Hubris.co.nz

Last Tuesday I was on the bus home, and I was texting Kat saying “I hate everyone in the whole world. Except for you” because I was having a really horrible shitter of a week/month/year, and all I wanted was someone’s shoulder to cry on. Then when I was stumbling down my street trying not to cry, I suddenly thought “Well, why the fuck don’t I just go visit her?” and decided that if I could get flights for under $500, I would. A quick flick through the Air NZ site and a text to confirm that she was free for the weekend later, I found myself with flights booked for Friday-Sunday, and as she told me that they live in a bedsit, I searched wotif.com for a hotel, and then ended up making a booking straight through the Hotel On Devonport site as it was cheaper – $130+gst for a deluxe room. Plus, they emailed me back almost instantaneously saying that they saw I requested a 10am check-in, to let me know that if my room wasn’t ready at that stage I could still park and leave my suitcase there. Very impressed with that.

That made the rest of the week a little more dealable-with-able, along with sending a series of “this is why I am angry with you” emails to a series of people. And so on Friday morning I found myself up before 7am, with the shuttle picking me up at 7.20am. Golly gee, that was an early morning. Air NZ has gone all super high tech at the airport, where you check yourself in at a kiosk, print your own sticker for your bag, and just biff it on the conveyor-belt yourself. At this stage I would like to mention that the Caltex in the Newtown shops still sends an attendant out to pump your gas for you. What is happening to service in the rest of the world? Won’t someone please think of the children? Anyways. I had heaps of time so I got a coffee from Fuel and read the paper, but if I’d known that they wouldn’t give me a stamp for the coffee, I would have gone to Wishbone.

The flight itself was uneventful, and touching down in Tauranga was pretty. As soon as my taxi driver found out that I’d never been to Tauranga before, he proceeded to narrate everything, which is what I hoped for. He gave me so much information that I was constantly able to pull it out over the weekend and impress Kat & Kane, or at least make them start calling the taxi driver my boyfriend. He answered my questions about how much a taxi to the Mount would be, pointed out where the buses went from, explained that the Strand went off on Saturday nights (his words) and lifted my suitcase out of the car for me. The reception staff at the hotel were just as friendly and nice, finding me a room that was available then rather than making me wait, and asking when I’d like my complimentary drink delivered. My room on the fifth floor was absolutely lovely:

However, I couldn’t make the lights go. And yes, I saw the large plastic key thing that you’re suppose to slide into the switch, but it wouldn’t go in. I rang reception, and told them, so they sent someone up, who couldn’t make it go either because there was something jammed in the hole. They found housekeeping who unjammed it, but the lights still didn’t go on and they blamed a broken fuse. Five minutes later, I had electricity, and they checked to make sure. Hurrah! Kat wasn’t due to finish work until 2pm, so I decided to venture out and find myself some brunch.

Devonport St is the main shopping street in Tauranga, apparently, so there were lots of places around. There were also lots of vacant shops, but mostly it was a pleasant little high street full of chain stores. A block over and down I found a little plaza area, and decided to eat at Bravo because they had lots of sunny outdoor tables. I had mushrooms on toast with super crispy bacon and enjoyed the sunshine. I found the city art gallery and marvelled at the collection of NZ paintings that BNZ bought during 1982-1987 before they went bankcrupt or whatever, and talked to the attendant about how patronage of the arts will no doubt suffer in this current R-Word climate. After that, I strolled around a bit more before heading back to the hotel for a lovely nap on the huge big bed. Even Damian Christie recommends the hotel, and that says a lot.

Then it was KAT TIME! She came to meet me at the hotel and I hugged her so hard I almost went all Mice & Men on her. I offered to buy her a pedicure, so we went off in search of a place that would take us. The first place we tried right across the road was busy, but the second one we found (there are nail salons EVERYWHERE in Tauranga, it’s a little weird) the woman said she could do us both at once. Oooer. So we clambered up into the massaging chairs and soaked our feet while she slid back and forth between us. I know we didn’t have appointments, but she was really rushed because as we discovered she had another client coming in, and I just don’t think we got a very good deal. I was really disappointed that we didn’t get the dead skin razored off our feet, or any kind of massage (in fact, she only rubbed lotion into one of my feet!) and the nail polish job was patchy, and since my toenails are unnaturally thick, I always put polish on their edge, but she didn’t. For $48 each, I thought it was seriously lacking (although looking at their site now, what they list is what we got). Still, I bought some bright yellow nail polish as well, and it was relaxing to have the soak and the electric massage, and that’s what I was after. Perhaps I was spoiled by my only other pedicure experience in New York. And in fact, looking at prices of other places on the net right now, maybe that’s pretty standard or actually fairly cheap. Ahh well.

Then we headed to a convenience store for snacks and a bottle of wine, and sat out on my sunny balconey until it got too hot and then we flopped all over my bed. We booked dinner at Cafe Versaillies for 8.30pm so we could watch NZNTM first, and Kane came and joined us in my hotel room for television watching, napping, and making sex-faces on the big suede headboard to confuse the housekeeping staff:

Eventually though, we were so hungry that we decided to change our booking to 7.15pm. We were seated in a corner that if we’d been on a date we could have had butterfly-adorned curtains pulled around us.The very French man at the restaurant was very accomodating, even though we felt obliged to try and thank him in French, which made me want to speak Japanese, as that’s my default “not English” language, and Kat was the same with Spanish. I tried very very hard not to make any “aw haw haw Baugutte!” exclamations, which was hard, because I was very very giggling, and also our napkins were arranged thusly:

And how can you fight that? Especially if you’re a cheese-eating surrender monkey. YOU CAN’T! It’s NOT POSSIBLE! So instead we surrendered to the duck in orange sauce and eclairs with incredibly intense chocolate sauce, and some beajolais and potato gratin. What did the French person say when they’d eaten a lot of amazingly delicious food, including eggs in Kat & Kane’s chocolate mousse? I’ve had an oueff!

After that we adjorned to my hotel for more lol-ing and lolling around on my big bed before they finally went home, with plans to pick me up at 10am the next day. I slept fantastically, the double-glazed doors keeping out the sound of street hooliganism that I expected but never saw. If I could change one thing about the hotel though, it would be that they didn’t have aloe vera-flavoured moisturiser because I don’t like aloe vera scent. But that’s just me being super picky. I should have remembered to pack my own lotion.

So yes, anyway, Saturday. They picked me up and we went to Grindz on First Avenue for breakfast after we flagged walking up to Fifth for some sort of market. They said that the staff at Grindz can have bad attitudes, but my french toast and coffee were great, even if the toast was more eggy than I personally prefer. Plus I love that Grindz has a whole dedicated playroom for kids to keep them out of my ears. We did some shop-browsing, then jumped on a bus over to the Mount. Kane wanted to go to a particular op shop, so we went to the “bad” part of the Mt Manganui shops. It all seemed a bit sad and shut down. I tried on a thousand pairs of sunglasses, but I still can’t find any I like as much as the glasses I wear these days which I’ve had since 1999 (May 1, 1999 to be exact! Which was also the first day I told someone to their face that I loved them is how I know that for a fact) and they’re all scratched up to hell. Eventually we got to go and plonk our asses down on the beach and watch a family learn to surf. I couldn’t help but cheer every time any of them caught a wave, especially the 10 year old girl. Kat also made me laugh and cheer and clap by performing the chicken dance from Arrested Development for me and also for Lisa, except that it was too high-res to mms to her. But here it is for you. Turn your head!

And if that video doesn’t make you happy, then you are officially (OFFICIALLY!) the lamest person on the face of the planet. Now, when I twitted that I was going to Tauranga, I asked people what I should do. Almost everyone who replied told me I should go for a walk up the Mount. Here is a picture of the Mount.

