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  • 2 degrees of Melbourne – Episode 1: Andy White

    2 degrees of Melbourne – Episode 1: Andy White

    A while back I wrote a blog about how this year I was going to focus on being more creative. It turns out that living with your parents while your house is being renovated, and then moving back in to the aforementioned house, leaves very little scope for creativity. But we have been back in our house for about 6 weeks now, and I have just finished my first real creative project…and I’m really happy with how it has come out.

    The idea

    I love Melbourne, and I love hearing people’s stories…so one of the big projects I wanted to embark on this year was to interview some Melbourne people who I admire and create a series of short videos. Basically to talk about my home city, via the people who I think make it great. In theory this is very doable…but in reality, people who are worth interviewing and making videos of, often have better things to do with their time than talk to you for a video that they are not getting paid for.
    So it was with a fair degree of trepidation that I approached my first potential interviewee, Andy White (of Fyxomatosis fame). I put off writing to him for about two weeks, then I spent an hour or so crafting the perfect email, then I spent the next 12 hours preparing contingency plans for the inevitable rejection. So it’s fair to say that when he replied with ‘Sure. When/Where?’, I was both surprised and overjoyed…not to mention impressed with his brevity.
    But once you have someone who has agreed to be interviewed, you then have to prepare for the interview. You have to make sure you have all the gear that you need. Most importantly, you have to believe that you are going to create something that your interviewee will be happy with, so that the next time they see you they don’t start screaming ‘You!’ and throwing things at you.

    The filming of the interview

    Andy was happy to come to my house for the filming, so at least I knew we would be able to get some good light…and if we used one of our new ‘Of course your happiness is my prime concern darling…wait, HOW MUCH?!!!’ chairs I might be able to claim them as a tax deduction. I used a roll of white paper as the background (I gave a guy my mountain bike when he was looking at getting back into cycling and he repaid me with reams of white paper, which make an awesome background for filming or photography) and I shot it all on my Canon 550D and my iPhone 4 (I used a Zoom H2 for the audio).
    Any concerns I had about whether I would get enough good stuff to edit with were assuaged within the first 3 minutes. Andy is a dream interviewee, he was relaxed, fearless and best of all, engaging.
    After 40 minutes of interview, the sensor on my camera was starting to overheat…and Xavier had returned to wreak havoc on my film set, so we called it a day.

    The edit

    As I said, the interview went for 40 minutes. Normally my first cut (where you get rid of all of the stuff you know you won’t be able to use) would whittle this down to about 10-15 minutes…then I would begin the tricky job of cutting it back to 3-5 minutes. But when I got rid of all of the guff from Andy’s interview I still had 30 minutes of footage…pretty much his entire interview was great! Which is great if you’re producing a half hour doco…but when you’re producing a 3-5 minute video for the web, it’s a freaking nightmare.
    I was eventually brutal enough and cut it down to 5’30″(but there was some great stuff I’ll have to find another use for!), added some photos and footage that I had (and two that I got from Andy), wrote the music track in GarageBand…and the end result goes a little something like this…

    or for the Vimeo fans

    2 Degrees of Melbourne – Andy White from 2 Degrees of Separation on Vimeo.

    So there we have it, the ‘Year of creativity’ is finally underway…my next interview targets are Richard Gill, Danny Collis and Hanna Assifiri. So if any of you have any good contacts with them, please let me know.

    A big thanks

    Last but not least, I’d like to thank Andy very much for taking the time, being such a great interviewee and most of all for running the best bike ride I’ve ever done, The Melburn Roobaix.

     

     

  • Recovering your Hotmail account

    About two and a half weeks ago, I got a weird email from my wife’s (hereafter known as Katie) Hotmail account. Feeling quietly confident that she wouldn’t be sending me emails in German that were apparently trying to get me to click on a link, I gave her a call to let her know her account had been hacked. Turns out a few other people had told her the same thing and so she was heading home to change her password. It’s fair to say things turned crap pretty soon after this, here’s our experience.

    Step 1: Hotmail sends an email to your secondary account with a verification code

    When Katie went to log in there was a screen saying ‘It looks like someone else is using this account. We will send a verification email to your nominated account. Just type the code from this email into the box below and you can regain access’.
    Clearly this is genius, and as I’m the person with the nominated account I waited for the email with the verification to arrive…and I waited…and I waited some more. If you’ve ever had to change your password on something, or you use internet banking, you’ll know these verification emails usually arrive within about 10 seconds. After half an hour, I got Katie to try again…then again after another 20 minutes. Nothing.

