Travelling on - to Concord

Farewell to Chicago - the view from Lynn & Dick's condominium!

Today, it was time to move on to my next destination: Boston, MA, where I braved the wonders of the rail network to arrive in West Concord, at the home of my penpals, the Ljutich family. Above are examples of the kitchen trim that Carolyn and her son, Ian, added to the kitchen when he was just a young boy.

Carolyn was amused by how often I was engaged with technology.

There was much negotiation between Ian and myself over whose turn it was to use the Internet connection.

Bullies beware

I truly used to think that, one day, I would be free from schoolyard bullies.

As a teacher myself, I spend so much of my life helping defenseless little kids to ride out their first encounters with bullying, and it continually hurts when I remember (via personal experiences) that adults are out there, bullying other adults, deliberately trying to take away someone else's fun, stomping on perceived tall poppies, and admonishing happy people for their behaviour, just as often.

Even via the Internet.

And I thank those who rally around the bullied person, giving them encouragement, and telling the bully, in unison, that enough is enough. Thank you.

Jingle bells, Batman smells...

Okay, young whippersnappers! When did the words of this famous 1960s Christmas carol parody get perverted? (Well, even more perverted than from its "Jingle Bells" origin?)

Every kid I knew in 1968 knew it as:

"Jingle bells, Batman smells,
Robin flew away.
The Batmobile lost one wheel,
All on Christmas Day."

I'm sure that is the version that ended up in one of those June Factor & Peter Viska collections of Australian school rhymes and chants ("All right, Vegemite!", "Far out, brussel sprout!" and "Unreal, banana peel!", etc). In fact, in 1968 - or '67?, definitely around the time of the Adam West/Burt Ward "Batman" TV series - my Batfriends and I were not only singing it, we thought we'd invented it!

Imagine my surprise when someone at TrekBBS had, as their current sig line:

"Jingle bells, Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg.
The Batmobile lost a wheel,
And the Joker got away."

"Ummm," I told them gently, "You've remembered some lines incorrectly..." Now, even allowing for Chinese whispers-like variations, and numerous regional variations, "egg" doesn't even rhyme with "away"!?

"That's the point," I was reminded.

And, from someone dismissing mine as "the Australian version" (which it obviously is!), who boasted, "I know it doesn't rhyme, but we Americans don't need no stinkin' rhyming."

Then, yesterday, someone offered this 1992 clip, from "Batman: The Animated Series":



Mmmmmm. 1992? As if that's somehow definitive? But do I really want to pick a fight with the Joker? I don't think my Robin outfit (see top of entry) even fits me any more. Certainly not as well as it did in the 1980s.

Someone even offered other line variations: Batgirl broke a leg...; Mr Freeze cut the cheese...; and agreed that there were "lots of arguments about the correct lyrics". Even Wikipedia wasn't definitive. Not that it ever is, but then that's the point of Wikipedia. A disturbing number of uninformed youngsters on the Internet attribute the song's origins... to Bart Simpson!

Our guess, over on the bbs, was that the song was inspired by the Adam West "Batman" series, which premiered in the US in 1966 - but how schoolchildren circulated the, ah, "Jingle" jingle so quickly around the whole planet is a testament to pre-Internet communications.

In those days, a TV show which premiered in the USA in September didn't reach Australia until the next February, so the time lag was extremely useful for marketing departments, not to mention toy manufacturers, TV tie-in books, and their distributors - and most of the kids were oblivious to what they'd been missing out on for all those months.

The Internet is the great equalizer, since I'm usually as current for "Star Trek" and "Batman" goss as the rest of the world - and even ahead of the USA sometimes, when the International Date Line works in my favour, such as the upcoming premiere of JJ Abrams' upcoming "Star Trek" movie!

Mum's day

I rang my Mum in Perth today. The flowers I sent arrived safely and she was thrilled.

When she first moved to Perth, I often picked out potted plants for my Mum from an Interflora catalogue - and she always ended up getting so much more than advertised, such was the lower costs of flowers in sunny Perth. Select a little flowering pot plant, receive several huge ones. Select a small green ferny thing, receive a small rainforest. And so on.

I don't always send flowers for birthdays and other special days, but if I want to get a parcel of goodies to her, I've found that an "overnight" postal satchel works well, but suburban Perth actually takes 48 hours, not 24. I did have a few interesting little items I'd found over recent months, but I couldn't get away from work early enough last week to guarantee delivery in time for Mother's Day. So flowers it had to be.