I don’t walk up shit like that. In fact, I was already starting to develop a blister, as well as having one on the back of my heel still from my stupid new shoes, and my arms were banged up from walking into a pole. So it was nice to sit on the beach and chill for a while, but eventually I declared that I needed scheduled relaxing free time, and we made a plan to go and get a bite to eat. I picked Slow Fish at random, and it turned out to be a very clever thing to do, because the haloumi that came with my greek salad was the best haloumi I have ever ever eaten. Because I feel bad for you because you didn’t get to share my haloumi, here is a bonus picture of a tree with big bouncy branches that we rode like ponies:

Then we went to the Hot Pools. Because I mysteriously found myself in possession of a Tauranga library card, I got in for $6, but it would have been worth the outsider rate of $14. We sat in the passive pool for a while because it had a shade sail over it, and I impressed K&K with my sign-reading-and-retention knowledge by telling them that it was called the passive pool, and that it was 35 degrees. Then we switched over to the active pool in the sun, but it was a much cooler-feeling 33 degrees, and so we were more active. We did interpretive water dances about our jobs. Apparently my job involves me typing with my toes. The salt water made me super extra buoyant. I couldn’t help but float, so I impressed them with my abilty to float with my legs crossed. My sunglasses are so big Kane could wear them happily over his glasses, but they did get salty. We finished with a soak in the spa pools (38 degrees) and then went across the street for Copenhagen ice cream. I discovered that a Black Cow Soda Shake is made with coke and chocolate ice cream, but since I’d already had coffee and a coke my heartrate was being a bit racy (like a Victorian lady showing off her ankles!) so I settled for a lemonade & chocolate concoction. It was weird and tasty but I don’t think I’d want to have one every day.

Back at the hotel (my room was apparently aproximately the size of their house) there was more napping (I LOVE napping with people, I could totally be friends with Bret and Jermaine) and many episodes of The Simpsons before we strolled off to the fish dock for dinner.

It’s very nice eating 100 metres from where the fish comes in. People in the know bring along their own picnic sets and booze, but we just ate out of the paper. The fish was amazing, so fresh and crispy and yum. It made me a very happy Jo to be sitting with two of my favouritest people watching the sun set. Kat says that one of the reasons that i like them so much is that they don’t make me do anything, that we can just be still in each other’s company and not have to be rushing around doing anything, and maybe that’s true, and we proved it when we went back to my hotel to watch Grand Designs and Richard E Grant being awesome in Miss Marple. We giggled with glee a lot and told stupid jokes and just generally had an amazing time, and then they left and I was a bit sad. So I changed the time on my cellphone for daylight savings ending, and then I went to sleep.

When I woke up to my alarm, I looked at the time on the alarm clock that I’d also adjusted, and realised that MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH my cellphone had ALSO changed its time, and there was 25 minutes until my plane left. I grabbed all of my shit and rang a cab and dropped off my key. After waiting ten minutes for my taxi to show up, the driver tried calling the airport for me, but the flight was already gone. At the airport they offered to put me on the next flight to Auckland, but it was only going to save me $20 or so and I would have had to wait around there too, so I decided that I’d just take the next flight to Wellington – at a cost of $370 extra. I waved my arms in pretendish-fiero when I found out that at least I’d get air points for that flight so that I wouldn’t cry. I took my complimentary Herald On Sunday to a picnic table outside and waited three hours for my flight, really regretting not having taken the time to call the airport before leaving the hotel so that I could have showered and had a decent coffee and breakfast in town. Sigh. And then the fucking shuttle in Wellington went all the way around Oriental Bay and then back into Newtown while I sat there fuming and just wanting to be home and clean and with my kitty. Grrr. Bad way to end a holiday but oh man, it was a glorious time, so chilled out, relaxed and pampery. It was exactly what I needed and the perfect time to have it too. I will go back.

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Other things in very very brief format that I have been up to: getting better at Hottest Dance Party Ever! on the wii, even though my knees might disagree / organising the Pretty Pretty Pretty First Birthday Party for April 18 (come along!) / discovering that me and much of my team are being made redundant at work / stressing out about Sebastian when he got a big nasty abcess and was in a lot of hurt at the vet’s / freaking out my new GP with all kinds of crazy questions and cut-up arm from falling against the evil wall outside the National Library while she was giving me a smear / trying to figure out ways to expand my circle of friends because I’ve been having Wellington claustrophobia because everyone has slept with everyone and it’s kind of stressful keeping it all in balance / having a million kinds of difficulty getting ahold of my shrink before and after my prescriptions ran out / making the married man sit at the back of a cafe and watch me cry for 45 minutes just to be sure that it registers with him how much I’m hurting but neglecting to ask the things I wanted to ask / buying a new laptop and becoming obsessed with season two of Gossip Girl / being perplexed by people who have different values than mine to the point where I was going to call my journal entry “My cunt: who’s in it and who’s not” before I went to Tauranga, and it would have gone into more detail about my smear and no one really wants to read that do they? / going to the most fantastic Steam Punk party ever where everyone was dressed up, there was a whole ballroom and a Klemzer band playing and pashing the woman that I pashed at Kowhai’s party last year again / I think that’ll do for now.

I bought Robyn’s wii, and I bought a new Wii Fit, and last saturday some people came over for Wine & Wii. All was going well until I stepped on the board, found my centre of gravity and did some leaning, and then it was all “YOU ARE TOO HEAVY! THE BOARD IS RESETTING” and I wanted to cry but instead I drank some gin after we ran out of wine and was glad that it didn’t do that all the times that I’ve done it at work. It is highly plausible that I put on weight recently, especially with my brief summer diet of red wine & cum for breakfast. Oh, good times.

But seriously wii – fuck you. That said, I’ve been playing at least a half hour on it every day since I got it, except on Wednesday and today in which I went swimming instead. OH MY GoD. Holy fucking wow, swimming feels amazing. I can’t believe how amazing the water feels all over my skin, and how the breathlessness that comes from being unfit translates so quickly to a lightheaded sensation of total euphoria when you’re scrubbing yourself in the shower afterwards. And the lanes – they’re set up all the long way, which seems like forever to swim, but as you get down them, you find yourself over the super super deep parts under the diving boards. I know that I will always float on the surface of the water, reassured by both my levels of floaty blubber and also my absolute belief that I will always float, but the deep deep depths of the pool is a serene temptation, like when you’re swimming in the ocean and you become aware that if you just _let go_, and you could go out into the blue and it would be like, so beautiful. But instead, I was all “omg, I did ten lengths of a 100m pool, that’s totally 1km!” but maybe it was only 500 metres. Still, it was a good half hour as well, both times.

What else? The new flatmate has moved in and he seems nice. He leaves the toilet seat up, which means that I can no longer use an up seat as a clear method of telling whether or not Smoo’s been home.

I’m doing a big presentation at work next week. Maybe I might ask Lisa to do animations for it, or maybe I’ll save that for GOVIS. Her and her flatmate filled me so full of meat last time that I’d be doing the oxy moron signal right now if I wasn’t a lady.

Also while I was at Lisa’s, my computer started totally friztzing out,, and I was like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHG but she googled on Pearl how to restore the factory settings and it is now as good as new. Except without any of my files, but with bonus flash back, woo!

I’m really sleepy. There has been some weirdness. There has been some “huh?” and some “”thank you but no”. Those were nice things to happen at the end of a terrbily low self esteem week. I had hoped that all my jiggling around had managed to shake out my ovaries, but apparently not. I really should go ahead and book a smear, and the mnybe I’ll get my bleed as she cranks me open,and I’ll gush right past the light and up into and all over her face.Awesome. Squirter Gyno Doctor Porn! I’m going to be rich. Rich I tells you. And oh man, I would kill for a cheeseburger right now.

Tonight I went to a party in Hataitai that had amazing views, and a totally empty downstairs nad a very seventies pool. I took Top Model photos of Nigel and some guy in it, it was very Fierce. Had you been there, I would have pulled you into the empty walk-in wardrobe in the big empty bedroom, and you could have furnished my rooms.

Oooh here comes my pills kicking in finally, ni n!

Hey, remember my adventures last year at Webstock? Well guess what I’ve been doing today???

I should warn you that I am a barrel of all kinds of emotions today. Webstock is the highlight of my professional life each year, because so many of the things I learn are so directly applicable to the work that I do, but it’s also about my extra activities and communities like the Wellingtonista (I wrote the Beginner’s Guide to Wellington for the Webstock Site). I have been pleasantly surprised over the course of the day and also last night at pre-drinks at the Southern Cross to have people go “ohh, you’re in the Wellingtonista!” really excitedly, or even “OMG you’re JO HUBRIS!” from Twitter. The latter girl was rewarded with spare trading cards (my wad is so big it hardly fits in my envelope any more, if you know what I mean) and then when she suggested that I should have my own card because I was such a personality, I was like omg, let me give you all the cards I have in my hand. Except I won’t, because we have a community of shared knowledge that we need to build on.

That paragraph above appeared to be very long. I did have some free drinks before (trading surplus cards for drink tickets was a great idea, and yes I’m that confident that i can do that) and then there was sake at dinner, but mostly if I sound slurry, it will be because of the zopiclone fighting it out with the two coffees.

