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Shakespearean spam, idling away, Deploy landmines, LanPwnage & Lost directions, Birthday planning deadline met.

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

I haven’t blogged for a while despite the fact I should have, but lack of everyone else updating has rubbed off on me if only a little bit. I am loving all the comment spam I have to delete, must recently a semi Shakespearean false definition to a dead link.

I have been slowly upgrading my Gentoo and preparing for / backing up the under warranty repairs. Also have been playing ET occasionally on Internode servers (I just discovered why my guns kept getting jammed. Low mouse sensitivity on touchpad.)

I also went to a small but LEET lan courtesy of Ruben, and after Hell and high water in order to get there. (Taxi driver corrects my correct spelling of street name and can’t find it in Referdex) . I get dropped off somewhere in Ruben’s suburb , and then find a phone book and ask Ruben for directions. (This proves two things, one my lack of humanity / abnormality and two that women are incorrect to stereotype men as not being able to ask for directions.)

I finally got there and had I wonderful time, lanning and gaming and chatting. Although Cameron and Ruben’s ET suicidal lets flamethrower all our teammates approach wasn’t well received. Savage is an awesome game (RTS & FPS in one) and Tremulous isn’t bad either.

I am currently finalising my birthday planning and organisation, before tomorrow’s deadline. I have also been told that my userbar qualifys as short movie.

I might post more if I have the time, but now it is back to planning and organisation.

Hope you are enjoying your break as much as I am
Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Beryl + Nvidia = drool *pretty 3d graphics*, My Userbar beta, Curtis Bayne is online

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

This is my attempt at a short post. I have been configuring and updating my Gentoo for a LAN party that is happening on Thursday and for the warranty repairs that are happening to my laptop on Friday. In this process I have installed and configured Beryl, and wow is it beautiful. Unlike everyone else I am not going to post screenshots or videos. If you want to see it you will have to visit my laptop or get a copy on an XGL Linux LiveCD, like Koroora or Sabayon (3.2 is out yay!).

UPDATE: Alt f2 run dialog shortcut works with aquamarine :).

I have been on IRC provided some form of tech support for a few ocasional open source projects, while job seeking, party planning, and computer configuring. I have managed to make an animated Userbar for myself (I compiled all the images and used gimp’s animation abilities ). See below. (BTW my gallery and MYSQL are boxing at the moment, so until I hear from Cheater regarding phpmyadmin, images in my previous posts may not show up, if anything it will be a count of those who actually read and or care about my blog)

My userbar beta :)

In other news, Pokemon Emerald is easy and boring and Curtis Bayne’s blog is back online, I also got pestered by some random on IRC regarding Tesla’s perpetual energy inventions and some facts regarding maths, physics, chemistry and quantum. I am worried for his mental stability and approach, and surprised that I learned nothing from what he told me that I wasn’t aware of already.

Another weird thing to note we had different JW’s show up at our house this week. (Kind of made me miss the usual ones, as these ones were pushy and interested in the construction of the rammed earth walls than any theological discussion, oh well)
This blog’s query is Do you believe we don’t exist ? If so / If not why ? What are the requirements of existence ? or of the proof of existence ?

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Freedom, Irony, Coincendence, Love

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

All my five exams are over (lost two lives on the maths levels but gained two on the IT subjects) and till next February I am temporarily free. (No more University till February)
Irony seems to like to throw itself on me, with coincidences and random events occurring all around me lately.

From bumping into people, hearing love songs after witnessing fist fights, dealing with friends and acquaintances in similar scenarios, cliched pop cultures references leading towards mockery of anything sacred, people striving for difference that in doing so they become the same.

However, that doesn’t mean all fun and games till then. I have already compiled a to do list of tasks, jobs and other fun stuff to keep myself from becoming a lazy pathetic holidaying slob.

I will be attempting to be more active in the OSS (Open source Software) development section of my life as I now have the time to do so, I am also looking for part-time / casual IT work for over the break. I made a resume Website for 002, that I might polish and upload.

