God is Canadian

Some two to three weeks back, Dave Sim, creator of the utterly inexplicable comic Cerebus the Aardvark, made it known via Neil Gaiman's blog that he was offering free, signed copies of specific issues of Cerebus (the ones where he lampoons Gaiman's Sandman).  All anyone had to do was ask for one.  Nicely.  By mail.  And he would ship them out to you, at his own cost.  He apparently expected to get anywhere from ten to twenty requests, since the overlap audience for both comics would appear to be near zero.  He's up to a couple of thousand and still counting.

I got mine on Tuesday.

I'm a Happy Toxic Purity.

I'm also an utterly amazed ToxicPurity, because this one issue is like a single milimetre in a kilometre stretch.  That's a hell of a lot of pages Sim has written and drawn entirely on his own, out of sheer bloody mindedness, for well over two decades.  This is what one page from a magnum opus looks like.

Wow.

The Audition

Here's some images from The Audition:

Wanted

Sri Lanka's handball team. Last seen crossing from Germany into Italy. If found please contact Heidi Jung, acting German Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

What I Learnt This Week

1. You can almost teach yourself to lip-read by squinting at hours of medium shots with no audio that must be synched up with wide shot footage that has audio but poor video.

2. Australian Anglo-Indians are blonde.

3. Transperth bus route 32 is so badly managed that they can't even put the right driver behind the wheel. You don't want to hear the driver say, after turning south instead of north, "This is the 32? Shit, I don't know how to get back from here."

(HINT: Two wrongs may not make a right, but three left turns will.)

4. The cat growls just like a dog, which rather surprises dogwalkers - and their dogs - in the dark.

5. It is possible to move two files off a hard drive, delete some extraneous empty folders, clean up the disk, defrag it...etc, and be completely unable to move the two original files back because the hard drive now has less empty space on it than when you started.

All together now: Windows sucks.

6. Some companies think it's perfectly sensible to set a postal deadline on a Sunday.

7. Bitumen may come off with turpentine, but it sure as hell doesn't come off anything else afterwards.

Exhibitionist

I spent the day attending the Comm-IT WA Technology Showcase at PCEC as an exhibitor for PLUG.  Basically it is like the Royal Show but for IT corps instead of farmers and without the rides.  There were lots of goodies and I scored some stuff from Novell that, at first glance, looks pretty hoopy.  Hey with free stuff I'm easily impressed.

My job today was to stand at our booth - kindly purchased/hired/donated/acquired by the folks at Open Source WA - and talk to people about linux (and occasionally about PLUG).  Now, those that know me will know that I do this anyway so the job kinda came naturally.   If only I could work out how to get paid fat wads of cash in the process.

Things were kinda slow initially.  Then they got downright glacial.  Then I had lunch and when I returned I was run off my feet.  Go figure.

I met some interesting people and most of them said yes when I asked if I could interview them for Byte Me so the day was pretty rewarding, even if the morning was hideously tedious.  So rewarding I'm going to be spending some time there tomorrow.

Understanding Politics

Thanks, George.

Gmail invites

I have a couple of Gmail invites available.  If you don't know what Gmail is then click here.  Currently it is still in beta testing and available via invite only.  If you'd like one just leave a message in the comments attached to this post.

Weekend Networking

I've just spent the last two days helping the new tech, Bob, fix the network situation at CTV. We now have the ability to transfer files between the upstairs and downstairs areas - something that was mysteriously disabled during one of the last tech's Windows reinstall binges.   It pretty much took two days to undo the good work the last tech did.  Bob has done a great job, even if he did insist on using windows (98 at that) as the server.  Hopefully it will improve productivity back up to where it was six months ago.  I can dream, can't I? =)

Sign here, please

Now you can call me a dirty brat, who's mind remains in the gutter, but I have to say that I think that one of the most poorly conceived - and evocative - names for a company is Sign Erection Services. I saw one of their vans today and it did take me a moment to work out what they did.

ToxicPurity's 2 Second Pop Quiz

ToxicPurity has not posted recently because she:
has no time even for email, let alone blogging.
is a total figment of skribe's imagination.
is mute-blogging in protest against spam, net-bloat, and Windows machines in general.
has the secret subpower of breaking Blogger everytime she tries to post something.

More Installfest pics

The image server has returned and so here are a few more pics from the Installfest doco plus a few other stills that I took on the day.  Enjoy.

That's no moon. That's a space station.

This is a snap of the highly secretive weapon system being held in reserve in case the Bush Administration loses the November presidential election:

The picture was shot by the Cassini probe.

More Installfest soon plus a puzzle

I have another lot of pictures from the Installfest that I will put up as soon as the image server returns to its normal programme. 

Meanwhile, here's a puzzle:

A man pushes his car to a hotel and as soon as he reaches it he knows he is bankrupt.  How?

Post your answers in the comments area attached to this posting.

Nothing to see here

There appears to be a problem with the image server so please bear with us while we find the person responsible and have it nibbled to death by horny goats.

Wacky Ads II

This one floored me:

Installfest doco update

Well, I was going to post some shots from the Installfest doco I've just completed  - everything except the CGI that is- but unfortunately they appear to have gone walkabout.  It seems in my tiredness I inadvertently saved them to the wrong location.  Either that or the Blue Men haven't put them back yet.  Hopefully tomorrow.

Update

Actually, I did find a few of them. I've had to reduce the quality considerably.

More tomorrow

This means waaah!

Bush admits war on terror can't be won. Nuff said.

Being Conventional

Despite having a name that resembles the noise I make when I get out of bed, the PCEC, or as us locals call it The Convention Centre, is not too shabby.  It's none too grande either because it has taken me nearly three days to write about it.  Maybe it was the shock of meeting Mahesh there that has caused the delay =).

We went last Friday and the place was packed.  In the main foyer they had empty showbags that could be purchased through a donation to the Flying Doctor.  After dutifully helping to save a few regional lives we, bag in hand, headed to the far end and worked our way back through the exhibits.  Was there ever a lot of them - and we quickly worked out that the showbags were designed to carry all the goodies you bought from the exhibits.  Apart from the free pack from the workers compensation stall ours remained empty.

As for stand-out exhibits the only ones that stick in my mind are the RAC exhibit, because they were giving away 5 VMoto scooters - unfortunately it seems we failed to win one, and the Screenwest exhibit, because it was so mindnumbingly insipid.  It was camped amongst all the other arts and culture exhibits, but whereas the others had real people to talk to, the Screenwest one only had a widescreen tv running the sort of arthouse films that SBS reject.  Bloody pathetic.  We have great film-makers making great films.  At least Screenwest could have had the decency of supporting them, but alas they didn't.

Overall, I like the place, but as I looked around the various halls, ballrooms and boardrooms I kept having the one image in my mind. Thousands of screaming Sci-Fi geeks at a Worldcon. Now that is a scary thought indeed, because the place would be perfect.

Flicktease!

Flicktease! Flicktease! Flicktease! Flicktease! Flicktease! Flicktease!

No, this isn't part of my porn ad experiment, but a big thank you.  I just won the 30th Anniversary edition of Blazing Saddles. It is one of my favourite films simply because it is so mind-numbingly fun and fourth wall.  Flicktease were running one of their many comps and unusually I entered.  More unusually I won. So, to all the gang at Flicktease, thank you very much.

Which of the Greek Gods are you?

Another stupid but fun quiz (yes, I find they're addictive =):

Athena

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

Those of you who have read Stephenson's Cryptonomicon will know that being identified with Athena (or Minerva as the Romans knew her) is a very good thing for a hacker =).