2009's first crapart.

Happy new year, everyone!

And here, have a crappy photo of the first art if the year, drawn at Husks and Alysande’s party. Because I’m a dag like that.

In my defence, the night’s other activities were 500 and Lips…

Mirrored from void-star.net β. Comments are preferred on the original.

So, Christmas, eh?

Well, this year was the first year since I’ve been with Mat that we’ve spent down in Wollongong with his family, rather than up in Canberra with mine. Usually we do Christmas in Canberra, then New Year’s in Wollongong, but I suppose now that we’re all married and stuff we should work out some kind of alternating timeshare arrangement.

Anyway.

Some stuff happened at work in the week before Shutdown that had left me not a particularly happy camper. Getting out of town was probably about the best thing for me, and spending the last couple of days at Husks and Alysande’s with Braken playing World Tour and WCIII custom maps has been good for stopping me feeling sorry for myself.

We also got the have a look at Mother-in-Law’s new quilting machine, ostensibly bought in retaliation for Father-in-Law putting in a golf green last year. Said quilting machine is twelve feet long. Yes, you read that right; it’s an industrial-grade sewing machine that’s about twice the length of a person. We all thought mum’s factory straight-stitcher was over the top.

With this in mind, Mat’s trying to persuade his parents to buy either a) a private island, or b) a castle, but so far neither idea seems to be taking. I’d totally volunteer to go live in the Family Castle, especially if it ended up being built in one of the small, industrial towns the family has ties to. The fandom lulz alone would be worth having to live in, say, Gladstone or Port Headland. Oh well, maybe in a few years with this whole GFC thing blows over.

So, Christmas swag:

• A new mattress from and to Mat;
• A sweet ex-sari quilt sheet set from mum for said mattress;
• Handmade chocolates from Alysande and Husks;
• Free dinner from Braken;
• Various sundry things like chocolates and shortbread (mm, my weakness); and
• A Trollbeads bracelet from MiL.

That’s an interesting one. I hadn’t heard of these before specifically, but I’ve seen the concept done before by more mainstream jewellery retailers (I think they’re called “Pandora” or something). It’s more-or-less a charm bracelet, albeit not tacky. I’ve currently got a berry, fairy, five faces, lucky dragon, origami, planet, Art Deco, royal and a neither fish nor bird with a fish lock. And, damn, it’s bad because I love semi-symbolic collectable shit like this, and I can already see myself buying, say, a bead of fortune and a Midgard Serpent to add in, and it’ll just get worse from there. Luckily they sell special boxes for the excess beads.

Mat loves it when I spend money, hey.

Anyway, that’s Christmas. We’re here until after the new year, so maybe I’ll be ready to go back and face work by then (har har). Right now, it’s just that lazt time after Christmas lunch. Mat is playing DotA and his brothers are camped out in front of the projector trying to figure out how to play World Tour (assembling the drumkit was almost more lulzworthy than playing it). Me, I’m going to see if I can find a cable to get the photos off my camera (if this post has photos, the answer was yes) then maybe… have a nap. Or install WoW on the laptop and make Mat play tower defence with me. Either works.

Best wishes for the season to y’all.

Mirrored from void-star.net β. Comments are preferred on the original.

So I’m standing there, waiting for my raisin toast, when:

BoHo Chick: I’d like a chai soy mocha latte with decaf thanks.
Italian Café Owner: … what?
Chick: A chai soy mocha latte with decaf.
Café Owner: (very confused) Chai is–
Chick: I know what chai is. I was a barista you know.

With that attitude, no, I didn’t know.

Here’s the deal, BoHo Chick. There are two types of cafés in this here city. There are hipster American-style cafes where they serve things like your chai soy mocha latte with decaf (that is to say, things that wouldn’t know a coffee if it sprinkled cinnamon all over them) and there are cafés owned by Italian, Turkish and Greek immigrant families who make exactly one thing: Coffee. Thick, black and like it was Back In Ze Old Kontry. You do not walk into one of these places and ask for you chai soy latte whatever, any more than a sane, coffee-loving person walks into one of the Americanized cafés looking for a cappuccino.

Seriously.

Oh, and cut your fringe out of your eyes. You look like a horse.