These days, the Internet (and the online White Pages phone directory) makes flower deliveries so much easier. I had to laugh, though. The florist I've come to use in Perth doesn't record orders on a computer; I assumed they'd have my details on file since the last time, but they do it the old fashioned way. A pad and pen. How quaint.

No matter. I tried cut flowers this time and my mother received her (apparently very generous) "bright colours" arrangement of cut flowers on Friday morning, and has thus enjoyed Mother's Day all weekend - and no doubt will for most of the coming week.

Sunday's magic number: 94.0. Absolutely no change since last week. I have mastered the art of keeping my mass stable? I've been fairly careful this week; just not careful enough to get the numbers down again.

Farewell to David, Karen & Tal - and my penknife

I've just returned from three days in gloriously sunny Brisbane. I flew up on Friday afternoon - feeling very chuffed at having selected my own plane seat and printed out my own boarding pass at home the day being leaving! Yes, it's now possible to get on a plane without speaking to any human beings at the airport! Bizarre!

Alas, my poor penknife. Travelling with only carry-on luggage as I was, I suddenly realised I had nowhere to put my trusty ol' little penknife, which has been attached to my keyring for about twenty years! No sharps permitted in airline cabins these days so, not wanting to risk a $100,000 fine, into a garbage bin it went. Sob.

Saturday was a quick trip to the local mall for a haircut, and then into the city with my friend Maria and her new(ish) baby, Benjamin, who was born a few weeks after my last trip to Brisbane, last year. We dashed around all my favourite haunts: Ace Comics, Egg (second hand collectibles - I actually completed my "Herculoids" action figure collection!), Comics Etc (where I located an elusive Star Trek comic art cover), Mr Toys' Toyworld and Daily Planet. I think I managed to find something very cool and/or well-priced in all locations! Ben was very considerate and sat looking very cute and patient in his stroller.

You should have seen me, a few hours later, frantically freeing all my toy purchases from their little plastic sarcophagi to squeeze them into my cabin baggage allowance. Even though Maria and Peter had offered me the use of a large suitcase, I had to know well in advance if I needed it or not - before printing off my return journey's boarding pass on their computer! Seeing I don't have photo ID (I'm a permanent pedestrian), it was in my best interest not to have to try to prove who I was with two credit cards (and a current bill in my name with my domestic address printed on it).

Saturday night was spent with my old conQuest buddies at author Natalie Jane Prior's house, sitting on the balcony munching on Thai food and overlooking the annual River Festival fireworks. Most congenial!

Sunday was the Sci-Nut Star Trek Convention, with guests Jack Donner ("Tal" the Romulan), Star Trek novelist David R George III and his wife Karen. I'd been lucky enough to meet them the week before at a Sydney celebratory brunch, but this time my fellow Star Trek Meet-up and TrekBBS denizen, Rosalind, was also able to make the trek up from Sydney to meet David, and we both found it such a buzz that David was as excited about meeting us as we were to get to know him. What a pity so many local Brisbane fans overlooked this weekend's event. I don't think I saw one poster for the con in a bookshop, but Quest members had been made aware of the day, but they were rather thin on the ground. Oh well, their loss.


David R George III (left) and Ian McLean. Jack Donner and Ian McLean.

The small, intimate affair that was this convention granted attendees unprecedented access to these most generous and entertaining celebs! At lunchtime, the convention doors were locked and the entire party moved to the nearby Shingle Inn for lunch, and then wandered back for more hobnobbing. Thanks for a great time at the convention, and have a safe trip back to the US on Tuesday, Jack, David and Karen! Hope to see you again soon.


Ian McLean with Karen and David R George III
at Sci-Nut Convention, Brisbane, 2007.

In a moment, I shall weigh myself and see what damage all this feasting and hobnobbing has done to my dieting efforts...

Sunday's magic number: 95.0 - drat! Musta been those damned "Krispy Kreme" donuts Maria made me buy for her at Sydney airport on Friday night. (Or Saturday's lemon cheesecake, or Saturday night's chocolate Bavarian, or Sunday's carrot cake...) Sigh. Back to the old drawing board...

Drawing a blank

I was all ready to post a rather elaborate blog entry tonight when the 'Net went down. Drat! By the time it came back up, I was feeling uninspired and tired. Oh well, back to the old drawing board.

Lost Wednesday

I opened the posting window at about 10pm last night, and pottered around trying to get inspiration for a witty post but - suddenly, at about 11.30pm, my Internet connection went down.

