i-Anya

From the sublime in my last post, to the ridiculous:

Click the image for the Axel F appropriation which includes the unfortunate crazy frog ringtone. I can’t believe it’s hit number 1 in the UK charts.

Last week I received an email from the incredibly talented Sarah Boak. Apart from writing beautiful poetry (which I mentioned in a previous post), her profession is as a singer. From her website comes the following:

Sarah Boak is one of the most exciting and dynamic young vocalists in the UK today.
With a voice that has been described as ‘sweet, soulful bliss’, she is an enigmatic and versatile performer, unafraid of crossing musical boundaries.

There are some mp3 files of her singing on her site - unfortunately they are only tiny because she has the most glorious voice and the music is soulful jazz - my favourite musical genre. I hope she releases a CD some time soon! Isn’t it lovely that she contacted me to say thank you for posting her poetry!

Yes, I think… I have finished my book chapter! 11,000 words that did NOT come easily, I must say :/ I think its supposed to be 12,000 words but I’ve exhausted my brain and can’t think of anything else that I know that I could include. I enjoy writing most of the time but the expectations for this chapter were set very high and I’ve had a lot of anxieties about it. Anyway, you will all be very happy not to have to read me moaning about this task again. I know I will be happy not to hear myself whining :>

PicassoAnya
Originally uploaded by Anyaka.

I saw this “Picasso head maker” at Lois’s blog (when I was hunting down a reference to use in my chapter, I promise!)and decided to have some light relief by making one of my own! So here it is - Picasso Anya!

Here’s the original canvas and a link for making your own.

pure. unadulterated. exhaustion.

- chapter not quite finished
- book not finished
- marking lining up along the office walls
- last minute meetings called that I wish I didn;t have to attend
- more teaching this week and next
- flying to Brisbane to give a keynote talk on this coming weekend
- haven’t had time to stock the fridge with food so living on toast!
- have at leat 200 emails to sort to and reply to asap
- have a draft of a masters thesis to read and respond to

Meanwhile if anybody knows the correct way to reference APA style the sites of : del.icio.us, flickr, and 43things I’d be very grateful!

But time for bed now I fear. 20 hours left until the deadline for this chapter!!!

I am so exhausted I feel drunk!

I saw this image meme at Profgrrrrl:

Search for: Place you grew up. Place you live now. Your name. Your Grandmother’s name. Your favorite food. Your favorite drink. Your favorite song. Your favorite smell. Then post the first image or your favorite result for each.

Place I grew up:

Place I live now:

My name:

My grandmother’s name:

My favourite food:

My favourite drink:

My favourite song:

My favourite smell:

No captions - after all, its an image meme!

Highs:

- getting out of Sydney and being away from the office - conferences are hard work but the change of scenery was a real pleasure

Here’s Brian and I having fun in Lygon Street.

- the lovely accommodation in Melbourne, eating delicious food (eating out and being catered for is such a luxury!) and the chance to get to know some of my own colleagues from the University of Sydney much better!! Sadly, with the frantic, packed -full, daily grind, we don’t spend much time just talking to each other, so the chance to talk over breakfasts, lunches, dinners, on the plane, etc etc etc was great.

Here’s Brunetti - a coffe shop / cake house in Lygon Street, Melbourne, and here’s a close-up of the display case full of amazing works or art:

- meeting and talking with new people who were really engaging with my ideas and who were very generous in their kind words (a special hello to Claire if she sees this!!)

Here’s Brian at the beginning of our presentation.

- being inspired and stimulated by the ideas of others - after all, this is what conferences are designed for!

Wei’s talk about intertextuality was really stimulating!

Lows:

- There were a few things that didn’t work so well that disappointed me. They were kind of out of my control but in post-conference reflections with one of my colleagues from Sydney later we have already thought of ways to alleviate those problems and improve next years conference (we’re planning to hold this conference annually)
- Having somebody dismiss my work as trivial! (I’m not saying any more about that!)

kellialyson
Originally uploaded by Anyaka.

