The Boat Matters

Boating / By

Ugh, so streaming service Neat-Flicks just HAD to go and make their own version of Dark Boat, and set it in Japan instead of the original Australia. “We just thought that the story would be more profound and reflect the cultural norms better in the place where it was originally conceived.”

Well, they were wrong, on so many levels. That’s not even the thing that bothers me either, and I can just about get past the shoddy sets they dressed up to look like Tokyo. No, it’s how the ignored the themes of the original and just inserted their own. Marine stainless steel welding was at the very heart of the original source material, with the main character originally just wanting to go into the stainless steel welding industry and be a good, productive member of society. What starts out as a passion for him steadily erodes with the corrupting influence of the dark boat, until eventually he cares only for selling spirits and creating misery.

They even removed his original plate alloy boat from their adaptation, which in the original served as a powerful anchor to his past. Its neglect over the course of the first season was a powerful reminder that bad influences can destroy the things we love the most. Instead…they gave him a girlfriend. An evil girlfriend, who makes him do evil things, and that shows that he’s a bad buy.

I’m glad to see that most of my forum friends are avoiding this monstrosity and seeing it for what it really is. What was once a taciturn look at a young man’s life, and how it’s ruined by the arrival of a magic boat that produces infinite sorrow, is now a cliché storm of a young man turning into a delinquent because he hangs out with the wrong crowd, with the boat almost fading into the background. All those themes about plate alloy boats being superior to old, magical ones full of terror, left by the wayside. This is why shows like this needs to stay animated.

-Dave-kun

Worse Job, Better Garden

Gardens / By

The popular online game ‘Over-Botch’ is supposed to be for jobs, but honestly, I’m more interested in the home option. Which is weird, yeah, I have a job on there as an assistant mechanic, and it doesn’t pay all that way, sure. I don’t actually enjoy it that much. My boss is a jerk, and some people find it weird that I play an online game that basically simulates the average work experience. But that’s not the point, not to me. I just want to finish up my virtual job so I can go to my virtual house and do virtual home things. I might only be an assistant mechanic, but I have a really nice home. Because I actually put some effort into it.

Fortunately, Over-Botch has a robust garden supplies business going on, so I can go online and purchase daffodil varieties for my garden. We’re coming into virtual spring, so the garden is going to look awesome once we get some virtual rain showers. All my virtual spring flowering bulbs are going to sprout, and everyone is going to see it on their way to their virtual jobs.

That’s the thing about this game: people don’t put much effort into their home life, because it’s supposed to all be about the job. It’s the job simulator; why do you need to worry with planting flower bulbs and trimming the lawn? But I just like to be well-rounded, and as a result, my home looks better than everyone else’s. No biggie.

The way I figure it, people are going to be asking for tips at some point. I can then make a smooth transition from going to work every day to sustain my gardening and home design habit, to the point where I can take those things and make them my main job. I’ll be the only garden consultant in all of Over-Botch. Need to know where there are standard roses to pick up, or how to grow hyacinths in winter? I’m your guy.

-Marc

Smart Car Potential

Cars / By

Can’t wait for the next twenty years to pass, because then everyone is going to have a smart car, and my hacking skills are going to come in extremely handy. Feels like I’m caught in an unfortunate fringe period of history right now: early enough to become a master hacker, but TOO early to rule the world via everything having smart technology installed. Right now I can impress my friends by hacking people’s fridges, if they’re the affluent sort who have smart fridges, and sometimes I steal millions from foreign bank accounts if I’m bored, but smart cars are what I’m waiting for.

You know, the cars that can basically drive themselves to get repairs. Like, say you need an auto service in the Malvern area but you work in Sunshine, and you just don’t have time to both get home, make dinner AND take the car in for a service. No problem in the tech-savvy world of 2030, when you can get home (after having the car drive you, of course) and just tell it where to go for a check-up. Still not sure whether the mechanics and auto repair garages will be automated, although my current guess is half and half. Everything will be automated to some degree…even hacking.

And with all these terribly clever vehicles comes the potential for me to hack them, with my hacking mastery. I don’t really have any particular reason, mind you…I just like the thought of there being a whole new playground of technology to explore with my amazing hacking. Although just to be clear, I’m not a monster. I wouldn’t mess with people’s cars, so I trust the local garage to do a proper auto repair in Hawthorn. I might just sneak into the car’s systems and replace their horn with some sort of shameful ringtone, or turn their headlights pink. Just normal hacker stuff, you know? Nothing…lasting.

-Zed-One

Solar to power space flight

Energy / By

You know, it’s come to my attention that a lot of sci-fi just don’t really understand the usage of energy. Take the Space Conflicts series, which has people jetting across the galaxy in a flash using space crafts. However, the most egregious sin of scientific abandonment has to be the Light-Swords, so named because they’re swords that are not particular heavy, but also because they’re made of laser light. They can cut through anything, and yet the energy requirements seem to be almost nothing, which we’re just supposed to accept. You don’t need to plug them in to recharge them or anything.

