For Battle!

Movie formulas for profit

2012-01-26T14:57:00.000+11:00

a.k.a. a recipe for movie-making success!

So it turns out that there are some interesting factors that make for a successful movie. Strangely, things like dinosaurs really don't help movies do well. Oddly enough, having a piano seems to be a boon. How do I know these odd factiods? They are backed up by science! Well, some amusing maths done for a competition lead to these and many more startling discoveries. The data was taken based on the last 5 years worth of US movie releases.

The full story complete with all of the ingredients to add is at
http://www.jeromecukier.net/blog/2012/01/23/hollywood-data/

It Occurs to Me...

2012-01-11T12:05:00.000+11:00

A thing occurred to me on the ride home, in what I'm certain is not an original thought. If Republicans:
1) Believe that corporations have the same rights as people, and
2) Believe that embryos have a right to life, and
3) Are consistent
Then declaring bankruptcy in a start-up should be against the law.

Fortunately (for them) I'm not too worried about #3 turning out to be true. So that's all right then.

Vale Fronti

2011-12-16T13:24:00.002+11:00

Frontignac
aka Slugface, Fatboy, Lardarse, Trigger, Fang.
9/9/1995 - 15/12/11
A cat of infinite noises.

Mother - Nutmeg (Yseult's cat)
Father - random Kirribilli tom
Brother - Basil (also Yseult's cat)
Step-sister - Muscat

He was a fearless kitten. Muscat was so unimpressed to suddenly have a little brother and hissed at him for about a month. Fronti just ignored her.

When he was tiny Fronti could clear a room with his farts. That was when we discovered he was lactose intolerant. The farts stopped when the milk stopped.

He was also incredibly noisy for such a tiny creature. We used to have the cats sleep on the bed with us. Muscat would sleep near our heads but Fronti could only sleep at our feet. The noise of his purring would keep us awake otherwise. We thought the noise would decrease as his got older but we were very wrong.

At about six months old he was chased up a tree by a neighbours dogs. I had to call the fire brigade to get him down. I took photos of the event but the record was lost when the camera was stolen shortly afterwards. He happily rode on the fireman's shoulders down to my arms. I think the firemen were happy to have something to do at 6am in the morning.

We was a great catcher of mice, rats and birds. I didn't witness it but I was told that Fronti would sit in the backyard and taunt the magpies into swooping him. Fronti would leap up to try and catch them when they did. Fronti also loved it when Stig would give him fish heads to eat. Fronti would take them to the 'Fronti killing ground' and happily crunch them down.

At his largest, Fronti was almost 12kgs. But he was a cat with a large wheel base and while he puddled well he would never be considered obese.

At about seven years old Fronti developed a bladder problem which had him on special food for the rest of his life. This same condition killed his brother. Despite a few acute times, the condition was managed. At the beginning of this year Fronti suffered an injury to the edge of his eye which needed treatment. When he was a kitten he caused the injury to Muscat's eye which is still quite obvious as the cloud on her eye. In 2009, Fronti was diagnosed with a thyroid condition which had him injected with technicium and radioactive iodine to destroy the hyperactive bits of thyroid. Shortly after, he had a benign lump removed from his side. He has been an expensive kitty costing us probably about $7000 over his lifetime, but it's been worth it.

His most recent illness progressed much faster than I expected. Last week I noticed he had stopped eating, his meow was muffed and he seem to have a sniffle. The vet did a battery of tests which ruled out most common problems. We don't know exactly what killed him but it was likely some sort of tumour in the liver or kidney. Basically he died because he was old and the parts started failing. If we had caught the lung infection in time it was likely he wouldn't last much longer past it. It does explain the big cough he had during winter. I just thought it was an extra large furball but in hindsight it was probably the early chest infection.

Fronti was huge and cuddly and noisy. He was often the butt of many jokes and he was loved for it. He was greedy and lazy and warm and soft. We was also very gentle and usually obedient. He had a long and happy life for a cat.

Edit - I forgot to mention Fronti's drug days when he was heavily into the catnip. Those days he would head out before breakfast and lick the dew off the catnip and usually eat leaf or two. He would spend most of the day curled up around his precious plant. The poor old catnip plant was almost pruned to bonsai status.

Paean to American Roadside Cuisine

2011-11-03T13:35:00.004+11:00

Americans can be a bit schizophrenic about food.

Here's what I mean by that:

There is a type of cooking here known as "Texas BBQ". Not all Texas BBQ is alike, of course, but if you pick one at random you'll most likely find someplace where they lovingly prepare a meal along these lines:

1) Get yourself a nice cut of beef brisket.
2) Marinate in a specially crafted blend of spices.
3) BBQ.
4) Fork shred, so as to more easily embed flavour, without destroying the texture.
5) Gently smoke the meat for quite some time in a specialised smoker, over a variety of woods.
6) Heat to luke warm, put a big ole scoop on a sugar-infused lump of sponge rubber masquerading as a hamburger bun, along side a jumbo-sized serve of nothin, and sell.

VrrrrrrrrrRP! What?!? Run that last one by me again? You get something that looks like this:

And the meat is delicious! But after all that care preparing it, they might as well fire it down your throat out of a cannon for all the trouble they go with serving it. You can _almost_ admire the purity of it - we're about the meat and nothing but the meat! - but not so much as you actually want to eat one of these styrofoam-encapsulated blobs a second time.

Well just up the road from us is a place where occasionally is parked a trailer emblazoned "Big John's Texas BBQ". For all I know he makes a great sandwich - I've never had the heart to try one, after too many lukewarm lump experiences. But he makes spectacularly good meat. I'm not just saying that because the guy behind the counter has a Texan accent, and he's big (he may even be named John too.) I'm saying that because he's an artist. He paints pictures on my palette with protein and spice. A Michaelangelo of Meat. I've had it a couple of times for various reasons without ever actually ordering a sandwich, and its always delicious. And he sells it in bulk.

So rather than risk another hamburger bun fiasco, the other weekend I bought a pound of brisket off him. I spent the morning making fresh french bread, and timed everything else to be finished just as the bread came out of the oven. I grilled some onions with some fire-roasted Hatch chilies until they got all caramelised and yummy. I heated the meat to mouth-scorchingly hot - quickly, so as not to dry it out - and melted some good sharp cheddar over it. I served it on the aforementioned fresh french with some avocado, some black pepper, some of Big John's own vinegar-ey spicey sauce that he kindly packed for me to go, also hot. Garnish with crisp romaine lettuce and fresh tomato straight out of the fridge, for that nice temperature contrast and crunch.