I’ve taken lots of photos at our English and Literacies Research conference in Melbourne! Clicking this one will take you to the set. This is at the end of the conference - tired but happy (Kelli and Alyson enjoying coffee and cake at the gorgeous Brunetti).

Conference reflections to come.

I am off to Melbourne University tomorrow for a few days! I hope you all miss me while I am afk. This is the first conference I have organised so I hope it goes well. I’ll be taking photos where possible - of my hotel room if nothing else! *grin*

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald today could not have arrived at a more fortuitous time to help me finalise my book chaper. Nokia today unveiled a small wireless tablet and at the very reasonable price of $458 (AUD) the tablet is being positioned as:

…an alternative to buying an extra personal computer or laptop for different rooms, providing a cheaper, quicker and less-cumbersome way to connect to the web and email at home.

It has no hard drive but rather 128 megabytes of onboard flash memory and a memory card slot. Nokia says the device is not intended as a rival to Apple Computer’s iPod or other MP3 music players. A software update is expected early next year to add features such as voice over internet telephony and instant messaging.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

While fairly novel in terms of its handheld size, the Internet Tablet can be seen as another variation on a concept that has repeatedly failed to catch on - a device that offers easy internet access and basic tasks such as email for which the computing power of a full-blown PC is unnecessary.

During the internet bubble, prominent names from a wide range of technology industries dabbled with web appliances. Intel, Gateway, 3Com, America Online, National Semiconductor and Honeywell all either launched or promised such devices. Nokia itself weighed in with a tablet called the MediaScreen.

Many were wired devices, such as the “Audrey” from 3Com, though a few like the Airboard from Sony and the WebPAD developed by National Semi used wireless technologies similar to Wi-Fi.

Since the Nokia tablet is meant to be carried from room to room, its 10.41cm screen is considerably smaller than the display on most of these predecessor appliances but also far bigger and sharper compared with most cell phones and handheld computers.

And rather than serving up stripped-down versions of web pages like most mobile devices, the tablet uses an Opera browser to display sites as they appear on any computer.

Weighing 230 grams the Internet Tablet is 1.91cm thick, 14.22cm wide and 7.87cm deep. It includes a loudspeaker but there’s no typewriter keyboard for thumb-typing e-mail as on popular handheld computers such as the Treo and BlackBerry. Instead, the tablet comes with a stylus to tap a virtual keyboard on the screen.

The device is designed primarily to use at home, though its Wi-Fi transmitter can also connect with public and commercial hot spots. There’s also a USB port to connect to a PC and a Bluetooth transmitter that can be used to connect with a mobile phone that has cellular online access.

The Nokia announcement marks the second time in days that a prominent producer of mobile devices has veered into a new product category.

Last week, PalmOne unveiled a $US500 device called the LifeDrive, essentially a cross between a mobile media player, portable hard drive and an organiser. The LifeDrive features 4 gigabytes of internal storage and a high-resolution screen for on-the-road access to music, video, digital photos, e-mail and office documents. It also offers Wi-Fi wireless capability to connect to the web and corporate networks remotely.

Nokia has struggled in its attempts to forge several new product categories. Most prominent among these has been the N-Gage, a cell phone designed specifically for video games. Others include a digital picture frame with a cellular connection to download photos.

Copyright © 2005 Associated Press.

Maybe I’ll be bale to invest in one of these later in the year! I kinda prefer the musical and touch fashion but this is pretty cool. My friend Bruno has had some manly thingie Personal organiser device with everything you can imagine on it that he lets me use when I have to choose a movie we can go and see. It also reads his emails and incoming sms text messages. My othern friend Kevin has some tablet and stylus system he uses to do his stock market speculations on but I can never follow what he is doing - not my strong point.

But I do like the look of this one.

Yesterday I showed an image of a musical dress, which had all sorts of special mobile media technologies carefully integrated into the fabric. Of course, the idea of wearable instrumentation is nothing new, see:

Bob Dylan, for example… and of course - my favourite: the fabulous horn guy!

Because I wanted to include a section in my book chapter about mobile cultures I found lots of exciting new trends… here is the second preview of wearable technologies and beyond!

