Sunny Breaks

The sss-duh-diss-dix was easier than I thought it’d be. As they say `I am the operator with my pocket calulator’ (which, grammatically just don’t sound right to me, but anyway). I was pleased to follow all the little formulas, tap in the numbers (plug them in, as the textbook so funkily says) finish with a bunch more numbers that made little sense to me — and then check on the net — and had actually got them right. Amazing. i was terrible at maths in high school. i thought this legacy would follow me. But no — now i’m learning statistics, and getting a free tour of greek too: hmmm – it seemss I can’t easily reproduce these symbols on the spot … will look into it .. I think Amaya is good for that. There’s a `u’ with a bit hanging off it, an `o’ with a whacked out hairstyle – there’s lots of ‘em.

unfortunately because of the schedule, there’s no time to dwell on what we’re actually doing – it’s just follow the recipes and keep the questions to a minimum. And frankly I’m sceptical about how much statistics actually get used in real life pschology practice. i get the feeling it’s tacked on to try and attempt to keep up some scientific aura, and when they really do need numbers crunched they either pull out the Excel, or get in a real statistician.

It reminds me of when i was a kid and out of some book I learnt this card trick. You’d ask the person to pick out a card, remember it then put it back in, then there was the whole series of manouvres, and somehow i’d end up with the card the person had. i didn’t understand how it worked, it just did. And then I forgot how to do it. That’s what stats reminds me of.

homework action – that is. woohoo. Mountains and Mountains of statistics today, downtown freebasing/creative writing tomorrow and the blow by blow action replay on sunday (ie. i have to explian what i’m writing). Jean’s gone to her folks’ place for the weekend and Fadda’s day.
And it’s definitely not sunny today so I don’t know if I’ll be getting out to snap up some fotos of the joint. It’s occurred to me that i really don’t have a photographic eye either. Of course it can be developed, but looking back at the holiday fotos, they’re kinda boring.

Already thinking about what i’d like to do once the uni year finishes – O for some free time! Want to become a master of the GIMP (the GNU image manipulation program) — I know there’s a lot in there that I don’t know about it and there’s a long manual i’d like to read. Also would like to spend some time getting to know the OS X system. I’m sure that the only reason why it bugs me at the moment is because i haven’t spent enough time getting familiar with it.

Via the O’reilly weblogs, found this page, which is chokkas full of futuristic theory and opinion. i wish I had the time to read it, but don’t so this here is a bookmark.

Ended up watching Seinfeld last night because Frasier wasn’t on. (Did tv always rerun shows as much as this? Were people watching `The HoneyMooners’ for five years constantly after it’d finished?) So eventhough i know the seinfeld ep.s well, (just the other week I was thinking of that costanza line, “What was my father doing with a man in a cape? What was a man in a cape doing with my father?”) it was still good to see. Was reminded of how well it’s written – almost every line comes off a winner. A combination of the writing and the acting i suppose. They really stuffed a lot into 22 minutes, compared to Frasier and even The Simpsons. There’s something to be said for the phrase, `leave ‘em wanting more’ — the simpsons is pretty much beyond that point.

Also: it seems all is not well between Red Hat and KDE: article here. Is in terribly bad form of Red Hat to screw with kde, thinking that it’ll get more people using Gnome — on their next release (RH 8.0(?)). if they do cripple kde, then i think I’ll have to take another look at SuSE.

because, like tony I really am pressed for time, what with all the school work.
I really like some of Rasterman‘s photos – particularly the ones of Mt.Fuji.

Yoshi’s black n’ white seems to have disappeared. i was going to link him on the subject of the ABC show, dimensions (aka `dementias’) – with `Uncle George’ Negus. Yoshi mentioned it a while back – an episode that had a couple of car designers on it -(I saw that one too) — but anyway – the wednesday night episode is all about The Future. They seem to interview a lot of “Futurists” — what the hell is that? — what do ya gotta do to be one? — I wanna be one.
Tonight’s ep was about living spaces – accommodation – lots of skyscrapers – not really my idea of a party. All very interesting though. each wednesday is about future stuff – worth catching.
I really think that instead of the little funny multi-coloured set that they stick george in — they should have him in a tool shed! Cut from the end of a story to Unkie George Negus sitting in his tool shed, whittling. George reels off a few (previous) story related puns then introes the next one. And just to keep things in character, George should poo-poo most of the great new ideas that come out of the stories.
“Riding around town on a personal hoverboard?! Not me thanks.”
Ah! – here we go – the general dimensions page (featuring Unkie George!) and the page for future dimensions.

