While it is no secret to those of whom I see on a regular basis, I may as well come clean with the rest of you. I have started collecting Pokémon cards. I say started in the most poetic sense possible, as of the 600+ card collection was purchased during the early months of 1999 when it was first released in Australia. The more correct term would probably be ‘resume’ or even ‘continue’; sometimes I like to pretend I have dignity. When a friend oh-so fortuitously came across a set of the cards I was immediately reminded of the healthy stack of cards sitting in a shoebox in my wardrobe. Urged by carnal powers stronger than any man has ever faced, the cards were sought, dusted off, and brought to bear the harsh light of day once more. It was immediately apparent that the dusty old ripcurl packaging was no throne for my Pokémon and thus began the quest for a more fitting container. With Pokéballs in short supply (I blame the recession), small plastic forcefields would have to suffice.

With my accomplice trainer (whos identity has been expurgated* at his request) at my side, each Pokémon was lovingly acknowleged and cared for, catalogued and stored away. It is our common goal to one day catch them all.

Now for the change. Wanting to keep updated on some of my favourite webcomics, I have found myself checking my Twitter account more often. I created my account sometime during the Triassic period, only ever having made a single “Tweet”. The original account was made for an experiment I once ran in the name of science; an attempt to use a series of Twitter accounts for in-character banter between sessions, allowing for an expirience above and beyond normal character interaction. Interestingly enough, the user name I managed to acquire tends to attract the attention of those who believe they are getting something else entirely. My ‘followers’ are an interesting bunch, that is for sure.

With the account in my posession, and keypresses of F5 occuring at an alarming rate, it was an obvious (to some) descision to start making posts of my own. Ergo, if you are a purveyor of ‘Tweets’ like some I know, hit me up  on the site and see if anything I say is worthy of reading.

*Word of the Day: I refuse all and any who judge me for its usage!

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The past month has been a tiring one yet, as it would turn out, a satisfactory one. Exams are always a stressful period, for anyone taking them, and this is compounded when you have a Project Report due on an experiment that just refuses to work. However, exams are over and the report has been completed and submitted (and soon hopefully marked). It is fantastic to be able to sit down and not have to constantly think whether or not there is something earth-shatteringly important that I should be doing right now. Even better news was the fact that I have already passed two of my exams, and hopefully a third if mid-semester results are anything to go by. The best news was delivered via telephony less than 10 minutes after putting down my pen in my last exam.

I am pleased to announce that I have been selected as the newest addition to the team at Perth’s Horizon Planetarium as a Planetarium Presenter. While the selection process is not as gruelling as some other professions, I like to think that my unique set of skills and experiences will make a fantastic contribution to the Horizon team.

Thus we come to the final section of today’s post, where I like to make some unfounded claims, pre-broken promises, and generally set myself up to disappoint others. Now that my schedule is lighter, and I have figured out some sort of plan for the immediate future to save myself from drowning in commitments like I usually do, I plan on three posts a week for the next month. Small (relatively) easy goals are the way forward to a more productive me, I think. Let us see how things go, hey ol’ chap?

Today’s links of pure awesomeness:

• Not so much a link as a request; one of the reasons my posts kind of stopped recently was due to the WYSIWYG editor no longer working after upgrading to Wordpress 2.8. That is right, I wrote this entire post in html tags. If anyone feels like giving me a hand in figuring out how to fix this, please give me a buzz in my email: corsair@corsairsanchorage.com (and yes, I have posted in the WP forums too).

• Back to linkey goodnes – Like zombies? This is a really interesting look at the way augmented reality might be used in the near future. Personally, I am foaming at the mouth with excitement for what this could do to a DnD campaign. Are you listening Wizards?!?

• It turns out that Call of Duty 4 is actually making me a better driver. This kind of study usually makes me really sceptical, however I must say that the ABC science team have actually written something that does not sound too skewed and biased for a change, and that makes me very happy. Small victories are better than flat-out defeats, I guess.

• I am a regular reader of Dan’s Data (no, not that Dan) and rarely find myself glossing over what he writes. This obviously means that I find what he writes to be interesting; this article is no exception. I agree with almost everything he says here, and I think people should look at the way they use computers with this article in mind. Also, I think people should cut their whinging and whining, and simply make the effort to learn how to use these contraptions. I never tire of listening to people tell me that computers “should just work”, thus absolving the user of any and all blame. This is doubly true for people who complain about bad coding, but this is a rant for another day.

