Drunken Rant

I've had a gutful. Have you ever noticed how people who are trying to sound intellectual drop a certain smattering of words needlessly into conversation to convey the illusion of sophistication? You know what I'm talking about. Words like "bourgeoisie" and "disingenuous" and "faux-whatever". The english language is expressive indeed.. so expressive that we've invented words of higher scrabble word-score value where words are redundant. Sure.. that sentence sounded good.. but what did you SAY? I suspect there is much art and poetry in the conversations of the intellectual elite, and little said at all.

But by far and away my greatest pet hate is POST MODERN. I mean seriously. What the hell. That phrase has confused the crapper out of me for years, even after looking it up. You would think, at face value, it would have something to do with *time* for starters. The "modern" bit gives it away.. then of course "post" literally suggests that it has something to do with whatever comes after "modern". Immediately I'm thrown into a Max-headroom style style paradox of meaninglessness! Egads.. I'm on the right track.. but it somehow has to do with architecture!

Ok fine.. lets imagine that architecture, indeed a cultural zeitgeist could be phrased as "modern". Yes, I agree everything after "modern" must be post-modern... BUT MODERN IS A RELATIVE TERM! Did they not realize that whatever comes after modern.. is in fact.. modern! You might think it is *I* who am playing with semantics here but like a kid in the yard caught by his teachers for throwing fists I have to assert that I was not the aggressor here.. *I* didn't start it Miss.. it was they who broke the semantics, I'm merely pointing it out!

Now it wouldn't be so bad if the meme died with the architect nerds, who are probably still laughing at their clever little word play to critique crappy buildings... but the meme didn't die at all. It multiplied and god-help-us started being USED as a real word applied to all aspects of culture.. not just crappy buildings! Now I can do a frigging graduate course or PH frigging D thesis in postmodernism! WTFF?

Intellectual? If you can't think of a better phrasing and feel the need to insert the word "postmodern" into anything have a think about WHY the hell you used that word.. WHY it was necessary .. and WHY what you are writing about may explain the infrequency of sexual contact you've been experiencing for most of your life.

I Want SPAM!!!

We recently implemented a new spam blocking solution and a user was asking what happened to all the email he used to get. He was told that Spam is deleted before it reached his inbox. He was told about the history of our solution and how spam is now detected.

The user then got fired up and was quite upset that email addressed to him (the spam) was being deleted before had a chance to read it.

Lets think about this point again. The user was upset that he couldn't read his spam.

He also thinks it would be a good idea if a notification went out about the deletions to all the people affected by spam.

Imagine that email...

Hi All,

A recent change in our spam detection infrastructure is now causing spam to be deleted before it reaches your inbox. If you have concerns about not being able to read your daily viagra, please let us know, and we can ensure that ALL spam can be redirected to your inbox, instead of being deleted.

This is a one off solution. Once you select to receive these types of emails, we will not be able to reverse this change.

Cheers
Your friendly email admins.

Toxic Jungle - Friday 3rd August

From the people that brought the infamous Bodyhammer series of parties, Toxic Jungle presents the next chapter of heavy hitting music. Expect a night of sounds that you wont hear anywhere else, the freshest jungle, heavy DnB and Breakcore, aswell as forgotten classics from the early 90’s to the present day. Not to be missed!

Toxic Jungle

Friday 3rd August
Phoenix Bar – 34 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst
10pm start
$5 all night!

Selectors:

Double Robin (DSS Sound System)
Victim (Bodyhammer)
Insurgent (DSS Sound System – Lethal Rhythm)
Highly Dubious (The Collective – No Frills)

GoogL is in UR chatz, indexing UR IM

I just experienced just how sneaky the Google and Yahoo search Bots can be.

Yesterday I sent a URL via IM to a friend over Google Talk IM.

