Monthly Archive for October, 2005

Well it’s about time I actually posted something here.

Published
by
Simon
on 31/10/2005
in Ego, Family, Friends, University, sw'as and web development
. 0 Comments

Last Monday, exactly one week ago, I attended my final class at uni - and it feels sweet. I have two exams to go which I haven’t started studying for yet. I’m sitting on 44.5% with a 50% exam to come for Multimedia Systems and 54.2% with a 40% exam to come for Information Technology Management. I think I’ll start studying next weekend.

Last week I signed up with a new hosting provider which was a totally fun experience. I’m yet to migrate this site and that should happen today[1]. The only downside I’ve found so far is that Dreamhost doesn’t seem to accept connections to it’s database servers from outside IP addresses. So I can’t do one of the things I wanted to do, which is run a script on my home web server that will store data in the hosted MySQL database. But apart from that it’s been great so far.

One of the things I’m liking is the ability to host multiple domains. I have already set-up http://www.techtalkwiki.net in place of http://www.elvery.net/ttwiki/ [2]. I’m enjoying playing with a Linux based server for a change. Finally I have access to mod_rewrite (hence the lovely, clean, new URLs on the wiki).

Another thing I’ve been fiddling with for the past week or so is making a database and index of all the posts on TechTalk. One of the big drawbacks to the ABC forums has always been the lack of ability to search - we had to rely on Google’s indexing. I started by using Sphider which is very good for a small site but didn’t suit TechTalk for a number of reasons. Not wanting to write my own crawler and indexer from scratch I have adapted Sphider to be more suited to indexing TechTalk. It’s now storing the post author, subject, time and number in separate fields in the database which will be very useful for both searching and generating some statistics which people are always interested in. The indexing script has been running for around three days and the database is currently indexing 96,670 and adding another every second or so. The database still a little bit messy as I’ve been adding functionality along the way so there is a little bit of inconsistency in the database but that can be fixed reasonably easily. The preliminary search interface is here.

This weekend was a great weekend. Tony had his traditional fancy dress birthday party, the theme being a celebrity you hate. High on my list of possibilities were most people on Blurbomat’s list of Whores. Unfortunately, in the end none of them quite suited. Dressing up as a broadband provider or a Linksys router would have been tough[3], I didn’t want to cross dress[4], and some I just don’t agree with. In the end I went as Ice-T who is (almost) single-handedly making Law and Order into a completely crap show.

Tarlee and Brad came down to see the Ben Lee / Missy Higgins concert at River Stage on Saturday night and took up our offer of accommodation. As always it was great to see them and we hung out with them on Sunday morning. Then I went to play soccer, and Nathan came along and played in the mixed game which was great (even though we lost). We finally had our first win for the season in the men’s game, which was totally a result of our new Aston Villa jerseys. There were two attempts made to destroy my chances of having children. The first using a cricket ball [5] and the second using a very will kicked soccer ball.

The weekend was nicely closed with an impromptu family barbecue[6] with (almost) all the important people - Mum, Dad, Laura, Laura’s Parents, Hannah and Nathan. A good weekend finished well.

  1. I’m expecting a small amount of down time. [↩]
  2. Thanks again to JungleNut for the domain name. [↩]
  3. And I probably couldn’t call them celebrities. [↩]
  4. But well done to Laura for being the only cross dresser at the party. [↩]
  5. Thanks Tony - I know you haven’t got it yet, but the Birthday present is coming and that kind of payback is just uncalled for. [↩]
  6. Using our nice new (hand me down) Beefmaster - thanks Peter and Lenore. [↩]

It IS NOT the best coffee in the world!

Published
by
Simon
on 23/10/2005
in General
. 2 Comments

I really, really, want instant coffee companies to stop trying to tell me their coffee is the best in the world. IT. IS. SIMPLY. NOT. TRUE! I even want McDonald’s to stop telling me their espresso coffee is good. It’s not, and I don’t have to taste it to know that.

Brendan Nelson: Intelligent Design?

Published
by
Simon
on 21/10/2005
in General
. 3 Comments

Touched by his noodly appendage It’s been a ridiculous and ongoing debate in the US for some time now. The alternative theory of Intelligent Design is being promoted in schools in more than 20 states across the US and by the US President[1]. Some school boards are requiring teachers to refer students to Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution and inform students that evolution is only a theory and is not fact.[2] This week, 70,000 Australian scientists have (wisely) taken pre-emptive action and sent an open letter to schools asking them to not consider teaching the ‘theory’ as it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory.

Brendan Nelson has fucked up much of Australia’s education system, but I’ll leave Laura to rant and rave to you about that. Could this be an issue on which he is showing some kind of intelligence? He has said that parents should have the choice as to whether the ‘theory’ of Intelligent Design is taught in schools, though not to the exclusion of the established theory of evolution. If it were up to me I’d exclude it all together but (fortunately) we do live in a democracy. He has also suggested that it’s rightful place is not in the science class room, but rather in religion or philosophy classes. Wow, more intelligence from Brendan.

You can find out more about Intelligent Design from Wikipedia (although I don’t know why you’d want to).

You can find out more about the theory of evolution by natural selection at Wikipedia as well, and if you’re really into it (like me) you should consider reading Origin of Species (which you can get from Amazon - go on, give me a click).

But by far my favourite for an alternative to the theory of evolution is the teachings of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  1. Gah! OMGWTF! Could he be more stupid? [↩]
  2. School defends intelligent design - BBC [↩]

Damn this ambition to succeed!

Published
by
Simon
on 19/10/2005
in Ego, Music and University
. 0 Comments

Final ExamsIt’s week 13 at uni this week which is the last week of teaching before study week. That means that any student who knows anything about doing well in exams makes every effort to turn up because it’s the week when lecturers are most likely to hand out exam tips. The end of semester is also the reason I’ve been a little slow at updating here of late. The past two weeks have been very assignment heavy[1].

Anyway, getting back to the point, week thirteen is generally important if you plan to do well in your exams. On top of that, tonight I have tutorial work due which contributes directly to my result. 1.5% of the subject is up for grabs tonight. What really pisses me off about this is that the Eels are playing in Brisbane tonight. I have decided to pass on the opportunity to see one of my favourite and one of the best bands in the world for the possibility of 1.5% and a few exam tips. Gah! If only I didn’t care so much.

  1. You can find about 5% of one of the assignments here [171KB - Shockwave plugin required]. I plan at some point to do a post on how to create a realistic 3D model of the solar system in Macromedia Director, stay tuned. [↩]