nastybun

Apologies for just posting media lately.. I’ll find something to post about soon, I promise.

Caution.. Caution.. my typing fingers are flailing wildly..

A while ago on The Triforce forums (not affiliated with Nintendo in any way) it was suggested that we all make a mix CD and post it to two other forum members. It was all organised by one of the members, so we who opted in were sent two addresses while our address was sent to two other members. It was kind of supposed to be a bit anonymous, but being the only aussie on the boards makes it a bit obvious to my victims recipients who sent it.. but oh well. I received one recently from a member, it’s a really good mix. Some stuff I know, some I kinda recognise and some completely new to me.. which makes the other part of it even more interesting.. there was no track listing included so I’ll have to at some point see if I can work out what’s what on there. There’s certainly some artists that I’d like to find out more about. So, all of you who may be part of a wider community.. if you want an idea for a community-wide activity, there you have it.

Oh, and if there’s someone out there saying ‘omfg you gave your address to the internet now you’ll be stalked and whatnot’.. it was my PO box address, and anyone with even the most basic of internet stalking skills can find that easily enough.

If anyone’s missed it from the twitter feed over on the right there, I found out last night that glass saucepans don’t bounce. Sigh.. this means that two of the three cooktop vessels I brought over with me have broken. One in transit, one last night. It also means that there’s some little bits of glass on the floor in my kitchen, because I’ve no broom or vacuum cleaner. Sucks to be me… Also, as good as the surviving 3.5 litre pot is for making a big batch of green curry, it’s a little excessive for a single serving of shell pasta. I think I need to go shopping this weekend…

Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off bigger clouds are called scuds.

So now you know…

We made sausage rolls! They’re super great! There’s pictographs and all!

ingredients

The unfortunate looking blob in the middle of it all is the sausage mince.. looks gross, but it’s required for proper texture. There’s an equal amount of real mince in beneath it, so it comes out ok.

rolls

Rolled into.. rolls. They’re like a series of tubes. Meat tubes.

golden and delicious

So very very tasty. Now I need to buy a toaster oven so I can warm up the ones that are in my freezer…

Ok, so it’s been a while… but you get that. Right? Right? …

Things that have happened lately.. I finally got off my arse and did an exam that I’d been ’studying’ for for a while, passed it sufficiently. The problem with studying from courseware that’s intended to be accompanied by a person talking is that there’s no one to tell you what to believe when the book contradicts itself, makes no sense or just outright lies at you. And it’s bleedin’ boring. Still, with some practice questions and help from an appropriately knowledged up oracle, it was adequately passed. And subsequently forgotten, as most of it is irrelevant for the current version of the software anyway. The fun of learning something that’s out of date. Still, it’s an easier exam than the current one, so I’m not complaining!

Me mate was in town last weekend, we went and saw the rugby that was on. Great game, we outplayed them and won. I won’t go into why, because most.. if not all.. of you aren’t interested. Or already know. Still, even though I was nauseus to the point of thinking I was gonna chunder earlier in the day, it was an enjoyable night out.

I’ve finally got the papers sorted for my car, all that remains is to head into the RTA office and swap the plates about. There will be times when not having it are inconvenient, but the three and a half odd grand I’m not spending a year on it will be more convenient. And I like it.. I’d rather it was being driven.

Onto more meaningful things. If you wish to pass some time and fondly recall times playing old school adventure games, or wish to know why some people fondly recall playing old school adventure games, check out Ben There, Dan That. It’s a little point and click adventure littered with in jokes and references to things you may recognise, and it also contains dinosaurs. From the site:

Written by and somewhat-narcissistically starring heroes Dan Marshall and Ben Ward, it’s bursting with bold cartoon graphics, laugh-out-loud dialogue, colourful characters, some frames of animation and nearly 100 different sound effects! There’s no need for hand-eye coordination or split-second reflexes here; it’s a fun game that anyone can play as long as they don’t mind a few naughty words here and there and the odd dabble of mild racism.

