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Been wandering around today as if I have a concussion, finding it hard to think straight, to remember thing to get things done. I've been not very observant, being surprised by things I should have seen earlier, etc. and my head has felt woolly and on the verge of illness. I've pushed on through it, getting a new hoover for half price at Farmers, and number of little things done round the house. But if this keeps up, I'm not going to be up to any new year partying. Which would be a shame, as I have many invitations.

I have got nowhere near as much done this week as I had hoped, I suspect mainly because of the lure of Skyrim, finding GOG, and the fact that a lot of what I want to get done involved sorting stuff of mine, and that is always distracting, as one discovers something one hasn't actually read or looked at in detail yet, or going off on tangents associated to what one finds.

For instance, finding GOG was a result of trying to throw out ancient photocopied manuals for ancient PC games, that I had copied back when I was in the air force in the eighties. I reasoned to myself that if I could find online PDF copies of these manuals I didn't need to keep the stack of photocopies. Searching on the game manuals led me to a link that described how GOG had bundled Wing Commander I & II, with no DRM, in a form that would run on Windows along with official PDF copies of the manuals, and the original "Bible" distributed to those working on the Wing Commander projects. At GOG I discovered several free games I remembered and found myself buying several of their games that I missed being able to play on more modern machines at half proice because of their holiday sale...

That became some tangent, huh? All from trying to throw out a small pile of paper.
See why I don't get anything done?

There has been an awful lot of linkage and discussion about geeks, depression, and Asperger's, on the web recently, culminating in the inclusion of suicide in Violet Blue's latest column due to the suicide of one of Diapsora's founders. It's interesting, I have never, ever, considered suicide during my life, because it always felt to me that doing so would be to admit defeat, and letting the bastards win. "Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light" has been my motto with regard to death ever since I read that poem. It's stuck with me since school, from the one few high school English syllabus parts I really got into, the war poets.

I've had situations in which suicide would have been considered a potential option by some people, so much so that I've even had people worried for me in that way, but the closest I have come is that potentially fatal recklessness one gets when one just doesn't care, and I guess I have just been lucky when in those moods

Oh, I got my packet of random shirts from Tee Fury today too. It was full of win. There was only one shirt I had to look up to figure out what it was about, and having done so, I might be forced to give it to someone who likes bacon.

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As most of you will know I hit fifty last Friday. This led to a bit of retrospective thinking about my life, which in turn led me to asking my other if she had any photos of me as a baby as it would be nice to see them. They arrived today, and I decided to scan them so my other could have the originals back, and then I thought there might be some amusement to be gained by posting them on here.

My mother didn't have very many photos, but you have to remember that back then getting film developed was quite expensive, at least in comparison to wages. People actually got employed to develop films in local chemists. My mother was the daughter of a "downstairs" lady, and as I was born out of wedlock as the result of an affair my teenage mother had with an older and married naval officer, our little family, consisting of me, my mother, her mother, and her mother's live-in companion, were on the poor end of the scale when I was born.
( Image Heavy, click to see pictures! )

Well, I hope some of you enjoyed that little glimpse into my early childhood. I certainly enjoyed putting it together, being all reminiscy and stuff.

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Last Friday I turned fifty.

The previous night, I had attended Thursday Night Curry, starting in the Fork & Brewer with adrexia, Joel, Jacob, & Martin. seraphs_folly joined us at Dawaat, along with others regular TNC-ers.

I'd taken my birth day off of work, after seraphs_folly expressed surprise that I hadn't already arranged to. I had intended just to go to work as normal and head into the party after work. Had I done so, I might have gotten to the party on time! As it was I slept in at seraphs_folly's place.

When she awoke I was presented with a marvelous gift, two beautiful limited edition resin Studio McVey miniatures that had had been masterfully painted by Rachel (of Iron Halo. The first is "ar Fiach" a modern/steampunk fantasy avian elf creature with a musket perched on a brick chimney, sculpted by Yannik Hennebo, and the second is a lovely rendition of "Pan" sculpted by Jaques-Alexandre Gillois.

  

  

Yes, those are tiny naked green fairies in the Pan picture, and while ar Fiach is wearing a fancy jacket (probably stolen from a washing line somewhere) she sure ain't wearing a shirt!

I think you'll all agree Rachel has definitely done these sculpts justice. She went town on adding fairy forest detail to the "Pan" base, and added an entire roof to "ar Fiach", as you''ll see if you go and look at the originals on the Studio McVey site (I can't provide a direct link because they have a silly Flash-based site). I spent some time examining the detail on these miniatures in sunlight. I would have loved to show them off to people at the party, but I was afraid of potential damage. Not that anyone would do so intentionally, of course, but they are resin and very fragile. Anyway, you really need sunlight, or really good artificial light, and a very close look to see the detail, so photos are probably more useful to get the full effect.

Following that lovely start to the day, we toddled down to Caffiend's in Petone for a late brunch, where I made my first mistake of the day, leaving my Samsung Galaxy SII sitting on the table when we left. Of course I didn't realize this until somewhat later.

After returning from Petone, my lady retired for further rest and I proceeded to play Borderlands on my Envy17, as I had recently purchase the PC version complete with all downloadable content for the minimal fee of $7.49 during Steam's Halloween sale.

