Sam's Insane Ravings

Damn this firewall. I can't resolve OpenNIC top level domains now. Bastards! It's all a big conspiracy to make my life less joyous.

I only just noticed, since my machine at uni is new and hence still being set up software and configuration wise. A slashdot story reminded me that I'd forgotten to set up my resolv.conf for it. As you would expect in this fascist place though, the firewall destroyed my attempt.

Speaking of setting up my machine. Yesterday I rewrote my MoD player, since the one I wrote years ago was in /usr/local/ on my old machine's hard drive. That hard drive was formatted to hold a windows install at home, since it didn't contain anything that couldn't be found on freshmeat. Or so I thought.

I'm sure all those who have done programming (which is the entire readership I suspect :) have heard of plan to throw one away. It's an essay by Fred Brooks which can be found in The Mythical Man Month. That entire book is a must read for anyone involved in the production of software. If you haven't read it and are a programmer or a manager of programmers go and read it now. I'll quote a section of the essay for those foolish enough not to have read it (and for those who aren't involved in software - but I've already mentioned there aren't any of those people who read this :), any typos are mine.

In most projects, the first system built is barely usable. It may be too slow, too big, awkward to use, or all three. There is no alternative but to start again, smarting but smarter, and build a redesigned version in which these problems are solved...

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers...

Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

I didn't plan to throw away my MoD player. I did throw it away though, since the only copy of it was on a disk that got formatted. The new version only took a coupld of hours to write. The new version is orders of magnitude better in terms of code quality. Much simpler than the old version (what I remember of it anyway). In fact I'm pretty sure it would only take a few minutes to install on any i386 linux machine (since the ac program is a binary for that platform) which has apache and a modern perl on it. I'll never know though, since it seems everyone used windows these days.

The player includes a queue of tracks to be played. The queue can be reordered, items can be deleted, and the queue cleared. The player can be paused, the current track skipped, and the system stopped completely. It supports multiple repositories of metadata (which I use to have a 'metallica' CD, which contains by reference all the Metallica CDs in the system). It can also randomise queue, which is pretty silly (but since perl has 'shuffle' function in List::Utils it was three lines of code it was done for fun). Tracks/CDs are are added using the same interface as the standard MoD players, hence the original music selection interface works. For those who know what they want, track IDs can be added to a text file by hand as well. And most importantly (for the original version, not so much anymore) is that being a CGI script the web server can be configured to require authentication to access the queue.

Oh well, I was meant to be raving about domain names...

So, back on topic. Domain names are, in my opinion, an elegant hack to give names to those less memorable IP numbers, and in doing so allow a server to physically move (and hence change IPs) but keep the same name. However, ICANN is not what I would call a great organisation.

My suggestion is that everyone who can use OpenNIC (or some other alternative) to give their web page at least one alternative name. Those who can are those who have wasteful IP based web hosting, or the ability to add aliases to their name based web hosting. Keep a standard name as well, so that those not using whatever alternative you use can still access your site of course.

If your top level domain doesn't actually match what your site is, then going one step further would be wonderful. Make the non-standard name the primary site name, and the standard TLD name the alias. And mention this on the site. Adding a footer to the page providing information on how to use the non-standard primary site name to the standard TLD name pages would be good advocacy as well.

There's where I hit the do as I say, not as I do issue. My site name is actually suitable. My name is Holden, this is my personal web space, and I'm Australian. Hence holden.id.au is a good meaningful name. Compare with malignity.net which I don't believe offers net services. Or with electron-pusher.org which I don't believe is an organisation (I realise the .org is a free for all, but that it's name implies otherwise).

Anyway, I'll investigate .geek, when I use a machine which can recolve it.

Azzuri's two for one coffees after 3pm on Fridays are going to kill me.

Maybe I should find a coffee partner, so I don't have to drink both myself.

I guess they'll be closed over the break anyway :(

I managed to get to Bison in SF2 hyper with Honda, now that I took the risk and discovered the machine controls work again, I can get back to playing that once a day or so...

I also managed to pre-enrol today. I guess they'll work out I shouldn't be able to later.

I beat that damn footballer in google again. That damn photographer is another mater of course...

I've read a couple of books, without writing a damn review for no one to read. I really need practice writing, since I need this thesis thing to actually be in semi-correct english.

And my mum's partner's son died yesterday. In a fall while carrying a television. My mum seems very sad. Annie must be very sad. I never know what to do or say in these situations. Hopefully Anna can teach me. I haven't really been close with Josh, but I do remember hanging around with him on occassions. Way back in high school, when he was a punkish skater, and I was a long haired metal head.

