definatalie.com

I am really excited about 2010, and it’s not because I want to see the back of 2009. It’s because this year has been really wonderful: I have made strides in my art career, met so many new friends, reached a place of peace within myself and just generally had a lot of fun.

When I was a teenager I’d make resolutions, and none of them ever stuck. So, when I reached my 20’s I decided to stop making any resolution other than “Natalie, you must have the most excellent year”. Every year has been better than the last, and I feel that it has a lot to do with treating myself kindly and not punishing myself for failing to keep resolutions that are ridiculous.

In the next year I actually want to resolve to do a few things that I feel are realistic:
• I will attend art exhibitions and events and get to know people in the Brisbane scene better.
• I will keep trying new things in my creative practice.
• I will keep up with the Couch to 5k programme, but don’t chastise myself if I need longer to achieve the milestones, or if I miss a session.
• I will listen to my body and my brain, and treat myself accordingly – always with respect and honour.
• I will have lots of fun!

If you are setting goals for next year I hope they are honest and achievable and if you trip up a little, I hope you don’t treat yourself too unkind. I also hope that you’re heralding the new decade in a most excellent and safe manner!

Housekeeping! I haven’t done a desktop for January 2010 yet, but don’t fret – there will be one! The holiday season has been very… relaxing, and I’ve been taking some time out. I’ll update with a new desktop for the new year in a few days!

This chart for discerning a wife’s wifeliness just popped up in my dashboard on Tumblr, and I had a little giggle about it and though I should post it here for some lite blog content over the holiday period. I thought I should credit the original source, The Art of Manliness, because that’s the polite thing to do.

At the blog, I found the husband’s version of the chart but also a whole pile of “What about Teh Mens” crying. I’m sorry that society was holding you to the standard that you should rightly be held today, while women were forced to pander to your every whim but now can rightfully tell you to sod off!

So I apologise that it isn’t entirely light-hearted content, but I still wanted to post it regardless! And just for fun, I added up just how wifely I am, and got a -6. WOO!

Ahh the day of fussing over hangovers, and wondering what on earth you’re going to do with all this stuff you were given yesterday. And shopping the sales, if you do that sort of thing (I’ve only done it once, never again!) I hope you all had a safe and happy day yesterday, and that you enjoyed all the people around you, the food you ate and the gifts you gave and received.

Here’s a few photos from my Giftmas:

Happy birthday Nana!

And the best husband ever gave me a Holga camera! I can’t wait to see how my first roll turned out

I was invited to submit some of my older work to Gestalten publication Hair’em Scare’em, and today I got my contributer copy. The book is full of fantastic illustrative and photographic work from a huge variety of artists – I was really impressed with it, and myself for being published alongside such great names!

That’s my stuff on page 74!

Tabitha actually sent me my issue of Forth Thread the other week, but I hadn’t gotten around to blogging about it. You’ll have to excuse its rumpled demeanor, Australia Post must have handled this with their elbows!!

There’s the Bearded Lady of Brussels!

The zine has heaps of young Australian talent – you can buy a copy of the first edition “This Ain’t Digital” here.

Kelley from Peppermint Magazine sent out my contributer copy of issue 4 and this lovely diary!

2010 is going to kick arse! Am I right?

Some of my friends surprised me with a visit and a gift the other day – a beautiful and completely unique blown glass pen! I had seen these pens online before, and had been really curious about them but decided against buying one at the time. I’m thrilled that Lindy bought one for me, and from a Queensland glass artist too! Wolfgang Engel lives and works in his Bundaberg studio and creates unique glass pens that follow the style of the glass pens that were first blown in Venice around 150 years ago.

The spiral handle is gorgeous!

The nib is also beautiful, and draws a line that is pretty close to a 08 felt nibbed pen.

Writing is really comfortable, and the spiral nib does hold heaps of ink for a dipping pen. I was using Noodlers Bulletproof Black ink. I love how the ink fades as I write and by turning the pen around in my hand as it runs out I can use the ink that is caught in the spirals around the nib.

Drawing with the glass pen feels just as lovely as writing with it! I would love a whole heap of these pens in different nib widths so I can retire my felt pens entirely – it’d also solve the problem of having to dispose of so much pen waste each year, as the only consumable of using a dipping pen is the ink.

A close up of my hand writing – the paper I was using wasn’t the best, but it still wrote beautifully.

If you like unusual writing instruments, I recommend a glass pen highly! It’s just a little bit more fancy, yannow?

The December 21st Stop Internet Censorship meeting was excellent, and fortnightly meetings are commencing from January 4th 2010 in the evening. I am so proud of Nick, all the Stop Internet Censorship team and the speakers (Nic Suzor and Cameron Reilly).

Nic Suzor, chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

Discussion about what action we should take next was plentiful!

Andrew Bartlett adding his ideas to the forum.

Cameron Reilly gave a great talk on how the government is employing propaganda to win over the media and the population.

