Robot Apple Monkey Blog

So I read on my local paper’s website that the 30 second TV spot is in trouble, and product placement is on the rise. I think the first half of the argument is a little premature, but there’s no doubt that product placement is becoming more and more prominent in film and television, at least that coming out of the big US machines. I’ve certainly started to notice it more and more in stuff that I’ve been watching, although it’s likely that that’s at least partially because my sensitivity to such things has been raised.

But surely it’s getting ridiculous when movie trailers start picking up the (sponsor’s) message and running with it. Have a look at the trailer for the latest Jim Carrey film, “Yes Man“. Seems to be all going fine until you get to about 1 minute in … even then it’s just dropped casually. Then about 10 seconds later, in case you missed the first one, RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL. I mean, I get it, the movie industry wants more money, and they can get that from advertisers in the form of product placement. How else do you explain Apple usage in “Hollywood America” being exponentially larger than the regular USA? But sometimes it’s just ridiculous.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m thirsty …

Tags: advertising, movie, product placement, rant

One thing about your internet being capped … makes it much easier to focus on sorting through photos!

Whittled the 200-odd photos taken while skiing in July down to 21 shots uploaded to flickr. Check them out over there. The down side is that while I was sorting through iPhoto, I found another batch of photos that need sorting, so my total didn’t go down quite as much as I was hoping. Still, 406 is a better number than 600.

Tags: photography, skiing

I’ve always been interested in photography. Not too interested, but a lazy interest in knowing the basics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also have an interest in the gear itself, so when my partner and I bought a digital SLR last year, we decided to get the Nikon D80

The good, and bad, thing about having a good camera is that you feel the need to justify the large sums of money spent on it by taking a lot of photos. Although I enjoy taking photos, I’m typically not the type of person to photographically record every major event, simply because I hate being that guy who wanders around at a party taking photos, not having a party. As a result, my photos tend towards landscapes and places, rather than people. What it also means is that when I do take the camera out, I take a LOT of photos.

Coming back from a recent ski trip, the camera had 250-odd photos on it. Not bad given that it was one day of photos in a place where, trust me, I’ve taken a lot of photos in the past. And then this past weekend was up at my parents’ property (”The Glen”) in the Hunter Valley (just north of Sydney), which netted another 266 photos. Combine that with some other, smaller “rolls” and my “Current Working” set - being all the photos I need to filter through, clean up and upload - is sitting at around 600 now.

Of course, that will filter down to something like 30-40 shots that make it up to my flickr page, but that’s a lot of culling to do! And on that note, I’ve got some photo tweaking to do - expect some serious picspam in a post soon!

For now, here are four shots that I uploaded quickly, just so it felt like I got something done.

Bee and Cherry Blossom 1

Bee and Cherry Blossom 2

View From the House

Front Paddock

Tags: cherry blossom, d80, photography, The Glen

Okay, I haven’t even finished setting up the main theme for Robot Apple Monkey Blog, but thanks to WPtouch, I now have a very nice looking iPhone skin. Visit on MobileSafari and tell me what you think.

Tags: iphone, Meta

Pointless Bureaucracy Journal

Okay, so one of the “perks” of my job is that I’m attached to an SLA that supports a lot of the uni’s clerical staff. This is basically the textbook definition of public service cubicle monkey.

I went up there to roll over an ANCIENT computer. Standard policy is just to roll over the computer itself, leave all other peripherals the same. This old machine we’re taking had a PS2 keyboard. Yeah, old school. So we needed to find a USB keyboard. We don’t have any spares in our stores, so we scrounged and stole a keyboard off an old PowerMac G4. Obviously, Mac keyboard + windows machine doesn’t appeal, and thus begins a discussion on supplying a keyboard.

Seriously, we had a 30 minute “discussion”, involving 1 IT and 3 bureaucrats about getting a USB keyboard, whether IT took a previous USB keyboard that should’ve been there, if there were any spare USB keyboards in the department, roaming around and searching… All because they didn’t want to buy one.

Let’s think about this. Just MY hourly wage for 30 minutes would buy a keyboard and still leave change for lunch. Now put in the salaries of everyone else. Suddenly we’re talking Optimus Maximus keyboard ranges, seriously.

Focus on the big picture people … fiscal efficiency is NOT acheieved with keyboards, forms and cheap teabags.

Tags: Pointless Bureaucracy Journal, rant, Work