Sunny Breaks

Upon starting up Juggernaut this morning it sounded like someone else had also switched on a floor-polisher – not good. Sometimes the fans inside it sound a little off key to start with but then are okay after a minute or so. Felt I had to whip the side off and have a look this time. Everything seemed okay – no obstructions. But reminded me of this shameful situation I’m in of underclocking my CPU.
That’s right – an athlon 1000MHz travelling at 750MHz.
I feel a bit like captain Archer from last episode – a bit frustrated at such a crappy situation. But getting it sorted means having to take everything out – removing the heatsink from the CPU (no small feat; it’s really wedged on there) then cleaning the conductant-goup off the heatsink (which i don’t have the correct chemical for — maybe I’ll have to ask the nerds at the computer store in Smellmont next time I’m there) – the whacking some Arctic Silver back on there – and sticking it all back together.

Would love to get another stick of Kingston RAM – only $88 this week. And interestingly enough – Soltek in recent ads for their newer motherboards don’t appear to be using the “red storm” overclocking technology – which is understandable – because it’s crap and it doesn’t work and all this would’ve been sorted for me if it’d worked.

I think I missed the point to the story – I need to get the CPU out of there so I can see what its safe operating voltage is – this will enable me to set the switches correctly – thus travel at the cruise speed of 1gHz or above.

Gene did a lovely thing for me and subscribed to PC World mag. -because I’m now talking about it I’ll probably null&void my cosmic-lucky-chance of winning the bonus, which this month is a DV movie-making package (with DV burner, firewire card and software) which sound kinda okay, but of course would require me to be using Woodnose to use its software, plus I don’t have a digital video camera. There are other things more called for right now. [Lasts month’s bonus of an IBM laptop wouldda been pretty choice, and hard to knock back).
They say it’s worth $1150, so I’d sell it – around $700 I reckon and get: – a domain name and 12 months hosting – a CD rewriter – payofff the last of the Juggernaut debt – and maybe a slightly cheap but reasonable digital camera.
Mmmmm….. purchasing….

Bob the Otter from Dutchland, who does the Pivot programming, has finally added Spouting to the Pivot
front page of people who use it — it’s on a basis of 10 random users showing up when you click through.
Also, he says that the next version of Pivot of very soon coming.

This was the excuse for getting an extension for my essay on the EU. But lots of people were getting them anyway. Have been feeling a tad run down by it all. Need a good meditate. Or maybe a hibernate. Still vaguely hear the kookaburras just as am waking – but it’s getting darker out there in the mornings — and this morning there was a kangaroo in the neighbours front yard. The older ones get to know the area and know the routine – it starts to rain a bit and all this new green-ness pops up – and they pop around for a nibble.

Borrowed a fairly neat looking new book from the library today – on web building/programming. Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program by Deitel, Deitel and Nieto.
I know the names sound made up but it looks to be a Linux friendly type of book – and goes from basics right through to Python, XML, ASP etc. Interesting little bit at the start of the PHP chapter it stands for Personal Home Page (tools) – and was invented by a guy called Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 – and it landed him a job at Linuxcare as senior open-source researcher. If you’re a big fan you can visit his page. But don’t believe what it says – the book is right – it was ’94 that he invented it. Anyway – so the book was published in 2000 — and it’s a shame that it’d probably cost a hundred books or more if i actually wanted to buy it.

For posterity’s sake — here’s my currentdesktop.

- and there was Lego – a whole shitload of it. The brick testament apperently isn’t dead-set serious, but whoever did it must have somewhat of an appreciation for the wacky go-nowhere, badly plotted storylines of the bible. This is kind of the same reason why I have a 2nd hand six cassette box of Johnny cash reading the thing too.

