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Get Crafty

10/31/2005

Aww man! You know what i LOVE? Losing my sewing machine plug, only to complain about it to enough people that they shut me up by putting me onto cool sites that I can't leave for hours. Aside from that, I also love taking my broken $25 machine into the local sewing shop where the shopkeeper gasps in astonishment at the price, proclaims its advantages over the fandangled $500 models and proceeds to shower me with plugs and advice and offers of assistance.

Anyway the site is: http://www.craftster.org 'ha ha' I hear you think 'anyone who spends serious time on the internet and enjoys crafts, surely would have gone there years ago.' mmm, yep, I am slow. The place is full of American high school students sharing excitment over their proms and 'big fat stomachs', BUT, some of them have real talent when it comes to whipping up a dress. There are some really cool patterns and advice aplenty from those in the know.

In other news, I accidentally left my car unlocked on the streets on friday night, unluckily for the poor kid who had a good rummage through it, I am a freak who keeps it spotless and empty. Thank you, to whoever it was, for not breaking, harming or doing anything other than trying to make a quick buck. I feel that strange reverse guilt, what kind of stingy girl leaves no money in the car for the opportunistic car rummager?

And another big thank you (I'm feeling very grateful today) to all those growing number of people who use 'she' instead of 'he' sometimes, when describing a person. I don't consider myself a feminist, but I do think it has a massive effect on life when everyone always assumes it was a man who did something - something that's really hit home recently when I've sat as the only female in meetings and had, I not known, never would have guessed my gender existed...

18:20 Posted in Chatting | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this

One for the luddites

10/29/2005

I just had a conversation with my father who has just arrived back in NZ from Hawaii where the chiefs of defence from the Asia Pacific region were having a conference. The keynote speaker was an (American?) expert on Globalisation, the point of his speech was that anyone who disagreed with Globalisation was living in a fantasy world, because of course, all products these days were conceived in one country, designed in another, made in yet another, and sold in another. True. Because I didn't actually listen to the speech it is now beside the point. The point is, this weird thing we all do, we do it with the environment, we do it with GE, globalisation, virtually any time someone says 'woah slow it down a bit... is that actually what we want?' we accuse them of being luddites.

I haven't kept up with the debate about globalisation because it's true, these mass things tend to get quickly off track and overpowered by those who are keen to jump in the next bandwagon of 'cool'. As with those who post banners round town saying 'NO WAR', I get quickly annoyed. Whats the solution? Anyone who jumps round singing the latest hippy catchphrase is actually doing more harm than good to their cause of choice. It is them who allow the people who own the media and a lot of the massive multi nationals that are leading this globalisation to be justified in their little newspaper articles writing off the non-conformists as crazy, non thinking loonatics. As with everything, the 'leaders' of these protests, those with actual realistic, rational concerns get drowned in the noise created by their blind followers. And don't think anyone's going to take the times to trawl through it all to pick out the rational arguments, it isn't in any of our global power's interests to point out the wrongs of what they are doing.

I am 'anti war'. I spent a lot of my school years studying history, politics, conflicts, resolutions, in every single one of those classes the only thing that was EVER talked about was war. You wouldn't know that there has actually been massive massive non violent revolutions the world over. And they have been successful, less lives have been lost and they have happened in some of the most aggressively run dictatorships. Have they taken longer? Well that really depends on when you classify something as over. Is it over when America says 'the wars finished', is it over when they implement a new government? is it over the decades later when the country is still in ruins under a government that represents another country? I think there is another way, I think it has to involve the people within the country, because as I learned, the only truely successful revolutions have been led from the inside and SUPPORTED by the outside. When Iraqis got to a state they were so dissatisfied with their hideous leader, they should lead a revolution, confident in the belief that we 'the good guys' would back them up, not have someone else come in and tell them what is hapening to them is wrong and they may now die by accident because of a war someone else is running. And the funny thing is, we're all so trained to think violence is the only way, any other method seems just a bit thick and naieve. Yeah whatever, like I'm ever going to believe that an entire country can be so 'evil' that guns and smart bombs are the only way.

So back to globalisation you're probably thinking. But that is this form of Globalisation. 'Globalisation' is global warfare, is the fact that to boost ones oil imports another must be trampled. 'Globalisation' is also that fact that it doesn't matter in what country I go shopping these days, I'll still end up facing those disguiting golden arches, or some clothing chain store, or the world's super store Walmart. Yay.

