文字馬鹿: A fool of words

Often my weekends start out with grandiose plans of what I might try and get done.

This weekend (and the preceding evenings I guess) saw me produce a Wine patch I was only playing with out of interest but which turns out to affect Warhammer Online, although I didn't know it until after I implemented the patch, and a WIne patch I've been meaning to prototype for a while using XInput 2 to fix a long-standing Wine bug which also affects Warhammer Online.

I also got back to watching Life On Mars, although I've only managed one episode and a bit. It's pretty damned good.

I also decided to make gyoza, as I have fond, alcohol-supported memories of the last time I made them.

I managed to lazy my cooking even more than usual. I'm using a recipe I picked up last time I made them off a site called The Food Palate by Deborah Rodrigo, whom Google has since informed me is from Sydney but both that site and her personal blog appear to have fallen off the Internet, sadly. However, I distilled (with the help of Kirky at work) the ingredients down to this:

Ginger, chives, chili flakes, coriander, garlic, sesame seed oil, soy sauce for dumplings, and gyoza skins

Adding half a kilo of lean pork mince, and about a half-hour, you get:

30 gyoza, freezer-bound

So not as bad as the ugly cake I made recently, but still not spectacular. And unlike the cake, I don't yet know if these turn out to be poison or not.

I expect that they'll be delicious, and not even slightly poisonous. And unlike my cake, I'm not going to try to share them with anyone. ^_^

It could be worse, at least I seem to have not managed to poison my housemate's lizards, Prime and Grimlock, whom I've been feeding while he's away this weekend. I'm not sure how I could get "put grasshoppers into the box" wrong, but I don't think I did. I think they're pretty neat names for lizards, reflecting Mick's inner geek, and his outer geek, although Prime seems to be larger than Grimlock which is to the best of my knowledge the wrong way 'round.

I was going to try and leverage in a rant about characters in children's books with alliterative names at this point, and observe that one of my favorite authors as a young child, Richard Scarry happened to avoid that, but upon actually looking him up, I realise the characters whose names I'd forgotten quite often had alliterative names. The characters I remembered still had non-alliterative names, so it's not as bad as some authors I can't be bothered remembering, but I'll chalk that one up as being disappointed by a childhood memory.

A less disappointing childhood memory turns out to be Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series. I read the series when I was quite young, and I'm only re-reading the first one at the moment, but it reminds me how good a writer he is, and why I loved his books so much as a child. Also because he's alphabetically early on the shelves. I don't know why I seem to do that. I think when I'm picking a new series, I start at the beginning and go until I've chosen one. So that favours the alphabetically early.

I've managed to get a whole bunch of reading done recently, which is good. Sadly, Borders now wants me to pay $7 on a $14 book to order it in from overseas, and it turns out most of the series I'm following keenly enough to actually order books are on that list, so I may end up having to do an Amazon order. Which is annoying, because I'm also looking for some DS games: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations appears to be discontinued in Australia and the US, and Impossible Mission never seems to have been released here at all. Along with wanting Race on DVD, I have a fair bit of overseas shopping to do, and the local financial climate is not exactly conducive to that. -_-

Anyway, the above is my documentation supporting why I should not be left alone for days at a time. ^_^

On today's business list for the NSW Legislative Council the first entry is the NSW Attorney General, Mr Hatzistergos, moving to amend the Crimes Act and related acts with respect to throwing rocks at vehicles.

The ABC has a writeup about the intended new law as well as a story about two boys who were arrested for throwing a 2kg rock at a car. The article doesn't say, but I believe this incident happened yesterday (I heard about it on the radio, along with the new law, this morning).

I'm not going to discuss the idea of a nanny state, childhood violence and/or destructive influences of video games, 'cause I'm actually at work, and don't have the brain-space for it.

I will try and get the actual text of the law and its eventual fate if I remember to.

I also will have to remember not to go skimming rocks across any trafficked waterways in Sydney

Also, "Sisyphæan", in case I need it later.

Edit: Googling for nsw bans throwing rocks pulls up knee-jerk from Encyclopedia.com as the fourth hit. ^_^

Edit: Crimes Amendment (Rock Throwing) Bill 2008 is now law.

