Procrastination.

Last.FM

JJ — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 06:35:00 +0000

Broadcast your musical listening choices! Stalk others'! Edit: Gees having another look at it it has this mysterious feature where it will play songs from my 'neighbours' (a figurative term referring to similarities in music taste). I wonder how this thing works - I really don't recall giving my permission to share my music, and the program and the website are all above board. Maybe its the music fairy, I don't know. In related news how the hell is Kelly Clarkson similar to my musical tastes.

Party Poppin' Power Rangers

JJ — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 01:18:00 +0000

Suze recently got older, and part of the celebrations was dinner out with the UWS food type folks, over at Eurolounge at the towers.

The food was alright I suppose. The place had a lovely ambience though, with a live jazz band and lovely warm colour changing non-flammable table lamps which I came oh so close to bringing home. Seeing as there was a crispy skin duck option I immediately sprang for it (I love duck, no not in that way). I can't say that it was very crispy skinned (the Chinese have that down pat, I don't know what went wrong here), but duck is still duck, even soggy-skinned, and the tenderness and flavour saved the day for me.

Surprisingly enough for a 'Modern Australian' menu they served Wagyu beef, and two pairs took this option. Personally I'm not really able to stomach Wagyu well. Wagyu needs to be sliced quite finely and served closer to raw (to preserve the flavour, and so that the fat deposits don't reach that stage of gammy chewy grossness), and my ability to eat raw beef decreases with the thickness of the beef. Tataki? A-OK go for gold. Inch thick barely cooked beef tongue (even at one of the best Japanese BBQ restaurants in Sydney, Rengaya)? Gag reflexes setting in. Unfortunately the chef at Eurolounge chose the (relatively) thickly sliced and somewhat cooked (I'd hazard a guess at medium) option, resulting in those inedible solidified fat deposits rather than the almost liquid fat that usually makes wagyu so good. This didn't stop the birthday girl from taking on (and losing) a challenge to eat a smacking huge gob of solidified and cooked fat within 45? seconds. I think I gagged just watching her try it.

At the end of dinner everyone was quite surprised however by a 'cakage' fee of $27 (considering that there was 9 of us that would equate to about $3 a head). It was a lovely cake done up in the shape of a rose, however I think the cakage fee was equal to a substantial proportion of the cost of the cake, and noone was really expecting it (there was a bit of a 'did someone short us' moment on the bill before we found this out). In retrospect I'm guessing it was to cover the cost of the (alcoholic) shots provided to us - not exactly the best idea in light of the large number of P platers we had with us, but only one gave it a miss. I mean I've heard of corkage fees, but this was the first time I'd been cakaged (if its even a word).

Unfortunately there was a bit of an incident at the end of the night, with the birthday girl getting accidentally 'popped' in the face. This is as close as an approximation to the event as I could find during my one minute youtube search(there's a wealth of party poppin' shenanigans), just without the warning or the protective camera. Fortunately medical staff (slash family members, having both in the one place is quite handy) were at hand to save her from a life of canine-co-dependence.

Gastro outbreak, or something along those lines

JJ — Mon, 29 May 2006 13:38:00 +0000

Yes, somehow Sydney managed to cop a nice outbreak of Gatsro last week. Myself included! It was a mightily painful experience, and I must say I spent a lot more time in the bathroom in those 3-4 days than I had in (approximately) the 3-4 weeks prior to that. AND THE PAIN. It sprung on Monday and lasted a glorious 4 days, disrupting my experiments at uni. Just above there is a graphical representation of my stomach: the yellow bit is where there was holy shit fiery stabbing pain every 10-15 minutes for several days.

The culprit? Well I either didn't wash my hands effectively before eating or after going to the bathroom (admittedly I don't do full 10 second washes, but come on!). Personally I'd like to thank Goulburn Street SuperBowl, which is the last place of import at which I ate. Sure the food is in huge servings, comes at the speed of light and is reasonably tasty, but its not the cleanest place out there (a quote from the aforementioned website: "The restaurant is a bit dirty especially the cutlery"). Neither of the other guys I had dinner with got the horrible sick, but regardless its still top of my suspect list.

Well, that's the price I pay I suppose. Also worth noting is that its not worth the time, effort or hassle to attempt to have a walk-in visit with a doctor in the city. $60 for just a consult; I suppose city doctors need more money - I chose the 'I'll drive home to my local thanks' option. This entailed a further hour and a half wait (on top of the writhing in pain drive home), just to see the bloke prescribe me an over the counter stomach pill that did shit all, a list of food not to eat and advice to nick off from work/uni for a few days and ride the wave of pain 'til its over. And what a fun ride that was! As an aside I'd like to thank my good friend Buscopan. They're puny little things and they taste like tic tacs. I have to say they did exactly nothing for me, other than to maybe slightly improve my breath. As I'm sure that anyone who has had the (mis)fortune to chew pills knows, if it doesn't taste like shit its not doing shit.

