The Rug Doctor

Just come away from another weekend with NZLarps - Multiverse. The fantastic weekend included highlight like running around smacking people with swords, causing one person to have his soul ripped out by a Chaos champion just because he was there at the time, and having Vanya's 21st. I am slowly getting over my problems with larps, and interacting with them more.

Been gymaging today - had some great results. My knee is hurting alot less as I walk and run now, and my stats around body mass and fat are aligning. One of the key indicators I set on my arm is starting to happen now - I am over the moon and grinning ear to ear.

Key tools I am using all the time now - my red Sony T50 camera which I have on me all the time to people's charign and later amusement, and inspiring people to do the same and look at the details of the world around them - that alone is priceless. Paid Flickr account that I upload good photos too, albeit slowly at times. Google Calendar for the TXT alerts and reminders of holidays, party events, and which week the slightly different rubbish week is. Facebook for keeping track of people and their parties, and using it to share photos from flickr and import events into my calendar. MirandaIM for gtalk and msn and gmail notifier.

The new flat is now six months old, and we are about to have our third flatwarming party (the second one is planned for around christmas time). The "fireplace party" went down a treat, as did the mulled wine recipes people manipulated. I have gained a pendate which I am pleased with, and actually am wearing it around my neck which as people might know is very unusual.

All in all, things are good.

Invite to Asylum flatwarming on the 29th

http://flickr.com/photos/drrugg/2332802894/

BattleCry is coming up!

The America Club is hosting its yearly gaming convention "BattleCry" again at the Freeman’s Bay Convention Centre, with tournaments for role playing, card gaming and war gaming.

There will be war gaming, card gaming, roleplaying, board games, larps, demonstrations, tournaments, talks, stalls, paper sword battles and much more. BattleCry’s main aim is to support a range of styles of gaming, and introduce different lesser-known games to the wider gaming community to help encourage their playing and to provide a venue for people to try new things, and play old favourites.

Check out the website on the America website with the online/ offline entry forms, and show your support on the Facebook BattleCry 2008 event page.

Everyone is welcome from seasoned experts to people who want to just see how things are done - its a weekend full of gaming and events.

Gene R
WebMonkey
TheAmericaClub

Lan was fantastic. We didn't partake in much leeching, nor FPS. But much enjoyed by all. Friday and Saturday was filled with five true geeks and food. Sunday and Monday were action packed two rooms of gamers. Our flat is looking at gaming at some stage. Must finish making fully ready games, and a cheatsheet of servers and common computer faults - no firewall, antivirus requirement, and DHCP turned on!

I have a few people to be doing a  photo- a- day now in hopes to have better photos and/ or a record of what goes on in our lives.

Tech: I will have a five port gigabit switch for the flat very soon. Cal has a gigabit card now which is sometimes working. And Maud has lost her big head in lieu of becoming a temporary gateway server so that we can upgrade (er) our current nameless one (now has temporary name of Neo - 192.168.1.1)

I love coming back from a game pumped - full of ideas, having fun with mates in competitive/ cooperative epic RP gaming. Getting hints about Season Three ideas - things I almost played through with another gaming group years ago (Klint etc).

Currently upbeat and grooving to Up FM 107.5 (Base FM  is another one to listen to - Spider FM [from NZ list] sounds interesting but Avondale only?) - electronic music flavoured like Infected Mushroom for reference. I have also looted a bunch of CD music to trim down. [Edit] BaseFM is playing Juno Reactor's Pistolero

New toy and tech - a sexy sexy Sony T50 from Trademe - will start taking more photos at parties/ events again. Will attempt a photo a day, but the super-macro and shake reduction are already blowing my mind.

Tech note 2 - feature for wireless in Windows that you can connect blind when the router is not advertising itself. Handy when using Ubuntu without WPA/PSK

Just come back from "300" with saturday gaming crowd - blown away. Particularly liked how the style of fighting was highlighted in several scenes, and how each of the main characters got screentime showing off a slightly different fighting technique; ideas are going straight into feating up battle descriptions soon! It was everything that the last part of Sin City should have been.

Have invested in a few more books - cheap books from sales in Real Groovie and Vagabonds ($2 old RPG books), and the thoughtful and until recently unused gift card from unnetheand terridian for "Ender's Game" and "Rama II"; slowly now working through flaviusb's Must Read List and the increasing Must Watch List finally.

