Sunny Breaks

The last few days i’ve had to dodge reviews of the two towers; the the visual, virtual equivelent of putting my hands over my ears and going, “la la la”. Not that i don’t appreciate a good review, but they influence my expectations too much. Anyway i was waiting for a go-ahead on the job-thing until setting a time to go to the cinema – but am starting thrursday, so should go to da mooviss today or tomorrow.

Cruised through town on saturday morning – was odddly quiet – i thought the place’d be awash with Bargain-Hunters. The freeway heading out of town towards the coast was jammed.
I’ve only bought one copy of australian personal computer magazine, but have been reading it a bit in the library. Despite if having those Jerry Springer-like subtitles through articles – you know those pun-ish tempters that catch the eye — despite that they seem to give a better wrap to Linux than PC World mag. They give it more coverage. There’s also what, at first, appeared to be the wholesale dumping of specs on the page – but as a mag. – it’s probably geared more toward the administators than home users – and there’s nothing wrong with that.
A couple of issues back they stuck an ‘updated’ version of the excellent Linux Pocketbook on their CD – as a .PDF file. I borrowed it from the library and had a look.
In the editorial they say have amazingly popular the last version of this little book was – it sold out everywhere and they did a reprinting. i would’ve thought this was reason enough to produce the next version (this one) also in book format, rather than as a PDF. A big part of what i like about them was that I could read it in bed or where ever – not stuck in front of the monitor.

In it they look at Mandrake 9 and Red Hat 8. Mandrake was included in the magazine before, but because of changes to Red Hats distribution policy – their distro can’t be copied and and included on mag. covers or places like everythingLinux anymore. Or at least they can’t call it ‘Red Hat’ if they do. So while the pocket book was sayiing, ‘here, these are the features of red hat’, they were expecting you to get a copy from somewhere else.
But – at last here were some people wwho agreed with me on Red Hat 8 being pretty dodgey and mandrake 9 being a better choice for the home user.
But I’m glad i didn’t go out of my way and buy the magazine specifically for this PDF, because it’s astonishingly identical to it’s predecessor – the 3rd ed. of the pocket book. The only thing they really changed was the editorial, and then throughout the book where it used to say “red hat 7.0 and mandrake 7.2” it now says “red hat 8.0 and mandrake 9.0”. And even then, there are some glaring typos where they’ve not even properly made that change – it still refers to 7.0 and 7.2.
It’s a good resource for the new Linux user – But i would’ve thought – heaps more accesible in paper format rather than PDF.

name: Quanta
email: quanta_87@myway.com
url: aspyre.net/quanta/
ip: 203.220.144.250
date: 2002-12-31-13-14
I had been avoiding reveiws, till dad turned on the moive reveiw show (on SBS)…

So I went and saw it…

Must write quickly – electrician coming to turn off power soon. Have been having trouble with one of the powerpoints here in bungalowland. Am starting to think that a telephone that relies on electricity is not such a fantastic idea. nice lookin’ phone though. Will stick a foto of it here later. I almost feel like sticking it in one of those clear plakky cake presentation things they have in cafes — and calling it the ______-phone. Blue flash? The bat-phone was red – yet batman didn’t wear red. hmm.
Y’know i did infact have aspirations to be a super hero at one point. Super-Hero. Of human endevours, that’s probably the first that ‘super’ was added to. They do it because there’s already so many people doing the normal type that they have to distinguish themselves somehow. Super-models, and the xfiles gives us super-soldiers. Ah… what’ll we do when everyone’s super?

Southern victoria finally gets a balmy night and i get nutso and zombiefied. There is no pleasing me.

Think I’ve just aboout reached saturation point with SBS docos. After two years or whatever of only seeing them through blizzards i caught up with one on IBM (I really like their early slogan- T H I N K – and was amazed to see that it’s founder somebody-Watson, really was very boring.), Martin Luther, economics, and Florence Nightingale, saddam hussein.
It’s pretty amazing how they can stretch four photos and several talking heads rabbiting on about they’re favourite obscure subject into 50 minutes of tv. And the bylines they give these heads – like ‘biographer’ – how am I supposed to know if that’s right? They could be somebody they hoisted in off the street and asked to read some cards. The Saddam one had some decent footage.

name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 144.132.163.213
date: 2002-12-29-17-03
Thomas Watson wasn’t really so boring – he (and IBM) got into serious hot water by trading with Nazi Germany. (see http://news.com.com/2009-1082-269157.html?tag=cd_mh)
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name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2002-12-30-08-55
Oh yes, I’d forgot that bit already: the nazi stuff – that really got my ears pricked up.
I’d read somewhere else that Ford motor company did that too. They were selling trucks to Germany at the same time that american soldiers were advancing across France.
Was interesting to hear the technical side of how they funneled the money to Switzerland for the duration of the war.

