A personal pledge made public, because you always hold me to it world. Because I love much of what technology and post-modern culture has brought us – but not all of what it has wrought on our delicate abilities to really enjoy, or think or grow together.

p.s. where I say “read” you can read read, view, listen, consume or any partaking of content. Same goes for “writing”. I recommend reading the list first, then the detail points. Or skip to the bullet with your lucky number on it and read that first. It all works.

1. I will not consume anything not worth consuming with my complete attention.^[1]
2. I will seek my friends out where they are, not where I am.^[2]
3. I will not simply read about experiences I can have myself.^[3]
4. I will use language as a plaything but never to obscure meaning or lack of thought.^[4]
5. I will not engage in conversation where I am not fully present.^[5]
6. I will seek timelessness not timeliness.^[6]
7. I will resort to irony as a means of appreciation, only where I am subverting it, not simply excusing it.^[7]
8. I will not preach to the converted nor will I play devil’s advocate – I will only argue where there is a chance either one of us might change our minds.^[8]
9. I will shop locally for my art, and globally for my ideas.^[9]
10. I will be an unashamed member of the audience unless I can make better or make right.^[10]
11. I will keep it as simple as it can be, but never so short that I am only making someone else’s point.^[11]
12. I will always think first of what writing can do to help me understand what I am feeling or thinking, or to help me remember either – never for what it will say to others about me.^[12]
13. I will share my feelings through glances, grasped wrists and excited babbles not intermediated words.^[13]

Feedback welcome. This is an evolving list of saccharine-dripping ideals by which I hope to enjoy a better modern life. Because it can be rubbish, but it doesn’t need to be.

1. ^[1] Because multi-tasking is never more of an illusion as when it is allowing me to waste time consuming something I don’t really love. ↩
2. ^[2] Because ambient awareness of my friends is worse than a tease of the wonderful experience of being with them. ↩
3. ^[3] Because there is precious little time to enjoy all the wonders of the world – but that is not made up for by my becoming even more aware of things I am not doing. ↩
4. ^[4] Because expressions can be beautiful – but never as beautiful as a great idea. ↩
5. ^[5] Because I owe you my ability to listen. ↩
6. ^[6] Because nothing is so important that I cannot give it time to prove itself before I pay attention to it. ↩
7. ^[7] Because resorting to the back-story to enjoy an experience is a feeble replacement for achieving an unmitigated flow of enjoyment in the now. ↩
8. ^[8] Because surrounding yourself with the like-minded or “yes”-men” will never grow your ideas and your ideas will never change the world. And because no idea is worth holding onto that you have not tested outside your comfort zone. ↩
9. ^[9] Because context is what brings meaning to ideas – but the world is too small to restrict yourself to ideas that happen to happen near you. ↩
10. ^[10] Because we can give too much value to instant public agreement or dismissal, liking or rating – and not enough to spending time understanding what we have just read. ↩
11. ^[11] Because we too often share so much without adding any of our self to it. ↩
12. ^[12] Because my personal brand is not worth the powerpoint slide it is printed on compared with feeling honest and healthy about myself – for just myself. ↩
13. ^[13] Because words are poor substitutes for shared experiences and non-verbal cues. And hugs. ↩

So I decided to offer to offer $100 to the preferred charity (and a cocktail) of whoever had the most creative idea. I’ve picked the top twelve and have mashed them up with stills from some of my favourite movies below.

You can do two things. Vote in the poll at the end to help me decide who gets the donation choice and the cocktail.

And secondly, whoever guesses the most movies featured correctly will get $50 to their favourite charity and a $50 bartab at their favourite joint. Some of the movies are literal interpretations of the job, others are slightly cryptic.

Barman

Fortune Cookie Writer

Corporate Raider

Facebook Employee

Horse Whisperer

KGB Agent

Microsoft Employee

Raver

Salesman

Hustler

Superhero

Zookeeper

Vote for the best

Choose the winning idea below. Yes, vote for yourselves if you want!

Guess the movies

Names the movies in the images, in any order below. Whoever guesses the most wins.

Webshite Column '99

Craccum was like a mutant hybrid of The Onion, Adbusters and a serious student news publication. There were too many times when I’d be halfway through an article and stop and think, “wait, is this a parody?” Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. I always imagined that there were a bunch of stoned people somewhere laughing their arses off, being like, “oh my God! That is sooo funny! You’ve got to put that in next issue!”

Indeed.

Craccum Magazine

1999 was an interesting time to be writing as the online space was finally hitting the mainstream locally and the scene overseas was ridiculously (full of) hot (air). I wrote one column on how to “acquire music” online a few months before Napster launched and changed the music world forever. Then, after a break in 2000 while I lived in Wellington, came back to write the column in 2001 after the bubble had burst and re-wrote the column for a post-Napster world.

In 2002 I wrote some Craccum columns on politics and the odd feature or four on other topics. I might dredge the content of those up for another story…

Communications Breakdown

In 1993 I came across a magazine on the stands called, “Amiga Down Under”. A new local title, it was all about my favourite piece of hardware, the Commodore Amiga computer. I was 16 at the time, and in a flush of youthful bravado sent them a letter (yes, no email…) asking if I could write for them.

Surprisingly, the editor actually called me back a few weeks later and asked what I’d like to write about. I stammered out something about BBSes or Shareware. He was conducive to both ideas and despite my ending the conversation with a, mortifyingly embarrassing, “it’s okay that I’m 16 right?” I got the job.

