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Palliative Unrequited Requiems of …

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone,

New Year, Finally the year of video blog (vlog/ vblog / something else here) or it would have been if I could have gotten the audio sync in wxcam to align to  the video feed.

I also played around with dvswitch and webcams (picture in picture) attempting to ressurect the plans for meta vlogging goodness. Look at me , now look at me, now back to me, what you do see ? Its just me. We need to go deeper.

Did some further improvements to the manga downloader stuff in Python given that the source HTML stuff had changed, still not fully finished. Watched numerous anime including Black Cat, Candy Boy and Aoi Hana, recurring theme seemed to be unrequited love.

Had a birthday, had Christmas, had Chinese New Year. Birthday and Christmas were so-so, though quite dominated with food and rituals. Chinese New Year wasn’t what I had expected (No Yumcha :(), but I guess there is always next year.

Was at Bookfest, did some counting, some sorting, the change in the format lead to more issues given the lack of preparation for it. Lots more thinking about people and circumstances, and lots more planning and systems development then I would like.

I occasionally take 3-5 seconds to reminisce at the luxury of being able to watch movies on SBS2, particular foreign films at weird times that instigate cognition in topics and circumstances that are so unforgiveingly real but so esoteric that it appears that an extraterrestrial scene is unfolding before your eyes.

There are at least 8 Japanese restaurants within a 2km radius of me. I relish in this fact, or I would relish if someone proceeded to find a bottle, mortar and pestle large enough to contain me.

I have a bookshelf now, it has some more books from Bookfest. IKEA is quite interesting, though I would be content with just the warehouse component of it, maybe it is just all the exposure to The Sims Deluxe I had. I miss soothing background music. Was pleasantly surprised at the Swedish food choices, but didn’t decide grocery shop there.

Also got the VGA cable, though it is hard to use it with desktop as its motherboard has finally decided to resign from palliative care, despite replacing the power supply.

Still on Arch, miss Gentoo heavily, will probably plan a migration back given  compile time & reconfiguration time.

Freezer has icecream, though I don’t feel like it currently, perhaps tommorow. Umbrella got hole in it, Mended Umbrella, Umbrella got second hole in it, yet to mend it again. Ice cream scoop broke, acquired superglue but haven’t begun the repairs.

I wonder if sense data is enough or if the abyss will provide relief.

 

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

Magnetic Bubbles of Distraction

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

Recently I have added some Magnetic Bubbles of Distraction to my blog, for those who don’t like to read stuff. (Which appears to be most of the people I talk to, I am not sure why)

These used to be on by default, but now they are no longer. They are implemented in canvas and Javascript (and based on the work done by hakim ).

They are separate to the drag and drop components of the blog theme, which allow people to move sections of the blog around the page at there lesiure, they are also seperate to the click to read links on each of the posts.

In Opera the pointer-events CSS isn’t implemented which means the canvas steals all the mouse clicks. For this reason control of the magnetic bubbles of distraction is done with keys on your keyboard.

Press b to start the bubbles,  press c twice quickly to create new bubble, place your mouse near the blue core of the bubble you want select and press d to start dragging it with your mouse and press d again to stop dragging it.

Pressing s with the same conditions as pressing d, will select the bubble and it will sprodically jump around your mouse, until it is deselected using s. Press x to hide the bubbles and press x appear to make them reappear. To turn bubbles off just press F5.

Best wishes and have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

Neon Electric Sky, Light Speed,

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

Still no spice collection, just a single canister of Mixed Herbs, and still no bookshelf, justs books in boxes, although I have a small LCD TV, but need aVGA cable in order to use it with the netbook or other computers.

I did acquire icecream and apricot nectar and organic blueberries. 😀 . Though I am all out of icecream at present, so I will need to acquire some more, and also ration my consumption.

Trying to slowly focus on side projects in order to ensure they get completed slowly rather than misplaced in the chaotic and busy jumblings of life and employment.

Glad to be reading non-fiction books again , even if they are just digital and related to transaction processing or software development. I should probably resume speed reading, but I find myself enjoying the content too much in order to accelerate the pace.

Abstraction and complexity make for strange bedfellows or at least strange conceptual dreams with polymorphic spooning and heterogenous design patterns fracturing mental resonance in the early hours of the morning.

Yumcha is deliciious,  Omegle is just more of the same, I am tempted to train a chat bot or two there but the bias from various sources doesn’t make for a robust linguistical corpus.