Pretty amazing how they’ve always been at the head of the pack too. It’s one thing to have a brilliant idea that ensures success for one generation – like with the card punch machines, but then there was this that you mentioned, and something else i read about them developing a monitor or TV screen that produces a picture so clear that it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.

a colour that’s too dark to be called tangerine. This is the summer look – and functional now with still two months left of summer to go! Wow, now that’s a snappy schedule, he says sarcastically. Ah – summer’s alway’s late here anyway.
Graphically it feels a bit barren right now but will add some little bits. Unfortunately – it’s one of those sacrifices: to have the dynamic squeeze-box style of layout then it becomes rather difficult to successfully slap a graphic head-banner across the top.
Still got a few of the secondary pages to revamp.

Have been mucking around in the veggie garden a bit the last day or two – planting, weeding, throwing composted soil down and mulching. I have some rechargable batteries for the camera now – so there’s absolutely no reason not to go completely sick with it, so I will.

Still no word on when i’m getting to have a test-run with the floor-buffering monster. Apparently, this is the part where I’m supposed to act all keen and ring them again and say, “hi, i’m really excited about doing this”.

Golly, this is a moody way to kick off a new design. Bah! it’s late. I’m done.
PS. Goodbye to the man-machines. “Goodbye! Goodluck!”
Oh – and I should confess – I pinched that last colour scheme off of Shell. Or at least it was ‘heavily inspired’ by it — and shell are evil, so I guess that made the colour scheme evil.
But the new look came completely out of my head — along with a bit of help from this nifty colour chooser thingo.

name: Jay
email:
url: www.mowabi.com/
ip: 63.60.239.243
date: 2002-12-28-17-12
Change is good. All hail change!
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name: Monkey
email:
url: iamthemonkey.com/blog/
ip: 203.31.48.3
date: 2002-12-28-21-56
Nah, I’d call it Tangerine. But I’m colour blind, so you can’t really trust me.

And what Jay said. With an added ‘Huzzah!’ at the end.
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name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 144.132.163.213
date: 2002-12-29-00-25
A change is as good as a holiday =). I am with the Huzzah crowd ..
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name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2002-12-29-10-47
Thanks for the feedback folks – was starting to get the feeling everyone must’ve been on holidays.
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name: Quanta
email: quanta_87@myway.com
url: aspyre.net/quanta/
ip: 203.220.145.160
date: 2002-12-29-18-04
Hhehe, I was on holidays.

Add a “!” to the huzzahs, and some fruit cake.

we may experience some turbulence ahead.

- the tpg connection’s still valid. There’s a ? mark hovering over my head as I type.

Today was okay. It’s funny – there’s not really any other day that’s laden with expectation the way dec.25 is. Either I think everything’s gonna be hunky dory – and then it’s not — or i think it’s going to be a nightmare and I’m pleasantly surprised when it’s not. Sure I was in a bit of a bad mood last night – but that’s just me.
Have been going through old posters and wall things the last day or two and found this little scrap of paper that I tore off of – of all things – junkmail from a real estate agent – which stopped me for a few minutes.
It’s called ‘the rules for being human’. I won’t repeat all ten – but this one,
“7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.”
That one really speaks to me. If and when the family get on my nerves it’s because they’re like me/I’m like them.

The neatest and most unexpected think I was given was a veggo cookbook from my bro sschew. There’s lots of pictures of perfect looking food in there which I’m gonna have a hard time emulating.

Didn’t think I’d be back here tonight but my sis was driving back to melbourne for work tomorrow so i got a lift. She’s got Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as her phone ringtone. Vaagner.Vaaaagner dude. This got me vaguely wondering if she’d become a nazi, but perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions.
I wonder how long it’ll be before there’s a hip anti-hip revival of people putting ‘Greensleeves’ as their ringtone?

