Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Tuesday roundup
The very first thing I thought when I heard Charlton Heston was dead was “I wonder if anyone’s prised the guns from his cold dead hands yet?”
*sigh*
In other news this link does a fantastic job of explaining why I don’t use instant messenger programs. And this one is a petition to stop Uwe Boll making movies. He claims that if it gets one million signatures, he’ll quit. Sign it! For the sake of humanity sign it!
Let the sleeping death seep through
So I get up this morning and (after showering, shaving and getting dressed – eating breakfast in one’s bedclothes is so uncivilised 😉 head into the kitchen to get breakfast. I open the fridge and immediately notice a number of things…
1) The three litre plastic bottle of apple juice in the fridge door seems to have imploded, and is around two thirds its normal size.
2) The bottom of said fridge is full of a liquid that looks suspiciously like apple juice.
3) The floor around the fridge is covered in the same liquid.
Forensic examination of the scene quickly revealed that at some point during the night the bottle developed a pinhole leak, drip-siphoning juice all over the bottom of the fridge, which then leaked it all over the floor. Great.
So, I get down on my hands and knees with a big wad of paper towels and start to mop it all up. It’s at this point that I notice the apple juice has pooled around the big chunk of rat poison down the side of the fridge – the one whose instructions strictly forbid touching it with bare flesh or even breathing deeply within a fifteen foot radius. So not only is my kitchen floor covered with apple juice, it’s covered with poison apple juice!
I eventually got it all cleaned up, hopefully without poisoning myself. *sigh*
Being born psychic should really free me from having to get out of bed this early in the morning
Once again a big break between entires. I’ve been busy at work, and a lot of my writing mojo is going into another project, so I haven’t had much to left over for chronicling my oh so glamorous life. But I’ve decided to get off my backside and actually try to catch up a bit.
So, while my social life hasn’t really been more active than usual the extreme gap between entries has let things build up a bit. For instance, a few weeks back (Easter Sunday actually now I think of it) it was up to Fabian’s new place for a pseudo housewarming sort of thing. We (which is to say myself, Ryan, Matt, Juan and – naturally – Fabian) ate large quantities of food (all prepared by Fabes who will make someone a very good wife some day 😉 and watched Beowulf in the home theatre room, which was quite impressive. The room that is, the movie… not so much.
(They took a lot of liberties with the plot, which as a bit of an elitist classicist I took objection to. If I’d known Neil Gaiman was involved from the start – a fact I didn’t discover until the credits rolled – I wouldn’t have been quite as annoyed, because it was really a typical example of Gaimanian story remixing which I usually enjoy. But I didn’t know, and found the whole thing fairly irritating.
I guess I’m also slightly miffed by the fact that people all over the world are now going to think the oldest story in English literature is about a loudmouth jock who sleeps with a demon, cheats on his wife and cuts off his own arm to kill a dragon who just happens to be his own son. *sigh*)
After Beowulf we watched some of Revenge of the Sith, during which I amused myself by heckling Aniken and doing shadow puppets in front of the projector. Senator Palpatine may never recover from having his head crushed 🙂
The following week (which is to say last week) I went around to Rebecca and Dom’s for lunch, which was interesting because Rebecca had decided to do something with the dried barberries from the hamper I gave them for Christmas. Unfortunately the barberry rice that resulted wasn’t exactly a rousing success. But the conversation and company were (as usual) excellent, and a good time was had by all (or at least me).
(On the subject of Rebecca she’s managed to slip over in the kitchen and break her ankle in three places – they’re putting in screws and a plate tomorrow. Apparently she’ll be off her feet for several days, then on crutches for a few months. I’ve convinced her to see if she can get a cane instead so she can perfect her House impression. Get well soon girl!)
Hmmmm, what else? Oh yeah April Fools. I keep meaning to do something really creative with my site each year for April Fools, and always run out of time and end up redirecting it somewhere stupid instead. This year was no exception, and any visitors trying to reach Wyrmworld would have found themselves forwarded to the website of the Australian Liberal Party (I figure Brendan Nelson needs all the help he can get ;). I decided to leave the redirect up all day on the basis that the web is an international medium, and if I took it down at 12:00 Perth time then overseas folk wouldn’t be able to share in the confusion. I know at least one person *cough*Ryan*cough* got caught, so that makes it all worthwhile.