And my sister got married a couple of weekends ago. In Perth. And is heading to New Zealand in a few weeks time to live for, I think, a couple of years at least.

Change and me don't go together...

And just for a surreal light finish.

Don't bother reading... I'm in a bad mood and thought I'd do a harley...

I'm fucking miserable.

Josh the son of my mum's partner of a bit over 15 years died suddenly recently. The funeral's tomorrow. I get to be a pallbearer.

I went up to mum and annie's yesterday and stayed night. Zach was there as well. Lots of sadness.

I tried not to cry so much. But didn't manage.

So then I felt guilty as well. Which made it worse.

I feel like I have no right to cry, no right to be sad. I wasn't close to Josh. But I am.

Maybe it's just sadness vibes from others. Doesn't make it feel any better.

Surely I'm meant to somehow be supportive. Instead I get sad and teary and my mother comforts me.

Anyway, venting doesn't make it better, so I'm curling up now...

The funeral is over, I hope nobody minds me raving...

Josh's father, Andrew, gave a great Eulogy. His mother, Annie, spoke beautifully as well. And Zach, his brother, spoke wonderfully, and read a poem by Josh. The funeral was emotional and beautiful.

Josh was truly a lovely person. Not an angel, or a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but kind and generous and caring. The fact that he was an addict, and a drinker, and spent some time in prison, highlighted the good in his character. He would steal from those he loved when he was at a bad point. And yet be generous when he had.

He couldn't cope with this world and life in it. He tried hard, and struggled with his demons. And now he has been released from it all.

He got to know his 3 year old son, Jasper, in his final year. And he didn't die in the midst of a failing struggle, but at a time when he was doing OK. When things were generally on the up.

The bulk of my memories of Josh are of a teenager, having fun, mucking up. So I guess to me that's how he'll stay.

The daily telegraph, the finest newspaper in all the land, had an article that caught my eye today. Of particular interest was the following:

In an exclusive interview, during which he received news that Australia faced a possible terror attack before Christmas, Mr Carr said some civil liberties would need to be curtailed in the fight against terror.

"If you've had military training in Afghanistan then you ought to be subject to surveillance," Mr Carr said. "If you are a member of JI [Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah] then you ought to be subject to surveillance.

"If you've written a leaflet praising Osama bin Laden, you ought to be subject to surveillance. If you've got a website with a photo of Osama bin Laden you ought to be subject to surveillance.

"That's a fair price for giving an assurance to Australians including Muslim Australians that there won't be a Bali here."

So I guess if I was to say that Osama Bin Laden is a terrorist and should you see someone walking with a cane, who is left handed, and looks like this:

You should probably run away, or you could try and catch him in order to claim the reward.

Then I would deserve to be put under surveillance, of course it's probably already happened.

I added reviews of the three books I read over the last month to my book review section.

A piece of spam made it through my filters by being sent to my shopping email address which doesn't get filtered. Since everything to it that I want looks exactly like SPAM, for example:

SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ----------------------
SPAM: This mail is probably spam.  The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM: 
SPAM: Content analysis details:   (8.47 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (1.2 points)  From: does not include a real name
SPAM: Hit! (1 point)     BODY: Contains 'Dear Somebody'
SPAM: Hit! (0.01 points) BODY: Asks you to click below
SPAM: Hit! (1 point)     BODY: Asks you for your signature on a form
SPAM: Hit! (0.01 points) BODY: JavaScript code
SPAM: Hit! (1 point)     BODY: JavaScript code which can easily be executed
SPAM: Hit! (1.3 points)  BODY: Auto-executing JavaScript code
SPAM: Hit! (0.7 points)  BODY: A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED
SPAM: Hit! (1.55 points) BODY: Contains an ASCII-formatted form
SPAM: Hit! (0.7 points)  BODY: Contains a line >=199 characters long
SPAM: 
SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results ---------------------

Is what my spam filter does to an email whose body starts out:

Dear Mr Holden,

Thank you for booking with travel.com.au!

We are responding to your booking from Sydney to Auckland.  
Please find attached your itinerary and an invoice for payment, 
which also contains the due dates for your deposit and final 
payment.

Let's just say, I want that email!

But back to the point, this spam that found its way to my shopping email, was shall we say very badly targetted, it started out:

No Caffeine, No Ephedrine, No Crash Dieting, and No Painful Exercises.

