The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Why Linear Algebra is the best area of maths to see in the cinemas ?, B1A = B2A, Lemon pudding and my hair is back to its braided self.

Posted on April 22, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

To start off with,

You have seen Snakes on a Plane and all the other parodies across the Internet / Interwebs. You love Snakes on a Plane for two reasons.

1. Samuel L. Jackson

2.“Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!”

Well I was recently sitting in my Linear algebra lecture, scrawling notes down , when it occured to me, that The only thing better than Snakes on a Plane is Motherfucking snakes on this Motherfucking plane! and the only thing better than that (being the enthusiastic Maths student I am) are Vectors on a Plane or Isomorphic Vectors on a Isomorphic Plane.

I wonder if we can get Samuel L Jackson (or even better Jesse Ernest Wilkins, Jr
see (http://magazine.uchicago.edu/9708/Images/AAWilkins.gif)

), to star in a more Maths educational film Vectors on a Plane, or maybe I will just have to make another Flash or MNG animation / parody / tribute (The world needs better MNG animators and animation support). And can you imagine come exam time the number of Linear Algebra Students that will say Enough is enough! I have had it with these isomorphic vectors on this isomorphic plane!” .

Also we were proving that B1A commuted to B2A, which I immediately interpreted as B1 being B1 the Banana and B2 being B2 the Banana and A as being their thought matrix. As it commuted successfully (so we proved on the board) B1 and B2 were thinking the same thing. (Are you thinking what I am thinking B2 ?) For more maths humour see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke and

suicidal integration

batman integral

Also my I made lemon sponge pudding nice, and it was quite tasty, I still prefer butterscotch but you take what you can get and my hair is all plaited / braided up properly now.

The question today is once an IN joke is common knowledge, is it still an IN joke or does it become an OUT joke ? Does this idea apply to things other than jokes ? If you have any funny in jokes I would love to hear / read them ….

Chill out or Stay Warm

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Supernova, Umbrello, Anope and chapped lips and other things

Posted on April 15, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

I went to Supernova this weekend, it was awesome but somethings were a bit of a let down.

<RANT>
Disappointment 1
KA-LAN Attendance was so low…., I was only registered member and biggest UT2004 game we had, had 4 human players. On the upside however I did meet two really cool people :).

Disappointment 2
I didn’t get to play / duel (not in tournament, just normal game) Yugioh with anyone, instead getting abused and heckled by 2 collectors that wanted my Gold Top Don Zalous . (Anyone heard the term NFS …..)

Disappointment 3
Most of the stuff I wanted to buy was either to expensive in comparsion to its actual value to me or not avaliable for purchase.

Disappointment 4.
DDR brang back memories of LCA2007, (Thanks mark_alec) and $3 for a bottle of water is a rip off and Tales of Earthsea premier which I really wanted to see was sold out… 🙁

However Supernova wasn’t all bad

Leet Thing 1.
Meet two really cool people from KA-LAN.

Leet Thing 2.
Acquired lots of free stuff and got to watch 300 and Blackadder 🙂

Leet Thing 3.
Got to hang out with Gatl for almost 2 days … (Thanks Gatl, I hope you enjoyed your uni stuff evasion and all your shopping)

Leet Thing 4.
Hellsing Ultimate 2. This was a one my first few exposures to Anime and I enjoyed it greatly :).

Leet Thing 5.
Got two possible job offerings and got myself a blueberry cheesecake in freezer at home. Yum 🙂

</RANT>

Other notes about Supernova include , I got to preview night 9 hours early , then went into city and didn’t end up returning to preview night, instead spending the day studying / working (half heartedly) and configuring Anope (IRC Services bots) on Olympus and helping Dorian Gray get a new sub domain for phpbb3 testing and stuff.