This isn’t what I’ve been up to – but what I purchased today from the music store. EEEEaaazzzeeeeehh! [At this point I should apologise for the recent tendency to use repititions of the same letter as a form of self-expression]
Happy Mondays Rock. And as I sit here I’m a testament to the theory that being able to download a bit of music off of the net increases the amount of dollars spent on music – not kills it.
One thing about Geelong is that it’s terribly impoverished when it comes to even halfway decent rekked shops. One of them had a Happy Mondays best of – which, admittedly did have the long version of `Stayin’ alive’ – but I don’t want a compilation! So I held out – and ye gods smiled on me coz one of the other shops had Ps n’ Ts and B.As – for twenty bucks – so what could I do but treat myself.

And despite feeling a bit zombified by an assignment that went way too late last night, and me having a zit “in action” on my chin — it was indeed a happy monday.

To the euthanasia people – stop bloody whinging and take a leaf from the corporate sweat-shoe book and JUST DO IT!

as to how I’m feeling at the moment.
We’ve pinned it down to tonight’s full moon — but my brain isn’t working! This assignment is relatively simple but I can’t do it. Even look at it is like running a mild electric current through my brain. I feel like a lab rat. Must be done by tomorrow morning – and there’s really not that much to do. It’s like looking at a glass of water sitting right on the edge of a table, being asked to push it off but only being allowed to use brain-power.

On the upside, my computer’s running well! Grabbed up a whole bunch of programs and things yesterday. Got some neat themes from kde-look.org, and finally got around to checking out this folding@home distributed computing project. It’s for cancer research, among other things. I joined the Whirlpool team.
And generally, this is the great thing about having all fresh “up 2 date” packages is that i can grab almost anything from the net and it’ll install no probs. Also got webmin up and running last night, so that might be handy for getting the kernel sorted properly.

There’s a thread of scary stories here on K5. I was reading it last night before bed but it started to give me the heeby-jeebies! So I had to finish reading it this morning, and it’s a long thread so – I didn’t get any homework done today. Uh Oh!

Ah – yeah also the dalai lama managed to get to mention monkeys in his twenty minute speech, which was mainly about world peace. Pretty good goin’ if ya ask me – it’s not easy to work monkeys into a topic like that. Great men; the dalai lama, homer simpson, me (hahaha!) always end up talking about monkeys sooner or later.

Have been thinking about putting a poll function on here. It might happen, it might not.
Have been attempting to recompile the kernel today – not much luck so far though.

Spent the day in town at the footy oval where the His Holiness Dalai Lama was doing his gig.
Amazing that after this last week and a half of rain and wintery temps today was completely sunny. In fact, was caught a bit off guard and my braincase is a tad toasted. Good Day though!

There was a morning session, which was an audience of 2000, -pay to get in. HH spoke a little about the basics of buddism – like the four trruths and suffering, and emptiness. I’d kind of heard/read this before, but was good to hear it again because there’s some pretty heavy concepts in there, and definitely I could spend more time reading through that stuff at my own pace, but maybe in a group so that I could ask questions about things that need clarification. HH spoke about it in Tibetan and there was a guy there translating.

Then HH administered the `white tara’ blessing to the audience, which was kind of like a guidded meditation, but which I found a little difficult to get happening due to the crampt grandstand seating and other distractions. Interesting though.

I don’t know – it’s the rituals and traditions and fixed rules in religions that I’m not so ecstatic about — even buddism. For sure the things like a non-violent attitude towards others, and a sense of compassion toward others is very good, but that kind of thing seems like “common sense” to me. I dunno — maybe it’s just my ego not wanting to bend to anymmore rules than it absolutely has to.

Maybe one day I can get around to reading the buddhist scriptures – and keep an attitude of take it or leave it. I’d probably feel more enthusiastic that way.