It was fantastic. It was so good I went back and made another one and ate it too. I could barely move afterwards. My whole Saturday morning was consumed (sic) by lunch. I took a picture (which doesn't really do it justice, and in fact looks a bit oogly to me now; trust me, it was magnificent):

If they served these I'd happily pay $20 for one. So why the extravagant care over the meat followed by nothing else? I dunno; just American schitzo cuisine I guess... but it really is fine fine meat.

Cover the Earth

2011-10-22T12:36:00.004+11:00

Been wondering where all those Cthulu-worshipping cultists have been hiding out? Wonder no more! Just check out this sign from our local paint store:

Still don't know what I'm talking about? (Why does this surprise you?) Look closer:

If that's not the motto of a doomsday cult or a Bond villain, I don't know what is.

(I ride past this store every day, and I keep meaning to take a photo of their sign, which I love. Finally got to it today...)

An Open Letter to SuddenLink, our ISP

2011-10-08T06:45:00.002+11:00

Hello Suddenlink,

Welcome to the neighborhood! When you took over from our old ISP a couple of months back, we had a few rough weeks with connectivity, no doubt while you assimilated new hardware into your systems. But your techs listened patiently while I explained in detail what was wrong with your DHCP servers, and eventually you seem to have got that sorted out; our internet is stable again, and faster than it was before, so bravo. Noone blames you for a bit of teething problems. And when you arbitrarily decided to move me, without informing me, from the terms of my old contract - that I had with your predecessors, since I have never entered _any_ formal relationship with your company - to one which costs roughly twice as much per month, you at least had the good grace to back down when I called you on it. True, it was after I'd been transferred 3 times and left on hold for an hour listening to to some unholy hybrid of a televangelist, a used-car-salesman, and a lost Wiggle deliver high-intensity sales pitch at me while apparently speeding out of his head on your hold loop, but the lady who eventually helped me was very friendly and understanding of any nervous tics I had developed, so I can let bygones go.

So I just wanted to say thanks ever-so-much for the kind offer that you included with that bill. I must have missed it at first glance, occupied as I was with the bottom line, but you're really too generous to offer to guarantee the rates for my internet service not just for 25 years, as your ad originally stated, but for life, as was carefully pasted over the top in what I've no doubt one of your marketing folks thought looked like an impulsive and artless scrawl.

Guaranteed for Life! In an industry nigh-archetypical in the speed at which its product becomes obsolete! Wow! 25 years from now you won't charge me a single penny more for the internet service that I'm getting today! If only my parents had signed up for such a deal when I was in high school, we could be connecting to CompuServe on a 1400 baud modem today!*

Suddenlink Marketing Department, I'd like to introduce you to Suddenlink Technical Development. Its high time you met; they may not be unassailably brilliant at what they do, but they at least know what the product is that you guys are selling. You apparently don't.

Cheers,
- rob.

*Note: For those of you not old enough to remember 1400 baud modems, this would be roughly equivalent to having your 80-year-old Slovenian neighbor shout descriptions of web pages at you in broken English through her kitchen window. In a thunderstorm. While dub musicians hold a spontaneous street party for teenaged dolphins out front. Bandwidth-wise, its got nothing on overcooked pasta.

Infinity Elephants

2011-09-26T14:32:00.001+10:00

There's a few more of these on YouTube:

Are you jealous of my new t-shirt?

2011-09-22T20:12:00.000+10:00

How about now?

And now?

The Day of the Turkey approaches

2011-09-07T11:25:00.000+10:00

Prepare yourselves.

No-one knows the hour of it's coming. Mainly because the cooking time can be annoying to work out.

Saturday November 26th.

Our place.

More details and RSVP-ing stuff as plans come to hand.

Kid's clothes for next festival

2011-09-04T18:27:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

I had an idea so I thought I'd run it up the flagpole and see how it goes. My child is going to need more clothes for next festival because he has grown out of some things and I'm guessing everyone else will too, at least to some extent.

Last festival, there was a spontaneous pink day, and during the Lemming day, it was said that it made it easier to track kids from our campsite through the quest because they were all in the same colour.

So, how about creating another set of kids frocks in the same fabric again. It doesn't need to be the same style for everyone, but choose a colour that everyone will use and we suggest a day to wear each colour.

I don't particularly mind which colour or which days. I'm sure we will need at least one red frock because we like red. We don't mind pink either, but I think some of the boys might object. Apart from that, I have no plans.

Does it sound like a worthwhile plan?

Your Friday Deviant Statistic

2011-08-06T01:25:00.003+10:00

(Well all right, _my_ Friday. I don't know what day it is where _you_ are...)

Rode past a couple of kids on my bike this morning, and one of them was saying "Jinx!" like we used to do whenever two people said the same word at the same time. I think it was supposed to be bad luck or something; I forget. Anyways, it made we wonder how often that happens:

Assume that "started in the same second" is close enough to "at the same time."
Best estimate to average number of words spoken in a day that I could find with references: 7,500.
Percentage of words (written, but we'll assume roughly equal distributions) that are on the top 25 most frequently used words list: 33%
Number of times per day, on average, you say one of the top 25 words: 2,500
Number of times per day, on average, you say _each_ of those words: 100
Number of seconds in a day: 86,400
Odds that someone is saying a specific one of those words in a given second: 100 / 86,400 =~ 0.0012, or about one in a thousand, give or take.
So 2,500 times a day I say one of those 25 words, and each time there is a one in a thousand chance that you're saying the word at the same time. Just counting those, we should "jinx" each other 2.5 times a day.

That's with two of us. There are approximately 328 million native English speakers in the word, so even discounting the non-native speakers, and the non-top-25 words (and the fact that those statistics are from 2006) the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the fact that someone somewhere is jinxing you every single time one of those words passes your lips, 2,500 times a day. That'd be a lot of bad luck, but I've just arbitrarily (but y'know, no less arbitrary than the original superstition) decided that its actually _good_ luck, so thats a relief.

"Jinx!" (But then, you just said that, didn't you?)

Reggie Watts F--- S--- Stack

2011-08-05T21:05:00.002+10:00

So this video is Not Safe For Work, or for any small listeners prone to repeating what they hear.

AWW WHO DOESN'T LOVE A THREE LEGGED PUPPY...!?

2011-06-27T04:31:00.002+10:00

Watson, my bottle baby. Happy, adopted (not by me) and tripoded.

SpaceChem

2011-06-24T01:36:00.003+10:00

This game, is cool.*

SPACECHEM

(*Warning: the management takes no responsibility for your definition of "cool" being different from that of a complete and utter geek.)

Its a puzzle game, and it happens to nicely embed a number of basic concepts of computer programming. Those of you whom I have cornered at a cocktail party and bored nigh-unto-death about my doctoral thesis may recognise this as a topic near and dear to my heart; these guys did it much more elegantly than I did. I'm not actually sure they were _trying_ to make a game that taught programming concepts - they don't beat you over the head with it, certainly - but the concepts just sort of naturally fall out of the puzzles. The game doesn't teach them to you; you teach them to yourself just in order to play the game better. Perfect melding of content and game.

