The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

My break is just starting to get busy. I started my research scholarship yesterday. Its two days a week and it is great fun.

I am working with Chris Savini, with Michael Lawley (lawley.id.au/blog/) as my supervisor. I will be most likely working on porting diff to MDA & Tefkat (no we didn’t try to fry a cat, it is a model transformation language (tefkat.sf.net)), or working on writing a visualisation or graphical editing tool using GMF, EMF, GEF or some other Java based visualisation library.

Before that I was trying to recover my soul and psyche from the stress of exams and the year gone by. I started playing Neopets (Thanks Sabrina), now I have a pet that won’t abadon me or die on me, or run away. I still have to complete the flash AAA game challenges sometime over the next few days.

Don’t forget commas between different IDs in CSS this mistake cost me two hours of sleep. I will probably also start filling some Gentoo Bugs, as the list of packages that aren’t compiling cleanly is getting about the usual 4. I also will be working on two game development projects if all goes well, and two web development projects as well, and my Gentoo developer quiz & Wesnoth translation and the rest of the other stuff and things.

I am also transcribing and recording the skits. If you are bored during the break and want to catch up with me, just give me a bell or a ring or something. Chris is making Fruit Salad using Tefkat & Eclipse has had to start again at least 4 times, and taken over 8 hours, and while the Wiggles may call fruit salad yummy yummy, it is starting to become tedious.

But at least we know our way around Eclipse, EMF and Tefkat. I have also done several GMF tutorials, so I might hack something up with them. I also won 60 free texts in a Optus win promo, so I am able to send and reply lots of texts over the next 3 weeks or so…..

The only thing I am going to say about my first voting / election experience is that when I got to the booth, I looked at ballot papper for the house of representatives expecting to see 7 choices (the example had 7), with the 7th being Doctor Who from the Australian Timelord Party. Of course there was only 6 entries so I had a WTF look on my face, and I had to place my 1 in the box of another candidate that wasn’t Doctor Who …

I also need to send away for my Keypass ID, and need to catch up with everyone, my family is a having party around Christmas sometime (my younger siblings wanted it), so I will send the inivites round via email.

Have fun and enjoy whatever you are doing,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Second year of university at an end. Just leaving me to hope and pray that I did ok on all the exams I studied and worked so hard for. I am now recovering my mind, soul and what is left of me :P, by attempting to relax, recooperate and then focus on all the other non-Uni related stuff.

I have Gentoo updates to run, bugs to wait on, Eclipse to install, and a dev quiz to finish. I have so much other stuff as well but here goes. I had cupcakes and raspberry lemonade on the last day (not the best lunch, and I had butterscotch pudding for breakfast). Thanks Gatl for the cupcakes. Your new hair looks awesome.

I have several things to plan and organise over the break, including the part-time research scholarship work, I have starting in 10 days, catching up with everyone, publishing and developing stuff that has been bottled up and preserved, etc.

I don’t think I will have a celebration for my birthday, as I would probably be too much hassle to get everyone together even if I was to comprise on the date of birthday celebration (which I am not known for). But I wouldn’t mind a game of Mafia or Mao or other funny party games with a bunch of people.

I have a lot of people I need to catch up with. I could list them here, but that would incriminate them. (One because they wouldn’t read the list even if they were on it, and two because well meh (shuffles and doesn’t provide justification.) )

If you want to catch up with me, please get in contact with me, either via mobile, email, blog comment etc ….

I should make some cupcakes and some sushi. (Gatl you made me hungry). My hair is growing longer and my beard is slowly growing. I don’t look like my mental avatar just yet but I may do soon. I may upload some photos later.

I find it ridiculous that the Ubuntu crew removed alsaconf from alsa-utils. (I was trying to help Johhno with his sound…).
Thanks to andy_t_roo for making me examine the trolley problem and then go overboard rationalising and applying logic,illogic, and emotion to morality puzzles and gedanken. Examining the possible implications of one’s actions or lack of action is much more fun than eye-spy, and is almost as much fun as playing real world Where is so & so ?.

I am not going to KA-LAN tommorow, as I have better things to do and I have played enough Enemy Territory as is. Thanks to Skorge and Ruben for confirming my view on the Source Physics engine being less than robust with an excursion into gmod.

I still need to work on the Wesnoth Indonesian Translation, I need to get a non brain copy of the Denied sketch / skit, The adventures of a misguided 3 year old in the world today part one skit / sketch, along with self-pwnage guidelines and the lyrics to some of the poetry and songs I have been working on.

As for Christmas and my birthday (the eve), I am not sure what I am doing yet, I will most likely accept best offer, and be taking several offers for consideration, my family has made me one offer, and I still am waiting for the other possible ones….

As for things I want for the period, I don’t know, other than being able to see the the Time Crash Doctor Who episode and the Christmas episode ASAP, oh catching up with everyone (Good company) would be nice too.

I don’t think I will make it to LCA2008, given the expenditure and effort required. I may pop up at Woodford but no promises. I will be online, I will be getting stuff done, and I will be having an awesome time …..

Dreams and fates still tease, asking me to open up the door
And yet not just one, but more and more
Need to remain open, to appease their whim.

This post’s question is

If you could save someone’s life, would you or wouldn’t you ? Why ? What moral implications would this act have ? How would the moral implications reflect or be influenced by the logic of the situtation ? the emotion ?

