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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Morbid Curiosity's LiveJournal:
| Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | |
| 9:20 am | Also... ...who do I know who's going to GenCon Indy this year? |
| 8:42 am | After an interesting discussion about renewable energy sources/technologies over on ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} atdt1991's journal (here), I went looking for local stuff. I happened to stumble across the Christchurch City Council's Sustainable Energy Strategy (2008-2018) document in PDF form:http://www.ccc.govt.nz/environment/sust Mostly here for my own interest's sake to review later, but I thought other people might be interested too. |
| Friday, April 25th, 2008 | |
| 7:11 pm | Tripod - Hot Girl in the Comic Shop [via Greg Costikyan on PlayThisThing] Current Mood:  amusedCurrent Music: Tripod |
| Monday, April 21st, 2008 | |
| 2:09 pm | With a mop on a drop ship or trying to stab a goblin. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. > LOLGRUES [via ladyjestyr, from bruceb, from David Bolack, and thence on into the Internet] Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: MC Frontalot - It Is Pitch Dark |
| Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | |
| 12:40 am | It's that time again. Made it this far, I guess. Current Mood: older Current Music: Headless Chickens - Expecting to Fly |
| Monday, April 14th, 2008 | |
| 10:36 am | Square hat with tassel on. Now that I've got the necessary bits of paperwork sorted out (after regalia applications getting lost in the post back in February), I shall finally be graduating at the end of the week for my MSc. Got a new copy of my contract at university (to replace the one that got drowned in the post) sorted out, too. Also turning 30 on Thursday. Seems like stuff is going places, and most of it's actually getting there this week :-) |
| Sunday, April 13th, 2008 | |
| 2:01 pm | |
| Friday, April 11th, 2008 | |
| 2:53 pm | Plans underway. 17/07: CHC -> AKL -> LAX 30/07: LAX -> DFW -> LEX 18/08: IND -> ORD -> SEA 25/08: SEA -> AKL -> CHC Dates and exact itinerary are tentative at this point, but that's looking like five weeks of my life and a fair chunk of (budgeted for) savings. Should be fun :-) Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 | |
| 8:56 am | Attention, people of the interwebs: I would like you to pry Charlton Heston's cold, dead cliche from your hands now, please. Not as bad as the Gary Gygax saving throw comments, to be sure, but still... |
| Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | |
| 1:46 pm | In case anyone wants to know what I and others have been doing at university for the past couple of years: Virtual Varsities The Press | Tuesday, 26 February 2008 ( Full text below, for when they archive the link into inaccessibility ) |
| Friday, February 15th, 2008 | |
| 2:45 am | Not quite a poem: On the bus, I am accosted by the treble yell of a half-dozen personal playlists; drowning in drowning out. |
| Friday, December 28th, 2007 | |
| 2:26 pm | I'm not sure why, but whenever I hear or see someone saying or writing "Go The All Blacks!", I find myself thinking of the "The people called Romans, they go the house?!" scene from The Life of Brian. Have been settling into the new flat well, though I still need to find time to unpack a few bits'n'pieces. I also met my flatmate Scott's family yesterday, which went decently - they seem like a nice bunch, and it hasn't taken long for them to start treating me as one of the tribe. Speaking of the tribe, Christmas went relatively well too, despite me nodding off in inopportune places. A fairly low-stress Christmas was had by all. My nephew Alexander already seems to be investigating facial expressions and gaze tracking, and given another couple of months he'll probably be capable of what it would take a computer science PhD a few years to achieve. Humans are cool like that. As best I can tell, he's a relatively well-behaved young sprogling; he doesn't cry at the hideously painful pitch of some people's children, and he's already learning that he can vocalise a little bit without yelling continuously to get someone's attention. To be fair, I think that my sister and her husband are doing a pretty decent job on the parenting side of things, too - a combination of geekily active involvement in understanding the parenting process, and perhaps a bit of support from my parents (who are pretty awesome and live just down the road). All things concerned, a child could have a heck of a lot worse a start in life than this one. In other news, I have new pants and a random domestic hints book. Certainly, the idea of freezing parsley and/or chives so that you can just crumble them into whatever you're cooking without bothering to chop is a nifty idea. Current Mood: sneezing from dust Current Music: Absurd Minds - Master Builder |
| Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 | |
| 10:18 pm | Thanks to help from Brian and my father, mostly moved into new place now. Many boxes and books still to move around, but everything pretty much fits in the room so far. It apparently got up to 31°C today, so perhaps not the best day to move, though we got through it in fairly good time at least. Still, the important things are that the bed and computer and set up and working, so I think I'll go have a shower and maybe get towards comatose for a good eight hours or so. Hurrah. Current Mood: knackered |
| Sunday, November 25th, 2007 | |
