The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hi,

Its study week , the week dedicated to the cohesive repetition of techniques and methodologies that allow the recollection and presentation of fluid information or application of knowledge to take form in items of assessment.

The weather is wonderful. The cold keeps me cool, the rain keeps me wet, but not wet enough. The code keeps me focused, Gradually habits get influenced or broken, solutions to problems arise and more challenges face us as we live.

Several interesting discussions have occurred lately including the discussion about humanity’s stupidity being infinite (lets just say I disagree with Einstein and have a logical basis for doing so), the discussion about the game and double or n-think. Ignorance, discovery and recognition make for an interesting meme let alone amusement. Imagine if an IT lecturer got hold of this and hid carefully a subliminal reference to that which we lose by knowing and face palm without questioning.

Subconscious subliminal triggers could be the key to brainwashing or habbit forming the entire world, and yet my own snares lay decadent, covered in dust and spiderwebs, so sublime that they seem camoflauged in auspicious reality and never sprung even when the bait is tasty pizza or hamburgers.

Pruning is important in the maintaince of fast growing climbing species and humans are no exception, focus and willpower is required to avoid being left too long in the shade to stagnate until fermented.

But now my mind turns to the peach and to the folk song and piano solo I know so well, for with each person comes their own mental triggers caused by emotion or illogical mental association if these were harnessed for uses more beneficial to the society, success would be eminent, however at the same time we would lose a piece of ourselves in the process, doomed to remain a broken jigsaw piece for eternity.

Why do the JW’s expect me to drop what I am doing to engage in a discussion about my beliefs, and then leave 10 minutes later, when they can’t make me an easy convert ? People are so similar, unless you act like they expect you to act, you say what they expect you to say and you fulfill their limit processes on your character instead of being free to paint outside the lines and dance in infinity, why must reality be a consensus of oppressionistic judgements rather than a fondue of perceptions with some chunks of personalisation and attitude added for flavour.

Now I am hungry, is non toxic really non toxic ? Could I eat a crayon ?, apparently they test chemicals for safety individually and not in chemical combinations because the permutations are far too numerous, and yet we will soon have quantum computing and can model all most anything approximately, but don’t as the funding hasn’t be allocated yet.

Eventually people will realise that rates of change matter to our reality and society, the total differential of human morality,  it matters, the rate of change of the environment and ecological support systems, it matters, the jacobian of the influence of the internet on capitalistic society and people’s approach to social interaction, it matters.

The world will come crashing down, if steps are not taken, but currently that doesn’t matter, baby steps are taken, stumbling blocks are made, and yet people are not prepared to sacrifice the now for the future (and yet they unwillingly do so already) or sacrifice their freedom for reason, people value freedom more than the ability to itself live.

Thousands of people have died, so others could live free, if the rates of change and the reality calculus are ignored,we will be dying for freedoms, that the future will never get because at this rate the future will be lost or forsaken.

We could force a rollback or reversion to a previous circumstance and society, and avoid problems now, we could use what we have in multitudes to develop and implement solutions to scarcity in the context of reality, or we could sit comfortably in our lives, unaware of the dangers that lurk under the bed or in the closet, the children see it, but the parents don’t believe, choosing to forget when they were children themselves, and instead focus on their important part of existence.

Did you see their smile, did you see them cry, did you see them laughing as in their souls they died ?
If you manage to see my bubbles (they aren’t pointy), let me know ….

Hope your thinking hard and staying focused,
Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

I know what I said. No more reading extend paragraphs of text which appears to be mildly interesting or boring depending on your emotional attachment to knowledge. Instead there was supposed to a bright flash based audio player that streams my voice (not that it is really anything all that stupendous, but it is mine and parapharsing Jewel “This voice is small I know, but it’s not your’s it is my own, but it’s not your’s it is my own, I am never broken. “) to whoever wants to click the play button.

Unfortunately that isn’t the case. So you will probably have to keep on reading or fall asleep. Your choice , not mine, and entirely upto to you. If you are going to fall asleep while reading my scribbles (Well they are typed so they aren’t really scribbles or etchings, but if I had to write them up in hard copy they would be with lots of little weird metaphorical and random pictures.) , you may as well make yourself comfortable by getting a decent sized chair unlike the one I am currently sitting on, a pillow and either a sheet or doona.

Alternately if you happen to have a giant beanbag of comfyness, that would work just fine as well. You comfy yet ? When your comfy either read on or sleep your choice ;).