    Step 2: Prove your identity

    There is also an option to fill in a form that proves that you are the legitimate owner. Again, genius. The form asks you all the normal questions, but also asks you to list the subjects of your recent emails, as well as the addresses of people you have recently emailed. At first blush this makes sense, after all who else would know the subjects of your emails. But in reality, if you haven’t used the account for a couple of days, or if a lot of your emails are replies to other people’s emails…how the hell are you going to remember what the subjects were? How much tolerance is built in? How many of you (without taking a peak) can say what the subjects of emails that you sent 3 days ago were? How many of you actually know people’s email address off by heart? Most email systems autofill these when you start typing, so it’s become like remembering people’s mobile phone numbers…you don’t have to because the machine does it for you.
    But don’t panic. After all, this is Microsoft…a multimillion dollar company. They will have thought of all of this and built in tolerances accordingly. Just fill in the form, and tomorrow you’ll be back into your account.

    Step 3: Wait 24 hours…then be told that you haven’t proven you are you

    OK…so the email verification never arrived, and now their system doesn’t believe that you are the legitimate owner of your own account. Just to be clear, the system that was apparently sufficiently lax as to allow your account to be hacked by a complete stranger…is now saying it won’t let you back into your own email account.

    Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3…twice.

    By this stage we are getting furious. Katie uses her Hotmail account for a lot of her business stuff, so it’s really important to get those contact details back from her account. In desperation I actually started scouring the internet for help. After 2 hours of being bounced from the form we had already filled in…to a series of FAQ’s…to a ‘help Forum’. I was starting to feel like one of those old people who say ‘I just want to talk to a real person!’
    So I did the next best thing and sent a snarky tweet to @MicrosoftHelps (Microsoft Support’s twitter account). The next day I got a reply from them, and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing they escalated our case to a ‘moderator’. At last! Clearly this was going to be the turning point…God bless Social Media!

    Step 5: Abandon all hope

    Ahh yes…I may have been a bit too quick on the ‘God bless social media’ thing (actually in truth, @microsofthelps were really good…it’s just the rest of Microsoft that was freaking useless). After a week of filling in the same forms (because clearly after two weeks Katie’s memory of the subjects of her emails was going to be better) and trying to convince Hotmail that Katie really is the owner of her own account. We were given a final notice that we had not proved that Katie was the real owner, so we could not get access to the account…but hey ‘Why don’t you set up a new Hotmail account…and this time be really careful with your password.’
    Well there’s an idea…and here’s another idea…why don’t you go F$&# yourself?! How about you develop some security systems that actually prevent this from happening? If you can’t do that (and I appreciate it’s very difficult), then why don’t you implement some systems that actually allow the legitimate owners of the account to gain access to it? And if you can’t do either of these things, how about you don’t patronise people by saying ‘hey just set up another account’? Because sometimes people have over 10 years worth of correspondences and contacts and you can’t just get that back by starting a new account, you human paraquat!

    Some advice

    So after two and a half weeks of trying, we have finally given up. After over 10 years of being a loyal customer, Katie has set up a Gmail account…and all because Hotmail’s systems are so inadequate and their customer service has been so poor.
    I realise that complaining about the customer service for a product that I’ve never paid for is pretty much a ‘first world problem’, but you know what? I don’t care. I’ve been nice, I’ve done everything they’ve asked, I have held fast to my belief that if you just do the right thing, then the system will do the right thing. But the system hasn’t done the right thing, it has strung me along for two and half weeks, and then dumped me on my arse (and I had more than enough of that during my teenage years from any number of girls!)

    So here’s some advice for Hotmail:
    Fix your systems.
    Improve your customer service.

    And here’s some advice for all of you:
    Set up a Gmail account and transfer all of your contacts over there.
    And if you you’re trying to get in contact with Katie…don’t send anything to her Hotmail account.

  • The song that changed my life…kinda.

    The song that changed my life…kinda.

    Rafael Epstein has a segment on his radio show on 774 ABC Melbourne where people talk about the song that changed their life, and every time I think about it, there is one song that really stands out: ‘Red 2‘ by Dave Clark. But it’s not because it heralded the onset of some amazing time in my life, more that it marked the end of one.

    The rave scene in the early 90’s

    If this were a news report or documentary, this is the part where you cut to the footage of people dancing with glow sticks in a massive club while a light show explodes around them. But in truth this is not where this story starts. In year 11 and 12  at school (1992-93) I started listening to techno music. Back then it was called ‘trance’ and it was still well and truly outside of the mainstream. DJ’s who would eventually play at parties for 10,000s of people like Will e Tell and Richie Rich were still playing the back room at Insanity at the Chevron to a transient group of about 20 punters.

