A few years ago I came up with the idea of “Lensbox Studios”, having grandiose plans of turning my one-man freelance operation into something a little larger, out-sourcing aspects of projects to those more capable in particular fields, leaving me to concentrate on what I knew I could handle. Sadly that never really happened and I continued to work on projects as I got them, often burning the midnight oil to get them done.

Once I moved to Johannesburg, the freelance side of my life ground to a halt and Lensbox Studios,  for all intents and purposes, died, leaving me to use the lensbox.za.net domain for my own personal blog and one or two hosted projects, such as the Awakened Guardians guild, my father’s blog beginnings and hosting some images and files that some folks were linking to.

I’ve decided to re-invent the Lensbox again. This time I’ll keep it as my personal brand as opposed to my freelance work. If ever I start that up again, I will find another more suitable name for that side of my life.

For now, Lensbox will be representative of my views, both personal and professional, my photography and 2D/3D work, my writing and my personal hosted projects.

Here are some of the items you can expect to see in the coming weeks:

• Akira
• Black Jack
• Black Lagoon
• Bleach
• Burst Angel
• Burst Angel OVA
• Code Geass
• Cowboy Bepop
• Coyote Ragtime Show
• Elfen Lied
• Ergo Proxy
• Eureka Seven
• Fate/Stay Night
• Genshiken
• Ghost in the Shell (movies and series)
• Gun X Sword
• Gundam 00
• Hellsing
• Hellsing Ultimate OVA
• Heroic Age
• Kaze no Stigma
• Kekkaishi
• Macross Frontier
• Macross Plus
• Macross Zero
• Mai-HiMe
• Mai-Otome
• Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
• Mushishi
• Naruto – Shippuden Movie
• New Dominion Tank Police
• Ninja Scroll
• Paradise Kiss
• Pumpkin Scissors
• Read or Die
• Robotech – Shadow Chronicles
• School Rumble
• Scrapped Princess
• Serial Experiments Lain
• Shadow Skill
• Soul Eater
• Stellvia of the Universe
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
• The Third
• Trigun
• Umisho
• VanDread
• Vexille

Air Gear

The subculture that has sprung up around the manga and anime industries is massive and not just limited to the East where it began. If anything, it’s probably one of the things that has brought the East to the Western youth culture in a big way.

Consider the title of this post; the word otaku, a word loosely meaning ‘fan’ in Japanese (though there seems to be some nuances in the use of the word that mean you can’t just call someone an otaku and get away with it) has been accepted as a loanword in the English language. Even then it has it’s negative connotations as stated by Wikipedia:

The term is a loanword from the Japanese language. In English, it is used to refer specifically to any kind of “geek”, though it can sometimes refer to a fan of anime and/or manga. It also is used to refer to people who appear to be obsessed with Japan and its culture. The term serves as a label not unlike Trekkie or fanboy. However, use of the label can be a source of contention among some anime fans, particularly those who are aware of the negative connotations the term has in Japan. Unpleasant stereotypes about otaku prevail in worldwide fan communities, and some anime fans express concern about the effect these more extreme fans can have on the reputation of their hobby (not unlike sentiments in the comic book and science fiction fandoms).

It should be noted that the English term geek is not a precise translation of the Japanese otaku. Otaku has a significantly greater negative connotation than geek does in the West, especially as the term geek has become less derogatory. The term otaku in Japanese occasionally suggests a creepy, obsessive loner who rarely leaves the house. However this is not always the case, and in general use it shares more of a similarity with the English term “enthusiast”. In English, geek can possibly suggest a person who may be socially awkward but who is also intelligent and may be fairly “normal” aside from their interest in certain typically ‘geekish’ pursuits (video games, comic books, computers, etc.). Otaku is closer in connotation to the English nerd, but the closest English-language analogue to otaku is probably the British English term anorak. Both of these English-language terms have more emphatically negative connotations of poor social skills and obsessive interest in a topic that seems strange or boring to others.

So, in other words, the title of this post and the one prior to it, could be “Becoming a nerd”? Hmm… If the shoe fits, I guess…

So… bearing all that in mind, am I still becoming otaku in the pure sense of the word? Perhaps not (at least I hope that is not how people view me), but the tendency is there… Hell, if I consider the sheer amount of time taken recently watching fansubs from friends (rarely leaves the house?) and the ‘obsession’ I have for all things Ghost in the Shell related (I blame that on my fascination for cybernetics and cyberspace), you could write me off as an otaku.

That said, I think I’m nowhere near as bad as some folks I know. And as for obsessions… well, I have to laugh at some of the cosplay threads on some forums I’ve frequented recently. There are some truly awesome cosplay artists… and there are some very very sad ones too.

I will say this though… as a marketing mechanism, the anime and manga culture is frighteningly efficient. Without even looking at the media sales of the DVD’s and books, you have games, figurines, clothing, pin badges, clothing patches, lunch boxes, keyrings, huggable pillows, plush dolls, wall scrolls and more… Sites like JBox (JList is the more adult oriented store), and more locally, AnimeWorx and Akiba help satisfy the many needs of fans. One needs only look through the selection of items there to see how extensive the range of merchandise is. And I can guarantee you this… that most, if not all the people buying from those stores are teenagers and older.

Anime and Manga is not ‘something only kids should be interested in’. It is not just ‘cartoons, comics and toys’. It is something far greater. More mature. Bloodier and darker. Uplifting and joyous. Funny. Sad. It is everything you’d expect from the greatest fantasy books through to the darkest horrors and thrillers. The happiest love stories or the most heart-wrenching of tragedies…

It is a visual culture. And I think it’s here to stay.

Recently, myself and John, a friend and colleague at work, were talking about anime and when we’d each first started actively watching anime. By this, he meant watching anime with the knowledge of what it was. For me, that discounts a good chunk of my childhood as although I’d grown up watching Robotech, it wasn’t until much later that I was able to link my favourite shows to the fact that it was not just another cartoon series.

I think the first active foray into anime and manga for me came while I was at college, working for the campus computer services department, one of the few departments to have access to the Internet in 1997. A classmate of mine that was also working there pointed me in the direction of the SUNET FTP server where I found an anime repository, with pictures, sound bytes and low-res video clips from shows such as 3×3 Eyes, Ah! My Goddess, Bubblegum Crisis, etc.

I downloaded many of those pictures in the time I was there and sometime that year I remember buying my first manga magazine from a store that used to sell old overseas publications by weight. That magazine had an article about mecha and referred to Robotech and Macross. It also mentioned shows like Akira and Plastic Little, and little by little I was drawn into the anime world. For some time, my main focus was on Robotech, recalling with fondness the childhood memories of running home from school to watch it on TV before settling down to chores and homework. Sometime that year, my friend Bruno brought over his VHS tapes of Macross Plus which we watched during breaks in our LAN games one weekend. I think, then, that I fell in love with anime (again).

Later, with access to the Internet, I put more and more pieces of the puzzle together to discover that other childhood favourites had also been anime. Shows like Galaxy Rangers, Saber Rider and Star Sheriffs and way way back in the distant past, I recall watching Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind while visiting somewhere.

However, my first real discovery of anime since the Robotech and Macross craze came with the discovery of the Ghost in the Shell movie in 1998. After that, a colleague of mine, Michelle, let me watch Ninja Scroll and unfortunately, Urotsukid?ji – Legend of the Overfiend, my first experience with the world of ecchi and hentai. I recall being rather shocked at what I’d seen and telling her as much when I returned the VHS cassettes to her the next day. She just smiled and shrugged, telling me that that sort of thing was normal in some anime. Thankfully I learnt that this was not the case and that there were indeed separate categories… though some series tended to border on crossing the lines between them.

I recall finding evidence of a planned TV series and spin-off game called Mission to Avalon, done by Human Code Japan, presenting a space colony cel-shaded anime adventure. I was obsessed with the project, downloading trailers, listening to the music, browsing through screen-shots… I even mailed one of the project artists, Sergio Rosas, sometime ago, when I suddenly saw the site go offline. Sadly, he informed me about the project’s demise and the fact that no further work would be done on it. Truly a pity as it looked as though it could have been quite good.

After that, I recall watching Akira, AD Police, and ultimately, I began collecting the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series and now after a few years I have every DVD except the OVA, the original mangas, the console games and the collectible merchandise, except for one figurine of Motoko Kusanagi, based on her look from the original manga.

In the meantime, friends have introduced me to series such as Trigun, Macross Zero and many more (thanks John, you’re officially my dealer of anime fixes!). I’ve also moved to Johannesburg and gained access to shops like Outer Limits and Animeworx.

Recently, through exposure to the Animax TV channel, I’ve come to see a lot more anime, though admittedly, I’m disappointed with the service the channel provides, considering how disjointed the sequence of the series shown are, let alone the constant repetition.

That said, it’s helped a little with my anime education and has pointed me in the direction of new shows for me to explore, such as Basilisk, Black Lagoon, Eureka Seven, Speedgrapher, Wolf’s Rain, etc.

These in turn have led people like John to take it upon themselves to properly educate me by letting me watch some of their fansubs and boxset collections… such as Burst Angel, Code Geass, Elfen Lied, Gun X Sword, Gundam 00, Hellsing, Kekkaishi, Mai Hime and Mai Otome, Mushishi, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, etc… in the hope that they can get me out of the habit of watching, in their words, badly dubbed versions of good shows, preferring the more purist route of watching the shows in the original Japanese with subtitles.

I hope to do proper reviews of each of them in time, something I’d promised a fellow otaku some time back.

So what is it about anime that makes it so appealing?

Honestly, I think it’s because, as a visual medium, it is truly entertaining and it appeals to a wide and varied audience. And, according respect where respect is due, the Japanese truly are masters of animation, blending stunning matte scenes, action sequences that defy the laws of physics, awesome 3d animation and modelling, and fantastic storylines with some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever seen.

The only thing that doesn’t always grab me is the soundtracks, though composers like Yoko Kanno have gone a long way to change my opinion with their solo work (Macross Plus and Macross Frontier, etc) and their collaborative work (Ghost in the Shell SAC, 2nd Gig and Solid State Society) with the likes of Origa, Ilaria Graziano, Gabriela Robin (though some may argue that Kanno and Robin are one and the same) and Tim Jensen.

Another brilliant composer that has come to my attention is Yuki Kajiura thanks to her work on the Mai Hime and Mai Otome soundtracks. And I’m sure there are many more out there like them.

Let me end on that note for now… More to come later when I have some more time and inspiration.

Update (20/7/2008) : I’ve added some Wikipedia linkage for those interested in looking for more information about the shows and artists mentioned here.

Tempus fugit… time flies… 

Not much to report. Just some articles of interest I’ve found and shared on Google Reader. Maybe someone out there finds some entertainment in them.

Anyhow… back to work for me.

After Friday night’s movie, I pretty much expected the rest of the weekend to be restful and relaxing. Life, however, decided to surprise me in the form of my new housemates taking me out to Gold Reef City for the day on Saturday.

Now bear in mind, I haven’t seen Gold Reef City in probably 21 years… I was still in primary school when I went there with my Mom and her family. And my recollection of the place is dim, except for some events… like me trying to walk out of the mint with a gold bar.

It certainly appears to have changed a lot since then.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Andrew, Gwen and I went on some of the rides (Gwen’s face after the Tower of Terror was both amusing and concerning… the poor girl was quite shaken by the experience) and wandered around the park, experienced the 4D theatre, saw the Gumboot Dancers, tried our hands at winning some prizes at some of the stalls, etc.

We got home around 5pm or so and I had to get ready to go out to Catz Pyjamas in Melville for the joint birthday bash organised by Rozz for herself, Nick and I.

Craig was kind enough to pick me up as my little old VW Beetle was not up to the task, suffering a little with battery issues at present so driving at night becomes quite hair-raising unless you keep your foot on the gas to keep the lights on.

By the time we got there, most of the folks were already there, except for Rozz, Nick, JJ and Vanessa who were stuck in traffic due to some accidents on the way from Pretoria.

From there, the evening just kept on getting better and better. Good food, good company, good times!

And I got spoilt rotten… to the point that I was almost in tears, very much overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends.

Gift #1 – From Matthew, Marti and many many others who I still need to thank.

They surprised me with a TomTom ONE XL GPS… Now you have to understand a few things here… I am notoriously bad when it comes to directions. I get lost in my own backyard… And I’m forever getting lost whenever I go to a new place. Sure, I have software on my laptop to try and work out routes, etc but as my friend John recently discovered, the software does not necessarily choose the best or safest route.

However, with this gift comes a new joke… TimTim (thank you, Pieter… you’ve scarred me for life!) has a TomTom…

Gift #2 – From JJ and Vanessa

I’ve always loved swords. From the day my father showed me his grandfather’s cavalry saber (which we sacrilegiously used in the garden to chop up small branches and other such vegetation) to the day when Maarten offered me the chance to learn kenjutsu in exchange for some website work to promote his academy. There is just something awe-inspiring about holding a sword in your hands, feeling it cut through the air. And this applies even moreso to the Japanese katana.

