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[Aug. 18th, 2009|06:58 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Boy Does Nothing, Alesha Dixon | ] |
I mostly don't have a big problem with Internet addiction. Last night I hung out at work a little longer than I should've (after I'd clocked off) in order to read about George Orwell's 1984 and associated bits and pieces, but it wasn't too bad.
The only website that gets me to compulsively click every link is TV Tropes. One night a couple of weeks ago, I accidentally stayed up till 3am reading, and then woke up the following morning with like 40 tabs still open - half of which pulled me straight back in so I spent half the following day reading it as well.
It was at that point I decided that prevention was a good idea. I installed BlockSite, a FireFox extension that prevents access to specified websites, and then added TV Tropes to it. I figure if I do want to read it, I can open it in a separate browser, and at least that way I'm very aware of what I'm doing.
This morning, that effort came into its own. This entry was posted. I have work today. The link was not present, merely the text. Perfect.
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 11th, 2009|02:44 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nerdy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Khe Sanh, Cold Chisel | ] |
I'm pretty sure that the initial reaction from most people upon obtaining a copy of Guess Who? is not to try to solve it.
-Mmaster
(Incidentally: My solution for twenty people maxxed out a five or six deep. I'm sure it's possible to do better.) |
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| Well, that takes talent. |
[May. 1st, 2009|11:28 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Wanderer, Johnny Cash with U2 | ] |
I don't know what the hell DJ's done to itself, but for some reason it's now managing to give me 403s when I load anything related to the website in IE (It still works fine in FireFox and Chrome). This irritates me, because the update page's Javascript doesn't play nice with my FireFox extensions somehow (it confuses itself into thinking I've logged out even though I haven't), so I've used IE View's "Always view in IE" to load the page into a different browser with a single click.
Unfortunately, that ability has been broken. So after waiting hopefully for a couple of days in the belief that it would mysteriously fix itself in the same way that it mysteriously broke, I finally decided to switch the application being used to Chrome. Unfortunately, I don't like Chrome all that much, despite admiring its technical innovation (which is unusual for me, I'm something of a Google fangirl); as with iTunes, it doesn't play nice with GridMove, and I have no idea where any of the options are since they've disguised the toolbars (which is why I'm still running IE6). But at least the update page works.
I might actually make a further switch and change the thing to Opera, which doesn't have the problems I've complained about for Chrome. But not tonight, Josephine.
In the process, I discovered that Bianca's copy of Chrome is installed in a retarded location; I don't know which version she's running (or who's fault it was), but it's been installed to something along the lines of:
C:\Documents and Settings\Mm\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\application.exe. WTH?
(When I recited this to Andrew Harkness, he said "Whatever happened to good old Program Files\Google\Chrome?")
Connor's, on the other hand, uses the more common path:
C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe.
Don't ask me what the hell the difference is; I have a feeling one's running the beta and one the stable, but I'm blowed if I can remember which is which.
In vaguely related news, I now have Dreamwidth account, but more or less don't plan to use it unless people actually migrate over there (and even then, possibly not). I'll probably wait till they implement imports from DeadJournal, (they already support imports from LiveJournal) - and then cross post (they have a button for "automatically cross post this"). But that's a worry for a day when they have, in actual fact, implemented it - purely theoretical at this point. But if you happen to have an account, tell me, and I'll add you to their equivalent of the Friends list...
-Mmaster |
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[Apr. 4th, 2009|08:20 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | dorky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Lasting Impressions, The Starting Line | ] |
It's kind of sad that a primary excitement of my life is cheering along BitTorrent downloads.
Yes! 20KB/s! 30! 40! ...35... 25... 0.5... ...No!
...Well, maybe not a *primary* excitement, but certainly an enduring pastime.
-Mmaster |
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| Heroes in a half-shell! Turtle power! |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|09:54 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | dorky | ] |
Chris knows (at least some of) my obsessions a little too well.
I now own three DVDs' worth of Ninja Turtles. The proper stuff, none of this silly "Men in suits" thing.
Ginger durdles!
-Mmaster
PS: I can't help but be amused by the back of the case, which lists the region encoding variously as "NTSC" and "Region 4". Well, which is it?
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[Mar. 6th, 2009|10:55 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | dorky | ] |
People tell me I spend to much time around computers.
...Just because I tell them that Bianca knows she's pretty, and thinks that this entitles her to do whatever she likes whenever she wants to...
What? They're people! ...Well, they certainly have personalities, anyway...
-Mmaster |
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[Feb. 12th, 2009|11:28 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Damned Ladies, Rufus Wainright | ] |
Today I received an email to the effect of "Hi! We're starting your Photography course two months late! Have fun..."
