The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

The last few days have been very very busy but lots of things have been happening. Uni is great, although it is only the end of the first Week, so maybe the diagnosis is a little early. Life isn’t bad, and isn’t exactly good (in the wonderful sense) but it seems to be tolerable.

It is amazing how lack or excess amounts of time can borify (coined word, meaning to make boring, I could have used dullify but it didn’t convey my mood or colloquialism as articulately) or stimulate a basic activity, like washing the dishes or cooking food, or doing study, or walking from place to place. The same could probably be said of mindset and enthusiasm for a particular task.

[Positive odds and ends, that will terrify & alienate most logical people or coldblooded bastards]

(This section is similar in form to a poem I read ages ago, but the content is different)

You should love what you do, because only once you love it, will you enjoy it and excel at it.

: You should accept what you do, because despite the fact you can do something else, or do something better or worse, it is what you do (did) not do, not what you could have done that matters , that causes reactions and opens doors and creating opportunities.

You should love who you are, because it is unique despite the social stereotypes and generalization of society, because you are special, beautiful, wonderful, terrible, if you don’t love yourself, you can never love others properly, you can never feel right, because there is always that self love missing.

You should accept who you are, because no amount of physical or mental manipulation is going to change your acceptance or lack of acceptance of yourself.

You should live , try , feel despite the results, because ultimately it is better to try , live , feel and fail / have a bad experience then it is to fail by apathy / lack of trying.

You should smile, laugh, cry, anger because emotions are normal and natural.

You should treat others as you would have them treat you.

You should accept others because while they may be different from you, they are still people too.

You should love others because it is a cold dark lonely life to be alone with nobody and nothing.

You should believe , Have faith and trust

You should learn and grow and think and question

(this part is an interesting and simple route to happiness or success or contentment or enlightenment, however it does involve going against human nature)

In order to be content

1. Have something (easy part) or have lots (still easy part)

2. Be content with what you have. (hard part)

[End Positive odds and ends]

Anyhow, enough positive glitters of what people should do in order to not lose sight of the life they are living.

I have been enjoying my life, engaged in

• Funny, interesting, detailed, mathematical, logical lectures at Uni.
• Purchasing the most awesome textbook ever. To elaborate it was bought at the second hand bookstore and it was further discounted as a new edition was out, upon brief inspection before I purchased it, I noticed it was natural bound (not rebound) back to front and upside down, so to read it properly the cover appears upside down and back to front :), the clerk at the register tried to sell (salesperson sell) it to me, but she was preaching to an old timer, that knew the faith better than her, I bought it immediately and bounced down the stairs with sheer glee spray painted all over my face.
• The second maths modeling lecture wasn’t as funny as the first, but it did have the lecturer mentioning infectious diseases as we are doing population growth models (SIS, SIR for those who are interested), each time he said the words infected, infection, either myself (who just had a runny nose from not eating enough icecream and having too much salt) or something else sniffled, sneezed, coughed or wheezed, it was the the yawn effect (one person yawns, three people yawn, etc) gone orchestral
• First Computer Architecture Lecture was great, despite the quoting of a stupid article published by APC, about Con (ck-sources guy) quiting kernel development, the article style and title were scandal style (Linux Kernel exposed, Con reveals all), the title was misquoted on Slashdot, and APC isn’t a decent Linux magazine, Linux Format could be if it didn’t cost $25 to most people outside the UK. During the lecture I learnt we were using DJGPP on Dos, and was sad I couldn’t just use native tools, but I got DJGPP working with Dosbox quite easily, so I can do assignments and such on my laptop.
• My Mathematics for Computer Graphics Tutor is really funny and seems like an awesome guy, so I am also enjoying that subject
• I spent Friday night and most of Saturday at Darren’s 21 first part organised by Elise (a good friend of mine), and met some wonderful people, and had an interesting series of discussion about society, Tesla’s lack of fame, Doctor Who, Religion, Magic, Heritages, Electronics and a series of other topics. From observation (as I didn’t participate, as I don’t drink) I conclude that turn based drinking games suck (as the rate of alcohol consumption is to fast, the fun of the game is to small, and the hangover hurts like hell) , I did suggest round based drinking games but got ignored.
• After leaving the party goers lying in the sun (at a nearby park) after we had eaten breakfast at Chermside Shopping Centre, I was determined to walk to my Grandfather’s place at Kedron, whilst being dehydrated and hot. The walk was fun, despite all the heat, hills and the surprise on my Grandfather’s face was worth it. It was wonderful to catch up with him and talk about politics, the past, how things were in his day (some of them sound so good, I wonder why they were changed) , the dust, the races (His family’s tradition), Americans, Australian story and other bits and pieces. My grandfather is so generous, he gave me Anzac biscuits to take with me , I then caught the bus into the city and got home and slept
• After that I woke up at 9pm , did some things involved movies on TV and other stuff, till 2am, and then slept again. (hence the weird sleeping patterns)

