Category: Self-ish

Schmap’d!

“Hi Morgan,
I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the sixth edition of our Schmap Southampton Guide…”
So began a letter from Emma Williams of Schmap, which is basically Google Maps with further data built right in. How exciting, I thought, one of my silly photos has struck a chord with someone!
The photo in question is of Winchester Cathedral. From the back. With most of it missing. Not exactly my best piece of photography ever; the caption I gave the photo was Not the most dramatic view.
“Hi Morgan,
I am delighted to let you know that your photo has been selected for inclusion…”
And there it is as promised: my photo of a Cathedral’s backside. How… bemusing.

How It Went Down

It’s been a busy week. Back into work today, and will try to chip away at the big list of emails and such waiting reply. But here’s something of a roundup of the day.
It was a pretty relaxed day, all told. There was setup of the venue in the morning, with assistance from many lovely and generous people who shifted fridges and set up chairs and so on. We got that done much faster than I thought possible, which was great. Thereafter I lurked about as Dan set up some lights and Damon set up some sounds, and then I just lurked about. Strange to spend a while sitting all alone in the venue on your wedding day.
I ducked away with Billy to clear my head, then went home to get kilted up; Ado and Frank joined me for this and a whisky or two was drunk. Then to the venue again, where I hid out the back waiting for the go signal. Soon my parents appeared and we got the word, and Cal and I entered the hall from opposite sides and went up the front at the same time.
Then we got civil unioned. It was pretty cool. Here’s the 2-minute highlight reel prepared by Steve Leon:

Afterwards there were many photos, a couple of speeches (but no more because acoustics were rubbish), a haphazardly hilarious ceilidh, and dancing to DJ Malc’s tunes to finish on I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).
And yes, the face was sore from smiling by the end, but that was great. It was a very happy day. Memorable, you might say. And now I’ve got a ring on my finger and, y’know, it actually feels really quite different.
A number of people wondered why we went for a civil union over a marriage. There’re a bunch of reasons – it’s more inclusive, for a start, which is something quite important to us. Most of all, though, the CU allows us to sidestep the long shadows of tradition and preconception and make our formalised relationship exactly what we want it to be. I feel quite privileged, actually, that we can join in a formal union using a structure that has virtually no baggage attached to it; it’s a special position to be in. (Respect also to starlajo and Thomas, and Evie and Jarratt, for going the CU route before us and showing the way.)
Here’s something of a linky roundup. Have I missed anyone? I still need to reply to all these people:
The Alligator
Not Kate
Susan
Karen
Dave S
Gametime photo
Matt C (with photos)
Debz (with photos that aren’t of me!)
Damon’s gearbox analogy
Maire
Fishy
JB
Damon’s collective naming exercise
Dan
Hottieperm
elderflower’s photos
Off-Black
lostperdita
buzzandhum
And there’s a heaping helping of photos up on Facebook too, if you are part of that collective. (Some of them may be public-view, I haven’t checked.)

Civilised!


Cal and I tied the knot yesterday! (This photo is from Jenni on Facebook – thank you!)
Shortly we go to my parents for the post-bash BBQ (2pm until fallover o’clock). I hope everyone remembers that it’s on and they’re all invited… or we’ll have lots and lots of sausages left over…

Wire and Request

First thing, cross-posted from my LJ:
“Wellington – buy The Wire now.
If you are in Wellington, and if you like The Wire, stop queueing to borrow it. Get yourself along to Borders Lambton Quay where you can get seasons 2, 3 and 4 for the princely sum of $9.99 each (down from $59.99 each).
You read that right. Borders goes a bit wacky with their pricing sometimes and no doubt this is a system error of some sort, but there was a whole display with 9.99 Wire seasons. They’ll probably fix it in a day or two, like they did when I bought Under The Mountain for $7 (down from $30) but it is entirely legit while it lasts.
I bought ’em.”
Second thing:
If anyone going to the big wedding party on Sat is free during the day and can lend a hand setting up, drop me an email. We’d love to have a couple extra bods…

BIZ-E

Final week before the big day. Final week being engaged. Loads to do.
Was in a shop the other day with Gregor, Malc and Liz. Gregor nudged me and pointed at a t-shirt showing a bride-and-groom symbol, and I read aloud the words above it: “Game on!” Gregor shook his head and flattened the shirt so I could see that it really said “Game Over”. But he insisted that it was a good omen that I misread it so positively…
(If y’all want to come, give me an email. Yes, you *are* invited.)

Reappraising CauseWired

A couple months back I reviewed CauseWired, a book I’d been comp’d. It was not a glowing review, but it wasn’t that negative either.

