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One of my younger cousins had his 16th birthday today. I’m not old by any means but whenever I see him and his two brothers now, I’m reminded that I’m not the age that I think/feel that I am.

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My inner child burst out at the antique shop this morning and I couldn’t resist buying this old Bburago model of a 1962 Ferrari GTO—I just love the shape of it.

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Civic Plaza in Wollongong CBD brings back lots of memories: I used to teach drama and have been to many shows at the arts centre here; I’ve visited the travelling Spiegeltent here; and I’ve also had wedding shots with @NTKF in a few spots around the place. 🏤🌳🥰

PhD Study Journal: Entry 4 📝

PhD Study Journal

Yesterday I had my first joint meeting with both of my supervisors, Dr. Kate Bowles and Dr. Chris Moore. I’ve worked with Kate before (during my Honours) but this is my first time working with Chris. I can already tell that this will be a great experience, as they’re both on the same general wavelength but offer different views and research interests, which will keep me thinking and questioning my preconceptions about media and the specific area of podcasting. I need to be even more fundamental: what makes a podcast a podcast? It’s a question of both style and the specific technical implementation.

Even at this early stage, I’ve been my typical self and worried too much about my reading progress, however they were both quick to say that there’s no template for success or how to embark on such a project. It’s amazing what work deadlines and expectations can do to you; I just need to loosen up a bit and enjoy the process of learning again, which was the whole reason that I decided to do this.

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It was a beautiful out on my mum’s back deck yesterday. The long weekend went way too quickly.

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A wondrous Monday morning in Keiraville! Thank goodness for the public holiday today…

Links > Micro Monday

This Micro Monday, I encourage you to follow my lovely wife, Natasha (@NTKF). I hassled her for a loooooong time to join Micro.blog and she finally made an account very recently. It’s lucky that she’s here now because she’s more interesting than I am! 😜

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@NTKF and I saw Ad Astra tonight and my goodness, it’s a fantastic film. It had better receive some decent attention at the next Oscars.

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Night mode in iOS 13 can certainly produce some really fascinating shots, like this one that I took above my mum’s house yesterday. It feels odd to be revealing the reality that is obscured by darkness by actually distorting that very reality through software.

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One of the best things about Natasha having school holidays at the moment is that she can send me cute photos of our guinea pigs at home. Paco is trying to sleep under the water dispenser in this shot.

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I’m very fortunate to have a place like this to walk through and sit around at lunchtime. (I thought that a less apocalyptic photo than yesterday’s would be nice.)

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I do enjoy an apocalyptic, post-nuclear landscape shot every so often during my lunchtime walk.

PhD Study Journal: Entry 3 📝

PhD Study Journal

Today’s post is less of an academic update and more of a technical one: iPadOS has already made a significant difference to the efficiency and comfort of my PhD research. More specifically, the latest Ulysses update (with support for multiple windows / app instances) and broader mouse support in the system under Accessibility > Assistive Touch has made writing and editing soooooo much easier.

I had become accustomed to using touch and my keyboard’s arrow keys exclusively for navigating sheets and editing, however the ability to manipulate text indirectly and customise mouse buttons for multitasking has been incredibly helpful.

As I did in my undergraduate and Honours years, I believe that I still take way too long to finish reading and jotting down notes from any book or article, although at least now the writing part in my apps will be quicker.

Finally, my somewhat ‘modarn’ and haphazard iPadOS desktop set-up is complete with a mouse. Yay!