    Community radio was the only place to find it. There was one show that I listened to religiously called ‘Beat in the street‘ (that later became ‘Transmission’) on RRR-FM hosted by Kate Bathgate. I used to tape every show, and then listen to the tape on my walkman again, and again and again at school over the next week.
    Going to a private all-boys school meant that listening to anything other than MMM or Fox-FM was basically like walking into a steakhouse and just ordering a salad, it simply wasn’t done. So listening to these tapes in the common room at school had a sort of forbidden pleasure element to it.
    I started going to dance parties (or in the parlance of 1994 ‘raves’) regularly when I started Uni and it was a total revelation. The venues were usually shitty warehouses with one toilet. The sound systems were prone to blowing just as everyone was going apeshit (Thomas Heckman, I’m looking in your direction) and the people attending them were the offcuts from society. There were tall and lanky guys and short squat women. They had their own dresscode (highly coloured clothes, with very wide pants and very tight tops). They didn’t drink and there was none of the agro that hung over the club scene like a fog as soon as the clock hit 2am. And the music…well it was like nothing I had ever heard! There was the big 4/4 beat driving it along, but there were also floating basslines and awesome melody lines that I just loved. If you can imagine my music up until this point being basically nothing but guitars and the occasional hip-hop track… then suddenly hearing this or this you can get an idea of just how big a change it was.
    It was a very friendly and welcoming scene, and like so many sub-cultures, part of the pleasure was sharing an experience with a whole lot of like minded people. I would head to these parties at about midnight and then dance until the early morning…then catch the first train home. Some how I managed to also accommodate my exhausting 8 contact hours a week of uni. I was living the dream.

    Cometh the drugs, cometh the pretty people…endeth the party

    By the mid 90’s the parties were getting bigger and better, with the Hardware and Every Picture Tells a Story parties attracting thousands of people…and with that I started to notice more and more people from clubland appearing at the raves. It started with a slow trickle of muscly men in white t-shirts and their blonde bombshells…and eventually became a monsoon of pretty people armed with whistles, glow sticks and talcum powder. But of course these people weren’t here for the music…they were there because someone had told them that it was cool to go to raves and do drugs.
    Now of course drugs had always been a big part of the rave scene, but suddenly people were no longer going to listen to the music and maybe do some drugs…they were going to do some drugs and maybe listen to some music. So the music slowly began to morph away from the flowing melodies and soaring chords, towards something that said ‘look, you’ve spent a lot of money on those two pills and that gram of speed…let’s give you something that you can just grind your teeth to all night’. To me Red 2 was the tipping point. It was so sparse, so mechanical, and so minimal that I felt no connection with it…and as the crowds around me generally lost their shit to it…I realised that I had no real connection with them either. And suddenly the spell was broken. I could no longer see my future self still going the these parties when I was 40 (I had earnestly announced this to people in the past), I couldn’t even see myself going to these parties in 6 months time. The dance was over.
    Like any naive person in a subculture, I wanted the mainstream to see how amazing this scene was and to experience what I was experiencing. I was convinced that if the mainstream could just attend these parties, then the world would be a better place…but when the mainstream decided to drop by, they were like a drunken gatecrasher. They turned up at my house, made a pass at my girlfriend then vomited on the cat. In short they pretty much ruined everything, and Red 2 was the soundtrack they did it to.

    That was 20 years ago. All of the flyers I used to have stuck on my bedroom walls are gone, the recordings I listened to religiously are on redundant technology and it takes weeks weeks to organise someone to look after the kids if I was to go out on a Saturday night…and even then, I’d have to be home by 1am because otherwise I’d be too tired for the next day. But while writing this I jumped on YouTube and started listening to some of the tracks I used to love, and suddenly I was back in a warehouse in Footscray, at 4am, dancing my heart out with a room of people who were having the best night of their lives…and I’m so glad that I got to experience that.

  • Riding to work

    Riding to work

    I love my daily commute to work. It’s 2 x half hour exercise sessions that don’t take any time out of my day. All of the stress of the work day has evaporated by the time I get home. It’s faster than driving or catching public transport…and I’ve reduced the number of times I’m almost killed to less than 3 per week!
    I’ve ridden to work for about the last 12 years, and there are more people doing it than ever before, so I thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve learned over this time and provide some basic etiquette tips for the potential commuters and the new commuters alike.

    Don’t just jump in the deep end
    People will happily tell you that riding on the road is dangerous and that you could be killed. There is a very good reason for this…it is dangerous and you could be killed. But there is plenty you can do to lessen the danger. One of these things is to get to know your ride before you start commuting.
    I really noticed this over the last 6 months of living as a gypsy in a few different place and having to adjust my ride to work. The first couple of times you do a ride, your senses are overloaded; there are new things to look at, new smells, new sounds and a litany of other things that your brain is trying to process…adding peak hour traffic to this is not a great idea. This year I worked through the Christmas –  New Year period, and I realised that this would be the perfect time to start riding to work. There was hardly any traffic and so you could really get comfortable with the ride itself; learn where the big bumps are, learn where the hills are, learn roughly how long it will take, all without having the stress of cars going past at 60km/h.

