Archive for April, 2006

Errata Sunday.

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

I often don’t bother with movie reviews, but when I do, Mr Ebert really is the man. I watched the trailer for Stick It and assumed it must be Bring It On, but with gymnastics. Turns out it has the same the writer, has moved on to writing AND directing. So that’s super. One of Ebert’s comments was amusing:

The story will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a movie about a troubled athlete and a brilliant coach. It will also be familiar to anyone who has not.

Of course Stick It won’t have Kirsten Dunst AND Eliza Dushku, so really it will suck. But still. Erbert’s review of Bring It On is, I reckon, spot on.

Edward Norton fans will also be pleased to see that he has a new film coming out called Down in the Valley which looks cool.
I was clearing out some junk downloads last night and came across a Fan Flick trailer for EP3 called A Lost Hope It really isn’t particularly good. Too many poor poor jokes, and too much pissing on R2D2 for my liking. But some of it was amusing, and even if it sucked – man it must have taken a lot of work, oh yes. The Obi-Wan character is amusing sitting back drinking from his hip flask, and the Emperor’s names for the Death Star also good:

Sphere o Fear
Planet Death
The Killing Ball
Death Moon
Giant Hurt Ball

And finally, it ends with Yoda “Way to go Kenobi.” which made me laugh. Oh yes.

/derail:

Wikipedia is one of the best things EVER. I went looking for a link to Obi-Wan and as usual got lost in the maze of knowledge. What I found this time, was an article on the various styles of light sabre combat. Of which there are about seven. I knew there would be “some” but I thought to check the geek.

SMS to Ben: Pop Quiz: How many forms of light sabre combat are there?

Two minutes later:

Ben SMS to Me: Depends on what source you’re going by. the Jedi Knight games had three, KOTOR 2 has six I think, stunt guy on prequels was talking about seven I think.

So there you go.

Back to the blog.

Erm.

WOW Update: Have I mentioned before that I don’t feel too bad about how much WOW I play because I literally watch NO TV? Not sure if it balances out, but there you go. I have watched two hours of TV this week, finally watching the crime porn from last Sunday. I often tape it but don’t see it because I forget about it, but this week Mum and Dad have been in Kaikoura so I’ve had to spend sometime at home looking after the cat.

Anyway, gogo WOW. Pukeko made 60 this week, which is pretty impressive all thinge considered (more the in game stuff like not grouping much, rather than real world stuff) Also, our guild kicks arse. Formed early February, and we’ve cleared MC and BWL and are currently up to the third boss in AQ40.

I know some of you think WOW is a big waste of time / lame, but I do honestly find it 1) Cool, and 2) somewhat interesting on a personal level. The amount of work and organisation required to have 40+ people regularly showing up and doing their jobs is significant. As such, we the NZ/AU guild on Dragonblight are awesome. Yes we are.

Somepeople get very excited. This is one of those guys. We have Hoarn (usually), and he doesn’t get this excited. This is some raid vs Onyxia – It is somewhat loud, and probably won’t make sense to you, but thanks to the flash animation and the “throw more DOTS” I laughed and laughed. You can too.

Oh yeah, looks like TBALC will be go for 48 Hour Movie goodness this year. Currently in the hunting for gear stages. More news as it comes to hand.

For those of you who don’t know. Go ask a ninja. Do it now. I thought I’d posted this previously, but I can’t see it. Especially see Ninja Dogs, Ninja Omnibus and Ninja Gifts.

The cannon has been sold on Trademe. If has gone to the home of some woman and her mute partner who are attending a pirate party soon. She seemed pretty excited about it. He seemed mute. Here are some words that rhyme with cannon (c/- Maddy): Stickman and those lazy Scotts.

Trademe recently sold for a hundred million dollars.

Ha, sod me it actually sold for 700 million dollars. Holy CRAP.

