Category: Old and Uncategorised

Over the last few weeks I’ve been heading into work early a fair bit. No particular reason, I’ve just been in the mood. This has meant that when 4:00pm rolls around I’ve had the choice of working some extra time (and getting paid more) or going home early. Some days I’ve worked through, others I’ve scarpered.

On the days that I’ve scarpered I’ve generally got home at about 5:15. Just about the first thing I’ve done (after dumping my bag on the floor and turning on the lights) is turn on the TV so I won’t get distracted and forget to turn it on at 6:00 for Doctor Who (hey -I freely admit I have no life OK? *g*). This has resulted in me catching a fair bit of a new ABC science fiction show which I shall now blather on about.

The show is apparently called Silver Sun and is set in the 2050’s aboard a spacecraft taking a bunch of cryogenically frozen settlers to a new solar system. For no apparent reason (apart from that it’s squarely aimed at the teen market) most of the crew are whining teenagers (actually it might be something to do with the voyage taking 90 years so they want to start the crew off as young as possible, but let’s not let inconvenient facts get in the way shall we?). There are four or so adults on board, but one of them (glorifying in the title of ‘Commander Cyriax’) has been possessed by a space slug, so he probably doesn’t count. Oh and there’s two younger kids, no doubt intended to capture pre-teen viewers and keep them hooked until they move into the main demographic.

So that’s the set up. What I’ve seen so far of the plot and characterisation are pretty much what you’d expect for a show aimed at 14 year olds – I could write paragraphs on the bad science alone – but I’m still pretty impressed. Mostly by the sets, costumes and special effects. They’re actually fairly good. When I was growing up ABC science fiction was generally on a par with Plan 9 From Outer Space, but this show seems to have a budget totaling more than $2.50. And it’s harmless enough when there’s nothing else on – the end theme by itself is worth a listen, some manager in their late 30’s obviously thought that mid-90’s chipmunk techno is what the young people are rockin’ out to these days 🙂

But the main point of this rant is to poke fun at the ABC website department. In an attempt to figure out what the hell I was actually watching (since I’ve never caught more than the last half) I went over to www.abc.net.au. I found the appropriate section easily enough, Silver Sun seems to be one of their flagship shows at the moment, and while poking around the site found the episode guide. And while browsing this episode guide I noticed something rather interesting…

OK, the guide (obviously) has a listing for every episode, but only the ones that have actually screened are activated as links. Clicking on one of these takes you to a plot synopsis of the episode on a separate page. And the really interesting thing is that these synopsis pages are numbered sequentially…

Naturally I had to try and see if the future synopsis pages are available by bumping up the number in the page name, and sure enough, they are! You can view the plot of every single upcoming episode of Silver Sun by the simple expedient of tweaking the number in the URL. Spoiler city! Well done ABC! 😀

So yeah, basic rule of web design. Don’t upload anything you don’t want people to see, because insouciant provocateurs (such as myself) will inevitably find it 😉

Hmmm, before I go I’ll do a quick music round up. House of Cards by Dollar Bar, great tune with some relatively clever lyrics. You Lot by Orbital, great sample. I’m Gonna Haunt You by Fabienne De Sol – bluesy spooky cool, a lot like a Shivaree track. Chicken Payback by the Bees – complete and utter stupidity but fun stupidity. Mickey Mouse Mofo by Mocky, again clever lyrics, although with an obvious language advisory for those who are sensitive to these things 🙂

(Given that I was only able to find lyrics for one of those – if you can call a sample a “lyric” – I think I’ll have to transcribe them myself *sigh*)

Well how about that. MySQL version 4.0.20 crashes if you try and paste Anglo-Saxon letters (

From an email I sent to a designer last week…

“In reponse to your request, text can be made to blink on and off on a web page by use of the ‘blink’ tag, however we strongly recommend against this for the following reasons,

1. It is only supported by Netscape and Gecko based browsers, which means users of Internet Explorer (currently about 75% of users) will not see any effect from it.
2. Workarounds to make text blink in Internet Explorer are extremely complicated and time consuming.
3. The blink tag is not part of the W3C HTML standard and therefore there is no guarantee that it will continue to work in new versions of browsers – even those that currently support it.
4. Blinking text is incredibly irritating to visitors, particularly when more than two or three words are set to blink.
5. It is the most hated and derided tag in the entire HTML language (as a Google search on ‘blink tag HTML’ will confirm) and any designer using it opens themselves up to unlimited ridicule.

