Archive for February, 2004

survive the apocalypse

Yesterday I linked to a piece in The Guardian that uncovered just how doomed we all are. It got me thinking about how many predictions of disaster are released by media organisations. The newspapers don’t just make them up. The predictions are made by researchers and government departments. But sometimes astrologers, cults and general nutbags make some wonderful doomsday predictions. My favourite was back in 1982. I was in primary school and remember reading about ‘The Grand Alignment‘ in the paper. I remember that some kids at school genuinely believed what they heard/read about the world being blown up. Back in the 70s it was thought that a new ice age was approaching and it’s said that the Mayans predicted that the end of the world will happen sometime in December 2012. The Earth’s magnetic poles are about to flip and, if Murphy’s Law holds true, that magnetic flip will probably occur during the first event at the inaugural World Orienteering Championships. Now that would be unfortunate.

A massive chunk of ice and rock missed our beautiful planet in 2002 by lazy 830000km. Phew! But that’s not all. There are at least two more headed our way.

One thing is for sure. One day, for each and every single one of us, the world will indeed end. If we all go at the same time in some magnificent cataclysm, the pearly gates will have one huge queue. If we find out that there isn’t a heaven and we are all reincarnated instead, where will we be reincarnated if there’s no planet left? These are the real questions which need to be answered.

A fact we need to remember is that humans are fascinated with the idea of death. Stories about apocalyptic situations have been around for centuries and maybe, one day, one will come true. However, I’m not going to sit in a log cabin on a misty mountain top staring at the stars - waiting for it to happen.

wap it up

According to a secret Pentagon report (well, a formerly secret report) we are all stuffed. Riots, wars over natural resources, droughts, floods, plagues, famines and crop failures could make life unbearable within 20 years (via many people).

mandate my arse

It’s been another computer free week. It’s been a whole 5 days since I last looked at my CRT monitor and I needed that break. Sometimes I think I spend far too much time reading news sites, browsing for weird stuff and frigging around with Moveable Type templates which will be obselete in 5 years anyway.

The S.U.V has taken the US by storm and increasingly, very large vehicles are appearing on Australian roads. This article, entitled Big and Bad - How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety, has one great sentence within it. It says “internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages and who lack confidence in their driving skills.” (via bluishorange) Now I know why I don’t find the need to have one. According to the above mentioned internal market research I’m quite a well adjusted married man.

You wouldn’t know I’m a well adjusted bloke by looking at my CD collection though. Why are Nine Inch Nails and Baby Animals in the same collection? Well at least I can laugh at my goth phase when I’m 64. Or should I laugh at my Suze De Marchi phase when I’m 64?

can a blogger complain about an invasion of privacy?

One of my daily blog reads is Jen’s blog. While details are sketchy at this time, I assume she’s the latest victim of a boss finding a blog and getting all pantsy about it. Anyway, Jen got sacked becuse of something she said on her blog. She’ll be back in full force though. And when she does I fully expect her to name and shame her old employer. Surely they can’t sue for for naming them. After all, they used her website to discipline her. It’s logical that she is able to return the favour is it not?

Microsoft’s leaked Windows source code contains a myriad of foul mouthed comments. Stuff like:
// the fucking alpha cpp compiler seems to fuck up the goddam type “LPITEMIDLIST”, so to work
// around the fucking peice of shit compiler we pass the last param as an void *instead of a LPITEMIDLIST

revenge of the dutch rose growers

Yes. Now is the time of the year when, all of a sudden, little side-of-the-road stalls pop up all over the joint. It seems that everybody with an ounce of enterprise in their blood turns into a bloody florist at this time of year. It’s my first Valentine’s Day since getting married last April and, well, this is more the attitude that my wife and myself have towards Valentine’s Day.

From the age of 18 until about 25 I was genuinely concerned that I had nobody decent to give flowers to on Valentine’s day. To be honest I was too busy drinking beer and going fishing to worry about a nearest and dearest. Anyway, I don’t have to worry about being romantic anymore. I’m married after all!

another pollieblog

Most of you would have seen John Howard’s blog. Now you can read the musings of the opposition leader in the Mark Latham blog.

kitch inn

I get to visit loads of different offices in my job. Sometimes I even get myself a drink of water in my customers’ kitchens. That’s where I find the dreaded “clean up after yourself sign,” like the one below.

If you have a photo of a nasty kitchen sign from your workplace (or shared house for that matter) please email it to me (address is in the links section). If I get enough I’ll create a “clean_up_after_yourself_you_bastards.html” page or something.

blindly following the crowd

Geek talk. I don’t do it very often.

I’ve read all about the Firefox browser. I’ve also read plenty about the Thunderbird email client over the last 48 hours. So, what did I do. I installed them just like everybody else. A Mozilla browser is a Mozilla browser I say, but Thunderbird is way less annoying than Mozilla’s email thingy. It was an ordeal moving my old emails to Thunderbird though. I know you’re not asking for my opinion but I’ll give it anyway…I think these two pieces of software should be a compulsory download. Git’em, now!

And just in the case that you’ve been considering knocking up a gallery of images for your website, A List Apart has an article about how to create a “gallery that uses JavaScript to load images and their captions on the fly.” That’s just what I’ve been after for some time now.

the populist card

Kind-of-free trade with the US. Yee haa! More shit to watch on TV. More crap to buy and big fucking SUVs to drive. Just what we need. And most of our farmers still can’t sell their stuff into the US.

I’ve noticed a few blogs around the place flogging a hosting service called AusBlog. While it claims to Australian own and run it actually hosts your blog in the US. Go with a local host who actually hosts it here instead. The best I’ve found in Australia is Smartartist in Blacktown.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no stark raving mad anti-globalist. I just reckon that trying your best to reward local businesses for doing their business locally is a great thing to do.

frontpage has cleaned itself up…

Heh? Or has it. Check out this banner ad (and most importantly, line 28). There’s nothing wrong with a little Micro$oft bashing is there? (via mezzoblue)

It is strange how these days I work with a text editor to make a webpage. I scoffed at people who prefered to use a text editor only about a year ago. I just prefer having total control. I’m not even going to bother with a newer version of Dreamweaver to make pages ever again, let alone frontpage. Yuk!

iconology

What else is there better to do than change all the icons on your computer? I won’t know what the hell I’mm clicking on for the next few weeks. Go on! Change yours. Iconfactory.com.

Peter Beattie’s unbeatable. The Queensland Electoral Commision’s summary of the results looks terrible for the conservative side of politics.

i tend not to think

A few days ago a friend of mine, who from now on shalt be known as Yabby, left a URL in the comments that led to a 404 page. He’s since given me a new URL for the picture he wanted to share with us all but alas, it also led to a 404 page. Thank god he attached the photo of his favourite piece of Melbourne graffiti that he found on the wall of the TAFE college next to The Tote (pub) in Collingwood. I’ve got it on my server now so we can all finally see what Yabby wanted us to see.

OK. Fair enough…

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last two weeks you would’ve noticed that there’s a rumbling in the media about the avian flu virus in East Asia. Well, some scientists believe an avian influenza virus was behind the flu epidemic of 1918 which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, or one in forty people on the planet at that time. I brought that up because right now I am sneezing and today I had a chicken schnitzel burger for lunch. What are the chances ‘eh?