Anyway – so after that there was a break for an hoour or so – and me n’ gene got sme lunch then there was another bit – which was more secular – just the D.H talking a bit about him, (this bit was free and open to the general public) — and the spiel was mainly aimed toward the hoards of primary and high school kids who’d rocked up. Well, it wasn’t aimed at them — but HH was emphasising that while the 20th Cent. was one of bloodshed etc. the 21st Cent. could be much better and more peaceful and that it “was in the hands of the kids”.
Quite So.
This part was HH speaking in english – and quite an impressive vocab and pronounciation he had too. Some of the impact of hearing him speak was lost when done through an interpreter. Because HH has got an amazing voice, very deep but kind of high, (funnily enough) a lot like Yoda’s!!
At one point he mentioned a convo he’d had with the late queen mum – he’d asked her what she thought of the 20thC – since she’d seen all of it – and she said to him that she thought it was getting a lot better toward the end. But once he stuffed up and said ‘him’ instead of ‘her’ re: the qm. HH realised the boo-boo and had a good laugh then said sorry then had another laugh. It was great! He can be totally serious and totally light-hearted at the same time. And humbleness/humility are a way of life for him, not just concepts.
At 67 y.o. HH struck me as being awfully nimble and sharp-eyed too.
So, as I was just saying to gene – I didn’t have any catacalysmic awakening because of the event, but the Dalai Lama is every bit that the public image of him is – very genuine and very deserving of RESPECT. i saw nothing that proved otherwise (and believe me – that always happens to me at live gigs — sonic youth, ride, primal scream the list is endless). Any downers were my own making – like `I wish we couldda sat a bit closer’ etc.

Was really really cool that he came to Geelong. First regional visit in australia ever. Good on the geelong bureaucrats for not giving in to the unseen business pressure from Chinese cappoes.

Well, somehow I managed to get away with not doing my social theory assignment for 3 weeks after it was due.
HAHAHAHAHAHhahahhhaaaahhhhhaaaa-uuuuuuuuuurrrrkkkkkk!

It must’ve been the look of honest to goodness dumbness on my face yesterday at the lecture when I realised and went over to hoco the tute teach. and said I’d made a terrible mistake. And the Head guy of the subject, “Mr.Jacobs” was there too — and really it’s only fair that if he lecture all semester about questiong everything and how bad “The Bureau” and bureauracracy is then he not act like one.

Anyway, I got til Monday morning to do it. And I think for `reason for extension’, for this one I’ll put `Chronic Idiocy’, to follow up the last one, which was `confusion’.
All pretty smooth – the transition to Red Hat 7.3 – is nice to be using Evolution without Ximian. Also, seperate from the actual distro – I d/loaded Open Office 1.0 yesterday – and am very impressed – he got anti-ailed font! mmm he good now.
There’s some funny little facts that run by durinng the install of this one that weren’t there in 7.2 – I don’t know how much of it is true — they give about three different explanations as to how they came up with the name red hat. Then it says “Now would be a great time to —Let’s all got to the kitchen and get some snacks!” haha – will have to find the .PNG they use for that.
KDE is starting up marginally quicker for me – but konqqueror, the file manager really ahs sped upp heaps, and am thinking of having a little experiment and using konqueror the web browser for a full week soon, just to really check it out.

Off to see the Dalai Lama tomorrow – sweet!

A couple of hours ago realised that I’d miss-read one of my social theory deadlines — it was due a couple of weeks ago. Man – what a screw up. Anyway – looks like I’m gonna be one busy little chappy.
Last night upgraded to RH 7.3 Valhalla but can’t say much yet

complete spoilage
Yes Yes, Please read on if you’ve seen it and want to participate in some meaty disco re: SWAotCs ….

or of course if you just wanna find out what the hell it’s about…
>Here are my comments from whirlpool – I thought I’d just C n’ P them rather than write it all out again — afterall, I do have a freakin’ assignment to write this weekend —

