last post from wordpress

January 28th, 2008

Using tumblr now as wordpress gives me an ulcer. Update your rss aggregators: new rss feed is http://eggmceye.tumblr.com/rss

goals for ‘08

January 16th, 2008

I’m not particularly goal oriented so this is more of an exercise in seeing what the goals might be if I were to pull some out of thin air.

  • get the hell out of web development but somehow keep the hosting going
  • finish euo3d, get some serious help to maintain content for euo, start some other game or game-engine
  • help Miro as much as possible to get Effacrum finished
  • tae kwon do 2x a week, hi yellow belt march, green june, high green sep, blue belt dec (rather ambitious)
  • swim 10-20 laps per week
  • keep the fish alive
  • have a sticky beak at frogland with Cecelia, probably in sept
  • get this reflux fixed
  • see a dentist

blah blogging is boring

froggo

August 17th, 2007

froggo.jpg

ocean man, ocean girl

August 14th, 2007
 

EUO 1.2 using the Moa engine live, finally

July 30th, 2007

After much kicking and screaming EUO has been completely retrofitted into what I now call the Moa engine. As far as updates go to EUO, it wasn’t very exciting - with the widescreen view and skull keys being the highlights. However engine wise it is a massive overhaul and one that I’d never thought would happen.

Moa (which stands for Multiplayer Online Adventure, which has been EUO’s slogan for quite a few years now) was orginally a branch of EUO called Egg’s Apocalypse Online, or EAO. After about 2-3 months of dev the apocalypse mod was shelved, but work on the engine continued. The idea was to make the engine as generic (as in configurable, not boring) as possible.

About a year later, after saying it wasn’t possible many times, EUO now runs on this very engine. The EUO 1.1 src now lies abandoned.

So what next? Here’s some things to do:

  • document Moa
  • get Effacrum (era’s steampunk mod) running on the latest build of Moa
  • work on a huge EUO content patch, euo 1.2.1 or 1.3 or whatever it will be called, including many new maps sent to me, new mobs, merging in the best bits of Brownthorne’s Dungeon, lifting more ideas from Nethack & Diablo, etc
  • continue work on EAO!
  • make a simple demo RPG with Moa and distribute a windows server

download EUO 1.2

patch thread

bugs thread

browne stripes

July 28th, 2007

not drawn on moleskine

July 27th, 2007

because moleskine is just another crappy feelgood blogtastic bourgeoisie piece of crap - picasso & hemmingway DIDN’T use them - at least not the marketed ones today - according to wikipedia - have I bitched about wiki yet

complaining on the internet and blogging on my wireless laptop while africans are starving and little kids make my shoes

I didn’t eat a sandwich for lunch this week

July 20th, 2007

mon: can’t remember but it wasn’t a sandwich - will update if I recall what it was
tue: leftover potato bake
wed: biscuits
thu: leftover yoghurt and museli and fruit - abysmal failure
fri: leftover mum’s cooking (not a sandwich)

fucking blogging

July 12th, 2007

fav things:

  • man who sing “I go Crazy”, “Try Me”, “YOU got Tha Power”
  • Golden Fang off
  • Ice cream + cordial
  • Silver handbag
  • Love Song Dedications

unfav things:

  • Reg
  • Lord Jim

whatever tank

The Indifference Engine

May 29th, 2007

The Indifference Engine is an absurd machine: a serial computer that makes a lamp flash pseudo-randomly using a non-linear mathematical formula adhering to the principles of chaos theory.

Adding to the chaos is the fact that the floating point number passed serially between the computers was only in 4 bit resolution, and also the light toggling flip flop circuit was not functioning correctly (it had all the appearances of a distinct lack of de-bounce).

the indifference engine

The Indifference Engine featured prominently at the inaugural Workshop Showroom Showcase. Some even thought it might have been art.

Youtube video of the Indifference Engine in full operation coming soon. More photos from WSSR showcase #1 here.

euo cartoon #5 and #7

September 19th, 2006

#7

#5

euo cartoon #6

August 30th, 2006

Bloggin from Melbourne -.-;

July 6th, 2006
  • This is me drinking goon on the street and puking: BLEEHHC
  • This is me getting into sports: HURRAH
  • This is me talking about syd ’cause that’s all that anyone in melb ever does here: BLAHBLAHB:AH
  • This is me being fruity: FROOOT
  • other misc gibberish: HLAUGLAUGUALUGUGAGH

euo cartoon featuring Tone, #1

May 29th, 2006

euo cartoon #4

March 21st, 2006

Dr Wenkhoften, ep #8

March 12th, 2006

Ripleys

Dr Wenkhoften, ep #8

Diary excerpt, 12-4-96.

March 12th, 2006

… How am I supposed to get a date with Christine Hoffman, supermodel #1; the one that looks like Nora Wilde? What am I thinking? I’d have to like, put a grenade or a pipe bomb in Chuck’s boot or some shit.