In shamefully related news, both hot water urns here at work are broken. That means no tea. A whole day with no tea. I should claim unduly cruel conditions and go home.

Mirrored from void-star.net β. Comments are preferred on the original.

So this sitcom ad pops up while we’re lying in bed watching Lord of the Rings…

Him: What’s that about?

Me: Why would I know?

Him: You’ve got friends on the internet who watch bad TV shows, right?

Me: Only ones with a dominant homoerotic subtext.

Him: Good point.

Mirrored from void-star.net β. Comments are preferred on the original.

So I just woke up from this dream where I had to go with some old family friends on an emergency trip to Washington, D.C..

We were all totally standing around in a subway station overlooking the Mall, the day after we arrived, and I was furiously typing on my laptop trying to get hold of nounbeast so I could say, “Hey, guess where I am!” Even thought we only had until that evening until we flew out, and I knew she was very far away and I had no hope of seeing her.

So I dragged Mat off to do shopping in the Lincoln Memorial, instead — after almost dropping my laptop’s screen in the fountain, and dodging all the locals in white hot pants and gold Lamé bikinis — and my last thought before I woke up was:

“Amazing, this whole place looks exactly like pre-war Fallout 3!”

Mirrored from void-star.net β. Comments are preferred on the original.

So. I'm here to confess a secret. This is just between you and me, mind, so don't go spreading it around, okay? The secret is…

The secret is the fact that I kinda maybe sorta… have always liked the gym.

There, I said it.

It comes, I think, from high school PE. I loathed PE with a passion; we spent 90% of the time playing excruciating team sports which were nothing but an exercise (hah!) in humiliation and an effective way of turning less athletic persons like myself off the idea of physical activity for life. The other time was split between gymnastics (whoever thought that was a good idea needs to be expelled from the education system), barn dancing lessons (okay, if a bit "WTF?"), walking/running around the block (fun) and occasionally – if we were very, very lucky – walking down to the local gym. It only happened a handful of times; we'd get there, do about half an hour of BoxFit, then another half an hour of just mucking about on the equipment. I used to wonder why we didn't get to do that every class; it was self-directed, non-competitive, and no-one got "left behind". You could walk on a treadmill next to your friend who was running and it wasn't a big deal.

Alas, we were lucky if we got one week of gym visits a year. The trials of an under-funded public school, and all that.

Thing is, despite liking the idea intellectually, I've never actually been a member of a gym. We live within walking distance of one,¹ and recently, as part of ~Mat [h]'s health-kick, he joined up. Meanwhile, my parents started going to a different gym in Woden – one that recognises the members of the local gym on weekends and public holidays – and work changed its "healthy living" rebate.

So, the other week, I caved in and joined the local. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week saw me on a rotation of bike, weights, rowing machine and – when I was feeling adventurous – cross-trainer. If I can do five minutes on the latter it's a Good Day.²

One week down. I've got a three month membership, and if I recall correctly it takes something like that length of time to properly change a behaviour or adopt a new routine. So we'll see.

At randomredux's urging, I went out an "obtained" Fallout 3 on Friday night. I was always a big fan of 1 and 2 (especially 2, which as far as I know was about the first mainstream game containing same-sex marriage), and I tend to like Bethesda's stuff as a general rule, but I was avoiding it since Lich King is coming out so soon. But randomredux convinced me (I wasn't a hard sell), so…

Gameplay wise, F3 "feels" like Oblivion, in that the concepts around the HUD, menus and dialogue are similar. Visually it looks more… well, Silent Hill than anything. The world seems a little smaller than Oblivion, which I think in this case is a plus; Oblivion's open world I thought was a little too big, especially since I wasn't really keen on the mythos of the world and ended up getting bored with dungeon after dungeon after cave after dungeon.

In the Wasterland, at least, F3 mostly manages to avoid this by having most of its locations above ground. On the other hand, I have been finding it a bit light on side-quests; there are a lot of cool, abandoned locations but they seem to be almost exclusively populated by Raiders or (in DC itself) Super Mutants. I was especially disappointed when I decided to single-handedly take back the Capitol to find nothing really there. I mean, shit, it's the Capitol! I'm trying to re-take it! I killed every living thing in there and nada; no quest, no "good work for restoring the seat of our government", nothing. Same with clearing out the Mall.

