MODM #1 wrap-up

So last night, as promised, we held MODM #1, the meetup for Melbourne’s Online Digital Media community. There were thousands of us there, spilling out into the street, dancing semi-naked on the tables, causing riots, drinking shots, it was absolutely wild. You really missed out if you weren’t there. The things I saw would shock you to the core.

Anyway, make sure you don’t miss the next one.

Details will be worked out over on our new MODM Forum.

More G’Day World feed problems

Thanks to Chris Aliviado for pointing out that if you try to subscribe to G’Day World in iTunes at the moment you don’t actually get the G’Day World feed – you get the Digital Photography feed!!

WTF is going on with my feed???

Cam’s World 24 April, 2007

Eddie Van Halen has new teeth!
Eddie Van Halen's new teeth

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Thanks to everyone who commented, emailed and IMd about my dark clouds yesterday. Really, there is nothing to worry about. Today I’m back on top, thinking more about “the future” and less about “the past” (neither of which really exist, of course, other than mental constructs in “the now”). It’s part chemical, part psychological. The questions I’m asking myself today are better than the self-pity dialogue I had yesterday. Today’s it’s all about “what can I do differently?” rather than “how the hell did I end up here?”.

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John Howard won’t pull Australian troops out of Iraq because he doesn’t want the US to be “humiliated”. It’s this kind of muddled thinking which has totally undermined Australia’s credibility on the world stage. Our continued involvement in the tragedy of Iraq, our refusal to sign Kyoto, our treatment of refugees in internment camps, and our treatment of our indigenous people have left Australia’s international reputation severely lacking. Humiliated? The US has already been humiliated by Iraq. I can’t see how acknowledging their mistake is going to lead to more humiliation. We teach our children that admitting a mistake is the first step to learning from it and resolving it. So it tells you a lot about a government’s willingness to learn and grow when it cannot admit its own mistakes. Do they think history will punish them more for admitting a mistake than for perpetuating one?

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G’Day World feed borked??

I’ve been getting reports over the last week that the G’Day World RSS feed is sending out the data without any formatting so it appears as just one long string of text. Can anyone confirm or deny? It would be good to know if it’s happening across the board or just with certain readers. We have no idea what’s causing it yet. Apologies to those affected.

Thanks Scienta!

I’ve been meaning to publicly thank Scienta for the gift of a Flickr Pro account! She has also been telling me about a service which lets you set up a USA mailing address called MyUS.com. They will forward any mail that comes in to your regular address. Handy if you want to subscribe to magazines in the US, etc. Looks kind of expensive to me though. $150 to sign up, please the forwarding fees.

Anybody else using similar services and think they save money?

Nothing Like A Cleanskin Moleskine

Ahhh… I cracked open a cleanskin Moleskine last night and have spent some time today wondering how I might hack it.

I tell ya, I don’t know what I did without Moleskines for so long. There is something mystical, magical, intoxicating about them. I swear I get almost as much joy out of cracking open a cleanskin Moleskine as I do turning on a new PC for the first time. There is a sense of exploration, of new beginnings, of promises, boy’s own adventure about it, that I find myself putting the moment off, not sure that I’m truly ready for the responsibility…

This new one is purely for me to write down my thoughts, ideas, inspirations, revelations – no tasks, no productivity stuff, no goals – just to contemplate, ponder, poke at the hidden meanings of my internal monologue.

Via PigPog I discovered my latest hack from moleskinerie – using Excel to create a page index which gets pasted into the first four pages of the new book.

Here’s the one I have put together:
moleskine index
(click on the image to download my Excel template for free!)

It’s set up for 200 pages which accommodates the 192-page ruled notebooks with the pocket, not the tiny form factor (I’ve got a couple of those but struggle to write small enough in them to make them useful).

I simply print it out, slice it up into four separate pages that get glued (using 3M Repositionable Spray Adhesive) into pages 2 – 5 of the new book. I actually like to leave page one completely blank. In the index I can keep a note of the topics I’m writing about in the book for fast future reference.

I also recently learned to keep a page-sized piece of blotter paper in between the current page I’m up to, to stop ink blots appearing on pages from when I shut the page before the ink from my uni-ball eye pen has completely dried. I’m using paper from an art book which I find does a good job and has a nice rough feel to it. I used just a cut-down piece of printer paper before that though, which worked just as well but didn’t have the same tactile texture to it. I’m a very tactile kind of guy. I like to touch. 🙂

Anybody else want to share with me their current favourite Moleskine hacks?