Wyrmlog

Well Channel Nine didn’t completely balls up the ARIAs last night, although they came close. Great idea limiting it to industry professionals guys. At least when you’ve got a seething horde of demented fans filling out the seats you can count on someone laughing at the incredibly lame pre-scripted jokes that plague these events. And what was with the titles during the red carpet interviews? I had no idea Powderfinger was just one unshaven guy in a hat.

Of course they had a bit of an uphill battle to start with, what with the Living End and Avalanches pulling out of their performances (both because of leg injuries, how about that?). The Superjesus gave a decent performance, but Powderfinger and his associates were distinctly lackluster. Was it just me or were Tidas (on backing vocals) incredibly flat during that particular performance? At least their albums sound OK anyway.

Unlike Tina Arena. Probably the most obvious sign of the awards being on Nine this year was that she got to perform her new single. Like we didn’t see that coming. And Natalie Imbruglia got to sing as well. Ack.

As usual with the ARIAs my faith in the Australian music purchasing public has been blown to hell. Scandal’Us had the highest selling Australian single last year?!? Scandal’Us?!? Oh please shoot me now. Or at least put me into hibernation until the manufactured group fad dies off. Say around 2043 maybe. When the robots have taken over.

On the up side I’m happy to see that the Avalanches got some awards, although the unshaven behatted one seems to have gone against expectations and beaten them to most of them. Stella One Eleven missed out on Best Independent release, but you can’t have everything. Little Nikki Webster also went home empty handed (OK, I don’t know that for sure, I’m writing this only one hour into the show, but she’s already missed out on one and I can live in hope, or at least denial), which is good to see. And Slim finally got Best Country Album. So not a total wash out.

Best Male Artist – Nick Cave. Cool. Best Female Artist – Kylie. Well I liked Impossible Princess so I’ll let that slide. Best International Artist – Craig David. What? Best Group and Album of the Year – Powderfinger. Talk about a busy guy, no wonder he’s got no time to shave.

Well, it’s the Queen’s birthday long weekend and I’ve put my day off to good (or at least semi-good) use by making an addition to the website. No, don’t get excited, nothing amazingly fantastic like a new Tale, just a rather stupid javascript test thingie based around White Wolf‘s Vampire: The Masquerade role playing game. You can find it in the Ephemera section of the Junk Files. It’s amazing what I’ll do when I’m bored eh?

I’ve also put the first nail in the coffin (to keep with the vampiric theme) of my association with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by opening an account with our local independant bank. This is partially in protest against the Commonwealth’s ridiculous fees, impersonal attitude and closing of their local branch (which means I now have to travel a good six kilometres to do any on-site banking as opposed to just one, which may not seem much but I don’t drive) and partially because my new account will give me a fee-free VISA debit card, allowing me unparalelled online spending power!

Until I run out of money that is.

So, as soon as my VISA application is accepted (which I imagine it will be, having stayed very much under the credit radar for the whole of my life to date) I’ll be switching my direct debit contributions over to the new bank, emptying my Commonwealth account, and aiming a hearty raspberry at the Executives behind that hulking financial monolith. Charge me for having less than $500 in my account will you? Nyaaa!!!

Then I’ll blow all my money buying DVDs on eBay and starve to death. Ho hum.

Not too long ago, while watching the opening scenes of the film Armageddon I idly wondered what it would actually be like if New York City was hit by fast moving flying debris that brought down skyscrapers. Now we know and I wish we didn’t.

I find it impossible to even begin to comprehend the kind of hatred that could motivate an act of this kind. An attack on the Pentagon is at least justifiable from a military perspective, but to crash civilian aircraft, packed full of innocent passengers into not just the heart of the US military but the largest commercial office block in New York City is an act so nightmarishly evil that I can hardly believe it’s true.

Like many other Australians I woke up to the news on my clock radio. I’ve been wandering around in a daze all day, waiting to wake up and find it’s all a dream. I went into work an hour and a half early just for something to do apart from watching it all on TV, or not watching it, and thinking about it instead.

Many people (including our own Prime Minister who is currently stranded in the States after the closing of all US airspace) have been quoting President Roosevelt over the last twenty four hours, and though I agree that this is indeed a day that will live in infamy, the words that are running through my head are those of Herb Morrison – a radio journalist who, four years before Eisenhower’s famous speech and not all that far from the site where the World Trade Center would one day rise, was sent to cover the landing of a German airship called the Hindenburg.

