Sam Wilson's Journal

I’m bored and tired this Monday morning, but still I flick through my blog feeds; I found this: [if:book: ephemera] from the Institute for the Future of the Book. It’s an interesting idea: that the inconsequential, unconsidered, printed matter of the day gives ‘the future’ (the people, that is) insight into how normal lives were [...]

[Keywords: archiving, books, how I write, Tools] [No comments] [Permanent link]

So here I am, back in the office, and bored again. I have spent the morning trawling the Arts Full Text database; from the ‘Notebooks’ category, to ‘Reading and Books’, and thence to things about binding, I’ve been remembering that thrill of quiet, sparse, precise, personal times in libraries, with books and a notebook. Nicholson [...]

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, books, Woodworking] [No comments] [Permanent link]

Another gap in posts for this blog; sorry. (Not that there’s anyone reading this to say sorry to, but as they say: meh.) It’s not that I haven’t been writing lately, I have, but in places that the web doesn’t reach; I’ve been enjoying that. But it’s four-thirty on a Thursday afternoon and I’m at [...]

[Keywords: Bicycle, boredom, how I write, Investigation, keyboard vs. pen, Speed, Things, Transport] [One comment] [Permanent link]

Urban Adventure in Rotterdam Not that I’m bored today at work or anything, as you can see: not posting for a month, then here I am warbling on about urban exploration! But then I would really rather be out charting the course of a drain, or sketching the rust scars on a strange unknowable lump [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, Fremantle, how I write, Investigation, Place, Placeblogging, Railway] [No comments] [Permanent link]

[about walk walk walk] The above is about walking in a local urban area, and doing so to get to know where you live. A great idea, I think, and it’s something that I’m very keen on.

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, Investigation, Place, Placeblogging] [No comments] [Permanent link]

Bloggers unite. Today is blog action day, when we write about ‘the environment’ in order to ‘save it’. Oh yeah. Tom Worthington calls for less emails; but I concur with Paul Kingsnorth, and say: smash your computer and lock on to the nearest airport check-in counter! (I might say that, but I’m more inclined to [...]

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, air travel, blog action day, Making, sewing, social networking, Transport] [One comment] [Permanent link]

Just to intersperse this stream of codeish posts with something a little more real… I rode part of the way to work today, and then put my bicycle on the bus for the remainder of the journey. (An odd feeling, looking through the bus’ windscreen and seeing my little bike all alone out there, bobbing [...]

[Keywords: Bicycle, craft, Making, technology, Transport, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]

On Sunday 2007-08-20, Steve Dalton of the Gold Coast Greens posted the following: Reposting this excellent cartoon that everyone should see to get an understanding of preferential voting and why it is so important to Vote 1 Green! Except, of course, it isn’t actually doubling your vote, is it? The ‘S’ in STV is of [...]

[Keywords: Federal Election 2007, Politics, STV, voting] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I have often thought that one of the greatest attractions for me to writing in ink, on paper, in a properly-bound book, is that where one writes the words is where they will remain, and the only place they will ever be. That’s not the case when writing on a screen: I often write a [...]

[Keywords: archiving, how I write, Investigation, keyboard vs. pen, Things, world wide web] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I’ve just discovered the ABC’s blogs (blogs.abc.net.au) and I quite like what I’ve read so far. Maybe it’s just the idea of far-away correspondents filing these ‘letters home’ that appeals. A chap with a laptop (I’d like to think he’d be writing in longhand, on some favorite brand of Australian notepaper, but I realise the [...]

[Keywords: ABC, boredom, Gardening, Work] [One comment] [Permanent link]

All has gone well, since my last post, with my intra-office carlessness. My announcement (“I don’t go in cars; don’t ask me to.”) has been met with near universal acceptance (or silence), to my great relief. I had wondered whether the conversations in the tea-room about various cars’ power-ratings and other such motorcar trivia would [...]

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, cars, dichotomy, Making, Woodworking, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I’m writing a more in-depth article on this topic at the moment, and I’ll post it soon, but for now I just want to mention a couple of things. The team that I am part of at IBM looks after servers that are spread over two different data-centres, one just across the road from us, [...]

