"Real" "Life"

Tiny crocheted animals

2010-05-12T20:10:00.001+10:00

I've only been making amigurumi for a week or so, but I thought I'd post some pictures of what I've been up to.

This pig was the first complicated thing I tried. It's based on a pattern from Wire My Soul, though I'm constitutionally unable to simply follow a pattern. :D

This is the second time I've tried this elephant, and I think it's a very cute pattern by Lucy Ravenscar. I'll be making more of these, for sure:

And finally, here's my favourite thing of all: a freestyle bee that I designed myself. It's inspired by the previous/next bees on the KinokoFry web comic, but simplified and 3D. I can't even tell you how cute people are when they see this. They cannot resist picking it up, squeezing it and messing with the wings. Adorable.

And for educational purposes :D the base of the bee, where you can see the colours overlapping. Because amigurumi are made as spirals, there's always going to be a bit of a mess when swapping colours.

Comfortable to be labelled an atheist

2010-02-01T17:53:00.003+11:00

Since I only update during even years, (guilty cough) here I am updating. Been reading/watching/learning a lot about atheism lately and I'm a believer! Or rather, a non-believer.

Many of my friends are roleplayers/fantasy readers/speculative fiction aficionados. People who get intrigued with exploring other worlds, and I've been thinking about faiths in other worlds, particularly how weird it would be if there were one or more gods who, you know, existed. What if prayers were answered. We've all imagined worlds like that, right? Even something as simple as D&D forces you to examine how freakish it would be if the gods actually took sides.

And wouldn't atheism be an interesting choice in a world where there were gods who made a difference? It would require an active denial of reality. An ability to see the world and say, yes, but I have *faith* in my own beliefs; a faith which transcends logic and facts.

And then I make a coffee and I'm glad I live in the real world, where atheism is rational, because there are no sky wizards here.

bringing it home

2008-05-16T17:45:00.003+10:00

You know how cats love to bring dead birds, lizards and, in rare cases, socks to their humans? Well, Printy just brought in a big piece of bacon. And then ate it in front of me.

This raises some interesting questions: Why? Why me? Where the hell did she get it? (Our neighbours? A nearby bacon tree?) Is she going to throw it up? Near me?

What was she thinking? (My best guess: CAN HAS PIG MEATZ NAO?)

LOLPRINTY macros will be looked upon with great favour and amusement.

2008-05-08T10:34:00.001+10:00

So, Prozac gives you vivid dreams and in the last week or so the nightmares have returned (why do they go? why can't they go back there?) and are so consistent that I've actually noticed a pattern. Warning, this is some freaky shit right here and possibly a window into my brain that you don't want to look through.

Phase One: something lovely happens to me, often involving cuddles and acceptance. This phase is usually very tactile and detailed. Some vaguely nasty undertones, but nothing I don't ignore using dream logic.

e.g. I discover a new creature kind of like a cat and there are two of them and they depend on me for everything and I love cats so it's all good. Sure they drink blood, but that's not really a problem, right?

Phase Two: Weird interlude. Something odd but pleasant enough happens which takes me out of the situation of phase one. Also tactile, but not so overwhelmingly lovely.

e.g. Go on a tour of a garden of alien plants. In the meantime, arrange for the first delivery of live food to the cat things, and they tear it to pieces as expected. They're also growing really fast, but nothing to worry about, right?

Phase Three: Something ghastly happens. Usually quite vague on the physical details (thank christ) but also the start of the really evil subversion/blame thing that my brain does to me in this dream.

e.g. Cat things dismember their first human victim leaving the bits in my room. It's someone I love and they're doing it because they need to (not their fault) and they wouldn't hurt me (because they love me).

Phase Four: Attempt to solve the problem which goes Very Badly.

e.g. Decide to destroy the cat things, so I capture one of them in a big glass jar (for maximum pathos) but the other one escapes. The one in the jar starts starving to death. I realise that they're silicon based lifeforms and that more of them are evolving/transforming from ahem, my anime figurines. (Wtf brain, thx for that.)

Phase Five: Realise the real solution is to destroy someone or something I love, so I do. This is fucking unrelentingly grim, sometimes involving me crying the whole time.

e.g. I have to burn all my anime figures but for some reason I can't admit to anyone that I've worked out which thing of mine they're transforming from, so instead I have to box up everything I own and throw it on to a fire, with the help of the people who don't understand why people keep getting killed by the still-at-large cat thing and are grieving for their loss.

Phase Six: no real resolution, just more self-blame. Wake up. Have a great day!

I can remember three versions of this sequence in detail and suspect that there are more. I'm hoping that writing this down will help to exorcise it, or at least improve my chances of realising that it's all a dream while I'm in there. Wish me luck, dear reader.

2008-04-08T21:40:00.003+10:00

Here's a photo of some of my favourite people wearing things that I made for them: Simon's wearing the scarf that I already posted about. Dave's got a long black and grey scarf for keeping him warm on the walk to the bus. Fiona and Connor are wearing hats. Connor's wearing my first attempt at a beanie: tiny and grey and blue, complete with a pom-pom on top. Fiona's hat is white wool with a very funky greeny/gold brim. Jimbo's wearing the first of two black gloves made of mohair. These are super simple gloves basically made from a square of fabric sewn up one side with a hole for the thumb. They work really well.

I am making a pair with the same design for Emma-sensei, but hers have purple and black stripes and are long and hyperfunky.

While I was putting up photos, I thought I might also link to a photo of some woman holding Connor. He's very cute.

some kind of medal

2008-04-01T15:32:00.003+11:00

I'm sure I deserve to have something nice happen to me, given that I just spent about four hours fiddling with bills, statements, tax certificates and other dreadfully important pieces of paper. Not just because it's a pain in the ass to file things, but because it's like a litany of things that require action and OMG my life is falling apart. Also worrying about money is never fun. Stats are fun!

Unopened envelopes as a percentage of total paperwork heap: 80.

Oldest unopened envelope found: March 2006.

Total number of unopened letters from Wonky-wah: three for me and one more addressed to Anne.

Number of companies who sent the you-missed-a-payment, you-missed-two-payments, we're-cancelling-your-service, your-service-has-been-cancelled letter sequences: four.

Number of companies who sent followup OMFG-you-owe-us-money letters: two. Insurance companies don't let you get into debt with them, apparently.

Total number of letters that I didn't open: NONE. Go team me, fight and do miracle. I also rang the tax office! And a buncha other people who needed to be called! Woot! (Reread the wiki page about Social Anxiety if you don't get why this is a big deal.)

Number of years of tax returns outstanding: eight. At least.

Number of years the tax dept is going to charge me $550 for not putting in a tax return: two. (I intend to make poor starving puppy faces at them until they cave and waive this. I can dream.)

Number of thousand dollars I owe in HECS (yes, STILL): 18. And a half.

Sigh. So this is all depressing and shit. Sigh. It represents (in a stark, map-is-the-territory sort of way) the past year and bit of my life.

And Xopher isn't well and I've started coughing today (damn you, Centrelink germs) so we're not going visit Dave and Fiona and Simon and Jimbo and Connor tonight, so *sadface*. No stitch and bitch for me. No presenting the scarf I made for Dave to him. Or the hat for Fiona. Or the gloves for Jimbo and Emma-sensei. No holding the baby while everyone else has dinner. *sob*.

My life is deeply tragical today. I might go watch some emo bands making dreadfully earnest and homoerotic declarations to cheer me up. Fauxmos! \o/

2008-03-31T13:00:00.005+11:00

Finished another scarf, so I thought I'd show you. The last one was made of hand-painted mohair. The crocheting was therefore fairly boring, because the yarn itself was so interestingly textured and coloured. This one started out as a test of an old-fashioned stitch which can be made into three dimensional repeating bumps as you see here, using some old wool I had lying around. I decided I liked how it looked, so when I ran out of the green wool I added black to each end.

Yesterday I gave it to Simon for a belated Christmas present. He seemed quite pleased.

I've been doing quite a lot of crocheting lately, ably assisted by our little stitch and bitch group. It was originally something for Fiona and I to do on Tuesday nights while everyone else played RPGs, but Emma-sensei has also attended a session and it's fun -- unironic fun, even. For one thing, having crocheting to pay attention to takes some of the pressure off conversation, and for another, making things is neat.

I was going to make a big list of the tv and music that's making me happy lately, and then a contrasting list about medication and anxiety, but there's some links instead.

orz

2008-03-21T14:44:00.004+11:00

So I haven't posted in a while, but hey, posting now. Lately I've been doing some crocheting and I made this scarf for my friend Anne. Also featured is our sole surviving cat, Printy. She's doing remarkably well at being an only cat though we both miss Manson. Hope you're happy and well, dear reader.

Incompetent and Unaware

2006-01-19T13:33:00.000+11:00

I know it's been ages since I've actually said anything interesting, so thanks for persevering with me, gentle reader.

I find psychology fascinating. Part of this is the comfort of knowing that many of my reactions are in fact very human, and part of it is validation of my belief that I'm really not like most people (or, actually, most women).

This article is intriguing in both these ways: http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

Go ahead, read it. Read the whole thing! Skip over the stats analysis like I did, but definitely read at least the intro, just so you know why "But I wore the juice" is funny.

So here are two of my conflicting reactions to the article (which you have just read, right? It's really interesting and well-written, apart from the stats bits which made me cross-eyed).

Firstly, there are some skills which I may not realise that I'm no good at. This is deeply worrying. 8) If you know me (and if you don't, why are you reading this?) you know that I like being good at things. Particularly, I like being smart. One of the quickest ways to get me angry is to imply that I'm stupid. (Remember how Seneca said that anger is a failure of expectations? I *expect* you to know that I'm smart.) But from these results, even if I'm presented with evidence that I'm no good at something (say, comedy, for instance) then I won't realise it, because I'm no good at it.

Worrisome!

Secondly, people consistently generally over-estimate their own skills. This one is not so bad for me, because many of the skills on which I pride myself have been objectively measured (many, many times) through formal, university-level exams, and the fact is that I *am* good at them. So, phew. This is one of the "I'm not like most people" things, I think. Anyone who's seen me immediately after an exam knows that I'm chronically unable to believe that I've done well until I have the high mark as proof. I think I'm much more likely to believe in a false consensus: everyone else can do what I do, because it is in fact, fairly easy. Except that really, no, not always. Some of the things I do are hard for most people.

Yay me!

Of course, the article isn't perfect. For one thing, the subjects are volunteer university students, so it's applicability to "normal people" might be hard to gauge. But then, I'm more like a university student than a "normal person" (and you are too) so I choose to believe that it's a freakin' excellent article which really helps to explain how come some people can spend all their *life* being incompetent. And no, this is not a secret message for you. I'm not talking about you. I like *you*. Geez, sensitive much? 8)

That's a whole lotta tv

2006-01-11T18:19:00.000+11:00

What I'm downloading each week and why (in five "words" or less).

Battlestar Galactica. Robots vs. puny humans.
Bleach (Anime). Ichigo 4 Ishida 4 eva.
Bones. Agent Angel vs. Smart Lady.
Family Guy. She'll pretty much have to.
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Who's feeling Peanutty? *
House. House 4 Wilson 4 eva. *
Justice League Unlimited. Flash, Bats and GL. *
Kyou kara Maou (Anime). So pretty, so gay. *
Lost. OMG WTF polar bears. *
Numb3rs. Bad maths with Doctor Joel.
Rome. Historical and dramatic. *
Smallville. Clark 4 Lex 4 Eva. *
Stargate Atlantis. Rodney 4 John 4 eva.
Stargate SG1. Jack 4 Daniel 4 eva.
Supernatural. It might get better.
Surface. Gonna need a bigger boat.
The Dead Zone. Walt 4 Johnny 4 eva. *

* Or at least I will be when the hiatus/Xmas break finishes.

Too much weather

2006-01-01T20:40:00.000+11:00

It's almost 9pm and it's 38 in my living room. There are currently warnings for severe storms, severe winds and a total fire ban in both Canberra and NSW. There's enough smoke around that earlier the sun was doing the apocalyptic red glare thing and I can smell burning house paint on the wind.