I pre-ordered Sin Episode 1: Emergence on the weekend. It was cheap (AU$23 or so) and included a Steam version of the original Sin. This is partly my fault, I was hoping for a steamy version of Original Sin... (Sorry if you were hoping for a different original sin joke. ^_^)

I actually own Sin, but I don't know where the CD is. The original box is still on my shelf. So I'm taking the opportunity to actually finish the game, since the new one is set four years later. And it's still as I remember, one of the best-fun first-person shooters I've played... Dragged me right away from Half-Life and its expansion packs. (Although I'm finished Half-Life and Blue Shift now, and I think I'm close to the end of Opposing Force)

A recent topic on Slashdot about The changing value of certifications. Beyond the somewhat inaccurate summarising of the arcticle on Slashdot (certifications still attract a pay premium, they don't actively hurt your career) I think a rather important oversight was made in much of the discussion (ie. that bit which survived my threshhold) --- and maybe this was covered in the original research, I didn't bother trying to track down the report mentioned in the article --- that for some jobs a certification doesn't attract a premium, because it's a neccessity.

Certainly the terms of employment at CBIT require that I hold a certification of some kind within six months of joining. It originally specified MCSE, but they happily let me substitute my LPIC-1. I since discovered that my Windows NT4 MCSE is still valid, so I'm putting the MCSE upgrade on hold to get my CCNA done.

Then a lot of the posters proceeded to confuse certification with qualifications. Having both, I'm amazed that this happens. On the other hand, the people generating this confusion were usually on the "I didn't need stuffy boring university or a do-in-my-sleep MCSD, I just walked in and told them how I've been running Windows since I was six and they hired me" side of the debate.

I'm going to get condescending here. I'll let you know when it's over. I really think these attitudes go hand in hand, and are usually closely followed by "Why won't <large company> hire me as their CTO? I know as much as all these highly qualified lawyers and managers. They'll fail now, and it'll be all their fault for not hiring me," and then later followed by "I've been working this same $30k/year first-level support role for ten years now, because management are too short sighted to realise that I was just too smart to waste three years on a degree."Done with the condescending bit.

And sure, I myself have been guilty of this. I still am, frequently. I think most of us in IT do it to some extent. This is also how we end up with the armchair lawyers, armchair managers, armchair accountants and armchair linguists that pervade our community. (I pick those because I've done them all myself. Ranter, berate theyself. ^_^) It might be a symptom of the type of person who succeeds in IT (self-confident, multi-skilled and widely read/educated) as compared to those who fail (obstinant, unfocussed and arrogant).

So why certify? I do it partly because I love training and learning, and having something to show for it --- Ignore that I waited five years to graduate my B.Sc --- and partly because it makes financial sense. I like to read when I go to bed... It settles me down and clears my mind. However, a $20 novel will only last two or three days. My CCNA INTRO book has taken me over a month to get about half-way into... I think because it's so dry, I can't read more than a few minutes. Either way, good value for $50.

Flicking through Planet Linux Australia as I do when I forget how much time it sucks up... Between the sordid tales of a Power5 lying with a SunFire --- Oh I wish I had a project to throw at them... Where's my multi-threaded Sudoko solver? --- I came across this gem of an idea for a Canberra-wide wireless mesh network. This is something I'd heartily endorse, and help with where I could... I'll have to dig out my old Gungahlin-wireless-mesh plans...

A quick aside: Another Rich Web with PHP talk from Rasmus Lerdorf. The content aside, the template is sweet. The template aside, the content is fascinating.

Another quick aside: Digital cameras have their own digital signature. I'm not sure if this is even vaugely practical for any use, but here's the original article's PDF. Someone in the discussion pointed me at a US Government scheme to convince colour laser printer manufacturers to encode printer identification data onto each page. It's a scary world we live in.

Last aside... Two more links: One to make you cry: Even if the author is being facetious, someone somewhere belives this; and one to make you laugh: Every workplace should have a plan on its books for how to deal with Viking Raids.

