Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Final Lap

Ok, final lap, we can do this.

Shit what the hell was that?

Son of a bitch could have killed me, ok let's over... shit shit brake brake!

Ok that was too close, hang back a bit.

"What the hell're you doing? overtake the bastard!"

Dammit John I'm trying, he's driving like a fucking lunatic.

The tunnel, pressure pressure pressure! Stay on his arse...

Opening! Go go go go go! Yes!

"4th, keep it up."

Thanks John.

Ok there's 3rd, this bastard's going down.

Long straight, time to slipstream. Right on his tail now.

Dammit he's good, can't get passed. Move! Move! Goddammit the straight's over.

Sharp corner. He's gone wide! Yes yes yes! Gotcha!

"Half a lap to go, push harder!"

Piss off.

Ok complex bit here, there's 2nd.

Geez he's taking that corner a bit fas.... and there he goes... Ouch that's nasty.

Shit lost grip. Oversteer! Hold it! Hold it!

Phew that was damn close.

"Careful, keep your head here."

What happened to push harder? Dick.

There he is! 1st.

About 2 minutes to get this guy.

"You've got about 2 minutes to get this guy."

Thanks for that.

He's good. C'mon.

Weaving, left - right - left - right...

Shit watch the traction. Can't slide now.

Over that crest, two corners to go!

First hairpin. slow slow slow....

And go!

Right on him now, no opening. Come ON!

So narrow here, can't pass, final bend.

He's slipped a bit, holds it.... nice save. Bastard.

He's lost speed now, power through!

100

150

170

Pulling up beside him, looks at me, then the line, so close now.

Just a little more....

YES!

FINISH!

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Rambling Restlessly

I think I spelt restlessly wrong. Well spellchecker isn't picking it up so I assume it's correct.

Anyway I'm really really tired. It's been a pretty shit week, started off well with a close friend's birthday bash that went down very well, then it took a nose dive into the crapper the very next morning when I had to work at eight.

Anyway that's irrelevant, this whole post (blog?) is really kind of irrelevant really.

Hmm, let's see, what can we discuss? Maybe a review of the things around me.

Ok, my yellow pencil case. Bought it two years ago and it's still holding together. There's a few holes in it now and the plastic bit that holds the letters was ripped off during a particularly boring class last year, so maybe it'll need a trade in by the end of the year. It's covered in graffiti of course, so it's managed to hold up to various bashings by bored people. The main thing is that the zip's held together, it's probably a record for one of my pencil cases, so it's a reasonably decent brand. Too bad I have no idea what that brand is, but I recommend you purchase any yellow, mid-sized pencil case that appears to be made of vinyl, they last.

My camera, a Fuji Finepix Z1. This is a brilliant little machine. It's tiny so it'll fit in my pocket and with a metal casing it's a tough unit. The screen's nice and large, particularly for a camera of its vintage, and it takes decent photos to boot. It could be a little quicker on boot up and between shots, but the auto-focus is fast and grainy or blurry shots are pretty rare. As is usual for most compact cameras, the flash isn't fantastic, but it gets the job done.

On a side rant, people who complain that their camera "doesn't have enough megapixels" are talking out of their collective arses. If you're not blowing up your pictures to sizes larger than say an A3 sheet (and I'd assume that's the majority of people), you could easily get by with a 4 megapixel camera. My camera is 5.1 megapixels, and it wipes the floor in terms of picture quality when compared to some of today' s cheapy ultra-compacts that boast 8-10 megapixels. Megapixels aren't everything, folks.

Ok, that's the camera.

My speakers. They're a Logitech R-20 2.1 set. The woofer's tiny but surprisngly powerful and the satellites deliver a decent sound at medium volumes. Like all cheap sets (these set me back about 30 bucks), they tend to distort sound at higher volumes, but if you're after a cheap set of speakers you can't go passed these. Hopefully I'll be replacing these soon with some Logitech Z-2300s or the equivalent Altech Lansings, but maybe not for a while since I'm supposed to be saving for a car.

Computer. It's a decent setup, I'm not going to bore you with specs. It's been a project for a while, initially it started as a pretty rubbishy workstation, and slowly it's been built into something a little more beastly. It's bloody loud sometimes though, likely due to poor airflow. My favourite aspect of it are the dual screens. I have a 22 inch widescreen LCD as my primary monitor, and a 19 inch 4:3 LCD as my secondary. It's handy to have MSN, Winamp and other programs I might look at from time to time set up on that screen while I have the browser on the primary.

