Invasion Day, Linux Conf, Social Life

[tcpip]

Like Melbourne's most well-known anarchist, Dr. Joe Toscano, I cringe in anger and shame at the "celebrations" of Australia Day. Like Toscano, I believe it would be far more sensible and sensitive to have a national holiday on "Mabo Day" as a good symbolic step towards reconciliation. Nevertheless, the day was spent in the fine company of Chris Samuel who become an Australian citizen (now he can get back into the country). At the ceremony itself Tony Smith (Liberal, Casey) provided one of the biggest loads of empty-headed jingoistic nonsense I have had the displeasure to listen to.

Linux Conference Australia is being held in Melbourne this year and like a damn fool I've volunteered to help out with registrations every morning before work this week, along with caseopaya. Nevertheless it's a extremely impressive programme and I hope to see at least some of it whilst helping out. On a related topic, Shahrokh Montazavi , Microsoft’s main HPC Developer Architect, recently gave a talk at VPAC on Pure Mpi.NET developer tools they've recently released. They're pretty good, but stuck within the Microsoft operating system, which probably means the ideas will have to be picked up by the open source community which has several operating systems which are actually suitable for High Performance Computing.

First week of social life post-forty (thank you all for the kind comments, btw) included dinner with severina_242, _zombiemonkey, imajica_lj and caseopaya followed by a accidental involvenment in a trivia night at the Drunk Poet (or something) where we did fairly well. Later in the week dined with ser_pounce (his 24th, the young 'un) and hathhalla and went to see Sweeny Todd at the deco (or more precisely, apparently, "jazz moderne" and "streamlined moderne") Rivoli cinema. Director Tim Burton's influence is everwhere as gothic, bloody and whimsically semi-operatic. Producer and script-writer John Logan certainly deserves kudos as well. Excellent performances are given by the morose Johnny Depp as Sweeny Todd, Alan Rickman as the manipulative Judge Turpin, Helena Carter as a lovesick Ms. Lovett, and Timothy Spall as the violent Beadle. Also I am sure Jamie Campbell (Anthony Hope) is going to become a heart-throb for numerous aging homosexuals. Anyway, a highly recommended film and one I suspect will be good on multiple viewings as well.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks my shadowy friend.

Linux Conf has been very cool so far, even if I haven't been to any of the miniconfs (apart from dropping into the Linux Chix miniconf for a minute)

Sweeney Todd is well worth the watch! Enjoy!

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

welcome, mate. :)

And glad that you are enjoying it.

I think that I shall -being a Burton fanboy and all. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard not to be a Tim Burton fanboy. He did a great job with Batman (I helped organise over 100 people to an opening night screening), and of course Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Sleepy Hollow... He manages to combine gothic horror, romance and humour in a very special way.

.. and it's just been pointed out to me that he's engaged to Helen Carter. Now that I didn't know.

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

it was really The Nightmare Before Christmas that really did it for me.
Had seen Edward Scissorhands before but didn't appreciate it because I was too young to understand it.
But now I really do like his work.
I also think that Big Fish is a great film -especially considering the original story it is based on isn't all that good.

Yeah, my Sweeny fangirl friend pointed that out to me too.
Which is why she appears in a lot of his films since Planet of the Apes (which is one of his lesser films).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I haven't seen the Apes or Big Fish. I've read that Planet of the Apes includes Burton in name but not in spirit.

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

PotA was really hacked apart by the studio to make it what they wanted.
Such a pity really.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It is a pity. I can imagine something seriously creepy coming out of Burton's mind to deal with that somewhat camp tv series.

I'm thinking Tim Burton, David Cronenberg and Peter Gabriel should get together. They could do their own monkey film that combines Batman, Altered States and Shock The Monkey..

OK, that's fucked-up right there, isn't it? ;-)

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

that's beyond fucked up.

More fucked up was the photo of Cronenberg, Hunter S. Thompson and the lead actor from The Naked Lunch.
It looked the most fucked up generational photo.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think of it as cyberpunk meets planet of the apes :-)

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

heh heh.

Would still be cool.

But probably too violent to ever see the screen. :)