Right here and now in Melbourne, commercial energy storage is able to hold enough power to run lights are night and the likes in order to reduce power bills. By sci-fi standards, that’s not very much. Now, by normal Earth standards that’s massive. Energy storage has to be pretty good, what with all the push for green power and industrial solar systems taking over, but it makes you wonder what they had to go through in the Space Conflicts series to achieve such a thing. Were there mass protests whenever the Light-Sword was invented? Were the carriers treated like people who ignore water restrictions and just put on their sprinklers anyway?

And that’s not even going into the colossal power requirements needing to be miniaturised for such a thing to function at all. You’d have to take an entire real-world power grid covering miles of land and shove it into a small tube. I just don’t even know if that’s possible, even with space magic involved.

I shouldn’t be bothered by this stuff, and I’m sure if I got the mic at a convention and asked the creators, they’d have an answer. Maybe commercial solar systems have advanced to a degree that simply flying by a star charges your device for years. I don’t think energy storage can be that efficient, but eh. Factor in the magical power of the all-powerful Push, and maybe it could work.

My Flair for Designing Offices

Office / By

Working from home is the dream for a lot of people, but for me it’s pretty much the only option. I refuse to live off unemployment benefits, but it’s just me and the kids, and they’re not at school age. That’s why I started running my little set of businesses, and that involves a LOT of financial planning and all sorts of little business foibles. You have to be really accurate with your bookkeeping, you have to keep stocking up on both giant mantis mandibles and the wheat-grass juice required to keep them fresh, and you NEED your own office space.

That’s the goal at the moment. I have my own home office, and I’m really proud of it. The business has started to take off in the big way and it’s time to expand. I’d love to find a company in Melbourne performing office design, get on board, and maybe do some work from home. I like to sell beads, necklaces, bows, potions that invigorate the drinker with newfound strength, and greeting cards…but some sort of office design job would be great. There are loads of good companies for that sort of thing in Melbourne. Office fitout capital of the world if you ask me. Some of the most innovative office layouts you’ve ever seen. I’ve drawn up a bunch of designs that I think would be really good, some of them based on my home office and others more on the offices I’ve seen. I worked in one for a week during work experience, way back in my school years. And of course, there’s the secretarial work, but that often involves a lengthy commute across suburbs.

Maybe customers would pay more if they had some really flashy, professional office interior design. Melbourne clients need my skills and my wares. Clearly I have found my place in the world. Well, that’s going to be the level of confidence I carry as I head into the office fitout world. It might be cutthroat, but never underestimate a single mum with a plethora of skills.

-Chardonnay

Bureaucracy Meets Pest Control

Pest control / By

If I’d known the number of boxes that need to be ticked in the course of building a house, I may never have started on this ridiculous journey. At least, I might have opted for something more straightforward than this split-level pole home concept… but then, what else would I put on this block?

At the end of the day, I have no doubt that it’s going to be worth all the fuss and bother. I inherited this block of land, and that puts me a step ahead of most in the pursuit of homeownership. So I can’t complain about the slope and intensive filling of swamp that’s been required, or the lack of existing connections to utilities for that matter.

It just surprised me how many components of the process I’d never heard of before in my life. Take, for example, pre-construction termite protection. Turns out, builders are required to incorporate defences against termites into new houses being built in areas with a high risk of infestation, and my block is positioned within one such area.

I don’t even rightly know what’s involved in these kind of termite control treatments. Dandenong homeowners out there: can anyone fill me in? Does something get sprayed into the wood, or is there some kind of high-tech device that keeps them at bay? I guess it’s not that important for me to know – I’ve got a pest management expert on the case now. But I’m still keen to know what’s going into the fabric of my house.

In any case, I don’t regret deciding to build on this block here in Dandenong. Pest control companies’ opinions on its risk level notwithstanding, I think it’s pretty much perfect. I guess it benefits me, in the end, to jump through all these bureaucratic hoops – a lot of them are no doubt worth it as far as ensuring the longevity of the structure goes.

All thing considered, I’m glad I went into this not knowing not was involved – if I had known, I’d never have made it this far.

Football Fan (Not)

Sports / By

Ah, sports… everyone’s favourite topic of conversation. Except mine, that is. It’s not that I actively dislike it; it’s just that I don’t really know much about it, and have very little inclination to prioritise changing that. Unfortunately, here in Melbourne it’s considered de rigueur to have a footy team, as my colleagues never let me forget.

They say I’m doing my kids a disservice by not taking them to the football, but I beg to differ. The kids can all play an instrument, know who James Turrell is, and are competent at making sushi. They don’t need sport to grow into well-rounded people. Still, I occasionally take the critiques to heart and wonder if I should be helping their school buy new soccer netting instead of donating to the library. People like sport – that cannot be denied.

Maybe I resist sport because, as a lad, I was denied options for extracurricular learning – there wasn’t enough money for music lessons or circus summer schools, not that these were on offer anyway. The only thing to do in my town was play footy. I hated it, largely because it felt like I had no other options for having a social life. Now, whenever I walk past the AFL barrier nets at the park, I can’t help but shudder inwardly.

Now that I’ve realised this, I guess it’s a bit clearer that I’ve been imposing my own discomfort around sports on my kids. I mean, I wouldn’t have stopped any of them if they’d expressed a desire to play soccer or cricket or even rugby league, but I never exactly made it an option for them. In a way, I’ve done just what was done to me – I’ve imposed my values on them.

