Foolish Behaviour

Queensland is flooding, and being a short-staffed week at the radio station, I'm like a scalped whale at the moment: I've got water on the brain.

Emergency Services are quite rightly getting fed up with people ignoring "Road Closed" signs, and crossing flooded motorways and streets. These intrepid adventurers take a punt that their Magna or Cruze can handle half a metre of muddy brown H20 - but the result is a inevitably a parade of surprise-looking wet people standing on the roof of their automobiles awaiting a swift water rescue team.

Police are even starting to charge people who they believe have ignored advice and recklessly entered floodwaters. One such example is the case of the Bremer River Three - a trio of teenagers who decided floating from Ipswich to Brisbane on inflatable mattresses would be a top notch way to spend a Monday.

If nothing else, they've forgotten to "slip" on a shirt. Tsk.

Now, I can wholeheartedly agree with the official line that this is foolish and risky behaviour. Essentially these three are the biggest d***s in the 'swich since that peculiar tattoo-gone-wrong case.

And yet...

Chewing the Christmas Fat

It comes a tad late; but I heartily wish all readers, contributors and all-round attractive and intriguing visitors to girlclumsy.com a hearty and healthy Christmas.

To those of you on vacation - I hope you're having a ball, and getting lots of sleep, relaxation and fun times. For those of you who, like me, are still down the salt mines - more power to you. It's a hard bloody time of year to be working, and you deserve extra nice treatment.

I've had a lovely day, where I was pleased to not do much at all. The Wah and I had an amusing Christmas coincidence - we each gave the other the same little Doctor Who themed squeezy toy:

And now, to Boxing Day!

Edgy Queensland Style

Sometimes being a journalist means sitting in front of a computer screen all day.

Sometimes it means ending up trudging through a half-built tunnel in an ensemble that's more post-modern absurdist installation art than clothing:

I. Am. A. Serious. Journalist.

I'd been wearing a top and skirt, see, when I got late notice of Premier Anna Bligh's impending media conference at the Airport Link tunnel. But the worksite is just down the road a bit from my parents' house, so I rang my mother and told her to have some pants ready.

My mother is a couple of sizes smaller than me, and so while I was pleased to fit into her grey stretch pants, I decided to keep the skirt on as a way of protecting my butt's modesty.

When I arrived at the worksite, they promptly handed me the giant boots, tent-like safety shirt and hardhat. Everyone always looks silly at hardhat jobs; but this really took the cake.

Shortly after the Premier herself arrived, and as she said a quick hello, looked me up and said "That's quite an outfit."

My voice rose in indignation.

"I was wearing a skirt! It was late notice! I had to borrow my mother's trousers!" I spluttered.

"Oh, I think that the whole thing, with the different elements... it's certainly got an edgy Queensland style to it."

SPLUTTER, splutter.... sigh.

Forget the sun. I'm getting burned by the Premier of the state now.

The Cab Driver Dilemma

I like to think my cursed Libran tendency to always want balance, to see both sides of an issue and weigh the evidence equally, helps me as a journalist. But I think it may make me rubbish as a practical human being.

Perhaps you then, dear reader, can help me with a moral, ethical and philosophical dilemma.

Sticking it to My Family

I find the whole concept of My Family stickers - now spreading like obnoxious planter warts across the back windscreens of vehicles Australia-wide - fairly repulsive. Mostly because I question the need to so openly advertise one's familial make-up to potential thieves and child sex offenders.

Having said that - hot DAMN I wish I'd invented the idea.

Let me explain.

Purple Cat

You know you're a bit sick and possibly off your nut on cold and flu medication when you download a paint program for the first time.

Damn I wish I had artistic skills. Or at the very least, more pseudoephedrine.

Losing It

I got a call earlier this evening from a nice man named Wayne at QPAC, informing me that he had my wallet. I was most surprised, as I was unaware that it had left my possession.

I'd been at the Concert Hall today to watch The Wah roll off the QUT production line as a freshly-minted graduate (a very proud moment; although we stopped short of greeting his debut into Bachelorhood with a vuvuzela blast, which was the triumphant sound that welcomed one of his fellows).

In all the excitement I must have left my wallet somewhere, and had no idea it was missing until Wayne gave me a buzz. He said it had been handed in, and he had tracked me down through the White Pages. I arranged to drop by tomorrow to pick it up, marvelling at the kindness of strangers that still exists in the world.

#TelstaWP7: Figaro Takes a Bow

Has it really been two weeks since I first got my hot little hands on Figaro?

It feels like it's flown by; and yet, I feel like I've had the phone for much longer.

Is that a good thing, or am I just bored with it?

I was given the device by Telstra for its HTC Mozart Windows7 "social review".

Here are my thoughts on each of those elements.

#TelstraWP7: Figaro & Bono

I fell arse backwards into some U2 tickets this week, courtesy of nerdy metalhead and buffet dinner enthusiast Disco Stu.

I left all other cameras at home in order to focus my U2 "360" concert experience solely through the HTC Mozart Windows7 phone prism.

Unfortunately for Telstra, the prism seemed not to be doing its best reflecting on Wednesday night. Of ten photos I tried uploading to Facebook, using the very easy access feature on the phone, only three made it through. I also experienced trouble getting any kind of signal, even though I had the data and WiFi connection buttons flicked to "on". I had no access to the official Twitter app (a problem that actually began earlier in the day); and my attempts to download an alternative failed miserably. Twitt keep bleeping up an error message; Beezz wouldn't connect; and when I tried to download Seesmic - it kept flashing up that it could not connect to Marketplace at this time.