Techy stuff; The newest posterchild of the Linux world Ubuntu is having a major release on the 19th of April. Looks fantastic - inbuilt support for virtual machines (ie running very fast WinXP and WoW). "Feisty Fawn" will also have better wifi support, an even easier installer, Windows Migration Tools,desktop effects (think of Beryl goodness - must see). Will be investigating this as a desktop replacement.

I am organizing people to see Black Sheep on Friday for 920p session at Queen St Village - interested at all? I will be at O'Hagans for my workmates/ Kung Fu teacher's last day at work before then too - post back and I will arrange tickets tonight.

The rain is glorious - the half hour walk/ joy this morning was cleansing.

Computer Nerd 78% (Literature 61, Science 59)

Hack fun - the chair crutch
Tech fun - Firefox Extension (etc) Backup

Reminder - Oriental "Excuse for a Party" Party at our flat this Saturday. Part flat warming for me, part "we haven't been drinking seriously enough recently"; my room should be a dance room or as the drinking lounge.

In running with Google your first name and the word "needs" and post the first five or six funniest results...
* Gene needs therapy
* Gene Needs a Longer Tongue
* Gene needs to learn how to use my camera
* Blue Gene needs to integrate with grid middleware (and save energy, apparently)
* Mutant gene needs to be destroyed or repaired

Tech - have purches a new camera via the evil EBay, and now playing the waiting game for it to come in. It has an extra lens inside that counterbalances to the movement your body makes - clearer photos! It also does ISO1000 and a touch screen.

More tech - For in game talking to other people, you can't go past TeamSpeak - most popular one currently, it has overlays for fullscreen games for whos online, and push-to-talk or (slow) voice detection. Is a server-client setup. We've set one up at the flat - working very nicely with Neverwinter Nights multiplayer ... we will have to organise a lan party soon...

We are planning on a Oriental "Excuse for a Party" Party that includes my flat warming, various celebratory drinks, and the dedication to getting rather drunk for once. All is invited - One Mount Eden Road, Saturday Twenty-fourth of March. Oriental Attire Encouraged, Heavy Drinking Expected. Brind a bottle of something tasty, and some form of costumage (I know of at least one hawiian shirt, and stick on moustache) - much photos to be taken!

Apparently I have shifting muscles within my hip joint, which is why my "knee" is clicking. There is also a small amount of movement there, but nothing serious at this stage. My Tai chi and kung fu is triggering this particularly, and shorting the hip in particular triggers this. Strangely enough - need to do more stretching, and more relaxing of muscles.

I have moved in the last few things into my room - three piece lounge suite, corner cabinet, couple of side tables (one made by Soozie), and a microwave. Flatmates are pleased, except for being motivated into cleaning themselves - I'm not complaining!

Techy stuff on the go - found my wireless router in cabinet draw from storage. Am now missing most cables from my room. Can't get the portible playstation'y types to connect  to 'DasNetwork' due to WPA/PSK security used, but laptops should be fine (particularly any new ones).

Minor update + no fluff. Have taken two mental health days this weekend, much to the charin of four different events going on (all of which I now owe chocolate and visitation and an apology). My knee has started clicking loud enough to hear the back of my skull; I am very paranoid about it, as I have just started walking and kung fu again recently. There is a new dude at work whom I will train if we ever get phonecalls; and my other teammate has put her notice in. I am missing a wireless adsl router.

Here cheers to an interesting life ;-)

So, BattleCry rocked. Usual scuffles at the last moment for some things (the poor pies), and some really good ideas actioned (the LARP on the friday night, the board gaming saturday, general flow of things working). Just need to get people give us feedback!

Had the Roadshow where the head of the company (not big T) told what was the current company path. Hasn't changed much from last year (good), and they confirmed several tech-ne-me-logical stuff that is coming up to drool over (a la GoogleDocuments and such). I presented to half the Auckland staff of 300 people what the Service Delivery and service desks thought of where we were at and needed to do to go forward - five minutes of panic and appreciation from the team.

Met my new team leader too, and starting a plan to move desk up to The Tower and pick up /more/ clients like Ravensdown and Genesis.

