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Category Archives: Fragments

A Mobile Symbolic Analyst’s Guide to the iPad: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of iCloud

13-Nov-11

iCloud was undoubtedly what tipped me over the edge to buy an iPad. It hadn’t launched and few technical details were available, but the idea of iCloud and Apple’s reputation for eminently usable technologies had me convinced that it was going to transform mobile computing. After a couple of months this reality has not manifested itself for me, but the potential is certainly there. There are many good points, there are gaps that have no solution yet (the bad) and there are those gaps for which inelegant solutions exist (the ugly). I’m going to reflect on these from my own point of view as a researcher whose needs are for a) manipulating text documents and b) a mobile library of PDF documents. More…

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A musical tribute to the Build Up: Mango Walk

08-Nov-11

This song, in so many ways, encapsulates the vibe right now. Many people call it “mango madness” but it’s nowhere near hysterical enough to be a madness. It’s more subtle than that. You don’t quite realise it but the whole rhythm of the place slows down and becomes lethargic. Which is fine if you have nothing to do. In fact, the whole place can be quite calm with a feint din of activity as a reminder that life still exists. But, if the mind and body are required to be active then it will be like trying to run through knee-deep mud. At this time of year, it’s best to do the Mango Walk…

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Thanks Jarron…

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What is history?

19-Sep-11
Before reaching for E. H. Carr, it’s worthwhile studying what E. H. Gombrich had to say on this question when he wrote his children’s book in 1935, A Little History of the World.

In the opening chapter, ‘Once Upon a Time’, Gombrich intuitively and beautifully answers this question in three parts.

The past

It’s like a bottomless well. Does all this looking down make you dizzy? It does me. So let’s light a scrap of paper, and drop it down into that well. It will fall slowly, deeper and deeper. And as it burns it will light up the sides of the well. Can you see it? It’s going down and down. Now it’s so far down it’s like a tiny star in the dark depths. It’s getting smaller and smaller…and now it’s gone.

Memory

Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper. We use it to light up the past. First of all our own, and then we ask old people to tell us what they remember. After that we look for letters written by people who are already dead. And in this way we light our way back…

But we only catch glimpses, because our light is now falling faster and faster: a thousand years…five thousand year…ten thousand years. Even in those days there were children who liked good things to eat. But they couldn’t yet write letters. Twenty thousand…fifty thousand…and even then people said, as we do, ‘Once upon a time’…

History

…And just so that ‘Once upon a time’ doesn’t keep dragging us back down into that bottomless well, from now on we’ll always shout: ‘Stop! When did that happen?’

And if we also ask, ‘And how exactly did that happen?’ we will be asking about history. Not just a story, but our story, the story that we call the history of the world. Shall we begin?

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More than just imagination

17-Sep-11

Stefan Merrill Block (2011) The Storm at the Door, London: Faber and Faber

Block is clearly a talented writer. This book impressively weaves together two narratives – that of a husband, Frederick, and his wife, Katherine – into a story about loss. The most impressive element is how Block tells a story of loss without allowing the characters to descend into maudlin sentimentality. Frederick is a bright man with a mental illness. Katherine, his wife, comes from a privileged background and struggles to cope with Frederick’s problems. There is certainly a dramatic unravelling of this couple’s story in the end, but Block’s tone in the conclusion does not betray his project of rendering this couple’s life as an everyday struggle to exist, to simply be. Frederick’s story is particularly interesting because most of his story takes place in a mental home where he was staying throughout the 1960s. There is a particular talent Block displays in rendering madness as something coherent, yet elusive – you can understand it, but you’re never sure if you fully grasp it. The way his writing subtly changes tone helps to keep the transitions between Frederick and Katherine’s stories smooth. More…

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Adbay okejay orway ustjay orgotfay otay emoveray esttay ataday? AILFAY eitherway ayway!

05-Aug-11

1. Unsubscribed from a mailing list at uni.

2. Got the confirmation email below.

3. I had a question (see link above).

4. Got this screen.

If you don’t get it, check the URL parameters carefully and then re-read the title of this post…

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Things I use and have used as bookmarks

02-Aug-11

The airport bookmark (aka boarding pass)

The random piece of paper bookmark

The even more random bookmark (aka someone's business card I vaguely remember meeting)

 Other things I have been known to use as bookmarks:

  • The receipt I used to buy the book
  • The library receipt for the book
  • Train tickets (big favourite)
  • Movie tickets (also quite popular)
  • Paper clips (not recommended)
  • Cleaning cloth for my glasses
  • Sticky notes (sounds like a good idea, but really isn’t)
  • Driver’s license
  • Postcards (usually ones that I was supposed to send)
  • Shopping lists (before I got an iPhone)
  • A coin (only once)

I’m sure there have been plenty others – generally speaking, if it’s flat (or close enough) I’ve probably used it as a bookmark. But rarely are they actual bookmarks…

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Is my HTC Desire possessed?

22-Jul-11

I installed ADW.Launcher on my HTC Desire and started to find the touch screen behaving oddly. Sometimes it was not responding, other times it would get the co-ordinates of my touches completely wrong. But, lately, it’s been doing this…

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Why am I starting to regret my decision?

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder and hopefully (but doubtfully) your interest in this site

01-Jun-11

A ‘weak Sydney constitution’, efficacious Top End viruses and a pressing deadline have soaked up most of my mental energy recently. Even more recently I’ve been dragging myself through the lofty heights of the Darwin rental market and have been feeling a little vertiginous. Here’s a quick post about what is likely to be coming up as I come back to Earth…

The 4th anniversary of the NTER is coming up. Because of unrelated land rights issues that have been going on recently I have felt like revisiting the self-determination critique of the NTER. I’m taking Francesca Merlan’s interesting and controversial 2009 piece for Inside Story – More than rights – as my point of departure. It kicked up a lively debate that I wish to recount because it does highlight the internal tension of self-determination – land rights alone do not guarantee respect, but neither does an intervention. My own perspective on this debate is that respect is the wrong measuring stick for the moral grammar of Indigenous politics and I provide some reflections of what the concept of dignity might offer.

