The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

Long time no post, because the web server hosting my site (courtesy of Nick Stallman) has had IBCD (Infected bash commands disease, long story short messed up glibc linking in all bash commands ).

I also suffered an cold, sore throat, mucus, fever etc superbug which I have recovered from due to time, sleep and lots of garlic water (Yes it has another purpose besides warding off vamprical beings). I have lost my invitation to Ruben’s (Really, really nice guy / hacker (Combine him and Nick Stallman and Me with computers, sugar and caffiene (which I don’t have) and you have 3 elite hackers (the good kind (has all the embedded brackets pissed of the Scheme haters yet ?)) ready for fun)) LAN party, so I missed it, apparently it was on Monday.

Although I have probably made up for this with all the other gaming I have been playing. I resumed playing Runescape for some unknown reason, and despite enjoying myself, I observed the use of poisson processes in mmorpg combat systems (usually turn based) and a great example of population flooding and its consequences of reducing the entire population’s standards.

I am also hanging around with #ddh crew on irc, I got bot spammed and redirected and they seem nice enough . I really need to focus on my assignments which looms like the creeping population flooding that I am so irritated with.

I don’t like it when the quality of something (anything, whether it be a folk festival, an online game, the nature of humanity) drops the lowest common denominator of the quantity of its population. I believe the humans as people have a responsibility to ensure they don’t screw it up too much for everyone else.

Call me an idealist, call me a dreamer (quoting John Lennon) but I am not the only one, the world can be a better place all humanity has to do is start polishing the positive traits of humanity and neglecting the negative ones, while this will be no means create a utopia, it will be a partial patch to the big rip / hole in the quality of life for humanity.

Anyhow Jullian Lennon (John’s son) captured an example of this in his song Saltwater and its video clip, it is a great clip with a great message and I recommend watching to anyone. Another good movie to watch if you want action, romance, drama, culture and tragedy is Dangerous Bangkok. It is about the life of a mute deaf assasin and I throughly enjoyed the depth of the plot, the imagery and the sublime completeness.

Whilst on the subject of recommendations I recommend the comic and literary genuis of Martin Pearson (hehehe lol ). With the amore skit, the levictus song, the unofficial lord of the rings musical and serious songs about interesting issues, he can make you laugh, cry and clap.

I haven’t been without the influence of people and religon on the holidays, whilst not having to deal with people at Uni on the subject, I will always have the JWs (Jehovah’s Witnesses) to discuss things with and the occasional Christian acquaintance.

This post’s question is

If could give your new born god child (for those who don’t know the term, child that you would look after if something ever happened to their parents, (yes it is commonly used in religon, some don’t get all hot and bothered)) 3 recommendations or words of advice at any time in their life, that your still alive in, what would they be and why ?

Any how back to work, I hope

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

BTW: Bootsplash works not perfectly but almost and kxdocker works a treat. =)

In Reply to Sarah K’s comment on a prior post:

(If you will ever read my blog again given your misconceptions of my nature): Please don’t call me Ben. I prefer Benjamin or Appleman1234 or Apple if you are lazy.

I vehemently hate Ben, I hate the human trait of laziness over respect, that it symbolises, etc.

As to distraction to education: You really couldn’t distract me from 005 as I have had prior exposure to the majority of the subject matter. I am very determined as you noticed.

The lost pen lid was irritating if and only if, the fact that I couldn’t find it and had to move all my existing books / bags / etc around in the process which generated more noise, which disrupted learning of the remaining people in the lectutre. (Well the ones that were not bored brain dead or asleep with open eyes)

AS for STFU: That was an entire different scenario, one fact in I have grown more tolerant of, even if the lecturer hasn’t. The ITB005 lectures aren’t made interesting, it not like the lecturers pull apart the hardware components in a computer for the relevant sections.

Also all the good / hard / fun stuff has been removed / watered down from the subject due to review. I can understand that your social group wants to use the time more efficiently by multi-tasking.

What I don’t get is what your group’s consensus on respect for lecturers is ? (Not that I can speak, I was taught critical literacy and intend to practice it, I usually ask questions for the benefit of the majority, (I am thinking it, others might be), However Since I have realised that people intend to injury me or burn me at stake for this, I might just not bother and keep my questions to myself.)

You seem to all have relative high levels of intelligence given that your social group is prone to verbal making my entire existence a living mockey.

