The Rodeo

Hi to everyone that isn’t me. I’m guessing there aren’t too many of you (yet).

I have decided to try and write something every day for 30 days.
As you can probably see, this is entry number 1.
Not much to speak of, but it is a start.

So, what am I going to be writing about?
I guess we’ll find out as I write it.

I’ll go over the ‘why?’ tomorrow.
Maybe the ‘who?’ might be an idea too.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 2

Why do I want to write something every day for 30 days?

Primarily because I’m terrible at finishing things. I start projects all the time, but I very rarely finish them up. I want to start ending things. So the first thing I am going to finish is 30 days of writing. I got the idea from Steve Pavlina, a shareware author who also runs a ‘self-improvement’ blog. I don’t agree with a lot of his ideas, but the concept of having a trial period of something you want to start really made me think.

It’s just like having a 30 day trial of a new piece of software. I try and write something everyday for 30 days, and at the end of that time if I don’t like it, I stop. If I do like it, it’s much easier to keep on going.

Also, I plan to try and trick my brain into wanting to write. If I can keep myself writing, my brain thinks it should be writing, and so I keep doing it, and can hopefully improve my communication skills, as well as making me better able to put down those ideas that run through my head constantly into words that I can follow up on later.

That about covers the ‘why?’.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 3

Kotaku has a competition running where you can win a swanky looking Electric Blue Nintendo DS.

I’d love to have one of these fine machines but my bank account won’t let me. It keeps going on and on about things like rent and wives and children (I actually only have one of each of the former, but it doesn’t want to listen…).

The deal with this competition is that you have to send in a photo of something blue. And that something should have something to do with gaming (being a game-related website I figure that’s fair enough ).
So I have submitted the following picture:

Doesn’t look too game-like at the moment?
When it was first taken (by my wife – I checked this with Brian at Kotaku, he said it was fine to use) my first thought was: That looks an awful lot like Link finding an object.

I illustrate my thought thusly:

My second thought was: Actually, that looks like he wants to be a plumber, by stomping on my head as all plumbers-in-training are want to do…

If he reminds me of any further game characters, I’ll be sure to make reference to them here.
He is a cute kid for sure though… He’d love to be able to play a fantastic little Nintendo DS (he already plays gamecube… although his small, chubby fingers lack any finesse when trying to control X-wings and Olimar). I’d love to be able to teach him how.

Brian… if you read this, please let me have that DS… I’d really appreciate it. Look at his face, he’s so happy now, and he’d be happier still if we won.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 4

There is a simple rule I was taught in primary school; it was re-iterated at high school, and the first thing any one is taught when learning to drive:

Keep Left* (unless overtaking).

This very simple rule saves a large amount of headache when a large number of people are trying to move in different directions in a restricted area.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of pedestrians in North Sydney are unaware of this principle. Upon alighting from the train, hundreds, if not thousands, of people spew into Greenwood plaza and proceed to fill any available space, the vast majority of whom seem to be short women, who walk at a pace of about one step every 3 seconds. If these people stuck to the left then those who wanted to move faster could easily move around the slower members of society, and then move as far to the left as they can once they have passed them. People trying to enter the station at the same time would have no difficulty walking past, as no-one would be bowled over and the awkward situation that occurs when two people are approaching one another directly, and no-one knows where to move to to prevent a collision. Here’s the simple answer: MOVE TO THE LEFT. If both parties move to their respective lefts, then the uncomfortable ‘dodge/whoops/swerve /one-more-try/sorry-about-that/embarrased-smile’ routine could be extinguished from this plane of existence.

Perhaps the government could run one of their expensive advertising campaigns… “Keep Left and no-one gets hurt” or something like that. I’m envisioning large, thuggish, pin-stripe suit wearing men hired to enforce the rule while the public is educated. These gorilla-men standing at the top of the escalators and near bus-shelters would peer intimidatingly over the tops of immense folded arms and grunt at passers-by. If anyone moves willingly into the path of oncoming pedestrians, they would be ushered away quickly into a nearby side-street or doorway and ‘persuaded’ to mend their ways.

A repeat offense would end with walking rights being denied for several weeks while the bones mend.

This brings me to another gripe I have, this one regarding escalator behaviour. What is with people hurrying along the footpath, grunting at innocents in their line of fire (normally those walkers doing the right thing: keeping left, where they should be if they are among the velocity-deprived), pushing aside those in their way and then… stopping on the escalators. In the right-hand side.

Why do people stop moving once they reach the escalators? Walking while riding the moving stairs increases your speed at no inconvenience to yourself. You don’t even have to stop to get off!.

That’s just about it for this grand rant. It has been hanging over me for a long while, I know there are other largish men, as well as some particularly enlightened women who keep left unless overtaking, and to these pedestrian paragons: I salute you.

*or Keep Right in the US… you understand the principle.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 5

It was pointed out that not moving on escalators just means you can conserve energy. OK, I accept that the escalator problem isn’t as big a deal as I made it out to be.

I was reminded this morning, however, of a far more serious crime that needs rectification.
People ignoring the No Entry signs at Central station. When changing trains from the country line to the city line, the flow of traffic heads underground to where the entry to the city platforms are located. There are two stair-cases to each platform (at this end, I’m not discussing the underground, miniature labyrinth at the far end of the platform), one marked with big No Entry signs at the bottom, and the other with a big No Entry sign at the top. Fairly simple in concept, allowing people entering the platform unrestricted access, while also providing a simple escape route for those leaving the platform.

Unfortunately about 75% of people at Central don’t understand the simple signs with the big slash through them as representing an improvement to the otherwise resultant mess. It’s a pretty simple test of comprehension, and people are failing it continually.

I won’t even start on the people coming down the up-only stairs on the wrong side…

Here endeth the rant.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 6

OK after five entries I have two regular readers (Hi Michael! Hi Andy!) and a further two sometimes readers (Hi Jen! Hi Annelise!), my popularity is sharply on the rise, and therefore it would probably do me good to provide you, my wonderful audience, with a run down of who’s ramblings you are reading (as well as introducing you to each other: Michael, you’ve met Jen and Annelise, this is Andy. Andy, meet Michael, Jen is my wife, and Annelise is my sister. OK, we’re done here ).

My name is Ian Tyrrell, I am about six foot tall, and have blonde hair with it’s own (collective) personality. I have loads of energy, which unfortunately clashes with my low fitness level. One of these days (tomorrow?) I plan on doing something about the fitness thing.

I’m a dad to Matthias, who you can see some photos of here. He’s great, but stops me sleeping. He currently knows the words:
- ‘word’ (a’ight!)
- ‘pear’
- ‘toast’
- ‘dad’
- ‘mum’
- ‘shoes’
- … that’s about it actually.

I work for a company called Proxima Technologies, doing Java development. If anyone runs a big business and needs some business systems management tools, let me know and I can hook you up. Andy will remember this place as he quit about a fortnight ago, and used to sit next to me.

I’m a Christian (I’m sure there will be more on this topic later).
I like meat.
I like Firefly and if you want to buy me the DVD that’d be just dandy.
I like driving.
I like sleeping (but don’t get much of it done unfortunately… see comment on being the father of a small child).
I like ninjas
and pirates
and giant robots with energy swords.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 7

Tonight I am going to write about my wife:

Jennifer Andrea Tyrrell

I love this woman more than my own life.
She means the world to me (and more).
She is the first thing I see in the morning and
The last thing I see at night.

She irons my clothes.
She cooks my food.
She cleans our house.
But that’s not why I love her (it’s just a bonus).

Just the thought of her is enough to make me smile.
Or cry.
She is the mother of my child(ren. Soon. Perhaps).
She is the one I want to hold when I wake in the dark.
She’s the one I want to hold when we walk (in the park… look! I can make it rhyme).

When I proposed I asked if she would put up with me for sixty years.
I hope we make it to eighty.
She makes the mornings worth waking up for.
And the days worth living for.
And the weeks worth working for.
And the months worth fighting for.
And the years worth dreaming for.
And this lifetime… well, it’s already more than I could have hoped for.

I love her and she loves me.
I can’t wait till our fiftieth anniversary (ooh, another rhyme… unintentional. (this time)).

Jennifer I love you with all my heart.

30 Days of writing: Day 8

OK, my sister-in law just returned my copy of Spiderman 2 for the X-Box.
Well, actually, Jen went stealth and recovered it from Sarah’s room. I imagine it was a very Raiders of the Lost Ark-type affair, with booby traps and a bag of sand, running from giant boulders and one nearly-lost hat. But she got the game back to me. And that is good, because this game belongs in a museum.

And when I say it belongs in a museum, I mean that it is a game that will remain with me for a long time. I think it is a fantastic game. It definitely has its faults, but overall a game that was done right.

So, why?

The number one reason this game is so good is that it makes you feel like you are spiderman: effortlessly swinging through the city, knocking bad guys senseless, and never quite feeling like you are in complete control of your powers.

Wait a second…not being in control, isn’t that a bad thing?

In any other game, yes, here however it makes the game feel so much more alive; swinging on instinct, nearly slamming into a wall but then turning that fumble into a skillful wall-run. Being caught in an ambush, but ending with six rough youths dangling from a lamp-post, before finishing the day sitting atop the Empire State Building and just watching the sunset… then launching into space and gracefully diving fifteen-hundred-odd feet, just barely catching yourself before tasting the ashphalt.

I have never played any game just to run around the environment before. However I now find myself starting the game and just spending hours swinging aimlessly through Manhattan. The movement in this game is fantastic, and if there were no story missions, no races, no items to collect, and no Bruce Campbell, this game would still have enthralled me for weeks. As it is, I’ve been playing it frequently over the last year.

There are a few downsides to the game, the all-too-frequent Fission Mailed notices, the insta-death water, the annoying camera when working in 3-D (trying to catch those balloons is almost impossible without locking on to them, and the wall-running seems to change directions depending where the camera is situated – the next game needs to automatically swing the camera behind you when clicking down on the right control stick), and worst of all, the ridiculous load/save times and the completely arbitrary three-game save limit. I have a ten Gigabyte hard drive – why can I only have three save games?

This is definitely the game I’ve played most of on my X-Box, far more than Halo/Halo 2, and I think it comes completely down to the feel of swinging through New York city, I love playing this game, and am looking forward to Ultimate Spiderman (Although I might wait for the X-Box 360 version if it is significantly better than the standard X-Box version).

Oh, and one last thing – make sure you listen to all the hint markers, because once you’ve found all (213?) of them, the Bruce Campbell voice-overs on each change to say something different.

I didn’t catch that gag coming at all. It’s terrible. And fantastic. To Jamie Fristrom – make sure you get Bruce Campbell back again for the next game, please!

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 9

So I have now written something every day for a little over a week, and I’m beginning to see a flaw in my original plan. I’ll stick with it until the end of the month, simply because otherwise I would be doing exactly what I didn’t want to be doing, however I can also look at what doesn’t work and make plans to correct it.

The Good
- I am beginning to write ‘better’, in that my ideas are being formed into words that I can write, rather than just being a jumble of images in my head with no unifying theme or direction.
- I have managed to write something every day for nine days (so far), although a few of these entries have been rushed off before going to bed.
- Due to the very nature of blogging, I can write a review, and have the creator (well, one of them) of the game in question read it within twenty-four hours, and therefore know that I liked it (encouragement is always good), as well as being told some specific flaws that bugged one of the game’s players (me) personally.
- I can stick up pictures of my son so that anyone in the world can see him and smile. Isn’t he cute?

The Bad
- The main downside I have discovered to writing every day is that I have been only giving myself a day to write each piece. And most of each day is taken up with work and sleeping and my family, and so I don’t have a large amount of time for editing what I’ve written. In effect, everything you are reading here (including this) is a draft, written without a large amount of forethought or planning. Is this really bad? I’m not sure yet.
- Jen is getting a little frustrated that I am burying myself in the office for an hour or so every night while I write something. Maybe I can get more written on the train to and from work.

The Ugly
- Too many cliches.
- I haven’t had much time to update my site, so it currently has template sections showing through rather than information about me.
- I haven’t got my email address in a prominent location, so the only way to contact me is via the comments. I’ll hopefully address that issue tomorrow.

Well, that’s my critique of my current endeavour. I hope the few of you reading are enjoying the trip through my mind.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 10

OK, so I’m now thirty-three point three (repeated) percent of the way towards completing my goal, so I’m doing alright so far.

Tonight I’m mainly going to talk about some technical changes I’m planning on making to this blog. It will be an evolution of sorts (by evolution, I mean gradual changes over time, rather than throw the site in a bag and leave it for a long time until it magically turns itself into a sentient being capable of self-analysis, although that would be cool (if improbable\possible) too).

So the plan for the next few updates:
- Update the graphics. Currently I am using the theme chinared, but I am planning on changing the graphics and making the whole thing a bit more like myself (that is: beautiful, chaotic and exciting!) .
- Update the RSS feed* to use the well formed web namespace elements allowing my RSS feed to include comment feeds attached to each item. This is really groovy, and the RSS aggregator I use (SharpReader), will attach a comment list to each post with comments. Even though there aren’t too many people reading and commenting, this at least makes it cool .DONE (plus I added a comment count)
- I plan on removing the two other RSS feeds I don’t really want (Atom and RSS 1.0), as they just add more complexity and every feed aggregator I know of will deal with any of them. This is mostly just a neatening aspect (I might leave them around, but I’ll remove any reference to them from the code etc).DONE
- I plan on adding a tag-based category system, so each post will have many descriptive meta-tags attached to them, allowing searching by ad-hoc categories. Ultimately I’d like to make this into a funky AJAX search mechanism, but that’s probably a little bit further into the future .

