Munden's Bar

Long Time, No Update

2010-01-02T21:09:14Z

It's four in the morning, (just after) the end of December, I'm writing you now just to see if you'll recognize the Cohen reference.

Actually by the time I post this it will probably be much later in the day. But I started it around five AM, after having got up at four due to lack of ability to sleep and fear of imminent zombie apocalypse. I spent some time fixing up spam attacks and other suspicious activity on the Mage Wiki which may help make the other sites on my server more stable, seeing as it seems to be the spurious activity on the Mage Wiki that is causing the server crashes.

It's odd activity, looks like a large number of different IPs posting short encrypted (or binary) strings. May be it's a form of bot communication? I'd be interested if anyone has heard of MediaWiki being used for anything like bot comms or similar.

Anyway, here's an (image-heavy) update

I seem to have adopted a black cat. He's technically the neighbour's cat, but has taken to spending most of the night with me, and is purring and kneading my knee with his claws as I write this. I'm calling him Susuwatari, or Su for short, after Miyazaki's soot balls. Yep, A Boy Named Su.

In an example of that interesting congruence that often seems to occur, evie_fae & jarratt_gray turned up in the weekend before christmas bringing me birthday presents and dessert, and one of their prezzies was a real, licensed, susuwatari.

Can you see the resemblance? The very next morning I had to rescue the licensed susuwatari from the cat, as it looked very much like a cat toy to him. I also got a lovely Totoro and a Cat-Bus keitai strap. As evie_fae said when she fitted the Cat-Bus for me, I can now be a Japanese school-girl.

Getting back to cats, the weeks leading up to Christmas resulted in various cats catching and bringing in various things. seraphs_folly & I awoke to the sound of Noo crunching something as it flapped about trying to get away. When we investigated, all that was left were these two wings.

We think it may have been a fairy (of the Hemiptera Cicadidae variety). Not to be out-done, a couple of nights later Kohaku brought in the following large green puriri moth :

Over Christmas I went up to Tauranga with seraphs_folly and tyellas. They travelled up by car before me, so I took the bus. I have to say that bus travel is great for getting to Tauranga at least. It's cheaper, more comfortable, and you don't have to worry about stupid baggage rules like you do on aircraft. Sure, it took almost eight hours to make the trip, but it gave me a good opportunity to read, and I got a much better look at parts of New Zealand I've only driven myself thru before.

It was very hot in Tauranga and we did a lot of lazing around and eating food. I'm told that's the point of Christmas, though the prezzies also helped. tyellas gave me a copy of Kushiel's Avatar which I'm still enjoying (those who know the series will have some idea why).seraphs_folly's Mum gave me some very expensive slippers, and my lady gave me a selection of good quality clothes. Not exciting perhaps, but very useful.

I slept most of one of the days, laid low by either a migraine or heat stroke, I'm not sure which. Got some more reading done, walked around the Mount (during which I got sandwiched by the two ladies), had some lovely meals, both at restaurants and prepared at home (tyellas really seemed to enjoy the kitchen there), and saw a couple of movies.

The first was Avatar and the second was Sherlock Holmes. As I tweeted at the time, all the bad things you've heard about Avatar are true, and so are the good things. Basically it has a horribly patronizing, racist, ableist, and predictable, plot, and the environment makes no sense unless you assume it's artificially constructed. I won't bother going into the details, you can read about them all over. It's unfortunately just a technology showcase, but given that it's competing with the likes of Twilight : New Moon maybe in comparison it is the equivalent of War & Peace.

Having said that, there are some wonderful visuals and some lovely design work. Given the beautiful work on the mechs in Avatar and in District 9., I'm really looking forward to seeing a "live action" Gundam series soon. I really like the "helicopter lizards" regardless of whether they'd actually work, and there were a lot of little touches of realism on the "human" side of the show that I enjoyed, such as those helicopter lizards actually rotating under their rotors due to lack of a tail rotor, people having to pull the blanks from the intakes on the turbofan before making a getaway, and that the mercenaries didn't have access to nukes, being a commercial operation and not a military one, making the classic "take-off and nuke it from orbit" solution infeasible.

Sherlock Holmes was great, and very accurate to the source material. Many don't seem to think it is, but I think they must be basing their opinions on other movies or television shows, rather than the original stories.

For example, some people didn't like the scenes where Holmes was involved in fist-fighting, but in fact it's a well established part of his character that amongst his many other achievements Holmes was a remarkable pugilist. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes introduces himself to the prize-fighter McMurdo as : "The amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back." McMurdo responds by saying, "Ah, you're one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy." Holmes often gets involved in fights during his adventures, and invariably wins, I think people miss the fact that Doyle's stories were the late 19th - early 20th century equivalent of this movie.

Others mentioned the lack of the deerstalker, but Holmes usually only wore his favourite deer-stalker when "in the country" or "walking on the common", and while many of his adventures did in fact occur in the country, this film's story did not, and neither did it occur on the common. Some complained that he wasn't shown injecting himself with cocaine. This is unsurprising, as doing so would have resulted in an R rating for the film rather than the PG which it gets in most locations, and is to me an entirely reasonable studio trade-off of accuracy for exposure and profit.

I was a little worried that the script was going to ruin it by having actual supernatural vents in the movie, which, while putting the ultimate logician up against the supernatural is a fun idea, would in my opinion have broken the genre. Luckily, as he usually does, Holmes explained how Blackwood had managed to achieve all of his seemingly supernatural events.

Sherlock Holmes also deserves mention for it's visuals. The panoramas of 19th century London, although only backgrounds, were remarkable in their authenticity and completeness.

We drove back down the day before New Years Eve, our trip documented by seraphs_folly here (if you're privileged enough to be able to access it) , and had more lazy days, not bothering to do any NYE celebrations at all.

When I got back I got a second Christmas, opening presents from the family, including a Bluray of District 9 from panda_pitt, the first issue of Joss Whedon's version of Astonishing X-Men from ferrous_wheel, and the two-disc collector' edition of Kurosawa's Ran from Ben. wasup_bro had given me his present before christmas, before I left, which was a piece of abstract art he'd created himself :

BTW, near the end of this post there are minor spoilers for Avatar and Sherlock Holmes, so skip if you haven't seen them and wan't to maintain your purity.

Oh, also, I got a hair-cut. Supposedly I look ten years younger.

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Warning!! Maximum Safe Planetary Temperature Exceeded!! Evacuate now!!

2009-12-12T03:24:34Z

This rant brought to you by a lazy Saturday in pajamas and random blog reading..

It shouldn't be called "climate change": as climate change is a secondary effect, and is very wussy sounding. "Global Warming" is better but still makes it sound mild and nothing worth worrying about. What we should be talking about is that the Maximum Safe Planetary Temperature for human life will soon be exceeded.

