lederhosen

What with still being unemployed, and Rey working graveyard shift, my own sleep cycle is all over the place. Last night I was working on a modelling project when I noticed Dog-Or standing there staring at me: It's two-thirty in the morning. Shouldn't you be in bed?

I mentally acknowledged that yes, I probably should, but I just had one little bit more to go. So he came over and flopped on the beanbag, watching me and waiting for me to finish. So around 3 am I finished up and went to bed. Dog-Or is used to cuddling up to either Rey or myself, and since she wasn't there and I was up later than usual, this was obviously messing up his plans. I thought about what a loyal little doggie he is, and went to bed with a spaniel cuddled up against my feet.

And then while I was fast asleep he snuck out to the kitchen again, stood up on his hind feet, and nibbled a great big wodge off the cake that Rey had left a little too close to the edge of the table because I was no longer there to stop him.

*sigh*

Of all the things I'd never thought to do with my life, I spent Saturday morning watching a rugby game. Because da_norvegicus had to choose between that and cross-country for his winter sport. There were a lot of tries scored at both ends, but unfortunately not in the same half; I've forgotten what little I ever knew about rugby scoring, but the other team scored somewhere in the low triple figures. Still, it was a nice day and the dog got to explore a new place with new and exciting smells.

Sunday, da_norvegicus elected to earn money by scrubbing floors while Rey and I went into town, leading to the following exchange:

Me: "It'll take a while, so I suggest you find some music you like and put it on."
Ratboy: "Or I could pick something I don't like, so I've got motivation to do the job quickly."

This degenerated to "the first track from the Hampsterdance CD, on repeat."

(Sadly we ended up leaving in a rush, to get to the shops before they closed, and forgot to set this in motion before we left the house. Still, he did the kitchen and dining room, and they look much less grimy now.)

We stopped off at Tin Soldier and bought gaming supplies. Then we stopped by the craft shop next door, and I managed to delay us longer there (and cost us more, too) than I had in the gaming shop, when Rey asked me to pick wool & pattern for a new jumper*. I'm not sure what this says about me.

And then we made a month's supply of sandwiches to go in our new chest freezer, because we are Organised (TM). Wasn't that exciting?

*Which means here what 'sweater' does in other parts of the world.

Gave Dog-Or the last of his antibiotics yesterday, so no more "catch the dog and force horrible tablets down his throat". I'm happy about this, and presumably he is too. The wound is healing, slowly but surely, and he gets his stitches out on Wednesday. Will probably leave the cone on a while longer, though, because we *know* he'll want to scritch the hell out of it as soon as possible.

It's my father's 60th next month. Not sure what to get him. Not that he demands a big fuss over presents - he's pretty easy-going that way - but I'm fond of my father and I'd like to get him something nice. Half of me is saying "maybe a cookbook for bachelors" and the other half is saying "let him enjoy his birthday without reminding him about that bit". Talked to my brother - he's well and cheerful, so that's all good.

Still feeling tired and sore of late. Partly not getting to bed at sensible hours, partly a stiff spot right at the base of my skull causing headaches (chiropractor has tried twice so far to dislodge that, no luck as yet). Managed to get in a short stint on the exercise bike last night; total exercise since last update 20 km, which would be more impressive if it wasn't spread over 3 weeks, which is exactly the same thing I said 3 weeks ago. Total 158km/95mi leaves me neatly at Old Man Willow, day 4. No wonder I feel sleepy. Did at least get a reasonable amount done around the house this weekend, smote the front garden with the whipper-snipper and drove legions of tiny skinks before me. (This is a good thing; I'm v. fond of skinks and am glad they have the sense to run.)

Odd dreams last night - I'd recently sent a fairly important letter to an old old friend, and in the dream somebody was telling me she'd died. Fortunately, I'm usually at least a semi-lucid dreamer; I don't get to shape my dreams exactly as I want them, but I was able to wrench it away from "she died" to "somebody claims she's died, but they might be wrong, and besides this is a dream so it's not reliable anyway". Rey says I was talking in my sleep, but it doesn't sound like it was the same dream; apparently I was pestering her for tech support.

Oh, and the latest spam: "We cure any desease!" The contents offer me a choice between 'Viagra generic soft' (sic!), 'Cialis generic soft', 'Levitra', and 'Viagra and Cialis'. Forget hydrogen peroxide, we have a new cure for HIV and cancer!

Oh, and Dennis Mize, who sculpted minis for Ral Partha, Reaper, and various others, died aged 49. I don't think I had any of his human figures (mostly too cheesecakey for my tastes), but I'm pretty sure I've painted a couple of his monsters, and I rather like these fellows.

