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It’s been ten years since I owned a bike. I started, as so many kids do, with a little BMX, then around my late teens I was gifted a refurbished hybrid to get about the backroads of the Hawkesbury hills. When I moved on campus, the hybrid became a handy mode of late-night transport between my 4×4 cell room and the computer labs (that had better internet, and printers).

But given the lack of space available, the only place I could store the bike was lashed to a post outside my room. It wasn’t ideal, and it wasn’t too long before rust started to appear on some of the more delicate-looking bolts and parts. Before it progressed too far, I decided to throw it on ebay. Since saying goodbye and handing that bike over to some rando who frankly could’ve looked happier to acquire such a beloved machine, I’ve wanted another bike.

Cue several years of stop-start savings, getting close only to have some life event empty the coffers, getting up there again, repeat ad infinitum. A couple of weeks ago, I finally got one: a mid-range cyclocross bike that handles road and trails with ease. It’s a joy to finally be out there again — it’s cliched but I really have missed that mixture of agony (uphill) and bliss (downhill). Melbourne is good place to have a bike, too, with a surfeit of dedicated paths and trails and bike lanes on most major arterials.

Here’s to many happy spins henceforth.

downstream

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Edie Brickell’s Good Times, one of two music videos that were included with Windows 95.

The disc for the Windows 95 operating system shipped with two music videos: Edie Brickell’s Good Times and Weezer’s Buddy Holly. These two videos were included to demonstrate how much digital video technology had advanced. Squinting through the pixels today to attempt to discern the image, it’s a wonder anyone thought digital video worth developing beyond that point.

One of Peter McKinnon’s latest videos demonstrates how you can bring a multicam setup into Premiere Pro and then edit between all cameras in real time. Vision switching has been a thing in live (and even recorded TV) for quite some time, but I find it crazy that processors can now handle real-time 4K video mixing.

Twenty years is a long time, but it’s also no time at all.

dust to dust

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I’ve attended three memorial services this year. March isn’t over yet.

Annihilation is one of my favourite books, and I can’t tell you why. It’s something about the way humanity is reduced to just its connection with the world around us, and done so simply, and only in words. Names, backgrounds, the trimmings with which we identify ourselves. None of it matters.

Today’s memorial service was secular. It was a fitting and touching reminder of how life is about family, it’s about vitality, about making the most of every day. But it was primarily about the connections we form with each other, be they familial, be they long-lasting, be they fleeting.

There is no real rhyme or reason to this post. Sometimes you are a member of the expedition, working your way through the unknown; sometimes you are Area X itself, all-knowing, but also uncaring. Sometimes you want answers; sometimes you want to just give in, let go, and be.

The Adrian Miles Reading List

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I and many others in the RMIT community are struggling to find ways to deal with the loss of our dear colleague and friend Adrian Miles. Adrian had a profound impact on me in a very short space of time. My current book project has a foundation in many of the challenging ideas he threw at me; so much so that picking up work on it again will be tough.

Finding words is something Adrian never struggled with. I thought I’d collate some of the hundreds upon thousands he foisted on colleagues, students, and friends. Suggestions welcome in the comments: I’ll update the post with any additions.

If you’re wondering how best to remember Adrian, maybe pick up one of the following, or take 25 minutes’ silence, with a 5-minute break.

 

 

Bogost, Ian. (2012). Alien Phenomenology, or What it’s Like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press.

Ingold, Tim. (2011). “Rethinking the Animate, Reanimating Thought.” Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge.

Latour, Bruno. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Harvard University Press.

Pickering, Andrew. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. University Of Chicago Press.

Stewart, Kathleen. “Atmospheric Attunements.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011): 445–453.

Vannini, Phillip. (2015). Non-Representational Methodologies: Re-Envisioning Research. Routledge.

Romance and reflection

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There is a mode of writing about film that I really enjoy reading — I’m cautiously calling it romantic-reflexive. Practitioners of this style include Murray Pomerance, Geoff Dyer, Raul Ruiz. It’s a style I enjoy because it feels immediate, almost as if the thought had just occurred to the writer. It’s an informed style, but rather than be peppered with footnotes or citations at every turn, the reader is just aware that they’re being spoken to by someone who’s done a lot of reading.

It’s a style that permits idiosyncrasies, but one that does not allow laziness. It allows for a nuanced discussion of film, but a discussion that is not hyper-critical. The analysis is not over-wrought, such that the film loses all magic, all its moments. I sense that this is a difficult style to master, but I’ve sketched out a few projects in the coming months that will hopefully allow me to give it a try.

For now, though, here, on this blog, I’m going to run the style past whatever I’m watching in the next few weeks, months. I’m currently halfway through Paris, Texas, so maybe that’ll be first.

Another one bites the dust

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I received this text message today, and it made me sad.

I lived in Katoomba for a couple of years while I was working on the PhD, and somewhere between the Carrington Hotel and Civic Video, plus the not too shabby view off the back verandah, was maybe one of the most blissful and productive times (creatively and intellectually) in my life thus far.

Civic Katoomba had a top range; a diverse clientele, from tradies and proper, honest working class folk (with proper, real jobs), to commuters like me who taught at unis or were authors or artists or similar. They also sold Ben and Jerry’s, which made for an irresistible weekend combo.

If you can get there in the next day or two, catch yourself a bargain. Otherwise, like me, you can reflect once again on the past, and how things change, and how places, buildings, businesses that you thought would be forever, turn out to be just as fleeting as everything else.