Have you ever opened a milk bottle and heard it hiss like a soft drink bottle? It really makes you wonder how many bacteria cultures are setting up home in there...

I used the milk anyway and I haven't died, so my body must be coping with it OK. I keep getting strange flash backs from Microcosm, though ô_ô

I cannot stress how important this entry is. In combination with another entry (which I'll list shortly), it is the most important entry I've made to this site so far.

Some things have gone on recently and if they aren't clinched shortly, someone is going to get dragged through emotional hell and get very badly hurt.

I refer you to my garbage entry of 0:52:46 19-10-2002, specifically the section between "But enough about technology" and "But enough about humanology".

I know my intuition well enough by now.

Don't allow yourself to be used.

I found out today that I'll be audited next Monday, how exciting! Fortunately for me I don't have anything to hide, so it should be a smooth and easy experience (unless they find out about the beeeillions of dollars I'm hiding under my bed! Kaw! ;)

Heh :)

I spent the weekend in Brisbane again but it was busy and tiring.

The last episode of 24 was on tonight and provided twists and turns up until the last minute, which is nice to see from a TV show. I'll definitely be watching the next series, which will hit Australia in 2003 (I believe it's already airing in the US).

I'll jot some more in tomorrow, I need an early night!

A very short update: as someone once said... "Just when you thought it was safe... be Keff-ful."

Same position, different direction.

We went to IMAX last night to see a 3D movie called New York 3D. The experience is impressive and imposing, with the size of the IMAX screen allowing the 3D image to fully envelop your field of view, which makes for a very realistic experience. It really seems as though you're part of the environment and the sound makes it even more convincing. The New York 3D movie was really good and traced a lot of the history of New York's construction throughout the last century. A lot of the images were from high on buildings while construction was taking place and bring new appreciation to skyscraper construction workers. There was also quite a bit of helicopter footage which was very cool, dodging between and over the buildings. The WTC could be seen in a lot of the shots (the movie was filmed in 1996, I think) and being able to see them in 3D makes you realise just how high they were in comparison to the surrounding buildings. Being able to see the endless streets of New York from ground level demonstrates the scale of the buildings and city very well.

It was a great experience and it makes me want to see more IMAX 3D movies. There were only about 20 people in the giant cinema though, and earlier this year it was reported that IMAX would be closing its operations in Brisbane. However, since it's well past its publicised closure date, they must have reconsidered that decision. I'm not sure what you could do with such a massive and oddly-shaped cinema anyway... it couldn't be converted into a normal cinema due to the very large screen (8 stories high) and long distance away from the projectors (bound to be out of focal range and projection power of normal 35 mm systems).

The weekend was rainy but has now cleared somewhat. It's raining further West, so it'll probably head this way again later tonight or early tomorrow. We had an 'open house' for our old apartment/unit and there was a lot of interest, particularly with one woman who was very enthusiastic about the property and looks like she will put an offer in shortly (to be able to sell it so fast would be handy as it means things could be switched directly to the new unit in one go without any messing around).

We also arranged a time and inspected our new unit, the settlement date of which is next week (contract is signed and all is good). It looks even better than I remembered it, probably because a lot of the furniture has been moved out. The people that had been occupying it were in the middle of moving to their new house, so all of their property was stacked up in a space that it was never designed for. In typical Splash-style™, I've made a plan of it using Photoshop so we can tell what will fit where and how to arrange things in the rooms :D

I've been paid for a few more contracts recently which has built a nice cache of money in my bank account. The only trouble now is the temptation to spend it ;) That's risked each time I visit a store like Video Pro, heh. I've decided to save a large percentage of it, though.

The bay will be reasonably quiet over the next week with the school-leavers having headed south for Schoolies Week, or across to Fraser Island (which has just been voted as the world's third best island holiday destination behind two islands of Hawaii, which it has been for the past few years running). Those Americans don't know what they're missing out on, but it seems ignorance is bliss ;)

"she already knows it hurts, she's living like it's the last night on earth"

Currently on the way to Brisbane... as we left it started raining and it hasn't stopped. There are some storm fronts moving across the area that will continue all weekend. We've already seen a few accidents on the way down, which is easily predictable. I shudder to think (given it's the start of Schoolies Week) how many accidents there will be over the next three days. The combination of stormy weather, end of school ecstasy, alcohol and inexperienced drivers who think they're experts, is not a safe one. I remember the statistics we were given at this time two years ago: four out of our class would be dead due to car accidents by the end of the year. That statistical prediction was closer to reality than a lot of people had expected, or were too arrogant to take heed of.

Meanwhile though, I'll be enjoying the rain and storms this weekend. This kind of weather is really what the area needs, having been so dry and hot in recent months (more so than average). It would be nice if it rained for a week.

I've nearly finished the billing system for Birch Phillips and it's working as efficiently as I'd hoped. The idea was to cut down on the amount of time spent generating invoices by completely automating the process, while creating a system that will allow debtors to be assessed quickly. Because of the way it's been designed, it will also allow full cash-flow analysis (for example, being able to see complete reports of debtors and receipts at any point in the past). Invoices are generated automatically from the information entered and are printed right from the web browser.

Now, back to absorbing some of that rainy weather :)

The new wallpaper I talked about some days ago is now online in Infraction, but only available in 1600x1200 at the moment.

