My stack of home video tapes are up to almost eleven years old, so I figured I should try and digitize them before they become unusable, and that precious footage of times past is gone forever. Of course I'd forgotten that I was in a Mad Beard phase when I started filming this and that, so there's some cringe-worthy moments to be seen. This stuff hasn't really been watched for a very long time, so it's a real pleasure, unfortunate facial hair aside, to see it again. This is me in October 1994 on Rye Beach, near Melbourne, where my parents, myself and girlfriend Kate went for an afternoon picnic. It's also the place where I filmed the end of my mum's nose moving when she talks, just to prove to her that it does, in fact, do so. The word "seven" got the biggest proboscal deflection :)

The other picture is of Simon Borda and myself - he used to be married to my cousin Marthese. Its nice to see I trimmed the beard for the party :) I had a beard for many years, though I can see why my wife very insistently says NO when I suggest growing it back again - firstly it doesn't grow evenly enough, and secondly I'd be terrible at maintaining it and soon look like a hermit again.

The process of getting these tapes saved is, as usual, a friggin' nightmare of incompatible cables, dodgy hardware and dying appliances. The video capture card was unseated in its PCI slot and thus refused to even show up as being installed in the PC. Opening up the PC to fix this led to a half-day crusade of wire untangling, USB hub replacing (three stops to find what I wanted, a seven port one), a VCR with a dodgy loading mechanism that now refuses to eject the tape. My 8mm tapes will play in my camcorder, but since I can't connect it directly to the PC I need to go via the VCR's line in, but it is so paralyzed with fear about the stuck tape, I can't even get it to change channels.

So the VCR will be taken to the repair shop on Monday, I'll buy an adapter so I can handle the 8mm tapes, then I'm buying a bloody digital video camera! Goodbye analog!

My friend Daniel, in a successful attempt to get me back on the web, challenged me to do the "Five Favourite Tracks" thing; so here's my choices:

Kings - The Church: This one is from the Priest=Aura album, from 1992. Its got a combination of what I love most about the Church: poetic lyrics ("And kings will come/and years will pass/stars burn cold/beneath the glass/and days will glow in distant time/in distorted haze/the zebras graze"), a measured heaviness in the rhythm section, and their trademark jangly guitars.

Othertime - Steve Kilbey: From his Unearthed album (1987), this is my favourite of Steve's "little songs", a short, descriptive, melodic and very singable song.

The Sun and the Rain - Madness: They were my favourite band until I found The Church, but I still love hearing their music: it's very English, a culture I was immersed in for a while as a child. It's an uplifting song that I finding myself quietly singing whenever I get caught in the rain.

2nd half of Before and After Science - Brian Eno: I can't choose just one song from these masterpieces of restraint. "Julie With", "By This River" and "Spider and I" have not one wasted syllable, and Eno's mastery of ambience doesn't need repeating.

Amarok - Mike Oldfield: OK, it's 60 minutes long, but it's still only one track! It's a pain in the ass to fast forward through, but why would you want to? It's a rhythmic, insanely melodic collection of tunes and guitar choppery. Oldfield's best, IMHO.

By the way, Daniel has become a great spokesman for public transport users in Melbourne - I'm proud of you, mate! As many of you know, the USA is not known as a country that values public transport: I hope Melbourne keeps investing in their system, which is (was?) a big part in making Melbourne one of the worlds most liveable cities.

I'm not sure why I stopped blogging so suddenly, but I think it's time to get back on board. We've just come out of a stressful few months, which sees us still waiting for settlement from the insurance company on damage to our house from last year's hurricanes. Also Deanne's car was in an accident and sat for about 6 weeks at the body shop before they even started work on it. After some yelling they agreed to rent a car for us, and it should be finished "any day now." We'll probably sell it right away, I think.

On a more positive note I've taken up archery as a hobby. It's a lot of fun and has put a bit of muscle on me! When I got started I had trouble pulling the bow back after just a few shots, but I can now get through a set of 50 arrows fairly easily. We meet at an indoor range called "Gators 'n Guns" every Monday night and shoot over a twenty yard range. I'm the only one there who doesn't also hunt for real; I'm just there for the exercise and trying to improve my aim. I'll take some pictures and post them here.

Work is going well - we just installed a new version of our Release of Information software at three hospitals, the highlight of which was spending a weekend in Las Vegas before the L.A install. I did something I'd always wanted to do: play craps in a Vegas casino! I gave myself a budget, which I stuck to, and though I ended up losing it all, I had a couple of streaks where I doubled my stake in short order. It's a good game to play once or twice, but, like all casino games, the odds are against you. I'll stick with playing it on my Nintendo DS from now on.

Hey there! Long time no see - I've been quiet for a while, but its been an eventful couple of months. We sold our house back in Australia, we're still talking with the insurance company here in Florida about the damage to our house from the hurricanes in September and my main computer just refused to boot up - I think its because of all the dust inside. So it's time to buy a new case and transfer the guts into a nice new dust-free and SEALED home.

