Zenstar's Universe

EXODUS!

2006-08-26T21:38:00.000+02:00

i've been shanghied!
since i had to create a username in wordpress to join the thurteem blog, i decided to move this blog over there too. partly because blogger can be pig-slow from varsity, partly because moonflake said it was good, and partly because of peer pressure (i'm cool right? right? riiight?).
anyway. new adress is:
zenstar.wordpress.com
bet you coulda guessed that one right ;)
if you're interested in how the cooking went (i'm still alive if i'm typing this) then you need to head on over and read the post entitled refry.
see you there (don't forget to update your bookmarks... *laugh* like any of you actually bookmark this page)

you can't eat binary

2006-08-25T11:38:00.000+02:00

cooking has always been a kind of binary system to me in the past.
you see, either there was someone there to cook for me (i love you moonflake;) or there was someone willing to take money from me and give me cooked food.
microwave tv dinners do not count as cooking in my opinion. neither does opening a packet of chips or making a sandwich. (otherwise we'd have a trinary, quadary, or quintary systems and that's just weird)

of course we're not talking metaphorical cooking here, otherwise i can really cook if you know what i mean *wink* *mac-face* "how you doing?"
ok... maybe i'm not quite the metaphorical chef either, but the point here is: barring a few pancakes and some omlettes, i've never really needed to cook.
first i was living with my parents, then i was making enough money not to need to cook, then i moved in with moonflake...
then moonflake got sent overseas for a couple of weeks...

since moonflake knows me well (she should do by now) she made me promise that i'd make myself food from the freezer.
you see my laziness outweighs my hunger on most occasions. i don't cook not because i don't know how, but because i'm too lazy to try (plus: i do the dishes).
having friends who buy you chip & cheese occasionally doesn't help my cooking skills either (thanks james:)

but the more astute of you will have noticed the phrase "in the past," in the first sentence of this post.
that's right folks. i've mastered the art of reading the back of the box of some frozen, crumbed chicken pieces.
they were hot, but cooked properly.
i may even attempt to make some more for lunch today.
i may go as far as making some sort of accompanying side-dish.
we have some of that microwave rice stuff...
i'm sure i can handle reading the instructions on that packet.

the more i think of it, the more cooking is like ordering from the menu at a restaraunt.
only this menu makes you run around and set timers and things.
it's kinda like being the customer and the waiter all rolled into one...
well my waiter is not getting a tip unless i get some garnish or sprinkles of stuff and drizzles of sauce like they do in restaruants where there's more sauce and sprinkles than food.
well.. actually i suppose it's like being the customer and the cook since i don't really take my own orders (yeah. i'm crazy like that!).

note: i say "cook" not "chef."
if i was a chef i'd do more of the drizzles and sprinkles (is it just me or does that sound like something you shouldn't be doing near food preperation?) and i'd probably have a french accent.
maybe i'll upgrade to chef status after i make some rice.
then i'll be using 2 appliances at the same time to create a unique dining pleasure: chicken and rice.

hmm... that needs a name with more flare.
chook and grain? nah... too auzzie slang.
foul and pilaf? nah... not catchy enough.
bird 'n bead! yes... it's got that catchy sort of name used by trendy little coffee shops that charge far too much for the simple lunches they serve and hire the most annoying waiters. luckily for me i don't have to deal with the waiter (i hope i don't spit in my food though.)

bird 'n bead: tender, succulent chicken breasts grilled to perfection and perfectly complimented by a generous helping of taste-tastic brown rice.

read: frozen chicken pieces warmed up in an oven with however much rice comes in a bag. the chicken will hopefully be cooked as long as the "chef" follows the intructions and the rice will be whatever flavour is in the cupboard. the "chef" probably won't screw it up. good luck. be warned all ye who order here!

the pressure

2006-08-24T11:15:00.000+02:00

i feel a need to blog
the only problem is that my blogging attitude seems to be going through a phase of dissatisfaction at the moment.
this blog has gone through a couple of variations in the past and probably will go through many more.

its been a kinda diary thing
its been a source of odd news
its been a rant page
its been a humour column
its been various permutations and combinations of the above
there have been pictures and trivia

the problem i have now is: where do i go from here?
currently i find my hobbies (the bountifull plethora of them) to be running short of time. this means i have to prioritise things and recently i haven't had anything good to blog about.
normally the prioritisation tires me out and i need a nap.
in fact napping often takes a very high priority.
i must be getting old.

it just seems like my available time is always inversly proportional to my required time.
i really don't feel like coding at 04h30 in the morning again.
i wake up with my eyes feeling like pieces of coal after nights like that.

so what's next?
i don't know... things'll probably be a little sporadic.
i may do the diary thing again.
who knows?
i guess you'll just have to stay tuned!

note:

2006-08-23T12:36:00.000+02:00

synkronos is blogging again.

i can smell the crazy

2006-08-16T11:28:00.000+02:00

so i'm out with a few friends over the weekend and after a nice supper we head on over to the local pool hall.
now this pool place is on the first floor and has an outside balcony bit where you can go when your ears begin to bleed from the music inside.
3 of us planted ourselves there and began to chat about the meaning of life, world affairs, descarte's philosophies, the dichotomy of good and evil, the nature of the human soul, etc (read: "we talked shit for a long time").
suddenly michael jackson on crack appears.
it was like a thriller flashback... if his leather jacket had had any red in it i would've hidden the children right then and there!
this dodgy looking black guy (i make reference to his race only to strengthen the mj image and because it becomes important later) in a black leather jacket and 80's style black jeans oozes onto the balcony and stands *right* next to us (in spite of the balcony being 90% unnocupied due to the cold) like he's trying to huddle up for warmth.
he also puts his back to the wall and sneaks glances through the door like some sort of smooth criminal hiding from the law. made me wonder if there were any children crying inside, but since its a no under-18's place i thought not.
you could smell the crazy!

smelling the crazy is a survival tactic that needs to be learnt if you want to survive (especially in south africa).
in fact you need to learn it if you just want to have a successful relationship that doesn't end in attempted homicide.
forget all that bullshit relationship advice out there about what to talk about and how to have the perfect date etc...
guys, you want real relationship advice?
learn to smell the crazy!
and don't be a dick...
women aren't looking for crazy dicks unless its a one-night kinda affair. and even then they're looking more for freaky than crazy.
your best relationship tool is your crazy-o-meter.
if the girl is coo-coo for coco-puffs then you need to bail like sane rats off the crazy ship.
some helpful indicators of crazy (non-gender specific):
eyes twitch randomly.
when blinking, one eye starts first and then the other.
froths at the mouth.
likes celine dion.
compares everything to the ex.
says thinks like "i'm the illest mutherfucker you ever saw."

that's right. mj pretty much introduced himself by informing us that he "lived in a world that we will never know" (its called crazytown you freak!) and that we "lived in a world that [he] would never know" (its called reality).
and then he told us that he was the "illest mutherfucker [we] ever saw."
by this point the smell of crazy was turning into something more like a palatable taste of crazy like bitter honey that warned of bodily harm.
this guy definitely had the attitude that said: "i wanna be startin' somethin'."
we tried the tactic of smile slightly, nod occasionally, and avoid eye-contact, but he just wouldn't go away and he kept talking until eventually one of my friends cracked and tried to reason with him.

reasoning does not work with crazy people!
how do you tell someone crazy that they're crazy when they're obviously the only sane person in the world, right? right??? right!!!!??!
unfortunately, by acknowleding his existence he had been given power, just like the staypuff marshmellow man was given form.
and from there it went downhill.
mj decided that my friend didn't like him and so he did the only sane thing: ask my friend to hit him. in fact he offered us his hands so that we could hold him while our friend hit him.
we refused. i think that may have confused him.
that's about when he broke out the good old new south africa classic:
(this is where his race becomes important. all 3 of us are white. he's black)
he calls us racist.

being "fucking nuts" (clinincal term) is not race dependent.
we didn't like you because we could smell the crazy on you. and because you were aggressive and trying to start a fight.
but that's just a part of being "fucking nuts!"
you could be green with blue polka-dots and we wouldn't have wanted to talk to you - Because You Are Crazy!
not because you're black, it doesn't matter if you're black or white.
if you call racist without an actual reason then you fall into the "fucking moron" category. If you don't have the brainpower to actually formulate an opinion or response, but instead simply shout "racist" when someone disagrees with you then you are a waste of biological material.
so: moronic, agressive, *and* nuts.
wow. i wonder why people don't like talking to you.

that attitude definitely won't heal the world.
luckily bullshitting is an art, and my friend has done a degree in fine arts (which is like refined bullshitting).
with some flair (and the phrase: "waxing the cryptic" which reminded me of the phrase: "bite the wax tadpole") the verbal war began.
mj started to become more confused and went on about "talking straight" and actually asked my friend not to use such "large terminologichal" words.
moron.
eventually i think he relised that we weren't going to fight and we didn't give a fuck if he thought we were racist or not.
he mumbled something about his "three-fifty-seven" and "coming back to the club tomorrow and killing every mother."
now i'm fairly sure that he was trying to be all self-debasing to highlight what he thought was racism here. problem was that with that amount of crazy you never can tell...

the night resumed to fairly pleasent after he fucked off back inside. we even spoke to some not crazy people (some of whom were, in fact, not white *gasp!*).
turns out mj had been bothering people inside too, we discovered when we met up with our friends again.
people like that make me want to scream.

locked in a box

2006-08-04T11:14:00.000+02:00

varsity air, being half-way to space, is obviously depriving our sys-admin of vital oxygen supplies.
i say this because we're all using firefox on kubuntu.
while they do the job that they were designed to do, so does your ass (unless you've got a colostomy bag), and some of the features of both resemble each other.
for example: the kubuntu colour scheme is very brown.
i'd say "baby brown" or even "purity veg brown."
but certain special things that firefox does, especially when combined with the kubuntu operating system, make it extra, super-number-one, hyper, anime-style-over-the-top crappy.
the equivalent "ass" comparison would be to spontanously start shitting out of your belly-button because you accidently changed the tv to the wrong channel.
annoying? yes!
uncomfortable? i'd say so.
messy? certainly!
unwanted side effect? most definitely (unless you're some sort of freak)!

what am i talking about specifically?
well... you know that F5 is the refresh key right???
(for those non "tech-savvy": F5 is, in fact, the refresh key)
and you know how web pages can get cached so you get yesterday's news when you want today's?
(for those non "tech-savvy": again, true... just believe everything i say from this point on... send all your money to me and you'll have a better life!)
now a normal pushing of F5 results in a refresh that calls the cached page again.
to refresh through the cache you need to push one of the following:
shift + F5 or
ctrl + F5 or
alt + F5.
now i never rember which combination it is and i come from the old school of computing where such long combinations as "ctrl" + "alt" + "del" + "swear at bluescreen" were commonplace.
so my solution to the problem: ctrl + alt + shift + F5.
kubuntu's answer to this unique and wonderful solution of pure elegance:
switch off the gui (graphical user interface to you... the "windows bit") and dump you into the DOS-like "konsole"
(stupid fragging kubuntu and its "k" names. was it designed by the kreators of mortal kombat?)

now while i grew up on DOS and feel very komfortable in it i do not want to try surf the web or check my mail in it.
(besides: ascii porn just isn't where its at)
the worst part about this invasive interaction: no konfirmation box!
no little window popping up saying "we're about to ram something unpleasant up there without using lube. are you sure you want to kontinue?"
they just go right ahead and shove you're lovely windows interface where the sun don't shine.
when people tell me that linux/unix is better because you have more power over things etc i think of this and am reminded that i don't mind the odd prompting and forward thinking of a good operating system.

now i see you're all a little konfounded.
"what about firefox?" i hear you wail with gnashing of teeth and klenching of sphincters.
how is firefox involved in this other than the katalyst for the "everything + F5" shortkut?
i'll tell you how:
firefox is stupid!
to prevent you accidently running multiple kopies that access the same profile and screw things up firefox writes a kouple of "lock" files.
if the lock files exist, then you kan't access that profile (including bookmarks and kache etc).
sounds like a good idea right?
wrong!
when firefox krashes (or if you accidently dump yourself to the konsole and need to reboot) the lock files get left behind.
what does this mean? this means that next time you try to run firefox it tells you to go screw yourself and doesn't run.
wtf?
back to the ass analogy: firefox has applied duct tape to the whole area, sealing off all access and blocking proper flow of execution.
now the problem is fixable if you know where to look and what to delete... but delete too much and you're losing the profile anyway.
why it doesn't just check if firefox is actually running (check what services are running) before telling you that "firefox is already running" i'll never know.
and i don't know why it doesn't pop up a helpful little window saying: "we think this profile is already in use, but if things fucked out and we're currently dicking you around then press the 'reset your stupid locks' button and firefox will be start to function again."
(so much for all your supposed unix/linux power and kontrol)

for the non tech-savvy lets have a more real-world analogy here:
you need to use the photocopier and you have your own photocopier in a special room in the photocopier building.
you go over to the building, find your photocopier room and begin photocopying.
(i don't know what you're photocopying... some important documents or your ass or something)
unbeknownst to you, the photocopy machine has locked you into this room while you're using it and the keys have been hung on the back of the door, amongst a whole set of other keys.
you accidently push the wrong button and the photocopier explodes, blowing your shoes off, and a man in military uniform appears.
let's call him colonel crash (*snigger* techie joke).
the colonel drags you out of the window and dumps you in the street outside (where everything is black and white and very sparse).
you replace your missing shoes, or re-boot (*sigh* terrible techie pun) and head back into the photocopier building to finish your work only to discover...
*dun-dun-daaaaaah*

your door is still locked.
not only that, but all doors are locked now and every time you try to open one you hear a voice saying "this door is already open. to open this door you must close it first."
now there are a couple of solutions to your problem here:
1) climb in through the window, search through all the keys and find the right set of keys, unlock the door and walk out so that you can turn around and walk back in (only to get locked inside again).
or
2) knock down the building and replace it with a sleek office-block where you don't get locked into rooms and helpful people ask you if you want to be an idiot before hitting you in the face with a klub.

the climb to enlightened violence

2006-08-03T10:28:00.000+02:00

i woke up early this morning.
i woke up really early this morning.
i woke up really early after going to bed really late.
i woke up really early after too little sleep just for the purpose of getting up to varsity without needing to rush and hurry like the last few days.
i made an extra-special effort to set my alarm early and wake up super-early so that i could amble up to varsity in a relaxed manner so that i was fully prepared to absorb knowledge in my comsci lecture.
i made a superhuman effort to prepare myself for an early morning in spite of the evils of television reduceing my sleeping hours to but a scant handfull.

i then went back to sleep and had to rush up to varsity.
i rushed up for my one and only lecture of the day.
on thursdays i have one lecture in the morning and that's it. no more. no less (or so i thought).
and it was cancelled (definite possibility of less then).
thoughtlessly and inhumanely cancelled.
i could have woken gracefully into the day and done all sorts of useful things instead of being dumped into an awake state like a bum off a train cart before it pulls into the station.

the excuse given was that the lecturer was sick.
pfft.
she could be no worse off than i.
i'm still suffering from some bastard cold from outer space.
every time i get to campus my left ear gets block from the change in altitude and refuses to unblock until just before i decide to leave, providing hours of amusement on the way home as i return to a more normal atmosphere remember... my university is a short mountain-climb away from actual civilization.
its kinda like a shaolin temple, only filled with idiots in stead of monks. And the buildings are nowhere as nice. And i don't think there's a prayer wheel anywhere to be found.

but my impending eardrum rupturing fun and search for enlightenment in the freezing dark of the winter morning is not the point.
the point is she shoulda sucked it up and come in to lecture.
if i have to drag myself out of bed before riding a mountain goat to the lecture venue (ok... its a bus... but i have to walk to the bus) then the least she could do is drive in her comfy car, park in her reserved spot, and bore us to death for 45 minutes.

hmm.... actually that doesn't sound so fantastic.
ok. what about this:
she can take as many sick days as she wants as long as she phones me to let me know that i don't need to break out the ice picks and carabiners in the morning.
then i can lie in bed comfortable in the knowledge that i'm not learning important information that will be asked in the exams at the end of the year.

hmm.... actually that doesn't sound so fantastic either.
all right:
she can be as sick as she wants as wants as long as i get 5% added to my final marks every time she coughs, 8% for a sneeze, 10% per sick day, and a whopping 20% if there are any technicoloured yawns involved, 25% if there's blood.
that sounds fair to me.
i could pass with one conversation to god on the big white phone followed by a "get well soon" baseballbat blow to the face.
of course i'd have to claim the wheeze of air leaving her body was a cough.
And no-one would be able to find out who spiked the drinking water at the lecture podium otherwise they might claim something about unfair marking practices.

you know something... i'd do a lot more varsity courses if that was the marking scheme.
hell! with some of the lecturers i've had, i'd be doing so well people would be sponsoring me to stay in varsity.

"resonant attack wave of doughy flesh"

2006-08-02T12:16:00.000+02:00

you know what really pisses me off?
stupid people!
you know what pisses me off more than stupid people?
stupid people who don't understand the concept of "personal space!"
you know what pisses me off more than stupid people who don't understand the concept of personal space?
obese stupid people who don't understand the concept of personal space.
and you know what pisses me off more than obese stupid people who don't understand the concept of personal space?
having to stand in line with them!
if there is a hell then there's a long line in front of the entrance.

now i'm not talking your average, run-of-the-mill overweight person here...
i'm talking full-blown, knee cracking, deadly sin style obese where the person wheezes because the weight on their chest is causing breathing difficulties.
the type of person that somehow defies the laws of physics because their leg bones should splinter as soon as they take a single step...
maybe they're walking on solid fat? maybe it calcifies in the center and forms a kind of fat-bone?
i mean the american indians used to use every part of the bison, but these people would eat the whole thing in a single sitting... as a snack... and still be hungry!
now there seems to be a certain culture in south africa that values massive, death-star proportions in women (something caveman-like about wealthy due to being well fed.) but you see it in almost every culture...
i think its a "trash" thing: you know, trailer trash, ghetto trash, etc...
it always seems to be the people that can't afford to live and requires a handout that looks like they spend more than you earn on food every day.
now i know the arguments about junk food being cheap etc... but that's not what i'm talking about here so go argue with someone else about why their fat.

all i'm saying is that if you wire their jaws shut then they wouldn't be so large.
and genetics has nothing to do with it. genetics say you put the fat on your ass or on your nose or whatever... unless you have whale genes in you, you have no excuse to be obese.
overweight i can understand and i have no problem with. overweight is a lifestyle choice and doesn't make someone cough up a mouthful of vomit when they see an overweight person eating.
obese is just plain disgusting.

now the real reason for today's blog:
standing in line with the type of person who looks like they have their own gravity. (maybe that's the problem? food gravitates towards them and they need to eat their way out of a debris field of doritos and chocolate bars so that they can see the tv from the couch where they park their lazy, truck-sized asses!)
i try to avoid lines if i can as i'm sure we all do. no-one likes to spend time staring at someone else's back and drooling quietly, but sometimes its unavoidable. sometimes you just need to see a bank teller or (my more regular problem) you need to wait in line to catch the bus up to university.
unfortunately i have to do this almost every morning. i would walk except the geniuses that built my university decided to put it halfway up a mountain. this means that i could kill myself walking up in the mornings and not be able to hear the lecturer over my gasping cries for air in the rarefied atmosphere that comes with high altitudes, or i could catch the bus up.
i walk down from varsity and am quite happy to get the exercise, but in the morning i need to get in line.

now whenever i'm standing in line there always seems to be one of these obese people that enters the line behind me... and that's when the jostling begins.
until you reach the front of the line and escape, or until your sanity cracks and you run away (vowing never to return, yet you always do) you will be bumped and shoved and prodded by whatever flabby part is closest at hand, or stomache, or elbow...
for some reason these obese people think they need to stand closer to me than a skinny person does.
hey! man who looks like he just ate his way to this point in the line... don't you know where your body ends?

seriously... do obese people not have a spatial awareness of their size? surely they can see the horizon of their distended bellies encroaching on me as they waddle down the line?
maybe excess fat results in bad eyesight?
either way i get continuously and annoyingly jostled... and it really annoys the fuck out of me!
i make sure that i'm not bodily violating the person in front of me by keeping a step back from them so that we both have a little space to move and breathe, and it really fucks me off when someone else doesn't do the same for me.
i don't want to be touched by you and fondled by your protruding nipple-flab-spears.
so what ends up happening??? i have to close the gap with the person in front of me to try get some distance from the cloying tentacles.
what does mr/mrs 5-chickens-for-lunch do? they think the lines moving and so they move forward.
maybe their trying to hook a roll onto me so that i carry some of their weight for the wait???

of course in south africa whenever you get bumped you think you're getting your pockets picked. well, i do ever since i've caught people trying to pick my pockets (and not in the good way). so whenever i get bumped i begin patting myself down to check everything is still there.
of course jumbo will continue to bump you over and over and over and over like chinese water torture and involving more chicken grease!

maybe obese people do stop before getting to you and their momentum simply carries loose weight round to their front where it ends up in some sort of resonant attack wave of doughy flesh that they are somehow unaware of.
or maybe their nerves are streched so much that the messages get tired before reaching the brain and give up so they are never informed of the fact that their bellybutton keeps trying to make intimate contact with your ear.
or maybe they're just used to things poking them as they walk down corridors and walkways designed to accomidate people of the same dimensions of the family they just ate and not someone who looks like they've just eaten a family of people.
so used to being poked that even short elbow jabs are ignored, leaving you iritated and madly doing train impressions with your arms trying to fight for a little breathing space before jubba completely crushes you.

and then there's the obese woman with her handbag!
a true demon who has studied the art of creatively getting you to lose your cool and kill.
why do you need to keep turning around and hooking my back with the corner of your ugly, unwieldy, apparently metal, bag of pain?
what do you need such a massive bag for anyway?
is it refridgerated?
i assume its a pantry in case you get stuck more that 5 minutes away from an eatery of some sort and need to sustain yourself until the sun burns out and the world ends.
get your giant sack of hurt away from me and take your giant sack of fat with you!

i'd suggest that these obese personal space offenders walk around with a hoola-hoop around them to learn the "comfort zone" of people, except i don't think they could get the hoola hoop over their 27th chin, nevermind around their waist.
next time i need to get in a line i think i'll take a donut with me and when the staypuff man decides to hump me with his belly i'll just throw it towards the back of the line and hope i get someone skinny and xenophobic behind me.
then i'll cough!

universe conspires to prevent internet access to information-starved student

2006-08-01T11:23:00.000+02:00

so i'm back at varsity now (actually i was back yesterday, but i had stuff to do in the afternoon) which should mean that i've got net access again.
unfortunately all the machines were off when i went to the labs today. probably a server down again.
you'd think that a computer science department could keep a small computer lab up and running for a few days without major problems.
you'd be wrong of course, but you'd think it anyway.
so this is a notepad/dialup colaboration again.
hopefully tomorrow things'll be sorted and i'll have actuall access again.
i have notes to get, blogs to read, and stuff to download dammit!
good side of returning to university: i got my marks back from last semester.
apparently it was too much effort for the computer science department to put marks up on the web.
in fact it was too much effort to even send their usual little letter.
"what did they do?" i hear you wonder with anticipation...
...
..
they printed out a list of the marks and stuck it on the notice board.
whoo. tech savvy! you need to know how to use a printer *and* thumbtacks!
i guess they didn't think that students who were working during the holidays didn't want to know their marks (unless they wanted to risk being assaulted on campus in the dark hours. btw: another proffessor got attacked at uct these holidays)
i guess students who don't live in cape town and were spending time with their parents don't care about their marks either.
and it was some mix-up with just me (i checked). other students only got their marks upon returning to campus at the start of lectures.
maybe its a computer science thing. they have websites and news forums for every comsci course but they can't maintain a working lab and use hardcopy printouts as the only means of comunicating important information.
morons!

so i'm listening to the radio as i walk down from varsity today and the dj is giving tips on "how not to have a breakdown at your desk just before leaving on holiday."
now correct me if i'm wrong (actually... don't) but holiday season just ended here didn't it? school holidays ended just a short while ago and university holidays have just come to an end. talk about horses, bolting and doors.
anyway, the (airquote) advice went something along these lines:
start winding down before going on holiday. start about a week early.
(this sounds like some hippy scam to get paid for a week's holiday already)
gather supporters: tell people that you're going on holiday in a week and that you are begining to wind down now so if you're late for a meeting they'll know and say (and i quote here) "she's going on holiday soon. she's allowed to be 10 minutes late."
(wtf? this dj has obviously never actually had a job. i bet she's some homeless person that found a microphone and accidently hooked it up to a transmitter)
incorporate other people into your work early so that you don't leave with unfinished work. (sounds plausible so far) do the work with them so that by the time you leave they're doing the work that you'll be leaving with them.
(ah... stop working a week early and tell people they'd better do your work because they'll be responsible when the deadline hits and you'll be on a beach in mexico, unreached by the blame)
there was more to the list that she promised to read out later.
i'm waiting in anticipation... no wait. that's not what i meant. i meant that other thing: who cares!

basically the dj is saying "don't do any work and you'll be nice and relaxed when holiday time comes along."
you know what? holidays are meant to be the time you unwind. work time is the time you work. (wow! what an odd notion)
if you don't do any work you don't need a holiday!
look at homeless people... they don't have a job and they sure as hell don't need a holiday.
a homeless person needs a holiday like they need another diploma in html design.
i'm not trying to poo-poo html designers here, i'm just saying if you want a good looking website hire a homeless person.
the site may smell a bit like fish and the home button may look like a cardboard box, but it'll be swish.

ok... maybe you gotta be in the states to get good homeless html.
here in south africa if you hire a homeless person to design a websit for you, you'll probably end up with vomit on your keyboard, your dustbin upended with that 3 day old sandwich crust missing, and the homeless guy will be nice and cozy at night snuggling up to his new monitor while he sleeps under the bridge at night.
"it was thrown away... i swear... some guy ran past and just gave it to me."
seriously... i've seen homeless people with monitors.
perfectly good looking monitors.
ok, they may not be 19 inch plasma screens, but if you're homeless you'll make do with a crt i'm sure.
especially when you've got nothing to plug it into. and that includes power.
fuck knows where he got that from. i'd say he stole it, but even that is too much work for the standard south african homeless person to do.
i mean, i've seen homeless people wet themselves because they couldn't be bothered to stand up and piss behind the phone exchange box like they normally do.
seriously.
and it's not like he didn't have the energy or anything. 5 minutes later the same guy was standing outside a tv shop watching some football or rugby game.
he just couldn't be bothered to stand up to piss. or even unzip to piss...
its why they don't make pants waterproof right? so that liquids can pass straight out... i mean if you smell that bad already then what's a little extra urine gonna do?

well that's it for today.
hopefully i'll have real access again soon and blogging will return to normal (and i'll be able to read some blogs too).
btw: half of this post was written on my laptop while i sat on the toilet.
not because i was lazy (i actually pulled my pants down before abluting) but because i didn't want to forget that "home button may look like a cardboard box" bit :)
man that's some funny shit.
what do you mean "no it wasn't?"
it was if you had a sense of humour you damn comedy fascist!
go away and do some real work now you slackers!

been busy

2006-06-17T14:03:00.000+02:00

well the exams went ok.
i'm now busy helping out at my dad's shop.
hopefully i'll only be needed for the following week.
then i'll get some actually holiday, lazy time.
maybe then i'll be able to go abuse the internet up at varsity.
until then...

another speedy update...

