Funky Footpath Drawing

 

Keeping warm Liverpool-style

Very Cool

Ezprezzo.com - Aircraft carrier entirely made of Lego

'South Park'-Scientology battle rages

USATODAY.com - 'South Park'-Scientology battle rages: " 'So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!'"

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies... You have obsructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!" - Matt Stone and Trey Parker

Ever get the feeling that Scientologist's just don't have a sense of humor? The Catholic Church has to put up with crap like this all the time (witness the Davinci Code), but the minuite anyone says anything slightly negative about their little group and it's all out war.

Greatest Book Section Title Evar

From Forbidden Planet, London.

Leblanc Mirabeau

Leblanc Mirabeau powered by the Koenigsegg engine...and designed to be road driven. 

How acceptance speeches...

...should go.

Warhammer 40k RPG In Production

It's true! Read about it on Black Industries' website. (They're the guys who did Warhammer FRP v2).

For those too lazy to click on a link (you know who you are, you lazy sods) there are actually going to be three slightly different corebooks released, each one scaling up the complexity a little.

Stage 1 is an Inquisitor's retinue. Root out heresy and Chaos, and if it looks like you're going to fail it's Exterminatus time.

Stage 2 is Rogue Trader/alien pirate game (if I knew more about this aspect of the setting, I'd go on about it a bit more). So I guess it could be a version of Firefly only River would be the navigator, locking onto the soulbeacon of the eternal Emperor and guiding the ship through Chaos itself. And if Book burned people at the stake.

Stage 3 is, of course, the Adeptus Astartes rule book - like the book of Starship Troopers only with more fanatical religion and pseudo-Latin, and marginally less 'yo'.

The first one's coming out 2007. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

A Bloody Revelation

Get a load of this article (Full article here)

'Health' meals fail to live up
From: Sunday Herald Sun
By ANNALISE WALKER
March 12, 2006

MORE than 10 meals billed as 'healthy' by fast food chains are worse for you than a Big Mac.

Research by the Sunday Herald Sun into the nutritional values of seven of Australia's fast food outlets has uncovered most fall short of health recommendations.

Of 70 meals suggested as healthier or lighter options, only 17 made the grade according to Nutrition Australia guidelines.

New franchise Sumo Salads fared best, with nine of its menu choices passing.

But a further 11 fast-food meals were found to be unhealthier than a Big Mac when kilojoules, fat, sugar and salt levels were compared.

They included sandwiches, baguettes, a pie and two salads.

None of McDonald's Deli Choices or Salads Plus meals passed, generally due to high sugar and saturated fat levels.

And none of Hungry Jack's new range of baguettes and salads passed, all being too high in salt.

Now I have to ask: Was anyone with a brain really fooled?
Yes, they may taste different, some people may actually prefer the taste, I have no problems with this. But, did you really think that the healthy options were more than just marketing bullshit? If you did then you should report to the nearest disintegration booth so that your genetic stupidity cannot be transmitted to a new generation of moronlings. I mean, was this really a surprise?

For your viewing pleasure...

[Listening to: Bran Van 3000 - Glee - Drinking in L.A. (3:56)]

Wolfmother

In the words of the immortal poets TISM...

"F@cking rock mate! F@cking rock!!"

Taken from the front row (after moshing my way there).

Das Keyboard

They claim that you will memorise the keypositions pretty quick. I guess you'd want to. 

Day 04 - 25/02/2006

The big day. Hooray

Got up at 6:30 after sleeping through the twin logging experiment. Went
for a swim in the pool (shock horror). Remembered two things. 1 - should
have brought goggles. 2 - can't kick to save myself. Still, it was nice
and relaxing.

Had breakfast again - reaonable buffet thing. Steered clear of the fry-up
selection - was not really sure of the 'chicken sausages'. Stuck to the
cereal and a pastry selection (mmm danish, jam doughnuts, muffins).

We are all suppose to meet down in the lobby around 10:30 to be transported
to the ceremony. I remember how well the plan to all meet somewhere worked
last time (it didn't), so we'll see how this one goes. Lance seemed rather
relaxed this morning (or was it stunned - I'm not sure).

Ceremony was great. Effectively three ceremonies combined into one - the
Thai, the Budhist and the Civil. Elephants = big. Very big. Those
things wandering down the beach to the ceremony certainly attracted
attention of all the people on the beach. Nothing says romance more that
sunburned tourists in theirs dt's wandering around the outskirts of a
wedding ceremony. Funniest moment was when the ice sculpture the couple
were posing in front of collapsed. Just that few seconds of terror as they
worked out what was happening was priceless. Thankfully all it did was
collapse on itself due to melting under the sun. No real damage occured.

