Re watching all the Indiana jones movies over the last 3 weeks has reminded me just how great they were. Back in the 80s there was a string of movies with great action, silly dialogue and ridiculous plots. Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile were others, but I liked the indie flicks better, Harrison Ford isn't very good at acting, but he (and Sean Connery) can deliver a snappy one liner!

I'm watching Last Crusade at the moment and there's no shortage of silly one-liners and derring-do to impress. This inspired me to download the demo of Lego Indiana Jones, and I'll almost certainly watch the new movie. I'm falling for the media blitz!

This image by Magdalena Bors grabbed me for various reasons, but I really need to check this exhibition before I leave.

Friday 2 May to Saturday 7 June 2008
Tue - Fri: 12.00 - 7.00pm, Sat & Sun 10.00am - 6.00pm

Gallery 1 & 2

MAGDALENA BORS, MARK KIMBER, ANDREW MAMO, ALEXIA SINCLAIR, SIMON STRONG

Vivid, complex and magical, the works in this exhibition abandon the traditional realm of the photographic - the real world - to conjure images of the fantastical. From Magdalena Bors' fairytale scenes to Alexia Sinclair's regal women of history and Simon Strong's dreamscapes; from Andrew Mamo's phantasmagoria to Mark Kimber's landscapes of the imagination, it is an odyssey of the fabulous. The result of highly skilled and detailed construction these enchanted scenes are either created as theatrical settings and then photograph or pieced together from hundreds of photographic fragments.

Mark Kimber is represented by Stills Gallery, Sydney
Simon Strong is represented by John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne and King Street Gallery on William, Sydney.

Being running around in a circle like a headless chicken, which means I have turned yet again into a bad blogger.

Bad blogger, bad!

Unemployment felt oddly unsettling. As contrary as it might sound, I can probably enjoy this state more if I have a job lined up in the future. On the positive side I have been catching up with plenty of friends and I have enjoyed finding all the little food cranies that Sydney has to offer.

I've been meaning to post this, but couldn't find the disc to save my life. I think I might have mentioned a while back that I enrolled in the ACP's lighting course that finished a couple of weeks ago.

Though the price nearly demolished my bank account somewhat, it was an incredibly fun and instructive course to do. We were lucky enough to have the incredibly talented, kind and generous Greg Parsons teaching the course. He usually taught the more advanced Still life course, and it was an incredible piece of luck to have him take this course instead.

The photo featured here was taken at our last class, featuring one of my fellow student. Shot using medium format camera, it was a lot of fun just playing around with the pose and the lighting and watch it all come together.

One thing I took away from the entire experience is that good lighting is a matter of trial and error, a good 3/4 part of a shoot will be invested in finding the perfect lighting for the shoot. The Milo shot taken a while back is a perfect example of fiddling around trying to find lighting.

At the end of the course, I realised that my camera was due for an upgrade. Not being able to go down to a lower ISO than 200 as well as having some severe issues when it comes to synching with flash is getting on my nerve. The camera for some odd reason can only operate with either flash/ambient light, but not both, resulting in one or both light flaring at ridicilous times. I would love to upgrade to a D3, but if all goes well at the end of this year this would be my Christmas present for myself.

I've started another blog mostly for shots I'm happy with, but will probably move more things there as I go on.

Random plug, go on and check Growing up Asian in Australia, by the highly talented Stikman, Kylie Kwong and other interesting people.

1. Wii Fit is great and also a freaking licence to print money for Nintendo and I'm glad to have helped.

2. However, the cute anthropomorphised Wii Balance Board totally mocked the shit out of me for being an uncoordinated old woman. Hopefully the game can actually help me with that...

3. After dinner we got rickrolled by the shopping mall.

4. Iron Man was fantastic. My flist never lies! Though I suspect you all liked it because you're gadget freaks in some way or another. ♥

5. The fourth yoga pose completely wrecked me tonight, so obviously I needed to get this game. XD

Tomorrow is Friday yet again! This month is dauntingly crazy, but I WILL DEFEAT IT WITH THE POWER OF YOGA.

I was going to wait until I had more art to post... but nope, I still hate my own art beyond belief right now. As soon as it's finished, I hate it. (It's all being posted at fanart_a_day, y!Gallery and aesthetexxx if you do want to see any of it.) Gaaaah.

Have some cute bird videos!


Trying to be SUPER IMPRESSIVE against a game of Mario Kart Wii!!

( +2 )

I have yet to take a photo of the thing he does where he pushes his beak into my face to get his head scratched. It's so so so so cute. XD

I was going to put TWEWY up there, but sadly it doesn't have the same cache as the flavour of the moment.

( GTA4 )

Right, that done with I can prattle about TWEWY! I have to say that I like this small, non-FF DS game by square more fun than GTA. It actually shares some similarities! It's set in a real world location, slightly changed (Shibuya). It has sidequests (fashion stuff, pin battles) aaand... That's it. I enjoy it more because the style is great, the combat is fun and the story is deep. At the moment GTA4 doesn't have those, it has no style (though it copies real-world style quite well), the combat is more annoying than fun, and so far the story is very similar to all the other GTA stories.

The annoying thing about TWEWY: You can't really explain it in words, it's all very visual. Instead of GTA's renamed New York, TWEWY is in the emotional shibuya; buildings loom over you, the landmarks are all next to each other, but to appreciate it you might need to actually visit the place.

Later on GTA4 might impress, but for now I'll take an interesting new IP over a well-made sequel.

I thought about buying GTA4 today, but everywhere seemed to be sold out in parra, so my decision was made for me: You must read and shelve manga instead! said the gods of Whatthehellshouldidotoday. So I did. Our lounge has only one remaining box! I can actually see what the floor looks like! We're finally ready for a housewarming, so that should come up in 2 weeks maybe?

The rest of the day I spent catching up on manga, mostly unlicensed stuff on onemanga.com. If anyone wants to read a mature, intense story that happens to be based on an Astroboy episode, I can heartily reccommend Pluto. If you're more in the mood for pirate action, you can't go wrong with One Piece. I was delighted to find an oldschool classic, Dragon Half. Dragon Half was an instant classic at AnimeUNSW, a slapstick comedy with some terrible (but great!) jokes. Annoyingly all 3 of these manga are ongoing, Dragon Half has long finished but the translation still has 15 chapters to go, but One Piece is 498 chapters with no end in sight!

Again, it was so cute I had to get a photo.

Buying Wander new toys is always a bit nerve-wracking since he's not guaranteed to like whatever I buy him. I usually try to buy things that look like the sort of things he's currently interested in (shredding paper, chewing on wood). It always helps if we can steer that sort of behaviour away from our stuff and towards the toys, too. He's now approved of pretty much everything in the monster shipment of stuff I got recently, which is a relief! The joys of animal behaviour. :P

Despite birds trying to steal my tablet pen nib, I have actually been able to draw!

( Phoenix Wright oekaki pic )

The working week started out pretty tough but today went really well client-wise, and tomorrow is Friday!! And now it is bedtime yargg.

I have photos, oh goodness I have waay too many photos to go through. The following was taken at the Wombats gig a few months ago at the Metro. One of those gigs where the crowd was more intent at flinging themselves across the barrier than anything else.

No surprise that the security guards were more intent on watching the next wave of crowd surfer and not the spattering number of people armed with SLRs.

My photos of the band were pretty mediocre, but I rather like this crowd shot. Something about the warm light and having just enough details to see the crowd's expressions.