One Hundred Hundreds

Online Role Playing - Or - I Hit It With My Axe

2011-05-26T10:26:00.052+10:00

Besides the fact that the title of this blog is a reference to an online video series that chronicles the ongoing adventures of a group of porn stars attempting (and succeeding quite awesomely) to play D&D, it also references something that my friends and I do quite often...well...almost. It references a new way to do something that we do multiple times per week. I am, of course, talking about role playing. "Duh" I hear you cry, "You called it Online Role Playing for a reason, I assumed." Well you can take your attitude, mister smarty pants, and leave! The rest of you fine, glorious, and slightly moist people can stick around and listen to me espouse the virtues of this activity!

Role playing is, at the heart of it, very very much like acting. Only, without the script. Improv! Role playing is, at the heart of it, very very much like improv. You have a character who you embody - that character has a backstory, a personality, and so forth (much like Holtarrion in the journal I have been keeping - Yes, yes, I did only start doing that last week, but the person who pointed that out can join their friend in the hallway, thank you very much - I will see you both after the class has finished) and you create their future by interacting with other players or non-player characters. In the case of more traditional role playing games, the success or failure of your actions is determined not by how well you can play the character, but instead by a series of dice rolls (it's just like Maths: The Game, I love it!) Online role playing, however (as well as the offline free form varieties, like the Murder Mystery party I held a while back) rely solely upon your ability to pretend, to immerse yourself in the other world, and to play nicely with others (something those two in the hallway just don't seem to understand, apparently.)

For the purposes of keeping everything nice and together, Laura (who I haven't really mentioned in this blog, but who will be cropping up more and more frequently, I imagine) has created a Facebook group which houses several posts, each of which represents an area in the fictional world. To interact with the world, you simply post your actions as a comment on the thread, and everybody kind of feeds off what you do. This, of course, means that you don't have to have anybody else online with you for your to participate - though in this situation you might be waiting for anywhere up to a couple of hours before somebody responds to you, it means that you don't have to worry about everybody being together at once.

The story we have going at the moment is, brilliantly enough, being written by everybody as we go along. There is no over-arching plot, there are no goals that we have to achieve, there isn't any big bad who is going to come and slaughter us if we don't go training. We do what we want. We write how we want. We make it up as we go along. Really, the only rule with this is that as long as you respect the other participants, and as long as you respect established continuity (once something has happened it can't unhappen...) then you're fine. It's brilliant.

So I guess then, that you're wondering the big question of "Why?" (and it's certainly not the first time I've had that question asked in my classroom, I'll tell you!) Well besides the fact that it's fun, and that it exercises your creative muscles, it's a pretty cool social activity. I mean, sure you're not technically interacting with other people as yourself, but you are playing a game with them, and games are one of the most social activities out there.

The More You Didn't Care To Know, Part 1

2011-05-24T13:00:00.001+10:00

It occurs to me, sometimes, that I am considered a font of knowledge for many different areas. These areas, and the knowledge contained therein are, of course, mostly completely irrelevant and thus I'm not particularly helpful, per se. But still, it is nice to be considered something of a polymath. The best thing, of course, about the word polymath, is that if you have to ask if you are one, then you aren't. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, only the prophecy is about smug self-righteous intelligence. But enough waffling! You came here to be educated (because it's Tuesday, and that's what happens on Tuesdays!!) and so today I thought I would explain the differences between some words - words that are, of course, commonly confused. There would be no point in explaining the difference between the word 'pancake' and the word 'Tuesday' because the two are connected in no particular way (other than, of course, Shrove Tuesday, but that's just because I was thinking about delicious food...)

Then vs. Than

The confusion that exists between 'then' and 'than' strikes me as somewhat odd. Once you know what the two words actually mean, then hopefully you should agree that they are quite different. It's kind of like the words 'dead' and 'deed' - sure they only differ by a single letter, but I'd rather much have many deeds than many dead.

The word 'than' is a comparative term. It is used to compare two objects, expressing the fact that one of the objects experiences a certain quality in greater abundance (man it's difficult to define that word without using it...) Correct usage of the word 'than' should be limited to sentences of the following nature: "Nathan has more money in than bank than I do." or "The red ball is smaller than the blue ball is."

The word 'then' is a temporal modifier (for want of a better term.) It is used to indicate that an activity or event is to take place later than (and there's that word again) another activity or event. Correct usage of this word should generally be limited to times when you want to express a chronology. For instance, if I were to say "I'm going to go to the shops, and then I'll return home." then this is correct usage of the term. You may have noticed I just used the word in another context - this is because 'then' can also be used as a conjunctive (meaning roughly 'in the situation that the preceding or following is the case'.

Less vs. Fewer

The difference between 'less' and 'fewer' is actually quite small, but it is still something that, on occasion, irks me. I can understand, for instance, if the average person says that they have less raffle tickets than their friend. This is a pretty common misconception, and the two words do carry the same vague meaning. What I have trouble ignoring, however, is the glaring grammatical error that stares at my any time I am in line at the supermarket. The sign that offends me so reads "12 Items Or Less." and, besides the fact that ever letter seems to be the start of its own little sentence, their misleading of the public disgusts me.

Traditionally (if it's appropriate to call language traditional, and I don't see why it isn't...) the word 'less' should be used only in conjunction with an item that is uncountable - for example 'hair' as an overall concept. One could correctly say "I have less hair than you." The word 'fewer', on the other hand, was designed to be used with countable objects - for example 'hairs' (this time, though, the individual objects that sit on your head, instead of the mass as a whole.) One could correctly say "I have fewer hairs than you." As I said before, the difference is small, but if you want to exercise your mind then attempting to differentiate between these two can be good for you.

Affect vs. Effect

There is quite a handy mnemonic device that one can use to remember the difference between the words 'affect' and 'effect'. If you simply remember the word RAVEN (standing for: Remember Affect Verb Effect Noun) then you should generally be fine. As a verb, affect usually means to influence, alter, move emotionally, or (when speaking of an illness) to harm the body. As a noun, effect usually means the result/outcome of an event, though it is also seen in 'special effects', 'sound effects', and so forth.

There is a slight difficulty when it comes to very specific (and rarely used) definitions of the words, in which effect can actually be a verb and affect can actually be a noun. These cases are, however, quite rare. As a verb, effect means simply 'to bring about' (i.e. "He effected a change in the policy.") Affect, on the other hand, has a noun usage which seems to have fallen almost entirely from the common vernacular, being defined as emotion or an external display there-of (i.e. "The Doctor was void of affect as he finished off the Daleks".) Still, it's not hard to tell when one should use affect and effect in common speech.

And Finally...

So I think that should pretty much wrap it up for this particular entry in 'The More You Didn't Care To Know'. There are a couple of other discrepancies that I wanted to highlight, however I think that would do for next Tuesday, or at least one in the near future. I have decided that, to square off the list, I am going to include a list of words that people consistently use incorrectly in either context or spelling that don't deserve a full explanation.

Bold, when used in the context of someone without hair, is incorrect. The correct term is bald.

Horny when used in the context of any inanimate object (i.e. "The porn your mother starred in is really horny") is not only incorrect, but downright silly. Inanimate objects cannot, by definition, experience emotion, and thus cannot feel horny. What you mean to say is either the object made/makes you horny, or that the object is/way erotic.

A Whole Nother when used at any time, is incorrect. What you mean to say is A Whole Other.

Peruse when used in the context of quickly looking something over, is incorrect. Peruse actually means that one takes one's time and carefully inspects things.

Rediculous is not spelt as such. It is correctly spelt ridiculous.

Ironic. You know what? Don't even bother trying to use irony correctly - you're probably not going to...(But in case you wanted to know, it is only used to describe outcomes that are opposite to the expectation. For example, a giant banquet being eaten at the funeral of a man who died of starvation.)

Reviewing The Caanoo

2011-05-23T12:40:00.043+10:00

So today I'm telling you (albeit briefly) about the GP2X Caanoo - the most recent version of their 'cover-all' hand-held device. The Caanoo, which can be purchased from ThinkGeek (amongst other places, I'm certain, but I got mine from ThinkGeek, because I'm a well-behaved nerdling...) costs about $150 US and, given the features that it boasts, I think it's well worth it.

The Caanoo is marketed as a handheld console that runs on Linux. And is open source. Yup, that's what they sell it as...Everything perfectly legit. Okay, not really. Yes, technically the Caanoo is an open source hand-held that runs Linux, but as if that's going to pull the big crowds. No - the draw card that they use on you is that it is capable of running an emulator for virtually any console in existence before the N64. That means that you can now play Sega Master System games (Hello Alex Kidd...), SNES games (Hi There, Link To The Past), or MAME games (Why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I almost didn't notice you...) amongst a swathe of others. That is where the console really comes to power.

As far as retro gaming goes, the Caanoo is (in my opinion, of course) just brilliant. I mean, sure, it can't yet (yet) run Nintendo 64 games, but really I think that's more a limitation of the dev community than anything else (okay, yes, you'll have to overclock it and do a really good job of optimising everything, but still, I think it should be do-able...I mean, they've gotten PSX games working on an overclocked Caanoo...) The emulators that you can download for it (no, it doesn't come with them pre-installed, but it's not like they cost any money...) run smoothly and I've yet to experience any real hiccups with them. I did have to configure the SNES emulator to allow transparency so that I could actually see the game I was playing, and also to allow me to save properly, but that's a community developed software problem, as opposed to a hardware issue.

The graphics are, for me, clear as liquid crystal, and the touchscreen is reactive and hard to damage. The sound quality is pretty decent, considering the speakers that it is coming from, however I do have the issue that the speakers are back-facing, instead of pointing towards the player. Still, if you're not using headphones to play then you're probably not too worried about sound quality.

The battery is advertised to last about 4 hours, which (in my experience with the handheld) is accurate. This is long enough for, say, a small car trip, or use at work, however given that it only charges via USB, it probably won't suffice for a return train trip to Sydney (3 hours each way, give or take 30 minutes.) Still, given that it knocks off a full direction of travel if fully charged, it's much better than nothing.

The other nice thing about the Caanoo is that it has a host of third-party applications developed for it (although you admittedly have to pay for most of them.) Included on the device itself is a media player (which handles both audio and video), an eBook reader, and various other nice little extras.Oh, and you can play multi-player via Wireless, as well...

So basically, if you've got some disposable income, and you are a fan of retro-gaming on the move (instead of at your PC) then I'd recommend the Caanoo to you. It doesn't have many down-sides other than the price. Oh. And, I suppose, the fact that well-known games won't really keep being released for it. But then, I guess that's what the developer community is for...

The Journal Of Holtarrion Oaksbane, Entry #1

2011-05-20T13:00:00.000+10:00

Entry The First

Good day to you, new journal! Ah - The first words written in a brand new, leather bound book - a pleasant greeting. Yes, that feels right. Much better than those that marred the first page in my last one. "Hello World." I mean, yes, I was greeting what will surely be a rather captive future audience who no doubt wait with baited breath at my every penned word, and sure I was using the standard wording for a test message - you can't be too careful after all (must make sure these things aren't cursed when we begin writing in them, don't want our personality transferred into the paper. Or worse.)

After several days worth of travelling via a most fantastic steam-powered gondola down the river from Turtleback Ferry where I managed to...shall we say "acquaint" myself with some of their more unusual customs, in return for availing myself to them to aid with their ongoing restorative efforts - turns out a rather nasty something-or-other created quite the issue their dam, leaving a large portion of their town mostly destroyed. Still, a rather nifty place, that Turtleback Ferry, with a rather cool looking fort - met a nice, if somewhat unhinged, alchemist there - learnt a bit about restoratives and potions. Nice chap. Loud explosions. Still, eventually time pushed itself forward, and I had to move myself onwards.

Oh my - I was halfway through a sentence up there, wasn't I? I do that sometimes, but you'll grow to accept that this happens, and hopefully embrace it - you are recording my thoughts after all, and they don't exactly always go just where I want them to. Tricky things thoughts - like trying to pin down fireflies at times, what with all of the jumbled nonsense going on inside my head. Oh look - that man is trying to bully that lady, I could help her out - or I might be better suited to curing the sick for the church of the glorious order of Vink today - or mayhaps I should instead spend my time arranging flowers in a pretty shop instead. It is a cacophony of good intentions. Still, better than being boring now, isn't it.

So yes, after several days travelling lazily down the river, with not much to do but read through my old journals (having recently filled your direct predecessor) I arrived at the port in Magnimar - a lovely sprawling town Magnimar, with many...interesting areas. I, of course, opted to stay in an area where my expertise could be put to rather good use - the Marble District, I had heard rumours, was certainly somewhere were the gentry enjoyed the luxury of enough coin to pay someone else to perform even the most menial of tasks for them, and a man does have to eat. But before I settled into my cosy inn room for the night, I opted to ~~excitedly explore my surroundings~~ take a jaunty perambulation (as I am want to do...) finding myself in one of the more suspect areas of the city.

I was greeted, as I stepped over what almost appeared to be a physical threshold to Lowcleft, with something you will no doubt become quite used to me writing about - trouble. It is somewhat traditional, you see new journal, for my most incredible self to find myself in consistent spots of bother - sticky situations, if you will - I do so enjoy jam with my toast. But I digress (how unlike me - ahaha) and should instead by telling you of what occurred in Lowcleft. It turns out, you see, that I had stepped directly into the path of what initially felt to be an oncoming carriage. Upon collecting myself, however, I noticed that, running rather quickly away from myself was an unusually dressed man with what could loosely be described as "art" attached to his back. I say "loosely" because even someone with my limited capacity for the finer aspects of oil painting could likely have done better - still, there's no accounting for taste in some people, I suspect.

Following significantly less expediently after him, I quickly noted, was a watchman clearly from one of the more upper-class areas of town, where this kind of ~~blatant thievery~~ 'art liberation' was uncommon. He yelled something along the lines of stopping the villainous bloodsucker, and before I knew what was happening my legs had decided to assist. They do that sometimes. My body parts, that is. Always going off with minds of their own, doing whatever they feel is right at the time. Blasted moral compass must have slipped out of my head again, and into one of my shins. Still, my legs wanted to give chase, and who would I possibly be to argue with them?

I don't suspect, new journal, that you know what it's like to need to catch up with a professional thief, what with your being a book and all. I can't really explain what it's like for most people, to kind of careen swiftly through the streets at blazing speed, using their tremendous physical strength or alarmingly sharp dexterity to wind their way around their obstacles. What I can tell you, however, is that when I put my mind to something it tends to kick my other senses out of the way to let it do its thing. Suddenly every corner, each drainpipe, the most insignificant apple cart, and the largest snoozing vagrant appear to me as a series of trajectories - equations fill the air - I can see what I need to do in order to best launch myself off a building. Until a very short time ago I was entirely certain that this is how the rest of the world saw everything, but apparently it's just me and...well...the people like me.

