CTTLBlog

2003-10-19T03:37:00.000-07:00

So...
If you actually read this blog, click here. Consider it an experiment.

2003-07-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

You look different in that picture for some reason. Have you had a haircut?

2003-07-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

Syllables racing
through his mind, the ninja pon-
ders kaleidoscopes.

A political science major, Jeff Saunders earned four letters in varsity soccer and set Hobart career records for goals (44), assists (26), and points (114). He shares the single season marks for assists (12) and points (42). A two-time All-American, he is the only Statesmen to be named to the NSCAA All-American first team. As a senior, Saunders served as team captain and was the leading scorer on the 1992 Hobart team that was 15-0-0 during the regular season, ranked No. 1 nationally in Division III, and earned Hobart soccer’s first invitation to the NCAA Division III Championships.
(Courtesy of http://www.hws.edu/athletics/hobart/hof/2002/saunders.asp)

2003-07-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

OMG GENEFORGE 2
I get two new great RPGs on ONE DAY
and UCCLAN is tonight for FPSing and RTSing
The Computer Gods are kind... eeeeeee excitement

2003-07-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

I got a copy! I got a copy! I got a copy!
Skies of Arcadia: Legends
The only true RPG for the Gamecube, to date, and reviewed by all and sundry to be excellent. The bastards discontinued the Australian version the day of its release in my state, citing 'poor sales' - this when the game had been out for three days and was already in the top ten chart for GCN game sales. But I did not give up hope; I searched and wheedled and back-ordered and a copy is in the process of being shipped to me right now yAY.

("Curses," say the Evil Conglomerate of People Trying To Annoy Thomas. "Foiled again.")

2003-07-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

[milly:/etc/apache] root# cat srm.conf
#
# This is the default file for the ResourceConfig directive in httpd.conf.
# It is processed after httpd.conf but before access.conf.
#
# To avoid confusion, it is recommended that you put all of your
# Apache server directives into the httpd.conf file and leave this
# one essentially empty.
#
[milly:/etc/apache] root#

what

Okay, that makes no sense out of context, so here's some explanation. I recently set up a new server, running Debian. I went through all sorts of stuff, making it up, and eventually got to apache...
...only to be greeted by this "srm.conf", which recommends that I do not use it for anything. This begs the question: why is it THERE?

2003-07-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

The death of a character is not all bad.
DM: Here's X character levels and Y experience for your new character. Do what you will.
Me: *twink twink twink*

2003-06-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here's something which I wrote some time ago, intending to blog it, but never ended up doing so.

As I type this, I am sitting in a cafè in Fremantle, waiting for my food to arrive. The table is a glorious royal blue, and my shiny white laptop is very visible against it. I am en route; Prospero Productions is behind me and Cameron Hall in front. Having spent a few hours repairing Macs, I now have a cheque for $630 in my case, and more on the way. In my bag is an interesting new fantasy book and in my pocket is an iPod. After eating and depositing it at the bank, I will proceed to the Hall and roleplay the night away, spending time with friends and pretending to kill fabulous monsters in the name of a god that does not exist. Exams are in two weeks and I have no assignmen

At that point, my food was ready, and I closed my laptop hurriedly. Why didn't I finish and post that snapshot of my life? Well, my mood changed somewhat. I fell ill, and illness makes you miserable even when all else in life is good. By the time that was over, there were exams...

So what's relevant and what has changed? I'm in the same cafè, with the same laptop. The $630 was spent on a new CPU, which has made computing rather more pleasurable. Coincidentally, I'm now owed another $640, which will get me a fanless home server. Tonight is Michael's 18th 'P' party, and these chips are delicious.

As when the original post was writen, I am happy. Life currently is good: exams are over, social opportunities abound and personal projects are coming along well. Life in the future will be good too: plenty of time to work on phunt, next semester I have a LOW workload, my marks seem like they'll be good enough to get into Honours. What more could I reasonably ask for?

2003-06-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am at a LAN party which has, for once, Internet access, and it is Good.

2003-06-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome back!
Meanwhile, I'm resisting the temptation to go to the blog's admin console and run Revelation.

2003-06-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

The swords Durandil are forges in the mines by the dwarves.
With it it is easy to kill a troll even with only one hand. No need
of super training or level 28. When you unsheathe the instrument it's
the enemy that flee! With your sword Durandil when you go through the
paths, you massacre without worry brigands and gobelins, the giant
rats, the mutant ogres, the zombies and the liches, you cut them in
pieces as they were parts of a quiche.
The swords Durandil! The swords Durandil!
When you ensheathe it in a dungeon at least you don't have a weak
appearance.
It is the weapon of the tough ones that know to be subtile.
Don't leave for an adventure without your sword Durandil!

2003-06-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

You have slain Engineering 101.
Welcome to level 2.
You can learn 1 new spell.