That’s about it for tonight. Maybe something actually interesting tomorrow.

*RSS is basically a REALLY REALLY cool internet thing that lets you not bother about checking a site (or blog) for updates. Your computer checks for you and lets you know when something new turns up. I can’t imagine using the net without it, it’d just be so… slow…. However, the site needs to provide the RSS feed for your computer to grab. Any blogging software should do it automagically, and if it doesn’t, bug the people who made it to include it.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 11

I’ve run into a stumbling block.
I’m a Christian, and had a post in mind to write regarding that this afternoon, but I’ve realised that I don’t actually know what to write.

I read a post recently on These Infinite Spaces that I think sums up everything I want to say.

Mercy and Justice

Had a great discussion about predestination in home group on Tuesday. The classic objection people have to this doctrine is that it is unjust.

The crucial point, however, is that the reprobate are not condemned by an arbitrary act of malevolence. They are condemned purely on the basis of their sin. Their judgment will be perfectly just – they will receive justice.

The elect do not receive justice – they receive mercy. This is an act of grace on the part of God. In and of themselves, the elect deserve the same condemnation as the reprobate. But instead they receive mercy.

This is Gods dealing with mankind. Some receive justice, some receive mercy. No-one receives injustice.

I think that this sums up Christianity really well, it has nothing to do with how good you are, or how good you think you are, or even how good other people think you are, compared to God’s standard you fail.
I fail.
Miserably.

The benchmark is perfection and I am not perfect.
It doesn’t matter that I haven’t raped and I haven’t murdered, because I have lusted and I have hated.
I haven’t stolen (much), but I have coveted (much).
I haven’t lied…
.
.
.
.
.
.
(If you couldn’t tell that was meant to be ironic).

The only reason Christians can claim they know where they are going is because of God’s grace.

It’s All Who You Know
Newsboys

For the want of a marker the doctors lost their place
For the want of a cut-line they couldn’t lift his face
For the want of a face-lift his ratings dropped
Then the sit-com folded then the network flopped.

After the climb
After time turns designs to despair
It is good
Nothing’s fair
It’s all who you know…

For the want of a cough-drop the musher’s throat went hoarse
For the want of direction the huskies went off-course
Then the sled got snowbound; took some time to free ‘em
Now they’re on display inside the British Museum.

After the climb
After time turns designs to despair
It is good
Nothing’s fair
It’s all who you know…

And after the fall
After all of our strivings are dust
Even so
Good for us
It’s all who you know…

For the want of a compass; we’d be shuffling charts
For the want of good radar; we’d be glacier parts
For the want of a light-house can’t you see
We’d be lost at sea.
Lost at sea.

After the climb
After time turns designs to despair
It is good
Nothing’s fair
It’s all who you know…

And after the fall
After all of our strivings are dust
Even so
Good for us
It’s all who you know…

It’s all who you know.
-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 12

This morning I added a few features to my RSS feed. In the interests of public knowledge (and so I don’t have to keep visiting pages to read comments), I now present a short article on implementing the commentRSS API within wordpress’ RSS 2 feed.

The commentRSS API allows feed aggregators to attach a comment feed to each item in the RSS feed, giving access to the comments on a post without having to visit the site to read them. Handy.

To start with, open up wp-rss2.php in a text editor and add the line starting wfw: in the <item> </item> node:

<item>
    <title>< ?php the_title_rss() ?></title>
    <wfw :commentRss>< ?php echo comments_rss(); ?></wfw>
    ...
</item>

Close your text editor because your RSS aggregator can now associate the appropriate comment feed with your all-purpose feed. Yep, that’s it. A single line.

You want to make it a bit fancier still?
OK, how about we add an image to the channel (so your aggregator can show a little picture of you above your posts) and a count of the comments to be included.

The image code is fairly straight-forward again, just add the <image></image> node under the <channel> </channel> node:

<channel>
    <title>< ?php bloginfo_rss('name'); ?></title>
    <image>
        <title>The Rodeo</title>
        <url>http://...(etc).../images/ussmall.png</url>
        <link>< ?php bloginfo_rss('url') ?></link>
    </image>
    ...
</channel>

This example assumes you want to label your image ‘The Rodeo’ and use a small picture of my wife and I as your image. Just change the title to suit and specify the URL to where your picture is located.

Once again, a fairly simple change. Adding the number of comments should round off the evening’s lesson nicely.
Firstly the following namespace needs to be defined in the<rss> </rss> node:

<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
    xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
>
...
</rss>

Then add the slash:... line in the <item> </item> node:

<wfw:commentRss>< ?php echo comments_rss(); ?></wfw>
<slash:comments>< ?php echo get_comments_number( $id ); ?></slash:comments>

All finished.
Those few simple changes will make your wordpress RSS feed look a bit cooler in any aggregator that can handle those extensions.

Note: I realise this looks terrible, but I was having huge issues with getting the code to display at all – I’ll try and neaten it up at some point in the future.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 13

Don’t they use computers to do their writing?
Don’t they do any research?

I was just watching the new series of 24 with Jen and some friends, trying very hard not to make any comments on computer usage (Jen hates watching any sort of movie/tv show with computers in it with me), when in a meeting of the US President’s advisors etc, one of them says: “We can’t shut down the internet…”.

That is fine, and an accurate assessment.
Until she finishes her sentence: “without disrupting all communications and operations control”.

I laughed so hard juice flowed freely from my nose and mouth (I caught most of it in my glass). Apparently in 24-land, the President of the US of A has the internet’s on/off switch readily at hand should terrorists want to broadcast videos of beheadings to everyone on the internet (I’m not going to worry about the fact that video requires large amounts of bandwidth, and the fact that you can’t force people to download things and make them watch film on some sort of video player that just works…).

I spent several minutes (once the friends had left) explaining to Jen how the internet (or DARPAnet anyway) was created as a way to avoid communications disruptions due to say, atomic weapons taking out a major city. Trying to explain that there isn’t a single point of failure for the internet is kinda hard.

I really hope there isn’t a single point of failure (can’t think of any offhand).
So, that’s it for tonight, not really interesting or important, but writing none-the-less.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 14

It was my uncle (David Moss)’s funeral today.
He was 40 (or would have been, I’m not sure – he was born in 1965).
He was a genius (literally), and he was killed by a brain tumour.
I think God has a definite sense of irony.

I don’t understand why he had to die so young, but I know we’ll meet again.

See you soon Uncle David.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 15
(Halfway – hooray!)

As I said, yesterday I was at my Uncle’s funeral. I’ve had the (mis)fortune of having to attend three funerals for family members so far this year (hopefully there won’t be too many more for a while) and I’ve made a small observation:

You can tell who is, and who is not, a Christian at these funerals very easily. Uncle David was a Christian, and all the Christians at his funeral, while sad, knew they would see him again. All the people who aren’t Christian had no hope at all.

Not a profound observation by any means, but one that illustrates something of the hope provided by Christ. If he can overcome death, then we will see our (Christian) friends again. It hurts when they leave, but it’s not permanent.

Death is an un-natural part of our lives. It was not intended to be, and that’s why it hurts so much when someone we know dies.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be permanent.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 16

I heard about this on ABC radio this morning. Bernie Ebbers was found guilty of fraud and so was given a 25 year sentence for his part in it (it waas fairly massive). He’s 63, so it’s pretty much a life sentence for him.

While listening to the radio, the reporter said that many people had written to the judge asking for leniency because he was a ‘good man’ and had given much to charity.

It always confuses me as to why people think that because someone is good most of the time, that when they do something wrong it shouldn’t be counted against them, or judged as harshly because of the goodness inherrant in the person. This type of thinking amazes me, and is one of the reasons I think that there is so much confusion as to what Jesus taught. Many people today say that they hope they will get into heaven because they have been less bad than good, or because the good things they have done make them worth heaven. We are told in the bible that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23. This tells us that even the good things we do aren’t enough to make us worthy of heaven. No matter how much good we do, the bad will always out-weigh it. It is not like bank balance where you put good deeds in and take bad deeds out and if the balance at the end is positive you God accepts you.

It seems to me sometimes, that when people who are generally ‘good’ do bad things, those things become worse (subjectively) than when completely depraved people do ‘moderately’ bad things.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 17

I have decided that using ’30 Days of writing’ as the title of these posts is not the best for archival purposes, so I have gone through the set of posts and given them all new, better, more powerful titles. That’s about it really. Short entry day .

I have a few open letters in mind to write to several people, so that is probably what will be coming up next.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 18

Dear Colin,

We’ve been friends for a long time; it’s been about 20 years since Mum introduced us. You used to look after my money when I measured it in cents, rather than dollars. You used to send me comics, and other surprises (I loved the pencilcase and ruler set by the way). You and I both appreciate that there is some history between us, and that’s what makes this so hard.

It seems you’ve been taking money out of my wallet whenever I’m not looking.

I don’t like making baseless accusations, but I’ve been noticing lately that everytime I get some money (my money) from you, there is less remaining than there should be. I didn’t mind the occasional borrow, but everytime you do anything for me (like pay the rent, power, internet or insurance bills with my money) feels a bit excessive. You already take a fee to look after it in the first place – which I don’t mind giving you each month – but you are using my money to generate some extra money for yourself and then taking fees and then taking some more every time I spend some of my money. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being conned. Especially when you charge me money for things you used to do for free… like provide me someone to talk to face-to-face at your little store-fronts. Also, why do I get less interest from you now than when I was five? You look after so much more of my money now. I’m getting really worried.

I have been thinking about ending our friendship for a while now, but you make it really hard to let go. You keep sending me letters telling me how much you appreciate my friendship but then I notice that you’re telling me that you are taking more of my money. Again.

I’m sorry Colin, but I can’t take your money-grabbing ways anymore.
I don’t think we can be friends any longer. Please give me back what’s left of my money.
Maybe if you change your ways we can be friends again, but for now I don’t want to see you anymore. I’m looking for new friends now. Friends who won’t keep taking my money all the time.

Yours Regretfully,
Ian

P.S. When someone is leaving and the hat gets passed around, next time can you refrain from putting in $17,500,000 on my behalf. I appreciate the gesture but next time, maybe, just give him a gold watch and a Myers voucher? Something a bit more reasonable. Thanks.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 19

Recently I have become mildly enamoured with a program called Next Action. It is a SPADE application (although that is a bit like saying the Automatic ATM Machine), where the entire application is written in JavaScript and contained within a single HTML page. Neat.

Next Action is basically a to-do list, which isn’t that amazing in and of itself, but it feels so cool to use. The list of actions is stored in the html page when editing, and you just do a ‘Save As’ and save the page to keep the data you have entered. The original creator is in the process of adding some more feature, like auto-saving, which is pretty cool.

One other cool thing about Next Action is that all the code for the application is editable from within the page. So you can edit it as well as manage the data from within the page. As I said… pretty cool.

I am thinking about writing a simple PHP page for saving of the data to a database, allowing persistence as well as multi-user lists (I have an action to-do, and you can check it out). Not really a huge project, but I’m thinking about it to improve my JavaScript and PHP skills a bit. I’ll probably look at making it AJAX-y as well, so there is no reloading the page etc. We’ll see how it goes.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 20
I want to be the good guy.

Specifically, when I play computer games I don’t want to be the bad guy. I don’t want to be hurting innocent civilians, I don’t want bonus points for running them down. I don’t want to be rewarded for doing the ‘wrong’ thing.

It seems that because of Grand Theft Auto’s success, every game developer is jumping on the anti-hero bandwagon. I can understand the draw of the morally ambiguous avatar — everyone loves Han Solo and movie characters like him, but ultimately he is a good guy, even though he might ‘bend’ the rules every now and again. I don’t see the glory in being an out and out criminal.

I want to be the good guy however, running down innocents isn’t my idea of a good game, I want to save people (even if that involves beating up the baddies), and I want to be the hero.

If you are thinking about making a game and you read this, please make the player a good guy.

Hot Coffee
If you haven’t heard, a code/download has been discovered that allows the player in GTA:San Andreas to ‘go up for coffee’* with women in the game. The visuals aren’t exactly explicit (from what I’ve heard – I don’t have, and haven’t played, the game), but it shows what is happening quite blatantly. The ESRB has recalled the game from shops, saying that it should have been rated AO(18+) rather than M(17+), and are considering fining Rockstar (the game’s makers).
Rockstar have claimed that the program code was never meant to be activated, and can only be done so by modifying the code. The ESRB claim that the scenes are fully rendered and stored on the disc in an accessible format.
I’m not sure who is in the wrong here. While I don’t like the game’s ideals, I can understand leaving code in the game that should not be able to accessed, and am not sure that they should be fined for people being able to access it. An appropriate analogy might be having a pornographic artwork painted over and then sold to a family. A child in the family then removes the paintwork and sees the porn. This is a similar kind of thing, although in the GTA case, it is a bit more complicated for the child to uncover it. Although the data is on the disc, it is not accessible in it’s original form without modification.

I’m not sure if this is wrong in and of itself, and whether the ESRB is in the right or not. It feels like they are using this to justify their existence. However, if Rockstar released the details on revealing the section of the game, then I think they should get everything that’s coming to them. If they didn’t, and the code was something they were thinking of including, but then commented out rather than deleting, I’m not sure it is their fault or not.

I think the ESRB’s ratings are fairly stupid too. What is the difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old in terms of ‘maturity’ (although I’d suggest anyone who wants to play the mod isn’t very ‘mature’ anyway). I think either way this goes, Rockstar is going to get even more publicity, and that can’t be bad for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did release this for this very reason.
It’s a difficult situation.

*have sex with

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 21

This is a poem I wrote during my honours year at university. I have modified it so that it suits my current vocation. The title is actually kind of ironic, as I am working from home today. But I liked it, so I left it.