2006-06-05T15:36:00.000+02:00

just a quick report back.
the exam on friday went ok.
as i suspected, the first half was tough but the second half was easy.
i expect a decent pass for that.

moonflake and i spent saturday watching battlestar galactic
(the new movie and series)
we finished the last few episodes on sunday morning.
(thanks holey crusader for lending it to us)
it was pretty decent except for a couple of irritating things.
some of the characters make stupid choices.

a military man choosing the government's side over the military,
later he chooses a terrorist's side over the government's.
inconcistent!
there was no real character growth leading to these decisions.
i think george lucas is secretly writing for some of the characters...
(yes. sometimes it is that annoying)

also i think the whole religious aspect is a bit overboard.
the president starts seeing visions after taking some hippy cancer drugs,
(i did like the bit where the doctor says: "oh. you're one of those." after she asks for the hippy remedy)
and then gets roped into believing she's some sort of messiah...
and everyone who finds out just goes along with it.
unrealistic!

some of the characters are more believable...
like the psylon (sp?) agent who doesn't know she's a psylon, but suspects it...
and doctor bulthar (sp again?) is fantastic.
is he mad (and mad lucky) or has he got something implanted in his head?
there are some real fun story lines and it was great to watch.
especially great when you don't need to wait a week between episodes.
and i wouldn't mind seeing the next season...
(the first ends in a huge cliffhanger)
but overall i'd rather see another series of firefly.
or see some better character writers get involved.

any way.
next exam on the 13th.
thats a week after my birthday :)
yep...
this year my birthday is the 6/6/6.
birthday of the beast!
(and i don't mean the blue guy).

anyway.
i'll update again when i can.

sporadic update

2006-06-02T14:47:00.000+02:00

to everyone that wished me good luck for my exams: thanks.
just a quick update before i go off to write an exam.
for some reason it starts at 16h00...
and is 2 hours long (or one and a half... the lecturers seem undecided).
pfft...
typical uct organisation.
anyway.

i've been studying and playing soul calibur 3.
that's about it.
nothing really exciting.

schpat brought around some ask a ninja podcasts last night.
they are damn funny.
basically: it's a ninja. he answers questions in a uniquely ninja way.
go have a look.
and a quick link: another artist site. (also a shadowrun artist)
r.k. post has some damn cool art.

study week etc

2006-05-30T10:49:00.000+02:00

i'm not not blogging because i don't want to... it's because i'm in the middle of exams (well.. about to start) and then there's varsity holidays.
net connection at home is dial up and the only reason i'm doing this now is because i needed to check my exam timetable and download a zip file full of notes for my one course.
i'll try update when i can.
this also means i don't get to read any blogs either :(
oh well...

the answer to the last quote:
teenage mutant ninja turtles :)

oh... go see xmen 3!
it was awesome.
the movie quote game will continue when i get back to proper blogging (about a month from now).

dream armour scrap

2006-05-25T11:14:00.000+02:00

answer:
blade runner. first quote: bryant tries to convince deckard to go after the replicants. second quote: tyrell talking to deckard about the replicant test.

and today's quote(s):
[delivery guy]: "Hey, this is a 10. The tab is 13!"
[name removed]: "You're two minutes late, dude."
[delivery guy]: "Aw come on, I couldn't find the place!"
[name removed]: "Wise man say: forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
[delivery guy]: "I gotta get a new route. And I thought I delivered everywhere."

hints:
the film was released in 1990.
EXTRA HINT:
think 4 artists
EXTRA EXTRA HINT:
think martial arts
FINAL EXTRA HINT:
vanilla ice starred in the second movie

i forgot to mention this yesterday:
i was outside after a lecture and there's this big trailer parked behind the comsci building. some people pitch up with a bunch of pc boxes that have "SCRAP" written in permanent marker on the outside and they begin manhandling the pcs into the trailer.
i got a look at some of the insides: ram, cpu, mo'bo, cdrom drive... all still intact. all still inside.
i managed to chat to one of the guys that works for IT here and he said that they don't test the stuff they scrap because it just takes too long.
sometimes they leave entire scsi setups in the boxes.
and some of the machines they're scrapping are pIII's.
perfectly working tech being trashed.
basically these scrap vultures pay a couple of bob per box and then turn it into scrap metal. all they're interested in is the box.
man... it was saddening to see.
i don't know about you but i'd happily accept a working pIII, pII, or even pentium.
(moonflake would probably be upset with me for making more of a mess in the flat than i normally do)
you could do a lot with those things...
my dad is still running a pentium (p1 dammit). i'd upgrade him to at least pII if i had one.
plus they'd make a sweet firewall/proxy for when we finally get adsl.
plus, sweet platform to play old dos games on.
get enough of them and you could create a small cluster and supercompute stuff.
hell, i'd dig through the machines just hunting down pc-133 memory to add to my machine.
(yes... i still run an old pIII 800. someday i'll join the bleeding edge of computing again)
*sigh*
what a waste.

i had another odd dream or two last night.
i was away with a bunch of people, most of whom were staying in this log cabin thing in a field.
for some reason a few of us were a short distance from the cabin in a dirt road and i was looking up at the night sky.
the moon was looking full, when all of a sudden i notice a line down the middle of it.
watching intently, i see the line grow thicker and thicker and thats when i notice that its a reflector of a sattelite that i'm seeing edge-on.
it turns and a tranclucent gold reflector becomes visible as the sattelite passes overhead, only a few hundred meters high.
the feeling of awe was palatable.
continuing to watch, it comes crashing down in a field in front of the log cabin and some of it bounces onto the cabin.
while everyone rushes to make sure the people in the cabin are ok (i knew they were... assesing the damage done to the cabin told me that) i go off to the field to start gathering reflector bits.
when someone asks me what i'm doing i tell them that i'm collecting the reflector for moonflake. she'll be so happy to get a piece of an actual sattelite.
(i wonder if this has anything to do with our previous conversation about moonrock, how cool it'd be to own, and how much money you could make selling it.)
eventually i wake up.

shift position, close my eyes...

and i'm riding a bicycle down a highway (safely in the yellow lane).
eventually i take a turnoff and stop for a quick rest and to get my bearings.
i know i'm heading for a destination (in that dream knowledge way) but that seemed unimportant to the rest of the dream.
i go cycling through a suburb, looking at the houses as a drift by.
eventually some girl asks me for a lift and ends up alternately sitting in the parcel basket in front or walking next to me while we meander through the suburb.
at some point we pass through someone's house (they had 2 dogs) and into some more back streets.
finally arriving at a cul de sac that has an entrance to a rather large property with multiple buildings and lots of red dust.
we rode around there for a while and then i woke up.
odd.

and wow-europe has some nice armour pictures :)

just your average day

2006-05-24T12:36:00.000+02:00

answer to quote:
the devil's advocate. not too difficult to get. al pacino plays a great part.

today's quote(s):
[person 1]: "They jumped a shuttle off-world, killed the crew and passengers. We found the shuttle drifting off the coast two weeks ago, so we know they're around."
[person 2]: "Embarrassing."
[person 1]: "No sir. Not Embarrassing because no one's ever going to find out they're down here. 'Cause you're gonna spot 'em and you're gonna air 'em out!"
[person 2]: "I don't work here anymore. Give it to Holden. He's good."
[person 1]: "I did. He can breathe okay as long as nobody unplugs him."

hints:
another quote:
[person 3]: "Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris..."
[person 2]: "We call it Voight-Kampff for short."
EXTRA HINT:
skin-jobs
EXTRA EXTRA HINT (NB: WILL MAKE THIS EASY):
harrison ford, rutger hauer.

not much going on again today (been a real slow week hasn't it?).
i've been browsing the shadowrun site more and more.
its rekindling the need to play a shadowrun game again.
i must mug yancke for the 3rd ed. rulebook.
it has become my duty!
(i'd be fine with a copy of 4th ed. too)
ahem... any way...
i came across some art previews and followed a couple of the links.
one of the artists (kevin wasden) has recently started a blogger blog called splinter.
(www.kevinwasden.blogspot.com)
and he has a website too of course.
(www.kevinwasden.com)
another artisit, klaus scherwinski has a website full of art too.
(www.klausscherwinski.de)
klaus also has a couple of desktop images up for downloading (including an awsome optimus prime illustration).

i found an amusing conflict of articles HERE and HERE.
basically, eskom (power company) is going to spend a bunch of ca$h on promoting gas over electricity to get people to switch (and ease our beaten electricity grid... stupid government...).
they're subsidising the switching of electric stuff (cooking hobs, heaters, etc) for gas equivalents by giving massive discounts to people who hand over the electic stuff.
quick side note: the article claims (in a positive manner) " Two thousand appliances have been exchanged in Khayelitsha and Langa in the past few weeks."
problem with that is this: khayelitsha and langa are "informal settlements" (ie: a bunch of shacks made with whatever crap their occupants could find/steal) and they regularly have disasterous fires because some moronic fuckwit leaves his gas stove or heater unattended. and when a shack goes up in flames all its neighbours go up too because there's no clearance between their highly flammable shit-huts. would it be wrong if i thought "oh well... a few less criminals, beggars, and drains on social welfare" ?
probably. it'd probably be more wrong if i blogged that here.
back to the main story though (and possibly khayelitsha and langa's only hope).
so there's a big push for electric to gas conversion.
but the other article has this to say: " Gas shortages have hit the country because major gas supplier Afrox has run short of cylinders."
yep. afrox supply 50% of the gas and they've run out of cylinders until the manufacturer opens shop again in a few weeks time (fuck knows why they're not open now). another major supplier of gas (easigas) had no comment as they're top brass couldn't be contacted.
some bright spark managed to accidently bump 2 braincells together and came up with this: " Preetha Harikishun from a petrol station in Clubview said it was not really a shortage the company was experiencing, but an increase in sales."
do you have the stuff to sell? no! so an increase in sales has resulted in a shortage dumbass!
to sum everything up: eskom is throwing money away, there's a gas shortage, dumbasses are making stupid comments, and shacks are going to burn on a more regular basis.
at least the people living in khyaletsha and langa will be kept warm by the flames that are burning them to death.
me personally: i'll stick to electric heaters and cookers. besides, i've got a decent duvet.
man, i wish i had a blanket like that though.

short post again

2006-05-23T11:42:00.000+02:00

answer from yesterday:
willow. high aldwin telling burglecutt which way to go.

today's quote:
"There's this beautiful girl just fucked me forty ways from Sunday... we're done, she's walking to the bathroom, she's trying to walk, she turns... she looks... it's me. Not the Trojan army just fucked her. Little ol' me. She gets this look on her face like: 'How the hell did that happen?'"
name the movie.

hints:
think lawyers.
EXTRA HINT
al pacino.

quick news:
acording to mr angry: egg is in fact available on pizzas in australia.
it seems it is popped on top raw and cooks in the oven.
i can understand that.
it might even be good.

gaming news:
the playstation 2 is getting a treat (in my opinion): appleseed.
magicbox has more pictures.
sega are aiming for japanese release in sept 2006, it looks reminicent of ghost in the shell: stand alone complex (also playstation 2).
it seems to be a 3rd person action game.
cannot wait.
appleseed manga was written by masumane shirow, the same man to write the ghost in the shell manga.
the games are by different companies however (bandai v sega) in spite of the similar look.

happy birthday sir arthur conan doyle

2006-05-22T12:07:00.000+02:00

yep. the creator of sherlock holmes was born 22nd may 1859.
(random trivia for you)

the answer to yesterday's quote (yadda yadda):
johnny mnemonic. johnny is unhappy about slumming it :(

and today's quote(s):
[person1]: [throws an apple into the air which turns into a bird] "Go in the direction the bird is flying!"
[person2]: "He's going back to village!"
[person1]: "Ignore the bird. Follow the river."
know what film that's from?

hints:
don't know the answer? Stupid dikini.
ONLY EXTRA HINT:
think tree.

so not too much happening today...
i heard that egg is a populour topping for pizza in australia.
i'm trying to get mr angry to give us the low-down.
i guess i could understand a nice fried egg on a pizza.
scrambled would be odd though.
i mean... think about it.
it'd make the pizza all soggy if it were scrambled properly.

yep... that's how interesting today has been :)

but pizza is a good subject nonetheless:
what constitutes a good pizza?
anything with anchovies is automatically disqualified!
far too fishy!
and what's this big "macon" thing? give me real bacon dammit!
build a seperate "infidel" kitchen that deals in pork product and give me bacon!
i want a pork chop pizza with real bacon and extra ham!
i don't want mock chops, macon, and mam.
salami always good!
feta!
garlic is a must!
calamari can be good too.
what is the perfect pizza?
can mere mankind ever hope to obtain the smallest taste of such purity?

ok... so i've really got nothing to say today.
but i do like pizza.
and i expect an explanation mr angry!

btw: HERE'S A LINK to teach you how to fry an egg on a CPU.
and HERE'S A LINK to a site of pictures. a guy shoots stuff with a pellet gun and uses high speed photography to produce some stunning pictures.

false fires in the shadows

2006-05-19T15:22:00.000+02:00

yesterday's quote answer:
x-men. the first film. magneto and xavier talking about their fears.

today's quote:
"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."
what's that film?

need hints:
there's a dolphin in the movie...
EXTRA HINT:
futuristic
EXTRA EXTRA HINT:
it starred dolph lungdren

today has been interesting.
while doing my usual morning post-lecture surfing the building alarm goes off.
as usual everyone ignores it.
the first alarm's always false. if it were a real alarm i'm sure we'd see the secretaries and the cleaners bailing down the corridors at full steam...
since the hired help weren't making like rats on a punctured sailing machine, we sat calmly surfing. occasionally someone would sniff the air just in case they could smell smoke.
you never can tell, a flash fire may have taken out all the hired help before their wailing screams alerted us. alternatively they could have escape through the back doors.
a minute or two after the first alarm, a calm voice quietly slides over the builing's broadcast system, gently urging everyone to evacuate.
i stuck around to finish typing a comment and to make sure it posted, before logging out and leaving.
i wasn't the last one out either.
no idea what it was all about, but it gave me a much needed cigarette break and i picked up a coke while i was out there.
by the time i got back everyone was filing back in.
i assume the network admin needed to get an extra boost to his pr0n dowloads so he hit the fire alarm and took the full bandwidth for the 15 minutes everyone was cattling outside wondering if the building was gonna blow.
on the plus side i remembered how to do those horizontal line rule thingies again :)

do you like shadowrun?
i do.
ever since i first heard of it.
fasa is king.
(actually fasa is no more... um... long live fanpro who now have the shadowrun license from wizkid and are continuing the work).
if you've never heard of it then let me give you a quick rundown:
its a roleplaying game (if you've never heard of those: i'm not going to explain it. that's what google is for) with an unusual setting.
its a cross between wiliam gibson style cyberpunk and your traditional dungeons and dragons fantasy.
its the future, but the cycle of magic has returned to the world and woken many dormant things.
previously slumbering genes awaken and humans split into several sub-species generally only showing signs of mutation around puberty.
trolls, orcs, elves, dwarves and people walk the street side by side.
except for the poli-clubs, and the riff raff and wage slaves, and the corps...
ok... not so much walk side by side but you get the idea...
since magic has returned to the world, people have awakened.
some people are able to wield the magic and call on elementals or spirits.
these people can train to become shamans or mages.
man and machine combine with cyerware and neural jacks become standard.
slumbering dragons awaken and return to a world which has been taken over by global megacorps.
everyone has a SIN chip with their unique ID... well, almost everyone.
you see there are a lot of people left in the slums and sprawls.
no SIN = no job.
so the poor are screwed (not like the megacorps would hire the riff raff any way)
and what are you to do if you happen to end up in the slums with no prospect of getting legal work, and no SIN?
easy! you do the dirty, underhanded, black-ops jobs that the megacorps don't want traced back to them.
you join a shadowrunning team and take jobs from a "mr. johnson."
do well and there'll be more johnsons and more jobs.
the more dangerous, the more creds you can get.
and if any stupid slothead gets in your way you frag the bastard. just make sure he's not a suit otherwise you brought a world of drek down around you.
no problem.

browsing through fanpro's website i discovered they have a nice little section with some fan fiction short stories... i've been reading them all day :)
that and downloading the free pdfs from DriveThruRPG.
you can get the 3rd ed quick star rules, the critters book, and the gm screen from there.
plus there's a whole load of desktop wallpapers (some of them are very cool) all made with shadowrun artwork here...
so its been a real busy day for me :)

there was a little bit of news that i was going to comment on, but the evacuation had me close all my links so i can't really link any of the sources now.
but i'll try remember the main bits...
the proposed march (cosatu) yesterday happened everywhere but cape town (since the security guard riots on tuesday made the municipality rethink the situation).
i was surprised. i wouldn't have thought legality would have stopped them... it doesn't normally.
but the stayaway (from work) went ahead as was expected. (you can't expect them to work when there isn't a march that they aren't going to can you?)
any way: there have been conflicting reports as to the success.
cosatu claims a whole bunch of numbers across the sectors...
employers say that it was a bit higher than the usual absenteeisnm expected on a normal day (10% as opposed to 6%) but no higher than a bad flu week.
since cosatu have outright lied before i guess that it wasn't that bad.
lots of workers were stranded without transport though as taxi drivers decided to "stick it to the man" too.
there was violence though: 2 buses torched, 8 buses stoned extensively, 1 bus driver dragged out of his bus and badly beaten a a mob of non-working workers. (i'd say that's an oxymoron, but i think they're more like the regular brand of moron)
that's all that i really picked up on but i didn't go in depth.

i did discover that a new bout of taxi violence is flaring up in cape town though..
turns out that this time 'round they're using snipers with rifles.
how evolved these moronic asses are becoming... it tugs the heartstrings.
no longer do they stick their gun-hand around the edge of the taxi and blindly open fire in the approximate direction of the other taxi (and all its passengers) while the other taci driver does the same...
now they've become sophisticated and hire gunmen to snipe taxi drivers.
last time i checked the life of a taxi driver was worth 50 rand (less than US$10).

for the overseas non-saffers (i'm looking at you mr angry) in south africa we don't have the usual london cab or new your taxi cab... we have delapidated volkswagen minibuses that are occasionally driven using a monkey-wrench because the steering wheel is missing. sometimes the driver holds a piece of string out the window and pulls on the brake pads to slow down/stop because the brake line has been cut (seriously: moonflake has seen that one first hand).
and since the minibus seats about 9 people comfortably (without anyone accidently impregnating anyone else on a trip down a gravel road) they pack about 24 people on to each one.
one reason why road deaths are so high here is because whenever a taxi is hit by a truck (happens often) or rolls over a cliff because the driver stopped to take a leak and didn't put on the hand-brake (also true) or simple terrible driving brings the trip to a sudden stop, the entire passenger load of the taxi get seriously injured or killed... and that is always 20+ people. always!
i've taken a taxi once in south africa. i will never do so again.
i'd rather walk for a few hours than catch a taxi for a few minutes.

think i made it all up? i qoute THIS newspaper clipping (better clipping available HERE):
"Some of the 23 passengers (17 adults and 6 children) with the goat outside a minibus taxi that was stopped for overloading on Saturday morning. Traffic officers impounded the vehicle, which was on it’s way to the Transkei."
that's right... 23 people and a goat in a minibus.
morons.
they probably all piled onto the next taxi that came along too...
if they were unlucky it was this one:

well i leave you with one final question to ponder:
if a quiz is quizzical what is a test?

idiots, ineptitude, corruption and morons, oh: and space

2006-05-18T11:04:00.000+02:00

answer to last quote:
beverly hills cop. (the first one). its axle foley talking his way into a restraunt.

today's quote(s):
person1: "Does it ever wake you in the middle of the night? The feeling that one day they will pass that foolish law or one just like it and come for you? And your children?"
person2: "It does indeed."
person1: "What do you do, when you wake up to that?"
person2: "I feel a great swell of pity for the poor fool who comes to that school... looking for trouble."

no hints today... the quote should be easy enough.

mr angry just had a post about stupidity.
and then i read the local news.
*sigh*
lets start the roundup with cosatu (worker's union)

cosatu have decided to march... again.
(wow... must be a thursday)
while this isn't really news there are a couple of noteworthy things.
after the security guards (in their 7th week of violent striking) trashed cape town city center on tuesday (and bunches of people were injured and/or arrested including 2 high up satawu members) the municipality pulled permission for cosatu's march.
so they started the march any way (hell... what's another illegal strike in this country) and torched a couple of buses to begin the day (after stoning a bunch of other buses of course... got to work up an appitite for destruction.)
of course these alleged workers have torched trains before and so transnet has already suspended service on the cape flats line (stranding the workers from being able to get to work... ironically)
what i find funny is a lot of employers have given permission for their workers to join the march if they wish... but now that they no longer have permission these employers believe that there won't be any absenteeism.
ha!.... hahahaha! you make the little joke yes?
just because its now an illegal march doesn't mean it won't happen. that's a ridiculous notion, bothering about legality in south africa... really!

what i don't find so funny though is this:
cosatu are urging teachers to join the march:
"'We call on our members not to go to school on Thursday and join the march to parliament,' Sadtu regional secretary Don Pasquallie said."
wtf?
do you want to keep kids from being educated?
the reason why your members are manual labour and are forever fighting for a better wage is because they're uneducated, you moron.
but i suppose its politically a good move. without uneducated idiots your union wouldn't have members.
i do like the statement: "Four out of 10 workers were unemployed, according to Sadtu."
i guess that means that 6 out of 10 workers aren't workers then...
that means that 4/4 workers are employed which equals 100% employment, and some uneducated people convincing real workers to stop working and go on strikes.
why work when you too can be involved in illegal and violent strike action?
feel the adrenalin as the crowd runs blindly to escape police...
fell the pressure of people behind you trampling your prone body to escape teargas...
feel the pure enjoyment of throwing bottles and stones at policemen who hold shotguns...
you too can be a complete moron. all you need to do is not go to work and listen to your militant unions. you too could be like the security guards behave like base animals as satawu lead you into the jaws of illegality into the stomache of civil unrest just so that they can line their pockets with money that could have been yours.
you too can be a moronic fuckwit!

and for some more corruption and illegality look no further than the police:
turns out that some criminal got his girlfriend to bring him a gun and cellphone which he took to many court appearences and eventually led to a hostage situation where two policemen were injured (one shot in the hand, one shot in the lung) and he was shot dead (at least the story has a happy ending).
how did she smuggle these things past the police? did she hide them in a most uncomfortable place? (what? like the back of a volkswagen?)
nope... she simply bought a bottle of vodka for Inspectors Maxwell Khumalo and Simpiwe Nthetha, who then let her visit the crim in his cell... after visiting hours... without searching her!!!
well done morons. corrupt morons no less.
but you haven't heard the coop de grassy yet.
this crim was no ordinary crim.
no no no my friends. after he had been killed in said hostage situation they discovered his real identity: he was an escaped death-row inmate who had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
now notice: he had already been to court a number of times under his false name... this means that the police are not only stupid, not only corrupt, but wholly inept as they couldnt identify an escaped convict that they had been holding in their custody for an extended period of time.
surely you fingerprinted him? maybe he gave the cops a coke to lose the fingerprints...
now if that isn't an argument for death penalty i don't know what is. the death penalty may not be a deterant for others, but it would have stopped 2 cops being severely wounded here.
oh, by the way: the rest of the police are highly pissed off with them as they've thrown shame over all of them...
and: Inspectors Maxwell Khumalo and Simpiwe Nthetha are going to plead "not guilty" to all the charges.

and they wonder where the kids pick it up from:
some junior fuckwit in training took a gun to school and allegedly accidentally shot a girl in class. luckily she only got a flesh wound in her leg.
but you have to ask yourself these questions:
what the fuck are you taking a gun to school for?
where the fuck did you get that gun? (oh.. your uncle left it at your house. dumbass!)
what the fuck are you doing taking the gun out during class and playing with it?
he's currently in custody facing charges of attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition.
he took a gun to school, took it out during class and was playing with it when it "accidentally" went off and shot a girl.
fuckwit... the gun didn't do anything accidentally. it is designed with one sole purpose in mind: shoot bullets. if you're not going to shoot something you don't take it out. there is no other reason to take a gun out other than shoot something. the only accident in that classroom was the fuckwit that shot the girl. the best part of him ran down his momma's leg!
extra info bit: this is the third accidental shooting by a pupil in 3 weeks (that we know of at least).
for the mathmatically challenged: thats more than 1 a week. if we're lucky at least half of those will be fatal to the gunman and we'll solve our education problems, overpopulation problems, and crime problems all in one fell swoop.
unfortunately i believe our stupid criminals breed faster than anyone or anything can kill them.

on the positive side of news: koeberg is up and running again.
yay... there may be fewer power cuts now that they've finished fixing the generator... until a couple of weeks when the other genny goes down for maintanence and winter hits proper.
they only estimate a shortfall of 400MW.
but don't worry.. shortages will probably only last for 3 months (may, june, july).
great. i'm lucky this pc is still running then.
of course we all trust the power comany's estimations after the last time they were in the news (due to massive power cuts across cape town because we don't have enough electricity and the government is screwing the pooch on this one too).