Fuckin' weather.

You lookin' at me?

2005-12-16T16:39:00.000+11:00

We had our work Xmas party today and it had the usual fare: awkward conversation, bad food, endless discussions of how/why/what-sort-of/no-really-why-am-I vegetarian (on behalf of all vegetarians: sigh).

My casual Friday shirt du jour was a Neon Genesis Evangelion shirt, black and red with the NERV logo and the phrase "God's in His heaven and all's right with the world." This is my sly/cynical version of an Xmas shirt. 8)

Anyway, after a brief discussion with one of the waitresses about the NGE mangas (tee hee), I was sitting innocently at a table, when I noticed one of the (cute, young) chef type people grinning at me.

Then he pointed both fingers at me, pointed his thumbs at his chest, and gave me two big thumbs up while mugging and grinning. Reading through this, you probably know exactly what he meant, but at the time I had no idea. I actually had to stop myself from turning to see if there was anyone behind me.

Apparently, he liked my shirt.

mult-eye-task-ing

2005-12-14T12:34:00.000+11:00

On a whim (and I have lots of those) I bought a bunch of cross-stitching projects to make for my friend Anne for this Xmas. Sadly, just because they're less than $10 to buy, does not make them quick to do. I quite like cross-stitch though, it's a lot like pixel art and making things with my hands is always rewarding.

But the problem was how to find time to devote to actually making them, because I practically live on my computer when I'm not at work, and cross-stitch takes both hands and pretty much all of my attention. The solution is to get my computer to read to me.

Macs have been able to speak arbitrary text for a very long time (since at least the late eighties when the Talking Moose was pretty damn funny), and the speech system has been getting progressively more sophisticated. I get my computer to read stories to me, which have the advantage of being real sentences and it's quite good at the subtleties of English. Emma-sensei and I were testing it the other night, and it clearly uses context to decide how to pronounce words. For instance, in sentences it was (mostly) correct when it used reject as a verb (short re) or a noun (long ree).

I have a list of words that it consistently gets wrong though, and probably banal (to rhyme with anal) is my favourite. Banal conversation was never so amusing. (Or is this just an Americanism? It certainly says "erb garden".)

I've finished a book mark (Tigger with butterflies!) and almost finished one of the pictures (Tigger again, this time with flowers and trees (*@#ing trees)).

I might try to resurrect a miracle and start beading again. Most of you probably remember the beer coolers I made years ago with beaded thingies on the front. I've been trying to remember what the penguins on "Lager Drink" looked like. I don't suppose anyone has any pictures?

Casual Friday

2005-12-02T14:54:00.000+11:00

In the past few months the IT people where I work have started wearing jeans and tshirts on Fridays. It's kind of cute, because someone thought of it, and now everyone does it, but as far as I know, nobody talks about it. (The first rule of casual Friday is...)

So, anyway, I wore my Gatchaman shirt today. Some of you might remember it as G-Force, but basically the shirt has the logo, a red G on a yellow background.

One of the few women I work with wandered past and interrupted me to say, "Super girl, super girl."

Me: It's not Super Girl, it's Gatchaman, G-Force. You know, that old animated tv show...
She: [laughing meanly and shaking her head] That's just sad. Sad!
Me: [flatly] I'm sure you think so.
She: [nothing to say at all, wandered away]

Victory! She was wearing an old, tatty, give-away Microsoft shirt. As she does almost every day. My shirt is nerdy, but hers is an ad for an out-of-date version of a Microsoft server product. Hah!

This woman is known crap-head anyway; she once asked me "Why is your life so empty that you watch *Batman*?" That day I couldn't think of a good answer ("Fuck off!" would have been perfect, but is a little outside my comfort zone.) so I owe her many snide comments.

By way of contrast, one of the guys who I work with occasionally is a much nicer person. We chat about animated shows and House and all sorts of things.

He: [walking past] Hi.
Me: Hi.
He: [notices shirt, looks jealous] Where do you keep finding these shirts!? I want a Green Lantern one...

And then five minutes of chat about finding cool shirts and variations on the Green Lantern logo ensued. Rock.

In other news, I'm another year older, and much less in debt. I love my friends. My mother visited for a week, but has now gone back to the less-than-tender mercies of my sisters. Finally, I loved HP4, and though there's no sneaky thing at the end of the credits, the Jarvis Cocker power ballad is worth waiting for.

Good boss, bad boss

2005-11-02T18:53:00.000+11:00

So I went to speak to Good Boss (GB) on Monday, to discuss the fact that I'm having trouble staying at work for five days in a row, and that I may need to reduce the number of hours that I'm working.

He was very cool. He said that he thought I was very brave for seeking help, thanked me for speaking to him, re-assured me that he'll speak to my immediate supervisor (BB), and only tell him what we agreed to. I spoke to GB first because I don't trust BB. You'll see how justified I am below.

Then today, BB asked to speak to me, and it was such a sharp contrast that it was almost laughable. Not quite though, because this is still some pretty important stuff that he's screwing up.

For instance:
Me: [On Friday, ringing at 9 am] I'm not feeling well, and won't be in.
BB: [incredulous, disappointed] Still?!

Seriously, can you imagine a worse response?

BB: [Today] So, I know that it's very personal, but can you tell me what's wrong?
Me: [pause] Did [GB] speak to you?
BB: Yes, but he only said it was a health issue... and I'd just like to know...
Me: [longer pause] Well, I'm going through a lot of things at the moment, but I'm getting treatment for them.

It's not like I didn't give him a couple of chances to RESPECT MY FUCKING PRIVACY.

BB: So how long will this [the reduced hours] go on?
Me: Unfortunately, there's no real answer to that.
BB: Well, I'm coming from a position of wanting to get you back to 40 hours a week, as quickly as possible, so you just tell me what we can do to make that happen. As quickly as possible.
Me: Er... (!)

Whereas the GB said at the end of our conversation, "We really do try to support our people here, whether they're contractors or full time staff. I'm so glad you're not resigning."

My plan of attack/defense is as follows: I'm not going to be speaking to BB alone about this from now on. I'm going to speak to GB again, point out my problems with BB's response, and ask him for advice and assistance.

You get the minion you deserve

2005-11-01T18:21:00.000+11:00

I have a new minion at work, and when he first got here, he knew hardly anything about my speciality, and even less about Microsoft development in general. Despite this (or perhaps because of it) he's a perfect minion for me.

One of my little foibles (or "faults" if you will) is that I tend to be very good and precise at what I do, and so I expect the same of people working with me. When the person involved tends to "let the little things slide", and "gets there eventually" I can be perceived as arrogant and overly-critical. Because, I know the right way to do it, why oh why don't you just believe me and do it my way? 8)

My new minion not only has a very blank slate (so my way is the only way he knows), but he's also very self-deprecating. When he shows me his solution, and I say, "Well, you could do it like that, or you know..." and explain a better way to do it, he doesn't get mad, and he doesn't argue. He says, "OMG, you are so right. That's just... of course."

It's all good: I'm happy; he's more knowledgeable. Yay. It's not always so clear cut, and remarkably, I'm not always right, but even then, his attitude is "let's work together to solve this, OMG you're so clever".

And the other important thing here is that he's very intelligent in his own right, and smart enough to listen when I talk and takes in what I'm saying and still ends up agreeing with me.

Er... sorry about the complete silence

2005-10-31T13:27:00.000+11:00

Life's been kind of interesting lately, but in a very hermit inducing way. Basically after struggling with a bunch of stuff which was making me feel crappy and making me miss work, I've started seeing a psychologist (hereinafter "doctorc" where the c is for crazy), and been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (hereinafter not mentioned).

This is a very interesting time to be me, and man, if you thought that having a blog made you self-obsessed, you should try working through a bunch of childhood crap.

In happier, quick let's gloss over the personal revelation parts of this post, news, I've also started reading a lot of comics. Batman is the shit. Yes, indeedy. It's a shame that it's taken me so long to catch up (gloss gloss) with how cool comics are, but now I'm here and nerding the hell out of myself.

Anyway, my doctorc says that I'm good at working out what I need, and she's one hundred per cent behind my buying comics and toys habit, so hee hee, no stopping me now.

Please feel free to relate your personal revelations to Batman in your comments. Or Cable and Deadpool, if you know who they are. Or Young Avengers (featuring Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, to make an in-joke that I expect absolutely nobody reading this blog to get -- feel free to prove me wrong).

Tattoos

2005-09-20T12:02:00.000+10:00

Many of you have probably heard my idea to get a tattoo on my butt that says, "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here." I've had the best idea for a matching tattoo, low on my stomach:

"Gaze on my works ye mighty and despair."

Reason #8,492 Why I Love Living with Chris

2005-08-05T21:13:00.000+10:00

[Driving home after a lovely dinner with Ms. Fiona, Mr the Dave and Simno]
L: Watch out for that bus, it's probably turning right.
[Bus doesn't turn right]
L: It didn't. [peers in rear-vision mirror] Oh, I thought so, it's out of service.
X: It might be going this way.
L: Buses turn right there.
X: What if it's going to that bus stop?
L: That's not a bus stop.
[pause]
X: What if it's a hospital bus?
L: The buses to the hospital go the other way.
X: What if it's going to that bus stop?
L: Then it would have gone into Woden and back out again.
[pause]
X: What if it was a private bus?
L: Then it wouldn't have said "Action Buses" on the side.
[pause]
X: What if it was a private bus going to a private hospital?
L: I've already told you about the hospital buses.
[pause]
X: What if it was one of those late night buses that go everywhere?
L: Those buses are smaller, because hardly anyone is on them. Don't backchat me, I know buses.
[pause]
X: What if it...
L: Look, you've lost this one, okay? There are plenty of other arguments that you can win, so I think you should just retire gracefully.
X: I think I should fart and run away.
L: I think you should NOT fart AND stay in the car.
[pause]
X: So I win?
L: ...yes.

Classy

2005-08-05T14:01:00.000+10:00

Yikes, it's been a while since my last post. But since I've been asked to, and I'm very vulnerable to requests (or, let's face it, orders) behold:

I've started Japanese, after an initial balk at the gate and refusal to attend the very first night. Ahh, anxiety, my old friend. But since then I've been three times and I loooove it. I've started half-way through third year, and I have a lot of catching up to do, mainly grammar patterns and vocabulary relating to travelling (which is not a frequent topic in manga or anime). There are between 10 and 15 people in the class (lots of people have other commitments) and many of them are Australian-born Asians, which means they already know at least one other language apart from English. Fluently. And quite a few of them are Chinese which gives them a huge advantage with kanji too. Grrargh. I'm torn between relief at no longer being the smartest girl in the class, and an overwhelming compulsion to study until I *am* the smartest girl in the class again.

Or, hmm, perhaps I mean most knowledgeable -- the one that everyone else turns too when the teacher asks a hard question.

All of you know what it's like to be the smartest person in the room. It struck me particularly hard on Wednesday night when we were writing some sentences, using patterns that I'd seen less than the other kids, but they just didn't remember. Whereas I seem to be able to see something once, understand it and reuse it, the others seem to be a lot more repetition oriented. I don't mind this at all, because it gives me time to catch up on other things in the mean time. I think I catch on quicker than most of the others because I've listened to and read much more Japanese than them (well, except for the ones who've lived in Japan).

I like my analogy of language acquisition requiring a framework into which new information can be placed. The more you know, the more places you have in your framework to put new words and structures. One of the few things I dislike about the way we study in class is that we often take a task (such as a ringing to arrange a hotel reservation) and learn how to do this particular task very thoroughly. We learn the particular phrases required, how to specify dates and times and so on, but this is a focussed, restricted sort of learning. Where's the love? I mean, where's the bit where we learn how to chitty-chat with people? I want chitty-chat skills dammit.