• Speaking of computers – This is possibly the most amazing case-mod I have ever seen. Actually, I do not think it can be called a case mod; there were no real modifications, so much as being built out of raw awesomium and refined into awesomite. Called Edelweiss, it truly is a thing of beauty. Something I would be proud to have sitting on my desk, seriously, this thing would be in photos inside my wallet!

• This just makes me angry, especially when I am looking at starting up a small business myself in the next 6-8 months. To slam small businesses with fees like this is outrageous to the point of being purely malicious. Seriously, how can the be surprised when we torrent all out music and television episodes? The answer to Piracy is not to increase tariffs and taxes, that is how you ENCOURAGE it!

• In summation, I do not think I have ever seen someone make a heartbeat sound so epic!

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In the meantime, look at some of these fantastic things I have found while desperately trying to procrastinate!

• The only magazine I would consider buying has done another fantastic article on the Terminator. The movie tie ins are obvious, but the content is interesting independently (see previous post).
   
• I always feel compelled to let everyone know when important astrophysics comes out of Australia. Just click this link to find out why.
• Keeping the astronomy theme going, these are the only pictures ever of a shuttle in solar transit. Read up for how he did it, which is the truly amazing part!
• This is just freaking cool! From the same guy who brought us that fantastic Steampunk IBM keyboard and the amazing Steapunk Laptop, don’t be too shy to delve deeper into his site and look at all the other fantastic creations within. May hat is eternally tipped in respect.

Alrighty now, back to it. This project does not write itself… little bastard that it is.

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While I am not a big fan of changing the spelling of a word just for the hell of it, I will lay down some extra tolerance for the short term and go with the proverbial flow. I have apparently been tagged as la Kreativ Blogger extraordinaire by my brother-in-arms, the Apocathary. Whether a true source of creativity, or just a number to fill the spots, I have been tasked with sharing seven things that I love. If one were to plot number of updates on this site versus time, they would be excused for thinking that number one on the list was Procrastination. Some days I would not disagree.
 

1. My partner: I know it is cheesy, and I know it has been done before, however the truth remains that my quality of life would be far less than fantastique if it were not for the love and support of Mel.
    
2. The sound of rain: I would go so far as to say that I love everything about rain, but the sound of it is usually enough to satiate my lust for winter. Sometimes, when I am stressed, I will listen to rain on my DAP. Now, I should make it abundantly loud and clear; I am not talking about you lah-dee-dah, rainbow vomiting, pitter-patter, raindrops keep falling on my head, rain. When I hear rain, I want those motherfuckers to be mistaken for Armageddon. The soundtrack to my tranquillity is something between a category 5 and a waterfall. There is nothing that gets my goosebump on like lying down with closed eyes and listen to the sound of Mother Nature bringing her wrath to bear.
    
3. Artificial Intelligence: This actually came up today as a matter of conversation, but I love stories with AIs as characters. Cortana, GLaDOS, HAL, Daedalus, Skynet and Holly; there is something really exciting about the idea of machine intelligence and being able to interact with it in games will often be enough to put it in my favourites column. Transhumanism and the idea of an AI approaching something that cannot be differentiated from a human intelligence (HI) is truly fascinating. I remember my first contact with Daedalus in Deus Ex when it freed me from my prison cell; later finding out it was an AI made me completely revisit our earlier interactions in my mind. The subtext that plays out between Master Chief and Cortana is also a personal favourite of mine. The concept of a genetically engineered “post-human” and an AI having a subtle love story woven into a game is something that I do not think most people really appreciate. Then there is Mass Effect. I have always wanted an AI companion of my own, ever since I was very little. As a massive Transformers fan, I always looked forward to having a car that could talk to me, just for the companionship. Then, as I grew older, that desire turned into the love of AI in all it’s forms. After reading Neuromancer and then Asimov’s work, the need to be able to interact with computers on such a primal level grew. This probably explains how I feel about computers today, and why I am so willing to spend such ridiculous amounts of money on them. Eventually, it became a dream of mine to have a suit or watch/belt with an Artificial Intelligence in it that would always be with me. Probably says a lot about my subconscious mind. Seriously, I could talk about this forever…
    
