DS Ex Machina

New Years Resolutions 2011

2011-01-01T00:01:00.015+13:00

Alright. It's that time of the year again; time to decide how to improve my life and make some poorly-planned resolutions for 2011.

Things to do:

GradDipSci in Computer Science, meeting requirement for Post-Graduate Bioinformatics
Lose weight (current BMI: 24.2)
Work smarter, not harder!

Things to give up:

Alcohol
Caffeinated beverages and soft drinks
Candy and chocolate
Smoking

Things to improve:

Contribution to work; the 2012 University Academic Timetable should be a vast improvement over the 2011 iteration
Effort put into coursework, not just the bare minimum required for a mediocre grade
Grades, aiming for a minimum GPA of 7, A-
Keyboard/piano playing
Overall Fitness
Reduce time spent playing computer/video games, e.g. weekends only during semesters

GST increase vs. Income tax decrease

2010-05-31T18:32:00.002+12:00

Earlier, I provided a brief summary of the 2010 New Zealand budget.

Recall the following points (or, if you can't recall, re-read):
• GST up from 12.5% to 15%

• Adjusted income tax rates:
   o $0-$14000 at 10.5% (down from 12.5%)
   o $14001-$48000 at 17.5% (down from 21%)
   o $48001-$70000 at 30% (down from 33%)
   o $70001+ at 33% (down from 38%)

So how does this even out? I threw everything into a spreadsheet and came up with some basic numbers:

(Click image for full size view)

The left column represents different gross (before tax) incomes, while the column at the top represents different proportions of income spent on GST-inclusive expenses. The purpose of specifying different percentages is that some things you do with your earnings will be GST exempt (mainly rent, mortgage repayments and savings).

You will thus have more effective purchasing power if you fall into at least one of the two following categories:

You spend 90% or less of your income on GST-inclusive purchases (i.e. at least 20% is spent on other things, such as the aforementioned list of rent/mortgage/savings)
Your pre-tax income is over $20,000 per annum.

Now anyone working full-time (40 hours/week) will fall into the second category automatically (minimum wage equates to $26,000). Of course if you're a poor student who pays neither rent nor mortgage and spends all your money, then I feel sorry for you. Although you most probably live with family and the difference will amount to perhaps one or two beers a month. You'll survive.

NB: I've tried to make sure the formulas are accurate. If your own calculations don't produce the same result as mine, then please let me know.

Fleur de mort

2010-05-26T20:30:00.000+12:00

Consider, if you will, a flower blossom. From a bud, it blooms, growing into a beautiful, delicate delight. Bees swarm to copulate with its tender parts, people marvel at its colour, symmetry and perfection. Yet, eventually, this blossom must die. Its petals shrivel up and discolour, it loses its radiance and falls from the tree whereupon it decays.

I'm sure there's a lesson here for all of us to learn.

[NZ] Budget 2010

2010-05-20T16:47:00.000+12:00

While I was in a seminar sharing my uninformed views of writing in late-medieval China, the latest New Zealand budget was announced. It coincided nicely with the University's fortnightly pay day.

To summarise the key points:

• Property depreciation will no longer be eligible to offset against income
• GST up from 12.5% to 15%

• Adjusted income tax rates:
o $0-$14000 at 10.5% (down from 12.5%)
o $14001-$48000 at 17.5% (down from 21%)
o $48001-$70000 at 30% (down from 33%)
o $70001+ at 33% (down from 38%)

• Additionally, the business and PIE (Portfolio Investment Entity) tax rates will drop to 28% (from 30%) while trusts remain at 33% (in-line with the top tax-bracket).

• Student allowances, superannuation, benefits etc will increase by 2.2% to offset the GST hike.

Overall, sizeable income tax reductions will more than offset the increased cost of living due to the GST hike. It certainly encourages saving and investment (particularly investment in something other than property) which is currently somewhat lacking in New Zealand. It is important to remember that the GST increase will not apply to things like rent and mortgage payments, or any interest/dividends you earn from savings.

In essence this is very much a pro-capitalist National budget. Where does this leave the socialist conveniences of the welfare state? Additional spending has been announced for the healthcare and education sectors, as well as infrastructure, particularly ultra-fast broadband (yay) and rail networks (good luck with this).

Bearing in mind that various governments, including New Zealand's, are trying to reduce deficit (particularly with the situation in Europe getting progressively worse, and the potential 2012 financial crisis looming), this is one of the better budget announcements in recent years. It provides for more taxation fairness (certainly a good thing), and reduces tax evasion by funneling income through trusts while qualifying for state support. It additionally encourages savings and investment, both foreign and domestic - particularly because Kiwi Saver is still intact.

Personally I don't have a problem with paying tax, as long as the money isn't being squandered and I can see tangible gain, either to myself or the country. I support the idea of a capital gains tax, and compulsory retirements savings/insurance. But on the other hand, I'm not going to complain about a bit of extra money every pay day.

