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Facebook UpNext NYC
Just found a new facebook app that plugs into a site called upnext. The interesting thing is that they've added it as a facebook ap but it isn't listed yet (that I know of). Citing Techcrunch, this thing looks to shake up the small niche between 2D maps and google earth, with all of the business addresses and ratings to go with it. For all the Yorkerphiles this is a must have....

Jesus

Reproduced with kind permission from here.

Bill Callahan - The Factory, Enmore

Recently I joined a beta for a mixed tape web2.0 widget that allowed me to choose any music I wanted and add it to a mix for dissemination amongst almost every social network (see previous post). The first thing I did when I reached the add music section was to quickly type the word 'Smog'. The result? Donut.
What the hell? My first track add and I'd already stumped the entire start-up. There was no listing for the band/artist Smog, or Bill Callahan for that matter. I won't go into it in too much detail but I'd say old school music label distribution is alive and well in web2.0. If you're an independent you don't get much room anywhere, even on the tech frontier.
Anyway....
Bill Callahan toured recently and I missed the opportunity to see him when I got the chance. When he reappeared in Australia for the second time in 6 months I knew not to act similarly again.
My memories of this gig I hope to cling to for longer than I'm sure my brain will allow so I'll write this like a mash of recollections, if only to stave off the inevitable entropy between my ears.
I love this guy (yep, remember that bit...). I just haven't found someone so unique and refreshing since forever. I can't think of someone who's occupying his niche or doing it with such seemingly flagrant apathy. He plays like the world is ending but the sound of his deep-tube vocals are just rounding, warming, singular and sweet. Gravitas meets groundswell, the downer brings epiphany. Everything he does coos the audience into a bubble of the harder edges of his life, his tracks are so simple that artistic interpretation just isn't necessary. For a mid week 'no brainer' I was left dazed and confused. Some time passed, I enjoyed my time with friends and then it ended far too soon. It felt like I'd been robbed of something, maybe an hour or two of my time, maybe something far more important.
I do remember distinctly that upon leaving the venue I'd witnessed something approaching genius; a baritone with a three quarter guitar and a track list that drew me to gravel roads and fur tree forests. It was a reminder of rooms with simple furnishings leading to simple living, of days and nights being marked by nature, not devices and of an inevitable cadence flowing through us all. I think of Bill's track "Show me the Colts" and the line "Is there anything as still as sleeping horses?" and I realise that is exactly what the five hundred strong crowd had been treated to; music that left us all still and a little more quite as we filed out into Sydney's inner west. We'd been robbed of our busy lives, just for a few hours, and we were all the happier for it.

My new mixaloo mix

This is something new I'm trying, courtesy of a beta I've been invited to. Essentially if you like the mix you can purchase it here instead of pulling the tracks off itunes. Let me know if you find it interesting.Cheers

Wooster Collective - Kenji Nakayama

Some more from a website that I just can't get enough of. For more visit www.kngee.com.

The little Blighter

You might think that it's hard to get excited about something so grainy and out of focus. For the two us it is a dream without limits, a joy beyond comprehension...

...and for those of you who can see him/her then you might notice the hands - already in fighting stance!

Rice Art - Wooster Collective

I just love these guys. Every time I visit their site I take away something insightful. This one is at the more trivial end of things but no less impressive for the effort involved!

Apparently rice farmers in Inakadate have been creating theses works since 1993.

Hamilton island Delivery

OK, I've been out of the loop for a month or so. I'd apologise but no one is reading this so I won't bother.

Last week I had the opportunity to sail a 46 footer from Sydney to the Whitsunday Islands (1000 nautical miles). With the promise of good times, sun and heaps of deep blue water I quickly jumped at the chance - taking a week off work. Sailing north is always a great deal; things get warmer as you go and the breeze and sea state tend to agree with everyone's overall health (as opposed to heading south - where there are no guarantees...none).

Here's a blow by blow:

Day 1 - got away late because there are always jobs to do at the last minute. Even after 6 months preparation there are still last minutes safety checks and hardware adjustments to make before pointing seaward. It's a state of mind thing...just ask any pirate you see walking down the street.

