So, stuff happened in the past month. We went to the Soundwave festival, then to see God Forbid, then to see Helmet although I haven’t written that one up yet. Just yesterday I booked tickets, flights, and accommodation to see Nine Inch Nails in Syndey next month, but we’ll miss Stone Sour (playing in Perth the same night). There’s probably other stuff too…

Today we went for a walk down down the Kingsley end of Yellagonga. I took some photos. Here are some of them.

See ya at next month’s wrap-up

A friendly huntsman on the fence outside. It was quite dark and we didn’t want to startle him with the flash, so it’s a bit fuzzy.

So where’s the goatlady gone, you say? Well, there’s nothing more annoying than a blog with nothing except “sorry I haven’t posted for so long”, usually interspersed with discussions about eating breakfast and toenail clippings, so we’ll leave that aside. Let’s just say that there are things in life that have to come first, so they did. I’ll have to start double-posting to make it up.

The photo above captures Honey in mid-complaint. She has a very hard life, oh my. Firstly, there’s the annoying fat boy cat who is so stupid and slow and stupid, and then there’s a constant battle against utter starvation, and fitting in 22 hours of sleeping per day whilst still maintaining a svelte 2.2kg frame is tough work, even for a multi-talented Abyssinian like herself. Then, goodness me, she’s always so terribly itchy and everyone has to scratch her and well, they’d better not stop scratching or I tell you what, she might start doing some scratching herself.

If she ever wondered why some of her altos were a little giggly at late afternoon rehearsals, it’s because we had a three hour break between the end of our last class for the day and the beginning of the chorale rehearsal, and we used to mostly spend it in the tavern, drinking bourbon, eating Kinder Surprises and making the little toys that you get in the Kinder Surprises.

I really enjoyed chorale (and not just because of the bourbon and chocolate). Because I had years and years of choir training, I can blend nicely with other voices and tell right away if I’m not in tune, but I cannot for the life of me sing solo. During my first year at the Con, we sang Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which is still one of my favourite pieces of music. It’s spine-tingling, ephemeral and downright terrifying in some parts.

I also like the Kinder Surprise toys although the chocolate is a bit sickly.

Tonight was the official opening of the 2007 Perth International Arts Festival. Hey, what a fantastic web site! I wonder who we know who was involved with that…

The Supreme Court Gardens in the city centre hosted the opening event: firstly the specially commissioned overture, composed by Iain Grandage and performed by the Festival Journey Chior and Tetrafide percussion ensemble, with visuals onscreen from BLINK, a photography exhibition from regional WA.

Then a screening of the brilliant stop-animation film version of Peter and the Wolf by BreakThru Films with the live score performed by the Australian Youth Orchestra. Although it’s for kids as well as adults, I found the film quite scary, and the intensely atmospheric music only added to the unsettling feeling.

Here’s a trailer from the world premiere of the film in London.

The animation is just beautiful.

Being a family event, the evening was quite short – the film is 30 minutes long, and we were home by 10.30pm – but it was a good start to what’s going to be a really great festival program.

I got the big lens out and did some scurrying around the sides of the choir stand, and managed to get a few passable photos of Mr Grandage, Prue Ashurst, the other director of the choir, and the Tetrafide percussionists – just more material for slow days in the infamous photo project!

Iain Grandage conducting the choir:

Tetrafide Percussion Ensemble:

This month was the first of the Port80 “mini-talks” – two speakers giving 10 minute presentations on suitably geeky topics. First up, Brian Madsen (better known as Deprecated Cruelty on the Port80 forums or CSharpZealot in other circuits) gave an overview of the new Microsoft Expression suite.

Next up, Myles Eftos gave a presentation entitled “Out of the way JSON – if CSS can be unobtrusive, so can JavaScript” which covered the basics of DOM scripting.

Both speakers did a great job and the concept was well recieved. The Velvet Lounge rocks as a Port80 venue – looking forward to many more cool events there!

So, today was my birthday. The big three-oh. I appear to have survived.

Many things happened today. Notably, the first Port80 networking event with “mini talks” at the Velvet Lounge, which went really well. Then, Dave convinced me to leave early so we could go grab some dinner, it being my birthday and all. Then, he let on that he had a reservation at “That Little Mexican Place”, a restaurant we had been meaning to try. When we got there, all our mates were waiting. Sneaky.

I’ll write more about both the meeting and the restaurant later, and I have more photos. But right now I’m really tired so I’ll leave you with this funky chandelier from the Velvet Lounge.

My new baby arrived today!

The photo above is an attempt to establish scale, against Dave’s 15″ notebook. This little beast has a 8.9″ screen and weighs in at just 1kg, making it a cross between an oversized UMPC and a small TabletPC. Machine name is “Leviathan”

It’s very small and very cool. Notice the fingerprints all over it already.

Here’s an update for everyone breathlessly waiting to see how my mailbox spider is doing. She’s still hanging out, threatening the postie and generally causing trouble. You know how those teenage spiders are. Her colouring is much darker and the red stripe is much more prominent. Although she’s not completely black, she’s definitely recognisable as a redback.

And so far, we’ve managed to get the mail out on a regular basis without incident.

Honey certainly does. And where it’s at is anywhere that sunshine is coming in through the window. Preferably through a closed window so it’s even hotter on her side.

I was thinking the other day that cats must have an absolutely insane tolerance for heat. Seeing as they don’t sweat (I think except from the pads of their feet, like dogs) and you rarely see them panting, except when they’re not well. And even when it’s stinking hot they tend to seek out the warm areas of the house. So of course I looked it up on wikipedia and apparently a cat’s average body temperature is between 38 and 39 °C, and they’re in trouble above 39.5 °C. So there you go.

So Photo Project, what day are we up to? 35 or something? I’ve skipped about four I think…