I just finished reading Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It’s a funny sort of book.. I’ve tried three times to explain how I feel about it, but I keep deleting the words. I know I enjoyed it, but I don’t know why. That’s either a measure of how unique the storytelling is, or my shortcomings in understanding my own mind. A little of both, I think. A lot of the time I was reading it without really taking it in, but that doesn’t seem to matter.. it doesn’t require thought or analysis to be enjoyed, you just need to tag along with Mr. Okada and let him regale you with the slightly impossible things that happen to him.
Sep 17 2008
maintenance
On Sunday afternoon I found that my hot water system appeared to be borked. By which I mean I had no hot water. Further investigation led to the fuse box, from which I could hear the electricity. This is generally considered a bad thing. So I went to bed. Handily nothing caught on fire during my slumber, and as another plus it seemed that it had settled down and allowed the hot water system to produce me some hot water. So I had a nice hot shower. A few phone calls later and an electrician was on the way to fix it. Normally I’d have investigated the fuse for the water myself, but I don’t trust audible power. Four times is enough times to be shocked by mains power. Turns out the whole fuse housing was burnt out anyway, so there was nothing I could have done to fix it. On the plus side of having all the power in the place off to replace it, I could reset my microwave clock.. it had gained nearly five hours in the time I’ve had it, which I think is around six months. So now it begins anew its quest of confusing the occasional visitor that comes by my place with its fantasy time keeping… and I can have warm showers again.
Of a slightly more concerning note is the not inconsiderable hunk o’ cash that’s been charged to my credit card recently.. I’ve no idea what it was for, and its still just saying Authorisation Only. This isn’t the first time it’s happened though.. and every other time it has turned out to be something legitimate, so I’m not concerned enough to be putting a freeze on the card just yet… but I’m keeping a close eye on it until I know what it was for. Usually though I do remember what it is within two days.. not something that’s happened thus far. Still.. maybe I bought myself something nice as a surprise.. you never know..
I read somewhere today: “…Tiffany was certainly not my cat. And by that I mean that you can never truly love someone else’s cat. Cat owners, you understand what I mean.” I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but never really having been a cat owner (ours only lived for about two years, and spent most of her time outside or avoiding being patted.. she was supremely brilliant though) I’m not sure I’m qualified. Thoughs?
The tower of London has served many purposes, including a zoo.
Jul 31 2008
time flies when you ignore it..
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!
Jun 27 2008
freedom of speech is hilarious
Some excerpts from spEak You’re bRanes:
“And don’t forget, if you really want to get the best out of your terrorists, pinch them out to encourage bushing. Once they begin to flower, start feeding them with a formulated terrorist-feed. If you water them frequently and keep them free from slugs, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t continue to enjoy homegrown terrorists until September.”
“Awww. If I’d known there was an Anti-Establishment Proletariat Pseudo-Marxists and Anarchists rally I’d have gone down. As it was I ended up at a Crypto-Communist Envirofacist Morris Dancing Festival. Heavy police presence as usual. BURN DOWN BABYLON.”
Go have a poke through, very amusing.
Recently I was pondering what it would take to make a lobster costume. Essentially, a case of ‘if I was a furry and I decided I was a lobster…’ I’d make a carapace and tail using a 44 gallon drum (the main floatation devices used by contenstants on Scrapheap Challenge) as a mould, creating it out of fibreglass and painting it appropriately. How hard could it be? The drum would be about long enough for the main carapace part, the tail would be segmented as per an actual lobster, the feelers would be moulded around some fishing rod poles (just the bare poles, no hardware attached.. ever made your own rod? You know what I mean), and the claws would be an arrangement of levers and servos. Simple. The only difficulty would be finding a surgeon to reverse my knees… they’d need to be reversed in order to make the tail work. Once that’s overcome, a few little air tanks installed the main carapace would be all it’d take to go for a dip. It could be excellent…
Also amusing for anyone who’s worked in IT support is this… get right to the end.
I reckon I’m one of the few people in this world who has a (little) subwoofer and leaves it turned down almost as far as it can go. Unless my downstairs nieghbours are playing their shite music at times when I’m not trying to sleep and I want to drown them out. Then it comes up a little from the stopper. Fuckers..
Still going to sell my car. It’s occasionally useful.. but cash is more useful. Also, I feel a return to cheap, povvo motoring coming on. I was watching the Top Gear Botswana special again yesterday, there was a time when I nearly bought myself a Lancia Beta Coupe. Maybe I should have, I coulda gone anywhere… as long as I had a mechanic and a film crew following me. I think it may have been brown though… I’ll not own any car that’s Korean, (no offence, I’ve met some loverly Koreans and their food, TVs, monitors and.. most other things that Samsung do apart from mobile phones are great, but… not cars yet. Although, the Samsung cars are just Renaults with a different badge, so they’re actually the pick.. where was I?..) brown, or a Holden. Not that I’m a Ford fan, but at least the other models are German, rather than rebadged Daewoos. Sports Volvos ftmfw.