and a personal pet peeve of mine: laugh it off tshirts are coming back...
after a year long hiatus, justin nurse is returning to shirt making (i want credit where credit is due, bull thief!).
nurse had this to say: "The new direction is more abstract - you interpret it yourself. Surreal was the only place left for me to go that was creative and exciting,"
for those not in the know: laugh it off make satirical tshirt (at least one of which was stolen from a poster i made... bull fuckers!). they take company logos and names and twiddle them into something humourous and then print shirts and make cash off them...
their new tshirt idea (remember that deputy (ass) president zuma has just been aquitted of rape charges):
"On one new shirt, the name of trainers company Puma has been converted to Zuma and instead of a leaping cat there's a provocatively posed naked woman. "
surreal? i don't think so moron! while funny, (and slanderous i might add... but you're doing it for the satire not the money right? right?) you don't really need to interpret anything yourself.
so basically your previous statement was a load of balls to try make consumers think they're smart because they get the joke.

how about this for a tshirt design:
you have the laugh it off megaphone with the laugh it off text next to it as usual, but in stead of "laugh it off" it says "load of ass".
how 'bout that for an idea?
not that i think you'd ever have the balls to mock yourself (as all real satirists are wont to do) i have to add this disclaimer: you steal my shit without crediting me again and i will personally train a pitbull to ass-rape you while pouring sugar into your gas tank and spreading viscous roumors about your questionable sexuality and the homeless guy who lives behind your office block.

now you may be tempted to rip me off just to see the results of said training, but know this: i'm extremely lazy and may just unleash an untrained pitbull into your house after giving it 5 viagra and a slap about the face. on your way home i'd spray your jacket with pheremones ordered over the internet and let you find the surprise yourself!

and now for the space:
go to www.space.com and have a look.
they have some cool pics and desktops and loads of information.
go look.
here endith the post.

bad news wii good news wii

2006-05-17T12:53:00.000+02:00

simon gave it away yesterday.
maybe i should have removed his name too... but i didn't think it was that big a clue.
oh well :)
answer for yesterday's quote:
die hard with a vengance (die hard 3). John McClane talking to Simon (quote 1). John McClane talking to Zeus (quote 2). die hard rocks. they may be making a number 4...
and today's quote:
"Don't you think I realize what's going on here, miss? Who do you think I am, huh? Don't you think I know that if I was some hotshot from out of town that pulled inside here and you guys made a reservation mistake, I'd be the first one to get a room and I'd be upstairs relaxing right now. But I'm not some hotshot from out of town, I'm a small reporter from "Rolling Stone" magazine that's in town to do an exclusive interview with Michael Jackson that's gonna be picked up by every major magazine in the country. I was gonna call the article "Michael Jackson Is Sitting On Top of the World," but now I think I might as well just call it "Michael Jackson Can Sit On Top of the World Just As Long As He Doesn't Sit in the Beverly Palm Hotel 'Cause There's No Niggers Allowed in There!" "
can you name the film?

the hint for today:
its an oldie (mid 80's) and a comedy. they made 3 of them.
EXTRA HINT:
the character is a policeman.
EXTRA EXTRA HINT:
umm... he also played an entire family in a more recent film.

good news for the uk:
schpat mentioned that he heard a report on the radio that may intrest you...
apparently our good buddy snoop (fuckwit) doggy (gumster) dogg (oxygen thief) has been banned from entering the uk.
that's right :) persona non grata.
you fight in our airports: no soup for you! you come back never again!!!
that'll teach him to be a violent, antisocial fuckwit.
actually it probably won't. but if you live in the uk he won't be your problem anymore.
reminds me of wesley snipes who entered south africa on a fake passport.
he would have been fine except flags were raised as the passport passed inspection, but was a little dodgy.
and then he tried to leave the country on the same passport and got nabbed.
persona non grata.
no more mr snipes in south africa.
of course wesley snipes was banned for doing something stupid (why was he using a fake south african passport anyway?) and not for being a violent menace to society.
hell... i'd swap with the uk. they can keep stoop(id) doggy dogg and ban snipes, and we'll forgive snipes and ban snoop.
but since i'm not involved in foreign affairs i guess that'll never come about.
think about it: what would the country be like if i was head of foreign affairs???
btw: i did not mispell gangster. for all you non-southafricans who haven't had a saffer bore you to death about sa already: gum (pronounced something like ghum, not like gum) basically means classless, baseless, crude, etc...
many of our gangsters are also gum. basically: if you actively have perfectly good teeth taken out of your mouth just so you can have a "passion gap" (also refered to as a "front loader") you are probably gum.
i think it originated with cape coloured afrikaans (a um... "unique" twist on the afrikaans language).
learn something new every day.
disclaimer: my afrikaans sucks! if i spelt it wrong or if you have a better definition: that's what the comments are for!

bad news for the nintendo (stupid name) wii:
magic box has a little bit about castlevania and the-console-formely-known-as-the-revolution (TCFKATR):
"Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi said that Castlevania does not fit with Wii, because the Wii market is for people who want to have new experience, these type of people do not have time to play lengthy games like Castlevania; also he does not have a good idea to make use of the Wii controller in the game."
this doesn't mean that castlevania won't be on the TCFKATR as i'm sure that if there's a demand it'll be met. and they'll find a way off making the controller work or just use the classic controller that is made for the downloadable roms.

good news for the nintendo console-name-that-should-not-be:
that's right: TCFKATR will have emulators to emulate old nintendo systems and the sega genisis! games will be downloadable. prices unknown. sega promis a best-of selection.

and now to finally finish off my file system.
i think i got all my pointers sorted out now...
only 2.5 days late... *sigh*

quicky: no real news

2006-05-16T10:56:00.000+02:00

yesterday's quote answer (you know the drill by now):
hackers. everyone seemed to get it. the first quote was cereal killer (wd moonflake) and the second was the_plague: the evil IT guy. (eye-tee not clown).
and now for today's quote(s) (its tough):
Simon: "I want you and the Samaritan at the corner of 72nd and Broadway in fifteen minutes. You understand?"
[name removed]: "Yeah, I understand. I understand that you're a fucking wacko who likes to play kids' games."
Simon: "Hahdly."
[name removed]: "[imitating Simon] Hahdly? Well, what have you got against me anyway? What did I bring you in for? Shoplifting? Purse-snatching?"
[pauses and puts hand over the receiver]
"Cross-dressing? "
Simon: "You c... c... couldn't c... c... catch me if I stole your ch... ch... chair with you in it!"
[name removed]: "My ch... ch... chair with me in it? Well, Simon, why are you trying to k... k... k... kill me?"

and if you need a little more help:
[name removed]: "You know this guy Simon we're talking to?"
Zeus: "Yeah."
[name removed]: "I threw his little brother off the thirty-second floor of Nakatomi Towers out in L.A. I guess he's a little pissed at me."
Zeus: "You mean to tell me that I'm caught up in all this shit because some white cop threw some white asshole's brother off a roof?"

and because its so tough, one final clue:
this is the third movie in a trilogy. 1st movie: in a building, 2nd: at an airport, 3rd: in a city. and if you still don't know you'll have to wait till tomorrow

so not much going on today.
still coding file systems.
they still suck.
i hope my code's gonna work.

nothing newsworthy going on either.
so that's it for today :)

file systems suck balls! games, and i create the best news.

2006-05-15T12:06:00.000+02:00

the answer to yesterday's quote (black text. select to view): 12 monkeys. l.j. washington tells bruce willis about his mental condition.
todays quote:
"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!"
if you need a second quote select the following text:
"Someone didn't bother reading my carefully prepared memo on commonly-used passwords. Now, then, as I so meticulously pointed out, the four most-used passwords are: love, sex, secret, and... god. So, would your holiness care to change her password?"
can you name the movie?
(i bet moonflake can.)

i had to write a file system for today for comsci.
i haven't finished.
i'm going to have to finish this afternoon.
blegh.
its not that its difficult...
its just that i had to write a lexer for last monday, i had a test on wednesday, i have another test on this wednesday, i have a short prac handin for friday, and i have to extend the lexer into a parser for monday.
and i had a mild cold on saturday.
and i played some liesure larry 5 in stead of working.
i just couldn't concentrate and eventually had to rewrite a chunk of code because i decided to switch from an array of pointers to an array of ints and chars that reference a pointer array to get the neccesary pointers.
if you don't speak computers then heres a translation:
i just couldn't concentrate and eventually had to do something because i decided to switch something for something else.
it was a pain.
it still is a pain.
but hopefully by this afternoon it won't be anymore.
and for some reason my brain keeps wanting to spell saturday as saterday...
every time i have to write/type it i go to dictionary.com and search for "saterday" and it asks me if i meant saturday and i have to go change it.
i don't know why.
i never used to have the problem until i got this prac.

so, castlevania: portrait of ruin (for the nintendo ds) is going to have wifi co-op play. max 2 players. n-philes has a little interview thingie with the series creator: Koji Igarashi.
looks like their bringing completely new ideas to the game. if it works well it'll rock.
and the psp is getting a silent hill game. silent hill: origin will be released in the fourth quater of 2006. magic box has a bunch of screenshots. it looks suitably silent hill-ish. the psp is picking up some nice titles. hopefully the psp2 will have better battery life and a cheaper price tag. (i might actually own one then).
trawling through the news to try make today's post a little more interesting turn up no really worthwhile news. i started with local news:
taxi drivers threaten to strike again... big deal.
someone died in a fire... again? so what.
security guards are still on strike... 7 or 8 weeks now? i forget.
so i turned to internation news:
some dude trashed his ferrari... another car accident. big deal.
the greek orthodox church complains about the davinci code... tut tut. i expected more.
a girl lost her hand in a chocolate factory... unfortunate but not unique and its probably sown back on already.

maybe i'm just getting more cynical, but none of that interests me.
we need some real news...
something to do with an enraged animal, money, sex, and drama.
something like:
"crazy llama attacks naked couple in bedroom before dissapearing with their life savings. police suspect plot involving jelous ex-husband."
now that's news!
reporting ain't so hard. look at the news i just created.
if reporters were more like me i'd buy more newspapers...
i'd also probably complain about terrible journalism and lies in the media...
not to mention that the saturday argus would become the saterday argus.

a little game news

2006-05-12T12:30:00.000+02:00

well i've managed to pick up a couple of new dots on my clustermap (see right column).
canada and south america have joined the fray along with siberia :)
i bet most of these dots come from searches and people are rapidly hitting the back button once they realise their mistake.
maybe i should add the goatse picture here just to shortcut things?
please note my magnanimity: i did not link to that site.
anyone who doesn't know that site: thank your lucky stars and just say "no!"

and on to the quotes.
the answer to yesterday's quote, as if you need it: (black on black. select to view):
once upon a time in mexico. agent sands (johnny depp) talking to "el" while eating a pork dish.

it may be a bit too easy, but here's today's quote:
"Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend?"
name that film :)

not too much happening today. just a quick bit of game news.
since e3 is going on there really is loads of it at the moment, but i thought i'd just nab a piece or two for my blog. get the full coverage at the site i mentioned in a previous post.
the next generation consoles (playstation 3 and xbox 360) have some damn impressive hardware supporting their graphics.
this of course means more realistic graphics and better pantyshots!
that's right... tekken 6 is coming to the playstation 3 and looks better that ever.
and the xbox 360 gets an interesting game. i would have thought fasa would have gone the ropleplaying game route with this title...
shadowrun for the xbox 360 will be a team based fps (first person shooter) mixing magic, guns and tech.
use your cyber-eyes to look through walls (infra-red) to find enemies, summon an elemental to attack while while swinging 'round the corner to blow the other one away with a really big gun. taking place in the classic shadowrun universe.
i wonder if there'll be dragons? (remember: never deal with a dragon.)
on the rolplaying front:
a new all flesh must be eaten sourcebook is on its way: argh! thar be zombies.
that's right... they're finally doing a pirates sourcebook :)
about time too.

zenstar signing out with the old shadowrun saying: there's nothing to fear if you've got the gear!

nintendo golden shower, new wow race, and al lowe news

2006-05-11T10:49:00.000+02:00

starting off with the answer (black text... select to view): mallrats. rene is making it clear to brodie that she's not taking his shit anymore. this was a difficult quote to choose as mallrats has so many good ones :)
and today's quote:
"...you really must try this because it's puerco pibil. It's a slow-roasted pork, nothing fancy. It just happens to be my favorite, and I order it with a tequila and lime in every dive I go to in this country. And honestly, that is the best it's ever been anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It's so good that when I'm finished, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen and shoot the cook. Because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help keep the balance by pulling the trigger."
hmmm... that might be a difficult one. select the text below if you need a (big) hint:
the character that says this is played by johnny depp.

al lowe has added a page on his site about sam suede: undercover exposure (the new game hes involved with) and the new company also has a webpage: ibase entertainment.
it sounds like al lowe is trying to bring his larry brand of humour into an action title. it sounds like it could be fun. go read the write-up yourself an lookit the pictures too.

the magic box has a list of games being planned for the future, including a bunch of games for the nintendo wii. scanning through that list i found something horrible:
Wii Sports. (a collection of sports games).
o.m.f.g. seriously!
wee sports?
nintendo, you need to fire the crackho that's responsible for this shit.
i can see it now: nintendo's next handheld will be called the p00...
(p zero zero. the zeros representing 2 eyes watching the game, or two thumbs on the controller)
there will be one of those "party" games where you try outdo your opponent and it'll be called "eat my p00!"
and soon you'll be able to get the nintendo buttsex next generation console,
with vibrating controllers...
and the flagship release game will be "assfuckers" a fps showing off the whoresome graphics...
do you see a trend here nintendo?
you need to do something about it now.
please.
rename the console-formally-known-as-revolution.

and the new alliance race has been announced at E3.
the burning crusade addon will add blood elves (horde) and draenei (alliance) as new playable races.
the draenei (or "exiled ones" in their own tongue) are all blue and have a very "persecuted good guys" story to them. You know: beings of light being chased by nasty demons who have almost wiped them out etc...
very cleric looking.
go read the story yourselves... and pick up some of the new wallpapers while you're at it.

reportback dreaming.

2006-05-10T11:50:00.000+02:00

the (now) usual start to today's post: the quotes.
i had a few responses saying that yesterday's quote was too easy...
i just can't win can i :)
oh well. here's the answer (black on black... select to view): serenity. malcom reynolds talking to the people in the bank near the begining of the movie. i was going to use jane's quote: "we're going to explode? i don't want to explode."

and today's quote (schpat should get this): "[name removed]! I've always taken you with a grain of salt. On your birthday, when you told me to do a striptease to the theme of "Mighty Mouse", I said okay. On prom night at the hotel when you told me to sleep under the bed in case your mother burst in, I did it. And even during my grandmother's funeral when you told my relatives that you could see her nipples through her burial dress, I let that slide. But if you think I'm gonna suffer any of your shit with a smile now that we're broken up, you're in for some serious fucking disappointment."
whew that's a long quote... what movie is it from?

well i got some reports back from people today so i guess i'll post the relevant:
firstly, al lowe is finally allowed to say what he's been doing for the last year. here's what he had to say (on his cyberjoke 3000 mailing list):

It's late Tuesday night at E3 and my secret is secret no more! I just returned from iBase Entertainment's very first press conference where we announced to the media what is by now obvious to you: I am doing a new game! Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure will be out in 2007 for PCs and next- and current-gen consoles.

The press conference was a blast. We had a big crowd; I'm sure you'll start seeing talk about Sam Suede soon, first online and then later in print. But, more importantly, it's just such a relief to finally be able to talk about this game! I've been working on it for over a year now, while still trying to maintain my "cover" as a retired guy playing golf and saxophone. Meanwhile, I've been working every day, all day, creating not only a fun game design, but a game development studio and a publishing company, too! I feel like Sam Suede: I've been Undercover and now it's time to get a some Exposure!

So what is iBase Entertainment? Who is Sam Suede? What is Undercover Exposure? More on all that tomorrow. As they say, "stay tuned!"

and our world of warcraft specialist report/gimp, holeycrusader (no link to blog because he dismantled it due to lack of updates... probably playing too much wow) shows us how much he loves children in his report on children's week, wow-europe:

And about your story about the orphanage quest in WoW, I did it yesterday with both my characters. But not for any silly pet that can follow you around... I did it for the money - the reward for the quest is one of the following: Mr. Wiggles the Pig, Whiskers the Rat, Speedy the Turtle or a bag of 5 Gold. What can I say, I started the quest with the best of intentions (I never knew about the money), but when they showed me the good stuff...

so there. he loves children for 5 gold apparently!

i had a comsci test this morning.
last night schpat came round and we played more zombies!!! corps(e). he won after we killed every zombie on the board. we then stayed up till +/- 1am.
after he left i couldn't get to sleep.
i lay awake thinking about many things...
why zombies are so cool.
writing a blogpost about why zombies are so cool.
computer games.
board games.
more computer games.
i eventually started to phase in and out of conciousness which led to some rather odd dreams.
i dreamt that my tongue piercing was back (i took it out years ago) and woke moonflake up to show her (in the dream, not irl luckily) except she couldn't see it, so i went to the bathroom to check and i could only see the bottom, not the top. and then eventually i couldn't see any sign of the tongue piercing and my tongue was bleeding a little bit at the tip.
so i went to the lounge and discovered the tv was on. i turn it off but i can still hear the sound and conclude that the tv next door must be on.
except now i cont see our tv... it's vanished. i go closer to inspect and there it is, lying flat on the surface of the table in the middle of the lounge, looking like a photocopy of the front of our tv.
my dream self realises that the tv was a flatscreen all along and it must have blown over in the wind, but where did the wind come from?
i check the front door and discover that the glass has been smashed, but the burglar bars/gate thing is still intact so i head for the bedroom to wake moonflake up just in case.
as i'm heading there i begin calling her name, but my tongue is still bleeding so i'm holding it to the top of my mouth which muffles my calls, and i just don't seem to be willing to pull it off the top of my mouth just yet.
i make it to the bedroom, moonflake is still sleeping, and check the room quickly while still calling out in my muted way.
the room looks fine until i've turned a full 180 and i'm facing the door again. suddenly my view is skewing and there's all these ladders in my way, blocking my exit from the room and some of them have rope tied to the top rung. there are metal ladders and wooden ladders and so on.
i try heading towards them but i'm weaving and my vision is still all skew and warping and everything is moving real slow and not quite right.
at this point i realise i'm dreaming because i've had the whole "someone's broken into my house and i can't call out and i my body stops functioning and my view is all screwy" dream before. so i wake up.
it must have been about 3 in the morning by now. someone in the flat then dicided to run a bath.
at night everything sounds louder and longer than it really is.
about an hour later the king must have arrived because the elephant-like trumpeting of the pipes finally ceased.
i started to think about why zombies are so cool and maybe i should write a blogpost about it...

i woke up early and wrote the test this morning.
i think i did ok, but i ran short of time and screwed up a question or two.
oh well...

i'd like to sign out with a qoute from bash.org:
dazed: yeah my mom caught my brother jacking off to Powerpuff Girls
dazed: she didnt yell at him because she was laughing so hard
dazed: she just told everyone at his birthday party the next day
BaileD: You have the most fucked up family ever. Period.

bastards! (and orphans)

2006-05-09T11:07:00.000+02:00

the bastard got off.
a chunk of evidence that was allowed would have contradicted boatloads of his story.
thank you police for screwing that pooch.
unfortunately the verdict is probably legally solid.
i reference the oj trial again.
that's all i'm going to say about the subject.
it makes me too angry.
at least he apologised for the whole unprotected sex part of it.

today's answer to yesterday's quote (select text to view): hellraiser bloodlines. said by pinhead himself.

it has been brought to my attention that prehaps my quotes are a little to obscure and/or difficult. this game came about by listening to velvet acid christ who uses lots of movie sound bites in his music.
of course there's a big difference between reading the quote and hearing it, so i'll try to make them a little more recognisable.
today's quote:
"You all wanna be looking very intently at your own belly buttons. I see a head start to rise, violence is going to ensue. Probably guessed we mean to be thieving here but what we're after is not yours. So, let's have no undue fussing."
name that movie :)

its children's week in world of warcraft this week.
players can pick up orphans from ogrimmar (horde) and stormwind (alliance) who then follow them about on adventures.
there are a few sights that the orphans would like to see and when the player finally returns them to the orphanage (after visiting the sights) the orphan offers on of his/her favourite pets for the player to keep to remember the child by.
thats cool.

archangel is blogging again and has trivia questions (and a scoreboard).
go read her page!

real news roundup:
the miners that were trapped underground in australia are finally free.
the roman catholics neither support nor condone the davinci code movie (finally a sensible standpoint from a religious institution).
brazil is going nuclear: well... it's enriching (non-weapons grade) uranium for its reactors locally as opposed to spending the ca$h to have it done for them.
and the "aaawww" moment: a baby dolphin stranded in a rock pool near mossel bay has been rescued bu the NSRI and returned to its pod.

and E3 kicked off today.
find the official site here.
there's way too much to cover here so go browse their site for your specific intrests.
i'm still waiting for al lowe's announcement.

and thats it for today folks.

judgement day and bad burgers

2006-05-08T12:12:00.000+02:00

edit:
oops... i forgot to put up the answer to the movie quote on the last post.
the answer is (selct text to view): extreme measures. hugh grant's character complaining about ethics.

and today's quote: "i can smell the exquisite stench of what you really are!"

name that movie!
end of edit.

i almost forgot...
today is the day that old zuma gets to hear whether he's been found guilty of raping an HIV positive woman or not.
iol.co.za doesn't currently have much of intrest... but i'm sure they'll update once things get interesting later in the day.
i think its possible that he may cochrane his way out of it.
i'm not saying he did it, i'm just saying i think he did it.
but i don't get to decide the verdict so i guess that's just my R0.02

browsing through the news today... nothing really sparks my intrest.

been browsing the world of warcraft (europe) site a bit.
meandering throught the articles and history that snag my attention.
man... i'd love to play that game on a proper server.
the events look like so much fun.
moonflake, love, when are we getting adsl *flutter eyelids* ?
my birthday is coming up sometime soonish *hopeful grin*.
there's even a travelling "faire" to take part in (seems stop once a month here or there).
oh well.
they also have cool wallpapers.
i don't need adsl to run those.
*pilfer*

the weekend dissapeared far to speedily for me.
friday afternoon was spent declaring tokens and fighting with sableCC.
basically i needed to make a simple tokenizer, the first step in creating a compiler. declaring the tokens was easy. it should have been easy to compile that decleration into a lexer with sableCC, but noooooo.
sablecc started spitting out some version error at me. eventually i gave up and decided that it must be my java sdk that's too old (as i'd spoken to someone who ran the same version of sablecc with a newer sdk and it worked).
so i end up going up to varsity on saturday morning to finish off the stupid lexer before monday handin.
turns out that sablecc ver3.2 wasn't the problem... it seems that sablecc v3.2 combined with any sort of proximity with me is the problem.
it still wouldn't run, even on the varsity machines, while someone else is running the same version 3 machines over without a problem!
fsking sablecc 3.2
luckily sablecc version 3.1 isn't so snobbish and i completed the prac fairly quickly after establishing that ver 3.2 needs my foot up its ass!

friday night was supper with moonflake's dad and sister (and her boyfriend).
most of dinner was spent with moonflake and myself conversing with her dad while m's sister (and her boyfriend) looked on silently. it was kinda like having and audience that couldn't follow the on-stage dialogue.
those two really need to read more newspapers and watch more current affairs reports and spend less time researching hippy remedies which no-one is really interested in.

saturday afternoon - night saw us playing runebound (a board game).
we short break for spur supper which was accompanied by terrible service. the waitron's name was BLONDine. she was dim. with a capital d. so Dim really.
the guacamole was still mostly frozen. when we point this fact out to her, her response was "i know, it's just come out of the fridge."
well guess what: we don't want frozen guac. defrost it moron! she also took yancke's cuttlery with his burger (to warm up the guac) and braught back his burger, sans cuttlery and then promptly dissapeared without checking that everything was ok, leaving yancke to wander around the spur looking for another knife and fork.
man... what a dumbass waitress she was.
eventually we returned to finish off the game.
it took a damn long time but then most of us had never played before.
overall fun.
sunday saw us at moonflake's mom's as usual. a generally relaxing day followed by some yummy supper.

if only the weekend were longer.
i feel like all 2.5 days were rushed into one blurred day and i'm still waiting for my second (and a half) day of rest before today. *sigh*
oh well.

i'm honoured by racing zombies.

2006-05-05T12:22:00.000+02:00

well i got no comments about yesterday's quote, but i assume you've made your guesses...
if you haven't then scroll down there now and guess.
the answer is on the following line, but it's black on black so you need to select the text to see it.
answer: scream. right near the begining when the first victim is talking about her boyfriend.

and today's quote: "You tortured and murdered those men upstairs, and that makes you a disgrace to your proffesion."

name the movie.
(and don't be lame: just say no to google).

so i'm sitting in my lecture venue this morning, before the lecture starts, and the lecturer comes in, puts down his stuff, then walks over to me and asks me to talk to him after the lecture.
first thing in my mind: "uh-oh. what have i done wrong now?"
so after the lecture i go talk to him...
turns out he wants to know if i'm doing honours next year.
i originally wasn't planning to... i mean i need to get out and get a little experience as well as save up some money if moonflake and i do plan on moving to australia sometime soon.
but now i'm thinking maybe i should. i obviously have a shot if the lecturer thinks i should go for it... and he did the whole "hard-sell" approach.
i guess this must be what being head-hunted feels like.
i'm gonna need to speak with moonflake and my dad before i can make any firm decisions, but its still flattering.

so our normal thursday game (d&d) was cancelled yesterday (schpat had to work) so we ended up playing zombies!!! corps(e) and cthulhu 500.
zombies!!! corps(e) is very cool. maybe its 'cos we only had 3 players, maybe its 'cos there are fewer map tiles, but it went really quick compared to previous games of zombies!!!: original, the end, and mall walkers.
moonflake managed to sneak the win by charging headlong into the zombie fray, battling her way to the helicopter.
and then she managed to sneak the win in cthulhu 500. barrelling through the opposition in her truck, managing to draw the checkered flag moments before being passed by the second car in the pack.

and it looks like they've updated zombies!!!
there's a version 2 coming out with all new art and female zombies.
and theres a zombies!!! 5: school's out forever.
(in case you hadn't noticed i really like zombies and the zombies!!! games)

anyway... not much going on today.
i'm tired and going home early so it's a short post today :)

a short discussion of why the petition may fail...