Alarm clock. I received that for my Confirmation back in 2002. It sat beside my bed for several years until it was eventually replaced by a clock radio. Now it sits on my desk. It used to tell the time but the batteries died and I can't be bothered replacing them. I would rate it as decent, it has a little sticker that lets you work out what time it is in London, New York and things. Useful if you like to know those things before going to bed.

That's about it, I could talk about my lamp, but it's rather unremarkable (even more so than the alarm clock), so I won't bore you with it.

Over and out.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Bass, beats, bus?

I bought new headphones the other day off Ebay. They're a pair those fancy Sennheiser CX500 in-ear headphones. You know the sort that drill all the way down into your earhole, essentially doubling as earplugs. It was interesting catching the train that first morning after a year of using the old ear-buds that came with my Creative Zen.

First there was the weird sensation of having tiny pieces of silicon squelching into your ears and forming a seal - well, in at least one ear. It seems my right ear hole is a teensy bit bigger than my left, probably from numerous operations that went on there a couple of years ago to stop it from going deaf. Of course that means that it's slightly uncomfortable sitting in my right ear, and no matter how far I jam it in (painfully, I might add) the bloody thing won't make that satisfying seal that it does in my left. Ah well, at least the majority of sound from the outside world is blocked out, and that's a good thing, isn't it?

It is a strange sensation, walking down the street without hearing a sound from the outside world. It's a feeling I can compare to being drunk, or extremely tired, there seems to be some sort of disconnection between I can see and what I can hear. Simple things that ground you in the real world, like cars roaring passed or the rumbling of a train, are absent, replaced with the blaring soundtrack of whatever is pumping through my headphones at the time. Obviously this disconnection can be good, since you can then lose yourself in the music (well, most people would, the spasmatic audiophile in me can't help to fiddle with equaliser settings everytime a new song comes on).

On the flip side, it does make my morning treck across several busy roads a little more treacherous, not only can I not hear cars coming, but I'm also off with the fairies and not realising that the fast moving metal thing can cause hurt. It's almost as if I'm associating the sound of an approaching car with danger rather than the actual image of that same car approaching at 50 clicks.

Ah well, at least my life now has a basstastic soundtrack.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Indiana Jones and the Sequel of Doom

You guessed it. I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull today. It was actually not too bad. It did suffer from somewhat overplaying it's cards though. The original trilogy from the eighties was well known for it's balance of goofy humour and over-the-top action that bordered on the preposterous. It was silly, but fun anyway, and it was never too outlandish. Indy's latest adventure largely manages to capture that goofy sense of humour, but unfortunately the action can occasionally become too over the top even for a movie of this pedigree. Make no mistake, it'll draw some laughs, but in the back of your mind you'll be thinking that it went just a little too far in one or two scenes.

The plot was another sticking point. It just didn't seem to gel with the whole Indy universe. It was also a bit more complicated when compared to the previous movies, so there were parts that left me confused as to what was actually supposed to be happening. In the end it was actually much weaker (and more predictable) than what it could have been. Ah well, at least the villains were cool (note to film-makers, more movies with crazed vodka-swilling Soviets!).

As for the acting, well they basically carried the movie a little bit more than I would have hoped. Yes, it's kind of a back-handed compliment, because basically the entire cast was excellent. I particularly liked the Soviet Colonel, who looked suitably stony-faced, solemn, and massive, a perfect stereotypical Communist Russian then. What's-her-name the Ukranian scientist occasionally buggered up the accent, but she was suitably sinister nonetheless. Of course Ford was brilliant as Indy, and the guy who played his side-kick (look up the names, you can use IMDB, right?) was excellent as both an aspiring adventurer and a typical fifties greaser. It's just a shame that the brilliant acting (and decent writing obviously) had to cover for the lazy plot.

In spite of these downers Indy's latest adventure still managed to leave a smile on my face once the credits rolled. And isn't that what movies are all about? Where it sits amongst its 80's era peers is a matter of opinion. I think it's probably a bit better than Temple of Doom, but it can't touch Raiders of the Lost Ark or the Last Crusade.

By the way, I really didn't like Temple of Doom, but I'll save that rant for another time.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Girls

I can't work them out. Any ideas?

Monday, May 12, 2008

Angry angry man

Everyone's angry. Everyone's stressed. Everyone's rushing, red-faced, dazed. Why? Exams? Formal? Parents? Assessments?

