Kate's Birthday - Part one

blanc
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Went out this friday night to celebrate the birth of the Incandescent Kate, with a dinner at Vibe (which I didn't attend, except for the cake presentation) and then around the corner to Yelza. now this is an interesting bar, because it seems like a small quaint place from the front, and then as you head out back there's a HUGE beer garden :) A good time was had by all, especially the ex colleague that Kate was flirting with all night ;)

Anzac Weekend

fading light
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, this weekend was completely dominated by work. work work work. Specifically a restructure of our computer room, moving 200 systems three feet to the left, with round-the-clock shifts and blah blah blah :)
Before my first shift started Joe and I went to the botanical gardens to shoot some stuff, and I got this very nice shot of the sun through the trees. If you haven't gone and checked out Joe's stuff, I suggest you do, he's pretty good :)

exhibition

tricolour
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Went out for a bit of a night shoot, which is one of my favourite things to do on a clear night. And decided that the Royal Exhibition Buildings would make a good subject. The funny thing was that I spent ages aroung the front, including some lovely shots of the fountain (go have a look for yourself)
And then just as I was about to go, I thoguht "hey, maybe one quick shot of the other side" uh huh. yeah. Hey Scootie you idiot, they light up the other side :)

Format Change

ok, ok, ok. Clearly, I'm a craptastic blogger :) My Ability to update the blog is woeful, due to my nagging addiction to the captured image.

So the Great and Powerful Shazzie has come up with a solution: turn it into a photo blog.

So here you go. What I'll try and do now, is grab one photo from each upload to Flickr, and blog a quick paragraph about it, which should equate to an update every 1-3 days. in theory. if I do it :)

So stay tuned...

15-17 April

The big news about Friday night was that Mikey green, filmmaker extraordinaire and husband to the Ebullient Shazzie, had a film as a finalist in the Comedy Channel's Short Film Festival, so it was hyper-crucial to go down to fed square to catch it on the big screen. It was also rather important as an occasion to catch up with Shaz and Mikey. The film was superb, really funny, and actually based around an amusing plot, rather than just filming a single joke. Don't get me wrong, all of the films were really good, but I believe that Mikey's short was a cut above the rest as far as story and concept went. Unfortunately the judges didn't agree, but it was still a big kick to see them up at the finals.

The rest of the evening, wrapped around the viewing of Mikey's creation, was spent in bars with other friends :) The beginning of the evening was in Cherry bar helping our friend Elissa celebrate her birthday, and after the film viewing I went up to Yak to meet up with a few stragglers form Cherry and to meet a fellow flickrite called Stuart (s2art or flickr). So as people came and went hung out a bit with Joe and Kathryn and Daimo, then Hung out with Daimo and Elissa, then Daimo, Elissa and Stuart, then Stuart and Kate and Kerry. After some time at Yak, chatting away and drinking, Kate Kerry and I moved on to greener pastures, which weren't really that green :) Let's just say that Kate's desire to get a Pash-n-Dash resulted in us attending De Biers for some cheesy dancing, some bad drinks, and me giving Kerry a quick lesson in how to be a 'wing man' to avoid Kate's targeted boy from leaving when his friend got bored without someone to talk to.

Sunday afternoon was time for a impromptu picnic at the St Kilda botanical gardens with Felicite, Dean, Bec, Joe, Julie, Liam and Fiona :) It was a pretty nice afternoon to lay around on the grass talking shit and watching the world go by. It was such a lovely thing to do, and those guys are such great people that the afternoon soon flew by and we had to head back to Becsie's place for more fun and games. We all lolled around on the cushions in the conversation nook and chewed the fat, and Felicite and Bec gave us a dancing demonstration to their favourite tune, some of the finest cheesy dancing I've ever seen. :)

misc & other

Been a pretty busy week at the house of joy, making for a very slow week on flickr and therefore even slower in the blogsphere. Not that I could get much slower without being arrested for loitering ;)

Socially the week has been pretty good, Tuesday was spent with the illuminating Kate, where we went to see a show as part of the Comedy Festival. We couldn't get tickets to the guys Kate actually wanted to go see, so we ended up seeing The Bedroom Philosopher and he was pretty funny. What I like best about the comedy festival is going to see an obscure comic that I've never really seen or heard of before, and laughing my ass off :) This guy was doing a great 'dork' act, brown suit and all, butby far the funiest moment was him reading out his grade 10 diary, when he thought it was important to provide a ranking system for the hottest girls in his school, tracking them week to week and offering other awards such as "Most Improved" or "Best Face" or my personal favourite "Most overall ability to appear Hot". It was a very funny moment as we joined him laughing at how sad and dorky he was in high school :) It was especially touching when he showed us the week he got a girlfriend and she ranked number 1 with the other top 5 spots marked as "not important" :) it was hilarious.

