Hear Ye! Since 1998.

Archived Posts for March 2000

Please note: The posts on this page are at least 3 years old. Links may be broken, information may be out of date, and the views expressed in the posts may no longer be held.
29
Mar 00
Wed

Soapbox Fixed

I don’t believe it… the soapbox on this page has been a broken link for over two weeks and not one person told me?!

Overheard

On list-en: “damn it. 27 new messages with the subject: got rice. *cocks shotgun*”

Communal Crier

New
• Phunstuff.net

An SMS an Hour

• “Seen on the back of a bikie’s t-shirt: ‘if you can read this, mywife fell off'” –Phil (not unpc Phil, nor Plutonia Phil, but Tatterdemalion Phil)
• “free.be.com  <— it’s here.   altho all the servers are busy :(” –Solo
• “I don’t want a dot, a box would be better, a big box” –Shakespear
• “Penii: I’ll kick your dog. So, Inferno, where do you live? :) *ramblings.net*” –Irish (far enough away from you)
• “Everyone: www.bad-candy.com <– funny.” –Silverweed
• “Inferno, if you make enough money you can retire to new zealand and be a sheap herder, I’ve heard it has ‘benefits’.” –Alecks (like this, huh?)
• “How can I get http://www.phunstuff.net on your links list?  Thanks, Ryan” –Ryan

Heh

Women workers waste more time netsurfing. Thanks Fuzz *”*.

Star Trek DS9: Blaze of Glory (Ep 5.23)

Another great, solid episode. Eddington is a unique character in that he’s a match, or even more than a match for Sisko. The repartée between the two is swift and cutting, hitting each other blow for blow. Both are astute in their observations of each other, and despite their viewpoint differences, they are indeed very similar men – loyal to the end about their beliefs. There is no “wrong side” in this case (between Maquis and Federation), which makes this episode interesting. Eddington isn’t really a villain, and neither are the Maquis. It’s a unique way of poking holes in the “goody-good image” of the Federation and Sisko. The episode also ties up neatly why Cardassia joined the Dominion, and updates us on the status of the Maquis (who seem to be no longer a force). Eddington going down in the “blaze of glory” was a good way to resolve things. It seemed to have put Sisko in a more reflective and more objective frame of mind.

On the flipside, we’ll ignore the subplot of Nog trying to gain the respect of the Klingons, except that it was quite amusing at times :).

Top 10 Road Signs

Check out these road signs. Sometimes the mind boggles :).

Late Night Meal?

For Sydneysiders: Eat Streets at Night

If you are looking for a late night dining venue in the city there are now more than 55 restaurants, bars and cafes with kitchens open until midnight at least three nights per week as part of the ‘Eat Streets at Night’ program.

Shops normally close way too early here, so this is good move for Sydney. I wonder what overseas visitors would think when the Olympics roll around and everything is shut by 5pm?

28
Mar 00
Tue

E-Bay Again

Another dodgy item up for sale on e-bay :). [Update: E-bay seems to have pulled the plug on this auction.]

Work

Turns out I am going on course next week… just not TCP/IP but SQL Server instead. Cool.

MS Knowledge Base

I don’t care what you say, but I say Microsoft’s Knowledge Base is great – it’s really, really comprehensive!

While I Was Sleeping…

BeOS R5 is out and the servers are absolutely flooded.

SMS

• “Who just slapped me with that fish? *twiddles her thumbs*” –gstarr
• “A fecalphiliac is someone who is obsessed with Mookie stinks” –shakespear (uh I’m quite sure I didn’t need, or want to know that)
• “Red Dot!  I don’t want a red dot!  AUHGGGG!!  I’m being sniped!  (TFC joke, Stewey)” –RegBarc (yeah I know, I’m the one with Private Ryan quotes bound to keys for TFC sniping, remember? :)
• “WTF?  Daylight Savings Time?  We’re in…oh yeah.  That “Southern Hemisphere” thing in “Austrailia”.” –RegBarc
• “suck it dude!” –spaz
• “WTF is that fucking black dot !!!!!! it ain’t there !!!!! SWEAR!!” –WaD
• “Ok i’ll be your stalker. But first I gotta move to Australia, get the money to move to Australia, and whack off.<3 *Ramblings.net*” –Irish
• “Irish needs to shut the hell up.  His complaints are getting annoying.  PS – New Zealanders have relations with sheep?” –Penii (hahah this is the SMS of the day!!)

Levitating Frogs and Sumo Wrestlers

Behold, the floating Sumo Wrestler. And here’s an article about the levitating frog (which is mentioned on the same page as the Sumo).