These days even most "climate change deniers" don't try to contradict the evidence of global warming, as the evidence is far too strong. Instead they merely try to claim that it's not humanity's fault, that global warming is happening regardless of what humans do. I have some sympathy for this, not much, but some. It is true that we are approaching a naturally warmer part of the Malenkov cycle, for instance.

But what these more modern deniers miss is that it doesn't really matter what the cause of the warming is, we need a global response to it. What we pump out in terms of pollutants may not be the primary cause of the underlying increase, but it's certainly not making it any better and it's something we should control for a whole pile of other, equally dire, reasons.

The thing that most people on the denier side, and even many on the pro side, don't realize is that emission control is not the point. Sure, high C02 levels can trap more energy by reducing our planet's ability to radiate it, but it's actually the output of pure heat into our atmosphere from what we do that's the real problem. Let me side-track into spaceship engineering for a moment.

Earth is a space-ship. A big, complex space ship with no obvious means of attitude control or propulsion, but still a spaceship. As any space-ship designer can tell you, there are a few main issues with making spaceships functional for their inhabitants. One is a source of energy, another is life support, and the major one, if you solve the previous two, is heat dissipation.

Our spaceship has solved the first two problems reasonably well, the first by orbiting an unshielded fusion reactor at a relatively safe distance, the second by evolving a complex biosphere that can process our waste and produce the necessary chemicals to keep us alive. The final problem, heat dissipation, is dealt with by rotating the ship, with the planet being positioned at a distance from the energy source such that excess heat can be effectively radiated during the night cycle.

Now let us talk about heat dissipation. Within our biosphere, our primary cooling mechanisms work by convection, in which the heat is transferred away from the environment you wish to cool. The heat isn't eliminated, it is merely transferred from one place to another, causing greater heat in another location. A classic example you can feel yourself is your refrigerator, it's cool inside, the heat drawn out of the inside by the convection of the coolant fluid, but the heat exchange panel on the back can get quite warm. Here, the heat is lost into the environment by radiation but the fridge still relies on convection, as the atmosphere passes over the heat exchange panel, warms up and rises. If you have no airflow around your refrigerator the environment around it will get hot, and it will stop working effectively.

Convection requires a substance, be it water, coolant fluid, or atmosphere, to carry the heat away. Unfortunately, space is close to a vacuum, there is nothing to carry heat away from the planet, so we only loose heat from the planet via radiation. Radiation is dependent almost entirely on surface area.

Another way to deal with incoming energy causing over-heating in a space-ship is to reflect it. That's why there was so much gold reflective foil in the Apollo series landers, to reflect as much of the incoming energy as possible, as on the moon, convection is rather limited due to the almost non-existent atmosphere. The "reflectivity" of a planet is known as it's "albedo". Earth's albedo is taken as the standard value, and is thus "1". This value means a certain percentage of incoming energy is reflected. The Earth reflects an awful lot of the energy that hits it's upper atmosphere, so we don't have to worry about it warming us up too much. We've been damaging our planet's albedo in the UV wavelengths for some time, resulting in decreased sun-burn times for those of us living near the antarctic ozone hole.

So, we have a spaceship that largely has the right albedo, is at the right distance from the sun, and the right size, to be able to effectively radiate enough heat from the surface of the planet (and when I say surface here, I mean the outer troposphere where it contacts space) such that there is a balance between the energy impinging on the planet from the sun and the energy we're losing by radiation over night, keeping the planet largely within a livable temperature range.

Of course, the above is not the whole story, some of the energy isn't radiated, it's stored for the use of organisms on the planet, to allow them to construct complex molecular chains which effectively take the heat / energy out of circulation.

Then along comes technological man that starts releasing huge quantities of the energy that has built up in complex molecular chains over millennia, over a time period of little more than a century by burning fossil fuels. Even worse, they start reducing the ability of the planet to radiate that energy during the night cycle, and they also come up with ways of releasing energy that has been stored in atoms since shortly after the big bang, and they start releasing all this energy into their previously balanced biosphere. The original balance is destroyed, because more energy / heat is being released on the planet than it is able to radiate and still be able to maintain that life-support temperature range.

This means, if we want to continue to live comfortably on this spaceship, we have to deal with the problem. There are only a few things we can actually do to deal with the problem of excess heat / energy. One is to increase our planet's ability to radiate heat during the night cycle. Or at the very least, stop spoiling it's natural ability to radiate heat. That's what emissions control is all about. We could also look at ways of actually increasing our spaceship's ability to radiate, but the first step is to let it do it's job properly instead of hindering it with unneccessary emissons.

Another is to reduce the amount of long-stored energy we release, in other word stop burning fossil fuels, stop making nuclear power plants, stop releasing energy that has been bound up and use only energy that is already free in the system, such as wind, wave, solar etc.

The final one, which is more sci-fi, but still perfectly workable, is to work on our planet's albedo so that it reflects more of the energy that falls on it. At the very least, we could try to reduce the damage we've been doing in the U/V wavelengths, by trying to repair, or at least prevent any increases in, the ozone hole. There are other good reasons to do this, such as preventing skin cancer, and reducing mutations to crops. Actually trying to artificially boost our albedo does have some significant potential problems, which is why it doesn't have such a high profile as other solutions, but there are people working on this one too.

What doesn't help with all this is that our biosphere has a hysteresis effect. The mass of our biosphere and it's organic parts has a sort of inertia to temperature change. This is a good thing, as it helps damp small changes, such as those caused by the Malenkov cycles and our non-circular orbit, but unfortunately tends to hide large changes to begin with. In other words if the temperature increases by a dangerous amount right now, it will take some years for the full effects of that change to become manifest. Equally, if we start doing things to control the temperature, it will take similar amounts of time to bring the temperature back within the safe range. This is what drives the urgency of those who are pushing for temperature control, by the time the change is such that no-one can deny it, and millions are dying, it will take even longer to reverse the process.

The points I'm trying to make here are that firstly humanity's effect on the temperature of the planet is not _just_ via carbon emissions. The well-documented ozone holes growing over our poles reduce our albedo in the U/V range and add to the problem, as does our releasing of the energy contained in atoms or long molecule chains, via the use of nuclear power and burning fossil fuels. Each of those three sources of warming, and potentially a number of others, such as catalysing certain uncommon chemical reactions, are adding to the problem of excess heat in our biosphere, and this may also be being compounded by certain natural effects, such as the Malenkov cycles.

