Quality, Quantity and How Others Are Blogging

Yesterday night I was told by a few friends that I didn't update my blog enough. At some stage a few weeks back I managed to do 5 in 6 days, which I thought was pretty good. Now with a deadline for my uni project hanging over my head, whenever I'm online, I shouldn't be sitting there bored, just looking for more sites to read and then thinking "I've finished with the Internet, I'd better blog now." I should be doing work and there always seems someone online to let me know that. But a request is a request, so I'll both post and try to explain myself.

I like having quality posts. Few and far between they may be, but I'd like to think they look more like articles than a one-way Messenger conversation. I've thrown quite a few posts out and I've got a few old ones that are a bit too dated to post now. I'll save those for when you guys are desperate for new stuff. I think my point is that since I spend time on writing posts, I need free time to do that, which I'd normally rather spend doing nothing. Usually I have to reach the peak of boredom or anger at a particular topic to post something.

I read Brad's blog this afternoon for the first time in over a week and discovered he added a "Cool Blogs" section. I'm happy to be mentioned alongside some great blogs like Brad's brother Gavin's one. Brad noted that it was "the runaway success of [his] (blogging) family - he actually gets visitors."

Reading it, I actually wondered whether bloggers actually aim to get visitors, because I haven't. I've got a few readers from work who've curiously clicked through from Josh's blog, but I don't advertise it in my MSN tagline or encourage anyone there to read it. I doubt my blog has the sort of qualities to sustain a random audience who's never met me. I mean, I do different posts for different audiences (the crazy War On The Sun rants are for Leigh) which is reflected in the comments. How long can people keep checking back for me to post about what interests them? Unless they're interested in me...

Maybe if I can stockpile a few posts up my sleeve I'll make a push to get visitors. I never quite started the podcast that I was considering back when I moved to Blogger's RSS-ness...there's potential for a full scale attack on the "blogosphere" later. It's tough to believe people can actually make money off blogs, but I love those dumb T-shirts people sell off their site, so I believe it.

And so my self-centred wafty blog entry ends. Until then, thankyou, come again!

DriRiver

My iRiver MP3 player "was thirsty" on Monday night (to use a phrase from the Faceoff Hockey Show's glossary) ... meaning I dropped it in a sink of water. The display went a bit funky, then really dark, so I just turned it off. I probably should have consulted the instruction manual first, which told me to leave it running. After it didn't come back on later that night, or Tuesday, I expected the worst: iRiver death ... by drowning!

Thankfully I caught a lucky break and yesterday morning, my beloved iRiver was back and playable again! Sweet, sweet joy! By my calculations of the displayed out-of-date time, it stopped for 16 hours, but it still managed to remember where I stopped playing. I'm glad to have my music players (iRiver and laptop) working fully again after a couple of scares in recent weeks. It's a little easier for me to accept the loss of my crappy old phone than my expensive and highly used equipment.

Plus now I don't need to go to JB and pretend it broke by itself; I'm such a horrible liar. For $500, it's worth still trying your horrible liar routine anyway.

There Can Be Only One

Ben L started a thread a week or two ago, asking who you would get to play the role of yourself in a motion picture, someone who looks somewhat like you. More importantly, they couldn't be A-list superstars, it had to be a "realistic" choice.

I was stumped who to put down for myself. What actor would look like me? It's safe to say I look like I belong in Ringwood rather than Hollywood. I pushed it aside rather than select the first freckled guy I could think of (Ron Howard).

Yesterday I heard about MyHeritage.com, which lets you upload a picture of someone and it attempts to recognise facial similarities against a database of celebrities. I decided to try it out and see if there were any interesting suggestions. Unfortunately it does seem entirely random and I've got no further leads, just a few laughs. (Registration is required)

Recent photos of me with a spiked-front hairstyle produced results like Chad Michael Murray, whom I hadn't heard of. I tried it with a picture of me from Crag's party at the end of the night when I looked totally fucked and the results were about as flattering as the picture.

The best match they found was Andie McDowell. Thanks, MyHeritage. Maybe you should try examining my crotch in the picture first, then my face. Or perhaps even insert a "Got Testicles?" checkbox before proceeding.

It was closely followed by some Asian actor, some Russian actor and then Christopher Lambert, the Highlander. Taking inspiration from my supposed similarility to Lambert, I concluded that I look too unique to be categorised with this game. With Patrick Horgan, like Highlander, there can be only one.