I hope you like.

I Want to go Home
-Ian Tyrrell

I want to go home.
I am tired and my eyes hurt.
Programming is fun but it makes me think
I don’t want to think anymore.
I want to go home.

My peripheral vision is blurring
and the monitor seems to be slowly moving
away from me, slipping in my frustrum
I need to go home.

I want to hold my wife
I want to kiss her.
I want to not be at [uni/work] for another 30 minutes.
I want to go home.
I need to go home.

I can feel my shoulders straining,
and my back is slowly freezing up.
My neck is cricked.
I can’t think anymore, only spout randomness.
I want to go home.

The office feels dead,
The tack-tack-takky-tack of keys hurts my ears
Onomatopoeia is great, but
I want to go home.

I can hear others breathing, I guess they want to leave too.
But [a thesis\javadocs] must be written and a project must be done.
I want to go home.

I want to sleep.
I want to dream.
I want to wake up.
I want to run.
I want to jump and
I want to fly.
I want to create.
I want to love.
I want to drive.
I want to play.
I want to watch.
I want to win.
I want to eat.
I want to paint.
I want to stare.
I want to read.
I want to stall.
I want to muse.
I want to laugh but
my life is frozen.
I want.
to.
go.
home.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 22

Jen and I just finished watching The Village. My verdict: fatastic.

Before you read any of the comments at the IMDB site (the one linked above), watch the movie first, they all contain spoilers. Yes, this is another spoiler-type movie. It’s not a horror movie, as the packaging and advertising suggest. I feel very sorry for M. Night Shyamalan, ever since he made The 6th Sense, he has no hope of ever being able to just make a ‘normal’ movie again. Everyone is expecting a twist, and a big one at that.

This movie had a few twists, some were pretty predictable. Some things I first thought were mistakes, I’m now pretty sure were intentional clues. I’d been told what the twist was before I watched this movie, but I was still surprised as to some of the others.

I don’t think Jen liked it too much. It is a fairly slow movie, building up over time before finally releasing the goods in a very short burst. Exactly like all M’s other movies (I wonder what M stands for anyway…). I’m a big fan of movies that are well thought out, and I think this movie fits that description well. The characters all seemed believable, and developed throughout the whole movie. And when watching The Village, try and forget that the movie will have a twist, it does, but it’s not the huge 6th Sense sledgehammer-type twist, it’s more subtle and thought provoking than giving any kind of “Oh! I get it!” kind of response.

Anyway, I really liked it. It’s hard to write without giving away the ending and the whole movie relies on the ending so I won’t ramble any more. I really did like it.

“Thankyou for the time we have been given” – Edward Walker (William Hurt)

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 23

Channel 7, how do I hate you?
Let me count the ways:

1. I hate that everytime you get a show you hype it out of all proportion.
2. I hate that the show you have hyped changes timeslots.
3. Many times.
4. I hate that you now have the cricket, and schedule it over the top of a show I would normally watch (after weeks trying to find what timeslot it has been relegated to).
5. I hate that you have ‘recap’ episodes, purely to prolong the top rating shows you have.
6. I hate that you start shows at 8:40 instead of their scheduled 8:30 purely so you can count the previous show’s ratings as the new shows.
7. I hate your ‘news’, and I hate that when a show I want to watch happens to coincide with a bomb blast that hurt nobody, you stop the show I want to watch and cover the non-news event for 3 hours.

I hate you channel seven. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!*

Anyway, that’s enough vitriol for tonight. I have to see if I can find a channel 7 TV show that I want to watch, but via some method that doesn’t involve inconveniencing me, or playing ads over the top of the show I want to watch…

*note: I also hate channels 9 and 10, but the majority of the few shows I watch are on channel 7 – hence they are the target of my attack tonight.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 24

CityRail gives the impression of being run by the most inept people possible. I think that no matter who is in charge of anything at CityRail, they are almost certainly the wrong person for the job*. Almost every aspect of the NSW rail service is terrible, mismanaged and begging for someone sensible to step in and provide a few pointers. Someone like myself.

I believe I am completely unqualified to make any sweeping pronouncements regarding how to run a multi-million dollar public service, but I have been travelling every day on said train service for the last decade and have therefore seen some of the things that should be common sense for anyone running these things.

Let’s start small; if a service does what it is supposed to do well then people will forgive the little things. If it cannot, then the little things start to build up.

1. The new train information monitors installed at Central Station today. They look great; plasma screens are the perfect medium for displaying this information. However, when replacing something as important as notifying passengers which train travels to which destination and when they depart don’t hide the monitors behind the station’s support structures. They need to be visible. This really isn’t rocket science people.

2. The information sticker that drives Sim to distraction constantly.
   “Help us keep our trains clean.
   Please take your rubbish with you.
   Report unclean carriages by
   phoning 131 500 and quote the
   carriage number.”
   You’d think that before putting hundreds of these stickers into production They’d get someone to proofread the text for grammar. Someone needs to explain that you shouldn’t use two different tenses in the one phrase.

3. That last problem actually brings me to my next point. Rather than relying on people phoning in to report ‘unclean’ carriages, why not provide bins. It seems like a fairly sensible thing to offer.

4. While we are on the topic of bins, who’s great idea was it to remove all the bins from stations? I can understand the logic behind removing them during the Olympics for ‘security reasons’, but perhaps someone should put them back now that the Olympics finished about five years ago…

5. People who can speak intelligible English should have priority for any public speaking roles. Such as announcing timetables and the like.

6. A fundamental issue when running transport services should be getting people where they want to go as quickly and efficiently as possible. Running on time is a big part of this, along with letting people know why their train has been delayed, along with how long the delay is expected to last. Giving an explanation wouldn’t go astray either…

7. Oh, please stop putting up ticket prices every time I have to get another ticket.

Anyway, that’s enough complaining for tonight

*There are of course a few notable exceptions: Chris Parr, ex-Station Master of Woodford, and Dave, Station Master at Hazelbrook, are both excellent representatives of the group of people who should be running CityRail. These two guys are fantastic – say hello if you ever run into them. Oh, and the train driver who gives the fantastic speeches every so often: “…please, enjoy your meal, but please, please, remember to take your rubbish with you.” That guy is fantastic too . Everyone else should be sacked.

-RodeoClown

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/contest/and-the-finalists-are-113975.php

That’s Me and Mat at the bottom (zelda baby).
Please vote for us!

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 25

So, yesterday I discovered that Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is trying a new financial model, one that involves allowing people to play for free (rather than paying a monthly fee) and only needing to pay money should they want to become an officer or purchase rare in-game items. A financial model that suits my meager entertainment budget quite well (I haven’t paid anything yet, and I’m not sure if I will.

Puzzle Pirates is a Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMAarr!PG — their joke, not mine ), that consists of friendly cartoon pirates sailing the puzzley seas. Walk up to another pirate and challenge them to a swordfight. Should they accept, you are treated to a tetris-like puzzle game, where the winner of the puzzle is considered the victor of the duel. I am already rated ‘Legendary’ for my swordfighting abilities throughout the entire Viridian ocean (as I should be ). Sailing a ship consists of solving puzzles in order to increase the ships speed. Ship-to-ship combat consists of multiple puzzles being played by various crew members on both boats. Once the ships are in boarding range, a multi-player swordfight breaks out to defend the craft or lose the booty.

It’s great fun and has an extremely friendly atmosphere. I hope their trial of this new payment model works out for them. I like the idea of not having to pay large monthly fees to play a game like this. Check it out.

Bonus Pirate Joke
A pirate walks into a bar and the bartender says “Hey, you’ve got a steering wheel down your pantaloons!”. And the pirate says…
“Aarr! It’s drivin’ me nuts…”

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 26

OK, This morning I found my first comment spammer. Gah!

I’d somehow disabled the first post moderation feature. It’s now re-enabled, so the first comment anyone posts needs to be approved by me, after that it’s plain sailing (or mailing…).

Sorry about the inconvenience. I don’t know why people want to post comment spam on completely unrelated messages. Do these annoyances interrupt people’s conversations at home, barging through the door and then shouting “DO YOU WANT TO PLAY AT A CASINO. MAYBE YOU WANT ‘ENLARGEMENT’. ETC ETC ETC”. What’s wrong with them? The only good use for spam is spamusement. Maybe one day we should make spamming a capital offense. Maybe tomorrow.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 27

Hooray for babies!
They are so good. I love just watching them sleep, and grow, and play, and laugh, and learn. I can’t wait till we have another one. One is great fun, but I’m guessing two will be better (not that I’m sick of Mat, he’s great, I love him so much!).

Why all this baby talk?
If you haven’t guessed: we’re having a baby!!!
In March/April next year. Hooray!!

Pray for us, and the unborn. I can’t wait to meet him/her.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 28

OK, so I did one of those crazy tests. This one is on your humour style. I am a ham.

yep.

The Ham
(39% dark, 65% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)
your humor style:

CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | LIGHT

Your style’s mostly goofy, innocent and feel-good. Perfect for parties
and for the dads who chaperone them. You can actually get away with
corny jokes, and I bet your sense of humour is a guilty pleasure for
your friends. People of your type are often the most approachable and
popular people in their circle. Your simple & silly
good-naturedness is immediately recognizable, and it sets you apart in
this sarcastic world.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Will Ferrell – Will Smith

My test tracked 3 variables — How you compared to other people your age and gender:

	You scored higher than 17% on dark
	You scored higher than 90% on spontaneous
	You scored higher than 21% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Oh, and if you like ham, check out MciverCork. They like Ham too (check out their demos… Their album is pretty good too).

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 29

One more day to go and I made it all the way to thirty days. Hooray for me finally finishing something. Wait, better not start crowing too soon or I’ll break all my fingers and be unable to type tomorrow .

So, I have noticed (and so has Jen) that I am starting to get a bit chubby around the midsection. And I re-discover fairly frequently that I am very unfit (normally when running for the train in the mornings…). I’m not sure how to get out of this dilemma though, because I don’t have much time to go walking or whatnot, as when I’m home I want to be around Jen and Mat (who goes to bed at 7) and not out wandering the streets.

I used to go walking at lunchtimes while at work, but then I found myself getting back and being all sweaty and stinky and wanting to go to sleep and not work (not that that is too much different to normal but…). So what do I do about it?

I’m kind of starting a diet, with eating less snacky foods during the day, and smaller serves of food at meals. This is cool, except I don’t really eat too many snacks anyway, and Jen cooks really nice food…

We go for walks when we can, and hopefully as it gets warmer we’ll get to do more of this.

Any suggestions as to how I can lose weight and get myself fit again would be greatly appreciated. Any cheap ways to do it while not having to work-out or eat less would be even better.

-RodeoClown

30 Days of writing: Day 30

Yay! I made it.

-RodeoClown

Oh, maybe I should add a little extra text under here . I’m planning on keeping up writing things, but I’ll probably not be posting every day. But I’ll try and keep posting things fairly regularly, as they come to me. Goodnight.

OK, tonight we had some fine dining with my parents and one of my sisters. Chicked Kiev, with roast potato and sweet potato. Yum.

Mum provided the dessert, which included creme caramel and lemon meringue pie. Delicious.
I’m looking for a new bank account at the moment, and hopefully I’ll find something soon, as I hate the commonwealth bank.

Not much else to say. Played some good puzzle pirates, ready for bed soon.

-RodeoClown

Read this It’s fantastic. I think I want to buy Jason Kotecki’s book, I read his blog and I would definitely subscribe to his newsletter.

Why should adults have to be all ‘grown up’. It stinks.

-RodeoClown

Background: Whilst enduring the daily hassle that is Sydney’s rail system, I ended up trapped between someone who wanted to leave their seat and an aisle full of people who were waiting to leave the train. I suggested to Beth (who I see on the train from time to time – she works in the building across the road from mine) that perhaps the entire side of the train should be a door, so everyone who wanted to get off the train could do so simultaneously, greatly reducing the time and inconvenience of the current system. She suggested that, perhaps, too many people would fall into the gap between the train and platform. “Maybe have doors that fold outwards, to become a ramp covering the gap?” was my response. Then it hit me, cannons would provide a far more convenient way to get people to their workplaces.

The Pros:
– Arrive at your exact destination, rather than having to walk from the station (just make sure the window is open…).
– No more sardine-like carriage packing (unless you take my alternate cannon plan: firing packed train carriages to their destination).
– Everyone gets a window seat (effectively, in reality you get a full view of the entire journey).
– No more delays due to broken-down trains.
– You can leave whenever you are ready.

The Cons:

…Nope, can’t think of any.

-RodeoClown: Reinventing public transport for the new millenium.

This morning we had the boy in bed with us, grumping it up, when I figured that’d I’d get him some food and see if he was hungry. So I got up and started getting dressed and Jen said “are you going to get him some P-E-A-R?”.

Mat suddenly perked up and said “Pear!”, and hurried out of bed to follow me and get some pear.

Kinda cool.
Kinda scary.
I don’t know if we’ll be able to continue having secret conversations like this. Maybe I’ll have to start trying to learn Swahili again.

RodeoClown: Has a kid who knows how to spell…

The definition via These Infinite Spaces.

-RodeoClown: has some black friends.

So today is the day of birth for two people who have influenced my life.

First (and most importantly) is the woman I share my life with. Jennifer, turning a grand old 22 years today. I love you Jennifer, and I hope you have a wonderful day (I hope Mat starts behaving for you too…) I’ll see you tonight beautiful.

