My Top Ten Numbers

Counting down in reverse order, here are my favourite single digit numbers.

10. In last spot is number seven. I've disliked odd numbers since primary school, and seven was the worst of the worst. Is there a repressed bad memory that hypnotherapy can reveal? Was I humiliated by failing my seven times table? Or did I impale myself on a spiky number seven wooden block?


9. One bores me. It looks like a plain twig, 


8. Nine sounds like the German word for "no" so has negative connotations for me. 


7. Four is too common. It's a square number, predictable and uninteresting. 


6. Three sounds pleasant when said but the actual number makes me think of the lamest party ever. 


5. Two is neat and romantic but more importantly is the number of Twix's in a packet. 


4. Six is special. It sounds jazzy, like a sax, and sexy, and is underrated like socks.


3. Five - I forgive its oddness because it's half of ten, a crucial number in the decimal system. The word is short and snappy and decisive. High five !


2. Zero. It reminds me of Coke, and it looks like a doughnut. Mmmmmm.

And my favourite:


1. Eight. The spelling is unusual and the shape is pleasing and curvy.

Replacement Workers

My automaton hard at work this morning

Is it legal to replace yourself with an automaton? Working from home, you're given some routine tasks to get through such as proofreading a report, or writing a summary of a lengthy dissertation. You're smart enough to write programs that can automate these jobs with such accuracy that its quality is indistinguishable from yours. Would it be immoral to claim your salary for doing this work while you're in fact heliskiing in the New Zealand alps?

There weren't any clauses mentioning automatons in my work contract, so I suspect it's fine.

Let's Regroup

My favourite sporting cliché is "He needs to regroup". I can imagine this phrase making sense when applied to a ramshackle soccer team, or a poorly organised basketball team, but how exactly can one person regroup? Can someone disassemble and reconfigure Transformer-style into a more useful shape? Perhaps for soccer, one of the arms can become a third leg?

Living in the Past

When you've been around for a few decades, it's tempting to spend time caught up in nostalgia, continuing to listen to the classic pop tunes you grew up with, reflecting on good times at school or university, reliving your youth. But don't overdo it. Most of your time should be spend in the present or looking forwards, else you'll bump into something.

If you spend too much time in the past, you're not allowing enough time for living. Below is an illustration of someone's day: they awaken and listen to a few hours of a 1970s breakfast radio show and throughout the day find other ways to avoid being in the present.

Kicking for Gaol

An unknown player kicks a goal for Freo. A rare sight indeed.

The low grey cloud in the foreground is in fact a stray sheep. No, it's a guy with a fluffy toupee, obscuring my view.

Making a Tark

This is Matthew Pavlich taking a mark in front of me at the Freo v. Essendon game tonight.

Coincidentally the guy to my right was also snapping away with an Olympus Pen-EPL1.

Blurry Fungus

Seen in my front garden a few days ago. It was in an awkward spot, underneath a bush and beside a fence, and it was very tricky manually focusing correctly.

Illustrated Dramatic Tension

This shows graphically the change in dramatic tension inherent in a standard murder mystery story.

The first spike occurs when the body is discovered. Then interest dwindles until a minor hiccup as the culprit is unmarked. Meh.

Crime Stories aren't Thrilling

I have a problem with the genre of crime fiction, be it movies, novels or tv series. The modern detective story follows a formula that starts with a warm body and ends with a culprit being identified. In between are introductions of suspects, red herrings, cul de sacs, maybe some flashbacks and some further murders. But the underlying problem is a lack of tension. The victim is already dead, and you know that no matter how close the detective or investigator gets to the murderer, they're going to be fine. Even if the protagonist seems to be in jeopardy, the necessity of hiding the identity of the murderer from the audience tends to limit the amount of tension there can be.  The writer deliberately conceals the inner thoughts of the culprit, and only hints at their psychology and motivations until the denouement.

Compare this with a thriller in which a protagonst finds themselves caught up in a dangerous and uncertain situation. This has greater potential for dramatic tension and more potential for the audience to be captivated.

Hopefully the world's scriptwriters read this blog and learn from it.

Late Sunshine

Tonight's weather forecast from Weatherzone provides a welcome treat. After the 5:18pm sunset, the evening will be mostly sunny. Clearly NASA's space mirrors have been moved into place and will be illuminating us later today.

Psychological Thought of the Day

Irritability is contagious. Some people can absorb its spikiness in the same way that a thick mattress can envelop a cactus. But if the thorns are long enough, they'll get through.

Taking Notes

Enliven a meeting by taking photos as you take minutes.

Mobile Party Ball

A party in a pocket. Encased in bouncy plastic are LED lights and gold glitter floating in a gooey liquid. When bounced this modern version of a disco ball comes to life, strobing different colours, reflected randomly by the glitter. Bounce it around a darkened house and add music and it's magical. My best birthday present ever.

Captivating Audiences

The opening scenes of a film are often the best. Even dire movies can start with promise, with an extended action sequence à la James Bond or a range of potentially interesting characters being introduced one by one. In a mystery or a thriller, you're enveloped in an intriguing situation that could lead anywhere.

Take an M Knight Shyamalan movie with an intriguing premise such as The Village, where a township in an earlier century is terrorised by monsters of the forest. But as the storyline settles into a recognisable pattern and then approaches a conclusion, the magic of the film often dissipates: a mystery is solved in a convoluted and contrived way; star-crossed lovers reunite, a western heads towards the inevitable showdown or the M Knight Shyamalan movie is explained by a monumental twist that was never hinted at in the previous two hours.