4. Roleplay: No, you dirty bastards. I am talking in the greater sense here, things like Dungeons and Dragons, White Wolf’s World of Darkness, MMORPG games etc. I think that the obnoxiously close-minded view that roleplay is for children, or for adults who have not grown up is the most juvenile and retarded thing I have ever heard. I love being able to enter the mindset of a completely different person and become them for a period of time. Being able to play outside of your usual personality and bring a completely new face to bear is a fantastic thing that I think everyone should be able to experience. If there is one thing I wish University did not impinge upon, it is the fact that I cannot play as much DnD as I would like with my friends. What I would like to do is take it to the next level, however, and DM a game of people I do not know. I think that experience will be something I would really appreciate, and will help me become a better DM and a better player.
    
5. Fonts and Etymology: I love words and their roots. I love languages and typesetting and the shapes words make on a page. I love the symmetry, the assonance, the dissonance, rhyme, rhythm, timbre and time. Words in themselves are wonderfully pure. Sometimes it pays to look at a page of writing and look at it not for what it says, but for where it came from. When you see the similarities between languages, and where they differ, you start to see a little piece of history and I really feel I can appreciate that. The English language as it stands today is a marvellous patchwork of roots that all trace back in different directions, and yet they all (mostly) come from a single source. I think everyone should make the effort to learn a little bit more about their own language, not just how to speak another country’s native tongue. However, if you do want to learn another language, I recommend Lojban.
    
6. Tallships: This should come as no big surprise to anyone who even remotely knows me. I have been a Watch Officer on the STS Leeuwin II, a position I held with pride for two years before University dug it’s claws into my skull. I have also held a crew position on the Duyfken when she sailed our shores, not to mention a handful of recreational classes out of the South Perth Yacht Club. I have never been so at peace with everything than when I am sailing at night, or in a storm (see number 2). I love sound of the ocean, the feel of the swell beneath your feet, the salty air on your face, and the utter lack of humanity. Somewhat obvious that a misanthrope would dig the sheer remoteness that only the open ocean provides. At night, with an overcast sky and a new moon, there is no way to tell where the horizon is. The result is something truly otherworldly; a place where you are alone on a deck, floating through a vast empty space with nothing above nor below. I miss my Lioness.
    
7. Information: I do not know if I love this, or whether I just have an addiction problem. I need information, and I love having it. I have RSS feeds intravenously fed into me at all times, and I freak the fuck out when I miss out on something. I do not know why I react to information this way, but when I read an article talking about something obscure, and I already know it, I get a rush similar to the kind one would normally find in an illicit consumable. My Internet browsers (usually Chrome but sometimes Firefox) have more open tabs than they were ever designed to handle, and culling them is a painful experience that I do not relish when the time comes (usually around about the same time that my RAM starts crying). Information is not limited to just news and science, either. I hate low bit-rate music because I cannot bear the thought of not hearing all the subtleties that were in the original track, as a result my 32GB DAP holds fewer songs than one would expect. I hate JPEGs for their lossy encoding and the way it collects artifacts like the way Yahtzee’s proverbial Scarlet Harlot collects venereal diseases. While RAW is phenomenal when employed in photography, Internet browsers do not natively support the file, not to mention it’s size is prohibitively huge. I use PNG as a happy alternative with an acceptable trade-off as a result.

So, there it is. I have no doubt that if I actually spent some time thinking about it my answers would probably be slightly different (or just longer). I am meant to tag seven people here, but to be quite honest I do not know seven people that have not already been tagged, so I will just nod to those who have0 already done it and that I respect enough to read (that is, they are in my IV RSS machine).

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This chap has turned old cassette tapes into something truly amazing. My personal fav is definitely Mr Smith of Cure fame; the surly look is perfectly rendered in magnetic tape splendour!

Using X-Rays to see inside of things is something we take for granted, but someone has decided to use them to artistically show the innards of our favourite objects. The nostalgia aspect of seeing inside a SNES holds particlar sway over my heart.

What possessed this man to actually do this, I do not know, but the result is truly breathtaking. Is there a little artist inside every Roomba, trying to break out? Part of me kind of hopes so.

Of course, what better way to finish the day than with a perspex blue glowing COIL GUN!