What does it all matter? Will you be better if you snap at everyone who tries to help you? Will you be angry yourself when you try to help someone, but the only response is a hostile one?

Anger is good, when it's controlled. If you let it boil over, prepare for a few bridges to be burnt - or at least singed for a while.

I'm the first to admit my hypocrisy. I'm known to snap when under stress, under the pump. But, I'm working on it!

What am I saying here? God, I don't know.

School isn't everything. Results aren't everything. Believe it or not, a good ENTER won't set you up for life. Especially if you bury yourself in your room studying for a year only to wake up one day with no social skills, no friends, and a little piece of paper in your hand that means nothing because you didn't take the time to work out what to do with it.

Money isn't everything. For God's sake, don't go into a job for the money. It sounds pompous coming from someone such as yours truly, but I know people who's only goal is to make money. And they sit on it. Guess what? They're not happy. They're the most boring individuals with tired, repetitive jokes who never come out because it's too expensive.

LIFE is important. LIVE your life. ENJOY yourself.

God I'm a fucking preacher.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Conform to my non-conformist ways!

Non-Conformists. We've all met them. And they all look the same. Isn't that ironic? You meet someone who tells you that they're going against the flow, bucking the mainstream. But in reality they're simply conforming to another stereotype or group.

A billboard caught my attention to this the other day. It asked, "If emos are non-conformist, why do they all dress the same?" It's a good point, and though, bafflingly, it was an ad for Sprite, it provides some food for thought. Let's think about the average non-conformist for a moment. What springs to mind? Dreadlocks, earthy-green looking clothes, a rather strong smell of something, thongs, and of course a battered-looking 1980's Datsun that probably spews out more pollution than a Toyota Landcruiser.

Therein lies the problem, by definition we should not be able to pidgeon-hole a non-conformist into a category. Yet, we can. Therefore it's safe to say that the advent of a true non-conformist is extremely rare indeed. A non-conformist wouldn't think in the same way a normal person does. They would, to make use of a tired cliché, think outside the square. The true non-conformist isn't someone who dresses differently, or looks down upon society, they're someone who tries to improve society, improve the human condition. They are Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton. People who change the world, rather than those who try to reject it.

So to those people who look down on others for "following the crowd" by listening to certain types of music or wearing certain types of clothing, take a look at yourself. Do you follow a crowd of your own? Do you ever think of improving the world rather than simply trying to dismiss it by calling them conformist sheep? I'd hazard a guess at saying you probably go for the latter more often than not. I say to you, you're a conformist too, you're simply conforming to another stream in society.

So, I say to you. Wear what you think looks good. Listen to what you think sounds good. Don't worry as to whether or not you're conforming to some sort of crowd. These are the superficial parts of society that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter. It's your mind that you need to keep open, keep unique. It's your mind that could change the world, not your clothes.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Something Old, Something New, Borrowed and Wild

Cars.

Yes we're talking cars.

Why?

Because I want to.

BMW. Know em? I generally think that Beemers are for tossers. There's nothing inheritably wrong with them. In fact they're fantastic machines. They're generally reliable and they have that sleek German efficiency about them. Sure, a few years ago they churned out a few dogs style-wise, but now they're back on track producing some truly fantastic-looking machines.
So why do I think they're for tossers? Because they're the only people who can afford them. And therein lies the problem. All the best cars, the coolest cars, the most powerful cars, usually have someone who you'd rather not talk to for very long behind the wheel. They're the sort of person who always has one of those blu-tooth mobile phone headsets glued to their ears, as if every call is of such importance and urgency that it must be answered right away. They're the sort of person who picks on the most uninteresting topic of conversation imaginable - usually involving themselves - and proceeds to crush you with a torrent of sheer boringness until you can take it no longer and find an excuse to leave. Basically, they're the sort of person you'd only spend time with if they had a nice car.

It's ok for the likes of Ferrari and the other Italian supercar makers. They have that exotic excitement about them that makes them desirable to the common man. Beemer, on the other hand, are too... common. Too run-of-the mill to be an object of desire. It's a shame, really. For years BMW's M series has been the pinnacle of performance and engineering, but no child has a poster of an M5 on their bedroom wall - that's reserved for the Italians. BMW has always stood on the sideline, a rich man's car, but not a rich man's dream car.

Ok, BMW make solid, reliable and boring cars. So what? They always have, right?

Not true.