I FUCKING LOVE WEBSTOCK SO FUCKING MUCH. There, I’ve declared it. I won’t be doing the point by point all my notes here assessment. In fact, I might just step out of webstock all together, and talk about how on Tuesday I took my car in for my warrant. The place was right opposite a Dick Smith’s, so I thought I’d go in and buy a universal remote control because my DVD remote is so completely fucked it physically hurts me to make things go on it. Anyways, so I got it home, and it was all “Dude! Check out my DVD! It’s like, SUPER EASY” so I was all like, okay, sure, so I put it on, but I had to use my old remote to get it to go, and that was aaaaaargh, and then it turned out that manual was much more helpful than the DVD anyway. I managed to tune in the power on/off button, but none of the other keys were working, and while I was sitting on the wood floor in front of the tv, swearing madly at it, George decided that would be an appropriate time (when El and Smoo were off to Aussie the next day) to tell me that he has found a cheaper flat and he’s moving out.l
I swore at the remote control, went to my room, and had one of the worst breakdowns I have ever had, in terms of condensedness. I was hyperventilating and the lack of oxygen made my scalp tingle and the front of my face go numb. I had the metallic taste in my mouth, I was howling out loud along with the tears that did not stop for half an hour, I thought at one stage that I was going to black out and kind of hoped that I would. the thoughts going through my mind was “I am such a fucking smart girl, why can’t I figure out that remote?” which of course was linked to “I am such a fucking smart girl, why was I not capable of delivering a better performance assessment at work, why did I not support my intern better, how could I have allowed myself to fall for someone completely wrong for me, why have I subsequently been begging them for attention when obviously they are trying to cut off my air supply like I’m a troll, why can’t I keep a flat together, what the fuck is wrong with me?” and I howled and howled and every time I thought I’d settled down a bit, my body locked up, so I’d make a move, and I just started crying more and more, The part that was fun though, that I texted back to a concerned sisterly text was that I was blowing my nose on my really big really heavy dark brown Egyptian cotton bath sheet, so I was like “I’m blowing my nose on a bear!” (and speaking of which I so need one of these bags!). The physical aspect of the crying was kind of terrifying, the input of the oxygen and the way it wasn’t going out again, and I was high, and I thought about putting my head between my legs, and my boobs got in the way, and that didn’t make any sense, and quite frankly, it was really not a good time. Until I was like “umm, actually, I think that remote control was actually officially uncompatible with my DVD player, since it’s a DVDr, and then it was easier to see that no, I’m not actually a complete failure at everything, and I actually had a conversation out loud, taking the voice of my counsellor on.

So it was a good rich cleansing cry that has been building up for a very long time (readers of my twitter have obviously seen that), but still today, in Ze Frank’s presentation he talked about how one of his readers asked him to write them a cheer-up song for a situation that sounded really similar to the way I’d been on Tuesday night, and he started it up, and I cried and cried because it was exactly what I needed Luckily the lights were off in the hall at the time, and of course I twittered about it and saw everyone else saying that they’d cried too. Powerful. I shook his hand later and told him he made me cry. Looking at Twitter, an awful lot of people feel that way.

I want to talk more about other things, like venn diagrams (people at the conference that I’ve slept with, people at the conference I don’t want to talk to, and how they overlap but only a little bit and so I’d have to throw in another ring about something), and how much Star Wars sucks, and the free coffee, and the free ice cream, and how much I’m caught up in the trading card game because I’m going to win a baby dinosaur, but it’s like, midnight and tomorrow is going to be INTENSE and I have to replan my outfit since the motherfucking thong in my birki jandal broke, but i realise that I haven’t even mentioned how AWESOME the last half of the Fur Patrol gig that I made it to was, and how I cried again when they were singing ‘Silences and distances’ which is all “Please don’t make this hard – at least be willing to try” and the night was perfect, and the air was blowing hair, and everyone was lovely, and we humped Lisa a lot and I just so adore getting Alan drunk, and Craig Terris has cut his hair to look like Carlos D, so I’m wondering if he also likes to bang fat chicks, and therefore I can get herpes off him and give it to the whole iPhone world. These jokes will make no sense to you, I’m sure, but as my final “this is how awesome Webstock is” for the night – I bitched on Twitter about how i had no handcream and I was twittered back to inform me that there was 8 Hour Cream at the front desk. SUCH BRILLIANT CUSTOMER CARE. <3 <3 <3 and there’s a whole ‘nother day to go tomorrow in which I may just marry Tom Coates. Watch this space.

When I think back on this summer, I hope the memory that stays with me the most is of standing in my new paddling pool in my back yard, a slight breeze ruffling my skirts and hair, and I’m buzzed on the sun and daquiris, singing Bic Runga’s ”Gravity’ – “I forget myself when I’m with you, please remind me of who I am”. The tiki shack that I built with the help of many friends has been a tremendous success, and it will continue to be open all sumer.

There’s been so much going on. I’m so far behind in telling you stories that I don’t even know where to start. The Wellingtonista Awards consumed an awful amount of my time, and my mindspace (even though Hadyn was project-managing, I was an evil micromanager). The event went off fantastically, we had swag bags and prizes and all kinds of goodness from all kinds of wonderful people. So many of the nominees came along, and Bunnies on Ponies played, and just, so many awesome things. You’ll need to check my flickr stream for photos from it. I’m trying to think of my highlights from the night. One of them was definitely Callum from Green Cabs winning Wellingtonian of the Year. I think the other was just that there was so much build up, and anticipation, and we totally pulled the thing off.

Pretty Pretty Pretty is going really strong right now as well, we’re doing heaps of giveaways and people are reading us, and it’s nice, and stuff. One day we’ll be rolling in money and I won’t have to have a day job, honest.

It is nice to be on holiday. My intern at work is very smart and clever and is getting many things done. I’ve been a bit crazy lately and I don’t feel very smart. I’m hoping that will change in 2009. I’m hoping to sort ut my head, stop doing bad shit, go to the gym and get off the sleeping pills. My dreams are too intense and weird and extreme, every day. I don’t need that right now.

This is the worst update ever, I know. Xmas was good, we had it at Anji & Bambi’s, and ate a lot. Kat and Kane are getting married in under two weeks, and they asked me to MC their wedding. I’m going to cook MCs like a pound of bacon. Mmm bacon.

I’m identifying with people I don’t want to identify with lately. I’m happy to report though that my lease has been renewed at the same rate for another year so there will be many more drinks in the tiki shack to be had. The flat is ticking over really nicely. The boys are away right now. El cleaned today while I sat on my bed looking at the clock, and pretending to read. She thinks it may be the spark plugs in my car that are fucked, rather than my alternator, which I hope is the case.

Blah blah blah. Something about Singstar at Lisa’s. Something about New Year’s Eve coming up, and something about SausageQuest perhaps? Something about something.

The good news is though that now that I’ve done this long overdue update, I can do more posts more regularly. Awesome.

There’s things. I mean, right now, mostly there’s 2-for-1 Tigers, and also Zopiclone, which makes me want to talk about how I ran out of it, and didn’t go to work that day, so I couldn’t go to the pharmacy underneath (have you figured out yet where I work?) and I knew from after one night – umm maybe it was Romania/Fetish that no matter how much I’d had to drink or what time I went to bed I can’t actually sleep without pills, so I busted out a halcyon that I had leftover from my breakdown in 2003 (I’d like to link here but old Hubris isn’t online right now, I need a personal computer with a CD drive and a good net link to sort all that out), and Halcyon made my scalp feel weird, and I woke up half a dozen times in the night, rather than just once when Seb bites my toes at 6am, and the dreams weren’t quite as textured, and while they were horrible I didn’t wake up and feel all the things that’d happened to me in my dreams (zopiclone dreams make me miss work, that’s how real they feel), but maybe I felt a bit fuzzier? I dunno, I’m trying to restore proper work days that would give me a chance to do proper exercise in the gym at lunch that would help me feel more normal. I’m also asking for a wii and wii fit for Xmas (and a big chilly bin, an outdoor recliner, books by David Sedaris, John Hodgeman and umm other Daily Show people, no doubt). We just finished Bowling League. I know that doesn’t really count as real exercise. but it was fun.

I launched Sausage Quest, and also Mike has saved your future for you, if your future is in entrepreneurship, anyway. He dropped a tarot card between the slats of my dek and then asked for a hammer to take the whole thing apart. Manly. So yes, now if I read your cards, it may end up that you may be an entrepreneur when you grow up. Thanks Mike! My card readings are pretty accurate. Also, a nice way to talk to boys. I think I might have missed that part in my coverage of Kowhai’s party last time I wrote.

