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Dec 24th, 2011

Ford Fiesta XR4

I have finally bought myself a new car. It has been several years in the making.

I have always like small cars. I can appreciate large cars but my personal preference is to buy small. My old car was also a small car. I enjoy not paying ridiculous amounts of money for insurance and road registration. I don’t use my car for anything but driving around, and rarely long distances, so large cars aren’t a necessary part of my lifestyle. I’m also relatively average height, so seating/roof height/footwells etc in small cars are rarely too small for me.

The Fiesta XR4 (or Fiesta ST as it is known in the UK) is special because it has a 2.0-litre engine from its big brother, the Ford Focus. Not only that but the engine has been tuned to provide more power (110Kw) and a better torque band (190Nm) which kicks in from around 3300RPM. The car also has sports suspension, a five-speed manual transmission, wide grippy tyres, a subtle bodykit and – if you are so inclined – racing stripes from the factory.

I first saw this car on an ancient episode of Top Gear – around 2005 or so – and was unimpressed to note the car wouldn’t be available in Australia until 2006. I researched it over and over and over until I had memorized every little detail about the car. I even took one for a test drive from a dealer. I was pretty much in love with this car (though not to the point that I actually made love to it). However, at the time I was still a uni student, and although I was working full time it was in a dead-end job. I could’ve technically afforded to buy it with all the on-road costs and a drive-away price around $28,000, but I would’ve had absolutely zero money to spend after that.

I watched the prices of them on the second-hand market over the next few years, all the while willing my current car to die so I would have an excuse to buy one. In the end, my old Nissan never really died. It is disabled but it’s not dead, but now it’s at a point where the cost to fix it would be worth more than the value of the car, so it makes financial sense. Plus Carly needs a car to drive to work in, and I just got a raise. So it was time.

I went searching and I was impressed when I saw this for sale:

As you can see it has stripes, though they aren’t ridiculous fat slug trails from front to back. It also has some nice white wheels. Aside from that this car had done about 48,000 kilometres and was going for a price I couldn’t refuse: $15,990. The only problem was that it was coming up to Christmas (the weekend before) and the car was in Sydney. I had organised the loan the week before so the cash was sitting in my bank account ready to go. I just had to organise the purchase. It was an experience in quick-thinking logistics to sortthe flight, accomodation, legal papers, etc etc.

I had my aunt and uncle living in Sydney inspect the car for me and they gave me the thumbs-up, so it was ‘all systems go’ on the plan. Carly and I flew down to Sydney on the Saturday afternoon (5PM flight) and were picked up by the seller in the car from the airport. We drove back to his house and did all the paperwork and exchanged the cash (he wanted cash to buy a replacement car the next day), went to his parents place to pick up the stock wheels and tyres, and everything was a done deal by around 8PM that evening. We waited on the road side while I waited on the phone for the insurance to be instated and away we went.

We stopped off at Carly’s sisters place in Mona Vale for a visit, then drove on to Newcastle. We arrived in Newcastle around 2AM and stayed the night, then took the inland route to Brisbane through Glen Ines etc. We arrived home at around 7.30PM that evening and were well-pleased with our accomplishments! The car performed brilliantly for the journey and never skipped a beat. Although the low-profile tyres and sports suspension sometimes proved to be uncomfortable over the old country roads, the journey was otherwise comfortable and stress-free.

I am now thinking about what extra bits and bobs I can buy for it. I am not sure if I want to modify anything; cars are a more huge money hole than any hobby I’ve had before. I am looking though at getting a cat-back exhaust, or perhaps a full system including extractors, as well as a cold air intake. That’ll be about it though for performance mods as I don’t want to put the car too far out of spec. for the purposes of keeping it drivable for the long term. Cosmetic mods I’m considering are replacing the LEDs on the dashboard from green to white, upgrading the stereo, and maybe replacing the exterior plastics with carbon-fibre look-alikes. Not because I like the look of carbon fibre, but because they’re darker in colour and enameled, so they should last longer.

Another cool toy which I am thinking about getting is a Bluetooth ODB plugin. It connects to the diagnostic computer interface of the car and then you can pair it to your phone. With the aid of an app (Android or iOS), you can get real-time readouts of all the critical system parameters. Considering this requires zero modifications and costs around a hundred bucks, although it’s probably useless it’s still pretty freakin’ cool.

