Month: January 2011

Packages

Goodies

Two of my eBay orders arrived yesterday (well, actually they arrived earlier in the week and I was only able to pick them up yesterday) which means I now actually have some models for my force of Valhallans. Not a huge number, but it’s a start.

Let’s see, I have a Valhallan Commander (who needs assembling and painting), two Iron Legion lascannon teams (the posting on eBay said they were Valhallan, but hey, I can convert them), a Techpriest Enginseer (who needs some repairs and a decent re-paint) and two partly constructed Sentinels that I’m going to modify the crud out of.

I’ve got some other bits and pieces on order including parts for the Sentinel project, a Commisar and an Valhallan Officer. And a whole load of flock for the game table that Fabes and I constructed over the weekend. I’m also wondering if I have the patience (and money) to build some bear cavalry… mmm…. bear cavalry…..

In other news it’s 9:30 in the morning, and already 37 degrees. The temperature is not expected to drop below 20 until Thursday next week. That’s the minimum temperature I’m talking about. Oh joy.

Later…

Ah! They’ve revised the forecast! Now we’re going to be hit by Tropical Cyclone (Hurricane, Typhoon, whatever you want to call it) Bianca instead.

That sounds catastrophic, but by the time cyclones get as far south as Perth they tend to lose their puff. It’s due to hit on Sunday and will just be a slightly larger than normal storm. The good news is it’ll drag temperatures down to the much more reasonable low 30s with slightly cooler nights. Hooray!

1045 and All That

The other history of England

There are times that I really struggle to hold my tongue.

On the train this morning I had to endure an emo guy informing one of his friends about English history. Highlights of his lecture included…

  • ‘One of’ the King Georges went mad from Syphillus.
  • The Saxons were French. They moved to England and thus became Anglo-Saxons.
  • King Henry VIII got divorced and married seven times as none of his wives could give him children.
  • William the Conqueror invaded in 1045.
  • Brittany, Scotland and Ireland all have exactly the same music.
  • The Irish and ‘Scotch’ hate the English, while the Welsh love them (because ‘they’re on the same island’).

I was severely tempted to leap out of my seat and beat him around the head with a copy of Macaulay, but instead contented myself with the thought that a single kick would snap both of his skinny-jean clad legs like twigs.

Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco

In Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco (2010), the two main characters, Lindsey and Leon, go to a roller disco.

Observe the Wikipedia page for “roller disco“. Observe this…

In Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco (2010), the two main characters, Lindsey and Leon, go to a roller disco.

I so wish I could have found a reference to this on Google, but I couldn’t, so I had to remove it, damnit!

Watching the Numbers Trickle Past

The JJJ Hottest 100 2010

Well it’s Australia Day, and I’m slaving away in the office. This sounds bad, but I actually decided to take Monday off instead and come in today and get a good slab of work done without distractions. Well, apart from the Triple J Hottest 100 anyway.

They’re up to number 88 and so far I’m not too impressed. Of course this could very well mean that all the really good songs have come in in the low numbers, which would be great, but we’ll see.

Only one song I voted for has come in so far, the Bedroom Philosopher at number 91. I’ll update the post as the results continue to trickle in…

Hmmm, according to the Wikipedia page we should all “seriously get to Jimmy’s” in Victoria Street in Brunswick, Melbourne. It also informs us that Jimmy is “a knob jockey”, although someone else thinks this is “unnecessary slander”. Fascinating…

Megan Washington at 84? I thought she’d get much higher…

Number 82. This is the music you tighten up to!…

Number 76. Ah, so that Kings of Leon song is named Radioactive. No wonder it makes me nauseous…

Ah Rosie Beaton! My long-time radio crush! Yey! 🙂

Number 74: I’ve always wondered what would happen if you put Tame Impala in a room with Leader Cheetah…

Number 71: Gypsy and the Cat have now popped up twice. No Jona Vark yet though…

Number 64: Ah! There it is. Should have got much higher if you ask me…

You know, there have been no songs yet that I really really hate? Interesting…

Number 56: Bring Night only got 56? What’s wrong with you people?!…

Ambling Alp at number 51. That takes the total-so-far of songs I voted for to 4…

Number 42: Gorillaz! Yey! (there were also at 78, just for the record)…

Number 36: Chiddy Bang! And they’re pretty much amazing!…

Number 31: Bloodbuzz Ohio by the National. So much for no songs I hate…

Did I mention that my prediction for number one is Cee Lo Green?..