Best wishes and have fun

Hope to see you all around

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Some things I have learnt in my almost two years studying IT / Software Engineering …

• People skills, teamwork and communication are very important in the developing relationships, friendships, software solutions
• Coding doesn’t mean Software Engineering, neither does Hacking
• Software Engineering is usually very much like a Sunday roast, either under done or over done
• Democracy works in teams, provided they are small odd number teams (Modeling the effort dispersion using odd sidded equilateral polygons) and the personalities and natures of the team member are either complimentary, similar or contrasting. Democracy in larger teams leads to bureaucracy and ochlocracy.
• Documentation and Code commenting / usability is only as important / useful if you have an appropriate reason or justification for it. Otherwise it becomes extensive, vague or overly specific and requires much more effort than the actual design or implementation process.
• Just because something is done in “the industry” doesn’t make it correct or valid practice
• Flexibility and Tolerance are also important especially when dealing with deadlines and clients
• Just because you a taught a certain way to do something, doesn’t make the best way to do that something, and it doesn’t mean that way is the only way
• Exhibit intelligence, creativity, initiative in an IT Lecture and you will get labeled as a hacker, engineer, or otherwise regardless of what course you actually do or who you actually are
• Standards are either de-facto or obtuse with too many different versions, if they aren’t then they are out of date
• KISS is a good policy
• Things just don’t build easily on MS Windows (I tried wxMozilla), even with MiniGW or Cygwin.
• Project management when properly done is actually useful
• Make sure that the computer you are compiling the final release on doesn’t have a virus.

Consider I just finished my Software Engineering studies exam today , I think now is good time to post this. I was going to add a section on what I use Windows for, but decided against senseless Microsoft Bashing. (As we all know I am in favour of bashing Microsoft senseless…., but meh, I can be civil)

I will probably add more to this over time, as I learn more. I am off to study for my other exams and continue blogging.

Happy coding / or (software engineering :P)

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

I am currently sitting here, cleanly out my laptop’s 100gb hard drive, and updating as much software for my Gentoo as I can since I had to leave the software updates to the weekend as their were several blockers (packages that can’t be installed with other packages), but I believe I have them all sorted out now.

Other current blockages include our toilet which has caused the most grief this weekend. Because it is a septic system it isn’t just as easy as using a caustic or acidic solution like Draino to unblock, and we are currently using an enzyme based solution which may or may not be working and can take upto 12 hours to fully process….

The worst outcome of this is that my Mum has banned toilet paper (She believes this is the solution, I believe it is just avoiding the problem.), and my parents are seriously considering banning internet given my little brother’s online gaming habits (an almost addiction to the game Conqueror Online…).

This combined with numerous other factors promote and encourage me to reevaluate my current situation and to remember my identity and comfort zone, outside that of my family. I currently done really feel at home, either in the City or Peachester, in fact ironically I feel more at home sitting anywhere with decent internet typing or uploading stuff to this site, which now that I think about it isn’t that ironic, ironically. (two levels of irony, how many will cope ?, n levels of irony, how many still cope ?)

I would probably move out on my own if my resources and circumstances allowed me to do so, but unfortunately they currently do not. I also need to reparse and update my todolist to ensure that all the stuff I need to do gets listed and eventually done. When I do move out or possibly before then I am going to have to find my own doctor, lawyer, etc, etc …
(Circle of professionals….)

Today my mother’s sister and her husband visited us as they were over our side of the country (they are from WA), and they were an hour late, which wasn’t that important, other than the fact that Dad wanted to go to the beach early, and Mum had other plans which they then had to change to accommodate an early meeting time 9am, which ended up happening later anyhow. (I don’t normally talk about family much, if my talking about family on this occasion bothers any of the people that read my blog (Wait a second, people other than me, or those that I have told, or Bots actually read my blog ???… If so this is a triumph…)), well you will just have to comment about it in the comments )

Anyways I said to my Aunty and Uncle, with my parents in the car, a small slightly humorous advertisement which I am going to repeat here. 18 YO M N/S N/D Maths/IT Student Seeks FFI (Fast Free Internet) and GC (Good company) along with the occasional shared meal and card game….

I spent most of Wednesday to Friday last week playing Europe in Ruins in the company of Ruben and completing my group MAB422 Maths modelling assignment which was using differential equations to model love. (Thanks JC Sprott for your initial groundwork). If anyone wants a copy of the report, feel free to request one from me ……

The general conclusions were that in order to have a strong relationship with someone whether a positive or negative relationship, the direction of the relationship was determined by romantic or social profile or personality and the strengh of the relationship was determined by the amount of influential interaction .

I intend to exterpolate and interpolate the findings of this report to the majority of my social interactions in general, although the findings of the report weren’t exactly new to me.

I updated to the new STK11xx webcam drivers and they seem to have memory allocation issues so I will have to file a bug relating to that. I also have to get around to doing the regression test for WinMX under Wine, to get the Netrek Cow Client to compile and a valid ebuild, let alone the release of my Wesnoth Maps and the Indonesian translation for Wesnoth and my Gentoo development quiz. I am also going to have to setup all the ACPI buttons, get the wireless LED working, and setup hibernate or suspend…

I found a local (1km down the road) biodynamic blueberry grower, and was able to purchase Chrystle’s birthday present(two blueberry bush / shrub cuttings) for her and give it to her today. The fact that I have a local blueberry grower nearby is awesome, it means decent priced delicious biodynamic blueberries. Hazzaar and Hooray

I am in a gift giving mood and am currently thinking about the wxMozilla code I have to write for my ITB712 (Software Enigeering Studies) group project, the Matlab code I have to write for my MAB220 (Computational Maths 1) assignment and about forms of government and Polybius’ musings on Kyklos.