I believe I might be moving this weekend. Watch this space. Fishie - I'll make a post soon - watch out for it!

I got some Oggz (changing led egg shaped mood lights) and now have one spare that is faulty they didn't want back - I need to get myself a "I Void Warrenties" tshirt I think ;)

Tech of the moment - Dialing *7664 for Telecom Song ID, and then locking the txt so I can lookup the artist on Pandora for samples.

Thing of the moment - martial arts. Specifically, getting back into it with a Tue/ Thu hour of Kung Fu, and hour of Tai Chi. It is really good stuff, really enjoyable, and getting right into my weak points and making me feel the stretch - yey!

Cando does amazing art. And is a might fast poster ;)

If you can see this, you are invited to the Dia de los Muertos combined birthday party of Canice and Gene, with partying, music, grog and dancing monkeys*.

Bring grog, bring attitude, be something dying (or you will *become* one of our minions)

The Lair, on the third.

(* zombie monkey milage may vary)

Big Day out was fantastic. Muse, Tool, My Chemical Romance, Peaches + Herms, The Killers, Crystal Method,... great time had by all. Emo was the fashion of the day, and Muse the overall winner in most people's eyes. Boiler room rocked for the base hunger for base I have had for so long... dance clubs just don't cut mustard anymore.

I have now moved house - and have setup wireless internet again (oh no, three days offline - [mock emo wrist- forehead- staplegun]) but don't have sp2 onhand. A few things scratched, and only one thing broke - my reversible belt I got from Australia has ripped apart at the eye that I use mostly.

Work is great and clients that are threatening to leave are staying, and cool clients are threatening to not pay and leave. So lots of fun - the Ambulance managers like interacting with me on a daily basis, so no actual trouble at work per sec.

Multi- colour changing alarm clocks (that are black at night until you tap - then they show a backlight) and Oggz (egg shaped squidgy wireless LED mood lights) are the thing of the moment. Also, getting empty TXT messages from various people overseas for the last couple of days (and only partially successful in getting the message back either)

So I've been working saturdays, doing a tweleve hour shift instead of gaming with. Go figure. I got a few website updates for NZWRS and theamericaclub.net.nz websites at least. I might even get around to making them look pretty.

Many little victories today - several work incidents sorted out (including emails with me going "the problem lays here" and everyone else disagreeing and two weeks later getting proof I'm right), and confirmation about joining back into martial arts, and many much hours added to the pay check (the two Big T's have awful time management tools. Job logging tools too for that matter). Doing another drawing for Soozie, and getting through Bablyon5 one season at a time. Gaming is good, and getting photos done (although not hitting the magic photo- a- day targets)

If I don't have much contact over the next two weeks, it is as I am moving out. Again. This time with the family in tow - the house is sold, moving into a rented space out at the end of the North- Western motorway.

BTW - flickr is great. It is a freeeee web photo service like all the others, but you can add hover notes too. Based on a Yahoo login (yes, I use yahooPhotos for the easy unlimited space, not that you can't get around that easily with flickr...). I have started uploading my creations for the club there, and even started a AMERICA pool that I can do some website magic with now or later.

Oh ... Map of the internet from 2006 (as seen by IP space ... that 192.168.1.1 stuff). ... And, go surfing for the microfoam. Just be gentle with it the first time!

I ended up at two very good Christmas do's this year - lunch at the Lair and dinner with the folks. Lair was a pot luck affair with excessive amounts of good food, good company, grog a- plenty, and a quick two hour board game. Then had to rush off (forget my chocolates and install CDs) back home for more bubbles and minted baby potatoes with just the family (and no usual additional family friend or relative).

Best gift: Chthulu-poo (actually a Winnie in a snake skin, but very convincing and very scary beady eyes - thanks Xanalith for that one)
Useful present: Bucket full of socks from The Olds - I need that bucket for rubbish while getting ready to move again.

MO for the next couple of days - working. Working three non statuary days each week being the only person on my team (including lack of team leader), and covering afterhours for a twelve hour shift on Saturday too -- so no sanity gaming for me that day. A little annoyed that daylight events are cropping up, but will be attending any evening stuff that is going (nudge nudge!). Including to this, I am wanting to go to the movies again - 'The Prestige' looks quite inviting, or perhaps 'Borat'?