..

Hyargh!

2003-06-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

Fedex tracking numbers are the devil. The temptation is just to reload, and reload, and reload, and reload because it will... say something else... this... time... this time...
Meanwhile, my first and hardest (by a great deal) exam is tomorrow afternoon, I'm not ready for it in the slightest. I suspect I will be the most cheerful likelytofail student sitting the exam, however.

I wrote a long thingy a week ago about how happy I was. Then I got sick and felt miserable, so I didn't post it. I'll see if I can dig it up, though, to avoid having to post "Milk" again tomorrow.

2003-06-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

Milk.

2003-06-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

Milk.

2003-05-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

CATS
Why are they so cute. Why?
Anyway.
Things that have arrived:
Power adapter, keyboard
Things that have not:
iPod, CPU upgrade
Units I'd like to withdraw from but I'd get a 0 if I did:
Linear Algebra
Tests I should have studied for:
DAT, tomorrow
Parties that were fun:
UCCLan
First person shooter that is actually good:
Urban Terror
Soundtracks that rock:
Chicken Run, Chrono Trigger, Love Hina
**set Stuff Done Flag 031 to 1, spawn Goblin Fighter x3 at party location, Thomas disappears in a puff of smoke**

2003-05-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

Banana: What was the city in Zeal that wasn't Enhasa?
Maelkann: What is Zeal?
Banana: the place in chrono trigger in 12000 BC
Maelkann: I've never played chrono trigger.
Banana: !
Maelkann: :)
Banana: Can I quote you on that?
Maelkann: Yes, why?
Banana: Can I use it as an excuse to kill you?

2003-05-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

"Today ATI shipped its Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB DDR-2 card in time for E3 and nVidia announced the NV35-based GeForce 5900 which will be available in June. Early tests seem to say that while nVidia edges ahead of ATI in specific areas, overall ATI still has the better card."

Muahaha. For some reason I've always liked ATI, so it's nice to see them kicking nVidia's bottom these days.

2003-05-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

help me which one do I play first???
It is a moral dilemma of unequalled proportions:(

2003-05-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

12:30: *starts the DAT project*
12:40: So, I've just got to implement these two queue interfaces, okay.
12:41: *begins work*
12:42: *stops work, starts procrastinating*
1:30: *stops listening to music, starts work again*
2:00 *finishes implementing the first interface, takes a cake out of the oven*
2:10 I'll just check the spec again before doing the other half, in case there's something I missed. What's this? "At first glance, the project may seem long and somewhat daunting."
AHAHAHAAHahahahaAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAhhaahahaahahahahahahasnrkt

Long? How long is a very short piece of string? And daunting? It might have been daunting, if it weren't for the fact that I've now been taught how to implement abstract data types in Java four times in under 12 months! They really do have an inflated opinion of the difficulty of this course...

2003-05-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

She came from the Cocos Islands,
She came from the Cocos Islands,
She came from the Cocos Islands,
She came from the Cocos Islands they were singing
Chunky chunky air guitar now
Chunky chunky air guitar
Chunky chunky air guitar now
Chunky chunky air guitar
He was getting down like a freakshow
She was going off like a whale

2003-05-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

Update #2:
It now also works in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
This seems to be an alarmingly common issue when doing web stuff... everything will work perfectly in almost every browser I test it in, and then I have to add lots of hacks to make it work in MSIE.

2003-05-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

Update #1 to the website:
It looks and works exactly the same, but now generates XHTML that is
a) Valid
b) Readable

2003-05-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Planet Earth website is live! Yay! I'm rather proud of the content management system I designed for it. Adding new articles - or indeed new entire sections of the site - does not require editing a single text file; everything is filesystem-based. The wonders of PHP, they never cease to be wondrous.

2003-04-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

From my OOP lab: "Index gets you to a 27 letter means to access classes by first letter."

That's, uh, a pretty interesting index you've got there. I'd love to see it... ABCDEFGHπIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, perhaps?

UPDATE: It appears that the 27th letter is in fact an underscore. Because, you know, so many words start with an underscore. Except that in Java, they do. Coming from a C background this is very strange:)

2003-04-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

*installs system updates like they grew on binary trees*

So, Apple's new music service is US only. There are things that I like more than that. THOSE THINGS INCLUDE HITLER AND KICKING PUPPIES.

2003-04-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Toasted sandwiches are reeeeeaallly nice, but make me more hungry, rather than less:/

2003-04-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

...
"System version Mac OS X 10.1 Server (5K10) [ Mac OS X 10.2.5 (6L29) ]"

So, um.. wtf?
I'm kind of scared to reboot or anything.. everything seems to be running exactly like it was before, except that the About This Mac window says I'm in Server 10.1. The version string above was from System Profiler and confuses the heck out of me. I appear to have some, but not all, of the Server utilities installed... Software Update is offering me the Server 10.1.3 update; I suspect installing it would be a Very Bad Idea. I'm going to reboot now, and then, if my computer starts up, attempt to cure its schizophrenia.