Lost me after the first two words :)

Don't make fun of people who have pentacle tattoos on their forehead, and sacrifice dogs because dog is god backwards.

Especially don't call them a nonce because they think Buffy's Drusilla is attractive.

A DEVIL-WORSHIPPER who murdered a young woman and had sex with her body was branded "scum of the earth" by the victim's mother yesterday.

Am I the only person who thinks that paragraph reads a bit like, The Pope's Catholic, English cricket team loses, or Australian loses sporting event, everyone else branded a drug cheat?

Hashcash is an old and simple idea for combating spam by charging for each email sent. Instead of charging money, processor time is charged, by requiring a token for each mail sent which is expensive to generate but trivial to test.

Hashcash is designed to make spamming more difficult which is a good thing. However, a similar but not quite as effective system could make spamming more difficult and make the use of public key encryption common.

Instead of requiring a hashcash token, require that all email be encrypted with the reciever's public key.

This is not as good as hashcash for stopping spam, since the checking and dropping/bouncing of invalid messages can't be done until the MUA of the reciever is reached. However, once no one reads non-encrypted email the network usage will drop as spammers give up on sending them.

This would make spamming harder in a number of ways. Firstly an email address isn't good enough, you need the public key associated with that email address. Secondly you have to spend some processor time encrypting the message for each reciever, so if you plan on sending that email a million times, you will have to encrypt it with a million different keys. Nothing prevents you from sending the same encrypted spam to the same reciever hundreds of times, but since the message must be identical that would be trivial to filter out at the reciever end.

More importantly it would provide an excuse to push cryptography. Not as a way of keeping things secret, but as a way of avoiding spam. Even those if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear morons, can't argue with that.

Last month the government rushed through legislation to ban terrorist organisations, the best link I find for it is pretty crap.

As expected JI was banned almost the instant the UN added it to its list of terrorist groups.

And still the government whines that it can't deport members of the group.

So the government passed a law making it an offence to be involved with the group, and now complains they can't do anything about the members in the country. Here's a novel concept, enforce the damn law you created and lock them up... Though I guess that's less effective than whining to the media about how you can't do anything and linking asylum seekers with terrorists a little more. Less effective at getting draconian laws passed, and keeping the opinion polls high anyway.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock was reported in the Daily Telegraph as saying several members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) had been identified but could not be removed under present laws.

The newspaper said 10 JI members had applied for asylum claiming that if they were deported to their homelands they faced persecution.

Mr Ruddock said the claims had been rejected but a minority had remained in the country by marrying an Australian or using legal processes to delay their removal.

"Sometimes they remain here unlawfully," he said.

- SMH article

So charge them under your wonderful new law, win the case, and lock them up (or whatever punishment the law allows). It's not like they are going to be let out on bail (imagine the media stink). After all being convicting them with a criminal offence makes it easier to deport them. Unless of course you don't actually have any proof of their membership...

Note, the implication that legal processes to keep the government honest should be done away with since they are abused by the terrorists. And also the idiotic immigration minister trying to imply that people who remain here unlawfully can't be removed under present laws

If you read/watch/hear any Australian media you'll know that Fred Nile has once again shown how stupid he is, and how even more stupid those that vote for him are.

Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE: I ask the Minister for Police a question without notice in view of the terrorist alert yesterday given to the whole of Australia. Is it a fact that the Islamic female terrorists in Hamburg, Germany, and in the recent Muslim terrorist attack in Moscow, Russia, wore the black chador body covering of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Is it a fact that such total body covering completely conceals a person's identity, even whether the wearer is male or female - which is a perfect disguise for terrorists as it conceals both weapons and explosives, as occurred in the recent Moscow theatre attack when female Muslim terrorists carried explosives strapped to their bodies? Is it a fact that many Muslim women in Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia et cetera only wear discreet, Western style clothing and not the chador? In view of the new terrorist threat and as part of our new Australian security precautions, will the Government consider a prohibition on the wearing of the chador?

The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: No.

NSW Legislative Council Hansard of 20/11/2002

I'm not a fan of Costa, but he answered that question perfectly. Giving it one more word than it deserved but I guess that's the minimum he's allowed.

As you would expect Nile shows his complete lack of understanding anything other than the conservative protestant world. The chador, for example, may (or may not, admittedly) show the face. Since he specifically said Iran, then the chador he's referring to does, in fact, show the face (unless the wearer holds it). So it's not much a disguise. As for concealing weapons and explosives a trench coat would do just as well.

Of course John Howard, had to chip in with more than just No.