2006-05-04T11:14:00.000+02:00

a new game for my blog:
i'm going to start putting up movie quotes here and the challenge is this: can you identify the quote without using the internet to find the answer?
post answers in comments if you want.
i'll be posting the answer next time i blog (normally the next day).

today's movie quote:

"he's big and he plays football and he'll kick the shit out of you!"

still reminding you to go sign the abandonware petition over HERE if you haven't done so already (and if you agree of course).
i see another +/- 200 signatures have been added since yesterday.

now the possible problems with the petition:
there are two major hiccups and a few niggling issues that companies have with releasing their old games as abandonwares.

firstly there's the call that abandonwares will help create brand awareness and bolster brand loyalty, except: many old games were not created with today's hardware or operating systems in mind. this can lead to major errors in the games (timing issues going crazy and crashes for wierd reasons etc...). companies believe this would reflect badly on them and actually harm their brand name. of course they could solve this problem by doing a little development and updating the game to a windows interface, but this then costs them time and money that could be spent on something new.

the other major problem involves trademarks. trademarks need to be actively defended (unlike copyrights) or else they can be weakened and lost. now most characters and themes in a game are trademarked. companies like to keep their trademarks just in case they want to make another sequel (very likely if there's a sudden cult following for a game that results from releasing a series as abandonware). but the companies fear that by releasing the game into the public domain it'll weaken their trademarks and they could lose them.

the companies would also like to keep some games in reserve so that they can make future "bundle packs" more appealing by providing older titles with newer titles. eg: sierra's space quest or liesure suit larry collections that include all the quests and occasionally some additional extras like laffer utilities. (i'd love to get these collections. esp the larry set)

there are a couple of other issues like distribution (free vs small fee. support vs no support. release into public domain vs make super cheap but responsible. etc) and packaging (manuals vs pdfs. boxes vs download only. etc).
basically they don't want to waste money on it but don't want it to have bad repercusions. easy solution: don't support or release it at all, just concentrate on new games.

there are many arguments supporting abandonwares. the best one i've read recently goes a little something like this:
if you want me to pay for a game in 2006 that was originally released in 1996 then i expect the same level of support now that i would have had then. the problem is that companies rarely support games past a year or two and a lot of old development houses have long since dissapeared, making support nigh impossible.

another arguement is about availability:
if you're going to maintian a copyright on an old title then make it available for purchase or release it so that someone else can make it available. many programmers who actually made the game say that they'd prefer people to download abandonwares and play them (piracy basically) as opposed to having their games being forgotten about.

also:
the actual creators of the old games are 99% likely to have moved on and are no longer at the development house. is it fair that companies should still be collecting money for their work when the actual creators are no longer being paid for it?
this brings up an interesting question (moonflake had me thinking about it): why is it that developers don't get royalties? authors and singers get royalties and are basically doing the same thing: creating a piece of work for a publisher to release and make cash with. i think it has something to do with development houses, the number of people working on the project, and the contracts involved... but i don't actually know.

i am firmly in the "abandonwares are good" camp.
maybe its because i grew up with dos (all the way from about 3 to 6.22... and i still have my 6.22 install disks).
maybe its because i grew up with many of these old games and i'm biased by nostalgia.
maybe its because i realise that the old games may not run properly on today's systems and know the work-arounds.
maybe its because i know how to use dosbox and scummvm.
maybe its because i have a pIII 800 in today's p4 world.
i'm certainly not claiming "all information should be free!" screw that cyber-hippy crap.
i just think that there's a lot out there and if the companies aren't going to do something with it then its just selfish of them to not make it available to people who appreciate it.
if they actually have legit plans for it then i can see their viewpoint, but there are titles out there that companies aquired through buyouts and they don't even know or remember that they own the copyright on that title (if they even remember the existance of it).
sometimes they don't even hold a copy of the titles they own and that's just wrong.
its kind of like this choose your own adventure:
page 1:
you find you have a chocolate muffin that you don't plan to eat. you've had your full of all sorts of interesting, new muffins and this one just isn't doing it for you. then someone comes along and say: "ooh! i love chocolate muffins. are you going to eat that?"
do you:

say "yes!" and then watch it slowly rot away, becoming useless to everyone? turn to page 222.
say "no, but you can't have it anyway." ? turn to page 365.
say "now that i know you want it, yes!" then sell it at a reduced price? turn to page 104.
say "no, you can have it since you love it so much... but i'm not responsible if you don't like it or if you start to choke on it." ? turn to page 7.

page 7: you support abandonwares, releasing your muffin free for people to enjoy. ladies love you, men love you, you have your pick. you're invited to all the cool parties and have loads of friends. people think you're great and buy all your latest muffins at full price. you are the muffin man/woman!
well done: you win the game with the best ending and, um, did i mention abandonwares make me hot?

page 104: not a bad move. if the price is right then you'll find a happy medium where almost everyone is happy, except you've got to remember that now you have to support the muffin and be responsible if the muffin doesn't work on new systems...

if you're not happy supporting the muffin then maybe you should reconsider your viewpoint: go back to page 1.
if you're happy to support the muffin then well done, you win the game with the second-best ending.

page 222: you're an asshole. maybe you should reconsider your viewpoint. go back to page 1!

page 365: you're a real asshole and people hate you and your company. maybe you should reconsider your viewpoint. go back to page 1!

and now something boring:
previous post corrections:
as schpat brought to my attention, the current sa president has not been to jail. i had my information mixed up. his father was jailed and he was always under threat of being jailed, but served no actual time.
also: it has not been confirmed that nelson mandela's daughter helped get snoop released. when asked for a comment she said she did not want to talk about it, and when the police in UK were asked for comment they said: "you'll need to talk to foreign affairs about that."
so draw your own conclusions...

about 300 signatures in a day...

2006-05-03T11:46:00.000+02:00

the abandonware petition picked up about 300 signatures since i signed up yesterday.
scrolling through the names i spotted a few people i know.
for those of you who haven't signed yet here's the link:
www.petitiononline.com/oldgame/petition.html
the basic aim of the petition is this:
there are a lot of old games out there that are real classics, gems if you will. unfortunately most of these gems are unobtainable as the companies no longer sell them, but they still retain the copyrights and so copying them is illegal (even if the company doesn't care about them anymore) unless they've been explicitly released into the public domain.
this petition asks gaming companies to make these gems available again. either by freeing them into public domain, or by releasing them for download for a small fee.
They certainly aren't making money off many of these titles anymore, they will still retain trademarks (characters etc...), and most of the developers who made these games don't even work for the companies anymore so they won't be collecting any kind of royalties for the sale of these games.
it just makes sense. brand recognition and loyalty are worth millions to companies and a move like this is definitely worth it.
find articles on the subject here, here, and here.

in other gaming news: it seems that al lowe (creator of liesure suit larry and heavily involved with the creation of larry 1- 3, 5 - 7, there was no 4 and he had nothing to do with magne cum laude) may be getting back into the games creation scene after a long hiatus. gamasutra has a short report and al lowe promises to give us the skinny on tuesday (go join his cyberjoke 3000 mailing list)
no-one knows how ecstasy island is involved...
the new games company? the new game? a red herring? who knows (but he's on first and he's not saying).

i came up with another tshirt design last night while watching an ad on tv.
(remember: if you steal this design and actually make the tshirts i want 2 things: credit and a shirt!)
picture a pink duracell bunny with devil horns, holding a trident.
big letters across the bottom: DURAHELL
smaller lettering: lasts up to 666 times longer

random link: duracell bunny flash game (found on duracell.jp).
tell me if its any good. i don't get flash at varsity :(

"real" news: (from tonight [powered by iol])
anna nicole smith has just won another step towards getting her late husband's estate.
she's been in a decade-long battle with her late husband's son about who gets the cash.
originally a texas court gave everything to the son,
then a calafornian court gave a bunch to anna,
then the appeal courts decided she wasn't allowed anything,
and now that decision has been overturned and she may now fight for the cash in a federal court.
*phew*
good luck.
i would say "i hope its worth it" but i guess $1.6 billion is worth it.

who let the fucking dogg out? (warning: swearing!) also: sign the petition (under rants, unrelated to snoop)

2006-05-02T13:27:00.000+02:00

yeah i know it's a corny title but they let that fucking criminal out!
firstly they claim WITH ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF WHATSOEVER that snoop's arrest was racially motivated!
this completely contradicts the fact (reported by scotland yard) that SEVEN POLICE OFFICERS WERE INJURED BY HIM AND HIS ENTOURAGE!
shut your flapping lie-holes! he was arrested because he was causing a disturbance (in an airport no less) and he assaulted police officers.
and then they let the fuckhole out!
seriously. snoop was sitting in jail, arrested after assaulting police officers, and one of nelson mandella's daughters uses the foreign affairs department to get him released so that he can come to south africa and rap in some concerts...
what... the... fuck...
" The release was effected after former president Nelson Mandela's daughter, Zinzi Mandela, apparently approached the department of foreign affairs to get him out of the cells."
well i suppose since our last 2 presidents have been in jail, our ex-deputy pres is currently being tried for rape and corruption, and most of parliment has a criminal record, i suppose then its ok to import criminals!
we have enough fucking criminals in the country already!
we don't need any more!
especially violent fuckwits that assault police officers!
its not like he's here saving lives or anything socially responsible... he's making money!
he's been released from jail in another country so that he can come here, rap to the kids of SA that crime and gansterism is cool, make some cash, and then fuck off home without ever paying for his crimes!
fuck you south african government! fuck you right in the eye with a screwdriver! i hope you fucking die!

oh yeah... while talking about criminals and government needing to pull their thumbs out of their asses:
SIX WEEKS OF SECURITY GUARDS ON VIOLENT STRIKES!!!!
for fuck's sake! sort this shit out!
four other unions have accepted the 8% increase offer. satawu refuses 8% and wants 11%, and they're willing to kill to get it:
there's been a recent shootout (this morning) between working security guards and striking security guards (or as i like to call them: stupid fuckers!),
the stupid fuckers disrupted rally meetings (held by cosatu) yesterday by becoming violent (they brought baseball bats, sticks, and shambocks) and trashing the stage and media equipment,
they've been dragging working security guards out of their place of work and beating them (seriously injuring them),
they've trashed the dept of labour offices in pretoria (room to room, destroying everything),
they've stoned cars on highways (N2 i think),
they've thrown rocks, sticks, and bottles at police,
they've thrown people from trains (killing 6),
and they've been caught on camera doing all this shit.
of course satawu (the union behind this) doesn't claim responsibility. they blame the police and some mysterious 3rd force.
BULLSHIT YOU FUCKING LIERS !!!!
the workers have lost so much money (in wages) during this strike that they'll need to work for another year to 2 years, with the increase, just to make up what they're losing now!
this has nothing to do with the workers' well being and has everything to do with lining the pockets of satawu, who gets a cut of the increase!
i hope they (satawu) get stabbed in the face by an enraged, striking security guard!

and now the petition
there is an abandon games petition up.
go read it and sign it if you agree.
it may not budge the copyright holders from their current position, but it'd be nice if they were convinced that freeing their old titles is free publicity and advertising for their latest titles. it costs nothing (since there's no more revenue coming in from the old games) and it helps create brand loyalty.
any way... go read the petition and sign it if you agree.

*sigh*
and nintendo have made a tremendous blunder (in my opinion).
as moonflake pointed out a few days ago:
nintendo have finally named the revolution.
you see "revolution" was a project name that was always going to be changed.
unfortunately the name that they've decided on is "Wii" pronounced "we" or "wee."
it is probably the stupidest thing they could have called it. so many peeing jokes.
"i'm going home to play with my Wii."
"jimmy, what are you doing?" "just playing with my Wii mom."
"to keep it looking new, i store my Wii in a box."
"there's Wii on the TV."
etc ad nausium...
not many people like the new name.

and as for a funny thing (thanks again al lowe):
look at the recipe (in french) on this site: www.leguidecuisine.com/avocatnoix.html
go to google's translation thingie: www.google.com/language_tools
under translate, translate a webpage: type in the above adress and choose "from french to english" and laugh at the result.

i must leave now.
i need to go to the bathroom for a revolution!

snoop updizzle yo, someone's telling porkies!

2006-04-28T12:14:00.000+02:00

snoop missed the thursday concert in jo'burg.
in case you didn't read yesterday's post and you're too lazy to read it now:
snoop was arrested at london's heathrow airport under dubious cicumstances.
original reports that he was trying to get his entire mob (bodyguards etc) into a first class lounge. since they weren't all first class they were refused and violence ensued (seven police officers with cuts and bruises, one with a fractured hand).
so the snoop group (snoop hisself and five others) ended up cooling their heels in holding.

iol has another report today which claims that the whole thing was outrageous and unfair.
basically:

the report is all from one witness.
snoop is portrayed as a complete gentleman, not like a man arreted for multiple crimes including drug dealing, drug possession, possession of an illegal firearm, and accessory to murder. (he was found guilty fo many of those crimes too).
the police are portrayed as acting (and i quote) "like the Gestapo."
this alleged witness person seemed to have overheard the entire conversation between security and snoop in spite of the dozen or so bodyguards surrounding the (silent c)rapper.
the witness states (again i quote): "I boarded before Snoop and his entourage, and when they arrived at the boarding gate, they were not allowed to. I do not know what the reason was, because I was already on the plane."
the police say the group got violent
the witness spends two (admittedly short) paragraphs complaining that they were delayed because they had to remove snoops luggage, and the witness's luggage was accidently removed too.

what fantastic hearing you must have mr witness. you are able to hear an entire conversation in a busy airport terminal, through a bunch of security guards while being on a plane next to the airport!
even if you were still boarding while the whole thing started, the group would have been taken aside by security (hence further away from the witness) and mr witness would be having to produce tickets and whatnot before walking down the long corridor to the plane.
having been on a plane a few times before i can state the following as a fact: no matter how loud the argument in the terminal you CANNOT hear it from the plane.

and do you think we're gullible enough to believe snoop would simply as an innocent "what's up?" when approached by a security guard wanting to have a word with him? a far more believable statement would be "bite me you fucking punk-assed, bitch, pig wannabee." possible with an optional "yo!"
oh yeah... by the way (mr lying shitrag witness [in my opinion]) if the police were indeed acting like the gestapo, dont you think they would have arrested all 35 of the snoop group and not just 6?

and this little snippet of quote reveals a couple of things too:
"...and he [snoop] was getting angry, you know." (talking about snoop's reaction to security giving him grief).
well mr witness... would you like to add a "yo my nizzle" to the end of that sentence?
so by your own admission, snoop was getting ready to rumble. and the resulting injured police officers are in no way proof that prehaps snoop deserves to be in jail... again?

i think our alleged witness has a couple of issues with the fact that our esteemed criminal rapper (maybe the "silent c" stands for criminal?) was detained. mr alleged witness sure did seem to be steamed about the 2 hour delay to remove snoops luggage. and i'd also be really pissed if my luggage had accidently been removed because it was labled as belonging to snoop group and left in london... hmmm... wait a moment: a completely independent witness defending snoop and portraying him in the best possible light, a witness who managed to overhear the entire conversation between snoop and security, a witness who's luggage was packaged with the snoop group's!
hmmm.... mr alleged witness... your objectivity is under question... you wouldn't happen to have had a ticket to that concert that snoop missed?
or maybe you were meant to make sure he got on stage safely? *cough*bodyguard*cough*

anyone else find the second report a bit dodgy?
(can you say "media spin?")

public hizzle todayizzle gangstizzle, yo.

2006-04-27T11:33:00.000+02:00

so i'm up at varsity on this public holiday (here in south africa) to do a little work on my comsci pracs before the deadlines begin to loom (and i do hate a looming deadline).

while there's not much happening i did stumble accross this article at iol.co.za and it made me laugh.
apparently snoop doggy dogg (the 'c' in rap is silent) has been arrested, at london's heathrow airport, on charges of "violent disorder and affray."
basically the fucker tried to use his "gangsta street cred (yo)" to get his dozen bodyguards into the british airways' 1st class lounge.
only problem is that not all his bodyguards had 1st class tickets, so they got refused. (the americans don't like posh and becks so why should the british like snoop?)

just a quick backround insertion here: this is the same snoop dogg that has been arrested multiple times... convicted for trying to sell cocaine, suspended sentence for illegal firearms possesion, arrested as an accomplice "after-the-fact" in a murder for which he was later acquitted, fined for marijuana possesion... etc..

so what is the response of this *begin sarcasm* perfectly reasonable and gentlemanly group of upstanding citizens *end sarcasm* upon half of their party rightfully being refused entry into the 1st class lounge?
they start throwing bottles of whiskey on the floor and then begin arguing with a clerk at a duty free store... wtf?
i bet the whiskey came from the store and they refused to pay for what they broke in their childish little hissy-fit that would have gotten them into clubs in america but had the british calling the police.
anyway... the police pitch up and the moronic snoop group get violent!
seven police officers suffered minor injuries (cuts and bruises) and one suffered a fractured hand.

but 21 bobbies is nothing to sneeze at. (i really hope they used a liberal dose of "SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP!" *whack with truncheon* "YOU-CAN'T-EVEN-SING!" *whack* "YOU'RE-NICKED-SON!" *whack*)
so the entire group gets arrested and are being held in two west london police stations.
the best thing about this: snoop was at the airport to catch a plane to south africa. uk has taken one for the team. hopefully his concert here will get cancelled.
what a bunch of dumbasses.
seriously. your gangsta shit is a fucking joke.

man i hate the whole gangsta crap image that all the stupid kids seem to love nowday.
and it seems all the "heros" *cough*dickheads*cough* of gangsta rap are all "playas" and "for the ladies" and have all served prison time.
i would be willing to bet cash that while in prison the same morons were having their "shit pushed in" or "pushin the love cushion" of their cellmate.
of course all their fans would refuse to believe that... i'm sure all nice gansta rappers are misunderstood gentlemen that were falsely accused of killing and raping people and were unlucky in trial because their lawyers were bought out by "the man."
and since they're such nice people they all get sent to a special rapper's prison where they also imprison female nymphomanics for being too hot.
and if you believe that you deserve to get shot in the face.
you may survive.
one gangsta did... what's his name? half-dollar? loose change? oh yeah... fiddy... fifty cent (about fifty cents short of a dollar in my opinion) took a few shots to the face.
he's also served prison time for numerous run-ins with the law over cocaine possession, heroin possesion, and dealing, as well as illegal possesion of firearms.
i bet he took a few more shots to the face in prison.
with those muscular arms i bet he can row real well.
he still has a bullet fragment stuck in his tongue whish is why he sounds slurry like he's permanently drunk (that and he's probably permanently drunk).

the real farty cent (courtesy of the smoking gun) after being arrested for peddling crack and heroin:

dumbasses... all of them moronic fucking dumbasses!

anniversary of disaster

2006-04-26T12:06:00.000+02:00

i didn't realise it until i stumbled across an article on iol..
today (wednesday, 26th of april 2006) is the 20 year anniversary of the chernobyl disaster.
i looked up the incident on www.chernobyl.info and this is what happened:

on the night of the 25th april 1986 a crew began a test run on reactor 4 of the chernobyl nuclear power station.
they planned to see if the turbines could keep the coolant pumps running long enough while waiting for the emergency diesel generators to kick in.
to prevent interruption of the test, all of the safety systems were deliberately switched off.
to initiate the tests the power levels needed to be decreased to 25%.
something went wrong and the power levels dropped to 1%.
30 seconds after the test began an unexpected surge was encountered and a chain reaction started. since the safety systems were disabled the emergency shutdown failed (if it hadn't it would have halted the chain reaction).
at 1:23.44 am the reactor blew and blasted off it's 1,000 tonne sealing cap.
temperatures of 2,000 degrees celcius resulted in feul rods melting and the graphite cover of the reactor catching fire, creating an inferno which sucked radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
100 times more radiation than the bombs dropped over hiroshima was released.
about 135,000 people had to be evacuated from the surrounding area.
people trying to fight the blaze were fried on the spot by gamma radiation.
many firefighters and engineers at chernobyl died.
the reactor is currently enclosed in a concrete casing known (aptly) as the sarcophagus. the sarcophagus was meant to be a short-term fix and currently another casing (a 20,000 tonne structure) is planned to be completed in 2008 and should safely contain the reactor for another 100 years.

there are some pictures of chernobyl (some of which are in this post) by Waclaw Gudowski available through this link.

elena (the kid of speed) likes to ride her motorbike around the area and has some interesting facts on here page (available through this link.)
apparently a radiation level of 500 roentgens in 5 hours is fatal to a human (not counting cancer and whatnot), but it takes about 2.5 times that amount to kill a chicken, and over 100 times that to kill a cockroach.
some places around the reactor after the explosion were measuring 3,000 - 30,000 roentgens. your average european city has a background radiation of about 20 micro-roengens (20/1,000,000 of a roengen).
interestingly enough the roads in the area are in very good condition (no traffic) and since radiation lies in the soil and plants, not the asphalt, the radiation levels in the middle of the road are not too bad. they double at the edges of the road and are 4 or 5 times higher 1 meter off the road though.

one final link to another information site which has some news coverage in realplayer format (haven't tried it myself): www.chernobyl.co.uk

this is the sort of thing that reminds engineers why safety is important.
i'm not normally the one to rant things like "this should always be remembered to remind us..." but i think this should.
but remember: the lesson here isn't nuclear power is bad, the lesson here is that safety is paramount. it doesn't matter what it is, if it explodes then safety is an issue. surprisingly the immediate deathtoll of this incident was actually very low (however cancer is a slow killer).
for a non-nuclear accident to illistrate this point even more, look at the disaster at bhopal, india. again safety systems had been neglected and ignored (they ignored the warning light and pressure gauges) resulting in 27 tonnes of a deadly gas (methyl isocyanate) leaking out over a sleeping city. people were killed while they lay asleep in their bed. the immediate deathtoll is estimated around 4,000 people. more than 120,000 people are still suffering concequences from breathing in the gas.
find more information on bhopal through this link, this link, and this link.

remember: safety is important!

the sarcophagus at chernobyl.

forking children, proven by hippy bullshit (tm)

2006-04-25T11:36:00.000+02:00

so we're at moonflake's folks' place on sunday and her sister's hippy boyfriend is there. now he's a nice enough guy except he's been indoctrinated into the whole hippy thing by his hippy parents.
talking about anything medicinal or scientific is like trying to convince a devout chrisitian zealot that the world is a big cosmic joke and the real "man behind the scenes" is actually a giant pink elephant named borris who has a liking for vodka, russian communists, and being mistaken for god.
so he makes a typically hippy statement:
"in the past doctors had supreme power, but nowdays that power's being taken away from them which is arguably a good thing."
lets just slice this little (crap) argument into its components shall we:

firstly: to prevent commiting the fallacy of "guilty by association" please disregard the fact that the statement comes from a hippy.

note the use of the word "arguably." obviously he's trying to sound philisophical and also show that he's open minded to the fact that there could be another opinion. of course if you disagree then you must be taking the stricter, less open-minded side right? crap!
his argument is full of argumentative errors (highly un-philisophical) and supporting the other side is simply a matter of preference (some may say intelligence, but for the purpose of analysing its just preference).

the statement "something had supreme power and now it doesn't." sounds very good. people don't like things that have supreme power over them (except for the religious who like the safety of their decisions not being their own... but that's an entirely different discussion). but when you look at what that something is, doctors, you realise that he's talking complete shit!
doctors used to have a lot of say over your health (and still do) simply because they spend their lives studying the subject. the application of their help is still up to you. you can always not take what has been prescribed (and you could have refused to "let two leeches disolve under your tongue and call back in the morning" back in the olden days).
in addition: back in the olden days (when he claims doctors had supreme power) there was even more bullshit remedies from housewives and protohippies (what i like to name the precursor to hippies. you know: old hags that smelled bad and lived in the woods alone, prescribing treebark and potions made of worms to their "patients").
so the "supreme power" was always split between the two (and back in the day people trusted doctors less than they trusted the protohippies).
but you could always choose to have a stiff drink and hope the gangrene went away on its own... so ultimately the patient had the power.

as for power being taken away from doctors being a good thing: bullshit!
doctors do need to be monitored to prevent god complexes and those wacky nazi-style experiments involving needles, the spine, and injecting things. and guess what: the doctoring profession is self regulating.
doctors understand that if a patient trusts the proffession then they are more likely to accept help from the proffession and more good can be done!
of course the argument is hinting at that power being given over to "alternative" (read "untested and untrustworth" and add a liberal dose of "snake oil" for good measure) medicines.
obvious reasons dictate that that is not a good thing. no alternative medicine is scientiffically proven. all of it is proven with anecdotal evidence and a special brand of quantum mechanics (i like to call it quantum mechanics for hippies... it takes real quantum mechanics and ignores it. in stead it uses a bastardisation of schrodinger's cat to prove things, as far as i can tell).
if an alternative medicine really worked it would be tested and accepted, thusly not making it alternative anymore.
(maybe that's why the hippies are keeping their medicines a secret. not because they don't really work, but because they afraid of becoming "mainstream" and being seen as a sell-out by their friends?)

so basically i can condense his argument into the following statement:
"complete shit, crap, bullshit!"
ergo: shut your stinking, hippy, vegetable hole and think before making a stupid statement. especially when its aimed at someone who actually thinks.

its like there's some hippy textbook out there that teaches hippies to believe a small set of (stupid and easily disproved) opinions, hate the FDA, become a vegetarian, and to ignore any kind of proof that disproves a "radical" belief.

a hippy is more likely to believe a channeled atlantean scientist who says "moss covered treebark is a wonderfull antiseptic. i can prove it with quantum mechanics." than an actual scientist who has to remove their gangrene infested arm and tells them that prehaps introducing dirt and bacteria to their blood supply was not the smartest thing they've done in their lives.
This statement highlights 2 things:
1) hippies are really closed minded. they don't accept anything that counters their "alternative" beliefs in spite of their calls for open-mindedness from others.
2) doctors are fallible like all humans are. that probably was the smartest thing that hippy has done his entire life.