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photo credit: pvera

Quitting ones job just before a global recession may seem an unwise decision. Some have led me to believe that the act showed a lack of foresight or planning; or common sense. I like to think that walking out on my job just started a global trend. While the lack of income has stopped me from doing some of the things I really enjoy (eating, bathing, etc), I have been resourceful in funding the bare necessities (internet, electricity, etc). Getting a teaching position at my University was a fantastic move, though a stopgap measure in the long run. What I truly have found myself poor of is time. Between my classes, my Astrophysics Project, and instructing the public in key survival techniques; there is little interesting to talk about, and less time to say it in.

However, none of us have it as hard as the Russian Cosmonauts. This makes for one hell of an interesting read, and I wholly recommend taking in the whole article, because there are gems a-plenty throughout it.

Of course, talking about space just makes me want to start paying Mass Effect again; something that is beyond my power until my computer is restored to a respectable standard. One thing that I have been doing to help me forget the woeful state my computer is in, however, is playing a lot of Xbox 360. Namely: GTA IV. I full well understand how far behind I am in the grand timeline, I just never expected myself to buy a 360 to be perfectly honest. The act of purchase itself was one of my last while working at that godforsaken place, somewhat akin to a last ditch attempt at trying to validate all those hours toiled away in futility. I do not regret it.

Next: A Segue!

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photo credit: Midnight-digital

I don’t really believe there is a word that can accurately describe the amount of time between my last post and this. Gigantanormoriffic springs to mind; so does “crepuscular”, however, so I would not hold much by the fact. It makes one wonder if it is no small coincidence that crepuscular means “during twilight”, and twilight was “craptacular”? A pondering for the muses, I am sure.

It being so rediculously late, I am going to keep this one short. Monsieur Flax_ has brought down the ethereal bludgeon of guilt and so I have resolved myself to update this site a sight more often (see what I did there). I have some things that I want to talk about, and anyone who wants to listen is more than welcome to refresh this page in two days time. Two days.

I promise.

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photo credit: bjornman

It is the International Year of Astronomy and you are all invited. Since this is the first week of the new teaching year at my University, and this is my (theoretically) last year of my Astro degree, what better time than now to quickly talk about all my favourite celestial endeavours that are happening this year.

• ->  How to make a telescope out of a kilometer cube of pure ice. One of the most ambitious projects I have seen in this modern epoch, and yet it receives a backseat to less fruitful endeavours.

• ->  The AEGIS project is a utilisation of the worlds three largest land-based telescopes plus the orbital Spitzer and the aging Hubble to analyse a ultra-high resolution strip of the sky smaller than your little finger nail. 56k users beware, these images are approximately 20mb each (and there are a lot of them) but I promise you, the result is fucking breathtaking and truly humbling.
   
• ->  How do scientists use such a stupidly high res photo? Why, on the worlds highest resolution monitor bank, of course! Anyone up for a game of Crysis?
   
• ->  If you like your astro pictures to be more “Desktop Worthy”, then The World At Night project is another fantastic undertaking. Go now and start your wallpaper crusade!
   
• ->  Want to know how to take those photos yourself? You would be amazed just how simple it is (and how expensive it can become once the addiction gets its claws in)
   
• ->  I am amazed that my favourite blogospheric misanthrope has not made mention of his inspired avatar.

Last but not least, I promise this is the last time I mention Windows 7; this guide is a glimpse of how to make the new OS really work.

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Underneath the GUI, what does Windows 7 bring to the table. The first thing you are likely to do it bring up the start menu, and it is interesting to note some new icons there. The two that stuck out like a sore thumb to me were “Sticky Notes” and the “Snipping Tool”. Their names pretty much say all that needs to be said; Sticky Notes are Post-It style text boxes that you can place on your monitor, while Snipping Tool is a glorified Print Screen button. While both programs may become a staple diet of new users to the Windows environ, older customers are likely to throw them both out the window in favour of tried and true techniques that still work just as well.

What I personally dislike about Stickey notes is that each note seems to be a seperate process, and is always shown on the Applications Bar, making it an ugly program to be running when compared to programs like PostIt or others like it which usually have a single process  that (turns out the multiple processes was a bug and is now fixed) sits in the SysTray. Furthermore, I am way too ingrained into the habit of opening a Notepad.exe file whenever I need to jot something down. In fact, hitting the Windows button and typing “note” to bring up a notepad document no longer works as the Sticky Notes programs holds some kind of Trump card when the order is defined; this brings me to a jarring halt as I close the unwanted program and then use the mouse to open notepad instead. I will most likely uninstall Sticky Notes ASAP.