List of Random Recent Events

Silence at the Beach despite the lack of lack of people and sun burnt legs.
Mention in speech at get together.
Excessive laughter and inspiration for parodies and comedy in online conversation.
Free but not Free, ultimate Irony
Updates and Bugs, Where is Mortein ?
Broken electronics and dirty plates
An actor, a chair, five men, five loves
To elaborate (at least on the last point)

I had the pleasure of being in the audience of not only the wonderful comedy of Cheater and LMM, but also in the audience for a play called the Dressing Chair, hosted at the Upfront Club. The characterisation was written, directed and acted to perfection. I recommend it to anyone looking for an excuse to avoid something else they don’t want to do.

BTW, The Upfront Club has a mean rump steak…, even if their fish of the day is No Fish. (Quoting Curtis whose blog seems to be indefinitely down Nice Fish , No Fish)

In other news, this post has taken the longest to write, due to lack of inspiration and eloquence. Knetworkmanager is finally working and my Gentoo configuration and updates are slowly and smoothly being completed. Quadra (1.20) works with CPU usuage bug, and I just need to make or update the ebuild.

18th Birthday party is edging closer. Thanks to all those that bothered to RSVP.

Slashdot is almost metamorphosing into songmeanings.net and Webcomics keep my smiling even when my smile is so translucent you could see through it.

Best of luck,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Time oh time yes I need more Time, Online Life, Family, Culture and Ethics

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hello everyone,

A number of changes will be happening to the write style of my blog. It will be come more weird and unusual, less clear and narrative and filled with more whimsical crazy things that I do or come across. Blog hasn’t been updated in a while, unfortunately. This is because of switching servers, downtime and lack of clarity and inspiration. (I wanted to update so much during the downtime but couldn’t.)

UNI

University is going great, onto the second semester exams now. Already completed OOP (Object Orientated Programming) exam, just have to study for the rest of them. (mainly mathematics). Also I have being stealing unis (uniforms) as a covert operativke in Enemy Territory on Internode and GameArena servers, however I make a much better medic or engineer.

Jobsearch

I am currently looking for part time or full time employment over the summer break, somewhere in the IT industry. I would prefer Linux or System Admin work that I can do remotely, but wouldn’t mind any programming or web development offers either. I also applying for 2 jobs. (SEEK finally became useful.) I made a resume site for 002, I might upload it after I have tidied it up.

Celebrations

I have recently attended a 50th Wedding Anniversary and 77th birthday. Both kept me busy but where quiet enjoyable. I got to watch the parents of one of my life’s biggest role models undergo and celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, to try on my new suit (no pictures yet).

I also got to attend a family get together for my grandmother’s birthday. While I did spend expansive amounts of time, appending more pictures to the powerpoint presentation (2nd time I felt kind of like a utility belt, first was at an 18th where I was only useful due to my torch and swiss army knife).I have also been organising my 18th Birthday. Invitations have been sent out, most people have RSVPed.

The rest can get a move on. Reasons to attend include: it will be fun or it sounds like fun according to most people who can’t make it or are attending, you get to see and possibly laugh at me in my new suit, you get to create a wonderful memory etc.

Online Life, Family, Culture and Ethics

Life should not be split up in RL (real life) on OLL (online life), they should have a super and sub set relationship. I have been back on LMM(Linux Movie Mania) and realised how much of a family it is. I encourage Wine to get WinMX working with WINE again, so my experience can be better.

In numerous online environments whether they be a chatroom or IRC channel, a forum , a gameserver or a MMORPG there are rules and ethical requirements of the people invovled, these environments foster online or net culture which helps foster and develop the online communities that make OLL and RL more enjoyable.

That is right n00bs, ET servers have ethics, Forums have ethics, Runescape has ethics, IRC has ethics. I used to play Runescape, I played since classic when the ethics and manners were still in common usage and the n00b count wasn’t devastating Runescape, like Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Runescape is has been culturally raped by n00bs and isn’t worth playing, between the member and free player bickering, the spammers, the scammers and the lazy and rude individuals that live for the flame it has becoming a MMORPG hell.

To GNAA and other IRC Trolls go back to UseNet and flame there, you are a waste of space on the internet. I also came across grouphug.us and read the confessions of offline or real life people some of which where n00bs, it either sickened me or made me laugh.

My message to all n00bs is Get some manners ! Get some culture ! Get some respect ! Stop being so expletive selfish! Get some intelligence ! and if you can’t do that then at least have the decency to stay away from those who can. (permanently through suicide would be nice. 😉 ) In life if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.
To most of the people on Grouphug.us get some counseling, it isn’t guaranteed to fix your situations, but it definitely won’t damage them. Failing that get some chicken soup.