Aug 10th, 2010

My new phone, and why Telstra doesn’t suck anymore

Telstra were the first company I signed a phone contract with, way back in 2004 if I recall correctly. They had the phone I wanted, but it was on a pretty ridiculous plan. Still, I signed with them anyway. This was before 3G and cap plans. This was when EDGE was a big deal, and Push To Talk was being flouted as amazing technology.

Well, we know where all that stuff is now: long gone. With the likes of 3, Vodafone, Virgin and later Crazy Johns all jumping in on the 3G + caps bandwagon, Telstra was left behind with their decades-old poor value phone contracts (you pay $80, you get $80). I paid out my Telstra contract early and went with 3, and I’ve been there since about 2006/2007, and had two phones with them.

Recently, 3 has been puchased by Vodafone as you may have noticed. But not so recently; say, in the last six months or so, 3 has been growing steadily irrelevant. Their once great coverage (3G + 2G on Telstra) became standard. Their once great range of phones diminished over time. They got to a point where they are now: they have three or four flagship phones, but nothing else. Hell, they don’t even have the iPhone 4 yet. No ritzy midnight launch from 3.

Although 3 has been good to me, I was tired of getting drop-outs everywhere along my short journeys to and from work. 3G is slow enough already, even when browsing ‘mobile friendly’ sites, but it’s made worse when between my home station and the CBD, reception would drop completely about two or three times for several minutes at a time.

It was with much trepidation that I decided to check out other providers – Telstra initially wasn’t even on my radar as, well, we all know Telstra is shit, so why bother?

But that’s where I was wrong. It turns out that as Telstra has recently sold all of their copper-monopoly to the government they were only left with their NextG mobile network monopoly. Which, combined probably with a thousand other things behind the scenes in Telstra’s board room, has made them really think about their place in the market and where they want to move in the future. Hence, their residential broadband services are now actually good value. You can get 200Gb of data on Telstra cable at 30Mbit for around $60-$70 per month. I pay more than that for less data on much slower ADSL2+. Other mobile carriers have the new Android and iPhones on $60-$80 caps, most of the time with more included call value and data, but still with a higher entry price point than Telstra, from whom you can get the latest and greatest Android and iPhone starting at $49 per month, which is exactly what I did. They actually have a deal going at the moment where you can double your data for free – for the period of your 24 month contract. So, the included 200Mb on the $49 cap goes to 500Mb, which is alright. But what really got me was the fact that this applies throughout your contract period, even if you change your data plan! If you bump your included up to 500Mb, you actually get 1Gb, and so on.

A lot of people will tell you that in metropolitan areas, other networks are just as good as NextG for speed and coverage. Well, they’re probably correct most of the time. However, the advertisement on television you see with the apathetic girlfriend and the eBay-fanatic boyfriend is actually true, mostly. I have tested it. You really can maintain mobile reception, data connection, calls, etc, inside elevators, with NextG. I went to Townsville recently for work and took a NextG data card with me for my laptop. I was downloading at about 100-200Kb/sec on the outskirts of the city, inside a concrete building. That’s impressive. I could barely make a call on my Vodafone work mobile.

My reluctance to choose Telstra was removed – temporarily. I had a bad experience turn to a good one while attempting to sign up.

First, I went to my local Telstra store. They told me I couldn’t have the double data deal. I was confused because I was sure it had been advertised. I was right, and they were wrong. So I left a whinge about it on TEX, the Telstra Exchange blog and forgot about it. I went to another store, waited for 45 minutes to be served, and eventually signed up. I got my double data deal. However, on that day in particular Telstra were doing some upgrades, so my number couldn’t be ported then and there. This meant leaving the phone with them until the next day, as they can’t give the phone out without porting the number first due to the risk of fraud. OK, so I waited again.

It turns out the store I visited first is a “Telstra licenced” store, which basically means it’s a franchise and they do their own thing while carrying the “T[life]” branding. I thought it was pretty ridiculous because thousands of stores who franchise under hundreds of companies don’t selectively pick and choose what deals they honour or products they stock. Why is Telstra different?

