I hereby declare this International Year of Freaky Fauna

Just a few weeks after that four-legged duck, comes the pig with two snouts and three eyes!

Steam cleaning Babel into Weng Weng

Stayed at home and moved furniture from living room so we could get it steam-cleaned.

Wife rings steam-clean guy, who says that he's just looking at the map. Says our street is not on the map. "Wait, i will just look at the internet". He arrives at 12, instead of 11 as originally scheduled.

(Later, i will find out that his map is from year 2000. Goddamn, wouldn't it make business sense to get a new street directory every year, just so you can bloody find your customers' houses without any problem?)

Cleaning, cleaning... it all looks good anyway.

Oh, he doesn't have change! What a surprise. Oh great.

Well at least he didn't go and try to rip us off like the previous steam-clean guy, who charged $30 extra! When my wife told him she already got a quote from his wife of $55, the guy goes, "Well that's my wife, not me." WTF? Amazingly, my wife booked him to come back to our place to clean the rest of the carpeted area. I got her to cancel that, of course. Talk about adding insult to injury.

But for a bargain hunter like me, paying $140 instead of $135...waah, it's the principle of it! So he's late AND gets a $5 tip? Nice.

We were planning to watch Babel at 6pm at Westfield Burwood, but now my wife decides NO I DON'T WANT TO WATCH IT, NOT THIS WEEKEND, NOT NEXT WEEK, NOT IN THE CITY. Under my new policy of not cancelling things I really want to see/ go to just because she friggin' changes her mind, otherwise i'll just be resenting her later.. I still go and catch the train in time and get there with a few mins to spare. They had other trailers anyway.

Babel was screening at Senstadium cinema.. biiig and nice. And there, your seats are booked, though seating is never really a problem when the 6pm session had only 3 people in the cinema. And we're all Asian.

I really want to cry at a movie. I want to be touched. To feel something so deeply. To get my buttons pushed, be emotionally manipulated, be a bigtime teary-eyed sucka. But no, not this movie. Throughout the film, you could sense there was this grand, profound statement about the connectedness of us all. Or maybe there isn't, and Innaritu just wanted to use that overlapping, sequential events thang used in Pulp Fiction, Amorres Perros.. oh, wait, Amorres Perros was his film! Anyway. Maybe it was all an artful, deeply felt, emotional way of saying "Shit happens. To everyone. At the same time."

The Mexican nanny played by Adriana Barraza was quite moving. As was Rinko Kikuchi as the rebellious, deaf-mute Japanese daughter. Who was also pretty hot, and amazingly still a virgin. WTF?

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett lent starpower, and quite possibly were major factors in this film getting made, but they didn't really have much to do. The drama was with the Moroccan characters, which I guess is a bit of a novelty for a big budget film like this.

I can just hear the studio execs before this was greenlit:

"Seriously? More than half the film is subtitled? But it doesn't have Zhang Ziyi or any kung fu? And it's not produced by Mel Gibson? And no steamy sex like Y Tu Mama Tambien? Or creepy monsters like Pan's Labyrinth? You mean, they really have to read the subtitles to know what's going on?"

"But the Japanese chick flashes her pussy. And takes it all off. Full frontal. She's emotionally fragile, you see."

"Bada-bing! Carry on then."

But at least it wasn't as down as Pan's Labyrinth. That was a good film, but I'd have to agree with my friend who called it depressing. The killing of hope is never a good thing.

Off to see Weng Weng films tomorrow! I never saw a single one when I was growing up back in the 80s, but now that I've heard theyr'e actually cult classics, hey, lemme have some o' that. That's my heritage. Hahahahaa... Been trying to ring my brother, who actually enjoyed these films in our childhood, but he never answers his phone, for some reason. He'll be kicking himself now, when I tell him what I saw! Maybe.

At the Chauvel in Paddington, 9pm, they're showing the films For Your Height Only, followed by The Impossible Kid. And I won a double-pass from Drum Media, so my name's at the door. So if it sucks really bad, it didn't cost me a thing! Except dinner. (This is actually the very first freebie/ prize of any sort I've won in Australia)

Let's hear it for extra-limbed animals!

Especially cute ones like this duckling. =)

Four legged duckie

Rest in peace

We never gave you another chance, but I think twenty years was enough.
You fucked up bigtime, and now your children no longer care.

