The USS Quad Damage

Quad Damage has gone nuclear!

2006-10-13T00:17:00.000+10:00

now at the much more official sounding http://blog.quaddmg.com, the new quad damage offers 20% extra punch per bag. Please ask me for passwords.

I hope soon to ween people off this site with redirections.

Official Widescreen USS Quad Damage Wallpaper

2006-10-08T22:13:00.000+10:00

This is the official USS Quad Damage wallpaper in widescreen & 4:3.

ah crap they were right

2006-09-28T23:42:00.000+10:00

White Knight Story will actually make you want to buy a ps3. Terrible, but true. I'm not gonna link to the movie here, because it's kind of depressing, and we wouldn't want to encourage Sony, but despite all the laughing at the hilariously overspecced and expensive ps3, there's really something really quite amazing about this platform if they can make games like that...

Fuck.

gg lolz pwnzored

2006-09-22T00:13:00.000+10:00

There's a show on ABC2 called Good Game. Is this a good thing or bad thing? Discuss. You can download entire episodes and see for yourselves whether it's a good show. I'll summarise my opinions on it:

It's a crap show. In the intro sequence, they show some TLAs with their meanings below it, like "LOL" with "Laughing out loud" below it. "FPS" "First Person Shooter", "RTS" "Real time Strategy". They bill themselves as a show "by gamers for gamers", but explain such simple things. It's retarded. The show is very dumbed down, so you'd think (like Top Gear), at least the writing is clever...

You'd be wrong there as well. We've written better reviews on our off days. If we made a competing show about gaming called "TCLOL" it would be far superior in every way:

Before you start to build your gaming machine, you need to figure out exactly what it will be used for. It sounds painfully obvious - "I want to use it for games!", but really, think about it for a moment. There are so many different types of games out there, all with different requirements. What you need to run relatively simple games, like Starcraft or Quake 3, is radically different to what you need to run something like Oblivion or Black & White 2.

... yyyyeaah. For gamers... Well done...

What's the good news? Well, hopefully it'll eventually become the "Top Gear" of gaming, encourage gaming in youth as well as encouraging young kids to become coders / artists / whatever. Maybe an Aussie mod community will rise up. Hack the planet! If enough attention moves down here then maybe game companies will set up shop here and we'll get an actual gaming 'scene'. Maybe I'm just being too optimistic.

Anyway, TCLOL y'all!

And now, for other amazing stories

2006-09-18T01:27:00.000+10:00

Nothing like this to make you feel special...

Wii turns a profit

2006-09-17T21:15:00.000+10:00

The Nintendo Revolution (now known as the Wii, the gayest name of all consoles, evar!) will be sold at a profit, and I'm happy about it. It's not because I'm some Nintendo nutcase that worships at the altar of Nintendo (although I'm considering this shirt), I'm happy because this hopefully opens the door for homebrew game designers everywhere. While this is not a sure-fire truth, it's a hope that I think many of us hold, and I'm guessing we'll win Nintendo around.

See, developey people want to see the ps3 sold at a (hopefully heavy) loss so that we can buy a couple, put something like a raytracer on it, and try to render our rendition of the next Toy Story. It's a bargain priced supercomputer. People want the Wii to be sold at a profit because we want nice dev-kits and open-ended controllers. The DS was initially dubbed the "Developer's System" because it was supposedly built for developers, and Nintendo was apparently doing "stuff" to help "independent game makers". While the third party NDS adapters are by far the easiest way of getting started, I'm hoping that Nintendo will soon be opening up more... legal... avenues to allow people to make games for the DS.

The signs for the Revolution are positive, and the fact that it's region free and will allow downloads of previous Nintendo games off the web are just some of the things that lead me to believe that Nintendo really are trying to open up to independent, and perhaps even open source, game makers. I'd love for a bunch of free software "killer apps" to appear on the "Wii". I think when Nintendo sees exactly how having an open platform can make the Wii a platform for the "intelligent box near the TV", I think they'll really start taking steps to open up both the Wii and the DS.

I'm just confused about what I should call the thing...

A real word.. or not

2006-09-12T16:29:00.000+10:00

In case you don't believe me: froobie.

Better than "stupid american"

2006-09-10T23:56:00.000+10:00

We have an insult for most races. "Lebs", "fobs", "honkies", "wogs", "skips", "abos", just to name a few. Admittedly, some of them aren't really insults but more contractions ("leb" would be a pretty shit insult). However, we do not have an insult for Americans. A friend suggested "American" as the perfect insult for an american, but I think this dodges the issue somewhat.

I propose "burger".

Everyone sucks but me

2006-08-31T21:07:00.000+10:00

I haven't been posting much, but neither has anyone else. I've been working on a rails version of this site. It's going to be based on typo, but I haven't had much of a chance to work on it because I'm lazy and I like playing video games. Worse, typo's just hit 4.0, and I was using the svn repository. This means I'm gonna have to synch my repo with the official one, which promises to be a royal pain. Worse is all the unit tests that are broken left right and centre. I have no idea where to proceed. Perhaps I should've tried to make the site from scratch instead of trying to learn ruby, rails, and typo all in one shot.

Also, my life's been pretty boring. I've moved, so I'm doing a lot more stuff now. Cooking, travelling, meeting more people, but it all feels ho hum. Don't get me wrong, you guys are all fun and everything, but you know, hanging out is nothing new. I'm also still afraid of cooking, because of my horrible failures. The big problem is cleaning up afterwards. It's like an entire night gone to waste. I think I'm possibly just spreading myself too thinly on all my interests and obligations. I've been playing some games, trying to fit in the website somewhere, cooking and seeing you all ends up taking all my time. I haven't had a satisfying round of picture taking since the grave, and I know it was only a couple of weeks ago, but still.

I want to shoot a little skit or film or something, and I'm hoping with Tim more free we can actually think of some ideas. Hopefully when I get the new site out of the way I can go back to working on luminous, and then a crazy MMOG or something.

Meaty Ohs

2006-08-16T20:36:00.000+10:00

I got a copy of Meteos for my DS, which is a puzzle game by the makers of Lumines (which is on the PSP). This is the second game I've got other than Advance Wars: DS, and unlike advance wars, which makes excellent use of both screens but doesn't use the stylus (you can but it's less powerful than the D-Pad + buttons), this game is pretty much made for the stylus, although it doesn't use the non-touch screen very well.

The great thing about the DS is that it's got a bunch of nifty "stuff" that developers can use or not, so I don't really mind the fact that games only use a subset of the features. Brain Training and it's crappy "call out the colours" aside, I have yet to see a game that really uses the microphone well. The stylus was one of those things that I figured was probably not going to be great for fast paced gaming, because I haven't yet seen any games (on, say, palmpilots) that would do such a thing.

Meteos has changed that perception. You must move blocks, a lot, and you must move them really quickly. You can't possibly move them with the D-pad. The ability to "touch" a block and "drag" it to it's proper place is astounding, and in fact it's a lot quicker than a mouse would be for the same task. This is clearly awesome. I've been playing it a lot since I got it (about 2 days ago), and I try and squeeze in some play whenever I can. It's addictive as all hell considering.

Which really brings to light what I'm doing considering I could be playing the damn game! later peeps.

A week of no internet

2006-08-03T21:49:00.000+10:00

See the pun there? It was supposed to be "A week of no interest", because I haven't posted anything here for a week or more, but in reality it's because I had no internet until last friday. Sometimes life changes so much that to figure out what actually happened, catalogue it, and make it available for everyone to see is quite a challenge, and one that I'm happy procrastinating about and then doing a half-arsed job at it.

Apologies in advance, but this is going to seem more like a journal entry than something debatory, or otherwise interesting.

The reason I've had no internet is because I've moved to a new place. This is not only expensive, but it's rather uncomfortable and extra work & hassle. The reason why I'm doing it is (largely) to prove to myself that i can do it, but also to be close to the city where the "action" is "happenin'", which mainly means I don't have to go home so early (even though in practice that won't be the case). I'm still asserting an authority over my parents' house, which means I can stay up late in either C/Town or C/Wood.

Another reason I wanted to move was to free up more time during the day (since I work up city way), so maybe I could get some exercise in. The exercise part hasn't happened yet. I have no one to blame but myself. It's interesting though, that even when you take in the fact that one of us has to cook each night, we still seem to have more free time. I think this is in part to the fact that I'm not tired, so I still feel like doing stuff close to 7, whereas before I'd get home at 7 and not feel like doing anything.

Oh yeah, I'm living with two others. One is Paulo (Part'A), and the other is a man named Matthew, who's Paulo's girlfriend's brother. I'm hoping that's not too specific. Anyway, this is not nearly as bad an idea as it seems (so far), because Matt is probably less likely to put up with crap from his sister than I am, and Paulo's mature, so we expect no issues there. Also, we're all boys, and this means we're all cool and unlikely to destroy the house because of our "feelings".

Paulo's an excellent bargain hunter, and already has a lot of house-stuff and Matt's agreed to take care of the "accounting" for us, and all I have to do is take care of the utilities (which is all pretty much automatic). That's a huge load off my shoulders, except I suppose if I were living alone, I'd have no "accounting" to do, and I'd just end up buying the extra stuff, but it's still good. Everyone here is responsible and we haven't had too many hiccups in our lives, save for the lack of a TV and lounge.

And microwave. And a table in my room. And I didn't have a towel when I first moved in, but that was my fault.

Anyway, I didn't want to live alone, and it's not just because you can afford a better house with multiple people. Part of it is the fact that I'm just not used to being alone. It's wierd not talking to someone in the evenings, or having a house where the only activity is your own. The other thing is mitigating risk. It's likely that one of you will forget something, but it's unlikely that all of you will forget it, or not notice it. It feels more secure, somehow, hearing random activity (like the shower) knowing there's someone else in the house.

I like how we don't just cook for ourselves, but we take turns and share food. I think this is probably a bit tough for Paulo (because I'm a vegetarian and he ain't), but I think Matt doesn't mind (he says as much, at least). Anyway, it's good because it gives us some time together so we can chat and eat, and I spose it's just a bonding thing. It's a bit screwed though because there are a lot of asian places near work (so I often eat thai and chinese) and Paulo and Matt tend to cook asian food, so I'm starting to get a little sick of it. I'm hoping I can learn to cook some stuff from a bunch of different cultures to bring some variety into it, but knowing my cooking skills, it'll all be the luck of the draw. Italian and Mexican are interesting foods to me, because of the amount that's vegetarian.

It's really cold here, in the mornings. I can imagine that summer here would be beautiful, but winter is not great. Worse, no central air-con means we have to use inefficient heaters which cost more to run. We mitigate by only heating our rooms (at least, I do). Even then, going into the bathroom is a rude awakening, it's that bloody cold. I find that I'm waking up later because of this (that's my excuse anyway).

I'm hoping life chills out and becomes less hectic after this. I want to look at going to Hapkido again soon, but to say my fitness is lacking is an understatement. I did 15 situps yesterday and I couldn't do any more. My stomach is still hurting. However, I find I'm missing the mental benefits of Hapkido as much as the physical benefits. If I can get back into a rhythm again, I'd be very happy.

A really odd thing to read

2006-07-24T16:35:00.000+10:00

I'm not exactly a big fan of MMOGs, and I've had enough friends play enough MMOGs that I know of their addictive qualities. However, reading this:

The games commonly associated with anti-social behaviour are multiplayer online worlds such as Everquest, Second Life and World of Warcraft.

is a little strange. In fact, I'd say it works better as a counter-point, in that these are multiplayer games, so they have to be interacting with someone, just not their lovers, school, or jobs. Perhaps it merely means that the game world is favourable to the real world. It's addictive because of the social aspects of the game. You don't want to miss out on a raid because it affects other people, and you don't want to let them down (or something). Help me out here MMOG players. Am I right or am I right?

Half Life 2: Ep 2, Portals and TF2

2006-07-21T02:09:00.000+10:00

We all know and hate STEAM, but we still use it to play the games we love. The next installment (episode 2) will come bundled with Portals and TF2 <-- initial previews for these titles... zomg (scout concussion gren jumps ftw)!!!

Reality television on ice

2006-07-18T21:48:00.000+10:00

It was once often joked among literary people, and others who generally aren't very funny, that one day the face of reality television would change, and instead of every day people they'd have professionals -- actors -- do what ordinary people do in reality television today. The idea being that actors acting out some pre-made story are more interesting to watch than Big Brother housemates sitting around doing nothing.

I think the joke was that this "new form of media" would be "drama", which has pre-existed reality television, which implies that reality television was a dead end. In theory, I'm sure it's all very funny if you really think about it. In reality, however, the joke was on them ("them" being the literati). See, reality television did change to have actors, but they were B-grade celebrities in real reality television instead of on the aforementioned pre-existing dramas. A lot of these shows sucked, like pretty much anything with Grant Denyer on it, or hosting it. However, there is an ingredient that you can combine with reality and B-grade actors that sends chills of pleasure down my spine.

That ingredient is grievous injury.

Torvill and Dean's Dancing on ice is magic, because you take people like models and actors who know nothing about ice skating, and make them do things like lifting their partners up / being lifted up, or performing moves that have names ending with "... of death". The amazing thing is, people often do get seriously injured, and that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When they do get a chance to perform, you can sometimes see the terror on their faces, and you're always on the edge of your seat, just in case that they fall on their faces and die, or lose all their teeth, or in Karl Stefanovic's case, get impaled through the balls with their partners' skates... both of them!

If you haven't been watching the show, I've prepared a quick list of the contestants, who they are, why you care, injuries sustained, and what you can expect from them in the show:

Lara Bingle: Lara Bingle is the chick who said "where the bloody hell are ya?" on those ads the poms all got in a knot about. She's 19, and really hot for someone who sounds a bit bogan. She's small and reasonably well co-ordinated, and can (and does) attempt dangerous maneuvers (like the "Face Crusher") with her partner Matt Evers (US figure skater). I believe she's had a concussion thus far.
Jules Lund: He's someone off Getaway, and a bit of a drongo, but a hilarious one. He's one to watch, because he's completely unco-ordinated, and very likely to die. Luckily, the other viewers agree, because despite the low scores from the judges he's stayed in the game thus far. He's also pretty tall and his partner Kristina Cousins is about half his height, which makes the pair exceedingly entertaining. Amazingly, no injuries yet.
Giaan Rooney: Swimmer. She's supposedly very good, but I don't remember seeing her either the first week or this week, so I can't comment further. Her partner Johnathan O'Dougherty is british and has the same name as the girl on charmed. No injuries that I can recall.
Karl Stefanovic: He's the host of the Today show, and he shits me to no end, that smarmy little bastard. Fortunately, he is really small, and his partner Linda Aubrecht is comparatively gigantic. She can lift him up, and he can't convincingly do the same for her. No injury bad enough that he stopped shitting me.
Jackie Kelly: Pavel Aubrecht is Linda Aubrecht's husband, is suitably gigantic, and partners Jackie Kelly, who is a politician who is over 40 years of age. For every episode she is on, sponsors will donate up to $8000 towards the Mamre Project's Sudanese Refugee resettlement program in St Marys. Ironically, for a politician she's also one of the few I don't want getting injured. She dances amazingly well for someone her age, has decent song choice, and I think she shows excellent emotion on stage. She's had stitches in her head and something to do with hips / backside.
Dermott Brereton: Footballer (AFL). He's big and sporty, so his reasonably small partner Pamela O'Connor (complete with Scottish accent) is quite maneuverable in his hands. However, he lacks finesse. No injury yet.
Annalise Braakensiek: Model. The one in Pizza. She's not great, but that's possibly because she's extensively injured herself. This could, in part, be because she's hilariously tall, and her partner Trent Nelson-Bond is... not. She started the first week with cracked ribs, and sat out in the second week due to broken knee-ligaments.
Michael Slater: Cricketer. Anya D'Jamirze is his partner. He's not great, but not bad and he tries. He got his hand cut open with his partner's blade. He performed tonight with a cast over his first two fingers. All his lifts had to be done one handed. I don't wish the guy harm, but still hope someone would yell "Gilly!" during a particularly difficult maneuver.
Trisha Broadbridge: Young Australian of the year 2006. Got kicked out. She may have been the one with the concussion.
Jake Wall: Model who used to be a carpenter. Dating Jennifer Hawkins. He's big and muscular, and partnering Maria Fillipov. He's always had the highest scores by far to date, but the judging is possibly biased towards men in general, and Jake specifically, because there's 3 girls and 2 guys who look sorta fruity. No injuries thus far.

So there you have it, a quick run-down of what to expect from a show which offers a lot, and pretty much delivers on it.

Peak Oil

2006-07-10T22:29:00.000+10:00

The amount of time it takes to eat a grain of rice with chopsticks increases exponentially as you reduce the amount of total rice in a bowl. This is because when there's a lot of rice, you can clump it together and eat big chunks, whereas when the rice starts going away you have fewer grains of rice to clump together, which means less rice that you can grab. You either need greater skill to handle the last few grains of rice, or you just leave them.

In that sense, rice has a "half-life", a term coined for radioactive materials which will only lose half their radioactivity in a particular period of time. This gives radioactive materials (and rice) that exponentially decaying curve that we've seen so often.