When JJ and Vanessa gave me this long, wrapped box, I wasn’t too sure what was in it, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to open it up to find a beautifully crafted sword. Especially not a recreation of the sword from “Last Samurai”.

It is a truly stunning looking piece.

Back to the party… dinner was great but all in all, I think the best part of the evening was the company. And if the time we left Catz is anything to go by, I’d say everyone got on pretty well. We eventually stumbled out around 12:30am after which Craig and I sat talking at my place until around 4:30am, catching up a little on what has been happening in his life.

Sunday, after trying to catch up on some sleep, was spent relaxing at home, watching the Code Geass anime series I’d gotten from John, reading and listening to music or playing a little Warcraft III now and again to take a break from what I was doing.

It was a good weekend. No, it was a great weekend. But now it’s time to get back to work.

I’m on training tomorrow and Wednesday so I best get some work done today so that I don’t sit with a small mountain of it on Thursday.

Ciao for now.

I like my patterns… my set routines. Some would call it a rut, others may accuse me of being inflexible. But truth be told, I am just lazy. I like my comfort zones. And I do resist change. Hell, ask Rozz… she knows better than most, having tried to get me to change some of my ways over the last 8 years she’s known me.

Like some great tree, I tend to set down roots and would rather weather the storms where I am currently than uproot and have to resettle elsewhere. That metaphor continues on beyond my residence at the time… it seems to be a common theme in my life, in my career, friendships, relationships, habits, tastes and more.

Well, lately, I’m becoming less tolerant of storms. Maybe age is finally bestowing some wisdom and experience upon me.

I had to move home recently… those that have followed my story over the last year and a half, may have heard some of the descriptions of the antics of my housemates in that time. I’ve met some truly wonderful people. And I’ve met some that I would prefer not to relate to ever again. Perhaps due to my own anachronistic intolerances or maybe I just got tired of being used and abused.

The move, for me, just like all the other moves, has had it’s fair share of pain and trauma. Uprooting everything. Packing up more than just physical belongings and having to shift from one secure space to a foreign and uncertain space. Not knowing if I can create the same sense of security and serenity that I try to create in ‘my’ space.

And yes, I am delving into the esoteric here… exploring a concept based on what I heard recently on a podcast presented by the late Alan Watts.

We are more than just the physical extremes of our bodies. We are the space we live in. Work in. Move through. We are the people we interact with. We are our actions. We are our thoughts and feelings. We are more than ‘centres of awareness, locked up in a bag of skin’. And we are not separate from the world and the people in it.

Without an environment, everything else becomes meaningless. Without a description of my environment, there is no reference for my actions on that environment. Ergo, without people, my interactions, my words and my feelings have no meaning. And so on and so forth.

We are in fact, our ‘organism-environment‘. I’ll let the biologist boffins tell you more about that term.

Getting back to ‘my’ space… the ‘organism-environment’ that I try to create for myself, is one in which I try to build a sense of security. Of isolation, when I need it, yet with enough openness that I don’t remove all chance of interaction with others. I surround myself with books and music, pictures and movies. These are my friends when I need them, when the real world becomes too much for me to deal with. And they are mechanisms whereby I interact with others… a book lent between bibliophiles, a shared passion for the music lovers, a movie to watch with friends, etc.

My home is my den. I keep in it the things I need to feel comfortable. So that when I retreat from the world, I can go to a place where I feel safe. Where the chaos of the world around me is left at the door.

And so, every time that I move, I have to dig up all of that hard work and try find that ‘space’ again. Or work to create it.

This recent move… we’ll see how it works out. So far so good, but I still have some reservations. But who knows… I’ve only been in here a week and I’m still adjusting to the new environment. It would be unfair of me not to give it a chance.

Anyway… enough serious thinking for tonight. I’ve just gotten back from going to go see the new Indiana Jones movie at Brightwater Commons and in all honesty, it was a fun little romp. A well needed break from reality.

Tomorrow night I am celebrating my birthday with Rozz and Nick and our respective friends and colleagues, as we all have our birthdays one after the other and have decided to do a joint celebration.

Good times, good company. May that feeling last the whole weekend… I need it after the week I’ve had.

I was also housesitting for friends of mine while they went away to celebrate a birthday. Which gave me plenty of time to reads my RSS feeds and catch up on some podcasts. One of those was a Dave’s Lounge Podcast I hadn’t gotten around to listening to yet… Dave’s podcast has become something of a regular feature in my music library these days.

In episode 107, he introduced me to a new music project called Sleepthief, featuring some of the vocalists and themes from another music project I enjoy, namely Delerium. The track he played was off “The Dawnseeker” album, called ‘Sublunar’:

Well, the lights are on and I don’t feel safe
By this tainted window
So if you’re looking in, you might see the pain
But I don’t want you to know, so…
Just go on pretending that you don’t know
All I am is empty, an empty world in my heart, In my heart, in my heart, in my heart
Sweet angel sweet angel sweet angel
All my pretty things make you stop and think
I must be a sweet angel
But when the glitter smears and the wires appear
You’ll see I’m horribly mangled, but
Hush hush hush la da da da
Hush hush hush hush hush
Hush hush hush hush hush hush la da da da da, da da

I don’t quite know how to put into words the ethereal quality of Kristy Thirsk’s voice. Reviews online describe the track as “melancholy but heavenly” and “Kristy Thirsk’s crystalline vocals are truly angelic and stunning within the celestial textures of Sublunar.”

Now Dave generally promotes a lot of smaller label artists so I wasn’t too hopeful about finding this on anything other than CDBaby or iTunes but I see Amazon has it as does Take2 so I think I may get this for myself sometime. Once my move, etc is done and I’m settled again.

The other highlight of the weekend was seeing “Iron Man” with some work colleagues. I’m not going to spoil it for those that have not seen it, nor am I going to repeat what several hundred other blogs are bound to say, except that this was a good movie. Specifically, a good comic-related action hero movie. And I think we all know how rare those are these days. It has all the elements of success in it. And as one blog put it, if you could leave your preconceived ideas at the door and sit back and watch it as a technology-fest, the geek in you would love it.

Reading some of the RSS feeds this morning on the topic, the folks at Marvel must be smiling, as Iron Man has taken the box office by storm.

Another page I stumbled upon recently lists all the upcoming movies for the next 3 years with links to their IMDB records. Some awesome titles on the cards, it seems, and some questionable ones too:

Filtered from titles slated for 2009

• A-Team, The (2009)
• Area 51 (2009)
• Astro Boy (2009)
• Barbarella (2009)
• Captain America (2009)
• Castlevania (2009)
• CHiPs (2009)
• Conan the Barbarian (2009)
• Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) – [Didn't he die?]
  
• Dark Avengers (2009)
• Elfstones of Shannara, The (2009)
• Fraggle Rock: The Movie (2009)
• G.I. Joe (2009)
• Ghost Rider 2 (2009)
• Godzilla 3-D (2009)
• Green Hornet, The (2009)
• Halo (2009)
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
• Jetsons, The (2009)
• Jurassic Park IV (2009) – [Why?]
  
• Justice League: Mortal (2009)
• Kong: King of Skull Island (2009)
• Magnum P.I. (2009)
• Masters of the Universe (2009)
• Metal Gear Solid (2009)
• Neuromancer (2009)
• Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian (2009)
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2009)
• Rambo V (2009) – [What, is Rambo going to go postal on us in the retirement home?]
  
• Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of the Banshee (2009)
• Shinobi (2009)
• Sims: The Movie, The (2009)
• Sin City 3 (2009)
• Smurfs, The (2009)
• Spider-Man 4 (2009)
• Spy Hunter (2009)
• Star Trek (2009)
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
• Superman: Man of Steel (2009)
• Swiss Family Robinson (2009)
• Teen Titans (2009)
• Tekken (2009)
• Terminator 4 (2009) – [What time paradox excuse will they use this time?]
  
• Thor (2009)
• Three Stooges, The (2009)
• Tintin (2009)
• Transformers 2 (2009)
• Transporter 3 (2009)
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
• Warcraft (2009)
• Wolf Man, The (2009)
• X-Men Origins: Magneto (2009)
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Filtered from titles slated for 2010

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2010)
• Alice in Wonderland (2010)
• Ant-Man (2010)
• Bond 23 (2010)
• Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The (2010)
• Clash of the Titans (2010)
• Cyclops (2010)
• Devil May Cry (2010)
• Dune (2010)
• EverQuest (2010)
• Fahrenheit 451 (2010)
• Fantastic Voyage (2010)
• Fantasy Island (2010)
• Green Lantern (2010)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (2010)
• Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
• Heavy Metal (2010)
• Hercules (2010)
• Hobbit, The (2010)
• I Am Legend 2 (2010)
• I, Robot 2 (2010)
• Incredible Shrinking Man, The (2010)
• Invisible Woman, The (2010)
• Jason and the Argonauts: The Kingdom of Hades (2010)
• Jonny Quest (2010)
• Jungle Book (2010)
• Knight Rider (2010)
• Lone Ranger, The (2010)
• Mighty Mouse (2010)
• Mortal Kombat (2010)
• National Treasure 3 (2010)
• Navy Seals (2010)
• Nick Fury (2010)
• Puss in Boots (2010)
• Q (2010)
• Rainbow Six (2010)
• Resident Evil 4 (2010)
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2010)
• Robotech (2010)
• Sherlock Holmes (2010)
• Short Circuit (2010)
• Shrek Goes Fourth (2010)
• Sin City 2 (2010)
• Spawn 2 (2010)
• Splinter Cell (2010)
• Sub-Mariner (2010)
• Sword of Shannara, The (2010)
• Tarzan (2010)
• Thundercats (2010)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• TRON (2010)
• Voltron (2010)

Filtered from titles slated for 2011

• Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, The (2011)
• Ghost in the Shell (2011)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (2011)
• Hobbit 2, The (2011)
• Jumper 2 (2011)
• Untitled Third Tintin Film (2011)

I can only hope that they don’t screw them up too badly. Specifically the ones in bold… (please do not let Uwe Boll near any of these movies!). As for the ones in italics… well, one has to wonder…

Considering that my last post was in February sometime, and we’re almost done with April, I feel I’ve neglected this site for some time. Time, specifically spare time, has become somewhat of a rare commodity for me lately…

Ok, some updates (for those that care and even for those that don’t):

I’m moving… where to, I’m not too sure yet, but I’m hoping it will be a little closer to work to cut down on traffic, etc. I should be seeing a place tomorrow night that sounds perfect…

Work has been going well, just busy. At present I’m on-site at BCX (Business Connexion) in Midrand, standing in for a work colleague who has decided to get married… poor sod… another one bites the dust. I’m studying as well, brushing up on my Checkpoint Security Administration knowledge so I can write my CCSA (Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator) and CCSE (Checkpoint Certified Security Engineer) exams when I get back to the Randburg office.

What else? Oh, I’ve been raiding a little again in World of Warcraft with my US Stormrage guild, Awakened Guardians. My rogue is somewhat under-geared and underpowered in comparison to some of the uber-backstabbers out there, but some recent gear upgrades has made her a far more formidable than she was.

Sadly, with this move, I’ll be offline again for some time unless Telkom miraculously pulls it’s collective finger out of deep, dark, unmentionable body cavities and does something quicky for a change…

Not that I’m a pessimist… not at all… I’m just a strong believer in Finagle’s Law, which states:

“Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”

OR

O’Toole’s Corollary of Finagle’s Law, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

In other words… Murphy was an optimist.

I haven’t had much time lately to discuss or even explore the various metaverse cultures out there or my more recent research into trans-humanism, but catching up this morning on one of the more interesting blogs out there on these topics, I found that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks want to make a 3D CGI movie of one of my favourite anime films of all time… Ghost in the Shell. As a self-confessed fan-boy of the Ghost in the Shell franchise and Masamune Shirow’s work, I sincerely hope and pray that they don’t screw it up…

Reading further (my GoogleReader has too many feeds for me to catch up on all of them in one day!), I see that there is talk of a live-action version of Akira. While I was never that fond of the Akira story, it was and is still a well-known landmark within the anime/manga culture and I hope they do it justice.

Other than that, not much else to report. Eskom is keeping us on our toes with load-shedding (thank Heavens for laptops with batteries and podcasts/movies to watch while waiting for the lights to come back on), traffic is a pain in the butt (especially on Allandale and Malibongwe)… and I think I need a refill on this coffee… or maybe some hot chocolate.

The last few days/weeks have been busy for most people. For me, they’ve been filled with work, social events, issues at home and a general need for downtime in which it’s either just me, my PC and some uplifting music or my bed and a good book.