But what of the bikinis, I hear you ask... Or would, were I narrating this out loud instead of in my head... And you cared about bikinis more than you care about Sun Tzu... OK. This is an IRC story. You've been warned.

On one of the IRC channels I hang out on, discussion turned to bikinis, and one of the channel regulars (Io) mentioned that she doesn't wear bikinis.

Pseudo-aside: This is Io. I knocked up this image that same evening, as it happens. MSPaint's so much easier to use than The Gimp... I did the whole image in the time it took me to give up the other day on finding a "Draw a square" button in The Gimp.

Anyway, it seemed sensible at this poit to consult with my new TzuBBot. TzuBBot being my Art-Of-War-based-advice-bot. Here's the results.

03:00 < TBBle> TzuBBot: Any advice on the best way to get Io out of Brazil and into a bikini?

03:00 < TzuBBot> THE NINE SITUATIONS: 55. Hence he does not strive to ally himself with all and sundry, nor does he foster the power of other states. He carries out his own secret designs, keeping his antagonists in awe. Thus he is able to capture their cities and overthrow their kingdoms.

03:01 < TBBle> TzuBBot: Any advice on the best way to get Io out of a bikini and into my lap?

03:01 < TzuBBot> THE ARMY ON THE MARCH: 45. If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.

The TzuBBot gives useful advice so often, it's scary...

Final note: My goodneess, but the move from Yurika to Dino has made this website soooo much snappier!

Seen on TV news tonight: Scientists have identified the depression-response gene which governs how well people handle stressful situations and how likely they are to lapse into depression. They are reluctant to advocate testing for this gene, as identification as a carrier may lead to the people at most risk of depression becoming... depressed.

I'm not sure if this is scientific responsiblity demonstrating the counter-argument to the people who claim that science should never have split the atom, since it lead to the creation of the atomic bomb... Or if it's simply a news editor's idea of a good story punchline. Either way, it's nice to see that Australian news is catching up to the present day, the BBC article is not quite three years old. As opposed to the recent slashdot article about toxic toads taking over Australia... ^_^

Things I'm tracking, hoping for good things:

GplFlash2

Open source, GPL implementation of Macromedia Flash 7. The developer has a blog, last updated in July.

Bazaar-NG

Revision Control Software from Canonical, who put Ubuntu together. Successor to Bazaar, which is the successor to arch. Also has a cool set of plugins growing around it, such as bzrk which lets you visualise your branches and then drill down into them, as well a the essential bzrtools.

a couple of bazaar-ng web interfaces

bzrweb (Not yet upgraded to bzr 0.1.1 -_-, you could otherwise see it on my bzr site) and a port of the Mercurial web interface, hgweb which I've not tried since it looks like the repository contains bzr as well, and I'm not clear if that's because modifications to bzr were needed, or what. Also a complete lack of installation documentation, and the TODOs need to be done.

Vega Strike

3d space-flight simulator, along the lines of Wing Commander. Admittedly, I've only run this once on a 3d-enabled machine, and I managed to ram a mining station at full speed as I forgot that you need to accelerate against your line of velocity to slow down. But it looks promising. It already looks good.

Asterisk ('*')

Open-source PABX software. It does SIP, H.323, IAX2 (their own protocol) as well as interfacing to line-interface cards. I've actually got this set up on Keitarou, running SIP, but have no one to call me. I'm supposed to get this ready for voice-conferencing for anime.au comittee meetings... I'm also looking forward to further database integration so I can hook this up at BU and sell cheap VoIP calls. ^_^

IPv6

Anyone who's dealt with me in an ISP sense (especially if you're a supplier ^_^) will know I keep asking about IPv6. Because, dammit, it's the future, it's coming, and the sooner we're ready, the sooner we'll be transitioned. From home, all my machines can connect to Yurika over the 'net via IPv6 with no speed issues (both here and Yurika are using 6to4 which, if more NAT routers supported along with Neighbour Discovery, would allow basically zero-conf setup of an IPv6-capable host such as Windows XP, MacOS X and of course Linux and BSD flavours.

Oh, the horror!