How did it feel to lose everyone in your life? For your family and
friends to stay away?
How did it feel to be the most intelligent man in your family, but the
only one to die alone?

You considered me dead ten years ago. And I saw you likewise.
But now I don't need to do any considering anymore.

I don't like myself at this very moment. Gloating. Relieved. Almost thankful.
I am not a good human being right now. I loathe myself this very second.

I do not want to feel this way. But I feel it still. You made me so.

Jose Gonzalez: Love Will Tear Us Apart

I don't know what it is, but he's got it. He doesn't seem to be as burdened with the legacy of this song. The New Order version just has too much fucking baggage, and inevitably triggers all these comparisons with the original. How could it not?

This guy just goes and does it, almost as if he's in a hurry, with a voice that reminds me a little of Ian Curtis - deep, and monotonous - the kind of voice you'd expect announcing the arrival of a new train, or paging somebody on the hotel PA.

I must admit, if it was Ian Curtis's voice announcing the coming train, maybe I wouldn't get on it.





R.I.P. to the ones who have left without joy from this world.

File under: OMG-thisIsSoCool-IwantOne!

A Ramones wall clock.

I mean, come on, do you really need twelve numbers??

OneTwoThreeFour!

http://chaos.com/product.asp?intProductID=597107&intArtistID=2953

Interesting book on website accessibility

http://joeclark.org/book/

Found while doing a search on a problem I've been having with a page
containing two forms, and they both have an input textbox with
tabindex="1".

The problem: One form on the page contains a search box, and the other
is a form for posting comments. Now what happens is when I'm in the
comment form, at the first textbox, when I press tab to get to the
next textbox, I end up going to the search box instead, I think
because it has tabindex="1" also.

And his advice is:

http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter12.html

"Of course, if there's a search field on every page but the content of
the page in question consists of a separate form not duplicated
elsewhere, then that big form is what takes precedence."

Though there's no advice on what to do about the conflicting tabindex
values. Maybe I should just experiment and see how it works out. Hmm..
interesting idea.

I like what he has to say about "Reset" buttons:

"In general, Reset buttons are a miserable idea. Real-world visitors
are quite likely to hit the button by accident and wipe out everything
they have entered in the form. Web developers seem to include Reset
buttons because HTML makes it easy. I've been online since before
there even was a Web and I can tell you categorically that I have
never once found a Reset button that truly needed to be there."

Taking Back Sunday: 12 Days of Christmas (animation)

This video actually got me thinking about the song, and how weird those gifts really are! Imagine, you get birds for the first four days, then jewellery, then geese, swans, maids, dancers, lords, pipers, drummers. I'm surprised they thought the geese were "laying", as in getting it on. Birds lay eggs! What are kids thinking these days.

If this was made in the early 20th century, you'd probably call this "surrealist". But these days, we just say NIIIIIIIIICE. Watch for cameos from Jerry Garcia and Gollum.

New Year's resolution?

I'm not in the habit of making New Year's resolutions, but if I was, I might include this:

Babies laughing - always cute, always works!

Found the perfect vid to cheer me up after my despairing rant about h8rs on YouTube:



Turn up the volume, for best cheering up effect!

Wanted: YouTube h8r cancelbots/ crowd-moderation

YouTube, til recently a cause of great joy and wonder, is now turning into an embarrassment and cause for despair. Why? "leet h8rz" speech. Almost *any* post that gets popular enough is certain to receive shitloads of hateful comments. You can't call it criticism, and "comments" is giving it too much weight. It's more like cowardly sniping by morons, hiding behind their usernames.

David Pogue on the NY Times wrote something recently about the decline of Netiquette, so the issue's been lingering in my head and I'm wondering if this is all just being alarmist or if it's actually getting worse.

I was just looking at a video of a baby smiling after it farted (it was a YouTube Featured video okay, I didn't look for it!) and it has received a 1million views and around 2000 comments. Most of the comments consist of - "ugh! this is so gay", "faaaake!", "this baby should've been aborted", "ignorant white trash dads". Oh come on! Whatever happened to babies being cute and adorable and undeserving of such trash talk?