Secondly, Andy, the guy I used to sit next to at work. Happy 27th birthday dude (oh, and I have your copy of Pikmin safely hidden at work in my drawer if you come visit again and I’m not around). Andy is a good one for discussing deep thoughts with. Thoughts involving ninjas, pirates, giant robots with energy swords, and politics. Although I disagree with him on some (many…) things, he is still a great person to nut things out with.

Lastly, the late Chris Wich, who would have been celebrating his 24th birthday today. You are missed, Chris. Update: (I have been informed that Chris’ birthday was the 30th of August, not the 29th. Sorry.)

RodeoClown: wishes it was his birthday also (because then he’d have two sets of birthday presents each year)!

Scoble is talking about Thin vs Fat clients again. I have to agree with him on this one, I commute 3 hours or so each day and having things rely on being connected is like a kick in the groin with spiked boots to me. I want to open several dozen websites and read them on the way home. Firefox is ok with this as long as I don’t shut down my PC, but explorer wins out by far when it comes to offline viewing. To the firefox developers: don’t empty the cache when I disconnect, OK?

At work we rely on a web-based support case system, which is great when the net is working, but when the connection drops out (or someone drives a tractor through a cable), suddenly I can’t work.

I can see the attraction in thin clients, but using tha laptop when I commute means that I have to go for the offline RSS aggregator, which I leave running overnight, then grab when I leave so I can read everything on the way to work.

RodeoClown: Loves the idea, but has to commute.

Feed Baby, Feed.

UPDATE:If that link doesn’t open up your feed aggregator, try using http://feeds.feedburner.com/RodeoClown instead (thanks Jason).

I’ve changed my RSS feed links to use FeedBurner so I can get stats on how many people read my RSS. Could anyone who is currently getting my RSS feed please subscribe to the feedburner feed instead now please?

Thanks.

So, while I’m talking about stats, I’ve also added a stats plugin to wordpress to provide some small statistics details. For instance, someone came here looking for a rodeo in Australia, someone looking up cityrail complaints, and someone else looking for political correctness (I know my site probably wasn’t all too useful to you guys, but thanks for visiting!).

Definitely some interesting referrals there.
In other google-related news Jason Kotecki who wrote Escape Adulthood emailed me this morning after finding my comments on his manifesto via google. I ranked higher than he did for the phrase ‘escaping adulthood‘, and he has offered me a review copy of his book. So look forward to the review once it arrives. Suffice to say, that email really made my morning .

RodeoClown: has posted lots of links in this entry.

Important!
Protecting the Unborn
Protecting the Unborn, part two

Did I mention we went for an ultrasound today?
Babies look like people WAAAAY earlier than most people think (probably because they are people).

RodeoClown: thinks kids are God’s best invention.

RodeoClown: can do the robot (a bit)

Well, God has smitten me with a bad case of rhinorrhea.
Not real fun, and it kept Jen awake for a large part of the night, she said she’d try and find something for it at the chemist. It’s not comfortable for me either.

Hope everyone else can avoid it.

RodeoClown: likes using large words.

So reads the inscription scrawled in the front of the book I found sitting on the – I don’t actually know what it’s called – that sits just inside our front door last night. Sounds like a worthy challenge.

I love getting packages in the mail, even when they are expected, especially when they are free.

And I was even more happy to receive a book that sounded like it was written just for me. Once the envelope had been ripped open and the contents laid out on the – thing, I took a quick flick through and registered my first impressions:

Look – Red, in a very primary-colour kind of way. The cover only hints at what lies within, without any out-and-out cartoons that might deter those who need to read this book most.
Feel – The cover is very smooth with sharp corners. Once inside though, strong, thick pages that make you feel like you’ve skipped a page when you turn them and ink that is raised off the page. You can feel the very print on the pages. I love that.
Smell – Neutral, doesn’t have the musty smell of old books, or the sharp tang of the numerous catalogues that somehow make it past our recycling bin.
Taste – Licking books is something I won’t be doing. Again. Leaves a nasty mark and weakens the pages, so I don’t know what the book tastes like. Maybe ask Mat if he gets his hands on it (and once he learns to speak).

Escape Adulthood was written by the Champion of Childhood, Jason Kotecki. I don’t know who dubbed him thus, but he seems pretty determined to cure Adultitis and return dreary grown-ups to the land they used to inhabit as children, so the title seems pretty apt.

The whole book reads like he has been watching my life and writing down my story. Life is too short to fritter it away worrying about things you can’t change and to stress over things that aren’t really important, so why bother doing that. Instead, you can re-discover what it is that makes young children so innocent and stress-free, and do likewise. The whole book is just so… obvious, once you read it, that to ignore the ideas within is to resign yourself to a grey, dull, monotonous life.

Read it. And then do it. Not much more I can really say.

The end of each chapter contains a bunch of tips to try, and so, to conclude, I leave a few tips of my own:

• Slide down the bannisters. Nothing is more fun than landing a full-length staircase slide and letting everyone know about it.
• Smile at people. So many people grumping all the time, an unrequested smile can brighten up someone’s whole day.
• Laugh more. There’s plenty to laugh at – try pulling faces at kids. Or adults.
• Name your own constellations. There’s plenty of stars and they can all do with names. The splattered cat, the shopping trolley, the saucepan. One day you’ll have named enough to navigate by these.

RodeoClown: knows Nein Nunb is from Sullust

Elvis and John F. Kennedy team up to save a nursing home from an ancient Egyptian mummy .

It wasn’t as good as I was expecting, and Jen pretty much hated it.

Bruce Campbell is an excellent Elvis, he does a great job of portraying an old, zimmer-frame bearing Elvis Presley. You can really believe that it is actually the King wandering around the nursing home.

Ossie Davis is JFK. Yes, he is black. The justification for this had both Jen and I in stitches for ages, one of two really funny points in the movie (the other is the translation of the heiroglyph graffiti in the visitor’s toilet).

The basic synopsis of the movie is as follows: Elvis switches places with an impersonator and then breaks his hip, landing him in a nursing home. Jack says he is the former US president, dyed black, with a bag of sand in his head, convinced Lyndon Johnson is trying to kill him. Maybe he is… we’ll probably never know for sure. The two of them join forces to hunt down and kill an ancient Egyptian mummy that is sucking the nursing home’s residents’ souls out through their buttocks. That’s about it. Wierd, but sounds like my kind of film.

The movie was seriously let down by it’s fascination with Elvis’… um, little Elvis, and the pus-filled growth thereon. The opening lines in the movie basically put Jen off completely and set the tone for the whole movie. It’s pretty crude, although there are some genuinely funny moments in there too. There are also a few very touching moments, and some fantastic acting by all involved, but in the end it all just didn’t grab me as it could have.

Would I recommend it? Probably not. The few good lines are great, but the rest of the movie just isn’t as wonderful as I’d hoped. The fact that I heard only good things about it back in 2002, combined with three years of waiting for it to finally arrive in Australia meant that the hype that had built around it just wasn’t matched by the final product.

RodeoClown: is Taking Care of Business (T.C.B. baby!)

As in the right one shut down last night.

A week or so ago I tried using some ear-drops to get rid of some wax build up in my ears. That seemed to have worked, however some of the liquid got caught in my ear and I have slowly been losing the ability to hear from the right side of my head. Last night, my ear finally gave up, and I am now half-deaf (yes, I have tried grabbing my nose and blowing, and yawning etc – which works for about a second and a half).

It’s very wierd, I can hear my body very loudly (such as talking, breathing and the slight rubbing of clothes on skin as I move) but I’m finding it very difficult to hear things outside my body (which is good as I can get to sleep without hearing Mat crying ) but it means I have to ask people to repeat what they are saying all the time (which sucks).

I should probably just go see a doctor and get the crud syringed out, but it’s kind of cool to experience aural life this way…

hmm…

RodeoClown: can’t hear you. LALALALALALALALALALALA!

The Coward

Jen was getting very annoyed the other night while watching the news, and the winners of the AFL Grand Final being called (and treated as) heroes. I know I hate the idea, and I think that being good at something you are paid to do, but with no real consequences doesn’t make you a hero.

I was reading the article linked at the top of the post the other day (be aware the navigation is non-standard – you’ll need to hit the next button at the bottom of the page to continue reading) and there it was, what I was feeling put into words: those people are role models, not heroes (and not necessarily good role models either).

The whole article is pretty good, it is from The Escapist, an online magazine about computer games (but not reviews and things, more interesting articles – well written for the most part), I download the pdf every Saturday (which includes the bonus two articles attached for the weekend) as it is far easier to read in that format than in it’s crazy html incarnation.

RodeoClown: hopes he’d run up the stairs in a fire.

My Grandad died yesterday.
It’s OK, we’ll see him again, but I’m sick of going to funerals. I have been to more this year alone than in the rest of my life combined.

RodeoClown: is sick of funerals.

We just went and saw Serenity. I went exprecting great, but came out having seen freak’n awesome!

Suffice to say, it was very, very good. Much better than I expected (and I went in with high hopes). My goodness, Mr Whedon doesn’t pull any punches with this movie, a whole bunch of stuff I watched and just thought… “no, he can’t really have just done that…”. I thought it was just going to be an extended episode, but it feels like a real movie, and is paced extremely well – lots of stuff coming from nowhere, but making perfect sense.

All the characters seem like they are really real, and the only thing that felt a bit contrived was Mal’s old war wound (no more to be said here).

It was a great movie, I’ll definitely be getting that one on DVD when it gets here. Jen’s planning on getting me Firefly on DVD for Christmas. I can’t wait.

RodeoClown: aims to misbehave!

Or Why traditional advertising is wasted on me

While seeing Serenity yesterday, we were assualted with a barrage of advertisements for movies I care nothing about, and products I don’t care for. The only one I really remember involved Richard Gere wasting a large amount of money paying for some (assumedly) Indian man to release a large amount of birds (which I assume would return to him so he could charge another poor sucker and release them again ad infinitum) to surprise a small girl who could only afford to purchase the ‘release’ of a single trained bird by the money-grabbing shopkeeper (who reminds me of every person who runs a mobile-phone ringtone download business), in order to secure good fortune for her brother who was going on a trip.

It was an ad for some credit card or other. Visa I think. But it had no effect on me, except to make my image of Richard Gere seem slightly rosier. What a nice man.

But what did it have to do with convincing me to obtain one of their credit cards? Nothing at all.

I hate most advertising. I don’t watch ads on TV, I record programs so I can watch them without ads. I ignore 99% of ads that I see on billboards while commuting to work every day. I read the newspaper online, and whilst online I use a firefox plugin called Ad-block which allows me to remove ads from my screen. I never see them.

All this ads up* to a big problem for traditional advertisers: I’m not getting their message at all.

Here’s a hint for you all (should you want to advertise something to me): Make it relevant or make it funny. I have a whole directory on my laptop where I save cool ads. I show them to people around me. All of those ads have two things in common – they are very funny/cool, or they are extremely relevant to me.

That’s the only way you’ll convince me to even look at your advertising. Even then I probably won’t buy your product if the ad is just funny. It needs to be relevant, and I need to have loads of people back it up. Go look at bloggers – give them free stuff and they’ll probably give it a plug (but don’t expect it or you’ll make them unhappy).

RodeoClown: thinks Richard Gere got more advertsing than Visa.

*pun intended

Penny Arcade

Tycho has a review (if you can call it that) of Firefly up. I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much everything he says on the topic.

It kind of sucks that to discuss pretty much anything at all in the movie involves major spoilage. It’s also good though.

Oh, be warned, Penny Arcade is pretty swear-y at times, so if you catch on fire at the mere mention of the word bullfeathers, you will be combusting frequently, and with great intensity should you visit the site.

RodeoClown: probably can’t afford to see Serenity again at the movies, but would really like to.

(That’s meant to be said like the sound bite from Wolfenstein 3D).

My laptop power supply died today, which means I’ll have to read a real book on the train (gasp!). Hopefully I can get a new adapter for this non-standard laptop soon – I’ve got about 70% charge left in it, so I won’t be turning it on till I get home, in order to try and copy as much as possible to one of my other computers.

I didn’t realise just how much I used it at work. I feel positively stifled only having two monitors now (I was working with four till this morning).

I hope it can be fixed soon, it’s like missing an arm.

RodeoClown: never realised how dependant on computers he is.

Presentation Zen has a new article regarding a FEMA diagram showing how their disaster management works.

It’s a mess.

Pretty funny though.

RodeoClown: suggests actually looking at stuff before you publish it.

They said there were big cats running around the mountains:- Blue Mountains Panther

Maybe they were right!

RodeoClown: was told by his father that he could have a lion cub instead of a brother or sister. He still feels let down (but I love you li’l sis – it was an OK trade!)

OK, so I just ordered my Christmas Present:
*

I can’t wait to sit down and watch it (again).

RodeoClown: is a leaf on the wind.

*If you click on that link, it will take you to DeVoteDDVD, and if you buy the DVD I will get 55c… I figure I may as well try and recoup some of the losses of buying this present, right? If you want to buy more DVDs from them click the link below too… They’re pretty cheap (and I get a (small) commission).

In liturgical churches, many of the prayers are well-crafted, but to some ears they lack spontaneity. In non-liturgical churches, many of the prayers are so predictable that they are scarcely any more spontaneous than written prayers, and most of them are not nearly as well-crafted.

D.A. Carson, A Call To Spiritual Reformation

via irRegular Expressions

RodeoClown: likes the green prayer book.

Jesus Talks With A Gay Man – (John 4:1-33, 39-42 – more or less…)

¹ In late July, the Metro Chicago Synod heard that Jesus was attracting more first-time visitors and baptizing more adults than any other ELCA pastor in the city, ² although in fact it was not really Jesus who had baptized them, but his irregularly-commisioned staff of unordained lay ministers. ³ Now when Jesus learned of this, he left the seminary community in Hyde Park and went back once more toward the ELCA headquarters on Higgins Road.

