• UK Number 10 petition for marriage equality. Please sign and forward.

• The revenge of Cat Le-Huy.

• Not that this is me or anything.

• Searching with Bing will actually cost you money.

• NotN: Turnbull still stuck with Liberal leadership; "Going Rogue" sells 500,000 copies, some read; Jordan eats kangaroo's anus; Boris Johnson to become Sheriff of London.

This week I got a NEW CAMERA, had lunch with nyecamden (and got a video of the Russell Square fountain for Wikipedia — a picture of a fountain is nothing to watching it actually burbling away) and was very tired. And played with Freda a lot and got stuff done at work.

After spending some time earlier in the week hand-reconciling three VirtualHost httpd.conf files that were different not only to the checked-in version but to each other (for our biggest-earning site, so rather important to get right), I asked on Twitter/Facebook about how to do macro expansion in Apache httpd.conf. The answer is, of course, mod_macro. The catch is that there are no binaries readily available for anything but Leengux, so they have to be hand-compiled for Solaris. This is fine when your Apache was compiled with gcc, less so when your live servers (12 CPU/96 thread T5140 Niagara beast machines) are running Web Stack, a Solaris-optimised AMP compiled with Sun CC. The answer is to get out there and shave that yak: download a 493MB .tar.bz2 of the entirety of Sun Studio 12.1 (which I wasn't aware is now freeware), spend ten minutes uncompressing it to 530MB (why isn't pbzip2 used by everyone?), spend twenty installing it then compile the single 30KB mod_macro.c file. And it Just Works. *exhale*

(I thought gcc-compiled .so were meant to be able to link to Sun CC programs, at least in C if not C++. httpd appears to feel otherwise, however.)

TRANSLATION FOR NON-GEEKS: I have done (obscure technical trick) that required (going ridiculously out of my way to do what should have been a simple thing) but which worked brilliantly, and will save me having to do (ridiculous effort from a few days ago) and will save us (a twisty maze of configuration files, all different when they should all be the same). Computer roadieing, man. Everything is gaffer tape.

Today we are going shopping, then I am rebuilding the front room and bleaching my hair and going to Vagabonds with the NEW CAMERA and capturing your soul. Just as soon as I have yet more caffeine.

I just don’t know anymore… I truly, honestly, didn’t think it got worse than this. Does this author have an amazing sense of humour, or is she really insane?

I forget where the link to the original is, I'll go look l8r.

And now for the insanity.....

With New Moon likely to make yet another metric fuckload of money this weekend we need to find the bright side to the entire Twilight mania. There must be something good that comes from this awful Mormon fantasy that seems to have invaded our culture on every front. That something is the eventual movie version of Breaking Dawn.

Even though New Moon has made a bazillion dollars and even though the third Twilight book, Eclipse, is already filming, Summit has declined to announce the fourth and final Twilight book as a movie. There's a good reason for this: Breaking Dawn is completely fucking insane, and it is probably totally unfilmable. But if they do film it... man, we are in for a treat.

Breaking Dawn opens with Bella Swan, the lacteal heroine of the series, finally getting married to Edward Cullen, the mopey vampire hero. They go off to honeymoon on Isle Esme, a Brazilian island the Cullen clan owns (this is already ridiculous beyond belief. Imagine a vampire going snorkeling; it basically happens in this book), and Edward is afraid to fuck his new bride. The reason: he's super strong and she's just a human - Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex type of situation here. But Bella wears him down and Edward throws it in her - and knocks her the fuck out, leaving her badly bruised.

Let's go over that again: Edward fucks Bella into unconsciousness. This alone should have you running to Fandango to pre-order your tickets, but it only gets better.

Despite being knocked out cold by his sexual style (and having the headboard destroyed), Bella goes back to Edward for seconds. This time he knocks her up. Yes, an undead vampire apparently has enough viable sperm to impregnate a human woman while fucking her off the coast of Rio de Janero. Stephenie Meyer, you fabulous idiot!

