Orb Drive
Should have one (of these) by the end of today if lucky.
Saw Austin Powers today… nice $5 ticket at an independant cinema near the uni (= university = college for you yanks). Friggin cack that movie! “I’ll try and stand up!” <craaaaack!> “The bone is protruding through the skin!” Seeing The Mummy today. Spent way too much moola on movies this year.
Are over baby!!! Gotta catch up on my updates and 30 or so pieces of mail waiting. One tip… never start reading a good fiction book the afternoon before an exam. I got bored studying so I decided to pull out Krondor: The Betrayal which my friend gave me last Christmas (but never got around to reading). Mistake. Eight hours and 350 pages later and I had finished it – just in time to go to sleep. Been a long, long time since I’ve read a novel of my own accord, actually.
Here’s an interesting page on lightsabres. Apparently Yoda has one. It’s short and pudgy.
Can’t do anything but laugh at this. It’s about a product recall of a certain jedi-weapon :).
This one is a good one. It’s got an interesting section on how to set up your own web cam. But I value my privacy too much. The grammatically incorrectly titled site’s called The Rant. Good stuff there. Hey… just read something on State of Origin… could it be… yes, he’s Aussie! ha ha! Brisbanian (suck! we still retain the S of O cup :), but nonetheless Aussie. One of the few. Hehe. Found a link to this flaming turtle from there too :).
More:
The PiratePete Experience
Updates
* KK knows all! :)
Hah some damn ethics question popped up in my CIS exam. About www.anonymizer.com. So I thought I’d make a post about it (actually I was writing out my next set of posts cos I finished early, and in a non-mathematical based exam you can’t really go back and check answers, but I forgot that the “working-out book” I was doing it in had to be handed back in). www.anonymizer.com is sort of a “proxy browser”. You send it a site to fetch, and it fetches it for you. So basically, it accesses the site you want, but not from your IP, but theirs. You can get around bans this way (unless you ban anonymizer.com, of course).
Science and Tech network. Interesting stuff in here. Also, uselessknowledge.com.
Somewhat weird and somewhat dodgy:
To find out what your name would be if you were in Star Wars, follow these directions:
To get your first name:
Take the first three letters of your last name
Then add the first two letters of your first nameTo get your last name:
Take the first two letters of your mother’s maiden name
Then add the first three letters of the name of the city you were born in
Lohst Chcam? WTF? Thanks to Pip.
(Not interested? The last bit of this post might.) Street parade for the Aussie team in Sydney next Monday :). I’ve got a friend skipping work to go there, but no way am I making the two hour journey to the city to go there… not when my last exam (computing) is on Tuesday.
It was a bit of an anticlimax the final of the world cup however I sat up and watched it and the best part of the game was the way the Aussies – slaughtered – the bowling attack. Here we have one of the fastest in the world and they were aboslutely caned – there is no other description. I have not seen us take so harshly to an attack since I don’t know when. Here hoping we keep it up.
As for Steve Waugh – what can you say – the dude is an absolute legend. He makes runs and comes through when we need him. If anything such adversity just makes him more determined. It will be interesting to see how the team performs from here on. Once again all the Steve Waugh knockers have gone back into the woodword – just like they did when he pretty well single handedly won the 95 series in the West Indies for us in the batting department. Can’t handle short pitched bowling huh? What was that score he made – 200. Certainly sounds like it eh?
As for South Africa – one word – choked!!! Big time. I remember that they gave us that label the last time we were in South Africa – Aussie chokers!!! I do not think that they will even mention a hint of it again when playing Australia. In fact they have probably ripped that word out of their language altogether now. It certainly will make sledging for the Aussies much easier. They just need to make gagging noises when the batsmen come in and that should do it. I had the pleasure of relieving some South Africans of some of their devalued currency for that outcome. How sweet it is. Sorry to have raved on but:
ossie ossie ossie – oi oi oi!!!!!!
ps – I think your web page is great.
Robert
I say I’d have to agree wholeheartedly with this. Except that I don’t think so much that SA *really* choked as in “Greg Norman 6 strokes ahead on the last day but lost” choke. They just cracked first under the pressure :). More credit to the Aussies (I think the exact quote from steve Waugh was, “we were shitting ourselves out there”). But yes, the finals were a stunning display of batting. Hate to be the Pakis returning home tho: Pakistan’s World Cup Squad returns to rotten eggs and angry fans. Crazy, fanatical bunch those fellas.