Yes, Portman is kinda cute but her acting was terrible.
I still don’t quite know how to react to Anakin in this one…. It’s weird to be in this position of knowing who he’ll become (Give Us The Bridge, George!).
It’s funny how grand and expansive battle scenes in this and ep.1 are — yet the light saber battle stand well above them. I thought the Yoda V Christopher Lee scene was great too. Would love to get a still or a poster of when Yoda takes up the kung fu stance.
All up it gives a different impression of what jedi are like. Those early scenes where anakin is questioning and speaking out of turn with Obi-Wan just seemed wrong. If I was obi-wan – that kind of thing would’ve sent alarm bells off – “potential psycho with jedi-power here”.
And I would’ve like some kind of explanation as to why some jedi would’ve decided to build a clone army ten years ago. What was with that?? Will it be explained in the next one? Same with the Christopher Lee character. With ep.1 it was kind of justified to have new characters popping up everywhere, but you’d think maybe if they were gonna have a big part in ep.2 then they couldda been sewn into 1.
-Poor Boba Fett, having to see his old man decapitated like that. Can understand why he becomes such a hard arse when he grows up.
-Was funny to see that Water Rats guy popping up straight away in that first scene. But Jack Thompson —oh brother!
-That bit where an akin had his hand stuck because of the stamping thing was odd — They looked like giant cpu chips!

Re: purple light saber.
Samuel L was interviewed on Parkinson a couple of weeks ago. He was telling how some E! type interviewer asked him the stock-standard question of, “is there any director you haven’t worked with who you’d like to?” He used the opportunity and said – Yeah, George Lucas — so that’s how he got the gig.

At one point he just off-handedly asked George if he could have a purple light saber. George thought about it a bit and agreed. Jackson said he knew it’d get the purists in a tizzy.
It worked for me. It’s a Jimi Hedrix/Prince/SL Jackson thang. :^)

>“The story is much to do with Obi-Wans failure as it is about Anakin himself.” [someone else’s comment]

For sure. It’s a reminder of the variables involved with jedi training. The same thing could’ve happened to Luke after the little training he got from Kenobi, and then cutting short his lessons with Yoda.
Even if the romance was a bit dawson’s creekish, there’s still some good symbolism in the movie. They quip about it light-heartedly but Anakin’s continually breaking his sword is a good one — a broken sword symbolises failure. [me replying]

>“and it had a NZ kid in it with a REALLY thick accent.. GOD DAMN!” [someone Else’s comment]

Ah c’mon – that’s just being elitist. What do you want – them all to have american accents? This is globalistaion baby! It’s a good thing to see american, australian and kiwi actors mixing it.
I think some folks had their expectations set a little high.
Has anybody else noticed some of the weird similarities? One of the more noticeable is how the line “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” – has popped up iin in of the movies now, and right at the end — an akin and anakin are standing arm in arm, with back to camera and the droids next to them — and how that’s almost a carbon copy of the end scene in Empirestrikess back – except it’s Luke and Leia looking out a ship window. [me replying]

If you’re interested, the full script of the movie.

So — yes I liked it, and am a tad disappointed with the number of folk on the boards who are shit-canning it.
A comment above was to do with theswordd symbolism – from memory Anakin only broke his once, but almost lost it too. But more interestingly, Obi-Wan’s wasbrokend too – sliced in half at the hilt by Chris Lee. So there’s a doublewhammyi of failure there.
I’d like to sit and ponder the use of the stamping plant imagery a bit more… there most certainly would’ve been a reason that Georgy used that particular setting — but it eludes me at present.
Also on that scene it struck me as interesting how for nearly (also there was the tatooine bit) the first time that padme was dressed very plainly. When she was dumped out of that giant soldering pot she looked like a white mouse.

I’d like to know where they shot those bits of Naboo – by the lake.

I should amend a couple of the above comments too: there were English actors in there as well as australian, kiwi and american. Also — JackThompsonn stood out because of his bad acting – not the fact that he was australian. I’ve seen him try to do anAmericann accent before – somewhere he was a texan general – and he’s just no good at it.
Of course I know there’s always been parallels with “the wild west” drawn – but that scene where he’s saying that the sand people were like animals etc. was just too ponderossa, Bonanza.

