Public Class GeoffAppleby : Inconsequentials

Moved Day

Geoff Appleby — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:54:00 GMT

All done. Well, the PC is moved anyway. And configured finally to play live tv again. The table where it used to live is still sorta unavailable for use...but you get that.

After shot?

After shot.

w00ty t00ty.

Rumours have been greatly exaggerated.

Geoff Appleby — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:57:00 GMT

I would like to state categorically and unequivacally, right now, that the rumours you may have heard are completly unfounded.

I'm a little saddened that no one thought to simply ask me instead of wildly speculating. Please, just ignore what you may be hearing around the grapevine.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a dancing pony.

That is all.

Aliveness

Geoff Appleby — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:09:00 GMT

If I may, just for a moment, quote the esteemed Martin Riggs..

We're back, we're bad, you're black and I'm mad.

I decided two months ago - yes, two full frickin months - that I wanted to start blogging again. It's taken this long for webhost4life to pull their fingers out of their asses and actually make the fricking site work once more (that's a lie, but more later). Long story. You don't care. You will, when I describe it in detail, but not right now. However, this site is called crankygoblin for a reason...man I'm cranky.

So anyway...I'm back. I have a few different projects on the boil all at once at the moment. These should start appearing soon - read: hopefully tomorrow. Until then, rest assured, I'm alive and things are starting to get back to normal now.

W00t? Oh yes. Very w00t. Wootlike.

Cross Culture Experiences

Geoff Appleby — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:48:00 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 found another 2 headed thingo

Geoff Appleby — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 06:46:00 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 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:39:00 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.

What do YOU talk about at work?

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:59:00 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?

Reinstalling the media center box, part 1.

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:31:00 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*

Graffiti...please explain.

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:34:00 GMT

I don't mean explain the whole concept of graffiti. I know what it is. Hell, I'm sure I've even done some myself - on my desk at school if no where else (and I'm pretty sure it's nowhere else, now I think about it). Some is stupid, some is rude, some of it is some pretty decent artwork.

There's one near where I work that captured my interest. It's just a simple little picture, similar to what you'd expect to see on a sign showing where to find a public bathroom or change room or something. And the first time I saw it that all I thought. But then I noticed the difference...

Why does the smaller person have two heads? It almost looks like it was stencilled on, not just free hand spray paint - the circle of the big figure's head, for example. What sort of effort did the 'artist' have to go to?

But mostly, I'm just wondering if this is meant to mean something. Is it a symbol of some club or organisation that I'm currently unaware of? Or was it just a funny picture? If you've seen this before, let me know. I want answers, dammit!

Sometimes I get intrigued by the stupidest things.

Escape From Fnordish - Chapter 1

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:41:00 GMT

Late last year (ish) myself and Kari, a friend of mine, were killing time, and we ended up maing up a story. It's certainly not serious or anything like that (quite the opposite even), but it was fun. It all happened in an IM window, and I believe it started something like this:

Me: I'm bored.
Kari: So?
Me: Tell me a story.
Kari: No, you tell me one.
Me: Ok then...

Obviously a lot of planning went into it. So what then followed was a story that was just spat out as fast as I could. Type a sentence, send it, type another sentence, send. No chance to go back or anything - I was very conscious of the fact that the longer I took to write any given sentence, the more chance of boredom setting in to captive audience of one.

It went pretty well I thought. It was certainly not serious literature - hell, it's not even supposed to have a point. But it was fun, and it was relatively amusing. And afterwards, reading back through our conversation history, it looked like it could almost work as a short story. So it's been rewritten and edited and polished and stuff. It's still not great of course, but it's now a lot more readable than going through a conversation transcript.

And now the point. I figured I might as well blog it. There's 4 chapters written so far, with no end in sight. Once in a while we (myself and Kari) will pull it out again and think about another chapter or two, but it's been on hiatus for a bit while I've been busy with other things (read: my new xbox 360). Maybe by pushing out the bits that are complete it might spur me on to get it finished.

Well, you never know.