I have also been invited to lots of different things, this seasons to be the season for birthdays, events and invitations, at least my purple suit will go to good use.

I am slowly getting world up to date with Gentoo, but haven’t got the 2.6.22 kernel compiling clean yet.

If you could play hide and seek with reality, would you and where would you hide and why ?

If you got given $100 from a stranger, what would you think of that stranger ? and what are the chances of you giving that $ 100 to another stranger ?

Best wishes, keep having fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Between lighting the fire and my current pastime of cooking Chiko rolls (pan fry as apparently baking them is treason to their iconic Australianism), the closed windows because it is winter there is little piece between then shrill howl of the two smoke-alarms that do their jobs oh so well (setting off at least 8 times consecutively for lighting a fire in fireplace and 3 (make that 5) for pan frying Chiko rolls)

I prefer open fires to fireplaces as there is so much more freedom, as your not limited to a small cubic box and my Chiko rolls are much more black / charred then their advertisement claims. (My guess is their instructions don’t cover a gas stove and cast iron frying pan)

Anyways back to fry pan I go to make sure the kitchen isn’t on fire :P.

UPDATE: Their distributor has a money back satisfaction guarantee, so If I don’t enjoy my black Chiko rolls, I can get money back.

Hey everyone,

This was going to be an audio post, but I don’t feel like talking /recording at the moment.

Anyhow I have lots to cover.

First Things First (Because they can be first, second or last and it wouldn’t matter) and keeping them brief so people can’t use excuse it is too much read. *sighes*

Over the holidays so far (since after the Trolltech BBQ), I have attended a 75th birthday that was so much fun. It is really fun to be able to catch up with family friends and their family. Funny or interesting sub-events at this event included:

• The cute children and the newborn baby (terribly cute).
• Siblings and Mother arriving late after half listening / misinterpreting directions
• My reluctance to eat until the Kabana & Liquorice arrived (on the platter of nibbles we weren’t supposed to bring but did anyways)
• The early accidental unveiling of the birthday cake.
• The hide and seek / cover myself with hat and hood game, played with 2 to 3 little youngsters trying to dehood / dehat me.
• The impromptu request (as I am studying mathematics & IT) to fix someone’s palm pilot.
• The piece of cake that fell on the ground, that I bet my little brother would walk / step in, and he did.

After this (a few days) we had two of the people (close family friends, Lisa and Alice) come for a weekend sleepover. Interesting things that occured include but are not limited to

