The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

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

Hey everyone,

I forgot my power cable today. (Again….) . The MAB220 lecture was good although I misseed the first 10 minutes. Revisiting / repeating Romberg integration and improper integrals. I believe I am now stopping with my wxMozilla efforts as the group has decided to go with a C# GUI for the ease and speed of development. I got wxMozilla to build on Windows by copying my header files from my /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox directory, this was much easier than locating them in the source tarball or generating them from the idl files using xpidl.

I managed to get to of the libs that wxMozilla wanted to link to from the gecko-sdk binary. The other libraries I didn’t manage to get as they required me to compile xulrunner from source and although I had VS2003 (and not VS2005, as it fails….) and minigw environment courtesty of the Mozilla-build package. The configure wasn’t able to find Java even with a valid .mozconfig, thanks #developers on irc.mozilla.org for all your help. Even when I set JAVA_HOME or manually provided the java bin directory, it wasn’t able to find it.

Upon walking home through the storm last night. it was wet and windy but I loved every minute of it. I got home drenched and decided just to have Chicken sandwichs with the fancy Tomato and Cheese bread that Helgas makes, only after eating did I realise the bread contained sulphites as preservatives, which I am allergic to, so long story short, I didn’t get much sleep last night and my throat is still sore. I should have cooked the mince and pasta, but my laziness and simplicity lead to my sore throat.

I hate sulphites, and I don’t like my allergy much either.

I just upgraded the wp-stats plugin so it works with WP 2.3, and I am finally taking advantage of the new tags feature.
I just received a patch that should allow WinMX to work with latest Wine, I will test it when I get home (due to lack of power cable) and will continue rebuilding the remaining 50 or so packages that need to link against expat.

This post may be smaller than normal, which may or may not be good thing.

This post’s question is Has an easy out you have taken ever had an unexpected consequence ?

You live you learn

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Uni is keeping me very busy, but I guess it is that time of year. I mean only 5 to 6 weeks and then the semester and all the exams are over. I am currently working getting wxMozilla wxPython bindings to compile on Win32. (I will be posting instructions once I am finished, other things I will eventually post include some new choruses and songs I am writing, a semi satrical piece of my IT education so far, the recordings or transcripts of some of my mental skits, etc)

I am also working on general study for all my subjects, a Maths modelling assignment, a Computer Architecture assignment and this group project for ITB712. The last few nights have been late ones at Uni, whether working or talking (thank you Sabrina) or whatever else.

I went to Elise’s engagement party of Saturday, it was absolutely wonderful. I am so glad Elise and Darren are happy. The coolness of the pool and the heat of the day complimented each other entirely. I arrived late as Dallas (my ride :P) was stuck in traffic, but it wasn’t that bigger of a deal. Elise was more excited that I actually came and that I was going to go swimming.

On the way there I discovered a design flaw in the Tomtom GPS Dallas has, you know you have been paying attention in Software Engineering Studies when you get mad or upset at poorly designed software interfaces. The dynamics of the party were interesting from the people I met at Darren’s 21st , the Tumaths, my family and the others I am yet to meet properly. It was good catching up and offering my congratulations to the engaged couple.

I also got to briefly chat with Buddy (regarding Xbox 360 mods, Halo3, anime, Doctor Who, etc) and Teegan (regarding her employment and future) which was nice. Bob Tumath (Elise’s Dad) wouldn’t stop bringing up the philosophical and utopic discussion we had on MSN ages ago, I don’t think he ever will get over my answering his humourous rhetorical questions in a logical literal sense.

The most interesting thing about the party, would have been the fact that I had seen it all already over 6 months ago, right down to the engagement ring and the dress she was wearing in a dream / premonition. I am looking forward to attending the wedding :).

After the engagement party finished Mum was giving me a lift home, and we were involved in a car cash. We are both fine now, barring some minor bruises, aches and cuts, and the car whilst damaged isn’t written and is covered under insurance. The crash was at the Dornoch Gladstone intersection that I walk across everyday, so the entire experience is a bit hallowing for me. The ambulance, police and firepeople where very helpful and polite. Mum had to say in hospital under observation for neck or spinal injury most of the night.

The worst part about the crash, is that like the engagement party it was also in my dream, the same dream in fact, and whilst I normally can predict and alter some circumstances of certain dreams and premonitions, this was static and not alterable.

I am sure I will have to mentally process everything all through, and focus on my desires and goals and apply my willpower to keep me from get sidetracked or from falling behind. I was laughing weirdly after the crash mostly from the accuracy of the premonition, my own mental vulnerability and the irony of the circumstances.

Oblivion (What I don’t know about, doesn’t concern me) and apathy (What I don’t care about, doesn’t concern me) are interesting things. I notice I have slipped away from anti-socialism and apathy for the moment, as I enjoy social contact as much as solitude and reflection, and when I become a apathetic, I become stoic (not like the philosophy, rather like the new deffinition of the word), and don’t care about anything. My heart becomes stone. I think it is better to have an emotive heart that can feel joy and pain, rather than a heart of stone, but whether my thoughts remain like that, is something for the future to determine.A significant portion of my week of holidays was torn up with this moral and psychological decision, of To be or not to be, to feel or not to feel.