I’d better get to bed shortly (I foolishly stayed up until midnight last night watching season three of Battlestar Galactica which arrived earlier this week) but before I sign off I though I’d direct everyone to take a look at FreakAngels – a free weekly comic by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. Set in a partially flooded future London it’s about a gang of twelve young adults with freaky powers (and purple eyes, and names heavily featuring the phoneme /k/), who are somehow responsible for the apocalypse that pretty much destroyed the world six years beforehand. Six pages get released each Friday (which is to say Saturday here in Australia), and so far we’re up to episode eight.
Given that it’s post-apocalyptic, a bit steampunk and set in London I am naturally loving it. So much so that I spent an hour or so the other week throwing together a Google Earth file of all the identifiable locations featured. I may or may not maintain this as the series continues – I haven’t decided yet 🙂
Anyway, enjoy (keeping in mind that it’s “recommended for mature audiences” that is, and probably not exactly safe for work 🙂
Farewell to the milkiest Battlestar of them all
Well they’ve (apparently – I’m not looking up the exact details for fear of spoilers) announced the end of Battlestar Galactica – conincidently on the same day my season three box set is shipped by Amazon. This is actually perfectly fine by me, the basic plot couldn’t possibly keep going season after season after season without the series turning really stale. Ending while it’s still a reasonably good show (as far as I know, only having seen seasons one and two) makes sense.
(It also gives them a great opportunity to pen a really crappy sequel series featuring flying motorcycles 🙂
As regards my box set, it’s going to take over a month to get here. This is merely more evidence for my sea otter theory regarding Amazon deliveries to the Asia-Pacific region.
PS: Why Milkybar? Trust me – linguists will be wetting themselves over that one 😉
A mystery solved.
Well it looks like they found the Sydney, and only a day after the Kormoran. Nice work!
Really that’s about all I’ve got to say. Didn’t do much over the weekend, just did some cleaning and watched five straight episodes of Stargate Atlantis so I could return the DVD box set I borrowed from Daniel at work. I also managed to hurt my shoulder somehow – it’s quite painful, I may need to get it looked at.
Oh, and Sam didn’t make it in on Friday (sick apparently, although she may have just been sick of us 🙂 so she’ll finish up some time this week. Don’t know if we’ll do the lunch thing or not.
That is all (ain’t my life just fascinating?).
Television Redux
You know, I’m really enjoying Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which started its run here a few weeks back (it’s fair to say that it’s the closest we’re ever likely to get to River Tam Beats Up Everyone). Unfortunately however it’s already begun the slow slide towards the early hours of the morning suffered by all sci-fi on Australian TV. It began in a blaze of glory at 8:30pm Tuesday nights, stuck there for three episodes, went AWOL for a week, then came back at 9:30 this week. Before long it’ll drift to 10:30, then 11:25, and before long it’ll be on at 2:10am alternate Wednesdays and Tuesdays – when not bumped by repeats of the Red Shoe Diaries.
I’m also quite enjoying That Mitchell and Webb Look on the ABC (sorry! ABC 1!). Entertaining English sketch comedy with a touch of the surreal. There’s BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner, the Bad Vicar, the Lost Tribe of the Garden Center, and (best of all) the Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar. I find the latter so amusing that I can hardly keep from bursting into gales of laughter every time I’m waiting to be served at Sumo Salad (which no doubt says much more about me than it does Mitchell and Webb).
Still on the subject of television, Channel Nine is rerunning Friends at 6:00 nightly. Sad to admit I was quite a fan of the show in its original run, so it’s nice to get home from work and turn it on in the background. For some reason though (probably to do with the earlier time slot) the powers that be at Nine are butchering the hell out of any even slightly risque content, leaving rather jarring jumps in its place…
Ross: What is the name of Chandler’s father’s all male drag review?
Rachel (leaping up): Viva Las!
