Quit Facebook Day

In 1942, Gandhi put out his famous call to quit Facebook. Well, not really. Just change '1942' to '2010' and Gandhi to about 20,000 jaded youths who just don't give a stuff anymore.

Today is Quit Facebook Day. Sorry, all you 20,000 jaded youths, but I'm way ahead of you. I quit a month ago. I was on there from November 2007 to April 2010. I only joined it in the first place to keep in touch with someone overseas who probably kept in contact with me for about a month. I never wanted to know someone's quiz results on which Sailor Moon character they're most like, or see pictures of people chundering into a Hello Kitty biscuit tin, or know exactly who's riding the porcelain pony due to agonizing diarrhoea at this particular moment in time.

As a way of keeping tabs on people, it's great, but as a way of keeping in touch, it sucks. Once you're locked in and making up the numbers on someone's friends list, you might never hear from them again. They'll just trawl through your profile or pay passive attention to your updates in lieu of actual one-on-one communication. So if you're wondering if you should quit, then I say do it. Send email or write a letter instead, or – dare I say it – have a face-to-face conversation!

But enough about that...wanna see my deviantArt gallery?

Pete & Amy: Critics At Large I

Joining me for this post is my American friend Amy, and as 'critics' we will offer our viewpoints on different graphic artforms, such as album cover art, music videos and other stuff. In this way, we will comment on the same theme and hopefully get some different perspectives. Let's get on with our first album cover:

Lil' Kim – La Bella Mafia (2003).

Amy: I have always liked Lil' Kim's music and even now I go on Youtube to watch her videos. I love her style of rapping because she doesn't hold back the way she feels. She is the best female rapper. She looks pretty on the album cover, but she keeps changing her image and it's hard to tell it's her sometimes. I like her most with black hair, I think it brings out her eyes. Her style of dress is unique, but I don't think it was necessary for Kim to be topless and have those black things over her nipples, but hey, at least she covered some parts of her up! I'm not against it because that's the way she expresses herself, and she also tries to be known as a sex symbol so she does things like that to get attention, but she could've just had on a long tight dress and that would be sexy also.

Pete: I don't actually own this album (but I have heard all her others) so I don't know who put this cover together, but I have to wonder why there's a car and two guys standing on the water's surface. That's Photoshop cover art for you I guess. After studying graphic design I tend to pay more attention to whether something's been Photoshopped (and if I want to get really dorky about it, what filters they would have used and so on). Anyway, Lil' Kim is one of the few people who could get away with wearing something like this on an album cover. It gets the attention, but you can't have timid album covers with lyrics like hers.

A Small Boat

On Saturday, May 15, thousands of people packed into Sydney Harbour to see 16 year old Jessica Watson return after circumnavigating the world. My vantage point was close to North Head in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. When Jessica's boat finally crossed the heads, it was hard to make out amongst all the other boats (this is a massively zoomed-in shot, so it looks like crud):


A sky-writing plane had written this message earlier, but I can't read what it says. Something-'live'. I've turned the photo upside down. Any ideas?

The next day I went to Darling Harbour and Jessica's boat happened to be moored there, surrounded by news crews and hundreds of photo-takers. I was surprised the boat is only 10.5 metres long – to think she spent seven months on it. I'm sure there were plenty of naysayers, but the impression I got was that most people were proud of what Jessica did, a courageous feat at a time when people are taking fewer and fewer risks in the world.

To finish up, here's a shot of a road sign somewhere on the Hume Highway in rural Victoria. I think it's awesome that someone named a town Dookie. Did they know what it means as a slang term? If you look closely you'll see that the 'Dookie' part is on a separate piece of metal stuck on to the main one. Perhaps the town was called something else before? And what was it? Some things will have to remain unknown.

To all the fine citizens of Dookie, Victoria: Nonesuch Blog salutes you!

Opera House

Circular Quay in Sydney is a great place to enjoy the sights and the atmosphere. The sights, of course, are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, probably the two most famous landmarks in the country. Here's my standard postcard shot of the Opera House, taken last Sunday.

On any given day there are hundreds of tourists milling around on the Opera House steps to get their obligatory photo, but photographing it from front-on doesn't do it justice and it won't all fit in the frame anyway. Since it was my second visit to Sydney I tried to get something different to the first lot, and one of them was this darkened shot with a glimpse of the bridge in the background. It would be better if you could see more of the detail on the roof.

And so the Opera House will continue to attract thousands of tourists, most of whom will end up doing that ridiculous 'star jump' pose on the steps. Grow up, people. That aside, I still find it a great shame that the man who designed the building died without ever seeing it finished.

Next time: A small boat.

Bondi Beach

This is the first of three posts about my trip to Sydney last week. First up – Bondi Beach. Now we all know that this beach, in Australia's wealthiest suburb, is well known around the world. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a panoramic shot I did.

It's almost empty because last Friday was fairly cold. You've probably seen that Bondi Rescue show that they film here, but let's ignore the lifesaving. There's also skate ramps and street art along the walkway facing the Tasman Sea. Below is an emblem-style stencil showing Bondi's postcode, 2026.

There are two of these; someone drew a cigarette in the girl's mouth on the other one. The next picture is of one of the street artists at work on the wall.

They've covered a lot so far, as you can see the wall is fairly long. The new stuff has a lot of Avatar graphics in it.

Next time: the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.