For some reason I felt like buying some original art. We have some posters on the wall, but its not the same as having something unique, something original, so I got onto eBay and took a look at drawings and paintings. It's been great so far! My favourites are ink drawings by a guy called Kenneth Eccles, who makes exquisite line drawings. I've bought lots (more than a dozen!) of small ones and two large ones, and I was so pleased with them that I rushed out and got four of them framed. I really like seeing art that is clear (as in "I can see every line he's drawn) but still produces a nice image with different textures and "feels". It's hard to describe why you like something, isn't it?

I got a call from Keith, my brother, and we chatted about Tivo, Bittorrent, Java, Azureus, Firefox...jeez, what a couple of geeks :) Hopefully Deanne and I will be going up to Jersey for a visit some upcoming weekend.

Patch bounced around the park on Saturday afternoon. Keith got the dog's website working again and all is generally happy and good with the world. Deanne and I have decided to sell our house in Australia and after just a few days I think we have a sale! The paperwork wasn't quite ready for a buyer to arrive yet, but we've got a verbal agreement so it's pretty much a done deal. For the first time in 5 years we'll be without a financial tie to Australia.

In other, slightly geekier, news, I've been working on a mashup of Church songs. I've mixed together samples from 15 songs by The Church and I think the result is pretty cool. The band's singer, Steve Kilbey, just auctioned the original notebook in which he worked on the lyrics for their last album, Forget Yourself, and I joined a small group of Church fans who bid on it. We won! Steve gave permission for the book's contents to be scanned and made available on the Shadow Cabinet image gallery, where fans will be able to see the book freely, and perhaps be inspired to work on their own music.

Today I found a very interesting blog that has nothing to do with the usual topics of pet pictures, politics, science fiction or technology. EnglishCut is the blog of one of the famous tailors of London's Saville Row, where some of the world's finest men's suits are made. He talks about the culture of high-end tailors and the work that goes into the suits he makes. Very interesting reading!

Time for an actual blog entry, I think, rather than picture of our ever-so-cute pets. That said, however, I posted 6 new pictures to my buzznet account...of pets! I took Garibaldi to the vet yesterday - he's developed fuzzy spots on his eyes that had us worried. It turned out they're called "Florida Spots", or "Florida Keratopathy" and luckily for us they are not a threat to his sight or health. The cause is still unknown but is suspected to be a virus and results in small "opacities" or "fuzzy spots" in one or both eyes. They reach a certain size (usually quite small) and just stop; I'm guessing they stop when the cats immune system kicks into gear. The vet told me the only case he saw where the spots continued to spread was in a cat with feline AIDS; he had a weakened immune system and couldn't protect his eyes from the spread of this virus. So if your cat has this condition, make sure its not some other condition, and if not then don't worry about it.

In Babylon 5 news, JMS has just revealed that the planned B5 movie "The Memory of Shadows" is not going into production. Sad, but seemingly inevitable for this brilliant show that just can't catch a break. Crusade was born on the wrong network and got shut down before the first episode aired, Legend of the Rangers' ratings were killed by a football game, the collectible card game got cancelled and the video game got screwed by Sierra-Online. It's weird - there's any number of Star Trek and Star Wars games, B5 makes a huge profit for WB and still it's beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

I've been recording more music over the last few days and learning how to use the software and hardware I bought. I wrote a song called "Civilized", which started out as a merry little ditty called "Tropical", but mutated. I still have more work to do on it, but it sounds quite nice at the moment, IMHO. The lyrics are a sort of paen to the future, urging people to think for themselves and not waste their lives being bound to the superstitions and beliefs of the past. I got a bit upset after watching a documentary on celibacy in the Catholic Church which talked about how in 1139 the church decided that all clergy, not just monks and nuns, had to be celibate? Why? Putting the theological "married to the Church" excuse aside, it was so that thousands upon thousands of clergy would have no heirs and so would pass all their money and land back to the Church when they died. Follow the money and there's your answer, all dressed up in sanctimonious mumbo-jumbo.

I got up earlier than usual for a Sunday morning, so I think it's going to be a very productive day :)

Wonderdog gallumphs across the sands of Jupiter Beach. 

Patch bounding around 

I like this one - looks like a courtly ritual of some kind. Actually it was just the little one inviting Patch to chase her. 

When Patch gets in close, it can be a bit scary for a little dog to see! 

Patch played with this six month old Labrador puppy for a few minutes. 

Mum and Dad are fostering Harley for a year. She is being specially trained to work for the Australian Customs service, sniffing out drugs in the airport. They have a list of behaviour to encourage, like being comfortable around people, being able to go down slides because she'll be working on luggage ramps a lot and not being taught to sit on command, because she'll be trained later to sit when she smells food in a piece of luggage.