Well the bright side? I managed to get some potty reading happening. The Da Vinci Code no less! A suitable place for such a book I think. I'm not a big fan of Dan Brown (being a Catholic doesn't really help that much); having read the book its just a really poorly written and characterised book that floats along on the safety of its controversial revelations or what not. I don't think I'll continue on to pay for the movie: its getting absolutely crapped on by reviewers, and even managed to get banned in the Philippines. I don't really agree with the sentiment though: people should be free to see how poor the movie is themselves. Hopefully I'll manage to somehow aquire a copy from the magical fairy internet to discover that myself.

I'm apparently 67% Benicio Del Toro and 62% Paul Walker

JJ — Tue, 02 May 2006 03:10:00 +0000

No, I'm not talking about one of those retarded 'How IMRE KERTESZ are you?' TheSpark.com quizzes or anything lame like that. This is a decently entertaining but unfortauntely inaccurate website called MyHeritage.com. Take the 'test' today!

Sadly it relies on matching the pose, facial expression and hair style represented in the photo, which makes it a lot less accurate than if it solely relied on profile photos (ala police matching style). Of course this results in much comedy, such as getting four blondes from four asians (above), and other miscelleneous gender bending fun (below).

The only duplicates I got were Benicio Del Toro and Paul Walker (yes I'm excluding the numerous female matches). I'm fine with that!

Parking Ticket Efficiency

JJ — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:33:00 +0000

Having overstayed my street parking in the city by about half an hour (thank you random Japanese restaurant for bringing out my meal so long after my friends that one had already finished and departed for K) I returned from dinner to be greeted with the sight of almost the entire street having little orange envelopes held between windscreen and wiper. Included was my car. Awesome.

Opening up my little gift from the gray ghosts I almost had a double take: gone are the ratty old carbon-papered hand-written near-illegible parking infringements of old. They've been replaced with sterile and precise, heat-imprinted semi-glossy parking receipts, as if I'd just purchased myself (at great cost might I add) after-the-fact parking. Its got the whole kit and kaboodle on it: besides date and time it describes my car, its location and the offence in exacting detail (no more weaseling out of these on one slightly off or illegible detail anymore). Observing them on one of my non-offending days over at Parramatta I'd say it would have taken the parking officer about a minute to type in the relevant information and print it out.

Flipping my little receipt-of-debt over to investigate my options, I noticed that they've also streamlined the payment process. The orange envelope is now pretty much just for show (and to protect the receipt within from the elements I suppose, heat imprinted paper loves the sun): you don't mail them back anymore, hell you don't even have to rock up to the infringements office to pay. Parking infringement resolution, meet the internet! I just had to go to the handy-dandy website on the back of the receipt, credit card in hand, and just a minute of form filling later (about as long as it took to print the damn thing out I guess) I'm now less one parking infringement (and $75 bucks).

Thanks Sydney City Council! Putting a positive media spin on it though I've figured out that if I avoid parking tickets (slash receipts) for the rest of the year (this being my first) I can whittle down the cost of overstayed parking in the city to 20 cents per day averaged over the year. Doesn't feel as bad if I look at it that way.

Monkey Poo Coffee

JJ — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 03:46:00 +0000

Nominally I'm a Filipino. Both my parents were born there and so was I, but having lived in Australia for so long I'm just not very Pinoy, in language or mannerisms. Still, I like to keep a casual eye on happenings in the Philippines, such as failed coups, firing computer-illiterate judges and freak occurances of nature.

Regardless, the most interesting piece of news I've seen recently actually has to do with food. Not so much cooking and cuisine as new product development so to speak. Some resourceful Filipino entepreneurs somehow came up with the bright idea of taking the poo of civets, and putting it into coffee. Granted there's a culinary reason behind it all: the civets like eating, digesting and then excreting coffee beans, which apparently somewhere along the line gives them a unique smooth chocolatey taste (fermentation and what not). Interesting indeed, but not something I'd be creative enough to think of myself, nor really try, at least not while sober.

This Coffee Alamid, as its known, is actually a relatively rare commodity, with an annual production of only 500Kg. And it sells for about $150 a kilo. Yes that's right, $150 per kilo of poo! Rest assured though, if you do buy this connoisseur's coffee choice you're not only paying for a feast for your tastebuds, but you're also helping the environment, preserving a rare species, and supporting the livelihood of farmers!

I haven't seen it anywhere locally (and we currently have no plans to import it) but I'm sure its just a matter of time.

Bunnies advertise Kellogg's Mini-Wheats in 30 seconds?

JJ — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:59:00 +0000

For those of you that actually watch TV, Kellogg's mini-wheats have started a new promotion to focus on teens. Two high schoolers (Dharma and Greg) break up in 30 seconds! Average for a TV advertisement, slightly above par if you're an impressionable teen on the market for a new and exciting breakfast cereal I suppose, but when I saw it it seemed awfully familiar. The hyperactive 30 second replay, the narration style, the girl's shriek when the library nerd tries to plant a wet one at the end.

