Best idea ever? I love Russian optimism!
The Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn’t work once.
– in relation to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, which Russian sources say could be stemmed by detonating controlled underground nuclear blasts at the source. (Komsomoloskaya Pravda via Slashdot)
operative word: Controlled.
Well that was considerably less painful than I thought, other than the fact I kept getting caught out by the back-end disk quota limits while trying to upload the new software.
A quick bump to 50MB soon solved that, but sometimes I wish FTP error messages weren’t so damned archaic – an ironic quip, perhaps, coming from someone whose daily grind consists of decyphering archaic/nonsensical error messages…
But anyway. You can read this, so that means I can start posting useless crap to my little corner of the world once again.
Rally NZ pics now on flickr. Doing everything shoestring this year, which means attending only the free events. Hey don’t complain, you get to choose between arty dusk shots or blurry ISO800 voyeurism!
the last three months in summary
camera collection: embiggened by the acquisition of a bulk lot of vintage rangefinders – see here. However I’m now overwhelmed by the number of test rolls I need to shoot.
car collection: 4WD TX3 finally signed off and finished. Banana almost road legal (after emptying my wallet like a ravenous beast). Squid back in Auckland. Coupe continues to be a pain in the backside as far as keeping it on the road is concerned – stuff tends to break down after 27 years if it’s never actually been replaced.
other: werk is steady, training a new backup to keep the cogs grinding in the instance that I end up having that next meltdown. Relocating all of my accumulated shit back from Hamilton to Auckland went smoother than I thought. My facebook account got hacked, deactivated, reactivated, hacked, deactivated, and finally reactivated again, but I’m pretty much over it now; twitter seems to do the job just fine for daily ruminations.
to all the would-be shippers, no I still haven’t said anything to her yet. “Coward!” i hear you mutter, but the gist of the situation is that I never get a chance to sit down with her and actually lay the cards on the table, in private.
But then again if you look up “avoidant personality”, there’s a picture of me.
Right, now that I feel like I’ve accomplished something today, time to go find something else to break!
from the desk of ed…
- started writing for another blog this week. Battle to the max, baby…
- Red Cliff and Moon are out at the movies. Missed them both during the limited-time film festival run earlier this year, so must go see them while I can. Red Cliff, especially so.
- Still working through the itinerary for December’s TX3 summer shakedown roadtrip. retro-classics has the low-down on what’s up here. Basically it involves a shitload of driving, and catching up with people I haven’t seen in ages. Of course this all hinges on whether I can get the time off work to do so.
- bought Fallout 3 GotY edition and resurrected Little Miss Lysergia for another trip around the capital wasteland. I’d almost forgotten how sweet this game was!
- NFS: Shift is actually a decent game; refreshing given the wiggerized garbage the franchise has been spawning for the last umpteen years. there’s no chance in hell of me ever buying an Xbox 360 just to play Forza 3, and GT5 ain’t due until March next year, so this will do the trick for now.
Am I seeing things or is my twatter working again? Dare I try logging in, in fear of having it crap out in the middle of loading?
**edit** nope, still broken… but my tweets seem to be working again?
neither of my accounts are currently working, so I haven’t been able to log in and do any of that social networking stuff for at least a week now.
It’s a sign, I tells you. good excuse to start updating this blog-thing a bit more.
now I remember why I never got around to upgrading to ubutnu 9.04 earlier… the bloody fglrx drivers got removed post-intrepid, and installing the linux ATI Catalyst drivers was always a right pain in the arse. Gonna have to figure that out tomorrow.
Windows 7 on the other hand, seems to make amends for the downright rottenness that was Fister. Been using it as my main OS for a few days now, and I can pretty much last a whole session without swearing profusely at it. There are still a few irksome things about it (the new ‘improved’ windows firewall for example) – but overall, it’s not the huge bloated pit of fail its predecessor was.
where has the year gone? September went by in a flash, about the only thing I remember doing with the site was getting ye olde coffee forum back up and running again (and paying another hosting bill, natch)
I may have procrastinated about a great many things this year, but I’m happy to admit that finding the slowest lift in the CBD isn’t one of them. It took a few months but I think I’ve found THE one – all that remains is to find an opportunity to head back there and take some photos without looking all suspicious-like.
