The Blog - The Archive

   Something for Code Geass fans...



Yeah, it's not normally like me to embed youtube videos, but I thought I would give it a try, just this once.

For those who haven't seen any of Code Geass, it's a fairly dramatic series about a boy fighting to destroy an evil empire with some magic, giant robots and all of my favourite anime plot devices. The video linked is the show recast as a high school harem romance anime, or at least the opening theme for such a show. It's very well done.

Labels: anime, code geass, j-pop, the internet is for porn

   A seriously crappy day was just made better...

Me: 9 people in the office...
James: Time to vote someone off.

Labels: I want to go home now, love my boy, odd smells in my office

   Domus Prime Note...

So, someone was wondering at my collection of textbooks in the new office, and asking why I needed my old basic astronomy one. I pointed out that I use them for tutoring and that it's helpful to have them to hand, and he agreed and left me to it.

Flicking through the book, a bit of paper fell out. Torn from a diary, and dated the 15th of April, 2000, the scrap of paper has a few pencilled notes on it, which I repeat here because they are awesome:
Riddler - end of prequel
"Blade", flashback
whispered "Riddler"
betrayal...
decides not to tell him believing nothing will come of it.

My only interpretation is that this was the first imaginings of Hikari-No's premonition in the prequel, when she has a momentary flash of insight that allows her to tell the Riddler that she'll protect him from Darth Blade. But actually, I'm not sure, because I have a feeling that I may have planned more for this, given that "end of prequel" line, which suggests that I was going to do more foreshadowing than I ended up playing with.

Of course, the back is more exciting, dated April 19:
Thea and Jester!!!!!

I guess I don't need to tell anyone what that is about. Of course, given that the textbook was for a class that Heidi and I took together, and that date was around the time that we were really getting into the novel, that scrap of paper may be the first inkling of the P'Lot.

(The date doesn't really tell me anything, given that I use diaries without any regard for page numbers and just use whichever scrap of paper comes to hand first, but it's a month after Thea's arrival in the novel, and before we really decided to pair her off with Jester).

Labels: Domus Prime, Loki/Jester, nostalgic-Cat

   Rah...

So, they moved me from my office of awesomeness into a cubicle farm of doom and gospel music (and while I have no objection to gospel music as a form, it bugs the hell out of me that I have to spend all day either blasting techno in my ears or listening to how much the person sitting next to me loves jeebus).

Labels: odd smells in my office, paging the jigoku tsuushin, stupid people, why didn't I post this?

   I liked my old office...

It was nice and big, there were only three people in it on the busiest of days and only one person could be gazing at my screen while they were at their desks.
Sure, it didn't have air conditioning, but it had a fan, which was nice, and most of the time I was the only person there.

Now they've put me in a huge cubical farm, with no whiteboard, air conditioning that is on by the vote of a committee of overheated peoples (I should not have to wear a jacket at my desk) and they won't stop talking. If they're not arguing over the position of the fridge (which I suspect Korinne won't be happy about, since everyone will be congregated at her desk if it stays where it is), they're fretting over what numbers the phones currently possess (which are being changed as soon as IT services gets around to it) or they're just fucking talking all the fucking time!
I was told it was going to be quiet in here. That it was nicer than my old office. That I would be seated with a bunch of people who are never in. Only now those people are saying that they like it so much they want to be in all the time, and they are all looming behind me making it so I can't concentrate and do any work.
Frankly I'm tempted to switch my computer off and move it back, because I'm really very unhappy here. Either that or switch the position of my desk so that I can face the window (another plus of my old office) with my screen pointed away from everyone else.

I hate it here, and I wish that W would get off the fucking phone and do some bloody work. It takes him an hour to drive here, he ought to respect that effort more and not spend the whole time talking to his wife.

Edited to Add: Break out the fucking headphones, or I will break them out for you, dipshit. Your taste in music sucks arse.

Labels: get off my lawn, I want to go home now, never going to graduate, odd smells in my office, stupid people

   There were reasons why James is my first boyfriend...