Snipping Tool as a concept, as I said earlier, will probably become second nature for some. Maybe, like the Amish, I fear change; I simply cannot bring myself to use this feature. Print Screen and Photoshop will always be my port of call when I feel the need to take a screenshot.

Now onto the good news. The talking heads over at MS Public Relations have been vomiting rainbows everytime they talk about Windows 7’s battery conservation “skillz” and its 1337 Power Management. As a University student who frequently has 2 hour lectures and 5 hour lab sessions, being able to work without the constant fear of my battery being depleted halfway through a data run is a huge turn on (yes, a power-pun!). As such, I decided to start catalogueing my battery life a couple of weeks prior to installing W7 onto my laptop. My old Dell portable utilised a 9-Cell battery; when I had to replace it however, Dell was not offering anything larger than a 6-Cell battery for their new laptops. As such, the longest time I could use it from 100% charge was usually about 2 hours on a good day.

As you can see, while I have significantly fewer data points for W7, the battery life is undoubtably longer on average. The data was taken over a week with varied levels of use, from simple web surfing using a wireless access point, to rendering flame fractals using apophosys while listening to music. Each data point was taken in minutes from Power On until the Critical Battery Warning which is displayed at <1% battery power (about 5 seconds before the computer shuts down and refuses to turn back on). However, for ease of reading the data, it was converted into Hours (Base 10). To ensure that W7 was not pulling the wool over my eyes, I verified the complete discharge of the battery using the LED indicator that is now standard on the new Dell data batteries. My data is available as a .csv file for anyone interested in reproducing my statistical analysis.

Further good news, and something I am sure a lot of people are aching for, the User Account Controls have completely been redone. Not removed, and I don’t believe they should be excised from the OS entirely as it is a good feature for the elderly and the very young (or stupid); experienced users now have the chance to run their computer at a level that matches their capabilities. Want to be in control of everything your compter does while maintaining your own sense of security? Turn UAC off with a single click from the control panel. Don’t want Windows to tell you that UAC is off and that it should be on? That is simply smashing; since you turned it off we just assumed you knew it was gone. In fact there is a nice big ol’ button in the control panel that lets you chose what windows will announce at any given time.

All this is now in a catagory called the Action Centre which seems to be an amalgamation of UAC, Windows Update and Error Reporting all in a single panel. I personally feel like it has been thought out by a rational person this time, so that is a nice change from the Redmond team.

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The first impression is very much a “Oh, it is Vista?” reaction, but this only lasts a brief moment. Quickly you notice the lines seem sharper, more defined and cleaner than vista. There are the usual Quick Launch icons next to a familiar Windows button bottom left, and a System Tray looking thing bottom right; only on second inspection do we realise neither of these are what they seem.

Starting with the Application Bar and Start Menu in the bottom left, I must say I like that new glowing Windows button. Here comes our first big revelation and an indication that maybe things are different. The Quick Launch and the Task Bar are now the SAME THING! This is a difficult concept to explain as it goes against everything the typical windows user knows, however I will try my best. The Quick Launch icons will sit happily where you expect them to be, until you open their respective applications. As you click the icon, the application loads; it’s Task Bar icon now Replaces the Quick Launch icon, preserving it’s location in the grand order. The amount this reduces clutter is unfathomable. Suddenly I feel compelled to have a Quick Launch, which is something I would always remove in favour of more desktop real estate. In addition, new instances of the same program automatically stack on the Application Bar.

There is a graphical indication of how many deep the windows are stacked; in the screen shot I have one Windows Explorer instance, two Firefox 3 instances, two Pidgin instances and one Adobe Photoshop instance. Windows Media Player 12 (yes, a new WMP to review, but not today) is not running, yet it’s icon will remain there for rapid deployment to your desktop. As you can see, hovering over an application will show you a dynamic thumbnail of the instances open, allowing you to hot-switch without hesitating. Another feature not seen in the image is the glassframe map that appears on the desktop as you hover over each application/instance. Read on for a better explanation in the section on the Notification Area.