I have chapped lips from the weather and lots of shampoo,soap etc (I don’t eat chocolate, and received an organic hair and bodycare pack instead (And it is all from the only range I would buy (but the shops won’t sell me), w00t :))

I also did some work on 008 (MAD = UML project), and while I don’t like UML, Umbrello makes the diagrams childsplay. I greatly thank the KDE Team for making my life easier once again :). (Dia is also good, I should probably rewrite / update my ORM set for Dia…, mmmm, maybe after I get Netrek Cow and Quadra 1.2.0 to compile cleanly…)

I have get back to work on the 4 group assessments I have to complete. (I am so closed to finishing my Linear Algebra one it isn’t funny, oh well maybe it is ). I also have to watch more Anime and read more Manga (Gatl and Supernova demonstrated how in the shallow end I was…)

I am still also looking for part time work and part time fun…
I am going to start chatting and studying before I have to catch the late bus to cheesecake (I mean home) :).

Hope you enjoyed your Easter Break as much as I did,

The Question today is
Vampires or Werewolves which would eat more ice cream and sandwiches and you have to state a reason why …. ?

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

It’s a fine fine line, out in the danger zone, Oh noes REMBO ate all teh Greenroom boxes except everest and olympus…

Posted on April 6, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

I was in a MAB101 lecture at the moment, studying F and T distributions …, but that is over now and I have Easter Break. COUGH!!! Easter break should be called Easter break from classes, because that is all it is a break from classes. (Easter by itself is special for another few reasons… (Jesus sacrificing himself, Other spiritual new life festivals and celebrations etc )).

I have at least 3 group projects todo and lots more study todo (ITB006, ITB008, MAB101 Worksheets etc). I also lots of catching up to do on chatting to people, blogging, publishing and finalising ideas and stuff I have created etc etc.
To keep a long story short… I am quite busy, but not busy enough to care or spend / waste time with good company.

I missed my 006 lecture last night due to a family commitment (Alistair Hulett concert) , which involved a BUS traffic jam and having to walk from Adelaide St to Brunswick St with my little brother, but we made with 5 minutes till the calzones were ready.

The atmosphere of the restaurant was quite nice, as were the kalamata olives, (the pips just slid out of the olive, and there was no strong brine aftertase.) The waiter was friendly and funny and the calzones weren’t bad (not as good as the Italian ones, but not bad at all). Real Italian calzone, pizza and pasta ruins most calzone, pizza and pasta made anywhere else or commercially unless it is made by an Italian.

The concert was awesome. Alistair Hullet mainly focused on the Australian and Scottish labour and union strike. He was accompanied by Dave Swarbrick on violin / fiddle , whose mastery of the instrument was tremendous, and had by foot which was keeping in time, sore from matching his 16/16 time with the occasional 32 in for good measure.

None of Alistair’s songs from Backstreets of Paradise were played, however he was kind enough to give me a link to all his Youtube recordings . His new albums are Red Clydeside and Riches & Rags so if you like folk music or protest folk music relating to Australia and Scotland (protest folk is akin to Red Gum etc) then please visit his website http://www.alistairhulett.com/ and / or purchase his albums.

He should be at the National Folk Festival in Canberra by now, if your lucky enough to be attending that then you’re in for a treat.

In Greenroom news, Rembo has wrecked almost all of the machines by quick formatting them and not making the partitions bootable, or bad images with no usb support or a single ip address configured. We also resurrected everest on a different machine (to its original one) (so the Greenroom has a least one working machine) and procured a nice big black server we like to call Olympus (one higher then everest). ATM we are setting up useful stuff on Olympus and we already have IRC. #QUT server qutirc.no-ip.org and port 8000 I believe if you attend QUT and want to visit us.

Thanks for reading, the question is When and what was your last experience that you found it difficult to keep a straight face ?

Stay safe over Easter.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Spare Ribs, Webcam conversations and Wireless instability…

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

I was supposed to blog earlier, but have been overwhelmed in a gooey mixture of assessment, my little brother’s birthday celebrations, unstable internet and slow software compiles. I still need to go shopping …, maybe I can find some time this weekend for that.