Then I clicked on a similar vid, of a Spanish baby making farty noises with its mouth (it's a whole new genre for short film!), and what do we get? Racist taunts about Mexican immigration! Fucking hell. Doesn't take long to get the rats coming out of the woodwork.




Was looking at another one where this Vietnamese-Australian girl was complaining about "bogans" causing a disturbance on public transport , and sure enough, after a day or two, out comes the comments along the lines of "If you don't like it, go back to your country", "Your ancestors were savages in rice paddies", "Me love you long time suckee suckee".



I think there should be another law similar to Godwin's law, a YouTube version of it, stating that "As the number of comment pages on a video goes past 4 and there's any indication that the person in the video is not a white American, the probabilty of a racist comment approaches 1."

Anonymity is the reason why juvenile idiots, racist scum, and plain old jerks are able to pour out their hate (and I use that word repeatedly because that's what it is) without any regard for the consequences of their speech. I'm pretty sure people would at least think twice before spewing this much bile and filth if they had to use their real names to make a post.

Of course, those with underdeveloped IQs and potty mouths would be doing it - but how long would you persist if you knew that everyone in the world, or at least everyone you would ever meet from that point on - friends, future schools, universities, employers, would-be lovers - would be able to Google your name and see what an asshole you really are.

I can't see why Google, having spent truckloads of money to buy YouTube, would just sit by and let it get clogged with all these moronic, hateful comments. Given the collective IQ at that place, can't they find a way to institute some form of self-policing by the public, or have a system where certain users can get responsibility for controlling the comment flood. Slashdot and Digg have crowd-moderated systems, and WikiPedia still seem to be successful with a system that everyone can still edit - so what's YouTube gonna do?

This is the user-generated content that Time voted as "Man of the Year"? Nice one.

Preventing a page from reloading when using onClick event in a HREF

The hyperlink is often used instead of a button to run a javascript method using the onClick() event of a link with a value of "#"

<a href="#" onclick="someMethod();">This Does Something</a>

However this also reloads the page, which may result in loss of some changes performed by someMethod(). For example, if someMethod() changes the display of page elements -- a page reload will result in the page looking like it was *before* someMethod() was called.

To prevent this, it's good practice to return false to the onclick event, similar to the way we return false to onsubmit event in a form, where we don't want the form to submit.

so we either:

1. Modify someMethod() to return a value of false and change our HREF to:

<a href="#" onclick="return someMethod();">This Does Something</a>

2. Or add a return false; after calling someMethod(), like so:

<a href="#" onclick="someMethod(); return false;">This Does Something</a>

My first post-apocalyptic dream

Well, maybe not the absolute first, but it's the first one I remember.

I was waiting in line, wearing my German army jacket, and another coat underneath. The line seemed to be for food rations, but the rations were freshly cooked, just like in Chinese takeaway shops. And they had a menu! I only remember seeing fried rice and tofu. I remember thinking, "Hmm.. I'd really like to get Ma Po Tofu, but I wonder if they have any mince pork."

I really should sleep earlier. Since starting the holidays I've been remembering a lot more of my dreams, though I think normally you finish the dreaming state and go back into "sleep" phase so most of the time you don't remember them anyway. But five hours of sleep a night doesn't seem to be enough. One more New Year's resolution!

I never believed in multitasking in the workplace

"The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once."
- Samuel Smiles

flickr: wayne freaking flaming coyne

i've got a plan and it's here in my hand
Originally uploaded by fetching.

Sometimes you're just randomly clicking on flickr, minding your own business, then you come across a photo that completly floors you. I cannot even begin to describe my awe at this photo.

I really have to see the Flaming Lips next time they're in Sydney.

Hmmm.. can I afford to wait that long?

What if they suddenly go all Radiohead on us and become annoyingly contrary and anti-fame, "waa waah waaah.. we're too popular, everybody acts like they like us, waa waaa, let's make albums full of bleeping sounds and piss off the classic rock kind of crowd, let's stick to the cool crowd fan base, but let's keep my whining singing voice..."

Whups, went off on a tangent there. Sorry. I guess I still haven't gotten over Kid A. Heh.

