Internet dating hits a dead end

TwinCities.com 06/30/2003 Part 4: Internet dating hits a dead end

Heh. This article dates from mid-2003, about a year after the last time I used an online dating service. Over 9 months on it at the time, I had ONE person show interest. We went out for a couple of months, but as soon as I mentioned the 'R'-word (Relationship) she declared she was a lesbian and vanished. I heard from her a few months later, she phoned up wanting to be 'friends', having now married a a rich German guy and bought a house in French's Forest.

Having just spent nearly $100 on joining a few dating sites a few few weeks ago (wow, they are expensive nowadays) and discovered that for about $5 a message you can expect NO replies, I typed 'internet dating is dead' into Google and the above article was the first hit.

I have a couple of theories:

1. Lie like a trooper. Especially about your height it seems. If like me you are cursed with being a male of less than 1.6m height, don't expect any matches. Ever. 90% of women want you to be 'between 5' 9" and 7' 11" ' which means you are most likely a basketballer or pace bowler.

2. The links without photos? Stooges. How can you use a dating service and expect anything without a photo? There simply cannot be that many people out there totally embarrassed by their looks. What is there to stop sites 'padding' their lists? A voluntary code of ethics? Considering they make money out of me every time I try to send a message, it would be worth their while to fake as many as possible. The maths involved is probably the same as poker-machine luring techniques, ie very well researched. It's easy enough to fake entries - it seems no-one replies to messages anyway, so how could you tell?

3. Do a search for women, then do the same search for men. About 20 links to women, about 200(!) links to men. Sorry, I thought the media said there were hordes of single women out there. Maybe they are all in the bars & pubs then. A shame I have given up alcohol, and Sydney pubs & bars have the music up so loud they make my ears bleed. I think it is a Legal(tm) requirement to stop people talking/thinking/conspiring against The Economy(tm).

4. Like the article says, include 'likes moonlight walks along the beach' - in Sydney? Right? I keep odd hours sometimes, and I do not see dizzy lovers out on moonlight walks! I mean, sure you can take it as read that I like moonlight walks along the beach - when I am in the Whitsunday Islands, or Thailand!. I thought people might be interested in more useful descriptions, such as "I like dolphins, Lego and chocolate, but not all at once." I suppose I should just join with the masses and say that I like "moonlight walks along the beach, sleeping in and a bit of a boogie on the dance floor". Truth in advertising - there is none.

Since I went to a bit of effort this time to even make sure my profiles were proof-read, this all adds up to being very depressing. I was pretty much truthful in my profiles, and now I feel I have revealed way too much - and that what I have revealed must be a huge turn-off. And I'm too short.

Self esteem? Yeah, I had some a while back...

HHGTTG: The Film

Fry hitches ride as Guide - Film - www.smh.com.au: "'like having your birthday on Christmas Day, discovering a winning lottery ticket in your stocking and having chocolate poured all over you'."

- Stephen Fry on being chosen as the Voice of The Guide

Medieval Italian Hill Fortress

Many people (well, actually one person) asked "what is a Medieval Italian Hill Fortress?"

The above picture provides the answer. When I think Palm Beach, I think Medieval Italian Hill Fortress!

The design is a work-in-progress, modelled in Autodesk (blerk! swut! turlingdrome! belgium!) Revit (Yay! Gotta love them corporate takeovers).

UK braces for black Monday 24th | The Register

At long last, someone belting the damn Black Dog over the nose with a good hard rolled-up slab of science.

Well, something close enough to science to appeal to me, anyway.

Great T-Shirt Slogans of 1989

SOGGY
BOYS
DON'T
CRY;
THEY
JUST
LIKE
WATER

Seen on T-shirt owned by Fiona Smith, 1st year Architecture UNSW 1989.

I am not sure why my memory dredged that up here and now, but I assume it must be relevant to something.

'Slayers' or Googling for Anime Dolphins

You are most like:
Deep Sea Dolphin



You have a mysterious nature that makes others distrust you. You also tend to be aclectic in nature, and possibly slighly missing some screws. You're passionate about some things, but retreat at others. You tend not to make friends easily, and others view you as odd.


Actually I am like something else from Slayers, and the text appears to written at Internet Standard Age Level* of 1.

What this does underline is the dearth of anime dolphins out there. Ok, yes there is Marine Boy, and there was a dolphin in Inspector Gadget once (but it does not count as anime. close though), but apart from that... nothing. You will find plenty of hamsters, cats & dogs a plenty, even lizards get a good airing. No dolphins though. Pity. They are a bit difficult to draw anime style, mainly due to their lack of frontal binocular vision - a crucial component of anime style drawing.

My answers did not result in that selection, but since I did a Google Image search for 'anime dolphins' that is what I got back. Link number one (shown below), the thought of which is terribly cute, does not count, they have to be real dolphins, not inflatable.



Bear's Brother, a notorious Slayers fan, may be able to explain all this.

Though on thinking about it, maybe not.

*I have just invented the Internet Standard Age Level. It is 12, as in 12-year-old. Thus an ISAL of 1 means written by twelve-year old (or appears to have been written by a twelve year old). I have an ISAL of 0.3529

New Jobs and Torment

I started my new job last week.

After 10 years of bouncing from job to job, getting either sacked for reporting a client to the Police for arson, or getting retrenched when the company directors had a bit of a tish, or just plain working myself to nearly death (literally) for the joy of being told I was 'not working hard enough', I finally seem to have landed a job at a nice small firm, that does quite interesting houses with fairly distinct character.

I would love to tell you where and whom, but I can't as most of our clients are stratospherically rich and don't like people knowing where they live unless it makes the cover of Domain on the SMH. That does give me pause for concern as traditionally I don't get on very well with people like that. We shall see.