[Keywords: Bicycle, Canberra, Place, Speed, Transport] [One comment] [Permanent link]

My brain is feeling pretty groggy at the moment, so excuse any pointlessness in this post. Not that there’s ever any point to my posts, but that’s beside the point. I’m at work, almost thinking that the afternoon’s nearly half-gone and so, well, what’s the point of doing any more work… There are, in Australia, [...]

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, AuDA, Place, Placeblogging, social networking, technology, world wide web] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I have just returned from my customary post-lunch walk around the lake. It’s lovely, strolling through the hundred meters of bush that lies between the shore and the highway — I’m not being ironic, it really is lovely. I went across the bridge (the one over the weir) and turned south, along a vehicle track, [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, dichotomy, Investigation, Place] [No comments] [Permanent link]

Professor Mike Dopita “traces the often violent life cycle of galaxies to answer the following questions: How are galaxies formed? How is the gas transformed into stars? How do the massive Black Holes that lurk at their centres grow? What happens when galaxies collide?”. A public lecture from the Australian Academy of Science. Read more [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, Coming events, Investigation] [No comments] [Permanent link]

On October the 15th, blog about the environment — along with everyone else! Register your blog for the Blog Action Day.

[Keywords: Coming events, People, social networking, Uncategorised] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I seem to always want to return to this state: a quite chair with a pleasant outlook, and a good book. Here I am, into my second week at IBM, and I have achieved it, albeit with some detractions. The most major: I’m reading IBM Red Books. Next: this is no quiet parlor with a [...]

[Keywords: A chair in which to sit, Canberra, Place] [No comments] [Permanent link]

I bought this watch when I started working at IBM, because it is such an archetype of The Digital Watch, and I like to be reminded of the Future. Some pointless facts about the F-91W: Water Resistant; Micro Light; Daily Alarm; 1/100 second digital stopwatch: Measuring capacity: 59:59.99; Measuring modes: Net time, split time, 1st-2nd [...]

[Keywords: Casio, F-91W, technology, timekeeping, watches] [No comments] [Permanent link]

In which I walk to the shops, pondering place and looking about.

[Keywords: Canberra, Investigation, Place, Placeblogging] [No comments] [Permanent link]

Why oh why does Tilley’s not open until nine o’clock?! Doesn’t anyone in Lyneham understand the joys of escaping first thing in the morning to a nice warm café, a good book, and the ignoring of everything one’s supposed to be doing for a few hours?! I mean, really! I do have plans, of course, [...]

[Keywords: A Place of One's Own, Canberra, People] [No comments] [Permanent link]

During the last few days I’ve been working with Margo Kingstong and Kate Tucker on porting Kerrie Tucker’s website to WordPress. I’ve also set up the new ACT Greens online merchandise shop, Green Shop. So I’ve probably had about enough of sitting at here at our kitchen table hunched over this laptop; why I’m not [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, People, Politics, technology, Uncategorised, Woodworking, world wide web] [No comments] [Permanent link]

…I really don’t like being honked at by lone occupants of four-wheel drives! Me get off the road?! Why don’t they get off their stupid arses!?

[Keywords: People, Speed, Transport] [No comments] [Permanent link]

Walking the same path, backwards and forwards, again and again, day after day, in doing this one gets to know the path. It doesn’t matter where it is: a city street full of cars and businesses, a suburban wasteland of scraps of grass and rough dirt, wherever we walk we build up a pattern of [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, Place] [One comment] [Permanent link]

I’ve been walking lately. To university, to the co-op, and home again: along Sullivan’s Creek I go, sort of following the bike path and generally veering off and strolling quietly through grassy, damp, tree-lined avenues. It’s nice, as nice as anything really, these quiet moments of stillness amongst the green, and I notice the small [...]

[Keywords: Canberra, Gardening, Place, Speed, Transport] [One comment] [Permanent link]

Spareparts Puppet Teatre; the now-ornamental crane at ‘E’ Shed; a line of billboards hiding much; and the corner of the railway station — these form the horizon of my view from here. There’s Norfolk Pines, this café’s umbrellas, and the awning above filling in most of the rest of the scene, and all framed by [...]

[Keywords: Fremantle, Investigation, Place, Railway, Things] [No comments] [Permanent link]