One last thing. Mad props to John Stanhope for posting and defending his decision to post the federal government's latest effort in the war on freedom. It's about time the federal government was reminded that they don't get to keep laws secret from the people. They're not a large corporation answerable only to their shareholders with only the board allowed to know everything that's going on, they're the elected representatives of the people of Australia, and when they get caught trying to sneak bad bad things past the Australian people hoping no one notices, they deserve all the suffering they get. Mind you, I haven't read the draft legislation yet. But whoever the government sent to Lateline to try and dissolve the PR fallout did a pretty poor job. He seemed to be in denial that anyone else had seen the draft yet, evading questions like a minister caught deporting Australians for speaking a second language in question time. I can't listen to question time any more, it's just too frustrating listening to people arguing rhetoric pointlessly and making enormous leaps of bad logic. But I digress.

I had a quick wander through Planet Debian and it took to on to such interesting things as progress shots on a graphical Debian-Installer (Not actually from Planet Debian, but I can't work out where I saw that now), some very funny Sinfest mods (If you're a Debian person..), an absolute dream-sounding job (Yes, those two're the same blog. She's got some good stuff there. Including a capcha that apparently expects you to type ϖ...), A commentary against the patch-management systems that have started be become quite common in Debian, and to which I converted FreeRADIUS as my first post-Sarge task, personally implanted RFID chips, and musical breast implants.

The weirdest thing about that last one is the idea that fifteen years from now, we'll still be playing mp3s. Hell, an observable percentage of people I know are either .ogg or .flac already. I myself stopped downloading mp3s because I've had two hard disks fail from what I suspect was the weight of my mp3 collections. And my laptop only had the most essential 100 Mb or so of mp3s (Cowboy Bebop, Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge and a couple of random bits like the Blues Brothers' Everybody Needs Somebody and Abbot and Costello's Who's On First. And ガガガSP's 卒業 single, but I don't listen to that very often. In fact, I don't listen to any of these mp3s much anymore. My desktop machine's no longer in front of a west-facing window, and I'm not towing my laptop to work in the upstairs basement at TransACT anymore.

I've also ripped my new Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy soundtrack to flac, because either mplayer or copy protection (it doesn't say CD Audio on the cover! Aha! Treachery uncloaked!) means it skips every second in my DVD drive. I don't have a CD-audio cable, so analog isn't an option, but happily cdparanoia was happy to extract it perfectly to the hard disk. Analog mode works fine in my laptop, but I avoid doing that because I'm sure that the laptop's DVD drive is dodgy and just waiting to eat something important.

Oh, and I scored a new TV. Well, technically my dad gave me an old TV of his, but it's an improvement over my old one because it's larger, it has OSD, it has a remote, and it has AV inputs. So I plugged my gamecube in, and played Resident Evil Zero for a couple of hours. I only get Resident Evil Zero out when I change TVs, it seems (it was still in the gamecube from when I was getting my TV Tuner working in Linux) but the TV doesn't do PAL60 so I can't have another burl at The Ocarina Of Time, although I could try and finish Metroid Prime at long last.

On a more personal note, it's looking more and more like the work at TransACT's dried up, and I'm starting to think I should start seriously exploring my Melbourne options. I've got the JET information evening on Wednesday night, so I'll have an idea of how many people I'm going up against.

I prolly should talk more about the Melbourne plan here. As it happens, I dropped out of everything else to focus on BU and TransACT, and now that work looks like it's going to dry up. I can do my BU work as easily from interstate as I do now (technically, I do the work from my flat in Queanbeyan, so I'm already interstate) and frankly I'd like to try living somewhere with trains and other such public transport and try getting a job I actually like (TransACT's nice, but I need a change). So I figure either Melbourne or Sydney fits so far. I've friends in both cities, as well as family in Melbourne, so it'll come down to the job opportunities. Melbourne's main advantages are Cybersource whom a friend of mine mentioned are likely to be looking for people, as well as a project a friend of mine is looking into which I'd love to get involved in. When I thought I'd have TransACT work until the end of the year, I was thinking I'd go to Melbourne in February (after linux.conf.au 2006) and find a five month job until JET blasts off in July. Now I'm thinking maybe I should be looking to go in December/January... The problem with this plan is that I've got a possibly opportunity coming up in Canberra in online shops, and I'd have to break lease on my current flat. And I don't have any savings to afford to be in Melbourne without a job. And it's already mid-October. So I'd better get on with it.

