After noticing that I was going to be missing out on a really important debate in Sydney I discovered a fantastic website that has many great speeches and discussions. This is the debate I wanted to see in person (if only to shake my fist angrily at Tony Abbott). Fascinating stuff, although I have to say that their debating skills were fairly lacking. Bob Brown was the only debater that actually argued his point – the rest summarised the topic or attempted to make jokes (Tony Abbott you absolute wankface).
Next I am going to watch Peter Singer’s speech. I am reading his book ‘Animal Liberation” (1975) at the moment and loving every bit of it (in a masochistic, he is making me feel like a mass murderer kind of way).
Whether it be the result of moving into my own abode with a lovely kitchen, or my ever-increasing age, I have turned to the domestic ‘arts’ and they are making me darn happy. It started with a garden in our small patch of dirt that has thrived and grown in such a manner that we are having trouble making use of all the bounty. The grape tomato is particularly large, and we have a constant supply of chilli’s (various varieties), rocket (or roquet as some like to say), silver beet and herbs. We also have a cucumber plant, as well as a dwarf lime and lemon tree that are growing noticeably by the day; hopefully they bear fruit soon enough because they are causing Dan so much excitement I am afraid his head might implode.
Not only does the garden provide wonderful food, it also allows us to recycle our food waste. We purchased a kick-ass tiered worm farm that is a hive of activity and also gives us wonderful natural fertiliser for the plants. That is the fucking circle of life if I have ever seen it in action.
The food bounty has led to me taking a very strong interest in cooking. I have always had it, hiding somewhere deep in the bowels of my unconscious nature, but it has really come out to play in the past few months. I get such an awesome thrill out of making various meals (usually of the baked, sugary variety) and seeing my friends and family eat them. Dan is particularly grateful and this makes it all the more worthwhile (at this point I am reminded of my friend Laura reciting lines from a home economics book at the weekend such as “put a coloured ribbon in your hair and it will delight your man when he arrives home” and “greet him at the door with your make-up on and dinner waiting – he will appreciate it so”).
Honestly, the shift toward domesticity has scared me a little. I felt like I was selling feminism short and taking a path of lameness. That was until I realised I can be a female head-kicker as well as an awesome cook. I can be ballsy and make soufflé. They aren’t mutually exclusive and I am going to take full advantage of this new found state of being. I think I want to employ it as a tool of confusion; lure people into a false sense of security with some spicy pumpkin soup and chocolate cup cakes, only to rant at them about religion and politics while their mouths are full. I figure I can pretty much enjoy world domination with this tactic.
I am going to start posting some particularly yummy recipes on here in the hope that a geek, somewhere out there in the series of tubes, will pick up a wooden spoon and get on it. The recipes I post are all adapted from magazine and internet versions, which to me means they are officially now mine. If I change an ingredient or add something, it is mine. MINE. The first recipe is Chilli Con Carne. Be aware that it requires a lot more tomato puree (I used paste) than they advocate – I put in something closer to half or 3/4 of a cup, which made it far richer and tastier.
Enjoy!
P.S. That is a cinnamon stick, not a turd.
P.P.S. I have also been knitting. It looks like a scarf, but it can also be used as a torture device. It is all coming together nicely.
I completely missed the fact that the Sunday just passed was John Frum Day. Happy John Frum Day! Big ups to the people of Tanna for illustrating so beautifully the absurdity inherent in all religious belief.
TECH 2U asks that “If you’ve found something cool on the web you want to see here, let us know.” The only problem is their SSL certificate expired on 13 August 2008, causing the link to break.
TECH 2U boasts links to thirteen separate filtering applications. Webshield is a not-for-profit whose whole business model is centred on “think of the children” hysteria. There’s only one outcome of this trial that could possibly be reported by either of these ISPs. Resounding success. Don’t believe me? Look at Webshield’s “Do we believe in free speech?” FAQ entry. At least they’re honest. Noticing a pattern here? Could Herr Conroy have selected this rag-tag mob of podunk ISPs in an attempt to get favourable results from a non-representative sample of pro-cleanfeed ISPs? Naaaahhhhh.
The Netforce homepage contains a large “Consulting” link at the bottom left. If you follow this link you get a 404 Page Not Found error (at least at the time of writing). This isn’t some minor link buried deep within their site somewhere. This is a big, front page, customer attracting link. And nobody noticed it’s broken.
I’m noticing another pattern amongst these ISPs. They’re about as good at their jobs as Herr Conroy is at his.
This is my frustration noise. I need to find an example of a computer problem report form for my office. All I can find is this, over and over and over again.
Yes, it is very funny. Until after the 7th or 8th attempt to find a real form example. Then it becomes hella condescending. Yes, people have a tendency to be stupid, especially plebs like me. It does not mean we deserve to be shat on with your programming logic.
Users are not fucktards. We deserve a little bit of respect. Get on it.
WARNING: THIS POST WILL CONTAIN INFORMATION THAT DOES NOT FLOW AND IS EXTREMELY RANT-LIKE IN QUALITY AND COHERENCE
Happy 2009 to you all; I hope that the new year brought grand delusions of change and wonderment and new beginnings. Wow, that was sarcastic. In all honesty, I do believe in a chance for something new and better; however I also believe that a lot of us lack the ability to grasp this something new and better and milk it for all it is worth. Go forth and suckle at the teet of possibility my friends! Having said that, I would like to list my resolutions for 2009. I decided to take a practical approach, and pick things that are very achievable yet will still make me deliriously happy (or insanely sick – see resolution 1).