I better remember to ring Dad to see if he has a tumour or not. Maybe I should drop in. Maybe on the way, I should call in on big Mel and shake some sense into her! Remind her that Craig is not the man of her dreams! And then I can go over to Adam’s (give him that letter yet to be written) and tell Pru that forkboy from Smithy’s hates flowers and that he hates Maccas and that he fuckin grotesquely hates Smashers. I think I am going nuts. I played Dark Forces fucken all day today, altho I did stop to attempt to change the light bulb in mum’s room, with ZERO success. This pen has fucken shit itself.

euo cartoon #3

March 7th, 2006

euocartoon3.gif

euo cartoon #2

March 2nd, 2006

euocartoon02.gif

The Cloning of Miss Ripley

February 17th, 2006

The Cloning of Miss Ripley

I upgraded to Wordpress 2 just to say that I hate blogging almost as much as I hate life itself

February 14th, 2006

ok well, replace ‘hate’ with ‘mild disdain’ or even ‘a slight, part-time loathing’. Ridiculous headlines are still good tho.

Yesterday I destroyed half of my entire garden gnome collection with a lawnmower

October 11th, 2005

My hypomanic winning streak of happy days is over.

EUO vs World of Warcraft, part 2

September 28th, 2005

Last week I cancelled my WoW subscription, so that is that. I learned what I bought WoW for to learn, and have otherwise gotten bored with a game firmly strapped to the rails of MORPG mediocrity. It’s easy enough to spend 24 hours on a character, but then it just grinds to halt at around level 20 (with 40 levels and countless months to go). You really need some RL friends to pass the time in this game with - and I couldn’t even con any of mine into accepting my “1 week free” cd-key.

As far as the remaining issues foreshadowed in part 1 are concerned, I nether have the energy nor feel the necessity to formally complete this ‘picking of EUO & WoW to shreds’ business. I don’t mind making some random notes however. For example, I liked WoW’s party system and consequently stole a few bits and pieces from it (specifically, the party list in the player status panel).

I also liked WoW’s quest system, but in reality, it’s pretty much the same as EUO’s - just extremely polished, and maybe a fraction simpler. One thing I found shocking at first: I went to a lot of trouble in EUO to make ‘assassination’ quests appear believable, and WoW made no attempt at all. In EUO you start the quest, the target spawns, you kill the target, you return. In WoW, the target is always there, even before you have started the quest, and you can even kill him over and over again if you feel like it. This is very unrealistic and maybe even immersion breaking for some (me for example). Easy to implement however, and immune to the unreliabilities of the EUO method. I like my way better thanks.

Partying was often fun in WoW, but it’s fun in EUO too. In a group the pace was picked up, you could take on more than one mob, and it almost approached a Warcraft 3 kind of feel. Nothing compared to the furious keyboard mash of EUO though, but still a saving grace for a game that’s infuriatingly slow. Apparenlty Everquest 2 is even slower, but I don’t have any plans to trial that.

The classes in WoW are all pretty much the same, though I suppose if you took the two extremes they may seem a little different. This is where the player character becomes a totally cookie-cuttered product of the system. Apart from the pathetic talent tree (a thoroughly watered down cross between a set of perks and the skills tree from Diablo 2) and the vaguely random items you pick up along the way, every Druid of equal level is the same, every Mage of equal level is the same, every Priest of equal level is the same, etc etc. There’s no pre-planning, no strategy, no builds, just bump and grind. This is what killed it for me I think, though $15 a month worth of insult to injury didn’t help either.

If I could think of something to write, I’d be too scared to write it

September 19th, 2005

Maybe innocuously, I voted for the hippies in the Marrickville by-election last weekend, but now I fear that the combination of that, being a part time blogger, and being a foul-mouthed tryannical game maker will incite the new gestapo to kick down my door any minute now and cart me away for incarceration and interrogation. Perhaps it is only my terrible ego that leads me to believe that I could actually be a threat, but really … who knows?

Well the fear isn’t that bad, but you have to wonder about what the hell is going on in this country when seemingly harmless hippies are being deported for no apparent reason at all. It’s not so much the fact that Scott Parkin got cuffed’n’stuffed, packed up and shipped out, and not least of all billed for 11 grand, but the fact that nobody will tell us why. It is insulting at best; it is another step in the systematic dismemberment of our freedom of speech marking the nuclear dawn of a new age of despotism at worst. How can we be allowing this to happen, and why hasn’t the goddess Miranda said anything about it?

This neo-conservatism has got to go, but what real alternative is there? The aforementioned hippies that smell, spineless shadow of a dead trade union movement, and a bunch of clueless christian fundamentalists with their sordid and reverberating nationalism have absolutely no idea at all. The whole world is fucked and we are all going to hell.

It actually crossed my mind a couple of times this week to get myself into politics, but I don’t think my nerdy brand of gonzo-romanticism would wear with the voters. Besides, if EUO is anything to go by, there would be more incarcerations and deportations than ever before, if I took control of this shithole. Yeh, I’d be a regular Il Duce. But it couldn’t be much worse than what we have now. I mean, just look at the awful caliber of people running the country as we speak …

I’m eating a banana in the elevator

September 5th, 2005

How can I explain these strange bouts of euphoria and light headedness which for two days in a row last week struck me for no apparent reason at all?

