Stocktake!

On this, the eve of my...uh...thirty-sec-ond? Thirty-second? Thirty-second, yeah, my thirty-second year of life on Earth.

Dad's right, birthdays mean less and less the more you have.

This time last year I was working a shitty shit shit job in what has become the most precious place in the world to me – Ullapool, in the Highlands of Scotland – with the knowledge that my lover would be at the end of my fingertips within a week after years disguised as month apart. Pretty great way to show in the era.

Since then, we have been a we (we counted and are pretty sure that in the past year we've only spent three nights apart (not counting those nights when either party was perhaps out being a menace and didn't notice the sun come up)), have travelled to the Faroe Islands and seen massive colonies of PUFFINS!!! and watched an ocean of clouds crash against and up over the cliffs while gannets ghosted across the ocean below, and then we got lost on several islands and were rescued by wonderful locals several times. We put a tick beside the "our first flat!" and it was indeed a complete and utter mould and mildew-infested, draughty, freezing, dank, dark, cramped, fetid, stagnent crapbox in a tenement for which the front door didn't lock and the corridor light didn't work and used syringes, bent spoons and half-eaten pizzas were regularly left outside our door and bedroom window. I've managed to not completely suck at freelance editing which my confidence enjoys. We've done Iceland (again!), Amsterdam, Nordland Sweden in deep winter, Paris in a diamond-cut crystal winter, Kiev in a lazy winter and Chernobyl, oh goodness, Chernobyl. Vancouver in a wet but gentler winter.

And home.

And back to the Monday to Friday, and back to the office cubicle and the same bed every night, the same streets and the same trains and friends who were there and are there now.

And gosh it's nice.

And possibly, maybe, I'm actually settling down. Or still riding the adventure high. I just don't feel as restless in my heart and lungs, there's not that same sense of urgency to chase every horizon.

Or, maybe I'm just tired.

Anyway. Got my love. Got my families, my friends, my dogs. Got my happiness. Got a pen and space in a notebook. Got shit to learn. 31 was pretty damn amazing. Looks like the forecast isn't going to change for 32.

Thank you, my sweet random microclimates. 

"What do you think of Michael Bay?"

These ones aren't too bad, to be honest. Humour is always a plus. Snide little put downs (which may easily be tongue-in-cheek, but without knowing the owner of the voice nor having any emotive modifiers to guide my interpretation I have know way of knowing this) are not.

iDie

Hal III is dead. Long live Hal III.

There is no middle ground with memory and iPods at the moment, the jump goes from 60GB (which is too little) to 160GB (which is waaaaaay too much). As such I hit the nearest Apple Store and made an appointment with the Genius Bar with hopes of resuscitating Hal, because I am traveling and in transit and I bloody need all my music with me at all times.

They had some massive global infinite database which, when Hal's serial number was entered into, produced his date of purchase; 24 December 2006.

Five years old, okay, yeah, I guess we've had a good run.

He really was dead though, and I wasn't interested in spending heaps of money on a new shiny thing, so I then visited a second-hand dealer, and found a 120GB classic for significantly cheaper. Still money I wasn't intending on spending, but not a frivolous purchase I think.

Hal IV is all set up. Before syncing, 'Owner's iPod' indicated it had two songs stored upon it.

It doesn't recognise 'eh'. DOOMED.

hello, my freaky darlings.

for Christmas, my family put in together and bought me Dragon Dictate for Mac. It was at my request. A year is long enough to sit on an idea, and where it down, until, it is no more threatening than my age painted this. I was actually a little bit excited to receive it, as while I will not be using it for fiction it will enable me to properly e-mail all you far-flung distant beautiful friends. I have missed you.

Unfortunately, many in technology, well, we have “issues". When I installed Dragon Dictate it politely informed me that it refused to run on the current version of Eddie's operating system. Fussy little sheet. That shouldn't have been a problem, and I was quite happy to even pay for a legitimate upgrade (because Macs are just too weird and funky to our stuff on) and went to do that right away. However, Apple beings so forwardthinking shooter orientated, and all that, there was no option to simply download the upgrade. Noel. They insisted on shipping me the physical disk. Which... Was not what I wanted this year on the first day of the four-day long weekend.