Ahem. To bring this back to the framework idea, just learning how such one such conversation might go is not very helpful. Far more useful to me would be a lesson from the text book about the various verbs involved in giving and receiving gifts. In Japanese there are (at least) three verbs for "to give" and at least three verbs (though one's usually only used by men) for "to receive". Learning these would be fun, and useful in lots of ways. It's also much more of an insight into Japanese culture and if information was included about the courtesy of gifts, then that would be cooler still. But I guess there's always the chance that I missed this lesson.

I've decided not to do Level 2 of the JLPT. Sasaki-sensei convinced me that level 3 is quite hard enough, so my kanji count is now much smaller and I'm not going to bother tracking it any more.

In other news, well, I don't have any other news. I'm studying a "lot". Oh, except that Emma-sensei and Xopher bought me a tshirt from China and it's lovely and says "Dao" (Chinese), "Dou" (Japanese), or "The Way" (English).

Japanese: Yay

2005-07-12T13:28:00.000+10:00

So the good news is that I'm still resolved to try to pass JLPT 2. The bad news is that Japanese Certificate Level 3 was not advertised in the paper. Does this mean that it's not being offered? Must ring to find out.

Okay: results of phone call. Operation Motto Motto Renshuu (Much More Practice) is go. Sasaki-sensei is still teaching (yay!). Japanese Certificate 2 and 3 are now two semesters each (they used to be one semester each), so they're half way through. I think that I'm past Certificate 2, so I'll turn up to Certificate 3 and see how it goes. Hopefully a bajillion hours of anime watching and manga reading will make up for two semesters of actual study. Exciting!

I've been tearing through the low level kanji, using the new software I've bought for the purpose: ReadWrite Kanji from Declan Software. It's not perfect (particularly the way it uses the printed way of writing the characters instead of the handwritten style), but it suits me. It takes no prisoners: you must correctly identify the onyomi, kunyomi, stroke order and English meaning of each character before "graduating" from that character. If you get any of these wrong, the character stays on your list to review. And it's got a cute little countdown of how many characters you've "graduated" -- so far I'm at 44 of the 1945 official kanji.

The printed vs. handwriting thing is fairly serious though. It doesn't affect stroke order, but it definitely changes how the character looks. Good examples are iu for speak and hairu for enter. Aaaand at some point I'll put some pictures up. (God knows I won't be scanning in my practice book, because my handwriting sux0rs.)

Also, my house is full of cool packages: a bunch of tshirts for Emma-sensei that she ordered from Think Geek; a bunch of dvds (I think) for Xopher from the UK (his family in London is fine, thank goodness); and finally and best of all for me -- a bunch of uber-cool random anime stuff that dadbot sent me. Whoot! My favourite is probably the microfibre towel with Roy Mustang (and his staff) of Fullmetal Alchemist on it. It's so geeky and excellent.

JLPT Level 2. Days remaining: 145. Kanji nailed: 44. Kanji remaining: 966.

The JLPT

2005-07-09T00:35:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about doing the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) this year. The JLPT is run by the Japanese government, and there are four levels: 1 is the highest, and 4 is the lowest. According to http://www.kanji-a-day.com there are 149 days to go until this year's test.

Back in 2003, when I'd been studying Japanese for about six months, Sasaki-sensei thought that I could probably pass Level 3 if I pushed. (Level 4 is pretty easy, really.)

Because the quizzes are right there, I just did 100 Level 3 kanji questions, and got 60 of them right (which is a pass). I know it's not the same, and kanji comprehension is only one part of the test, but hey, I didn't study at all.

Given that I have 149 days to actually study the material, Level 3 is probably too easy. So Level 2 is the logical test to try.

But: eep. Level 2 is about three times harder than Level 3, with 1000 kanji and 6000 words, and "the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature". (Does yaoi count?) Also: "This level is normally reached after studying Japanese for around 600 hours and after completion of an intermediate course."

I haven't done an intermediate course. Perhaps I could... Spooky. I just checked, and the uni where I did my previous course is advertising enrolments for Semester 2 tomorrow. Woo, I'll get the paper in the morning.

Well, thanks for following along the bouncing ball of me talking myself into trying for Level 2. How hard could it be? (Hahaha. Very hard indeed.) And, if nothing else comes of it, there will be the novelty of failing an exam, which hasn't happened for a very long time indeed.

Yay. Challenge. I'm off to dust off my kanji books, exercise notebooks and quiz software. もっともっと練習が必要ですよ！　(I need much more practice.)

Contracts, motives, pronouns

2005-07-07T11:04:00.000+10:00

I've just received word that I've been offered another contract here for one year with two further one year options. And a pay rise. Yay! It looks like the head-hunter gamble thing is working for me. For instance: I got in to work this morning after 10am, and that's OKAY. OMFG. Love this job.

In other news: I've been watching lots of anime with Meagan, and she is very cool to watch anime with because she gets involved in the stories, and we usually pause the show to chit-chat about all manner of things.

One of the problems with watching subtitled anime is that it's harder to actually follow what's going on, so subtleties of plot and characterisation can be missed. Watching with someone who's watching carefully, and willing and able to make guesses at motives and mysteries makes it a lot of fun.

Like me, she's fan of sub(titles) in the eternal sub vs dub(bed audio) war. Reading subtitles takes more work, but dubs are usually wincingly awful. This is because American voice actors are, as a rule, worse actors than Japanese voice actors. Meagan's emerging interest in the language means that she listens to emotional tone carefully which is very important in getting the most out of subtitles. Without vocal cues, "Oh?" can be everything from a polite request for further explanation to an outburst of bitter regret. (Do these examples reflect that we've been watching romantic anime? I think they might...)

I've been talking about speaking Japanese quite a lot lately, and this led to a strange dream last night. In the dream I attended a (very formal) exam during which I was expected to speak Japanese. In the strange way that dreams have, I didn't speak any English at all and that wasn't a problem. The problem was that my years of watching shounen anime (giant robots and pirates) led me to use... inappropriate pronouns! That's right, I spoke like a boy, or possibly a pirate, and though I was very embarrassed I couldn't stop blurting out something very impolite ("Suwatte, yo!" Siddown!) then having to revise it ("Sumimasen. Suwatte kudasaimasenka, sensei?" My apologies. Won't you sit down, sir?). Inappropriately harsh language has been a worry ever since I started speaking Japanese to people who know it better than me, but I spoke a little Japanese with Jo at the Eurovision party and had no trouble at all staying polite. Chotto hen da na, yume wa. (It was a kinda weird dream.)

All new cutest hair ever

2005-07-01T08:31:00.000+10:00

As part of my Eurovision party preparation, I paid a nice young man a bunch of money to remove my foot long braid and replace it with a much shorter, perkier and altogether cuter haircut.

I'd post photos, if I were someone else entirely.

It's basically a darkish red, with brighter-red oddly-shaped highlighted chunks. I don't think the Young People call them streaks any more, but I could be wrong. It's kind of a messy/shaggy cut, so I can do lots of things with it.

The main, most important thing is the Flippy! This configuration has got kind of a sticky out flippy thing at eye level, all the way round. It's very cute!

There's also the Minor Flippy, which is the best I can do with my n00b hairdryer skillz. (The true flippy has only been seen once, and was implemented by the original cute hair cutting guy with his l33t skillz and ultrasomething electronic hairstyling majigger.)

The next most likely style is the Work Configuration, which involves lesser amounts of "product" and is more sleek to my head. The sleek thing is important because the default setting for this hair is a kind of all-over sticky up thing. Still cute, but nowhere near as funky.

However, the importantest thing of all is: my new hair is cute! I've been getting a bunch of compliments. From women, because most are better at "OMFG! Yr hair is so kewt!" But also, so far three of the the painfully people shy computer nerds I work with have managed to find some time when noone else is around to tell me that my new hair looks "quite good". Tee hee.

I've got some amazing double takes too. My boss had to clutch at his desk with both hands to keep from literally falling off his chair.

But anyway, enough about my hair... Not! It's also much lighter, and as you might expect, I'm kind of still going through some long hair habits. Such as: reaching around to pull my braid out of my collar whenever I put on a jacket; hair flicking (now has no effect!); removing my hair band when going to bed; and so on.

So, there, now you know. My hair is both new and cute. How's your hair?

A cat, a bat, many books and some babies

2005-06-22T21:17:00.000+10:00

I've been very sad for the past few days. Xopher got back in town last night and it's very nice to have him home again, but still, very sad. I loved trash-talking Emily (something I got from Jimbo's habit of trash-talking his cats) but even with her weird standoffishness and all the effort involved in looking after her, I miss her a great deal.

In happier news, we (Meagan, Fiona, Dave, Simon, Jimbo) went to see Batman Begins last night and I really liked it.

- Batman Begins spoilers -

It was streets ahead of the previous ones in terms of plot and writing, but I think it was the least sexy Batman so far, in so much as there wasn't any overt costume fetishism. In the previous movies there was usually at least one person drooling over the costume itself. This costume lust was amazingly ubiquitous too, demonstrated by sidekicks, villains and definitely the love interest.

In contrast to the gothic extravagance of previous "outings", the overall vibe of this Batman was much more utilitarian: even his vengeance was unusually purposeful. This is not altogether a bad thing, but I do kind of miss the exhibitionist dark and sexy Batman.

Which is not to say it wasn't pretty: between Katie Holmes' nipples and the hot young doctor, there was much to ogle. 8)

- end spoilers -

I've been rather remiss in not blogging about my recent trip to Sydney in great detail, so here are some brief highlights:

- Stomping around Paddy's Markets with Emma-sensei.
We were standing in front of a huge display of stockings, and Emma-sensei mentioned that she'd recently decided that she really needed some fluoro-orange fishnet stockings. The complete stranger beside us picked up a pair from the display and handed them to Emma-sensei with a smile.

- Finding more books than ever in Kinokuniya.
Shopping for manga just keeps getting better: I continue to improve my understanding of the shelving system; I'm getting more confident about asking for help; I had a big list of authors and titles, and very supportive company. Emma-sensei carried around a basket for ages before admitting that she had only picked it up because she thought I might need two.

- Buying so many books in Kinokuniya that I broke their security procedures.
Emma-sensei had long achieved the coffee shop when I was still having books stacked, tags removed and bagged by two (2!) checkout boys. They decided not to bother stamping each book, because there were "just too many". So when the beeper at the exit went off, I had to patiently wait while the checkout boys came out and explained to the security guard that I had just bought "too many" books and that I was not actually stealing anything. *blush*. And for those playing the "how much money did she spend?" game, my 10% discount amounted to more than $30... Yay!

- Playing with Michael and Jo's baby.
Xopher, Emma-sensei and I stayed with Xopher's oldest brother and his partner and they were very nice. Little babies are cute, especially when their parents are cool enough not to be constantly shushing them or pulling things out of their hands. And Nils was named after the character in Platinum Grit as Xopher guessed (not Nils Bohr, which was my guess).

Overall it was a great trip, and I've got literally months of reading to do.

Oh, and in the happiest news I've heard in a very long time, ted is a dad! He's posted the first of hopefully many, many pictures of little ted aka Hanachan.

Emily, Defender of the Universe: 1987-2005

2005-06-19T00:37:00.000+10:00

After a long battle with kidney problems and high blood pressure, we put Emily down today.

She was a cranky and weird cat, but she did have two special humans: Chris was her favourite minion, and Polly picked her out of all the kitties at the Refuge because she was staring at nothing and whining. Apparently she's always done that.

In the end what matters is who you love, and who loves you.

Irregular Correspondent

2005-06-04T00:28:00.000+10:00

I do really mean to update this blog more often.

Fun at work: we asked a vendor to quote on a solution to a problem. They came back a few days after receiving the requirements and said it would take them 100 days to develop it and outlined their plan of attack.

I thought that their plan of attack sucked, and after consulting my superiors, rang them and talked them through my solution. They really hadn't thought of doing it like that, so they needed some time to reconsider, but there might be a "dramatic reduction" in the amount of time required.

They called back the next day and revised their estimation down to fifty days. o.O

Apparently, I have good ideas.

Fun at home: Getting very excited (obnoxiously excited, probably) about the trip to Sydney tomorrow. Even the thought of boarding the train before 7am cannot dampen my enthusiasm. There's a good chance that I'll buy a record number of Japanese manga from Kinokuniya. Then the real fun begins with trawling through China town for all the other bits and pieces.

