tallpoppy

fill the gap with our english dead

2009-07-16T21:25:00.009+12:00

It's the school holidays again. I remember when I was a kid: school holidays were giant events that lurked rarely in our calendar, huge chunks of free time, during which we were invariably packed off to some improving activity which suspiciously happened to take place during business hours and thus let our parents get some time at work. These days, the plethora of diversionary activities is larger and more diverse; but the holidays are more frequent. Like, every two months. Blimey. Blink and there's another set of the damn things. And R is still just our lovely wee girl, so we're taking a bit of time off to look after her. So far, I got the first end of the holidays, and then had a bit of a gap, and now I've got another day tomorrow. At the start of the holidays we checked off all the major things we wanted to do:

Movies: check. Ice Age 3 was good fun; Simon Pegg gives a stand-out performance as a mad weasel. The plot is cobbled together from Jurassic Park 3 (seriously; I can go into boring detail about exactly how precise the rip-off is) with splashes of Moby Dick (again, can be dull, but Buck = Ahab, Rudy = the whale - c'mon, it's even bloody white!) and a kick-off homage to Sir Arther Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" (though to be fair, they probably just got that from Jurassic Park). Find anyone who says "But it's so unrealistic, dinosaurs during the ice age!", and hold them against a wall with a broken bottle to their throat while saying "and what's so fucking realistic about talking mammoths, matie?"
Swimming: check. Porirua pool has a very nicely sized hydroslide and a wave pool. Rebecca loves it. When we went, they even had a miniature inflatable assault course thingie in the kids' pool; they covered it with soap bubbles, with the result of greased toddlers moving at high speed.
Wildlife: check. We went to a morning's talk about wetas at the Karori Sanctuary. And then Rebecca got to make a weta hotel (basically, a wooden box with a perspex cover and a detachable lid, so you can take the lid off but the weta is still safe behind perspex). Due to an hilarious mix-up, there were no hammers, so the session turned into a group re-enactment of early human evolution as we all pounded nails in using rocks. Fun though, and it works fine.

So I've done my duty as a parent. Until tomorrow, of course, when R wants to go see BJ Bear do a teddy bears' picnic at J'ville mall. Wish me luck.

Oh, and we took Rebecca into her first tattooists yesterday. I had another session booked with Tim out at Pacific Tattoo in Paekakariki, and since it was the school holidays, Rebecca came along for the ride. More specifically, Maggie was in creche (we got a casual day for her) and Heather gave me a lift out on the way to take Rebecca to Lindale for honey and llamas. Rebecca thought the studio looked interesting but smelled "stinky" (disinfectant not a hit with the kids), but seemed interested. Before she could warn Tim against hurting me (as she'd been threatening to do), Heather took her off, and Tim and I got down to the serious business of pain.

We kicked off by reworking all the big black areas from the last session, to get a good depth of color and consistent shade. After that, there was a fair bit of work filling in the chevrons we didn't get around to the last session, then a short bit of design to work out what the new bits should look like, then a fair bit more inking. We stopped about every two hours for tea and biscuits, but it was quite a day under the needle. I can say that having the inside of your elbow hurts immeasurably; and the inside of your arm isn't a picnic either. Apparently I'm quite good at staying still while thinking inside my head "Well, this is agony." Not fun on that front, but the results are quite nice. I now have a lot of black chevrons and lines on my inside forearm, and a patterned section inside the blank triangle in the junction of my elbow. When we started this project, I put together a portfolio with the words "Big, bold" on the inside. We've achieved that. Latest pictures are available through flickr.

One interesting moment during the day was when I noticed that the tattoo machine's power supply (an Eikon unit) has a display that showed stats about the current being supplied. One of the stastistics shown was CPS, Cycles Per Second - how fast the needles are going back and forth, in general the frequence of the tattoo machine. This mean that while I was being tattooed I could look over at the power supply and know precisely how much this hertz.

Still have a blank area right around the back of my arm, on the lower back of my tricep. The plan for the next session is to tweak any remaining re-coloring, add some more patterning/texture in the remaining area... and then start work on the next project. But that's another story.

you wish you'd thought of it first

2009-06-18T20:59:00.000+12:00

Ever used a torque wrench? It's a fairly simple device. You set it to a certain amount of torque (rotational force - which in this context, means "how tightly you can do up a bolt"), then use it to tighten a bolt. When you've applied the specific amount of torque (i.e. the bolt is precisely as tight as you want it - no more, no less) the head of the wrench starts to slip. So you can only apply up to a certain, appropriate amount of force when doing up a sensitive component.

Here's my solution to the anti-smacking debate.

One of the problems is that many people support the right of parents to administer mild smacks to their kids - these are probably the people who support the repeal of the "anti-smacking" law. Now, in point of fact the "anti-smacking" law just removes a particular legal defence from people accused of assaulting their children. That legal defence had previously been used by people who had beaten their kids with horsewhips, metal implements, and the like. Hence the cross-party initiative to remove this defence in cases where parents had clearly overstepped a line.

But the problem that a lot of people have with this is, where is that line? The examples touted by the pro-smacking crowd refer to parents giving children smacks across the back of the hand, of perhaps bent over for a spanking after particularly egregious cheek. A substantial proportion of the population wouldn't disagree with mild physical discipline of a child, but would have a problem with more serious assaults. But leaving it up to the individual parents has an obvious problem: people very seldom do things they regard as morally wrong, but someone's idea of what's reasonable may be drastically out of kilter (as in the case of the woman who regarded horsewhipping her son as a reasonably means of correction).

I propose a simple means of setting the "acceptable" line.

Just as a torque wrench lets you apply a certain amount of force (and no more!) to a bolt, we need a set of official Infant Punishment Sticks that are calibrated to break when struck with a particular force. Then we make it legal to beat your children with the appropriate stick. For example, you could have the Level 1 Chastiser, suitable for children under 2. This would allow a modicum of force, but would harmlessly snap as soon as you really get your arm moving. Thus, a parent could admonister the appropriate, legally sanctioned level of loving physical correction, secure in the knowledge that they weren't going over any lines. The level 2 chastiser could cover up to age 5, but be set to snap just as you started to breathe hard from the effort of the beating. And of course, for older and more impudent children, you'd need level 3, calibrated to last up until you start to produce little flecks of white foam at the corners of your mouth.

All sticks would be no thicker than your thumb, of course.

Think about it: we save $9 million from a pointless referendum, the youth of the nation becomes instantly more thoughtful and less cheeky, and we've created a valuable new industry making correction sticks. Plus, there's a flow-on effect in about 20 years when NZ becomes a worldwide centre of S&M porn. Win-win.

Reading: Max Brooks' World War Z. Apparently there's a movie of this in production, which is a bit of a shame. What it really needs is a TV miniseries of 6-12 episodes. Basically, the book itself is written in a fauxcumentary style, as postwar survivor testimonials. This leads to some clumsy and disconnected moments: the text is supposedly told in the voice of a disparate group of survivors, but they often end up sounding the same. The voices of some of the survivors end up almost cliched (I found the sole English survivor very annoying and unrealistic, and the non-American speakers skirt dangerously close to ethnic stereotyping). But that's an artefact of the narrative technique: the only way to tell people what was happening is to have the survivors describe it. Putting this onscreen solves that, and would give you more latitude to differentiate the testmonies. What it's really crying out for is a Band of Brother-style presentation: a mock version of the "surivor testimony re-enacted" docutainment genre. That would work very, very well and look excellent. My worry about converting this to a movie is that a lot of what makes this worthwhile is the little details and bits around the side, where Brooks puts a lot of thought into the consequences of a zombie holocaust- descriptions of undersea combat with legions of zombies walking along the bottom of the harbour, having zombies freeze solid during winter and then defrost and lurch forth in spring, sly asides about people's reaction to the initial news - and this is the sort of thing that would probably be dropped first for time reasons. Basically, this uses the book format to expand and explore around the limited window available for a 2-hour movie; you'd have a hard time keeping it all in, and not just ending up with the big action sequences. While the big splatterfests are fun, there really isn't much there that we haven't already seen on screen a few times (well, except for the scale of it, which would be pretty awesome in its own right).