The theory behind peak oil is as with rice. In the beginning, due to the sheer amount of oil, it's easy to get at the oil itself. At a certain point, however, you either need to get better at extracting the oil, or you won't get as much for the effort, even though there may still be plenty of oil down the tube. At about the time that your increasing extraction meets the decaying, you reach a peak. The idea of this "peak oil" (the catch phrase) has gained recent attention when some dude came to this country talking about it. Four corners had a program about it just tonight, and I'm guessing with petrol prices, this will only be mentioned all the more.

What's quite surprising is how readily practically everyone in the report, from the scientists to the oil producers to the businessmen, accepted the idea that while we'd be meeting oil demand, that we'd have to pay a huge price for it. Everyone except Saudi Arabia, who are all "trrrrust me, we khave oil coming out of ourrrr frrreaking earrrrrs."

I'm a little worried about how oil prices will affect me directly. Not a lot, because not only will everyone else be screwed like I am, but I'm hoping clever living strategies will limit the problems this will cause. After all, the biggest use of oil for me is petrol (directly). I don't know why I'd be consuming large quantities of diesel, wax, rubber, or the various other hydrocarbons present in crude oil.

Indirectly, I'm shitting my pants. Again, LPG, petrol (gasoline) and diesel are the most important products of crude oil. Everything else has some sort of substitute which big companies could switch to in case things go very wrong. This may have issues, but in the end I don't expect that they will be horrible. Petrol, diesel, and LPG have the problem that they're perishable unlike things like plastics, oils, etc. which (at least in theory) can be recycled.

This affects food and (to some extent) electricity, shipping and other types of travel, etc. I haven't really begun to think of the implications, but the problem is that it could cause a severe depression that we have no way out of. I've never been in really tough times. I'm sure that years of playing video games haven't done all that much in preparing me for what's to come.

Agile film development?

2006-07-09T14:31:00.000+10:00

In engineering, there's often a time consuming process of design before any prototyping can take place, and this is often related to the amount of time and money it takes to do the prototyping. At about the time you're making a circuit board, you really don't want to repeatedly re-make the board. However, Software engineering is different. Because the cost of actually making stuff is the same as designing it, we've (I use that term loosely, I did nothing) developed "agile coding methodologies" to lighten the load of heavy design.

So it is with filmmaking. Because a lot of film has to be shot anyway, and reams of it will go to waste, as well as because the props and actors cost a lot of money, a huge amount of the effort goes to the front: story, scriptwriting, the little action drawings, etc. However, in the fields of digital filmmaking, internet filmmaking and machinima, you'd think people would develop different methodologies for making these films.

For example, machinima. Machinima has some distinct advantages over traditional filmmaking. One is that prototyping is ridiculously easy. In my ground-breaking warcraft 3 machinima classic: the Hungry Party, I did absolutely no thinking beforehand. I just put the characters in and winged it. I have the benefit of being able to go forwards and backwards in time, completely control the cameras, put the text and timings in when I feel like it. By contrast, writing a script and a story, and everything on top of that not only would have been a waste of time, but would also have resulted in a far inferior product, since I would be tied and bound to what I'd written.

Similar things go for shooting with digital cameras. Things have to be a lot more cut and dry, but if your props are pretty much set out, and the way the story goes is set out, then you can make a lot of it up on the spot. It might take a few more goes, but in the end I think the result would be better. In our award winning documentary: Fwoosh, the story of Lord Frederick Worthington III, this is exactly what happened. Our story was only somewhat written, and our props were small and set out. We knew roughly what we were doing, and ended up doing most of it on our first take. We just winged it, and took the opportunities that came to us.

It's odd then, that I see so many machinima productions that follow the values of the oldskool heavyweight film development when the children of the interweb have a lot more flexibility at their disposal. Don't we need to work on agile film development?

A new William Wallace?

2006-07-07T21:50:00.000+10:00

This guy says some useful things. I know I'm just linkpimping here, but really, that article and this one say some things rather nicely that I can't say as well.

At least, not so any of you will listen.

My laptop tale of woe

2006-07-07T19:17:00.000+10:00

I used to order things over the internet. I'm going to stop now. I'm also going to stop ordering things from places that aren't actual physical shops. It's not about the security, it's about the service. Usually, you get better prices over the internet. The problem with this is that there's significantly more demand than supply. If everything works out alright, everything is fine, but otherwise things can turn to shit really quickly.

I've talked about minidigital and them taking 3 months to deliver a trackball. I've talked about my 3 phone and how the guy fucked up my order, despite the phone I wanted being written down on my contract. But it's the little things that get me. When you ring up, people don't really want to talk to you. When you need things delivered in a specific way, people don't care. If they've got your money, they really have no incentive to help you any more.

I've usually had a good time ordering from auspcmarket. Orders are delivered promptly, and delivery is budgeted in to the price, which isn't a total ripoff. Convenient eh? All except for the delivery part. See, they deliver in office hours, and only accept delivery if I personally take it. The delivery guy can't reach my office, because it's behind a secure area. He's obviously too retarded to ask someone downstairs to ring me, so it ends up being sent back to the warehouse, where they can try to re-send it for $10 (probably with similar results) or I can come pick it up from their (luckily) conveniently located warehouse. Not so bad in the end, but still more effort than I think it was worth for a product I could've picked up for a similar price from a yum-cha computer store.

This thing takes the cake, though. Every other internet experience has cost me time. This one has cost me both time and money, and a lot of it to boot. I've got an out of date $3500 laptop I didn't want.

I've wanted a decent transformable tablet PC for a while now, but they weren't done cooking yet. Either too heavy, or crappy battery life, or too expensive. With the advantage of salary sacrifice, and the advent of newer laptops like the fujitsu lifebook T4010/T4020, and the IBM X41 tablet, I figured I could get one and be down an acceptable amount. The only problem was actually getting one. No real shops had it in stock. I really wanted to play with one beforehand to know whether a tablet was really a good idea. In the end I thought it would probably be fine and ordered it over the internet.

I did the stupid thing and went for the cheapest price. I found computer world (www.cworld.com.au). The prices were cheap, and the descriptions were terse. Doesn't matter, I thought, I know what I'm after: The IBM X41.

Fast forward to a month later when I actually got the machine. Payed for it and got it home, only to find that it wasn't the tablet. I broke into a cold sweat, and started poring over the documentation, and other crap that I signed. Earlier that day, I was having a conversation with Paulo where I discovered there was another IBM X41 -- a non-tablet version. As it turned out, that's the one I ordered.

I immediately contacted computer world. About a week and 10 or so phone-calls later, they informed me to bring the laptop in, and they'd see what they could do. They wouldn't admit fault. These were all phone-calls, so I didn't have anything I could prove, so I decided I wouldn't push the point. In the end, they couldn't send it back to their supplier, so they've basically left me with this laptop. They won't replace it with the model I want, they won't take it back. There's not much I can do.

The thing is, if you go to the lenovo website now, you'll realise that the X41 (non tablet) doesn't exist anymore. It's been replaced with the X60, so the X41 is unsellable, unless it takes a big loss.

This leaves me royally screwed, but it's a lesson learnt.

Jumping Castle

2006-06-29T23:14:00.000+10:00

I haven't had a chance to look through all the recent posts, they didn't look like much fun so I'll get to it later, in the meantime, who wants to buy a jumping castle? =) Aldi will have it on sale from next Thursday!!!!! =)

Link here.

The adventure set would've been great as well, but my girlfriend instists that I won't fit. :'(

PS Links will only work for the next week.
PPS I wanted something lighter on the site again.

Quaddmg club

2006-06-29T10:48:00.000+10:00

I hope I'm not overstepping the mark here, as I am not a moderator, but I think it may be time where we write down some thoughts of rules etc. for contributing to this site. I think we should keep in mind that this should remain as open a forum as possible, but people also need to be able to contibrute without fear of flame wars etc.

First rule of Quaddmg club; No-one talks about Quaddmg club. (Sorry, I know it's old, but it had to be said)

I think we can all agree that this site is where people can voice there own opinions about things, and they shouldn't be taken as a personal attack against other bloggers.

I also think that it's in everyone's interest that, whenever someone posts something that others may have an opinion about, we all have the right to comment and post/voice our own opinions about that particular subject - even if it's in total disagreement. Name-calling should obviously be avoided.

I'm sure no-one here purposefully comments on others' posts disagreeing with them just because a particular blogger posted it.

For me, I welcome people to disagree with my own thoughts. I always try to keep my mind open and objective on subjects - and never discount the fact that I may change my mind later. That's not to say I never feel passionate about things (quite the opposite, there are many many things I feel passionately about), but I feel being stubborn and closed minded on issues doesn't exactly promote a healthy learning environment for your mind. If I were to post something and no-one commented, or someone basically just said 'yes I agree', then who's to say my opinion is the be all and end all of that subject? Hearing from many different sources is a good thing.

I love reading other people's opinions about my posts; if I am to post something, I obviously have a strong enough opinion about it to write it down for the world (all 10 of us, or however many people read this site) to see - and for someone else to also have a strong enough opinion about it to write down their own views, to me is somewhat of a compliment. I view getting comments on a post, whether negative or positive, as a good sign. People are actually listening to what I have to say.

In summary, I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion about things - and people need to recognise that everyone's views are not always going to be the same. If you were right about everything - I'm sure you would find the world a boring place.

Australia at the World Cup

2006-06-27T19:28:00.000+10:00

Summed up in a senetence, Australia made it to the second round with every referee having a bizarre prejudice against them.

The media pushed forward the idea what Australia making it to the world cup would somehow make soccer a popular sport in Australia. However after years of being screwed over by Fifa with the Oceania grouping saga. Then the quite obvious bias of referees when we do actually make it. I believe that soccer is now almost guarenteed to be relegated as a second rate sport.

In Australian sport we value fairness as much as victory. Take the third umpire in cricket or video referee in football (Rugby). We take great lengths in each sport to ensure that the correct decision is reached by the umpires and referees. Soccer on the other hand has dubious decisions regarding penalties and fouls and hasn't attempted to rectify this in any real way.

Perhaps even more important is that in cricket, league, union and afl players get hit and hit quite hard in the course of playing. It is seen as a desireable characteristic to be able to shrug it off and continue with the exception of a clear and obvious injury which sidelines said player. Even then players don't act even half as injured as soccer players whom have simply been touched by an opposing player and fall to the ground demanding a penalty for a fake injury.

As far as most people will be concerned other countries in effect cheated and Australians will be quite content to point that out and say. If you want to play us at a real game and fair game then try Rugby, League or Cricket.

An organiser's nightmare

2006-06-18T18:01:00.000+10:00

It's not easy to organise a get-together. It can't be too close, or people will already have plans, and it can't be too far away, or people will reply too tentatively and cancel at the last minute. Throughout high school, Harpreet, Simon, and Tim have (mostly) been the organisers. I've never quite appreciated how hard their job is until I've had to organise outings. At uni, I became one of the organisers, for some reason. This is not an official title but a role that implicitly gets given to you, because for some reason everyone asks you whether anything's been happening lately.

Similar but different things happened to my high school friends post-high school. The normal organisers got busy, or lazy, or something, but the usual events just weren't happening anymore. Whenever I'd try to put things together, they'd fail miserably. Sometimes only a few people would turn up, somethings things would get cancelled before they really started. I was forced into a period of "man-dating", where I'd go out with Trevardy or Moh, and we'd be the only ones there, probably lamenting the fall of what was a great mix of high school friends.

Harpreet organised something recently, and a fair few people came (not as many as we thought would come originally, but still). It was an excellent day. The interesting thing is that I'm trying to organise something for my uni friends in a couple of weeks, and I'm not sure how to go about achieving success. I figured I'd write something to encourage those of you who are going to actually attend these events to help the organiser along:

Reply Promptly: Even if the answer is "I don't know", it helps the organiser know that they've got a successful PING. If this is not how you want to be contacted, let the organiser know straight away. The worst thing that can happen is you telling them the next day that you didn't know the event was on. If the organiser can't tell between a lazy bastard and someone who didn't get the message then they might neglect to call that someone.
Invite Others / Fix invitations: Groups often have sub-groups. There'll be "chains" or small molecules of best-friends who can instantly tell that someone's email is wrong, or that someone hasn't been invited that really should be. The organiser isn't strictly not-inviting people, he probably just doesn't know their emails.
Be direct and honest: "I don't want to go because I don't know anyone and I don't like mini-golf" is a much easier problem to deal with than mysteriously not going for some reason, then mysteriously going later when conditions are altered. These can be complicated rules (I'll go only if Bob or Jane go, but not if both Bob and Jane go), but it's better having complicated rules than a yes or no.
Understand that the event itself is not important: If you're playing mini-golf, you're not supposed to be an excellent mini-golf player or anything, you're just there to chat and have fun, and mini-golf is just a setting in which you're doing the chatting and having fun. Mini-golf is not the activity, but the setting, where the activity is really hanging out with everyone else. Don't say no to a movie if you've seen it already, just say "I'm in, but I've already seen 'Days of Thunder 3: Tokyo Drift'". Worst case, you'll watch a movie you've already seen, but you'll still have fun with everyone else.
Don't cancel at the last minute: This is really a "don't change your mind at the last minute" but it's usually a good thing if you can make it when you said initially that you couldn't (but if you do then ring first). However, last-minute cancellations are worse than they you might think. Not only does it mean that resources that were allocated to you by the organiser must go to waste, but it also means that someone else who was going because you were going now also can't / won't make it. This can have cascade effects which are devasating to any gathering. Further, sometimes people can't make it for legitimate reasons, and that can have flow on effects, and you're effectively doubling that effect, unless you don't have a good reason.

For a lot of these points some part of the responsibility still goes to the organiser, in that they should mention that you should reply even if you don't know that you can make it, but their job is hard enough as it is. Please make it a little easier. They're trying to have fun during the event as well!

A potential solution to the mac problem

2006-06-16T22:25:00.000+10:00

I tried to look more carefully at someone using a mac today, seeing exactly what was slowing them down, and I think I've got it. See, macs have their menu bar at the top of the screen as opposed to on the window (this is not a bad thing, just different). However, modern applications come with more than just menu items. They generally have status bars, toolbars, tabs, etc. These appear on the window itself.

So now you have two potential places to click around on: the top of the window and the top of the screen. In order to get their applications nicely centered on the screen, mac users often have to click and drag to resize their application. A lot of the resizing happens due to the users trying to click on something at the top of the window, and looking at the status bar at the bottom.

Now the reveal:

First, move the status bar to the bottom of the screen, not the window. This way switching between applications changes the status bar, switching between windows keeps the status bar in the same viewable place. Do the same thing for toolbars, but at the top, as if it were a maximised window in Windows. The downside of this approach is that there's a lot of screen real estate used by default, but with clever auto-hiding and information "squeezing" there's no reason this can't take as little space as it currently does. The big advantage is that the toolbars are always there, where they're accessible. You can click on toolbar buttons for an application without being able to see the entire window / the top of the window / etc. A lot of the resizing that currently occurs should be minimised. If the mac panels are anything like gnome panels, you'll be able to place them anywhere around the screen (like the left or the right) for a flexible setup. The second advantage is that each window, where these controls are duplicated, get a lot more screen space to display everything.

Second, get rid of the scrollbar on document viewers. Scrollbars really don't take advantage of the fluid window management in the mac. They also limit the power of the scroll wheel. My proposal is that the window grows to the size of the document (at least, perceptually). If the webpage is 1000 pages long, the window grows to 1000 pages long. In order to "scroll" down the webpage, you have to move the entire window up or down. Now you can use the scroll-wheel to move actual windows around. Modern scroll wheels are two dimensional, so this makes manipulating windows very easy. Easier if you add IE-style auto-scrolling. The big downside is that now you can't completely control the size of certain windows, but I see more mac users size windows to what they would've been with the above implementation than to some other size.

Finally, get rid of the title-bar. The only real reason for the title bar in a mac is for shading and moving a window. Because window movement can now be done with the scroll wheel, the major purpose of the title bar is gone. It takes up room, and it makes the top of the window more important than the rest, which is clearly incompatible with the "windows move everywhere" philosophy above. Get a key combination + middle mouse button to shade. This way middle mouse button + scroll wheel + autoscroll can control all window motion. A window should shade to where your mouse is, and re-expand to where you left it. This allows users to shade docs out of the way when they're doing other things.

I'm thinking this is a good idea. What do the mac users think?

Loser interface

2006-06-15T20:18:00.000+10:00

Macs. Mac users, more specifically. They claim they have a superior user interface to the rest of us. I mean, if there was something that was supposed to make it worth it for a PC user to switch to a Mac, it was supposed to be user interface. I mean, I generally accepted that despite the fact that I could never (since primary school) make heads or tails of the mac UI, that it was somehow better than the ones Windows and Linux users have. However, I've seen a fair share of OSX and OS9 mac-heads use their macs. I expected to see them achieving their goals quickly, without thinking. Instead, I found them floundering, slow and ineffective at getting their tasks done. I've seen Nathan & Tim, and they're very much included in this group.

First, I don't claim that the Windows users are necessarily much better off. I've sat with a number of Windows users, and their "umm"ing and "aah"ing and random floating through menus has prompted me to ask "what exactly are you trying to do?". However, all the coders I work with are extremely quick, regardless of whether they use Windows or Linux. I've only ever seen one quick Mac coder, and he was the guy doing the presentation for Ruby on Rails. His voice alone should convince you that he's had to irrevocably alter his body and mind to be able to use a mac at that speed.