Chrystle made a very good point , when I was talking to her after dropping off her present, she says whenever I talk to her, I have recently been eating cake or pie or something. This makes me think, who many other people do I talk to that see or hear of my eating other things…

My little brother says I am too loud as he is always asleep when I am quite, imagine the effect you could have on someone if their only exposure to you was that of a particular emotion or behaviour, they would logically stereotype and limit you as someone as only exhibiting that emotion or behaviour. That is social conditioning at its best for you…

I think society needs to start using social conditioning for a positive improvement in the morale and morality of humanity. Then the world would be a better place for all. As a sidenote GIR from Invader Zim is awesome….

This post’s questions are What do you all think my diet consists of ? and What is the gift you most want to receive ? (I am in a gift giving mood) , and What is the gift you most want to give ?

Best wishes and hope your having fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

I am very very busy and probably shouldn’t be writing this post, but I figure I may as well now that I have started.

Anyhow, OPEC is on in Sydney, Austria and despite the city being shutdown and secured in order to avoid protesting and anything else productive, the Team from the Chaser (www.chaser.com.au) still manages to get past two security checkpoints and make the majority of us laugh. Apparently if convicted, they will face 6 months in jail.

What defines humour ? what make funny funny ? I know that my funny isn’t your funny and vice versa. When is something comedy and when is it mere stupidity ? I happen to prefer genuine humour that relies on wordplay,wit, intellect and other such comedic devices, as opposed to some one calling my Mother something, or the flaming paper bag with fecal matter inside on someone’s porch.

Sydney did like look quite desolate in the news, almost like the city in Julians Lennon’ s “Saltwater”. However at least most (least most, best worst, black white, hehe) people in Sydney got a day off. Maybe they should make an OPEC holiday permanent and erect a statue of a motorcade with Juilan Morrow & Chas Licciardello in the middle of Sydney somewhere.

But at least it demonstrates that people have been receiving the subliminal messages of the Spooky Men’s Chorale’s “Vote the Bastards Out” as well as the messages from Penlope Swales’ “Madness,Mines & Mortgages ” (http://www.penelopeswales.com/archive.html) (Yes I am folkie, so shot me….)
(or more specifically The money and the machinery
The greed of the nuclear industry
You’d have to be deaf dumb and crazy
To pit yourself against that
But the ones that do and the only sane ones
Everyone else is mad)

Anyhow I get to vote for the first time this year (which is probably why I am mentioning news and politics), and whilst I am not exactly a fanboy of Kevin 07, the fact that he is offering a faster broadband plan to Australia, and his ability to speak in Mandarin to the Prime Minister of China, make the choice of voting for him, (there are other reasons but I am not going to list them) much better then that of voting for “Howard The Coward”.

I have to send away the form for changing my address to the AEC (not the AEC from Finding Nemo :P) and receive the form for my Keypass application. But anyways moving on… Happy Birthday to Jerub, sorry I missed your party. Happy Birthday for Chrystle for next week. and Best wishes to everyone else whose birthdays I have forgotten.

The only problem with the Translink website is their journey finder doesn’t tell you where you have to walk towards only how far, related to this interface problem was the Commonwealth Bank ATM that didn’t give me the option to widthdraw $40 , so I choose $50 and it had no $50 notes, so it gave me a $20, Commonwealth Bank fix your ATMs so there is an option to specify how much a customer wants to withdraw. (See codinghell.com for more interesting software system and design flaws and antiflaws (good hacks))

Anyhow, I am currently very busy with uni projects , assignments and study, I submitted my ITb744 assignment on time on Friday, but it wasn’t 100% finished, and for some reason ld wouldn’t link the assembly object files and C object files. I wish the practicals for ITb744 actually demonstrated the techniques and methods assessed in the assigment. But I suppose I did leave the assignment slightly to the last minute.

(Note to self and possibly to others, you can understand Pointers in 20 minutes, you can understand Structs in 20 minutes, and you can understand dynamic memory allocation in 20 minutes, this doesn’t mean you can write code to dynamically allocate memory for structs of pointers in 40 minutes (especially if the argument to calloc requires multiplication (* for pointer, * for multiplication )))

Anyways the groups I am in have a Design Specification for ITb712 due Wednesday 5pm and a Mathematical Modelling Report due Friday 10am next week, so I better get typing them up instead of this. Other side notes, why doesn’t QTWebKit have Python bindings yet ? and I wonder if I can get wxMozilla working for our project…

I feel great, and not euphoric great, which is unusual for me. The next message in this topic is a quote I said to Gatl (Celia), in response to her MSN message, I hope she gets her ITB003 project in on time for Monday. I got to catch up with Gatl briefly on Friday night (whilst coding in C and Assembly) which was nice. Another thing I just noticed is I was wearing my shirt back to front, this entire day, and that earlier in a MAB281 tutorial, I said I know complex numbers uptofront and backside down. (So this is my new MSN name and quote)

I am going to see a Midsummer Night’s Dream at 4pm, with family (Shakespeare is awesome, I was in Midsummer Night’s Dream play in Grade 5 or 6 in Darwin) . I have been singing more on the way to uni and will probably eventually write down and upload the lyrics and possibly the recordings, but since I don’t have any feedback from the previous song, I am not really sure what people think about it.

I did the new Nerd Test and I reckon it was broken and worse then the previous one. Eventually I will reattempt to make ebuilds for the Netrek packages as a new COW release it out. But shmeh ….

Anyknow I have to get into some form of work , as my thoughts are all organised and some of them are even digitised on this post.

