Today I decided to change the blog name (even though the URL remains the same).  This is to help me become inspired about life in general (and some aspects of it in particular).

I do remain infidel.  This won’t change soon, bar a deititious revelation hehehehe.  Not sure if that was even a real sentence.  Anyhoo…

I do remain irritated… but luckily I’ve tracked down the source of this irritation.  I am irritated because I am not inspired.  I am not inspired by what I do.  Not inspired by where I live.  Not inspired by the people I interact with (except for one or two special souls).  Not inspired because I am not reaching my goals.

Hopefully this blog name change is the minor beginning to major inspiration…

Instead of being all doom and gloom, I have to mention the biggest joy in my life right now:

The CDs I ordered off SaikoSounds. These are by and large CDs from Manic Dragon Records.

The CDs, with links to the track samples on SaikoSounds, are:

• Fractal Cowboys / The Many Faces – Entre Nous
• Various Artists – Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Massive – No Angel
  This is the solo project of Davina from Sirius Isness. Apart from the fact that she’s hot as hell… she makes incredibly cool stomping tunes! Sexy, bouncy… but not girly at all… like the name of the album implies
• CPC – Double Bouble
  One of my favourites of the lot
• Various Artists – Light from The Depths of Chaos
• Various Artists – Multiple Personalities 2
• CPC da Friends – Violence
  This CD is insane There is one track which is a 170bpm track! I tried to stomp to it during a little NYE shindig I attended.
  Did not succeed in making rythmical sense of it… but i still love it.

The first CD on my next order will be:
Xenomorph – Demagoguery Of The Obscurants. The whole CD
is about capatilistic greed and destruction. Interesting.

So, I’ve finally jumped onto the Eclipse IDE bandwagon.  I found it has very nice (and free!) plugins available, esp. for web authoring.

I was specifically looking for a nice PHP editing pluging.  So I found the plugin from the PHP company, Zend.  It is called PDT.  Instead of downloading the PDT-all-in-one package (which is basically a complete Eclipse installation with PDT plugin added), I decided I’ll rather use the Eclipse update manager.   In theory, one just points the update manager to the update / download URL of the plugin you are interested in and it takes care of the rest.  In theory.

Problem is this:  Many of the plugins/packages depend on many other packages and the update manager is not clever enough to figure out where to get the dependencies for each package (and in turn, their dependencies!).  So now each time the update manager bitches about a missing dependency, you have to locate the download link for that dependency, add it to the update manager list of download locations and hope the newly added dependency doesn’t have dependency issues of its own!

Tres irritating.  I’ve also found that some of the packages that you download in zip format and not via the update manager; clobber some of the core jar files and then screw up my existing core eclipse installation.  Not cool.

It would be nice if the Eclipse update manager could work like the Debian package manager ‘apt’ which resolves dependencies as needed.

Here I am, stuck in the coastal town of Kleinmond, thanks to familial guilt. Hope that was the right expression. So, there i thought i’d be clever and leave the pc at home. You know, catch up on some reading, actually work on a tan… what ‘normal’ people do on holiday. Turns out i’m not normal. Dope.

See, i’ve been sleeping like mad this week. Prolly post-party exhaustion. So i wake up when it becomes too hot to go walk on the beach. Or i’m just too lazy. Anyhow, soon we get to the mobile. So, i entertain myself by jamming guitar. But, i forgot the adaptor for my headphones and i don’t like playing through the amp when i’m clearly out of form. So there goes that option.

Next we have the book option. Did that. Now i’m ready to start my own company and work at most 4 hours a week while partying with supermodels wherever. Buuut… before all that, i am stuck with my cell phone for entertainment. This in itself is not so bad, right? I mean, i have Opera Mini installed so I can cruise the web in style.
Also, my phone (SE k800i) actually has a media player so I should be sorted…NOT!

Since my thumb is getting sore from typing on the phone keypad, i’ll cut to the chase: It seems like the k800i can’t play Flash content! And i cant get Flash Lite installer because of Sony Ericsson and Adobe bungling! The friggen SE walkman phones can play Flash, but not the K series. So, no Youtube or Boobtube for me :’(.

Enter shortcoming number 2: I was clever enough to load only metal tunes on my phone. So, in order to get my trance fix i decide to browse to http://www.saikosounds.com. Unfarkingfortunately, between my phone’s firmware and the webbrowser they can’t find a way to interpret m3u files and serve me up some tunage .

So, to finally get to the topic of this post: my next mobile will definitely be a smartphone. It will also be able to bring me breakfast in bed…

Ok, my thumb is fcked from typing. Outta here!

I’m in random rambling mode; so please bear with me. Probably just talking to myself, but it feels nice anyway.

Here’s a list of the things currently irritating the crap out of me (I shit you not; it is all out of me):

- My inability to narrow down the selection of properties I’m looking at buying. I’ve drawn up a little pairwise forced decision thingy for choosing between a number of alternatives… but doink me if I actually get round to scoring the alternatives. Procrastination, I be thy bitch.

