The Lion in the Meadow

Get digging

2007-03-06T12:48:00.000+11:00

A Microserf had an entry on his blog where he realised that our whole economy is now driven by something other than gold. Not quite true, not quite false. Here's my take, based on simple stuff learned in Ted Trainer's elective 'Ecosystems and Human Habitation' in second year at UNSW. In 1990; it's not like science is hiding this information from anyone. People like John Winston Howard should be made to study, and pass, this course. At gunpoint. With me holding the gun.

Read on, and try not to get too depressed:

Money, and wealth, still comes from digging stuff out of the ground. It has since prehistory; it doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon.

Up until recently, that stuff was gold, by and large, or any other metals. It probably still is a large component on a global scale. My guess is that by far the largest component of diggable stuff is oil.

Despite all the claims of paper or digital economies, we still base all economic calculations back to three things - the value of the US$, the value of a barrel of oil, the value of an ounce of gold. There is no 'value of a Gb of data' yet, despite a Gb being worth a lot, say for pr0n (no, really, think about it!) or a movie (and the DRM); a Gb of spam is actually worth a negative value. This would be the main reason why data is not a tradable commodity, and likely never will be - 99.999% of it is crap.

Think about what events would really cause economic collapse: running out of oil and / or metals.

Running out of oil is really no big problem - there are other sources of energy. Running out of metals is a big problem though: we can still get energy from trees / sunlight / animals, but without metals we have no transport, communications or weaponry (to defend ourselves from any animals who might see us as a source of energy). Put simply: Stone Age and the resultant minor economic downturn ;-)

Running out of oil might happen in our lifetime; running out of metals will take longer but will happen. Earth's resources are large, but not infinite. Eventually, we will reach a point where there won't be enough metals to allow us to find new sources of metals - asteroids, the Moon, Mercury. For some metals (especially non-radioactive steel) we are close to that point already. Non-radioactive steel currently allows us to build airliners and spacecraft; without it we can't make accurate radiation counters - vital to the maintenance and manufacture of airliners and spacecraft.

Ponder that for a moment - there will come a time, and soon, where we won't be able to make airliners or spacecraft anymore. We'll be stuck, here, on Earth. Using up all the oil, then all the metals, and then... we won't have to worry about economics anymore; only about whether our flint knife will protect us from that grizzly bear runing towards us.

Economics will always be about digging stuff up. Data won't save you from a bear, or from peak oil.

Good luck, have a nice life.

Suddenly Serious

2006-12-21T13:38:00.000+11:00

David Hicks has been imprisoned, and likely tortured for about 5 years now.

Thanks to the policies and wisdom of Our Glorious Protector and Father The Right Deplorable Git John "Little Johnnie" Howard, David isn't going to get a fair trial inder Australian law, he isn't even going to get a fair trial under US law, or indeed the law of ANY country.

It's likely he'll die there, eventually, as it's pretty clear that the US & Australian governments are shitting their pants over what he'll say if released, and the likely backlash.

Amnesty is trying to do something about it, and you can too. Remember to be polite, because polite is the only language smarmy gits like Howard understand. It's quite OK for them to use torture, keep people in cages, wage unjust wars, but we actually can't call them 'little Hitlers who aren't worth spitting on as it would be a waste of good spit' to their faces, because they think that kind of behaviour is rude.

Dream job: Custom-made Planet Designer

2006-12-18T17:03:00.000+11:00

I've always though my dream career was hard to define, and for good reason: I've just discovered it doesn't exist, except in the fiction of Douglas Adams.

I want Slartibartfast's job.

This is my first little test output from the latest version of Terragen, a marvelous terrain & atmosphere rendering program. It has little in the way of bells and whistles - an austere interface, suitably technical variables, sparse (at present) documentation, and drop-dead gorgeous output! The galleries on the Terragen website, particularly the v2.0 galleries, have some images which defy belief. Can a digital image look that good? Yep.

I've always loved a great landscape photo - as much as Missaisle loves her macro lens - and the more clouds, mist and crepuscular rays the better.

Asuming I don't spend my entire summer break in the delightful company of Missaisle, I might get a chance to have a play with Terragen 2.0 a bit more...

Now how much was an AthlonX2-939 +4800 again? Or should I wait for post-Vista performance & prices to stabilise, and the Athon Quads to appear? Decisions, decisions!

For those who were expecting a rant about architectural education: it got shoved into draft. I might finish it. Maybe.

Expect the unexpected

2006-12-11T12:53:00.000+11:00

Don't expect any sense out of me for a while.
I'm in love.

We met online a whole 2 weeks ago, and met in RealLife(tm) on the weekend. We get on rather well.

On the morning train

2006-12-05T14:31:00.000+11:00

I caught the inter-city express today; it occasionally stops at Meadowbank, so it's fun to get a comfy seat and air conditioning for the 30-min ride to the Big City.

I sat on the western side of the carriage, listening to Enya's 'Amarantine'. Looking out the window the sky seemed a brighter blue than normal, with big happy-looking clouds. Facing west, of course means facing where she lives, and I got to sit and wonder if she could see that cloud too.

As the train goes south past Rhodes and Concord, there's a section with a clear view all the way up to the mountains, and I coud see they were shrouded in clouds and mist. That's her favourite weather, and I could see it! So exciting! I had to repeat the song 'It's in the rain' for that!

I could see the clouds she was wrapped up in, and I think I was almost jealous of those clouds; but it also meant that I could see the clouds that she could see at the same time! I never knew such little things as simply knowing that it is possible for her to see the same cloud as me could be so much fun, and make me want blush, grin, laugh and cry all at the same time. I've been like that a fair bit this week.

I feel like the past week has been a dream; one I don't want to ever end.

This makes me think of you

2006-12-04T14:44:00.000+11:00

You go to my head till I'm losing my mind
Your beautiful words stretch me out on a blanket of sky
I don't want to come down
No I don't want to come down
Just want to stay lost in your eyes

You go to my head, I dream I am loved
You're flowing through me like a river of poetry
I don't want to come down
No I don't want to come down
Just want to stay lost in your eyes

So keep feeding the fire, I can't get any higher
Till the night burns with the fire of a thousand stars
You go to my head and I know I'm alive
You could waken the dead with your beautiful mind
I don't want to come down
No I don't want to come down
Just want to stay lost in your eyes

I don't want to come down
No I don't want to come down
Just want to stay lost in your eyes
Just want to stay lost in your eyes

- 'Head', by Kirsty Maccoll

I'm floating too!

On Tapestry and the Meaning of Life

2006-12-03T00:55:00.000+11:00

The image above means so much to me at the moment. It's a grab from the film 'Kiki's Delivery Service' by Hayao Miyazaki; a film which usually means a fair bit to me anyway, but a bit more at the moment.

This pic is of my tapestry - the one single tapestry I have kept, in the small frame, and a larger work based on the smaller one. The next photo shows what I have done just this evening.

I'm suddenly doing tapestry again, after a break of... too long.

One of the things I had forgotten about tapestry is the way it clears your mind, especially when blocking in nice big areas with one colour. The big grey area I did tonight put me into one of those states of mind where you start free-associating things; you can practically feel something happening within you, something good.

Several things occurred to me as Thoughts of Interest:

1. Why I like tapestry, and have done for a very long time, yet have very little to actually show for it. Tapestry for me has not exactly been a lifelong passion, and I'm not exactly prolific. It's been more something that has simply been there, a latent skill as such, since about 3rd grade, when I learned it. I think something to do with it being not something boys really did; there is no way in the world I would have ever told anyone at high school I enjoyed tapestry.

2. Why I don't have any tapestries left. A mystery wrapped in an enigma. Closer to solution now than ever before though.

3. Art/craft is something I need to do more of.

4. More stuff swirling around. Good things. Some bits are fading now, 2 hours later, like a dream, but I know how to get them again.