2003-04-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

So. What happens when you accidentally install Mac OS X Server 10.1 over the top of Mac OS X Client 10.2? I guess I'm about to find out.

2003-04-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

I don't think I ever want to eat pizza again.

2003-04-23T02:20:00.000-07:00

I have a job! For which I get paid money! $40 an hour!
And it's easy and not too boring!
And I can pretty much pick my hours!
The Internet, I am extremely lucky. Please take note of this, as there may be a test later.

2003-04-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

Just one more episode. I'll stop after one more episode, I swear!

2003-04-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Ha! Partake in a swig of your own medicinal beverage, Mei!

2003-04-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

EXCLAMATION MARK

2003-04-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

If they absolutely had to introduce a new character, fine. But why did it have to be a bad one?:(

2003-04-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

I've realised I am completely at the mercy of the writers of this show. My attempts to predict the plot are a dismal failure >_<

2003-04-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

What I don't understand is why there is always a bowling episode.

2003-04-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

oh damnit NOT HIM AGAIN

2003-04-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

I swear these are the craziest episode titles in existence.
"Jealousy explodes! Two hot people on a boat. TRAP-"

2003-04-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

wtf now the doll isn't evil? But space turtles?

2003-04-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Creepy doll-thing eeeee
Edit: Creepier than I had first thought, indeed. eeeeeeeeee.

2003-04-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

Love Hina really rocks. It's not just a sappy romantic comedy like I thought it would be. It's that too, but it's just really well done, and crosses genres like a genre-crossing thing. Also -
*thing happens in episode*
!!
!!!!1
!!1111!!!!
must watch not blog

2003-04-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Is it May yet? Is it May yet? Is it May yet? Is it May yet?

2003-04-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

Strange ideas are running through my mind, but I don't know if anything will come of them. We'll see.

2003-04-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Things I Can Say In Japanese
mother
father
yes
no
big brother
hello
goodbye
sorry
Tokyo University
mistress
very sorry
pervert
cartoon
comic
demon
sir/mr
various other honourifics
"I am"
numbers one through ninteen and ten thousand
yay!
huh?
the names of some flowers and petals (ie. sakura, nadesico)
cute
idiot
sword
card
...and possibly some others that I have not remembered. I know nothing of the grammar of the language, and I vaguely recall a time when hiregana and katakana were more than just squiggles to me. A time which has passed. Thank [deity] for subtitles.

2003-04-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

I have just finished writing my first "Hello, world!" program in OS X assembly. It was evil. MANY HOOPS WERE JUMPED THROUGH.
It's callconventionally specific to PPC, horribly specific to Mach-O, and annoyingly specific to dyld. The main problem was the eleven lines of extremely complicated assembly required to call printf.. inlining assembly should be relatively painless by comparison. Only relatively, of course, since the PPC is still a female dog to write for - did you know it has a "bdnzflrl+" mnemonic? And "eieio"! There are also no useful resources available anywhere; even PPC assembly stuff on the internet doesn't play nice with Darwin /bin/as and dyld. Oh, dyld, from the heart of /dev/null I stab at thee. When you have to add directives to the assembler to appease your non-optional dynamic linker you know you have created a monstrosity.

...it assembled and ran really fast, however, and argument passing is very nice compared to the 68k. If only there was a way to do static linking.. hmm. Command-line options of as itself?

---some time later---
The Official Word from Apple is that static linking of user binaries is Not Supported. And indeed, Not Possible unless you recompile your very kernel. Well, then:(

2003-04-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Of the 3019 songs in my library, 324 of them are by bands that start with S - over 10%. By contrast, only 102 songs are by artists that start with P.
Statistically, each starting letter should make up 3.8461% of the total.. P is quite close to that, but S is decidedly not. I suspect that this bias may be due to the facts that
a) I recently was at a LAN with people obsessed with the Smiths and the Smashing Pumpkins
b) My favourite band is Smashmouth
c) My brother's favourite bands are Sonic Animation and Static-X

2003-04-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

The orc, the orc, the orc is on fire
The orc, the orc, the orc is on fire
The orc, the orc, the orc is on fire
We don't need no water let the mother!@#$er burn
Burn mother!@#$er, burn

Lucas has had a very successful day. I, on the other hand, have a problem. One of the people who was to be playing in my campaign, which was to start on Tuesday, has had to (temporarily) drop out. This leaves us with only three player characters for now. Is that enough, or should we postpone things long enough for me to find somebody else? Hm. As far as I know, none of Andrew, Craig or Daniel actually read this blog.. so I'm asking the wrong people, aren't I? I think I'll make it the official source for Planet Earth info, so I'll change that:) Actually, I have a special "news" blog which contains extracts from news articles and such going on in the campaign world, too, and really should tell the players about that.

