Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.
John Ruskin in a letter to C. E. Norton, 4th Nov 1860:
“I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous, one can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin.”
Computerspielemuseum
Thinking about Berlin’s computer Game Museum, the Computerspielemuseum, today.
It’s the only building in Berlin I can walk into and feel nostalgic and childlike.
Business idea: a coffee translator.
All I want in Mexico is to just order my coffee.
In Australia I order a long black with cream (pouring cream), or if they don’t have cream, with cold milk. I call it a poor man’s latte. All of the coffee, less milk.
A big cup of black coffee, and I take the temperature and black-coffee-ness out of it with a dash of dairy.
In Baja an Americano is basically a long black, but often filter coffee which would be fine if it was lukewarm. An espresso is an espresso shot. A long black doesn’t exist. I got close today, but once I asked for “like an Americano but hot”, they also brought out hot milk, and you don’t want hot milk in this drink.
My fortune for help on how to order a “long black with cream/milk” in Spanish, or in a way that local baristas will understand.
I’m reflecting on the recent Optus hack today as I wonder what to do with my phone number I’ve had for 20 odd years.
So much of modern society needs a phone number to work and to identify us.
New services register with a phone number and text message verification code, trusting that only you would have your phone number or SIM card.
When I turn off my Australian SIM card in Mexico iMessage warns me the clock has started.
It’s kind of ridiculous that something as fragile as a phone number is the backbone of identity.
I think do Dave Winer’s ten year old blog post proposing DNS as a form of ID, but I feel like that would exclude so many normies.
Funnily enough, in many parts of Mexico the police will take your number plate or drivers license back to the police station as that’s the closest the national identity systems don’t really exist here.
How are we supposed to verify who we are? Maybe a blue tick will help?
Reason no. 72 to read James Hennessy’s email:
“I decided to dig into this, because the prospect of an intersection of forgotten Australian pulp lit and Cold War tech development is, regrettably, extremely my shit”
@jrhennessy
Just going on the record before November 2022 hits to say that I had a blue tick before it wasn’t cool.
That’s right, mum. I was verified before @tealou.
Nieman Labs reckons that newspaper political endorsements might not matter anymore. I think that’s for the better?
Gary Voth’s piece, The Forgotten Lens, reminds me why I love the 50mm so much. I only have a vintage Minolta f/2 manual focus lens at the moment but now I want the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2!
Is this mural on the toilet entry wall about menstruation?
Dave Winer with the best Twitter analogy:
“Why would I leave Twitter? It’s like living in NY and not taking the subway. Sure it’s dirty and smells bad, but it’s how you get places.”
The latest in dynamic bus signage technology
Reporting for The Verge, Justine Calma says that
“Traffic jams are tied to lower birth weights.”
It’s almost like us humans are making ourselves extinct eventually.
Someone just got a fire truck for their birthday or the truck celebrated its birthday. Either way, congrats!
Tequila shot $1USD
James Cameron, artist: outside and other and alone
This New Yorker profile of Director, James Cameron, hit home with this line:
“He sees himself as essentially outside and other and alone; he bites the hand that feeds.”
Thats a solid mark of an artist, that they create from the outside-ness, the loneliness, and in doing so they bit the hand that feeds.
Just yesterday a photographer friend and I were lamenting this feeling in ourselves. It’s why I found it so easy to transplant to a new country, maybe why I feel so at home with an airline ticket.
So if you feel alone, you’re not alone, despite the fact you truly are.
Thursday’s sunset
Netflix, One Tel, and me, a nostalgic love triangle
Britt and I are watching Netflix’s new show The Mole at the moment and as that guy who knows Queensland like the back of his hand I’ve been following the filming locations keenly. (If you know what that Daintree resort is, please tell me!)
So as the team reached “The Great Barrier Reef” aka The Whitsundays I immediately recognised the location as Woodward Bay, just a few minutes’ drive north of Airlie Beach. Visitors in the past include the King of Morocco, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, but most importantly for this story, the owner’s husband, Jodie Rich. Apparently, they all helicoptered in, but I just drove when I visited.
I’ve been brought in - pretty sure it’s 1999 or 2000 - to install two Alcatel PABX telephone systems, one that sits at the front gate, and another in the main compound, connected by fibre optic, to allow the main compound to make and receive phone calls, but also for the fancy new gate to be opened by phone call.
I worked for a local company called Business Solutions, and my experience there has always stuck with me. We were a one-stop shop where we provided actual business solutions, not just products. I still love doing that in businesses today.
Anyhow, I’m on this amazing property that Tom Cruise has just stayed at, and Japanese property developer, Kumagai Gumi, has just dropped $150 million on the property, then sold it to Jodee Rich’s wife for $2.5 million so that’s probably a totally cool and normal transaction.
The whole thing was out of reach of ASIC as One Tel went broke because the husband didn’t own the property that was attributed to him, but his wife did. That’s the kind of business sense that gets you places, like starting your own top-level domain (.CEO) and NFT.NYC, kill me now, this bloke has such an epic legacy of grifting.
Seeing the property in The Mole was cool, it looked so similar twenty years on. It is honestly a really beautiful property. Back then they allegedly had lasers across the bay to keep people out, and as a young bloke, it’s the nicest property I’ve ever stepped foot on. I remember being told that the coffee table was made from a door of a monastery.
Interested in staying the night? It’s only five figures a night.
And if you need a PABX installed in a weird situation twenty years ago, give me a call.
