Mr Altruistic

Returned this week from a 5 day expedition to Shallow Crossing near NSWs South Coast. Let’s trot through some of the high (and low) lights…

At 6am Friday morning my mobile phone frantically buzzed on my bedside table as the geek rang through to confirm if the trip was still on. We debated the merits of battling the pissing down rain, as we remarked on how Sydney has gone months and months without a single day of rain and then it all comes down in fucketsfull when we decide to go away - We made the decision to be hardcore and go camping anyways even if the rain persisted at its torrential monsoonal level for the next 5 days.

So off we went in the jam-packed Cruiser for another trip into the wilderness. After doing some running around town and a few stops for some essentials (and non essentials) we finally got under way. Funnily enough we spotted a Morey Boogie 136 early on in the trip and the mood was jovial despite the sheets of water glancing off the windshield. It was about then that we noticed there was a leak in the far left corner of the windshield and we had to make a stop to silicon that bitch up. Right about then the rain started to pelt down a bit more forcefully and we pondered on whether the shallow crossing was going to be fucking deep crossing but we hit the Sheep Track anyways, the cruiser and its driver battling wind, rain, mud, and corrugations, and through our dark depths of despair there was one glimmer of hope like a shining beacon. Our faith. When we arrived at the crossing it was less Niagra Falls and more cascading water in the trough and we made our way safely to the other side and into the Shallow Crossing Camping Grounds.

Stuck in the middle with you - Clowns to the left of us (redneck motorheads from Minto we were guessing), Jokers to the right (the subaru 4WD club complete with screaming kids) and us stuck smack bang in the middle (well not really, we had the pick of the spots at the very back of the camping grounds with two embankments in which to fish off - we were only really in the middle as we drove to our vacant spot at the edge of the camping ground).

We were also forced to set up camp in the rain. I can tell ya pitching tents when you are soaked through to the bone isn’t my idea of fun. BUT (as became the catchphrase of the trip) You get that on the big jobs… you certainly do hehehe. Once we got the flys, the tents and the swag up (the swag being set up with consummate ease, a mere unrolling and hey presto it’s done) we hit the hayskies. The end of a long 1st day.

Next day we hit Batemans Bay to pick up some pilchies (bait) for fishing and some 100 pipers (grog) for pissing. After a bit of sightseeing we headed back to the crossing via Barkshed Road and nailed the trademark shintara and vilesilencer fire pit. We set the wood up in teepee formation with a few jiffys, hit it with the kero, tossed in a match and wooshka instant bonfireskies. The geek then pulled out his arsenal of barbie equipment and we nailed a simmering Indian curry, in a pot over the fire. Nothing beats a meal like that. As darkness descended on us we nailed the bottle of Pipers and proceeded to discuss the pros and cons of about 15 different program languages. Sounds like fun eh? Believe me it totally rocked!

keepin it reel the geek snares an eel! battling the dying fire, steaks sizzling away on the hotplate and a toying sea monster, the rod pinged away several times as dave was forced to recast several times in order to tempt the tricky “fish”. He then looked at me and said I’m gonna toy with him watch this dood, he cast the line once more and felt the familiar ping on the rod as the “fish” nibbled at the bait, then in one swift fluid moment he whipped the rod back and jerked the hook into the “fish”, it was then a battle of wills, with my esteemed friend plucking the eel from the water.

Day 3 saw us visiting Pebbly beach a nice little spot tucked away inside Murramung National Park. Very picturesque, and peaceful. Well it was until we walked across the nicely grassed area towards the beach and were confronted by this monster arrrrgghhh! We had a nice look around the area and soaked up the atmosphere before returning to camp via Batemans Bay to collect more supplies.