It was then that I made my second mistake, of not keeping a proper eye on the passing time, and suddenly realized I should have been at the Fork & Brewer five minutes ago. It was also at this stage that I realized I no longer had my cell phone, as it is my primary timing mechanism. Then had to wait while my lady got up, as I was also supposed to have woken her with time to get up, so in the end I didn't get to the bar until almost ten to six. Sorry to keep people waiting!

Despite the late start, Part One was good, with people from mutilple "families" turning up. Certain people were being naughty in the corner of the booth, not that I minded, but as a result certain ladies might be interested in the picture that wyldcard pxted to me... Moving on, I received a number of presents, including a dice bag complete with dice flogger, a book on bootleg whisky during WWII, and some white curacao from my D&D dungeon-mistress.

The Fork & Brewer's beer selection was good and I discovered a couple of new brews that I will drink again, though I stuck mainly with the good old Emerson's Bookbinder.

I would have stayed longer in the bar, but some people wanted actual food ( I don't know why, it just soaks up the alcohol quicker!), so we cruised off to a Korean place Sophie knew which was too small/full, and ended up instead at a nearby Vietnamese place.

Got back home not too late and fell asleep.

Saturday morning I got up early, as I'd gone to sleep pretty early for me, and then played Borderlands again until seraphs_folly woke up, when I got showered & dressed and headed down to Caffiends and luckily recovered my Galaxy, did some shopping on the way back, and then waited until it was time to go to Yum Cha at Dragons with the family.

My mother and sisters came down from Levin, the first time I'd seen them in quite some time, Ele & Ben came over also, but the big surprise was ferrouswheel turning up with , all the way from Hong Kong! Thanks for that Joel, it was a nice surprise, and I'm sure others appreciated seeing you too! :)

seraphs_folly tells me Ben tried all of the strange foods, and thomasdequinc seemed to get on well with Ben also. The food was good (I <3 coconut buns), but I had to sneak into Joe's Garage afterwards for some real coffee.

Then it was back to Harbourview for more Borderlands before needing to prepare for Part Two. Yes I know I should have been playing SkyRim, but that would have involved taking my PS3 round too, and anyway seraphs_folly's TV isn't big enough. *grin*. I have actually shown great restraint in not playing SkyRim over the last few days. I think it's wearing thin though, maybe I'll give in tonight.

I put out all the snacks with assistance from others at the the flat, and the first selection of drinks, and then got a bit flustered as the first people were arriving as I had discovered the secondary hard-drive on my lap top, where the play list I had set up was stored, seemed to have failed. Anyone happen to have a spare 1TB laptop drive anywhere? Hopefully I haven't lost too much in that crash, as the first sign of the drive going was the back-up failing, and I thought it was the the back-up drive and it's drivers that was the problem initially, so I don't have a recent back-up of the drive.

Luckily all the actual music was on the main drive, and wyldcard expressed his love for 80's music, volunteering to be the de-facto DJ for the night, so we managed to work around the hardware issue.

More people arrived, and I got other presents including new music from panda_pitt booze of various varieties, including a nice looking Laphroiag, and books. tyellas insisted on feeding me a chocolate-coated strawberry, not that I needed much convincing.

I'm not sure what time I ended up getting into the spa, but it was after the first round of savouries, and there were a lot of other people already there when I got in. Obviously, one does not talk about the spa, but I feel it's OK to talk about a few fun things around the periphery, such as how evie_fae and jarratt_gray's choice of Bruichladdich Rocks</a> as a gift went down really well. Coming after the strong peatiness of the 16 yr-old Lagavulin (trust adrexia to go straight for the good stuff when sent out for another bottle!), it's easy to see why this spa event was particularly memorable.

The one draw-back of the spa is that there were people that I'd intended to talk to, that I never really got the chance to, and even some gifts that were left for me that I didn't get to thank people for in person. I know pombagira left me some witchy bath salts, so thanks for those, Polly! Apologies to anyone else I didn't manage to spend time with, and thanks for coming!I don't even know if any fire-spinning occurred out front, as had been rumoured to occur.

Once the spa party finished up (not sure when that happened, someone may be able to let me know) I found myself involved in a long session of interpretive dance with adrexia to the soundtrack of Bob Dylan's "Blood On the Tracks" (primarily). I'm sure we must have been amusing to those socializing in the kitchen, but it was a lot of fun, even if I am not the most co-ordinated of dancers, and the one or two lifts I attempted were abortive, despite adrexia's co-operation. I hope we didn't scare the hare too much. The dancing was eventually ended, I believe, by car pool people needing to leave, and I do not know if I said good-bye to all the people remaining, I was, after all, somewhat drunk.

After everyone left, I found myself lying in bed with seraphs_folly listening to songs on my Galaxy SII (Tori's Bells for Her seemed appropriately beautiful to my mood) whilst exchanging tweets and Facebook entries with other party-goers who had also not yet gone to sleep.

On waking in the morning I found my legs very weak and wobbly. I blame the combination of several hours soaking in hot water, followed by the interpretative dance. Overall though, I felt pretty good. My commiserations to those who did not, and/or who had to get up & go to work.

My lady & I got up relatively early, to head into town to pick up her latest cat from the airport, which had been kindly brought up from Christchurch by argentbear, whom it was good to catch up with during the car ride, and then did some party clean-up.