CauseWired is the name Watson gives to social causes that leverage online tools, particularly social networks… Watson is clearly a very switched-on guy and he’s explored social activism in great detail, but the book left me feeling underwhelmed and convinced that it will date rapidly…. I wanted Tom Watson to ask himself harder questions. Instead it feels to me like he’s played safe and contents himself with giving a tour and quoting extensively from others. To give credit where its due, it is a very good tour of the online cause state of play in early 2008, but I can’t see this book retaining much value beyond 2010 or so. In that sense, it isn’t really for me.

Next part of the story. Only a few weeks after reading CauseWired, there was a change in government here in NZ. The new govt. acted fast and suddenly climate change policy was up for review. I felt like a response was needed – something to give a steer to the new government away from indulging the hardcore climate sceptics of their partner party. It soon became apparent that no-one else was stepping up.
So I did. With some frenzied behind-the-scenes work from a team of helpful souls, the Don’t Be A Rodney campaign was born. And it was a success on its own terms, generating at least a couple dozen and maybe as many as a hundred hard-copy letters to the new Prime Minister urging him to put his foot down on climate change.
The campaign would not have happened if I hadn’t read CauseWired. It is that simple. I think I knew everything I needed before the book, but CauseWired gave me something that I hadn’t given it credit for in my earlier review: detailed, specific inspiration. The examples in that book gave me some confidence and momentum I would otherwise have lacked.
If its effect on my life is the measure of a book’s worth, then CauseWired ended up as the most valuable book I read in 2008. And that’s something I never would have believed when I wrote that first review.

On my 2008

(I still have a bunch of “wrapping up 2007” posts sitting in my to-be-written queue. Er. The world still needs to know the story of Losing My Heart To A Starship Trooper: The RPG!)
Bye bye 2008. You were a good year. A hard year, but good.
I handed in a thesis for a Master of Science, which dominated things somewhat; I spent most of the year shedding responsibilities and activities to create space in which to work. It was, in fact, bloody hard work, more than I had expected. But the good news is, it was tremendously educational. I learned more than expected in exact proportion to how much I worked harded than expected. It was a really good experience. And handing in ten years after I completed previous significant chunk of uni work was also a nice touch.
So that was the “hard” bit; for the “good” bit, I started last year by proposing to my Caroline. This happened in the first minutes after midnight on new year’s day but we kept the news under our hats for almost a week. It has been marvellous to be engaged, I highly recommend it. I understand that what comes next is also rather good. Anyway, we’re being civilly united in three weeks, so if you want to see me in a kilt and Cal in a dress, drop me an email soon.
Those were the two big forces in my year. There was much else of interest, but nothing on the scale of those two. In my online life, well, this blog reached its fifth anniversary, and I thoroughly enjoyed sharing abundant Friday linky to clear my bookmarks each week. More significantly, with much good help I started a campaign that got a lot of people writing letters and may possibly have had some impact on government decision-making. And I joined HoffSpace, the social networking system for David Hasslehoff. I have non-bot HoffFriends!
Finally: turns out this didn’t make it to the Dr Horrible video selection, but you can still catch my cameo in Jon’s excellent Evil League of Evil application, the Embezzler. See it, and also the sweet Baby Hurricane application, here.
Laters, 2008.

Stuff and Nonsense

Read through my thesis draft today, making copious scribbly notes all over it about things to change. Worst bit: realizing my intro section is an example of the kind of academic writing that I hate. Filled with jargon, poorly structured, obfuscatory and exclusive – the opposite of communication. The rest of it wasn’t so bad, but that first chapter was suffering. Too many word-processing passes over it to amend this and make that more precise, and it had lost whatever shape it once had. I need to take it apart and reassemble it I think, if I want to be proud to put my name to it.
It was John Ralston Saul in Voltaire’s Bastards who really made the case in a way that convinced me – that expertise in modern society is used as a tool for power and is bound up with developing an exclusive vocabulary that is then used to keep out outsiders. I don’t know that I buy the agency implicit in his argument, but I certainly buy the end result he notes, of knowledge being caught up in silos and unable to serve as a check on itself across disciplines, of the reification of knowledge divorced from reality, and the cult of expertise that results being deployed as a rationale for persisting with insanity in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. (Witness: the economy, around the world, right now.)
Actually, that brings to mind a great bit in the Boston Globe on the rise of the economist blogosphere, populated by highly educated experts who don’t buy the orthodoxy and who have been providing running criticism as recent events have unfolded. Go see the article, it’s pacey and insightful. Particularly go see if you’re one of those people that publish books about how the internet dumbs people down and blogs are a fad or a negative-sum game.
Anyway. Thesis. Continues. Yes.
Also: I am troubled by the precedent set in this, not least because sexually explicit parodies of popular cartoon/comic characters are a hallowed tradition.
And in today’s DomPost, prime spot on the features page yet again goes to a climate change sceptic. Tim Pankhurst, get your newspaper under control already! This is humiliating! If I had to pay for it, I’d never read it!