Salbjörg Rita Jónsdóttir (Dalla) is an Icelandic photographer. She is a master of the Lensbaby lens. A master. I have followed her work for years, and I feel compelled to share it with you. Enjoy.

Loved the book. Hated the movie :(

Image from an unknown illustrator. Found it via This Little Class Of Mine, and followed it through to Terrible Yellow Eyes, a fantastic collection of artwork inspired by Where The Wild Things Are, but was unable to find the source. Perfectly apt for this moment in time.

Go well Maurice Sendak. You certainly did.
— Oliver Mann

Safari Omnibar by Olivier Poitrey, a combined URL and search field for pre-OS 10.8.

For me, there are two parts to this event, good and bad:

1. Good: iCloud with remove the ability to share files with a download link (iDisk). I used this feature a lot and have been concerned with finding an appropriate replacement. Dropbox’s new feature will be this replacement.
2. Bad: Apple has not yet said iCloud will work on OSX Snow Leopard, so I’ll have to decide between the better of two evils:
• Downgrade Upgrade to OSX Lion, or
• Go without/find and alternative to syncing contacts, calendars, bookmarks, etc across my Macs and iPhone.

Dropbox link sharing is the first solid step towards an alternative to iCloud. I really really don’t want to move to Lion (yet¹), so I hope that Dropbox or another startup is able to workout replacement syncing for Apple’s ecosystem².

;D

Eh?

My first cinemagraph.
Made with Cinemagr.am for iPhone.

My second cinemagraph.
Made with Cinemagr.am for iPhone.

I lost 4–8 in the first round (matches are first to eight games, win by two, tie-break at 8–8), but that’s not the important part. The important part is this tennis tournament was set up, advertised, and organised by local tennis players. There was no club or organisation involved. By players, for players.

This is amazing and inspiring to me.

There is a similar tournament set up by two self-proclaimed tennis ‘fanatics’, called the Community Tennis Open, or CTO. The CTO has a decent website (and a Facebook page) so it’s easy to sign up, see registrations and results, and interact with the organisers.

In addition to a bi-yearly (I think) tournament, they have a quarterly ladder system whereby registered players challenge other registered players for a game at least every two weeks (or you lose a spot on the ladder). It’s all run by SMS and email: the challenges, accepted challenges, match venues, and times of play, are communicated between the players themselves; the results of the matches, disputes, defaults etc are SMSed or emailed to the organisers. Check out the detail in the rules!

The whole thing is based on community, the age-old honesty system, and the simple desire to play tennis regularly.

Can’t wait to get involved.

Remember Ballin’? Well, since the beginning of 2012 I’ve been playing a lot of tennis. This year I’ve taken regular lessons, and I’ve been playing two or three games a week. It takes up much of my time, especially the mornings. Apologies to everyone who’s been waiting on me for design stuff. I still play basketball down at Yonkers, but not every weekend any more.

I’m loving tennis. This tennis ball cover is long overdue. This is one of my actual tennis balls, a Dunlop Fort Elite, number 4.¹

A documentary called American Juggalo from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

I found this 20-minute film fascinating because:

• It’s shot and edited extremely well. The photography is superb, and the editing allows the people to be the focus. There are no special effects to distract.
• The film is honest, due to the above reasons.
• The people in the film are intriguing, funny, scary, creepy, down to earth, drunk, high, and I’m sure some are lost — not in the geographical coordinates sense.
• It’s shot and edited extremely well. This point is worth repeating.

If you’re interested in people, and have 20 minutes to spare, I recommend giving this a watch. It’s embedded here as 600px wide, but I suggest you go to the site and watch the film in a higher resolution.

Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table →

Great example →

Last Friday night, Kelly and I attended the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra‘s tribute to The Beatles.

I thought it was a good performance, but without singing (the orchestra played the vocal lines) the conductor elicited crowd participation on the form of clapping (ok), whistling (borderline), and singing (I didn’t pay to hear people who think they can sing sing). The definite standout for me was Elenor Rigby, simply because it’s one of my favourite Beatles songs, but also because the song itself is all orchestral so it translated perfectly.

The event information called for attendees to dress up for the Beatles era. Living in KL with the group of friends we have, we’re no strangers to dressing up. For this occasion Kelly wore a newly-acquired flower-power-esque dress and boots. I don’t own anything vaguely resembling the 60s/70s, so I wore all black (surprise) but accented my attire with four of my Beatles Yellow Submarine figurines. Yes, I brought them with us to Malaysia! In truth, I’d forgotten I had them until about a year ago when Kelly made the discovery while looking for something else in our unpacked boxes.