The question for this post is

If something bad happens , why get stuck on it , or let it immobolise you, why not learn from it and move on ?
When you lose a life in a video game? With the next life don’t you normally avoid the obstacle that lost the previous life ? There is no use crying over split milk, or is there ?
Is Laughter the music of the Soul ?

Best wishes, Hang in there and keep living …

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

First of all, the sections in brackets are extra details that can be skipped and the message should still be comprehensible but the brackets represent side notes, footnotes, thoughts, extensions and other such fundanglery that makes life worth living or at least my blog worth reading or laughing at …
As for my over use of brackets that probably comes from the fact that my brain thinks 3 times faster then most people, hence I have more sub processes, hence faster and more indirectly linking between thoughts, it is either that or the fact I enjoy Scheme / LISP programming which also uses lots of brackets.

Second of all, this post has been at least 8 days (over one week in the making) so it probably will be long. Sorry it isn’t an audio blog, I will see what I can do with respect to them, but I haven’t gotten much feedback. As for name quotes, other then direct speech quotes, names are first names only for the moment.

This feels odd, quite odd, as I have put a significant amount of thought into this entry (probably as much as most of my prior entries, and I just think I have put more effort, brainpower and time into this one). It also feels odd because for once I am not writing this entry directly into my blog (which is Wordpress powered for those who haven’t noticed…) via my web browser (Firefox unless I am downloading PDFs in which case it is Konqueror because KPDF Kpart > Adobe Acrobat Reader Plugin in terms of speed and ease of use), but instead into my text editor. (which is currently kwrite for plain text and kate when I am hacking something up or coding, not vi or emacs or even joe…)

Lets see, where should I start, considering I haven’t blogged in 8 days, only 8 days and yet I have the urge to blog.., which is strange because all signs lead me to believe that I am one of the few people that actually bothers to look at my blog, let only read it, let only attempt to comprehend it or relate to it.

These signs include me (indirectly) or my blog being labelled as a ‘Useless Random Crap Dispenser’ (notice the leading letters are an anagram for CRUD, I like anagrams….), thanks Chris Savini for that comment, but to be fair Chris also said upon further clarification, “Don’t stop, its good and its addictive..”, the fact that people on my MSN list don’t get my hints about being proactive…, the fact that people tell me both face to face and via instant messaging that the can’t be frogged (Yes it used to be the other f word and I don’t mean frolic or fruit, but Sabrina noticed I swore, so I am censoring it (even though other people said it), and also I think frogged sounds much better) to read my blog, or that the read it and fall asleep a paragraph through it or they read it and they don’t get it.

Anyhow, where was I, that is right, I was at Uni watching Invader Zim (ZIM!!!!) with Ruben and Arania with unstable Internet access, oh wait, wait, I mean meant where was I in the process of the topics for this post / entry. Ok, Ok, the world isn’t ending and I found my thought process.., After getting that comment from Chris (although I did bump into Chris and Megan at V block / Library earlier) and talking further to him about the uses of Differential Equations in the workforce, (He is doing MAB413 Differential Equations, and was looking for how they would be used in IT..), Bacon Numbers (oraceofbacon.org, I think or just Google oracle of bacon, to steal a homerism “mmm, bacon”), how I meet all these people (the people I know, talk about , mention etc.) and radioactive bins or bin segregation (/bin/queue). Julian rushed passed us and I said Hi to him. A bit later on Danny / Rastilin ran by us (I said Run Danny Run and got whacked in the back of the head for it).Slightly after that I said goodbye to Chris and headed to Central Station, and just as I had gotten past V Lab I ran into Chadders, who was also going to Central Station (Currently that is 6 people that I bumped / ran into).

We started talking about the Computational Mathematics (MAB220) Mid semester exam, Bacon numbers, Linux and the fact that Chadders was heading to where he was staying (his uncle’s) to prepare for a QPAC performance. We made it as far as the traffic lights before we bumped into Matthew and Kyle who where also on the way to Central Station. The conversation shifted slightly but not by much, to what Maths subjects we were doing, how I kept up with all the people I knew and how we were going and then I started to tell the casino story (see previous entry) to them (which never really got finished), upon reaching half way down Queen St Mall, I bumped into Rita (who I knew via Birgit, having meet at a meeting about a month prior), I said Hi and let her know when I will next see her and the continued walking as we had trains to catch.

Outside the sweet shop, Chadders bumped in a friend from Uni and said Hi and we waited for a while, then Matthew bought some sweets and we continued on. On the way up the escalators their was a really argo rushing man that was angry and yelling for no reason other than his bad day. He was also making some pretty nasty threats. I remarked to Chadders, that if I were looking for trouble, I may have whacked the angry man with my umbrella, Chadders replied that his head would probably be too thick to whack anyway.

I then got a ticket and got $16 in coins :)(Same feeling as you get at the casinos without the risk and euphoria), said goodbye to Chadders, went to my Platform bumped into my little brother (who I was meeting) and Andrew’s little brother (both which are taller than me) (that is 12 total, that I ran into bumped into in the one afternoon sequentially), we then bordered the train, which was 6 cars, but had a previous train cancelled so we were packed like sardines into the train.

Eventually, we got seats and then Matthew had reached his destination. My little brother had already embarrassed me at this stage. We then played cards (Gin) for almost the remainder of the journey, which was good fun. Unfortunately for us all the wonderful rain we are getting that is breaking the drought and causing flooding and wind damage, caused a fault in the train’s braking / electrical system and the train got stuck at Glasshouse one stop before home and two stops before Kyle’s connecting bus.