name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 203.110.131.78
date: 2002-08-30-10-10
You know what – I think I saw negus last night in my local restaurant (Bistro Niche, Neutral Bay, good stuff). As for futurists – wired had a big spiel about one not that long ago .. can’t find the link ..but I found this http://www.iftf.org/
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 203.110.131.78 / Block IP range 203.110.131.*

name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.8
date: 2002-08-30-12-01
Wired has some interesting stuff — there’s a couple of articles on the Apple Newton there at the moment.

Or – probably more acurately – something new each couple of days. Yesterday i learned that via google you can find out who and what is linking to your website by tapping in: link:www.suchnsuch.com . i always thought you’d have to install a special script to find that kind of thing out. And of course – it’s only updated each couple of months like the rest of google stuff.
i’m really curious as to how search engines work at the moment. Do they index everything on the site or once they get to a certain point of a page (like if it’s really long0 say – `okay, that’s enough, onto the next one’. ? Hmm…

Finally got the digital camera situation all sorted. We picked up the HP C120 photosmart. The lad at “ComputerSores” forgot to order it for a few days – then did – and said that it’d be an extra fifty – coming to a grand total of 300 bucks for a 1megapixel digital camera. I was reluctantly going to accept this, eventhough we’d seen that model on sale at dick smiths and officewerks and `the goodguys’ and just about every other place you can think of – for 270bucks.

I’m not a haggler. for some reason I can’t explain – I find the whole process is wrong. If a retailer offers something at an inflated price – then this means they have no integrity or honour, but rather than tell them this, I’ll just not deal with them again. remind me to stick a pic of an Edoan from star trek TOS on here – that’s what they’re like in business. ug – am rambling.
Anyway – jean got on the phone and sez to this nerd, we’ve seen it advertised at this price, can’t you give it to us for that? And, bugger me, – he could. i thought because they technically already had 250bucks of the cash – all I got was a store voucher – that they’d never do it.

So it hooked up straight away to the OS X machine, but not jugger – there’s a chance that with a bit of fiddling I can get the HP C120 photosmart happening under Linux. The linux hardware database has some encouraging stories.
Hopefully this weekend I’ll get a chance to go for a walk and get some images.

The Advaita Vedanta talk didn’t go so good. Probably should spent longer gettin the info together.
They make salt and vinegar chips too strong these days.

I thought three or four visits relating to uhm .. that umentionable chef was a lot – 49 visits! yesterday – most of which were from search engines for that same…(and one for “a poem with rhythm about mothers” teehee) yet no comments no emails no signings of guestbook … and no writs. Oh well. This is the last time I’ll mention visitor numbers. It’s a relatively new thing to me, and (judjing by my reaction to it0 i don’t normally get a lot of traffic.

i honestly didn’t think that show would last into a second season. And, although I don’t have a control group, it’s interesting that people are using the `new media’ to look up the `old’ media.
The other thing is that perhaps there’s room out there for a tv critic blog. i know quite a few australian blogger mention tv in passing, but this would want to be a specific thing. This is also where the whole `being paid to blog’ angle comes in too. The networks should hire someone – or set it in a job’s job description.
But don’t look at me, most stuff on telly get me muttering curses and a-throwing hexes at the whole system.

Anyway – I’ve got so much homework, if I stayed to prophesise any longer I’d be done for, he says and sighs.

Oh dear. I know this kind of navel gazing is neither entertaining or informative, but in the last three days i’ve received 3 surprise chef related visits from google and yahoo, because of this bit. It’s a slippery line between fair criticism and defamation, and i think that at best i’m sprawled half on either side. i should point out that it was the evil yak sox that wrote it, not me. [Mental note from evil self: get him back for the scapegoating.]

This guy was always going to make it to the `rockin’ out with’ list. It was just a matter of hitting a week where nothing else came up.