Sailed straight into 25 knots and building. The sea was confused and the waves came from all points out of the west and south. As we were pushed further out to sea the wind grew, and by 2am the next day we were at full hammer sometimes surfing 20 knots or more. The boat, I have to say, loved every minute of it.

Day 2 - The 2 not-so-experienced crew on board were put through a double reef and headsail drop in the darkest part of the night. I must say of all of the newbie experiences for sailing this was a full dance card. No moon, 40 knots, 2 metre confused seas, a boat surfing down anything, oh and seasickness to boot. They did well all things considered. Their colleagues gave no quarter until the boat was settled and back in rhythm. Lots of rest followed and the skipper took the helm for 5 hours until he had a replacement wake up. I was backing up the crew work and moonlighting as a bowman whenever needed - I think I got an hour's sleep that night.

Next morning, more of the same but morale was restored by a beautifully clear day...and a change of course back towards land ( we travelled over 50 nmiles offshore that evening).

Day 3 - Back into holiday moed well and truly. Breeze veered to SE and holding at 20 knots. Plenty of fun off the wind and the sea was much calmer. The boys got over the malaise and joined the watch, much happier to trim and keep the boat settled whilst we steered. I think the first of the wildlife sightings ocurred at this time.

meals consisted of muesli bars and water up until then so when a fahita was placed in my hand whilst I trimmed the main I was truly in awe. I literally cleated the bloody rope and devoured it in about 3 bites. I felt I could take on anything, which was a shame because I still hadn't caught up on sleep. A good couple of hours kip time quickly followed.

Day 4 - saw a full breaching Southern Wright whale off the beam during the day. Even hundreds of metres away this thing made a huge noise. I remember food featuring more and more, nothing much else came to mind at this point.

Except this.....we were almost charged down by the local wildlife. I was steering, I had my eye on a pod moving toward us when it dissappeared. I kept my on the sight line and sure enough a couple of minutes later the bovines popped up 4 lengths from the bow. I had already changed course so I almost soiled myself. I had a whale at full cruising speed heading straight at me. I called for a crash gybe and had my skipper racing for the running backstay. Whilst the new guys looked on with questioning expressions the two of us threw the boat through the manoeuvre and quickly checked the leeuward side. I must say at the point I was expecting this thing to ram us at speed so i wasn't sure if i'd see it before we felt it break the boat in half. I had a tingling in my feet and I preyed that it would pop up somwhere else. I didn't have to wait long. maybe one second after the gybe the whale surfaced again, its spine arcing through the water a single boat length from the stern, exactly where we were 2 seconds earlier. We'd missed it and it never even looked like slowing down. One thing I will remember - the mottle black and grey splotches all along its back, as it simply rolled through the water. That close, so close. The memory is purely what it looked like when I could make out the detail from that kind of proximity. I didn't sleep as well for the rest of the trip.

Day 5 - Generally a dulling of the previous day's excitement. There was a long, slow run up the Capricorn channel with a dying breeze holding square behind us. This made the boat roll and the rigging unsettled. Things weren't as comfortable but some added knots from the motor always helped (and made us believe we were keeping the whales at bay with the noise). Watches passed without anything to say, I think boredom crept in a little at this point.

Day 6 - Finally met a new day in the Cumberland island group. Saw a turtle and some beautiful islands as we drew a rhumb line to Airlie beach. The impatience grew as the breeze died and like all of murphy's good laws we spent a long time basking in sight of the finish line. I steered her in by memory (I spent a long time in the Whitsundays as a child) and were greeted with the challenge of not having a berth for the night. Whilst our skipper was pleading with the marina over the VHF the rest of us were giving our promised drinks nicknames and began writing pen pal correspondence to them.

Finally and anticlimactically we arrived at Abel point, washed the sea off us and warbled towards town for a beer.

Klingatron - street art

http://www.klingatron.com/

Found this by checking out the Wooster Collective. These guys know a good thing when they see it. Check out the youtube vid, you'll see what I mean...

