Month: <span>March 2006</span>

Call this anything you like, but procrastion is probably what fits best.

Yesterday afternoon found me with Mum at Chateau Yerring. We had afternoon tea and then she was superbly nice and followed me round listing whatever I yelled out to her… I was taking photos for my, “The Formal Vision” assignment. Beautiful out there and if the photos work I shall be pretty pleased. Of course today when I go to drop off the film, the camera house is closed. What a waste to come the long way home for nothing.

Jess’s party was small but rather good. A police car was extremely annoying and followed me all the way to her place.

Got to catch up with Jo, Alecia and Elyce as well as a few of the others I see normally. Katie (if you read this) your invite to your party via email never made it to me, I don’t think you are being a cow because you are too nice and I have ‘other’ emails missing :S Jo let me know where it was, but I can’t make it 🙁 I am a bit cranky about all this very not impressed at gmail or kastanet or whatever! Happy Birthday anyway.

So we sat around and cooked dinner in these small pan things – not sure what you call them. Watched the new Pride and Prejudice (which I still REALLY like even though the old one has it’s firm place) Elizabeth Bennet is the worlds greatest character aside from equalling Jo March. If you are watching the dvd – which you should as videos SHOULD NOT AND SHOULD HAVE NEVER EXISTED, you can try the alterante ending. I suggest quite strongly that you don’t as it is *gag* material and thoroughly ruins it.

The others chose to watch Crash after that – oh did I mention the extremely fine raspberries I ate for dessert? So I half dozed half watched. At about 1:30am (Jess had gone to bed, as had Isobelle). Sam turns on the light to attempt to find this stick insect that was crawling across the screen, “In order that someone wont swallow it in their sleep”, instead Laura spots this fantastic specimen of a spider up on the wall. So hushed shreiks and ‘arghs’ ensue. I think I was the least worried and was quite prepared to stay where I was half asleep. It was too high to kill. There was great discussion about ‘not sleeping in that room’ and where should we go? And to quote Laura, “I might just be paranoid, but is that another one?”. More squealling of a kind. It was pale and even bigger. Downright refusal to stay there was made by everyone except me, and they started clearing the back room entirely of junk in order to fit all the beds.

We made the jigsaw work evenutally, with Laura in Jess’s room (who was fast asleep and knew nothing). I was lying in bed for about ten minutes when I thought of something and nearly gave myself away before I’d had a chance by laughing – great things coughs are. Another half minute or so and I had estimated where Sam’s arm was. I reached over and touched her ever so lightly. The reaction was entirely worth the risk. She gave this massive gasp and I cracked up laughing, which when she realised had her laughing a little traumatically and Alecia and Jo laughing.

Watched some Arrested Development (oh, yeah did I mention that Jess LOVES movies and such obsessively?) over breakfast. Then when I went out to the car, I made the beautiful discovery that someone had egged my (well Mum and Dad’s) car . Took a while to clean the stinking mess off the windscreen – it was not a pleasant drive home.

And I really should stop putting off writing that assignment…

I intend to give you (and myself) some time tonight. Which means I would like to write half a decent blog – but I’m not sure on what yet. I feel this need to make myself think about something. Three stars for vagueness. If you EVER have any suggestions for ‘what should bec blog on’ please email me at rebecca.mylastname@gmail.com if you don’t know my last name or can’t spell it, just leave a comment somewhere (Do subsitute my actual last name in place of mylastname, I don’t think you are that stupid but just in case there’s the odd blonde floating around 😉 I would LOVE to get suggestions as I’m sure your brain is entirely non-linked to mine and thus might come up with some left field possibilities. This is not a guarantee that I will post on what you send my way, but I’ll have a shot at the interesting ones and keep a file of the others. *crosses fingers for LOTS of unique suggestions*

Worked from 8:45-5pm. Met a clean cut Dave for lunch, well I ate lunch and then we wandered randomly into Kmart for a bit. I didn’t recognise him at first, ach the shame! His hair was cut (good Dave) and back to a dark brown… if it ever even was that, I’ve lost track. I’m always pleased at how Dave and I just seem to get along fine and dandy even if we haven’t seen eachother in ages. Some people are just simply cool like that. He’s working heaps more because of changed circumstances re: uni so I dare say I’ll see him round a bit more. I tried to get him to choose to graduate – he’s still not sure and proably wont. Silly boy. (Hi Dave if you even still read this!)