After being dropped home from the hospital I watched the Sideshow (which was funny as a ever) and most of the movie The Island. I want to read Huxley’s book the Island now , having read Huxley’s Brave New world and enjoying studying the moral and philosophical implications of Utopic and Dystopic socieities.

I don’t like the fact the traffic light the same one we saw as green, and the other witnesses said was red takes less than 3 seconds to change from green to red, given the size of that intersection. I timed it this morning while walking down the hill.

I can’t wait till teleportation becomes the prefered method of travel. I just heard James Blunt’s new song 1973, and I absolutely love it, and relate to the metaphors behind it. Isolationism is so easy in today’s society. I am also rebuilding numerous software packages on my laptop as expat was masked for some reason. (So I am going through rebuilding everything againist the new expat for a second time, but the second time makes it easier.)

I also recommend the movie Tarka the Otter, is it a romantic scenic tradegy that actual uses the word bitch in its proper meaning and context.

I am going to go back to the repetitive process of fixing these bindings, and I wish you all the best and farewell for now.

This post’s question is How far would you go to protect the ones you love ? Do you agree or disagree with hunting for sport, if so then why ? (personally I disagree)

Stay safe and keep into or out of mischief

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

My current status is a bit of a conundrum. I have been stressed, sick, sore, tired, happy, busy, concerned, GIR-like, distracted, in awe, inspired and then some. I am enjoying my holidays, kind of, although given the amount of work I have to do still, I really couldn’t say that I am enjoying them.

At least the blackberry pudding and the 3 hours sleep I got this afternoon (to cure my headache…) helped my unusual mood. I also found my copy of Railroads Tycoon 2 and after redoing the first campaign and tutorial, and wasting more time playing ET only to be disrespected by idiots. (where did the good Internode servers go, Game Arena just isn’t the same).

I hope to be visiting several people in Toowoomba tomorrow, but we will see how that goes. If this holiday has taught me anything, it is either A. Don’t make plans that circumstances lobotimise or B. Focus is important. (Just because I am feeling miserable and not upto coding / working / studying doesn’t mean that chatting to people, or playing games or chilling online will help my mood. (Although theoretically it should)).

To my ITB712 team, don’t worry that I am behind schedule, I already have mockups of my GUI design and code segments, and have actually gotten a chance to look at your source code for once. It should all be done (to or past Phase 1) close of business friday.

Thanks for the wish to stay in contact email Kristina, if anyone else is interested in staying in contact, then please contact me or I will contact you. (I know I have a large list of people I want to stay in contact with, and a smaller list of people I want to improve my relationship with.)

Now to be brutally honest but not secret revealing (much), Seeing as my taking my soul out of silver box after highschool seemed to be an appropriate but costly decision, I conclude that for the moment I accept who I am (not to say that I wasn’t before) and rejoice in mine me-ness.

Although I will say the social interaction / networking boom that people normally experience when the start Uni was kind of damaged when several key players either quit Uni or deferred. This is the flaw in hierarchical social networks over web or mesh networks, their is no social redundancy, because the majority of social interactions are transmitted via the organisation and glue of a few popular sanguines.

(Hippocratic personality type, also mentioned in Personality Plus book series) (sanguines’ organised, you say, well yeah, they tend to be the sparkiest social butterfly to ever flutter the game that is social interaction in the Massive Multiplayer Real Life Experience (hence forth MMRLE or RL) )

That said Ruben is trying to place some organisation back into things by rerunning forums and IRC on Olympus, and we still have Gunther who maintains a nice little network of EIR players. I am not sure if I should make public my todolist yet, but as aforementioned (yes, this is a rare a occasion I reference a previous blog post), I am looking for good company.

So those people that I am friends with currently, I want to stay friends with and also improve that friendship. This was part of my plan of going to Toowoomba tomorrow, as it was supposed to go last holidays but didn’t get the chance. I am not sure what I am doing for my birthday this year, nothing as big as last year, although I will probably organise a more diverse get together involving Mao, Mafia, and other games card, board, computer and otherwise during the next holiday period.

I also got the regression test done for WinMx under WINE. (which was another thing I was supposed to do last holidays).
I would write more, and I have several post and post ideas in draft form (Thanks Redhatter for the inspiration of draft form) (include some bits and pieces of on software engineering, some of sitcom and other dialogues in my head, and more music and audio recordings) but I need sleep if I want to wake up early tommorow in order to get to Toowoomba on time. (especially because I wanted to stay more then one day, but won’t be now, and I was also considering visiting (Great .. I think)Uncle Rod and Auntie Carol.)

Thanks to Sabrina for the Neopets (adds to the list of online games he will actually consider playing, (unlike WoW)) conversation, and her friend Ash for the translated lyrics of Gaukt songs. The redemption music video was riveting, and it inspired me to see the 30 minut music video which was also awesome.