This is fun.

Wise men say...

2006-11-28T17:58:00.000+11:00

A wise man once said "That was not a pause, that was a boring gap!"

Actually it was Max Headroom.

If there's one think I like, it's refuting things; and I refute my last post.

Internet dating is not dead. It had just gone for a lie down, some tea and a biscuit. I found this rather good online matching (I guess; it's complex) site that works on a few simple premises: firstly, it's free (!) and secondly, there seems to be some thought put into how it works.

It's made by some Harvard-based mathematicians, who I suspect might be likely to become quite well-off once the Googlorg or Microsoft snap it up. Instead of psychology as a basis (or random monkeys, which is what most of the others seems to use) they use basic statistics to match people. They ask you a lot (I mean it. A lot. Think 500+) questions, most quite personal, and also ask what response you think a good match might give. They also apparently track everything - where you go on the site, the kinds of profiles you click on, etc. As an architect, I can see what this is doing right away - some pretty major set-theory analysis - probably using similar software to the kind of stuff used in designing airports and transport hubs. (Also the same stuff that WETA used to do all the big army scenes in LoTR, but I digress).

And it works.

The matches it suggests are actually closer matches for the type of person I am interested in than other sites that ask you to define a very limited series of responses to some fairly plain questions.

It reminds me of flat-hunting back in 1997, when the flatshare agency I went to asked me a whole lot of worthwhile questions like:

"Do you like wild parties? y/n"
"Do you get drunk every weekend? y/n"
"Do you enjoy taking drugs? y/n"

The woman who ran it looked at my survey and said "I don't think we'll find any matches for you in Mosman" (where I was living & looking at the time). As things turned out, she did have another group who were looking for a flatmate about 10 years older than me, and she gave me their address; and the rest became history. I did get a flat (and a whole bunch of really good friends) out of it; but I could have saved the $50 and found that bunch anyway, just by asking friends-of-friends. It seemed to me at the time the psychology of matching people with only 20 or so questions was a bit of an imprecise science.

OKCupid goes to quite some lengths to show you the science & math behind their system, and while my eyes usually glaze over with statistics, the graphs are pretty and look right.

One of my mottoes in life is If it looks right, it is right.

If there was a way of telling if it smelled right, I'd be even more sure; I think smelnet is going to be a part of Web 3.0. That's the rumour, anyway.

So far, I am one happy camper with OkCupid's system. Quite happy. I even suspect it smells right, too.

There are no magic words

2006-07-26T12:14:00.000+10:00

OK, so I tried online dating again, despite my opinions of the futility of the exercise.

Apart from the mentioned bizarre responses I got one decent response from someone in Australia. We exchanged a few emails, chatted a bit over MSN, then met for coffee two weeks ago, then went out to dinner on Saturday night.

About 20 mins ago I got the email saying "I just wanna wish you all the best and good luck!"

The problem is, I had nasty, nasty dreams last night, and was pretty much expecting that to happen today. It was just one of those kinds of days. Of course, my slow emotions had started to drift towards actually being attracted to this person, rather than just interested. So now I wonder how much of my 'premonitions' were just gut feelings of reality slipping through, meaning that I am pretty much well and truly detached from it? How can I be so fucking wrong so much of the time?

I take it that as a person I am not at all attractive, in any sense. There is something deeply wrong with me that I am too deluded to realise what it is or how to fix it. From a rational point of view this is entirely understandable; my DNA is simply not worthy of the human species. It is in the interest of evolution that I don't breed; the fittest survive, and I am not fit.

Of course this is a deeply depressing view on life; which is likely the thing that is deeply wrong with me - bad wiring.

Recently I have been going to counselling to deal with that aspect of my life, and it was through positive progress that I decided to try online dating again, or indeed any form of dating. It isn't like it is easy to meet women in Sydney if you are not at uni, don't really like hanging around in the 'meat markets', and don't want to be a guinea pig in the latest reality TV show. As it turns out, it doesn't take much to utterly destroy my self-esteem (again). On one side, I have all the methods of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that I spent 8 months learning, and that seem(ed) to work well. On the other, I have reality, yet again hitting my in the small of the back with all the force of a major planet in solar orbit.

AND it's fucking raining AGAIN, so no soccer training tonight, I can't even go and try to kick the ball halfway to the End of the World. (Not too far, I can see it from where I am sitting. No really, no metaphors here - Kings Cross is just down the road)

There is some good news - it appears Titan has lakes, so 'Titan' by Stephen Baxter might actually be possible. If you can call that good news. It is my current frame of mind.

Ah, and I just placed the little snippet of music that has been running through my head for the past hour: 'Broken Ice' from the soundtrack to 'Orlando'. Fitting: "Nothing thicker than a knife's blade seperates melancholy from happiness" - Orlando in response to Sasha's rebuff.

The boss has just offered Guinness & toasted sarnies for lunch, as I looked 'miserable'.

I'm yet to write a response email, too, it might be easier after beer.

national economics reliant on space weapons and triffids

2006-07-18T16:28:00.000+10:00

It is a rainy afternoon, I am having a cuppa and my usual afternoon-ly random trawl of the web.

Today's topic is 'carnivorous plants' which brings us to triffids, and to the linked gem of an essay.

For example, this paragraph:

"The Nazis were first encouraged by big business to limit the political Left; the Nazis then started to control industry; war when it came allowed a cover the exterminations; the extermination camps provided labour for industry, and for wealth to be stolen and re-cycled. Ultimately the war economy was going to be destroyed, weakened from the inside by the need for soldiers to guard the camps etc, making them unavailable to fight, but the destruction was an integral part of the process of:- big business encouraging Nazism, encouraging war, devaluing life, the destruction of Europe, the destruction of Nazism. One part re-enforces the other. It has happened elsewhere but this was the example that both authors had seen at first hand."

From 'Day of the Triffids' through 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four' to what happens to civilizations that allow themselves to be ruled by blocs.

Fascinating reading, if a little bleak.

Scrotoss: Scrotoss!

2006-06-30T23:17:00.000+10:00

Scrotoss: Scrotoss! You have been warned.

All the latest news

2006-05-10T13:03:00.000+10:00

Bleh, not a lot, actually.

On second (third? fourth?) edit there IS rather a bit of stuff here today.

I have given up on RSVP, who have been sending me crap links for months now, and never replied to any emails in regards to some of their categories (ie, 'arts/design/creative' is not possible as career according to RSVP) and pricing (blatant rip off). As I have said before, online dating is dead.

That didn't stop me from joing match.com which appears to be more of the same. I have all the matches I want from Ecuador, Nigeria, Laos, Guatemala, Columbia and, for some bizzarre reason, Canada. NONE of which fall into my definition of '50km from Meadowbank'. People STILL don't reply to emails you send them, despite the fact that the privellege of sending costs some serious money. I should have just subscribed to New Scientist and been done with it - a better way of spending cash I think.

Please, feel free to provide feedback, as I am quite clearly ugly/boring/undesirable enough to warrant attention only from gold-digging skanks from 3rd world countries (sorry, Canada). I haven't had ANY links from anyone even living in Australia! Oh, just found out the frelling link doesn't work if you aren't a member, so this link will have to do.

In other, more exciting news, there might actually be some decent PC games appearing over the next few months, GTA:SA being the last really good game to come out, with NWN before that. BF1942 has been played to death by the GamezDudez, though the young'uns are soldiering on in Star Wars Battlefront. Most new games (BF2 comes to mind) have gone way too far down the track of complexity, and have lost the sheer time-eating simple joys of Unreal Tournament. I don't think we've given UT2004 quite enough time, though, as it does retain that special, silky-smooth, run-run-run-ROCKET-run-run-jump-FLAKCANNON-run-run-run-HEADSHOT-runrunrunrunrunrun-M-M-M-M-Monsterkil! goodness. The teams maps though, heeerrrrmmmmm, you could not have 'em and it wouldn't be a great loss.