Four-day weekend v. good idea, must do this more often. Tidied and dusted the craft table (long overdue), and bought some drawers to sort my modelling bits and pieces, with the usual "must do something with those!" moments that that entails. Got lots of puttying and pinning done, plus some glueing; my mumakil from last year, which originally came in 41 pieces, is now in just 11. Lots more putty to go, but it's getting there.

sarin_girl came over to feed us on Thursday, and waitingman had dinner with us on Friday and was introduced to 'Robin Hood: Men in Tights'.

Discovered that pate has onion in it. *grumble grumble*

Watched some of the making-of stuff from Heat, which went a long way to explain why the firefight scene is so effective. Something I noticed after a comment by Michael Manne: it's a movie where the notion of 'luck' is almost entirely absent. There are no coincidences, no flukes of fate; everything of significance that happens, happens as a foreseeable consequence of somebody's decisions. Got in 18km/11mi pedalling: total 93 km/57 mi, putting me 4 miles short of Farmer Maggot's fields - Heat is an excellent exercise movie.

Edit: Via Pharyngula et al., angels vs T-rex! More here.

Another year, another Windows vulnerability, and quite a nasty one by the look of it; might want to check your security settings, if you haven't already.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on November 30, but Tropical Storm Zeta is still hanging in there. The NOAA has a list of the many records broken by this year's hurricane season.

velvetink has some photos of the smoke from the recent bushfires to the north. It was Sydney's hottest New Year's Day on record (45C/113F, and 47C elsewhere in NSW; hotter for the firefighters, of course).

Dog-Or got me a DVD of Peter Gabriel's music videos for Christmas. Such a thoughtful doggie! Still waiting on a present I ordered for somebody else on October 31; if it doesn't arrive this week, time to chase the company again.

Bought myself a little electric drill, which has made the whole pinning-models process much easier - a lot faster than using a pin vise, and more importantly more control. What am I saying? I'm an instant-gratification child and the speed's what really makes me happy, but the control is also good. I'm still working on my giant eagle, which broke off its base under its own weight (lovely pose, shoddy engineering). My Cunning Plan is that if I angle it into a turn, I can have half of its tail scraping the ground (rather than just the very tip) and get three pins into it between the tailfeathers rather than just one, but I'm still not sure that'll be enough to hold it. Any modellers got suggestions here?

Happy news! A good friend of mine had his wedding reception at Mt. Stromlo Observatory some years back, and I was saddened when the place was gutted by bushfires - and I do mean gutted - back in 2003 [not 2000, the article is wrong]. So it's good to see the Mt. Stromlo team with something to celebrate at last.

We went down to Canberra for the weekend and saw my family & our neighbours. Alexander, my childhood best friend, is doing very well for himself and looking forwards to his first child next year, so hooray for him :-) We visited the National Portrait Gallery for their Cecil Beaton exhibition and looked at some of the others as well. I was entertained by the portrait of Joh Bjelke-Petersen; the card next to it explained that it was painted for the 'Joh for Canberra' campaign as a fund-raiser, but the artist refused to go on TV to promote it - in his words, "As a Queenslander I'm happy to take Joh's money, but I wanted nothing to do with the campaign".

Then we saw the new Pride and Prejudice. Enh. ( No, you do not get sodding spoiler warnings for Jane Austen. )

Overall, weekend was rather stressful but could have been worse. Oh, and on the way there I saw the most shamelessly weasellish front-cover-review-quoting on a budget DVD for sale at the Goulburn rest stop:

"PERFECT... 10/10!" -IMDB

And you probably *can* find such a review somewhere among these, but when the best recommendation you can find for your movie is that "some anonymous dude on IMDB liked it", you know you're in trouble.

In the noble low-budget tradition of Dungeon Majesty: Fantasy Bedtime Hour. Two women in bed read and discuss Lord Foul's Bane. (Visually work-safe thanks to strategically placed sheets, AFAICT from brief examination; audio probably not work-safe.)

"My son becomes a man, gets +2 STR, +1 DEX." A geek's pride as his 13-year-old son gets his first set of roleplaying dice.

Tuesday, the RAAF will be holding a funeral service in Hanover for the crew of a Lancaster PB290 bomber shot down in 1944. One of them, Richard Hawthorn, was a cousin of my late grandmother; beyond that, all I know about it is what's in the article.