LAWS: Could you answer this question. I don't if you've heard me talk to Fred Nile earlier, did you?

PRIME MINISTER: No I didn't hear you talk to him. I heard of the issue.

LAWS: How do you feel about that? I mean it's a very unfortunate thing for the wider Muslim community who I'm sure are very fine and decent people. There are extremists but there are extremists everywhere. His concern is that the women wear total covering, or can by choice. Apparently it's not mandatory in the Qur'an for them to do that but they do it. Fred Nile's concern is that if somebody walks into a bank wearing a full face helmet, he's not allowed to go into the bank because he's considered to be a sinister person. Why is it then that people, because we don't even know if they're women because they're that covered, are allowed to enter these areas while wearing that garb?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I'm not precisely sure of what the rules of the Muslim religion are on this question. I mean I've had some... I heard a lady interviewed by you, a Muslim lady, who said that the wearing of the full cover was not part of the religion. Generally speaking I'm in favour of respecting people's religious beliefs.

LAWS: So am I.

PRIME MINISTER: Or indeed people's lack of religious beliefs. We have to respect each other in these things. It's just a question of civilised living. If you've got a religious faith and providing you're not flinging it in somebody else's face, then you should be allowed to practise it. We do take the view that sometimes the public interest can override a particular practice. I mean I think the law in this country in most States is that, for example if Jehovah's Witness parents refuse blood transfusions, I think in certain circumstances...

LAWS: They can be overruled.

PRIME MINISTER: They can be overruled by the Courts, the view being taken that it's not in the public interest. Now I'm not saying that that is through suggestion on all fores with this. I mean I don't have a clear response to what Fred has put. I mean I like Fred and I don't always agree with him, but you know Fred speaks for the views of a lot of people. On the other hand I feel it's very important at the moment that Islamic people don't feel they're being singled out. I feel for them.

LAWS: But wouldn't it be better if they were less conspicuous at this time?

PRIME MINISTER: Well obviously, consistent with their religious beliefs. But it's not only... I mean you sometimes see, not so much in Australia but in the United States, you will see Jewish people wearing the long hair and the hats. Now that's conspicuous but it's something that, you know, I fully respect.

LAWS: But their face isn't covered.

PRIME MINISTER: No, look I understand what he's getting at but I also stop short of agreeing with him because I have got to frankly myself have a better understanding of just how fundamental that is. Now the general rule in this country, as I illustrated with my Jehovah's Witness example, is that there is sometimes a public interest overriding any religious practice and this doesn't apply in relation to any particular religion. It just applies generally. I mean we are a secular country. I mean we have a long Judeo-Christian tradition and ethic but there is no established religion in Australia and therefore in the end, whatever people's religious beliefs are, the rule is that there are public interest tests that override anything. Now I can't make at this stage a judgment. I've just had this flung at me. I'm not sufficiently apprised of the tenets of Islam to fully understand that.

Prime Minister The Hon John Howard MP interview with John Laws, radio 2UE, 21/11/2002

Note Howard, hedges his bets as always. Making sure he can claim he didn't agree with Nile, while also giving the impression he does to the morons who think it's a good idea.

John Laws and John Howard both show the same misunderstanding of religion as Fred Nile demonstrated. Nile mentions that many Muslim women don't wear the chador, Laws mentions that he heard the Qur'an doesn't require it, and Howard's got to find out how fundamental it is. They have obviously never considered that there might be more to a religion than just one book, and that there might be different sections of the religion with different beliefs.

Maybe Nile has heard of this group called Catholics. They make up a far bigger chunk of the christian world than the Uniting Church he is a minister in does. They have a bunch of traditions that you would be hard pressed to find in the Bible. While he does some research on those Catholics he might like to take a look at a translation of the Qu'ran, he could start at Surah An-Nur 24 ayah 31, or Surah Al-Ahzaab 33 ayah 59.

And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need (of women), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known; and turn to Allah all of you, O believers! so that you may be successful.

24:31 The Holy Qur'an, Translator Shakir, M. H.

O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

33:59 The Holy Qur'an, Translator Shakir, M. H.

And then there is:

O you who believe! do not enter the houses of the Prophet unless permission is given to you for a meal, not waiting for its cooking being finished -- but when you are invited, enter, and when you have taken the food, then disperse -- not seeking to listen to talk; surely this gives the Prophet trouble, but he forbears from you, and Allah does not forbear from the truth And when you ask of them any goods, ask of them from behind a curtain; this is purer for your hearts and (for) their hearts; and it does not behoove you that you should give trouble to the Apostle of Allah, nor that you should marry his wives after him ever; surely this is grievous in the sight of Allah.