On the other side of the scale, some Yank who will remain anonymous (although it could as well be most of you :) once again displays the ethnocentrism inherent in “American culture” :). In response to the World Cup post last Monday:
Ok…I assume we’re talking about soccer here, but correct me if it’s something else. What the hell is a Wicket? And an Over? (won by 8 wickets & 20 overs?)
I rest my case.
Australia got the Paki’s all out for 132. If we don’t get 133 then we don’t deserve to win.
At none for 42, looks like a somewhat anti-climatical victory for Australia.
The Cricket World Cup final, Australia vs Pakistan, kicks off now. Live on the net at Cricket.org.
What I meant, G, was that by going to sleep at 5am, and by your readjusted body clock, that you’re “living” in another time zone… I mean, if you flew to one of those places (islands in the Pacific Ocean hehe), your body clock would be perfectly adjusted to it, and you wouldn’t suffer from jet lag at all. Similarly for me if I ended up in India somehow (my body is very much still in Sydney). I know your body is on the East coast of the US, but your mind might as well be a few thousand kilometers to the West :).
Welcome to Somewhere – Writings are nicely done.
You’re Creeping Me Out
By my estimates, G is actually living in Vanuatu, New Caledonia or the Solomon Islands (albeit, one day in the past – GMT +11, or more accurately, “-13” which doesn’t exist). I’m living somewhere in India… like Mumbai (GMT +5.5). Neat worldtime shockwave thing here.
Seems we have a horny AOLer on the soapbox :).
“involved in cnn discussion boards on kosovo
its great
lots of morons tho
“Milosevic is the new Hitler” and bullshit media crap like that”
Italians now free to duel, drink, beg and blaspheme
Man accused of assaulting woman with 10 pound fish
Scotland’s Nessie sighted — on the Internet
Christian biker clubs duke it out over Jesus logo and name (hahahaha)
County throws away $43,000 in coins
[All From CNN]
Literally. This is what it looks like. Our galaxy is going to “collide” (sorta… they’ll actually slide through each other) with another in a couple billion years, but I don’t think we need to worry. The picture was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Yeah yeah yeah. Maths exam on Tuesday.
Well. My primary ISP, Zipworld was acquired by some Singapore firm. I pray that their service and pricing won’t be affected…
My secondary ISP (no monthly fee.. good backup one) sent out an alert about the Melissa virus and the ExploreZip one… and they took the opportunity to alert users that “[Isp name]’s original Vet Anti-Virus Software offer is still available, which, at $66.00 plus P&H, is over 30% off recommend retail price.”
Actually this is a quasi-response to Fallen Angel‘s post on “The Internet”. I had this vision a couple years ago, and I reckon it’ll come true. After all, UO and EverQuest are the accurate incarnations of seemingly “impossible” gaming concepts I dreamt about (without the lag) when I was 7. Picture this. It will happen in a couple decades I’m betting. (Is this a hackneyed vision?) :
You get on the train in the morning. You sit down and your mobile phone beeps. It’s a message that you have e-mail. Pulling your handheld PC (HPC) out of your pocket, it connects wirelessly to the net and you grab your mail. It’s a mail telling you to look at the newspaper today, which so happens you don’t buy. No matter, you download the frontpage news for the day.
On the way back home, you’re on the train and you’re bored. You want to play a multiplayer-game (and I’m not talking two-player snake over Nokia 6110 phones here). With who though? Your HPC sends out a short-range wireless radio broadcast. It’s answered by one person. One who happens to have the same game and a compatible HPC in the next train carriage along. The two HPCs hookup via a direct connection and you start playing. The game finishes and you end up chatting via IRC/Q, mp3s (or mp4s etc.) playing in the background through earphones. Then your HPC runs out of batteries.
Yes, these people will still be called Yuppies. Only, there will be more of them.
Last Monday’s cricket match was totally eclipsed by the one today. I wrote Australia off, as I did the last match they played.
So, there I was, at midnight, sitting in my room studying. I’ll just check on the score, I thought. Flicked from CD to Radio. “And South Africa are cruising at none for 43.” Swore a bit. Flicked from Radio to CD. An hour later, about to call it a night. I’ll just check the score again. Flick. “AND WARNE’S GOT HIS THIRD WICKET! South Africa are down 3 for 53.” Sat there a bit. Thought I’d study for a bit longer… with the radio on. I ended up rivetted in front of the radio and lost two hours that I could have spent sleeping (it finished 4.15am – same morning as the exam). All this with accounting book still in hand, still at the same page it had been opened at. Absolutely incredible game tho… right down to, again, the third last ball. Klusener is a freakish player. Even though the game ended in tie, Australia moves on to meet Pakistan in the finals on virtue of net run rate.