I was then surprised and impressed to receive an e-mail from a Telstra customer relations manager in a followup to the little whinge I left on their blog. He wanted to know which store I had been to and whether he could get someone to call me to help me out. Frankly, I was shocked. Telstra, the same Telstra who everyone hates, has actually e-mailed me out of the blue to ask if they can help, based solely on a little rant I left on their blog. “THIS IS INCREDIBLE!” I thought, “TELSTRA ARE ACTUALLY ENGAGING WITH CUSTOMERS USING MODERN COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES!” my unnecessarily loud and excited thought continued. Since then I have exchanged a few e-mails back and for with the fellow concerning Telstra and the phone I bought, and frankly I am really impressed.

The phone I chose is the HTC Desire, but I think I’ll write another post about that later – this one is already just over 1,000 words!

Oct 31st, 2009

Media Centre Musings (Part 5: Putting it all together)

This post is part one of a five-part series. Skip to related posts:

Probably the most epic assembly of consumer electronics I’ve experienced, and still not quite finished.

After I picked up the television and the PS3 on Sunday last week, I went out and bought most of the components for my HTPC on Monday. I unfortunately couldn’t assemble it that day because every local PC store had conveniently run out of stock on the case I wanted, so I had to wait for that to be sent to me. It arrived on Wednesday, and I assembled the HTPC, which was pretty straightforward because building PCs is my thing.

The Antec Micro Fusion 350 is, as with all other Antec cases, a very solidly put together affair with all of the things you’d expect and Antec case to have. Even though its name denotes it as being the smaller in Fusion class of HTPC cases, it suffers no functionality or convenience loss, even incorporating Antec’s dual chamber design.

In the above picture you can see pretty much everything: 96×16 LCD just visible on the front, 750Gb Western Digital ‘Green Power’ SATA disk in the foreground inside its own chamber, GeForce 9400GT graphics card and 2x2Gb Corsair TwinX memory in the mid-ground, and the CPU cooler and exhaust fans of the motherboard chamber in the background.

I installed the 9.10RC of Mythbuntu onto the server and was totally lost. I have never used MythTV before, so I really had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully it comes with a lot of sane defaults and most of the functionality worked with minimal setup. I copied all of my media from an external backup disk into the appropriate directories and then started configuring the remote and the LCD.

As mentioned, I’ve no experience with any of this, so I was starting from scratch in all regards. After I spent nearly a half day mucking around with the remote and the LCD, following guides designed for Mythbuntu 9.04, I had aquired enough knowledge to realise that my setup was actually fully functional but was not working because I had selected the wrong presets.

So, now the remote works, but it is a little clumsy in my mind. What buttons from the devices’ original remote do not exist on the Logitech remote are mapped via the softmenu keys which allows you to scroll through a list of functions and then choose what you want to do. The only criticism of the remote itself that I have is that it is very long and slender and the buttons are very hard to push. This means you nearly always need two hands to operate it because you can’t quite reach end-to-end and maintain a good enough grip to support the remote while pushing down the buttons at the extreme ends of the device at the same time. I will have to let loose the newbies to see if they can navigate the system without my assistance, and also to gather from them ideas on how to improve the control scheme. As of yet I have not implemented any direct control of the television from the PC and everything relies solely on the Logitech Harmony remote.

There’s little to say about the speakers and the receiver at this stage – the setup of both was very straightforward, although I did have a problem with the subwoofer not working initially. I took it back to Harvey Norman and they tested it on their demonstation system, where it worked perfectly fine. Confused, I assumed it must have been the cable, or worse, the subwoofer output of the receiver. Thankfully, the helpful sales guy at Harvey Norman gave me the high-quality cable from their demo system and told me to take it with me. “If it works with this cable,” he said as he handed it to me, “you can keep it. Just let me know.” It worked with the new cable.

There’s only been two things so far which my plan failed to account for: the S/PDIF output of the HTPC, and where to place the rear surround speakers. The latter was swimming in the back of my mind at various stages but I never put any solid thought into it. I solved the problem yesterday by going out and buying some universal satellite speaker stands which feel like they’re made from wrought iron. Thankfully though they are just perfect for mounting my speakers; the stands themselves are hollow so the speaker wiring can pass through to the bottom and leave the base unseen. As for the audio on the HTPC problem; the motherboard doesn’t have an onboard connector, only internal jumper pins. Currently I am passing the S/PDIF audio from the internal motherboard connector to the graphics card and through the HDMI cable to the television which then outputs it via optical cable to the receiver. However, in order to listen to music through the HTPC this requires the television to be turned on. Really not a great option considering the television draws about 265 watts of power when on. So I’ve ordered an S/PDIF dongle with both co-axial and optical connectors which should hopefully arrive soon, as when the XBox 360 gets here it’ll need the optical input on the receiver currently in use by the television.