Life is a busy thing. My laptop is now being repaired under warranty, however they are charging me $130 for it (it should take 3 to 4 days), this means I paid $170 total ($40) for the new ac adaptor (which works but doesn’t solve the problem).

A warranty is an obligation that an article or service sold is as factually stated or legally implied by the seller, and that often provides for a specific remedy such as repair or replacement in the event the article or service fails to meet the warranty. (From Wikipedia)

Because the manufacturer of my laptop has definitely provided a remedy to repair the product if it doesn’t meet the warranty, which is exactly is what they are obligated to do. However the contents of warranty (apparently didn’t cover the pressure spots on my lcd laptop screen, which became dead pixels eventually, but by then it they said it was too late to repair under it warranty, and they could replace it for $900) don’t mention whether the remedy of any problem which doesn’t live upto the standards of the warranty is paid for by the consumer or the company providing the warranty.

I read my warranty booklet (5 pages approximately 10 cm square) and it doesn’t mention who pays, nor did it mention any detailed expectations that the laptop is supposed live upto.

Previously when I tried to get my LCD screen fixed, I was told that if I had brought in my laptop to the service centre (which wasn’t the address I was originally given) as dead on arrival (even though it wasn’t, as it was in an operational state it just had very small (around a pixel, pressure spots move and aren’t static like dead pixels) , hardly noticable pressure spots which grew bigger later leading to dead pixels) during the first week, they would have replaced the lcd screen under warranty (not charging me).

I recently was able to get a bag replaced with a new one as part of the bag’s 5 year warranty. When this happened I took it in after two years (which is the same time as my laptop) and they were happy to replace with the similarest model to it they had (as that model was no longer in stock) after seeing my warranty card and receipt and other paperwork. They didn’t charge me, in fact as the new bag was cheaper than the original they gave me $20 credit.

What I am wondering now is , is a warranty like insurance, is it money you pay upfront or in installments so that if something happens to cause the product not to live up to the obligations in the warranty, that money covers the scenario of replacement / repair of the product, or are we as consumers expected to pay extra money for a warranty which only gurantees a solution to the problem provided we pay for it ?

But enough about my warranty queries, moving on …, Advanced Calculus is awesome. Partial Derivatives are Sexy, to quote our lecturer (He is awesome! :D). Thanks to his awesomeness , clarity and passion I finally clearly understand what a differential is, let alone the fact that I don’t have to do calculus slowly like I was taught in highschool but can speed it up (This is like being shown howto speedread when you were forced to only read aloud.).

Even though one of the lectures starts at 8am, I can think of little else to cheers me up, than some advanced mathematics (calculus or otherwise) early in the morning. On the subject of Mathematics, “Happy Pi Day !”

I have to finish coding up a prime number generator for ITB749, the tutorial exercise was just to teach for and while loops in C (which I know), but having done ITB712 and being a maths student I thought using Sieve of Eratosthenes was a bad choice given it is the opposite from an algorithim design perspective and thought the Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena primality test would be faster computationally.

However after finding in implementation in C , I ran into some hiccups, it uses both the GMP (gnu maths precision library) and Maple hooks to do the required mathematics. This got me thinking and if I can find time, I may write an entire implementation in C, or alternately just use the Sieve of Atkin instead (*sigh*), although primegen (http://cr.yp.to/primegen.html) already has one for that.

I was trying to write a double sieve algorithim in my head ,but it got confusing, and while I don’t have anything yet to show for the tutorial (unlike Cheater’s quick and dirty Sieve of Eratosthenes implementation ) , I think the tutorial has taught me more than I could have ever expected it to.

Cheater needs to focus on writing the oscilloscope kernel driver for poscope anyways :P, and needs to stop playing BF1942 and Defcon. On the subject of drivers and games, I finally did the usb sniffing for my digital voice recorder (jnc ssf-22) and will eventually start writing a libusb based driver for it, and we played Inquistor at Uni on Thursday, it was epic, despite the rush to create my character, my terrible luck with the dice and my morale at the end of it. (I apologise for being so demoralised by the end, it was only because I had pumped myself up way too much at the start. Silly excitement.)

Anyhow, I also installed lots of portable apps on my usb stick so I can survive till I get my laptop back and use IRC and IM wherever I end up. I also caught up with Redhatter today and helped setup a demon laptop to smoothly run Xubuntu for Maddie, as well as honing my Python skills helping first years.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me, with some voting, some coding and lots of caculus study.

Best of luck to you all and have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

I normally apologise for delays, but I am not actually sorry. Any how lets get down to updates which I really wanted to record, hence giving you a video or audio blog instead of what has been referred to by my readers as addictive useful random junk and mountains of monotonous ramblings that cause sleep.