But here's the thing: the whole point of embedding something educational into a game (still assuming they did it on purpose) is to take something that the player might not find interesting, and drop it in a context that _is_ interesting, so the player will want to learn. What context did they use to make programming interesting? Industrial chemistry. Seriously. I mean, I like blowing stuff up as much as the next guy, but even I would never go so far as to say that making and breaking bonds between atoms was glamorous. It fits the material well, but it seems like it kind of misses the point.

Anyways, you can quite easily ignore that its about chemistry; its just a puzzle where you rearrange patterns on one side and make them look like patterns on the other. I suspect those among you who are already programmers won't be able to resist it; finding _an_ answer is often not that hard, but can you find an elegant one? One that solves the problem in fewer cycles (runs faster?) Or one that uses fewer elements (lines of code?) I'm not sure how much fun non-coders will find it - I'd be interested to know. Its not that you wouldn't be able to do it, its just that its the parallels to coding that keep _me_ coming back to it - its certainly not the chemistry.

Yes, its a computer game, and no, you don't get to blow anything up. Unless you build the right chemicals, I suppose. But if you're in the mood for a clever puzzle game, it might be worth a look. (It has a free demo, and the full game is $15 downloaded from their site.)

Mucus...

2011-06-11T04:32:00.002+10:00

Mucus... its not working out. I think we need to see other people. I don't love you anymore. Its not me, its you. Fuck off, will you! And get your shit out of my lungs!

(Had that damn Tripod song stuck in my head for a week...)

Carbon Pricing

2011-06-03T21:52:00.004+10:00

by @NineSortJam

For all you new(ish) homeowners out there:

2011-06-01T02:37:00.002+10:00

Don't do this:

(Lookin at you Fitz...)

Normal!

2011-05-25T16:03:00.003+10:00

old skool Savage Chickens

Also, check out this selection the next time you need some stress relief at work

Be Prepared

2011-05-20T09:45:00.005+10:00

I'm so glad the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention are taking the Rapture into consideration. Found via DV on Facebook through this article on the ABC.

Together with Regretsy, I'd say they have the situation pretty much covered. Now I just have to figure the time zones out so I can enjoy.

Dang... missed it this year...

2011-05-20T09:19:00.005+10:00

Not safe for work. Last week had the 6th Annual World Nude Gardening Day, although I suspect I'm not a hard core enough gardener to participate.

Eurovision 2011

2011-04-30T20:31:00.000+10:00

Only two weeks away. And I haven't any plans yet. Aaarrrgghh.

Okay fellow Eurovision fans, what's the plan? Is there a plan? Can we make some plans? I know you are out there. Don't make me come looking for you.

This is also the same weekend as Ironfest and the Spirit of Distinction. I was interested in both but I haven't formulated any plans on that front either.

Seriously need to get arse into gear about this so we can assign countries and have themed food (and possibly costumes... We haven't done costume before but maybe this is the year for it....)

If we can get someone with the appropriate technology, the shows can be downloaded before they appear here. We might be able to view the semi-finals before the weekend. We watched the downloaded UK coverage last year and it was brilliant to be able to fast forward thought the scoring!

HELP!
(I will watch the show alone in the dark muttering to myself like a mad woman if I have to)

Beer in a Squirrel

2011-04-29T14:41:00.003+10:00

You just know that if this had been invented in EU... it would be lemmings, not squirrels.

I wasn't sure whether to post the photo or not, but really... if I'm gagging and giggling at the same time, why not you? Article here.

Perhaps a little project for next Festival? What a shame we didn't find it in time for this year!

Carry on.

An oldie but a goodie

2011-03-10T11:01:00.002+11:00

Finally a charity for me to join in

2011-03-01T20:02:00.001+11:00

So the usual big do something silly charities don't really work for me. I have a mo, so Movember isn't much point. Similarly shaving for a cure doen't seem like much of a challenge since I shave my head twice a week anyway.

Time for something new and different. Something less folically oriented. Time to don the cape for Capril (their facebook page has some photos). While it doesn't seem to have taken off just yet, I'm hoping it does. The money for this one goes to Beyond Blue.

Time to book for Festy

2011-02-05T09:21:00.003+11:00

I got a message from Daniel this morning:

so far only 8 Casa Celi and 14 lemmings have booked. Considering the needs of the combined households and the conversation we had last weekend, it sounds like there might be 40 odd of you. I thought I would drop you a line to let you know.

The upshot is simply no bookings, no space.

So if you haven't, now would be a good time to book so you

a) get a good price
b) we have enough room
c) minimise squealage because there isn't enough room.

Go to! (It's what I'm doing now, since I am one of the slackers!)

Fighting Trousers!

2011-01-24T13:54:00.003+11:00

Found by The Other Andrew, but via Facebook.

Parte the Firste, without which Parte the Second doesn't make much sense:

And now, Parte the Second:

Get onto it, you bally nincompoops!

2011-01-24T03:47:00.003+11:00

ROWANY, HERE WE COME

Hi everybody.
As most of you know we are coming out for Festy this year. Woot!. It's been 3 years. Crazy huh!
I thought I put this in a central place to help us get organized.

The vague plan is to fly in a few days before hand, go to festy then spend the rest of the time running around catching up with family and friends. We are planning on 3-4 weeks.

Questions and stuff-

We are happy to farm ourselves out to who ever will take us. Will bring our thermorests so floor space is all good.

Kate, Snowpea and Hal are planning to come as well. Yay! I'm assuming there will be enough campsite room for all of us.

I want to travel light so there are a few things I'm hoping we can borrow.

I'm planning on bring my Lemming landsknecht and one other costume. Can I borrow a tunic or two? Rob is thinking about bring his armor. He wants to know whether any other of you old buggers are planning on fighting? If not then he probably won't bother.
I would like to shoot arrows at people but not really stressed about it enough to get my gear together.

Feasting gear, tent, bedding. We gave our bows to someone...
Are we getting a communal tent, burners etc? If so, let us know what our share is.
Will work out food stuffs when we get there.... 5347 meat pies and 68221 lammos pleeze.

Last time we bought phones. I think we still have them...somewhere. If so, we will try and hook them back up. If not then we will either have buy them again or rent them and send them to one of you lot.
Can you email us your phone numbers, please.

Is there anything you want from here? Nice exchange rate at the mo.

I'm sure there are more issues. I don't want to leave everything to the last minute so we have more time chilling.

Very excited to be coming home.

Two amusements for your Sunday evening

2011-01-23T20:02:00.002+11:00

I bring you news of two things that will stay with you for life:

1. FireHero -fire + guitar hero, what's not to like? Via my friend AnnaVCulture's tumblog

2. 'Steampunk Palin' -OK this one is more disturbing, but the review of the comic book is very amusing and well-written.

