I havnt listened to much over the last few months. What has stuck in my head have been singles, not albums.

If I was going to break them up into mixtapes, #1 is acoustic, #2 is electric

#1
The Books – Motherless Bastard
Dirty Three – The Zither Player
Laura Veirs – Little Deschutes

#2
Sufjan Stevens - Futile Devices (Shigato Remix)
Grimes - Genesis
Pinch - Get Up
SchoolboyQ - Gangsta in Designer
LHF - Essence Investigation
Mord Fustang - Lick the Rainbow

I've listened to the Grimes album and the Anna Calvi one a fair bit. Both are worth a few more listens

Stunning day at Gordons on Saterday. Water completely flat, and clear down to (I guess?) 7-10 meteres, possibly more. Went right out to about as far as clovelly point, and right out of the bay. It felt safe, and I went further than I'd ever been. Looking for a wobbegong but didn't see. Instead, a school of about 30-40 squid of various sizes. Some quite large, very cute. Plenty of grouper, and large schools of fish. Amazing visibility. Saw about as much as I've ever seen out there. I think this weekend was the peak of summer - today was the annual inflatables day down at Gordons. Good times - times to remember.

At Gordons Bay:

When I first came down here to live (late 2009) I regularly saw a few sandy-coloured stingrays at the bottom of the bay. three or four? little ones, just larger than the size of my hand. cute as pie, hiding in the shallows, sand over the wings. Anyway. I hadn't seen them anytime since, and then last month I was told they'd re-appeared. After a couple of days searching - sure enough - they're back. Its nice to be able to swim with them, and even just watching them move in the water, such a hypnotic movement.

Also: Saw my first Wobbegong. Much larger (longer) than a catfish but I get how they could be confused. Nice to swim with a shark although the Wobbegong kinda doesnt count, does it? Its doesn't look like a regular one, so no fear.

Anyway, the highlight.

Right after hanging with the rays I turned around, swimming away, and noticed.. a bit of seagrass? or debris, off-green, floating along in the water, about a foot below the surface. Its green, and its bobbing along. After I second look I cant figure out whats weird about it, maybe its got... purpose? I swim close to it until I'm a foot away, and then I see... two little eyes. Its a FRICKEN SEAHORSE. I have never swam with one - and only seen one in the wild once before (in the galapagos) so this was rare, and very special. We hung out for five or so minutes. The whole thing was magic. I was swimming with a friend, she saw it as well, felt good to share the moment.

It would have been nice to have the camera with me in all honest? the experience was enough. A really rare experience. Just ecstatic getting out of the water. It happened a few days ago but I am still kinda stunned and amazingly happy about it.

The bay is teaming right now. Not sure what it is. With all the rain the visibility isnt great but there are a lot of fish about.

I made a list of end of year things because it's the end of the year.

2011 Overall result: Slightly better than 2010. I'm pretty tired of trusting people that end up being horrible. I do not understand how some people can be so callous. At least from this year I feel stronger for it, and it's behind me. I am getting better at finding the right people to trust, sometimes I guess you just learn that the hard way. I met some genuinely good people this year. I enjoyed my work a lot, and I had an amazing holiday and was able to share that with people I love completely, and all of those things have been very important to me.

Soundtracking this year...

Best Album?
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake, probably gets the nod here, even though it seems like a consistant choice from a few people, it's a damm fine album. Gillian Welch, Kurt Vile, The Antlers, Mogwai, M83, Washed Out & Beirut were all great. As usual a few of my favourite albums this year were actually released last year, James Blake, Sufjan, Kyu, etc

Songs:
Beirut - Port of Call, the final track on 'The Rip Tide' album and my favourite song from this year.
And also great one that same album - Goshen.
Bjork - Crystalline, the last 50 seconds are the best Drum and Bass I've heard in years.
The opening track on the Gillian Welch Album (Scarlet Town) and quite a few others there.
The opening track on the Tom Waits album (Chicago)
The opening track from the latest TV on the Radio Album (Second Song)
The first two tracks on the new Feist Album.
Cascades on the Fleet Foxes album.