University is back. I am doing 5 Subjects. 2 Maths and 3 IT. So far they are all equally awesome. I am doing TCP & IP , Unix Network Admin, Scientific Programming (aka C & C++), Data Visualisation & Analysis and Advanced Calculus. (dealing with multi variable and differential beasties)

As I have some prior knowledge in parts of the IT subject material, this makes them more enjoyable then if they were brand new. Uni is ok , I guess, the social side of it is confusing with lines between colleague and friend blurred, the lines between colleague and person who insults or teases me Gaussian blurred and the lines between social interactions, emotive relevance and personal satisfactions not actually lines at all but complex illogic hypersurfaces in n dimensional hyperspace which is littered with off cuff remarks, pop tarts and indirect misinterpretable offers of what appears to be positive or negative or sarcastic gestures.

I would elaborate in more detail but since, this isn’t an audio blog or a video blog and since most people can’t visualise social modeling and psychology above 4d hyperspace with hacks, I simply won’t bother.

Other things that are going on include the GIR Cluster, which is the development a supercomputer comprised of a cluster of lesser computers, that a bunch of QUT students (which I am part of) are building and configuring a cluster of computers that we hope to donate to the University to decrease the supercomputing deficient between QUT and UQ.

More info about the GIR Cluster can be obtained via comments, email to me or joining #GIR_Cluster on Freenode via IRC.

I also have a report to finalise for the vacation research project I was engaged in during the holidays, a game manual to update and append for Thousand Parsec, A transition period in the becoming a Gentoo Developer Process (I do work, and then mentor looks at my quiz), A excel calculator to finish, A web solution to develop, A eeepc that isn’t mine to setup the vpn on and lots lots more.

Frankly I am quite busy and need to focus on achieving things, which is hard when the amount of stuff that you want to communication is approaching several gigabytes and noone has time to listen, and your brain can either parse your thoughts in self reflection or it can focus on other scheduled tasks.

I also seem to be running late, which is probably due to a dodgy internal CMOS battery :P, or some other reason, mainly being that I need to get everything off my mind before full processing and memory access can be dedicated to the scheduled tasks.

If the above is technobable to you, then it is ironic that I am using computing metaphors and to deanthropomorhise my brain as to actual explain the mental and social conditioning it uses is quite complex and verbose. I did manage to achieve some things on the supposed break (which was only really a break for doing 4 or 5 uni subjects), which include giving out a birthday present, catching up with a relative that has just got back from Las Vegas and numerous software updates for my laptop and organisational updates for my person.

Family is mostly in City now and at the other unit, a Chinese exchange student is being hosted (not some sort of server, an actual awesome human being), She seems like a wonderful person, She currently owes me twenty dollars and she is doing Year 12 at the same school as my brother (although he is doing a different year level).

I have also volunteered to assist in the administration of a LAN that is happening at the RNA showgrounds in April 12 to 13. I have the 8th and 9th of March booking a conference at the Golden side of things. I am really missing not having Vovage of the Damned as I wanted as a birthday present and have waiting 2 months with no avail.

If you want to catch up with me just contact me and I am happy to let you know my schedule via email, if you want to contact me you know how to reach me. Audacity doesn’t record because of Portaudio ALSA issues, which will take a while to get in tree and OSS just freezes up with USB microphone.

Libsoup is also broken, and I got Skencil to build with Tcl 8.5 but it has runtime issues, I could just merge upstream’s patches but I will wait. Things on the Tcl and Tk front should improve as 8.5 is now stable. Otherwise emerge -avuD world works fine.

I am also tutoring Maths B and Physics and helping out lots of people with lots of stuff, if you are looking for help or tutoring on anything just let me know. Favours are great fun.

I was going to deliberate into something a little more ravenous but as I will be leaving soon, I will instead take the shallower path, only postponing the inevitable.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

How are we all ? Silent and uninterested as usual.

This update like the last one should have been written and posted earlier, my apologies to anyone who suffered as a result of the delay in writing this.

Java Blues (You can get blue coffee ?)

I begin to realise know that most of the problems with my code not working aren’t due to typographical errors or silly mistakes but rather due to my unfamiliarity with the Eclipse Plugin Architecture and the Eclipse View Architecture and to a lesser extent Java itself.

I also realise that if I had been in contact with someone familiar with either of those architectures it would have made my time coding this plugin so far significantly easier. Currently my buttons and everything else isn’t showing up, and I am not sure why, but at least my view isn’t crashing, my application worked best as a standalone SWT/ Jface app, but meh.

