back to "A to B to A to bed" *

A couple of weeks ago, Lee visited Queensland for a week or so, splitting time between relatives in Brisbane, Mullumbimby and Toowoomba. When she went back to Canberra, I went with her, taking a week or so off work to recover some energy and see how Lee lives in the day-to-day.

It was a great holiday. I caught up with Greg at ANU (Greg visited our team in Rennes for a few months), I saw a crappy hollywood movie matinee, I checked out the national gallery and new portrait gallery. I went to question time, saw an MP cry, and heard Tanner tell People Skills to "stay in the car and bark at strangers". I ate really well - Lee had her cooking chops on full exhibit, despite not cooking chops. I managed to go to two of her footy games and two training sessions, including helping out with goal umpiring, training drills, being a runner and even calling some substitutions at one point. I also, importantly, got to catch up with lots of family - Liz, Mike, Dave, Marg, Toby, Tom, Joe, Leonie, Daisy and Tess (in rough order of age).

Its almost a shame to be back, but it had to end.

* "A to B to A to bed" is a lyric from The Idea, a song on the latest Guild League album Speak Up, which has some great stuff in it. I love how evocative such a rhythmic phrase is off the workaday grind; its yet another reason to deeply mourn the passing of Tali White from songwriter to schoolteacher).

A year in the life

It has now been a year and two weeks since I started playing Age of Conan. I don't think I've mentioned it here before. Although I have put a lot of time into the game, I suspect its not something most of my readers would care about.

I started playing with Paul and Julie - the choice to play on a PvP (player versus player) server - Bloodspire - rather than a PvE (player versus environment) server was theirs. Left to my own devices, I likely would have chosen PvE, although I don't really regret the decision much. Ali joined us for a very short while, but she found the personalities of PvP a little hard to bear - understandable, there were then, and there remain, a lot of players who are immature in their communications and in the way they play the game.

My main toon (and still my only toon to reach the level cap) is Danlara, a Cimmerian guardian. I chose to play a tank because my previous MMO experience (in WoW) had been as a healer, so I thought I would try the other essential (in my opinion) group PvE role. My only other toon is a (as of last night) level 79 barbarian named Rokito.

The thing I have enjoyed most about the game has been the people I have played with. We started with our own guild, Hashhashin (or something like that), which was fine while we were levelling up our toons to the level cap (80). When we approached the cap, we merged into a guild called Wake of Fury, with a bunch of other (mainly) Australians. WoF dipped their toes into raiding in late October, and despite not really having the numbers, it went well.

I had a break over Christmas, and when I came back near the end of January, I found that Wake of Fury was doing weekend raids with a US guild called Immortal. I enjoyed these, and started having a significant role in the raids as one of the main tanks. Near the end of February, guilds started abandoning the server we were on because of falling population, in favour of the more populated Tyrrany and Cimmeria servers. Immortal was one of the last to leave, and Wake of Fury decided to follow them to Cimmeria, rather than be left as the only guild on Bloodspire.

When we arrived on Cimmeria, we merged with Immortal to briefly form Immortal Fury, which quickly reverted to the name Immortal. I became their main tank (with first dibs on guardian gear), and we were raiding tier 1 fairly comfortably. One weekend, though, Immortal quite suddenly fell apart, and the oceanic members (including those of us that had come from WoF) all moved across to the main Oceanic guild on Cimmeria, Primal Fury.

Primal Fury had recently absorbed the Acadians guild, and we fairly quickly moved up to easily completing the tier 1 raids and attempting the tier 2 raids. After 6 weeks or so (in April) we had 3 tier 2 bosses on farm, and had downed 3 more tier 2 bosses (leaving just 3 to go). However, a bunch of the most experience players, including the guild officers and raid leaders, moved to other guilds, or tired of the game and returned to playing other games. There were a couple of weeks where numbers were well down, and it looked like the guild might fold. A couple of weeks ago, I and another ex-WoF guy stepped up to lead some tier 1 raids with the remaining members and a few new raiders. The raids went well, and with the new members (and a few returning members), in the last week we have downed all but one of the bosses we had previously. I now find myself an officer in the guild, and frequently involved in forming and leading raids, and it is gratifying to be able to help new people come to grips with raiding.

I am really happy with the guild I'm in. Wake of Fury had great people, but was too small. Immortal had the size, but raided at inconvenient times for me, and had some members who were sometimes a bit too precious. Primal Fury, though, has mature people whose (virtual) company I enjoy, and in numbers that make all of the (PvE) endgame content available to us.