This is something I don't understand. People who use photoshop are really quick at using photoshop, regardless of whether it's on a mac or in windows. When it comes to using their "native" OS, however, an OS which is supposed to make it easy for them to do what they want, they just click around like idiots, seemingly lost in the pretty graphics and the multitude of windows. I just don't understand it.

I claim to have one of the better UIs at work. Quick multiple desktops, file browsing, and terminal windows. There are two people who are I've seen that are better, and one of them is a wierd mouse freak (types and cut-and-pastes a lot), and the other pretty much exclusively uses cygwin. And he's fast when he does. You can do a lot to windows to make it more Linux-ey, and give it the power to get shit done, but now I not only have no idea how someone could use a mac, I also have no idea why.

To pull the envelope

2006-06-15T17:41:00.000+10:00

Although this particular article is old news, this story is of particularly interest to me in regards to the gay marriage issue in Australia. What does Mr Ruddock mean when he says "the fundamental institution of marriage"? The PM speaks of "Judeo-Christian tradition". What traditions, customs and concepts are we talking about when it comes to matrimonial continuity?

Fifty years ago, having a child outside of wedlock would lead to shunning from family members and the greater community. Today, such a thing doesn't even raise an eyebrow. Indeed, being a "single mum with a daughter" is seen by some as being a sign of female empowerment, and that not having a husband doesn't make you any less of a person. According to Roman Catholic Canon law, it is required that both the man and woman be baptised, yet we allow marriage between people where one or both participants aren't baptised. It isn't even necessary that the people in question follow "Judeo-Christian tradition".

Let us look at the Marriage Act 1961. In particular, the words "for life". I would ask those who speak of defending the tradition of marriage make divorce illegal, since it clearly contradicts the very definition that the Commonwealth has outlined. This way, Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock can both be genuine when they make appeals to "tradition". Perhaps there should also be an amendment requiring that all brides-to-be must be virgins before they vow to "love and obey".

Although critical of events in the US, this strip from This Modern World sums things up far better than I can.

Sunny's d20 campaign

2006-06-13T16:44:00.000+10:00

What's happening with this? I'm still very interested if other people are!

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-13T13:46:00.000+10:00

14 September 2006. Mark this date in your diary. At this stage, this is the official Australian public release of the film An Inconvenient Truth.

I have seen the preview. A friend at work has actually seen the film (at the Sydney Film Festival on the weekend) and said it is the most disturbing thing he has ever seen. And I am desperate to see it!

According to this film (from what I'm told), the Kyoto Protocol isn't nearly enough to stop Global Warming. And the Australian Government still refuses to sign even this. We are one of the worst pollutants among western countries as well. I believe we're 2nd (per capita) behind the USA.

Scoring Games

2006-06-12T15:59:00.000+10:00

I like UGVMs method of scoring games. They score out of 5, where:

Don't bother
Only get it if you're obsessed with the genre / frachise
Average. Playable, but not awesome
Good, but maybe a couple of flaws
Must buy!

Other magazines will do percentages or scores out of 10, but with floating point accuracy (72%, or 7.2 out of 10). I find that it's completely useless to do this, because a person's opinion might sway them between a 7.3 or a 7.4, but it's very difficult to cross the border between a "4" and a "5". Conclusion: the most effective dynamic range is a score out of 5. The way I cope with this is to map everything to a universal UGVM score:

0-50% goes to 1
50-60% goes to 2
60-80% goes to 3
80-90% goes to 4
90-100% goes to 5

I made this decision because of the intuitive feel someone gives to a percentage. Anything below 50% is a waste of time. You'll give someone a 6/10 if the game wasn't complete crap, but still not worth the time or money. Average games sit between 60-80%, good games at 80-90%, and excellent games 90%+.

However, a person only has a binary decision to make: do I buy this game or not, so what's the use of 5 levels of depth? The reason is to lower the effects of opinions and personality when describing how good the game is. A score of 5 or 1 means "don't bother reading the review, you'll love / hate this game." A score of 4 or 2 means "you'll probably like / hate this game, but read the review to find out why. There might be problems / redeeming features that might make this a show-stopper for you / make you consider buying this game." 3 means average. If you like it, buy it.

I'm discussing this because I just bought a DS lite, which means my normal routine of "just download / borrow the game, and if you like it enough, then buy it" won't work. I'm going to have to shell out hard earned cash before I really know whether the game is actually good or not. It's mitigated by the fact that GBA & DS games are relatively cheap. Because I don't actually have a collection yet, I'm going to start with the 5s and go down, starting from the genres I like.

Tetris DS

To say Tetris was the defining game of all gameboys might be a stretch, but only just. The real things I'm looking at with this game is the multiple play modes, online play, as well as direct connect against 10 others. The nice thing about this game is that you only need one cart for something like 10 players, and they can all play against each other. Clearly, this is only a good buy if I can entice others into buying a DS lite, but I'm hoping that it won't be too hard.

Meteos

Meteos is a puzzle game by the makers of lumines, and the interesting thing about this is that after matching pieces, instead of having the pieces disappear, they "blast off" lifting up the pieces above them as well. If the pieces above them are too "heavy", the blasted off pieces will actually fall back down. Adding to the fact that you can't play effectively without the stylus means that this ought to be a unique and interesting game which can use the DSes functionality.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Dual Strike here is clearly a homage to the system it's running on. This thing is portable turn based strategy with some RTS elements. From what I've heard about this game, this is "the one" to own from my perspective.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Of all the games with "DS" at the end, this has to be the one with the most thought put into it. I mean neither the word "Dual" or "Screen" are used in "Dawn of Sorrow". I've heard a lot about the Castlevania series, but never really got to play it. Maybe this will be the title that starts it all off for me.

Mario Kart: DS

I read a review that calls this the best kart game ever. While I'm not a big fan of the kart racing games, I know that everyone else on the planet is. The only reason to get this is that all my other friends have bought a DS and also Mario Kart, and I have to get this game or else become an outcast.

Nintendogs?

The questionmark is there because I'm mentioning this last. I'm rather hot and cold about this game. It's like Animal Crossing, and I generally like the idea, but it's sort of creepy at the same time. The gameplay is unique and relaxing, and it takes full advantage of the DSes features. However, when I envision myself sitting on a train looking at my DS saying "Sit... stay... good boy!", getting wierd stares from everyone else, I kinda think "maybe I don't want this game in my library." Having said that, the idea of having a dog without the responsibility of taking care of it and cleaning up after it is a big plus, so maybe it's worth it.

Games as a religion

2006-06-11T00:22:00.000+10:00

Like, I'm like a smart guy, right, so you know people ask me, like you know what's your religion and stuff, and I'm like, "you know it's like RTS", and they're like "what's that?" and I'm like "you know, it's kinda like buddhism"
- teh pwnerer

I see Pure Pwnage as post-modern sarcasm. As Harpreet would put it, "It'd be funny if it weren't so true." When approaching religion, the gag here seems rather simple: you understand the world through the eyes of your main occupation (where "occupation" here means "what occupies you" as opposed to "what pays the bills"). Teh Pwnerer's understanding of religion is as a type of game. It seems juvenile at the beginning, but as a broader statement it's quite true. However, when I think of myself through this viewpoint, I see how deep the similarity is.

I'm not religious, and I don't claim to have any understanding of god, or anything deeper about how the universe was created (other than "the big bang makes sense, as opposed to every other thing I've heard"). The main point is that I don't care. See, Michael seems to have it out for god. He says things to try to disprove the existence of god. He's "atheistic" in the sense that he believes there is no god. The difference is that I don't know if there's a god or not, but mainly, I don't care. I finally understood why when I was thinking about play.

Play is something that can be generalised to anything that lives. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that the very definition of life is play. There are many definitions of life, and they all have some bearing on reality. The chemical definitions make sense sometimes, and the clinical definitions make sense in others. However, I've found the most robust definition of life to be "does it play?" I think it's a lot stronger as a statement than Descartes' "I think, therefore I am.". I would venture "I play, therefore I am."

Perhaps that's taking it a bit far, but I read somewhere once that fun is the highest goal (I don't know where, and I can't find a link), and the idea really resonated with me. Higher than life or death, higher than love or sacrifice, higher than whatever else you can think of. Just recently, I was thinking about this again, and I remembered the quote above, and I came upon an idea for people who are overly religious. When I play a game, I'm playing in the twisted world of the creators. The game designers, coders, artists, and musicians all come together to make something that I can take actions in. These actions rarely have anything to do with knowing or remembering the people who made the game. In contrast, the people who made the game probably put a fair bit of themselves in the game. It lives and breathes like they do, and it says the things they want to say, and it works like they intended for it to work.

Now translate this to the Jehovah's witnesses that come around every weekend. If you look at "god" as whatever created this "game" (it must be a game, because the purpose is clearly to play), then God clearly intends for you just to play the game, not waste time talking about God. If you're having fun, God's probably happy with that, since after all, he is the game. Everything in life lives and breathes and works like God intended. There might be easter eggs in the game, like shooting the head of John Romero in Doom, but that's more a sideline. It's kinda like those little things the designer does to let you know he's there, but for the most part he should be invisible. If you see a miracle, it's probably you unlocking one of God's easter eggs, but that's all. Now go back and play your game.

The best show on TV

2006-06-10T22:09:00.000+10:00

Remember that night I came over to watch soccer (Germany vs Costa Rica) at Tim's house, and we were watching Rage from time to time? I taped that rage on my PC, and one of the videos had a spellbinding start of a man jumping off a balloon, practically in space. The music wasn't great, but it set the moment off perfectly. At first I thought "maybe this is really digitally edited footage, and they purposely made it grainy and shaky to make it believable."

So I typed "highest skydive ever" into google, and I got info about a guy named Joe Kittenger. I immediately typed in "Kittenger video" into google, and got this. It was the same video as the clip, so I have a higher quality version of it recorded. I think they've padded the music video with some clips of the water and stuff, but it's mostly genuine.

I am a prick

2006-06-07T18:56:00.000+10:00

My name is Tim and I am a jealous prick!

This article is now up for vandalism by those who have the power to do so!

Let the vandalism commence:

My name is Tim and I'm a big doodoohead and I like to eat my own doodoo. I like spice girls (but still not as much as Nathan). And nathan is a poopooface.

A test with zest

2006-06-07T08:25:00.000+10:00

I've tried to setup a comment-forwarding account with gmail. It was a real pain to setup the filters, since gmail only seems to let you use two accounts for any given rule. Luckily, I managed to figure out three different rules to use so I manage to cover six of us. If you aren't getting the comments emailed to you, want to change it to a different email address, or don't even want to get them at all, please tell me!

Testing will commence below.

Popcorn time!

2006-06-06T20:27:00.000+10:00

I've recently made a few movies of some things in World of Warcraft. These movies are short so Nathan should't get hooked by watching them. Also he has dialup so it'll be a while between watching both of them.

One is called Enigma V Rajaxx and weighs in at approx. 4.3megs.

A higher quality version can be found here and is 8.7 megs.

The other is called Restoration Druid Crits and is slightly highest quality and comes in at 8.1 megs.

If your not too familiar with World of Warcraft the most interesting one is probarbly the first and smaller of the two. The other does a much better job at coordinating the music, scenes and action in each scene. Grated the damage numbers probarbly don't mean a whole lot to the uninitiated.

Having uploaded these I also found some Quake movies I made ages ago.

Here's the first which is a compliation of those games we had ages ago during a lan at Sunny's. I called it Quake Noobage. 4.9 megs

Elder scrolls 4: Oblivion

2006-06-05T22:11:00.000+10:00

The Elder Scrolls series of games always produces a fair bit of buzz, and a lot of people talk gleefully about how great it is. I recently played Morrowind and didn't like it one bit, but cayenne promises with regards to Oblivion made me take the plunge once again, and maybe really try this time. When I heard it came with no CD copy protection, I was incensed further into trying it. When a company does the right thing™ by trusting their users, I fully want to support them.

Of course, first I have to betray them by stealing an easily pirateable copy so I can see if I can finally become one of the "Elder Scrolls people". After one day of playing it, here's what I found:

Ugly Races

Most of the races look the same, and all of them are ugly. By "look the same" here I mean there's not much to physically distinguish them, except for the elves and the "cat-people". Even the elves are roughly human, except for their ears and elongated faces. The "cat people" are thus the only truly unusual race in the game, and because they're effectively furries, they're pretty freaking gross. I didn't mind though, I figured I'd be one of the human-ish races and generally mind my own business.

More importantly, though, is that they're ugly. By "ugly" here I mean there's nothing to stylistically make them stand out. In other games (using nwn as an example) we have only a few 3D models as representative of their races, and they all pretty much look the same, but they look easily distinguishable. With the level of detail available in this game they're almost skirting the "looks creepy" curve. Different characters don't walk differently, or talk differently, or are built differently, or anything. It's a game of carbon copies, except the face is always exquisitely different, except for being hideous. It's hard to make a hawttt chixorz in the game. I don't just mean busty blondes here, but even someone with some sort of character is difficult to produce in the game.

I think it's dumb to mess with "chin depth" etc. to get your character to the way you like it. The sliders should probably be more like "Fierce / Bashful" "Loving / Loathing" "Courageous / Coward", with the option of messing with the amount your nose sticks out if you're still not happy at the end. Messing with the sliders is funny, but the result is probably not what anyone wants at the end.

Also, where are the short dudes?

Conversations

A big part of RPGs is walking around talking to people. This is part of the game mechanic, but it also needs to be as engrossing as possible. Morrowind had this annoying "web-page" style talking interface which was disorienting and fruitless. You never knew if you'd talked to someone about everything you wanted to talk to them about. It also didn't feel like a conversation, more like an "information dump" of what the other guy knows. Further, influencing them is done totally separately to the "conversation" itself. You can brag or say nice things to the other guy, but the mere fact that you're doing this in a separate UI to the talking is jarring, and pulls you out of the game.

Oblivion improves the situation by having actual talking, and having all the options in a separate menu. It even dulls the menu items after you've finished talking, but it still feels like you're getting someone's brain dump rather than having a conversation. You can't really form characters in your head in this game, like "this guy is funny", or "that girl tells great stories".

Quests

One big problem in Morrowind was the lack of clear direction in the game. I don't even remember if there even was a journal in there. Oblivion has a journal, and a little red arrow which tells you where to go. You don't have to go there, which feels very liberating, but at least you know where to go.

Technical

Technically, I think the game is great. Despite the fact that most people I've talked to have said things about bugs in the AI or what-not, I find this to be one of the best games I've played, technically (certainly not as bad as Vampire: Bloodlines). Load screens are quick, and the world loads transparently. Quick saves are practically instant. The UI is mostly good. If there's something I can complain about it's the fact that when casting a destructive spell you can't aim properly, but it's a minor issue.

System

This system is very different from D&D, and is perhaps the most jarring part of the game for me. The mere fact that you get acrobatics skills by jumping up and down is wierd. The fact that you get them so gradually is also wierd. The wierdest thing, though, is the buffs you can give yourself through your class, which seems to fly in the face of the "Doing what you want will make you better at it" philosophy in the rest of the game. I also don't know certain things about it, like "if I fight a harder monster, will my skills grow quicker?"

All of these things are making it a pretty difficult pill to swallow. Having said that, it's a lot more pleasant than Morrowind, and if I can get over the initial learning curve, perhaps I'll even buy it!

Google maps has Australian Roads

2006-06-05T17:46:00.000+10:00

w00t! I mean, we can actually use Google Maps / Earth for useful things now!!!

The bar above

2006-06-04T21:46:00.000+10:00

The black bar above is great for splitting up the "header" part of this site from the rest, but it's functionally completely useless. I've known this for a while, but I've been too lazy to fix it. Not only can IE users not mouseover the links, the links aren't even all that useful. Further, it takes me a while everytime to figure out that we have a search function. Looks like it's not so prominently displayed. I recommended arrows to Julian, which he's implemented, but I haven't done the same. I partly blame blogger for this, but it's pretty much my own fault. The archives especially are in such a huge list, there's no way of managing it all. Maybe there ought to be a separate page for the archives. Further, "Story mode" should probably be changed to "the story so far..." and displayed a little more prominently. I mean, we've only had 5 episodes, and I want you guys to write some as well (bastards)!

We also need some way of collecting posts about ourselves, so there's more than just a little description of ourselves up there. I picture a collection of all of our posts when we click the faces. That plus a little bit of shifting, and probably even resizing the faces, and re-drawing them so I'm not stealing any real material.

This still leaves the question of what to do with the bar above. One idea is to move the story mode to the sidebar, as well as any other blogs of note, and have the bar above simply for the archives, which would give some easy way of browsing the past articles. The faces would select only the blogs written by particular people. I'll think more on this.

So Karismatic

2006-06-04T21:12:00.000+10:00

Added some more Kari images. Enjoy. I'd add sarcastic comments but I'm doing it so much now that I'm wondering if I've crossed the line into "are you being sarcastic dude?" "I don't even know anymore".

So seriously then, one of the things I've always actually liked about Kari is her dress sense. She always wears out there wacky clothes, which sometimes go to the point of being bogan, but they're worn with such purpose it looks cool. The one episode of Mythbusters I've always wanted to upload pictures from is the balloons one, because she's wearing the most crazy shit in that episode. Here's a list I've compiled:

The black top with a lower-cut, smaller blue top over it. The arm-glove thingies make it look appropriate, despite the bogan appearance of the dress.
Bright pink and red top with fluro green fuzzy thingy and reindeer ears. Looks like something a five year old would wear, but she's like a five year old "whose ass just will not quit", whatever that means.
Finally, and most importantly, the white singlet with a black bra (with straps showing), and a red jumper and a kilt. The wolverine claws add a touch of the ordinary. Seriously, they should totally make a poster with her wearing that outfit and the claws!