Into The Wild

I recently saw Into the Wild and throughly enjoyed it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see a good movie. The movie also reiterates the ironic conundrum of an individual finding the secrets of true happiness and wisdom, only to die the death of a martyr and not get to live them. It was quite painful to view the reality of human nature where simple carelessness and stubbornness lead to such tragedy.

Philosophy isn’t Dead

Today I got unintentionally caught in a discussion in ##philosophy in Freenode in response to the statement “Philosophy is Dead”, it was an interesting incursion into death of abstract concepts as anthropomorphism, analogy, metaphor, literal lack of existence or otherwise, I enjoy dialogue on such oddities and was quite happy to discuss the subject with one or two other channel members.

Learning the Hard Way Why good help is so hard to find.

Everyone has heard of the adage “Good help is hard to find”, but few people think about why. It seems to me from my experience of being ridiculed, rejected, scorned, ignored, criticised, mocked and generally disconcerted that people don’t want help regardless of whether they need it or not. The quality of the help doesn’t matter,Pat Rafter could offer your child free tennis coaching , but if you child doesn’t want to play tennis, then fat chance they will attend one session playing or coaching with Pat Rafter.

When people need or want help they usually ask for it. But these days pride, importance and independence mean that people are reluctant to ask for help, let alone accept help as they see it is a sign of weakness, because they no longer get the satisfaction of doing it all by themselves. This is the kind of satisfaction that a young child has like the protagonist in Andrew Daddo’s “I Do It”, and yet as old we grow, we don’t seem to get over this sense of self importance and pride.

I can understand now, why classmates and fellow students hated me for allowing them to extend and broaden their knowledge and learning, I can understand why people flat out rejected my attempts to care about their well being and their quality of life. Being helpful and nice seems to come hand in hand with being used and treated like a doormat, or being rejected.

These are the days in which if you tried to help an old lady across the street, you would get all eyes on you with suspicious glares wondering when you are going to snatch her handbag, you go anywhere near a playground or children that it doesn’t appear you are family to, and people think pervert or pedophile.

This is quite sad and I don’t see why virtues are admonished as the vices that people engage in everyday are ignored or disregarded. Human Morality and Human Nature needs hope know more than ever, if we are even going to bother to turn off the TV, wake up and actually start caring about the state of our surroundings.

More notes and updates are scheduled for later.

I wish everyone the best with their new year and their celebrations.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey Everyone,

Long time no update, but it is that time of year.

I should have another audio post for the new year and I would actually like to have some feedback on stuff so feel free to comment or email or contact me.

First things first. Elaboration on the Title Topics.

I have to mention the wonderful wedding of Elise & Darren’s that I attended in my purple suit. It was a very memorable experience, complete with sunshine, bagpipes, kilts, a buttonless black dress shirt (Only Buddy (A friend of Elise’s) can wear a shirt done up with only gold safety pins as the buttons mystically disappeared and Converse sneakers to a wedding, just as I was the only one in a purple suit, Buddy & I get along quite well, and enjoyed discussing the scenic background of the wedding, (on the water) and the details of the wedding photography.), a Scottish brooch & some well hidden Aussie thongs, lots of Ribbons and comic celebrant.

Elise & Darren are most likely enjoying there honeymoon, and so they should be. I am so happy for them both. I am also going to have mention the unusual things at the reception involving me feeling a little off colour (pardon the pun :P), a friend of the Tumath’s flattering me, and attempting to match make me with her daughter and only showing me a photo of when her daughter how wasn’t present was little, and that she was like Wednesday from “The Addams Family”.

This is making me curious because I can’t recall the first name of the Mother and I wasn’t told the surname, and I wasn’t sure about which Wednesday she was referring to as the cartoon, TV, Movie & Anime Wednesday’s have different personas and personalities.

This leads me to wonder why the Mother was so eager to matchmake, and whether her daughter likes spiders and guillotining porcelain dolls and causing harm to others (sadism) or her siblings. To conclude I got my scalp sunburnt and go told off by the father of the bride about my lack of my linux.conf.au hat and my political preference. (I did try to avoid mentioning it.)

But next topic.

The Child on the Bus

This section was hard to get into the right words. Thanks to Sabrina for asking about it so that I had a framework of this anecdote to go by when posting it.

I saw a child on bus, the other week before Christmas, on the one day I took bus home instead of walking up the hill as I normally do. The bus ticket reader was broken, so most people got a free ride. I was standing as always, as I always stand on buses because it is polite and it’s not like I have any one to sit beside and chat with. I was watching / observing all the people in the bus.