Let’s see, where to begin…

May as well begin with work as it is where I seem to spend most of my time these days!

I love my job. People think I’m odd, but I look forward to going to work, to see what new challenges await me. And they often do!

You see, I’m a relative newcomer to the security industry… having been primarily involved with systems administration, web development and design, ANSI development and some minor DBA work before this… And when I joined, I was initially there to look after one of our anti-virus products more than anything else. Except, me being me, I had to go and stick my nose into other things and jump feet first into the firewall tickets and try my hand at log analysis…

Now, I spend most of my time abusing my workstation’s processor and memory, building pivot tables, running SQL queries and pulling reports from client log files, trying to make head or tale of what I see before me… is this a botnet I see before me? A portscan perhaps?

Management have also gotten me involved in some of the research and development projects, which makes for some interesting times as I sit and research topics that I may have glossed over before or never even thought of.

I work with a good bunch of people as well. On the AV side of things, I have Reshan to lean on when my own knowledge of F-Secure fails me. On the Checkpoint side of things there are many talented and knowledgeable people, like Matt, our technical manager and primary Checkpoint trainer, Gary, Clive, Marcel and Teper. All of these guys have helped me when I’ve gotten stuck with an issue and have been patient enough to explain it to me without treating me like an idiot.

We all work hard. And we play hard as well; Matt provides music during the day and we often take breaks for coffee or cooldrinks, go stand in the bar area and play a round or two of pool, throw some darts or discuss World of Warcraft, something many of us play, though Marcel and Reshan are supposedly rehabilitated… We’re trying to rope them back in though. Those breaks afford us a well-deserved mental break from the stresses of concentrating on some rather intricate configurations and mystifying security incidents.

Between work and play though, we end up working long hours, seeing to the demands of clients… I think most nights the tech team leave work well after 6:30pm, if not later.

For folks like Matt, Gary and myself, it’s then time to drive home and log into World of Warcraft, to our guild, “Thunderwalkers” on Dath’Remar, US Oceanic. That keeps up busy until the next morning when our work cycle begins anew.

Beside “Thunderwalkers” though, I still belong to “Awakened Guardians” on US Stormrage, where I have most of my characters and play a role in guild management by running their website and forum which I host under this domain.

We’ve gotten together a few times offline, as the photo to the right shows. Interesting to put faces to names and voices…

Aside from my usual routine of work and play though, I also have the dubious honour of living with 4 women who keep me on my toes. Sharlene and Cari have stayed with me before, as two of the original tenants that moved into the commune shortly after I did. The two newcomers, Renee and Tarryn, have brought their own chaos to the party.

Some folks joke with me that I must be a very lucky man to live with 4 women… My response usually surprises them… It’s certainly not the ideal many would think, as there have been some spectacular blowups and unspoken issues… but for the most part it’s peaceful and it’s company… Something I’d gotten used to since I moved out of my bachelor flat and moved in with other people in a sharing arrangement. It’s taken some getting used to, but for those that cannot afford to get their own house just yet or cannot stand the idea of being alone 24/7, it’s not that bad.

It’s actually quite nice to come home, sit with someone and have a cup of tea or coffee, hear about their day, relate your own experiences, etc. This is great most of the time, but I’ll admit there are some days when I am feeling less than sociable and all I want to do is make myself some supper and go lock myself in my room, put on my headphones and forget about the world outside.

Something I need to do again is get back into my photography. I’m still working through a backlog of photos for Sheelagh’s wedding, my company’s last year-end function and several other spools I’ve had lying around and finally had developed.

And I’ve found some new subjects to photograph as well… just need to make the time to go and take some proper shots that aren’t shot with my little HTC P4350 smartphone…

The shots below were taken one evening when Rob was up from Cape Town and we’d gone to see Alien vs Predator 2… we stood outside the movie theatre area in Brightwater Commons and were treated to this colourful little display, though the accompanying music was badly distorted through very tinny and bass-intolerant speakers.

Makes me realise that I really need to get back into things again… I haven’t managed to beat shots like these and some of them are well over 3-4 years old now.

Time to get back into the habit, I think…

Ah, yes, the storm and subsequent demise of my ADSL modem and laptop. And MPH.

I’ll start with MPH… I’ve never been to a car show before and certainly never anything like MPH, so thank you Rozz, for a very different and entertaining Christmas present.

Didn’t get to see all that much of the car expo itself, but the ‘theatre’ part of the show was brilliantly executed by the hosts and their accompanying stunt drivers. The banter between Hammond and Clarkson was a welcome familiarity for those that have watched any Top Gear at all, and I think poor Sasha Martinengo didn’t stand much of a chance of stealing any limelight from those two.

There were some stunning driving/stunt sequences, some amusement in the form of the soccer match with cars, the hosts driving their own inventions and the half-a-car race, a rather different take on bull fighting with a very flexible female matador and a bakkie as the bull, mixed in with some of the best looking cars available today. A petrolhead’s dream come true, I think.

The whole thing was marred a bit though, by the travesty they called seating. I think no matter what shape or size you are, those seats are just uncomfortable, especially if you’re a little taller than most and your knees end up crushed against the seat in front of you.

Anyway… it was still a good time though. Good times with good company… it’s all that counts really.

We left MPH, only to be greeted by a magnificent storm and downpour.

The next day wasn’t much better. Though for the most part, it wasn’t stormy. Or so I thought.

There I was, happily sitting on my bed, playing World of Warcraft on my laptop, headset on, chatting to friends, when ZAP! … Everything went dark. Ok, not surprising, considering the mains tripped on the distribution board… flicked the switch and we had power again. Except that somethings didn’t come back up. Things like my brand new Netgear ADSL modem and my laptop. And there was the smell of ozone and electrolytes in the air to confirm my suspicions.

Ah well… It’s meant that I caught up on some of my reading this week, though I have ended up working late to get some research, etc done that I normally would have done from home.

In the meantime though, I’ve put my old Telkom ADSL modem back online and built up a small PC from spare parts. Nothing great, but it’s enough to run XP and Office, browse the ‘Net and listen to MP3′s. I got a new Netgear as a replacement but not in a rush to install it just yet as without the laptop, I don’t really need the wireless just yet. And frankly, my housemates can wait a bit before I put them back online again… maybe this will encourage them to pay me for their usage.

Hopefully I get the laptop back this week coming. Apparently they’ve replaced the motherboard, and I’m hoping I didn’t lose any data of the hard drive.

Between heading back to my normal office after my last day on-site at ABSA and catching up on mail and office news, I met up with Rob, and my other good friends, Pieter, Tania and their daughter, Zania, at Fourways for supper. Supper turned into late night coffee and cakes at another restaurant when the first started hinting we should leave due to them wanting to close and later Rob and I went to go watch “National Treasure 2“.

NT:2 was good. In some ways better than the first, but in hindsight, my reservations about the first may be skewing that judgement.

Saturday, after playing catchup with the folks at home, I got dragged around Northgate by Tarryn, who initially only went there to get some Tupperware. Several hours later, we eventually emerged, Tarryn having bought a new handbag and some clothes. I picked up a ‘Men’s Health’ book on lifestyle change to combat the typical stresses, etc men fall victim too.

Later that evening, Rob and I went to Brightwater Commons and saw “Alien vs Predator 2” after a very decent meal at Scrooges. AvP:2 was… well… crap. Not bad enough to walk out of, but certainly not memorable. The first was infinitely more memorable.

And today, Rob had some more time to kill before flying back to Cape Town, so we went back to Brightwater Commons and paid a visit to AnimeWorX, where I took the plunge and replaced my Ghost in the Shell : Alias figure, that got broken a while back and secondly, indulged in a Mon-Sieur Bome : Fate/Stay Night – Saber figure.

The first was something I was fond of, not only because I own just about every GitS product short of the games, but because it was originally bought for me as a Christmas present by Rozz, and admittedly, I should have taken her advice back then and left it in it’s packaging. Which I intend to do with both new figures. For now at least, or until I have the means of displaying them out of harms way.

The second, is a series I quite enjoyed recently (many thanks to our resident otaku, John-san, for letting me watch it – may your broken ankle heal soon) and I was quite intrigued by the character of Saber, who turns out to be a female incarnation of King Arthur, known there as King Artoria. Again, my fascination with mythology kicked in…

While I don’t count myself as an otaku, I do enjoy my anime and manga, and if I find something that I like, I tend to collect everything I can from the product range.

So far, I’m looking to collect:

• Fate / Stay Night
• Eureka Seven
• Genshiken
• Hellsing
• Battle Angel Alita
• Robotech / Macross
• Last Exile
• Ergo Proxy

with many more to be added in time to come, I’m sure.

We live, supposedly, in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Yet hidden under all the trappings of a tourist haven, we seem to be trying to hide some very big homeland issues that need urgent attention.

The one on everyone’s minds at the moment, is our dear friend, Eskom.

We are at the mercy of a bunch of bureaucratic jerks who think that by getting snotty with the public about their consumption, it is going to make us understand why we’re stuck in traffic for 2 or more hours everyday, why we come home to a dark house, cannot prepare a warm meal, have a hot bath, etc.

You lot clearly do not understand the mob mentality of people that have reached a critical mass… Sanity flies out the window when you’ve been uncomfortable with something long enough to drive you to express your feelings either vocally or physically. All you need is enough people in the same state of mind and you have a mob. And mobs are never pretty…

And now they want to ration the electricity for home users. Right… So you’re going to make sure that people are not only miserable during work hours, but at home as well? Nice one, boys! I don’t care who you are… You could be black, white, coloured or indian… a lot of people are turning to old racist crutches and blaming the black staff… I’m beyond that! I’ll happily paint everyone with the same tar-brush at this point. You’re all a bunch of idiots! Well paid idiots!

To use a rather apt saying that I grew up with in my family… “Julle dink nie verder as wat julle neus is kort nie!”

This does not even begin to touch on the impact on business!

Oh, sure, some businesses are smiling, right about now… let’s see… companies that deal in gas appliances… diesel… generators… rechargeable lights. And because demand is so high, of course the prices have to follow suit. I hear from some places that generators have a 6-8 week waiting period for stock availability.

For the rest however, we’re stuck with UPS’s and their incessant beeping, diesel generators thrumming away in basements, guzzling thousands of Rands of fuel to keep businesses alive… and those are the lucky ones that planned for this sort of thing; the banks and other big corporates that cannot afford to be out of action because every minute lost means less money for them.

What about the SME’s that may have a few small PC’s (with or without UPS’s)… or corner shops and deli’s… butchers and bakers… what about waste from stock that goes off in fridges? Restaurants that cannot serve customers?

How about this as an alternative? You know those lovely big signboards we see all over the place? The neon signage on company buildings? The corporate towers that stay lit up like Christmas trees all night long?

How about asking them to switch off their lights after hours… you know, the last person out the door turn off the lights for their floor, etc? Turn off signboards after, say, 8- or 9pm. The same goes for corporate signage. And those pretty lamps and floodlights that you see in some company ‘gardens’ that light up the empty parking lots and sides of buildings.

I’ve spent the last month working in the Johannesburg CBD and thanks to Rozz’s late hours (definite busy bee award nominee!) and the fact that she’s been kind enough to cart me back and forth the last while, I’ve seen first hand the sheer amount of electricity wasted after ‘normal’ working hours. In fact, I remember seeing the same thing from my own time, working late in the Cape Town CBD (I was in the ABSA building there, sitting 23 floors up, you tend to have a pretty good view of the city).

And everyday, we hear new excuses… rain to affect power. This to affect power. That to affect power. And behind that, the smug voice of Eskom, not apologising, not discussing alternatives, not telling us that they’re looking for solutions… No, it’s “We are going to ration you and you will have to pay fines like a bad person for using more than your ration!”

Then we have our roads… which seem to becoming more and more like dirt roads lately.

Potholes, potholes everywhere and Oh my God, my car is going to sink!

Drive around and count the number of potholes you have to dodge between home and work, or your next stop in journey. Stop for a week. Then do it again. Hmmm, not only have they increased in number and in size, but nothing has been done to the existing ones, except maybe having some sand thrown into it to fill it temporarily, which the rain then promptly turns to mud and spreads out across the roads.

And my all time favourite pet hate, Telkom… where else can you sit on the phone, on hold for 45 minutes or more, listening to the worst hold music ever and not speak to a living person… and now they have a new option!

“Please, if you cannot wait to report your fault over the phone, feel free to report it online at our website…”

Gee, that’s nice, but maybe the reason I’m calling you is because my ADSL is not working and I can’t get online?!?

The more I see and hear these things, the more you hear in the news and in discussions between peers and colleagues, the more I wonder about the viability of staying here. I think, now, that my time left here in South Africa is limited. Time to begin working towards finding alternatives. Before it’s too late.

Grey…

The weather is grey.

Johannesburg CBD seems predominantly grey.

