Public Class GeoffAppleby

How Excitement

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:24:00 GMT

RIP Don

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:45:00 GMT

Well turds. First George Carlin, now Don S Davis.

*sigh*

Be well, General Hammond :(

My New Children

Geoff Appleby — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:08:00 GMT

As anyone who knows me knows, I've got two gorgeous children.

It's time now to show you the new additions to my family. They're nowhere near as cute, but they're family, so you have to love them.

Last night I was at the doctors checking up on a problem with my wrist, and I mentioned that I'll be going overseas soon. Not long after that, I got jabbed in each arm getting boosters for both tetanus and polio. The doc was fine, but he certainly wasn't thinking when he put bandaids on my arms though.

I decided not to try to pull the bandaids off. Instead I cut them off. It was way less painful. So now I have bald spots on my arms to go with my head.

For some reason, my mother and sister had an idea.

So here they are, my two new babies. :)

RIP George

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:53:00 GMT

Sad now :( I'll miss you.

Cross Culture Experiences

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:48:00 GMT

A friend of mine in Phoenix, Arizona asked me to send her some vegemite. I won't name her, for anonymity is important. Let's just call her 'Teh Mandeh'.

So I did.

When Teh Mandeh received it, she tasted it for the first time on webcam, so I could watch.

All I can say is...oops, did I forget to tell you that you should have it in small doses? *evil grin*

I Gots Me A New Phone

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:57:00 GMT

For a while now i've been using an iMate JAMin as my phone/pda. It was pretty good, cept for the lack of buttons. It was all touchscreen.

I upgraded a few weeks ago. I wanted something that was pretty much the same, but i wanted to be able to type, not just tap.

Enter the iMate Ultimate 9502.

So far it's going pretty well. There's issues, but it's a bleeding edge phone with no ROM updates or patches available yet, so I've had to learn to baby it along.

Issues I've had so far:

It takes SD cards, but not SDHC yet. Apparently there's an update coming out that will make it work. There's an unofficial patch floating around that will make SDHC work, but it's no good for me. A common side effect of this patch is failure to read the card from Media Player. Since the thing i do most with this phone besides send texts is to use it as my mp3 player, it makes it difficult :)
It's got internal GPS, but it doesn't come with GPS software. I haven't got around to (read: I'm too tight) buying an app that works well.
Most of the time, the keyboard runs a little slow. Those of you who know the size of my hands will realise that being able to use my thumbs on the qwerty keyboard is a feat in itself, but I can actually type really well on it - my thumbs are just pointy enough. So i type away as fast i can and...the keyboard can't keep up. It drops letters all over the place unless i slow myself down. This only seems to happen when texting - if i'm in word it keeps up ok.
Random hardware messups. I have to reboot it once in a while because the vibrate function stops working. A reboot fixes it, but it's a strange little bug.
I use the pre-installed windows live messenger a fair bit when i'm at home (since it's got wireless, so i'm not paying for data access). But I also use Yahoo (ugh) messenger a lot, and a decent windows mobile client is really hard to find (that's free). anyone got any suggestions?

What else have I learned? It's amazing how much value you can get out of quite a small cap. I'm only on the $49 cap with vodafone, and I do a LOT of texting and a bit of going online to check emails or random webpages when i'm out and about away from home. I've come close to going over the limit for the month, but not quite. That's pretty cool.

I do need to work out how to create my own themes for winmobile though. I really like the green theme that comes built in (coz i lurv green), but I need the text on the today screen to be green, not white. My preferred wallpaper is quite pale, so reading the white text on it is a little difficult.

But yeah. It's been geek heaven.

Technology is wonderful...and lazy.

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:02:00 GMT

I find it fascinating just how much is available for keeping in touch with people. But what really made me laugh was how I talk to a friend of mine in the states. We talk a lot, and finding the easiest way to communicate quickly has been a slowly evolving process.

So the setup is like this. Two webcams, one here and one there. Visibility is achieved. This is all good, but what if one person isn't actually at the computer at the time of connecting the cams? Messenger Plus! comes in handy there - it has an auto accept feature, so now whenever either of us open the the others cam (and limited to only that other person, thankyou very much!) it will automatically open, be the other person in bed sleeping, or sitting on the couch watching a movie, or whatever. I've noticed that i pick my nose when in front of my computer a lot less now. Just. In. Case.