Still uninspired, but getting more desperate, I made several attempts to reboot, but once that connection is down, it's down. The midnight deadline came and went, so did "Big Brother Uplate" and thus, I went to bed.

Sigh...

PURLs before swine

After starting up my blog last year, I was excited to discover that numerous friends - from various stages of my life - had blogs of their own. But sometimes I found that their online presence had been abandoned after only a few weeks or months of blogging; my messages of greeting and hopeful reunion perhaps never to be found. Sigh...

I sometimes find myself pondering what would happen to my various websites should I suddenly not be around any more.

Luckily for one of them, way back in 1999, my Number 96 Home Page was catalogued and "captured" for inclusion in the online PANDORA Archive. It was quite a thrill: my home page was selected for the first exclusive group of (three) Internet sites about Australian television programs to appear in the National Library of Australia's online public access catalogue, alongside the official websites for The Panel and the long-forgotten Good Guys, Bad Guys! In 1999, The Panel and Good Guys, Bad Guys were both current shows; my site honours an Aussie soap opera from the 1970s, and the site has been running since "the Year of '96" (wink).


NUMBER 96 HOME PAGE

PANDORA has since catalogued many other Australian TV show websites. They simply web whack* the site as it existed at time of cataloguing (ie. mine on 26 Nov, 1999), but once only, and give it a PURL (persistent URL). They also provide a hot link to the current updated site (if it continues to exist, which - so far - mine does). The Panel's URL now only links to Working Dog's production house site, and the original Good Guys, Bad Guys website has vanished completely! ("Why wasn't I told?" Dorrie would ask.)

Even if, somehow, Ian McLean, web composer, vanishes, the Number 96 Home Page shall continue forever!

* "Web whacking" is when someone downloads a copy of an entire website to their hard drive. Of course, doing that means they never get to see any future changes that are made by the web composer. But it does preserve for posterity an early version that even the website owners might not keep in their files.

Mego Museum freebies

In the mail today came my complimentary set of fourteen Mego Museum trading cards, #39 to 52 inclusive, featuring the highly-coveted Mego 8" Star Trek action figures from the 1970s. All one had to do to get these cards was send both email and postal addresses to the guys who run the Mego Museum website.



The photography is very nice. The designers and photographers have managed to get those early figures, including the ultra-rare Andorian and Romulan figures, into some great poses. The monochrome cardbacks feature "Mego Facts", and trivia questions and answers. Too bad the mailing list has been closed off for now, or they'd be swamped with more word-of-mouth orders.

Time magazine's "Person of the Year"!

And the winner is... :

Me.

And indeed, you. According to a blog entry over at KRAD's page, Time has given the title of Person of the Year to "anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web".

So congratulations to KRAD. And me. Oh, and you!

My Sassy friends

In November 1993, I was invited by Selwa Anthony, literary agent extraordinaire, to attend an all-day seminar and gala dinner for her little band of authors, and soon-to-be-published authors, at the Novatel Hotel in Brighton-le-Sands. It was called "Succeed Some More in '94" (and was a follow-up to a very successful dinner the previous year, "Succeed With Me in '93", named for a book she'd just written with Jimmy Thomson).

At the time, I was deep into my proposal-and-sample-chapters for a book on the social history of the Aussie soap opera, Number 96, and the wonderfully encouraging Selwa was going to agent it for me. While that project did the rounds of the publishers - twice - and gathered a lovely collection of encouraging rejection slips, it was eventually seemingly accepted by Allen & Uwin (for two weeks) in 1995, who then declined to offer a contract on it after all. Sigh.

So, rather than try to self-publish the thing instead, I launched the briefest of details as a website and started working on some other book ideas. Despite the fact that, so far, I haven't earned Selwa any percentages, she keeps inviting me back. Yesterday was "Succeed, it's Heaven in 2007".

Selwa has faith in me that I'll eventually get my act together and complete something both literate and commercial! I did get an article published in a "Starlog" magazine for Star Trek: The Next Generation (an interview with actor Leonard John Crofoot, who played Data's little gold android offspring). Mind you, I have incorporated a lot of skills learned at "Succeed with Me" seminars into my daily life, and it's paid off in so many other ways than just financial and literary ones. There has been advice I've used to tighten my book reviews for Scan, improve my mental health and feng shui, lose many kilograms, and how to use visual clues to tell when people are telling the truth. I've also been part of Selwa's unique brand of networking, helping out numerous other authors with their various writing projects. And I knew all the right answers when being interviewed for my editing position at Scan.