After I got back to Wolf Castle I found a large pile of parcels had arrived while I'd been away, including a large order of RAFM miniatures that had been spending several months making it's way toward me across the sea, so before crashing I unpacked and processed some of that stuff. My lounge really looks like I've only just moved in now. So many figures, so little time.

To sum up though, I have fun memories from a great weekend into which many people put effort to make it lovely and memorable. Thanks to all, though especially thanks to seraphs_folly for hosting us and transporting me when I was drunk, and arranging beautiful gifts, and being accepting of me sharing significant & meaningful times with others. Thanks to those others, and to all, for your hugs, kisses, gifts of song and joy, your presence, your assistance when needed, your energy, and your love.

I am now fifty, but I've had a spring in my step on the way to work this week, and am not at all feeling old, because of you all. <3

I'll leave you with a song from the party play-list that is one of my favourites, from Simple Minds, the title of which I think sums up my attitude at present : Alive & Kicking

You turn me on, you lift me up
And like the sweetest cup I'd share with you
You lift me up, don't you ever stop, I'm here with you

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"I'm an Eager Young Soldier!"




"You don't need to worry about me. Those aliens won't stand a chance. Bring'em on!"



Personality:As an Eager Young Soldier, you're still a novice ANIMa pilot, but excited to do your part in the war. You difficult history has toughened you and your fascination with violence drives you, but your determination has yet to be tested in a real war. Your heart is filled with anger and passion.

Advice: Relax. Regardless of what's happened to you in the past, don't be so afraid of being hurt that you don't make new friends. You've got a wealth of experience and knowledge, but that's all wasted if you don't share it with the people who need it. If you open up to the world just a little bit, who knows what might happen?

Which Bliss Stage Pilot are you?
Bliss Stage

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Yesterday turned into the least boring** day I have spent here so far.

The day was horribly hot and bright, but I allowed myself to be dragged out to brunch overlooking the ocean, and other than the amount of interest the ants found in my legs, it was quite nice sitting in a little shaded gazebo drinking pineapple juice and eating pancakes.

Later I was also convinced to go swimming in the ocean, and to go para-sailing, which I have to say was absolutely terrifying. Being strapped into a harness that is old & worn, and then being dangled over shark-infested waters several hundred feet up with nothing but the skill of a bored boat-driver keeping you from crashing into the hard water and being drowned by the parachute canopy (they didn't give us knives for cutting our way out of the parachute and it's lines, and we weren't wearing quick release harnesses either) is not my idea of fun.

Possibly it's because I know far too much about what happens when you hit the water in a parachute from training in the Air Force. Possibly it's because the people running the operation actually forgot to put us in harnesses in the first place, and I had to remind them. Possibly it's because it felt like I was going to fall out of the harness at any moment, and I spent the entire time I was up in the air trying not lean forward too far. Anyway, I doubt I'm going to do that particular trip again.

I will admit that in the brief moments I managed to distract myself from the terror, the view was wonderful, and the soaring swooping motions the parachute would make as the wind changed and the boat driver adjusted for it, were great fun. I found the driver's skill at being able to winch us in and land us standing on the deck of the boat impressive.

After having survived that, I needed a drink, and my lady bought me a "bananarama", something quite alcoholic with bananas in it, that may or may not have been a political comment, and was accompanied by deep fried bananas and ice cream. I chased that with a big glass of pineapple juice to deal with dehydration.

This was followed by another dunking in the ocean to cool off, as all that flying around had resulted in quite a bit of heat being captured my skin. Playing in the ocean is a lot of fun here, as long as you avoid all the wild-life.

After that we crashed for a few hours back in our room.

We got up at around 7pm and walked to the resort next door for dinner at Cross. Cross is the most expensive of the restaurants attached to the Raddisson, It's run by Richard Cross, an ex-Christchurch chef, and I can heartily recommend it. Every course was superb, from the ciabatte garlic bread entree, thru the beef main, to the kava ice cream dessert. The beef was probably the best I have ever had, cooked perfectly even though it was inches thick, served with cubes of a wonderful cheese, shiitake mushrooms, & potatoes au gratin. The kava ice cream was presented with a tower of spun green toffee almost as thin as candy floss, home made marshmallows, and a pina colada to wash it down. My lady had a huge Akaroa salmon steak, and their "chocaholics" dessert, both platters being presented in such wonderful style, I wished Id brough my camera with me to photograph them.

The service was superb also. My lady asked for water melon juice, and though they didn't have it on the menu, they came back with freshly crushed water melon in a glass. Naturally the meal cost more than most, but in this case, I think the meal was totally worth the price.

Today we woke up late. I haven't bothered with any breakfast as yet. Weather outside is a bit oppressive.

Only about another two weeks of this hell to endure before I get back home.

(**Yeah, I'm afraid beach resorts largely represent boredom to me. There's only so much of sitting around waiting for other people to do nothing I can take. Thank Gaia for Inotia 3 on my Galaxy SII. I also don't get this fascination that other people have for exposing themselves to the radiation from an un-shielded fusion reactor.)

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Cetain people out there might remember the following concept album track listing, and go on a bit of a nostalgia trip, like I just did when I opened  a notebook found while sorting a pile of ancient junk.