MO for next month - getting ready to move. The house across the street is about to be finalized and sold, and The Olds will be moving out on Waitangi/ NZ day. I have heard about a room coming open in a flat, but need to figure logistics (car, awkward furniture) out first, and do the official inquiry with the flatmates.

Geeky stuff - Drupal 5.0 is in final beta, and people are converting modules and sites over already. I have already redone some elements of TheAmerica site - tho dunno if anyone has noticed really yet. =

( That Twelve Days Christmas Meme that is floating about... )

Played in my first (and last) Mordavia a while ago - that rocked. Being in character for fourty- odd hours does something strange to a person. I am still recovering sleep from that! Fighting in the dark with a glowing green tree with whipping branches **mmuuurrrrrrrrhh!** **poisonknockdownmmmmuuuurrrrhhhh*** was great - so well put together and executed.

Christmas draws nigh. I will be doing the traditional mad dash for presents for family and some friends tonight. Sounds like I will not be doing twenty extra hours of overtime at work over the weekends on top of working non- stat days. I am hitting 1430 and wanting to fall asleep tho.

I am looking for a good Picture frame now too - the digital photo works- with- encrypted- wireless types ... there are a few on the market, but not as sexy as the one from thinkgeek. And not as amusing as a wi-fi bunny or an e-ink pdf reader, but you can't have everything.

People definitelyshould see _poe_'s Big Bad Wolves short film - yet again R and his teams full another witty production out of nowhere - about to be release to the interwebby.

Also, check out the BattleCry coming up - registration forms are out, and games are in the making. See TheAmericaClub website for details [/shameless plug]

Wow, has the last month been stressful.

The last week or so I have been hounded by all sides for information and getting websites up to date. I have my intranet up to date now, with all the information up to date, who is who and what is going on. I am quite proud, and she is quite happy with what I've done so far. Of course, she's then handed me a sheathful of material to sort and upload, and a project to compile any person and their role and phone number into a database. E Gads! Client champion'ing is hard work.

Between this is the actual client.. Sky went down early this week, and I have'nt gotten anything done outside of work since. 111 Ambulance lost their primary system for paging vehicles for most the southisland - just a little stress. Some of the recording software was having issues today too. And then I get "critical" jobs about non essential access that hasn't worked for months (and they are on holiday tomorrow) - things are getting prioritized.

I am doing Christmas shift on the servicedesk - it means picking up the other three servicedesk's workings, so I can be prepared for anything (comparison - I have two primary clients out of six I support since May... this will be thirty by the end of next month). I also need to study up on Microsoft exams while I still am under then "company will pay for exams and salary increase" scheme that finished on my birthday roughly.

That, plus minor twitterings outside of work. Meh. MYOB upgrades.

Which makes live grand at the moment ;)



Unnethe - sorry - haven't planned very much yet. Me, you, Markattack?

---

Things have been... interesting... recently in any case. Been partying with Xanalith a bit, getting some good gaming in, and following up on some interesting possibities ;) ;)



Hint of the week - if you harrass me (or I harrass you) I will send you the Friday Funnies of the week.

Tech of the week - Oggz squidgy silicon rechargable egg shaped mood shifting light ball ... things. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Lamps-lighting/Tablelamps/auction-77453032.htm

Bonus Funny - widescreen crystal ball
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0376.html

Something to look into - Writely is now Google Documents and Spreadsheets (shared documents you can edit only that works exactly like Word and Excel). Google bookmarks for remote access to your favorite bookmarks. Google reader keeps me up to date with most livejournals (except unnethe who is private) and website updates. And I am trying out Picassa + Google Images for free upload space. Mmm, space of one month and I become a google fanatic?

I have moved out of my flat now, fully. I think I *am* allergic to wool, and the brand new 100% wool carpets are not helping at all. Going to miss Porche alot. But I have my wooly Simba instead

I am now also fully on the new Service Desk role here - its is really good feeling to be able to fix problems directly rather than arranging techs and minions to get it done. I am still having issues with my primary account that I am the Client Champion for - 111 Ambulance. Yes! That is fun - I am learning all about their domains and devers, backup issues, and resolving problems over the phone.


