a familiar stranger in Oz.

Follow the yellow brick road down the Hay St. Mall, Murray St. etc and marvel at how almost nothing has changed in 3 and a half years. Little hole-in-the-wall restaurants are still in the same holes in the same walls, goth/darkwave/rivet-head affictionados are still leaning up against the Perth Post Office, and all that. People seem really damn tall, though.

Yep, i arrived in Oz safely, abeit being delayed in Hong Kong. Got a free voucher at the Hong Kong airport for HK$90 because of the delay. Pity it only bought me two Carlsberg draft beers. I've caught up with most of my immediate family except one brother and his wife, but i'm sure that'll be rectified in the next few days. I'm sitting in an internet cafe (if you can call it that, compared to the hardcore affairs they have in Korea) in the centre of the city, typing this out after wandering about the place and buying a few things. First purchase was an AC adapter for my camera as i'd left my original in Chungju. Brilliant move, as it cost me AU$169 for a new one... Next move was to Dymocks bookstore where i picked up 'Dead Air', by Iain Banks. Seems like a really good read.

Anyway, i'm about to wander off to the river and see if I can get some interesting photos to post later on. Hopefully everyone is doing well wherever they are, and see all you good peeps back in S. Korea in February '05. :)

'Malazan Book Of The Fallen' review (finally)

deluge, douse, drench, engulf, flood, immerse, inundate, knock over, obliterate, overcome, overflow, overpower, overwhelm, plunge, prostrate, sink, soak, sop, souse, submerge, suffocate, swamp, wipe out.

Basically, you can drown in these books. In the world, the characters, the writing. Most heartily recommended for fantasy lovers. And that wraps up my thesaurus-ish review for today.

Margin changes to template

As you might have noticed, i changed the margins a little to use up some of that empty space. This means epic posts like Reuben's last one should be more readable now. :) I haven't checked to see if it looks ok on lower resolutions (i'm running my monitor at 1280x1024), so comment here if the site looks messed up to you. Cheers!

U.S. military to reduce 'gorfing'?

Interesting snippet. I'll just post a quote and you can check it out...


If it's good enough for ravers, it's good enough for U.S. troops. That's the thinking, apparently, behind the Army's decision to test the animal tranquilizer ketamine as a way to soothe injured soldiers. The drug -- known in clubs as Special K -- has been reducing partygoers to gurgling blobs for more than a decade. This year, the Army has been running final, phase III Food and Drug Administration trials on a quarter-dose nasal inhaler of ketamine to see if it can substitute for morphine. "With morphine, the soldier's just gorfed, he can't do anything," said Col. Bob Vandre, of the Army's Medical Research and Materiel Command. "With this, he can drive his truck, or shoot his gun." Vandre said he knew full well that ketamine "had been snorted by people at rave parties" and that "it makes you kind of weird, sort of like acid." However, he promised, the military's dose of ketamine would not have the same effects.

What if the soldier snorts too much, as in multiple doses? Might be fail-safes involved, but it makes for an amusing picture in my head. Guys with guns and humvees on acid... Full story here.

ah, more posting...

Hey, back again.

The 26th of November was my last day of work, as my academy closed down for financial reasons. Kinda sucks as I liked the place (had been there since I arrived in S. Korea back in 2001), but it's allowing me to move onward and upward. Been busy with applications, and so far two job interviews in Daegu and Kangneung. Anyway, I'll be trying to get back into regular posting here from now on.

Erikson thoughts to follow shortly, after an interesting military story.

Telstra screws up Australian Idol advert...

Okay, i was going to do a literary post about the Steven Erikson series but i still haven't quite got my head around the epic ending of the third book yet... So, a quick fun fact for the day, care of Fitharn, an internet friend back in Sydney, Australia.

You all know the <insert country here> Idol tv show, right? Bunch of teeny popstar wannabe's all competing each week and slowly getting voted off until someone becomes the new 'idol'. Australian Idol is exactly the same i gather, although to be honest i've never sat down and watched it. Anyhow, Teltra (Australia's main telecommunications service, currently owned 51% by the government) is a big sponser of Australian Idol, and after the current series ended they took out big color ads advertising Casey Donovan's brand new website. (Casey is the girl who won this series, apparently). Only problem is, they left out the .au, and all their adverts pointed to the website of a gay porn star...!

Check it out:
http://www.caseydonovan.com
http://www.caseydonovan.com.au

They've offered copious apologies etc etc, but it's damn funny, hey... :) However, one slightly dodgy part to this story is a quick 'fix' Telstra has implimented as a way of damage control. I'll quote Fittie here as he typed it to me via instant messaging:

"... I think Telstra's being evil about it though. They're apologising profusely and all that but what they've also done is change the DNS record for www.caseydonovan.com on their name servers to point to a page that redirects you to www.caseydonovan.com.au ... This means all Telstra BigPond users end up where they want them too. It's a pretty big abuse of the DNS system to save face though... I don't know if it's going to be a tempory thing or if they're going to keep it there on a more long time basis. My guess is it's going to be there for a long time..."

Kinda dodgy end to a funny story, eh? I reckon someone should inform the gay Casey Donovan about it, as he might be losing sales on his porn tapes...

Anyway, next story is the Erikson thing, i promise... :)

moving homes

Actually, not moving physically yet, but that'll be soon. I've just changed homes for my blog - previously it could be seen only at bloglines, however i decided i wanted people to be able to comment on items. So, another mass of emails out to everyone, and i hope this'll be the place to stay. If you link this site up at bloglines, you'll still be able to be notified when new posts happen, but you can't actually comment from that site. You have to actually come to blogger to be able to comment on a post.

Make sense? :)

Next post - some literary thoughts on the Steven Erikson series of books, "A Tale Of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen". I'm hoping Matt and I can really disect some of the stuff that is going on in the series (at least up until book 3 - coz that's all i've read so far...!)

Halo 2 frustrates modchip owners

It seems Halo 2 has some sneaky extra-curricula duties, aside from being a pretty good xbox fps. Apparently if you try to play a legal, bought copy of Halo 2 on an xbox with a modchip installed, you get banned from Microsoft's 'Xbox Live' service - their online gaming system. Even if your modchip has been turned off/disabled, people have been finding themselves banned from the service. Nasty stuff, eh? Full story here.

fait accompli

I woke up yesterday to find that HalfLife 2 had finally been unlocked on my computer. I resisted the urge to load it up until quite late last night. Played it for an hour or so (ok, i lie - quite a long time), and now i am all scratchy-eyed this morning.

The atmosphere and graphical style of the game work hand in hand, creating quite the unique experience. I own Far Cry and it's damn fun, but the feel and viceral effect of getting drawn into the Freeman character and the HalfLife world is second to none. Amazing job, guys.
Here are some quick screenshots I captured for those that want to check out how it's looking played on my current sysconfig:

intro

Hi and welcome to my new attempt at blogging - i have an account at livejournal, but it hasn't been updated in weeks months. I like the idea that this place seems to breed: a collection of thoughts or interesting snippets available in 'rss feed', instead of a personal diary type thing. I know, livejournal is rss capable and it's up to you what you use it for, but i want a change and i just like the feel of this place. So, without further ado, salutations and i hope you find it interesting.