I'd like to assert that I'm still masculine, despite the fact that I've been talking about clothes in this post.

We'll be normal soon

2006-06-03T12:26:00.000+10:00

I'm reading the escapist from start to present. Frankly, I'm losing the battle, because they seem to publish issues quicker than I can read them. Fortunately, I seem to have detected a pattern. See, each of the writers seems to write one type of article, and by type I really mean the same article over and over again but with different words and pictures. This is really speeding up the process.

I'm slightly irked everytime I read the "we're becoming normal people now" article in it's different manifestations. The premise of the article is simple: Look at gaming, everyone is playing video games now. Sony and Microsoft have taken consoles and made them entertainment items. Everyone buys them, not just gamers. We should accept these normal people into our gaming culture, so they realise that we're not insane axe wielding maniacs. Nerds are about to become cool. All hail the new flesh.

Except that it's all bullshit. Firstly, if everyone plays games, and you're better than they are, it still won't make you cooler than them. Secondly, if normal people play games now, and they didn't play games before, and you did play games before, you must not have been normal. Them playing games simply makes them normal, and you still not normal, except now the both of you play games. The difference is that games will now be big budget extravaganzas of everything you hate about TV, sports, and popular music. No longer are they catering to you, the gamer, they're catering to Average Joe, and you won't want to play the games he wants to play.

So now you're still a freak, only surrounded by normal people in an increasingly unfamiliar setting. And it gets worse.

You see, absolute freaks sometimes hang out with lesser freaks. The lesser freaks accept them because, well, they're all freaks, and the absolute freaks aren't really all that bad, in context. When the lesser freaks are absorbed into the realms of normality, the normal friends of the lesser freaks are less tolerant of the absolute freaks, and the absolute freaks end up being left alone. This makes them turn into axe wielding maniacs. These axe wielding maniacs are going to go after the lesser freaks for abandoning them.

They will kill you, and you can't do anything about it because they're 1337er than you are!

The real solution is to realise why we want to become normal: women. See, if there were more freaky women, more men would want to become freaks than the other way around. All we have to do is to emotionally scar little girls so they become freaks. Once this ratio grows above 50%, we win fellas... we win.

Not a day goes by when we don't call the Japanese crazy!

2006-06-03T09:35:00.000+10:00

Speaking of Beyond Tomorrow, the other night they did a story on the Burj Dubai being built, and also mentioned the proposed Sky City 1000 in Tokyo.

This reminded me of Arcologies in Sim City, and I wanted to do some further research. Apparently there are quite a number of proposed buildings like this, and it may not be too far in the future when we see them.

I came across this site, which lists the proposed tallest buildings in Tokyo, as well as some other famous buildings there.

The X-Seed 4000 is visioned at 4km high (taller than Mt Fuji), with 800 floors, and designed for up to 1,000,000 people to live/work in. Although, IMHO, this is simply unachievable, they have completely designed this. Can you imagine the work that has gone into this plan!?

We've all said it, and it's time to say it again - those crazy Japanese have done it again!

Please get off of my goat

2006-06-02T12:20:00.000+10:00

Ads suck - nobody disagrees with this. They are a necessary evil. There are numerous particulars about them that can be an annoyance, but those that especially get to me are American ads. Or, more specifically, American ads that have been re-dubbed using Australian actors. It isn't like they're replacing the audio on an ad from Germany - US advertisements are in English, and so can be understood by the vast majority of viewers here.

So why do it? Do American accents make people a little reluctant to buy a product? We watch their TV and films more enthusiastically than we do our own (when was the last time you saw a domestic film?), so that can't be it. Does having an Australian audio track count as part of our "Local Content" quota, much like they do with Beyond Tomorrow and their Mythbusters segments? Whatever the reason, the greatest injustice is that everyone of these ads is done by the same two actors. Every single time. Their voices are burned into my brain, and I am sure that encountering these individuals will set me off on a murderous rampage. Think hypnotised CIA assassins, unaware of their status until they hear a certain word or phrase.

Speaking of advertising, whatever happened to the ads IBM would make? I really liked them. More ads that have clever dialogue and good photography and less shouting at me about water-damaged goods sitting around at Homebush that must be sold by this Sunday.

PS Kari Byron 3D ass

Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden

2006-06-01T09:44:00.000+10:00

English Soccer hooligans will be required to report to their local police station at kick-off time for English matches in this year's Soccer World Cup. They won't even be allowed to leave the country at all, having their passports taken off them.

The cynic in me says that this is over the top. But on the other hand, they're English.

Coffee Time

2006-06-01T09:20:00.000+10:00

A couple of amusing (some aren't) short articles in the Sydney Morning Herald today. They continue on to the next page.

Ahem... um... anyone up for a trip to Collaroy? I need to take a whizz.

Will I need to move back home?

2006-05-29T14:31:00.000+10:00

I just got a SMS from my housemate telling me that it's not working out and I need to move.

I'm not that surprised that I need to move, but what's with it being via SMS? So on the second attempt, after three weeks I already need to move again, then again the previous time it was only one week before she decided she hated me so it's getting better. That time everyone my girlfriend and I talked to thought it was because of jealousy, this time I think it's partly because she's obsessively clean/tidy and had no interest in talking to me at all.

Just as well I hadn't bought furniture and a fridge and so forth... just a quess sized mattress that I need to work out how I'll transport again...

It's ok, I have a PhD in pwnage

2006-05-28T23:20:00.000+10:00

Before you go under the knife, find out if your doctor is properly accredited... challenge him to a Quake dm.

Coaster factory

2006-05-27T16:08:00.000+10:00

I've been burning DVDs today to free up some space on my hard drive. Out of 5 attempts I've only burnt 1 successfully. It doesn't appear to be my burner's fault, as when I pull the DVD out I can clearly see areas where the plastic is malformed and the data is clearly not burned. It's interesting the difference there is between CDs and DVDs. With CDs I've had a relatively good experience with burning, and considered switching off verification altogether. With DVDs, however, it's all too important to check that the data has been written correctly.

I've bought no-name el-cheapo DVDs, which does imply a lower quality standard, but considering my failure rate, it's surprising that you can legally call them DVD-Rs at all.

On this note, I've been looking for a good CD burner for gnome for a while now, with no avail. GnomeBaker is an apt solution, and much prettier than GnomeToaster, which is simply too kludgy to constitute any sort of solution to the problem. However, missing a "verify" feature implies that I'm stuck with the proprietary, ugly, and yet somehow still the best solution I can find so far: NeroLinux. I'm eyeing bonfire, which looks like it'll have some sweet features (but no mention of verify), but I really don't want to be forced to use k3b, which, despite the fact that it looks like the best damn burner I can find for linux (a lot like Alcohol 120%) is for KDE.

Fuck KDE.

The miracle of copyright

2006-05-24T21:45:00.000+10:00

If you've ever seen the intro to "House" in Australia, you'll notice that the theme song sounds a lot like Teardrop from Massive Attack, but... well... it isn't. However, those of you who've watched the American version (from having been in america or downloading an episode) or have bought the DVDs, you'll notice that the song in the intro actually is Massive Attack's Teardrop. In fact, even the closed captions in Australia erroneously state that "Teardrop - Massive Attack" is playing. Why is it they re-do the theme song in Australia?

I could only think of two reasons for this. The first is that Teardrop, complete with video clip of in-utero baby singing, was a pretty popular song in Australia. Maybe it wasn't so popular in America, so a lot of people in America would've been "introduced" to the song (and the composers) through the show. A lot of shows do this now, using slightly off-beat artists in their intros, and it mutually benefits both parties. In Australia, already being so popular, Teardrop could've made the show look cheap (like it was stealing the whole in-utero idea, maybe). I think specifically noting the difference in release times: Teardrop is a really old song here compared to House, which has only recently started airing.

Anyway, that reason sounds a bit weak, mainly because of the fact that it implies that the guys who make the show care enough about Australia to re-dub the intro, or that the station in Australia cares enough to change it to suit. I don't buy that either of them care for this market. I think the issue is one of copyright and royalties. Basically, I think the show doesn't have the right to play Teardrop in any country but America, so they had to quickly cut it out and replace it with the "slightly different" version you hear in Australia.

That's the miracle of copyright.

Violence in Australian outback

2006-05-24T13:32:00.000+10:00

I wish to bring your attention to an elightening letter to the editor published in The Australian recently.

I live in and work for a remote Aboriginal community. In considering the debate about social dysfunction in communities such as mine, I ask you to consider how you would cope living like the people here have to live.

Take at least 10 people from your extended family -- children, the frail ederly, relations with addictions or mental health problems -- and then imagine them living with you and your family in a small, three-bedroom house. Imagine that maybe only one, or two, if you are extremely lucky, has some sort of part-time paid work. Imagine that there is no cinema, no restaurant, no shopping centre -- no form of family entertainment to allow you to get out of your crowded house. It is 150km of dangerous, car-destroying dirt road to the sealed road, and another 300km to a town with such facilities. Fuel costs $1.70 per litre.

Imagine this for a year, two years, for your lifetime. Imagine the impact on your children: how can they do any school homework, get a good night's sleep or get your undivided attention, even for a moment? How would you personally cope with the noise, the mess, the unending chaos of such a household?

We need to tackle the fundamental problems that cause social dysfunction in remote communites, and in this town, we need to start with housing and community infrastructure. I was angry to hear Mal Brough say that this isn't the issue and I challenge him to try living like the brave people here do and see for himself how it feels.

Kerry Shegog
Ernabella, SA

Although it would be hard to draw a link between lack of infrastructure and the horrible accusations of things like the raping of children etc., nonetheless, I thought it was very important to highlight an example of government neglect of small rural communities, and the plights of Australian citizens in our own country.

We've all seen on television the violence that occurs overseas; even the thought of evacuating Australian citizens from East Timor does not really raise an eyebrow for the Australian public. But I have to ask why people aren't more concerned when they hear about the idea of "evacuating" citizens out of an Australian town because of violence. See these links; 1 - 2. Are people just used to it now, and expect this kind've thing? Or is it some sort of denial; "This only happens in places like Africa."?

I want to know why there aren't more people asking about the moral responsibilities of government, and questioning the socio-economic effects of discriminatory government policy. I think this is where the Australian 'laid-back' attitude should be put to shame.

Like a tiger

2006-05-20T11:00:00.000+10:00

I had an interesting experience while driving home on Friday night. I was driving home from work, speeding just a little, as everyone is wont to do when going home from work. I must say I was being conservative considering it was a friday night and everyone was travelling 20kph over the speed limit as opposed to the "standard" everyday protocol of 10kph.

Speeding up from behind me comes some fierce driver. I was thinking "wow, this is one of those crazy 1 in 10 drivers that decides for some reason to drive 40-50 kph over the speed limit instead of just 20." When it went past me I realised it was a copper, and slowed down a little. I'm not sure why, because it had already passed me, but still. The cars in front of me were still speeding, and the cop car casually changed lanes behind it's victim, and flicked on the lights. The guy was pulled over. We all kept driving on.

I felt like a deer stalked by a lion, that got away.

Ass-kissing

2006-05-17T14:15:00.000+10:00

Is there such a thing as too close?

Link to ABC article

JH <3 GB 4eva

The War Against Net Neutrality

2006-05-15T14:12:00.000+10:00

Going over my daily look at web-comics, I came across an interesting blog read at PVPonline.

Basically the US congress is considering passing a new Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enchancement Act (COPE). This act allows the service provider to control the content that you view, the speed to any given site and even which programs you can access. Just add money and "business plans" into the mix and you'll soon catch my drift.

I would advise you to take a closer look at what net neutrality is, and make up your own mind. For our US readers, there is a petition you can sign to oppose this insane act.

EEEyoo

2006-05-12T12:45:00.000+10:00

I always feel a little left out at this time of the year, and that's because of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that's held in America. To satiate your curiosty, take a look inside. We need more Aussie gamers, and a larger, more passionate gaming / developer community to garner that sort of interest with which to entice people and companies to pay us a visit down under.

You say potato, I say pomme de terre

2006-05-09T15:25:00.000+10:00

Last weekend, in addition to us starting fires and certaian unnamed individuals making light of my problems with spiders, we went into a discussion regarding the way we pronounce things and our preferences for certain words over others. Language is something I am passionate about, and I am sure it is a topic I've brought up many times before.

Wikipedia has a section on the bottom half of the page about how different cities pronounce a certain sound in certain words. Somewhere above is an explanation on the difference between /aː/ and /æ/. Make sure you understand it before posting your own results.

/æ/ is the A in trap, lad, had.
/aː/ is the A in bath, palm, start, bard, hard.

For me...

Graph - Always /æ/.
Chance - I use both, but usually /æ/ when speaking casually with the fast Australian slur.
Demand - /æ/ as a verb, but /aː/ as a noun. We demand that you meet our demands!
Dance - As above.
Castle - Always /aː/.
Grasp - Always /aː/.
Contrast - Always /aː/.

Is there a nuclear wessel in the house?

Sweet Mother of Justice

2006-05-08T18:39:00.000+10:00

In a tumultuous turn of events, Sigil is now co-publishing Vanguard with SOE. Before I could /wrist, I came upon the faq and am now rocking back and forth curled up in the fetal position. It's very hard for me to look past Sony's past indiscretions - guess I went cold turkey on MMO's just in time... /twitch.

Unforced Feedback

2006-05-07T15:46:00.000+10:00

As time goes on, people are finding fewer and fewer uses for analog game controllers. While this is less true of consoles, it is certainly the case for PCs. The keyboard and mouse reign supreme here. A while ago there was often a use for joysticks and possibly even gamepads. Games with complex controls like Mechwarrior required fancy joysticks with many buttons and sliders to play with any real dignity. Nowadays, even Mechwarrior games bow to the mighty keyboard and mouse combo.

I'm under the impression that many people are reluctant now to drop $100 odd on a joystick which can only be used in a certain set of games, many of which are better controlled using the keyboard and mouse anyway. It must be even more ludicrous to suggest dropping about twice that amount on a controller that only works for one type of game. I'm talking about wheels.

I've always wanted a wheel. However, I couldn't even justify this to myself, much less my parents, owing to the fact that I would've had at most one driving game on my PC, and likely many more that could've taken advantage of a joystick or joypad. Furthermore, I was rather dubious about the nature of these wheels. Would they make any difference to the game? Were they anything like driving in a real car, or are they just analogue controllers dressed up so suckers will buy them? Nathan has a wheel that does not only force feedback, but is one of the few that work on a PC: The Logitech "Driving Force". He lent it to me so I could play some driving games on it.

The first thing I learnt is that a wheel without force feedback would probably be useless. I know because when he lent me the wheel, he didn't lend me the power adaptor. The wheel still worked, but there was no force feedback. This effectively made it an analogue joystick, except with crappier control. A wheel without force feedback could have springs in it to bring it back to the center, but the mere fact that your arms have to travel a great distance to go from "hard left" to "hard right" effectively makes it worse than a joystick, save for the accelerator and brake.

So now that I do have the power adaptor, I figured I'd try again. With the power plugged in but the game set to "minimum" force feedback, the change was minor. It was still a great deal of trouble to steer, but when set to "medium" my experience immediately improved. I found I could feel the road a bit better, and even pulled off some tricky turns. Having said that, I was still fishtailing it through the straights for a long time before I got used to it. Why?

Because fundamentally, a force feedback wheel feels different to a car. I mean, I'm sure if the game worked right, it could feel similar, but it's still very different. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is the "feedback loop". Basically, in a car, your steering wheel is attached straight to the wheels (figuratively, not literally). The power steering is only an assistance mechanism, but there's still no "lag" between when you turn the wheel and when the car starts turning. Contrast this with the accelerator, which will only open the butterfly valve, which will increase the amount of air to your car, which will increase the revs. There's a distinct lag between when you press the accelerator and when the car accelerates.

In a game, your steering wheel sends an electrical signal to the computer, which may or may not process it, and then send it to the game. Further, the game must then generate electrical signals to "push" the wheel one way or the other. This means there's a lag between when you move the steering wheel and when the game responds. There's also a lag between when you move your steering wheel and when your wheel responds with the feedback. The problem is, when your brain does something and doesn't get a response for a little while, it has a lot of trouble correlating your immediate actions with the immediate consequences. Think of it as a loss of "sync".

Have you ever had an experience where you're playing a game on a computer which can display 90FPS, but having a lot of trouble. Then you upgrade to a computer that can display 240FPS, and all of a sudden you find the game trivial. If the monitor can only display 85Hz, then how is the FPS difference affecting your gameplay? The answer is that most games have a "game loop", which runs usually in sync with the FPS. The quicker this loop, the quicker the game will respond to your actions. The difference in FPS is not making you better because you can see the results quicker(you can't), but because the game is responding to you in 1/240th of a second instead of 1/90th.

This "loss of sync" is apparent in force feedback wheels in PCs (in consoles, they care a lot more about this "lag" and cater for it a lot better). You not only have to concentrate more because you've got more complex controls available at your disposal, but even more so because your brain's gotta do stuff to link that turn you took 1/60th of a second ago to the "feel" of the turn right now.

