I consider myself to have been an excellent supporter of Carlton this year. Even though we are bottom of the ladder, having only won 2 games before this weekend, I’ve attended every match, and stayed to watch the end of each and every Melbourne based disheartening loss throughout the season (with the exception of one 100 point thrashing).

This weekend, due to feeling slightly shite and having worked until 3am this morning, I decided to save myself the embarasment of yet another massive defeat – last time we played the Tigers, we lost by a rather depressing 85 points, and we hadn’t won a single match against anyone since.

After making that gut wrenching decision this morning, guess what happened? Carlton chalked up their first win for almost three months, which means that the Tigers both started and ended our 11 game club record losing streak. I suppose that means I should in a good mood, but I ain’t. >:|

Pete

Serves:
1 Dog right.

Ingredients:
1 intellectually stunted bull terrier

1 Porcupine

Method:
Introduce animals to each other, preferably in a confined space. Sit back and wait for results.

I think it’s fair to say the score sits at Porcupine 1, Doggy 0 although judging by the look of the dog I’d doubt the porcupine actually survived. Perhaps a draw is fairer. Oh for those left a little disturbed after that, you’ll be pleased to know the mutt survived to live another day. Apparently the vet spent a few hours removing the quills, and some were in too deep to remove, but they eventually worked their own way out. Still, painful shit.

Pete

As most of you know, I’ve had an iPod for quite some time now. It’s travelled with me around the world, had most of it’s insides replaced at one time or another and entertained countless people with literally weeks worth of music. I got the iPod some months before iTunes launched it’s windows version, but when it eventually did come out in October 2003, I started using iTunes to manage both the ol’ iPod and my general music collection on the computer. As far as I was concerned, iTunes did an excellent job at what it was meant to do – even if Australia has to this day been screwed an iTunes music store. The only problem I had with iTunes itself was that you couldn’t have music playing in the background while you were working, with no big taskbar icon in the startmenu, while having track information and controls easily accessible. I know it’s a tiny thing, but it really annoyed me that the mini-mode insisted on making it’s presence known by taking a huge slot out of your taskbar.

That is, it annoyed me until today. I was trawling through random crap on the interweb and found news of another corporate takeover of a small, clever program that I had never heard of. Konfabulator is a ‘widget’ manager, where Widgets are mini-programs that are too useless to be launched on their own. Before Yahoo decided to buy the company out, the program cost money to own, but now Yahoo have released the full program as freeware. It has useless shit that you’d expect to be spyware, like a weather bar and analog clock popup, but there was also an iTunes remote, which is exactly what I was looking for with the original iTunes. No annoying bar thing, as well as being sleek and attractive to boot! iTunes is all of a sudden great again!

«The iTunes remote & clock widgets ontop of Firefox»

Anyway go and download Konfabulator and see if you can find something even more useless than an iTunes remote!

Pete

NASA has made it’s return to flight, with the shuttle Discovery blasting into space about ten minutes ago. Congratulations to all who helped it succeed, although just between you and me, I think they went a bit crazy with the safety issues over the two and a half years of no flights. The fact of the matter is that we are sending people into space – however well prepared we try to be, the risks are pretty bloody big.

But nonetheless, this is quite a day. Congratulations, humans!

Pete

I haven’t actually been able to confirm what I’ve heard as being true, but apparently Peter Jackson had a hand in this new, funny as hell, frankly big ad for Carlton Draught. It’s still rubbish beer, but the ad is bloody impressive. Apparently the TV campaign starts tonight, but it’s been circling the interweb for the past few days, and was featured on the Footy Show on Thursday. Anyway check it out. Tres Cool.

Pete

Well who could have asked for a more exciting first day for an Ashes series? The Australian skipper was sconed and bleeding within half an hour of play, Harmison took 5-43 and lead England to bowl out Australia for 190 and then, at the change of innings, McGrath outbowled his opposite number with 5-21, helping send England off at stumps with an abhorrent 7-92. With all this action – 17 wickets falling within a day – you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that didn’t enjoy (or wouldn’t enjoy if they understood the game) the day’s play.