⁴ Now to get there, he had to go through an area just north of downtown called Boystown. ⁵ So he came to a part of Boystown called Northhalsted, not far from the plot of ground where Emperor Mayor Daley had ordained that the Chicago Cubs should play baseball. ⁶ Cub’s Stadium was near there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey on the Red Line, sat down at a sidewalk café table outside the bar called Hydrate. It was just about lunch-time, and though the rainbow flags were fluttering in the breeze and the music inside the bar was pumping, there weren’t many people around (because it’s often hot and miserable outside, at mid-day in late July, in Chicago).

⁷ A waiter came to the table, wearing a bright pink “His+His” t-shirt and a “Silence=Death” armband, and raised one eyebrow at the man seated at the table in front of him in the “Come Follow Me” t-shirt. Jesus said to him, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (All the lay ministers had gone down the street to pick up Subway sandwiches for the rest of the journey.)

⁹ The gay man said to him, “Hey…you tell me. After all, you appear to be a straight Christian, and I’m a gay man. Let’s face it – we don’t get many religious folks in Boystown, let alone places like this. And I’m not only a gay man, but I’m a Muslim gay man. So where does a guy like you get off asking someone like me for a drink?” (For Christians do not associate with gays, nor with Muslims if they can help it.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Hey, mister,” the gay man said, “I’m the waiter here. I don’t see you with an order pad or a serving tray, and it’s tough for customers to even get close to our fountain-drink station, let alone our bar. So how are you going to get anything for me to drink, let alone ‘living water’? Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you somehow greater than the folks who own this place, who let us drink have free water and soda (and snitch the occasional mixed drink) whenever we want?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks your water, or your soda, or your beer will get thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The gay man said to him, “Yeah? Mister…you know what, I have no idea who you really are, or even what the heck you’re talking about. But you’re the first Christian man in 20 years that hasn’t spit on me, or called me ‘an abomination’ to my face. Somehow, I think I want some of what you’re offering. Give me some of this water you keep talking about, so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to get something to drink.”

¹⁶ Jesus told the man, “OK – just call your wife and come back here, and we’ll talk.”

¹⁷ “Who are you kidding?” the gay man said. “Don’t you know where you are? You’re in Boystown, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t have a wife, or a girlfriend. Heck, right now I don’t even have a boyfriend,” he replied.

¹⁸ Jesus said to him, “You’re right when you say you have no boyfriend. The fact is, you’ve had five boyfriends, and the guy you’re living with now isn’t even your boyfriend. He’s just a guy you picked up in the club – some guy who doesn’t even know your real last name.”

¹⁹ Whoa, buddy,” the gay man said, “that’s pretty intense! How’d you know that about me?” Jesus was silent. “OK…I get it. Maybe you’re one of those folks who can see right through people – maybe one of those guys with ‘second sight.’ Maybe you’re one of those folks who ‘have the Spirit,’ like those televangelists say. ²⁰ I don’t know anything about that. My family – my people (the ones who are observant, anyway) – think that you have to pray five times a day to Allah to get that kind of power. The rest of the people I know don’t even bother with that spiritual mumbo-jumbo…they just think you have to work out a lot, look good, live fast, die hard and leave a good-looking corpse. And all the Christians I’ve met think that I have to pray their way, and start living life their way, or I’m ‘going to hell.’ Either way, my day-to-day life is so empty, I’m not convinced that I’m not already in hell. What’s a guy supposed to believe?”

²¹ Jesus said, “Believe me, my friend, a time is coming when you won’t worship God in Mecca, or in the gym, or in the club, or in a church sanctuary. ²² You and your friends worship what you think you know, but do not know. Christians worship what they do know, for salvation is promised in Scripture. ²³ Yet a time is coming – and has now come – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The gay man said, “I know that the church folks say that their Savior is coming. Maybe when he finally gets here, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “Then wait no longer. I’m the one they’re waiting for.”

The Irregularly-Commissioned Lay Ministers Rejoin Jesus

²⁷ Just then the lay ministers returned and were more than a little surprised to find Jesus apparently talking with a gay man – one who appeared to be Middle-Eastern in origin, to boot. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with him?”

²⁸ Then, leaving his tray and his order pad behind at the table, the gay man went back to the bar, and even next door to the gym and to the other clubs, and said to the people, ²⁹ “You gotta come and see this… come see a guy who told me everything I ever did, and didn’t run away or act disgusted. Could this possibly be ‘the Christ’ all those religious folks keep talking about?” ³⁰ People came out of the gym, and out of the bars and clubs, and made their way toward him.

³¹ Meanwhile the lay ministers (the ones who considered themselves Jesus’ disciples) kept saying, “Hey, padré, you may walk on water, but come on – even Michael Jordan’s gotta eat something.” ³² But Jesus said to them, “I have a source of energy that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Did someone slip him some Mrs. Field’s cookies while we weren’t looking?”

….

Many Gays and Lesbians Believe

³⁹ Many of the gays and lesbians who gathered from all around Boystown believed in Jesus because of what the waiter said: “You gotta come and see this… come see a guy who told me everything I ever did, and didn’t run away or act disgusted.” ⁴⁰ So when the people of that area – gay men, lesbians, bisexuals (even people in civil unions from Vermont and Episcopalians visiting from New Hampshire) came to him, they urged Jesus to stay with them. So rather than continuing the ride out to Higgins Road, the irregularly consecrated lay ministers found some rooms at a nearby bed-&-breakfast, and he stayed in Boystown – amidst the people with whom most Christians would not associate – for two days. ⁴¹ And because of what Jesus spoke to the men and women there, many more became believers.

⁴² The people who heard Jesus said to the gay man who first encountered him, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

via Ragamuffin Ramblings (I just re-formatted it).

RodeoClown: thinks that Christians should be more like Jesus.

You either want to see that, or you don’t!
– Samuel L. Jackson

Snakes on a Plane, see Collider and Quarter to Three for more details.

Via Zen of Design. Language warning on all those links

Personally, I can’t wait. I think Samuel Jackson may have actually turned insane, but I think the name is great, lets you know exactly what the movie is about, and is so very, very, very much better than Pacific Air Flight 212, or whatever generic name they were going to give this movie.

I think Mr J knows his marketing better than the studio execs. No one cares about generic flight movie 3006, but read the title: Snakes on a Plane. You know straight away you either want to see that, or you don’t.

RodeoClown: just can’t think of any quote to beat Snakes on a Plane.

RodeoClown: is a proud father.

I’ve got a list of links I want to comment on, but I haven’t found the time to actually write up a full entry on them all, so here is a list of articles/posts that have piqued my interest.

Car Kill Scores
I would love to have one of these decals for my car.

Pushing the Envelope
I love these dinosaur comics, this one espescially – make sure you read the alternate text on each image.

Clueless
Not the movie. Stupid bureaucracy in action.

Hurry
Seth Godin almost always has interesting stuff to say (hence two links here). Why do people rush to get a plane, when they could just leave home a bit earlier?

Pisseth-ing the Night Away
I have a good friend who is all about the KJV being the only true English version of the Bible. If this was in any of the versions of the Bible I read there would be much laughing and falling about. Even though it is an accurate translation, it is not what we would say in modern (polite) English.
It just goes to show that some translators have, quite literally, been taking the piss. is my favourite comment on the article.

No God = Know Peace??
The Matthias Media Couldn’t Help Noticing blog has a lot of thought-provoking articles. Like this one.

Sexy Statistics and Hypocricsy
And these two.
For the record: I get to tell my kids not to have sex before they get married — without hypocrisy YAY!
Take THAT Dr Kaplan

Hey! We’ve got TV!
update:This is actually a link to Put Me in the Zoo, not Church Marketing Sucks… Sorry Daniel. Read Daniel’s stuff too – it’s great, he’s a kindergarten teacher with some great insights.

Bonus Link
The Smiling Pastor
Church Marketing Sucks (or Stinks for the easily-offended) has a lot of very good articles on marketing in churches. This one really stuck with me. Smiling has lots of benefits, I’m feeling a bit down right now and would love to have more smiling people around me. They are really uplifting.

RodeoClown: loves the phrase: ‘Sexy Statistics’.

Quick update on the last post… I accidentally mis-labeled a post from Daniel at Put Me in the Zoo as being from Church Marketing Sucks.

I have both of them subscribed in my RSS reader and got the two mixed up. Sorry Daniel.

Anyway, check out Daniel’s site, and check out Church Marketing Sucks. They are both good sites with some good reads (usually on quite different topics – except for this time). I’ve updated the last post so it reads correctly, and added a bonus link to an article from Church Marketing Sucks that I forgot to add in last time (hence the mistake…).

RodeoClown: once took a photo of a pig at the zoo and put it in a frame in the dining room at his parents’ place and managed to keep it there for about five years before someone finally took it down. He hopes to put it back someday.

Daniel asked me to post my thoughts on his and Dr. Ransom’s views on mega-churches and bribing people to visit them.

Firstly, I love the whole bright, chimp theme going on at his site, that’s the kind of feel I would like to get happening here at some point in the future (I like the current red, but it doesn’t feel like an accurate representation of who I am).

So, to mega-churches…

I have a real problem with mega-churches. There is no way that a church can still be personal when thousands of people attend at once. At the church I currently attend, the 4:00pm Sunday gathering has around 50-80 people each week (this is the smallest of the meetings), so it’s definitely not bursting at the seams (although has, and continues to, grow). The first week my wife and I turned up, someone at the door greeted us – no big difference to most churches – however they actually took the time to find out our names and where we come from and so on.

The next week we came back, the greeter (hi Alan!) remembered our names and details and had a chat with us again. The pastor also came and said hello and learnt our names and so on. Last Sunday both of them said “hi”, even though the pastor was busy talking to someone else he waved when we walked past and we know that he knows who we are, even if we don’t have a close relationship.

Feeling known and wanted is great, people will ring up and ask where we were and if things are OK if we don’t show up for a week or two. It makes us feel loved and we know that the church body will try and help us when we need it (as well as ask us to help other people too).

There is no way a greeter at a multi-thousand member church can know who is new and who isn’t. People manage to slip through the cracks at a small church, so how much more likely is it to happen when the church doesn’t even know you exist?

I realise that most of these huge churches have very extensive small groups, and that is where most of the growing will happen, but that doesn’t include new people who turn up out of the blue.

I think that when a church meeting gets to a certain size (probably below 200), it is best to split that meeting up into smaller groups which can continue to grow. I’ve been to huge Christian gatherings, they are great – thousands of people singing in one voice and praising God together just can’t be beat – but they should be events, not the main spiritual gathering for the body of Christ.

RodeoClown: knows that hymns sung with 4000 people make a glorious noise to the Lord.

note: I think spending hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on making fancy ‘environments’ for Sunday Schools is a bit of a waste. The rooms shouldn’t be barren wastelands, but they can be made fun and exciting without hiring professionals to get involved. One of the best ways to cheer up the rooms (and to help make them more personal for the kids) is to get the kids to do the decorating. Stick up pictures drawn/painted by the kids, help them own the space. Plus it gives them the incentive to come back, and also to show other people what they have done.

Was linked to a collection of modified iPod ads at Bleach Eating Freaks. Be warned there may be dodgy links from that site.

Anyway, I have taken the liberty of putting the best images (in my humble opinion) here:

RodeoClown: doesn’t have an iPod but wouldn’t mind if someone bought him one…

I’m trying a new look to the site, because the old red design wasn’t feeling too much like me (felt too dark). I still like the old one, but I’m trying this one out for a while.

I’ll probably make some more changes to it over time, but at the moment I like the brightness of it.

RodeoClown: just felt like a change.

I’ve started using del.icio.us which is a ‘social linking tool’. Basically, I stick links on it that I think are cool/interesting, and other people can look at them. Handy no?

I found a wordpress plugin that (after some hacking) will create an entry for each new link it finds in my del.icio.us list and post it here. Meaning that if I see something cool, I can just stick the link in, and it will automagically appear here for you to read (if you want).

I’ve formatted these entries differently, as they are not full posts. I plan to modify the plugin some more in the future to condense each of the entries into a single entry whenever there are new links to post.

RodeoClown: hopes you enjoy looking at stuff he thought was interesting/cool.

You are invited to join me at this event on Tuesday 6th of December.

Craig is talking at one of the seminars (the one on divorce) and I’m going to go join in. I’ve never met someone from the internet in person before, so it’s kind of scary, but I’m sure it’ll be cool. Also, I’m not planning on getting a divorce (ever), so don’t worry, I’m not going for advice on ending my marriage, just going to hear a friend talk about his life and how God fits in even when things go all pear-shaped.

Again, if anyone wants to come along, I’ll have my car in North Sydney on the day – let me know and I can pick you up… or take you home (assuming you are at least somewhere near where I am driving on that day ).

RodeoClown: doesn’t like antipasto OR wine.

Five wise, blind elephants were discussing what humans were like. Failing to agree, they decided to determine what humans were like by direct experience.

The first wise, blind elephant felt the human, and declared, ‘Humans are flat.’

The other wise, blind elephants, after similarly feeling the human, agreed.

From International Hobo

RodeoClown: thought this was a very profound joke.

Dear Reader,
let me impress upon you a tale of adventure into the heart of the city. It is a tale of woe, not of mirth, and the details may make you quiver in fear, but take heart, dear reader, as the hero has emerged beaten, but not destroyed, and all the stronger for facing his fears in this test of courage and strength of will.