Australian Bandwidth

Adam sighted this article on Slashdot (quoted below). Apparently Telstra will be rolling out ADSL and most Aussie households should be able to get it by August. Not quite cable, but hey, I’ll take any broadband you throw at me! Full story at NewsWire. Telstra is a monopoly of sorts – while the telecomms industry has been deregulated to some extent, Telstra still has tight control and ownership of much of the physical infrastructure. The only reason why they made their Cable service flat rate, was because Optus did.

Well as it seems Telstra, Australia’s telephone monopoly has finally been recognized as one, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has forced Telstra to grant full local loop access to its competitors and to bring extensive testing to a halt and begin the mainstream ADSL rollout by August at the latest. If you don’t live in Australia, Telstra is the only reason we’re all stuck to poor modem speeds, Telstra owns all exchanges in Australia and is privatised and thus wouldn’t open them to other companies so they could install the relevant ADSL equipment. As usual the full story’s at NewsWire. I think I’ll have my xDSL medium rare! :)

IR Printing with the Palm

With PalmPrint you can use the IR port to print to an IR enabled printer. Pretty neat.

27
Mar 00
Mon

I Wonder…

So Ramblings gets suspended from school because of their site, and this guy gets fired (as told by Salon). Dangerous job, this online journal keeping business. (They also mention the weblog community. E/N sites are no where to be seen, as per usual :)

Communal Crier

New
• John’s Crawlspace
• The North
• Wondergirl.org – not your traditional sidebar link, check it out though!

Facelifted
• Bombshelter
• Fuzzy’s Logic – Refreshingly Fresh :)

SMS Daily

• “testu” –ben (yeah it works duh)
• “Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! You’ve got a date babbbbbby! <3 *www.ramblings.net*” –Irish (… stalker …)
• “Oh yeah, and the guy was speaking japanese too!” –SilverWeed
• “Look at www.codeine.net, now look at issues.baefed.com !!” –SilverWeed
• “chew my pants!” –not the unpc Phil

• “Today at work, my female co-worker asked what half a person was. I said “a woman”. I was then beaten unmercifully.” –Justin (probably the only truly entertaining SMS today :)

Work

You gotta be kidding me. They cancelled the TCP/IP course that’s meant to happen next week. Grrrr.

Daylight Saving Ended

Pluses: You get an extra hour of sleep (or non-sleep, depending on what you want :). You get to wake up and the sun’s out. No more driving into a blinding afternoon sun coming home from work. If you forget to set your clocks back one hour, it doens’t really matter – you just wake up early/turn up to wherever an hour early (as opposed to an hour late).
Minuses: You get home and it’s dark and colder. Winter is approaching. Morning glare from the sun when driving.

It all evens out, basically.

Check It

This is certainly a creative e-mail attachment. It’s an excel spreadsheet [zipped, 1 MB] (enable macros – no viruses in there I hope, cos if there are, then my computer is infected) with a knockout tournament chart of women (models/actresses/etc.) The table is randomised and you slowly choose between pairs until you pick the winner. The results are tallied, points are allocated to 1st-5th place getters and the main scoreboard is updated. Save the file, pass it on (via e-mail), and the cycle is repeated, and the main scoreboard is updated again to reflect the next person’s preferences. Repeat. Enjoy :).

25
Mar 00
Sat

Communal Crier

Check out Atley’s de la soul. Something I’ve always wanted to do, but I believe I could never be entirely forthright and upfront – even if the people that are reading it are faceless and probably many kilometres away, the world is small. And there’s no guarantee that the password application process will screen everyone. This doubt makes it hard to really “bare your soul”, but it is an interesting thing Atley (and Riothero) are doing.

New
• Shattered

Moved
• Kane of Nod’s Web Dominion

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S M S

• “3> are for people not cool enough for <3 :-)” –Russ (or too dumb to get it right)
• “weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee i love you man” –ben (uh…)
• “i hope i didnt bring this onset of <3” –sung
• “CUZ I LUB IT <33333333333 (and you)” –sung (UH… one more message like this and I’m going to freak)
• “fuck the red dot!  Give us a green one!” –da5id
• “living in america, i have never heard an asian with an australian accent.  you should record your voice” –red scare (maybe one day… but it’s an Aussie accent… don’t think you’d be able to pick out any asianess in it)
• “I heard that Aussie’s like to bang Kangaroos.” –jonez (no, but the rumour you heard about New Zealanders and sheep is correct)

  7:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  SMS  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Scream 3

I haven’t seen 1 or 2, so I think I didn’t understand all of what happened. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable movie :) One that makes fun of itself and the horror genre (“head! head! head! head!” “what?” “aim for the head!”), and features a cameo appearance by the “prophets” in Dogma (you know who I’m talking about ;).