But here's chapter one. Feedback appreciated, but not expected. Let me know if you hate it or like it. You won't hurt my feelings, especially since it was never intended to be anything other than a time filler and a little bit of amusement. Note: Some language m ight be censored out with "***" as a replacement. If you see any "***"s, it's safe to presume that it's the good old f word. You know the one. Admit it.

Escape From Fnordish

Tales on the Path to Squishpoo

Chapter 1 - The Daring Escape

Once upon a time there was a little fish called Phillip. He was a smart fish, was our Phil, if a little undersized for his age. How old was he? Well, let’s just keep that a secret for now, if you don’t mind.

Phil lived in a lake. It was quite an ordinary lake really. It had food for him to eat, other fish for him to talk to, it was just like any other lake that you could find – except for one thing. This lake sat in front of a castle, a castle that was habituated by the evil King Fnordish. In fact, that deserves a capital e - the Evil King Fnordish. That’s how evil he was.

Phil had spent a lot of time trying to find a way to escape from the Evil King’s rule. He’d come up with plan after plan, but nothing ever worked. He always ended up back in the lake in front of the castle. But it was his dream – nay, he thought it his destiny – that one day, yes, one day, he would get himself away from the lake and live out the rest of his days in happiness in a lake in the beautiful land of Squishpoo.

For all his failed attempts though, he didn’t give up. He always kept an eye out for any opportunity – you never know when fate will come knocking at your door. Not that Phil had a door, of course, they’re a *** to install on a lake, but metaphorically speaking it was what he did. And he did it constantly.

Which is why, on this fortuitous day that we join Phil in this story, he was ready. It wasn’t fortuitous at first, but before long, Phil had managed to convince the Evil King’s son, Edgarb, to help him escape.

Edgarb really was a good little prince; he was just trapped under the rule of his Evil father, just like everyone else in the area. Now, I know what you’re thinking, Edgarb is an interesting name – surely there was a problem at the typesetters or something, right? Well, yes it really was supposed to be Edgar, but it’s not the fault of anything on my end – as with so many problems boys have, our old friend Freud wins yet again – his mother was the one that caused it.

You see, Queen Fuxalot had caught herself a bit of a cold near the end of her pregnancy. When he was born, she went to speak his name – as is tradition in these lands, the mother speaks the baby’s name out loud, and that shall be the name used for all time – she was all blocked up. "By sod’s dabe is Edgarb", she sniffled. Well, sure, everyone knew that what she meant to say was "My son’s name is Edgar", but tradition is tradition, and who were they to do any different?

So anyway, Phil was out swimming in the shallow parts of his lake when Edgarb came outside to do a spot of fishing. He sat down on the edge of the lake, baited hzis hook, and threw it in the water. Phil, meanwhile, was feeling a bit peckish, and while he was smart, he was still just a fish, and therefore could be quite stupid too. Phil happily gobbled up the worm that was sitting there on Edgarb’s hook, not even realising that his luck was actually about to change (not realising, in fact, that if it was anyone else on the other end of the pole, he was a goner).

When Edgarb started to reel Phil in, Phil put up quite a struggle. Well, as big a struggle as a little fish could make, so he lost the battle very quickly. But once he was up on the bank, flopping about as fish do, he saw Edgarb and realised that this might actually work out for the better.

Phil called out to him, "Save me, please save me, good prince, and I will reward you".

Right, so let’s just stop here a moment.

Phil spoke. He spoke English. He spoke it loud enough for Edgarb to hear him. I’ve got no idea how, ok? Phil has gills, neither lungs nor vocal cords, but it happened, and we’re just going to have to live with it. Let’s just say that something interesting happened earlier in Phil’s life, maybe on one of his precious failed escape attempts.

Now leave it be!

Edgarb of course was impressed and astounded and many other multisyllabic words besides at this seemingly impossible (but we know better, don’t we? *wink wink*) occurrence, couldn’t help but come back with something a little un-princely.

"*** me", he said, "a talking fish!"