I had pork spare ribs (yesterday) last night at the Norman Hotel. (whose registered trademark (R) was Mycity’s worst vegetarian restaurant, (Mycity is replacing the city I live in just so the stalkers have to work extra hard ;P)) . They were more pork ribs than the pork spare ribs and the flavouring was more like sambal oelek, than proper spare rib seasoning, they weren’t bad but the ones I had at a BBQ were both cheaper and better tasting.

I was actually supposed to cook last night but had the plans changed on me at the last minute., only to be thrown in another unexpected situation of waiting a long time for a bus, when I could have walked home quicker. That said the internet at SLQ yesterday afternoon was quite unusually stable despite a long start up time, and the fact that it used neither baselayout (gentoo’s net scripts) nor knetworkmanager amazed me.

I just reloaded the kernel module and issued ifconfig eth1 up which is interestingly a subsection of the activities from last week’s 006 practical session. If I learnt anything from last week it would be that lectures are actually worth going despite how boring or irrelevant they may be. Anyhow I spent the rest of my day off yesterday typing / transcribing linear algebra notes from the lecture. Hooray we finally made it to eigenvalues and vectors, I thought the day would never come.

I also watched an awesome German movie”Vaya con Dios” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295001/) about three Cantorian monks and their journey from Germany to Italy, it was an interesting romantic comedy, much better than Love Actually or When Harry Met Sally etc. Daniel Bruhl did a wonderful job of playing Arbo (the young monk that had lived in a monastery his entire life, that falls in love with a journalist.) But that is kind of to be expected as Daniel Bruhl was in Joyeux Noel (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/) which is one of the best movies ever.

In short I recommend you watch Vaya con Dios as it displays numerous truths about the paths to God, Sin & the Church and the power of true love, not to mention Tassilo’s 3 jokes :). Prior to my day off I also had the luxury of meeting Redhatter in person and I must say it was a pleasant experience.

Cheater’s negativity is rely irritating me, it is like he has and AOE (area of effect) radius that negatively makes good things bad. I also accidently overwrote my linear algebra typed up notes (all 30 pages of matrics, formulae , worked examples and proofs). I tried to use Photorec and test disk to recover my files but as it was overwritten and not deleted.

I am now happy , mainly due to Dallas and his mac Phonebooth application and the Arnotts french fries I just ate. I also registered for ITSA, so now I am a member and probably on of their only Linux advocates. I am still trying to fix and optimise numerous packages for compilation, including creating the Netrek Vanilla Server and Cow client ebuilds.

I am also busy with finalising MAB101 quiz , 312 quiz and the group projects for both subjects, not to mention 008 , 006 and 711.

I am going to make a start and accomplish some of the many things on my todolist in Makagiga.

Other news, my webcam now works in AMSN albeit still unstable and with some colouring issues :).

Message of this post : Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming ……

BTW I will uploading more photos and some of my poetry and lyrics later on.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Kill-9, Petri nets , Vi vs Emacs, The stupidity epidemic is at all time high, hope you got immunised as I only have a few shots left.

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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

Petri Nets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ninjas and Pirates are both resourceful in combat.

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

Ninjas and Pirates respectively both band together in groups.

Ninjas and Pirates both prefer stealth and surprising their opponents.

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

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

Ninja and Pirates both practice guerrilla warfare.

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

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

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

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

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

Ninjas and Pirates both like being free.

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

And numerous other similarities….

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

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

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

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

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

Best of luck saving your friends,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

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

Repairs , return to the grind, fun fun fun ….

Posted on March 9, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey Everyone,

I am finally settled in, in the city. Uni is back and I am working hard and having fun, Laptop screen isn’t fixed, but HDD is upgraded to 100gb and battery is already fixed. I also now know how Brisbane transport system works. Speaking of systems reminds me of my new subjects MAD (008, Modeling Analysis and Design, information systems ) and Linear Algebra (MAB312, linear systems.)