ABSA’s buildings are grey.

My mood is grey.

To be honest, the only highlight of this month is the drive to and from work, being able to spend some time with Rozz, something that I haven’t been able to do all that often in the time we’ve known eachother.

The end of this week can’t come quick enough. I want to curl up in bed this weekend, watch some anime, read some e-books and play a little online. And sleep…

In our quest for finding some uniqueness, to what lengths to do we go to stand out in a crowd, to add character as such?

Grow your hair, colour your hair, shave your head, grow a beard, shave your beard and hair into odd patterns, get piercings, maybe even tattoos?

Let’s see… I’ve done the whole long hair thing. It was interesting but a lot of maintenance. My hair changes colour of it’s own accord due to the seasons. I shave my head in Summer. I have a beard and it’s shaved to outline just my jaw-line until it joins the traditional goatee; funky designs are too much hassle to maintain. And piercings just don’t do it for me.

Something I have toyed with for some time now (upwards of 7 years) is the idea of a tattoo, but to be honest, I’ve never seen any in the usual catalogues that don’t… well… look overdone and boring. Yes, everyone seems to go for the whole tribal tattoo trend… or the opposite extreme with full (body) sleeves… All I ever wanted was something that defines me, the duality of me and something that I’m not afraid to show people. In other words, something tasteful and inconspicuous.

So, if I look at myself, the first thing most people pick up on, other than physical characteristics, is that I am one of those mixed up individuals that fall under the Gemini star-sign. The second, is my love for a certain animal… the wolf.  The third is my love of myth and legend.

When I was in Cape Town recently, Rob and I sat looking through deviantART at different designs and I think I’ve found the one for me, should I ever be brave enough to want to permanently stain my flesh:

To me, at least, it’s neat and simple and rather symbolic for me. The wolf is a constant in my life, being my favourite animal and the one I aspire to be like in certain aspects of my life. For instance, the wolf is a very family orientated animal. They mate for life, are fiercely protective of their family… The following sums up quite a bit for me about certain aspects of myself:

The wolf is charged with a vast range of symbolic values which are always felt to be powerful and consequently important.

The wolf is perhaps purely “the beast”, which appears from nowhere, wreaks devastation, and vanishes without trace, leaving carnage in its wake. In mythology, its role is sometimes benevolent, sometimes evil. The wolf sees in the dark, so is symbolic of light and the sun. The wolf can be the solitary hero who defies the hunters. It is a symbol of intelligence and courage.

In dreams, the wolf acquires the importance that we attribute to it. It is often a part of the self, positive or negative. It can represent solitude and self-absorption, and retreat from relations with others, but it can symbolize instinct too; the instinct that certain people can only keep locked inside. The wolf can also represent a “devouring” character that we carry within us, a father or mother for instance. It often represents a social character of this nature, for a man may be “a wolf towards other men or women, but a wolf seldom behaves badly towards other wolves”. Wolves are fiercely loyal to their mates, and have a strong sense of family while maintaining individualism. In the stars, Wolf is represented by the Dog, Sirius, thought by many aboriginal tribes to be the home of the “Ancients.” It seems to be through this connection that Wolf has come to be associated with ancient teachings. The wolf is held in very high esteem, as they are used as totems and representative of clans.

Wolves are probably the most misunderstood of the wild animals. Tales of cold bloodedness abound, in spite of the their friendly, social and intelligent traits. They are truly free spirits even though their packs are highly organized. They seem to go out of their way to avoid a fight. One is rarely necessary when a shift in posture, a growl, or a glance gets the point across quite readily. Traditionally, someone with Wolf Medicine has a strong sense of self, and communicates well through subtle changes in voice inflection and body movements.They often find new solutions to problems while providing stability and support that one normally associates with a family structure.

There are also other meanings attributed such as the ones listed at these sites:

• http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/wolf_folklore.html
• http://users.ap.net/~chenae/sacred2.html

Wolf and Raven, to the North Americans are seen as teachers or pathfinders. I’ve been a teacher, both while studying and professionally, and to some I am a pathfinder of sorts, even if only as a ‘conscience check’ now and again.

Visually, no differentiation is made between the symbols of a raven, a rook or a crow. The symbol of the crow signifies that the bearer is someone who is watchful and vigilant for friends. It has also been associated with being crafty and strategic, to the disadvantage of one’s enemies.

To be honest, it also just strikes me as a symbol of enigma and mystery. Some more of the symbolism behind Raven can be found here: http://www.askyewolfe.com/symbolism-raven.html

Raven has other meanings for me too. It reminds me of many of the books I’ve read that have affected me over the years. From Edgar Allen Poe’s works (“The Raven” being one of the most poignant) to the likes of Charles de Lint’s “Someplace To Be Flying“, to the various stories from Arthurian, Celtic and Norse myth and legend.

The chosen image, interestingly enough, also makes for an nice and fresh alternative to the old traditional Yin-Yang imagery.

We’ll see… I don’t know if I’m quite ready to mark myself permanently yet, but if I do, I’d like to think that in doing so, I am doing so with a mark that correctly defines who I am or who I wish to be. And I think this is indeed the correct one for the job.

The basic idea is that you start of with a single branch, or idea and while discussing or investigating it, you find similar related subjects and begin exploring and discussing them. These in turn have their own related subjects and so you can potentially veer off the path of your original discussion or investigation, following the branches where your interest takes you.

To give you an idea, something I sat back and looked back at recently while discussing books about folklore with Rozz:

1992 or 1993 (I can’t remember anymore) – A school play, working with Craig and Stuart doing backstage lighting and music, if I recall. Craig was playing a cassette with Enya‘s Shepherd Moons on. I fell in love with the music (having only ever seen the video for Orinoco Flow on Good Morning South Africa as I was getting ready for school in the mornings) and started collecting all of Enya’s music that had been released til then, getting it as birthday presents, etc.

Somewhere along the line I remember getting into an argument with my next door neighbour, Michael, one night when he was visiting (I think my folks and his were at a parents-teachers evening at our respective schools), as I was playing my Enya CD’s on my hi-fi and he asked me to turn it off, as being of a particularly intolerant religion that is rather peculiar in their beliefs, he could not listen to music sung in a tongue he could not understand, in case the lyrics were meant to subvert him and steer him off the path he was on. Oddly enough, the song at the time was ‘Angeles‘ and I explained to him that she was singing about angels, to which he responded that she may be singing about fallen angels or rather devils.

I then took it upon myself to go and translate the lyrics of all the CD’s to prove a point to Michael that there was nothing sinister about her music and in between sitting over 200-year old gaelic- and welsh-to-english dictionaries, I started exploring a) the irish- and scottish-gaelic language and b) the folklore of the gaelic people, especially after the re-release of Enya’s album “The Celts”.

This led me to read about the Celts, celtic history and mythology, to search for books such as the Mabinogion and discover some of my most loved characters in myth and legend. These led me to explore some more fiction author’s works (I was a school librarian then) and found many variations of the Arthurian legends, which, up until then, I had only really read briefly here and there.

That lead me to read “The Mists of Avalon“, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. “The Mists of Avalon” in turn reminded me about Morgana le Fay, or Morgaine as she is known in the book.

That book and the others before it, led me to look into druidic lore and teachings, which taught me about the various deities, one of them being Cernunnos, the Horned God, otherwise known as Herne the Hunter. That in turn, helped catch my attention while wandering through a bookstore one day where I saw the cover for “Greenmantle“, by Charles de Lint.

de Lint’s books grabbed me and I read everything I could get my hands on by him, enjoying titles such as “Someplace To Be Flying”, “Yarrow”, “Forests of the Heart”, etc. “Forests of the Heart” got me reading up about the Greenman.

The Greenman is linked to Cernunnos again, as well as unlikely figures such as Peter Pan, the earliest renditions of Father Christmas, Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow, Puck and the Green Knight. The Green Knight leads back to the Arthurian legends and books like “The Once and Future King”.

“Yarrow” introduced the concept of energy-vampires, leading me to research more about vampires than is classically portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This led me to buy books on vampirism that showed a variety of vampire-like stories from pretty much every cultural group today.

Interestingly enough, every culture shares at least two stories… one is The Great Flood and the other is vampires.

Browsing through a second-hand bookstore one day, I saw CJ Cherryh’s Chronicles of Morgaine. I bought it and read it right through, finding it to be a very enjoyable book, describing Morgaine, in essense, as a figure striding across many worlds, appearing here and there in different stories and myths as she goes about her tasks.

Reading through CJ Cherryh’s list of books, I came across “Rusalka“. The word ‘rusalka‘ reminded me of playing Sierra’s Hero’s Quest IV where you as the intrepid bungling hero are stuck in a medieval town where a good many things go bump in the night… in one scene you walk out to a lake and a young woman is in the water, calling to you. If you go into the water, you die by her hands, so talking is about all you really can do with her. We won’t mention the run-ins with the vampiric bunnies though…

So I went out and found a copy and loved the book and it’s concept of wish magic, and discovered yet another entity to research… the “Vodyanoy“, which reminded me of another character in a book, where the author combined a Grendel-like character and something akin to a vodyanoi into a grotesque being called the Fisher King.

I later found the vodyanoi again in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag novels, where the Vodyanoi are an aquatic people skilled in water magics. In Miéville’s “Perdido Street Station“, striking Vodyanoi dockworkers use their water magic to blockade a shipping route.

More recently, the movie, Night Watch, caught my eye and I began researching it a bit more, only recently finding an english version of the books by Sergey Lukyanenko, which means I have some more reading to do.

Another recent study of mine, is about the kabbalistic lore around golems and the lore used to bring them to life and return them to stasis, inspired by two unrelated events… One, playing “Vampire: The Redeption” PC Game and the other, watching “Ghost in the Shell II : Innocence“.

The golem in turn leads back, or rather, on to, such stories as Frankenstein and other avenues of research about creating life such as the experiment by the alchemist Paracelsus with homunculi…

Ok, so after that long-winded story, what is the core of my post?

The main branch shown here is a love of mythology. The branches off that branch that I’ve chosen to follow are a love of celtic and later slavic folklore and mythology. Subbranches of that are vampirism and lycanthropy, fueled by my own roleplaying research. Gaming, music, reading fiction, etc have all had their impact as well, steering my interests at the time down certain paths.

And it all started with some music… (Thanks Craig, it’s all your fault!)

Amazing how something so small can open up a world of opportunities to discover…

Today, the Internet is a vast playground for this sort of exploration of knowledge. And tools like Wikipedia (and Google) make it that much easier, with linked topics, reference sites and all sorts of other avenues of investigation.

I can lose myself out in the ‘Net very easily. Just give me the bandwidth to explore, an unlimited data cap and a topic and let me be…

Sometimes I wish I could just plug in directly and travel the ‘Net behind closed eyes as my body rests and explore.

There is so much out there and so little time to discover it.

It started off more as an experiment in flavours and aromas and turned into something that people are eating out of the pot before I can get it to the table.

The best thing, is that it is very simple to make, but be warned, it is very rich!

I work per punnet (400g or so) of mushrooms so if you want to make more, just multiply the amount per punnet used.

250ml fresh cream
75-100ml lemon juice
lemon pepper
crushed garlic (to taste – some like a lot, some don’t)
punnet of button mushrooms, chopped into chunks, or thick slices

Pour cream into suitable non-stick pot (I used cast iron on gas most of the time though) and bring to the boil. Add remain ingredients in no particular order. Reduce heat and stir frequently. Take care not to let the cream seperate. You can taste the cream now and then, adding more lemon juice, lemon pepper or garlic as needed. I generally make mine quite lemony but it’s up to you.

As a note, you can also put the garlic in first, with the lemon juice and lemon pepper and ‘fry’ the garlic up a bit to kickstart the aroma. Just don’t scorch it. Add mushrooms into that mix, then the cream over it. Either way works fine, in my experiments.

Let the mix cook and reduce (the mushrooms shrink a lot as they lose their water) and you should end up with a relatively thick-ish cream, grey-ish in colour. Serve hot on fresh garlic bread, over meat, rice, etc or as a dip.

A variation of the recipe I sometimes use is to add some soy sauce and cayenne pepper instead of lemon pepper.

For those that don’t like cream, take the same idea as above and cook the mushrooms in your choice of chutney, tomato paste, etc. If I do that variation, I tend to make it more spicy (more cayenne pepper, etc) instead of lemony.

As a last note, this mix keeps rather well and is ok to reheat and use for a few days afterward. So go big and make a lot…

For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.

Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.

Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…

Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.

I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.

Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…

Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages  such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…

When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…

I’ve been stationed at ABSA for the last few days, standing in for one of my colleagues while he is off on paternity (and annual) leave. I’ve also flown down briefly to Cape Town to attend and photograph Sheelagh and Andrew’s wedding.