amazing how things go round in circles. 15 years ago, FM and LA synths rocked my world, then towards the end of the ’90s I discovered the joys of sample-based synthesis and abandoned FM completely… now, 10 years on, I’m finding myself in want of a Yamaha DX7, which is about as profoundly FM as you can get.
three things of note:
- copious amounts of instagibbing
- transformers-esque shootout towards the end could have been avoided
- cutting up the only guy in the world who can operate your precious weapons generally ain’t a good idea
Overall better than expected, but I tend to hold low expectations for ‘mainstream’ movies these days. The most annoying thing I found was that the trailers and previews revealed way too much info, and I don’t think it deserved anywhere near the amount of hype it generated.
and I now have to restrain myself from referring to South Africans as “prawns” (doesn’t help that I work with a few)
as part of my daily work routine I find myself spending a disproportionate amount of time in various buildings around the CBD waiting for lifts to arrive, and then standing in the damn things waiting to be shuttled to the floor of my choice. (I would use the stairs more often than I currently do, but a lot of buildings now have the annoying ‘feature’ of locked/carded stairwell exit doors on each floor in the name of security).
Over the last few years (spent in the same role) many of the lifts I’ve travelled in have actually undergone ‘modernization’ as part of a greater push to spend money conform to H&S standards or whatever, to the point where even the most run-down office tower will often possess a couple of state-of-the-art liftcars with mood lighting, indiglo LCD floor displays, heated buttons, and soothing feminine voices that tell you to stand clear of the bloody doors you idiots. Which can be nice at times, but sometimes I consider it unnecessary – especially if it ends up altering whatever character the building may once have had.
anyway, it occurred to me recently while riding in one particularly crowded liftcar that even with all the modernization bullshit going on there’s probably any number of older, decrepit lifts out there in some of the less trafficked, smaller and/or less glamorous office towers. some crazy part of my brain decided that it would be fun to discover the slowest lift in the CBD in overall travel time (from one floor to the next) and perhaps also with other criteria factored in: most noisy, most annoying call tone, most likely to rattle itself to pieces, and so on.
A few people have suggested also trying the lifts in and around uni/AUT, and those in various other public facilities such as the Civic/Skycity and central library; while I guess I probably should (in order to present a fair comparison), the goal is to find the quintessential cruddy corporate lift that annoys the hell out of its office workers on a daily basis…
So at the end of last week I headed down to High St – home of fashionistas, expensive boutiques, one of my favourite bookstores, and conveniently, a high concentration of customer sites located in quaint buildings which I’m actively involved with for work purposes. Good place as any to begin my quest!
All this fuckin’ junk is.
also, half my plugins seem to be broken thanks to whoever tried to php-exploit the blog yesterday. Arrgghhh
Too late! the spell is gone, and this time you’re the fool!
It’s too late for tears, too late… no one hears you
Certain parts of teh e-netz are currently abuzz with the news that senile old shambling Ozzy and his money-grubbing harpy wife $haron have just announced they want more money out of gee-tarist Tony Iommi, late of Heaven and Hell, by suing for 50% of the rights related to merchandising of the ‘original’ Black Sabbath even though Ozzy apparently relinquished his rights to the Sabbath name to the tune of $80,000 when he left the band in 1979.
The timing couldn’t be more exquisite either, what with Iommi, Geezer, RJD and Vinny Appice currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity with the recent release of H&H’s new studio album The Devil You Know (itself a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Sabbath moniker). Even diehard Ozzy fans seem to be against the cash grab actions of their metal lord. Given the tanking quality of the Osbournes’ rubbish new variety show and Ozzy’s last studio album, this latest stunt is fairly unsurprising; $haron’s gotta conjure up some publicity from somewhere I guess…
Whatever becomes of the Sabbath legacy after this, I’m just hoping it doesn’t end up splintering the Dio-Iommi (and to a lesser extent, Butler) partnership for a third time.
currently listening: Hacride – Lazarus
Two years ago I embarked on a mission to restore one rather beaten-up Ford Laser, once upon a time the main focal point of this very domain.