    Learn the flow
    Once you’re comfortable with your route, then learn how the traffic works on it. Where does it all slow down? (you’re more likely to get people pulling into the bike lane to get around other cars)? Where are the slip lanes? (cars rarely look for bikes if they are merging onto a sliplane…and they tend to start drifting across the bike lane as they approach it) Where are the schools? (there will be a lot of parked cars with doors opening) Where are the tram tracks? (for those not living in Melbourne, a tram track is a long piece of metal with a hole the same size as a bike wheel running along it. They are strategically place so that if you have to swerve around a car door opening or a pedestrian stepping out from between parked cars your wheel will hit it and you will be sent crashing to the ground. The only thing more dangerous than a tram track is a wet tram track…and possibly BMW X5 drivers). What are the traffic light sequences? (if you’re in the far left lane, and there is a left hand arrow, it’s better to position yourself right near the gutter, rather than in the middle of the lane…that way people behind you can still turn left).
    The more you ride, the more attuned you become to the way the traffic works…but only use this a safety mechanism to protect you…not as an opportunity to make up time. Just because that light normally turns green 3 seconds after the turning arrow turns green, doesn’t mean hitting that intersection at full speed assuming that the light will change is a good idea. Sometimes lights use different sequences…and suddenly you’re hurtling towards moving cars.

    Be aware of what’s behind you
    Just as a good driver checks their rear-view mirror regularly, you need to make sure you take the occasional look behind to see who or what is behind you. Obviously you will also be using your ears to hear cars coming up behind you, or to hear another cyclist letting you know that they are coming past you, or any number of important cues…so I highly recommend against wearing headphones.

    Basic etiquette
    As with many things, there are a number of unwritten rules that you only tend to discover when you transgress them…and then get yelled at/publicly shamed. Here are a couple:

    • Don’t roll to the front of the queue at lights This is acceptable if you are a very quick cyclist and will leave everyone else for dead when you take off. But if even one of the cyclists who you have just rolled past is faster than you…then you may as well just have served them a decaf coffee for how poorly they are going to think of you.
    • The ‘Commuter Cup’ is just a joke. It’s not a race. Some people are going to be slower than you…but you do not need to make a big show of how much faster you are than them. And you certainly don’t have to swerve wildly into traffic to get around them.
      By the same token, if you are a slower rider, have a regular look behind to see if you’re holding anyone up. If you are, give them enough space to pass…no-one likes that prat with the caravan that is holding up all the traffic on the way to the beach.
    • Use your hands You may know you’re about to stop, or turn, or that there is something on the road ahead…but the person behind you probably doesn’t. So where possible, use hand signals to let them know. For example
      – put your arm out in the direction you’re turning
      – put an open behind your back to let people know you’re slowing or stopping
      – move a pointed finger around your back to let people know there something ahead to swerve around
      – point your finger at hazards…or wiggle your fingers if there is glass on the road ahead
      People should be sufficiently aware of their environment, and shouldn’t be riding too close to the person in front of them. So these aren’t essential…but you do get a lot of people thanking you if you do use them.
    • Written laws There are of course quite a few written laws as well as unwritten laws. Laws like stopping at red lights. Stopping for trams. Stopping for pedestrian crossings.
      Just sodding do them…nothing sh!ts me more than watching a cyclist cruise through a red light. You give cyclists a bad name, and you give fuel to the fire of every ‘they shouldn’t be on the roads’ wanker out there.

    ‘Remember, everyone else on the road is an idiot’
    My Mum used to say this to me every time I went to go for a drive during the glorious P-Plate days. It was true then…and it’s true now that you’re on your bike…it’s just that you are no longer surrounded by 100kgs of metal and numerous safety features. So never ride in a way that relies on other people doing the right thing. If that car could pull into that side street without indicating, then slow down so that if they do, you can stop in time. If that pedestrian could step out from the curb, then check behind you to make sure that if you have to swerve to the right, you won’t go straight in front of a car or tram. If that cyclist is riding unpredictably, then give them enough space so that if they stop suddenly, you’re not going to crash into them.
    At worst you get to work or home a minute or two later…at best, you save yourself a lot of grief.

    You will crash
    No matter how attentive you are, no matter how careful you are and no matter how much you do to mitigate against having a crash…if you ride often enough, you will eventually fall off. It may be at the hands of car, a pedestrian, another cyclist, a tram track, a wet drain grate, or an ill-advised track stand…but you will come off. Andy from Fyxomatosis wrote an awesome post on Cycling Tips about what to do if you have a crash…I suggest you head here and read it…I’ll wait.