Also saw the second trailer for Mission Impossible 2. I must say again that it looks great (including a overhead shot of the opera house :).

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Wrapster

Apparently a Napster add-on that allows transfer of files other than MP3s. Does anyone know where to obtain it?

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Palm Vx Review

This device is awesome. Apart from being a glorified daily organiser (that it may be, but it would be an incredibly short-sighted assessment to leave it at that), it can be used for a multitude of other things. Alongside the standard memopad, calendar/scheduling, to do lists and contact directory, there are tonnes of apps available for it – you think of any situation a handheld computer can be used in, and someone’s probably written an app for it. I love its internet syncing utilities. I’m always rushed when I take off for work in the morning, so what I can do now when I wake up is hit the hotSync button and the computer loads to the Palm all the e-mail that’s come in overnight, as well as about 300-400kB of news articles from Wired, CNet, Salon, the weather etc. Naturally, I plan to write something so I can download e/n articles too. I grab the freshly recharged Palm from the cradle and off I go. I’ve got an hour to read it all on the train, afterall. I can even compose e-mail replies, to be sent the next time the Palm gets synched with the computer.

Aesthetically, the palm is small, light, and looks sleek in its anodised aluminium case. The 16-colour grayscale display is quite sharp and readable. The scroll buttons on the centre bottom aren’t very well placed – when holding the unit in the left hand, the thumb can’t reach down to hit it, and the right hand is holding the stylus so it’s pretty much inaccessible unless you hit it with the stylus (but that’s just wrong). They should’ve put the scroll button on the left side, perhaps. The palm’s speaker could be a bit louder as well. Other than those minor gripes, the Palm Vx may be a yuppie gimmick, but it’s a very functional yuppie gimmick :).

Work

As luck would have it… my stay in the tech services department has been extended for a week. Thus, MCSE+I training starts in two. That bites.

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Etymology

Mainly European-based etymology site. Find out the origins of your name, including shortened and “pet” names.

Efonexchange

Efonexchange allows you to check and reply email through your mobile phone via voice at $20/month, which doesn’t include mobile phone charges I think. I reckon the idea is a bit of a flop. E-mail is a medium that is not meant to be verbal. And if an e-mail is *that important* (the advert portrays a businessman and a caption saying, “This man lost $1 million because he couldn’t check his e-mail) why wouldn’t the sender just give a phone call instead of sending mail? Besides, there are devices you can get for cheaper that allow you to check and send e-mail on the go, for about the same monthly fee.

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Ooh. Trippy.


Where’s the Black dot?

Also in wallpaper version, for when you want to make people fall over or have a spasm when they pass by your computer screen.

22
Mar 00
Wed

Communal Crier

New
• Chilidog

Moved
• SynNet

SMS Overload

• “For Word files. Go to MS site and download the wordviewer. You can read files just not edit. And it’s free!!! Cheers!” –Blatz (tried it – that doesn’t work either, unfortunately)
• “GAHHHHHHH!” –RegBarc
• “WOOOOOOOO!  WOOOOOOOOO!” –sfoster
• “what? you mean you don’t 3> 3>? ;-)” –Russ (wtf is 3>?)
• “You check these pages on a cell phone?  Is the tiny screen big enough?  I need a high-tech toy.  I feel left out.” –sonic junkie (yep, Nokia’s have nice screens as far as mobiles go – do you Yanks normally call them cell phones?)
• “very flash site, makes me wanna blow ^_^” –WaD
• “You will be sent <3s until I get a red dot. This message will self destruct in 5 seconds.” –Theseus (Mr Pink Dot)
• “<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3” –Mr Pink Again (Reservoir dogs, anyone?)
• “spooties” –Jaz
• “When I think about Dennis, I spew on myself, yeahhh. Dennis unban me damn it! I love Hear ye!” –Irish (Uh…)
• “SKIN UP” –Chops

Star Trek DS9: Children Of Time (Ep 5.22)

Great episode! It was packed with all sorts of things. The perfect example of where Trek sometimes uses sci-fi as a vehicle for conveying issues, because this episode wasn’t very sci-fi at all, except for setting up the base environment for the rest of the episode. The opening of the episode shows the writers screwing around with time again, but in this case, they don’t expose too plot flaws. Instead, they deal with the paradox. Here’s the episode synopsis I ripped from st-hypertext (I can’t be bothered explaining it :)

