Lachlan ‹ Blog ‹ 2007

Andy Warhol Exhibit is at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art

December 22, 2007

Yesterday I went to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the GoMA (Queensland Gallery of Modern Art). The GoMA is a brand new multi-million dollar building that is part of the state's cultural centre, centred along the south bank of the Brisbane River.

Firstly, as it was a state government funded exhibit, I expected it to be free, but like the museum, I was wrong, it cost $20 for an adult, $16 concession. Works have been brought in from galleries all over the world for this exhibit that runs through to the 30th March 2008, so you still have plenty of time to go see it. It's actually pretty impressive that a little country town was able to put such an exhibit on display, it just goes to show you that Brisbane is growing up.

If you need a way to entertain children for a day, I would recommend visiting the exhibit, there are about half a dozen activities to keep them occupied in the theme of Andy's various works. One is a photo booth where you can make pictures like the one of me shown below.

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Before you visit, you should download the audio tour from the gallery website and put it on your DAP (such as a phone or iPod). I didn't do this as I didn't know about it beforehand.

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My dad ruins christmas and that's ok

December 18, 2007

Every year Christmas erupts in this giving of material possessions that makes people unhappy. It can be for many reasons including people misunderstanding who you really are (which can hurt deep from family), or people taking it too seriously and getting completely wrapped up in gift giving without giving a moment of thought as to why. It further complicates matters when surprises are spoilt, and the dollar value of a gift comes into question, or is revealed. It is simply better to not know.

The past two years I have created a wish list in the same format, numbered 1 though x. This never works that well with #1 often being ignored, often not for cost reasons, but because someone in the family has an ideological standpoint, which hurts the most when the item is of educational value compared with other items. Yet year after year we continue to do this, to bring satisfaction and joy to the gift giver. I've pretty much given up on mindstorms, after having run it in my list for over half a decade, I still put it in my list this year. Of course being a mechatronic engineer having slogged it out at uni for the past 4 years, and probably wanting mindstorms for the 4 years prior, you would think that this award winning educational product would be an appropriate gift, more so than the largely disused Combat Flight Simulator II and joystick combo I was given one year.

So this year I have taken a different approach. I still list the dollar value at retail to aid in my parents decision making process (money makes the world go round). Mindstorms is actually several hundred dollars cheaper than the item my sister has basically bullied my parents into ensuring she recieves under the Christmas tree this year. I have created a chart instead of a list which describes the relationship between gifts. For example a game may accompany a console which may require a tv tuner to use. Let's face it, it isn't the cheapest thing on the list, but when coupled with the questions I had been asked prior to having prepared the list, I am getting a Wii, or at least the USB TV tuner I specified.

Not only is the chart different in that it specifies relationships between items, it also arranges the big ticket items by dollar value rather than preference. It also states that I don't have to get a big ticket item, pick from smaller items. The cheapest items are a bunch of albums that I wouldn't mind having. Rather than speaking of dollar value, I should be speaking about entertainment value per dollar spent. In that area music clearly wins where single songs reach hundreds of play counts over the years. It is also good as it supports artists, especially given that I specified albums. Singles don't help bands.

Some people may think that video games would rank next, but I don't have the attention span to ever finish one, and let's face it, competing for a TV to play a video game when you're at uni doesn't win appraisal, ever. Though video games are by far more social, especially with Internet gaming where you don't have to be social with your family, but can be with your friends and extended family instead. In fact a more solitary pursuit wins, Mindstorms.

The other things I listed were some star wars Lego sets, (I love Lego, and get the magazine quarterly in the mail still), and of course I listed the Canon EOS 400D again which has dropped about $400 since last Christmas, but after this year it's usefulness is limited as all the social events are pretty much over. If I do get the 400D, I'll have no excuse not to go to Q1, even if Richard or others are working that day. The last and most item was an entry level SONY HD HDD handycam (I have no use for). My sister said "could I think of anything else more expensive", and I said yes (that 40" Bravia TV I want). When I told Richard he laughed and said he could think of more expensive things as well. This comes from someone who spent $500 on a computer chassis and close to $300 on in-ear earphones. I think there is also a solid chance of getting the 400D as I have been bitching about my G7 all year (stupid consumer grade 5x7mm CCD), but in realistic terms I'll be getting the Wii. But who knows, it could amalgamate itself into a graduation gift that I've been promised, and with Vodafone mobile Internet out of the question until at least August, who knows.