Long story short, new journal, I managed to catch him ~~by beaning him on the head~~ using a clever trick I picked up in a small mountain village, involving some stones and a rather keen aim. Of course, in this situation I had to make do with lemons, but you know the saying, new journal (or rather you probably don't) "When life gives you lemons, use them to knock a criminal unconscious." So I returned the stolen painting to its owner, apparently it is some kind of modern art, and it's not supposed to look good (or, as I think it was put when the painting was created - it looks like absolute rubbish but if you tell someone that it's the latest thing, they'll have to have it.) Now I fear I must retire, as I have quite exhausted myself.

Until the next time, my dear new journal, when adventure abounds once more.

Tasting The Rainbow - Or - Miracle Fruit Tablets, Ho!

2011-05-19T12:00:00.088+10:00

A couple of weeks ago, when the Australian dollar was incredibly strong against the US market, some friends and I decided that we were going to make a bulk order from ThinkGeek. I say incredibly strong, I mean that we were up to around $1.10 US (which is much better than we were when I was younger, when I can recall being at around 70c per dollar...But, like an ageing gentleman who has nothing better to do than ramble uncontrollably and incoherently, I digress.) Kylie bought a couple of bits of clothing (including the "Meh" hoodie, and a "Soft Kitty" t-shirt), Encey got herself a crazy USB robot owl, and I got a couple of things including a Caanoo (which you can read more about on Monday.)

The thing that I was most excited about in this order was not, however, the prospect of a new handheld toy. It was, instead, the reason the package took so long to get to us in the first place. That's right - I ordered something that caused my parcel to not only get flagged as a risk by Customs, but also by Quarantine. After a rather lengthy (and somewhat worrying) couple of days, which involved many calls back and forth to various areas of the country, attempting to get everything cleared without being burnt "for safety" (because fire is the cleanser, after all) I arrived home to discover a rather sizeable package had arrived for me. I tore open the box with fevered anticipation, and discovered that yes, my quarry had made it through the "parcel immigration" process just fine. The Miracle Fruit Tablets were mine.

They Don't Really Taste Of Anything...It's Like Semi-Sweet Chalk

Quickly I jumped onto MSN to ask Spud if he could take me shopping for a variety of foods. He whipped around in his car with Encey, and the three of us went on the most magical of adventures. We bought three types of cheese (feta, goat's cheese, and a double brie), some vegetables (including, but not limited to: carrots, pickles, capsicum, and brussels sprouts), fruits (apples, limes, strawberries, lemons...), and various other things that I can't exactly recall right now (I know there was maple syrup, and some juice of some variety...and an onion! Can't forget the onion!!)

Our Selection Of Food, After We'd Been Chowing Down For A Bit

Before I go any further with this, I should let you know what Miracle Fruit Tablets are. Basically they are a small pill, roughly the size of an ibuprofen tablet, that you dissolve in your mouth. Once your tongue is sufficiently coated, the tablets dull your ability to taste various things (such as sour or bitter) leaving many foods tasting quite sweet. The tablets reportedly work at varying levels depending on the person, which is something we definitely noticed, however I'm pretty sure if we were doing it with the actual fruit (called the Miracle Berry, funnily enough) or if the tablets were slightly fresher (I mean, they did take about a week to get to us - and who knows what Customs did...) it would have been slightly more profound.

Encey Demonstrates The Correct Way To Eat The Tablet (As Well As The Taste...)

Oh well - the evening was fun, nonetheless, with myself, Spud, Encey, X-Man, Elmo, Kylie, Squiggles, and Emma chowing down on foods that we might normally have avoided. The highlights of the night were most definitely the lemon (which we were actually taking bites of - no sourness at all, it was like eating lemonade) and the goat's cheese (which tasted like one of the nicest cheesecakes I've eaten.) Notable mentions should also go out to maple syrup, granny smith apples, strawberries, pomegranate juice (which I normally despise), and limes. We noticed that some foods changed for certain people, whilst for other people they stayed the same. All in all, it was quite a strange experience, and something that (money permitting) I might do again...But really only if I could get my hands on some of the actual fruit.

So here are some pictures from the night, captioned for your pleasure. If anybody out there has tasted the tablets I'd love to hear about what foods you guys liked whilst eating them, and any ideas for things to nom nom down on next time we try this crazy venture would also be greatly appreciated.

X-Man Tripped Out Slightly

Every Takes Their First Bites

Emma Was Kind Of Scared, But Squiggles Protected Her

While I Ate A Raspberry, X-Man Was Throwing Down The Wasabi Challenge

Encey, Having Just Eaten Half A Birds-Eye Chilli, Agrees To The Wasabi

Hello Again, Old Friend

The Strawberries Turned Squiggles Into "Seductro" (His Alter-Ego)

Elmo Enjoyed The Granny Smith

Onions...Still Tasted Like Onions...

Spud Agreed With X-Man. Onions Remain Very Oniony

Nothing Would Ever Make Pomegranate Juice Palatable For Encey

"I Feel Like Maybe This Whole Thing Was A Giant Trap..."

On Eating Habits

2011-05-18T12:00:00.011+10:00

Breakfast, I have been told, is the most important meal of the day. I understand the reasoning for this - you need something to get your metabolism going if you want to function at your physical and mental peaks. Still, I also know just how difficult it is to actually feel like eating when you've just been forced to get out of a brilliantly comfortable bed, and you are faced with the prospect of a hard day sledging away at rocks with a pickaxe. Or is that coding? I may have just confused my work-day with a past life as a miner on the planet Metebelis III.

Because I am friends with a large number of students, as well as a fair number of programmers, I get to see some fairly...um..."interesting" eating habits, when it comes to breakfast. I'm not exactly sure why I'm so intimately aware of certain people's eating habits, and yet here I am about to discuss them on The Internet. I know that Spud, for instance, has tea - every morning. Some mornings he may have toast, some mornings he may not eat anything at all - but he always has tea (and I know that English Breakfast (or 'red box'), Earl Grey (or 'yellow box') and Irish Breakfast (or 'green box') are amongst his favourites, too...) Shibby, on the other hand, is more of a cereal kind of gal (did I really just say that?) eating one of the relatively healthier cereal option, like something along the lines of All Bran.

I Heard What You Said

For me, however, breakfast is relatively large. I would like to make it the largest meal I eat, but I just can't seem to overcome the need to have a big lunch - baby steps, I guess. Because I am, truth be told, a gigantic flipping weeaboo, I've taken to going the Japanese route for the majority of my meals - this means that my breakfast typically consists of some rice (white at the moment, but I'm going to try to move to the unprocessed stuff in the coming weeks), a portion of smoked salmon, a handful of pickled vegetables, and a bowl of miso soup. People, upon hearing that I'm basically eating dinner at breakfast time, initially take the "What the hell are you doing?! Aren't you trying to lose weight?!" route when attempting to discern what my thought process is when choosing food. What various individuals fail to grasp, however, is that people tend to have this whole eating thing backwards and, in the same way that when dancing you have a big fish, a little fish, and then a cardboard box to wrap it all up, when planning your daily meals you should have the largest meal at breakfast, then a smaller meal at lunch, and finally your smallest "wrap up" meal at dinner time - oh, and you should include lots of fish, too...but you could probably leave the cardboard out, unless you're really starved for fibre.

I Couldn't Find A Decent Gif To Explain BF LF CBB, So I Found One Of Pokemon Raving Instead...

I can't help, then, but wonder what makes up a "usual" daily dietary routine. I mean, I eat my breakfast before I leave for work (at 8:00am, in fact.) I have some rice crackers at 10:30, to tide me over until lunch (which either happens at midday or 1:00pm, depending on when my friends are eating) and I chow down on an apple when I get home from work (at about 5:00pm - though I really need to start having my apple a bit earlier in the afternoon.) Dinner is my biggest issue at the moment - some nights I don't have it at all (though really that was because I was kinda sick and didn't feel particularly hungry.) When I do have dinner now it's just some more miso soup and steak, with some veggies in there for good luck (well, good nutrition really I guess, but that doesn't sound anywhere near as good...Do you feel like a big man now, having ruined my linguistic fun?)

What do normal people do when it comes to foodenating? I kind of assumed that the typical person male (whom I shall address as Bob) eats either a bowl of cereal, or some toast with bacon and eggs. To drink I think that Bob has some orange juice (ick) or coffee - I don't see Bob as a tea drinker, and I doubt he eats fruit in the morning. Bob's female counterpart (who I shall name...uh...Bobina...) most likely has some toast, a piece of fruit, and a cup of coffee as she runs out the door - I'm not certain as to why, but that's the only visual I can get when I picture Bobina's morning ritual, I mean, sure Bobina would like to sit down and enjoy a nice meal in the morning but there's just no time what with her having to take the kids to school, and then she has that high-powered business meeting that she has to attend. How can you expect her to eat right under those circumstances? Jerk.

I don't think that Bob has morning or afternoon tea, and I'm pretty certain that he only has a couple of sandwiches for lunch (unless it's Friday, in which case he goes out to lunch with his colleagues.) Bobina has a muesli bar and some fruit for her between meal snacks, but she has a small lunch made up of some kind of canned fish and sliced vegetables (or fruit, masquerading as vegetables - I'm looking at you tomato and cucumber) on some wheat thins. Overall, I wouldn't rate their daily meals as overly satisfying or healthy, but it's what they have to make do with given the time that they have. Dinner is most likely the same for both, and I'm pretty sure it's something like spaghetti bolongaise - heavy on the meat and pasta, low on the vegetables.) Still, you can't really blame Bob and Bobina for their eating habits, I guess...

I Tried To Find A Picture Of Someone Literally Eating A Habit...But I Couldn't - Have A Red Panda Instead

The moral of this story is that, when you think about effective weight-loss dieting on the way to work, you will probably write a blog on food. This also has the tendency to make one quite hungry and, given that I ate whilst writing this, I'm going to assume that it's actually a thirst response, and not legitimate hunger. Stupid need for liquid pretending that it's actually a need for solids. It's a coward, that's what it is. Well, I'll show it. I'm off to buy some water.

On How Things Change

2011-05-17T10:14:00.063+10:00

Sometimes, recently especially, I find it kind of difficult to be spontaneous in my blog posts. This has come about for a number of reasons - not least of all because I have been so very gosh darn busy lately. But still, I have been reminded of the fact that I owe some kind of debt of favour to the universe, and that my continuing existence appears to be contingent upon me delivering content to the world's fevered masses, and their increasing hunger for something thrown together with a loose train of thought. These reminders, coming to me in the form of (as I have said before) emails and IMs, had kicked me in the pants, and sent me into a writing frenzy for a week...But it was then that the business kicked in once more...And so I am writing this post to let you know that...

I'm not giving up.

No, I'm not leaving the blog business just yet, although I did think (briefly) about it. But the blog means something to me that it probably doesn't to you guys. For me, this is a way to allow me to process thoughts which would otherwise just float about in my head. As I sit here, mashing away at my keyboard like a spasmodic monkey, I think about stuff that I don't type about - thoughts about what I did on the weekend, or how I feel about various events flow through my mind and get neatly sorted into their correct place, so that I may address them later. Ideas for things I want to do - both related and completely non-sequitur - rampage through my mind so often that when I take the time out to put anything down here...well...they seem to calm. Sometimes a notion will fall forth from my head, and onto the page, and you'll get some pseudo-random linguistic nightmare that entertains and informs.

What I'm doing, instead of leaving, is changing the format of the blog. Making it a bit more predictable, as it were. Of course, we all know how well I stick to plans about this sort of thing. Remember "Fiction Friday"? Or how about those challenge posts? What about that list of 100 100 lists? Yeah, neither do I. And so, without further needless dancing about the point, I present to you the updated format for One Hundred Hundreds. Let me know what you think in the "Comments" section below.

On Mondays I shall be reviewing things. Many things. Varied things. The last Monday post I made was a review of the film Thor, and that is what inspired me to continue this trend. I really enjoyed writing my thoughts down about the film, and sharing them with the public, instead of just bouncing them about between my friends (as I would continue to do anyway.) Each Monday I'll tell you about a show I've been watching, a film I saw, a device I've tested, or any number of other things that I can try and convince you to do/see/hear/experience.

On Tuesdays (excepting today, of course) I shall be providing wisdom in the form of a weekly factoid. This might be a "Word of the Week" (which is what the idea was initially conceived from) or perhaps a mathematical curiosity. As long as it furthers your (so called) education, then you'll see it on a Tuesday. Perhaps I'll give you a piece of breaking news (or news from the distant past...) I could treat you to a geographic fact...The possibilities for me are virtually endless - Knowledge Is Power (and knowing is half the battle!)

On Wednesdays you'll be treated to a rant in the same fashion that I usually perform my posting obligation (well, I say obligation, I guess I'm not really obliged to post anything, though I really do enjoy doing it, and if I don't know what I enjoy, then I'll just become...some kind of...Boring McBorington or something...) I'll basically use this as a space to talk about whatever is on my mind at the time. It could be the fact that the automatic doors no longer open for me, or it might be the fact that I'm pretty sure space monkeys are secret trying to lure us to our doom using fantastic astronomical images. It probably won't make sense. But I'm sure that you've come to expect that from me, by now...

On Thursdays you'll be treated to an update of the adventures that I've been having with my friends. I have one that I've been saving up for this Thursday, where we bought some potentially mind-altering substances from ThinkGeek (all legal, duh) and performed a usually rudimentary action in a rather nifty way. Other than that I may tell you about our trips around the town, or whatever. It will be like that time I made up a story about my laundry, only better. Or not. Whatever.

Finally, on Fridays, I will provide you with some fiction (woah, deja vu...) This time, however, it will be the adventures of a character who I will be playing in Spud's D&D game soon - Holtarion Oaksbane (known usually just as Holt.) My current character in Spud's game (Tetch, an assassin...) is still going strong, so I won't be actually telling you anything of the events of that game until Holt steps in, rather I will be writing a series of diary entries leading up to his meeting the group, and replacing the dapper tengu Tetch. I hope that you enjoy them.

The moral of this story is that change can be quite scary. Change can, however, also be a mechanism for good. A tool that prevents stagnation, and stops me from going crazy...Crazy? I went crazy once. They locked me in a rubber room. I died. The buried me in the ground. Worms live in the ground. Worms like to eat dead things. So do rats. Rats! I hate rats!! They drive me crazy. Crazy? I went crazy once...