It gets worse, though. See, because a real road has the advantage of actually being there, you don't have to compute how the wheel's going to react to you travelling on it. In a game, instead of having every piece of gravel speak for itself, you usually have "patches" of road which have certain properties. There's usually simple (or sometimes complicated, but simplified) equations that determine whether you have grip on a patch of road, or not. Despite this, for a game it feels OK, and if you're driving on the road (or gravel, or ice) that you're meant to, it feels OK. It's just when you accidentally go offroad, the feeling's abrupt and unrealistic. This is not bad, per se, and it doesn't destroy the gaming experience, but it still doesn't feel like I'm driving, just playing a game.

A wheel is probably the toughest thing to design, because unlike killing aliens, sneaking around factories taking out guards, or riding around on a giant 'mech, we all have some experience in driving (except Nathan). The demands for realism in a wheel controller are large, and in some ways unachievable. Having said that, it's still a lot better, and a lot more immersive, than a keyboard and mouse, and it begins to allow you to think of the driving game more in driving terms. Perhaps I'll buy myself a wheel some day.

IGE pwns Allakhazam... ya rly

2006-05-04T22:28:00.000+10:00

Want to see true e-businessmen at work? Take a look at IGE, and cry them tears of blood. The latest bastion of MMO-gaming knowledge and resources to be bought out by these mongrels is Allakhazam. Lesson: money ruins everything.

Bloody citibank

2006-05-04T20:18:00.000+10:00

So I get a message from Citibank saying that they're nerfing my OCM account. Basically, the interest goes down from 5.5% p.a. to 4.75%p.a., unless I've got $100,000 or more. They've created another type of account now, though, which is a $5 monthy fee, and it's got the old 5.5%p.a. interest rate. It's also got unlimited transactions, so that's still pretty good (it figures out at $1100 to get $5 back in interest per month, so if you can keep this much money in your bank account, it's like paying nothing for unlimited transactions).

Unfortunately for me, because I don't use that many transactions, this means I have to find a cross-over point for when the extra percentage is worthwhile. Here's a conversation I had with my computer:


octave:1> 5.5-4.75
ans = 0.75000
octave:2> 0.75/12
ans = 0.062500
octave:3> x=0.75/12
x = 0.062500
octave:4> 5/x
ans = 80

WTF?


octave:5> 80*x
ans = 5

Oh yeah, 5 percent


octave:6> x/100
ans = 0.00062500
octave:7> x=x/100
x = 0.00062500
octave:8> 5/x
ans = 8000

OK, so I need to have (and keep) $8000 in my account to make back the $5 from the difference in interest. Considering I get taxed on the interest, I don't know if it's worth the trouble to make such small gains, so I guess I'm sticking with my lowbie account. I'd make an awesome accountant.

How to fprot a n00b's tarball

2006-05-03T19:47:00.000+10:00

Despite being a technical person, and liking Linux for all it's technical abilities, I've often been both impressed and miffed at it's usability. Impressed because of the speed at which these issues are fixed. D-Bus and Beagle most recently, but also things like udev, hotplug, and the event architectures. The freedesktop and xorg projects have also been pivotal in making the desktop more usable, interoperable, and... well... pretty.

I'm miffed because there's still a long way to go, and there's some pretty small things holding the whole experience back. One of those things is the new xorg server. It's become more modular, and Ubuntu at least is now giving xorg out in little chunks, but it still uses a conf file to configure it. Granted, the conf file is slowly being reduced in size, and a lot more of the settings are auto-detected, but there's still often reason to stop the X server, change some setting, and start it again.

One of the examples here is the mouse & keyboard, and maybe other things. And by that I mainly mean the mouse. I've always been envious of the windows users who can plug in a USB mouse and it works. I have to plug it in and restart X. Understandably, it's not often that you have to plug in a new mouse and have to get it to work instantly, but there's absolutely no reason why a mouse shouldn't be plug & play. The new evdev driver should (I think) combat this, but upon installation at my work PC evdev crashed my computer. WTF!?

The other problem I have is sound cards. In Debian specifically, sound cards are all started as a service, and they refuse to stop if they're being used. So, if you add a sound card and want to restart the alsa-sound service, you have to stop everything from using the sound card. This is not only unnecessary, it's tougher than it sounds. Gnome tends to start the esd daemon, which keeps your sound card occupied for as long as you're logged in.

Point is, Linux is really bloody good at being user friendly now, so the little things are starting to become more annoying.

The times we live in

2006-05-02T01:11:00.000+10:00

Recently I happened upon The Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World (2006). I would request that, time permitting, our readers can peruse the list and comment with their thoughts on the people mentioned and maybe even the events that surround them.

Links

2006-04-26T23:18:00.000+10:00

A friend send me this link to some pretty Ice sculptures

I was looking up woks and, oh my, it sounds like a big pain to get a new one ready -
Wok with Chan, Cooking Wisdom from Three Generations

I went and bought a nice one from Myer, and then I realized that I shouldn't had got a non stick one, you can't cook stir fries with it as well and there are health problems if you overheat it, although it seems ok if you don't heat too much past the point where cooking oil starts smoking.

Number Plate

2006-04-26T21:26:00.000+10:00

I thought of a personalised number plate today for one of you guys.

It's unfortunately taken, but it would have been cool!

W T F 1 0 1

Kim is not that fat

2006-04-26T21:16:00.000+10:00

I met Kim Beazley in the city today. I was quite surprised, as he is a lot slimmer than he looks on tv. It looks like he really has lost a lot of weight over the past year or more.

He had his minder with him, but he was more than happy to shake people's hands and have a chat to them, and he seemed really friendly.

I was just standing at a set of traffic lights waiting for the little man to go green so I could cross the road - and he just walked up next to me waiting for the little man to glow bright green. Dammit. I'm trying to make a joke by referencing John Howard in here somewhere, but I just don't have the wit!

Anyways, at first I was a bit afraid that I'd act like a fool if I went to say hello to him, so I just crossed the road next to him - in fact I kinda followed him for a while - I'm sure I freaked him out a little at some point there. There were other people around too just walking right by like they didn't know who it was. I couldn't believe it, as he's quite easy to recognise.

I finally got the opportunity to go shake his hand and say gidday when this big guy walked past and started saying "hey, it's you (giggle), hey, look, (giggle), hey hey, how are ya man, (giggle) I'm a fan I'm a fan (giggle) okay see ya man (giggle giggle)".

It was not a hard act to follow.

Putting kids on the open market

2006-04-25T11:50:00.000+10:00

Kids in western society today are risky business. You pay for them to grow up and they might become drug addicts (the standard way for kids to go, like getting run over by a bus for programmers). In addition, with their teenage rebellion they may never pay back the enormous wads of cash that you, as a parent, have afforded them.

So, in order to reduce risk and maximise return, I and some uni friends came up with a simple solution: float kids on the open market. Capitalism has all the answers, does it not? First, it lowers risk of having a baby. Instead of having to pay for them and putting them through to university, you simply float them on the market with a portfolio and promises of a decent upbringing, and then wait for the cash to start flowing in.

As they get older, you hand over the management of the kids to the kids themselves, giving them the responsibility of having to produce a quarterly results, managing the ownership of their stock, options, dividends, etc. Now when the kids whine "oh Mom, Johnny got one!" you can say "Well, Eggbert doesn't, and he's got a much more promising ROI."

If you want to adopt a child? Invest in a few kids instead! This leads to a diverse stock portfolio and you can sit on the board of directors. Then everyone will have more kids, be better parents, and have a happier, more healthy existence.

Real estate sites suck

2006-04-25T01:31:00.000+10:00

This post is really notes for me to make a competing real estate site that kicks the shit out of all the real estate sites that exist currently. There are certain things I'm looking for when I'm looking to buy or rent a property.

What I want is a property within a certain area. I want to select that area on a map (with shapes, like circles) as opposed to selecting from a list of suburbs. Hell, even a single point with a "within 100km of" would've been great, but no site I've found does this.

I also want a weighted set of POIs (points of interest), such as work, restaraunts, railway stations, etc. These would preferably be dynamic (such as railway stations, because I need to be near one, but it doesn't really matter which one) but it's not necessary. I'd like to be able to use this to generate a "hot-spot", which would look like the equi-pressure lines on a weather map. It shows a hot spot of where the properties are "cheapest" for me (ie: properties that I would value highly, but are priced relatively low to other properties I would value highly).

I want to use this "hot-spot" to generate a "mean value" (an amount I expect to pay to rent or buy a property). This should take into account the value I place on amenities (like parking, garden, a view) and automatically divide up the cost of a 2-person or 3-person abode (with penalties for having to live with other people). I would call this "mean value" the Optimal Price Index, or OPI, and I would measure properties against that.

I want all the properties in the area to be displayed on that map, with a simple click to get pictures and other information I want. Then I could finally make an informed decision on what property to get, whether to rent or buy, and how many people to do this with.

Bored

2006-04-19T23:51:00.000+10:00

Ok, so I was sitting in my apartment a couple of weeks ago, kinda bored just thinking about things. I was supposed to be the spring break but it was blowing a blizzard outside, I was kinda broke and my girlfriend was at her parent’s house studying for an exam. So not really wanting to do my thesis sized homework I thought I’d scribble down a wish list of parts for a sweet l337 computer. I started off with a classic old school power box with everything in its place doing its own thing, something not far off my current system but the SCSI card had RAID and I threw one of those physics processing cards in. But then as my thoughts wandered off I started thinking about a system not too dissimilar to the PS3 with a Cell processor (or two,) a simple mirror RAID and a NAS for bulk storage, and it would all fit in a nice slim enclosure and sit beside the TV. The only snag I hit was what if I wanted WiFi (or not,) or if I wanted a TV tuner card and do a little VTR type activities. I suppose it all comes down to those engineering types of decisions, trading the price, performance, flexibility and costs to produce something that people would actually want.

Not touching any sensitive topics that might result in a flame war, what do you guys and gals think? (and can the word “guys” be considered unisex these days?)

Buried treasure

2006-04-19T21:20:00.000+10:00

Seeing as we're moving, I've been sorting through all the things out in the garage that I've accumulated over the years. Below is a sample of the cool things I have managed to find. Should I find anything else, I'll share them also. Make sure you click on the pictures, then click on "All sizes" to see it in detail.

This is the chunk of metal that was attached to my leg/ankle for a few months sometime around year seven. I had the same thing done on both legs, but there's no real point taking two pictures. Obviously, it would have been located in the same spot as the scar, but then I wouldn't be able to show it off would I?

The games and consoles that I could find. The Sega Gamegear takes SIX batteries. It's no wonder it came with a wall adapter. Those strange card things down the bottom were for some Atari console I think, but I have only the faintest memories of owning it.

Various die-cast cars. Try and find the Batmobile!

The Castle of Lions. Looks rather unassuming, if a little large.

Kamini is no match for Voltron! That thing is made up of five separate lions, just like in the cartoon. It is only somewhat awkward to put together.

OH SHIT IT OPENS UP AND THERE ARE GUNS AND OH NO WE ARE DOOMED! On the left there you can see the shitty money box I made for woodwork. I never liked woodwork.

More than meets the eye my friend.

This could have been awesome if they could stand on carpet and weren't half broken. Grimlock is but a shadow of his former self. He still kick butt, however.

How awesome was this show? I really hope I can find the rest of these.

Batman or He-man - who would win?

Sex sells - especially for Uni students

2006-04-19T20:23:00.000+10:00

Check out my Uni's latest mid-year intake video ad.

Dear viewers of Today Tonight...

2006-04-17T04:19:00.000+10:00

Fuck you.

Hugs and kisses,
Nathan Partridge

This is a collection of the most popular stories that were aired by Today Tonight last year. So what kinds of things interest the average Australian?* Do we care about the protection of our civil rights? Social equality? Foreign relations? No. What interests us is

Miracle breakthrough diets! Why compare the input (eating) and output (exercise) of our energy when we can just spend $100s on pills that don't do anything or only eat foods that are high/low in buzzword of the week?
Looking younger! Screw things like staying out of the sun or not smoking, let us instead apply acid to our faces and purchase expensive yet ineffective creams!
Save save save! Please purchase products mentioned in our advertorial from this shop or website!
Beat arthritis/back pain/random ailment! Ignore your doctors advice and drink some of our magic water while sleeping on our magnetic pillows! Dear God, fuck me with a loofa.
Bec and Lleyton! Fuck YOU with a loofa.

*Well, the average TT viewer anyway. There's a cubic piss-load of them and so represent a significant portion of the population.

A cause for national shame

2006-04-17T02:33:00.000+10:00

Over the last few years, a favourite talking point brought up my "Current Affairs" programs, politicians and those radio guys is that of certain people (or their actions) as being "Un-Australian". What does it mean to be Australian? Is being a citizen of this nation good enough, or does it go further than this? Is it necessary to be of UK stock, speaking English as your first (and only) language? How about your actions - who you vote for, who you worship, what you do for recreation?

Another term that is thrown around quite often is "Australian Values". SInce my little write-up has been sitting in the queue for a while it isn't exactly current, but several weeks ago we had this brought up to the public's attention. The oath that Mr Costello takes issue with (which is something he and other upset "Australians" have never needed to speak) is to me completely adequate, and to add anything else would edit: I can't remember what I was going to write here so let's go with "be dumb".

I used the above link from Today Tonight rather than a real, legitimate source because of the phone poll mentioned at the bottom of the article. TT viewers voted overwhelmingly (99%) in favour of stripping citizenship from those who don't observe a term that cannot accurately be defined. If we are to kick people out for misbehaving, then we should not discriminate on whether they "flew here" or "grew here". Being a native-born citizen doesn't make you any better than a naturalised one, and those who are native (as opposed to the real native Australians) can't trace their "Australianness" back much more than 200 years (and very few can go that far back).

Personally, my definition of being "Australian" is simple. Citizenship and wanting to improve this country. If you intend to gain citizenship or are in the process of doing so you count. Improving the country is simply that of trying to make Australia better, and never being satisfied with the status quo. If I don't agree with what you think makes Australia a better place, or even the absolute vast majority of us don't agree with you, if you honestly think it would improve things you count.

As for Australian culture? BYO and share!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

2006-04-17T00:44:00.000+10:00

It is well known that I am not the most adventurous of individuals when it comes to putting things into my mouth (I'll never work in porn!), and this was something I was going to accept to be the case for the rest of my life. In case you aren't entirely sure just how culinarily conservative I am, here's something to clue you in. Last week I had my first ever kebab, and strangely enough, I enjoyed it. This experience has changed my outlook on food, and I am no longer willing to miss out on all the awesome things I could try (and all the horrible things I will regret).

This is where you guys come in. From now on, whenever we get together, I'd like it if we could eat a wider variety of stuff. Rather than going to Hungry Jacks for lunch, let's instead go to Sizzler, and you can all watch as I attempt to sample everything they have on offer (the stupid faces I will pull demand that you take pictures). When we play DnD, let's have some of that crazy Indian food you guys eat instead of chips and the like. Pizza? pfft, why not Thai again? I remember liking that one thing I tried. Although the bourbon (or whiskey, or whatever it was) I tried made me cry, and I hated the wine we had, I want to have a go at things like vodka or even beer. Maybe I'll even get drunk one day! (won't happen).

In turn, however, you guys need to try milk and red cordial. It's the least you could do if I'm going to go on this journey of discovery.

My other mission is of a more serious nature. Another of the things I am known for is my complete inability to drive a car. I've given a myriad of reasons over the last 8 years or so, (lack of interest or need, no money to even have a car, etc) and although they were all true at the time, the real reason is the fact that cars terrify me. And I'm not talking about the normal type of fear that people commonly have, where become nervous around heights, with public speaking, fear of social rejection and the like. I'm talking about being totally unable to deal with the issue. Fight-or-flight. Panic attacks. Dear-God-I'm-going-to-die type of feelings.

Just being in a car makes me a little nervous, though I can usually hide it fairly well, and sometimes I'll forget that I'm in a car altogether and feel relaxed. Heavy traffic or high-speeds make me funny. I hold my breath when going through round-abouts (the cars always look like they won't stop). Rain is creepy. Things like sudden braking, reckless driving by others and so on make me go quiet for a while. Driving at night is a little easier though - perhaps there are less distractions?

I don't know how or when I got like this, but then it's irrelevant to my point. Despite all this, I want to try learning to drive. Although I'm not convinced I'll be able to do it, it is important to me that I try.

Comment from Hannah from Alice

2006-04-15T17:30:00.000+10:00

After my girl bashing article I got a comment from someone outside of our little group (and Alan Green). named Devon (I have no idea what he / she was talking about) and Hannah, which initially seemed juvenile but surprised me, when I thought about it.

I've reproduced it here for your convenience:

You're too much of a wuss?? Umm, no, sorry maybe too stupid.
And why is picking on guys like, braver then picking on girls, maybe its due to the fact its easier to pick on girls (I mean, come on, its pretty much a televised sport) then it is to pick on guys so you might just be LAZY as well as stupid.
Now, I too got super pissed at that particular issue of the escapist. only I got annoyed over the whole "women like social stuff" bullshit by some guy who read a lot of books on evolotion but didn't talk to a lot of girlgamers, hell any girls for that moronic article.
I would send you a link to what I wrote in reaction to it at the time but my mother banned me from making my blog public.
You're thinking lady gamers are freaks is pretty insulting, not to mention ignorant. I mean, where do you live? under a rock?
Pretty much all my girlfriends play video games (OK 2 of them plays the sims, which I dont count as a game as it annoyed me. INTENSELY.) At the moment I can (very sadly)only play games using zsnes but I do play games and I am not a freak and neither are my friends. We are normal girls. I would write a more coherent comment but I am tired right now..