Some things I took from the meeting: we need to utilise our creative people and create a sticky and viral, online AND offline campaign that employs advertising techniques to offset the government’s propaganda (ie: if you are against the filter you are a pervert and you support child porn and abuse); we need to highlight that the government is introducing mandatory censorship as a tool of power to strike out dissenting opinion, NOT to protect children; and we need to be a political force without leaning on partisan support as the filter has opponents within the government and in the opposing parties. Our protesting will not be taken to the streets with placards, as this will further isolate the mainstream majority. We will undertake education in small groups, targeting parents and community groups in real life situations (one idea is to set up a booth at sporting events and Australia Day BBQs.) We need to convince the media and the mainstream majority that the millions of dollars spent on the mandatory filter every year would be better spent on education for parents and communities and funding our police in the undercover operations they already carry out on peer 2 peer networks as they bring down child porn rings.

If you object to mandatory censorship, please write letters to your local sitting members, members of the Liberal Party including the shadow Communications Minister Tony Smith, as well as Senator Stephen Conroy. Letter writing is taken seriously, and while you might get a standard response do not feel as if your correspondence was disregarded! Here’s the page on how you can take action from nocleanfeed.com with links to contact details. If are not Australian you can still help! If you have the desire, please send letters to Senator Conroy. It’s important that this government is aware that their mandatory censorship and lack of transparency is not going unnoticed by citizens in other countries.

If you want to help Stop Internet Censorship, please get in contact with your ideas or your skills. We’re holding the next meeting on Monday January 4 2010.

You can grab a button for your blog from my flickr, or use one of the logos (1, 2) under a CC license.

I need a weekend to recover from the weekend! What a fantastic birthday! I turned 29 with my mates and my family and had bogloads of fun. On Saturday Nick and I went down the coast to a family Christmas dinner, then zoomed back to Brisbane to hang out with friends and sing karaoke in our own private room. We sung, and shouted and laughed so hard that my voice was completely ruined the morning after – but it was so worth it! Then we went to my parents’ for a whole bunch of awesome food that my Mum spent all day making including a fantastic cake made with my favourite fruit.

Holding my cousin’s gorgeous baby girl.

My fancy birthday outfit.

Dress: Yours Clothing
Tights: Kmart
Shoes: Softspots
Necklace: Lola and Bailey

My friends Viv and Mem singing Queen!

My wonderful husband got me Flora by Gucci and a (My Little) Pony! YAY!

Fantastic views of Brisbane’s skyscraper forest from our room at M on Mary.

Super casual in the humidity, going over to my parents’ for birthday dinner.

Blouse: Kmart
Skirt: City Chic
Bow: Gift from Sonya
Thongs: No idea
Sunglasses: Giant Vintage

My Nana gave me this ring and it totally matched my nail polish.

An incredible mangomisu cake Mum made for me – it was delicious.

The lovely Nick who made my birthday so excellent!

Phew. Let’s do it again in say, a year?!

I have loved space since I was a young girl, and things like this make me feel so connected to the cosmos even if we are a tiny part of it! This was posted somewhere else by a friend of mine and I just wanted to share it with everyone because it’s awesome.

Today is my pre birthday! That’s right, it’s the day before my birthday that I am claiming as being part of my birthday so I can demand things all weekend! I bought myself some flowers and arranged them with some clippings from our garden. I may not be a good florist, but I am awesome at my birthday.

Oooh ETA! This is somewhat related to star stuff… it’s Amanda Palmer singing about pop music and art and I love the sentiment!

Sometimes things are just the opposite of fance, and they make me grumpy. This is a post dedicated to a few of those things!

Censorship is a terrible direction for the Australian government to go, and I am very disappointed and worried about the future. The clean feed is claiming to be about protecting children but it is a very slippery slope, and once it is installed future governments probably won’t do a thing about removing it. My worst fear is that it will be a victim of “feature creep” and the features that creep in will go further towards censoring dissenting opinion rather than protecting Australians.

The Animal Weighing Scales look cute, but read the product description. It’s still all about losing weight, whatever whimsical unit of measurement you put on it.

For something a little bit more light hearted – super spangly iPhone cases are not fancy. Don’t even go there!

Image via Crafting a Green World
Packaging waste really bothers me, and there will be a metric buttload of it this month. The end of December is probably going to be an awesome month to skulk around collecting boxes and waste wrapping paper for your crafty upcycling purposes!

Image via jackson.badger
I have to end on a fancy note to offset all the unfance – so I present my newest hero Kelli Jean Drinkwater!

Nick and I are campaigning against the “clean feed” under the banner of Stop Internet Censorship. One of the reasons for forming this blog is to support fortnightly meetings, so those who are concerned about the clean feed and the impact it will have can discuss the issues at hand and how to better solve them as a community.

Nick has organised a meeting on Monday December 21 at Room Z-205 at QUT Gardens Point campus. The room will open at 7:15pm with the meeting to begin at 7:30pm.

“There has been too much talk and not enough action. The plan of this meeting is to not only discuss the filter and what impacts it will have on us, but to look at how we can work together to bring awareness to others. Ultimately the goal is to have this stopped before it is even put into place.”

If you are in Brisbane, check out the facebook event here.

If you are from interstate and want to talk to Nick about setting up blogs on stopinternetcensorship.org for other cities to use, he’s on twitter as @NicholasPerkins or you can leave a comment on one of his posts on stopinternetcensorship.org.

The “clean feed” is a slippery slope to a place where human rights are surely eroded, and it will NOT solve the issue of child pornography and its distribution.