Jason Benjamin - Metro 5 Gallery

Having just read the article of Jack Marx in the Sydney Morning Herald I was extremely interested then find the follow up from The Art Life (You Be The Attorney, I'll Drive, 19/07/2007). No punches pulled, and no quarter given for 'artistic license'. This blog could learn a thing or two from this creative think tank!

But onto more important things. The subject matter of the above article is Jason Benjamin, an Australian artist of particular renown worldwide. His latest exhibition, 'Set Yourself Free' is now showing at metro 5 Gallery (http://www.metro5gallery.com.au/) until July 8. For those of you in Victoria, you're all very lucky people.

For years a Benjamin work sat above the headstand of my bed. The work was so epic it almost needed the white cotton of the bed sheet to act as a visual buffer for wayward glances, a risk that could mean total immersion and subsequent loss within the image.

This painting was of his established style; a landscape both hyper-real and trying so hard to be surreal but somehow casting off the preconception of surreality. It was a snapshot of what I wanted to feel but it would always force me to stop before I made quick assumptions about the subject matter. It demanded that I take nothing for granted.

It was painted in the very sudden throes of a storm, the greens and blues so dark as to be immediately thought of as black. The cloudscape sat amongst all of this aggression with an omniscient softness, the clouds tearing and revealing incandescent blues. All of it just teetered in some catastrophic brink, perfectly balanced but ready to fall into tragedy at a moment's notice. Somehow some amazing 'force majeure' had been ground to a staggering halt just beyond the head of my bed.

Get along and see it, from the poor reproductions available (like the one included here - 'Please Don't Go You Just Got Here', Kyoto 2007 - from the Metro 5 website) I can see that this exhibition is amongst his best.

Sydney Dog's Home

To all and sundry who feel that pets of all shapes and sizes can be subject to whim and fancy, fashion and image, or Christmas gift giving- you should not be allowed to own a pet. This post isn't for outlining the benefits of owning animals or for chastising those who don't understand those benefits. This post is simply saying this:

'Thanks to the likes of those who don't understand the nature of pet ownership thousands of domesticated animals have to be euthanised each year'.

The sense of waste and the dereliction of responsibility is needlessly extreme. We all need to get our act together.

For now a small group is leading the way and trying to stem the flow of animals that become liabilities of local governments all over Sydney.

If you do find yourself purchasing a pet please look towards the rescue centres across NSW first. The animal of your dreams will most likely be waiting and at a fraction of the cost of purebred puppies.
The personal favorite of this blog is the Sydney Dog's Home. Please check out the link and feel free to smile at the bright faces waiting for homes on the site.

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Little Tibetan Tale

In the distance
I same something moving
I approached
I saw an animal
I came even closer
I saw a man
I came even closer
And I saw he was my brother.

6 Billion Others

A friend's project, something of a purely indefineable scale. Check it out...
http://www.6billionothers.org/index_en.php

Misogi - Japanese Martial Arts

Something I thought I'd add to the fray - a local supplier (Sydney) of traditional martial arts gi and obi. A rarity indeed! These guys look like the real thing and are doing so at great prices. Among the clutter of so so uniforms and apparel it is really refreshing to see someone trying to bring it all back to the basics and in keeping with tradition! URL in links....

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

There's a lot to be said for marketing but this shouldn't deter fans looking for a book that doesn't mind treading the murky depths. Steven Hall has created one giant allusion which he has treated with respect, thereby not insulting the reader with over stretched analogies. I've read reviews of this book stating it as a 'new modern' fiction, this would be pure tosh. There have been so many writers (modernists and others) who have attempted and achieved similar things this century.
What can be safely stated is that it is an homage to all of the author's favorite writers and in some cases genres, most of whom have come from contrasting backgrounds. The book is a pastiche, definitely, and considering the literary weaving process involved Hall has done well.
I won't go into the book's inner workings or try to summarise and catalogue. I would merely suggest to anyone inquisitive for something 'out of the box' to get this book and let it flood your mind with ideas.
Four out of five from my end.