(cut to Chandler looking disgruntled amongst uproarious audience laughter)
Chandler: Unfortunately that’s true.
…rather hard to follow I think.
On a more personal note I’m feeling rather disgruntled myself this week. Sam – who’s been doing a traineeship with up for the last 18 months or so – had decided to leave the company, tomorrow being her last day. This means that the office is going back to a dead-boring all male environment. In a previous entry moaning about the now-departed cute girl at the supermarket over the road I commented that starting the day with a smile from a pretty girl makes work a lot more bearable. It seems that that’s even more true when you’re actually working alongside said pretty girl. And in addition to any totally inappropriate pulchitrudinous aspects Sam is smart, efficient, a quick learner and generally pretty cool (not to mention that from the all important giant-personal-ego viewpoint she laughs at most of my jokes) so while I’m going to miss her on a personal level the company is going to miss her too. But hey, lunch on the company budget tomorrow, so it’s not all bad 🙂
Additionally on the upside, feeling sad about something real – as opposed to just being generally depressed – is actually quite refreshing.
Well, now I’ve potentially opened myself up to all kinds of sexual harassment suits I suppose I’d better go 🙂
PS: A quick web search suggests that while, strictly speaking, “pulchitrudinous” retains its meaning of “physical beauty” it has in the last few decades… taken on a connotation of, shall we say, a much earthier kind of appeal (thank you Wikipedia). For the sake of clarity I would like to state that in this particular instance I intended “pulchitrudinous” as a humerous, faux-pompous substitude for “attractiveness” and nothing more. You know, just to be perfectly clear 🙂
PPS: The missing word is “Gaygas”
Foam related antics and reckless endangerment of compact cars.
OK, well I haven’t made an entry in ages, so I figured I’d better jump on and make some attempt at doing so, lest the Wyrmlog turn into one of those abandoned relics from the golden age of Blogging that litter the web like the tumbled ruins of an ancient civilisation (there, that’s a good start).
So it’s the Labour Day public holiday, and I’m celebrating by labouring – that is going into the office and catching up on some work. But that’s OK – I’ll get paid for both the holiday and the time I’m giving up, and with no one else in the office I can fire up some internet radio and listen to cheesy 80’s music with no complaints.
The more observant of readers may have noticed that it was my 32nd birthday last week. How very depressing, I’m practically ancient now. To celebrate, the family went out to Savinni’s in Mount Lawley on Saturday night. The food was excellent (as it usually is) although the service was a little bit dodgy – but then they were extremely busy, so I can forgive them. Katie (who isn’t technically family, but might as well be *Lest anyone get over-excited by this statement I would like to point out that she’s practically family because we’ve known each other for decades – we’re just friends people!) wanted to go dancing/clubbing afterwards, but even in the unlikely event that dancing/clubbing was something I’d actually enjoy (as opposed to regarding with unreserved horror :)) I was far too tired after helping Fabian move all day.
Now that was a fun way to spend the day. Matt, Ryan and Myself turned up to Fabian’s place mid-morning and spent about the next two hours hauling trash down his precipitous driveway in the blazing sun, while he was out and about dealing with some kind of “IKEA emergency”. Well, actually I jest, he turned up not long after we started and joined in. We then spent the better part of a half hour debating on what we wanted for lunch (we ended up settling for kebabs as none of the local fish and chip places seemed to be open), and then drove around in a two car/one trailer convoy picking up new furniture from various places, one of which kept us waiting for about 45 minutes before informing us they didn’t actually have what we’d arranged to pick up from them. (This journey was made all the more exciting by my salvaging some extremely large sheets of foam insulation that someone was throwing out and having no other place to put them than in the passenger cabin of the ute I was sharing with Ryan)
We then hauled said furniture over to Fabian’s new mansion. I say mansion because it has about five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gigantic kitchen and dining area, and a home theatre room with built in projector. Oh, and a small chandelier in the hallway. That counts as a mansion in my book. Ryan and I had great fun testing out the acoustics by bawling bits of opera at the top of our lungs, while Matt and Fabes cringed (as Fabian observed, Ryan’s version of Oh Sol Le Mio would be a great introduction to his new neighbours, many of whom are probably Italian and could therefore fully understand the rather obscene version of the lyrics he was using).
