absent in black

[adelaidesean]

I'm out of the office for a week or so, and to be honest, I'll miss it. Sometimes people wonder how I cope with working from home most of the time. My response is simple: I bloody love it. No commuting, fully-stocked kitchen, couch for afternoon naps. What could be better?

Perhaps this: the steampunk laptop and concrete monitor.

(Update: and this clock.)

Somewhere out there is a chair to match. I just know it.



Meanwhile, the promotional machine rolls on.

Grant Stone's fabulous Faster Than Light radio show has started podcasting interviews. Here are links to the episodes containing halves of one he recorded with me in October: part one and part two. Grant is my favourite interviewer. He always throws me something I couldn't possibly have seen coming, but only ever in a good way.

Geodesica appears at #1 on Lou Anders' list of ten books he'd be reading if he only had the time to read.

More soon.

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I love working from home too.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

How do you manage your hours, Dave? Or do you, like me, smear them out through the entire day? (If I could somnambulate my email in the middle of the night, I probably would.)

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

In summary, badly. My impression is you are quite a bit more disciplined than I am (though, in my defense, my work is more short term and less regular than yours). I generally end up doing two shifts, one in the afternoon, and one late at night.

[chrisbarnes.livejournal.com]

I love that steampunk laptop. All it needs is a gramophone horn as its speaker system and it'd be complete.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Ha! Brilliant. I hadn't thought of that.

And now I consider the issue of the chair a little more thoroughly, George Cheyne's chamber horse comes to mind. I learned about this in a recent issue of New Scientist: "a chair sporting an elevated seat on what resembled an accordion bellows. Inside was a large spring, and by gripping the chair's arms you could bounce up and down in a simulation of horse-riding."

They were all the rage in the early 18th century, apparently. "Even the dour Methodist theologian John Wesley spent time each day bouncing up and down on one. Cheyne recommended to Samuel Richardson that he compose his novel Pamela by dictating it while bouncing on a chamber horse, and then helpfully suggested that Pamela would be also improved by adding house fires and plenty of broken limbs to the plot."

I can't find a picture, but the full article is here (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19225721.900-histories-dr-diets-recipe-for-health.html;jsessionid=PLADMJOFCHAK).

[chrisbarnes.livejournal.com]

The chamber horse sounds like the Exercise Rider of its time. These days it'd probably be sold via TV infomercials. How'd they sell it back then, I wonder? Ads in the Times?

"Available now, Dr Cheyne's Celebrated Chamber Horse! Cures a Vast Assortment of Ailments, from Housemaid's Knee to Cow Pox. Write now Post Haste. Our Clerks are Standing By to Accept Your Order. But Wait, for there is More! The First Six Purchasers of this Marvellous Modern Apparatus shall receive, At No Extra Charge, a Free Trepanning Tool."

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Terrifyingly close to the truth, I suspect. :-)

New Scientist describes Cheyne as writing 'the archetypal self-help dieting and exercise best-seller', 1724's An Essay of Health and Long Life, which was reprinted and translated many times over. Here's another great quote from the article:

'"The Human Body is a Machin of an infinite number and Variety of different Channels and Pipes, filled with different Liquors and Fluids," he proclaimed in 1733 in his treatise The English Malady. Cheyne believed the body was a hydraulic mechanism operating by definable laws, and he counted himself among the "Iatro-Mechanists" who sought to apply Newtonian laws to biology. By observing that "leathern tubes" did not clog or wear even after years of carrying thin and mild fluids like milk, Cheyne reasoned that most human ailments arose from a meat and alcohol-rich diet that, as he memorably described it, promoted a "glewiness" that turned veins into "a Blood Pudding".'

Yikes.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

You know, he wasn't far off with his advice. (I've just read the article in a friend's NS (Will get my own subscription soon)).

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

You know, he wasn't far off with his advice.

Except for all the vomitting. :-)

[throughsoftair.livejournal.com]

I would kill to work from home again. I loved it. It's definitely the dream endpoint of everything I'm enduring now.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

The cheapest place in which to work from home in Australia (and still enjoy superior wine and food) is, of course, Adelaide... :-)

[throughsoftair.livejournal.com]

Do the SA Torism Board pay you a stipend? :))

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

I wish! No, I'm just desperate for more of my interstate friends to visit. :-)

[throughsoftair.livejournal.com]

You know, I have a hard time picturing you as lonely.... :)

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Well, no, not often, but I do miss the people I see only once or twice a year. Adelaide is off the map, specfic convention-wise, so if I want to see them, I have to travel, and that gets expensive after a while. :-)

[throughsoftair.livejournal.com]

what happened to the SF Con that was being planned last year? I know it folded, but was it just a case of too many Cons on the landscape?

I'd love to travel more, and as all I've seen of Adelaide is the airport (The cleanest I've ever been in: tell your superiors at The Tourist Board :) ) I'd love to do it properly.

If we can scame ourselves a trip between Clarion and the move, I think it's on the cards.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Last year's con was cancelled for a bunch of reasons, too much competition one of them. Maybe it'll get up again one day. We'll see. I kinda like keeping work and home separate to some extent; ie when I come back to Adelaide all I have to do is write, not be "on"; that works out well for sanity. Still, there are lots of people I'd like to hang out with more regularly, outside a con, and that's what I miss most of all. Watching sitcoms with Deb Biancotti, drinking too much Sav Blanc with Cat Sparks, talking Dr Who with Danny Heap, etc etc. And your good self too, of course. I remember a particular evening in Brisbane earlier this year (iirc) with great fondness...

I am heading off to our sparkling new airport in about half an hour, so I will report on its cleanliness upon my return.

[throughsoftair.livejournal.com]

You are definitely one of the people we miss seeing on a more regular basis.

Enjoy your trip, and get in touch when you come back. We should work *something* out.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Thanks, my friend. Will do.