From the Brain of Matty

National Identity, et. al. (26.08.05 9:23 am)

Wow, thirteen days since my last update. An omen, perhaps?

I've actually meant to make updates occasionally, but they're usually things I think of in the car on the way to or from uni (occasionally while delivering pizzas), and un^(?)fortunately I don't get a chance to jot them down to remember them. But today I'm making an effort, because it's Friday. I don't know why that makes any difference, it just does.

Say these lines to an Australian, next time you see one:

Travelling in a fried out comby
On a hippie-trail, head full of zombie

Really, you only need the first line, but the second just cements it. I'd be willing to bet that the Australian in question knows exactly what you're talking about.. even if you don't. It's quite funny how things like national identity are instantiated differently around the world.

Just a thought.

Oh, and if you want to identify with a North Queenslander, say:

Out on the patio we sit
And the humidity we breathe
We watch the lightning crack over canefields
And laugh and think, this is Australia

In case you're wondering, yes, they're songs, and quite iconic in their own bad-80s-pub-rock kind of way.

I probably had something more meaningful to post today, but this is what you're getting. Soon I'm going to start filtering through my papers, trying to draft a thesis proposal, and I'm also going to critically analyse this one paper (tech report) for CP5090, and somewhere in the middle of all that I'm going to go teach OpenGL to a bunch of non-programmers.

For all the tech-heads out there: I glued a bunch of cheap kitchen sponges to the inside of my computer case. It dropped the sound level quite noticeably. Now all I have to do is cut a hole in the side, maybe get a new fan, and stick some shaped plastic/cardboard in there to improve airflow (because the sponges make it pretty warm - and ducted cooling [1, 2] is a cheap and efficient way of lowering the temp) and I ought to have a happy, cool (literally, not figuratively) computer.

Now to work. Ciao tutti! Be well,
Matty /<

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