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Shoulder Angel

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Heroes in a half-shell! Turtle power! [Mar. 29th, 2009|09:54 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[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?
link1 Divine Judgement|Be an Angel

[Mar. 11th, 2009|11:27 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |Song 13, The Ataris]

I got my first email address when I was in about Year 6 - maybe late Year 5.

At this point, we still didn't have Internet access at home. I would have to visit my parents at work to leech off the University network.

One day, I'd run out of things to do, and hence went searching for games. Judging the era, I probably would have been using Yahoo as the search engine. I'm guessing this was too early for Flash to really have come into its own, so they probably would have been Shockwave.

But wait! Why do I need to search? Yahoo has games already.

...Which required an email address for registration.

So, I went to hunt down my mother to ask for her permission to get an email address. For some reason, she refused.

In a rare moment of rebellion, I signed up for a Yahoo account anyway, and played the games I'd been drooling over.

The next time I returned, I was up to my elbows in rebellion! I searched for all the free webmail providers I could find, and signed up for all of them. The fact that an email address isn't much use to you if no-one else knows it apparently didn't occur to me.

But, now that I had all these email addresses, with different usernames and passwords for each, how on Earth was I going to remember all those details?

So, I created a text file listing the assorted details. But then I needed to figure out where to put the file - I couldn't leave it in Mum's account, she might realise I'd been sneaking around behind her back! And anyway, they wiped the machines fairly regularly.

I managed to dredge up a floppy from somewhere, and added the text file to that. But how to label it? "Passwords list", again, would make my rebellion obvious - I didn't want her to find it and know what I'd been up to. I didn't want to leave it unlabelled; that would mean it would probably get mixed in with the random blank floppies we had lying around at home.

I tried to think of the most boring title I could conceivably imagine - something so dull that noone would bother to check the contents of the disk to see that it was what it said on the label. I wound up writing "A Brief History Of Horticulture"; I may even have renamed my text file to match. Admittedly, I was still probably too young to understand the "What I find boring, my parents may find interesting" concept.

Several months later, a classmate was flicking through my folder, and came across the disk slipped into the last plastic sleeve. He read the title, then gave me the weirdest look I'd ever seen. I tried to explain the history, but I think he just dismissed it out of hand.

I think we still have that disk, somewhere. We may have finally thrown it out; I have a feeling age and wear & tear may have finally rendered it unusable. But it stands as testament to one of my few efforts of actively going against what my parents told me to do - I was mostly a good kid, and they were pretty lenient anyway.


I think this is springing to mind, because when I showed Mum a list of Motorcycle Training Courses, her reaction was "My baby's commiting suicide!" ...Apparently this is my delayed adolescent rebellion kicking in. At least I now (as of today) have a reasonable level of private health cover, so I can be well patched up when I kill myself.
-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

This keyboard... is... sucking... [Jul. 20th, 2008|07:59 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | cheerful]
[music |Moment In The Sun, The Living End]

Nostalgia is sometimes a surprisingly good motivator.

I really loved my Latin classes in Year 8. There were only like ten students (possibly fewer) - the absolute minimum to viably have a class.

Miss Hayes was always late. So we'd pull open the window from outside, throw Steven Yangiou through the window (he was the smallest and lightest, hence the easiest to push), and get him to open the door for us so we could all pile inside.

Then we'd dig up some chalk from somewhere, and write "Happy birthday Miss Hayes" on the board. She'd never tell us what her real birthday was, so we figured if we tried every time, we'd eventually have it right. After that, we'd sit down to chatter till she finally showed up.

One of the times, we had double Latin first thing Monday morning. We did our standard set up, and chattered a bit, etc etc. After a bit, Erin got bored and plugged the TV in, managing to get a very snowy image of Humphrey B. Bear onscreen. We sortof looked at our watches, bemused, as the minutes ticked by.
Eventually, ten minutes before we were due to leave for roll call, Miss Hayes turned up: "Get out your books, children!"
"Uh, Miss? Class is just about to end."
"...Huh? What time is it?"
"Nearly ten."
The previous weekend had been the change from Daylight Savings to Daylight Losing. It turned out that she had remembered the change, but managed to turn her clocks the wrong way - and had had no occasion to realise her mistake.

It was also cool that we were not required to do oral exams, since in most counts it is no longer a spoken language.

Fort Street no longer offers Latin, as far as I know; I think my class was the last. They've swapped it for one of the variants of Chinese, I believe - no-one was picking it, so they quietly scrapped it. I think it's a shame, kind of.

I liked Latin, and would have continued it past Year 8 had there continued to be a class. They offered it to me as a correspondence course; Black and Richard both took them up on it. I resisted: I had enough self-awareness to know that I had enough trouble getting my work done with a teacher breathing down my neck; something where it was only me acting as the motivator would be continuously sidelined while I found other things to work on. Which pretty much wound up being how they treated the subject, for that matter.

But nostalgia can also be that motivator. I had a sudden desire to re-visit it the other day. I had to try three different bookshops to actually find the textbook, then resist the temptation to purchase the entire range up to and including Book Five (we only covered Book One and a tiny bit of Book Two).

