The The Rocks and Sydney Observatory provide wonderful vantage point to see some of Sydney’s iconic constructions. The Sydney Harbour Bridge - known locally as “the coat hanger” was completed in 1932. The single span bridge was completed in eight years - the £6.25m loan took a little longer, and was paid off only in 1988! The [...]

Sydney’s observatory and astronomy museum is located at Watson Road, Observatory Hill, The Rocks. And it is well worth a visit. The observatory started life in the 1850s as a time ball tower - at 1.00pm each day the ball would be raised and dropped exactly on the hour as a time signal for ships [...]

Homeofpoi has launched their one-piece cone poi!

This is a great moment in poi history. The design was a collaboration between homeofpoi and myself, based loosely on a pair of sock-poi I got from Drew (of ministryofmanipulation.com). They are much like the poi I often use in my videos, but with a different (and hopefully better) method of inserting and removing the weight. They are super comfortable and pretty much tangle free. This is the kind of cone poi the world needs! So order a pair and tell me what you think. (Note: I do not recommend the cone-poi with the swivels, as I think they are too clunky.)

Oh, and I now have "playpoi" as my referral code at homeofpoi. If you use it when you buy something, I get a percentage. This is good, as it will help me justify spending more time making poi video! :)

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I have been unplugged so to speak for a while in a social experiment that confirmed my suspicions of the evil of the internet. My birthday is tomorrow and you know you are getting old when instead of cute birthday cards in the mail, you get solicitations of postcards for life insurance. That’s not depressing at all. I also am thinking of all the things I have not crossed of my to do list for the past year and it is making me so very disappointed with myself, then I look around and also feel the emptiness and disgusting provocativeness of humanity. How trite, how predictable. I am in the doldrums.
I did however assist on a very interesting lumpectomy surgery for my 10 year old dog and that was the highlight of my day, maybe even week. It was really awesome and very self gratifying. UNFORTUNATELY, this make my perception of the what ifs way to too big and I am back to questioning my goals, roles, and responsibilities. What do I REALLY want to do. Is this good enough, is it ever good enough.
So yeah….Happy birthday to me.
whoo hoo.
yawn.

Oh… I am really going to start writing my book, for real this time.

On arrival in Sydney I was given a lesson in patience… well, not me personally, but the person waiting behind us at the supermarket as we were buying milk and coffee for our stay. After paying for the goods, it took a moment to put the change in the wallet, and replace the wallet in the [...]

Flags are everywhere.

Posts, beams, cables, spikes … eventually, all these flags will have something put in the ground where there are only flags now.

Surveyors have been out walking, consulting maps, stepping off distances, trying to make sure that drawings and plans become actual facts on the ground.

Yesterday, Monique and Danny were working their way around the rim of Center Camp, repeating the same process over and over and over again: Go to the pink and green flag, put a stake on the digging machine, slowly rotate it into the ground,  adjust the sheath, put it in a little further, adjust the sheath again, then sink it so that only a  loop of steel was peeking out of the dust.

Later, cables will be attached to keep the shade sturdy.

Danny is very much like a lot of people out here: He’s got another life in the default word, but more and more the Burner life and the default world are intersecting.

Earlier this year, he went to Peru in the wake of the earthquake there to help put devastated villages back together again. He’s got a variety of skills — plumbing, electricity, carpentry — so he brings a lot to the party. He planned on spending a week helping out, then he’d spend a couple of weeks traveling around. “Two months later, I was still there,” he said.

The villagers were accustomed to having water for only an hour a day, and that was before the earthquake.  “But they were happy,” Danny said. “They’d just say, hey, it’s Peru.”  So he and the other Burners Without Borders were building concrete tanks that would gather water, so the villagers would have water when they needed it, not just when it was running.

So how does a guy find it possible to go helping people out around the world? “I sold a software company at the right time,” Danny said.

I'm happy to say the Halifax Busker Festival has been going well, although it was very hectic getting the show together in time. Feedback and reviews have been great so far, so a big thanks for all the support and love so far. As some of you know, I actually haven't performed much, so this is a very special moment in my career, and I'm sure I'll find it easier to get gigs after this. If you're anywhere near Halifax, you have 4 more nights to come see our show! The schedule:

Wed and Thurs: 9pm at the Aliant stage, and 10pm at the Pepsi stage

Friday: 10pm at the Aliant stage (with an "all-star" fire show an hour earlier at 9pm")

Saturday: 9:30pm and 10:30pm at the Aliant stage.

Hope to see you!

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I finally plucked up the courage to go into an Apple shop - I picked a day when I had left my credit card at home - to check out the new iPhone. I’m still looking for the ideal mobile blogging platform, and thought perhaps sensible convergence had been developed by the wonderful designers at [...]

The move from Gerlach to the playa is underway. Time to haul your camp gear out there and get squared away.

And time to start spending your evenings in the incredible golden light of the desert.