This is how I normally play these games, see; I don't follow the plot, I set out on my own and see what I can get done. And I resent it when the plot disallows me my freedom. I'm not to the point with F3 that I'm ready to give up, but… but I get the feeling the game is forcing me into its storyline (which is… okay, I guess; better than Oblivion's, at any rate) rather than letting me get out and save the world on my own.

But more than that, I think my main complaint with F3 is that it's trying too hard to be twitchy. The V.A.T.S. is an interesting way of trying to make the game – which, let's face it, is an RPG – actually accessible to RPG players while still retaining its otherwise FPS-esque combat system. I dislike the idea of trying to put twitch into RPGs in general, so I'm a little lukewarm with the implimentation but I suppose I'm used to it coming off the back of Bethesda's other stuff. And, well, I cheat through these games something chronic, so it's kind of a moot point. Still, I feel there's a lot of F3 that's going to frustrate the "traditional", non-cheating RPG player.

The two things I really don't like in the are the lock-picking and computer hacking minigames. I didn't like this system when it cropped up in Oblivion, either, but at least there it was a bit easier to learn how and when to push up the tumblers. F3's seems a lot more like blind motherfucking luck (as there's no real visual feedback), same with the hacking puzzle. As far as I can tell, your actual Skill rating only affects what difficulty of lock you can attempt; it's still up to you, the player, to actually do the picking.

Here's a tip, Bethesda: If I have 100 in my Lockpicking skill, I don't want to be fucking about with broken bobby pins. I'm the fucking lock master, for godssakes! Either have a skill-based system or don't, this hybrid "ZOMG JUST LIKE REAL [insert-action-here]!" shit is getting on my nerves.

So. Ultimately I think I'd rate F3 somewhere above Oblivion and below Morrowind. It's been about a zillion years since I've played the prequels, so I'm not going to give it a rating versus those, especially since the gameplay is so radically different. But I like the world, even while I wish the story was a bit more expansive than just the main plot (though the obligatory not-evil evil-race guy, Fawkes, upped my squee factor exponentially). Bonus points: Ron Perlman, Liam Neeson and Malcolm McDowell. Cons: From what I gather, the game isn't open-ended (that is, once it's over, it's over), which is kinda a bummer. The whole "Chinese invasion" thing also feels a bit… awkward nowadays, considering, so I'm just going to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt and assume they inherited it from previous canon.

Still probably the best RPG I've played in, well, a hell of a long time.

1. Ironically, the same place we used to occasionally visit in high school, albiet refurbished with new ownership, a new name and a new entry door. ^
2. For those of you who haven't seen them, they essentially simulate no-impact running; think of what you might imagine running on the moon is like, and that's close. Except a hell of a lot harder than you'd expect. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

Still not dead!

Just busy. Main thing: vs.hive has bumped its release number up to 1.2.1.

This is a very small bugfix based on something that popped up a zillion years ago at CodeGrrl and which I've had in my todo pile ever since. I've also added a "random site" link to the webring functionality (all of one line of code), as requested by Sue (again, about a million years ago).

I probably need to refine the bugfix code a little but… it should work. I think. For now.

In other news… not much. I finally capitulated to peer pressure and joined the local gym. I'm back on the WoW and (for the sanity of randomredux, mostly) have created a new journal in which to bitch about it. Work is very busy, and I'm updating Twitter a lot more than my more meaty blog, so if you're all dying to know what I'm up to, stalk me there.

One day you'll get another real blog post, but alas today is not that day.

Dee out.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

Another one of those wonderfully sporadic and completely boring multi-topic blog updates? Don't mind if I do!

Mail Migration

I'm super-happy with the migration of void-star.net's email to Google Hosted Apps. The POP3 access is great for my laptop, the IMAP is perfect for my iPhone, the spam filters are beautiful for the catch-all address and the mailing lists work better than that bloody perl system that comes with CPanel ever did. In short, it's sweet. I'm not sold on the benefits of the other aspects of Apps (the Docs, Sites et cetera), but the mail is worth it. Even if it does mean Google is archiving all your stuff. Not like it wasn't doing that anyway.