This post is so powerful that it's not necessary to talk about it

2010-05-16T15:12:00.001+12:00

I think my argument is so powerful it's not necessary to talk about it

- Rick Giles

If you haven't seen it yet, this is a quote from Rick Giles, who appeared on New Zealand's Sunrise (TV3 Breakfast show) program at the end of March this year. He's talking (ranting, even) about his support for Edison Hour, an anti-Earth Hour, and... well, you should just watch it:

Personally, I'm not convinced. But there's no need to talk about it. As you may have gathered, Rick is (was) a member of ACT on Campus, the University body associated with New Zealand's delightful liberal party ACT, which is currently one of the country's governing parties.

Of course Rick Giles should not be seen as representative of this party, and was dismissed from ACT on Campus shortly afterwards. Not apparently because he was clearly failing at communication, rationality and maintaining his mental faculties, but because he formulated a response video and the party had ordered him to desist.

It's not that his views are, to put it mildly, fucking batshit insane. His views are still fairly representative of ACT (he was, after all, the president of ACT on Campus), but they canned him because he wouldn't shut up. Which, I suppose, is reason enough.

Rick Giles did, however, have the last laugh: Sunrise was cancelled shortly afterwards and aired for the final time on April 8. Clearly, someone tried to disagree with his overly powerful argument.

Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane.

- xkcd

Anyway, on to other matters. After much deliberation, I applied for, got offered and started a new full-time job on April 1. The result has been a substantial increase in income, which I'm not entirely sure what to do with so I just throw it liberally at poorly thought-out schemes until the problem goes away. Man, my life is so hard. Actually, if I was doing anywhere near as much study for my history degree as I ought to be, it'd be pretty hectic. Thankfully, I'm easily-distracted, poorly-motivated and lazy - yesterday was spent playing Chrono Trigger on the DS and flash games. And eating potato chips while hiding from the weather (which was seriously intense, the neighbouring building had a waterfall running down the side of it).

One of the reasons the post stream has been drying up a bit around here is that effort must be saved to write late-night assignments. Also, been thinking a lot without bothering to make the effort to put thoughts into written form and set them in a cohesive, legible and comprehensive order. Eventually either my work or my studies will become less demanding and I can work on other plans.

Reciprocity

2010-03-25T19:35:00.000+13:00

A 100-word short story attempt. Written during study time, it ended up being exactly 100 words (no need to go back and mess around with adjectives and prepositions to hit the target count).

She sat down and began to write. Petals fell as brush caressed page in a creative dance of narrative. A world was born amidst fluid ink-laden strokes. In this world, a girl was born, a prodigal child, mastering wondrous magic. Yet as she grew up, evil befell the world, with the corruption of men bringing sorrow and pain. The girl, a woman now, opposed this evil, striving with all her talent. Endlessly she fought, finally sacrificing her life to restore hope. Her daughter, wishing her memory to endure, decided to tell her story. She sat down and began to write.

[Legacy] Quest for Progress

2010-02-19T14:00:00.000+13:00

Rather than actually coming up with something original, for which I don't get paid enough, I have decided to just rehash some old content. And by 'rehash' I mean repost. Partly for content, partly because I like the original post, and partly because I'm vaguely considering writing something like this, just for the hell of it.

Has anyone played Progress Quest? It's a little single-player RPG that takes the grinding out of RPGs. Which means that it just runs in the background spouting random RPG-related text to the GUI, with the net effect of looking like Kingdom of Loathing played by a bot.

You start it, it runs. It quests for you, kills stuff, empties bags, buys new gear, and you can watch those little Progress bars... progress. Slowly. And after a while, very slowly. And while this is doubtlessly more interesting than whatever work you're meant to be doing, homework you're procrastinating about, or blog you're trying to read, it's still a bit single-minded (GRIND GRIND GRIND!).

I'm thinking we can do better than this. Hereby introducing Quest for Progress. The non-interactive RPG of the future. It's so futuristic there won't even be a QFP1, but we'll move straight to QFP2. There will be a single player option that can start as soon as your computer loads, and a MMONIRPG (massively multiplayer online non-interactive role-playing game), with over 2 people per server!

This game will be so awesome that if you close it and then load it again later it can extrapolate what would've happened while it was off. No more losing game-time when a tornado takes out some pylons!