• The poker game based on the success of my little brother’s (should I call him bother, for now he has the benefit of the doubt) flamboyant attire (suit and cane, etc, etc) in the previous game, which I was winning until Lisa asked to win some, sure enough she won the game :). (see previous post for why I find poker boring..)
• The watching of Robin Hood Season One on my laptop (Thanks Dallas so much for that….) , after the first few episodes, there were two more Jonas Armstrong fans in the house.
• The attendance of the Abbey Medieval Fair (sub-events are shown below)
  • The drive in Lisa’s car (her driving has improved, and I still don’t drive)
  • The broken CD player that would only play the first 5 or 6 songs of a CD.
  • The more comic than skilled Jester that was been very modern in handing out a business card with his Myspace
  • Getting to see two pigs and a lamb on spits
  • Asking an expert in regards to weapons used by the clergy (as originally discussed in #wesnoth @ Freenode)
  • Watching almost everyone but me get more excited over the presence of Shelley Craft than the fact they were at the medieval festival
  • Walking Lisa through a medieval market and have her not purchase any non food items
  • Looking at Germanic early cannons
  • Getting irritated at trivial and major inconsistencies made by those with the best intentions in reenacting medieval life
  • Avoiding bumping to people (Including someone from Lisa’s uni, Celeste, Chrystle ( ) and at least 7 other people)
  • Seeing how chainmail is made, after misinterpreting the location of the event (That was my fault, but we were only 10 minutes late and it wasn’t crowded)
  • Missing the oppurtunity to get better seats for the jousting, because I choose to wait for Lisa and Alice to get Snow Cones (Did they exist in medieval times ?)
  • Not dressing up and pretending to be Ivanhoe (I so wanted to…)
• Watching the wonderful French Movie “The Singer” (so sad, so romantic, so French)
• Having a wonderful brunch with more family friends (Paul, Birgit and Jessica from the Gold Coast)
  • Their story about the letter about their journey through Africa was amazing and awe inspiring
  • Oh and the food for the brunch was very very good. (not to die for)
• Having Dallas come over (Lisa and Alice left soon after.) (Dallas has a chicken and we have scraps for it to eat, it is a good arrangement, Dallas you should mention your chicken on your blog and upload a photo or something)
• Watching Jessica and Dallas play air hockey (first there was rules and order, then cheating and chaos)

After all the fun was over I got online and checked my QUT Virtual and allo and behold, my results were posted and I didn’t fail anything :). So the second Round or Third Round of Space Invaders is cleared, although without the shield bonus and gun bonus (see previous post for the in joke).

I really should be doing more with my holidays, I have lots planned and lots of planning to do and will get around to it before Uni is back. I have been playing Wesnoth, slowly translating bits and pieces of Wesnoth into Indonesian in Kate, I tried Kbabel didn’t like its obfuscating and specific interface, I have installed poEdit and am yet to try it.

I have also been chatting on IRC and MSN, one of my recent conversations was with Mircea / Danny / Rastilin (not sure exactly what his name is, he is a friend of Nick Stallman), started out a question about Debian, and became a beliefs / philosophies argument (at kept me up till 3am).

My analysis of his approach is shown below (The full log will be shown on request only, until I am ready to a major philosophy post, this post will only have the analysis and some highlights)

(02:17:27 AM) Appleman1234: it is interesting
(02:17:50 AM) Appleman1234: whenever you deem yourself as not being victorious, you change the subject or the angle
(02:18:23 AM) Appleman1234: or when your logic doesn’t result in the conclusion you expect from me you instead resort to taunting and cheap insults
(02:20:34 AM) Appleman1234: however the method of conversation you are using isn’t exactly that of critical thinking, or that of scientific reasoning , or even that of scientific or philosophical skepticism
(02:21:23 AM) Appleman1234: it is merely I believe your belief is wrong because of Reason A and because it doesn’t match mine,
(02:21:48 AM) Appleman1234: when asked to clarify you either do so reluctantly or vaguely
(02:22:28 AM) Appleman1234: and when posed with questions, you either claim incomprehensibility or retort with an unjustified insult
(02:23:29 AM) Appleman1234: I also forgot the stereotyped
(02:24:10 AM) Appleman1234: So logically you haven’t invalidated or changed any of my beliefs
(02:29:27 AM) Appleman1234: however your style does remind me of doublethink

It makes me wonder as such (referring back to the protester and the candle, (if you know what I am talking about , you are a diligent reader of my blog and I admire you)) why people try to discredit others beliefs, to replace them with their own all in the name of criticism and critical thinking ?

Beliefs are rather important and special to a person, if you remove their belief system, what do they have to live for ? What are they to believe ?, before you attempt anything as to brash as basically brainwashing someone with their consent, at least be able to answer the question “Why should I believe what you believe”, with a better answer than “Because I said so”.

