Smithology

Looking back at my posts this time last year, I wonder if there’s a reason I didn’t post a New Years Eve post. Usually I spend a whole heap of time reflecting on the meaning of life, the direction I’m taking and my relationships yet this time last year I was in a very un-sentimental frame of mind. Perhaps this was due to watching too much BSG and Sarah Connor Chronicles, or it might have been a sense of fatalism about life in general. In 2008, I dropped out of a whole heap of stuff I’d been doing in order to just earn an income and have time to look after kids. In truth I felt like the particular tack I’d been taking was the wrong one so it was a relief to drop it yet I was then faced with the question of what I was going to do instead.

Sometime during this year, I started to look at things differently and developed a little bit of a framework on how I was going to move forward. My thinking was that instead of trying to change things and wasting a whole lot of energy on moving immovable objects, I should look for opportunities as they came and take advantage of them. Instead of spending all my energy focussed on the things I didn’t have, I should look at all the things I did have and see what I could do with them. In some ways it’s about taking the path of least resistance but I like to think of it as guiding my (awesome looking) space ship through the asteroid field by heading for the gaps instead of trying to push all the rocks out of the way.

Anyway, maybe this philosophy is how we ended up here in Sale. Steph had the opportunity to work pretty much anywhere in Australia, we knew we would come out in front if we sold the house and we figured that we didn’t have a lot to lose as we weren’t exactly living The Life in Forest Lake. Now we are in Sale, we’ve reconfigured the game and we’ll see what presents itself in 2010.

So how about you lot out there? Any thoughts on where 2010 might be taking you? I’m off to buy the beer and wine for a small gathering that seems to have eventuated at our place so I’ll bid you a happy new year, be safe and I’ll see you on the other side.

UPDATE: I did write a new years post last year, don’t know how I missed it the first time I looked for it. It’s a bit more up-beat than I remember feeling at the time. I stand by those comments on parenthood. It can be a drag but it’s worth it.

Uncategorized life, new years eve

Sol and I have just finished watching season 1 of Clone Wars which we had to borrow as two separate DVDs from the video shop (and they wonder whey people pirate stuff). I wasn’t expecting much from this, not being a fan of the three prequel movies but I was pleasantly surprised by this cartoon series.

I put the DVD on for Sol so I could do some other stuff and then found myself wandering into the room and standing in front of the TV and getting hooked by the episodes.

Clone Wars is very much pitched at children and has a kind of nostalgic voice-over intro in sixties-newsreader style that sets up each episode. The writing is actually pretty good though. To me, good writing is all about setting up believable relationships between the characters and keeping the right pace of story progression. I really hate stories that are over-complicated and rely on characters who you thought were good guys suddenly revealing they are secretly bad guys.

So the things that annoyed me about the prequels were the way Qui Gon and Kenobi and later Anikin and Kenobi were just so cool all the time. Cracking jokes in the middle of being shot at just doesn’t do it for me and wrecks any sense of peril. As for the plots of those films, I could never figure out what the hell the bad guys were actually trying to do. It was a big complicated plot to destabilise the republic and take control but it just was too hard to follow on first viewing.

Anyway, the Clone Wars which is set between the second and third prequel does a good job of keeping the stories simple whilst working within the framework of Dooku being a bad guy who is trying to get planets to leave the republic and sign up to his separatist movement while the jedis and clones are engaging the separatists in war and trying also to win back planets that have defected to the separatists.

The series introduces some new characters who we see briefly in the third film being assassinated in another stupid plot twist where apparently clones can be given a secret order to slay all jedi. There is Anikin’s apprentice Ahsoka Tano and Dooku’s apprentice Asajj Ventress. Also a few other jedi masters who join in such as Plo Koon and Luminara Unduli.

And of course there are the old favorites, R2-D2, C3PO, Padme and (not so favorite) Jar Jar Binks.

The stories also focus on some of the clones and interestingly touch the surface of some philosophical questions about identity and the sanctity of all life. This is touched on in an early episode where Yoda and three clones must fight their way out of an ambush. The clones question why Yoda refuses to leave a wounded clone and Yoda points out that each of them has a slightly different personality and preferences and each of them perceives their own unique identity. The clones are used to being treated as dispensable resources.

The episodes tend to focus on values such as team work, use of power / ethics, thinking for yourself, loyalty (even to droids!), self sacrifice for a greater cause and friendship.

The action scenes are actually fun to watch even though it is a cartoon. Sure there is the usual million-lasers-that-miss-the-good-guys stuff but some of the light sabre duals are quite fun with the use of the force and the quips and sledging thrown in but also the space battles and clone trooper action is well done.

There is some good humour in the episodes too. I particularly laughed at the one where Jar Jar Binks pretends to be a jedi. He is much less annoying than in the movies but still a buffoon.

I definitely recommend this series for kids because the values are there without the puke-making moral lectures at the ends of the episodes and they are quite watchable for adults too.

Uncategorized clone wars, scifi, star wars, tv

Last Sunday, Steph suggested I get a bit of nerd time and go see Avatar so I hopped in the car and drove two minutes into town and filed into Sale’s dinky little cinema. I really like our cinema, it lacks all the neon lighting and flashy carpet of city cinemas and instead has a kind of charming excitement in the foyer which is generated by the buzz of people gathering to see films: lining up for tickets, buying popcorn, being ushered into the darkened theatre to be whisked away to another world.