It is good to see that the Greenroom hasn’t changed much. Still gamers, still same amount of 2 years hanging around (possibly a few more), although we are missing Adios, Everest and CS 1.6. I misplaced my gaming cd case,if anyone finds a red and black cd case full of linux games, please return to me. I really like MAB312, the matrix tricks Ian Turner showed us in the second lecture were so awesome. (spliting big matrices into small matrices and doing operations etc)

Despite all my worries I know have Maple 9.5 (I haven’t upgraded to 11 yet) working on my Sabayon Linux (Gentoo derivative ) and Minitab 15.1 working in WINE for MAB101. It is amazing I go away from Cheater’s negative / critical thoughts and my wireless reception improves, my webcam errors disappear (with a small C hack as well) and my Beryl stability improves and my networking and WINE setups are as easy as pie.

Subject summary

MAB312 : Great and lots of fun
MAB101: So far it isn’t nothing new …, but I am glad that I have great group for group project and that Minitab works
ITB008: Alright, heavy workload but good project group despite deserter.
ITB006: This subject is pretty awesome, well at least the Linux pracs, as Dallas said on the way home, the lecturer would have gotten more attention from the late night crowd if he had focused on wireless network protocols instead of wired.
ITB711: So far I don’t enjoy this subject, 1. It is C#, 2. I find its principles on Programming by Contract superfluous, just as you would find 3 seatbelts for one seat superfluous. 3. Because of the standard of communication by the teaching staff (I have nothing against different backgrounds, races etc or weird accents, but making basic grammar errors while teaching material that is already obfuscated by its nature, does make it tedious and more difficult ) Hopefully I will eventually like this subject, when I get to write some useful code.

In order to get Minitab to work I have to switch some of its DLLs with the ones provided by Klaspery (or something like that) Antivirus and get Maple working was just old export hack :). sed ftw 🙂

Other projects I have stumbled upon include Ruben’s multicast chat client, that doesn’t work cross platform yet, Meritorious (I will provide the url for this cool game when I find it again), PXE & pxelinux and many others.

I have also been asking questions religion-wise / belief wise but haven’t moved much further yet. Note to people if you want to contact me do so, if I don’t want to be contacted due to being in class or lecture I will say so. Note to people that abused be in the greenroom: you just got caught by the fish. Note to people that didn’t get any of the other notes : Hi how are you people ?

I want my copy of UT2004 and Condition Zero back. I have been singing on the way to Uni, at the moment is the same random free thought flow as normal, but if I find anything worth remembering I will publish it. BTW I also upgraded to WP 2.1.2 and I have my todo list in Makagiga, which contains lots of different things to blog about and upload.

Explanation of server downtime: It got phising, then it went AWOL, but it is all better now. (/me points to bandaid and bo bos). Also Chendo has given the Xbox AV cable that he bought to QUT FIT people, so the first years can get new TV, even though he didn’t steal the old one…., This is kind of generosity and kindness the first years should be thankful for.

If this is short, well it is because more will come and if not then Oops

Have fun and keep living

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

PS: Question is What question would you like to ask me ?

PPS: I finally to stop caring / responding when people insult me or Linux, I have been playing victim since grade 1 for the fun of it, but the same regurgitated crap is getting boring.

Migration to the City, Waiting for Sabayon’s communication to clear, Hey looks its Gatl :)

Posted on February 18, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

Today is my first day living in the city, and it seems to be absolutely great so far. I am currently waiting for my laptop to return from warranty repairs.

Back at Uni I am, a week early, planning and organising numerous tasks and exploring my new surroundings. I got a new bed and its so comfortable, and my new room is so cosy :).

I went and bought my IT text books for my subjects this semester and I managed to get them second hand. (Yay!!) But the price still made me grimace. I only need to get the Maths textbooks now and some more pens and pacers and I am set :).