Highlights from the chatlog are shown below:

01:47:59 AM) rastilin: You want me to debunk your beliefs with illogic?
(01:48:08 AM) rastilin: Purple flying elephants!
(01:48:08 AM) rastilin: There
(01:48:12 AM) rastilin: Debunked with illogic.
(01:48:14 AM) Appleman1234: sigh
(01:48:25 AM) Appleman1234: that is surrealism not illogic
(01:49:32 AM) rastilin: Is there something wrong with my logic?
(01:51:49 AM) Appleman1234: no just your interpretation / definition of debunk, illogic and your understanding Gödel’s incompleteness theorems

(01:26:09 AM) rastilin: The hardest lesson I learned was that I was not a special snowflake or holder of unthought wisdom.
(01:26:50 AM) Appleman1234: why limit yourself through lessons, why not expand yourself instead ?
(01:27:05 AM) rastilin: Because the expansion is an illusion.
(01:27:07 AM) Appleman1234: if you have nothing to gain from a lesson , why learn it ?
(01:27:17 AM) Appleman1234: Reality is an illusion
(01:27:22 AM) Appleman1234: it is all perception
(01:27:22 AM) rastilin: Because there is something to gain, I just can’t see it from where I’m standing.
(01:27:32 AM) rastilin: That’s silly.
(01:27:52 AM) Appleman1234: faith in incorrect perception is your reasoning and yet you label me silly
(01:28:25 AM) Appleman1234: I would rather believe that I can be right, then that I am always going to be wrong from a different viewpoint

There could be more but this post is long enough already. On the bright side I visualised more of my philosophies and certain constructs and I discovered ##philosophy on Freenode, on the dark side I got 6 hours sleep this morning and I got kicked from my Wesnoth Game.

Final Note: I got phpMyID working and now I can log into LJ and post on Chrystle’s and Stephen Thorne’s LJs :). (I only took me 6 hours due to a typo…)

This blogs question is Do you belief in acceptance of others and if so or if not , then why ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

Just upgraded Wordpress to 2.2.1, almost went to a BBQ with Chrystle, was quite nice and meet some wonderful people. I also had the luxury of engaging in an intellectual discussion about the state of the world (overpopulation, shallowness of people, levels of intellectualism, perception of reality, asian philosophy, the purpose of religion, etc), was both informative and interesting , all the while getting to see some pretty sketchs / pictures of Anime characters (especially Kingdom Hearts 2, see machina-maw.deviantart.com) .

Chrystle was very tired, so I hope she is sleeping well now :), earlier and as per her LJ we played a derivate of 20 questions over MSN, I was reformatting her entry to add some of my own questions (no, I won’t post the raw log) and spent 1.5 hours doing so in Openoffice.org only to lose it all when trying to export to XHTML, (fuzzle, wuzzle, fuzzle, learning to behave Java.)

I may upload the information later along with other stuff I need to get round to doing and uploading (fixing up 002 resume site and uploading, coding some nifty stuff in PHP / Ruby, etc, doing more Gimping and playing around with Inkscape, not to mention song lyrics, poetry, stories and my mental skits.)

I currently am doing my final study for my Programming Abstraction & Linear Algebra exams, so I am in the mood for Graph Theory, Data Structures, Design Paterns, Matrix Algebra & Proofs, Eigenvalues & Diagonalisation and Linear Operators. I like the usage of Linear Operators in 3D graphics engines, and am conceptualising (thinking, planning, modelling) a new way of Wesnoth Damage calculation using Linear Algebra as a opposed to the current matrix method, so that units with ridiculous health (Survival Extreme / DOTG etc) don’t take up excessive RAM.

I am also unsure if my entry for the Greenphone competition will be ready in time, *sigh* maybe next time, at least I’ll see them at the Trolltech BBQ at QUT after my exams are over.

I have also been attempting to get the Wireless Reception to work on my bed in our RAMMED earth house and(packet loss >85% ) . Today on the way home from BBQ, there were some troublemakers on the train that got off at my stop (and probably would have attempted to bash me, if not that I had a ride waiting).

