sjh - mountain biking running linux vegan geek spice - mtb / vegan / running / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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email: sjh@svana.org

web: https://svana.org/sjh
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Aaron Broughton,
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Martijn van Oosterhout,
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Tue, 29 Nov 2005

One Week - 14:02
You are most welcome to sing this entry to the tune of One Week (video) by Bare Naked Ladies (if ever there was a NSFW sounding band name that is it). though I do not know how much it will help.

I saw someone else doing this detailed diary of a week thing, everything you see on the Internets (or if you must wikipedia link) should be copied I thought I would give it a try. (thanks to the fun that is using a proleptic gregorian calendar I am pretty sure the days below are correct for those dates)

Monday May 13 150 BCE, Sittin' around discussin' with Ishvara what name would be good for the son or daughter of god in the Christian religion in a century or two, a few possible names such as Trevor, Cathy, George, Kylie, Rick, Neil or Gwendolyn come to mind, but we do not worry much as no one has to decide for more than a century yet.

Tuesday April 1 2036 CE, One joke someone tried today was suggesting Unix Time would overflow almost 2 years early due to the f00f bug, however this being somewhat geeky other themes proved more popular.

Wednesday February 21 3120 BCE, Someone opened the first Mcdonalds franchise on Christmas Island today, not much media coverage, and due to the lack of people living there they have not sold many big macs since they opened, this may explain why the crabs do not tend to be overweight, though I am not really sure about that.

Thursday July 28 1932 CE, Trying to find a milk carton to do a late Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging post I am once more stumped by the fact the milk carton has not yet been invented, hurry up you lazy swedes and invent the milk carton, I don't have all day to sit around waiting for a milk carton.

Friday December 2 2005 CE, that is still a few days away, how am I supposed to know what I will be doing, silly.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Wed, 23 Nov 2005

This cause and effect may give the kooks a pause - 22:22
Sure I almost said this may cause them a pause for a thought, but then I remembered how unlikely it is that a thought has ever really entered their head rather than just passed through as a repeater for kook radio. However stop for a second and imagine, what if those people (kooks, interchangeable term) who think some $DEITY placed all life on earth at some given point not too long ago are correct, and evolution and all that are all just a big giggle.

Now I know this is hard to accept, but you will need to suspend disbelief just a little bit further, thus accepting that first idea may make this next one more palatable. Assume for a second all these miraculously created people were not religiously inclined loonies salivating over small children or hiding away in some abode of worship, imagine for a second one or two of them had sex, you because it feels good, or it was something to do of an afternoon.

What the hell did they think when the effects started to appear, otherwise known as childbirth. With no period experience, due to evolution, when the female started to increase in girth and have all associated issues, what was going through their heads. How many years did it take them to correlate the sex with the child birth, they may not even appear to be related at all, and with the religious mind seeming all intent on banning all forms of reasonable science anyone suggesting the two (sex and childbirth) were related was probably burned at the stake. Then when pregnancy reaches its culmination, all the pain and weird things going on, followed by the appearance of a little human. Heck the religious mind may even take this as some form of exorcism, thousands of women and newly born children were probably put to death. $DEITY may have needed to intervene at some point to put a stop to the silliness.

Getting back to reality I think we should be glad of evidence and observances as we and other animals evolved to keep current reality of how the species propagates understood by the practitioners (in this case the practitioners being all of us).

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Mon, 07 Nov 2005

What is it with Holbrook. - 22:15
Driving through Holbrook the other day got me to thinking what I am sure is on the FAQ list for the town. What is a submarine doing in a country NSW town no where near the coast? Sure some people have attempted to come up with a reasonable answer, something about renaming it from Germantown during WWW1 and choosing a submarine war hero and maintaining a link to submarines over the years. But really who is ever going to believe that. Obviously not the townsfolk or the council, on the FAQ and the council page about about Holbrook there is nary a mention of the submarine.

