footpath to skyline, old and new - the demolition site in the mall (where the cinema used to be, near the information booth) and the latest sky-scraper creeping upwards in the background.
Labels: photo
...you flick throught he latest issue of fiend magazine and find:
- an article on a band your own two-gig-wonder group once shared a gig with (dead inside the chrysalis). it wasn't hard to tell they'd go further than us, considering our band more or less self-destructed after that ;)
- a feature on a band that swaps remixes with the band you run a website for (real life). talks about the gig that kicked off their tour... i posted photos of that gig at the time.
- a pic of a band you met after a gig a few weeks back (angelspit). scary thing is they look just as good in real life as the do in photos. *nobody* should be allowed to do that.
- a guy you buy cds from reviewing an artist you were about to ask him to order in (jarod/gup and klinik). i guess he won't think i'm odd for being interested in their old stuff :)
none of it is big stuff, but at the same time it's different to the usual magazine experience (people you've never met and bands you'll probably never hear). it's not remote or theoretical. i guess it goes with the territory after something like nine years on the scene. odd but nice, i guess :)
Velvet Revolver...
- Start late? Check, although someone should tell them Axl Rose isn't in this band.
- Row of rock god poses, guitars slung so low they're nearly on the floor? Check.
- Singer flanked by two guitars, major posing on feedback wedge? Check.
- Guitar played behind the head? Check.
- Dual-neck guitar? Check.
- Huge banner behind band, "Rock'N'Fuckin'Roll"? Check.
- At appropriate moment, banner drops to reveal band's name up in lights? Check.
- Singer wanders off in the middle of a song for no reason, band covers for him? Check.
- Slash came out for the encore in The Hat? Check.
- Slash is a bitch for not then playing cheesy Gunners smash hit? Check. Bitch.
The rock and roll classics have been observed :)
old number 7, succeeds where strepsils fail ;) entered over at lj:photocontest for the 'smooth' challenge. sure, 'smooth' would be more accurate if it had been a glass of Oban or Maker's Mark, but work with me people :)
Labels: photo
* note that despite this post title, i am not a trekkie. not all geeks are trekkies, ok?
contrast between old and new, city/kangaroo point.
Labels: photo
IEBlog | IE7: [Microsoft is] committing to deliver a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP customers.
Some immediate thoughts:
- This is only for Win XP SP2, so MS is still trying to force users to upgrade their OS just to get a better browser. To put it another way: MS is still saying 'fuck you' to anyone who hasn't upgraded to their latest, greatest and soon-to-be-replaced OS.
- It's unlikely that they would have bothered with this unless Firefox had started gaining marketshare. Firefox, Opera, hell even Netscape 7 are all far superior browsers and have been for some time.
- It's also unlikely that they would have bothered if Longhorn's release date hadn't slipped.
- MS will no doubt claim they are wonderful for adding features which long ago became 'standard' in other browsers... eg. popup blocking, tabbed browsing, easy plugin controls.
- I hear that this IE7 release uses a new/modified rendering engine so I guess we'll have to figure out all the new bugs.
- That said, the press release etc all focus on this being an 'improvement for security' so this could all just be a massive security patch with added marketing.
So... overall... I guess it's better for MS to at least roll out a new browser for XP, even if they're not making it available to existing customers with other products. That said, there's no indication yet as to whether IE7 will support web standards or isolate itself from the OS a little better.
It's just MS scrambling to stem the flow of users moving away from IE... MS doesn't like that because they want their users to remain docile. The do not want people to think for themselves, or - worst of all - consider and switch to non-MS alternatives. Once people switch from IE to Firefox they're that much more likely to switch to OpenOffice or an email client like Eudora or Thunderbird. MS is the AOL of software - as far as they are concerned the less their users have to think, the better.
street art - sticker cluster near king george square.
crossposted to lj:photographers and lj:aussie_photos.
Labels: photo
[eagle street pier carpark] this must have shaken the driver's teeth out. the imprint of the tyre is at about chest height - clearly someone backed their 4WD into this pole; and the spare tyre slammed into it with enough force to leave an imprint of the text written into the rubber. they're using Bridgestone Desert Duellers, from the look of it.
Labels: photo
best. calvin. and. hobbes. ever. well actually equal best with the one which ends with 'sometimes i think the surest sign that intelligent live exists out there is that none of it has tried to contact us'.
Story Bridge, taken from Riverside.
Eagle Street Pier carpark. [Update: I pulled some courage together and entered this over at lj:photochallenge]
Both taken earlier tonight... I love digital :)
Also posted at lj:aussie_photos.
Update (2005.02.17): came Photochallenge">8th out of 39 for the photo challenge... rather chuffed at that actually, particularly since i got more votes than the shots i voted for :)
Labels: photo
wildgrass at kangaroo point, brisbane.
Labels: photo
PHWOAR, I say. Car and Driver Magazine : The Mother of all GT-Rs, the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R Z-tune. This quote sums it up: Why did they make it? Simple. To show what's possible.
Why is it that I always like the most expensive possible version of everything? :)
Why Does Windows Still Suck? / Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn't everyone on a Mac? OK, great question: why do people put up with their computers fucking up? Then it turns into Mac zealotism. Shit man, you started out so well.
This go me thinking about the whole Mac vs. PC thing (again) and I think I've finally worked out what's going on: this whole Mac thing... it's a conspiracy.
