I’m booked to do a paper in Sydney the weekend after MLX5 at the CSSA conference. I’m keen to listen to some papers (oh, how naive of me!) but I’m also a bit unkeen about the wanky cultural studies bullshit. I’m sure I’ll meet some nice people and have a lovely time, though.
The paper is on camps and exchanges as ‘fixes’ (a la the theme: culture fix). Which is kind of interesting as I’m coming straight from running MLX. We only have 30 mins all up (or is it 20…?) so, after clippage (which is mandatory), I’ll only have about 15 minutes to talk. Which is a shame, as I love to talk. And I love to give loooong, boring papers. But it’ll be a relief for the punters…. I hope I can narrow it down to just the one point.
What will that point be?
Something about how camps and exchanges are like fan conventions I think. Something about the appeal/addictiveness of camps/exchanges and the en masse and utterly intense experience of a camp/exchange? Surely I can make some sort of comment about wild men’s weekends and immersion events…
Heck, it’ll be fun: I’ve scored $$ for the fare, I’m staying with local swingers (yay!) and I’m going to see if I can get in for free/cheap for volunteering. It will be a nice break after MLX I think.
Or perhaps it’ll be all about the parallels between academic conferences and lindy exchanges… or is that too painfully wanky even for a cultural studies conference? It’ll certainly make the point about the arbitrary (and ideological) demarkation of ‘the field’ and ‘the academy’, or ‘subjects’ and ‘researchers’ …
Author Archives: dogpossum
Creativity +
Things are getting interesting over here at the House of Nerd.
The Squeeze has contracted me to do him a new website. I have worked up a lovely page using CSS, and have just sourced a most amazing looking system for publishing galleries of photos: stopdesign gallery templates which also uses photon, a neat plug in for publishing photos from iphoto to your blog. The whole thing also uses Movable Type, which The Squeeze was keen on anyway.
It’s all a bit of a tricky project (for me, anyway): Dave works with masses of photos, rather than just the 30 or so at a time that ordinary people use. The other night, for example, he shot 300 photos at a party. That’s just a starting-total for him, really. On a big night, he shoots zillions. So we needed a way of handling and publishing hundreds and hundreds of photos – whole galleries – at a time. We used to use picasa (a nice, free setup which does this sooo easily), but it’s not a mac thing.
Blogging software rocks: it’s an easy way to upload information quickly and easily.
Dave wasn’t keen on using flickr (the usual option for blogging photos), and I’m not sure it’s really the tool for this quantity of photos.
So we’re going to install the photon plugin (which could be useful anyway), we’ll check out the stopdesign templates, and we’ll explore the MT plugins. Once I figure out how it all works, I’ll see about styling it up to look like the mock site I’ve already done for Dave (which isn’t up anywhere, I’m afraid – I’ll see if I can source a screen shot). He really doesn’t want too much: white/grey colour scheme, simple, san-serif fonts. It’s going to be fat with images, will ignore screen-reader accessability issues (because the blind aren’t really his demographic) and basically be somewhere to hang all his lovely photos.
Yay!
I’m looking forward to this. I’m especially interested in the way the stopdesign guy uses MT to do unbloglike things. I’m getting a bit facinated by categories myself, so we’ll just see how we go, shall we?
And why am I so interested in all this? Thesis avoidance, of course!
It can’t be helped: I’ve developed this massive case of thesis anxiety. No reason for it: the thesis is actually going very well. I guess it’s thesis-completion anxiety. The job-searching continues, however.
man. do not let me be that type of writer
I have recently read ths article and I have some issues with it.
Having read the blog entry to which the article referrs, and having read that bloggers’ site for a while, I suspect the article’s author has gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Not one to pull my punches, I’ve no trouble with public scuffling. in fact, i quite like it. most of the time. the age article, however, seems misinformed. the blogger – who i don’t actually know in person (though i think we’ve met), but who’s blog i read and who i’ve ‘spoken’ to online in blog comments and other discussions, is one of the least confrontational and least stroppy bloggers i know. the article’s author is kind of, well, wrong in the things she’s read. down with her. up with everyone else.
to return to the age’s article.
that piece is fairly sorry-arse in content and thought. i’ve only read through it once or twice (quickly) and am writing this entry quickly (i want to return to this topic, though), but i was struck by this bit: the article’s author apparently sees the rise of blogging as part of the
democratisation of debate
i sigh.
i shake my head.