Directly in front of me was a little girl (around 3 to 4) with her parents (a young Asian couple). She was standing on her dad’s lap and playing with him and his arms: and enjoying pieces of chocolate and Arnotts chocolate teddy bears that parents gave to her. Her Mum tried to play with her but she ignored her Mum, she was more interested in Arnotts chocolate teddy bears and game she was playing with Dad.

It appeared as though she didn’t like Mum or didn’t care so much, anyhow, she continued playing and smiling as bus drove on she looked back at people behind her, the lady that sat directly behind that was making silly faces at her as old people tend to treat little ones.

I was pensive and I would occasionally smile and wink at her (I like kids and have a blue card, but the parents never seem to like me, they always think he is a weirdo or creep or perve or something) (In the dialog I had with Sabrina she asked whether I tie my hair back, and I replied I do, as she reckons it might help.)

*pop*These parents didn’t mind and the little girl was giggling and playing game with Dad still and then she didn’t get a chocolate teddy and she was about cry or whinge that she didn’t get one, but Mum saw and popped one in her mouth and then the little girl went back to giggles and play.

Aas bus moved forward towards next stop, Mum pressed the stop button and got up and got off…., Her Dad waved bye to Mum and at first little girl didn’t notice (for at least 2 minutes) but as the bus started moving again, the little girl looked round and didn’t see mum and even though like earlier it looked like she didn’t care.

Now she burst into crying and tears Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma!!, Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma!!, Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma!!. All other passengers but me turned to look and react to the noise, I just kept focus and made no reaction.

Dad tried to get the girl to play game again but the girl wasn’t interested, he tried giving her a chocolate teddy bear but girl didn’t want it, everyone knew what she wanted Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma!!, Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma!!. (Here is part where Sabrina commented on cuteness)

Eventually as bus kept on rolling and at two stops down from prior stop the Dad and the daughter got off, and she was still crying. I wasn’t sure if the parents were seperated or Mum had to work or what. I was pensive.As the Dad and daughter who was being carried by Dad, walked off she didn’t stop crying.

I was thinking of the age, the innocence, the circumstances and the metaphor f while we are busy with life or content with food, or trinkets we don’t really notice or acknowledge those that are special to us, but as soon as they go……
:as soon as something happens to make then disappear, the busyness and stuff doesn’t matter and that seems to be the my message about meaning of Christmas.

Not silly presents or memories of Saint Nicholas being nice to poor, not a Christian Stolen Pagan festival from north hemisphere that has the dates wrong, not stupid commercialism, not food or trinkets
but people, people that matter, I reflected rest of the journey home about meaning and metaphors and other memories, It reminded me a bit of Joyuex Noel (Best Christmas Movie ever, although Hogfather is a close second) , as it has other metaphors that give the Christmas message.

Protester Blacklisting

I was going to a bit more on this but I don’t think it needs a much as I first planned. Basically those who are diligent will remember my first post about the candle protester, I have since then been approached by the two members of the The Wilderness Society (probably because I have long hair, and look like a hippie or something) .

The first one I mentioned in an earlier blog post about Nuclear radiation and Synroc and what not else. This is the second one. On my lunchbreak from work a few weeks ago, I was again approached by another Wilderness Society recruit (He was getting paid so he wasn’t a volunteer), He asked me if I wanted to join their cause, I replied with a flat out No!.

He then asked whether I knew what they were doing to the rainforest. I then told him what they were doing and told him I knew of the solution to the majority of their problems. He was now eager to hear it. I said, “The best way to protect the Wilderness from destruction, is via mass genocide or mass killing of all the people, as the Wilderness can’t get ruined if there are no people to ruin it.

I then went on to say while this method isn’t ethically or morally viable, and there are other methods available the majority of them would not save the Wilderness as the level of bureaucracy in Government and the level of corruption in Business prevent most of the methods from working, the remaining methods are so gradually that without an external catalyst the Wilderness is doomed anyways.

I followed by a brief explanation of consumerism and production and the economic decisions which made the Wilderness and society was it was. (I won’t go into to it here, as most of it was recalled from highschool economics essays and thestoryofstuff.com (which is a really good website that everyone should watch)).

Once I had finished speaking, all he could say was “Wow”, I then took my leave and went to get my lunch about 5 minutes late. Basically what I want to say to protesters is this, I have long hair, I am aware of your causes, and the problems of the world, I have spent a significant amount of time and effort looking at solutions to save the world and humanity from itself.