If we're both sitting at the computer, then there's nothing else to do. Type away in messenger, or talk on the mic, depending if it's turned on. I only remember to plug it in half the time, so i forget a lot and just type without thinking about it.

But when she's sitting on the couch, what i type can't be read from there...but that's easily sorted. She's got a blackberry, and every email i send gets delivered (eventually) to her phone. And she can reply on her phone. Sorted.

But that can have some delays. Now we've moved on to the next option. Yahoo messenger *shudder*. I really don't' like the yahoo brand, but every im sent to her on that gets delivered to her phone as an SMS instantly. And when replied to, it's delivered back to my IM window jsut as quickly. Nice.

Damn americans have it good. Unlimited SMS for a flat fee. We don't get that here.

If i want to be lazy and sit on the couch or lie in bed too, then i'm stuck with paying $1 for every 5 minutes i spend online on my phone checking my email. And on my phone, which has no actual buttons, typing stuff takes ages - the stylus and screen area is small, and my hands are very big. Pretty crappy, but workable. And expensive.

But still, technology is cool. Enabling people sit on the couch and do things with very little effort everywhere. This is where we've ended up as a society. All things are pretty much possible now without getting up off the couch. No wonder i'm so overweight :)

Side note: I've been looking into austrlaian prices of diffferent deals you can get. I can't find an unlimited international SMS deal, but i have discovered that vodafone (my mobile carrier) does has a $5 a month unlimited data deal (the Email & Messenger pack, which is part of vodafone live) provided you only connect to windows live (mail and messenger only) or yahoo (mail and messenger only). There's very little on the web site about it, so i guess i have to make a phone call, dammit. Anyone know any more about it?

And that sounds like too much effort :)

Hmm...look at that. Time passes.

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:39:00 GMT

You know, it's been a while since i posted anything. Had you noticed? :P

I've actually been constantly (ish) thinking about writing posts. But the thing is, i've been working on a big article to put up here. It's really long, it needs a lot of polish - it was one of those ones that just wouldn't come out right with a lot of effort.

And i've been working on it for a while now. So long that i've forgotten what it was I was trying to say. So that article is going to the great electron recycling bin in the sky.

Normal transmission shall resume shortly.

I found another 2 headed thingo

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:46:00 GMT

You may recall a post of mine recently about a peice of graffiti where one of the people had two heads.

Late last week I was wondering back from a lunch date (not that sort of date) and found (quite by accident) another one of them.

That's two. The second is about 200 metres away from the first as the crow flies, but there's a road and a car park in between. It's painted on the side of a little tin shed that serves as a small office with a parking attendant in it.

I have to wonder now - if I wander around this area, will I find a trail of 2 headed mutant things? And if there really is a trail, what will it lead to? Riches? Treasure (of the non-riches variety)? A boobie trap?

I can't help but wonder...

Rule 34 of the Internet

Geoff Appleby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:39:00 GMT

XKCD is a comic that I really like. Just read it, it's great. Anyway, this one in particular stands out to me as oh so true.

(Note: yes, wetriffs.com does exist now :)

In the last 12 hours, it's been proved to me twice.

I found this about 10 minutes ago (actual url hidden to protect the guilty - and I know this guilty person personally):

No, it's not porn. But I can't help but fit it into a superset of rule 34, which is simply that if you can imagineit, it can be found on the internet.

And then there's this next link. Please, don't follow it if you're easily offended. Or at work. Or if your speakers are turned up too loud. Or if there's kids nearby. Or if there's anyone around at all. Hell, just don't look. Don't look here. omg.

Escape From Fnordish - Chapter 2

Geoff Appleby — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:42:00 GMT

Escape From Fnordish

Tales on the Path to Squishpoo

Chapter 2 - Portentuous Portents

Having escaped their prison, Prince Edgarb and Phil the Fish set out across the meadow that was just outside the gates of Castle Fnordish.

How’d they escape? Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let’s just accept the fact that they did. Somehow. So let’s move on. ^##

"Well bugger me," said Prince Edgarb. "That was a close one!"

"Yeah, I know," said Phil. "Can you believe how-"

I said never mind!