The setup is as follows: Returning to the station from a reconnaissance mission in the Gamma Quadrant, the Defiant (carrying all the DS9 senior officers, of course), deviates from its course to investigate a planet with some odd energy readings. Dax assures Sisko that the risk of entering orbit is minimal–definitely worth investigating for what may be a rare scientific discovery. The Defiant is snagged in an energy field, and seconds later they receive a hail from a human colony with more than 8,000 people. The crew beams down to the planet, where they’re told by the colony leader (Gary Frank) that the entire settlement’s citizens are descendents of the Defiant crew. According to the leader, in two days when the Defiant attempts to leave orbit, the ship will encounter an anomaly that will send it back two centuries through time. The Defiant will then crash on the planet. With no means to escape (the wormhole doesn’t even exist at that point), the crew will decide to begin life anew. Two hundred years later, this history is revealed to the crew before it happens. The leader of the colony, by the way, is Yedrin Dax–the current host for the still-surviving Dax symbiont.

The outcome actually leads to the episode touching on existentialism – questioning exactly what existance is. If changing the timeline means 8000 people will blink out of existence, and therefore it can be argued that they never did exist, does that make it okay? You may say that if these people never existed, that’s alright, it’s not like killing them. However, is it correct to say they never existed? The crew has memories of them – is that enough to justify existance? The episode also briefly looks at religion, and the concept of destiny. Then of course there’s the issue of Odo and Kira, which I believe was handled well. What seemed as “an easy way out” for Odo to express his love for Kira turned out to only make the situation more confusing and somewhat precarious. We also have wonderful characterisations coming through – of O’Brien (and his weak spot for children), of Sisko (I found it humourous how he sat there listening to the crew debate whether or not they should return home, even though he had already made up his mind), etc. There are probably other things I’ve forgotten to mention, but there was a lot of stuff in this episode, and all handled well and wonderfully character driven.

5 Days

To BeOS R5…

Automatic

Automatic.com.au seeks to unify your email and website address using your mobile phone number. Weird concept.

Quicky Update

Quick post. Got home late and I got work tomorrow (uh… make that today). Got the Palm :) It’s awesome. More on that later of course, and can’t forget the Trek episode gobbet. And the ton of SMSes. You’ll have to wait when I get home… and I’ve also got uni this evening too.

21
Mar 00
Tue

New Toy

Cousin just rang from the Palm developer’s conference. I should soon have a Palm Vx to play with :). I just couldn’t resist the 25% off offer.

Norton Strikes Again

The General Manager at this company just installed Norton Utilities and ran a defrag on the system. Upon reboot he was greeted by a bluescreen. Now I have to rebuild his system. Screw you, Peter Norton. I advise everyone to stay away from Norton software. Norton Anti-virus stuffs things around too. The only one that works properly seems to be PCAnywhere, but even then I prefer Laplink to it. Go PowerQuest instead.

Communal Crier

Sung has posted his QOTW up (bit over a week since the last, but hey, no one’s counting…)

Moved
• Presto Inc.
• Scratch

Facelifted
• Bump (not in this community, but I’ll let that slide… call it a guest appearance)
• Evil Net

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Ess Emm Ess

• “Hey! <3, you know you love it.” –Silverweed
• “hey man, fucking awesome site, btw, <3 :-)” -Asmo
• “Stile really does suck. Oh and get Dennis to unban me. Geez, how many times do I have to ask?!?!?!? www.ramblings.net” –Irish (Dennis reads this page. Whether he wants to edit his htaccess settings is up to him :)
• “OH! And make your damn Send an SMS window bigger! its so damn small…….. make it like a paragraph one (the text imputter hhahah” -Irish (SMSes are restricted to 160 characters, hence you only need a one line text box for entry)
• “The nokia network thing looks like a good idea. I love how the future is going wired. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. :)” –Roosh
• “on your new layout: “Our minds have been blown!”” –Justin

  10:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  SMS  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Starlancer Trailer

Pip enthusiastically pointed out the trailer for Starlancer to me. He’s right, it looks pretty schmick.

A Moment of Bitching

Hanson and The Queen are in the country. Ack. I freaked when I turned on the radio driving home tonight and Hanson was playing live on 2day-fm… And I might as well complain about the shitty rainy weather that we’ve been having for the last two days. I actually don’t mind it when I’m in the office, but outside it’s a different story. Not to mention that Campbelltown car park turns into a muddy paddock with large puddles everywhere when it rains. And it looks as though Phil got cable and Fuzzy is going to be getting it. ::wail:: Oh yes, and Norton Ghost refuses to work properly.

  10:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Diablo 2 Beta

You Yanks and Canucks did remember to sign up for the Diablo 2 beta, right?

No Content Day

Sorry, there’s no real content today. Although /usr/bin/girl is holding a contest that can get you SomethingShiny :) Hmm… I just decreased everyone’s chance of winning.