The server, too, is a step-up from Bloodspire. Being a PVP-RP server, and because the game has been around a while, there are a lot fewer adolescent ("zOmg, I wtfpwned you, n00b!") morons running around. Being a non-Oceanic server, we aren't able to participate much in mass-PvP sieges (the siege windows are during Australian workdays), and the combination of latency and battlekeep buffs (and IMHO some exploiting) prevents us from competing with the top guilds in PvP. I'm not really a PvP fan though, so I don't feel like I'm missing much.

I will now return you to regularly scheduled programming talking about sport and my other, less geeky, day-to-day banalities.

no voice

Today, as Sunday and yesterday, I am hoarse.

The damage was done on Friday night at the Brisbane-Carlton game at the Gabba, taken by Carlton by 6 points despite a 4th quarter comback by the Lions. It was the worst-umpired game of football I can recall seeing. I harbour no conspiracy theories. The umpires had the worst game I can recall seeing, generally allowing far too many free kicks to go uncalled, and making those that they did call inconsistent and alarming to supporters. I am biased, but the opinion of neutrals that I've read echoes my opinion that Brisbane (with 8 free kicks against 16 for Carlton) had much the worse of the inconsistency.

That the Lions lost by only one straight kick makes it more vexing. I'm not sure whether the Lions deserved to win - they played a poor first half characterised by hesitancy coming out of defence (where they were missing their 3 tallest and best defenders), and did not kick especially straight when it counted. However, in my opinion the result was, in no small measure, decided by the umpires' decisions, more than by the endeavours of either team.

I shouted at the men in green all night, but to no end other than the altered tone of my voice this week.

Now is the autumn of our discount tent

Autumn at middle ridge, originally uploaded by jsteel.

I really needed a weekend away. On Friday I penned a draft blog entry bemoaning my work situation (which may yet see the light of day depending on how this week goes). I left work a little early and jumped on a bus to Toowoomba. The service was poor, departing a half hour late and arriving more than an hour late, leaving me hungry and tired. Fortunately, the weekend that followed was idea for taking my mind of things.

On Saturday morning Dad and I had 18 holes at Borneo Barracks. The scores were tied after 18 holes, courtesy of an 18th on which both Dad and I hit great approaches to manage matching pars and post twin 94s. In the afternoon we went down to Dad's new local course (he joined last week) to squeeze in 11 holes before the light and fatigue beat us. I hit the ball better in the afternoon, and managed +9 through 9 holes, meeting my aim of bogey golf.

Sunday was bushwalking. Mum and Dad's club had a navigation day, so we convoyed to the mystery location south of Toowoomba. There we were given a map and a set of coordinates/instructions/requirements. We walked a loop of the property through fairly untamed grazing land, stopping at each of the checkpoints. We were accompanied by Naomi and Claude, who were along for the first time (as was I, I guess), having recently arrived to work on a defence-type project at Oakey. The company was good, the weather was good, and the lantana, although present in abundance, did not cut deep.

We left slightly early, in order to get me to my bus, which delivered me back to Brisbane, leaving on time and arriving early. I felt much refreshed for the sojourn.

return of serve

It's been the worst part of a year

Since you turned a cartwheel in here

(Lucksmiths, All The Recipes I've Ever Ruined)

It had just ticked over 6 months, I reckon, since I had played tennis. That reckoning is based on a small sticker left in my tennis bag from a restring I had last year, deposited in May and picked up six months later in November.

Anyway, I got the call to fill in with Gav & Dave's fixtures team, so I wandered along to see if I still knew how to hit a forehand. I didn't, and sprayed them all over, but I will never forget how to serve, and that alone earnt me a couple of games in an otherwise undignified but I suppose not disgraceful 6-2 singles defeat. I found a little more touch in the doubles, and we scraped home 6-5, salvaging a little bit of my pride, albeit not enough to get the team a win on the night.

I do miss tennis - its something at which I have the potential to be quite good, and the improvements that suggest themselves are not physical, but mental (much like golf). I play stupid, and playing smarter is something not hindered by the progression of time, which is reassuring.

Cloudstreet

Yesterday afternoon, on a bus-stop bench across the road from the dentist, I finished reading my third novel of the year: Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton. It was comfortably the best of the three.