Please don’t approach me in fact please blacklist me, unless you are looking for someone who knows your subject material as good or better than you do, who has actually planned and done stuff towards your causes other than just saying we need more supporters to get anything done. (All it is takes is a small group of motivated people to change the world.)

Or unless you are looking for someone who to tell to take over the world in order to save it. Of course I don’t want to rule the world. (Only to save it from itself, and humanity from themselves, and while this is quixotic, I still stand for it). I do however have contacts and colleagues that do want to control or rule the world and who would know how to ensure society undergoes different social conditioning to the point of revolution and riots or who know how to pull off assassinations and coups.

Because ultimately quoting Red Gum (one of the greatest bands) “If you don’t fight you , you lose” , that is why people are called activists because they actually do something, promotion of a cause or message is important, but if you all you do is spread the message, then you end up with an entire world that knows the message, but does nothing.

Just like on “Last of the Time Lords” (Yay Red Gum and Doctor Who references, I pat myself on the back), Martha not only tells the world the Doctor’s and her story, she also gives them an instruction. It is them all actively following this instruction that regenerates the Doctor, not the fact the know the story, although have a series of psychic mind control satellites helps too. (Believe it or not, this is another non ethical solution, because it absolves freewill in order to benefit humanity.)

Simply instead of telling me that I should join your cause and then get others to join your cause, I suggest you actually do or plan something resembling a solution.

Broken Inside

I have almost recovered from my physiological and emotion state, which was altered / caused by a betrayal or two. I am not going to say much more, except that I am still healing, I find it very ironic that I accidentally moved my /lib directory to RAM (when fixing an invalid symlink , to fix the wine bug and others I was having) and then cleared the RAM.

This placed my laptop in a state quite similar to my physiological and emotion state. Luckily I was able to use a Gentoo LiveCD and busybox to copy the most of the libraries for a chroot I made a while back. (I no longer hate chroots). I then ran revdep-rebuild and waited. My system is virtually fixed now, except for a weird thing where alt-f2 gets responded to by both KDE and Xorg, but I think a recompile of Xorg may fix that, if only the process in my brain was as efficient as revdep-rebuild.

Anyhow, I know this post doesn’t contain anything about my birthday or Christmas, but the next one will.

Best wishes

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

Hi everyone / anyone,

I am currently updating world (Gentoo package collection), and managed to get rarian to compile after filing a bug in which someone suggested I disable ccache for that compile, so I did and it worked, so thanks. (Now I am CC for a ccache bug that was reported earlier…) I was working on a Project evaluation for the ITB712 project earlier, but will resume it tomorrow with a renew vigor courtesy of sleep, focus and some other rhapsody of persuasive gusto.

I had a meeting discussing the details of my vacation research scholarship today. (To keep me from get boring and taking over the world :P) . It was a good meeting, I almost didn’t make it in time as Google Maps doesn’t have street numbers yet. The research over the vacation is in the field of MDA / MDD (Model Driven Architecture/ Model Driven Development) and promises to be interesting and fun, well at least I think so.

I also got to say Hi to Redhatter, who was picking fights with a 386, a CGI script, a font resizing script in Perl, some LEDS on a breadboard and anything else he could get his hands on …… :P. That said he plays good music, the kind I remember from the hospital, the kind I wanted to listen to on the way home tonight.

I also got to play a bit of Freelancer, which isn’t as rewarding when you realise that other people have so much more money and better ships then you. Well at least I have the highest kill count for now …… .

As I was coding I came up with a parody in the space of 5 minutes, I won’t upload it at the moment, as I want to make sure it is ok with the person I am dedicating it to before, I do so, let alone recording it.

According to the others playing Freelancer (thanks Arania, Sedim, Skorge) I shouldn’t bother speaking or engaging in conversation with them because I either oversimplify or overcomplexify anything said. I disagree with this, I am more inclined to believe that I interpret and perceive things not in a 1D context, where each context is represented by a single point with constant axis values, but in a 2D, 3D or ND context, complete with change of basis (linear algebra term) context , context zoom and intertexuality. (possibly consider least squares approximation in linear algebra, basically isomorphs to things that can’t be understand in the current context, unless given with respect to their original context, if Chris ever reads this, I am not liable for what happens to his head….) .

So occasionally given the nature of my brain, I am prone incorrect context zoom, and mentioning terms , concepts, ideas and other things (that make people call it old or say WTF ……), that isomorph or approximately isomorph into the current context but the rule of isomorphism is implied, and not explicit , so just as people wonder how the magician does their tricks (implied), people wonder where I pulled that reference or context from ?

