- State Library acquires Flinders’ original love letters – It’s more than just love letters, really. I’ve been to a couple events at the State Library of NSW in the past year and I’m always astounded by the depth of their collections. It’s as much a museum as it is a library!
- News Knitter – A data visualisation project where information gathered from daily political news was analysed, filtered, and converted into a pattern for a machine knitted sweater.
- The Commercial Pattern Archive – A wonderful resource that archives commercial sewing pattern data to preserve these ephemeral bits of our culture for the future. (Link via Metafilter.)
- The Easy Tiger Sessions by Charley Castle & The Boys in the Well – We heard this group playing a bit at Wayward last weekend and Rodd tracked them down. It’s “newgrass.” Very nice.
- Blogroll.org – I’m still on the hunt for more sites to add to my feed reader. Lots to explore here!
Category: Music
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Links I’ve been enjoying lately
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Photo Post
“I still love you, the girl from Mars…” ❤️ @jpofoz and I continued our musical tour of the 90’s with tonight’s Ash gig at Sydney Uni. So fun! The openers (So I Says to Mabel) were great too. (They won me over with a Taylor Swift cover…)
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BIEBER DUCK TAPE
Justin Bieber Duck Tape – My brain is just exploding from the awesomeness. Who thought of this? Why? It’s so wonderfully random. It’s like surrealist art. I want some.
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Photo post
Got new headphones as my old ones (bequeathed by @chrisgander ) were falling apart. These are “for DJs”. I feel hip.
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Sunrise, Sunset
The lyricist from Fiddler on the Roof has provided new lyrics for “Sunrise, Sunset” that make it suitable for gay weddings. That’s lovely.
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Ukulele Crazy
“Ukulele Crazy” – an article about the current ukulele renaissance and all the artists taking advantage of it. Eddie Vedder is even coming out with an album of uke songs! Yep, I am firmly on this bandwagon. I can play like four songs passably well now, and I’m trying to practice twice a week. (Link courtesy of the Snook, who doesn’t seem to mind me strumming while he plays Warcraft.)
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Celebrity Sightings
Two weeks ago we joined Kunaal for a special Popcorn Taxi screening of the new sci-fi comedy “Paul”. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (aka the guys from “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) were actually there to talk about the film and do a Q&A with us afterwards. It was really cool! Popcorn Taxi’s posted video of it on YouTube if you’re interested. (Part 1 / Part 2) We all enjoyed the movie quite a lot. I’d probably say it’s not as funny as their other ones, mostly because the humour is a lot more broad. It’s still full of awesome geek references though.
Anyway, the cinema was in the Bondi Junction Westfield shopping mall, so afterwards we headed for the elevators to leave. While we were standing waiting for the lift to arrive, Simon, Nick, and their whole entourage suddenly came around the corner for the lifts too. One was about to arrive, so I turned to Nick and said, “That one’s free if you guys want it.” He said thanks and nodded and they all headed into the lift. The three of us stepped back and decided to take the escalators instead to avoid the crowd. And then I nearly fell over excitedly tweeting it on the way out to the taxis. How excitement!
Last Saturday our Knitters Guild meeting was moved to Kings Cross (due to Surry Hills being booked for the Writers Festival). We always break in the middle for tea, so me, Fiona, Merrin, and Margaret went for a walk to get coffees. We were standing outside a cafe in Potts Point waiting for our coffee when suddenly, stepping up onto the footpath in front of me was THE COMMANDO. I actually stopped talking mid-sentence when I realised it was him. He was wearing his trademark sunnies, but other than that he was totally casual in jeans, sneakers, and a pink T-shirt. Once he moved up the street a bit, I took a sneaky photo of him. He’s shorter in real life than I thought. But, uh, dude can fill out a T-shirt. That’s all I’m sayin’.
This Sunday we’re going to the Opera House for a special talk by Sir Terry Pratchett. Looking forward to that one. Maybe we’ll bump into him by the lifts too!
I almost had another one. I was utterly convinced for about 10 seconds the other night that Alan Brough was drinking in the laneway outside that annoying tiny bar next to Morris & Sons in the city. When I got closer though I saw it was just some other giant Kiwi in a checked shirt. Damn.