Shame that torchwood isn’t on still. (Thanks to Chrystle, for the reminder, best of luck with your anatomy study) I need watch more anime, old animation films, Doctor Who and Torchwood, and more Zim probably, as well as writing more wxPython GUI code, C code, x86 assembly ISRs and Matlab code.

This post’s question is What makes you ask the questions you ask ? What makes you seek the answer for them ? Why are you curious ? Is the desire for knowledge a primeval urge ?

Best wishes, best of luck with study, work, fun and such and such, and keep wondering ….

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best wishes and hope your having fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question for this post is

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

Best wishes, Hang in there and keep living …

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey,

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

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

Steps

1. Click Administration tab, Click Add Printer

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

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

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

5. For Make choose Generic, and click continue

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

7. Choose your preferred printing options

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

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

10. Realise it is late and they are closed

11. Sigh

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

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

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

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

The question today is Do you like waffles ?

Best of luck to you all,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question / s today is

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

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

Anyhow, have fun and get well for those ill,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

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

I was going to rant and release here but *meh* *sighs*

Later has come, First things first Happy Birthday Lisa. I am wondering do I wait till Australia has a national ID card, pay $60 for a Keypass card (the closest thing we currently have) or pay $24 dollars to get an 18+ card. This scenario all arose from the events that happened two days ago, which invovled me getting let into the Treasury casino on my student card, then going with Lisa and friends to the ATMs which are located in the most weird location near the rear on the ground floor at the back of a casino. Signage to them was also confusing, we finally got there got money from the ATMs (I was getting money as I would need it for the coming week.)

Then I tried to get back into the casino and was told that they don’t except student cards (apparently they are easier to fake than other forms ID…), this confused the cognisance out of me, if they didn’t accept student cards, why the first security guard at the door let me in ? We then went round the front to double check and now they wouldn’t let me in.

Those who know me, know I don’t drink or gamble, which makes the scenario more ironic. I then asked whether I could goto the Blackjacks restaurant downstairs. (which isn’t near the gambling areas and the entrances to gambling areas have more security guards), I was told I couldn’t go down the stairs to the restaurant….., My Mum has always said that if I ever needed a good meal in the City I could go to Blackjacks, but it turns out that I can’t….

It would have been much better if they had refused me correctly the first time, because that inconsistency bugs me, Getting refused initially would have been fine, because it wouldn’t be a broken standard. It is like going into the swipe card doors at uni at getting let in, and then when I want to get out, the swipe reader on the inside won’t let me out…

We ended up going to Strike bowling bar instead, and whilst it was still a nice night and Lisa still had a ball, I still feel confused and guilty. Although music from Cat Stevens and Jewel is wearing the guilt and misery away quickly and my pancake stack breakfast also helped.

So now I have to decide whether to wait, pay $60 or pay $24 dollars, to prove I am who I say I am. One of the wise or semi wise things (I sounded like Millie from Ozy and Millie) was “What is the point of being old, if no one believes you are old ?” I still looked great in my purple suit, and Dallas looked great in his suit and fancy shirt :).

This annoys me for two reasons, one the broken standard reason which I see all to often, eg Feminists want Gender Equality, and yet the government only has Violence against Women being wrong in Australian TV ads, nothing about violence or abuse in which the sufferers are men.

In my humble opinion, it should not have female actors being all victims and male actors being all protagonists. Sure statistically men are at least 70% of sexual abusers are apparently male, but if we want Gender Equality, then the Government should have Violence against People and fair advertising…, (Chaser’s War on Everything made a different but valid point / joke about the portray of actors in Government ads).

The second thing is the lack of national and international standards, this was an issue I also faced with my Senior Certificate, (I got OP score which is QLD only), I wanted an International Baccalaureate as it was an equivalent International qualification. (but it wasn’t available…) This world needs global standards, national standards, not each state having different solutions per state. Sure some things are state specific but others can be nationalised.

The state of QLD is also being very stupid with all the council amalgamations, especially by not having a referendum on the issue. If that actually looked into the problem, instead of looking for an easy way out, they would have identified the buerocratic rubbish that slows development and problem solving at the local government level, they would find the corruption and the fact that the councils we have aren’t weak just inefficient. But then again any legislative political system involving a committee prides itself on its lack of productivity or benefit to society in general .

So in short broken standards & double standards aren’t worth the legislation they are written on,(So eliminate them using proper legislation, education and training) and Certain things need to be localised and others need to be centralised and others still need to be globalised. Make sure enough though is put into which goes where.

Anesthesia is normally localised, Subversion is Centralised, and most multi-national corparations like MacDonalds and Coca-Cola are Global…

Simpler than it looks but harder than it seems ….

So if anyone has any experience with success of keypass in Queensland or states other that Victoria and Tasmania, I would love to her about it.

The question today is what would you do if you were in a world where your identity was stolen, not believed, etc ?

Have fun, Stay safe and start something

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234