Why is it then that you all don’t develop gestures, note passing, instant messaging between the two laptops or basic lip reading, etc as an alternative form of communication to the talking which you do. that isn’t exacly whispering.

You would still communicate just as effectively but would reduce the noise level by a few decibels, calm the lecturer, etc.

As for your last verse / paragraph , it is wonderful idealistic and poetic, two traits I relatively enjoy. I did search in earnest, but hindsight I wish the either my or my colleagues had caught the pen lid.

Thanks for your contribution

And I add my sincere apologies and condolences if any interpretation of anything I typed / blogged or anything I neglected to type / blog caused distress, upset, anger, insert other negative emotion here.

xkcd: An awesome Webcomic by Randall Munroe

I just discovered this and in combination with several lyrics including P!@TD and my own compositions, my mind has a sector in a linguistical buffer overload. If had a euphoric emotion it would be here.

If you were given a change to alter something after seeing its effect in hindsight, would you and why ?

Apple Pie tastes wonderful and it is good for you too.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

I have had an interesting weekend. Monodevelop nows works to a T. (Including code generation and GTK# gui designer) All I need now is for VS 2005 to be backwards comptiable and I would be cruising.

I am just starting to learn System.Windows.Forms development in C# in Monodevelop, so far my GUI application named guifun works.

I am going (was supposed on the weekend but got delayed and sidetracked) to write a C# application to do some basic linear algebra for MAB220 (Gaussian elimination, Matrix multiplication, Doolittle and Crout,etc) .

I went to a extended family member’s birthday, dressed in character (theme was Hollywood, I was Richard from the Beach), I got blasted by daughter of birthday celebrant, regarding my conversations with a mutual acquaintance.I then got that 5th wheel feeling, the feeling you get when you know you really don’t belong here / your out of place.

I also went and saw a matinée (Fame) that my sibling’s friend (Him and his older brother are music geniuses) was in the orchestra for. You know those musicals / plays where the actors / performers / front-end of operation doesn’t do justice to the script and backend, well it wasn’t one of those.

In fact it was the complete opposite if anything, the performers, the band did a great job but it left me with the feeling that the musical writers / directors / screenplayers/ other backend people didn’t do the front end of the musical justice.

Compliments to Kizedret / Kieran for introducing me to P!@TD (Panic! at the Disco), they instantly go on my “favourite bands” list. Their lyrics and music videos are clearly inspiring and ravishing complete in the surreal detail, that I like to think in.

Amarok pwns, with covers from amazon.com, lyrics and wikipedia artist information, and replaygain courtesy of kde-apps.org. I need to be bothered to configure kxdocker properly and organise skinning and gui themes.

Wikihow is an interesting idea, it will be fun to watch it grow. The price of the Greenphone came out on the day after anniverisary of USA’s stab itself (USA’s self stabbing), so that it can kill someone else event.It is 695 USD, which is an immediate painful stab for me, because I want it so badly and now I can’t afford 1500 dollars for a phone.(regardless of its leetness)

If someone did have a fit whilst a nightclub and you were their and witnessed it, what would you do ?

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Uni
Just finished really busy midsemster exam / assessment period. I didn’t do as well as I wanted in MAB220 (Numerical Analysis) exam, due to lack of study / practice and lack of time. I will make up for it in the final exam though. The ITB005 (Systems Arch. ) exam was easier and more fun.

The other assessment in assignment form has also kept me busy. I enjoy OO (OpenOffice) Math, aside from me bothering to learn Latex, it is the best solution for the insertion of mathematic syntax and symbols. I don’t enjoy Visual Studio, (Stupid irritating MS IDE), ITB003 (OOP Programming) lecturer said I would be able to the course entirely using Linux (or that anyone else would be able to use Linux, Mac, Win whatever) and yet they wanted assignment as Visual Studio solution.

I tried using a converter located at here .

I also spent lots of time completing ITB002 (IT Professional Studios) group assignment, which although we were a person or two short and Mirza and I were busy with our 4 other subjects, we managed to complete successfully, albeit cutting it closer than we had hoped.