It’s fun, amusing and a pleasent way to spend an evening. Give it a go, it’s free! And then if you appreciate it, donate to the struggling developers! Get that warm, moist feeling in your pants that can only come from helping out those less fortunate than you. It’s not their fault that they’re poms, but at least we can try to make it easier for them.

Next on the agenda are some tweaky bits for Windows XP. Wonderfully timely I know, but these may be useful for some of you. They’re all from the Powertoys page, so they’ll be old news for some but there may be people for whom this is useful. There are three that I’m currently using, and I’m going to miss all of them when I eventually can afford to bin this boat anchor masquerading as a PC and get something worthwhile. They are:

Tweak UI: “This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.” Essentially, you get more options to make little changes to your PC that can be handy. Things like removing the little arrow from shotcuts. Or trimming the crap from the New (file) submenu. Some very nice little things that add up to a much nicer XPerience. (Yes, that’s truely why XP is called XP)

Open Command Window Here: “This PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder.” This one isn’t of much use to normal users, but for those who will find it useful… well, it does what it says on the tin. Something that should be there already, frankly.

Image Resizer: “This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.” Read that again. How brilliantly handy would that have been back in the days of dial-up? No more tooling about with photoshop to debiggen a picture for someone. It works excellently, it’s super fast, and it just lives in the right-click space on picture files. Definately useful for everyone, if someone has ever broken your e-mail my sending massive pictures tell them to get it and install it. No more excuses!

Unfortunately… these are only for XP. There are image resizers for Vista, I’ve not tried one (and lost the one that Blake found for me) and I’ve no idea what they’re like but if they’re modelled after the powertoy there.. brilliant. I’ve no idea why these little things weren’t tooled into Vista, they’re stupendously handy and add basic functionality to the OS to make living with it so much nicer. Give em a crack!

Ninety-eight per cent of all life forms to exist on Earth are now extint.

I guess if you think about it then… we’re not so bad after all!

See if you can spot the part that they probably wouldn’t be able to do nowadays without someone shrieking. Not the paint…

This is the most astoundingly brilliant thing since the invention of forever. Well, there may have been a couple of things.. maybe.. Anyway, watch and listen. It’s Radiohead’s Nude off the new album (not heard it, is it good?) played by very old and outdated hardware. More music should be made that way.

I’ma just put this here..

I used to have a uke.. it was cheap and it broke.

I am now going to gush about a bit o’ softwares wot I stumbled upon recently. Upon discussing the drab and dreary boredom putting up with having the same imagine on all screens in a multiple monitor setup, a googling of different wallpapers on each screen led me to stumble upon something I had found. Bing bong billy bong. It was DisplayFusion, software that not only allows one to have multiple background images, but the sheer power of it conjoins words together. It goes beyond that though, there are hot keys to flick your programs about monitors, tile things, resize things.. alla that funky shiznat. More funky though is that it integrates into flickr (for those wot got an account there) and if you cough up the measly ten bucks for the pro version, you can have your images randomly selected on timed changes. So yea, if you have multiple displays and suffer from the not so rare and surprisingly deadly ‘Gee, having the same desktop background on each monitor is so boring, I wish there was a way to have a different image on each one, maybe two images that complement each other, maybe even two completely different images, wouldn’t that be zany, I’d be the talk of the town and the ladies really dig that shit, maybe I can put sanskrit on one of them too’ syndrome, then this is the product for you!

In other news, is it just me or does healthy eating really not satisfy the hunger pangs. I ate two oranges and an apple for lunch yesterday and I ended up hungrier than when I started. Not sure if that’s my body rebelling against it or if that’s just what happens, but a dosage of steak and Coopers down at the pub fixed me right up. Tuesday night is cheap steak and trivia night! Lotsa fun, last night we join forces with a couple who wandered in and sat at the end of the table we was at. Unfortunately our combined forces didn’t help as much as we were hoping and we only ended up coming fifth, but it was fun anyway.

Anyway, I’m off.. going to get 6 oranges and 14 apples… that’ll learn my stomach..

This may not make sense so much if you’ve not played Portal, but the song is still tops…