Of course, no matter how good the movie is, the question is: will it be as awesome as Dead Snow?

Also finally got around to reading Watchmen. There really isn't much that I can say that hasn't already been said several times before; to be honest, I'm surprised that I'd managed to get to this point without reading it. Anyway, I decided that I should probably get around to reading it before I see the movie. Glad I did. It is, as all the media agree, excellent. It's always slightly odd viewing these breakthrough works in retrospect: you've already seen all the derivatives and everything affected by it, but not the work itself. Many times, it's anticlimactic when you actually read the original thing. Not in this case. Well worth the effort if you've not read it yet.

it's fucking sore, OK?

2009-06-14T22:38:00.002+12:00

There are many interesting ways to injure yourself that combine "risible cause" with "surprisingly painful/debilitating". For example, cutting yourself while trying to prise the stone out of an avocado: sounds dumb, but I know a number of people who've done it and managed to seriously injure themselves. Slight mishaps while vacuuming in the nude. That sort of thing.

To this list we must add one more entry.

My mother has recently adopted a greyhound. Then, even more recently, another. This is great; they're good dogs, the kids love them, and I get to take them for walks. One of the consequences of my childhood is that I find walking dogs very calming. So this morning, I was out for a walk with a brace of greyhounds. At one point, they saw a freerange bichon friese. And they tried to run over and say hello. Now, these greyhounds are 30kg each. They're also trained athletes; one has a career total of 13 wins, 33 places, for a total of around $24,000 in prize money. So when they decide to run somewhere, there's a lot of force going through that leash. I restrained them, the bichon friese booked it, and then I realised that I had blood freely flowing from the end of my left little finger. The combination of the dogs effort and my restraining them gave me a rope burn that took a surprising amount of skin off the end of my finger.

So the dogs have drawn blood, but not in the traditional way. I wonder if this is a typical greyhound injury? Anyway, it's bloody painful, and it makes typing surprisingly hard. I hadn't realised quite how much you use the side of your little finger when typing; this is the disadvantage of being a touch-typist. Notably it's really painful using capital letters. Expect me to go all e e cummings for a bit.

Still, it's distracting me from the residual pain/itching of the healing tattoo on my right arm. Mostly it's good, except the black stripe running along the top of my forearm. Since that goes across the articulation point of the elbow, the scab keeps breaking whenever I bend my arm. This is slowing the healing, and bloody hurts. Still, the rest of the ink looks to be healing pretty well - still a lot of healing skin sitting on top of it, but it'll look pretty nice in a week or two. Just in time for the final session, at the end of the month.

that hurt redux

2009-06-05T21:54:00.004+12:00

Another day, another tattoo session. Got most of the rest of the sleeve at least mapped out, though we didn't complete some of the fill. There's just a wee bit left to figure out what to put in, and a reasonable amount of fill to complete. Looks good though. Still the abstract b/w Pacifica theme, with a bonus cycling tribute section. Pics are available on Flickr as usual.

it's a tricky balance

2009-06-03T20:36:00.005+12:00

The company I work for has around 700, 800 employees. Two of us are called Jack. When I first started, they put us in the same room and gave us only one phone extension. We both work on the same project. You can imagine the hilarity. The other week, I conducted a user satisfaction survey (why do you only ever "conduct" surveys? You never just "do" them), and among the returned sheets of results was a single post-it note with "JACK IS SO SEXY" written on it.

Yes - but WHICH ONE? Aargh.

Anyway, it cheered me up on a cold Friday morning, so it's all good.

My Friday morning:

9am: Accountant.
10am: Tattooist.

Got another text from my tattooist this morning. We're all go for Friday. 9am I meet my accountant to work out my tax for last year; 10am, I'm being inked in Pakekakariki. Plan for this session is to work on the infill between the wristband and my existing armband. We're going with the geometric-but-flowing stuff, and trying to work in at least one round design on the forearm. So that should be good fun. On the plus side, the last session healed up quite nicely - one or two minor touch-ups necessary, but mostly very nice new flesh. So, knock on wood, we won't need to spend much time on touch-ups, and can just get stuck in with the new design. I have another appointment booked for the end of the month. Between these two sessions, we should manage to finish the sleeve off nicely.

And this should be obvious, but I can highly recommend Tim Hunt out at Pacific Tattoo out in Paekakariki. Excellent abstract/Pacific work, and a good needleside manner.

Mind you, immediately after spending 7 hours being tattooed, I'm going to a matariki party at Maggie's creche. Mmm. Fresh blood and childcare.

Had a very annoying commute in this morning. Or rather, an annoying kick-off; came down the Ngauranga Gorge right behind a VERY NERVOUS cyclist. As in, riding the brakes the whole way, 25kph descent. I (and most other cyclists) normally take this at about 50. Fair play to the guy, ride within your comfort zone and all that; I'm a nervous descender myself, so I can't call him a bastard for that. But that doesn't mean I can't find it annoying. I don't think it helped that although he was riding a fairly decent road bike, with Look pedals, he was actually wearing jeans and sneakers (so wasn't clipped into the pedals). Still, good on him for riding, I just hope I'm not behind him again tomorrow.

With Rebecca at school, I'm only riding in 2 days per week. On the plus side, I'm definitely riding those days. If I've only got two good ride days in the week, it would have to be biblically bad weather for me to give riding a swerve. So I'm getting a lot of practice at riding in the rain. But I've got to say, it's very nice to not have drenching rain and 100kph winds for a change. Not that I've gone soft, you understand; just that I really prefer to not do the squelch-squelch-squelch-socks walk of doom when I get home soaked to the skin.

H: Is the Kings of Leon anything to do with Leon the god?
Me: The Kings of Leon are a rhythm combo popular with the youth of today. Leon the god is a mate of Morgue's.

another milestone

2009-05-25T21:37:00.001+12:00

Maggie turned two last week; happy birthday, dear. Great moment at her creche - I dropped a cake in for morning tea, and stayed while they served it up. Prior to demolishing the cake, Ali had a word to all the assembled kids and told the older ones that since Maggie was turning 2 today, she'd be in the big kids' area from now on, but that she's still pretty little. Then she asked who was going to help look after her and make sure she was OK. "MEEE!!!!" all the kids chorussed, thrusting their arms up. Including Maggie, and a couple of the under-2s, who presumably thought this was more of a general query about whether they wanted cake.

In any case, this general protection was entirely superfluous. On our arrival at nursery at 8:20am, Rebecca had buttonholed her mate Sam (turns 5 in a month or two) and designated him as Maggie's minder for the day. This morning, it was Jake who got the nod. She's a good big sister; setting up the protection.

Heather's parents came and stayed over the weekend for Maggie's birthday, which was nice. I ended up picking them up from the airport (I work 1k from the airport, so it's a no-brainer), which worked nicely.

