Something to crow about, Game Development, IT stuff, old rats and life, Iraq.

[tcpip]

Happy (Chinese lunar calendar) new year everyone! severina_242 and I celebrated the arrival last night with dinner at our favourite Chinese restaurant, Wong's on Glenhuntly road. He appreciated our wishing him "happy new year" - I think we were the only customers that mentioned this. He does great food and it's damn cheap too. Also amazing how many women on my friends list have been making comments along the lines "Year of the Cock - I wish!" already... Hmmmm...

The call for players and gaming announcement in my last post has come up with positive results. Ten Thousand Islands is now up to scene four, and I reckon I've pretty well figured out what basic stats I'm going to use for the Mimesis roleplaying system. There has been a lively discussion on the mailing list as well about game design, which is exactly what I want. Also, on strangedave's suggestion, I've joined in the forums at The Forge and have been stirring the possum there. Finally, caseopaya as a novice gamer has fallen into the clutches of a single-person face-to-face Call of Cthulhu/Nephilim game. I mean, train 'em on the tough circuit, right?

IT life has been very busy of late. At Borderlands, I've been rebuilding their library database from a piece of crap called PrimaSoft to something useful, like MySQL. At Web Prophets I've been building test BSD servers (mail, web and admin), and most recently I've volunteered my services at the Unitarians to be second-on-call if the radio presenter goes awol - which has meant learning Adobe Audition. In addition I have a small mountain of web development that clients have heaped upon me, and to top it off, tomorrow morning I meet with an indigenous landscape manager for a database administrator role. All very interesting.

Other notable events of the past several days include convening the quarterly meeting for Labor for Refugees and setting up (finally) the national email list for said organisation. I've had no luck getting the person who runs the website to update it or pass on management, so setting up a new one seems to be the only alternative.

Last Saturday eve caseopaya and I went to the Astor, Melbourne's most beautiful cinema, to watch the double of Shark Tale and Team America: World Police. The former is NYC as a reef with intelligent fish, with a theme of "it doesn't matter if your really poor as long as someone loves you". Deep, eh? The latter film however was just a brilliant piece of work. A stylistic satire on the Thunderbirds, a thematic satire on US foreign policy and with clever censor-challenging scenes. Parents who are stupid enough to take their kids to this film without checking (a) the ratings and (b) what it includes deserve to be shocked.

The rats went to the Lort Smith Animal Hospital on Saturday. Poor ol' Harlequin, already suffering loss of movement in his back legs, is developing an ulcer or similar on his stomach. Tonight they both go to a vet. I've always considered it metaphysically unfair that intelligent social animals have short lifespans. The greatest thing that anyone can do is increase the lifespan and quality of life of living creatures.

Brain breaker of the week goes to daoistraver. What happens when a Professor of History at the University of Michigan whose specialisation is middle-east affairs decides to take on a hired idiot, like Jonah Goldberg on CNN/NPR over US foreign policy in Iraq? The
results are truthful, insightful and amusing - both times.

Comments

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you've been so busy lately.

Ah, you've reminded me...I'll be sending-out a Market Research Survey far and wide tonight/tomorrow.
Do you mind taking a look at it / filling-out one and forwarding copies to some of your contacts/network in my behalf?

What happens when a Professor of History at the University of Michigan whose specialisation is middle-east affairs decides to take on a hired idiot, like Jonah Goldberg on CNN/NPR over US foreign policy in Iraq?
Those pieces on Jonah Goldberg (who I'd never heard of before but I don't doubt that his lousy opinions have had an indirect effect on many of us thanks to the hate and political manoeuvering he's caused) are plain scary.
How does such a fool get his voice heard?
Seems to be more evidence of a hopelessly biased media quoting/publishing who/what they want. :(

Wongs. And stuff.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Wongs is pretty cool, and Wong himself is a great guy, and I even like the food, but... every time I've eaten there, and I mean every time, I have had the runs less than an hour later. Mim has reported similar, even though she has eaten there for her entire life. (We live around the corner, you see, and Mim grew up down the road.)

If it weren't for that slightly unfortunate side-effect, we would eat there more often. As it is, though, Pavarotti's up the road (the other side of Orrong rd) and the Japanese place further up again (on the same side of Glenhuntly Rd, not the new place next to Coles) are very well suitable places to eat. As is the Mexican place a few doors up again. Spoilt for choice, I am.

Nephilim/CoC? 1on1? for a neophyte? You sadist! I thought I liked you. No Kult thrown in? Just for variety?

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Juan Cole is my new hero.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

And I'm afraid I think you are getting your arse handed to you on The Forge, at least on that combat systems rant.

[redcountess]

My sympathies on Harlequin - our rats are getting old too, and Spike is starting to have problems with his legs. Both of them had sores on their tummies a while ago, which is due to them still liking to marinate in their pee, as boy rats do, but not being able to clean themselves properly anymore, so the vet gave us an antibacterial solution to flush the sores with and a course of antibiotics.