Random tech for you this time - Wikis. PB wiki specifically. You sign up, and start writing. If you want a second page, just bang the words together for NewPages AboutStuff and theymake links. If you log in with an email adress, you get updates if someone edits the pages - look at http://buildyourown.pbwiki.com/ and follow it around. We have been using this for our games, and the email alerts are pressuring us/ reminding us to update and get info up - quite good! AND PB standard for Peanut Butter ;)

Back from ozzie, and finally unpacked. The trip was brilliant - I ended up staying at the Place backpackers, something I can throughly recommend as being stumbling distance from town and just upstairs from a bar. Just thwak people who talk through the night and play movies on their Sony cameras.

Brisbane itself was great - the weather was warm ('cooler than recently') and it was plesent to be able to walk around without sunscreen ('dangerously high UV levels of 8'). As per usual guy sense of style I re stocked my waredrobe - ie I have sense enough *not* to by clothing I find fashionable, and tagging along with two girly types who enjoy dressing me and making recommendations which I mostly take ;)

Of course I went over to see the lovely haliath on her twenty first and what a bash that was! We were in the Good Knight Bar under a specialist pancake house built into a church ("the owners were on drugs" to most questions), dancing in bar darkness, playing unnethe to pool sober and drunk (pottering around balls for most the night), chatting with the gamers, vodkas at midnight (which went down will everyone, in terms that noone brought them back up soon after, or later on), and generally having a "fabulous" time all round!

On other topics, just tonight made a batch of pumpkin soup (read: pumpkins, mushrooms, bit of oil, vegtable boulleon/ stock,.. well blended - its in the fridge Unnethe, and vegan AFAIK) and enjoying it for the fact I can taste each flavour in it. I know I have gotten quite a rep in a particular club for food (and disecting burgers down to component pieces) but I far enjoy the differences between them and don't get that if I take it all together.

A great many things a better when you can tell the difference - it is our individulality that gives us our flavour. What would we be if we were all the same?

Last note: joking yesterday about how media doesn't cover when prices of petrol comes down. Todays paper, page 3: "Prices come down, but won't last that way (doom doom!)" We don't seem to be winning here!

Really the last note: Creative Zen Micro Photo/s rock more than iPods ever could. This has been a public announcement

I have handed the reigns over at work for Chch, advised how to whip the the techs and managers appropriately, and signed off all the mailing lists and off their usual garbage.

Its weird - between job roles. Back to training up. Yey!

I get to doom more of the company and customers now too - access to company systems to do (er) Preventative Maintenance...! [locks users accounts out] [puts up system sign "PLBKAC"] [goes for lunch break]


Off to Ozzie tomorrow to see the sights and the magnificent haliath, with the fabulous unnethe. I will be staying in a large hostel under a large bar with our backpacker types. Might picks me's up a foreignlady along the way...

No email access (well, I lies) and plenty to do

Oh yea - my pirate name: Bubonic Bud Smithe! E'vast-ye scurvy bilge feed'r!

Cookie-gamic -- by Unnethe

[droool]


Must... not... turn... to the... dark... side... [confirms that dark chocolate was on interests list] [resists urge to loot off countertop]

[returns to bok-choi mushroom baked-bean tomato yam and peanut-butter stirfry]

Updates interests, and follows suit with left bower...

( My Interests Collage! )


I have some one of the more amusing things today - unnethe using percussive cook to blend mini batches of *something* in the little coffee bean blender coz the big blender is a glorified smoothie maker. And her mate carefully scooping margerine into a metal 1-cup measure and gentle soothing it over each time before asking if he should microwave it for creaming!

I have confirmed this with several people, and there should be more parties like the one bookdragon help Friday night - everyone enjoyed it, lots of dancing and a little bit of drinking; it was a fantastic well rounded party (and no Unnethe - no hooking up with Kaos chicks either)

[432. The Chemical Brothers - The Private Psychedelic Reel]
Imagine this - urgent jobs for failed servers, failed backup drives, a wireless network still waiting weeks later to be setup, a part to be installed (urgently) into an archaic server ("We are the field agents for HP in Otago? How wildly facinating"), rearranging technician schedules and pulling a "er, I would far prefer you to be working on this [contract client wifi setup] job then this [non contract 'just advise us' setup financials computer urgent now please] job". And, a user requesting a larger monitor.