Have fun everyone,

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

Lemmings difficulity, Propagation of Entropy

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

How are we all ? Just finished lodging my tax. It was interesting, much more interesting than I first expected. I feel like I was playing Lemmings again, through a maze of legalize and taxation policy. Currently in a new place , in a new space, with a new list of things to get. Lots of nice restaurants around here, but I also relish in the return to ethereal methods of cooking, so much better than convective / conductive electricity based cooking. On that note has anyone ever cooked using Lightning ? I also have a microwave for the first time ever, but with the 福島県 nuclear incident fresh in my memory, I am reluctant to use it, and am surprised at how long it wants to take for simple defrosting of things.

I also need to estabilish my spice collection and find some modular bookshelves so I can unpack my 5 boxes of books. Technology wise I have been playing with ILSpy and Rec for multiple language decompilation fun. I really need to buy some ice-cream. Random interrupts regarding web discussion are obligied not because I care or desire to but because I am too kind for my own good. Is the Internet a hivemind ? No it isn’t. Because things made possibile by the Internet aren’t the Internet themselves. Collective consciousness first requires people to isomorphically share pherenomological experiences in order to streamline cognitive reference points.

Why exactly do I end up walking the drunk to the traffic lights, or obliging the random stranger ? I have a visual novel to be working on along with countable errands and miscellanea. Baby dolphins are quintessentially cute.

Web 2.0 is overated , bring back text, until we are shrouded in the Wired, where we can all love Lain.

 

Have fun, stay safe, will write more later, apologies for the interruption,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chionarchimaniation, further musings, and silence

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

I am really enjoying the cold weather. I would have posted earlier but I spent two hours last night coining Chionarchimaniation (the act of entering a hyperactive / frenzied state during the winter or when exposed to cold weather or snow) , to express a concept in I had in mind for this post.

I still haven’t found a place to move out to, or a replacement netbook / laptop. I did buy a DWA-125 wireless dongle (for the Windows XP box on my floor so I can vpn into work) from Officeworks and was presently surprised to find that it uses rt2870 Linux drivers.

I love the cold weather, the contrast from the heat of shower water to cold air just makes me feel energised. Enjoying using Kmymoney to keep ledger of my accounts.  Much easier processing receipts as I  acquire them, rather than filing them and trying to decipher them once the warranty has ended and the ink is faded into invisibility.

No liking the lack of interaction on the bus, but I guess people just want to have their headphones on playing the sountrack to their existence in 128 KBs mp3 format, whilst they pretend that others around them don’t exist. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have the solipsisr attitude or belief system to go with it , just the behaviour.

Stuff I have been upto includes, assisting people with introduction to web application development, introduction to SEO, attempting to decomiple an application written in VB6. (I didn’t manage to with rec or boomerang, and as the person who asked found what they were looking for in a text file, they no longer needed the hashing algorithm reversed.)

Also watched Watchmen Motion comic and enjoyed it thoroughly. Interesting possibilities and justification for characterisation and setting. I hope to redevelop the drag and drop javascript distraction I previously made for this blog, preferably in jquery, but that will only happen if I find the time for it.

Most of my time has been spent at work, where I am familirising and further developing my knowledge in PL/SQL and Oracle, Telerik RadGrid and Telerik AJAX, using and abusing popups and iframes for fun and purpose, getting irked at ungraceful socket and signal behaviour (see http://www.madore.org/~david/computers/connect-intr.html for more information), Solaris diagnostics, LINQ magic, Vim and KSH, XMing and X forwarding over SSH and VPN connections using NetscreenRemote, NCP Juniper Secure Client and Shrew.

With regards to Gentoo GNU/Linux stuff on my netbook, sane_backends doesn’t compile due to change location of v4l libs, kernel-2.6.39 has udevd timeout issues with loading video card drivers using modprobe (hopefully fixed when gentoo-sources 2.6.40 or 3.0 come out), and not too much else.

Developed the chorus of a song this morning, should put it up on the lyrics page soon. Apologies to all the non tech people that don’t get the tech terms used above, it is ok, I am still alive and still doing stuff with things for purposes.

Have a nice week, month, < arbitrarily long amount of time here>

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Updates

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

AC adapter on for net book is damaged, managed to get it working for the moment, replacement should arrive next week. When it does I will probably order some tools so I can repair the old one using cable splicing.

Messed Ubuntu configuration on MID by updating a single package, then accidently reinstall older firmware including old Android, old GNU Linux and old bootloader, nothing starts up clean, and I will have to borrow or acquire a male to male USB cable to reupdate the bootloader.