Set in Australia during the 1950s, Cloudstreet revolves around two starkly different families that share a house in suburban western Australia, and the evolution of the families as their children grow to adulthood. The story ambles along and I guess explores the influences that different family members have on each other - mother on daughter, wife on husband, husband on wife, brother on brother - and the influence that each family has on the other. At the same time, though, it is an exploration of the times, and the changing of the times, I suppose, which is carried as much by the general flow of the storytelling as in the story itself. The writing is a strange mix of Steinbeck's gentle imitation of working class accents and lifestyles (although without the former's depth of feeling or insight), and something more lyrical, at times toeing the line of pretentiousness but without, in my opinion, crossing it. The rhythm of the story is at times uneven - the ending, or perhaps dénouément, feels somewhat peremptory and even unnecessary in my view - but in many ways it is the rhythm of the writing that wis more important, and this is generally strong and even throughout the book.

Having finished Cloudstreet, I'm now returning to FreeDarko Presents The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, which I began after buying it for myself at Christmas, but which lends itself well to sporadic reading. Also, from today, I resume with the knowledge that it will at some point be followed by a sequel (or perhaps more accurately a prequel).

The Greatest Band I Ever Knew

Music won't be the same for me. From their world-famous website, their mailing list, and in the gaunt undertones of the curlew's plaintive wail, comes news of the Lucksmiths:

There's no easy way to put this, so please accept our apologies for the seemingly abrupt nature of this post. We are saddened to announce that after sixteen years as The Lucksmiths, the band has decided to break up.

Their music was so full of melancholy nostagia for loves lost, but looking through them for something to quote on their own demise would be just too bittersweet.

Their last Brisbane concert is in August.

reading to achieve

I finished a novel last week, and it was kind of special. For the first time, I managed to get through a complete novel in french, after having tried and failed a couple of times previously (Le Comte de Monte Cristo, and Le Peuple Turquoise).

The book was Le Lion, by Joseph Kessel. The story, narrated by a frenchman visiting a wildlife park in east Africa, deals with a young girl and her relationships with her father, mother and a lion that they adopted as a cub. At times I felt like it got a bit pretentious in its descriptions of things, and I really didn't like the mother character, although whether that was intended or not I cannot say. The plot, though, was interesting, and the ending was handled fairly well, albeit perhaps a little brusquely.

I read the book somewhat assiduously, taking a lot of time to read every word and spending a lot of time looking up words in the dictionary. The vocabulary was unfamiliar - I had very little occasion to discuss lions' manes or overalls or watering holes with my friends in Rennes. Also, books in french are written in the simple past tense (passé simple), which I have never studied. I was easily able to pick the roots of verbs, so the passé simple wasn't really a problem, but the vocabulary made the going very slow, and the anticipation of that slowness made it difficult to pick the book up, the main cause of the many months it took me to finish.

In hindsight, I'm very proud that I got through the book, and I did enjoy reading it, but I probably take more pleasure from the sense of achievement than I did from the reading. I certainly didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoy reading in English, where I read considerably faster and better appreciate the art of the wordsmithing. I will go back and read french again, but not for a little while.

Next on my reading list is Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton, and also some more from FreeDarko presents the Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac.

hesitation move

Being as my last post was about cooking, here is another.

Over the course of last week I rather recklessly bought up quite a lot of ingredients for cooking. I had grand plans - another kangaroo roast, another quiche-cum-tarte-thing, galettes, a chicken & leek pie, brie pizza, etc. Unfortunately, the nature of fresh ingredients meant that I had to get cracking.

With that in mind, last night I started on a quiche-cum-tarte thing, using a bunch of things in my fridge that needed using - some crème fraiche, a pack of smoked salmon, a bunch of celery, some leek, onion. I have a couple of new tricks with quiches, courtesy of Emily. First, I am separating the eggs and beating the whites to get a fluffier texture. I still don't have a beater, electric or hand, but I have been getting reasonable results just going to town with a fork. Secondly, I have been trying to blind-bake the shortcrust pastry in order to have it crispier in the final product.

That last step brought me undone last night. Monday night is not a great night for cooking. I generally get home between 5:30 and 6, and I have trivia at 7:30, which doesn't leave a lot of time for preparation. I managed to get things underway with (I thought) enough time to at least get the pie cooked and out of the oven before leaving. In my rush, though, I forgot to put down a sheet of oven paper between the pastry and the rice weighing it down, which was, to paraphrase Ron Burgundy and his wise words on dairy products, a bad choice.

Anyway, I had to put aside my ingredients and run off to trivia (reasonably succesful - 83 points, good for 5th place on the night). This morning I baked a new pastry and got the pie cooked and out just before heading off to work. It will be waiting for me when I get home, to fill my belly and reinvigorate me for beach volleyball.

