Some Revisions

I've decided to give parcelforever another chance. I realize now that the reason my parcel took 6 days of flight in an airplane to get to the UK from SF, was because it spent 5 out of those 6 days sitting in a shed somewhere outside the International Hub in London. Now that my parcel has gone through customs and has been placed safely in parcelforce's hands, I'm meant to expect its arrival within 48 hours.

The only problem is that I got nabbed by customs charges, and now the arrival of my parcel will be a sweet sour event. I'll get my much desired paintball gear, and also, a shiny bill for hell knows how much. As far as I can tell, customs just make up a random figure and charge you for it. (not really).

So parcelforce hereby has the chance to prove itself worthy of this humble (or not) blogger's (rarely) praise.

You know when I'm waiting for a parcel, there suddenly seems to be an increase in heavy traffic outside my house. It's always been the same. This morning I woke with a start as what sounded like two timber lorries thundered past our driveway. I almost had the urge to jump and and peer out the window, to see if either of the lorries had my parcel stacked somewhere between pine logs. I resisted though, and slumbered as the garbage truck rolled on by, an RACQ repair van (I got up to check that one), and a dozen other heavy vehicles. It's a conspiracy I tell ye.

On to another subject, I just finished reading Buchan's The Island Of Sheep. It's the last of many accounts of Richard Hannay and his circle of friends, doing what they do best: kicking evil butt. Of course most of us will remember Dick Hannay from the 39 Steps, and I'm glad to say that Buchan develops his character marvelously over the rest of the series. He even creates a circle of friends for Hannay, all who have their own books and adventures along the way. Buchan seemingly creates an immense world for readers of the series to experience. I'd thoroughly recommend reading the 39 Steps, and then graduating onto a few other novels involving Hannay, before reading what must amount to Buchan's best work: The Courts of the Morning.

Why Parcelforce is Parcelforever, and the UK needs to be preceded by a Y.

So I'm still waiting for my parcel to be delivered. Apparently it spent 6 days in an airplane flying from SF to London. That's parcelforce for you. Parcelforever, I mean.

They're the worst company for.... they're just the worst mkay? Don't use them, ever.

Also don't come to the UK. it stinks here, as everything is tied up with miles of red tape and we're all under nanny's rule. Just don't bother. The weather stinks too. If you're going to go to the UK go to Scotland, stay somewhere rural... avoid all towns, and avoid all known commercial / government services like telephone lines, car rentals, shopping centers, and just anything where you need someone to actually get off their lumpy British butts and work for you. The work ethic (if even existent) is infused with lethargy in Britain.

Heard of the VCR Bill? It proposes that crime might just be reduced by taking legitimate sporting airguns and paintball markers away from honest citizens, so they can't have fun on weekends by playing a game at their local airsoft / pb center. Also it proposes that dangerous crime would be further reduced by taking the said equipment away from anyone under 18, who might be too young to operate them (safely). I'm entirely sure that this will also reduce crimes involving retarded 20 year old dudes holding up their local grocers with fake walther ppks and bow ties, who would subsequently, develop a hole in their heads, originating from the barrel of a very real gun held by an itchy law enforcement officer.

Such enlightened individuals would simply be deterred by the VCR act, presuming that because the fake firearm they were carrying was deemed illegal for their 17 year old younger brothers, they'd better use a real one instead (and still wind up dead).

There's no real reason behind the VCR bill other than to satisfy Nanny's babbling safety conscious, parasite ridden brain.

I love the US gun laws. They're great. They give you the right to send an almighty burst of lead the way of a intruder attempting to enter your property with malicious intent, against your wishes. In the UK, we only just established the right of self defense in our homes. Now if a dangerous criminal breaks down your front door in order to get access to your prized action figure collections, you can fend him and his gun off with a cricket bat, your fists, or possibly even a knife, as long as you promise not to run with it and hold it carefully with both hands. Before that, we were supposed to let Nanny beat off the intruder with her handbag. Or call the police and hide in some shadow like a timid vole while the said intruder violated our sacred shrine to chewbacca.

Although I can't really complain too much about the UK, Australia is the same... if not sometimes worse. However, the workplace lethargy that is so widespread over here is simply not an issue in Australia. Nanny's overbearing force however, has turned the nation into a closely guarded police state, where even the idea of allowing children to climb trees is debated fiercely on radio stations.

I say, guns in the hands of the population is comforting in a democracy. That way when congress or parliament do something to really anger a country (like ban rugby), there would be serious weight to the phrase: "Up in arms". Guns in the hands of general citizenry is also a comforting prospect, giving them the means to defend their property, their lives and their families.