| 9:02 pm | House found Okay, I've found a new place to move into - larger room, similar price, relatively close to bus routes to get places. In St. Albans, so not so obnoxious for going to university or work, and not too far for visiting various people, either. Hooray! |
| Saturday, November 17th, 2007 | |
| 12:21 pm | Housing joy. So, Tony and James have apparently found a place to move to and are doing that in three weeks or so. Given plans of my other flatmates, realistically this means I'll need to line up a new place to live in the next fortnight or so. Is anyone in Christchurch looking for a flatmate, currently? Preferably close to central city or university, but I'll consider whatever options I can get right now. |
| Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 | |
| 2:28 pm | Occam's Cultural Razor? So, there's lots of talk in the NZ media about the "terrorism raids" we had a while back, and evidence recently leaked to the press. These bits in particular caught my eye:
See, given the Reservoir Dogs-style codenames and so forth, my immediate thought upon seeing meetings called "Rama" was that it was code for "rendezvous", after the classic Arthur C. Clarke story Rendezvous with Rama. Indigenous culture or pop culture? How geeky is your average "terrorism suspect", anyway? Current Mood: Lunchtime over, coding now. Current Music: Funker Vogt - Martian on the Moon |
| Thursday, November 8th, 2007 | |
| 6:12 pm | Oh bloody hell, here we go again... So, there's been another school shooting. This time in Finland. And the shooter also liked KMFDM, just like the Columbine boys. To be fair, the TV3 coverage was relatively fair and balanced, but I'm expecting more numbskullery in the press. Here's an old KMFDM song that doesn't get quoted when things like this happen: ( The Problem ) Their point is that problems like this are something that communities have, not simply individuals. Things like this happen because people are alienated from their communities. That alienation doesn't tend to be a one-sided equation. Current Music: Recoil - Jezebel |
| Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | |
| 4:16 pm | Zero Point Ninja Energy, or the Power of Various Factions by Population I've had a number of discussions recently in which the relative power levels of different entities relative to their number has been argued. So I wrote some notes last night. To whit: Monkeys: Monkeys definitely increase in power according to their numbers. One monkey is often pretty harmless, but ten or a hundred monkeys become a formidable force (especially if you're deputy mayor of Delhi). However, the amount of power a group of monkeys has will eventually tail off; even an infinite number of monkeys will still only be equivalent in creative power to one English playwright, for example. Pirates: Pirates are more formidable in numbers, but past a certain critical mass they become increasingly unstable and will fight amongst themselves, arguing and backstabbing for a greater share of the plunder. If pirates ever manage to develop some form of social teflon to prevent their internal friction, then they may become an even more formidable cohesive force. Cowboys: Cowboys follow some kind of mysterious quantum laws. Two cowboys of different charm (black and white hats, respectively) in close proximity will likely cause the annihilation of one cowboy or the other, depending on their relative speeds (i.e. "the quick and the dead"). The collision of charm-aligned cowboys will react differently, however: resulting in one Hero, one Sidekick, and a burst of gamma radiation (or hilarity, if the reaction takes place within a comedy field). See also: mad scientists and Conservation of Strangeness. Clowns: Creepiness increases with the clowns-per-car density ratio. Contortionist mimes especially, due to their lack of visible car. Robots: They're a tricky one, alright. Robots tend to increase in numbers, but also have recombinant properties such that five smaller robots are less powerful than those same five robots joined into one larger robot. On the other hand, swarms of very small robots could easily infiltrate and bring down a larger enemy without much threat to themselves. There may be some elusive high-order polynomial relationship that depends on mass, number and overall surface area of robots involved. Which would be just like them, really. Ninjas: Last but not least, Ninjas have a very curious property: they are more powerful when there are fewer of them. For example, a group of 100 or more ninjas is likely to find itself decimated by a foe in relatively short order. A group of three ninjas can defeat a squad of men without even blinking. One lone ninja can flip out and defeat an entire household of guards, including elite cadres and bodyguards and maybe even a samurai champion or two. This leads us to believe that the most powerful force in the universe would be no ninjas whatsoever. Certainly, most of the known planets in the universe are completely uninhabited, and also contain absolutely no ninjas. It would be foolish in extreme for us to consider these two facts to be completely unrelated. |
| Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 | |
| 9:35 pm | Commencing Unclitude My sister had a Caesarian this evening, and is recovering in hospital for the next few days. In related news, there is now an Alexander! This being-an-uncle thing may take some getting used to :-) |
| Monday, September 24th, 2007 | |
| 3:03 pm | A Mime is a Terrible Thing to Waste Marcel Marceau: 22 March, 1923 - 22 Sept, 2007 |