33:53 The Holy Qur'an, Translator Shakir, M. H.

Of course, the obvious practical reason that Nile's suggestion is stupid comes from the fact that NSW is almost a police state. Far better the terrorists dress up in chadors and hence are easy to tell apart from the rest of the population.

What about the non-terrorist chador wearers? Well that's where being almost a police state comes in handy, you just treat them as terrorists as well.

What about in areas with a high proportion of Muslims? Now our racist country comes in handy, it doesn't matter if they get blown up.

I guess I'm now being watched...

Since my Ravings page will contain this little message.

And some quotes from the Qu'ran.

And some whining about draconian laws in Australia.

And a call for people to use cryptography.

And finally a picture of Osama bin Laden.

Anna's going to kill me...

Some of the people who checked this page in the last day, and run an ssh server just got some failed login attempts as me... Sorry about that.

I finally found foo, the little gateway machine, and grabbed the stuff I needed off of bar, the little linux desktop machine. I really should add a little 'my IP is' message whenever the ppp connection goes up...

At least anna will be happy the bin Laden picture has scrolled off the page now.

I finally decided which camera I want. Choosing cheaper over better...

So of course there are supply problems with the camera I want. It would have been good to have the thing before I go to New Zealand, but since I go in a week I don't think that's going to happen.

While trying to find a place that has the camera in stock and has a good price (since cheapness was the selection criteria), I stumbled across www.digicamera.com.au. They have a funny page raving about how IE is wonderful and mozilla is crap.

In our opinion, and the opinion of most heavy duty developers, Microsoft is closer to the standard. Considering that we design to the W3C standard, then any Microsoft browsers will give you an accurate rendition of what we planned for you to see; the more recent the browser edition, the more accurately will your browser render.

http://www.digicamera.com.au/digicamera2002/browser-wars.asp, emphasis mine.

The W3C disagrees with that claim, twice even.

They have good prices on some things though.

Another shitty coffee from Azzuri.

A flat white is not supposed to look like instant coffee! The sugar should not sink instantly as if it is being added to water.

Well that does it. It's happened one too many times. No more Azzuri coffee for me, the proportion of crap is too high to risk it any longer.

So it's back to making my own in Madsen.

One year of good coffee on campus is better than what the brochures said, yet I can't help being annoyed, I liked my morning Azzuri run. Well I did until they started making watery crap and calling it a 'flat white'.

One day I'll need complete access to a web/mail server. The web server because it would be convenient to be able to set up virtual hosts at the drop of a hat. The mail server because it would be conveniant to be able to set up addresses at the drop of the hat, and run mailing lists and so forth.

None of those things, really need a dedicated machine, but it would just be more fun to not have to deal with webhosting type companies.

Of course it's far too expensive. And I don't like the idea of sticking servers inside companies that someone works at (or once worked at), ala ritsuko.

Since colo hardware is too expensive, and dedicated machines are even moreso, the fake dedicated machine seems like a good solution. Someone with a big grunty machine and some software that effectively gives you a virtual machine to play with.

A kuro5hin ad caught my attention a while ago (becuase it had so many comments), and since I was too tired to do real work, but not tired enough to sleep I made a little spreadsheet. Since I really can't afford US$65/month just for playing around with web sites and email (and even when I get a job, there are other things I would rather spend that much money on), I let my spreadsheet do the math for the cost with multiple users sharing the virtual machine.

I don't really think I could find 19 people who would want to try out such a thing, but it comes with 40GB/month traffic, and I was using 2GB/100MB per user. If more disk space or bandwidth was required it could be paid for, or I guess you could pay for an extra user everytime you wanted an extra 2GB/100MB (though it would be nicer just to use the US$2/GB. Those last two column are AUD/month based on USD$1 == AUD$1.80. 10 users is probably the affordability point for me, I can find $12 a month for 4GB/100MB, though 11 users would a few cents, and give just under 4GB/200MB.

Oh well now that I'm vaguely alert I'll go and do some work, and leave thinking about this until the middle of next year when I'll need to do something (and will hopefully have an income).

