Had a fairly sociable weekend all things considered - a couple of hours at each of aegis_nullius and dang_dodo_ditty's combined birthday gathering at MOtown on Friday, sIn predrinks at miaowkytten's on Saturday (though no sIn), and Ingles for some of notsomighty's crew on Sunday night. Was good to catch up with people. The 'roo at the Ingles is yummy, though service was a bit poor.

Discovered Tequila Rose at the middle gathering. belzacue is evil.

Caved and got the boots from Zomp on my way to Maylands on Friday. Classic mid heeled calf length, nothing too fancy, just very good quality and something I can wear around town without risking fatal death. Just need to put protective soles on them now.

Missed the window for voting in angriest's best SF TV of all time poll, and Triple J's all time hottest 100. Oops.

It's been a while since last time I watched that movie.

The cast is every bit as excellent as I remember, and the script starts reasonably well. But from some point a little after the halfway mark..

IT MAKES NO SENSE!!

not quite sure why I bought the DVD now...

Somewhat belated post, just for completeness really.

As I already mentioned on twitter and stalkbook, I made another acquisition three weeks ago (5th of June), some 'Fancy's from Zu. (rabbit1080 got some shiny shoes that day too :) )

Anyhoo, these ones:

Probably a bit too flimsy for much in the way of stomping, but very comfy for sitting around in (nice soft PU), and I'm liking having a a pair that are somewhat lower key than my taboo-2021s while still being a tad more elegant than most of my collection. They're a better fit around my scrawny ankles than anything else I own, too. Most excellent for cocktail parties and the like :)

(oh, and in hunting for the images I just found out that Zu are now having an online-only end of season 40% off sale on those ones. Bastards! I'm used to dealing with that for laptops &c, but not shoes..)

I knew I was following @warrenellis for a reason.

This morning he linked to a fantastic review of the next Transformers installment:
 Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie

Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

I'm reminded of rabbit1080's thesis that the second matrix film is actually a ballet.

This was all over the fandom end of my flist yesterday, but I'm guessing many of the rest of you have yet to see this six minute Buffy/Twilight mashup showing just what happens when Edward falls for Buffy.

Cheers stephen_dedman and akire_yta for linking it yesterday, and solkana for reminding me about it today.

I usually only drive in flats or bare feet, but I tried driving back from Karrinyup in my Filippo Raphaels today - they're a lot lower than anything else I've got, and I'd tried using toes only on my way out in socks.

Right foot I barely noticed the difference, but lost a lot of finesse on my clutch foot, so I lost that one the second traffic lights I got to. Still less hassle than changing altogether on arrival and departure.

(oh, and lol at current music - totally unplanned! Better not be prophetic :-P )

Tarago River "Shadows of Blue" is very creamy, very mild, and very more-ish.

$54/kg at Fig Jam (9443 8233), The Mezz, cnr Scarborough Beach Rd & Flinders, Mt Hawthorn.

This evening I witnessed a (non-fatal) accident. I was cycling down Thomas St, and had just crossed Kings park road and was queuing to head west when I saw another cyclist head west from the corner I had just arrived at and get hit by a car that was heading south. The actual collision was on the far corner of the vehicle from me, but I think they went over the bonnet. Moments later (the car had stopped at this point) the cyclist staggered back off the road, and was quickly surrounded by bystanders, so I focussed on calling an ambulance.

Call initiated at 17:53, was off the phone by 17:55 (why don't mobile providers route the call to the right state??), ambulance arrived a little after 18:05.

I found out later that one of the witnesses happened to be an ER professional on her way home - all I noticed at first was that someone who seemed to know what she was doing had taken charge of first aid. The 33yo victim seemed in a pretty good state considering - conscious the whole time. Lent the headlamp of my bicycle to someone who wanted to check his eye response, but mostly I just kept an eye out for the ambulance.

Police arrived by 18:20, then I gave my eyewitness report such as it was (I knew I had a green as I headed south, and was planning on waiting for the red for heading west to vanish before I crossed, but I wasn't looking at the lights at the time of the incident), the ambulance left with the cyclist, and I very gingerly headed home. Didn't really feel up to carrying on to my Pilates class, besides which it was half over by the time I got away.

OK OK, I'll go read some Pullman already.
(my results here - high scores for highbrow and cynical but only moderate for violent and experimental). And yeah, I can't be arsed returning to Tolkien for the forseeable future.

which fantasy writer quiz following leecetheartist

Hmm

So supposedly today's the day you are meant to be able to snaffle your very own vanity URL on stalkbook (facebook.com/*username*). There's been a banner announcement on the top of the news page for days, articles in the popular press, etc etc.