Haptic Gloves

Hold my hand so we can make music together…

Musical Performance in a Sonic Dress

A custom dress made for Phish percussionist Jon Fishman was worn and “played” live on stage using specialized tape head gloves during a concert in april 2004.

Interactive Textile Art

Every art piece produced by IFM is a hand woven and printed computer display, integrated with our proprietary drive electronics and custom artistic software. An IFM color change textile hangs on your wall like any other piece of art, but unlike other artworks it magically changes color and pattern over time.

Denim Jacket Synth

The Musical Jacket turns an ordinary denim jacket into a wearable musical instrument, allowing the wearer to play notes, chords, rhythms, and accompaniment using any instrument available in the General MIDI scheme. It integrates directly into the jacket an embroidered fabric keypad, a MIDI sequencer/synthesizer, amplifying speakers, a fabric bus sewn from conductive organza, and batteries to power the above subsystems.

The Firefly Dress

The Firefly Dress is a creative application that embellishes the wearer’s motion with an ever-changing display of light. Its first part is a skirt, handmade from two layers of conducting organza (one supplying power and the other ground) separated by a layer of nylon netting. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with fuzzy conductive Velcro** ends for electrical contacts are placed throughout the netting. When both ends of an LED brush against the power and ground planes, the circuit is complete and the LED lights.

The bodice (with a conductive front panel) and the necklace form a second dynamic element. The necklace is a simple analog computer, powered when any of its conducting tassels brush against a plane of conducting organza sewn to the front of the bodice. Each tassel has its own resistor network and provides a different color bias to the red, green, and blue LEDs on the face of the necklace. The dress demonstrated the visual, tactile, and mechanical potential of sewing circuitry into clothing.

I spent part of today in a Primary school with a first year education student out on her first practical teaching session. It’s so delightful to see such the enthusiasm of young students. What amazed me though was that the class she was teaching on had a class size of *drum roll* 15 children!!!! With a few of the children away today with the usual wintery illnesses, that left only 12 in the classroom. From the window was a view of the large reconciliation garden (reconciliation is all about respecting Australia’s indigenous heritage) in which the children had planted flowers, shrubs and small trees. There was a large mural of indigenous art along the fence, and several birdbaths and benches on which children and parent volunteers were sitting and reading stories with each other. Other parents were in the room working with small groups (about 2-3 children with each parent!!) also reading or doing writing together. Music was coming from a music room that was actually musical in nature (hey, I was a music teacher for 1 year and let me tell you, 30 kids playing recorders is hard work on the ears!!), and another group of children were in the HUGE computer lab across the hall (apparently there’s a ratio of 1 computer for every 2 kids in the school). I was so dismayed that I’d travelled without my digital camera tucked in my bag because I saw such beauty all around me. It was really refreshing to be in such a positive atmosphere (especially after my last prac visit) and I thought - what a lucky student to have such a lovely place/space/time on her first teaching experience.

Via Lois, I just saw this Call For Papers. It looks so exciting!! I would soooo love to go to this conference!!

CFP - Perspectives on Childhood in Illustration and Imagery

Open to View: Popular Fiction and Visual Narrative. 19th-20th November 2005.
Association for Research in Popular Fictions (ARPF). Dean Walters Building, Liverpool John Moores University.

Papers are welcome, for this strand of the conference, on perspectives of childhood in illustration and imagery, or illustrated texts for children and young adults.

All papers on the topic of childhood (for example, girlhood, boyhood, young adulthood) will be considered. However, papers addressing the following themes and issues will be especially welcome.