Maybe it’s the rockmelon and yogurt fruit drinks I’ve been making, or because if you do a google image search for slut, swut.net comes up first with a picture of a very skanky Catherine Zeta Jones. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that EUO is nearly done, or even my talkative cat, or the fact that in WoW, by playing a Night Elf druid, you get to be a bear at level 10 - something that for me that will always remain somewhat elusive in “Real Life”.

Salad days indeed. Not even the user comments on slashdot or Liz Hurley’s weird upper lip appeared to be having a negative effect. But as I write this, a few days later by the gregorian calendear, things seem to be restored to normal. Bored at work, overworked at home. In my lunacy I concluded that the Night Elves probably listen to My Bloody Valentine too. The difference between them and me however is that they have a good excuse to own an iPod, with all the running around that they invariably have to do. I’m generally not running anywhere.

Post patch EUO requires serious vitamins, and only my secret (carrots, celery and rockmelon) and very special blend of exotic fruits, veg, and gluten-free “friendly bacteria”-infused dairy can get me through this shit. But I’m kicking myself: I forgot to buy a cheese and bacon roll from the IGA, so a non-redknobbed banana chaser will have to do. Even David Koresh had his moments of weakness.

I love Miranda Devine so badly that I need to vomit

August 14th, 2005

Miranda’s risen to new heights of tabloid banality today with her column in the Sun Herald today as her vague crusade against internet porn (along with everything else) slowly gathers momentum:


Online porn addiction turns our kids into victims and predators
But as internet pornography becomes increasingly pervasive, making every home computer a potential red light district, Australian parents, in particular, are becoming alarmed.

hahahaha …

ATTENTION: YOUR HOME COMPUTER IS A POTENTIAL RED LIGHT DISTRICT!

This isn’t the first time she’s waved her pink stick at the old internet porn. Some time ago in a thingy she wrote about how “ug: muslims are bad”, she noted that not only did the Bankstown rapists once live in a cave down the road from Osama bin Laden, but “were also avid consumers of internet pornography.”. How the fuck she would know this is anyone’s guess: so undoubtedly, she just made it up - and you know what she’s done in her own ‘tea and crumpets’ way? Attempted to make a subliminal connection from internet porn to terrorism.

Anyway, months of fervent fanboyism (i.e. me reading her tripe for 30 seconds two times a week as a distraction from work) have finally paid off: I’ve Devined (heh) her formula. Miranda generally starts off with a couple of loose paragraphs of poignant shitsmell, followed by reams of quotations from experts just flown in from overseas (or whoever’s handy that will regurgitate her opinion, or at least agree with her on paper) that seem to take up no less than 80% of her column, finally winding up with some lame-ass suburban wisdom she plucked out of thin air whilst driving her Land Rover to pick the nooblets up from school.

One slightly scary thing about this weeks piece though: albeit by proxy (because she is too yellow to say it herself), she’s basically endorsed the use of ISP level porn-filtering, to, you know, “protect children from damaging accidental exposure.” Tsk tsk Miranda, don’t be getting out of our depth now. We won’t stand for some northshore housewife, of all people, censoring our internets.

But don’t get too sweaty and worked up over loving or loathing her, for you’d be falling into her trap. Hell, even little old me has done exactly that by writing this crap. But my excuse is that I didn’t have anything better to do, or that I had to put something up on this page, or I had to take a rest from EUO, or something. Of course I’m not the only one writing about her.

Technorati has 20 Posts in the last 28 days in all languages about “Miranda Devine”. Even the Bulletin has something to cheeky say about her (and good reading too).

If only she still wrote for the Terrorgraph, life would be perfect.

More Stupid Polly Quotes

August 10th, 2005

“Bill is a good bloke and Barnaby’s a good bloke. They’re both good blokes and they’re both my blokes as far as I’m concerned.” - John Howard. He seriously has NFI.

A couple of interesting quotes from Bob Carr

August 4th, 2005

as the door slammed him on his way out …

“Life’s a … rough cut. Nothing’s ever perfect. If it is comfortable enough, that’s probably as good as it’s ever going to be.”

and if you’re not a polititian, you’re a freeloader who’s “only good for eating food and filling toilets”.

link via SMH

Oz is fucking the best show on TV right now **

August 2nd, 2005

I almost can’t stand Bear Busters now: Jamie ‘the moustache bear’ is still cool but Adam ‘whiny bitch bear’ Savage is beyond irritating. Not even Scottie ‘token blonde female with tattoos who can use tools like a man’ welding shit can make up for that fat, orange headed twat acting like an annoying child or having a cry about something.