Addendum:

7 Feb 2010

Shit, what a dumbass.. why didn't I download the photo?? Shit. No longer available on Flickr. Fuck. The photo was totally awesome. Sorry if anyone reads this and wonders

From Outlook to Thunderbird pt3

http://www.postneo.com/2005/02/26/thunderbird-shortcomings-outlook-import-support

OLEXP: How to Import MMF File into Outlook Express:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=176267

MAPI error messages when you import or export messages:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q179637

How to reinstall or repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=318378

How to Import Archived Outlook Email Into GMail Using GML:
http://www.wikihow.com/Import-Archived-Outlook-Email-Into-GMail-Using-GML

"1. Import your Outlook mailbox into Microsoft Outlook Express. Open
Outlook, then open Outlook Express. In Outlook Express, select Tools > Import, and instruct it to import Mail from Outlook.

2. Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird, an open source replacement for Outlook from the people who make Firefox. Be sure during the installation process to have Thunderbird import your mail from Outlook Express. Installing Thunderbird allows extraction of your old mail from Microsoft's proprietary (and difficult) PST file format into a more open
mBox file. While Thunderbird offers the option to import mail directly from Microsoft Outlook, the data is less likely to get corrupted if you add the intermediate step of importing to Outlook Express. "

=========================

http://andrewcain.blogspot.com/2006/06/migrating-to-mac-part-2.html

=========================

http://www.littlemachines.com/

O2M (formerly known as Outlook2Mac) may be the fastest way to move your Windows(r) Outlook(r) email, contacts, and calendar appointments from your PC to your Macintosh(r) computer!

And it's only $10!

=========================

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:2wvO2kUZQaEJ:gladiator-antivirus.co
m/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t18295.html+convert+from+outlook+2003+to+t
hunderbird&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=6&ie=UTF-8&client=firefox-a

"It is easy to do From Outlook Express to Thunderbird

http://jamie.typepad.com/ontheverge/2003/0...outlook_ex.html

But if you are trying to import your emails from outlook 2003 pst file but TB does strip all html stuff and you get plain txt emails instead of some beautiful email ....

Then you must do this..

Import it into Outlook Express, and then import it from Outlook Express into Thunderbird. That solves most Outlook import problems.

It also doesn't hurt to doublecheck "view->message body as" is set to "original html".

That was exactly what you do , Thunderbird will not "find" you Outlook 2k3 which is installed on your system. So do the Outlook --> OE --> TB and it works fine for email, about 600MB transfered into TB in less then 2 minutes!

The Contacts, however, you needed to export to a CSV and then put the columns in the correct order.

Somebody in another thread recommended using the shareware program Outlook2Mac to convert a .pst file to mbox's (the format thunderbird uses to store emails) if you don't have a copy of Outlook installed.

http://www.littlemachines.com/

You might want to try converting the address book with Dawn if you have order problems.
http://www.joshie.com/projects/dawn/

Good luck..let me know who it all works out for YOU."

outlook mail conversion pt2

i thought i could use this:

http://alioth.debian.org/projects/libpst/

but turn out it doesnt handle Outlook 2003 (according to the forums),
which i use at work.

converting Outlook mail to mbox format

Has there ever been a task more hideous?

Just tried using a program called "ABC Amber Outlook Converter". What a
piece of shit! I ran it and the first thing it does is try to convert
ALL of my .pst files it detected from Outlook, and the gui locks up,
leaving me no alternative but to shut it down. F*ck. I hate badly
designed software. Before you try and do some gargantuan task, at least
they should inform the user and give them a chance to *not* run the
process. Aaargh..

Oooh, talk like a Pirate Day was yesterday, 19 Sept... ARRRRR...

Next in line - Thunderbird! I used Netscape Mail long ago to convert
Outlook... but that was in 1999. Does Thunderbird handle compressed
Outlook 2003 .pst files? We'll find out...

Unix file processing magic...

