Archive for June, 2005
Today was an intersting day, it highlighted for me some of the problems I have with my job.
Like driving for 3hrs 16 minutes in order to do 4hrs work. The 3hrs 16 minutes totally just over 200km of travelling and was split up between 4 seperate jobs. The issue was more that the jobs were so far apart from each other rather than being far apart from me.
Pakenham South to Ringwood North for example, bloody long trip, but the trip from either place back home would have been nothing to write home ( or online ) about. It probably didn’t help that the temperature seemed to drop after I got to the first job of the morning.
That’s right. 2 degrees at 10:30am
One of my last jobs was in Berwick where I saw an almost dead computer and actually dead person. The dead computer was amusing, a customer that had purchased a new laptop because the old one was ‘about to die’. All I really had to do was transfer some documents across, but I downloaded Lavasoft Ad-Aware while I was there just to see how much of the guy’s problem was to do with spyware.
Whooops
Yeah.. and he didn’t like to run that Mozilla Firewall Firefox thing because it didn’t work proppa…
The corpse was a little less amusing. As I left I went through the main street of Berwick. I had to stop at the traffic lights there and for some reason noticed someone coming out of a shop behind me and to the left. I had a look over my shoulder and noticed the feet sticking out from under the blanket laying on the ground at her feet.
An interesting day…
June 27th, 2005
The reason there’s no new posts recently, and no new photos recently is actually not because I’m too lazy to post.
Well… strictly speaking I guess that is the reason, but there’s more!
My gallery is generated on my PC then uploaded, it has a source directory, a file of specifications and settings and then a destination directory. The only files that make it online are the destination files, with resized images, thumbnails and a neat directory structure.
Why should you care?
I accidently deleted the source and the config file.
I cannot undelete it.
My library of photos is about 15 gigabytes in size and is spread across 4 DVD-R discs and 2 harddrives.
So in the end, I’m too lazy to find the files and put the gallery back together, but not too lazy to bitch and moan about it at great length.
June 22nd, 2005
I swear that today was custom made to piss me off.
though it does seem like this works with wap
June 21st, 2005
In the last 18 months we have seen a drastic increase in the number of virus and virus-like threats that have become so widespread that they have come to the attention of the mainstream news. Regardless of whether trojans are called virii or virii are the product of hackers, it is a truth that new computer users are more aware of the posibility of a virus attack.
Awareness leads to caution, caution leads to stress, stress leads to scapegoats..
In this case, the chosen scapegoat is Norton Antivirus.
A worthwhile, effective, user-friendly program that auotmatically updates itself, quarantine’s suspect files, can be made to ask for permission before acting on an infection, scans incoming email, downloads, removable media, the installer pre-scans before installing and the installation disk is bootable in case you have let your infection run that far.
Yet the program receives an awful lot of criticism from people, everything from “breaking the computer” to having a lousy activation system to failing to identify a week old virus when the program hasn’t been updated in 4 years.
These are examples, not exagerations. The first one I have seen no evidence of ever. Did it corrupt your MBR? Did it delete important system files? Did it mangle the windows registry? Or is it a result of the second, the Activition system?
Many software firms are moving towards a subscription based system for the licensing of their products, those that haven’t done so already. It makes a huge amount of sense to have some record of who uses your product when said product is so well-designed and downright essential that it is a top pick for software pirates. Norton Antivirus’ activation system is so easy I have seen children using it. Lets go through it..
1) Open the program.
2) Notice the big text saying “Attention!” at the top of the screen next to the bright yellow Exclamation Point!
3) Now go down the list and see if you can find what might cause that (!) at the top. Could it be “Auto Protect”? No, that has a lovely green tick. Same with Email Scanning and Script blocking? Can’t be those then. Of course, being the conscientious person you have already run a full system scan, so that is green as well.
4) Keep looking! Seeing as you’ve already made sure your program is running the latest updates ( What’s that, it updates automatically during the install ) both the “Virus Definitions” and “Automatic Liveupdate” are green.. and what does that leave us? Well lookey! It seems that perhaps we have a certain number of days to “activate” this product.
5)Click on the “Activate” section. What’s this?
6) An activate button? And this lets us communicate directly with the symantec server? And in 15 seconds we’ll be activated?..