I hate these stupid definitions of things. Globalisation means a global world ( I would use 'community', but as we can see from this form of globalisation, it doesn't really meet any definition of community I'd be happy with). Globalisation is not what were doing now, thats simply one way globalisation can look. Same as Communism is not what you read in Animal Farm, its just one way it can evolve. The same people who are telling us that we're stupid to not believe in globalisation, are the ones who have always thought that for one group to succeed, then the vast majority must suffer. That is why there was Apartheid, that only ended a few years ago. That is why Black americans were forced to join a civil rights movement that took decades, that is the very foundation of capitalism. I'm sorry, but there is not a chance I'm going to believe a word uttered from the leaders of countries who have been incredibly successful at looking after their own interests to the detriment of whoever got in their way. I don't want their form of globalisation. I'd rather ask the Chinese factory worker (of whom there are far more than any of the so called experts and government agencies and CEO's of our most globalised countries.). What do they think of globalisation?

What would you think if suddenly tables were turned and this world we live in with the joys of globalisation and war and Genetic engineering by a trick of fate, tomorrow delivered you into another group? If you always lived with that possibility, would you still be singing the praises of this world? or would you be doing everything in your power now to ensure there was something a little more beneficial to us all, 20% may have to tone down our living a bit so that the other 80% don't have to live in conditions we wouldn't accept for ourselves. Because when you think of it like that, maybe we would be thinking of a few more solutions, maybe we wouldnt accept this form of globalisation, or the newspaper articles telling us about these stupid greenies and luddites, maybe we'd have cause to wonder why our universities teach us that the only form of conflict resolution is war, and that we'll all be shopping in Walmart forever more. Maybe if it was our lifestyles on the line we'd actually question some fundamental beliefs and give this globalisation thing a good turn over, this human nature thing a little more exammination. Maybe, when we feel that tiny bit of smug satifaction when experts are telling us theres nothing we can do (and we think, phew, no point in getting all moralistic about this, I can't do anything anyway), we should recognise it and wonder if maybe we're just feeling lazy in our wealth, and maybe they are only saying it to create a dull, unquestioning mass .

I love the idea of a global world. I love the idea of democracy, but I don't for one second think that what we have is even close to the ideal of either of those. What I do think, is that there are other, easier, less destructive ways, they wont come through spraying slogans throughout the cities, they wont come from governments or experts.

12:40 Posted in consumerism | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Dogs on Beaches

10/28/2005

A couple of years ago a little girl in NZ got badly mauled by a dog, her parents were fairly high profile go getter types and made absolutely sure that this had an impact on the way we as a country treated dogs. Polititians and journalists quickly got caught up in the craze (and I use the word 'craze' for a reason) and before you knew it, you'd think we had an epidemic of dog owners training their dogs to attack innocent children.

As a result, dogs in our country now have a very restricted area to live in. They must walk on leashes a lot of the time, they are not free to run on the beach, people sometimes give you a glare or a snide remark if you can't handle it anymore and let your dog free to run again. There are posters up in council buildings warning of the dangers of dogs and it is meant to be frightening for one of these big sloppy creatures to come romping up to you.

I understand that a little girl was attacked, I understand that it happens sometimes, obviously not as much as little girls get attacked by their own parents, but some would say, enough to put some serious restrictions on them. They are animals, and therefore prone to bouts of absolute craziness, any old family dog could suddenly become a wild beast desperate for the taste of blood.

I knew a woman once who had a massive husky dog, who lived in a fenced garden. Every day after school, little kids would come and taunt him through the fence with food and sticks and everything else they could find to distress the poor thing. She rang the council and asked if she could report the kids for animal absue before the day her dog finally snapped, and became perfectly justified in getting them back. No one would listen. She rang the SPCA, and they said that in this certain high profile dog attack case, it was believed by the SPCA the story was the same. We don't care that the dog is just defending itself, humans are so high up in the food chain, that there will be no fair trial, there will be no thought of cause and effect, we will stick to the assumption that ALL dogs have this unexplainable trigger that turns them against us. It's easier that way, and when a cute girl gets hurt, noone wants to think that maybeshe had a role in it, we'd rather blame the evil dog.