I got Book One. I'll see if I can find the motivation to work through all of that one - if I can, I'll move on up. I've got through two of the twelve Book One units today. But at the moment, it's still the stuff where I can more or less read it without the word list on hand. We'll see if the motivation and dedication stick around once I get to the more difficult passages.

But still. Whether I'm good at it or not, I love Latin.
-Mmaster
link2 Divine Judgements|Be an Angel

Leave me once, and I'll be fine; leave me twice I'll make you mine! [Dec. 24th, 2007|07:45 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[mood | chipper]
[music |Dirty Little Secret, All-American Rejects]

I'll be having Viennetta for Christmas dessert. I think it used to be KFC's dessert of choice, so Mum'd pick up a meal deal along with one of them on her way home from work. It should be a nice nostalgia hit. I thought they'd stopped producing them entirely.

-Mmaster

PS: When I was searching for pictures of it, I came across this brochure (PDF). It's a little surreal, in a "Wow; they actually think about that? Well, I guess they'd have to..." kind of way.
linkBe an Angel

The start is the hardest part to step inside and announce a newly broken heart... [Sep. 16th, 2007|01:20 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | dorky]
[music |Invasion, Eisley]

Hahahahhh...

My DJ displays up to twenty entries to a page. ...Except on the 'day' view, should I ever have the desire to post twenty-one entries on the same day; which I won't, because I've always set myself a limit of three entries a day. I think I've gone over that a total of about twice, both in 2004.

To print the latest twenty entries generally takes about twelve pages.

However, in a fit of boredom (AKA procrastination), I decided to make a new tag. It lists only the entries that go for more than a screen on Connor. The content must be at least primarily prose (or extended bullet points); quotes, while not subtracting, aren't "worth as much" towards the rating, and pictures (on the odd occasion that I post one) don't qualify at all. In the last three hundred posts (as far as I could be bothered going back), there were only 18 that qualified. The fact that so few actually made it through is perhaps suprising, but probably not; I don't have as much time to devote to it as I used to (though still devote more time than I should :P).

However, I'm re-discovering: when I sit down to write a long entry, I wind up with a long entry. To print out my "these are long entries" page?

THIRTY PAGES. Or close enough. Mm writes essays of entries.

Anyway, I should be writing an SQL script. If I can figure out what the Hell said SQL script is supposed to be doing. See you later.
-Mmaster

PS: On the "I write too much in here" topic, my mother's very bitter. In Year Seven, we were required to do a journal, and by the end of the year mine was still practically empty because "I can never think of what to write"; yet I manage to ramble on about stuff in here on a daily basis with no trouble. *giggles*
link

[Jun. 4th, 2007|08:08 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |Terrible SNES MIDIs]

On Friday morning, I was sitting in the Database Fundamentals lecture, half listening to Julia ramble about database security.

My attention was diverted by Peter, sitting a row or two in front, playing an emulated version of Super Mario World on his laptop. It made my fingers itch for my old SNES controller, despite remembering how abysmally bad I am at the game.

As I watched Peter restart from the start of the room every time he made a mistake, I muttered to Justin:
"Y'know, this game was a lot harder when you only got to save every ten levels or so."

-Mmaster
link1 Divine Judgement|Be an Angel

I need a new tag for this type of entry, but I don't know what. [May. 30th, 2007|05:21 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[mood | amused]
[music |Without Your Smile, Evermore]

It's Council Clean Up week in my suburb. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, basically the council tells residents to leave stuff they don't want on their nature strip, and a week or so later they come along with a large truck and collect it. In the intervening time, a lot of stuff changes hands as people stickybeak around other houses' piles of throwouts, deciding what they want from the items left out.

Richard Glover made a joke several years ago, about an exercise bike that's given people far more exercise picking it up off someone else's lawn, and then dumping it on your own at the next clean up, than it has while being ridden.

This time, my family didn't throw out much stuff:
* Some old clothes drying racks, where the paint fell off whenever you touched them (and came off onto the clothes if you attempted to use it.
* One of the computers I got from Gore Hill UTS, Trent. I salvaged his floppy drive, CD drive, hard disk, and (broken) RAM, and then threw the rest, separated, onto the pile. So, that's a motherboard, case, case cover, network card (with co-ax port alongside the RJ45), video card, sound card, and some assorted ribbon cable.
* The old, non-working, VCR (that permanently melted the foot on my SNES to the point where it needs to be stored upside down or it leaves a tar-like black smear on whatever it touches), along with its remote.
* Mum's old, just about to blow up, MixMaster, along with its beaters and the like.

It's truly bizarre what people will pick up and what they'll leave behind. From the above list:
* They took the VCR, but left the remote - which is how you access most of the functions, for all the good it does you.
* They took the internal to Trent's case, but not the cover or any of the rest. And I think they skipped the motherboard, as well, which was still attached to part of the case.
* They took the MixMaster, but left the beaters. ...Umm...?