Charles Eicher aka Mr.Disinfotainment wrote this interesting piece of modern history – a first hand experience of selling the apple //c and the PC Jnr. in the christmas of ’84 in L.A. Was an eye-opener to hear of that perks program that apple set up with sales people. I wonder if they still do that.

name: Charles
email:
url: ceicher.homeunix.com
ip: 64.6.91.76
date: 2002-12-31-13-16
Hey, that story was only the tip of the iceberg. Spiffs were pretty new to the computer industry back then, but now it’s fairly common. I also wonder if still Apple does this, especially at Apple Stores where I hear they work on salary only, no commission. Surely they have little promo deals for employees like “sell 50 iPods get a free iPod” or something like that.
Anyway, Hewlett-Packard was especially agressive with spiffs, as were a few other companies. I remember one year, salesmen kept trying to steal each other’s HP laserjet serial numbers and turn them in for bonuses before the other guy did. That’s one of the reasons I got out of the sales business, too much greed. I’m not that greedy.

Well I’m splittin’ for The Plains in a couple of hours. I haven’t exactly psyched myself into a state of high tolerance – will just have to wait and see how things go. Christmas for me isn’t all that bad – well not as bad as Monkey’s sound :^) — but it can be fraying. It hasn’t seemed the same since i stopped eating meat. What i do like is getting back to where ever i live on boxing day and watching the kick off of the syndey -> hobart – partly because it signals i am back where i can do things the way i want and partly because i like watching a little yacht racing — they’re like push bikes – a relatively (environmentally) clean form of racing things.

Next time I tap away into here it’ll either be from the dead of morning or from the library. On a slightly related note – Telstra suck so much it hurts. how is it that they can be still half owned by ‘the public’ but be able to charge $5.50 if you pay their bill a day late (whereas no other public service like the electrics or water do not) — but also half privately owned while owning the damned infrastructure; the wires on the street, so that no other company can compete with them and offer a better on monthly phone charges. The line rental fee part of the monthly bill is outrageous. And GST sucks too.
Man.
A rat done bit my sister Nell
and whitey’s on the moon.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

Just read an excellent piece of short science fiction here at K5. Has got me a hankering for some more spacey reading. It’s about how rare it could be to find another planet similar to Earth, and then how proximity to a star (like the sun) can be a double-edged sword.
It’s interesting how, now with so much more scientific understanding, the ‘space opera’ type science fiction which doesn’t base itself on hard fact – just doesn’t stand up. Or at least, that’s the way I see it. The author of this piece I just read could be talking made up mumbo-jumbo — but to unscientific me, it sounded plausible — and it’s the plausablility that gets me thhinking, “wow, this could really be possible” compared to other more fantastic stories where a wormhole (or whatever else) has been thrown in as a plot device instead of it being a real possibility that they exist.

Scene:
Three Tibetan monks stand around inspecting eachother’s newly, closely shaved heads with awe and admiration – making ‘aww’ and ‘yaa’ sounds.
One of them holds x-brand hair clippers. They speak in Tibetan —
subtitles :
“if it were allowable for me to express pride, then I would do so for this cut”
“I will be the envy of all my brothers at the monastery” says another.

Cut to american accented voice over —
“For a cut or shave that’ll give you a feeling second only to the supreme state of Nirvana itself, Use x-brand electric shavers and clippers. Ask for them by name. X-brand.”

Cut to close shot of one monk, head bowed slightly running clippers over his own head. He turns the clippers off, looks up, runs a hand over his head and with smile says to camera —
“Ah-Ha!”
[vocal expression of supreme realistaion – facial expression of cosmic oneness.]
**********
I wonder if Remington would buy it?

Yesterday I had a serious rethink about changing to the phposxom set up. The idea of it – and blosxom – is simplicity. It supposed to cut away all the doo-dads and leave you with the esssentials of a blogging system. I was missing the point and spending ages trying to bolt all the bits back. Anyway – I realised I can’t do without all the jumble stuff – stats, search, comments and whatever else. So am going to stay with moveable type. i was just a bit annoyed about the license it was with – but what can ya do – i don’t really think I’ll be making money off of this thing. It’s preety damn imaginative to think that i could.

