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The Saturation Point of Bells

"There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind." (from Moomminvalley in November, Tove Jansson,1971)

back in black

Friday, June 19, 2009

My Mum tells be that the white on black is too hard to read. But I do so, so, so like black. I'm from Melbourne, after all. It's what we do well.


And the idea of reworking the whole colour scheme....! Readability is one thing, but there are already way to many pastel colours in the world for my liking....

However, my Mum generally knows best. If you are finding this hard to read because of the colour, please let me know. If you are finding it hard to read because of the content, you probably also should let me know. But break it to me gently.

Posted by Unknown at 9:40 AM 0 comments    

You've been Googled

Thursday, June 18, 2009

I am hoping like hell that 'bing' turns out to be crap. Because I won't use it.


Not for any logical reason, just because I haven't forgiven them for Vista.

I will not bore you all the actual problems with running the dog of a thing. What really pisses me off is that it was forced upon me. I needed new hardware. Why could I not have my old operating system on my new PC? Windows Whatever It Was (pre-Vista) had served me perfectly well, and wasn't that old. Why was it so unreasonable that I should expect to be able to choose? Couldn't I at the very least be given the choice to buy with no operating system at all, so I could have put my old one on? Apparently not. I must be forced to purchase an endless supply of frequent crashes and inexplicable stalls.

Impotent fury festers. Besides, its rare to have the opportunity to happily nurture resentment and turn the other cheek to the advances of that harlot Forgiveness without hurting a flea. Why would I want to give that away?

I found myself with a dilemma, though, after the nightly news have furnished the Big M with about 5 minutes worth of free advertising. What if 'bing' is actually better? A lot of my work depends on internet research. If it was good, there was a very real prospect of being forced to comply. The very thought makes me break out in a rash.

So I thought I would run a simple test and ask them both to find something obscure. I 'binged' myself. It sounds like a mild assault, like having a ping-pong ball bounced off your head. Then I Googled myself. More of an aural tickle, I think.

To my everlasting relief, I found that 'bing' disdains me as much as I disdain it. It most ardently prefers an American sociologist of the same name. Google knows the sociologist, and the kindergarten teacher, and the lawyer in Ohio who share my name, but it knows me as well.

It wins. Phew.

Posted by Unknown at 7:55 PM 3 comments    

Labels: gadgets, searching, web

Florence luxuries.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009


Florence! What a luxury.


Its a luxury and a privilege for anyone to have an opportunity to go to Firenze for the weekend, obviously. As an Australian, who has spent most of one's life assuming that any trip to Italy will take a years worth of savings and probably two years' worth of accrued leave from work, I am acutely aware of just how great the privilege is.

In fact, when P first suggested I come and meet her there for the weekend, my instinctive response was 'no'. It's justs not the sort of thing one does, is it? It took J, a European and well-travelled one at that, to point out that I both could and should. So I did.

It took about the same time to get there as it used to do to drive to visit Mum and Dad in Gippsland. Andthe plane ticket cost didn't cost any more than the petrol would have, either.

And yes, the art was magnificent and the architecture grand (more of all that later). Yes, the view from the hotel window (domes and roofs and flying sparrows framed by foothills) was lovely. Yes, the food and the wine were great, and the people running the trattoria friendly, professional and often chic.

More glorious than that, though, was to have the opportunity to sit eating and drinking with family and friends. The main bit is the company itself, obviously. Lovely people who you like, who are family, whose friends and family are by extension and connection and varying degrees of separation also yours.

There is something else, as well. Its time spent with people with shared experience, shared acquaintences, shared context. Suddenly remembering what its like to skip all those laborious parts of polite conversation where you explain the backstory: where you come from, what you mean, who on earth the other characters in the story are.

The real luxury is to be able to speak in short-hand. To be able to say something like 'it was at that place in Alma Road', and have everyone there, know exactly what house you are talking about, in what suburb, who lived there, and exactly the kind of parties that were held there in the summer of 1988. All you need is one little phrase like that and the scene is suddenly peopled with the whole tapestry and characters and sub-plots that we share.

So thank you Penny, David & Romani and the Oxforshire Aussies. Thanks for the whole weekend, but especially for that lovely night at Gustavino on the Via della Condotta, where the conversation, like the wine, was full and rich and warm.


Posted by Unknown at 5:49 PM 0 comments    

Labels: Florence, Italy, travel

Silence in Disneyland

Tuesday, June 9, 2009


Just one further thing that I have to mention before I stop crapping on about Venice.

Talk to people about Venice and the first reaction you tend to get is a 'wow' if they have not been there, or you get a kind of sneer and a remark about 'Disneyland for Grown-Ups',which is the precursor to the slightly embarassed admission that they have.

Its is true that the really touristy bits are genuinley and dismayingly awful. One night, when we where sitting in our rose garden, looking over the grand canal to the people dining on the opposite shore, we had a thought that maybe it would be nice on a sunny evening to eat while watching those glossy water taxis drift by. Perhaps, we reasoned, even though the restaurants in question were off the the horridist street we had found, once you were in looking out it would be alright.

So, we slipped past the African guys selling fake handbags and ventured over the Ponte Scalzi,the density of persons-per-square-foot increasing with every step. We peered past the glitter of gelati vendors, walls festooned with low-rent mini-masks and bad t-shirts and through to the restaurants mining the bottomless income-earning potential of their canal-side tables. The first three or four didn't warrant a second look. We were about to turn back, but dedided to creep ahead just a bit more.

Suddenly, to our relief,we were greeted with lovely old rugs draping over antique furtniture in a rather peaceful and elegant looking hotel lobby. With the confidence that stems from Green Coat Magic, we strolled in. Through the glass doors directly in front we could see white table cloths, tragically empty glasses and sunlight glinting on the water. This was more like it.

We had nearly reached the door to the restaurant when suddenly it came. With a pant and a crackle, a slightly off-key 'O sole mia'(sic) boomed out from the terrace, tune favoured of advertising industry gondoliers the world over (though apparently its not even a Venetian song). Worse, it was accompanied by the amplified puffs, clicks and crackles that accompanies bad cabaret acts the world over. Yes, there was a live (though possibly only just) singer in a bad suit creeping his way between the tables.

I looked at J. He looked at me. Without breaking silence or stride we pirouetted on our heels and walked straight out again, back through the souvenier stalls, back over the bridge, back to the safety of Santa Croce, on OUR side of the canal.

Which brings me, after that rather lengthy and unintended digression, to my point. Which is silence. In amongst all the Disney madness of a city that lives and breathes tourism, is was surprisingly easy to find silence. It was in in Santa Croce, San Polo and Dorsoduro, anyway. All the tourists didn't seem comfortable with the notion of getting lost in this maze of lanes where no car has ever rolled, so in that part of town all it took was a little wander down a narow lane,and suddenly you would be in the cool shade, with the old walls like canyons brushing your shoulders and geraniums glinting from widow-boxes in the top floor. A square opens in a glare of light and there is women playing with their babies, boys doing their best to skittle old men with their soccer balls, and old women watching over it all. Turn down another lane and you meet an old lady with a walking stick who waves and says something to you in Italian. You smile, continue on your way, and reach a dead end: canal and no bridge, and which point you realise she telling you that down there was only 'aqua'.

You thank her sheepishly as you return,and she smiles tolerantly in a way that looks like it probably translates as 'the idiots never stop and listen'.

Posted by Unknown at 8:00 PM 3 comments    

Labels: blogsherpa, Green Coat Magic, Italy, Venice

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