A friend got published in Column 8 a few years back, suggesting he'd found the indication that the video was truly dead: on his lawn, he'd put out a working VCR, and a broken DVD player; the following morning, the DVD player was gone, but the VCR remained till collection day.

-Mmaster
link2 Divine Judgements|Be an Angel

Random thoughts while travelling home late enough that it's cold in the height of summer. [Feb. 23rd, 2007|12:23 am]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[mood | exhausted]
[music |Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys]

Some clever sod left a half full schooner of liquid under the bench at the bus stop. An uninterested street sweeper broomed it into the gutter, where it promptly shattered. Passing buses ground the glass fragments to dust.

Stupid buses. Left ProgSoc room at ten past eleven. Bus failed to materialise until ten to twelve. Graghrah.

Better buses. The 437 we were tailed by let me catch it for the one stop without paying, because I 'looked tired'.

Seeing the Southern Cross always makes me feel oddly calm. I don't know what it is; I certainly don't know any other constellations (nor have any real desire to learn them). But the Southern Cross is the one that I seek out whenever I'm consciously looking at the night sky.

It's strange how something can become a symbol of a person, even when that person no longer generally associates with it. A friend who used to live across the road has moved to Canberra to study at ANU. But the home, despite the fact that rest of the family still lives there, will always be "Dan's house".


Sleep time now. *collapses*
-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

Here we go Santa Malone, and turn yourself around! [Feb. 11th, 2007|07:19 pm]
[Tags|]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |We're going on a bear hunt...]

From a music book I had as a child:
gigol bells gigol bells
gigol olall the way.
Fathr Christmas lost
his wiscis on the way.
Hi!

The above is written in a late-preschool/early primary school graphite pencil hand. I don't remember when I attended the class the book was for - or perhaps it was added later, since I remember being very young for the class, and the above shows at least enough fine motor skills for legible text. The attempt is accompanied by a drawing of a person wearing a triangle of a hat, and then what looks to be another triangle hovering vacantly on top. And snowflake smudges, and bells.

Most of the rest of the contents of the book are written in my mother's hand - far more legible, and lacking the spelling errors. Though I did another effort on the first page reading "we wish you a merry christmas and a happy new yere".


...I want to know how I managed to spell "Christmas" correctly both times, yet managed to lack a single "n" in the word "jingle".


I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say... But it'll keep.
-Mmaster
link1 Divine Judgement|Be an Angel

I don't know if this is about me or my brother. [Feb. 7th, 2007|05:16 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |Bullet With Butterfly Wings, The Smashing Pumpkins]

My brother's taste in music as a teenager has influenced my own - but not to any large degree. I have purchased albums that I heard across the hall as I grew up, but only a few that I can think of off hand: (What's The Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Oh, and The Living End's self titled.

My brother used to love The Smashing Pumpkins. I don't know whether he still does, given he doesn't seem to have time to listen to music of late. But still. He even wound up with two copies of The Aeroplane Flies High, because two people gave him it as a gift at the same birthday, or something along those lines.

However, perhaps because he owned more than one of the band's albums, their music never really sunk into my consciousness as much as some of the others. But watching Clerks II, I rediscovered 1979, and realised I knew the song. And remembered at Shaun's birthday party several years ago, where we had this conversation (if you want to call it that):
* Shaun has received Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness
* Puts on Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Music: The world is a vampire...
Mm: I know this song!
Shaun: Really?
Mm: ...Well, just the first line...
Music: Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage!
Mm: ...And the chorus...

So, the day before yesterday, I was suddenly remembering a bunch of lines from random tracks by the band. Disarm, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, 1979, Tonight Tonight, perhaps a few others.

Having discovered that at least the above were included on a best of, I finally purchased it today. It's odd; the album is almost divided into thirds: five tracks that I don't know, five or six tracks that I recognise and know reasonably well, and then the rest of the tracks that I haven't yet listened to (and hence am not yet sure whether they will be familiar or not).

This may simply be that the tracks appear to be in roughly chronological order, and the listed ones were released around 1996 - the last few years of David living at home. After he moved out, there were several years of no interest in music, followed by the (almost inevitable) teeny-bopper phase. Having escaped it, I come back to the music he liked at my age - since I've barely listened to the radio in the last couple of years, it's a little unsurprising, I suppose.


...Man, that was long. Summary: I bought a Smashing Pumpkins best of. Yay!
-Mmaster
link

RESPONSIBLE ADULT: BETA [Jan. 19th, 2007|08:24 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[mood | stuck in the 80s, apparently]
[music |Wine Women & Song, Harvey Danger]

Thomas asked me if I was "stuck in the 80s", today. The fact that I was too young to actually remember the eighties is apparently irrelevant.

He asked, because I was recounting to him what I had done today. Aside from shopping with my father (I replaced the scooter wheel that had shattered), my day was mostly devoted to videos. I went through our collection, pushed each into the player, and verified that they still actually worked. After that, I watched several of them: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gave me a serious nostalgia high. I spent the entire time going "OhmygodIrememberthis!".
...I then watched Strictly Ballroom. And half of Shine, till I realised I wanted to throw something at the father every time he came onscreen, and turned it off.