KellerIron Chef is still pure entertainment but sadly, it’s getting a bit old. So my new favourite TV show right now is HBO’s Oz. It’s been on SBS for a while now, and I only got onto it by accident, but I’ve been watching it religiously now for about 3 months. It might be set in a prison, but don’t be put off by all those dicks … this show has more ‘Ganks per minute’ (gpm) than anything else on TV. As soon as some character gets interesting, or worse, you start to get attached to them, WHAM - shank in the neck, or ZOINK - head into the TV. There must have been a half-dozen murders last nite, the worst/best being my latest fav character, the Reverend Cloutier. An Evangelical preacher played by Luke Perry, I was taken totally by surprise when he was suddenly getting bricked into a wall by the Brotherhood (and that nasty little redhead who is SO going to cop it) to die alone, crying and praying to Jebus. There’s still a chance that next week, someone will find him … but somehow I doubt it.

Feature ganks last nite:

  • Augustus secures Supreme Allah’s demise by obtaining his med records, finding out that he’s allergic to eggs, then organising to have eggs mixed into his brekko, causing him to have a massive allergic reaction and dying all puffy faced, vomiting blood
  • The Colonel tries to gank Morales but fails: instead gets him self squashed under the elevator they were working on together
  • Kareem comes out of nowhere to gank old Vern Shillinger - but I don’t think he’s actually going to die. Another muslim ganked Vern’s lackey at the same time
  • Omar rammed some random latino’s head into the communal TV in a fit of rage
  • Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier got himself bricked into a wall
  • O’Reilly left the gas on in the kitchen and later, one of the wardens lights a fag only to blow himself up
  • At least one other that I’ve forgotten the details for

Other Oz Trivia

  • The warden is played by the 4th Ghostbuster, Ernie Hudson
  • one of the main cops in Law and Order:SVU (a show I don’t watch btw) plays Chris Keller, this nasty serial killer who was by miles the best character till he got sent interstate after, ironically, taking a rap for a murder he didn’t commit
  • Vern, the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, was also J. Jameson in Spiderman 2
  • Another Law and Order cop, the lead female in Criminal Intent, Detective Eames, played Shirley who was hung on death row for killing her daughter or something

EUO vs World or Warcraft, part 1

July 26th, 2005

Warning: nerdy MORPG dissection inside. Reader discretion advised!

As a short intro, for those of you who don’t know, I wrote this silly ORPG called EUO. Starting this endeavour 5 or 6 years ago , I wanted to make a small multiplayer game for bashing dungeons with friends. The idea was to make a roguelike (ie ASCII gfx with keyboard controls) where you slaughtered loads of mobs and hoarded loot within random dungeons. But why not just play Diablo? Well, since I’m an INTP and a programmer, the journey is generally more interesting than the destination.

So six weeks ago roughly I bought WoW, after holding out for however long it has been since its release. I generally don’t last with MORPGS: AO got me for 2 days, DAoC for about 3 days, AC2 for 1 day, and even EQ for about an hour. The RPG I’ve played the most however is UO: clocking in maybe around 2 weeks total since buying it in 1999 or thereabouts. I find these games generally pretty boring. I also find the pretense of paying 10-15$ a month to grind insulting.

However, I’ve managed to play WoW on and off now for the entire 6 weeks; in fact, I think I’ve actually clocked up around 50-60 hours total playtime. I’ve got a lvl 21 tauren hunter (about 24 hrs), a lvl 19 troll rogue (20 hrs) + another half dozen sub lvl 10’s. The idea was to make a whole bunch of chars, using different races and classes, to try everything out and subsequently borrow as many ideas for EUO as possible. Well why not? WoW stole all their ideas from EQ and every other MORPG before them.

The sad thing is, I don’t even have 5 lines worth of notes of ideas to borrow: mostly just stuff to do with tidying up EUO’s quest & party systems. Everything else in EUO seems fine as it is.

So the point of this entry then is to compare a bunch of subsystems in EUO and WoW, without any particular goal other than that of ‘because I feel like it’. I’ll probably compare combat systems, magic, items & loot, quests, partying and whatever else comes to mind.

Combat

WoW : generally right click monster and, every 5-10 seconds or so, press a number from 1 to 0 to execute some special attack, cast some offensive spell, heal self with spell or potion, etc. Fights per mob take about 30 seconds each. When solo, usualy fighting more than one mob at a time will get you killed. Mobs have levels, and it is clear cut as to whether you can beat something or not: a mob 2 lvls higher will probably put the hose on you, and anything your level or below you can right click and go back to reading forums. There is no point fighting relatively easy mobs as you won’t get any xp, and there is no point fighting relatively hard mobs since the xp they give isn’t worth the effort.

EUO : hold down CTRL and furiously mash arrow keys, sometimes pressing 1 to 0 to use some bound item (eg pot) or hitting f1-f8 to cast some bound spell. If you suck at keys, or have bad lag, you’ll probably die. Depending on the mob, a fight can take anywhere between 5 seconds and 60 seconds. Groups of different mobs can have interesting effects together, whereas individually, they may be a complete pushover. EUO has it’s combat roots in Diablo: the idea is to fight hoards of mobs at a time, rather than slowly chew on individuals, which seems to be the way modern MORPG’s work. Mobs don’t have levels, so it isn’t clear cut as to what you should be fighting at any particular character level.

