Watched the Channel 10 edition of MotoGP last night. All I can say is ouch after seeing John Hopkins crash quite spectacularly. He said he accidently dropped it into second because his foot was numb due to painkillers that were needed after a crash a few days ago. Note to self: Don’t take painkillers and ride bike.

It also feels abit “ouch” that the second semester of uni starts today and I’m not around (I know that other unis started earlier). Although I will be there next week, it will only be in a professional teaching capacity, not in fulltime missionary mode. Kinda disappointing. Oh well, I’m sure there is some reason I’m not supposed to be there yet, I just wonder what her name is ;-)

I’ve seen that many people seem to use the term “google it” when someone asks them about something. This usually comes from tech guys (Kevin Rose comes to mind). Now while this is all well and good, I don’t google something as my first choice when needing info.

Increasingly I’ve discovered that I use Wikipedia when I need to get info. The reasons for this are three-fold:

1. You get unbiased info. Unlike google where the first link is often the commercial website, wikipedia is written, edited and maintained by the general public.
2. Quicker. Wiki usually takes me straight to the article (unless wikisearch is down). Google usually involves me wading through thousands of results.
3. Hyperlinks. Wikipedia will easily link me to related topics both within itself, as well as on the rest of the web. On controversial issues, the links are usually broken up based on bias – see a page like The Bible.

Plus if you discover something that is wrong, you can edit the article, contributing to the common good.

• Posted the first real ChaotiColumn. Covers salvation from a slightly more traditional perspective than most tracts these days – I think Jonathan Edwards would be proud
• Looks like my prac teaching won’t start until week 2. This means I’ll get paid less overall, and that I won’t get a full paycheck til week 5, which is september. Also means loyal readers from club mac won’t see me in person for another week.
• Other than the column, I have a few other projects that I’m working on. Can’t reveal details, but they should at least keep me busy.

IT’S BACK!!!!

The column that I began in 2003 has returned.

There is a link on the sidebar –>

Or the lazy can click here….

Learning how to kill people – officeguns – using standard office stationery to make dangerous weapons.

Porn – The internet is for porn – a song from Avenue Q the broadway musical. The musical itself has been described as “Sesame Street meets south park”. Click here for the soundtrack on amazon. While the flash video is safe, it does contain some language.

Of course now that I’ve mentioned a link to some weapon making on the internet, and I’m a religous fundamentalist…. I guess ASIO’ll be knocking at my door. ;-)

Well…. for the next few days anyway. And by early mornings, I mean going to bead in the early morning. I’ve stayed up til 2am for the past few days watching the first ashes test, le tour de france, the wallabies v springboks on saturday, and the motogp last night. They’re all finished now, but I do have 2 DVDs of star trek to watch, and the Luther movie.

Oh well…. “teaching” “work” starts next week I believe (123 usually has pracs in week 1), but it involves neither teaching or work, hence the quotes. So I’ll be able to blog from uni. Maybe I’ll even live-blog one of my classes to give you all an experience of how silly it is.

Of course I’ll have to direct my students to the “How to ask a question” article on the MS Knowledge base. It’s quite good, and probably should be required reading for anyone who ever wants to post on a net forum. Plus it’s the only decent thing I’ve seen fro MS recently.

Yesterday I got Baldurs Gate 2 running on my linux box. It’s good to place a nice story based game, and I’m using the monk class for the first time. Should be interesting, not having to worry about stuff like armor and weapons for my main character.

I also whipped up a new background for my computer….

The bike is from MCnews, the ninja guy is from the webcomic Little Gamers, the logo from google image search. And yes, I have a MacOS-X theme running on Gnome.

The title is my quote of the week. It comes from a book review written by Michael Jensen. Good to see that there are still people with the backbone to say that something is crap.

I also visited the stage 1 of the upgrades to the local pagan temple – Westfield Tuggerah. Interesting, except it isn’t. I remember when each shopping centre had its own style and feel. But now they all look the same. About the only thing that Tuggerah has that isn’t normal is Apple Centre. But it’s is probably just the start of apple invading shopping centres.

There is a JB HiFi though, so I was able to get a couple of cheap CDs – Anthrax – Fistful of Metal & Armed and Dangerous (their first album and EP), and the Joe Satriani Anthology.

Also stayed up late last night to watch Ashes and le Tour. It looked like the Oz dominance was over eith our first innings, then England batted even worse. So if I seem sleepy over the next few weeks, cricket is the reason (plus the F1 + MotoGP on sunday night)

Once again a heading with 2 meanings.

Firstly, I had a really strange dream the other night. The basic plot was me getting rejected by a girl I know. Interesting because I never really been interested in her, and it was the best rejection I’ve ever had. None of that “I like you as a friend, but….” stuff that I always get, but logical, well reasoned objections to the formation of such a relationship.

Although it is worrying that my dreams are know just about getting a good rejection….

Secondly, I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on DVD last night. It is a good film, but the usual spielberg-lighting-style(tm) was much more evident than on the VHS copies. It also struck me how dodgy the theology was. The holy grail doesn’t even grant eternal life, it gives some healing, and must be used continually for everlasting life. If you stop doing it, you age and die like a normal person. Sounded to me like it was just a transposing of the Catholic view of confession and your spiritual state to the physical realm. Or possibly the catholic view of Mass, as you have to be “righteous” to recieve the good stuff.

Luckily the Bible teaches that it is by grace we are saved, and it ain’t about us doing stuff to keep ourselves saved.

What is also funny is how modern the harbour looked in the venice speedboat scene – big cranes and such that I never saw in the 4:3 version. Also the clearer picture showed up alot of the blue screening and other special effects, when both the foreground and background are in focus it don’t look right.

This blog is now being transmitted into deep space by bloginspace.com So I greet our new alien readers, and just for you I’ll give a nice string of prime numbers, because that always seems to be part of any human-alien transmission in good sci-fi.

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113

So now on to the real post. My feet hurt from my new boots, my cheapo leather jacket is quite warm especially when combined with a flanno (even if I then feel like mini-Geoff) and I start work at uni in a week and a half. Once I start getting paid, I’ll be able to get my bike-L’s and then a bike. Hopefully I’ll also of found a place to live (for free or very cheap) and a new church.