36 and still breathing

Folks, my birthday continues. Now that I'm feeling better about the event I can apologise for the winge and the attempted rectification of Angry Dad 2006's family (See 36 today). I'm feeling better as I had my final celebration with my very dear friend Jannit.

It wasn't an exciting night in terms of riding a roller-coaster or the like, but its great to be with someone you love. We went out together but had to break if off about 20 months ago. Sounds like a story for another blog entry.

Anyway, we had dinner at the Easts Leagues Club followed by coffee at the Coffee Club Stones Corner. See the photos on Flicr. We ate at the Rugby Club as I was rewarded with a free birthday dinner after becoming a member last September. I had to join in order to get entry (as I live within 5km. I could lie, but most clubs are affiliated, so for a whopping $2 joining fee I can get into most RSL and Leagues Club - something which happens with suprising regularity when you walk the circles I do.) The real reason for joining was not to be able to drink cheap (read - "subsidised by the poker machines") piss, but to dance to a band playing there. Unfortunately due to the Rugby League Grandfinal the band wasn't playing. Why not watch the Grandfinal I hear you ask? I can take it or leave it. When I'm with mates who love watching it I'll love watching it to; But when with a friend who couldn't give a toss I couldn't give one either. We ended up dancing at the Cooporoo RSL. I got in there with no problems as I am now a bona-fidey, genuine, guaranteed member of an affiliated club!.

Life goes on ... or should I say "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives" (Nah naa na na nahhhh na na na na nah na nah ...).

Party on kidies and enjoy it while you're young.

I will have to go off now and check out what Angry Dad 2006 has had to say lately.

Sleep well my little lamb chops.

NE

Photo Management (Generally and for public display)

I thought I would write a post on how I manage my photos and put them up for public display.

First of all I use iView Media Pro for media management. I haven't yet ventured into movies so it is currently only managing my photos, however it would be a fantastic tool to manage movies aswell and I look forward to making this step.

I use a Mac though iView is available on Windows aswell.

iView handles applying meta-data, and in particular:

• Events
  
• People
  
• Keywords
  

You can also create Categories and assign these to any photos (or rather, assign photos to belong to Categories). A photo can only be part of one 'Event' but can belong to any number of Categories.

I use a tool called Picture Sync to upload the photos to my Flickr account (though it can be used to upload to a number of photo management sites). This tool will also reduce the size of the image and upload the meta-data aswell. This last bit is why I use the tool - so I can manage the meta-data at home but have these appear on the photos in Flickr.

Then in Flickr I move the photos into the appropriate Set. Flickr's own upload tool for the Mac, imaginitively named "Flickr Uploadr" can also manage to move the photos into a defined Set in Flickr. Maybe PictureSync will be given this feature one day (soon?).

I match 'Events' in iView to Sets in Flickr. Due to iView's many-to-many relationship between Categories and media files, I will never upload Categories to become Sets in Flickr. Buy by definition, an iView Category is the same as a Flickr Set, since a photo can belong to multiple Sets also. Perhaps Flickr is able to manage this - to have only one image and in multiple Sets. YES, I know this is a feature of Flickr, but I mean so that if you upload a new Set with an image with the same name it will just use the original. For this to work then Picturesync will need to be able to upload to Sets. Investigation continues ...

As for putting photos that are in Flickr on the Blog see yesterdays post at Flicr Images.

I will put information up about how I manage the media files in iView in some future post.

Flicr Image

As you may have read in the previous post, I've started a Flickr account, and this blog post is to have a bit of a play with linking to images. I found that if you click on "All Sizes" then it presents HTML you can use to paste into a page.

The first image was created as part of the blog page created directly from Flickr. That doesn't seem to allow me to 'add to an existing page' and thus it was great to find the HTML to paste in.

The next trick will be change the alignment so text comes besides the images. Let me have a look at the HTML DTD ... I think you need to use CSS and perhaps text-align: center? Dunno, will have to have a fiddle with.


IMGP0435.JPG



Joanne and Brooke at Woodford




Originally uploaded by novorivus.

Having a fiddle and seeing how I can reference an image that is on Flicr.

Australia Day 2006

Today (26/1) is Australia Day. Also known as Invasion Day as it was the day James Cook landed in Australia in 1788 and through a turn of events, pushed the indigenous population away causing much social discontent. The Australian Aboriginals are less than pleased at our presence and let that be known. In return the right-wing constituents of this counry let them know that their culture is not welcome here - white man is here to stay so they'd better like it. That is obviously an over-simplification. How I look at it, is that the Australian Aboriginies lived here for 40,000+ years, living in perfect harmony with nature ('the environment') and in return for this, nature them rewarded them with a rich life. Modern man, of which Europeans who populated Australia are part of, have been around for only a couple thousand years and already we're wiping out species at a non-natural rate, we've poluted the planet so badly that is changing the global climate. Modern Man though, has made significant strides into Science, technology and allowing us to "have fun". What we haven't discovered is what Science can't directly prove. There is so much we don't understand and we are not going to while we continue along the same path we are.