I’m a big fan of the Yellow Submarine animated film, more so than The Beatles themselves. My cousins and I watched this in video countless times when we were young. It’s equally colourful, imaginative, and bizarre, and completely wonderful. (I’m sure the directors/animators were munching a steady diet of hallucinogens at the time of production). I don’t doubt this film had some part in steering me towards a graphic design career. If you haven’t seen the film it can be viewed in full on YouTube.

When I grew older, and started earning some money, I found that McFarlane toys had released two series’ of Yellow Submarine figures. Naturally I had to have them. The full set wasn’t hard to put together from eBay, and luckily it didn’t cost an arm or a leg. While I had the figures unpacked and out in the open, I decided to shoot them for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

My set of figures came with a bonus wife. Did you spot her?

Update

In an uncanny coincidence, six days ago the official Beatles website announced a DVD/Blu-Ray version of The Yellow Submarine, in May 2012!

Currently out of print, the film has been restored in 4K digital resolution for the first time by Paul Rutan Jr. and his team of specialists at Triage Motion Picture Services and Eque Inc. Due to the delicate nature of the hand-drawn original artwork, no automated software was used in the digital clean-up of the film’s restored photochemical elements. This was all done by hand, frame by frame.

I don’t have a Blu-Ray player at all, so I will purchase the DVD and download the Blu-Ray rip for playback at home :)

I often still look at the moon, but once in a while I stare at it. And what I see is not “the moon”, but a giant spherical rock floating in the sky, not too far from earth. This might seem normal to you because we all know the moon to be a giant spherical rock floating in the sky not too far from earth (well, maybe not McGauz…), but once in a while I see it for exactly what it is.

And it’s pretty amazing.

I think you should try it. When you’re next in the moon’s presence, look at it and picture it being a heavy floating rock — a physical object — rather than “the moon”. Imagine this physical object being “just over yonder”, almost within an airplane flight’s distance away, say, 8hrs, just to give your perception some sort semi-realistic base.

When I do this, it opens my mind to the realities of the universe because at that time, I see the moon for what it is, and I see “our world” for what it is, a planet. A physical object. Floating in space.

We are at the same time insignificant, and extremely lucky to exist.

Epilogue I

There have been two recent films that are somewhat related to the above; Another Earth, and Melancholia. Both great films.

Epilogue II

If you tried to see what I see as described above but couldn’t “get it”, this video might help you understand what I mean. What typical landscape photographs might look like if the earth had the ring system of Saturn.

Yesterday marked Kelly and my first visit to the recently opened Hampshire Residence games room. The Games room looks more like a carpeted heroin shooting gallery than a games room; it’s rather large, oddly shaped with many mini areas or voids, has one ping pong table, two card tables, two unhung dart boards, no darts, and some left over ice-cream wrappers, but hey, we’ll take what we can get. It’s free!

Kelly and I played some ping pong¹ over Christmas in Australia at my brother-in-law’s house. It was the first time I’d played in my adult life (that I can remember) and I had an absolute blast!

The reason we made our way down to the games room was to test out the new paddles I’d purchased for us:

Along with the professional paddles² which set us back a whopping $15 each (!!!), I thought we could do with some covers to protect our new investments. I was with Mrs J at the time and she thought these covers looked particularly “porno”. I agreed, so bought Kelly a red one, and myself a black. Chur.

The reason we purchased some ping pong paddles was because we had challenged T-Jizzlé and Mrs J to a doubles duel of pong. In fact, it was to be the inaugural Hampshire Residences Tower A (A-Team) vs Tower B (B-Team) Mixed Doubles Open.

We knew B-team had played pong before, but not enough to warant the following score:

0–5
That’s 0 to 5 sets of first-to-21-points, not 0 to 5 points.

A-Team needs some practice.

In recent years, the larger tournaments use the electronic Hawk-Eye system, where a player can challenge a call from a lines-person if they believe a wrong call was made. I’m generally in favour of Hawk-Eye because the ball moves so quickly nowadays that wrong calls are going to happen. A blink at the wrong moment is enough to skew one’s view of the ball’s bounce.

What I’m not in favour of is the camera operator’s focusing on the lines-man or -woman during the few seconds tense seconds of animation which shows whether the ball was actually in or out. I feel this selective camera focusing is unfair to the lines-person. There’s no need to embarrass them by placing them on the big screen, especially when the ball clips the outside of the line by a millimetre or less. In important points, I feel even worse for them. I haven’t heard boos from the crowd yet, but I can sense them around the corner.

