Feb
23
2008

Sweeny Todd

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, February 23, 2008 - 10:37:27 pm
(Posted Under: Movies)
This morning we went out to see Sweeny Todd. At the moment we have a ridiculous amount of free movie tickets, and there hasn't been much to see. Sweeny Todd seemed like a good one, if for nothing else, the Johnny Depp factor. I really didn't know what to expect, whether it was going to be a Tim Burton animated film or not.

As much as I detest anything that resembles a musical, I thought the movie was excellent. Right from the start the whole dark and cynical thing was great, and the whole musical factor of it was really good. And that is really saying something, coming from someone who really think the whole concept of musicals should be banished! It really turned out to be a movie that I wasn't that interested in, but thoroughly enjoyed.
Feb
21
2008

Point Of Ventre #5

Classic Album Of The Month - Al Perry & The Cattle - Losin' Hand/ TMF Bands

(Add / View Comments) (0)Thursday, February 21, 2008 - 07:55:21 pm
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music, Point Of Ventre Episode)
  1. Little By Little - Al Perry
  2. Sunnyslope - Al Perry
  3. Off And Running - Al Perry
  4. Sound Of An Teardrop - Al Perry
  5. Twisted - Al Perry
  6. Pow! - Al Perry
  7. Losin' Hand - Al Perry
  8. Another Sad Song - Al Perry
  9. Sour Grapes - Al Perry
  10. Loserville - Al Perry
  11. Swap Meet Women - Fish Karma
  12. Kalifornia - Jim Beach
  13. Stratlin Powell - Dead Hot Workshop (Acoustic on Point Of Ventre)
  14. Going To Acapolco - Calexico
  15. Tribudor On Parade - Hans Olson
  16. Angelina - Greyhound Soul
  17. Comin' Down -
  18. Waiting On A Girl - Shelby James & The Crying Shames
  19. God's Eye View - One Lone Car
Now Playing: Gloritione - Swan Dive
Feb
20
2008

ssh timeouts with wipfw

(Add / View Comments) (0)Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - 09:38:00 pm
(Posted Under: Geek)
Going on holiday meant that it was time to fire up wipfw again. I haven't used it for a long time (sometime after the last Arizona trip), because I was getting sick of ssh connections dropping randomly.

Re-enabling it for a week definitely wasn't too much of a big deal, certainly compared to turning on Window's firewall. At the time I unistalled both wincap and wipfw out of frustration. On the plane, it dawned on me that what was happening was the dynamic rules for open ssh connections were timing out. No idea why it took a year and a half to give that a thought.

Looking into it tonight, finding any answers on addressing this was fairly difficult (without enabling ssh keep alives), despite there being a fair few questions about it. However, it appears that version 0.2.8 supports changing sysctl values, which may help. We'll see.
Feb
16
2008

Last Day In Paradise

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, February 16, 2008 - 03:55:04 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Queensland Trip)
This morning I got up early again, with my last opportunity to catch a sunrise over the beach. Given how much I drank last night (to finish off the Coronas we'd brought on arrival) and how late I went to bed, my ability to wake up ridiculously early has been quite amazing. It's been true of the entire week, and today was no different, waking up at 5. It was the earliest I'd been up and down at the beach, and was still dark, or at least darker than the other mornings.

Photobox ImageMuch like the other mornings, masses of dark clouds hung over the ocean. Probably little chance for seeing the sun come up, but still, was pretty cool being out there. Despite there being no opportunity to see the sun rise, it did break through the bottom of the clouds, which made for some good photos. Ironically it was the one morning where it could have been good to have my tripod, and the one morning I hadn't taken it down. I took a cool shot with the camera on the sitting on the beach, which I think came out really impressively. The angle looks really cool, and is something I could have certainly played around with more, and wish I had.

On getting back I went back to sleep for about an hour and a half, before getting up, packing up and what not. Our plan for the day had been to take our bags to the airport and check them, and come back to Surfer's, rather than dragging them around with us the whole day. Just walking down to the bus stop made it seem like such a great idea, what with them swaying every which way rolling over the paved sidewalk. It didn't take too long for a bus to come, but the ride to Coolangatta airport was a lot longer than we'd anticipated. We'd expected about 20 minutes (based on distance), but it took a full hour. Kinda nightmare bus ride (just because of jolting every time it stopped, which was - well - all the time). However, we made it to the airport, dropped off our bags, grabbed Katie a biscuit and made it to the bus back to Surfer's without too much of a wait. While it seemed shorter, the bus ride back too about the same amount of time. But was a lot less painful. And not having our suitcases to carry around definitely made the two hour excursion worthwhile.