Namely that as a general rule, the girls at my school were scared of the boys school down the road. And the teachers were too. They went to great lengths to ensure that we started school earlier than the boys, and finished earlier too, so that the girls wouldn't have to meet the boys at the train station. As far as I can remember, the only in-school contact we had with them was our debating teams meeting once a year (at our school), and we didn't do anything with them in music or drama, even though it would have been easier than having girls singing on the edges of their range and playing all the male roles in the school plays (yes, I played a bloke in a school play. I also played the mother of a girl three years older than me. Drama was fun).

When I tell people at uni that I never knew any teenage boys other than my brother and his friends they are surprised. They don't quite get what I mean by the local boys attending a bad school; in general they all seem to think that "bad schools" mean that the average UAI (the final school result, used to get into university) is low.

This series of articles, while being as sensationalist as the Herald can be, reminded me of all the reasons why I avoided boys in high school. I'm sure there were nice kids at the school, but all the girls (who didn't have brothers there) ever knew were the stories of the fights (some with knives, but I'm sure if guns were easily available Birrong Boys would be the place for a school shooting), of learner drivers who drove drunk, of the kids who died because of injuries incurred while trying to graffiti a moving train.

I'm not sure what the point of this post was. I guess I just wanted to point out that this is where I grew up, and if I sometimes still show some rough edges, that's why. Maybe someday we'll be able to fix up Birrong Boys, to bring in new ways of teaching and guiding the boys and turn it into a truly good school, and maybe someday the Birrong Girls will stop being scared of the boys down the road. Because the segregation is just sad.

Labels: birrong, high school, love my boy, snacky's law

   I have a cold and am in no state to blog...

so here's a photo my mum put up on flickr:
I think that is her on the left, with my grandmother Eileen, Aunty Cathy, and then my great grandparents, of whom Granny Ruth is the only one I knew.

Labels: family, history, old photographs, sickly-Cat

   I'm fickle, I know...

But I forgive you for being so picky, and a dick. After all, you did just send out a very public email to a lot of the PTBs around here saying: "Excellent work Catherine! Well done - we are in Good shape I reckon at this early stage."

That almost makes all of this trauma worth it.
Almost.

Labels: conferences, fickle-Cat, web stuff

   Despite what my tshirt says, I'm not feeling that lucky...

Stupid blogger/google, what are you doing to my rss feeds? I'm hoping this post fixes Planet Myrkur. Sorry peoples.

Labels: apologies, blogger, stupid blogs, web stuff

   Yes, this is very nerdy...

But this is something I just needed to know and had difficulty finding online.
If you want to forward your mail from a unix server, the easiest way to do this is to set up a .forward (dot forward) file in your home directory, containing the address you want to forward to.
If you want to forward your email, *and* keep a copy in your local mail system, your .forward file needs to read:
/username, other@email.address

In positive, and less geeky, news, the conference websites are due to go public, and within three seconds of me telling everyone, L had registered and the database read that she doesn't like cheese, that she was presenting "no olives" and that she was paying by "poster". Oops. Stupid comma-separated lists.

Labels: .forward, conferences, don't ask about the commas, emails, some times I think I'd be good at helpdesk, the Harry Potter / Domus Prime crossover seems more likely every day, web stuff, yes I am dumb

   This is why I keep him around...

"Tonight's ASA Annual Scientific Meeting is proudly presented by the Anglo-Australian Observatory - helping you observe better. And by the Australia Telescope National Facility - where radio-astronomers who know go! And by Macquarie University, Australia's innovative university."
- James

Labels: conferences, love my boy, web stuff

   ippen, shindemiru?

No, I don't care that your logo is smaller than everyone else's. You should have chosen a square design like the other peoples, or, you know, had a bigger logo available on your website. The fact that you don't is not my fault. I'm doing the best I can with what I was given.

Labels: conferences, paging the jigoku tsuushin, stupid people, web stuff