    The good stuff
    Yes there are negatives and downsides to commuting on a bike, but never underestimate the sheer joy of riding a bike. A bad day commuting on a bike, still sh!ts all over a good day commuting on public transport. You will get fitter. You will arrive at work invigorated and return home relieved of your day’s stress. You will ride past portly people sitting angrily in their cars and resigned people squashed into trams and know that you are not one of them. You will see and experience things on your bike that people in cars and trains wont. You will save money and help the environment. But best of all, you’ll be getting back in touch with that 4 or 5 year old version of yourself that first felt the exhilaration and liberation of riding a bike…and you can blow their mind by telling them that the bike you are riding is worth roughly 18,000 weeks of their pocket money!

     

  • Guns n Roses at Calder Park

    Guns n Roses at Calder Park

    Come gather around children and I’ll take you away to a mystical time called ‘the early 90’s’ and I’ll regale you with a tale of one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever attended…Guns n Roses at Calder Park.

    The early 90’s were a very different time. Your ability to get good concert seats was determined by your willingness to sleep out in the carpark of Doncaster Shopping Town rather than by the speed of your internet connection. Young men in Commodores blasted heavy metal out of their speakers and felt nothing but disgust for people playing doofy dance music. And the hottest ticket in town was Guns n Roses. I had done the requisite wait in the cold at Doncaster and had got my ticket, and was pretty much like Charlie on his way to the chocolate factory (however I did not have some octogenarian tagging along for the ride).
    I was 17 and was going to start Year 12 the next day…so the concert had a real ‘final fling’ feel to it, and I was a pretty massive Guns n Roses fan. So the fact that we had to wait for about 2 hours in the city to get a bus out to Calder Park in 38 degree heat didn’t seem like such a problem. Similarly, when we arrived at Calder Park and security threw out all of the food and drink I had brought with me (a packet of Monte Carlo biscuits and an eggflip BigM) I was willing to tolerate it…after all, surely there would be food inside…and I had mistakenly purchased the eggflip BigM because the yellow ‘M’ looked like the yellow ‘M’ on the banana BigM. What wasn’t so good, was that somehow during all of the bag searches and pocket emptying, my ticket had disappeared. The ticket I had spent cold hours of the morning lining up for, the ticket that a scalper had offered $100 (roughly equivalent to $1.3Billion in today’s money) for just 10 minutes ago was gone! It was hot, it was windy, and I suddenly had to face the reality that I may be heading home without even entering Calder Park.
    Just then, I saw a spindly tree about 20 meters away, and wedged in the fork of one of its branches WAS MY TICKET! It must have blown off the table when I emptied my pockets. I bolted over and grabbed it before it blew any further and walked into Calder Park.

    The support acts
    From memory Rose Tattoo were the first band to play…but I don’t really remember because I spent their entire set lining up for some food from one of the 3 food vans that were there. There were at least 10,000 people in the ‘A reserved section’ where I was (the remaining 60,000 were restrained behind a cement barrier) and none of us were allowed to bring in any food or drink…so yeah…I reckon 3 food vans with 3 people working in them was just about right.
    Next up were SkidRow. From all accounts when the lead singer (Sebastian Bach) did the triumphant hands in the air salute to the crowd after one of their bigger songs, the drummer snuck up behind him and pantsed him…and I think the guitarist was heading off to join the army and so had his long ‘metal’ locks shaved off on stage. I say ‘from all accounts’ because I was back at the food van explaining that my dim-sims were still frozen in the center, and that I would kind of like some cooked ones.

    The weather
    We had already sweltered in close to 40 degree temperatures for most of the day…then an enormous wind storm came through. I can still vividly remember all of the people on one of the hills at Calder Park throwing their polystyrene cups in the air and the wind catching them and creating swarms of white cups…ah, then I think a few people threw some plastic chairs…which only flew a few meters…and didn’t end so well.
    Fortunately the wind storm only lasted for about 10 minutes…not so fortunately we then got rained upon from a great height for about half an hour. It was an absolute deluge, and suddenly the guy selling ponchos for $5 who I had laughed at during the extreme heat, seemed like a freaking genius.
    Then the lightning started.
    Legend has it that the reason the gig was out at Calder Park was that Axl Rose (the enigmatic lead singer) had been told by his clairvoyant that if he ever played in a town starting with ‘M’ then he would die. Technically Calder Park was outside of Melbourne at that stage…but the wind, rain, lightning and massive scaffold structure, probably had Axl checking a few local council boundaries.

    The actual gig
    By about 6pm we had gone from stinking hot in shorts and t-shirts, to drenched in shorts and t-shirts…and then inevitably cold and wet in shorts and t-shirts. The only water we had access to had come from the sky, we hadn’t eaten, and Angry Anserson hadn’t even arrived in the Batmobile as he had done at the 91 Grand Final. So I think it’s fair to say that the general consensus amongst the crowd was ‘Well I sure hope Gunners put on a good show…or we are going the riot the bejesus out of this place!’
    Well they did put on an awesome show. They played songs off their new double album, songs off Appetite for Destruction and even a Misfits cover. They were freaking awesome! My personal highlight was when Axl threw his wireless microphone out into the crowd. There was at least a 5 second delay between him throwing the mic and the sound engineer turning the signal off. So you got to hear the mic sail through the air end on end, then land in the crowd…then the sounds of at least 8 bogans beating eight shades of shit out of each other in order to get it. It was beautiful.
    Then after an encore of ‘Paradise City’, the gig was over.