My point is that I was talking to my Dad about it, and he was thinking it sold for way to much, but I pointed out that unlike some of the sifty dot-com (why didn’t I make millions then?) companies, Trademe is actually awesome. It expects 31 million successful sales this year and makes at least 1 dollar off of all of those sales. I’d say the average is probably closer to at least $5 (cars for example make it $20 minimum) and so 5 times 30 million is 150 million and so yeah that is a decent income. Not to mention the advertising revenue of having the number one site in NZ. Additionally their costs must be pretty low, especially given that the help desk is 0900.

My point? Dunno, just thought I’d comment on it and say Mr Morgan – good job, but I’m not convinced your some kind of uber genius web guy. You just copied eBay. And it made you 227 million dollars, which is more than pretty nice. And of course you actually did copy eBay rather than just think about it. You have to be in to win. Also, you have some better than eBay things, like auto-extend. Oh yeah.

And now a story (why are you still reading this rambling Sunday afternoon story?) about recent sales on TradeMe.

This is why TradeMe rules. A few Fridays ago I got around to putting some used computer parts up for sale. Digital camera and a few seconds later, stuff for sale. In this case some RAM. This was around 9:20pm on a Friday night. Put it up for $1 reserve, with a $20 buyout and $5 courier fee. Eleven minutes later, at 9:33pm I got an email from Trademe telling me it had been sold.

Awesome. And that is why TradeMe rules.

I’ve sold a couple more bits of accumulated computer parts and most of the way to my savings goal of mighty digital camera. The Canon Ixus 800IS

Why do we like it? Image Stabalisation, plus four times optical zoom. That’s why we like it. It still doesn’t appear to be in NZ, though the shops keep telling me “in two weeks.”

It might have lost out though, I wandered into a Vodafone store earlier in the week and spotted the Nokia 6680.

799 is I reckon too much for a camera, but the woman seemed impressed that I’d been a customer since pre 2000 and was going to give me $100 off. But from the way she said it, it sounded liked I should have said, erm, $200 is better. (Especially as Will found an online shop selling it for $629)

But even that would be 599 which is still a lot. So I’m looking around on TradeMe, seems to be a fair few on offer. Often still in the box, so I might aim for one of those.

I think I’ve mentioned to many people, who have suffered through my thinking aloud re camera phones is that I was initially opposed to them, because anything that costs money to use gets annoying, and I would prefer it to be part of my plan.

BUT with the invention of phones capable of connecting to other things – such as my laptop, the camera on a phone becomes useful – and free – because I can transfer it to laptop, and thence the world. (Although Mog and Si demonstrate that even this can be difficult)

My whole concern over buy a digital camera, well not the entire concern, but one of them, has been my desire to take MORE photos, MORE of the time. (I’m also concerned about the lack of “printing out of” of digital photos, but that is a different issue) And so that is one of the reasons I’ve leaned more towards a compact than a pro-sumer sized one, let alone a DSLR (I don’t got skills enough to utilise one of those) A camera phone takes this step even further. Even with a compact camera, most people don’t take them with them everywhere, and I think this is a bit of a shame. The nokia has a 1.3 megapixel camera, and that is damn decent for web viewing. So maybe that will do for now. I can score me a canon later on.

Obviously I could take the camera with me everywehre I go, but in the end, isn’t taking my phone with me – which I already do – just easier? (Unless it is Si’s small moon sized)

Finaly, becuase I feel that this post needs some more blockquote, an awesome headline from Fark (from a few weeks back):

Belarus, Belarus, they are opposed to Lukashenko? Police swoop in like lightning, very very frightening, see?

Oh, the news link is dead. Ah well, you get the idea.

I should probably mention ANZAC day. But I won’t.

Ode To The Pwned

Friday, April 28th, 2006

I’m writing a song.

Support the PWNED, it’s not their fault they SUCK.
Their skills are weak, the PWNED
Support the PWNED.
They hide their shame at HOME!
Support the PWNED
It’s more than just bad LUCK
Support the PWNED
It’s not their fault they SUCK.
… yes it is.

I forgot a few other lines, but they were similar. Gogo commments!

Bubblicious.

Saturday, April 22nd, 2006

There have been some great Fark headlines recently.