Anyway, if anyone wants a (free) @void-star.net or @furced.net email address, give me a username and an existing email address (to mail your password to), and I'll set you up.

Material Goods

Season's changing, which makes me want to buy clothes. But… from where. I don't shop in stores much any more, but my usual online haunts are failing me. So, readers, where do you shop online?

I also bumped my hand against the back of my chair the other day and accidentally threw my Death Note mug across the room. I have a really bad track record with anime-themed mugs. Upshot: I need a new one. Anyone have any recommendations for something cool?

Plus I need to re-dye my hair and whinge at ~Mat [h] until he buys me some new RAM. Nothing new there.

SharePoint

After my SharePoint training a couple of weeks ago, I went through a fit of insanity and installed WSS 3.0 on my computer at home. For those of you who've never heard of it (which is probably most of you), WSS and it's "big (un-free) brother" MOSS make up Microsoft's CMS system. I guess it's sort of like WordPress on steroids, if WordPress was hideously ugly, aimed at the corporate market and tightly-coupled into Microsoft Office.

I installed it partly as a training exercise, and partly because I thought it's EDMS features would be cool for working on Urban Nordica in that hazy distant future where I get the time and energy to get back to writing. Alas, this was not the be the case. The system is up and working fine locally, but there's some r-tarded going on with its Alternate Access Mappings (Micro-speak for vhosts) and it keeps trying to resolve the external URL to the internal one. Which works great on my local LAN, and not so awesomely from everywhere else in the world. No idea what's going on there.

Oh, and my Office 12's WSS integration support appears to be broken for no reason at all. I ♥ Vista so much, srsly.

World of Warcraft

Shamefully, I started playing WoW again. Mostly at first because I noticed they'd finally released a Hawkstrider PvP mount. Seriously, I'd been saving my tokens up for one of those ever since BC came out and just when I spend them all… So a dozen or so games of WSG later (fuck but I hate WSG), I now have my Black Battlecock. It's awesome. Then I figured that I nearly had enough Honor for a new set of shoulders, and—

Goddamnit! Now I remember why I quit this stupid game!

Seriously, though, I recently heard WoW described (by one of the guys responsible for Warhammer Online, I believe) as a piece of "flawed genius". Which is really pretty well true. There are things I adore in WoW and things I loathe. Unfortunately, all the loves things are mechanically trivial (the art direction, lore and way the devs are constantly upgrading the UI based on player wants), while all the things I loathe have to do with the actual gameplay. And yeah, I'm starting to look forward to Wrath of the Lich King, but it doesn't look like it will be addressing any of the game's systemic flaws. The new quests and new zones will keep me entranced for a while, but as soon as I hit 80 I'm going to quit again. Because I don't grind, and in WoW there's really no point in endgame if you don't. And that's always been my problem with WoW, because I want to love it, but I never feel like I can actually achieve anything worthwhile. I calculate the amount of time it would take to get decent gear or a cool mount or whatever and it just ends up at, "Fuck that shit, I could be writing/drawing/playing other games/gardening/doing housework/sleeping/going to work/cutting my toenails." And the frustration of never achieving a state of satisfaction kills any enjoyment I might have otherwise found in the stuff I have done. Plus I kinda hate group content. Yeah, I know.

Still, we'll always have Diablo III…

Work

HP Service Manager 7 is a hulking pile of fail. Srsly.

Obligitory Crap Art

Finally, some art. This is all Zenntheartof: Smallville, because that's what I've been doodling most of lately. I need to learn not to draw right in the inside margin of my notebook, too.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

So dad rings me up last night and says, "We've got a letter for you here from the US. It's about a court case."

What. The. Fuck?

Thankfully, my first panic (oh gnoes, the piracy police!) was incorrect, and instead it turns out I'm named as a Member in a Class Action against ValueClick/Commission Junction. There's a website with more information, but in a nutshell I have the option to either withdraw myself from the Class or not. Despite what idiots on the 'net will try and whinge about, the only real reason you'd withdraw from the class is if you wanted to pursue separate legal action against the company, and the only reason you'd do that was if you thought you had something more to gain by suing them privately.