There was a big Sabayon Linux split up, with cvill64 and Squarebottle resigning due to development issues and expectations not me, and blackmail accusations and other harsh words.

I am remaining interested in contributing to Sabayon Linux, but have noticed (with the assistance and kind words of wolfden), that trying to help and implement my passion into Sabayon Linux ATM, isn’t currently wanted by lxnay (lead developer), so I will sit and wait on the sidelines till I am I wanted.

I also got new batteries for my speaker pillow (cushiony musicy goodness), and I bumped in to Gatl (Celia) at the secondhand guild bookshop. I then went to return my books home and get the ones I was loaning to Gatl.

Also got to instant message Cheater & Bo & Sabrina, I need to update my userbar, to patch / hack my fortune script, and do more interesting things to blog about, besides helping those Bosnian business first years.

Finally concluding this entry is me reminiscing back to watching Theatrebiz and remember BNW, Oh brave new world, with such people / things in it ?

The question today is If you were stuck on an Island kind of like the terribly predictable Lost TV Show, how would you react ?

Have fun & chill

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

I am 18, My Birthday Party, Christmas, The Party of the Futurrrr MegaPost

Posted on February 6, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

Sorry that this post is so late, but I didn’t get the photos back and uploaded till after LCA2007 (See the following post for more on that).

I am now official 18 (well 18 and 1 month and a bit), I can now legally choose to abstain from certain benefits of being 18. One such benefit that I won’t obstain from is the one which allows me to transact in online commerce. Paypal, Ebay, etc here I come :P.

My birthday party was hosted at The Sofitel on the eve of my birthday. The preparty (Organised by my mother) was fun , and I hoped I mingled enough. Thank to all the people that attended the preparty, your company was wonderful. Photos are in my gallery which is at the same address as this blog, but replacing /blog/ with /gallery2/ (here) .

The Sofitel did a great job, the food was great, the cake was awesome (see photos), the room was great, etc. Other great people included Derek Matthews (our MC and game moderator for the evening), the guests that showed up, (Thank all you all so much, for making it a memorable experience), the guests that didn’t and RSVPed (you missed a fun night) the waiters and event manager and the Sofitel organiser / correspondent, the pastry chef, anyone else who I forgot to mention.

Highlights of my 18th

Presents (I did not expect any presents only guest presence but I got quite a few, so thank you all very much
The IceBreaker (The background info that was only for Derek’s eyes, but he read it out to everyone, whilst censoring on ocassion)
The conversation (Lots of friends talking at the same table, gave lots of varied conversation, including hypothetical conversation about naming my future partner and kids)
Mafia , this was awesome despite Derek’s occasional mistake, People caught on fast, features of this included, Crazy intelligent, rambling suicidal innocent townies played by Ruben and I , The sneakiness of the Mafia, The number of people killed by Mafia, saved by Archangel only to be killed by Assasin, The crazyiness of the voting
Mao, it was fun, Andrew & Megan knew different rules to me and I got caught out twice 🙂
The speechs of my father and me 🙂
The Cake

To all the people that did not come and were invited, regardless of RSVP, I would like to eventually catch up with you all and this will be easier due to my relocation to Brisbane this year.

Christmas

Christmas was grand and traditional, I shared it with some dear family friends on the Gold Coast.
The German tradition (of the presents on the 24th night) and the perform something for Christmas or no presents, and other traditions were wonderful. I sung Favourite things from the “Sound of Music”. There were bonbons and carols, and great food…..

Then slept till 25th and had Christmas brunch with the same friends, then went to family gathering in the afternoon.

The Party of the Futurrrr

The Party of the Futurrrrrr, was the New Years party I attended with Dallas and his friends, all aspects of this including the lack of sleep beforehand (installing Gentoo for Dallas all night :)), the drive to Brisbane, meeting Dallas’s friends who had a Wii, an awesome flash comic series on Newgrounds and cool future costumes. Think Robot and Buzz Lightyear of the Futurrr.