On the "actually getting things done" front, I finally submitted a FreeRADIUS 1.0.5-2 which should clear the logjam 1.0.5-1 became when libltdl3-dev started conflicting with libtool1.4 without warning. I'm disappointed in this back-door method of forcing libtool1.4 out, where either a Replaces in libltdl3-dev or a diversion in libtool1.4 would have allowed the libltdl3-dev/libtool transfer of ltdl.m4 without boning me unneccessarily. As it is, the solution became to drag in the relevant parts of the libtool1.4 package to update the in-tree versions of the files. This is bad, but I can't NMU libtool1.4, and the patch I was given to upgrade FreeRADIUS to libtool 1.5 was unneccesarily intrusive to my mind, and I couldn't distill the libtool parts from the 'change how we build the package' parts.

I've also been actively hunting bugs in packages I'm using, leading to patches to libpam-mount (So I can mount my home directory from Keitarou on Mutsumi from XDM and safe from segfaults due to configuration), lftp (so it doesn't abort when a download finishes ^_^ Upstream didn't use my patch, but it _was_ a minimal -- but not optimal -- solution which neatly explicated the problem, I think) and xmame (so I can use xmame with programs with CHD files). In the process, I also submitted bugs to pam and liblircclient0 which are simple non-crashers that valgrind picked up. I'm so glad I started using valgrind, it's the absolute bee's knees for finding any kind of memory misuse bug which might otherwise lead to a segfault much later. I also used it on libnifi which majorly improved my memory management and stopped a whole bunch of segfaults. ^_^ I also took the opportunity tonight to point out to the php4 team that libcurl3-dev had disappeared during its autobuild time, much as libltdl3-dev broke FreeRADIUS during its autobuild time. It happened a week ago, so I expect they knew about it, but I was surprised to see absolutely no bug about it.

I was awoken this morning by my mobile at the ungodly hour of 7:50am. It seems the changes I made last night caused BU to cease to work. Which is weird since I made the change at 1am, and the traffic graphs indicate it was all working fine until 6am. Maybe a daily cron-job decided to rearrange things for me? Either way, it took under a half-hour to fix, another two hours of mucking about with the network to see where we stood on the issue, at which point I decided that rather than go to work and have a late lunch, I'd have an early lunch and spend a long afternoon at work before cruising on to ANUAS.

I don't remember what happened at this point, but I think it involved more mucking about with BU stuff and similar. Or I might have played with the L2TP stuff.

Either way, I agreed to be available at about 4pm, so I figured at this point I'd kick back, watch The Jerry Springer Show, and chat to people on IRC and IM. I was also playing with the L2TP stuff during this, but it was largely kernel compiling so it was "type command, wait an hour" type work. Being on IRC reminded me of my occasional project to create a PGSM Music Video. In order to do this, I obviously need to have seen the whole series. Hence I decided to finall watch my PGSM Special Act DVD.

(The lesson learnt is inside the spoiler tag. I'm sorry, but it's the final scene of the whole show. I'm also gonna talk about the story of Hitch. Yes, I saw Hitch last night. It's good. ^_^)

For reference, the current AMV plan is the Shitenou set to "Knights Of The Round Table" from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. It has the huge advantage of being only a minute long. ^_^

Anyway, Special Act was a surprising DVD, in that there was no omake, and the menu only appears at the end, which has the choice of Whole Movie, or one of six chapters.

As far as the story goes, I enjoyed it as far as I understood it.

Then I got ahold of the guy I needed to talk to to get the rest of the BU changeover done, and we worked through and identified the last of the remaining issues, and he went off to work on them.