Flying to Cape Town was a bit weird for me. For the last 9 or so years, I’d been used to travelling up from Cape Town to Johannesburg or Durban on vacation or to visit friends and family or for work. Now, I’ve reversed the destinations… and I must admit, Cape Town no longer feels like home to me. I felt very much like a tourist in a place I used to call home… me, the person who swore he’d never live anywhere but at the coast.

I landed Friday morning, was picked up by Louise who took me to go get my supplies I needed for the wedding (18 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and spare batteries for my Canon EOS 500n), then spent some time with her and her family until meeting up with Rob for lunch after which I spent the rest of the afternoon with him and some of our mutual friends, Andrew and Mervin, that work with him at Tellumat. That evening, after picking up Lou again, we met up with some guild mates from Awakened Guardians at Century City for some drinks, etc and finally wandered over to Cattle Baron to meet up with some of Lou’s friends.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was in Cavendish Square, photographing Sheelagh and her Mum- and Sister-in-Law-to-be during the various stages of their hair-styling. Then we bundled into Lisa’s (Sheelagh’s best friend) car, went to go fetch dresses and bags and headed off to Monkey Valley in Noordhoek to get  started with their makeup. After a while I decided it was prudent to make myself scarce so the girls could change and get dressed and went to go check my surroundings for the shoot, judging light levels and backdrop inclusion from various angles.

The ceremony was very nice, the bride looked stunning, the groom looked nervous (though that may also have been due to some stiff breezes swaying his kilt) and everyone was very happy for the newly-wed couple. We took some group photos on the lawn and then the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaids wandered down to the beach with me for some shots their.

In retrospect, the path we took was not the best one (coming down was ok, climbing back up was not as easy) as the loose beach sand made climbing some of those dunes rather… well… interesting at times.

We finished up at 11pm that night after the traditional cake-cutting and first-dance photos and I left for home, wishing the newly-weds all the best, promising to visit in Australia sometime in the future.

The next day, aside from sore muscles, I spent relaxing, chatting to Rob, listening to music (I introduced Rob to the group ‘E Nomine’) and catching up a little, talking about his planned move to Australia to be nearer to his daughter, my goddaughter, Timeah.

Before long, though, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We stopped briefly along the way to get something to eat and unfortunately, cut it a little too fine as with some unaccounted for traffic, I ended up getting to the check-in counter 2 minutes too late to check in… I begged, pleaded… everything short of threatening, but they were stubborn and would not let me check-in.

So I got put on standby for the morning flight. Fortunately Rob had not yet driven too far so he was able to pick me up again and I spent the night there.

I called several people to tell them what had happened, including Matt, my technical manager, as I was supposed to be back at ABSA in the morning.

Bright and early, I was back at the airport and then my ordeal really began. For unbeknownst to me, all the Johannesburg and Pretoria people that had been on vacation were there trying to get back home as well… Suffice to say, I did not get onto the 6:30am flight. Or the 9:15 one. Or 10:20 one. Matt arranged for Reshan, one of my other colleagues, to stand-in for me at ABSA, so at least that was taken care of.

Eventually, they squeezed me onto the 1:00pm flight and I arrived home, very agitated, annoyed and heartily sick of airports just before 3pm. Matt, was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off at home where I promptly collapsed and swore not to get onto a plane for another few months, at the very least.

Yesterday was back to ABSA… back to a semblance of normality. Here until the 18th, after which it’s back to the office and my new favourite pastime… log analysis.

2007 was a tough year for many. Actually, in hindsight, it seems for many of us, each preceding year seems to feel that way until we’re done with the next year and looking back, wonder to ourselves how we managed to live through yet another year of utter chaos.

I won’t harp on about the aspects of 2007 that upset me. What’s done is done, and I’m done with living with regrets and what-if’s. Tempus fugit… time flies… time moves forward inexorably.

A lot of good came from that time of turmoil though. A new job. New friends. New opportunities and knowledge gained.

This year, I intend to expand on that. To grow, both socially and mentally. To accelerate and move forward once more and leave behind the stagnation of the past.

Looking at my journal today, the quote at the bottom of the page reads “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person; he believed in me.” – Jim Valvano.

My father has always hoped and prayed that I would excel and do well in my chosen field of work. From my college days and beyond, he’s always encouraged me to do better, to push myself, work hard… “Someday, Tim, someone will take notice of you and you will be rewarded for your efforts…”

Sadly, some of my past employers have not lived up to that expectation. And perhaps I hoped for too much from them.

For now, I am content. For the first time in 7 years, I feel like I have a career again, instead of just a job. I have a support base, people of knowledge and experience I can turn to when I get stuck, people willing to teach instead of criticising me regarding the gaps in my knowledge.

I hope your dreams and hopes for 2008 are fulfilled. I know I will certainly be working to fulfill mine. Perhaps we’ll meet somewhere along the way and work together.

I’m not with family today… rather, I will be seeing Rozz and Nick a little later today for lunch, then will probably go see a movie, then come home to the housemates and have dinner with them.

I cooked a nice Christmas Eve dinner for us last night:

Chicken, cooked in red wine, ginger and garlic… end result, chicken that tastes really nice and non-chicken-like that is tender enough to cut with your fork.

Add to that, my trademarked cream mushrooms (cooked in garlic, lemon juice and cream with lemon pepper), gnocchi, pineapple chunks, gherkin chunks and a little blue cheese and you have a very very rich and aromatic meal.

I also made my idea of Christmas in a Cup:

Melt some bournville cocoa chocolate, add cinnamon and sugar and some Amaretto, let that mix, then add milk and coffee to taste and serve in a mug.

After dinner, the girls decided it was time to get online and hit the dating sites to see who was lonesome on Christmas Eve. Tarryn had her laptop and Sharlene commandeered mine, leaving me to amuse myself by watching and listening to their reactions as they browsed the sites.

One particular trend I noticed was that Tarryn would browse some poor sod’s profile, commenting on the negative aspects of said person, or photos, etc in the profile only to exclaim, “Ooh, he’s a doctor!” a few seconds later, adding what would have been a non-candidate to her favourites list.

This continued till the early hours of this morning, by which time my sides were hurting from all the laughter.

Ah well, it was good fun. And harmless too. It’s also nice to come home to people I can relax around and relate to on some level. With some of the previous housemates, I have not had that luxury. Now, I look forward to coming home and hearing the antics of the girls. It’s certainly entertaining to see the chaos they cause in their own lives.

Any folks, hope you have a good and safe festive season further. Let’s all try and make it through the rest of the year and see in 2008 without incident, and make it a better year than 2007.

2007 was a tough year… let’s hope 2008 bears the fruits of our labours in 2007.

Why did I celebrate? Partly, it was a tongue in cheek celebration, poking fun at all the people that predicted my hasty return to the coastal life… And partly a celebration with the people I’ve met (and known from before) in this last year.

We met at McGinty’s in the Brightwater Commons in Randburg. My thanks to the people that arrived and celebrated with me:

• Matthew and Marti
• Gary and Kati
• JJ and Vanessa
• Rozz and Nick (and John, however briefly)
• Jacques and Jenny
• Louise and Lana
• Karl
• Pieter, Tania and their daughter, Zania
• Grant and Rika
• Jon and Elke
• Peter

Today, one year ago, I moved into the commune where I live now. A year down the line, it looks like I may be the only resident of the original batch that remains, the landlord having taken matters into his own hands to remove some unwanted elements.

Tempus fugit… time flies…

She’s always talking about her 18 month old daughter, Taneka, and I noticed that the only photos she has of her are taken either with her cellphone camera or with a small digital camera.

So, I offered to take some photos of them together, down at a local park in Fourways, around the corner from where we both stay, well, close being a relative term in Johannesburg

I went through 3 spools of film… going to hand them in on Monday and get them scanned to CD.

I must admit that the afternoon reminded me of times with my friend Rob, his daughter, Timeah, who is also my goddaughter. Bouncing around a park or playground, taking photos, laughing with the kids, being a kid at heart myself again.

In some ways, I think I’m living out my Mother’s wishes for a grandchild through these sessions. With my godchildren (I have 3) and the children of those I call friends, I get to capture photos of them the way I would one day hope to do with my own child.

Anyway… on to less somber thoughts…

That afternoon also set the mood for the weekend… I’m house-sitting for another colleague, Matthew, who is away at Kruger Park for his birthday weekend away with family.

It’s been a relaxing time. No noisy housemates. No fights at home. Not having to lock my groceries away because certain people cannot keep their hands to themselves.

So I’ve spent the time watching the Animax channel on DSTv, enjoying some of Matt’s wife’s homemade coffee icecream (to die for, I might add), playing a bit online and trying to understand the though processes of their cats, Storm and Jewel, with no real luck…

Hope everyone had a good weekend as well. Back to work tomorrow.

Johannesburg suburbia, however does not always offer the best subjects for photography. So I either need to range a little further, or I need to go in closer, ignore the scenery or rather the lack of it, and focus on details or individual subjects again. Like animals and children.

Something I miss from my time in Cape Town… just rambling along, either in my car or on foot, letting my eyes wander over everything until something catches my eye. Sometimes you find something. Sometimes you don’t.

Here… either the roads are too busy to wander aimlessly, or you’re wary of wandering the roads on foot in case someone either thinks you’re trying to ‘case’ their house for a break-in or you yourself may become a victim of a mugging.

However… that shouldn’t stop a once-avid shutterbug from getting back into the practice of taking good photos. If anything, it should be more of a challenge.

That, and there is nothing stopping me from doing events and other more commercial type photography in the meantime to get some practice in.

So if you’re in the Randburg area and surrounds and you need some event photography done, or you want portraits of you or your kids or even your family pets, drop me a line and we can talk business.

I shoot 35mm film, colour or black and white. Postwork on PC is also available. Web galleries too.

The show wasn’t bad, but I must admit, if not for the company, I probably would not have stayed there long. Seeing as I’m not a wine drinker (it has a nasty habit of leaving me curled up in a ball of pain after even one glass) the only other item was interest was the food, which, sadly there was not much of.

I did manage to find some decent chili relish and some jalapeño cream cheese though. So not all was lost. Had some semi-decent sushi, some dry wors, plenty of samples of pesto and relish, some gluten-free breads and chocolates, brandy berries, cheeses, etc, etc…

Other than that… it was crowded. Noisy. Hot.

It was a far more pleasant afternoon, having a simple braai with Gary and Kati, talking about graphics, games (they are two World of Warcraft addicts), networking, horses, photography… And to end it all off, a perfect Johannesburg storm to add some pyrotechnics. What more can a person ask for?

Anyway, back to work tomorrow… these weekends are too damn short.

Gaia Online (Main Site)

Gaia Online Wikipedia Entry

How to best describe Gaia Online?

I think I can sum it up as an anime-themed forum turned web-based MMO.

Why an MMO?

• You have a fairly customizable avatar (even from starting) and can continually kit this paper doll out as you play. You can initially customize the following:
  • Hair style and color
  • Eye style and color
  • Mouth style and size
  • Skin tone
  • Gender
• You accept quests and receive rewards for completing them.
• It has a virtual economy and marketplace.
• It has events “in-game” and it’s own timeline.

Over and above that, it has, what has been called the web’s largest forum, with over a million posts made daily, over a billion posts in total and 2.5 million unique users per month (stats from Wikipedia).

It’s annoyingly cute at times but fun for those times when you just cannot be bothered to log into World of Warcraft or browse your usual websites (whatever those may be…)

My first discovery was Dave’s Lounge. (Subscription details to be found here.)

Dave Warner introduced me to the likes of Natalie Walker, Lovespirals, Dive Index, Raul Ramirez, Bitstream Dream, Karmacoda and Endless Blue.

His shows aren’t long, averaging 30 minutes or so, but there is very little talking in between the tracks and what is great is that he keeps his show notes up to date with links to artist sites and free downloads where applicable.

My only gripe is that we cannot buy from the iTunes store as there are a few songs he’s played that I would love to download.

Through Dave, I discovered, quite by accident, Miss Anji Bee, vocalist of the group, Lovespirals, and hostess of her own shows, the main one I follow being The Chillcast.

Anji also does an all female vocals show called Lovely Ladies and is one of the 7 hosts of the Showgirls podcast, along with Cali Lewis from Geekbrief TV, Share from Rock and Roll TV, KFC from the Podchick podcast, SoccerGirl from SoccerGirl Incorporated and Karla and Karen from Rumor Girls. Check them out…

Last, but not by any means least, I found Mark Smith’s Ambient Falls podcast, which has some of the music that Dave and Anji play and more.

Again, his shows aren’t long, averaging 30 minutes, but there is no speech, no preamble and the tracks flow smoothly from one into another. Perfect for iPod queuing for a long trip or to fall asleep to.

You get up in the mornings, get ready for the day, get started along what you think will be a series of events for the day, then get sideswiped by real life.