Texts about children and young adults, for example:

The child in advertising, TV, film, fine art, photography.
Concepts and constructions of the child (e.g. the Romantic Child, violence and the child,
nostalgia, ethnicity, diversity)
Historical viewpoints on childhood
Common themes surrounding childhood e.g. the family, school, peers, the child’s
relationship with the media

Texts produced and marketed for (or appropriated by) children and young adults, for example:
Picture books, video games, toys, information books, comics and graphic novels
Ideologies surrounding the child
Message and medium
How texts work (eg interplay between words and pictures in picture books)
Perspectives on the implied child reader

Issues to do with teaching and learning: challenges and issues when teaching
Childhood in illustration and Imagery to students at undergraduate level, for example:

Teaching visual literacy to non-specialists
Introducing students to historical representations of childhood
Helping students to perceive varying views of the child
Supporting students in interdisciplinary study

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to Dr. Mel Gibson at:
mel.gibson@unn.ac.uk or by post to Dr. Mel Gibson, Northumbria University,
Childhood and Family Studies, Coach Lane campus (East), Coach Lane, Benton,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7XA by 1st September 2005.

An article from The Age by Dirk den Hartog puts Big Brother through its paces. It’s an amusing look at reality TV, social voyeurism, and a peek at public hangings. There’s a bit about the performance of identity that I have included below:

Indeed BB is most offensive, I’d argue, not in the gross and salacious things that the housemates are manipulated into doing (simulated sex was included in this year’s auditions and naked showering is hinted at), but in the way good human qualities are made gross by being reduced to no more than strategies for “pleasing”. (A prize example here is the contestant who, asked in a pre-eviction-nomination session to name an asset he brought to the house, came up with “honesty”.) For it’s in creating, in the social laboratory of the house, a micro-society in which ethical behaviour, i.e. disinterested goodness, cannot exist (or if, somehow, it freakishly could, could not be seen to exist) that BB most subtly and insidiously carries out O’Brien’s boast that through social manipulation “we create human nature”.

Life in the House is a modestly un-horrific but real version of the Orwellian nightmare because in it the possibility of goodness has been eliminated from human nature.

In one way, this point is not lost on the cultural studies commentators. As John Hartley puts it, for instance, everyone in the house “performs the self, and everyone knows that they are doing it”. Which makes one wonder why this critical school persists in claiming that BB “explores contemporary ethics” (Mapplebeck, 2002) and teaches “ethical lessons” (Lumby, 2004). For while the housemates’ antics do provide good material for viewers to diagnose deceit, hypocrisy and the varieties of self-promotion, which is the essential negative element of ethical appraisal, the only positive lesson to be learnt from this is how to be these things with a more pleasing plausibility. To call such learning “ethical” is to endorse the show’s collapsing of morals into manners, of trying to be good into simply trying to be wellliked. The recent mutation of the word “disinterested” itself into a mere synonym of “uninterested”, suggests that the cultural studies critics and Endemol are not alone in this.

I absolutely must come back to this text (at a decent hour of the day!) and do an appraisal analysis on it - what a fun text to use stuffed full of every type of evaluative language possible!

Yes, its my regular “today at work” post. Most of my day today was spent in the Arts faculty. I am on the University’s academic board and regularly get called upon to be a representative on interview committees - its a policy here that every interview committee have a non-Faculty representative to ensure fair and equitable procedures are followed. I have been on quite a few of them now. Today there were quite a number of candidates being interviewed so there were a couple of recesses to give us time to stretch and move about. It is such a beautiful part of the University that I took the opportunity to take a few quick photographs.

Here is a view through the window of the main courtyard:

Walking outside and to my left was this view:

and to my right and across the road was this:

The university has many beautiful old sandstone buildings - I love them!

redcurtain
Originally uploaded by Anyaka.

I haven’t managed to get the macro settings on the digital camera finely tuned yet. I thought this would look very pretty on my blog until I saw how blurry it was. Fortunately I am a member of the blurvision group photo set on flickr - that way I can pretend I did it on purpose :>

branches
Originally uploaded by Anyaka.

Just a few more leaves to turn and drop until Winter arrives.

On one of my mailing lists today I received the letter of invitation below - it sounds really exciting! I’ve subscribed now and will share anything I find of particular interest to young people / education.

Writing and the Digital Life - exploring the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience

The Writing and the Digital Life discussion list
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE.htmlopened in
April and has over 200 subscribers from 15 countries. We have already roamed
across a number of interesting topics including the future of text,
authenticity, interdisciplinarity, abundance, and technophobia.

