Projects

Mariah
Originally uploaded by Jhuny.

I just simply haven't been inspired to update my blog like I used to. Hopefully touring will change that, I'll have something to write about instead of: "oh! look what's happening at the Opera House - Bangarra!"... Which is great for the first couple of weeks but there really is only so many ways to skin a cat.

So with few things to inspire me to write, I turn to my trusty old camera to get me going.

Oh! Look what happened at the Opera House!!!

I had just d/l a mash-up of Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". If that sounds like a double cheeseburger with cheese, it is. Just listening to it causes you to gesticulate wildly and knock your head with a coke can.

It's currently getting the most spin time on my car stereo. At traffic lights I make sure the windows are tightly wound up and, to be sure, I turn the volume down a notch.

Really old meme (first seen here) and I don't know why I came across it but it sounds interesting...

Basically what you do is type in each letter one-at-a-time in the address bar and see what comes out. You're supposed to put in the first link but, if you cheat, who's gonna know?

Anyway, here goes:

ARIA Charts
Beatmixed - where you can get cool mixes and mashups
Cyberstore at TPG
Darkseason - a relatively new addition to the blogroll, mainly about coffee...
Elektric Cowboy - more cool mixes and mashups
Flickr - my online photo album
Google - Boring!
Herald Sun - Anger at gay serve - bit of an unforced error from Spewie Hewie.
IMDB - all about Sommersturm
JhunyTheBoy - where you're at. Unless you're using an RSS reader or something like that, of course.
Kinja - before I went Bloglines
Listen Missy - this New Yorker sees alot of dance
MunchyMunchyMooCow - a local
NRL - where I get my tipping info
OneStopHot - not much of a choice here...
Oh la la Paris - pretty pictures!
The Adventures of QueerPenguin
Requiem - interesting, thought-provoking stuff.
stevenberlinjohnson.com - author who likes to mix it up.
Technorati.com - Tag!
UK Launch - commentary on the UK Singles Charts
Mashup of the Week Podcast - more cool mixes and mashups (obviously)
Wired - my favourite mag
Xayma - recently encountered blog
Yahoo - the other "y" sites cannot be shown under this rating.
Supernaut - contemporary dancers are crazy, aren't they?

PHEW! That took longer than expected.

Tags: Internet.

Club SP
Originally uploaded by Jhuny.

Whilst on tour I commenced work on this mix only to see my laptop hard drive roll over and die. Perhaps it died of eighties overload. I almost did as well; that's why the mix does a bit of a switch in the middle somewhere. If anything, it's a mix of ideas that never quite get there (wherever *there* is). It was initially going to be a birthday gift to PT but ended up being completed in time for ST's birthday (I ended up giving the CDs to both of them). It was PT's initial idea for me to do an eighties mix like this but the final two-sided nature of the mix came to me while I was out with ST (at The Beat). The title refers to a conversation we had at Spoon in Fortitude Valley envisioning a new promotions company led by SP and PS, calling it SP Management. My idea was to hijack their concept, replacing them with two completely different people, and including the graphic design that they were planning to use, except that I didn't think I had appropriate pictures (ACTUALLY, now that I think about it, I DO HAVE APPROPRIATE PICTURES!) In the end, the title was confusing for the recipients and the mix goes all the way around and finishes nowhere. But it's become the Official Sound Track to my bus trip to the Opera House for work.

Track listing:
1. Red Kult vs Mike and the Mechanics - Miracle
2. Eric Prydz - Call On Me
3. Cabin Crew - Star 2 Fall
4. Mylo - In My Arms (Sharam Jey Remix)
5. Armand Van Helden - Into Your Eyes (The Droyds Delinquent Remix)
6. Armand Van Helden - Into Your Eyes (Sant and Matteo Esse Remix)
7. Midnight Star - Midas Touch (Dirty South Mix)
8. Max Graham vs Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Club Mix)
9. Max Graham vs Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Future Funk Mix)
10. Mohito vs Howard Jones - Slip Away
(Sick of the eighties yet?)
11. Kylie Minogue - Giving You Up (Riton Re-Rub Dub)
12. Body Rockers vs Rogue Traders - I Like The Way You Voodoo
13. Scissor Sisters - Filthy Gorgeous (tone396 Mix)
14. Deep Dish vs Dire Straits - Flashing The Money (Sultan Club Mix)
15. Sarah Vaughan - Fever (Adam Freeland Remix)
16. Missy Elliott - Lose Control
17. Destiny's Child - Girl (Junior Vasquez Dub)
18. Usher - Caught Up (Bimbo Jones Mix)
19. Shakedown vs Taylor Dayne - Shakedown My Heart
20. Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb (Tiga Remix)
21. Ciara ft Missy Elliott - 1 2 Step
22. Stonebridge - Put 'Em High (Lief Remix)

Phew!