The URL was a HTTP link to an IP address of an X-Serve I was playing with and to subfolders folders /weblog/admin. The URL + IP was up for about total lifespan of 2 hours, offline overnight while I created and formatted RAID mirror, then back up this morning at 9am.

In the HTTP logs are 2 distinct visits directly to the full URL from both Google and Yahoo bots!

74.6.72.218 - - [18/Jul/2007:17:20:03 +1000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 5634
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:16:08 +1000] "GET /weblog/admin/ HTTP/1.1" 404 3752
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:16:09 +1000] "GET /grayx.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 3811
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:16:09 +1000] "GET /osxserver.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 2028
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:16:09 +1000] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 200 7782
66.249.73.229 - - [18/Jul/2007:18:19:01 +1000] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 404 3752
66.249.73.229 - - [18/Jul/2007:18:19:02 +1000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5634
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:41:25 +1000] "GET /weblog/admin/ HTTP/1.1" 404 3752
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:41:25 +1000] "GET /grayx.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 3811
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:41:25 +1000] "GET /osxserver.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 2028
- - - [18/Jul/2007:18:41:26 +1000] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 200 7782

WHOIS reveals the NetBlock owners ->

74.6.72.218
OrgTechHandle: NA258-ARIN
OrgTechName:   Netblock Admin
OrgTechPhone:  +1-408-349-3300
OrgTechEmail:  netblockadmin@yahoo-inc.com

66.249.73.229
OrgTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechName:   Google Inc.
OrgTechPhone:  +1-650-318-0200
OrgTechEmail:  arin-contact@google.com

The bots received 404 responses as I’d just formatted the X-serv overnight hence the incorrect timestamp in the logs as well.

As the link as not public, and only ever sent to a friend over Google Talk, I can’t draw any other conclusion other than that Google is trawling URLS it finds in chat over its Google Talk product. How are these categorized? Are they used for profiling and data mining? Or are they simply added to the Google Search? Either way, GoogL is up in UR chatz.

The Da Vinci Code

Many scholars have tried and failed, but if you look carefully you will find the painter has left us a hidden message, with the potential to redefine all we know about modern intellectualism.

Guess which asshole called - Fatuous Stationary

You need this right? So I've created a PDF File Here you can use to run off four assholes at a time. Enjoy.

Great Moments in Australian Popular 80's Culture

The Grim Reaper AIDs campaign was how I learnt about Acquired immune deficiency syndrome as a child. I learnt that AIDs is a virus you get from dark cloaked figures from the other world whose primary method of dealing their scourge of death was bowling. Watch as the ball mows down its victims, sending babies flying and all to their sudden, cold deaths. Prevention is the only cure we've got, so for gods sake... don't go bowling.

Daisy, Daisy...

My friend Carolyn has an unhealthy obsession with kitsch second hand stuff she finds at garage sales and second hand stores, but this malfunctioning language toy is pure dystopian splendor.

Nice car for a nice guy.

So we are walking down Oxford street after the Live Earth concert in Sydney, pretty vibed, pretty loud and we come across a jaw dropping beautiful corvette in a no parking zone, with a parking ticket. Cameras and phones come out like we'd never seen a nice car before, people looking at us like we were idiots. Scotty holds his hand up in faux ownership as he poses with it asking "Can I touch it? Should I touch it?" trying not to get fingerprints on it.




Naturally at this point the owner walks up to find a bunch of us yokels standing in a circle around his car, Scotty in full pose lowering his hand on the roof. But this guy had just come from buying an o porto chicken burger and far from leaving in haste he says "Do you want to sit in the drivers seat?".

"Are you serious?" we ask incredulously. The guys girlfriend is standing at the passenger side waiting to head home I assume, but one of our group tells her "Sorry about this.. they are from Albury." She smiles and folds her arms as if to say here we go again. Scotty beams as he opens the door ... up. "Mate you are a legend.. " we tell the owner as we snap photos and Scotty gives the thumbs up to the camera for his kids back home.

