Wednesday, 3 July 2002

Best Kept Secrets of Australian Music. There are too many well kept secrets in this country, artists who should be respected all over for their extraordinary creativity, and who would be if this was any other place.       The reputation of a lucky few manages to slip outside into the wider world occasionally, and so some of them get the recognition they deserve. Others don’t and languish in obscurity.       And their foreign fans wonder why they are ignored in their homeland. I wonder why I can’t find their music in local stores, in the case of Lisa Gerrard’s former band Dead Can Dance, and Sydney-based Single Gun Theory.       I began musing on these issues when playing the Gladiator DVD in the background on the borrowed SuperDrive iMac earlier today. Lisa Gerrard collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the soundtrack, a fantastic and highly emotional piece of work. Lisa also worked on the soundtrack of another Russell Crowe film—The Insider. 9:46:18 PM    Add a comment.

SuperDrive iMac: Gets My Vote. Although I have pretty much set my heart on getting a portable computer when I have the money in, so I can work on location, I have found I really like the SuperDrive iMac.       I have a loaner here for a short time, and although the small screen was disconcerting at first, when used to much larger resolutions and dual monitor set-ups, I really like it anyway. It’s marvellous for playing DVDs, and many recent applications rewritten to use up less screen space are now OK in a 15-inch monitor. And that SuperDrive, well…       There is a phrase that keeps coming to mind each time I boot this iMac up—Limitless Possibility.       That is precisely what I feel this machine offers me, even though it is not top of the range by any means. It is more to do with the fact of Mac OS X itself, the beauty of the object, the quality of sound and vision it offers, being able to play a DVD while working in the wordprocessor, and that I can make movies with this thing and burn them onto DVD for sharing with everyone.       It is not a top of the range professional model, and yet it allows me to feel that anyway. Wow! 9:24:21 PM    Add a comment.