*goes off to try and contact people*

2003-04-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

This post is just to test Omniweb's automatic change checking.

2003-04-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

More sloppy thinking, but this time I caught it:
I found myself saying to someone "If I were you," but corrected myself just in time. Why did I need to correct myself? Well, because I didn't mean "If I were you," just as almost nobody does when they say it. The common usage is:
A: I [verb]
B: If I were you I would [different verb]
It's easy to see why this is incorrect: If B was A, she would [verb], not [different verb], because B would have _exactly the same circumstances, motivations and personality as A_. What people mean - and what I meant - is "If I were in your position". Different people can react differently to things; but if you were someone, you wouldn't be a different person to them. You'd be them.

Why is this important? Well, I'm a pedant. I like being a pedant. What I don't like is being a hypocrite - so if I'm going to call people on tiny irrelevant points of grammar that are just figures of speech anyway, I'd better make expletiving sure that I follow those rules myself.

2003-04-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

what

2003-04-05T03:48:00.000-08:00

HELP STOP BLOOD COMING FROM ELBOW STOP DONT WANT TO DIE STOP SEND BANDAID IMMEDIATELY STOP

2003-04-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

Did you ever send a packet to the socket of a port?
And then find by lack of reply that the server's overwrought?
Now you're running out of time
And your job is on the line
Because your boss is counting on the web to submit his report

Network probing reveals that you can SSH to the hub
And from there jump to the server running the defective sub
Which is crucial to your workforce
So you'd better fix it perforce
Of the problem you vow that you'll place your finger on the nub

So you're grepping through the logfiles when you'd rather be in bed
When for some reason you decide to take a chance instead
And you kill -HUP the process
And you call the server hosters
And they hard reboot the router and the LAN's no longer dead

Live in worry, live in doubt, live in the machine room and fear
Fixes flimsy come from whimsy but the next crash may be near
Can you trust your server code?
Can it handle larger loads?
For a sysadmin disaster lurks behind every frontier

2003-04-01T05:59:00.000-08:00

Argh! I just had a moment of sloppy thinking!

The scenario: I am in my house. So is my mother. Mum gives me a pile of clothes and asks me to put them away. I do so. I notice that the drawers are full. I comment that they're overflowing, and then..
"At least it's better than the alternative".

ARgh. Stupid! Stupid! How could I have SAID that?? The alternative to "overflowing drawers" is not "empty drawers"! It is "drawers that are not overflowing"! Quite often, this is NOT worse than "overflowing drawers".

I apologise most sincerely to all concerned.

2003-03-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

So, let me get this straight: You're saying that he was a boy, and she was a girl.. and you think that that makes things obvious? I mean, yes, the implication is there, but having already heard the song, I know that it doesn't turn out that way, making me rather less inclined to trust you in the future. Consider yourself on probation.

2003-03-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

I have lots of stuff to talk about, but nobody else is online - hence, blog.

Friday night was.. nice. Roleplaying was slightly sub-par, with two people missing, and was something of a low-budget episode - very little action and a lot of re-used footage. Lucas was impaled with many arrows, but took it in his stride, even to the point of making the most successful fall-from-a-dying-horse ever. The person we travelled for weeks to find had, naturally, vanished the day before. MattTGT tried to convince Andrew that none of us should get any experience, so Andrew didn't give him any:) Since we'd finished early, Andrew, Hamish and I took a walk to Broadway Pizza, where we ran into a few older Cameronhallites (and ate pizza). The garlic bread was delicious. On the way back, we run across Furry, who tried to convince us to come join the karaoke night going on in some nearby wretched hive of scum and villainy. I was sorely tempted, but was vetoed - this turned out to be a good thing, as I would have missed the last bus otherwise.

Which brings me to the sore point.

I then had to sit on a bus for half an hour, wait at a bus stop for half an hour, get on another bus, walk a kilometre and a half and finally stumble in the front door and collapse. Had I left things any later (I left at 9:30) I would not have been able to get home at all. This is Very Inconvenient. I love staying on campus late, doing things with friends or just hanging around, in Cameron Hall or the greater Crawley area.. but I hardly ever can because of living so irritatingly far away. So what are my options?

* Move out of home to somewhere closer:
Unrealistic and undesirable. I like where I live, I'd prefer UWA to move closer to us. Additionally, without a job moving out is a Bad Idea.
* Get a car and learn to drive
A lot more feasible and very useful, but I'd still need a job (petrol)
* Maintain the status quo
Well, it's easy...

Bah.