BassHunter

I want to personally congratulate BassHunter of his successful integration of Net culture into music. Thank you for Boten Anna and the Dota Song. As a tribute to your efforts and due to the fact I had your song stuck in my head, here is the QUT version that I came up with.

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
I hear you man!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
I feel you man!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
We got assignments todo and lectures to gota(goto)
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
Our net is very slow, we need to buy more quota

Lets get it on!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
We got assignments todo and lectures to gota(goto)
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
C# and ASP.net irritate even the leetest coder

Have one on the house!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
I hear you man!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
I feel you man!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
That’s more like it
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
Excellent choice.

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
We got assignments todo and lectures to gota(goto)
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
Our net is very slow, we need to buy more quota

Lets get it on!

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
We got assignments todo and lectures to gota(goto)
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
C# and ASP.net irritate even the leetest coder

“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
We got assignments todo and lectures to gota(goto)
“We’re sitting in the Greenroom, sick of playing DotA.
Our net is very slow, we need to buy more quota

Don’t worry be happy!

I will have the recording done sometime soon and comments regarding the lyrics are welcome.

Timing and Everyone has gone to war
On the subject of music, Nerina Pallot has a great song Everyone has gone to war. The music video is available here . The timing and relevance for this song is impeccable . Also while I am Youtube linking the creator of Foamy has some pretty interesting suggestions to solve some of humanity’s problems, his solutions and opinions while judgmental, ruthless and other not positive are despite this logically sound. (Will contain swearing)
See http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZnnLdJDziQg

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NzJBXgc2skM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qoS39F9r0ZE

Best of luck and have fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Loss of Power, Portfolios & Projects, Ubergeek gangsta style that’s how I code, Celebrations and more

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

Headings this post. (You shouldn’t get so lost.)

Maths Assignment / Skills Portfolio / Project Madness

Back from One Week of poorly used holidays. (Got sick and lethargic) Still as busy as ever. I maintained to complete the majority of my 2 mathematics assignments on time :). First wave of assessment is over. Wave 2: Skills portfolios, Wave 3: Projects, Wave 4 (The Big Boss) Exams.
I will be coding almost continuosly over the weekend, if not the next 10 days in order to deal with the second wave of assessment that seems to be target locked to my being. Whilst I probably won’t get an amazing high score, the score I get should be at minimum above average. Wish me and the others that share a simlar fate luck :).

Forgotten Laptop Power Cable
This week I went to Uni on my days off (Tuesday as propogation of error, Wednesday in order to show parentals (thanks to Sabregypsy for that :)) the proposed venue for my 18th see below.) I should have achieved more but I did enjoy myself. Any how because I didn’t get my break and rest at home I was tired for today’s early start.

I caught my early train as I do on Thursday and Friday, and worked on my 003 project on my laptop. (36 minutes of battery left) I then walked and arrived at Uni and enjoyed an early dose of MAB220 (Numerical Analysis). I then went to my C# lecture and used the rest of my laptop’s battery. Meanwhile Cheater convinced to forgo my 3 hour statistics lecture in order to work on 003 (C#), I reluctantly accepted, amazed that Cheater was actually going to do work at Uni.

When We got to a computer room, I was shocked to realise that I had left my laptop power cord at home, so I had no laptop. I was able to access my assignment using my external HDD, but C# without Mono/ Monodevelop isn’t the same and so Cheater actually didn’t work. But I will keep trying. 😉

Then Cheater (Nick), Dorian (Ray) and Apple (me) went to the mall and went thirds in Super Variety bucket from KFC for lunch. The results were surprising to say the least. I ate more then I expected, with no ill effects (so much I elected to have no dinner tonight) and Ray and Nick complained about their typical KFC eating symptoms. Ray then suggested next time we get $20 worth of Macca’s fries, I politely refused.

Chaos Underlords and Defcon
Instead Cheater introduced me to Defcon. (A fast paced nuclear / war RTS) I did pretty well for my first few turns. 🙂 Later on Reuben introduced us to Chaos Underlords which is an awesome old TBS gangster city game. I really enjoy it. Gunther is hosting a DEFCON tournament in Green Room 12 noon with $10 dollar entry, winner takes all. (I won’t be entering, not going to waste $10 dollars).

