Its been a while since I showed any signs of life over here. The hot weather usually leaves me crawling under a rock until the Vernal Equinox.

One of the advantages of Summer is that I get to hang up my camera for a while and indulge myself in some of my other distractions, primarily music. Doing some photographic work for the band “Magnetic South” has renewed my interest in getting a band together again – the last one I was in folded some 12 years ago and I've been doing solo work ever since. I've gotten as far as pricing a new electric guitar, but that's about it.

Mostly, I'm trying to get back into composing and song writing (including an attempted contribution to the new Magnetic South album) – finishing off the soundtrack to Space Taxi II, preparing enough material for an album of my own and generally just progressing with a couple of other projects. I've become much better at procrastinating than I used to be, so that's my current stumbling block.

One of my considered goals is going to Melbourne later in the year to attend the Syntax party and maybe enter the music competition. Gaining first place in the competition at Project 95 and taking second place at Project 97 purely by default doesn't really qualify.

Another reason for my renewed submersion in artistic pursuits is as a way of unwinding from the stresses of my day job. I'm making a point of leaving work related concerns at work, coming home and doing my own thing (much to the chagrin of my employers). Whilst I enjoy my music, photography, writing and drawing, its purely for my own pleasure – I have long passed the stage where I thought I might like to turn professional and have come to acknowledge the limits of my talents. Indeed, even embrace them – once you've learned the things that you can't do, you know which areas you need to work to improve.

I've managed to publish some of my work commercially in the past, but it was too much effort to chase payment afterwards (the fact that the contract for “Xiom” was written in German didn't help matters).

So where to from here? Well, as the weather cools down and I get my energy back, I'm planning on having a go at doing multi tracked recording so I can try putting some of my songs together whilst playing all the instruments myself – once the weather changes I'll be able to move my computer away from the air conditioner and back into the studio, away from the distractions of my neighbours arguing with each other constantly and their obsession with slamming doors. When Jyoti Mishra (White Town) was recording his second album in his apartment, he commented “in places you can hear the floorboards squeaking”.

If anyone wants to meet up for a jam sometime though, leave me a message here.