Work is fun, lots of Telerik familarisation, and lots of tickets to keep me busy.Managed to spend the test card from work on USB sticks at officeworks, which will probably be used at work, if colleagues don’t borrow them first.

Jellybean consumption is at an all time record high, considering they arrived Tuesday and were gone by Thursday. Met Scott on the bus again, had interesting conversation largely about subjective trust in humanity, and we were up to the influence of whimisicality and the nature of human indecision.

He also mentioned a cooperative house environment started by bunch of Griffith students, which once again made me thing about cooperative living environments as a whole, and how to ensure their long term sustainability in general.

The cool weather is nice. I really enjoy it, in spite of the weird looks as I appear to be missing a pullover or jacket.

Have fun and best wishes with whatever you are upto,

 

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

Cracked, Resolutions, Delays and Chances

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

I could apologise for being late, like so many previous posts, or I can just keeping typing. I think I will do the later.  My eeepc’s screen is cracked and is still usable for the moment. 150AUD to buy replacement LCD screen, so at present I am waiting to see when the N570 atom are mass released here. (Given current CPU is n270).

Projects are happening slowly, still trying to find rhythm in the shift from student to employee, along with the search for continuous improvement both of self and of circumstance. Going to be setting up piece by piece progress so that stuff gets done gradually but eventually, otherwise it will get lost in the buzz of productivity that occurs in other components that interact with my existence.

Fixed this blog’s search functionality, ironically enough by deleting the theme specific search options. So now things should be searchable. I still need to get video and audio going , along with continuing the redesign and some other fancy javascript fun.

Course of action for the cluster, is getting the controller online, which involves updating the bios to support usb booting, by netbooting the floppy disk image, thanks to Redhatter  for the suggestion.

Work is C++ for the most part and is still fun. Had work trivia the other night which was interesting (we came sixth, with a difference of 5 points between us and the winners), but more interesting has been the various sagas of lost and found items or interesting people that have occurred whilst using public transportation in this city.

Books read recent include Japanese Things by Basil Hall Chamberlain (which I own thanks to Bookfest and have lent out to a colleague) (google books link here http://books.google.com.au/books?id=FEreXqAUAdIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=japanese+things+basil+chamberlain&source=bl&ots=YM57CF6K3p&sig=UyiXdYGefRZrLcAWyIN_uo0ZVjs&hl=en&ei=S-2XTYvZEYzCvQPiyfzzCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false, ). Things Japanese is a wonderful book. , Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers, and Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Had Bris2600 meeting last night, It was good. Lots of thoughts on my mind about some of the unanswered questions on my mind. Missing GURPS and other roleplaying dreadfully.

Lost wallet, found wallet, lost usb stick , found usb stick, lost umbrella, got new umbrella after normal shopping saga.

When I go shopping offline it works like this, I know exactly what I want, and most likely where it will be, but when I go to the merchant they don’t have the product I am looking for, I then have go to merchant , after merchant looking for said product which isn’t retailed here or is sold here but is only avaliable at one merchant, in one part of a multistory building.

Firefox 4 is interesting but I am so used to the plugin support I get from Chromium at this point, that I probably won’t rush back. Still need to get offline copies of LCA 2011 videos .

Hope your foolish first days of April weren’t riddled with serious consequences.

Have fun and best wishes,

 

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

 

 

Fortnight of Frenzy, New Subroutines and Temporal Allocations

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

Updates: I am slowly doing stuff with dvswitch, some of which will involve the new webcam I received (logitech hd c510, works with uvcvideo, though not with built in webcam in tandem yet). The dvswitch stuff is a side effect of my volunteering for linux.conf.au 2011, which was amazing.

Other side effects include the development of my OpenWRT knowledge (I did lots of flashing of them for LCA) and getting to have fun in patch closets as well learning the basics about recording digital video. Additionally I am helping review the videos as well.

Also got a yubikey or two from LCA haven’t done much with them yet. My headphones broke (the pin of the off aux broke in to the laptop slot) in the middle of Vint Cerf’s keynote, but after some partially disassembly the other night, my headphones audio is working again.

Also volunteered at Lifeline Bookfest, for more long days and even less sleep. Not as many fun conversations or balloon creations this time, but still plenty of book counting, pricing and sorting. Got reminded that my fan fiction forays needed further embellishment and development. Managed to restrain myself to about 8 new books for the entire Bookfest, self restraint++. Bookfest also involved get trolleys of books down stairs as elevators faltered from flood fiasco.