These people were locals to my region (I am ashamed, it wasn’t like this in the Beginning (when I was 3), stupid population and education system creating low social economic circumstances and bored youth) and idiots (in Grade 9 to 11) looking for a fight on the train calling people faggots and trying to wake up the people that were asleep. Their ring leader was drinking Bundy Rum on the train (underage drinking and drinking on a train is $150 fine) and was calling a guy near me a faggot, after they had walked on I talked to him and realised just how lucky they were that they hadn’t attacked him. (He knew his rights and the law)

The bothered me when I got of the train, probably because I am weird and more intelligent them, with the usual faggot taunting, I said Grow Up and then got asked to supposedly repeat it to his face, but I just remained silent and kept walking. (I don’t want no trouble or wasted time)

My little brother doesn’t like living in the city, but with the low socioeconomic suburban sprawl of uneducated, immoral and bored youths surrounding the place I call home and others call home the noise, pollution and hustle bustle of the city is looking more enticing by the minute.

Thanks

Stay Safe (I like I barely did)

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

The last few days have been relaxed and busy almost in simultaneity.

A nyhow onwards to the odds and ends….

Statistics exam is done and hopefully I did well in it. (I only forgot the proof of equal variances bit which was only worth 3 marks.)

On my way home, I was a approached by a Japanese Girl looking for directions to a sharehouse at a certain address, as I had nothing better to do I was happy to help her find the place she was looking and I walked her to it. After this I got a rhyme stuck in my head and I kind of like its message. Here it is “Random acts of kindness, go unnoticed but unpunished, so I’ll just do another one” (Yeah I know it doesn’t rhyme  but oh well)

I had the luxury of spending Friday in the good company of Ruben and Cheater (Nick Stallman), whilst Ruben was twice late and his lateness generated a ripple effect which saw me home late (missed trains), the afternoon whilst not much more than a few shared Warcraft 3 custom maps, all in all we had a wonderful time (to quote Judy Small).

On my way home I met a nice old lady on a train, who offered me a seat and we got to talking about Nuclear Energy, Human Morality, Futility and Solutions for the future. It was very interesting and enjoyable to say the least.

I spent most of Today’s at Chrystle’s (See Mdu- link on  blogroll for her LJ or here)  just catching up and having fun, this was a great experience, was quite funny and enjoyable. Topics we covered included Minti (the adorable cat), lolcats , using packaging as fake snow, the dispersion patterns of this snow for various actions like walking, running , blowing the foam etc, bananas, Ozy & Millie ,

fairies (the mythological creatures), blood sorbet, chainmail condoms, Space Invaders, Easter Eggs, Word Tennis, World Building, Pretty pictures in GIMP (see Flamingworm in Gallery) , the cuteness of foxes and cats eg animals in general, that small things amuse small minds whilst even smaller watch on (what does this say about Big Brother fans), the annoyance of Parents and Siblings, Jam Drops, the Abbey Festival, Ivanhoe, Soup, Flatuelence and the list goes on and on and on.

I also managed to do some UML study thanks to the Butterfly Ugly Betty Stick figure. Anyhow bring on the morality :P.

(Extracted from Wikipedia, in Harvard referencing form
Seven virtues, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seven_virtues&oldid=136541757 (last visited Jun. 18, 2007). )

As I don’t like APA referencing and prefer Harvard :P.

Anyhow, whilst these sins and virtues are accepted by the Catholic Church and have their specified meanings both of the the newer English words and their older latin bases, take a moment to reflect what these sins and virtues mean to you, where they stand under your current morality or conscience and have a look at which side of the balance you think you are on.

Humanity as a whole is collectively leaning toward the Sin side of the balance by focusing on the sections of human nature that have been associated with negative connotations and ignoring or misplacing the sections that have been associated with positive human nature.

If we are ever to fix any problem on this Earth or in this reality, we must fix repair the balance of our collective Morality by collectively changing our attitude and focus on human nature and morality.