He thought for a moment (Edgarb was indeed normally a quick thinker), and quickly followed it up with "What will you reward me with?"

Phil, you remember, was only a fish, and not nearly as quick at thinking as Edgarb, really hadn’t thought past his opening line.

"Umm, fucked if I know", he replied – hey, at least he was honest – "But I know English, and that’s pretty cool right? How about you do it for the novelty factor?"

Edgarb thought about this, realised that there was still something to be gained, even if it was only friendship, and threw Phil back in the lake. He really wanted to know about this strange fish that was sitting on the end of his hook, but he knew that now was not the time – besides, it was getting late, and staying out once it was getting dark was not a good way of keeping on his father’s good side. Not that his father had a good side, it’s only an expression, but Edgarb certainly didn’t want to get beaten. Again. So he left.

Edgarb slept badly that night. He kept on waking up, his mind drawn constantly to the idea of magic. If there could be a fish that spoke English, could there by other magic in the world too? Could he somehow discover some? Perhaps there was a way to be free of his Evil father! His mind was in a spin – somehow he’d find a way.

The next day he went back to the lake and called for Phil. "Here fishy fishy fishy!" he called. "Where are you little fishy?"

Phil, of course, was expecting Edgarb to come back, and had been waiting near the shore for this very thing. "Edgarb", he called back. "My name is Phillip. Phil, if you prefer. I’m not just a fishy."

"Ok, Phil then", Edgarb said with a smile, picking him up and holding him carefully in his hand. "I’ve been thinking. There must be magic in the world, right?"

"Oh, for sure there is. I don’t know much about it myself, but there certainly is. Why?"

"Will you help me defeat my Evil father?" Edgarb asked quietly, relying on hope that his father’s Storm Troopers weren’t hiding anywhere nearby spying on him.

Storm Troopers, you ask? They’re those guys dressed in white armour who work for the emperor. Duh!

Luckily, they weren’t spying, and as a result, Edgarb wasn’t shot through the head with a dinky red laser that made a noise that belonged on a little kid’s cheap plastic toy.

"Edgarb", Phil answered quietly.

"Edgarb", he wheezed, and flopped a little.

"Edgarb, please", he coughed.

"What Phil?" Edgarb asked. "What are you trying to say?"

By this stage Phil wasn’t looking too happy at all. Phil coughed again, and then said "Edgarb, I’m a fish for ***’s sake. Put me back in the water! I can’t breathe!"

Edgarb had thought of this, of course, he was just a little slow sometimes. It’s probably related to the in-breeding that goes on in royal families or something. Edgarb was happy not to have extra toes or nipples, let me tell you. He’d brought with him a fish bowl, and slipped Phil gently into it. It was filled with nice clean water, scented with rose petals oil and just a hint of lavender. Fish like cleanliness too, you see.

Phil got his breath back, gulping in gillfuls of the nice scented water, and then answered Edgarb.

"Edgarb," he said. "Edgarb, instead of defeating him, let’s just piss off to Squishypoo where we can live in safety away from your father’s Evil control. Good enough?"

You might be wondering about now why Phil said Squishypoo instead of Squishpoo. It was meant to be Squishypoo right from the start, but I made a typo – oh, don’t look at me like that! Even someone as perfect as me can have typing trouble once in a while. My word processor has already learned Squishpoo as the right way to spell it, so let’s leave it at that.

I said don’t look at me like that! We’re stuck with it now. Squishpoo it is!

Edgarb was a little unsure of this suggestion from Phil. "But I hardly know you", he said. "How do I know you won’t just turn me over to my father the first chance you get?"

"Well, you’re just going to have to trust me." Phil replied. "But we’re a team, I know it. And I’m sure we’ll become firm friends by the end of our adventures. The path to Squishyp – damn, I mean Squishpoo – will be long, dangerous, and nothing encourages friendship and loyalty like shared experience."

Edgarb agreed, but now they had to face their first real obstacle. Castle Fnordish was enclosed by a massive towering wall, and it was protected by many advanced security systems.

There were lasers.

There were flashing lights.

There were things that go beep.

