Sorry to do this to you all (all three of you) but this less than postastic month is set to continue, as I’m off to the coast for at least the next few days. The Sydney test starts on the 2nd, so I should be back in town for that (there are other more alluring qualities of Melbourne as well ), but I can’t make any promises. Not any I could keep at any stretch.

Happy New Year bitches!

Pete

G’day guys,

As you may or may not have noticed, for a substantial part of Christmas eve and Christmas day, the site was ‘suspended’ by my hosts. It turns out that due to the ridiculous amounts of comment spam flooding in (although it never gets published due to a nifty battery of anti-spam shit here) the SQL server was freaking out and overloading the server. As a result, dialagranny.com was suspended until proactive action was taken. Now I can understand that the administrators needed to do something to stop the onslaught of comments, however they really didn’t need to also disable my email and change all my passwords so that even if I wanted to do something in the way of fixing the site, I couldn’t.

So anyway, all of this was explained to me in very broken English late on Christmas evening, and in my anger I decided to change server to a slightly more expensive but much more recommended and trustworthy (apparently) server farm in Kentucky. We’ll see what the speed is like, but so far, so good. The little mice that run the internet are busy making all the connections and alterations that go with changing server, but if you can read this post, it most likely means that everything has worked quite nicely.

Oh, and you can’t comment for now, so suck it.

Pete

Merry Christmas everyone – or rather, everyone except the people who control the weather. What the frig is with Christmas rain, hail, spots of sun, more really heavy rain, and then a sharp drop to 8 degrees this evening, which is meant to drop further to a low of 4 overnight? FOUR DEGREES IN SUMMER, when Thursday night didn’t drop below 27.2 degrees (hottest December night on record apparently). Well, I suppose we all know what they say about Melbourne weather….

Pete

Time really does fly when you’re enjoying yourself. I didn’t really think that it’d been that long, however, since my last entry so much has happened, and to illustrate the point (also to hide the fact that I’m feeling too lazy to write properly) I’ll complete this entry in dot points:

I was semi-dumped (she thinks we have a future but is still massively hung up on an ex and apparently just needs time?) just in time to get properly back together for her birthday weekend where I met the parents in Mt Martha, after which I was semi-dumped again. It’s confusing as hell, but I’m fairly sure she’s not playing me, and I like her enough to put up with it, at least for a little while

So as you can see I haven’t just been sitting on my arse doing nothing these past few weeks. Although that said I could afford to put a bit more effort into this – usually I have a christmassy theme followed by the annual upgrade and re-theming of the blog in early January. Oh well – the coffee cup isn’t too bad – maybe it could stay for a bit longer…

Pete

I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for Philip K Dick’s writing. Any man brilliant enough to write and publish gems such as Bladerunner (published as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), The Minority Report, Ubik (possibly my favourite) and short stories like Paycheck and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (you may remember Total Recall, the film version with Arnie in the lead) – all published between 25 and 50 years ago – is worthy of high praise indeed.

Anyway while in Africa during 2004, I took part in a 21 day truck tour of Southern Africa, detailing South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Although it was incredible and undoubtedly one of the highlights of my time spent overseas, there was an AWFUL lot of driving during the day, which I managed quite resourcefully with a collection of Dick’s writing, including A Scanner Darkly, the semi-autobiographical novel that I left until last to read (possibly because it was the final book in the collection) which was also the most difficult to enjoy. It was set in California in 1993 (the near future at publication), where society had slipped into a deep pit of chronic drug addiction and psychosis. The protagonist is an undercover police officer supposedly monitoring a drug den, and the book explores the themes of drug culture and the terrible curse of addiction as well as police surveillance (stunningly poignant to today’s world) and privacy.

Much to my suprise, I found out a year or two ago that there were moves to adapt the book to the big screen. Apparently it was to be filmed as an independant film using traditional methods, then computer processed to appear like an animation through a process called rotoscoping. That was about all I remember reading all those months ago, but last month I started hearing more and more about it, leading up to a limited national release in cinemas on November 30.