Emma-sensei will add considerably to the experience. I expect she'll really help with the "I only remember what this anime is called in Chinese" discussions that I usually have with the nice people in the Chinese bootleg stores. I don't expect the discussions to go any faster, but they'll probably be more fun.

Fun with kitties: With the cold weather, my bed has become plagued by kitties who are super-snuggly. A few nights ago, in a moment of indolent stretching, Manson managed to reach out and gently scratch one of my eyes. Bad kitty. Word to the wise: by the time you flinch, the (minor) damage is done. Definite drawback of him wanting to sleep on my pillow.

Shopping!

2005-05-23T00:02:00.000+10:00

When I suggested that Emma-sensei, Ms. Fiona and I should go "girly shopping" during Emma's visit this weekend, I had no idea it would turn into a seven (7) hour shopping extravanganza during which we didn't leave the Canberra Centre. Good thing too, because it's starting to get really cold outside.

It was so much fun! Highlights: Fiona realised a lifetime dream when she purchased knee-high lace-up stompy platform boots. The boots are a freakin' work of art and possibly even cooler than you imagine: all the shoes in the store have style names, and these boots were called simply Trash. Emma found some very flattering jeans in a very pleasing size and I spent more money on a single pair of shoes than I ever have in my life. Fun!

The shopping just doesn't stop, either. I'll be meeting Emma-sensei in Sydney in two weeks for a shopping trip to Kinokuniya. Given how much time we can spend discussing Chinese vs. Japanese without being in a bookstore that sells books in each, I fear we may spend even longer in one single bookstore than we spent this Saturday. I also fear how much time I may spend planning an optimal route for ensuring that the maximum number of manga are purchased, while still giving us time to randomly wander.

And I asked Emma-sensei to teach me to count to five in Chinese. It's hard! I'm still fascinated by the similarities between the pronunciation of kanji in Chinese and Japanese and how the two languages can have such different grammar and sounds (there are no tones in Japanese), but so many of the abstract concepts are written the same way. For instance, the Chinese concept of the Tao (pronounced Dow) is written 道　(in Japanese: dou) and in both languages literally means, "the way".

Also in LindaNews, work's getting a bit stressy as I'm starting to actually demonstrate the prototype I've been working on for the past few months. People seem fairly pleased with what I've been doing, which means that I might shortly have to stop using "but this is just a prototype" as an excuse. Also, sorry if this is a little incoherent, I'm suddenly really tired. Zzz.

Con Report

2005-05-15T22:00:00.000+10:00

Apologies in advance for the Emma-sensei indulgent inclusion of giant pictures.

This was the second anime convention I've been to, so now I can generalise that they are fun. I was remarkably social (for me) and met some nice people including Alison who knows Evan and thus Simon, and entirely independently knows me because I used to work with her mum. She was very amazed by this, and by the fact that so many of us knew each other from Townsville.

Right, first of all: loot. I bought a "lot" of stuff, but that's because I haven't been to Sydney for ages. I'm well overdue for a trip to Kinokuniya to buy an embarrassing amount of anime/manga/merchandise. Hopefully Xopher, Emma-sensei and I will be heading out to Sydney in the next few weeks for a weekend of shopping and hangin' out.

Starting in the top left corner: Two pencil boards (a bit like mouse pads) from the anime Bleach: the white and blue one is Ishida, the president of the sewing club, and all-round very odd young man. His love interest/rival is beside him: the orange haired boy is Ichigo, the star of the show and part time shinigami.

Across the top are the three issue of Bronze (in Chinese) that I bought in the auction after being totally egged on by two yaoi fans behind me. Yaoi is Japanese explicit homosexual anime/manga/whatever. It's pronounced "yowie" which caused the expected "I thought you were talking about the chocolate bunyip" comments from the peanut gallery. There's also another Chinese yaoi manga up there, but at least I had some reason to buy that one (more on that later).

In front of them are two shirts: the big yellow and red G from Gatchaman (not G-Force which is the Americanised and lame version) and some kitty witch thing from .Hack Sign. The Gatchaman shirt was because they're a ninja science team, and that's so cool. The kitty witch shirt was because Alison talked the Madman guy into swapping it for a packet of gum. Alison has mad trading skillz. I was going to give him the gum, but she was going to sell him gum for a dollar a stick. Since the shirts were $5, he was kind of getting a bargain...? I'm not sure how it happened, but I think I should try to do more shopping with Alison around.

Between them is a kitty badge, but there's a better picture of it below.

The black shirt on the far left is from the Sydney Uni Anime Club and has a bunch of cute faces with manga expressions. Below that is a very amusing bumper sticker "My other car is a 60 foot transforming robot" which I'm still hoping to convince Chris to put on his car.

There's a stack of other stickers, two badges and tote bag, also from Sydney Uni's anime club. Man, package deals? They so saw me coming.

Standing between them and the Gatchaman shirt is Envy - but more on him later.

Another pencil board, this one with three of the Sins - Envy, Lust and Gluttony - from Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA). Bless.

Also from FMA, the figure of Alphonse Elric is standing on OzTaku, an amateur Australian manga magazine. I bought the first issue last year at this con, so felt kind of obliged to support them again. Damn, Australian fan art is just so very lame... Sorry, but yeah. Ganbatte, ne.

The white tshirt in the bottom right is from Raxephon which is yes, another giant robot anime. Hard to resist a $5 shirt.

Another Chinese manga (sigh) and then a Japanese boy love manga! Whoot! It's actually called Beautiful Boy Love, and it's the manga of a movie I have about beautiful Japanese boys who work as "hosts" in Hong Kong. Since the manga has furigana (which make it easier to read), there's a good chance I'll be able to work out the whole thing. My reading is getting much better lately. It's still amazing how much improvement I can see in my own reading... I love being able to pick up a manga in Japanese and actually fucking read it. So cool.

Anyway, I had to buy the other two Chinese manga to get this Japanese one. Actually I had to buy four, and four Bronzes, but after rather harshly outbidding a vociferously-disappointed 13-year-old girl, I ended up selling her two of them for $5. I really enjoyed the auction, and would have spent even more money if there had been more cool stuff for sale. I later ended up chatting with the woman who sold these Chinese manga, and she is also cool and interesting and has my email address.

Next to them is the character book from Yami no Matsuei which is all in Japanese and was probably overpriced, but YnM 0wnz my ass.

And standing on that is Hughes from FMA. And here's a better picture of the three FMA figures. Check out the detail. I love how Hughes has his throwing knife behind his back (and there's probably another knife in the hand that's in his pocket). Japanese anime figures are so gorgeous, and incredibly detailed. You should be able to see that there's a tattoo on the back of Envy's thigh. Envy's the androgynous one (eep), in the skirt (eep), with the bare legs and the halter top (omfg)... The suit of armour is Alphonse, and he's from a different release of figures, and thus is probably not quite big enough to be in scale with the rest of them, but he's close enough.

Here are all my FMA figures that are at this scale (yes, I have more than this, shutup). Izumi is the woman crouching in the martial arts pose. I love her purple sandals and dreads. I could blither for (further) ages, but my fingers are getting sore!

Almost done: a close up of the Kuroneko-sama (Lord Black Cat) badge from the anime Trigun, and a little round ball thingy of Saizou the angry pig from the anime Peacemaker Kurogane. Kuroneko-sama came in a Trigun two pack with a badge of Vash the blond and ditzy gunslinger, but I gave Vash to my friend Anne who came along for the whole day to the convention. It was lovely to have her there and she was very patient with my habit of dashing off to start conversations with interesting looking people or have yet another look at the same vendor stands that I'd already looked at twice. Simon and Chris were very good value too: amazingly willing to carry my stuff and generally supportive and cool. I had a posse, yo. 8)

I spent a lot more time with people than last year, and can present the following tips:
1. Wear something interesting, because that will give people a chance to open a conversation with you.
2. It only takes thirty seconds or so to realise that you don't actually want to be talking to someone (or they don't want to be talking to you), so what the hell, give it a try. It's only thirty seconds.
3. At 33, I finally have enough poise to decide when I want out of a conversation, and get out of it.
4. Despite above mentioned aura-of-calm, I can still get a little het up and shouty if other people are heckling too. (Must work on this.)
5. Finding other women interested in yaoi is very neat, especially when they blush adorably or filthy-giggle when you talk about blow jobs in public.

Speaking of yaoi, there was also a yaoi panel which was very interesting - it was all about female sexuality and expressing desire and why it's so very hard to admit things like, "I think Envy is incredibly hot" in public. But that might be a blog for another day, perhaps.

AMVs

2005-05-11T16:56:00.000+10:00

One of the things I regret about only finding out about anime.au.05 a few days ago is that I've missed on the anime music video competion.

An anime music video (AMV) is a fan-produced music video created from clips from one or more shows. I've never made one before but AMVs, and their media fandom equivalent, vids, are fascinating and I've always wanted to try my hand, given that I seem to have a fairly good "eye".

Here are some of the ideas that I've been playing with in my head for AMVs.

Go West, Village People: GetBackers. Go West is a fabulous gay anthem, and I'd love to see its perky and overly enthusiastic gay illustrated by Ban and Ginji. The main visual themes would be the rescuing, hugging and running towards each other. Sunsets and sunrises would be used for romantic effect: Ginji <3 Ban. It could also use footage of Kazuki and Jubei if required, but mainly Ginji and Ban because they are teh cute.

Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd or Foo Fighters: Yukikaze. Yukikaze is a deeply beautiful anime with stunning computer-generated atmospheres and planes in flight, contrasted with lavishly animated characters. Jack is bearded, blond and obviously American. Rei is Japanese, zombie pale, and probably the least attractive main character I've ever seen in an anime. Nevertheless... 8) "Tongue tied and twisted / just an earth bound misfit, I" This song is so perfect him. I'd take the footage from the dvd of the first two of five planned OVAs, so I could get super high definition video footage, and then play with it. Depending on how much time was left over after "woo, planes" footage got boring, I might try to focus on the triangle between Jack, Rei and Yukikaze, because that never gets boring. I haven't decided which version of the song to use, but I'm tending towards the original, because it has the creepier guitar bits, and the tower chat in the middle.

Unbelievable, EMF: Various. "The things, you say / Your purple prose just gives you away / The things, you say / You're unbelievable." Very very silly idea for grabbing together some of the worst subtitles from anime: like the early episode of Fullmetal Alchemist where Gluttony was subtitled as "Blatny"; and the million and one ways to subtitle the traditional Japanese habit of saying "itadakimasu" before meals. (Everything from "I'm eating!" to "Looks good." to "Thanks for the meal!")This is not a particularly well thought through idea, but it could be fairly funny. The important thing will be the complete lack of context for the clips which should help to make them funny. I don't intend this to be mean (after all, where would I be without fansubbers?) but more of a play on the whole "Japanese expert" conceit. And I'll probably put some Evil Doctor Muraki (he's so evil!) from Yami no Matsuei in, because he loves a bit of purple prose.

The clues I've picked up from the best AMVs I've seen:

1. Use the music. Not just the lyrics which people can miss, but the base line and other musical changes to trigger changes in the visuals.

2. Don't, for the love of god, mess with the aspect ratio. This makes me burn with the heat of a thousand suns when otherwise perfectly serviceable AMVs are fucked up by squishing everyone from letterbox into 4:3.

3. Don't put the subtitles on unless you want people to read them. People can't help but read them. Letterbox (without messing with the ratio) to get rid of them if you have to.

4. Funny is good.

Anime Con!

2005-05-10T10:24:00.000+10:00

I update because Emma-sensei tells me to.

The annual Canberra anime convention is being held this weekend. Last year was lots of fun, and was filled with interesting people, and even more interesting Japanese stuff, including a subtitled episode of Monkey which made me gibber with glee at their voices. I'm quite absurdly looking forward to the weekend, even through the miasma of tired and busy which is currently clouding my future.