On Things That Are Confessional

2011-05-05T13:16:00.000+10:00

There are, occasionally, some things that I want to get off my chest. There are, occasionally, some things that other people would also like to get off their chests, however there is just...always something in the road. Perhaps you don't wish to burden people with your concerns or feelings. Maybe now just isn't the right time. Or it could just be that you fear the repercussions. I mean, I don't blame you for any of those things - I'm guilty of them myself, after all, and I certainly do my best to remain hypocrisy free. So I decided, a little while ago, to do a blog where I could let myself, and the people I know, just kind of...get stuff off their chests. Anonymously of course.

What follows, then, is a collection of random thoughts from myself and my friends, in no particular order. It's not just confessions, either - it's like a collage of thoughts, ideas, pictures, and everything. If you ever have a thought or something that you'd like added to the next post like this then please email it to me, and I'll be sure to include it in the next one of these that I do...That is, of course, assuming that this post is popular enough to generate those emails...But...whatever...

-- The Ten Commandments Need Asterisks For Extenuating Circumstances --

I still like to believe that Pluto is a planet

I Love You

No Matter How Fucked You Think You Are

Always

My thought is for everyone who takes themselves too seriously
Take a look at yourself and laugh at yourself,
Feel comfortable with yourself before you criticise others
Because only when you can laugh at yourself
Should you be able to laugh at others

I've Had Beethoven's 7th Running Through My Head Ever Since I Watched 'The King's Speech'

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

Makes 2

4 Tblsp Flour
5 Tblsp Sugar
2 Tblsp Cocoa
1 Tsp Baking Powder
Pinch Of Salt
1 Egg
3 Tblsp Milk
3 Tblsp Oil
3 Tblsp Chocolate Chips (Plus 2 Tblsp Extra)
Small Splash Vanilla Extract
2 Microwave Safe Coffee Mugs

This recipe makes two mug cakes and therefore is made in two separate mugs. You can mix the entire thing in the mugs and therefore avoid any extra dishes except for the egg which I whisk lightly in a bowl. Add dry ingredients to the mugs, and mix well ensuring the there is no flour stuck at the bottom.
Pour in the milk, oil, chocolate chips or flakes and vanilla extract and mix well. Whisk egg lightly in a bowl and pour half of the egg in each mug and mix well. Add the extra tablespoonful of chocolate chips or flakes on top of the batter. Cover with glad wrap.
Do one mug at a time. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 1 minute on medium heat. Then microwave for another 30 seconds on medium heat. Check on the consistency-it should be cooked but still moist and gooey. If it is still not cooked, microwave on another 30 seconds on medium heat. Remember, it will cook further on standing.
Allow to cool a little and serve with ice cream.

A Favourite Quotation

Insanity: A Rational Adjustment To An Irrational World

-- R.D. Lang

On Corruption And Collections

2011-05-04T12:00:00.004+10:00

I like Doctor Who. In that statement is possibly one of the largest understatements of my life. I really like Doctor Who. A lot. So great is my love for Doctor Who that...well...it surpasses my love for many other non-sentient entities (and even some of the sentient ones.) This is, I feel, a rather important piece of information for you to know before I begin to relay to you the tale of Sunday night.

It Was A Dark And Story Night...

There we were, huddled around the TV, watching "Day Of The Moon" (the latest offering from the Doctor Who universe) being generally frightened by the enemy in question (although if I name them before it airs in Australia, Shibby will murder me) and having our minds completely blown by the ending (the spoiling of which will definitely get me killed.) It would not, of course, be a session of watching Doctor Who if it weren't for those two events. It was also, however, quite monumental as we finally convinced Elmo to start watching Doctor Who, to try and "get into it" as it were. Admittedly he will only commence his viewing from the first episode of the new series, but I know when to not push my luck.

This Contains Almost All Of The Info For The Spoiler I Wanted...It's A Hint At Least...

So I switched the media server over to my Sorted Live Action drive, in an effort to bring up my monumental collection of Doctor Who only to discover it wasn't there. This has, of course, happened before - the server software is known for being somewhat cantankerous, and occasional restarts of my PC and the PS3 are required. Still, nothing would have prepared me for what was to go down on this fateful night. As I restarted my computer, waiting for windows to load, I noticed a screen that never appeared...a disk check - something had corrupted, and files had been orphaned...I watched as it listed them before me...hundreds of files...all in one folder (well, not all in one folder, but the vast majority of them...) I logged into my PC, and quickly checked my drive. It was gone. Missing. Kaput. I had just lost my entire Doctor Who collection to Hard Drive Corruption. I also lost some Muppet Show, and maybe some other things. But most saddening of all was the Doctor Who.

I'm Sorry... I'm So, So Sorry

Spud, Squiggles, and Elmo spent a great portion of the night trying to restore the drive to its former glory, but to no avail - and it has since deteriorated further. Alas, it seems that this drive is on the last of its regenerations, and shall instead die until it is dead. That is, I suppose, what happens when one buys HDDs from a Computer Fair, and keeps that at near capacity for almost a month. And so, in my malaise, I have decided to allow my love for Doctor Who to rise, like a phoenix from its own ashes (not that it ever really died...) Yes, for you see whilst hardware failure may have struck down my passion, in doing so it has only caused it to become stronger than ever before.

I am, as some of you will know, quite obsessive when it comes to something I really put my mind to. I have a Minecraft project going, now, that will possibly take me into the depths of insanity. If I start collecting a manga series, then I will finish it. And if I set my mind to collecting every episode of Doctor Who, then I will damn well collect every episode of Doctor Who. But I'm sick of having them on my computer. I feel that the people involved in the show have given me so much love, and have earnt so much of my respect, that I will actually purchase every Doctor Who DVD that I possibly can.

All This, And More, Will Be Mine!

To this end I have started a Google Document that contains my progress on obsessively hunting down these DVDs. It will list my progress, and it will allow me to keep tabs on it in a nice, orderly, manic fashion. It will also allow you to see which ones I'm missing, in case you ever wanted to do something nice for me. I will have them all. They will be mine. Even the ones that were junked by the BBC. I will find a way.

On Performance Arts

2011-05-03T12:00:00.000+10:00

I find that, when one is attempting to move house, everything else kind of gets kicked to the wayside as stress levels mount and all you can think about is how much crap you've accumulated over your lifetime. Seriously. How much stuff could I possibly need? And yet I appear to have kept items that I probably will never find a use for (including a very old Soda Stream, and a 180cm diameter table - would you like a very large table that possibly originally functioned in a Chinese restaurant? You'll have to organise pick up, but you can have it...)

Besides the blog, there have been a couple of other things that have been neglected since I started this whole "moving" process. One of the biggest, for me, and possibly for the rest of the group as well, was the ritualistic playing of Rock Band. Seriously - I didn't realise just how much I'd missed bashing away at a plastic guitar, and blasting out off-key lyrics to a song I only half know, until I picked it up again the other day. Since we last played, there have been a couple of songs added to the library that I quite enjoy (recently including Fleetwood Mac, which I am over the moon about) however it struck me that there are some songs that just feel like they're...missing.

People who play Rock Band as habitually as myself, and the rest of my little gang, would be well aware of the thoughts that enter your head as you listen to music that you know from the game - mostly involving "air-playing" with pretend Rock Band instruments, and moving your fingers in a pattern long ingrained into muscle memory. There is, however, a second class of though that occurs when you listen to music that is not included in the game - music of grand proportions, with spectacular guitar parts, blasting bass, smashing drums, kick-arse keyboard, or powerful vocals. Everybody who plays has had the thought. "This song should be in Rock Band." Everybody who plays has had the thought, but how many people actually do anything about it?

To this end, I have taken it upon myself to compile a short list of songs that I am entitling "Tiger's Pack", about which I will petition Harmonix themselves, as well as the recording artists (or as close as I can get to them) as possible. I shall endeavour to get these songs in the game, either as "Official Releases" or as "Rock Band Network" tracks, and then...then...if I am successful...I shall play them. And lo, it shall seriously rock my socks off. So today I thought I'd give you a small look at "Tiger's Pack", and give you the opportunity to perhaps add your own songs to it to...We could create the One Hundred Hundreds pack!!

Song #1

Title: Invincible

As Sung By: Muse

I want this song in Rock Band because it just makes me feel so good about myself - it's great to sing along to, and I can see if being great fun for the rest of the instruments as well - if not quite challenging for some of them! It's got great lyrical content, it has a brilliant vibe to it in terms of overall feel...and...well...it rocks.

Song #2

Title: You'll Be In My Heart

As Sung By: Phil Collins

This song, although from a Disney film (or perhaps because it is from a Disney film...) is really really powerful. There are some songs that I listen to on my PC, with friends around, where everybody sings along, and this is definitely one of them. It has a great drum part, you could probably do the strings on the keyboard, and you could get a really good harmony going with the singers.

Song #3

Title: Threshold

As Sung By: Sex Bob-Omb

The second my friends and I saw Scott Pilgrim, we knew that the Sex Bob-Omb songs had to be added to Rock-Band. Unfortunately, Beck is really really hard to contact, so I've settled for Bryan Lee O'Malley instead (okay, settled sounds really harsh there - it's just that I don't think he has any rights to the music...) This is probably the song I'm holding out for the most. Seriously guys. I'm in lesbians with this song.

Song #4

Title: Not A Love Song

As Sung By: Uh Huh Her

A great drum beat, biting lyrics, and a great combination of guitar riff and synthesizer. Rock Band is missing out on Synth-Pop and, given that it has Spongebob Arsing Squarepants on its tracklist, I really think they could afford to add some for us.

Song #5

Title: Oh My God

As Sung By: Kaiser Chiefs

There are already some Kaiser Chiefs songs on Rock Band, but my favourite song of theirs of all time would have to be this one. It would be an excellent song for keyboard, the vocal part provides a good opportunity for some harmony, and it's just basically a really fun song to sing. Come on Kaiser Chiefs - make me happy.

Song #6

Title: The Distance

As Sung By: CAKE

Listen to that bass-line. How could you not want a song like this in RockBand, really? I mean, there are other CAKE songs that rock pretty damned hard, but if I can only pick one then it would definitely have to be "The Distance" - I mean, I'd like their version of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" but it's hardly appropriate for RockBand, given that it's mostly trumpet...And "The Distance" is so fun to sing, and the bass...oh the bass...

Song #7
Title: Starlight
As Sung By: The Superman Lovers

I'm finding it difficult to describe why I want these songs in new and interesting ways, but I'm pretty sure that this line from the email I sent to The Supermen Lovers sums it up nicely: "I'm writing because RockBand has a distinct lack of awesome house tracks that contain brilliant baselines, sweet drum-tracks, brilliant vocals, and almost pornographic guitar riffs.
Of course, there is one song that could quite easily satisfy this gap - "Starlight"."

On Hulking Norse Men

2011-05-02T13:00:00.001+10:00

It has been thought, in a couple of emails that I have recently received, that I may be dead. Well...whilst I can with great certainty say that I am currently not dead, I cannot say that I never was dead - and I most definitely cannot say that the way Death plays with you when you make a bargain with him for renewed life makes the Celestial Toymaker from Doctor Who look like a small child in a sandpit. I most certainly cannot say this because...well...because I was most certainly not dead. I was just a bit busy, and a bit tired following that. But it's okay now - I'm back - and you can all go on living your lives as though the past...however many weeks it has been...never happened. Oh, and before you think I forgot, yes, I will be keeping on with the challenge posts, but I'll be using them as filler (also I still haven't gotten the photos taken so...nyer...)

On Saturday night, instead of playing Spud's game (as he was tired and busy working on a management assessment that, I believe, may be due today) Squiggles, Emma, Kylie, Elmo, and myself decided to go to the cinema to watch Thor. I was fairly excited about this, as we had planned on going the week before, however the plan fell through (as it tends to do when it involves leaving the house and spending money, especially around holidays such as Easter.) So, as we drive ever closer to the impending Captain America film, and the increasingly titillating Avengers film, I figured I may as well give you a bit of a review of Thor (my mother's favourite Avenger...)

My Mother Sings This All The Time

I must first, before I start to tell you of the film itself, get something out of the way. The version of Thor that I saw was in (to my initial unknowing naivety, and subsequent weeping horror) ~~mind-destroying~~, ~~soul-crushing~~, ~~nausea inducing,~~ satisfactory adjective escaping 3D. For the initiated, 3D tends to make me slightly queasy, and I feel that it doesn't particularly add anything to the film experience at this stage in its development - I'm there for the story, after all, and looking pretty is just a bonus. Thor, whilst looking exceptionally beautiful as far as visual effects goes, did not (in my opinion, of course) need to be shown in 3D - it made me feel as if I was watching the action through a view-finder, where everything is 2D, but at differing levels. Still, I didn't throw up (although I did have to remove my glasses several times), and I was able to kind of get past it to enjoy the visuals that were presented, which (as I said before) were really well done.

Grasping His Hammer

Still, there is no point seeing something that runs for 114 minutes simply because it is pretty - there has to be some substantial story there as well...And Thor does not disappoint. Basically, as with all of the pre-Avengers films that are coming out, Thor is an origin story...of sorts...I mean, it's the origin of how he came to defend Earth, but it's not really the origin of Thor from the beginning. You won't see him become drenched in hundreds of Nordic battles, for instance (although there are some really nifty fight scenes.) Instead what you get is the tale of a fallen god. A man who let his arrogance and vaingloriousness get the better of him, who defied the wishes of his father and king, and who was banished to Earth - devoid of all power - until he could learn a little bit of a lesson.

The acting was more than passable - I mean, it was a bit hammy in some spots, but when you're playing the godlike son of the Allfather, who could blame you for playing it up a little bit. Really, though, Chris Hemsworth does a brilliant job of portraying Thor (and he looks spectacular) and has certainly come a long way from his days on Home-And-Away. Natalie Portman does a great job of bringing humanity to the film, and the interactions between her character, Jane, and Thor are superbly done - funny when they need to be, touching when they want, and always engaging. As for villainy, Tom Hiddleston's Loki felt like he was simply made of slime and skeeze, and whilst I knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. were only looking out to protect the planet (or America, whatever) I still kind of wanted Thor to kick their teeth in, in a kind of barbaric Scott Pilgrim sort of way.

Continuity wasn't really broken so much, which pleases me. I mean, no mention was made of Thor's need to eat the golden apples to sustain his immortality, but this is possibly because he spent the majority of the film as a mortal, stranded on Earth (why bother telling someone about something like that, when they're going to look at you cock-eyed?) They kind of ignored the fact that Jane was actually a nurse for Thor's secret identity (Donald Blake), but making her a physicist was pretty awesome, even if it did remove the whole 'love-triangle but not really because they're the same person' aspect to the relationship (but it's a film, so it's not like it could be developed very well.) What I was really excited about (I believe I actually bounced up and down a little bit when I realised) was the cameo by Hawkeye - seriously, stuff like that really gets me going.

