Happy New Year! (and I hope you don't GPFO)

Well, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! In a few hours by our time zone the clock will strike midnight and it shall become 2004 in the PunkClown household. I will probably be in bed at this time, as I have to work in E.D. in the morning, and heaven knows what the New Year's revelry will bring to us in the way of ETOH poisoning, injuries and the like...There used to be a acronym widely used in casualty departments and by ambulance crews: G.P.F.O. or P.F.O.
~ this stood for Got Pissed Fell Over or Pissed Fell Over. Political correctness decrees that we don't use this term anymore, no matter how accurate it may be. I bet the Politically correct bureaucrats who decreed this have never been vomited at, had punches thrown at them or been subject to the wonderful verbal abuse that nurses and medicos often have to deal with in their professional capacities whilst looking after these patients...It's part of the job, and we deal with it, and work on as well as we can under such conditions, in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of these individuals, or prevent them form becoming even more unwell as a sequela of their condition - but just let us have a little light-heartedness to help relieve the stress every now and then! Let's bring back the category GPFO!!
Our children have been acting possessed this evening ( well, more possessed than usual) and as a consequence Mrs P.C and I are a bit weary and not really in a good mood to see the New Year in, so I hope 2004 can start off a bit happier! I better go off-line and head upstairs now to see if I can cheer my beloved up a smidgeon...Now where was that champagne?

New Template ~

work in progress, still sorting a few things out...constructive critique/feedback welcome!
addit: OK, it's looking a bit shite in Netscape...the graphic is being overlaid with the posts...a bit more css tweakage is needed methinks. Doesn't look too bad (even though I say so myself) in IE 6 however (from what I can see)
OK, sorted that and placed a random image javascript code to update some banner images (above) there's only a few so far but if you refresh the page a few times you can see them all...(Wowie-Zowie) I think I have finished fiddling here now...I will probably have an attack of the "WTF have I dones?" tomorrow and change it all back to the two column style...but in the meantime, goodnight! Which reminds me...I must get to Renderosity and check the 2D forum threads there tomorrow, thank heavens I have one day off at least!

Astronomy

Looking through the telescope tonight...On such a clear & relatively warm night it would be a shame not to get the telescope out ~ Looking up my my old friends, NGC 3532 & NGC 2516 a couple of beautiful open star clusters in Carina, not to mention the wonderful Carina nebula (NGC 3372) itself, wherein resides Eta Carinae, which of course may explode at any moment...

Patterns, Textures, Flowers - ( New Photographs)

I have just been putting together some photos for viewing...here... I hope your patience in waiting for the pages to load is rewarded (for the people on dial-up) Things are dragging slowly with the 'puter today ~ It makes me wonder, did it sneak out in the middle of the night to celebrate the season with other rougue computers...creeping back to its desk in the wee small hours to operate on half a processor today? Or perhaps it just seems that way because I have been trying to generate scenes in Bryce, which has a rather glacial pace for it's rendering... Oh! And here's that coke, which I originally stole from Gary who had lifted it from Mandarin Design...yes, it's making the rounds again! Hi Meg! (and everyone). I was thinking meg, that we could have this coke (which seems to be inexhaustable) and a pudding instead of cake at ...Frank's birthday ~ A Magic Pudding to be exact! Then no-one would go hungry or thirsty at the party! I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with "The Magic Pudding" ...most Australian readers I would think ~ it is a children's book by Australian author and illustrator Norman Lindsay. "Every time you cut a slice from the pudding, another one grows in its place, you can eat as much as you like, the pudding lasts forever. What's more, you can change the pudding to any kind you like, it can be steak and kidney or plum duff or jam roly poly" (from a review by Louise O'Conner at Amazon)

Return Of The CAMEO

   As I walked into the newly refurbished and revamped Cinema One at The Cameo Cinema at Belgrave, a well dressed gentleman standing inside the doors apologized that adjustments were still being made to the screen. "No problems" I replied "I'm just happy you've re-opened.." and I was. My wife and I had enjoyed many movies at the Belgrave Cameo Cinema over the years, and were dismayed to hear it was to close down in 2003. Close down it did, for a while, only to be purchased/rescued by Eddie Tamir (Classic Elsternwick) who has revamped it with a fourth cinema, new seats and speaker systems and plans for an outdoor screen next year.
   So there I was making my way to my seat, watching as some workmen with a very tall ladder fiddled about with the screen for a few minutes before collapsing it and hopping off the main stage, satisfied with their screen-tweaking, to the delighted applause of the audience. Then a young looking gentleman in a t-shirt and a neat blazer (Mr. Tamir, I presumed, but wasn't sure having never seen the fellow before) stood at the front of the stage with a microphone and thanked us for being the first audience at the first session of the new Cameo cinema.