really: are we still buying that old line? i mean, really, who’s believed that the internet and blogging is in any way a demonstration of democracy?
sheesh.
the ‘internet’ … wait, … the Internet … is hardly a democratic place, with all voices of all citizens present in any type of equitable discourse. it’s the territory of white middle class kids. and most of those are blokes.
i want to mention that i read that age article online.
i want to talk about journalism and blogging and blogging as ‘journalism’.
i want to talk about public and private talk (and the bullshit myth that the two were ever different animals).
i have so much more to say about this article, but i have to go to a party and i don’t want to go cranky. plus i have a new dress to go try on. priorities.
but if the slandered blogger is reading this, please: ignore that rubbishy article. it’s a bundle of crap. and the clearest case of bullying i’ve read in a while.
quick update
i know the comments aren’t working yet, folks, but i’m too busy to sort it out just yet! so hang loose til i deal with it…
btw, anyone want to buy an MLX5 tshirt? they’re black with a white shoe and ‘MLX5’ in the mlx5 font next to it. they should arrive in about… a week and a half? only $22. and some are sweatshop free. yay!
team brunswick is so adorable
dogpossum galactica
do you like the new theme?
i know, i know, those stars are a bit much. i’ll make them smaller, just wait.
but you should note: that was the first time i’d ever tiled anything on a site. aren’t i clever?
another entry
this entry is pretty much just a test.
i’m fiddling with dogpossum again, mostly because i’m having thesis blockage issue. but a meeting with the supes on wednesday will fix that right up.
goddamn this blockage – of course it would happen NOW when i’m right near the end and cruising along comfortably with the mlx prep… i can never do anything when i don’t have a deadline hanging over me1
dogpossum lives!
finally we get around to reincarnating dogpossum.
like that new title? i drew it by hand then coloured it in with photoshop. i think i prefer the hand-coloured effect, but i couldn’t be arsed going back and colouring in all the masters.
on a technical front, we’ve installed the new, flasher version of moveable type (3.something). the author interface is swish. there are new features (including layers of categories – which willl be a nice thing when i finally upgrade freeswingpress to the newer version of movable type).
the squeeze thought shifting my dead dogpossum files to the new movable type would be easy. one hour tops. yeah, right.
so don’t hold your breath – read back through old entries as they’re uploaded, perhaps…
home again, home again
i’m home again.
early morning arrival yesterday, though the plane was delayed in heathrow for 3 hours we made incredible time and were only about an hour late in to melbourne.
the flight was ok: quite empty as the delay had stuffed up people’s connecting with us. i scored a three seater to myself on the second leg from singapore, and slept a bit.
melbourne was a chilly, wet shock. we retired to bed as soon as we got home and though we’d only intended a quick nap, i slept until 5pm. then up for a couple of hours and back to bed by 9pm.
i don’t mind this jetlag thing: i beat it with hardcore sleeping.
today i was awake by 6am. i hassled The Squeeze until he sent me off to get some stuff for breakfast.
i am much less tired than he is, i think.
today we rode to smith street where i purchased replacement dance shoes. $25 for fancy arse keds. new, improved padding and support. a wider toe. rockin’. then dropped them in at the shoe man for sueding. he’s upped his prices from $20 to $35, but that still works out at $55 for brand new dance shoes. not bad, considering they hardly last a year (and the last ones only lasted 9 months).
priorities, huh? ah well. we also had a lovely lunch at a cafe on brunswick street. hoorah for excellent sandwiches.
i think i’m over my jetlag, now. i don’t mind those massive flights, either. it made it heaps better to have a less-full plane.
i’m really glad to be back in the land of good food. i couldn’t hack that english cuisine much longer. The Squeeze is certainly iron wok brunswick: how lovely to be presented with gorgeous stir fry last night.
in my absense the university has gone insane. i have about a million irritating forms to fill out. seems the rgso couldn’t figure out that my ‘o’ form really did mean that i was away on field work and wouldn’t be able to do my progress report. despite my follow up emails to the uni, there was still a little drama. gotta sort that out tomorrow. and i have to add up all my receipts from my trip.
sigh.
it was certainly worth it, though. i will write more about that later…
and i didn’t have time or opportunity to blog much while i was away. certainly not while i was in herrang. tooo busy. tooo tired.
it’s good to be home, but i really liked travelling. and i like travelling on my own, as well. though it’s certainly good to be back.
now i need to chase down a phsyio/podiatrist. my poor feet….
work?
how goes it?
oh, same old.