Let us click on that new pretty Windows button, shall we? The Start menu looks much like it’s Vista counterpart, and as far as I am concerned behaves almost identically. The only new feature brought to the table here is the inclusion of a hover-activated context menu on applications that have multiple files accessed regularly. Those little right-facing arrows will expand to a list of recently opened files on Photoshop and Notepad, where as Dreamweaver has not been opened yet (but will most likely use the same feature when I save/open some files with it). Now, an update requires Windows to restart, so I will meet you back here after the boot.

Always a good time to be productive! The Notification Area (often mistakenly called the Task Tray, System Tray, combinations thereof, etc. Microsoft maintains it’s correct name is the Notification Area) looks much the same as previous incarnations of the OS, and behaves accordingly. To expand the Notification Area we no longer slide sideways, but pop upwards. I guess that is new… not really a feature though, is it. Nothing new here except the empty nub of glass on the far right. Let us click it and see what happens.

OH! As soon as our cursor approached the button, all our windows turned into pieces of glass! A clean and intuitive representation of where all the windows are located is displayed; clicking the button minimises them all to the desktop. Much the same as Windows+D function(s/ed), the command gives you quick access to the desktop, only now it does it with style and aplomb! Personally, the feature is somewhat gimmicky, especially for those who already use hotkey combos like they are a second language. I have to say though, I reallly like it, and now that it is there I find myself using it all the fucking time. Sometimes I will just hover, look at my gorgeous Desktop Wallpaper, and then go back to work. Crazy!

Next: Applications! Batteries! User Account Control put to the pasture!

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photo credit: Toothsouper

It has been quite a month for the living dead in my little corner of this blue marble. First I become totally hooked on the musical artist Voltaire. Then Valve releases Left 4 Dead, their latest singularity whose event horizon marks the death of all my spare time. The game on Steam is one of the most innovative multiplayer games I have seen implemented  in a long time, and I strongly believe the gamble has paid off in their favour. Left 4 Dead, however, is not the highlight of this reanimated flesh-pile’s week (although I do so desperately want to talk about it soon!). Rather, it was last night’s intimate encounter with a certain Mr Nick Cave and his misbehaved Seeds that has set my heart a swoon. The concert was a punch in the face by my good friend Nostalgia who is always there to remind me of my childhood before the millennial shift. I have to say that the concert-goers were about as varied as a pack of licorice all-sorts, something that took me off guard. Ages ranged from what looked to be 16 all the way through to about 60; there were IndieKids, Hippies, Ravers, Goths, Metalheads, and Blingers in any given aliquot. Imagine that!

After the warm up band wrapped up their little contribution, mostly the same tune over and again with lyrics on such pressing topics as suicide machines and porcupine love… something that will hunt my sleeping hours evermore, the pit of the Belvoir Amphitheatre swelled with the bodies of all these different breeds; all united in their common passion. The noise of the crowd as Mr Cave entered the natural stadium was otherworldly, and subsided instantly as he raised his microphone laden hand to his mouth. As far as my post-concert emotionally-drained brain can recall, the setlist looked something like this: 

Hold On To Yourself

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Tupelo

Red Right Hand

Today’s lesson

Moonland

We Call Upon The Author

Jesus Of The Moon

Midnight Man

Nature Boy

Straight To You

Papa won’t leave you Henry

The Mercy Seat

Deanna

Into My Arms

More News From Nowhere

Encore:

The lyre of Orpheus

People Aint No Good

Get Ready for Love

Hard On for Love

Jesus Of The Moon

Stagger Lee

Highlights for me are most certainly the revamped Weeping Song which seemed to take on the feeling of a swollen ocean, storming and crashing with the emotion of a million souls; Mercy Seat and its machine gun tattoo drilling pure remorse and fear into my skull; and Into My Arms, a song intrinsically tied to thoughts of my beautiful partner. That said, every single song performed that night was simply amazing. It is doubtful that a non-Cave cd will be gracing my car’s stereo for some time now.

If I have made a mistake in that setlist, maybe the order isn’t quite right or I have missed something (or worse, imagined a song they didn’t actually play!), please let me know in the comments or email. Lastly, I would like to thank Mr Nick Cave for coming all the way out to Perth, and then all the way out again to the Belvoir (a good 40 minutes from the City), and giving us a memory that will stay with all who attended for the rest of our lives. Also massive thanks to Mr Tooth Soup for the epic lift to and from, and the photos from on high.