If I was the owner I'm not sure I would have let us anywhere near that work of art, but this guy was so down to earth he made our night! Thanks dude, you rock. (^_^)

The Fatuous Political Compass

Hows your insurance?

The bridge just ran out in front of me...(as you can tell by the dates this is recent news)

"Girlfriend?" said Pinnochio. "Who needs a girlfriend when you have sandpaper?"

One day Pinocchio came to Gepetto with a problem.

"Every time I have sex with my girlfriend, she gets splinters. What can I do about this?"

"Have you tried sandpaper?" Pinocchio hadn't, so he went to try it.

"Pinnochio," said Gepetto a few weeks later. "How is the problem work out with your Girlfriend?"

"Girlfriend?" said Pinnochio. "Who needs a girlfriend when you have sandpaper?"

Joke's on you sucker! The punch-line was the post title! And therefore ruined for you! But not for me! Ahahaha! It's not possible for me to exclaim my point any further! One.

Religion Wars - The Phantom Premise (Australian Edition)

The Australian 2006 Census Stats are in folks, so how can we manipulate them in order to make simplistic inferences based on our own personal biases? Lets pull the numbers apart and see what we can do.

You can view the 2006 Census tables raw data here -> (http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/) Select the data and fields you are interested in. I’ve chosen religion which gives us access to this spreadsheet. (Religion_Australia.xls)

Conveniently the data includes 1996 and 2001 data for comparison.

Here is a pretty graph I made with my amazing advanced excel skillz. As you can see, Christianity is on the decline, but only statistically. The actual total number of Christians has remained pretty well the same for the last decade. The population on the other hand, has increased in the order of about a million or so every 5 years.


The other thing I immediately noticed was how religious the children are! Who would have thought that people we don’t allow to vote, drink or fuck have such well defined religious commitment! The greatest proportion of the 12.6 million Christians, are children under 14 -  a whopping 2.2 million.



The skew here is not because of a population skew either, Australia’s population distribution is fairly even, peaking in the middle age group.



Atheists and Humanists are guilty of the same bias, as kids represent the largest group in the "No Religion" category .. but isn’t that technically correct?

Anyway.. I feel like a pie graph, how about you?



So my first thought is.. where did they put the Jedi? I suspect they are in the group “Inadequate” which ABS describes as : [Comprises 'Religious belief, nfd', 'Not defined', 'New Age, so described' and 'Theism'. In 1996 and 2001, 'Religious affiliation, not defined' was called 'Inadequately described'.] But they could just as well have been lumped in with “Not Disclosed(Stated)”, the tiny “Other Religion”s or “No Religion” depending on how ABS chose to interpret that answer. I think it’s probably true that anyone who chose “Jedi” is so non-committal to the religious question that, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees, really belong in the “No Religion” group.

You would expect of course that Jedi’s would have a 25-34 age group bias which curiously DOES appear in both “Other” religion groups! Without official confirmation from ABS (which I’ve asked for) we’ve no way to know so I’ll leave that for you to decide. I don’t think ABS wants you to know how greatly this data set has been affected by the power of an internet meme alone, so I don’t expect a confirmatory response.

Finally, lets put our magnifying glass over Islam. Seeing as we are engaged in the “Culture Wars” it’s certainly topical and interesting to see the stats.



That’s odd, adherence to Islam grew from 1.1% in 1996, to 1.5% in 2001 to 1.7% in 2006. By in large, Islam represents a per capita increase unlike Christianity, which represents a per capita decrease. Is it that we are losing the “culture wars” or is it that old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. 

I don't want to conclude anything, as the data is here for you to interpret. If ABS respond to my Jedi question I will let you know, but once thing is for sure : The religious statistics ascribed to children are far more detrimental to the objectivity and truth of these numbers than the Jedi.

Is Cisco a Racist Company?

I was shocked today as I was clearing out a Cisco 7301 box to find a blatantly racist message within :