Massive quake rocks Kamchatka peninsula. Yakutsk and Irkutsk plan to attack, get card with little cannon on it

Oil prices hit $71/barrel because of Nigerian supply disruptions. If only there were some way to ASSIST IN EXPORTATION OF GOODS PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA

Huge explosion in Kabul — plume of white smoke signals new Afghan pope

Well, I was laughing.

Of Course

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

I awoke this morning to the sound of two british chaps discussing a witch’s hat outside of my bedroom door. This really didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The discussion continued and I ascertained that these guys were apparently electricians and that this “witch’s hat” was something that they wanted to put in the roof.

Recollection filtered into my brain slowly as I recalled Mum saying something about having someone coming to look at the fan in the bathroom.

Presumably these were those guys. Why they were British, I may never know. Why they were discussing a witch’s hat, I’m slightly more up to speed with.

I’m sure when I get home their will be a nice new powered extractor fan, which should be a significant step forward. The old fan was some kind of “passive” fan, designed (presumably) to essentially use the convection currents of the steam in the bathroom propel the blades around and suck the steam into the roof cavity.

I’m not sure if that makes sense even theoretically… Do average “steam in a bathroom” type convection currents generate enough energy to turn cieling fans? Is it more or less equivalent to having a hole in the ceiling for the steam to escape out of? Who knows. And more importantly, who is in the business of knowing such things?

Be it because of physical unlikelyhood, or simply through old and busted mechanism, our ceilling fan has been more on the completely non functional side of “passive” than I believe is desired in a fan. So now a new “powered” fan is to be deployed. With bonus “sucking steam into the sky, rather than the ceiling” action.

Why this had to happen at 8am… That’s a, that’s a Goddamn mystery!

Cannon For Sale or Rent. (Technically, only Sale)

Wednesday, April 19th, 2006

If I’d had more time, or rather, if I’d pasted it over to Ben, this would be a whole lot cooler. Si too could no doubt have brought more of his own special brand of “funny.” But I was impatient. Once you piss around for 6-8 months on something, when you finally actually do it. You do it NOW, no more pissing around will be tolerated.

So, if you need a Cannon that fires nothing but air, I have one you can buy.

A mighty AIR FIRING CANNON! This cannon was built for one of the great parties of 2004, the Bounty Pirate Party. You may remember it, but if you weren’t invited, or you got too drunk, you might not.

At its heart there lies a powerful Airzooka (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/60b6/)

Protecting the mechanism from the elements is hand cut and polished(ish) polystyrene, painted pirate BLACK The Airzooka core of the cannon is garish pink – it was unfortunately the only colour available at the commencement of hostilities..

The overall quality of the cannon is: “Made by an actual engineer, with little or no regard to actual engineering.” It survived the party (Ben for example didn’t), it has survived in the garage for over a year, and now it is surviving office politics in at work, but it might need some touch up painting – especially urban camouflage if you plan on using it within the CBD.

The cannon is mobile thanks to four trusty wheels requisitioned from a plastic lawnmower. It has some additional polystyrene bricks to assist targeting – to hold the canon at the correct firing arc. And is raised and based upon some form of wood.

This cannon has an operating range (as tested in our office just now) of over 12m.

This cannon fires air – so theoretically nobody can get hurt if you shoot them in the face. I suppose the wind could whip their hair into their eyes or something.

Note: Never fired in anger. Not exportable to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Australia, or where otherwise prohibited by law.

Shipping: Delivered in Christchurch for $5 Shipped NZ wide for $X – It is approximately 80cm x 60 x 80 and weighs a couple of kilos. I have a box that should fit, but will need to check with NZ post for costings. I’ll see if I can’t figure something out later today.

So… Go buy a cannon. What the world needs now are cannons. Etc etc Cannons.

Those of you needing some visual reminders can behold the Cannon’s creator with his magnificent creation…

Cannon and Creator

Heh

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

Really need to sort out my remainder links, but for now, it sucks to be Frodo.

Also,  Metasyntactic Variables. That is what things like Wikipedia are all about. I feel educated (and geekucated).