Planet Earth is looking rather more possible than previously; the only remaining issue is the Rusty Tuesday business, which will hopefully be resolved telephonically. The P.E.C.K. is almost complete* and people seem to be thinking about characters and things; all the pieces of the main storyline are slotting into place with only one of the jigsaw bits getting annoyingly folded, resulting in the whole puzzle having this stupid crease in it that ruins everything you've worked for, everything you've hoped for and dreamed of, to make them pay, pay for what they did to you, them and their little dog, the dog oh god the hound with eyes of fire oh god oh dog oh god

I have departitioned excelexcel** and removed DEBIAN LUNIX OMG once again; it turned out to be too much of a hassle to get X working properly, and I really don't feel like using a distribution without apt-get. I no longer care, anyway, about having a properly-working gst***, because I'm downloading Cocoa vw*** as we speak. As we speak, poor excel is being raped by the Windows 2000 installer - Virtual PC has its uses, and playing Planescape: Torment is among them.

I'm attempting to turn maelkann to the [moral] dark side, too..
Him: blah blah blah blah
Me: blah blah you're the only person on Soc who'll know blah blah
Him: But it's like, if I ignore this, do I have any right to complain about manics/leisure?
Me: I don't know. If you ignore somebody sneakily having an extra slice of cake, do you have any right to complain about the man who attempts to stab you in the face?
Him: Exactly.
Me: THE ANSWER IS YES

There's a long line of cars and they're trying to get through
There's no single explanation there's no central destination
But this long line of cars is trying to get through
And this long line of cars is all because of you

We don't wonder where we're going or remember where we've been
We've got to keep this traffic flowing and accept a little sin
So this long line of cars will never have an end
And this long line of cars keeps coming round the bend

That's about it for now. For the record, I'm opposed the war (on somewhat more rational and better thought-out grounds than most other lefties), I don't recommend Broadway because their small pizzas are VERY small (though the garlic bread's divine), and I can beat you by jumping off a high platform and pointing my sword straight downwards DEATH FROM ABOVE!

* not really, but it's coming along
** the current name of my iBook - previous ones include "localhost" and "shiny"
*** Smalltalk environments

2003-03-27T02:07:00.000-08:00

I spend every second hour working or studying, and every OTHER hour playing Super Smash Brothers.
It is quite acceptable.
Next semester, I have 9 contact hours, which is vastly more acceptable.

2003-03-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

!!
The prodigal ninja has returned!

Now I'll talk about something unrelated!
Specifically, classes. It turns out that I'll have to do a second-year maths unit next year...
but only three units next semster. Operating Systems, Discrete Geometry and Something Else I Forget. Teh Slax0r, in other words.
I should also finish my AUC WWDC scholarship application...

2003-03-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

Gwahaha!

2003-03-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

I have discovered that it is actually quite nice to just be sitting on a bus, clean, healthy and warm. Also, Student Admin is the most bureaucratic place on the entire campus.

To people to whom I've been talking about Planet Earth: hghygj
(my H key is broken)
What I MEANT to say: How ready are you for actual startingness? Does anybody have a preference for days, times, and things, and stuff? Also, how much have I actually told you? Who even ARE you? Talk to me!

We now officially live in crazy village. Complaints should be directed to Michael Pauley.

2003-03-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

Also, "Where There's Smoke, There's Sexy Fire!" sounds very Scary-Go-Roundish to me.. is the person who came up with it a reader?

2003-03-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

A: What you say !
B: I dunno. What YOU say !
A: I dunno.
<completely-random>

Monday will be busy.. I need to
a) Find the semi-mythical "Rob Credaro" and speak to him about AUC WWDS scholarships (FTSMRCASTHAAWS).
b) Find out the procedure for switching courses/units and do so since I've decided I'm not as interested in maths as I used to be (FOTPFSCUADSSIDINAIIMAIUTB).
c) Pay my Amenities Fee fee (PMAFF).
d) Turn everything into an acronym (TEIAA).

2003-03-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

I have a half-formed DEBIAN LUNIX OMG install on a partition of my iBook, but rather than complete it right now I'm going to sing.

We know of an ancient radiation that haunts dismembered constellations, a faintly glimmering radio station...
While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather" the flies and spiders get along together; cobwebs fall on an old skipping record...
Beyond the suns that guard this roof, beyond your flowers of flaming truth, beyond your latest ad campaigns...
And old man sits collecting stamps in a room all filled with chinese lamps he saved what others throw away... he says that he'll be rich some day...

2003-03-12T22:05:00.000-08:00

I have had enough of The Internet for today. Goodbye.

2003-03-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

Roleplaying on Wednesday was great.. actually, the whole week has been great, socialness-wise. Being 'popular' (if among a small set of people) is very strange and sometimes inconvenient, but it's certainly interesting. Actual work is, hopefully fine - I need to get further into semester before I can really say how things are going. Need to study maths more. Also, I need to work on Planet Earth (provisional title for secret project).