This post is huge already. I think I will write up some reviews of all the components over the next few weeks to save novellising what I already have.

Here’s my working area during setup, the final setup, and the obligatory shot of me playing Team Fortress 2 on the setup. Not seen are the rear satellites just out of shot under the foreground.

Oct 1st, 2009

What’s wrong with Australian television?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Australian television: HEY HEY IT’S SATURDAY IS NOT PERMANENTLY ON AIR!

OK, maybe that was kind of predictable, and yes, I’ll grant you that a change in the entire broadcasting system of one show probably won’t make that much difference, but you know what? Last night was the first time in probably, hmm, at least the last eight years that I have purposefully sat down to watch an entertainment programme on television.

Sometimes I will have been watching television just because I was at a friends place or to see some documentary on SBS or whatever, but I think that last night was the first time in a very long time that I purposefully sat down with the intent of watching a show on one of the commercial channels, on purpose!

Some people have been saying that last night’s show only served to highlight how Hey Hey is a very old programme and is showing its age horrendously. Well, I can only conclude that those people probably never liked Hey Hey to begin with and can’t pick anything else to criticize about it.

There are two things I really liked about the show last night. One was the overall format, and the other I will mention later.

Daryl is the host, but he isn’t always in control. Sure, he does most of the talking, and guides the flow of the programme, but that’s about it. He is a guide, not a director. All of the other characters (I can’t think of a better term for them at the moment, so this’ll do) on the show are pretty much free to cut in whenever the hell they want (an example last night; near the start of the show, Red made a joke, but the camera didn’t cut away to him from Daryl. So, he went over to where Daryl was standing, stuck his head in the shot, interrupting what Daryl was saying, and said, “What do you have to do to get a cutaway around here?!” – classic Red). Dickie, the cartoon guy, John Blackman, and even the guys in the band (Red and Wilbur) sort of just hang around and make jokes about what’s going on. None of it feels particularly scripted, and I’m typically a pretty good judge of that (but I am biased toward Hey Hey, so I could be wrong).

I could be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure that Hey Hey was one of the first shows to use breaking the fourth wall to help with the comedy. With the characters butting in whenever they feel like it, and the camera crews taking regular visits backstage, and the audience and camera crew being frequently shown and involved in the programme, the overall feeling is more … ‘welcoming’ and I personally feel a lot more involved in a show like Hey Hey than I would any other programme where there are simply talking heads jabbering on, which accounts for oh… every other live television show, ever.

Rove Live is similar in concept (IMO Rove stole most of the ideas from Hey Hey), but it’s more compartmentalised. Rove is the director, he controls the show. The guests and comedians stay on the set off to the side, but they are rarely involved after their respective segments. They do a lot of the same gags that Hey Hey did, but once again, without the regular but unpredictable input from the other characters, most of the comedy is left to Rove, who simply can’t compete with a whole cast.

The other really important aspect of last night’s show, for me at least, was that despite Daryl being wholly and soully an “old-world media” type of guy, he has apparently fully embraced Facebook and Twitter and their usefulness. Unlike on every single other show on television where the hosts refer to Facebook and Twitter etc with ridiculous parody names and give a general sense of disdain toward the services, usually alongside an overwhelmingly dramatic sense that these things are simply beyond the viewer and they shouldn’t bother with them. The Twitter tag #heyhey was for a period last night the most popular tag on the entire website, which Daryl mentioned on the show! He actually talked about Twitter like it was an interesting and useful tool, because it is! (conspiracy theory incoming) Instead of all the other talking head idiots who are either genuinely stupid, or contractually obligated, to play down the role of these websites in order to avoid threatening the old-world media conglomerates who still haven’t figured out how to make money from the internet.

