May, 2007

So yeah, the only way I could have already seen the Heroes season final here in Australia is from watching a downloaded copy. The current episode being aired in Australia is somewhere around episode 16 / 17 which is pretty decent compared to other TV shows, but still pretty bad.

I remember reading some kind of survey done by someone, that I could probably find if I googled but don’t feel like it at the moment… anyway… the survey basically showed that Australian people downloaded the most TV shows. This doesn’t really surprise me considering the crappy TV programming that happens here in Australia.

For starters, we get TV shows weeks after they air in the US. Heck, sometimes we are seasons behind what is showing in the US. Add to that the fact that the TV channels over here have a great habit of shuffling up the episodes, showing part of a season then part of an older season then the rest of the new season or just generally screwing up the flow of the program by not even showing it one week. It really makes it hard to watch a TV show and follow the season through.

Also, forget about discussing the TV show on many of the Internet forums. Chances are the people in the US are heaps ahead of us so they will be talking about stuff we have no idea about and end up ruining the ending anyway.

So yeah, I download TV shows, and I’ll probably continue to do so until the Australian TV channels start doing things right.

This movie caught my eye in the dvd shop and after reading the back of it I decided it might be an interesting watch. Turns out it was. It’s basically a movie about the word ‘FUCK’. A word that has been around for centuries, used in many different ways.

The movie looks at the word from many different angles and provides a pretty decent history of the word while also debunking a lot of urban myths about it.

I find it interesting that a word, made up of 4 separate letters, can have such an effect on people ranging from extreme excitement through to insane violence. It’s funny how we, as human begins, associate certain feelings and emotions to words and phrases.

Personally, I don’t really find particular words offensive. Sure, when used to verbalise a certain emotion, the word may take a certain meaning depending on what I associate with that word. However, it’s more about what the person is trying to express, not the way they express it that I may find offensive.

I found the movie really interesting. Certainly made me think about how humans express themselves and how we associate emotions with words.

I’ve had a .mac account now for some time. I basically only use it for the iChat account (which you can get without continuing to pay) and the email address.

I never use the webspace, and occasionally use backup, which I guess justifies the cost for me in some way.

It seems that these days, you can get comparable free services which in some cases are much better. I kind of hope Apple are working on some kind of updates for .mac to make it seem a bit more worthy of the yearly subscription fee.

I’ve read a lot of comments about how bad and anti-climatic the Heroes season finale was. Personally I thought it was great. I think a lot of people were expecting some kind of uber fight between Peter and Syler, with both of them going at each other using their powers and one of them being defeated in some kind of huge season 1 climax. In reality, Hiro teleports in and stabs Syler, which may seem a but lack-lustre, but really that was all that was needed.

I think a major theme of the show from the start was Hiro’s journey and discovering his ‘destiny’. There was a point when he thought the sword was the key to his powers but in the end he discovers that he is the one who controls them and the sword is just a tool.

I liked how they actually tied up some loose ends. They could of quiet easily taken us to the start of the last fight scene and then thrown up a ‘To Be Continued…’ message, which would of annoyed me to no end. Instead, they followed it through and gave us an ending. I think the major problem were the expectations people had, and they didn’t just watch it to see what happened.

Who knows where the story will go now. It looks like Syler managed to drag himself away and get into the sewers, even though he had that strange eye thing happened and supposedly died. Did Peter really die? or can the healing power he absorbed from Claire actually help him survive, meaning that maybe only Nathan is really dead? What is up with Hiro getting tele-ported back to the future in the middle of some kind of battle between Japanese forces, is he really the hero that he read stories about as a kid?

So many questions left to be answered. Im glad the series ended like it did and I’m looking forward to it returning next year.

Well, the Australian federal budget was announced on Tuesday. I usually don’t pay much attention to it but one item mentioned in an [article](http://apcmag.com/6069/bland_budget_for_broadband_battlers) on the [apcmag.com](http://www.apcmag.com) website made me wonder.

>Barring the somewhat anticipated expansion of subsidies for solar power installations, the most technologically complex development in the entire budget seemed to be $20 million for an Australian Taxation Office software development project. For the 50% odd of Australians who already file electronically, the ATO will now offer pre-filled returns, complete with salary, benefit and health insurance information. Handy if you’re a standard salary earner, but hardly an earth-shattering development

$20 million for an Australian Taxation Office software development project that will offer pre-filled tax returns. $20 million dollars…. are they kidding?

The Australian Taxation Office has offered electronic returns for a few years now. It works really well under Windows but their solution for Mac users is to run it under Virtual PC. Considering the amount of cross platform solutions that are available these days, I find it extremely hard to swallow that they cannot offer a Mac native way of doing a tax return without having to use some kind of emulation / virtualisation solution.

I hope some of this $20 million will be used to address the current terrible solution for filing a tax return electronically. Changes are though that this $20 million project will be developed and released only to support Windows users.