Next week I’m going to Canberra for work, but with the way my flights have worked out, I’m going to have a bit of time to explore, My hotel’s near Parliament, but I’ve been warned that the city is not at all as easy to work out or as small as it appears on maps. I’m planning on cabbing (on my visa, not work’s!) to the National Museum one day because for me museum > art gallery, but do any of youse have any other hot tips? Hit me back just to chat, yo!

Celebrity issues: I am so gutted that Holly and Hugh have broken up. Makes me want to cry, like for serious.

Web stuff: Amy and I are kicking so much ass right now on Pretty Pretty Pretty. Enter our Delicious competition now. And the Wellingtonista Bowling League has just ended, but we’re moving towards our annual awards – or rather the TAWAS!!!! (third annual wellingtonista awards). And! As a secret surprise few people know, I’m planning a scavenger hunt competition for January sometime.

Other things I’m organising in part is the catering for Kat’n Kane’s wedding. I figure I’ll drive up on Jan 9 in time for the Hen;s Party, and on the 11th I will book a room in Hamilton to stay in so I don’t have to cross-country when I may be hungover. And that way I get to see Maree and her stretchy vagina, and maybe Chelsea’s real tight one. Heh. Oh text message jokes, how I love you.

I’m still crazy, a little bit. But with travelling for work, pages of wikis to edit (and I’m gonna break Code of Conduct and say FUCK YOU, G S N! Everything you touch turns to crapness!) and my very own private intern starting in November, I feel more connected. Hell, I even blogged yesterday. And watched a whole episode of Gloss but uhh, not at work, obviously.

Sebastian is still my favourite smoodlepoodle, his curling up in my armpit the highlight of every night, In the mornings if it’s cold he’s even more adorable and occasionally n peeds to the day=be reminded that I need to go for work before he’ll start biting me enough to make me get up. It’s a hard enough life for us. I still so totally think that poverty > creeeeeeeeeeepy.

Dates to remember:

Saturday Oct 26, Beer Quiz at my house 1pmish. Bring some mysterious beers (enough for a good tasting for ten people or so, and then extra for later boozing) and also salted snacks for sharing. You need to write 3 multi choice questions about your beer and bring them along too, ala: (example)
November 8: Tom”s Mad Men Election Party. Just as in the show, we will (probably) be drinking mass amounts of Crème De Methe from water-cooler, and we’ll be dressed ala 1960 – points & lust for the best Joan Holloway representative;
December 6: Country Club “South Pacific” – and there’s a secret awesome amazing surprise due at this party. It will be AWESOME. Clues later to titillate you but stock up on bikinis. hawiian shirts, pineapples and multiple rums please.

Sometime; I wanna do a PPP clothing and products swap before AND after Xmas. What do you reckon Amy? We’ve made $9 US so far so please keeep clicking our google ads!

The TAWAs – third annual Wellingtonista Awards are on Dec 18, so far: I have a terrible fear that Hadyn will hate me with a firey passion by the time it’s over, because he’s project-managing but I have no off-switch.

Also, I have secret projects going on, so if you get me asking for power tools, please don’t get confused with a rabbit when I[m really asking for a mouse sander (although wanking helps me realise while I bowl better with my 3rd and 4th fingers in the hole rather than my pointer. You can totally wear out the pointer on my masturbating habbits. But you know, if we all get SausaageQuest right, we can end that. Tonight I had a couple of “really? her? really? moments, but I guess that’s just me and i’m a lamer and there are things that were a million years ago and weren’t even things. So anyways, what’s your favourite fact about monkeys?

I spent all of last week at home hiding out. There were occasional distractions – Amy came over on the Monday night for prettyprettypretty stuff, and I made Lisa dinner on Wednesday, but apart from that there were only a couple of conversations with Smoo and George. I kept my phone switched off during the day so work couldn’t call me, and on Friday I sent an email to my boss that said in part:

suppose I’ve been hoping a little bit that by going AWOL I would just get fired, and then I wouldn’t have to own up to all my failures. I haven’t been at work this week because the thought of coming in just absolutely petrifies me. I physically cannot get out of bed and leave the house because of my fear of all the work that I should have done by now that I haven’t, and the thought of having conversations about it, and why I haven’t done it, and how I am not meeting your expectations absolutely terrifies me. That’s why I’ve left my cellphone switched off, which is a total copout for someone who used to pride herself on her communication skills. I think I need to resign, I am not the person that you thought you hired, and I cannot do the work that I have been hired to do. I know that I’m in a down space right now that I will climb out of, but I just don’t see how I will get any better at doing what is expected of me at the *.

As the ever-perceptive Smoo said, perhaps it was a cry for help. She sent me back a really really nice, really really supportive email, which made me cry, which was kind of nice too, because I’ve felt more numb than I should be feeling, and have been questioning whether or not I should be on 40mg, or if it’s actually too strong. But anyways, I cried, I washed my face, I blowdried my hair, I fought off the metallic taste of rising panic, and I headed out to Deb and Mike‘s Emancipation Party.

First up though was dinner at Arashi with Robyn and Shirley and Tom, who bought along really really nice champagne to celebrate, even though I didn’t want to talk about resigning, or not resigning, or whatever it is that’s going to happen now, which will involve a lot of work and conversation and bravery and all that sort of stuff. So instead, here’s photos of them at dinner.

Then we headed up to Hawthorn early to secure the big corner table. I love Hawthorn so much. The bartenders are so charming, and make such good zombies. We laughed a tremendous amount at Shirley saying one was cute when he was standing right behind her. We’re grownups that way. I held court at the big table, drinking more zombies and more bottles of wine. Having not talked to anyone in so long, and after essentially sitting in my own filth all week (well, I showered, but then I put Pjs back on) it felt insanely great to be out of the house again. I could talk and bullshit all I wanted to.

And yes, I got rather drunk, and in fact told the third person ever that I loved them, ((EDIT: actually the fourth. If I was Good Tom, I’d be quite insulted at how often I got left out of the count, but then again he’s probably just relieved!) via text message that I don’t remember sending, and which also quite frankly isn’t true, or rather as I texted the next day, I love them, but I don’t love them. I’m just going to miss them a fuckload. I also invented a new insult in the Twitterverse - “Asscunt”. I hope it’s going to take off. Yes, I drank far more than is healthy, but oh holy crap did I need a huge blow-out and some rants and raves. I’m having trouble having responsibility for the most basic parts of my life (I need a wife) so it totally makes sense to go out and be totally irresponsible, right?

A story from the night that has nothing to do with me but which was incredibly hilarious unfolded in front of me and Robyn. We noticed this guy sitting at the end of the bar looking around a lot and staring at us, and we thought he was Sam Farrow so we yelled out his name but he didn’t look, so we decided that there was something else seedy going on with him. Later a guy in a white pinstriped shirt came in with a girl in red, and the girl in red started talking to Sam-Lite. Next time we looked up, Sam-Lite was gone, and Red Girl was talking to some other random. I was ordering more wine at that stage, and so I got to overheard Pinstripe at the other end of the bar sending down drinks to Red Girl and Random. Then later, Pinstripe found himself a new friend in the form of a girl in a floral dress, who was there with Leather Jacket. In fact, Floral found herself between the two of them, with hungry suburban manhands all over her.

You can’t see Pinstripe’s roaming hands in those photos, but believe me, they were there. Icck. Keep it in the Hutt, please. Small bars are not good places for discretion.

And yes, anyway. Have I mentioned how much TV I’ve been watching? Carnivale (love it so much, sad it’s all gone now), Green Wing, Strangers with Candy, This Life, and more, I’m sure. I’m pretty sure I can’t remember how to stand up anymore, but I will need to find out tomorrow when I go into work. Oh also I have to pash 20 people before next Tuesday when I turn 28. Volunteers please? And my birthday dinner is on Saturday and we’re going to Karaoke afterwards, you should come along if you like that sort of thing. And um, I think that’s it for the night. It’s too cold to have my arms out from under my duvet any longer.

The drugs do work. They make me much better. That is nice. Although occasionally, I think that maybe I’m actually taking speed, because my mind does not stop ticking over with new ideas for new projects, both at home and at work, before I have finished all of my old ones.

Case in point – the lovely Amy – formerly a Wellingtonista PAG and now a blogger in her own right – and I have started a new website about girlie things. We’ve decided to have Make(Up/Over/Under) Mondays as well when we try out new beauty products, so you should come and play with us.

