Updated: Ben's blog link was borked
I'm far too hung-over to do anything exciting today. I didn't quite make it to see the Baggsmen playing at the Basement last night, instead opting for the cosy confines of the Cricketers. While I'm a little miffed that I didn't go and see some music, I don't think I really missed the overpriced drinks at the Basement. The pub is pretty nice, and would make a welcome change from the Bank as a default venue for after-work drinks. Of course, being slap bang in the middle of nowhere does not help with getting public transport there.
In sharp counterpoint to my debauched evening, is this (link from Ben) email that I heard about from a few people at work. There is probably no meaningful context that I could provide to the email, except to simply say that the experiences detailed are both powerful and inspiring.
I've added a technology section, skillfully disguised as the Geek link. Contributions to Open source projects, and the bits and pieces of glue that make this site up will be placed in that section.
It's been about a week since we started to rebuild the dot-com dream in the biotechnology arena. Out first acquisitions in this dream were the Airzookas, and while amusing, are difficult to master as a truly effective office weapon. Due to the increasing frustrations of modern working life, it became quickly apparent that we needed a quick and easy method of releasing pent-up frustrations, in preference to the time-consuming and laborious task of aiming and shooting airzookas. When trying to emulate dot-com excesses of the past, you cannot go past the air-hockey table as a potent symbol of too much money and too little sense.
After passing a collection around for the paltry sum of $AU 15 each, we made the purchase of the table from another symbol of dot-com success, Ebay. Anticipation built up over the week before the table arrived, as we all eagerly awaited for our 5 foot bundle of joy to arrive from the importers in Melbourne. When the package finally arrived on the Wednesday of the next week, we quickly set to work building it. Despite the lack of adult supervision, we were able to construct the table and have it set up to play in record time. It was at this point of time that all productivity dropped in the office, and has yet to recover.
The table has a number of quirks about it - cheap construction, noise, and a lack of decent air flow being notable problems. These quirks, however, all pale in comparison to the problem of projectile pucks. It is common to see the pucks fly off the table due to certain people hitting them far too hard, and in fact numerous injuries have been sustained from these incidents. I apologise both in advance and in retrospect to anyone I've injured playing this.
From Liquidgeneration: "According to law officers, Mathers was hysterical when police arrived and told them that she killed her boyfriend only after he accused her of illegally downloading music and erased about 2,000 of her MP3s. Mathers complained that it took 3 months to build her music collection."
Kids, this is why you should not download music from the internet. The best bit is that she was remorseful that she had spent so long building up her collection, and that it was gone in an instant. A further lesson that was learnt here is that you should back up often.
One of my gifts for my birthday was a swanky looking t-shirt with the above caption printed on it. It's quite a nice t-shirt, but it raised a few issues when I wore it. This apparel is from the trendy fashion label FCUK, who I still haven't forgiven for making their name an actual acronym. It would have been a lot more fun if they were just called fcuk, with the implication that they were too stupid to spell a simple four letter swear word. The t-shirt is quite well tailored, and you can tell that it's got quality stamped all over it. Of course, when I say stamped all over it, I really mean stamped all over it except the print on the front, where a basic lack of thought by the fashion monkey who designed it has led to many people questioning both the accuracy of the statement that it makes, as well as my ego. I feel that I should clear up any misconceptions about the t-shirt.
At a first glance at the t-shirt, one can make the assumption that the statement made is one of vanity - that I (as wearer of said t-shirt) find it difficult to be one of the beautiful people. Of course, as I'm not classified amongst these ultra-beautiful people, a large amount of paying out goes on about how incongruous the t-shirt is in comparison to um.. me. However, after about half an hour of this verbal abuse, I decided that maybe I could not only actually defend the accuracy of the t-shirt, but of the intentions of the misguided designer who had decided to print a "witty" slogan on a t-shirt.
I think the t-shirt is actually begging a very important question as to what "this good looking" actually is. The spectrum of good looking-ness ranges from supermodel to beaten around the head by a plank of wood. I think the designer was really trying to make a statement about the harsh realities of modern life, where everyone from the bulemic catwalk princess to the feature challenged hobgoblin face challenges that transcend ugly, beautiful or unclassifiable. Clearly, if the designer had more flexibility with the design, he/she would have written the slogan "It is difficult to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous judgements on face value (especially so if you are ugly), and I empathise which each and every one of you (especially the ugly ones)".
The economy on words has clearly marred an otherwise impressive statement that could have been made. My favourite thing about this t-shirt however, is that such economy was shown in words that he/she decided to leave out the apostrophe in "it's". I mean, seriously. Its not that hard.
I've finally gotten around to fixing up the CSS and JavaScript components of this site so that users of that alternative operating system can view these pages without too much discomfort. Once I figure out a prominent, but non-intrusive method of displaying extra crap to IE users, I'll start placing subtle, but subliminal messages encouraging them to ditch IE.
On the other hand, there have been a few really encouraging rumblings from Dave Hyatt (link), who has been releasing tid-bits of information about the new stuff happening in Safari. Of particular note are the nifty form enhancements and CSS3 support. This should make life a lot easier for the average web-monkey out there, as well as opening up some really cool layout possiblities for pages.
Edit - 4/7/04: Just to clarify.. I'd like to think it was accurate.
ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population. Myers-Briggs Word Test result. A surprisingly accurate result.
"Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September. We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers."