Well done to the Victory!

Well done to the Melbourne Victory for their 2009 Grand Final win over the Adelaide United with the score of 1-0. In what looked like a very controversial game from a refereeing point of view, Tom Pondeljak in the 59th minute scored the winning goal.

GO VICTORY!!

The Big Merino

Went to Goulburn yesterday for lunch on recommendation of NutMeg. She suggested to try the Paragon Cafe in the main street. On the way into Goulburn, from Canberra, is the Big Merino. I've always had a fascination of everything "big" in Australia, and had to stop to take a few photos.

While taking photos, a car load of local guys rolled up to yell abuse at me for taking photos of the Big Merino. While this did not alarm me, as they were probably unintelligent and bored, this is something that should alarm the Big Merino operators, as well as the Goulburn tourist board. Scaring away visitors from a city that has been bypassed from the Hume should not be tolerated, as I'm sure Goulburn would want entice as many people as possible to stop and spend some money. Maybe I'm wrong, and Goulburn does not require any additional tourist money.

Big Merino

ric_man and Big Merino

Big Merino side shot

My teams are winning...

I was down in Melbourne for the Australia Day weekend. On the Friday night, I was fortunate enough to witness Melbourne Victory win 2-0 over the Wellington Phoenix, and secure the top spot of the A-League ladder for the 2008-09 season. To add to that, the Boston Celtics have started winning again after their 4 game loosing slump, which included a loss at home as well. And it was good to catch up with my bro4Life, Jay, who is now a Celtics follower!

Jay and ric_man

GO VICTORY!

GO CELTICS!

Fix for Firefox 3 in Gnome on Gentoo

A few days ago I blogged about a conflict problem I was having with Firefox 3 on my Gentoo box. I did some further searching on the internet and found a fix on one of the mailing lists that caters for Gentoo topics.

Essentially, to fix it, you need to alter the /etc/make.conf file and alter the USE flags so that it includes the following:

USE=".... -firefox xulrunner ..."

then:

$ emerge -DNuva --with-bdeps y world

and everything should be right. This will also recompile anything that was using Firefox 2.0.0.19 as a basis, and convert it over to Firefox 3.0.5. Apparently the package support was split out some time ago, and I missed the announcement.

Everything else is running smoothly...

Basketball sneakers...

People that have met me in person know I am not really into fashion. I dress poorly, but at least I am comfortable in what I am in. Unfortunately I do have a thing for shoes - basketball sneakers to be precise. I was just thinking of the shoes I have owned recently, and in this case, I was focussing on basketball sneakers. Here's what I have had (from memory):

1. Nike Air Jordan VIs (originals)
2. Converse Aero Jams (original Johnson's)
   
3. Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars
4. Nike Air Max Sensations (original Webber's)
5. Reebok Original Pumps
6. Reebok BB4600
7. Nike Air Jordan "6 Rings"

Out of all the shoes there, I would consider the most comfortable to be the Air Jordan VIs. They also looked quite good for their time. The worse I would think were the Converse Aero Jams - as I usually wore shoes until the sole disintegrated, and this caused the gel fluid to leak out all over the place - much to the hatred of my parents who could not figure out why there was all this yellow gel fluid all over the carpets. The "6 Rings" are the current shoe I use. Quite new, they have design elements from many different Jordan shoes - 6 to be exact. When I saw them in store, I could help but notice that they looks like Jordan VIs, VIIs and VIIIs - which are, in my opinion, the best looking Air Jordan shoes Nike has ever made. Very comfortable too!

Nike Air Jordan 6 Rings (excuse the hair on the legs!)

Firefox 3, and kernels on Gentoo

Recently updated my Gentoo box, and found that a few new things were finally available. The first one being a new kernel, which I promptly compiled and installed, and is not up and running with:

evilric@lasek ~ $ uname -a
Linux lasek 2.6.27-gentoo-r7 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jan 11 11:44:19 EST 2009 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

The second thing being the latest version of Mozilla Firefox. This has been a long time coming in the Gentoo distribution, as there has been some slotting or compilation issues due to the nature of the package management system used by Gentoo - being portage. Even now, when I update "world", I notice there is still some problems with Firefox 3.0.5 and Firefox 2.0.0.19 wanting to be installed on the machine at the same time, but I believe this is mainly due to me choosing to use the entire Gnome desktop, and hence some dependencies are there. Here is the emerge error message stating the error:

!!! Multiple package instances within a single package slot have been pulled
!!! into the dependency graph, resulting in a slot conflict:

www-client/mozilla-firefox:0

('ebuild', '/', 'www-client/mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.19', 'merge') pulled in by
=www-client/mozilla-firefox-2* required by ('ebuild', '/', 'www-client/epiphany-2.22.3-r1', 'merge')
=www-client/mozilla-firefox-2* required by ('ebuild', '/', 'gnome-extra/yelp-2.22.1-r2', 'merge')
(and 1 more)

('installed', '/', 'www-client/mozilla-firefox-3.0.5', 'nomerge') pulled in by
www-client/mozilla-firefox required by world


It may be possible to solve this problem by using package.mask to
prevent one of those packages from being selected. However, it is also
possible that conflicting dependencies exist such that they are
impossible to satisfy simultaneously. If such a conflict exists in the
dependencies of two different packages, then those packages can not be
installed simultaneously.