The new hopefuls? Well, NeverwinterNights 2, and (at long last!) Jade Empire for the PC! Hurrah! Hopefully a bit of multiplayer goodness will find it's way into JE-PC, so we can finally act out our Wolf & Cub vs. One-armed Boxer vs. Drunken Master vs. Flying Guillotine fantasies. Well, we being Bear & me, anyway. With some persuading I hope to get the legendary Sabyr to actually put pen to paper and do some writing so we can make some NWN2 mods and fling us to fame & fortune as game writers rather than... whatever the hell it is we do now.

While on the topic of gamez, it is about bloody time someone came up with a decent space-shooter. Hello? Anyone? The last Great Space Game was X-Wing Alliance; while it still runs it ain't pretty due to changes in DirectX technology, and requires a plethora of fan-made (ie, mostly crap) tweaks, edits and hacks to get the damn thing to run. The resulting kludgy mess just isn't worth it. I don't ask for much - X3 Reunion nearly gets there, except for the massive number of bugs, graphics slowdowns, lack of plot, fucking StarFarce protection, wacky German sci-fi (they brought us Lexx - get the idea?), character names that sound shit-hot in 'Cherman' but just SHIT in English (Ban Dana? Who the hell names a main character BAN DANA? You may as well just call him Ret Ardo, Dich Ead or B'Lau M'e Orfwan Ker. I suppose 'bandana' translates into Cherman as 'uberkopfenmichtelscarvenruundenknutische' and everything makes sense.), and a universe composed of solar systems 15km across, arranged in right-angles in a galaxy of nearly 30 stars! Whoop-de-fucking-do. You have to go waaay back to Frontier 2 to get a decent universe - a fractally generated galaxy, with realistic solar systems (well, apart from the number of them), a laudable if ultimately flawed attempt at Newtonian sub-light travel, and enough action for more than an afternoon's diversion. OK, granted it was released half-finished, fatally riddled with bugs and was made to look good by the abysmal demon that was Battlecruiser. (I have an original of that - I am hoping it will be worth serious money in 20 years time).

OK, so here are my demands:
1. Dogfighting - it needs to look like the new series of Battlestar Galactica.
2. Graphics - It's SPACE. It's EMPTY! We can put a pile-o-shit onscreen in things like BF2, so are some decent ships, planets, nebula too much to ask? And give us an OPTION to TURN OFF the fucking lame 'twinkly-flying-specks' to show movement. They made sense in the C64 version of Elite, but NEVER SINCE THEN. (You hear me, Egosoft?)
3. Space is big, really big. SO MAKE IT BIG! Fractal galaxies! Black holes! Neutron stars! Wolf-rayet stars! Freeware authors can model EVERY star in the local sector of the Galaxy (Orbiter & Celestia), so what is stopping game authors? They are all lazy.
4. Trade. Geez, it could be as simple as Elite and we would be happy. If it was as good as Frontier we would be happy. We don't need to model EVERY STEP OF INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION! EGOSOFT! Are you even listening? If I wanted to do accounting I would wear a suit - NOT BUY A GAME!
5. Some plot would be nice. See: Ultima 4, Planescape Torment, HalfLife, HalfLife 2, Halo, I-war, I-war 2, ANY of the Final Fantasy series, but 7, 8 & 10 for starters, heck, even Star Wars would be a good start. Bloody hell, Gyruss has a better plot than most space games these days.
6. Test the game before you release it! Egosoft! YOU AGAIN!
7. Have a good hard look at I-war 2 - it is damn close to being perfect, it just didn't have the universe to match it's glorious graphics.
8. Fuck, why do we bother? Just go and make ANOTHER lame FPS / MMORG / Mario Bros / TV tie-in / sports-game-for-EA. Oh, and read some history books about why the video games industry in the early 80's died horribly. Nintendo, despite the ongoing perversion that is Mario, you are exempt due to the delightful DS and Revolution (though you had to spoil that by calling it 'Wii'. HINT: marketing people are not REAL people. They are now laughing at you from their mansions in Monaco).

More news, my dream this morning invloved looking for houses for Bear & Syn in suburbs that don't exist but looked rather nice, accompanied by my dear cat, Kimba, sadly gone to the Big Sunny Warm Place With Furry Things To Chase many years ago. It was good to see him again, he has learnt to say 'kangaroo!' along with his previous 'arro!', 'auh-woggle' & 'gug'. There was also a roadside table next to an antique-shop/pub that had steam engines on it, though they didn't have my one that got stolen.

Crap, this is looking like a diary entry! No rants... OH wait! (Apart from the previous one..)

OK, two guys down a mine. Yeah, OK, but why does EVERY FUCKING THING these days turn into a marketing op / reality TV show? I'm thinking YOU Sustagen! There, I've mentioned your name, where's my $1 million? Occassionally I haven't left my workplace for days at a time too, you know! As for the Ip-ods I would have loved to see the 954m extension cables they used to get around the PATHETIC battery time they have! "Hey guys, it's going to take 10 days to dig you out, but is it OK if we spend 30 minutes drilling a hole big enough to get some product placement in?" It would have been better to give them Sony Minidisc players. Mind you they would have still needed 6 alkaline AA cells each to cover the 320 hours (you get about 60 hours out of an AA with an MD player - stick THAT in your junta, Apple!). It's a shame Eddie McGuire couldn't have been there for the collapse, especially under it; though on the bright side that awful Richard Carlton media-frenzied himself to death. For some wierd reason they didn't stick cameras in his face as he lay dying - I am sure he would have! Caviar won't help you now, MAAAAYYYYTE! (note to self: expect PBL hitmen to beat the shit out me / sue the shit out of me later this afternoon...)

Speaking of conspiracy theories, I noticed some new signage on Shitty Rail stations this morning - both Meadowbank and King's Crass - "You are under video surveillance and your conversation will be recorded". I kid you not. I suppose at least they are honest, though we are just that little bit closer to the world of V for Vendetta, Brazil and A Very British Coup. Seig Heil! John Howard mein Furher!

Wow! What a rant that turned out to be! Hurrah!

Here's the text to my Match.com entry. I try to be honest, rather than fill those boxes up with bullshit I don't believe.

Race Caucasian
Marital status Single
Children 0
Religion None
Drinking Light/social drinker
Smoking Non Smoker
Food Non Vegetarian
Occupation Construction (again, no 'art/design/creative' )
Education Bachelors Degree
Languages Mandarin (Minimal) English (Fluent)
Interests Food and Wine, Cooking, Movies / Cinema, Computers / Internet, Sailing / Boating, Motor Racing, Football / Soccer / Rugby, Cricket, Literature / History, Music - World, Music - New Age, Music - Blues/Jazz, Music - Alternative, Museums / Galleries, Arts / Crafts, Nature

How daunting!
Sydney born and bred (North shore, but now living midwest!). By profession I am an architect; I never really got past Lego. I can find my way around a PC (otherwise would not be here!), and enjoy building pretty much anything and tinkering with things. I have travelled to every continent except Africa, Sth America and Antarctica. Have spent some time working in China, so I know how to order a meal in Mandarin (at least, I think I am ordering a meal!). Leanings in books & films tend towards sci-fi. I enjoy pretty much any sport that does not get scored for artistic talent & invloves cruelty to animals. Favourite sports are sailing / soccer (playing) and cricket, F1, occasional RL (watching). I haven't yet found a food I don't like.

Appearance
Eye colour Brown
Hair colour Auburn
Body type Average
Height 5'2"-5'6" (157cm-169cm)

Short, fair, average.
Everyone wants tall, dark and handsome. Sorry, I'm none of those.

If you are interested in honest, caring & loving you're in luck!