Any how back to Gentoo updating, studying UML, Programming Abstraction and Linear Algebra :).

The question tonight is you had the power to grant one wish to somebody else not for your secondary or primary or nthary gain, who would you grant that wish to and what would it be ?

Best of luck and keep enjoying yourselves

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

Whilst I have been audio blogging, I felt that I should return to written form because I need to write / type some stuff in order to properly self express myself, as written language seems to give more freedom than verbal and less prejudices than verbal. Although I can’t really be sure. First up

Computer Science / IT / Linux Nursery Rhymes

This little piggy programmed in Lisp
This little piggy programmed in C
This little piggy programmed in Perl
and this litlle piggy programmed in CPL & basic assembly

Little miss muffet
saved to her emacs buffer
her files and data displayed
Along came a vi-er, who terrified her
and flushed the buffer away

Three MCSEs
Three MCSEs
See how they code
See how they code
They code with VB and ASP.NET
So terribly that you want to forget
Three MCSEs
Three MCSEs

Add the data to stack
Place it their in sequel
Give it some CPU time
Pop goes the weasel

Next

I was able to get in contact an old friend of mine that I meet in Yr 10 when studying Indonesian as a visiting student at USC. As I thought I had lost all contact, this is definitely something I am very happy about :). I may be able to get credit for one my Indonesian subjects I did there, and that should help my GPA.

That said my mood is currently conflicted after watching two movies (WarGames, Rage in Placid Lake). The theme question of WarGames regarding futily of war and other things (What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? ) makes me wonder how many other strange games there are in Life, in thought and in everything else ? The second movie talks about a semi social outcast and his efforts to attempt to normalise himself, it hit very close to home, as the main character’s situation reminded me of my own slightly, and also caused more thought and consideration into previous memories , decisions and actions.

Hope however is a marvelous thing, because despite everything from illogic, philosophical questions about life, busyness caused by my university situation and my current mood, hope allows me to attempt to pull myself out of digging my own grave of despair mode and attempt to refocus and restabilise / justify who, why and what I am to myself and the world around me. Thanks for those have been supporting and inspiring me, it is greatly appreciated.

If it is better to have loved and lost then not to love at all, does that mean that love isn’t a strange game ? Big Brother is a strange game however, because despite the prizes at the end, both the contestants and the spectators lose their dignity in exchange for a million, a holiday and car …., nothing changes the romans enjoyed watching the gladiators, now the people enjoy reality television which is in fact one of the biggest oxymorons that I am aware of.

I am not doing too badly at Uni, although I would have liked to have done better on my Statistics Midsemster, and provided I do better on the final exam, I should have no issues, I also have to focus on getting the outstanding assessment commitments done, so I can study for exams. I have examined my degree pathway and am a little annoyed that MAB580 isn’t offered anymore, but as I have identified a valid secondary pathway (Plan B ) I should and will be fine.

In all the reflective learning we have done in MAD (Modeling Analysis and Design), I have come to the same conclusion as a both my team members that most systems are much easier to just lightly plan and develop as opposed to using the techniques taught by the subject. Whilst I am sure UML will come in handy, I prefer Petri Nets and State Machines and other more mathematical ways of modeling. On this note Umbrello and Dia are really good tools for UML modeling, but both still need a few more improvements.

People having being shoving Discworld (Pratchett) references in my face and it reminds me of the amount of stuff (Discworld,C, C++, Emacs, Vi, Language / Linguistic skills, Rollerblading, etc, list goes on) that I learnt or mastered a long time ago but need to brush up on. I am most likely going to enter Trolltech’s Greenphone competition (I have the SDK, and am brushing up on my C++, both for comp and Wesnoth, and my QT). As probably aforementioned I really like the greenphone and winning one or even having the chance to develop apps for it and QT, is a great oppourtunity.

Also wanting to get WINE to link correctly on my Gentoo 2007.0 (originally from Sabayon), which doesn’t seem to want to link wine to right libraries without a custom ebuild or an EXPORT statement. It would be nifty if WINE was slotted so I could do the regression testing on WinMX a fare bit faster / easier.