20
Mar 00
Mon

<3

Those trying to piss me off by sending <3s through SMS… you’re doing a good job of it :/ Does anyone have a program that can convert or open Word 97 docs (without using Word 97/2000)? I have a corrupt document I need to recover, and I want to get at the contents, I don’t care about preserving formatting. Word hangs when it loads the file, so I need an alternate way to get at the data.

Update: When I said I want to get at the contents, I mean I need to get at the content that is READABLE. These solutions don’t work: “rename as .txt can then open with notepad”, “Just open the file using notepad (or any text editor) I’ve had to do this a number of times with files that people have saved using “save as word 6.0/95″ option in word!” A suggestion from Bonhomme De Neige (henceforth abbreviated to BDN) for using this Linux program doesn’t work simply cos Linux doesn’t exist at IPS, “There’s a nice linux program called word2x. I’ve no idea where you might find it though. Look around =)” Thanks anyhow.

Communal Crier

Moved
• Misunderstood

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SMS Returns

• “Rockin’ layout!  :)” –Atroxi
• “Nice layout, now I have to change myself” –RegBarc
• “Oh man, I love the redesign, keep up the good work.” -Silverweed
• “Get Dennis from Uncle Dennis to unban me damn it! Oh and HELL YEAH I ROCK!” –Irish
• “Congratulations!!!! I love the new design man! It looks very professional…when did ya find the time to do it? Well done buddy.” -Shaf
• “howdy” -Intaglio
• “ok, this thing rocks. I must know it’s secret :)” –Fuzzy

  9:30pm (GMT +10.00)  •  SMS  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Site Redesign Feedback

Thanks everyone for the feedback, which has been positive. The most used words describing it are “nice” and “slick” (I think you guys need to expand your vocab! :). About the black text on white – sonic says that “Text is easier to read over a white bg and all.” although Bonhomme de Neige says, “White text on black background looks a lot better (and is much easier to read) IMHO.” Oh well, can’t please everyone. I reckon the two are just as good, they just lend themselves differently to different styles of design.

Shopping

So, this is where you buy flashmemory, SmartMedia USB readers, and the like in Australia…

Dammit

All Symantec software is cursed I tell ya! Latest run in I have had is with Norton Ghost (at work). It hangs just as it is about to ghost an image and I have NFI why.

List-en

Today, the total number of mails sent through list-en topped 1000. Mind you, half of those were one line e-mails, but still, it’s a milestone of sorts!

19
Mar 00
Sun

3rd Generation Mobile Phones

Hey Roosh, no doubt you’d find this as exciting as I do. And I only just found out that university has a wireless network within the library building. I’d imagine in the not too distant future, universities (and even schools) will have a wireless network encompassing the whole campus – one you’ll be able to jack your mobile phone or laptop into (I’m thinking something Bluetooth-like on a big scale).

18
Mar 00
Sat

Work this Week..

10th week of work and 5 days left in the Ops Center doing Tech Support, then a week of the first subject in +I training (TCP/IP, I think). They are sending me off to IPS on Clarence street for most of the upcoming week to set up a standard operating environment for them.

In uni, the Info Sys labs are screwed. None of the lab exercises have worked due to the fact that someone didn’t set everything up correctly. I can’t believe my (bad) luck – my Advanced Database Systems tutor is the same one I got last year for another subject. She has an unpronounceable first name, “Zixiu”, an undecipherable accent and an obstinate personality. Anyway, she was lending out copies of Oracle to assignment groups for home use, but only if we gave her our student card or driver’s license (until the CD was returned). And she was adamant about that. My student card doubles as a concession card and gives me 50% off travel fares. That’s a saving of $22 a week, and I was buggered if I was going to give my card to her to keep for a week. Couldn’t give her my license either – buying a $22 train ticket but not being able to drive home from the station isn’t very good is it? She wouldn’t accept last year’s student card either. Luckily Joel was willing to give his in. Why did she have to be so difficult?!

Palm Vx

I got an invitation to a Palm developer’s conference in Sydney this Wednesday. They’re selling off Palm Vx’es there for 25% off. Can’t go, of course, but my cousin can, and he’s going to grab a couple. I wonder if I should get one?

Communal Crier

New
• Codeine

Moved
• Plutonia – Not moved very far :)

Sleep Deprivation

This article, about extended periods of no sleep, makes a lot of sense.

