The Laxatives were Super Effective

Terrible insomnia last night. When I finally did get off to sleep I dreamt that I was hand crafting miniature figures of characters from Little Orphan Annie, a project that also (for some reason) required a miniature replica of Bassendean Oval decorated with a gigantic beer advertisement. I can only blame too much cheese.

Anyway, you may (or may not) have noticed that there hasn’t been much activity on the Wyrmlog throughout the last month. This is because – in addition to the usual stress in the run up to the festive season – I was dealing with a potentially serious health issue. Without going into too much hideously organic detail I was suffering a series of intestinal upsets allied with strange abdominal pains, which led my doc to order a full endoscopy and colonoscopy, which for the uninitiated means sticking cameras into both ends of my poor, abused body to try and figure out what the hell was going on.

Now of course the worst case scenario was cancer…

And while based on my symptoms there was nothing to particularly indicate cancer there was nothing to not indicate it either. So until I got the tests done I was in a state of some nervousness. By which I mean only just staving off blind, screaming panic by sheer effort of will, which left very little time for such things as writing blog entries.

So, I spent the weekend before Christmas not eating and downing vast quantities of various nasty liquids and pills that did a quite effective job at aggressively clearing out the entire length of my digestive system, and on Monday went in to hospital to have cameras go adventuring where no cameras had gone before. These – naturally – turned up nothing more than a bit of general inflammation and mild diverticulitis which while not completely explaining my abdominal pains managed to rule out any nefarious malignancies about to drag me into an early grave. Thank God.

Since then I’ve been regaining my mental equilibrium courtesy of turkey sandwiches (perhaps the most reliably enjoyable aspect of the holiday season), Minecraft and a number of really excellent books I got for Christmas. I can particularly recommend The Martian by Andy Weir which I received at about 12:30 on Christmas day and finished at 11:30 the same night, having been quite unable to put it down. I’m also working my way through The World of Ice and Fire, which Rebecca and Dom kindly got me, knowing my penchant for getting way too into the background detail of fantasy settings.

(On that note, could it be any more obvious that the Andals are Anglo-Saxon expies? “The Axe”, c’mon! And what’s up with all the Lovecraft references? Oh, and a proper map would be nice. You know, this really sounds like I don’t like the book – nothing could be further from the truth, it’s just that fulsome praise is boring to both write and read, so I’m merely nitpicking at a really excellent work. Go and buy it!)

Anyway, so that’s what’s up. I was worried I might die, but it turns out I probably won’t any time soon. I hope you’ll all agree that this is a good thing 😀

PS: World Without End was pretty good, wasn’t it? Nora von Waldstätten, wowee! Although why did they make the Tower of London look nothing like the actual Tower of London?

PPS: It’s too hot today!

Obladee-Obladah

So, over the weekend I had very slow, very erratic internet for about half an hour each morning before it dropped out for the rest of the day. I also couldn’t go out anywhere and do anything interesting because the Telstra man might turn up and need access to the flat. So I was isolated, trapped and miserable – a condition only slightly alleviated by re-reading the entire run of Scary-Go-Round in book form and crushing the Ottoman Empire in Civ 5 (try to convert my cities to your heathen religion will you?!)

Tonight I’m doing a sleep study as part of my long term plan to get on CPAP, get some decent sleep, have the energy to join the gym behind my complex, lose weight, get healthy, get confident, become suave and sophisticated and marry Florence Welch. This is a good thing, but it means that I can’t have any caffeine today, so not only am I suffering from net withdrawal but my head feels like it’s imploding.

In any case, here is possibly the most perfect video ever put up on YouTube – Dehydrated Spinning Blue Peter Cat.

An amazing fusion of vision and music that is at once hypnotic, strange, disturbing, jolly and fundamentally pointless. Go Internet!

It Begins

My landline is being very erratic. Telstra are going to come look at it, then decide whether they’re going to charge me for coming to look at it. Don’t know how often I’ll be able to hop online over the weekend, but it seems to be holding for now.

In any case, we’ve started on the road to H.O.L with the proposed foundation of Church and Munch.

Golden arches: Businessman wants to build McDonald’s in a church

A FAST-FOOD lovin’ entrepreneur has come up with a unique idea to entice people back into the Church.

Build a McDonald’s in it.

Paul Di Lucca’s McMass Project aims to get the congregation back by turning communion into a Happy Meal.

I believe there was a ‘rave church’ in London in the 90’s that offered communion in the form of consecrated Big Macs, but this really cuts out the middle man. Break out your Sponks!

How to Boost Your Flickr Stats

Put the word “Cock” into the description.

In the last two days my recently posted photo of Green & Co has had over 40 views from people searching for “cock”, “penis or cock”, “cocks”, “penis or cock or xxx” and other variations.

Seriously, if you’ve selected Flickr for your pornography needs you need to have a good, long look at your life choices.

Oh the Humanity!

This article is just too funny! I mean a Murdoch Journalist couldn’t possibly have a reason to criticise Netflix, could they?

FOR the past 12 months, Aussies have been begging for US TV and movie streaming service Netflix to launch in Australia. The company finally announced yesterday that it will be in March, but prepare to be disappointed.

Netflix in Australia will have a lacklustre library of titles, as shown by the fact that yesterday’s launch titles were mediocre at best and did not include any of the big exclusives that have garnered Netflix popularity, including House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

Harry Tucker – loyal Newscorp employee – we salute you!

International Addressing

One shouldn’t laugh at foreigners for getting things that are obvious to oneself completely wrong, but sometimes it’s pretty hard.

For instance, the person from the UK who wrote us an angry email today because they couldn’t use one of our websites to send their brother a gift. Apparently the website kept rejecting the postcode, which simply isn’t good enough.

The address they were trying to send to?

Street Address: West Beach Adelaide SA New South Wales 5024
Suburb: Adelaide
State: New South Wales
Postcode: 08

Which is more or less the equivalent of…

Street Address: Sopley Southampton Hants Cumbria BH23
Suburb: Southampton
County: Cumbria
Postcode: 016973

…and no more likely to result in a successful delivery.

I know that international address formats can be confusing – I’ve had to deal with lots of them while coding some of our systems – but randomly throwing chunks of them at a form in the hopes that the computer will somehow be able to sort it all out can only be described as optimism of the most wild variety.

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