Ants And The Mystery That Surrounds Them

The weirdest shit happened on Tuesday. After I got up to go to uni, I cracked out my laptop to quickly check if our project team had changed the meeting agenda, junk like that. I was only on the laptop for about eight minutes, but it was long enough to notice there were a few ants roaming around where I was sitting. I was in the kitchen sort of area near the two phone line inputs, so I figured someone spilt cordial or something that the ants were going for.

When I opened my laptop to take the meeting notes at uni, the screen was barely on. I cranked the brightness but I could still only see the white text of the Windows XP start up and the "Wireless network not connected" bubble once I logged in. The one thing I did see was ants. Spurting out of the laptop. After a few power off, power ons, I closed the lid and gave up. I blame them for screwing with the inside of my laptop and making me use this "paper" substance for note taking.

There's a happy ending though, as my laptop mysteriously works again. I have no idea how they got in there. They must have got into my room through the window, navigated up the chair and into the unzipped laptop case it was housed in. Previously, I thought ants were more interested in sugar than microtechnology. Clearly, their schemes were becoming more modern.

Now I'm not going to declare war on ants, like I would towards the Sun. No, I respect the mysterious workings of the ants. It's possible they're industrious and mischevious enough to get me if I hold some hostility towards them, so it's probably a good thing to not demonstrably stand against them.

Of course, I'm probably not doing ant-kind any favours by crushing the ones that surface out of my laptop. The Queen will be most pissed if my vast knowledge of ant colony society, extrapolated primarily through SimAnt, serves me correctly.

I tell you what: to the first 10 ants reading this, I'll give you a free Microsoft Word lesson to get you up with the times. Just don't break or steal my belongings. Stick to the sugary stuff.

Elyse has a blog!

I just found out! Elyse is one of the wackiest friends I have and I think a blog is an awesome way to express it! Here 'tis.

The post I just read has a bit about dreams. I love hearing stories of dreams that don't make much sense, things just happen and time skips heaps. I've liked them ever since Trav seemed to have a new one every Monday or so way back in year 10 or 11 or whatever. They were always the coolest. I don't remember my dreams very often, so maybe this is my way of supplementing that.

More good blogging news: Briony's gone nuts. In all honesty, that's sort of the key to blogging anyway, so I'll consider it an initiation. Here's the link.

Allow me to throw down the gauntlet to you. Start a blog!

I'm an Uncyclopedia contributor

I couldn't possibly leave such a vast expanse of written hilarity without a touch of my own personal comic stylings for long. Why, it's...it's unjudgemently!

Shortly after I found out about the Uncyclopedia, the piss take of Wikipedia, I scanned for potential targets and found one that hadn't already got an entry.

I nutted most of it out recently when I couldn't sleep and then used my fresh Wiki page skills (that I had to learn for our uni project) yesterday to liven it up. (In reality, I was just trying to escape doing real uni work.)

I can't wait for it to be marked as "a pile of crap" like most of the shittier articles are. I was going to create a page for my user profile before posting this, but I won't be arsed doing it.

Thus I present to thee: F1 circuit architect/douchebag Hermann Tilke. Also check out: Kitten huffing, Oprah Winfrey and your mom. Follow the links when you're bored, it is the best thing to do when you think you've "clocked" the Internet.

Hockey: My Panther hopes for the rest o' the season

I concede that Florida won't make the playoffs this season. It's a damn shame too. With 17 games left to play, I don't think they can catch up 10 points. I have a new goal though, one that I've thought about for a few weeks so I might as well blog about it.

Florida must finish higher than the New York Islanders at the end of the season. I simply hate the Islanders for no real reason except that they're the worst managed team in the league, year after year. If you look up the worst trades in the past 8-10 years, I reckon the Islanders alone are on the losing end of half of them. But seriously, thanks for giving us Olli Jokinen (among others)! Oh, and I think Rick DiPietro's crap, also for no real reason. I'd almost trade him away for Jussi Markkanen!

That's a 5 point buffer to make up. Tonight's victory over the Isles was a good start, plus it netted Jay Bouwmeester his first goal of the season (in his 66th game). Florida's top defender, Bouwmeester had scored 25 or so assists, heaps of them were point shots that got deflected in and credited to some other player, so he really deserves it.

Let's go Cats!