He Wasn't Quite So...Purple...Though

Without really spoiling anything, all I can say is that you need to go and watch Thor - especially if you are as into comics and super-heroes as I am. Sure, the plot is somewhat clichéd/predictable, but there are so many reasons for this that...well...they speak for themselves. I mean, for starters, it's a superhero/comic book story - it's kind of what they're for. Not only that, but it's a story that already exists (which may have tainted my viewing of it being predictable, admittedly). Finally - it's heavily influenced by Norse mythology. And still, the team working on the film managed to squeeze every drop of creativity that they could from this. Watch this film. Do it. Now.

On The Third Day Of Thirty Day Challenges

2011-04-07T09:24:00.001+10:00

Note that the following was originally written on Tuesday last week, and thus contains references to events that have already happened, as though they are still in potential only (go me for being lazy on the camera front!) So it turns out that this weekend I might be going to Sydney for a professional development seminar. I'm not 100% sure on whether I'm actually allowed to go or not, yet though, and the fact that I even was capable of going was a complete surprise to me until this morning. I applied for this AUC iOS SDK Workshop thingo a little while ago (towards the beginning of this month) and yesterday I received an email to tell me that I'd been accepted - the only problem is that, because it's professional development, and technically would mean I'd have to skip work Friday (and maybe Thursday, for travel) I need to get approval from work to actually go (and hopefully they'd then pay for me...)

I had, during my professional performance review, discussed this potentiality with my team leader, who told me to apply, because it was worth a shot. I do not, however, think that there would be such a short period of time between my application's approval, and the actual event. Oh well, I'll keep you posted on what the dealio is there (and I'll hopefully continue to blog while I'm at the event, to let you know that I've not been swallowed whole by the seething mass of Sydney while I'm there...) On that note - here are today's challenges!!

Song Challenge #3: A Song That Makes Me Happy

The musical challenges, I am finding, are quite difficult. The issue that I'm having with them is that I'm not exactly starved for choice when it comes to music, after all it's a relatively large part of my life. Indeed, I find myself unable to select just one song to sum up what should be a veritable plethora of music. How can one, after all, select just one song to sum up an emotion such as 'joy' or 'sorrow'. How can one have a favourite tune? Music, I have discovered, is like a stack of pringles - once I pop, I can't stop (although I shan't merely apply this to pop, as my favourite genre is Indie Pop, though I'm partial to anything that's not metal.)

As far as music that makes me happy goes...well...pretty much anything that's incredibly bouncy and upbeat - I mean, that's the point of those songs, is it not? The excessive use of major chords exists solely to create a positive feeling in your brain-head, even if the lyrical content is slightly down. I suppose I could pick something like ABBA's 'Gimme Gimme Gimme', although it's not the song I really want to use to express joy (and irony). I could, perhaps, use 'Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me' from Rocky Horror, or Oh No Oh My's 'Be A Star', but then they still don't really make me feel happy when I'm down...well, okay they help...but still...I could do so much better with something else.

And so I have chosen Belle & Sebastian's 'I'm A Cuckoo'. The tempo of the song, combined with the chord progression, make it the best song for getting into a slightly hyperactive stupour and picking me up when I'm a little down. The lyrical content of the song, on the other hand, could be construed as a little dark, if one actually paid attention to it - but lines with undertones of stalking and the implications of self-harm to get the attention of a former girlfriend provide enough contrast with the formerly mentioned upbeat melody that the song could (I think) be classed as ironic pop.

Book Challenge #3: A Book That Makes Me Lough Out Loud

I am not, for some reason, in the habit of laughing out loud at fiction. It honestly does not matter just how amusing the book is, I tend to keep all emotional reactions to things that other people aren't perceiving internal, lest they start to think I'm giggling at some invisible spectre, and worthy of committing to an asylumn. Still, I do find some books amusing in a *teehee giggle giggle* kind of way, and there are some non-fiction (or semi-fictional, I suppose, in some cases) books from which I have deliberately read passages aloud just so that I was justified in my laughter - and I was thusly able to share my joy with others. Huzzah.

Anyway, as I am currently reading a book which is providing exactly what I described above (i.e. the opportunity to read passages aloud to others, in order to provide what is commonly referred to, I believe, as 'teh lulz') I figure I'll just use it. I'm currently reading "Twitterature", which is a collection of classic literature, told in small portions as though via twitter updates. This may, admittedly, seem like something that would make my heart weep, and my eyes bleed, however it is (generally) done quite well. Please take, as an example, this excerpt from the "Hamlet" condensation.

Gonna try to talk some sense into Mom because boyfriend totally killed Dad. I sense this is the moment of truth, the moment of candour and –

WTF IS POLONIUS DOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN?

.Gif Challenge #3: A .Gif Of Someone That Is Sad

When I was a child, Pokemon was able to provide me with some of my most emotional moments. Looking back now, I am amazed that a cartoon was able to connect with me so strongly, and that they continue to do so today. I was watching Avatar The Last Airbender last night with some friends, and there was a Zuko heavy episode, which showed the story of his mother dying. The last shot in the episode was the people whose life he had just saved basically running him out of town. Cut to credits. Seriously, that kind of stuff is heartbreaking - although I suppose that is its purpose, to entertain, and to make us experience emotional situations that we might not consider otherwise. Anyway, here is my .gif of someone who is sad. I'm pretty sure it's from one of the many points where Ash saves Pikachu, and is laying helpless.

About Me Challenge #3: A Picture Of My Friends And I

Knowing that this challenge was coming up, and knowing that I don't have any photos of all of my friends and I together at once (generally I am not in photos that include all of my friends) I had to actually have a special event to get this photo taken. Well, okay, I say a special event, what I mean is that I forced everyone to stay late after Spud's D&D game so that we could take the darned thing. It was remarkably difficult, and we went through many failed attempts at creating a panorama by having X-Man run out of the shot after his section had taken, him taking control of the camera, and me running into shot so I could be in the correct place. These did not end well. Instead, we ended up taking a picture with Kylie's camera (which has a timer function.) One day, I would like to have a photo (or, at least, some kind of collage) that includes all of my friends, even those from the U.K., and other places overseas. Until then, however, this is pretty darn good!

There's Me, Elmo, Kylie, Emma, Squiggles, X-Man, Spud, And Encey - View Full Is Better

Photo Challenge #3: A Photo That Makes Me Happy

Please see above. There is no photo that I have taken recently which makes me happier than the photo that I used for the "A Picture Of My Friends And I" challenge. It, to me, epitomises what life is about. I mean, sure, there are some people missing from the photo who I'd rather were in it (Andy, and so forth) but still. That picture symbolises what being my friend is about. It took us about half an hour to do, Elmo was getting frustrated, X-Man was trying to be helpful, Encey was being silly, Squiggles was posing, Emma was reluctant, Spud was happy to oblige, and Kylie was likely thinking "What have I gotten myself into..." - but the photo was still taken, and there it is. A lasting testament, if ever there was one.

Facial Expression Challenge #3: My Sad Face

I don't tend to use my "sad face", or even really have a sad face...I think...So this is the best I could do. At first I tried to think about upset/hurt kittens, but for some reason that just made me giggle. So instead I imaged what it must be like to have that Friday song stuck in your head for all enternity, and this is the result I got.

On Why Flying Was Worth It

2011-04-06T11:16:00.000+10:00

Okay, so I'm typing this at the last day of my iOS Developers Seminar thing that I'm attending in Sydney. If you haven't seen me by now...well...to be honest, by the time I post this, I'll probably already be back in Bathurst (especially given that I have a video to edit, as you'll hopefully see below.) In my last post you will no doubt recall that I approached the flight to Sydney with no small amount of trepidation - well, you might be happy to know that Spud drove me to the airport, and helped me to calm down enough to board my flight, and make it all the way to Sydney. So a big thank you to him for that - it was really really needed.

On the flight down I experienced a couple of cool things, that made flying...well...not so bad. I mean, I was kind of uncomfortable, but it was pretty much the equivalent of sitting in the back seat of a small car for 30 minutes, so it could have been much worse. Anyway, I got to see some really nifty things. I got to see what it was like to be inside a cloud (thus dispelling several ideas I got about clouds when I was a child and, although my education destroyed them, it was nice to have the certainty of seeing it for myself.) I saw storm clouds from the top. I saw the sunrise from above the clouds. These things were all remarkably cool. I also saw the apartment building I lived in, when I lived in Leichhardt - I don't just mean that I saw Leichhardt - I mean that I could actually see my old balcony. This was cool too, but weird at the same time, I started to feel a little bit like my time in Bathurst had been some weird holiday/dream and that I was going home/waking up. Still, I'll try and get some cool pics on the way home, if the light level permits it.

The Light Level Did Not, Alas, Permit. Here Are Pictures Of Paul Being Jaunty

Anyway, once I got to Sydney I pretty much had to head straight to the conference. The conference itself was pretty cool, I guess, even though I knew about 99% of the content from my own development experience, it was nice to get a refresher. I learnt some best practices that I wasn't really sure of, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to come, and hopefully it will give me some points with the uni so that, if they ever want to develop an iPhone app, they'll consider me a good option. Also, one of the presenters kind of looked like David Tennant...so...you know, it was like being taught something by The Doctor's 10th incarnation (which makes anything and everything interesting - although I would have preferred his 2nd version, because he's an awesome little imp, and chances are I would have got to meet Jamie McCrimmon, but still - you take what you can get.)

After the first day's worth of learning I met up with Roo and his girlfriend Spritza, who helped me find my hotel, and get "settled in", as it were. Not that I really needed much help. Seriously - this place was so cool. It had a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom, a lounge/dining room, and a balcony. It was nicer than my apartment in Leichhardt - hell, it was nicer than my house in Bathurst (only a little smaller...) There was a nice selection of AUSTAR Channels for perusal on the television (although no Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network - sadface.) There was a bathtub that was so big I could lay down fully in it (well, excepting for my neck, of course, because they don't want you to drown...) The bedroom was huge. The loungeroom was huge. The whole experience was really cool, and it was capped off by the fact that, as I left the building on Saturday, a bellboy said "Good morning, sir." I felt oddly...I don't know...not important, but...still it was pretty cool. To get across to you just how nice this place was, I'll have a "One Minute Of" video up in the coming days.

For Now - A Thumbnail

As well as the awesome accommodation (which the University totally paid for, by the way) there was also a plethora of wonderful, magnificent shopping. There are, regrettably, some things that I want that I simply cannot come by in Bathurst. This is a sad fact, but true, nonetheless. So, whenever I come to Sydney, I have to stock up on things that I might be missing out on otherwise. Things are are either too expensive to grab online, or that it just isn't feasible to order from the net. To this end I buzzed around a couple of Japanese shops, two tea stores, and some bookshops (amongst other, less notable ones) over the course of my visits, and am coming home with some wondrous swag including four manga (two English, two Japanese), some onigiri shapers, some really cool teas, and an entirely great quantity of delicious foodstuffs.

Not Entirely Related, But I Made These Really Cool Japanese Hot-Dogtopus Things

On the topic of delicious foodstuffs, I got to go out to dinner on both nights I stayed here, both times with awesome people. On the Friday night, Roo and Spritza took me out to Pepper Lunch (the first time I'd ever been there) because Wagamama (which I have never been to) was too full. Alas, I didn't take any photos of the weirdness that is Pepper Lunch, but suffice it to say, that it was delicious. On the Saturday, Andy and I went to find SECRET RAMEN HOUSE OF DOOM (my name, not theirs) which is accessed via a hidden lift off the street near Paddy's Markets. It was really really swish inside, the servers used iPads to take orders, and...the food was...well...spectacular isn't strong enough a word. Flumgobflable, maybe...Not quite - but it's getting there.

Sake Cocktails

Tori Karaage Ramen

Also, Andy - Now With New Short Hair!

And, of course, I went to the arcades that I used to love so much. Well, okay, I went to two of my old arcades. It turns out that the other one has reportedly since closed down (which is sad) but I guess that's just the way that progress works. Still, I had a great time on both nights - I played games at Galaxy World with Roo and Spritza, and tried the claw machines. All I managed to score on the claw games was a little tofu brick wearing a kimono. All I managed to score during the gaming sessions was a heightened sense of embarrassment due to trying to play DDR on "Difficult" mode. Before I go home, I might check out the site of the old arcade - just to make sure that it isn't still there, and that I've not been duped by false signage.

The moral of this story is that travel, although initially quite scary, is actually (and eventually) fun. I'm going to take some videos of the guys eating and drinking the stuff I brought back - any good reactions will be posted up in a "One Minute Of" video, and hopefully a great deal of fun will be had by all. We'll see though - there are some fairly weird things that I want them to eat. <insert evil laughter here>

On The Mechanics Of Flight

2011-03-31T12:00:00.000+11:00

Okay Internet, I still haven't got the picture for Day 3 of my 30 Days of Challenge posting schedule, but I swear that it's coming. Instead I need to let you know that I will be in Sydney tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday for a three day conference on programming for the iOS (iPod/iPad/iPhone devices, etc.) This means that, apart from spending the hours between 9am and 5pm learning about something I already know (I am using it as a refresher course...) I get to go to Kinokinya, Ichiban Boshi, Galaxy World, and all of the places that I've missed going to on my weekends when I lived in Sydney.

Hells To The Ramen Based Yeah!

The reason I'm posting about this, however, is because I'm actually a little scared/stressed. Okay, a little is not entirely the correct work. I am actually very very nervous about this trip. The fact that I'm going to a workshop in the city is, in itself, no big issue - I've been to conferences before, after all, and I know how to be a good emissary for my employer. No, the issue is the fact that, in order to get to Sydney, the uni wants me to fly. This stems from the fact that I cannot drive, I lack both the capacity (I haven't got a license) as well as the ability (I just...can't drive.) I offered to catch a train - after all, it would be cheaper for the university, and I really don't mind having to stay an extra night and spend an extra 3 hours travelling to do this - but no, they insisted that I fly. So now I have to wake up at about 4:30 tomorrow, in order to get on a plane to get to the city.

There's A Half Past Four In The MORNING Now?

This is a problem. Not only do I loathe having to get up early to do anything at all, but...well...Flying scares me. And it's not just one of those little "oh I have butterflies in my stomach because I'm slightly nervous" fear, no oh, it's more of a "Please physically help me onto this plane, oh why god why did I agree to this?" fear. It's not the thing I'm afraid of most, mind you, but it does rank up there - for those keeping score it's just below bodies of water where I can't see or touch the bottom, and just above clowns. I know that my fear should be irrational - people fly all the time, and nothing bad happens...but still...I just can't move past it.