The baby in Bella's belly starts growing incredibly fast. And it starts hurting Bella, as each kick it gives has the super strength of a vampire behind it. As it grows, Bella gets sicker, and then the good stuff starts. The baby kicks so hard it breaks Bella's ribs and then severs her spine. Are you imagining Kristen Stewart wearing a fake pregnancy belly and pretending to have been suddenly crippled by her own fetus? Because I am and it's making me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Oh wait, I missed something. Edward is completely freaked out about the baby, fearing it will kill Bella. He tries to convince her to get an abortion (but seriously, how could she? Vampires are tough to kill even in this shitty series), and goes so far as asking Native American wolfboy Jacob to impregnate his wife so that she can have the baby she desperately wants. I'm dizzy with how ridiculous this is, and we're just getting started.

Eventually the baby starts to get born and Bella is dying. The baby has telepathy, by the way, so everybody can read its thoughts while it's in the womb, and it turns out to have an essentially adult mind. Like Alia in Dune; I would accuse Stephenie Meyer of ripping this off, but anyone who thinks that Meyer might have read Frank Herbert has never been within spitting distance of Twilight. The woman is a moron.

In a moment that demands to be shown on the silver screen, Edward gives Bella an emergency C-section with his fucking teeth. It's like something out of XTro, for the love of God. It's so horrible it's brilliant, and this scene alone is why I remain firm in declaring that David Cronenberg must direct Breaking Dawn. This is surely his movie.

Once the baby is out, Bella gets vamped by Edward, as she's about to die at any moment. Then comes the most astonishing turn of events in 21st century literature, and possibly in the entire history of awful fiction aimed at tweens: Jacob the werewolf, who has been madly in love with Bella, sees the new baby girl and immediately imprints on her. What this means, in layman's terms, is that he falls in love with the baby.

I want to pull this out on its own: Jacob falls in love with a baby.

The book makes no bones about this; while Jacob doesn't want to fuck the baby right off the bat, he can't stand to be away from it and visits everyday. His love has been transferred from Bella to the baby (who has the tongue shattering name Renesmee), and because of the science behind imprinting he'll love her forever. So one day he's going to stick his wolf dick in this girl that he see as a bloody newborn. Romance is not dead, it's just being abused by insane Mormon writers.

There's more in Breaking Dawn - the Volturi come back, for one thing - but these are the main amazing events that demand this book to be turned into a film. I will not rest until I have seen a movie in which a werewolf falls in love with a baby. Hell, once I've seen a werewolf fall in love with a baby I may quit movie watching - I will have seen the ultimate culmination of a century of cinema. The entire film of Breaking Dawn would play like the weirdest exploitation film since Doris Wishman died - brutal sex, bizarre body horror, unbelievable pedophilia.

A werewolf falling in love with a baby. This is why Thomas Edison invented this shit in the first place. So we could see a werewolf fall in love with a baby.

I'm showing a friend of mine around this fine city from 9th-12th December.
Can anyone suggest the best places to sip cocktails and admire a beautiful view, the best places to have a delicious dinner, the most undergroundy hip bars? I've only been here a few months myself.
So, basically, anything that one must absolutely see in Sydney if one is to completely fall in love with this city.

Thankyou!

I tweeted the following, in a discussion with someone else:

@jeamland mr landeryou has some history on wikipedia. (i did the sockpuppet investigation.)

Mr Landeryou saw fit to send me a threat for this:

( full headers )

--0016364275f7efd07804795b1708
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

dgerard@gmail.com

Mr Gerard,

I am told you made reference to me in your musings on Twitter. I don't know
you, would rather not have to become familiar with who you are and what on
Earth possessed you to comment so freely about me or to edit Wikipedia to
say absurd things about me.

Your entitled to your opinion of me but I think it might be best for you to
discuss claims you make about me with me first. If you don't, I'll promise
to return the favour after an investigation into exactly what ails you. And
that really would be a waste of time for me and a very unpleasant outcome
for you, so I urge you to Twit more carefully in future.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Landeryou

I look forward to an exchange involving pie charts.

p.s.: if you don't want your months-long-running Wikipedia shenanigans remembered, it helps not to have done them. Oops, too late.

I love my field of science. This is a screencap of my exam... that I'm home at 11pm on a Friday night alone for...