The second, and main, point is that regardless of the underlying cause of global warming, for our species to survive comfortably on the planet we need to ensure a rather narrow surface temperature range is maintained. We would be in just as much trouble if we were experiencing a three degree overall temperature decrease, (such as that which people believe might occur in the event of a "nuclear winter." It's insulation of our spaceship's temperature from large deviations either way that is important, and not being planetary engineers on the scale of ring-world builders, we have limited tools to work with.

It is completely irrelevant which of those mechanisms listed above are the primary cause of the build-up of excess energy in our biosphere, or even if other mechanisms I haven't mentioned here, or which we as a species don't know about yet, are primarily responsible; we still have to do something about it if we wish to continue to live comfortably on this planet's surface.
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Forty-Eight

2009-11-19T04:30:15Z

It was my birthday yesterday, and it was a wonderful day. The day started by getting up relatively early and eating the strawberries that seraphs_folly had prepared for my breakfast me the previous evening. She'd removed the greenery from almost an entire punnet of strawberries, so I was unable to finish them all for breakfast!

I headed off to work and kept nicely busy, so the day passed quickly with a minimum of stress, and several happy birthday wishes via txt or twitter, and then it was down to Kazu yakitori where seraphs_folly had already started on the lychee chu-hai, and she began to ply me with beer (Asahi).

I was also surprised by a pile of presents on the table, topped off by a beautiful cat-shaped birthday card (I'll post a pic later). Even though she had already given me a birthday present (a watch), and there was another birthday present on the way in the mail (something naughty), and even though busy with her latest house project, my love had gone out of her way to pick up some presents for me to unwrap.

The wrapping paper was also memorable, possibly the richest wrapping paper I've ever received, thick heavy paper, embossed with gold glitter, etc. It was so beautiful I didn't want to damage it, so I very carefully plied it off to reveal...

Well, I was expecting a couple of little things, just to give me something to unwrap, more "stocking fillers" than real presents, as I'd already received, or had ordered, some lovely presents. What I got was presents that were in many ways more impressive than those I already knew about.

My love told me that she'd gone into Comics Compulsion and asked the guy there to show her "the prettiest things he had". She'd sorted thru these and made her choices trying to ensure they weren't things I already had. And so I ended up with the hard-back version of Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell's The Dream Hunters(1) and Absolute Death. I am very spoilt, and I'd say that these were the best presents ever, except I seem to be saying that every time about the things my lady gives me. It's wonderful having someone who knows you well enough to buy surprise presents that one really likes.

We ate and drank our fill, edamame, karraage, miso. In the process I discovered that the Kazu peppered steak is divine. We moved on to Cafe Eis for dessert. I had an ice cream that tasted like biscuits and coffee. From there we weaved a somewhat drunken way to Reading Central, and determined we had to wait a bit to get Gold Lounge seats for 2012 We filled in the time by trying out the iFeel (or some similar name) massage chairs in the lobby. It was a little disconcerting being held by the ankles, pummeled in the back of head, and anally-probed, by an intelligent chair.

The Reading Central Gold Lounge is not a particularly good deal these days, without the free drinks and popcorn, and with the seats being a bit worn and clunky after several years of use, but the seats are still nicer to relax into and we had some of the best ones. Based on the trailers, I now want to see several movies, from Sherlock Holmes (if only for the laughs) to Avatar (Even though it worryingly reminds me of the second Star Wars trilogy, combined with Matrix 2 and Starship Troopers the TV show).

As to 2012, well, as expected it was a big, dumb, special effects movie that was a lot of fun. It had many common Hollywood tropes, from reconciling a divorced couple with kids(it happens all the time in movies, I'm not sure it ever happens in real life) to killing all the people who have sex. But there were very few times that the pace got slow or there was unnecessary padding, the only places where I felt that was where some characters lingered a little long over their good-byes and kisses when there were important reason for them to hurry. I enjoyed several things, like the fact that the lead drove his Russian mafia bosses limo, which was one of those armoured, over-powered things, with bulletproof tires, designed for taking gunfire and for combat evasion, through the initial escape, giving at least some justification as to why the car survived that sequence. And then the Russian pilot found possibly the only aircraft that could have gotten them out of Las Vegas like that, an Antonov AN-124 Ruslan (NATO reporting designation 'Condor'). I also loved Woody Harrelson's character, and you could tell he was enjoying it too! The Yellowstone eruption sequence looked great, regardless of it;s technical accuracy.

There were so many enjoyable little touches, many of which made me LOL, I can't list them all and of course, the spectacle. Overall I think it's well worth watching in a big theatre while tipsy, probably not worth getting on DVD though unless you have a 60" screen and a really good sound system.

Waiting for the Gold Lounge showing meant we didn't get home until almost midnight. When I got home I found I'd received a lovely email from a close friend which really topped off the evening, and then when i remembered to turn on my phone this morning (having turned it off during the movie) I found more birthday txt messages.

And just a few moments ago, my love informed me that she had also purchased tickets to Neil Gaiman's talk next year for she & I.

A really great day that made me feel very loved and special.

Just finishing this at work while waiting to head of to BBC, followed by TNC.

All I need now is a day of relaxing at home to remove the shrink-wrap and really appreciate my presents!!

1. Not to be confused with Neil Gaiman & and Yoshitako Amano's The Sandman : The Dream Hunters. This entry was originally posted at http://mundens.dreamwidth.org/458460.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Ruined

2009-11-15T04:03:40Z

Last night a group of us, organized by tyellas, went to see Terry Gilliams's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It was a lovely little story, notable for being Heath Ledger's actual last film, and unlike Dark Knight which he actually finished, this one he didn't and the film was instead completed by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell all playing Ledger's role, which works perfectly because of the film itself.

Seeing as the latter are some of my favourite pieces of male eye-candy it was an especially enjoyable film from that point of view. You could see, in some of the scenes, the same brilliance that made The Joker the star of Dark Knight, and with Depp playing the same role, you could see many similarities between Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow & Ledger's equally piratical Tony. Depp, of course, tried not to be Captain Jack, so we had Ledger being Captain Jack, and Depp not being captain Jack, with both playing the same role. Colin Farrel and Jude Law were equally adept at being Tony, so much so that while it was easy to pick which scenes were definitely played by Ledger, and which were definitely played by Depp, it was not quite so easy, at least to me, to pick those played by Law & Farrel.

Chistopher Plummer played the title role adequately, but often reminded me of Dumbledore, or even Gandalf, it seemed he even wore Dumbledore's robes at points through the film. Tom Waits was perfect as a rather friendly Devil who was more interested in the game than winning, whose character was perhaps summed up by one line : "Damn! I think I've won!"