We got out after offering Kyle a lift, and my little brother called Mum and let her know what had happened. She drove to Glasshouse to pick us up, it was then that they identified that the train wasn’t going anywhere, and I reoffered the lift to Kyle and he accepted, we also found out that Dana (Daughter of a coworker of Mum’s, that attends QUT) was on the train and went looking for her but couldn’t find her.

We drove or got driven to Landsborough and met Dana there and gave both Dana and Kyle a lift back home, which was embarrassing (don’t you just love siblings) and interesting simultaneously. When we finally got home, I noticed that my little sister’s friend Breanna was staying over. (Grand total of 14, not bad for one afternoon + evening)

Ok that is that story out of the way, in other news, I played a game of Europe in Ruins (europeinruins.com) (a persistent army mod for COH) that I didn’t suck at, I attended and did quite good at a MAB281 (Mathematics for Computer Graphics, not to self next time get more study and sleep and right fast from the beginning, even if it hurts your wrist, which is what the extra time is supposed avoid, but doesn’t seem to), I also managed to submit my Maths Modelling Assignment (MAB422) in on time, albeit as complete as I could get it with Maple not returning the differential equations with dsolve.

I spent way too much of the Weekend on that assignment, and getting stuck on both the phase plane section and the analytical solution of the DE didn’t help things, on the bright side I did get to read Harry Potter 7, as told to by Gatl, and found it boring, more funny than sad and disappointing. DEs or Differential equations seem to cause tiredness in me.

One that note, its 1am and I need sleep, continue this when I can, since I have 2 assessment items for a group project due by 5pm today.
Continuing as I now have time to do so about a day later. I also managed to do well enough, but not as well as I would have liked on my Mathematics for Computer Graphics Midsemester exam. (MAB281) After this I managed to play a game of Europe in Ruins (persistent army mod for Company of Heroes) and not suck. Hazzar to quote Chrystle or myself.

I then went home and slept to make up for lost sleep, the went into to uni to work on my ITB712 Group Assessment items which were due today, (and we managed to complete and submit them both successfully Hazzar!!), and ended up not getting much work done, observing Ruben recompiling AMP (Apache Mysql and PHP) on Olympus, and then watching him play WOG (World of Greenroom, the Greenroom’s private WoW server, which is slightly broken and using Ascent, nothing a few database hacks won’t fix).

After watching WOG for a while, I along with Arania were both boring almost to the point of mindlessness with WoW and began to wonder what its appeal was ?
I also wondered what Gatl was doing on WoW, that was so important she couldn’t even have time to say Hi.., meh *sigh*

As it got later the program changed to watching Doctor Who (The Shakespeare Code Episode) and Invader Zim, this was all made possible thanks to the generosity of Ruben and his fancy lots of gigabytes NAS (network attached storage). I am still wondering if it was worth sacrificing Numb3rs and NCIS for that but I will just have to wait and see or wait and be blind.

Before the night ended, Ruben showed me an interesting short story called the Last Question by Isaac Asimov, which several topics including whether or not you could reverse entropy, whether reality is subjective, the nature of base logic (which I walked all the way to Adelaide St, in attempt to explain it to Ruben only to walk all the way back unsuccessfully.) and other such wonderful topics.

On my way back I bumped into Arania and talked a little while longer before heading home. I came to the realisation that just like the rule of 3 for IRC,
Of the people on IRC they can be Single, Intelligent, Mentally Stable , Pick 2.

I will let my readers determine whether I match all 3 or which 2 (as I am on IRC, 17 channels at last count), of course it depends on your definition of Intelligence and Mental Stability. Hey my hand is almost going numb. But anyway I came to the realisation that using Goedel’s laws of certainty and uncertainty and the limits of knowledge theorems…

The rule of 3 for logic systems or base logic is
Complete, Consistent, Valid Pick 2

The majority of people believe that base logic or normal logic is all 3, but by Goedel’s laws it cannot be. So either base logic is incomplete (hence my mention of using illogic or another external logic system to complete it) or invalid, which can mean we don’t exist :). (this can also be solved by using another external logic system such as illogic to validate it).

The two logic systems don’t just merge into to one, otherwise you would still have to pick 2, which demonstrates the importance of the belief in multiple logic systems, which as a sidenote strengthens the case for not ignoring faith which is a basis for illogic, just as truth is a basis for base logic, instead they are separate systems linked by a circular logic structure whether it be a circular argument, a paradox or something else (an giant elastic band :P)

On a side note, I said something quite cool in the Maths Workroom the other day that they asked me to write on the board.
It was “Your approximation of reality is inaccurate. More iterations required”
in this same round I also got told not to steal the tea (when I don’t even drink tea…, wow the Maths Society is paranoid about their tea and I thought Mathematicians were supposed turn coffee into theorems), but Cake Day is tomorrow , shame I am not a member, oh well their is always next year.

On a final weird note, after being asked two questions about how I meet the people I know or make friends and about how I keep in contact with them, I figure that I should probably say that at the moment I don’t know how it works yet or even if it works…

I would also like to compare my existing relationships to my QUT Wireless connection, in the sense that most of them are established connections, even connections that support data transmission and application stacks, but for some weird reason my packets get dropped when I ping people ….
Maybe they are a busy server or maybe my route to them is misplaced, or maybe I am impatient in expecting a fast response time, or maybe my signal is out of range.