I've known a lot of dogs, I've known the poor starving dogs of asian countries who form gangs and fight each other until they are bleeding and cut up, yet come back to us for a cuddle, others who have been so mistreated that their entire neck has an open, gaping hole out of it, running around terrified and aggressively, yet when someone manages to bring it to a shelter, the dog is the most loveable creature they have met. Dogs like my parent's dog, who with her Mastive, German Shepard crossing, can bark terrifyingly, yet wimpers and comes bounding behind us if she so much as spies a plastic bag or a stranger.

We are happy to take these animals into our homes, we often expect them to exist within tiny plots of grass while we work for 8 hours a day, with maybe a 15 minute walk at the end, and now that must be on a leash. We expect their absolute and undying love and they offer it willingly no matter how much we have wronged them in their lives, then we fail to teach our children to respect them and treat them like the valued memebers of our society that they are, and when one dog snaps, we feel justified in removing the freedom of all of them. That is wrong.

In Ohope, I have heard there was an overwhelming vote against dog restrictions on beaches, and you can see the difference. These dogs are wildly happy, they go swimming once a day, the chase seagulls round and round, play with other dogs and run alongside you if you encourage them. Sometimes you see parades of poodles, or dogs so small they could fit in a shoe, or proud 'parents' unsuccessfully giving their new puppy obiedience training. It's nice.

Some people are not fans of dogs, they don't feel comfortable on the beach surrounded by dogs, another phobia. But I don't believe that the answer to an irrational fear is to remove the target of the fear from every day life. Surely any phobia or fear cannot last the distance of seeing hundreds of dogs of all shapes and sizes blatantly ignore you because they are so absorbed in their own lives It is the agreement that the fear is justified thats letting us all down, we make it sound like there is a logical reason for it by restricting all areas of dogs lives and the fear becomes qualified and perpetuates.

09:30 Posted in New Zealand | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Shaping up

10/26/2005

My sister wants to run a mini triathalon in Febuary, I am her keen yet unfit sidekick. Geez man, the years really zoom by when you think of excercise, I've been running several times a week all year yet only now am I starting to get to the level I used ot get to in a few measley months. Hows that for the anti motivator? Anyway, my newest discovery is biking. Funnily enough I'm surrounded by keen bikers, but never felt the urge, until i went straight after a run. One of the best feelings in the world is jumping on a bike after plodding along on a run where every step exhausts you, and doing the entire route again at high speed. I really recomend it, I look forward to it even. Actually the sister is now contemplating a duathalon or whatever it's called when you cut out the swim part, she's decided she's not big on swimming.

I'm trying oot get the other sister involved with my ideas for matching pink excercise outfits, however, unbelievably, she is staunch in her lack of excitement. So it looks like I will only be producing two matching pink outfits. When I get a new sewing machine. The last one was just great, but of all things, I lost the plug. So at the moment I am poised over http://www.trademe.co.nz waiting out the final thirty minutes of the auction. Im currently in the lead, which gives me a bit of a buzz. Tim (boyfriend/business partner) is amazed at my newfound joy over things he showed me long ago, that I was completely disinterested in at the time. We have a summer plan to leave the computers behind for parts of the week and get out and into the Ohope scene... I'm really keen to take some early morning beach yoga classes, I would like to teach them but dont know any yoga, so may have to chat to someone in the know.

 Just so you know, in NZ this week a massive 4.5 meter long, 1 tonne, beautiful Great White Shark was massacred by us humans in a fishing net. What a loss. How incredible, to be a creature that can swallow a seal that is largr than myself in one gulp, no teeth marks. How dismal that it's life is ended by us for no reason.

21:31 Posted in Chatting | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Germs and pests and vermin

10/20/2005

We had a vacuum salesman round a while ago, he filled up little baggies with dust and gave us a stern look and a good talking to about cleanliness. It appears, the aim these days is to live in a house so sterile, nothing would dare co-occupy. You'd probably be disguisted to know that we enjoyed the company of a large family of wild mice for a while, and that although we were warned of the dangers to our health, we had a good time with them, before trapping them humanely and removing them to a nearby forest. The reason I'm starting to notice things about dirt and bugs is that it's ever so common these days to have a massive spider phobia, or to douse your home in so many chemicals the entire ecosystem of little dust mites and ants and spiders and flies is killed off. We're a world of asthmatics, allergics and phoebics - we're terrified of tiny insects that couldn't harm us if they tried, our bodies can't cope with flower pollen or seed spores, and we think the answer is to remove nature from our lives.