I tried turning the phone off, then turning it back on. I tried flicking the WiFi and data buttons to off, then back to on. Nothing I did worked, and I couldn't ask for help - because I couldn't connect to Twitter to throw a question at the #telstraWP7 peeps! Catch 22 strikes again.

I was really disappointed not to be able to "live tweet" U2. I had all manner of great jokes and captions pop into my head as the concert progressed. Part of the attraction of using the smartphone for me was being able to share this quite extraordinary experience.

A number of people have suggested via Twitter that it was a network problem; something wrong with the towers; too much interference due to the massive number of phones that would have been going at the time; and that some other carriers seemed to have similar difficulties. I guess it's fair to say there would have been a jam, but I really got the feeling there was something else going on.

Turns out I was right; but more on that in a moment. First, some test examples of the HTC Mozart's video capability.

Here's a bit of Jay-Z doing Empire State of Mind, the final big number of his warm-up set:

As you can hear, the sound is really blown out - but then perhaps that's to be expected when causing deafness is a by-product of your particular creative form.

U2 hit the stage around 8:30pm to the strains of David Bowie's Space Odyssey; then launched into Beautiful Day:

It's my favourite U2 song, so I would've been happy had I been forced to leave at that point. Luckily, I was instead able to sit back with a Cornetto and enjoy some top class stadium rock 'n' roll complete with Jesus - sorry, lead singer Bono - whipping and stirring the crowd into I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For-gasms:

The final piece of vid I captured was near the big finish, when Bono encouraged audience members to use their cameras or phones as flashlights, to create a "Milky Way" inside Suncorp Stadium for With Or Without You. It was rather pretty, and I think the HTC Mozart captured the colours quite well:

In terms of photographs - I'm still finding the camera problematic in low light. Contrast this relatively decent one of the band taking the stage....

Any lepers in? Bono's here now....

... with this, once all the whizzbang lights have kicked in:

"It was a beautiful dayyyyyy...."

And that's probably one of the least blurry that I was able to take. It's to be expected, of course - I was a fair distance away and everything moved so quickly it was hard to focus on anything. But I've found that even when you get people to stand still, the camera will still blur in low light - I haven't worked out the "trick" yet perhaps, or get the real feeling of when people actually need to be still to be in focus!

All up, I'd rate my evening the following:

• Buffet dinner - 5 stars.
• The Greatest Band in the World - 4.999999 stars (it WAS a good buffet).
• HTC Mozart camera performance - 3 stars.
• Telstra Network - 1 star.

Regarding that network - Thursday morning saw me STILL unable to log onto the Marketplace! I even went down to emergency only phone access. Something was definitely wrong, and the folks on Twitter suggested I take the battery out, wait, then put it back in. However, neither I nor The Wah could actually get the damn back cover off, and I was really worried about forcing it too much. So I emailed Mike at Telstra, and the boffins there recommended a reset.

I managed to get the U2 stuff onto the Mac - the Connector program seems to work really well; sucking photos and videos straight into iPhoto - but then the reset took me back to basic settings. Everything I've been customising was lost - and you know I'm a noob. I hadn't done much, but it had taken me a reasonable amount of time!

On the bright side, I was much quicker at finding everything again this time around.

My final impressions of the HTC Mozart to come on Friday....

#TelstraWP7: Figaro Duet

I've been blown away by the response to the "Blogger of Note" nomination. So many people have dropped by to take a look - it's incredibly humbling. It is my intention to pay a return visit to everyone who's left a link back to their own blog - but I think that will take some time, so my apologies if I don't turn up straight away!

In the meantime, I'm still using the HTC Mozart Windows7 phone Telstra gave me for their social review. Below is a video featuring many ramblings about said product and my experiences with it. Please excuse the fluffy, uncombed hair.

Blog of Note & "Fists of Fury" 3

I've been blogging here at Blogger for over six years now. Today I woke up to find myself the Blog of Note for Thursday 2 December. I promptly burst into tears.

What an absolutely lovely, lovely honour - thank you so much to the Blogger team.

If you've come here from Blogger, thank you so much for clicking through. I hope you spend a few minutes having a look at some of my stuff; please leave links back so I can come find you.

I would also love you to look at the following comic book wrap up for Fists of Fury, my current improvised 1930s noir superhero pulp show at the Brisbane Arts Theatre. If you like action, adventure, comedy, photography, comic books, great music and just really awesome things, you'll love this:

As always, the thank yous:

• The Wah directed the show and did the voiceover
• Aurelie Beeston took the wonderful photos
• Dan Beeston converted them into the brilliant comic design
• Kris Anderson wrote the music and produced the video

The final Fists of Fury is this SUNDAY 5 DECEMBER at the Brisbane Arts Theatre. It's only $10, and begins at 7:30pm. If you're in Brisbane, Australia with nothing to do this Sunday - please come along for a fantastic night's entertainment.

Thank you once again to everyone who's popped in for a look - and of course to those who've been here for years reading my stuff. It's because of you that I keep stumbling about in the first place.

Possum

After Sunday night's Fists of Fury show, I grabbed my camera to film a lovely wee possum, who was busy rifling through the bins looking for tasty morsels. We often find the courtyard bins knocked over; the local possums are very used to humans (even theatre types) and quite aggressive when it comes to finding dinner.

My recent iLife software update included a new "trailer" function in iMovie, so I played about with it for about ten minutes and created the following work of cinematic genius:

Come to the final Fists of Fury show this Sunday 5 December, and you might see our cheeky possum for yourself.