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Sunday, 10:17 am, 18 January 2004 I was out of town on Friday. One night on a UK hotel bed was enough to make me into a zombie. Interestingly enough, I don't get a lot of sleep. But I realise after experiences like Friday-yesterday that I must sleep really deeply. I think comfort when I sleep makes a huge difference. Okay, onto the dot points... Chester My wife and I headed to Chester on Friday. Chester is about forty minutes away. It is a medieval/Roman town with city walls - apparently. The city walls were surrounded by buildings and it was hard to actually make out when we were inside the city walls or not. I went with no expectations and had a pretty good time shopping and wandering around a new place. My wife went for the history and was disappointed. I think the transition between medieval and modern is something a number of UK hamlets have gone through. There really isn't much that can be done about MacDonalds replacing gargoyles. Towns aren't Disneyland - they aren't historical reservations. They are functioning places of capitalism. They need to make money. The view of medieval towns kept in their original condition means that basically there has been no money coming into the town from the medieval period. Conservation - historical conservation - seems to be very pragmatic in the UK. I can't really complain. I can't imagine the UK as a non-functional environment. The more I think about my representation in the UK. My life - what it conveys - I think of myself as an economic migrant. There is no speculative technology work in Australia. The US economy is not getting better - no matter what propaganda is published. Buying in Chester Shopping - occasional shopping - seems to be one of the joys of the middle-class that hasn't really been apparent in my life prior to now. The mark of success is not what others say about you. It is what you can do with yourself. I think we spent about UKP100 in Chester. I put about UKP13 into the Chester Games Workshop - a great store. About twenty minutes of conversation with the staff. They were setting up for the Brettonian release (happened the day after I was there). The biggest purchase was computer games. I bought Medieval Total War. I thought I needed to play it a couple of times. It is difficult to spend time developing with the spire of games in the house. So much of the Noble Warfare development has been about integrating and bug testing. Slow and somewhat monotonous work. My wife got a PlayStation game, although she is heavily addicted to the Sims currently. We went into a Christian bookstore too. My wife had commented that there weren't any Christian bookstores in the UK. I remembered one in Leicester. But it seemed like a good break with blatant capitalism. I was looking for books on Christianity propagating through the Roman empire too. My current topic of interest. I walked past the Christian music CDs and I saw a DC Talk album. In 1998, I dated a Pentecostal graphic designer - who actually drew the icon for the Noble Ape Simulation. She had two DC Talk albums. I hadn't heard of them since. The irony with DC Talk - was they also fitted in with a train trip I had in the US when I sat next to a Christian rock musician. He and I talked long about the propagation or failed propagation of Christian rock. In terms of music, DC Talk was actually quite good in the commercial rock/pop genre. The use of minor keys was something that is so lacking in mainstream US popular music. So I picked up the DC Talk greatest hits. It was funny to hear the music again. I think the documentary component of the production is interesting. For example, the conclusion is an interview with their neighbour to a backbeat; People have come here since I was on the Jesus Freak record, And people have been here from at least twenty states, haven't they, Want my autograph and picture, I have met a whole lot of nice people, And I think I've had my fifteen minutes of fame. [Mrs Morgan (Act II) (c) 2000 ForeFront Records] It brings back a lot of repressed memories actually. The more segments I get of my life prior to the UK, the less I want to remember. But good music for a middle of the road Christian rock group - caveats aside. What's the deal with spam? In the past four days, my spam has increased by at least 100%. I suspect this is a direct response to the US laws - perhaps? I don't know. I haven't subscribed to any new mailing lists. Perhaps a bot hit some of the Noble Ape Simulation source. My greatest concern with the huge amount of spam I am receiving is although my filter catches about 95% of the spam, still I get about 15-20 emails in my intray a day that are just total rubbish. I can't understand how any of the spams that get through actually relate to money making ventures. It has become something so totally disturbed that I can't imagine someone new to the internet would understand that getting emails like; Re: oak tree beside m zyz ldjihkj Re: FXCJJO,4, a queens lover claim your free gift now nfr lbq slhw Fwd: I think we should try again It really is an international ad for how poor democracy and representation must be in the US. Capitalism over sanity? Watch your email intray fill with post-advertising. Where is the War on Spam? Speaking of which, I am now receiving Arabic spam from Iran. There are a number of jokes that could be made about getting Arabic spam. I though through them and thought it would be difficult to joke about it without offending one or other side in the ongoing conflict. So I thought, best just include an image of the address on top of the spam. If anyone reads Arabic and can let me know what is going on...  