Tags: Mix.

Previously: My Favourite Buildings #2.

It's been awhile but now that I'm in Melbourne, there's no better time to start again.

Federation Square.

So this is Melbourne’s answer to Sydney’s Opera House? Interesting… Both aspire for greatness as major architectural works (and both compromised by bureaucracy) but the two are diametrically opposed as the cities themselves. The Opera House is a proud, confident and inspiring statement. Fed Square is a question, a challenge, a contradiction. One commands and directs to its visitors into its space while the other sits back and lets you explore its jumbled maze. One charges a fee while the other is mainly a free experience. A curious thought I had while wandering down Collins Street, checking out the natives, was that the buildings (in a very general way) reflected the way their respective cities dressed: Sydneysiders are ready to show off their sleek form and shape that they spent a lot of money to get, Melburnians layer contrasting patterns and somehow make it work. I don’t know how true that thought is though, it came to mind after walking past a particularly good-looking stylish local rugged up to brave the cold.

I found Fed Square to be quite a difficult photographic subject. It’s difficult to find a view of the building that is original and interesting; I constantly had that feeling that, despite the crazy shapes, the architects had pre-planned just about every view of the building and that to take a picture of it was to simply re-iterate the design without saying anything new about it. It is highly irregular but, viewing it from a distance the building does something that you wouldn’t expect it to do: it disappears. You’d think that it would clash with the urban background but it actually blends in somehow.

But I really do love the building. A couple of hours after I arrived here from Tullamarine (and after getting my compulsory soy latte from De Graves Espresso) I found myself wandering around the place, through the Alfred Deakin Building to check out the Screen Gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. There is a photographic exhibition there that looks interesting too (Bill Henson) and is certainly a reason to visit again in the future. I just wish I could take a decent picture of it.

Here's a criticism: considering it is partly a gallery, sometimes I find it dominates the art that it houses rather than simply presenting them. This happened to me last year, I can't remember which exhibition, maybe it was so shite I found myself preferring to look at the building itself rather than the art. Possible.

tags: Federation Square, Buildings.

Hungover and with a husky voice, I scrambled out of bed to make the most of my last day in Nagoya. Why I decided to go back to the Expo is a bit beyond me, especially with Kyoto down the train line.

Flew into expo on the Maglev and was rather disappointed; what seemed cool a day ago was rather lacklustre though there was absolutely nothing wrong with the service. Made my way into the site (via the staff gate YAY free ticket!), stood in Japanese plaza looking and the lengthy cue into the Earth Tower thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" The motivation was to take photos but, looking around, things looked so fake, I would have much preferred a temple or shrine. It was all too shiny brand new and, besides, after such a big night I wasn't feeling like sharing my space with a million of my bestest japanese buddies. Wandered around aimlessly for a while, the queue into Earth Tower was over an hour, or so I was told, so I headed down to the forest area. On the way I passed the Aichi pavillion, which had a market and people participating in group exercise, which was quite entertaining. All up the pavillion seemed to have a good message: looking to the future with good health and environment. The exhibit inside the pavillion was pretty entertaining, seemingly Japanese-style theatre warning us of the consequences of continued polluting energy production to the environment and the need to use greener energies. The show was full of dramatic pauses, lighting effects, puppetry and aerial work.

The Aichi pavillion was probably the best exhibit I went to; most of the others had lines that seemed too long. I also went to the Phillipines, Pacific Islands and Spain but wasn't in the mood to linger. I raced back to the Giant Wheel to take more photos of it (gotta love that sunset!) and then bit the bullet and stood in the Earth Tower line for an hour. It was pretty awesome, though.

All up, it was quite disappointing. I should have just gone shopping.

Tags: Nagoya, Aichi Expo.

Meanwhile, finding it hard to keep motivated in blogging at the moment. Somedays I want to write but I get stuck with the idea of these thoughts being out there somewhere. Never mind that, at the moment, only me myself and I know about it. I just want it all to be meaningful though not too revealing to the point where I might as well just post a picture of myself naked. Or something like that. Besides, I just want some STUFF to exist, somewhere out there in my little bit of Internet-Space (or what is more correctly known as the World Wide Web but that just sounds so daggy and old-fashioned) so that I can muck around with it later, y'know, make myself that website for myself that I've been wanting for so long but get stuck because there's not much I feel like publishing in a website about myself. The whole point is to have all this STUFF then design pages around it then keep on adding until it all means something.

When does it become meaningful? When I stop prattling on about this kind of pseudo-philosophical junk and talk about things that really mean something to me? What about what this all says about me? That, given this kind of forum I will tend to prattle on about this kind of psuedo-philosophical junk instead of saying something really revealing about me? Is that enough for it to be meaningful? Ask me after a few weeks of blogging.