And whisked away I was! At first I wasn’t sure the movie had started, it was just some guy talking about his brother and the next thing I knew, it was all space ships, a planet, a shuttle and as soon as that shuttle landed, they had me and I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Wow! What a visual feast. Apparently it’s mostly animated but there was hardly a trace of the uncanny valley here. I’m sure when I rewatch it, I’ll start to notice bits that are obviously animated but on first viewing it all just looks real.

I’ve read a few places people criticising the plot saying it’s too simple and cliched but that’s another thing I liked about the film. The story is refreshingly simple and uncluttered, no stupid about-faces in characters and clunky hidden twists that so many movies hit you with. It’s all written up in the first ten minutes and you just know what’s going to happen but the thing that hooks you is you need to see it, the movie looks so good you sense what’s coming and just think “hell yeah, I want to see that”. The predictability of the story just creates anticipation.

Another thing I appreciated about the film was the amount of context. The expense of this film is all in the details. There are no plastic ferns in this film, every plant you see on the screen seems to have been created with some amount of thought. The wildlife is both alien and familiar and there are recurring similarities between the different species of animals on the planet so that you can imagine that they evolved from common ancestors.

When it finished, I wanted to go home, eat some dinner and then come back for the next session, it was just so enjoyable. Perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I haven’t seen a film for awhile or I’ve been stressed out with the move or whatever but from the reaction I’m seeing elsewhere on the net, people are really excited about this film and it’s going to go on a lot of people’s DVD shelves next to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Uncategorized avatar, movies, scifi

It’s Christmas Day, I’m in the kitchen enjoying the smell of roasting lamb and drinking a good strong coffee. This year we’re spending our first Christmas away from our family so it’s just us and the kids and the flies (who are few in number thankfully but some days it’s like there’s an organised fly assault on the house and you have to batten down the hatches). We’ve opened the presents (with a lot of WOW and YES! noises) and dashed to church for a bit of God bothering and now we’re just kicking back in the mess we’ve made and well just eating crap. Sol is playing Clone Wars Lightsaber Duals for the Wii and Felicity is playing with a toy she’s owned for her whole life and ignoring the new ones.

Anyway, I usually do a Christmas Message sometime about now on the blog so I can enlighten you pagan / heathen / agnostic / atheist masses on the true meaning of Christmas. This year I’ve noticed a lot of people complaining about their families at Christmas time and how their families drive them mad or how it brings broken relationships to the foreground etc… I just wanted to reassure you all that from all New Testament accounts, Jesus also had issues with his family and sometimes refused to talk to them, in fact he was a very apocalyptic kind of guy and predicted war and famine and earthquakes and families turning against each other and bad times for all. I think there’s something in that for all of us. Merry Christmas!

Uncategorized

So … how’ve you been? I’ve been … busy. You know how it is, you’re sitting at the dinner table late one night talking about how life hasn’t been going to plan, how you never meant to buy a house in an outer suburb of a big city but you still have to both work and even then you seem to be getting further into debt with each passing day. Then you start talking about how your jobs are ok but maybe you’d like to try doing something else but really you can’t change anything because to start something new would be a pay-cut. And then you get on to the topic of schools and how the only nearby private school is ramping the fees up but the state schools nearby are ginormous and you keep reading in the paper about parents having fist fights in the carpark. And then you start talking about how you’d always said you would travel and maybe grow a vege garden and spend more time with the kids. And after a couple of more wines, your wife’s logged on to seek and found jobs advertised in Katherine, Mildura, Gippsland and central NSW.

Then in the wink of an eye, there’s a job offer and a date set, you’re handing in your resignation, trying to sell a car (unsuccessfully – 2003 Ford Focus, Manual, gc but needs a small but very expensive repair if you’re interested), talking to real estate agents, breaking the news to family and friends and organising airplane tickets (which end up being put on hold because you decide to make it a road trip).

Then there’s the move, several weeks of packing and trying to cut the payload down, roping in some loyal friends to help you clean, some tearful goodbyes to friends, handing the keys to the agent and rolling out of your suburb and town for the last time (at least until you come back to visit).

On the road you get to judge each town from the highway as you coast through trying not to break the speed limit (but we got a ticket anyway – watch out for the 50 zone and speed camera in Woodburn). With kids there are several strategies but we decided to take it slow and just do two to three hour stints and then break for an hour or so to play at a park and stretch our legs. The days become blurred recollections of scenery and hotels and then you cruise into town, the new town where you are going to live and check into a hotel.

But your work hasn’t finished yet. While your wife starts a new job, you’re busy keeping the kids occupied and looking for some place to live and then it’s all boxes and unpacking until the next thing you know it’s almost two months later and after a bit of a job hunt and more settling in, now, only now you can sit still and look back and go “Holy shit, what have I done!”

Uncategorized life, travel

Every time I go to write a blog post, I look around the chaos that is my house and see something I really should be attending to. Either that or I’m just too tired to think or the kids need me. I will make a glorious come-back one day though.

Uncategorized meta