But this debate isn't even about guns. It's about replica guns. Guns that don't fire, and just give the police (and shopkeepers) a scare. The sooner the general population accept the fact that whoever just got shot for wielding a fake sidearm in a grocery store pretty much deserved dieing in the first place, the better. In a criminal situation, treat a fake firearm with the same weight as a real one. British law already covered this aptly, the VCR is an outdated, desperate attempt at looking pro-active. It also reminds me of video tapes, and I hated them with a vengeance.

Give us the right to use airsoft and paintball markers at the appropriate centers, and return the age limit to 10 (for hire, 17 for possession). By all means ban public carrying of the markers, ban using them outside of a center or when used without permission on trespassed property.

If parliament does carry through this bill on october the 1st, there will be a petition to also ban fishing, cricket, baseball and any such sport where the instruments used could potentially be used as dangerous weapons. I'm not kidding, that petition is already out there somewhere. It's time to break free from Nanny, get off our lumpy butts and see if democracy really works.

Tiptoeing late into a lecture hall.

Trying not to be noticed. Everything is just fine and normal. Shucks, I'm always around here. What are you all looking at? I just took a day off from blogging, for two months.

Life is good. Work is hard but enjoyable, sleep isn't really well acquainted with me and according to an article in this week's New Scientist: I'm not responsible for my actions, the environment made me kill those flowers and also convinced me to sign that lucrative business deal with an X.

I saw Ocean's 13 yesterday. Danny Ocean, Rusty, Jason Bourne, the Mexican kids and Buffalo Bill go to save Reuben from a myocardial infarction - the work of the infamous Al Pacino.

Okay so I may have got lost along the way with the plot, but these four kids in front of us kept getting up at regular intervals and leaving/re-entering the cinema. Dad thought they were doing a drug deal and I just thought they were incontinent.

So anyway, I never actually saw right to the credits. We left at the point where Reuben is celebrating with the Young Guns while the confederates are shooting colored rockets into the sky. So what happened to Danny's previous heist victim, the guy who bought the French-channel-digging-drill for them? Email me, leave a comment. I'm dying to know.

That is that for today. More tomorrow. But by the way, try out Vendetta Online. It's a great game available for most platforms out there, including OSX, Linux and Windows. It's a tasty space sim, and when you sign up for your 8 hour free trial (8 hours of gameplay) look for me. The name is Bauer.

Oh man. Don't ask me why, I got it a long time ago, and may have created the account whilst watching an episode of 24. Don't judge me, Kieffer Sutherland has his ways of convincing people to join his fan army. We will enforce global military time, no more PM for you!

Lastly, there is also a wiki for the game at http://www.vo-wiki.com/ which is worth a look if you're confused, otherwise just ask in-game.

Korean General kick starts meeting with stab at Bush.

Just in a quick news-scoop: North Korean General Kim Yong-choi, in an effort to break the ice and find common(?) ground kick-started a meeting with South Korean counterparts with a fairly popular internet joke at President Bush's expense.

Bush goes out jogging one morning and, preoccupied with international affairs, fails to notice that a car is heading straight at him.
A group of schoolchildren pull the president away just in time, saving his life, and a grateful Bush offers them anything they want in the world as a reward.
"We want a place reserved for us at Arlington Memorial Cemetery," say the children.
"Why is that?" asks Bush.
"Because our parents will kill us if they find out what we've done."

Pretty interesting, but I wonder what it'd sound like in Korean. If anyone can speak it, it'd be great if you could record an audio clip of it and send it in, we'd appreciate that greatly!

Read the Aljazeera article here.

News Scoop

Current affairs always have that fresh coffee feel to them. They're fresh, interesting, and if edible: probably delicious.

So I've decided to do a little news scoop today. I'm in the library right now at school, we get the newspapers delivered everyday, and the BBC Focus (no New Scientist, to my dismay).

• Today, President Bush Jr vetoed the war spending bill. I don't even know if that counts as news as we knew it was going to happen anyway, but it made front page of Reuters.
  
  
• And has anyone noticed how badly the $ is doing against the £? Well the silver lining is that today the $ has hit a 2 month high vs the yen.
  
  
• A little closer to home (or not), obese British children will apparently replace underweight and hungry convicts on the next deportation to Australia. That's right, another reality get-thin show. They'll have to eat bush tucker and sweat off the pounds.
  
  
• And finally, the scoop of the day: Meet the Lawyer with the $67 Million pants. (That's trousers, to you, Brits). Apparently the dry cleaners lost the lawyer's trousers, and now he's suing them for $67 million so he can retire early and buy 84,115 pairs of pants at his quoted value of $800 per pair. Also, he wants 10 years of free weekend car rentals so he can take his dry-cleaning to a different company.
  
  
• Why doesn't he just buy a dry cleaning rig himself? With $67 million I'm sure you could fetch a pretty good deal, or three. Thanks to Dvorak.org/blog , a blog I can't recommend enough.

Enjoy your java beans!

