The Blog

And continuing the random linkage throughout Saturday...

Baby's First Internet

Labels: Harry Potter, internet famous, linking all over the place, web stuff

You will be pleased to note...

...that I just paid my bill and will remain at this url for another two years. This is good.

If anyone has visited the site recently, you'll note a mess of broken links and odd formatting. Apologies, I'm working on it in what little free time I have at the moment.

And since I'm here I might as well blog this column and this video are my favourite web things from the last week.

Labels: chasing after butterflies and wishing I could fly, lonely-Cat, politics, random, retail therapy, still poor, wasting my life, web stuff

I may just be the luckiest girl in the world...

I got to see the Phantom of the Opera again today. That makes three times for this production: last tuesday night, last saturday's matinée, and then today's matinée. I was only expecting to attend two of them, but K's sister was ill this morning and didn't want her ticket to go to waste.

As a result, I've gotten to see all three of the Phantoms we have performing in Sydney (okay, I missed the "understudy" (as opposed to the "alternates"), but given that he was playing Raoul in all three performances, I don't feel like I missed out on watching him perform a sexy part. :) ). There was no competition as to who was the best: every word that Anthony Warlow sung sent shivers down my spine and I wanted him and Christine to end up together all the way until he flipped out in the end, and even then I felt sorry for the poor man. He was amazing, and sexy and he was the Phantom. I'm so glad I got to see him.

Saturday, the Phantom was sung by Simon Pryce, who was okay, but he was a very different Phantom, not as strong, a bit more pathetic. He sang it fine, but he didn't have the depth of character, and you never really cheered for him. He was more of a madman, and I wondered why Christine was ever really entranced by him. That said, he was performing with Sarah Bakker (the understudy for Christine) and she played a more self-aware Christine, a little stronger of voice and personality, and somehow giving her more spirit was a good foil to making the Phantom a whispering madman. Now if only they'd been able to keep his headpiece stuck down at the edges, I might have believed in his deformity.

The third, Roy Weissensteiner, was a very Michael Crawford-like Phantom. I've not seen Crawford perform, but his is the canonical version we've all heard so many times on all our cds and compilations, and Weissensteiner's voice was very similar. Dramatic, spine tinglingly creepy, and I was crying at the end when she abandoned him. Sarah Bakker has amazing charisma and is able to play her role so well that at the end, when she's hesitant to leave him, you really believe that she's torn between the two men, that she doesn't want to leave the Phantom alone there in the dark.

The makeup also looked best on Warlow, probably because he doesn't have any hair they need to hide beneath the prosthetics, so his head isn't too mishapen. :) Oh, and I want to steal the Phantom's Composing Hat (link to a geocities image, may not work, click here to see the original page).

Hmm, I'm not sure what to add now... I think my favourite costume of all is Carlotta's from Masquerade (she was wearing the spider one, with the beadwork and the little wings) and I'd love to have the time and energy to make it for myself. Not sure what that says about me. Anyway, I've been having fun, I'm sorry I've not been blogging much, it's just been a very emotional (and busy few weeks for me).

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, this and this are what's been preventing me from sleeping for the last few weeks (the second are the test pages, don't tell the boss I linked you to them).

Labels: he's here, the Phantom of the Opera, web stuff

   La la, lalalalalalala...

Last night, I took so long drinking my tea that a tiny spider took up residence in the mug and spun a rather involved web across the top.

Labels: almost but not entirely unlike tea, spider, web stuff

   September 11th...

Heh, I bet you thought this was going to be a serious blog post, didn't you? No, I'm leaving that for everyone else to fret about, because I have more important (to me) things to blog about. Like, for instance, the realisation that five years ago today I put most of the content on my website up, although I didn't link it for general consumption until October 2nd. Expect something nifty on that anniversary (and if you have any brilliant ideas for said niftiness, please email me).

Oh, and of course I should mention that James and I have been going out for 5.5 years now. Woo! Love you, boy!

Labels: love my boy, web stuff

   300 posts later...

...and I still want to do this blogging thing. Who would have thought?