Hannah, Thanks for your response. You're 13, right? I can tell, not just from the fact that I have an unhealthy obsession with underage girls, not just because you mentioned your mother banning you from making your blog public, but because you're a self important bitch who thinks she's somehow mature.

You're not. You're a little girl. You'll realise that when you're 16, and again when you're 21, and again when you're 25, and probably many more times. I know from when I was a little girl.

Picking on guys is braver than picking on girls because, as you say, it's easier. You're weak and have no say in society, so I can be weak and still pick on you and feel good about myself. You could call it laziness, but I'm not really lazy, just a coward.

I think we agree about Chris Crawford (women like social stuff guy) here. I "don't appreciate his views on gaming" and have called him a "doo doo head" on many occasions (but never to his face, because he'd beat me up). One of the points I was trying to make in my article was that despite the fact that he's probably right. I mean, 2 of your girlfriends play the Sims!!! You're practically proving his point! However, I agree with you in that the sims is not a real game.

Now, for your next point (me thinking girl gamers are freaks) I was going to write something mean like "look yourself in the mirror girl, you're a freak", but then I realised that I was wrong! Wrong in a delightful way.

See, I went to a primary school one day (a long time ago) and helped set up some computers. A little girl was in there talking about PCs. She wasn't a freak, rather an attractive, elegant, confident young lady who was into computers. I remember envying the computer nerds who followed me, because being into computers wasn't going to be wierd any more. I remember feeling really proud that day.

I'm thinking that maybe you are normal. I think that maybe you're like that girl I saw in that school. Maybe you and all your normal friends who populate your school play video games and you talk about em at lunch. The girls who are my age are the freaks, because they had to enter a place full of guys and feel really out of place, but despite all the bullshit, despite all the "no one cares about women in gaming", despite the "we need to make social games for chicks", despite nobody actually giving a shit about making games that women really want to play, in 10 years we're going to see hordes of boys and girls playing games, as normal people, and nobody will give a shit that they're boys or girls, they're just gamers. You're the brave new world, girlfriend.

If you were legal, I'd kiss you!

Wait, did I step over a line somewhere...

I <3 my ABC and I vote

2006-04-14T03:26:00.000+10:00

Let's face it - the ABC is a really good television station. I have to admit it's probably my favourite station. I usually only listen to ABC radio in the car as well.

The ABC seems to fill the massive holes that the other major commercial networks leave in terms of content. For example, it's left to the ABC to televise the paralympics!

I am disappointed that the station isn't more popular. It's not like there is much commercial TV equivalent to the first-rate programs like Catalyst, Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent, The Glass House, Lateline, The Chaser Guys, Enough Rope, The 7.30 Report, Media Watch, and The New Inventors,. Oh, and I should give a special mention to Nathan's favourite, The Saddle Club.

The ABC's charter essentially states that it is to provide programs that will inform, entertain, and educate. I believe that a lot of programs are of very good quality, and I think they're doing a great job of meeting those goals. There has been some critcism that the amount of Australian drama on the ABC has dropped 80% in the past 5 years, however the ABC claims this is because of a lack of funding from the Federal Government, and you know what? I believe them!

I've known for a long time now that John Howard doesn't like the ABC in it's present form - he doesn't have direct control over it! But the time will soon be upon us when he practically will - and it may be lost from public hands forever! I bring your attention to this article. Note: The article may seem biased, and you may not be in agreement with the source, but I already know most of the content to be true through following this issue in the media. Besides, the points in this article are just what I wanted to write tonight anyway, they're just written better! Also, the article briefly mentions the change to cross-media ownership laws, which I am against as well. It is more dangerous territory!

Now, when the subject of allowing advertising on the ABC comes up, I always cringe! Not only would it severley impact on the ABC's independent voice, but it would be the beginning of the end for Government funding. Having commerical income for the ABC would destroy it's essence; obviously it would cease, or gradually cease to be a publicly funded organisation. Instead of something being for the public's interest, it may be done for the commercial sponsor's interest. When an organisation becomes dependent on money like that, it can become a puppet on strings very easily. Watch out for the next episode of The New Inventors - I hear they're demonstrating the new X Brand Mobile Phone.

There would also be the possiblity of scrapping certain programming altogether, because it wasn't bringing in enough ratings for a particular commercial sponsor. Instead, they would replace it with a more mainstream "popular" program.

At the moment, commercial radio stations and television stations usually steer clear of criticising their major sponsors, for obvious reasons. Would you really want the ABC to be under that kind of pressure? And if commercial interests ever had a say in spending - there goes some of the services to rural Australia. In a lot of situations, ABC radio is the only voice to the bush.

The ABC is severley lacking in funding from the Federal Government - in a way it is trying to force them into accepting commercial funding. It is ridiculous for the ABC to be in this situation when the Government is sitting on a $14 billion budget surplus.

We hates dem, we hates dem!

Deregulation of media

2006-04-13T22:18:00.000+10:00

This won't be a long post, as I have other things I need to get done tonight, including maybe another post or two here. However, I did want to raise an issue as a topic that might invite some comments - and I certainly would like to see people's different opinions on the matter - especially considering that I think some people will disagree with me on this one. Ooh, a controversial opinion I hear you say. Well, don't get too excited - look at the topic!

This week's episode of Media Watch (I only caught it tonight on ABC2 and I think it's at least a few days old now) highlighted some new federal laws, that by default take over from existing state laws, in relation to privacy and defamation, and in particular what the media can publish.

According to Media Watch, basically the new laws (and I need to stress that, as with all new laws, they need to be tested in a court) allow content to be published as long as it is "substantially true". This means that no matter what the content is, or who it is about, as long as it's substantially true a media organisation can present it to the public.

Now, I'm probably as voyeuristic as the next guy and I love to see what those crazy celebs get up to in their spare time, but I do not agree with these new laws, as they have been presented on Media Watch, because it removes the argument of "within the public interest". Now, forgive me guys as this opinion may be a little conservative for this discussion board, but I do think Justice Hunt got it right in his NSW Supreme Court ruling in Greg Chappell v Channel 9.

"if every public figure is to become "fair game" in relation to his private behaviour which is unrelated to his capacity to perform his public duties, the community will suffer grievously from the unwillingness of suitable people to enter public life.

Chappell v TCN Channel Nine Pty Ltd, Justice Hunt judgement, 1988"

I know there are many arguments against this, like 'they're big boys and they can handle it', or 'they should expect this if they want to become a celebrity', but in the case of, say, a politician, a person who only does it for want of celebrity is exactly the type of person I don't want in our parliament! Don't get me wrong, politicians need to be known, and I want to know who these people are that are representing us as citizens and our interests, but I think there is a limit.

Let's use the example of a Prime Minister cheating on his/her wife/husband . There would be an argument that if he/she can't show commitment to their spouse, how could they show commitment as a Prime Minister. Surely their personal life would reflect on their capacity to do their job as Prime Minister. Well, I personally believe that as long as it genuinely does not affect their public work, then there is no real reason to make the connection. Of course, being a Prime Minister this would make it a very difficult case to prove. So, obviously I have chosen a really bad example to prove my point...

Let me clarify my position here. I would not be against the publication of an article stating the above in relation to a Prime Minister, as it probably is in the public interest. But to publicise something as malicious as Media Watch's example from Britain's News of the world is a perfect case of how these laws could be used in the media's favour, for example to increase ratings (yes, I think most Australians are nutty enough to read/buy this garbage and I think there are already many rags being sold in Australia that would print it!).

The Daily Telegraph has a claimed readership of over 1,200,000 people throughout the week. This statement has nothing to do with the preceding paragraph! No, I do not have $250,000!

I also think it's appropriate to know what someone's family situation may be, particularly if they are going to have a say in laws and public facilities that affect families, but again, there is a limit and I think it is a clear reason for regulation. We already place too much trust in the media as it is!

Furthermore, the laws put a cap on payouts for defamation law suits at $250,000. I think the program raises this as a very important point, as large media organisation will weigh up the possible cost (maximum cost of $250,000 to the company) versus the possibility of higher sales, higher ratings and associated income. Given there is no benchmark of "public interest", and the only real other one is "substantially truthful", hypothetically it would cost a maximum of $250,000, a public apology and a retraction, to publicise a complete and utter lie!

Hmmm so much for a short post.

Mental Health & Drug Abuse

2006-04-11T20:57:00.000+10:00

A while ago I was in a cab in the city, stuck in traffic as usual, when I saw a guy on the side of the road picking up leaves. Looking closer, he had the biggest grin on his face (yes, bigger than Mr Walsh's) I had ever seen! He would bend over, confidently, and pick up a single leaf, smile, and put it in the bin. Then he'd see another one, and repeat the process. There was plenty of leaves being blown around, so I could tell this guy was gonna be happy for a while. He was well dressed (not business clothes, but his clothes were clean, neat and tidy), clean and shaven, and probably somewhere between 40 and 50 years old.

My first thought was that this guy had missed his medication or something! But he definately had some sort of mental illness. And then I caught myself; how prejudice of me! Why couldn't this guy just be really happy in that he is cleaning the footpath?

I wish to raise two points. I think people, including me, too easily dismiss others who are "different" as someone who must be mentally ill, especially considering we (well, I) don't know much about mental illness and the many, many different types. I believe Mental Illness is a very important issue that our society needs to learn more about and understand.

That's my first point, and is really only to sum up my anecdote above, but my second point is related, and is about the sorry state of Mental Health Services across Australia. As far as I do know about a some types of mental illnesses , is that it can be genetic, or even brought on by trauma, such as drug abuse.

In fact, on that note, I would recommend this ABC's Four Corners documentary on crystal methamphetamine ("Ice") as an excellent insight into the lives of addicted drug users.

The use of crystal meth was even mentioned recently on House, and essentially almost promoted the drug, where in one scene Cameron (hot chick) takes the drug, gets horny, and sleeps with one of the other characters. This also reminds me of a part in the Four Corners documentary where they talk about this special room in St. Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst where they put people who are 'high' in there to come down. One of the Specialists was saying that this one time a guy was in there after taking "Ice", known for increasing sexual drive, and masterbated for 14 hours straight!

Anyways I am getting a little off the point here. Given that I've now spent two paragraphs on that, I've added it in the "Title".

In a country where one in five citizens will develop some kind of mental illness, the current research and treatment funding is not adequate. I am glad to hear that the federal government is going to contribute $1.8 billion dollars over the next 5 years, but it's still not enough! Australia's mental health system has been neglected and forgotten about for 10 years! It's a shambles.

The vast majority of homeless people in Australia are mentally ill. They simply have no-where to go and get turned away by the many charitable organisations out there because they simply don't have the resources. Eventually, like drug addicts, they would more than likely turn to criminal activity for money and/or food.

Looking after a country's citizens should not be left to charities! Granted, they get some funding, but not enough to cope. Governments need to do much more about this increasing epidemic.

Violence and Emotional & Psycholigical Disorders, through Mental Illness also tears apart families. With a lack of understanding and community support, it can wreck people's lives completely, and unnecessarily, and can have many victims - the person and their social, professional and family networks. Mental Illnesses can be treatable and manageable, but there is just not enough resources!

I think this is a serious problem in Australia that needs a lot more understanding and public awareness.

Cyclone Larry

2006-04-11T19:10:00.000+10:00

I guess it was appropriate that I talk about Hurricane Katrina in my last post, because soon after that, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine at work about the current state of affairs in North Queensland. She is moving up to Cairns in the next couple of weeks, and has friends in the region, so I believe her opinions and research are credible. I also think it's important to know what's going on, so I thought I would share her e-mail with you.

Hi All,

After Judith mentioned Hurricane Katrina, I just wanted to let you all know some facts about Cyclone Larry, as we really havent heard much about it in the News, and Im sure most of us assume that things are ok in Innisfail and the surrounds.

There are still 135000 houses without power - although I have spoken with ergon energy and they tell me they are trying their hardest to get as many as possible fixed by Easter

Many phone lines are still down, even as far up as Cairns Tafe and wont be fixed until mid April.

and just to make matters worse I have come across this article about tradesmen charging 3 times the regular amount.
Article from The Australian

I am sure that you all have heard about the Banana situation, but a few facts on that:
12000 ha of crops have been destroyed (90% of Australia's production)
The farmers were not able to insure crops due to a storm in the early 1990's, after this insurance companies stopped underwriting for crops.

Farmers will have no cash flow for at least 9 months, and their properties are "in the hands of banks"
more than 4000 people will be out of work, and for a region like Innisfail - that is a lot of people in a place where unemployment is already so high - most families would be moving and relocating to other towns such as Cairns.

Sugar Cane industry
Most insurance companies did not cover for cyclones.

So whilst we aren't on the same scale as Hurricane Katrina - it just shows that it can happen anywhere, and it wont be all fine after a week - although most news would have us thinking different as we havent read/seen anything about it recently

If your feeling generous the donation line is 1800150411

It's true that if something falls out of the headlines, and off the news pages altogether, it seems that people put it out of their minds and assume everything is okay. I have to admit I did too, and figured things were on track - but 135,000 homes still without power is pretty significant. I'm glad no lives were lost, but in other ways, people's lives have been completely destroyed by this.

On a related note, a recent episode of Media Watch highlighted a Miranda Divine opinion article in the SMH. I don't know whether she genuinely holds this opinion, or is doing it to gain attention, but either way I think it's pretty nasty!

Anecdotes re USA, and other things

2006-04-11T12:52:00.000+10:00

My boss returned from the USA this week. She was there for about 6 months (?) doing a course at Harvard, and travelling around to conferences and such.

At the staff meeting this morning, she was actually in tears saying how happy she was to be back in Australia, as the standard of living here (and the weather), as bad as it is for a lot of people, is still better than in the US. And the worst thing is - they don't even know it. They seriously have NO world news over there - they are lucky to see what happens in the next state on their news services.

The conferences that she did go to were Trade Union related of course, but let me tell you a story that she heard first hand over there.

A young woman (30ish) stood up to tell her story of what her workplace was like. She was a Trade Union delegate. She works in a large processing factory, something like the size of two football fields. One day, the company's "internal police" came up to her and handcuffed her. They dragged her across the whole length of the building and took her to the company's "internal questioning" room. They interrogated her for 7 hours over an alleged stealing. When she said she needed to go home to her kids, they hit her.

This did not surprise the conference of some 2000 attendees. But the mention of what John Howard is doing in Australia did! They could not believe that a country like Australia, which has a good reputation of Industrial laws, was having these type of laws go through. A lot of people are saying that our new laws are worse than in parts of the United States.

These workers have no choice but to stay with their employer because of their dependence on basic health insurance - I'll get to that later.

A failing Government:

She also mentioned that over 8 months after Hurricane Katrina there are still up to 80 % of the main areas affected without power or water… and in doing my own reading, to combat looting, the Government started a "shoot to kill" policy on "African Americans"!

She continued on to say that around half of Americans have no, or inadequate health insurance. Which means if you have a sick baby, the choice is whether to eat (for the WEEK!) or go see a doctor. They have radio ads over there telling people when to bring sick babies to see a doctor - ie when a temperature reaches over X amount - because people simply don't go to the doctor as they can't afford it. They have a REAL problem of unneccesary deaths over there. Darwin's theory of "Survival of the fittest" really does ring true in America.

Sure, for the upper middle class and higher citizens, life is a breeze. Mostly. You can have a really decent job, but without health insurance, you're basically stuffed!

Getting back to New Orleans - the government took the opportunity to close about 95% of the public schools there because they weren't up to standard. They've now been privatised, and 25,000 teachers have been sacked. Most don't even know it, as they aren't contactable. They don't even know that they have lost their health insurance - almost more important than money over there - and I go back to what I said earlier, and reiterate that half of Americans have no, or inadequate, health insurance!

In Australia, John Howard and his Liberal Right-Wing Government are gradually eating away at things like Medicare, Social Welfare, Public Education & Health, Broadcasting & Publishing laws, and Freedom of Speech/Association, and just plain trying to kill things like Worker's Rights and Asylum Seeker's rights - in favour of a Privatised, Institutionalised, Individualised, Criminalised, Terrorised... G-G-G-G-Grease Lightening... uhh, I mean society. Sorry, that kinda wrecked it!

On a related note, "V for Vendetta" is such an important political commentary, on a very real possiblity for the future of paranoid western countries like the USA, Australia and Britain.

I will finish by saying that John Howard's vision for Australia - one that is idealised on what America is politically - achieved through politics of division, blatant deception and fear-mongering, is a very scary thought indeed.

Take it or leave it

2006-04-10T13:25:00.000+10:00

This article from the Sydney Morning Herald really speaks for itself, I don't think I can add anything more to it, apart from - this is only the beginning!

Article at SMH

Whether we ever find out the REAL story on the 29 Abattoir workers in Cowra, I will never know.