Or so you’d think. If you were to actually look around, it would be fairly easy to find a lot of disgruntled fans who wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much, including myself. So why didn’t I enjoy what appeared on the surface to be a fine day’s cricket? What exactly is the big, maggoty fly in my ointment? Well, I’ll give you a couple of hints. The fly is French, comes in 21 stages and lives throughout most of July. The Tour de fucking France.

Well, perhaps that’s unfair. The cycling tour itself is quite enjoyable and interesting, and it quite easily deserves coverage on Australian TV, it’s just that the best way to watch cricket is generally by actually watching it fully, not seeing the first two hours of the cricket, follwed by 4 hours of cycling, then the last 45 minutes at Lord’s. I understand that the SBS can’t really afford to drop the cycling, as it’s become almost a tradition for the channel to broadcast the tour every year, but surely there’s some way we can all be happy?

I suppose really it’s Channel 9′s fault. Infact all the commercial stations have a case to answer. They all bid on the rights for the Ashes earlier in the year, and all failed to secure the rights with their millions of dollars, but then promptly gave up. When it looked like Australians would be left without any coverage whatsoever, the SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) – the government owned brother of the ABC which screens foreign films, foreign news, soccer and Mythbusters – came to the rescue, picking up the rights at a bargain and ensured Australians would see the Ashes, free to air. Of course you can get the Ashes disruption free on Pay-TV, but then who the hell wants to pay $50 a month for 60 channels of crap, just for the cricket?

Oh well. Looks like we might just have to grin and bear it. It’s better than nothing neh?

Pete

I really liked it. Harry Potter has grown up, and the writing style and maturity of the content has followed that progression. However, although I must say I had expected something along those lines, I don’t think I was expecting Half-Blood Prince to be as dark and grisly as it was. When I say this, I mean dark and grisly in the sense that I don’t think I’d read the story to kids of mine, if they were under the age of about ten. Honestly, the sleepless nights and bedwetting would just not be worth it. I’ve gone to the precaution of putting a plastic sheet on my own bed just in case, and last time I checked I was well outside the target audience for Harry Potter books.

Alrighty now, this is where it get’s more specific, so a warning is in order. If you haven’t read the books yet but will, or just don’t want to know about the secrets within, then DON’T READ ON. However, if you don’t give a toss or have already completed the book, then Read more

Although it seems the latest Harry Potter book will outsell previous titles (100,000 more preorders than the last), most people I know couldn’t care less about it. These include people who suggested I start reading them 6 years ago, which is disheartening in many ways.

Oh well I still preordered the book a couple of months ago, and waddled down to the bookstore this morning to pick the book up an hour or so after the worldwide embargo was lifted. I suppose that shows quite clearly that while some of us grow up, others don’t.

Matthew, the retarded easter-egg chick with my brand spanking new copy.

Pete

So where exactly did that last week go? I had intended to blog a fair bit actually, and still have something rather profound bubbling in my head, readying itself for mass publication, but I just haven’t been terribly enthused to do anything this last week.

Instead of writing for months, I’ll do a quick wrap of the week.

Oh and speaking of holidays, 2nd semester of uni starts on Monday, although the first week is supposed to be a student strike, and the second is green week. I have no idea how I’m going to pass at this rate

Pete

They may be in the middle of a terrorist crisis at the moment, but those bloody poms never seem to miss an opportunity to appear arrogant and cocksure. The Australian cricket team has been the bearer of much of the recent taunting (just wait, you fuckers!), and I remember receiving a number of taunts from various bastards around the place after England’s RWC win in 2003, however in the last few days the French have been under fire, thanks to London pipping Paris for the 2012 games.

Here’s a couple of images that I stumbled over today. Although I fear I may be suffering a bout of hypocrisy here, and there are few things as fun as beating down on Chirac and his crepe eating compatriots, there is such a thing as a bad winner.

Pete