Further features (which in fact may or may not be implemented):
- no more spending ages deciding on a class, they're all the same anyway; QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (defaults to "Village Idiot")
- no more spending ages deciding on a name, QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (also defaults to "Village Idiot")
- the same goes for race, except that "Village Idiot" is not a race
- better quests: escorts, debaucherie, highland games, marry an heiress, earn a Darwin award, engage in massive public quests with other "Village Idiots"
- more MMO-realism: QFP will occasionally create an alt for you, and level that one instead (defaults to "other Village Idiot")
- PvP: QFP will include player-versus-player combat (well, QFP-versus-QFP combat)
- NPCs will have names, they may not be very good names, but they will exist
- trophies: QFP will randomly award you completely meaningless things for doing stuff you had no hand in doing (we're basing this on a beaureaucratic model). Other QFP 'players' may or may not view these.
- new hairstyles!
- new dances!
- destructible buildings (actually, no, that won't be happening)
- realm versus realm combat (also a nono, sorry)
- bugs!
- false promises!
- ambiguity!
- lag! (although not sure how we'll do this)
- free beer on fridays! (we are, in fact, working on this. But only on fridays)
- salvation and forgiveness for your sins! (QFP creators hereby forgive you for all sins committed before last summer)
- the wrong release date (next week, honest)
- colons in future titles, because more colon makes everything better!
- and many other things we'll add when we see that they work for other companies (currently considering Google ads)

Quest for Progress 2: we hope you'll join us
Your village called, they want their idiot back

Disclaimer:

DS Ex Machina in no way guarantees that any of the following will be included in any software it can be associated with (directly, indirectly, non-directly, recursively or otherwisely):
- monsters
- graphics
- spells
- items
- installability
- features

[Abridged] Sweet pancake recipe (with ground almonds)

2010-01-31T12:17:00.001+13:00

This is the printable, useable version of the heavily annotated pancake recipe found here.

Sweet Pancakes with Ground Almonds (makes ~6)

Ingredients:
3/4 Cup white flour (not self-raising)
1/2 Cup ground almonds
2 Teaspoons white sugar (1A)
3/4 Cup Milk
2 Eggs
Oil for cooking

Mix everything in a mixing bowl. The batter should be fairly fluid and pour easily (add milk or flour as required).

Making the pancakes:

Heat about a Tablespoon of oil in a frying pan.
Pour a ladleful into the pan.
Spread the batter evenly.
Cook for 15-30 seconds, until firm.
Flip the pancake.
Cook until brown on both sides.

Serve with maple syrup, cinnamon sugar, lemon sugar, or fruit and cream.
Enjoy.

Sweet pancake recipe (with ground almonds)

2010-01-31T11:57:00.002+13:00

For the shorter, practical version click here. If you continue reading, be warned, this is a scholarly work approximately 10 times longer than the actual recipe. A story if you like, a story of hope, and justice, of beauty and wonder, of true love and the triumph of evil over good.

I've always had a rather impromptu approach to cooking, one that I rather like. It generally involves tossing things together in a haphazard manner (rather than using accurate measurements), and, if necessary, making minor adjustments. It's rather unscientific, but so far has generally had acceptable results (I remember once cooking a lentil soup and having the top of the ground pepper container falling into the soup, together with a sizeable amount of the contents - this was, however, more an issue with someone not screwing the lid on properly than with my food preparation methodology). But in the interest of public knowledge, reproducibility and improvement potential, I have decided to, in some few cases, go for an approach whereby ingredients quantities are determined in standardised measurements (rather than add a lump of this, a handful of that). As such I'm going to share a sweet pancake recipe I've been working on for a while now.

Sweet Pancake Recipe with Ground Almonds (makes ~6)

Equipment:
Mixing bowl - needs to hold at least a litre (4 Cups), preferably double that to prevent splashes when mixing
Measuring equipment (Teaspoon, 1/2 Cup and either 3/4 Cup or 1/4 Cup)
Whisk - or something equivalent for mixing the batter, a fork will do in a pinch
Frying pan (skillet) - non-stick is best
Spatula (a.k.a. fishslice or turner) - don't use metal with a non-stick pan!
Ladle (optional) - allows more control over pouring batter
Serving plate - dinner plates work fine

Ingredients:
3/4 Cup white flour (not self-raising)
1/2 Cup ground almonds
2 Teaspoons white sugar (1A)
3/4 Cup Milk
2 Eggs
Oil for cooking

Comments:
Flour - staple ingredient. I use High Grade, but standard will do just as well. Wholemeal flour will give the pancakes a thicker texture, although if you use this approach I'd recommend mixing with white flour.
Almonds - provide some excellent nutritional benefits as well as improving the texture of the pancakes and giving them a distinctive taste (nutty, unsurprisingly enough). Could possibly replace with flour if ground almonds are hard to come by (potentially wholemeal flour, see above).
Sugar - I find 2 teaspoons is about right for my preference, adjust for your own taste. Could omit this to make savoury pancakes with a nut touch.
Milk - I use blue top, which is around 3% fat. Unless you use full cream I doubt that it will make much difference.
Eggs - Roughly size 6 or 7. You may need to slightly adjust milk or flour if the eggs you use are significantly different.
Oil - The type is really up to preference. Butter has a low burning point and can start to burn after a while. All vegetable oils should be fine as you won't be cooking at a high temperature.