As of this weekend that mission is now complete.
there are still a couple of things left to be done, but it’s all window dressing compared to everything that’s come before (for the record: fit new wheels, apply factory decal kit, and get some replica side badging made up). The car starts, runs, drives, and looks the part, so by all accounts IT IS FINISHED.
The bonus round shall commence in another few months’ time when the Link V5 ECU gets shoehorned into the engine bay… but for now, I shall bask in the glory.
moar photos on my flickr
suppose that means I’ll have to put up another one of those vainglorious showcase pages with a bit of info about the car itself; did have one way back in the early ’00s but it disappeared along with the free webspace I was whoring at the time. The wayback machine actually has a cached copy of the page circa 2003: click thru to have a look and promise me that you won’t cringe…
Supra injectors? Series 5 intercooler? What the hell was I thinking at the time? At least I followed through on the promise to fit a Series 5 fuel pump though. It only took, what, four years?
…Then decide whether to continue modding, or get another car and keep the TX3 as a daily driver.
Oh, ha ha. I see what I did there.
From the “misuse of Engrish” files this week:
now I suppose the original intention was to call the brand RODEO DRIVE, however I’m guessing there are already countless other companies out there already using that name.
(for the record, Lodio Drive are a Japanese company that makes alloy wheels for SUVs and MPVs)
oh wow, an update. You do know I write for retro-classics as well, right?
rediscovered my collection of Lego last week whilst moving another load o’ chop out of my folks’ place, and it’s been eating up a fair chunk of my spare time ever since.
Started re-assembling my ice planet colony on the weekend – actually managed to collect the complete subtheme when I was a ten-year-old back in ‘93 (maybe I happened to be a real good son that year!) and somehow ended up with multiples of a few sets over the subsequent years.
it’s great to let the imagination run wild again – I’d forgotten how much bloody fun playing with Lego was. But now I’m thinking I might need a display cabinet or one of those coffee tables with the glass centres so I can set up a little scene, and my new pad is pretty damn full already as it is, haha.
by the way, if anyone’s got any Space themed Lego from 1987 thru 1996 they want to offload… you know how to get hold of me.
And no, I didn’t end up selling my DR30 in the end, but I didn’t really expect anyone to come knocking – this whole recession business has got everyone a bit fearful.
currently listening: Heaven and Hell – The Devil You Know / Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Agorapocalypse / Sapattivuosi – Ihimsen Merkki / Khanate – Clean Hands Go Foul
currently reading: Crooked Little Vein.
I’ll make it short and succinct: my DR30 coupe is now on the market, due to various circumstances. Nothing sinister; I just figured it was time for a shake-up.
here be the link: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=209129009
to be honest though, as reluctant as I am to let it go, my current feelings are ambivalent as to whether it does sell or not. We’ll see what happens when the auction ends in a week’s time.
in other news, I’m really starting to get into Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, after an incredibly slow start (and getting pre-empted by other authors – *shakes fist at Alastair Reynolds*)
one thing’s for certain – Stephenson is master of the art of using twelve words where two will suffice!
p.s. follow me on twitter. Ain’t that what all the cool cats doin’ now? 
Commander Keen street art? Now I can die happy!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anklepants/sets/72157600030492928/
someone buy this guy a beer.
There was a thread on Buttonmasher recently. Suggestions were sought as regards cooking for oneself while one’s missus is out of town. Having lived alone and in flatting situations for almost the past decade, I know a thing or two about cooking for one.
The trick to cooking for one is to buy quantities that you can eat before they go bad. Or it is for me at any rate, since I eat a lot of meat.
A few of my favourites:
Red Alert 3 didn’t do much for me, either. Check out my review over at Buttonmasher. As for writing – contributing – that is something I’ll be endeavouring to do more of. Which means little, as those who know me can attest.
Since the supply of review material from Buttonmasher isn’t exactly flowing like a mighty river, I’m doing very little in the way of writing at the moment anyway.
So you never know.
Tronreview 11 and a Tronsite special feature are both well overdue. I promised to have them done last year, and didn’t. Hopefully I’ll have them done soon. Hopefully.
One just never knows, does one?
welcome to mine own name: Ed (Orion/decypher)
location: Auckland, NZ
contact: e-mail
antisocial networking:
myspace | flickr | twitter (below)
contributing writers:
Gareth (GaR)