That said, if the client insists we will put blinking text in – on the understanding that most people visiting the site will be unable to see it, and most of those who can see it will be annoyed by it.”

He decided against using blinking text 🙂

I spent a good part of today updating the standard pseudo-legalese that our template generator puts into newly created client websites, during which process I discovered this…

“…we receives and stores any informations you enter on our website…”

Yes. Our privacy policy was apparently written by Gollum.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Democracy doesn’t work.

That’s right boys and girls, the Federal Election carnival has rolled into town! Get out there and vote today, because if you don’t the Government will hunt you down like a dog! Hooray for compulsory voting! Hooray!

Yes, it’s election day. Will John Howard and his evil minions retain power in the halls of Canberra, or will they be ousted by Mark Latham and his evil minions? Only time (and every bleedin’ media outlet for the next week) will tell!

I got up early and voted as soon as I could. The polls open at 8:00am and there’s one right around the corner at Mercy Hospital, so I was there at 8:05. This isn’t down to some kind of earnest political zeal on my part, it just means you can get it over with quickly and don’t have to queue. Straight in, straight out. It also means you avoid harasment from the various parasites (candidates, campaigners, ‘how-to-vote’ card hander-outers etc.) who acrete around polling stations as the day wears on. It’s 8:30 in the morning and my democratic franchise is well and truly exercised, meaning I can get on and do other things instead.

As for the parties involved this year, the comments I made the last time we went through this ringmarole are still fairly valid. The Liberal/National Coalition are as conservative, bigoted and pseudo-fascist as ever, and have opened a new line in bald-faced lies concerning the war in Iraq and international terrorism (Australia is the third member of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ by the way, we just don’t get as much publicity as the US and UK – thank God). Labour have managed to slightly reinvent themselves thanks to their new leader Mark Latham – they actually seem slightly different to the Coalition for the first time in over a decade. The Democrats on the other hand have totally self-destructed. In the last election they were close to being a real alternative party – lots of candidates, a good deal of respect and interest from the electorate and a real chance of wielding some effective power in the Senate. Thanks to a very nasty leadership struggle (which deposed Natasha Stott Despoja) and a number of frankly ridiculous alcohol related incidents in the House their political star has well and truly fallen. They were getting 10% of the vote in some seats last time, but voters have abandoned them in droves and the polls indicate they’ll be lucky to get 2% this time.

The Greens on the other hand have a good chance of getting somewhere. They seem to have absorbed a lot of disaffected Democrat voters, and while they aren’t as strong as the Democrats were they’re getting to the point where they might weild a bit of influence. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party is no longer Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party having dumped Pauline Hanson in a series of vicious and incomprehensible internal struggles (try to make a bunch of rednecks, conservatives, racists and petty neighbourhood dictators toe a party line – good luck!). They’re now just One Nation, and if anything are even worse. The Natural Law party seem to have dropped below the radar, but in the nutcase stakes have been replaced by the much more worrying Family First.

Almost all of the many Family First candidates (including their leader) are Pastors in the same ultra-conservative pentecostal church – however they deny any connection between their policies and their church whatsoever. Nonetheless in the last week they’ve encouraged their supporters to monitor and catalogue ‘strongholds of Satan’ in their neighbourhoods (their handy list includes bottle shops, mosques, and Hindu and Buddhist Temples) and have said that lesbians should be burnt at the stake. Well thought out and rational policy making there I’m sure we’ll all agree!