Went for a ride on my bike this morning through the burbs to the House of Junk. It’s like a warehouse attatched to a rubbish depot. I was searching for a kettle cord which wasn’t found, but there was heaps of other great junk there. I have no room or money for it. They had a hardened movie poster/ wall hanging thing of ‘Star Trek II – the search for spock’. I think it was a screen print – definitely not the glossy paper type of thing they all are now.
Great to get back on the bike. It’s a bit rusted after two years of ocean air but still as comfortable and cruisey as ever. I couldn’t really ride it in anglesea on account of the waay-steep slopes and it only having three gears.

A buddy of mine, T1ee, has got me a job. What? ..But i can’t work – that’s what normal people do. It’ll turn me into a Normal!
This is something I have to get over. I think I’ll be alright. It’s cleaning supermarkets – early in the morning -like 3am. He says I’ll hurt where i never thought I had muscles. Because of using the floor buffer etc. Haha! Me with a floor buffer – now that I gotta see. I can seriously use the money though. With all this moving/re-sorting and chucking stuff out – I came across an old bank statement from 6 or 7 years ago. i was getting more money then – on the dole — than I am now on austudy. Finding that out floored me for a little bit.
The hours don’t bother me since I have no social life whatesoever at the moment.
I’m already imagining the product purchases I’ll be able to make with my dough. (Ooo goody! Stuff!). But i imagine what i’d get even when there’s no prospect of dough. I’d dearly love to rip the guts out of Juggernaut and start again. A good quality power supply and some super quiet fans. Then a Pentuim based motherboard…. it goes on.
The reality is – I need pants.

I just found out that FreeCiv can be played against the komputer (as well as online against people). Apart from a couple of the interfaces being a little clunky – it’s pretty much the same game as Civilisation. A cool way to spend a 34 degree saturday arvo.

name: Quanta
email: quanta@dodo.com,au
url: aspyre.net/quanta
ip: 139.134.63.153
date: 2002-12-22-08-58
Yeah the jumble stuff is what converted me from blogger to M.T.

I have enjoyed MT a whole lot more then evil blogger.

I’m thinking I’ll wait til that day before new years day before changing over scripting systems. Kind of makes sense – new year, new look.

This morning in the supermarket a small old lady asked me if i spoke Macedonian.
“Sorry?” I say
“You spik Macedonia?”
“No.” I say really surprised and disappointed that I don’t. i don’t really look like i come from macedonia, so maybe she thought that i looked cluey enough to know Macedonian but not actually be from there. I’d like to think that anyway.

I’d planned to give a couple of chairs away the brotherhood et st. lawrence and they came around yesterday to pick them up – but hadd a look at them and there was a couple of small rips in the fabric. So they say they won’t take them – occ. helf and safety thing, they say.
‘People stick pins and nasty things in them. Not you of course. But you know.” I bet he says ‘not you of course’ to everyone.
The chairs are now sitting out the front with signs on them saying ‘take me!’.

I got christmas shopping out of the way this morning. One thing those old people have got worked out is getting into town and getting things done early in the day. I wasn’t that quick off the mark, but i really tried.

Tony has a heckler. Neat!

name: Ron Sones
email: srdsgolf@
url: http://
ip: 205.188.209.10
date: 2003-04-01-10-18
need approx 300 chairs for church
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name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2003-04-01-16-14
Sorry Ron, can’t help ya. Those chairs are long gone, and there was only two of em anyway. Try the op-shop. Or better yet — get your church to start up an op-shop.
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name: Rev. Thomas l. Biddle
email: Hope8711@
url: http://
ip: 12.26.69.43
date: 2003-05-22-01-14
looking for chairs to borrow for wedding? i call my old school they said they could not help?
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 12.26.69.43 / Block IP range 12.26.69.*

name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.24
date: 2003-05-22-08-50
Heh. He said ‘old school’.