It’s a simple process, it really is. Anyone that can’t activate a copy of Norton Antivirus 2004 should not be in charge of the security of their PC, simple as that.
June 18th, 2005
… Try to take over the world!
Just won my first full game of Civ 3. Yay!
I class it as a win, so did the game, didn’t get to the space race though or complete a conquest or hit 20,000 culture in one city.
It was actually a fairlt difficult map. Some very harsh environment ( desert ) with very few spawns of things like saltpeter ( 3 in the whole map, 5 civs, 8 islands ). So while I had gunpowder researched early on, I actually had to eliminate the Zulu empire before I could build any more advanced units.
I’ll tell you one thing, communism was a damn godsend at the end of the game, that and the Smith’s Trading Company easily tripled my income due to descreases in corruption and maintenance costs.
June 15th, 2005
.. to me!
Sleepy now so I wont babble on too much, but Josh, if you’re reading this. I hate you for playing Civ3 and talking about it to me. Now it’s installed on my system and today ( no work ) I spent about 6 hours getting my Aztec’s up to a point where I could possibly have taken over the world.
Damn addictive games. Civ 3, Guild Wars and now they’re releasing Battlefild 2.
June 11th, 2005
I am bored. So bored I am contemplating re-installing MandrakeLinux 9.1 just for something to do.
It’s my birthday you see, and I took the day off of work because I figured that I would have stuff to do, places to go, things like that… but instead I find myself playing RTCW: Enemy Territory for free on my ISP’s servers. As you can imagine, there are not a lot of people in Australia playing at 2:00pm on a wednesday afternoon.
So I’m here now, because typing here stops me from letting GRUB/LILO smash my MBR.. which is a bad thing..
June 10th, 2005
An Elementalist/monk is not a monk.
If I wanted to play a support character I would have chosen Monk, I wouldn’t have chosen a power hungry, damage dealing Elementalist.
Yes, I chose Monk as my secondary profession. That was to keep myself alive while soloing, not so I could play nursemaid.
While we’re talking about playing nursemaid. It is not my responsibility to keep you alive if you decide to pull groups ( plural ) of 5 or 6 mobs.
Aggro radius is easily shown on the mini-map with a circle in the centre, I don’t care how well you think you can tank, if you go running through and collect all the creeps, they’re eventually gonna kill you and come for us Casters.
I’ve focused on AoE DoT Spells, but they need a stationary target. Normally I pull a creep, then move between his backup casters/healers, Firestorm the guy in the middle, Eruption, Symbol of Wrath, Eruption. Boom! If you pull the guy out of the area, Firestorm hits nothing but soil and I have to chase after firing off flares. Pointless!
Then, after making me run around using my weaker spells, you want me to rez you and restore your HP. Sod off.
Hehehe… ‘Restore your HP’.. sounds like my work… Press F10 to begin HP System Recovery!
Seriously though… not a monk!!
June 7th, 2005
I’ve fixed the gallery, added some stuff.
Here’s some of the new stuff.
New wallpaper @ http://www.platinumweaver.net/gallery/Wallpapers/
New photos @ http://www.platinumweaver.net/gallery/Parks/Melbourne_Zoo_22-04-2005/
New page of all the headers @ http://www.platinumweaver.net/headers.php
New Deviations @ http://www.deviantart.com/print/142209/
New Prints available @
http://www.deviantart.com/print/145185/
http://www.deviantart.com/print/145985/
http://www.deviantart.com/print/145182/
http://www.deviantart.com/print/145468/
http://www.deviantart.com/print/142209/
With regards to the prints from DeviantArt.com the prices listed will most likely be in US dollars unless you have an account with DA, the policy on DA is to set the price high enough to discourage people buying prints, scanning them in and reselling them elsewhere without any monies going to the artist. I have chosen to keep the price at what DA suggests, but can order the print for much much less.
If anyone wants to order one of the prints, and all humility aside some of the shots are really nice, you would be quite better off letting me know so I can get it on the cheap. I’ll be getting a copy of the snow leopard shot myself soon, so anyone nearby that wants to have a look will be able to see the final product.
I think that’s all for now, as usual if there are any glitches or incorrect links, please let me know.
June 5th, 2005
