Don't Need The Sunshine

Annual post

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:12:55 GMT

I solved a problem! I feel like celebrating!

(I'd explain what the problem was, but I can't think of a way to make "I got grub going" not sound dirty. It's a Linux thing, honest . . . )

A modest attempt at Google-bombing

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:58:30 GMT

Sarah Palin, ladies and gentlemen.

Posted without further comment (the jokes write themselves)

Fri, 16 May 2008 08:13:46 GMT

IKEA to sell furniture to Sims 2 households

Good News Week and the writers’ strike

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:02:24 GMT

Everyone here seems to support the writers’ strike. Which is as it should be, I suppose, though it feels a bit weird to see those kinds of slogans in the LJ icons of people a continent or two away from Hollywood. Not watching much in the way of new TV, I’m kind of indifferent about it, though the writers damn well deserve the extra cash.

The problems start when Aussie TV networks try to make up for the shortfall in between-ad filler by ramping back up their production of “quality” local content, when they previously were often happy to get by with the bare minimum required by law. Australian TV is on the whole no better than American TV, and much less likely to have big-budget special effects to at least distract the viewer from the crap, so this is by no means a good thing. (Americans who complain about the quality of the popular culture they export should first check out the shit other countries produce.)

And then there’s this bit of news. Given the Chasers are running out of steam, it should be nice to have Good News Week back (Brits, think Have I Got News For You; Americans, think of a cross between Fark.com without the boobs-and-beer fixation and The Daily Show with the gloves off) but this could all go so very, very wrong . . .

Especially since there’s no mention of Mikey Robbins or Julie McCrossin coming back. And the beginning of the end for GNW the first time round was its going on a commercial network in the first place and losing the energy it had as a half-hour-no-ads show.

Oh well, fingers crossed . . .

On behalf of the people of Australia, I am proud to be able to say . . .

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:27:29 GMT

You're fired, Mr Howard.

Email address change

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:59:21 GMT

(blows away cobwebs) Does this thing still work?

Am still alive. May start posting fic here—y'know, right when everyone else is leaving—if I get any into a fit state to publish.

Have new e-mail address (the old one will stop working in a couple of weeks):

caira (dot) canto [at] yahoo /dot/ com {dot} au

So, what happens if I push this bu—

Randomness

Tue, 22 May 2007 17:03:53 GMT

Oh, stop teasing us, Mr Howard . . .

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:19:41 GMT

I'm learning LaTeX.

Voluntarily.

Those on my flist who know what it is, know where to send the nice men in white coats.

Filling in numbers

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:47:56 GMT

Every morning, after rousing myself with sound effects King Kong would run from in terror, I sit down to breakfast with the local Murdoch tabloid, and the fresh wit, wisdom and insight into world affairs offered by its Su Doku puzzle. And get distinctly cranky if interrupted before I've either got the thing done or given up in frustration.

Observing this, my doting parental units got me a Su Doku board game (seriously) for Christmas. I had a sneaking suspicion it was a quick and cheap commercialisation of the trend and an unintentional gag gift, and so it remained in the shrinkwrap until this afternoon. Flipping through the rulebook for multi-player games confirmed my suspicions — not to mention actually playing through a puzzle with athe_fionavar and finding that the game's Scrabblesque tiles come in a startling variety of thicknesses and with one number seven too many. Thus I've spent perfectly good fic-writing time today coming up with new rules that might actually challenge someone who's actually finished a puzzle without peeking before (mostly by ripping off Scrabble, but hey, steal from the best...).

So, now, plans: 1) Try and get in the daily quota of writing I promised myself I'd try and get done and still go to bed early enough to be awake for my appointment at uni tomorrow and 2) Try and find volunteers to test the game out on with...

blows away the cobwebs

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:29:12 GMT

Back from visiting floopyboo in Echuca, (had a great time, am now utterly exhausted, which is an annoying side-effect from getting three hours' sleep in a car park in Kerang) and now I'm back I'm finding out exactly how bad Adelaide tap water really tastes. Thinking about getting back into writing, putting the old fics on here and getting them off yet another ad-flooded get-what-you-pay-for free web host, maybe writing some new ones — like I always do when I've got uni essays I really don't have any time left to procrastinate on. On verra.