DISCLAIMER: the above example is a fictional story created to highlight some points of my argument. you can tell its ficticious as no hippy would go to a real doctor. they'd probably just take some coloidal silver to stave off infection (*cough*bullshit*cough*).

i think that all "alternative" remedies that have no scientific proof (and that includes all those "food supplements" that are only labled as such because the hippies can't get permission to call them medicine) must be labled: "proven by hippy bullshit (tm)"
and if they ever claim "proven with " then they should have to produce papers that have been submitted to bone fide scientific journals (not hippy journals) and those papers have to have been accepted and published. otherwise they get the lable "proven by hippy bullshit and covered in unscientific lies. probably harmful! (tm)"

i wouldn't find hippies so bad if they actually were open minded and used their brains to question things and decide on things for themselves. the problem is that they all spout the same arguements that have been disproven hundreds of times, yet they still refuse to believe that they could be wrong.
refuse to believe in the possibility that there is a probability that they may be incorrect.
stupid hippies!

in a complete side whatsits:
i realised that computer scientists must hate children.
while sitting in my comsci lecture today i pieced the pieces together.
creating a new process thread in a program is called forking. the new thread is called a child thread. when a thread completes you kill it.
when assigning resource to another process/client and that process/client dies, the resources are refered to as an orphan. it is encouraged to constantly seek out orphans and free up the resources.
so basically, in computer science it is common practice to:
fork children then kill them, and seek out orphans and eliminate them.

gaming news:
castlevania: portrait of ruins pictures (not many) at the magic box.
techeblog says that its expected in november 2006 and there will be two player characters to switch between and more powerfull summmon attacks to use on the 100+ different enemies and "massive bosses" all in new locations such as "the desert and Misty Town."

ears broken :( copyright ! and robots at the end (on top of the skantily clad lady)

2006-04-21T12:26:00.000+02:00

angry 365 days a year rants about hippies today.
hippies suck!
thought i should link to him since i've begun to read his blog since moonflake told me about it. he does a good (and funny) rant.
his site is very pink though. it is a little disturbing.

my headphones broke yesterday :(
they were cool sony headphones that came with my discman many years ago.
the left channel started going wonky and then cut out.
further examination (pushing the little boot back) resulted in the discovery of a sealed jack with tiny holes where the wires go in... or at least where a wire goes in and a wire doesn't anymore.
*sigh*
i like sony products.
they may have made some mistakes in the past... (like that whole root kit copy protection thing that happened a while back, and barbra streisand)
they may be more expensive than other alternatives...
but they also do some things right... (like system of a down, vaio laptops, playstation, and walkmans)
and but they really do bring out a quality product.
(and sometimes they bring out something kinda odd...)
anyway... if i could afford it most of my consumer electronics would be sony!

i was going to do a piece on copyright law today... i even started to read up on it all and everything. it was going to be a cogent and well organised essay looking at copyright law and the implications in our lives...
the problem is that its an ultra boring subject once you get started.
so here a a few quick points:
important: copyright differs from country to country! the following points seem to be fairly consistent, but that doesn't mean they apply in your area!

copyright law differs from country to country although some sort of international control is attempted.
copyright lasts for ages and ages.
you may sell copyrighted materials on (eg: secondhand cds and software) as long as you do not keep a copy.
you may back up (archive) software as long as you are the legal owner and you destroy / delete the backups when you get rid of the software.
to have a backup you must be in possesion of the original. ie: if the cd breaks, put it in a plastic bag and keep it in the box!
the backup clause does not extend to music.
you may not mp3 a cd for your own personal use even if you own said cd.
the previous point seems to be in contention as there is normally a "fair use" clause in a country's copyright laws and people, especially in the USA, claim that this is fair use. it seems that (in the USA at least) the practice of "format-shifting" is being seen as fair use.
similarly you may not copy a cd to a tape so that you can listen to it in your car.
copyrights need to be explicitly given away and don't get lost if a company doesn't try to actively enforce them.
copyright infringement is normally a civil case, but some places have a felony limit that turns the crime into a criminal case if its over a certain monetary value of infringement.
copyrights are different to trademarks and patents and should not have their laws confused. (they can be similar but the laws are sometimes completely different).
do not go to finland! they have some ultra-nasty laws about copyrights.

if you're really interested in finding out more do a google search.
i found a little info at Brad Templeton's page titled 10 myths about copyright explained.
i found a little more on a new zealand page about the subject.
there is another page dealing with digital music (in the states).

of course there could be a whole discussion (as i've mentioned before) about the legal vs moral / ethical issues on the subject.
a company could be ethical and still hold copyrights since infringement is a civil case thing... but it gets tricksy and the areas tend to be grey...
if you really want to get into that you'll need to bring me a box of cigarettes and a couple of 2l coke cokes, find me in the right mood, and be prepared to discuss for a (possibly looooong) while.

and now everyone's favourite: fighting robots!!!!
i found a site called robot dreams that has some writeup about a japanese (i think) show that had a section on fighting robots. it looks awesome. kinda like the ones that the uk seem fond of, except it seems to be kids and the robots are bipedal and don't look lie a nipple-pierced, silver breast on wheels.
they have some WMVs of the fight to download...
looks very cool.

and now for the promised scantily clad lady...

hey man check at me rocking out...

2006-04-20T11:13:00.000+02:00

so i joined al lowe's cyberjoke 3000 mailing list the other day.
the joke quality is straight out of liesure suit larry 3... you know, the bit in the comedy club where the guy tells hundreds of kinda funny, kinda lame, mostly entertaining jokes.
but he also normally sends some interesting links with the jokes.
today's link is awesome.
RadioLovers.com
they offer old radio shows in mp3 format for free download.
they even have that old classic "who's on first."
unfortunately varsity seems to block mp3 downloads :(
go thank al lowe by joining the cyberjoke 3000 mailing list
(you don't need to join yahoo groups... you can just sign up for the mailing list)

as for a little gaming news:
the magic box has a few pictures of a new metal slug game heading for the playstation 2.
"another one?" you may be thinking. "what makes this newsworthy?" i hear you cry, gnashing your teeth in misunderstanding and anguish...
well... how about a totally 3D metal slug?
i'd heard rumours, but they were all over a year old and i passed them off as a photoshopper's pipe dream (or closet fantasy).
but it seems to be true :) a full 3D metal slug!
if that doesn't tickle your fancy (float your boat, peel your bananam whatever) then you obviously aren't interested!

talking about gaming...
i haven't really mentioned one of my intrests on this blog, but if you know me you probably know i have a bit of a fixation on abandon games.
abandon games are basically games that have been abandoned by the copyright holders. some particularly nice companies (like rockstar games who allow you to download GTA and GTA2 for free) actually release their old games into the freeware domain. free to download and enjoy. unfortunately some companies keep their money-grubbing talons firmly embedded into their aging software, trying to wring the last few cents out of the nostalgia factor.
but mostly old games just get forgotten about and the companies don't really care about them anymore. they are still copyrighted, but the companies don't enforce said copyright and the games are effectively "abandoned."
some people claim that abandon games are free and legal.
bullshit!
they should be, but unless the company actually releases the copyright, or the copyright expires (and i don't believe any have yet... copyrights last for ages) you can still be nailed for copying the games. most companies could be bothered though. most companies don't even remember what DOS was and if it isn't hitting their latest titles or their budget wares then they abandon following it up.
anyway.. that's just an informative sidetrack.
guess what i found while visiting my parents' place last night...
well go on, guess...
you got the answer in your mind?
ok...
i found my old original copies of duke nukem 3D, doom II, alien vs predator, GTA (and london mission disk), and tomb raider revelations.
I also have the quake 3 (not really abandoned) originals somewhere, and ufo: enemy unknown (also known as xcom).
unfortunately my quake and quake2 disks are missing :( although i do still have the boxes. and my descent 2, syndicate wars, and syndicate disks and boxes are gone :(
i also have the originals of DOS 6.22 and the manual.
(i need to back those up).
apparently sierra have the liesure suit larry collection and space quest collection out for sale which include pretty much everything involved with those titles.
man i'd love to get my hands on those... but i haven't seen them anywhere in this country (and i do keep my eye out for them).

if abandon games intrest you here are some links:

getting them to run can be really difficult. DOSbox is a great DOS emulator (or
virtual DOS machine). it gets most things running.

a nice frontend to simplify DOSbox (for all you non-DOS literate people) is available, called Dfend.

another nice little program to get all the SCUMM games running (like monkey island, am and max, etc... lucasarts stuff) is SCUMMVM.

an alternative to the above is to use window's native virtual dos machine. since it isn't purpose built for gaming it isn't the best, but it can run a surprising amount... but you'll need some DOS sound emulation. and VDMS provides, emulating a soundblaster in the virtual dos machine.

a nice frontend for window's virtual DOS machine is called abandon loader. basically it just makes running the things a little easier.

1up.com has a nice little feature called freeloader that finds and reviews freeware games (including abandon games that have been released). the link is about half way through the series. just hit the archive link and find what you want.

a good abandon site called abandonia has plenty to look at and download and also have all sorts of game manuals and midi files, and usefull utilities. they also have links to various other abondon sites.

abandonia's sister site abandonia reloaded is a freeware games site with plenty to look through and download.

another nice abondon site is abandoneer. they have a nice little selection and links to other sites.

and finally: the abandonware blog. a recently started blog looking at the abandon scene and doing reviews and links and whatnot.

now that is a wealth of resources for you if you're interested in that sort of thing.
don't say i never gave ya nuffink!

insomnia: meet couch and tv. couch and tv: meet insomnia.

2006-04-19T12:52:00.000+02:00

somehow, in spite of my fatigue, i seem to get a sort of second wind before i manage to get to bed. last night i finally crawled into bed and began to doze, only to not actually fall asleep for an hour or two. i ended up lying there thinking up all sorts of cool ideas that insomnia later robbed me of.
eventually i reconvened to the couch and watched a little tv. only problem is that at about 2am there is nothing but crud on tv.
seriously.
and even dr. phil talking about some uncontrolled brat (who obviously needed ritilan, a swift swipe upside the head, and a firm "NO!") couldn't push me over into oblivion.
it eventually took most of some ancient film about land claims, forestry, and romance to knock me out.
strange how even though you're awake you can't concentrate on anything while trying to go to sleep otherwise you simply wake up.
(hence the reason why i didn't go play some games and the reason why the description of the merciful film sounds so odd)
i woke up this morning at 6-something and moved back to bed.
of course when morning comes all thoughts of not being able to sleep are thrown out of the window and waking up becomes a real problem.
was almost late for my first lecture.
it was boring.
even the lecturer admitted it.
but he's covering it for completeness so that he doesn't need to remember that he left a section out when it comes to setting exams.
*sigh*

so the zuma trial...
what a croc of shit!
they had that stupid YOU agony aunt (louise olivier) giving testimony for zuma's side (they must be getting desperate) because she has some apparent psycho-whatsits papers.
so she testifies that the "freeze" response is unnattural and indicates that the woman that says zuma raped her is lying. she also claimed all sorts of other kak.
during cross examination it comes up that just a short while ago the stupid -crazy-hippy-bitch-looking-lying-sack-of-shit-moron (YOU columnist for short) told a woman that the "freeze" response is a perfectly normal response to have during a sexual assault.
how much money is she being paid to lie?
and she is obviously lying to someone... either the response is normal or it is not. simple logic. claiming both statements is a dichotomy since the one is a negation of the other. therefor: to claim both statements means you must lie at least once!
(and she does look like a crazy hippy bitch)
interestingly enough: while the news was reporting this lie last night, iol makes no mention (that i found) about it. i would think that that was a pretty newsworthy item... "lier on stand for zuma's defence" is the sort of headline i'd use.
but i did spot a small bit of text "here" which i will quote for you... remember: olivier is on the stand to discredit the accuser:
"Although Olivier attended the complainant's evidence and cross-examination, it remains unclear whether she will be called to challenge Friedman's findings, particularly as she never clinically examined the woman." -iol.co.za
i'll assume she got all her information psychically then?
nothing out of her foul, blackened, two-tongued mouth can be trusted now (not that her advice was any good before). she's proven herself false!
i think she should be fired from YOU magazine.
a proven weaver of untruths cannot be trusted toadvise people looking for council and help.
i think we should e-mail letters@you.co.za and complain!
seriously!
i'm going to do that!

btw: while looking for the news on this on iol.co.za i accidently clicked the "zuma corruption trial" subheading in stead of "zuma rape trial."
isn't it nice to know that our ex-deputy president keeps current.
politicians in this country really do love the news.

pfft!
now to lift your spirits after that crapstorm (stupid hippy!) here are a couple of links for you to try out:
remember those motivational posters?
they have some nice photo with a little text at the bottom.
the photo is normally a wildlife shot or something like a close-up of a couple of gears or pencils or something.
the text says stuff like: "achievement: blah blah blah.. something to make you feel good / think about."
well check out this site: www.despair.com
they have much more realistic posters.
i personally like:
Indifference

It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, but it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face.

heh.
and for the second site: the dialectizer

enter some text or put in a url and istantly transform it into redneck...
or elmer fudd, or jive, or moron...
i tried it with my blog... damn thats some funny stuff :)

and thats all for today.

java code burns my eyes (or: whore code and the guy i'm going to kill)

2006-04-18T14:01:00.000+02:00

man i need a shower.
as moonflake has said, we spent the long weekend with her family in a small wooden box next to a river.
it was great and relaxing (and i caught a couple of fish).
the only problem was that i needed to finish up some code, and in spite of moonflake's laptop, i needed the internet to solve some problems.
so i've spent most of last night and a large chunk of today sorting out the proxy server that was meant to be handed in this morning.
-10% for a day late i finally handed it in.
problem is this:
my project partner (fucker) for the rmi prac spent the long weekend trying to code his (fucker) proxy server and so he (fucker) didn't complete his (fucker) half of the rmi prac. which means we hand that in tomorrow, as long as he (fucker) finishes it today!
another -10% for lateness (10% per day...)
fucker!
while i was doing my half of the prac he was surfing the net and saying that he couldn't do the client until the server was completed...
bullshit!
write the damn client, mocking server response, and then when the server is complete you can integrate.
so i lose marks because he fucks around!
man that pisses me off. if he doesn't finish it by tomorrow i'm going to strangle him and hand in the code, cut into his lifeless corpse!
if he had finished the rmi i could have helped him complete his proxy (now that i understand it) and we wouldn't be getting -10% on both pracs.
fucker!

pah!
anyway.
thats about all i have to say today.
i need to go home and rest a bit...
...and shower. spending large amounts of time in the labs is a bad idea. they still haven't fixed the aircon in here. i'm thinking of bringing an uncooked chicken with me next time i have to code. by the time i code half of it i'll have a nicely roasted meal. i'll just need to remember to take basting breaks.

peeing is the new topic of conversation.

2006-04-13T10:59:00.000+02:00

ah yes...
peeing. its one thing we all do yet men seem to have all the fun with it.
and there are so many topics involved.
every guy knows all the tricks about hiding "dribbles":
when washing your hands make sure you flick a little water over the area and surrounds. then don't wipe your wet hands on a towel, use your pants and make sure you leave a visible handprint so that people can see that you didn't pee on yourself but that you used your pants as a towel. a truly manly thing to do!
men don't pee on themselves or use towels!

and then there's urinal fun:
every guy knows the 2 supreme pleasures of the urinal.
1) "the shivers." you know what i'm talking about. you're standing at the urinal doing your business when that little godess of hidden pleasures runs gracefully up your spine resulting in a euphoric quiver often accompanied by half-shut eyelids and sighing.
2) ice! for some reason they put ice cubes in urinals. they probably claim something about cleanliness or some such gumph. the reality is this:
it is fun to melt ice cubes with pee :) really it is.
but with the pleasure comes the danger:
often the ice cubes are cup shaped (probably easier to manufacture in large quantities) and a careless or amatuer ice-pee'er will often hit the cup at the wrong angle and score an "own goal" if you get my drift...
then they've got to use their pants as a towel.

ah yes... urinals.
every man knows the unspoken code.
its kind of like a gentleman's club. i may be hunted down and killed for revealing the secrets of the mens' room, but it must be done (don't ask why).

a man shalt never make eye contact with another man while urinal use is in progress.
a man shalt never make, erm, eye contact with another man's, erm, soldier while urinal use is in progress.
unless the men are good friend a man shalt not distrurb the tranquility of another man by talking to him while urinal use is in progress (exceptions: the annoying guy at work and drunks).
a man shalt respect another man's privacy and always use the urinal that is furthest from all other men (while urinal use is in progress).
a man shalt never be caught unawares and thus must he always choose a urinal farthest from the door unless this infringes on the privacy of another man (detailed in previous rule) while urinal use is in progress.
a man shalt not show weakness and shalt flush only about 1 in 10 times when using a urinal (exceptions: the boss is in the room [probably talking to you while you pee and while he's using his pants as a towel] or a member of cleaning staff is watching you pee).

these are the rules we are born with. these are the rules we live and die by.
its probably why transsexuals aren't fully accepted by society. some keep trying to adhere to the urinal rules when there are no more urinals in their life, others were never born with the rules and are now thrust into a complex society of porcelain and urine.

and since chittychittybangbang told us his story, i guess it only fair to reciprocate and tell my very own "gotta go" story. it is not as funny as his. my tale is a real life and death struggle. it was back in the days when men were men and peeing was important.
there i was. a new recruit... (to the local wargaming club at the local library.)
a fresh young soldier ready to take life by the balls... (and play a few games of warhammer 40k.)
i was young and foolish and reckless back then. i believed i was imortal... (i didn't go to the bathroom before leaving the house.)
it was common amongst us to drink like real men... (we were throwing back the cokes.)
late one afternoon it was just me and the sarge left, all the others were no more... (because we were the only ones to pitch up to play that day.)
we were seriously short of equipment... (schpat had given us the keys to get in but forgot to give us the bathroom keys.)
and then it happened. i had my calling and knew my duties... (my bladder was full and i really had to go.)
but the usual route was insurmountable and i had to find an alternate... (the bathroom was locked and the only other room we could get into was a kitchen.)
there i was, stranded and alone, looking death in the eyes knowing that the enemy could be watching me from anywhere... (standing in the kitchen i realised i could just use the sink, except for the large window that opened out over a public road.)
i needed some form of transport... (i needed some way to get the pee from me to the sink without "direct access".)
and then i laid my eyes upon it. like mana from heaven the answer stood there glistening in the afternoon sun... (i found some empty coffee jars.)
taking my life in my hands i did what i had to do, no matter how i felt... (i peed into the jars, awkward having to hold the item you're peeing into.)
i was running out of resources and needed to reload which seemed to drag out into infinity... (i filled a jar and had to "interrupt the flow" to switch to another jar.)
finally i could deliver the goods... (i dumped the pee down the drain.)
and then i melted back into the shadows as if i'd never been there... (i rinsed out the jars and sink and put everything back where i found it.)
with the mission complete i returned to base camp... (to finish the game.)
and vowed never to be caught so unawares again... (making sure the bathroom keys were always available.)

ah yes... i love the smell of pee in the morning (or something).

and on another topic entirely:
n-philes reports that another castlevania game for the nintendo ds is on its way. konami has released a list of up-and-coming and castlevania: portrait of ruin is on the list. if its anything like the last one it'll be a keeper!

and for those interested in abandonwares: the abandonware blog.
quoted purpose of the site:
"I have hundred of ideas right now but the main thing I'll be trying to do is write reviews and post abandonware-scene-related articles."

if my posts continue in this vein i'm going to lose all my readers... well, all the girly ones anyway.
remember: you're not a man if you pee on yourself, use a towel, or if you don't read this blog... and women: read this blog to ensure you know what your man is really doing in the bathroom when he walks out looking like he's been wrestling an octopuss in the bathtub.

urinal etiquette and women in the military and owls (how's that for a dangling participle?)

2006-04-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

inspired by totalwaste's picture on one of his recent posts i got a couple of pics of women in uniform.
btw: if you happen to be using google image search in a public environment (eg: in the university labs) never forget to add -xxx to any and all searches especially when thay have women and/or uniform in the title.
even when safe search is on!
i have noticed that the pic i found of the cute saluting girl is titled israel8.jpg...
i wonder if totalwaste has met her?
(i'm betting he wishes he has ;)

so i walk into the urinal this morning (complete sidetrack) and out of the corner of my eye i spot a dude at the urinals standing as you would (if you were a dude at the urinals).
so i do what any normal guy in the situation does: i don't make eye contact and head straight for the farthest urinal spot on the other side of the room.
now since its easter vac there aren't many people on campus which means its pretty quite.
i begin to (how to put this politely?) drain the main vein, shake hands with the man, shake the snake, go for a squirt, drop a bladder-load, take a slash, paint the urinal, making a sissy, leak the lizard (take your pick), when i notice that there is no sound coming from the other side of the room.
the guy is just standing there in front of the urinal, not peeing.
maybe he got stage fright? maybe he likes the smell of urinal cakes? maybe he just likes to look at his own dick?
most disturbing.
i finished up and got out toot sweet!
(remember: if you shake it more than twice you're playing with it!)

now that i've lost any female readers i guess you can have a picture of an owl.
"why an owl?" you ask: because they're funny!
now go do something constructive and of social redeeming value.
but before you go, a free bonus picture.
the writing translates to: "attention finished charlie" according to google's translator. and i didn't even select german to chingrish.

people all around the world.

2006-04-11T10:36:00.000+02:00

i recently put up one of those clustermaps on this site just to see where i was getting hits from. its only been active a couple of days but already there's a few interesting things to note.
in spite of most of my friends living in cape town i'm getting a spread of hits from around the world (ok. my cluster map does not look like a spotty teenager after eating a double cheese pepperoni pizza... like schpat's / moonflake's maps).
now this blog (this may surprise you) doesn't get millions of hits a day. i believe (read: fool myself into believing) that this is because my blog is highly intellectual and requires refined taste and understanding to fully enjoy it.
but then i know some of the people that read it and realise that i'm just not as interesting as the competition :)
but still... red blips from america (can't think who they would be), spain (who do i know in europe? everyone i know there is in uk), israel (*waves to totalwaste*), japan (konichiwa. i don't know who they'd be either), cape town (*waves to friends*) and jo'burg (*waves at chittychittybangbang*).
unless someone is trying to mask their ip to read my blog (maybe i'm unwittingly at the center of some massive spy vs spy secret swapping ring? the comments aren't for me but are coded messages?) i'm getting a diverse set of readers.
well whoever you are: welcome and thank you for reading.
i'll try do my best to keep up the same level of blogging as i always have :)
(pfft. that shouldn't be hard... its not like this is award winning material. i don't even use capitals).

since yesterday's post was so massive today's post is short.

just a quick bit of nintendo ds gaming news:
resident evil: deadly silence should be out in stores here soon (i haven't seen it yet) and is already available from take2.co.za.

on the zombie note:
n-philes report that a new zombie shooter is being developed. its called dead and furious. using the touchscreen they hope to recreate an arcade gun shooter. if they get it right it could be loads of fun :)

anyway. that's all for today.
if you want more finish reading yesterday's post (like anyone could read all that in one sitting.)

pirates and cargo... they steal our phone money.