I always do the survey each year after filing taxes about how useful (useless) the online system is for mac users. I always write constructive feedback about the many cross platform solutions that could be used to make the system useable for people on any computing platform. Who knows who actually gets the feedback and whether it’s actually read / passed on.

It’s a joke.

I brought a [Rubik's Cube](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubiks_cube) the other day when Melanie and I were wandering around Big W. I remember having a Rubik’s Cube as a kid and somehow the stickers got pulled off it and moved around (No doubt the same thing that happens to all Rubik’s Cubes given to young kids). When I was younger I never did get around to actually learning how to solve it so I figured I’d give it a try again.

There are heaps of sites on the internet giving step by step guides to solving it, there is also heaps of actual video tutorials about it. The best one I’ve found though seems to the the [one](http://www.rubiks.com/lvl3/index_lvl3.cfm?lan=eng&lvl1=commun&lvl2=cbegam&lvl3=compet) on the official [Rubik's site](http://www.rubiks.com/). It’s done by a guy who was the first to ever solve a Rubik’s Cude in under 2 mins while blind folded, I figure he knows what he is doing.

So yeah, I haven’t actually used a full tutorial or video yet to solve it. I kind of figured out the first two rows by myself but it gets hard after that.

The only major problem I’ve had so far is if I take longer then a few days to solve it, the “Rubiks Cube fairy” (Melanie) will use her online solving tutorial to solve it because it doesn’t look ‘pretty’ when unsolved. This of course is slowing my progress in learning to solve it but also helping me learn to solve the first parts as I need to keep redoing them.

I remember also having other Rubiks puzzles as a kid including the [clock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Clock) and the [magic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Magic). I also remember a silver colour magic that I think had 4 rings, although I could be wrong.

On a related note, the [Rubiks Revolution](http://www.rubiksrevolution.com/) looks interesting.

Watched the movie ["Grimm Love"](http://imdb.com/title/tt0448400/) on the weekend which is based on the true story of [Armin Meiwes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes), a German man who killed and ate another man after advertising on the Internet. The Wikipedia article linked above details the exact circumstances and is not really for the squeamish.

I find true stories like this both incredibly interesting and also extremely shocking. The human mind is indeed a strange thing and knowing that people are capable of things like this is sends shivers down my spine. I guess the thing that I find most amazing was the fact that someone willingly agreed to be killed and eaten. You obviously can’t class this as ‘normal’ human behaviour, so what made these two people act the way they did?

It’s not really a movie I would recommend everyone to watch. I don’t really classify it as a ‘horror’ movie in the traditional sense. Watching this and knowing in the back of my mind that it actually happened made me more dumbfounded then anything. As the movie unravelled I found myself questioning the motivations of both people involved. Why would people do this?

Overall, an interesting watch. Not something I’m likely to watch again, but it got me thinking and I like that about movies.

There have been rumours floating around for ages now about what [Blizzards](http://www.blizzard.com/) next gaming project will be. Most people are hoping for a new RTS game based on either the [Starcraft](http://www.blizzard.com/starcraft/) or [Diablo](http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/) worlds. Unfortunately, it looks as though it may be another MMO (/groan). [Kotaku](http://kotaku.com/) recently posted about the rumours of a [Starcraft based MMO](http://kotaku.com/gaming/nooooooooooo%21/starcraft-mmo-coming-say-sources-257902.php) and judging by the comments to that post a lot of people don’t sound very impressed.

Personally, I can’t see a need for another MMO from blizzard at the moment. [World of Warcraft](http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/) is going fine and making Blizzard a truckload of money. The only reason I can see for Blizzard to turn the Starcraft world into an MMO would be to try to pull in all the fans of Starcraft who currently don’t play World of Warcraft. Why not just stick with a RTS based game? The world needs decent single person games (with multiplayer options), not more MMO’s.

Was only a matter of time I guess. Blizzard have teamed up with First National Bank of Omaha to create [World of Warcraft Visa cards](http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/visa/). It’s kind of amazing the impact that [World of Warcraft](http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/) is having on the world. The largest and biggest money making game of the decade and it just seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

How long before they customise it and allow you to get your personalised World of Warcraft character printed on the card?

Another blog update. After moving over to dreamhost for hosting, I found that one of their ‘one click install’ options is wordpress. The neat thing about it is that if you install using the ‘one click install’ option, then it makes updating the install really simple.

Anyway, yesterday I decided to blow away my old blog files and use the ‘one click install’ option. After battling with the setup a few times (and almost wiping out some other hosted sites) I now have a brand new install of wordpress.

I also decided to change the theme. This one seems pretty cool for now until K2 gets updated again. I really like K2 but… meh… I guess I just got sick of it. I still need to take the time out and do my own design, but having pre-made templates make me so lazy.

So yeah, blog updated, theme changed, hopefully more blogs to come.