Method:
Mix everything in a mixing bowl. I like to whisk the ingredients until I get plentiful bubbles, as this produces a lighter pancake. The batter should be fairly fluid and pour easily, milk can be used to make it thinner and flour to make it thicker.
Everyone has their own prefered method of making pancakes, but I'll add my own method for reference.

Heat about a Tablespoon of oil in a frying pan, this obviously varies with the size and style of the pan - use more if you're not using a non-stick (teflon) frying pan. You do not need to cover the entire cooking surface, instead just tilt the pan to make the oil flow over the majority of the pan (I find that shaking the pan from side-to-side can also have good results), if it pools in a spot when you put the pan on the stove, it doesn't matter.
Give the pancake batter a quick whisk to mix it (it will settle and separate over time) and get some new air bubbles into it. Then take a ladle (my preference, otherwise you can just pour straight from the mixing bowl) and gently pour the batter into the pan, spiraling outwards from the centre.
Tilt the pan and/or use a spatula to spread the batter evenly. Lift the pan off the stove while you do this to ensure even cooking.
Replace pan on stove, turn the heat down and wait for a while (15-30 seconds, but varies with the heat of your stove). Start sliding the spatula under the edges of your pancake, once you notice it stops sticking lift the pancake up from all sides.
Flip the pancake. This requires a degree of practice. I use a spatula to flip, being unable to master the freestyle method; on occasion I have been known to use two spatulas (although this was more for filled omelets and quesadillas/sincronizadas).
Hopefully the pancake will be well-cooked underneath (but not burnt) and have a nice light-brown colour, if it's not completely cooked then just keep on flippin' until cooked on both sides. If the pancake is fairly thick it may need to be cooked for longer than just for the surfaces to brown, make sure you do this on low heat.
Once your pancake is cooked, flip it onto a plate. Either eat it (in which case turn the stove off) or resume cooking more using the steps above (you probably don't need to add as much oil for subsequent pancakes, since there may still be some left in the pan and it should be fairly greasy. Try to work out improvements if something didn't work quite right on previous attempts.
I use a 20cm diameter frying pan, and this recipe makes around six full-sized pancakes which fit nicely onto a dinner plate.

In terms of serving the pancakes, I recommend using maple syrup, cinnamon sugar, lemon sugar or even fresh fruit and cream. Other sweet condiments are of course fine as well. Pancakes are great either eaten piece-wise with knife and fork, or rolled up and devoured whole while dripping maple syrup everywhere.

Also, when preparing pancakes for multiple people, I think it's best to pile them up on a plate as you make them, and then taking the plate to a table for everyone to eat at once (rather than people grabbing them out of the pan with greedy little fingers as you make them). This, apart from being more sociable and fair to the cook, lets the pancakes cool down a bit which makes things like syrup and cream less runny (and drippy/messy).

While certainly being more time-intensive than toast or cereal, pancakes are a great food for when you can afford the time and make a great Sunday morning breakfast (or brunch/lunch).

Chicken vs. Beef in takeaway food

2010-01-29T20:37:00.000+13:00

I prefer chicken for burgers, beef for pies.

That is all.

And you were expecting something long.

I'm really not sure about this

2010-01-28T00:43:00.002+13:00

If you trawled through and read the roughly eighteen-hundred and forty-seven words that made up my last post, you may have noticed two points in particular:

I'm doing a BA(Hons) in History this year
I'm kind of looking for work at the moment

Now the job listings for the prospective Timetabling Services Office at the university are currently available (internally). I'm considering applying for one of the positions, and believe I have a reasonable chance of getting in on the basis that I have spent the last 14 months working with the software that will be used, and have had a hand in setting up the procedural processes and data configurations that will be used. There are a few advantages to having this job: a stepping stone to bigger and brighter things, work I'm familiar with, and a reasonable, reliable rate of remuneration. The obvious disadvantage is that it will take up quite a lot of time that may conflict with my studies or other life pursuits.

Now I need to decide if I can manage to work, study, and write dull blog posts after midnight.

I suppose I should look at my time constraints:

If I get full-time work I can quit my Saturday job, giving me a two-day weekend (and avoiding the hassle of City Council organisations amalgamating into the Auckland super-city later this year)
The typical week contains 168 hours
The typical working week is 40 hours
Travel time to both work and my classes is roughly ten minutes, thus fairly negligible
I have three papers which each have a two-hour seminar per week. I have been told I should spend at least eight hours a week preparing for each of these seminars. That's 30 hours a week
I should also probably do about ten hours a week on my dissertation

I believe that I can spend around 12 hours a weekday, and 8 hours on weekends working for either pay, or for my courses. This amounts to 76 hours per week. If I'm really really really disciplined about it

Let's take a look at a potential timetable of what my life could look like:

This looks crowded and thoroughly unpleasant. Especially compared to everything that I've managed to do to date (viz., be lazy, procrastinate lots, do things mere hours before they're due and sacrifice sleep in favour of blogging and planning). It would take mammoth control and discipline, perfect time management, and a shortage of unforeseen events to pull this off. Yet it also represents a good opportunity to combine study with work, or rather earning money while significantly improving future prospects.

