Archive for the 'Survival and Life' Category

OPEC in Austria leaves Sydney secure but abadoned, 438 metres in which directon? Screwing uni doesn’t work…

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

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 :)

The Rule of 3’s, WoW *sigh*, Differential Equations and Deadlines

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Wireless Printing for me :), Proactive people ?

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

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 :P

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 :)

Meant to be, Possum Good or Bad ?, You can call me …

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

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…

To a T

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

It suits me and it is just one word

Esoterism

Amazing :)

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Gingerbread, bittersweet, partridges, darkness, how do you save yourself from yourself ?

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

Salutations in moonlight

Truth …

Lies ….

Secrets …

Surprises …

Honesty & Chivalry war in my mind’s eye

Seeking Compassion & Redemption

For Crimes Not Committed

For Glass Shards that bleed my barefeet

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

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

The damage done and only realised post mortem

If only consumption was enough

One day you will all get the keys

To play in the ball pit and do as you please

Hopefully by then my half-life will have decreased

But perhaps we seek the pain and damage

To prove we are real, as having faith in something

In order to just feel, Depravity becomes Humanity

As we stop caring, and just continue to exist

Legal obligations require moral sacrifice

And a pound of flesh and a pound of soul

Should both weigh the same

Persecution, Criticism creep along the foundations of Tolerance and Acceptance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kippers gone know, along with the dolphins and whales

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

And when I will next see either, noone knows

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

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

Oh wait, you’re already headless blast

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

Never realising that the door is open wide,

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

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

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

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

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

Before you know I will have climbed the FarAway Tree

Or hidden from myself, whether I fancy

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

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

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

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

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

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

False illusions of grandeur and stones and dead birds

Are shallowly laughed at without saying a word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the flesh is good, quite nice to eat,

The Lion and the Mouse, The Rabbit and Tortoise ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The message above mentions or intertexutalates with

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

Have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

*sigh*, in one door out the next, misrepresentation blues

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

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 :)

Back to front and upside down, weird sleeping patterns, anzac biscuits and changed times, and so many invitations.

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

Hey everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You should believe , Have faith and trust

You should learn and grow and think and question

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

In order to be content

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

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

[End Positive odds and ends]

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

I have been enjoying my life, engaged in

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

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

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

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

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

Best wishes, keep having fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Emo yeast, Kitty Pool, Skeletal Clothing & Hip Hip Hooray

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

Hey everyone,

Uni is back, had my first Mathematical Modelling (mainly ODEs based) lecture today, and the lecturer who is new to QUT, mentioned over crowding and yeast that said “Life is crap, this place (petri dish) is crowded and crap, I want to die”, to which the entire lecture room laughed, and I had to suppress a shout of Emo Yeast!!.

On the last week of the holidays I spent lots of time at Ruben’s, because he had his LAN party (which wasn’t bad) and his birthday which was awesome, I met lots of cool people, demonstrated my skill or lack there of at pool / 8 ball. Cries of “Damn you Bede” were echoed in both events, and the watching of Family Guy, Firefly and Invader Zim were enjoyed all round.

I was going to upload my resume website thingy after cleaning it up, but it seems to have mystically disappeared, so I can’t do that obviously. I am currently composing / writing the verses and bridge for a song that I have the chorus for and also brushing up on my knowledge of C, C++, QT, Assembly and ODEs (Ordinary Differential Equations).

I also bumped into an old school acquaintance on the train, and that reminds of my quest / task of attempting to have a reunion or Mafia or Mao game with a bunch of people, those who are interested just email me or respond to my email when I get round to emailing you.

Other interesting things that have been happening,

The Magic Train Ticket (It changed dates or something like that, as it was accepted by lots of people who asked, when I found my real / current (not old) in the bottom of my pocket I was so surprised)

The Mecure has a good steak sandwich. :)

The Guy on the Train, that accused me of staring at him, and then when I made sure to only look at my knees / feet, he asked was something wrong.

[RANT] Why does everyone automatically categorise and associate negative connations with certain actions, If I am sighing there is something wrong, If I look at my feet, there is something wrong, If I look in someone’s general direction, I am staring at them and thus I have a problem with them.

Where will it end, will it become like certain events in the US where if you look at someone accidentally and they interpret it as the wrong way, you get stabbed or shot ? Clarification is a very important part of communication and stereotyping people just to improve one’s self esteem or to alleviate the fear of unknown doesn’t limit that person, it limits your relationship, behaviour towards and your ability to cope with that person.

It is only when a person stereotypes themselves or believes the stereotype that their self esteem begins to suffer. Where did courtesy go ? chivalry ?

I wish people would understand that same and equal are not equivalent. Men and Women are equal but not the same,Different Ethnicities are Equal but not the same, People placed in stereotypes are equal to that stereotype (if the stereotype is logically placed without bias) but they are not the same as that stereotype.

Equality isn’t about making everyone the same, it isn’t about forced integration and interaction and facadious multiculturalism. Equality is about realising that despite our differences we are equal and tolerating those differences or even celebrating those differences doesn’t hurt a society.

I think that feminists shouldn’t misinterpret chivalry as a sexist gesture that implies that can’t do things (open doors etc) as well as men. If men are being chivalrous (which is rare enough these days), then just accept the chivalry graciously. As a sidenote to this can the idiots (normally male) who are being chivalrous just in order to get into a girl’s pants, please stop because you are ruining it for the rest of us.

The journey is more important that the destination.

*SIGH* end rant (this rant may have wisdom inside it, if you can be bothered looking)

[/RANT]

As for the Skeletal Clothing I suppose that would be skin and muscle tissue, but I was actually referring to the awesome picture on Chrystle’s LJ. (LJ is down ATM :()

Have fun,

Imagine life as a drop of rain, or a snowflake, If you could play any game on an amusement park ride what would it be and why ?

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Burung api, reunions and cinematics, Ozy and Millie, and Birthday’s galore

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Hey everyone,

Here are some Indonesian phrases (almost proverbs) that I discovered, when in a semi depressed / semi concerned state based on all the emotive or argumentative MSN conversations I have had lately, they are slightly sad but do raise a philosophy question or three.

Kata semua menyakit, mengapa saya berbicara lagi ?(Every word hurts, why am I still speaking?)
Pekhiran semua menyakit, mengapa saya berpikir lagi ? (Every thought hurts, why am I still thinking?)
Api yang menyakit aku, tetapi api juga menyenyumkan aku, api teman atau musuh ? (Fire it hurts / burns me , but it also makes me smile, fire is friend or foe ?)

I also went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Chrystle and some of her friends, surprise I met Emma and realise that we have already met from TOM (Tournament of Minds) from ages ago. The night was a great night, the movie was good (yes much darker but good, and I reckon some of the casting could have been better) and the company was excellent, between Jam drops, Skittles and watching Emma and Chrystle devour ice cream, it was the most fun I have had at the cinemas in a while.

The discussion about the supposed Emo Invasion of the Sunshine Plaza was also interesting. (hehehe)

Have a lot of birthdays coming up that I have to look for gifts for, I also caught up with Pat last night on MSN, and am preparing for Ruben’s LAN. Have you ever tried chewing or sucking on icecubes with cold feet in a hot shower, the sensation is weird yet amazing ?

The question for today is What is the weirdest thing / usage of Cheezels you have ever witnessed ?