There was a little red button that no one really knew what it was for, but no one ever pressed it because it was red, and it had a little sign above it that said "Don’t Press".

They needed to devise themselves an escape plan.

So, Whatcha Been Up To?

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:55:00 GMT

Well, not that much really. Work is flat out, but fun, so I'm happy :)

In the off hours, I've mostly been running my net connection downloading tv shows. Last month (12th December-11th Jan) my 40 gig download limit was used up 5 days before the end, so I got throttled to slower than modem speeds for 5 days :)

This month (12 Jan - 11th Feb) I increased my quote to 80 gig, and ...that's already been used up (4 or 5 days ago) and so I've been throttled back until the 12th.

What did I get for my efforts? Let's see...

All 8 seasons of That 70s Show.
The last 2 seasons of the West Wing
The last season of Doctor Who
The first season of Torchwood

Everything that's aired so far in the US of the current seasons of:

Stargate SG-1
Stargate Atlantis
Supernatural
Heroes
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
24
How I Met Your Mother

I also grabbed the first episode of the 'Sarah Jane Adventures', which is a new Doctor Who spinoff, but after watching it I decided not to download anymore :)

Oh, and I copied some stuff off my sis:

All that's aired so far of My Name is Earl
The first season of Top Gear
Saw III
Pulse
V for Vendetta
The DaVinci Code

So what have I actually been doing with my time? Watching them all! All I've got left to watch is the last three movies in that last list.

Tonight I'm not watching anything yet. Mitch is killing some time at my place so we're sharing a throttled net connection (not very well :) and just shooting the shit, as you do :) Oh, and I think I may have come close to making him lose his dinner - I showed him the opening scene for Saw III - at least, until the third or fourth hit to the foot, and then he made me stop *grin* Sorry man!

It's All About Trust

Geoff Appleby — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:23:00 GMT

No, this isn't a security port - at least, not security in the way that Rocky would talk about it :)

Last night Jordie and I had to go a meeting at Issy's school. On the way home from picking her up (before we went to the meeting) she asked who'd be babysitting her. Here's the script:

Issy: Who's going to be looking after me?
Me: Alex is coming over. (Note: Alex is my sort-of-brother in law. I dont' know how else to describe it - my sister's partner).
Issy: <laughs> Yay. I love it when he comes over.
Me: Why?
Issy: Because he kisses me in funny ways.

Do you see anything wrong here? *grin* Fortunately, I knew what she meant.

Yo Peeps

Geoff Appleby — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:17:00 GMT

It happened so long ago that I don't even remember why I did it, but I've just been informed that I've been listed on 25peeps.com.

You know, now that I think about it, it's pretty dumb idea. Maybe it's fine for normal blogs, but for tech blogs? I don't know what I was thinking - more than likely it was really late at night and I was tired :)

But anyway, if you care, you can have a look and see if i'm still there. I doubt i'll be there long :) Oh, but go and have a look for the peep that is a cleavage shot with little necklace - follow the link to that persons blog, it's very funny :)

It's Funny What You See When You're Sitting On The Couch

Geoff Appleby — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:41:38 GMT

Note: This is post is completely non-geeky, entirely personal, has no references to coding, contains only a drive-by reference to computers and the net, and links to a blog that is completely and utterly not safe for work. If you only want to read about code, or are offended by graphic nudity, then don't bother reading any further. You've been warned.

Sometimes you see the strangest sights - and sometimes you don't even have to leave your home to do it. Last night I was sitting on the couch minding my own business when I realised something.

I'm sitting in my lounge room looking at my wife who was looking at naked pictures of an ex of mine.

Yes, that's right. It sounds like the beginnings of some fantasy that you read about in the letters section of certain men's magazines, but never in real life, doesn't it?

Perhaps some explanation is in order. It's a twisting road, but let's see if you can travel it with me.

Before I met my wife I lived for a few years with my ex. In the spirit of not really wanting to say anything too bad (I've got past that...well, in public anyway...well, I don't swear as much anymore when talking about her) let me just say that in hindsight it's pretty clear now that it was never going to work between us, that I was a fool for the time I wasted, and I honestly have no idea what I ever saw in her.

