GenesisDreams

Eat Beast

Fun Well it's the last day of term. Almost everyone is gone, or is going today. Simon and Adam left around midday and Bruce went about five minutes ago. I don't head out until tomorrow morning. The place is pretty empty now and it's a little lonely. I'm in the process of packing now, and I've come to the realisation that I have so much stuff! I've probably got about twice the amount of stuff now than what I came over with. I don't know where it all came from. I've just seemed to pick up things along the way. I'm getting picked up tomorrow morning by my cousin John, and them I'm headed back to Liverpool for a coupled of days before setting off trekking around the country. I haven't actually got anything planned yet, I'll work it out as I go along. I celebrate the end of term Bruce, Ben, Graeme, Niki, Vicki and I went out to a Chinese restaurant called Dynasty. It was all you can eat for £15. You go through starters, second course, soups, main course and then dessert and order whatever you want on the menu, if (or in my case when) you finish it, you order another, or something else, and they just keep bringing it out until you are done. It was fantastic. We were there for about three and a half hours and at a stupid amount of food. I am the Eat Beast! Anyway I'm starting my break from tomorrow which means I will be out of contact for a while. I wont be on Yahoo, MSN or ICQ, I will probably not get onto IRC, and I'll likely only check my email every week or so, if that. GenesisDreams will also go into stasis mode for the next month, so don't expect any comments. I've got an entire month off, so I'll be backpacking around the UK, and maybe across to continental Europe if I get the urge. I'll be travelling alone at times, but I've organised to meet up with someone else and travel with them for a couple of weeks too. I'm really looking forward to it, I'll be able to do a whole lot more than the "weekend trips" have allowed me so far. I'll probably rent a car for a week to check out southern England, then use trains and buses for the midlands, Wales, northern England and Scotland. Wish me luck everyone! ^_^

Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction

Books - Japan - Quotes Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami Wow. This mix of Jungian shadow worlds and cyber-punk-ish Tokyo has totally blown my mind. I generally don’t like making statements about my “favourite X”, because it usually depends on my mood. I don’t have a favourite movie, I don’t have a favourite TV show, I don’t have a favourite actor, or band, or song, everyone who knows me will know I have a favourite anime, but until now I didn’t have a favourite author or book. Well step up Murakami and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Sorry Neal Stephenson, sorry William Gibson, sorry George R. R. Martin, sorry to the rest of you. Murakami is king.

"I closed my eyes, I felt a ripple run through my mind. The wave went beyond sadness or solitude; it was a great, deep moan that resonated in my bones. It would not subside. I braced myself, elbows against the backrest of the park bench. No one could help me, no more than I could help anyone else." Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, pp:391 (Alfred Birnbaum translation).

And no, this is not a mood thing. Like Eva, I think I will love this book however I feel. Also interesting to note is that the anime Haibane Renmei seems to be influenced by Murakami’s work. The End of The World in this book refers to a village in the middle of land surrounded by a high wall (at least on the surface, I’m not going to delve into its deeper meaning here). A lot of the descriptions of the town and the wall seem to respond directly with what is depicted in the anime. Also the protagonist in the book is a newcomer to the town who is different from everyone else and who has no memory of his previous life (just like the Haibane). It’s also interesting to recall back to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as that book contains a scene where the protagonist has a revelation while trapped down a well. Calvin, if your still collecting anime DVDs, pick up Haibane Renmei, I think it’s just started being released in Australia. In short, I love this book.

Vulture Street

Fun - Movies - Music - Travel - University Well I'm back from London again. I arrived home yesterday, but I haven't even unpacked yet. I've had this CSD (ok enough with the acronyms, it's Commercial and Industrial Systems Design) coursework due, and I originally thought it wasn't due until tomorrow. Oh well, it's done now, I just had to sacrifice some much needed sleep. It was basically just a project management assignment, and I did a whole subject on engineering project management last year, so all the PERT/GANNT analysis stuff was pretty easy. Once I submit it then I've only got one more piece of coursework due before the Easter break! Yay! (Oh yeah did I mention that I've got an entire month of holidays coming up! ^_^) Anyway back to the weekend. I caught the bus down to my cousin's place Friday night where we proceeded to get very drunk and play chess using backgammon pieces with letters written on them. We woke up the next morning around midday, so we scrubbed plans to get the train into London early and went out to see a movie instead. Simone wanted to see Mona Lisa Smile, a chick flick if ever I heard of one, while Toby had to go to a meeting (rather convenient on his part ^_^). The movie sucked. It was shockingly bad. A women’s Dead Poet’s Society this is not. Simone hated it as well. Julia Roberts was passable, Kirsten Dunst was cute in a 50’s sort of way, but everything else was horrible. After the dismal movie we met up with Toby and had some Italian at this restaurant called Z’something. The food was nice but the service was bad; we waited forever for everything. By the time we got out of there it was 5pm, so we raced off down the M1, and then onto the M25 (the London orbital) around to the western edge of London to Hammersmith. We all had tickets to see Powderfinger play at the Hammersmith Apollo (there are a whole lot of musical venues at Hammersmith, and the Apollo is but one)! For those who don’t know, Powderfinger are a Brisbane band who are probably the biggest rock band in Australia right now. They are not my favourite group, but I don’t mind their music. The strange thing is that even though they are from Brisbane, I’ve never seen them live before, and I had to come all the way to London to see them! Simone knows the drummer, well she used to know him back in Uni, he was in the year ahead of her at UQ. While she was doing engineering she lived with a bunch of guys who were in a percussion band, and the Powderfinger drummer was in it too. Anyway they rocked. The Apollo must have been a pretty small venue compared to what Powderfinger and used to back home, and I think they really took to it. We were right up the front in a really great spot and the atmosphere was intense. They were really pushing their new album Vulture Street, but also played a lot of their old classics. Overall the gig was great and I’m glad I got the chance to see them. Sunday we slept in again, before driving to Northampton to have lunch at this really great Indian restaurant. Simone and Toby know the owner, and the food was incredibly tasty. After that we went to see a preview of Starsky and Hutch, which was great. Then we did some more stuff, then it was Monday, then I went home. I’m really tired now so I’m going to go to bed. I haven’t slept since Sunday night and I didn’t sleep much then either.

