Luke ‘n’ Kim

let’s not talk about quality

ok so, after writing and re-reading the previous post, i thought; stuff it. i’m not gonna apologise for anything, i’m going to write in this blog, whatever i feel like, whenever i feel like it.

i made the mistake of quickly checking out problogger the other day… ugh. the title bar pretty much sums up why i hate that site so.

“blog tips to help you make money blogging”

to quote reel big fish:

sell out, with me me oh yeah,
sell out with me tonight,
record company gonna give me lots of money,
and everythings gonna be alright.
etc

ugh, “here’s my blog about helping you make money blogging, all the while, help me make money blogging and you don’t get anywhere”. the site itself is not only disorganised and really difficult to read but gives me the feeling of those real estate entrepreneurial seminar types.

and no, i’m going to link to his site, you’ll have to find it yourself.

back to the point, i tried re-writing the “about” page at the top in the hope it would focus this blog… but couldn’t, i had to write my own mid-year performance evaluation at work this week and that was bad enough.

in reality, i’m an extremely fortunate guy living in melbourne with an unbelievably great family, and truly excellent friends… i work in IT, i like tech, gadgets, music, movies, football, motorcycling, etc.

this is my blog about stuff, if you came here from google or facebook or twitter or tumblr or whatever, you’re going to have to deal with my content, because that’s the point…

there’s no money to be made, no pop-ups, no adwords, no click throughs…

just me, writing content.

Posted in family, generica, melbourne, tech, twitter | No Comments »

time, privacy, cost and purpose

so apparently, for those that care, blogs are dead

no sooner had i read this article, i got an email from a friend announcing he was disbanding his… citing; various reasons for closure.

and fair enough i think, sometimes, in trying to post twice a week i feel like i’ve somehow signed up for my very own “thing a week“… now that i have a tumblr i’m VERY tempted to stop digging crap i find on the web and just link to them in my tumblr and make comments… but that effort would take away from time actually writing stuff here… so why not just link and comment here? because apparently (i need to find a better word), blogs are for long form writing and nobody has time to write them any more… let alone read them!

so i guess, i’ll keep posting news and long form thoughts, and keep posting other random internet stuff over there and even shorter tidbits here and we’ll all get along fine for the moment ok? ok.  

my problem is i don’t put enough planning or effort into proper posts, i tend to give each one about half a day of thought and about an hour of drafting, editing and publishing… hmm, maybe that’ll change… maybe.

if you’re still reading, surprise, i put up some new photos too

Posted in family, generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »

doom and gloom

so while kim and liam were in brisbane for our nephew and niece’s christianing, i had to work through the weekend, big surprise eh, i should be used to it by now… i think i’ve finally reached the acceptance stage and weekends are no longer something i have, to look forward to.

to relax on sunday night i watched ‘children of men‘… i knew it wouldn’t really be relaxing, but i needed something a bit epic to take me away from what was truly a craptacular weekend (well, except for friday night)… so the movie. amazing, challenging, thought provoking.

what a concept; a whole generation missed through infertility, all of humanity are united and divided because of it. then monday night, i watched v for vendetta, i had no idea how similar the movies are!

unbeknownst to me until today, it’s anti-poverty week in australia! then, i saw this post and it got me thinking…

so in these movie studio created, post apocalyptic worlds, survival is key. but for us, in our world of inconvenient truths, battery hens and flat-out blind consumerism it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever reach the point where drastic changes will actually happen.

we spend time trying to prove whether or not we’re actually in danger of wrecking the earth, when… i dunno… maybe the government should step in… get serious about it.

i doubt that sighmon is completely right though, “vegetarians use 100 times less water” sounds like that statistic was made up on the spot. i wouldn’t mind going vege if it meant saving the world, hmm, can we exclude seafood and eggs?

so i’m not hardcore. but i’m not an idiot. and i do feel challenged.

Posted in family, food and drink, generica, melbourne, twitter | 3 Comments »

proper words

hmm, i guess this is what happens when i don’t get enough sleep, work till midnight for months on end and my sense of humour disappears completely… i saw the below on tumblr and i figure this is better than reblogging it there, it is actually worth some proper words.

in short, i’m over it, about 90 people got unfollowed today and twitter is going to get checked a lot less.

catbird:

When I decided to stop reading Twitter, I found that, on a daily basis, my moods were improved significantly.

yewknee:

Despite knowing full well that Twitter is a place of narcissim and meaningless updates I have to say I get legitimately agitated when I read overly vague and dramatic posts. If I read one more “too f***ing sad” or “overcoming adversity despite the depression that plagues me” i’m going to quit the whole thing. why do people use these insipid web 2.0 services as a place to passively cry out for help?