Bulls run faster uphill than they do downhill because of the bone structure of their legs.
So if you find yourself in Pamplona, you know what to do. Dig a hole.
Jun 10 2008
i'm 99% darker than you
I finished my first block of 99% cocoa lindt chocolate this afternoon. I have another. I think it’s the first block of chocolate I’ve had that comes with a warning label. Seriously. There’s a label over the tray of it that says you should probably start with the 70% (not enough) then progress through the 85% (wonderful) stuff before having a crack at this one. You actually only get half the mass of it, segmented into smaller squares, as you do with the other two strengths, which is more a reflection of its intensity than any money grabbing on their part. It also says to break off a small peice and let it melt on your tongue, which is a good thing to do. You don’t want to go scarffing this stuff down, it’s not a pleasent experience. Best to eat it slowly, with a cup of coffee (also good with green tea), letting the flavours of your cup of choice mix in with the chocolate. I find myself with tea and choc on the tongue, mixing and matching together. It’s very enjoyable. It’s also good for you, as it turns out. There’s a website and everything, and if it’s on the internet, it must be true. Not that if it was terrible for me I’d avoid eating it, but it’s a good excuse.
It also turns out that beer is good for you. Think of all the goodness I’m consuming! Wonderful. My dad has a perscription for a glass of red wine every day, just because he knows the doctor that perscribed him, I’m sure it’s legitimate and serious… I wonder if I can get one for tea and chocolate.
We recently consumed some tasty tasty foods, I’ll give you the recipe here:
3 tortilla rounds (soft tacos, burritos.. like that)
16 cloves garlic
2 cups parmesan cheese, grated
2 cups mozzarella, grated
Basically, you roast the garlic in the oven until it’s all nice and soft, spread it on the totillas, add the cheese, lay them atop each other and oven the lot until the cheese is as cooked as you like it. I go for golden brown. We also added sauce (whatever Dolmio you prefer, slack and tasty) and salami chunks. Obviously any recipe that has 16 cloves of garlic in it is pure genius, but it’s one of those things that you can add whatever you like to. Think of it as layered pizza with thin bases. I think I prefer pizza like this… which means it’s probably good that I don’t want to test my crappy looking oven out. I’d eat these far too often… Comes from the 4 Ingredients recipe book, my mum sent it to me. Great book, but a quick flick through seems to have revealed that most of the recipes require trust in one’s oven or grill… maybe one day…
Ancient Romans ate flamingo tongues and considered them a delicacy.
Good with a nice dry white…
Jun 01 2008
ramblification
It’s been dark and overcast today, barely raining. Cars had their headlights on. I still wore my sunglasses. A conversation with myself follows.
“Why are you wearing sunglasses?”
“It makes the world seem darker, more oppresive, dark like my heart. It keeps people from seeing my eyes, seeing the tortured soul inside them. Keeps the anquish within, from spilling out into the world and bringing everyone down. It’s a sacrifice I make for the unwashed scum out there, though they don’t deserve it. No-one understands me. If my hair was longer, it’d be in front of my face.”
“… Are you taking the piss?”
“Yes.”
The nice thing about talking to yourself is that the responses are always timed right for comedic purposes, and always attuned to one’s own humouratic senses. Funny how many more people stare at you when you’re smiling for no obvious reason…
Apparently the price of butter has risen 700% in the last 4 years. This is bad, because it’s the reason why I couldn’t get some tasty, properly made pasta today. I shake my fist to express frustration!
There’s a bagel joint near my place. It’s called Bagel House. A bagel and cawfee lunch is possibly the greatest lunch I’ve had. If ever you’re in Rozelle (it might happen..) go there.
I thought there was more to put here.. oh well.
May 23 2008
when fiction becomes reality
Remember this? Turns out someone is actually making a pac-man film. Horrifying, I know. It’s not the guys that made that frankly brilliant trailer, which I think is a mistake. Anything else would only be unfavourably compared to the masterpiece that is the original, frankly. I think it’s time for a letter writing campaign, on a scale the world has never seen!
May 21 2008
squidgy wares
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..
May 17 2008
fire is too good for them…
Orright, innit, insofar as hello, whatup, sandwiches.
I just ate some lovely spicy pasta what I did make the sauce for. Next time you make pasta sauce/nachos/chunky mincey stuff hunt down some (malaysian) sambal balado, in hot guise, and put in 2/3s of the jar. Dayam that’s tasty. Ugh. Groinal thrusting ensues. Hwhuh.