I don't really care for gifts anymore, but if it makes my parents happy, I am grateful to accept. They like to make me happy, and it's one of the few things they know how to do which does so. But sometimes the only gift you can ask for is respect (which is what I have really been wanting the past couple of years over material possessions), and when they fail to deliver on that, getting upset is inevitable. Any material possession I can go and buy myself, but trust and respect from your parents can't be packed bought and sold, but it can still be given. And it is that inability to buy the gift that makes it more precious than anything I have listed on my Christmas wish list.

But there is one redeeming characteristic of Christmas, and it's not going to see the relies who you otherwise don't know exist and exists no-one else in the family to which you can relate to. It's of course the gathering of the relatives you do know exist. This year rather than falling on the weekend before Christmas, the family lunch falls on Christmas day. All my favourite family will be there, so I am looking foward to that.

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My Chemical Romance

November 29, 2007

Last night I went to the My Chemical Romance concert with Richard and Troy. We were in "first barrier", which is the closest to the front. I wasn't at the front though. Not having been to a show before I didn't know what to expect really. The audience were quite subdued for the support acts, not that they weren't bad, I just people were saving their energy, and the acts didn't try to engage too much.

My Chemical Romance started, and the crowd got really into it, but were still well behaved. It was much more civilised than televised broadcasts of the Big Day Out are made out to be, it was more like any other rock concert. It probably helped that it was a single main act and most of the kids were under 18. There were lots of women there, and Troy said Richard made a much of man friends \seedy

Troy was being a party pooper during the support act and fiercely told me that "we do not clap", which I promptly ignored. After My Chemical Romance started it didn't matter that he wanted to rain on the parade, if he didn't have fun that was his prerogative, but he wasn't going to drag me down with himself anymore. It's so hard to get into anything with such strong clouds of conservatism and cynicism constantly hanging around you.

So that was my first (rock) concert, all-in-all a good time was had and I survived.

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Last day of classes

October 26, 2007

Today was my last day of classes ever as an undergraduate, and I can't help but feel somewhat melancholic about it.

Through micromouse and MLI, METR has forged to be a social group of some description. Today marks the end of that, which makes me somewhat sad. Sure I have them all on facebook, but it will all drift apart, and I will end up alone.

As I target to complete my assignments and exams so that I can graduate, the future feels grim. I truly feel proud to graduate with those of the MLI.

METR4LIFE,
out

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Blog Move Completed

October 09, 2007

I have successfully finished moving my blog to ZinZam.

I finished the move of the articles on the weekend, and got word up from Richard that SI hosting would not be renewed in favour of dreamhost and I would have to backup my smithydll.id.au domain.

I had 228 MiB of junk lying around on the domain which I managed to backup last night, I still need a database backup, but if I don't get it is not the end of the world.

I just setup my smithydll.id.au domain as a forward to my ZinZam blog for the time being. I've lost all the comments, but that is ok.

A lot of my documents and pictures linked to from ZinZam are missing now because I left them on my smithydll.id.au domain which now forwards to ZinZam, so I will have to upload them somewhere else to fix that. In addition to that my latex serving script is no-longer live so I will have to upload that somewhere else, I will probably be able to upload it to dreamhost somewhere.

I know my gallery2 installation has been broken all year, but I will re-upload all my micromouse photos from METR3800 to my ZinZam gallery at some point, which will be sweet. Hopefully Richard will be able to backup my old database so I can tag them with the same commentary.

That is about it from me, back to writing my thesis.

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The Lego® Company comes through again

September 22, 2007

It has been a year since I last got a Lego set with the World Club magazine (which didn't cost me anything). Since this is the first issue since I renewed, it means they got the renewal form which is good.

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This time it came with a small set from the City range, a small boat. I think it's a fire fighting boat. It doesn't actually say what it is supposed to be. Though it's fairly obvious it's a small fireboat.

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Again a fair number of pieces came with the set, and even a single spare part. Lego are good at giving you spared of the piece you are most likely to loose. This case is a transparent blue round 1x stud. I almost lost one of them opening the packet.

