Showing all posts about Australia
The Australian Typography Club
1 August 2008
Australian typography enthusiasts are being sought (Internet Archive link) to help establish The Australian Typography Club, an informal group that will “promote choosing, using, and creating great typography”.
The mission of our club will be to promote choosing, using, and creating great typography. On a day-to-day level, the purpose of the club would be to create a real-life community for type enthusiasts to meet, collaborate, and learn. Meetings would be held periodically (in my studio if needed), where Sydney typography enthusiasts of all ages can discuss choosing, using, and creating great typography.
Check out this thread on the Australian INfront forum if you’re interested in being involved.
Update: both the Australian INfront and its discussion forum are no longer online, and links here point to the Internet Archive.
Originally published Friday 1 August 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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OpenAustralia: opening up the Australian Parliament
17 June 2008
OpenAustralia, a new website that allows you to track debate and discussion in the Australian Parliament, launched on Sunday. Nathanael Boehm, who is on the project team (in a post on his no-longer online website purecaffeine.com), describes OpenAustralia far better than I could:
OpenAustralia is a site that aggregates House of Representatives debates with data about the Members of the House of Reps and presents it in a way that makes it easy to see what debates your Member in your electorate is participating, what they’re saying and whether they’re doing a good job of representing you. You can see statistics of how many debates they’ve been involved with. You can comment against any Member’s contribution to a debate and discuss that with other users of the site.
OpenAustralia also lets keep tabs on your local MP, and while learning that my local representative Peter Garrett (he of Midnight Oil fame), is one of the more vocal MPs (is that really a surprise?), I also learnt a few other things:
Has spoken in 50 debates in the last year – well above average amongst MPs. This MP’s speeches are understandable to an average 20 – 21 year old, going by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. Has used three-word alliterative phrases (e.g. “she sells seashells”) 138 times in debates – well above average amongst MPs.
Originally published Tuesday 17 June 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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The Aussie Bloggers Forum launches
1 January 2008
A brand new discussion forum for Australian bloggers — which I was invited to help setup — goes into soft launch (I hope: this is the timestamp speaking again…) today: Aussie Bloggers Forum (update: no longer online).
Of course it’s not just for Australians, and everyone, where ever you are, is welcome.
So whether blogging is your major or minor, head along and say hello, network, and strut your stuff.
How’s that for an easy, not too demanding way, to spend New Year’s Day?
Originally published Tuesday 1 January 2008.
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Grow your DVD movie collection each time you visit the supermarket
9 December 2007
Going to the supermarket is increasingly becoming a one-stop-shopping experience. In addition to sourcing groceries, some stores now offer not-half bad coffee, which you can enjoy as you pace the aisles. And for movie fans, a visit to the supermarket is only going to get better, with news that DVD vending machines are being rolled out across Australia:
Instant DVD has installed vending machines in 12 supermarkets throughout Melbourne and Sydney and intends to expand to 500 throughout the country, creating yet more competition for the traditional video shop.
The hire prices are too bad either, and the “late fee” for not returning the title by the due date may not — depending how much you like the film in question — be so terrible either:
All movies cost $2.99 a night to hire and can be returned to any of the service’s vending machines. If you fail to return a movie within two weeks its price is charged to your credit card and it becomes yours to keep.
I’m not really up on the state-of-play when it comes to late fines on hire movies, since returning hires is about the only thing I actually do promptly, but it seems to me someone who’s a little more casual in this regard could end up with quite an impressive DVD collection.
If nothing else it makes for a good way to try before you buy. If you like the movie enough simply keep it, and two weeks later it’s yours. I wonder how the price of the “to keep” hires compares with those on weekly special at the supermarket though?
Originally published Sunday 9 December 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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The changing political landscape in Australia, and the world
30 November 2007
The defeat of the Liberal/National coalition Government in last Saturday’s federal election in Australia could herald an upheaval in the political landscape, not only locally, but globally, says Steve Biddulph, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:
We are so conditioned to the idea that two main parties define politics, we even call them left and right as if they were parts of our body. But parties spring up in response to the primary tensions in a certain time and place. In the 20th century that polarisation was capital versus labour.
A century earlier, before even the idea of power among the working poor, politics was aristocrats versus tradesmen, the growing middle class of shopkeepers and artisans that formed the basis of the Tories.
It’s no longer the workers against the bosses though.
The issue of the future, coming down on us now like a steam train, is of course the environment, the double hammer blows of climate change and peak oil. Energy, weather and human misery are the factors that will define our lives for decades to come. You can cancel your newspaper, those are the only four words you need to know.
But that’s not the end of it.
For two years now the best predictions have been that the subprime meltdown would act as merely the detonator of a much larger explosive charge created long ago by US consumer debt, concealed by Chinese and Arab investment in keeping that great hungry maw that is America sucking in what it could not begin to pay for.
The avalanche-like fall of US house prices will be closely followed by the same in linked economies worldwide, and presage a harsh and very different world than the one we have lived in.
In a nutshell then:
In short, the party is over. We are a civilisation in collapse.
Earlier this year, former Labor leader, Kim Beazley, who incidentally has just been appointed professor of politics and international relations at the University of Western Australia, predicted the party that lost last weekend’s federal election faced political oblivion in Australia.
“If the Labor Party is not able to get in there and change [the current] industrial laws, the whole character of working Australia will change substantially, and to the Labor Party’s detriment.”
The Liberal party’s position being equally as serious.
If Mr Howard lost, “there is a serious question mark over the future of the Liberal Party”. Labor would win the NSW election in March and Mr Howard would remain the only governing Liberal. “After some years of Labor state governments, Liberal oppositions are still struggling to get a third of the seats in state parliaments.”
Mr Beazley noted the state Liberal branches were already in poor shape and if Mr Howard lost the election, the Liberals would not govern anywhere.