That leads me to my final point regarding Hey Hey and why it’s so great: Hey Hey makes you think. With all of the conversation threads flying around between the different characters, the various wierd and wonderful acts on the show (Red Faces!, and last night the a capella performance as well), the show actually had strange things on there that required people to step outside their lovely perfect television world and say, “Hang on, that’s different.” Current television programming is all the same, and it’s all designed to do one thing: sell crap. Whether they’re just selling the station itself, or the shows have accompanying merchandise, it’s all about selling crap. Hey Hey is the same of course, but it does it in a much more obvious way (‘Here’s a cool band, they have a CD out, buy it if you like it!’ as opposed to ‘OMG, FUCKING REALITY TELEVISION!!!! HOLY SHIT! , , etc etc of all the other shows)

… that was a bit ranty, so I will summarise by saying that Hey Hey sells shit obviously by saying “here is a thing, if you like it, buy it” whereas other shows use subversive tactics like emotional manipulation to sell shit.

I hope next week’s reunion show is just as good as this weeks. I would probably watch it if they put it on again full time, but it has been around for 28 years, and I imagine after a few months or so the novelty would wear off. But then again, the average age of television viewers is around 50 – so maybe the old-style format shows, with a few modern touches, can make a comeback? I personally think it could go either way. People my age (23) grew up watching Hey Hey, and now we’re all on Facebook and Twitter. I imagine they could modernise the show in that sense and retain a whole bunch of viewers who, like me, watching Hey Hey last night was the first time they had voluntarily watched television in years.

Aug 28th, 2009

Are you impressed with how good I am at buying stuff? I am.

I am a very sceptical person when it comes to computer hardware and software. Hell, anyone who knows me would call me an outright fanboy or even evangelist. Yeah, fair enough. I have an extreme dislike for all things proprietary and all things that ride the sales wave powered solely by the hot air of marketdroids. It takes a special circumstance for me to be able to say ‘I love hardware x’ – but, today, I feel as though I am able to say that about two brands of computer hardware.

Specifically, Dell and Asus.

Why? Dell, because their computer systems are nearly always Linux compatible from top to bottom. My Dell XPS M1330 laptop is a perfect example; everything works out of the box with Ubuntu Linux (even the media keys!). The same goes for most of their other models. Dell typically uses quality hardware components which aren’t manufactured by obscure impersonators. Also, apparently they’re really interested in what their customers have to say.

Why Asus? I haven’t ever really thought much of Asus in the past. I used to think their products were overpriced and under-performing. Maybe I was right five years ago, but things change. Today, I have many Asus products which I find to be of excellent quality and well worth the associated price premium over similar products. My desktop machine is based on an Asus motherboard; it has more bells and whistles than I will probably ever use, but the knowledge I can in future is nice. Not only that, but the Asus uses superior power delivery circuitry than most other motherboards.

My sound card is an Asus sound card; this is great. For a long time, Creative were the only company making sound cards worth buying. Consequently, they got lazy and barely innovated. Their product updates brought little improvement, and their support was atrocious. Knowing they were the only vendor worth giving money, they pretty much stopped caring. If you’ve ever tried to search for drivers for a Creative sound card on the internet, you’ll know what I mean.

So, I was glad to not buy a Creative product. The Asus Xonar DX in my desktop system is arguably the best sound card for its price, and it works well with my Alessandro MS-1 headphones. Not the best solution for gaming, but I don’t care too much – I prefer the clarity, richness and size of the soundscape that this combination gives me in music.

However, recently, I decided that it was rather ridiculous for me to turn on my desktop machine just to listen to music while working on my laptop. (I am a bit of an audiophile – no, the inbuilt sound in my laptop is nice and all, but not really good enough for me.) So, I went ahead and bought myself a shiny new toy, also Asus: the Xonar U1. Essentially, a USB version of the Xonar DX. I did a little research beforehand to ensure it would work in Linux – thankfully, it does. As it uses similar hardware to the other products in the Xonar range, a driver was already available. (No thanks to Asus for this of course – they’re not that good). Currently the hardware volume control of the device doesn’t appear to work, nor does digital-out at present, but I don’t really use either, so I am not worried. I care more about the quality of the output, which is great for a $63 piece of equipment.