Now, who says cricket is boring? I’m free to perform bastinado on you.
Cricket.org’s commentary:
49.4 Fleming to Klusener, no run, run out gone, Australia have done it
South Africa 213/10, Partnership of 15
AA Donald run out (Fleming) 0 (0b 0x4 0x6)
I’m going to have a heart failureball was pulled down the wicket, Klusener called him thru, Donald didn’t move and then dropped his bat, both batsmen at the bowler’s end, mid off passes it to Fleming who passes to Gilchrist, Donald running down the pitch without his bat, well short
just a tad of an exciting match, it’s tied, Australia go thru because they finish higher in the super 6 table first tie in World Cup history, and surely the most exciting, the last few overs provided drama after drama after drama
sensational, amazing, astounding, whatever, make your own superlatives up
presentations comign up Cronje looks lost for words, devestated: “up to the fall of the 1st wicket, we were looking good”, poor guy he can barely speak, MC wraps it up quickly
Steve Waugh says “it’s the most exciting match he’s ever played in”, looks a little underwhelmed, sensibly knows the final is still to come
Man of the match is Shane Warne, mentions how “fired up” and “pumped” he was after the wickets… he thinks this tops the Mohali semi final, point is made of Mark Waugh getting a duck in both of the matches
and so we move to Lord’s for Sunday’s final. WC87 v WC92 winners to determine who becomes the second team to win the World Cup twice. It’s Australia 4th WC final (a record) and their 3rd in the past 4 World Cups
so it all begins at 0945 GMT Sunday June 20. The Ripe Bananas v the Unripe Bananas (Aus v Pak) from Lords. Until then, I’ll be laying down and catching my breath.
There are also many manga/anime mags for horny men. These are basically just comic porn, and I don’t mean they’re a joke :) Generally there is a great deal of (what we in the West would describe as) pornography here. A lot of it is just soft-core. Like in all the newspapers (even the prestigious ones) it’s completely normal to have ads for the equivalent of ‘playboy’ or ‘post’. I don’t really get it. Maybe they don’t even have any concept of pornography (it is a western concept by the way — I read a book on it earlier in the year). It’s interesting.
Kim Beazley (leader of Labor – the federal opposition party) was slapped in the face with a lemon meringue pie today. He so fits the bill of an Aussie “bloke” (esp. with that gut). He licks at the pie and says, “That’s the best feed I’ve had today.” I dunno why they went after Beazley – he’s likeable as a person… Howard’s the “dignified” one – he’s got a vague air about him of being snobby. Beazley didn’t press charges. Almost makes me want to vote for him.
Australia. All out for 213. They could be well and truly screwed, just like an expensive whore. Not unlike me for my exam tomorrow.
I have my final accounting exam tomorrow. First out of four exams. What am I doing online?
Hey, it’s do or die time again. Australia vs South Africa (again). Semi finals match. This one ought to go off. Too bad I won’t be able to watch it :(. Winner plays Pakistan in the finals. www.cricket.org
Kicks off in a couple days. If you haven’t heard about it, ye can read about it here. I really wonder how many people a net site can reach out to and if it’ll have any effect on ticket sales whatsoever. Also, got this amusing top ten list off the same site:
Top Ten Things To Do When Attending Fan Day ’99:
10) Recreate Battle of Endor by ambushing everyone waiting in line for “Trekkies”.
9) Find two ushers standing next to each other, and ask which one is the master, and which is the apprentice.
8) At the concession stand, attempt to buy popcorn using only the Old Jedi Mind Trick.
7) Wear a costume, then when you go to the window to buy tickets, take a long time to “decide what movie you’re going to see.”
6) When, talking you to theater staff, speak only, you do, as Yoda does.
5) Simulate 3-D effects by performing live recreation of final lightsaber duel… during the actual film.
4) Accept the fact that Sidious and Palpitine are the same person, for crying out loud!
3) Wonder why they didn’t cast a GOOD actor as the lead in a great science fiction epic… (Oh, sorry, that’s “The Matrix”)
2) Chant: She’s eighteen! She’s eighteen!! ;)
and the #1 thing to do when attending Star Wars Fan Day ’99: Read the opening scroll aloud!