During the last month or so while having a look at what matt a.whole had to say I’ve seen him mentioning this creative commons thing and I’ve thought yeah-yeah-legal-stuff .. boring. Whatelse is here?
But i’ve been having a read though the site and it’s Interesting — I don’t know why i didn’t cotton onto what the idea was sooner. These people have put together a few different licenses which material (intelectual property) can be released under. These new licenses add stepping stones between copyright as we know it — and right up the other end of the spectrum; the GNU GPL – which most humans on this planet think is too hardcore.

I’ve never been a big fan of copyright. I remember at school (the writing + editing bit) they told us that more often than not copyright ends up helping the little people – not the soulless corporations – but i don’t really see it. Personally – I don’t need helping.
The same way that in theory modern science is supposed to be about people making discoveries individually, then sharing their knowledge for the universal progression of science — and also human living conditions as a whole —- I’d like to see creative endeavours go this way too — where’s there’s less ‘cult of the individual’ and more combining, remixing, sampling and bouncing off of eachother to collectively create something really amazing.

But anyway – these new licenses aren’t about destroying copyright – more like giving people more options as to how their stuff can be used. Listening to an interview with DJ Shadow a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me how antiquated copyright is – it doesn’t work well at all when it comes to today’s art, culture – and how electronic mediums purvey these things.
The GNU GPL was pretty much only written with software in mind, so I’ll be happily hooking my stories ans stuff to one of these new licenses as soon as they’re legit within australia. I really believe that the only way to keep a hold of something is to give it away. And that’s why it breaks my little heart when i trawl through countless mediocre weblogs “Stacey said such-and-such LOLzzzz” etc. and then down the bottom i see a ©

There’s some fun stuff on the CD of the current pc world mag, including some short videos from the ’50s. They were lifted from the movie archive. The really funny ones are ‘personal grooming (below (as you’ll notice, the young lady’s blouse is untucked etc. which I’m sure you’ll agree is truly preposterous)), ‘are you popular?’ and ‘duck and cover’.

I can’t help but think that life would’ve been pretty swell as a youngster in the ’50s – but that’s probably because I wasn’t there.

I got some good news in that the daytime internet connection has a week longer to it than was previously thought. [insert original exclaimation here.] I’m running out of them. really – I am.

Also, I see that Jon of Jon@MacGenius has started a seperate web log. Good stuff. I finally get to see some of those paintings I’ve occasionally heard about. :^)
It would behoove all you mac users out there to sit up straight and listen to the MacGenius once in a while!

name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 144.132.163.213
date: 2002-12-17-20-24
hahaha. I was wondering weather you read your referrer logs =). Yep I decided that Wiki is just to esoteric for most and hence I have moved to MT as a possible “thought-distribution-medium”. Don’t be fooled by the MacGenius domain though .. that was just something that I tried Apple to support me with =) which they didn’t so I am using it for my stuff, Just a Mac User – no Genius … by far =).
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name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2002-12-17-23-45
Yeah, I was starting to get that impression with the Wiki – after normal web set-ups it kind of spins people out that it’s editable by anyone.

You probably don’t know it, but you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing right now without coltan.

(geez that’s a good story lead-in innit? Someone should give me a medal)

Coltan, also known as tantalum, is used in making the capacitators that hold the electric current in a computer chip. It’s also used in mobile phones and other info-age goodies. Eighty per cent of the world’s coltan is located in what is known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. In fact it’s a very mineral-rich bit of the planet, and they’re getting ripped off bigtime. The rest of this particular article is here. And for 24 more slabs of under-reported news check out Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2001-2002. Sadly, none of them are good—news stories. There’s no “studies proved wrong on findings of ‘new car smell’s’ toxicity”.
I read about Project Censored in Nexus magazine.

But i did get my whole clickey-counter catastrophe worked out! It’s full steam ahead. I knew a bit distance was all it needed.

Swifty has a song available for download. It’s pretty cool – I dig that drum machine.

I got a Dear Yak email from Sun Micros the other day saying that they’re shutting down their My Sun free webmail sevice in March. That’s a shame. It’s what i used for potential spammer-exposed places, and after having used it for a year or so, was still receiving little rubbish. Must have some good filters or something. Maybe they’re just shutting mine down because of the vulcans thing.

Sir Flakey has posted a couple of interesting book reviews over at Core of late; one of Micheal Crichton’s new novel and one of science fiction short stories. Make me realise it’s been ages since I read a good novel. Was going to have another go at Jack keroac’s Desolation Angels, but it just wasn’t getting me. Maybe the time for me reading keroac has passed.