Posted in generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »

“internet famous”

i was listening to BOL-816 the other day, it contains some interesting discussion about online profiles, facebook and i guess narcissism… i was reminded of the ever-so-snarky merlin mann’s twitter feed (when he was using it) and of this gem;

If you’re really worried about your “branding,” try to stop thinking about life as a press release and just focus on _making something_ (twitter)

…just last week i decided i was tired of the majority of people from the tech news industry that i follow, and for the most part, unfollowed them, and honestly, cannot understand why people would ever follow problogger let alone the all the other wannabes. i got to thinking, what value are they actually adding? twitter is for (officially) “what are you doing right now?”, and the last thing i want to hear or read about is barely famous people doing ad-hoc press releases for their barely famous acquaintances… for me to follow someone now, they almost have to live in melbourne, not annoy me, and limit the swearing…

poignant quote from the arstechnica article:

“…researchers caution that those who are overly fond of themselves tend to cultivate a wide-but-shallow social network…”

so yeah, i think in the grand scheme of narcissism, i’m ok… i recently pared my facebook “friends” down to a reasonable number, revisited my “info” page and made sure there isn’t too much there… and i’m considering removing the “about” tab from the top of this site, hmm, would that make a difference?

Posted in generica, melbourne, tech, twitter | No Comments »

part of the problem

not sure what i really want to say here right now, i read this the other day and i liked it.

i’ve always thought social networks or socnets **groan** don’t really hold much water without actual real life contact… merlin is right, people can spend all their time grooming online presence but in reality, it all could be completely made up and no one would know any better.

i can’t stand the bickering, the evangelical atheists,and the snarky people with nothing better to do on digg; just sad.

so yeah, umm, i’m really actually really enjoying browsing around on tumblr in all my spare time, there’s some really interesting actual art out there… yes i used the A word.

i guess… filling the web with your lifestream is pretty pointless… but really, there are no rules, are there? do what you want. for me, it’s a little concerning how egocentric the people seem to be getting… he says blogging.

people have public flickr portfolios, then whinge when someone rips off their photo!

to (sort of) quote jeff, gimme a break.

Posted in generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »

we didn’t plan it like that

normally it’s kim and i that notice we’re wearing exactly the same colours as we’re leaving the house, today, it was me and liam… great huh… in fairness, kim was the one who put him in that jumper… ahh little peanuts… what a champ!

Posted in family, generica, melbourne, twitter | 1 Comment »

oh that reminds of the time i…

i’ve officially decided, it takes more effort to post here because of twitter and tumblr .

as said previously, i was on a course last week… and as usual, it was interesting for all sorts of reasons… it was a class of 3 + the instructor for 5 full days, one of the other students worked at in the IT section for a state library, and honestly, i’d completely forgotten what the public servant world is like.

during the week, i was treated to a couple of sterling anecdotes about how work days start at 0930 and finish at 1530, and how the IT department was made of at least 20 people, around 60% of which are “managers”… gold.

…so while i was trying to give all these stories the attention they deserved, my mind wandered into the realm of oversharing… normally (according to urban dictionary) the term is used for things of an intimate nature, but i disagree… sometimes, i just don’t need to know how something i mentioned earlier relates to another one of your hilarious/amazing/noteworthy 10 minute stories, especially when i’m actually trying to learn about something completely different.

you probably think this is pretty hypocritical coming from someone who uses twitter… but if i’m your only exposure it, you probably should be made aware, in varying degrees, it is chock full of what the internet loves to call “attention whores“… and it is these people that are doing the oversharing.

i know twitter is pretty much a vehicle for it, and you think the followers/following ratio would remove the “issue”… but that would only happen if the majority of users weren’t so similar…

so, i’ll say it again;

• good morning
• good night
• need coffee/sugar
• too much coffee/sugar
• i can has foodstuff, nom nom nom…
• the weather is cold
• the weather is hot

**groan**

so yeah, after the week i had, i unfollowed about 25 people… so now my feed is nice and quiet, i may miss the odd inside joke, but meh, it’s not worth fighting through the noise for…

Posted in generica, tech, twitter | 3 Comments »

i forgot about motogp

you know you haven’t posted for a while, when you start considering writing about how hard it is to write… or you start revisiting the well worn road of discussing what’s really relevant…

but i know what’s relevant, things like; family, melbourne, football, music, tech, twitter, food… so i don’t need to go there do i… i just need to write more… easy.

now that that is out of the way, you know what’s been annoying me lately? a couple of people have been trying to finish my sentences for me, in an effort to prove they understand what i’m talking about… even when either of them ask me the question… it just proves they don’t, and most of the time it doubles the length of the conversation… **sigh**

ok, in other news, liam took his first real steps yesterday, i was absolutely gobsmacked… he’s becoming a real person! i’ve uploaded some news pics to prove it, hehehe…

hey! why don’t i make this an uber-post and try to cover ALL the categories above… hmm…