UPSs

2006-04-10T10:13:00.000+10:00

I haven't had time to read through the recents post yet, so here's something quick -

My mother called me on Friday to tell me that there was a blockout at home and that the battery thing was beeping... and she asked if she should turn it off. =)

Another round of girl bashing

2006-04-09T00:54:00.000+10:00

I pick on girls because I'm too much of a wuss to pick on guys. Either that or I'm too much of a man, take your pick (but if you pick the latter, you're a sick fuck. Remember: Violence against women - Australia says no!).

I'm reading an issue of the escapist. I'm upto issue 17, and I'm reading "cover to cover" (as in, 1 through to current), I hope to catch up one day, but currently the magazine produces more content than I can read. It's getting to the stage where that content is getting predictable, but there's still enough in it for me to push on. The magazine is interesting enough that the issue about women in games kind of got me a little pissed.

See, when I think about gender equality, I always think about that comedian who said something like "women think they can pick and choose their rights and responsibilities when it comes to equality". It was funny when he said it. Anyway, that really rang true with this edition. Basically, the first article says things about how games aren't usually rigged for girls, because girls are wired to gather rather than hunt, and "social reasoning" is more important than "ubermicro".

I agree with this point on some levels. I mean, in the sense that we need more sports games and FPSes because it suits the male demographic. See, there's women in two senses, just as there's men in two senses. We can talk about women proper, like the air-headed blonde bimbos who haven't touched a console in their lives, or men proper, like the jocks who only have an Xbox in their dorm room so they can play Halo 2 and Madden 200X. In order to "attract" the "female demographic" we need more "games" that deal with "social reasoning".

Despite the fact that this may well be "necessary" for the "success" of the "gaming industry", I don't give a fuck about either group. So the bit we agree upon is sorta moot.

I disagree with this point on other levels, and the disagreement is with the paradox it creates with the rest of the issue. See, the rest of the magazine spends an inordate time pushing the point that female gamers can "pwn" at games like Halo and Mario Kart (or whatever). Well if they're the same as us gamer guys, they must enjoy the games they play, right? See, if gamers see themselves as different from normal people, then female gamers, being gamers, must be happy with the current state of gaming. No "social reasoning", they seem to be having plenty of fun playing man-games. Aren't we discouraging this band of hardcore gamer girls by selling copies of "bratz"? I mean, there's even a girl discouraging it's distribution towards the end!

Even if "social reasoning" was why women aren't playing games, this doesn't explain why girls aren't playing more adventure games like "the curse of monkey island"? I mean, all you do is talk! Guybrush has long hair, he's practically a girl, and there's a strong female personality throughout the series (his girlfriend and later his wife). WTF?

So we come to the second article which argues there aren't any female rolemodels in games, and survival horror gives a positive feminine persona in the monster rather than the main characters. She argues this is because games are marketed towards men. Women take up three positions in the article: The useless woman, the heroine, and the monster.

It's pretty clear why Bonnie Ruberg (the author) has issues with the useless woman. First, the useless woman is pretty, and second, she's useless, like a trophy. She's something that must be protected by the "man", and she's clingy and annoying. Point well taken, but even Bonnie admits that it's scarier having to protect something than being a badass mercenary on your own. The alternative she suggests is kinda sorta retarded: Why not have a strong confidant woman defending a trophy guy.

Here's the reason why: Nobody cares if a trophy guy dies. This is something women in general I think don't understand. No matter how pretty the guy, when the chips are down, no matter whether you're a guy or a girl, if there's a pretty-boy who can't defend himself, you won't protect him. What kind of man doesn't know how to defend himself against an onslaught of undead minions? No kind of man, just some pathetic retard.

Then she goes on to the heroines, and basically mentions Jill Valentine straight off the bat. The complaint? This one has to be quoted:

Yet even such seemingly empowered female characters come with ambiguous implications. While their presence does speak to certain pro-gender equality ideals - more representation of capable women in games, more opportunities to play as women - their submissive relationship to interactivity puts them once again at the mercy of male gamers.

Men, as the ones most often holding the controllers, exercise control over playable female characters, redistributing the power balance in favor of the male. And while there's something innately sadistic about this interaction, there's also something highly voyeuristic. Male gamers often claim to enjoy playing as women, not because they are interested in stepping into their shoes, but because it gives them a chance to stare at attractive female characters.

OK, once you stop "WTF"ing on me, let's try and figure out what her delicately put 2 paragraphs is trying to say: Because men are playing as these girls, they must be sex objects. I think that pretty much covers it. When you put it in a sentence, the point isn't all that forceful, is it?

So if I perve at a girl, she becomes a whore? I wonder if that'll work in court.

As weak as this point is, and as infuriated as it made me, I went on, and I think I got it in the end. She was only really trying to textually downplay the importance of the female heroine so she could get to her point about the female monster. See, she's a writer, and writers have this nasty habit of substituting the truth for something that fits so they can get to the point. Basically, she likes female monsters because female monsters are scarier than male monsters.

You see, men apparently don't want to shoot female zombies. It irks them, and it's creepier than shooting a male zombie. I mean, it'd feel a little unchivalrous, right? I mean, they're ugly, and an ugly woman is really quite creepy, more so than an ugly man, right? I mean, whenever you shoot a female monster in a game don't you feel somehow different? no? Me neither.

What about sexually aroused? Another WTF moment:

The woman monster stands as well outside the normal sexual boundaries of complacent femininity. In her undeniable association with death, she exudes sexual energy - two forces that are inextricably linked in the human mind - and introduces a dynamic of sexuality into situations where none existed previously. Before the gamer, she is a sexual predator. She is a zombie, in more ways than one, in that she is untamed in her desire for the consumption of flesh. This threat of sexual dominance is, perhaps subconsciously, as frightening to the gamer as the literal threat of in-game death. At the same time, the sexual interplay her presence creates makes the situation at hand more intimate, implicating the player to a higher degree in the extreme violence at hand, and therefore making his own actions terrifying.

So there's this female zombie, and while it's true that most men would totally hit that, because men would totally hit pretty much anything, the thing we're worried about is not that she's going to bite off our face, rather that she's going to be "on top" as it were. That's what we're worried about...

So, I don't agree with her monster point either, but what was it that stopped me from being so infuriated at the heroine part? The thing is, the article is constructed around logic, but based on feelings. She said all that crap, but what she really meant was something like "for some reason, I don't know what, I can't relate to the damsels and heroines, but I can relate to the monsters". The article was an attempt to explain why.

I think I figured out why: She's a gamer. She's a freak of nature. She's not like other girls. It's kind of annoying to have a damsel in the game, because that's not her. Imagine being a guy and having to protect a pretty boy: "I screw totally hot chicks all the time, and you have to protect me here, because I'm totally fucking useless". Now imagine that girls who play this game totally want to protect this guy. I mean, it'd be irritating having to protect him, and irritating thinking of all the girls who play this game who actually want to protect this totally useless piece of shit. I think she maybe feels the same way about the damsel. Bonnie's not pretty and useless, she's capable and intelligent.

Having said that, she's probably not navy seal material. This is why the heroines don't appeal to her either. They're either pretty, or sporty, or both. They're there so men perve on them (even if they're good role models), and that's irritating, because they're not perving on her. She has to be in the body and mind of a character she despises. She sees herself in the monster, though. She wants to take a chunk out of the guy, and screw him while he's down, and be on top. She'd be all like "yeah, bitch, I killed your stupid damsel, and I'm going to fuck your brains out, and then EAT EM!".

That's rape -- Violence against men, Australia says no?

Note: Incidentally, if Bonnie ever reads this, I'm totally in for everything but the brain eating.

MPAA != RIAA

2006-04-08T23:14:00.000+10:00

OK, So I know most people equate the two, and really, they're in the same boat in a lot of different cases, but the thing is, the MPAA is different to the RIAA. What I mean by that is, for a movie that costs 20 million dollars and two years to produce, it costs you about $25 for two DVDs filled with extra features. I got two DVDs for $15 each for movies that are slightly new (Incredibles and Pirates). I also got two CDs for an average of $25 (new Soilwork and Lacuna Coil), which I thought I did pretty well at (you get em at $20 if you do really well).

Here's the difference: 20 million dollars, a couple of years, a hundred odd people, and practically a day's worth of content, including a complete musical score, commentary, acting, etc. Sometimes you even get these separately (as in, the musical score by itself). This is incredible value when compared with a CD. What you get with a CD is a work of 20 thousand dollars in a couple of months, by about 10 odd people. You get about an hour's worth on a CD. Does it make sense that it's costing you more for the CD than the DVD? It doesn't to me.

Don't get me wrong, the MPAAs ridiculous screwy secure HD intiative is totally fucked up, and shows some idiotic minds at work behind the scenes there, but you simply can't argue that value for money wise, a DVD is a lot better than a CD. You can't even argue on content here, because an excellent DVD can equal the impact of an excellent CD, and recording artists have gotten lazy from years of image building and "cool" over skilled audio.

So like Nathan said "fuck computers" and bought... a mac, I'm saying "fuck music", and I guess I'm going hunting for something that makes music worth it again.

Interesting 4WD statistics

2006-04-08T22:39:00.000+10:00

This link is a bit dated but it does show that 4WD (SUV's in America, what American's call 4WDs are called AWDs in Australia) are ever so slightly more likely to be involved in a fatal crash. That might not be you, but you know, you've bought a car that's more likely to kill someone.

As far as safety goes it looks like 4WDs are about as safe as large cars, only a bit less because they handle worse and have a ~20% greater chance of tipping in an accident. Tipping causes the roof to collapse which causes the people in the car to die.

The ATSB is an excellent site, and a great resource on cars. To be perfectly honest, I had a pretty unkind view on 4WD users, and the stats have basically softened my views somewhat. I mean, most 4WDs are actually out in the west (far west, past Campbelltown) and a bunch of people defending 4WD use are those that use it because they actually are living in an area where going off-road is pretty much an all-the-time activity. Those guys and tradesmen actually make up a huge chunk of 4WD users, and that's cool and all.

The other bunch of people who buy 4WDs are those in the east. This link gives a nice map we can all look at, and we can see a bunch of people near the coast who drive 4WDs. The really creepy part is that near North Sydney and east of Berowra there's a greater percentage of 4WDs than out in Richmond or past Campbelltown. The link explains that these people are "affluent" (which I think means they smell bad) and can afford the petrol prices. The cars are used as people movers, but they don't want to get actual people movers because they're not as "extreme".

They also poison trees not on their property to get a better view of the ocean. They get pissed off when their more affluent neighbour adds another story to their house to ruin their perfect view. You know who's at the center of their universe? That's right, it's the Queen.

Fucking imperial system of measurement.

Supply lines: a failure of RTS

2006-04-05T22:06:00.000+10:00

A large part of RTS games is gathering supplies and building units. You use these units to kill off your opponents in some means. It's also a genre in which "ubermicro" has taken root. The idea that one should micro manage individual units to gain an advantage. While I'm not an advocate of realism here, I still think this is far removed from the tactics used in real warfare.

One term I keep hearing in regards to real war is "supply lines". It's of the utmost importance in all war to control where things harvested. Along with "controlling high ground" and "controlling the air", it's one of the most fundamental underpinnings of warfare. Unfortunately, it's only with Ground Control that I even saw mention of tactics like this. GC was an excellent game, but it was geared at individual control of units for a specific objective. What if you wanted to orchestrate this operation, like you do with RTS?

It seems like you're stuck. It's kind of annoying that something that can be so interesting in real life has not been taken advantage of in games. This also has to do with the "arbitrary" nature of RTSes in general. There's a bunch of units and newcomers have no idea what they do. The balance of the game is also usually pretty questionable, and basically the guy who's figured the game out through hours of play usually emerges victorious. There's rarely a "gentle introduction" to the game. It's this kind of crap, and the promises of real battle that give me an odd love / hate relationship with the RTS style of games.

From Ghandi to... Howard

2006-04-04T12:40:00.000+10:00

I am interested in finding out where you rate on a political scale. If you have the time, please do this short (about 5 mins) test at Political Compass and post your result here.

I really would like to see your results - so don't let me down people!

My result (this will come as no surprise to some of you)

What is interesting is seeing where they rate such people as John Howard and Saddam Hussein.

Straight from the horse's mouth

2006-04-01T01:40:00.000+11:00

I got the most interesting spam today. If you've ever read Paul Graham's A plan for Spam, he makes a prediction (either in that article or in related articles) that eventually spammers will start using "garbage words" to "neutralise" the spam, to make it seem more like a normal email. It seems like enough people have started using bayesian spam filtering to make that a reality.

Today I saw a spam email, with got through gmail's filters, likely because of the text that was stuck on at the end of it:

By the time Scarlett had undressed and blown out the candle, her plan for tomorrow had worked itself out in every detail. It was a simple plan, for, with Gerald's single mindedness of purpose, her eyes were centered on the goal and she thought only of the most direct steps by which to reach it. Scarlett obeyed, bracing herself and catching firm hold of one of the bedposts. Mammy pulled and jerked vigorously and, as the tiny circumference of whalebone girdled waist grew smaller, a proud, fond look came into her eyes. There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness. As they neared the intersecting road that came down the thickly wooded hill from Mimosa and Fairhill, the sound of hooves and carriage wheels became plainer and clamorous feminine voices raised in pleasant dispute sounded from
behind the screen of trees. Gerald, riding ahead, pulled up his horse and signed to Toby to stop the carriage where the two roads met.

Garbage words indeed. Frankly I'm disappointed the filters didn't identify her as a slut...

bash.org is awesome

2006-03-26T23:13:00.000+11:00

So I discovered bash.org, and I'm basically thinking to myself how mad it would be to make skits of this stuff...

This one reminded me of Chris:

once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.

Never enough light...

2006-03-26T13:33:00.000+11:00

A large part of buying my camera and related equipment is playing with it and figuring out what it's all about. One of the lessons I've learnt in the past is that there's never enough light. For outdoor pictures in the day, it's great. Pictures end up sharp, in focus, and full of colour. Indoors (or outdoors) at night is almost always retarded. The flash helps to some degree, but the one I've got doesn't "integrate" with my camera very well. I've got to constantly adjust the settings to make it work right, and it's got some sort of lag, so I can't go above 400.

One thing I've learnt is that if it takes 4 or 5 pictures before you get it right, people are going to lose interest.

The solution was more light. I didn't have a studio or other fancy setup, so dropping in excess of $100 for a light kit wasn't feasible. I looked at the Bunnings catalogues every now and then and noticed some very powerful work lights (2x500W) for reasonable prices (~$30). I went out with Nathan and bought one on a stand (2x500W) and one carry-around (150W for ~$10). The nice thing about them was that I could also use them for outdoor lighting in parties. Entertaining in an outdoor area is always difficult at night due to limited lighting. I intended to fix that and my picture taking in one hit.

There are issues with going with cheap work lights over a (cheap) professional lighting kit. The most immediate one I knew about was colour temperature. I didn't check, but I figured that even the cheapo lights in lighting kits would have a slightly more neutral colour than a work light, which no one really cares about. Having said that, they were both tungsten halogen lights, so I figured it was OK. Worst case, my pictures would look a little yellow. I like warm pics. The second thing was control. Work lights generally don't have as many controllable factors as something that's actually built to take pictures. I figured I could always go bush mechanic and figure out what to do in particular situations as they came along. The thing I wasn't aware of was the grilles. Work lights generally have grilles to protect them from getting hit by work equipment. I know it seems obvious, but when I bought them I didn't realise that the grilles would cause shadows over whatever they were pointing at. Oh well, either reflect them or cut the grille out. I didn't mind. This wasn't even really an issue for the 2x500W lights, because there were two of them, which pretty much cancelled out the shadows.

Immediately after buying them, we decided to test them out. What I found was interesting. The first thing is that they're very, very bright. If you're standing in front of them, even if you're trying not to look at them, they'll send you blind. Direct lighting is not an option unless your subject is wearing sunglasses. The solution is to reflect them off the ceiling, if there is one. Otherwise just put them far enough away that it's liveable. They're as bright as sunlight, but at the same time, not the same, because they're point lights. This means they're too bright in some places, and not bright enough in others. This may not be a big problem in a small area, because of the number of objects the light can reflect off.

The second thing is that they're not nearly bright enough. At least, not for taking pictures indoors at night without a tripod.

The ideal scenario is that you're walking around during an event with many "picture taking opportunities". You notice one, you take a picture, and it's awesome. It brings out the meaning of what it was to be at said event. It turns out that this may well be impossible, or at least difficult. Here's the real problem: Completely zoomed out with 400 ISO speed setting, the pic is great. The camera determines, at maximum aperture for my lens (~5) I can take pics at around 1/250s. This results in pretty sharp pictures for a handheld lens. Start zooming in, however, and the 250 turns to 125, 60, 40, and lower. That's if you're in a good place, lighting wise.

This basically means that you take pics at maximum zoom-out-ey-ness, and walk in or out whenever you need to "zoom" in or out. That's fine, but what if you want a very low DOF? Re-arranging the objects is the best option you have. If you want a higher DOF you're stuffed as well, because smaller apertures mean longer times.

This basically leaves the tripod as the only real option for taking decent pics at night. If I've left the tripod at home, I'm already screwed.