We talk about the relationship of writing and reading in the context of many
subjects including ‘new and old’ media; craft, art, process and practice;
social networks; cooperation and collaboration; narrative and memory; human
computer interaction; imagination; nature; mind; body, and spirit.
Contributions related to research, writing and teaching in the arts,
sciences, and humanities are all welcome.

There is also a del.icio.us page at http://del.icio.us/cornucopia/ where
list-members share their favourite bookmarks touching on the impact of
digital technologies upon writing and lived experience within an
interdisciplinary context.

You are warmly invited to join this lively interdisciplinary conversation by
sending email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with the following text in the body
of the message:

SUBSCRIBE WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE your name

NB: Your email must contain no other text beyond the subscription message.

I just came across Bruce Eisner’s blog about new cultures and cybercommunities - a fascinating exploration in cutting edge social technologies and potential future forms of society. Very Brave-New-Worlds-ish!

I am now officially listed as a category over at Blogtrax, Dr Joolz and Guy’s metablog about blogging. I really enjoy the friendship I have developed with DrJoolz and the way our responses to each other’s blogs have helped us create a shared sense of understanding not just about the content of the blogs, but about our fuller identities as women, academics, educators and so on.

And one of my favourite images from DrJoolz’s flickr stream is…

the image of these glorious bags! I do believe they will suit my blog beautifully so I simply had to share!

DSC_7397
Originally uploaded by junku.

Wearable technology seems to be the latest big fashion trend. Last week, MIT held a fashion show featuring wearable technology. I really liked the designs of Alison Lewis, who created clothes that responded to touch. How lovely!

Closer
Designer: Alison Lewis

The Closer Pullovers are snuggly, huggably soft garments that respond to positive touch interactions. They inspire playful, real-time, real-space contact in order to show technology’s capacity to spread positive touch experiences between people.

More conventional and functional wearable technology includes:

belts for iPods (I don’t have an iPod yet… I asked Santa, but to no avail).

Wearable technology that was invented in 2002 such as this:

Xybernaut Corp.’s lightweight headmounted display and the KITTY, or Keyboard Independent Touch Typing, data input glove, hasn’t taken off, however.

Also invented in 2002 were these:

described as:

a jacket featuring a wearable MP3 player with a keyboard on the sleeve and earphones on the drawstrings. In addition, it has voice recognition, so if you don’t want to use the sleeve keypad to input instructions, you can simply tell your jacket what song you want to play.

which I think is wonderful - but is anybody actually wearing them? Here’s another version on the runway:

For those who want to always smell fresh and gorgeous, here’s a dress that has something called “reactive scent technology”.

(Err…???!!! No explanation provided about it unfortunately)

I found a (now defunct) magazine called HorizonZero (Digital Art and Culture) which has a 2004 special edition on wearable technology. There are some great articles in it. Here’s a little of the editorial:

Over the past few years, technological prostheses have gradually encroached upon the world of clothing by combining with the surfaces that protect and personalize our bodies. Communications and entertainment devices, such as cellular phones and mp3 players, have become new forms of adornment, connecting our inner world with our surroundings and profoundly altering our relationship with the world. These increasingly multifunctional and powerful accessories have contributed to a process of layering our personal boundaries with multiple strata of information and sensation while offering others the image of a hardware-equipped body.

In the field of smart clothes, the trend today is towards a subtler and more complex integration of technological elements - the concept of the “second skin” - while taking our needs and desires into account. This issue of HorizonZero highlights the many achievements in the field of “ready-to-wear” technology.

It seems that research into the potentials of wearable technology has been influenced by the military.

One important research direction involves interactive camouflage: uniforms that possess chameleon-like qualities and can change colour [www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218391833&language=english] when a soldier moves from a desert environment to an urban one. This exciting area of research will also lead to many applications for visually adaptive clothing that displays personal information, or changes according to mood, time of day, or other internal or external input.