1. All Trolls Are Blue
   
2. Unchivalrous War Machines
   
3. Planet Dance
   
4. How Many Emmeline's To A Grand-Pa?
   
5. Hayworth Riding The Astrolabe
   
6. One Red Dog Gives You Crayons
   
7. Like A Telesocpe
   
8. Holly "Sweeps" Over
   
9. His Bat-Like Wings Covered In Snow
   
10. Three Giant's Pass
    
11. The Mountain Swallows The Ship
    
12. Slidin', Ridin' Grand-Pa
    
13. Under The Mountain
    
14. See Them Crying Thru The Stone
    
15. Drake Over Ice
    
16. Lambeth Circles The Tower
    
17. Nocker Knockin'
    
18. Behind Enemy Lines  or  We're Not Fighing The Dwarves, the Dwarves Are Fighting Us!
    

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We've fixed all the bugs. Now we just have to wait to deply the damn thing. So let's clear a few tabs from my browser. 

Top Ten Myths about the brain  This article should be publicized on nation-wide TV! Especially the last one.  (hat tip : threemonkeys )

music by Googe. This looks interesting. Am signing up for the beta. I most interested in what their client will be like, as reportedly it will import from both iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Go Tejas!  Civil disobedience against the TSA at the state level.

Big Crazy Gun! I love the design of the Chrysler TV-8

Boozy Office Party Results in Super-Conductor! 

Viruses harnessed to split water This is a bit older, but it has Angela Belcher again, demonstrating a virus-templated catalyst solution.


TermKit  Modern UNIX Admiinstration using WebKit

Get Your Game On  Web-based  Sports Administration by someone you may know

Chest of Colours Nice miniatures site.

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Things I've seen on the web over the last two weeks that are far more important than either Kate & William's marriage or Osama Bin Laden's death. (Since when did the births, deaths, and marriages section become the headlines anyway?)

• Angela Belcher of MIT describes "growing" better batteries and solar cells with no toxic by-products using viruses. (TED Talk)
• University of Sydney creates graphene "paper" that is stronger than steel.
• Lasers may replace spark plugs for ignition devices.
• The Complete Guide To Not Giving A Fuck.
• The First Zombie Proof House.
• The Fire Hedgehog.

Oh, alrght, I included the last two for fun, they're not really all that important. Though the Zombie proof house might end up being more important...


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Cameron McKechnie pointed out in a Facebook comment on Will Marshall's journal :

I thought surely this can't be right ? Surely the bill would define file-sharing more accurately?

But no. Here's the definition of file sharing from the relevant section 122A :
and

The internet is itself a "network" that "enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users", a web server is also an "application" that "enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users", and in order to read a web page, the web browser must "download" the page. There is no clause that says the "application" in question must be on the infringer's machine, or that the term "network" excludes the web or the internet itself.

This means any viewing of web pages that do not explicitly give the user permission to copy them automatically constitutes an infringement under this poorly draughted law.

There doesn't even need to be an explicit copyright statement on the page to trigger this, as under the Berne convention copyright automatically applies. In fact, only an explicit statement of permisison to copy, in one form or another, will make your web content legally readable by the masses. So, seeing as I'm not a bastard :


NZ File-sharing Law Makes Using Your Browser An Infringement
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

There are no further clarifications or restrictions of these statements in the rest of the bill. Probably because the representatives of commercial rights-holder organizations didn't want to be restricted by any more specific definitions that would later become obsolete. But in their desire to have maximum coverage, they have effectively created a law that is too general to ever be workable, and one which can be used against them, because in order for them to discover a file-sharing infringement, they will have to go onto the web and infringe the law themselves.

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I've never really got round to reading Diana Wynne-Jones, perhaps because all the covers I've seen have been silly-looking, as if the stories were written for three-year olds who happen to read chapter books. I did read Howl's Moving Castle, but only after Miyazaki decided to make it into a movie. I think I read maybe one other over the years, because nothing about them ever grabbed me enough to make me want to read them all that much.

Still, what I discovered from her death was that thru her, I, and many of my freinds are only twice removed from J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, & Beatrix Potter. There is this really good Guardian obituary, where it states that Wynne-Jones and her siblings had been slapped by Beatrix Potter, and that she studied under Lewis & Tolkien. And then there was Neil Gaiman's remembrances of her. Many of you reading this will have met Neil.

Us to Neil, Neil to  Wynne-Jones, Wynne-Jones to Potter, Tolkein & Lewis. I wouldn't be surprised if Dunsany and Peake could be included in that linkage somewhere. All of modern English fantasy no more than three relationships away. Probably we could link in all of modern American fantasy as well, either via Gaiman or George Martin, or Mercedes Lackey, or a combination thereof.

I may be being silly, but the idea that this an entire body work is that connected, that we're all that close to all the creators that we've enjoyed over the years makes me, I don't know,  grin ?

Maybe I should give the lady a go, she can't be any worse than the 40K drek I'm reading now!
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I think I'm in love. :)

Unfortunately I'm old enough to be her father. . 

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Last night I went and purchased high quality cotton boxers from a local  manufacturer (Yes it's a horrible web-site, it seems the owner agrees). It's been a long search to find anything that matched the ones I bought in India four years ago, but now I have, and they're also local, so I get to feel good about supporting local industry as well.  They're lovely, and I got them for $35 ea which is about $10 ea less than they sell for in Kirks, and comparable in price to mass produced brand name stuff, but far better quality. I also picked up a brace of matching nightshirts. 