Summary : WoW’s combat bores me to tears, but I feel that EUO’s is clumsy and antiquated. At least EUO’s is fast and furious; however, WoW’s can get fast and furious when partying and tackling a few mobs at a time. But then again, that can get a bit tedious too.

Items/Loot

WoW : has a massive list of discrete items (ie even crappy items have special names, like ‘Crappy Axe of chopping’, and then ‘Slightly Better axe of Chopping’). Allakhazam has a list of all of WoW’s axes here, among everything else. Every item has a rarity (indicated by colour), and most items are found as loot on dead mobs, tho some are bought and some are crafted (whereby instead, the recipes for the crafted items are found as loot, ironically - and guess what: the recipes have rarities, indicated by colour, too). Most mobs drop useless body parts that you can loot and sell if you can be bothered, and have the backpack space for.

EUO : for starters, EUO weapon/armour system borrowed directly from DnD: vanilla items (eg ’short sword’, ‘long sword’) with enchants (eg +1 to make ’short sword +1′). I then expanded enchants to other effects (eg ’short sword of leeching’), as well as added material types (eg ‘vampyric short sword of leeching’). This adds up for an extreme shitload of items, at the expense of the items having uninteresting names. The current Alpha version of EUO expands on this with artifacts, which is basically a discrete set of WoW style items on top of the oldschool ‘formulaic’ items. ‘Good’ (read: magic) weapons and wearables drop from ‘bosses’; again, an idea from Diablo. In EUO the bosses used to even glow and have names, but that was removed since players, being the natural cheesers that they are, simply end up ‘Boss hunting’ to get items.

Summary : I’ve never particularly liked EUO’s item system, but you gotta give it one thing: it’s simple and it’s always worked. The artifact list is a nice expansion, so currently I’m getting the best of both worlds. I like WoW’s lists of discrete items but there is no way I could come up with a few thousand items like that. It’s been enough work coming up with a few hundered generic items: but combined with a dozen materials and 9 or so effects, there’s a lot of permutations. Again the drawback is boring naming: but artifacts add a little of flavour here.

More to come!

  • notes about WoW’s classes, and how they all seem pretty much the same to me
  • crafting
  • magic
  • merchants & economy
  • travel
  • quests - both WoW’s best and worst feature at the same time!
  • partying - WoW’s saving grace (a bit harsh?)

Levelling Up in Auto-Mechanics

May 2nd, 2005

I never really feel like I own a car till I’ve done some half serious work on it, so I’m noting down here, as it’s as good as anywhere, some of the work I’ve done on the Green Tuna in the last 3 weeks. While the kids have been grinding levels in EUO I’ve been grinding “Real Life” (RL) levels on the car. I think I’m about a level 3 now.

Engine stalling after starting, runs like crap, blowing smoke out pipe, smoking under bonnet!
Smoke from under the bonnet - sounds terrible! What a demoralising thing to have happen to your new car. The engine stalling, smoking & running like crap made me panic so I rang the NRMA. NRMA guy says change points and all should be sweet. Also notes that smoking from under bonnet fixable by cleaning or replacing PCV valve, which I do, which indeed stops the engine smoking. I also put in new points. By co-incidence, and not design, the car runs ok for 2 weeks (not that I ran it much), but then the same old nasty happens again: stalls after starting, runs like shit.

One thing the NRMA guy did do was test all my electrials, and apart from points, it was all good (ie coil, spark, etc). The thing the NRMA guy failed to notice (and what I failed to notice properly) was that the carb had flooded petrol all over the manifold on top of the engine. NRMA guy said ‘ you should fix that leak’ but didn’t deduce that that was the cause of all my problems! So 2 weeks after NRMA guy, when she starts playing up again, I open the hood and lo-and-behold: the carb has flooded terribly and petrol is everywhere. I take proper notice this time, and think; carb flooding probably due to sticky needle valve or faulty float.

Check manual: sure enough, correct symptoms. Quickly take top of carb off, remove float and needle valve, clean replace. Float chamber is dirty as. After re-assembling the carb hasn’t flooded but now engine misfiring - I must have stirred up some crap from the float chamber and sent it into the jets. Nothing for it but to take carb off, strip it and clean it properly (or at least remove jets and clean float chamber). Too bad all my tools got stolen with the other car.

Anzac day (april 25): after some shithouse CS:S Maxwell (Allah bless him) invites himself over and brings his 13mm open end spanner, what I need to get carb off. I remove carb and strip and clean it and re-assemble it on loungeroom floor while Adam watches Half Life Done Quick. One hour later, put carb back on and car works perfectly, and has done so all week. Have done about 70 trouble-free miles since cleaning carb. Fingers crossed. Only thing I didn’t like that the carb had a slight petrol leak after replacing - possible one off - all other carbs I’ve had had leaked a little. Definitely no sign of flooding tho! Later in week replaced fuel filter.