“It burst into flame and it’s falling, it’s fire, watch it, watch it, get out of the way,get out of the way… oh my god what do I see? it’s burning-bursting into flame, and it’s falling… all of the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world, ohh the flames are rising, oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky. It’s a terrific crash ladies and gentlemen, the smoke and it’s flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground… all the humanity… Screaming around me, I’m so — I can’t even talk, the people, it’s not fair, it’s — it’s — oh! I can’t talk, ladies and gentleman, honest, it’s a flaming mass of smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe… I’m sorry, honestly, I can hardly breathe, I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it… I, I can’t… listen folks I’m going to have to stop for a minute, just because I’ve lost my voice, this is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed…”

Dreams can be very strange things. I woke up this morning absolutely convinced that an old woman with a piglet on a leash came and messed with our fuse box on a nightly basis, under the impression she was delivering antibiotics. Make sense of that if you can all you self-styled dream analysts!

In other news I have had my more or less quarterly haircut. I knew it was time when I woke up on Saturday morning and stumbled into the bathroom to find I looked like Rod Stewart on a bad hair day. Eighties Rod Stewart. On the worst hair day of his entire bad hair day existance.

So I headed off to the local hair salon, where my flowing locks were deftly trimmed by the mono-thumbed hairdressing lady. I’ve always wondered exactly what happened to her other thumb. Was it lost in some horrific styling incident? Did she slip with the shears one sad day? Did she anger one of her teachers at hairdressing college so much that they grabbed a pair of scissors and snip? I’m too scared to ask.

Anyway she’s done her usual adequate job (no comment on her skills, I am one of those unfortunate souls who can only hope for an adequate haircut.), and I am now in my short haired geek phase, as opposed to long haired Beatle-style-but-without-the-talent-or-charasima geek phase.

There was one scary moment though. She did the front and sides first before tackling the dense jungle of the back, so I glanced up at one point to see myself the unsuspecting victim of a Billy Ray Cyrus super-mullet. Absolutely terrifying. That kind of thing can easily scare a year’s growth out of you.

And now Ted Mulry (of the Ted Mulry Gang) is dead! What the heck is going on here? Thankfully I only know one of their songs (the ubiquitous “Jump in my Car”) and for some reason it’s completely failed to lodge itself in my brain. Obviously not as catchy as the Skyhooks.

I got nowhere near enough sleep over the weekend. No, no exciting social activities or incrediable adventures, just general insomnia. My sleep deprived state has combined with the general Monday morning bleughs to make me feel truly rotten. I think I’ll be mainlining paracetemol and St John’s wort all day just to keep the spiritual weasels off my back. Urrgh.

I hate it when singers die.

On the surface this may appear to be a particularly compassionate and sensitive statement, but when you go plunging into the dark depths of my conciousness it becomes clear that it has less to do with any empathy for the singer, their friends and their loved ones, and more to do with shallow self interest.

I hate it when singers die because it means their songs are in my head all day.

The unfortunate and tragic demise of Graeme “Shirley” Strachan, former lead singer of 70’s super group The Skyhooks, who last night shuffled (or more accurately flew screaming into a mountain in his helicopter) off this mortal coil has resulted in me being completely unable to get the Skyhooks’ catalogue out of my brain. Even when the whole office went out to lunch at Sicillian’s to farewell our receptionist Megan (her “only-speak-when-spoken-to” attitude and my severe social phobias have resulted in us exchanging maybe three non-job related sentances in the year she’s been working for us, but I’ll miss her answering the phones 🙂 who’s managed to find a real job where she won’t have to do telemarketing. Not even the piped in strains of Fleetwood Mac, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jackson Browne proved able to combat the nasal strains of Shirl’s “Shockin’ me right out of my braaii-aaaiiin!!”.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that I only know three Skyhooks songs. Living in the 70’s, Horror Movie, and Jukebox in Siberia. And to make matters worse I only know a few bars of the first two (I know the entire lyric of “Jukebox” strangely enough). So it’s been a constant round of “We’re livin’ in the seventee-ees! Horror movie right there on my TV! We’re livin’ in the seventee-ees! Horror movie right there on my TV! Deep beneath the arctic ice, yankee sailors all dressed up nice, Shockin’ me right out of my braaii-aaaiiin!!”, which is not exactly conducive to a relaxed state of mind.

Don’t get me wrong, what I know of the Skyhooks I like, and I bear Shirl no malice whatsoever. I’ll miss seeing him building stuff on Our House on the rare occasions I watched it (lifestyle programs are good light entertainment when there’s nothing more stimulating on). I’m just genuinely sick and tired after a good 10 hours of wailing 70s guitar >:-|

Well the archiving functions are finally done. No more loading up every single entry I’ve ever made in one go, now you get my inane ramblings in convienient bite sized chunks of five at a time. Now I’ve just got to look at filling up that space over to the left, under the copyright notice. Suggestions gladly accepted.