White and Nerdy

Weird Al has a new Single named as above, check out the video here.

Jesus Camp

See Cheater’s link on my blogroll. This is scary.

18th Birthday

I have been planning my 18th birthday party for a while. I already have a guest list which is still getting updated. (Criteria is I that I have to believe you have had a significance on my life so far) I recently enquired regarding the venue and other stuff and am starting to finalise a few things rather slowly. I am very happy that currently the dates I am interested in are available.

Have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

A lot of servers underground, want to use them you got to go straight down with the sickness, recovery happens

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

Long time no post, because the web server hosting my site (courtesy of Nick Stallman) has had IBCD (Infected bash commands disease, long story short messed up glibc linking in all bash commands :)).

I also suffered an cold, sore throat, mucus, fever etc superbug which I have recovered from due to time, sleep and lots of garlic water (Yes it has another purpose besides warding off vamprical beings). I have lost my invitation to Ruben’s (Really, really nice guy / hacker (Combine him and Nick Stallman and Me with computers, sugar and caffiene (which I don’t have) and you have 3 elite hackers (the good kind (has all the embedded brackets pissed of the Scheme haters yet ?)) ready for fun)) LAN party, so I missed it, apparently it was on Monday.

Although I have probably made up for this with all the other gaming I have been playing. I resumed playing Runescape for some unknown reason, and despite enjoying myself, I observed the use of poisson processes in mmorpg combat systems (usually turn based) and a great example of population flooding and its consequences of reducing the entire population’s standards.

I am also hanging around with #ddh crew on irc, I got bot spammed and redirected and they seem nice enough :). I really need to focus on my assignments which looms like the creeping population flooding that I am so irritated with.

I don’t like it when the quality of something (anything, whether it be a folk festival, an online game, the nature of humanity) drops the lowest common denominator of the quantity of its population. I believe the humans as people have a responsibility to ensure they don’t screw it up too much for everyone else.

Call me an idealist, call me a dreamer (quoting John Lennon) but I am not the only one, the world can be a better place all humanity has to do is start polishing the positive traits of humanity and neglecting the negative ones, while this will be no means create a utopia, it will be a partial patch to the big rip / hole in the quality of life for humanity.

Anyhow Jullian Lennon (John’s son) captured an example of this in his song Saltwater and its video clip, it is a great clip with a great message and I recommend watching to anyone. Another good movie to watch if you want action, romance, drama, culture and tragedy is Dangerous Bangkok. It is about the life of a mute deaf assasin and I throughly enjoyed the depth of the plot, the imagery and the sublime completeness.

Whilst on the subject of recommendations I recommend the comic and literary genuis of Martin Pearson (hehehe lol :)). With the amore skit, the levictus song, the unofficial lord of the rings musical and serious songs about interesting issues, he can make you laugh, cry and clap.

I haven’t been without the influence of people and religon on the holidays, whilst not having to deal with people at Uni on the subject, I will always have the JWs (Jehovah’s Witnesses) to discuss things with and the occasional Christian acquaintance.

This post’s question is

If could give your new born god child (for those who don’t know the term, child that you would look after if something ever happened to their parents, (yes it is commonly used in religon, some don’t get all hot and bothered)) 3 recommendations or words of advice at any time in their life, that your still alive in, what would they be and why ?

Any how back to work, I hope 😉

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

BTW: Bootsplash works not perfectly but almost and kxdocker works a treat. =)

Apology for a hindsight overreaction, Pictoral representations of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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In Reply to Sarah K’s comment on a prior post:

(If you will ever read my blog again given your misconceptions of my nature): Please don’t call me Ben. I prefer Benjamin or Appleman1234 or Apple if you are lazy.

I vehemently hate Ben, I hate the human trait of laziness over respect, that it symbolises, etc.

As to distraction to education: You really couldn’t distract me from 005 as I have had prior exposure to the majority of the subject matter. I am very determined as you noticed.

