FA Cup 2006

Saturday night, I decided to meet up with a few friends and watch the FA Cup final between Liverpool and West Ham. We went out to see it at the Pig N Whistle at the Riverside Centre. And can I just tell you that the bouncers at that place are a bunch of total wankers. My night started well, having to work the opening night of a show. That naturally had a post-performance function, which of course wasn't on my roster. So rather than a 10:45 finsh, as was written down, I then had the joyst of sitting around until 12:15am until the special people decided to leave.

Then it gets better. I have to brave the joys of Brisbane's overly regulated taxi industry. Second only to the Hotelier's in the way they protect their fiefdom by preventing any chance of competition. Queue another 15-20 minuites standing on the side of the road at a taxi rank, waiting for a taxi to deign to show up. I actually had a small amount of luck in being able to share a ride with two girls heading into the valley, so that saved 10 minuites. And I shouldn't have bothered. Why?

Because of those bloody bouncers at the pub. Have a look at this picture. This, apparrently, is a pub that is too full to let any more people in until a minimum number leave.


Does that look full to you? Nope, me either. As I said - wankers!!!. A small mercy was that I got to see a small corner of one tv. So while I twiddled my thumbs waiting, and the bouncers diddled themselves by flaunting their mighty powers, I got the miss the remaining 20 minuites of the first half, and another 15 or so of the second half.

But I stuck around, and eventually managed to be let in. And what a finish to the game. Liverpool 2-0 down after 23 minuites. Equalising in the 91st minuite of stoppage time with a 30 metre shot on goal. And winning on penalties after half the players had collapsed with cramp 3-1.


The crunchy floor (not the best shot) that was covered in spilt beer and broken glass following the 3rd equaliser.


People freaking out over the shootout.

I ended the night hoarse and covered in champagne some nutter bought after singing like lunatics. The 4 pints in 40 minuites probably didn't help either ;) An absolute stormer.

As for the highlights of the game? What this and marvel.

In the tradition of thumb related stuff

Finger gallery

Ever seen the fire-suppression system in a air craft hangar?

Air Force Base Fire System Test Photos

Battlestar Galacticsimpsons

pantsketch: Battlestar Galacticsimpsons

In Nomine Fic

CSI: The Marches

Basically it is a Serpah, an Elohite and a Cherub questioning a sentient parchment.

Short and entertaining. Especially the bit about the purple bag.

George is probably getting more of my money

This September: Original Unaltered Trilogy on DVD

May 03, 2006

Fans can look forward to a September filled with classic Star Wars nostalgia, led by the premiere of LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy video game and the long-awaited DVD release of the original theatrical incarnations of the classic Star Wars trilogy.

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

And I remember when you were never going to see the originals again. I guess everything has its price...

Snakes on a Plane

Yes - a real movie. To quote Samuel L. Jackson

"They had already changed the title when I got to Canada to start shooting. I let it go for a while. Then one day all the producers were standing there, and I'm saying, "So are you seriously going to leave this name like this?" And they're going, "Yeah, we don't want to give too much away to the audience." I'm like, "Yeah you do. That's the way you get them in here. Nobody wants to see Pacific Air Flight 121. People want to see Snakes on a Plane." When I picked up the script and I saw the title, I didn't even read it and I said, "I want to do it." You know, before I opened the first page, Snakes on a Plane. If this is what I think it is, I want to be in this. I want to be on a plane full of poisonous snakes. And I want to see other people on a plane full of poisonous snakes. You say Snakes on a Plane, people who don't like snakes are intrigued. The people who don't like to fly are intrigued. The people who don't like both are totally terrified now. People who just like seeing mayhem are ready for that. They want to see, you know, people enclosed in a big tin tube getting attacked by poisonous snakes. Come on! What could be more exciting than that, you know? What do you do? What do you do until the plane lands? Come on, Snakes on a Plane, that's the title."

Finnish monster metal set to invade Eurovision

Pinched from Crikey.

The countdown has started to the world's kitschiest songfest, the Eurovision Song Contest. Finland has participated in 40 Eurovision songfests, with a record eight last positions. Some countries are notorious for voting low against countries who have slighted them, but when was the last time Finland insulted anyone? These are well-deserved bona fide last positions. (To get an idea of the competition you may be interested in this gem – a Finnish music video from the 1980s).