On getting back to Surfer's Paradise, we headed straight for Cavill, on a mission - food. We were both pretty starved, and had been all morning. Of course, with a detour to Appel Park for a smoke. Sitting on the bench over looking the river, it would have been easy to lay back, and go back to sleep. But there's no rest for the wicked. We went over to the mall on Cavill Avenue, looking around, probably for too long, for somewhere to eat, before settling on the Hog's Breath. Hot food and cold coke - oh, it was great. After eating, and sitting around for a bit, we headed back out, and finished the remaining of souviner shopping that needed to be done. On completing that, which by the time we had, I was getting closer to be getting home, we wandered down to the beach. We decided earlier on that rather than catching the bus back to Wharf Street, we'd walk it along the beach. It was 4pm, and our ride to the airport wasn't going to be around until 5:40pm, so we had time. A good thing about having done the same walk two nights earlier was that we knew how long it would take, and even with the laptop weighing us down, we still had plenty of time.

I was really looking forward to the walk, but almost immediately when we set foot on the stand, it started to rain. The wind down the beach was also rather strong, but the clouds look like they'd blow over (and if not, we'd get past them on the walk in no time), so we decided to brave the whether, which was a great call, because the rain was gone within five minutes or less. Interestingly also, as we got down to the shore, to walk on the more compact sand, there was this freaky change in temperature, it being a lot warmer. At the end of the day, the only somewhat uncomfortable thing, which I didn't mind that much, was the strong, deafening northerly wind blowing into us as we headed south down the beach.

Photobox ImageAll in all, the walk back down along the beach was really good, and a great way to spend the last few hours of our holiday. Along the way Katie found some shells with holes in, ready for making a necklace. We also stumbled across a tiny crab, which made for another great photo. Not to mention the weird coral-ly things we came across. The first we'd just thought was coral, but the subsequent ones we found had some sort of critters inside, with arms or legs moving into the coral when you touched them.

Our timing on getting back to Wharf Road was amazing. After sitting down, having a smoke, taking some photos and getting the sand out of our shoes, it was 5:30pm, time to walk down to meet the shuttle to the airport. It really could not have been timed any better.

The ride down to the airport (for the second time today) was direct, after picking up some people at other hotels in Surfer's, and also was on a more comfortable coach. We'd been interested on seeing how long it would take, compared to the public bus service. It aligned perfectly with our earlier estimation of 20 minutes. It took between 20 and 25 minutes to get down there. Much less painful than this morning.

With a fair bit of time to kill, we looked around the airport (which was fairly small, though big compared to Marochy), and then went through to get on the plane. Katie again was excited to get to go on the tarmac to board the plane.

Although throughout the week, neither of us had been looking forward to going home, but now we were both ready!
Feb
14
2008

Valentine's Day

(Add / View Comments) (0)Thursday, February 14, 2008 - 11:50:16 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Queensland Trip)
Today has been a really great Valentine's Day. There was some question in my mind about whether we should go away during the week that Valentine's Day fell or not a few weeks ago, when planning the trip. Not sure why now as it made for such a great Valentine's Day, without even really trying.

The day started out waking up Katie at around 5:20 am, to take a walk down to the beach, to catch the sunrise. On getting down to the beach it was quite cloudy, and it was obvious that the sunrise wasn't going to be visible. But it was fine, being down at the beach on Valentine's Day morning, pretty awesome no matter which way you slice it. And I got to write Katie a Valentine's Day message in the sand. Just perfect.

Around 6 we headed back to the apartment and got ready to go out to go to breakfast with Manny down at a beach cafe at the north end of Surfer's. From there, we came back, crashed for a couple of hours, then lounged around for a bit, and got some supplies, before getting ready to go into town for dinner at the Hard Rock, which is our Valentine's Day tradition.

Down on Cavill we walked around the mall, and marvelled at things such as tatt palors and shooting ranges in a mall. Gotta love tourist resort towns! [wink] After this we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe and got situated. We were seated outside, which initially was kind of annoying, as we check out all the memorialbelia, however it turned out to be really nice. Looking through the menu, I was surprised and appalled to see that the Surfer's Paradise Hard Rock Cafe is now the only one in the country, since the Melbourne was closed last year. Honestly, what is wrong with this country? I thought at very least there was one still in Sydney. Anyways, the meal was great, and because it was Valentine's Day there was live music.