By way of rejoinder

I would have to say that, on the whole, the quality of my culinary preparations has probably gone slightly down since returning from France. This is attributable to any number of factors: the unavailability of ingredients to which I had become accustomed, the increased distance to the shops, and perhaps the general laziness associated with getting older :)

However, one of the great blessings I've had is introducing myself to kangaroo meat. I've had a number of kangaroo steaks, fillets and roasts since getting back, and I have found them thoroughly palatable, both from a pure taste point of view, and from the point of view of eating a lower-fat, lower-carbon-footprint, lower-water-footprint form of meat.

" * * * "

What's that, skip? You say you'd taste lovely with some roast potato, sweet potato and garlic? Ok!

Watchmen

Last year I bought the graphic novel Watchmen on a whim, and quite enjoyed reading it. The specific whim upon which I bought it was that it was mentioned on a webcomic I read, in the context of its then-upcoming movie adaptation.

A week or two ago, I saw said adaptation.

A group of us went along, roughly corresponding to our pub trivia team, all bar one of whom had read the book. That's an important fact, because this is a film that is, more than most, coloured by what you have or haven't experienced from the book. I can only speculate - and I will - what the film might be like for those who haven't read the book.

First of all, it has to be said, the movie is generally very faithful to the book. There are some sections cut out (the thread with the kid reading the comic and the newstand owner, and the stuff about the comic book writer, are omitted, and the ending is changed), but most of the style and plot are intact. This might be a problem if you haven't read the book - the consequence is that the film is quite long, and quite broad.

The film is also quite violent. I guess this is to be expected from the director of 300, and when I think back, the book was also probably quite violent, but I still found it confronting at first experience. The performances are generally sound - performances aren't what you generally look for in a superhero movie - but Rorschach and Dreiburg deserve mention for being better than the others. The romance scenes are handled with remarkable success - eliciting the same humour and feeling that the book had.

Without giving things away, I had no problem with the changes they made to the ending. I don't quite understand why they made them, but it wasn't my favourite part of the book, and the movie ending might actually have more relevance to the rest of the movie, in terms of character arcs.

Anyway, enough rambling. Go see it - its colourful.

Gran Torino

Gran Torino, the Clint Eastwood movie, was another in the list of top movies from 2008 that I didn't see in 2008. It didn't get nominated for any Oscars, but it did get bandied around a few of the awards lists, mostly for acting (Eastwood).

Eastwood doesn't act as much as he used to, although he has done some good stuff (Million Dollar Baby). As a director, he's done some very, very good films (MDB, Mystic River, Unforgiven, Iwo Jima). I would argue, in fact, that he's turned into a more skilled director than actor, notwithstanding my view that some of the films he acted in - the Leone films, Dirty Harry - might be better than those he's directed.

Anyhoo, I'm spending a lot of time talking about Eastwood's past, and not a lot about this film. That's probably because I found this a bit underwhelming, and I prefer to remember him for his other stuff. The plot is ambitious in a way, I guess, dealing with the changing of generations as Eastwood gets old, and the intermixing of race (Hmong/White) and lifestyle (families/gangs) in suburbia. Perhaps this is the problem with Eastwood as the lead. I felt he was a little bit one-dimensional as the grizzly old man. Maybe this is his baggage as an actor - he felt like a retired Harry Callahan - or maybe its a lack of range - he was never the most chameleon of performers. Anyway, the upshot is that I didn't quite buy the performances, either Eastwood's or the others, and that hurt the film for me.

I read that back, and it sounds like I'm panning this film. I suppose its important to say that I didn't mind this film. It bounces along, and the ending is slightly surprising, but does make sense in the context of the film. It arcs nicely enough, and it has something worthwhile to say. Its a pleasant watch.

It isn't, though, a great film - it didn't make me feel anything very strong, one way or another, and for me that's the mark of a great film, it sucks you into its world, and makes you feel something.

Frost/Nixon

I enjoyed writing my little review of Slumdog, so I'm going to do it again.

Last week I saw another film that was nominated for best film at this year's Oscars: Frost/Nixon. It was also nominated for director, editor, adapted screenplay and best actor, although it won none of them. Of the films I've seen, it would win a couple of those, but as I mentioned in my Slumdog post, I still haven't seen a lot of the films discussed for those awards.