So, how did I vote? Well my general policy for the Lower House over the last few years (quick reminder – in Australia you don’t just choose one party/candidate, you number them all in descending order of preference) has been…

1. Democrats – They used to be good!
2. Greens – I agree with most of their policies, and the ones that I don’t agree with don’t matter because they’ll never have enough power to implement them
3. Anyone else who seems to have some decent policies
4. Anyone I don’t know too much about and who seems fairly harmless
5. Labour – They’re slightly better than the Coalition
6. Liberal/National Coalition – Getting towards the bottom of the barrel here
7. Fascists, psychopaths and other dangerous lunatics (One Nation, Family First, etc)

In the Senate I’ve voted basically the same, although inversing the Greens and Democrats, since the Greens have a better chance to do some good there.

This year however I’ve decided that getting rid of the Coalition is the most important thing. I won’t disclose exactly how I voted – but Labour (the only party big enough to take down the Coalition) have got a much better ranking from me. Oh, and the Democrats have done a bit worse, since they’re just plain hopeless now.

So yeah, that’s election 2004. I have a horrible sinking feeling the Coalition is going to win. Again 🙁

OK, I haven’t had time to write anything in a while, and I don’t have time to write much tonight, but as a Geek I could hardly let this pass. Congratulations to Bert Rutan and Scaled Composites! I mean we all knew they were going to win, but it’s still one hell of an achievement none the less 🙂

(What the heck am I talking about? Google it for crying out loud!)

Oh, and while we’re here Girl Anachronism by the Dresden Dolls is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.

Update in a few days! I promise! Probably!

Well I’m back.

I did intend to make an entry detailing the rest of my time in the UK somewhere between arriving home on Wednesday evening and starting work again on Monday morning, but didn’t get around to it. I’ll probably do something about it later this week. Suffice to say work is as depressing as ever, but at least I’ve got a funky new chair. I’ve done a little bit of work on Wyrmworld – specifically redirecting all the old Abandoned in Perth pages to the new hosting, and I’ve played a lot of Civ III. Oh, and the new floor is fantastic – I feel like the apartment is too good for me now 🙂

Work beckons so I’d better go.

P.S. Thanks for the tip on Worcester Helen – don’t know what I was thinking 🙂

As Ali pointed out this morning the Leicester Tigers are a rugby team, not a football (ie: soccer) team. I could make the point that if I was from New South Wales or Queensland I’d be perfectly correct in calling them a football team, but I’m not, hence this correction.

Hmmm, let’s see, what does everyone mean when they say football? Here’s a partial list compiled from a quick web search…

• United Kingdom: Soccer
• United States: Gridiron
• Canada: Canadian Football or Gridiron
• Australia (WA,SA,VIC): Australian Rules Football
• Australia (QLD,NSW): Rugby League or Rugby Union
• New Zealand: Rugby Union
• Republic of Ireland: Gaelic Football or Soccer
• South Africa: Soccer
• Almost everywhere else: Soccer

Wonder if there’s any I’ve missed out?

Well, it’s been ages since |’ve made an entry hasn’t it? This is of course because I’m still in the UK and…

1. Have been staying with various psuedo-luddite relatives who don’t have computers or internet access
2. I’ve been far too busy doing and seeing stuff to be bothered writing

But today I have some time off, and access to a computer so I figured I might as well do a bit of catching up

I’m in Leicester at the moment visiting Helen, Rob and Ali. I’m not staying with Helen and Rob because their flat is a bit on the small side and they’re still on thier honeymoon and hence wouldn’t want me clumping around the place while they’re trying to be newlyweds *grin*, and I’m not staying with Ali because it would just be the two of us which might look a bit suspicious. Instead I’m staying just down the road from Ali with Emma, who is safely married and hence it’s all repectable.

I met Emma and her husband Phil at Helen and Rob’s wedding the weekend before last. I was going to write a long blog entry about the wedding, but I’ve been too busy and it probably needs more care and attention that I could give working on someone else’s computer (that may sound odd, but I’m sure all Geeks would agree with me, you’re never quite as comfortable or efficient on someone else’s machine than you are on your own). So I’ve decided to write it all up when I get home. Suffice to say it was the best wedding/reception I’ve ever been to, even if I did have to sleep in a tent and the toilet block was full of spiders *grin*. Plenty of people dressed up – most impressively Rob’s dad and a guy who came as a pirate ship (did I mention it was pirate themed? The reception that is, not the wedding), and I got to meet plenty of Ali/Helen/Rob’s friends, who were all pretty cool, including the aforementioned Emma and Phil.