But the title of this post is "Ruined" and that is because I am now completely in lust with Lily Cole, who played both Parnassus' wife (in flashback) and daughter Valentina. Not only is she a perfect pale-skinned redhead, with a fae-like Audrey Kawasaki look to her, but she's smart, with five A-levels, and a first class from Kings College Cambridge, environmentally and socially aware, working with anti-mining groups, and writing the foreword for Tansin Blanchard's Green is the new Black. Gilliam made full use of her physicality throughout the film, drifting her mermaid-like through some of the imaginary scenes, posing her in a Lady Godiva manner during one sequence, enhancing her other-wordly facial look in other, and, in the aftermath of the one sex scene just having her breathing heavily in a mauve bra.

I shall now forever be doomed to live a life of unrequited lust, unless I, like Parnassus, can also make a deal with the Devil for Ms. Cole's attention.

This morning I woke drained and migrainy, maybe there is a succubus or vampire at work in the neighbourhood?

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Dollhouse sources

2009-10-27T22:20:13Z

After having watched the latest Dollhouse last night, I just wanted to record something which I noticed when watching the thirteenth episode, Epitaph One.

Almost everyone is aware that the basic premise for Dollhouse is taken from Gerry Anderson's Century 21 super-marionation series Joe 90 with appropriate updates to create an edgier and more modern story.

However Epitaph One owes a lot more to Frederick Pohl's 1964 novel A Plague of Pythons (also called Demon in the Skull). Though most blurbs for that novel imply some form of alien or demonic intelligence is responsible for people, including the lead character, being taken over by other intelligences and doing horrible things, which is what some of the characters in the novel think because the general public has no idea what's causing it, the final explanation is much closer to the situation in Epitaph One.

I'm not claiming that this is where Joss Whedon got the idea, but for fans of Epitaph One it might be interesting to see a similar concept rendered in a novel.

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Dreamwatch - Plane Crashes & Pokemon

2009-10-19T22:18:32Z

Mind fed on science fictional poetry read by the Voyager's authors, body fed on half-price Chow - edamame, Angus beef satay, Thai fish cakes, and banana leaf-wrapped fried chicken, watered down by Asahi, I cuddled up with seraphs_folly in a haze of of over-fedness.

This, unsurprisingly, led to dreams.

Plane Crash

I finished work in a large technical complex near an airport, and chatted with a friend I hadn't realized worked in the same area while awaiting the bus. Then I saw a stubby Virgin passenger jet in trouble.

Anyone who has ever seen an aircraft crash knows that you just know when they're going to crash. You can tell that the angle is wrong, that the plane doesn't have the lift necessary to get out of the position its in, that there isn't enough height to recover from that stall, etc. A plane crash is fascinatingly, slowly, inevitable. In the interminable gap between noticing the plane falling slowly out of the sky, engines roaring against the tyranny of gravity and the actual impact, you imagine the pilots doing all they can to level the plane, pull the nose up, get it away from the blood-hungry ground, and you know, as they almost certainly know also, that nothing they try will be enough. But you will them success anyway.

The Virgin jet slid sideways behind the buildings that stood between us and the runway as we watched and listened for the result. But when it came it was a surprise, for not only was there the smoke and roar of the crashing jet but an Air New Zealand tail section and wing-tip also rose above the buildings on a cushion of smoke and fire.

"Fuck" I was thinking "they hit another jet on the ground." But I was wrong, for more of the ANZ jet came flying toward us from the direction of the runway. It seemed that either the ANZ jet had been taking off or trying to land as the Virgin one went down, because it's pieces had far too much directional momentum to have been the result of just a stationary, or even a taxiing, impact.

Had the crash been on the runway only, I probably wouldn't have done or seen what happened next, but the momentum of the ANZ jet resulted in large pieces of it flying more or less towards us, and impacting in a collection of homes and shops at the end of the street directly in front of us.

Like the time I saw a real crash, I found myself running toward the impact site. Like then, my rational mind was saying "No, there's nothing you can do, you're needlessly endangering yourself." But again, as then, there was no getting over that immediate, urgent, desire to assist. I rationalized to myself as I ran, I've been trained, I know what to look for, what to avoid in an aircraft crash, I have first aid training, someone might have survived...especially those on the ground.

I reached the intersection at the end of the street. Part of the fuselage of the jet had buried itself into the upper storey of a two-storey building, the lower storey was a dairy. Nearby almost half a wing lay where it had crushed the centre of a bus. The wing scared me, as that is where all the fuel is, and on cue, I detected the unmistakable kerosene smell of AvTur. This meant my rational mind had been right.

Hearing a noise, I looked up to see, framed in the gaping cross-sectional hole of the fuselage piece buried in the dairy, an air hostess lying brokenly upside down, hair hanging out into space. It looked like she should have fallen out, until I saw the spar protruding from her belly. She was alive, but in a bad way.

She was saying something, I tried to read her lips, and realized that she was saying "Run". Then I saw the severed electrical cable sparking below her in the broken fuselage, saw that her clothing and the entire back of the fuselage section was soaked, it must have been splashed as the wing piece went past spraying fuel, and realized she knew she was going to die and didn't want me trying anything stupid to save her.

At that moment, I heard and felt the "woof" of a sheet of aerosol AvTur igniting somewhere behind me, and instinctively, unthinkingly, I ran, feeling the pressure and heat of the flame on my back as I ran, the hair on the back of my head shrivel and crackle, trousers melting on the backs of my legs, but impossibly all I could see was the hostess' face as it blistered, cracked, and blackened, as if my holding her gaze was what was keeping the pain and fear from her, until finally her eyeballs popped and I was staring only at a bubbling black pools...

I think I woke up about then.

Pokemon Evolution

My later dream was much less horrific. It involved a team of heavily armed operatives, of which I was one, hunting through the floors and rooms of a huge, ultra-modern, building, perhaps even an arcology. At the base of the building a was a marina full of yachts, and there was a lot of enclosed air-space within the buildings "glass" walls.

As I got off a lift I heard a few suits discussing the effect on the water level in the marina of launching someone's huge new yacht, as if the marina was self-contained, and did not connect to the sea.

I remember standing on a balcony outside the bank of lifts and looking down many stories at hanging aerial sculptures and people far below.

We were hunting a group of three pokemon whom we had to capture, kill, or at the very least prevent them from merging and evolving into some sort of giant dangerous pokemon. I was getting, location, distance, direction, identification, targeting information on my HUD, and we tracked them down in the inevitable "service corridors", which, for an ultra-modern arcology looked remarkably like the alleys from Left 4 Dead. Maybe the arcology had been built on top of an existing city?

They were trying to merge and evolve, and we were hitting them with everything we had, trying to keep them apart, and then to hit them with pokeballs while they were apart, but it was hard, and they were very good at dodging the pokeballs.

Then my alarm went off.