He also pointed out that we were probably the first ever cinema audience to witness the adjustments to a brand new screen, which apparently had only been delivered a short time before! He also mentioned that the new speaker system (which I can happily report sounded fantastic) were only passed through customs 48 hours ago and were unpacked and setup on the day before Christmas.
   So it really was a bit of a Christmas miracle that we, the audience, got to view The Return of the King, the third and last film in the epic Peter Jackson adaptation of Tolkein's best known work, on Boxing Day morning 2003. Despite the last minute screen adjustments and so forth, the Movie started bang on time. When I left the movie I was pleased to see a large crowd in the foyer and extending out the door past the brand new side-walk cafe that is also part of the new set-up ~ I snapped a couple of photos of the turn-out from the other side of the road (see above).
   Thanks to Mr. Tamir for bringing my favourite Cinema back to life and giving Melbourne film goers a different choice with a bit of character and atmosphere from the huge multiplex cinemas that seem to lack the soul that the Cameo and other independent cinemas have. The film? Ah! I will tell you about that some other day perhaps, for it has been a long day, a long week in fact! Suffice to say, it lived up to all my expectations! Enough to see it again...no doubt at the same venue too! Read more about my favourite Cinema re-opening...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Everyone!

I wish all a safe, joyous and loving time over the holiday season! Love each other and be happy!

If you want to pop this (it is a 7kb flash swf file) onto your blog or web-site, feel free to copy and paste this code into your page, and it should look like what you see above:

<div style="width:510px; padding:5px; margin:5px; "><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="500" height="100"> <param name="movie" value="http://home.iprimus.com.au/punkclown/PunkClown/Flash/holiday.swf"><br /><param name="quality" value="medium"><embed src="http://home.iprimus.com.au/punkclown/PunkClown/Flash/holiday.swf" quality="medium" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="100"></embed></object></div>

This is fun!

This is my SouthPark self, above...A big thanks to my friend Varian from Renderosity for pointing me to this one! Go on, try it...Show your South Park Self!

Where were they?

All the people that weren't arriving for medical and/or surgical help at work the other day? They were just waiting to roll through the door yesterday, when I was assigned Triage....Everybody comes to the Emergency Department when I'm at triage! The nurses from "out the back" kept coming into the "front" ~ hitting me and tell me it was all my fault that the department was so busy! *heh* Lots of sore tummies, hmmmmm....(contemplates the probable assortment of chips (crisps), chocolate, nibbles, soft-drink, hard-drink and fruit cakes that seem to adorn every table at this time of year) ~ I wonder where these sore tummies are coming from?

Back at work...

after suffering some weird sort of vestibular disturbance yesterday that made the room spin (no, I hadn't been drinking!) Probably some minor ear infection/inflammation. The good looking one put some special ear-drops in my ears and that helped...Getting ear-drops put in your ears is the weirdest thing, sort of like tickling, sort of like...oh I don't know...it just feels weird! Work today, in the monitored area, quiet for most of the shift...where was everyone? Out Christmas shopping maybe? Oh and bloggar works with the title field again, without any api error messages, thankfully. Good stuff. Is everyone having fun?

A happier post ~ "Happy Happy Joy Joy" *grin*
Re: Bloggar problems, well I've sent off my request for help to blogspot, as well as to the forum Terry pointed me to previously, as well as the Bloggar forum, so hopefully someone will have some sort of answer...On the blogspot status page there is this post:
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Logging into the Blog*Spot admin panel is currently unavailable and we are working to fix it.
posted by Jason Goldman | 5:44 PM
Perhaps that is what underlies these troubles. Cheers everyone!
Testing...the Bloggar programmer(s) have sorted a fix to override this problem, you just can't use it with a title field in blogger at the moment...they have also informed blogger about it...not bad for a freeware program developer! Just testing now...*fingers crossed*
Yay! It works!

OK....Now what?

Your blog server returned the following error message:
com.pyra.blogger.api.AppkeyNotValid Exception: InvalidAppKeyException: Either this appkey isn't registered or you sent a null appkey.

Now it appears I can't use Bloggar to post? Moveable Type is starting to look more and more promising! Currently I am using the blogger interface that seems to take forever to load and do anything with, compared to Bloggar. ARRRGGGHHHH! I'm sure I will be more cheerful soon, sorry!

A message from Michelle

peace

And one I would like to pass along too! And thank heavens that nasty man in Iraq has been captured. Now a sincere wish in the hope that the deaths of civilians and soldiers cease in the region.

Thinking about Christmas Gifts

I just had a bit of a rant (or something) over at Scott's blog Darklemon in reply to this post ~ the discussion was about buying Christmas gifts, and a couple of people were razzin Scott because he gets vouchers. Here's what I said:

I think whatever we choose retail consumer wise is so-so, vouchers, gifts, whatever. Hand made things mean the most, even if it's a hand drawn card with a jar of jam you made yourself, whether you can draw or make jam well or not. You get the idea...These things mean something to those who love us, and even those who don't. What we should REALLY DO, we who are so "effluent" (Thanks Kath & Kim) is NOT buy presents for each other at all, we who already have so much STUFF, that we don't know where to put half of it most of the time..(which is why we shop at Ikea too, so we can find smarter ways to organize our STUFF so it looks semi-stylish) ~ No, what we should do is spend the money (or at least half of it) that we would ordinarily spend on our fellows (who already have enough stuff anyway, so wtf) on something like Medicins San Frontiers or the World Wildlife Fund or something REALLY significant. No I'm not trying to put our retailers out of business, I'm just bouncing ideas (and maybe having a bit of a rant, sorry Scott) Peace on Earth, Goodwill to ALL.
:-)>

What do you think?