Not being able to find a visit tracking system that’ll work easily has been quietly frustrating me for two days. Has got to a point where I’ll have to give it all a rest and look at again in another couple of days. Been a while since I came against something web-related that’s been this much of a hassle. Am wondering about why I need one so much to begin with. I’m not as obsessed with looking through the search strings as i used to be, but I still get curious. Maybe i’ll have to have a look at those remotely hosted jobs.

name: Monkey
email:
url: iamthemonkey.com/blog/
ip: 203.31.48.3
date: 2002-12-16-17-00
Site meter (dot com) is great – or did you want something a bit… harder?
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 203.31.48.3 / Block IP range 203.31.48.*

name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2002-12-16-22-22
Actually I just figured out how to keep using the one I have. Wunderbah!

The title derivatives for these set ups just get wackier and wackier. This is what I’ve been mucking around with the last few days. I’ve bitten the bullet and decided this is the strain I’m going with. Eventhough it’s the officially sanctioned php port of blosxom, phposxom wasn’t the first (you might remember the link to the phosxom set up a while back). However, PHPosxom has documentation – those all important tips and pointers on how to set the thing up. Also, I see any possible time spent on learning CGI as a step sideways, whereas PHP seems like going forward. Plus blosxom – with it’s cgi actually seemed a bit sluggish in tests of late — I don’t know if it’s just the server I’m running from or what – but hangtime on the loading of the front page is no good.
Hopefully just a couple more days worth of fiddling and it’ll be ready to go for real. Currently having trouble finding a traffic stats system that doesn’t give it grief. It doesn’t seem to like these ‘ things.

I stayed up last night to check out the free-TPG service and it works fine. A pretty amazing find really. Credit must go to jean. I thought free internet was dead.

Dropped a bunch more stuff at the op-shop bins. They’re overflowing — people are no more decent than cats. The garbage bags (of clothes) that were left in front of the bins have been ripped open and strewn all over the joint.
I have trouble sending stuff to the op-shop because i think if I don’t want it then why would anybody else? i chucked out an old, ripped in two, copy of ‘Helter Skelter: the charlie manson story’, as told by his lawyer vincent buguloisi. i was almost going to scan the front cover – a foto of charlie with wide open eyes and wanting to look freaky. But better than that was a stamp-on caption to the side [like the “best taste ever” sticker down there on your right] which reads “Now a Disturbing Motion Picture” …
But i thought if I start scanning or taking fotos of everything i chuck out then that’s a weird and unhealthy behaviour – and is indicative of the problem i already have – that of hoarding too much crap. i’ve been drowning under mountains or it today.

Listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds last night, looking through the liner notes of the compilation CD of theirs, and was struck by the foto of Blixa Bargeld — it’s almost an archetype — the mysterious man with the big hat. Tried scanning it – but the moire effect was terrible and I can’t remember how to remove it. Looked around but couldn’t find a copy on google anywhere.
But did come across the homepage of one of the other projects blixa is a part of – Einstürzende Neubauten. Was interesting to see how they’re using the net to go beyond being dependent on record companies to release material. I hope it works.

Yipee! I finally have a fridge again and managed not to sik myself with cakey milk.

It’s a shame about this defamation stuff. It seems it will not be easy at all to get ratty on people, organisations etc. via the internet from the comfort of your own home. So I’d like to take the opportunity to say that up until a couple of months ago i thought that everyone working for Sun microsystems were, in fact, Romulans. That’s right. The only humanoid representation i ever saw of the company was these little pictures of scott mcnealy, and he was always in the distance – hard to make out, and never smiling. So i got to thinking that they were Romulans.
But then, while researching an assignment i came across Bill Joy, and he doesn’t look like a Romulan at all. Then when you look at this line up most of them do look human, with the exception of this guy.
It’s not much fun to make fun of people who are down on their luck. I’m under the impression that Sun are down on their luck, indeed, their lunch is being eaten. This is what some person was saying who dan gillmour (of dan gillmour’s ejournal) was referencing once a while back. I tend to agree. It won’t be long before the 64bit processor is a household appliance thanks to Intel, and the Linux/IBM combo is really hoeing into Sun’s sammiches while Sun buggers around with those ridiculous paper filters at the coffee machine.
Who’s eating your lunch?
The LG family are eating mine.