The weekend looks like it will be rainy, yey :D Mmm... rain. Although most people like to believe that the planet we live on is static and calm, the truth is that we live on a very active planet filled with rain, lightning, cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. When you think about it like that, this planet is a dangerous place to be! Pushing all that behind a mask of blind optimism, I really like rain and storms ;)

*ruffles fingers through hair* And now I have short hair again, which feels so much more comfortable with the high temperatures we've had lately.

I've come up with a fun design for a t-shirt that I'm going to have made, which I might post online here if I get the chance. It may be cryptic for those that don't know of the USA's Office of Strategic Influence or George Orwell's Ministry of Truth, but that's half the fun ;)

Nite!

Mmm... Vanilla Coke... (I had to say it).

Today I managed to get my hands on Underworld's "A Hundred Days Off" CD. It's great music to chill to. With the exception of a couple of songs, the album is mellow, but it's up-beat as well, which is a handy combination.

The days are getting hotter. I need a haircut. Fashion is dead. (What am I talking about?)

I feel like I should put in an all-night coding session to catch up on work that I didn't have the motivation to do today. It's too hot to sleep, anyway.

I'd like to put my new wallpaper online, but the JPEG quality ruins it. I may just put up a full quality 1600x1200 version and people can scale it down if they need to. I'll see what I can do for you :)

Meanwhile, after some searching (for who knows what reason!) I've found the song used in the recent batch of Channel 10 ads. Most people in Australia will know the music I'm talking about. The original was by Osibisa, called "Sunshine Day" (back in 1976). Since then it's been remixed by over a dozen groups, the most recent being Glaubitz & Roc, which is the version used on the ad. Now, I can sleep easy at night ;) heh

Yesterday was Ethan's birthday party, which was fun. A lot of people came, of whom I recognised about three quarters at first. I think there were only a few people that I hadn't actually met before.

The weekend has gone very quickly and it's as though it never actually occurred. A few hours were spent redesigning a Q3A map that I started about a year ago. It wasn't until the other day that I decided that I should finish it and change some elements that were slowing down the game play of the map. It's far more fluid now and a lot more enjoyable to play :) The textures are now more detailed and I've added suggestions that friends have come up with, which have improved it a lot.

My brother was up from Brisbane this weekend too, and we'll be going down to Brisbane next weekend (which will be a welcome change, even though it will have only been two weeks since we were last there).

I've recently come up with some interesting ideas for projects, some of which will probably be costly to implement, but will be a lot of fun and perhaps even profitable in the long term.

I think now I'm starting to get recognition for my work, which is a good feeling. It's nice when someone rings up and asks for your services, or sends you a request for quotation through snail-mail, and you don't know where they heard about you. Of course there is always the want for larger clients and more challenging and creative projects, but with each client there is a trend towards creating something new and different, which keeps things interesting. It's also good to know that what you're creating is being used by people out in the public sector.

I'll probably add some more in here later tonight, but for now, 'tis me, signing off.

No, it is not Christmas yet, despite what you're probably being told by advertisers. Last week I heard an ad on the radio (which I rarely listen to) promoting some product, reminding people to "get in early for Christmas because it's just around the corner!". What? No it's not, it's almost 50 days away! I'm shocked that people actually think they should spend one sixth of their year preparing for Christmas.

Then there are people that want to plan for what they're going to do on Christmas day, about 2 months ahead. Most people don't know what they're doing next week, so who could be expected to know what they're doing over a month and a half away? For the majority of normal people, it's difficult to be certain what you'll be doing on a specific day that's over a month and a half away, because plans change, life gets in the way and invariably someone else will want you to be doing something else than what you had planned.

Get... a... grip... people!

Meanwhile, there's been huge hype over Doom III - with good reason. I played the leaked alpha that has recently been circulating around the net and I'm impressed (and it's just a very incomplete alpha at this point designed purely for showing off some of the features of the game in a controlled demonstration environment). My guess is that they'll release it next year (a few months after nVidia's NV30 is released anyway). I can't wait. It's the first time in a very long time that I've had a game give me an adrenalin rush.

I did some work over the weekend on my old school's latest CD-ROM Yearbook, just to help them out with a few problems they were having (Flash isn't always the most user-friendly application). After some messing around, I hooked up an old modem to act as an answering machine on one of the lines here and it works very well. The software for it is really flexible (it can do a huge amount, and it's free!). I've also finished redesigning and optimising the Coffee Lounge. It's much more efficient and a lot easier to use, as well as presenting the information in a better form. Also some new work here and there popping up and I've been finishing that swiftly (which is nice).

I was going to pull an all-night code session but my body doesn't feel up to the task, so I'm going to head to bed and I'll update this again tomorrow. Good night all.

OK, I lied again, tomorrow there'll be an update ;)

I've been meaning to update this (and I will in the next 24 hours), but each time I try to it's too late and I should be in bed already trying to get some sleep instead.

Alas, this is the present situation again, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow :) Nite!

Today my little nephew turns 1 year old. It seems like only 6 months ago, but I suppose a lot has happened in the last year :)

After last night, I should get into bed earlier - an all-night coding session followed by only a few hours of sleep before being woken up again.

More updates tomorrow :)