Goth Goes to live in Silicon Valley

So if you haven't heard the news I got offered a job at our headquarters in Silicon Valley and have moved to the US of A.

I've moved to Engineering Program Management, a bit more aligned with what I was doing outside Google and a great chance to work on some unique challenges. I'm loving the role and the team and couldn't be happier with the choice.

Unfortunately this wasn't quite the timeline we were intended and my beloved boy Chops couldn't move out at the same time due to work commitments. So there's a lot of video calls and international travelling going on until he can move over. What is nice though is knowing that your relationship is strong enough to stand the distance without worrying, now that is a nice feeling.

If you've never done it let me tell you that moving countries is hard. Even with the full support of a Google relocation team there's still waiting for months on Visas, packing up the house and then arriving to no credit history, no bank account, no tax number and a lot of paperwork.

When I arrived they put me in a lovely but isolated corporate apartment in Santa Clara which is at the arse end of Silicon Valley and pure pain without a car.

The San Francisco rental market is also somehow worse than Sydney with all the same desperate shivving of other applicants and ludicrous prices. I have however got a great house in Twin Peaks, less than 5 minutes bus ride from Noe Valley and The Castro. Upstairs there's a couple of other nerds and there's everything I need within a 3 min walk - including transport to the work shuttles. For SFO the place is a steal too - my own separate apartment including kitchen and bathroom for about $100 a month more than what I was paying in Newtown. Once I've finished decorating and my furniture has actually arrived from Sydney I'll post photos.

For a while there I was really struggling, but now that I'm living in the city, Chops has come to visit and I have a functioning bank account and social security things are looking much better. I found some local black wearing Whiskey drinkers at work and I even got to march in SF Pride, and there's nothing like a pride parade to make me feel at home!

Becoming the Fairy Goth Mother

With a gaggle of adult urban family I've always been dubbed "The Fairy Goth Mother" by an army of lost ducklings I have found and loved.

This time my friend Rachel made me a Fairy Goth Mother for real; bestowing the title of Godmother on me for her daughter Lorelei.

What a cutie she is!

Recently we held a secular Naming Day ceremony, with plenty of friends and family to wish her well in the world. 

For my part in the ceremony I did a reading of "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" by Dr Seuss, a fitting and sweet story of the ups and downs in life just perfect for a new life going into the world. 

Of course being our friends this also meant about 3 tonne of food including a lot of cupcakes. It was a lovely day to begin the journey of a lovely girl. 

Thanks to Rachel and James for allowing me to have this role in their family, I hope I live up to the task. 

More pieces of my art collection

As I've noted recently I've collected artwork over the years from places I've travelled and loved. An original piece of art attached to a beautiful memory has always appealed as a piece for the home.

Recently I found a fantastic local framer and have been having regular trips to the framers to preserve my collection and prepare gifts alike. Lets review some of the work so far!



Black and white photographs of the Chrysler Building and the city skyline bought on 5th Avenue in New York, USA



Handcoloured lithographs of the Maison Jacquet and the St Louis Gate from Quebec, Canada.



This print of the Google Doodle celebrating the birthday of mathematician Gaston Julia I received at the Googleplex in Mountain View, USA while interviewing for a new position. I had this framed to present to my father as a gift, he's a mathematician and instilled a great love of number sets in me. I can't think of a better gift to mark changes in my current life.







Custom archival prints of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and an Allosaurus from the American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA.



Romance, gothic style... this is a print of the Charles Addams "Unhappy Darling?" cartoon from the Addams Foundation Collection that I bought as a gift for my partner Chops while I was away on business without him.



I simply cannot get a picture of this artwork that does it justice. This is a watercolour of the skyline in Firenze, Italy dominated by Il Duomo.

Vale James O'rance

Today was the memorial for James O'Rance, a good friend who died suddenly and young from complications of a life long struggle with Diabetes.



James was a man of great nobility, he judged people by their actions and their heart, but loved his friends for who they were warts and all. If a measure of a man is those who choose to come to his wake then today was evidence of what we all know - that James was loved by many and touched us all.