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I have never known a day of my life without my dearest cat, Casper. For as far back as my memory stretches, Casper was there. As a kitten, he was brash and playful, but powerfully independent. From his first days to his last, he would disdain being picked up and cradled in anyones arms. Like an indignant child he would squirm and writhe until he was released and allowed to stand on his own four paws. This is not to say he did not love company; Casper loved nothing more than to curl up in a warm lap at night, purring himself into a ecstatic torpor. While aloof and seemingly uncaring, Casper consumed affection like a fire consumes air. Gorging himself on your love at any possible encounter, he could redefine gluttony in but an hour of your time.

As an old cat, he lost his left eye and most of the vision in his right. The impairment slowed him down as much as a bullet being fired through damp rice paper. Like the proverbial “grumpy old man”, he would never miss a chance to remind you that he was there, howling and crying louder than anyone could possibly imagine whenever he wanted something.

In his final days, he stopped eating or drinking. He lost his omnipresent voice to a hoarse sigh, and his stiff joints dragged him aimlessly from room to room. Lost, dehydrated and in pain, I simply couldn’t bear to watch him suffer. The Vetenarian claimed he had only hours left to him, and I knew that for him, this would simply be one drawn out agonising ordeal. My family and I made the hard decision to end his suffering; the hardest order I have ever been forced to give to anyone. Holding Casper as he took his last shuddering breath will forever haunt me as the most foul and despicable act I have committed. I felt a dirty great stain on my hands that I will never completely be rid of, and the permanent knot in my stomach reminds me of it every time the hour hand circumscribes the dozen judges that look down on me from the wall.

My hat sits upon my breast and I will always remember him fondly.

I will raise a stone for all to see;

A rune carved to his memory.

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photo credit: Midnight-digital

I have been told many times that my lifestyle is a brooding monolith on the corner of Hedonist Ave and Obsessive-Compulsive Blvd. The sustainability of such a lifestyle has been debated at length; I maintain it justifies the mindless hours lost behind the event horizon of the heartless singularity that is customer service. Sure, spending 4 hours changing soft-returns to hard-carriages a 26 000 word document can be perceived as obsessive-compulsive; having an intricate zombie plan can be percieved as crazy, but we all have one. Personally my Zombie Plan involves a certain well fortified building with supplies, near a mechanical workshop and a readily available supply of chemicals. Of course, I can’t divulge anymore for security reasons, and my meager fortress can only sustain a manageable number of zombie-plague refugees. In case of emergencies, however, there is a quickly accesable bag of clothes and equipment should the Zombies catch me at a moment of weakness in my ever vigilant stand. This, however, is not the point.

Hypothetical Me is confronted with two products or services; one of a high quality with a matching pricetag, and the other its inverse. Hypothetical Me doesn’t hesitate to spend the extra dollar, and feels justified in doing so. I concur wholeheartedly with my hypothetical doppleganger, of whom I now feel needs a name. This is not to say I will squander my earnings on pointless lavishness. Comfort where comfort is due should not be seen as a sin. However it should be pointed out that with a premium product comes premium service. A case example at hand, my leather jacket by Sinikka. A $500 pricetag adorned its sleeve, extravagant for someone on a student income, however the value is in the lifetime service from the store. One button thread came loose four months after purchase, and upon my return to the store, the friendly leatherworker removed the rotten cotton (I hear a song title there) and replaced the button while I waited. I should note that he also did this to the exclusion of other customers entering the store. I thanked him and within 10 minutes I was on my merry way, freshly stiched fasteners and all. Should a customer come to myself or my colleague at my work and purchase a couple of $2000 DSLR Cameras, we are more than happy to go out of our way to track down an obscure lens for them at zero profit for us. Head on over to Headphonic in West Leederville and you will be amazed at the fantastic service you are immediately presented with. A staff member will walk you through your needs and custom select the perfect audio device for you, making sure you trial it first and are happy with the choice. Why? Because it is a premium headphone store. You spend $600 on a set of AKG 701’s, but you come away knowing that you now possess exactly what it was you wanted. Again, I digress.