Best Gig:
#1 Gillian Welch - Tipitina's New Orleans
#2 The National - Both gigs at the Enmore
#3 Portishead - Harvest Melbourne
#4 Holy Fuck - Laneway Festival
#5 Kyu - Becks Bar
#6 Grinderman - At the Enmore

All those gigs were fucking amazing. There were plenty more I could add to the list as well. A great year for live music.

Movies:
Well the two that actually generated some interest were Tree of Life and Source Code. But both were deeply flawed as well, I couldn't say I loved them to til the end. Notable mentions to Drive, Bridesmaids, Hannah and A Burning Man, all of them well above average.

Best TV:
Game of Thrones, Frozen Planet and Black Mirror (National Anthem). Frozen Planet is absolute top-of-the-line BBC doco, with some of the most incredible shot footage (under the icecaps especially). Black Mirror is best-left-unrevealed but its a little bit gripping, twisted and fucked up drama from Charlie Brooker. Both are incredible works, and both surpassed any movies I saw. Game of Thrones is different again, it has weaker moments as TV (spread out over 10 episodes) but definitely had a cultural impact - it was all most people were talking about for the first half of the year.

Worst Internet:
Google, who screwed up the only decent social network they ever had when they overhauled google reader - it really altered (ruined) how I recieve and share news online. Also google for making a bunch of really poor design & UI decisions for their online products. And twitter for doing much the same to a lesser extent.

Best Internet:
My MacBook Air. Closely followed by Telstra 3G. And I'm even a fan of the VMWare suite these days. And I've really enjoyed using instagram. It's not the filters as much as the community around it.

Best Purchase (non internet):
My new bike!

Best Food:
New Orleans, and thats probably till forever. Everything on the USA trip was pretty great actually.

Best Thing:
Burning Man. Hard to top this one.

See you all next year.

The best article I've read all year.

What really happened on flight AF447

I've read it a few times now, and thought about it a lot.

There's a lot there to digest, both in the article and also some discussion in the comments on the second page. Up until now the story was the mystery itself (how could a modern airliner crash?) This article changes that. We now know exactly why, thanks to the cockpit voice recorder.

The 'psychology of the brain under stress' discussion was quite revealing, although we'll never know how much it had an impact. Specifically - how decisions are made when anxiety levels are high, and the importance of having a third (more subjective) person to help triage. That sort of thing is occasionally relevant at work. There are outages during oncall shift, and in some cases it's overwhelming. Some people are naturally better at responding to that than others (I am not so good) and I'm always interested in the habits of people who are.

The concluding paragraph of the article is an excellent summary with the problems of having technology that's a little 'better' than it should be, basically past the point where it can enforce (or remind) a basic level of competence level on the operator.

There's are some design issues in the airbus cockpit that could have improved communication, and visibility, just even via the layout of the cockpit. Central decisions must be physically 'central' to a space as well, I guess thats part of enforcing transparency through good design.

Even after reading it ten or so times, I don't know how they ignored the 'stall' alarm. Monitoring and alarm noise can blur out into meaningless or indistinct blur of noise, I get that and I've witnessed it. But I'm still struggling to understand how they missed that alarm.

CRM (applied generally as good, effective communication) is just as important as any technical skill (or problem) you may have.

The pilot who made the mistake, and who effectively killed all those people, never realised what he was doing wrong. He never realised that he was to blame for the entire thing. Not even towards the end, not even seconds before impact. He died not knowing. And that kinda resonated as well - some people will just never know.

Cash
I've been listening to the Johnny cash covers from the american 4 & 5 releases. It's just my opinion, but i think he improves almost every song. The ones he doesn't improve are still distinct and different enough to be a worthwhile cover. The difference is the stripped-down nature of each cover, it exposes the fragility in his voice, especially towards the end.