The tale begins, as so many do, with a girl…

She stirred as the hero awoke, the morn of his journey’s commencment arrived. Our intrepid hero arose, dressing for the journey ahead, unsure of what conditions he would face, weather fair or foul would not stop him. He kissed his beloved and then left, checking for any last well-wishing messages from his family and friends, before eating his meager meal of wheat biscuits in silence as he surveyed his intended route.

He had received word of changes taking place along the path. Of interchanges and tunnels. Of roads guarded well trolls intent on taking travellers’ hard-earned coin. Of these, he worried but a little, this hero’s journey could not be halted by mere words.

The hero’s son awoke whilst he donned his boots. A final embrace of his wife and child was all that stood between him and his beast. He felt the warmth radiated by his small family as they huddled together, and then turned and strode towards his ox.

The beast rumbled to life and he led it to the nearest driniking hole, where a young lass charged him dearly for the privilege of refreshing his steed. He took the blow to his purse with a smile, knowing this would not be the only time today his funds were to be asked of him. With a final look towards his hometown, the hero rode forth, leaving the comfort of familiar surroundings for the hostile city roads.

The first stage of his journey was not particularly hard, following the well-trod, well-defined highway down from the mountains he called his home. These roads were easy, and the traffic light. They are the roads one should travel, and often, as they are restful roads and presented the hero (and others like him) a simple path through the villages. Once on the plains, however, things took a turn for the worse. A large number of fellow travellers turned on him, hedging him in, denying him the space he so desparately craved. He rebelled against this crushing foe, stetching forth his foot and driving his ox onwards, spying a break in the assembled enemy, he darted forward, daring the giants who now surrounded him to react.

A small steed, with an even smaller woman driving, hesitated, she looked lost, but our hero could do nothing for her now, as the throng pressed in once again with its attack, surrounding the woman and driving for their next victim. He seived the opportunity afforded by his unknown companions sacrifice and raced forwards, reaching for the small path that would allow him to escape the deadly highway.

He took a moment to thank his maker for his mercy as he stumbled onto the pathway. A small caravan of travellers was passing ahead of him on this new, narrow, path. He joined them at the rear, hoping they would lead him to his destination.

After following these travellers for some time, he saw the signs on the road ahead that indicated a toll would be charged. A sacrifice would have to be made in order to proceed. Our young hero prepared himself for the worst, knowing that the booths inhabited by the road-guarding trolls (relatives of the bridge-guarding trolls he would have to face on the return journey) would be a particularly difficult foe to face.

Or so he thought.

The troll who stopped the steed did not even look at the young face as the fare was thrust towards him. Our hero was puzzled. This deadly troll did not wish to take any further steps to hinder him. Slightly worried, but still relieved, our hero decided to press on, not worrying himself with the uninterested troll, but delighting at the ease of his passing.

Once the troll booth was hidden by a curve in the road, the young man breathed a sigh of relief. The troll was too far away to be a bother any more. However, while the young man took his rest, he was suddenly set upon by numerous travellers, rushing and jostling him on every side and forcing him in a direction he didn’t wish to go. It took all his strength but he managed to regain his path, spending some fair time trapped between two great beasts, who sat against the side of the road and swallowed up the many pedestrians who happened to stand there. There was nothing our hero could do for those men and women in the bellies of the great beasts. But they had no interest in him, and he moved off to the great maze.

The maze in question was of gigantic proportions, ringing the city, but also travelling through it, forced lanes, and evading turns, together with the great throng amassed to get to the centre. It was some time before the lad could find his way. He was no Alexander who could slice through the Gordion Knot, there was no blade at his side that could pierce the pitch labyrinth’s many lines.

He looped to and fro, often circling the same area, seeing the same people, harried and restless, whilst he tried to gain entrance to a resting place for his ox. It took all his strength of purpose not to just leave, and all his strength of mind to not go insane and lose himself in the writhing mass.

But in the end he prevailed, finding a resting place for his faithful ox, he secured the beast and headed towards the market. What adventure lay there is another story, and shall be told another time.

RodeoClown: is not particularly looking forward to the trip home.

Last night I went to Annandale to meet Craig and hear him give a talk on his divorce, and where God was throughout that whole ordeal. It was a good talk, very open, and absolutely heart-wrenching. I was almost at tears at several points in the night.

He referenced Psalm 22, a poem/song written by king David, one of the first (well, the second) Jewish king. The psalm is an outpouring of grief and pain towards God: ‘How could you let this happen to me?’

David then answers his own question. He is God, and is sovereign over all. He is there and worthy of praise even when the fan is being barraged with excrement. It is no wonder Jesus spoke the same words as David when he hung on the cross. It just hit me then, that when Jesus cries “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, there’s more to it than just the pain, he knew that psalm, and implicit in his cry is the knowledge that his father was there with him and that he knew what he was doing.

After hearing Craig’s experience with divorce, it makes me pray that I’ll never have to deal with it in my marriage, and it was also a wake-up call to me to not take Jen for granted.

Jen, I want you to know that I love you more than anyone else in this world. I want to live with you until the day I die, and I want you to help me be honest with you when things aren’t the best. I love you more than the day we married and I stand by my promise to love you to the exclusion of all others as long as we both shall live.

Anyone who sees me do something stupid, or sees me doing things that could start me on the path to ruining my marriage, feel free to slap me and let me know. In fact, don’t just feel free to, actually do it.

In other news: Dave, nice to meet you too, sorry I didn’t say goodbye, I turned around to say it and you’d vanished somewhere. Anyway, goodbye

RodeoClown: can see far more clearly now why God hates divorce (but not divorcees).

It’s 4am, I’m tired but it’s too hot to sleep, so I thought I’d introduce you to a site I stumbled across (via Kathy): Slow Leadership.

That article I just linked discusses the need for leaders to slow down in order to be civilised, that rushing decisions that should take time ignores those most likely to be hurt. When I read it, I was immediately reminded of our current federal government’s insistence on rushing through a few recent legislations which have some big implications.

Although I don’t necessarily disagree with the content of these new laws, giving people 30 minutes to digest a 1252-page document before starting the formal debate just seems to be rushing things far too much.

I think so many things in life need to be slowed down, not everything of course, but important decisions rarely need an answer immediately, rather, they should be considered carefully, espescially when they will impact millions of people.

RodeoClown: is disappointed that his government rushes things so much.

No.
Or more accurately: Yes.

I found this questionnaire in two of my RSS feeds this morning, and it sounded like a good idea, so Daniel, Jason (aka B. N. Positive), here are my results.

Oh, first – for anyone who wants to play along at home, load up your handy-dandy music manager (they used iTunes, but I use Winamp) and stick it on random. Use the songs that come out as your answers.

1. What do you think of me, Winamp?

   Newsboys – Entertaining Angels
   That’s nice to know. I’m an entertainer then, and I hang around angels. cool.

2. Will I have a happy life?

   Sixpence None the Richer – Anything
   Um, ok. I’ll take it you mean anything could happen right, right? Although the first words are that this is their forty-fifth depressing tune, so… Should I pack my tent, shut down my show? I should like to see a burning bush, but anything would be fine. Anything would be fine.

3. What do my friends really think of me.?

   U2 – Desire
   Well, I guess that answers the next question too.

4. Do people secretly lust after me?

   Lenny Kravitz – Thinking of You
   Ok, I’ll take that as an affirmative.

5. What should I do with my life?

   Endorphin – Free (Free Range Mix)
   Free… free what? Free software? Free slaves? Free spirit? Free speech? Free beer…?

6. Why must life be so full of pain?

   Relient K – When I Go Down
   Well, I guess when I go down, I go down hard. I hope that my problems will go away when they’re ignored. But that’s not the way it works…
   I know that when I go down, you’ll be there to lift me up again. That is enough.

7. Will I ever have children?

   Audio Adrenaline – Big House
   Well, that’s pretty conclusive. It’s a big, big house. With lots and lots of room, a big, big table, with lots and lots of food. A big, big yard, where we can play football. Sounds good to me.
   If I’m gonna have a big house (with rooms for everyone!), looks like I will have plenty of kids. Yay!

8. Will I die happy?

   dc Talk – Jesus Freak (Reprise)
   Hmmm, I’m to be a martyr then? Perhaps. I hope I’d have the guts to if I have to.

9. Can you give me some advice?

   Newsboys – Cannot Get You Out of My System
   You crazy Winamp, have you got hidden registry settings, installed a rootkit or something?

10. What do you think happiness is?

    Rob D – Clubbed to Death
    Um, stop it Winamp, you are scaring me. I’d feel like a seal or something.

11. What is my favourite fetish?

    Modjo – Lady (Acoustic Version)
    Well, Jen should be pleased to hear that, no crazy, kinky, wierd stuff here.

12. Am I a total freak?

    Sixpence None the Richer – Waiting on the Sun
    Um… OK.

Well, there you have it. That’s what Winamp answered me. Post your own responses in the comments.

RodeoClown: offers the following as what he would have picked were he Winamp incarnate (and slightly cheeky):

1. What do you think of me, Winamp?
   Lenny Kravitz – I Belong to You
2. Will I have a happy life?
   Newsboys – Lord (I Don’t Know)
3. What do my friends really think of me.?
   Newsboys – Lost the Plot
   Sixpence None the Richer – Easy to Ignore
   Audio Adrenaline – Some Kind of Zombie
4. Do people secretly lust after me?
   Lenny Kravitz – Can we Find a Reason?
5. What should I do with my life?
   Newsboys – Thrive
6. Why must life be so full of pain?
   Jamiroquai – Where Do We Go From Here?
7. Will I ever have children?
   Pointer Sisters – 12
8. Will I die happy?
   Modjo – No More Tears
9. Can you give me some advice?
   Relient K – The Only Thing Worse Than Beating a Dead Horse is Betting on One
   Newsboys – Be Still
10. What do you think happiness is?
    Jars of Clay – Whatever She Wants
11. What is my favourite fetish?
    Creed – Bound and Tied
12. Am I a total freak?
    dc Talk – Jesus Freak

Hi all.
I hope you had a great Christmas and a decent New Year’s Eve. Me, I’m tired – It’s 7:13 and I’ve been up for nearly two hours. The little one doesn’t think that because Mum and Dad stayed up playing Cities and Knights of Catan(good win Callum!) and didn’t get to bed till 11:50 – wait an extra 10 minutes to see Pope Greg’s arbitrary year start flip a digit? no – that he should sleep in past 5:30…

So. I care very little about New Years Eve (I like the day off work on Monday though ).
I think the theme of Christmas gifts this year was ‘DVD’. Everyone in our family got DVDs (with the exception of Mat, and possibly Mum… not sure).

I also saw a few movies (Sin City, The Longest Yard and The Iron Giant). I’ll post a review on each of these shortly (hopefully anyway).

Have a great year everyone.

RodeoClown: is so very, very tired.

Um, I just realised that when I changed the look of the site a little while ago I did not set the RSS alternate tag in the header php file to point to the FeedBurner feed. Whoops.

Just looked at my statistics page and heaps of incoming hits are for my atom feed… so, if you are reading this via any feed other than the feedburner one, can you please update your feed subscriptions… please…

Thankyou.

Also, if you aren’t using an RSS reader. Get one and use it… There’s no way I could read 250 sites a day without it (in a reasonable timeframe anyway).

RodeoClown: didn’t check everything…

Hi,
just letting everyone know that if you post a comment with the word ‘Phentermine’ in it, it will be deleted instantly. Forever.

I have a stupid spammer trying to post comments filled with links to online drug stores (as in pharaceuticals, not narcotics), this word has been in every post so far, so by doing this I will no longer have to keep marking his stuff as spam.

If anyone legitimately needs to post a comment about it… well, mis-spell it or something.

RodeoClown: really hates spam. Unless it comes in a can. That stuff is tasty.

Just a quick note to say that I’ve upgraded the blog software to WordPress 2.0.

If anything funky is going on, that’s probably why. Let me know if you see any problems.

Thanks.

RodeoClown: thinks that the upgrade was relatively painless.

I’m not normally a huge fan of blonde jokes (being blonde), but this one is the absolute best I’ve ever heard.

RodeoClown: is ROTFLHAO.

Men Versus Women (part II)
Interesting observation. True? I’m not sure. Probably.

Lamenting the Disappearance of Proper Discourse
I would like to speak more better. No, really I would.

You’re probably a cessationist, too
When he puts it like that, you know he’s right.

View All Demotivators®
Demotivators. Not much else to say.

Alchemic Spot: Americans Grow To Fit Their Environment
It’s true! Science proves it! (Or in this case: Doesn’t… but it’s fun to pretend )

Del.icio.us links brought to you today by the letter R and the number 6.

Jason tagged me with this meme, so here you go. A bunch of stuff about me that you probably don’t particularly care about . Note the 1-4 does not represent a ranking here, they are just numbered so you can see I’ve done four of each.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Java developer (current)
2. Web developer
3. Research guy at uni.
4. PC repair/construction

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Zoolander
2. Shaun of the Dead
3. The 5th Element
4. Aladdin

Four places I have lived:

1. Hazelbrook, NSW (nearly 2 months and counting)
2. Blaxland, NSW (12 months)
3. Bullaburra, NSW (18 months)
4. Woodford, NSW (20 years)

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. Firefly
2. Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
3. Stargate (SG-1 and Atlantis)
4. Smallville

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Parma, NSW – first ever (new) family holiday
2. Cairns (well, Palm Cove), QLD for honeymoon
3. Adelaide, SA
4. Melbourne, VIC

Four websites I visit daily – These are the only ones I have without an RSS feed:

1. AGAST Message Board
2. PVP Online
3. FaithFUSION: home
4. Tales of the Questor

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Tuna mornay
2. Lasgne
3. The meat pie thing that Jen cooks
4. Tuna mornay

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Here, but a little bit cooler, and with Jen.
2. Here, but playing games instead of working.
3. At the pool. It’s too hot, if you couldn’t guess.
4. Hanging out with Callum.