I have been told I look like Harrison Ford when I smile, which I guess makes me a scruffy-looking nerf-herder!
Looking for
Gender Female
Age from 25
Age to 40
Looking For Romance, Relationship, Marriage

Between 23 and 38 years old from within 50 km of Meadowbank, New South Wales, replies to emails, is honest, caring, loving and understands that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do. Ideal partner is also bemused as to what to write in these darn text boxes.

Quote of the Day!

2006-03-21T16:47:00.000+11:00

The monotheistic idea implies a cruel and grumpy old electric donut surrounding Earth and ever threatening it.

- Robert Anton Wilson

I've read the Illuminatus trilogy - it was OK-ish, not enough dolphins in it for a book with dolphins on the cover. Quite a lot of sex, but I suppose the intention was to shock people when it was written. Bit boring nowdays - you can skip massive chunks of the book, as no important plot or dialogue happens, just titilation for teenage boys.

Nevertheless, he was a rather good writer and philosopher. The above quote proves the later.

And not many people ever stuck with the fractals-as-decoration fad. You have to admire that.

On Singularities

2006-02-15T12:29:00.000+11:00

PREFACE: I think I started this mid-February. Finishing in early May is, er, slow.

This time of year always brings to mind singularities. Having been one for nearly 8 years now does that to you.

A common theme in religions, philosphy, mathematics and physics (hmmm, all aspects of the same thing?) is the singularity. "Every man is an island" Not politically correct, but linguistically correct. (could someone tell me how politcal correctness occurs in gendered languages such as french and german?)

Some see this as proof of the Intelligent Design (*cough* appendix, wisdom teeth, canine teeth, malaria, influenza virii, prions et. al. *cough*) mode of thought - it is so infinitely unlikely that life, let alone humans, should evolve by chance, that Occam's Razor says it must have been God.

The opposing argument to this based on the Drake Equations and the Anthropomorphic Principle - that in a universe capable of supporting human life, we must eventually evolve, given time.

So are we the first? Is our planet the single consciousness-bearing rock in the Universe?

I am starting to think 'Yes' might be the answer to that, bleak as it may sound, and here's why:

Take our planet, and life on it, humans and all. Work out how likely that is - you pretty much get the Drake Equation. I think it works out that in a galaxy the size of ours, you should get maybe 5 civilisations. Don't forget that we orbit a 2nd generation star - there can't be any life (well, carbon-based at least) around 1st generation stars.

OK, lets look at the planet for a moment. How many lakes does it have? Lots. Probably thousands. How many of those contain driftwood? Quite a few. How many of those pieces of driftwood float vertically? Not many... that would be pretty rare. You'd be right. There's ONE.

This is The Old Man of The Lake. The Lake in this case being Crater Lake in North America.

The point? There is ONE vertically floating piece of driftwood. One on the entire planet. One. Singular.

The meaning? It is quite possible in this universe to have one of something. For some reason this completely freaks out a lot of people.

I'm just glad I finished this blog entry!

Linkage Silliness

2006-02-06T10:14:00.000+11:00

The Sydney Morning Herald has a story about how BMW has been blacklisted on Google for indulging in the kind of petty linkage you expect from 12 year-olds or spammers. Heh. Corporate ethics at work again. Just goes to show that corporations will do ANYTHING AT ALL to increase profit.

Though it made me ask: What search gives MY blog the number 1 spot on the Googlor?

THIS ONE

Living Dangerously

2006-02-05T22:43:00.000+11:00

I don't know how many of you have been following this little story.

Apart from anything else, it is yet more proof of the 'world gone mad' theory of why we haven't heard from aliens yet; they are staying well away, and for good reason!

For those who have been visting Mars lately, a cartoonist in Denmark drew some cartoons which were duly published. Some people took offence at them. Well, that sort of IS the point of political cartoons; only the the people he offended were, shall we say, the 'Totally Out Of Their Fucking Minds Party'. Anyway, the whole thing has grown to the point where a Danish consulate was firebombed in Syria, followed shortly by the Norwegian Consulate. Norway? It looks like they copped it because people always get Norway and Denmark mixed up. I think. Maybe it was because they look the same or something.

Next on the list is that domineering oppressor tyrant New Zealand. Erm, OK. Right. Could we have a little sanity on the planet, please?

What gets interesting is the cartoons themselves. Try to find them. Go on, try! You can only get some very small badly scanned versions, right? So small and badly scanned that it is difficult to tell exactly what they are saying about who. The link I have early in this entry is to the highest resolution I can find. Yes, it includes the most notorious one, the 'bomb-on-the-head' one. Is this new? There have been cartoons on a similar topic probably since the 70's, certainly since 2001, so what's the problem? Several were published online in The Onion at the time, and also in print most likely; I think The Onion does have a print version.

My point, if I have one, is this: could people just CALM THE FUCK DOWN? That, or it looks like the next Crusades really are upon us, and this is just the trigger event. It looks like certain Governments gave the go-ahead to burning down the wrong embassies, and if they have an angle, you can bet the good 'ole boys also have an angle. I like italics tonight.

As to living dangerously, it seems that even talking openly about this story is enough to get you in serious strife. The ultimate source of all wisdom and knowledge, Wikipedia, has been under near constant seige since it has run the story. There really is a major effort block the publication of it. It looks like certain people are such a threat that our own media an government are being circumspect about the whole thing, no doubt saying they don't want to incite things, but are they really that scared? Since when has our government or media worried about upsetting people before? Could it be a stooging exercise by Our Glorious Leaders to test feasabilities of world-wide media control?

Who knows. Who the fuck knows.

Stay safe out there, people, and remember: Duck, and Cover.

StarFarce

2006-02-04T15:53:00.000+11:00

OK, an odd entry this one. The following text is something I just put on a forum called 'Boycott Starforce'

A long story short - a new DRM copy-protection scheme that uses a Sony-like rootkit to, well, root your PC. Alleged to actually damage CD/DVD drives and HDDS. IT DAMAGED MINE. Yes, Starforce is "Anti-copying malware" to quote numerous other critics.

To add to matters, Starforce is written by some Russian dudes. Anyone who has ever seen 'A Very Peculiar Practice' and 'A Very Polish Practice' will start laughing now, as these Russian guys have a really odd way of dealing with critics. They send lawsuits to them, AS WELL AS accusing critics of software piracy. Their attitude is "If you have problems with our software you must be a pirate, and we are reporting you to the RIAA"

So posting anything on any forum is dangerous. LUCKILY in Australia we have consumer protection laws for this kind of thing, so sue away Russian dudes! Although with the Free Whoring (darn, how do I do strikethrough again?) Trade Agreement we have with the United States of Assholes I might not be so safe....

Click 'read more' to see the whole sad tale...

My system:
Athlon 64 3200
ASRock 939 Dual-Sata2 (latest firmware)
4GB Ram, SB Xfi Platinum, Leadtek PX7800GTX

(yes, I got a bonus at Xmas! :-D )

Drives: 2 x Segate ST3200826A
1 x Asus DRW1608P2 (firmware 1.37)

OS: Windows XP Sp2

So this is a new machine, replacing an Athlon XP with a near-dead DVD drive and failing HDDs. reinstallation of everything was going fine, at this new machine really was quick. WAS quick, up until I installed Ubisoft's Silent Hunter 3. At this point I HAD NEVER HEARD OF STARFORCE. Booting seemed slower, but hey, there was more software on the machine, right? Anyway, it gets to the point where I want to do a backup of my install, and pop a DVD in my nice new drive, and it want to write at 4x max. WTF? This is a 16x drive, and I am using 16x DVDs! It's BRAND NEW! Anyway, backups written. Decide to play SH3. Choppy as hell, took 10 mins to start. One look at SH3 forums says 'make sure you are using latest Startforce drivers' Starforce? What's Starforce? Find Starforce website, DL drivers, install, reboot, still slow. Actually slower - it took my nice new PC nearly 6 minutes to start! When it did start, a SPEEDFAN alarm went off. I have speedfan installed to monitor temps - it gets hot in Australia in summer - and an alarm had gone off for my primary HDD. Funny, it's never overheated... THE ERROR WAS A S.M.A.R.T. SYSTEM FAULT!