We had fun on the way down to the party which was out past Logan, it is a cross between a treasure hunt and a Super Mario platform game in a roundabout level. We got there eventually , and I met some more nice people and spent New Years playing Blank White Cards (Think Mao + Charades but simpler and crazier) , watching drinking games, singing and listening to folk and other types of music in the early hours of the morning, talking and a little bit of sleeping.

Only to arise to pancakes and smiles and the urgent rush of Dallas needing to get back to his office for Work. (being on call is fun :P). But all in all it was a great new years with great people.

Sorry if this post is too long or too short or too delayed etc, I will probably be updating it or elaborating if I need to.

Best of Luck and Have fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

PS: BTW how were your Christmases and New Years ?

Also BTW, I didn’t finalise this post till after LCA so even though it all happened between 23 Dec 2006 and 5 of Jan 2007, the date on this post is kind of wrong

Hiho, Hiho it is off to LCA I go, well almost, hey I made it :)

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Hi, (Server is UP Now)
The Birthday, Christmas and New Years post is still in draft form (as I am waiting for photos to be developed, so I can scan and upload). All the while I have been shopping yesterday and preparing for LCA 2007 (lca2007.linux.org.au) which is a much slower process than I expected, I suppose it would be a less slower process if I focused more on getting ready than on helping people in #Sabayon on OFTC.net.

I actually managed to finish packing and went to the Upfront Club to listen to Cloudstreet, albeit an hour late. They were awesome, they played the “The Green Man” and their “The Van Song” had me in stitches. Out on the highway :).

Finally I went to bed, only to wake up at 3am , as I couldn’t sleep, after waiting for a few hours, we went down the range to goto the airport, and I having taken the laid back approach, realised I had forgotten my suit. So we went back up the mountain and I rushed down to get my suit and we went back down again, only for me to realise that I had forgotten my aeroplane tickets, so we had to go back up, and we were now about an hour late. (as my dad had also forgotten his sunglasses, but only 10 metres from our driveway)

This caused a change reaction which resulted in me just missing my flight and having to get the next one, which was a pain in the rear given the circumstances, the lack of communication really stressed me and my family out. I finally got on the plane and all was well, I spent the journey listening to music and talking to person in the same set of three seats as me.

Upon landing I promptly got my bags (not wanting to have any more airport chaos), and waited for the 400 bus to bring me to LCA. It came eventually and I got on , and forgot to take my ticket after paying for it (I got it eventually), on the bus ride I talked to Wen (Who is /was also going / at LCA) and an old Sydney local that talked about the past and future.

We got off at the right stop, and as we were crossing the road, both my parents called me, I ignored the phone and rushed to the kerb in a life preservation technique. I finally got to International House, settled in and meet some people that invited me to lunch. We had Indonesian for lunch (So many memories). I am not going to recount everything else in detail else you will be bored off your faces.

Highlights of LCA So FAR

Bumping into people and chatting and bumping to them again

Jdub (Jeff Waugh)’s Welcome and Chris Blizzard’s keynote (I reckon all the keynotes will be awesome)

Jerub’s Flickr

Qtopia Greenphone Presentation

Getting to catch up with Quozl (James Cameron) and Jerub (Stephen Thorne) and their partners

Jdub’s Wii demo substitute for a Gnome.conf talk

Lack of wireless at International House causing me to sit on a table (underneath pavillon) in order to get wireless and power

Meeting Rusty Russell Face to Face and listening to his Wesnoth talk.

The Creation & Bugfixing (I need superglue, as someone other than me damaged a Gentoo chair) & Beautification (I need purple cushions) for the Gentoo Chairs.

Fellow Gentoo users at LCA, I need either a Koorora x86_64 install or a Sabayon 3.26 livedvd to upgrade my Gentoo (curse GCC4.1.1)

Have fun & Happy Hacking

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Unexpected disappointments & delays, Parties and planning and judgment day has arrived….