2003-03-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

Being back at uni is highly cool. Hanging around all day with cool people in cool places, occasionally going to cool classes (yes, Calculus is cool - jocks are just in denial).

Also, Scary Go Round might be the funniest thing ever, I'm not sure. "Windows Security" is pretty funny.

2003-02-28T04:17:00.000-08:00

Chas: Where's that place?
Oliver: You mean the place across the road from the other place?
Chas: No, the.. the place.
Oliver: What place?
Oliver: Give me more information, here. Tell me something about the place.
Chas: It's the place with the.. I'm tempted to say the thing.
Chas: The place with the skull.
Oliver: I don't know where that place is.

2003-02-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

Redesign: complete! Some notes on the new layout:

The only visible difference to most people is that the sidebar no longer goes all the way to the bottom of the page. I assure you, though, that it's a LOT nicer under the hood than it used to be. If only <object> could emulate #include properly, I wouldn't need any javascript at all...

Another visible change for people using text-based browsers is that the content now appears before the sidebar, so that you are not forced to wade through piles of links and archives and whatnot.

The code of the page template is now 2415 bytes, down from 3578. This is, I am aware, a reduction from "Very small" to "Very very small," but if you scale it up it's a good indication of how much bandwidth CSS can save you. Especially if you're actually using included style sheets, instead of just a <style> in the header like I am.

Basically, it used to work but suck; now it works and rocks.

Since Hydra is no longer in Canada and no longer has to worry about the page being under construction, he no longer has an excuse to no longer post!

2003-02-27T03:36:00.000-08:00

It recently came to my attention that there are people who actually read this thing, so I think I'll post something. First off, I've changed the layout slightly - removed comments until I can find a stabler server to host them, and moved the archives links to accomodate their increasing quantity. When I have more time, I'm going to change the whole page to use semantic markup and replace all the icky font and table tags with CSS, but

Actually, I have plenty of time right now. I'll be back later.

2003-02-13T20:14:00.000-08:00

Gooooooldfinger
He's the main with a Midas touch
A spider's touch
A coooold finger
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
Don't go in

2003-02-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

Castiglione's Law:
As the length of a work of fanfiction increases, the probability of any given character acting OOC approaches 1.

2003-02-09T01:39:00.001-08:00

ba da DA da da da dum da da DA da da da, da da da da da da dum da da da

2003-02-09T01:39:00.000-08:00

*orders Fallout 1&2 bundle - old games, but they're cheap now and I love RPGs*
*listens to Chicken Run soundtrack*

2003-02-09T00:42:00.000-08:00

The Director of Economic Strategies for the US Census Bureau is called Frederick T. Knickerbocker.

2003-02-06T02:15:00.000-08:00

I have UBERSPEAKERS.
Music high ensues.

2003-02-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

Found on alt.sysadmin.recovery:

A poem:

          <>!*''#

          ^"`$$-

          !*=@$_

          %*<>~#4

          &[]../

          |{,,SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

          Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,

          Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

          Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

          Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

          Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

          Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

2003-01-31T18:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I just slept for 18 hours. Features of the previous 30:

₪ Why do people have to move just when you're trying to shoot them? It makes it so much harder to get frags.
₪ My orcs are much, much better at fragging people than I am.
₪ I have 30+ CDs of anime to watch. Does anybody want to watch Trigun with me?
₪ Sometimes SMB (Windows file sharing) doesn't work because it sucks. Sometimes, it doesn't work because the network cable is broken.
₪ Kim, Hamish and Martin are cooler than I previously knew, as I did not actually know them previously.
₪ Pizza Hut's pizza isn't as bad as it used to be.
₪ 30-packs of Coke Are Not Enough.
₪ Urban Terror is rather easier to play than Counterstrike.. and more fun, in my opinion.
₪ iBooks are quite decent gaming machines, but do not attempt to play Warcraft III with all the settings at maximum and iTunes playing mp3s in the background.
₪ Burning CDs while playing Quake 3, on the other hand, is fine.
₪ There are Windows users who do not know what FTP is.
₪ wakka wakka
₪ Western Digital make better hard drives than even they claim.
₪ Damn you, Canada.
₪ MoJoBo WILL LIVE AGAIN - it's official!

2003-01-26T05:59:00.000-08:00

Arggahhhhhhhhhhgh get thee behind me, fanfic! Fie, scanlations! Out, foul demons of manga and anime both, that bring nothing but addiction and despair. Thy strength most potent and most awful, depart hence! Damnit, I'm a geek, not a nerd!
help

2003-01-26T02:20:00.000-08:00

I'm not at my ordinary computer, but at Dad's. Through some kind of Internet magic, I'm still able to blog! I want this machine. It's so FAST and shiny and fast and the 17" LCD and fast and almost a gig of RAM and fast and hundreds of gigs of disk space, fast, and the geforce 4 ti and the harman kardon soundsticks and isub and did I mention it's really really fast?