But now? Announcement gone from your news feed, and while http://www.facebook.com/help.php?ref=pf still has a notice stating

"Starting at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009, you will be able to select a username at http://www.facebook.com/username. For more information, visit the Username help topic."

the linked help page is devoid of content.

(eta - as Justin just pointed out on my FB status comment, we're still half an hour out..) Still amused at sudden lack of information..

Oh, and the http://www.twitpocalypse.com/ seems to have been and gone without the sky falling. (tweet UID's exceeded 2**31).

ETA again - just snaffled http://facebook.com/shrydar . As per notsomighty, not like that one was ever in doubt, but I thought I'd explicitly decline christopher.phillips1 (as my brother says - '1' really means '2'), and christopherp just sounds like it ends with 'ferp'.

MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HD, $1000 ono

Less than 2 years old, original owner
LED backlit Matte display, one column of occasionally stuck pixels a few mm in from RHS of screen.

( detailed specs and extras )

The same model only with a perfect screen but half the hard drive spec recently sold in NZ for NZ$1950 ($1600au)

Asking price only $1000au, first best bid above hidden reserve by noon Tuesday gets it. Buyer collects unless near Perth CBD.

Comment below (screened), or SMS or email me. (laptop at jaruth dot com)

ETA - no definite bids yet - asking price down to $1k

Never could make sense of the video clip for Total Eclipse of the Heart?

Thanks to PersephoneMaewyn & DASjr, we at least now have a version where the words match the imagery...




(courtesy of kalischild, who I suspect only showed up on my friendsfriends page because I stumbled across and added the multitalented pyrotech_c3h8 a day or two back :-)

I do believe our local paper is trolling.

They've published a full page article, split between pages one and five, of 'advice' from a 36yo expat American, telling women what they should be doing in order to make it easier for him to 'hook up'.

It includes such gems as "Stop hanging out in big groups ... laughing and having a good time together". Apparently it's too intimidating, and "hinders their efforts in attracting quality men" (such as our guest writer presumably, who despite moving to our fair city expressly for the purpose, still hasn't found his "Princess Mary").

Women should also not listen to music on headphones while strolling through town, as it might discourage decent people from walking up behind them, tapping them on the shoulder and issuing those immortal words "Hey, how's it going". And walking around talking on a mobile phone? That's just right out.

There was some almost sensible stuff in the middle about how it's a bit rude the way people sometimes ask him to get back to them, then ignore any attempts he makes to do so. But then he finishes up by advising his readers to approach three new men everyday while sober and not at a bar (presumably on the off chance that eventually they'll get around to approaching him, while not actually enjoying themselves).

Or alternately he left his email address at the end of the article, and can be found most days lurking on Hay Street.

Watched the film with rabbit1080 last night. I liked it :-) And now I can share some links it was finally safe for me to follow.

Great review of the science of Trek Zero by an admitted nitpicking dork who none the less enjoyed the film here. (cheers illdrinn!)

And over here, Rogers of Kung Fu Monkey holds forth on revelatory vs transformative character arcs, as they pertain to Trek and Star Wars vs Disney. (This one courtesy of akire_yta).

Comments to this entry may contain spoilers.

Last night I dreamed that I accidentally tore up a cheque for $5000 because I thought the envelope it was in contained junk mail. Then I dreamed that I woke up, and couldn't remember whether I'd torn up the cheque in real life or just dreamed about it, though my dream self was confident the envelope existed. I knew I should still be able to get hold of the money eventually, but it was going to be a pain getting the cheque cancelled and reissued, particularly because it was from a financial institution in the US.

Weird.

eta - when I really did wake up, I remembered there was no such cheque at all :P

Ooh, it's been a little while. Last weekend I turned Old. On the Friday morning rabbit1080 and I went off to Garden City to stock up on Lush and eat some doughnuts. Also checked out Zu, who are having a sale at the moment - want to go back in dressier clothes to try some more boots. Then off to Little Creatures for brunch :)

Saturday (my actual birthday) started with a fairly quiet morning, then off to the Queens for a few hours in the afternoon. Thanks everyone who could swing by; it was lovely to see so many of you :-)

( the list )

Then in the evening rabbit1080 had another engagement to get to, and I dropped in to Hula Bula for Sarah O's birthday drinks, and got to meet some of her friends who I'd previously only seen across crowded rooms. I don't recommend the Hula Bula Hurricane - they definately have better cocktails on offer. Oh, and I got into a 'discussion' with Aaron G about which Batman movie was the worst ever ever. He was taunting me with plastic penguins, what can I say.