I would be staying with Emma and Phil as opposed to just Emma, but Phil is in Belgium building a Coca-Cola plant. He gets back today some time. Then they’re both heading off tomorrow to swim up and down the Thames as practice for a holiday where they’re going to tour the Cyclades by swimming from island to island. Their house is really nice, particularly since I’m sleeping in the spare room which is where the computer is *grin*. There are two slightly eccentric features though. The staircase is incredibly steep, the steps are normal width (or is it “depth” when you’re talking stairs?), but they’re really tall, probably 50% again of their depth. This makes them a lot of fun to climb up and down but I wouldn’t like to try it if I was elderly. The second interesting feature is that the bathroom door doesn’t have a handle. It doesn’t even have a hole drilled for a handle. This makes it rather difficult to close – you have to grab the edge, swing it towards you really hard, then pull your hand away before it gets crushed. And of course with no handle there’s no lock either. The general policy is to keep it closed when you’re in there, and wide open at all other times, which has so far avoided any embarrasing incidents.

(Oh, and just as a point of interest Emma is uncannily similar to an Emma I know back in Australia – same height and build, same speech patterns, even a really strong facial resemblance. If it wasn’t for the fact that this Emma doesn’t have a Scottish accent and is an A&E Doctor [A&E – That’s “ER” or “Casualty” for the rest of us, I presume it stands for “Accident and Emergency”] I’d have trouble telling them apart. I figure they must be psychic twins or doppelgangers or something 🙂

Anyway I thought I’d summarise what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks, so here we go…

