Sunny Breaks

Literally and otherwise.

I’ve been putting off mentioning drivel until I actually got a chance to try it out, but it hasn’t happened and it’s taking very little to get me spinning out about what kind of pace I’m going to have to sustain with studying this semester. A no-breaks 4 month dash for the finish.

Anyway — it’d be fun to be the dian fossey of webloggen by working my way into the strange and mysterious realm of livejournal — getting them to accept me, acting like them until they started to forget I was there et cetra. For those not in the know, it’s a free, hosted service similar to Blogger’s blogspot setup, except (and I didn’t know this bit) that to join up to LJ, you have to have an existing member ‘recommend’ you. (There’s also an option to pay to join.) I haven’t had the time to gain the trust of one of these inhabitants. Just wanted to see what the interface was like.
And that’s where Drivel comes in - it would be like the ‘word-processing’ window bit (or front-end) to the livejournal account. There’s versions for windows and Linux on the souceforge page pointed to above. The first time I saw it was as part of Dropline Gnome and I was wondering how many Slackware + Gnome nerdy hacking types would be into using LiveJournal since most users seem to be on about breakfast and boyfriends (like so) — but the Livejournal software is open source, so there ya go.

Comments:

pixelkitty
url: http://pixelkitty.net
date: 2003-08-01-07-27
I have an LJ account, so I guess I could recommend you to get you in, if you like? havent used it in a long long time though.

yak sox
url: www.spouting.net
date: 2003-08-01-07-42
Why that’d be neat, thanks.

A fortnight ago I was at a meeting. Somebody brought this little dog - white furry thing. I don’t know if it was a specific brand. But it went around sniffing out everybody there and got to me and starting humping my leg. It was pretty fuckin’ funny. I think it was a day or few before that I’d missed a Rodney Dangerfield movie, but who cares when you can be a participant in your very own Dangerfieldian scenes? This kind of dog is the sort that generally when I see them I assume that it must be a girl-dog because they’re just so, well, girlish. But no - instead: fiesty.
Anyway it was there again tonight and again mine was the only leg worth a hump-attempt. I don’t get it.

Floating my boat musically this week is Gene Krupa - Drum Boogie. Swingin’ and swell. He was known as a big band drummer, and I’d heard him kickin’ it on a couple of tracks before — and sure it’s not as wild as the amon tobin drum crash-bam-boom-bash rolls, but there’s 60 years between them.
I’m liking that mid-1940s ‘gettin’ the dinner ready in wiinter and everything’s gonna be aawwlllll-right’ feel. Up until a couple of months ago I’d found the 40s kind of repulsive but am now curious. I wish I had a Tardis.

There’s a tv show starting tonight that has prompted me to finally write this entry. It’s a hammed-up cooking show, something I heartily endorse.

I’m de-indexing the surprise chef piece. Perhaps it was a bit harsh. It’s made its point. I happened to catch 10 minutes of a show a few months back, and noticed that they’d taken on some of my suggestions of hamming it up a bit. Aristos did the same joke 4 times in the same episode, which is great because I like the number 4. Anyway, i harbour no ill will towards the surprise chef. There was a more broader point to it, effected by the fact that countless people clicked through to the page. Let this be a lesson, TV networks - you and your shows can be got at. All it takes is one lone nut with a web page and a well targeted < title >.

Somedays I have these moments where it feels like the best thing to do is pack it all up and head back to mars. My social interaction muscle is severely atrophied and getting back to a more healthy state produces some weird results, particularly when i been staying up too late watching men on bycycles.
I came across that quote about the internet again recently - something like “the internet is a tool whereby individuals who have lives are able to benefit from those who haven’t”. The coin seemed to drop this time, and damn yes — it’s true — those bastards!
Of course now I feel obligated to populate as much virtual space as possible with misleading info, half-truths and infinite Kaos.. Ah-ha-uh-ha-ha-ha-HAHAHAHAHAaaaa!

I mentioned Amon Tobin a week and a bit back. He’s on the NinjaTune record label, and at their site there’s a couple of Tobin tracks for download (on a different site here - on the discography page, down near the bottom: ‘Verbal’ featuring MC Decimal R and a remix of ‘people like Frank (except they spelled it franck) by some French dude) plus a whole bunch of other neat stuff like wallpapers, .mpegs, videos and screensavers — of other artists on the label too.

I found out which is the nation of Boom-Cha! - it’s Italy. They play it at the Formula One when the driver is driving a Ferrari because of the Italian connection.

Sad to see Jan Ullrich have a stack earlier this evening on the tour de france highlights. I was thinking, very few people can relate to smashing up a racing car (or perhaps a few more - smashing up their own car at speed) but nearly everyone can relate to coming a cropper on a pushbike.