    The Aftermath
    We walked back to where the buses had dropped us off, only to find that the buses taking us home were in fact on the other side of Calder Park. Then we heard that all of the buses were full and had gone.
    So we all started walking along the Calder Freeway back to Melbourne. It’s hard to describe the sight quite of 10,000 thousand sunburnt, damp, hungry and exhausted bogans walking along a the side of highway. But if anyone has seen the episode of the Walking Dead where all of the zombies were walking along the highway…you’ve got a pretty good reference point.
    Some of my strongest memories of the walk were:

    • seeing a guy in a Mr. Whippy can auction his final can of soft drink, for about 15 times more than he would normally have charged
    • hundreds of people converging on the BP in Taylor’s Lakes, and simply eating the food right off the shelves…as a helpless service station attendant just looked on
    • spending my last 30c on a phone call to my Dad to come and pick me up.

    So Guns n Roses are back in town…do I think this could all happen again?
    Not really…and if it did, there would be so much righteous indignation and whining on social media, the internet would probably need a cup of tea and a lie down.
    But I’m so glad that it did…and that I was part of it.
    And if I have one last parting piece of advice I wish I could have passed on to myself, it’s that spending all day in the sun headbanging leads to a both sunburnt and very sore neck…but no matter how sore your neck muscles are, forgetting you’re sunburnt and rubbing deep heat in is a really, really, really bad idea.

     

  • 8 renovation tips

    8 renovation tips

    When I was training for the Shepparton half ironman, I remember telling myself that once I completed the second of three laps of the run leg, then I would be fine. The hard yards would have been done and all I had to do was grit it out to the finish. To a large extent this was true, but what it didn’t take into account was the just how freaking hard that last 7km would be.
    At 5 months into our 7 month renovation, I think I am at that ‘second of three laps’ stage. The finish line is in sight…but it ain’t going to be easy.
    So here’s what I’ve learnt so far.

    Debt
    I had braced myself for the inevitable financial indebtedness that embarking on a renovation would bring…but not the other forms of debt.
    I’m indebted to my parents for letting the whole family stay with them in their house and for them helping out with the painting; I’m indebted to my father in law for all of the work he is doing on our wardrobes; I’m indebted to my mother in law for the number of times she’s looked after the kids so that we can work on the house; I’m indebted to the kids for the number of times we’ve handed them off to other people so that we can work on the house; I’m indebted to the various friends and family who have come around and helped us paint; and I’m indebted to my wife for moving in with my parents.
    With this level of debt, even Greece is looking at me and snickering.

    Architects
    A good draftsman will give you exactly the house you want…a good architect will give you the house you never knew you wanted.
    What our architects (Breathe) have done is nothing short of amazing.

    Builders
    We dropped by the house on New Year’s Eve at 4pm and our builder was there working…we went there the next day, and he was there working.
    There’s nothing worse than a tradie who doesn’t conform to my stereotypes!

    Architects vs Builders
    This is a reality series just waiting to be made!

    Don’t watch too much ‘Grand Designs’
    You will be tempted to project manage the thing yourself and will become convinced that it’s OK to be $200,000 over budget.
    You should not, and it is not.
    Also, it will not all be done in 42 TV minutes.

    Unexpected costs
    Oh sure I was expecting some out of the blue costs…but $600 for a permit to build a deck?…Oh, City of Darebin, you pranksters you!

    Exercise
    I actually decided not to cancel my gym membership, as the guilt of paying the monthly fee would be sufficient to motivate me to get to the gym. In five months, this has happened 4 times. Sound investment, Chris…sound investment.
    I’ve also had to cancel a bike ride I’d booked in for as I just haven’t done any training.
    I ended up walking to work on one of my runs to work, because it all just got to much. And if you’re thinking ‘well there are other ways to get exercise’…let me assure you that living back under your parents roof, with a child that is now sleeping in your room and two other children in the bedroom next door may lead to your virginity growing back.

    Free babysitting
    In theory, the parents that you are staying with will say ‘Hey, leave the kids with us. You two go out and have a meal/watch a movie/have a conversation that last more than 18 seconds’.
    But in reality, they are helping out with the kids in little ways all the time and are probably just as keen for a break as you are.

