The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have fun and enjoy whatever you are doing,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post’s question is

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

Best wishes and have fun

Hope to see you all around

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

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

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