On the day (Saturday), Maggie got a number of presents. She was very impressed with the "memory game" which was basically a lot of toy farmyard animals and plastic eggs to fit them in (though this may give her odd ideas about how cows reproduce). She really loved the Wishbone trike (designed in Island Bay, folks) we got her: at 6:30am on Saturday morning, in the pitch darkness, I heard her say "Hello bike" as she walked through the house. But it all paled in comparison to the mighty joy of the picnic set Suzy got her. 73 items, the packaging says, and I see no lie. Plastic fruit, croissant, plates, cups, cutlery, and the piece de resistance: a replica plastic stovetop coffee perc. Maggie loves this and plays with it all the time. Massive win there.

And respect to all present on the Auckland Harbour Bridge protest yesterday. That's the spirit; next time, just see if you can get permission first, eh? Might help with the public perception if motorists can squeeze past.

that came from left field

2009-05-13T19:42:00.002+12:00

I spent five hours under the needle today. I have a tattooed forearm (well, it's not huge yet), and my shoulder is finished. I am fucking sore. And happy. Taking bets on how much my forearm bruises; next scheduled session is on the 5th June. W00t, etc. I can canonically say, you would not fucking believe how much being tattooed on the inside of your forearm hurts. Or maybe it was just that a lot of that was happening with an outliner rather than a shader needle setup; either way, I'm expecting a bruise

Got there at 10, courtesy of a very fine lift from my lovely wife. Tim at Pacific Tattoo had a look at how the last session had healed. And he was not happy. From 10:30 to 12:30 was spent merrily re-inking a lot of the big black areas from the last session, plus adding the red bits and inking a couple of black sections we'd missed. By the end of that, I was literally shaking from low blood sugar: cue lunch, frantic gulping of tea, etc. I calmed down a bit and we started up on the new sections. We decided to end the sleeve with a wristband (as I've got a band around my bicep, so it has a nice symmetry to it), with flowing designs going down to it. To give us an idea of the parameters, we did the wristband today. It took about three hours and fucking well hurt.

Pictures and a few notes available at my Flickr set for the sleeve. Next session is on June 5th; we're going to start on the infill between the bottom of my old armband (done by Rog Ingerton way, way back in 1996 or so) and the wristband we did today. Idea is to have it flowing, but geometric. Further bulletins as events warrant.

social media this

2009-05-12T20:02:00.001+12:00

Good ways to start the day: 10am text message from your tattooist, advising that an appointment has come up tomorrow. Excellent. Roll on another 6 hours under the needle, then.

Rebecca is loving school at the moment. I now have a new tool of persuasion in the morning: "No, you can't do your homework until you've got dressed and brushed your teeth." It's like someone's flipped the "must learn to read and write immediately" switch in her mind.

bit of a hiatus there - hopefully you won't notice

2009-05-04T19:21:00.002+12:00

Went out to the SFBH on Saturday for the gypsy evening. Excellent gig. We had to do some thinking, and came to the conclusion that the last time we'd been out on our own, together, to go to a gig where Heather wasn't playing, must have been... in the UK. Yikes. Don't get me wrong, we actually go to a lot more live music now than we ever have; it's just that most of it is related to Heather getting up onstage with violin. And man, you know you've been out of it for a while when you find yourself reflexively turning up at the venue at the stated start time for the gig, "in case we miss the support" (who, of course, don't actually start playing for another 90 minutes you fool).

Speaking of which, Niko Ne Zna were great; didn't fuck around, just got out there, started playing, and had taken the lid off the place within 5 minutes. You got a sense that a lot of the crowd were friends of the band, but a lot of the crowd weren't, and everyone was jumping up and down. From start to finish they played an excellent set of Balkan, klezmer, and latin-influenced stuff (covers of stuff from the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Slavic Soul Party, and the like). Very impressive, and I'll definitely be looking out for their gigs in future.

The Benka Borodovsky Bordello Band, on the other hand, were a bit bitsy. When they were good, they were very very good, but when they were bad, you were standing there thinking "fuck the showmanship and play the bloody tune." They were clearly into the spectacle of the whole thing, but they took it a bit too far. I frequently found myself wishing they'd talk less and play more. And they'd fallen victim to the virtuoso trap: they were doing some stuff just because they could, rather than because it was actually a good idea. Yes, it's pretty cool if you can start a song really slow, and then slowly work the tempo up well past the point where anyone can actually dance to it. That's fine once. You don't need to keep doing it. You certainly don't need to do it more than once in the same song. I just wasn't convinced about the pacing; between the long gaps between songs, and the long gaps in the songs (both when everything stopped dead and when they were actually playing too fast to dance to), it ended up a bit jagged.

But when they hit their stride - when they picked a song that didn't fuck around and concentrated on booting it well out - they were blindingly good. Their original stuff was mostly great, and they were obviously having fun up there. On balance, worth seeing; and their album ("Polkapocalypse") holds up very well.

And it was fun being at a gig by two New Zealand bands who are very, very unlikely to get any particular promotion as part of New Zealand Music Month.

On the other hand, it was desperately unfun getting to bed at 2:30am. I was forcibly reminded of the reason why we don't do this very often, when at 6am the girls came through and started agitating for breakfast. I managed to talk Rebecca into taking care of it and slumped back, trying to doze through the sounds of destruction from the kitchen. I heard the following:

Fridge: *beep beep beep* [the "you've left me open too long" alarm]
Rebecca: Maggie, can you close the fridge for me please?
Maggie: *clump swish clump swish clump swish clump* [She's got one shoe on] *noise of fridge door closing*
Rebecca: [Runs into our bedroom and shouts at high volume] Papa! I asked Maggie to close the fridge door! And she did it!

Excellent. Three weeks out from her 2nd birthday, Maggie can help with basic household tasks. Next week: "Maggie, can you pass me a 3/16" hex socket?" Or, and handily, "Maggie, just get under the house and grab this wire when I poke it through the floor, eh?"

And a very happy birthday to my lovely wife for yesterday. And fervent thanks for the babysitting that let us go out for a nice French meal to celebrate it.

Why I don't drink cocktails much: the sheer, horrifying pretension of it all. Note the number of admonitions to chill everything (lest you should, quelle horreur, actually taste the damn stuff); note the attention to ceremony to get around the fact that you're SWIGGING NEAT FUCKING GIN.

I mean, I have little enough time for lushes, but none at all for a pretentious lush.

I love it when other cyclists casually coast up from behind me as I'm waiting at a red light, and drift to a halt just in front of me. You might think that this is a bit rude, but you'd be wrong. It's a direct challenge. "I need to get in front of you," they're saying, "because I'm going to be taking off faster than you when the lights go green and it's easier if I pass you now." They're throwing down. And that's fun. It means that when the light goes green, I can put a bit of wellie on and try to pass them. If I manage it, ha! If I don't, well, they were right that they were faster than me, so no harm done.

There's a pair of piwakawaka (fantails) who seem to have taken up residence outside my office. It makes me very happy to see them twirling and diving around outside my window.

Mostly, Secret Tweet is depressing; occasionally it has entries that are entire short stories on their own.

and now, i'm off to the pub

2009-04-17T13:34:00.001+12:00

Had the rellies down for Easter. Jim, Jo, and Evelyn came down and stayed for a few days. The weather intermittantly cooperated withour plans to run the kids around outside. Probably a larger spanner in the works was Maggie coming down with gastroenteritis on Friday night. Hilarious. Let's just say we spent a lot of time over the break cleaning toddler vomit out of bedsheets. Often at 1am. She came right after a couple of days dedicated care, and everyone else had a good time, so it all worked out OK.