I guess the question is: do I really hate myself enough to put myself through this?

Your suggestions and comments are welcomed.

Please Hire Me. Also, waffles.

2010-01-22T22:16:00.006+13:00

Given the absence of people capable of giving me more work to do, I have instead decided to devote some time to investigating potential future employment opportunities. Or rather, I have ended up devoting a lot of time and type to lamenting my poor subject choices of my degrees.

With the imminent demise of my current job – a casual contract supporting the implementation of a new timetabling and room-booking software and associated administrative entity (initially for the purposes of data entry, although it has evolved into the glorious and highly ambiguous position of Business Analyst) – I have recently moved to considering methods of supporting my enormous fiscal requirements. Naturally I require a large, sustained and predictable income for the purposes of satisfying my luxurious lifestyle of non-existent cars, beautiful woman, and a cramped 10^th-floor apartment (calling it a penthouse suite would be excessively abusing my creative literary license; the view is of the wall of the building next to us, which is sufficiently close to block out direct sunlight except for a 30 minute period at high noon, and then only if you lean over the railing, while the balcony is sufficient for the toasting of marshmallows over waste-paper fires and for locking myself out of the apartment), although to be fair the apartment wouldn’t be nearly so cramped if I didn’t insist on owning a plethora of surprisingly large and useless crap, or if I stopped myself from buying more.

I am currently a graduand (which apparently is the term for someone who is eligible to graduate, but has not yet done so) and will remain so until May, having finally completed my BA (mathematics, history)/BSc (biology) conjoint after five years (if I’d scrutinised the degree more clearly, I could have seen if I’d simply done a single Stage Two Science paper at summer school last year, I could have finished a year earlier). I always assumed that having completed a tertiary degree of some kind that I’d be eminently more employable than the previous iteration of myself whose formal qualifications stemmed merely from high school. However, having reason to now consider this assumption more closely, I find that my reasoning (calling it logic would be an insult to that sacred art) has been sadly lacking.

Consider, if you will, the field of Mathematics. Assuming that the field is Real, and moreover that it is Rational, and thus all Complexities can be ignored, then Naturally there are a finite number of puns this sentence can contain while still being relevant… I digress. Mathematics is an excellent example of a internally consistent logic system (unlike, for example, many organised religions), and some qualification therein - representing some degree of mastery thereof - could arguably be constituted to show that I have some understanding of logic, deductive and inductive thinking. Further, a potential employer could assume that I know a bit about working with numbers, algebra, graphs, matrices and the like. Yet apart from these basic skills there is very little about the Mathematics major that represents tangible value to the employer. While I can prove that the square root of two is irrational, I am unable to write a web applet, or troubleshoot a database query. While I can prove that there are an infinite number of primes or add a couple of ones to the upper-right of a triangular matrix (thus proving I am a genius), I am unable to perform data quality tests or accept responsibility for accounts payable. Without further study, this major is a lot less useful to a job-seeker than something more practical, such as Computer Science or Statistics

(Oddly enough I have had more A+’s and C-‘s in Mathematics than any other subject, in fact both instances number 3; I just thought I'd throw that in there as a really bad way of ending the paragraph).

The same can be said for History (and by "the same" I mean that it lacks marketable skills, not that bit about ending paragraphs badly). While a lovely and interesting subject, studying past events and people and motives and ideas, semiotics and whatnot, practical skills are still limited to resource interpretation, critical thinking, and waffle writing. Mind you, waffle writing is a very important skill, particularly when submitting job applications and cover letters. Waffle making might also be a very useful skill, I mean, shit, turn up to your next job interview and bring waffles - go on, see how it works. If a prospective employee showed up to an interview and distributed waffles, wouldn't you hire them right then and there (on the proviso that more waffles were forthcoming, preferably on a weekly, if not daily, basis, BYO cream and strawberries - I find honey is good too)? However, returning to my original point (after a brief detour, the wordiness of which may be attributable to my History major), with the addendum that waffle-making is sadly not a skill taught by the History department, I think that most employers would hope for, but not necessarily expect, the kinds of written, analytical and interpretative skills that I learned during my years studying the origins of the French Revolution, male hustlers in 1930s New York and the landscape of history as seen in a metaphorical airplane flown by John Gaddis. Where job listings include history it is generally "applicant must have an interest in history", which is not the same as having a degree in history.