With the ceremony finished it was on to the reception. Not surpising,
being Thailand the dishes served were mostly spicy Thai dishes. And being
such a fan of spacy food (even mildy spicy, the wimp that I am), I stuck
mostly to the rice. Nice speeches - relativly short. And then there was
the drinking. Lots of drinking. Maybe more on that later.

Day 06 - 26/02/2006

Total wreck this morning. The reception the night before somehow ended up
back in our room with a dozen people, including most of the bridal party
sans Bride and Groom naturally, consuming allof the duty-free liquoir that
no-one wanted to takeback with them. Plugged my iPod into the tv so we had
some music. It was fun. I went into my room at one stage to start some
packing for my early start in the morning and somehow passed out. for half
an our. It was one of those parties.

Eventually got the shuttle to the airport. Supposedly my baggage will go
directly through to London from Phuket, so hopefully I'll find it there.
Discovered the joy of Departure Tax - 500 Bhat you have to pay in order to
leave the country. Nice of them to tell us this wasn't it... Transferring
planes at Bangkok, after following their direcitons I somehow managed to
find myself having to go through Immigration again. Explaining to the
drone that I didn't have a departure card becuase I had already legally
'departed' the county took a little bit of explaining to them, but I
eventually eventally managed to point it out by me talking loudly and
pointing to the colouful stamp on my passported with the words 'Departed'
in nice bright letters.

Finally got onto the plane. Being served bannana chips. Wierd. The gods
are conspiring against me. I thought I would take it a little easy and ask
for a diet coke. Got served a normal coke first. Asked again for a diet
coke, and believe I've recieved a burbon and coke. Not in the mood for
booze at the moment...

Was served a beef mignon as the meal. The apple and plumb crumble tart was
nice. Now settling in for the long flight.

Skipped watching Pride & Prejudice - how many times do they have to remake
that? The BBC one from a few years ago is still the defnitive version for
my mind. Watched Mask of Zorro - can see why it didn't do anywhere near as
well as its predecessor. It was an okay film, but it was really dragged
down by its beginning. It just didn't seem like they knew how to get the
whole show started. And the stupidly contrived conflict/fighting between
the two leads - that kind of stuff went out the window years ago.

Am starting to wish this bloody flight was over. The damn button to signal
the cabin crew doesn't work, they all seemed to be somehow hiding and I
just want to get a bloody drink of some kind.

Temp on arrival = 4 Degrees. A bit of a change from what I'm use to.

Met up with Kathleen at Heathrow. She was a bit concerned that she was
going be late for some reason, but it all worked out in the end. Had to
catch the Express from Heathrow as the regular Tube was not running.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the British public transport system.
Kathleen rattled off a whole bunch of things about getting around on the
way back to her place, but they all pretty much went right over my head.
Hope it makes a little more sense in the morning.

You gotta love abandonware

Dos games we all knew and loved

Day 03 - 24/02/2006

Pulled up relatively well after last nights activities. Got woken up at
7am by a phone call from a friend in Australia. Hopefully more on that
later.

Today the plan is to go shooting. That should be big fun (I hope). If we
ever get there.

The shooting was good fun. I used a .45. Th gun had bit of a kick - more
jerk upwards than anything else. I ended up winning the pistol shoot with
an 85% score.

Went looking for some souvineers to take home to people. Not a great deal
of luck.

Went out for dinner tonight. Do you think we went out for some authentic
Thai cuisine? Nope - we had Italian instead.

Went back to Patong Beach- sober this time. The place still smells pretty
bad - which you don't really notice when you've had a few. Managed to do
some shopping for a bunch of stuff. It's amazing how quick a price will
drop when you walk away from a vendor. 1200 to 600 Baht or less in the
blink of an eye.

Pepsi Latte - a drink that's probably not going to catch on.

Vultures

We're currently having one of the (semi-) regular curbside clean-ups. This
is where the Council (eventually) comes along to collect all the junk
you've left out.

Of course along with this collection come the parasites. These creatures
trawl along the side of the road in their utes, presumably looking for
items to sell at the local flea market.

We pul out on the curb our old lounge suite. It was only 32 years old,
infested with moths, cracking at the joins with rubber straps that snap
every time you sit in it.

It didn't last three hours.

A bunch of old wooden patio seats we no longer used because the seats are
cracked in half. Gone. My old parallel port scanner which made grinding
sounds like a draw bridge every time you plugged it in & no longer scanned
anything. Gone. I'm now waiting for someone to nick the deceased monitors
I've put down there. The ones it's rained into...

Now the parasites k.nicking stuff isn't my major gripe (although you'd
never guess). What really bugs me are the loosers who dump their junk
while loading up on ours. Things like sheets of glass & broken bits of
fibro. Tossers.