The next Generation G Class Cats

Thought I'd show you a little bit of what lies ahead for the next few years of maxi-cat yachts being designed in France.

It's well know that the true cutting edge of yacht design has been France or more importantly 'Sikkaflex Valley' in Brittany. If you sail offshore in any high end technology or race at the pointy end of the fleet all of your innovations have been tested and tried years in advance by designers and ocean racers from France. This is almost without exception. As ocean racing goes France leads the way by a country mile, all due to the French love for all things adventurous. To the French These ocean racing is on of the great adventure sports, unrivalled in scale and inspiration. Ocean racing attracts big sponsorship dollars and a consistant national audience. It's no wonder that so much development in speed and safety comes from this end of the world. We might think we have an edge when it comes to producing great sailors but all of them are utilising technology that is, in most cases, old hat to theses blokes.

The one example of this that I'd put forward is the canting keel. Think of any maxi monohull going around today without one. They've been on boats for the last 4 Vendee Globes. That's almost 2 decades of testing and racing before the western world even condsired it de rigeur. We have a lot to do to even consider ourselves amonsgt the avant garde when it comes to yacht design and above all else speed.

Here are a couple of snaps from the van Peteghem/Prevost team. This is a trimaran weighing in at 40 metres. Forget 100 ft maxis this is the real thing (that can even go to sea as well!).

In 2001 Club Med averaged something near 29 knots in a circumnavigation of just over 60 days. This thing (pictured) could quite easily see the Jules Verne Trophy go sub 50 days. This means we are building boats capable of going around the entire globe (from Europe south and do a lap of antarctica before heading north again) in under 50 days! The current record is something closer to 55. This is without expending any fuel to propel or assist in mechanising the boat's progress. The concept is mind blowing, the reality is something else again....

Northstar Martial Arts

At any local PCYC in Australia you're most likely to find various boxing and martial arts centres with a spattering of sweaty and pugilistic people 'going at it' in various ways and means. For years I'd look in on all of this like it was some secret coven of fighters and their trainers. They would train to breaking point amongst old men carrying buckets and mopping wooden floors. There was no obvious appeal to someone like me and there definitely wasn't an invitation to join. Well, a year and a half ago something changed and I marched into one of these institutions and asked the sensei if I could participate. My life hasn't been the same since.
The first impression you get when poking your head into a dojo is something approaching fear, at the very least its something disconcerting. These are people from all walks of life, old and young, kicking and punching thin air in almost perfect unison. They wear white pyjamas. They look motivated. They don't talk yet they're all stuck in close proximity to each other. For thirty or so people in a normal size room that's a lot of avoiding eye contact. Then there's the noise. The building practically shakes.
This is what I faced when I rang Andy one afternoon. It was a new year's resolution I think, and my wife was encouraging if not a little cautious - I have a habit of picking up fads and dropping them again almost in the blink of an eye. I approached the PCYC and sure enough the building was shaking. I think I joined in as an act of solidarity. Actually my reasoning was deeper than just what martial arts had been moulded into by Hollywood over the last twenty years. I'd slowly been feeling the ill affects of insecurity, especially when it came to personal protection. Actually when my home was burgled twice in two days later that year it was Shinbudo that helped me sleep at night. I wanted to know how to get a cheap shot on the boisterous drunk before I ran for my life. There was never any motivation to kick a brick in half from somewhere above my head whilst blindfolded and whilst wearing funny pants. I'd leave that to people who genuinely found that sort of thing interesting. I just wanted to get a handle on something that was starting to get me worried when I was drinking with mates or getting stuck on a quiet street at night. I had run out of excuses not to address it so I did what all sensible people do when they want to solve something - they look up the yellow pages. Andy asked me to drop by the next evening.
Well now I'm a blue tip grade and I'm absorbed, completely immursed in the art and all that it stands for. So what happened? What changed me so significantly as to want to be one of those fabled white pyjama wearing athletes? Patience grasshopper, all will be revealed.