Number 22: The counter-curse is “Unjellify”…

Number 15: Never thought I’d see the day that Barbara Streisand got into the Hottest 100. Well, live and learn…

Number 11:I also never thought the ABC News Theme would get a look in. Awesome!!…

Number 10: And now Boy George. Curiouser and curiouser…

Number 7: SEVEN!? Cee Lo only got number SEVEN!? Wow! Wonder what piece of crap took number one then?..

Number 5: Crowded House at five. Sort of :)…

Number 3: Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. It’s a great song, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s ranked so high due to sympathy votes…

And Number One….. Big Jet Plane by Angus and Julia Stone. Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. But then it did win song of the year at the ARIAs, so I suppose it’s not that surprising.

OK, I’m out of here. More nuanced analysis will appear later (maybe :D)

Illusive

Maybe my opinion of journalists is a bit harsh

I can’t tell if this is a case of a journalist being rather clever, or a journalist being an idiot and backing into cleverness (‘pulling a Homer’ as it were).

Yesterday there was bit of a scare in London when a police training exercise involving an entirely fictional gunman running up and down Oxford Street somehow leaked out into the Twittersphere as warnings of a real gunman running up and down Oxford Street. An article on one of the news sites I peruse (I can’t remember which one, and frankly I don’t care enough to go back and try and track it down) reported on this situation, including a comment about “the illusive gunman”.

At first I assumed that this was a typically (typical for Australian online news sites anyway) illiterate misspelling of “elusive”. But as it turns out “illusive” is that rarest of things – an English word with which I’m unfamiliar! It means “illusionary” or “imaginary”, and is hence a perfect description of the gunman in this case.

So, did the author pick the word deliberately, or simply mean “elusive” and fall backwards into brilliance? I guess we’ll never know (and they’d hardly admit it if they did :))

#Twibbon rhymes with Gibbon

News Limited jumps on the bandwagon

Well, News Limited have certainly gone all out to help flood victims! They’ve created a page on their news sites where you can go to add a blue ribbon to your twitter feed to show your “support, strength and comfort” for Flood Victims. You can even go to certain stores and get your own blue ribbon to wear in real life! Fantastic!

Excuse me, but how does this actually achieve anything short of making people feel like they’re doing something without actually doing anything at all?

If News Limited actually gave a damn about flood victims they’d put the instructions for decorating your twitter feed behind a donation wall. And rather than give the ribbons away for free, they’d sell them. But no, they’d rather pander a feel good solution that makes them look like heroes without having to do any work.

If you want to help flood victims then donate money, goods or time. Changing the background on your twitter feed achieves nothing but making you look like a massive tool.

Pyramid Cake of Sadness

The stupidity of the masses knows no bounds…

I don’t know what’s sadder…

1: People have only just realised that the signs of the zodiac are 2,000 odd years out of date.

2: People are freaking out that their zodiac sign has ‘changed’ (apparently a lot of them are worried that their personality is going to alter).

3: People actually believe astrology has any connection to reality at all – as opposed to being a load of complete horseshit.

(In the interest of full disclosure I should state that I’m a Pisces. The traits of Pisceans include being born in February/March. No, wait, that’s the only trait of Pisceans…)

Old East Perth

Old photos

I’ve started work on a major cleaning project – basically going through everything I possess and deciding what I can either throw away, give away or sell. It’s long term, but so far I’ve spent some time doing it every day since Wednesday, so maybe I’ll be able to keep at it long enough to have a unit that I won’t be ashamed to show to guests.

Some good has come of the project already however, in that I’ve found a long lost set of photos (yes, actual physical photos!) recording the state of East Perth Power Station and surrounds back in the mid 90s – right at the start of the the Graham Farmer Freeway and East Perth Redevelopment schemes. I knew that I had them – it could be argued that they record my first attempt at urban exploration – but I had no idea where they were, so it was fantastic to stumble over them.

I’ve spent the afternoon scanning the most interesting 17 in and posting them to my Flickr stream, so head over and take a look.

I Shouldn’t Laugh…

Oh the irony!

A client complains to us that when his site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6 the text on his homepage looks like “it was done by a child”.

The email informing us of this is in bright blue comic sans 😛

(By the way, the text looks awful in every browser because he’s gone wild with the CMS and made it a dozen different sizes and colours with underlines, bolding and italics everywhere. It just looks particularly bad in IE6 because of its problems with automatic line heights…)

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