Anyway – have been thinking about the movie heaps since I saw it, mainlybecausee I’m doing this comms assignment on ep.1 — but also cause it was a good movie, and would ideally like to go see it again soon – but may wait til I can buy the Vid.

So what do you think????

Servers were down yesterday evening, so I couldn’t post.

Hey Hey! Finally the www.pointbreakbackpackers saga has concluded.
Yes …. it’s been a haphazard 5 months or so — lately I’ve learned how to navigate the Melbourne IT website – and figured out how to register and delegate a domain name.
And the netfirms option doesn’t seem too bad either. To bring yers all up to speed that’s a website I put together for a guy I know round here.

Anyway — am soo busy these days that i don’t know if I’ll be continuing my burgeoning career as a web page designer. i mean, I was charging an absolute pittance – I suppose that bit didn’t bother me too much, but maybe from know on I’ll just choose who I do them for, rather than the other way round. kinda like an andy Warhol or something.

Re watched phantom menace last night – am doing it for the comms assignment. I dunno why people are offended by jar jar binks so. He’s not that bad. I reckon if I was a kid I’d think he was ACE!

I couldn’t concentrate on study – and was starting to freak out about all this work I’ve got to do in the next few weeks – and it’s not as if smoking makes my life unmanageable…

Damn this is humbling.
I’ll have to regather my troops at mid-semester break.

I’ve given other things up before – and I thought this’d be just the same – a bit of resolve and I’d make it. Damn damn damn.
As mumma said on the phone – I shouldn’t get down on myself if it doesn’t come off first time round.
S’pose all those grand plans of what to do with the surplus money will have to wait.

Smoking cuts life into defined segments for me. This last couple of days has felt non-stop. Going outside and watering the plants wasn’t doing it.

is back. He’s just standing in the doorway looking at me. He does’nt have to say anything because he knows that I know why he’s here.
It because I was laughing at that girls blog (below).
I think the thing is, sometimes I also can be awfully un-concise when saying what I’m saying.
I call this guy, ‘minister from the interior: Critic squad’. After two years of methodical tracking – this guy eventually caught up with poet-yak and pushed him down a flight of stairs.

I’m thinking if I write a piece called ‘How To Write a Blog’, then maybe that’ll appease him.

Well, no go – too tense to deal with mum.

As was mentioned here, this journal really is desperately tedious. Heheheh.

This morning, feel a bit like there’s jet turbines in my chest and they’re revving up to take-off speed bigtime for the first time in ages, but there’s still chocs ( there has to be a better word than chocs) blocking my wheels.

Think I might have to go for a run around the block later. And a meditate sometime soon is definitely in order. Long night. Sometimes — in that prevoius life as `smokin’ yak’ I’d wake from a dream – and there’d be all these thiings to think about because of it that I’d get and go outside for a cig in the middle of the night.
Really wanted one of them last night. Several dreams – one about giving up, one about these black crabs trynna pincer me and someother one.

Subtitled – `Lies & line-toeing’
This relates to this earlier post.

This news article appeared in the Geeloong Advertiser last tuesday the 7th of may.

Lab dismisses death theory
Geelong’s Animal Health Laboratory has dismissed a Canadian news-paper story linking the death of one of its microbiologists to 10 mysterious deaths in the United States, England and Russia.
Some of the victims were described by the newspaper as world leaders in “weapons-grade biological plagues”.
Geelong microbiologist Set Van Nguyen, 44, died at the CSIRO’s Animal Health Laboratory last December.
AHL acting director Dr Stephen Prowse, said yesterday the conspiracy theory had abounded on the world wide web since last december, and the author had been sent details of Mr Van Nguyen’s role in the laboratory as a member of a technical support services team, and how he had died.