Rumours of the Wagsor making an appearance later that night, whilst the geek hit the swag for a few z’s and to dream of doze and br0nz3 (hehehe actually i doubt it) motivated me to use the quiet time constructively and I pulled out pen and paper and worked on a few new ideas for the silencer to be unveiled the next time I overhaul this hideous bitch goddess (which for clarification wont be anytime soon, i.e. next year at the earliest). I too dozed, in my chair by the fire, and awoke to smoking embers and the end of pleasant yet unfulfilling dreams.

The next day the Wagsor made a surprise visit, as we were expecting him the night before, and we lazed around soaking up a brilliant sunny day in the best the wilderness has to offer, by the water, chatting about life and fishing and laughing. Like all good times, they go fast. Before we knew it, Brad had left to return to the humdrum of city life, and after our last night of discussion by the fire, Dave and myself were packing up our own shit and heading back to the malaise ourself.

In other news - Congrats to Michael Clarke, Australia’s 389th player to wear the baggy green, on his debut century. His final score for the 1st game in india was 151. Adam Gilchrist also bagged a ton to put us in a strong position in the match at 474, we later rolled the Indians for 246, and it’s looking like we’ve got this game in the bag with them 6 for 105 in their second innings and needing another 352 runs to win. Shane Warne needs another 2 wickets to overtake the chucker Murali, as the worlds greatest wicket-taker.

KFC. Yup it’s never-ending. I came across this ringing endorsement for KFC a couple of weeks ago. I highly recommend watching the video. If you are having trouble giving up the KFC, the video clip might make it a bit easier. I enjoy the way PETA works, they know that companies like McDonalds and Wendy’s are never going to close their doors, so they don’t try and get them to, BUT they are trying to force them to change their cruel ways and correctly treat the animals they slaughter to make money. Which I think benefits us all.

In the interest of fairness, after my little Apple bashing midweek, I’ve decided to dedicate this auspicious entry to Bill and that wonderful windows operating system he stole from IBM. As you can see from the image above, my AMD-k6 450Mhz PC has seen better days.

Why the fuck is it in bits? I hear your ask…

Well my friends, it’s in bits because it died rather abruptly one afternoon suffering a massive cardiac arrest as the harddrive died and took the rest of the machine with it. Attempts to resuscitate it were futile as 2 replacement heart drives were implanted to no avail. Surgery went awry as my 6 year old flatlined never to see the light of day again. So what happened? Who the fuck knows, all I know is the machine was dying a slow painful death. It all began when I allowed the windows “auto-updater” (WAU) the right to download updates from MS for the Win2k Operating System. I noticed that the WAU was always updating.

Like everytime I was online (I had dialup back then), it was always sitting in the taskbar with a % completion progress bar. I started noticing the OS working very slowly in the weeks that the WAU had been granted access. Call it a conspiracy theory but I think auto the updates are designed to get you to make a real update (i.e. to go and buy windows XP) by rendering your current Operating system obsolete & unusable. After one particular update my Internet Explorer failed to work, as did Windows Explorer and My Computer. Making file handling and surfing an absolute bitch. No, it wasn’t a virus, Bill’s updates fucked my machine, I don’t get viruses (unless I intentionally load them onto a machine).

About 8 months later the HD failed to boot, and was making a whistling noise. If you’ve ever heard it before (and I have when my 486 passed away) you know the boot sector of your hardrive has had the dick. John Holmes size. Still 6 years is a good life for any computer, and mine served me well.

However it was this incident that prompted me to give Apple a go. I had witnessed a Dual 2 Gig G5 with 23″ cinematic display set up in full swing running Final Cut Pro and, being the 24/7 user I am I felt that a laptop was more my thing. After hearing Dave Dakcream about his 17″ Powerbook G4 I knew I had to have one… So far I am liking it enough to stick with Apple for a while to come. However as you can see from my previous post, I still have a few gripes to come to terms with. Hopefullly that’ll all be rectified in the near future

It was recently mentioned by Brad that I plug ‘n’ played a Microshonk USB optical meese. *Gasp!* I can hear all the dedicated Apple users cry… Why did you do that?

