Phoney noises

I don't like mobile phones

Being long-sighted and having man-hands mean that I find the interface frustrating to use.

They sound terrible too.

The ringtones might be polyphonic but the speaker still sounds like a shrill piece of plastic.

However, I recently returned to full-time work and they insisted I'd need one.

One of the IT guys couldn't believe I didn't have a phone, but I wasn't going to list the ways an iPhone had disrupted my life five years earlier -- especially since he was clearly an Android user.

The phone they gave me has been useful for the demands of checking-in at supermarkets, now that COVID-19 contact tracing is part of our lives.

And it's quicker to see if there's an email waiting for me, although I will use a computer to reply.

The phone makes strange noises at times and I haven't learned what they mean.

I've disabled a lot of the apps but some of them still seem to announce themselves.

Anyway, last week the Disquiet Junto project asked for a transformed sound and I thought I'd try to improve the ringtone of the mobile phone.

I've slowed it down and replaced the instrument with a piano that has a lot of character.

There might be a way that I could use this piece as the ringtone, but I worry that might change my relationship with the mobile phone.

I've seen how addictive these things can be.

Vote 1 Oscar

Play Music On The Porch Day

I recorded this version of my song 'Blue Moon' for Play Music On The Porch Day, which is an initiative that I've involved myself in during previous years.

Untiring zeal

Have zealots given zeal a bad name?

I don't know the background to this plaque sitting in my office, but it's given me an appreciation for how the word zeal might have a different connotation now than whenever Ms Campbell was writing for the ages.

Droning on

Sitting in the sun yesterday, wearing underwear and reading

Listening to the drone of lawnmowers and whipper-snippers, when I looked up and realised there was also the drone of a drone hovering over the neighbour's yard and panning around.

If I had a bottle, I might've recreated this shot but I wasn't going to throw my book.

When I studied TV production I realised that the role of a camera is to privilege the viewer. 

Now there are so many more cameras around, it seems that privilege has grown too. 

The thing that shits me is it is privileged and the person fixated on the view doesn't have to deal with whine. 

All the amazing drone videos I've seen use a soundtrack or post-production audio, whereas real life is living with the dentist drill-like drone of a drone. 

Enjoying the song of blackbirds

 

Missing the library

Saturday mornings usually hold a bike ride to the library to read newspapers and talk with other old blokes 

Stuck at home today due to "lockdown" but still can't bring myself to buy The Australian, even though I try to read it ironically.

I like the horoscopes and the Review section but also find it amusing to read their Coalition spin and attempts at agenda setting. 

Up to a point though, some of their agendas trample over the lives of marginalised people and leave me feeling angry.

Most people rejected his message

 

Reason to stay at home

There are stay at home orders in place at the moment

The spread of the delta variant of Covid-19 is concerning. 

However, it's nearly time for another airbourne threat to emerge: swooping magpies.

The video below is from 2012, when I paid my son $10 to get swooped.

Gold-plated turd

Somethings can't be unseen

When Facebook shows me this ad I keep seeing a gold-plated turd in a toilet bowl. 

Putting the cart before the plague

My federal member had a curious turn of phrase in a recent email, where she described lockdowns as a plague

Restrictions and lockdowns have plagued our communities, particularly those on our NSW/Vic border, for more than a year. These have been frustrating, socially disruptive, and economically devastating.

I like how it somehow innocently inverts the response for the cause.

Elsewhere in her text it was ensured that every measure of human life and health was qualified with an economic indicator.

By ramping up the vaccine rollout and working together, we are can be confident in getting the current outbreaks under control and continue to grow our economy.

It speaks to how the Coalition can't help but put their economic cart ahead of the horse, but unfortunately they won't see those horses are actually people. 

History repeating

Recently I returned to full-time work

It's a maternity-relief role, although it doesn't involve directly assisting a pregnancy. 

The role actually involves communicating for local government and it's surprising that it's been a decade since I thought I'd left that career.

This time I seem to be in a happier organisation and I know my role is a supporting one, rather than trying to change a culture.

One thing I did this week was make a video for social media and it's been fun to see the response.

It was also fun to work with Emily, since it's kinda strange how we knew each other years ago and both ended up in the Riverina working for a small council.

More speed in my suburb

Not sure I appreciate what you're inferring about my suburb, Telstra.

Dreams are wired?

“These brain circuits are self-organized at birth and some of the early teaching is already done,” Crair said. “It’s like dreaming about what you are going to see before you even open your eyes.”

Dreams are weird

Dreams are not logical. They speak to us about the other side of ourselves, the side that has been so fervently abandoned in modernity’s pursuit of explication. This is the fertile darkness, the lunar mind, the unconscious, which the tools of the underworld assist in exposing. Dreams and psychedelics support us in making the unconscious conscious, and, with proper assimilation, thus ladle some much-needed water into psyches parched by solar consciousness.