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And the completed set, set against a blue screen I setup on my laptop lid opened at 180 degrees (horizontal).

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Again it came with a lego man which is quite awesome. The Lego Company is awesome.

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New MODX Stuffs

July 23, 2007

Today I have released a new chapter in the phpBB Modification Team's MODX to the masses. As of today MODX1.0.1 has been released.

All told it is a fairly minor release that addresses some of the concerns of using MODX1.0 with phpBB3.

Firstly the issue with version numbers such as 3.0.B3 has been addressed. Secondly translated imagesets are now also supported, that is templates with translations associated with them. Now you can package new imageset items translated into languages other than English (en-GB, World English).

To go along with this I planned new compatibility releases of two MODX tools. Firstly mEAL got a nice update I'm sure everyone will hate :P. And secondly, MOD Studio got it's first release in over a year to deal with MODX and phpBB3 compatibility.

That should be enough to keep everyone out of mischief for a while. The MODX documentation has also been moved to it's new home from PDFs to the MODs documentation section. If anyone knows how to change the stylesheet for docbook to enable prefixing titles with numerals I can also release PDF versions, and would help me with my thesis.

Have fun modding.

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Albums you really get into

June 03, 2007

For a few years I have been listening to real music, and I always buy albums. Alot of people say "why buy the album when you'll only like two songs from it?" Well that is true only if your listening to the back street boys, Madonna, or Britney Spears (in that case you're lucky to like two songs from the album).

This week I bought Linkin Parks new album, pretty much because I would and I already had Hybrid Theory and Meteora (both were gifts). I didn't expect much, but I am really linking this album. Not just a one or two songs thing, but I've just been letting the album play through from start to finish. I always listen to an album from start to finish when I first get it, it really helps you get the album rather than thinking of it as a collection of songs, you appeciate it as a whole worth. This is part of the reason I like buying albums. It's an ok album, nothing spectacular, but probably LPs most polished album yet.
Take for example, the highly successful Green Day, their latest album (2004) was a rock opera. The only way to truly get the message from all the songs was to listen to the whole album in a sitting, an experience you don't get from the top 10 on video hits on a sunday morning, or by buying individual 99c tracks off iTunes.

Of course, the ever changing popularity game has no time to sit back and enjoy an album as they have to get caught up in the latest and greatest single from the artist of the moment as promoted by the record company. And that's part of the appeal of rock music, it's alot more real than sensationalist celebrity of the moment pop music artists.

And of course there are those who move on from boy bands and proove themselves to be legitimate artists, such as Robbie Williams, one of the greatest entertainers today.

As I have now gone off topic I will finish this post. Until next time I post, have a good one.

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phpBB.com Live again

March 18, 2007

It seems Bertie was able to get all the honey out of the server, but it took a long time as honey is really sticky. It seems a rack mount server isn't the best place in the world for a bear to store their honey.

The site has also been converted over to Olympus and the new website has been released, it seems really shiny and new, hopefully Bertie won't stick honey into this one, you could imagine the result, no fun for anyone then.

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Edit: need some pictures to spice up the homepage

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.NET Framework 1.1 Support & Vista

March 02, 2007

Starting April releases of my applications mEAL, mod_to_modx, and MOD Studio will no-longer be compatible with the .NET Framework 1.1 and will require the .NET Framework 2.0.

This should be of no concern to most Windows users as the .NET Framework 2.0 was pushed as a Windows Update download over a year ago. As for Linux and OSX users, those using the Intel version of Mono for OSX have a compatible version of the runtime. As for those on a PPC or Linux (or other Mono platform), any recent build of Mono will be compatible (2006 or newer, maybe older ones as well).

Windows Vista does not come with a .NET 1.1 runtime, but comes with a .NET 2.0 runtime which is backwards compatible with .NET 1.1.

This is unfortunate as the MOD Studio Installer isn't smart enough to know that and requires you to have the .NET Framework 1.1. You can always download the zip file instead of the msi and use it that way on Windows Vista.

Happy modding everyone, and I suggest any keen modders download mEAL from the phpBB forums. It is a useful tool for helping you determine wether the phpBB team will deny or approve your MOD and suggest how to fix it (despite any teething issues in going public).

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