Eat a Big Mac. Being averse to sugary bread and weird ‘meat’ and soggy lettuce and something called ’sauce’ and greedy multi-national conglomerates I have never given myself the opportunity to try or enjoy this ‘food’ product. There is a proviso – I must be rotten drunk and stumbling past the King St golden arches in order to allow the burger into my gullet.
Enjoy what are known as ‘the little victories’. I have discovered that these are in fact some of the best. Large, life changing victories are few and far between (unless you are someone awesome like Batman or Richard Dawkins) so I think I might high five the person nearest to me (or just pat myself on the back if I am alone) when I do something like get a killer parking space in a mall or watch a small kid cry when he/she loses the ice cream from their cone. I will be happy!
I want to tell a story because it is utterly sad and quite nihilistic and I need to share the burden a little. On new years day Dan and I decided to go places with air conditioning to get over the hangover and heat, which led us to a certain suburban cinema (our first mistake). As we were walking through the oppressive inland heat towards the cinema, we both noticed a lady sitting at the entrance. She was in a very old, very basic wheelchair and she had her leg, which was amputated at the knee, propped up on the cement pylon that was helping to hold the buildings awning up. Then we noticed that she was urinating and defecating on the side walk – it was pouring through the cloth of her wheelchair. It was possibly one of the most confronting things I have ever witnessed and I am fairly certain Daniel felt the same way. Trying to compute this scene was difficult to say the least. There are so many possibilities for why this was happening; I imagine that she was waiting for someone to collect her after the movie and simply couldn’t hold it any longer. This is possibly one of the most humiliating things that could happen – she was in the open, in full view of a lot of people without control of her body, and all she could do was sit and wait with a stoic face. It was just terribly, terribly sad and totally unexpected viewing on my part. The rest of the day went by in a blur – it involved a really shitty movie (‘The day the Earth Stood Still’ = lame) and a fire near the cinema when we left the film that was chokey in nature. It was a cruddy day to start 2009, however it certainly won’t shape the rest of my year.
On an entirely different topic, I am going to start posting some of my cooking experiments on here. Dan and I moved into a new house in late 2008 and I have a new found love for baking and cooking. Our extremely awesome herb/vegetable garden is providing inspiration and helping me make some very yummy dishes. The next recipes I am going to try are lentil dahl and chilli con carne. Hopefully I live to type the tale!
Also, I have decided to randomly nominate things I love or hate (how very original). Perhaps it will offer an insight into my warped existence. This week, three things have seriously irked me. One is fairly generic – people not indicating whilst driving. Figure it out, douchebags! The second is that when I get a kebab (or a wrap in this particular instance), and the main ingredient (meat or felafal or whatever) is on one side, and the salad and sauce is on the other. They should sit on top of each other so that when I take a bite, I can get a bit of everything. However, some purveyors of wraps or kebabs put them side by side, and it is far too difficult to enjoy without wishing they could be tasted in one bite. The third is when I say ‘blah blah blah this year’ (in reference to 2008) and someone replies ‘don’t you mean last year’ and I say ‘no, this year blah blah blah’ and they say ‘hahahaha, it is 2009 already Adele’. I hate that little bullshit tete-a-tete where they think they are being really funny and clever by confusing you with something that is totally understandable. It is only JUST 2009 people, give me some time to catch up and don’t bore me with your smart mouth. I will figure it out. In summary, my world will not collapse as a result of these things, but man, they piss me off!
Here is the contents of that document, by the way. Twelve lines of awesome:
<table>
<tr>
<td><div style="width:100%;height:100%"/></td>
<td>
<div>
<span style="height:100%;width:50%">></td>
<span style="height:100%;width:50%">></td>
</div>
</td>
<td><div style="width:100%;height:100%"/></td>
</tr>
</table>
Non-Flash users, please click or double click here
Oh Exetel, that’s a good one. Ignoring the fact that language which assumes the presence of a mouse is inaccessible garbage, that’s actually pretty hilarious.
To Exetel’s credit, both their Flash and non-Flash home-pages are valid XHTML Transitional, which is more than we can say for the home-page of the worst ISP on the face of the planet. 1099 validation errors. Nice fucking work Telstra, that’s a positively amazing effort. Is there a company in the country with a home-page more broken than yours? A beer to whoever finds it.
There must be some brilliant comedians on Microsoft’s payroll.
On Windows XP SP3 today I noticed this “More themes online…” value in the theme combobox in Display Properties.
Clicking “More themes online…” opened my browser at a page explaining that if I want extra themes I’d have to buy Windows Vista. Microsoft really need to drop this spam tactic and simply remove the more themes link from the combobox. The page looked something like this:
Note the Flash applet on the left advertising Windows Live OneCare, itself having also already been discontinued. Pure class, Microsoft.
Also note the Silverlight installation link at the top of the page, even though the page uses Flash. I guess Silverlight tastes even worse than dogfood does (but not as bad as Visual SourceSafe).
In other news, what do you think happens when you press this Bookmark All button in Visual Studio 2005 SP1?
It bookmarks the search results, right? Wrong:
This brilliant error even sneaked through a service pack release. Nice testing regime you’ve got there, Microsoft.
Finally, why is middle-click page scrolling broken on MSDN Library for every single browser except IE? One imagines this has a lot to do with it.