So, I plugged it in, configured my sound devices through the PulseAudio configurator, and now I’m happily enjoying high-quality music through my laptop just as I would my desktop! This also eliminates the need for me to remote desktop into my desktop to change the song, which is another story of horribleness courtesy of Microsoft arbitrarily defining ‘Home’ versions of Vista as being incapable of supporting remote desktop technology (I use VNC, it is a pain as it has to be started in user mode, it is blocked by the kernel due to “security reasons” if I try to run the service).

Anyway, this is pretty much a post inspired by my being chuffed at succeeding in having things the way I want them. At the end of the day, that’s what life is all about, right?

Jul 7th, 2009

Triple J’s Hottest 100 of All Time

If you didn’t vote for this year’s Hottest 100 of All Time: too late! Voting’s over. But just for shits and giggles, why don’t you post a shortlist of your top ten; the ten you would have voted for, weren’t you so lazy. If you’re really into it, you can post about why you chose your ten! Here’s mine:

Nine Inch Nails – Ruiner: I love this track because it puts into the form of lyrics many of my emotions, and puts into the form of music my will to overcome those emotions. The song is essentially accusing the Ruiner of destroying the protagonists’ life through betrayal, deceit, and hardship. The protagonist struggles to understand how the Ruiner became so powerful, and acknowledges that the Ruiner has seriously fucked things up. In the end, the protagonist resolves to continue anyway…
Karnivool – Synops: This is not my favourite Karnivool song. I actually don’t have a favourite Karnivool song, because I love them all. I picked this one however, because I believe it is a great example of how Ian Kenny’s voice has the power to inspire any emotion, with the right combination of lyrics and music. In this song, I believe the protagonist is struggling with an inner turmoil, and is having trouble understanding how it affects him.
Cog – The Spine:This song explores the haphazard lifestyle that many people lead. If you were to read the lyrics without music, it may come across as a string of terrible haikus. I love it because it questions the listener: are you really sure that what you’re doing is what you want out of life? The lyrical talent of Flynn Gower, combined with the powerful driving music carries the song through to the end at great speed, leaving the listener pondering the questions raised through the lyrics. I love the guitar solo.
Ponyloaf – Aargh’s Townhouse: This is a near perfect example of how to make awesome electronic music without ruining it by having someone attempt to sing over the top of it. This is simply a great song to dance to. It’s also very good to put on as background music while you’re thinking, or doing something else – tone down the bass, and you have an extremely logical and progressive track that makes getting things done rewarding.
Pendulum – Through The Loop: A near-perfect example of how to make awesome drum’n'bass music without ruining by having someone rap/rhyme over the top of it. The quote from the original ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ film of 1971 is perfectly tweaked to fit in with the song, and the emotion in the voice peaks right at the perfect moment: the higher pitched music slowly builds, and then, WHAM! The bass hits and you are dumped into a rollercoaster ride of epic proportions. This song is a fucking blast to dance to, and it never gets old.
System of a Down – Vicinity Of Obscenity: This one’s quite the euphemism, isn’t it? Apparently the song is about anal sex. I must admit I never really picked up on that before doing a little reading into it, but hey, it works. I love this song because it’s so crazily energetic like most SOAD tracks; you can sing it loud and proud and most people won’t know what the fuck you’re on about!
Fear Factory – Edgecrusher: I love this song because it is the epitome of anger, expression and making your fucking point heard. It’s about the Edgecrusher, a machine with a singular purpose: to destroy human life. The protagonist sings about his history and how his singular purpose is to destroy the Edgecrusher. This song is similar in theme to Ruiner by Nine Inch Nails, but while the protagonist in Ruiner expresses his emotions with quiet reserve and controlled words, the protagonist in Edgecrusher screams his purpose to the world.
Death From Above 1979 – Romantic Rights (The Phone Lovers Remix): This remix heavily samples the chorus, which brings about my own interpretation of the song: I started listening to these guys right around the time I met my beloved Carly, and the song has very special meaning for me.
Nine Inch Nails – We’re In This Together: After reading the lyrics, you can come to a pretty straightforward conclusion that this is some kind of love song. Well, I think that it is, and it isn’t. It’s a typical love song in the sense of the singer’s need to cling to someone, but I personally interpret it as a song of friendship. The ubiquitous and ambiguous L-word is never mentioned. Great to sing along to.
Nine Inch Nails – Meet Your Master: When taken literally, and in context with the Year Zero ARG, it would appear this song is a message from the resistance to the government, or perhaps vice-versa. However, I take the song less literally: I interpret it as being a general “you had your chance, now it’s my turn” or “now I will prove myself to you” type song, which encourages me to do my best and really put effort into what I’m trying to achieve. It’s also pretty damn awesome to dance to, and the lyrics melt together in a way that makes singing along with the song very easy.