From November 1995, when Selwa added her annual Sassy Awards to the night's entertainment, it really added some glitz and glamour to the nighttime activities. Ten or so trophies are given out each year, to Selwa's most successful authors or editors. (Feeling a bit like the ultimate phony, as Selwa's longest-attending "author" who's never actually earnt her any $$$$, I even received a Sassy myself, in 2000, for my "Positive Attitude", from that year's Sassy presenter, Harry M Miller.) Last night, Toni Lamond was back, along with Maria Venuti (this year's Sassy presenter), Jeanne Little, science fantasy author Ian Irvine, Jennifer Green, Barb Angell, Tara Moss... And so many more.

The most amazing thing about this year's seminar was the first sentence uttered in the first presentation. Helen Hope, an astrologer who has written 2007's twelve "Daily Horoscope" guides for Hinkler Books, asked for a show of hands as to who were the Sagittarians. Had we noticed that we Sagittarians seemed to have lost some of our magic in recent years? We all nodded "Yes".

It seems that yesterday, 25th November 2006, marked the return of Jupiter into the sign of Sagittarius! Pluto has been in Sagittarius since 1995, coincidentally(?) the year my "Number 96" book was rejected. Now, thanks to Jupiter, "a big year" is coming my way: one that "may forever see as crucial". My ruling planet of Jupiter returning is cause for great celebration - and Pluto's exit from Sagittarius makes 2007 "crunch time". (Notice how it ties in to my news a few days ago that I'm back in the school library next year?) Thanks Helen!

Time to kick in my "Positive Attitude" again - and finally redeem myself and earn that Sassy!

Ah, well, back to the manuscript...

The Bluetooth, the whole Bluetooth and nothing but the Bluetooth

Ah, the wonders of modern tech. My mobile phone comes with Bluetooth, a supposedly wonderful wireless connection that enables my phone to share data without the cost of a phone call, and to communicate with others people's phones and even my computer. If only it was easy to do.

Actually, my phone has been able to pick up several friends' phones with Bluetooth - just not my friend's mobile of the same make and model as mine, which was bought on the same day, in the same shop! Anyway, I've since downloaded a batch of very nice high resolution photographs (that were way too large to send by email), but last week, after several head-scratching attempts to read the manual and learn how to make the phone talk to my iMac, I was able to Bluetooth my Big Brother 2006 House collection of pics to another friend's PC... and have them emailed across town to my computer! Phew!

See them, at last, here!

Starship Exeter at ConQuest 25, Brisbane

As I mentioned previously, I'm just back from Queensland where I was asked to present the first Starship Exeter episode, "The Savage Empire", in which I have a cameo appearance, at the 25th annual science fiction media convention, ConQuest.

It played in three sections during intervals at the gala banquet, held on the Saturday evening, and I was asked to introduce the episode with a few anecdotes about the fan film's producers, how I came to be involved, and previous ConQuests I've attended.

A little daunting, since it has been several years since my last ConQuest, and I wasn't sure how my audience would react. I wasn't even sure how many people would be there, whether the celebrity guests would be in attendance, or whether most Queensland fans had already viewed the Johnsons' films via the Internet. Luckily, I can tell you that the reactions to "The Savage Empire" were extremely favourable. (Wait till they see the new episode!)

I'm used to seeing the footage on a tiny mpeg frame on my iMac's monitor screen, or sometimes via DVD on a television screen. At ConQuest, Sonja the media magician projected "The Savage Empire" onto a Very Large Wall! Scary!

The souvenir convention book said of my spot:

"Ian McLean came to Star Trek and science fiction media fandom by way of Filmation's animated Star Trek (coming soon to DVD!) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He spent over a decade as President of ASTREX, a Sydney-based fan club. A frequent visitor to ConQuest, Ian was often featured as a panelist or Master of Ceremonies. These days, Ian is a frequent poster on Psi Phi, TrekBBS and Blogspot ("Have Phaser, Will Travel").

"His Andorian persona, Captain Therin, has been similarly prominent over the years, appearing in fanzine fiction, at costume parades and gala film premieres, and hosting live convention gameshows. Sale of the 23rd Century and Perfect Botch won National Science Fiction Media Awards in the category of Best Australian Audio-Visual. Most recently, Therin had a park named after him in the Pocket novel, Andor: Paradigm by Heather Jarman (Worlds of DS9, Volume 1).