    Now I know that this all sounds very ‘First world problems’. I know that people all over the world are living without homes, and that there are people in Melbourne who would love to have to deal with a renovation if it meant they could afford a house. I know I’m being whiny and self-centred and churlish. But hey, take away our ability to be whiny, self-centred and churlish…and you take away 98% of social media.
    With any luck the next blog post will be when the painting is all done, and wardrobes are in, and the council has found time in their busy schedule to approve our deck permit, and I have found $50K in a briefcase by the side of the road. Ha ha ha! Just kidding….we’re never going to finish this painting.

  • Creativity…I want to get me some.

    Creativity…I want to get me some.

    If you’ve ever read the Dr. Seuss story ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!‘ you’ll know about a feared destination called ‘The waiting place’. It’s basically a place where people are waiting for things to happen, a form of limbo if you will…and I think it’s fair to say that 2012 has been pretty much a year of ‘The waiting place’ for me. Waiting for the renovations to be finished, waiting to see if I’ve been successful in applying for my own job, waiting for our eldest child to start going to sleep without 2 hours of coaxing, waiting for our youngest child to just go to sleep, waiting for the chance to get back into exercise, waiting, waiting, waiting.
    But the whole point of the ‘Waiting place’ in ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!’ is that’s it’s very easy to get stuck there and wallow in your self pity. If you want to get out, you need to put in some effort. So I have decided to break free of my wallowing, and declare 2013 my year of creativity!

    So what the hell does that mean?
    Good question. I’ve worked with, and been dazzled by, genuinely creative people, and I do not include myself in their number. When I worked in film and TV I was the Producer or a Production Manager, which is basically a nice way of saying I was kept as far away from the creative process as possible. And with good cause, if there were ever a battle between the chaos and anarchy of creativity and the structure and organisation of order…I will be there with my ‘Hurray for structure’ banner.
    However, I have always admired the end result of creativity and have always harboured a desire to be more creative. I love music and film and photography and various other things where people have ignored the beautiful structure of order…and just been creative. The challenge has always been to get involved in the actual process of being creative rather than just admiring what other people do. But this is not easy, because to be truly creative you need to have a singular vision and belief in what you do…which is very tricky to have when you’ve never really done it before.

    For all it’s ‘Waiting place’iness, this year has actually been a really good year for me creatively. I’ve started really getting into photography, and I’ve started trying to do new stuff with my video work. But I think I’ve treated it as a pleasant distraction from the more mundane work…rather than something to focus my attention on.
    So for the next year, I’m going to actively embrace the creative process as an opportunity, rather than an entertaining by-product.

    That was sufficiently wanky…what does it really mean?
    Well for starters I’m going to do some singing lessons. If I’m willing to be seen in public in a triathlon suit…then I can no longer claim that I refrain from public singing out of a sense of common decency. Plus I really like singing…it’s just that my preferred venue is an empty beach where the only thing that can possible hear me is the unfortunate dog I’m walking.
    I’m going to pester O’nev into giving me a photography masterclass…and I’m going to try and take some photos that I can enter in a few competitions…and I’m going to set aside time to go and take photos, rather than trying to fit them in around some other activity.
    I’m going to finally shoot my short docos on Melbourne people I admire and get them up on YouTube.
    But, most importantly I’m going to start putting my work out there…and wait for the internet to tell me how much they hate it. After all, there’s no one’s advice you should take more sagely than an anonymous loner with a keyboard.
    So here are my favourite photos that I took this year, let me know your thoughts.
    Unfortunately WordPress isn’t playing nice with ‘media’ at the moment…so for the time being you’ll have to click through to Flickr to see all of them…but here’s five to get you started.

    Beechworth streetscape

     

    Gippsland sunset
    Windfarm
    Empire
    Scarlett O’Hurta at the Rollerderby

     

  • My Movember reflections

    My Movember reflections

    I’ll keep this one short and sweet. A massive thanks to everyone who supported me for Movember…whether you donated money, took a photo of me every day, or you just resisted the urge to snigger until I had walked past…Thank you!
    Here’s a 30 second video of my progress:

    And another big thanks to the other members of Comms Comancheros.

    Eug you looked terrifying. Brendan, your hirsute abilities are beyond compare. Matt, you would have made an awesome extra in Deadwood. And Luke…well at least we tried…now let’s get this 70’s themed Christmas party out of the way so we can shave these sodding things off!

     

     

  • Movember…an update

    Movember…an update

    In 1998 I travelled to Ireland. Both my Mum and my Dad can trace their ancestry to Ireland and I genuinely thought that when I arrived there I would feel some sort of connection…some sort of ancestral calling. Not surprisingly, I didn’t.
    Movember has been similar. I won’t lie, as much as I played the ‘I’m going to look ridiculous’ card going into this, part of me genuinely hoped that I would actually look good. That it would suit me. That it would redefine me. In short, I really hoped that I could rock a mo. But, like Celtic ancestry, some things work better in the realm of imagination.
    But here are some things I have learnt after three weeks with a mo.