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:49:09 GMT

the Wit
(82% dark, 8% spontaneous, 11% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat.

I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.

Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on dark
You scored higher than 0% on spontaneous
You scored higher than 0% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Well, if two people at once on my tiny watchlist are doing it...

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:22:28 GMT

... I may as well bandwagon. So here it is, the Ten Songs Meme/Quiz:

step 1: get your playlist together, put it on random, and play.
step 2: pick your favorite lines from the first 10 songs. (that is, the first ten songs that have english words.) (What, no French? No Japanese? Wimps.) try not to quote the song title.
step 3: post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from. ~~(And no Googling, please; that's cheap.)~~ (Go ahead and google #2, it won't help you... *evil laugh*)
step 4: cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

1. "Epic trouble in slumberland / forgot the dreams that I had / because of the trouble in my hand..."
2. "Yer gonna rip me up, man / you blew it..."
3. ~~"The destiny I chose / all becoming clear / The currents have their say / the time is drawing near..."~~ floopyboo
4. ~~"I drew a map of Canada, oh Canada / with your face sketched on it twice..."~~ butterflykiki
5. "In the summer sun / as we two are one / swaying..."
6. ~~"I'm forgetting to draw breath / while everything about us burns..."~~ floopyboo
7. "I can print / This picture won't tell you what I mean..."
8. "Warm wind blows my skin to red / I can't change what hasn't, hasn't been said..."
9. ~~"You can go now / you can go now / you're already in there..."~~ athe_fionavar
10. "By the time / the oleander is falling from bloom / and the tears of the crocodile water the sun..."

My first icon

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 04:50:34 GMT

... sums things up, really. We will fight on. Idea by vivian_shaw, poetry by Edna Millay, Australianisation by yours truly. Steal, with credit, at will.

Aussie election results...

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 13:43:28 GMT

Worst case scenario. The Libs not only increased their majority in the Lower House but took half the Senate as well.

Is there anywhere in Canada with a decent climate and cheap real estate? I want to get in quick, in case Bush wins... Toronto's nice, right?

Back in the City of Churches from a country full of 'em.

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 11:28:57 GMT

I would write a nice detailed thing about what Poland was like, but it'd boil down to one word: piękna. Which means beautiful. Even Łódź wasn't as ugly as expected (well, it was, but there were plenty of trees to distract from the buildings) and in any case I was too busy drooling over ma belle athe_fionavar to really care. (The same applies to the rest of the holiday, and come to it most of the time now I'm back home). And Gdańsk was stunning, even if I did get all the red brick buildings in the Główne Miasto mixed up with each other. And being able to say "oh yeah, I've been to his house" when Kopernik comes up in conversation (this is not a rare event, considering what I've been studying) is always fun. Oh yes, Kraków wasn't bad either. And... well, you get the point. Best bit, though, was putting our feet up (up fairly high hills, by Aussie standards anyway, in some cases) for a week in the Bieszczady (down near the Ukrainian border). And there we go, the world's fastest holiday roundup LJ entry in one run-on sentence.

Oh, wait, I also had an all-too-brief stopover in Tōkyō on the way back. Meaning I had just enough time for a quick look around one museum. (The Edo Tōkyō Museum, for the record.) Nice place, but I didn't even have time to see the entire collection, what with the temporary exhibition for the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg... I was hoping for something on the Russian Far East (you know, remotely relevant to Japan?) but it was the usual round of old paintings and city maps. Impressive, but not worth the entry fee considering I'd been seeing similar stuff around Wawel two weeks before. Then again, I made the mistake of visiting it first --- if the collection had been big enough to be worth it I'd not have time to check out the Edo part of the museum. ;o)

Back to earth --- I mean Adelaide --- with a crash, though, on seeing my grades. I got sixty-five per cent in both my Maths subjects. Added together. Bye-bye Physics. I'm now trying to worm my way out of the B.Sc. part of my B.A./B.Sc. (Astrophysics) with as much dignity as possible. Frankly, considering how much I really don't like exams (in much the same way as Harry Potter finds Lord Voldemort a mildly disagreeable person to spend time with) I'm not really shedding a tear at this... as long as I can keep the cool galaxy photos in my 'net icons and desktop picture, oczywiście. ;o) Fear not, I'll still be the guy yelling "Oi!" in Asian Studies tutes when the tutor mutters something to the effect of "bloody scientists..."