Happy Sunday!

Guns

2011-01-15T16:29:00.002+11:00

As an American, living in Australia, I used to regularly get asked questions like: "How could you stand to live in a country where everyone is shooting each other with fully-automatic anti-tank guns all the time?" As an Australian, living in America, I nearly as regularly get asked questions like "How could you stand to live in a country where the government gets all the guns, and citizens are killed on sight for owning a sharpened paperclip?"

(It is just possible that I am exaggerating both perspectives slightly for dramatic purposes. May you never guess how little I am exaggerating in either case.)

Generally, I try to stomp on some of the more ridiculous hyperbole without pissing off the fanatical extremists of any given jihad, and avoid making eye-contact whenever possible. However, when pressed for an opinion by people who actually seem likely to entertain the brief sojourn of facts into such an emotion-riddled battlefield, I will admit to liking living in a society where gun ownership is limited. I'm not saying no one should be allowed to own guns, but lets face it; military technology has progressed to the point where the idea of a successful armed citizens revolt against the government is laughably implausible, and nobody needs an assault rifle for home defense against burglars or for hunting rabbits. To my mind there are guns with legitimate civilian uses, and growing up in a household where they are present, stored properly, and treated with respect can help kids learn to be a lot safer about them than kids who grow up with Hollywood as their sole source of information on the subject. There are also guns whose sole purpose is the efficient obliteration of large quantities of human beings in as short a time as possible, and I don't like those sorts of things running around near me, thankyouverymuch. And then there are fuzzy things in the middle, and I'd hate to be the one whose job it was to draw the line, but gosh I'm glad when someone does. When I get dragged into these sorts of discussions, I generally bring up two points: 1) the majority of people who are shot in America are shot by accident, usually by friends, family, or loved ones. Or to put it another way; your friends, family, and loved ones are the most likely people to be shot by your gun. And 2) places with high gun ownership are less safe.

I've had people dispute that second one with me. They tell me things like "I lived in Texas, and in the bars there I can tell you that everyone is REAL polite." Which is a lovely anecdote, but doesn't actually, you know, mean anything. And so, years ago while living in Sydney, I dug up 3 years worth of per capita violent crime data for Sydney, and for some portion of the San Francisco Bay Area with similar population density (I forget where exactly, but including the bit that I lived in as a kid) and found that for the same time period you were about 6 times more likely to be involved in a violent crime involving guns in the states, and about twice as likely to be involved in a violent crime of any sort. Is this scientific? Oh hell no. It doesn't take into account cultural differences and all sorts of other factors, and it doesn't in any case establish a causal relationship - it could be that people own more guns because its such a dangerous place. But its a fairly obviously glaring statistic all the same.

Unfortunately, I didn't write any of this down at the time, and I get fuzzier and fuzzier on the details with every passing year, so that essentially its stopped being a statistic and started being an anecdote _about_ a statistic. So I was pleased to recently find this site which nicely graphs some of the results of the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000. It shows the per-capita murder rate of the US to be 2.85 times that of Australia, but the per-capita firearm murder rate to be 9.51 times that of Australia. And for those who would say "yeah ok, more actual murders, but it deters other violent crime", the per-capita rates of robbery and assault are also slightly lower in Australia (though only slightly. Which could imply that the presence of guns is neither a deterrent _nor a contributing factor_ in these other violent crimes, which to tell the truth I would not have guessed. Or on the other hand, it could mean that Americans are not essentially more - nor less! - violent than Australians, but they _are_ far more likely to kill you when they get violent.)

Anyways, I've had another of my long-winded rants without a triumphant pronouncement to go at the end - there isn't really enough data here to properly draw conclusions from. Mostly I just wanted to store the statistics themselves somewhere that I could find them again the next time I get buttonholed at the bus stop. Its not a simple issue. Saying America would be better off without guns is like saying it would be pleasant to live on a moon made of marshmellow with lakes full of beer; it might be true, but without a realistic plan for getting from here to there its all just pointless daydreaming.

Those who enjoy the scientific approach

2011-01-06T20:57:00.004+11:00

to mixing or experimenting with cocktails, or equally applying science to coffee, try some trawling through Liquidity Preference (nothing to do with Keynesian macroeconomics - I promise).

Here's some sample links of what got me in. In "The Pegu, clarified", he gives instructions on how to clarify lime juice for making a cocktail. There are "A duo of beer cocktails" that look really good, and some detailed instructions on making "A clarified coffee cocktail" using a few different methods.

Enjoy!

ZOMGSCIENCE

2011-01-05T13:02:00.002+11:00

Completely and utterly not safe for work.

More expletives than you can poke a stick at, but it's in the name of science, so that's okay.
Read on!

Do yourself a favour...

2011-01-03T15:56:00.003+11:00

Tired of no one one noticing you??

Are you sick of being ignored? Do you sit unnoticed
on the sidelines while others are picked?

Are you tired of being overlooked?

Get a new scarf ! !

Try the latest scarf fashion and you too will be the center of attention..

(Yeah, yeah, I know most of you are far from cold at the moment, but it's pretty darn nipple-snappin' over here!)

Sex

2010-12-22T19:40:00.001+11:00

stay with me, it's worth it.

Because I have lots I need to do, I'm doing a meme instead.

2010-12-03T15:59:00.000+11:00

via the lovely but currently germy Ampersand Duck. Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but didn't finish and feel all smug if you've read more than six of them. So here goes. I wonder if reading them for school counts? I think so.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2. Lord of the Rings – JR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34. Emma – Jane Austen

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41. Animal Farm – George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (No, never not even if it was the last book on earth. Well maybe then if I was really desperate.)

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses – James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazu Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
So glad I didn't have to study this for the HSC.

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
No longer the most disturbing book you will read, not by a long way but was probably pretty groundbreaking when it was written.

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Not too bad. More than six, well less than 100. Smug value - moderate.

It starts with C

2010-11-20T23:23:00.001+11:00

It's Like Conquistador, but different....
Etsy Conquistador deliciousness

Vatel

2010-11-19T12:41:00.002+11:00

Here's a DVD worth getting out, though you'll probably all tell me that you saw it in 2000 when it came out in the theaters and what do I mean I'd never heard of it...

Vatel

Its got Gérard Depardieu. Its got Tim Roth (being evil, though that really goes without saying.) Its got Uma Thurman (who is a space alien, but she is a rather pretty space alien.) And its got Louie XIV, so its chock full of French cooking and frock coats and spectacle. Any of you who have ever run an SCA feast should recognise moments of the behind-the-scenes chaos.