There’s a funny little interview here. Radiohead (adored by The Kids, respected by the Establishment (and I think they’re okay too)) have come out and said that a lot of the Kid A and Amnesiac albums were aphex twin inspired. The interviewer here asks aphex twin if he likes Radiohead, would he ever play with them?
“No. I wouldn’t play with them since I don’t like them. It’s hard enough to go on tour with a band you like and see them play the same songs every night. It’s even worst if you don’t even like them.”
Haha – ya gotta love that honesty.
I dig pretty much all his stuff i’ve heard. About six or seven years ago there was a radio show on PBS FM called Interzone. Once they did an aphex twin special which I taped. There was this one track that had a little kid syaing “mashed potatoes” through out it, and what sounded like a guy – saying “Mashed potatoes. Why do you say mashed potatoes?” Kinda break-beaty sound ot it. I never found out what it was called and haven’t heard it again since.
The other lost thing is was a EP some friends had but lost, something like “The Mike Flowers Pops Meets The Aphex Twin” — remixes of mike flowers tracks. That was so quirky and groovy.
So, don’t feel inhibited to jump on the networks and download some aphex twin stuff, he’s made plenty of dough and drives around the back roads of England’s south in an army surplus armoured car (the kind that looks like a tank but without a turret) on his days off.

My “blog daddy”, jeremiah newbie, seems to be in limbo right now. Halfway between www.delusional.nu and tripledoubleyou.com. I hope things are going smoothly – I know it’s no fun being of the air. It took me a while to figure out the name. Interestingly, there actually is a www.www.com, although it seems wasted due to the content – and that stoopid purple monkey. And (Attention Kiwis) tripledoubleewe is still vacant.

So, anyway – I said I had no idea about this story… This morning I wake at the normal weekday time of quarter to seven, which is unfortunate – but what can ya do? — and one of the first thhing I think is that I’ve got this thing to write — and then within 5 minutes I get a full idea. HAL – ah – loo – Jah!
Reckon I’ll even get the opportunity to thread in the Kraftwerk line `She’s posing for consumer products now and then’, from the relatively well known, `The Model’.
I can’t claim that it’s going to be 100% original, but everything’s derivative now. If music was where writing was then it’d be totally recycled beats and snippets of old stuff. In fact, right now it’s kinda leaning heavily on this bit at Kuro5hin.org the other night while I was waiting for a bunch of red hat updates to come through. iain m banks – i’ve seen the name around before – never read any. Sounded pretty inneresting.
I better get down on it now before the idea fades.

Oooo! I’ve known that it’s been RRR‘s annual radiothon happening for a week now (with 3 days left) but I hadn’t heard what the major prizes are. The major prizes are: a flat panel 700 iMac, among other things and if you’re a business, (and take out a business subscription) then among other things that could be possibly won are a Handspring Treo and a business server running Linux. Hhmmm – maybe I’ll have to subscribe as Dashboards Incorporated.

Just added a little search mechanism. Noticed people visiting via google with search words like `Benq’ or `a carcass’ and even one poor person from chekaslovakia (I know that spelling’s wrong, what can I do? And .ch is that country’s identifier – I think (?)) – with the search words `how to buy a digital fotokamera’; lead astray by my dodgey use of pidgeon eastern-euro-speak.
And they are only directed to the front page here, which’d make finding what they want a nightmare.
It dropped in pretty easy. Just need to get the single entry archive template a bit more polished.

name: jean
email:
url: http://
ip: 210.84.253.230
date: 2002-08-23-14-43
so, do you like KNOW what words get put into ya search engine?
like if I put Jean, would ya know that i’d put jean?
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 210.84.253.230 / Block IP range 210.84.253.*

name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.7
date: 2002-08-23-15-38
Well hullo jean, shouldn’t you be working? :^P

No, the search function doesn’t record the searches I don’t think, but (for the people out there at least, one would presume that if they came here via a google search phrase such as “surprise chef” then they would also use the search function to find the same phrase.
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 203.58.6.7 / Block IP range 203.58.6.*

name: Binky
email: binky@astrogoth.com
url: http://
ip: 12.236.248.58
date: 2002-09-01-12-24
Czechoslovakia. CZ. CH is Confoederatio Helvetica, or, your friends in Switzerland.
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name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.9
date: 2002-09-01-22-31
Yeah, thanks binky. i figured that out a while after — found a page that had all the abreviations. Not a particularly obvios one that, CH…