My clearance is "almost" complete. All they need is proof of every job I've held for the last ten years. *_* The easiest way to do this is group certificates, but I've moved many times over the last ten years, and had quite a few different jobs. And I've always sucked at doing my taxes. Or I could write to the companies/universities involved (those that still exist) and ask for a record of service, but this is even more outrageously unlikely to succeed.

My estimate is I'm in for at least six hours of trolling through the dim dark *dusty* past, finding bits and pieces in an ultimately futile task. I've already signed a statutory declaration that my employment history is true and correct so what good will some of the group certificates do? Well, apparently until I find them, I'll have to stay down here in exile. And since "we're" now waiting on me to find the paperwork, it's now my fault and no pressure, but we really need you upstairs.

If the above doesn't make it obvious, work is getting rather stressy. While I've been getting some very positive feedback about my performance, it's still the case that they're expecting a prototype very soon, and it's not quite ready. And a whole bunch of people went to their first ever training course about my area of expertise yesterday and now they have all these mad ideas about installing software and changing how things are done, and I'm sure I don't have the energy and time to waste explaining it to them. And cleaning up after them when they fuck it up.

Hmm, could be I'm just tired and grumpy this morning. I think I should have a big drink of water and get the fuck over myself. 8)

Empty House

2005-04-26T12:23:00.000+10:00

Emma left yesterday morning after more than two weeks of staying with us, and it was very sad to see her go. She is charming and lively. For those of you who don't know, she and Xopher are going together, or dating, or whatever it is that young people call it when they are cute and sappy together.

Emma spent quite a lot of time watching tv shows and then joining in spirited discussions of all the things wrong with them and who is sekritly gay. I quite like analysing and discussing shows. Fiona's good to meta with too, and she's caught up with House now.

Speaking of meta: has anyone else noticed the class messages in Doctor Who? It could be related to the fact that we watched Status Anxiety recently (Alain "Philosophy: a Guide to Happiness" de Botton's show about why we're rich and unhappy), but it seems to me that there's a thread of "the lower classes are happy with their place" in the first few episodes. Specifically, Rose's mum, the blue skinned plumber and the psychic maid from the first three shows are all quite aware of their status ("Oh, yes, Miss."), and happy with their lot.

I'm not sure how much weight to assign this class message as a "cultural sign" though; it's hard to say if the presence of these characters reflects current British culture. Doctor Who is more quirky and independent than most (American) tv shows, but the latest series is also more slick and produced which would imply that the opinion of executive producers (i.e. money monkeys) has more impact on its direction. However, since Russell T. Davies (a brilliant writer, responsible for the original Queer as Folk amongst other things) is also the EP, perhaps the low class message is just something that Russell has on his mind at the moment.

How much can tv shows be said to reflect their originating culture anyway? It's all very well to view each show as a beautiful and unique snowflake which should be appreciated solely for what it is, but clearly doesn't account for the fact that Captain Kirk wouldn't be written now, and House is far too misanthropic to be a good doctor on an eighties show. (Although, can you imagine Kirk and House? Bwahaha. "Well, it looks like you caught a disease from the green-skinned slut you slept with. I can't say I'm surprised, can you? Take two of these twice a day and try to keep it in your pants.")

However to say that each tv show is a clever piece of social engineering designed to change the behaviour of the general populace is also over-stating the case. I think some shows are genuinely a message from their creator to the viewer (aforementioned Queer as Folk) and some are ways of just making money (Survivor). In between are the vast majority of shows which try to be good entertainment but are also constrained by what "right thinking" people are willing to watch (and thus, how much money advertising for the show can make).

Sadly it seems that I often disagree with "right thinking" people. For instance: House <3 Wilson 4 Eva.

Lex rhymes with sex

2005-04-18T12:12:00.000+10:00

Episode seventeen of season four of Smallville is one of the finest
pieces of televisual entertainment that ever made me screech with joy.
I think all the comic nerds who read this list (and let's face it,
that's almost all of you) need to see this episode.

Early Smallville writing was plagued with the kind of mushy high
school crap that I find very irritating. But as time goes on, the
writers are moving further away from love triangle shenanigans and
closer to pure comic book writing. And that's far from an insult. I
think that Clark Kent is wasted on stories where his powers serve as
nothing more than an easy way to save the day and an impetus for yet
another will-they-or-won't-they-work-it-out moment with his friends.
I'd much rather watch stories that are bigger than "Smallville High".

I've never collected superhero comics, but I do borrow other people's,
and what attracts me to these stories is the same thing that I find
fascinating about most science fiction: what would the world be like,
if this were possible? How would everything work if there were
superheroes? This same process of world building and conjecture is one
of the things I love about roleplaying games.

The reason that season one of Smallville failed for me is that it was
much more about "What would Superboy do if he went to high school?"
Lately the show has been much more about a world where super powers
exist and where money really does buy justice.

This episode is also a turning point in the Clark-Lex-Lionel
tug-of-war. For me, the central struggle in Smallville is not between
Lex and Clark, it's between Clark and Lionel, and they're struggling
over Lex's soul. I know that it should be obvious which side will win,
because we all know that Lex is Superman's arch-nemesis. But...!
Smallville is a long way from comics canon, and I'm determined to hold
on to the idea that no-one is beyond saving. Clark still has a chance
to show Lex that there is some good in the world despite all the abuse
Lex suffers from his father.

One of the nice ironies about Clark is that he lies to Lex, just as
Lionel does. A recurring theme when Lex discovers Clark's secret (as
he has done several times so far, but always loses his memory again
(yay, comics!)) is Lex's bewildered hurt. "You lied! I trusted you and
you lied!" Clark is the only person Lex believes in, and if Lex finds
out that Clark has lied to him all along (and that Clark is still
lying to him), then Lionel will win.

The only way for Clark to win is to trust Lex enough to reveal his
superpowers, and let Lex choose to support him. Clark, despite
being a Good Man, is still incapable of realising that this is the
right thing to do. I love a good tragedy.

Bouncing fool

2005-04-14T09:00:00.000+10:00

Last night I had a very pleasant evening of renovation and pumpkin
soup with Fiona (and Dave, Jimbo and Simon). The renovations are now
up to the re-flooring of the front rooms and part of this is removing
the slate from the kitchen and hallway. This is mostly achieved by
application of great force, but underneath the skirting boards is
where tiny chunks of slate and excess spongy black glue hide, and this
needs to be removed carefully, one clingy piece at a time.

I previously volunteered the information that removing little bits
from under the skirting boards (a process I like to call "winkling")
was kind of fun and Fiona jumped on this statement like someone who'd
happily have someone else do it. But despite my blistered thumb (A
blister from physical labour! How outrageous!) I didn't get much done,
so I'm going to visit again tonight. The boys have set up a World of
Warcraft "play date" (as Dave called it) with Chris and Amanda, so
Fiona and I will entertain ourselves.

When I got home last night, I discovered that I'd been paid early.
Lawks, it's a lot of money. It seems rather unreal actually. Some part
of me wants to not spend any of it, in case it turns out to have been
a mistake and I have to give it all back. Holy shit, it's a lot of
money. And when you consider that it was from a month when I started
on the seventh and there were three public holidays... next month
should be considerably more. Yoinks.

Slug to human in three days

2005-04-07T22:10:00.000+10:00

After three days of continual hormone-induced misery, I'm finally dragging myself up to somewhere towards human. Evolution is a strange and mysterious process -- what possible use is it to make half the population susceptible to such extremes of emotion...? I honestly have no idea. Maybe I wouldn't notice it if I were struggling every moment just to survive. As it is, I have time to sit around on my arse, watching tv, feeling like toasted crap and whining...

Mind you. House MD really is very good, even if none of you care enough to have asked for it. Surprisingly enough, it even keeps Xopher awake (for the most part). We have had a number of conversations (shocking, I know) about it. I wish someone else would watch 16 so that I can wave my little arms around and rant. Rant!!1!

I'm still also completely hoping that House and Wilson will start a relationship. It could happen! Stop looking at me like that! Wilson is unhappy in his marriage, and everyone knows that he's the only person that House can tolerate. House made a joke about them breaking up! It's right there. In my imagination, yes, fine, whatever. Just you wait, sooner or later someone is going to write a show where the main characters have a big gay romance and then we'll see who's imagining what.

And if it's not House, it might be Eyes, another new show which has just started in the US. It has private investigators. One of them is a guy. And then another one of them is a guy too. And the second guy is like, gay. So, like, there you go.

Defence rests.

The funniest thing I've heard in a pub for a while

2005-04-01T20:55:00.000+10:00

We were discussing how much it sucks to have to sift through a huge pile of resumes to find people to hire. The funny bastard I work with said that there is one way to reduce the number of resumes you have to look at. Divide the pile in half and throw half of them away. This will eliminate people who are unlucky.

All your House are belong to me

2005-03-30T22:38:00.000+10:00

I've recently started downloading and watching a show called House M.D. It's a medical show (bad), but it has Hugh Laurie as the eponymous House (good!). Hugh Laurie has an American accent (bad), but also stubble (good!). The show can be a little mawkish in an American way (bad), but is usually very snarky (good!). It's got Robert Sean Leonard who was good in Dead Poet's but nothing else, ever (bad). His character is House's best (only?) friend and is surprisingly layered (good!).

Overall, I'm thinking the good! outweighs the bad, but your mileage is your concern. For a limited time only, I'm going to send the fifteen episodes so far on dvd to anyone who asks.

This is because sending things to Meagan has really revived in me the pure joy of pimping. "Pimping" is the technical term for the jumping-up-and-down joy of sending cool things to cool people who appreciate them (contrast with giving shows to erm, well, you know who you are...). Meagan not only watches things, but she gives feedback! She asks for more! It's like the good old days of sending things to my online (imaginary) friends and then chatting with them about it. When it works out well, pimping is just so cool.

While Lost and Superboy are on hiatus, it's nice to have something to fill the gap. I mean, aside from anime. My weekly anime list is only: Bleach, Gankutsuou, Kyou kara Maou, One Piece and Sukisyo. And Gundam Seed Destiny. And Monster. (And the rest... *facepalm*)

[eta: for some reason, blogger didn't publish this when I emailed it... eeta: stupid formatting, grumble grumble]

Angry angry Emily

2005-03-25T13:32:00.000+11:00

Although the camera isn't very high quality, my new mobile does have a movie function, which means it can record sound. Fun!

I've told people about some of the noises that Emily makes and I'm not sure that y'all believed me. So here's the evidence that she is in fact in great danger of choking on her own rage: 23 seconds (368k) of Emily eating and growling.

Link will only work for a week. (In the second half you can hear her wander away, still growling. So cute!)

Now I've just got to try to capture the "I'M SO UNHAPPY I'M GOING TO HOWL LIKE THIS UNTIL MY LUNGS BREAK!!1!" noise. Needs to be heard to be believed, especially as she does it when there is nothing wrong with her. Sigh. I love cats. Don't you love cats? Cats are fun.

Apples vs. Oranges

2005-03-24T12:14:00.000+11:00

I've been really busy lately. The kind of busy where work is chewing
up my brain.

I was talking to Fiona about this the other day -- the difference
between working, and working hard. In the last few months of working
at my previous job I rarely felt that it was actually an intellectual
challenge, or even an intellectual exercise. I'd gone from having a
great deal of responsibility for one project -- I didn't just manage
the finances, but actually led the development and testing teams -- to
partial responsibility for three projects, two of which were just
barely ticking along. As kindly uncle Bilbo might say: like butter
scraped over too much bread.

So I was working, but I was rarely working hard. Also, I had good
reason to think that I was very good at my job so I didn't have much
to prove. All this has changed.

At my new job, I'm working hard. I'm learning a lot. I'm solving hard
problems. And, as programmers do, I tend to get caught up in it. Just
adding one more feature, or tweaking the interface a little bit, or
extending the scope... And then suddenly it's 6.30 and kind of cold.
And quiet.

Well, it's quiet all the time, really. I'm still in exile which means
that some days I don't get to see any of the other people that I'm
working "with".