Reasons not to see 'Wedding Crashers'. I don't think there's any topic that should be completely off-bounds for humour - one of the ways we cope with wrongness in our world is to joke about it - but *trivialising* rape is remarkably uncool.

OTOH, 'Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit' was very good. IMHO, best Aardman so far :-) And several gags in there that the little ones *won't* get...

Via sclerotic_rings, a rather amusing poem by one of Australia's best-known expats: The Book Of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Imagine if William Shatner was your enemy!

Rey and I went to see NIN last night, along with sarin_girl and Tim-whose-LJ-I-don't-know. But I'm assuming he has one, because, hello, NIN concert-goer?

And it was pretty good. I've seen complaints that at other gigs, NIN played for forty-five minutes and then left without so much as a 'goodnight', but that didn't happen here. We got almost two hours of Trenty goodness, including all the crowd-pleasers*, ending on 'Head Like A Hole'. Trent himself was a little jarring, no longer the pale gothboy he used to be; he's bulked out a lot (looks like muscle rather than fat) and got a short haircut. (Also, I notice, an ascending forehead.)

Second-stupidest moment of the night: In the quiet bit in the middle of SF Inc, the audience started clapping. It wasn't really a bit that *needed* clapping, and they screwed up the rhythm so badly that Trent lost his place, gnarred at the clappers, and ended up skipping ahead to the next part of the song.

Stupidest moment of the night: The support act, 'Bird Blob'. I'm sorry, Melbourne-Band-Whose-Name-I've-Forgotten who supported Nick Cave some years back, but you have been toppled from your perch as Suckiest Support Act Ever. They had the volume cranked up to 13 (seriously, they were several notches louder than NIN) and I walked out about a minute into the first song because it was outright painful even without the spot strobing directly at my face. Poor Rey decided to stay and mind our seats; I hope it hasn't damaged her hearing. From the foyer the volume was low enough that I could make out the actual music, and... well, I'm sure it held something for somebody, but that somebody wasn't me. Ended up spending most of that time milling around outside with the smokers, icky but not *as* icky.


*He didn't do 'True Love Waits', though.

I was too young to follow his political career at the time, but David Lange seemed like a good sort of fellow. An incident about a week ago endeared him to me: in failing health, Lange was in hospital, due to have his leg amputated because of complications from diabetes. He was frail enough that the medical team were unwilling to put him under; instead, they gave him a local anaesthetic and went to work. About forty minutes into the procedure, he looked up at the surgeon and asked "Doctor, are you sure you've got the right leg?"

Unrelated: Have been watching the BBC Day of the Triffids, which is v. good (and reminded me just how much of 28 Days Later it inspired). As always, I'm impressed by how little John Wyndham's novels have dated; it's hard to believe DotT was written more than fifty years ago. I think the key to this is that Wyndham's novels are driven by people, rather than technology, and people haven't changed nearly as much. I'd *love* to see a movie of The Kraken Wakes, but I doubt anybody would do it; it lacks the climactic battle at the end that Hollywood seems to need.

Anyway, I digress; what I want to know is, is that Sinead O'Connor singing partway through the second episode? It sounds awfully like her, but I can't find any information either way.

Arthur asked me to give him a hand with a mathematical problem the other day. Good news: on investigation, there's a single-line Matlab command that will do what he wants. Bad news: he needs to do it in Excel. (Eventually solved, but rather more work that way.)

Via usekh, this hurts my brain. Still trying to figure out whether it's intended tongue-in-cheek; I suspect so, but it looks as if some of the subjects are taking it at face value. Reminds me of Kim Newman's Pitbull Brittan, a stirring tale of a Thatcherite superhero who goes around walloping striking miners and combating evil unionists.

CBC story, by way of james_nicoll: "...a spokesperson with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority said lightning was causing technical problems with the airport's lightning-detection system".

Also, lovely octopus icons! And I have yet another Girl Genius icon, too.

Also, goddamn earworms! (See current music, below.) At least there's this site to 'help'.

Also also, I am disturbed to read this passage on Wikipedia: Badger Badger Badger, not for its content but for its implications: "The audio doesn't match up exactly with the visuals. This becomes plainly discernible after 30 minutes of continuous playing. At this point, the audio is at the twelfth "badger" in the first line while the visuals show the mushroom. Over the next few hours, the visuals continue to play faster than the audio, achieving maximum separation at 4 hours 12 minutes. Thereafter the gap begins to close, and becomes synchronized again at about 8 hours 30 minutes. This process continues cyclically."

Also also also, somebody at the Onion feels the same way I do about the age-old "how do I write female characters?" issue.