Yippee...

After several hours of not being able to access this page, I can view it again, and yes the changes seem to have taken...as for anything intelligent to say at the moment? Ummm...can I take a raincheck on that? addit: Well, I shouldnt have spoken so soon...I'm getting that screen again...WTF is going on? I know this blog isn't so popular that too many hits are overwhelming the servers!

Changed comments thingy...

Poor old enetation seemed a bit temperamental, so I am trying out haloscan, from what I have seen it seems to be fairly stable. Thanks to all those who left comments on the old system, sorry they have all disappeared* well, technically I think they haven't...they exist as energy somewhere (probably on enetations servers for a while)...Please continue to comment! Not much to say about today...I did some brush-cutting in anticipation of fire and snake in the long-grass season, and then it rained, quite a bit...The good-looking one and I watched "Enigma" (once the rugrats finally settled) and enjoyed it...time for bed. I will be catching up with a few posts at rendersosity tomorrow...my time to do that today kept getting interrupted...I was pleased today to see one of my good Internet friends exposed in the Computer Arts Magazine Exposure section. Way to go Bev! I don't have that issue, I will try and find it....An outstanding artist, you can also see more of her artwork in her online portfolio here! Sublime.
Addit: *I have saved all archives for the last 4 months separately and the original comments for those months are still accessible, when enetation is working properly, it is only the comments from this month up to this post that are lost...
I am currently getting this message:

We are sorry, but a temporary problem is preventing your request from being completed.
The system administration team for Blog*Spot has been notified.
Error: 500

when trying to view punkclown daze to see if my changes have been implemented. The backroom stuff at blogger seems to be working however, as I was able to retrieve my template and this post to update it. Strange!

Just a quick one...

I have just visited levitated.net, Jared Tarbell's inspiring open source flash based site, and discovered he has been busy with a whole lot of new and groovey projects...I borrowed some of his open source code to make a quick and dirty modification for posting here...

[Current Audio Stimuli: My Human Gets Me Blues - Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (02:47)]

We need bigger pipes!

"What we need," he said, "is a place where we can crash and burn without bringing down the whole system." Georgia Tech's Mr. Hutchins said, referring to a new Internet system that will operate independently from the world wide web of today...his comment was referring to the fact that scientists need to tinker with any new system to streamline and improve information flow on the system, much as the computer scientists did with the ARPA net, the precursor to the modern net that we know. Read more...bigger information pipes

busybusybusy...

Hi! I've been at work, being busy, busy, busy ~ with busy bodies, very busy...getting nowhere...
Well that's not quite true is it. Even when standing still we are still moving with the planet as it revolves eastward (from where you and I are standing) Not forgetting the Earth is also zooming around the sun on it's orbital path as the solar system itself moves about the galaxy...Our front balcony faces eastward. I like that. On a clear night I sometimes stand on the balcony watching the individual stars rise in front of me, and imagine I am on the bridge of an enormous ship, looking out as the new horizons of the universe unfold before me. It's a beautiful thang...
Thank you Graham from Sydney for visiting my guestbook, I hope life is treating you well! Before I forget, in the spirit of Mandarin Design (the idea certainly spurred by meg's image gallery and my wish to contribute to it) I have these thumbnails for you to snag and use if you wish! Thanks Meg, it is a good idea, if you want to borrow these for your gallery, please do, your server is probably more reliable than mine (I've found it (my isp) and consequently my main web page and images I link to) to be down a couple of times too many in the last few weeks. I don't know why, but my gif file sizes are relatively large, I probably need to limit the palette or something. I don't actually use gifs that much, I usually use the "save for the web" functions in photoshop to get small file sizes in my jpegs...Cheers all!

[Current Audio Stimuli: Going on 17 - Jerry Goodman - Ariel (07:17)]

Freak Storm

~ all night last night, lightning followed by thunder followed by lightning, und so weiter...I love summer thunderstorms and the rain on a tin roof. We weren't hit too badly by it, no damage, so we were lucky...not so others - Melbourne cleans up after freak storm...I sat out on the balcony for a while enjoying nature's light show, then I thought I would try and capture some using the video mode of my digital camera. Just another thing to add to the nature pages of this site. You can see some of what I captured with sound from last night here. (About 450kb flash file...do some eye exercises whilst its loading!) It's strange but everything seems to be running 10 minutes late today....

Net Visions...

Ever wondered what the net may look like? Internet mapping project weaves colourful web ~ Those of you who subscribe to New Scientist or perhaps webmonkey may have read this already, but I thought it was quite interesting, read more at the link, and look at the pretty pictures!

I stole this coke...

from tfs reluctant who had previously stolen it from Mandarin Design...ummm, I got thirsty and drank a bit, sorry.

More "Art" ~ Less Talk!