When the magician explains their tricks (explicit), is like me explaining which context I am relating from, or speaking with respect to (explicit), it makes it less WTF and more Ohhhhhhh, Weirdo …………., or ” I get it, but I don’t like it.

Anyhow, enough to say that given the death promises (I already have at least 350 people who consider me their enemy that have given me death threats, I don’t need friends and acquaintances to start) , I won’t interject unless asked into anymore of their conversations and will keep my thoughts and wisdom to myself.

And sure sure, critical literacy and the scientific method make it ok for you to rip other people’s ideas and concepts to threads in a quest for validity and truth, but logic doesn’t allow for emotions. Quoting “I, Robot” (The Movie),

V.I.K.I.: Do you not see the logic of my plan?

Sonny: Yes, but it just seems too… heartless.

V.I.K.I.:My logic is undeniable, my logic is undeniable, myyy looogic is unndeenniabble..

And if I mention illogic now, most of you will freak, so I am not going to, because if you really want to know, you would search out the knowledge yourself or ask me.

There are always lots of little things, little things we don’t like or approve of, but we tolerate, we bide our time and put up with circumstance, not because we want to, but because we choose to show tolerance towards it.

Tolerance in moderation is good, as too much leads to rages and emotional breakdowns, being treated as a doormat and too little lends to a short fuse, a hot temper and the consequences associated with that. I try my best to ensure that my tolerance for the majority of things stays at a high level. I am not sure why….

As for the Meme Title comment, it is in reference to two things, the first being that of the chain email, particular the cute chain email , that drives people mad and makes them combust mentally, and the second being that Chrystle posted a Meme on her LJ (Livejournal), that requires a user to provide 10 things that they want to say to 10 of their friends but not specify which friend and thing to say goes where.

I don’t like this meme. I don’t like it because I don’t see what leaving people hanging over which comment / compliment is their’s does , I don’t like it because I don’t see the point in not telling your friends directly what you want to tell them(unless you feel uncomfortable about the topic or they will feel uncomfortable about the topic, in which you can either spend some time getting comfortable or tell them anyway and be out of your comfort zone).

The word or lies that hurt most are the words or lies that are thought but unsaid , silently creating a web of deceit and deception, unless you don’t know what to say or what to think. All hidden truths will appear eventually.

I rediscovered Toonstruck the other in a discussion about adventure puzzle games (which seem to be the topic now that everyone loves Portal) . Weird thing is I don’t remember Christopher Lloyd (who is the main star) being in it. That also reminds me of the Monkey Island series and Myst and ScudVM and BASS.

Does anyone still use Binhex ? I don’t see why unicode and tar.bz shouldn’t have taken over.

What is futile that you still bother with ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

My apologies for the delay, not like anyone will notice it. I have been very busy with Uni stuff (almost over, only Computer Architecture assignment due Monday and Exams to study for). Thanks to my ITB712 Team for keeping me sane.

This was supposed be an audio blog, but then I realised that I had too much to say and that some of it wouldn’t be easy to record.

Events of the late (what happened since last time).

Successfully finished ITB712 group project complete with Virus Fiasco. The machine the release was built on had a virus :(. Naturally the tutor accused me of writing a virus to infect his machine. (of which I did no such thing.)

Got my modeling results back, not happy with them, but will have to live with them. Like everything else I suppose.

Tried to escape into a Freelancer reality and haven’t succeeded. The problem with escapism is that unless it is immersive then it doesn’t work. The reality or place of escape has to be isomorphic with the real reality, otherwise you get bored and return to the real reality, in which you suffer the pain you were trying to avoid.

At least I have two class 10 weapons now, fat lot of good they do in this reality, in resolving my mood, mental issues, people issues, etc. Guns are no use as violence was never the answer, let alone magic guns on a spacheship in a computer game.

Mum has a new job in the city and she seems to be enjoying it. She comes home happier it seems. I applied for a research trial scholarship over the break in Model Driven Architecture. I have a meeting on Tuesday about it. Hopefully I will have some fun porting diff and make and other GNU tools to MDA and possibly making a visual / GUI diff program to compare different models.

Didn’t hear back from the Lego people, so not sure if they are still interested in hiring me. I wish everyone else that is working on assessment or exam study, the best of luck. I also saw the Rotary Display of donated brasserie on the Goodwill Bridge, which made the hand rails unusable, why they went to all the effort for only 3 hours of breast cancer promotion I don’t know.