Changi Airport, 4am

Well, here I am in Singapore. Staying in international territory, of course, since my bag's on its way to Phuket without me actually meeting it on the way.

And for a bustling international airport, at 4am, it's a ghost-town. Only about a quarter of the fabled duty-free shopping precinct is actually open, and those that are open generally have a single staff-member looking hopefully at passers-by.

Well, more like passer-by - me. Did I mention it's a ghost town here? There are other people, but only, like, a hundred. In the entire international terminal. It's like they know something I don't.

So, with four hours to go before I need to be ready to board my flight (I've already walked over there and about halfway back), there doesn't seem to be much more to do than listen to the muzak.

It's gone from almost-but-not-quite 'Lily Was Here' to almost-but-not-quite another saxophone instrumental I don't think I ever found out the name of, then detoured off to what Manowar might have sounded like if they had decided to sell out and get a sound that was real thin (instead of playing on TEN) - and I walked past one of the few cafes that's open (prepackaged food, but I did spy a coffee machine) and there was some funky house music stuff being played. (Oh, look, I don't know electronic genres - it might have actually been acid-trip-hop-washboardboogie, but I wouldn't be able to pick it.) And apart from a guy who's stopped me to ask me what Singapore time is, no-one's talking to anyone else. There's some construction work going on.

Here was I thinking (call me mad, perhaps) that maybe getting away on a holiday from the shiftworker lifestyle was supposed to make me perhaps feel more like a member of the human race (rather than some outsider - Lord, what fools these mortals be!). But no, here I am, drifting along with the other ghosts.

And the Skytrain connection between the terminals (which when I saw, immediately made me think WHEE!) doesn't run until 6am. So it's just wandering this empty mausoleum.

Oh, and if I sound depressed? I'm not, not really - just mellow. But being in a huge, virtually empty building gets to you. Try it some time.

And you thought the first one was bad...

...they've somehow found the money to make a sequel. Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God.

How scary is that.

But at least you know the movie is going to be true to its roots. I mean - just look at the title screens...

Multi-Monitor Madness

Would you like to know more?

This is nuts 

Very Nuts 

INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS

Site here

In the name of physics decency, to protect the minds of children everywhere, so that they may grow up in a world where they know the difference between speed and velocity, we have taken the responsibility to rate movies for their portrayal of excessively bad physics. The system is as follows:

* GP = Good physics in general

* PGP = Pretty good physics (just enough flaws to be fun)

* PGP-13 = Children under 13 might be tricked into thinking the physics were pretty good; parental guidance is suggested

* RP = Retch

* XP = Obviously physics from an unknown universe

* NR = Unrated. When a movie is obviously a parody, fantasy, cartoon or is clearly based on a comic book it can't be rated but may still have some interesting physics worth discussing.

My guess is that Star Trek is categorised as both RP and XP, but where is the category for 'Plain Bloody Stupid'?

Remember when...

... you only needed 10 minuites for an exam, and not 45...

[Listening to: The Ramones - Anthology CD02 - Daytime Dilemma (4:33)]

How long until I can have one?

This looks extremely cool. Forget the practical uses: I want one on a games machine!



It's the result of some sensing research by these guys.


(Link courtesy of Schlock Mercenary, video mirrored courtesy of the tech blog Bad Ace Tech Show, technology courtesy of Jefferson Y. Han and his team.)

...the show must go on...?

Two nights at work, two nights of drama.

Wednesday night, for the first time I can ever recall - a show was cancelled barely two hours before curtain up. I guess it's kind of hard to find a replacement for the understudy to the understudy to the understudy for a main role. So we had the wonderful job of telling 2,000 odd people "Sorry - but the show you've come to see isn't on tonight". Was kind of fun... not.

Thursday night. 7:29pm. Show starts at 7:30pm. And I get the task of relocating almost half an entire row of people (all 18 of them) from Door 5 (stalls) to Door 21(Second Balcony). Why? Because the seats these people had were double-booked (ie - sold twice). Was it my fault? No. Did I sell the tickets? No. Did these people care? No. They just wanted someone to blame. And guess who that was.

Friday night - I'm sort of dreading. These things are suppose to happen in threes aren't they???

[Listening to: Foo Fighters - One By One - Disenchanted Lullaby (4:33)]

When you wish upon a star.

VG Cats is just so much twisted fun sometimes.

'tard

Guess what type of car I drive....

Looks like a squashed one of these to me...

.

Lamborghini Muira

The New Lamborghini Muira concept car...way funky


 


 

Random Advertisments

Not entirely appropriate considering what was being downloaded.

They don't stuff around

They don't even wait for January to finish before dragging this crap out. 