So they started across the meadow. But little did they know that the other side of the meadow, hidden away at the back, was an item of portent. Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it? Portent. P. O. R. T. E. N. T. I’m not really sure what it is yet, but it I like it.

Where was I? Oh yes.

They crossed the meadow. It took them three days. It wasn’t actually that big a meadow, but it was a heavy fishbowl, and Edgarb wasn’t used to physical exertion. Besides, he forgot to bring his walking shoes, and he didn’t want to hurt his footsies. They made it finally, however.

Stumbling, gasping for breath – yes, both of them were gasping; Edgarb has been using the fishbowl for drinking water, the little ***, and it was running low – they approached the edge of the meadow.

And there, in the shadows, just sticking out a wee little bit was something reddish. Or was it bluish? It was definitely sort of...green. Yes, dear reader, in case you haven’t worked it out yet, I still have no idea what it is, ok?

"What’s that?" asked Edgarb, pointing at it while stalling for time.

"Umm..." said Phil. "I’m not really sure. I think it’s something portentous though. We should probably have a look."

They crept closer, peeking carefully to make sure there were no doodie traps. Unlike booby traps, which can be harmful, doodie traps are only annoying; they’re all squishy between the toes – Edgarb had no shoes, remember?

They approached the red-blue-greeny large (but small!) item of portent. "***!" Edgarb whispered, "Is that what I think it is?"

"You know, I really do think it is," said Phil.

"It’s an item of portent!" they both whispered simultaneously together at once to each other.

Phil looked carefully up and down and to both sides. "You know Edgarb, I think I know what it is," he muttered.

"What is it?" asked Edgarb. "To me it looks like a giant tiny can of hairspray."

"That’s exactly what it is!" said Phil. "It’s a giant can of hairspray. If we spray it at our enemies, something portentous will happen."

"Sah-weet!" said Edgarb, who incidentally also hung out in chat rooms and other things of that nature, and he’d really picked up on the l33t lingo.

"Grab it and we’ll take it with us Phil", said Edgarb, who incidentally also hung out in chat rooms and other things of that nature, and was also a lazy bastard who never did anything he didn’t have to.

"No Edgarb," said Phil defiantly.

"What? Why not Phil?" asked Edgarb, confused. Surely Phil wanted the hairspray of portent as much he did.

"I’m a fish, Edgarb." said Phil. "Got no hands."

"Oh yeah," said the lazy little prince. He grabbed the portentous hairspray, put it in his bag, and they set off on the trail out of the meadow.

"You know Edgarb," Phil said as they walked, "I think this is a sign. Items of portent are just so, you know, important. Something portentous is going to happen with it soon, I’d stake my reputation on it."

"What reputation?" Edgarb asked.

"Oh hush."

The trail led into some woods. No matter where you are in the whole mega-multi-uni-thingy-verse, there are really only two types of woods. The first type is like in the Return of the Jedi, with the speeder bikes and the massive trees. It big, it’s open, there’s plenty of light, and there’s cute fuzzy teddy bear things running around eating your food and worshipping your servant droids.

The second type is like the one that Little Red Riding hood travelled through to get to Grandma’s house. Those woods are dark, closed in, and nasty things like cross-dressing wolves with big sharp teeth lurk around every corner.

You know which type this one was, right? Of course you do. I might have had storm troopers at the castle earlier, but there’s no way I’m writing in cute fuzzy Ewoks.

Edgarb, with Phil in his bowl clutched in his arms, crept quietly down the dark twisting trail. He had to duck under low hanging tree branches, push his way through spider webs, and climb over tree roots, all that annoying travelling through the woods stuff.

They weren’t really that far into the woods when Edgarb thought he saw something moving off to one side. He looked carefully, but couldn’t see anything. He shook his head, and kept on going.

A little later, the same thing happened again, just a flash of something white in the corner of his eye. Again, he couldn’t see anything there when he looked properly.

The third time it happened they were deep into the woods. By this stage they were starting to look for somewhere to bed down for the night. The flash of white came again, but this time Edgarb, who had been looking out for it, was ready. He immediately dashed off the path; heading straight for whatever it was that was there.

"Who’s there?" he called. "I know there’s someone there!"

"Edgarb, what are you on about cobber? Are you seeing things mate?" Phil, it seemed, had not only completely missed the flashes of white that Edgarb had seen, had also picked up a bit of an Australian accent.