But the next time I ping you (I greet you or contact you or say Hi…, etc) in would be nice to get a Reply From so & so along with a few packets of data maybe storing emoticons like and words like Hi, How are you ? , I am fine, I am great … etc (no pressure, after all I normally have to wait along time for QUT Wireless to work or stay working)

I am going to try and attempt to organise a get together sometime to play Mafia and Mao again, and will probably seen an email with a long CC list eventually. For the sake of clarity today is yesterday for the today mentioned in the entry, and today is Cake Day. (This today being the day this is uploaded and not written.)

The question for this post is Did you go down to the woods today ? Did you believe your eyes ? What did you see ? What saw you ?

Best wishes and good luck with your commitments and other life featuring items

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

I am uplate and home up coast for my Mum’s Birthday it was a great surprise. Anyhow

Here is the log from #gentoo-au.

* andy_t_roo is now known as vcr
* vcr blinks 0:00
* vcr blinks 0:00
<patoh> mine blinks 00:00:00
* vcr blinks 0:00
* vcr upgrades its clock
* vcr blinks 00:00:00 AM
* vcr blinks 00:00:00 AM
<patoh> mine is 24 hour
* vcr is now known as someon1
<greenmanwitch> hahahahha
* Appleman1234 reprograms someon1 in Assembly
* someon1 is now known as foo-matic
* Appleman1234 reprograms foo-matic in Assembly
<foo-matic> … -.– -. - .- -..- / . .-. .-. — .-.
<foo-matic> … - .- -.-. -.- / — …- . .-. ..-. .-.. — .– / -.. . - . -.-. - . -..
>adds< Hard AI programming to foo-matic, gives foo-matic basic logic learning protocols, and exposes foo-matic to science and religion
* Appleman1234 adds Hard AI programming to foo-matic, gives foo-matic basic logic learning protocols, and exposes foo-matic to science and religion
<foo-matic> .–. .-.. . .- … . / .. -. .–. ..- - / .- -. / .. -. - . –. . .-. / -… . - .– . . -. / .—- / .- -. -.. / .—- —– —–
* Appleman1234 goes back and fixes all 46 bugs
<foo-matic> (the above transales to “PLEASE INPUT AN INTEGER BETWEEN 1 AND 100″)
<friendly12345> Segmentation fault
* Appleman1234 types 42
* foo-matic points out that before i AI and logic was given i also had a stack overflow)
<foo-matic> … — .-. .-. -.– / - …. . / -. ..- — -… . .-. / -.– — ..- / .. -. .–. ..- - / .– .- … / - — / …. .. –. ….
* Appleman1234 reprograms foo-matic to use an infinite symbolic stack
* foo-matic is now known as turing_machine
* Appleman1234 reprograms turing_machine with exposure to humanity
<greenmanwitch> turing machine.. analytic engine is better
<greenmanwitch> analytical
* Appleman1234 reprograms a brainfuck interpreter into turing_machine
* greenmanwitch is related to Charles Babbage though so I am biased
<Appleman1234> ++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>
++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.
+++.——.——–.>+.>.
<turing_machine> hi there
<greenmanwitch> perhaps computing is my blood and I must become good at computers.
<greenmanwitch> Perhaps it is my destiny :\
<turing_machine> note, i didn’t actually run that program
* Appleman1234 realised that
* Appleman1234 offers turing_machine duct tape
<turing_machine> Rather than machine language of progress crossing the reference of the database access whose many important improvements are extensive in the method of learning, it is good to inform that by good analysis
* Appleman1234 offers turing_machine WD40
<mark_alec> Redhatter:
<mark_alec> <Snausages> So, an E-flat, a G-flat, and a B-flat walk into a bar.
<mark_alec> <Snausages> And the bartender says,
<mark_alec> <Snausages> “I’m sorry, we don’t serve minors.”
<turing_machine> Appleman1234: your program prints “Hello World!”
<mark_alec> <Myke> That struck a chord.
<mark_alec> <Snausages> Careful with those puns, you’ll get in treble.
<mark_alec> <Myke> But they’re key to my humour.
<mark_alec> <Myke> And very noteworthy.
<friendly12345> mark_alec: you have to be sharp to get that joke
<mark_alec>
<Appleman1234> mark_alec: old from bash.org , it is mainly a collection of noise
<Appleman1234> slash bang bin bash
<Appleman1234> turing_machine: correct
<turing_machine>

Appleman1234: >+++++++++[<++++++++>-]<.>+++++++[<++++>-]<+.+++++++..+++.>>>++++++++[<++++>-] <.>>>++++++++++[<+++++++++>-]<—.<<<<.+++.——.——–.>>+.
<Appleman1234> msg turing_machine Have a look at this Bible
<turing_machine> Appleman1234: i think you forgot a ‘/’
<Appleman1234> nope it was intentional, AI testing
* Appleman1234 kicks turing_machine and sighs
* turing_machine notes an impact
* Appleman1234 offers turing_machine icecream and a genetic catalyst
* turing_machine is now known as andy_t_roo
<andy_t_roo> mmm icecream . . .
<Appleman1234> success

andy_t_roo is a friend of mine, he turned in a vcr on IRC, and I tried to bring him back

The question today is which languages, references can you spot , (think of this a geek meme in disguise) ?

Best wishes and sweet dreams

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey,

Being trying to get QUT’s services working with Gentoo properly. I lost my usb stick this morning. (The silver one that was 1GB but Windows damaged to 512mb and that is currently partitioned as FAT32)

H drve only works using mount (smbclient gives an error) so I made a bash script to mount my H: drive for me, I also got Wireless Printing working using CUPS (this will make my life so much easier.)