Well, at least my values have resulted in them having excellent taste. It’s really not the end of the world. But perhaps I should go a bit easier on Emily’s soccer-mad school friends, and consider investing in that basketball hoop Cameron wanted for the backyard.

From Kitchenette to Real Kitchen

Kitchens / By

Open-plan…open-plan just everywhere. And why not? It’s the big space-saving trend! Stick a kitchen in the corner of a room, slap down a few tiles and you’re golden. You have a kitchen/lounge without anyone in the estate agency business having to skimp on the description. But what if you’re on a bit of a budget, but you want a bit of space? You browse the home listings every single day and hope to strike gold. And of course, there will be about twenty-five other couples just like you who’ll strike gold at the same time, so you fight your way through them.

It’s probably really stupid hoping for the kitchen of my dreams at this stage. I should also stop watching The Great Australian Trade-Off, because last week’s episode about complete kitchen renovations was absolutely amazing, and I have so many ideas. Mostly, I want my kitchen to be based around baking. Both of us love to bake, and neither of us like to cook, so if it’s going to be our big married activity then we need the space. And a tiny kitchen with about thirty centimetres of free work-space just doesn’t work for baking. You need a ton of space, a dedicated kitchen space rather than just a few installations and cabinets stuck in one corner of the lounge. An extra sink would be great as well, and that’s also pretty much out within our budget as well.

I shouldn’t even be talking about this. Putting ideas in my own head. Though we do have a bit of time we can wait for the right place, and the separate kitchen room is something I’m willing to wait for. Just the thought of doing stuff in a ‘kitchen’ with a sink, cooker, and a tiny fraction of a work-space isn’t exactly appealing. And in twenty years? I’ll ask someone who has the skills to create the best designer kitchen Melbourne has ever seen. And it’ll be a marvel of modern kitchen design, geared towards baking.

-A.B.G.

I Like My Chamber, Deal With It

Health / By

They say that if you can’t stand the heat, then you better get out of the kitchen. What I’d add to that is that if you can’t stand the chamber, get out of the…house. Specifically, my house.

No, but really. EVERYONE has something to say about how I seem unsociable when they come to visit. Oh, it’s too weird! Well, you can all shut your mouth, because this is how I like it. I like to sit inside my oxygen chamber, and the walls aren’t that thick so you can talk to me just fine from outside there. I hunted around for the very best hyperbaric oxygen therapy available near Melbourne, all because I knew I’d be using it constantly. There is a limit to the amount of time I can spend there, and I stick to that. It just so happens the time I’m in there is usually when friends come to visit. 

It’s all down to what I’ve done in early life. All those marathons, all that improper breathing technique…well, something had to give. Circumstances might have forced me to mostly stay indoors, but I’m making the most of it by staying inside my portable oxygen therapy chamber and having a wonderful time breathing easy, even though I don’t really NEED to. Makes me feel like I’m back on those rolling hills, running forever, breathing in that sweet oxygen in my fittest prime. Of course, this is artificial oxygen…not quite the same thing. Though so long as it does the job and clears my lungs, I’m kept quite happy.

Not so my visitors, but who needs them anyway? I like having guests over well enough, and if they don’t like chatting to me inside the chamber, that’s their issue. Fine by me. It gets lonely, but i always take a good book in there. Keeps the companies in Melbourne who sell portable hyperbaric chambers happy as well, because I’m probably the best customer they’re EVER going to have.

-Edith

Maybe an Under-the-Sea Theme Next?

Windows / By

First it was the tinting, and it SEEMED like a good idea. I still maintain that it had a net benefit, since people were getting unforgivably distracted by what was happening outside. There’s a city square right below the office, and every day it seemed to be something else. A very proficient juggler booked the place on Monday, Tuesday was the all-day hip-hop group, Wednesday…oh right, it was that woman who did chalk murals, but gigantic ones that covered the whole square. It was mesmerising to watch her work for hours.

And yet I nearly forgot, because we’ve had the windows quite thoroughly tinted and you can’t really see much anymore, thank goodness. And thank the company doing professional commercial window tinting. Melbourne offices are much more productive when the light is properly filtered. Tinting helped us out immensely. Although I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the NEXT problem. We really did order the tint to be quite strong, much more powerful than they recommended, but we were quite determined to block out the distractions. Now the office has been plunged into a time of eternal night, so to speak. It’s dark all the time, and we didn’t have much natural light to begin with, so we had to keep all the lights on full-blast for the whole day. It felt a lot like working a night shift, and very, very depressing.

So…we went for decorative glass. Colourful, decorative glass that coated the walls and put people in good spirits. Some of it is tropical, we have a small section of winter wonderland imagery, and then Judy came up with the idea of images of famous landmarks to make people think they were travelling places. The result is some of the best decorative windows Melbourne has to offer, and quite the nice display to perk up everyone’s spirits. I like the winter wonderland section especially…perhaps something for my future office. I just know that if this doesn’t work, we’re going to need even MORE special glass.

-Oscar