In very very very exciting news, Kat and Kane are coming down on Thursday night, and we’re going to the wrestling to see “New Zealand’s Sexist Masked Man” on Friday night. I can’t wait to see them again, it’s been far too long. And I have a backlog of ‘Rock of Love’ episodes to watch with Kat, not to mention the finale tonight. Exciting! When Season II starts, I’m going to recap it like I did ‘Rockstar’. That’s how much I love it.

But I don’t love it as much as I love ‘My So-Called Life’, which I have been devouring eagerly in the privacy of my own bedroom. It still makes me cry because I can remember how strongly I identified with Angela. And how hot is Jordan Catilano? Daaaaaaaaamn! It makes sense to me now. I was watching TV the other day and decided to be mean to Smoo, so I was all po-faced “I need to tell you something” and he was like blanched, and I was like “I think I’m kind of obsessed with 30 Seconds to Mars videos” and he was very relieved and I laughed and laughed. Anyways. What I am so loving about MSCL right now is the mcguffin that is Tino. Where did Rayanne get the Chinese food from? Tino. How did they know about the Buffalo Tom (so good!) gig? Tino. Etc. And I love that you never ever actually see him.

Today I stayed at home because I have a horrible head cold, and I got my work emailed home to me, but then I fell asleep on the couch. Perhaps I’ll do some later. Right now there is a big pot of curry bubbling on the stove, but Smoo is at work, and George doesn’t want any because he’s on a health kick. That’s okay, that’s what the big freezer is for!

What else did I want to talk about? We had a wine quiz on Friday that went very well, and a Newtown pub crawl on Saturday that was low-key, but fun as well. Then dinner with the family at the Med Warehouse on Sunday. The service was atrocious, the pizza was good. There’s wrestling coming up, and Webstock Mini (yay!), and hmm, I dunno, other stuff. I need to get more work done at work, but I am keeping on top of life in general. And that is a good thing.

And now I gotta go, cos Tino’s coming over to bring me a panda.

So. Again. The reoccurrence. I am so very tired of this. I am so very tired. I don’t sleep at night, so I can’t get up in the morning, and even if I was sleeping I would still want to sleep all day because bed is safe and warm and if I am asleep then I can forget about all the things that I should be doing (except that instead, I dream about them).

These are the things on my mind right now:

• Getting together the rest of the swag that I’m responsible for and then putting together the swag-bags for the GirlGeek Dinners tomorrow night.
• Speaking about my career at the dinner tomorrow night. You know, that career.
• Much much much paperwork at work that I have not done because I’ve been worrying more about the Big Picture
• The small remaining details of the Big Picture at work which seem to have no end.
• My assessment at work tomorrow. The predicted verdict: it would probably be helpful if I was at work more often. And more paperwork needs to get done. Which is where the ability to get out of bed would be nice.
• All the things that I should be doing to enable me to get out of bed a little easier, but because I’m not doing them I don’t feel like I’m entitled to go and talk to a counsellor about it, and so it goes.
• The creative projects that I have bubbling over in my head right now. I need my next paycheque so I can proceed with these. Or at least with the domain names
• The neglecting of all my current projects in favour of staying in bed/lying on the couch staring at the TV
• Social things coming up like KateH and Heather coming down, and the Wairarapa Harvest Festival, all of which I am looking forward to, but which will require me to be peppy and functional.
• Ideas kicking around in my head for a sorely-needed work function to build inter-team bonds
• The many many bills that I need to pay.
• The many errands that need to be run – getting a new prescription, taking the microwave in for fixing, getting my warrant. I need a PA to coordinate this kind of shit. Essentially, I’m just so fucking tired of having to take responsibility for my own life. Not in like, a mortal way. I just wish that someone would make me up in the morning, and give me a coffee, tell me what I was going to wear that day, and drive me to work. Then they could pick me up via the supermarket where we’d buy vegetables that I’d eat, make sure Sebastian has flea treatments, and tell me when my schedule’s overlapping so that I don’t overbook myself. Even just a couple of days with someone working like that for me would be great. I don’t understand how it is that people manage to function all the time with looking after themselves. I would like to book myself a couple of nights at a house in the country, but I can’t take time of work until we’ve launched and that’s settled and oh, nuts, it’s just all errrrrrrgh.

But it’s funny though, if you talk to me, if you see me, I will be doing my very best to pretend that none of this is going on. Or I will pick one thing, and roll my eyes about it, and make some lame joke. Last week one of my friends I hadn’t seen in ages told me that she was making more of an effort to say no to people, so I decided for my homework I’d try to say no at least once over the past week. Instead I seem to have picked up more projects and things to do. Maybe I am on the wrong medication. Maybe I should go back on fluoxetine so I can think about nothing instead of thinking about everything. But I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I failed today at going for a swim (my body is aching from doing nothing because my mind is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love functioning properly) and also at cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. But at least I have the Mighty Boosh on divx to watch. And Australia’s Next Top Model was on last night, exciting! Not to mention hundreds of episodes of The Simpsons which are very handy for sleeping through.

Dear people who made Webstock happen:

I think I love you. Can it please be Webstock every day? Even if we would all die from over-knowledging, over-caffinating and over-drinking?

I got home today sometime after 5pm. It’s been a hell of a week. I will update more when I have napped.

• The Innovation Workshop
• Day One
• Day Two

The Innovation Workshop

My first Webstock twitter (The WS is to send it to the Webstockbo so that everyone subscribed could read it): ” Ws I am late for my Scott Berkun workshop. I find nothing innovative about mornings! “

Despite having stressed out about the bus being late, I stopped off at the Dixon Street Deli for coffee, before heading off to the Town Hall to check in. The lovely Jeff was on the door, which is always a good way to start, and things got even better when I was handed my webstock bag. So sexy! And so filled with intriguing things! I took my bag and my coffee upstairs, and found Amanda waiting in the foyer for the workshop to begin. I flicked my way through the brochure, marveling at the beautiful design of it all, and tried to figure out what talks I wanted to go to. And then the workshop began, and things came alive again.

I should say here that I had been having a really rough couple of weeks at work and in my life in general. This is why there’s been no updates on Hubris. Moving proved to be such a stressful experience that I stopped going to the gym and stopped taking my meds properly. It was of course that stupid downward circle spiral that I periodically get stuck in. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t functioning, and that coupled with the rather large project that I’ve been struggling with at work, and how hard that’s been to launch has made me pretty despairful. Before Webstock began I forced myself to fill my pill box properly, so that I could go back to 30mg instead of 20, and so yes, there’s that working in my favour again. That said, Scott Berkun was so fucking amazing that even if I hadn’t been on my proper dosage, I still would have had my world utterly rocked.

He started out by showing us slides of things we see every day- big macs, arches, browsers, google, and an assortment of other things, and asked which of those we thought were innovations. Then he explained how they all were, and that every successful innovation will eventually be taken for granted, and that its value may only be obvious after it has been created. He also suggested that if people are using the word innovation, it probably isn’t happening. I have pages and pages of notes that I don’t want to write out in full here (I’ll stick them on my work wiki though) but essentially, he talked about the process of innovation, and where things fall down. That was really great for me, because I was able to slot in my work project, and go “oh wow, apparently I’m not the only one who ever has any problems”. That sounds simple, but it has been really hard to see. He also mentioned that old “Genius is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration” saying, that you would normally expect to see on the poster of some lame cow-orker, but it didn’t sound trite or cliched from him, it sounded like the truth. Oh yes, perhaps I am buying into a cult here or something, but it was just SO GREAT.
@johubris says <3 the branding, <3 the sandwiches and most importantly am feeing good about my big project again! 10:34 AM February 12, 2008

I was sitting at a table with Amanda and with Mike Brown and Anna and Belinda from SPARC, so it was nice to know people around me. I was introduced to Kris, and it turns out that he’s the brother of the guy I work with. Small world! At one stage, we all had to contribute random words, and then we had to pick three and create a new company with them. We created Robert’s Ecoterrorist Adventures, it was awesome. And he made us come up with ideas for the worst cellphone in the world, so that we could work backwards from there to create a great product. Really nice ways of changing thinking.

johubris Ws the couches at the town hall are for napping on, right? Being re-enthused by scott berkun is FTW,but i’m so tired! 12:54 PM February 12, 2008 from txt