The lost pen lid was irritating if and only if, the fact that I couldn’t find it and had to move all my existing books / bags / etc around in the process which generated more noise, which disrupted learning of the remaining people in the lectutre. (Well the ones that were not bored brain dead or asleep with open eyes)

AS for STFU: That was an entire different scenario, one fact in I have grown more tolerant of, even if the lecturer hasn’t. The ITB005 lectures aren’t made interesting, it not like the lecturers pull apart the hardware components in a computer for the relevant sections.

Also all the good / hard / fun stuff has been removed / watered down from the subject due to review. I can understand that your social group wants to use the time more efficiently by multi-tasking.

What I don’t get is what your group’s consensus on respect for lecturers is ? (Not that I can speak, I was taught critical literacy and intend to practice it, I usually ask questions for the benefit of the majority, (I am thinking it, others might be), However Since I have realised that people intend to injury me or burn me at stake for this, I might just not bother and keep my questions to myself.)

You seem to all have relative high levels of intelligence given that your social group is prone to verbal making my entire existence a living mockey.

Why is it then that you all don’t develop gestures, note passing, instant messaging between the two laptops or basic lip reading, etc as an alternative form of communication to the talking which you do. that isn’t exacly whispering.

You would still communicate just as effectively but would reduce the noise level by a few decibels, calm the lecturer, etc.

As for your last verse / paragraph , it is wonderful idealistic and poetic, two traits I relatively enjoy. I did search in earnest, but hindsight I wish the either my or my colleagues had caught the pen lid.

Thanks for your contribution

And I add my sincere apologies and condolences if any interpretation of anything I typed / blogged or anything I neglected to type / blog caused distress, upset, anger, insert other negative emotion here.

xkcd: An awesome Webcomic by Randall Munroe

I just discovered this and in combination with several lyrics including P!@TD and my own compositions, my mind has a sector in a linguistical buffer overload. If had a euphoric emotion it would be here.

If you were given a change to alter something after seeing its effect in hindsight, would you and why ?

Apple Pie tastes wonderful and it is good for you too.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Developing countries need a solid sustainable monolith structure, epileptic fit whilst doing the macarena and price of fame

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

I have had an interesting weekend. Monodevelop nows works to a T. (Including code generation and GTK# gui designer) 🙂 All I need now is for VS 2005 to be backwards comptiable and I would be cruising.

I am just starting to learn System.Windows.Forms development in C# in Monodevelop, so far my GUI application named guifun works.

I am going (was supposed on the weekend but got delayed and sidetracked) to write a C# application to do some basic linear algebra for MAB220 (Gaussian elimination, Matrix multiplication, Doolittle and Crout,etc) .

I went to a extended family member’s birthday, dressed in character (theme was Hollywood, I was Richard from the Beach), I got blasted by daughter of birthday celebrant, regarding my conversations with a mutual acquaintance.I then got that 5th wheel feeling, the feeling you get when you know you really don’t belong here / your out of place.

I also went and saw a matinée (Fame) that my sibling’s friend (Him and his older brother are music geniuses) was in the orchestra for. You know those musicals / plays where the actors / performers / front-end of operation doesn’t do justice to the script and backend, well it wasn’t one of those.

In fact it was the complete opposite if anything, the performers, the band did a great job but it left me with the feeling that the musical writers / directors / screenplayers/ other backend people didn’t do the front end of the musical justice.

Compliments to Kizedret / Kieran for introducing me to P!@TD (Panic! at the Disco), they instantly go on my “favourite bands” list. Their lyrics and music videos are clearly inspiring and ravishing complete in the surreal detail, that I like to think in.

Amarok pwns, with covers from amazon.com, lyrics and wikipedia artist information, and replaygain courtesy of kde-apps.org. I need to be bothered to configure kxdocker properly and organise skinning and gui themes.

Wikihow is an interesting idea, it will be fun to watch it grow. The price of the Greenphone came out on the day after anniverisary of USA’s stab itself (USA’s self stabbing), so that it can kill someone else event.It is 695 USD, which is an immediate painful stab for me, because I want it so badly and now I can’t afford 1500 dollars for a phone.(regardless of its leetness)

If someone did have a fit whilst a nightclub and you were their and witnessed it, what would you do ?