2006-04-10T10:45:00.000+02:00

funny (in the unfunny sense).
just last week moonflake and i were talking with her uncle about cargo containers falling off trucks.
he had recently seen a truck going around a corner when the gigantic container on the back simply fell off.
he was saying "imagine if someone was next to that truck..."
and then there was various talk about containers falling off trucks in this country.
well guess what's in the news today:
a woman has been crushed to death by a cargo container that fell off the back of a truck, and her husband (who was in the passenger seat) has been seriously injured.
turns out the the proper locks and things weren't used, but the container was illegally attached with chains. well that obviously didn't work.
the truck was travelling along the N3/R103 interchange when the container clipped a bridge and came off, killing the poor woman.
what the fuck is wrong with the shipping industry in this country?
trucks are forever in accidents (mostly with taxis).
their cargo is always falling off (and now killing people).
driving long distance always, without exception, has at least one incedence with a truck driver being a fuckwit (like overtaking another truck while there's oncoming traffic... seen that before).
when the new turbine for koeberg arrived they didn't have the cranes to offload it.
wtf?
who the hell is in charge of all this shit? i'm betting government is to blame again, just like telkom.

talking about government and telkom:
we are getting fucked with high prices because the government holds a 38% share of the monopolistic phone company: telkom!
why would they regulate them and bring down exhorbatent prices when they're getting a fat share of the R30 billion pie. i bet that pie is full of gravy, and we all know politicians in this country get fat on gravy!
did you know that government also owns a share of every single communications provider out there? varying percentages from 5% (mtn i think) to 100% (santek i believe), with most being around the 25-35% range.
carte blanche had a whole thing on it last night.
telkom refused an interview and the smarmy government bitch that they interviewed had pretty much one comment to say:
"on behalf of the south african people." (obotsap)
interviewer: you own 38% of telkom.
government idiot: obotsap
interviewer: and you own (some percentage) of vodacom.
government idiot: obotsap
repeat adnausium, stopping only to change percentages and names.
the moron's other claim was that by having such control over the communications government could effectively use them in a time of crisis.
funny how there is already a crisis department (i forget their name) set up which already has all the legislation in place and has nothing to do with government's communication sector (other than hijacking it when there's a crisis).
funny how the rest of the world doesn't need a stranglehold on the people to warn them of a crisis.
our internet connections are 2000% (two thousand percent) more expensive than most developed countries and 1000% (one thousand percent) more expensive than most developing countries.
and of course you all know the little story about how its cheaper and quicker to fly to hong kong, catch a taxi to the nearest internet cafe, download 100Gb, get back to the airport and fly back to south africa.
more interesting comparisons to point out:
telkom's fastest adsl speeds: 1 Megabyte a second.
hong kong's fastest adsl speed: 1 Gigabyte a second (thats 1024 Megabytes a second).
price to download 100Gb:
telkom: R9146 (excluding line rental)
hong kong: 20 of your fine hong kong dollars (about R17.43 at the internet cafe)
please note: i did not forget to add a "." in telkom's figure. it is nine thousand one hundred and forty six rand excluding line rental!
think about that for a second.
btw: where is the SNO? (second network operator).
will government own a large part of them too?
will they also like to fuck us in the arse as much as telkom enjoys it?
something needs to be done!

i was going to do a whole bit about the dichotomy of big companies complaining about piracy (especially of music) while also providing us with the tech to pirate their stuff. blame telkom for the bad rant as i'm too spent after the telkom rant to do this one justice.
basic points were this:
different departments are involved with the different sides.
both departments need to do well and so need to push their agendas.
piracy is wrong, but so is raping us for the price of music.
piracy is illegal, but massive cd prices isn't (its just immoral).
mp3 players aren't for stealing music, the same argument: poppy seeds aren't for morphine (or whichever drug it is).
if you use the mp3 player for illegal purposes then you're pirating.
if you turn poppy seeds into drugs then you're a druglord.
if you don't pirate mp3s but listen to legit ones then you're all legal.
if you like the smell/sight of a poppy and plant the seeds then you're all legal.
what is the inherant intent behind mp3 players (and cdrw's etc).
do the companies really believe that people are using them legally?
are they just trying to get some cash out of people who probably wouldn't buy their music in spite of the fact that they will now contibute to piracy?
its a very complicated bag of different, clashing schools of thought.
personally i rip only cds i own and that's what i listen to on my mp3 player.
i'm not squeeky clean... but i wash behind the ears.
i know people who will pirate just for the collection of it and don't even listen to what they rip most of the time.
i don't have a problem with them personally.
i haven't really decided my standpoint on piracy yet. there's just too many sides to come up with a firm standpoint that applies across the board.
think on this: what about a friend of mine who had a bunch of cds that he owned and ripped to mp3 so that he could listen to them on his main entertainment system: his computer. someone stole all his cds (in a spectacular cat burglary style: coming down from the roof, onto his flat balcony, in and out with all his stuff, and managing to escape afterwards without killing himself, all 4 floors above the ground). now all he's left with are his mp3s. he paid for his music. some criminal has his cds. who's entiled to listen to the music? he can't prove he owns them (who keeps the till slip for a cd after they've gotten home?). the crim didn't pay for it.
tricky tricky tricky. legaly speaking i think my friend might be in the wrong (unless he did keep the till slips. but i don't think he's that anal). but morally he isn't. he owns a copy of that music (or the rights to listen to that music, or something). he paid for it. surely it doesn't matter what form that music takes?
think on that for a while too.

wow.
it's been a philosopher's thinking blog entry today.
hope i didn't hurt your brain.
(telkom rippoff images from here)
edit: telkom rant -> 2000% more expensive than most developed countries, not 2000% more expensive than most developing countries. thanks moonflake for pointing that out :)

weekend funnies

2006-04-08T10:58:00.000+02:00

well.
i'm up on campus today doing a little net surfing before my project partner arrives. we decided that programming at varsity would be better because we have net access and we're developing on the machines that we're developing for.
so i arrived early to browse the interweb.
man, downloads are fast on the weekend. its awsome!
anyway... since i'm up here all special like, and i haven't really posted anything of real intrest recently, i've brought up some pictures that i've taken with my phone.
just a few funny ones.
the images are a little big (dimensions not kb).
i would have shrunk them except phone cameras are kak quality (well, mine is) and you wouldn't be able to make out the funny.
i've commented on each pic below the pic.
need a full body message! do they work out muscle tension with morse code? are they tattoo specialists? i didn't take down the number at the bottom so i guess we'll never know. photo taken at adult world's message board (don't ask).
Mr. Fish with a knife. ok. this is more scary than funny. why does mr fish have a homemade knife? why does he look like he's about to shank someone? this is why your mother told you not to trust sailors (and if she didn't then she oughta have). photo taken at a fish 'n chips shop (called mr fish funnily enough).
chingrish warning to peadophiles. this is an actual box for a chinese made pistol (a norinco if i remember correctly). i really admire the chinese for their stand against child abuse. btw: i have seen the same warning on a box of ammo too. photo taken at a gunshop.
and finally we have New SouthAfrican Wildlife. this wonderful creature was spotted resting from the midday heat in the shadow of an alleyway. while we have better pictures of him showing off his brilliant mane of dirty dreadlocks, this picture shows off his grace. even passed out in the gutter he shows us what peotry in motion he is. notice how it looks like he's fallen from the sky to land on the asphalt. unfortunately we do not have recordings of his call: a wonderfull mix of mad shouting and mumbling to himself. if you wish to experience this magnificent species yourself all you need to do is find the right alleyway in claremont, cape town. we've managed to study him in his natural habitat for over a year now and his territory ranges all the way from pick n pay to stadium on main. but be warned: he may look pretty but he is unpredictable and could be dangerous (he may also piss on you if you stand still for too long).

well...
i hope you enjoyed that.
i'm off to download a little more.
cya.

not much

2006-04-07T13:25:00.000+02:00

not much to say today.
saw corpse bride the other night.
it was fun but very short.
not much else been happening.
realised that i haven't linked to evo.llusion's blog so i corrected that (see side bar as usual).
varsity vac starts today for a week.
got 2 projects to code during the vac and both my project partner and i are going away over easter weekend....
*sigh*
oh... i came up with another shirt idea. it still needs a lot of work and is probably only funny to computer geeks but hey:

bad checksum!
i'm a few bits short of a byte

i never said it would be a good shirt.
erm...
that's it for today.
go read someone else's blog.
tata!

too tired for a title

2006-04-05T11:35:00.000+02:00

the last few days have been exhausting.
been getting too little sleep.
i just spent R730 to purchase 2 (thats right... only two) textbooks.
(the fuckers jacked the prices on the reorders).
i also just handed in an essay that i was completing this morning at 1.
and i just wrote a comsci test.
blegh....

but on the good side of life:
moonflake and i attended schpat's wedding yesterday.
it was a small affair with only 10 guests (mostly family) in a lovely little getaway upcountry.
everyone was dressed all smart and the entire day was very nice.
there was chocolate with every course of lunch.
the wedding cake was decorated by schpat's mom and had over 1000 small purple icing flowers on it. the food was fantastic.
we wandered the gardens a bit between lunch and tea and schpat harrassed the ducklings (catching one in the process).
it was a lovely wedding and i wish the newlyweds a wonderful long life together.

moonflake and i watched national treasure on sunday.
the dvd is fantastic.
the film is quite fun. its kinda like a more current indiana jones without indy.
it was most enjoyable.
then we found the extras.
while most of the extras are your standard fare (making of etc), you get a bit of puzzle at the end of each.
once the puzzle is solved you get access to even more extras...
and there's another puzzle hidden here.
to get the code required you need to solve a little game where you need to select the right lenses to see some numbers.
i managed to guess it first time :)
(ok... there were only 4 lenses on each side meaning a 1 in 16 chance... but still)
this final bit gives you access to a trivia track on the film.
its probably really fun to watch with the trivia, but we were renting it, it was late, and we were at moonflake's mom's place.
(plus watching the movie again just after watching it is a little too soon for me).

anyway.
excuse bad blogging for today.
too tired for better.
once again: congrats to the newlyweds.

essays never end

2006-03-31T13:26:00.000+02:00

stuck up at varsity downloading essay research again...
will these essays never end? it doesn't seem like it.
i've still got another 2 projects to code too.
*sigh*
we have some new lecturer for the compilers section of the course.
she has the most irritating voice i have ever heard.
her voice makes my ears hurt.
and she has a habit of saying "a grammar."
"lets look at an example of a grammar."
now while dictionary.com seems to say that that's acceptable use, i think its like saying "a water."
it just sounds so damn wrong! a grammar system sounds so much better.
she does have a horrid, high pitched, afrikaans, plaasmeisie kinda accent. maybe thats what the problem is.
my ears bleed after 45mins in her lecture.
and this means another R350 textbook to purchase.
its an expensive month and it hasn't even started yet.
blegh!
and this weekend looks busy.

enjoying the system

2006-03-30T13:00:00.000+02:00

cool, in denial
We're the cruel regulators smoking
CIGARO CIGARO CIGARO
yeah.
i'm enjoying system of a down at the moment.
moonflake recently bought the 2 albums that i hadn't (steal this album and mezmerize) and i mp3'ed them to listen on my mp3 player while wandering up to and down from varsity.
i'd only ever heard 1 song from these albums before. man they're cool.
i do suggest purchasing them and never romoving them from your preferred music playing device (i currently have all 5 albums on my mp3 player).

so moonflake and i went out last night and had sushi (mmm) for supper before going to see final destination 3.
before i say anything else that may lead you to believe the contrary let me state now: on face value i thought the movie was ok, not fantastic, but enjoyable enough.
now for the catch...
as the 3rd part of a trilogy (and i hope to god they stop here before ruining it anymore) it sucked the biggest donkey dick i have ever seen!
the first movie brought the whole concept of "death's plan" to the audience and was a fresh film that kept you interested.
the second film had a character return who knew what was happening and they had the whole "how to escape the plan" thing going.
both those films had something and added to the universe which they created.
the third film dilutes the final destination formula to its simplest form (ie: some kids escape certain death and begin to die off as death catches up to them) and adds nothing new.
there was a little tension and some gore, but overall you were left feeling that you'd seen it all before (deja vu if you will... ironic since that's kinda how they escape death in the first place... maybe its a warning to wait till it airs on tv before going to see it).
they had no returning characters, instead using the internet to discover about the events of the previous movies. they had to discover death's plan themselves, which had already been done in the first movie (which you presumably have already seen) and there wasn't any real attempt to squirm out of death's plans through loopholes or anything (like in the 2nd movie).
this movie was basically just a remake of the first movie with a different "we escaped death" bit and different actors. the tech is obviously better and there is more gore than i remember the other movies having, but overall it was just a little bland.
its unfortunate as i really enjoyed the first 2 movies and thought that this one was just "ok."

*shrugs*
oh well, it was still a fun night.
stuck up varsity today while i wait for a stupid tut/workshop thingie.
game tonight should be fun.
chittychittybangbang (see link on sidebar) had a funny (to all but him i'm sure) encounter on an escalator which he blogs about.
he obviously hasn't seen mallrats otherwise he would have been a lot more careful.
in closing i'd like to say:
There's nothing wrong with me
There's something wrong with you
There's something wrong with me
I hope your stepson doesn't eat the fish
There's nothing wrong with me
There's something wrong with you
Don't eat the fish

playmates, popes, guerillas, they stole my shirt...

2006-03-29T11:24:00.000+02:00

it started with the "dead bull" shirt and now the che shirt.
*sigh*
ok at least this time it wasn't directly stolen from me.
hmmm... you may be getting a little lost here. time for a history lesson:

many years ago i got my hands on a couple of red bull posters.
scissors, glue, and a little time later i was hanging up a "dead bull - energy kink" poster in a society room up on varsity (i belonged to the society at the time).
i go away for a year and a half, come back and get told that my dead bull poster was made into a shirt by laugh it off.
"odd co-inkydink," i think to myself until the details come out.
fact 1: turns out the shirt was almost identical to my poster.
fact 2 : the founder of laugh it off went to the same university as me.
fact 3 : someone from the aforementioned society knew the aforementioned founder of the aformentioned t-shirt company.
fact 4: the fucker stole my idea and i never saw a cent.
apparently the founder came to the society room to meet up with his buddy. he saw the poster and even commented on it. he went off and created a t-shirt company and ripped off my idea.
(all this story i gathered through multiple friends who were members of the society / went to that university at that time)
now i don't have a problem with the shirt being made. but the fucker could have at least thanked me (cash wouldn't have been amiss). i did put my usual signature on the poster and everyone in the society room knew who made it.
here endith the history lesson.

now: the current.
i've been talking about making a shirt with che on it.
you all know che. he was the marxist revolutionary and cuban guerrilla.
che was second in command to good old fidel castro after he became the dictator of cuba. in short che is a well know terrorist.
people wear t-shirts of him all the time because his image has become synonamous with anti-establishment, anarchy, "fight-the-power" kinda vibes (man).
this is why so many teenagers love the shirts.
the picture of him is a black and white, kinda high contrast photo of a bearded man with a berret that has a star on it.
now my plan was this:
create a tshirt of che, but subtly alter it by changing the star on his berret (representing marxism/communism) with the golden arches (representing macdonalds and cash) thereby creating a twofold joke.
joke 1: the entire image now stands for capitalism, the very thing che stood against.
joke 2: che looks a little like a macdonalds employee. the man would have been a burger flipper if he'd discovered the schpatula before the AK47.
i'd have loved to create the shirt and sell it on (especially to dumb kids who didn't notice the changes and didn't comprehend the joke) except someone got to it first (well... not exactly as i would have done it). look at the following picture from some political shirt company.

(they actually have some cool shirts. i don't agree with all their political bull, but a shirt that says "hippies stink" is cool).

so i guess i just have to give up on the whole t-shirt creation thing and am now putting some of my ideas out here to be stolen and used (cash thank-yous would be nice).
shirt 1: in nice bold text on the front: "YES! I'M STALKING YOU!"
shirt 2: in nice bold text on the back: "I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING ME"

well... that's about it at the moment (it's not my fault that my ideas get stolen faster than i can think of them).
if i remember any more / come up with any more i may (or may not) post them.

in other news:
anna nicole smith is in court trying to get some cash from her ex hubby's estate (dead ex not divorced ex). she was a twenty something, topless dancer when she married 89-year-old oil tycoon billionaire.
a year later he died.
his son claims to be the only heir and has allegedly done some bad stuff (forgery or something... he denies it) to keep her away from the cash.
she just wants her fair share.
come on... give the one time playboy plamate a little cash, she may give you a little something in return *wink*
find here a link of her getting almost topless at an mtv australia awards thingie.
(actually she's got flesh coloured tape covering any naught bits with mtv decals over that).

random link: is the new pope darth sidious? check for yourself.

funnily enough, talking about the pope and anna nicole smith: i found the following picture on some guy's blog that had a (prehaps tasteless?) satirical report on anna attending the pope's funeral and claiming she owns the vatican as they were secretly married. (not the best photoshop... but funny).

super quick games news today from magic box:
god of war 2 is on its way to the playstation2 (there are some pics at magic box).
and (unconfirmed) konami are working on a new castlevania title for the nintendo ds. apparently a sequel to circle of the moon.

and that's about it for today... over and out.
ps: please replace all "arguement"s yesterday with "argument"s (my spelling is teh suxxor).

a rant day today

2006-03-28T10:37:00.000+02:00

just added a link to ChittyChittyBangBang! (see sidebar).
he's got a good writing style and churns out an interesting blog.
i don't read it as often as i should, but then i don't do a lot of things as often as i should.

anyway.
i was reading a copy of nag (new age gaming) last night and came across a review of shadow of the colossus.
now the game is fairly bold in its implementation and quite original. its all about defeating 16 giant creatures in some spectacular ways (climbing all over them and stabbing them in the weak spots etc). from all the info that i've read it is a unique experience. there are no minions to defeat, the story is simple yet engaging, its just plain good.
but what ticked me off had nothing to do with the game. what got my proverbial goat (i don't have a real goat to call my own) was the fact that the review opened up with a tired, overused, and lame arguement about gamers that has been bandied back and forth since the invention of games (and pertains to all media really).
the arguement is simply this: people claim they want originality but when something truly new arrives they don't like it.
well what the hell do you expect?
firstly its a generalization. a lot of people will try it and like it. a lot will shun it because it doesn't appeal to them. a lot will shun it because they don't realise what it really is.
but just because its original doesn't make it good.
just because its original doesn't mean we have to try it.
its not a difficult concept yet whenever this arguement rears it overcliched head, the person spewing out the disjointed garbage that makes the basis of their whining claims automatically latches on to the unreasonable fact that because he/she found it original it must be amazing and everyone should try it.
i could make something original that people really should try. i could make some shitty art film about slowly eating cereal while focussing on children being mauled by hungry seals.
"fruitloops and fish" i'd call it, and there would be stupid cunts out there who would watch it an tell other people that its better than crack (which is what i assume they're all on).
yes it'd be original but it'd also be crap.
people like things they know. the best form of originality is taking something people are comfortable with and providing a new and refreshing twist that evolves it into something new.
a sudden disjointed jump of new ideas often leaves people uncomfortable with the new environment, and people don't like to be uncomfortable.
some people thrive on experienceing something brand new that hasn't been done before (especially if they experience it before someone else and can lord it over them), but a lot of people like a certain thing and, while appreciating new additions to their preferred genre, like that thing to be left recognisable as the thing that they like.
people who like action movies will watch action movies. you can create a new, fresh action movie (that may be good or bad) but its still an action movie. fruitloops and fish is something brand new and "never-done-before" (i hope) but an action movie buff is not going to like it (unless they really have problems).
basically the point is this: originality is not the be-all end-all of everything and the stupid old "its original so it must be good" arguement is stupid. anyone who really believes that should be subjected to repeated screenings of fruitloops and fish until they cry blood.
if you're going to review a game (or movie or anything) don't start by threatening your audience by saying that they'd better like it or they're stupid morons.
tell us its original and sell the damn thing on its own credits!
if it is actually good then it doesn't need guerrilla reviewing tactics to get people to play/watch/try it.
the rest of the review actually made me want to try the game. not because its original but because it sounds like fun.

ha!
that's my rant for the day, well... the second really. i ranted a bit on chitty's blog about feminism. i'm not gonna repeat all that here but the basic gist of it is this: feminism can take things too far. as with the rest of life: common sense and not being a dick work far better than some stupid ideal that gets taken up like a brainwashing revolution of idiocy.
i'm sure the original feminist movement was fantastic, but too many female che wannabies have lost the real world applications (quixotic. look it up motherfuckers).
i may have actually gotten my point across a little better here than there... but that's rants for you: a burst of vehement opinion that normally is badly verbalised turning into a bitter stew that you try to force down someone's throat because you think they're too stupid to each such sweet nectars themselves. (man its fun mashing metaphores into some sort of goopy goopy).
*shrugs* whatever. i make no excuses. if you know me you understand and if you don't then it doesn't really matter if you do (understand that is).

we got floaters

2006-03-27T13:02:00.000+02:00

woo...
spent most of the weekend playing computer games with moonflake.
read some news today and decided not to comment on it as its all about idiot, racism, and just plain crap!
talking about crap:
there's a backed up drain near the comsci building today.
it was spewing water and shreds of toilet paper onto the pavement.
they finally stopped it flowing and took the lid off to gain access to the blockage (i assume?).
i had the unfortunate luck of walking past at this point...
the drain if full to the brim with liquid and we gots floaters there.
nasty!
on the plus side (and the reason why i'm still up at varsity today) i got an extra mark for my last comsci test which bumps me up to a first (75%).
yeah... that's what i'm talking about.

btw: ever wanted to make an origami elephant out of a dollar bill?
go here -> http://www.serve.com/hecht/origami/diags.htm
its a site with a bunch of patterns (pdf instructions).

and finally a little pic from al lowe's site (that is quite appropriate concidering he invented larry laffer)

poker, breasts, and games... what more could you want? (a concrete slab?)

2006-03-24T11:35:00.000+02:00

browsed through some normal and gaming news today and came up with some interesting stuff...

this guy must hate concrete!
the actual story is about some ambulance having lunch around the corner in stead of responding to an emergencey, but the subtle "under-story" hidden in there is about a man's struggle against concrete.
according to the story he was at high court in a case about a concrete slab falling on his head some time ago. while leaving the court he had an epeleptic fit and took a spill down some stairs, cracking his head open on... (you guessed it) the concrete.
he's obviously being hunted by the powers that build!in another story: this guy has tits, and has been charged with exposing them!
apparently this ohio man has a full set of breasts and was wondering around topless.
he's skipped his court appearences but his defence claims that a man cannot be charged with exposing his breasts.
in fact he continues with the statement: "It's also not even technically illegal for a woman to expose her breasts (in public)."
ohio sounds like a nice place.and in the last "real" news story: this guy won a million while on holiday.
he went on a holiday cruise to the carribean, but spent the entire time onboard playing in a poker tournament with his 15 buddies cheering him on.
He's a university student and borrowed some cash to enter the tourney and won, becoming the youngest person to win the PartyPoker.com Million V tournament.
he claimed it was very stressfull and he didn't get a holiday, but he can afford to go on another holiday now. he's going to give a share of his winnings to his backers and stash the rest until he decides where to invest it.

now for some gaming news:
the magic box reports the following:

- SNK Playmore announced Metal Slug Collection for PSP, a compilation of the 6 classic aciton shooters, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Metal Slug. The titles included in compilation are Metal Slug, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X, Metal Slug 3, Metal Slug 4 and Metal Slug 5. The PSP version will offer WiFi 2 players support, and it is scheduled to release in fall 2006.

kinda makes you wish you had a psp...
and for those of us who own a ds, the magic box also reports that a new zelda game is on the way.
named the legend of zelda: the phantom hourglass it'll have graphics similar to wind waker, ie: a mix of 3d graphics (environment) and 2d graphics (possibly cell shaded, for characters and stuff).
hit the above link for a couple more pictures.
no decent screenshots are out yet, but what there is looks like it could be good.

as for the usual going-ons in my life:
the game last night was fun. we bested more ninja and somehow got caught up in some politics between the king, the queen, and the princess. my character's not really too interested in political intrigue, but is starting to pick up a taste for intimidation. bull's strength and polymorph help.
bull's strength also may have gotten us into a little trouble. in self defence (while bull's strengthed) i slapped someone upside the head with the flat of my greatsword (going for non-leathal)... and critted! 30hp damage later and there's a crumpled, non-living heap in the corner somewhere. oops. and i only wanted to talk.
oh well, it was self defence, unlike the knifing of poor defenceless, unconcious manfred who ended up at the bottom of the docks before he woke up from his kidnapping. some players will do anything for the promise of cash (we're looking at the rogues *cough*thives*cough* here).

and that's it for today.
ciao!

office humour

2006-03-23T12:17:00.000+02:00

spent most of yesterday playing larry 3.
go visit al lowe's page (he created lesiure suit larry and did most of the work: programming, writing, sound, etc)
did you know you can skip the questions (for proving your age) at the begining of LL and LL3? and that al lowe used his birthday as the universal password for LL2.
go read his page.

gmail has been pissing me off all day today.
for some reason it just won't log in anymore. it was fine this morning and now its fuxxored. pah!
spent most of this morning researching http servers in java (and SOCKS4 proxies) again... but i think i got a good load of stuff including some pdf books on java.
took ages to download everything (including an abandoned game or two).

ah... al lowe's site is funny. go look at the virtual mouse cleaner.
there's also some rather dodgy fruit.
man, lesiure suit larry 3 is difficult. i remember playing it years ago and not getting far. retrying now and damn! all i can say is thank you gamefaqs.
larry 2 was a walk in the park by comparison.

well well well... gmail finally decided to log in.
ooh... mail.
and look... its all the crap activation mails so that i could log onto the tutorial pages that i've been browsing (spam here i come).

well...all my downloads have finished and i've got cleaning to do before the game tonight so it's time for me to foxtrot oscar!

an elephant the size of the moon!

2006-03-22T11:25:00.000+02:00

i forgot yesterday was a public holiday.
what a nice surprise to discover that when my mom mentioned it on monday night.
i spent the day watching tv and playing computer games (i finished lesiure suit larry 2).
relaxing.
i probably should have done some work for varsity (or at least some reading) but i didn't.
i was lazy and damn proud of it.

i discovered today that out webserver thingie has to be written in java :( but someone gave me a tutorial dealing with sockets in java :)
i'll have a look at that when i get home today (as well as download a couple more notes while i'm here at varsity now).

had to cancel the game yesterday as synk and moonflake both had dinner arrangements (one with parents and one with work) that they could not escape. man, this game is never going to get finished at this rate.
from now on i think i'm just going to run the game anyway... whoever pitches plays and whoever isn't there is just real quite for the session.
once i finish the campaign (not long now) i'll hand over gm'ing reigns to someone else.

anyway.
here's a pic proving how dumb people really can be.

friday's post died

2006-03-20T11:08:00.000+02:00

well there was a post on friday but the net suicide up at varsity and i didn't feel like waiting around for it to come back online.
(btw: happy name day schpat)
i finished and handed in my code on friday.
i finished my essay and handed it in today.
i have a little free time now, but i need to write an http server / socks4 server for april 18th...
and another project will be posted for me to do soon (for about the same time).
*sigh*
damn the net is slow up on varsity today.
stupid 2nd years eating all the bandwidth!
can't wait till people stop coming to lectures and leave my bandwidth alone.

any way.
sony are working on a PSOne emulator for the psp. psone games will be distributed over the net and playable on the psp.
that's pretty cool.

moonflake and i spent a lot of time over the weekend playing wow together (in between me researching and writing my essay).
our pair of undead are leveling up nicely.

other than that i can't find much of intrest to report on.

Happy name day schpat.

2006-03-17T13:00:00.000+02:00

seen google today?
its got greenery around its name (what tipped me off about st patricks day).
ha!

i just finished coding up my prac for monday and it works all good n stuff.
i'd done it before with a guy from my class so all i really had to do was type the code out and compile.
I rewrote the whole thing (well, we were given a skeleton to fill in) and made it much neater. for example: the original we did had a single function that used global variables to catch and handle signals. i wrote three much smaller functions and switched them in and out as needed, meaning slightly less statement checks but slightly more code.
any way. it's done now and handed in (sticking to my schedule) so now i need to go off and do my essay.

well.
i found a site with the original lesiure suit larry on it.
314Kb.
man, those were the days.
one disk games that rocked.
schpat forced me to go to the casino so we could play blackjack (in larry, not irl)

the d&d game last night was pretty funky, although we're going to be missing a waynne for a while (i would say congrats and enjoy the honeymoon except he doesn't read my blog so there!)
we killed ninjas and pissed off the king and queen (as usual) and are looking for more ninjas to cause trouble with (they started it!).

not much else to report on at the moment and i have an essay to write (for monday) and an http server to code (thankfully not for monday) so that's it for today.
zen!

i been working on the railroad...