The final thing that I noticed is that I ruin as many pictures from getting the autofocus wrong as I ruin from camera shake. I'm used to my EOS50E. It tracks my eye to see what I'm looking at, and takes the picture. The 350D tries to figure out what I'm taking a picture of, and focuses based on that. It tends to weight the middle spot more than the rest. I tend to take pictures where the subject is off-centre. I have to do the funny focus-move dance to get the picture correct. On many occasions you just can't get the subject to wait while you do this (it's a seat of the pants thing*) and sometimes I just plain forget. The red dots focus on something unrelated, and I take the picture unaware that I've screwed it up. Gotta take more care...

* I have no idea what that means.

When will the madness end?

2006-03-22T10:19:00.000+11:00

New Star Wars TV Series Confirmed

- New Star Wars Series
- 100 Episodes
- Writern by Mr Lucus
- Covers the 20 years of Lukes life leading upto episode 4

I for one will not be watching this. Episodes 1-3 were enough for me.

As far as I'm concerned the only Star Wars movies/books worth acknowledging are 4-6, Shadows of the Empire and maybe the Admiral Thrawn series (Cause he's cool)

Someone on /. said make it about Han Solo. I for one agree. Get Joss Whedon to do the stories and direct it too. Infact how about they just keep making Serenity and call it Star Wars: Serenity or something to pull in the mainstream audience. ie; ad revenue. Atleast then it will be the first time in 25 years that the Star Wars name has been attached to something worth watching.

Abort, abort, abort!

2006-03-21T00:07:00.000+11:00

Does anyone who’s sane wish to move to Chatswood or somewhere else on the North Shore line? I’m having major problems with my flatmate for the last two weeks and I’ve only been here for less than four weeks, getting quite stressed out. I haven’t even finished unpacking yet and I already need to move out. =(

The Television Party game

2006-03-16T22:49:00.000+11:00

If you were televising a dinner party where you could invite any 6 people living or dead (using time travel, not reanimation cough) who would you invite? How would you arrange the table and what food would you serve?

First, I would like to say how disappointed I am that I can't host an undead dinner party (involving zombies). I've also taken about 9 months to answer this question. I've just got to face facts that no matter how hard I try, I'll never fulfill all the potential that's in this question. Not only the people, but also the way they can be paired, and what they can be given as food.

Initially I wrote a huge post with many wikipedia links of who I might pick and why, but my browser ate it. On top of two hours in traffic, this day has been one big waste of time. So, without reasoning this time, I give you the members of my dinner party:

1) Bach
2) Rudess
3) Socrates
4) Kurt
5) The person who's suffered the most pain in their lives in the entire world, EVER.
6) Gandhi

OK, maybe a bit of reasoning. Bach and Rudess would get along great, and we see a master teach and learn from a contemporary legend. Socrates and Kurt to see if Socrates can talk Kurt out of killing himself, considering his own fate. The person who's suffered the most pain in their lives in the entire world, ever, so that no one else bitches about how bad they've got it. Gandhi because he was killed by his own people, when he helped them become a nation.

There'd be a small table and couches, so you'd have to grab your food and sit on the couch. There'd be copious alcohol on tap, a grand piano, a guitar, a few notepads and pencils, as well as whatever the hell else you find lying around the house,

I'd serve vegetarian food for Gandhi's sake (and likely my own, even though I'm not going to be there), although I don't think anyone except Bach and Socrates would mind, and it would at least be interesting conversation. It would be served inside fake animal parts.

The Last Temptation of Gilchrist

2006-03-13T02:41:00.000+11:00

I love it when a good pun for a title comes to mind. Doubly so when the reference involves a film starring, of all people, David Bowie.

For as long as I have known you guys, I have managed to render myself immune to the effects of your constant discussions and playings of the game known as cricket. I had always seen it as a slow, boring, almost passive sport. A sport that could barely even hold the interest of those playing it - how could anyone enjoy watching this trash? However, over the past 12 months or so, something happened. I can not accurately described how it came to be, but I found myself coming to terms with my true feelings towards the game. I don't like cricket.

I love it.

I want us to play it from time to time, be it in the backyard or the more pure form on an oval. I want you to teach me the finer points in regard to the skills involved so I don't feel inept when at the crease, and don't feel intimidated by the ball when I'm barely a metre away from the person batting. I think it would be totally awesome if we formed a team and played indoor cricket or something next year.

Anyone?

now winter nights

2006-03-12T13:50:00.000+11:00

Is it just me or is nwn looking like a better buy now than ever before? I mean, you can now get the platinum edition for ~$70 and the mods for it are bigger and better than they've ever been. I mean, there's a d20 modern mod, and I'm really considering using that instead of using pnp. I was mostly spurred on by the escapist. The only thing really missing is Nathan's blessing. I think people hate nwn when it came out because it wasn't what people had hoped it would be. I've always thought that those hopes were really too high, but so many years on and it's still being developed, and I think it's getting closer to the hopes and dreams that the pnpers had of it so many years ago.

I think that Bioware have got to be crazy not to make nwn2 backwards compatible and build upon nwn to make it what people have always wanted. Maybe a few years too late, but has the dream really changed at all?

It's like a whole different world

2006-03-05T22:27:00.000+11:00

Every now and then, I end up watching the real media. That is to say, I may buy a newspaper for some reason (yesterday, it was because of the attached tropfest DVD), and get curious about the contents of said newspaper. Sometimes I end up watching real TV while waiting for dinner, as opposed to playing my pre-recorded strict diet of Futurama, Family Guy, Mythbusters, and the Iron Chef. On days like that, I fear for our future.

First, I made the mistake of reading Icon and Good weekend. Icon is well known for being retarded, mainly because it claims to be about computers. Anything that claims to be about computers will eventually be read by people who are interested in computers. Unfortunately, it's aimed squarely at people who know nothing about anything technical, at all. Their VCRs flash 12:00, and they're not even ashamed about it anymore. The people who write the articles can hardly "program" their VCRs. Their definition of "program" also constitutes "setting the time, and recording stuff", whereas the canonical nerd's definition of "program" is having the screen display "1 pwn3d j00r m4m4", and have the VCR actually go out at night raping the womenfolk.

So it was no surprise that Icon was full of shit. They had a laptop roundup, which was retarded. Some notable models (like the fujitsu ultraportables) went under their radar. The most surprising thing was reading good weekend, where there was an article about Steve Jobs. It went like this:

Most of you won't know who Steve Jobs is.

WTF? What kind of insane planet is this? They spend the entire article making comparisons to Bill Gates, like:

I know Bill Gates, but who's Steve Jobs

and

Bill Gates is a nicer guy but Jobs is more innovative.*

Do people really not know the Jobs? What about monkey-man Ballmer?

So I'm a seething mass about now. Then a brilliant new Channel 9 show called "Clever" comes on. Let me warn you: It is not all that clever. The format is basically contestants on either side get given a "scientific" puzzle and they have to guess what happens. That's actually putting it in a favourable light, so I'll give an example. There are three water coolers with gunpowder, water, and cork dust in them. The question is, which will cause it to go off like a rocket. Most of you will have seen this done on various kids TV programs like "Y?" and "Braniac", so you know the answer, but these people were actually thinking about it and discussing it. There are 4 such questions in the entire show. Talk about retarded. The only thing more retarded are the contestants, who know nothing about science, and presumably the viewing public.

Granted, I didn't have all the answers. For example, for the question "which ingredient will burn: coffee, sugar, or condensed milk?" I knew it was condensed milk (because sugar and coffee definitely don't) but I didn't know why. They didn't really explain it all that well... I also didn't get the TV dunking one (dunk a switched on TV into distilled water, sports drink, and oil, and see which one keeps working). I knew it wasn't the sports drink, but I didn't know why it wasn't the distilled water. It seemed rather obvious afterwards. However, the thing I'm getting at is that at least I looked for the reasons. It was the why that mattered and not the what. This show doesn't care about the why at all. Worse, it's a cheap rip-off of Braniac, which is a cheap rip-off of Mythbusters. Neither Brainac nor Clever manage to keep anything resembling an interesting show.

* These are paraphrased. The article was like this, but these aren't real quotes

Are women destroying the car industry?

2006-03-05T21:31:00.000+11:00

So I decided to take three of this blog's favourite topics and merge them into one. That's gotta make for the greatest blog article of all time, right? The first topic is video games, and specifically Colin McRae Rally.

CMR has been one of the greatest series of rally games ever, and I say this having played only CMR2005, and no other competing rally games that may be better. It's unforgiving, and very hard. At least, it is for someone who plays on a keyboard. Whilst I was playing I started thinking about how great some of these cars are. For those that didn't notice my brilliant textual maneuver, this is a segue into the second topic: Cars.

Even the Audi A3 has some nice engineering behind it. They've all got some ethos which makes them decent cars. Handling, power, drive style. You drive them all differently and it's always interesting. This is brought out even in the road models. Whether it's V8s or rally cars, there's something about the road-going version that makes you feel the engineering behind it, and it feels good. These cars have been put through their paces in rallies and what's been learnt has gradually filtered over to the road models.

Which brings us to the third topic: women, the Nissan Tiida, and the future of cars. You see, women don't want power, handling, and feel. They want price, comfort, and "safety". That's why you see the smart cars and the Priuses, the Suzuki's, and now the Tiida. You see, Nissan's always produced some nice cars, including the bluebird, the skyline, and the pulsar. The pulsar might sound like the odd one out in that list, but it was quite good for what it cost. I'm not sure it won, or even entered, any rally championships, but it was still a good car. However, the fact that it's kept Nissan alive has taught nissan a particularly bad lesson: Make cars for women.

The problem with women is that they generally don't really care about V8s or rally cars. They don't care if their car handles like a dog, and doesn't have the power or control to be able to safely get out of a bad situation. They want a car with doohickeys so they can talk on their mobile and apply their lipstick while driving. They want a car that has colour and styling to match their clothes. They want a car that's shallow and useless, much like they like their men, which I'm going to use in a flawed analogy to justify my own singleness.

"Safety" in these cars means that once they're in a crash, they'll probably save your life, but they'll probably be that much more likely to be in a crash. You see, rally cars are bred to not kill the drivers in extreme circumstances. They handle better so they're less likely to cause a crash. Girly cars are built to offer a big rubber stamp of "SAFE", for the kind of person who's too busy "multitasking" to maneuver their cars*. Is this really the way the car industry should go? Whatever the answer, the industry is headed in this direction, whether we like it or not.

* The writer doesn't know any real women and has crashed his car twice in as many years.

I can stop whenever... Really!!!

2006-03-03T06:13:00.000+11:00

My existance is comprised solely of gaming, eating and sleeping; only bodily functions hold priority over these. I can accurately be classified as an addict, but to the casual observer people would say that gaming has taken over my life. The truth is that gaming is used as a medium to feed my actual addiction, that of escaping reality. My computer is an easy, readily available and relatively cost effective tool (considering the hours I spend on it), the most practical way for me to feed that desire.

Every now and again I see articles on the telvision and newspapers referring to gaming addiction, and while I can appreciate the negative affect that any addiction can have on someone's life, I do find the blatant tagging of "gaming addiction" to be somewhat unsubstantiated. Gamasutra has recently featured an article which discusses this in a more eloquent manner.

Pwn breakfast

2006-03-02T23:57:00.000+11:00

An interesting question was asked about the nature of the product "Weet Bix". Is "Weet Bix" the plural or singular? ie: if you have 3 on your plate, do you have "Weet Bixes"? Contrariwise, if you have one, is it a "Weet Bic"?

This is a problem which occurs when you "productise" names. You see, if they called it "Wheat Biscuits", or "Wheat Bicks", they'd probably be unable to trademark the name, so they changed it to be trademarkeable. Unfortunately, this trademarked entity is now unclear on it's pluralage. I see productization as leet speak for marketers, only less funny. I find leet speak funny because I've never seen anyone actually talk that way. With marketing, the spelling pervades everything we do. "Light" becomes "Lite". Why? Nobody even trademarks "Lite" anymore.

I propose the solution is to call them "w00t b1x0rz". That way, the singular is clearly "w00t b1x0r", and they can keep the 'X', which makes them so "X-Treme". In conclusion, leet speak is superior to marketing speak, which is absolutely abhorrent.

Note that no matter how intelligent you are, if you pronounce it "nucular", you sound like an idiot. Don't do it!

Design and Documentation

2006-02-28T22:45:00.000+11:00

CSS. Programmers and writers often talk about it as being useful to split off the content from the presentation. It's a good idea. After all, sites like a list apart look great. Then you see the escapist. I understand that someone here might chime in to bitch about how it doesn't look right in their browser, but that's not the point here.

Someone could write the text by itself. It'd still look OK. It could look like a list apart. The design could make it actually readable. The Escapist, and print magazines in general, however, are about Synergy. You read stuff, and the backgrounds are there to bring out the atmosphere of the piece. It's like having music to video, wine with food. It's what pushes the article into the realm of easily connecting with the audience. Not saying that text by itself can't connect, but it's harder by itself. Pictures also give a good impression of what the article is about without actually having to read the whole thing. It makes it easy to skip some articles in a magazine that you may not find interesting.

Therefore, while content does not depend upon design, design does depend upon content. QED my friends... Q E D!

A murky relationship

2006-02-28T22:22:00.000+11:00

The first system I owned was an SMS. I'd often gone to people's houses and play on their amigas and C64s, but my parents didn't buy a console until the SMS. From then onwards, I've been on the sega side of things: More mature games with serious content. You punch people in the face, you don't jump on turtles. It was with a heavy heart that I bore their post megadrive crappiness. I was shocked to hear of their departure from hardware, right when their brightest flame was burning. I was crushed, and I've been wandering the gaming landscape aimlessly since.

I guess I got jealous of everyone playing their game boys. I've been looking enviously at the nintendo crowd, and when I found that Ikaruga was available on the gamecube (and a gamecube could be had for sub AU$100), I joined the ranks. It's been an uncomfortable relationship. On the one hand, I like thinking outside the box, I like the new ideas and designs that come out of the company in an industry making largely dull titles. So is nintendo my champion? My saviour?

No. Not by a long shot. This company puts in a lot of work to make sure that it's very difficult to develop for their platform. This is why there's hope in the Revolution. I'm hoping that alongside their NES and SNES library, they'll give away a dev-kit for free games. Sure, they don't make money from it, but if the game were free they wouldn't be making money from it anyway. On top of that, it makes their platform more dominant, which means more games for it.

Anyway, I'm ready to get my bubble blown yet again. Fucking Nintendo...

Storage

2006-02-18T16:06:00.000+11:00

How did I manage to get so much junk that I think I need a NAS? I just bought a 300GB HDD (Maxtor SATA - $199) so I can backup the contents of a 250GB drive that is dying, I was thinking of building a file server for a little while.

Recently I saw the ReadyNAS NV unit it'll cost a little over 1k, but the thought of being able to buy it and just throw HDDs into it and having it just work...

But then could I live with myself buying a preconfigured unit for use at home when I really should be setting up a proper Linux server? How many people here have got a Linux server set up here? Any of you guys played with LVM, backups (from network, versioning, and DVD archive?) and/or system partitioning?

What I really want to use the VLM from Linux to manage my storage, with the ability of play windows based games and use the OSX as the base OS, I guess I’ll need to wait for a hacked Intel based Powermac or just switch between three of my computers.

High Def Dvd's

2006-02-18T15:23:00.000+11:00

This Zdnet Article sums it up.

I assume that this technology is aimed at stopping people whom have very little idea how to use computers from copying DVD's. I also assume that they would probarbly buy a DVD player rather than try and work out how to play a dvd on their computer.

"Look here all I have to do is put it in the DVD player and it works."

I also assume that everyone sees the fault in leaving the decryption device in the hands of the consumer.

One Piece

2006-02-18T14:40:00.000+11:00

One Piece is pretty critically acclaimed, considering the series itself goes on forever. It seems to be liked better than Naruto (having said that, Naruto's got more ratings), and now it's on ten. Weekdays at 7:30. I've seen it, and to be honest I haven't been too impressed, but the premise is great, and it involves pirates, and that can never be a bad thing. I honestly think the problem is that I haven't been watching it through and through, and the dubs are really quite bad. Hopefully they won't destroy the story.

Dateline is super the shit!

2006-02-16T22:04:00.000+11:00

George Negus is a little bit full of himself, and a pretty crappy interviewer, but boy has he got a great show. Whenever I watch Dateline I'm always impressed, and think "I've really got to start watching this show regularly". This is something I tend to forget easily, which always shits me the next time I see Dateline or an ad for it on SBS. In any case I made a point, eventually, to start taping it... err... HDDing it...

Lucky me, the first episode I taped was the one which showed the photos that other news sources reported on. I mean, imagine a story so good that news programs report it as a news item, and there are newspaper articles about it. These photos aren't supposed to be shown in the U.S., but I think they're out now. Before you click that link, I'd like to say that these soldiers are really fucked up (even by my standards), and these photos are pretty disturbing. There's more photos on the show itself, as well as video, among which is a guy with his head half blown off, and someone else who's been shot in the arse (sounds funnier than it is). There was also someone who covered himself in shit (probably to keep the guards away from him). One of the videos is of the shit guy repeatedly beating his head on the wall.

Worse, the story implies that the directives (which low level officers have been charged for) were given by much higher ranking officials. I reckon even WW2 people would've been treated better than that. Anyway, kudos to Dateline for showing this stuff. The rest of the stories were really good too (one about political movies and another about Hamas' victory in Palestine).

PS: In case George Negus is reading this: "super the shit" is a good thing.