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Benjamin Southall

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Starting from scratch…… (WordPress / Firefox / Vector Calculus/ Goodness else knows ate my last two attempts at this post )
This post is later then it should have been sorry for the delay and I still have the mega Christmas, Birthday and New Years one to write, and it feels so weird to type it all down.

Last week I went to city with my dad to drop off my laptop to warranty repair guys and to inspect and apartment in Brisbane. After dropping off my ASUS A6KM (It has screen blemishes from pressure since I bought it (new retail I might add)), we were driving back to city and I was having one of my many occasional WTF, this going to be another deja vu day realisations.

The day continued onwards,

First of all I knew the lead computer repair guy, name and face from one of my dreams / premonitions, then we saw with blue ute, with the n00b driver but it had an Apple (company, copyright Apple) Logo sticker on it. We continued the drive to Brisbane, to inspect this nice and cheap 3 bedroom apartment. (This post and the other following it have taken ages to process are might be sligthly stale but still interesting read at your own risk, you might enjoy it)

We arrived with around 15 minutes to spare, so we went into West End, so Dad could bank the money I reimbursed him for linux.conf.au stuff, we then went back to the apartment building and waited around till the real estate showed up.

It was both fun and funny watching the other interested people show up, wondering why they wanted to see the property and who they were and what stage of their life they were at. There was a little girl and her mother, they were one of the earliest people waiting and the little girl was so cute trying to open the locked door to the apartment building.

More waiting and laughing and enjoying the breeze, looking at my watch and a few mutters about the tardiness of realtor later, She finally showed up 15 minutes late to a frustrated crowd of twenty strong. Then she tried to get in the locked door, just like the little girl, except she had a key which didn’t end up working.

In the end we were kindly let in my a resident of the apartment, and I was one of the few that bothered to say thank you (where are the manners of society these days). One of the elevators was broken and with such a large crowd, I of course got to check out the stairs of the apartment building.

Let me reinforce to all QUT UNI students, we have the most Leet stairs in Brisbane that I have seen, the stairs at these apartment made even the engineering building’s stairs reminiscent of the Hilton Hotel.

Anyhow, I beat most of the people in lift up there and the mob of us, waited will the young female realtor, knocked on the door, she knocked twice quickly and the proceeded to open the door and walk through, only to reveal a white cat, the entrance to an apartment that looker lived in, and a half naked old lady that was frightened near death, who hadn’t heard head or tail of the inspection. (which is unusual her being the tenant and all).

The rest of us, backed away while the realtor, closer the door with her inside and talked to the tenant. About 5 minutes of waiting in the Level 3 hallway, the realtor can out and here face spoke before her mouth and then she told us, the tenant wouldn’t let us in and we would have to reschedule tomorrow morning at 10 am.

The now disappointed, angry, gibbed mob of people quickly vacated the building after a few people snatching application forms (without seeing the property) from our young realtor. Tommorow morning didn’t suit my Dad, so we then went straight to the real estate office and talked to them in order to accommodate something.

After another 15 to 20 minutes we stepped out of the real estate office, everything arranged (Dad was going to the Thursday inspection (apparently you can’t apply without inspection) instead.) We then had gelatis, which were more refreshing as they took our mind of the scared old lady and real estate agentry which was an absolute Joke.

We then went home. (UPDATE: Our application for the unit got rejected, it went to someone else, that probably offered to pain more than the set price. Pity it was a really good unit)

The planning for my 18th is 98% complete, with Guest list, name tags, most rsvps, menu, contract, game details (Mafia and MAO FTW) sorted.

Also in this time period, for a lot of people I know that are year younger than me, they are finding out their OPs, which will only slightly effect their futures. Most of them have OP fever. You will all do just fine :).

I would write more, but this post is already out of date and taken too long to write.

This post’s question is Can the future be accurately approximated using a number or a mathematical system or a logic system or a scientific system etc ?

Best of luck and Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