I really enjoyed studying history, I found it more consistently interesting than my other subjects. I enjoyed it enough to want to do a BA(Honours), although the closer I get to starting it, and the more I look at the large stack of books that make up my dissertation reading, the less appealing it seems. I just really wanted to do original research, not just parroting about what other peoples' conclusions, and their arguments with their predeccesors' conclusions. Oh, and there was the vague possibility that if I studied enough History I might one day be in the strange and appaling situation of being paid to do something I enjoyed. That would have been weird.

This is the style of waffles that I grew up with. As such it is the only possible representation of a true waffle. No arguments will be allowed.

I remember my parents once making a huge pile of them, together with masses of strawberries and whipped cream, for my seventh birthday party (I think, give or take fifteen years). These were served in two adjoining tents set up on the back lawn. I remember not how it was instigated, but I do remember same parents being rather annoyed with us children for using the remaining waffles (and strawberries and cream) to undertake a violent and ferocious food-fight, mostly within the tents.

I also remember inviting a friend over, a few years later, who finished the entire stack of waffles while everyone else was still on their first, but that isn't a particularly entertaining anecdote.

Which brings me (via waffles), to Biology. And a BSc in Biology doesn't really seem useful at all. Except to get into a PGDipSci in Biomed, which is what I'm currently thinking of doing next year. After the BA(Hons) in History, which, considering where I'm heading now, seems like a complete waste of time. Ho hum. I should really work out what I want to do with my life.

So my qualifications are fairly useless in terms of employment prospects, except for being able to say that I have a qualification of some sort (with the subject majors being inherently irrelevant) - yay me. This conclusion is not entirely news to me, but I suppose that over the last few years I have always pretended that a) it was a problem that would solve itself, and b) I always intended on continuing studying (presumably under the potential misconception that this would somehow result in me automatically acquiring a high-paying, high-satisfaction AWESOME job). I guess that it was similar to the way I'm intending on doing something that will mostly like prove to be a waste of quite a lot of time and money this year.

In fact out of my verifiable marketable skills, some of the main ones stem from having worked in a public library for the last five years. Five years spent in a structured, yet variable, highly customer-service orientated environment. I now earn 27% more than when I started (now at 38K FTE, about what a fresh university-graduate could expect to receive), which to me seems reasonable for a part-time job I started when I was freshly out of high school with no real work experience. And whatever else I need I can hopefully produce by exaggerating my role in my other job (timetabling software implementation) and getting good references; heck I wouldn't need to do much in the way of embellishment, I did a decent job when I wasn't browsing the internet or blogging. Anyway, work experience 's where it's at, yo.

Yet as far as finding new work is concerned, I really would like to find something that pays a bit better than my current jobs and which I can use my fresh degree to get. If I don't find that then I suppose I could sell some of my useless and space-consuming assets, possibly beginning with my Magic card collection which, at purchase price, exceeds well over a thousand dollars. Yet, taking into account their very rapid rate of depreciation as the cards cycle out of the Standard environment, they are probably now worth around a tenth of that, which almost doesn't make it seem worth the effort, and it's not the kind of thing I can maintain to support my fast and furious lifestyle.

Anyway, I suppose if I'm not going to auction off my life's collection of artefacts, I should go look for work, or at least do some research for the dissertation that will prevent me working full-time. Or write a book. Or go to sleep, ready to tackle the structured, yet variable, highly customer-service orientated environment, where I spend my Saturdays earning money. Kind of like a prostitute, except not (I am not belittling prostitutes, they sell what you want - if they weren't busy selling their bodies they could go into marketing. Maybe).

This post has too many parantheses, commas and - also thanks to the guy who came over to our place after work with bananas and made a cake.

[This is] Still not content

2010-01-07T20:05:00.000+13:00

Why have you forsaken me?
Your presence but a ghost.
Abandoned in my misery,
Now when I need you most.

Do you not remember,
Words promised by your lips?
Love to last forever,
That time could not eclipse.

You would be with me,
Instead gone in a moment.

Oaths now lie broken.

Gone in a moment.

And I will not
Continue
In this world
Alone

Know only that
I miss you
More than I
Can live with

And so I go
Say my farewells

But I shall find you
In the loneliness beyond
And so I journey
Knowing that
You wait for me

For the Fallen

2009-12-04T22:14:00.002+13:00

An Age has passed since
We remembered
The past dwindles
Memories murdered by
The ravages of time

Those who gave everything
Our friends
Our loved ones
Forgotten

Abandoned
We continue
Fighting onwards in hope
Always alone

No one to share this pain

Tireless
We toil
Achieving nothing
Striving onwards

Forsaken by fate

Betrayed by those that
We relied on
Just like those
Who came before

And yet we refuse to
Forget them
Like we ourselves
Won't be remembered

No hope for the fallen

This post was written on a combination of Mountain Dew, Killa Cola Demon and fruit salad.
Also, I'm topless.