So, in the personal news, Minako is back! Woo! *does the happy laptop dance, which sounds much dirtier than it actually is*

James bought me some stickers from MOO with my flickr photos on them, and I've been gleefully sticking them all over my once immaculately white iBook. I'll post photos later, I imagine.

Actually, on the subject of photos, the other week I knitted a scarf in three days for my dear friend Nilanka's birthday. It was the short row rib from Magknits, knitted in Vintage Hues by Cleckheaton and it was really fun to knit something fun and simple for a change. Which is to say something other than my jacket of doom (last seen in this blog post by my mum), which is coming along nicely, but the last stages (knitting the collar and sewing it up) are going very slow.

As a part of her birthday present I also promised to teach Nilanka how to knit herself, and so last Sunday I went to see her and taught her how to both knit and purl and she's now the proud creator of the first 15cm of a scarf in a 3 rows knit, 3 rows purl rib (much the same as the one I knitted for her, but without the short rows). It's very pretty and I hope she enjoys knitting from now on. I may have to go back in a week or two to teach her how to cast off.

I've also knitted a scarf for Heidi in the last few weeks, but I forgot to photograph it. :(

I'm currently at 6 pages on "Skirting the Paradox", for those who care about my fictional works. I'd love to have this finished soon, but I'm really bad at writing fight scenes, and when you get right down to it the whole story is one long string of fight scenes. *sighs* I kinda just want to skip them and get on with the fun mystery stuff, because that's really the point of the story, but the violent setting keeps getting in the way.

Oh, and I suppose you want to know about the PhD. Well, I think I finally made a breakthrough today. I'm still not going to finish anytime soon, but I feel like I know what's going on and where I'm headed. I'm sure that'll only last a day or two, but right at this moment, I'm feeling good about it.

James has started a new job today. That makes me inordinately happy. I imagine he'll be blogging about it soon enough. In the meantime, everyone should go and read his post where he points out the uncanny resemblance between the latest iPod posters and screenshots from Battle Royale. Because it's awesome and while I believed him when he first told me that was what they look like I didn't realise just how similar the imagery was.

My sister has packed herself a "go-bag" in case of terrorist attack during the APEC summit next month. We're reasonably certain she's being ironic, since it primarily consists of her St John's Ambulance first aid kit (which she keeps in her car anyway), a change of clothes and a packet of timtams (which will someday run out), but you can never be too sure.

My grandmother on my father's side is currently in the Sydney Eye Hospital (she had the cataracts removed from one eye last week and it promptly became infected) and yesterday she had an operation which was apparently successful. She's in the room next door to Anthony Mundine, who's got himself a horrible eye infection because he noticed a speck on his contact lens and licked it to get it clean. The good news is that my nanna will be fine, the bad news is that no one is sure about "the Man".

Actually, while we're on the subject of Catherine's relatives, my grandmother on my mum's side recently loaned me her collection of newspaper clippings about her father (my great grandfather), Edward Michael Boland. My mum took the time to scan them all into a pdf file for posterity, and it's available for download if you are interested in my family history. He was a great man (even the Queen recognised it, giving him an OBE *smiles*), being Apprenticeship Commissioner in NSW for more than 20 years, known for being fair minded and working with Liberal governments in power despite him being a Labor man through and through. Grandma informed me that the Liberal government actually changed the age of retirement laws so that he could stay on longer in his job.

My favourite quote from the collection reads:
The Commissioner is not concerned that his OBE puts in the same order of chivalry as the Beatles with their MBEs. But he commented wryly: "I still prefer youths with hair short back and sides."
- (We think the Sunday Telegraph), 27th June, 1965


Moving on to the world outside my circle of peoples, we have a couple of great bits of news to discuss:

Giant Lego man washed up on Dutch beach
This is just amazing. Both for the quotes ("I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England.") and for the thought that maybe he was made to walk the plank on a giant Lego pirate ship. Or maybe he was just washed overboard. We may never know!


China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate
You read that right. The Dalai Lama must now ask permission (no doubt in triplicate) before he reincarnates.
And while that sounds amusing at first (and indeed, those of us here in the office laughed when we first read it), it's also terribly sad when you think of the Chinese government using this power to corrupt the beautiful mysticism of the Tibetan people.