I got the work done by going in to the office early on Friday and Monday and tinkering away. It didn’t take too long much to my surprise, only about 45 minutes, apparently I’m a better JSP programmer than I thought. I could have done it all from home, but we’ve had some problems with re-programing in the past and if the server decided to choke fataly on my additions I’d rather everyone was around to bail me out. Especially after that database incident a few weeks back.

Went and saw Blow over the weekend with Becca who was in town (she did work here, now she’s going to work here, it’s her kind of place ;-). Pretty good all up. Peewee Herman’s in it. At least I think it was Peewee Herman, it sure looked like him (anyone who demands toilets in his dinosaurs is A-OK with me). There is a bit of a surprise shock ending though. Not quite on the same scale as the end of Boogie Nights, but certainly a “Gah!” moment. Be warned! 🙂

Denys sleep now.

So what’s with the CD promo you ask? Well, after a good two or so years of fearsome independence, Wyrmworld has finally

SOLD OUT

It was inevitable really.

Mind you I haven’t gone totally over to the dark side, all I’ve sold out for is the promise of two free Stargate CDs. Which all in all is a pretty Geeky thing to sell out for. You can’t say I’m not being true to my roots.

The deal is thus. I promote the CD with a link back to GNP Crescendo and they send me two copies. In exchange for these laser etched miracles of modern music reproduction technology winging their way across the globe to my doorstep I am obligated to keep the add up there for the next six months, an arrangement no doubt secured at their end with all manner of sigils, arcane diagrams and mighty oaths.

I don’t know what would happen if I took the adds down prematurely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if heavily armed Crescendo commandos storm my residence to seize the CDs back 🙂

That’s if they arrive at all. I must admit to being slightly suspicious. GNP may well have stumbled onto a great promotional technique (advertising across 50 Stargate oriented websites for a total cost of 100 CDs, Dale would be proud of that) but on the other hand the whole thing could have been dreamt up by an evil spammer abusing GNP’s good name to gather the emails, urls and mailing addresses of poor trusting saps from around the globe. Saps such as myself. Or even worse it could have been devised by a global organisation of anti-Stargate terrorists who are, even as I type, sealing up their highly destructive mailbombs marked “STARGATE CDS” and preparing to decimate the ranks of web-savy SG-1 fans worldwide…

Although that does seem unlikely

But when you think about it all I can probably spare a few square inches of screen space for a few months and put up with a few more spams daily about miracle weight loss products, herbal viagra and Russian army surplus supplies for the chance of two free CDs.

Guess now I’ve just gotta watch the mailbox and wait for my music.

Or my mailbomb 🙂

I have finally, after a good twenty months of profitable employment, done a very stupid thing to the database…

One of the first things you soon realise working in the IT industry, is that when used properly, computers and the net are remarkably effective efficiency tools, allowing the user to fit much more work into their already packed day at the office. Can you imagine what it was like before the information revolution? You’d have to write a letter to a client on a typewriter! Then stick in in an envelope and post it! And then wait at least 24 hours for them to get it! Insane no?

The downside of these wonderfully efficient tools is that if you’re not paying attention they make it incrediably easy to not only shoot yourself in the foot, but blow off your entire leg. As I did on Friday afternoon when I got confused between single and double quotes in a database statement and erased one of the fields in about, oh, I don’t know 15,000 of our products!

Happily that particular field is only used on about 30 of our sites, and a tape backup was done last Tuesday, but it’s still pretty damn embarrasing. And it will probably have a rather disruptive effect on my plans to take some leave in about two months time. Hmmmm.

Well, it turns out I’ve been surfing the net for the last two years via a corroded 1950’s copper cable, stripped of it’s insulation by years of under-house weather conditions and rat nibbling, the wires slowly snapping one by one, until late Friday night the final one went, leaving me with no net access for the entire weekend.

However several sweaty hours of work by Telstra engineers has resulted in the installation of a brand new, shiny modern cable, which will carry my signals at blinding speed, until they arrive at the 1950’s junction box out front, where they will slow to the velocity of an arthritic dog.

I did notice however while waiting on the Telstra faults queue on Saturday morning for ten minutes (amazingly swift service, on weekdays it takes at least forty, if you must have line faults try and arrange them for the weekend) just how much the Telstra theme song (“Making it easier to share” c’mon you know the words!) sounds like a Sergeant Pepper era Beatles song. Penny Lane in particular. I don’t know if this is an impressive testement to the taste of the souless muzak engineer who put the tune together, or a depressing symptom of the continuing abuse of some of the best music of the 20th Century musical cannon. I suppose it depends how long you’re on hold for.