For more information, see MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge man page
or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

Still, it's a welcome to the new browser, and a good indication that the Gentoo project still keeps on ticking...

Gentoo's Mozilla Firefox's About Dialog Box

New Year celebrations in Sydney

I was up in Sydney's Star City Casino for New Year's celebrations. I have a before and after photo:

Before! Jay, pappaD, and ric_man

After! Jay and ric_man

No further captions offered.

Happy and safe 2009 to everyone!

After Christmas censoring...

Firstly, I'd like to wish everyone a happy and safe festive period, regardless of what you believe in.

Now, I have not heard very much in the media recently about the good Senator Conroy's plans of censoring the internet. This may mean a few things:

• The government has given up on their inefficent plans to censor the internet (unlikely - sometimes you just cannot stop stupidity)
• The lack of interest and support in the cleanfeed scheme has silenced the government into rethinking their strategy (possibility).
  
• There is far more interesting things in the news to report on - and most people interested in this topic are away on leave (possibility).

I have some hope that the Australian public have stood up against this scheme. It was also heartening to see parents (which have been used as the main reason to bring in this scheme) stand up and protest this scheme. If they're not interested in this solution, then the government should really look at what they're trying to do, and possibly drop it. Will report on more when I find out more...

All the best to everyone for a prosperous 2009!

Down in Melbourne for Xmas break

I was down in Melbourne for the Christmas break that most of Australia takes. I'm not a big believer in Christmas, as any meaning behind it appears to have been diluted by the commercial side of marketing and selling of goods and services around this time of year.

So, Christmas day was a nice long drive down from Canberra to Melbourne. Not much traffic on the road, but there were a few speeders. Luckily, they were apprehended by police, which means the police were busy doing what they do. Does anyone else have the belief that in rural areas, if you see a police car pull over a vehicle (for one reason or another), that there will not be another police vehicle for a 5km radius? Maybe it's just me...

I caught up with Jarvo on the 26th after visiting some Boxing Day sales. I think it gets worse every year. The stores are much busier, and this goes back to me thinking of the commercial aspect of this time of year. People buy gifts for the 25th, and then go out and spend again on the 26th. Why not take notes from the Greek Orthodox faith, and celebrate Christmas on the 5th of January (or so), and therefore take advantage of any Boxing Day sales?

27th was lunch at Grizzly's, followed by watching the Melbourne Victory come back from 2 goals down after 5 minutes to eventually winning the game 3-2. Jarvo came along with me, and it was his first time he had seen A-League live. It really is like the slogan suggest - "90 Minutes, 90 Emotions". His friends were initially "giving me grief" over the lack of defence that Melbourne showed in the first 5 minutes, but left happy with the result that the Victory turned the results around into a win.

GO VICTORY!

28th was having breakfast with Jay, and then jumping in the car and driving back to Canberra. We are planning on heading up to Sydney for New Year's Eve with pappaD. Should be a good time...

Australia is being taken over by wowsers!

With the apparent news that the cleanfeed filter may have been delivered a large knock-back from Telstra, I have never felt so much respect for Australia's largest telecommunications company. I have always been weary of Telstra. Back in the early 1990s, when they were the only choice for telecommunications in Australia, I was unimpressed at their service. I remember once I called up asking for my home phone (at my parents house) to be changed from pulse dialing to tone dialing, and it took a fortnight to complete. These days, phones are all tone dialing, so this is no longer an issue.

On the other side of service (at the time), my father engaged Optus for a second line in the house. Optus were on site 2 days later to install the line - even though I suspect it was a re-sold Telstra line. With choice, came a better level of service. I have been a long time Optus customer. I have always had a mobile phone with Optus, and have chosen Optus for the majority of my ISP services. This may change. Well done to Telstra. Optus's stand on the cleanfeed Internet filter is that they will trial it in small doses, and allow customers to opt-out of it. I would have preferred for them to just opt-out of supporting the government's solution altogether.

I am now appalled to read of another news item. An Australian judge has ruled that naked cartoon characters constitute as child pornography. Seriously! His argument is that this type of imagery is going to fuel the need in people to see the real thing. How is this supposedly sensible person's perception of reality warped so much? I've approached this decision with an open mind. What are the child protection laws supposed to protect? From my reasoning, we have anti-child pornography laws to protect children from being exploited in an industry that they have no understanding of, and to protect both physical and mental well-being of those children who may not be able to make the correct and informed decisions that leads them into those situations. In the making of a cartoon (which I will admit is somewhat tasteless), no one was harmed. I fully support these laws, and anyone who wants to support this through exchange or manufacture of this product should be persecuted by the law. The judge has now made a decision (at least in New South Wales) that suggests that the common person that sees something in cartoon form will want to see it in real life form. This leads me to think, maybe I need to exploit the possibly huge untapped market of giving a shotgun to a rabbit, and getting him to team up with a duck, and shoot a short balding man - and then filming it all. May sound crazy, but the judge that made the ruling thinks there may be a link.

Who put wowsers in charge?