Is what thom yorke of radiohead yowls in `Morning Bell’ from the Kid A album. (The line, Where’d‘ya park the car? is my favourite, but that’s another story.) My take on the song is that it’s about a break up.
See, as mentioned before, i was trawling the ODP a couple of weeks ago. One of the many I had a quick click through was this. I didn’t think much of it – but the poignancy of that front image struck me last night.
Via TV we’ve all seen fotos ripped in half, but how do you rip a .JPEG??? [With a whole bunch of bitterness – ed.] I wonder if there’s ever been a couple (married or otherwise) or an equal partnership which has broken up and resulted in legal proceedings (Court Battle) to see who gets to keep the domain name?
“You can keep the kids, the dogs and the house but suchn’such.com is MINE!
Either way, sounds like a good movie plot starring Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan – HAHAHAHA!!!

Am a tad chuffed and self conscious at present; Sir Flakey at Core gave a nice little mention to these here ramblings. hahah – i cope so badly with positive comments!

But the point is definitely taken re: blogs being a new form of communication. I look around a bit further and see bloggers with archives back as far as 1999 which makes me think `what the hell was I doing all that time?’. (answer: muckin’ around in chatrooms, and then discussion boards)
It’s like when I actually got on the net — i wasn’t on of the first, but just as the thing really exploded — same with blogging — and really it’s only this last couple of months that it feels like I’m getting my head around it. It’s pretty amazing – something big and new unfolding right in front of you.

That’s the thing about net-related technologies and personal computing – it’s moving so quick! And there’s so many areas that you could go further and further into learning about.
The last thing that really grabbed me was poetry about four years ago – but that burnt itself out within a year because it’s just not moving anymore. All the big events were in the past and a stuck there.
Convergence of all these gadgets, OSes evolving, CPUs speeding up and the net being used in more and more different ways – it’s all very interesting – but that last one i like because it doesn’t require a head for coding.
The thing I’m wondering a lot at the moment is What’s Next? What’ll be the next form of communication to spring up oganically out of cyberland. I’ve got no idea Predicting the future sure isn’t my specialty.

Just finished reading chapter 3, `Navigating the blog universe’, from the book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs. Was quite good. Some of the beginning stuff kind of seemed obvious, and I’d read about that whole “kaycee scam” in pc world mag ages ago. But the interview with the blogdex guy was interesting. And I finally found out what both blogroll and meme mean. for some reason everytime I saw the word blogroll written i got visions of souvlaki, but that was about it. It’s just the list of external links people have on pages. One would think it might’ve been spelt `role’ as in `role call’ … Anyway – and meme – I found odd because it wasn’t in my dictionary (the Macquarie – the big one too – none of the pcket-size stuff) — got in 98, so maybe that explains it. A meme is: `The term meme refers to ideas or behaviors that spread from one person to another.’ – they say.
Oh – and one quote I really liked from the afore mentioned blogdex guy was, `For some, the weblog is a natural medium for the expression of their personality, and for others it is an awkward square hole with which to press their circular identity into’.
I think I’m probably one of those round people, but half of the fun of using the written word to communicate in is its limitations. While I might try as hard as I can to get the reader to `hear’ the tone of voice and exaggeration I’m using when i write, the truth is that I probably wouldn’t go over the top at all in a face to face convo.

My AllSeeingEye is seeing too much. One discovered that if one is using a web based statistics mechanism … and one happened to be looking at one’s own statistics … and sees … “joe blogg’s” page as a referral address … and one think `Oh, I’ll click through straight from here and see what joe’s up to’ … and if joe has an AllSeeingEye too, then Joe can click back through that link address that is left and sees ones stats page.
This is not a huge issue, but if we all wanted others to see our stats page, then we’d probably stick a link to them in our “felafel blogrolls”. ;^)

Woke with a headache so decided not to go to uni. It wasn’t the cause of any excess. Was just feeling a bit crap. Going to have to get an extension on one of those assignments. Much more procrasto yesterday. Having trouble with the comms one — one of the readings for it is absolute bullshit. One of the things that bugs me most about academia is the continual misuse of the word and concept; communism. It’s Stalinism ya dingleberries. And they way they twist Marx’s writings around – he’d have a complete modern-day Freak Out if he were alive to read it all.
So trying to decode this crap and attempt to make any sense out of it is – obviously – headache-inducing.