Four people I am tagging. Feel free to do this in my comments if you want, or not at all.

1. Annelise
2. Kim Kotecki (Jason already got tagged)
3. Craig
   
4. Callum

RodeoClown: writes a lot of lists.

We just went to tuck Mat into bed, as we do everynight before we retire ourselves, and found him asleep with a book open on his lap.

We’d heard him making noises about an hour earlier and thought he was up playing with his toys when he should have been asleep. He wasn’t though, he was in bed, having got up to get a book to read, and then gone and tucked himself back in and was ‘reading’ himself to sleep. He smiled when we came in, but didn’t want us to put the book away, so we left it there to get after he had drifted off.

We just went back in then and found him fast asleep. The heading on the page he had open: Sleepy Dreams.

RodeoClown: has the cutest kid in the world.

Ok, I’ll join in.

brrreeeport.

RodeoClown: breeporting.

Baby #2: Jesse Edward Tyrrell was born last Sunday.

Mat woke us up at 11pm after having a nightmare about yoghurt and Jen started feeling a bit off. Her off-ness turned into pain quite shortly and so I spent most of the night massaging her lower back as contractions came and went.

Grandma came over at about 5am to collect Mat (who is having a great time holidaying with her and Grandpa), and Jen and I headed down to the hospital (I didn’t drive nearly as fast this time as I did with Mat).

After a few more hours of labouring, our obstetrician (Dr Parry – really good at obstretric-ing) told us that the baby hadn’t moved down at all and so Jen was labouring for very little gain. A caesarean-section was going to have to be arranged.

It all came about quite quickly, and Jen was prepped and ready within the hour, and I was dressed in surgical blues and brought it to sit with her while they finished cleaning the incision area and then while they removed the kid.

It was very quick, and within about five minutes we were shown a small, purple child and told that we had had a boy!

Hooray for a testosterone-filled house!

From then, Jen has healed remarkably quickly, getting up and walking around the day after the operation, and two days afterwards, having a shower by herself and feeling well enough to walk to a coffee shop in the next building for milkshakes with Mat and Grandma.

Thank God that we have another healthy boy to add to our collection – we already love him heaps, and are looking forward to raising two boys together.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us and the boys.

I have created another page on this site filled with photos if you are interested.

RodeoClown: tired, but happy.

note: During the operation dropped my sister’s digital camera, killing the XD card inside (if anyone knows how to fix this so I can get some photos out of it pleeeeeease let me know asap, thanks).

I’ve been invited to be a member of the Annandale Anglican/Christians in the Media team weblog.

Despite the fact that I don’t live in Annandale.
I don’t attend an Anglican church.
I don’t work in the media (except under very stretched definitions of media.

I am a Christian though. I guess that counts for something.
And I listen to their sermon podcast.
And I guess I’m exposed to the media occasionally.

Anyway, I’ll be posting stuff there too occasionally (I know I haven’t posted here for a while – small kids and busy and tired, blah blah blah).

There are some interesting people posting there, and hopefully soon it will be full of interesting posts. The comments are often very in-depth there, so don’t forget to check them out.

RodeoClown: Honourary Annandale Anglican

I used to hate playing in front of other people, and I never used to improve my skills. I played the piano for about 10 years before getting a bass guitar. I’m not the best bass player in the world (by a long, long way), but these things I’ve learned let me play well enough that I’m not asked to leave the bass at home. Hopefully they will help you too.

1) Play with (and for) others: Playing by (and for) yourself will never get you performing well. You can always stop if you make a mistake and keep practicing until you get it perfect. But it’s better to play middlingly well and entertain and uplift people than it is to play perfectly for no-one but yourself. Join a band, or jam with some friends, it doesn’t need to be in front of thousands, but playing with others gives you someone to be encouraged by and to encourage with your music.

2) Turn up the volume: Your volume knob goes to 11 for a reason – so people can hear you. When I first started playing, I used to turn myself right down and hide in the background. If I hit a wrong note, I played even softer. You’ll never improve until you turn yourself up, when you play loud, you have to learn quickly to cover your mistakes. And just because you don’t play exactly what’s written doesn’t matter. Getting thrown in the deep end here will help – it’ll also help you learn when you need to play to get the biggest impact.

3) Don’t worry (be happy!): This is actually two tips in one. Unless you are playing in front of a group consisting entirely of professional music critics, the only people who will know when you make a mistake are you and (only maybe) the people you are playing with. Don’t stop. That lets everyone know that you’ve mucked something up. If you can’t keep up with that fancy riff, just play the notes you can. Keep it moving and pick it up when you can.

A smile always helps too, if you enjoy yourself you’ll find it easier to get into a state of flow that will help you hit your rhythm right, and really make a joyful noise.

4) Turn down the volume: Music with all instruments all the time has a special term: a mess. If you want to play better, listen and figure out when not to play – gaps in the noise can actually make a bigger splash than constant noise. Walls of noise don’t give the mind a chance to think. Play softly when you’d normally play loud, let another instrument take charge. The other musicians will thank you for the opportunity and your sensitivity in playing. Don’t turn yourself down until after you’ve turned yourself up first though.

5) The bass guitar is a rhythm instrument. A bass player can get as fancy as they want, playing the melody and bringing harmonies, but their primary purpose is to act as the spine for the music. The drums set the beat, and the guitar and piano play the tune, but the bass is what drives everything along. If you are a bass player and spend too much time fiddling around and bringing the melody, cut back and make sure the rhythm is right. You shouldn’t be in the foreground, people should not even notice you are playing if you are doing it right. You emphasise the beat, and pull the rest of the music together, but the bass isn’t a lead instrument (well, there are exceptions, but I’m talking in general here). If you don’t play the bass, help your bassist by not sitting in his range (play low occasionally, but don’t remain down there all the time), and don’t fight him, but let him drive the rhythm of the song.

RodeoClown: Bassist Extra-ordinary (or not).

Better musicianship also comes with having a really good musical instrument to play. Electric guitars as well as acoustic guitars are very popular musical instruments to have and maybe even a set of drums would work too.

Last night after bible study we ended up having a discussion about tithing (giving 10% of your income to the church) and whether Christians should do it or not. It came about after one of the guys talked to a friend who came from a church that pushed tithing. Hard.

My view on the subject is this: We don’t have to do it, but it is an appropriate response to God providing us with a church. The church (locally in this instance) needs money to run, to pay the ministers, to help fund missionaries and charities, and it can’t get this money without asking for it (well, some churches I know of buy properties and rent them out, but that only acts as a supplement, not a primary income).

If everyone at pretty much any church in Australia gave 10% of their income (net income, I don’t count the money that is taken from my pay in tax – it was never my money ) to their local church, I think we would see a major shift in the view of the church. There would be huge amounts of money for charity work, probably enough to make a real dent in poverty and homelessness. We could pay for our pastors (and not just them, anyone who needs it) to get further training. We could make sure that everyone who wanted a bible could have one. For free.

It would make a huge difference.

But most christians just give what’s left in their wallets at the end of the week. It’s not wrong, but it’s sad. I think that your church should be an extension of your family, and we don’t/shouldn’t treat our families stingily. I think it is often a lack of trust that convinces people that they shouldn’t give large sums of money away. They need it for themselves and their families. Which could be true, but usually isn’t.

²²Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? ²⁶Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

²⁷“Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ²⁸If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! ²⁹And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. ³⁰For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

-Luke 12:22-31

If you haven’t guessed, Jen and I tithe what we earn. It was something my parents taught me to do from a young age. Mum always said that if I couldn’t afford to tithe now, and I said I would do it when I earned more money, that I would never do it. I think my mum is very wise. If we can trust God with what little we have, he will give us plenty more (that we should then use for his benefit).

I guess what prompted this little sermon is that in the mail today we got a letter from the Australian Government telling us they had underpayed us our family tax benefit for this year, and so they were giving us a further $1,300. Which is pretty much exactly how much it will cost for us to pay for registration and insurance on the car, which we weren’t sure if we would be able to afford without dipping into our savings this year. God always seems to drop money on us when we need it, hopefully we will be good stewards when we get more money too.

RodeoClown: doesn’t have to stress over where the money will come from.

Update: I have bumped this up after posting it on 10,000 words

(
6: today, 06/06/06
x
5: houses I’ve lived in
x
4: years of university
x
3: years of marriage
x
2: brilliant boys
x
1: wonderful wife
)

-

(
5: hours sleep
x
4: hours travelling
x
3: snacks that aren’t in my bag
x
2: missing carriages on the train
x
1: degree celsius on the platform
)

/

25: minutes at work so far

=

24: years of age.

RodeoClown: Happy Birthday to me.

A Passion For Growth – Prayer :: Colossians 1:1-14 by Andrew Barry

I listened to this sermon this morning on the train. It has inspired me to change the way I pray. Thanks Andrew.

RodeoClown: wants to grow in prayerfulness.

Comments over here

Anyone reading this blog via the url, rather than via rss, will have noticed that it seems to be working a whole lot better – no more URL redirects and the like.

This is all thanks to Jason Bean of Bnpositive design. Jason kindly offered me free hosting for my blog, which I gladly availed myself of. Many thanks to Jason.

You might want to check out his primary blog, wherein he posts many things, mainly humourous, and often insightful. He also posts on a whole bunch of other blogs, which I will link to here once he tells me what they all are

Thanks again JB!

RodeoClown: hosted.

If you go to The Official “Weird Al” Yankovic Web Site, you can download a parody song from Weird Al’s next album – “You’re Pitiful”.

It’s actually pretty good – nowhere near as annoying as some of his songs – Even Jen thought it was funny.

Some more Al stuff if you are that way inclined:

Weird Al Interviews Eminem

The Saga Begins music video
Amish Paradise music video

And finally: The Fat video clip (watch it next to ‘Bad‘)

RodeoClown: doesn’t have a poodle hat.

Today Mat and I were playing with playdough and he made a cave.
To go into the cave I created a dough facimile of Big Col (my dad). He was missing something though, so we stuck a beard on him. Dad’s beard is one of his defining features – I wouldn’t recognize him without it. Mum probably wouldn’t either – he’s had it since before I was born (or thereabouts).

Then we made a Dough-Matty. Mat was insistent that he was missing something. So he stuck a beard on his little homunculus.

Then we made teddy (who went on an adventure with Mat and Big Col at Jenolan Caves). Mat was adamant that he needed facial hair as well, so on it went.

At prayer time tonight, we asked Mat what he wanted to thank God for. His usual answers – CallumLisaLaura (one word), and lounges and beards.

So we prayed that he would grow up into a big, good, strong man. And that he would have a beard.

He’s gone to sleep happy.

RodeoClown: loves his beard.

After a discussion with Craig, I’ve decided to write with more of my own opinion and less qualifications. From now on, you can assume that everything I say is covered by BOCTAOE. What I say is (most likely) what I think. Either that or I’m thinking through an idea out loud.

Enjoy.

RodeoClown: damn straight!

My online handle varied when I was in highschool between Godboy, Fedaykin and a couple of others that I can’t remember. Right around when we were finishing up school for good, a bunch of people got everyone to sign their shirts. For no good reason I drew a picture of a rodeo clown on Lenny’s shirt.

A little while later I thought that rodeo clown sounded cool and reflected my personality, so I started using it.

I’ve had several people message me on IM thinking I was an actual rodeo clown. For those who are unsure, I’m not.

The correct way of writing the name is RodeoClown, capitalised and with no space. I’ll forgive you if you don’t get it quite right

I have this name on a lot of the larger sites around the net – when it was already taken (*grr*Flickr*grr*) I generally went for RodeoClown II. That’s never taken.

Not an amazing tale, but now everyone can know the origin of my name.

RodeoClown: not an actual rodeo clown.

Everyone has probably heard about the latest mobile phone scam going ’round. DC Marketing ring your mobile and then hang up before you answer, leaving a phone number for you to call back and then charging you exorbitant rates to listen to their phone spam.

It’s legit – I got hit with it (and hung up within about 10 seconds when I heard it was spam). My boss just got called about 10 minutes ago.

These guys are jerks, although they are technically not doing anything illegal because you have to call them back, which you can choose not to do.

Attention DC Marketing: anything you market I will not buy. Ever.

Why do advertisers feel the need to trick people into listening to their ads? If you have to trick me into hearing it, I don’t want it, and I won’t buy it. Gah!

List of phone numbers used here: 4 Wise Monkeys » DC Phone Scam

RodeoClown: hates DC Marketing.

Update: If you get hit by this – or rung by these people, report it here.

Got an excited phone call this morning whilst walking to work. Jen was ringing to announce that Mat had learned a whole bunch more letters in his alphabet book. Whilst sleeping.

Last night we went through the book and he could only identify a handful of letters (s, o, m, q, d), and this morning he showed Jen a whole big bunch more. Hooray!

RodeoClown: thinks reading is for cool kids.

Not so much because of the rain, which I think is awesome, but because the rain makes all of the city’s smokers seek shelter outside my building, and everywhere there is some shelter from the rain there is none from the haze of nicotine-filled, carcinogenic, horrid cigarette smoke.

RodeoClown: *cough*.

While walking to the station this morning, I started wondering what my reaction would be should someone randomly punch me in the face*.

I really don’t know what I’d do what I’d do – would I punch them back, drop and cry like a baby, run like the wind? What would you do?

*Afterwards I remembered this has actually happened to me, but the guy who did it has since become my best friend. Must have done something right, but what?

RodeoClown: not in the face! Not in the face!