Like the heroes of urban car chase movies, the high-rise freeway is about to come to an abrupt halt not far ahead of me. My internet connection goes kaput a week from today. It’s not what I want but i suppose it’s what I need. Will i be able to turbojump my vehicle over to the other bit of asphalt? Yes, but it’ll take a couple of weeks to marshal up the clams to do so.
Here’s something I found out a couple of days ago: TPG offer a free dial-up service – provided you only want to connect between 1 and 7am. If only the nights were balmy and sleepless to suit this arrangement. I haven’t been given the green light to use this service but if I do expect to read a big bum-licking hearty product endorsement for TPG from me. If not, then there’ll probably be a defamation suit from them to me via something not so hot about them that I’ve said here.
Either way it’ll only be temporary. I can get back onto the normal dial-up plan without having to resort to plastic, but have to pay a year in advance.

name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 144.132.163.213
date: 2002-12-11-22-07
Excellent writing .. although I am not shure who’s eating my lunch =).
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name: SirFlakey
email:
url: www.core.org.au
ip: 144.132.163.213
date: 2002-12-11-22-07
Ewww.. I wrote “shure”… I of course ment “sure” =). Apparently my fingers are not connected to my brain ..
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name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.9
date: 2002-12-11-23-07
Ah fingers … if I spoke the way I typed i’d have a hhell of a ssstutter. :^)

The same as how it’s not the major major-stressy things in life that make one snap — it’s the little everyday irritants … is that it’s not the big things that I regret or wish could be changed (it’s easier to just accept them as the way life is going, and at some point it becomes clear why things happen the way they do). No – it’s the little trivial stuff that I think of changing. In this long-winded case – the digital camera.
It’d be nice to be able to go back to the BenQ dc1300 now that I have a way to connect it. It’s able to record sound.
During the last day or two I’ve been playing a bit of, What’s That Sound? There’s something that I’ve been hearing semi-regularly from the direction of across the road. It’s like a cross between some kind of bird, a telephone (as in: noise-noise[pause]noise-noise[pause] etc.) and a horse whinnying. There’s another thing that sound a bit like a bit and an old squeegy being scraped across something.
Then there’s the identified, but worth sharing sounds; the 100% Looney-toons door-stopper spring that goes “doo-wah-wah-woing!”, and the little dog over the fence. I don’t know that it has a name but I’ll call it Snuckles. The sounds it makes are truly out of this world, and it’s here that a recording device would solve the problem of me tryiing to describe something that is at once so hideous, pity-inspiring yet comical that it would defy any attempts of translation into written language. However it could be .WAVed and uploaded to Spouting.

Power boards and extension cords
line the walls
“Oh fiddlesticks, where’s the-

Okay, so I was a bit wrong about the deakin server. it appears I was looking in the wrong place. But see here – it looks like a pretty reasonable place to go to find your results, and then there’s a link halfway down the page that says, ”Accessing Results Via Student Connect ( World Wide Web)
Web address:” – and then there’s a link and it’s a dud link and this is where I was going wrong.
You gotta cut me some slack though, I haven’t made a really dumb mistake in ages … or at least that’s the way it feels.
I got three Ds and a credit for psychology (68; close but no avacado). It was the stats i reckon. But the communications exam must’ve done as well as I was boldly thinking it did, because the overall mark I’d racked up after the second assignment (which tanked) wasn’t too hot. And the other two artsy subjects; technocultures and truth and trancsendence scored 78 a piece – again close but not quite there.

name: Quanta
email: quanta_87@myway.com
url: aspyre.net/quanta/
ip: 211.26.146.53
date: 2002-12-09-17-39
Yay know you should upgrade to the Canon, bad luck though that canon doesnt have any in stock.

Arrgh…

grumbles and goes off to find a new christmas present
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name: yak sox
email: yaksox@spouting.net
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.58.6.5
date: 2002-12-09-21-24
Um, yeah those cannon A40 cameras are way out of my price range. Odd that they should be running out though — every christmas catalogue I’ve seen in the last week has had it in there.