I don't. I can't imagine how I got nominated as a Member of the Class – probably signed up with someone else who used CJ to manage their referral program – but by doing absolutely nothing at all, the only impact it will have on me is the vague possibility that I might end up with a cheque for some nominal sum of money (no less than US$1) at some point. Unlikely, but the chance of free money is still free money.

Mildly amusing, either way.

So many things to do, so little time. I have that character-letter meme to do, care of jen-in-japan, but for the moment I think I'm going to do something else. Since my updates have gotten so infrequent, I figure the downtime is perfect for a guessing meme. So here it is: the opening lyrics to fifteen songs from my iPod. You guys guess what they are (no Google!). Ready? Go!

1. Gnarls Barkley, "Gone Daddy Gone" (raaven)
   Beautiful girl, lovely dress
   High school smiles, oh yes
   Beautiful girl, lovely dress
   Where she is now I can only guess
2. Gwen Stefani feat. Akon, "The Sweet Escape"
   If I could escape
   I would, but first of all let me say
3. Jimmy Brown
   Made of stone
   Charlie Clown
   No way home
4. I just don't wanna be lonely
   'Cause the lights, were shining ever so bright
5. This is the way you left me, I'm not pretending
6. I can feel the Earth is moving
   When the clock strikes twelve it's time to go out
7. I cried on my blood day
   There was nothing that I could hold on to
   Just a line could have helped
   Remind me of you, of you
8. Put your finger on a map
   And that's where I am
   Draw a picture of the world
   And that's where I am
9. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender"
   Keep you in the dark, you know they all pretend
   Keep you in the dark and saw it all begin
10. The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army" ( randomredux)
    I'm gonna fight 'em all
    A seven nation army couldn't hold me back
11. It's not my fault, it can't be my fault
    That you speak to me that way you do
    Now I'm split in two, I'm half me and half you
    But I hate us both, don't you?
12. OK Go, "Invincible" ( severedscythe)
    When they finally come to destroy the Earth, they'll have to go through you first
    (I bet they won't be expecting that)
    When they finally come to destroy the Earth, they'll have do deal with you first
    And now my money says they won't know about the
    thousand Fahrenheit hot metal lights behind your eyes
13. The Killers, "All These Things That I've Done" ( gnosis)
    When there's nowhere else to run
14. I've seen it with my own eyes
    How we're gettin' otherwise
    Without the luxury of leavin'
15. Shut your mouth
    My mother said

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

1. Yeah, I've been quiet recently. Somewhere in between the mad scramble of work, family business, SharePoint training and CoV I just haven't gotten around to posting (or replying much to comments; sorry guys!). But I feel guilty about it, hence this list.
2. In a burst of creativity, I've set up Google Apps for FURCED!net. This means that anyone should, theoretically, be able to sigh up for an @furced.net email addresses (bonus points; it should work with GChat). However, I need to do more research into the signup API in order to get it to register new users. Hrm…
3. I can't believe this never occurred to me before, and it's taken the lovely naa to point out the obvious; using WordPress MU for a collective site, like her's. What a brilliant idea! … Too bad I don't think I run a single domain with multiple WP installs (I do have multiple WP installs, but they're split across four domains).
4. My LJ theme doesn't work under IE7. Oh well.
5. Being on call sucks.
6. Reading people's write-ups from DragonCon is making me jealous. My favourite thus far, mostly for the mad balance of squee and sheer mundanity:
   

   I'm sad that I missed all of Michael Rosenbaum's panels, but that's mostly ameliorated by the fact that we rode in the elevator with him and he asked me "Who's Saxon?" (me: "um, he's the Master for [sic] Doctor Who, he's all evil and stuff OH MY GOD YOU'RE LEX LUTHOR AND YOU'RE SO HOT") and then he asked us for gum because he'd just eaten Mexican and sadly we didn't have any.

   Quoted From: rusty-halo.com

7. SharePoint's actually kinda cool. For a Microsoft product.
8. The CoX base editor is my new BFF. Hello~oo Gnosis Institute.¹
9. People converted to iPhones so far: 3.
10. Whom're you?
11. I've been kinda trying to stay away from Wrath of the Lich King stuff. I'm currently a bit dissilusioned with WoW's game-direction but, damn, the art-direction is making me drool.
12. I should really be paying attention to class.

… that is all.

1. Resemblance to gnosis purely coincidental. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.