"I’m not seeing things," Edgarb called back as he ran into the forest. "There’s something there!"

Edgarb ducked behind a tree, and came out carrying a gorgeous little fluffy white bunny rabbit. "You see Phil? I told you there was something."

Ok, ok, I know – but it has no resemblance to a cute fuzzy teddy bear.

Edgarb stumbled back to the path and sat down, putting Phil’s fishbowl down on a flat stone beside him. He held the rabbit up and looked at it.

"This thing looks pretty healthy to me Phil," Edgarb said. "Looks like I’ve found myself some dinner. It’s about time I had a properly cooked meal – I’ll get a fire going"

Phil was about to answer (he had his own opinions on what made a good dinner, and roast rabbit meat – any meat – didn’t sound that tasty to him. Worms, flies, and other little bugs – now there was a dinner fit for a fish!) when the rabbit’s eyes went very large and it started squirming and wriggling (much like a worm in fact, Phil thought – he was getting quite hungry) and trying to break free.

Edgarb kept a firm hold while the rabbit struggled. It twisted, it turned, it did it’s best to get free, but Edgarb was too strong. Eventually the rabbit stopped struggling – but its eyes grew big, and it just stared. It stared right at Edgarb, as if its eyes were boring right into the back of Edgarb’s brain. When that seemed to have no effect, it stared at Phil too. Back and forth it stared.

"You know Edgarb," Phil said. "I think this rabbit is more than just a rabbit. I’m pretty sure that it heard you say you were going to cook it."

At this, the rabbit stared back at Phil. And then it nodded.

"Holy shit!" said Edgarb. "I think you’re right! Ok little bunny, here’s the deal. If I put you down, are you going to stay still? I think we need to talk about this."

The rabbit stared back at Edgarb. And then it nodded. Edgarb gently placed the rabbit on the ground in front of him, and let it go. The rabbit just sat there, staring.

Edgarb stared at the rabbit. The rabbit stared back. Phil looked at the rabbit. The rabbit stared back. Phil, you’ll note, didn’t stare. Well, he did, but since he was a fish he couldn’t blink, and everything was a stare. He was a little sensitive about it, actually. So he just looked.

"Oh well, looks like it bugs again," said Edgarb, who got up and started looking around for things to eat.

The rabbit just sat there, watching.

He found some berries for himself, which he ate while he picked them, and then dug some ants out of a nest and dropped them in Phil’s bowl. Phil was getting pretty tired of ants, but he knew that Edgarb was doing the best he could, so he didn’t say anything while he ate.

And the rabbit just sat there, watching. And then the rabbit hopped over to Edgarb’s bag and started pawing at it. "Hey, stop that," said Edgarb as he pulled the bag away from the rabbit. "Leave it alone! There’s nothing in there but an item of portent." Still the rabbit kept trying to get at the bag.

"You know what Edgarb?" called Phil from his bowl. "I think I know what’s going on. It’s obvious when you think about it. But I don’t think you’re going to like it though."

Edgarb considered this very carefully, then thought about it more, and then pondered some ponderings. "Nope, I don’t get it Phil, what’s going on?"

"You sure you can’t figure it out? It’s easy." Phil paused. "But ok then. We picked up an item of portent before, right?"

"Right," Edgarb nodded.

"And now there’s a rabbit hanging around, right?"

"Right," Edgarb nodded again.

"And...." Phil prompted.

"And...?" Edgarb’s face was still a blank.

"And so you should spray it with the hare spray!" Phil groaned.

All of a sudden Edgarb understood. "You’re right, I don’t like it Phil. That’s a terrible joke."

"I know." Phil agreed. "Don’t blame me, I’m not writing this."

"Well I’m not writing it either!" said Edgarb.

Well I’m not writing it- oh. Sorry everyone. I guess it’s my fault. Any-who...

Edgarb took the hare – sorry, hair – spray out of his bag, pointed it at the rabbit, and sprayed. Nothing happened. He sprayed some more and still nothing happened.

He sprayed a third time. Something definitely happened.

The rabbit grew. As it grew, it changed shape a little, so that it stood like a man – but shorter. Imagine a werewolf, but instead of being part man, part wolf, it was part man, part rabbit.

It was a wererabbit.