What makes me afraid of flight? It is most certainly not the thought that the flight may be high-jacked - who cares about a domestic regional flight from Bathurst to Sydney anyway? It is, ostensibly, the fact that I am travelling in a giant metal construct that is fuelled by a highly combustible substance, far enough above the planet that one can look down onto clouds, with absolutely no protective mechanisms (such as parachutes) prepared for the event that something were to go wrong.

People have, at various times, informed me that more people are killed in car accidents per year than in incidences involving flight. This does not serve its intended purpose, however, of calming me down. Instead, this does one of two things - if I am wearing my irrational hat, then I start to become worried about driving and flying, as being in cars over long distances already makes me "butterflies" nervous, unless I really know/trust the driver. This irrationality does not happen very often, however, and is not prone to lasting for any extended period of time. The second scenario, where I wear my rational hat, is much more common. This involves me informing my comforter that I have analysed the maths behind their statistics already, and have discovered that the values they use are not normalised, making their point invalid. I then usually have to rephrase and state that their facts don't take into account the fact that there are significantly more people driving than flying.

Your Use Of Maths Is A Joke!

What annoys me the most, however, is that I understand how flight works. I get that the wings are specifically shaped to generate the best lift, which, in turn, keeps the plane airborne. I know that the wings have to generate significant lift to overcome the weight of the plane and its contents. I understand that the plane uses the viscosity of the air it moves through in an attempt to turn the resistance it encounters into a force for goodliness and keeping-the-aircraft-in-flight-itude. All of the parts of the plane sit there, they hurtle through the air, they work together. Newton's second law is in heavy practice.

Why does this knowledge not comfort me? It's not like the whole "bodies of water" thing I mentioned above, where the fear comes from the fact that I simply don't know what's down there beneath me (in the case of not being able to see the bottom, anyway) and it's not like the whole clowns thing, where I scared myself by reading tales of John Gacy and the like, combined with the fact that there is nothing real about a clown - their facial expression is painted on, for carrot's sake...Why does knowing that turbulence is just a change in relative air density which causes the aircraft to be shifted rapidly up or down in accordance with the relative thermodynamic rules make it no less worrying?

In This House We Obey The Laws Of Thermodynamics

The moral of this story is that I honestly cannot believe that there is something that I miss about Sydney, that isn't Roo, Shibby, Andy, or one of the other few people I know who lives there. Really. I was never very happy when I lived there - it was so big and...just...it did not feel like home. It was weird. Still, I find it quite strange now that I miss certain things about it. I don't miss the hustle/bustle, of course, but I do miss some of the more awesome stores, the convenience of various things, and...well...I guess that I need to invent teleporters so I can have that convenience at my fingertips all time time.

On Why Nobody Cares That One Is The Loneliest Number

2011-03-30T11:27:00.000+11:00

Hey guys - A brief pause from my Thirty Days of Challenge today, because I'm waiting for a picture that I need to have uploaded for me (and I left the camera at home, so if I want to do it, you won't get the post until tomorrow...) Instead, this is a post that was requested in the comments of Day One. I must preface this soon-to-be tirade, then, with a warning that, like many things I do, this is going to involve a lot of mathematics. I do not just mean that I'm going to go "the integral of x is half of x squared, lol" and be done with it. No. What follows is my justification of 5 being my favourite number.

The number five has, for quite some time now, been what I would consider my 'favourite' number. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are other really cool numbers - five million three hundred and eighteen thousand and eight, for instance, is quite nifty. But it just doesn't have the...appeal that, for me, five sums up so well. Did you know, for instance, that five is a prime number? That means that, besides 1 and itself, five has no divisors. The first three prime numbers are 2, 3, and 5 (1 is discounted for many reasons, which I shan't get into in this post, 4 is discounted because it can be expressed as the product of 2 and 2.) From reading this, it should be obvious that 5 is not only prime, but it is also the sum of two primes, and the sum of the two primes that came before it. The number five has quite a few other properties to do with special kinds of prime numbers, such as being the first Safe Prime (numbers N that are prime, and satisfy N = 2P + 1, where P is also prime), as well as being the only number to be in a twin prime pair twice (a twin prime being a set two primes whose difference is 2.)

Speaking of being the sum of the numbers 2 and 3, 5 is also a Fibonacci number. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that is created by repeatedly summing the previous two numbers in the series together. Thus, starting with '1,1' (as it is defined) we obtain the third and fourth terms by going (1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3) leaving us with a sequence of '1,1,2,3' - obviously the next term is '5' as 2 + 3 = 5, and so 5 is not only a member of the Fibonacci sequence, but also the fifth member of the Fibonacci sequence.

There are five platonic solids. These solids, comprised of the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and the icosahedron, are the basis for the standard player's dice in most games. There are other dice (for example, the pentagonal trapezohedron - the d10) however any die that is not one of the platonic solids will not roll quite as nicely (or, often, as fairly) as one that is. This is because the platonic solids are the only solids where each edge is congruent (exactly the same), each angle is congruent, and each vertex is congruent. Thus, if you were ever wondering why your d10/d100 doesn't roll as well as your d4/d6/d8/d12/d20, there is your answer. Really, the only reason they were invented was because it was so annoying to get a percentage with other means.

Now, I could sit here and wax mathematical at you for quite some time, but the number five has applications to other areas of science (and life, and so forth) that I find quite interesting as well - plus, I've got so many more posts that I can do about maths! In biology, for instance, it can be seen that many flora and fauna in nature exhibit pentamerism, a kind of rough natural symmetry involving five protrusions - this can be seen by cutting an apple in half and observing the star-shaped pattern the seeds make, or by looking at (the vast majority of) starfish.

In music, a perfect fifth is the basis for the majority of western systems of music, as it is the most consonant harmony. Consonance, for those not in the know, is the opposite of dissonance...it's like...the property of things sounding really nice together. Kind of like harmony, only not. Five is the number of lines on a stave. Michael Jackson started in the Jackson 5. Take 5 is my favourite jazz song - it contains five beats per bar.

We cannot, then, forget TV shows such as Babylon 5, nor should we ignore the fact that there are 5 fighters in a standard sentai team (think of the power rangers, or the sailor scouts, for instance.) The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy is a trilogy of five books, and there are five classical elements (fire, water, air, earth, and aether) - plus that Bruce Willis film. We must remember, remember, the 5th of November. Shakespeare wrote most of his verse in iambic pentameter, whilst the first and last stanzas of all haiku have 5 syllables. And of course, there is the high-five.

The moral of this story is that one should subscribe to the law of fives, as taught by discordianism. If one listens to discordianism (basically a self-parodying philosophy which subscribes to Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos - it's genuinely quite cool, and I suggest you look it up) there is the law of fives, which states that...well...it's best if I just quote directly from the Principia Discordia for you:

The Law of Fives states simply that: All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5

The Law of Fives is never wrong.

—Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00016

On The Second Day Of Thirty Day Challenges

2011-03-28T18:38:00.000+11:00

Hi Everybody! It's day two of my thirty day challenges challenge. Before I get into it, however, I was just wondering if anybody in the Bathurst area would be interested in participating in a Flash Mob. For those of you who are unaware of this concept, a flash mob is basically a group of people who, at some public area, just start doing something that would be considered a little...um...nonsequitor in action. Examples of this are the group of people who all just stopped moving at once in the US, or literally anything that they've done on ImprovEverywhere. Anyway, I think that it would be pretty nifty to do something like that here in Bathurst (or maybe in Pitt St Mall in Sydney, if I feel like travelling there...) The only real issue is that I don't think that I have any good ideas, so I'm looking for concepts and stuff that we can organise, as well as participants. Anyway, without further ado, here are my challenges for day two.

Song Challenge #2: My Least Favourite Song

Much like trying to decide which song is my favourite, attempting to decide which song I hate the most at this point in time is quite difficult - there are just so many contenders. The main issue is that there is a lot of currently popular "music" which I would simply...well...I refuse to classify it as such. Okay, so yes, admittedly what is happening in the background of the song is music, but what's happening in the foreground isn't singing. It's often flat speech, or monotonous warbling that has been crafted to appear like singing using some kind of computer. I'm sorry to anybody who has to rely on autotune to get by, but really - you wouldn't throw some cherries and dark chocolate into a packet cake mix and tell me that it was a decent attempt at black forest cake now, would you?

Besides the abomination that is autotune, a great deal of music (and not just from today, admittedly, but from time and time ago as well) just lacks any kind of lyrical substance or depth. Songs about how drunk one is going to get, and how many (and I quote) "bitches" one is going to score with in a single night, are not particularly appealing to me. Songs about getting drunk because one has just been dumped are okay, as long as they contain depth. Songs about what day of the week it is, however, are simply abhorrent. Now here I may be referring to Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting by Elton John (which I was never a fan of) or Manic Monday by The Bangles. I'm more likely, however, talking about what I have decided (over the course of writing this piece) is my least favourite song currently: Friday by Rebecca Black.

What makes the above video even worse, however, is learning that Rebecca did not actually write the song in question. No, instead the song was written by Clarence Jay and Patrice Wilson - two people who, it would seem, have the combined lyrical genious of a dying guppy. The pair also produced the video which Black's mother forked out $2,000 for. Still, I suppose we should be thanking the quartet responsible for this travesty, after all, how else would I know that, if today is Friday, yesterday must have been Thursday, tomorrow will be Saturday, and Sunday comes afterward. I was also unaware that 13 year old were allowed to drive, and that it's apparently okay for them to party all night. Great parenting.

Book Challenge #2: My Least Favourite Book

I'm not entirely sure how to answer this one, actually, however given that I just ranted for three paragraphs about how crap certain musical styles or songs are, I feel that I don't really have the time to fumfer about on this one. Of all the books I've read, I find it difficult to pick a least favourite - I mean, there are books that I don't feel that I want to read again, certainly, but then if I don't like a book, I generally won't continue to read it.

Actually, you know what, I've sat here, and I've thought about it (I know, it's a hard thing to convey in a continuous stream of text) and I believe I know which book would have to be my least favourite. Jane Eyre. I know that it's supposed to be a piece of absolutely classic literature. I know that it's meant to be ahead of its time. I know that, if one were to break it down into its thematic elements, one could draw parallels between it and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I know all of these things. Still - I hate Jane Eyre.

.Gif Challenge #2: A Gif Of Someone That Is Happy

The language (both the obscenity and the poor spelling) in the .gif below aside, it is indeed a .gif image of happy people. Happy people, apparently, really enjoy eating salad. Well, okay, perhaps salad really makes people happy. Either way there appears to be some correlation between eating a salad and finding joy in life. I, personally, don't see it. Sure, I enjoy eating certain vegetables (I love capsicum, and eggplant - oh gods do I love eggplant...) but there's something so entirely primal about tearing into a massive steak that just kicks my brain's pleasure centre into gear, and sets me on the path to extreme joy. I challenge you to eat a well cooked steak (not necessarily a well done steak, mind you) and be upset. Still, here is a .gif of some really bloody happy women enjoying their salads.

About Me Challenge #2: The Meaning Behind My Blog Name

There isn't really much behind the name of my blog, except a failed attempt at bettering myself. A while ago (some time last year) I noticed that a lot of people were creating those lists of things to do before they died - bucket lists or whatever. I, in my obsessive wisdom, thought that a simple list of 100 things to do before I died was not enough. No. Instead, I had to create a list of 100 lists of 100 things to do before I died. I had to read 100 fiction books, 100 non-fiction books, I had to see 100 films, listen to 100 songs, see 100 famous pieces of art. There were so many things I wanted to do (one hundred hundred things, in fact...) and yet...and yet there was so little time. Were I to achieve just one thing a day, I would not be done before I was about 43. That's just one thing a day. And it was not going that quickly. There were things I wouldn't be able to do for years anyway, and other things that I just...don't think I was going to be able to do...So instead my blog transformed into a way for me to kind of...talk about things...and I hope that it's entertaining because that's the whole point.

Photo Challenge #2: A Photo Of Myself A Year Ago

It was harder for me to find a photo of myself from this time period than I thought. A year ago I was living in Sydney, I didn't know many people, and there wasn't really anybody to take my photo. Thus, this is as close as I can get to giving you a picture of myself from then...It's pretty close...I think...

The World Shall Burn With My Fury (XMan On The Left, Me On The Right)

Facial Expression Challenge #2: My Happy Face

There are two ways that I could have gone when it comes to photographing my "happy face". I chose what I hope is the least disgusting/disturbing of the two (given that the other involves me orgasming on camera, I'm pretty sure you're glad I went with joy right now...)

Aw Man - I Do Not Look At All Comfortable Smiling Like That...

On The First Day Of Thirty Challenging Days

2011-03-25T14:34:00.001+11:00

I've been seeing a lot of people on my Facebook feed participating in this "30 Day Song Challenge" thing, which is basically where you post a song each day, following a theme. Following this, came, I discovered, the "30 Day Book Challenge", and upon searching my hero Google, I discovered that there is a plethora (and yes, I use the word correctly, as the number gives me an overflowing supply of choices) of different 30 Day challenges that one can participate in. Because I like jumping on bandwagons as much as the next person (or, in the case of bandwagons, the previous person) I've decided that I'm going to sporadically do "Challenge" posts that respond to the following "30 Day Challenges":

Song Challenge
Book Challenge
.Gif Challenge
About Me Challenge
Photo Challenge
Facial Expression Challenge

I think that's enough things to make an interesting blog post each time I do one of these kinds of posts. Plus, various people were clamouring to know more about me, so now they'll have no reason to complain!! I suppose, then, that I should discontinue my usual waffling, and get into it.

Song Challenge #1: My Favourite Song

This is, actually, a really difficult question for me to answer. I don't tend to have just one favourite song. I have songs that I like a great deal, but their popularity with me waxes and wanes like our satellite the moon. To compensate for this, I'll tell you some of the songs that come to mind when I think of "What songs do I really really like right now?" and then give you the clip for the one that seems to have been in that list for the longest time (Oooooh oOOooh, for the longest time...) or just the one I feel resonates the best.

Telephone - Pomplamoose (It's a cover of the Lady Gaga song)
As The World Falls Down - David Bowie (It's from the film Labyrinth)
I'm A Cuckoo - Belle & Sebastian
This Winter I Retire - Said The Whale
A Winter's Tale - The Tunics

This Winter I Retire - Said The Whale (It's Been In My Head For A While Now...)