So, this semester I'm studying:

~~As little as possible, as usual~~

日本語 (Move on, nothing to see here. Except I really need to bone up on all the vocab I've forgotten over the past year.)

Media Studies (first assignment: discuss the differences between tabloid and broadsheet media. 1000 words. The phrase "could do it in my sleep" would spring to mind if I was actually getting enough. I'm half-tempted to use the Brisbane Courier-Mail and London Independent, which IIRC use the opposite paper sizes to those one would assume from their reporting quality, just to make things remotely interesting...)

Introduction to Comparative Politics (Snore. Tired of theory after two lectures. I know the virtues of comparison, I want to apply them.)

Asia and the World (because I'm embarrassed at being so Eurocentric I can tell you who the Polish Defence Minister was in 1932 and still not be totally sure how to spell Korea (Corea?)... Least I can do is learn the basics. Plus the tutor has some wildly entertaining rants...

行きますよ。

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:20:31 GMT

Writing from Narita airport --- God bless self-promoting ISPs.

I didn't realise just how bloody pretty Adelaide looked from the air at night --- "the city in her pearls, a sixties ballgown" said the poem above the bus window, but that was no preparation. It was stunning, threads curling down into the plains grid through, around and occasionally in spite of the hills like the wrapping on the Platonic ideal of a great Christmas present. Passing low over the centre of town, I could see individual cars Pac-manning their way around, though not quite individuals (presumably they'd all been eaten by the cars...) Then again, what Adelaide only rarely has the nerve, and never the right, to call a nightlife on a Tuesday really should stay well away from any source of light in shame at their hopeless naivety.

They screened the news on my flight to Sydney; our fearless PM is far more tolerable a TV personality when you can't hear his voice. Now if only they'd get rid of the subtitles as well...

(there would have been more, but this stupid browser ate it)

Warning: this post contains occasional coarse language. Well, it is about exams, after all.

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:20:03 GMT

Had my last exam today --- one of those Maths subjects you can use the names of to frighten small children into submission. And I was reasonably confident, for once: I'd done quite well in the written assignments during semester (admittedly with a little help from my friends) and I'd aced the computing crap (and that was all on my own). I'd studied much better than usual (admittedly this is not saying much), had gotten past exam questions done (sometimes even correctly!) and I'd even written up a little formula sheet with all the theorems and definitions I'd need to memorise on it. And spent ages staring at it and rewriting it and taking notes and muttering to myself like a madman, or possibly a secret agent in a particularly incompetent terrorist organisation ("... and when the formula is exact, Meester Bond, dee eff by dee enn is equal to nought! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaah!"). So, did I remember anything on it after I got in the exam room? Did I fuck. Well, maybe I'll pass the subject.

The good news is, soon I'll be a very long way from that gah-damned exam room. Like a continent or two. The See athe_fionavar Again fund has come to fruition, and I'm off to Poland for three and a half weeks tomorrow evening, give or take a couple of days in various aeroplanes. Fuck yeah. (basks in glow of own happiness, in anticipation of basking in athe_fionavar's) I may drop in on Lj and the greater fandom world once or twice, but most likely you're rid of me until I get back to Oz. And find out my uni grades. Well, I knew there had to be a downside... ;o/

Mam nowy słownik...

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 11:56:45 GMT

..i ponieważ muszę ćwiczyć moje język polski, będę nudzić wszelki przez czytać o tym słowniku. I co też myślem. Problem jest, że słownik skieruje polscy studenci języku angielskiego --- nie ludzie jak mnie, których język oczysty jest angielski ale chcieć uczyć się języka polskiego. Tak, jesteśmy niewielu i zrobić wsystko dla nas może nie jest opłacalny, a przynajmniej autorzy mogliby tłumaczyć na angielski spis treści!

Ach. Zapominałem, że uczyć się nowy język obcy jest bardzo męczący. That'll do. I think I'll spend the rest of the evening trying to make sense of the news.