This documentary examines the incredible story of the rise and fall...and the rise again of the humble British sausage. It is a tale of betrayal, mystery, death, drugs and love. A tale of greed vs quality and good intentions. Two men who go into the food business with different perspectives, one intent on bringing back the traditional British sausage to its former glory and the other intent on making a lot of money by compromising on quality and doing the dirty on his mentor. This is the story of Bill O'Hagan, the South African journalist obsessed with the perfect sausage, and Martin Heap, the uncle of O'Hagan's former apprentice and failed restaurateur who was Bill's partner but was, eventually, his nemesis. As the Guardian puts it "...both funny and poignant...Bill, you think wistfully, should have stood for parliament. He stood for sausages, and began to make them to his own recipes in a back shed. His success was instant and enormous. The rest of the story is so sad I can hardly bring myself to tell you"

Blurb on SBS TV guide

Now that was a funny show. Every bit as good as Animalicious.

My camera arrived today, so the phone call yesterday about it coming tomorrow wasn't a dream after all. Of course I would have rathered this camera, but since it was almost $300 more I settled for the bigger one. Which in some ways is good, since I don't like tiny cameras, and the one I got is the size of a normal compact, but much heavier... Of course want something far to expensive. Though my EOS 1000F that I've had for over 10 years broke a while ago, so it would be a replacement... It was so old it has been replaced by the 500, which was replaced by the 500N, which was replaced by the 300. And years ago Jeremy broke my 75-300 lense anyway, so it's only got a crappy 35-80 or somthing, so I have less incentive to stick with EOS cameras.

And my progress review came and went today. More confirmation that I have far to much work to do and not enough time to do it.

I just spent 2 hours converting the main script running this site from php to mod_perl. Instead of writing my thesis...

Now I just have to convert blog.php, book_reviews.php, edit.php, links.php, parts.php, photo_album.php, and I guess libs.php to perl modules. Then I shall never have to worry about php's idiotic lack of namespaces. They should all be easy to do, but I'll leave that for another day.

My laptop power cord broke today... The Friday before the Monday I leave for New Zealand at 6am or something. I think I've found a replacement on ebay though :)

Hopefully these things do come in threes. And hopefully I can delay the third and choose what it effects.

As I've mentioned I finally decided to shell out for a digital camera. Of course the supplier of the one I wanted was having stock issues, and the first place I ordered it from said it probably wouldn't ship until after Christmas, since the delivery of them they had had that morning didn't even come close to filling the order queue they already had. This was on Tuesday. On Monday morning I was to leave for New Zealand. I wanted the camera now so I could play with it on my trip, and not after christmas.

I managed to find another place, a bit more expensive, but they claimed to have just recieved a shipment and would run out quick. So I ordered one, that was on Tuesday. On Wednesday there web page listed them as out of stock. On Thursday my camera arrived at my door.

So that was the first item, that was left to the last minute and was still completed on time.

Then, on Friday, the power adapter for my laptop broke. My battery was almost out so I plugged it in, and still the little red light flashed. The little green light on the adapter wasn't on. It looks like the cord had twisted and the wires snapped or something. Since I have zero ability to fix such things I figured I was stuffed. After all it was Friday afternoon, and on Monday morning I was flying to New Zealand, to give a presentation using my laptop, which was now just a doorstop.

I checked the web a bit and rushed to some shops to try and find an adapter with a stupid dell connection. There are some by Targus which where in Harvey Norman and Dick Smith, but not with a Dell latitude CS compatible powertip. They were also $300, but I would pay that since I needed the laptop.

By about 7pm on Friday I figured I was completely screwed, since Dell are basically a mail order house now. SOLD.com.au didn't have anything on offer that looked vaguely like a suitable adapter. Ebay however, resulted in a couple of suitable auctions. Both of which ended after I left for New Zealand. But I managed to spend twice as much as I could have got away with if time wasn't so short. So now I have $90 less in my wallet, and what seems to be a brand new AC adapter that has now charged the laptop's battery, allowing me to type this.

So that's two things that have been done at the last minute successfully.

The third thing, I'm hoping can wait until March. I have this thesis due on the 15th, and I really need the third part of this sequence saved up for them.

One last note for any millionares who want to but me a christmas present. One of these would be great.

While watching the cricket just now, I saw a Johnnie Walker ad for their scotch and coke cans.

Two people playing some sort of first person shooter game, when the boss walks in on one, who quickly alt-tabs to a work application. Of course this means he is killed by the other guy, who runs across the office to do a victory dance in front of his opponent. Since the boss is in the office this doesn't go down so well.

It just makes no sense.

They are drinking scotch and coke. Playing a quick game seems minor when compared to getting sloshed. If it's after hours then why would the boss care if they were playing a game? If he did care surely he'd also care about them having a drinking session? If it's lunch or something, then drinking seems a much worse thing to do then playing a game...