Jon Harsem
url: http://www.core.org.au
date: 2003-07-27-18-37
I am from the relaive region were the Tour De France should make me wanna watch it but somehow it doesn’t appeal to me. I dunno why .. it’s curious in fact. You’re probably right about stacking it on the bike… except of course there aren’t usually 20 people running over your you afterwards ..

yak sox
url: www.spouting.net
date: 2003-07-27-19-07
True. I haven’t had a bingle at 60km/h either, which isn’t rare for them.
Those pile ups looked nasty. Motor-bikes move a lot faster, but they have leather too..

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The fully-grown flies, as doctors described the parasites, have been emerging out of Chandan Goswami’s genitals and flying off for more than two weeks now. Yikes. It’s tempting to start thinking about relocation to the tropics as a solution to everything at this time of year… but then again, maybe not. (via TDY).

Alright. I was going to do a bit of schtick titled ‘Night of the Living Hussein Boys’ but eating dinner always diminishes mania. I still think it’s worth saying that it’s really disappointing how much of the media and so called leaders are saying, ‘golly it’s a damn good thing those two are dead’, and how few people are saying, ‘it’s a shame that killing them was the best solution we could come up with’. Regardless of how much bad stuff they did at the end of the day they were still people.
Gee, it’s been a while since I got political.
When The Man whispered in california’s ear, “Just remember, it’s all just a circus sideshow y’know” regarding parliamentary politics — california took it literally and decided that Schwarzenegger was the perfect ring-leader since John Wayne was no longer available.
I’m waiting for the movie where he is angered by the (by then) federal democrat (D) congress, shows up glazed muscles and a touch of blood. “OVER-REGULATE THIS, ASSHOLES!” pow-pow-pow-pow-peeeoWW!

These shoes got me wondering why the idea of making shoes with springs attached to the bottom hasn’t progessed at all. Of course there’d only be certain situations where they’d be useful but they’d get you there in half the time with half the effort.

Is on - here. It snuck up on me. I was intending to participate with the theme of :“Get more Buddhist Monks Surfing” because the one in geelong does and I thoroughly endorse it. But anyway, maybe I’ll just click around and poke fun at the participants like I did last year.

Had the first lecture of developmental psychology aka kiddie-psych. It’s gonna be the holiday I hoped for compared to the other two brain-mashers. In fact it includes lectures on fondue cookery, making wall hangings out of tiny plastic beads and proper grooming - I get to wear a blouse, skirt and bobby-socks on that day. ooo-la-la.
The library at uni went sik on O’Reilly books. They must’ve had 40 newies there — PHP cookbook, Python cookbook, java and XSLT, maintaining mailing lists and even a Linux book. All of it was web app. related and all but one really small reference book for windows was open source in subject matter. Not that I really have any time to look at or borrow any. Ah well.

I’m a bit disturbed by how different this page appears in internet explorer compared to everything else. May have to backstep to the carbon-vanilla layout that it came with. Go Jan Ullrich in the tour de france, go. I’m sure lance armstrong is a nice person but he’s had his turn and wherever possible I’ll always barrack for a non-yankee over a yankee. I can relate to Ullrich disappearing into the wilderness for a couple of years too. Actually, lance armstrong can speak french. And so can that big-footed australian swimmer guy - thorpe. It seems everyone can but me — gotta do something about that.

I bought a pair of shoes from the op shop. They were two dollars each. At first I thought the were corrective in nature, but it’s just that they had really thick soles and I’m not used to that. Thick soles make for a pretty sweet ride — it’s like suspension. It’s strange how foot-memory is so short. They can put on a pair of shoes that immediately feel shocken but after a day or two they get used to it and forget that they ever had anything better.

Comments:
name: Jay

url: mowabi
date: 2003-07-25-00-42
Hey Devlopmental Psych!? I did that.. no doubt you will look at the likes of Piaget and Skinner.. and the nature vs nuture thing.

yak sox
date: 2003-07-25-00-55
Yes indeed - there was a little of it last year and both of them came up, as did Noam ‘Chompers’ chomsky.
Long time no see, Jay! :^)
I was almost going to email you to see how you were going. Mowabi-land has been very quiet.

Jay
url: www.mowabi.com
date: 2003-07-25-01-50
Yeah Noam is an interesting one.. among other things (quite controversial things), doesn’t he have some ideas about language development?

As for the quietness, I have been moving house… an activity which I detest! It’s been keeping me busy

yak sox
date: 2003-07-25-06-21
yep, linguistics was his thing before politics.