* my neighbours are very loud on a friday night
* 1 down, 2 assessments to go and I'm finally FINISHED uni for the year. I have had 7 measly days break from uni since Feb. I'm free til trimester 2 starts, I'm skipping trimester 1 for a break.
* does anyone want a google wave invite?

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/11/has-london-underground-map-lost-its-way.html

Yesterday's Guardian pondered what Harry Beck would do with the Tube Map today in the light of the expansion of the Oyster card & a new map to illustrate this.

"What would Beck himself have done? A man of vision as well as courage – and a pragmatist if ever there were one – he might well have recommended something drastic, even iconoclastic: tearing up his own Underground map, and suggesting that we begin again from first principles. No doubt this would be an occasion as emotionally charged as the introduction of decimal currency was nearly 40 years ago, but it might be the only rational thing to do." Thanks to richjm for the heads up.


A few years ago, I went to a talk that London Underground map expert Maxwell Roberts. He had similar thoughts. I wrote:

Max believes we've now got to the state with the map trying so desperately to please everyone (wheelchair access, station closures, partial station closures, zones, future extensions), that it has become a bit of mess. The network has grown so much that even Harry (or rather Henry) Beck would have tearing out his hair.

Now more than ever we can see the tension between the map's need to be legible, usable, attractive and simple and its counter need to convey information. The addition of Cross Rail and the Olympic Line will only make matters worse. Take a look at TfL's own projection of what the Tube Map could look like in 2016 (with Boris's arrival this projection no longer exists) and you'd need a pretty big diary map to cope with that.


What's the solution? If designers went back to the drawing board would they go curvy as Max Roberts recommends?

Max said "So, does this map 'work'? With extra railways on it, the simplicity of Version 1 (his earlier version) has been diluted, and the map needs a bit more mental effort to make sense of it (as for any complex map). I think I have shown that there may well be some mileage in designing maps in this way, but die-hard Beck fans will not be convinced. On the other hand, it's hard to know just how bad the design of the current official map has to get before they would be."


Will the design team board™ have their way with a proposed 2012 Tube map based on Olympic rings (see first image) - they say "recent usability feedback has been very positive." Would going geographical help or hinder? Has the map got so bad it needs a total re-design?

Things that I am grateful for this week.
Rediscovering music. Been pulling out artists that I haven't listened to for a while, like Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Air, and Laurie Anderson, and loving it.

A nice stereo at home, and a cute little one in my office, to facilitate this.

Catching up with old friends that I haven't see for far too long, which I did last weekend, and yesterday afternoon.

My wonderful, hardworking (in lots of ways at the moment), caring, resourceful wife.

Good friends and long-running roleplaying games.

Good food available within easy walking distance

The advances in medicine that offer viable treatment and hope for the future to so many people I know with chronic and/or life-threatening medical conditions

Delicious beer. I have monk beer from New Norcia.

And OK, just a little bit of schadenfreude at the Liberal Party implosion. OK, maybe a lot of schadenfreude. I'm actually kind of pleased that the showdown is over climate change. If it was over any other issue, we'd see the delusionist disease continue to fester in the heart of the party rooms, but the way things are going, in a few months it might be driven out of mainstream politics. Either that, or the Libs will be consigned to being even more unelectable. Either is good.

Anyone need a Homebake ticket?

Any recommendations for carpet cleaners in the Gladesville area? I'm not moving, just wanting my loungeroom and bedrooms done.

Has anyone had experience with the 'dry' kind of carpet cleaning?

I always thought the common SF trope of Artificial Intelligences turning on humanity and attempting genocide was, while making for good stories, unduly alarmist and not that plausible. But it suddenly seems a whole lot more likely if we base AIs on cats.
Think of a godlike cat treating humans like mice, and I have no mouth and I must scream doesn't sound so bad.

Can anyone suggest a place to get good, inexpensive hair extensions around City/Inner West area..?

Will probably get half a head only..

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/11/extreme-tube-sleeping.html

The London Underground seems to be one of the better places to sleep in the winter if the following pictures are anything to go by.