Skipping away from depressing news, the new iMacs were released today. I think they're pretty ugly, what with the giant black border around the screen (which is really a quite clever way of hiding the fact that you can't actually fit a computer in the space behind the screen alone), but they're better than the mockups James showed me last week and still reasonably sexy. And I'm sad to say that I want one like burning. Good thing they haven't released Leopard yet, or I'd be in trouble. Bloody Steve.

And this story about Magic has just made my day. I must wire some of those switches into my life.

So, this is the end of my 300th blog post. Was it good for you too?

Labels: crafty-Cat, Domus Prime, family, history, iCatherine, knitting, lego, longest blog ever, magic, never going to graduate, news, old photographs, phd, reality distortion field, web stuff, writing

   So, who's sick of hearing about the conferences?

The answer is me! (For the record, we got enough people, and the deadline is technically tomorrow night, since I need my beauty sleep and we want to give everyone around the world a chance to register. And I didn't break the site at all today, go team me!)

So tonight I bring you a scaled and dated (well, more or less) photo of my latest craft project, because you all need to know just how stressed I am (I only knit this quickly when I'm stressed and need an escape).


I've made myself a promise that I'll have it finished and ready to wear on the last day of the second conference. It doesn't look like it'll be a problem, as I've still got a month and a half and it is now... *bashes head against carculator for a bit* ...31% done.

Wait, that's it? It's not even a third of the proper length, and it comes up to my chin already? I'm doomed!

Labels: bloody hell I'm short, conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, I made this, knitting, web stuff

   I'm fickle, I know...

But I forgive you for being so picky, and a dick. After all, you did just send out a very public email to a lot of the PTBs around here saying: "Excellent work Catherine! Well done - we are in Good shape I reckon at this early stage."

That almost makes all of this trauma worth it.
Almost.

Labels: conferences, fickle-Cat, web stuff

   Despite what my tshirt says, I'm not feeling that lucky...

Stupid blogger/google, what are you doing to my rss feeds? I'm hoping this post fixes Planet Myrkur. Sorry peoples.

Labels: apologies, blogger, stupid blogs, web stuff

   Yes, this is very nerdy...

But this is something I just needed to know and had difficulty finding online.
If you want to forward your mail from a unix server, the easiest way to do this is to set up a .forward (dot forward) file in your home directory, containing the address you want to forward to.
If you want to forward your email, *and* keep a copy in your local mail system, your .forward file needs to read:
/username, other@email.address

In positive, and less geeky, news, the conference websites are due to go public, and within three seconds of me telling everyone, L had registered and the database read that she doesn't like cheese, that she was presenting "no olives" and that she was paying by "poster". Oops. Stupid comma-separated lists.

Labels: .forward, conferences, don't ask about the commas, emails, some times I think I'd be good at helpdesk, the Harry Potter / Domus Prime crossover seems more likely every day, web stuff, yes I am dumb

   This is why I keep him around...

"Tonight's ASA Annual Scientific Meeting is proudly presented by the Anglo-Australian Observatory - helping you observe better. And by the Australia Telescope National Facility - where radio-astronomers who know go! And by Macquarie University, Australia's innovative university."
- James

Labels: conferences, love my boy, web stuff

   ippen, shindemiru?

No, I don't care that your logo is smaller than everyone else's. You should have chosen a square design like the other peoples, or, you know, had a bigger logo available on your website. The fact that you don't is not my fault. I'm doing the best I can with what I was given.

Labels: conferences, paging the jigoku tsuushin, stupid people, web stuff

   An Actual Conversation...

Q: So, when's the website going to go live?
Me: Probably early next week.
Q: Excellent, excellent. You are getting paid for this, right?
Me: Not a cent.
Q: Good, because this is meant to be volunteer work.

*sweetdrops*
I get that a lot.

Labels: conferences, still poor, uni, wasting my life, web stuff

Sleepy...
Well, in grand Catherine tradition, I've decided to go to bed before I really get started on making this pretty. At the moment all I really have is the rough layout, but I guess that will just have to do. Talk to you tomorrow peoples.

Labels: this was before tags, web stuff