Purple Wyrm – Page 107

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.

Salt

Salt that tastes of things other than salt

Right, so I assume my package arrived then 😀

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…)

Straits of Canada

See the small person I don’t like wearing jewellery and makeup.

Reading my feeds this morning I stumbled over the news that a regulatory body in Canada has banned Dire Strait’s Money for Nothing from the airwaves for reasons of being offensive.

My initial reaction was “WHAAA?”, however on reading the article this was revised to “Oh, yeah – that bit”. The problem is of course the third verse – not one of Mark Knopfler’s best moments – where the song repeatedly uses a rather nasty pejorative. Someone complained – quite justifiably in my opinion – and away we go.

There seems to be a lot of outrage floating around over the decision, but personally it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m as big a Dire Straits fan as the next guy (assuming the next guy is also tragically out of step with modern music) but the verse really is in rather poor taste. More importantly there’ve been versions of the song without the offending verse available ever since it was released – as long as these versions are still allowed on the radio, what does it matter? You don’t listen to Money for Nothing for the words, you listen for the durn-d-d-d-duuuurn! durn-durn-durn – durrrrrrn-durn! d-durn-durn-durn! d-d! (and for Mr Sting wailing about MTV).

The people who complain about this sort of thing are typically the ones who want to keep on using the offensive terms in question. They hide behind a facade of second-person artistic integrity, but fundamentally they want to keep the word ‘faggot’ in the song because they want to keep calling gay people – or simply anyone they don’t like – faggots. The idea that their apparently God given right to hate and belittle others is under threat is what upsets them – not that a song from 30 bloody years ago will now have to be played in slightly modified form.

Sheeze. You might as well complain about not being allowed to sing that verse from Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.

On second thoughts…

They’re the anchor of the Free Mantle Systems

Maybe my Valhallans were fighting the anchor of the Free Mantle Systems, the Freo Marines?

	Name:	Freo Marines
	Founding Chapter:	The WAFL Marines
	Founding:	Unknown
	Chapter Master:	Matheus Pavlach
	Homeworld:	Freo
	Fortress-Monastery:	The Dock
	Battle Cry:	Freo! Way to Go!

😀

Imma Charging Mah Lazers

Reinforcements incoming from Philadelphia

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve gone and thrown stupid amounts of money at eBay to start a collection of Valhallans. This is slightly better than throwing stupid amounts of money at Games Workshop to start a collection of Valhallans, as the stupid amounts of money I’ve thrown at eBay are about half the stupid amounts of money I’d have to throw at Games Workshop for the same amount of models. They’re still quite stupid though.

Since Fabes’ Space Marines seemed to be fairly intimidated by my Laser Cannons, I’ve bought a couple of them. Also a mortar team, an officer and a couple of large, nasty surprises, the nature of which I’m not going to mention because then they wouldn’t be surprises any more (you have read up on all the vehicle rules haven’t you Fabes? 😉

When my reinforcements arrive from Sunny Philadelphia I’m planning to do some conversion work on the officer. He’s a very fine model, but is basically a bit too 19th century for my tastes. The general look of the Valhallans is World War II Red Army – having them commanded by a mustachioed Cossack in a giant fur hat just doesn’t gel with me. I’ll be chopping down his hat and replacing it with a ushanka for a start, and plan to go with a more subdued paint job than the example above.

I’ve also bought some scary neodymium magnets for weapon swapping. They’re very tiny ones, so hopefully I won’t accidentally amputate anything trying to get them glued into place.

Finally I’ve avoided blogging about the floods because really, what’s to be said? It’s a disaster, and me going on about it in my usual irreverent style wont make it any less so. I’ve donated to the relief appeal and my thoughts and sympathy are with all those affected. That’s about the best I can do.

The Black Swans

Aussie Marines

So, today at work I was thinking – exactly what Space Marine chapter were my Valhallans fighting on the weekend? After some thought I decided it had to be the Black Swans…

	Name:	Black Swans
	Founding Chapter:	Unknown
	Founding:	Unknown
	Chapter Master:	Septimus Rowe
	Homeworld:	Cygnus Occidentalis
	Fortress-Monastery:	Ratnast
	Battle Cry:	Cygnis Insignis!

Hailing from the semi-arid, sandy world of Cygnus Occidentalis the Black Swans dwell in the orbiting fortress monastery of Ratnast and hone their combat skills fighting the fearsome burrowing creatures known by the natives as sand-gropers.

OK. Done now 🙂