I have to say, I've always wondered what MacHeads were getting out of Macs that I'm missing. Sure, they might look pretty (the Macs that is) but I've never found the ones that these people clearly use - you know, it directly stimulates the pleasure centres of the brain, makes you a coffee and gives you a blowjob (alter this to your relevant beverage/body parts, work with me people).
See, I hear people talk about how their Mac has never crashed and never needed any maintenance. Ever. Plus they knew how to use it instantly and never once screamed at it in frustration. Then they say how it's so cool that there's an update to the OS every other week which they've just installed, you know the one with the feline name? OSX Kitty or something. Doesn't matter that they dump on Windows for having an OS update every other week, their updates are Good Updates. Plus they're now claiming that Macs are 'cheap'.
None of this matches my own experience. The Macs I've used crashed just as much as any other computer. They all cost substantially more than any comparable PC (unless you're fucking stupid enough to buy a Dell or whatever name brand). I once spent an hour trawling the help files looking for the answer to a simple question... only to discover its help files assumed I already knew where to find Panel X. I assume Panel X existed somewhere on the machine, but I'll never know since I reefed the power cable out of the wall and asked a MacHead to test the damn website on their laptop (why do so many MacHeads drag their personal laptop into work, only to run it next to their work-supplied G5-from-hell?).
I've tried, really. I've used Macs. Only once as a workstation - *twitch* the G3 crash-o-matic *twitch*twitch*. But we have Macs at work for testing purposes. I've used a G3, G4, G4 dual-chip, PowerBook and an iMac (first generation). I've used OS 8, 9, 10. Maybe 7, not sure. I have not found any iteration to be 'intuitive' - ever since my first Mac experience, I've found them annoying. The power button was placed on the keyboard (I call it the 'cat key') and marked with a left-pointing triangle. WTF? The floppy drive had no eject button. WTF? I have to drag my disk WHERE on the desktop? WTF? Are you fucking crazy? On my Amiga that meant FORMAT.
My overall position is this: Macs are no more reliable than anything else. They are no more intuitive than anything else (that's probably the key point actually). I *hate* the Mac 'floating window' paradigm. I hate the way Mac OS comes up with radically different interface features in every new release (where did that weird little pop-out configuration bar thing go?). I definitely hate the way everything on a Mac is bloody *round*. Apparently corners scare Mac people. Games... need I say more? A lot of the software I like doesn't have a Mac port (the major stuff, yes; but not the various utilities). Most file compatibility issues I've come across were related to going between Mac and PC. Sure, there aren't many Mac viruses out there... but that isn't going to make me switch. I do, however, want an iPod. Please also note that I'm not saying Windows is good or doesn't crash or any crap like that. I think Windows sucks, but I don't have the time/energy to learn Linux and I don't have the money or inclination to buy a Mac.
I've just watched a workmate go through the joy of getting a brand new iMac G5. Sure, it may have taken several attempts to get his files off the G4. Sure it might have taken hours even over the apparently-magical firewire. But hey, it's nifty and one piece and runs nice and fast! Two days later he was logging a support job to replace the monitor since it had fucked pixels (some dead, some 'dark'). Massive runaround ensues since not even the people who sold the machine to our organisation know what the tech support deal is. He's told he'll have to ship the damn thing off site for at least a week - hang on, it's an iMac so doesn't that mean he will have NO COMPUTER? You can't just borrow a monitor off someone. Eventually they are forced to come out and replace the monitor on site. The new monitor only has one fucked pixel.
Of course, he still defends his Mac. It has not actually wronged him, he still feels the love. Although not a tattood iSoldier in the OS frontlines, he remains a Mac advocate.
Then it hits me - the people who sold this Mac didn't know who was getting it. They didn't know they were going to harm a Brother. They shipped.... an evil Mac.
You see, finally realisation has dawned. There are two kinds of Macintosh. There's the kind I've come across... then there's the kind that they sell to people who go to Mac showrooms with their Mac t-shirts, Mac tattoos and the blue iPod which is the Work iPod (nothing in this sentence is a joke). These people get ushered out the back, to the room with hundreds of Mac Ninja training for.... well, who knows? Even Mac Ninja are Ninja. So anyway, in this secret room they find rows of............... the Other Macs.
My guess is these Other Macs have the fuckup chip removed. These Macs actually have a Panel X, a screensaver and an eject button on the CD drive. All games run on this Mac. Even Microsoft applications run perfectly on this Mac (or maybe not, if you read the article...). This is.... The Mac.
The Zealot is then initated into the next level of the cult, sworn to secrecy and sent home with their cheap, perfect Mac. They are given DVD manuals on how to annoy the piss out of everyone by talking about their Mac all the fucking time. They actually earn money for defending the price of their own Mac, thus coming out with a profit over time.
The rest of us get Evil Macs.
more on gmail's sudden storm of invites... one person i know has 50 invites, two others have just a couple. from what they've told me about the invites they've sent, it doesn't seem to correspond with successful invites. maybe it's based on total number sent regardless of result; or perhaps it's based on regularity of login. but it's not obvious.
*blinks*
*checks again*
Yep, it seems I have 50 Gmail invites all of a sudden. Five-zero. That's a lot of love to spread around.
I wonder if everyone's got that many?
someone carefully stacked these broken bricks into a kind of informal lantern shape. i saw it several mornings in a row, then decided to stop and take some photos. that afternoon, it was gone.
Labels: photo