As it's now the school holidays, I've taken a few days off to look after Rebecca. So far, it's been good. Tuesday we did a fair bit of art, went for a bike ride (Petone esplanade + stiff southerly = short ride), went to a ceramics painting place, had lunch out, then came home and prepped dinner, did some baking, and I read her the first five chapters of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. All around, a good day. During all this, Maggie was off at nursery, happily playing with her friends and painting things, because I am the sort of appalling parent who lets other people look after my children even when I could actually do so myself. Tcha! And then today, I took her out catching fish with the bait trap (we practice catch and release); she loved it.

Mind you, Tuesday night was Maggie's first night in a real bed. I was pretty concerned about the danger of a lot of running around and yelling, but she snuggled in and went to sleep like a real trouper. Excellent. Another couple of days to double-check, and then we can go and pass the cot (and the porta-cot) to my sister, who we now know is expecting a girl later this year. Nice.

rush the stage

2009-04-08T19:25:00.001+12:00

Went to the Wiggles gig on Saturday. Excellent stuff. We stayed in our seats for about ten minutes, then it was off down to the front to dance. I hung back slightly (sitting cross-legged in the aisle), but R was straight up in the mosh pit. M mainly stayed around us, but enjoyed the music as well. Full credit to the performers; it was notable that Sam was significantly younger than the others, and Jeff got a bit of stick for his age, but they all kept the pace on. I was amused that they put in a gymnastics sequence featuring Anthony and Captain Feathersword in skin-tight gymnastics kit, hanging upside down from things and showing off their impressive physiques: definitely one for the mums in the audience. And on the way out I was impressed to note that the merchandise stall included tour t-shirts for the preschoolers. On the whole, well worth the money, and if you get a chance I'd recommend them as a gig. Best atmosphere I've seen at a gig since the first time we saw Lemon Jelly. Mind you, I think most gigs could be drastically improved by throngs of preschoolers who know all the words.

Interesting/depressing credit crunch note. I just received a flyer from a debt collection agency. No, not one of those flyers where they threaten to send the boys around unless you cough up last months' payment; one of those flyers where they point out politely that with the credit crunch, people may not be paying their bills promptly and offering their services to send the boys around to anyone who hasn't paid your bill for last month. This makes me uncomfortable.

Having fun with Twitter so far. One point to note: watch out for any interesting keywords in your tweets. I dropped a one-liner about creationism, and promptly picked up a couple of fundies on my follower list. So be careful out there, kids.

Job satisfaction: I just managed to get a quote from The Orb into a technical manual. See that? That's quality, that is.

Ah, easter. We've got rellies coming to stay, so there will be much time spent doing familial stuff around the place. I'm just hoping that the weather holds for a trip to Staglands. After easter, I'm taking a few days off to look after Rebecca for the first week of the school holidays, then Heather's doing similar for the second. I have a few basic activities planned - bit of cycling, bit of fishing, trip to the movies, that sort of thing. Should be a good laugh.

i blame the dog

2009-04-01T19:14:00.001+13:00

We don't watch much broadcast TV. We kind of run on the principle that there's almost always something better you could be doing than watching telly, and anything worth watching you can catch up with on DVD. So we'd kind of meant to get around to watching Battlestar Galactica one of these days. Still, no hurry eh? Then a couple of months ago, one of Heather's coworkers loaned her a copy of the miniseries. After a night or two we got around to watching it.

Now, I'm a reasonably focussed person. I can concentrate on stuff. I can particularly concentrate on good drama. Heather is of course renowned for her non-diffuse attitude to paying attention to things. Which is why, about 2 1/2 months after watching the miniseries, we're now two episodes from the end of the 4th (final) season. With luck, and a following wind, we'll be there by about 11pm tonight. Excellent. I've managed to avoid hearing how it ends, though that was harder than it sounds. Heather and I have a couple of side bets about the resolution; this is what happens when two people with postgraduate arts degrees watch something with symbolism in. "I reckon [Character X] will turn out to be [Y]"/ "No, that won't work, because there's the obvious symbolic link between [Thing A that happened at the end of Season 2] and [Thing B that happened to Character X at the end of Season 4]". Seriously, we're putting a surprising amount of mental power into this thing. And if you haven't seen BSG yet, seriously, it's really, really good. It's the West Wing in space with death, weird mystic stuff, and hotties.

As I am a Young Trendy Person, damn you, I have acquired an account on Twitter. So if you're the sort of person who wants to be relentlessly updated with what I'm thinking and feeling at any time (Sample entry: "Scratching myself. Ahh, that's better"), I'm user jackelder. It must be a boon to stalkers. Now, one of the things that's supposedly great about Twitter is that you hear about stuff within 10 mins of it happening. Personally, I'd rather not be that connected with the world. I like the fact that, for example, I completely missed all the discussion around the end of BSG, so the ending can now come as a complete surprise to me. I'm mainly in it for two things: the ability to post throwaway lines that I wouldn't bother actually blogging (I prefer writing longer, rambling blog posts - you may have noticed), and the ability to txt in posts like "Pod of dolphins back in Evans Bay now".

Of course, now I've said that, the bloody dolphins will disappear for months.

Maggie is really into books at the moment. She likes looking at the pictures and saying the words she knows. One of her favourite books has both pictures of bunnies and ducks, two animals which she likes and two words she can say. Those of you who've ever read anything about the philosophy of perception will probably be able to guess what I showed her next.

i can't remember if i'm punk or not

2009-03-30T20:22:00.002+13:00

Excellent stuff on a programmable camera motion rig here. This guy's built a computer-controlled camera motion/control rig for stop-motion film, which is being productised and used on set. They're using a basic modular construction architecture to facilitate speed of prototyping, with some components later being replaced by more solid equivalents once the design has settled down. The interesting bit about this is the hardware/software component system they're using to build the rig and develop the control software. Yup: lego.

I'm sure I shouldn't be as happy as I am that Lego's new range includes both Pirates and a farm set. Yes, it's definitely for the girls. Hey look! An octopus! And a cow!

For her birthday, Mike gave Rebecca a copy of the first season of Fraggle Rock on DVD. Man. I remember when that first came out; the fuss they made about getting it on TVNZ. Ah, the saturday mornings of my childhood. Over the weekend, we watched a bit of it with Rebecca (Maggie was slightly interested but was more intent on reading a Maisie flapbook).

As I was watching it, it occurred to me that children these days are quite able to repeat their parents' childhoods. DVDs mean that kids can watch the same TV as their parents; Fraggle Rock, the Muppets, ... Toys, too, are where they once were: I was at a birthday party a few weeks ago where the 3-year old birthday girl received about 20 My Little Ponies. My god, I thought, can't the little buggers have their own culture? Why do we feel the need to revisit our own childhoods?

Then again, when I was a kid my dad gave me a load of books to read. Just William, the Jennings books, sets of fairy stories he'd had as a kid. There's nothing new or unusual to this. I'm passing on some of the media I liked as a kid, while ignoring the vast swathes of crap that I also watched/read. Ditto toys: sure, some stuff has made a comeback, but there's a shedload of new stuff. And why worry too much about whether the injection-moulded plastic being aggressively marketed to your children is the same as the injection-moulded plastic that was aggressively marketed to you when you were young, or an entirely new media creation? And since one of Rebecca's favourite movies is Snow White, it's not just our childhoods she's repeating, it's potentially her great-grandparents (as Snow White was released in 1937).