Book Challenge #1: My Favourite Book

With no question, and I have mentioned this fact before, my favourite book (or collection thereof) of all time is the Alice tales, by Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll.) For me there is no story that presents a better allegory for "growing up" and learning to face the challenges of both puberty and adulthood. Alice goes from being a well-natured, if naive, young girl, and suddenly falls down this big hole into the unknown. There, her body and mind undergo change after change, she questions who she is, and learns to think for herself along the way, eventually learning to stand up for herself against the Queen of Hearts, and to face her fears when confronting the Jabberwocky. It is exceptionally well written, a joy to read time and time again, and it just...I find it...magniflorious.

.Gif Challenge #1: My Favourite Gif

I have, as with my song choices, many gifs that I really like. Unlike with my song choices, however, there is one gif that, when I see it, it just makes me feel...good...and nice...and happy - and all that kind of stuff. It's the image for the little animated avatar that I used to have as my MSN picture way back when I still lived in Diggings - and it is what earnt me the moniker of 'Tiger'.

About Me Challenge #1: 15 Facts About Myself

Okay - here's a nice straightforward one for me to do. Below are fifteen completely pseudo-random facts about myself (determined by asking people simple questions, what they wanted to know, etc.)

My favourite colour is a specific shade of blue defined by the HEX number #003366
My favourite number is 5, for ever so many reasons (which I will go into upon request only.)
My IQ is around 145, but it fluctuates. I don't think that IQ is a very good measure of intelligence
My favourite food is tonkatsu ramen with additional tori karaage in it
I've learnt how to play the piano, trumpet, tenor horn, and cello, but I'm not very good at them
If I was presented with a piranha infested river (wading across which would mean almost certain death), and I had Bear Grylls as my companion, I use Bear as a meat-boat, to get me to safety
I am deathly afraid of the unknown, to the point where being faced with something like a very deep body of water (where I can't see the bottom) causes me to go into panic mode. Similarly, so does being in a situation where I know I should know the outcome, but I cannot determine the best course of action
It annoys me how many many characters in the Marvel Universe use alliteration in their names. It's as though their parents were intentionally cruel - examples can be seen in Susan Storm, Peter Parker, and ~~Lois Lane (and, if you count assonance, Clark Kent...)~~ Bruce Banner
I am entirely addicted to Book Depository
My mother can sing the 60's "Hulk" and "Thor" cartoon theme songs from memory, which I think is a fantastic quality to have in a parent
I've always wanted a pet ferret/stoat
I used to have a webcomic, but it was terrible
I'm an applications developer
I don't really have any regrets - I think I can look back on everything as something I have learnt from
I am currently single

Photo Challenge #1: My Facebook Profile Picture

I have really been meaning to change this picture, for quite some time, but here it is:

Look At Me There, Looking All...Something...And Yellow - Maybe I Have Camera Jaundice?

Facial Expression Challenge #1: My Regular Face

And finally, this is what my face looks like when I'm not...well...pulling a face, or smiling, or anything. I like to think of this face as "quiet contemplation" - it's the expression I pull when I am just existing, and nothing more.

Oh God I Have An Alfalfa Cow Lick Thing D:

On Things I Really Shouldn't Get Into

2011-03-23T10:30:00.001+11:00

There are some activities I participate in that I really don't enjoy, but that I have to do anyway. Sleeping, for one, is something that I wouldn't do if I didn't have to (I mean, I could get so much more done, which would render part of this blog post - the impetus, anyway - kind of moot.) I also probably would only eat on rare occasion (because, I mean, taste is delicious but, once again, I have things to do, and it would be cheaper.) Come to think of it, of all the things that come to mind, I'd probably leave it there as far as 'not doing things' goes, but then, I'm not in the most imaginative of moods today.

I mean, I think I'd still go to work. I like having money, and I feel that one should have to work for one's money. Or at least, one shouldn't just get it handed to oneself (note that studying and receiving benefits is not just magically getting money, because I consider that a kind of work, and if you're on a disability pension then you obviously have extenuating circumstances), which is why I would consider winning some kind of 20 million dollar lottery pool, and then living off what I made from placing that amount into a high interest savings account, a fair way to support myself (but then, I'm most certain that everyone at some stage in their life, will attempt to do this - and no, I don't actually play the lottery, because I am aware of the odds of winning - and yes, I know "You have to be in it to win it", but you have to be in a game of Russian Roulette to "win" [i.e. Not Die] as well, but the odds of losing, combined with what is at stake, are not particularly flattering.)

Oops - I Got A Little Distracted There...

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. No. I wanted to discuss the fact that somebody (not mentioning any names...well...okay I am, Spud) decided that it would be a good idea to start a Multiplayer MineCraft server. I had, up until two days ago, never played MineCraft - I had never actually witnessed it being played. This was not by accident. MineCraft, I had heard, was tremendously addictive (regular readers of XKCD will have seen the comic below) and the allure of a seemingly infinite expanse of brick-world that I could use to create fortresses, forests, and indeed my own entire world was something that it was obvious I should avoid, lest I succumb to obsessively hollowing out structures, filling them with water, tunnelling to oblivion, and so forth.

But Elmo, Squiggles, Encey, and Spud were all playing on Spud's server. And the pressure they were exerting on me to at least give it a try was phenomenal - all the time it was "You should get MineCraft, Tiger" and "Tiger, the MineCraft server is up, come play with us" - of course, I failed to anticipate that they were secretly whispering "for ever and ever and ever..." and the end of that last one. I should have seen the signs. I should have listened to the way they spoke about it.

Elmo: "Dude, Why Aren't You Playing MineCraft - I'm Trying To Make My DS Play It And You Don't Even OWN It..."

Squiggles: "All The Dapper Gents Play MineCraft, Fool..."

Spud: "Play MineCraft Now And You'll Receive THIS EXTRA LIFE!! ACT FAST!!!"

Encey: "Even The People Of MARS Play MineCraft, You Pitiful Fool!!"

But no - I ignored the signs, and I bought it. I started playing, and Spud showed me the basics of what I was doing, and invited me to dig myself a room in the communal base. Our "Fortress of Companionship", if you will. So I started tunnelling away, creating some spiral stairs, and an expanse at the bottom of them. I dug, I created pickaxes, and I dug some more. Eventually, I looked at the clock and realised that it was after 10pm, and I'd lost my entire evening to digging out a room, and I wasn't even done yet. I had other things to do, so I very reluctantly tore myself away from the computer, and headed out to make sure I was fed for the coming day, I showered, and I headed to bed.

Dammit - I wasn't finished my room. So yesterday, when I got home from work, I continued on in my quest to slowly chip away at the cavern I was creating. I hollowed it out, and began my next task - creating the glass to line the walls with. This is something I am still not finished doing. This game will consume my soul - I can feel it calling me now. I'm sure that, if Kermit the Frog was making his music today, Rainbow Connection would instead be about MineCraft ("Have you been half-asleep, and have you heard voices - I hear them calling my name. Is this the sweet sound that calls the young gamers, the voice might be one and the same.")

Oh well, what can one do, I suppose, other than just ride it out and wait until we've mined the world so much that it's no longer sustainable and it implodes upon itself. At least, that's what I figure will happen - we aren't entirely working towards a sustainable environment here, given that I've used the majority of one of our beaches in order to create glass for use with my room. We are, however, constantly replanting trees, so that's a step in the right direction. Maybe I should...Oh...There's an idea...But it will have to wait for another time, as I wish to keep it secret (for now) from the other guys on the server...Oh but they will be surprised when they see what I've done (pleasantly, I hope.)

Before I sign off, I actually wanted to ask a favour of you. I want to do a blog post about confessions. Well, okay, two posts about confessions. One is secret confessions (like PostSecret) where you guys send me anonymous postcards with your deepest secrets written on them - things you just want to get off your chest - and I'll scan them, or whatever, and put them up here. The other one is public confessions - things that you have been hiding for too long, and you just want to world to know, and you figure that "Hell - I've never said this before, why not say it now?" or even just "Hell - I don't say this enough", which I figure would be emailed to me (so I could put a name to them, although I could make these anonymous if you requested it in the email.)

Anyway, if you'd like to help me out with this my postal address is:

Tiger Bailey
127 Russell St.
Bathurst,
N.S.W. 2795
Australia

And my email is dirtytiger@live.com.au

The moral of this story is that trying to deny my OCD habits is just, well, silly. There's nothing I can do to stop them, for now at least, so why am I bothering to try by denying myself something fun. If I were to try and stop myself being so obsessive about things, then it will take time and practice, and telling myself that I can't join in activities with my friends just because I'm going to go all weird about it is just plain stupid. So, yes, my name is Tiger Bailey, and I'm currently addicted to MineCraft. Damn it all, Spud - damn it all indeed.

On Personal Goal Fulfilment

2011-03-22T10:46:00.000+11:00

Today is a pretty nifty day for me. Well, okay, it's partially a nifty day for me. It's also partially quite painful, but only in a physical sense (I hurt my leg), rather than an emotional one (so I suppose it's all good.) Recently, loyal readers would be aware, I have been setting myself a number of mini-goals. Well, I say recently, but what I really mean is "Since I was aware that mini-goals could be set." and even if I am just taking into account the ones that I'm dealing with in this blog post, that's still a number of months.

You might recall that, some time ago, I made a post about wanting to purchase a bento box, so that I could prepare suitably sized lunches that were delicious, healthy, and looked awesome. Having finally dismounted my winged appaloosa of procrastination, I went onto eBay and did a broad search for the term "Bento" only to be rewarded with a fairly limited set of things to purchase that were...well...even remotely feasible. I ended up settling on a red usagi themed set of bento box, elastic strap (to hold it together), and furoshiki (to make it look awesome when I took it out!) So I've now got the delicious part of my meal down, as well as the healthy part, I just need to work on the "Oh Gods - Look at that awesome food-art!!" aspect.

Big Section, Little Section, Bento Box

Bento, Elastic Strap, And Furoshiki (Wrapping Cloth)

All Wrapped Up And Ready To Go!

As an offshoot from having finally received my awesomeness in lunch-box form, I have also achieved something that will make people familiar with the One Hundreds Hundreds initial concept go "Ooooh yeah - He had planned on doing that, hadn't he?". Regular people, on the other hand, will more likely go "Oh, you did something! Good for you!!" But yes - remember how I originally wanted this to be a list of 100 lists of 100 things I wanted to do? Well, I remember that, even though I don't care so much now. Anyway, I have (recently) been learning to cook a number of really cool things. I have made things like good sushi that I've never made before (see three posts ago), salted salmon, garlic prawns, balsamic strawberries, and just...so so
many delicious foodstuffs. I'm not sure why, but learning to cook new things - and actually cooking them - just makes me feel so much more adult. I know that it shouldn't really have any bearing on my life, but I feel as though I can support myself more in the real world when I know that I can make Earl Grey Tea Muffins.

That Stuff That Looks Like Potato Is Actually Apple. You Stop It Browning By Soaking It In Acidulated Water

I Managed To Bring: Sprouts, Apple, Capsicum Confetti, Tofu, Beef, Rice, Miso Soup, Green Tea, And A Baby Muffin.

Speaking of the initial concept of One Hundred Hundreds, I've become rather addicted to the website BookDepository. Seriously - the offer you free postage on books, and you can get some of the rarest things I've seen for ages from there (and often cheaper/in better quality than from eBay.) As a result of this, I now have seven books (that's the most they'll let you have in one order) coming to me from various countries, just waiting itching for me to get my hands on their (mostly hard-cover) goodness. I'm not sure why, but I appreciate hard-cover books more than I do their soft-cover or paper-back brethren. For me there is just something so much more...bookish about holding a hard-cover copy of, say, a Terry Pratchett novel, or a book on pseudo-science, as I lie in bed relaxing. Reality is stronger in things like hard-cover books (unless you're talking about fiction books, in which case reality is at its weakest, and you're more susceptible to being swept away into a world of fantasy.)

On the topic of being swept away into a world of fantasy, and of books, and eBay, I recently purchased a copy of my all-time favourite book from a nice gentleman on eBay. "How?" I can hear you asking in the back of my mind, "How is it that one does not own a copy of one's favourite book? Surely that is how it would become such a thing?!" You sound, dear reader, just like my friend Spud, who chastised me recently with these very same words (although said slightly differently, as he and I do not tend to talk in the same manner.) The answer I'll give you is the answer I gave him - I just never got around to buying one. Books weren't something I ever tended to buy, because I always thought my money should go towards more fitting things. Since, however, I acquired my bookshelf, I have been working towards another goal of mine, which is reading books, books, and many books; any books, and all books. And so this is how I wound up with a copy of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (well, technically I have the complete works of Lewis Carroll) - and if you couldn't tell that this was one of my favourite works then...I suppose you really don't pay a lot of attention to the style in which I write, do you?!

Let's Break The Tension With This Picture I Took Of Some Kitties!!

Moving On...

Finally...I think...the thought of books has brought me back to Japan based things that I have been longing to get my grubby little mitts on. As you may know, I purchased (some time ago now) a revolving subscription to the monthly manga magazine Shounen Ace, known for printing such brilliant series as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Well, last week, these books finally arrived and, besides the fact that my Japanese really really really needs work, I am over the moon. Seriously, besides the fact that I'm waiting for those seven books from BookDepository, and the fact that I have a wishlist of, like, 12 pages over there...Things are good in terms of personal goal satisfaction.

Not Shown Are The Suzumiya Collectibles That Came With These Books

Well, okay, satisfaction as far as being driven by capitalism goes, anyway - but that's okay by me for now.

On Things That Are Complimentary To Each Other

2011-03-17T17:29:00.000+11:00

When I was in high school I knew that I was different. I didn't really like P.E. - I tried to sit in the shade as often as I could when it came to play...you know...sport-ball or whatever. I did, however, quite enjoy gymnastics...oh yeah, and the triple/long/high jumps! I was also not a particularly big fan of drama - don't get me wrong, I wasn't scared of making a fool of myself, or being embarrassed...I just thought that there were better things that I could be doing with my time. Things that were more...me...and in touch with the me-ness within. I was, of course, kind of ashamed of my leanings, at first, but I soon came to embrace them fully. It was in high school that I discovered that I'm a geek.


This Is A Poster You Can Buy, From A Site, On The Internet

My favourite subject, if you didn't know, has pretty much always been maths. English is cool, of course, and the charm of a subtle turn of phrase, or the beauty involved in correct grammar usage are certainly not lost on me. There is, however, this little...niggling thing...about English. It's subjective - that is, you can be wrong, simply because somebody disagrees with you (regardless of how much evidence you bring to the party.) I am sorry, language studies, but that is not what it means to be incorrect - that is simply having a differing opinion. In maths, on the other hand, everything is based upon a logical sequence of fact. If you say, for instance, that 0.9999... and so forth repeated infinitely ... is equal to 1, and you can prove it using pre-established facts, which are again based upon pre-established facts, until you are using axioms only (as I have done in a very very early post) then you're correct, regardless of whether the marker disagrees with you.