But when I do see them, they seem quite pleased with me. And not just
with the actual SharePoint stuff that I was hired to do, but with my
strategic input. At the rare meetings that I get escorted to, I've
started sort of cautiously suggesting some strategic things,
especially around IT project management. The reception so far has
been, "What a good idea! We must get you talking to [the expert hired
to deal with this issue]." The weird thing is that my opinion was
never sought or valued at my last job which means either that they
handled things better, or they under-valued me. I tend to think it's a
little of both.

It was a much larger IT operation, and there were a lot more silos. By
this I mean that the various types of IT: infrastructure, operating
systems, projects and so on were managed by separate groups, and
rarely communicated except at the very top and the very bottom. (Where
I was...) There wasn't a single person (the Chief Information Officer
here at New Job) who was responsible across the board for IT stuff. I
kind of like the flatter and more accountable style of IT management
here. Which is not to say that the lack of appreciation of IT at an
enterprise level isn't a little... worrying. (Nobody said cowboy. Did
you hear anyone say cowboy?) But hey, it gives me a chance to make
what seem to me very obvious suggestions which are received as works
of genius.

Too many cats

2005-03-16T20:35:00.000+11:00

With Xopher off on his free and easy journey of love and family, I'm
now chief pat giver for Emily and Manson and Printy. I'm not at all
sure that I'm up to the job.

Each of them has unique needs: Emily requires eight to ten hours a day
of human contact and a dedicated team to clean up after her; Manson
needs someone to sit on and love; Printy needs time to realise that
there aren't any other cats around and so she can come get pats.

Since I've been leaving for work earlier than ever before, and usually
arriving home after seven, they're just not happy. Emily's almost
complete blindness means that she needs to be not only patted, but
talked to (where upon she'll walk into me, then fall over patting
herself on whatever part of me she walked in to), and she does not
leave Xopher's room except to eat. So when I go in to talk to her and
give her some pats to make up for the fact that Xopher's not home,
within about five minutes Manson will be sitting in the doorway
yowling for pats. If I ignore him he'll come into the room, which
drives Emily into paroxysms of rage and growling and that's not a good
thing. So I usually go to pat him. But then I smell like him, so when
I come back to see Emily again, she chokes on her hatred of all things
Manson anyway. (To be fair, she is very old and quite tiny and she
can't see, so smelling The Enemy is the only way she knows they're
there, and I don't blame her for being a little tense about it.)

Because Xopher is not home, the house is locked up a lot more, and
Manson hates this. He's always huffily running inside or outside
whenever the doors are open. This morning when I let him in, he was so
lonely that he followed me around as I got dressed. I didn't really
have time to give him the dedicated pats he deserved, so he attacked
my shoelaces and then looked forlorn and annoyed when I left.

Printy has taken to sleeping on a folded up quilt in my wardrobe for
about 20 hours a day. She'll happily accept pats if I go in to pat
her, but her fear of being beaten up by Manson means that she doesn't
sleep on my bed any more, as she did when Jimbo was living here
(because Manson slept on Jimbo's bed then). Not that Manson sleeps on
my bed much, because he's usually outside...

I've tried sleeping in Xopher's room to see if that will keep Emily
from waking me at two hourly intervals with her howling (not that I do
anything when I wake up, but still, Not Enough Sleep, Dammit). But if
I'm sleeping in there, I'm still woken up by her, either howling or
doing something unspeakably smelly in the middle of the night. (How?
How can one tiny cat generate so much evil smell? She's got Mad Ponk
Skillz, I tell you.)

I also have this overcompensation thing going on, which means that I'm
spending a lot of time when I'm home doing research on work stuff. And
not patting the cats.

Win!

2005-03-12T23:40:00.000+11:00

After some fraznarfing* and nundle-wunking** about the new sound card (purchased because it looked like the on-board one was, you know, fucked) I now have sound on the PC! Whoot! Just in time to get some sleep.

Also: I have a new mobile phone. *looks shifty*. I won't promise to answer it unless you promise not to ring. It has a camera and a colour screen and wank wank wank.

I also bought a Blue-tooth adapter majigger, which connects my Mac with my phone. (First time, no problems... No fraznarfing* with a Mac, by gum.) This means that I didn't have to type in all your phone numbers again, because they were transmitted from my computer's address book via tiny address pigeons through the aether to the phone. Or something.

I may have your number, but I'm not making any promises to ring you either, because, er. Good lord, is that the time? Zzzz.

* Fraznarf (IT, vb.) To discover that something that should be Plug and Play just isn't.
** Nundle-wunk (IT, vb.) To cynically resign oneself to continual fraznarfing.

A much better day

2005-03-09T22:00:00.000+11:00

The first two days of my new job were fairly hellish. I was quite intimidated by the reality of a whole bunch of new people (well, men) who kept warning me about the delicate political situation. And being IT men they're also fairly objective oriented, and not big on feedback, so I couldn't really tell if I was doing what they expected me to do, or even whether or not I could do what they expected me to. And new job + PMT = exhausted and cranky Linda. (Sorry, Xopher!)

Today was much better. It started well with a morning tea where I found someone else I knew. Not that having Dave there hasn't been very nice; he occasionally drops past my desk-in-exile. Over timtams, I talked to my new boss (yeah, already) about what he expected from me. When I explained my current strategy, he and his boss were all smiles, which is good.

Then later I had a meeting that opened with everyone praising my discussion paper, which I always like, and then discussing my sound plans and more praise, so I was pretty much zooming. Then I discover that the one woman I've met who seems both highly intelligent and engaged in my project -- I'd been told three times separately that it would be essential to develop a rapport with her -- turns out to speak some Japanese too. Bliss bliss bliss.

It was so funny. Someone else spoke some Italian (which she also speaks). I denied all understanding, explaining that I only spoke Japanese. She bounced and said, "Watashi mo!" (Me too!) and then we both said, "Sugoi!" (Cool!) and we both jumped up and down clapping hands and promising to be bestest friends for ever. (At least that's how I remember it. I was pretty happy by then.)

And I've decided that working in the city is just the coolest thing. I went to an Asian grocery store today! There's a choice of sushi stores! There's a shop that sells tea! I can eat my lunch outside sitting on the grass with a whole bunch of other people! Yay!

So cheered was I by the whole day that I stopped in at the National Library on the way home and did some research into my family tree. Genealogy is a lot like collecting. And I like collecting things. So far I'm up to my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother (or GGG Grandmother). Research on my dad's side isn't going so well, since it's stalled at my grandfather who was born in Scotland. But still. Fun.

PS. Glad to hear you liked it, Dimensioneer. 8)

へたのよこずきですよ

2005-03-07T21:43:00.000+11:00

前週オフィスでパソコンの上で標語が二枚ありました。さるも木からおちる。その仕事でさるがたくさんいました。そうして、ぼくらはいつでもさけんでる。これは鋼の鎌金術師の音楽からです。
今日は新しい標語がほしいんです。でもわからないです。

First day frazzle

2005-03-07T20:47:00.000+11:00

As Fiona pointed out in an email: Yay! Yay! Huzzah! Yikes, etc.
The new organisation is quite interesting. Much blokier than the old one. More scope for doing whatever the hell I want. I'm stuck in an unsecure wing of the building because my clearance hasn't come through yet, but that's okay because I have a corner office with pretty much two walls of glass and noone else around.

Working in town is weird. There are shops everywhere. Good thing I don't have any money.

Very tired now. Eight hours is a long time.

And congratulations to ted and Sumie-san. Apparently, it's a girl.

Best second hand book purchase. Ever.

2005-03-02T23:22:00.000+11:00

"Medical Hypnotism and Suggestion" by Alexr. Verner, F.A.I.P.

This is such a cool little pamphlet. I'm guessing at the year, because it doesn't have an ISBN or even a publisher listed, but I think it's around 1910. There are a bunch of things that rock about this book, but I'm going to start by quoting the whole of chapter five, because it's just that funny.

CHAPTER V
HOW TO PUT A MAN IN A TRANCE

To put a man in a trance for a week is a very remarkable thing, but it can be accomplished by getting a good subject. It is the best to find a man that is strong, one that has a good share of the motive and vital temperaments, so that he will be able to endure the ordeal without suffering a great deal. You must hypnotize the subject frequently to get him under control, then practice keeping him in the hypnotic state for a few hours, then a day, after that two days. You must suggest to him that he will not awake until you tell him.

There are a few secrets in connection with this performance, viz.:-Keep the patient warm, avoid draughts, let him lie in a comfortable position, turn him over about twice a day. Before commencing, the subject must be a state of good health; he must walk a few miles two days before he is put in the trance, and he must take two ounces of Epsom salts, so as to have a good purging. The Epsom salts have a constipating effect on the bowels after they have acted, and therefore he will not want to move the bowels while he is in the trance. (A person with weak bowels will not do for this test.)

Hypnotize the subject, put him to sleep (the deep sleep), and suggest to him that he will not awake until you tell him.

HOW TO AWAKEN THE SUBJECT
To awaken the subject, make long upward passes and throw the magnetism off, blow your breath in his face, slap the palms of his hands, and speak to him in a loud voice, saying "You are all right, you are all right." The subject or patient will then begin to come round. Do not let anyone touch him, because it crosses the magnetism and retards the awakening process.

* * *

You can see why I wanted to quote the whole thing. Apart from the picture of you showing off your MAN IN A TRANCE in his comfortable coffin to your well-heeled friend, probably my favourite bit is the confusion between "performance" and "test", and between "subject" and "patient". In the last paragraph, even the author is unclear which the victim is.

Other points for discussion: Why, oh god, why? Explain how members of the medical profession who are very jealous may also cross the magnetism and retard the waking process. How many MEN IN A TRANCE do you think it took to discover that the subject/patient/victim must walk a few miles two days before? In modern days, a better greeting for your previously comatose victim might be "You will not sue, you will not sue." Would you sue? Can I hypnotize you now? Are you feeling sleepy?

More excerpts coming soon:

excellent references to phrenology,
Alfred Russel Wallace: the other thing he was famous for,
the best product placement ever -- an ad for the book you're reading, in the book you're reading, and
other ads for books like "THE SOLAR PLEXUS Or Abdominal Brain" by Theron Q. Dumont.

Update, update, update...

2005-03-02T11:26:00.000+11:00

After receiving dire threats about evil haxx0rs, I was nervous about
putting blackpig (the name seems to be sticking, because noone but me
knows how to spell or say my preferred name, Saagatanasu*) on the
Young Person's Interweb. Xopher was not willing to wait!

Using our combined powers of Credit Card and Typing, together we
purchased Norton Internet Security 2005. After downloading the
installer and running it, blackpig began a fun game called Let's See
How Many Times the User Can Be Bothered Checking for Updates.

There were no less that five (5) update and restart cycles required by
blackpig last night, including one from Microsoft. Whoo! I've become
quite fatalistic about them though. On a Mac, I'm much more willing to
critically evaluate updates (even automatic updates) because I believe
(perhaps erroneously) that I know better. For blackpig, I've become a
slave to the Recommended radio button. Do you want to check for
updates now? OK! Do you want to restart your machine now? OK!

And I don't know if it's because Symantec (makers of Norton Internet
Restarter) were in the middle of an update or what, but the only
reason it stopped at five updates is that I stopped checking. Luckily,
it also stopped asking me to update. But even without being prompted,
I was curious enough (or perverse enough) to want to see the "No
updates are available" message. But somehow that just didn't happen.

It was downloading at least 600k of "Internet Security URLs" each
time. I must investigate how to get it to quit doin' that, because I
don't have the space on disk (or the patience) to download megabytes
of URLs that I suspect are completely useless because there is no
point NIS storing information about sites that I would never visit
because I am not stupid. Even worse, these URLs may be pr0n sites,
which NIS is downloading in case I ever switch "Parental Control" on.
Bwahahaha! As if!

* Saagatanasu is the black winged-dog demon from Yami no Matsuei. He
has an elaborate title (according to one translation he's called the
Demon World's Grand Duke Dragon Cavalry Lord Ashitarote's servant,
Brigade Leader Saagatanasu) and is a representative of an evil empire
sent to earth. His signature move is to convince his victims to kill
themselves.