At this point I was getting hungry for lunch (being about 6pm) when Shane walks in and says "If you want barbecue for dinner, you'd better go get some stuff, Julia and Bek are coming around in five minutes." Needless to say, (but I'm going to) I did. Sometime over an hour later, Sean, Julia and Rabekah arrived. We barbecued, watched some of the Canturbury VS St. George NRL game, and Shane went to bed and the others retired to Sean's house (across the road) once more leaving me on my lonesome. >_&lt. This I think may point the sorry state of my social affairs when I'm disappointed when people stop watching a rugby league game and leave. I consoled myself with the best of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and a repeat of The Glass House from Wednesday (Still funny the second time around), and by harassing Julia over MSN when I could. I also at chocolate cookies. ^_^;;;

Those of you playing along at home may have observed that the above overlapped the ANUAS screening. Which is correct. Kaz had the membership stuff, so my presence wasn't neccessary, and I was debating whether to drop in at the end when Shane arrived and triggered the above.

I tried a Cruise Juicy tonight, and it was OK, but too juicy for my taste ie. too much like overstrong cordial. They're also only one standard drink per, which makes them weaker than a standard cruiser.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to plug Television Without Pity as an amusing website of episode recaps for various TV series. The only one they're tracking that I'm watching (largely because the number of TV series I'm watching is down to Battlestar Galactica, The Glass House (these two class on Wednesday night), Little Britain, and Rosemary and Thyme) is Battlestar Galactica. And I'm enjoying it. ^_^

Here's PGSM Special Act. I got this with the 7-DVD box, which now holds PGSM Vol.1 through Vol.7. The second box comes with PGSM Act.Zero, shipping end of March. (Also below. ^_^)

Yay Mew!

Just when Australian politics couldn't get any more confusing...

Yesterday, the federal progressive party (the Labour Party) campaigning on Health issues lost to the federal conservative parth (the Liberal Party) campaigning on law and order. Strange as that is, it's normal.

Now the ACT's local conservative (Liberals) opposition is campaigning against the progressive (Labour) government for next weekend's electoin, promising to move money from law and order projects (a new gaol) into health care and hospitals.

I might go move somewhere where the politicians remember which side of politics they're on, and where the party names make sense... ^_^

Arrgh. >_<

People who've held still in front of me long enough, will have heard my idea that, although individual persons can be quite clever, people tend to be stupid. The larger the group, the stupider they act.

This principle seems to have elected John Howard as Prime Minister of Australia again. He managed to claim during the election campaign that Peter Costello was responsible for Australia's good economic position, but that Mark Latham would single-handedly drive Australia into the ground financially, and at the same time insult the intelligence of every Australian who can do simple arithmatic.

For those whose arithmatic isn't so good, 12 is less than 17, so the last labout Prime Minister reduced interest rates by 5% in one term. In three successive terms, John Howard's governments were only able to drop it 6%. This last point isn't really comparable, I expect, since a drop from 17% to 12% while the whole world is recovering from a recession isn't hard, while 12% to 6% over three years while other economies are suffering is not easy. But hey, if everyone else can insult the intelligence of the public, why can't I?

"The Australian Idol top 12 is an exclusive club. Only six singers have made it in." -- Australian Idol commercial.

You'd think at first glance, proscriptive grammar would be hard, 'cause that involves telling right from wrong, and such judgements are not simple.

On the other hand, descriptive linguistics seems simple, since all that involves is recording what people are saying and how it hangs together.... Except that everyone time someone opens their mouth, that's more work.

And I wouldn't want it any other way. ^_^

A kangaroo hit me on the way home today.

For those not familiar with Australian fauna, this is very different from hitting a kangaroo. When one hits a kangaroo, one's grill gets compressed, and if you're lucky, the kangaroo dies. If you're unlucky, the kangaroo gets angry. >_<

On the other hand, tonight the kangaroo hit me. This means it hit the side of the car, then got up and hopped off the road (in the direction it was headed) before the next car got there. (At 60km/h and heavy traffic, this is under two seconds by my count.) It knocked my passenger side wing mirror at a weird angle (but very convinient for parallel parking) but hit the car exactly where I hit the pole in a parking lot, so I couldn't see any other effect in the dark.

I had a near miss the other day with a kangaroo at 100 km/h.

All this, and I'm down with the flu too. >_<