Summary: carb needle valve sticking probably due to 30 years of crap in float chamber. Engine misfiring after aforementioned crap gets into jets. Smoke from bonnet fixed by cleaning PCV valve.

High pitched whine in distributor
After replacing the points the dizzy starts making this annoying ass whine that would come and go. Turns out it just needed a bit of oil under the plate that the points are mounted on. I don’t believe in co-incidences but maybe the dizzy squealing from being a bit dry did have nothing to do with the new points, or the way I put them in. At first I thought it might have been faulty points, or that they needed a bit of oil on them (which I also thought was extremely unlikely) or the more likely scenario that the cam that the points ride on needed a bit of grease. Oil inside the diz under the points mounting plate fixed whine completely.

Annoying squeak in dashboard, crappy lock on glovebox
Removed glove box and found the noisy dashboard mounting peg. Applied light oil, squeak gone. Glovebox lock oiled. Glovebox lid not aligned properly, so loosened all mounting screws, aligned lid properly, retighten, lid fixed.

mileage: 67970 (also replaced air filter)

Things left to do

  • change oil & filter
  • replace noisy fan belt
  • change spark plugs
  • check points gap, drop to 0.016″ (the max spec, it’s about 18 thou now)
  • try and fix fuel gauge (which will probably be a slut)
  • fix clock
  • secure centre console
  • strategicly place some stiches in carpet just to tidy it up

30 things to do before you’re 30

March 17th, 2005

Inspired by this article entitled 40 things to do before you’re 40 (which I thought was pretty lame), I’ve decided to compile my own list of things to pass the time. Of course, since I’ve already turned 30, this list is suddenly redundant (at least for me).

  1. launch yourself into outer space
  2. smoke opium
  3. have group sex
  4. go skinny dipping with sharks and electric eels
  5. go do a life drawing class
  6. waste 4 years at university just to quit the job you studied for and change careers
  7. partake in some Sports Eating
  8. acid+spa
  9. mow the back lawn with your puppies out
  10. waste 6 or so years on some ridiculous computer game, giving you a case of life threatening RSI in the process
  11. call in a hoax bomb threat to (extort perhaps) your local Toys R Us
  12. join the navy
  13. eat chicken everyday, grow breasts
  14. yell at the noobs in the lift
  15. see a psychiatrist
  16. join a football team
  17. get plastic surgery
  18. blow something up
  19. stage your own Iron Chef kitchen battle with your friends
  20. get a proper job (maybe in the games industry) and in all probability hate it
  21. hell, get a job at the Immigration Dept and steal children for a living
  22. grow a large moustache
  23. martinis for breakfast, Stagg for tea
  24. dream up another half-dozen silly ideas for your own list of of dumb shit that you will think about but never actually do

Hangover

March 10th, 2005

Today was the first time I’ve had a hangover on a Thursday. I almost enjoy hangovers. 4-6 hours on the couch, rolling around in a weird and intense stew of waking dreams and hallucinations; the terrible daytime TV punctuated with regular vomiting. The only nasty bit really is the headache. Apart from the usual fantasies of large cars, automatic weapons and female friends in black leather corsets , I dreamed my flat was being torn apart by a cyclone. I woke up, and there was a hole in the roof and all my shit was wet. I woke up again to the sound of a low flying 747.

Later I had a real hankering for a cold, sweet, fizzy drink. Down at the IGA there were a bunch of boys from the local high school and I actually thought to myself, I wonder if any of these faggots was the guy who stabbed me death while I drunkenly tried to defuse? Last night I played Counterstrike Sauce from 8pm to 4am, and managed to drink almost 1/2 bottle of vodka and about 1/4 bottle of cheap tequila. Serious fucking downward spiral.

I grabbed an Apple Isle cider (my favourite hangover drink) from the fridge, then waddled into the softdrinks aisle where I packed my basket with 1 Vanilla Coke, 1 Pastitio, a 4 pack of Bundaburg ginger beer, and 2 cans of this glorious shit. Yes, Jesus loves me, and he has given his unfaithful flock a new a soft drink called Frenzy.

At the checkout there was the usual swag of old, drunken, lonely, crazy stanmore men, but they only wanted to buy either beer nuts, fags or tomato sauce. I almost fit right in here.

The cold apple fizz was consumed within 5 minutes of getting home, and I had the good sense to put the Pastitio in the freezer. Pouring the chilled passion fruit lollie-water into a pint glass full of ice just now I have strange flashbacks to 4am last nite, and it actually crosses my mind to chuck in some Vodka to make a hair of a dog. Time for another nap.

Battlefield Recipes

March 9th, 2005

Lunchtime in Chinatown. Been regularly having franchised portuguese chicken 3 days a week for almost a year now; but everything has its limits, and any more chicken than that I’ll start to grow manboobs. My goals for today are to further master floatings divs and look up a new recipe for tonight’s dinner. Stagg and Eggplant Potato Bake was a fucking blast. On battlefield earth, he with the most farts wins, and I’ve been parading around Stanmore in a victorious gastromical parade for near 48 hours now. However all good things must come to an end, even brown ones.