So, that’s my list: what’s yours?

Jul 4th, 2009

Tattoo

So, I think I’m going to get a tattoo. I’m not entirely certain what it’s going to be, but I certainly know that I’m going to get one. I am definitely going to have to invest some serious thinking time into it before I get it… whatever it will end up being. I am not a fan of pointless tattoos; I think if you’re going to permanently mark yourself it should be with something core to your being, something you firmly believe in.

I am pretty sure it’s going to be NIN-related. I am not going to get a standard NIN logo tattoo; but I will probably get something abstract that is related to NIN or influenced by NIN. Why? Well, I’m not sure yet. Figuring out why is part of the process. I do know that I really, really love NIN, and all NIN music, and everything related to the whole uNINverse … (haha, see what I did there?) …

Anyway, it’s definitely something NIN-related. The era, I’m not sure. Perhaps a synergy of themes from multiple eras. Perhaps just two eras, or even one. That’d be too hard to decide, though. Do I really identify with the self-deconstructive anthems of The Downward Spiral, the continuation of which occurs through The Fragile, or am I more inclined to think of myself through the eyes of society and how I fit into our bleak future, ala Year Zero?

These are my three favourite NIN albums, and I will be considering themes, artwork, lyrics and music from each seperately, and together, before making any decisions. This means a lot to me.

There are plenty of ideas around – check out the many online examples … I don’t want to copy anyone else, but I will be using those as an example of how to expect mine to turn out, and about what other people may think of it … not that the latter is really important to me at all, because this is a personal journey I will be undertaking.

Some of you may think I’m putting way too much thought into this and I should simply get whatever I love most about NIN tattoo’d onto me, and maybe I will… that isn’t to say I won’t think about alternatives, compositions, and new ideas first.

NIN is… it’s something I really appreciate. It’s some of the only music I can listen to which I feel a real, wholesome, emotional attachment to. It’s something I can enjoy almost any time, any day, anywhere. It’s beautiful, ugly, wonderous, destructive, awesome and cataclysmic… it’s everything.

Jun 25th, 2009

Epic weekend

What a weekend! I’ll start off with a skeleton, and flesh out from there:

Friday: worked from home. Went out with Carly for dinner, late at night, because it was our two-year anniversary.
Saturday: went over to Tate’s place to learn about Ruby, and Ashley came too. In fact, he gave me a lift there and back. Saturday night, went to my mate Dave’s 21st. It was pretty fun!
Sunday: didn’t do much during the day, just relaxed. Sunday night, went to see Karnivool who were fucking epic!

That’s the summary. I might write the rest when I could be bothered. Or not.

Feb 23rd, 2009

Soundwave 2009

I went to Soundwave on the weekend. I saw Nine Inch Nails. It was fucking epic.

The end.

Jan 24th, 2009

My first week at work

… has been largely uneventful. I was handed a laptop on Monday, my manager said I should probably review some of the CCNA material … and that’s about it. I’ve had a few 20 minute meetings with various heads of departments, along with my fellow new starters, which were informal, informative, and necessary.

Aside from the above, though, so far this week I’ve not really done a lot. I have read through the CCNA material, but I already knew most of it. I was essentially just attempting to mentally plug holes in my knowledge. It was a straight-forward exercise. Until I have access to DDLS I’m kind of stuck for further learning options.

Next week though, I’m having a meeting where I will discuss with my manager what my performance targets will be. Essentially we’ll be setting KPI for my progress to be judged upon. This is essential for furthering my career: in a general sense, but especially in terms of my own knowledge, which in turn increases my worth to Dimension Data.

I’m getting my work mobile phone next week also, which will be nice. Not that anybody, as yet, has reason to call me. Nor I to call anyone else. That will come in time.

In closing, I am very much looking forward to setting my KPIs as I am eager to get moving forward.

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