Need to continue the gradually redesign effort of this blog. Other news includes my trip to NSW for Cheater’s wedding, was a fun trip and awesome wedding. (pacman wedding cake and harp and flute wedding music kind of do that).

Daylight savings time is interesting, I didn’t feel tired or jet lagged. Learnt how to play darts properly in NSW, not that I couldn’t play darts before, just that it wasn’t up to another YHA patron’s standard.

If I spent to too long talking about malicious overflows and memory leaks in HIPHOP as a potential FB attack vector to  a teenage cousin of the groom, my apologies, I just couldn’t handle the whole b@t f1l3z in n0t3p@d l33t h@xx0r thing.

NSW double decker trains are more interesting than QLD trains, but have far fewer friendly fellow passengers.

Other news is I started work, so I know have a day job which I am currently enjoying immensely. So much to do and get done both at home and at work. But if you want to catch up with me , most of you know where to find me.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Year of the Rabbit as much  as I am. We had 火鍋 which was wonderful in its peppercorn and chilli goodness.   What new foods have you trying or experienced a new recently ?

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Kippers,Delays,Licquorice

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone,

Lots of thoughts happening only out number the number of events that fly by as the seconds pass. I am almost hauntingly reminded to the lyrics of Arramaieda’s Moving Ahead or Ruth Apelt’s Spider and the Fly. Deja vu also occurs spreading its wing in to predicting the fiction that I peruse in this supposed reality.

Productivity seems elusive, but that is probably because like so many other things I spend more time looking for it, then just ignoring it and existing and then it falling into my lap unnoticed.

Conflicts rage in my mind back and forth like the stormy sea as to what course of action would best ameliorate circumstances or whether circumstances aren’t things to be changed or just to be content with.

Restraints are missing as whimsy dances in the firelight, forlorn with the glistening  flames, instead just seeking the warmth but remaining impervious to temperature despite the raindrops and fevers.

Here is to new chances to find what needs to be found, whether it appears to be there or not.

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

Status quo, Qindarkë për mendimet tuaja

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Hi everyone,

Lots of stuff going on, bits and pieces of various things flying all over the place, although I am lacking the bickering domestic animals made from cloth swatches.

I have been having fun developing various projects in Python, JavaScript, C#, PHP and C++. I seem to update only once a month or there abouts, I probably should remedy that.

Narwhal and RingoJS as CommonJS or ServerSide JavaScript solutions are interesting as was porting a code snippet from Python to JavaScript.

However I then begin to wonder about interaction between client side and server side JavaScript, and if virtual DOM, or DOM based interfaces to Files or Databases can make jQuery even more versatile. I also start thinking about possible flaws in various security models which  a solely JavaScript client + server web based solution could have.

I don’t speak Albanian yet unfortunately, however I am know more familiar with over 100 of the world countries’ currency units, thanks to another code snippet I spent a few days developing in C#, all in Monodevelop and some on my SmartQ V7.

My SmartQ V7 will eventually become a replacement for my phone even though it doesn’t have any GSM telephony. But I hope to continue developing a Gentoo based firmware for it. I already have a some what working chroot. I also have identified why the microphone doesn’t work with the default firmware.

I discovered just how versatile this new device was when my EEEPC / laptop was out of action for a few days whilst I waited for a new AC adaptor. Normally I dismiss the scene in Bruce Almighty, when he abuses his new found deitic abilities, to the tune of “I Got the Power”.

But upon the arrival of my AC adaptor , the song was bursting out of my mouth, if only for a few short seconds, before I smirked and sighed. Julian now has turtles.

How is that relevant to anything you might ask ? Well the simple answer is similar timing with respect to delivered goods (his turtles arriving just before or after my AC adaptor). The more fun answer has to with Albanian currency linking to a type of turtle(which may not be the type Julian has but is the most common type for pet turtles), along with linking to the most awesome character in Inspector Gadget, (Inspector Gadget also having powers and adapting to circumstances).

Hopefully the explanation is obtuse enough, that it doesn’t spoil the magic entirely, then again it probably will. I recently finished reading Asimov’s essays on chemistry which I throughly enjoyed. One of which compares catalysts to magic or the illusion of being magic like.

I am still job searching, along with slowly progressing on a wide variety of side projects. I had written some fun JavaScript for this WordPress Theme,  however it got omm nomm nommed (accidently truncated doesn’t sound as tasty) to zero bytes, so I will have to rewrite it.

I had written a short section on politics but I am reluctant to post it now, as I am not sure if I want to refine it and develop it into some sort of article or essay.

Hope everyone is having fun now that most people’s exams are over,

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