What I like most of all is a critique of the functional approaches to wearable technology and the hunt for some “killer application” that can be incoporated into clothing to be the next big marketable thing. Joanna Bersowska says:

The real killer app for wearable computing is to convey personal identity information - this is called fashion, and it is mostly visual.

Yes, fashion as an identity marker. I like it.

I am enjoying the continuing media interest on Princess Mary. Today I learned that she not only has a new pup, but that it is suitably child-friendly, is a good reminder for the Princess of farming life in Tasmania (errr… she came from the CAPITAL CITY, not a farm, but I guess that doesn’t give the story enough emotional pull), and also that it is… smart, needs exercising so it doesn’t sit around the palace getting fat, and “needs to be very firmly trained to understand its place in the pecking order of the family” (does it sound like the writer of this article is writing analogously about Mary to you?).

The funniest part of the article though is about the name of the pup:

In Denmark there has been some speculation about the name Ziggy. Most people seem relieved Mary indulged her naming creativity on the dog and not the forthcoming baby.

Of course, if we read this source, ‘According to name experts of the Instituttet for Navneforskning (Institute for Name Research) of Copenhagen University the crown princely couple’s first baby will be a Christian or Margrethe.’ (Though others argue that a girl should be named Ingrid).

And, speaking of names, in this news report from Tasmanian (a few weeks old now), a racehorse owner in Tasmania has named his newest horse Princess Mary, ‘in recognition of his admiration for both the Tasmanian-born princess and his yearling’. Not only that, but very importantly,

“She is intelligent, attractive, gracious and well-bred - qualities which the princess also possesses.”

I do like the Country Road look she’s got going in this picture though. Very nice, casual, and sensible.

The Age is reporting today that Lara Corft is getting a new look! Why? Because FINALLY there’s a recognition that girls play computer games too! Wow - this is quite a breakthrough! Here’s a little of the report:

In an attempt to appeal to more female players, the creators of computer game icon Lara Croft have revamped her image to remove one of her most prominent and remarked-upon features - her generous bust.

For years, Croft’s gravity-defying chest, waspish waist and long legs have delighted teenage boys playing the various editions of Tomb Raider, the computer game in which she stars.

According to today’s edition of The Times newspaper, British computer game firm Eidos, which created Croft, has changed her physique to one less likely to put off female players.

In the soon-to-be-released Tomb Raider: Legend, the eighth title to feature Croft, her DD-size bust has been reduced to a more modest C-cup and some of her more revealing outfits have been ditched, the report said.

I am very impressed!

Originally uploaded by tokyo knock.

Another stunning photo from the secret life of plants pool.

trunk

Originally uploaded by Anyaka.

I love these twisted trees. There’s a whole row of them dividing Georgina Street into two lanes. I think they’re fig trees but I am not certain. At night they’re popular with fruit bats.

More female fan fiction, from the Sith chicks to the Star Wars chicks. (Not all ‘G’ rated)

Continuing from Yesterday, another favourite for me right now is the power of images.google.com to teleport you to the images you’re hunting for!! I am doing all my lectures and presentations this way now - between google-images and flickr, there’s no excuse for a boring slide aesthetic.

Tonight I have been really ill but have moments of lucidity where I attempt to blog and hide the fact that I have been in bed most of the day! One of the television shows on when i woke up after nap #4 was a special tribute to Kylie Minogue. Kylie has breast cancer, just in case you haven’t heard the news, and today she went in and had surgery. Following the surgery she will have radiation therapy, a treatment that a friend/colleague of mine is experiencing right now. It’s very tiresome for my friend and there’s a possibility for hair loss. Hair loss is a major deal for most people. It’s like removing an important characteristic of your feminine identity. (But I love Natalie Portman’s new look!)

Anyway, following from here, I have:

5. image.google.com - the ability to find exactly the perfect image! Like this:

Doesn’t Kyles look gorgeous on my blog!

(still to be continued)

shadow play
Originally uploaded by Sabinche.

