Steve, you marked the spot with an O, not an X.

XOXO,

me

Stereophonics – Have a Nice Day

Posted less than an hour ago, keep updated here.

While better than the last version, going by the summary it walks and quacks like a three strikes law. It’s been said elsewhere – why are we basing (pun?) laws on baseball?

Either way, I like that there’s more onus on the rights holder to drive the action with the ISP as an intermediary, instead of forcing ISP’s to be judge, jury and executioner. I also like the idea of capping the maximum penalty, so we don’t get repeats of the multi-million dollar RIAA vs Someone’s Grandma court cases as in the states.

It’ll be interesting to see what further analysis shows… stay on the edge of your seats people!

Shapeshifter – Dutchies

I have google wave invites now. If you’re interested, use the contact form

Orbital – Illuminate

I’ve been struggling recently with some extremely bad shin splints, and after watching various videos about how to strap your legs to mitigate them, and reading other advice such as

• Get properly fitted running shoes
• Adjust your running technique to a mid-strike and/or barefoot running
• Do some fancy stretches

all of which are definately parts of the overall solution, you just have to read a medical description of shin splints to realise that strapping is still going to be the most direct and effective solution. The problem is that it’s wasteful and, if like me you have hairy legs, painful.

I already have fitted running shoes to help with my plantar fasciitis, and the arguments for stretches are partly due to an imbalance between calf and shin muscles and partly due to flexibility. I have extremely flexible leg muscles thanks to years of Taekwon Do, so it’s just for strength building as far as I’m concerned.

The solution I want to talk about though? Compression socks. I got the Skins sox, which at NZD$80 or so aren’t cheap but I consider them an investment. I wear them during activity and the following night for recovery, but you can do either/and/or. So far they’ve worked a treat.

Midnight Oil – Beds are Burning

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been offered and accepted a position at Araneo Wireless as a Linux administrator. So my financial uncertainty is dealt with for now

Muse – Take a bow

I just found out that they’re reducing our team from 3 to 1. Chances are good that I’ll get the position, but just in case I’m now hunting for jobs, dusting off the CV and getting in touch with my recruitment agent.

I find out in a couple of weeks… September 11th actually, how ominous.

Islands In The Stream

Hi readers,
it’s been a while. Apologies again for the lack of posting lately, but my webhosting was maxed out until I was able to move it to this newerer fasterer plan. Plus you haven’t exactly missed much. Let me sum up the last few months:

work
sleep
drama at work with an overheating server room
work
sleep
relationship breakup *sigh*
started growing my beard back for winter
work
sleep
more drama at work
sleep

In more positive news, I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on my Ukulele studies, and I’m at the point now where I’m starting to record myself playing in order to snowball the improvements made through practice. I did miss out on the Winter Workshops being held by the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra though

Either way, I might be popping some videos up on Youtube – embarrassing! But I’ll try to focus on some kiwi tunes at least. Also, Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome is in full swing, I want at least 3 more ukes:
1) an upgraded gig uke, likely selling off my Oscar Schmidt
2) a D-tuned makala dolphin, keeping my options open
3) another makala dolphin to hack, I’m hoping to make a resonator

On the technology front, I have sold my main PC and downgraded to an Eee PC and an Eee Box. I have yet to upgrade both in the memory and hdd stakes, so they’re both performing fairly averagely for me at the moment. Subjectively, the PC is better than the Box.

I experimented with the uke recording using the webcam in my eee pc, but the software (cheese webcam booth) doesn’t allow you to specify your output formats, so it defaults to .ogv, something the Atom cpu seems to grind with at 640×480. Also, getting the mic levels right is difficult, and there’s a bit too much background hiss.

So I got one of these gorillapod things for $30 at Harvey Norman. There was a similar product that appeared to be rebranded (Samsung?) for $15, so I got both and surprise – they appear to be exactly the same, so there you go. I’ve fixed this to my Canon A560 and the improvement was instant:

me playing my makala dolphin

In other news, I’ve lost almost 9kg in the last few months. I don’t know why, but my appetite just isn’t what it used to be, and I’m paying attention to my body now: if I feel full, I simply stop eating. Not shoveling fast food down my throat every other day probably helps too, plus having breakfast every day would be having an effect on the metabolism… either way, that’s almost 30kg down from when I first got back from France, that’s huge!

signing off, hopefully the next update won’t be months away

I’ve finally got some time from the last three days to blog-o-rama it up.