2006-03-16T11:31:00.000+02:00

well, not the railroad...
but i have done a buncha work recently.
i got my test mark back today 21.5/30 ~= 70%
woot!!1!(one)!!11!

and i spent a large chunk of yesterday sorting out the prac for monday with someone. we finally figured out all the code and got it 90% working.
now i just need to code it up for myself, but at least i know how to do it all now.
and i spent a large chunk this morning researching denial of service attacks for the essay due on monday.

so the next few days look like this:
friday afternoon: code up the prac and hand in.
fri / sat / sunday: do the essay and hand in.
monday onwards: rest a bit before they hit us with more work.

spent a large amount of time last night playing a new undead warlock with moonflake (who was playing an undead warrior).
man that game is fun.

damn the labs are slow today. seems everyone is working up on campus and downloading as much as possible to try cut off my connection.

i feel like i really should be blogging about more today (i'm stuck here waiting for a pcu workshop at 14:00) but i really don't have much else to say.
i haven't really been keeping up with the news, but schpat and moonflake handle that side of things. i haven't done anything really interesting recently (unless you want to know about coding signal handlers and timers in C). i haven't even found anything particularly interesting on the net recently...
so i guess that's it for today then.
tata!

little time = little post

2006-03-15T11:43:00.000+02:00

had a comsci test this morning.
went ok.
i should have passed ok (luckily i knew the main section but the other 2 were a little dicey).
this afternoon will be spent with a classmate going over the prac we need to do for monday. something about kernel timing. since it's all in java he's gonna help me out a bit (i'm not so good with java... more at home in c++ but the crossover should be easy enough, they're almost the same after all).
tomorrow i need to do pcu (professional comms unit) in which we (classmate and i) outline the report that we will be writing.
finally the next few afternoons will be spent writing a 3k word essay on denial of service attacks for another comsci course.
then things should be free for a little bit and i'll do a real blog post.

quick catchup on stuff i've been doing: playing on my ds (advance wars ds, mario kart ds, castlevania ds [thanks moonflake]) replaced my PS2 (thanks schpat for the hookup) and got some games for it (working holiday is tiring but affords you games), housesat/dogsat for my parents while they were in cypress, watched serenity (twice now... it's awesome) and spirited away (dstv at parents' place. also very cool).

i still need to see doom, king kong, aeon flux (i don't care how bad you think it is yancke), and a handfull of other films when i get the time. i also need to get the rest of fullmetal alchemist (i got the first dvd with 4 eps on it... very good).

anyway.
thats all i got time for today.
cya.

long time no C (++)

2006-03-14T10:17:00.000+02:00

well i'm back at varsity now.
don't have much time for the next little while as the workload just got dumped on us.
essays, pracs, and tests all combined into the smallest time allocation possible.
at least i'm finally able to get online and quickly download all the info i need.
just put down a R100 deposit on a text book that i need that's only arriving in 2 weeks time and only 10 copies are coming.
of course i'll need to pay an aditional R220 when it arrives.
and that's only one of about seven prescribed books that i need for this year.
*sigh*
well that's about it for this post as i have to d/l some stuff and go home to study it all.
when i have time i'll blog a little more.
out.

bonus link: money origami

almost... almost...

2005-11-14T13:00:00.000+02:00

woo!
moonflake is almost home.
exams almost over.
just a day left!

well...
just a hyper-quick entry before my last exam in an hour's time.
hopefully it won't be too bad.

i did actually blog on friday except the power cut moments before i hit publish (or was going to hit publish) and i don't feel like retyping it all so here's a quick rundown:
exam went ok.
cook was a dick (again).
schpat and i went bowling (the shoes are skanky, the auto-scorer loves me, schpat made 4 strikes and broke 100 on his 2nd game)
and that's all i can remember.

schpat has been feeding me well (thanks schpat) and saturday night was spent at his place eating home-made pizza (except the base), smoking apple tabacco in the hooka, and playing star wars lego on his ps2.
(ps: thanks for the late birthday present too ^-^)
all in all a good night.

any way... i have an exam soonish so i'm going to go relax a little beforehand.
i've spent a fair time studying and can do the 2nd test paper from this year backwards now (similar: a large chunk of the first test).
hopefully the sections i know well will be the sections we get examined on...
hold thumbs!

the battle of midway (through exams)

2005-11-10T12:45:00.000+02:00

i'm upon campus early.
got my exam at 14h00
i've done enough prep.
basically 40% of the paper is architecture and 60% is bullshit
ie: hci, software engineering, and ethics.
while they may not be bullshit unto themselves (debatable) the only way to test your knowledge of them is to ask questions that lead to bullshitting!
pft!

well my internet wanderings have turned up a real gem: the official teenage mutant ninja turtles page.
i don't know about you (but if you had any taste or sense of wonder you'd agree) but i loved the tmnt since they came out. a little dissapointed by the "hero" turtles cartoon, but still fun.
well if any of you watched daytime, friday tv you'd have seen the new cartoon series.
it rawks!
its stuck much closer to the comic books that started off the whole thing (and they are ninja turtles again, not hero turtles).
the drawing style is pretty good and the story is enticing.
i'd love to get them all and watch them.
apparently the new series has been going on for a few years already (in the states at least).

on the nintendo ds front:
nintendo.co.za have published a release schedule here.
amazingly it seems that we're getting proper treatment in our gaming hobby now days. i remember the days when you checked the euro releases and then added a month and hoped! (wasn't that just yesterday?)
anyway... go check it out. some cool games coming.
(includes gamecube, ds, and gba releases. had some trouuble with the table formatting & firfox, but resizing the window worked).

anyway.
i started re-reading my slayers manga.
(i've already re-read lum, both maison ikkoku, and all my appleseed).
man... i need to get myself more manga. i love the stuff.
(plus i think more apleseed has been released).
oh well..
i'm off to relax a bit before the exam starts.
see ya later!

one down... two to go...

2005-11-07T00:50:00.000+02:00

fourier methods exam done.
i mad a couple of small mistakes but i think i passed overall.
it was rough and a little short on time but i think i got the right questions done.
well its over now and its only 1/4 of mam200w.
i only need 43 for this maths exam and 43 for the next to pass overall...
i'm still trying to get at least 50 for each, but its nice to know there's a little slack.

the weekend was pretty good.
spent a little time studying, a little time watching tv, etc.
schpat had me over for supper last night.
yummy!
i think maybe moonflake slipped him some cash to make sure i eat while she's away :)
spent a large portion of the night sitting outside smoking cherry tobacco in the hookah and chatting with schpat and elizabeth.
the cherry and the coke we were drinking resulted in ultra ultra sweetness.
it was all good.
managed to wake up early this morning and was up on campus long before my exam started.

woo: nintendo ds news time -
they are making tenchu for the nintendo ds. magic box says it will be released in japan in spring 2006. hot ninja stealth action ^-^
eurogamer has a little article on tenchu ds. turns out that the viewing angle may be switched to a top down view, switching when you align yourself with a wall. there will also be the ability to set traps and make weapons with various materials. there will be loads of missions with some side quests added too.
can't wait.

also: square enix are remaking final fantasy III for the ds, and it'll be fully 3d. hopefully that'll turn out good.
not too much in the way of pics for either of these posts yet (just a couple) so keep a lookout for more news.

finally: biohazard: deadly silence is shaping up real nice!
magic box reports that there will be full motion video intro, and gamplay will include 4-player co-op and competition modes.

hmmm... don't really have much else to blog about at the moment.
just sitting up at varsity browsing the web a bit...
got another exam on thursday (comsci) and the final maths on monday so i'm probably just gonna end up studying for the rest of the week...
and then moonflake gets back on the tuesday after ^-^
my tuesday game: cancelled this week (studying)
cancelled next week (picking moonflake up from the airport)

medic! we have a fridge down... call for backup

2005-11-05T19:11:00.000+02:00

ohayoo gozaimas.
it seems the fridge has packed up.
there's not much in it except for our reserves in the freezer which schpat has built up for roleplaying nights on tuesdays and fridays.
(schpat gets cheap food from work, moonflake cooks, i wash up, we all eat. sometimes there ain't no cheap food going and we hit the reserves)
tried to get hold of schpat and let him know / get him to empty the freezer except he is communicado non grata (or whatever... i can't get hold of him).
it was still icy in there when i last checked and i'm not opening again until we empty it. hopefully everything will be ok.

as for my japanese response...
i suddenly woke up this morning and realised that i totally screwed that response up.
i should have said: "dare anata no chichi des ka?" instead of "anata ga suki des?"
humourously they're both a similar theme but completely different meaning.
totalwaste: i didn't mean to say i love you (sorry to let your hopes down).
also: i should have said "domo arigato re: the comment" ie: thank you.
sumimasen! gomen nasai!
this is why i shouldn't post while tired just after studying maths all day ^-^*

i managed to get the drivers for the bluetooth dongle that schpat lent me.
i've uploaded mindless self indulgence - seven eleven on to my phone to use as a ringtone.
msi rawk.
(rawk: like rock but harder!)
i need to get their latest album!
christmas is on its way... hmmm...
msi lyrics are super disturbing though. they describe their music as "industrial jungle pussy punk."
yes they are odd. just check out some of these excerpts:

i be the cock in a jungle coming for you baby
i be the cock in a jungle burning
i'd meet a good girl but i'd make a terrible boy
i'd meet a good boy but i'd make a terrible girl

from: golden i (off the album: frankenstien girls will seem strangely sexy)

and:

said girls from seven-eleven stay up all night
and i could get a discount
she may not be good-looking
she may not be good - no - no - no
she might not get down
but it's possible she stays up all night

from: seven eleven (same album as above)

and finally:

I can handle this but i can't handle anything else
it's my own mistake - it's based on me and not on my groin
it's the little things in my pants that we're all living for
i never really knew what that thing down there was used for

from: kill the rock (same album)

while surfing around last night (waiting for drivers to download) i discovered a pretty funny webcomic: alien loves predator.
its all done with the alien vs predator action figures and is basically a sitcom about a predator and an alien who happen to be roommates in new york.
pretty funny stuff including a cameo by jesus here and there.

today's work safety picture:
from: phatty's place (artistic pictures... ie: panties!)
click it synk... you know you wanna (there may be a japanese schoolgirl outfit hidden there somewhere...)
nb: artistic pictures on some of the gallaries. occasional bare bottom, occasional wet tshirt. it's art :)

anyway.
let me end the post here so you don't waste any more of your day.

latenight

2005-11-04T01:09:00.000+02:00

well i just got online to check for some drivers for the bluetooth dongle that schpat lent me... i found them except they're 13 megs so i'll dl them some other time.
i might as well update the blog quick while i'm here.

firefox is reminding me why i took so long to switch to it and maybe i should go back to ie. the only reason why i switched was good timing between synk giving me the software and me having to use it at varsity because that's all they have in the senior (now open-source) labs.
ff was set to start searching the page when i started typing something (no edit - find - type in new box) except its now interupting me when i do things like type in the google search box. i get one letter off and then the search comes up and complains that it cant find "orn" (and it makes a stupid noise too... a knocking sound).
grrr..

btw: i responded to the last post's comments and don't feel like repeating... read them there.

schpat came round tonight and we went to canal walk to look at more toy stores. he got me a "birthday" present (only 5 months late... he claimed it was 'cos he didn't get me one on my bday... i think its 'cos he wants to play with it ^-^) which was very much appreciated. (thanks schpat).
it was one of those joysticks you plug into the tv and play games on... except its 2 player. so we spent some time playing.
problems: the games aren't great on this particular model and after about 15 mins one of the joysticks started acting up. so we'll return it and select something else.
hopefully they'll have another 2p version with better games.
its the thought that counts anyway.

oh well...
i've spent the past few days at varsity studying in the library.
not much fun... but studying needs to be done.
i start writing on monday.
-_-* blegh.
and thats about all for this quick update
type again soonish

tag... you're it! honk honk

2005-11-02T16:23:00.000+02:00

since i haven't posted a "what? no it's really work boss" picture in a while... i got two scattered in the blog today ^-^

it must be nearing christmass 'cos i saw a homeless guy wandering around with a sant cap on. when the homeless are decorated it must be a holiday!

this overhydrated young lass is from sweet strings swimwear.

well not 2 minutes after i finished publishing my last post saying i haven't been tagged i received a mail notifying me that i got tagged!
oh well...
time to succumb to peer pressure:

1) i have what is probably a third nipple (its on the milk line)
2) i once won a duplo pirate in a competition
3) i have 4 tattoos
5) i passed my drivers liscence on the first attempt but had the comments "can't maintain a constant speed" and "takes corners too fast" (or something like that) on the little sheet the dude fills out.
6) the only strip club i ever went to was in london (and from what i hear it was 100 times better than anything in capetown)
7) i once hit myself between the toes with a pick-axe but didn't notice until about 5-10 mins later when i felt a tingle (i was barefoot at the time... and about ten years old)
8) my first pc (ibm style) was an xt before they came with turbo buttons
9) i had a commadore 64 and used to play games on the small, black and white, spare tv. i spent hours and hours playing (and waiting for those damn tapes to load)
10) i'm a japanophile... i love all things japanese. not nearly as bad as some of the more otaku of us out there, but still ^-^

and now a very dorothy-esque milla interlude from www.takpart.com.

11) i'd love to learn to speak japanese, spanish, and german fluently (in that order)
12) i'm occasionally a little obsessive compulsive (doing things like packing away pocker chips with all the chips facing the right way and put in their proper colour order in each box) but generally just to pass the time, not because it really bugs me.
13) i've had multiple multiple piercings (mostly through the ears, never lower than the neck) but they've all been taken out now.
14) i miss my tongue ring, but don't really want to deal with the heal time again and would rather spend my money on other things.
15) if dni (direct neural interface) were available i'd be there... (hook me up doc!)
16) i've been to zimbabwe, namibia, south africa (duh), england, egypt, and cypress (while my dad has been to 6/7 continents... and would love to visit the 7th)
17) i was a real pain in the ass as a teenager. funny 'cos i was a generally happy, well behaved kid until the mid to late teens.
18) i've had laser surgery. used to wear glasses (quite stronge ones) for short sightedness (never had contacts) and now i have 20/20.
19) i once tried to get into a pair of leopard print, tight jeans. the only problem was the zip wouldn't close. i could get the button done up, but the zip just wouldn't zip up. it sucks 'cos those jeans rocked! they were teh supah porno.
20) when i was in creche i was hanging upside-down on the jungle-gym and fell off, landing on my head (on the tar they always have under those things). i needed stitches... also had stitches in my eyebrow from being hit with a hockey-stick (thank god for brow ridges otherwise i'd go "arrr" a lot and threaten to make people walk the plank while looking for me dubloons!)

hah!
any way.
schpat came round last night. he went into the kitchen and made me some pie!
mmm... chickeny.
we basically arb-ed around the whole night (with a short trip to the waterfront) and ended up playing cards (spite and malice) for a bit too long.
studying is real boring and has been taking up all my time recently!

on the ds front:
got to the magic box and check out the pics for ash.
this is what they had to say:
"Here are some new images of MistWalker's Nintendo DS RPG Archaic Sealed Heat, from the creator of Final Fantasy - Hironobu Sakaguchi. The game will have pre-rendered graphics, and the battles will have simulation RPG elements."
it looks pretty nice.
hopefully it'll be good.

any way. thats about it for now.
hopefully i'll blog again soonish.

post from above

2005-10-31T11:07:00.000+02:00

wooo...
i gots a bit to blog about due to the massive lack of being up at varsity (and hence unable to blog).

firstly: moonflake made it safely to new york but had hell getting there...
if i had realised it was an saa flight all the way i would have been more worried than i was when she didn't phone around the prescribed time.
eventually i heard from her at about midnight (roughly) which is about 10 hours late...
saa overbooked the flight from jhb to ny and hence moonflake had to go to atlanta and organise a flight from there to ny.
of course, since saa are a bunch of hopeless fucktards, her luggage never arrived in atlanta.
she managed to get a flight to ny and is now safely at her apartment there, but does not have her phone charger, her plug adapter, or any clothes other than her jacket that she took carry-on.
this just after work bought her all that corp-wear too.
hopefully they'll find the case and she'll get it back, but saa has done this to the boss's wife a couple of times before... and the last time they never recovered the luggage... ever! its still out in the ether somewhere, traveling country to country looking for a home, a welcome face, a... nah! some fucker probably stole it!
if you are planning a trip anywhere: make sure it isn't saa!

anyway...
i gots me a new phone ^-^
well... it was my dad's phone but he hates using it 'cos all he wants is a simple makes-calls-and-has-easy-alarm-function kinda phone.
so i swapped my far simpler phone for his nokia 6600.
it is sweet. i know there are better phones out there but i'm quite happy with this one. it has a colour screen, does true tone stuff, and is generally more fun than the one i had before.

talking about fun:
nintendogs rocks. i now have 3 puppies: rocket (he's a miniture daschund), jessie (she's a beagle), and sparky (he's the newest addition: a japanese breed called a shina ibu... or something like that).
i can't really say its a game. you "play" games. you interact with nintendogs.
its really a pet simulator, but without the aging or dying aspect. the worst that can happen is the puppy gets non-responsive and runs away from home for a short while if you don't pay it any attention.
and since we can't have pets in the flat, nintendogs suits me just fine ^-^

i saw ghostship recently.
it wasn't that bad. i rather enjoyed it and like the little twist it had.
it doesn't win any awards for best anything, but was fun enough to veg in front of.
tv should be pretty good soon: halloween draws near (tonight?).
if it isn't i've always got my appleseed books to read. in fact i'm rereading them now and then and i forgot how much fun they were.
shirow is great!
extra shirow link (pics).

anyway...
thats all i have time for today...
i'm actually up at varsity to study with a russian student doing fourier methods with me.
i may be here most of this week so updates may happen...
also: no time to do the tag thingie... but i never got tagged so there :p

last day of lectures

2005-10-14T10:33:00.000+02:00

woo...
no more lectures for the year!
monday was meant to be the official end, but i have no maths on a monday and my comsci lecturer was like: "hell no! i'm not coming in on monday... its hard enough getting you to come to lectures normally."
yeah.

<(o_O<) <(O_O)> (>O_o)>

*does a little dance*

ahem... anyway...
i get a newsletter from both the uk nintendo site and the sa nintendo site right...
on the 8th i recieved one from ninty.co.uk all about nintendogs just been released on the 7th.
today (the 14th) i recieve on from ninty.co.za all about... guess what... nintendogs.
they've finally started copy-pasting the newsletters and sending them a week later ('cos it probably takes those geniuses a week to do that).
all they changed is the final little panel about the uk nintendogs bundle for 99 pounds (i'm surprised they even did that much).
ninty sa is terrible.
i've tried registering games on their site and nothing works.
you can't see their flash menus with firefox (i blame firefox for this myself, but hey...).
i've emailed their support twice and never had a reply. not even an automated "thanks for your mail" reply.
they've recently started a buy online section that's more expensive than take2.co.za, even after delivery.

talking about nintendogs and take2: my copy has arrived for collection (yay!)
but its unlikely that i'll get through to it today because i have tuts till 4 and they aren't open on saturdays (boo!)
but i don't have varsity on monday so i can get it then (yay!)

today's "hit the boss-key" pic isn't that bad:
sponsored by gary begin photography

now for the real bad news:
with exams coming up and me not being at varsity much (i may still pop up every now and then) updates are going to become far less frequent and unpredictable.
not too much i can do about that unless someone wants to sponsor the phonebill *looks hopefully at the working people out there*
oh well..

i discovered, last night, that my world of warcraft character is on the wrong continent to meet up with the rest of them (synk, ork, holey)...
i'm gonna have to start up a new character...
not like thats a major problem at all ^-^
note to self: do not jump into the ocean!

real news: china has two taikonauts up in space.

short post

2005-10-13T10:53:00.000+02:00

not much happening today.
spent yesterday afternoon playing world of warcraft, yesterday evening eating chippies (mmm... prego sauce) and watching tv with moonflake.
lectures are almost over for the year and i only had comsci this morning so i'm going to be going home soon (can you guess what i'll be doing before roleplaying?)

today's "where's the boss?" picture:
sponsored by misty-dawn.com
you'll notice how i move the pic around so you never know where it'll pop up, just for that added suspence and excitement.

roleplaying tonight should rock!
we gots trouble heading our way and we're gonna need to open up a can 'o whoopass on it before running away like little girls!
i hope our druid can handle a demon on his own...
(and i hope that damn stone is where we think it is)

i'm sure i was going to complain about something, but i can't remember what it was that i was gonna complain about... oh well ^-^ couldn't have been that important then.

undead war ends, undead go to war... is it true love?

2005-10-12T13:04:00.000+02:00

my affair is over. darkthrone offically bores me now.
like young puppy-love i was lured to her by the potential and the possibilities, and quickly i was playing with her and discovering new things, but just as quickly i found myself going through the motions waiting for that promised jewel of excitement. merely clicking her buttons until the time seemed right and i was allowed to attack, which led to a brief high of elation, but all to soon i realised that that was all she was to me: a brief high that couldn't hide all the wasted clicking. in the end i wasn't sure i could stand clicking her anymore, and i can always find another who'll let me attack things... in fact i think i've just been seduced by a far sexier world of warcraft.
basically there are 2 ways of playing darkthrone: turtling and all-out offence.
there is no inbetween.
there is no personalization.
either you never attack and shove everything into defence and money (the defence is there to protect the money, the money is there to pump the defence),
or you get your money by trying to crack the turtles and steal all you can. all this money has to be pushed into bigger and bigger armies so that you can crack bigger turtles for more reward... anything in defence is wasted as you can't defend against another all-outer unless you turtle and turtle don't attack.
basically its lost all its charms. my army seems generic. i may as well have selected a radio button during sign-in that allowed turtling town or offensive army, and then i could just log in once a day and see what has been automatically worked out for me... it would save me having to click so much.

on the other side of the coin: world of warcraft is seriously addictive in spite of the buggy server.
i recently learnt (as an undead warlock) tailoring. mug a few mindless zombies and scarlette initiates for linen... combine for bolts of linen... combine with coarse thread for cloth robe :)
i now wear a little robe thingy just 'cos my character made it. its lower armour (slightly) than something else i could wear, but its his.
i think i'll learn enchanting as my second proficiency.
i still come across the odd server problem, eg: i can't seem to teach my imp a spell he should be able to learn, but it only detracts minorly.
(btw: synk... go search the net for updates please...)
in fact now that lectures are over i think i'll be going home soon to play a little more.
when nintendogs arrives i'll have to carefully plan my time... ^-^*

talking about varsity: got my maths marks back for the last tests...
introductory algebra: 65%
fourier methods: 73%
not too bad... much better than the first test results and balancing my year mark nicely. also makes me feel a little more confident about the exams.

the game last night started, was interrupted by various things (including an unneccisary lecture on how tax works... we all understood, we just couldn't convey that we understood...) and then yanke had to go do some varsity work so it ended and was replaced by texas holdem poker again.
the first round was a waste of R5 as someone *glare* insisted on upping the blind ever 15 mins and i was bled out by the increasing stakes without actually playing (properly) more than 1 hand... and i wasn't betting loosely. Synk took that round.
the second round was better but synk and james sucked all the luck off the table leaving the rest of us watching pennyless. james eventually took it, but by that time i think people were willing to bet it all just to finish. it was 1:30 and synk had already made his buyin back (james needed to buy back in early on).
if we play again i suggest an end time at which point we cash in the chips and call it before we get too tired and uncaring.
i actually did some planing for the kult game and have some exciting twists and turns to play out... maybe we'll get to them one day. at least it saves me having to plan next week.

today's "see if someone is watching over schpat's shoulder" picture:
sponsored by: fayreform
(not the best link i've provided... but world of warcraft calls)
finding good pics here is actually quite hard. i wonder if people look over my shoulder in the labs and think "echii!"
*shrugs* whatever... i know synk appreciates the links ^-^

whoops, undead

2005-10-11T13:02:00.000+02:00

keeping with the peek-a-boo at work situation (especially for schpat) today's random, slightly non-worksafe (if you're corp.) picture:

(sponsored by bullz-eye.com's gstring gallery)

forgot to set my alarm last night so i woke up this morning as my first lecture started.
oops.
discovered that after the 9am rush the jammie shuttles get pretty laid back with people in the line just kinda lounging back waiting for the next bus to amble its way to the pickup point.
of course after 9 they drop you on the wrong side of campus (like the wrong side of the tracks only not as good): the social science side!
had to push my way through all the artsy riffraff (i was tempted to randomly hit a couple of the ones that looked like art student... i still hold a grudge about that shitty art film before sin city) to get to the real side of campus where real sciences are taught.
(socsci is not a science dammit! quit fooling yourselves).
on the walk up to the shuttles, at the subway at the train station, some mad dude was screaming away in some unidentifiable indigenous language. he seemed to be directing most of his energy on the people who were walking a few meters in front of me, but still followed me through the subway.
luckily i had korn blasting through my headphones so i didn't have to deal with his shouting, but my adrenalin levels were getting ready for trouble.
thankfully there was none. i conclude that mad homeless people must sleep until about 9 except on garbage day.

managed to get the wow server working on my machine and spent some time playing an undead warlock with a panda cub as a pet. lots of fun except when the scarlette initiates gang up on you.
(yes: the undead have some quests that are very similar to some human starting quests).
probably gonna play a little more of that when i get home today, before the kult game starts.

ah yes: tonight is my kult game :)
maybe we'll get a little gaming in this time, if everyone makes it.
the summoning has yet to happen...

in gaming news:
some fuckwit has gone and created a virus that turns your nintendo ds into a brick. a similar thing was developed for the psp. technically they are trojans, not viruses, but the outcome is the same: dead system!
the guy that made the ds trojan claims he dislikes people using illegal roms and that's why he did it, to help the legal homebrew scene. he claims it is called r0mloader.zip so only illegal users will get it.
problems with that fuckhead's statements:
it was actually released as taihen.zip and claimed to be a hentai images rom (not illegal at all... just echii)
other people now have access to it and can strap it to whatever they want.
people are now scared away from the homebrew market because they don't want to take the chance of getting it.
well done fuckhead. you just stabbed your precious community in the balls and left behind a virus (trojan).

on the plus side:
ds central has a review about trauma center: under the knife. they gave it 4/5 stars and seemed to like it muchly.
i'll be keeping my eye out for that one.

elves and essays

2005-10-10T13:03:00.000+02:00

comsci have done it again!
they posted on our forums saying the essay should be submitted electronically.
the essay was due today at 9am, so i submitted it last night. plenty of time.
of course i arrive today to discover that on friday, at about 10:40, there was a post saying all essays to be printed and submitted.
i check the forum after my lecture which ends at 10:00am. if there is nothing new then, then i log off. if the post after 10:00am (say, 10:40am) then i don't see it until the next weekday. so when do they post imortant announcements?
at the last fucking minute!
so i had to run around this morning printing out my backup copy and handing it in, late of course... fuckers!
luckily i emailed myself a copy as backup, expecting the dept to ne a bunch of assmonkeys that i expect them to be.
i was going to blog today about how i finished the essay last week wednesday and how, for once, i actually didn't spend the last second sorting it out (not that it improved the calibre of the essay), but thanks to the fuckwits in admin i can't!
at least i got 78/100 for the final demo of my project (that only took them forever to mark), now all i need is the software engeneering mark for the project (which means that i still don't have the project mark back, and varsity ends in a week).

at least the weekend was a good one.
moonflake was still feeling under the weather on friday night so we didn't go with the group to watch sin city. we had a peaceful night at home in front of the tv instead.
saturday morning saw me heading off to ork_khrist's place where synk, holeycrusader, ork, and myself sat down to a day of world of warcraft.
we had the lan server (a little buggy) and we took a group of nightelves from 1st level to 6th level, had a break for a while while synk fought with the tv, then started a new group of humans and took them all the way to 8th level (well... almost: i was 80 xp away before they forced me to log off... 80, thats all...).
it was awsome.
there was much fun had by all especially when we discovered that you could strip your characters down to their underwear and make them dance (we were all playing female characters). ^-^*
sunday morning at 03h00: arrive home and sleep.
sunday morning, sometime later: moonflake and i went to go see sin city at canal walk. it was fantastic. moody with great visuals and great stories. i loved the style and just the whole thing was really slick and well polished. i suggest watching it if you haven't yet.
unfortunately there was some crap on before the film started: a 5-10 minute art film by some wits art student (who i would like to punch in the face) about baby rape in the townships, using all sorts of symbols and crappy, artsy-fartsy film technique to produce a load of stinking, slushy, boring shit!
it was horrendously bad. i think a 5 year old retard would have come up with better images than this wits "supergenious." *picks up sarcasm that has dripped off and replaces it back on top*
man that "art" *watches the word quiver in fear after being referred to in that tone* film sucked so much ass that it could have cleaned the bowels of the entire poulation of china... maybe that's where it got its imagry from!
the rest of the sunday was spent lazing at moonflake's mom's place and being fed good food!

last little news thingie: world of warcraft has a boardgame *gasp in surprise at the marketing machine in action*. find it here. i think the rules are available there too. looks like it uses cards and pieces and stuff.

and thats about all i have to report at the moment...
still waiting for nintendogs to arrive for pick-up...

spies like flies and dead plans

2005-10-07T13:33:00.000+02:00

damn...
i would not want to be a spy in my employ!!!
whenever i choose a darkthrone victim to attack i send in spies first... but to check the spy defence i send a lone spy to have a look around before the 5th column move in.
i have lost more spies that way!
on the plus side i've almost doubled my offensive power in just 1 day :)
the more offensive power the bigger the turtle i can crack...
the bigger the turtle the bigger the goldpile...
the more gold the more equipment for my army...
the more equipment the higher the offensive power...
repeat :)

roleplaying last night was haywire!
the plan... the plan.. the poor, poor, dead plan.
after finally deciding on a possible plan we got ready to execute it and then promptly threw it to the wind and ran around like crazy attacking left, right, and center...
luckily we're able to handle a fair amount of rough and tumble, even when confronted by a giant pair of pants...
in fact we function quite well without one of our members completely...
*looks at a certain player who was looting dead bodies throughout the entire combat even though he knew there was fighting happening right outside the door of the room he was in*
things are gonna get crazy next session (more crazy) as we have a demon coming down the stairs that have 1 party member gaurding it, we have a small army preparing to storm up some stairs with 2 partymembers guarding that, and we have exploding traps guarding what we hope is our prize which is hidden behind closed (trapped) doors... and then we need to escape!
at least we succeeded in the assassination... well it was more assault than assassination, but the end result is the same: his head in a pillowcase in my backpack :P

there may be some sin city watching happening tonight... i can't wait to see that film!

not much happening on the gaming front again (in fact almost all the news sites i read were stagnating with yesterday's stale news...) but expect things to start heating up soon.
moonflake ordered nintendogs for me today ^-^
(memo to self: pay the R25 outstanding to moonflake)
hopefully it'll be ready to collect from take2 soon.
thank you moonflake *kiss*

and thats about it for today... gotta go to a double maths tut now
~_~ zzzz

summer?