The message I passed on yesterday or the day before via phone to work unfortunately didn’t quite get through properly. Mel had me rostered from 5-10:15 tomorrow again. I told her I wasn’t coming because that’s what I said. So I wont. I think she sort of gets it – she did vaguely remember. Which means. I CAN SLEEP IN TOMORROW!!!!

A day to recover from how I’ve somehow been pushing myself. Plans are thus: sleep-in, do homework for assignment due Monday, afternoon tea with Mum at Chateu Yerring so I can take my next ‘photo’ assignment out to somewhere interesting (Pray for good light), go to Jess’s at 6:30 for her party and then choice a)sleepover and get to work at 12pm OR b)go home late and get to work at 12pm.

Wow oh wow, it’s still only Thursday!

Wednesdays happen to be very unfortunate.

Out of all the classes I have at uni “the almost” 3 best sit back to back. I have solid classes from 10-5pm. This excludes the occasion of getting out fractionally early and the 10 minute lee way you have to sprint (ok thats a major exaggeration) between buildings that are pretty much next to eachother, or simply up one flight of stairs. The problem is, by the time I hit about 3 o’clock – which is the start of a three hour workshop for still images (thats the analog photography thing) I am fairly stuffed, just from sitting on my butt for four hours. Or in this mornings case, wandering around with sound recording equipment “playing” followed by the building shift to watch a good 115 minutes of other people showing the class their artistic and technical capabilities. I show my assignment, you show your assignment. We all learn. Somehow.

I like still imaging I really do. I think having assignments where you are basically given a ‘shot list’ and freedom to go snap (or wind and push a button down after you have checked the ISO and the apeture and shutterspeed and compensation) whatever you so desire within a few minimal constraints plus no written explaination constitues less of an assignment and more of a good excuse to have a heck of a lot of fun. Yes the lecturer/tutor person guy thing looks like the spirit fingers guy off Bring It On (thanks Rebecca (other one) for that insight) but he’s fairly amusing. So I like the class, I just don’t like being half dead and half starved for it.

I might have mentioned one time before that I used to be a bit hypoglycemic when I was younger – ie: search for symptoms on Google (Don’t know where that is? Find that link on google). Basically it means if I didn’t eat or eat at odd hours I get a bit shaky. Something to do with low blood sugar. No idea why I originally got it, I think Mum used to get it when she was younger. It now doesn’t happen that often, but due to very late lunch or patchy lunches here and there when I can grab a spare few minutes I can tell it still lurks. This is annoying.

So this afternoon after about 5hrs of straight classes I got to present my slides, along with about 7 other people and I’m pleased to report (if it doesn’t sound like I have a big head) that he found nothing wrong with them, despite the fact that my one portrait (shape, not person) image was put sideways into the slide projector which is entirely his fault as I put it in correctly and he pulled out some wrong ones by mistake, found it and put it back in without looking.

2 hours earlier I presented my photoshop excercise. 4 images. Kitchen object on table. Normal photograph, Contrast/Colour altered photograph, Isolated object from background and Synthetic background that you your fine self with your fine talents whoever you happened to be even if you treated Photoshop like Paint, had created. Another easy assignment. Oh yeah did I mention the difficulty of the 300 words I had to write on, “Which was most like the original object?”

Artistic explanation is the worlds greatest means of hoodwinking the common person (or tutor). Creativity in your words, describes exactly why that splattering of brown is where it is and why it is perfectly acceptable and ‘actually quite good’.

Oh yes, and after 7hrs of classes (are you following this chopping across my day?) I show my camera to Kim – the lecturer/tutor still photography guy. He asks where I got it. “Cash Convertors”. Then offers me $50 for it – roughly what I paid. I said No… in my head. I think I actualy just smiled at him. Then says he think it is his old camera and it’s a good camera. How that for going and buying something I didn’t have a clue about!