The next few years stand to keep political observers on their toes.
Originally published Friday 30 November 2007.
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A late evening visit to the Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, Sydney
26 September 2007
Skulking around the darkened grounds of monasteries isn’t exactly my idea of living it up on a Saturday evening, but there I was last weekend, up at the Sacred Heart Monastery in the Sydney suburb of Kensington, armed with my camera, looking for photo opportunities.
I’ve been intrigued for some time by a floodlit building I can see across the racecourse from my living room window, so finally decided to trace the spectacle to its source.
The jaunt had the hallmarks of a c-grade horror movie though. The overly quiet tree lined street the monastery is located on. The ground’s wrought iron gate complete with squeaky hinges. The dark, foreboding, stairs leading up to the front of the building. Who knew what might be lurking there in the deep, gloomy, shadows.
It’s in the name of art, I kept telling myself as I apprehensively ascended the stairs. Yet, I lived to blog about the experience…
Originally published Wednesday 26 September 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, legacy, photography, Sydney
Culture jamming street signs as a means of political protest
7 May 2005
Saw this on the way to work the other morning. Along Epsom Road, in the Sydney suburb of Rosebery. I don’t know how long it has been there, or how long it will remain. I wonder what the exact point is. It could mean a number of different things when you think about it…
Originally published Saturday 7 May 2005.
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Adobe Creative Suite transitions, both subtle and not so subtle
18 November 2003
For years Adobe have been sending me invitations to a variety of seminars, conferences, and product launches. And last week I finally decided to RSVP yes, and go along to the Australian launch of something called Adobe Creative Suite, held in Sydney.
Creative Suite is a collection of Adobe products rolled into one package, and includes new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Go Live, and In Design. Part of the reason, we were told, in bringing these products together as one package is to reduce confusion as to which versions of Adobe’s software products are compatible with each other.
To demonstrate the features and advantages of the new suite, two of the product developers acted out a nice little role-play, mimicking designers in a studio, working on a project to a tight deadline. Their work, on their computers was, meanwhile, projected onto a screen above the stage.
All rather cosy, fun, and informative, and topped off with a nice smattering of gags and one liners. For all the great choreography though, it was the ending of the playact that let the production down. The two actors decided, almost arbitrarily it seemed, that the “show” was over, and with no transition at all, one of them was suddenly hauling a lectern across the stage, so he could declare that segment of proceedings closed.
Then again, maybe I blinked and missed something. And another thing, what’s the fixation with Hawaiian shirts? Why do they seem to be regarded as an enduring statement of retro non conformist zaniness? From theme parties, to casual wear on office mufti days, the Hawaiian shirt seems to constitute the continual butt of a never ending joke.
I only mention this because the Adobe road show crew were wearing them, (er, so we would know who they were) but isn’t it time we did things another way? Nothing against Hawaii, or Hawaiian shirts either, of course, but surely, say, black t-shirts, with the Adobe logo, and, say, the word “staff” emblazoned upon them would work just as well?
Originally published Tuesday 18 November 2003, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, design, events, legacy
Creed Chris O’Hanlon, on the couch, with Mike Walsh, Sydney, October 2003
8 October 2003
Dot-com flamboyance, and web design world domination, are terms synonymous with Australian entrepreneur Creed Chris O’Hanlon. Spike Networks, the web design company O’Hanlon co-founded in 1994, quickly expanded from its base in the Sydney suburb of Double Bay, into Asia, Japan, and the United States, thanks to the backing of numerous venture capitalists.
But Spike didn’t just do extravagant, and expensive, websites. At the height of the dot-com folly, Spike was even operating a radio station.
As with most things dot-com though, Spike came tumbling down in spectacular fashion, although O’Hanlon had left the company long beforehand. Workers (including someone I knew personally) lost jobs, investors were out of pocket by millions, while the rest of us were left wondering how so little could have come of so much hype.
Not helping matters were the stories that began emerging of the indulgent lifestyle led by O’Hanlon, during his time as boss. No expense was spared. Five star hotels, first class airline travel, and gourmet dining the world over, you name it. Then there was the extramarital affair with a Spike employee, which later resulted in allegations of sexual harassment.
So when an email from The Domain, a local media and technology professionals networking event arrived the other week, inviting me to see O’Hanlon speak, I knew I didn’t want to miss out. He would be talking to Australian futurist and speaker Mike Walsh, at the Hotel CBD, in downtown Sydney, as part of Domain’s On the Couch interview series.
Those expecting to see O’Hanlon pelted with projectiles however, would have been disappointed.
This despite Walsh pointing out O’Hanlon, in wearing a red shirt, had readied himself for any rotten tomatoes that might be thrown his way. In the end, the Spike co-founder only had to field a total of three audience questions, none of which related to dubious past activities, business or otherwise. Strategically, O’Hanlon headed off any acrimony, by admitting at the onset the “terrible” things he was accused of, were, “unfortunately true”.
Instead he offered an array of insights into online media and communications in general. He has been working as a consultant in Japan for a well known car manufacturer in recent times, and spoke of how mobile phones had changed the previously rigidly structured fashion in which the Japanese communicated with each other. O’Hanlon also spoke of the death of copyright, and the dearth of ideas when it comes to conceiving creative advertising campaigns for electronic media.
He also mentioned the upcoming publication of a book he is writing, which we were told would be titled The Zen of Failure. If nothing else, all of this shows that there are always opportunities to turn failure into, if not success, at least money. The right attitude is also useful, especially when trying to turn around a tide of negative perception. The gift of the gab, that is, the ability to sound intelligent, articulate, and well worded, is also somewhat useful.
Originally published Wednesday 8 October 2003, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, Creed Chris O'Hanlon, history, legacy, Mike Walsh, technology