    People are so unkind
    After the initial week of justified sniggering and pointing. People began to delight in taking the piss. A few people at work told me that I ‘looked like Cary Grant’. Which I took as a compliment until a quick Google images search revealed that the man never had a moustache!
    Then my brother-in-law took to Twitter to tell me that if I just moved my eyebrows to where I wanted my mo to be, I would look like Magnum P.I! While this may be true…I think it’s fair to say that his Christmas present this year is going to be remarkably crap…or entertainingly flammable.
    Then people on Instagram started to tell me that I looked like either Gomez Addams or Burt Reynolds. While this did lead to some pleasurable audio memories of the band Gomez, it also lead to some less pleasurable memories of…well…Burt Reynolds.

    Movember is the equaliser
    As a man you live in constant fear of accidentally asking a non-pregnant woman if she is pregnant (which roughly translates as ‘you’re looking a bit tubby’). It really is the ultimate social faux pas. So much so, that even if a woman is clearly in labour in front of me…I will avoid asking if she’s pregnant, just to be safe.
    Up until now, I could never find a female equivalent. But with Movember, women feel quite comfortable coming up to you and saying ‘Oh, you’re doing Movember?’ (which roughly translates as ‘Oh Christ there is something that looks like a caterpillar under your nose. Please don’t let that be serious!’) So all you have to do is look innocent and say ‘No, I’ve been growing this since October…I really like it’, and you can sit back and enjoy a lot of conversational back-pedalling and desperate attempts to extricate themselves from the situation.

    A moustache is not particularly comfortable
    Perhaps in time this will change. But after three weeks, my Mo is itchy and scratchy…and not in the good Simpsons way.

    Some people are very generous
    After my most recent post, three exceptional human beings donated to our Movember team. So thank you very much Julie, Karen and Marta. It is really appreciated.
    But for those of you who don’t see me regularly, and who want me to prove that I really am growing a mo…here are some progress shots

    If this isn’t enough to shame you into a donation…then you are dead to me.

  • Movember week 1

    Movember week 1

    Like most men I’m not afraid of having a moustache, nor am I afraid of not having a moustache. But what I am afraid of is the horrible limbo that exists between having a moustache and not having a moustache…at best you look like the bass player in an average rock cover band, at worst you look like a teenager trying to trick the guy at the bottle shop that you really are over 18.
    That’s the beauty of Movember, you get 30 days to try and work your way through this limbo with relative social humiliation impunity. So I’ve decided to give it a go… Now I’m No Expert But here are my experiences thus far.

    What mo to go with?
    It’s not until you consider growing a mo that you realise just how enigmatic they are. On the right person they can convey power and authority (think Dennis Lillee, a policeman, or my father in law). Combined with rock stardom they can convert a not so attractive man into virile stallion (think Lemmy from Motorhead or Freddy Mercury). They can even define a man (think John Waters, Adolf Hitler or Boony).
    But they are also the domain of the second hand car sales man, the creepy PE teacher and bikie gangs. And if you want to be a captain of industry or the leader of a country (one that hasn’t been taken over in a military coup), then no moustache for you!
    So when it comes to choosing a mo for yourself, what do you go with? I’ve seen both my cousin Austin and fellow Movember teammate Eugenio converted from friendly and approachable to ‘underworld standover man’ simply by having a handlebar moustache. I’ve seen photos of my Dad when he had a mo and was affectionately known as ‘Shifty the Pimp’. I’ve seen men walking the streets with mos and thought ‘Yeah…nah. That doesn’t work’. And of course I’m also painfully  aware that genetically I am not pre-disposed to growing facial hair. So as much as I would like to go with something intimidating or something ornate that requires wax…I’m just going to settle for something Clark Gable-esque.

    How to grow the Mo.
    A dodgy beard or a dodgy goatee will always look better than a dodgy mo…so for safety I recommend you grow out a beard and then trim it back to a mo once you have sufficient growth.
    But if you are doing Movember, then you are morally obliged to just grow the mo. You may look like a dodgy teenager. You may get wry smiles or stifled sniggers…but that is burden you have to bear.

    So how’s my progress?
    Well here’s my progress from day 1 to day 7

    I think it’s fair to say it’s sketchy at best. But there is potential!

    What have I learnt in my first week?

    • I have a very tolerant wife
    • I will need all 30 days to come up with something half decent
    • There are some grey hairs in my beard…GREY HAIRS!
    • Sometimes you forget you even have a mo, until you catch your reflection or you see someone sniggering
    • Nobody respects a man in his late 30’s with the moustache of 16 year old

    I’m fascinated, how can I find out more?
    You can head to my Mospace page , check out the daily photos…and ideally donate some money towards men’s health. At the very least, get me above $0!