I make no claims that this post counts as content.

Red Bull

2009-11-19T12:22:00.002+13:00

After several months of deliberating, I have taken into my possession the hitherto unclaimed 250ml can of Red Bull from the communal office fridge.

This is based on the knowledge that:

I often buy multiple cans at the same time, when they're on special.
It is not inconceivable that I would store it in the fridge to keep cool, just highly unlikely that I would make it to the fridge without drinking it on the way.
I have a terrible memory. If I did store it, I would forget. This would explain why it has been unclaimed for around three months.
No one else here, to my knowledge, consumes energy drinks.
No one here, to my knowledge, reads my blog, so they won't know it was me. And I eliminated all witnesses. Mwuhahahaha.
Ha.
Ha.

WIIIIIIIIINGS.

That being said, I don't think I really require an energy hit right now. But I'm not sure I can return it to the fridge without anyone noticing. Also, then this whole Spiel might start again:

There's an unclaimed can of Red Bull in the fridge.
It could be mine.
I am the most likely candidate as owner.
If I do take it no one will know.
If it IS mine, I have been missing out.

One week later: that can is still there.
Ditto.
Ditto.

PS: some people have suggested attaching a note to it, asking if anyone else stakes a claim. But that wouldn't be diabolical enough.
PPS: just taking it isn't particularly diabolical either, more a case of petty larceny.

New Look DS-Ex

2009-10-22T22:55:00.002+13:00

After an hour or two trying different templates and fonts, and messing around with pixels in MS Paint (!), I'm trying a new look for the site.

The new title logo

The new avatar/profile logo

(from memory the image is copyright Blizzard Entertainment)

The new look will remain until I decide to change it.

- DS, from the Blue World

DS-Ex ... what?

2009-10-01T18:47:00.000+13:00

If you're wondering about the title, it's a pretty bad wordplay on:
a) Deus Ex Machina (lit. "god from the machine") which in essence is a plot-device used by authors too lazy to conclude their stories in an internally-consistent manner. I look forward to using it whenever I am too lazy to finish a post, while maintaining internal consistency with the nature of the blog.
b) DS, the shortened form of Darksentinel which is the username/nickname I most commonly use in my online interactions. 'Twas conceived in around 'oh three or 'oh four of the third millenium succeeding the birth of our lord.

DS Ex Machina: Darksentinel from the machine.

If you don't think it's that good, I'd like to point out that coming up with a good, original title for a blog is tricky. It's not like writing a new Mills&Boon book, which can be done in the form "His [adjective] [synonym of 'Mistress']". Or a Harry Potter clone, which can be of the "[First name] [Last name] and the [Adjective] [Noun]" variety.

New beginnings

2009-10-01T18:31:00.000+13:00

There once was a blogger from Udder
Whose Madness eventually went under
But a blogger at heart
He went on to start

A new blog: DS Ex Machina

Hi. Welcome. And if you followed me from Udder Madness, welcome back.

This is my new blog, it will contain the usual set of rants and ravings, and long-winded non-sensical posts. It doesn't have a guiding theme, so I can write whatever the **** I want. Including the usual suspects of personal observations, whining, rants, original writing and anything else I feel like.

And of course some of my disclaimers from the first Udder Madness post are still relevant:
Expect rants. Expect very short posts. Expect me to possibly abandon this project very soon. Expect legumes. Expect men in coats to arrest me for being completely and utterly insane, and a threat to public health, the government, liberty and the nobility of the human spirit, and expect them to call me an idiot for leaving an obvious record.

Warning, blog may contain puns. May contain themes, language and rattlesnakes (kudos if you got the Bill Bryson reference), and also nuts, legumes, and small children.

I hope you'll join me for the ride!

This post was produced in a factory that also (mis)handles mathematical formulae.

[Historical] Hobos, vehicle mechanics and hubris

2009-10-01T00:00:00.001+13:00

This is another non-WoW Udder Madness post that I really liked (slightly abridged). It contains a typical DS rant, deep and meaningful truths about humanity, and a rough idea of how my brain can work at times.