I had a conversation in the weekend, where a spider phobia was put down to a natural reaction to a natural 'enemy'. I'm not sure what to think about that, I am personally extrememly uncomfortable with heights, and I suppose that could also be 'natural', but I think its more to do with some childood falls. I've always loved animals, but a few years ago, when swimming in a deep and isolated area of the ocean, I made the mistake of thinking 'Jaws' before bumping headlong into a jellyfish and scaring myself silly. Its funny then, for me to hear the story of the Australian shark attack 'victim' who ran back to shore, only to grab another surfboard and get back out. To him it's all nature, sometimes you get in the sharks way, and that's cool.

I'm not sure about the way things are going. I definately think all the sprays and poisons we use have more to do with our allergies etc than the bugs we've been living with for millions of years. I don't use flyspray, I don't think it's cool to trap and kill mice and I'm not too sure those horrible poisons are the way to undo the damage we've done by importing the wrong animals into our country. I don't have asthma, excema or allergies of any type so maybe I'm unusual, but I can't help but think that if we're becoming alergic to grass it is something other than the grass that is doing it.

When the vaccuum salesman visited with the asusmption that all dirt is bad, it suddenly seemed a little strange to me that we think that way. It's one of my new found joys, 'question everything', it's interesting when you examine your base assumptions, how many of them are the result of weird psychological events and how much that warps your view on the world. When you make the quiet little assumption that all dirt/bugs/pests are bad, the entire world ends up entirely different from if you believe in their role.

22:50 Posted in environment | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this | Tags: Ecology & Environment

Petrol

10/16/2005

What I love about this world, is that just as you feel like its on the brink of insanity and that you really will have to go and live some cut off existence in the back of nowhere, something switches. Oil prices are rising rapidly, and as they rise, our objections rise to meet them, climaxing as we realise we're still standing at that petrol pump. We have no other choice. The age of cheap petrol is over, we're eaching peak oil, the holes that we are drilling into the very core of this battered earth are drying up and so is the fuel we all depend on. Why does that make me suddenly insanely happy?

There are alternatives, and while we as consumers prove ourselves once again to be slow to catch on, the change is substantial. Yes the days of cheap petrol are over, but the days of petrol full stop will finish at some point soon after. The thing that gets me, is that cars were never made to run on petrol, the first diesal engine was designed to be self sustainable by crop farmers. People run their cars off left over vegetable oil, people run entire public transport systems off cow dung. Its not rocket science, its not even that tricky. And while I have no faith at all in our combined ability to realise our mistake in allowing ourselves to become reliant on some of the most disguisting practises and companies in the world, in this case, we may be saved.

The thing is, petrol companies are pricing themselves out of the market. Suddenly, it is cost effective to ban cars from cities and install bike tracks, it is wise to look at alternative fuels (not even just for cars, but for all energy needs - case in point, in NZ, solar panels are now installed almost by default in new houses). Maybe that science that has been around for ever so long now, for hybrid cars and hydrogen cars will become mainstream.

And while our great great great grandchildren will amuse themselves for hours by questioning how on earth we managed to get ourselves entirely dependent on one fuel source that  destroyed the environment, left gaping holes under our earths crust (yes you may have noticed an increase in massive earthquakes), and would eventually run out, at least they will be laughing in a world that is on the long, slow path to recovery.

In the meantime though, to those idiots who have decided to import their massive petrol guzzling American cars into NZ,  we don't think thats cool here.

11:13 Posted in environment | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Ecology & Environment

Terror In the Airports

10/13/2005

Every tram in Melbourne is pasted with banners telling a terrorised population to report every unattended "thing", NZ newspapers report a man who stopped an entire chunk of Auckland city dead when he discarded the bomb part of his Bad Taste fancy dress costume in a city rubbish bin. You will be mistaken for thinking that the recent natural disasters are not intertwined with a terrorist plot (terrorist plots, by the way, can only be hatched by dark skinned individuals from Middle Eastern areas of the world). I saw a poor Australian man being threatened and terrorised in an airport simply because his skin was the wrong colour. I stood witness for nearly two hours while his bags were unpacked and examined, his private property trawled through and his dignity stripped (while his entire family stood through the arrival gate for several hours without any of our lovely airport attendants bothering to inform them that he was being held up.)