(Image by James Mellor)

The lines-people are providing an essential service of the modern tennis tournament. They work together with the rest of the volunteers, ball bays/girls, umpires etc. They should be anonymous. The lines-people aren’t to blame, the system is. They do a hell of a job to keep focused for so long on the fleeting-est of moments, on a line a couple inches wide. I try to watch the ball when I play; sometimes I’m a mere few feet away from where the ball bounces and I still can’t call it, and my opponents and I are hardly at a level resembling professional.

===

As an aside, the BNP Paribas Open is the only tournament I’ve watched where they have audio advertising — and presumably video ads via the big screens — in between end changes. The Malaysian Open just had music, and I think the Aussie Open did as well (although I’m not 100% sure about the Aussie Open).

The BNP Paribas Open is in the US. Is this a coincidence? It’s a smaller tournament than the Aussie Open, so they might need the advertising revenue, but it’s one of the larger smaller tournaments. The Malaysian Open certainly ain’t big…

Yes, that’s me in a home-made helicopter costume (yes, you can click for a larger version). Yes, that’s Joel next to me (the guy who printed the teeny stickers for these babies).

Yes, of course, it was a dress up party. No, the theme was not look like an idiot (the theme was “what did you want to be when you grew up”. According to my parents, apparently, a helicopter). Yes, we all had fun.

No, you’re not hallucinating because, yes, there’s a young girl flexing her bicep in the background. Yes, K40 represents Kaz’s 40th birthday. Yes, Kaz is Joel’s wife.

Yes, everyone was impressed (especially the super-strong 11 year old girl in the background, and even more so her younger brother). Yes, everyone thought I had too much time on my hands).

Yes, I deliberately decided on wheels instead of skirting bars for landing gear. No, the costume didn’t stay 100% intact during the party, and even less so when the taxi driver squashed into the taxi on the way home.

Yes, the propeller on my head rotated.

In the process of ordering parts for the setup up my new Mac Pro, I knew I’d have a surplus of old SATA hard drives. I already had a few extra hard drives in the not-so-cavernous variety lying around, and with all new 3TB drives on order to replace my then current drives, I’d knew I’d have a few more.

So I bought myself a Voyager Q.

The Voyager Q is like a toaster for your extra hard drives. You pop in a naked drive — 2.5″ or 3.5″ — and it shows up as an external drive on your system. This is perfect for archiving your data, something I used to do with DVD media. The great thing now is I can fill the drive/s up with stuff on the DVDs to have a quickly accessible archive should I need it. I have everything catalogued with (the now defunct) Media Catalog for easy reference.

One 500GB drive holds all of my freelance design work, reaching back to 2003 (!!!), as well as all the layered PSD files of my photographic artwork to date, all of the music, advertising, admin from when I was in the band Subnormal, all of my design resources like stock imagery and vector files — and it still has space left for the future!

I have other drives with backups of my music, operating system, and movies and TV Shows. All of my data is now duplicated and easily accessible, and those otherwise abandoned hard drives are saved from landfill and put back into service.

I can’t remember the last time I was so eager for a new album release. Meshuggah’s Koloss is due on the 27th March, and I can’t wait. This SoundCloud taster is incredible!

I’ve changed the cover of the site to reflect my anticipation. The image is of Jens Kidman standing over the stage monitors, shot by Mikko, borrowed by me (with permission).

Update

Why does the pre-release album cost $8.99 in the US iTunes store, and $16.99 in the Aussie iTunes store? Just like that comic strip so perfectly shows: we want to pay for stuff, why do you make us angry?

BTW, I buy my music from bandcamp over iTunes if I can — the artist gets more money (I think).

In anticipation of the new album by Meshuggah, Koloss.
Image by Mikko, borrowed with permission.

Last week I spent most of my waking hours at the BMW Malaysian Open women’s tennis tournament. It was the first professional tennis tournament I’ve attended. With my borderline-feverish enthusiasm for the game of tennis over the last 6–9 months, it’s not an understatement to say I was flippin’ excited.

The Monday morning tennis group had been talking up the event for several weeks beforehand, especially telling me how ‘close’ I’d get to the players. I thought this was a bit weird; why would it matter how close I’d be to the players? I mean, if I was 10 metres away or 30 meters away I didn’t care. As long as I had a decent view I would be there to enjoy the top-level tennis playing.