I was supposed to go on MailMarshall training today in Sandton… got up early to try and miss the traffic on the freeway, though it took me about 30 minutes to get onto it in any case… busy listening to my music on my headset… then I get an SMS alert. Look around for Metro Police goonsquad… no-one nearby, so let’s check the phone…

The SMS is from my technical director. A change in plans. My colleague that was supposed to stand in for another colleague at one of our onsite posts in the CBD, has called in, with what we eventually found out was kidney stones… poor bugger. I know how he feels, as I was in the same position this time last year.

So I now need to go through to town… if anyone knows Johannesburg well, you know that trying to get anywhere in traffic after 7:30am is a nightmare… William Nicol is a gauntlet, Jan Smuts is worse…

At least I remembered the route. The last time I had to do this, it’d had been my first time venturing into the CBD and if I hadn’t had Rozz (who works in the CBD) to follow, I would have gotten hopelessly lost.

The day itself has been pretty quiet. Ran into some old colleagues and friends from my time as a contractor at SecureData so I had someone to chat to. Other than that, just been answering the phone and checking mail for tasks. And remoting into the main office and updating my tickets.

Now to try get home in one piece. Already dreading the return traffic.

Started on Friday, during the day… runny nose, coughs, sneezing, etc… get’s very irritating when you’re on the phone with clients and you have to cover the mouthpiece every few seconds.

Ah well… was a chance to catch up on some movies and my webcomics… listen to some podcasts, sleep and generally vegetate for a few hours at a time. No need to drive anywhere. No need to see anyone (although I did get to meet the new housemate, Ethel).

My technical manager, Matt, was kind enough to bring me some homemade chili ice cream that his wife, Marti, had made… must say, it’s an interesting experience. Very different taste.

Feeling a bit better now. Must admit I didn’t relish going to work feeling like I did earlier but I feel a bit better than I did now.

From The RIPE 55 Secret Working Group Session
Featuring “The Day the Routers Died…”

Words and performance by Gary Feldman

a long long time ago
i can still remember
when my laptop could connect elsewhere

and i tell you all there was a day
the network card i threw away
had a purpose – and worked for you and me….

But 18 years completely wasted
with each address we’ve aggregated
the tables overflowing
the traffic just stopped flowing….

And now we’re bearing all the scars
and all my traceroutes showing stars…
the packets would travel faster in cars…
the day….the routers died

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Now did you write an RFC
That dictated how we all should be
Did we listen like we should that day

Now were you back at RIPE fifty-four
Where we heard the same things months before
And the people knew they’d have to change their ways….

And we – knew that all the ISPs
Could be – future proof for centuries

But that was then not now
Spent too much time playing WoW

ooh there was time we sat on IRC
Making jokes on how this day would be
Now there’s no more use for TCP
The day the routers died…

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

I remember those old days I mourn
Sitting in my room, downloading porn
Yeah that’s how it used to be….

When the packets flowed from A to B
via routers that could talk IP
There was data..that could be exchanged between you and me….

Oh but – I could see you all ignore
The fact – we’d fill up IPv4

But we all lost the nerve
And we got what we deserved!

And while…we threw our network kit away
And wished we’d heard the things they say
Put all our lives in disarray

The day…the routers died…

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

Saw a man with whom I used to peer
Asked him to rescue my career
He just sighed and turned away..

I went down to the net cafe
that I used to visit everyday
But the man there said I might as well just leave…

And now we’ve all lost our purpose..
my cisco shares completely worthless…

No future meetings for me
At the Hotel Krasnapolsky

and the men that make us push and push
Like Geoff Huston and Randy Bush
Should’ve listened to what they told us….
The day…the routers….died

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we’d better give it a try
I suppose we’d better give it a try

It’s one thing to sit in the office and do changes where you can (hopefully) reverse them or ask for some advice from a colleague before committing the changes to the firewall. It’s an entirely different story to be at a client with them looking over your shoulder while you ‘tinker’ with their firewall.

What makes this particular change even more nerve-wracking is that the client cannot really explain the changes that I need to make to me upfront… we’re sort of winging it, trying to get something to work.

Hopefully it’s not too big a job. I need to route traffic from one network to another over two Microsoft ISA servers… how hard can it be?

2 weeks ago, in the aftermath of seeing all that Anime and Manga at the rAge expo, I placed my order for this DVD:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society – Limited Edition (Steelbook)

3-Disc Collection Featuring 2 DVDs and SSS Original Soundtrack

• Features
  •     Anamorphic Widescreen
  •     Animated Interactive DVD Menus
  •     Japanese & English 5.1 & DTS Audio
  •     English Subtitles
• Extras
  •     Uchikoma Days
  •     Work World File
  •     Anime + Car Design – Designing the Future Car
  •     Making of Tachikoma Robot
  •     English Production Interview
  •     Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (Production I.G) Interview
  •     Storyboard Subtitles

I picked it up during this week and I’m not disappointed. It is everything I’ve come to expect from the GitS:SAC series and more.

And it’s one step closer to completing my little collection. I have all 3 movies now and SAC Season 1. I just need SAC 2nd GIG now and I need to get the relevant Manga and replace my Alias figurine that broke recently during a recent spring cleaning session.

I wonder if I can find a mini Tachikoma to put on my monitor at work? Hmmm…

Love me, leave me
Devour me, deceive me
Is that the way that this is going to be
Between you and me? You say you want me, I’m sure that’s true
But how long will it be until you’re through?
There’s something I don’t trust in your eyes
You speak to me with sugar coated lies…

- Love me, leave me – Bitstream Dream with Anji Bee

Amazing how some lyrics just seem to tell the story of your life.

Listening to this song… I can’t help but look back over the last few years at some of the words that have been spoken to me by people I cared for. And how empty those same words appear now from those who supposedly returned those feelings…

I’ve never had much success, romantically. But I’ve always been honest, if not bluntly so, with the people I care for. Sometimes wish they would offer me that same courtesy instead of sugar-coating empty words of deceit in what I am later told was said or done in order to not hurt my feelings.

I’ve often said to people, I do not like the games we play with eachother in modern society. I’m not willing to subject myself to them. And if that means I exclude myself from society in general because of that, so be it. Rather a free-thinking outsider, than a pawn in someone else’s game.

I take things as they come now. And I’ll give 100% and more to the person that accepts me for who I am, and not for what I have, what I can offer, what I do or who I know.

And I should really change the music I listen to…

I’d hoped to sit and catch up on some movies and do some research today, but oh well… Guess it’ll have to wait until later tonight.

Looks like I’ll have to find a new place to stay soon. And fight with Telkom and all the rest of it. Hopefully this time I won’t be stuck with some dodgy housemates and their habits. My biggest complaint here is the fact that I am somewhat of a recluse and my fellow housemates are loud, messy and rather invasive. Also, I cannot abide their use of drugs, even if it is “only” marijuana. Their drinking habits are not much better.

Other than that, I suppose it’s been a good weekend. I relaxed, slept a lot, avoided the rugby (yes, I’m one of those traitorous unpatriotic bastards that cannot abide the hype around sports events in this country), and watched some DVD’s and TV series.

It was good to relax again. Work… has been a little hectic lately. Feeling a little brain-tired. Hours are a little longer, but I don’t mind that. Concentration is the key thing. Looking at a problem from various angles. Getting different opinions. Wears you out after a while.

After some casual banter, we got to work and were doing pretty well until I screwed up and closed the file I was working on… meaning we started again. From scratch.

In the end, it was probably worth it though, as it provided a few laughs and a chance for Craig to tease me about saving as often as possible. We also discussed Microsoft’s Silverlight and a few of the other goodies that Craig has been playing with lately.

We finished up around 12:30am… this is the finished result. Front and back.

If you were in Johannesburg today, you probably received a mail containing something along the lines of this:

“Netcare has issued a warning in respect of a storm that will hit the Gauteng region this afternoon at about 5 o clock.

Don’t underestimate the strength of the wind on the road and avoid low water bridges when driving. We were also warned to stay indoors and to take all loose lying objects inside. Tie down anything that might be damaged by severe winds.”

Or even this:

“Hi All,

In the interest of your Health and Safety and that of your loved ones, please be aware that the South African Weather Services has issued a high importance Warning to Gauteng regarding serious storms TODAY, 08 October 2007. They have advised that motorists avoid travelling between 18:00 and 20:00 today. Please try to get home safely BEFORE the storms begin.

National Warning – Issued on Monday, 8 October 2007 at 06.00

Very cold conditions are expected to persist over the highground areas of Western and Northern Cape, as well as over the northern mountains of Eastern Cape and south-western and western interior of KwaZulu-Natal.

Heavy falls of rain are expected over northern KwaZulu-Natal, north-eastern Free State as well as the eastern highveld of Mpumalanga and Gauteng. Severe thunderstorms, associated with strong, damaging surface winds are expected in late afternoon and evening over the eastern highveld, Gauteng, the southern highveld of Mpumalanga and extreme northern Free State.”

It even had us, at work, going at one stage, as City Power decided to add insult to injury by dropping our power, after we’ve been without water for more than a week.

The clouds built up and rumbled. It began looking rather ominous. And then… simply dissipated, leaving us with a clear sky and sunshine.

To the authors of those e-mails… a word of caution drawn from fable…

Don’t cry wolf… One day, when we really need to heed a warning, the ‘helpful’ mails being sent by those concerned for our well-being will be ignored.

All you did, today, was create a very effective denial of service attack on just about every website that offered some sort of weather forecast and cause many traffic jams as the more trusting folks tried to get home as quickly as possible to heed your faux warning.

Besides… do you really think that storm warnings would be broadcast via e-mail? A medium that not everyone has access to, let alone the fact that it is not a guaranteed delivery.

Surely this would be better broadcast via radio, television or better yet, SMS, something most South African’s have access to, as a majority of the population, even amongst those we may consider previously disadvantaged, seem to have a cellphone, these days.

The storm that broke was not meteorological in nature. It was a tide of anxious, frightened and later very frustrated and angry people who ended up stuck in traffic because someone thought it was a good idea to fuel the fires of people’s fears in light of very real tragedies that have happened to other people in more remote parts of our land, as recently as this last weekend.

Think before you click “Send”, next time.

Related links:

• The Citizen

• IOL

Well, transferred to a new server and playing with some new guild mates in the guild, Thunderwalkers, but you get the idea…

For many months, I haven’t played this old fella… he’s been getting a little mouldy and probably was growing roots, sitting in Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, Outland’s first region you enter into.

The catalyst behind this resurrection is one of my work colleagues, Gary (known in game as Trygor) and his lady, Kati (who plays Vulpine), who run a guild on Dath’remar, Oceanic server. They wanted me to level a new character there and help them, as I have more experience in the game than most of the guild members, but I don’t have the heart to re-level a toon from scratch anymore. With one level 70 already on my hands, and this toon not far behind, it was simply easier to do a paid character transfer over to the Oceanic server from Stormrage, than struggle from the beginning again.

Funny… when I was on Stormrage, I had little or no interest in levelling Nyctan. Now, I enjoy the challenge of trying to match the accomplishments of my rogue, as a feral druid.

If you’re looking to play with some casual players, who like to just play, without the pressures of raiding, or expectations that one has to be the best his or her class can be, then come visit us on Dath’remar server and send a whisper to myself, Trygor or Vulpine if you want to join in the fun.

Beware of Trygor when he begins serving drinks though. His “Mark of the Wild” branded Mojo is pretty potent.

Last week, I decided to leave work a little earlier than my usual time. For me, that meant leaving at 5:30pm instead of 6:30pm, something I usually do to try minimize my time in traffic, as Hans Strydom can be an ordeal at the best of times.

So anyway, I bravely set off from work, down Republic Road and turned onto Hans Strydom… only to see before me, like some great caravan trekking slowly but steadily across a tarred desert, the barely mobile lanes of traffic before me.

Out comes the phone, on goes my headset and music (thankfully I keep my phone loaded with podcasts and some of my favourite tunes) and I sit back and begin looking around me.

I see a range of emotions around me; frustration, annoyance, apathy, resignation, contentment, impatience, patience… Some smiles. Many frowns. Some blank expressions…

I see people nodding to the sounds of their own music. I see people chatting away on their phones. SMS’ing. I see animated discussions with the passengers of their cars. I see a few, like me, looking around.

I also see the world around me. I see cigarette butts, still smouldering, on the ground next to me. I see wrappers of snacks, discarded tins and cigarette boxes. I see the thinness of the treads on the truck beside me and wonder if it needs new tires.

I see the cherry red Porshe slide into the lane next to me and see heads turn as the car and it’s occupant tries to weave their way through the traffic, the blonde in the driver’s seat growing more and more agitated as time goes by. I wonder how she can afford this car, or who bought it for her. She is obviously well-off and well-groomed…

As two hours pass, the sun sets and people are forced to use their headlights, I sit in my little car, an old 1963 VW Classic Beetle, dull and worn, but still running, and marvel at the state of the cars around me. I see ‘newer’ cars, but with non-functional lights, dents and dings… Do people not care about their cars anymore? Is your vehicle simply the means to transport you from A to B, or is it something you value as a extension of yourself? Your freedom?