[463. Snake River Conspiracy - Somebody Hates You]
On another note, I am thankful for being who I am where I am - I love this city and this country and its flaws, even for seeing other places around the world. I am thankful that I have the support of my peers both in work and play, and that they are understanding enough when things go wrong. I give thanks that I don't have to deal with idiot users all the time and they give variety when they do - hell the fact I have variety. I am thankful that I am in a flat with people whom I don't want to kill (and I think the reverse is true). I am thankful that I seem to have great hearing and taste, and when wearing glasses my darkvision is 10', and that I can sometime comunicate better through geek'isms than with real english.

[353. Mr. Bungle - Vanity Fair]
I hope people who want to know, know about SuperCheap and PriceSpy for getting products, Mordor's fan base remake (game), Del.icio.us online bookmarking, wikipedia, XP Boot Logo mods, The Fanimatrix, 3rd Ed Disciplines and Combos, Alcohol for ISO images, and Miranda as a MSN (et al) alterative.

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	drrugg
Your haiku:	file now you can do one program to bring them all together maybe
Username:
Created by Grahame

Its bloody Cold.

Shorted day and all that. I put the car in the shop today due to a carpark jumping out and biting it. And nothing remains of my previous abode (the room at least).

I think Astra made some Leek soup again - she made some when I first went around to her place proper - very tasty with much herbage. Must remember not to try steal it tho. Not healthy and in the wrong way.

Recent pages of note - Arcane Evolved Prepared Spells, Spellbook Generator, and adventures for a various on DnD. Seems a little more organic - less spells, but each one can be modified with simple templates and diminished and laden versions, and classes that are bit more balance and flavourful.

Another one I am watching out for is Sony Reader and compared with the Illiad - paper with ink pixels that flip over and look like a newspaper. Due out... sometime soon. Via Borders!

GreaseMonkey is a little tool for Firefox that lets you use scripts on any page.

User scripts include things from a graphical picture previews for google search items, to removing annoying ads from pages that auto- ad blocking plugins cant remove automatically, to adding buttons and changing ways things work either for just one site, or all sites.

Ones I use - DeviantArt adbar removal and gallery skipping, Flickr links to orignal images hack, Gmail random signature generator, Gmail "I want my sig at the top not the bottom", and Livejournal dhtml to leave comments without moving away from the current page. Oh and the autoupdater one too.

To follow suit with other bloggers - yea, the power went out.

Apparently Hamiltron went out with us. Spots all over the place did have power (confirmed with the was-sleeping unnethe that our place didn't before being sent home for a couple of hours)

Had one call to our service desk
"Hi, our server is having problems"
"Are you currently experiancing a power outage Auckland caller?"
"Why yes"
"I think that might be the problem. What is the serial number?"
"Er, dunno - the lights are out"

I'm wondering what is next, and placing bets - Auckland water pressure drops out? 10 metre tidal wave? Paper shortages??

Did i mention that Christchurch and Nelson (and most of the south island) were closed too due to excessive snow? My managers down there couldn't come in due to being "snowed in". Suny in Invercargil apparently ;)

Miranda is a MSN and ICQ replacement much like Trillian. I have been using it for several years now, and for sanity sake (and because I hear people complaining about MSN recently) this is what I use and how I use it.


I am using the most recent develpment build which works a treat. It supports out of the box multiple connections to ICQ, MSN, GoogleTalk (all of which I use), AIM, Yahoo and IRC chat. It looks suck out of the box, but by adding things like Faux Aqua for background and colour dots (and squares and google bubbles) and it is looking hotter. Turn on the Avatar preview for your contacts (and a program fingerprinter) and your set. Add a gmail notifier, one person many programs merging, and turn on the chat that lets you pair people from different places without them knowing (tabSRMM). And turn the quick key AltCtr-A to show/ hide. Brilliant!

I have become the grinch that stole routers - and started to hack up my old books and boxes for their front covers. My "DOS for Non Nerds","Soundblaster [Orignal]" and "Win 95" fronts are now here on my desk and destined for a wall.