View From the Outside

We got an article written about us. One thing though. They mention that, “Only fairly notable stuff is acceptable, I don’t want to hear about how a person’s shit went.” That all depends. Bence gets away with it on a regular basis :)

Communal Crier

New
• Intrigue
• MJP Online
• Mojo Online
• N50 Digital
• Shakespear’s World

Moved
• Sungs (via SMS)

Facelifted
• Hear Ye!
• JB Online

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Star Trek DS9: Soldiers of the Empire (Ep 5.21)

Finally, a Trek episode which acknowledges that not all Klingons are brave, victorious warriors, and that the personality of Klingons in the Klingon empire is just as diverse as Humans in the Federation. Surely all Klingons aren’t necessarily honour-bound, courageous and belligerent. Interesting way to preserve the Worf-Martok relationship while making it evident Martok wasn’t doing his job properly. An interesting perspective given in this episode. The subplot this week was basically non-existent, but I think they might have done more with it to throw in a bit of humour (Bashir as intelligence officer was pretty amusing!).

Shaolin Monks

Saw the “Shaolin Kung Fu Monks” last night at the Entertainment Centre. Some incredible stuff there, and even more so when you realise these people have not learnt these skills with the intention of performing them (as opposed to circus workers who learn their skills for the sole purpose of performing them). Of course, the performances the monks put on was made much more “showy” so as to entertain an audience. I wonder what it must be like for them to perform to western music? And although it was really enjoyable, it just felt sorta wrong that they’re now performing for money in a foreign land, which I think, goes against tradition.

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Some Windows FAQs

Interesting FAQs covering 2000, ME, and Whistler.

Ta Da

The redesign: Is it nicer? Yay or Nay? Tell me, please.

16
Mar 00
Thu

(Free) BeOS R5 Release Date

BeOS 5 gets released for free download on March 28, 2000 here. Thanks to Renai for the heads up on that one!

Double Positives

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Thanks to Pete for that one!

Lunch

Hey, it’s lunch, and there’s a bug in the posting script… it’s screwing up the AM/PMs. Ah well, eat first.

Hug an Aussie Day?

Seen in today’s column 8:

A GRIM coincidence: Hug an Australian Day, to be observed in the US on April 26 (Column 8, Tuesday), coincides with Stop Domestic Violence Day in this State.

Bored

Hehe the printer in the room has an IR port and I’ve been amusing myself by using my mobile to print documents to it :)

Diablo II Public Beta

It’s here… the Diablo 2 Beta signup will be starting on March 20. But: “This beta will be limited to participants in the United States and Canada only.” Shit. Thanks to Solo for the heads up on that.

15
Mar 00
Wed

New IBM Deskstar Released

In light of sonic’s post about Maxtor’s new HDD, IBM has released a desktop-level hard drive sporting a whopping 75 GB of data, running at 7200rpm. It utilises glass platters instead of aluminium ones. Here’s its product page. My hard disk of choice for my next computer :) If only I had the money…

Various News

I archived the soapbox history from August 1998 – February 2000.

In other news, we have a classic item that goes nicely into the “only in America” category: 10 Year-old Boy Stabs Father to Death. The stupidity involved in that incident is incredible.

This is also interesting, the premier of Western Australia supports capital punishment (onoly for Western Australia alone though). It will be interesting to see what happens. I wonder what the US would be like without capital punishment…

Busy

You know how it is… nothing to do for a couple days then you get a whole heap dumped on you. That’s me now. :/ Well, almost lunchtime…

13
Mar 00
Mon

Linkfest

Evhead has a tonne of links to do with new web site launches at the SXSW convention thing in Texas. Funny how they all look like small bright startups aiming for an IPO :). Sounds like an interesting convention.

Now Posting from Work

Not much for me to do at work, so I just spent the last couple hours working on a new RemoteUpdate CGI script and has the capability of archiving the remote updates so they can be merged with the “real” manually added posts with the click of a button.

10
Mar 00
Fri

Communal Crier – Now With 200 Sites Worldwide

RegBarc (Ramblings) needs hosting help (see 8th March, his second post from the top). So, if you can, go help him.

I believe that The List has hit 200 sites (although the number of sites actually active and working is a bit less than this).

DNS Reclaimed
• BadassMoFo – Sharkey (and crew) is back as rightful king of his domain. Go go go!

New
• Scratch – part of the Pants2k network
• Zebulun

Moved
• Bence
• Illegal Operation

Korea

What would the Jews on list-en say about this restaurant?

Handwritten Fonts

Free for download fonts.