I had a mate at school whose eyes closed when he laughed.
It was great. You could tell him a joke, then punch him in the guts. And he never saw it coming.

RodeoClown: cruel.

On August 24 (one week from now!), the International Astronomical Union is voting on a new planetary line-up for the solar-system. Should the vote pass, the new list of planets will be (from the sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, Xena. The only new pronunciation I’m sure of is Xena, the others are a bit trickier.

In this new billing, Charon (“K-aron”, or “Sh-aron”?) gets a promotion from being Pluto’s moon, to being a planet in his own right. Simmo thinks that if we are upgrading Charon, all Jupiter’s moons should get a boost in status too. I disagree, Pluto’s moon is pretty much as big as Pluto anyway, so calling them both planets will stop them squabbling.

Ceres is an asteroid at the moment, so it jumps fully two places on the ranking of cool stuff you can be if you are in orbit around a star.

My buddy Cork thinks that changing the solar-system is a bad idea as there will be huge costs involved in re-training all the kids to know the new layout, building new models for classrooms and updating all the encyclopaedias.

I love the idea of new planets. I realise the Union isn’t building them and hurling them into orbit (although that would be super-cool…) but the more planets the better I say.

RodeoClown: from Planet X.

It’s like two of my favourite comics got married and had an extremely cute baby. I would like to add that the topic discussed by said offspring is also dear to my heart. Five out of five!

If you care to see it, step this way.

Actually, you’ll probably hate it, unless you are Angus or Shy. Maybe Callum.

RodeoClown: ‘they’ rocks my socks.

Or… They killed Pluto.

Well, that sucks. There’s no Ceres or Xena either. Charon is right out.

Ah well, I think they are just doing it to keep solar-system model makers in business.

RodeoClown: has seen Saturn, but hasn’t seen Uranus. Heh.

I did it!
The Poddy is back for another week. Also, I believe that this is the first time I have been referenced in song.

Thanks guys!
Keep up the great ‘cast!

RodeoClown: has an updog shirt!

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald talks about a huge number of house repossessions occuring in Sydney as people default on their loans after people took out huge loans to buy big houses.

It seems our society is fixated on getting stuff now, no matter the eventual cost. Delayed gratification is never considered.

It’s something we need to think about, and try and change our ways. Instead of buying everything you want, think about what you need. After you have the necessities, you can worry about the extras. Save up and get it once you can afford it.

This applies to housing too – instead of getting a 5-bedroom house with 3 bathrooms and a harbour view, think about what you need – maybe three bedrooms. And you could share a bathroom with the kids. Maybe even consider (gasp!) renting. At the moment Jen and I are renting, we’d like to buy a house eventually, but at the moment renting suits us fine. We can move at the drop of a hat if necessary, we don’t have a huge debt hanging over our heads and we don’t have to pay rates or maintenance bills.

It’d be nice to have our own place, and maybe we will one day, but we don’t want to be struggling just to make loan repayments each month – we’d rather be able to pay off a mortgage comfortably.

A quick note about credit cards
Don’t think of a credit card as providing you with free money. It’s very much not free. Credit cards are handy – they let you wrangle all your payments into one lump sum payable at the end of the month, and if you don’t have quite enough money for something you need, you can still get it.
But, the best way to use a credit card is to spend only what you have in your account. If you couldn’t afford it with the money in your bank account, don’t buy it. If you pay back the entire amount each month then you don’t have to pay interest (then it effectively becomes free money).

Don’t spend more than you have, or you’ll get yourself into loads of trouble. Don’t take out a loan you can’t pay back. Wait, and only buy things once you can afford them. Modern society has lost this common sense with advertising telling you to spend now and worry about the cost later. It doesn’t work.

RodeoClown: not a financial advisor.

I got an email saying that my request to change email accounts was cool and that all further mail would be sent to the new address. That’s cool. Except I didn’t change email address!

Thanks to Emma K. from eBay who helped me get it back with a minimum of fuss.

The moral: keep an eye on your accounts, people can try and steal ‘em. Also, eBay has a good system to fix problems.

RodeoClown: reinstated eBay user.

Ok, doing some quick sums while waiting for a late-running CityRail train (don’t get me started…), an equivalent price for my home internet connection would run somewhere in the order of $3 million each year. And I’m on one of my ISP’s cheaper plans. I can understand paying more for mobile internet, but when the cost of a phone call is very expensive at a rate of 50c per thirty seconds, and I can download a MB of data in a minute or two on my phone, I can’t see how they can justify a 5000x increase in price compared to the landline data transfer.

The more I think about it, the more easily I can see how Telstra can pay ridiculous amounts of money to it’s bosses (thanks Dave).

RodeoClown: slightly more annoyed than last time.

As of tomorrow, I’ll be working an extra day each week from the comfort of my own home (bringing the total to two days).

This means two days a week I get an extra three minutes sleep-in as Mat will come and wake me up instead of my alarm clock.

And this is all thanks to the magic of the internet (well, that and my boss) – I can log into my work computer from home and do everything I would normally do at work, minus four hours of commuting. Hooray again, I say!

The only thing that could make this any better would be for Remote Desktop to support dual monitors :S

RodeoClown: another happy telecommuter.

Matty loved this clip so much, he grabbed his ukelele and started to play along (well, he actually started banging it on the ground, but hey – that’s rock’n'roll for you).

RodeoClown: smells like awesome!

AndyM shares his views on Santa.

RodeoClown: approves (of the title)

The Australian parliament now allows human life to be created only to be destroyed in the name of ‘science’. What I found even more disturbing is in the run-down of how the MPs voted.

By my count 22 female MPs voted in favour of killing babies, and only 7 voted against. The men were split exactly down the middle – 37* for, 37 against.

It is truly a sad day when women, who care for their young were so overwhelmingly in favour of creating babies only to kill them.

RodeoClown: loves babies more than most female MPs.

*I’m including the one MP who abstained from voting, which in my mind is a vote for.

One of the conditions of the aforementioned allowing of baby-killing is that these children are only allowed to be killed in the first two weeks of their existence.

Logically following on from this, we should see laws passed outlawing abortion after the first two weeks, as obviously that is when a baby becomes important to the government. As it stands, a baby created purely to be destroyed for research purposes has more legal protection than an ‘inconvenient’ child – which you are allowed to murder after they are very obviously a child and not just a ‘lump of cells’.

RodeoClown: expects to see a surge in the birth/adoption rate in exactly eight-and-one-half months.

I thought this comic was accurate awesome.

Update: It is, in fact, accurate!

RodeoClown: still not a mutant superhero.

If you did, please let me know. I’d love to borrow the tape

Thanks.

RodeoClown: missed it.

I finished up my job on Friday.
The whole family is sick.

I hate being sick on my holidays

Also – Zelda is awesome.

-RodeoClown: sick of being sick

I just found out that everyone at my old job was just fired.

If anyone knows of any jobs available, can you let me know and I will pass on the info to my mates back at Proxima/Compuware. Most of the guys are Java developers, but there is a good mix of other skills too (web development and systems administration plus a few other languages).

Thanks in advance.

Update: a small bit of backstory:

• - Proxima was bought out at the beginning of the year by Compuware.
• - We were rushed through two crappy projects.
• - Pay reviews were pushed back throughout the year till the start of October.
• - Everyone was just fired, finishing up at the very end of September.
• - This means that everyone gets a redundancy payout based on their old pay level.
• - Compuware management are jerks.

RodeoClown: missed it by that much.

I discovered this morning that it is quite expensive to get a taxi home from work.

The driver, Jim, was quite keen for the fare (at 1:20am), and work will cover it, but ouch… wasn’t quite expecting it to be as large as it was.

So, why was I working late?
We had a release for our software scheduled, and a few show-stopper bugs turned up at the last minute. But now it’s fixed, and I don’t plan on doing that again any time soon.

RodeoClown: awake. Barely.

We recently had our aerial reconnected (neither at my request nor desire). After two years of not having television, suddenly it has re-entered our house and reminded me why I can’t stand TV.

There are six things Ian detests, seven that he hates:

1 – Ads. I’d forgotten how annoying they are. And how frequent. And now they are on SBS too – in the middle of the news. If you really must advertise, than use Google’s advertising method: show ads at least tangentially related to what you are viewing. Makes a lot more sense to me than throwing ads for feminine hygiene products into the path of this twenty-something male with a wife who does her own shopping.

2 – Sex. It’s far too easy to find myself watching something with far too much skin. I’m trying hard to make my wife the sole concern of my sexuality, and shows concerning themselves mainly with sex make this much more difficult than it needs to be. SBS, you are a prime contender in this arena – especially with your Friday night soft-core pornography ‘documentaries’.

3 – Sloth. It’s disgusting, but I can’t stop watching it. Moving from the lounge is hard, and often more than my work-abraded willpower can take. I’ll do the dishwasher later. I’ll take care of my wife’s needs once this show is over. I’ll just wait till the end. Even if it’s boring me. To death. Slowly.

4 – Speed (specifically the lack thereof). I can’t speed up TV. I can read things faster if I choose to. I can skip to the next song on a CD or the next chapter on a DVD. Sometimes I just want to know the outcome of a show, but have to sit through till the credits to see it. I couldn’t be bothered going online to find out what is going to happen (see previous point).

5 – Seduction. Even though I don’t like it, the longer the TV is available, the more I find myself wanting to just “see what’s on” when I walk past. Intellectually I don’t care, but the call is strong.

6 – Social Norms. Everything going on in TV-land seems to have a set of values that clashes with just about everything I believe. Adultery ‘Affairs’ are commonplace, and a bit of harmless fun. Everybody fornicates* on the first date – if they even get around to ‘dating’. Living together, sure, why not? So many kids think that this is how the world really works, and they are going to get burned. I don’t want my kids to think that commitment is meaningless.

7 – Seven. Did I mention I hate Channel 7? My two most recent reasons: Today Tonight and Heroes. One of which they keep showing, and the other they stopped. I’ll let you, discerning reader, figure out which is which.

RodeoClown: watching.

*Replace with a synonymous F-word for a more accurate description. It’s not love.

This is awesome. Really, really awesome. Spontaneous musical numbers breaking out at a food court? Just like Real Life(tm)!

You can read all the details at the Improv Everywhere site.

Update: if the video doesn’t play, click on the link and you can see it there instead.

RodeoClown: would also like a napkin serviette.

I Ian, in the presence of God,
take you Jennifer to be my wife;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish
as long as we both shall live.

This is my solemn vow and promise.

—

Jennifer, with this ring I wed you;
With all that I am and all that I have
I honour you;
In the name of God. Amen.

RodeoClown: doesn’t promise much.

On Wednesday I walked to Wynyard Park to meet up with an unknown number of  people I didn’t know for lunch.

Of the millions of people who could have shown up, 6 of us did, and we went to Starbucks, as it looked much warmer in there than it was in Wynyard Park. Anti-clockwise from the wall there was: Justin, dvm, CraigS, Michael Canaris, RodeoClown and Luke.

As Andrew (dvm) said: “…it turned out to be just a normal conversation between six people”. In fact, it was almost entirely unlike a group blind man-date, with the exception being that there was a group of men who turned up unaware of who else would be there. Actually, put like that, it does indeed sounds quite a bit like that. Hmmm.

It was nice to put some faces to names, and to be surprised by who turned up (Luke had posted over at Justin’s blog that he would try and get there, but Andrew was there first, and both Justin and I both mistook him for Luke, which (having now met both of them), is kinda wierd as Andrew is not exactly tall or British, and Luke is kinda not small, blonde, or a criminal lawyer.

Meeting people from the internet is fantastic (assuming you don’t hang out in seedy places online), I highly recommend it! In fact, we are having a family we met on the internet over for dinner next week.

RodeoClown: loves meeting new people (and even people who aren’t new at all, but just ones I haven’t met before).

If you do, I’m selling a copy on eBay.
It’s just the game (no guitars) and it is in perfect condition (it’s still sealed).
Bidding starts at $25.

RodeoClown: public service announcement

I have 4 wii controllers, two of which are brand new, and two are a couple of years old.

One of the new controllers stopped working, so I rang Nintendo about getting it fixed, and while I was on the phone, I asked if I could get some replacement straps for the old controllers.

Today I got a pack in the mail, and they had sent me 4 of the rubbery jackets that go over the controllers to stop people smashing other people and their stuff with them. I’ve already got 4 though, so if anybody with a wii needs a couple of covers, let me know.

RodeoClown: appreciates the thought…

I’m not sure why, but your account details landed square in my inbox, password and all*. If you want them back, let me know. Otherwise I’ll just assume your identity, send disturbing pictures to your old Pelham High school buddies, get access to your credit card and go on a spending spree, living your life for you until a US government agency shoots me in the back, then dumps me in a maximum security prison where I’ll spend the rest of my days making humourous licence plates and avoiding large, lonely men archive the email and do nothing at all.

RodeoClown: wouldn’t do that. Would he?

* Oh, and I checked, the email/password combo works, the account is legit.

2003 – The year of growing up. Fast.
2004 – The year of Matthias.
2005 – The year of death.
2006 – The year of Jesse.
2007 – The year of other people’s problems.
2008 – The year of Aravis.
2009 – The year of surviving.
2010 – The year of pets.
2011 – The year of…

RodeoClown: one more year

I got sunburnt while working today.
I think that’s a first.

RodeoClown: might try and claim sunscreen on tax this year

Why do clouds have a flat bottom?
Are they sitting on top of something?

RodeoClown: cloudy

Jesse just prayed extremely earnestly for the “people in Japan who had the salami”.

RodeoClown: is it ok to laugh?

Four hours.
One word.
Bug defeated.

That’s real programming!