^{## Thanks to Robert Rankin for this technique :)}

What do YOU talk about at work?

Geoff Appleby — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:59:00 GMT

Today's been pretty wierd. I share an office with one other person, so we're chatting to each other all the time.

Often it's work related chatter. And I'm sure that today is no exception. The thing is that besides all that, I was thinking over some of the topics we've talked about today (and many of them resulted in internet research). It's a little strange.

What the age of consent is in Australia (and overseas) and when is it considered statutory rape?
Is a friend of mine that I went to high school with - many years ago - that I recently added to facebook still married?
Just what is the church of scientology?
What did Christina Aguilera look like when she was in the Mickey Mouse Club with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears?

This is just some of them. I can't remember such an unusual list of topics in one day. Not at work anyway :)

Is every one like this?

Media Center and Divx

Geoff Appleby — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:55:00 GMT

I did some googling. It looks like someone has sorted out the issue! No more bluescreens when trying to play downloaded avis within Media Center!

Just download this free plug in for vista media center, and you're away :)

Reinstalling the media center box, part 1.

Geoff Appleby — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:31:00 GMT

As I glossed over on my last post, I've been reinstalling my media center pc. So far I've:

Formatted C Drive
Installed Vista
Installed the motherboard, audio, video, tv card, and bluetooth drivers.

And that's enough for tonight. I'se tired and sleepy. Interestingly, the remote control I got, since it's only a keyboard as far as the PC is concerned, works absolutely everywhere. Even the BIOS setup screen. I'm yet to work out if any key on the remote maps to 'escape' though - till I find that, some things are still a tad hard.

I'm pretty sure that there's something wrong with my hardware though. If I enter the BIOS setup screen with a USB memory stick inserted, the keyboard stops working after about the 3rd keypress. It also randomly and only occasionally gets stuck on the post screen when rebooting, and after about 10 seconds stalled only showing the motherboard model number, it reboots itself again.

The worst symptom however is it's lack of ability to boot off a hard drive. I was hoping a reinstall would fix the problem, but it didn't.

When I first got the TV card, windows wasn't detecting the card. No matter what I did, nothing was found. I added a little 3 gig IDE drive (the normal drive is SATA) and installed XP on it, wondering if it was a Vista issue. XP didn't see it either at first, but after a couple of 'reboot-remove card-reboot-add card' cycles, it suddenly saw it. Take the crappy drive out, do a repair of the boot loader (since XP blew away the Vista loader) and the card was visible in Vista.

But ever since then, it won't boot the hard drive. No matter how many repairs or anything I do, it just fails.

UNLESS I have a bootable cd or dvd in the drive. In that case, it offers to boot the disc (to which you do nothing and let it NOT boot from the disc) and magically it boots off the hard drive. No cd in the drive, and you get nothing.

I really wish that problem had gone away tonight.

Perhaps I have to blow away the entire partition table on the hard drive (it's split into a 50 gig C and a 250 gig D). I hope not, but it's all I can think of.

If anyone can confirm that a complete wipe of the entire drive will fix that problem, let me know before thursday night (Australian time) so I don't waste any more time doing setup :)

So tomorrow night (scratch that - crap it's got late - tonight) I've probably got ten thousand and four updates to apply from windows update, anti-virus to install, tv stations to configure, favourites to restore, uTorrent to install, codecs to add, and maybe, just maybe, media center to setup. We'll see. If it stops bluescreening on divx files, then I'll give it a go for a few days.

Oh, and I've also got to add my 360 as an extender. It's been failing to do that too - another reason for the reinstall. Hopefully it was that the antivirus was getting in the road or something. *crosses fingers*

Bluetooth and Vista

Geoff Appleby — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:23:00 GMT

I've just started reinstalling my media center pc (I think that's the cause of my remote control issues). While it's doing it's thing, I thought I'd make a quick note of a problem I remember having (and am about to have again) getting the bluetooth dongle that I bought to make my bluetooth mouse work. When I first plugged it in, I was having all sorts of trouble.

In the end, this is the page that saved me: Uncrippling Bluetooth in Vista RTM.

I had a panic attack about 5 minutes ago when I realised that I couldn't remember what I'd done. Luckily I emailed someone about it all, so I was able to get the link out of my sent mail. Now it's been officially recorded and I don't have to worry :)