Ninmu kanryou*

2005-02-27T09:09:00.000+11:00

With lots of help from Simon, I bought a new PC and even managed to find most of the drivers to get it up and running yesterday.

It's a second hand Compaq: P4 2.8GHz; 1 gig of ram; 40 gig hard drive (fine since I bought the 250 gig drive the previous weekend); DVD burner; ethernet; USB 2.0; Windows XP Pro; and a 17" monitor. Sweet. It's a lot faster than I though I'd be able to get, and the extra ram and XP Pro pushed the price up by about $200 each, so I'm pretty happy to have paid $920 for it. And the DVD burner will make it a lot cheaper to send tv shows to people. (Hint, hint.)

And I need to run VPC so that I can have a WinServer 2003 VPC with SharePoint Portal Server on it, as well as a machine to develop on.

Man, PCs are irritating! They don't just work! I -- well, okay, Simon has to go online for hours and look for all the s33krit drivers required to make it work. This is probably part of the problem with buying a second hand machine, and you're probably all saying, Duh, but this is my weblog, so stating the obvious and complaining about things that can't be fixed is one of my inalienable rights, dammit.

And it's a shame that ted's helpful advice came a little too late, but I don't think it would have changed much. From what I could tell from checking out some of the online suppliers, computers at a computer fair are around about three hundred dollars cheaper. I was also amazed by the number of cool things you can buy for under $30: Bluetooth dongles and USB hubs and internal drives and all kinds of other things, woo.

Now I've just got to worry about keeping the damn thing free of viruses and malware and all those other things. I have a two step plan though: only connect to the ADSL when necessary and Firefox.

* Mission accomplished.

New PC

2005-02-24T12:24:00.000+11:00

I need a new PC and since I don't yet have the fabulous riches that
may at some future time be mine, it will probably need to be a fairly
cheap and nasty one.

Below is basically what I think I need, and I'm looking for specific
advice. (ted, Andrew, anyone?) The main requirement is that it can run
Virtual PC (hence the RAM), and not games.

CPU - fully compatible, at least 1GHz
Cache - whatever
Chassis - whatever
RAM: 750meg minimum, 1G preferred
HD: at least 40G
CD: whatever
DVD: not required
Audio: whatever
Graphics: low is better
Network: Ethernet 100
USB 2.0: required
Keyboard: only if included
Mouse: only if included
Monitor: at least 17" CRT. LCD not required.
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional

To me, this looks like a second hand machine. Maybe a government sale?
Anyway, I'm going to try to get one like this on the weekend, pending
any better advice. (I'm trying posting to my blog via email. Hope it
works!)

Gmail invites up for grabs

2005-02-23T23:14:00.000+11:00

I was going to post about all the bazillions of things that I have to do, but instead, I'll just say: I have a bunch of GMail invites. If you'd like a GMail account, just ask me. First come, first served but since I have a bunch of 'em, go crazy.

I quite like how GMail handles email as "conversations" rather than inbox vs outbox. And a gig of space doesn't hurt either. But if you haven't heard much about GMail, you should probably be aware that some people are deeply concerned with what Google is doing with your mail, including how much information they are extracting about you to create targeted advertising. And they use cookies to track your use of Google while you're using GMail. And just because you delete an email doesn't mean it's gone from their servers. And so on.

Personally, I read their privacy page pretty carefully, and I'm okay with it.

My list of demands

2005-02-22T19:17:00.000+11:00

I went to see a financial advisor today, and it was pretty interesting. I'll be calling him Mr Knows His Shit.

I think my favourite bit was when I'd explained my current expenses and my new income, and Mr KHS half-laughed as he said, "What are we going to do with all this money?" And I laughed too, because I don't know.

Even taking into account the previously mentioned Japan trip, spending $5-7k on a new computer (which is a shitload), and paying off bills and insurance and blah blah, there's still an awful lot of money coming my way.

"What do you want?" Mr KHS asked. And, dear reader, I don't know.

When he asked, I had to say I don't know what I want now. I don't know what I want in three to seven years. And I don't know what I want to do in thirty years when my super becomes available.

But since then, I've been thinking about it, and I have a list.

1. I want to be happy.
1a. I want to have someone to be happy with.
2. I want to not have to worry about money so much.

Done. My "don't want" list is much longer. A car. A house. Jewellery. Stock. Holidays (as a rule). I don't want to get married. I don't want a house full of expensive or matching stuff.

I guess I could add a bunch of other stuff to my wanted list (a new VCR, work clothes, to give more away) but really, those are relatively minor, in the (grand) scheme of (expensive) things.

Isn't that kind of weird? That I haven't thought ahead? Even when I had a full-time, permanent job? No planning. Man, that sucks. Must plan.

I wonder if this means I'm finally going to be getting my shit together. In a similar vein, I wonder if this exact same thing happened to Alix, about five years ago. And I wonder how it's working out for her.

Maybe I should talk myself into wanting a house. I really do love what Dave and Fiona are doing with theirs.

Music, ethernet, financial advisors and so on in that fashion

2005-02-20T21:47:00.000+11:00

Simon's been finding cool music lately. ted in particular might like this: Rodeohead This link will probably only last a week, but since it's free... http://www.yousendit.com

Also, did you know that you can share your ADSL connection between your eMac and a Windows XP box by just connecting them with an ethernet cable? Me either. Damn, it's just that easy.

This is a good sign for when I get a new pc. I kind of wanted to get one this weekend, but since there wasn't a computer fair on, opted for an external 250 gig drive instead. Maybe I'll wait and buy a laptop to reduce tax. Would that be wise? Who knows. I gotta get me a financial advisor who knows what they're talking about, contractually speaking. And I probably should get a mobile.

And one last thing in stream of consciousness blogging: I have a new email address. firstname.j.lastname@gmail.com (You'll need to put my actual first and last names in.) I'm going to use this one for contractual type stuff, but y'all can write to me there if you like.

Spider!

2005-02-20T15:51:00.000+11:00

Xopher has kindly lent me the digital camera that he hasn't used since his sister gave him after she found that she wasn't using it... So it's been two years since anyone used it.

It's quite cool. After some initial futzing about with settings and the book and the battery and so on, I used it to take a picture -- of a giant spider!

Waaargh!

This giant spider was originally in my room. Since I hate spiders in my room, I sprayed it with some bug spray. Actually, I sprayed it with a lot of bug spray. It dropped down behind one of my book cases, and I figured, no problem. It would take a few minutes to die and I would come across its giant corpse at some future stage.

But it didn't die. It hauled itself from behind the bookcase, out of my room, down the hallway, into the hallway cupboard briefly, back out into the kitchen, around behind the oven and back out again. I spent the whole time convinced that it would crawl behind something and have the fucking decency to die, but no. I finally got sick of not knowing where it might start crawling from next, and decided to scare it out onto the patio and then the garden.

By this time, I was kind of awed by its tenacity, and completely unwilling to either poison it further or squash it. (For one thing, it would have left a hell of a mess. And what if it still didn't die? A zombie, half-crushed spider would have even more reason to menace me.)

So I grabbed a handy broom and started thumping the ground near by, at which point it reared up on its back legs and exposed its fucking huge bitey spider jaws. I went to get the camera, and spent the next ten minutes or so trying to photograph it near something to show scale. There are more photos, but this is the least blurry of them.

This is easily the biggest spider I ever saw that wasn't safely in a zoo somewhere. Last time I saw it, it was heading into the garden. The rate it moves, it could well be back in my room by now... Freaky!

Also: I'm going to take the job. I give two weeks' notice on Monday. They're not giving me LWOP, even though I did my best to talk them into it. "Their loss," is a fairly common reaction to this news. Exciting new job! Did I mention it's the same place that Dave works? I don't think he even knows yet...

Life decision... pending

2005-02-17T21:10:00.000+11:00

Short summary: I'm being headhunted for twice as much money (in my hand). The job will be cool (tech + responsibility + opportunity). Current job is teh suk (--opportunity + --satisfaction + --responsibility).

But the new job is a six month contract, so that makes it a bit of a risk. But I'm going to try to get leave without pay from my current job, which would be a great safety net. I'm talking to someone about that tomorrow.

Either way, I think I'm going to give two weeks' notice on Monday. Eep!

Because I have this plan. I can work at the new job for six months, while saving money furiously. Then at the end of six months, if they're going to offer me another contract, I take a month off and go to Japan. (If ted was in fact serious about letting me visit.) If they're not, then I either return to my current job if I get LWOP, or else live off my Japan money until I get another job. I also really want to finish my MCAD during the six months. And maybe even start an MCSD (solutions developer).

But I come out of the six month contract with heaps more hands-on experience with SharePoint. This would be extra neat, as SharePoint experience is, allegedly, very much worth having. (It's the reason I'm being offered the current contract, for instance.)

Also, for those gentle readers who have been around for a while, it's funny to think that the Platitudinal Presenter may end up being correct about my earning power. Not that I'm where she said I would be yet, but I'm a hell of a lot closer than I was on Monday. Damn, this is going very fast.

PS. Twice as much money!

Mmmm, recursion

2005-02-15T22:34:00.000+11:00

I spent a very fun Saturday night (turns out I am a ginormous geek) re-writing my Perl script to create indexes of images. Mmm. Now it works about twenty times faster. Basic structure:

indexImages(a folder)
  if (no sub folders)
    create page for images in this folder
    return link to this image page
  else
    start creating new index page
    create page for images in this folder (if any)
    add link to local images page to new index page (if required)
    for each subfolder
      add link to indexImages(subfolder) to new index page
    return a link to this index page

Done!

That only took about five hours on Saturday night (and I started at 10.30 *facepalm*) and two hours on Sunday morning. The script also does some clever checking to see if there are existing files and overwrites them if required. It's neat. Just the thing to help read all those scanlations that I download.

Then tonight I spent an hour or so fixing up my stripBadHtml script. I download a lot of html encoded pages to read later, and usually other people have god-awful tables and fonts and background colours, so this script rips through a folder of files and processes them against a file of regular expression rules. It's recursive too, natch, though it really is just a loop. It does do some cool things around detecting whether a file requires a backup, and accepts a switch to force update all files (if I change the html rules, for instance).

Sample regular expressions from the rules:
<h3.*?>::
</h3>::
&\#133;::...
\.{4,}::...
†::
 ::
{2,}::
Youji::Yohji

Which shows that I'm fussy about illegal characters (like the dagger and 133), grammar (ellipses only have three dots, dammit), and spelling of characters' names. I'm actually very fussy: I've also got a bunch of common spelling mistakes in there. And lots more formatting stripping. There are almost eighty lines. Ahem.

Emma suggested that the Perl programming might be a Microsoft overreaction, and she's probably not wrong. Still: fun!

Earning her nickname

2005-02-13T14:30:00.000+11:00

My mum called this morning, and amongst the things I mentioned was that Emma (Chris's girlfriend) just left after visiting for the weekend.

Me: Which was nice for Chris. He's been a bit sad, missing her.
Mum: Oh. Well. I think I owe Chris an apology.
Me: You do?
Mum: Well, I always thought he was ... gay.
Me: [amused pause] He did go out with me, Mum.
Mum: Yes, but.
Me: But?
Mum: I thought that was, you know. Platonic.
Me: Sorry to break it to you, mum, but no.
Mum: Oh. Well. You know, he's very quiet.

Tee hee. That's why some people call her Wonky Wah.

And the seventh seal was broken, and an Angel of Lord started to negotiate...

2005-02-11T22:05:00.000+11:00

Soooo, I'm developing at the moment (using my l33t dotNet skillz) but I'm the programmer of last resort. I'm also the project manager. In fact, I'm the project team. Oh, how I long for the heady days when I had two programmers and a tester. Now I've just got me, and well. Sigh. Someone to help with testing. We'll call her A. We'll call my boss, B.

A has been supposed to be doing my unit testing (which is like beta testing, really) for aaaages. She's had 'other priorities'. And yesterday morning, she came to see me...