Anyway, what does this have to do with Torment?

The Torment to which I refer is of course the best ever computer game*, Planescape: Torment. Based on the AD&D 'Planescape' setting, PS:T was made by Black Isle as an offshoot to the extremely popular Baldur's Gate series. PS:T used the same graphics engine to create one of the most stunningly well-crafted recreational computer games ever. It had plot; bucket-loads of it. You are immortal, but cannot remember who you are, expect that as the game progresses you find that you aren't... well, you're not what you think! It had characters; individuals so well written you didn't care if they sort of liked to set fire to things a lot, or had no body, or had thousands of bodies, or in fact were just living incarnations of the letter "O". Of the soundtrack, one piece stands out as one of the most hauntingly beautiful 1m 30s of music you will ever hear. The rest is still top-notch, if you like big doses of weird with your reality.

Apart from the reality-shaking philosophy behind PS:T, one of the things that I enjoyed was the art. The backgrounds are all beautiful mixtures of hand illustration and computer rendering, but what really stood out for me was the architecture of Sigil, the rather odd city where most of the action takes place. Sigil's buildings all take their design cues from the enigmatic being that seems to rule the city in an entirely nihilistic way - the Lady of Pain - who is described as a floating woman in a kimono with a head-dress made of knives. Nice. Hence Sigil's architecture is no place for birds to happily roost, as most buildings design is best described as 'sharp'.

Way way back in the day, when I was at uni I had a bit of a fancy for buildings that had a bit of danger and shall we say, aggressiveness to their design. My wildest designs were always curtailed or somewhat blunted before being submitted, though a few crept through. One was an Environmental Education Centre - that happened to look a lot like a B2 'Spirit' Stealth Bomber carrying a load of kitchen knives into battle. The second major 'sharp' design I did was my final project, an aircraft museum. Parts of the museum were made out of airliner tailfins and tailwings, and the large curving roofs had ribbed structures with big pointy eaves. More knives. So I sort of like knives on buildings, which must say something extremely important about me from a psychological point of view.

Torment, being full of buildings that I would have been proud to design, helped me keep the idea of deadly buildings alive.

The new job allows me design freedom. Quite a bit of design freedom. Nothing says 'beach house for stupidly rich client' to me quite like 'KNIVES' does. The first design I am working on is fairly quirky already, being one of the most expensive blocks of land in The Leviathan, overlooking one of the more expensive beaches on the planet, let alone the Antipodes, so of course the clients want "a medieval Italian hill-fortress". They have the money, I have the mouse, so off we go!

Just how many knives will work their way into this first design I am not sure, but don't worry, they will be there...

* Don't flame me too much, my list of 'Best ever...' also includes GPL, UT, Elite (C64), Gyruss (arcade), Beyond Good and Evil, Gran Turismo, GTA:VC and Gridrunner++, all of which are equal first. If I had to choose one though, it would be PS:T. And Elite.

An Attempt at Not Ranting.

I rant too much. I think I shall rant about this.

No! Every time I get to this situation I end up ranting. I think ranting is bad, as most people simply ignore it. Sure, I get extremely emotional about things, which is apparently bad, but there you go. Some people are great stockbroker, some people are artists. I rant. Such is life.


Take for instance Saturday night. I was watching 'Return of the King' on DVD, and a few things Gandalf said to Merry struck a chord with me. I fully intended to have a really good rant about that here, but by the time the film ended I had drunk 4 Gin & Tonics, 1 cup of Tea, 3 Baileys and eaten three very large chunks of Toblerone (thanks to Syn & Bear) so I was not in any state to rant.

When I woke up 12 hours later feeling somewhat rough at the edges, I could not remember what the rant was about, which really scared me. Is everything I get emotional about really so meaningless that 12 hours later I cannot remember what it was?

Answer? Well, yes, it appears so.

I cannot even think of anything to write after that statement, I have tried about six different sentences, all of which are glib, obvious, attention seeking drivel. This sentence bears a lot of the later.

What a pointless post that was / this is.

Note to smileys - don't think you have got away from a full broadside; I am just loading more grapeshot into the cannons of seething hatred I am readying for you.

Who makes this crap?

I want to do something simple enough right? Make some actually real scenery of Norfolk Island for Flight Simulator 2004, because the version supplied is crap (not even close to correct), and the various ones available online are also crap or made by people who have never been there.

So searching on Google gives me....the link above. WHAT CRAP! This map appears everywhere as the 'official' map of Norfolk Island. Even the CIA thinks this is what it looks like. OK Government & Military of the United States of America here is a REALLY BIG CLUE. Try looking for Osama on Norfolk Island - it is the perfect hiding place because you have NO IDEA what it even looks like! Do you have ANY IDEA what 'Cascades' actually IS? It must be the biggest joke on the island. GO THERE and have a look, or do some research, I'm not going to tell.

This is nearly as bad as smileys, which will be the topic of my next rant.

How to waste time.

64.28571428571429% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

This costs The Economy MONEY you know! You are not out there being EXTREEEEEME and Productive! Every second you sit there dreaming of clouds, or early steam engines you are wasting precious MONEY! Why aren't you checking your stocks? Is your bank account getting the best interest rate today? Is your accountant busy thinking of ways to write off your entire LifeStyle(tm) as a tax claim? Buy! Spend! ACQUIRE! ACQUIRE! ACQUIRE!

Hmm. Yes.

Notes for People Who Have Nothing Better To Do Than Check Other People's Spelling: "extreeeeeme" is deliberately spelt that way for effect. It is not the correct way to spell "extreme".