XML -> ( (XSLT + CSS) + DTD ) -> HTML

University I've spent about 8 hours so far today working on my "Internet and the World Wide Web" coursework. It's the most work I've done since coming here. I started it today, it's due tomorrow, and I'm almost done. Yay! I'm procrastinating now, becuase I've finished all the hard stuff, the XSL, CSS and DTD stuff, and now all I need to do is write 1000 words about what I've done. I deserve a break though. I haven't been too any of the labs for this subject, so I started from stratch this afternoon and storm learnt how to write XLS and CSS files to convert XML to HTML as well as how to write DTDs to validate the XML in the first place. The assignment was actually pretty tricky, a lot of non-standard stuff was thrown in there which meant I spent a lot of time trawling the net looking for hints. I get the feeling that all the little work-arounds that are needed to meet the requirements were discussed in the labs sessions. Oh well. Anyway I had better get this report written. I'm heading down to London again this weekend and I'll need my rest.

Formal Dinner

Fun We had a formal dinner here at Newark Hall last night. I didn't bring a dinner suit over with me (for obvious reasons) so I borrowed Bruce's dinner jacket (he was working that night) and cleaned up as best I could. The warden gave a little speech, the JCR president gave a little speech, the JRC for next year was announced, and then we started to drink and eat! The food way nice, very nice compared to the standard fare that normally gets served up by the Atrium staff. The main course was lamb, and we had pavlova for dessert! I drank about half a bottle of £3 red wine which Jenny kindly shared with me and managed to score an extra dessert from Roy one of the Atrium managers who for some reason had taken a liking to me (so I always get extra servings of chips whenever I normally get food from him). Funny moment of the night: A guy on the table across from us was taking a whole lot of pictures with his digital camera, he was pretty drunk and misplaced it and then started accusing everyone of stealing his new £400 camera. Security came up at one point to sort it all out, and even interrogated one guy who was being accused of stealing it. After about 20 minutes of this though, the guy reaches into his pocket and goes, "Oh sorry, my mistake, it was here all along." Almost everyone on our side of the hall started laughing at him. Poor guy. Anyway I didn't rock on to the post-formal party afterwards. I needed some rest and recuperation. I've been running around with some things a lot these last couple of weeks, but I'll do my best to keep posting regularly.

It Had To Be You

Fun - Travel I went down to London for the first time ever on the weekend. I went with my cousin Simone and her husband Toby and they showed me how fantastic the city was. Simone had lived in London for many years previously so she knew all of the places to go, and still had the underground map imprinted in her brain (which is good because it's almost as complicated as the Tokyo rail system). I'm not going to describe what I did exactly, it wasn't that sort of day. I left my camera at home, we didn't concentrate on any one place for too long, and instead I just tried to soak up the atmosphere of this great city. Just some passing mentions though; we walked through Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, across to St Paul's Cathedral, walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern, the largest modern art gallery in the world, (it had an exhibition called simply "The Weather" which was breathtaking). Didn't ride on the Eye (but probably will next weekend). Which brings us to the reason we were actually in London; we were going to see a production of When Harry Met Sally at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. It was staring Alyson Hannigan as Sally and Luke Perry's as Harry and boy can Willow fake an orgasm. We went to a Belgian beer bar and drank Belgian beer (not surprisingly) until we felt hungry enough to head over to this Belgian restaurant called Belgo's for dinner. It was packed, and we would have needed to wait for an hour in line, so instead we went to Soho. I like Soho. We had some great food, drank some more and came home. I feel I should write some more here, about the play, the performances, how cute Alyson looked (I've always had a bit of a crush on her), but I'm not going to. It was a fantastic day, I had a great time, and I'll leave it at that.

Harry: "A man can never be friends with a woman he finds attractive, he always wants to have sex with her."
Sally: "That's not true! I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved."
Harry: "No, you don't"
Sally: "Yes, I do."
Harry: "No, you don't"
Sally: "You're saying I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?"
Harry: "No, I'm saying they all want to have sex with you."
Sally: "Well, what if they don't want to have sex with you?"
Harry: "It doesn't matter because the sex part is already out there, so the friendship is ultimately doomed, and that is the end of the story."
Sally: "So a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?"
Harry: "No, you pretty much want to nail them, too"

I haven't been updating much recently. Sorry about that guys. I've been otherwise occupied over the last couple of weeks. I don’t know when things will change, but I will do my best to post more often. I have a month’s holiday coming up in two weeks. I’ll be on the road for most of that time but I’ll do my best to keep updating.