Someone should write a little piece of modding software so that “mailto:” links on web sites, instead of opening up a “new message” box in Outlook (or whatever email program you use), will link you to a Compose Mail page for Gmail.
After a pretty long bludge period, Issue 6 of the Backbench is now online. Bigger and (hopefully) better than before.
Does anyone here draw cartoons by any chance? We could use a good cartoonist.
Similar in flavour to The Smoking Gun, The Memory Hole has some excellent archives, including photos from the recent atrocities inflicted on Iraqi prisoners by Coalition soldiers.
My web host disabled command line PHP, which means all my cron jobs which are PHP scripts now have to be rewritten.
I made a commitment never to watch anymore horror or shock thriller flicks. I think that paying money so that I can sit for two hours in stress and fear, followed by not being able to sleep due to a hyperactive imagination and a suddenly enhanced sense of hearing, is something horribly wrong in principle. It’s worse in summer when you’re left with the predicament between sweating it out under the covers, or leaving your body parts exposed in the open to cool, but very much vulnerable to monsters.
Unfortunately my will is weak. I succumbed to peer pressure and went to see Gothika. It’s pretty funny when something shocking happens and you see absolutely everyone in front of you in the cinema jolt. Except that the humour in the moment is lost because your heart has momentarily stopped and you’re busy trying to peel it off the ceiling. Gothika is filled with more things that shock than disturb. The disturbing scenes are the things that stick around in your mind. Like that bizarre jerky walking motion the ghost has. Or seeing someone in the rear view mirror who shouldn’t be there. Joyce had to drive home alone at about 2am. I bet you she had the radio on full blast.
The movie sucked, by the way.
Google expects to raise around US$2.7bn from it. No date for the sale of stocks has been released. The online auction model they are using should open up opportunities to invest to ordinary people. The Washington Post has a good article about this (rego req’d).
The NZ snow fields beckon. I’m beginning to think that enrolling in Restitution for Winter Session at uni was a bad idea.
Massive props to Wad for hooking me up with a Gmail account!
(1)Finally used up my gift voucher for a defensive driving course. The day-long course was held down at Oran Park Raceway and I found it very informative. A great deal of the day was spent practising emergency braking – straight line, around corners and swerving, which is not a huge deal if you have ABS, but pretty interesting when you don’t, like my car. The aim is not to jump on the brakes (which is intuitive), but to quickly squeeze the brakes as much as possible without locking the wheels and skidding. To illustrate the point, the instructor did a neat demo where he showed that he could apply the proper braking pressure using his hand instead of his foot to hit the brakes. It takes a few goes to get the pressure right, and it’s not the sort of thing you’d try out by yourself – not to mention that the car smells of singed rubber afterwards! Saw a lot of demonstrations showing rear wheel lockups (and subsequent spins), front wheel lockups, oversteer, understeer, and what not to do in such situations. Then we got to try it all out, which was the fun bit.
It’s a bit pricey, but I would recommend one of these courses, they are surprisingly worthwhile and you pick up a lot of extra info about your car and how to handle it.
Went to see Michael Bublé’s final Sydney concert with Denise and Jenny on Friday evening. When you fork out dosh to see a live performance, you’re really there to see the performer perform – not just a repeat of what’s out on their latest CD. Michael Bublé is great with the crowd and a surefire hit with the girls, at one stage jumping into the crowd to steal a kiss or ten from a particularly good looker in the front row. Her boyfriend took it in stride and ended up cuddling Michael. The girl, finding herself suddenly ousted from the action, leapt back in and threw her arms around the two of them, making it a threesome. (As Eddie Murphy said in his classic Delirious: “Being a comic though ain’t like being no singer. The singers get all the pussy.”)
Most of the stuff was from his CD (including two of my favourites, That’s All and The Way You Look Tonight), with some other great pieces thrown in. There were also a few short bursts of George Michael and Michael Jackson thrown in for laughs (no moonwalk, but he did sing Moondance). Good mix of slow and snappy songs. At the end he stepped away from the microphone and gave an acoustic rendition of a verse from My Funny Valentine. The hall slightly echoed his voice giving it a really rich, resonant quality. I don’t know what it’s called if it has a technical label, but like all good singers, he has the ability to finish off a line holding a sharp, crisp note that gently introduces a softly pulsating vibrato before gradually fading away cleanly. Terrific stuff.
Another view from a concert-goer at Kazzart.
Well if you’ve seen the first half of the movie, you have to see the second half. There have been complaints by certain individuals with limited attention spans that the movie was boring, but I found it very good.
Caught up with an old high school teacher for lunch on Friday. He left the school in the same year I finished to work for Apple, so I drove up to Apple’s Australia HQ in French’s Forest to meet him. Back in school they had these old Mac SEs and other assorted Apple paraphrenalia. I always used to trash Macs whenever I got the opportunity (I still do :). It was good when they switched over to Pentium-166MXes because that meant we could occasionally play Quake during lunchtime.
Anyway, Apple has grown leaps and bounds over the last five years. I still enjoy bagging out
Macs because, well, they’re Macs and they only have one mouse button. Nonetheless, Apple’s industrial design is second-to-none in the computing industry. Although the Apple HQ is pretty much just a corporate venue, the reception area is decked out like an Apple store with a range of Powerbooks, iMacs and so on on display just begging to be played with and touched (and they can be). I got a brief tour of the place and there isn’t much there, but it very much has a dot-commy feel to it. Techies in jeans, funky furniture, weird walls, crazy chairs and lots of translucency. The call centre there, which handles tech support for the Asia-Pacific region is called the “green room”. The floor is done in a lime green (garish or soothing, it’s a matter of opinion) and the walls are ceiling-to-floor blackboards. Not a CRT to be seen.
My eyes lit up when I got to play with what was alleged to be the first and only non-imported Mini iPod currently in Australia (its April release date was delayed). It’s tiny. It’s sexy. It’s cool. It’s fun to use. I want one. Unfortunately, for someone a poor uni student like me, just a bit too pricey (especially compared with the 15GB model) to justify forking out that much cash for it. I was assured that Apple was in fact making very slim margins on the iPods, but if you want to be cynical, I guess this is counteracted by the limited battery life of them requiring a repurchase after a year or two.
Shish, he says hi to you as well.
| 4 days spent in current location | |
| Previously | San Diego, CA |
| » Currently | San Francisco, CA (2/1/26 9:47am) |
| In 38 days | San Diego, CA |
| In 41 days | San Francisco, CA (End) |
| View full itinerary... | |
4:56pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