The 13th Warrior

This was like Braveheart, but not. I don’t know what gave me that feeling. 13th Warrior is ultimately a pointless movie. I never really connected with the characters (when the guy dies at the end, I didn’t even know he was that major a character) nor the plot – I couldn’t tell when the show was really climaxing. I couldn’t see the point that Antonio Banderas had to go along with the other 12 warriors. Maybe it was because the “Viking kingdom” they were trying to protect was a pissy little village (which may have been a kingdom, but I don’t know anything about Viking culture) instead of a kingdom in, let’s say, the medieval English sense. And what the hell are Zulus doing in the icy Northernlands? On the other hand, the movie had some really pictureresque scenery and, if accurate, gave a nice view into the Viking culture and lifestyle. However, a movie without good characterisation and a pointless plot is not really worth watching.

Excuses, Excuses

Finally, the weekend… a chance to sleep in majorly and update

“so where the hell you been, down under?” -Solo (via SMS)

Good question. Well ok, I have a 6.30am start each day, leaving the house at 7 to get to work by 9. On Wednesday, I had uni after work (well, the IT2000 convention in this week’s case :) and thus eventually got home at 11. Then Thursday, I had uni after work again, but after that, went to the Bitsa AGM which ran until 9.30pm. Got back to Campbelltown station at about 11pm, but (and damn this is embarrassing) found I had left my headlights on since 7.30am (it was raining in the morning, which is why the lights were on). Battery was flat as a tack. I didn’t know you couldn’t even lock the doors from the inside (without use of the key), because the locking was powered. NRMA came at 12.30am and jumpstarted me and I got home at 1am. Interesting that the NRMA guy that serviced me had a work shift from 3pm to 6am – that must suck. 5 hours of sleep later and I was out of the house again. So, this is really the first opportunity I’ve had to update.

8
Mar 00
Wed

Communal Crier

New
• Homicidal Maniacs – breakaway faction from NASC

Facelifted
• WordPage
• Zero

  11:50pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

On Lan Gaming and Verbal Warnings

“You know where they are, your team mates know where they are, they know you know where they are, but they don’t know where you are. understand? no?”

Ohh… Kay…

Riiiiiight.

Lone SMS

“Get well soon, sucka.  :)” –Dennis (thanks)

  11:50pm (GMT +10.00)  •  SMS  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Verisign Acquires Network Solutions for HOW MUCH?

Holy Crap.

Musicmatch Jukebox 5

New version released, and it’s gone freeware. You no longer need a crack to encode at 320kbps :). It also supports burning to CD.

Star Trek DS9: Ferengi Love Songs (Ep 5.20)

*Shudder*. Zekky and Moogie. No more please. Subplot? *Wretch*. Closet bit was funny. Quark getting back at Brunt was pretty damn satisfying actually :).

Jamie’s 2nd Opinion:

not DS9’s finest hour….
the closet joke was the only good bit, and even it ran too long
(would somebody please SHOOT moogie and zek?)

IT 2000 Convention

Well since they had absolutely nothing for me to do at work, they let me have a few hours off work to get down to the IT 2000 convention at Darling Harbour. The weather today was shit. Raining, and I didn’t have my umbrella. So I had to run from Town Hall station down to the exhibition centre. I got soaked.

IT 2000 is primarily a corporate show, but I was mainly on the hunt for freebies. This year they combined it with a Linux expo, so you had all these Linux zealots running about. I got free frisbees (aka Linux distros I’m never going to use) and a t-shirt from a company called Rackspace (I can’t even remember what they do now – typical!)

They were handing out free au.com domain names (I can’t work out whether they are subdomains or real domains – they seem to have their own administering registry, so apparently they are real domains). I snapped up one, I just need a couple nameservers now…

6
Mar 00
Mon

*Sniffle*

I’m going now. Damn flu. Not strong enough to keep me bedridden and from going to work (thanks to the Vit C I reckon), but enough to be damn annoying and weakening.

  9:30pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Communal Crier

Simplecraft is back after a server switch. And about Stile’s latest stunt I say, “If Only…” Take that how you will.

Moved
• Sungs moved to Ramblings, the e/n hostel. Home of the E/N QOTW. Geez. The community is gay. :)

Facelifted
• Aherdofturtles
• Guruchild
• Pants2K

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The Talented Mr Ripley

Paradoxical that we should fear him getting caught out, when he’s clearly in the wrong, and we should be wanting him to be caught. This movie is also sexually confused. My guess? Matt Damon played a bisexual character. An intriguingly woven crime film, albeit weird. Weird films seem to be in.

  9:30pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Yuppy Devices

Nokia released three new mobile phone models. The 6210 and 6250 are the latest edition to the 6xxx line. Both support WAP/WML and have internal antennae. The 6250 is meant to be a sturdy durable model for rough workplaces (construction sites etc), being waterproof, but it’s almost 50% heavier than the 6210. The 8890 is part of the line of smallest Nokias (a little too small, for my tastes). I reckon Nokia produces the nicest phones compared to all others – aesthetically pleasing, large screen, long battery life and very, very usable.