Come on people… wake up!

Look at the world around you when you drive (though keep your eyes on the road as well). There are hundreds of people around you, following the same winding roads. Take a moment to look at someone. Smile when they let you in, wave. Wave back at the kid looking at you from the back seat.

Show some life…

I remember paging through this pocketbook and smiling to myself as I read the entries, sometimes laughing, sometimes shaking my head. Here was a perfect example of technology taking the English language and redifining it, providing those of us in the industry with so many new ways to describe our world.

Below are some entries I found most appropriate:

• Alpha Geek – The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. “Ask Larry, he’s the alpha geek around here.”
• Appeasement Engineer – The field service engineer whose job is to arrive at your site within the guarenteed response time, make sure the machine is plugged in, and then call the home office for further instructions.
• Beepilepsy – The brief seizure people sometimes have when their beeper (or cellphone) goes off (especially in vibrator mode). Characterised by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and interuption of speech in mid-sentence.
• Bio-break – Techie euphemism for having to use the toilet.
• Bit Diddling – The act of manipulating bits with little to show for it. “The artist bit diddled the image for hours, but I can’t see much of an improvement.”
• Bitslag – All the useless rubble one must plow through on the Net to get to the rich information ore.
• Blowing your buffer – Losing one’s train of thought. Occurs when the person you’re speaking with won’t let you get a word in edgewise, and/or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. “Damn, I just blew my buffer!”
• Byte-bonding – Occurs when computer users get together and discuss things that non-computer users don’t understand. When byte-bonded people start playing on a computer during a noncomputer-related social situation, they are “geeking out.”
• CLM or Career Limiting Move – Used to describe an ill-advised activity. Sending one’s boss a memo on recycled paper, the reverse of which contains a rant against him/her, is a serious CLM (a real life example, btw!)
• CEOP-phobia – The male fear of peeing while standing next to one’s CEO at a urinal.
• Client/Server Action – Geek euphamism for getting laid. “I went to the Oracle party the other night hoping for a little client/server action.”
• Cube Farm – An office filled with cubicles.
• Cybrarian – A digital librarian. One who makes his/her living doing online research and information retrieval.
• Dead Tree Edition – The paper version of a publication available in both paper and electronic forms, as in “the dead tree edition of the San Francisco Chronicle…” Also known as Treeware.

More to follow when I have some more time to type them up.

Which brings me to an observation I’ve made about gamers, both young and old, over the last few years:

1. You get the gamers that play for the fun of it. For escapism. Casual and leisure-time players. The types that like their MMORPG’s, console games, etc.
2. Then you get the competitive players. Generally, those that will play in LAN’s when they can and play online against other live players. PvP junkies. They can be a little annoying but they’re mostly harmless as long as you don’t take their caffiene and sugar away from them.
3. And then you get the hardcore fanatic. The player that rubs their victory in your face. Who needs to collect every accolade and award there is. Obtain the top rank. Have the most kills, etc. They’re also the worst kind of sore loser.

Walking around rAge, I think I saw a few of every type. There were the ones that bounced from stand to stand, ooh’ing and ah’ing over all the new games and consoles. There were those that dabbled in the LAN and co-op games. And I’m pretty sure I saw more than a few of the hardcore fanatics.

Of the 1500 LAN players there, I would hope that a majority of them were decent people that took their losses well and celebrated their victories without being rude about it. However, I know that their must have been those that didn’t… And I ask myself, why?

Why get so upset about a game? Are we turning gaming into a competitive sport? Are we going to have the age old split between the jocks and the geeks re-occur within our electronic world as well?

Is the elitist jerk with the R25000 gaming rig going to lord it over the casual gamer with his R6000 desktop? Does the quality of your hardware dictate your standing in the gaming metaverse? Is it the measure of the size of your e-peen?

And does your frustration at not being top of the log justify turning around to the people facilitating the ‘sport’ and treating them like dirt?

There is an old adage. A worker does not find fault in his tools (or in this case, the tools made available to him). Rather, he should look inwards, at himself, and seeks the source of his frustration there.

If you’re not winning the games the way you think you should be winning them, don’t blame the machines. Don’t blame the organisers. Don’t blame anyone except yourself.

Look at it as a reason to push yourself harder, if winning is so important to you. To keep reaching for the next milestone. If we all strive to be the best, we will improve ourselves, even if the ‘rank’, relative to others, remains unchanged.

Sure, it’s not E3 or any of the other overseas gaming conventions… but my word… it’s impressive nonetheless.

The plan for the day was to head through to rAge with Rozz and Nick (Kellia and Ulat from my old Affliction guild) but Rozz ended up going through alone earlier and I followed by about a half-hour… the drive through to Northgate (just up the road from me) was uneventful, until I tried to find parking. 3/4′s of an hour later I eventually gave up on the idea of trying to find parking near the Coca-Cola Dome and parked underground… on the other side of Northgate. My legs and feet are still complaining…

Anyway, I eventually got to the Dome, stood in the queue to get my ticket and started wandering around. I found it rather amusing that the first thing I saw that caught my eye was the female Night Elf Druid statue at the BT Games stand. Clearly I’m more addicted than I thought… though that purple hair does stand out a mile.

Anyway, getting back to my tale… Lo and behold, the first familiar face I run into is my good buddy, Craig, videotaping a presentation about Assassin’s Creed (I want that game so badly, it’s not even funny). Chatted to him for a bit before he headed back to his Xbox 360 stand then resumed my meanderings. Shortly after that I ran into Rozz who then proceeded to act as tour guide for me. We went to go see Louise (a.k.a Chronic) at the Intel stand where she was Tournament Director for the weekend. Poor girl was looking somewhat flustered by the time we got there.

On with the tour… I got to see the new Playstation 3… nothing spectacular in my mind, but still a pretty piece of hardware. The Wii… now that looks cute… some fun looking games. But by far, I think the star of the show was the Xbox 360. Sure it’s been around a bit longer than the other 2 platforms but damn, I have to admit that Microsoft have done a good job on this one. Halo 3, the other big attraction (they even had a Master Chief actor marching around), looked pretty damn good, even though I’m not the biggest fan of FPS games. Transformers caught my eye though…

Let’s see, what else… ah yes, the obligatory expo bag to collect brochures and cards in. Well, mine has a bit more than that in now. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics while at the show, getting the latest issue free and a cap. I got a copy of the new look SA Computer Magazine (SACM now)… and somewhere in there are my entries into several competitions. So if Lady Luck feels like being nice to me, I could walk away with… let’s see… a HP Laptop, the Xbox 360 Elite, a copy of Halo 3, a portable movie player… but who am I kidding… not with my luck.

Ran into some guild mates from Affliction (Sythenia and his lady) and Awakened Guardians (Jakalas, Papillon, Kiteena, Malystra, Serpentza, etc) there as well. We ran around for a bit, looking at all the things we could not afford (Oh to be a rich man!) before they went off and I looked up Rozz again and kept her company for the rest of the afternoon.

Had a look at the AnimeWorX stand as well as they seemed to be hosting a mini-comic con as well. Saw a lot of anime that I would love to get my paws on… but it will have to wait for a bit. However, I think I need to get AWX to book Ghost in the Shell : SAC2 and Solid State Society for me. Was quite amused to see some cosplay going on as well.

Oh, the one negative thing I have to say about the show… the pricing of their drinks and food. R8 a tin seems a bit steep for me, and R8 for bottled water is even worse. Or R30 for a hotdog that is more bread than anything else… the only real value may have been in the pizza’s from the mobile pizza van, but they were so damn slow it was painful. That and the fact that they seemed to screw up more orders than get them right and often the end product was burnt.

All in all, though, it was a good day, which I enjoyed with good friends. I will definitely make a plan to go again next year.

For an insider’s viewpoint on rAge, head on over to Craig’s blog entry.

My head is filling up with terminology and jargon, from both the Checkpoint Firewall-1 side of things and our own internally developed monitoring systems that we deploy at client sites.

This morning, I woke up, with the word “CACT’s” on my mind… Complex ACTions. Packets being dropped by the firewall. My staple diet of support tickets, these days. And something that is often difficult to interpret. I sometimes spend an hour or two to retrieve the logs, format them in Excel and Access, then do SQL queries to filter out the “trash” data to determine the culprits. And even then, I cannot always be sure of my analysis until I verify some facts with the network diagram or ask a colleague to double check my findings.

Thus far, I’ve found some DDOS attacks, some portscans, a virus infection, peer to peer software abuse and some really dodgy DNS systems.

Anyway… this weekend is rAge. First one that I will be attending. Looking forward to see what we here in South Africa call a gaming expo, seeing as we always see coverage of the overseas expo’s but never our own.

Hope you all have a good weekend. See you on the other side.

Initially I was just supposed to get up to speed with F-Secure, their AV product range, and refresh my knowledge of Trend Micro as well, but seeing as we haven’t received many tickets for either set of products, I’ve kept myself occupied by jumping in the deep end with Checkpoint firewall support.

Well, not so much the support side of things just yet. Changes, I leave to those a little more qualified than I am, for the moment. No, my major task these past two weeks has been firewall log forensics. Breaking down thousands upon thousands of lines of logged events to spot trends, looking for attacks, potential network issues, etc.

I found it funny that I ended up using some of my old development tools in order to do so. SQL queries are amazing at breaking things down into manageable chunks of data…

I must admit, though, that I feel really stupid sometimes, having to ask my colleagues for advice all the time, but considering I haven’t yet gone on training for the product, I think I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.

My other project has been building a MS ISA server for testing purposes, collecting browsing data for our Dev Team. And learning Websense again.

All in all, feeling a little overloaded, information-wise, but still enjoying it. The people at work are great, the environment is pleasant and I hardly notice the time there, in fact, I leave most evenings well after my finishing times. Mostly to miss traffic, but it’s also great to sit and chat with fellow geeks, play some pool, etc until such time as we all head our different ways.

For the first time in a long time, I feel at home in the IT industry again.

Granted, I haven’t started any of the real hard work yet, rather, I’ve been studying their products, getting to know the staff, building my PC and subsequently my virtual PC’s to run and test the products.

I’ve been made to feel very welcome by all involved and have met some very interesting people. Amogst them, I’ve found some kindred spirits that share my passion for certain things in life: photography, esoteric studies, music, even gaming. It was very amusing to find that at least two of my colleagues are playing or have played World of Warcraft.

Next week the pace will increase somewhat… but I’m ready and looking forward to it. For all the obstacles that I felt were in front of me on leaving the old company, I feel the path ahead is now the right one.

Or at least it should be, to avoid being left behind, stagnating and losing touch with the ever-evolving, ever changing universe around us.

This month for me, brings change. A necessary one, but not one without it’s repercussions.

At the end of this month, I leave my position as a system administrator for a junior position at an information security architect, to begin studying towards being a senior security engineer, or some such mouthful.

7 years ago, I was a system administrator. Then the company I was with retrenched a good many of us. It was a big setback for my career. From then till now, I’ve stagnated, barely creeping forward, trying to regain that original status and now that I have it again, I find myself unhappy, needing change.

Change found me, this time around, in the form of one of the vendors at the company I was contracted to. He then suggested I meet with the security firm in question and did some ‘selling’ on my behalf, to ease my way in.

I just wish I had more time to exit gracefully from where I am now. My timing is not the best for those involved and I’m afraid I may have lost more than just an employer in the process, but also one of my oldest colleagues.

Nothing to do now but finish what I started and move on. I cannot afford regrets anymore.

What does this mean? It means that no matter where you are, what connection you are using, etc on your company laptop, this service will poll the Websense policy server to see what you are and what you are not allowed to browse.

So the guys using company laptops, their 3G cards or phones, etc to bypass the proxy restrictions at work, have suddenly found themselves back where they began. Filtered and blocked.

I’ve been called everything from the Grim Reaper, to the Bastard Operator from Hell, to a Harbinger of Doom… Guess one has to just shrug it off as having to follow orders from above.

I first heard the term WoW-verse used in a podcast called WOWCast, where the hostess, Alachia uses the term to describe the metaverse that is the World of Warcraft. For those that don’t recognise the term metaverse, refer to the novel “Snowcrash” by Neal Stevenson.

The reason for this blog section, is a need to validate, somehow, the time I spend in my choice of metaverse.

Why I come home, cook my dinner, chat briefly to my housemates about issues of the day or hearing their work warstories, then log into WoW and live my virtual life, in an attempt to escape my real life.