...Right... (Oh well, at least it may reduce the courseload pressure, I guess...)
In other news, the other day I received a large box of Looney Labs gear that I'd ordered.
So, Dad and I settled in to play Volcano. This is the default layout:14555
21445
32145
32214
33321 The '1's here are the ones that have the 'caps' that form the core of the game. Ideally, they should be red.
The problem with this layout is that you wind up with red strewn all over the board, blocking your way to the rest of the colours. While this may be the intent, it made it mighty irritating to play.
So today, when I was playing with Fabian, I decided to use a variant of a Latin Square, adding an additional constraint; since the caps can be moved not only horizontally and vertically, but also diagonally, the same number (colour) should also not be on the same diagonal. I wound up with this:14253
25314
31425
42531
53142 ...Leaving the '1's with the caps.
It worked much better than the default layout (Fabian had great fun bouncing his caps off the 'walls' to wander around the board).
However, I still felt it could do with a final modification. When I played against Chris, I made it so that the caps were again placed on the diagonal, so there was one cap on each colour.
It seems more balanced this way. It also feels like it allows you to 'get at' more of the pyramids.
And now, it's way past bedtime, and I have to go to work tomorrow. (Five day work week?!? Heresy!)
-Mmaster |
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[Sep. 20th, 2008|07:57 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The River Of Dreams, Billy Joel | ] |
Random notes:
* WTF, lady? How do you turn "C-O-L... V for victory... I... Double-L E." into "Colvaooe"?
* WALL-E was cute. Now I want a WALL-E toy, but both Target and KMart had sold out. I'm tempted to do what Rob_Jedi did, and order an iDance WALL-E from the States. He had it hooked up to his iPod, dancing along to You Are A Pirate from Lazy Town.
* Note the song's very loose definition of pirate: "If you love to sail the sea, you are a pirate!". I wonder how the legal shipgoing public feel about this statement? (Mind you, you could argue that anyone who can afford the cash to spend on a boat must be resorting to piracy...)
* Most of the ads for movies before the film seemed to be for Disney films. One of the films advertised was The Tale of Despereaux, which I initially thought was going to be a sequel to Ratatouille, except that the animation style was wrong.
* Cinemas no longer have ads, they have a "Pre-Show Program".
* High School Musical 3 comes out next month. This fills me with mindless and unending glee. And Chris with resignation.
* "So, The Onion isn't a real newspaper, then?" -Chris
* Conceptis Puzzles are way more addictive than is healthy for my sleeping patterns. And it's not like I'm even that good at them, I just can't seem to stop plugging away.
* Stack Overflow is my new "I'm waiting for my code to compile, what's something IT-related I can be reading?" website. Coders might fight it useful, I just find it interesting what bubbles to the top. "I keep reading things telling me how to Unit Test, but nothing tells me what it's for. What is Unit Testing, and why do I care?"
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 12th, 2008|05:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  confused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Lighthouse, Interpol | ] |
The most creative spelling of "unfortunately" I've ever seen:
unphortunitly
... There are no words.
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 1st, 2008|08:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | sleepy | ] |
Life rambles on. What's been happening? Not much. ...Well, lots of stuff, really, but the same things over and over again. Get up, go to work, hang out at uni, come home, go to sleep.
Congratulate Chris, the "Apply for twenty different graduate positions concurrently" thing finally paid off, with him getting a job offer from AMP.
Lots of people are abandoning me in the next couple of weeks. Pout.
* Chris flies out to the US on Wednesday
* Fabian flies out for six weeks' annual leave from Friday
* Dad starts driving to Queensland on the 13th or 14th
* Mum flies up to join him on the 27th
...Meanwhile, it's not quite so much "The next couple of weeks", but Greg's leaving HRT in mid-July to join the Navy.
Friday night was EGG/Anime@UTS trivia. I think I knew the answer to about three of the questions. Total. Out of a hundred. "What does PING stand for?" (Packet InterNet Groper - It's a Cisco backronym), "Which planet is Doctor Who from?" (Gallifrey), and perhaps one or two others. The fact that I don't watch anime and don't really play games cut out my chances significantly. Phil, who was marking the sheets, told our team "You suck but I love you" - we started making up interesting answers to the questions we didn't know, which was most of them.
I got MarioKart for Wii. I can see what Fabian means about the other characters being 'meaner'. It's fairly common to be assaulted by a blue shell, followed by a lightning bolt, followed by a POW block. While you're trying to get over a gap.
I haven't figured out the significance of the bikes, yet - aside from the "Having more vehicles to play with, and forcing you to randomly change styles halfway through learning to play the game". (The 50CC is karts only; the 100CC is bikes only.)