MY 3 WEEK OLD HDD HAD ALREADY MAXED OUT ECC ERRORS. THE SECONDARY DRIVE WAS ALSO FAILING WITH THE SAME FAULT.

These were two brand new drives. Ok, sure one drive might fail, but TWO? A quick call to my faithful hardware store to check that I hadn't bought part of a bad batch of drives - nope, no-one else reporting problems.

OK, back to the net, a bit more searching on Starforce found.... this forum. Ah. Looks like Starfarce is the culprit.

However, before I removed it, I did a few tests.

Booting - takes 5mins to boot to desktop and load all autoruns etc.
CD/DVD writing speed - max 4x on both CD & DVD, on a drive that will do x16/x40 ! (note that's averaged speeds, which I checked with Nero Info, which was also picking up LOTS of ECC errors while writing)
HDD to HDD copying speed 400MB file took 6 MINUTES to copy from one HDD to another.

OK, remove Starfarce. This was done by booting in Safe Mode, then removing the drivers manually AS PER STARFORCES INSTRUCTIONS On THEIR WEBSITE. I also cleared out the entries in registry.

Reboot.

Booting was much quicker, around 45 SECONDS to desktop, but there was AN ERROR! "Windows has detected significant changes to your hardware etc'" I needed to re-activate Windows XP! Yeah, I had to do this 3 weeks ago with the new machine... ah. It won't automatically re-activate over the web - IT THINKS I HAVE INSTALLED ON A SECOND MACHINE. A quick phone call to Microsoft sorts that out. I mention what I was doing, too - removing Starforce. "Ah, no it shouldn't do that.." was their reply. "I agree, can you look into it?" was mine!

Other tests -
CD/DVD writing speed - Average DVD write speed x8, average CD write speed X30. Better, not great but better.
Also, NERO now allows me to select speeds higher than x4.
HDD to HDD copying speed 400MB - somewhere around 2-3 SECONDS. Hard to time.

So, here's my lst:

Starforce, in MY EXPERIENCE, WITHOUT A DOUBT:
1. slows down booting, significantly
2. slows down IDE HDD opereations, significantly
3. interferes with operation of CD/DVD drive and Nero, significantly
and here come the biggies:
4. DAMAGES HDD SIGNATURES FORCING RE-ACTIVATION OF WINDOWS
5. CAUSES ECC ERRORS IN HDD S.M.A.R.T. FIRMWARE WHICH CANNOT BE REPAIRED. THIS WILL, IN TIME, CAUSE THE HDD TO STOP OPERATING
Oh! and I nearly forgot...
6. DIRECTLY INTERFERES WITH OTHER SOFTWARE SUCH AS SECUROM. That last one I discovered when I ran Norton Antivirus 2005 - it uses Securom, and also had to be re-activated as well after removing Starforce.

Ok, no, none of this is PHYSICAL damage - nothing caught fire or exploded. The worst part is the SMART firmware damage - that can't be repaired, and I now have brand new drives that 'think' they are damaged. They might be fine, but their SMART firmware now shows their overall drive 'fitness' (as measured by Speedfan) to be about 47% for the primary and 50% for the secondary. THAT'S WHERE THE REPORTS OF DAMAGE ARE COMING FROM, IN MY OPINION.

I don't know about CD/DVD drives, and whether they have a SMART-like system that records errors - if they do, that's why peoples drives die over time.

Having had all of that happen to my brand new PC, I had a look at my old one - both older HDDs SMART systems reported totally failing drives, Speedfan reports 'fitness' of 0% for each drive. The older CD/DVD, a Sony was as good as dead - it would not read ANY DVD, and had trouble with most CDs - most read errors. It is the first piece of Sony kit I have EVER had fail. Then I noticed - I had X2-The Threat installed. I hadn't played it much, but it had been there for nearly a year, along with STARFORCE. Well, well, well.

When I first read about the Starforce issues, I simply intended to delete the bloody thing and watch out for it in future (You hear this, Ubisoft? that means I WON'T BUY YOUR SOFTWARE!). I had no intention of getting involved in actually writing about it on forums - quite frankly I don't have the time. However when I found out it screwed with OTHER software (including the OS) and their activation systems, I got riled.

So there you go, another sad tale.

More Katamari!

2006-01-29T14:10:00.000+11:00

Ah, too much Katamari! Yes, I have been playing it a bit, and the level of cuteness gets to you after a while.

I finally worked out the Japanese in 'Me and My Katamari' on the PSP and was able to save some of the pictures I have taken in it.

Everyone knows Chameleons like collecting things. Yep. Everyone.

The Prince on his Island, with a very disturbing statue of the King of All Cosmos. I think the power has gone to his head!

All hail the King! King of All Cosmos checks out what the Prince is rolling up.

Ahhh! Teh Cute! The Prince goes swimming with a dolphin!

AHHH! Teh Cute x 2! The Prince and Monty pose before another round of rolling Katamari!

I could be reading the property section of the newspaper, or learning how to trade shares, but this is MUCH more useful! KA-TA-MA-RI!

KATAMARI DAMACY!

2006-01-16T15:52:00.000+11:00

Na naa, na na na na na na naa, na na-na na-na-na!

Where have games like this been? (Ok, yes, Nintendo)

Ok, so you are this Prince. 5cm tall. A Little Prince. Your Dad is the King of All Cosmos. He got drunk, and smashed all the stars. Quite enjoyed it at the time too.
As Prince, you get to fix it all, by rolling things up... into... balls... of stuff... (stop laughing!) called 'Katamari'. OK, keep laughing, it is brilliant. Only the Japanese can do stuff like this and pull it off. Well, maybe His Yakiness Jeff Minter, but no-one else!

The sheer simplicity of this game conceals a romp through worlds wierder than most of my dreams, chasing swans and fish, avoiding bears and cows, and running over guys who sound suspiciously like Crazy Frog. Animated interludes keep you up to date with the Hoshino family, and their efforts to go and see their dad at work.

The metaphors for life are amazing - a tiny person rolling around a big ball of stuff that keeps growing.
Rolling up ratties goes 'Eeeeeeee!'. Rolling up cats goes "Mrowr!" Rolling up people goes "Yaaargh!", "What's happening?" "OH MY GOD!" or "Detention for you! Detention!"

Syn & Bear gave me this for Xmass (and the tip-off to mod my PS2) and I have played it a LOT since then. I also had a look at Ebay, and purchased the soundtrack to the game - a surreal blend of lounge, jazz and j-pop. Since Sony in All Their Wisdom haven't really seen fit to release KD in Australia (we might get the PSP and We ♥ Katamari release 'some time' in 2006) I exercised my RIGHTS as an Australian to purchase them overseas, so I have been sharing my rolling this weekend between 'Me and My Katamari' on the PSP and KD on the PS2.

The PSP version suffers a bit from the controls - it isn't quite as slick as the PS2 to roll around, but the sound and graphics really make up for that. It is amazing what the PSP can do - it should get even better when people have had more time to really wring out the hardware.

Today at work 'We ♥ Katamari' turned up, along with 'Shadows of the Collossos' from the makers of the artwork 'Ico'. (The later, I might add cost me AUS$30 brand new; it is due for release here in March for AUS$100! Talk about gouging!)

Now, to be fair, some people won't like it. Bear's brother got mighty disturbed by it, and fair enough. For those of us who have their heads wired in that weird way that makes you want to roll up clouds and giant octopi; then this game is for you!

The Mighty Box of Cool

2006-01-16T14:40:00.000+11:00

I wasn't expecting a bonus this year. Hey, I'm an architect; our definition of a bonus is "not being fired at X-mass".