So then I chilled out and took her out fishing with a bait trap. This was one of my favourite activities as a kid: you can catch and observe small fish, then release them. Plus, scrambling around on rocks! I picked up cheap bait trap (they're about $15) a few weeks ago, and now we occasionally go off and spend a bit of time catching cockabullies around the rockier bits of the waterfront. If you're stuck for stuff to do on a fine afternoon, give it a go. We haven't caught an octopus yet, but it's still early days.

Currently really enjoying various mix/remix albums by Diplo, who has an ear for a good beat. It's nice stuff. Also very happy that Golem! have their new album, Citizen Boris, on emusic. Ditto the revelation that the Klezmatics entire back catalogue is also on emusic - w00t, etc. Plus the most recent Solid Steel podcast is a stunning bit of work by Hexstatic, including vidcast elements. The mix is immaculate, and the visuals are very nice. Of course, I have to turn my iPod upside down on the desk if I actually want to get any bloody work done, but that's beside the point.

you never have to wait long to have bad things confirmed

2009-03-26T21:03:00.002+13:00

I was wondering how long it would take my somewhat pessimistic attitude about the national cycleway to be justified. I'd thought it would be longer than this. So the government is cutting the central government funding for alternative transport initiatives by 50%. And now we find out that rather than the proposed single Glorious People's Concrete Cycleway, we'll be getting a network of linked cycleways. Will they join up? Who knows. Will we be able to achieve that initial goal, Cape Reinga to Bluff on a dedicated cyclepath? I'd bet that the answer there will turn out to be no.

Actually, to be honest, I like the idea of a linked network of cyclepaths. But I'd like there to be at least one major "backbone" down the country. A man can dream.

I can confirm that it's surprisingly hard to corner a road bike on carpet. But on the plus side, if you go down, it's padded.

this took a while to write

2009-03-17T20:42:00.001+13:00

Why I'm not running around shouting with happiness and tearing my clothes off at the prospect of a national cycle route.

I mean, this is the sort of thing that you'd expect me to be all over. A national cycle path? Excellent. On paper it looks great. Basically, it looks like someone's had a good look at what the Otago Rail Trail brings to the regions it passes through. Specifically, a few bob when it was built, and then a nice steady trickle of tourist dollars afterwards. Except that I've got a few misgivings about it.

First off, what will actually be built? Cycle lanes on current streets, a purpose-built path, what? Are we talking about an area at the side of an existing road, or a completely separate track? And will it incorporate the existing cyclepaths? And then, what will it be built of?

The problem with this is that it's the sort of thing that's easy to do badly, but hard to do well.

One of the things that worries me is that the person who's proposed it is not actually a cyclist. One of the key problems with cycling infrastructure is that a lot of the people who build it aren't cyclists, and so don't actually know what sort of thing they should be doing. Cycle lanes are notorious for this: the government declares that each local council must make a certain length of cycle lanes, as part of a plan to encourage cycling. The usual result is that the local body either designates a footpath as a combined footpath/cycleway (one minor legal change and a couple of tins of paint), or paints some green lines on the side of a major arterial road that no-one in their right mind would cycle on. Job jobbed, we've installed 10m of cycle lanes in the last fiscal year - check that box on the budget form and move on to something more interesting. The actual needs of cyclists are seldom considered, because if you ask us, we tend to ask for annoying things like priority boxes at intersections, clearly marked cycle lanes through major intersections, or reduced speed limits on roads. These are a pain to design and implement, and it's much easier to just slap some green paint down and say "job done". Now, clearly I'm not saying this would necessarily apply in this case, but I do think that some parts of the path are likely to be designed by people who wouldn't know a derailleur if it bit them. And that does not fill me with confidence. And the fact that John Key has said that the cycle path would be made of concrete is a good example of this: concrete's a bad idea for a cycle path. If you're paving it, you want decent tarmac, just like a normal road. Concrete is hard to maintain and dangerous in the wet. He's also said that it might work in tandem with Te Araroa, the walking path that goes the length of the country - yet the head of the Te Araroa project says that the path would be a pretty technical mountainbike track in places. You've got to hope that they're going to get designers and project managers who know their stuff.

Plus, it's not just building a cycle path, it's maintaining it. Any cycle path next to a main road will collect broken glass - fact. It's just one of those things. Psychologically, we seem unable to break the compulsion some people have to hiff bottles out of the windows of passing cars. So if you want something reasonably maintainable you're going to have to either spend a fair bit of money on street sweeping, or locate it a distance away from roads, if that's practicable.

I mean, let's think about it. What we're really talking about here is mimicking the rail trail experience. These are bike trails for people who don't like cycling on the road (because if you do like cycling on the road, you just go ahead and do it). So why do people like cycling rail trails?

Traffic free
Easy gradient
Reasonable surface

One suggestion that has been made is to build it as a separate path near major train lines. That takes care of the gradient and separation issues, but raises a couple of others. If you're not going near a major road, you're going to need to pass through towns relatively frequently (so people have somewhere to buy food/drink or to stay). Certainly at least every 50k or so, if you want it to be used by leisure tourists. Does that really apply to the main trunk line? Aren't there a few areas where you've got wall to wall stuff-all for quite a bit?

And there's a few other details to consider. For example, would this be all entirely new, or would the cyclepath utilise existing infrastructure where possible? In which case, the section from Featherston to the Wellington CBD is pretty much done already, thanks to the Rimutaka Rail Trail, the Hutt River Trail, and the cyclepath alongside SH2 from Petone to the Railway Station. So how much of a boost here are we going to get?

Who's paying for it? Is the money for construction going to come out of the "sustainable transport" bucket, or the "tourist facility" bucket? 'Cos as cool as a national cyclepath would be, I think it's at least as important to keep pressing ahead with building actual day-to-day usable cycle infrastructure around the country - the sort of thing that doesn't get people on bikes for holidays, but gets them on bikes for commuting to work. If the national cyclepath sucks up that funding, I think that would be a bad thing.

And one last question about the tourist consequences. Hands up everyone who knows that the UK has an excellent national cycling network of over 12,000 miles, covering the entire country? Hands up everyone who would go to the UK for such a thing?

Now, don't get me wrong. I would dearly, dearly love to see a decent cycle trail the length of the country - something so that in ten years' time we can take a week to cycle with the girls up to Auckland to see the grandparents. I'm just acutely aware that this could go wrong. My fear is that this will be done badly, in a jobsworth way, and that we'll end up with a cyclepath that looks good on paper but isn't actually particularly usable. And then people will go, "Well, we built you this nice cycle path and you're not using it..." And that won't do much good for cycling funding.

I'd just like to close with an example of the sort of thing that I'm worried about. Recently part of Wellington's cycling blackspot, Thorndon Quay, was upgraded. Part of this was to put in a road narrowing point and a dropped kerb cycle transition at the point where the cylepath runs out. The intent here is a good one: it's designed so that the road narrowing point gives "shelter" to the dropped kerb, so if you're riding along the cyclepath you can easily switch to the road at the end without worrying about traffic. Except that it's badly implemented: the transition between the kerb and the road is quite sharp, so at anything over 20kph you get quite a jarring impact. So half the cyclists ignore it, and choose to still use the dropped kerb 10m up the road, which is much shallower and lets you move easily and safely from the cyclepath to the road. If you actually used that cyclepath a couple of times, the problems would be pretty obvious - but it's pretty safe to assume that whoever put it in doesn't ride. So the designer's good intentions go to waste because the contractor didn't understand why a steep transition between cyclepath and road is a problem. And it's this kind of disconnect between intention and execution that I'm worried about for the proposed national cycleway.