2005-10-06T11:45:00.000+02:00

just for schpat (and the people who love teddybears):

is summer back?
certainly seems like it today...
just one lecture today again... i managed to finish my ethics essay last night so i basically have the afternoon off. a little darkthrone, a little web browsing, and then off home for lunch, not forgetting roleplaying tonight.
moonflake seems to have gotten a cold/ sore throat and took the day off sick today. its about the only time she can afford to take a day to rest before more deadlines start attacking...

darkthrone: chatted to a bunch of people all playing in the labs today... they are all turtling. they say things like: "the amount of gold you get from an attack has to be high enough to offset the xp you get."
ie: i don't want to level unless i get so much money that i can make my army unbeatable.
xp does not figure into it if you are not a turtle! as a non-turtle (ok... i may be a little more agressive than most) i attack people for gold too... only i don't care about how much xp i get from the attack... i'll happily pillage 900k or 2mil. the amount of xp gained doesn't bother me in the slightest. obviously i understand that i need to bolster my army continuously to keep up with my level, but at least i don't take weeks off just to bloat my population.
damn turtles are almost as bad as the elves... and turtling elves, whoo-ee son, thems the worst!

well, nintendogs has just been released and stock of advance wars: dual stike and meteos have arrived so i'm going to go home and order one of them from take2.co.za (probably nintendogs).
oh... they also have 2 new colours for the ds in stock (no longer just the silver): pink and blue!

and talking about the nintendo ds:
source: magic box.
the following list of games are being developed for the nintendo ds (nintendo of japan recently announced at a nintendo conference)

Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Capcom, 2006)
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Square Enix)
Final Fantasy III (Square Enix, 2006)
Mario & Luigi RPG 2 (Nintendo, 12/29/2005)
Rainbow Island DS (Taito, 01/05/2006)
Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training 2 (Nintendo, 12/29/2005)
Tales DS (Namco)
Tingle RPG (Nintendo)
Magical Vacation (Nintendo)
Ash (MistWalker)
Tenchu DS (From Software)
Kaitou Wario (Nintendo)
Wishroom (Nintendo)
Eigo Zuke DS [English Training] (Nintendo)
Detect Hacker (Nintendo)
Densetsu no Stafi 4 (Nintendo)
Puzzle Up DS (Nintendo)
Bomberman Story (Hudson)
New Gundam (Bandai)
Mario Basket 3 on 3 (Nintendo)
Custom Robo DS (Nintendo)
Yu-Gi-Oh (Konami)
Nobunaga's Ambition DS (Koei)
Ocha Inu no Heya (Koei)
Daikookai Jidai DS (Koei)
Stylebook Series (Bandai)
Dracula Castlevania (Konami)
Dangerious Jisan (Konami)
Vs. Puzzle Papi Inu Vector Wan (Konami)
Crossword Puzzle (Nintendo)
Jigsaw Puzzle (Nintendo)
Sudokou (Nintendo)

well thats it for today... roleplaying tonight is gonna be interesting. we have to break into the keep and get away with assassination and theft... hmm...

wolt ihr das volkswagen in flammen sehen?

2005-10-05T11:47:00.000+02:00

since one of my players couldn't make the game last night, and another was unsure about making it, we ended up not roleplaying (surprise! ^-^).
schpat brought us his delicious meats covered with a spicy cheesy goodness.
(translation: steak + mustard cheese sauce = good)
and we sat around talking shit for a while before spontaneously breaking out into a R5 buy-in game of texas hold 'em.
we finished after 12...
(well.. i lost everything long before then)
it ended with mad-krazy blind doubling that basically led to the final 2 players (moonflake and synk) playing pure random games with no betting, trying to win 2 in a row (duece, advantage, duece, advantage, win)...
synk is luckier than a rabbit... and the rabbit has built in lucky charms.
there was much smacktalk going on down the river.
strangely enough, the person who wanted to play for cash the least walked away with all the money (and i know that, depending on your philisophical approach, the ends does not justify the means... always... but it makes for a more ironic ending in the retelling).

darkthrone update: i got attacked a couple more times... hardly lost any gold. the revenge attacks i made got me back more gold than i lost ^-^
my army is growing strong... now i need money to equip them all.

i arrived at varsity today to be confronted with the burning wreck of a beetle... not a 6 legged insect (firebug) but rather a volkswagen that had obviously been strained too much on the uphill and decided to combust a little more than an engine should.
sucks for whoever owns the car... amusing for everyone else.

well i must be off to do that stupid comsci essay before friday... and since there's roleplaying tomorrow (and i may need to supervise burglar bar quoting) i'd better do most of it today.
stupid comsci dept. this is obviously a "we need another mark for the students... ummm... quick, think of a tut for them." tut.
not well thought out with shitty subject and no response to questions from students.
well at least i passed the comsci tests that i recently wrote.

anyway: toodles!

citizens flock to undead-topia

2005-10-04T13:44:00.000+02:00

the day after i complain about the stranglehold on citizens in darkthrone, they give me 200 citizens. maybe someone there reads my blog?
i think all players with "zen" in their name should receive massive amounts of gold, prizes, and bonuses to offence and defence...
*looks around hopefully*
ayway... babyacid and i are rampaging around pillaging gold. we have yet to work on a coordinated attack... but then no-one has really bothered us.
babyacid has only ever been attacked by me.
i've only been attacked by 2 other people.
one guy attacked me 4 times and got bounced by my defences 4 times (all last night). so i log on this morning, find 200 spare citizens and double my army size before turning around and attacking him 4 times... plundering all his gold and trashing large chunks of his fortification. my offence (much) greater than his defence...
(he was attacking from 3 levels below me too...)
oh well...

not much happening in gaming news as usual... basically we're in the pre-christmas news slump. stuff is still being released, but all the hype and whatnot is being stored up for convincing people to buy christmas presents.

i managed to play with a psp the other day. incredible infection in cavandish square has one on display in a stupid plastic bubble thing that makes it really hard to hold the psp. this means i'm not 100% sure about its design as the shoulder buttons could be hard to get to, or just hard to get to because of the way i was forced to hold it (stupid bubble).
it sure does look and sound pretty. the screen is large and clear and the graphics are good. they had some stupid racing game on it and after the second corner i had managed to spin the car and was facing the wrong way (after getting in first). i couldn't figure out how to reverse to turn around and some moron, ai driver decided to park in front of me so i couldn't just swing around forward... leaving me in 2nd last place in about 5 seconds (last being the moron ai... technically i was still in front)...
stupid racing games. personally i think they are the worst type of game to show off a system. people either love 'em or hate 'em and they aren't gonna win any fans over from the hate 'em side.
overall i'd say: if you want it and can afford it and its games then get it.
games are expensive, costing R389.99 - R400+ in spite of the lies that claimed games would be R359.99. yes look and listen... i'm looking at you, and listening for a response!
better yet: win one with some games. ^_^

roleplaying tonight: my kult game.
after a 2 week break (stupid tests) we should be back into the swing of things... that means my players will pitch up and we probably won't get more than 10 minutes of roleplaying in... but as long as we have fun.

not much else going on today...
ooh.. lemme quickly check the real world news:
3 possible leads to interesting stories...
the new planet/thing they discovered has a moon... not that interesting.
then slashdot had a couple of interesting sounding things:
"collecting your life on usb" (ooh) turned out to be about storing your info and id on usb in case you need to evacuate... blegh... was more a question on security than an article about anything.
and slashdot's other failure: korea has english teaching robots (so some dude claims) that can read stories and correct pronunciation... except the guy who put this up claims the host redirected his link to porn so he took the link down. this means that his rather short description is totally unverified and unverifiable. there was some other link to a korean site but i don't read korean (and it wasn't about the article anyway).
so no real news then either!

and today's link:
abandonia... home of some really great old dos games :)
go check em out.
i'm gonna go home and eat / relax before roleplaying tonight!

some title here

2005-10-03T11:31:00.000+02:00

a rather relaxed weekend...
friday: supper at magica roma - linguini cabonara = good.
saturday: short excursion to pinelands club followed by lazing in front of tv = good.
sunday: excursion to pinelands to pick up R50 spur voucher that i won on saturday. then moonflake's mom's for the evening including brazilian pork (how about brazilian? see picture: microkitten brazilian bikinis) with roast veg and a cheesy kinda sauce with bacon and mushrooms = good.

the magic box has some more pics for biohazard: deadly silence...
(ie: the resident evil remake for the ds). it looks like its shaping up nicely.

as for dark throne: i'd better start getting a heap of citizens soon otherwise it's going to get real boring. basically i'm outstripping myself attacking people for gold. what ends up happening is my level goes through the roof and i don't have an army to really support my level. and there is no way of "buying" citizens. basically my strategy of "be aggressive and steal all the money i need from those poncey elves" doesn't work because an aggressive strategy does not work because you can't get citizens.
the only possibility to help encompass this strategy is this: attack like crazy... boost your level hugely so that you can get the level and gold requirement for the next fortification level... upgrade fortification and buy all the housing that that makes available... repeat until you find no-one left that you can attack without suiciding... wait for the housing to produce citizens to add to your army to raise offence power enough to attack again.
unfortunately it ain't that easy, especially since it seems to be a requirement for people to "turtle" on this damn game, so i run into level 2 people (when i'm level 8) with populations in the thousands and armies to match (all defence of course).
the problem is the rate you get citizens. you can't buy 'em so you have to rely the usual way which is: 1 citizen per house per day... 5 houses per fortification level... you need level 7 for 2nd upgrade (allowing 15 houses), need level 11 for 3rd upgrade (allowing 20 houses), and so on...
that's just too damn slow to work for anything but turtling.
there is also a "public recruiter" that you can click 350 times a day. each click gives someone random a citizen and you get a credit so that at some point someone can give you one... except i havent received any yet in spite of the +/- 1000 credits.
like i said: i'll probably get bored with it very quickly. i haven't quite gotten there yet, but it doesn't seem to be far off...

other than that: nothing interesting is really happening today.
ethics is done (for a week) in comsci and we're back to architecture with the funny irish lecturer.
since that was my only lecture today i'm probably gonna go home soon. i need to do some washing up today (or buy all new plates... but thats too expensive).

the assault continues...

2005-09-30T13:14:00.000+02:00

i took a short "time out" from elfbashing to teach babyacid not to complain about undead assassins on dark throne. a quick plundering of gold later and we're currently in alliance negotiations ("NO ELVES ALLOWED!").

today being a long varsity day, not much has been happening other than lectures. not even my usual news sites have anything interesting to say...

metroid pinball will be coming out for the nintendo ds sometime soon... its going to ship with a gba sized cartridge that is actually a rumble pak, so you put in the usual ds-sized cartridge and the rumble pak. graphics look quite nice...

roleplaying last night was fun... we're sneaking into an enemy keep, in an enemy city, for some devils!
well at least the devils'll keep the demons busy once we get in. we also have to pull off an assassination while securing a little magic item to stop more demons being summoned. *sigh* war is hell... literally!
we hear rumours of a merric, the generic cleric, being around (our name for him)... he's not really that generic and more "evil as a bastard" as far as we can tell.
well we've made it into the city, now we need to breach the keep walls without getting breached by their defences.

thats pretty much all i have to report today... go read something interesting now!

the undead walk... and attack

2005-09-29T11:19:00.000+02:00

i've tried dark throne now and can say it is entertaining.
i don't know how long it's going to hold my attention (probably not long knowing my attention span...) but for now i'm having fun building up a little army and attacking people who have no army (spies are useful).
basically its your standard empire builder with resource management. you get untrained citizens which you train to be miners / soldiers / guards / spies etc...
and you need to do things like upgrade fortifications and but weapons for your army, all of which costs cash...
i'm of the opinion that other people have my cash, so i send my army out to collect it for me.
i'm playing an undead assassin (there are 4 races and 4 classes).
my army is reletively small (especially compared to the people of the same level) but is decently equipped (i've only been playing for 2 days now... population is still < 50).
i attack almost exclusively elves, especially if that have stupid usernames. this normally means someone who has logged on once, collected tonnes of cash because it just builds up over their period of inactivity, and are about to have their account removed due to inactivity... so i sneak into their wretched forest and take their gold!
you can make alliances and stuff and apparently claws has an alliance, but i haven't bothered to find out. plus i may lose intrest in the game within the next week...

ds central has a few pictures of the upcoming pokemon: mysterious dungeon.
basically there's going to be 2 versions of the game... one on gba and one on ds with some for of connectivity between the two (probably both carts in the ds).
the story revolves around a human who has been turned into a pokemon. you will turn into different pokemon throughout the course of the game.
basic gamplay: enter a randomly generated dungeon and partake in search-and-rescue missions while battling in the classic pokemon style along the way.

hmm... seems blogspot is having problems with uploading pictures today so picture this: the image of a knight with glowy green eyes in the top left corner of this post... and a screenshot of pokemon: mysterious dungeons next to the paragraph about the game of the same name (my brother from another mother).

and that's pretty much it for my day...
i'm going home to relax / play advance wars 2 / watch tv.
roleplaying tonight should be the start of an interesting adventure...

blink blink

2005-09-28T10:18:00.000+02:00

i am so tired...
finally written my last test (for now) this morning...
last night's math test went ok... i don't think i did as well as i was hoping to do, but i think i did ok.
this morning's comsci test (nice scheduling assmonkeys) went ok. i totally did zero studying but still managed to muddle through alright.
but all this shit has left me real tired.
i need sleep... maybe i'll go home and nap!
...and get back to some advance wars 2.

oh: and the fuckers in the comsci dept have given us something more to do. the day we hand in the hci project they put up an essay topic on our forums. its a pants essay on computing as a profession that compares the cssa (com soc south africa) and the bsc (british soc of computing)... and its due for next friday. at least that's a week away (like anyone is going to do anything this week, esp after the week most of us have just had...).
*blegh*

found a cool link on the nintendo ds forum i read: a free and legal roms site... they don't do any commercial roms but still have a fair load of stuff (including games and demos and whatnot) on a variety of platforms...
go check 'em out at www.pdroms.de.
also: ubisoft have a couple of cute little things for free download (some minigames and wallpapers and things) oer at their website.
look in the downloads / goodies section.

anyone looking for a nice avatar (especially if you like anime and animated gifs) try anime-kun. look at the gifs animes. lots and lots of stuff.
(btw: the site is french but easily navigable / understandable).

nintendo ds news for people in south africa:
take2.co.za has released advance wars: dual strike, castlevania dawn of sorrow, and meteos for order (each at R360). stock should be arriving very soon.
i'm still waiting for nintendogs to be released (expected: 7th oct)... ork-khrist still owes me some cash which will go towards getting one of these games (still undecided which one, but i'm leaning towards nintendogs first).
btw: they also have shaun of the dead (dvd) for only R93.

oprah was super-ultra-hyper-rude-X last night on her show.
she was doing some around the world thing with women from all over the world doing little bits on her show and she had some icelandic women there. firstly she tells her her shark is rotten (the food she brought) and then phones up their prime minister's office (thankfully he wasn't in) and proceeds to put on a stupid icelandic-ish accent and patronise the poor guy that answered and tell him that he must tell the pm that next time she's there she'll see him for shots and lamb testicles (they like their drink in iceland and lamb testicles is one of their food things).
he was probably thinking: "goddamn drunken yanks got hold of an icelandic phonebook again... if i catch you you'll have more than lamb testicles to deal with!" (only in icelandish... ^-^' ).

*sigh* anyway... that's about it for today... go away now.

weekend of the dead and killer dolphins

2005-09-26T11:25:00.000+02:00

land of the dead rocked!
friday was a fun night of being dressed up like a zombie, wandering the mall, watching a cool movie, and having a fun afterparty.
thanks nu-metro in canal walk...
thanks antonio at the one ring in observatory...
thanks schpat...
i even got a vote (just 1) for best dressed zombie. i guess all the hard work paid off... i don't mean hard work on the zombie costume (i did hardly any work on that), i mean all the hard work i did at varsity: left me in a zombie like state, i just added fake blood...
well done yanke, schpat, and moonflake (the top 3 zombies).

zomg:
this must be a plot for a b-grade scifi movie...
the observer is reporting that hurricane katrina has released military trained dolphins into the gulf of mexico. 36 dolphins "armed" with toxic dartguns are roaming the free waters.
these dolphins have had training in attack-and-kill missions since the cold war.
wtf?
there is concern that the dolphins may mistake people in wetsuits as possible targets and dart them...
the darts are designed to put people to sleep for later interogation, not so much fun in the water.
yeah....

oh.. i should have been a little clearer on fridays post: it was national dog week in america... if you didn't follow any links you wouldn't have spotted that ^-^'

quick gaming news:
gta: liberty city stories for the psp is shaping up nicely and is expected to be done by the end of october (probably american release date). the price seeems to be about normal for current psp games ($50 means sold here for R350 - R400). go view some more pics at the magic box.

and finally the lazy weekend report:
saturday was relaxed. got up extra late, lazed around the house, watched lemony snicket's series of unfortunate events, ate some food... and that's about it. the movie was cool... the clothes were awsome.
schpat and james came round for the meeting we (project partner and i) were meant to hold, but my project partner was running late and the whole thing got postponed. schpat had managed to poison himself since yesterday (either from eating the fake blood, or getting a dodgy burger from mcdonalds).
sunday: got up a little late. my project partner came round and we held the meeting that we needed to hold and i handed over my section of the work which i'd done so that he could finish it off for tuesday's handin. (i get to study for a maths test so i can't do much more on it now...).
thanks james and moonflake for your help. thanks schpat for trying... get well soon.

anyway: i'm off to d/l solutions to tuts so that i can go study maths... cya

*edit*: wow i had problems putting the pic into this post... blogger was uploading them but not generating the html and addding it into the post so i had to open previous posts and figure out how to link them (where to link them) and do it all manually... *blegh*

national dog week and answers

2005-09-23T10:10:00.000+02:00

well it seems that national dog week is about to end (sept 18 - 24) but since i think its national, not international, i'm not too surprised i didn't hear about before now.
looks like nintendo are doing their bit for the pups as nintendo insider reports here.
inspired by nintendogs' fashion, the aspca (american society for prevention of cruelty to animals) is holding a doggy fashion show, supported by nintendo.
there will be a grass-covered catwalk (dogwalk?) and dogs strutting their fashionable stuff, looking for adoption.
owners can get caricatures of themselves and their dogs, all sorts of spot prizes (nintendo DSs, nintendog games, etc...) and there are interactive nintendogs stations.
Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto (*bows down to the great miyamoto*) will be attending. some of you may recognise the name as the man behind such small titles as: mario bros., donkey kong, and the legend of zelda.
its happening this saturday (sept 24th) in new york, so any american readers out there (like i have international readership.. yeah right!) go have a look and have some fun. all the contact stuff is available at the bottom of the article.

oh! also, if you have a little spare money, there are some other victims of hurricane katrina to think about: the pets! go to the aspca website and donate... they need all the help they can get (or click the pic below to go straight to the donation page). they're helping out all that they can. *takes metephorical hat off to the aspca*

now to answer a few comments from yesterday:
fourier methods vs fourier analysis...
they are fairly similar except the fourier methods we are doing (mam200) is a little less detailed than a full engineering fourier methods... its kinda the detailed introduction into the subject.
as for the gaming news comment: i must ammend that i generally don't keep up to date on the pc gaming world. basically i look at the nintendo stuff ('cos i have a ds) and get the console news that lurks around the handheld news. i occasionally keep an eye on the psp ('cos i'd like to see how well its doing and its an interesting new foray into the market for sony) but my pc news is restricted to getting nag magazine every month.
as for fable: it was out on console ages ago (if i remember correctly) and was a bit of a dissapointment (overhyped), but they did do extra work into the pc version before releasing it so it may be a lot better now (on pc).

as for my life news (you're gagging to hear it, i know):
the test last night went surprisingly well.
spent most of yesterday studying in the library for it with a classmate and we managed to swot up on the necessary stuff. i did some informed guessing for a question or two, and turned out (post-test discussion with the brain of the class) to be correct. ^-^
i estimate a 65%.

zombies tonight *YAY*
land of the dead and wandering around malls in full zombie costume... yeah.
its gonna be great. try make the canal walk 8'o clock show and join us for the movie and afterparty at the one ring.
check schpat's blog for details.

roleplaying last night led us to an interesting junction. we are currently fighting a war against an army that's supported by demons. we recently had a proposal of help from a devil. devils hate demons (mutual feelings). this could turn out good... or bad...

and thats about it for today... got projects to do over the weekend, and test to study for on tuesday and wednesday, but after that life should slow down for a short time, so i'm holding on till then.

avatar wanted... must do windows

2005-09-22T10:42:00.000+02:00

got a day of studying and test writing ahead of me now...
turns out this test will be 45 minutes long (just like the previous fourier methods test).
now the major problem people had with the last test was the time. 4 questions in 45 mins was too much in too short a span. but some fuckers got 100% (fuckers!) so his response was: "some people," i guess 2 people, "got 100% last time so there is obviously plenty of time."
but he has also previously mentioned how badly everyone did overall in the last test... wtf?
one or the other mudderfugger! you can't have your cake and eat it, unless you want partially digested mush-cake.
this is why he doesn't supply notes anymore... he thinks people did badly because they aren't coming to lectures... i've missed 1 lecture... i did badly in the first test.
maybe its because you're a crap lecturer?
maybe if we had notes we'd be able to study something concrete and not simply confuse ourselves over the random examples which we take down from your lectures (which need correcting because you often make mistakes!)

and other text books don't really help too much because he's steering the course between fourier analysis and fourier methods and some internal malfunction that is his alone. this means all textbooks don't aproach the suject from the proper direction or cover everything we do, while overdoing stuff we don't need.
*sigh*
oh, btw: tonight's game will have to start a little late (people who play in the game: you know who you are) due to arse fourier test!

i'm currently hunting for a decent avatar for my profile... its difficult finding the right one (well.. it is for me) so the little soldier dude (advance wars: green earth infantry) will have to do until i find something else.
i have found a bunch of animated gifs though... so today's post is littered with the occasional one.

advance wars by web is still down :(
they're having problems with databases being moved and not everything migrating with them. this leads to lotsa screwups.
hopefully they'll be back soon.

there seems to be a slump in the gaming industry at the moment. news is scarce, but there are a bunch of games about to be released here so i'm happy.
of course i have precious little time to play anything right now, but in a weeks time i should be free and clear for a while (until exams arrive).
as for news in the real world: nothing interesting catches my eye.
saw something about "ants using herbicides in their gardens" but i've read about that ages ago (years) so its nothing new, unless they've discovered something new (how's that for a statement?). either way it doesn't intrest me enough to afford the click.

so thats about it today then...
need to go off and do some studying (i am so sick of studying) and maybe have a smoke and a bite to eat.
at least there'll be zombies tomorrow. that should give me enough energy to do the hci project on saturday (i'm sick of comsci projects now too).