As it turns out, I was happy to be in close proximity to some live professional tennis, but you’d not believe how close the players were! *insert squee* They were, depending on where you sat and where they were on the court at the time, within three metres of my eyeballs.

And the price to pay for this proximity to top players? FREE for the first three days, with a season pass (for the following four days of the tournament) coming in at a whopping RM150, or A$46.50. Not too shabby.

If you have little time to be reading about some dude crapping on about a tennis tournament no one’s heard of I’ll give you the synopsis of this post: it was great, and if you’re in KL at the time of the BMW Malaysian Open, it’s well worth a look-see.

(As an aside, I had actually played on these courts before with the afore-mentioned Monday morning tennis group. The courts are part of the Bukit Kiara Equestrian Club, where some of the ladies have memberships.
It was quite impressive to see what I knew to be a standard — albeit well-maintained — hard court, turned into a playing area worthy of the title Centre Court).

Story

Those who follow me on Instagram or are lucky enough to know me on Path¹ will have seen many of these photos and videos before, but without much context. Now, for the first time ever, a world-exclusive even, they appear alongside some explanatory text. As a bonus, they’ll be in chronological order so you can get a sort of play-by-play of the event. By the end of this post you might even feel like you were actually there!

Here we go…

The big ticket players for the 2012 edition of the Malaysian Open were Venus Williams and Marion Bartoli. These are the bigwigs organisers needed to play at the event to ensure people actually went along to watch. (I heard stories that in previous years they were literally asking people to bring friends and giving away season passes just so the 1600-seat centre court looked half-full).

However both players pulled out at short notice.

In an impressive feat, they brought in some new blood: Agnieszka Radwańska (current world #5), and everyone’s favourite Jelena Janković (former world #1). Again, not too shabby. (I’m sure the organisers had to pay an appearance fee for the privilege of having some big names on the bill at the last minute).

Radwańska was announced to appear literally a couple of days before the event kicked off, and being a fellow country-woman, I was extra excited!

So I made a hat :), downloaded the ATP/WTA app, and was ready to rock.

Day one²

Not many people on the first day, and even fewer wearing a giant conical straw hat with bright red letters running across it.

After trying several seat positions, I concluded the end of the court was the best view, despite my initial intentions of seeing a pro tennis game from a vantage point I’d not seen before. I had read a great piece by the late David Foster Wallace³ where he details the speed at which pro tennis players hit the ball, and how TV viewers lose a lot in the foreshortening of the court angle shown on TV. While I was keen to experience what Foster Wallace described — and to be sure, the speed the ball travels is impressive (I can only imagine what the men hit like) — I found seeing the angles the players made on court and the amount of (or lack of) ball clearance above the net to be more interesting.

I saw Jelena Jankovic play the feisty French (young) woman Caroline Garcia. The match went three sets and into a tie-breaker. Unfortunately Garcia lost, which disappointed me because she played so aggressively against a former #1 with less experience and less body mass. Fortunately for the organisers, Janković won, and the event would not be plagued by a giant upset so early in the tournament. The draw card was still in place.

So, all was well at Bukit Kiara; I was enjoying some top-level tennis, and I was free of crowds.

Then the rain came… And it would not be the only day it did. Radwańska’s first match, against Akgul Amanmuradova, was to be played the following day.

Also watched on this day: The Greek Eleni Daniilidou (two ‘i’s'!) defeated the Indian favourite Sania Mirza (cool surname, and pictured on the right of the full court image above). I didn’t know Mirza (or Daniilidou for that matter), but the collective groans and sighs from the local (Malaysian-Indian) spectators certainly did.

Day two

On the first day I wore a red t-shirt to show support for Radwańska from Poland. Of course after sitting in the KL sun, humidity, and eventually rain for a good eight hours, I could not wear it on day two. So I popped on down to my local haberdashery store to see what I could find to continue my support.

A couple lengths of red and white ribbon would do the trick to create a Polish flag I could wear upon my chest. My sewing skills are diabolical at best, but Kelly gave my handiwork the thumbs up and we agreed it was the minimum I needed to do for a successful day’s supporting.

I arrived at the event in the early afternoon wanting to catch Radwańska and her rain-delayed match from the day before. Instead of this, I was greeted by the giant TV at the entry gate broadcasting pictures of the players being escorted off the court due to another rain delay. But I was optimistic; I had a backpack full of cold water, nuts, a sandwich and some apples so I was in for the long haul.