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

I kept my head above the midsemester floods and although I exchanged sleep with wet hair, I am alive

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Hey everyone,

Uni
Just finished really busy midsemster exam / assessment period. I didn’t do as well as I wanted in MAB220 (Numerical Analysis) exam, due to lack of study / practice and lack of time. I will make up for it in the final exam though. The ITB005 (Systems Arch. ) exam was easier and more fun.

The other assessment in assignment form has also kept me busy. I enjoy OO (OpenOffice) Math, aside from me bothering to learn Latex, it is the best solution for the insertion of mathematic syntax and symbols. I don’t enjoy Visual Studio, (Stupid irritating MS IDE), ITB003 (OOP Programming) lecturer said I would be able to the course entirely using Linux (or that anyone else would be able to use Linux, Mac, Win whatever) and yet they wanted assignment as Visual Studio solution.

I tried using a converter located at here .

I also spent lots of time completing ITB002 (IT Professional Studios) group assignment, which although we were a person or two short and Mirza and I were busy with our 4 other subjects, we managed to complete successfully, albeit cutting it closer than we had hoped.

Other stuff

I have also been doing so many other wonderful things recently which include:

  • Watching Nick Stallman renovate his home computing scenario. (Lots of nice hardware and a old laptop (P2 166mhz mx), lots of fun)
  • Watching Kieran Salsone nuture the development of Websinthe.org (Link is in blogroll) and Myleetjihad.com like a web gardener skilled in the knowledge of CSS and their power in creating a beautiful web garden and also skilled in erradication of the Bad Web Design bug and the pruning of the treacherous IE vine / crawler.
  • Dealing with my beliefs in the topics of God , Religon, Logic, Illogic, Magic, Evolution, etc
  • Found Dorian Gray’s (Alias of Raymond Marshall) Websites (which have had their domain names expired, thanks to Chris for pointing this out.)
  • Found Purple Dragon’s Blog (purpledragonblog.wordpress.com)
  • Officially improved my Smack talking skills @ Websinthe Forums. (I now have dangerous smacktalking mouth +12 as a secondary mouth / weapon)
  • Helping numerous people with lots of different things.
  • Started playing Quadra (quadra.sourceforge.net) again
  • Currently working on icons for Kuroo and Quadra
  • Perfecting my Gentoo install (installing software / fixing software / getting hardware support for stuff
  • Got rained on whilst trying to get to library to print MAB210 (Probability and Statistics) assignment
  • Postponing the writing of this post
  • Being avaliable @ Websinthe forums / MSN / Jabber and numerous IRC channels (mainly on freenode)
  • Wondering if God was a magical being
  • Having discussions on Religon / God / etc that I didn’t have time to have
  • Being me
  • Realising parts of me that I thought other people broke or screwed up, that still exist
  • Pining to release my creativity in the form of creating art, music,parodies, lyrics, this blog, fan fiction and poetry etc
  • Wishing I had anime / manga to read or watch
  • etc

My hair is growing pretty long now. It was supposed to be all braided / plaited up ages ago, but the braids / plaits fell out. I am going to need to get it replaited soon. On the holiday break I must still study, send my laptop to get repaired (Screen blotches) under warranty and have a LUG meeting.

Ohh, and Steve Irwin died . :(. Everyone seems to keep reminding me of this. It gets me thinking about life and how a freak accident can take life out from under someone just like the magicians (the performers not the real ones) take the table cloth off the table with damaging the table contents.

I also realised somethings regarding this and other stuff from watching the movie “The Beach”. With relevance to the above it examines how death is dealt with by people. In the death of people, some people just hear about the death and once the person is dead eventually forget about them. In the death of people , it is evident that those aware of the person and those who are affected by the person can’t just ignore the death of that person, in their minds that person will never be forgetten.Steve will definitely never be forgetten by Terri, Bindi and Bob as he has affected their lives immensely.

It is my hope that more people don’t forget about Steve and other people that have died, just because they are dead.

How is the relevant to “The Beach” you ask ? It might not be but it seemed to me. The movie demostrates the price of an exclusive Utopia. (to avoid mass people flooding messing it up / wrecking it) It also demonstrates the effect of death in this scenario.

*Plot spolier* Two people are attacked by shark. One dies instantly and is buried, the other is sick and doesn’t recover, the utopia nature of “The Beach” isn’t restored until the dead guy is buried and farewelled and the second guy is placed away from the camp and left to die (They can’t get help to him on the Island or their secret is given away) .