Not really a Woodle: Webbr

Since Alasdair's woodle was so artfully strange, I'm just going to post another Webbr woodle. It has a bad punchline, and might just be as bad as Alasdair's, but if we're going to have bad woodle's we might as well have two bad woodles. It could possibly make up for the lack of a better woodle. I have garden sheds full of woodle ideas, but nobody to draw them and not enough time/skill to draw them myself.

So if you're a graphic designer, artist or just a lonely person, email us at twtoday@gmail.com, or skippy@mactake.streamk.com and since we probably won't have much of a choice, you're quite likely to end up doing our woodle graphics. (which really isn't a bad thing.) It'll give you a glimpse into the creative minds and work ethic we have at Dunhenry. (If that wasn't a selfish plug, then I don't know what is)

Also, expect to see something about SaveNetRadio from us soon!

Undivided attention.

Take a religious building of prayer and place two very different people in it. One is a millionaire, he's praying for another $50000 so he can invest it risk-free in the stock market and pass the profit on to his wife as a birthday present. The other guy is in week-old clothing and he's praying for $50 to pay the rent and keep a leaking roof over the heads of his three kids and pregnant wife, for another week.

They both sit there praying for half an hour, both of them mumbling fervently; they really seem to need that money. Finally the millionaire turns to the other man.

"Mate? What are you praying for?"
The other man stirs, and replies humbly.
"$50, I need it to finish my rent payment so my pregnant wife can have a house over her head"
"Okay mate, $50? Its your lucky day. Here, take it; now get on out of here!"

The millionaire hands the other man a crisp, clean $50 bill; he rolls up his sleeves while the other man shuffles away proclaiming his thanks. The millionaire stretches his arms carefully, then resumes his prayerful position.
"Okay Lord, now that I have your completely undivided attention..."

Kudos to Tony, a true journalist, writer and generally inspiring chap.

0845 Phone Scam

Seems to be another phone scam going on. A number listed as 08450229977 will call for 2 seconds to a cell phone, before hanging up. The victim is expected to be interested to see who called and therefore, call back, from then on I expect charges will be incurred or an advertising message relayed.

Just watch out for it!

Desktop Tower Defense

I've been wasting my time. That's right. Wasting; and I love every minute of it.

I've discovered ( thanks to Alex Lindsay on tWiT MBW ... ) a game called Desktop Tower defense. Don't go near it, save yourself. Its like WoW, but way more addicting. Its an online flash game by handdrawngames.com, and boy is it good fun.

Check it out here.

Study? What is study? This game takes priority over all known bodily functions, let alone studying for exams that are far away. Okay so not that far away. Yeah, you're right; my exams are right around the corner. I should be dying of stress and heart failure, instead I've been stressing about whether or not little grey balls will find their way through my intricate defense systems.

So today, I wake up at about 8:30 and think briefly about all the poor state school suckers who had to wake up at 7:00 ( we have extra holidays, but spend more time at school overall so it balances out ).

I get my cricket gear on (after following normal hygiene protocols) and head out to Cambusdoon for some practice. Great huh? Believe it or not, I love it. My right hand is aching from two consecutive catches of balls that were at no ordinary speed. My lower-body is killing me from a dive, roll and long-stop hit in the thigh; and by jove am I glad that I wore a box today.

After practice I head over to a friend's house, do an hour or two of study with her before heading off home to catch Joey and some more Total Recall on Joost. Then, I settle in and spend the rest of my evening playing desktop tower defense. I have mastered the easy level, the fun 10k level and almost got good at the medium level which still needs some work.

Its eating my soul Alex, save me. Save me now! Oh man, I have DTD RSI.

By the way, we're on 69 posts now. Bow chicka bow wow! ( RvB style. )

Organizational shortcomings.

You'd think with the title of this post, that I'd naturally be making apologies about my poor organizational skills and blubbing about how my excuses just simply rock. ( I know that didn't make sense! )

Well in all truth and honesty, I'm an excellent organizer.

However, I just can't seem to organize New Word Thursday on time, but that's really down to my complete lack of ideas. Read up on this week's nwt here, as its been sort of obscured by our usual posts.

Ideas would be good people, send the nwt ideas to twtoday@gmail.com, or if you want it to go directly to me, and you have a mactake comment bundled in with it, send it to skippy@mactake.streamk.com.

Well, I went boating yesterday with Jimerson and Ben, we did a little fishing, rowed a dodgy boat and ate a tonne of lunch.

This brings me around to rant about my cell phone camera. Its disgusting. It takes 640x480 images, but even at its default and most base resolution, the image is pixelated. What gives? A camera that shoots pictures at X resolution, should not be pixelated at that said X resolution.

Anyway, I took an awesome picture of the water splashing off an oar, and Jimerson getting caught in a landing net. We didn't catch any fish, and I've completely lost the point of this post, so I'll stop now.

