The picture above now graces my PC desktop at work (in a somewhat larger size) and my CosmoBuzz widget (one of many widgets I have for Konfabulator - don't know what I'm talking about? Don't worry!) has the audio of the quote hotlinked for rapid 'girlie men' action whenever it's called for. I thought I would give you all the chance to listen to the Austrian Oak right here:
"Don't be economic girlie men!"
Posted: 9:28 PM
May the comments be with you. 1 so far.
Monday, September 26, 2005
A Change is coming....
While I think of it, here's a little heads-up for everybody. For a while I've been thinking of getting some dedicated web hosting for our site rather than rely on the webspace provided by our ISP (thankyou Netspace anyway, I still love you as my ISP). What does this mean? Well, we'll have more room to store stuff (i.e. all of Kirsten's photos :) ) and the geeky web monkey in me gets to be able to do some cool programming stuff that I can't do on here. But the biggest change for everyone else will be that our site will have a new address. What exactly that will be yet I don't know, but rest assured that we'll let you all know, and if you come here by mistake you'll either get redirected to the new site automatically, or there'll be a link for you to click to get there (or both most likely). You'll also notice that there will be a new design for the site when we make the move as well.
More on this exiciting story as it happens...
Posted: 11:40 PM
May the comments be with you. 3 so far.
(Can You Feel The) Serenity
Well, perhaps not. But you can sure as hell watch it. At least when it comes out this week at the cinemas. Confused? Good. So am I. Let me explain.
This week (in Australia) a new movie is being released called Serenity. Now for those who don't know, this movie is based on the (undeservedly) short lived TV series Firefly. Created by that fellow Joss Whedon. Y'know, that guy who, amongst other things, created those 'reasonably popular' shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. I'm a big fan of Joss' work, however I kinda missed the boat when Firefly first came out. I watched one episode, but it didn't grab me, and I didn't follow up on it. It's funny how sometimes you'll watch something, think 'blah', then came back to it sometime later and wonder "how the hell did I miss this?". That's sorta what happened here.
With the Serenity movie coming out, we (K and I - I as in me, not I as in the first letter of someone else's name like Ivan. Ivan? Who the hell is he? What's he doing in my house? Did I mention I write rather irreverently sometimes?) decided we should get up to speed with the Firefly series before we caught the movie. So, to that end, we sought out the series on DVD. And not without some timing and luck issues getting in our way. I saw the series in the Mt. Gravatt JB Hifi on Saturday. It was $36.99 (down from $59.99). I didn't get it. The next morning, I am 'persuaded' that perhaps we should get it. So on our way to Jules baby shower, we stopped at JB at Kedron, and the WOW closer to Chermside. Neither had it in stock. Much to my dismay. Even the JB in the city was sold out when I checked today. My mission was now clear: I must return to the Mt. Gravatt JB to obtain a copy of the series. So return I did, and to my great relief and pleasure they still had two copies left in stock (we only bought one). As a bonus (call it karma. Or something.) we also got a buy-one-ticket-get-one-free offer for Serenity. So we essentially get to see the movie for half price! Pleased as punch about that one.
Anyhow, we watched the first episode of the series tonight (actually a two-parter edited together which was the original pilot episode for the show, but which did not get aired as such). As for the show, it's definately Joss, but it's not Buffy or Angel. The whole wild west of the future (e.g. spaceships alongside guys on horses) took me a little while to get used to, but I am now and I'm enjoying the ride. I might even do another post once we've finished watching all the episodes!
Oh, and as for my *long* post of movie reviews - it's still coming... :P
Posted: 11:28 PM
May the comments be with you. 3 so far.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Blog Posts Not-so-a-gogo
As I metioned in my last post, it's been a while since I've posted anything on a regular basis. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is of course, I'm boring. But apart from that I've also been busy. Boring, but busy. Hmmm.
Why so busy you ask? Or maybe you didn't. Either way, I'm going to tell you anyway.
Busy-ness #1: Uni work. Yes, when I'm not leaving things to the last minute, I actually do do some Uni work when I should be. Our grouo had an assignment due recently, which required a lot of work. As I was also the report co-ordinator and editor/proof-reader, this meant I had to wait for everyone else's stuff to come in before I could really get it all together. Some of it came in on the day before it was due, so there was a bit of a rush the next day. But I'm not really complaining - it beats the last couple of times where I've pulled all-nighters in order to get it done. Now we have another assignment due in just under a month. Will still require a lot of work, but since I'm mainly doing programming this time, my workload should be a bit less. By the way, we got 37/40 for our assignment (or 18.5% out of 20% weighted). Pretty stoked about that.
Busy-ness #2: Work work. I do work at work for QUT as well. Amazing that. Things have been really busy at work, but it's pretty exciting. I'm working on a major project at the moment, which is the redesign and redevelopment of the QUT corporate web site (including the home page). I can say that without revealing any confidential information :) The work has been varied so far. I've programmed online surveys. Collected, analysed, and reported survey results. Put together some web pages based on some of those results. I've been in the loop with the design side of things as well, and as a web developer, it's always fun to watch these things develop. Right now (well not *right* now, as I'm blogging) I'm working on programming a directory of the various services that QUT has. I'm really enjoying it at (I know, I'm a geek). For those who are interested, you should see the results of all this redeveloping around the end of October, start of November. Oh, and I had to put in a bit of time for my 'show and tell' at our last section meeting. Each meeting, the notetaker for that meeting is also supposed to do a 'show and tell' about themselves, or something they do, etc... As you might have seen from a previous post, one such show and tell was a big-arse sword. Being a bit boring, and having no big-arse sword to show off, I opted for giving my colleagues a brief history of Anime (at the risk of looking like too much of a geek). To my mild surprise, it went down fairly well :)
Busy-ness #3: Just plain lazy. OK, I have had some time where I haven't been doing #1 or #2 (oooer... :P ) but that's been generally spent watching TV episodes (I feel a geek rant about Battlestar Galactica is long overdue), playing Tony Hawk on the PS2, or most recently, playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on the PC (a very good game, and like being in Saving Private Ryan, especially the landing on Omaha Beach. I don't often get into a game so much that I feel I'm really there, but I did with that particular level. Very intense!). Thanks for that Geoff. Kirsten would also like to thank Geoff, but in a much more sarcastic manner.
So there you go. I plan another post before the week is out. A *long* post. I have about half-a-dozen (or maybe more) movies that I've seen recently and not yet reviewed on here. So stay tuned!
Posted: 7:48 PM
May the comments be with you. 1 so far.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Photo Mystery #1: Answer
Yep, I've finally gotten around to putting up what the first Photo Mystery actually is (or was if you like). See the picture below:
It was of course, my Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer Optical (of course?!?!). I thought I would also clarify a few things about these photos. I stated that the photos come straight from the camera without any digital alteration. This is true. Further to that, I also make the following points about how these photos will be taken:
- I only use the 'auto' settings on the camera - I don't switch it to night mode, adjust the focal length, or anything like that
- I will take photos of things at odd angles, or zoomed in to a specific part (using only the optical zoom on the camera, not digitaly zoomed after the fact)
- Sometimes the 'environmental' conditions will be unusual - for the mouse photo I simply turned off the lights in the room
Hope that clarifies things a little. I have no idea how frequently these will appear on my blog, probably when I can get around to it. Probably more frequently once Uni is over. More on that, and my lazy state of affairs in the blog arena in my next post...
Posted: 10:31 AM
May the comments be with you. 3 so far.