Who are these terrorists? I have to ask. And I have to face the thinly masked racist members of our community who now feel justified in hating every person who wasn't born with pasty white skin and christianity. Racism is not the sole domain on Neo Nazi Skin heads. And terrorism is not the sole domain of Muslim extremists. In fact, in their name we are being terrorised, but not by them. If I was to do a tally of total terror throughout history, anyone without white skin would barely justify a mention, which not only begs the question, what have we done to create these terrorists? it also makes me wonder if in fact the terror is being inflicted by some of 'our own'.

I'm sorry, but panic notices on public transport do not makes society safer, neither does holding up innocent individuals at airports because they fit a terrorist 'profile'. What it does do, however, is inspire terror. Although I have never yet witnessed an act of terror outside of these, I am meant to feel as if our countries are under siege.

Don't get me wrong, I do feel sorry for those who have died s a result of the Bali bombings (mainly the Balanese, would you guess?), and the victims of the London bombings, especially the innocent members of London who were targeted for attacks after the bombs went off, thus proving our inherent racism. Most of all, I feel sorry for the people of Iraq, who now live in real terror every day, not just that commanded by propoganda on public transport. I feel annoyed when after the London bombings, some nutter said 'we are all Londoners today' and everyone thought that was a powerful statement. We are never 'all Iraqis'. And that says so much more.

22:15 Posted in Chatting | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Politics

Web Wars- The fight for web standards

10/10/2005

It constantly amazes me how many professional website developers fail to test their sites on any browser other than IE. I'm a staunch Firefox user, I developed the first site I ever made on firefox, and realised fairly quickly that Microsoft was playing dirty in the standards field, when that site was unreadable on IE. Most heavy users of the web realise the benefits of a faster, more customisable browser and reap the benefits of addons such as the developer tool bar. However, most 'normal' users stick with their default IE out of ease. This leave web developers in a tricky position. The easy answer is to design for IE, the hard is to force Mocirosoft to align with the rest of the world, by pushing web standards. That is where small companies come in.

 
The advantage of being small is the fact that we are lean, fast and have about as little legacy as possible. While bigger organisations are sensing a massive change in the air, yet still sitting chained to enormous liscence fees and proprietry technology, the small guys are shifting quickly, keeping pace with the internet and moving fast enough that bit by bit Microsoft's massive market share is being eroded. We have to look beyond the norm in order to compete, and that constant search for the new and innovative, the drive to keep up with such a fast changing space is what keeps small companies more ionnovative and higher quality than their larger and more stable counterparts. Big companies will keep their customers for now, but the revolution will not come from another big company moving in, it is the masses of small companies chipping away at their market share.

While it is easier in the short term to pretend IE is the only browser in the market, it is hurting all of us, it is a sign of lack of quality and laziness. It is far easier to catch on early and be driving the change, than hurrying to catch up while the rest of the world has moved on.

13:10 Posted in Small business | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Business International

Living the Dream

10/06/2005

I'm one of those people who annoy everyone by being young and idealistic, while they are slogging away in 'the real world'. The way psychology sems to work, is that a complete lack of support for your thoughts and ideas either a) makes you believe you are wrong, or b) leads to a total convition that you are right. Weird.

I never thought I'd be a technologist, I saw myself as more of an arty type, until I realised exactly how much technology and art are one and the same and dove head first out of a boring management degree and into the world of self-taught web design/development.

That brings me here, to an inner city suburb of Melbourne, where the three of us in our business have gathered for a week to develop a blossoming partnership, meet some very interesting people, receive some even more interesting offers of captial and opportunities and of course, take advantage of one of the few moments we're all in the same county, to develop our business for the next stage.

We have built an integrated management system for small businesses, designed with global growth in mind, and to cater for the unique challenges facing small businesses. Basically, exactly what we need as a small globally expanding company, and from the looks, what is really missing from the small business space. We've just moved out of an intense development period and into an even more intense time of pulling on customers and resellers, and all of this despite being told many a time to 'leave that dreamland and go and find a nice job in a shop'. Yes it's still early days in our 2 year old business, and we've made plenty of mistakes a long the way, about half of which we could have easily avoided. But those 'failures' are our biggest success to date, we survived them and we are stronger because of them.

Even though the hours are long, the challenges loom high and close, and things don't always go according to plan, I feel like I'm living the dream. Check out our website at http://www.evolutionone.com.

12:45 Posted in Small business | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Business International