Frost/Nixon is a very different beast to Slumdog Millionaire. This is a film built upon performances and characters, not on story, or place. Elements like the direction, editing, pacing, setting and cinematography are well executed here, but for me they weren't notable, nor especially important.

For me, this film lives and dies by the performances of its two leads: Michael Sheen as Frost, and most importantly Frank Langella as Nixon. The former is solid - he displays the TV smile but also the ingenuity and at times insecurities behind Frost. More importantly, though, he does enough to keep up with Langella, who has the "juicy" role. Langella is really excellent. Playing Nixon is fraught with the danger of slipping into parody. His manner and mannerisms are so distinctive, and have been so often lampooned over the years, and Langella does an outstanding job of avoiding the temptation of shallow imitation, and instead crafts a nuanced and balanced portrayal. He looks a bit like Nixon, but not exactly like him, but most importantly he makes sure that what the viewer takes away isn't the physical attributes of the performance, but the behavioural: Nixon's frustration at his own actions and its impact on his legacy, his failings (greed), and his love of the intellectual combat in the interview.

I was thoroughly impressed by this film. It might not do as many things well as a film like Slumdog, and it might not be as accessible to some, but the things it does well, it does with more ambition and yet with great success.

Slumdog meh

Either in response to its Oscar win, or simply because its on my IMDB 250 quest list, on Sunday I watched Slumdog Millionaire. Although I did enjoy it, I have to say I was underwhelmed.

I admit that I had strong expectations for the film. Danny Boyle has a good history as a director (I enjoyed Trainspotting and loved 28 Days Later, although A Life Less Ordinary was mediocre), and it has won just about every award under the sun. I can't really see why though. Its a good film; don't get me wrong. The 2 plot threads (the game show, and the vignettes of his life that lead him there) are woven together nicely. Its very colourful and nicely shot, with great images of Mumbai. The acting never stands out as bad, but nor does it stand out as good. The story bounces along nicely, and doesn't get boring, but on the whole, there isn't anything great about the film. The film is currently at #41 in the Top 250, one place ahead of Vertigo(!), and it just doesn't belong in that company. It felt to me like a solid "nice" film, and if that sounds like damnation with faint praise then it is in reaction to and slight bewilderment at the lavish praise that it seems to have garnered in the wider community and media.

I didn't see many great films in 2008 (or at least, not many great 2008 films), a fact I hope to remedy in the coming months; The Wrestler, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and Gran Torino are all on my list. Of those I did see, The Dark Knight is the one I would most definitely class as superior to Slumdog. The story and cinematography were at least on a par, the characterisations were deeper and more complex, and the performances - Ledger's, Eckhart's and even Bale's - were more noteworthy, in a genre that has often been thin on character and always on acting. Although The Dark Knight is undeserving of its #6 position on the IMDB list (which I think will soften over time), it seems like an oversight on the part of the Oscars to have omitted it from the best film nominations, if Slumdog Millionaire is the measure.

Ed: A shout-out to Pete, whose readership I never would have anticipated, and who reminded me that I haven't been posting much recently.

Win some, lose some

We had been going well at pub trivia on Monday nights. After a couple of inauspicious nights in the mid-80s to start the season, we'd settled into a groove at or around 90 (out of 100). That sort of scoring doesn't win much cash, but is a pace guaranteed to grant access to the $1000 round at the end of the season. This Monday past, it went horribly wrong, and we came away with 78. It was the music round that did most of the damage, but the night for me was marred by a question in the bonus round (each question worth 5 points).

What is the formal Italian word for goodbye? And I don't mean "see you later" or something. Goodbye.

Now there is no correct answer to the question. The two obvious candidates are Ciao and Arrivederci. Ciao is wrong because it is not formal. Arrivederci was given as the correct answer, which got me very annoyed. Arrivederci comes from the verb rivedere, meaning to see again - the term literally means see you later, which was explicitly ruled out in the question. I was very angry.

By Tuesday, I had almost recovered. We have made the finals in each of the three seasons I've played beach volleyball, with previous efforts being a loss in the grand final (in C Grade Mixed) and a loss in the semifinals (in B Grade Mixed). Last night, we took all before us (B Grade Mixed), scraping through a semifinal 42-39) (in extra time, after being 39-39 after regulation), before going ahead early and staying ahead in the final to win 40-26. I felt like we played pretty well, in the final particularly, and thoroughly deserved the engraved tumblers we won as a result. Next season will be tougher; due to a contraction from 3 grades to 2, we will be playing in A Grade Mixed.