Archive for the ‘Home’ Category

It probably only works for people my age or older, but this YouTube video of the opening credits for Star Wars done in the style of the TV series Dallas made me smile.  I particularly like the way the creator used a shot of Tarkin turning around for his credit – Old School!  The whole thing was inspired by this Star Trek one.

I’m currently building a small recording booth in my study using mostly IKEA furniture, so this article on MusicRadar How to Build Your Own Studio in 11 Easy Steps was a well-timed read for me (even if not all of their eleven steps seem that easy to me!).  I like their idea of plonking a whole new pre-built building down and fitting it out from scratch, but that’s not an option for me right now, so I’m using one side of my study/granny flat, some large IKEA cupboards, and some padding from IKEA and Clarke Rubber.  I’ll post photos of my progress as I go.

It’s not designed for music production, with sound proofing strong enough to acoustically isolate a drum kit.  I just need the ability to record voice and Foley performances without the sound of my PC fan and hard drives chattering coming through onto the recordings.

It’s coming along, but it’s taking longer than I expected (of course) and the booth door is still going to be a challenge.

Despite appearances, this website is not dead.  Behind the scenes I use my web server all the time for sending files to fellow filmmakers and clients, but I haven’t updated the actual pages for years (only two updates in almost three years).  So today I loaded up a new theme (Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll), tweaked it a bit with my own images, and added a Twitter widget to the side panels.

Time will tell if I update it regularly.

Maisy

We’ve seen a couple of snakes on the property in the last few weeks, but today I heard the dogs (Jed and Maisy) barking and went out to discover their latest kill – a green snake. Combined with the large brown snake Kareena saw yesterday, and it’s definitely snake season here…

I have not updated this website for over a year now, partly because I spend less time online than I used to, and partly because I’m writing a lot less than I used to. Despite no updates in over a year (and the website being offline for abour six months), my website still gets a healthy number of hits – proof of the power of Google.

But my very late (or very early) New Year’s resolution is to write every single day, even if it’s only a “blog post”. I have never considered myself a “blogger”, even though I’ve used blogging sytems to run the MavArt site for I think over six years (first Greymatter, then MovableType, now WordPress). I use these blogging systems because they allow me to change the look of the site without changing its content, and visaversa. But being a “blogger” implies a certain dedication to regular updates and posts – a dedication I’ve never had.

But, my New Year’s resolution is to write every day, so I’m going to write every day, even if it’s just a little blog post or review on my website – like this one.

This post, as well as qualifying as my writing for today, is also a test of the idea of using my Palm Treo 650 phone to type and upload blog posts. I’ve owned several Palm handheld computers and loved all of them, even the crappy plastic one that fell apart, but when I first got the Palm Treo I disliked the weeny little keyboard it had. I ‘d gotten quite good at the stylus-based Graffiti system for entering text on my other Palms, and clicking on the tiny little qwerty keyboard on the Treo seemed a lot slower.

But I recently discovered that I’d been pressing the keys the wrong way – using the tips of my index fingers, fingernails, or even the stylus pen in an effort to only press one key at a time. Now I realise that by pressing the keys with the end of my whole finger/thumbs, it may press more than one key, sometimes as many as four, but the PalmOS almost always guesses correctly which key I meant.

And if you’re reading this then I guess I figured out a way to upload it…

Kareena bought me a magnetic poetry kit, Shakespeare edition. Great fun. For some reason, this was the first poem I created on the fridge:

We spent the weekend at Ninderry Manor for Kareena’s birthday. Had a great time, the hosts were wonderful, the food was amazingly good. We did a bit of Japanese calligraphy, a bit of reading, even a bit of watercolour painting. And I took a few snapshots.

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At one of our favourite picnic spots, the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, I took a few snapshots.

(click for a larger version)

(click for a larger version)

We just ate at a wonderful Turkish resaurant, complete with belly dancer. Absolutely delicious. Er, the food that is. Well, and the belly dancer. I had my Canon EOS300D digital SLR with me:

(click for a larger version)

I’ve rediscovered still photography thanks to my two mega-pixel Canon digital camera. The camera doesn’t really offer full manual controls, but it’s so easy to experiment with I’ve taken literally over five thousand photos with it (yes, most of which are awful).

I’ve placed some of my less-awful digital photographs on a seperate server (the deviantart service). You can view them here:

MavArt digital photos

They mostly consist of panorama images created by stitching several digital images together using several pieces of panorama software (mostly I just use the one that came with the camera).

It’s been over twenty-four hours since the power in our place dropped from 240volts to what seems like twelve. The novelty of being without useful power is well and truly over. They say that any society is just three meals away from revolution, well this internet junky has gone two nights without web or email and if things don’t improve soon I’m going to revolt.

Calling the power company is futile, all we get is a recording, “We know there is a problem in your area. Restoration time is unknown. This message will be updated at 8:30″. Each time we call them the list of affected suburbs gets a little shorter and the next update a little later, but no change here since yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately today I told my students to email me if they had any questions or suggestions for day two of the course – but without power I can’t check emails. Bugger.

I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s nearly four in the morning and ever since we got home (about seven hours ago) the house has been in one long brown out. Obviously I’ve seen brown outs before, they’re a fact of life in Brisbane and they’re part of the reason I bought a UPS unit to protect my PC data, but until tonight they’ve always been momentary events.
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Our ten day holiday in Singapore is ending, and it was really great – how people can visit Singapore for only two days and think they’ve seen even a fraction of what we’ve seen these last ten days is beyond us. What a great country – so much to see and do, especially for people like us who like to eat yummy food and wander through beautiful places. Speaking of food, I’m pretty sure that there are more vegetarian eating joints in Little India alone than there were meal times in our entire stay.
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Well, this, the seventh version of the MavArt web page is finally up and running. There’s no gallery yet, but most of my old articles are now transferred over, and the rest can be added as I go. So I’m calling it done. Thanks to those that gave me feedback – it still amazes me how strangers stumble across my site and say nice things to me about my articles. Maybe I should write some new articles.

I took a look at the first version of the MavArt page the other day, dated 28 August 1996 (yes, I backup just about everything!), and man, was it lame! Hard to believe how much the internet has grown (and commercialised) since those days. Now that my vanity page is based on the moveabletype system, I have officially run out of reasons for not updating it more often. Time will tell…

I guess it was only a matter of time, but after Tuesday 11 September 2001, several people with their own agendas have bolted the facts of what happened onto their own beliefs and prejudices.
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When it happened, we were at the movies. Typical really.
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I have now set up a “weblog” on Mavart – after much twiddling with the weblog software Grey Matter (mostly playing with appearances, the software itself installed without a hitch).
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MavArt is one person – Skevos Mavros. No that’s not a nickname or handle, it’s my real name. MavArt is me. I am MavArt. Goo goo g’joob.* Read the rest of this entry »