*looks at release dates* Yeah, I suppose the "80s" summary has a little truth.

In the Ninja Turtles cartoon that I was so enamoured of as a child (and, admittedly, still love to bits and refuse to acknowledge other versions), the first episode was released in 1987.

The film Strictly Ballroom was released in 1992. However, the original play that Baz Luhrmann wrote, and later adapted to the screen, was released in 1986.

The film Shine was released in 1996. However, the first scene (and various others) are set sometime in the eighties.


...Next, I think I'll watch The Secret Garden. There's no eighties in THAT one...
-Mmaster
link

[Jan. 5th, 2007|10:15 am]
[Tags|, , , ]
[mood | geeky]
[music |Sad Sad Situation, Bowling For Soup]

Oooh. ...Shiny.

Connor is currently booted into Puppy Linux. Largely, just because I can.

Unfortunately, it's currently running off a LiveCD. I've installed it onto my USB Key, but thus far, the BIOS ignores the presence of an operating system on the flash drive, despite the Boot order:
* CD-ROM
* Removable drive (It should fit in here, I'd've thought)
* Hard disk
It checks the CD, bypasses the removable drive, and then loads from the hard disk.

Also unfortunately, everything 'net related lags, because we've hit the cap and nothing's cached. But Mozilla SeaMonkey is a massive nostalgia hit; having done no research into the matter, it appears to be a clone of Netscape in its heyday; back when I actually used Netscape (but with the addition of tabbed browsing).

*shrugs* Still... Shiny!
-Mmaster
link2 Divine Judgements|Be an Angel

I saw you in the club downtown; we danced together till you turned around and saw me... [Nov. 29th, 2006|01:28 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[music |Spanish Harlem, Bowling For Soup]

You know what I've got a craving for? Volcano muffins. Too bad we don't have all the ingredients on hand.

Several years ago, Mum had the idea of teaching me to make microwave muffins, so that I could cook up muffins after school. We followed the directions to the letter.

When we put the mixture in the microwave, the mixture still looked like slop at the end of the recommended time. Assuming that it was due to variations between machines, we put it through again. Repeat several times.

...Until the entire plate burst into flames.

We re-read the recipe, and from the imperial measurements, pieced together that it had been transcribed incorrectly. It was supposed to require 300 grams of flour; the recipe said 30. Unsurprisingly, this didn't return the desired results. We corrected the error, and they worked reasonably well. The mixture turned out better when baked in the oven, though.

The microwave smelled like smoke for weeks. And the muffin pan was a total write-off.


TO-DO:
Today:
* Eat
* Have bath
* Get dressed
* Maybe make aforementioned muffins... Or some variant.
* Maybe visit Stevie
Thursday afternoon/evening:
* Meet up with Richard, Stevie, and Matt
* Download audio drivers for Connor (since messing around with speakers showed me that several very strange things are going on on that count) - Current driver details
* Swap photos with Nora
* Get disk off Chris
* Upload ACS photos
* Go to the End Of Semester thing
Friday evening:
* Dedney's drinkies (If he ever figures out where it'll be)
* Prod him for Help!
By Monday:
* Clear out Garage of random cardboard boxes
* Clear out Useful Cupboard of some of its contents
Preferably by Monday, but not essentially:
* Shift/sort various notes; high school and University.
* Sort the books currently cluttering David's floor.
* Decide on which of the old machines to keep (Probably will chuck Trent)
By the 15th of December:
* Pick submajor (Software Engineering?)
* Pick subjects
* Enrol
* Join Advantage club thing for next year
Sometime:
* Measure alcove in back room
* Buy new Christmas tree
* Put up Christmas decorations
* Buy Christmas presents (Who wants chocolate? *prods*)
* Get Connor's Power Supply fan looked at
* Apply for job/s
* Organise a get together (Sometime in the week between Christmas and New Years'?)
Yes, some of those are things that need to be done as a family. So?

...Yay.
-Mmaster
link

Forty seven deadbeats livin' in the back streets: north, east, west, south, all in the same house... [Jun. 17th, 2006|03:39 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |(Living in the) Wild Wild West, Escape Club]

She's so mean, I don't care
I love her eyes and her wild, wild hair
Dance to the beat that we like best
Livin' for the ninties
Livin' in the Wild Wild West...

In one of my mother's many attempts through my childhood of actually getting me Active and Energised (or words to that effect), I joined a dance club for a couple of months. Or possibly less than that; I left fairly rapidly. I love to dance (often to the danger of others in the vinicity), but hate doing the same moves as everybody else. I have been known, several times, to start dancing random moves to the Nutbush, after loudly proclaiming that I refused to learn its actual steps.

The dance teacher required the students to have a dubbed tape of the tracks necessary for the two dances she attempted to teach us, in order that we could practice at home. ...I could never remember the moves, but I still have the tape. Every time I hear its tracks, I have to sing and dance along. I never knew the words or movements that she wanted from us, but I love the tracks nonetheless.