It is a shame that the majority of cancers have easy cures which the doctors and pharmaceutical companies hide. I guess human greed outweighs human compassion. It reminds of the saying it’s nothing personal, its strictly good business.Good business and Moral business two very different things.

I also went shopping for the first time in ages. It was boring and irritating. I miss the Indonesian tawar-menawar and pasar-pasar. Today society is too much harga pas. If only retribution and redemption were bargained so our consciences did suffer the ridiculously over priced fixed price of guilt , sorrow and pain.

I have also get my Gentoo development quiz finished (Yes I am lazy / careful) , two games to help design, plan and develop (with two different groups) and catch up with at least 17 people over the break, when it arrives. I haven’t decided if I am going to LCA or Woodford this year.

My pockets of specialist knowledge are growing from forms of asexual reproduction to neurology, and numerous others in between. Given I am a generalist by nature, I find this ironic.

I thought I was getting a ride home with Dallas, but he went to the Valley to have Pizza. So I caught a ride with Mum and Jacob. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I did, and had to suffer interjections, misunderstandings and ignorance. I really need to process things / issues out and resolve some flaws in the distribution of my willpower, and the nature of some things in my mind and soul.

Sometimes one doesn’t seek solutions, one just wants to talk, to discuss , to have a heart to heart, soul to soul, and yet any male on the planet assumes solutions are wanted. That trip wasn’t pleasant, and the harsh relevance of the music from All the Lost Souls (great James Blunt music on his new album), hurted more than it helped all through last night.

I came back here as a favour, but now plans are changing, and I wonder why I came. I wonder if the silence would have been better than the words said. I thought I would get some respite and time to resolve my issues, but it seems circumstances have dictated otherwise.

I seem to hide in the cryptic metaphors and references , I do this for my good and the good of others, though they don’t realise or accept it. I feel like most of the James Blunt songs I have been listening to and a few Avril Lavinge songs too.

I am sorry for shitting you off Chrystle, though I don’t know what shits off about me. If you want a straight honest answer you just have to ask for it. Alternatively it may be better if I just disappear, whatever suits you better. I live to serve … (Heck I sound like a Genie)

Relationship / Friendship development is much harder than Software Development, that is for sure. But I seem to have Gentoo packages broken (not compiling), parts of my mind and soul broken (that can be simply fixed, when I get the chance), and relationships bent and broken by circumstance.

I am currently fascinated with ambiogenesis, or the creation of something alive from something dead / non living, not really in the Frankenstein way. More in the way of the phoenix.

Honestly I am confused when one thing is said and another is written. I also like riddles again.

This post’s question is

Those who seek it , will not find it.
They question those who can not speak.
They beg the wisdom that can’t be heard.
Their prize can not be given in words.
But instead is found unintentionally by those who do not want it.
Those who have it often ignore it or complain of its burden.
It is more valuable than gold but more worthless then ash.

Who are they and what is it ?

Best of luck and hopefully I will cheerup

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

My Gentoo world update is taking its sweet time, with the two main culprits listed in the title. I have been playing way too much Freelancer (sighs, and blames Ruben and crew…., then shrugs,). I finally found the music on the CD I was looking for.

The lyrics are so soothing and wonderful they caused me to sleep in and miss my lecture. But at least the assignment and my revision study (to make up for missing the lecture) is done. But it made me remember some old dreams and memories that I thought I had also lost. Interesting how memory triggers work.

Another day, another sacrifice, another distraction, and the same old songs in my mind. My dreams toss and float like plasma amidst a sea of thought cryptically revealing themselves like mermaids in bikinis, showing all that isn’t crucial and hiding the truth, secrets and beauty away.

There was the gambling, the fountain of … ?, the running, and the faces flashing, everything was topsy turvy except not, and all the blood ran cold. What subtitles beesech me to speak in such a bizarre tongue, saying but not comprehending, trusting in the flow of the words, that the message though primitive and garbled, may be heard by someone else as a plea of requiem for those neither gone nor lost, those with silent shapes and loud minds, those which make my dreams what they are …. ? Rules only led to discrepancies and betrayal but are still necessary despite their consequences…

The bitter drink which life appears to be is rather a mask for something sweeter, something purer then ever anticipated, something that will slap you in the face, like a fish out of water. The sting remains though the wound was long ago, the memory remains while all records of conscious recollection have faded and rotted away, the dream its own requiem, a taunting teasing tune, that would send all others that listen mad, except me. For I have heard the screams, and smiles that the dream recalls and I have been to places others fear to believe in.

And yet the missing fragments haunt me so, even given my circumstance of supposed to be focusing on more important things like assessment.

What can’t you remember ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234