- The fact that I’m in an income bracket which results in a house bond which is 100K shy of a really nice property. Then again; I am a first-time buyer so I guess one would be lucky to get your ideal place first time. Hell; at least I have options. And I actualy enjoy my work again… so scratch that irritation.

- The fact that Windows Explorer still has a friggen FLOPPY DISK (A:\) icon which, if accidently fingered, makes your whole PC lock up for a mini eternity. I mean who the hell still uses floppy drives?!? Talk about legacy crap.

- The indescribable need of Yankee sitcoms to make musical episodes. I just watched an episode of Scrubs, my favourite comedy show, which was one long musical. Sure; the lyrics were funny, but ffs… Grease and all that other shite is SOO last decade (or is it the one before that?). Ugh.

- This one bit in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica, Ride the Lightning) which I just can’t get my fingers to play correctly on the guitar. The rest of the song is easy as in play with one hand easy (assuming you don’t need to strum any string… duh)… but this one little progression played by my man James … just can’t get the digits to cooperate. Only practised it 3 or 4 times now so I guess I can’t expect miracles (which we all know don’t happen; right?).

- The fact that people are still dying in friggen stupid-ass wars. ‘Nuff said.

- The fact that I’ve only now seen the bullet list button in the editor of this blog. Tough; carrying on as it is.

- OpenOffice! Hell… I’ve got a love-hate relationship with this software; with the love part constrained to it being free. Too many quirks, or maybe I’m just spoilt with good ‘ol TeX.

- Forbidden but oh so compatible fruit. Hmm… not going to elaborate on this one. Feel free to apply what’s left of your imagination.

- LOLcats.  I HATE FCKING LOLCATS; more than overzealous faitheads (that says a lot). It is the lamest dumbest crap out there.

OK; enough whining for now. Things that actually cause joy in my life at the moment (and now I’m going to use the bullet list… whoopee):

• My guitar, amplifier and general playing progress. This is one great sanity preserver, trust you me. Nothing like jamming a solid tune on the guitar to take your mind off the important things you should actually be thinking about.
• Finally being able to implement this one little bit of functionality for this project I’ve been working on almost all of this year. Suffice to say it is one of those features that took seemingly forever to get done but it should make the life of everyone using the system a whole lot easier. It is quite nice to see something like that come to be.
• The direction my job and company of employment is going. Things are happening and it feels like we are getting more professional in the way we handle business. Now if only we can start pulling in the dough like the overpaid duds out there (celebrities cough cough). I still think a black Lamborgini would look much better in my garage than my little Corsa…
• Finally getting my butt into gear to start looking for my own little nest to purchase.
• The urgency / drive that happened to trigger the former point.
• Summer… and outdoor trance parties. Man; I love a good stomp in the outdoors… preferrably a spot with lotsa trees on / around the dancefloor. Magical . Only downside to summer for me is… mozzies. I hate mozzies. One day I’ll have my mofo mozzie-tracking lazer zapping the litte fckers out of the sky as soon as they home in for the bloodbank that is I.
• Mountain biking… on par with guitar playing in terms of the satisfaction level.
• Red wine. I lurvs my red wine.
• Scrubs. Man; this series restored my sense of humour. Yeah; I actually have one. I just hide it very well.

Hmmm that’s enough random stuff for now. Yippeekiyay.

I’m evaluating Google Web Toolkit for use in a work project.

For those of you not in the know, this toolkit allows you to code
web-based apps in Java (or at least a subset of it), then generate
the Javascript etc. required for hosting and voila… bootiful AJAX-like
websites in a jiffy.

Now why this gets me wet is not because of Java, but because of
NO PHP! Wheeee! But mostly because it gives me an excuse to try
out Java at work No; it is because of NO PHP!!! Oh; said that
already. Right…

A cool feature of the toolkit is the ability to code your little app/website,then ’serve’ it (or ‘host’ it as GWT calls it) in a little browser thingy suppliedwith the toolkit. This allows you to make changes to your Java code, hit refresh in the hosted page and see the changes immediately. In short; we are talking very rapid development here, coupled with the powerful debugging capabilities of the Java / Eclipse combination (or so I’m told).

Will keep you posted of any major dramas etc.

Other than that; I’m in serious need of a big stomp (that means ‘trance party’ for those not in the know).

out

I’ve relocated my blog after experiencing some irritations with the previous host.

So here I am. Let me duplicate the last post on my previous blog. It is important, because it will tell you a lot about what makes me tick. So, without further delay:

I choose:
Freedom over oppression
Tolerance over prejudice
Life over afterlife
Knowledge over faith

Ok; there you have it. I’ve decided to toast my previous blog instead of importing it. Why? Because I’m a lazy Infidel Peeg.

out