Quoting Richard (lead character played by Leonardo de Caprio) �get better or die. it�s the hanging around in between that really pisses people off.�
�it would be a lot easier to condemn our behavior if it hadn�t been so effective.�
�…out of sight really was out of mind. once he was gone, we felt a whole lot better.�
�it�s easy to turn your back.. but not always so easy to forget.�
�you can never forget what you�ve done. but we adapt. we move on.�

Near then end of the movie Sal (camp leader) gets told by drug farmers if she wants to stay she has to kill Richard, Richard is at first scared then realises the situation then knows and states to Sal “You can’t kill me now, before it was different , noone had to see, but now it is in front of everyone, everyone will remember and know the price of the secret / island (or something like that)” and sure enough she can’t shoot him.

*/Plot Spoiler*

The Beach is a great book. I enjoyed the movie (all though many other people hate it). But the theme of the cost of sacrifce in utopic societies (in true utopic societies there should be none or some depending on your interpretation of Utopia) is an interesting theme, it was good to have another source to contrast with Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984.

This blog post’s questions are “Is sacrifice required for Utopia, why / why not ? What is Utopia to you ? Does humanity deserve Utopia, why / why not ?”

Live your life

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Madness down the rabbit hole, come with me, how far does it go ?

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

I am have been very busy lately with numerous time consuming things. I have been spending way too much @ Websinthe Forums. My midsemester exams are coming up soon, and will have to study hard for them.

Subject Update:

ITB005: Going good, lectures aren’t boring despite the fact, I have prior exposure to most of the subject material. Linux labs are easy and fun. The only thing that is irritating were the people sitting next to us (Mirza, Chris S and I) in ITB005 lecture, between not STFU and losing pen lids, it was a PITA. I will have go through tutorial questions again though.

ITB002: Going great. Team agreement is submitted, despite the crappy web interface for submitting it. Our ITB002 is awesome. Consisting of Mirza (MATLAB / Computational Mathematics Wizard), Nikolai (Awesome photographer his site here) and myself, our team though small is dynamic, powerful and very cohesive.

ITB003: Going ok. ELP exercises finally work after my installation of 32bit Java (using overlay)(Sun release WS for 64 bit java, most people won’t need it yet but they will soon). I need to do some study and practice coding. Best news of all is the Monodevelop bug I was having is fixed in SVN and a new MD release is due out within the week. I will become a C HASH / Mono wizard yet.

MAB210: Going good. I really need to catch up on the worksheets. The group activity with Markov chains was easy and great fun. I still do get the assignment done, but given its topic should have little trouble. w00t 4 Marhov Chains

MAB220: Going ok, I need to catch up on the worksheets and lecture I missed. Not to mention the assignment I need complete. It should be easier this time as I now have Maple 9.5 installed and working on my laptop. This subject is awesome.

More Stuff

It seems that I will always come across people who challenge me and my beliefs. Whilst talking / discussing / debating with these people is fun and interesting it is also very time consuming and I have decided whilst not cutting back on it, instead to keep my eyes aware of the time and to ensure that I waste as little as possible. Time doesn’t enjoy being wasted.

It also seems that I am earning my keep from my wonderful host Nick Stallman, by acting as an a form of early problem detection because when my site has a problem , it is highly likely that Nick’s free PHPNuke hosting site (eznuke.com) is suffering the same or a similar problem.

Also people seem to like to ignore illogic and emotion, even when by doing some they display emotion with their logic and they unknownly use illogic. Please learn to accept that illogic is as plausible as logic. Both are similar things with different basses. Truth -> Logic -> Reasoning. Faith -> Illogic -> Chaos (Possibly not sure yet)

If you can accept and tolerate this, then please take the purple and green pill (all natural, not a drug), slide down the rabbit hole and join me, if you can’t then pack up and go home. 🙂 You won’t know what your missing out on.

Redirection from the metaphor’s challenge

BTW I need more readers, so if you my readers know of people that would not mind reading about my thoughts and my life please encourage them to. I am not that scary honest ;).

Also I have rediscovered the stories from Jim Henson’s the Story Teller. The transcripts of them are availiable here .
Have fun and live life.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

PS: This post’s question is Did you slide down the rabbit hole ?