Can the people living there even see the submarine in the park there? When a visitor asks them about the submarine in the town do they look at said questioner in askance, What submarine? I can not see anything like that and I think it may be a bit hard to hide one in the park there. Maybe the submarine is sort of like a submarine patent, and no one could see the submarine, or the town (after all there is a sign on the highway claiming it is the submarine town) until the day when some other town elsewhere claimed to be a submarine town, and hey presto Holbrook appeared and pointed out an established history since a name change in 1915.

Of course there could be another reason for the submarine, kind of like a nuclear bunker but this one is for the town council in case of floods. No one will even know they left as the submarine will be able to sneak away under the water, it will just be Noah, a bunch of animals and the Holbrook town council.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Tue, 25 Oct 2005

Footpaths out to "get you" - 21:59
So I hear you wonder what does this yonder footpath upon which you may wander have to do with a complete understanding of yourself. Who knows, but I have to say the footpaths are not telling me anything. They just sit there all cememnty and solid keeping their secrets. I stop walking for a minute and ask the footpath "How's things Mr Footpath?" (This may be seen as sexist but I lost my book on footpath sexing so really have no idea how to work out what gender a given footpath may be so Mr it will have to be). You know what? the footpath doesn't even answer me.

I mean it could help us out so much if it did, a footpath is surely a useful source of information, I may in fact have been walking on the next Einstein of the footpath world. It would have saved us years of study if the footpath had told us putting our children on a diet of happy pills wont make them happy, instead scientists have spent years and untold monies trying to find out why drugging children up to their eyes with happy pills does not create happy bouncy children.

You know, maybe the footpath has a secret, it may know who stole this duck and is keeping quiet to protect the perpetrator. Hah I say, the duck stealing fiend has been foiled, the show must go on, and it did, the duck's understudy got quacking and was up on stage in no time.

There it sits staying silent and solid, it may indeed get you, it is after all a good listener, with nary a whisper of what it has heard repeated theron.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Thu, 13 Oct 2005

Are the cakes surreal today? - 16:53
When you see a surreal cake, you know what I mean, something that looks suspiciously like a vacuum cleaner, that is infact an edible slab of chocolate spongy goodness, swinging through the trees in your local library. Do you ever think to yourself, I wonder who bakes those cakes, or does this sight only make you hungry?

If you do sit around pondering the identities and habits of those artisans of Daliesque though never fear I will not reveal the answers to any of what you wonder, you are most welcome to continue sitting there as long as you wish.

Lots of people have been known to use colloquial phrases such as "as dumb as a box of hammers" or "as queer as a three dollar bill" however there are some variations. "As queer as a one or two dollar bill" may indicate the speaker belongs within the box of hammers genome for example. If you look around there are more interesting examples of these colloquial terms anyway. "As queer as a football bat", "As queer as a bottle of chips", "As queer as a screen door on a submarine", "As queer as a lemonade sandwich". All of these are of course variations on As camp as a row of tents though with a more American bent.

All you need to do is think up something that is rather obviously strange or unusual, put it after "As queer as" and you will be able to start your own americanised homophobic colloquialism production business. This is surely going to be far more profitable than selling underpants.

If you are however keen to see bats used in football (either the black flying rodent like creatures or the sports person's arm extension) I have to ask why the heck not? They use them in ice hockey and the violence of that sport attracts fans everywhere, if you used bats in football the game would be more violent and thus attract much larger crowds, after all everyone loves to crowd around a train wreck out of some ghoulish fascination. Letting some prejudice show, if the increased level of violence manages to kill off a few more AFL, RL, RU or NFL style footy heads the world will be a better place anyway.

If on the other hand black flying rodents become a common part of the average game of football, those Daliesque chocolate spongy vacuum cleaners flying through the library will no longer be so surreal after all.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Thu, 29 Sep 2005

No inspiration? - 21:51
So many blogs have one of those posts, the post that starts off with "I have no idea what to blog about" and pretty much ends there. This is probably one of those posts. I have no idea what to write, or should I even write something? No inspiration, I obviously need a source of inspiration, where art thou inspiration?