At morning tea we had rolled sandwiches and friands. There were mountains and mountains of friands, but the sandwiches ran out quickly. They were mighty tasty though. At lunch we had a buffet that had the added distinction of having a written-out menu by the plates. It’s always nice to know what you are eating. I mention this because everyone who went to Webstock in 2006 talked about the food. And also because I like to talk about food. The conference rooms were nice because they were old, and stately, instead of being all bland like you might expect. I wrote pages and pages and pages of notes. Scott asked if anyone was having a bad day, and I didn’t raise my hand, but when he asked if anyone was having a bad week, I did. He got the whole room to applaud me and then asked me what story I wanted him to tell. Awww. Thanks Scott! Not just for the applause, but for just the sheer awesomeness of it all. Without transcribing all my notes it’s probably really hard to express just how inspiring the talk was, so I suppose you’ll need to take my word for it, or check out his work yourself!

johubris ws I wish it was Webstock tomorrow, and that I didn’t have to wait until Thursday for more awesome learning and company! 09:26 PM February 12, 2008 from web

The conference proper

Again, I was running late, but I stopped to get coffee anyway, not quite realising that the lovely Peoples’ Coffee people would be making free coffee all day long (we asked, and one of the charming baristas said his record was drinking 30 double espressos in one day. Woaaaaaah). I found a seat for myself at the back and chuckled at the Pulp Fiction soundtrack pumping over the sound system to hype up the crowd. Mike Brown did the introduction, showing a photo of CJ and the end of this series of twitters:

• Jo Hubris: I have two dates on Valentine’s Day. But they’re both work-related. At least there’ll be booze at Webstock, right?
• Maupuia: @johubris oh hell yes there will be booze! 12:08 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to johubris Icon_star_empty
• Ceej75: @maupuia and there better be hotties cos its v day!
  12:14 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to maupuia
• @ceej75 there will be enough alcohol that everyone will seem a hottie 12:21 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to ceej75

Hehe!

Nat Torkington

I’ve never met Nat before, or read anything of his work, but I’ve heard a lot about him (mostly because I’m jealous I didn’t get an invitation to Foo Camp), so I was really interested to hear what he might talk about. And now I know a whole lot about the Crimean War. My only note from his session is “www.overcomingbias.com”, so I suppose I really should look up this site. What amused me the most about his talk was that for some reason he’d chosen to use some really weird font for his presentation, and hadn’t checked it, so half the letters didn’t show up. Despite that, he was a great presenter, and I was really interested in what he had to say. Even if I’m not entirely sure what it was now that there have been so many talks on top of his. Oh, looking at the book, he was talking about the past as a way to predict the future. That makes sense.

Molly Holzschlag — Why Web Standards Aren’t

I work for the government, as you’re no doubt aware, so it is important for me that any sites that I work on conform to web standards,and that they validate (Hubris doesn’t validate, by the way, but that’s the flickr and twitter codes that fuck it up, as far as I’m aware). Other than that, standards really aren’t my area, so I admit to tuning out a bit during this talk. Molly was clearly very very passionate about it though, and CJ said that the Webstock IRC channel was lighting up during her talk because she was saying some controversial things. Awesome! And the line that I took away from it is that web standards isn’t validating like editing isn’t spellchecking, which is a fantastic simile for someone word-obsessed like me to understand.

After Molly spoke, it was morning tea time, with little sandwiches and mountains of mini sweet muffins. I caught up with CJ and Frances and looked around at the various booths set up by sponsors, deciding to investigate them further at lunchtime. And then, because I was trying to make sure I had a written-content focus, I went to see

Rachel McAlpine – Look Ma, no quills!

To be honest, I was rather disappointed with her presentation. I felt like it was a little bit all over the place, and didn’t really have a focus or direction. I did come away with a few tips, like that 20% of people have a low literacy rate, that only professional communicators are trained to communicate and that everyone else is just thrown in the deep end as we’ve moved away from blue collar work, and that you should check your work’s readability with a Flesch plugin.
johubris Ws dear webstockers, remember to get cash out at lunch to buy valentines for CJ and I at Craftstock! 11:25 AM February 14, 2008 from txt

Peter Morville – Ambient Findability and the Future of Search

My very first note from Peter is “Don’t throw away your org chart, but provide other options too”. Oh hell yes. I’ve struggled in past jobs looking after websites whose navigation has been built around the organisational chart, which makes little sense to anyone on the outside. I want everyone in the world to know that often isn’t a very good idea! He also used the line “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” which is so true. As our haystacks get bigger, how can we make bigger needles?

And then it was lunch. Mmmm lunch! I loaded up my plate and went and talked to Belinda and some nice people from the National Library. Someone was eating ice cream, and so I found my way to a freezer full of it, sweet little tubs from Kapiti. Mmmmmm! I had a big decision to make in regards to which talk I should go to after lunch, but luckily, I decided to go to:

Liz Danzico – The Framework Age

Damn! It was so fantastic! The idea behind it is that assorted Web 2.0 aps provide a framework for communities to grow off, like jazz music has a loose frame compared to that of classical music so there’s room for things to happen. She talked about social patterns, and hacking of public signs like the New York Subway (adding in “downtown” to train routes that don’t specify things), and oh, it was just so so wonderful. She brought all these random strings together and wove them into a beautiful tapestry, and I could have listened to her talk all day. But unfortunately, it was only 50 minutes long. I really need to look her up online and see if I can get more ideas out of her.
johubris Ws Liz is talking about how classical music leaves no room for participation. @ceej75 is man-hunting, @darren is playing bingo. WEBSTOCK IS SOFA KING RAD 01:47 PM February 14, 2008

Kelly Goto – Getting unstuck. Moving from Web 1.0 to 2.0

Kelly’s talk was all about ways of finding your “AHA!” moment, and moving into “the flow” when you’re just working on the highest possible level. She was a total bundle of energy, and was one of the many presenters who made me go “Damn, I want to be her when I grow up!”

Michael Lopp – Primal software development

Michael works for Apple, and he said that they don’t do secrecy – they do theatre, which made me laugh almost as much as when he asked how many people had iPhones, and when a whole bunch of people (like seriously, many many people) raised their hands he was like “hmmm, they’re not available here though…”. He had some good ideas about the types of people that you should have on a project team, although it did have a bit much of an American perspective – if you work for government, you don’t get to hire & fire really. But he had some great ideas about getting the job done.

Jason Santa Maria – Good design ain’t easy

I think this twitter sums up the awesome power of Jason Santa Maria:
Ws wow, for the first time since i was 18 i’m thinking design might be nearly as important as actual content! Go Jason! 04:47 PM February 14, 2008 from txt
His slides were beautiful, as was his idea that design tells a story. I learnt about the golden ratio of 1:1.618, and about the rule of thirds, and just marvelled at the pretty pictures. It made me happy to see Fray up on the screen cos it made me remember the olden days a million years ago of The Vision Project and how we wanted to be them.

And then, there was a fireside chat between Rowan Simpson and Sam Morgan. I liked that Sam admitted to ripping off many other people’s ideas and designs, but I was absolutely furious when he was talking about his micro-credit work, and said that they don’t lend money to men because the men would just drink and gamble it away. Way to move forward with helpful stereotypes! And he was so clearly a National supporter, and that made me bristle.

Then we had Powerpoint Idol, where presenters had to talk on a random assortment of slides, including lots of Lol Cats. Lol Cats were a reoccurring theme, of course. I liked the judging panel, of course.

And even more than the judging panel, I loved the cocktails upstairs, with Wellingtonistas selling crafts, and fun people to talk to. Eventually I went to the Phoenix Foundation with CJ and other assorted Silverstripers, and that was wonderful. We’d taken a Canadian we met (Hi Johnny!) along, and so I was like “here, the Phoenix Foundation is my country’s gift to you in exchange for the Arcade Fire”. It’s good to share. Wellington SO turned it on!

Day Two

Again, it was a rush to get there on time, and again, I opted to pick up coffee first, correctly anticipating huge lines at the Peoples’ cart. I found myself sitting at the back by myself again, but I knew by now that wasn’t a big deal, even if I did briefly have school cafeteria flashbacks over lunch with seating indecisions. But nevermind my ridiculous insecurities! On with the show!

Russell Brown – Creative Deficits & Publishing Realities

As a regular reader of Public Address, a lot of what Russell spoke about wasn’t new to me. He talked about Keith’s fisking of Deborah Codswallop, and other times when the community came together, and also about how it’s a site where commenters actually behave – at least most of the time. The part of his talk that took my interest the most was regarding online advertising, because that’s something we’re starting to give some serious thought to over at The Wellingtonista, because while we don’t want to be sell-outs, we would dearly love to have a proper site design and an entertainment fund. It’s just a question of how fifteen people who all have day jobs can walk the fine line between editorial independence and actually getting some ads on that don’t compromise our values. I need to have more conversations with Miss Biz and also Russell to resolve this.