Whatleydude snapped this guy going through Maida Vale sound asleep:


He said "What's that? No feet on seats? What about legs? They're ok, right?"

Melanie Seasons saw a pretty dishevelled man on the Victoria Line and said "I've seen people fall asleep on the Tube before, but never face down into their Metro. I don't think the poor guy even got through the second page."


Didn't realise that Metro was that boring!

If you manage to spot any other heavy Tube sleepers on your journey, you should have plenty of time to take a picture. Let me know if you do and I'll add them to this post.

The national draft is on. You can listen to in on SEN, or watch it live on Fox 2. Meantime, here's how we're doing - I'll update it as the night goes on.

Pick 12:

NAME: Kane Lucas
( Player info and stats... )


Pick 43:

NAME: Marcus Davies
( Player info and stats... )

Pick 59:

NAME: Rohan Kerr
( Player info and stats... )

Pick 72:

NAME: Sam Jacobs
( Player info and stats... )

Pick 83:

NAME: Aaron Joseph
( Player info and stats... )

And that's all she wrote folks!

Hey guys,
I have 3 tix to see Tim Minchin next Saturday if anyone wants them.
$50 each which is sale price.
It's at the State Theatre and second row so good seats.

Turns out it's a show I've already seen so I can guarantee it's funny!

Can anyone recommend decent driving instructors in Newtown or surrounding areas. I've had some bad experiences with shonkey driving instructors so any advice on who to see and who to avoid would be great.

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-tube-investment-being-cut-back.html

We've started, so we won't finish, should be the catchphrase at Newbury Park. Although the London Underground fare increases are supposed to "sustain vital investment", Matthew V found the opposite at his local station.


He said: "For the last few months at least Newbury Park has had major construction work to install lifts. Signs went up last week that they are halting the work due to lack of funding, and yesterday there were severe delays for a while due to 'obstruction on the tracks'.


"From the looks of things it might have been to remove some of the tools etc, but the platforms still have massive blue hoardings limiting the space available – which was bad this morning as the station, which is a major hub for the Essex and areas East of London (it's got about 500 car parking spaces), was closed for a while. I'm a little annoyed at this since having lifts would really make the station fit as a transport hub, and would mean I didn't have to keep offering to help women up stairs with buggies (there are no escalators).

Is this just a sign of the recession? Money being diverted to pay increases for drivers? Given the price hikes I've got a feeling it can't be due to general lack of money!"

Has anyone else seen any instances of this? I know that improvements at certain stations seem to take longer than planned to complete. But it seems unusual to say that work is going to be stopped because of lack of funding just before we're about to have a fare increase. Not the greatest timing.

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/11/if-you-cant-film-on-tube.html

Build your own version. This is lovely animation for Coldplay song Strawberry Swing by Matt Clark


Thanks to richjm for the heads up for this.

I'm looking for shops which sell swimwear in larger cup sizes (eg: DD/E/F). They need to be accessible by public transport, preferably in the city/Eastern Suburbs or between the city and Liverpool (I'm headed out there on Friday). That's about it. :)

Dear Sydneysiders,

Can anyone tell me the exact location of somewhere that sells bubble tea as close to Town Hall Woolie's as possible?

Thanks!

the guy i'm doing the duet with has been jetisoned from reality into fatherhood, perhaps 10 days ago, so he's in babyland and it's turned his brain to mush. I imagine it's something like when you first hook up with someone you're really into, and there's a film of vaseline coating each eyeball imbuing the world with an irresistible softness, and you're giddy and distractable and feel at liberty to ignore all incoming calls/smses, maybe the auditory canals also fill with the fog of some kind of aural fairy floss. The rest of the world can always wait.
I'm sure I'd be the same, but
ack hard to work with

the gig's this saturday damnit and i need some answers!
and he wants to have a total of ONE rehearsal for duration 1 hour the day before, when the set is 3 hours, and and....pfffffff

Oh well almost ova

Maybe I can role play the part of a badass who loves flying by the seat of her pants and convince myself that this is my preferred method of rollin'


But good god does next week has a seductive ring to it or what
last big commitment for ages
yeysssssssssss!