All Delighted People
When I'd finally heard enough of 'Adz' this was the right next choice. And as always with Sufjan it's always headphones music still. I can't share it. And it's quite deceiving calling it an EP - at 59 minutes its longer than a lot of albums. Some moment of true beauty, even if a little dark.

Reckoner
I've always thought 'Reckoner' by Radiohead was a good song. But it's actually a great song, and it's only just really hit me now. There's a moment just after halfway though that scoops out my heart out with a spoon.

Harvest Festival. I went twice, I figured the lineup was good enough to warrant it.

The Fucking Amazing: Portishead. Not much else to say. It was as good as anything I've ever heard at a festival. Worth every sent. Chilling and spine tingling in moments (wandering star...). And absolutely mesmerising from start to finish. A quiet crowd throughout, a standing ovation at the end, and a deserved encore.

The Good: TV on the Radio, Holy Fuck, The National and Mogwai all put in excellent sets. TV on the Radio specifically put a lot of effort in to an awesome live show. It made me go back through all their stuff for a re-listen. Holy Fuck have never disappointed, theres always involuntary dancing, and I always wish their sets were a little bit longer. It was my first time seeing Mogwai and they have a great representation of their studio sound. Hard to go wrong with 4 guitars I guess. Definitely the meanest-looking band of the day.

The Terrible: Mercury Rev were definitely unwatchable and mostly unlistenable as well.

The Surprising: Getting a backstage pass form an old friend, and was able to enjoy a goof chunk of The National's set from the side of the stage. I had all these glamourous ideas about what backstage was like. I was hoping for a massive free bar to hang with the bands but not to be, mostly it was support staff and sound engineers. The Bands were all kept up at the 5-star Weribee Mansion which was behind the main sound stage. Luxurious doesn't begin to describe it

The Embarrassing: well organisationally, Melbourne was a fucking disaster. Specifically whoever organised the food/drink catering ruined it for a lot of people. Everyone would spent at least an hour or so queued up for toilets, drink. or food. It was amateurish, and I would have thought it would have been unacceptable for an event promoter.

I enjoyed Sydney a lot more, it felt more relaxed, and there were no queues for food or drink, and the although the sound wasn't as good as melbourne, it was still very good. I felt like they had oversold Melbourne by at least few thousand people, Sydney was just right.

I had a great group of people to keep me company for both days: Nomes, Gorman, Keir, Bee, Stef, Emma, Ruth, Rachel, Alison - Thank you. Nomes took her SLR to both events, you can see the results here.

Sculpture on for another year, for the next three weeks. My only advice would be to see it on a weekday, the weekend crowds are a bit much. Like every other person there, I took some pictures.



A short review: Less art than last year but it is of better quality. As usual, the pieces that had some showed some appreciation for their environment fared the best. Things that complemented the the ocean, the rocks, the waves, the wind. The exception to that rule was actually my favourite piece - descending the mountain. Still can't put my finger on exactly why, maybe just the gorgeous rusted texture, or the way it looked different from every angle. Whatever it was I sat in awe of it for some time.

I've watched Blade Runner twice this weekend. And Rachael. Rachael steals every goddam scene. I'd forgotten but I remember now.



I think this is my favourate moment. It's right on the edge, a second where her voice trails off. "He wouldn't see me..." There's also this scene. And of course this, and every other.

I was wandering through the 'top 25 most played songs' list on my iphone tonight. Its a good indication of what new releases been filling my ears this year, or at least, whats stayed in my head, what I've felt the need to play on impulse. It looks roughly like this:

PJ Harvey - (England)
Sufjan Stevens - (my latent appreciation of 'Adz')
Gillian Welch - (The Harrow & the Harvest)
James Blake - (James Blake)
Kurt Vile - (Smoke Ring For My Halo)

And if we add presumably what will be the entirety of the latest Tom Waits release (Bad as Me) then an obvious pattern emerges...

What the fuck happened to bands?