I'd like to think that it'll go well. But I can't help being worried.

busy busy busy

2009-03-15T21:06:00.004+13:00

Heavy couple of weeks. Mainly because it's Rebecca's fifth birthday tomorrow, and we've been busy with the implications of that: namely, that she starts school tomorrow. This has lead to a frantic rush of activity: sorting out the details of her last day at creche, getting her sorted for school, and organising the birthday party. The last day at creche was emotional. For the party, we did the math and thought that 17 4-5 year olds at our place wasn't a go, so booked a party at Chipmunks in Tawa. Worth every penny for the ability to a) put the kids down and pretty much relax and chat to other parents as they tore around the place climbing stuff, and b) after the party itself, grab the presents and leave the debris for someone else to clean up. Rock.

For her birthday present, we got Rebecca her first bike. We popped off to Burkes Cycles and she test-rode a couple. Bucking convention, she didn't just try the pink ones - pink, purple, and red were all considered. Of course, in the end she got the pink one. After they'd put some training wheels on, we popped down to Lyall Bay. While Maggie got to grips with the climbing stuff at the play area, Rebecca rode up and down the parade with a parent in close step. Later this afternoon, when we got home, she had great fun riding around the back of the house. Then she stopped, leapt off the bike, and declared that she needed some real bike stuff in her bag. Before I could stop her, she'd grabbed a bottle of Finish Line Epic lubricant and bunged it in her frame bag, then she was agitating for a spanner. I handed her a 17mm box spanner and she went to work, going around the bike and adjusting anything she could. Like father, like daughter. New bike? Fettle!

I am terribly, terribly proud of both my daughters. I love the pair of you, and you both make me very happy.

and now, a tip-off

2009-03-04T20:58:00.002+13:00

Things develop. The art project I mentioned in my last entry is definitely on for Monday the 9th May. I am reliably informed that the way to get into this art happening is to go up to the bloke himself, as he distributes tickets to get one of the tattoos.

So if you'd like to get a free tattoo of New Zealand, with the places important to you marked on as red dots, I strongly suggest hanging around the following places on Friday and approaching the bloke being filmed by a camera crew:

12-1pm, Midland Park (Lambton Quay)
2-3pm, Bucket Fountain (Cuba Mall)
4-5pm New World in Miramar

Before you ask: I was briefly tempted, but realised a couple of things. Firstly, and most importantly, I can't really think of where I'd put a tattoo of NZ, and it doesn't really fit with my non-representative theme. Plus, I'd rather be my own art project than part of someone else's (though I do have a fair bit of respect for everyone taking part in this). And finally, it's only free if you can take the time off without financial penalty - and I'm a contractor on an hourly rate now. But seriously, if you want a free tattoo, plus a free piece of NZ art - this is a pretty good chance.

not that i'm sensitive

2009-02-27T20:37:00.001+13:00

A while back, when I mentioned that I was getting another tattoo, one of my friends commented that they'd like a tattoo but couldn't think of something meaningful. They'd seen a fair bit of Miami Ink, and commented that they really preferred the tattoos that had a story, had a reason behind them. This is something that I've heard a fair bit.

I think it comes down to a perceived difference between "getting a tattoo" and "being tattooed". The idea of getting a tattoo of a specific image, which has a special significance to you. All the best tattoos have an underlying meaning. "Is it... Minerva?" a Cambridge don once asked Heather, when she saw the owl tattoo on her shoulder.

The corollary of this is that tattoos without meaning are somehow less ... hmm. Less meaningful, I guess. Less important? Less enlightened? Maybe it's OK to have a tattoo of a duck if it connects you back with your grandad who used to raise ducks, but it's dumb if you just happen to like the picture and think it looks good on your arm? I mean, tattoos are clearly a legitimate art form provided you're doing them for a point and aren't one of those dreadful people who hasn't given any introspection to the decision... I'm sure it's not a conscious thought, but I do think it's there in the back of a lot of people's minds.

Personally: who cares about meaning?

None of my tats have any bloody meaning. I briefly experimented with telling people that the spiral on my leg symbolised movement, or was a symbol of life in both Maori and Celtic cultures, but in the end I just started telling people the real reason: I like spirals, and I just asked the guy to draw one on that fitted my leg. All my tattoos have been designed based solely on the basis of the sort of design I like, and where I want to get it put. There's no more meaning than that. I just go on, describe what I want, work with the artist on design and placement, give it the nod, and go for it.

I mean, tats could well have a hidden meaning. A properly done Moko tells your whakapapa (genealogy); who you are and where you came from. And tats could gain meaning as they go. Maybe the design itself isn't significant, but it marked a period in your life, or maybe just the fact that you screwed up the courage to get it done.

Or maybe not. Who cares? If you like the ink, that's enough. Don't worry about getting something "important" or "meaningiful", just worry about getting clean lines and good shading.

Mind you, if you want your meaning to be art, you might want to have a look at this. As part of the Newtown Festival, there's an art exhibit on where 100 people are being tattooed with an outline of New Zealand, with red dots on to mark their turangawaewae. It's an interesting idea, I'll grant them that. I'm just wondering where they've found 100 people who all want to get pretty much the same tattoo as part of an art performance.

Annoyingly, I seem to have lost a bit of ink in the main black fill areas on my shoulder piece. Still, only another three months until I go back in to get the next session done. Next stop, forearm.

Yesterday's Achewood strip is a thing of sweet, sweet joyfulness.

into the wild with gun and camera

2009-02-23T20:01:00.001+13:00

Whoops, completely forgot about the internet blackout. Plus couldn't be bothered logging into the FTP server first thing to upload a black page. So sorry, take it as read that I'm pretty anti the current internet legislation - ta.

Just had a nice weekend in the Wairarapa. Well, I say "weekend", I mean "Friday/Saturday", but it was a pretty nice break anyway. Occasion was our ninth wedding anniversary: love you, dear. We dropped the kids off on Friday morning, having arranged for their nana to pick them up after creche, and took off. The torrential rain didn't help - I clove to an average speed of about 80kph because of the driving rain and excessive amounts of standing water. Let's just say that riding over the Rimutaka Hill Road was particularly hilarious; thankfully, by the time we went over, there were only a couple of minor slips. Well, I say "minor slips", I mean "large boulders in the middle of the southbound lane". Thankfully, we got to the Wairarapa without incident.

I'd not been to Martinborough before. It's a nice wee town, and if you want to move there you're certainly not short of choice of places to live. One house in three seemed to be up for sale. I mean, it seemed cosy enough, and you've got to like a town designed after the Union Jack - why is everyone so keen to get out? My best guess is that it's actually a consequence of the recession, as people unload the family bach/weekend getaway. So if you're looking for one, I suggest you swoop in now.

In fact, the same can be said about Greytown (where 1/3 of the businesses were also for sale, in some cases for quite some time), but not Carterterton. Odd that.

Greytown was a little disconnecting. It's like someone's taken Jackson Street from Petone and stuck it in the middle of farmland. Very nice, but incongruous. Had one thing that a lot of Wellington doesn't - gert big heritage trees. Seriously, you really don't get that many gigantic trees around central Wellington. The botanic gardens, some parts of Tinakori Hill, and that's your lot. So to find some truly gigantic trees knocking around on the main road in a small rural town was a bit odd. Nice though.