Off Sick

Yeah I caught the flu so quit bugging me to update :/.

  9:30pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 
2
Mar 00
Thu

Nooo! Make it stop!

This link made it into the mailboxes of the Ops centre at work (where I’m at currently). Big mistake. Looping audio. Tina opened up that page, took a strange liking to it and kept it open, much to the anguish of everyone else.

Then I get this link off the BIT mailing list and … different page, but it’s the same damn tune… arrrrghhh!

Riddle Ye!

The variation of the hats riddle is quite a bit more trickier than the “original”. Here’s my attempt to explain it – it’s got two “layers” of logic:

Label the three men A, B and C. Assume A is the correct man. Let’s step into his shoes. A must either be wearing a black or white hat. Now, assume that A is wearing white. In this case, either B or C can deduce what coloured hat they are wearing. B sees A (white) and C (black). If B is wearing white, C can straight away say he’s black (since there are two whites, A and B). However, C’s silence only can mean that C doesn’t see two white hats. Therefore, B must be black. BUT, as C and B have said nothing, A cannot be white. A can only be black.

This question assumes the three wise men have impeccable logic. It would be possible to mislead another person by keeping your mouth shut, thereby eliciting an incorrect response (eg: C is white, but A and B still say nothing). But the contest is to see who guesses first, not to humiliate someone else.

1
Mar 00
Wed

Communal Crier

Moved
• Badassmofo – Horror! Our SOTD source has had their domain name hijacked. They’ve relocated to that ip address. Network Solutions really should clean up their act…
• The Evil Network – Ramblings, aka World Domination Inc., expands again.

  10:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

SMS

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/9202/index.html  Very bizzare site!” –Gimpy Ho (The Force = evil? heh. Very bizarre, indeed!)
“WHERE IS MY BADASSMOFO? DEATH TO THE INFIDEL” –Ignatius
“You gave Dennis a red dot… And not me. You’re a fucking dead man walking.” Theseus (::snigger::)
“Hello, Kirpal here. YOU KICKED MY DAWG! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, I WILL KILL YOU. By the way, hasn’t eisa already acquired Ozemail?” –Shaf (yes, Eisa did acquire OzEmail, but I think Eisa wants to sell them off… or at least Telstra wants to buy them)

  10:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  SMS  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Hmm

All I can say is, lucky guy.

Two Tips

Everyone knows you press tab to move to the next form field, right? But of everyone I’ve seen, no one seems to know about shift-tabbing. When you need to move back a field, you don’t need to resort to using the mouse, just hit shift-tab.

Quick tip – stick in C:\Windows\SendTo, a shortcut to notepad. If you ever want to view a text file (without a .txt extension), all you have to do is right click, select send to, and then notepad.

Penguin Mints

Remember how I was talking about caffeinated peppermints about a month ago? I ordered a box over the net late last week and they arrived today.

Nngh... too... much... caffeine...

75 pieces a tin, 12 tins. That’s 900 mints. Or 300 Coke cans worth of caffeine. Well I won’t be sleeping for the next… decade. Who needs coffee? :) And absolutely zero nutritional content. I just got told off by dad who reckons caffeine is carcinogenic. He’s probably right, but I don’t think I’ll be downing a tin every night…

Woke up at 6 today. Out of the house by 7, worked from 9 till 4. Uni lecture from 5-7pm. Got back home at 9.15pm. Same next week, except uni will go from 5 till 8. I’m going to be absolutely buggered this semester :/

  10:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Food  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Star Trek DS9: Ties of Blood and Water (Ep 5.19)

Initially I thought this episode was going to be heavily political, but the politics only turned out to be a subplot. This episode stems from Second Skin, a few seasons ago. The real plot, with Kira having to deal with inner demons and the pain of having to watch someone die was predictable, but reasonably acted out. The vorta was quite amusing. It reminds us of the dominion’s presence (we haven’t seen them for a while), monitoring even Dukat (who seems to think Cardassia has been given “unparalleled autonomy” although I suspect otherwise). Probably not the most exciting episode, but possibly significant in the intelligence Gemore gave to Kira (intelligence that we do not hear about, which I guess reflects the emphasis of the main plot of the episode).

Jamie’s second opinion:

i can’t really remember much other than it wasn’t as good as its predecessor.
sorto of talky, with kira by the guys bed, and more kira/cardie conflict
which is normally good, don’t get me wrong.

You Kick My Dog!

“I’ve got an extremely funny wave file of an abusive phone call. The guy’s Indian, which makes it even more funnier.” Thanks Shaf :) It’s funny. Damn Right.

  10:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 


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