Air Pirates of Pinehaven

2009-10-11T08:05:09Z

This afternoon the valley of Pinehaven Road was bright, sunny and beautiful

Sally and I were watching a pair of kereru knoodle

when a marauding gang of tui came into the valley on a pub crawl. A flock of maybe forty tui spent the time sipping nectar at each kowhai before flying off en masse to the next kowhai.

Sally first noticed the tui gang as it flew into a kowhai about two houses down. I've circled the bits I'm pretty sure are tui in red so you can see what a flock it was!

They then flew to another kowhai closer to the road on the same property, before flying up the road to a kowhai one house up the road. Then they flew over us and cavorted in the kowhai by my back door

before disappearing down the road again. Meanwhile the local tui, who regularly peers over my shoulder while sipping cherry blossoms

laid low, as did the local kereru

as I'm told such gangs of drunken tui regularly beat on other birds who get in their way.

No Surprises Here

2009-09-14T08:02:23Z

Your result for The Demon Test...

Succubus

Succubi are a kind of demonic spirit that feeds off sexual energy. In this day and age they usually appear in dreams as attractive women or men, seducing dreamers and having sex with them. In medieval times they especially afflicted monks, appearing as furry or deformed women and depriving them of their sexual fluids. Those zealots probably deserved it. The original succubus was Lilith, the first wife of Adam. Male spawn of Lilith are called Lilim, while their female counterparts are called Lilin.

Take The Demon Test at HelloQuizzy

Your result for Are You Pansexual?...

No label/pan-curious

You're not quite pansexual, but you probably aren't straight, gay, or bi, either. You may be primarily attracted to gender variant people. Or you may be mostly straight or gay, but also attracted to gender variant people. Or maybe something else---but only you know your sexuality, so I'm not going to put you in any particular category, since your scores reflected a lack of conformity to any prescribed sexual orientation label. Way to be mysterious!

Take Are You Pansexual? at HelloQuizzy

Darkness on the Edge of Town

2009-09-12T05:51:06Z

It's a dull rainy Saturday, with time spent at craft fairs eating cake with lovely ladies and just generally relaxing, and I don't think I can be bothered doing anything useful.

This last week we finished our marathon watching of Battlestar Galactica. While it is a great series, and they do lots of great stuff throughout it, just like many Japanese anime it has very poorly constructed end. Basically I feel that the last episode should have ended about half way through thru as the Galactica passed over Earth's moon and we got to see and recognize continental Africa. Other than the very final scene of the angel versions of Caprica and Baltar, which was amusing, the whole "settling on Earth" bit was annoying, completely unbelievable, and horribly anti-climactic.

It was annoying because there were far to many, completely unnecessary, flashbacks. It fel like , in the last three or four episodes, the crreators didn't have enough story to complete the series run, so were padding it out with flashbakcs

It was annoying because Kara Thrace just disappeared, and the prophecy of her being "the death-bringer" made no sense, though admittedly she did "lead them all to their ends" in some sense of that phrase. It was annoying because it implied the whole thing from start to finish, all the drama all the killing, all the pain, and suffering had been orchestrated merely to pollute Earth's gene pool with that of the "13 tribes humanity" and the Cylons. Nice. Shows whoever did it has no sense of efficiency.

It was annoying because it was unbelievable as well. What space-faring race, colonizing an unknown planet, with a known enemy out there (they'd destroyed the Resurrection Hub, they hadn't destroyed all the Cylon fleets) sends all of it's space-ships into the sun stranding itself on the unknown planet? That is so utterly stupid as to completely defy belief.

BSG was worse than The Return of the King for having anti-climactic ending after anti-climactic ending. Almost nothing from the last half of the final episode gave us useful information or made the story any better. It would have been better of Kara hadn't just disappeared, and we were left guessing about how she got there. Why did we need to see Laura die? There really was nothing useful that came out of that section except that Hera was our "common ancestor", and as mentioned that basically trivialized the whole series.

I'm almost tempted to believe that, like Hideaki Anno with Neon Genesis Evangelion , the creators actually designed the ending to annoy fans of the series. In fact , the negatives in both shows are remarkably similar, as are many of the positives. Maybe there's a sort of neccessary balance there, a series cannot be really good, without also containing some really bad. Yin & Yang.

Anyway, just felt I had to get that out of my system.

Have just finished reading this interview with Dr. Phillip Zimbaldo, the organizer of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. It made me think. As most of you know, I have a strong interest in both BDSM and LARP, and while the Stanford Prison Experiment was psychological research, it ended up being very much about both live role-playing and BDSM, though I don't think the psychologists have really followed through on those links. Of course, I haven't done a survey of the literature so I may be completely wrong about that. In fact, the LARPers amongst us would look at the Stanford Experiment and be horrified at the lack of understanding of role-playing safety displayed by those arranging the experiment.

Still, in the interview, Dr Z speaks about becoming so heavily immersed in the role-play that he made significant mistakes in his handling of the experiment. He doesn't directly use that RPG terminology, but any role-player who has experienced deep immersive role-play will fully understand how he could make those wrong decisions. Dr. Z. was called as a witness for the defence during the prosecution of some of those accused of crimes at Abu Grahib, and there is an interesting discussion at the end of the interview around the way we, as a society, go after the war criminals as individuals, and try to make them seem monstrous, when in fact it is the situation that is monstrous, and the majority of those involved are acting like the majority of all people would when placed in the same circumstances.

But it's not the situation, it's us at fault. Yes, we should go after the individuals, both those who acted improperly in the situation , and those who created the situation. Demonizing the perpetrators, or blaming the situation, are both avoiding the primary issue, which is that as a species we tend toward these things, and that we know that despite protestations of high moral fibre, we'd likely do the same in the same situation.

Just as we try to demonize sociopaths and serial killers and paedophiles by pretending (often with a lot of help from the scientists) that they are very different from "normal" people., in fact the demonization is an attempt to try and pretend that the normal people are far removed from being those demons.

But it it's apparent just how close to the surface that demonic nature is, a mere two days in an improperly controlled environment such as the Stanford experiment. Wiliam Golding managed to capture that essence in Lord of the Flies but he had to use children instead of adults, and write an SF allegory, because, of course, back when Lord of the Flies was released, everyone knew a properly raised adult would never descend into barbarism like that. Later media like Straw Dogs, managed not to flinch away from how these things happen to normal people, and media, in general, now portrays this sort of thing well, but there is still the belief in many, most especially those who feel they are morally upright, that they at least, are not like that.

I feel that, like with addiction, you cannot start to deal with the problem until you acknowledge it exists. So, accept that you're capable of horrendous acts, don't pretend that you are somehow a paragon of virtue, be aware of your fallibility, your built-in weakness for oppression and you will have a better chance of resisting that desire should you ever find yourself in a situation where you are tempted.