Although I was sceptical at first, the rotoscoping technique is catchy and manages to further illustrate the detached, drug induced feel of the story. Keanu Reeves (or his digital self) is very good in the role of the protagonist Fred/Bob Arctor/Bruce, and Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and especially Robert Downey Jr. are spectacular as main supports. The film strays noticably from the book rarely and only ever to ensure that the story doesn’t appear aged, but perhaps most impressively the screenplay doesn’t bow to the dulling down of decent writing simply to placate investors or increase watchability and revenue. I highly recommend you watch the film or read the book (or both!), if for nothing else then for the stunning insight into the brilliant but drug affected mind of Dick, as well as the simple enjoyment of an excellent story.

The film was showcased in Australia during this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival in July, and is on limited release around the country right now. I believe it has been released on DVD in the US, and I’m sure the more frugal or amoral among us could also find the film online with little effort.

Pete

I’ve often wondered what impact keeping this blog, and more importantly being so open about it, has on my life and the way others see me. Most of my friends and family know about it, and their feelings, as far as I can tell range from bemusement to suprise, although all reactions are generally positive. I’ve personally always found writing to be not only calming and good for posterity, but also a fantastic opportunity to sort out things in my own mind as I write. As I said, I’ve often wondered how this blog affects other people’s views of me, but I’ve never really considered removing or censoring it. Until recently.

Although I didn’t explicitly show it to him, the owner and boss of Bongo found this site when I contacted him using the domain email address. He obviously opened and read at least some of the site on a few occasions over a certain amount of time, including the posts I had written about the experience after I was fired, and was less than impressed (quite understandably) in what I had to say. Anyway the story is complicated and I don’t really want to get into it, however the experience, as well as the fallout has made me question the prudence of publishing anything but the most superficial of personal details on this website – something that I have never really questioned before, and something I don’t really want to question. I’ve always believed in speaking my mind and being as transparent and genuine as possible with anyone I meet, and censoring my thoughts has been, and continues to be a fairly undesirable option. I suppose I’ve just got to hope that the blog doesn’t bite me on the arse much more. Does anyone else have these sorts of issues online?

Pete

I could probably go on for years about just how phenomenal volunteering with the bike ride was. I truthfully don’t believe it could have possibly been more enjoyable if I had riden, because I wouldn’t have gained yet another job skill, nor would I have met and become so close to the dozen or so amazing people on the café team that I can now call very good friends (enough cheese?).

Anyway it was an amazing experience, even though it was tough. Sleep deprivation was an ongoing issue – we’d all be up and about by 7am, and late shift finished after 11pm, and we inevitably knocked onto the local pubs afterwards to justify 7 hours of serving other people beer and wine. Along with the lack of sleep, there was also the heat and dust to battle with, along with the constant threat of gastro (3 of our 15 went down with it during the ride) and putting up with terrible portable toilets and showers mounted on the back of semi trailers.

So, why was it so good, what with sickness, heat and discomfort rife? Well – apart from simply getting me out and away from town for 10 days, it provided a good exercise for my liver, got me a bit of a tan (even though it may be a farmers tan ), taught me how to pull a beer in the hardest of circumstances, introduced me to awesome people that I would otherwise never have met, but perhaps most importantly the ride acquainted me with a particularly attractive, intelligent girl. After spending a few days together we parted ways this morning when the event ended, and I’m off to Sydney for 4 days tomorrow morning with Jake, but when I return I suppose we’ll see if it was simply a short, teenagey camp romance or something else…. I’d like to think it could just be the latter.

Well that’s a rare addition to this blog – usually I spout constant shit a few times a week – not anything that could be remotely considered personal, but it looks like this whole thing might become smooshie and lovey-dovey from here in. Hahahah that’ll be the day hell freezes over.

Pete