It means 'nothing'
Archive for October, 2009
Gay News
Oct 28th
I like to visit the Sydney Star Observer’s (SSO) website a couple times a month to keep abreast of what is happening in the gay community there but usually I end up shaking my head at just how petty and stupid people are.
This time there is an ongoing uproar about the police presence during Sleaze Ball, a dance party linked to Mardi Gras (the gay one). This party is generally attended by the gays who think using drugs for recreational purposes is not only acceptable – it’s mandatory, and letters regarding the problems that occured as a result of the police presence only serve to emphasise how much of a drug haven it is.
One writer complained that he was arrested and charged when he handed over drugs after being approached by police, making a point of explaining that the sniffer dog wasn’t even paying attention to him. Others tried to use the ‘this doesn’t happen at straight events‘ card, despite the fact that it does, and yet others complained they shouldn’t be penalised for drugs that only affect them (I’m curious about these drugs that affect other people too).
Out of all the rubbish that was written I liked a single response that pointed out how hypocritical the gay community is. This writer mentioned that the gay community constantly complains about a lack of police presence/help, but when they do their job it’s a different story.
You can always count on a gay newspaper for drama :)
Reading SSO sometimes make me doubt my gay credentials, fearing some katoey will kick my door in and take my card from me, because I usually couldn’t care less about practically everything they’re claiming is a gay issue. I guess it’s very selfish of me to be like that, but I don’t see how segregating ourselves from a society we clearly crave acceptance from will help anything.
PS It should be said that there is a large portion of the gay community who think segregation is a great idea.
IE7 Quirks
Oct 28th
I’ve overcome the majority of my problems with IE7 and the page layout is correct, but there is one minor issue remaining.
I have a div named main that contains two divs named content and sidebar. It has nothing else in it. The problem is that main has a background colour and borders that aren’t correctly displaying over the entire region because both content and sidebar are floated divs.
I can keep the layout I already have safe by removing the float from sidebar, but then the background and border extend only to the bottom of content in the sidebar, not to the bottom of main. I presume that reversing the float (so that it is on sidebar instead) would have the same issue, ie the background and borders will extend only to the bottom of content.
I could find a way to make it work but at this point I’ve achieved what I set out to do and I’m loathe to waste anymore time on it. The page layout is correct under IE7, so I’ve relegated the background/borders issue with main to the I-don’t-give-a-shit pile.
PS IE7 also has quirks with relative positioning that I didn’t mention here, but had to deal with.
Oui’s Gift
Oct 27th
Oui was sick with the Flu on his birthday, and still is, but was generous enough to share his sickness with me. I know he didn’t do it deliberately (or did he?) but I feel terrible enough to take medicine. So last night I took some psuedoephedrine variant and not only did I have immense difficulty sleeping, I still feel like I am floating around inside a cloud of cotton wool at 11:30am the next day.
In Australia psuedoephedrine can only be acquired with a prescription from a doctor, but here no such barriers exist. It’d be fun to read a list of drugs you can’t get without a prescription in Australia that you can in Thailand.
Can you tell I don’t take medication very often?
Skippy, the Phenomenon
Oct 23rd
I’ve started a new category that will be reserved solely for Youtube videos Oui has found and enjoyed. Today’s entry is the most recent that I expect everyone except Oui was previously familiar with.
Me and My Katamari
Oct 21st
Just keep rolling
I didn’t post about this yet, mainly because I’ve been preoccupied playing it, but I think I am in love all over again. I don’t remember the original game being so hard, but at least there are different modes this time around.
Playing WoW With and Without Family
Oct 21st
My brother and his kids are still chugging along on WoW and I put in the occasional few hours with them, but I still find playing with them incredibly dull.
Just last Monday Oui and I were helping my brother with some group quests in Icecrown and the results were not exactly what we had hoped for. Firstly, roll call:
- Ferag – 80 Fury Warrior (my brother)
- Tardin – 80 Shadow Priest (Me)
- Udmarge – 80 Discipline Priest (Oui)
Despite having Oui on his Horde toon, because none of his alliance toons were high enough, I wasn’t expecting any trouble, but my brother surprised us once more by dying about 3 seconds into each fight (I had been trying to heal him) after which Oui would pick them up and tank while I dps’ed.