[Listening to: Royal Crown Revue - Passport To Australia - Stormy Weather (3:45)]

Happy Trogday

It has been three years since TROGDOR the BURNiNATOR. Happy Trogday

Why I hate Sony - Part 34219

Now we all remember a few months ago how Sony got into all sorts of trouble for distributing (possibly copyrighted) software that installed itself on your PC without your knowledge when you played one of their audio CD's. Just another example of the bone-headed mentality of Sony.

Now here's another one.

Remember a little while back, I was going on about a debut CD by a singer called Nellie McKay and the difficulty I had finding the thing. What stood out from this CD even more than the music (which I really liked) was that it was a double CD - two albums worth of music. I thought that was pretty unusual for a debut album - especially from a major label. And the music got pretty good reviews, especially from the critics.

Fast forward to 2006. McKay's new album was suppose to be released in January. It wasn't. Instead, she was.

Sony really does seem to be having trouble with their female artists who don't fit into cookie-cutter mainstream pop don't they.

And why was McKay dumped you ask? Because of a fight over the length of her second album. Now she wasn't wanting to release some six disc prog-rock odyssey. She'd prepared a 23 track 65 minute disc. Sony instead wanted her to release a 17 track 48 minute album. And they weren't going to let her disc out of the warehouse until she agreed. So - they dumped her.

Is it no wonder the general public has such a casual attitude when it comes to downloading music? When a record company signs a performer to produce music, they deliver an album and the response of the company is "No - we don't want to put out that much music. Let's leave half the album on the studio floor." I guess it's just the general public's way of showing them the same respect they seem from the recording companies.

Now sure McKay probably didn't do herself any favours when she kept telling all he patrons at her most recent concerts the personal email address of her studio chairman and asking them to email him to get her full album out. But still.... why shaft fans in this way?

Bloody Sony.

[Listening to: Blur - Parklife - Parklife (3:05)]

Why is it...

...that when I hit 9:30am at work, all I want to do is curl up in a ball
and go to sleep. Yet when it rolls around to 12:30pm I'm bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed, raring to go? Does it take that long for the caffine to kick
in these days?

Galactica

Hooboy - that series is getting crazy. Just when you think the show can't
get any darker and more depressing, they find a whole new level of trouble
to take the show into. God it's fun.

How are Nindendo still in business?

With games like this

rock

Hot Fuzz is go!

iBelieve

devoted1.com - and you thought MAc users were just normal scary...

New Year's Eve

DSC00339, originally uploaded by JamesA.

Woohoo.... I guess.

Pathetically Funny

 

Power

Christmas Day. 30+ degree heat. Niceish breeze. And yet another one of
Beattie's Blundering Blackouts means I can't open the fridge to get myself
a beer.

When will Queenslander's wake up to the arrogance and incompetence? Maybe
when they've melted?

Has anyone seen my stapler?

Doesn't it suck when you're ordering Christmas presents for people from Amazon and you realise that in order to justify the postage you're about to be gouged, youve got to go and order a few things for yourself as well. One of the things I got was this.

The Special Edition with Flair!. Sometimes, it's just not fair.

The Internet Is For Porn

Apparently, there's a Broadway musical called "Avenue Q". It has a song in it.

This song has been spliced together with World of Warcraft characters pretty much lip-synching.

No idea why, but boy is this funny.

A new game to play

Maybe up the coast?

heh

Love this strip.

ASoIaF FAQ

ASoIaF FAQ - some interesting possible answers for the series.

Now these guys are having a bad day

Oops, Oops and Oops

Crows

Finished the book. Pissed off it's only half a book. Want part 2 now. Is it just me, or is Cersei Lannister completely f*cked in the head or what?

[Listening to: Jeff Buckley - Eternal Life EP - Eternal Life [Road Version] (4:50)]

Sacrilege

Is it just me or do all Ramones songs sound exactly the same?

In case you were wondering...

Game Console Controller Family Tree
How did the current home-console controllers come to be? How have they evolved? You may have noticed some similarities between the current generation controllers, or between them and the previous generations of controllers. So, how do they all tie together?

And you scoffed at Scientology.

You thought that there was no way Scientology gave you superpowers?

Check out this video evidence. It's chilling.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill To Men

I used to think that most Christmas Lights were, while pretty, pretty boring.

After seeing this one, though, I know they are.

I just hope that these lights have the soundtrack blaring out of the house when the lights start up...

heh

Got to love Penny Arcade.

Guess the Dictator or Television Sit-Com Character

This is rather cool: Guess the Dictator or Television Sit-Com Character
This is pretty good, even on 'unpopular sit-coms'

Where did the lumberjack come from?

Watch this advert (Spike Jonze = genius/madman) and then ask yourself - "Why doesn't Myer ever have such interesting adverts?"

[Listening to: Nellie McKay - Get Away From Me (Disc 01) - Waiter (4:15)]