- from an advertisement for a Media Coordinator for a large Arts Festival.
Ooh, yes please! I haven’t been given enough opportunities to work like a dog in exchange for the warm fuzzy feeling of bile in my throat.
Needless to say, the above sentence was buried in the middle of the advertisement.
My doctor has forbidden overwork and binge drinking, so I’ve compromised by working from home more than I otherwise would and napping whenever I can.
My home office in the new house is really quite pleasant, with a view of sky and trees in between the frosted windows. I never want to live in an apartment again; I’ve missed the way that old wooden Queenslander houses move and creak with the weather.
After a fortnight of nasty surprises, I was thrilled to learn I’d been chosen as one of five residents to work on their creative practice at the State Library of Queensland’s new centre for digital culture, The Edge.
I told Facebook and didn’t get the cavalcade of congratulations I’d hoped for; probably because as one friend succinctly put it, “I couldn’t work out what the fuck The Edge actually is and what you would be doing at it.” I think I also confused some Rockhamptonites - The Edge is the flashest apartment building in Rocky, also located on the river bank. Big Will is the night receptionist. I digress.
Basically, The Edge is giving me a stipend and access to their shiny new facilities (iMacs, recording studios and an espresso machine are just some of the facilities relevant to my needs) in 
exchange for me creating awesome stuff and helping out the other residents. Their facilities will also be bookable by the general public and there will be plenty of conferences, workshops, lectures, performances and panels on interesting things being held there. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity and hope like hell I can make my project AWESOME.
“Stop fishing and tell us about your project!” I hear you grumble. COOL YA JETS, MATE. Here it is.
A FASTER HORSE - A fortnightly podcast profiling young people with careers your guidance counselor wouldn’t have heard of.
When asked whether he sought the opinions of his customers, father of the automobile Henry Ford replied, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.”
Similarly, many young people’s views on future possibilities in both life and career are shaped by their limited life experience and the viewpoints of those around them.
“A Faster Horse” will profile young people doing crazy things that they never set out to do – from touring in an ABBA tribute band in South Africa to droving cattle across Australia. It will be available fortnightly from the iTunes store and through The Edge website with accompanying multimedia material.
I think the best thing about the internet (and something that has remained mostly unexplored by mainstream media thus far) is the ability to choose which medium would tell the story best. If a combo of text and sound would do it, then great. If a story would be more engaging as a vodcast, I’d like to give that a go. Anyway, we’ll see. There will definitely be 12 audio podcasts being distributed fortnightly from mid-March and a heap of multimedia stuff on the accompanying website. Keep an eye on the A Faster Horse twitter for updates.
The Edge has their grand opening tonight (Feb 26th)! If you’re in Brissie you should come along from 5pm. It’s a really neat space, DZ are playing and there might be free t-shirts.
Using a stack of physical phone directories to raise my laptop screen to eye level is probably the most useful thing I could have done with them. Now I can have good posture while I look up phone numbers on the Internet.
one of Bernard Salt’s theories on why some people are addicted to work.
It makes me feel a bit sheepish, but this is totally me. Without sharing my deep feelings on the internet, I need to learn to take time off and just relinquish stuff I can’t do.