Beach ripe Martin.

I cultivated some patients (meaning I stole some from our little old lady on a Zimmer frame outside the supermarket) and ordered the damp upgrade will stop. It was not delivered on Wednesday. It was delivered on Thursday. And of course Apple use a courier service so they weren't going to just shove it in the letterbox. I had to sign for it. So I missed that first delivery, and low! The next delivery would not be until Tuesday due to new years public holiday will stop. Fine stop. That's just fine. Fortunately they agreed to deliver to my workplace which happened on Tuesday quite early, and it was just a CD case. It's not even like it was a big cardboard box of new slots packaging will stop they could have quite easily have shoved in the letterbox. It was only $40. The.

After doing a quick backup of all my necessary files, of which I'm sure I forgot many, I upgraded Eddie's operating system. Which was surprisingly painless.

Then I ran Dragon Dictate.

Then, I pulled out the fancy Swedish headset that my family had also given me for an extra $100 and went to plug it in. The fancied swish headset has a USB plug that is the some reason ridiculously why stop.

Eddie has only two USB ports.

I could not plug the headset in and have my ergonomic keyboard plugged in at the same time.

Can't.

I can tell you right now I did not just say “can't" Asian stop.

So I had to unplug my ergonomic keyboard, which meant that Eddie could not sit in he's nice ergonomic laptop stand, as it covers his own keyboard. This seems to be, I don't know, ergonomic forces at wall? I know. Factions of occupational health and safety revolution coming into conflict and you're getting distracted so that they not actually fighting the problem which is RSI and instead bed is fighting each other and... It is a little bit frustrating. I'm going to have to buy a USB hub. The better Eddie gets for my hands, the first portable he becomes.

So. There we are a will stop. As you can see, I have a little bit of trouble ending sentences. I haven't corrected anything in this post. For ease of reading I will go back and insert paragraph breaks.

And then, I am going to teach this program how to swear will stop.

Expletive. Blasphemy. Expletive.

She wants me dead.

Spam imitating life?



So true.





Except for the part about the cat.

(As if I'd need help naming a cat. Pfffft.)

I am leaving the internet. I've a last day in fabulous San Francisco before jumping on a metal bird and returning to the future, 'cause this is the future, and we totally have the technology.

I will be reattaching myself to people I haven't seen in a couple of weeks, so to avoid any social malfunctions in recognition, here is a current, taken right this second, photo of me:



You peeps I just spent ridiculously hilarious weekend with, I loff you. I bequeath you the northern hemisphere, with which to do as you please. Hopefully, 'as you please' means you will turn it into a giant ball pit.

See you on the otherside of the date line.

They're evil! EVUHL!

Fire and flight no turn off for horny devils (Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the headings The Ages chooses to run on their site.)

SHE may look cute, but Smooch is a ferocious little devil. Born amid the ashes of Black Saturday, her existence is a small but significant victory in the desperate fight to save the Tasmanian devil.

The feisty six-month-old is one of 28 disease-free joeys born in Healesville Sanctuary's new devil breeding centre in the aftermath of February's bushfires.

Amazingly, all nine of the centre's wild-caught females became pregnant soon after being evacuated to Melbourne Zoo as embers rained down.

''We were very concerned that evacuating them would disrupt the breeding cycle because it's extremely stressful and traditionally devils have a really low breeding success rate,'' senior keeper Tiffany Eastley said.

''But they didn't seem to mind at all. Usually they have only a 30 per cent reproduction rate in captivity, so to have a 100 per cent reproduction rate is amazing..."

I can't be the only one getting Midwich Cuckoo vibes. They're telepathic-psycho-kinetic-hivemind furballs, and they will be the ruin of us all.