On the way back I picked up Thai for my lady, and Bun from the station. When we got back, I discovered Tetrajak was in bed with my lady, so I told Bun, and we all piled in.

Unfortunately I had to break up the cuddles sooner than would have been preferable or the Thai would have got cold and roti is not the best when reheated.

In this case it , it was all quite platonic, as they say, but I am so glad that we are all in the sort of relationship space where I can write paragraphs like the one two above, and it is defintiely does not signal the start of a long string of recrimination and angst and anger.

For some reason I'm drawn back to The Sisters of Mercy (the original Cohen song, not the band named after it) :

 



 
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I finished work last Wednesday and headed home to pack and prepare, and to get washing done before leaving. With that out of the way, I drove to seraphs_folly 's place and settled in for the night. She was excited, finding it hard to get to sleep, and I didn't really her blame her, though of course one must act blase about these things.

As our flights weren't until the early afternoon we didn't need to get up quickly so we had a long lazy awakening, followed by a leisurely drive to Courtenay Place during which almost everything that could go right with regards to the changing of traffic lights and finding parking places, did go right. We had brunch at Sweet Momma's, I had the waffles and multiple coffee's, seraphs_folly had her normal eggsadoo and EBT, and we shared some curly fries. Finishing brunch we drove to the airport, checked in, and looked at books and DVDs.seraphs_folly picked up the first of the Maximum Ride novels. I discovered there's both an Iain M. Banks and a Peter F Hamilton I want to read, and also that the fantasy section had been totally overwhelmed with supernatural romance novels. I don't often go to book stores you see.

Then we went through security and waited to board.seraphs_folly commented that normally we are on opposite sides of the security barrier and it was nice to be on the same side for once. We boarded and sat down and then had to get up to let the window seat person in. When I first saw this person I was convinced that it was a slightly unshavenfraser_by_proxy , so I said "Hi" and acted overly friendly until I realized it wasn't, and had to tell him why I was being so friendly. Still, he was cute. Later in the flight I pointed out a line in Maximum Ride I found amusing, and seraphs_folly read it aloud, which our seat companion pointed out was potentially not a good thing to do on a plane, seeing as the line was something like "Bombs! I love bombs!".

We got to Auckland, bought donuts, and took a taxi to the Quay West, which was an older hotel, but stylish enough to have marble columns and curved stair cases with thick balustrades in the foyer. I noticed as she provided our room keys that the lady behind the counter had Kushiel's dart. The room was old but well kept, and had a great view between two towers down to the ferry terminal and the edge of "Party Central". We stood on the huge balcony and looked down on the DFS Galleria building which had fancy peeks with iron railings round them. I noticed some previous hotel guest had "scored a basket" with one of the cushions from the hotel on one of the fenced peaks. .seraphs_folly had pre-ordered a chocolate platter for the room. After that arrived, and we had the fold-out sofa made up for R, seraphs_folly 's very cute friend from Christchurch, we filled in time waiting for R to arrive.

When R did arrive, after the usual pleasantries, we all ate donuts and chocolate platter, becoming quite full. We decided we would take the free bus to the concert which was leaving from just up the road outside the Sky Tower, and also decided we wouldn't hurry to get there in time for JayZ, none of us being particularly keen on the fellow. R wanted to take us to dinner, and we all thought we didn;t need that much food, so the idea of Japanese was floated, and we went out to hunt a restaurant. Unfortunately for our waist-lines, as it turned out, right next door was the Kabuki teppanyaki. It had interesting solo kabuki performances on video tow watch, and it also had some wonderful sounding set menyius, and we made the mistake of committing to far too much food. It seems the ladies hadn't had full-blown teppanyaki with the egg throwing before which made for a fun meal. We were so full that we made the faux pas of trying to leave before dessert, the female maitre'd was not happy . Thanks, R, it was a lovely meal! But so much for a light Japanese meal!

We rolled up the hill to the busses and snaffled the back seat of the bus, arriving at Mt. Smart Stadium just in time to see JayZ finish off with his Linkin Park collaboration on "Numb",. We then got stit and watch the set-up for U2 which was very interesting form a technical perspective. For those familiar with Warhammer 40K, the 380 stage looked like a cross between a Tyrannid Trygon and a Slaaneshi warmachine. Without lights it was four legged monstrosity with green skin and orange nodules pierced thru the centre by a huge arcane staff. We watched as some of it's crew were winched into their dangling cockpits hanging beneath the creatures knees.

Finally the show started. At first I was worried, the wall of sound and light that was thrown at us seemed to overpower any nuance of the song, and I began to hope that the whole show was not like that. But I needn't have worried, it seems the opening number was just to sensitize people and perhaps they needed some final adjustments to deal with a stadium full of people, because after the first song things became more distinct. R and seraphs_folly, along with much of the crowd, stood up from the beginning and started to wiggle around. I decided to pace myself, and didn't get up until a few songs in.

I really can't do justice to the entire concert here, so will focus on a few memorable moments.

The show started with David Bowie's Space Oddity and ended with Elton John's Rocket Man Overall, it was a celebration of technology, human  achievement and love.