But things are different this year. The Finns have nothing to lose, and have broken with tradition in how to select the Finnish entry. Usually, YLE (the Finnish national broadcaster and Eurovision delegate) appoints a panel of experts who choose the entry from groups nominated by Finnish record labels. This year, YLE invited the public to vote by SMS and phone in from the groups nominated by Finnish record labels. And the result? Well, it's not ABBA.

The Finns voted for Lordi, a heavy metal band from north of the Arctic Circle – they got a whopping 42% of the popular vote. The Eurovision website notes with understatement that "hard rock is a genre seldom associated with Eurovision".

"What we want to bring out from Finland at Eurovision is the winter darkness of kaamos, the cold, reindeer meat and blood pancakes", says the band. Lordi perform in elaborate monster costumes, masks, make-up and long black fingernails – they look like a cross between orks, vikings, Freddie Kruger and Kiss.

Last week, the US International Herald Tribune reported the story on the front page: "Monster Band has Finns fretting over face it shows". The article suggested that the Finnish public's choice reflected the Finns' low self esteem. The Finnish MEP Alexander Stubbs is quoted as saying that Lordi could embarass Finland when it takes the EU presidency in July 2006.

The IHT story was then reported in the national daily Helsingin Sanomat. It is hard to tell whether the painfully self-conscious Finns are fretting about Lordi being selected or fretting about the IHT reporting that they are fretting about Lordi being selected.

What will Terry Wogan make of Lordi? Finland may still come last. But it will go out with a bang.

Photo's from London - Part 03

IMG_1024, originally uploaded by JamesA.

The final set from my trip to London.

Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing

Damn, piece of crap, bugger, stupid bloody ... it goes on like this.

Bloody Heat Sinks

Why is it, when installing a CPU and Heat Sink that the CPU is bloody easy and the heat sink is a freakin' ordeal?

Why does it need to feel like you are about to break the motherboard in two before the bastard finally clicks in?

Photo's From London - Part 02

IMG_0932, originally uploaded by JamesA.

This time from Lords.

Citation

Legal Assignments. Why does it always seem to take longer to ensure all
your citations and references are correct than it does to actually write
the bloody thing..

Me and My Shadow, Pt. 1

My Boring Ass Life » Me and My Shadow, Pt. 1

As people who know me realise, I'm a pretty big fan of Kevin Smith and his movies (except for the Bennifer disaster). This is the first in a series of posts about some of the troubles he's had keeping his on-screen partner on the straight and narrow. Pretty sad reading.

I would have though that was obvious...

 

Photo's From London - Part 01

IMG_0877, originally uploaded by JamesA.

Some more pictures (for those who care) can be found here.

Fair call?

 

For Nick

Wired News: The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?

You can never have enough Vikings

Interesting...

Places I visited

Tickets (and the like) from a few of the places I visited.

They mock me

On my recent trip to the U.K., I managed to make my way from London up to Liverpool to watch a Premier League match.

While jumping through a few hoops, I managed to get a really good price for the tickets. Most Premier League games, particularly those played by the major clubs (such as Liverpool) sell out weeks in advance. So foreign suckers like myself can pay anything up to £120 per ticket. I didn't pay anywhere near that for both of the tickets (so I could take my London accomodation along ;)).


The game I managed to see was Liverpool v Charlton. With Liverpool in third place at the time, I was hoping (and expecting to see) a Liverpool victory. Naturally that wasn't going to happen.

Despite enjoying the whole experience, I walked away a little annoyed with a 0-0 draw. Still - that's football.

I get back to Australia and what comes next, I don't find amusing.

18 Goals.

In 4 games.

A team whose strikers could only score 1 goal post Christmas suddenly manage to score 18 freaking goals in 4 bloody games.

Liverpool v Fulham 5 - 1.

Liverpool v Newcastle 3 - 1.

Liverpool v Birmingham 7 - 0.

Liverpool v Everton 3 -1.

That's why they mock me. Bastards. Maybe they saw this sign in 'The Kop'

One for Josh to test

True20 Adventure Roleplaying: True fun, true excitement, true adventure, True20!

Free PlanetSide

PlanetSide Reserves

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.