You Leave Maths Alone, It Just Needs A Bit Of Help - There's Nothing Shameful About That

A great deal of people who I have dealt with in my career as a tutor are, for some reason or another, quite averse to trigonometry. Some of them find it pointless, whilst others find it too difficult. I, on the other hand, find it fascinating. That's not really fair, though, as I tend to find all aspects of mathematics (except for basic probability) quite interesting. Did you know, for instance, that you can measure the height of a very large object if you can accurately measure the length of its shadow, as well as a couple of the angles that it creates? Or were you aware that, to get the maximum distance possible in a triple-jump or long-jump attempt, you should aim to leap at 45 degrees (also, you should tuck correctly, but that's more mechanics than trig.) Finally, did you know that angles that add to 180 degrees are called supplementary angles, and that angles that add to 90 degrees (like the two angles that are not the hypotenuse in a right angled triangle) are called complementary? You did know that? Excellent.

It took me, for some bizarre reason that is known only to the part of my subconscious that deals with separating language into segments, quite some time to differentiate the word complementary (as discussed above) from complimentary (meaning either free or, as is my intention here, something conveying a compliment.) I mention this fact because there is a club at the University, the members of which I had the pleasure of meeting on Club Day last week, called Bekozwy (as in, I have since figured out, "Because We Can.") whose sole purpose is basically to go around being generally awesome.

Awesome Comic, But It's No XKCD (In A Moment You'll Look Back Upon This And Go "Ooh...")

Before I finish that part of the story (and thus, to hopefully keep you on your seat's edge) I feel that I must interject with an interesting factoid. I suffer, on occasion, and I know people who suffer, on occasion, from the most amusing bouts of aphasia. At least, I think I mean aphasia. It's hard to tell sometimes (see what I kind of did there?) Aphasia is where you tend to say the wrong thing - but not in a "foot in mouth" kind of way, rather in a more "Could you pass me the elephant, oh sorry I mean steak." kind of way. It's actually less annoying than you'd think (except for when I'm in the car, trying to tell someone to turn left, and I tell them to go right, and I don't even register that I said right until it's too late.) It usually ends up just being kind of funny, like when Andy said something was in the fridge, but instead he said garage. It's usually contextual, but still it's amusing. Now...I was talking about something...

Oh yeah, I was talking about the Bekozwy club. This club offered a place for people to get comments/critiques on work they were doing, just for the heck of it - so I suggested my blog to them. They read it quite quickly, and I was afforded the following statement of appreciation:

"It's like xkcd had a baby with the stream-of-consciousness genre, and bam: one hundred hundreds."

I was just compared to XKCD. By someone I technically do not know. This pretty much just makes it for me right there. I mean, Randall is one of the best webcomic creators I can think of - his drawing style may be simplistic, however he always brings humour or something thought provoking to what he delivers, and he does it with intelligence. So thank you, Bekozwy - you have made my day.

City Coding - A Work Day Bookended With Rage - Kalgar

2011-03-15T21:57:00.000+11:00

Tiger rawr asked me to write him a post about what it's like to be a coder in the city, with the intent of doing a guest post of this newfangled blog thingamajig. And so, without any further ado, words follow about this very topic - Kalgar.

I work as a programmer at a small company in the glorious city of Sydney know as The Project Factory. In fact, I was Tiger's replacement at this establishment, and as such I suppose I indirectly enabled hm to return to Bathurst. *shrug*. My role at said company is pretty much to write code. Lots and lots of code, with the intent of creating iPhone applications. At least, that's what they tell me, though I have seen no reason to believe otherwise. Yet.

A typical day begins with me waking up. This is quite an important part of the day, and usually immediately followed by my regret of having played video games so late the night before. This is soon forgotten when I shower, get my stuff together, and head off to the bane of every commuter's existence - the train.

CityRail is the culprit of my twice (and occasionally thrice) daily torture session. Torture via travel on a horrendous train, dealing with stupid hateful people. It makes me want to set everything I ever knew on fire.

For starters, there are the occasions when I sit on the train, minding my own business, playing my PSP, when someone sits next to me. I do not have a problem with this principle - heck, it's what public transport is for. What I DO resent is the fact that every single one of the will, without fail, sit on my jacket. While I am wearing it. They literally sit on the part of my jacket that is on the bench. This prevents me from moving. At all. For the rest of the trip. Most of them tend to give me an angry glare when I shift and pull the jacket out from under them. What the hell? They have eyes (and for the most part, their eyes work better than mine), they should bloody use them and give me a moment to move! Sheesh!

Also, I completely fail to understand how CityRail can fail so very much. they handed me a brochure the other week, which was essentially a "look how good we are! Look at all the improvements we are making for you, the customer!" I gave it a cursory glance for the lulz, and got quite a few out of it. For starters, they are aspiring to 92% reliability. This means that they AIM to have 92% of their trains actually show up. Not necessarily on time (they have a separate statistic for that), just showing up at all. One look at Sydney Ferries reveals 100% reliability, and 99.8% on time. And that is a form of transport which may cancel a trip if the water is too rough.

Boats. Much More Hardcore Than Trains.

When I eventually arrive in the city, I get my morning EasyWay tea (Green Apple flavoured black tea with tapioca pearls...mmmmmmmm) and head up to the office. It's about a 5 minute walk up a somewhat gentle hill. Of course, many other people make the same walk. Except that many of these people are smokers. And are smoking while they walk up a hill. Leaving their smoke to blow behind them. Directly into my face. I don't have a problem with people smoking - they are free to commit a slow, painful suicide if they so wish. I do not smoke. I would rather be able to breathe, thank you very much. So I would appreciate it if you didn't blow that smoke directly into my face. If you are going to smoke, then there's no reason for you to be walking up the hill while you do so! What, you can't afford 5 minutes to have a smoke without being late for work? Well there are multiple solutions to that. No I won't spell them out for you, I shouldn't have to.

I get to work, get into the office, and then look at whatever has been sent to my email. Occasionally it's a change request, more often it's asking for a device to be added to the provisioning for testing of an app, or some such. No big deal. I spend most of the day writing, testing and debugging code for iPhone apps. Occasionally there is some programming for Ruby on Rails servers in there, but since we recently hired a programmer who specialises in Rails, my workload in that regard has been reduced (although he is going to start to teach me how to do that stuff, which will be awesome.)

Once I finished work at 4:30 (I start at 8:30) I walk down the hill, head to the train station, and if I'm lucky, get on a train. If I'm unlucky, I wait. And wait, and wait. Like the other day. A customer "threatened self-harm" (their words, not mine) at Petersham. This caused 30 minute delays for every train line on the network, bar one. Looking at the map, Petersham station only connects on a single line. Three other lines go past there, which is fine, those ones would also get delayed if someone was on the tracks.

That is a total of four lines, at most, which should experience problems as a result. There are nine lines (discounting the sprint lines, peak our only lines, and intercity.) From this event, only one line did not have delays. Eight lines - 4 of which have no connection with Petersham, were delayed.

What?!?

When I get home, I tend to play a lot of video games. Lately it's been Dragon Age, so that I can play Dragon Age II soon.

--

So guys, that was Kalgar's guest post for me. You should check out his blog! It is cool and the cool kids all enjoy it!

On Dates, Deliciousness, And Dares

2011-03-14T21:26:00.000+11:00

Hey there all you wonderful, joyous people of love and joy - today I have two things to talk to you about! Yes, two! Are you not mallards made of the most spectacular luck? A brief introduction to today's blog is, admittedly, thing number one, but (as usual) it is quite removed from thing two, and so I have decided to count it differently. Today you may notice me rambling slightly more than usual. I am, you see, quite tired - I have not had what I would consider a "proper" night's sleep in a while now (usually interrupted by nightmares, or just general movement on my own behalf) and whilst I know that this is no-where near as bad as some people (indeed, some of my friends are visited by the insomnia fairy quite frequently) it is still frustrating enough that trying to work is an irritation, especially when my mind constantly flicks between English and other languages.

Besides being a horrible day to be awake, today is also a day to celebrate (which kind of annoys me, because...well...it shouldn't be such a frabjous day if I can't fully appreciate both the fabulousness and the joyousness of the occasion.) You see, in some circles - the ones that use the date standard that we here in Australia do not - today is Pi Approximation day (the 3rd Month and 14th Day of the year.) Of course, the best Pi Approximation that I'm likely to see doesn't come until 2015 rocks around (Month 3, Day 14, Year '15, Hour 9, Minute 26, Second 53, Millisecond 58, and so on ad infinitum...) And then we have the Australian (and British, and other peoples' who use the correct date format) Pi Approximation day of the 22nd of July (because 22/7 is a relatively okay approximation of pi in fractional format.)

But Pi is not the reason I wanted to talk to you today! No, no, and no indeed again. Today's blog post is all about the wondrous thing that I (and some of my friends) spent the vast majority of Saturday doing. Yes, that's right, from roughly 2pm on Saturday, until roughly 10pm Squiggles, Emma, Elmo, Kylie, and I cooked and cooked and cooked away, until we had enough sushi to feed not only ourselves, but also enough to take up to Spud and Encey (who were at The LAN, and thus could not make sushi) with enough left over for...well...significant leftovers!

Our Finished Sushi Product

About Half The Leftovers

I know that a lot of you are wondering just how sushi is made and, whilst no videos were taken of the actual sushi making itself (oh no, today's One Minute is much more entertaining than that) I can give you some pointers, and the recipes that I used for all of the ingredients. Below is a picture of the raw ingredients that we started with - there was squid, salmon, chicken, eggplant, carrot, tofu, cucumber, egg, tuna, avocado, rice, various sauces like sweet Japanese mayonnaise and mirin, and a couple of dry things like salt, too. I think that's everything. Anyway, after about 4 or 5 solid hours of preparing the rice, letting various things marinate, and then cooking them, we ended up with: lemon, garlic, and herb squid; honey, soy, and ginger chicken; teriyaki chicken; apple-vinegar tofu; miso tofu; tamagoyaki; tempura eggplant; salted salmon; julienne vegetables; and...well...cooked rice. You can see these things in the second image below.

Mostly Raw Ingredients (Plus Some Chicken Marinating In Some Bowls)

Finished Fillings

Nothing that I prepared was overly difficult, and if you only make one or two fillings then you'll have a pretty easy time. The hardest thing to make is, funnily enough, the tamagoyaki (egg-roll thingo), which requires a lot of practice to get right. Otherwise, for the chicken, you cook it like you normally would (after letting it marinate in the fridge for a while.) For the squid, you need to make sure that it doesn't get too rubber (and don't eat the purple bit at the bottom of it, either.) The salmon just needs to be salted likely (use rock salt, and rub it into the flesh of the salmon, softly) and left to sit for as long as possible, before you seal it on all sides (as briefly as is humanly possible, or to taste - I didn't trust the fish in Bathurst so I cooked it on a low heat, on all sides, so it was even all the way through.) Tofu is easy to cook as well - it takes on the flavour of whatever you cook it in!

This Is Unsalted Eggplant, Just After I Cut It Up

This Is What Happens When You Leave Salted Eggplant To Sit For About 3 Hours

The rice is possibly challenging if you don't have a good rice cooker, because (unlike normal rice) it requires patience and...well...a couple of special things. Firstly, you need to wash the rice effectively (duh - but just keep washing until the water runs clear.) Following this, put the rice in your pot with enough water to come up one knuckle further than the rice, and add some salt and a little bit of rice-wine vinegar (but only the tiniest amount, and this stage) to the water. You then heat the water/rice combo to a boil, before quickly reducing it to a low (quite low, I believe) simmer, and put the lid on. After this you wait for roughly 20 minutes, though it can take up to half-an-hour - you must not remove the lid during this time! When the rice is done, you have to stir in a special seasoning sauce thing that you can make yourself from rice-wine vinegar, sugar, and salt - or you can buy sushi seasoning stuff in a bottle from woolies, and it works just as well if you're in a hurry (but it's better to make it yourself, really.) Then you cool it with a hand fan until the rice is all nice and room temperature - do not cool it in the fridge, use a hand fan (or, if you have to, an electric fan.) Congratulations, you have now made sushi rice!

After you have your rice and fillings prepared, you're ready to roll (please forgive the pun there.) This bit is the fun part, and it's relatively easy. You'll need some yaki nori (the seaweed), a bowl of lukewarm water (that you can wet your hands with) and a surface to prepare on. Basically you just put the seaweed on your surface, shiny side down, and wet your hands, before putting on a thin layer of rice about 2.5 to 3.5 inches long, that starts about 1 inch from the bottom of your seaweed (if you don't wet your hands, the rice will stick to you like nobody's business.) Layer some toppings on the rice, in nice straight lines, and then roll. It's kind of difficult to explain the rolling process on here. I suggest you check out YouTube, and I don't have any videos of me doing it myself. After you are finished rolling, you just cut it into bit-sized portions, and put it aside until you're finished.

Cutting, Cutting, Cutting, Cutting

More Cutting! From Different Angles!!

Following what was, for us, a fairly mammoth effort in creating various different kinds of sushi rolls, we tucked into our meals and ate until we felt...well...kinda ill - but that's to be expected when your eyes are so much larger than your stomach. Following this, we took some video of us being idiots with the leftover wasabi (I also got some shots of some people at The LAN trying it out as well, and Encey demonstrated herself to be quite hardcore - I just hope the quality is good enough to be put in the video...Oh, and my youngest brother Yuck is in there as well, because he'll do anything if you promise him M&Ms afterwards.) Basically with wasabi the reaction is kind of a delay, and it works its way into your sinuses and all over your palette - it is harsher when it's mixed with the sticky rice, and you have to chew. I hope you enjoy the rest of the photos, as well as One Minute Of Wasabi Reactions.

Scott Got Caught Eating Some Chips - Bad Scott

He Tried To Be Charming To Compensate

Emma Also Wore A Fancy Hat...MY FANCY HAT!!

Kylie Just Looks Forlorn Cos She Has No Fancy Hats

Michael Wanted To Eat For About 8 Hours Before He Was Allowed To

We Ended Up With The Mountains Of Sushi!

A Minute Of Wasabi Reaction Shots

The moral of this story is that I really can't wait until I get to travel to Sydney to buy myself a tiered bento box - a proper one that I can take my food to work in. Of course, if someone from Sydney who reads this was nice enough to buy me one and post it to me, I wouldn't complain, and I'd even give them money for it if they were really nice. I might even feature them in a post...Well heck - they bought me the thing I currently want really badly, I would liken them to some kind of gift giving deity. Which would be nice, for them, I think.