Never have I seen so many people attend a funeral, so many openly weep without fear of judgement and more than that so many people console each other through a difficult time. It speaks volumes of not only the kind of man he was, but the kind of people he attracted.

James lived life to the full, he was himself at all times and to the full. He loved, he laughed, he was thoughtful and silly and wonderful. He will never be forgotten.

James would want us to remember him the way we shared his friendship, fondly, deeply and with laughter. The stories we shared today would have made him proud but not the sombre mood. A more celebratory memorial will be organised in the near future.

Artistic souvenirs and fantastic framing

Some time when I was younger I picked up an excellent habit of buying locally produced artworks and prints whenever I travelled. An unframed piece of artwork is easily protected with a plastic slip or manila folder and is light and easy to transport. This makes art a fantastic and unique souvenir and at this point in my life my collection has become quite large.

Unfortunately this has always left me with the problem of what to do about framing. Framing is frequently expensive and difficult to organise. Some items I had framed myself with varying results. Recently however I have discovered a fantastic local framer and so I shall be framing the rest of my collection over time. Good work deserves recognition so here's a hat tip to Song at Paddy Art Corner.

Web: Paddyartcorner.com
Phone: 0414 881 283
Email: Linxrsong@gmail.com
Address: Paddy's Market Stall 20-22, Haymarket Sydney
Map and directions: Google Places

These two pieces I bought in Kyoto and are full colour and gold/silver leaf woodblock reproductions (not prints but actual block presses) of two ukiyo-e pieces that I love. To be able to frame and hang both pieces in excellent condition for $80 is amazing.



Here you can see the quality of the framing, the staples are hefty and well balanced and the frame is sealed well with hefty quality framing tape. Both were chosen for custom size and matting with no additional cost.



Onna yu (Bathhouse Women), Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) framed in wood with custom matting for $35 ~A4 size

Ukiyo-e were commonly drawn of salacious activities in the pleasure quarter. Here we see a number of yuna, who were employed by the bathhouses to scrub the backs of patrons but were frequently engaged in "happy ending" affairs similar to certain types of massage parlour today.




Genji Monogatari: Yadorigi (The Tale of Genji: Ivy [Chapter 49]), Masao Ebina (1913 - 1980) framed in wood with custom matting for $45 ~A3 size

Genji Monogatari is the ubiquitous court novel of mediaeval Japan, akin to the Arthurian legends and as much adapted. Ebina completed an illustration for each chapter of the saga, the full set can be seen online. This reproduction is beautiful including all the textures and embossing of the original.

Capturing a little piece of computing history

As you should know I play WarCraft with my friends, and I love unique things, so when Blizzard announced they were going to sell off their old server blades for charity I simply had to get in on the action. The servers were all deprecated during the pre Cataclysm cluster upgrades but were in use between 2004/2005 and 2010 making the nerdy dreams of many a gamer come true.

Chops and Nat my two dearest boys both play, Nat religiously so I set out on a mission to secure them their own pieces of Azeroth.

From Feathermoon Server Blade

Nat is a long time somewhat obsessive Feathermoon player, I couldn't pass up the chance to present him with a physical piece of his own online life. This great portrait piece also shows the scale of the blade servers perfectly, while making Nat look a little bit rock'n'roll ;o)



I managed to keep the purchase of this Proudmoore blade super secret, leaving my partner Scott completely confused until he opened the box, I call that gift success. The size makes mounting a bit of a puzzle, we're pondering turning it into a coffee table. Either way I'm so happy to know that those I love have their own little piece of internet history secured and in their possession.

If this is Night City where's my heads up display?

When I was a younger thing obsessed with roleplaying all I ever wanted to do was live life in a dark techno future as a bright young corper in a Cyberpunk world...

I don't like to disappoint myself.

So ironic as it is I bought Nat an eReader for his birthday, spending my megacorp Asia bucks on digital devices so that we could read Cyberpunk novels.

We kicked off his birthday weekend with A Scanner Darkly, Strange Days and The Matrix. We've continued this week with Sneakers and the Bridge series by Gibson.

Hey... at least we thought of wireless in the real cyberpunk future.