And, just as an immunization aganst a disease gets your immune system used to the disease and more able to fight it, like a flight simulator helps a pilot practice for things that he hopes never to have to do in a real plane, like martial arts kata help mold our responses to combat situations we hope we never experience, I feel that both BDSM and role-playing provide people with the experience of being in those situations of potential darkness by choice and with consent of the participants in a controlled environment, making it to my mind more likely that those who have had those simulated experiences, are more likely to be able to resist those built-in urges that we all have, and act correctly should we find ourselves experiencing them in a non-consensual, uncontrolled environment.

Hmm, a Saturday afternoon rant. Haven't had one of those in a while, been too busy working. I blame Gaius Baltar.

Sun, Magnolia, & Wood Pigeons

2009-09-06T02:14:18Z

Sorry people am not feeling up to coming into town to discuss LARPS, even though Father's Day family stuff doesn't happen till later. It's a lovely day but my head is stuffed and my eyes ache, and while I can type, read, and sit here, I think the wee burst of cleaning I did this morning has drained me completely. However. I will be keen on being involved in, and possibly even running, a LARP or three.

However, while trying to recover myself after some cleaning I looked out the window and saw the following and decided it needed to be recorded.

This is why I love living out here!

Actors in Yellow

2009-09-04T00:31:19Z

The concept of The Curse of the Yellow Sign ( by John Wick) looks like it would make a good little LARP. In fact with John' suggestions for staging and the like, it's almost a LARP as written.

Almost makes me want to run it at Fright Night.

Ele's Birthday

2009-08-29T06:55:28Z

This is a little late, but I've been slack. The primary reason for putting this up is to share some pics with my sons, but others may be interested.

The following two sets of photos were both taken on the day we celebrated Eleonore's birthday this year. The first set depicts a uniquely decorated set of cup-cakes that wasup_bro and friend put together. They're pretty impressive, I especially like the cat (Tommy), the Pac-Man, and the Poke-ball!

The second set is from the dinner that panda_pitt organized at Scopa.

I disagree

2009-08-13T01:55:20Z

No Right Turn recently said this :

Christchurch International Airport Protection Bill (Clayton Cosgrove): this bill is a response to noise concerns about Christchurch International Airport by local residents. It would "resolve" those concerns by stomping all over them. The bill would ensure that no provision of the RMA could be used to limit the operation of Christchurch airport on the basis of aircraft noise, and require the Christchurch City Council to issue a new District Plan prohibiting "noise sensitive activities" (meaning residential development, schools, hospitals, or pretty much anything involving people living) within a moving boundary which will expand as the airport gets louder. From the maps on the Christchurch City Council's CityPlan site some of this area is already occupied by residential housing (see maps 30 and 31); no compensation would be payable for any loss resulting from this.

This is an awful bill. Its so awful, National might even vote for it. The only thing stopping them is that the victims are in Gerry Brownlee's electorate

I have to disagree. What No Right Turn is obviously unaware of is that the people who are complaining about the airport noise moved into the area long after the airport was already in operation, and have since being trying to use the RMA for purposes that it was not intended for, i.e. : for improving their own land values at great expense to the general public.

It's not about Christchurch airport getting louder, I suspect that bit is in there just so that there is something to that can be removed from the bill, a sacrificial clause, as it were, because aircraft technology is not producing louder aircraft.

What it's about is residential areas expanding and encroachng on the airport's pre-existing exclusion zone, and then home-owners and land developers, who are fully aware of the noise and presence of the airport when they purchased or built there, or when they started subdividing the land around the airport, retro-actively trying to shut-down the airport to improve their own property values. Those residential areas on the map were all created and developed many years after the airport was built and went into operation

We had exactly the same issue with RNZAF Wigram. The air force base had been there since 1911, yet we had people living in houses built next to it in the 1980's phoning up and complaining about the noise! Luckily being a military operation we could politely tell them to fuck off, bluntly saying if you don't like the noise, why the fuck did you build there?

Why should the greedy home-owners and land developers be allowed to force the Christchurch Airport to close or relocate, lining their pockets because they bought cheap unwanted land (because it was close to an airport) which would suddenly become worth a lot more if the airport was closed down, at great expense to the community at large?

That's what Clayton Cosgrove is trying to prevent with his bill.

Seen on the train

2009-08-11T22:43:32Z

Tui Ad "Two girls kissing is technically the same as two boys kissing - yeah, right! "

Not up to the usual standard , I don't see what the "yeah, right" is all about this time? It is the same, at least in the sense that both are two people of the same sex kissing. What's the problem? Are the Tui ad writers homophobes??

Also saw a "Royal Wolf" container. I want one to live in. Or to store certain things in.

We left a class of school kids standing on the platform this morning, because their teachers had bought "economy" tickets, and they had to wait until after nine to use them.

Closing Tabs Before Coffee

2009-08-06T22:13:38Z

The oracle offered up an interesting juxtaposition of songs this morning. First there was Garbage's Supervixen which ends with the repeated lines :

Bow down to me...bow down to me...

Which was immediately followed by Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man, which starts with

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you

He has a lovely voice. Makes me go all squishy inside.

Of course, this was followed by The Doors doing The End and Bon Jovi's Wanted : Dead or Alive, so I'm hoping the oracle isn't really trying to tell me something.

@jnicholson linked to this BBC article about the intelligence of corvids, and I found this interesting MIT article on interface technology somewhere and on Wired. this morning there was this interesting article about Feds potentially being caught by RFID sniffers at DefCon. It goes on to point out the massive security risk created by using RFID ID's and passports.

Now to waste more company time by going and getting a coffee. They're going to regret stopping supplying reasonable coffee. But then it seems HP's CEO Mark Hurd is actively trying to destroy the company and cause it to lose it's market position. I'm just glad I live in New Zealand where they can't force you to take 30% pay cuts just so that Hurd can get his $23 million bonus. But this publicity means no client will really trust that an HP/EDS team can deliver a project, because they'll know most of their good people will have already left.

I suspect Mark Hurd's days are numbered. Given the number of employees HP/EDS has, and how pissed off they are about him, the chances that one of them is driven enough to put a bullet in his head is quite high. Anyone who did so would definitely be cheered throughout the world as the saviour of the company. Isn't it about time that the workers of the world embrace assasination as a salary negotiating tool? It seems a reasonable response to multi-million dollar bonuses to me.

Train

2009-08-03T22:18:48Z

This morning, though dull and rainy, and the train was a late & slow one, I didn't mind, because the musical oracle served me up a treat.