He said the laboratory had also detailed it’s work in the diagnosis of exotic animal diseases including foot and mouth.
Dr Prowse said the claim being propagated was unsupported by fact, inaccurate, and an absurdity, and the laboratory had responded on the web to all allegations.
He said it had come at a time when Animal Health Laboratory had gone to great lengths to try and treat Mr Set Van Nguyen’s death sensitively from a family and staff viewpoint.

Mr Van Nguyen was found dead in an airlock and police said he died of a lack of oxygen.
The CSIRO said at the time there was insufficient oxygen due to a build up of nitrogen because four ventilation systems had failed.
A report for the coroner is still being prepared, but police said there appeared to be nothing suspicious.
Senior-Sergeant Adrian Benne of Geelong said police were assisting WorkCover in the inquiry becase it was classed as an industrial accident.

*******************

Pretty tough luck eh? Four ventilation systems failing at once – what are the odds of that? ….. without a helping hand.

The other days — finally discovered the CD collection in the civic library. Sure – there’s no aphex twin or boards of canada … but there is some interesting stuff there — and while it’s all way too scratched for me to bother tryning to rip.

The good thing is that there’s a lot of stuff there that is well worth borrowing, stuff which I’d probably never buy. And it might introduce me to some stuff which I wouldn’t take a punt on liking – spending 30-40 bucks on the off chance that it might be my thing.

Like this album by Philip Glass! It’s called 1000 airpanes on the roof, and is somehow connected to some performance of the same name – a play or something. Even while on the way home I was looking at the credits and noticed that Linda Ronstadt did vocals on it – and I’m thinking `oh great – some “ridem cowboy” stuff, let’s hope it’s not too much’ …
And bugger me – I have a listen – and she does etheral `aaaahhh-oooohhh-iiiiiihhhh-aaaahhhh’ type stuff – and it sounds really good. No cowboys in sight.

Last Mon. Morn’s psychology lecture was on anorexia nervosa – the whole thing. There was something wrong with it and at the time i couldn’t put my finger what.

It’s always gonna be a pretty in-yer-face kind of topic and there was plenty of video of skeletal looking young women.
It seemed to have a disquieting affect on the whole lot of us. Two guys, one of who I know, got up halfway through and went and got food. It was even making guys aware of how disfunctional their eating habits were. So if it was doing this to guys – then you can guess that almost all of the female students were squirming.

They were too. Veronica-from-Riverdale seemed to be unsettled for the whole day and during tute, wouldn’t really face the front of the class. Then again, maybe it was because she keeps catching me looking at her (coz she’s preety :^p (uh oh – I’m for it now! I know gene reads this -)) Peppermint paddy, who I sit next to was one of the few that wasn’t affected. She just said to me, `It was interesting Chuck – shame I had to get up and go to another lecture halfway through.’ Which is true.
I’m just not sure if we needed to see so much `A Current Affair’ and Oprah style vision about it. Just seemed a bit cheap for higher-education. There was this whole Oprah saga about Tracey Gold – who used to be on that show `Growing Pains’ – which I watched as a yoongster. I s’pose that was a bit of an eye-opener. And it was pretty terrible to realise that the writers of the show were using her as the arse-end of fat jokes.

During the lecture, there only the briefest mention of how the mainstream media contributes to how women (and probably even men now) feel alienated from their own bodies through trying to live up to these freak-of-nature type standards. The lecture guy didn’t even use the term mass-media.
That’s the problem I have with psychology – it takes absolutely no stock of politics. It basically is a science – and thus goes along with the whole bullshit science-mafia and Tradition thing. most of the students studying it are of the straght-outta high-school variety – and a high proportion women. And because they don’t have their sense of self 100% worked out yet — ended up feeling really uneay because they might be dieting or something.
Apparently there’s 1200 students studying 1st year psychology at deakin. i s’pose this is one way of knocking the numbers down. Pretty damn dodgy lecture though if you ask me.