So getting one was a pleasant surprise. Now what to do with it?

Half went into my "maybe afford my own house/flat/cardboard box in 20 years" fund, the other half went into my wallet. Briefly.

As it happens, my then-extant PC was going reasonably well; it had been reliable for nigh on 3 years, though in mid 2005 the drives started playing up. The usual reformat-test-drive-reformat-test-drive-junk-drive-buy-new-drive-reformat festival took place. Which worked. For about 4 months, and the problems came back. Bugger. Check power supply, which I should have done FIRST - the 5V was putting out somewhat less than 4V. OK, new PS. Nice new Antec Neo 480W. Quiet. Amazingly the PC perked up nicely; it seems the old 4-year old one was on it's way out for a while. So now I have 2 spare 120GB drives laying around, and talk of a games day after Xmas. Time to put those drives into the SpareBox then!

SpareBox consisted of an Athlon XP1600 in a MB with a dodgy secondary IDE port. Or maybe it had dodgy drives, or a dodgy PS. Anyway, I had an even older (though reliable) PS hooked up to it, and it was used at the last GamezDaze. It worked OK for about 2/3rd of the day when it just stopped wanting to play anymore. We figured it got too hot, which in Chris' garage was not unlikely.

In went the two new drives, turn it on and... BAD CPU. Not an error you like to see. Looks like the XP1600 was the cause then. It did have a tiny chip on the oh-so-delicate exposed core, which happened when being moved out of one MB to another, so that might have been the problem. As it turned out, XPs are hard to find in the lower speeds this MB would take. I couldn't use my main XP2300 to test the MB - it was not supported (luckily, as it turned out). So I found an XP2000 (the quickest this MB could take) on Ebay, and parted with $30 for it. Plugged in, turned on, and it worked! Yippee! Set the time and date in BIOS, set boot order, reboot... black screen. Oh. Reboot again. Black screen. Something smells hot. Touch processor heatsink - ouch! CPU fan is going, but now I can smell the magic smoke... Hmm... looks like the MB was the problem after all. Bugger.

So now I have an empty box, a dead MB and two Athlon XPs which will make nice bathroom tiles.

And a bonus.

Well, I could have spent it on a Lego Star Destroyer, but instead it went on this:

This is an Antec P180 qiuet case. It's large & heavy.
I didn't get the whole thing at once, mind you.

Part one was a socket 939 MB with dual AGP and PCIE slots. And an Athlon 64 to stick in it. This was good, though the stock Athlon cooler was rather noisy. So I bought a better Thermaltake heatsink, which made it much quieter.

But this A64 was lumbered with a mere 1.5GB ram, and an aging Nvidia5900 GPU. That had to be fixed! it was fixed with 4GB RAM, running dual channel. Fast. I though long and hard about a GPU, then bit the bullet and went for an Nvidia7800GTX. Very fast.

This all went into my heavily modified windowed case, with extra sound deadening using mainly bitumen (!) - actually a product called 'Brownbread' that works very well, although not exactly pleasing to the eye. That case also has a custom paintjob whose effect was completely disproportionate to the amount of time it took to do it.

GamezDaze 2006 was the last outing for that case. Too big, too heavy, too noisy, and with the 7800GTX in it, too darn hot. The day before GamezDaze, it was trying to run in ambient heat of close to 45C (well, 44.7C, but who's counting?) and it was NOT happy. The CPU was idling at 65C and the GPU at a whopping 85C. The GPU cooler also sounded a lot like a medium-size airliner. Hmmm. Mod time.

I have two, no three, requirements for a PC - fast, cool, quiet. Why anyone would want slow, noisy and hot is beyond me. Fast I had; what I lacked was cool & quiet. This all came down to - the case. And the GPU fan.

The Leadtek 'afterburner' fan and heatsink got removed, and replaced with a much smaller and lighter Zalman copper finned thingy. I think 'better designed' would be an excellent description, as the massive Nvidia-standard 4-heat-pipes 2-heat-sinks 1-mother-of-all-fans idea was heavier, larger and less efficient. Instantly the GPU idled at about 47C and maxed out at 57C. Better. The CPU was still cooking though - the old case has crap air supply. So I got an antec P180!

Erm, smaller, lighter? No. No, no, no, no and no with a side order of no. It's big. It weighs enough to seriously distort gravity. It is also extremely well designed, slick-looking and as close to silent as I could wish for. I did get a fanbus unit to control the abundance of fans in it (5 - 3 case fans, CPU and GPU), but now I have a machine that keeps all components at under 60C in all conditions. The highest ambient I have yet to test has been 37C, but I think this case will work well even under high temps. If it does get hot, I can sacrifice some of my silence and put the fans up to 50%. Even at 100% it is no louder than my old case.

Hopefully this thing should last a similar 4 years as most of the previous Ahtlon did.

Christmas Means Carnage!

2005-12-05T14:02:00.000+11:00

It's December. There are only two weekends until Christmas.

Welcome to the Season of Carnage.

There is something about December; the heat maybe, but most likely the impending occasion of mass consumer frenzy that is the Western holiday of Christmas.

At some point last Thursday, the little switch in most Sydney-siders head's went from the usually setting of 'MAD' to 'TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE'.

Twice on Sunday while driving, I had to swerve or brake hard to avoid head-on collisions with 4WDs (of course!) who had become impatient with waiting and simply decided to cross the median strip and drive on the wrong side of the road for a bit.

I also missed the ads on TV that said it is now illegal to drive at, or slightly above the speed limit; apparently you must now drive at least 20kph over it, and are allowed to tailgate, and use horns and lights on people in red Pulsars who might be trying to obey the road rules.

Mercifully, the Rhodes shops were amazingly quiet for a pre-Christ-It's-A-Mess Sunday afternoon, and I even treated myself to a dozen Pacific Oysters for dinner! Yum!

Meanwhile, (warning politcal statement approaches) the whole fucking country just goes American by declaring that Our Kulcha is The Best, and everyone else should behave like we say they should. Not many Australians held candlelight vigils outside the US embassies last week; though Singapore copped it for some irrational reason. I haven't heard any cries of protest over Gary Glitter's possible death sentence. (ah, but his crime wasn't cool); Singapore copped a ribbing though. No-one seems to be saying 'No, let Amrosi live."; Australians in Singapore are All Innocent Little Lambs wot never dun nuffin ever, well not much anyways. Our Glorius Leaders In Supreme Government From Whom All Wisdom Flows don't seem to be asking the UN courts to perhaps help in freeing David Hicks, held without trial for some years now; while someone arrested, charged, found guilty and tried under appropriate laws causes a fairly major internation incident (with Singapore). Ah, I forgot, we do whatever the US says, and thus it follows Asia should do whatever WE say, due to Australia being such a highly esteemed paragon of virtue, human rights, and being so gosh-darned-yankee-doodle-dandy-dixie-right-thinking-Christian-WHITEFOLK. Sorry, my bad.

As for drugs - of course trafficing illegal drugs is not so bad, after all, it keeps the vast majority of our society entertained. Recent events in East Jo'berg (s'nives) are a beautiful example: "Won-der-ful do, daaaahling, though we seem to be out of ice! Just give my dealer a call, quick-dial 3 on my mobe.." Within 5 mins, the chavs in their mini-boom-car turn up, but as luck would have it, the punter out the front is not the right one (who is most likely still inside trying to snort kitty litter). "ere's yer crys, mate" "what?" "yer crys, youse owes urs er gorilla" "fuck off, I'm just having a ciggie" stab stab stab stab, vroooooom.... The thing is, the media (to whom it actually happened, ah, the ironicalnessness of it all) are acting totally shocked and dumbfounded "how could someone do this? these two yoofs just drove up and suddenly stabbed him!" yep, right. Just like that. Just drove up. *shakes head* ah, not like my day, the kids had respect, and in s'nives too, who would have thought...