Its all about a moment in the life of François Vatel whos really quite an interesting character. Beautifully produced. And I thought the costumes looked pretty good too, though I know little to nothing about the period.

Memorable Meals

2010-11-04T14:31:00.003+11:00

So before they were Facebook quizzes they were blog memes, but I got done even older school than that - I got tagged by an author in a book. But I like it, so I'm passing it on. From Jonathan Carroll, via "White Apples"*:

"Describe the three most memorable meals you ever had. [One] Breakfast, [one] lunch, and [one] dinner."

This is kinda fun, and in the spirit of the book, you don't have to necessarily get it right the first time; you can change your answers if you come up with better ones.

Breakfast: I would have been about 14, camping with the Boy Scouts up on the ridge at Big Basin. The night before it was rainy and windy and we built a massive lean-to for a shelter, but by morning it had settled into a fog below us, over the ocean. One of the older guys - Tom Neer, if I remember correctly, which would be a miracle from this remove - wanted to become a chef, and did Eggs Benedict for breakfast, with real fresh Hollandaise.

Lunch: January 2008, Chateau de Puilaurens. Sitting in a ruined castle, on a knife-edge of a ridge between France and Spain, with Aussie friends that we hadn't seen often enough recently enough, and with French bread and cheese and pate and wine. Awesome place, awesome food, awesome company.

Dinner: Is really really hard. There are so many! First thought was Level 41 in Sydney, for the amazing food (though to be honest I don't remember what I had... except for the potatoes au gratin made with truffle oil, which I shall carry in my heart til I die, in more ways than one) but also for the company and the view and the thrill of splashing out on something that we couldn't really afford.

But then there's Cold War, the year that we raided the kitchen for midnight cracklin off of the suckling pig that we were cooking. Which crackling is just about the finest foodstuff I have ever consumed while giggling at a Girl Guides Camp. And I think that might have been the year that Tops introduced us to the Hey-Down-Down Hoedown, so the entertainment was pretty high class too (though I may be blending Cold Wars there.) But then, I'm not sure that any part of that was really even a dinner...

And I have a special place in my heart for every Turkey Day we had in Sydney, too. Can't call it at the moment; I'll think on it some more and see if I can come up with a single Most Memorable Dinner.

Anyone else want to play?

*(Which book I'm enjoying, but am not entirely certain I would recommend. Make of that what you will.)

Political comedy and polymaths

2010-10-28T20:10:00.003+11:00

In preparing for my imminent re-arrival into Australia (yes, I'm coming home, sorry I've been a bit remiss in mentioning this, and hooray!) and probable re-employment in some government related position, I've been reading a bunch of Australian blogs and columnists.

My most recent favourite discovery is Ben Pobjie. His recent column seems somewhat fitting for For Battle: EXCLUSIVE: Red-hot Excerpt from John Howard's memoir, "Lazarus Rising"
Especially if you are a fan of racy fiction about recent Prime Ministers. However, don't blame me if you get nightmares... Or want to stab your eyes out with a fork half way through the article...

(for what it's worth, Tony Blair DID write something akin to this in his recently released memoirs, which has had commentators over here in stitches and provided much fodder for derision)

Ben also does a weekly summary on The Drum, which has had me giggling every time.

Finally, I've discovered David Horton, who describes himself as a polymath (as did Douglas Adams and Stephen Fry), and seems to be a breath of fresh air. His blog is worth following, and a recent Drum article on addiction was just lovely.

It's lovely to be engaged in current affairs and opinion again. I suspect this confirms that coming home is the correct decision. Bring on Summer!

Just when you thought cheesecake couldn't get any better...

2010-10-23T14:33:00.000+11:00

Lemming childer

2010-10-05T13:07:00.006+11:00

Oh the cute, it burns

Little boy German Little Girl German

Pattern sheetWanna know more?

I've built a doc with all the specs but have nowhere to upload it (and google docs doesn't like my format)

Drop me a line and I'll flick it across to you.

Turkey Day 2010

2010-10-04T16:40:00.002+11:00

Celebrating the best of food.

So who gives a frac?

2010-10-03T22:15:00.003+11:00

The purveyors of these fine classic frac biscuits do. Thanks to my mysterious importer of amusing goods....

Before they settled on "Mr. President"...

2010-09-28T03:13:00.001+10:00

Found this little factoid today:

In the runup to the inauguration of its first president, the republic of the United States was engaged in an earnest debate over how to address its new leader. After a month the joint congressional committee on titles came up with: "His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties."

Dude; if I got to be a High Mightiness, I'd run...

Turkey day!

2010-09-26T21:00:00.002+10:00

Our place! 27th November! Turkeys shall be eaten!

Little lemmings

2010-09-13T18:35:00.002+10:00

I need a place to post little lemming frock stuff for discussion prior to little lemming frock day on 30 October.
Is here ok or will that jepodise the sekrit blah blahness factor?

The drugs don't work

2010-09-10T12:04:00.000+10:00

Few things more annoying (at the time) than cold and flu drugs that wake you up instead of putting you to sleep. It's only a cold yet I've had a day and a half off work already, sleeping on the lounge. Yesterday, despite having the 'good' drugs - the one the pharmacist makes you hand over your licence and first born for - the pseudoephidrine only made me feel sub par rather than bouncy. Today I'm almost back to normal with drug assistance (legal that is) but have cancelled the planned three hour stomp around a paddock tomorrow. Keeling over would not be a good look me thinks.

The non-pseud drugs, that I took earlier in the week before giving up my firstborn, were ineffective but interesting. I could sleep, sort of and by 10:30pm I had solved all the problems of the vampire fiction genre including do they sparkle or go up in flames in sunlight and how shapeshifting really works. Unfortunately I've forgotten it all so my end to all arguments book will remain unwritten and my fortune unsecured. Later that same night I also designed a system where for every one thing you owned, you would on ever need one other thing, ever. I can't remember exactly how this brilliant system to save waste worked either and anyway at about 4am I realised that it was completely open to rorting and would be horribly ineffective. I may still be able to sell it to Tony Abbott though if I can remember enough of it. I hope my need for cold and flu drugs wears off soon or otherwise the realisation each morning when I wake up that I haven't in fact solved world hunger or beauty pageants will be too depressing.

Tukey day....

2010-09-09T20:36:00.002+10:00

... is coming! (At our house! Saturday 27th November)

if you're going to sing about tea...

2010-09-06T14:55:00.002+10:00

... you really oughtta sing about toast, as well...

I can't find a clip for this song, although apparently one exists. on the single cover behind Alexei you can see his band, Alexei's Midnight Runners (a pun most Lemming-worthy), from left to right, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Adrian Edmondson and Peter Richardson (who I think was originally meant to be Mike on the Young Ones). there's nice scans of the cover front and back on this site. the back is especially mighty.