Steps

1. Click Administration tab, Click Add Printer

2. Type in a valid / relevant name , description and location, click continue

3. For device choose Windows Printer via Samba, click continue

4. Paste the device URI QUT provides (with the Mac OS X howto) changing your username and password

5. For Make choose Generic, and click continue

6. For model choose PostScript Printer Foomatic/Postscript (recommended) and click continue

7. Choose your preferred printing options

8. Done CUPS and hence Linux now can print over Wireless or Wired

9. Rush to M block / V block to buy more printer / internet credit.

10. Realise it is late and they are closed

11. Sigh

At least I will be able to print out my next MAB220 Assignment wirelessly instead of letting it sit in the printing queue for 4 to 5 hours . UPDATE: Apparently colour printing costs same as black and white when using CUPS, but I am yet to test this…. (Thanks Chadders)

I was going to mention this in the last post, but I want to know why virtually noone (Yes you all do when you deseperately need my help…) on my MSN list is proactive and initiates a conversation with me when I come online.

Or why so many people can’t be bothered to read what I am upto and instead I am required to regurgitate for their benefit. If people liked listening to my audio blogs more, I am happy to do that as well …

I am off to either head home, or get some assignment work done ,

The question today is Do you like waffles ?

Best of luck to you all,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Feeling a little better now, although, how one feels is quite relative. Best thing that has happened so far (besides having a Mathematical Modelling Assignment and C assignment todo) was returning home late at night, normally I would have been driven, but the other night wasn’t the case.

On my way up the hill, I met an old Greece / Italian lady with a broom, staring up at a possum and whacking the tree, to try and knock it down. Inside I chuckled to my self (beware IT Joke / pun coming), as I had already a photo of a possum on a bin at Uni (/bin/possum) and now I was seeing a possum on a tree (/possum).

She stopped me, and a pointed towards the possum and asked Good or Bad ? It was evident that she hadn’t seen a possum before, I replied Good, and then I went on to tell her in my best basic English (those who know me understand), “Possum, Possum is Good, I don’t think that possum will try to come into your house.

That possum is young. Other older possums have been known to scavenge from bins, but this possum it is young, Child possum, it won’t come it to your house and it won’t bother you.”

I also explained how there were lots of possums that lived in to Botanic Gardens, after talking to me, she put the broom down, said, “Good night” to the possum and then to me and went back into to her house to bed, and I continued walking up the hill.

This encounter made me realise a few things, I made me realise that despite Birgit being sick (seems to be this flu / influenza, Chrystle has it too, I think, I hope they both get well soon), I was supposed to attend the weekly meeting without her, else how would I have been able to participate in not only seeing a possum in a tree, but also saving the possum from any accidental harm it may have gotten if I hadn’t come along.

I also realised that people fear what they don’t know , which is why I am so scary….. ;).

Another realisation was that simple misunderstandings caused larger actions which can have larger consequences …

This makes communication more vital then the majority of us , give it credit for. We are meant to live, our lives have a purpose even if we are aware of it yet.

I will probably have to find sometime off (1.5 weeks or more) either to do a Gentoo reinstall or to possibly change distributions. Much more likely the first option. Matlab is finally playing nice with me, I had to edit the .matlab7rc.sh scripts in both my $MATLAB_ROOT and home directories, so that for the architecture I am using (glnx86, as I don’t have the 64 bit verison of Matlab) it exports the correct LD_LIBRARYPATH to find the libraries responsible for 32 bit OpenGL.

Simulink is still having issues (its libc.so doesn’t find a suitable libXft.so to link to…), hopefully I shall be able to get it working eventually as well as get used to the Matlab programming language, which seems so much more restrictive and broken to me in comparsion with Scheme and C or even Maple.

Hope everyone enjoyed attending or not attending the Ekka as much as I did, The fear of flu seems to scare lots of people from it. Thinking about the Ekka made me think about the children of the carnies or carnival people, it made me wonder whether the new technology and broadband avaliable would make it easier for them to get a better education.

By the way, my phone know has a recharged battery, so you can text or call me and I will be able to respond. (it was lifeless for about 3 days …)

The question / s today is

Why am I short of attention
Where’s my wife and family
What if I die here
Who’ll be my role model
If you’ll be my ….
I can be your long lost …

Bonus points if you can figure
Where the questions are from …
What the blanks are ?
Your answer contains a reference to the item or theme in question
etc

Anyhow, have fun and get well for those ill,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

PS: And my Dad takes offense to me saying that our strongest link is through music, Amazing…

Salutations in moonlight

Truth …

Lies ….

Secrets …

Surprises …

Honesty & Chivalry war in my mind’s eye

Seeking Compassion & Redemption

For Crimes Not Committed

For Glass Shards that bleed my barefeet

And yet don’t exist, or perhaps my feet aren’t there

I couldn’t be certain, and yet I couldn’t be wrong

The damage done and only realised post mortem

If only consumption was enough

One day you will all get the keys

To play in the ball pit and do as you please

Hopefully by then my half-life will have decreased

But perhaps we seek the pain and damage

To prove we are real, as having faith in something

In order to just feel, Depravity becomes Humanity

As we stop caring, and just continue to exist

Legal obligations require moral sacrifice

And a pound of flesh and a pound of soul

Should both weigh the same

Persecution, Criticism creep along the foundations of Tolerance and Acceptance

A riddle and a rhyme interlocked in time , its all between the lines

Of a polygon that doesn’t exist, don’t bother with the compass

It will only lead you to the labyrinth, and why go there when you could have had icecream instead

Fight the Minotaur, Wage your holy war, only to realise you are just killing yourself

So much self assisted suicide, it is as though we think we are born to die

Use by dates stamped on our heads, ensuring innocence is lost

Things loved and people discarded, in hopes that we can accept ourselves

Balls of string and dainty things, provide the perfect disguise for cyanide tea

Kippers gone know, along with the dolphins and whales

Have you seen Alice she owes me a prose, the White Rabbit owes me my pocketwatch

And when I will next see either, noone knows

Eat this, Drink that, Size doesn’t matter, does it ?