I discovered that I've probably owned far too much of the franchise - the only one I haven't played is the SNES version (and maybe a Game Boy version, if they released one; I don't remember). This becomes driven home as you play the retro cups and keep thinking "I remember this!"
Chris and I finally got around to watching some of season two of Doctor Who yesterday. Chris kind of fell in love with K-9, watching School Reunion. I was thinking of getting him one of these. Anyone know where I can get hold of one in Australia? Or do I have to buy it from the UK?
I'm sure I had more to ramble about, but I haven't really felt awake all day. I slept in! I never sleep in! I had to look at two clocks before I would believe that I'd woken up at 8:45. But if I'm waking up at 8:45 when I *never* wake up at 8:45, I think my body's trying to tell me something, so I guess I should listen to it. Bath then bed time for me.
-Mmaster |
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[May. 2nd, 2008|12:37 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | dorky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Better, The Screaming Jets | ] |
It shouldn't be this hard to virtualise Windows 98.
* Download and install Virtual PC 2007
* Create a Win98 virtual machine
* Start it
* Insert Win98 CD
* Watch as virtual machine desperately tries to install via network
* Sigh
* Uninstall Virtual PC 2007
* Download and install Virtual PC 2004
* Attempt to create a VPC04 virtual machine of the same name
* Get told it already exists
* Sigh
* Delete existing version
* Create new virtual machine
* Start it
* Receive error message about "Invalid boot disk" (expected)
* Insert Win98 CD
* Continue to receive same error message
* Twig to the fact it means the floppy drive, and a boot disk is required
* Sigh
* Download Win98 boot disk ISO application
* Rifle around in cupboards, manage to find box of floppy disks
* Insert procession of disks into floppy drive
* Realise floppy drive is probably busted when none of them read
* Sigh
* Rifle around in back room, find USB floppy drive
* Plug in USB floppy drive
* Manage to find a floppy that isn't dead, delete files off it
* Try to run ISO application
* Realise that it is unable to recognise any drive other than "A:" as a floppy drive
* Sigh
* Search for some way to re-allocate floppy disk drive letters
* Fail
* Sigh
* Give up
In other news, Matt gave me his Nintendo Wi-Fi connector. I am now able to access Wi-Fi games and things. Friend codes? The games I have are:
* MarioKart DS
* The Legend Of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass
* WarioWare: Touched!
* Super Mario 64 DS
* Tony Hawk's American Sk8land
* Mr. Driller Drill Spirits
* Sudoku Gridmaster
* Picross DS
Aside from MarioKart, I'm not sure that any of those have multiplayer Internet play, but maybe someone else knows better.
-Mmaster |
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| This was a triumph; I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. |
[Apr. 26th, 2008|07:40 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Still Alive, Jonathan Coulton | ] |
Rock Band is entertaining. I wouldn't really want to own it; it takes "The more the merrier" down to the far end. However, it's fun to play on other people's machines occasionally.
So long as I get to sing instead of attempt to play an instrument, and we stick to songs I actually know. Otherwise, I'm a little stuck and the results aren't particularly pretty.
On the other hand, it was entertaining to get 98% on Still Alive. When I decided that the Easy level was evidently a little too easy and bumped it up to Medium, I still managed to get 99% on Don't Look Back In Anger. ...Umm...?
(Mind you, My Sharona on Hard crashed and burned, so I redeveloped some humility rather rapidly...)
It would help if I were able to activate Star Power, though; my attempts to yell into the microphone for it never seem to register. Oh well.
-Mmaster |
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| In other news, I've memorised my debit card number. Is that a bad sign? |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|10:55 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  irritated | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ladies' Choice, Hairspray | ] |
For all its technical accuracy, the term "kibibit" annoys the hell out of me for some reason I can't put my finger on.
-Mmaster |
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| Mummy? I can see my walls, Mummy! Make it stop! |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|04:53 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Punchlines, The Lucksmiths | ] |
You won't recognise my room in a few weeks. I'm not sure I will. ...Well, aside from the whole "No difference in furniture" thing, anyway.
In preparation for my desire to make over my room, I spent quite some time today pulling the posters off my walls. And cursing mildly as the plaster came away with the Blu-tack. I even took most of the stuff off the door - the only thing still blutacked to it is my placecard from David and Kristy's wedding. Though I left the movie tickets attatched to the CD rack.
I also took the longstitch (that I did in the week of the Year 12 Formal and haven't found time to do anything about since) and the print that I got on the last trip to the USA (i.e., 2004) to the framers, picked out some frames and left the pictures with him. He even gave me a discount of $1.75 to make it a nice round number. Still, $250 is a lot more than the "Aw, $80 each?" he suggested over the phone - but I'd assumed it would be. He said there's going to be a turnaround of about three weeks for them. I've paid in full, so at a pinch, parents can pick them up for me.