As an aspiring academic (depending on which day you catch me) and former IT nerd, I was very interested in the discussions over at Club Troppo on the lack of technological advances in teaching, especially at universities. Nicholas Gruen started the ball rolling with a vignette of his ideas about the problem and possible solutions. This was followed by Ken Parish’s insights as a university teacher who has negotiated the tricky path of adopting new technology to provide more innovative and effective models of teaching. I had started had only just started to discuss my concerns with the diagnoses and responses of both Nicholas and Ken before I was hit by the aforementioned afflictions. I’ve been putting a few ideas together as a fuller critique and response to their useful contributions – I’m more sympathetic to their positions after speaking to them, but I still think that there are shortcomings with their diagnoses of the problems with tertiary education and the potential role that technology can play to redress them whilst elevating the quality of teaching and learning.

But, I can never rest for too long with my feet on the ground. These practical debates don’t offer the thrill of intellectual flights of fancy. And my chosen intellectual flying machine? This critique by George Ritzer of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). Ritzer and Vaidhyanathan seem intent on resurrecting the futile and poisonous Theory Wars of the 1990s. Whilst Ritzer makes the error of equating theory with reality (the web is postmodern, therefore it needs a postmodern theory), Vaidhyanathan appears to be far too dismissive of important critiques. I haven’t read Vaidhyanathan’s book so I can’t engage in any depth with the substance of the debate, but it’s fun to comment on how academic egos operate.

Also, I’ve fallen in love (for the umpteenth time) with Grant Green so I’ll probably be sharing some of my favourite Grant Green tunes.

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The Listening Post #1: Dark and moody jazz

06-May-11

This will be the first of, hopefully, many posts dedicated to providing you with samples of tunes that have currently captured my interest. Like many others, I go through different phases of listening and so I’ve erected the listening post as a way of sharing and archiving these episodes.

I found myself coming across an interesting album by The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, From the Stairwell (2011). It’s pretty abstract, but still quite atmospheric – it would be a good soundtrack to a David Lynch movie. Here’s the eerie ‘White Eyes’:

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Probably because of this acquisition I found myself listening to the moodier and darker jazz in my collection…

Eric Dolphy’s bass clarinet solo interpretation of ‘God Bless this Child’ from Stiockholm Sessions (1961) is absolutely mesmerising:

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It was so long ago now that I can’t remember from whom I got P.E. Hewitt Jazz Ensemble’s Winter Winds (1972).. Mind you, I only added it to iTunes a few months ago. P.E. Hewitt was a teenager when he did most of his work. This track, ‘Il Love Song’ is a hypnotic dream – the piano solo slowly takes you to a trance-like state where soprano Sonia Valldeparas and alto Nina Scheller appear as ghosts and sweep you away to an unfamiliar place deep in your unconscious. I listen to this song and think of the passages from Mikhail Bulgakov’s book where Margarita is flying above Moscow and the USSR on the way to the Devil’s Ball partly lucid, partly in a disbelief, just like a deep reverie.

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Ron Carter is a genius. Something of which I probably need reminding. And this number, ‘Doom’ from Uptown Conversations (1969), is the perfect reminder – it’s a little waltz tune that highlights Carter’s prowess on the double-bass. Hancock’s playing on this tune essentially sets the mood – he creates the persistent and antagonising anticipation of some sort of foreboding behind Carter’s anxious bass.

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Next week, I think I’m going to feature some Grant Green.

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Automated libraries and the loss of serendipity

14-Apr-11

I once read a silly fairy tale, called the Three Princes of Serendip: as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of…

– Henry Walpole, Letter CCXLVI to Sir H. Mann, 1753

Miller (1983) Men & Friendship

My afternoon has had a bright tinge to it since going to the CDU Library at lunch. I went there to pick up a specific book that I had very quickly found through the online catalogue. I drove to CDU, went to the library, found the floor where my book was located and then proceeded to find the aisle where it should be awaiting me. But as I’m scanning each aisle I pause, as is my mostly unthinking habit, and have a look at some titles – anthropology, psych, wait…what’s that? Staring back at me was a curious book with a rather unimaginative, but informative title: Men and Friendship. The concept of friendship occupied my interest for a while and so I flicked through and found a pleasant surprise: a qualitative psychological study of friendship between men from the early 1980s. Arguably this is a time when the organisation of social relationships around gender and sexuality were profoundly changing. And this book seems to track some of these changes through male friendship. Here’s the first paragraph from the Preface:

 

Table of Contents for Miller (1983) Men & Friendship

Most men, particularly if they think about it, if they let themselves feel their personal truth about it, will admit they are disappointed in the friendships with other men. Men may have wives, they may even have women friends, but their relationships with other men, which could be a true echo of their own manhood, are generally characterized by thinness, insincerity, and even chronic wariness. Since most men don’t let themselves think or feel about friendship, this immense collective and personal disappointment is usually concealed, sloughed over, shrugged away.

Put simply, this book appears to contain some insights into the formative years of the transformation of male friendship by modern ideas of intimacy.

Anyway, my excitement about the book has certainly been exaggerated by the recent absence of this kind of serendipity. I often walk into the library at CDU without holding high expectations of what I might find. CDU is mostly a vocational and teaching university, so there is not a great deal of breadth and depth in many areas of the arts and humanities. Even though the collection itself might not be large, wide or deep, it’s there for all to see and browse. This, however, got me thinking about the new library at my own university.

More…

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