Forty seven heart beats, beating like a drum
Got to live it up, live it up
Ronnie's got a new gun

At Jeremy's birthday party earlier this year, I requested the track, and was amazed to discover I still knew most of the lyrics - and that, despite remembering none of the moves we had been taught, my hand involuntarily moved in the spiralling motion that accompanies the words "wild wild hair".

I wonder what happened to the kids who were in the classes with me. They'd all been there for much longer than I had. I wonder if they still dance?

Now put your flags in the air and march them up and down
You can live it up, live it up, all over the town
And turn to the left, turn to the right
I don't care as long as she comes tonight

-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

[Feb. 24th, 2006|09:45 am]
[Tags|, , ]
[mood | cheerful]
[music |Stay You, Wood]

I stayed up till one am reading last night, mostly by accident.

We haven't had a sun shower in such a long time. And it probably won't last long. So I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

I also re-ripped the original Dawson's Creek soundtrack. The second set was better than the first, and both were probably better than the show, but it still has some virtues. And it's a nice nostalgia hit.

I still need to correct the thing where the Artist in these MP3s is in the comment field. But not right now.

I need to get up and get going soon. I don't know what time Dad expects me at Broadway, but I'll have to get there.

I really can't type this morning. Part of the problem may be that all my jewellery and stuff is between my body and my keyboard, so my arms are trying to dodge them as they type.

I have a corrupted folder on my desktop. I can't figure out how to delete it. It's driving me crazy. Oh well.

Did any of that make any sense at all?
-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

I'm not obsessive-compulsive. I just sort my brother's twelve year old NFL cards for fun. [Dec. 14th, 2005|10:28 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[mood | cheerful]
[music |Shut Up And Smile, Bowling For Soup]

I got bored, so I invited Matt and Stevie (and, later, Richard) over. Stevie and Matt both made it over - but not overlapping. Through a certain amount of crossed communication, I hadn't realised that Matt and Richard were going to a movie before they went to attempt to fix Matt's puter.

Stevie arrived around 10AM. He watched while I finished sorting my items out in Animal Crossing, and then we wandered around the house looking for other things to do. We ended up watching the tail end of Blurred (which we'd watched most of, last time I was at his place), and then having a lunch of semi-homemade pizza (as in, I assembled it from the pieces that parents bought). After that, with around an hour and a half of time before his parents were due to pick him up, we watched Monster's Inc., and some of the special features on the disc. His Dad picked him up around 4PM.

Matt ended up arriving around 5, 5:30. We tried out the GCN-GBA link section of Animal Crossing, decided it wasn't worth the effort, and then I scared him with a nostalgia box. By 'nostalgia box', I mean one of the boxes that had the leftover items from the Great CleanUp of Whichever Week It Was. I was looking through my tapes, seeing if he knew the Disney songs. I came across the 'Jennie Gymnast' tape. He delighted in getting her to drag herself around the ground purely by spinning her (evidently double jointed) perfectly straight arms around and around. I also discovered a spinny fairy (the brandname escapes me) which evidently had it in for him. Most times we pulled the string, it tried to attack him. Also in the box was my brother's twelve year old NFL trading cards. For some reason, we started sorting them. Parents gave him a lift to the station on their way out, at around 7PM.

When I went on MSN, I continued sorting them.
Shoulder Angel: ...yes, i do enjoy sorting cards. :P
Stevie: wahts wrong with that?
Shoulder Angel: lol
Shoulder Angel: i have no idea who's on them... and no real interest in the people
Shoulder Angel: the cards could have nothing but a number on them, for all i care.
Stevie: :)
Stevie: the simple pleasures in life eh?
Shoulder Angel: something like that
Shoulder Angel: ...and there's also the "hrm. is this a special part of THAT set, or a different set entirely?" game :P


...Yes, I am a dork. But I had fun. Video games, movies, and playing with nostalgic toys... What more do you really need from a day?
-Mmaster
link

[Nov. 25th, 2005|11:55 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[mood | sleepy]
[music |Dammit, I Changed Again, by The Offspring]

Today was slightly lazy, slightly constructive.

I played Animal Crossing till 3PM or something, before having a bath and getting dressed.
Then I started clearing out the garage of a whole bunch of stuff to go in the council clean up. I tossed out a massive number of boxes, and then started going through some old stuff of mine, trying to figure out what was worth saving.

When I was little, I had this system: if my parents told me to clean my room, I would get the largest box I could find, and shove everything that was on the floor into that box. Then I would stash said box in the garage.
...A family friend, visiting after my room had just been 'tidied', walked in, stopped dead, and said "Margaret! ...You have CARPET?!?!?"
When we got those massive cupboards, I made a consious decision that I liked my room tidy, and that I should make an effort to maintain its status as such. I've mostly been pretty good about it, but occasionally the old tendencies creep back.

