Orient Point photos

Here’s the good stuff. Or at least the condensed photo-narrative version of events as told by my camera. For a more full version of things head over to my Orient Point Flickr photoset.

Inadvertant nostalgia

I was doing really well trying not to think about any time other than now/future, until someone asked for something (past) to be changed. Which of course meant observing other things from the past, which of course meant remembering everything associated with those times. It’s just a slip in sentiment, that’s all. Don’t over-analyse the word ‘nostalgia’, its etymologies, popular culture allusions (in an inverse aetiological sense, meaning I thought of it first and then discovered similar foundations elsewhere), and all possible meanings (I can think of only two) in its usage. Anyway, it was entirely accidental. It’s not as though I stood there throwing taunts at some maddened, blind cyclops, revealing identities boastfully as the impious brute runs crying to its father. No: convenient mythological explanations for any of this are decidedly thin on the ground.

Flickr Gamma photoset view

Flickr’s photoset view irritates me. There’s always so much whitespace it’s not funny, the columns are divided but the “cells” (apparently, for they’re not in a table I don’t think — can’t be bothered checking) are stacked without space, and the page goes on forever resultingly. The screenshot with this post (right) isn’t even the entire page. That’s about two thirds of the content right there. I cut the image for visual brevity, etc.

Point is, they should be doing this lots better but aren’t. All it’d take is a floated div or two, and it’s not like their website isn’t complex enough with JS/CSS/whatever already… the current design is utterly illogical and can only be justified as an effort (made consciously) to make people make shorter photo sets (financial/bandwidth incentive, perhaps?). Pfft. I didn’t pay my (however much per year) to Flickr, Inc. Yahoo!’s acquisitions team (it passes for innovation, perhaps? ;-) Okay I’ve had my little jab now.) to put up measly numbers of photos. You give me 2GB/month uploads and at the minute I’m using up to nearly half of that — and, yeah, it’s something I’ll pay for, because 90% of the time it’s mind-numbingly easy and painless. 10% is little UI stupidity issues such as this one. Sigh.

Back from OP2006

Got back from Orient Point last night at about 10.30 or some equally respectable time (felt like a really short trip despite near-disasters with lack-of-petrol, etc., made much less stressful/long thanks to an iPod shuffle clearly powered by the Energi[s/z]er bunny, good conversation, and shared driving load). Was awesome, featuring lots of console action, a bit of mud, a lot of water earlier in the week, a lot of water in a boat after certain people (see photos referred to later in post) capsized a canoe, Kahlua (straight, with ice-cream, with vodka, milk, and I’m sure there were other variants), moderate quantities of Taboo, a few hours of DVDs, sunset on the headland looking over water (yes, even on Australia’s east coast. I love rivers.), alternately good and okay food (few disasters, I’m pleased to report!), and a not-quite complete absence of Internet (only by GPRS when we were trying to get something working earlier in the week).

Am now sick. (Not very sick, just annoying-cold-sick). Sickness was probably brought on by late nights etc., but it’s not like sleep wasn’t had… plenty of sleep was had, just at slightly, errr… skewed hours. Plus other people made me sick but I timed it well so I wasn’t sick whilst away. *nods* Too many diseased clouds (aside: that so easily becomes diseased clowns, which is all fun and games until you go a step further: deceased clouds (rain) or deceased clowns (black comedy). Words are fun. (Apologies if I used them to annoy anyone too much during the week (seriously (I like brackets))).

Last night was going to be early (after an expedient trip home) then became late as some wedding party rehearsal (the wedding was this morning) locked themselves out and I went to let them back in (should have been a quick trip but I stayed to setup various stuff for a bit). Meh! Then I didn’t get to sleep for ages because of not-being-able-to-breathe badness. I kept waking up and finally gave up and ended up getting out of bed at about 6.30 this morning… yeeeuuuccchhh. Yeah, whatever, I don’t care if you normally wake up at that time. It’s that versus 9.00-ish to 11.00-ish every morning for the preceding week, so twas e’er so slightly painful. And now I’m exhausted (predictably), and plan on sleeping in until about 11am tomorrow morning.

Whilst that’s happening, hopefully 750-odd MB will be trickling up onto Flickr. Since I started writing this (probably twenty minutes to half an hour) I’ve done 8 photos (~2.55MB each)… poor computer :( Gonna be a long night for it! Ah well… Telstra is being retarded this month (still capped speeds despite not officially being capped according to its site, etc. Must call up and whine extensively.) so I’m gonna use it anyway, because uploads aren’t capped (speed-wise, even if they retardedly-count-towards-quota). I could alternatively upload at work (== iiNet ADSL2+ == no upload quota == fast) on Monday but I’m afraid I’m too impatient for that. Plus I *heart* kflickr and abhor their (Flickr’s) Windows uploader tool (fuploader it should be called, which makes a sound suspiciously like a belly-flop does (“fup”/”thwup”/”thwack”/*blood splatter*). F stands for FAILURE.)

Speaking of quotas and the like, how much mucus (I could swear that is spelt incorrectly) do you think it’s possible for a person to produce per day? I’m so sure I’m over quota right about now. Hopefully this means I’ll run really quickly through this cold and be capped by tomorrow! Hehehehe. Insert elaborate metaphor about running noses and de… what’s the word? Some drug. Does stuff with colds. Whatever… point is I dislike cold + flu drugs. They make me drowsy and I forget to take them and you’re not meant to mix them with alcohol… err hi. I mean… Operate heavy machinery. Yes, that.

Good week. Photos coming soon.

Must stop tinkering with electricals

Oh my goodness I can feel myself turning into an aspiring engineer. WHY ARE MY INTERESTS SO COMPLETELY SCHIZOPHRENIC? And no, I have no interest in being a highly literate, well-read engineer that is capable of communicating well, so don’t even suggest it. Mostly because I do an Arts degree and am not terribly good at communicating to start with (I make simple concepts take hours to explain, but if given those hours things should hopefully be abundantly clear and open for independent exploration + thought… so I don’t really know how the teaching thing would/will go. Fact is I suck at talking to people in normal contexts without a massive focus on particulars).

Anyway. I’m kinda pissed off with myself for wanting to take the thing down anyway and try fixing it because that is SO GEEKY and anti-social, etc. Like, I’m sure there’ll be a quiet hour or three in which I can do that without appearing such, but… bleh. Disliking… various things. Oh yeah I’m talking about a projector with RETARDED MGA (26-pin, 3-row. Used as AV feature connectors on mid-90′s Matrox cards and possibly later, D-SUB part impossible to source with a day’s notice.) CONNECTORS that SO NEARLY match up to VGA VESA spec as to be indistinguishable. The only difference is two pins for some kind of digital IO… even device ID pins (introduced in DDC spec for supplementing proprietary ID bits manufacturers were starting to use anyway, apparently) are the same. The digital IO pins seriously should have been saved for some other socket, because this causes so much unneccessary pain. Grrr.

I’ll source real parts upon return to Sydney if I haven’t ‘accidentally’ dropped it from the back of a rapidly-moving vehicle before then. I am sufficiently pissed off at the eBayer who neglected to say that absence of cables meant impossible connection. Despite listing PC and video input in item specs. Bastard. Grr grr grrr. Okay I’m done being angry at the world now. Time to go finish packing then throw crap in car then sleep for… six hours, then get pink slip for car because it goes out of rego in the middle of the week away (!) and THEN drive with people southwards to Orient Point. And in that week I’m hoping to do stuff with people/read books WAY more than geeking. Will see how this goes. :-/