Still takes ages to encode MPEG-2, though.

2003-01-25T04:44:00.000-08:00

I have pizza! And not just any old pizza.. this is Domino's pizza. What does that mean, you ask? Well, it means it's not very good. But hey, it's still pizza.

2003-01-24T03:51:00.000-08:00

Banana 7:48:03
You say you want a revolution/well, you know, we all wanna change the world
You tell me that it's evolution/well, you know, we all wanna change the world
But then you talk about destructioooon/Don't you know that you can count me out?

~Coxy 7:48:53
Boo, you weak-livered hippie

2003-01-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

Some
more
CUTE CAT.

2003-01-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

CUTE CAT

2003-01-23T03:03:00.000-08:00

I just learnt something about C which I didn't know and have never seen in a textbook.
Because it's stupid.
Array subscripting is commutative.
Therefore,

myArray[2][8]

is equivalent to

8[2[myArray]]

.
This is not in any way a useful feature!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2003-01-22T05:45:00.000-08:00

Scene: A bare white room. As the camera rotates slowly, there are hints of padding on the walls; it may be an asylum, or it might just be the room. In the center, apparently, is a large ball of rags, but on closer inspection it is a human being.

Thomas is huddled over into a ball, as close to a foetus as an 18-year-old can be. His hair is long and unkempt, and his clothes are well-tailored but raggedy. The camera moves closer, and a small noise becomes audible: he is weeping. The sobs, however, are intermittent. A brief closeup of his face reveals his lips moving, but his words are nearly inaudible. Though the camera stays utterly still, his voice becomes gradually louder, until words can be perceived.

why... why so bad... why there why... why is it so bad... why did I go there why is the writing so bad why why

With frightening speed, he snaps his head upwards and begins to shriek "UNBEARABLE" over and over again. It is unclear whether he is insane, sorrowful or angry. Only one thing is certain:

fanfiction.net has claimed another victim.

2003-01-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

I just Aktivated Zer Device! It's so nice to have bass back again...

Specifically, I have a fairly high quality boom-box type stereo hooked up to my computer through, of all things, the tape deck. Also, the speakers are kind of hacked on. In fact, the only thing about it that isn't jury-rigged is the connection between the tape adapter and my actual tower. It still, however, sounds a heck of a lot better than the old dinky little $20 speakers I had.. someday, I will have a proper setup, but this cheap version will have to do for now. It pleases me.

2003-01-22T03:29:00.000-08:00

Re: Lost Kingdoms
I got the powerup and won the game. sux2bu, God of Destruction!

2003-01-22T00:54:00.000-08:00

chmod +s is dangerous! I just wrote an 8-line program that, if once chowned to root, will thence allow any user to do anything with superuser privileges from any context. Essentially, sudo without the need for a password. Note to self: do not ever put this program on a computer to which other people may have access.

..chmod +s is cool. But dangerous.

2003-01-21T20:03:00.000-08:00

It's noon. I haven't had breakfast or lunch, and I'm hungry.
We have no food in the house - not even bread and butter - and I am completely* broke so I can't buy any. I'm also the only person here.
...help!

*: $1.75 in my bank account, no cash.

2003-01-19T07:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to Craig's birthday party last subjective night.. it was fun! For some reason more and more people left as the evening progressed; by the time I was unexpectedly swept back to Fremantle, there were only four or so left, which Craig seemed rather annoyed about. However, the pool was fun, the conversation was fun, the music was fun, and the food was fun. Even Mario Party was fun, and we only played that because we couldn't get SSBM...

I have ten volumes of Tokyo Babylon sitting here staring at me and I don't know why. I suspect, though, the fault lies both with Patrick and Liz.

Tomorrow: Enrolment for Uni! Not mine, though, a friend's - I'm along for the ride and to return a b00x0r.

2003-01-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

IMMENSE IRRITATION.
Ircle crashed and it's all my fault. Well, it's the fault of the bug in the program that makes it crash if you right-click, but I KNEW about it, I've been bitten by it BEFORE, and argh
and at least I managed to get back into the channel and get the dcc send again but the bot doesn't support RESUME, so I have to start ALL OVER AGAIN
*gnaws nails*
I didn't actually gnaw on my fingernails, so I don't know why I said that.

it.screw();
I'm going to bed; I'll leave this on and attempt to sleep with the noise of the fan and the hard drive whirring. Something I have never before succeeded in doing.

(singing) Weeeee shaall oooovercoooooooooome....