When Mum gets home, I'm planning on putting in an order for that On The Terrace print. They're doing a 20% off deal today only, so I figure I might as well take advantage of it.
We bought a new ceiling lamp for my room a few weeks back; we need to get an electrician in to install it at some point.
And on that note, you get some photos of what the room looks like without images blutacked liberally to it. The flash makes it look even pinker than it actually is. (Hey, I was like eight when I chose the colour; name an eight year old female who's favourite colour is not pink - or purple, at a stretch. Fortunately, Mum put her foot down about the lurid shade that was my preference at the time.)
( PINK! )
Also, here's a photo of the artwork I bought at the Easter Show the other day: ( Artwork )
I'm overjoyed when she understands
I could make her chuckle if she gave me half a chance
The most she ever gives me is a second glance
She never gets a kick out of my punchlines...
-Mmaster |
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| Stuff that isn't important enough to actually direct the people in question to... |
[Mar. 10th, 2008|07:02 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sore | ] |
| [ | music |
| | You're Timeless To Me, Hairspray | ] |
Hey Matt!
Want Tripod to play at your next birthday party?!?
For a mere $5,000-$10,000, you can!
-Mm
PS: Is it bad that I'm far too tempted by doing so for Adam Hills, Adam Spencer, or Wil Anderson?
Hey Stevie!
You know how Hairspray is a movie musical remake of a musical that's a remake of a movie?
Guess who plays the main character in the original movie?
Ricki Lake, of that talk show fame. WTF?
-Mm
In other news, my neck/shoulders started hurting about 7pm. Eventually I had to sleep on pillows on the mattress, so that the head pillow was less high. It hurts less today, but I'm bleary eyed and irritable. I'd call in sick, if I were actually sick...
Let's hope I feel less miserable after breakfast.
-Mmaster |
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| People with English as a second language are interesting. |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|09:32 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Nicest Kids In Town, Hairspray | ] |
On my way back to Uni from work this afternoon, I was forced to stop while I waited for the traffic lights to change.
On the post, there was an ad that (I assume) promoted a flat for rent. I couldn't read it, because only the address was in characters I could read; the rest was in some Asian language or other. Okay.
However, the fact that it included the word "BRODUAY" made me die a little inside...
-Mmaster |
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[Feb. 23rd, 2008|11:38 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | In Her Eyes, Josh Groban | ] |
Drumroll:
I am now caught up on my emails!
I've been behind since before we went to Bermagui. I spent a couple of hours digging through the two hundred or so emails (around 130 were comics emails), and have now read everything.
The only emails in my entire account marked as unread are four emails to do with the AusCanals website, and one from Fabian about HRT stuff.
Nobody else may care, but I feel accomplished! Especially since it didn't take nearly as long as it might have - we spent at least eight hours out of the house today.
:D.
Now I really need to go have a bath then crash. It's dog training in the morning, and I've been running light on sleep anyway.
-Mmaster |
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| At such a young age she took her own life; now she's seeing things that come in our dreams at night. |
[Jan. 20th, 2008|10:59 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Calling The World, Waking Ashland | ] |
The T-Visionarium.
Verdict?
It's very shiny. Unfortunately, it gave me nausea within a few minutes of entering. Vast quantities of images spinning and reforming around you tends to do that. Especially when viewed through 3D-specs. It was okay when the images weren't shifting, and you focused on the opposite wall. If you looked through your peripheral vision, however, the effect was fairly instantaneous.
The fact that I was trying to look through my vision-correcting glasses with the 3D ones in front of them probably didn't help. I think it would have had slightly less of the 'shiny', but a lot more of 'I can sit here and admire your work', if they'd elected not to use the 3D effects; stack them if you must, but don't try and have them at differing distances as well.
However, I was amused when I noticed the five second clip of Spooks. I identified it initially by the music (as the person skimmed past) - and when they went back to focus on it, I could tell Chris exactly which scene/set of scenes it was from which episode (the evasion sequence from Who Guards The Guards, as he's crossing the bridge - if you're REALLY curious).
It was very mediocre weather all day - rain off and on, some sunshine (generally while it was raining), and impressive humidity. We decided not to go to Movies in the Overflow, which we'd been considering attending.
-Mmaster |
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| I'm in this place where I don't know where I am! |
[Nov. 4th, 2007|08:19 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tomorrow, James | ] |
Google Embeddable Calendar Helper!
I've been wishing for something like this for a while, now.
So, check out http://progsoc.org/~mmaster/FindMe.htm (or the link at the top of the page) to figure out more or less where I am - or when I'm free.
:D.
-Mmaster |
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