Because I’m not one to stop using something simply because I have a fucked up notion in my head that I’m fucking cool because I use Apple. I don’t wake up thinking, where’s my iPod, and my iCereal and my iMilk, geez I need an iCoffee. If you think like that, and I’m pretty sure a lot of Apple users do, then you are an iDickhead.

The reason I use the MS mouse is because it is simply, far superior to a one button mouse that has no scrollwheel (whoever at Apple thought that was a step towards the future needs a bullet). It’s a fact. I apologise to all Apple users if this update was a little pro PC. Bill has 2 things going right:

1. An OS that can install fonts simply;

2. A mouse with superior functionality.

Fonts.

The building block of any designers work.

The backbone of an idea.

The strength, silkiness and confidence that allows one to say I can do that!.

The dilemma?

Font’s that wont install.

The software?

Apple’s very own Font Book and another commercial Font Manager that is proclaimed to be exceptional at handling fonts Extensis Suitcase.

The reality? Both programs are extraordinarily bad at handling something so simple as font installation. The Font Book just doesn’t work. Ask most Mac users and they either don’t know about Font Book (because they’ve never bothered using it) or they’ve tried using it, realise it doesn’t work, then tried something else. So what’s the alternative? Extensis Suitcase. This is described as “an expert font manager that lets you break down your large arsenal of fonts into nice neat compartmentalised categories of fonts”. Sounds great? But it isn’t!

When you try to install more than about 5 fonts at a time you are greeted with a colour wheel that seems inspired by Microsofts blue screen of death, because that is pretty much what you get, an application that requires a force quit. Sure, you can install the fonts one at a time absolutely hassle free. But who in God’s name has time to install 2000+ fonts one at a time? I never had this problem on PC, and it’s a sad indictment on Apple that claim to be “designed with the geek in mind”.

Considering that the Apple is the designer’s machine of choice you would expect that fonts would install effortlessly, but it seems the PC wins this war. Click left mouse button to select first font, Press [Shift], scroll to end of fonts, select last font, drag entire list to the font folder in the windows system directory, watch the progress bar as the fonts install themselves.

Try something like that on the Apple. colour wheel. Abysmal. Almost makes you want to go back…. Almost.

Well, this year just keeps kicking onskies at breakneck pace, and I am finding it hard to keep up. The cash is exiting my wallet faster than I can earn it, even though I seem to be going out less and less these days. Why is it also, that work days just take forever to end, and the weekend just flies by in an instant? I was thinking about that on Saturday, then it was Sunday, and I thought, hang on what happened to yesterday… Then it was Monday…. and then Monday… and then MONDAY!… we’ll you know what I mean it’s like getting a dog up ya sideways - it’s not fun.

I’m fresh from a geek’s impression session with Brad and Dave and I’m mightily impressed with airport. The way it recognised the wireless router in the vicinity of the laptop has sealed the deal and im ready to sign to the Apple for a full season. The rockers and myself dined on take-out *tommy. I revisited the Ruby Foo’s experience in Times Square, New York, where my mate Filthy nearly died on the Kung Pow Chicken (thats the Kung Pow on the left above the soy sauce in the image above) whilst we were holidaying there last year. Unbeknownst to Filthy, the big bits of chicken he was stuffing into his mouth were actually chilis, and not even the several schooners of Stellas he downed could douse the fiery flames hehehe. So I thought I would give the dish a bash, and it came up trumps. A lot milder in Australia it would seem, the chilis were sectioned not whole like in New York, but it still has that zing, and I can highly recommend it.