Amiga Down Under & Others

I don’t recall if I started writing both columns at once but a couple of months in I was writing, “Communications Breakdown” and “King of the Public Domain”. Yes, even then the puns grated but what can you do? The former was around telecommunications, primarily BBSes. The latter was about shareware, mostly reviews but also commentary and advice for developers.

Looking back at the column I wrote on how to distribute and market Shareware I’m not sure if my advice on marketing is any better 16 years later… The pay wasn’t much but it softened my phone bills – which were a little on the high side for an, otherwise unemployed, teenager who had to make toll calls to access BBSs.

King of the Public Domain

My last article for the Comms column, which wasn’t published (the demise of Commodore, Inc. put the magazine out of business), was an interview with Iconz, Auckland’s first public Internet provider. A few years later I’d be writing a lot more about this whole interweb thing, but that’s another story.

The store had a basic email terminal for customers to use but I dragged an old Windows 3.11 machine in there and sat it on the first “all you can eat” dial-up Internet account available locally (thanks Ihug!). We didn’t do much advertising, the store had plenty of foot traffic, but it was mostly tourists who wanted to email home that rocked up to use it – locals weren’t yet clamouring for the internets.

Heath started Cyberculture Records, in 1993, providing a focal point for dance/alternative culture not only through its music, clothing, video rentals, art work, etc, but by also being the first retail/environment store offering Internet access and recording facilities. Cyberculture & SoulSonic invariably act as resource centres of sorts for info about upcoming parties – theirs is a near definitive flyer collection week to week.

Plenty of fun was had – but despite the Internet being relatively cheap – the 4c/minute business line calling charges (no thanks Telecom) made it fairly unprofitable. I think I made it up in free CDs and party tickets though. And I met a bunch of great contacts as we bonded over music and what this Internet thing might mean… including some folk I’d go on to build websites for. But that’s another story.

Cyberculture was hereabouts

First Bass flyer

In 1996, not content spending my days online and my nights on dancefloors we decided to merge the two by transmitting a danceparty online. Using 50 metres of phone cable, dial-up modem, couple of loaner Power Macs (score – promotor/design Gideon’s work gear), Betacam (score – flatmate Matt’s work gear), video capture card, and CU-SeeMe software we broadcast “First Bass” with Spring Heel Jack to the world.

We had a site off of atmos.co.nz with still photos for those without the bandwidth CU-SeeMe video needed, one of the few things I wish I had archived from the ’90s. Actually with a dial-up modem over a 50 metre phone cable, wrapping past interference generating speaker stacks we didn’t really have the bandwidth either – but it worked, well enough.

It was great sharing the experience live with friends from overseas that I only knew from IRC channels like #rave (undernet ftw!) but with whom we’d spent long hours bonding over dance/music/life. One of those defining moments/nights.

The party itself… was relatively awesome, 1996 was the peak of Jungle/DnB for me. Though 2009 isn’t serving too badly in that respect either.

First Bass is hailed as New Zealand’s first Jungle Party. Held at the Powerstation Saturday June 29, the cast included live players Lava Lava (Mike Neilsen and Benny Staples), DJ’s Riddle, 48 Sonic, Aaron, and the first ever Auckland performance of Unitone Hi-Fi, and headliner Spring Heel Jack direct from the U.K. Chelsea, Rude girl, and T.I.M were on board in the Rumpus room.

Emigre magazine #29

The flyer borrowed an image from Issue 29 of Emigre magazine (1994) – a Designers Republic character called Sissy. 1996 was definitely visually defined by DR for me, especially after hours playing Wipeout on the Playstation that featured their styling.

atmos.co.nz

When I was 18, a disturbingly long time ago on reflection, I launched a little website about electronic music and local events. It being 1995, and my being in New Zealand, meant that there was precious little out there like it. So for a while it was a useful site for Auckland’s fledgling electronica “scene”.

My flatmate at the time, Matt Mariu, had a habit of referring to great gigs as having lots of “atmos” – hence the name. The hideous image to the left is the first flyer I made for the site. Blame it on the rave…

I’m thankful that archive.org didn’t index the site, as the design was beyond hideous. I’d blame the web safe colour palette but there is really no excuse. Gideon Keith from seven did us a nice logo (which he’d probably rather I didn’t credit him for) which you can see below.

He also gives a description below of why/where atmos went – along with its subsequent incarnations as various mailing lists.

“your all newbies… even Olivia… the forefather of the list phenomenom… though not a list in the strict sense… was @mos… created by the unseen hand of re:act and wreckage… a Mr Thomas Scovell… with help from matt m… unfortunately atmos died from extreme bloodloss… a nasty gash in its wallet… and then came psurkit… which, like wreckage, imploded under the weight of bitching and back biting… and now we have re:act… enjoy it while its here!… it won’t last forever…”

The original url was bitz.co.nz/ATMOS – a local hosting outfit. But I managed to shell out enough for a domain after a few months and it lived at atmos.co.nz for a time. Back then I was paying for both disk space and data transferred by the meg at extortionate rates (NZ’s link to the world was a tin can and string at the time) – which added up, especially for a broke student, so it really was “bloodloss” and a little cynicism that killed it.

I actually let the domain lapse eventually – but just noticed recently it was available again so I grabbed it.

See the thing is… in a small way, atmos is back.