I also have to study up on Networks, UML, Abstract Data Types & other concepts, Linear Algebra and Statistical Analysis for my exams. Wish me luck. My emerge world is all done now (finally, kde-meta 3.5.7) except WINE but that will be fixed shortly. The Syntek Driver for my Webcam has version 1 release out, and it is a noticeable improvement in webcam quality. My apologies to the people I unintentionally irritated this week, group assessment creates short fuses…

The Asus Acpi also has new driver out that turns my previous always off wireless led to always on (bug filed), it should be changeable like the mail led using echo, but for some reason it is not. Make 5 Wishes Manga also reminded me of Rage in Lake Placid, and also helped me related to myself.

I am virtually sick of games without good or innovative game play, we need to revert to the classics or to innovate lest people die of boredom. (ET Quake Wars is going to be awesome when it comes out.)

This blog’s questions are related to both WarGames and the song lyrics of AT 17 (remember those who win the game, loose the love they thought they gained),

Is love a game ? Is life a game ? Are either of them strange games ? Is winning everything ? anything ? Is it better to roll the die or pass, fold or hold, take a chance or sit on the fence ? Are the sacrifices worth the victory ? How many sacrifices can one make and still win or draw the game ? What the game fun ?

Best wishes
Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Kill -9 by Monzy: See http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4 or monzy.com enough said.

Petri Nets

I am doing my 008 Software enigeering methodology report on Petri nets, which is awesome because Petri nets pwn all other methodologies because

• They are a formal method and formal methods pawn. ( according to Week 2 Readings for 008 by Richard Thomas)
• The have interesting, cool, fun, quirky and even coloured diagrams and animations. (Go see the ones on Wikipedia, they are so much better than Waterfall model or Spiral Model diagrams and best of all they are comptiable with UML or see below)

• Now the best part (especially for me, being IT & Maths) Petri nets are and can be formally defined in mathematics and have mathematical properties. For all the mathematical goodness see the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net .
• Also Petri nets are nondeterministic which gives you lots of freedom and options and freedom is good :).

Cheater pointed me to http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1396 , Vi vs Emacs is the best arch rivalry. A few years ago I learned vi and emacs fluently and also learned C and C++. I then used them both for a few months and then forgot them. I had to spend 15 to 30 minutes just remembering the save and quit commands for both of them. I now use nano on command line and kate or kwrite in GUI.

But enough with the history…, this moves me on to the topic of Pirate vs Ninja. I never really decided which one I was and when asked first by Gatl (I replied undecided) and now again by Cheater (I also replied undecided, to which he said that wasn’t possible…) , now that I think about it, Ninjas and Pirates are quite similar in fact the only things that seem to differ is people’s opinions and stereotypes of them.

Ninjas and Pirates both fight with sword usually. (Pirates with cutlass, Ninja with Katana or the smaller ninja sword with the really long name)

Ninjas and Pirates are generally both dishonourable characters. (Yes Ninjas have no honour, they are assassins and spies, the samurais where the ones with honours)

Ninjas and Pirates are both resourceful in combat.

Ninjas and Pirates both usually fight to train, for money / treasure or for power. (Both can also be mercenarys)

Ninjas and Pirates respectively both band together in groups.

Ninjas and Pirates both prefer stealth and surprising their opponents.

Ninjas and Pirates both use napalm / pitch, poison and gunpowder :).

Ninja and Pirates both like the colour black, although Ninjas do wear it more often unless they are disguised.

Ninja and Pirates both practice guerrilla warfare.

Ninja and Pirates both enjoy alcohol. (Yes belief it or not Ninjas like Saki as much as any other Japanese person or non Japanese person for that matter)

Ninjas and Pirates are both not that special, they are just people that practiced the craft of piracy or the art of ninjitsu.

Ninjas and Pirates are quick to betray … (not-loyal) .

Not sure if female pirates existed, but female ninjas definitely did. I am of the opinion female pirates should have existed.

Ninjas and Pirates both use and create chaos to achieve their objectives.

Ninjas and Pirates both like being free.