Goodnight, The Internet. I thank you for putting up with my struggle with the woes of [semi]piracy, and hope to see you again soon. Not too soon, though; I need to sleep for a long time first.

2003-01-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

Remaining: 18 minutes and 45 seconds.

Ph33r my midnight ramblings. For some reason I have been reading blogs about Safari, which lead me to blogs about Mozilla, which lead me to blogs about XBL, which led me to a w3c mailing list about XBL, which led me to the XHTML 2.0 specification.
And I like it. It will be years and years before this ever comes to prominence, but when it does.. we'll finally have a proper web. Completely strict definitions of all semantic elements mean that browsers won't be able to lay things out differently... no more UA checks.. total separation of style from content... and all sorts of cool stuff. I never formally learnt HTML, or CSS, or anything; I write what could generously be called "HTML 4.314128 Very Transitional," don't add a DOCTYPE and write to standards just enough that my pages work in all the browsers I know of. However, I feel inspired now to learn XHTML - 1.0, which is out now, doesn't have all the goodies of 2, but it does have the strictness. I'm tired of never knowing whether to write <table border=0> or <table border='0'> or <table border="0">, and I'll put up with the idiocy of </br> in exchange for the sweet sweet joy of correctly validating markup. It makes me feel dirty when the poor confused w3c validator is unable to figure out which CSS version I am using and if I validate to any one spec at all. Perhaps it would be a good thing if markup was true code, and required compilation - if you wrote bad code, it just wouldn't compile.

Microsoft Frontpage would probably generate the e-assembler manually, with bugs.

2003-01-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

Must.. stay awake.. for fourtyfour minutes.. downloading scanlations... the manga's been licensed in America so due to silly fandom selective ethics these are taken down (I found a bot that hasn't yet been updated), although the chance of it coming here any time soon is pretty much 0. Geh.

...since when do I read manga, anyway? But once you start one, for whatever reason - curiosity, boredom, insistence of a friend - it's very hard to stop.

Remaining: 41 minutes and 36 seconds. It's 1 AM and I type slowly when I'm tired. Just be glad I'm not getting all literary at you. That seems to happen when I'm mentally tired but not physically.. the inverse, for whatever reason, causing coding marathons. Right now, I just want to sleep. *conquers bodily needs through sheer force of will*

Why does this text go from left to right? That's just wrong. It goes from right to left, everybody knows that. Chii and Hideki know it, and if you argue with them you may end up the target of the unspecified powers Chii is almost certainly going to end up with, or of Hideki's Perversion Power (tm).

2003-01-16T00:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the american state of Georgia just decriminalised sex before marriage. I know little to nothing about Georgia, but it still surprises me.

2003-01-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

There are many bad people in the world, as evidenced by articles such as "How Parents Can Prevent Homosexuality". It is a good thing that Chris has posted a journal entry thingy to remind us of the good people. Reading and replying to it would be good.

2003-01-15T05:18:00.000-08:00

I have just encountered the Most Annoying Anagram Ever, and it displeases me.

The background: (names changed to prevent spoilers)
I read a book. It was a long book, and it was the first of a fantasy series. There was, throughout this book, a mysterious "watcher" spirit. There were also many other characters. One of them was more like an ex-character; Kotokan, the mysterious hero of ages past. I finished the book, and started the NEXT book; much reading took place, the watcher watched, Kotokan remained dead and legendary. Eventually, I had been getting clues to the watcher's identity, and suspected him of being one of a few people from the past; Kotokan was a candidate. Eventually, it was confirmed.. and THEN it registered with me. The watcher's name, which had been mentioned many times, was Natookk.
ARGH argh ARGH argh ARGH argh etc.

2003-01-12T01:43:00.000-08:00

I am not blogging much recently, because I haven't done anything interesting recently. There were a couple of things, like the Stick That Cuts, but overall I can't wait for the new semester to start so that I can get on with life.. holidays are boring.

2003-01-10T06:08:00.000-08:00

I am reading a book.

That's not unusual for me. Or at least, it wasn't. There was a time when it was my default state of existence. I pretty much read solidly from the age of 8 to 15. So what happened? Computers happened, and to a lesser extent, friends and things. This is not to imply that the latter is less important - I prefer having friends to having computers - but computers seem to take up more of my used-to-be-reading time. So now, when I used to read multiple books a day, I sometimes go for weeks without any. Sometimes. That's bad! Books are good! Hence, I will now turn off this flickering screen and do something rather more traditional, although no better for my health.

Ulterior motive: If you no longer visit the library recently, fines build up.

2003-01-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

Yay! It works! Unless you're using Internet Explorer, of course, since that has crappy CSS2 support, but in most browsers it's fine.

2003-01-09T04:39:00.000-08:00

I am going to add a speccy yet pointless thing to the blog's interface. To see if it worked for you, point to this - or any other - post.