On Getting Back On Several Horses In One Day

2011-03-10T18:39:00.000+11:00

Hey guys, gals, and everything in between - today is a much better day than yesterday was, for many, many, oh so many reasons. First (and foremost - well, not really but I just love saying that) is the fact that today is Thursday. This means, obviously, that tomorrow is Friday - the day that we (now) play Squiggles superhero game, allowing me to stretch my Locki muscles. And, to add wonder to awesomeness, the following day is Saturday, which means that (this weekend) I get to teach Kylie how to make sushi and (to my weekly delight) play Spud's 'Rise of the Runelords' game. Oh yeah, and we're going to make a real push on working on my costumes for SupaNova, too. So - a productive weekend it shall be (filled with sushi, no less - so all you non-sushi eating people can...you know...either suck it, or make your own sushi.)

Earlier today, as you may be aware, I had my combined performance review and end-of-probationary discussion. You may also be aware that I was quite nervous about this, and that, the closer half-past eleven became, the more my little tummy was going somersaults in an attempt to escape my body so that it didn't have to be present. All of this stressing was (as I was told by my team leader, my aunt LeakySpider, and a nice person from the CSU forums) for naught, and I was praised outright. Apparently I have "exceeded both my job description, and their expectations of me." It's a good thing.

Today was also CSU's Club Day - a fact which slipped my mind until it was almost too late. I am, presently, the founder of BAMS - the Bathurst Anime & Manga Society. I know, the acronym should be BAAMS but that makes us sound like sheep, which is something we are trying to get away from. So, at around 12:50 today I whipped out my notebook and drew up some very simple posters, as well as a "sign ups" sheet so that I can get in contact with the willing members when I find out exactly when and where we can host our meetings. When I rocked up the place was already full, and there were basically no spots left, so I sat myself down next to my friends from The LAN (a Bathurst gaming event) and tried to encourage people to rock up.

Emma Is Never Happy When I Take Her Photo For Some Reason

Squiggles, However, Is Always Too Happy...

This, I will admit, started off fairly rockily. I put my own name on the paper, and I got X-Man and Elmo to sign up as well - you know, to get the ball rolling. Otherwise, I just sat there. Alone. With the guy who wanted people to play video games with him. It was kind of like what I imagine high school must have been like for various people (I was going to say that it was like high school, but it has been pointed out that I was actually popular, and thus cannot draw that comparison.) After a while, we got sick of being "those losers who aren't doing a sport club" (nobody's words but my own, and said in jest) and decided to put some advertising on X-Man, sending him off to walk around, as though he were some kind of mascot. This worked okay, but the thing that really got people coming to us was - in X-Man's eyes, at least - his dancing skills. You can see, below, a minute of him dancing (I re-dubbed the music 'cos the sound was crap on the original.)

<br>J

YouTube Is Being A Tool About Showing Me My Videos, So I Hope This Works

All in all, we got about 20 members before I had to go back to work, and that's not including the couple of non university people I know will want to come, as well as any people who sign up after I leave. After I sort out the whole "Can we get affiliation, please" issue, and hopefully get our funds in, things will just snowball along - I am sure of it! I have some pretty nifty plans for the club, including (but not limited to) film/series screenings, subsidised trips to conventions, manga/comic sharing, and more. If you live in Bathurst and are interested in that sort of thing, then please feel free to email me so that I can add you to our mailing list!

The final awesome and wonderful thing that just makes today so wonderfully spectacular is that I saw someone wearing an awesome hat. Alas, however, I did not get to take a photo, as my phone was mucking up (upon checking my phone at home, it turns out that the photo did take!) And no, I do not refer to the fact that I caught Spud in the Gaming Lab wearing a paper bag on his head as though 't'were the finest of head gear. I am referring to the gentlemanly SPG who caught my bus again this morning. I thought it might interest you to know that, as I disembarked, I yelled (slightly too loudly perhaps) his name and he turned around and seemed genuinely pleased to see me. Well, okay, he didn't seem displeased to see me - and in my books that means that he was pleased.

In The Catholic Religion, He'd Be Pretty Important (So Sayeth The Height Of His Hat!)

So yes, I spoke to SPG today. I asked him if he enjoyed D&D, and told him that my friends and I were wondering if he'd like to play. He responded with the (actually totally unprepared for) "I've never played before, however I have watched a session and it seemed pretty fun." So I invited him to play in one of our sessions. Apparently this would be "pretty cool", but will have to wait until the uni holidays because otherwise he is too busy. So now I have to decide whether I want to run a one-shot, or have him play in a pre-established game. Either way I need to determine what kind of game to get him into - maybe a steampunk era game is in order - to help him settle in. Oh yeah, and he gave me his number, but that's just so I can contact him in April (during the holidays) to let him know the details of our games.

Oh yeah - there were a couple of other things that I want to just super quickly mention. I didn't have any nightmares last night (which is rare for me, at the moment.) The blisters on my hand were punctured somehow (totally accidentally) yesterday and have now had the pressure inside relieved - as long as I can stave off infection I'll be fine. I met a bunch of nice people at club day, many of whom were quite talkative, and I got to make fun of X-Man on the Internet. It reminds of the days when I used to have a radio show, and I would make fun of him through broadcast sound. Good times.

The moral of today's story is that it feels good to act like yourself, especially when you spend 95% of the time acting like yourself (assuming you don't count time spent role playing.) That 5% of the time when you're a seething mass of un-you-ness is made just so much more unpleasant by the fact that it's so uncharacteristic for you to become this totally different, and (to be honest) much less awesome person. But then, I guess, you can only act like someone who isn't you 50% of the time before that paltry personality becomes primary, and suddenly being awesome is weird.

On How Annoying It Is To Act Out Of Character

2011-03-09T18:11:00.000+11:00

There are times when the Internet, as a medium of communicating ideas effectively, is superb. Informing hundreds of people, in dozens of countries across the world, about commonly held beliefs that are actually fallacies, for instance, is an excellent example of moving this communication power from theory into practice. Sharing your home-made "comedy" shows, filled with poorly thought-out innuendo and in-jokes that likely only the people involved in the production will actually get is...another example...I suppose.

There are times, however, that it is incredibly, almost painfully difficult to get across just exactly what tone of voice you are using, or what the true intention of your message is. This has, admittedly, been made easier by the use of two major (and numerous minor, I suppose) techniques, the first being varying styles of fonts to express differing levels of stress within speech (for example, this looks like I am really stressing the word this to you.) The other is a wide array of emoticons, ranging from the rather banal : ) (representing joy) to the much less frequently seen Orz (which is a figure begging for forgiveness from another.)

Please Forgive Me, Let Me Orz

Still, until they either invent a web-standard typeface that is all quivery, or I find a suitable emoticon to express the feeling of "shaking in my high-tops" (non sarcastically), I just won't be able to properly get across the feeling that is going through my head right now, nor the feeling that has plagued me far too many times in the past week. There has been, in this time period, somewhat of a disturbance in my Tigeroscity, which is unusual because it's rare that things cause me to act...well...not like me. Especially when it comes to matters of confidence and such.

This story starts a little while ago...January 11th, I believe, when I left CSM and started in App Development. This position, like many of its kind, comes with a probationary period. A probationary period which, apparently, ends tomorrow, culminating in a meeting with my 'team leader' about how I am to progress in my role here. I should not be nervous about this meeting. I do my job well, and receive nothing but glowing compliments from the people I help. This kind of meeting is not something that is new to me - I've passed through probationary periods successfully before, after all. Even my team leader himself has told me that I have nothing to worry about, and that it's all good. So why, then, am I filled with a constant looming sense of dread that I'm going to be flayed alive tomorrow?

Except I'm A Boy! Woo!!

This is, currently, exacerbated by the fact that I managed to give myself a rather large hand-burn on Saturday. As the story goes, I was cooking tonkatsu for Elmo, Kylie, and myself, and as I placed the final breaded pork cutlet in the oil something there caused a massive eruption of boiling vegetable fat, which splattered up and caught the sides of my right index and pinky fingers, and the little divet in between. This meant that I spent the entirety of Saturday night in varying amounts of pain (which lessened significantly once I figured out that Aloe Vera gel and fan on high speed could produce a brilliant cooling effect.) It also means that I'm now left with a blister that is approximately 5cm long, and exceptionally annoying due to its placement on my hand. So I figured I'd use part of my lunch-break to wiki "Blister" to see what would come up, and determine just how long I'd be plagued by this thing for.

It was at this time that my aforementioned 'team leader' (who is supposed [and there's that emphasis again] to be in Wagga) showed up behind me to officially introduce himself to me. Of course, like many people, I tend to work with my headphones in, so that I can get into the 'coding zone', which led to him getting my attention just out of the corner of my eye, and me jumping about two feet whilst yelling "Augh!" in a Charlie Brown-esque fashion. I spent the entire time he was in my cubicle worrying about what he must think of me, using wikipedia on the work computers (regardless of whose time I was using) and mumbling something about how I'd like to work on the iPhone project. Go me.

And then there is strange issue number three, and although this one has already been explained to me, I find it the most frustrating of all. I see SPG around campus and downtown. A lot. I want to go up to him and ask him how he's going. I want to invite him to D&D nights. I want to know if he likes gaming or anime. Instead I just kind of stand there and giggle a little bit to myself - shyly. I am not used to being shy. In fact, having not really experienced shyness before, I can safely say that - now I have felt it - it is not something that I endorse in any way. I've discussed this with Spud, X-Man, and the gang, and they have all agreed that it just means that I am, indeed, human, and not a very advanced machine (assuming that very advanced machines can't develop crushes on people.) This does not, however, make it any less frustrating for me to be so uncharacteristically bashful around someone. Usually if I want to talk to someone I will do it, and to hell with the consequences. Why should I care if SPG approves of D&D - if he doesn't like it then there is no big loss. So why does this matter so much?

I Just Wanted To Post This Awesome Steampunk Segue

The moral of this story is that the human condition is something that I still find slightly foreign. I'm not used to lacking confidence in interacting with people, nor am I used to doubting my own safety when it comes to meetings. Sure, I worry about things that I have little control over, but only when it directly affects me (for instance: will I get this house I'm applying for, etc.) and things that are within my control...well...I'm affecting them, so if I don't do well then it's my own fault, and I'll suck it up. It's the way I figure the world should work, and when my own personal world fails to live up to that expectation...well...it's disconcerting.

On Making Mundane Tasks Fun For All

2011-03-08T19:38:00.000+11:00

I am, you are most likely aware, a creature of habit. I always drink my tea out of the blue teacup, I always start and end my sushi-train meals with nasu tenpura nigiri, and I always do my laundry on a Sunday. This carries with it several implications. For one, it means that I have to be in Bathurst on Sunday (although the fact that it is laundry day is now not the only reason why Sunday must see me at home), and secondly it means that my laundry must be completed before 6pm, lest I be kicked out of the laundromat and my precious clothes become forfeit. There are other implications that go with it, too, however none of them are quite so interesting (for instance, I have to go grocery shopping before I go to the laundromat, so that I have change to feed their insidious machines with.)

You may notice, long time readers, that this is not the first post I have made that starts with me talking about my laundry habits. In fact, the last time I talked about my washing, it became one of my most popular posts (with 107 views total.) It strikes me, as I'm sure it does a number of you, that the average person believes that laundry is an incredibly dull task akin, somewhat, to the illustration I have provided for you below (for your convenience I had created a gif animation of the video but it was too big, so if amusement is what you are after then the video actually has sound.) These people, however, could not be farther from the truth.

These things that one is forced to do in order to successfully meld with humanity, such as washing your clothing, cleaning your house, or mowing your lawn, are only dull and dreary because, in my experience, you let them be. What people need to do, I have found, is whip these activities into shape (resisting Devo joke...), and force them into submission - wrestle them, yell at them, torment them physically and emotionally until they relent and you are able to enjoy them. For mowing the lawn I treat it as though it's a mini-quest in a video game - I put my headphones in, and I mentally calculate the percentage of the lawn I have mowed, amongst other things. When I'm cleaning the house I put on some really bad 90's music (or some kick-arse indie music, depending on what iTunes says I should listen to) and finding a home for everything I own whilst singing and bopping around. And for laundry...well...if you take some friends with you, then anything can become an adventure (especially when you start being a tool with a camera.)

My washing took approximately an hour and 20 minutes to complete - 30 minutes in the washing machine, 40 minutes in the drier (plus 10 minutes leeway for "extra drying time") - and about 10 minutes into the whole process we got quite bored of just sitting there. So Squiggles starting laying on Emma (he was tired, after all), and the whole thing looked rather adorable. This prompted me to whip out my phone and sneakily take a photo of the two (because Emma is incredibly camera shy) and the whole thing just...devolved into a huge "I'm going to take pictures of you whether you are ready or not, so suck it up, precious" fight between Kylie and myself, while Squiggles and Emma just sat there being adorable. If you are wondering where the rest of the gang are for this quest, I guess that's a good question - Spud and Encey were visiting Spud's family, and Elmo was too busy for us because he was hanging out with his dorm. At least, that's what I'm sure the reason was.

Below are the better photos that were taken on Sunday, as well as suitably amusing (I hope) commentary on each. Enjoy.

Emma Does Not Like Having Her Photo Taken

Cutesy Coupley People

Dear Kylie: What Is It With Girls Being Camera Shy?

And Then I Took This Picture Of Kylie...Ahahaha

Emma And I Have A Headbutt Competition, Squiggles Played First And Died

Emma Performing 'True Resurrection' On Squiggles

But It Backfired And We Ended Up With A Romeo/Julie Situation

So I Poisoned Myself In Order To Convince Their Spirits To Return To Their Bodies

First I Consoled Emma

Then I Comforted Squiggles

I Talked To Them About The Good Old Days

About How Emma Was A Librarian

And How Squiggles Was A Puffer Fish

But Alas, It Was For Naught

Poor Kylie Had To Carry The Bodies Off, One By One

But At Least I Died Peacefully - The End

The moral of this story is that photo blogs are occasionally pretty cool to do - I have discovered that people enjoy voyeurism much more than they are willing to say. There is, ostensibly, something about living vicariously through others that satisfies a part of the human condition - regardless of how thrilling your actual life is. I mean, I trust that you all, as my loyal (or new!) readers, are all suitably adventurous and will slay the occasional embodiment of evil - yet you still enjoy seeing pictures of people you don't know, and video of my laundry spinning constantly around. And I'm just a tool with a camera.