Other interesting tidbits from Russell’s talk included the fact that 92% of New Zealanders don’t use RSS, and that he wants historical data and trends out of government websites. Another note that I have at the time was “I wonder how many of the audience here now are hearing impaired”, because for all the main speeches, there were wonderful signers standing at the side, signing away, and believe me, some of the speakers would have really made them work hard with the speed at which they spoke. Although of course, perhaps the signers were actually really crap, but I doubt it. One of the speakers did say out loud that he was wondering if he was being editorialised, but I can’t remember who that was. Anyway, I thought that was just another sign of how fucking awesome Webstock was, the way they were making it accessible, and I hope that the signers were videoed so they can be a resource as well.

johubris @verymiao Russell Brown is namedropping u (as Ball) in relation to his Webstock speech about moral panics about “bebo suicide cults”. Random! … … 08:59 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Simon Willison – OpenID and decentralised social networks

I don’t use an OpenID logon, but I found this talk much more interesting than I expected, to be honest. I thought it would be very technical, but actually, it was a lot more about the ideas of trust, and perceptions of trust and who you feel comfortable giving your password to. This relates very very strongly to the GLS, and if you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t have to worry about issues of government and authentication. I wonder if there is a way to take the good work that people have done on OpenID and run with it. What I loved about Simon’s speech was the way he personified all that he was talking about, so that OpenID was like “Hi Simon!”.
johubris Ws I just refered to Webstock as ‘this festival’ rather than a conference, and that’s so true. So much love! 10:50 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Then there was morning tea. CJ and I went and had our photos taken in the very sexy Verb.Ltd photo booth, and collected our robots, but apparently the photos of us were too ugly to go online, even though we hit the green button. That’s a shame, cos I thought they were damn cute. Ahh well.

Tom Coates – Designing for a web of data

johubris Ws Tom Coates saying “darter” instead of “dater” and using the word “thrusty” is reinforcing his cute hotness. 10:57 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Your site is not your product. Your territory is anywhere your network touches. Tom’s presentation was really really lively, good looking (He said at the end he was using Gotham Rounded Bold, for the font geek in all of us) and he talked extensively about twitter, which is something that I get. Hurrah! Plus, he had such a jones for data, it was very endearing.

johubris If i was a dirty bitch, i’d say i wanted Tom Coates to open up MY ‘data source’. And i am dirty. 11:41 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Luke Wroblewski – Web page heirarchy

What I love love loved about Luke’s talk was his many ‘Before’ and ‘After’ shots of websites that he’d worked on. It so clearly displayed how he’d made changes, and why. Although what I didn’t like about his talk was thinking in my mind about Hubris and the Wellingtonista, and how they could be a lot clearer than they are right now. Oh well!

Amy Hoy – Usability for evil

Amy used Hitler examples! Therefore, she wins! Also, the audience were the winners, because she was fricking hilarious, while still managing to be very informative and on-to-it. Did you know that ads work better if the pretty lady keeps some of her clothes on and is presented to the left? Well now you do! Although I do question whether New Zealanders turn right when they go into shops. I seem to always turn left. Is that to do with the way we drive on our roads?

Anyways, she talked about the five types of evil that can be done, and made me yawn by saying the word “yawn” (and now as I write this, I’m yawning again) and talked about emotional buttons to add things to orders. She was great. I am terribly terribly embarrassed that I only met her the next day, half wrapped in a towel, but I suppose that’s a story for later.

The 8×5 sessions

Mike took his clothes off and I filmed it, but I think other people took better videos. Sam Farrow from NZPA made me furious, as this twitter will demonstrate:
Ws apparently news 2.0 uses Comic Sans and stereotypical crime. DO NOT WANT! 03:01 PM February 15, 2008 from txt .

EDIT: I have explained myself quite badly here. Let me paste in an email I just sent off:

Thanks for your email. I think it was certainly more well thought-out than my hasty twitter deserved in response, but obviously my flippant remarks should be better explained.

On the subject of comic sans, well, I just have an irrational hate for it as a font, especially when there were some presenters who had some truly beautiful fonts. I didn’t get the self deprecation in it, which is no doubt my bad, I was probably far too tired and over-stuffed with ideas at that stage to be a very good judge of sarcasm or irony.

As for the idea of stereotypical crime – I suppose I had this idea that Webstock was this magical shiny happy land, where everyone was working together for the greater good, but your use of a South Auckland crime as an example reminded me of the many frustrations that I feel with mainstream media in general – especially the way that Maori and Pacific Islanders have their ethnicity pointed out when they commit crimes and Pakeha don’t. And yes, I know you didn’t use any ethnic identifiers, so it’s possibly my own biases showing through when I presume that you were talking about them when you refered to South Auckland. I’m going to also put a little of the reason for my hating on Sam Morgan’s throwaway comment from the day before about how they don’t give loans to men because they’ll just drink it away. Whether or not there’s statistical evidence that says more crimes happen in South Auckland or that men drink away loans, I don’t feel like it is particularly helpful to continue to say that, unless you’re specifically talking about ways to deal with those problems. I like the idea that we’re all likely to kill or drink away our money much better than targetting specific groups, so I wish that you had used a different example is all. But again, as a representative of the NZPA, you were copping the flack for all media in general, so look at that, I’m doing exactly the thing that I hate.

I’m really sorry if my post came across as a personal attack, and I’ll fix this up. It really wasn’t meant in that way. It was just some rough ideas tossed out into the wind that I obviously didn’t explain well enough. Thank you very much for taking the time to write to me about this, it’s much appreciated.

Jimmy Hendrix came out to play on a ukelale. I can’t spell. I like the idea of the 8×5 sessions, people covered a really diverse range of subjects. I just kinda wish that more women had volunteered to do them. That aside though, I really appreciated the number of women speakers at Webstock in general, and the number of women in the audience. I thought that was hugely encouraging and awesome.

Then Scott Berkun spoke again, and it was as awesome as his workshop. I enjoyed looking around the room at everyone whose energy had been flagging during the 8X5 because afternoon tea was delayed, and seeing them being woken the fuck up, as one twitterer put it. Fan girl squees all around. And then we got afternoon tea.

Damian Conway – Web 2.odium

I wasn’t a huge fan of Damian’s Powerpoint Idol presentation – I thought it was just too obvious to go for something on sex (yeah I know, right? Me saying that is weeeeeird), but his odium was fantastic. He took the point of view that we were elitists and we wanted to protect the web from the evil Morlocks by making it not accessible or proper (what’s a morlock? I must go look it up) so he gave us a list of 28 or so ways to fuck the web up. He used humour to teach! Just like those teachers that Edna Krabapple beat to Teacher of the Year! Except actually funny. And useful. I think no matter how brilliant everyone at Webstock was, they’re probably guilty of doing at least one of the naughty things on Damian’s list, so it was very useful indeed.

But oh man, it was a long talk, and it was already time for cocktails but we still had one more speaker to get through.

Kathy Sierra – Cognitive Seduction 2.0

There seems to be a bit of a strange cult around Kathy. The first I ever heard of her was when she was getting threats online so didn’t go to a conference, and it was really hard to get those thoughts out of my head when she was talking. Admittedly also, many of my thoughts were on the bar. It had been a loooooooooooooooooong day, and my brain was overflowing with thoughts. I did like that she suggested we should give users a “WTF???” button.

And then, that was that. It was all over! Or at least the talking part was. We were released out into the foyers where waitstaff circled with trays of drinks, and massive pyramids of seafood could be found. I made my way upstairs where it was quieter and easier to get wine, and found myself talking to the Silverstripe boys, CJ and Jonny again. It was fun, we talked and ate snacks and drank and good times were had. Finally around 9pm, the doors into the main hall were opened up again and we found ourselves in a totally transformed space:

So pretty! Thanks Google, I hearby pledge to do all my searching with you in exchange for that glorious dinner. Prizes were awarded, more speechifyings were made, and wine and conversation flowed. I was expecting a buffet-style dinner, but oh no, this was fully plated goodness. Behold my beef fillet on polenta:

That’s a terrible photo, I know. Did I mention the wine? And the dessert trays with lemon tarts, noughat and something else that was also delicious? I wandered around in between courses and afterwards, talking to people and embarrassing people who gave me stern “I’ll talk to you later!” eyes. I caught up with Brendan and also Mark, who I’d known online in Vision but didn’t realise was the same person when he did his 8×5. And then it was time to go to Vintage Bar for the after-party.