I could go wabbit^Winspiration hunting but where would I begin to look, maybe I had better hope inspiration comes from some external source, like say alien abduction. Who knows it could happen, though if it does, I hope it is some cute fluffy little aliens, cute fluffy friendly little aliens, not big scary aliens. Big scary aliens would be a bad source of inspiration, you would be sitting there all quaking in your boots... assuming of course you are wearing boots? Who knows you may be wearing slippers, or pumps, or spd sandals. Okay so for the sake of argument, you are sitting there quaking in your spd sandals while the big scary alien is scaring you. After all that is what big scary aliens do isn't it.

After all if the alien was sitting there with a tea service and scones it would be a big tea and scones alien and not a big scary alien. Anyway you obviously wont get inspiration from the big scary alien, nor for that matter would you get any from the tea and scones alien, what with it being too busy with its tea and scones to do any inspirin'. So it is obvious really why it has to be cute fluffy aliens that sit around giving inspiration. They could give you all sorts of inspiration, you could write blog posts about bunny rabbits, and harmless little kittens, maybe even the harmless cute fluffy aliens could be the focus of your newly inspired blog post.

But really how likely is any of that, maybe I had better face facts, I can think of nothing to write about, I hope my poor little blog does not have to be put down or anything because of it. Ignoring for a minute how difficult it is to put down some virtual object, just think about it, if you have a piece of paper, or a pen or a gherkin. You could put it down on that table (assuming you are near a table, rather than the camel you are probably closer to, in which case you would need to put it down on the camel). How do you hold some virtual object in order to put it down?

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Tue, 27 Sep 2005

The sheep are scared, what's next Brain? - 15:10
Riding out in the country today, along a bitumen road, 20 metres from fenced in paddocks full of sheep. It would appear the sheep have sufficient distance from me that they would not be afraid. One would think they may even be brave enough to come close to the fence and taunt me as I ride past. Insults and taunts such as "Baah Baaaaah Bah Bah Baaaah" or the rather cruel "Bah Bah Baaah Baaaaaaaaah Bah Baaah", none of this happened though. Instead the sheep ran further away from the fences on both sides of the road as I rode past.

Woohoo I instill such fear that even the sheep are running scared, next step either Profit or World Domination (heck why not both). Ignoring for a moment any other interpretations of scared sheep.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Sun, 25 Sep 2005

I Wonder - 19:00
Could this be shorter?

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Sat, 17 Sep 2005

How can you tell if you are as camp as a row of tents? - 22:15
It appears, if the title is anything to go by I am in search of some really bad colloquialisms, or maybe I just need to get in touch with my own raging homophobe. One possible response to the question I heard is "You have had a few pegs in the wrong places". If I were serious at this point you would expect me to be donning my white pointed hat and robes or taking up a position in the US Republican party (if they are not already synonymous?)

In answer to the question I could just link to the James Dobson's notes on detecting if your Son is gay (actually I can't as it appears the original article has disappeared, however Fafblog and the Apostropher to which I linked said it all much better) and suggest that my work here is done, there is however the small problem of that document being impossible to read with a straight face. Ahh yes if the gaydar pings wildly in the presence of your male offspring (notice of course in this obviously male centric world there is no questions raised about the female offspring) you must rush out and cure them of this abomination in front of Alanis^Wyour $DEITY.

But I hear you ask, given the option to choose your own $DEITY, what reason is there to be upset here, after all you may worship at the church of Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary, or any manner of fun loving and sensible (or not) house of worship. Indeed it is even written down in a few places that it is a good idea to allow people to choose their own religion (and have free speech and a bunch of other stuff). If we go ahead and let people choose something, rather than insisting on a prescribed text it would be folly to get upset over something as unimportant as someone having a slightly different sexual orientation to the so called norm. Wouldn't it?