I waited. And waited. And waited for the rain to subside. During the delay I managed to make a few friends due to my (over)-supportive Radwańska-flavoured straw hat. Which was good, ‘cos it rained for the rest of the day. It did stop occasionally and hold of long enough for the ball boys/girls to fully dry the court — and even once for the players to return to the court and complete a second warm-up — before starting again.

I waited around for long enough to decide things weren’t getting any better before I left for the day. A quick check of the tennis app when I arrived home confirmed all matches were postponed until the next day.

This sort of constant rain is not typical KL weather. It usually rains hard for an hour or so in the afternoon, then the sun comes back out. I was frustrated at the rain, as I’m sure the players were. I can only imagine what the organisers were thinking…

Day three

(This is the view opposite the car park, click to large version)

The weather on day three was much better. The sun was shining and I know I’d get to see Radwańska play the she (sort of) started way back on Tuesday (two days ago).

This was the first non-free entry day. I arrived at 11:30am to buy my season pass and watch the first match scheduled at midday. To my dismay (but not to my surprise) the ticketing booth was not set up yet! I impatiently waited until 15 minutes before start time to get over there and put some pressure on. One of the ticketing guys told me not to worry because play began at 1pm, to which I replied with a quick website load on my iPhone showing the playing times for the day. This prompted a hurrying-up of my ticket purchase and an ushering through the entry gate and a hasty stamping of my pass-out onto my wrist.

Great. It was hot and humid, and I was sweating, so the stamp lasted all of five minutes. (Upon returning from a trip to the car, I concluded that any faint black smudge of ink would get someone into the event. Though it probably helps if you’re wearing the biggest and most conspicuous hat the event had ever witnessed).

I took my seat at the far end just as Radwańska was warming up with her tall, dark-skinned⁴ coach. I thought it was a bit weird — where was her opponent? Maybe she had a quick toilet break? I didn’t know, but I sat myself down to enjoy watching Radwańska practise the typical warm-up stuff, consisting of:

1. A minute or so of baseline rallying, forehands and backhands
2. One player comes into the net to hit some volleys, usually 5–10, with a volley hit into the corner to signal the opponent to move to the next step
3. Some lobs hit by the opponent and smashes by the previous volleyer, usually 3-5, with the last being put away into the corner
4. Then it’s the same for the opposite player, repeating steps 2 and 3
5. Finally a couple of minutes of serving warm-ups before ‘time’ is called my the umpire

I found the order of things fascinating, and wondered whether it was a sort of unwritten code or whether it’s stipulated somewhere in the rules of professional tennis tournaments. I’m guessing the former.

So, Radwańska was still hitting with her coach when ‘time’ was called by the umpire. And the realisation hit me, the coach was not a coach, but the opponent! Holy crap! Akgul Amanmuradova is almost two metres tall and built like a brick slautherhouse! She was wearing shorts, (not a skirt), no colours (black and whites only), and had a serious-looking, and dare I say ‘manly’, ankle brace. In short, I mistook her for a man! (and unfortunately I’m not the only one).

Radwańska came through pretty easily with a 6-2, 6-4 win.

Next I watched Australia’s Olivia Rogowska defeat (currently) Australian Jelena Dokić in a hard-fought, nail-biting, tie-broken 3-6, 7-4, 7-6 upset. The upset wasn’t mine actually (I have a thing about rooting for the underdog in almost all sports, so I was happy with this result.)

After some lunch and a seating change, I watched Radwańska play her second match of the day, defeating qualifier Karolína Plíšková of the Czech Rtepublic, 6-4, 6-4. My seating change was strategic, and its aim was to get close to the exit of the court to try and Radwańska to sign my embarrassingly dorky hat. (I’m not one to get autographs usually, but my mum put me up to it this time).

And sign she did. Even after my crappy Polish language skills where I said “Agnieszka, sign please!” versus my rehearsed “Agnieszka, may I have your signature, please?” And to top it all off, I accidentally left my sunglasses on. And I knew it as soon as she looked at for my eyes to make eye contact. How rude of me. Agnieszka, if you’re reading this (and why wouldn’t you be?), I sincerely apologise.

I’d seen some good matches by this time. Even though Janković was up later I decided to head home because she had annoyed me two nights before before by taking. her. sweet. flippin. time. between. points, and it was clouding over again.