I know this is obvious… but I had to forsake my gorgeous lillies theme because I kept experiencing difficulties with the sidebar in IE. I love the colours in this new theme, but the image makes me wonder if I should change the title to something like “my journey through cyberspace” or “waiting for x”.

Is the sidebar showing up in IE yet?

This report starts:

LONDON, England (AP) — Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling will give a midnight reading of the sixth book in her hugely successful Harry Potter series at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland to coincide with its publication, the writer announced Saturday.

What’s especially lovely is that J. K. Rowling is inviting 70 children (from 6 countries and also from the fan websites) to conduct a press conference about the book. She is giving them all pre-release copies of the book so that they have a chance to read it and plan questions to ask her. She really has a good knowledge of her fan base - and one of the best authors sites I’ve seen, with all sorts of secrets hidden away for kids to discover. I like it that she sneaks in to web forums using a pseudonym to talk over her books with the fans, and I also like it that she has really encouraged kids to write their own fan fiction.

Clair Hill reveals the truth behind Star Wars: it’s a chick flick! The tongue-in-cheek piece begins thus:

FOR 28 years boys, men, and men who act like boys, across the world have been waiting to find out the answer to one question. Just what was it that made Anakin Skywalker turn to the dark side and end up a wheezing piece of plastic? Was it greed, the thought of wearing snazzy, and slimming, black for the rest of his life or was he wowed by the chance for a penthouse on the Death Star? Nope, it was none of those things.

In fact he did it all for a chick. Skywalker lost everything, both his legs and arms, and got burnt from head to toe all because he wanted to keep his wife alive. Slightly soppy reasoning and it also sounds like something out of a Bronte novel.

Very amusing. On the SBS Movie Show earlier this week, Megan Spencer’s review commented that Revenge of the Sith actually managed well with the narrative pulling together all the threads from the other movies, but lacked somewhat in dialogue. Megan did say though that the characters were actually developed a little more than usual:

The actors also are allowed to be more emotional in their roles - Natalie Portman shines as the frail Padme and Christensen is convincing as he nears his Vader destiny, progressively becoming more menacing over the course of the film. And the pivotal scene – the one fans have been hanging out to see for 28 years where Lord Vader finally “arises” - is frankly superb, suitably referencing Frankenstein.

I guess the lack of female presence is one reason why there are so many female Star Wars fans writing such fantastic fan fiction. The story world is exciting and has such potential, and the gaps, which usually serve to silence marginal groups, are being used by fans to insert themselves into the fiction. I moved some of my links to fan fiction articles here. One of the very moving points that the girls in my study told me was how in some Star Wars forums they were persecuted for being female fans when it was supposed to be “a boy’s film”. Consequence: they created their own unique spaces to celebrate their fandom, write their fan fiction and create narrative storylines that allowed them to become a combination of both action chick and romantic heroine. (More about this in my Fan Fiction paper about narrative identities)

Continuing DrJoolz’s meme, here’s my list of things I am excited about related to technology, as of right at this moment:

1. My passion: books!!!!

Thanks to reading about this book, girl wide web, over at both DrJoolz and also at Lalitha’s site, I ordered my own copy from amazon.com and am delighted that it arrived this afternoon!!

2. Flickr - multimodal, hyperlinked, social networking, glorious! My favourite photograph at the moment is:

I sure hope that when I am in Miami in December that I get to see this gorgeous beach!

3. Online Journals

I am so happy to find all the current journal articles I could want online now - it saves me sooooo much time and I am convinced it has improved my writing. I am really hoping to have my own article published in this journal - and I only found it through searching through the online listings!

4. Social Relationships!

People studying my blog, people writing academic papers about my blog, people writing to me about my blog, people writing comments on my blog, my research girls writing me random poems and role-play excerpts to publish on my research blog, people I don’t know linking me to them, and people I know very well linking me to them.

(to be continued…)

Anochece, tulipanes

Originally uploaded by besia.

OK! Thanks to all the people on the help forums, I have now found answers to most of the questions I had and fixed a lot of the problems I had in the template… the search function and the popular post function actually works now too! Of course, I am checking in Firefox, so I am just hoping its working in IE.