More important shit on SMH: Guy gives Casey some advice. In summary, the king of curly haired idiots tells some fat teenage girl, one depressingly banal Idol to another, that her song titles aren’t gay enough. Oh Oh, Guy’s latest masterpiece, is apparently capturing the spirit mass consumerism (or something) perfectly, well at least enough for a couple of hundred retards to buy it. “People are really liking the energy of it,” he said. Get AIDS already —-;

Two hours to go. Monty and I have decided to polish off the fortune cookies for afternoon tea. Here’s some ancient (yet vacant) wisdom for Guy and Casey that we’ve collected:

  • Man who gets kicked in testicles, left holding the bag.
  • Man who scratches ass should not bite fingernails.
  • Blowing into blonde’s ear is called Data Transfer.

The good old SMH still reports all the Important Shit

March 3rd, 2005

“Scud’s love game partner” screams the headline from the Sydney Morning Herald. “This 18-year-old from Miami, Florida, has stolen the heart of Mark Philippousis - and accepted his proposal of marriage. But who is she, exactly?”

The article then proceeds to lash us with 10 bits of vitally trivial information on the Scud’s new tasty bit of crumpet, most of which seemed to be intrepidly sourced from a Google search. The best (for want of a better word) bit is when the article’s author Amalie Finlayson gleefully helps herself to a quote from the most evergreen and trashy lower-middleclass bitch-rag Woman’s Day: “While strolling down Melbourne’s Chapel Street, Mark Philippoussis and girlfriend Alexis Barbara deliberately avoided Delta Goodrem’s favourite ice-cream shop …” POOR DELTA! Earlier, the author notes down how Alexis “appears also to be a budding journalist,” then goes on to quote from a high-school journal that the Scud’s new girlfriend once wrote for. Seriously amazing shit, especially for the SMH. Personally, I think you’re just sour Amalie. Maybe you once hit our Scud, and you got pooped on.

You know, I used to be a budding journalist too. For about 9 months I wrote a lunix column for a newbie computer mag called PC-Active, published by the same company that puts out PC Powerplay. It went tits-up, presumably due to one too many nerdy easter eggs I managed to sneak past the editor. References to Star Wars will never hold water, and comparing some shitty ./configure; make; make install app to Mon Mothma and the Lunix Rebellion would sink the career of any budding tech-journo, if not the entire publication. It’s a good thing Next had it’s floaties on.

For the record, I couldn’t care less about the Scud, or what’s her face, or Our Poor Delta, or even Paris. I think Paris is an ugly fucking whore but that’s about as far as my opinion carries me on the matter of the Hilton sluts. I just wanted to write about something.

The alternative subject was the haircut of some Macdownaldtown-guy who got off the train today; a weekend mo-hawk that had been blended into a bald spot. I’m reasonably sure that when this cat’s hairdresser was giving him his Beckham that they failed in their Care of Duty to inform this poor bastard of his failing follicles, subsequently rendering him and his stupid haircut as a minor laughing stock of the inner west. Someone should take this guy on a date to a hall of mirrors for a joke.

I’m declaring the weekend mohawk is officially dead. If only I could do the same with the fucking Hiltons.

On Hunter S Thompson

February 28th, 2005

My friend Dianne rang me with the news. “Your hero has killed himself!”

“Holy shit! Not John Laws!? How will I cope, hell, how will the whole of Sydney deal with the loss of the great Golden Microphone? I’ll sure miss the dulcet tones of that timeless baritone polluting the AM airwaves with all of his right-wing drivel. Who the fuck’s going to be Keeping the Dream Alive now?”

“No, Hunter S Thompson!” she corrected.

“Has HST got a job rockin the mike at 2UE? There’s hope yet.”

“HST has killed himself!”

“Oh, I already knew that …”

“Ok, bye.” She hung up.

Cars

February 27th, 2005

stolen HK Monaro
old car :(

HQ Prem, the Green Tuna
new car :)

This week I decided to buy another car. This decision had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my original, and most precious car, a 1968 HK Monaro, was flogged from outside my apartment the night after Valentines day. The STOLEN posters I printed up at work and plastered around Stanmore hadn’t done anything, and those destitute weirdos in the Yahoo Monaro group were no help at all. For all I know those dirty middleaged vultures were in on the conspiracy. Bits and pieces from my beloved HK are probably adorning these losers’ shitboxes right now. And of course the useless inner-Sydney cops are too busy riding their pretty horses, or telling responsible citizens like us to turn their stereos down 9:30pm on a Saturday night, to be out looking for my car. Society as we know it is fucked.

So naturally the first place I checked for a new car was Ebay, and sure enough Ebay came through with the goods. For four and a half grand I picked up a very nice 1972 Holden HQ Premier wagon, with a small v8 and 3-speed auto on the tree, aftermarket air-con and power steering, the sort of car I’ve actually been thinking about buying for a while now - a true Australian icon. And as my good friend Boothy might have said, although the green-cyan paint is a bit ‘gay’, it offsets the car’s natural manliness. We all know the last thing I need is to have my car looking more manly than my own good self.