What can I say about s'nives.. hmmm.. ah! Melissa up the road really did the whole 'I have cerm to cleen zee puul' thing. SLUT! I never did get to say that to her face, but one day I might get the chance. Her rationalle was that if the gender roles were reversed any guy would do the same. Well, I know of *one* person who might, but only if he had a few jars under the belt. Sober he is quite rational. As it turned out she is/was/became a lesbian; the career advancement was better.

What a rant. From Sydney Summer Sans Sanity to deep personal crises I still can't deal with.

I love December.

By the way, the warning sign is from the normally-sane BOM. Maybe these are new signs for all beaches and waterfronts, to go alongside the signs warning of the dangers of hot sand.

Amarantine

2005-11-28T11:32:00.000+11:00

Darn it, I discovered Enya first.

I first heard her music in probably 1986, on 2JJJ's Ambience with Arnold Frollows - tracks from 'The Frog Prince'. Her first track I remember hearing was 'Aldebaran' from 'The Celts' on the evening show with Tim Richie, back when 'The Sex Pistols' could be followed immediately by some guy called 'Mozart'. That was in 1987. I liked the song so much I phoned up to ask what it was, and where I could get the album. Import. It cost me $45 (a lot at the time) and I am glad I have it, as the vinyl is so different to the CDs of today. The 20-something Enya on the front was also pretty cute.

Her next album (everyone called it her 'first'. heathens.) was rather good featuring 'Orinoco Flow', her first big hit. I had that album (another import) by Christmas 1988, though the album is listed as 1989. In 2JJJ's Hot 100 of 1989, Enya came in at #48 with Orinoco Flow. (Other notables were the B52s at #14 with Rock Lobster and #2 H&C's Throw Your Arms Around Me; which should be one of the songs Australians should sing at football matches. I laugh at the 'alternative' 2JJJ of today)

By the end of 1989 I was at uni and had an email address: uXXXXXXX@arch.unsw.oz.au, and discovered newsgroups - What We Did Before The Web. (By the way, check the wierd email - yep, pre .edu.au, and the .au was only recent. We were .oz before that). The following is one of the rare newsgroup listings from 1992 still in existence:

Date: Mon, 4 May 92
From: uXXXXXXX@arch.unsw.oz.au (name deleted)

I agree about the water/air/fire.. sequence in Enya`s albums- Shepherd Moons is very much an `air` album, just as Watermark was `water`.

The question is, will the next album be `fire`? And does anyone think the The Celts is the `earth` album? I always get images of stone circles and foggy moors when listening to that album...

The page this was from is notable for having intelligent dicussion with no spam. Two impossibilities these days. For further enjoyment the other two surviving emails are here and here. Wow, what an embarrassing sig file! The second message is amusing given the subject and sender!

YES! Anyway, I have always loved Enya's music, but sometimes I don't quite connect with it as much as I would like. 'The Memory of Trees' was an album of hers I didn't quite enjoy as much as the previous ones. I absolutely loved 'A Day Without Rain'; I thought it was brilliant. I missed 'Paint The Sky With Stars' and the LoTR albums, as I either had all the songs on them, or didn't care much for the new songs. Does this make me a bad fan? I also dislike the videos, partly because film of Enya singing is a bit meaningless - she is three people for a start, and filming someone layering 400 tracks is not interesting to some people.

Her new album is taking a while to grow on me. The Celts, Watermark, A Day Without Rain - all of these albums I loved on first listen. Maybe I haven't been in the mood for Amarantine yet. My mood around this time of year tends towards Charlie Chan's 'Adventures of...' and 'Songs of Distant Earth' by *cringe* Mike Oldfield *cringe*. Lately, Kate Bush's new album was one of those first-time favourites. Miles Davis and Bill Evans also get a playing, as does k.d. lang. 'A Day Without Rain' got hijacked and played to death after certain events of 2001, so I don't listen to it as much as I used to.

I can't work out Amarantine. I love the concept of Enya doing some Japanese songs, but it sounds like an ad; the song was made for an ad originally. For me this is like Van Gogh painting ads for Nike. (OK, let's not mention Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups. Anyway, they're Spanish and hardly an evil globalist child-slavery supporter. I hope) It's just wrong. Like when a soap company butchered Clannad's "Harry's Game"; performing the musical equivalent of spray-painting Coke logos on the Sistene Chappel ceiling. (Note to advertisers - I said 'soap company', not the advertising fuckwits who actually did it. I remember the soap company though, and will never buy their products. There is such a thing as anti-advertising you know.)

The track about rain is ok, and there is a dancey sort of track (though not as good as 'Flora's Secret' from ADWR). I can't remember the last couple of tracks - I have fallen asleep during them. Not actually a good sign, though it may be. Hard to tell.

I feel like I am being unfaithful, and am confused as to whether being critical counts as unfaithful. I want to like this album... but I am neutral towards it.

Do some more Japanese songs, Enya; but no more ads.

I tried to get a link to the album cover, but you can't link to the images; so, no images of my favourite singer. Welcome to the Future(tm). >:-( (angry frowny)

FISH!

2005-11-28T10:42:00.000+11:00

Fish indeed.

I made steamed fish last night; blue-eye cod, steamed with garlic, ginger, coriander, chilli spring onion and lime. I had steamed bokchoy with it. Yum.

So it was only natural that I had dreams last night & this morning.

We were in a war. Us. Yeah, like that.

Australia was at war with... well... everyone. The USA held a lot, with France fighting hard against them. Both sides were pretty keen on eliminating all Australians. My surname meant I could pass as French though, which helped. John Howard was on radio telling all Australians to surrender to the Americans - to "honour the Agreement" and we would be treated fairly. That meant being shot on the spot. The Government survived though, and you could also be kept alive if you dobbed in at least 5 other people. Children were worth 2 adults.

This sounds like a nightmare, but wasn't; everyone had voted for it. Most parents were turning in their own children. My mum & dad had got away - I don't know where to. My brother was really angry at our betrayal by the Government "after all the work I did for you".

I got together with a few others - Bear, Syn, Bear's borther & family, my brother, and our friend from Canberra and his family. We all decided we could survive if we went bush for a bit. Out near Yass we got caught behind French tanks in a fairly big battle. The tanks were like the ones in Tron. They were getting hammered by US artillery though. The odd thing was each tank had hundreds of SAM and anti-helicopter micro-missiles, so thankfully we weren't being slaughtered by helicopter gunships.

Then the tanks went away, and I was on my own beside a concrete highway barrier. I was playing dead as The American General was searching bodies. He noticed I was alive, but worthless, so left me as a hindrance to the enemy. There was a young girl (maybe 12?) I was trying to protect her, as she had a broken leg. The General said she was useless, so he told her that he wanted to rape her, but she wouldn't be any fun. So he shot her in the head, but it didn't kill her as his gun malfunctioned. He fixed it with rubber bands (I watched this - it was important), then shot her again, killing her this time. I managed to then escape back behind French lines.

Then we (yep, multiple again) were on a wide plane that was also a forest, but with no trees. There was a massive air battle going on way overhead - hundreds of contrails. Pieces of aircraft were falling all around. B-52s were being used as fighters; in other words there was little sense to the battle, it was just destruction for destruction's sake. Then the Americans used an airburst nuke. I said "Oh, great, now everyone will use them" and they did. They used it because they couldn't win, but wanted to make sure no-one else would.

We hid; somewhere like Tamworth, maybe Coonabarrabran.

We hid in a carpark that was also in Hornsby - the old Westfield one before they knocked it down.

We all survived, due to the rubber band trick, and actually lived pretty well. Everyone else was dead; those that survived didn't bother each other. We hid when others came by, and made sure our house looked un-lived-in. There was a woman there who liked me. I don't know her - she had longish hair and freckles. I am pretty sure she was the one I was trying to protect earlier, but older now, and less murdered.