The boxes I was sifting were telling me very clearly how long it had been since I had actually looked through them. My best guess is that most of the stuff in there had not been looked at since Year Seven... Year Eight at the latest. I was amazed that the textas still worked. I found a couple of things I'd been vaguely looking for for the past couple of years. At the end of the sorting, I shoved the stuff I still wanted back into a couple of the boxes - and promised myself that I would sort out the contents tomorrow. (It was getting on for dark.) I then dragged all the chuck-out pile out to the kerb, where it will, more than likely, remain, for two weeks or so, till they bother to come and grab it. (Ashfield Council has discovered that if you hold off on picking up the junk for a half-week or so after the specified collection date, then everyone comes along and picks the place cleaner, reducing the effort required by council people.)

So yeah, I got stuff done. And had a nice nostalgia trip, while I was at it.

-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

[Nov. 12th, 2005|07:02 am]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |James Dean, Daniel Bedingfield]

Yesterday it suddenly occured to me that it was totally ridiculous to have a bunch of random MP3s on my hard drive, in a zip file so I never listened to them, just sitting there taking up space. So I dragged them out and shoved them into my misc folder.

...Ah, nostalgia.

There's a number of songs I'd forgotten I had - as well a handful of ones that I can't believe I ever liked. I'm now listening through the entire folder (which has now stretched to seven hours), to see what's actually worth keeping/chucking.

And also what's worth throwing back into a zip file, because I don't like the song right now, but it cost too much effort to find. Hrm. ...Remind me of the point of this exercise? Oh well.

Heh.
-Mmaster
link3 Divine Judgements|Be an Angel

[Oct. 2nd, 2005|06:22 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[mood | annoyed]

Well, Live & Local was good fun. Noisy, yes, especially since I'd forgotten my earplugs, but fun nonetheless.

I got to the Entertainment Centre at about ten past five. After taking a quick look around to see if I could find anyone, I rang Beccy. "We'll be there in twenty minutes or so."

Thirty semi-nervous minutes later, I had chatted to several random batches of people that had come to sit at the table that I was occupying, people watched hopefully, and felt vaguely nauseous. Especially when I realised I'd forgotten said earplugs. The first guy that came along didn't actually know there was anything on: "Why are there all these people hanging around dressed like goths?" The most popular band shirt of the evening - at least, while outside the building, before we had access to the merch desks - appeared to be the Green Day 'Heart Grenade' tshirt; though I saw three guys standing together (presumably friends), all wearing Slipknot tshirts. I also saw one girl walk by a couple of times wearing a "Mrs. Timberlake" shirt. I chatted to the mother of some girls who were still figuring out how they were organising themselves (I was amused that one of them had painted a cobsweb on her face), and wandered around fairly nervously.

We eventually managed to find each other, and went to the door. We were told very firmly that we were not permitted to leave the building once we had entered. We all said Okay, and went in. I was briefly introduced to "Alex", who I'd believe to be one of Dave's friends. Ed, who I think I recall from the Green Day concert, also attended. Beccy and Alex and I headed for the merch desk, and signed up to receive cheap copies of The Living End's next single, as soon as it was released, "Plus a free badge!" By the time I had finished writing my name down, Beccy and Alex had disappeared. I wasn't sure where they'd gone, but I figured it was easier to be where I knew we needed to end up, so I went upstairs to the gate. I got a phonecall from Beccy asking where I was, and she seemed surprised.

When they all appeared, we hung around beside the door till people arrived, and then snuck into the line early and headed in. We chose a place; I got the seat at the end of the row, and quickly realised that it gave me a very useful handrail to use as a tripod (though it could certainly have been at a better angle for the purpose :P). As soon as we'd found a place to sit down, Dave and Ed said they were going to go con one of the doorkeepers into letting them out to buy food. They took orders, but I was still feeling too out of it to eat, really. (I ended up stealing a couple of Beccy's Chicken Nuggets.) While they were gone, Alex and Beccy and I had a discussion about geeks and webcomics and the Asian population of Fort Street. Alex looked vaguely out of his depth whenever Beccy and I burst into spontaneous bouts of giggles over what other people (generally female) were wearing. My personal favourite was the pair of trendgirls wearing belt skirts and identical "Roxy"(? ...Whichever.) tshirts.

The first band of the evening was some unsigned group named "Krill". They couldn't sing, but the music itself wasn't too bad. Beccy spent much of the evening grumbling about half the music. I spent the first half with my fingers in my ears to reduce the echoes - I eventually gave up. Somebody came over and offered me some earplugs, but I refused; I'm still not sure why.

The Spazzys were up next. Similar vedict: they can't sing, and half their lyrics are fairly inane, but the tracks themselves weren't too horrible. They came over as a little self centred, though.

It was at about Dallas Crane that I stopped bothering to block my ears, and instead started taking photos and videos of the proceedings. As bands go, they were pretty good, but the type of music they played, I have to admit, is not really my style. Dave and Ed knew all the words and were dancing, much to the amusement of Beccy and me.