It began with David Bowie's Queen Bitch, which musically reminded me of The Killers Mr. Brightside , especially this bit

Now she's leading him on
And she'll lay him right down

Followed by Bush's Chemicals Between Us. Listening to the song I imagined it as an anime soundtrack. All those anime where people float in tanks of chemicals, and those that care for them touch the outside of the tank. The song also starts with the line "the power of children can amaze", and in so many anime are kids pressed into service. And as they sang "I'll try not to complain, I know that's a pisser, baby" I was reminded of all those anime heroes who are annoyingly whiny as well. Feel free to AMV it if you have the time.

This was followed by Sisters of Mercy doing Temple of Love. I've already raved about how that sounds like a soundtrack from a modern urban fantasy or techno-thriller, and that I can see the black attack helicopter in my mind as Andrew sings "the black sky thunder sweeping
underground and over water ", so I won't say any more.

From there it switched to Annie Lennox doing a gospel version of Train In Vain. It's just a great little song, though you probably won't remember the title, I didn't. The chorus though :

Did you stand by me? No, not at all.
Did you stand by me? No way.

Thence to the long version of U2's All I Want Is You, the one with the string orchestra ending it. Such a simple three chord song, one I enjoy jammming to almost as much as Knockin' On Heaven's Door.

Next as we swept down the edge of the bay, and squalls chased each other across the blue steel water, the oracle served up New Model Army's Green & Grey. "The time I think most clearly, the time I drift away, is on the bus ride that meanders up theses valleys of green & grey". Replace that bus with a train, and that's me.

Then as I needed to get up and leave the train I was assisted by the beat of Minuit's Roomful of Cute : "I fogot to mention you are beautiful" Finally as the tails of my leather trench swung in time to it's beat, I got Fiona Apple's Window . Words to live by (*grin*) :

So I had to break the window
It just had to be
Better that I break the window
Than him or her or me

Also, the young train guard acted like he'd been taking lessons from pookah guard

Fever Dreams Redux

2009-08-01T22:54:07Z

The dinosaurs are back. I don't know what it is about the concept of Jurrassic Park and dinosaurs, but they keep appearing in my dreams.

This time the park was in a coastal area, similar in feel to Queen Elizabeth II Park, just south of Raumati.

@SallyMclennan had decided to land her space-ship house there. She had chosen a spot based on the map, and kept insisting that was the spot for her, even though I had been to the place before and kept telling her that if she landed the house there, the rear section would be at a forty-five degree angle. This wasn't such a big deal as the gravity compensators could easly over-ride a mere 1G and make it feel like it was flat, but it would be a continual, unnecessary power-drain, and the engineer in me detested the idea.

After we had landed there was much exploring of dunes and seasides, until after scaling the side of a waterfall we came across the area we would later discover was the dinosaur park. It was not sign-posted and was merely difficult to get into, not impossible, requiring us to do a high wire act across the lake behind the waterfall, though while doing this I had deja-vu, and felt that it would not be safe but all those who've watched Fringe know what deja-vu is, so we ignored that.

There followed some discovery of dinosaurs and the by-now-mandatory hiding from T-Rex by staying still. If it turns out when we do re-create T-Rex, that Jurrassic Park and it's advisors were wrong, and T-Rex can see pretty well, then there's going to be a lot of people standing still and letting themselves get eaten.

While hiding in this manner, we observed that the dinosaur park had multiple levels,and we watched as the T-Rex made use of the elevator between them. It had difficulty using it's stumpy forearms, and had to sort of push it;s head against the wall sideways to be able to push the buttons.accurately. But it was smart. At one point we waited for it to go into the elevator before we made a break for a door, but the T-Rex was waiting for just such an event and poked it's head back out of the elevator seeing us running for the door.

It leapt between us and the door and we were doomed! Until suddenly we were rescued by a cute girl who flew out of the sky and interposed herself between us and the T-Rex. This seemed suicidal, until she announced herself as Battle Angel Alita, (though in my dream she looked more like Chise from SHE:The Ultimate Weapon). The cyborg, of course, wiped the floor with the poor T-Rex, whom one could almost feel sorry for as something that bite-sized turned out to be impossible to bite, and we escaped.

Later, we defended ourselves from, and herded, some velociraptors by each holding bed-spreads printed with a life size Battle Angel Alita in front of us. Also, at one point I got involved in hand-to-hand combat with another T-Rex and managed to escape it in a Jackie Chan-style sequence in which I managed to handcuff it somehow. Who said dreams have to make sense?

I had a later, more involved dream about politics & investigations, but I remembered more details about the anime dinosaur one.

I can actually see sun outside...

You will all submit to me in the end...

2009-07-20T21:44:45Z

Via elfs Your result for The Supervillain Archetype Test...

The Megalomaniac

Ambitious, Intelligent, Calculating

The Megalomaniac is the most prestigious of super-villain classes. If anyone is ever going to rule the world, it will probably be you.

Your main goal in life is power and domination, you have the tools to do it, and you know it. Megalomaniacs are intelligent and forceful, and they tend not to let their emotions cloud their judgment. Most of the time. They are usually found, or not found, working at the top of a huge structured organization, though many prefer to work by themselves.

The Megalomaniac has but one flaw, but its an invariably fatal one; arrogance. He knows that he can take over the world, and he isn't afraid to let you know, often elaborately and in great detail. They often do not foresee the fly in their ointment, because they do not want to admit that such a fly could exist.

Sample Megalomaniacs: Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, Ras al'Ghul, Kang the Conqueror, Emperor Palpatine, Brain

Take The Supervillain Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy

mundens @ 2009-07-20T09:59:00

2009-07-19T22:04:31Z

Via @Danjite & BlogHer, in finally severing all ties with the Southern Baptist church, Jimmy Carter says :

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views. Jimmy Carter, ex-Baptist, ex-US president, Nobel Prize winner.

It's a shame it still needs to be said, but at least someone with a little clout is saying it.

Things I want to remember

2009-07-19T09:15:32Z

This cogent description of the problem with the Department of Internal Affairs censorship of New Zealand's internet feed

This article about Jack Vance and the Totality of his verbosity.

Styling your garage

"We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,”

Sunday Morning Animals

2009-07-11T22:42:47Z

I was woken this morning by a cat bashing open my bedroom door. The creature did, however, have enough sense of self preservation not to come anywhere near me after entering the room and meowing at me. It is now sitting smugly by my right shoulder, after having demanded biscuits. No, I am not one who serves my cat masters gladly.

Having been forced out of bed way too early I found a baby weta on the kitchen bench. This was a baby weta, so it wasn't scary. I went to get my camera to capture it, but by the time I came back it was gone. That's a little scary. Ninja baby wetas infest my kitchen! Sounds like a Frank Zappa song title.