Thursday night was reserved for the anti-social behaviour of taking photos :)

Wednesday I managed to catch up with Clanga, Vlad and Dutchie at the Napier to help celebrate Vlad and Michelle's new baby boy Isaac (Zach, Issy, etc) and have a general catch up. I think in many ways these guys are my kindred spirits, as they are all so artistic and expressive. Clang and I used to do club visuals together as IT/Multimedia guys with a bit of an eye for an image, and now Vlad has taken up the mantle, having always been a phenomenal graphic designer and stencil artist, so his stuff makes us look like little children :) Dutchie is also a designer, doing graphics and fashion, about to head off around the world for a quick tour of the fashion capitals. We always end up in deep conversations, redesigning the ugliness around us and coming up with crazy and kooky ideas. In the light of day these ideas never hold water, but it's great fun :) For example, one great idea of the night was to line Dutchie's club with mirrors on all the walls, then project Vlad's visuals onto the reflective surfaces from multiple points and angles, allowing it to reflect all around, creating a mad kaleidoscope of silhouettes and imagery. Of course, anyone who has ever actually tried to put sound into a mirrored room would tell you straight away that it's a nightmare, as the reverb and feedback is insanely difficult to deal with. So it'd look phenomenal, but nobody would see it because the cacophony of noise would drive them out!

Friday was a large-scale catchup session, with time at Yak to see Joe, Kathryn, Kate, Pommie John and Mark (fellow flickrite). Then off to BearBrass to catch up with Mick, Steph, Tanya and Katrina. Then Kate, Katrina and I went to a few more bars to try and see what we could find. Not much actually, as most of them were crap or closing, or both! ;) Much fun was had traipsing across the city looking for something interesting, chatting with Kate and Katrina, but the original plan of Kate and I hanging out and chatitng it up and dancing up a storm all night didn't eventuate, so we'll probably have to try it next week. :)

Saturday was wasted at work. Ten hours of my life spent doing a three hour job, so that's seven hours down the gurgler :)

movie madness and sexy becsie

Movie Watch: went to see Hotel Rwanda with Kate and her mum. Pretty good movie. Obviously it's a bit of a tear jerker, but not as many scenes of horrendous violent as I thought it might have. It was quite interesting to see how the main subject was treated, most of the message was carried by the reaction of the main characters, rather than simply showing what they were scared of. It was a very effective technique that also allowed them to show more fear and less gore. Kate's mum is cool, but then so is Kate, so that's to be expected :)

Also saw The Pacifier with Vin Diesel. Not too bad. A bit predictable in some ways, but still managed to draw a few laughs. Not quite in the same league as Hotel Rwanda, but it was never meant to be.
Recent DVD Viewing includes Donnie Darko, Twin Town, Pushing Tin, Broadcast News, Even Cowgirls get the Blues, and I'm currently watching Judge Dredd on TV. I know it's a bad movie, but it's a pretty good bad movie ;)

I think I'll always be a big movie fan. I can happily go see two movies a week and watch a few DVDs and still miss out on some good stuff. There are so many good movies out there it's just not possible to see everything that's worth seeing.

I'm having the same problem with Flickr at the moment, too many really really good photographers and I'me having trouble doing justice to their streams. My preference is to view each photo in its full page, stepping through each in turn, commenting as required. It's taking up a lot of my time and making me spend a lot of time looking at great photos and talking to friends. oh wait. that's a good thing! :)

pretty good weekend so far, started on Friday with a trip out to Point Cook for a friends Bucks turn. Photos will probably not be posted on Flickr ;) I'm sure you understand, and to be honest, I don't know if you want to see them. Point Cook is a funny place. It's one of those housing estates, but not for entry level housing, for the people who have enough to buy a small house closer to the city, but want something larger to raise a family in. As such there's a lot of really nice houses and heaps of families, just not much else in the way of social life.

Saturday night was spent around at Bec's place for her birthday party. Pretty good party, but then Bec is a pretty cool chic, so that's kind of to be expected. There were a few 'gate crashers' who were actually friends of a friend of Bec's flatmate, but it was still funny because they were a little paranoid about being there uninvited, but they were a good bunch of people, full of interesting conversations, so they were very welcome :) The party continued on a bit later at a nearby club, but I had to go home about 1am as I was very tired from the night before.