Well it came to me soon enough. Angry Alien productions may not immediately ring any bells, but they take such classics as Star Wars, Aliens and Titanic and replay them in 30 seconds, with bunnies. I'm sure I've at least harrassed amie and suze with it over MSN at one time or another. The voice acting pretty much makes the movies and they're all pretty entertaining (be sure to repeatedly spam over the 'replay' button at the end of the flashes).

The style of the ad is exactly the same, hell the girl's yell at the end sounds exactly like one of the bunnies from several of the 30 seconders. Doesn't seem to be any recognition of the ad on the AA website, so I'm wondering did they actually get permission from the authors to lift it? I suppose that its sufficiently different from the original but where does inspiration end and plagiarism begin? Looks like advertisers today just cruise the internet or library to get ideas, sounds pretty dodgy to me but seems they can get away with it scot-free.

Pizza Apple Pie?

JJ — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:42:00 +0000

What's in the box, in the box? What's in the box today?

Blimey, it sure isn't a pizza. The writing on the box lied! That's an apple pullapart! It looks like something that our girl scout baker would be more familiar with than the usual greasy commercialised Italian fare that comes in these sorts of boxes.

Well it looked nice enough - unfortunately beauty here was only skin deep. From the taste of it, it seemed that after baking a few pizzas they just plonked the apple pullapart in that very same pizza oven. It had that distinctive inside of the pizza oven taste, or maybe the greasy flavour had immigrated into my mouth from the pizza and just refused to leave. Either way it was pretty nasty, I guess apples and pizzas just don't mix. Or do they? I'm not really game to try, could be interesting I guess but I so love causing animal deaths at some point in time during the preparation of my food.

I'm down with posting the inane and irrelevant

JJ — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 18:22:00 +0000

Since I'm such a lazy bum my posts can serve double duty.

1. The tail end of summer weather. Mercury was hitting the mid thirties for the latter half of the week in one final hurrah. Everything's just peachy from inside the lab but at home I have to leave the window open or else the mini server farm in my room makes it somewhat uncomfortably hot. Cool weather's better anyway: a new season's worth of stuff in the shops, plus layers - a skinny guy's best friend.

2. Service station counter-top promotional offers. You know, the buy two of a certain candy or confectionary for a reduced price sort of thing. I'm really a sucker for these, I'd say I buy them about a fifth of the time when I go in to buy petrol (a roundabout guess, I don't keep a log). Yes, I know the main reason they're discounting them is because they're approaching the end of their natural lifespans, but its usually not a problem. If I don't scarf them down during the drive home they sit in the car until I get around to it.

3. Where's my security pass? Its been a good two months for me at FSA and I just completed my induction (I'm guessing the pass follows sooner or later). This means I need to sign in as a visitor every morning to get the labs, and that my car is stuck being parked outdoors in the hot, hot sun. Good thing I don't leave children or pets in the car while I'm at lab, pokies style.

Putting these three things together meant that said confectionaries sat in that outdoor parking in those mid thirties temperatures for a good several hours or so. The result? A fused-solid multi-coloured brick of gooey gummi goodness. It had a warm, soft consistency, and stretched like good cheese on pizza, the sort that just keeps going and going (I'm sure our cheese connoisseur would know what I'm talking about). I managed to get a good two bites of the thing by juggling it and the steering wheel (don't try this, its worse than talking on the phone and driving) before a short stop at the lights had it ending up sitting on the floor of my car for the ride home (well past the five second rule unfortunately, so no more eating). Goodbye poor gummy lollies.

Room is clean!

JJ — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 13:17:53 +0000

Room is clean!

Dawn of War

JJ — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 14:00:20 +0000

Here are two replays of Roy and I getting owned in DoW. Or more specifically, Roy and I getting owned in one game, and then Roy getting owned in the second game. I learn!

dow.rar.

Current dual monitor set up

JJ — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 03:09:36 +0000

Much cleaner than reality.

Riiise from your grave

JJ — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:51:14 +0000

Testing Blogger system, since our super web host has dodgey perl support.

WTF, back to school this year... my Economics clas...

Nick — Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:23:24 +0000

WTF, back to school this year... my Economics class (which I'm failing) is like being f00kin 15 again in my old high school! So I'm sitting there spinning my pen around my hand, and out of the big blue ocean~ she stops her lecture and tells me how annoying I am and how I am driving her crazy with that spinning of my pen, and THEN she snatches the pen outta my hand and puts it on the table! wtf, old bitch factor? never-the-less, 5 mins later I was back at it again :p but wtf is up with that. grounds for a lawsuit? assault? defemation of character? discrimination?

um....WTF?

faith — Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:16:05 +0000

um....WTF?