Last night J & I went to the house of books and ducks to catch up with that crowd for the first time in aaaages. Caught the first two episodes of Better off Ted - must watch more :-) - and the most recent Supernatural (very exciting despite being only vaguely au fait with all the context), then home for a bit before dropping in to the Republic of Barmania for some Cloud Kollective and some Brash'n'Sassy.

17km cycle and brunch out near Hillarys this morning. Quiet afternoon on the way.

So.

What's it all about? Who's emigrating from LJ, and why? My current level of knowledge is

• Dreamwidth's a LiveJournal clone, based on the same codebase


• Just like LiveJournal, you can maintain separate lists of people whose stuff you want to read and people who you trust to read your private stuff.


• Unlike LiveJournal, it uses much less emotive terminology for these capabilities ('circle' instead of 'friends list', 'reading page' instead of 'friends page' etc)


• Unlike LiveJournal, they have a Diversity Statement


• Like LJ used to be (and still is for those of us with paid accounts), they're advert free. I gather this is in part because they wish to avoid messes like this (thanks @devinjay for the link)

What have I missed?

Got an iPhone or iPod touch? Check out Clack!

The classic tile flipping game for your iPhone or iPod touch, by me :)

Tap on tiles to change their colour, and that of any neighbours indicated by pips on the tile you tap. See how quickly you can change all the tiles to gold, then come back later to see if you can solve it faster.
Easy to learn, fiendish to master, this deceptively simple puzzle game will keep you occupied for hours!
Features over 50 levels, spanning seven levels of difficulty.

"I'm not going to get any sleep tonight, am I.." - LD
"It's really good and is full of shiny stuff!" - FR

buy from iTunes today!

(Yes, I've finally shipped something. Now to continue working on the next thing while publicising the one that's out, and resisting the temptation to do a 1.1 release to fix all the glaring issues that no one but me will notice...)

Thanks again to rabbit1080 for project managing, many of you for alpha testing, and Alex Ringis for contributing audio.

Soooo.... I've some thoughts on some faux victorian scrollwork. And some ideas for extending it into a three dimensional form, and further thoughts on how to do a render based on it.

And it's reasonably trivial for me to generate vertex lists for the 2d variant in any of Python, OCaml, or what have you. And somewhere or other I've got appropriate snippets for dumping out SVG, or EPS, or OpenGL.

Or I could dive directly back into my old pipeline I used for my exhibition last year and spit out tristrips for my existing renderer, which is fine for doing slow-but-accurate images, and I'll be snaffling a second hand renderbeast next week that will be considerably faster than my lappy for prepping print-ready images or for quick turnaround on camera/lighting proofs.

But it's all so... unintegrated. I've bits and pieces all over the shop, that don't really talk to each other.. so I need to make arbitrary decisions about which stage to break things down to triangles, how to tesselate, what language to express things in.. all of which have consequences down the line. I'm suffering from what board-gamers would recognise as analysis paralysis.

I've a head full of ideas, and an open text file that's gained two lines in the past two hours. One of which is a comment.

Attended the usual small service at Belmont RSL with bunny_m, justadecoy and themink17 this morning.

Rising at 5am is early enough that it feels more like a middle-of-the-night expedition than an early start. Home sometime between seven and eight, and back to bed.

GPS makes finding an obscure side street off Great Eastern easier.

They kicked off slightly too early; dawn wasn't until after the ceremony.

I really should look up the symbolism of the multiple times they raise and lower the flag. Apparently the lack of a risen sun was why the flag was left in the 'down' state at the end.

Minor disruption as someone tried to pull into the carpark mid ceremony (the 20-odd returned servicemen were arrayed across the carpark entrance, that being where the flagpole is). They reversed back out before anyone had to talk to them, but not without triggering the glaring security sensor light from the house across the road.

As is usual for the venue, a simple, dignified and respectful service - none of the "hymns, readings, pipers and rifle volleys" that wikipedia notes the rise of. That and a chance for a quiet stroll and chat with the other three are why I choose Belmont over Kings Park.

The day shift for the nearby 24hour McDonalds actually showed up this year. (last year our traditional post-service breakfast involved walking through the drive through, as they were understaffed).