Whomsoever it is that engineers light fittings is a sadistic prick who gets off on making life difficult for others. Especially the domed ones that are pretty much flush with the ceiling. I have one here that blew, obviously it’s the main light of the four that are in my little joint, and it took me three separate attempts over three days to uncover the mysteries surrounding the inner workings of the mythical systems that retain that thrice damned glass dome that contains the light emmiting bulb which sustains my megre eyesight whilst sitting here in the dim corner of my pad. Turns out that one of the three retaining hasps is spring loaded, allowing me to yank it outwards, barely giving me enough room once the recalcitrant arm has moved to remove the cover. Shame that initial explorations by nimble fingers suggested a nut/bolt retaining system resulting in time wasting with sockets that are all too large and pliers that won’t fit between the dome and the ceiling to manipulate the fanciful hardware, and the only personal height elevation device I have is the dodgy as all hell plastic stool that seems to have been a free gift with the joint. (I found it in the fridge nook once I rented the place…) I’m sure you can now imagine the frustration I have towards light fittings now, and the elation I felt once besting the Laytonian puzzle presented to me by said fitting. Now, considering the fact that I have a spare bulb all ready and waiting due to the fact that I purchased a twin pack o’ light bulbs to ensure a lighted kitchen upon moving in, I should be in a position to beam wond’rous light upon all that I shift to ‘neath heinous light fitting. Not so! Due to hated fuckwittery, the light fittings in the kitchen and bathroom are bayonets yet the other two are screw fittings! Fie! I have but four ceiling lights in my humble abode, not a hard task to ensure compatibility ‘tween such units, yet the pettyness of idiots has ensured I go another night without the advantage of complete perception. I put it to you, light fittings are the realm of sadists and arseholes.
Turns out a pair of worn out thongs (footwear) are not the best things to go running in Who’da thunk it?! Still, due to my amazing adaptability, I managed to do it without damaging myself. If anyone asked, I’m brilliant. And that’s important.
Today we went on a guided foodish tour of Cabramatta. This comprised of a super tasty Vietnamese luncheon and wandering past various food shoppes. We were also assured of being offered drugs (decline, the quality is poor and prices high…) and one of our number being stabbed. Neither occured, which was of great disappointment. I feel we missed out on the full cultural experience on offer from our destination, and I hope that next time our hosts can organise the locals to come out and really show their full worth. Still, I’m told the next food related jaunt will be here in Balmain, which means it’s coffee, coffee and coffee to start with, followed by the 13 pubs that are within staggering distance of my place here. Should be a good day…
I’ve been watching a lot of Scrapheap Challenge lately, which makes me feel a lot happier with being a part of the human race. Teams of people who can create, engineer and construct things from crap to acheive targets all within 10(ish) hours. Massive <3 to thems, they is the peoples what are awesomes. Innit. Watch it, anyway. To the aussies, ABC2, 6:30 every day (weekends included). To the rest… if you can’t find them, lemmie know. I can provide if required.
May 04 2008
happy birthday!
Happy birthday to spam this month! Turns out somewhere around here marks the 30th birthday of spam. Ain’t that something worth celebrating! To mark the occasion, I’d like all of you to pass on any chain mail you receive this month to any and everyone you can think of, and make up half a dozen addressess at popular domains to see if you can spread the love even further! Remember to attach a link to the article (or to here!) to them all to make sure you spread the love properly!
In all honesty, who has ever heard of someone replying to some spam or at least gleaning some useful information from some? Someone must have done it at some point to warrant so much traffic (I’ve heard anywhere from 60-80% of all internet traffic… that includes all the porn), but besides that first bit of success, when has it been useful? What have you done for me lately? It’s just mental.
Car decision: I’m selling it.
I have GTAIV.. it’s great. The city is more immersive than any other digital creation, the characters are engaging and the gameplay is lots o’ fun. And no, I didn’t import the UK version to get hookers, although I think the OFLC (bunch who rate games here) are fuckwits for not having an R18+ rating for these sorts of games, the average gamer is in his late 20s, so on average they ‘protecting’ people who are either old enough to know better or who are already complete wastes of space so really seeing a car rock back and forth due to someone else getting into it isn’t going to change anything anyway. And before anyone mentions the fact that kids under 15 are probably playing it anyway, that’s a parenting FAIL. I’m all for heavy fines preventing the sale of these things to yoofs, doesn’t bother me at all. I object to being told that I’m not able to discern these things as being fictional. Ergo, fuckwittery.
We went and saw I, Ron Man today. I enjoyed it rather a lot. It’s not groundbreaking at all, and I’ve no idea how close it sticks to previous Ron Man cannon as I know nothing of it (except all the words to (one of?) the theme songs) but they did a great job of containing all the tech to believable levels within the fictional reality, inserting the CG into the live action, and giving acceptable levels of both fun and amusement. If you want some fun afternoon fluff, go see it.
On a similar level is Shoot ‘Em Up. That is the title of the film, and everything you need to know about it. The story is ridiculous, the bad guys farcical, the disregard for the laws of physics immense, and the one liners plentiful. Recommend to watch over beer and pizza. I even managed to enjoy it without those.
Hawaii’s Mt Waialeale is the wettest place in the world. It rains about 90 per cent of the time (480 inches per year).
That’s pretty damn wet. The driest place on earth is in Antarctica…
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