Time Warp

After five years, my mobile phone wanted to have some 'time apart'. It did this by committing suicide every few days, and I would be forced to resurrect it by ripping the battery out.

We've had a good run. I barely used it, and it was fine with that. But, I can't stay with a phone that wants to die. For starters, I have no other contact number. Kinda a big deal, that.

So I upgraded. Grudgingly. Resentfully.

I've put off getting a new phone for some time. I knew the end was coming, but I was happy with what I had; a phone. Calls and text messages. That's all. All new phones that people pulled out and showed off in front of me, they came packed with so many features and heaps of connectivity. I don't want features. I really don't want to be connected. I want a phone.

But, oh well. If I must make this step, then I'll do it properly. Screaming. Shrieking. I have to admit, after some mild teething problems, the iPhone is pretty neat. I have science fiction in my pocket. I HAVE SCIENCE FICTION IN MY POCKET. It knows where I am! (Alarming.) It's learns my spelling, it learns! (Alarming.) Because it contains a keystroke logger! (Alarming.) IT CONNECTS ME TO THE INTERNET AT ALL TIMES. ALARM. ALARM. ALARM.

Because I love walking away from all my connectivity. I love being unreachable. I love being away from the feeling that I should be checking my accounts, to see if someone has sent me something. I love not being in a position to respond to anything said to me. I love not being able to receive anything sent to me. I love being away from you all, even as I love you.

I love being off the radar, off the edge of the map.

I love being off.

I haven't set up email on the phone, because I don't want access to it 24/7. So far I haven't fallen into the trap of checking through web interfaces. So far, I've just been treating it as I treated the old one; like a phone. There to be forgotten and ignored.

I wonder if people will expect me to check my mail, now that I can, and respond promptly. Is that expected of everyone? Are we unwittingly rising to an apex of perfect impatience in our demands for acknowledgment? Smack me if I nag. Sometimes, I'm not replying because I haven't checked my mail. And sometimes, I'm not replying because I don't feel like it. There is no one who needs my attention immediately. None of us are obliged to drop everything on receipt of a message.

(One thing the old phone definitely had up on the iPhone (henceforth referred to as Spartacus)is that it always displayed the time and an icon to show if there were any messages or missed calls. I could check it without touching it. I resent having to wake up the Spartacus every. single. time.)

Where to from here? More connectivity? How connected can we get? Should we be so perpetually connected? I know I don't want to be, but I think I'm being dragged along and into this tangle of connections anyway. For better or worse, we all are. I dread to think what, in five years time, the next phone will be. Something that reads my mind and sends prompts to my friends when I need attention? Coddle me, my piece of pocket science fiction, validate my existence. I dare you.

But as long as I can keep my MONKEEEEEEEEEY! ringtone, I will not fight the onset of the future too hard.

all you need to do is pay attention

Depressed? We can tell by your voice, academics say.

Dr Lech's computer program is scanning through the voice data, using pattern recognition techniques to seek telltale "harmonics" unique to a depressed person's voice. It can detect harmonics related to seven different emotions, including fear, excitement or anxiety...

Professor Allen said the research was at an early stage but showed great promise. "In clinical work, the voice is often one of the first things you notice (in depressed patients)," he said.

"I can tell with my patients on the phone, sometimes after only a few words, how they are going. You can hear a flatness, a tension coming through. The voice changes very dramatically when they are depressed."

Yes.

This is called listening.

I find it upsetting and a little disgusting that there is room for demand that such a voice-reading program exist. We're all creatures of conversation, even me, Little Miss Hermit Crab, have enough and sit through enough conversations in a day to understand that the dialogue is only part of the whole interaction. Facial inflection, louder body language, pauses for consideration, the words you choose, the words you don't choose, and how you say what you say make the whole. These things make a face to face conversation so much more meaningful than some quick IM of txt speak, and even a hand written letter.

We all read these things. All you need to do in order to understand them is pay attention.

No one should ever need a computer to tell them what is contained in another person's voice.