BTW, I opted for this meme trap - leave your name and
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours

I hate when I am stuffy. Is it a cold, or allergies? I dunno anymore - blame privet, or dairy. More likely it was the chippies, chocolate coated blackberries, and curry munchies I was having at my workmate's house. My body rejects foreign objects - I was having a ball with phlegm when I had campylobacter. On the upside, I have a (authentic?) recipe from his wife for Butter Chicken (that is to say the the spicier and not dairy version, and what passes as Butter Chicken but is really just another version of spicy meal for an indian family). Flatmate is quietly pleased, and I am sure once I nab some coconut cream and tofu I can convert Unnethe too ;)

Currently studing Windows 291 - Managing and Maintaining Win 2k3 Network Infrastructure. In other words, lots of networking and server linking, and playing around with VMWorkstation to create winXP's servers and linux boxes that run inside my main windows. MeasureUp testing program I highly recommend (and so does Microsoft?) as sample test questions. I am dreading the interactive sections of the test - "setup this network configuration" in a simulation of a 'real' server.

For those in love with YouTube (Or googleVideo or any of the others) you can download videos with this little web utility - great for podcast interviews and tutorials.

America's Cup is coming up - keep July 15th and 16th in mind. [note to self]

Hitting a bit of nostalgia here, listing to jazz, in the dark, 630 in the afternoon... the world is insane. And no, I am not going for a run today.

This weekend (after upgrading TheAmerica website, and making touches to my own, and the family business website... and pointing a good mate of mine in Wellington to a good commerce website maker) I have been thinking of all the websites that I had grown by hand, and preened to perfection before letting loose on the world. Surprisingly, some of them were still in use, and had grown into their own place of the internet!

Fanimatrix website (that I did the photography, website, and sound grip work for - my name was GentleGrip there) is now defunct, but according to the WayBackMachine it lastest from mid 2003 to mid 2005. And has some of the horrific pictures I used on that - oh dear! It even has references in Wikipedia now, and I have a reference in several poster sites now too. Oh, if you havent seen it, your missing out on one of the best fan made in a Matrix world, and product placement for welding machines at my family's workplace ;) It is *still* floating around file share'r desktops.

While I was with Terran (my company with three good uni mates of mine - another story, and another defunct website later) I made one sexy little brochureware site for ColourTec, which is rather snazzy, but unlikely to ever reach sunlight again. A shame, as they are a cool bunch of hands-on people who work with metals and coatings - a pc modd'ers dream client, but in a field where websites don't match up with word of mouth.

The Terran website itself was a shameless rip straight off Mozilla's back. Moving right along...

I also created a web portal for the Youth branch of the United Nations. I kid you not - my mate's mum is envolved in schools and politics like that. And they didnt use it. Lots of menus, no content, no updates - homepage suicide. Now, the site is flurishing with images and content, and I suspect that it has hit the nationalwide scope that it was orginally intended for. My first dynamic website baby has come to fruitition finally - I swell with pride for them.


Memories aside, I have (re)downloaded a brilliant little firefox module called MAF/ Mozilla Archive Format. It lets you made and read the MHtml SaveAs - Website (One File) option from Internet Explorer. Basically saves and zips up your webpage into one file. Now you can keep a copy of a good website (like the fabulous examples above) handy in full colour without worrying about the internet falling over. (Nbat!)

[start shameless plug] If you are looking for a website, drop me a line. I run in the lines of (a) no maintenance (b) very simple
(c) up in half an hour (d) low cost (e) attractive- type websites. I am playing with ecommerce plugins and Flickr- like commenting systems at the moment. Rule #1 - if you want a website, get it up. Don't wait til it is ready - just straight in and get your feet wet and figure the issues out. There is no time like the present. [end plug]

Sunbird (Lightnight) Mozilla's third part to their office campaign is nearly out - check out alpha2 version of the calendar program that might just push the last reason to use Outlook out the windows
Mozilla Projact: Sunbird

Geek to Live - Lifehacker have pulled the best blogging plugins together - resizable text areas, lookups, signatures, spellchecks. In particular, check- as- you- type is what the people love Errork rfor majickly updating his SpellBound module.
Lifehacker: turn-firefox-into-a-web-writer
Errorik.com - SpellBound in Firefox 1.5