A: I can't test this week.
Me: Okay. Well, I was hoping to get it out of unit testing next week so...
A: I can't test this week though. I wanted to let you know.
Me: Perhaps you could get to it early next week.
A: Perhaps. [pause] I can't test it this week though. This is not the only thing I have to do. I have other priorities.
Me: [patiently] Okay.

Time passes.

Me: I'm a bit worried that the testing is getting delayed.
B: Didn't A negotiate a plan with you to get the testing done?
Me: No. A told me she couldn't do it.
B: [crankily] I told her to negotiate a time, not to put it off. What exactly did she say?
Me: She said she couldn't do it this week.
B: I'll talk to her and tell her to negotiate a time with you. She has to negotiate because she has other things that I need her to do, but I definitely want her to be doing your testing too.
Me: Okay.

Time passes.

B: I spoke to A. I told her that she definitely needs to improve her communication skills, and that she wasn't negotiating before.
Me: Okay.
B: So, I've [heavy emphasis] directed her to negotiate a time with you.
Me: Okay, thanks.
B: If she hasn't negotiated a time with you by Tuesday, let me know.
Me: Will do.

Time passes.

A: Linda, can I speak with you?
Me: Yes, sure.
A: When we were speaking before, you said that you wanted to get the testing done early next week.
Me: Yep. [Yay! Progress!]
A: I can't do it Monday or Tuesday.
Me: Oh. [Crap. No progress.]
A: I can maybe get to it Wednesday.
Me: Oh. How much time do you think it will take? How much do you estimate you still have left to do?
A: Only a couple of hours.
Me: Right.
A: I can't do the testing on Monday or Tuesday.
Me: [patiently, oh, so very patiently] Okay, well, I may have to speak with B...
A: But I can do it on Wednesday.
Me: I'll see what I can do when I speak to her about your time.
A: Okay. I can't do it on Monday or Tuesday. I have other priorities. [See how we're not even having a conversation? See?]
Me: Right.
A: [And this is it! Here comes the negotiation...] Is that okay with you?
Me: I'll speak to B and get back to you.
A: [crestfallen] Okay.

Did you miss it? Can you imagine what would have happened if I'd said yes? Rains of toads! Swarms of locusts! Biblical plagues of not-getting-the-testing-done-fucking-ever!

I'm thinking this might be a cultural thing though. Perhaps I should have said, "It must be done on Monday" every time she said she couldn't do it until Wednesday. I don't know. It's fairly frustrating. Especially since it's taken almost three and a half weeks to do a day of testing.

Does anyone else out there in gentle reader land have trouble with this kind of negotiation?

More online recs

2005-02-09T22:29:00.000+11:00

Booktopia is an online Australian bookstore and while the website is flawed, the prices and the service are great. Or at least, my one order with them was both cheap and fast - obscure books imported from the US in two weeks for $13.50. Postage is $6.50 for up to twenty books.

I'm typing this in ecto - a Mac OSX blog client. I like it, but I'm going to have to pay for it in another two weeks. If I'm still using it after that, then I guess I really like it.

Oh, and the Battlestar Galactica premiere/opening movie/miniseries thing is showing on Friday/Saturday of this week. Woo!

In which bad things happen to good Lindas

2005-02-08T22:19:00.000+11:00

I'm starting to think that I was actually, like, bullied at work yesterday. Where the definition of bullied is a big loud guy on the phone who is so angry with not being allowed to do what he wants that he threatens you. So you cave in and end up making a mistake. You call the New Guy and ask him to bend the rules for the Bully just to shut him up. And the New Guy does it, because he trusts you.

And then you realise that you fucked up and go explain the situation to your boss.

But at least she's supportive. "You were partly responsible for the situation, Linda. You should ring the New Guy and try to put it right."

So, you do. You ring the New Guy and tell him that you made a mistake. You don't hear any more from anyone, but the Bully rings you three times (you don't answer the phone) and emails twice before you slink home at five.

Anyway, we had a meeting about it this afternoon, without the Bully. The New Guy was very supportive. And quite angry at the Bully. And quite willing to support me putting in a grievance. (Which I won't do, as I don't think it's that serious.) The New Guy's boss was present, and also willing to support a grievance, as he too has extensive experience with the Bully's tactics.

My boss had moved on to being amused at how typical the Bully's behaviour was of him. And expounding at length at how reprehensible it is that no one's ever actually stood up to him.

(Man, I'm cranky about her reaction. It was a crappy situation, and my boss did nothing to make it any better. It was the New Guy who arranged today's meeting. My boss was over it.)

What the Bully actually said was at the end of a phone call that I made to him, about something entirely unrelated. He suddenly went off on a tangent about how he hadn't been able to bully the New Guy into giving him permission to make changes willy-nilly. The threatening was:

Bully: This change needs to be made! [Important people] are in *love* with this change. [They] specifically asked for it to be made! By tomorrow! Who should I speak to to make this happen?
Me: I can make the change, but as I mentioned before, you need to speak to the New Guy. He's the [responsible person].
Bully: I have spoken to him. I called him. Twice! I sent an email. Did you see the email?
Me: Yes, I saw it, but...
Bully: You know what? I wash my hands of it, Linda. And let me tell you that the fur is going to fly about this. And you know what? When it does, I'm going to make sure that everyone knows what happened.

A bit more context: the Bully is seriously actually six foot three. He's ex-army. He is way-way-way further up the ladder than me, and often claims to have the ear of some very important people. He loves to name drop. This is not the first time he's tried to shout me down, either. In the past, it's always been in a room full of people even higher than him who were 100% unwilling to put up with his crap. I hate it when he wins.

So, I caved, and rang the New Guy and got him to give me permission to give the Bully what he wanted. Fortunately, the Bully's also thick as a fucking plank and didn't actually follow my instructions, so his change was not made.

The New Guy rang the Bully this morning (after hearing about what he did to me yesterday) and asked a series of questions including:

Is it an urgent change? No. [*rage*. He insisted that it was to me the day before.]
When does it need to be made? Any time in the next few weeks.

So, the outcome is that the New Guy is deeply embarrassed about this -- I have a lot of sympathy for his position -- and angry about it. My boss thinks that I should reiterate our corporate values to the Bully next time he tries this sort of thing. (Ahh, yeah, sure. That sounds doable...) And, in the end the Bully didn't and won't get his way. Which is good.

And me? I'm venting on the Young Person's Interweb. Heh.

One more tiny story about how frustrating I find it to work with my boss.

[The day before I sat my exam.]
Me: [blah blah reporting on progress blah] Oh, and I just did one of the practice exams and got 100% for it.
Her: [after a pause, in a serious voice] You really do underestimate yourself, you know.
Me: [struggling gamely on, cheerily] That doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Her: [still serious] No, but you can take it too far.

So, yes. Having to look further for my validation at work these days. To, you know, work around my underestimation problem. *grin*. Luckily I have BettyBetty for immediate validation. "God, she's crap," says BettyBetty. And so say all of us. 8)

The Kleptones

2005-02-06T19:33:00.000+11:00

The Kleptones do this very cool thing where they take music and combine it with other music to form music that some cool people call "mashups" but which record companies prefer to call "illegal".

The new album is called "From Detroit to J.A." and I'm probably missing many of the clever cross references between music styles, but I've still had it on almost continuously for the last few days. I think that at least some of it is a combination of Motown and synth-pop, for instance, "Close to My Girl" which is a very chirpy version of The Cure's "Close to Me" with the words from "My Girl" by The Temptations, but there are other things going on too. "From Detroit to J.A." is cooler than I've made it sound and you should go and get it before they get closed down. If you don't know already, you'll need to work out how to use BitTorrent, so check the info on the page.

I also completely recommend "A Night at the Hip Hopera". Some of the Kleptones' music is a bit of a mystery to me ("Yoshimi Battles the Hip Hop Robots" was not really my thing), but this album is very accessible, because everybody knows the Queen songs. And I do love their combination of Eminem and Queen: "Hi, my name is... Bicycle."

Cool Free Blog and OSX Addons

2005-02-05T22:19:00.000+11:00

So, if you're reading this on my blogspot page, you'll be able to see the little orange XML (with Feedburner) icon on the left. Feedburner is a free service that turns any feed (such as Blogger's default site feed (atom.xml)) into something more cross-platform compatible. It lets you see some simple stats on your feed's usage and use cute little icons like this one.

You'll also see a link to my del.icio.us account. Del.icio.us is free service that lets you collect and organise bookmarks. My list is fairly short at the moment, mainly because I haven't decided whether to use it for my own use (thus, put everything in there, with very few notes) or as a recommendation list for you guys (thus, put cool things in there and annotate them). My new del.icio.us links are also part of my Feedburner feed.

I'll be getting a Flickr account shortly for hosting photos.

I'm using NewsGator free online RSS Reader to organise the feeds I read. It's working okay, but the interface is a bit clunky. I'm using SharpReader at work, and I do really like that interface. Please let me know if you've found Reader software on OSX that doesn't suck.

Which neatly segues into: QuickSilver. This is a tiny, one-use program that Rocks Beyond Telling. It's activated by Ctrl-Space and then you just type some or all of the letters in the item that you want to use, hit return for the default option, or right arrow to get a list of other actions. The power is in the range of "items" that it automatically locates. This list includes all the programs you have installed. So, if I want to launch something obscure like my ADSL software, I can do it with four keystrokes - much faster than navigating with the mouse. It also lists all your bookmarks. And it remembers which items you use (and how you got there), and guesses these first. Hide Others (which I use often, and which is often not accessible through a keyboard command) is now only Ctrl-Space H I in every single application. QuickSilver is almost invisible software, and I adore it.

My other cool tiny app d'jour is Notational Velocity. All it does is take notes, but the interface is so minimal and tiny that it's a pleasure to use. Again, mouse-free operation means that it's incredibly fast to use. Notes are encrypted and saved automatically. I'm using it to track to-do lists like downloading episodes out of sequence.

First Post

2005-02-04T22:43:00.000+11:00

Since Rob specifically said that he wanted to know more about my [insert blog title]... Behold!

I passed the first of three exams to become a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) today. I feel kinda... dirty.

Apparently anyone who can pass even one exam gets to call themselves a Microsoft Certified ~~Prostitute~~ Professional. I'll have to resign myself to no longer being able to boast complete ignorance of the Operating System of the Evil Empire. I liked being ignorant. I liked my Maccier than Thou moral high ground. But now I officially have A Clue when it comes to programming The Popular OS. (Specifically, programming web applications in VB.NET, for those of you who know what this means.)

The exam was accomplished with my usual hyperanxiety and high marks. I got 848 when 700 was required to pass. The best bit is the giant Fuck You to our training guy. (He's a knob, more on this topic follows.)

He tried to convince both me and my colleague BettyBetty that we would fail. He tried very very hard to convince us that we should lower our expectations, and even that we should not tell anyone when we were sitting the exam so we would not be shamed when we failed. Presumably his reasoning was that if he failed his first few Microsoft exams, then people like us...

Well, ner. We didn't fail. BettyBetty only just passed, but she did pass, so blow it out your Evil Empire, asshat.

Also: all blogs have RSS feeds by default. The feed is at http://[yourblogname].blogspot.com/atom.xml I'll hook up Dave and Chris and Rob (but not ted, I think...?) and then I won't have to remember anyone's URLs. Huzzah!

I'm currently investigating RSS for use at work (go, forward technology Linda, fight and do miracles), so I suppose I could talk a little about that next time. In a radical break from blog tradition, other topics of conversation may include: Cats Do the Wacky, Oh How My Job Pisses Me Off, I Just Finished This Book You Should Read, My ADSL Brings All the Anime to the Yard. (Sorry, Dave.)

Oh, and just as a test: 今日はすごく寒かったです　雪が山で降っていました (Kyou wa sugoku samukatta desu. Yuki ga yama de futte imashita.) Today was really cold. It snowed in the mountains.

I will occasionally be speaking in Japanese, and I will definitely be making mistakes. Please please let me know when I do. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.