I have great memories of this song... it was released in 1981 and Clive Robertson used to play it all the time on 2BL on the breakfast show, in between terrorising Geraldine Doogue and Caroline Jones. it was mostly funny, but you could hear their frustration. one day, I hope they get to wreak their rewenge ;-)

Clive had a thing about toast, because there was another song he used to play a lot, but I don't know the title or the band. it was almost a proto-rap about making toast, and in the chorus was the line, "Spread that toast, boys!" with the sound effect of many knives scraping toast. I really wonder what that song is...

but in the mean time:

One: Think bread.
Two: Hands on head.
Three: Press down.
Four: Go boing.

BOING!

when I say OOO you say LONG

2010-09-06T06:13:00.000+10:00

Everyone loves rap about tea

well, does it?

2010-09-06T00:42:00.002+10:00

http://doesaustraliahaveagovernmentyet.com/

Fried Eggi Weggi

2010-09-01T15:20:00.000+10:00

or is it Fried Eggy Weggy? the screen res ain't so great...

... but the song is timeless ;-)

Twilight Years

2010-08-19T09:17:00.002+10:00

I mocked Twilight today.

I know thats up there on the list of news flashes with "Sky Blue: details at 11", but c'mon: sparkly vampires? Does he ride a magic pink unicorn? So when the phrase "Is there anything more romantic than Bella and Edward" passed me by, I took the cheap shot. Still, I felt bad about mocking Twilight - not because it didn't deserve it, but because I haven't actually read it (Or seen the movie. Or bought the sparkly pink folders to put my schoolwork in.) I don't like to judge things on hearsay. So as penance I did some research. On the internet.

The horror.

But if you turn on the special "no angst" SafeSearch filter in google, and look for things not written in txt spk, you can eventually find a plot summary that doesn't sparkle too much. This led me to an interesting and eye-opening discovery: Twilight isn't disgustingly angsty, or disgustingly sparkly, its just plain disgusting.

Seriously? This is a story about a hundred+ year-old guy who pretends to be a teenager and hangs out at high schools to pick up 16-year-old chikcs whom he eventually marries, murders, and has sex with, not necessarily in that order? Uhm, ew? I'm two-fifths his age and if I dressed up like a teenager and hung around high schools picking up girls - which I can think of few fates more horrible than, by the way - I would be arrested and shunned as a child-molesting freak. So, what? Its ok cuz he sparkles? Or because hes dead? Necrophilia trumps pedophilia I guess? Ew ew ew. I need a wire brush and dettol for my mind.

And that, apparently, is the great modern standard of romance. I wish I'd stayed unfair and ignorant.

Release your inner geek

2010-08-16T19:49:00.003+10:00

It's Science Week!

And you can participate in the Sleep Survey online, which is trying to find out about all our sleeping issues as a nation. Far more entertaining than watching execrable political ads on TV....

And it may actually help The Scientists (TM).

To absent friends

2010-07-28T12:57:00.007+10:00

This is Brambles:

She died a couple of weeks ago. Had to be put down. Neurological damage from distemper; she couldn't move her back legs and suffered from random seizures, which were getting worse.

This is Batina, or Bats:

When we woke up this morning, she was dead at the end of the bed. She was Brambles' sister, and she'd been a bit sick, but we thought - I'd convinced myself - that maybe she could make it. Last night she was still running across the road for a wee with the Big Dogs.

It HURTS.

I've been walking around all day on the verge of tears. I'm going to have to stop typing in a minute, when the brine-soaked keyboard finally shorts out. We've had these guys living with us for over 6 weeks - probably half their lives - and no matter how often you tell yourself that its just for awhile, and you're going to give them back, they become part of the family. And its always "give them back... to a good home." Thats what makes it possible to do.

And after six weeks of stepping in poop, and howling in the middle of the night, and things chewed that shouldn't be, and a barely two-year-old house that smells a bit like wee no matter how much you clean, it ends like this? Why the hell do we do this to ourselves?

This is why:

Thats Navarre. He's Bramble's and Bats' brother, and he's healthy as an ox. Got some blood tests today - to make sure he isn't carrying anything anyone else could catch - and then he goes back for adoption. And you know what? These guys too:

Thats a picture of every foster we've had that I could find a picture of. I don't even remember half their names. And as far as I know - and if you know otherwise don't you dare tell me - every damned crap-factory in the lot survived and were adopted into good homes. And yeah, even these idiots, who we never gave back and never will:

I'm sorry; that was a bastard of a thing to do to spring on you first thing in the whenever-it-is wherever-you-are. But it helps me to write about it. Hell, just putting that collage together made me laugh for the first time today. Not just remembering, but trying to articulate why we do this makes it real. And in a few weeks - maybe a month - when we're sure that there's nothing in the house that a new batch could catch, we'll do it again.

So y'know: sorry, but thanks.

Freaks in Costumes vs. Westboro Baptists

2010-07-27T03:12:00.001+10:00

Awesome!

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/super-heroes-vs-the-westboro-baptist-church/

While you were out...

2010-07-17T15:24:00.002+10:00

Old Spice Man

2010-07-14T18:28:00.000+10:00

Just watch them all: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=oldspice#g/u

Football (soccer) = Twilight

2010-07-13T09:03:00.000+10:00

I can't claim credit for this, but I think it is definitely true.

Both go for ninety minutes, no one scores, and a billion fans tell you that you just don't understand.

Brilliant.

Vuvuzelas of Doom

2010-06-25T10:51:00.001+10:00

Too good not to share. Thanks Lord MattressHammer.

Warning, I don't recommend drinking or eating anything while watching this. Well nothing you don't want to be cleaning off the screen or out of the keyboard anyway.

Volcanic!

2010-06-25T06:15:00.006+10:00

Coz posted about our fires but I wanted to show you all just how close we are. This is the view from the webcam at NAU - essentially the view out my office window (clicking may or may not get you to the current view...):

Google maps is being a pain and won't embed a copy of both of these layers at once, but this is the extent of the fire _yesterday_:

View Flagstaff fires in a larger map
And this is 2 flags - the bottom one is our house, and the top one is where we were camping on Sunday when all this broke out...

View Flagstaff Schultz Fire in a larger map
Distance from that camping spot to the fire line? About 2 km.

PM rolled. Saucy!

2010-06-24T14:20:00.004+10:00

This is for the Army of Flying Monkeys on Ozblogistan start crying about the Lesbian Socialist Republic that we always wanted.

In my head, our new PM always looked like this.

Note: Not really work safe link.

ha.

2010-06-23T13:34:00.004+10:00

no idea where it originally comes from, I found it on Wil Weaton's flickr stream.

heh. there's also a tops photo of him and Felicia Day there.

Internet filters for all..

2010-06-19T18:24:00.001+10:00

Hey Ob.. does this make you feel better about internet safety?