1. melbourne is cold atm, it’s winter and getting out of bed in the morning is extremely difficult. i still love it though. in the evenings we have the heater on in our living room and often, because i’ve done the wii-fit thing, i stay in t-shirt and shorts until we go to bed, AND THEN, i wonder why i’m so cold…
2. football? well, apparently duff scored a hat-trick in nufc’s win against hartlepool(?), i guess that’s good news (better than losing, duh) but you know, i honestly didn’t expect us to keep m.owen into next season, but seeing as liverpool just bought robbie keane, i think he might be safe! this also is the time of the year when i decide whether to join or start a tipping competition… hmm, i think i might skip the telegraph one this year, i get the impression guys do that one as a full-time job!
3. music. hmm, i’ve discovered a new blog broken record that is really interesting, and my latest tumblr post is pretty depressing if you’re into it…
4. the laptop i’ve been aiming for isn’t going to be released in australia! damn, against kim’s advice i think i’ll settle and if i feel like it later, i’ll buy a solid state disk for it separately.
5. twitter is still there, and probably generally unheathy for my writing in this thing. my random thoughts that would used to have been full posts get reduced down to 140 characters or less… otherwise meh.
6. and food. what can i say, i’m definitely eating less than i used to and am trying to shun the evil food i love… that said, we had fish and chips with emma and scott last night, and it was awesome but strangely unfulfilling… like the awesomeness didn’t make up for how kinda unwell i felt afterwards?

ok well, that seemed to work pretty well, amazing how much crap i can come out with.

or maybe not.

Posted in family, food and drink, football, generica, melbourne, music, tech, twitter | Comments Off

quick question; what is art?

i’ve been thinking, after those two tweets earlier this month:

so there’s some pretty messed up ‘art’ in the degraves underpass this morning…
08:15 May 01, 2008

that “art” has been covered up! yay, no more full frontal nudity on the way to work!
08:57 AM May 19, 2008

so what is art?

umm, pretty big question, i guess this month i’ve been trying to define it for myself…

is it just stuff i appreciate?
maybe stuff i couldn’t actually create myself?

i mean, you read about people “pushing the boundaries” and challenging us with their art…
…but as a viewer, can being subjected to sometimes horrific scenes be considered art?

hmm, i should explain… i walk through the campbell arcade every day on the way to work and the exhibit in one of the display cases was probably 60 photographs lined up in a grid. each of the photos showed the top half of a shirtless guy wearing a executioner style hood, but in each of the photos the hood was made of different material. materials like zebra print velour or hot pink something… and it went on and on…

btw, seeing as everything i know about S&M i learnt from CSI, i couldn’t help but feel like the other exhibits in the arcade contributed to a very S&M slant (the artist was probably trying challenge me or push boundaries **groan** ) and then in the bottom right corner of the case was a bigger photograph of the model, but full body, so full frontal nude guy, wearing a hood/mask thing.

consider the boundary pushed.

in a gallery, maybe that exhibition would be ok, but in a walkway to a train station? not so much.

you only have to watch a couple of episodes of epic-fu to see new art is alive and well (and it doesn’t even lower itself to trying to shock you)…

so yeah, my opinion?

unnecessary photos of nudes smacks of no-talent clowns looking for attention.

make sense? i guess it doesn’t matter.

Posted in generica, melbourne, twitter | 1 Comment »

more web2.0 fluff

so i’ve just hit 500 twitter posts!

crazy huh, i’m glad i’m on a capped mobile plan so i don’t have to think about the money that would’ve gone through twitter in more than a year… all in all;

• it’s been fun,
• i’m not that addicted,
• it’s useful for miniblogging,
• i’ve seen some excellent random links,
• the outages don’t really annoy me,
• still no ads, great!
• i’m not that much of a freak!
• mtub peeps are pretty cool.

so yeah, i’ll keep doing it, and encouraging others to, even if i can’t answer the their question “what’s the point?” easily. i guess the thing is not to over-think it. which is hard for me.

updated twitterstats:

in the spirit of random internet stuffs, i have succumbed to the enormous pressure and created a tumblelog…

“wow luke, um, what’s that?”

i’m glad you asked, quoth the wiki:

“…is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary…”

i’m going to use it to collect and post random interesting stuff i find on the web, but unlike the full-on wordpress style blog, the tumblr will just be a stream of pics, vids, quotes and links… so it’ll be just like my digg favorites, only not. ie, in one place and fully customised…

Posted in generica, tech, twitter, youtube | 1 Comment »

*poke*

so now facebook has live chat… that was sneaky.

for me, facebook is becoming more and more like this video…

i never did get around to emailing everyone, and the longer i leave it, the further away doing that gets… i’m at 172 “friends” now, so now i could just start chatting with these people, but… i find i really don’t have the inclination… maybe i’ll do a drastic prune instead.

sure, facebook keeps recommending people i might know, the majority of these people i “know of”, but really don’t know them well enough in the real world to consider myself their “facebook friend”… the thing is, i’m sure lots of people add these sorts of relationships as “friends”, but why? to appear popular? to broadcast their status to more people? i don’t know. also, did anyone else notice that facebook completely ripped off twitter with the tag line: what are you doing right now?

oh well, in the grand scheme of things, having an unmanagable number of friends isn’t a big deal is it? maybe only for the internet celebrities?

to think, i’ve had more communication with one of my favorite internet show hosts than probably 70% of my facebook friends!

Posted in generica, tech, twitter, youtube | Comments Off