Doin' It For The Queen

The Commonwealth Games hype has finally ended and it couldn't have come any sooner. It's so common to diss out the Commonwealth Games because, let's face it, they're lame. They've stolen as many of the traditions from the Olympics as possible, so the Games haven't really established any unique presence. Heck, the Games barely deserve to be capitalised in defiance to other less important games. Like tiddly winks.

Now that they've arrived, I am viewing them at face value. No matter how retarded the sport is, if it's on TV in place of daytime crap, that's a win for me. More channels to flick through.

Credit to Channel Nine for breaking up the coverage between sports pretty well. 15 minutes of shooting, then cross for 10 minutes of table tennis, a spot of rugby sevens, then some weightlifting later.

The greatest masterstroke of Channel Nine, which I can assume was a direct order from Eddie himself, was to assign weightlifting commentary to Darrell Eastlake. "Big Daz" was always a bit out of place hosting Nine's Formula One coverage back in the 90s, but I'm sure someone finds him an endearing or apt commentator, probably in rugby league. Eastlake's never short of passion and a little excitement in weightlifting can't hurt.

So I'll be channel flicking in the next few weeks. I might even go to the Shooting at Lilydale, mainly because it's only 10 minutes away. "Worldwide calibre events" aren't normally located close to Croydon, so I might as well support any international pretend-sports we do host.

Let's just say I'm doin' it for the Queen.

I Demand Sleep!

Once again sleep eludes me, in the same way I would elude the buskers on trains. Well, clearly not the same way - obviously buskers don't sit in front of me and wait until I cease ignoring them, normally they get the point quickly. Hey, analogies don't grow on trees, people! Cut a brother some slack. I blame my ineptitude on the recent influx of management speak that's corrupting my vocabulary. If we don't get all our ducks in a row, how can we expect to facilitate the enabler? (Mad props to Josh)

Frankly, I have no real sense of schedule at the moment and I think it's left my body in quite a state of confusion. In terms of food, I've stopped following a routine (the whole breakfast, lunch, dinner thing) and just eating when I'm hungry. However, it's not so easy to apply that "act upon direct need" concept to sleep, as I'm not quite sure I can have a cat-nap at work over lunch or between tutorials at uni. Although it does seem popular to use the Systems Architecture lectures to catch up on some Zs...

I can't believe I haven't learned how to shut my brain off yet. I can't believe after 21 years, I'm unable to control my own sleep needs. But I can believe it's not butter! All these uni days that go to 9:30pm, plus all the work I seem to be thinking about, are really messing with me. Hopefully this blog is so boring it puts me to sleep. Either that, or I just could put the English language to sleep...for good! pWNeD LOL j00 ROFL N00B pHAgZ AM T3H gHeYeReST!!1~1!2!!

I think you can tell it's just past 3:30am as I'm writing this.

Shoutouts to a couple of bands

Well, they aren't the sort of shoutouts where I actually expect the bands in question to hear them. It's just that I've seen a few blogs and MSN taglines describing what they got up to yesterday or Thursday night, so I thought I'd follow suit.

Massive shoutout to Gyroscope. They completely rocked the Northcote last night, weren't afraid to get up close with the crowd, had lots of good singalongs and most importantly played like they were possessed by demons. Musical demons. Like the Robot Devil in Futurama. There were some wankers with rugby player necks playing the half-mosh, half-shove game at the front, but by the end, I conceded they'd done a good job in leading the chorus and amping up the dudes on stage. Special shoutout to the bass player's white-man afro. He's not quite got it to Wolfmother's lead singer's status yet, but it's outstanding nonetheless.

I love Gyroscope's songs so much right now (nearly every track off the new album), it's hard to remember back when I thought buying the album was a bit of a gamble.

Another shoutout to Hard-Fi. My first point of contact was Axwell's remix of Hard To Beat on the Ministry of Sound Annual 2006, which even I admit is a bit unusual for an indie rock band (although Rolling Stone magazine labeled them a cross between disco and ska?!?). I've been constantly listening to the song Cash Machine for about a week now and when I heard Living For The Weekend when I flicked to SYN FM first thing this morning, I just had to buy the album. Muy, muy impressando. Right after the first listen, I'm already calling it a big winner.

Reaching the hockey trade deadline

I wasn't as involved in watching the trades as I was when the season was gearing up; partially because the action happened in the last half-hour, and partially because I've got more work to do.

The big news for my beloved Florida Panthers is that we've signed our star skater, Olympic silver medallist and captain Olli Jokinen, to a new four year $US21mill deal. A very high price to pay, but one of the luxuries of only having two good players over the age of 24 means that you can fit these guys under the salary cap. This should really help us sign Roberto Luongo, our other good player, in the Northern Summer.