Tonight I want to show you something, the BMW that dared to be different, a Beemer I'm confident would look right at home on a ten year old's bedroom wall between the Enzo and the Countach. It looks modern, but it came out in 1978. It started the M series of BMWs that performance nuts have grown to love. The BMW M1.
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It reminds me of a DeLorean, but unlike its Irish-American competitor the M1 doesn't fall apart when you power it up. Just look at it, sleek supercar lines meld with the traditional BMW split-nose grill to make something both familiar and unique at the same time. The colour of this one is terrible, but if you see a deep-black M1 driving down the main street, you'll be craning your neck until it's out of sight. It was a combination of the best of both worlds, designed by an Italian, engineered by a German.

The car was never hugely successful commercially, and that's probably why it's never been regarded as a classic car in the same way the Ferraris and Lamborghini of the time were. It did however lead BMW down the path of factory-tuned performance cars. The M1 was soon followed by the M3 in 1986 and the M-series as we know it was born.

Anyway, I've raised the M1 from the ashes for a reason! It seems BMW have been bitten by the supercar bug once again, perhaps they were inspired by Audi's fantastic R8, or perhaps they were sick of being the car company for tossers. Either way they've produced a new concept. Sure, it's a computer generated image, but here's to the million-to-one chance that Beemer will believe it's economically viable.
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I love that nose. It's got the same sleek styling as the M1, but with a much more aggressive bias. The hooded headlamps and the dark, stretched V-shape grill really give the car a sinister look. Like it could swallow you whole and spit you out the other end in a mangled heap.

And the back:
Photobucket
The aggressive styling continues around the back. Look at those tail-lights! It's like looking into the face of an angry hawk!

Ok, I admit, it looks a bit outlandish, but this is a concept mock-up. Remember the original R8 concept pictures? Expect that garish bonnet-bulge to shrink or disappear, change the colour to black and you have yourself a supercar. It's the M1 on steroids, and BMW should build it. Build it now.

Nothing to see here...

I originally posted this on Myspace blogs, which is rubbish, so I'm reposting it here:

Have you ever written something about nothing? It's a very powerful idea to write about nothing, as it can lead to something, even if it just means you better your writing skills. But can we really write about nothing?

What is the definition of nothing?

Nothing is.... nothing, it's not there, it's an empty space... Aha! But that's something! If you can describe nothing then it really must be something, because how can you possibly describe nothing, it's nothing! Therefore, it's safe to say that my previous statement is not entirely correct, writing about nothing doesn't just lead to an improved grasp of the english language, it leads to something! Because nothing is something!

What are you doing?

Nothing.

Impossible, even if by nothing you mean sitting on the couch staring at a wall, that could be described, therefore it's something! Why one would sit on a couch and stare at a wall is another issue altogether, perhaps you're thinking about something?

Have you ever tried to think about nothing? Impossible you say? Some people claim to have achieved it, they called it 'hypnotising' themselves. It's sort of a state of deep relaxation where the mind focuses on nothing. I tried it and concluded that it's bullshit. I also concluded that the internet must not be trusted. Then again, perhaps I wasn't trying hard enough. It's just that trying to focus on nothing, always leads me to thinking about something, often entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is, well, nothing.

So, is nothing an oxymoron? Since when you describe something as nothing it really doesn't mean that at all, it's something!

That's all the philosophy I've got time for tonight.

In other news:

Tonight's episode of Good News Week proved that Crocodile Hunter jokes are still taboo, give it another decade or so.

Petrol prices are reaching new heights, it is now close to half the price (per litre) of Mt Franklin natural spring water (if you buy it on sale (from a dodgy discount grocery store (in Dubbo))).

Parenthesis is back in fashion (bitches).

Hi-Top sneakers are still not cool, in spite of the 80's resurgence (you look REDICULOUS)

How much your new jacket cost will rarely impress your mates, or your girlfriend, especially when I find the same jacket for 50 bucks less at DFO. And I buy it. And wear it. To spite you.

The Sunday Herald Sun still sucks, and it's $1.80. And people only buy it for the TV guide. Which is crap anyway. Green guide people!

Bloggabout

Well, here we are, a brand new blog all waiting to be filled with blogtacular words of deep meaning and.... stuff.

Really, I'll be commenting on whatever I feel like at the time. Perhaps I'll chuck in a short story or two to mix things up.

Here's a brief summary of me:

I live in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Important to know as I'll be referring to local news and media from time to time. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, bad luck.

That's all you need to know for now, you'll learn more about me if I decide to post with some regularity here.