I... just... sigh

2010-06-12T02:16:00.000+10:00

Govt may record users’ web history, email data
*Incandescent rage*

Lego

2010-06-07T11:58:00.001+10:00

Lego is awesome, Lego robotics are great, Legoland is fun and now a genius has made Lego even better... Lego computer accesories.

Carl Sagan to music

2010-06-05T14:01:00.003+10:00

Videos featuring Carl Sagan and a bunch of other scientists - set to music... awesome.

Like The SCA But With BFG's...Yeah!

2010-06-01T09:21:00.002+10:00

Bill Williams Buckskinner Rendezvous, Williams, AZ.

Ninjas!

2010-05-20T07:32:00.000+10:00

If you have to get mugged, this is the place to do it.

What the assailants did not realise was that they were standing outside Ninja Senshi Ryu - western Sydney's ninja warrior school.They also failed to notice a ninja, Nathan Smith, standing in the shadows outside the dojo.

You know you've found a fun game when...

2010-05-10T20:03:00.000+10:00

... you wait until the kids go to bed, then have best of five tournaments. Star Wars Guess Who is so much fun. Sometimes we even let the kids play.

Bride of Dark Crystal

2010-05-05T16:40:00.002+10:00

The Crystal Returns?
Son of Dark Crystal?
Raiders of the Dark Crystal?

Who knows. Cool huh?

fighting lemmings!

2010-04-30T22:14:00.001+10:00

Sung to the tune of "These are a Few of My Favorite Things..."

2010-04-24T00:59:00.002+10:00

Loved the alt-text in today's xkcd:

Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes,
Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps,
Some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war:
The most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.

(Dr) Who ya gunna vote for?

2010-04-14T06:59:00.007+10:00

Gacked from Adina
Featuring Sean Pertwee ( Jon Pertwee's son) talking about what his father use to say and David Tennant doing the voice over at the end.
How many Dr who in jokes can you jam into one election ad? *boggle*

The new Bros, or "Where's the angst?"

2010-04-12T11:47:00.000+10:00

Jedward - Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) ft Vanilla Ice

They are teenagers, so by definition they should be full of angst. They are singing a song about a man cracking up under pressure. So why do I feel like this is being sung by people with big happy smiles on their faces, waving their arms in the air?

Here is how I think it should be done. Oh, and get those kids off my lawn!

Great Australian Firewall Bypass for Dummies

2010-04-10T02:32:00.002+10:00

Those of you unfortunate enough to be within frothing spittle range when I get started on the topic will know that I have somewhat conflicted - not to deny contradictory - feelings about electronic piracy. On the one hand, I think stealing things from the creative people who make things I like is counter-productive. But I don't exactly get to take the high moral ground, because I'll happily illegally download tv shows which have been publicly aired but which the arse-hats can't be bothered to allow me to watch when and where I want. And I've been known to pirate computer games which contain DRM nonsense that I know will fuck up my computer, or stop me from installing it on multiple machines or whatever. I could trot out a glib little self-serving justification for this, but the truth is that I'm lazy: I'll do the right thing as long as they make it easy enough for me, but if they won't then my moral stand goes to shite.

But at least I'm not kidding myself about it. Which is why I generally consider the Pirate Party movement to be full of tools, despite the cool name. Its one thing to nick a few things because you're lazy, and another altogether to try to claim that stealing stuff is some kind of unalienable basic human right. All of which background is just to say that I am not a Pirate Party fanboy by any stretch of the imagination... but when they get off the issue of actual piracy, there are some folks there who have some useful things to say about freedom of information, and I want to give them some credit for that.

Australia, I love you like the born-again convert that I am, but our government's views on censorship are fucked. If someone wants to make information which they have created freely available on the internet, and I want to view it, then the only pirates involved in the transaction are anyone who tries to hijack that information twixt the cup and the lip. The fact that said pirates are doing so out of some supposedly high-minded attempt to protect me from myself doesn't make it ok, it makes it insulting in addition to a grievous imposition on my right to communicate with others. The fact that the people doing it are elected officials who claim to be representing me would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. The fact that they are spending millions of dollars of _my_ money to do this to me heaps ironic salt by the barrow-load into the papercuts of annoyance. And while it could be considered some consolation that they are doing it with such thorough and comprehensive incompetence that its more a matchstick across my path than a firewall, I find that doesn't make me feel any better about the Australian government's rush to emulate the Chinese model of freedom of information. So I was mightily pleased to see this guide to bypassing the Great Australian Firewall written in simple language for the non-technically-inclined, put out by the Pirate Party. Good onya guys; way to find an issue that actually has a moral leg to stand on, and do something concrete about it.

See? Even the tools can do something good once in awhile...

what happens when you get a better script writer...

2010-03-24T15:15:00.004+11:00

from Very Demotivational. there were soooo many good ones, but this tickled my fancy, ever so. you can also get it on a Threadless shirt (well, actually, the shirt came first, I think, but you know what I mean...)!

Sick of Being Lied To

2010-03-16T06:43:00.006+11:00

I'm sick.

And of course I was sick over the weekend. But it gets better: I had a day off scheduled and a three-day weekend lined up to go camping, and even managed to get out of work a little early on Friday. I was home by 3:30. At 3:45 - I kid you not - I cleared my throat while walking the dogs and thought for the first time "hmmm... thats a bit sore..." Feeling a bit better today - due back at work tomorrow morning. But I didn't start a post just to winge about being sick (well not _just_, anyways) but rather to pass along a couple of little tidbits I learned along the way.

Yesterday morning I woke up at about 6am in full sick mode. My head felt like it was stuck in a vice. A vice being dragged on a chain across a World War II battlefield behind a tank. With a gamy clutch. Driven by an epileptic. Not good, is the impression I'm trying to get at here. So I stumbled into the bathroom and fished around in the Drawer Where Aging Meds Go To Die, and found some miscellaneous things with no product or usage label on them shy of a string of dihexa-shrexa-bobexa-flourides. But I was 95% certain that they were the leftover cold medicine from last time I got sick, so I took two and went back to bed.

A couple of hours later I woke up not dead, feeling quite a bit better, and rational enough to wonder whatinhell that was I took. Hi ho trusty Internet! Here's what I found:

Acetaminophen is a Paracetamol is a painkiller by any other name. Actually, in my more coherent later state, I recognised that one.

Phenylephrine is a decongestant. No worries there. In fact, even less worries because there is some doubt as to whether it does anything.

