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Blinks

Wednesday, 25 April, 2007

So today I am holed up at home (and it's great weather to be holed up at home—damp, wet, cold ... I think I'll stay in my pyjamas. If Ben were here, he'd say, “Karen wears pyjamas!” but he's gone to Tho's birthday brunch which is at Chappo house and not at the beach, and now consequently nowhere near the UNSW Bookfair. I'm still debating whether it is a Good Thing for me to be let loose near that place. Anyway, let's get out of these brackets.)

I am at home sunk with another cold and perhaps another flu, if the ghost of a sore throat is any indication. Plus I'm still coughing from my last bout with a virus. Pilates starts today and I'm not sure if I should go. Aaargh! I hate getting sick!!! And of course I start editing The Briefing tomorrow. It is probably wiser for me to stay home and rest instead of gallivanting off to some chilly school hall. Foolishly I said yes to playing piano for the Healing Ministry weekend on Saturday so I cannot go to Pilates then. Bother. Perhaps I should go back to bed but I've already slept for 11 hours. Hmm. Maybe I will later.

Here are some links to keep you amused:

• This Dilbert cartoon makes me think of proofreaders and Briefing readers obsessed with grammar;
• They've made the first book of His Dark Materials trilogy into a movie. It's got Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in it;
• The latest Studio Ghibli release is due out at the Dendy in May: Tales from Earthsea. Apparently Ursula Le Guin is not very happy with it;
• A Night in Fantasia was on again recently. It rather amuses me that people would pay money to go hear video game music;
• Haruki Murakami's new book is out very soon. Read an excerpt;
• This is how Neil is writing The Graveyard Book. I am somewhat gratified to find he is using an A5 journal because I do too. And he writes right to the end of the page. But I don't draw pictures in my journal. I usually don't tend to draw at all. I wonder why that is ...
• Roger's wife Leah told me about this auction site where you could buy and sell handmade stuff. The URL she gave me didn't quite work but eventually I found it—it's Etsy;
• From another Moore College wife: Drops magazine put a lot of their patterns online for free and there's some lovely stuff there too—like this and this and this. Not all of them have been translated into English but a lot of them have.
• Good questions about knitting etiquette;
• GoGet: share cars. You book the time you want and then take the share care for that period of time. The rental fee is deducted from your account. And you have to top up the petrol. What a good idea!;
• KahDo: rent a Smart Car with advertising plastered all over it for $35/week. You have to drive it a certain number of k's per day and always park it where it's visible. They pay for insurance and rego; you just pay for petrol;
• Hello Kitty Fender guitar (with instructions);
• Historical walking tours of Sydney: I meant to do one of these over the summer but never got around to it ...
• 24 lessons on making Mirrormask by Dave McKean (not sure where I got this from—probably Neil—but anyway ...);
• Free fonts—free and legal (I think);
• Nick Horby talks about 31 Songs on The Connection. He sounds an awful lot like Neil. He says that after the publication of the book, Ben Folds contacted him about doing something on an album he was working on for William Shatner. Alice Cooper also makes an appearance.

(Just an aside, isn't it interesting that in response to the question, “What did you think of the film of High Fidelity?”, he said,

I really liked it. What I liked most was that the film was personal to the filmmakers in the same way that the book was personal to its writer: they grew up in Chicago, where the film was set, and they are all music addicts. So it became a film about them, which is the best sort of adaptation. People kept asking me about the transposition to the US, but it meant that the book retained all its best features.

I wonder if this another clue into what makes a good adaptation.

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