*Tommy - many theories probably abound as to the origins of the word “tommy” when used in relation to asian food. There is in fact only one. Tommy comes from Tommy Nomchong, an asian chap a year ahead of me at high school. The phrase was coined when a good mate Moysie and myself were sitting in the infamous Wah Kee restaurant chowing down on lemon chicken and mongolian lamb after a session at the gym. It was an off-hand comment that stuck and is used to this day (over a decade later). This also gave rise to the infamous Tommy Knocker extension of the phrase, which I will leave to your imagination hehehe. So next time you’re thinking to yourself “Geez I could go for some Tommy right now” or “Man that Tommy is knocking already” spare a thought for the vilesilencer

After getting a trim on Saturday, I was sitting on the station reading the newspaper when I stumbled across a story about this bird in the UK that sold her virginity for $20,000 Australian (8000 pounds) on ebay. Her girlfriend (yes I re-read that too), apparently was in the next room whilst the “transaction” was completed… Even funnier is that the girl thought the first time was a bit of a dud, and she wanted to remember it as something special, so the gent that purchased her cherry, got a second bite at it, for no extra cost hehehe. For that kind of money I’d gladly become a born again virgin and let the highest bidding lady re-de-flower me

The Danny Williams King Hit on Mark O’Neill has been the talk of the NRL footy world for the last week. It’s occupied the back few pages of the sports section of my local rag paper. Danny, the Melbourne Storm forward, is claiming he suffered amnesia from an O’Neill tackle that concussed him prior to king-hitting O’Neill into hospital. If he suffered amnesia, how is it that he was able to wander across the play and locate O’Neill and deliver the knockout blow? What I also find interesting is that in round 13, Danny Williams broke O’Neill’s nose in a vicious tackle. There is clearly some history between the 2, why doesn’t the coward just own up to taking a cheap-shot on his rival and cop the ban squarely on his chin. After all he deserves it.

Looks like Telstra is back in the news again, and for once it’s not for one of Ziggy’s monumental fuck ups. Telstra is launching the Sensis search engine, which in their words is set to shake Google to its very core. Combining the power of the yellow and white pages, http://www.whereis.com.au/ and a few other databases it claims to have the wood on Google and it’s many rivals… Only time will tell, but my prediction is that this is another case of Telstra offering a Porsche and delivering a Daewoo… no offence to Daewoo.

Recently on the now defunct WPW forum, many mac users were extolling the virtues of the Mozilla Firebird Browser. I’ve heard people literally creaming their daks over using it. So it was with a very high expectation that I downloaded and launched what I thought was going to be the latest in browser technology. After using it I’ve got one word for all those WPW mac users - shithouse. The browser looks and feels like a beta of a bad Camino. Ok I won’t go so far as to say it’s as bad as Mac IE, but it’s down there in the toilet with it. So what do I use? Give me the freedom, speed and simplicity of Safari, which ships as the default with OS X. No fancy garbage, and no frills pretending to be something they aren’t. It’s no wonder to me now why WPW has gone down the drain. The majority of people that frequented that place have no idea about computers or the web. The so-called experts and moderators on the site were nothing more than glorified beginners spouting something they’ve heard or think they know.

As Homer would say “Woo Hoo!!!”. After a rather dull day at work, I was surprised when a customer brought in a CD to be printed containing a poster of (drumroll) The Periodic Table Of Beer Styles. I’d love to see a full screen image of this. I only managed to spend a short time reading over the poster when it was printed, but it is very detailed with information on every style of beer known to man.

While we are on the subject of the periodic table… Scientists have classified an element that has been perplexing man for centuries..

Element Name: WOMANIUM

Symbol: WO

Atomic Weight: (don’t even go there)

Physical properties: Generally soft and round in form. Boils at nothing and may freeze any time. Melts when treated properly. Very bitter if not used well.

Chemical properties: Very active. Highly unstable. Possesses strong affinity with gold, silver, platinum, and precious stones. Violent when left alone. Able to absorb great amounts of exotic food. Turns slightly green when placed next to a better specimen.

Usage: Highly ornamental. An extremely good catalyst for dispersion of wealth. Probably the most powerful income-reducing agent known.

Caution: Highly explosive in inexperienced hands!