Anyway, I'll finish my ditribe by saying that the terrible situation we have put ourselves and all live on this planet in doesn't have to be. The technology we've established, and the Science we've used to develop our fantastic understanding of the universe and almost everything should allow us to prune off the bad bits of our existance, and keep the good ones. This will then allow us to achieve what we ultimately want to - to "find god". More on this in another blog post.

James Cook also came "down-under" for another reason - to observe the Transit of Venus which only happens every 70 years or so. They needed to do this to establish our distance from the sun (now termed as "1 AU").

Finally, as an Australian, I'm glad that Captain Cook helped establish a colony or else I wouldn't exist (as the person I am / in the body I inhabit).

Australia Day is also the day of the JJJ Hotest 100. JJJ is a public radio station, which means it paid for through taxes. This allows it to be non-commercial and to not have to bow to commercial interests such as the "Lowest Common Demoninator". My post on Musical Intelligence goes some way to explain the relevance of this. I just need to survive the next 2 or 3 weeks now where they'll play the top 10 songs over and fucking over (breaking well beyond my threshold). Ultimately this will be done help promote the JJJ Hottest 100 number 14, 15 or whatever its up to. Don't get me wrong, I love JJJ, but when my threshold is constantly being broken, and my love has so long ago turned to hate, I find it kind of unpleasant.

I love to have a good winge! Life wouldn't be interesting without one.

I celebrated Australia Day by spending it with friends at Brisbane's Botanical Gardens. The central figure is "Trav", as we used to call him when we were teenagers in Canberra where we grew up together. Trav is the man with very short blonde hair. Trav is part of the Brahma Kumaris spiritual organisation and all other people were friends with him through that. It was a good day with friends, playing a bit of volley ball without a net, walking through the park and generally having a chilled-out time. The photos can be found at Flickr set - Australia Day. I love nature and this offered the best glimpse of it I've had in, ummm, 3 weeks since I was at Dad's (he has a property 60km from the nearest major town (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia), on the edge of a national park and with sensational views across the valley to another national park. That will be the topic of a blog entry sometime.

NOTE - I CHANGED THE URL IN FLICKR AND ITS STOPPED WORKING FOR ME, SO THE Botanical Gardens photos won't be available until I've fixed the problem up.

The last bit of news for today is that I've started a Flickr account and thus this is where my photos are now coming from.

Sleep well my little lamb chops.

NE

36 today

Its getting late, its a school night but I want to make an entry before today ends. Its about my birthday today.

Extracts from my diary (I don't publish).

Birthday messages

1. Dad had Messaged me a Media Message of him giving a message, however very little (not including the sound) came through.
   
2. Jannit msg'd me. She was going to try and have a bday dinner with me, but Steve didn't play the game.
   
3. June Msg'd me when I at work to say happy birthday
   
4. Mardi emailed me, and sent a postcard apparantly (she emailed to say happy birthday and to confirm mum's visa debits)
   

But didn't hear a peep out of anyone at work. I laid subtle hints (like "its my birthday next Monday.") over the last couple weeks to people i work with (including my team who shold be doing everything possible to please me!). When its not you it is easy to understand how people can not know or forget, but when it is you, irrationality cuts through and you feel hurt. I finally told Wes on our walk home.

Left at 17:30 and walked home with Wes via his car. He rang Anthea and arranged to take me out. "Jannit is meant to be taking me out", I told him, "but I haven't heard from her - so let me check with her first before agreeing to go out with you guys". He came in side and waited whilst I took crap and shwr.

I rang Jannit - she can't do dinner the father of her children didn't respond to her asking him if he could look after the kids. "Here I come Wes!"

He drove me to his place [BrackenRidge - 20km from CBD where my place is], we went out to dinner, spent 10mins back at his place [to watch some tennis - Haas V Federer - 2 all in 5th set (currently, so a good game)] and then he drove me home by 10.

When arrived at AngryDad2006's place, I greeted his whole family. We walked to the "BRidge Tavern". We there over 1.5 hours and ordered meals pretty quickly. Had 2 wines. Took fucking ages for our meals to come out - me a Rib Eye Fillet steak, W. - fish and chips, A. - Chicken Kiev. The meals took most part of hour to come, and my steak was only luke warm. I sent it back and they just reheated it. Lovely steak but like it hot so very dissapointed. Fortunately Wes paid or else I would have been really pissed.

On drive home, I raised with W. the fact that I think his children drink too much coke and soft drinks (our society is too fat and unhealthy and so I don't like to see this happening before my eyes). He said that its the sugar, not the acid in the coke, and Coke doesn't have as much as processed OJ (I said the opposite). He said that processed OJ is worse than coke. Maybe so, but feed them fresh OJ. I said I don't understand how difficult it would be to raise children, but I would lead by example from the start - good food, drink and exercise. Sorry to say these thing, but you know I like to say what I think and feel.

I apologise W. and A. as I know you are likely to read this post.