This time to KillKrazy. (Well it’s the correct day in Canada now, although not down under.)
The annual cry to get people to write in the guestbook. People meaning people like you. Can’t think of what to write? Visit KK’s WTWD, let him create some sort of emotion in you (happiness, depression, craziness, apathy, whatever), come back, and use that emotion to write in the ‘book.
This is a queer one. How many of these tricks do you know?
Thanks to Fuzzi who mailed this in:
Rule One:
If you pull into my driveway and honk you’d better be delivering a package, because you’re sure not picking anything up.Rule Two:
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter’s body, I will remove them.Rule Three:
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don’t take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose his compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.Rule Four:
I’m sure you’ve been told that in today’s world, sex without utilizing a “barrier method” of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.Rule Five:
It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is “early.”Rule Six:
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.Rule Seven:
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don’t you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?Rule Eight:
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka – zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which features chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.Rule Nine:
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.Rule Ten:
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car – there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.
Eating a bar of chocolate and a tiny bit of foil was, unknown to me, stuck on one of the squares. I started chewing, tasted metal, and suddenly ZAP. I had chewed on the bit of foil and it basically gave me what felt like an electric shock. Anyone else have this happen to them? Why does this happen?
I pretty much eliminated ICQ spam. If you go to Security & Privacy -> Ignore List there is a checkbox that says only accept messages from users on my contact list. Then you can turn off the annoying authorization thing, and they can only send you messages if you add them to your list. I just hope I’m not ignoring anyone I know.
Installed Gnome in Linux last night. So what did I do with it? Spent all night playing Gnu-othello (Othello). I need a new game to play (and preferably one that’s not under general public licence).
Spoke too soon. Apparently (as in, my-source-is-an-ICQ-message, apparently) Might & Magic 7: For Blood and Honour (sorry, honor for the yanks) gets released in the US this week. With 3D accelerator support this time around, too.
Plug-in tool letting you highlight words in web pages and letting you look up that word in Webster’s Online Dictionary. Requires IE4+. Opens definitions in a pop-up window.
Watch the World Die
Gets a new layout. White it may now be, but it’s still got a chick pic in the corner. Which reminds me – my Algebra textbook has quotes from Lewis Carroll novels introducing each chapter. Written by bored maths lecturers no doubt.
“It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it,
“but it’s RATHER hard to understand!…
… Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas
– only I don’t exactly know what they are!”
Ramblings
Has a screenshot of the sidebar. Never fear, one day it won’t fit all at once on any screen. 1600×1200 or otherwise.
Yesterday – 4.00a, 12.30p
Today – 3.00a, 12.30p
Sauce: Absurdity is a funny thing. Even when we know something is definitely absurd, we try our best to rationalise it. I dropped my harmonica, Albert. Worse
What a kickass match… down to the frickin wire!!! They’re into the semis, to play South Africa again. That’s as exciting a match of cricket as you’re going to get.
Looks like a rather interesting project to keep track of. Linux for handheld PCs and PDAs. Link here.
Shit. Three wickets down. $10 says that Australia is a gonna. Figuratively speaking, of course.
CD Now is holding a CD sale of Star Wars CDs. All the good CDs conveniently on one page. I ordered some. Damn, international shipping is expensive.
I know you’re more interested in this site here, though. It features really, really, high res, high quality pics of Natalie Portman as Amidala/Padmé. High res meaning ~3000×2000 sizes. Very nice stuff. Nothing there that gives extra backing to Theseus’ theory on Simpleminded (post IDs 111 & 112) though. Then again I didn’t look too hard. Honest.
Go out to Roosh. Happy 20th! :)
Do or die time for Australia (vs South Africa). Live Scorecard. Now this is a sweet sight:
32.3 Warne to Cullinan, OUT: Cullinan’s brain taking one of its famous leaves of absence, trying to slog it on one knee over the mid wicket, ball spins into the off stump
32.5 Warne to Cronje, OUT: Hansie obviously thought that last stroke of Cullinan’s was a mighty fine idea, because he tries it himself, ball hits the thigh of the leg on the ground, big appeal, ball was spinning down the line, small chance of it missing the off stump
Has anyone been getting spam through ICQ now? Ignor-o-tron time. UINs have hit 40 million, too. How long until it hits 9 digits?
A post on Brain Damage reminded me my wisdom teeth operation is but one month away. Four out at once. Ow.
Ok, now stop laughing.