Other stuff

I have also been doing so many other wonderful things recently which include:

• Watching Nick Stallman renovate his home computing scenario. (Lots of nice hardware and a old laptop (P2 166mhz mx), lots of fun)
• Watching Kieran Salsone nuture the development of Websinthe.org (Link is in blogroll) and Myleetjihad.com like a web gardener skilled in the knowledge of CSS and their power in creating a beautiful web garden and also skilled in erradication of the Bad Web Design bug and the pruning of the treacherous IE vine / crawler.
• Dealing with my beliefs in the topics of God , Religon, Logic, Illogic, Magic, Evolution, etc
• Found Dorian Gray’s (Alias of Raymond Marshall) Websites (which have had their domain names expired, thanks to Chris for pointing this out.)
• Found Purple Dragon’s Blog (purpledragonblog.wordpress.com)
• Officially improved my Smack talking skills @ Websinthe Forums. (I now have dangerous smacktalking mouth +12 as a secondary mouth / weapon)
• Helping numerous people with lots of different things.
• Started playing Quadra (quadra.sourceforge.net) again
• Currently working on icons for Kuroo and Quadra
• Perfecting my Gentoo install (installing software / fixing software / getting hardware support for stuff
• Got rained on whilst trying to get to library to print MAB210 (Probability and Statistics) assignment
• Postponing the writing of this post
• Being avaliable @ Websinthe forums / MSN / Jabber and numerous IRC channels (mainly on freenode)
• Wondering if God was a magical being
• Having discussions on Religon / God / etc that I didn’t have time to have
• Being me
• Realising parts of me that I thought other people broke or screwed up, that still exist
• Pining to release my creativity in the form of creating art, music,parodies, lyrics, this blog, fan fiction and poetry etc
• Wishing I had anime / manga to read or watch
• etc

My hair is growing pretty long now. It was supposed to be all braided / plaited up ages ago, but the braids / plaits fell out. I am going to need to get it replaited soon. On the holiday break I must still study, send my laptop to get repaired (Screen blotches) under warranty and have a LUG meeting.

Ohh, and Steve Irwin died . . Everyone seems to keep reminding me of this. It gets me thinking about life and how a freak accident can take life out from under someone just like the magicians (the performers not the real ones) take the table cloth off the table with damaging the table contents.

I also realised somethings regarding this and other stuff from watching the movie “The Beach”. With relevance to the above it examines how death is dealt with by people. In the death of people, some people just hear about the death and once the person is dead eventually forget about them. In the death of people , it is evident that those aware of the person and those who are affected by the person can’t just ignore the death of that person, in their minds that person will never be forgetten.Steve will definitely never be forgetten by Terri, Bindi and Bob as he has affected their lives immensely.

It is my hope that more people don’t forget about Steve and other people that have died, just because they are dead.

How is the relevant to “The Beach” you ask ? It might not be but it seemed to me. The movie demostrates the price of an exclusive Utopia. (to avoid mass people flooding messing it up / wrecking it) It also demonstrates the effect of death in this scenario.

*Plot spolier* Two people are attacked by shark. One dies instantly and is buried, the other is sick and doesn’t recover, the utopia nature of “The Beach” isn’t restored until the dead guy is buried and farewelled and the second guy is placed away from the camp and left to die (They can’t get help to him on the Island or their secret is given away) .

Quoting Richard (lead character played by Leonardo de Caprio) �get better or die. it�s the hanging around in between that really pisses people off.�
�it would be a lot easier to condemn our behavior if it hadn�t been so effective.�
�…out of sight really was out of mind. once he was gone, we felt a whole lot better.�
�it�s easy to turn your back.. but not always so easy to forget.�
�you can never forget what you�ve done. but we adapt. we move on.�

Near then end of the movie Sal (camp leader) gets told by drug farmers if she wants to stay she has to kill Richard, Richard is at first scared then realises the situation then knows and states to Sal “You can’t kill me now, before it was different , noone had to see, but now it is in front of everyone, everyone will remember and know the price of the secret / island (or something like that)” and sure enough she can’t shoot him.

*/Plot Spoiler*

The Beach is a great book. I enjoyed the movie (all though many other people hate it). But the theme of the cost of sacrifce in utopic societies (in true utopic societies there should be none or some depending on your interpretation of Utopia) is an interesting theme, it was good to have another source to contrast with Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984.

This blog post’s questions are “Is sacrifice required for Utopia, why / why not ? What is Utopia to you ? Does humanity deserve Utopia, why / why not ?”

Live your life

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234