I had a busy, busy morning today, because Deanne is coming back home tonight and I've left most of the errands till the last day again :) I returned some clothes to a store, took our car in for an oil change, got a refund from the Post Office for getting our Xmas presents delivered late, vacuumed the whole house and put laundry away. Then I had some breakfast :) I also have to write an email to the good folks who run The Church's website because they want to make it better but they're not sure how. I'm going to tell them to make the front page be more functional and less "stylish" - a big brown splat is not the way to welcome fans and new listeners to your band's web page, IMHO.

My own Church site, Shadow Cabinet, is coming along nicely. I finally found out how to put a piece of content *before* the news items on the front page, so I can permanently lead with thumbnails of the most recent three (perhaps four ?) albums. I'm also scanning a lot of collectables from my collection into the Image Gallery - my old scanner died an I bought a new one. Just $50 shipped from Amazon and it's doing very nicely so far.

I signed up for photo printing service Shutterfly this morning after realizing that the Kodak camera dock and printer we bought is, you guessed it, extremely expensive to refill. The colour catridge costs $20 for a 40 photo "roll", and you can't "stretch" the use of the cartridge - it actually advances a spool with each print you make, and stops when it reaches 40 prints. That's fifty cents per photo - I can have prints made online for half that cost, so I'm going to try that out.

Lastly I've had a fairly steady nosebleed situation for the last couple of days. I'm not sure what brought it on but I'd better see a doctor about it. It clots fairly quickly, but when the clot comes out the bleeding starts right up again.

Lots of interesting things have been happening lately, but for some reason I kept putting off blogging about them. I wonder why that is ? I don't have a good answer, but I think it's because my boss at ScriptRX used this blog to make sure I was in Australia when I said I was. This put me off writing or even thinking about blogging for a few weeks. Pretty nasty, I think. Anyway things didn't work out over there and I'm back at DSS.

There's lots of good stuff happening though ! I'm recording more music for the guy at Frightmares, who is planning to put out a DVD of his work ! So my music will, hopefully, be on a DVD for the second time. The second time ? Yes, Curt Stewart is sending crew copies of the DVD of "The Wedge", which also used one of my pieces called "A Good Beginning". You can find it in the "Brian's Music" link on the right side of this page. And as a result of being included on The Wedge, I'm now in the IMDB !

I bought a Zen Touch 40GB which I really like, except for the touch sensitive "slider" on the front, which is too sensitive even at the lowest settings. Shame really, because the price is good (about $310), sound quality is excellent and the battery lasts 24 hours. Deanne got an iPod and some nice travel speakers and she really loves it too. I'm a consciencous objector to joining the iPod Cult who think $250 for a 5GB mp3 player is a good buy. "Ooh, but its got colours ! And white headphone cords !". Sorry, not for me. But the wheely slider on the iPod is easier to use than the vertical slider on the Touch.

And the iTunes software, though a little braindead in some areas, at least does a proper two-way synch with your player. The Creative Labs program is "additive" only, meaning it won't delete anything from your player. So if you, for example, change a filename, or update your ID3 tags, you'll send down a fresh copy of the song to your player, but it won't delete the old one ! I ended up finding an open source program called NomadSync which does the job properly.

I downloaded a pile of free music from Epitonic (especially enjoying The Clientele (Rose, you might really like these guys)) and LegalTorrents. I bought a Clientele CD too, so there's +1 for the value of giving away unencumbered MP3 files for promotional use.

Deanne is in Cleveland, Chicago and Tucson for the next two weeks, so I'm in charge of house maintainance and all that. I already ran a bunch of errands and will be contacting roofers (to fix hurricane damage), taking cars for their 3000 mile services etc. I still have very little patience for these things; I know, I know, they're important, they have to be done, but at least now I can be accompanied by my favourite music everywhere I go.

And watch for the pictures from Titan tomorrow ! If all goes well you can thank Boris Smeds, a man who single-handedly discovered a fault in the communication system between the Titan probe "Huygens" and the Cassini orbiter. If not for him, we'd have nothing from the Titan landing. Engineers rule !

Siesta, by Hellblazer

Siesta
Originally uploaded by Hellblazer.

I'm going to try using flickr's blog posting service to put someone else's picture in my blog. This is a beautifully Maltese picture; it reminds me of the short time I was able to spend with my grandfather, Arthur Smith, before he passed away when I was four years old. We sat on the steps of his house in Balzan and played, I suppose :) My thanks to Hellblazer for taking and posting this picture.

I've been working hard on the Shadow Cabinet site (http://www.shadowcabinet.net) and I'm quite pleased with it now - it's a fan site for my favourite band and I've learned a lot about content management and also how to use the free software called GIMP for image editing. My fractal explorations are still going strong; there's four new images in the "Brian's Fractals" link on the right side of the page, and I have some more coming.

Me in front of the Melbourne skyline by the Yarra River. 

The family sings happy birthday to Benjamin - the poor little guy was asleep by the time the cake came out :) 

Mum looks at the *huge* Christmas display my Uncle Percy built in the window of his new house. 

A sparrow eats leftover food 

Mum and I watching Dad do his singing at the Yarraville Pokies Club. 

Me and my dad - he's dressed up to go and do a show.