Wait, one last point.
Did you know that a total of 7 people cancelled on the day before the afore-mentioned trip? We had to switch it from a kayaking trip to a boating trip last minute. Disgusting, and they had one and a half weeks notice! It nearly, just nearly screwed us over completely, but luckily Dad forked out and got some boats for the 3 of us that remained.

So for the rest of the pictures:

And its a battle of giants... with a landing net.

I did absolutely, no rowing. Possibly because I couldn't get it to go in a straight line.

Pwned.

Check out that splash!

Rainy Sketches.

Today, it is raining. I am sleepy, and I distinctly heard a cat fall off my neighbour's shed roof; it made a splashing, screeching noise as it fell into a bucket, half filled with plant remains and dirty water.

So is studying on the agenda? Absolutely not; but since I'm a self-disciplined and upstanding member of society, I'm going to study anyway.

Right after I finish this blog post. Absolutely.

I'm very prone to taking an opinionated stance on everything. However vague that sentence was, you have no complaining rights, I've reserved them.

It's not a woodle, its not a real comic, I didn't make, or take these pictures, but I did draw them from photographs. For heavens sake, its not even woodle time, but I just felt that I needed to share this with you.

[Disclaimer] I'm Christian, therefore I can complain as much as I damn well want to about my own religion, so don't take it the wrong way, I don't want hate groups after me!


PS.
Lore Gamers, Alasdiar?
Loamers.... Lamers?

Or more spicy: l4mers.

Yup. I'll keep working on it.

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot, Golf?

The Official U.S Military alphabet reads as such:
Alpha
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf
Hotel
India
Juliet
Kilo
Lima
....

Okay I've read enough. My short point tonight is, why on earth would an American soldier first associate the letter L with the word 'Lima'?

There's Looney, Loopy, Latex, Lozenge, Labor, Labial consonant, Lab, Lackey or even Love if they were running out of ideas! (Google also suggested: L'Oreal, but... nah.)

On second thoughts. Lima is good. Yeah, lets keep Lima.

Touche.

Image: Who said Physics was boring? Its spaghetti-crazy-town. Alasdair was just to the top left of this picture. He was having a I-know-what-I'm-doing day, more on that and fluctuating readings later, when I write a comprehendible post.

Skype, The Moon, Milk Cartons & Politics

The Moon as we know it will soon be turned a crimson blood red, and if that doesn't set the mood for the birth of a new hybrid Gordon Brown Werewolf of supreme intelligence, dark red fur and canines permanently dripping Tony Blair's blood then Project 'BreedHybridWerewolfWithGordonBrownsDNA' just failed for the fourth time, almost on par with the SNP's track-record for general and complete failure also.

That's a glance at the big picture at life here in Britain. As an Australian citizen living now for several years here in the sunny UK, the big political picture seems strangely detached from reality. It is snippets of everyday life that will captivate my attention, loping around awkwardly in the epitome of what appears to be a very non-sequential life.

Returning home after a hard day's work discussing everything from a milk carton's perspective of life to the comforting contours of the SNES during moments where the allure of doing so, outshines the misty cloud of gut feeling indicating that one is missing the explanation of an integral part of Physics. Simply put it is of course terribly relaxing.

It is my habit to automatically open Skype after precisely 5 minutes of checking my emails, verifying that my plethora of web-sites maintain the operating definition of 'web', and confirming my various appendages and limbs are still attached and supplied with an adequate flow of blood.

After joining a conference call with my colleagues and mumbling various greetings or wise words of wisdom, I tend to melt back into what is my endless mission to answer every email sent to my 5 separate addresses twice over, or I will resume wading in never-ending lines of php and html.

Shortly after the conference has been initiated, greetings exchanged and appendages and limbs re-checked, everyone else generally follows my lead; filling their time with games, girlfriends, chatbots or guitar strumming. It's really during this time of vague tranquility that the most absurd or bizarre comments are made.

"When did street lamps get here?", said 1Lt. Jamieson, out of the misty blue of what was the Skype conference call. The only sound that immediately followed that was of my gallant dash for a notepad, and the scratching's of a pen on paper, furiously scribbling this intriguing revelation down.

Shortly afterwards he added a twist to his monologue.

"The mayor took away the street lamps from outside my house again.", he mumbled, drumming his fingers on what sounded distinctly like a milk carton, almost in time to the resumed scratchings of my pen on Tesco note-paper. "Now its not special anymore."

Times like these seem to exist entirely in the unified moment, doomed to appear forever hand-in-hand with our perceived reality. The movements of key political figures or moons make barely a tremor on that placid surface of individual interest, yet the vague and incoherent whispers of a preoccupied mind break that placidity into a million different mirrors.

I suddenly found my hand reaching for the notepad once more, as Jamieson's vocal chords throbbed into melody.

"That wookie," he said, "just lost my vote.".