The next group to appear were "P-Money". It was almost amusing how truly inappropriate for the audience they were. The rest of the bands were rock acts - differing sounds, perhaps, but all of them could fit into the "Rock/Alternative" spectrum. These guys, however, were a couple of rappers over some guy DJing. Beccy and I were amused to note that half the tracks that the DJ used were in the slut dance. (Incidentally, I was looking back at assorted old videos - including the ones from the Year 10 Formal. The video of Paul acting like an idiot has one of those tracks playing in the background, as well. Oh dear.) The group were so bad that the crowd in the mosh pit were throwing bottles at them. I was amused to note that the rappers had matching tshirts: both read 'Go tell your boys', though one was white on black, and the other had the colours reversed. Beccy observed that "They don't have guitars, so they grab their crotch" - and indeed, in one of the shots I took in an attempt to capture the guy's shirt for posterity, he is. For the second half of their set, one of the guys got so angry that he stormed offstage and the guy in the white shirt had to do the track alone. However, obviously somebody was enjoying it, because I saw some girl filming the proceeding with her phone. And a couple nearby would get up and dance to the choruses, though that may have been admiration for the DJ/record and not the rappers, since that was purely him.
We want the Vandals! We want the Vandals!

After that, the presenters came back onstage (they'd been appearing periodically throughout the evening). Their speech sortof went, "Um, give a round of applause? ...Yeah, the whole 'throwing bottles' thing was good. Well, um... The next act won't be on for a while yet, so... Check out this guy that got onstage! We don't know how!" The guy danced around for like half a minute, and then a security guard wrestled him offstage.

At last, we reached the headliners. Well, semi-headliners. Spiderbait came on. They spent a lot of time in drum solos, but were otherwise good. I got a large portion of "Outta My Head", "Sunshine on the Window", "Buy Me a Pony", and "Black Betty" in video format. Plus some assorted videos.

Finally, there was The Living End. WOOT! ...I mean, Yay. I managed to keep tabs on most of their set (mostly by capturing video snippets of the tracks), which was roughly as follows...
* West End Riot
* I Can't Give You What I Haven't Got
* Tabloid Magazine
* What's On Your Radio?
* Roll On
* ...Something that I'm not too sure about...
* All Torn Down
* Prisoner of Society
* E-Boogie
* Who's Gonna Save Us?
* Second Solution
* ...Maybe something else as finale...?
What's On Your Radio? is their new single, due out in November, which Beccy and I pre-ordered. I got the recording in its entirity. My camera ran out of space just as the last song finished.

When we got out, I could head this tinny chittering over the top of anything anyone said. I couldn't tell if it was just the large number of people, all talking over the top of one another, or whether my ears were actually ringing. I walked to George Street, keeping in between groups of people, and keeping to the lit side of the street. When I got to George Street, I headed down it. I sudden;y realised that I was going in the wrong direction, but paranoia meant that I refused to draw attention to myself by changing directions, and just kept travelling the same way. I found a well-lit and reasonably well populated bus stop, and caught the 437 which was luckily the first bus to come along.

I got home at 11:30, but somehow forgot to go to bed till half past twelve. I hate it when that happens.


This morning I woke up at 6:30. Yay for six hours of sleep. I stayed in my room for another hour or so, tinkering with photos and suchlike.

We went to dog training, and did various administration things and stuff.

At about 11:15, I walked over to Marion Street to catch a bus to the city. I got in, walked into Broadway, and met Kara there.

We went and bought Beccy's birthday present, and then had lunch. We wandered around various shops and stuff, laughing at the possessed soft toys and feeling nostalgic for the real era of Polly Pocket and Lego and suchlike.

After we'd run out of shops to visit, we agreed that we probably should head home to give the illusion that we might do homework. We waited for the bus, disturbing other people with loud noises, and then went home.


I think I'll go do something to attempt to put me back in my good mood. I have a serious desire not to catch public transport on Wednesday - my backpack's likely to way a fair bit more than my schoolbag did, and that would involve carrying it for a far longer period of time. I'm going to go play Chuzzle, or something.
-Mmaster
link

[Sep. 23rd, 2005|07:40 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ]
[mood | nostalgic]
[music |Chemical Heart, Grinspoon]

Having had five hours sleep, I figured it was time to report on yesterday. Man, I'm going to be dead by the end of today if I don't get some decent rest.

I got to school at twenty to eight or somesuch, and saw a bunch of Year 12s sneaking around. They called me over, and we stuck a "For Lease" sign up on the front of the school. And then found a way into the compound, and stuck a sign saying "Yr 12 2005, Better Than U" in large spraypainted letters onto one side of the overpass. Nick BS turned up, and he's like, "What are you all so afraid of?", but it was fun running around. They then taped up the Valley and toilets with caution tape, and dropped red-smeared tampons in the boys toilets. Yay for lack of muck up day.

I got Nick to take my bag into the hall and dump it in the front row somewhere, so I could snag a front row seat before the crowds turned up. Stevie turned up, and he and I headed into the complex through the gate that had actually been left open for us. Various people had already arrived. Dacre turned up, and told me that he needed to borrow Tristian, so I set that up. I then spent my time getting assorted teachers to sign my little book. Three teachers in a row started their message (After the "Dear Margaret", or whatever) "I wish you all the best in..." and the one after that said "All the best in..." Yay for genericness.