September 27, 2008.
Laptop still broken.
Sort of.
Comes up with random memory failures.
Firefox thinks there's already a copy of Firefox running (which is not responding), and Firefox, being Firefox, thus won't let me start running a new window of Firefox. No Firefox isn't currently running.
The D-Link router at home gives me issues, and I can't 'apt-get' a new internet browser.
I suppose I should try to get ASUS to repair this thing, but there aren't any other verifiable problems with it now, so it probably won't register as broken. Sort of like when your car starts making a funny noise, it makes the noise when you start it, when you drive it, when you wait at red lights, and when you drive through red lights. After a while, it even starts making the noise when the engine isn't running, and, ever so faintly, you can hear the noise disturbing your dreams. Quietly but surely. Like a playground bully from many years ago. But as soon as you take the car to a mechanic it runs completely smoothly. In fact it runs smoother than you've ever heard (or not heard, as the case may be) it run before, since it's a 4th-hand Japanese import you bought from a crazy exchange student during the early 90s. Your mechanic gives you a long look, scratches his head (or her head, as the case may be), charges you $150 for wasting his (her) time and goes back inside after watching you drive off with your teeth tightly clenched. As soon as the door closes behind them, you know what happens? Yep. Your car, ever so gently, starts making that noise again. It gets louder. You know if it persists you will lose sleep, get divorced, and watch your teenaged daughter marry an in-bred hobo from the deep south (i.e. Hamilton) with barely enough intellect to fleece the ACC and WINZ out of sufficient money to finance a coup in Haiti (for reference, a level one troll rogue with Arcane Intellect has sufficient intellect to achieve this). Your grand kids will resemble cane toads going under the lawnmower. You consider going back to that mechanic, since you got a tax return of $263.37 yesterday (true story, the cheque is sitting on my desk, so will only take a day or two to find). But then you notice that even as you think of the mechanic the noise subsides and your petrol indicator has an evil gleam in its bulb. You surrender and drive home. The noise will slowly drive you mad, but if you lay off the coffee your blood pressure won't cause the arteries in your eyes to rupture.

The morale of the story? Buy a German car. They make the same noise, but it comes with a much angrier-sounding accent (people always tell me that when I speak to my parents on the phone it makes me sound angry, although this may just be the fact I'm calling home; I know my mother sounds angry fairly often, but this is because she IS angry). If you can't afford a German car, you now have a hobo-in-law who can teach you how to acquire one, at no additional charge (make sure your immune system can cope with tuberculosis, and be prepared to babysit the grandchildren on Friday nights).

The mechanic in the example above exhibits a fairly common quality (especially where technology is concerned). Think of it as the Midas Touch without the avarice, the anti-kaput, the borked-in-reverse. It's an aura of FIXED! whereby any problem of a particular type (such as car noises) immediately disappears when in close proximity to a particular person (such as a mechanic). Another example of this phenomenon is the photocopier at my work (I work at a library): it will jam, turn off all displays, shred unsaved printed e-tickets, decapitate the customer involved and trigger the fire alarms. Yet if I walk up to it it settles down, if I press a few buttons it starts printing again without fail, and if I croon to it, it plays Greensleeves (needless to say I like that photocopier a lot, I think that over the space of three and a half years it has earned me $4.25 in pay rises, while the computers guarantee my continued employment - although if I lose my job anytime soon just remember: HUBRIS IS A BAD THING).
NB: One year on, and I still have the same job ^_^.

It is facts of life like these that you must get used to, and learn to deal with. Some things you can't change, and some shouldn't be changed anyway.

TLDR: if you don't want a hobo-in-law, become a mechanic.

[Historical] Exdad and Lol

2009-10-01T00:00:00.000+13:00

This is one of my favourite non-WoW posts from Udder Madness. Reposted here because I can.

September 6, 2008.
I have just been asked whether 'exdad' is a word that is legal for use in Scrabble. I do not think it is. Wikipedia does not know it. Google only knows it 1400 times. Therefore it is not a word. Arguably we can change this by creating it, using it in a niche that makes it completely indispensable to modern humanity, ..., profit (like how 'Muggle' is now in the OED). As such, I present 'exdad' (extremely distressing acronym destruction), which is a term used for acronyms that no longer accurately describe their subject (object).

A prime example of an exdad is the acronym 'lol'. Just to refresh everyone's memory, lol stands for "Laughing Out Loud" (and not "Lots Of Love", "Lay Of [the] Land", "Licentious Orgasm Laws", or simply the word "lol"). It is now used in various contexts, such as "just joking", "haha", "coincidence happens" and "I have no other comment to make". Lol. It has been overused to the point where it has produced the derivative "I lol'd IRL" (I laughed out loud in real life), which is a pretty lol statement if you think about it.

Does this actually bug me? Not at all. What does bug me is the fact that when I think about it, I realise how fucked up my language sometimes has gotten over the last few years. I tend to start a sentence where I make a point with "but yeah,...", I use "lol" a lot, I think "lol" a lot. And irl I must remember to lolirl, not just say "lol". Lol. I frequently type stuff like "lofl", and "loflk", and "loflkwtf?" (the insertion of a random 'f' into run-of-the-mill acronym makes stuff more lofl). And various other idiosyncrasies.

But yeah, one statement I do like is "just for lols" (or "just for luls"). That one sometimes makes me lolirl. Lul.

Final point, use the term 'exdad'. Please. Just for luls.