After eating, I got up to have a smoke, and seconds after lighting up, I heard a very familiar song intro. It took a second to be able to distinguish whether it was Hey Jealousy or Follow You Down, with it being the former. How perfect. I've never seen Hey Jealousy covered here (to my memory anyway), and to see it on Valentine's Day - really magically. We snuffed the cigarette and went inside and watched the guy perform it. We'd already had such a good day, and having this happen was unbelievable. During the song, I thought that Katie would probably think that I requested it, which she said later that that ran through her head when it started (though I hadn't). Oh man, just perfect! After it was over (to an impressive applause IMO, and not just on our part! [wink] ) we went back outside to finish the cigarette, reeling over the experience. Following this we went through the cafe looking at everything, as we do. [smile] As soon as we showed up, I wondered (and hoped) that the platnum New Miserable Experience plaque had been moved up here since the Melbourne Hard Rock is no longer opened. It didn't take long for me to spot the big white and red "GIN NEW" in the middle of the record in the kitchen area. Katie was pretty impressed by how quickly I spotted it. Because of it's positioning we couldn't overly tell whether it was the same plaque from Melbourne. Checking out the photos later on, it's indeed a different on, for the sale of over 1,00,000 of New Miserable Experience, as opposed to the sale of 500,000 , which the one in Melbourne was for. So, just too cool, we got Hey Jealousy performed, and to see memorabilia for our favorite album, both of which, without, we wouldn't have been there together on Valentine's Day!

After the Hard Rock, we took a walk down to the beach, which we'd suggested before eating that we would do. Initially we were only going to take a short walk before heading back to the apartment. However, once down there, we decided that we might as well try to walk back to the apartment along the beach. Such a good call, because it was incredibly nice - a great clear sky with tones of stars, nice lighting from the high rises on the right the whole way down the beach. Just perfect, and really an easy walk which only took around half an hour. A really great end to a Valentine's Day that was pretty much perfect.
Now Playing: The Refreshments - Buy American
Feb
09
2008

Queensland

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSaturday, February 9, 2008 - 09:08:23 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Queensland Trip)
Today we headed off for Queensland, the first day of our week long holiday. I have really missed flying (it's been about a year and a half since I was on the plane back from the US), and have been looking forward to flying, let alone having a week off.

Once checked in, we went over to McDonalds for breakfast, which is more or less a Melbourne Airport tradition for me. It was really cool doing that with Katie, since the tradition was formed from going over to see her. After a much welcome breakfast, we went down to gate and waited. Being on a plane again, was really cool, both because it had been so long, and because we were finally getting to fly together. Katie had been excited about the Fox shows on the plane (particularly the Simpsons), and was devastated 20 minutes or so into the flight when it became apparent that it was a teaser, and was a paid service, if you wanted to watch any more. Poor Katie! It was however an opportunity for me to pull out the iPod and listen to the second hour of this week's Point Of Ventre show, which we only listened to half last night. I must admit, while it didn't take away from the excitement of heading to Queensland, I couldn't help but long for being on a plane headed for the deserts of the south west. [wink]

Photobox ImageOn this flight, I finally got an opportunity to take some photos from the plane (why I hadn't done this on my last trip to Arizona I don't know) which was really cool. It didn't seem long, especially given being used to the long flights to the US, until we were touching down in Maroochydore. Katie was fairly excited to be walking across the tarmac to the terminal, liking herself to Dr. Gonzo in the closing scenes of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

Pete was clearly excited to see us, and I noticed immediately that he was wearing the Dos Equos t-shirt I'd got him from Mexico. Too cool! Did I say how incredibly small Maroochydore airport is? [smile] It, as well as the climate (duh!) reminded me a lot of Townsville, although the Townsville airport is a reasonable amount bigger.

On the trip out to Coolumn Pete said I wouldn't recognize it. I expected this to be true too, since it's been 14 years since I was last there, but I was surprised that it wasn't really. It's maybe somewhat busier, but that's about it. But maybe my memory of 1994 isn't that great, who knows! On getting to the house I changed into shorts pretty much immediately, before having some lunch, and then hitting the road. Driving out through the back of Coolumn, the cane fields were ever so familiar. Many childhood memories of that being the last thing on a long road trip to see Peter. It was interesting to discover the land is now basically useless as it floods, and the sugar cane industry is dead.