• Friday/Saturday/Sunday – Helen and Rob’s Wedding at Ashingdon, and pirate reception at the Museum of Power in Maldon. Got there and back to London via train. Met quite a few people – most importantly Helen, Ali and Rob since we’d never actually met up in real life before, which was slightly weird but seems to have gone OK 🙂 Also Helen’s brother John (he of the beard and drums), Mark (he of… well I was going to say Kevin Sorbo but that’s just cruel ;), Emma and Phil, Will and Harriet and Rachel and Matt (who for various reasons I probably shouldn’t put as an “and” but it makes them easier to remember so I will for the time being). Arrived back in London on the Sunday just in time to see my brother off at Heathrow, and meet up with my Aunt Mary from Southampton.
• Monday – A fairly lazy day in and around Warsash with Aunt Mary. Did some shopping in the morning then visited Tichfield village and abbey, and Lee-on-Solent.
• Tuesday – Caught the bus into Southampton and did the city walls and some of the museums. Large parts of the walls were closed off for renovation which was rather irritating. Also found an internet cafe and checked my mail.
• Wednesday – Train from Southhampton to Bristol, then bus to Glastonbury. Climbed the Tor (which almost killed me), visited the Chalice Well Gardens, then spent several hours wandering around the ruins of the Abbey taking way too many photographs. Then bus back to Bristol, train back to Southampton and dinner at the pub in Warshash with Aunt Mary.
• Thursday – Driven out to Avebury by Aunt Mary. Visited West Kennet Longbarrow, Silbury Hill (which is BIG), Avebury itself and then Old Sarum on the way back. Took way too many photos yet again despite my camera battery being on the verge of death. In the evening Sheila and Mike dropped around to say hi.
• Friday – Visited Fishbourne palace with Mary, then she dropped me off in Portsmouth where I did the historic shipyard thing. Had a quick look at the Warrior, did the Victory tour (which was good although it left the really interesting questions unanswered – such as “Why did Nelson ask Hardy to kiss him?” and “Is it true that the sailors tapped into the barrel holding his body to drink the rum?”), and the Mary Rose which is still being sprayed despite them promising us 18 years ago it would all be done by now. Then caught the Gosport Ferry across the harbour and got a bus back to Warsash.
• Saturday – Driven out to Stonehenge by Aunt Mary. Did the whole Stonehenge tourist thing, despite the fact that I probably knew more about the monument than most of the people gawking at it (conceited? moi? ;-). Then headed off to see the Great Cursus, which proves my point because I seemed to be the only tourist who knew it was there – everyone else just stood around gawking at the barrows on top of the hill. Then did Salisbury and the Cathedral.
• Sunday – Caught the train from Southampton to Birmingham. Had to forciably stop myself from singing the “Manchester England England” song from Hair all day because my brain seems to think they’re one and the same. Tried to catch a train from Birmingham/Manchester to Leicester only to discover they were working on the lines and I had to take a bus instead. Went to buy a bus ticket to Leicester only to be sold one to Worcester instead (apparently British Rail are now employing the hearing impaired in customer service areas, which is admirable if somewhat inefficient) but it didn’t matter because in the confusion of trying to fit a trainload of people onto one bus no-one ever bothered to check our tickets. Eventually arrived in Leicester and was met by Helen, Ali and Rob. Went shopping and bought Mexican food for dinner, including two avocados for guacamole. Rob and I made the guacamole, but had to “force-ripen” the avocado in Ali’s microwave, which resulted in an extremely frightening grainy green paste that no one was really willing to eat – although I did try it for reasons of science. Had dinner at Helen and Rob’s flat before heading back to Ali’s and retiring at Emma’s.
• Monday – Still alive despite the guacamole. Went into the city with Ali in the morning. Had a look around the shopping district, and then did the cathedral and guildhall. Were ambushed by a predatory “Welcomer” in the Cathedral who gave us a 20 minute lecture on Richard the 3rd, Saint Martin and the Leicester Tigers (the regiment, not the football team) and then forced us to sign the guestbook. Had reheated Chinese for lunch. That evening we went out to dinner at a carvery that everyone calls the Foxhunter but actually isn’t with Helen, Rob, Mark and Rachel. There was a semi-amusing man doing the carving who said “Good Morning” to everyone. Ate far too much and got to bed far too late, so overall a good night 🙂
• Tuesday – Met up with Helen and Rob at Ali’s in the morning and tried to figure out stuff to do. Ended up on a quest to find the giant cheese shown on the tourist map of Leicestershire. This took us to a pleasant market town with a name like “Stratford” but which wasn’t called “Stratford” where we critiqued an “Australian” shop (the food was authentic the rest of the stock was rubbish) and had luch at a cafe where you have to ask for mayonaise. Then we checked out the Library and got rather wet on the way back to the car. Next we went to a historic church (at a place called ‘Tickencote’ I think) with really impressive carvings, and also got rather wet on the way back to the car, me in particular since I’d left my jacket in the car to dry out from the last time. Then we drove around for a few hours looking for the giant cheese, but couldn’t find it. We did go past Belvoir castle and Harlaxton Manor (where they filmed the external shots for The Haunting) though. Then we dropped in on Harriet and Will and had apple crumble before returning home. Dinner was spicy pork at Helen and Rob’s, where Ali and I assembled flat packed shelving in return for food 🙂
• Wednesday – Did a load of washing then walked into the city on my own in and spent too much money buying books and CDs. Purchases included the Killers, the Thrills, The Fiery Furnances and an Ash CD that somehow managed to contain all the songs I like by Ash, thus in one fell swoop eliminating the need for me to buy all their albums (good thinking Ash marketing department). I then checked out the castle gardens, but didn’t actually get up onto the mote as the steps were being occupied by a large number of threatening looking young people who glared menacingly at me as soon as I came into view and continued to glare menacingly until I fled. I looked at the canal instead. Walked back to Emma’s, then over to Ali’s for dinner with Helen and Rob. Had shepherd’s pie which wasn’t actually shepherds pie because it was made with beef, carrot and bacon (and potato obviously). Apple pie, custard, Uno and fake Jenga for dessert.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to. No idea what I’m going to do today, but dinner at Ali’s seems a distinct possibility. Well, whatever I decide to do, I’d probbaly better go and do it 🙂