What else to type about... I got a substantial load of Fred Reed miniatures including the Romans and Orcs used on the Noble Warfare site. Stunning as always. Good morning. Thursday, 09:04 pm, 15 January 2004 It's been a long week with no log entries. Much has happened. Here are the dot points. Idealism over Capitalism Following the ongoing narrative in the log with regards to Apple Computer - pricing, co-development, DVDs, time put into Apple specific development et al, my wife decided to buy a computer on Monday. Following my long-held belief that I would only buy a Mac when Apple produced a computer both powerful and good value, my wife ditched the idealism and bought a Windows XP Home machine. It cost UKP579 and came with a scanner, printer and digital camera. 2.6 Ghz. The nearest Mac in its class was four times that amount. It caused a toxicological breakdown in me. I was fundamentally depressed and unable to string words together for a log on Monday. I felt - perhaps feel - that I have wasted too much time trying to get Apple compatible code. Fighting interfaces here today, recommended against t'row. This is not my world. By Tuesday... We got two games with the PC. The Sims and Age of Mythology. We haven't opened Age of Mythology yet. My wife is firmly addicted to the Sims. I admit I have Sims related problems. I have heard contrasts with the Noble Ape Simulation and the Sims. Actually, they have typically been negative contrasts. But I see similar elements. The distinction - the big distinction - one had a huge budget to produce and the other was hacked together by me over a seven and a half year period. Somewhere over this period I stopped receiving emails... Emails - Cold Turkey I am someone who gets a lot of comfort from a well written email. I got a couple from my childhood friend, Alex 'Gurap' Brooks. But the emails from Prof Groove and Fred Reed all-but dried up. In fact, my pro-painting emails have dropped off the face of the earth. I have gone relatively cold turkey from miniature painting this month. And now I am going relatively cold turkey from email. Not through choice. The withdrawal from email has been greater than miniatures. Some part of the Sims experience has reduced the miniature interest - to be clear. Noble Warfare is also taking my time and polishing up things like Noble Warfare seem to be rating higher on my list of to-dos. I was watching some of WWDC 2003 over the past couple of days. I think - I go through phases but... - I should put more effort into the command line tools for Noble Ape/Noble Warfare. Noblemake is a good example. It is a very useful tool. People seem to be downloading it and accessing the page. It needs a bit of a touch up, but in general it works - it does what is needed. So - sorry I digress - missing emails caused me actual depression. I thought to myself, pages of spam. No actual emails. What kind of life am I living that people I employ and people who I assist don't email me. Not even friends. But those who make productive gains can't be bothered to email responses. Do I seem too eccentric? This musing lasted a night or so. Today? Well, today is prefaced with me taking t'row off and going to Chester (it's a place) with the wife. Staying overnight. We will be away from the Sims. Away from email. I might take a print out of source code. I might not. Who knows. But two day breaks have been the real joy of married life. Good night. Sunday, 09:24 am, 11 January 2004 Noble Ape Modifications Today Following correspondence with Mridul P about a post-Sourceforge world for the Noble Ape development, I have been thinking about the Noble Ape Source Log. I am going to have to work on its current form today. In fact the whole active source code for Noble Ape is currently suffering under Noble Warfare development. I could flick the switch and produce a release in the next week. Still debating that. The improvements in larger bandwidth are lost without regular releases. I am not paying a lot of money for hosting. But I would like to use up what I have with actual folks coming to the site or getting the software. My wife is at work until 3pm. So it gives me some time to fix. Good emails I have received a couple of good emails sent to me, actually three now I think of it, between going to bed and rising (Mridul P, Groove and Chris Blair). I have mused in the past in the log about the benefit of good emails in terms of friendly nurturing. Although nothing would beat a caffeinated chat. Emails, it must be currently. Plenty of work today. Good morning. Sunday, 12:01 am, 11 January 2004 Automating WeFunk Mirroring Thanks to some correspondence with Prof Groove, my WeFunk radio mirroring is now relatively automated. Until now, I have downloaded a show and then FTPed it to my webhost. I have now created an FTP direct account which lets Groove FTP the shows directly to my mirror. Progress... Recent Whim Purchase Missing recent log entries, I have missed my news at the end of last week. I have registered; Domain Name: IGETALIFE.COM Registrant: Barbalet, Tom Really, it came from watching the iLife video on Apple's website. Every aspect of the iLife video fails. It mixes disturbing advertising metaphors and - hello - cliches are not the new cool. If there is little information, pan Elijah Woods. I wonder who the market for Apple's products are. And if anyone should be totally snuggled up to this kind of lemonware it should be yours truly. So does it merit a sequel video akin to the Open Source vs iPod dynamism that was 'Something is Wrong'. I don't know. But I have the domain name. It struck me that registering the domain name was really easy. Perhaps; (1) People don't care, and, (2) No one registers domain names in protest any more... Who knows. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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