Featherston, in contrast, is trying really hard to gentrify, but still has some serious decay on the main street. Some very nice bits, and some falling apart. Based on the main street, not somewhere you'd be falling over yourself to move to in a hurry.

But we had a nice weekend. Some wine tasting, some olive oil tasting, some local heritage, and some good food. A very nice couple of days decompress.

Yesterday was pretty full on. Out of the house at 8am to take Heather to the start of the Bike the Trail, the annual ride of the Hutt River Trail. The kids and I waved her off and then spent a happy couple of hours at various adventure playgrounds, swimming pools, etc. Mission accomplished, we picked H up and headed home. The afternoon was a bit less frantic - only one major mission, a trip to the supermarket. On a Sunday afternoon, with two preschoolers, this is a lot harder than it sounds.

Rebecca starts school in three weeks. Blimey.

it hurt this time too

2009-02-11T21:05:00.000+13:00

So monday night, I was quickly popping out the back of the house to pot up a plant. I grabbed the potting mix from the garage, stepped off the decking, and went down like a poleaxed steer. "FUCK!", I screamed, "not again!" Yup, I'd managed to sprain my ankle again. In exactly the same place, doing exactly the same thing. Damnation. This time, I heard a very definite snapping noise as I went down. It seems that I may now have a glass ankle on my left leg. This is more than a bit annoying, and fairly painful. I promptly hobbled inside, got my leg up, and applied ice and compression. Something seems to have worked: two days later I can walk without a limp if I concentrate. I'm still off the bike for the rest of the week, just to be on the safe side, but fingers crossed it seems pretty reasonable so far. So I might have got away a bit lucky.

Still need to pot up that lemon tree, though.

i say this

2009-01-30T23:27:00.003+13:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson - best Daily Show guest evar. Seriously.

Tattoo itchy, peeling, at the "early diagnosis of scrofula" stage. A couple of weeks and we'll be good. Can't wait to go back under the needle.

Me: Now, it's Nana's birthday next week. I think she'd really like it if you drew her a picture.
Rebecca: ....
....
....
OK. Daddy, what's Nana's favourite kind of spider?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why my daughter is made of unalloyed WIN.

unnecessary detail

2009-01-25T21:21:00.007+13:00

So more details on Friday.

I got up, got the kids sorted and dropped off to nursery, then cleared my work email. About 9:15 I hopped in the car and headed up the coast. Got to Paekakariki about 9:50, and found the studio. Pacific Tattoo is on the main drag in Paekak; this isn't hard, as Paekak doesn't have much other than a main drag. Met Tim, who is a very personable bloke, without any of the "cooler than thou" attitude that tattooists often have. I described the sort of thing I wanted to Tim, and went through the design basics. He nodded, gave me some other books of designs to look through, and went outside for a ciggy while he thought for a bit. After about an hour's discussion, looking at designs, and cups of tea, he got me to lie down on the table and started drawing some freehand designs on. "We'll just give this a go and see what happens," he said.

We then had about another hour of drawing; I occasionally hopped up and provided feedback on the design so far. The end result was something that we were both very happy with: big bits of black, some nice patterning, mainly geometric but with a good degree of flow, and with a general plan for how to extend it further on down my arm in later sessions. Runs from the top of my shoulder (near the collarbone) down to my existing armband. Some small areas of color but not too busy. With the design agreed, I popped across the road for a pie and a biscuit to fortify myself prior to kicking off. Another cup of tea, and by 12:30 we were go. Then we settled in for some solid work. The outlining took until about 2pm, after which we got mucked into the shading. As the tat had some big, black areas, the shading took quite a while. At about 4pm we took a tea break, then quickly got going again to get as much done as possible before I had to leave at 5pm to pick up the kids.

Yes, it was as painful as I remember. Notably the worst bits were the point of my shoulder, the back/underside of my arm, and the point where the arm joins to the body (i.e. directly above my armpit) - man, did that bit hurt. In contrast, I was once again pleasantly surprised by how insensitive some of the outside of my bicep is. Mind you, Tim is clearly a perfectionist - he would carefully work and rework an area until he was totally happy with the line or the fill. This was gratifying but extremely painful. During one of the occasional tea breaks, we agreed that while we both rather like having tattoos, neither of us is particularly keen on the process of getting them. Overall, I didn't have any particular reason to reassess my position that tattooing hurts like a bastard.

Mind you, there is clearly nothing much else to do in Paekakariki on a Friday afternoon other than drop past the tattooist. From about 2pm, someone came through the door and made small talk with Tim about every ten minutes. Seriously. It was astonishing how busy the place was. From my perspective, this was pretty annoying, as I'd far rather that the tattooist was concentrating on working on my design rather than chatting to another customer.

At the end of the day, we hadn't quite finished the design. Some of the areas at the front of the arm still need to be coloured black, and the sharks' teeth need to be colored red. But we ran out of time, so that'll have to wait until the next session. Annoyingly, the next appointment available is in June. So I've booked two, to save time. The agenda there is going to be to extend the design down onto my forearm, and finish up the bits still to do from this session (plus probably a few touch-ups).

Now, a couple of days later, I'm still in quite a bit of pain. The big black areas are great, but really sore. The problem with having ink on the back/top of my shoulder is that the dense areas are on bits that either move/stretch a moderate amount, or which I sleep on at night. The fact that it's currently midsummer is both a blessing and a curse - it means that I can wander around topless or in a singlet without any problems, but it also means that it's all a bit sweaty and uncomfortable. Odd point: although I only had ink on my arm, I felt the pain equally much (both at the time and right now) at one or two points on my back - basically the areas where the arm rests against the body. It's very odd, as though my brain is treating the back of my tricep and my armpit where it normally rests as a single piece of flesh. Funny thing, brains. I'm currently praying that most of the ink stays in, as I don't particularly fancy getting a large amount of rework done. I'm a bit worried about some of the big black areas at the back of my arm - I tend to sleep on my back, and I did slightly stick to the sheets for the first couple of nights, which didn't help the scab formation. Still, if I need it re-colored, I need it re-colored, and the 3rd of June is time enough.

For a general idea of how the design turned out, have a look at this photo of the tattoo 4 hours after the end of the first session. And here's a shot that puts it more in context.

And as I was leaving, Tim mentioned that I should check out Life Under Zen. Yes, it's mostly in Portugese. But by god it's beautiful. From the main page, click through on the graphics to get to the full blog entries - ignore the text and see the evolution of the pieces through the photos. Now there's a tattooist with a very unique visual style - if you can look at this half-sleeve and not think "wow!", there's something wrong.

ouch ouch

2009-01-23T19:57:00.000+13:00

Well, that hurt.

i need to clean off my cassette

2009-01-19T19:36:00.005+13:00

An interesting week for the klezmaniacs amongst us. First off, on Tuesday night, the Klezmer Rebs went off at the Soundshell. Big crowd - people were even sitting around on the hillsides overlooking the soundshell (the organisers estimated 1500 people). I got up the front and started dancing after about 3 songs, and by the end so were a lot of the crowd. A great gig all around - 90 minutes of belting tunes. I ran into a couple of coworkers from Russia, one of who was praising the singing in songs like "Ochi Chyorniye" and "Zvezda Rock n Rolla". Lots of grins in the crowd, a few beers consumed, and home by 10:30pm to relieve mum from her babysitting. Top night out. The concerts in the Botanic Gardens are always a good time, and the light show they've got on at the moment is most spectacular. Even the weather was bang on: warm, still, dry. Verdict: a good night, and well played.