I did find tt most endearing that the cat also insisted on cuddles prior to biscuits. The forms must be followed. The cat gives you grins and snuggles and purrs and rubs, and then you give it biscuits. The cat is most put out if you just give it biscuits and can't be bothered accepting payment.

Speaking of payment @trentreznor has added the following to his great post about how to make it as a media star in the current climate :

Here's a truth: nobody knows what to do right now, me included. The music business model is broken right now. That means every single job position in the music industry has to re-educate itself and learn / discover / adapt a new way. Change can be painful and hard and scary. If any of these entities we're discussing are interested in you, ask them about their strategies IN DETAIL. None of them know for sure what to do. Some of them have an idea of how to negotiate these waters. Most of them don't. If you are young and use the internet, you know more about your audience than they do - for sure. This is a revolution and you can be a part of it. The old guard is dying, if you have good ideas - try them.

Heh! Meet the Singularity folks..

Just after reading that I noticed this exchange between @warrenellis and some followers, which starts at the end of a long twitter rant about how there are no good large capacity portable miuisc players on the market now becaue they're all trying to look like the iPod Touch. Remember this is Twitter, so start reading from the bottom :

I had a succesful CD ripping session last night, reaccquainting myself with Billy Joel and his early SciFi-ness, such as Miami 2017 (lyrics).

That's one of the songs that makes me wish I could play piano. This was written before SciFi was cool, before Star Wars. The original has a synthesizer at the start, evoking air raid sirens. It seems to have taken on a whole new meaning to a lot of USAians since 9/11, the financial crash, and the drug cartels in Mexico. Just look at a few of the "related videos" on it's YouTube page. I hope Joel survives long enough to play it in 2017!

OK, must now hoover, and do other chores.

Closing Tabs

2009-07-10T23:35:45Z

A brief round up of tabs I'm closing and stuff

So Serenity Adventures won Best Role-playing Supplement at Origins.

Kumi pointed me at Vex who do some interesting men's clothing

I've been doing chores all mornning, but that means the kitchen is clean and tidy and most fo the things are done.

Friday I worked at home due to the huge train fail. I spent the day writing image manipulation software in Javascript. Or should I say, finding examples of how to do varous differnt things on the web and trying to generalize them and join them together into a single package that does everything my customers require, and works on multiple images on a single page (which no single package out there already seems to do.) I now know more about differences in Javascript engines than I ever wanted to know.

Now to get washed & dressed & down to the bakery for some nice bread and baked things.

Dead insects and secret chimps

2009-07-04T00:55:56Z

Last night I was sitting here thinking that I should probably empty all the dead insects out of the light shade in the lounge. The problem with these new-fangled long-life low-wattage bulbs is that you don't get to remove the shade as often as you would with normal bulbs, and thus the dead insect collection becomes massive long before the bulb wears out.

I was surprised to receive an email from Avaaz recently with the title : Nuclear weapons: the only solution. You see, Avaaz are this liberal action group, and while I would fully expect to receive such an email from "Christians Wanting To Hasten The Rapture" or from a science fiction mailing list when discussing aggressive alien planetary infestations, I was intrigued to see what Avaaz would think that nuclear weapons were the only solution for. Solving the water problem in Saharan Africa perhaps?

But no, unfortunately I was disappointed. It was yet another call for "elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide". It's depressing that otherwise smart people still believe that it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle.

There have been a number of things I have run into on the web recently that I want to record as being memorable.

I would have been more excited about FilthyGorgeousThings based on it's premier issue had it not turned out to be a teaser for a horrendously expensive monthly webziine. $19 a month ? Come on! Still it's got some good writing and some nice arty erotica, and is pretty styley for porn.

There are these visualizations based on Twitter from Mashable. I especialy like the "Just landed.." one. Then there are these pics of the Aurora Borealis from space.

And there's Paul & Storm. How can a website subttled "Music, Comedy, Occassional Nuns & Pirates" be anything but a lot of fun? I especially like The Captain's Wife's Lament, here's a couple of verses to whet your appettite, as it were

There’s seamen here in front of me
And seamen in the rear
My God—there’s even seamen
Hanging from the chandelier

There’s seamen on the windowsill
And seamen in the yard
The seamen even left a stain
Upon the Saint Bernard

Although I am a patient wife
‘Tis more than I can bear
To wake up in the morning
With your seamen in my hair

And just in via @violetblue, using sex for ~~adverising~~ education

Now onto cleaning the house.

Fog and the New NiN

2009-07-02T00:28:27Z

There was fog in the Hutt Valley this morning, turning the approaching train into a shoggoth with lights. I didn't blame the driver for being a few minutes late if his visibility of the line was anything like our visibility of the train.

The fog seemed to seep into my brain though, everything from turning off the alarm till the first coffee at work felt like I was running on autopilot. This was perhaps due to certain amount of sleep disturbance. It was comfortable sleep disturbance, but nevertheless I would have preferred to not get up this morning.

Probably due to the sleep disturbance, I dreamed a lot. The one dream I can remember details of was about attending a NiN concert. NiN had a new line-up, which consisted of Boy George (yes, the Karma Chameleon one) on an impressive array of keyboards, and Oscar Keightley on guitar, and Oscar's sister on drums. IRL, I don't even know if Oscar has a sister, but in the dream he did.

Speculation between audience members centered on whether it was Boy George, Oscar, or Oscar's sister that was making Trent Reznor happy at the moment.

Finally finished watching Dollhouse last night. Beautiful little twist in the second-to-last episode around the identity of Alpha. Found the end of the final episode poorly constructed and didn't quite follow what was going on. It felt like it had been edited to the point of removing the important bits. Would say more, but am trying to avoid being too spoilery for those that haven't watched it.

Things I Want

2009-07-01T03:03:18Z

I'd seen pictures of this Korean designer's work before, but it wasn't until @neilhimself posted this link that I realized that the guy who designs cthulhoid furniture like this

is named Chul an Kwak.

I think it would go very well with these concept yachts that @SallyMclennan and I will be running away on.

Any women willing to wear bikinis are welcome to joins us, because, well, if one has such a yacht, one has to be a Bond villian, and have multiple bikini-clad women lounging around. Bonuses available if you are also a ninja assasin.

Speaking of which, @SallyMclennan and I have finally been getting to the end of Dollhouse, and i have been enjoying the parallels between the Dollhouse and a geisha house. The characterization of the series is very anime-like anyway, the doll's favourite phrase "be your best" is more Japanese than English, as is the design and structure of the Dollhouses. The drive of the boss lady ( De Witt?) seem very close to that of the geisha house mistrss in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Also watched new True Blood.