Alachia’s latest podcast discusses this issue in depth, and she brings up many really valid points for the virtual life. And she also discusses what to do to balance that virtual life with the real life. VL vs. RL…

I play World of Warcraft on the US server Stormrage, having started playing in February 2006, thanks to my best friend, Rozz, who bought the game for me as a belated Christmas present, so that I could play with her, a dream we’d had since the days when her and her then boyfriend ran the local South African Blizzard RTS servers for Warcraft III, Starcraft and Diablo II. She even bought me the Diablo II game and expansion and I did play, but never online as I could never afford to have broadband until January 2006.

I remember the days preceding the arrival of the game in the mail… She’d call me or PM me online, and ask me what class I was going to play, what professions I was going to take, etc.

Having come from a roleplaying background, something I’d done since college days, and having read fantasy and science fiction since my early teens, I was keen to try my hand at a druid, one of my favoured roleplaying classes from Dungeons and Dragons. Admittedly, my choice was also biased toward the druid due to the fact that Rozz’s main ‘toon’ was also a druid, hence she could help me and guide me as I played.

I was also really keen to play as a skinner and leatherworker, the idea of a druid, a man of the wild, living off the land and crafting from the land, quite prominent in my mind. At the time, I was still very much under the impression that druids were more like their Diablo II:LoD counterparts. Rozz, however, soon taught me otherwise and suggested I change to herbalism and alchemy, again something she could advise me on and as I would probably end up being the healer in any group, I’d need potions as well.

At the time, Rozz was already a high level druid, starting to get involved in guild raids and busy farming herbs for potions and trying to earn enough gold to get all the things she needed to be a ‘successful’ player. So I rolled Nyctan, my male night elf druid, and started levelling, and she helped me where she could, either coming to my rescue on difficult quests or financially with gold donations. Slowly but surely, I made my way to 10, then 20… and hit a wall.

So I took a break from my druid and rolled my rogue, Ksenia, a female night elf rogue.

Why a female, you may ask?

Sure, I heard it all before…

G.I.R.L – Guy in real life…

M.M.O.R.P.G – Many men online roleplaying girls…

I never roleplay my female toons. I’m not THAT into roleplaying. But, in using an old excuse, one used by many of my real life male friends that do play online with me, ‘if I’m going to stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be something I enjoy looking at’.

I do love my little rogue. She’s a very pleasant break from the norm. And I put a lot of time and thought into her creation.

I modelled the character off the main character from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell : Standalone Complex series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. While the female night elf is not the most anime looking of toons, I took the blue/purple hair from Motoko, her hand to hand combat style, mobility, agility, etc and chose a rogue as the final character that fit that mold. As with many things in WoW, unless you were there first, most of the big names from fiction or mainstream media are already taken. So ‘Motoko’ was out. As was ‘Kusanagi’…

So I turned to another source for names. My friend, Rozz, is of slavic origin, and I’ve always been fascinated with slavic folklore, from the rusalka to the vodyanoi, their naming conventions and I also happen to find many slavic women to be exquisitely beautiful. So I chose a name from that background. Ksenia.

Later, I would use more names from that background. And even one from Hindu folklore, Dushana, one of the demon rakshasa, for my warlock.

So I played my rogue. And my friends that had bought at the same time as I recieved mine, shot ahead on their toons, Rob on his mage, Andrew on his paladin, Sean on his warlock. Then Sean and Andrew both rolled hunters and replaced their mains with these ‘alts’, playing until all hours of the morning.

And I took my time, doing my own thing. Skinning anything in sight. Doing leatherworking… My ‘old’ dream I’d had for Nyctan, now transferred to my rogue, a self-sufficient, hard-hitting, tough survivalist.

It eventually got to the point where Rozz asked me which ‘toon’ I was planning to make my ‘main’… the druid or the rogue. I think I bowed to the pressure of wanting to be more like her, so I continued my druid, leaving the rogue behind for the moment.

So, Nyctan made his way painfully from 20 to 30, 30 to 40… and finally I got my mount, specc’ed Balance tree for moonkin, and suddenly I was rocking again. At the time, Rozz’s guild was fracturing and she was going through a tough time. Now, I’ve known this woman for many years now, so when it comes to her, I’d drop everything to help her. Eventually her guild split and those that split off, formed a new guild, Affliction, and she asked me if I was willing to join and be power-levelled to 60 to help fill sorely needed healer spots in raids.

And so I left Awakened Guardians, at a time when they were ready to make me a guild officer for things that I’d done for their forums, etc. Admittedly, I could have left in a better way, but I guess at the time I wasn’t as close to them as I have since become. I joined Affliction and Rozz and one of the guild masters, her friend and now boyfriend, Nick, helped power-level me to 60. And I started raiding.

Raiding… new places. New bosses. New loot… new gear. Great.

Raiding… pressure to perform, repair bills, lots of screaming and shouting and negative remarks… Not so great.

It’s had it’s highs and lows. Right now I’m happy not to be raiding. Specifically raid healing. Hell, even feral tanking was a nice break from the monotony of healing.

When I wasn’t on the druid, I resumed levelling the rogue. I also got bitten by the PvP bug and was trying to gain ranks and honour in order to get gear, seeing as I was not likely to get raid gear on my rogue anytime soon. And, in the time that I did PvP, with our South African latency, I managed to work my way up to Master Sergeant. I would have liked to go higher, but I was not about to take time off work to PvP AND raid AND sleep…

Eventually, I got tired of my druid. So tired, that I petitioned my guild to allow me to change over to the rogue instead. But I think the idea of them losing a raid-specc’ed, epic’ed out restoration druid that could off-tank when needed, to a rogue in blues and greens that would need Molten Core runs for fire resist gear, Zul’Gurub runs for other gear and rep, before being ready to go back into Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 40 and Naxxramas… well, let’s just say it was too much effort.

So I distanced myself from my druid, slowly but surely. And then I moved to Johannesburg from Cape Town and was without broadband for a while. And then The Burning Crusade came out and I made a decision. I was well behind everyone else at this stage, so I made a post on the Affliction forums, stating that I was retiring from raiding for the foreseeable future to resume playing the game on my own terms, on my rogue. I removed my rogue from Affliction, moved it back to Awakened Guardians, my original guild, where I had been helping their pre-60′s group, called the Omegas, led by another friend of mine, Louise, playing her hunter, Shadane.

And I’ve played, sometimes solo, sometimes in duo teams with my friend, Rika, on her retribution paladin, Bracye, where I generally end up rogue tanking and hauling her out of trouble and bandaging her paladin… a standing joke between us as she sometimes forgets she can heal, let alone ‘bubble’.

And as of tonight, I’ve made my way to 68… in fact I’m about halfway to 69 now, I’ve explored most of the Outland maps, power-levelled my druid’s alchemy and cooking with all the mats I’ve sent to him from my rogue… I’ve helped kill a fel-reaver… I’ve gotten my first dungeon set 3 piece, my Assassin Shoulders…

And we’ll continue the story from here… Right now, my bed calls. I have to be up in 5 hours time.

G’night.

Well, work has been, well, interesting at times. The joys of corporates : politics, backstabbing, favouritism, brain-trusts, ducking and diving…

I’ve met an old IRC acquaintance at work though, so all is not lost. Makes things a bit easier when you have someone to chat to during the day.

Other than that, life at the Big Brother house, as we’ve come to call our little commune, has hopefully settled down finally. We’ve had an interesting past few weeks, having to ask one of the girls to leave due to her abusive nature towards the other housemates, her alcohol problem and her cat. On top of that, one of the other girls’ ex-boyfriends has made an appearance and threatened us all with violence, phoning us on the house phone, stalking her, forcing his way onto the property, etc.

Let’s see, what else. Ah, yes, I’m back online playing World of Warcraft, now in The Burning Crusade, with my little slicer and dicer rogue. Been listening to a lot of game related podcasts from the folks over at WC Radio. Ah yes, that was other thing. The iPod. I love my little iPod. It’s my precious!

Hmm. Ok. Think that’s about it. Ah yes…

It’s Easter Weekend this weekend so hooray for public holidays and long weekends. Time to relax, play some games with friends, watch a movie (I think 300 is on the menu), drink some Amaretto, lime and lemonade, turn up the volume and unwind.

Catch you on the flip side!

How did 2007 start? Did you embrace it as an opportunity for new beginnings, new enterprises, new endeavours? Or did you wearily shrug it off as yet another year in which you need to work, enslaved to a paycheck?

Mine… a bit of both, perhaps. This new year is a chance for me to get back on my feet. To start correcting mistakes of the past and start fresh, with new opportunities.

I hope you all had a good (and safe) festive season. Now let’s go out there and show the world what we’re made of.

Well, not quite dead, but close enough to it.

A day and a bit till weekend. Then New Years Eve. New Year’s Day. Then back into the fray.

Hopefully we get our new equipment at the office, come middle of January. Then the Big Rebuild happens. Exchange servers. Active Directory servers. Domain Controllers. File servers. New switchboards. New cabling. KVM switches. UPS’s.

I can see myself not sleeping for a few days…

It’s good to be doing real techie work again. Not “home IT” as a colleague once put it.

Done your shopping yet? I haven’t. But then again I haven’t had much of a chance to do much other than work lately. It’s good to be busy again. Busy enough to get home at night and feel exhausted. Busy enough not to feel bored. Busy enough to keep my mind occupied so that it doesn’t dwell on other things.

Anyway… we had our company function this last Friday so things are quiet at work as many people have gone on leave. I’m busy doing website tenders for my company and listening to music (E Nomine) recently acquired from a gaming buddy of mine.

Some sites of interest:

Adobe’s Colour Scheme Planning Online – http://kuler.adobe.com/

Promisance – online, turn based empire management – http://www.wgamezone.com/

Adobe’s JamJar, online collaboration tool – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/jamjar/

While you’re there, if you’re a shutterbug, take a look at Adobe’s Lightroom - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

More to come later…

Ciao ciao

Other than work, which has been at once challenging and interesting, I’ve finally settled into my little hole in the wall in a commune, set up my PC and hi-fi and unpacked my books.

I’ve had a braai / WoW:TCG evening with my Warcraft Guild. Met some old friends and made some new ones.

I’ve met my new housemates, Jason, Kerry and Lindsay.

I’ve also been robbed… I fell for the old ATM scam and had my bank account cleaned out.

Right now, work is keeping me occupied most of the time. Will update more later.

I don’t know how often I’ll be able to update here. Will try to get online ASAP again on the other side.

I wish you all the best for the upcoming festive season, both for you, your families and loved ones, and in business.

Regards,
Tim

• Consumables can no longer be used in forms. This includes bandages, potions, thistle tea, food, or any other reasonable item that any other class can use.
• Primal Fury and Blood Frenzy rolled into 1 talent.
• Imp LoTP has been reduce to 2 points, with each point doing exactly the same amount as before (making this a nerf, only healing 4% at full points).
• Improved Starfire is now Celestial Focus. 5/10/15% chance to stun with Starfire for 3 seconds and chance to resist pushback by 25/50/70% while casting Wrath.
• Dreamstate now correctly lists MP5 instead of MP0.
• Barkskin no longer reduces the cast time, but the cooldown was doubled to 2 minutes.
• Nurturing Instincts lowered from 50/100% to 25/50%
• Improved Leader of the Pack changed from 3 points at 2/4/6% to 2 points at 2/4%.
• Weapon procs no longer fire for a druid in feral forms.

Items:

• Thistle Tea is restored back to “Classes: Rogue”

—

It’s official. Blizzard hates Druids. *cry*

Someone replied along the lines of “I’d still love to know where druids carry all these pots and things when they’re in feral form…”

And aside from some snappy comebacks that may lead to some bad mental images, I think it does pose an interesting question.

Feral form druids and gear and pots… if you discount the theory that the act of shapeshifting moves parts of your body mass from one reality to another (this could include gear, etc), does it essentially mean druids are naked when shapeshifted? And if that is the case, why do you retain gear bonusses?

A few years ago I read a set of fantasy books that discussed this whole issue. Specifically, what happens to a great big bloody sword when you go from being a humanoid to an animal form. (For those that have read some David Eddings, you may remember that discussion in Garion’s shapeshifting lessons in the Belgariad)

Personally I like to think that your gear shifts with you, as part of you, and imbues your form with the properties of your items. I can imagine a cat’s claws becoming more wicked and harder or more steel like, matching the properties of a claw weapon or dagger. Likewise with the bear, gear adding more bulk and strength, a thicker hide, heavier bones, all adding up to more impact per blow, etc.

Following that train of thought, why then could you not use pots? Maybe not physically, but then as imbued spells, as with the other imbued effects as part of the metamorphosis from one form to another?

Anyway, just an update. I may be offline for a while come end of the month. We have to move to a new place and wait for our ADSL to be moved as well so it may well be a while before I’m back in the land of the Wired.

Thanks go to Jon for the heads up about it. Cheers mate!