As soon as I hit the road good friend Dr. House (seen in yellow in the photo on this page called wanting to know if I was still at the tennis. I wasn’t, but the idea of having the company of a real friend as opposed to some small-talking tennis-goers, as well as the realisation I might not get to see some of these big-ticket players again if they were knocked out of the tournament, forced me to turn around and head back to the venue for the last match.

Day four

It was friday and it wasn’t good: Radwańska pulled out of the tournament with a shoulder/elbow injury (Chinese Taipei’s Su-Wei Hsieh skipping through to the semi-finals), and the rain was back.

Dean came down to keep me company (and to hopefully watch some tennis) and Dr. House once again made her way down once the heavens looked like they might be nice for a change.

But they weren’t. After a little bit of tennis, Claire arrived to a downpour. Attempting to keep dry — at least on the outside — we headed to the mini beer garden (it was Friday after all). We sat. After two beers and two tricks performed by a mime, we left.

Yes, a mime.

Day five (semi finals)

Saturday started early to make some headway into the pile of delayed matches that had been stacking up.

Since Radwańska was out, I needed a new focus. Scouring the late-to-post-online schedule for this day, I saw that Olivia Rogowska and the doubles team of Casey Dellacqua and Jarmila Gajdošová were all playing the same day, all representing Australia. (two representing Melbourne! Respect). I replaced my ghetto-ribboned t-shirt with my Australian soccer football jersey, but decided to keep my hat. If the sun was out, I’d be needing it. Besides, people had come to know me in the hat, even requesting photographs of me because of it (and sometimes because of my blonde-ish hair and blue eyes).

Unfortunately, Eleni Daniilidou defeated Olivia Rogowska in the quarter-final, and the Aussie doubles pair was defeated by the Chinese Taipei pair in the semi-final. Dang.

As a result of so much rain in one week (did I mention KL doesn’t usually roll like this?), Daniilidou came back out after a ‘suitable rest’ to play her semi-final on the same day as her quarter-final. I was actually quite excited and had fingers crossed she’d come through to defeat Su-Wei Hsieh because her opponent had skipped through her match with Radwańska (did I mention I lie to root for the underdog?).

But she didn’t make it. She began to cramp up (not my expert diagnosis; I’m not a doctor) and sought medical attention to no avail. She came back to finish the match despite not running for any balls, handing Hsieh a ticket into the final. I was quite disappointed in this result as the Greek surely would’ve beaten Hsieh if she had been properly rested (assuming of course her injury was related to playing earlier in the day). Daniilidou was visibly upset as she left the court, but the crowd acknowledged her efforts with loud applause.

The second semi-final between Jelena Janković and Petra Martic was delayed.
Can you guess why?

Day Six (semi-final and final)

On the final day of the tournament I decided to skip the earlier matches (singles semi-final and doubles final) to spend some time looking after Kelly who was feeling poorly.

The semi-final between Janković and Martić was (apparently) a cracker! Three sets, weighing in at over three hours, with tie-breaker in the first and third sets. The third-set tie-breaker, i.e., the match-decider ran to a nail-biting 7-5 with Martić knocking out the former world #1 and all-tournament crowd-favourite Janković! As much as I love my wife, I regret not going to see this match. (Sorry Kelly).

The doubles final happened. Dunno who won.
(Apologies to the world of doubles tennis).

Kelly and I made it to the final. We had to park a loooooong way from the entrance but made it to the court with enough time to find our friends, out seats, and Martić and Hsieh warming up. The astute among you would’ve realised that Martić was on court for a second time, and I hoped she would not befall a fate like Daniilidou did the night before.

But she did. Looked like cramps again too (did I mention I’m not a doctor?). Unfortunate for Martić, but incredibly fortunate for Su-Wei Hsieh who had now won the BMW Malaysian Open for 2012.

I believe the rain delays throughout the entire week and scorching sun on the final day contributed significantly to Hsieh’s title.

Credit to the winner and all that, but it’s impossible to deny the luck she had in gaining her first WTA singles title⁵. Hsieh had dodged Radwańska’s bullet in the quarter-final, faced a hindered Daniilidou in her second match of the day in the semi-final, and played a final with an opponent who had experienced several hours of highly-competitive world-class tennis in full middle-of-the-day sun only three hours earlier.

But you can’t control the weather, right?
Well, you can’t, but perhaps Su Wei Hsieh can…

Epilogue

I enjoyed live tennis. A lot. Maybe more than a reasonable man should’ve. Admittedly the initial puppy-dog-wee-excitement dissipated somewhat once I’d figured out how everything works, but watching the tennis itself was fantastic and inspirational.