Schnaffled Mozilla 1.1beta the other day. My impressed-edness grows with with each release. It’s rendering graphics much faster now, and from my unscientific point of view, is loading pages nearly as fast as Opera. That was the no. 1 issue I had with it, I reckon I can live with the other little differences (like the `adding a bookmark’ procedure is a little more laborious than opera’s. But that’s just me – i like to have my bookmarks all neatly organised.)
&nbsp&nbsp Also, For some reason the 1.0 release plugin installer wouldn’t work properly for me, but the new version’s does.
So now I’m going to be multi-threading my brain for dual browsing with both of them .

And the `neat little app. of the week’ award goes to KSETIwatch, which makes ditributed computing a whole lot funner.

There’s fun brewing at the Core Wiki – it kind of reminds me of a `choose yer own adventure story’ and the best bit is that it’s all anonymous.

Matt the wholelottanothing guy has a very funny Leonard Nimoy .MP3, `Highly Illogical’, posted for d/load on his page (scroll til you see the pics of Spock).
I remember many years ago hearing Billy Baxter playing one of the Nimoy tracks on the `Cracked Platters’ segment of Coulddabeenchampions. It was a cover of something like `walk on the wildside’.

That’s what spring is. It’s just starting. I can hear the bees humming around the new wattle flowers. Explosions of growth and reproduction all over the joint. i think spring is my fave season – full of potential. In ascent.

Jean got the new Ka yesterday. She refuses to pose for a foto leaning against the driver’s side door of it with arms crossed as in the classic “I just got my car” statement. I have not asked when I can drive it yet. Think I’ll be able to get a better attitude happening re: learning how to drive in it; its boundaries are closer to where me finishes and car starts – and car ends – and potential obstacles start. It can’t imagine that it’ll be much harder than walking.

I think the man at Computer sores is avoiding me. He’s supposed to be getting me a HP kamera, but “wasn’t there” on friday, and “was sick” on saturday.

This is kind of interesting: what happens when you send a couple of girls (aged 10 &12) and their a-bit-touchy “Mom” to the LinuxWorld Trade Show in San Francisco. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the TuxReports site, but I agree with one of the commenters that if the IBM reps didn’t have time to talk to a couple of kids – it’s not really a reason to “stack on a turn” (as my mum would say).

Also, Eugenia from OSNews got to go to LW too (lucky her) — and did a write up of it here.

Interesting discussion at blogroots on whether to sign with an alias or your real name. identity on the net is a really interesting thing.
I don’t think of aliased names any different to `real’ ones. It’s astoundingly easy to find my real name – which is partly voluntary, partly not.
It bugs me a little that some close to me know of this site because it puts me into partial-censorship mode. It seems counterproductive to have a second journal where i keep privater thoughts. Before I was web logging, i kept a paper (P)-journal. I was thinking about that last night — want to go have another look at them – see what differences there are between this and that. To me at least, truth in thoughts and feelings is important, mainly for the reason that when i look back in years time, I can say to myself – yes that’s really what I was thinking about that – not having to remember if i was skirting an issue because such-n-such was on to me.
Ultimately I think I’d like to kill `The Man In The Grey Suit’ and be journaling an unaltered stream of consciousness (a la Kerouac) but I don’t see it happenng now.

name: tony
email:
url: www.tamesapien.com/weblog/
ip: 210.50.201.136
date: 2002-08-16-14-37
I’m much the same and from what I’ve gathered by talking to other bloggers, everyone holds back a little. I used to keep a paper diary and when I look back at them they ARE much more personal. I don’t think the world wants/needs to know about personal relationships, health problems or fetishes etc. Everybody has a personal and a public persona I suppose. It’s natural.
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 210.50.201.136 / Block IP range 210.50.201.*

name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.4
date: 2002-08-16-16-03
Ah yes – yet it’s the personal health probs, messy relationships and fetishes that draw the readers – paradoxical indeed.
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 203.58.6.4 / Block IP range 203.58.6.*

name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.4
date: 2002-08-16-16-10
er… not that increasing readership is an all-encompassing desire for me or anythink ;^P – but there are factors of – how much do you write it for yourself, and how much for others, when you know others are reading etc. etc.