Perhaps the most memorable moment was when Bono spoke of the loss the country had suffered at Pike River, and said that in Ireland people sang to relive their grief, and launched into One Tree Hill, whilst the video display showed the list of the missing. I doubt there was dry eye in the stadium by the time the last few words rang out without musical accompaniment :

Several times during the night Bono found it unneccessary to do much singing as the crowd did it for him, perhaps most noticeably during I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, and one of the encore numbers With Or Without You.  

At one point spotlights were directed at either end of the central tower to reflect off of giant disco balls. I forget the song because of the effect that this caused. During the set, the Auckland weather had clagged in a bit, giving some reasonably low cloud. The spotlights, designed to reflect of the disco balls also as a side effect silhouetted the upper disco ball against the clouds, and we were treated to a"Spectre of the Broken" style creation of four moons. hanging over the stadium. I don't think that description really captures the effect of what we saw, and it was hardly something that could have been planned for in the stage design, but, wow. the atmosphere it gave was uncanny.

Throughout the huge video display was used to greate effect, from the poem recited by the captain of the International Space Station floating in  free-fall after footage of his childhood playing wth rockets, to the disembodied head of a happy Desmond Tutu talking about us all coming together as one.. which of course lead into One. The 360 degree screen had been there all night, interspersing live video footage with animation and canned footage and colours and patterns, but I think anyone who hadn't seen the show before would have been surprised when the screen suddenly started coming apart and rotating as it descended downwards toward the stage creating a cone like a rocket's, in the centre of the creature that was now a spaceship as "lightning" flashed up the central tower. Lights changed the colour and texture of the creature-craft throughout, at one time purple and gold, at another mottled in camouflage green., and then covered by flickering white fire and traceries of energy like an Eldar Falcon  entering the web way. 

But all this technical wizardry didn't detract from the music it merely made it, combined with the bass pedals vibrating your chest, a complete sensory experience. in fact with the right songs, like City of Blinding Lights  and Vertigo the effects complemented the songs perfectly. I really want to buy the blu-ray of the 360degreeTour now.

Still It had to end, and with U2 hustled through the underground pipe to their waiting helicopter we started leaving the stadium. The three of us held hands to stay together in the crush, so there I was, in the centre, a cute girl on each hand, wandering thru a magical misty night in a crowd of thousands. There was a little tension getting onto the buses. The gorls got on and then I had to release R's hand as the press split us apart... it was almost like a scene from a movie, beautiful waif-like girl's hand reaching across the pack to the person whose hand she had lost grip on.. In fact, I think R's lost look was responsible for a couple of people letting me through when they might not have otherwise. But we got on board in the end and drove back to the CBD, walked down Albert St with the girls singing Auld Lang Syne, and crashed for the night.

Well, it's after midnight and that was Thursday. I'll have to cover the rest of the weekend later. I say I'll have to, because while that night would be unbeatable, the rest of the weekend was awesome in special ways, and deserves rembrancing also. 
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This weekend didn't start well. Friday was a day at home sick, in which, after stumbling out of bed early in the morning, realizing I wasn't up to going into town, and ending off the obligatory emails to managers, I fell back into bed and didn't wake up again until almost 2pm. After getting up, I discovered that the week's mail had been delivered. You know how NZ Post was talking about reducing deliveries form daily to once every two days or so? It's crap, NZ post only delivers to our place, which is Not a rural delivery area once or twice a week already! I got mail that had been sent two days earlier, and mail that had been sent almost two weeks earlier, in one delivery. 

However, by the time I'd opened the mail and recorded it and and responded, etc. It was almost the end of the day. I vegetated and caught up with my YooNo feed until seraphs_folly turned up with my favourite Thai for dinner. It was the hi-light of the day, though It was also nice that a number of people commiserated on my whine about being sick.  I did however, get most of the washing done throughout the course of the day, seeing as that's something that doesn't take much effort when you have a machine for it.

Saturday I slept in without any getting up until 11.30pm. There was shopping needed, so I got washed and went and did it, but by the time I got back I felt wasted, and really didn't feel up to the drive over the hill to Gynn & Holly's ceremony. Apologies guys, I'm sorry to have missed your special day, especially considering what people have been saying about it since, but potentially ruining it with vomit would not have been a good look.

Several hours later, I was felling a bit better so  I went and picked up seraphs_folly to go to a farewell party at the Southern Cross for her artist who was returning to France. Even that was probably was a little beyond me, especially as there was some sort of French music festival on, and The Cross  was packed and very loud. It took all of my energy just to avoid running and hiding from the crowd or reacting in flight-or-fight mode, so I wasn't good company. I couldn't face real food, so just ate some garlic bread and some wedges. I did perk up a bit though when I realized that somehow I'd managed to do my normal thing of being surrounded by cute girls (six of them this time). 

After a while there we walked down the road to sokky & Lee's 70th party at the Fringe, waving at allyn thru the window at Wildilocks on the way. The karaoke party was less hectic and I could manage it a lot better. Saw  's  rendition of "Big Spender", among others., and
sproke_ina_can 's boots Liked catching up with people, but was still glad when we left. We were in bed not long after, watching  a couple of episodes of Fringe to wind-down. Sleep was bitsy and the dreams were vivid and strange.