So to summarise:
- Warrior dies near-instantly
- Discipline priest tanks
- Shadow Priest DPS’s
I was the only person filling their traditional role!
To Fix Or Not To Fix
Oct 21st
In building the website for my work I’ve experienced a hiccup or two, but it is up and running (www.cibus.co.th). Since opening it up to customers I’ve disovered that the site doesn’t render correctly in any Internet Explorer below 8, and even that only works in compatability mode.
So the question I’ve been tossing around in my mind is should I bother fixing it or should I tell customers to either use a different browser or upgrade to IE8. The reality of the situation is that many of our customers are hotels which more than likely have a very strict IT policy that would not allow users to upgrade to the latest IE so I needed to consider the very real possibility of fixing it. But first, the stats.
How many people viewing our website run browsers that cannot render it correctly? According to the wonderful world of webstats that is Google Analytics a total of 27% of visitors to our website run either IE7 or IE6, far too high a percentage for me to simply ignore.
Next I was faced with a problem inherent to Internet Explorer. Unlike other browsers it’s only possible to have a single version of IE on any one machine so the development of sites that works on all can be quite involved. Enter Sun VirutalBox!
This handy FREE program can create a virtual machine that enables you to install an instance of an OS and whatever else you might desire in a sandbox environment, which is allowing me to test the site in IE7 (I’m considering ignoring the 9% of users on IE6).
My Weird Sleep Patterns
Oct 21st
Whenever I go to bed at a reasonable hour lately I somtimes have very vivid dreams. They’re not vivid in a way that everything looks real, it’s more that everything feels real to me emotionally. Unfortunately most of my dreams are incredibly depressing and even though when I wake up I know they’re not real, the subject matter leaves me depressed for the next day or two.
This has lead me to staying awake so late that when I eventually do sleep I’m so exhausted that I either don’t dream or don’t remember them. The side effect being that I constantly have red eyes, causing people to sometimes think I’m a drug addict.
Does anyone else have sleep problems?
TV Updates
Oct 19th
I haven’t posted about my television viewing lately, so here’s an update:
Fringe
Remains awesome and loving every moment. Everything seems to be heading to Peter finding out he is actually from an alternate universe and that Walter kidnapped him. I really like that they don’t mess about in this show. Other shows feel like they are dragging the story out because there isn’t much of it to go around, but Fringe feels like they are desparetely trying to fit as much in as possible.
Heroes
Someone wake me up when this becomes interesting. I’m only still watching in the vain hope that things will turn around and the show will be good once more. The story is proceeding at an absolute snails pace so far. At least we’re past the requisite lesbian kiss.
Flash Forward
The premise is interesting, but I can’t shake the feeling that it will end up being lame. This show is also an extremely slow mover. I’m sort of irritated that they’re dwelling so much on the individual character stories rather than exploring the shows mythos more.
Stargate Universe
I’m trying to like this, but the snails-pace story progress and the characters aren’t making it easy. The whole stargate premise is already a stretch, but some chubby ‘MIT drop-out’ being recruited to save them all is pushing it. It also doesn’t help that the show has many parallels to Stargate Atlantis which started promising but devolved into complete rubbish.
MMO Rivalry
Oct 19th
While I play WoW, I also play Lord of the Rings Online and once upon a time I also played Age of Conan (I stopped because the game itself isn’t very interesting). If you’re like me and have stepped outside the confines of WoW you will have found quite a lot of animosty and derision directed at it from the wannabe MMO’s, and when I say that I mean they wish they were as successful as WoW.
WoW has it’s shortcomings, as do other MMO’s, but it is said to be cartoony, childish, too easy, the playerbase is full of kids, the graphics suck, etc. The list of insults is endless and they generally serve to highlight the inherent insecurity of players, similar to the console wars (ie PS3 vs Xbox360 vs Wii), but occasionally someone will say something that’s true. Unfortunately I can’t think of any examples right now so I’m instead going to mention a few things about LotRO.
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