Actually, wait. No, not a fool. I don't regret it - it taught me many important things; things like how to tell that you're living with a psycho, what sort of things I will NOT put up with in a relationship ever again, what I expect from a sane person, things of that nature. You know, useful life skills that your parents really can't teach you. I do wish I'd taken less time to learn these lessons than 5 or so years that it did take, but if there's something valuable to be gained at the end, then it's not a waste of time.

So suffice it to say while I don't feel any pain about it, at the same time I don't really have any 'happy' memories of that time. I don't miss her, I don't wonder what might have been, I don't even find her attractive (I honestly don't know how I ever did - and by the end of this you can see what I mean for yourself, but that's young love for you).

Oh look, there's a bend in that twisting road I mentioned.

*twist*

Last week the news broke that my widdle baby sister Deb has a bun cooking in her oven. Tee Hee Hee - I know what she's been doing! Hang on. Gross! I don't want to know what she's been doing. The baby was conceived immaculately right?

This is very cool. Not only is another Appleby breeding (well, possibly this is a good thing) but it's the one that lives close to me, so we'll be able to visit lots and Sam (my youngest) will have someone to play with :)

Aside: Go on everyone. Go leave a comment on her blog asking her if she's going to get married. She loves being asked *evil grin*

*twist*

My little sis actually had a small part to play in the breakup actually. No, it wasn't her fault or anything, that's not what I'm saying. It's just that the final straw that caused me to end it was when she abused Deb so much in an email that it ended up with my mother on the phone in tears telling me that Heidi (that's my ex's name) wasn't welcome at their house anymore. You can do what you like to me, but you leave me family alone.

Bye!

*twist*

In all the congratulatory comments that were left there was one from a complete stranger. This complete stranger used a LiveJournal account that was being used as an anonymous blog about...well, personal things - you know, not safe for work kinds of things...but it wasn't hard for Deb to think that she'd guessed who it was...and to send me a link to double check.

It's only fair I suppose. Deb's been scarred for life now in seeing it, so it's only fair that I get some more scarring too :) I had to look at the pictures to confirm - and yes, having been there and done that *laughs* I can say that while I wish I didn't, I can recognise all the different, umm, parts, that are on display.

*twist*

So while I didn't want to look, it was highly amusing that it existed. Even more amusing that it's been found. And of course, we need to share the scarring right? So I of course forwarded the link to my wife.

As you do. As I'm sure she wishes I didn't *grin*

So yes. Last night I was sitting on the couch in my lounge room, not really doing anything in particular, just sittin' and chillin' and flickin' channels. From the lounge room I can see straight into the computer room (since the computer room at my house is where most people would put their dining table). And I could see my wife looking at ~~naked pictures~~ (the link doesn't work now - see below) of my ex.

This was not a fantasy coming true. This is a letter that I won't be sending to any magazines.

*twist*

But sometimes I can be a bit of a sadist. Man it was funny watching her face as she realised what she was looking at. That totally made it worth it in the end :)

The moral of the story? If you're going to leave a comment on my sister's blog, and in doing so you leave a link to ugly naked pictures of yourself, and in doing that you can be identified - I am going to notice, and I am going make it public, and I am going to link the world to a site where you really should be making more of an effort to keep it secret (I'm presuming it's supposed to be a secret identity, anyway).

There was what she did to my sister before, and now she does this? Stupid! Leave my family alone - didn't you get the message last time?

Ok, I'm done now.

Update: Wow, that didn't take long - less than 24 hours. The sites gone now. Heh - mission accomplished.

My Sister Deserves Death, But Only After A Lot Of Pain

Geoff Appleby — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:02:13 GMT

My sister sent me a link to this site last week. It's a riddle site. They're really hard.

I love em. I'm currently on level 56, which means I've almost finished all the ones that are there so far.

Now I can't sleep.

Gah! Die Deb, die! :)