Dark Thoughts

The last few weeks has been somewhat of an exhillarating ride in the mining industry. In the last week alone we've signed two farily major agreements that commit our company to a lot of work in the next few years. The business that I am in, is still in it's infancy, in that it is a relatively new technology in a historically conservative industry, backed by an even more conservative, and risk averse, banking industry. People don't much like things to change, because that involves going out on a limb and testing new water's, where there is the potential for loss.

For an emerging technology, this adds up to 10+ years of development, testing, pilotting, scoping, advertising, demonstration, begging, pleading and then if we are lucky, we'll get the chance to put our heads on the blocks to stand behind the technology.

Anyway, what tends to happen is that the industry has been waiting for someone to adopt the technology for years, and when one company commits, then everyone wants a piece of the action. This is where we are heading this week.

Not that it's bad, just busy.

I got 2 x 200 page engineering documents dumped on my desk yesterday for me to read over. Somehow I need to make a recommendation at some stage on these, and others, some of which may be in Chinese. I then need to convince 5 other people that the recommendations I have made are the correct ones, before referring the matter to the board, and doing the whole thing over again. This is before the work even starts, and for only one of the 4 or 5 projects.

It can be an exciting industry, but at the same time, it can be frustrating to work so hard, and appear to get no-where.

In other news, I got a Kurzweil DMTi last night, which will help to expand my studio. It's a box that allows me to sync a bunch of different digital signals together. For the unitiated, it's a bit like platting hair. The hair start's off unruly and going in different directions with different lengths, but once platted, and controlled, is much easier to move around and keep well behaved. Multiple streams of digital audio is similar, but less hairy. Anyway, the DMTi is the magic platting machine. Put hair in, get plat out.

I still need to get some expansion cards for it, but that will come once Kurzweil have their wharehousing back to normal after their recent turmoil with aggressive takeover's.

Things are going well with Jodie. I'm currently planning her birthday surprise, which is cool. I just need to tie up a few loose ends to make it all happen, but it will be pretty awesome when it all comes together. We've both been sick for the last few weeks and are in the process of recovering both our energy and our health. We're planning on a few more fun trips out, starting this weekend, with a movie and a trip to the wineries for lunch. It should be a fun weekend, but we will be sure to do some more interesting things in the future also.

Anyway, it's a busy day, and I've got lots of paperwork to plough through, so back to the grindstone for me.

Of late, much has happened. Jodie has become part of our household, and has been a constant source of amusement with the constant battle with the toilet habits of the cats, and with trying to keep my housemate on the straight and narrow with respect to household chores. I guess I've had to make a few changes as well, which isn't all bad, but when you are alone there's never much of an incentive to make the bed in the morning.

My housemate has changed alot over the last year. He used to be the big neat freak of the house, and was striving to get organized and get his life in order. Instead he's kind of let all of his good habits go, to make room for relaxing, which generally involves spending days on end sitting in front of his two computers playing role-playing games on the internet. He's beginning to neglect most of his household duties. He's never been one for cooking much, but he certainly doesn't mind partaking in the meals that we prepare almost nightly, and really doesn't contribute much to the weekly shops.

I guess I'm sounding like one of those guys that's been hooked by the woman, but there's really a lot more to it than that. I've come to realize that my housemate's cleanliness is really a disguised attempt to clear clutter from the bench and sweep it into some cupboard that is much better suited to actually storing something useful, like food or stationery. He seems to have an obsession for hiding mess away from site behind a closed door, but has absolutely no desire to actually deal with the mess and organize it.

A case in point. He has a computer desk, that he has two computers on, and has relegated the computer used for the business to a much smaller desk. That in itself isn't too much of a problem except that he moves all of his piles of paper, spare computer gear and CD's onto the desk where we need to lay out files and statements. So it's out of mind for him, but it's to our disadvantage. The mess hasn't been solved, merely transferred to somewhere else, for somewhere else to deal with.

The other day, his prized cat after scoffing a big bowl of cat biscuits proceeded to throw up the gorged meal on the floor. Said housemate dodged it all day until I reminded him that we had visitors coming in an hour, and that cat puke, probably wasn't the type of interior design aethetic that he was aiming at with his minimal themed house. Minimal, to me, means seriously organized so that everything has it's place and is organized, not do minimal work to keep the house clean.

He's quite childlike in many ways. He wants all of the nice, pretty things, but doesn't want to do the work for them.

He's avoiding moving in with his girlfriend, because he "doesn't want to put up with being nagged to do stuff". The thing is, it's stuff that he should do anyway, like pick up wet towels, sweep the floor, open the windows to air out the room.

Blah.

Enough venting on that matter.

I'll vent now on my gorgeous little black cat. Normally she is the cuddliest little cat on the planet. She'll snuggle up to your neck and purr for hours on end. Not last night however. She'd had a bit of a tiff with the snooty persian in the house, and was consequently not in the best mood. She started growling at Jodie while she was curled up on the bottom of the bed (the cat that is - Jodie get's to curl up under the covers). I decided that a growly cat needed to be evicted. The LBC decided that she wasn't going to be evicted and engaged in some violent negotiations, resulting in a lot of my blood being spilt and me smelling of detol.

The LBC did however get evicted for the night.

In better news, I've got my mLAN setup running nice and smoothly and have nearly finished my first track using this remarkable technology. For those not aquainted with mLAN, it's essentially an ASIO (professional) soundcard that is set up through the firewire port on your computer. What is really cool about it, is that it allows lots of different devices, by different manufacturers to be connected together. It's like modern day MIDI, but with audio. It also supports MIDI so that the digital studio of the future can be connected with a single firewire cable.

It's still in it's youth, and consequently there have been some teething problems, but the latest drivers have proven to be stable, and very useable, dramatically reducing the processor load from earlier versions. I dearly hope that this standard get's much wider acceptance, as it's really a fantastic way to work, once you've ironed out the bugs.

Anyway, the new track is one that I'm very proud of. It's the third from my new album, and while it's not quite complete, it's pretty promising. I've just got to program the ending, and then it's all ready to be mastered. I'm going to push this album, to try to get some sort of a publishing deal, which will be great. I honestly think that music I'm making now, is better than most of what I hear on the radio, and on CD's. I just need to get the promotional side up to speed :), oh and a vocalist would be great.

Apart from that, things have been busy. Sonikmatter.com is developing well, work is going gangbusters with us signing up more clients than we can really handle, with a heap of work on the horizon. I've been to China once since the last Turkish trip, and have another trip coming up in about 5 weeks. We've got one of our Chinese clients over here at the moment, and I've got a dull day to spend in Kalgoorlie, keeping the entertained.

The move to China for Jodie and myself has been on again, off again, on again, off again, which is really starting to drive us both up the wall. I've asked work for some certainty in my movements over the next year. Here's keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been doing a bit of work on the house. I had to get some electrical stuff fixed, and am still fighting the electricians for PPP (piss poor performance) (ie they charged us an exorbitant amount to tell us what we told them (ie it was broken) and then not to fix it. We've had an extraction fan fitted to the bathroom, and fitted a drier in the laundry. Things are starting to take shape and life is becoming more comfortable. I'm looking for another house to buy, because I want to get the trust going, and growth over the last year in the Perth market has been outstanding. I made more money from property ownership last year than I did from mining, which I'm pretty damn happy about.

Sure, it's not realized yet, but that will happen, in time. I'm not in any hurry to cash out, and merely holding the properties is being of benefit.

Anyway, that's a bit of an update of life at the moment, and it won't be long till the next update.

Till then...