I probably only wrote this post because I cracked up upon hearing the expression used in the title, ahh well.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Wed, 14 Sep 2005

Ode to talkative cereal - 12:42
Yeah that cereal, the little one in the corner that looks like puffed rice, not the serial in the place with long sleeved white jackets who would like to be on the loose and armed. The little puffed rice'esque cereal, that may in fact not be puffed rice at all. Who knows it may be a weet bix (ahh the joy of English, where the plural of Weet Bix is Weet Bix) or a Pterydactal (a lesser known form of breakfast cereal dating from some 80 million years ago, this breakfast cereal looks remarkably like a large flying lizard, do not let it fool you though, it tasted great with a bit of milk).

Anyway while chatting with my breakfast cereal this morning, discussing the vagaries of economic rationalism as it is applied to pasta sauce purchases ("what if god wanted pasta sauce" sung to the tune of the Joan Osborne song) made by converts to the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster it got me to wondering, if I post something here, when you take into account my ability to Tipo, is anything written here intended to was some other message supposed to appear out of the mess that are these posts?

Just think, if we could combine dyslexia (bringing to mind the buttload quote "I am dyslexic of borg prepare to have your ass laminated") with Typos and apply this behaviour to many bloggers around the world, maybe they do not all write about their cats but are instead writing insightful posts into the modern world in which we live. Then again maybe not.

What to believe about the posts appearing on blogs around the world may possibly be influenced by other things, such as people adding the music they are currently listening to on the end of their posts. Why we need to know this is beyond me, though if they post about Alternative Rock how do we know they are not looking at another rock?

Alternative rock is the name given to one stone when you're looking at another stone. The term was coined by photographer Edwin Blastocyst when looking at one stone and speaking about another

After all this, how do you really know this train of thought arose while talking with a rather insightful rice cripsie? If I was not talking to my bowl full of bacon and eggs on toast with fresh milk poured upon it what was it that really sparked this post? Maybe it was simply more adventures in searching for blogthenticity. After all, the other day in an interview Heather was seen to suggest

if someone is just yakking about their cereal and how many errands they have to run and here they are living their life and describing it in the most banal way possible then it doesn't matter if it's the best looking site I've ever seen, I probably won't go back.

if I can not talk about my breakfast, I had better find something interesting to talk to my breakfast about, and the realities of pasta sauce in the modern world is as good a topic as any.

Mmmmm ... cows.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Tue, 06 Sep 2005

How exactly does one go about "Watching the sausage"? - 21:24
So I freely admit, Fafblog is pretty neat, in theory we all may be Fafnir, however irrelevant of our status as Fafnir I would recommend reading Fafblog.

I do need to ask one eensy weensy question though, no not "Giblets: Are you a big girly man?", instead I feel the need to ask, how exactly does one go about "Watching the sausage"? And what exactly do you get out of watching this tubular meat product?

As a small experiment, lets try it out shall we?

A Sausage
(zoom)

So what is the above Sausage doing for you? Does it incite you to riot? Are you sitting there planning a bbq that was not on your social calendar until your eyes alighted on the tubular meat product? Will this pair of sausages have meaningful insights on the problems faced by your political party of choice?

Should we simply sit around watching the Sausage or should we compose some questions for the sausage, stage a sort of Sausage interview if you will.

So Mr Sausage, how about dem Bulls?

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Get some blogthenticity! - 21:23
Given that this is supposedly a blog I had better do something to ensure you all believe that it is indeed a blog. Ahh but what I hear you ask gives a blog that oh so necessary street cred? Ahh of course, photos of cats are on all blogs everywhere, that must mean something, I had better do something about that fast.

Schroedinger's Cat
(zoom)
There, that may or may not be a photo of my cat ready for posting to Mongolia or simply wondering how to play alive and dead all at once.

There we go, back to our regularly scheduled adventures in belly button fluff.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

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