They served breakfast, but I'd already eaten. I wandered around, talking to people, and occasionally ducking back inside to get things or help Dacre/Rommell.

At about ten o'clock, they had a quick run through of the FLOP. I got a serious headache, and kept having to leave the room in an attempt to not die. I snapped at Anna K. when she asked me to sign her stupid book - I said no, and then she asked me again. Find a page worth of stuff to say to Anna? HA. Steson called me and suggested he visit. I was more than amenable to the idea - I don't get to see nearly enough of that boy.

At around eleven, we let the rest of the school in. I was amused that in the lead up, some twinkies came in early. We all chanted "Out, out, out!" at them till they left, chastened.

The FLOP was long, but generally good. We were plagued by technical glitches, especially the sound. They had like three sound inputs and only one mixer. I so have to buy the school one of those multiple-input-to-singluar-output gadgets as a leaving present. Jeremy hopped up on stage whenever the glitches occured and sang You Don't Love Me Anymore; he'd offered it as an act, but it got cut - so he took every opportunity he could to sing it to distract the audience (a verse at a time). It went for two and a half hours, and aside from technical issues, I think we generally held the attention of the audience for the entire time. I got the entirity of the teachers' pantomime on video. *Amusement* They made a really bad choice of song for the "Let's all get up on stage and look nostalgic" song, though. Having a song and changing the lyrics to suit is a nice idea; but their choice of song sucked. My Way is too hard to sing, and nobody can figure out the tempo. I hid behind Simon so I didn't have to try - and chatted to Richard, Matt and Stevie. (Doesn't everyone do that while they're on stage at their leaving celebration?)

Martin turned up. And all present were scarred for life.

We all lingered in the Fountain Quad afterwards. Richard went and took a cake to the office ladies. The icing on top read "So long, and thanks for all the late notes." Before he handed them it, he filled out a late note; they were protesting, saying "But we've seen you already today! You were here this morning!", much to the amusement of the onlookers. When they cut the cake, they tried to offer it to all present - I didn't have any because it was mud cake, Beccy refused on grounds that it was covered in coconut, and Stevie couldn't eat anything because he had his plate in. Eventually they palmed that piece off onto Darcy, who was paying for something or other. Steson eventually turned up at the door. We hung around a little longer, checking out the sign with great satisfaction, and then he, Matt and I headed to MarketTown.

We bought chips-and-Coke from the chicken shop (well, I bought the Coke from Michel's, because it's cheaper, but the idea's there), and ate it down in the food court. We then headed into Gadget Central, and I introduced them to Steve and Pete. I freaked Matt and Steson out with some of the stuff on sale - I think my favourite's still the Blacklight hat - and we chatted with the guys for a while. I edited the scrolling light sign to say "YAY!!! NO MORE SCHOOL FOR US!!!!" - I think I've got the number of exclamation marks correct. We then headed on, through to Target, where we drooled at the games and were traumatised by the soft toys. I'm not sure which one was scariest: the singing polar bear, who's cheeks light up with a possessed red glow when activated; the Care Bears that sing at you; or the Furbys, that I was amazed to find still in existence (Steson discovered that they were on exactly the same cycle - he activated both at the same time, and they said the same things. We also found a Pikachu doll which moves its mouth and speaks in a friendly voice when you squeeze its left hand - and buzzes with "Thundershock" when you squeeze its right. (I think Matt wanted to buy it.) He did end up buying a Knuckles (from Sonic the Hedgehog) 'poseable action figure'.

After we had been completely freaked out by the assorted animated soft toys, we decided that it was probably time to head home. Steson abandoned us at that point, while Matt and I went back to my place. We ended up watching Blurred. The film still felt appropriate, even though, in a lot of ways, we were watching it six weeks early. We both agreed that the experience of Schoolies that it documents is not really one we wish to have.

At about a quarter to seven, parents drove us both to school for the graduation ceremony. I love having a friend who has his name one place before mine on the roll - it's so useful for inanities like those assemblies. And from small amounts of swapsying, we managed to get Dacre, me, Matt, and Richard in a row. That was cool.

We all lingered in the Fountain Quad after that, hugging random people and taking photos and whatever else. There were lots of plates of stuff, but I wasn't hungry enough to face any of it. My parents and Julie agreed to hang around for a while, then go out to dinner.

We eventually drove down to Norton Street and found a restaurant that was still operating at 9:45 at night. I ordered a kids meal, not just because it was the only simple thing on the menu, but also because I was still not hungry to eat a full meal. I still didn't manage to finish my chips. We hung around, chatting, and finally left around eleven.

I ended up doing assorted stuff after that, to the point where I was still up at 12:30. And then I woke up at 5:45. ...Or, more to the point, I woke up earlier than 5:45, but refused to check the clock until then. I'm going to have breakfast (I'm tempted to make bacon and eggs, though I'm not sure I can be bothered) and then be tempted by the thought of going back to bed.
-Mmaster
linkBe an Angel

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