Tennis is still going and Federer has won 6-2 in the 5th set. Note that channel 7 is showing it 1 hour behind, either so they can stick to their programming schedule (dealing with QLD being 1 hour behind NSW). Fucking stupid in this day and age of mass media everywhere. I can be quite confident that with the trends Vodcasts are setting, we'll be able to get these types of media fed to us via live feeds, sometime reasonably soon in the future.

23:39 - time to sleep

Musical Intelligence

Musical Intelligence - 22nd January 2006

• Rate at which music is absorbed / assimilated
  
• I tend to get sick of music quickly. I hear it on the radio, most likely in the background to start with. After a while of subconciously absorbing it (and creating or reinforcing neural pathways) I will like it. But I theorise that I have a threshold of the rate of hearing it (and stimulating those same neural pathways) and once that threshold has been breached, the further stimulation 'angers' the neural connections, and the love turns to hate;
  
• The pathways must slowly break down ('decay'), or loose some internal structure, since given a break from hearing that song, I will like it again when heard later. But of course it doesn't take much to start dis-liking the song again;
  
• I build neural pathways quickly - that's the intelligence. The faster they can are built, the more "musical intelligence" one has;
  
• Some people either don't ever start dis-liking a song, or the rate at which they build neural pathways is so slow that they never reach the threshold whilst the song is being played to fucking death on the radio;
  
• Some people don't like much music. The don't have Schemas or Concepts for music and so don't have the structures with which to build neural connections about music, so, not only do they like songs very slowly, but they don't tend to like much music (because it takes so long for the structures to build and they stop hearing the song after some period of time so the structures are never built. Then, due to the decay, when they start hearing the song again it either has no impact since there are no structures in place, or there is a sufficient structure that they do like it.;
  
• Stimulation of pathways is 'exciting', and this is why we like music.;
  
• One day I'll get back to Uni to study Neuropsychology - one of the streams I touched upon when doing 1st year Psych, and the one which i later found out, interested me most, and which I tend to be 'excited' by, and quickly. The question is, why do some neural connections (Concepts or Schemas) form quickly? Perhaps it was influence sometime in the earlier years, but I can't think what that would have been. Perhaps this is the Innate part of intelligence that we are born with - that is, we are born with pre-made Concepts. But not everyone has the same concepts. But perhaps that is what the norm is - the majority of people are born with the same basic structures (Concepts), and then exceptional people are born with different ones (not that I'm necessarily an exceptional person, though I definitely different to most other people).
  

This discussion should be better organised and be carried on at some other time (not 11 on a Sunday night).

23:00

ps. Its my birthday in one hour. 36 - yipee. First gray hairs have started appearing.

I like wasabi

I spent the evening with my single Christian (white) female friend. We had dinner out in West End. I love Noodles (soup) but tonight was one of those experiences where it was, mmm, arrghhh, mmm, well it tasted like crap. I normally drink the entire bowl but tonight most of the slops were left for the waitress to take away, and I was secretly hoping that she'd spill them on her beautiful polyester floral dress as some kind of negative karma. So not feeling satisfied (which I normally would do after noodles), I suggested we go have a coffee. JC (that's not Jesus Christ though that would have been a real spin out if it was) wanted dessert. The first place we stopped in , Esspressohead had only muffins, so we headed across the road to Forest Cafe - a vegetarian / vegan / organic cafe. I had an organic coffee bean cappacino and she a vegan cheesecake. Both were pretty sensational. I don't think I could do vegan, or go full-strength vegetarian, though I am certainly interested in a tangent to those lifestyles which will help me throw off the shackles of a modern life.

We went back to my place and for the last 2 hours we've been filling out a profile for her at www.christianconnection.com.au. When she wasn't looking I snuck in "I like Wasabi" into the field titled "1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what makes you who you are:". She wasn't amused. When writing about how the favourite part of the bible is Genesis, I added that "My friend reckons I demean God by not accepting the intelligence He has given us in working out how life, the world, the Universe and everything (including 42) works.". I had to get rid of it. Spoil sport. Her profile is all about how she is such a fun care-free person, but what a tight wad she is. She kept telling me its all about her her her and nothing about me.

Its pushing towards the witching hour where I'd need to go sacrifice a virgin, or atleast a bush turkey if I could find one, but ohh miss "I'm such an exciting Christian" won't let me do it. But only cause she hates blood I'm told. There is hope yet.

Sleep well my little lamb chops.

NE

National Enquirer - Are you told the truth or is your news limited?

My buddy Angrydad2006, or Ad06 as I call him, wanted to know why I'd started hijacking his blog with the lengthy(ish) comments I was writing, and won't don't I just start my own blog? I said its because I relied on the poetic lubrication he provided to help attract readers to my words. I figured I should have more confidence and 'get out there'. So here I am.

The title of my blog and of this entry are in relation to my distrust of the global media. I see alot of problems in this world ranging from too much fatty and generally crappy food being eaten, to a President being voted in for a second term despite what a floored leader he proved himself to be in his first. I will expand on this one day soon ....

Sleep well my little lamb chops!

NE