Given a bunch of files like this

2.csv
3.csv

- divide each file into chunks small enough to upload to Dartmail.
Dartmail handles maximum of 1,000,000 bytes

-- find out how many lines in each file, and how big each one is

wc -l 2.csv

ls -l 2.csv

-- split a file into equal chunks, or max. specified number of lines per
segment

$ split --help
Usage: split [OPTION] [INPUT [PREFIX]]
Output fixed-size pieces of INPUT to PREFIXaa, PREFIXab, ...; default
size is 1000 lines, and default PREFIX is `x'. With no INPUT, or when
INPUT
is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-a, --suffix-length=N use suffixes of length N (default 2)
-b, --bytes=SIZE put SIZE bytes per output file
-C, --line-bytes=SIZE put at most SIZE bytes of lines per output
file
-d, --numeric-suffixes use numeric suffixes instead of alphabetic
-l, --lines=NUMBER put NUMBER lines per output file
--verbose print a diagnostic to standard error just
before each output file is opened
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit

SIZE may have a multiplier suffix: b for 512, k for 1K, m for 1 Meg.

Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.

$ split -l 110000 2.csv 2

-- get header row from csv

$ head -1 2.csv > header.txt

-- add header file to other files that don't have header row

(doing it for 3* files

$ for i in b c <-- b and c is the array.. we'll be processing 3ab and
3ac
> do
> cat header.txt 3a$i > 3a${i}.csv <-- the 2nd i is in {} because of
the . after it.
> rm 3a$i
> done

do-done defines the block ...

-- can also be written out as one row, with commands separated by ";"
for i in b c; do cat header.txt 3a$i > 3a${i}.csv ; rm 3a$i; done

=================================

history of all commands:

split
split -h
split --help
cd e:
less 0.csv
q
wc -l 2.csv
split -l 110000 2.csv 2
ls 2*
ls -l 2*
head -1 2.csv > header.txt
cat header.txt 2ab > 2ab.csv
less 2ab.csv
cat header.txt 2ac > 2ac.csv
cat header.txt 3ab > 3ab.csv
mv 2aa 2aa.csv
rm 2ab 2ac 2ad
ls 2*
wc -l 3.csv
ls -l 3.csv
split -l 90000 3.csv 3
ls -l 3*
for i in b c; do cat header.txt 3a$i > 3a${i}.csv ; rm 3a$i; done
ls 3*
mv 3aa 3aa.csv
less 3ab.csv
wc -l 4.csv
ls -l 4.csv
ls -l 5.csv
ls -l 6.csv
ls -l 7.csv
split --help
history

Bebot bebot bet bebot bebot

Damn. My eyes are glazing over. Why don't you guys just get an interview with Apl so you can grill him over what the songs really mean?

"So Apl... what is the moral of your song? What is your mesasge to all the Filipinos out there?" (ala-Germspesyal questions)

Juskoday. It's a freaking song. A freaking bad song - bad rapping, incoherent lyrics. (not Snakes on a Plane bad.. you know what i mean)

Ang tawag sa lalake, "kelots", ang babae naman yung "bebot". It's not a derogatory term. It's just ancient 70s slang. Di ko nga maintindihan bakit niya ginamit yung salitang "bebot", considering I last heard it used around the early 80s. =)

APL: (rings a family friend) "Tito, I'm kinda writing this song, and like, it's gonna be like an anthem about Filipinos and pride and raising our game and shit, y'knowhamsaying, giving us visiblity, without any sampling issues like that Asin jam I had on the previous album. (cos i know we should've paid them royalties for using the bloody stanza of "Balita", but let's not get into that)

So, like, I was kinda wondering what's a Filipino term for 'mah gurl', or 'baybeee'"

Tito: E di Baby! Like your Tita Baby, you know? You know what I em saying also, ha?

APL: Yeah, well, it's kinda too American.. isn't there a Pinoy word, something indigeneous?

Tito: Ah, like "bebot", "chicas", "chicks".

APL: So, that's not a word that's gonna get me in trouble Tito? I'm not going for that snoop dogg angle.

Tito: Ay, hinde, iho, that's a word we used in college.. tandang tanda ko pa nung magkasama kami nina Tisoy at Pomposa... (harp strums, fade out.. flashback sequence)

Fek. Academe. Tends to remove intelligible words from vocabularies.

Check this out:

"i suggest that this focus might be a way for the female poet to harness the political power to be garnered from heteronormative sympathy for the manongs and then by extension/lateral movement to inherit a largely male tradition of filipino american writing established by manong-generation writers bulosan, gonzalez, santos, and villa as well as the flip generation of robles, tagatac, syquia, penaranda, and others."

Goddamn! That's supposed to be English?