I am beyond help.

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 07:31:22 GMT

Other people on LJ squee when they get new photos of their favourite actor or their favourite fic author puts out something new.

I squee when I hear off a Crikey sealed section that there's serious talk of a new broadsheet starting up in my town soon. (I live in Adelaide, Rupert Murdoch's hometown, with the corresponding News Ltd monopoly. Yes, folks, he's all our fault.) I mean, seriously squee. I didn't think I was capable of making sounds that high-pitched.

I implore thee, God of Newspapers, return to the city that thou hast forsaken, let this new rag be successful... ;o)

April showers bring May downpours

Tue, 04 May 2004 04:16:24 GMT

It's been pissing it down lately -- welcome to Australia. Rumours of boiling hot sun 24/7/365 have been, fortunately, greatly exaggerated. Even the desert's been flooded of late.

Sunday's the last weekend I stay up all night, even if it is because I had work until 4am and then a new AIESEC trainee (nice chick, incidentally) to welcome at the airport at seven. After twenty-odd hours awake I have even less control over my tongue than usual and I don't think a certain asylum seeker line went down too well. (To put it another way, if the crack had come out of a major-party polly's mouth I'd have punched it.)

Got a start on a certain Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia. You know, one of those books people refer to often in conversation (circles of hell, seventh heaven etc) without ever having actually read it. Which is understandable, given most people's mediaeval Florentine isn't exactly extensive (in language or cultural background). And some translations apparently haven't been the best, if the translator's intro, magnificently snarky about many of his predecessors' overwriting, is anything to go by. And let's face it, most people these days boggle at the idea of a poem, singular, filling a two-inch-thick volume, even if a third of it is annotations. Without which I'd be totally lost. All the more so now, given the uni library insist on a two-week maximum loan for a book that takes a hell of a lot longer than that to get a grip on. It's on the back burner (somewhere in the sixth circle) for now. I'll just have to stick to Something Positive...

I'm writing this on the train (and transcribing it later, Gawd bless fat little notebooks). The man in front of me is reading Tom Clancy, aka the world's most widely read weapons manuals. A woman behind him is reading Jackie Collins. All of a sudden I feel like putting to use all those snobbery skills I'm sure I absorbed at high school. But mostly I'm wondering what would happen if I pulled that thirty-year-old Polish textbook out. Not a lot, probably.

In French, in honour of my Host Family issues from the year before last (get over it? Never! ;o) . Hey, if I can't write it in my native language, I may as well fuck it up others too.

Il ne sait plus ce qu’il a dit cette nuit-là, et plus important, comment il l’a dit, l’a expliqué à des qu'il ne croyait pas capable de le comprendre.

And now, I disappear...

Mon, 19 Apr 2004 13:29:50 GMT

... for four days for an AIESEC state conference, which isn't nearly as much bullshit as the site linked might suggest. If my readers (both of you) miss me, run off and wish floopyboo a happy belated birthday or something. ;o)

Kochana, będę Ci wiedzieć wkrótce. 1000 uściska i bardziej.

La vita é bella

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:47:15 GMT

Yeah, life's pretty good. I've just arranged tickets to Paris for me and my girlfriend (only... well... damn near three months to go, but still) at a price I can actually afford, uni's over for a couple of weeks (and not a minute too soon) and... hmm. Well, actually, that was a pretty crappy bar I went to for pub night last night, a crappy little meat market with a mediocre DJ playing music too loud to talk for a microscopic dancefloor. But the drink prices were right (a mate of mine disputed the price of a drink and wound up getting a pile of crappy bourbon and cokes, but for free, one of which landed in my hands) and, the crappy little meat market it was, it had the footy on the TV, and Collingwood were getting thrashed. Ah, the simple pleasures of life.

Li'l brother's 18th today (yes, Good Friday, and no, he's not religious). And I never realised how hard it was to shop for an 18-year-old who doesn't drink. ;o)

Meanwhile, I've been reading...

zombienet This is crack. Bad idea for me to stumble onto it before doing that week's Maths and Physics assignments, put it that way.