Ben
email:
url: please don’t eat me!
date: 2003-07-25-06-58
Kiddie Pysch. Hehe, that sounds cute. Do you get to sit in a circle and eat your glue?
I thought so.

yak sox
date: 2003-07-25-07-05
Hehe. nah but it’s okay to go have a nap in the corner if it all gets to be too much, which it undoubtedly will.
Nice to see you back in the land of the virtually-living too, Ben. :^)

This entry is placed here to remind me (and all you! :^) ) to remember those half, three-quarters or nine-tenths of weblog entries that were untimely rip’d from the screen by software glitch, power surge, HTTP gremlins and other dark creatures that inhabit the void, never to become part of the illusion that is internet-permenence. R.I.P. “what I had for lunch” 23/7/03

It’s been ages since I went to Melbourne to walk around. I haven’t had the need or desire to. So there was plenty to gawk at starting with Australian Centre for the Moving Image - which is a pretty neat place. We need more of them and less blackhawk helicopters. At least we got one. Probably not a lot of point attempting to explain the current exhibits, but there was one set up as a 6 minute quicktime file (the only one that was on a computer, the rest were on tellies or wall projectors) done by this taiwanese guy in new york - he took a still shot of himself in the same place every hour for a whole fucken year.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how I can hear the townhall clock from here, but one night at two or three i though _What If_ there was a little man in the clock and he donged it every hour and he’d have to wake up every hour of the night to do that. I thought about that when i saw this new york guy. All the images were stuck together so it was like one of those flick books. Was amazing to see the variations in hair length and everything except for this very basic set of elements of eyes, nose and mouth. It was like looking at the soul - the bit that doesn’t change.
The thing was fuly documented for authenticity and there was maybe 20 times when he took the pic. late or missed it or whatever, which is pretty good going for 365×24=8760.

The transition from hols to sem. 2 reminds me of those games - Donkey kong maybe - where I’ve completed a hella-difficult level and am taking a breather and Wham! straight back into it, and on this level - 10 or whatever, there’s no screwing around — it’s just straght into the insane fray. Sometimes I’m primed for it, others I wonder why the heck I bother to play such stress-inducing games. Sem 2 is level 10.
In fact I think I’ll just post the titles of entries here and then get back around to filling the rest in, in 4 months time.

For a month or two I’ve been having delusions of grandeur about famous people visiting this site. Seriously. If I hear anyone on the radio or telly use an expression that I’ve used here sometime in the last 12 months then I automatically think, ‘Ohh, they must be reading my weblog.’ I wonder if there’s some kind of medication that’ll fix this…

I’m officially sick of Blogshares. It was fun for about five days then I realised that I’ve got my head in the clouds enough as it is without spending time online accruing imaginary money. Besides, it wasn’t all that challenging.

There’s been a fill-in guy at Excitement machine and he’s posted links to some funny songs. Those entries are here, here and here. The first is to do with the coiner of this entry title. The audio sample was turned into a track. The second uses the stephen j hawking voice and a Naughty By Nature track to explain entropy. It sounds like they made an effort to be scientifically accurate. Last is Y2Khai who sounds like an american/asain version of Ali G — aparently Y2 has been around for years but I must’ve been in the toilet or something.

Everyone will be familiar with situations where words just don’t cut it in expressing a feeling. Perhaps some people more than others, but hey that’s another entry.
This is why emoticons were invented. Because this lack of how to say somting is impounded by being on the net. I’m not knocking emoticons, yet I didn’t feel right using standard pre-fab sets. We here at spouting are interested in pushing envelope. Always wanting more. And want to give more back. So we present to you:

Kimi RaikkonenIcon! set: spanning the almost infinite spectrum of human emotions –

The full set of Kimi RaikonenIcon! can be downloaded here.

Looks like bits of the layout need some work still. Remind me never to offer my services as a web person to anybody, because I can’t even remember to check how things look in the main browser (IE) on my own site, let alone anything beyond that.

Jon
url: www.core.org.au
date: 2003-07-21-19-18
Hey a bit of upredictability in your websites is good - just claim it was purposeful =) ..

yak sox
date: 2003-07-23-03-23
That’s the difference between an artist and not-an-artist. The artist deliberately attempts to rock the boat, and the not-an-artist just can’t get their frikkin’ images to sit right in the left column. :^)

Sadly not. Spouting netted no.2 ranking for ’spazbo’, defeated by the “Spa-zee-bo”. Much thought put into naming that one.

I bought Amon Tobin’s album ‘Permutation’ yesterday. A review and pikkachure of the cover here. I had already d/loaded most of the tracks from the file sharers, but think that the music swings so good that its creator deserves some of my money even though I don’t have much. Gosh I\’m admirable. It’s always a bit of a bleed to have to pay an extra 5, 10 or sometimes 15 bucks on top of the usual thirty because the CD has been imported but that’s what you get for living in a country of relatively small populace.

How I’m getting my jollies today: Standing back a bit and throwing cutlery into sink making tremendous splash.

The season’s battle for the lozenge dollar has kicked into high gear. Allens launched with their Butter Menthols television commercial (in the biz they say TVC) which I like for its use of light and colour and the girl in the coat is adorable. Vicks vapor drops just hit back with a new ad. that’s rather clever: a man and a woman sit on a park bench, she kisses him deeply and he passes out and falls over. Cut to a graphic, “Blocked Nose?”. I like it.

Update: This is happening too much lately - I go to write an entry then forget to add the main point of the thing.
So which lozenge would I buy? None. Those things are just lollies.