The only other deal for the Cats was trading away prospect center Petr Taticek for Pittsburgh d-man Ric Jackman. Florida's got enough young centers that getting a young defender who's played all year is a good pickup.

The craziest deal was Colorado taking Jose Theodore and giving David Aebischer to Montreal. Theodore's in career worst form, costs $3mill more in salary cap and has recently tested positive for drugs (related to a hair loss prevention drug he uses). Aebischer may be less of a big name, but he's younger, cheaper and is on a hot streak right now after an ordinary run of games earlier in the season. If I was Colorado GM, I'd have requested a second round pick to boost it, but obviously they believe Theodore's the guy who can ride a hot streak into the playoffs like he did briefly in 2002 and 2004.

Other deals of note: Edmonton picked up Dwayne Roloson from Minnesota for a 1st (and "conditional" 3rd) round pick. Roloson's a solid goalie (something Edmonton should have got months ago) and Minnesota are comfortable with their two other goalies, Manny Fernandez and 21-year-old prospect Josh Harding.

Carolina picked up Pittsburgh's Mark Recchi for Krys Kolanos, Niklas Nordgren and a 2nd round pick. I didn't expect the 'Canes to go after Recchi, considering they already traded their 1st round pick for Doug Weight a month ago. It still looks like a good move come playoff time for Carolina if Recchi can stay on next year.

Dallas picked up Willie Mitchell and a 2nd round pick from Minnesota in exchange for Martin Skoula and Shawn Bell. Mitchell developed quite a buzz about him in the past few months, but it seemed Vancouver would be the one to cement the trade for him. I really like Dallas' management this year. Few big names, but good results and a strong future. I expect them to stun a bigger team this playoffs.

Of course, I made a Fantasy Hockey trade of my own and I'm documenting it here so I'll see if it's a good 'un later. I traded off Pavel Datsyuk and Dan Boyle to Brad's Old Dixonians for Olli Jokinen and Niklas Lidstrom. I really wanted a goalscoring defenseman who'd be on PP and PK lines and was willing to give up a good center for it, as I've already got two or three I'm confident in. A day after the trade was done, but the waiting period was in action, Lidstrom went and scored a goal and three assists in one game. The points counted for Brad, but I still felt like a winner.

'Til Death Do Them Part

The front page story of Saturday's Herald Sun, Melbourne's most popular tabloid drivel, reported that a mother of three had dressed in full camouflage gear, lured her husband into an open area with a fake distress call, waited and then gunned him down when he arrived. The more startling part is that she was found not guilty of all charges. The defence's main arguments were that her husband was abusive towards her (verbally, physically and sexually) and basically that killing her husband was her only possible escape of her crappy life - and was adjudicated as an act of self defence excusable by law.

Australia says no to domestic violence, and so do I, but cold-blooded murder cannot be the solution. As much as I believe that morons like the husband should be taken out to pasture away from the rest of us, to do it in one's own hands makes a mockery of our judicial system and the values we base societial living on. Should we really be able to establish empathy as a workaround to our governing laws?

It's a shame that this woman couldn't predict the future life that lay ahead of her when making the binding commitment of marriage. That's a lifelong promise that you'll stick by them forever, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad. Instead, she skipped to the terminating clause: 'til death do us part. Even if it was at the hands (and arms) of a housewife driven to the edge.

Uni schedule whinge

I started back at uni on Tuesday (and Wednesday) and it already seems quite a different process as it was in my second year back in 2004. For a start, thanks to my non-Software Engineering specific classes being Masters subjects, my lectures and tutorials run back to back from 5:30 to 9:30 pm. Add an hour for travel and there's a recipe for an angry and tired Patrick.

Thanks to the amount of group work, it also seems I'll have to turn up every freaking week. Previously, I figured out which tutorials would be worthwhile and which ones would be a waste of time. Now I feel obliged to keep turning up and contributing to the team, although hopefully everyone will loosen up after the first assignment when we realise that most of the work will need to be done outside of class anyway. It's much easier only being accountable to oneself.

It is really crap losing some of my evenings again, even if they're not the weekend. It was the single greatest thing about working 9 to 5: being able to give up my pizza job and claim them back. Now I won't even be able to make volleyball anymore. Poo. Hey, at least I'm learning stuff.