If you havent heard about IT Crowd, its a hot "online- only" tv commedy series by the BBC. Stepped on geeks, their new hot female nontechnical manager, the loud and unbalanced CEO, and the antics they get up to... "Dear Sir stroke Madam. Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark. Help me, exclamation mark. 123 Carlignton Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. All the best, Maurice Moss." "0118 999 881 999 119 725 3"
Wikiquote: The IT Crowd
Maud Dropbox: IT Crowd

Pandora is a cool online flash program based on the Music Genome project - start with any music (such as Snakeriver Conspiracy - Vulcan) and it will play it! Then it starts playing similar music based on previous user's experiance, and music speed, type, vocals, instrument types. Very clever, and if you hunt about (ie read lifehacker) you can get it in Winamp too.
Pandora

Last night myself, flatmate Unnethe, her boy, his mate, his (now) partner (? who is of course Unnethe's best friend) all went to the WhiteHouse. It has been a year, and the acts have gotten better ;) I also met with someone interesting, got her number, made out, promised for soon contact. Life will be a touch more interesting for a while ;)

Blogged by Multiblogger to Livejournal, Blogger, and Drupal

Del.ici.ous + Firefox = Offsite Book mark storage

Between having Foxylicious (which retrieves saved bookmarks from the server, and puts them into your bookmarks list each day) and the Del.ici.ous module (which gives you a one click "bookmark this page" with sugested tags) I now can go anywhere and have the tools I use all the time.
Firefox Module: del.ici.ous
Firefox Module: Foxylicious

Design Choices can Cripple a Website

Another article from A List Apart that people into designing anything would be interested in. As usual, it applys to may things.
http://alistapart.com/articles/designcancripple

Other Stuff</h3> I am starting to study for my third Microsoft exam. Only two more to go before I get my full MCSA.

One program to bring them all together. Maybe this time I will get my wish, and post my my attractive Blogger site, the universal appeal LiveJournal, and the social America site as well.

I have signed for going perminant in my job now - three months (by days), and doing very well. If I can manage to fit this program (w.blogger) on my mp3 player I'll post some photos from the team building weekend in Taupo. Funny thing about Taupo... I had no problem with the cold, but the Wellingtonians...

Coconut butter.

Thats all I have to say ;)

Classic case of not putting my mind into gear. TURN IT ON! An easy double of fps for both Doom3 and Morrowind there. All it does is makes textures that are further away use a higher compressed picture - takes less space, faster rendering, yadda yadda.
Oh, and Morrowind has a cool toy - MW_FPS_OPT; it monitors your fps and extends the rendering field for a quick adjustment back to a resonable 20fps. And it can cull small objects (5 pixels high) off the screen, saving you even more.
Now, why doesnt Doom3 have something like that? ;)

http://drrugg.blogspot.com

Lets see how long this lasts... I am not posting through Deepest Sender (Mozilla Plugin for firefox), and also to my blog (via IMBlog in my instant messanger Miranda).

If all things go well, and plugins stay stable, I might start using my LJ again <copy paste><copy paste>

Sigh - yey

LiveJournal sucks. It took me long enuf to get to adding in this too - and it looks bad enuf.

I've picked up a blog tho ;) http://drrugg.blogspot.com

This is closed, only for linking.

First post into a new journal. Right. Getting right into it.

Work for the Company is work - engineering. Hands on, concrete dust, pull and push wires engineering at that. I'm doing fine at it too - so long as I ignore what Warren is telling me how to do conduit. I've done it for years fine; I tried it his way and got bollixed. Heh - you can always hope there are better ways that your own - especially from actual tradesmen.

B has gone to Australia, and I am still mixed feeling about him gone. I think we'll all miss our life-of-the-party, and sexyBabe Nadia too ;)

I'm working on a website with two mates, and it's coming along well. It should be demo'ing in March, but it looks like we might have a full product my then ;) Cool, eh? Only one proviso on the good news - the framework. Its what I sugested, and its whats been growing on me alot, and is Microsoft. Go figure. ;) And it works so well!

I haven't trained any way neer what I should be. I'm likely not to go to whu shu at all this month, what compiled with last month makes this very unusual and very hazzardous. But I haven't got enough money! And don't mention the lan im going to saturday, or that its 180 degrees across town, as with work...