And we have with a new wall hanging from the experience :)

The men’s competition happens later in the year. Hopefully we’re still in KL to see it.

Gmail updates its webpage loading bar from a 90s-era Windows-esque design to something worthy of the naughties. A simple change but a welcome one.

Another thing I thought about was winning.

Obviously, this was a competitive tournament, with prize money and WTA points up for grabs. Rankings could change upon winning. So, everyone wants to win. But I philosophised that while winning seemed to be the objective of the players, in reality it is, or should be, the result of playing well. By playing well I mean executing your shots as intended, as much as possible.

This sort of seems obvious, but consider this pair of hypotheticals:

1. A player plays reasonably well against lesser opponents. He/she doesn’t need to play their best tennis to win the tournament. They win.
2. A player plays very well against equal and better opponents. He/she needs to play their absolute best tennis to have a chance at winning the tournament, and they do so. They make it to the final but lose to a better opponent with more experience/skill/fitness etc.

Putting the amount of prize-money aside¹, which player would be more satisfied?
Which player would be happier?

I’d bet the second player would be happier. And I think this scenario can be applied to many things in life’s every day dealings. Play hard and well. You will be the happier for it. Winning is a nice bi-product.

This is a special gift given to me by Laura — Not the person, but the band — for my efforts on designing their most recent album cover.

Laura, Twelve Hundred Times. Recommended listening.

Album review on The AU Review.
Album review on musicfeeds.com.au.
Album review on Prog Archives.
Album review on Life Music Media.
Album review on gruodas.net.
Album review on Faster Louder.
Album review on The Dwarf.
Album review on Life Music Media.

Listen/buy on Bandcamp.
Listen/buy on iTunes.

I’m not usually absent-mindedly patriotic, but HOLY CRAP! Agnieszka Radwanska¹ has been added to the BMW Malaysian Open roster!  (Venus Williams and Jelena Dokic Marion Bartoli can’t make it — jam lah).

So, I’m lobbin’ to the event like a mofo (see what I did there?).
Anyone in need of design work over the next week will need to wait, sorry.

(How I wish I’d've bought a Polish soccer jersey a couple years ago… :(

Essential words to look for during your next Malaysian KitKat craving.

Since I’ve been using my new Mac Pro, I’ve had the “iTunes Artwork” screensaver running. There are two things about this that are great:

The first is my monitor stays on for longer, which means I don’t need to wait for it to warm up — and display calibrated colours — after a typical pause in working, like a lunch break. The screensaver starts after 15 minutes, and the screen shuts off after an hour.

The second, and more profound, is I get an epic reminder of the decades¹ of music my wife and I have stored within iTunes. Much of this music I have forgotten about, and thus, never listen to. (There are some albums that belong in the ‘never spin again’ pile to be sure, but the vast majority doesn’t).

The iTunes Artwork screensaver sort of punches my nostalgia in the face, and once it falls down proceeds to repeatedly kick it in the head, teeth, eyes, ears, and neck. It then scours the nearby trash cans for any broken bottles, but gives up when it realises my nostalgia has drunkenly got to it’s feet and escaped into the night.

And it’s awesome.

Upon returning from a break, I get a sampling of at least 35 unique album covers from my collection, with one changing every four seconds. It’s pretty random, which is exactly what I love about it. I look at this sampling, and sometimes I spy a ralbum² I haven’t heard in a long time and give it a spin. Glee ensues.

If you’re rolling Mac-style and have your music stored in iTunes, and find screensavers useful, I recommend setting yours to ‘iTunes Artwork’, running at four seconds.

Update

I’m now using an exposé hot corner (bottom-right, far away from any accidental triggering) to turn the screensaver on as a music suggester. When I come to do some work, and not sure what to listen to, whip into the bottom-right corner and take my pick.

I wish there was some sort of trial period for apps. Maybe there could be a system where if you somehow ‘return’ the app within, say, 48 hours, you get a refund. By return I mean there’s some sort of prompt that acknowledges you’re deleting an app within 48 hours of first installing, and let’s you know a refund is available. This could even be optional, i.e. the developer decides whether to provide a refund or not.

I still think it’s good, and it looks like I’m not the only one.

In Gruber’s short link to Phill Ryu’s recent piece on scammy apps in the App Store (scroll down to read), he mentions the same idea:

Phill Ryu has a good set of suggestions for how Apple should address this. Being able to get a refund within a short window after first installing the app, for example.