The dude I bought this Green Tuna from picked me up from Manly wharf in his girlfriend’s Barina, a tiny car into which he could barely fit. I was almost completely dwarfed. Volumetrically, Andrew, a diver in the Navy, was about twice the size of myself, and I’m most certainly not implying that he was a large fucking fatass. Even if fat does float, they don’t let obecities like Pavarotti and Kim Beazley squeeze into wetsuits to set themselves loose, knives in teeth, armed with spearguns and MP5’s, on heroic underwater search and destroy missions.

When we got to his place, he backed the car out of the garage, and after a good look over and an extended trip around the block, I retired back to Stanmore to mull over the situation. A couple of days later there was still no news of my stolen Monaro, and no better cars for sale in the paper or on the internet, so myself and Andrew agreed on a price and I travelled across the harbour once more to pick the Prem up Thursday afternoon.

The car needed gas and Andrew wanted to take it for one last drive around Manly. Why not, I thought. He was only selling the thing because he was going to sea for god-knows-how-long the next week, to help defend this great country from countless unnamed threats abroad. The least I could do is let him drive his own car down to the petrol station; the Last Goodbye.

The Green Tuna’s 10-stacker CD player was already loaded with Andrews favourite tunes. “Let’s put some Ministry on,” he said. I nodded contently. Al Jourgensen would totally approve, I thought to myself. A couple of good old boys tooling down the strip at Manly in a prime specimen of Australia’s own King of the Road, perving at Manly girls in pink bikinis, rockin to the nasty industrial groove of New World Order. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, the awful stench of (what I assume was) some terrible blonde’s voice came assaulting through the speakers. “I love Ministry of Sound,” mused Andrew. “That chick sounds so hot.” Indeed she does.

Anyway the deal was made. After I gave Andrew the money he turned to have a final look over the car. “She’s going to miss Manly,” he said. “She loved going to the beach.” Don’t we all. Hell, this car has a better suntan than I do. It’s a good thing he left the Free Parking in Manly sticker on the windscreen, you know, in case she ever feels the need for one final roll around the Corso. Unfortunately he removed his Navy parking sticker. “I can’t leave this on,” he said with a grin, “in case you’re a terrorist.”

How these Times They Are A-Changin’, with the constant threat of terrorism and whatnot. You can’t trust anybody anymore. I can just imagine us now; Booth, Tone, Maxwell and myself at the wheel of the Green Tuna, rolling straight into some Naval base at night with the lights off and the engine cut; all camoed up and balaclava’d from head to toe and armed to the teeth with an assortment of illegal weapons and blu-tack that we’d bought with the money we earned on our last bombing run. Those mounted pony bitches had really been asking for it. But who’s funding this violent exercise? It doesn’t matter, because we’d get away with it, since Andrew left his Navy Parking sticker on a car that he sold to a nerdy terrorist. And you thought that crazy homeless arab in the brown gorilla suit harassing the teenage girls on Dixon Street, Chinatown was trouble.

happy schmalentines day

February 14th, 2005

happy schmalentines day

If you had any questions whatsoever as to what to do on the 14th of feb (this year or any year), then the above should lean you in the right direction. Oooh, I’m thinkin of ya baby.

Mythbusters is fucking the 2nd best show on TV right now *

February 1st, 2005

Jamie & AdamThere’s this new show airing on SBS called Mythbusters where these two tech & junk-addicted bears blow stuff up on a regular basis under the (pretense of destroying urban myths) and enjoy it. Infact, at least one of these guys was responsible for the robot Blendo that was disqualified from some robot wars tournament: it was shredding the opposition and sending burning shrapnel flying into the audience.

This week’s show (among other things) was all about trying to set petrol vapour on fire with the EMF created by a mobile phone (to debunk the myth that phones can cause an explosion at the gas pump of course). For starters, they rigged up a perspex box, about a metre cubed, pumped it full of petrol vapor and strategically placed an old Nokia inside which Adam was furiously ringing in an attempt to create an explosion. After that failed, they replaced the phone with a jacob’s ladder. Anyone who fires up a jacob’s ladder at a gas station probably deserves to be necrotically Darwinised.

So to hell with queer eye and their stupid twink makeovers; bears setting stuff on fire is TV at its leopard-skinned finest.

* the best show on TV right now is Iron Chef

Hello smelly world!

January 31st, 2005

I’m not exactly sure why I’m undertaking this terrible exercise once again. The first ‘old-swut’ post was in July 1999, while the last was in October 2001, with around 800 pointless articles and insightfully ordinary reviews in between. Now that every Californian and their dog has a blog, it seemed almost appropriate for me to jump on this loathsome bandwagon. It’s like a Beatles re-union, except John, George and Linda are dead, and Yoko’s resorted to ad-libbing strange poetry to a troupe of culture-starved girl scouts.