Somewhat different experience at the EcoFest by Levin. An interesting crowd; as Dave Moskowitz said to me, "You're not on Lambton Quay any more". "Dude, we aren't even on Cuba St", I replied. One of the rare occasions that I've seen more people without shoes than with them on. A surprisingly large number of facial tattoos, though since this is New Zealand, most of them were on Maori women in their 50s. Lots of floppy-haired hippy chicks: I am reliably informed that it was like Woodstock-lite. Or rather, Glasto-lite, as it rained torrentially overnight and all morning, then broke into brilliant sunshine about an hour before the Rebs went on. This meant that everyone was walking through pretty extensive mud. The girls came along and were pretty happy about the whole thing, though the inevitable delays meant that the Rebs were an hour late taking the stage. Ever tried to entertain two tired, fractious preschoolers for 90 minutes in the middle of a field 2" deep in mud? It's an experience. The sun shone brightly all through the previous act and soundcheck (during which Maggie and Rebecca repeatedly rushed the stage), plus the Rebs' first three numbers. Then there was a brief shower - about ten minutes of torrential, monsoon-quantity rain. Cue wet, cold, tired children in field full of mud. I got a fruit smoothie into them and they perked up quite a bit, and ended up dancing for the final part of the show. They went off like fireworks during "Zvezda" and "Anarchia Totalle". Och! After we loaded them into the car they were asleep within ten minutes. Bless 'em. And another good gig for the Rebs, despite the climactic hilarity (which didn't help with getting a dancefloor going).

Next Rebs gigs are both on Waitangi Day, at either Chaffers Park or Te Rauparaha Domain in Porirua - see Klezmer.co.nz for details.

So I'm going under the needle again on Friday. It's kind of odd. People hear that I'm getting another tattoo, and ask what I'm getting a tattoo of. There's two answers to this one. The short answer is, "I don't know", which usually takes them aback and is, come to think of it, actually a pretty odd thing to say. The long answer is, "some sort of geometric design, mainly in black but with some red/grey elements". Thing is, I realised a while back that one of the reasons that I like simple, stark tattoo designs is simply that I don't have much design ability myself. But I know what I like. I know pretty much the sort of design I want, and I've got a lot of reference material for the work - but I'm not really capable of drawing it myself. So I'm paying a professional to do it for me. The first part of the day on Friday is to work out a coherent design for a full sleeve that works in with my current armband, and once we've got that sorted, we might get around to starting some work on it. So I'm in the faintly odd position of not actually knowing what I'll get tattooed on me in four days, nor how much tattooing will actually occur. I am, however, quietly confident.

Actually, to be honest, I've just started giving fake answers to the tattoo question. "So what are you getting a tattoo of?"

Plus, how great is this? Our women's pursuit team won gold at the World Cup Cycling in Beijing. The team included one rider who had never ridden on a track until 10 weeks ago. Dear god. Add in two wins in the individual pursuit for the women, Hayden Godfrey winning the men's scratch race, and the men's team pursuit taking silve, and we might see a bit more funding for track cycling yet.

i never wanted to be different

2009-01-06T19:49:00.001+13:00

Well, Christmas was good. The girls both got loads of toys; Maggie seemed nonplussed, but Rebecca was acutely aware of the situation. Santa came through with a copy of her favourite movie, Hercules. She also received a child's book of Greek myths, which she carefully went through comparing them to the movie and locating textual simularities and differences. From her perspective, she's used to Cinderella being at least three different books, a movie, and a ballet on ice, so she's quite fine with the notion that one basic story has a lot of variations. She just wanted to find out exactly what the divergences were. My big fun present was a hedge trimmer, which sounds irredeemably suburban until you actually have a go with one and realise how much fun they are to use. I had to be restrained from topiarating our hedge into a bas-relief homage to early colonial life in NZ.

Anyway. Christmas itself happened in Wellington, up until about 3pm - at which time we disappeared off up the coast. We drove up to Auckland via Rotorua, and back down via Taupo. On both legs, the first day went pretty well, while the kids got increasingly fractious on the second. They would appear to have a tolerance of about one day sitting in the car; on the second day, the interest wanes. The lesson here is "knock off as much as you can on day 1". This worked pretty well on the way up - yes, they spent a lot of time in the car, but afterwards they got to have a big swim in a heated pool and it was all cool. Less so on the way down; it was slow going coming down from Taupo due to incredibly bad weather going across the Desert Road (50m visibility, torrential downpour, etc), then running into the Otaki tailback (1 hour to go 7k as the crow flies). Next time, we're flying.

Auckland itself was good. We spent a day or two decompressing, then went around and met various family members. The high point of the trip was probably the day we spent in Auckland museum, which is excellent. The kids loved the natural history section; the underfloor tank full of crabs and crayfish was a big favourite. The particular reason we went to the museum (other than that we always go to the Zoo and fancied a change) was to see the "A Tyrannosaur Named Sue" exhibit. Most fun seeing a dirty great big dinosaur skeleton, even if it is technically not actually the real thing (it's a cast of the original bones). Most impressive. Maggie spent most of the time in the exhibition running around and climbing things - she'd made it almost up to the top of the Tyrannosaur's knee bones before I noticed what she was doing. Thank heavens the skeleton was pretty securely wired together. Rebecca spent a few minutes sitting in the corner and watching a video of "Walking with Dinosaurs". While she did this, Heather and I wandered around and spent time alternately looking at the exhibit and preventing Maggie from leaping off things. A few minutes later, I spotted Rebecca walking around looking around for us. She turned to look at me, her face crumpled, and she started to cry. I figured that this was just the delayed onset fear that you often get, when you only go to pieces a bit once you know it's safe. But she was screaming and moaning about how she'd been looking for us and then saw that there was a real dinosaur. "No, dear," I replied, set to maximum soothe, "it's just a skeleton. There are no real dinosaurs any more." Five minutes of soothing later, I turn around and discover that shortly behind me is a bloke in an incredibly realistic dinosaur suit. Quite frankly I'm surprised that Rebecca was the only freakout.

Maggie is at the stage of language acquisition where phonemes have a wide semantic field. She's mad on animals. Specifically, birds ("Duck!") and dogs ("Deda! Rrrr.... fss..."). At the museum, she had a great time running around the ornithology section: albatrosses, moas, pterodactyls, giant penguins, and even the occasional Anatidae were all merrily identified as ducks. Bless her.

Back on the bike this morning. Did 4700-odd kilometres last year; my target for this year is 5000, which should be fairly achieveable. Tell you what, though, after the better part of two and a half weeks off I've lost a little pace. Should be OK in a week or two.

Currently listening to Golem! - the New York klezmer band, not the heavy metal one. Their "Golem Hora" is an excellent track; a medley of classic klezmer tunes, some of which have rude words. They also do a version of "Bublitschki" that includes a translation of the lyrics into English (with a slight cultural translation). Currently watching: "A Matter of Loaf and Death", the Christmas Wallace & Gromit special. Really, really funny stuff; I laughed like a drain at various points.

And a hat tip to the Bike Snob NYC for writing the best bike review ever. Proving that all you have to do to get free stuff is a) write a well-read blog and b) ask people for things. Good work that man.