All lot of real Japanese pirates (before pirates were modernised in to the crap with guns and speedboats), had a decent knowledge of Ninjitsu.

And numerous other similarities….

I am still not decided, but think that if Pirates & Ninjas meet by accident they wouldn’t fight without reason, rather they would go their own separate ways.

Also as my webcam works some more photos of me will be available in my gallery .

And now the stupidity epidemic, The Stupidity epidemic is currently effecting humanity, please use your remaining intelligence that hasn’t been watered down by the media, reality , your country’s education system, to avert suffering stupidity and to immunise your friends against stupidity.

Another symptom of this epidemic is ignorance and that should be avoided as well where possible, question , learn , understand, think critically but don’t become a heartless cynical hypercritical atheist pure logic bastard, because another major symptom of this epidemic is emotional ignorance and stupidity.

Things you can do to promote intelligence, think, think before you speak, think deeper, play games that require thought instead of just point click, be imaginative and creative, feel, believe, love and smile, etc, etc..

Best of luck saving your friends,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

(This blog’s question is If knew you would die tomorrow, what would you do before tomorrow comes ?

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. =)

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

Hey everyone,

I am have been very busy lately with numerous time consuming things. I have been spending way too much @ Websinthe Forums. My midsemester exams are coming up soon, and will have to study hard for them.

Subject Update:

ITB005: Going good, lectures aren’t boring despite the fact, I have prior exposure to most of the subject material. Linux labs are easy and fun. The only thing that is irritating were the people sitting next to us (Mirza, Chris S and I) in ITB005 lecture, between not STFU and losing pen lids, it was a PITA. I will have go through tutorial questions again though.

ITB002: Going great. Team agreement is submitted, despite the crappy web interface for submitting it. Our ITB002 is awesome. Consisting of Mirza (MATLAB / Computational Mathematics Wizard), Nikolai (Awesome photographer his site here) and myself, our team though small is dynamic, powerful and very cohesive.

ITB003: Going ok. ELP exercises finally work after my installation of 32bit Java (using overlay)(Sun release WS for 64 bit java, most people won’t need it yet but they will soon). I need to do some study and practice coding. Best news of all is the Monodevelop bug I was having is fixed in SVN and a new MD release is due out within the week. I will become a C HASH / Mono wizard yet.

MAB210: Going good. I really need to catch up on the worksheets. The group activity with Markov chains was easy and great fun. I still do get the assignment done, but given its topic should have little trouble. w00t 4 Marhov Chains

MAB220: Going ok, I need to catch up on the worksheets and lecture I missed. Not to mention the assignment I need complete. It should be easier this time as I now have Maple 9.5 installed and working on my laptop. This subject is awesome.

More Stuff

It seems that I will always come across people who challenge me and my beliefs. Whilst talking / discussing / debating with these people is fun and interesting it is also very time consuming and I have decided whilst not cutting back on it, instead to keep my eyes aware of the time and to ensure that I waste as little as possible. Time doesn’t enjoy being wasted.

It also seems that I am earning my keep from my wonderful host Nick Stallman, by acting as an a form of early problem detection because when my site has a problem , it is highly likely that Nick’s free PHPNuke hosting site (eznuke.com) is suffering the same or a similar problem.

Also people seem to like to ignore illogic and emotion, even when by doing some they display emotion with their logic and they unknownly use illogic. Please learn to accept that illogic is as plausible as logic. Both are similar things with different basses. Truth -> Logic -> Reasoning. Faith -> Illogic -> Chaos (Possibly not sure yet)

If you can accept and tolerate this, then please take the purple and green pill (all natural, not a drug), slide down the rabbit hole and join me, if you can’t then pack up and go home. You won’t know what your missing out on.

Redirection from the metaphor’s challenge

BTW I need more readers, so if you my readers know of people that would not mind reading about my thoughts and my life please encourage them to. I am not that scary honest ;).

Also I have rediscovered the stories from Jim Henson’s the Story Teller. The transcripts of them are availiable here .
Have fun and live life.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

PS: This post’s question is Did you slide down the rabbit hole ?