I was a Doctor Who co-operating with a whole pile of other Doctors to foil the big bad who ws trying to destroy the universe. I had become convinced that one of the Doctors was actually the big bad, and at the last minute has realized that we all needed to get out of the Tardis as the renegade Doctor was using it as a trap to catch and kill us all.

I raced out the door of the Tardis yelling to the other that hey needed to get out, but as I exited the renegade Doctor acted hitting me with a gob of white acidic substance from some sort of gun that knocked me to the ground and burned like fuck. As the white goop began to dissolve my body I realized that once the Tardis door closed the other doctors would be trapped, so I tried to block the door of the Tardis with my leg, but the other Doctors were not leaving, I tried to get their attention but all I could do was scream in a muffled way as my body dissolved...

That woke me up. I think I may have actually made a few real-world muffled screams. Later in the evening I woke up worried about being trapped under a landslide to find two cats lying on me, Rosie on my groin and Lilly on my chest. The large fluffy white tail in my face was probably what woke me. There were other odd snatches of dream between bursts of wakefulness, and by the time I got kicked out of bed to shower for brunch I still could have slept for several more hours. 

I safely got to Courtenay Place and  got a park, despite driving in a bit of a daze. Brunch was a tearful affair due to saying goodbye to the French couple, but there was a lot of Leonard Cohen played. along with some Roxy Music and the Cat People theme from Bowie. Afterwards we got to visit danjite  & khaybee in their new house, which was lovely. It was good to see their art & curios out, and to taste the yummy bread khaybee was making for their Thanksgiving dinner.

seraphs_folly  headed home and I headed out to Newtown for Alice's Enlightenment-era D&D and game. My character spent most of the  session hallucinating from a hallucinogenic poison in a chest trap and deaf from a failed usage of  gunpowder weapons, both events which happened last session. It was however quite fun being completely useless and not understanding what people were saying. Alice has a wicked way of describing what my hallucinating character was experiencing. But despite a comedy of errors, we all managed to survive, win,  and more-or-less do the right thing.

I dropped in on seraphs_folly  on the way home, finding her in the middle of her Firefly re-watch with S, left them to it and picked up some buns from the pantsu for tommorrow's lunch, came home and wrote this up, because for some reason I felt like writing before bed. 

I titled this as a a "fail weekend", as I didn't achieve many things I'd planned to, and often I wasn't good company, and that's what  it felt like to me when I sat down and started writing, but in reading back over it, while being really sorry I missed the Rickersby's ceremony, and while some of it was sad, and some of it was nauseous or sleepy, there are quite a number of lovely little bits in there. Even the sad bits were lovely.

I think I like my life. Even when I'm ill and not I'm thinking I'm doing well, it's pretty special.

Thanks everyone for being who they are.
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I'm not at Speed Of Sound tonight, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, I think, because I'm in a bit of hermit mode.

Work is difficult. Not in a bad way. For the first time in a long time I'm actually being challenged by what I'm doing. A week or so ago I was actually trying to solve simultaneous equations in anger, working on a Java-script image manipulation package that the customer wanted rubber-band zoom added to.

This week I've been trying to chase down bugs in part of a RichFaces web application that has a more complicated UI than any native code GUI application I've worked on in the past. It doesn't help that the toolkit's only have very rudimentary documentation, and while they state how to use individual UI widgets, they don't state what happens when you put together a whole pile of them together in a highly ajax-ified page with multiple display areas updating separately. Every time I find and fix one bug, the fix causes other stuff to stop working, and what doesn't help is that I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that there are significant bugs in the tool-kits as well.

Still at least I'm not bored at work.

Thing is when I've actually been using my mind, I end up feeling like doing nothing but blobbing when I get home. I've fallen asleep on the train on the way home most nights this week. 

The time of year doesn't help either. Cold, always getting dark while traveling home, dark when I get up. My body is telling me it's hibernation time.

Finally I think I'm becoming more boring and stay-at-home. I actually enjoued Coronation Street this evening, and wouldn't have wanted to miss the episode where a killer's wife confronts her husband about killing her lover several months ago.  I think I'm finally turning into an old man. 

OTOH, last night I did have dinner with two sexy ladies, jumped into a hot tub with those two and another lady, and then watched the 20:20 program on burlesque with a commentary from the three ladies because they knew most of the women on the show due to having studied with them.  

So maybe there may be some hope left for me.   :)
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Passing this on as a public service :

Pretty obvious really, but people are easily fooled by social engineering attacks like this, and knowing the pattern makes it more likely you'll recognize it
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From this article by Rob Oram, discussing  a recent KPMG report on why farming in New Zealand is going to go bankrupt :

Even in a typical good year the surplus might be only $35,000 or so on a business with revenues of $750,000. And any improvements in payouts or productivity are immediately capitalised in higher land prices.

This is such an insane game that dairy farmers quadrupled their debt in the past decade to $43 billion, dramatically driving up land prices in the process while the underlying profitability of the industry remained unchanged. This is a sure way to go broke, which indeed many farmers are.

It's among the reasons why people like the Crafars don't don't deserve any sympathy.