The journal of a US soldier in Iraq, dealing with the BS foisted upon her by the higher-ups, local mullahs with militias, and her misogynist "comrades". I'll wait to see if she's comfortable with the influx of readers she's getting before I post the name here (it is a public journal, and I'm not sure all ten of my readers will make that much difference, but nonetheless with the way things have spiralled just at the last couple entries of hers...)

Some Brit crime writer called Ken Bruen. Any darker and it'd absorb all light around it.

Mheh.

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 09:51:47 GMT

It's been a long week. Computer still isn't fixed, and given the famille just got hit with a $500 insurance bill it's looking like a more and more remote possibility. Uni has been overwhelming --- I started getting involved in campus politics, and finished getting involved in the Campaign For More Hours In A Day Than Just A Measly Twenty-Four. Went to a bog-standard fucked-up kind of student protest against higher HECS yesterday, which was ostenstibly to harass the local MP and the university's Vice-Chancellor, neither of whom was in the city or even the state at the time, and got kind of depressed afterwards. My mood didn't pick up until this afternoon, when I was at the burger joint to tell them when uni holidays were, and one of my co-workers who I'll just call Jerk called me a bookworm (as if it were an insult) as I left. There's nothing like being unwittingly paid compliments by complete morons to lift your spirits.

Plus there's a minor Classical Mechanics assignment due tomorrow that I'd been stressing over all week, until I actually got a look at it. It was easy. I understood most of it. I have plausible answers to every question already written. Which, going by my past record in the subject, probably means I've completely screwed it up. Oh well, it's not like I'm breaking the laws of Physics or anything...

Ugh.

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 02:22:50 GMT

Called the computer repairer yesterday (since they apparently don't have the non-Macintosh technical knowledge to make their own damn phone calls). The old hard drive is gone forever (at least according to Norton Utilities). No big deal there... all I've lost is a few MP3s, last year's uni work (ouch, but I've got hard copies of most of it), my e-mail archives (ouch, but such is life, and again, I've got a hard copy of the one that really counts), and a fair bit of writing that was stalled anyway.

The real hurty part is in the wallet: a new hard drive will cost about $500, labour included. (It's been tactfully pointed out I could get a whole new box for that much, but not a Mac, and certainly not a Mac laptop, which is what I'm running). Good news: the male parental unit, ever-conscious of sheltering me from the financial realities of the world for as long as possible, will probably stump up for it, given time for the full horror of the price to sink in. Bad news: this will likely put paid (so to speak) to any hope of him contributing to the See athe_fionavar Again Fund, even on a "Sorry, tubby, look, I'm broke, can you wire some cash over, I'm desperate, I'll pay you back, pretty please?" basis. Ah well, back to the grindstone...

... unless, of course, said grindstone calls tonight. Got a phone call with athe_fionavar planned. Priorities, don'tchaknow. ;o) (Incidentally, for those ignorant heathens ;o) that have been asking, "Cię" is pronounced somewhere between an English "chay" and a French "tchein", depending on accent, mood, and I'm beginning to suspect pure randomness to annoy foreigners. ;o)

Very Very Short Entry

Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:00:50 GMT

Saw a poster on campus for a "Very Very Short Story Competition" --- plenty of details, then "visit our website at:" and the rest was hidden beneath a larger and more colourful poster, presumably there for something from the Adelaide Festival. Gah. Saw another one, checked the site in question out. "We are not a vanity publishing company". No, just small and dodgy. Damn sight better than nothing, of course, but making real money out of writing is still Teh Impossible Dream (particularly if I keep using words like "teh"). Ah, give me time. Although a "Very Very Short Story" may possibly take more time for me to write than I have atm. Especially if work calls this afternoon.

Of course, in order to write a story, Very Very Short or otherwise, I need to have, y'know, an idea I can put into 1500 words or less (or more, or whatever). And I must be reading too many webcomics. All the ideas I used to have for stories are now coming as series of images. True, the whole sappy reunion with athe_fionavar at the airport is a more than pleasant thought however it comes, but, well, I can't draw for shit. ;o) At least in words I stand some chance in hell of doing it justice.

In short: work, brain, work!

... what do you mean, Maths tute paper?