Too late now the order is past, off with your head!

Oh wait, you’re already headless blast

The caged bird it sings of the blue skies and the sunshine

Never realising that the door is open wide,

Brrr, so that is why my neck is cold, despite its mantle

Rhapsody or Empathy , what was that which was said to me ?

If I had a penny for each time, then I would be penniless

Everything has its price, and everything good doesn’t feel right

Hide and go seek, 1… 2… 3…, Try as you might you won’t find me

Before you know I will have climbed the FarAway Tree

Or hidden from myself, whether I fancy

If you were lucky, then a skeleton you would find, with ring on my finger

And Wardrobe behind, Narnia or Dorian Gray as too my fate, either would say

Nothing and no-one, abundance and glee, shrouded in hollow comptemt and facidious misery

Would I sup with Saint George, only if I could save him the trouble of committing genocide ?

Or perhaps the Jackerwocky is a better dinner guest , behind his appearance and behaviour, is less of a mess

Giant wooden bunnies and rude castle intentions, false bravery and a luck break

False illusions of grandeur and stones and dead birds

Are shallowly laughed at without saying a word

Recurring dreams, nightmares and doom, I’d rather be betrayed by Jack Sparrow, then conclude

That eight pieces of eight isn’t sixty four and that isn’t Thumbelina making out with Little Jack Horner

On the hearth rug, and what of the Calico cat and Gingham Dog, bickering over colour swatches and then doing each others laundry over coffee

It is so much easier to love a dream, as a dream doesn’t carry poison knifes, wielded with deadly aims,

Instead prefer to haunt the mind, scourging the soul, for whatever they find.

And the Doctor says I should go camping, but I have no intention of going to Gor, as fun as it would be to meet the Priest Kings or live and die by the homestone, and sword…

And those Ninja rats can watch and wait, the Oracle of Ishadna doesn’t know my fate

As for Sebastin’s composure and the love of the CareBears, well I guess they are over…

The Hill, sat a cross, an innocent life, surrounded by naughts, and yet that is somehow more fair then global thermonuclear war.

Why fight for peace, when you can play chess, beware the path of the knight at its best

Too many wagers, too little time, play not to win, not to lose, but to escape with my life

Torch of Illuminace + 3 doesn’t make the cavern any less dingy

Oh look I killed a Newt, now to roll a 6, Please pass the fruit

Peas catapulted, potato flying, along with Spaghetti, such a monstrosity unlike the cafeteria has ever seen

It will take a 1000 cleaners, a year and half just to get this clean

Ajax from chemical to web success, marketing buzzwords portray standards as second best.

Pictures mosaicing a path, Smiles breaking an already brittle heart, but at least the filling is sweet

And the flesh is good, quite nice to eat,

The Lion and the Mouse, The Rabbit and Tortoise ,

They try to teach you wisdom but you discard such childish pursuits.

To go play your Wii or see what is on cable TV ? Where was your class supposed to go ? The Museum ? The Opera ?

Or was it to witness Jimminy Cricket, the conscience of Pinnoccho

Culture these days is more like bacteria then humanity, growing in our yoghurt while we fail to care

Behind the mask, under the trapdoor, what lurks there now, that wasn’t before

You wish it was those two plumber brothers, collecting coins and spitting fireballs

In the above is hidden many meanings and some wisdom, there is still gems in plain sight but the coal is buried much deeper, and the pocketwatch deeper still, and if you get deep enough you might realise why I write this.

There is no question, the spontaneous prose / poem is cryptic enough, if you find it easy, think again slightly different, it should be more tough…,

How do I feel today ? I feel broken, but not damaged broken, just normal broken, so really nothing is wrong with me, I am just having troubles with emotions, self expression and fortitude

Not sure if it is because I am bored or because I am nice, but here are some clues, more cryptic advice:

The message above mentions or intertexutalates with

Sorrow
Jim Henson’s the StoryTeller
Wisdom
My Mind
The Layout of My Mind
Radioactivity
Shakespeare
Geometry /Mathematics for Computer Graphics
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Japanese Whaling Crisis
Alice in Wonderland
Bohemia
Enid Blyton / The Faraway Tree
Oscar Wilde (The Portrait of Dorian Gray)
CS Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia)
Saint George and the Dragon
Jabberwocky
Monty Python
Pirates of Caribbean
Fairytales and Mother Goose
Calico Cat and Gingham Dog
Doctor Who
Gor
Wizards and Warriors
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Little Mermaid
Carebears
Worldhopping
Wargames
Jesus
Chivalry
Dungeons and Dragons
Humilation
Food fight
Flying Spaghetti Monster
Ajax
Spain
Mosaic
Jewel
Valentine’s Day
Cannibalism
Crabmeat
Aesop & his fables
Popular culture
Simcity 3000
Pinocchio
Disney
Acidolphius
The Mask
The Phantom
Secret Seven / Famous Five
The Mario Brothers
And several more that I haven’t realised yet…

Have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234