On Friday morning I got up early and left for work earlier than my usual snails pace. Before I had a chance to walk down the front steps my phone went off. It was a text from mum alerting me to dilation measurements and other such things to help you keep your breakfast down. I was going to be an uncle by lunchtime, or so it said. Yeah, right.

I went to work with a skip in my step… or something. After months of waiting, my prediction that I would have a niece was nigh…

Complications abound (she decided to come out sideways, drifting into the d-dimension) ruined that prediction and bets followed. I put a lazy ten down for a girl at about 9.30pm. Dad was a bit more accurate with 11.15pm, girl, via c-section (off by about ten minutes). I didn’t know that birth method was being taken into account, otherwise I would have added c-section, given the long history of big Blundell babies, and the fact that myself and my brothers are all c-section for life.

11.25pm, my baby niece arrived into this crazy world, with her father’s nose and all. Some time later myself and Rob arrived, only to see the new parents and baby for all of 50 seconds before being kicked out by a nurse. We drove all night, for just that. Not enough time to get a photo on even my cellphone. We saw the nurse showing Tamati how to wipe baby-poo, we got to talk briefly with the exhausted Sarah, and that was that.

Still, that nurse was lovely, in comparison to the bitch ER receptionist whose attitude problem mixed with my (minor) alcohol consumption may have resulted in cold fusion. Patsy, if that’s your real name, I’m thinking of two words, and one of them is “off.” You haggard arrogant cow.

What a relief that it was a girl, with the lovely name “Sadie Elizabeth Blundell.” The pressure has been on me for some years now to settle down and have kids, in the hope that I would produce a great grand-daughter for my grandfather. This was pressure from a small part of the extended family only, as a discussion with grandad indicated that he didn’t care either way, and would rather that I ran my life my way, rather than throw it away ‘for him’ as some may have preferred.

So congrats to Tamati and Sarah, I can’t wait to catch up and actually see my darling niece for more than a minute

Wierd Al Yankovic – Don’t Download This Song

Last night I’d decided that I’d had enough of single handedly managing all my debts and bills, so this morning I went into my bank and consolodated my debt, with an agressive payment scheme.

Basically I’m NZD$12k behind for various reasons on a number of different things, and I’m paying anywhere up to $1.8k a month, which is making life hard, especially when I have no visibility of where most of the debts are at. The worst part is that there is one debt that varies quite wildly from $170/month to $800/month without warning – a stable $1.8k a month I could probably deal with, but an unstable total that’s all over the place just makes life complex sans reason or sense. With this consolidated loan, I’m paying $1k a month, which will get me even in a year, and I now have a tangible goal that I can check up on and aim for. I’m hoping next month to have some money in from people who are still owing me, and I can flick another $1k onto it. It may seem like a lot to take out of my monthly pay, but all up I’ll have more cash in hand each month, stability will be brilliant for a change, and I may finally be able to restart my savings.

It feels good to have my finances in order for a change, and now I’m inspired to really get on top of things. After this loan is paid for, I plan to attack my Student Loan, which is currently taking about $400 out of my pay. I figure I can change the $1k loan payments to a $600 payment (to top my Student Loan repayments up to $1k, while giving me $400 extra a month to reward myself for a year of knuckling down), and have my Student Loan all paid off within another year.

Look out ladies, I’m ambitious!

tHeDirTyJoHnSon – I just can’t help myself

Uh oh, I think I might have Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome (UAS).

I remembered that back when I was hanging out at the music department at school, messing around with drums, guitar, but more seriously the saxomophone, that there were practice guitars with sticky dots underneath the strings with the notes on them. So I figured I’d do the same with my uke, in order that I could learn the notes, and in turn scales and progressions etc

But my uke cost me damn near 2 hundy. I don’t want no sticky residue on my fretboard, I don’t want to devalue it and have it looking like some school instrument.

So I purchased my second uke, a red dolphin bridge makala soprano, then I stole the label maker machine from work and spent an hour and a half labelling the fretboard. I have guitar playing friends who bitch about the tuning of a uke, so now I’m considering a baritone to shut them up enough to just play. Yeah Ra, just keep justifying things to yourself… *self jedi mind trick handwaves*

Pictures of the soprano are forthcoming…