Slept 4.15am
Woke 1.00pm
My wallet is starting to bulge, but not from money (damn). 21 movie tickets for this year and 14 weekly train tickets.
Half of these grabbed from digital squirrel.
Dwelling
Gulfan’s Domain
Nerd Intelligence Agency
Mervernation
Planet 31
Space Coyote
Zero Hour
Yes it looks quite ridiculous now.
Now I can get down to updating this page instead of studying for exams like I’m meant to. I also pronounce Computer Information Systems 1 as the most damn useless piece of shit subject ever contrived. Here’s a short excerpt from the 500 page textbook which is a bible on how to pull incredulous amounts of shit from your ass.
This initial step of defining the problem is surprisingly difficult because people may not reach a consensus about what the problem is. Sometimes the disagreements are subconscious…
Then there’s the five friggin’ pages they spend discussing whether “management is a business process”. Who gives a toss?
DeForest Kelly, who portrayed Doctor “Bones” McCoy in the Star Trek series, died. Please refrain from, “he’s dead, Jim” jokes please.
This dethrones A Simple Plan as the worst movie I’ve seen this year. As good as Jackie Chan is with stunts, mixing him with rejected Australian actors attempting American accents is like the old adage of mixing a tonne of ice cream with a tonne of manure. You end up with two tonnes of manure. And I don’t find watching a two tonne turd very enjoyable.
Seeing it a third time does not make me a freak. Really. Meanwhile I have been searching, in vain, for an original (40 inch) poster of TPM. Did I mention it had to be sanely priced?
New sites :
Aurigas’ World of Stuff
Brain Damage
Guru’s Palace
HongX.Net
Payback’s Shack
The Dark Portal
New URL : The Heatsink
New Layout : In Your Ear, Frustrated, Wordpage 9.0
Made a really minor change to the titling of the sidebar listing.
A post on Atroxi’s site reminded me of this old favourite site: The Editing Room. Man this made me laugh aloud so many times…
This may make you shit yourself laughing. Download.
Saw it twice on Thursday and Friday. I don’t think anything more needs to be said other than, if you miss this film, you’ll end up regretting it a few years down the track. Yeah, so you can see it on video. You can also see it when the crowds dies down… but the atmosphere of a full-house, ultra-packed cinema is half the fun! The soundtrack sounds so much better when heard in context. Especially Duel of the Fates. I never realised this cos I’ve never heard a movie soundtrack before watching the movie. I’ll be looking at the Star Wars vs Titanic site in interest :) Screw the critics.
One more thing… apparently the film melted or the projector overheated in one of the premier screenings of TPM at one of the cinemas. The crowd left unrefunded, with half the movie unwatched. I pity the guy who had to go in and tell the crowd of the “technical difficulties”. It’s a wonder there wasn’t rioting.
I really don’t care what people put on the soapbox, but when it’s a post that takes up 500 kilobytes of diskspace, I do care. It costs money. So don’t, or I’ll ban your ass, Mr Block-rockin’ Beats :Þ.
Star Wars opens in Australia in ooooh… about 20 minutes. With a lot of freakish luck, I managed to get tickets from a friend five minutes ago for tomorrow :). Yeeeah.
It’s all done! The Matrix AI computing assignment, the Matrix CGI assignment, and the maths test on Matrices (yeah yeah – The Matrix… it’s all around us).
I think I made the final Top 20 “shootout” for the Matrix AI competition, and I’ve also completed my MatrixCGI assignment. It’s a crappy, clunky 2 minute-per-move CGI role-playing game without a plot. But it looks nice :). Check out what I spent 20 hours of my shitty weekend programming, right here. Please. Make sure you check out the sliding dhtml moon thing too.
People took to the streets with signs such as “Australia – the Global Village Idiot” after parliament’s upper house passed its censorship legislation last week. It won’t work. The only two countries which have introduced laws on online censorship have been China and Singapore, which aren’t exactly the most democratic of countries. So I don’t think Australians, who are pretty used to the idea that they can speak their mind without being arrested, will take very well to it.
In other news: This article telling how a topless picture of the Royal bride-to-be Sophie Rhys-Jones was emailed by a government staffer to the office of Prime Minister John Howard and other senior ministers:
“Senator Ellison said he was unaware whether Mr Wawn would face action under the government’s new Internet censorship laws which passed the Senate last week.”
I don’t get it. They do this sort of thing in New Idea and all those sorta mags all the time.
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3:00am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