Dextromethorphan is a cough suppressant. But here's the interesting bit; dig a little further in Wikipedia and find that there's a fairly huge amount of evidence pointing to the fact that cough suppressants don't do _anything_. Not just this one; none of em. And I don't just mean one study, I mean a meta-study by an independent volunteer organisation collecting the data from 27 different experiments on over three-and-a-half thousand people could find no significant improvement over a placebo. The conclusions in the study itself seem a little more wishy-washy - they say:

"This systematic review confirms the lack of evidence for or against an effect of OTC cough preparations despite using an extensive search strategy"

- until you realise that they are generalising to ALL over-the-counter cough medicines. They found some ambiguous support for the usefulness of expectorants. (Personally, when I've got one of those really tight hard-to-breathe chest colds I go looking for something with an actual expectorant (and its always hard to find something) and I find them helpful in those cases, but that ain't science... It certainly wouldn't surprise me to find them not useful on different sorts of colds.) For cough suppressants, they could find nothing even ambiguous to say.

(Though the wiki gods do hold out this hope: "Recent studies have found that theobromine, a compound found in cocoa solids, is more effective as a cough suppressant than prescription codeine. This compound suppresses the "itch" signal from the nerve in the back of the throat that causes the cough reflex. It is possible to get an effective dose (1 g, though 0.5 g may be sufficient) from 50g of dark chocolate, which contains 2 to 10 times more cacao than milk chocolate.")

So whats my point? Know what you're taking, he says, ensconcing himself firmly in the do-what-I-say-not-what-I do-camp? Yeah, some of that. But my story had another side too; those mystery drugs _did_ help me. Am I telling you this just to ruin the placebo effect for you? No, torturing sick people isn't _that_ funny. But don't let yourself get sucked in by expensive cold drugs - a couple of painkillers and some good chocolate will probably do you just as well. Even if that's just the placebo effect now too, at least its a _chocolate_ placebo...

Navel Fluff hypotheses and other odd papers

2010-03-15T00:39:00.002+11:00

For the past few months, I've been enjoying the UK version of WIRED magazine. They have articles on all sorts of interesting geeky topics. Including this one:

10 most absurd scientific papers

Pigeons as ultimate art critics anyone?

Volunteers illuminate Hadrian's Wall

2010-03-14T22:39:00.004+11:00

how cool is this?

if anyone can work out how to imbed that video into this post, feel free, I couldn't.

Now, with Extra Awesome!

2010-03-08T15:08:00.001+11:00

It makes me happy.

Date Wars

2010-03-03T12:58:00.000+11:00

shady shadiness

2010-02-19T17:25:00.001+11:00

Shady URL

Getting dodgy looking url's for websites has been amusing for far too many minutes.

such as

http://5z8.info/ip-stealer_m5e6_fake-gmail-login-page

http://5z8.info/white-power-rides-upon-stallions-unstoppable_k1o0_like-a-rose-for-emily-but-real-and-on-camera

Xin nian kuai le!

2010-02-14T12:38:00.001+11:00

As you can see, sleep's a little hard to come by at the moment...

...but we're having a blast!

on par with the Bacon Flow Chart

2010-02-11T17:40:00.003+11:00

make me snort my decaf.

found by Ken, but I don't know where. Ken??

Oh noes! Its a shortage!

2010-02-10T06:54:00.001+11:00

""In 2009, New Zealand had fewer than eight sheep per person," explained agriculture statistics manager Gary Dunnet."

- Adam Gabbatt, in an article for the Guardian.

For those Weird Al fans out there

2010-01-28T12:48:00.002+11:00

If you haven't heard yet, he's signed up to do a movie. He even blogged about it:
http://alyankovic.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/this-thing-im-doing/

A COOL CHANGE IS COMING

2010-01-24T04:22:00.002+11:00

While you guys are battling the heat we are fending off zombies.

Validation

2010-01-23T14:05:00.001+11:00

found by Spyd... something to make your day :-)

friday afternoon amusment

2010-01-22T18:20:00.002+11:00

Ripped off

2010-01-18T13:43:00.001+11:00

The Australian Tax office Scam page has this one up, but the one they have offers 30% instead of the paltry 19% I'm being offered here. Bastards.

The Cut Off Taxes Program

The Cut Off Taxes Program (COTP)
If you want, from 01.15.2009 you can register for the The Cut Off Taxes Program (COTP).
This means you could get 19% back from all your 2009 taxes.

Remember to keep your receipt.

They will help you calculate your refund and you may be required to show them as proof of purchase.

Get register Now

* Online Tax Refund is so secure guarantee we`ll cover any losses it there`s ever any unauthorized use
of your account . In fact , we even guarantee that every payer will be paid on time or we will cover late
fees Payments are guaranteed as long as all payment information is entered correctly.

awwww...

2010-01-12T18:11:00.002+11:00

poor little darlings. they'll have to live with reality instead.

Movie goers depressed at not being able to visit Pandora

awwww.

also: get a grip.

Nerdy danger science experiments

2010-01-02T01:52:00.004+11:00

For those of you science nerds here, have a look at this article.

Its a cute explanation of film boiling, where a surface gets so hot that a liquild will float on a film of gas rather than contacting the hotplate. All of this would be rather boring except for the second half of the article where the author begins DOING SCIENCE!!!!

First experiment: Putting your hand into molten lead
"I must also confess that my first several attempts failed because my brain
refused to allow this ridiculous experiment"

...I think my EHS person at work said that this is usually a BAD indicator of an experimeant.

"Could I possibly touch the lead with a dry finger without suffering a burn? Leaving aside all rational thought, I tried it, immediately realizing my folly when pain raced through the finger. Later, I tested a dry wiener, forcing it into the molten lead for several seconds."

Yep, this is the way we do it...start with live human testing. If that fails then go on to inanimate objects :-)

Experiment 2: Gargling liquild nitrogen.

"The moisture in my cold breath condensed, creating a terrific plume that extended
about a meter from my mouth. However, on my last attempt the liquid thermally contracted two of my front teeth so severely that the enamel ruptured into a ‘‘road map’’ of fissures. My dentist convinced me to drop the demonstration."

See SCIENCE!!!

Experiment 3: Fire walking

"I have walked over hot coals on five occasions. For four of the walks I was fearful enough that my feet were sweaty. However, on the fifth walk I took my safety so much for granted that my feet were dry. The burns I suffered then were extensive and terribly painful. My feet did not heal for weeks.
My failure may have been due to a lack of film boiling on the feet, but I had also neglected an additional safety factor. On the other days I had taken the precaution of clutching an early edition of Fundamentals of Physics to my chest during the walks so as to bolster my belief in physics. Alas, I forgot the book on the day when I was so badly burned."

I love this, "my feet burnt because I was not holding my physics bible"

He then goes on to argue that science students should walk across hot coals instead of a final exam to proove their faith in Physics before they are allowed to graduate...however, I ask you...is science about faith?

Chrissy pissy was scary this year

2009-12-21T08:20:00.001+11:00

And it wasn't just Santa scaring the children....