My idea is to prolong the start of the movie, and compress the rest. Leave a mystery unresolved and ambiguous; leave the lovers in a state of limbo, uncertain of their future together; keep introducing new characters till the very end; finish a war movie mid-battle. The audience will never see the end coming, so they'll be captivated all the way until the very last moment as the end titles roll without resolution to the story. They'll feel shortchanged and unsatisfied as they leave the cinema but thinking back rationally, they'll be pleased to have had an enjoyable few hours with their brain full occupied trying to see how the story will come together.

Winter Storm Excitement

With the gusty winds in today's storm wreaking havoc across hundreds of kilometres. I was barely affected. But there was minor excitement as the pot plants blew over at lunchtime, and later the outside gas water heater's pilot light blew out, and refuses to reignite. So I'm living without hot water. Should this crisis continue much longer, odour levels in the household will reach critical levels as I refuse to shower in cold water.

Best of all, as I drove along my street in the midst of the storm, power lines were arcing as they touched each other. 

Blurry Loon

A striking moonrise last night was nearly captured by your intrepid photographer. But sadly, in between discovering the pretty sight and starting snapping was a prolonged interlude of frantic running around the house searching cupboards for my well-hidden tripod. Once it was found it took another couple of minutes extending the telescopic legs and screwing on the camera to the base-plate, and by then the heavy clouds had all but hidden the moon from view.

Some Random Building Near Flowers

My camera made a rare outing away from it's hidey hole a few days ago, and was ecstatic to come across this pretty scene. I'd rate this photo as Postcard Quality, which is slightly below Calendar Quality, but way above Regular Happy Snap Quality.

How to Appear Evil...

...grow a goatee.

It seems that the upside-down triangle shape of a pointy goatee beard instinctively causes anxiety in people, seemingly due to its similarity to an angry expression. For absolute proof, please stare at Evil Spock for a moment. Reference

Walk Faster or Perish

People who walk faster tend to live longer.

Jama article
This chart shows how many more years you can expect to live given your walking speed. for instance a 65 year old walking at 0.2 metres per second might reach 72, but someone walking at 1.6 metres per second would on average reach 97.

This is a serious peer-reviewed study, unlike most of the pseudoscience I come up with !

Walking to the Left

Queuing to pay for in a small petrol station this morning, I was conscious of allowing room for the people ahead of me to get out. And the knowledge of right-leg dominance helped me. Because most of the population have a right leg stronger and more coordinated than the left, they tend to use it more and start moving with it. So they more commonly turn to the left, and if left in the wilderness without navigation aids, will usually end up walking in counterclockwise circles.

So when you're standing behind someone, move slightly to the right so that when they turn to the left they can get past.

A Good Irritant

Are any irritants good? Please discuss.

Irritants have a terrible image. You're probably already imagining a grain of dirt stuck in your eye, causing misery, or a dusty room triggering sneezing. Or perhaps an annoying person always interrupting you with inane comments. But theoretically, an irritant could be welcome in certain situations which I will try to describe as soon as I contrive them.

Decapturing the Moment

Attending a talk by renowned postmodern photographer Jeff Wall yesterday, I was astonished to hear him explain his philosophy. In contrast to every other photographer, he deliberately leaves his camera at home, and lets interesting visual moments pass by, uncaptured. Then in his own time, distanced from the original event and place he will reconstruct his impression of the essence of the scene. Much as I admire his work, I can't help but wonder whether the conventional approach would work just as well. Given that his audience aren't privy to the workings of his mind, when we see one of his photos we can't be sure if we're looking at an impromptu scene, chanced upon by the photographer, or something elaborately constructed.

Check out this marvellous creation for an example of his work.

Inactive Brains

When you're immersed in an experience, fully absorbed in a stimulating conversation, or in the middle of a game of squash, or waiting at the lights for a green signal, or nearing the denouement of a rivetting thriller or a thrilling rivet, your consciousness is completely occupied with the current situation and time passes quickly. But what if most of your time is so undemanding of your intellect that your brain is merely ticking over? I mention this after visiting the WA Art Gallery today, wondering how the guards looking after deserted galleries stayed alert after countless dreary hours of pacing up and down the brightly lit white rooms. So undemanding was their work that their mental requirement was virtually zero - the autonomic
nervous system was needed to regulate breathing and to maintain balance while walking but higher functions could be suspended. Do guards enter a trancelike state, or do they use their spare mental capacity to daydream? Either way, the tedium seems excruciating to me. I'm thankful that I have diverse methods to occupy myself, whether at home or at work, so I'm rarely left alone with only my brain for amusement.

Portion Sizes

Another aspect of the value for money and portion size debate is the ability to reach the dessert course. Touring the US last year, I only ever got there once in dozens of attempts. The outrageously oversized entrees and mains at reasonable prices completely filled me and put paid to my sweet ambitions. This applied not only to typical American diners and cafés, but also Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurants. The very classiest and priciest establishments did offer a glimmer of hope by not completely filling their plates, but compared to their Australian equivalents were still uncomfortably generous.

My ideal meal would be small enough to leave me wanting more, not leaving bent over, groaning with fullness. Or maybe I need to grow a large tummy?

Valuing Dining Experiences

Despite yesterday's passionate argument in favour of expensive dining experiences, I must admit that when it's over and I see the bill, I do question whether it's a sensible way to spend. Imagine a $100 meal that takes two hours. Comparing alternative spending ideas by looking at their cost per hour:

   Fancy meal. 2 hours of dining, at $50 / hour.


   Ten cinema visits. 20 hours of viewing, at $5 / hour.

   Year's membership to a golf or tennis club. 100 hours of playing, at $1 / hour.


   Ten novels. 100 hours of reading, at $1 / hour

Clearly restauranting makes no financial sense at all. I'll be eating at home from now on.