It was then back to Fabian’s place to load as much furniture, boxes and other junk into the ute-with-trailer as we could for one last run over to the mansion. Unfortunately I needed to get home to prepare for dinner, so Matt and I had to leave before the improvised “bed sheets and three bits of rope” baggage containment system we devised to hold everything in was put to the test (I hope it worked, otherwise the roads would have been littered with Fabianallia for miles).
The trip home was once again complicated by foam, as we passed the same house that was throwing out sheets of the stuff, and Matt decided to grab the quite substantial pile of it that I’d left behind. Unfortunately he was driving a rather small and beaten up Hyundai rather than his usual beast, and the only place the stuff would fit was rammed through the back, filling the rear of the vehicle from floor to ceiling with the hatchback wide open – the general dearth of rope once again coming back to haunt us. He successfully managed to make it all the way down the freeway to my place though without crashing or getting pulled over for reckless endangerment of a compact car – so that’s all right then.
So, a good day was had by all (except possibly Fabian’s new neighbours) and Fabes should be more or less moved in by now (there was still moving planned for today apparently).
Well my self determined lunch break is now over, and I’d better get back to it. People waiting on emails, expect them soon!
A big damn new start
So, I’m going over to Fabian’s place tomorrow, and he’s insisting that I bring my still-in-development Firefly card game, Plyin’ the Black (apparently people like it – I’m as surprised as anyone). So I fire up Open Office to print out a new copy of the rules. It tries to open the rules document as an ASCII file.
“That’s weird” I think, but I figure that if the .odt file is corrupt, I always have the .pdf version I saved. So I go to open that. No dice, Adobe won’t recognise it as a valid pdf.
Suspecting that something is up, I check out some of the other files in the directory. Then all the files in the directory. They’re all corrupt!
There’s only one explanation. I’ve been got at by the Hands of Blue!
Now normally I’d be in complete despair at this point – months of work down the drain. But I’m actually quite blase about it. All of the core mechanics of the game are in my head, and this gives me the opportunity to start over again without the baggage of all the arbitary rules I made up to get the game working in the first place. So Plyin’ the Black will rise from the ashes! (insert obligatory comments about big damn heroes, doing the impossible and being mighty. Oh and she’s our witch.)
(The only downside is I’ll have to type out all the rules again in an authentic Firefly accent. Last time I was talking like a cowboy for a week!)
In other news I have a new monitor. A 22″ HD LCD, which takes up a lot less room and has a much sharper and brighter image than the decrepit old CRT I was using. I’ve still got to get the resolution and colours completely calibrated, but it’s a major improvement. I’ve finally joined the 21st century! (in terms of monitors at any rate 🙂
One Word
SORRY
(According to the cover of the Sunday Times over the weekend most West Australians don’t want to say that. But screw them. Anyway, the stories reported in the Sunday Times have a tenuous connection to reality at best)
I would have called this ‘Satellite of Love’, but Dr Alice Roberts wasn’t at the dig 🙂
The ABC (sorry, as of last week it’s ABC 1) is currently playing repeats of Time Team on Tuesday nights, and tonight it was the Castle Howard episode. So I was watching, and decided to have a look at the place on Google Earth. I head to Yorkshire, and do a search which takes me right there. I zoom in to have a look at the walled garden they’re digging in….. Are those trenches!?
Yep! A big trench right across the walled garden!
So I zoom out to the west lawn. More trenches!
Has the Google satellite captured Time Team at work?
It sure looks like it! 😀
Now I won’t swear it’s actually the Time Team dig. But the trenches are in the right places, and seem to be the right shape. In fact (given that the trenches in the walled garden have been extended, but there are none on the north lawn) I’d be willing to date the photographs to the morning of day three. There’s a bit of a mystery in that one of the trenches (trench 2?) is missing from the west lawn, but possibly they closed it and replaced the turf before opening up the north lawn.
So yeah, how about that then?
(The location is 54° 7’14.46″ N 0°54’34.09″ W for those who want to take a look)
Big day tomorrow!