Which makes me feel, for a second or two, that I was ahead of the whole internet by 487 days (according to Siri).

UPDATE: it’s 497 days; 12th not 22nd October 2010.

!!!

:D

…

:P

(Yes, I realise I wouldn’t be the only one who’s had this idea, but one can dream :)

It’s been a while coming, but remember Malaysian race day?
Well, this is what apparently happened afterwards. (Tap for the large version).

The drunken, mischievous cast of this photographic production, clockwise from bottom:

• Jonathan
• Mags
• Tori
• T-Jizzle
• Kelly
• G-Bizzle (yes, that G-Bizzle…)
• Anna (aka Carrots, aka Mrs. Johnston, aka A-Jizzle)
• Chrissy
• Dr, House (aka “Claire”)
• Anne-Marie
• Gavin
• Colin
• Joel
• Me

Thanks to — I presume — the bar staff for taking this photo, and thanks to Tori for letting me show it to the world.

(I don’t remember this photo being taken).

Second wedding anniversary! We made it, only 98+ to go :)
Thank you Kelly, for another wonderful year.

I’m selling my trusty Mac Pro.

I’ve had many years of exceptional and hassle-free computing from it. The majority of use has been in design and photography, with some audio and video work as well. It has never let me down. This Mac has many more years to give to a new owner.

Gallery

Specs

Here are the details (the full geek-tastic details available at apple-history.com)

• Mac Pro 1,1
• 2x 2.66Ghz Intel Xeon Quad Core ‘Clovertown’ CPUs
• 16GB RAM (with lifetime replacement warranty)
• 512Mb ATI Radeon X1900 Dual-DVI Graphics card
• 1x 320GB Hard Drive
• 2x 400GB Hard Drives (more than 1.1 Terabytes total storage)
• 2x Superdrives (DVD+CD burners — copy one disc directly to another!)
• Ports: 5x USB, 2x Ethernet, 2x Firewire 400, 2x Firewire 800, Optical in/out, Audio in/out
• New slimline Apple keyboard
• 2x Mighty Mice
• Built-in WiFi
• Built-in Bluetooth

You’ll notice the specs are much more impressive now than when this Mac was originally released because I’ve upgraded much of it to make it as beefy as possible:

• Upgraded from 2x dual-core CPUs to 2x quad-core CPUs. This make 8 cores and essentially doubles the original computing power! I wrote in detail about that process here. (This is an unsupported upgrade, but it’s been rock-solid and working flawlessly since I did it :)
• Upgraded from 2GB to a massive 16GB RAM! All my RAM modules are from OWC in the USA, and have a lifetime replacement warranty!
• Upgraded the stock 256Mb graphics card to the Radeon x1900 5212Mb card
• Upgraded from the stock superdrive to 2x Pioneer superdives
• Upgraded from 1x 250 GB hard drive to 3x hard drives totalling more than a terabyte
• Added internal WiFi and Bluetooth

In short, I’ve made this into a beastly Mac.

Extras

I’m throwing in the following which didn’t come with the original machine:

• A second Apple Might Mouse
• Two Apple USB extender cables
• A clean installation of OSX Snow Leopard (10.6.8) on the machine. The Mac came with an older version of the operating system (original discs supplied)
• A new slimline Apple aluminium keyboard

Price

The price is A$1400 or RM4500

Condition

This Mac is in almost-perfect condition, I’d say 9/10. There are a couple of small scratches on the one side of the case, and there is dust in some hard-to-reach places. I cleaned everything thoroughly when I took the Mac apart to swap out the CPUs a year ago.

Is this Mac for you?

This is a perfect Mac for a photographer or graphic/digital designer, and even a video designer with a some minor upgrades like a newer graphics card and more storage (there is still one hard drive bay empty). The 16GB RAM will ensure your graphics apps are running fast and smooth.

Chances are, if you’ve read this far you know what you want and are probably the right person for this Mac. If you know your way around computer hardware, this Mac will last many more years.

Spread the word

Please forward this page onto anyone you think might be interested, or contact me directly with any questions, or to arrange an inspection.

KL buyers only!

Due to the size of this Mac, I can only sell to someone in KL as it’s too big to post, and I no longer have the original box. It’s best you pick-up so you can inspect it in person and see it working before you purchase. This Mac comes with a Malaysian power plug.

I compute. I goat.

Update

Cam Hines, co-founder and owner of Mountain Goat Brewery, had this to say via email:

Nice!