Despite all the battles and death, this actually wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't good as such (bits were) but it wasn't nasty.

Strange one. Other than the continuing collapse of Australian culture (hah!) and civilisation (hah!) at the hands of a democratically elected neo-nazi dictator, opposed by a bunch of spineless jerks who should be the first, er, second against the wall when the Revolution comes, I have no idea what caused this dream.

More news as it comes to hand.

Gataca here we come!

2005-11-07T10:18:00.000+11:00

Yay! Australia leads the world again!

In yet another bold move towards Our Glorius Leader Howard's grand vision of an Australian Fourth Reich, the ABC runs a story about genetic discrimination. Wonderful!

Through technology unavailable to previous regimes, the Australian Authorities can now use your genome against you. Genetic predisposition to: terrorism? Voting labour? Supporting Kyoto? It's all just a matter of time...

Oh, and since Friday, it is probably now a crime for me to write this; and a crime for you to read it! Seeing as Australia is a good little Echelon lap-dog, we should all be expecting a visit from the anti-throughtcrime State Terrorism Anti-Sedition Investigators. Or maybe the Government Executive Surveillance Taskforce Against Possible Offenders. Either way, we now have a legislated STASI or GESTAPO.

Aussie-aussie-aussie! Heil-heil-heil!

Yay! Australia! Yay! Howard! Making the world safer for rich white people!

Strange dreams of different worlds

2005-11-02T12:03:00.000+11:00

The weather has been distinctly summerish, and I have a cold. It's hot and humid overnight. Last night, I made myself one of my favourite chicken/chilli/garlic curries-stir-fry-thingy, guaranteed to scare the hell out of any known virus. And then I couldn't sleep, so I put on Brian Eno's Ambient 2: The Plateau of Mirrors.
Suffice to say, I had dreams last night; an unusual event in recent times. These ones weren't too bad, maybe a little nasty in places, but WILD.

I've been trying to assimilate the dreams since about 7:30am, and this is a very complex set. There are *lots* of images, of course in full 7.1 DTS, 3D-digital colour, smell-o-vision that all the experts say we don't dream in. There was also readable text - something very rare! that stayed readable for more than one glance. I also saw my hands, which is a sign of ... something?

Anyway, to start with I was on the corner of Elizabeth and William Streets in the city. Vicki Shaw / Snowdon walked by, and noticed me and tried to start a friendly conversation. She now had 3 childen, Laura would be 11 by now (but was still in a stroller) and the other two were 7 and 4, but were walking. Yes, 7 years old, I noticed that. A boy and a girl. Vicki was trying to be friendly, but the conversation went the way I have always imagined this conversation would go - nasty. She still wouldn't tell me why - outright refused. She could not understand why I would be angry with her. I retorted that as a major factor in severe depression she had little right to assume anything about me. Three times biten was enough for me, thanks. I told her to rack off, and never speak to me again. I felt sad doing it, but also this overwhelming desire to wipe her memory from my mind. She was wearing silver and black, and had her hair cut short, and was skinny like in 1990. Damn.

So I woke up after that bit, about 5am. Went and had a drink of water and went back to bed, listening to the kookaburras and the odd rooster starting to call. Yes, there are roosters living near my place. I like that.

The dream I fell back into made a major turn into the realm of wierd. How it relates to part 1 I have no idea. Maybe some link with women with dark hair? Yikes.

To start with, I was a woman. OK, before we go anywhere, there was nothing sexual in this, I just was a woman, like you play a female character. Right? Whatever. Anyway, I was a cross between Liv Tyler as Arwen Undomiel, Jennifer Connely as... as... anyone, and Aeon Flux (not Charlie Theron, thanks very much, the original). Um, women I admire? No, Xena wasn't there. Cute dark-haired women? Well, Jacqueline Pearce wasn't there either. And I have been wierder things - dolphin, trees, even sand. I was wearing a rather nice antique black silk kimono I saw in a 2nd hand shop in Katoomba on the weekend. The comment with this image was "Almost all gaijin end up looking like clowns in kimono.", by the way.

ANYWAY, I was in a city that was still Sydney, but Sydney in the time of Bladerunner or Serenity, which gives you a wide range, by the way. An intelligent holographic advertisment for the NRMA (might be a nightmare - they are still around?) accosts me, be gives me two million credits. This is not a bad thing, as I currently had zero in my credit account, and was living in state-supplied housing. But it was a nice house and I had a cat, a fluffy black-and-white one. I didn't see the cat, only knew I had it. I went to a bank-booth to check my account, it took them a while to search it, and I could see the 'reverse' side of the holograms the bank teller was using, and could read the numbers as she searched for my account. It was under my current pseudonym, Corinoco. The bank teller was the cute stewardess from 'Fifth Element'. The numbers were 'old' (our present day, present time, hahahaha) IP addresses, and I 'knew' that in the future, also knowing the real me. The numbers then jumped to 'modern' addresses, with 6 x 4 digit numbers. When she found my bank account, the teller said, yes, I had two million credits, but would now have to give up my house and cat! I said try again, so she started searching (or something) and this time the numbers '-6278' came up in big 100mm high holographic letters. The teller was startled, saying both that I had -6278 credits, and that it was an error. She then shut down the booth, and metal shutters came down. Alarms sounded and I heard the teller saying 'the criminal is outside'. I sat down thinking, 'be calm, you haven't done anything wrong, I'll just go back to my ship' Ship? Cool! Anyway, four security officers show up, heavily armed, firing stun darts. They hit about 7 bystanders before they realise I am the 'criminal'. I am screaming 'It's me!' at them, but they just keep shooting people. I lie face down on the floor, and the all point their guns at my head. One says 'Australian Security' (OH SHIT), while the other two use guns like Aeon Flux's needle gun to put black zip-locks on my wrists very hard. I see my hands here. They check their holographic PDAs to find I am a code '-6278' (shit, I have now seen that number clearly three times) and that I am to be taken to the 'Spire' in London. They drag me there. Fortunately London seems to be just outside the mall we are in. (Sydney? A mall? Makes sense...) They drag me along the smooth floor, and I am told to kneel 'like a dog' and be dragged. I offer to get up and walk, but they insist I be dragged.

Following this?

By the way, the entire second part of the dream had a soundtrack by Sarah Brightman. Which may make some people cringe.

Then we go up some escalators, that look a lot like the ones in a small arcade in Sussex St Chinatown in Sydney (present day, present time, hahahaha). There is even an old lady coming down who drops her sack of potatoes, blocking the stairs. The guards now say I can get up and walk, but I have to step on the potatoes. I feel sorry for the old woman.

Okaaaayyyyy....
Right, now we are up in the street, it is indeed London, with the 'Spire' being the Citadel from Half-Life 2. Makes sense. Sure. Not a place I would like to visit though. Parked to our left on a bridge is 'Serenity', which I know is my ship. (which is so darn cool!)

An aside here: it's not totally Serenity from the film, it's a mix of Serenity, the Liberator, a PatCon from 'Edge of Chaos', and what I think was a 'Daedalus' from those Galactic Starship books of the late 70s. It is nevertheless mostly the Serenity, with some slightly different engines underneath.

Anyway, while walking past it and admiring it, I notice I am free and the guards are walking on without noticing, still holding the zip-locks. Neat. I become the ship at that point, and fly away. I become a bird and fly between stars and nebulas, but at the same time I know that I am also being tortured in the Spire.

And then I woke up.

I haven't had intense imagery like that for quite a while. It's also nearly 2pm, and I know that I have forgotten over three quarters of the dream, I didn't get a chance to write anything till lunch.

Where that one came from and where it was going, I have no idea. Geomagnetic disturbances? I have leftovers of that chicken for dinner tonight, I think I may have some goat's cheese with biscuits for supper too!

I am a leaf on the wind...