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Had a moment's happy remembrance on the train this morning listening to NiN's Head Like a Hole

Head like a hole, black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
...
Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve

My memory was of my very first vampire LARP, when I had only recently arrived back  in Wellington, a Wellington-By-Night game at Turnbull House , where I played one of the villians of the evening, part of a Sabbat motorcycle gang from Christchurch. I remember dancing with a certain classic Malkavian school-girl (who unfortunately left for other parts shortly afterwards) in the "vampire club" we were planning to blow up. I think the song must be an official Anarch anthem. 

Which reminds me, I was thinking on how band names come from other people's songs, like Sisters Of Mercy named themselves from Leonard Cohen's song, and how the local Welly band Head like a Hole named themselves from that NiN song, I've been wondering whether this line from Tori Amos'  Precious Things  has any bearing on NiN ?

That song also has the lovely line "So you can make me cum, that doesn't make you Jesus"

I think this anthology of optimistic SF, Shine, looks promising. At the very least, just the concept of the analogy and that cover painting makes me think of story ideas. 

Am wishing I had more time for writing things even if it is just fluff like this.

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Last night i slept fitfully due to a large cat walking all over me. This means I remembered a dream :

I dreamed I'd gone to a NiN concert, except that it was only Trent Reznor by himself, and it was in a classic old NZ-style school hall, i.e.: wooden floors, doubles as both gym and assembly area, capable of sitting perhaps 200 people max on wood and steel "forms" with a basic built-in stage.

Part the way thru the concert, Trent decided that he'd rather sit around with us and talk about stuff. so we all sat in a big circle on the floor of the hall and talked. It was sort of like one of those medicine lodge gatherings of men, except without the steam and sweaty naked bodies. I don't remember seeing any women.  I found myself telling Trent my life story, and he and a number of other people there responded in in kind, so by the end of it we all knew a lot about each other and were, surprisingly perhaps, getting on real well.

Finally Trent said that maybe he ought to play some more music seeing as we'd all forked out for a concert, but after a bit of discussion it turned out that everyone would rather just head off to a bar. Trent had to be reassured that this wasn't because we didn't want to listen to his music, but that just hanging out with him was more special.

In other musical experiments, has anyone else ever notice how similar the choruses of David Bowie's Queen Bitch and The Killer's Mr. Brightside are?

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Haven't felt like writing. Too tired, too busy, feeling blah.

OTOH, with the busy, there's been a lot going on.

Friday we started playing  's new Scion game, in which we all play rock stars who just happen to be the children of gods. So far, we've had a good gig,  started the band's legend as one that trashes the joint, and certain characters are starting to tweet their experiences. I'd link to the Twitter account(s), but I don't know it, maybe  will oblige ?

For the first time in years, I've actually been getting rid of crap out of the rumpus room. seraphs_folly helped me take a car load of stuff to the Sally Army, and there's a pile of boxes containing unwanted magazines and books that will be going to the Charity Book Sale guy sometime this week probably. There's a pile of cardboard in the garage to be disposed off next rubbish day. The floor is almost ready to be cleaned, and table tennis will soon become an option again.

I got rid of an ancient, Japanese-made,  judogi (that was old when I got it and wore it as a child) to a mother &  son last week.  It went for a $1 on Trade-me, and the mother, who had never won an auction for a $1 before, brought me a couple of chocolates to go with it. She didn't need to, I was already happy letting go on for $1, it's served several boys in the past, and it needs do so again.

Now all I have to do is stop getting more stuff. But the good deals... I can't pass them by!  Picked up a batch of GW stuff for $20 on Saturday that, if bought at today's prices, would have cost in the region of $300. Will probably recover my expenditure with little effort, and as it came from the grown son of a lawyer who owns what is probably a million dollar property, I didn't feel the low price mattered to them either.   Karma?

Saturday evening, seraphs_folly and I went to see Angel, a clown-theatre event at Bats. It was entertaining. I think the bit I liked most was the newly cast-down angel enjoying playing in our rubbish.

But I have decided I really hate cats. At least, I really hate cats that spray on things. After having to deal with large amounts of cat spray in said rumpus room (for some reason anything that is a plastic bag needs to be covered in spray ), my computer died from being sprayed on. It only lasted as long as it has because the CD-ROM drive cable shielded most of the mother board from the spray. I don't know if the memory is recoverable, though the CPU probably is. I think all of the data is OK though, and I'm runing fo the 1TB back-up drive and using my work computer for now. Played Spellforce 2 on it last night, worked well.

A link or two now. Firstly, an old one but an interesting concept for the "science" behind a paranormal based role-playing game (and incidentally, provides a "scientific" basis for almost any form of real world paranormal belief), the Shadow Biosphere .  From the opening paragraph :

In other news, Agatha Christie's fortune of jewellery and coins worth up to £100,000 is found in an old leather case sold at auction for £100

Comics have been intruding into my life again. asgard pointed me at an article which reveals that a NZ  woman owns a copy of Detetcive Comics #27 (the first appearance of Batman) and a number of other rare and expensive comics. I can imagine our future arguments now : "You only married me for my comics!" "No, you only married me for my comics!" . This morning, the guy wearing a tie sitting next to me on the train was reading a hard-bound library copy of Shanna the She Devil.  Train cheesecake! Maybe I need to start reading shojo manga on the train again too! 

The oracle hit me with Portishead's Undenied. this morning, so I'm passing it on 


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