I love boxsets. There, the words have been given form and now roam free in the ether. I have been recommended to experts in the field, and common concensus is that I have something akin to bibliomania. I maintain, however, that I just really like them. The words Collectors Edition and Limited Print drive my blood into a wild frenzy that threatens to boil out of my very pores. I simply cannot pass up a chance to own something as beautiful as the leather-bound Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. Their silver etched pages and gilded edges sparkl in the dim light of a dungeon crawl, as if their brilliant display was put on specially just for me. Deluxe Ghosts I-IV sits in a large matte-black box, standing resolute against the feable attempts of photons to reflect off its surface. Thrice I own Nightwish’s Once, each a different special release. Opeth’s discography graces my drawers in its entirety twice over, myriad limited editions and re-releases scattered in their midst. In more recent days, I hunted down the last collectors edition of Warhammer: The Age of Reckoning from a small warehouse in Towoomba! The harrowind ordeal of nearly being unable to attain a copy left me a broken shell of a man, cradled only in the warm glow of hope and determination.

What brings this bout of self-convincing revelry you may ask? I am in the middle of my fourth year exams at Curtin University and sitting next to me are a disgusting pile of collectors editions of games that I can’t touch until next week! The pain of having Fallout 3 so close to my body, yet so far away in time is simply agonising!

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Like a gift from the High Heavens, a blessed angel came unto me with news. “Hark,” sayeth he, “for I bring tidings of joy.”

“Angel,” I cry, “What blessed enlightenment do you bring this humble hermit”

The room filled with light as his hood slipped back. Phantasmal wings wrapped about my being and cradled me close to his breast. Tyrael’s love buffeted my soul like a hot wind, bringing such ecstacy and clarity unto my soul. The beat of a heart and he was gone. I was alone, my only companion; his last words as they echoed through my skull. Echoes of my past.

Like magpies to loose aluminium foil, I bought this as soon as I saw it. A legacy of games that defined my youth, recorded by one of the most prestigious orchestral contingents this country has borne in the last decade. Who can pass this up? Not I, that is for sure. The stack of Collectors Edition boxes of recent releases that is sitting next to me is a testament to the unhealthy obsession I have with these entities. I can’t play a single one of them until my final exam has come to its inevitable soul destroying close, however that is a story for tomorrow. Or probably “today” seeing as how it is 0300 and all.

Please, if you know what is good for you, then read up the Echoes of War Blog while you are at it. Legendary editions are limited to one printing only.

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photo credit: Stuck in Customs

For those not in the know, I am talking about this; which is explained really well by this.

So I took the plunge and installed Google’s Chrome onto my laptop. I plan on using it for a month or two exclusively until a) I can decisively say that it is better or worse than Firefox, or b) I come across a feature that it is lacking that is vital to my everyday use of the intarwebs. In the event of either, I don’t see myself switching to Chrome exclusively for the remainder of my days; one possible outcome is using it to suppliment firefox. You must understand that this has become a competitive market that inspires competition and imitation between platforms; Mozilla and Microsoft are bound to start taking on aspects of Chrome within the next major release of each browser.

This all harkens back to that Web 2.0 bullshit that we got force fed in the last couple of years. While I don’t subscribe to the wankery of deeper connections and words becoming more powerful than their combined meanings, etc and so forth; the web browser literally has become more and more like an OS. With sites like youtube and gmail (and hotmail before it), not to mention the multitude of filesharing sites with “vitual storage”, the humble web browser has become less of a document reader and more of a doorway to a unified cloud computer. Google Documents has allowed me to write and collaberate with colleagues at University with almost 100% zero hastles; making sure your MS Office versions are compatible with another person’s before you can show him your .pps is a thing of antiquity when juxtaposed to this concept.

Before I leap headfirst into a gargantuan discourse on cloud computing, however, I will reign in my blathering and return to the titular topic. After a weeks worth of Chroming (hehehe…get it?) I can say with confidence that we are looking at a very interesting change in web browsing. While I love the extra realestate offered by Chrome’s GUI, I do sometimes find myself sorely missing some identifiers: the script icon bottom right, the page status bottom left, and the ubiquitous bookmark toolbar my cursor so often caresses with clockwork frequency. I do however feel wholly empowered with the threading of tabs; a working marvel in its own right. The mechanics behind the url-bar’s increased versatility could also prove to be a big winner, as soon as I shed my ingrained Mozillian habits…

More to come as I delve deeper into this virtual haptic browsing experience.

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