"Ian launched his exhaustive Rogues' Gallery of Andorians onto the Internet in 1997, with the aim of cataloguing every appearance of antennaed blue aliens in Star Trek - and was soon contacted by Jimm and Joshua Johnson of the USA, who were developing Starship Exeter, a Trek-inspired fan film. It sounded like a pipe dream, but Ian was invited to make a guest appearance, as Senator Therin of the Andorian Planetary Council, in their first episode, The Savage Empire. Therin's scene was shot in Sydney on video and mailed off to Texas where it was integrated into the main footage. The Savage Empire was released online in 2002 to great acclaim. It has inspired a wave of similar fan films, many with production qualities that seemingly surpass the 1960s source material and take the humble Star Trek fanzine to a new plane of existence.

"Starship Exeter: The Savage Empire will be screening during the Saturday night banquet."

"That is all."

I'm back!

Due to a nagging lower back and leg pain in the weeks before I started my recent holiday, I made myself promise to have a sabbatical from all computers while I was away in Brisbane. Even though the friend I was staying with had Internet access ("I..... neeeeed..... to Blogggggggg...."), I think I showed great restraint!

Will start putting up my news tomorrow, but here's a clue as to what I've been up to:



Captain's Log: Supplemental. After several attempts to master Bluetooth - and make it talk to my iMac and several other friends' mobiles - I've finally managed to coerce a friend to Bluetooth my phone's pics of the Big Brother 2006 House onto his PC, and then email them across to my computer. So here they are:



Above: Big Brother bathroom ("clothes on" version); the yard; the Friday Night Live arena.



Above: Big Brother lounge room with Eviction Couch; kitchen close-up; the communal bedroom.



Above: Another section of communal bedroom; more wacky games costumes in the arena; the kitchen again.

Broadbandwagon

Yay! I did it. A little concerned how the phoneline will cope, since it does get crackly in the wet weather, so the rain tonight will be a good test, but I just connected up the broadband modem and it all seems to be working. So far, so fast.

When providers go down

I had so much to say yesterday - I'd rehearsed it while walking the dog - and then my dial-up refused to connect. Ozemail's server went down in the afternoon and was still offline until just before midnight. I had a terrible sinking feeling I had missed some final last chance to switch over to broadband - someone had left me an urgent phone message a few weeks ago, following up an earlier quasi urgent letter, that Ozemail really needed to convert all its old customers from their now very ancient dial-up facilities. But, because I detest hanging on the phone (like usual), listening to recorded announcements that I could solve most problems by simply getting online and downloading something called "Toolbox" (if I could get online, sure, I'd download anything, but I'd also then be able to upload this and wouldn't need to get the helpdesk's attention, dammit), so I kept putting it off.

I did eventually try the help line, and had to wait about thirty minutes for attention. The friendly but slightly stressed female voice assured me it was just a temporary New South Wales server meltdown, but we did all the prep work to get broadband while I had her on the line... In about a week my problems shall be no more. (Mmmmm, I wonder. The phoneline still crackles terribly during rain and Telstra always denies it's their fault. Sometimes we should be grateful for droughts?)

Anyway, it's all back up again, and I'm assured I have lots more web space that I previously believed, so I can uploaded lots more old pics to the website to utilize here. So cool.

So what was I originally going to say? Oh yeah, I devoted some time yesterday to listening to the official audio commentary to the movie on the "Number 96" DVD. It was very, very cool, although I ended up feeling rather depressed listening to it all by myself. I wanted to be there in that room, getting all nostalgic about the movie, hobnobbing with Elaine and David and Andrew, or at least to be watching and listening with a roomful of friends. ("Number 96" is an excellent movie to watch with a roomful of pals and a bottle of Muskrat.) Blog entry continues after the graphic - I've taken out attempts to allign it more artfully beside the text because my three iMac-compatible browsers seem to hate Blogger parameters - and view these pages so inconsistently from visit to visit. Keep scrolling.



Yeah, so how come it's always just me and the dog lately watching all my DVDs...? Where is everyone on Sunday afternoons? Somehow, every time I buy a new DVD, I imagine myself in a room, kicking back with friends and popcorn, enjoying the movie and all the bonus features. The pile of as-yet-unwatched DVDs gets taller and I still end up seeing them by myself. Now that's pathetic...

Ooooh! I got a credit on the new (second) "Number 96" documentary! Excellent! Now someone pass the popcorn. Anyone..? Hello...?