Posted by Jerry on November 17th, 2005 — Posted in Journal, Writing
The other day at Gus’ cafe I met the Korean translator of my book for the first time. Dr Young-Min YUN met me with a big smile and we ordered coffee and some food. We discussed how he came to translate my book. “Ah,” he said “There is a story to that…” and he told me of the Graduate student who had suggested jointly translating my book into Korean, and how, having secured the rights from Routledge, the student then told Dr Yun that the language was too difficult – leaving him with a choice: either lose some face by withdrawing the project, or completing the project himself. It took 12 months, and the result is in every major bookstore in Korea.
I asked him about the title – I had laboriously tried to translate the new title – the @ sign gave away that the title had changed, and I knew that the word after @ was ‘Internet’ – so I knew that it was ‘Something @ Internet’ and not ‘Virtual States’. Young-Min smiled again “The word is ‘State’ – so the title is ‘State @ Internet'” I was curious. “You see…” he explained “‘Virtual‘ is not an easy concept to translate into Korean and I had to come up with something that would be easily understood as somehow summing up the book”. I complimented him on his choice.
He clearly enjoyed the project and asked me animatedly about the concept of ‘liminal space‘ and how he found the concept really useful. He has been using the book on his university courses since 2002 when the translation was published.
All too soon lunch was drawing to a close and we each had other appointments. We signed each other’s copies of the book. “one more thing” he said, and quickly produced a camera. We called over a waitress who smiled when we asked her to take a photo of us together.
Young-Min YUN and Jerry Everard
We stood and shook hands. “Anyonghi kyeseyo” I said and Young-Min’s eyebrows rose “Ah you speak Korean!” “just a few phrases” I said and we parted as the rain began.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on October 31st, 2005 — Posted in Journal
We just watched the mini series Mary Bryant – a Screentime/Granada TV co-production – a great story that really moves along and builds a terrific drama – based on the true story of a young woman convict who escaped in a small boat and sailed 3000 miles from Botany Bay to Timor… Our daughter Eve played a minor part in the Timor crowd scenes and the climactic dinner. Here are a few photos from the set:
Eve is the one on the left
Eve with Dutch soldiers
Eve in green dress
Eve in blue dress
The hair stylists were drawing lots to see who would get to do her hair…
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on October 27th, 2005 — Posted in Journal
Well it’s Eve’s (my daughter) birthday and I guess the look of concentration says it all – the new Dube juggling clubs are quite successful 🙂
We had a great dinner together before Eve had to head off to prepare for the next folk festival – Maldon Festival in Victoria, where she is performing with Will-o-the-Wisp Fire Circus
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on October 9th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
The cobblestones glistened damply in the morning light as I set off to Covent Garden markets. They had yet to open, but the buildings alone were fascinating. “Here on this site Punch and Judy was first performed in 1648 as witnessed by Samuel Pepys” read one sign. As I approached the market, I noticed a number of bicycles chained to fences. But I knew that Covent garden couldn’t be far away when I saw this two-metre unicycle…
I wish them luck on the cobblestones!
The concert in St Martin in the Fields was breathtaking – a fine complement to the extraordinary architecture.
St Martins-in-the-Fields
The National Gallery has an excellent collection – they were just finishing a Stubbs exhibition – but for me the Canaletto painting from St James Park is always worth a look
London – National Gallery
From Charing Cross it was a quick tube ride to St Paul’s Cathedral – Wren’s crowning achievement after the Great Fire. The dome you see from the outside is only the outermost of three, and was inspired by Bramante’s design for St Peter’s in Rome. The outside one is more cladding than anything, and beneath it is a brick cone that tapers up to support the lantern. Finally there is an inner dome with wonderful frescoes painted by Sir John Thornhill (1716-19) against Sir Christopher Wren’s wishes, that have been newly restored.
St Paul’s Dome
St Pauls inner dome
The whispering gallery (above) actually works – someone across the dome sounds like they are right next to you – a bit disconcerting really! I was treated to a delightful choir practice where the music wafted up into the gallery from the floor below.
It is well worth climbing the 538 steps to the top of the dome – the view is amazing
View from the top of St Pauls Cathedral
Of course London is the place to meet Australians – well blow me kangaroo down sport – if that isn’t Rolf Harris the bloke from Bassendene in Perth Western Australia who made a bit of name for himself with a paintbrush and a wobble board…
Rolf Harris
It seems he was doing a community arts project – Rolf on Art – which involved getting hundreds of people and community groups to paint fragments of famous paintings by numbers – and the result was pieced together in enormous frames in Trafalgar Square. It was a huge event with more than 10,000 people there to see it all come together. It was broadcast by BBC and there were bands and jugglers and demonstrations of Renaissance painting techniques and models of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions and loads more. It was a great atmosphere.
Rolf on Art
The Victoria and Albert Museum has an excellent collection of textiles – including the Jane Bostocke sampler – the oldest dated English embroidery sampler
The Jane Bostock Sampler (1598)
The museum was kind enough to open the musical instruments section just for me after I explained that my hardanger fiddle was modeled on the one they have there, and that I was over for a few days from Australia. I would have been just as happy to come back later when it might have reopened, but the staff were really helpful and gave me a personal tour of that section. They explained that it was closed as they were short of staff that day.
I rounded off the visit with bit of shopping at Harrods. It was the first time I had been to Harrods, even though I had previously lived in London for a year. The decor is, well, a bit over the top… but the staff were very helpful and friendly. And although I expected higher prices, they really weren’t much higher – and the service was excellent. The food hall does spectacular food displays. And if you are from outside of the European Union you can reclaim your VAT on major purchases. This brought the ultimate price of my new mini-disc recorder down to less than I would have paid in Australia.
Harrods
The one place that keeps drawing me back to London is St James’ Park – I love the view from the footbridge towards the Horseguards
And the fact you can walk through the Horseguards to Whitehall – where the Whitehall Cafe serves excellent lunches and a fine pot of tea.
Horseguards, London
All up it was an excellent visit – I’ll post more photos on specific themes later
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on September 18th, 2005 — Posted in Journal, Music, Technology
Well, if the blog has been a bit quiet lately, it’s not because life has been quiet! After five years with the graphite iMac the technology is starting to show its age – or rather sound its age. The disturbing whining sound coming from the hard drive made us think about the way we have continually pushed our home technology until it is well past its use-by date, by upgrading RAM and buying ever bigger hard drives. So the time had come.
We actually went shopping for a big hard drive so we could back up the formerly big one and still have room for growth. That was quickly solved when we found the price of 500GB drives were down to about half what the 250GB drive had cost us before. But we couldn’t easily work out whether itwas the external or the internal drive that was the problem. Hmmm time to look at other computers.
With our interests well into the graphics and music software, there was really no comparison to make – it had to be another mac, and then it came down to which model would be right for us.
The result was a bit of a dent in the plastic fantastic but we walked out with a couple of boxes – a 20-inch G5 iMac (big flat screen) with 1.5GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive and DVD burner built in. And an Epson stylys photoR210 printer – the latter because we can use it to print directly onto CD/RW – good for the Band’s demo CDs.
And it matches the electric fiddle! While the iLife GarageBand software looks good, I chose to upgrade to Mackie’s Tracktion2 for recording. The screen size is great for recording – everything is a good size. And the processor is quite a bit faster than the G3 iMac – and the whole lot a far cry from the machines we started on – the 512k mac and the mac plus. Those and the color Classic and the PowerMac all still work – each year we fire them all up. I reckon we need to start a tradition of Mac Day and fire up all the old macs on the anniversary of the launch of the Apple Macintosh back in 1984!
Cheers
Jerry
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