Got a third of the way home and Jess realises that her phone must still be in the uni library. We go back. I find it next to a computer. Poor girl, it’s her birthday. Some painfully slow traffic. Make it to Sofias where she picks up her birthday dinner (why?!), I get some gelati as Im extremely thirsty and have run out of water and could justify spending the $2 I was going to but didn’t spend earlier. Make it to her place. I drive home. I have tea. I drive back to Jess’s with Laura and we watch some of series 2 of Arrested Development and some of Farenheit 9/11.

And now I am back home, lamenting the fact I can’t get on to Centrelink tomorrow – guess who forgot to report again! as I have to work from 8:45am-5:00pm. I am impressed. They’ll be impressed. I think they have a file on me. How many times I have to call them up because I’ve forgotten.

Please read all the above with a good idea of what exactly is sarcastic tone.
I’m actually in quite a good mood. I just need a sleep in that reaches beyond 8:30(am or pm, your choice). I need to go to bed before 9pm before I hit 20 – which is soon, or I think I will retreat to the back corner of Dymocks and find a spot amongst the dictonaries and dream of long words and definitions.

If you were enthralled with physics and sound you’d know exactly what I was talking about when I title a blog post 140 dB. For the rest of us, it refers to what sound engineers, (Or other freaks, I mean people) call the threshold of pain.

This is a slight overexaggeration on behalf of a tedious 2hr lecture on sound. I had already dubbed the lecture room ‘that which has strange noises’, this time they were at least entirely intentional.

An email from Penelope (the SIT that is Principles of Interactive Media, lecturer) informed us of the benefits of coming to hear this ‘pro’. Two hours of watching him explain something he didn’t explain well enough for complete naive to sound everything – except the use of ears, was quite enough. The explanation might have been fractionally interesting except that it was accompanied by multiple demonstrations of unbearable tone, frequency, pitch, purity, noise, harmony and brightness. Which shovelled simply more noise upon an already impending headache.

There was some truth in part of what was shared. The start of a sound event (whatever the heck that happens to be) is called an attack, the end of a sound event is called the decay.

This describes what it was like perfectly.

The Mellows came for dinner tonight. I love spending time with them. I like laughing my face off.

Shannon bumped me on msn really briefly:

“hey bec…great to read your e-mail last week! Fantastic to hear what you have been up to — sounds like some exciting things have been happening in your life and that God has blessed you with a great new church”

…the last line has me seriously confused. She isn’t a Christian – last I knew. I know her best friend is???? What’s going on there? Is she just saying it?

Caught up with Sam around 3pm this afternoon. We wandered up to Morrisons. Had a good catch up. Decided I’d attempt a bit more face to face candidity (is that a word?). Tried to explain something thats be running through my head a bit lately. Maybe I got there. We theorised for a bit, paid and went next door to the Library which was open for once. I was looking for some photography books but they had about 3 and all crap ones. I came home with a book on body language – one I’ve eyed off in Dymocks. I also looked for the second book in the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books but no such luck.

Car is down at my Uncle Arnie’s (Anthony’s)factory, who is kindly going to work on some stuff. Dad discovered something this morning. The speedo on my car doesn’t work when it’s cold. This is quite funny, bit annoying, it can be replaced fairly cheaply but just another little thing. Of the list for the roadworthy, Dad’s fairly convinced that most will be fine when it’s given a proper clean up so shouldn’t actually cost me that much money.

Dad leaves AUS at some horribly early hour. He’s in the Solomons for two weeks. Misses my graduation and gets back just in time for my (and Laura’s) birthday. No we don’t get up early to say goodbye, that’s done the night before. I’ve been to the airport more times than I can count. Sometimes it’s a friendly place, but on the whole I’d rather avoid it.

I had today off uni, due to my one lecture being cancelled this week. It gave me some time to finish a few things off homework wise – which has been very minimal really. I have a class on ‘sound’ sometime tomorrow and an assignment on that sometime in a few weeks – not so pleased about that as I haven’t ever bothered learning anything about sound files or audio editing etc. to be honest it really doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

And that’ll do for now because I’ve run out of things to say, and I’m sorry I haven’t given you a theoretical one for a while but things go as they go, theoretical takes time.. and I want to get back to the Body Language book. It’s really quite interesting.