Photobox ImageThe first stop was the Big Pineapple, which Katie had been excited to see. Once she learned of it, and further more, all the big things in Australia, she came up with a new life goal - to see them all. There was some confusion as to whether it was still open, but to her delight she established late last week that it was. On arriving there, it was obvious where the confusion came from. The carpark was fairly empty, and it was obvious that the Big Pineapple's glory days were in the past. However, we still went through, climbed to the top, and what not. It was great to get to take Katie their, but also made our trip planning over the past three weeks, in terms of how much time we'd need to spend there pretty comical. We weren't sure if half a day would be enough, but as it turned out, half an hour was plenty. [smile]

Photobox ImageFrom there Pete drove us up to the Ettamogah Pub, which I thought was a great Australiana thing for her to see. Living in Melbourne for the past year, she hasn't seen too much of that stuff. By this stage, while it was really nice when we touched down, it was absolutely pouring rain. After having a drink at the pub, Pete drove further south, before we decided to head back, because the rain really wasn't letting up.

Photobox ImageOn getting back to Coolumn there were several cool waterfalls coming off Mount Coolumn, in light of the downpour (which was over by the time we got back to Coolumn), which we stopped and took a look at. The most impressive was one around the side, which came all the way down the mountain, and across a guy's driveway, and continuing down further.








Photobox ImageAfter a short pitstop out the house, we headed back out again, this time headed towards Noosa. Pete explained to Katie the yuppyness of Noosa, etc., but we both agreed we were big fans of the area (not that I haven't been there before). By this time the weather had definitely cleared up, and the beach was perfect. We drove around all the places to see, and it was definitely a great opportunity to get some great scenic shots, my favorite one to the right here.

After this we headed back down to Coolumn. Without planning it that way, today has been pretty jam packed (yet, still very relaxing) and we covered a whole lot of ground.
Feb
06
2008

iTunes - Importing Multiple Playlists

(Add / View Comments) (0)Wednesday, February 6, 2008 - 11:06:01 pm
(Posted Under: iTunes, iPod)
One of the complaints I have had with iTunes is how much of a pain it is to import playlists. Dragging and dropping M3U'S (which I have generated automatically) is fine, but the fact that dropping multiple files creates a new playlist within iTunes that contains the contents of every dragged M3U file. Fairly silly UI choice on Apple's part there.

Finally after getting sick of the limited choice of playl=ists on my iPod, I came across this set of tools that supports importing multiple playlists into iTunes as multiple playlists.

Teridon's iTunes Scripts

Slightly annoying having to move my playlists into a separate folder (when I don't want to import them all), but is really great to find a utility that gets around one of the more annoying iTunes UI flaws.
Feb
02
2008

Dead Hot Sillyness

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, February 2, 2008 - 09:48:55 pm
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene)
The past few days have illustrated the hilarious silliness of members of Dead Hot Workshop, past and present.

Throughout the week, Steve Larson has been playing roving reporter, covering the Superbowl festivities from Scottsdale, and doing his best (successfully) to get himself on Channel 3. Quite funny, culminating in Steve breaking out his Elvis costume, and...wait for it...renting a Segway! Steve Larson, dressed up as Elvis, riding around the ESPN stands on a Segway! Hilarious.

If that wasn't good enough, Brent and Kylie Babb on Point Of Ventre yesterday was more or less a 3 hour laugh-a-ton. By the time they were talking about the idea of Rabbit Ambulance I was in absolute stitches. I'm not sure I've laughed so hard since the time at Yucca when Brent was telling of the adventures of Cat Man.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can't think of Dead Hot Workshop as anything but serious, yet, they're all hilarious.
Feb
01
2008

Absolutely Right And Wrong

(Add / View Comments) (0)Friday, February 1, 2008 - 12:03:12 am
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music)
Roving reporter Steve Larson rocks my world for recording a video of Mark Zubia performing Absolutely Right And Wrong in Scottsdale. Not that Steve's other Superbowl coverage ( [wink] ) hasn't been great to watch.

Seeing footage of Old Town Scottsdale again is cool too. But, okay, well nothing compares to getting to see Mark play Absolutely....

She finds it hard to get along...
Now Playing: Mark Zubia - Absolutely Right And Wrong (Live)

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