Anotherblog

Cracked it!

Hooray, filmforensics is back up and going again. Phew. Turned out I wasn’t copying the .htaccess file correctly. I learned a bit about the capabilities of .htaccess - turns out to be pretty cool - and hooray, it worked.

Admin

I’m still having trouble with wordpress and filmforensics, dammit. I spent some more time on it on Wednesday, but couldn’t get through the current problem. While it shows the main page perfectly happily, whatever it used to redirect other pages is broken. So you can’t actually see any reviews.

spitnik.com is now working, for what it’s worth. The page is very, very old, but at least it shows stuff.

Also, regarding the anti-spam character recognition that many websites use to stop bots: it’s under attack. Bloody spammers.

Cross with Sydney traffic

It occurs to me that the kind of people who scoot up the outside lane to overtake may be seeing the situation differently to how I see it. Beyond the cry of “arseholes”, my reasoning is generally that it’s as though they are pushing in to a queue, and I am entitled to be correspondingly cross. But when driving on a freeway, or when people overtake me on the right, I don’t get cross at all. The situation clearly isn’t like a queue in this instance.
But even the most queue-like circumstances aren’t necessarily a good analogy. The person who scoots ahead sometimes doesn’t cost me a single second of trip-time: for example, if they turn off, and there is a subsequent delay (queue, traffic lights, etc.) This happens quite a bit in Sydney traffic, and I’ve mentally forgiven enough queue-pushers for me to realise that I’m not nearly as annoyed by it nowadays as I used to be.
Also a factor, I suspect, is that I realised I shouldn’t have more than one coffee per day.

Weekend update

Sadly, filmforensics.com remains a wasteland, despite a big effort to get it up and going on Sunday. I tried copying across everything and discovered problems (it would display the title page fine, but nothing else); then I tried installing from scratch, and encountered worse problems (totally unresponsive to the “install” step). So I’m going to try the first way again, but this time without changing the relative directory. That’ll show it.

Um, back from technical-land, I was having much too much fun on the weekend to really do much website administration. Lots of time with Veronica; we went out to our favorite restaurant (the Bavarian Beer Cafe), played piano and guitar together (I didn’t even have time for Guitar Hero 3 on account of actually playing a real guitar), went for a jog together, and made the most of Veronica’s mini-holiday before she started her new work (first day: today). I didn’t get to archery on account of the new “Sam & Max” game, which Von and I are playing through with great glee.

Caught up with Jon & Kate on Sunday, watched some Dr Who and Sara-Jane Adventures, played a little music (Dear Prudence) and had dinner with them. All in all, a really pleasant, mellow weekend, especially after the mad antics of Friday.

Oh yeah, Friday. Remember how Australia won the World Cup Burling this year? Well, we finally got photos, including the official 2007 World Cup Burling jerseys.

FF, Spitnik

filmforensics.com and spitnik.com are both currently going through some minor changes - with the domain rehosting, each domain now has a completely separate account. So I’ve got to transfer everything for Film Forensics across. It’ll hopefully be done this weekend.

Jade = Veronica

I have a confession to make. Jade’s name is actually Veronica. The reason for this bit of deception is that until yesterday we worked together in the same team, and we wanted to be discreet (some workmates read this weblog). Yesterday was Veronica’s last day at our company, and we came out - ah, a good feeling! Of course, many people had guessed, and many more people hadn’t guessed but didn’t care (as is typical for engineers).

It was a fun bit of deception. We were very careful for the first six months, and over the last five months have been getting progressively more casual about it, going to the Macquarie Centre together, hanging around Chatswood together, etc.

But I will miss seeing her at work.

Guitar

I’ve been grabbing all the small moments I can to play guitar, and it’s been paying off, I think. I finally collated all the pieces I can play into a folder (thanks to the photocopier function on my printer) and it has really made a difference. I have such limited time, it’s often a pain to go hunting through books to find the one piece I like from book A, and followed by the two or three I like from book B, and I end up playing the six or seven I like from book C, which is all very well, but I get sick of them faster.

I was talking with Joel, a work colleague, about this tendency for minor inconveniences to act as disproportionate blocks to doing things, leading to the use of ridiculous time-saving devices, such as may be purchased in a Magnamail catalogue (you know, the kind of thing that has Surgical Stainless Steel Rotary Nose-Hair Clippers). He plays Double Bass, which is a big pain to transport and unpack. It can lead to him not wanting to play, even if the playing time vastly exceeds the preparation time, so he does what he can to reduce that - he owns two music stands, one permanently open (saving the effort of packing and unpacking it at home), and so on. I have similar issues with guitar - I need to keep my nails in good condition, I need to tune, I really ought to do warmup scale exercises, and sometimes these myriad of nits keep me from practicing as much as I’d like.

Not at the moment, though!

Joel, by the way, along with Daniel and Veronica (also workmates), are practicing Rachmaninoff’s Trio Elégiaque #1 In G Minor, and I’m page-turning for Veronica. It’s thrilling listening to the piece develop. One of these days I’ll record them practicing.

More relaxing

Mr Rabbit here shows the final level of relaxation, and concludes our set of exercises. Naturally, if you feel a sharp, persistant pain, strange dampness, or jagged shards of bone in any part of your body, you should probably stop doing these exercises. Remember, Mr Rabbit is on an animated gif. You don’t have to try and keep up.

I have been relaxing with Jade over the last two weeks, and it has been so pleasant I’ve not thought to update the blog until now. But things have been happening, yessireebobcatgoldthwaite! Activity on Darths & Droids has been continuing (of course) though only at the three-a-week pace. I’m particularly proud of our recent efforts, and the traffic on the site has also been steadily increasing. It looks like our efforts to make Jar Jar a sympathetic character are paying off - of course there will be people for whom nothing could possibly redeem him, but we’ve already had several comments on the forums expressing their surprise with how they kinda like him now. Faint praise! That’s my second-favorite kind of praise.

We also played a complete Lorwyn tournament, which I won with a disgusting Merfolk deck, and had a nice Halloween party (pictures will be forthcoming) in which I dressed as Dr. McNinja and Jade dressed as an angel of death, and I worked very hard on patents at work, which wasn’t very relaxing at all, come to think of it. Hmm. I’d blocked that out.

And! Playing the new Sam & Max game and am enjoying it heaps despite the rather dodgy game engine (full of stutters and slow loading times). Took Jade to archery, which she enjoyed a lot (did I already mention that?) Created a “Burling World Cup” rugby jersey with the lunchtime gang, which we’ve ordered from an embroidery place and will be getting in time for the work “Open Day”, which has a sports dress-up theme this year. Started playing Guitar Hero 3, which is much harder than the previous ones! Drunk lots of coffee, of course. Played badminton and went jogging with Jade.

How’re you?