I love Vintage, it’s such a pretty bar. Lots of fun was had. I talked to people I haven’t talked to for a million years, without oddness. I made new friends in the bathroom. I talked to Keith Ng lots. I talked to an assortment of new people, and I’m not sure I could match all of their names to their faces. And then there was a kiss on the stairs, and I found myself going home with one of the key speakers of the conference, except by home I mean to the Museum Hotel. And here again we find evidence of the awesomeness of the Webstock planning people – Russell and everyone else might have complained about the wifi in the hotel, but daaaaaaaaaaamn it was a nice place. The bath was as big as my couch, so big in fact that I had to take a splash. I was brought pasta and wine in the bath. SO FUCKING RAD! Best choice of speakers ever, dear Webstock. People are fantastic. I have mad love for my flatmates at this stage too:

progcunt My flatmate is awol and we,re thinking of calling the police 11:05 AM February 16, 2008 from txt

Around 12pm, I got woken up by a knocking at the door, and figuring it was housekeeping I wrapped a towel around myself and went and opened it, hiding half behind the door because the towel wasn’t that big. Amy Hoy was standing there, and she was like “oooooooooh… have I got the wrong room?” and I laughed and said no, and she was like “well okay, do you guys want to come for lunch? Meet in the foyer at 12.30″. I was like sweet, and passed the message on, but then went back to sleep. It was a mighty comfy bed. I only woke up sometime after 4pm when Kat rang me to make sure I was okay. She wouldn’t have been so worried about me if she hadn’t bumped into Hadyn and Amy, who reminded her of my tendency to jump into the harbour at night. But anyways, I tried and failed to throw up discreetly, and went home to my Kat and my cat, both of whom were pleased to see me.

In conclusion: I LOVE WEBSTOCK! Greatest collection of people ever, superbly put together, so inspiring and invigorating, and just wow. I wish it was 2010 already…

I have been reading my journal from 1999, spurred on by stumbling across Shakespeare in Love on TV and deciding to find what I’d written about it, and realising what was going on with my life at the time, but anyways, I fucking wish I could be that honest and upfront right now. I mean, yes, in the olden days I did write my secret thoughts in the source code, but at least I wrote them. In the past couple of years, I’ve become so boring and sheltered and so fucking cafeful. I miss pre-google days when you could write about how fucking stoned you got with various people and call them by their names.

But I don’t smoke pot anymore, of course, and man, I so fucking miss that. Did you see the parts in my journal in 1999 when I used to be in my pyjamas, and someone would call, and my flatmate would be in love with them so I’d put on my grandfather’s silk dressing gown and get driven across town to go smoke with them and then go home? Good times. I wish the world was that simple right now.

Yes I know that I am full of “oh I wish that things were still that way or that way or whatever it is that I want”. And yes, I realise that might make you think that I am unhappy with the way that things are right now. I wish I could write and explain the things that are causing me drama. I have layers of privacy written into this journal, and I could make posts on different levels, or write in different spaces, put in linked footnotes, or be really obscure, but I don’t want to do that. I wish I could tell you what I dislike about my job, very specifically, but I am reduced to saying “government can be a little bit slow-moving”. I wish I could tell you what the problem is with my homelife, but I will sumarise by saying that Kat and Kane are moving out in February to go to Tauranga to be nearer to Kat’s Mum, and you can’t argue with that. But oh yes, of course it doesn’t actually matter when they’re going, as much as I love them and will miss them so much, because oh yes, that’s right, I’m BEING EVICTED. They’re terminating the lease on this house that I love so much on February 3, so I will need to be gone, and find somewhere new. I left a note for Smoo telling him about it and saying that I hoped he would come with me when I set up a new house, because I love living with him, but he’s gone to Hamilton for Xmas, so I don’t know what he’ll say and I’m a little bit scared that he’ll be all like “oh you know what? Done our dash at this flat, time for me to move on”. But I suppose if that’s the way the road goes, that’s the way the world goes.

I am trying to be very calm and very philosophical about everything in my life right now. It does not help that I have failed to go to the gym for a couple of weeks, that my alcohol intake has increased exponentially with the season, that I can’t remember the last salad that I had, that there’s a full moon and most significantly that I am down to a pill a day, if that, because apparently it is far too too hard to find five minutes to cut them up and fill my seven-day box.

So there have been more than a few tear-bouts. Like when my car got towed from the carpark near work that I’d only parked in because I’d failed to sleep and was running an hour and a half late, and that was all the coins I had. I didn’t know who to call and I didn’t want to bother anyone with my drama, but as I later suggested to my counsellor, if anyone was in my position and they failed to call me, I’d want to punch them in the head because of course I’m always there for them (so I have resolved to treat myself like I’m actually my friend, so that I will see that I am actually important and special and deserving of cherishing and nourishment – the way I view my friends but have difficulty seeign myself). So yeah, I called Shirley, and cried and cried, and through a series of navigational mishaps, we ended up driving out to Petone. I had a big panic attack – or is it an anxiety attack – in her car. My heart rate went out of control, my entire body tensed up to the point where my left side felt like it was a heart attack, my flesh tingled, and I had the most disgusting metalllic taste in my mouth. I was more successful in fighting it because I was in someone else’s company than I normally would be. And we wen to the beach, and I stood ankle deep in the cool water and tried to unclench my body, which had of course gone into total survival clenched mode.

We wandered down Jackson St forever, trying to find a place for dinner that was open which would fit us in, and finally we came across Gusto, down the opposite end from Wanda Harland. Yum! We had a cheese plate which had a brie that gooed everywhere, and antipasto with four kinds of preserved meats. The service was a little new, but very well intentioned. And after we had retrieved my car from the towing yard, $180 later, I stopped by quiz and was so upset and stressed out about my workshop the next day I hardly even noticed when the Quizmaster hugged me.

The next day I had a huge big challenge organising an interactive workshop on wikis for 50 people. I panicked and doubted myself and thought I’d fucked up room bookings when it was of course some people overstaying their time in rooms, but other than that, it went pretty good. And then after work I got drunk over dinner at Longixang with Karen and Kowhai and Lisa, and we drove out ot Martha’s shop opening and I drank more champagne and bought presents for Anji and Karen, and a bear-shaped rug that I am SO going to fuck someone on, while my fire-place video plays on the TV. Maybe I will add in photos some other time.

I didn’t write about the Wellingtonista awards yet either. Such an amazingly good night. I can’t believe that things went as well as they did. It was such a stressful period leading up to ist, but on the night, it appears that we pulled it off quite well indeed. My dress was pretty, and that;’;s what’s most important, right? and OH MY GOD Blam Blam Blam were so astonishingly good,a nd I jumped up and down and up and down and dancd and danced and then I hugged them and the whole time I was dancing I had the biggest grin on my face going “BLAM BLAM MOTHERFUCKING BLAM ARE PLAYING AT AWARDS I FUCKING HELPED ORGANISE!” (although props for the actual night must go to Mitch and Russell) and it was just so fucking lovely to know that 678 people voted, compared to 57 from last year. The Wellingtonista have filled my social calendar this year and I love them all dearly, even when they don’t read their emails properly.

And there are other things that are lovely in my life. Kat and I may have finished our Veronica dates, but the other night on our girlie date night we watched Dirty Dancing and then The Breakfast Club and I know that even when they’re gone in February, they’ll be coming back all the time for wrestling. And fuck, I so don’t want them to leave. Do you know how amazing our vege garden looks right now? I don’t want ot have to leave this house, it’s just not fucking fair. This is my home. How dare they “consider their options”? Shirley’s consoling words have been all about promising me that I’ll find a place with a better kitchen, but how will I find a house big enough to fit in all my crap? I have so much crap. My aim over the holidays is to throw out three things a day, but I dunno if I’ll get that done. Yesterday I was hungover all day from end of work drinks, with Tom buying Bollinger at Arbituaguer, and then much sake at Hede, and teapots at Alice, and more wine at Hawthorn, and today I had half a dozen people (Karen, Tom, Kowhai, Shirley, Frances, Lisa, Kat & Kane) over for drinks in the sun, which of course turned into drinks with candles outside and everyone wearing my hoodies and wow, I’m so fucking huge. My idea of spontaneous entertaining starts with texts at 10am, and then there’s bratwursts and frozen samosas and a trillion cocktails. We’re having Xmas at Mum and Neil’s, even though their deck isn’t finished (I am SO dreading the mess already) and so Karen and I went entree shopping this morning. And I have already finished the white rum, apparently. D’oh!

What more did I have to say? I am so fucking craving some physicality. I want to devour the world. So let’s end it there, yes?