Something
Emporium

Well, 2004 has finally drawn to a close. I don’t know about you guys, but my 2004 has brought me my worst times, and my even worse times. I think I can honestly say that 2004 has been the worst year of my life. And that’s really saying something. I’ve never understood new years resolutions before. Up until now, I thought that New Years Eve was a time to reflect on everything that has happened. Now, I realise that sometimes when you reflect, you think about the things you would change if you could. The reason one makes new years resolutions is because one is not happy. This is why I’ve never made them before.

Lets hope that 2005 is better than 2004. I can’t see how it could be worse, but that’s another story.

Yeah, so for Christmas I got a brand new shiny phone with a camera, meaning I can now present y'all with the following pics without having to link to them:

Before	After

Ok this is how its goin to work. If you want to give five bucks and you know me then you can just hand it to me next time I see you. If you don't know me, hand it to Justin who will give it to me. Justin is the Man. He is the Mantis. Thats the Man with a tis on the end, which means hes cool. He's also the Mantosaurus. Thats Mantis, replacing the i with an o, and adding a 'saurus'. Which means his penis is as big as a dinosaur. Anyway, Tsunami fund. If you can't be arsed waiting until you see either of us, here's my address. Yep, my address. I don't care, what you gonna do? Gatecrash it? It would be better to gatecrash somewhere where theres a party. 7 Nicholson Place, Hillcrest. Put your 5 bucks in the letterbox, in an envelope or something, addressed to Chris, with your full name and a contact phone number inside with the 5 bucks or however much you want to donate. The number is important for when I draw the flights out, because not everyone looks at SE and I'd like the whole thing consistent.

I'll reiterate that all donations go to the Red Cross, nothing too me, and I guess you'll have to just trust me on this as there is no other way to do it. If you don't know me, ask someone who knows me if I can be trusted.

I will compile a list of people who have donated and include that on the bank cheque which I'll give to the relief organisation. The names on the list will also be thrown in a hat and 3 names drawn out for scenic flights. If you've donated 15 bucks, your name will occur in the hat 3 times. We all get the drift, we can all do maths.

Oh, and if you put it in my letterbox, let me know through here or email (c_blake01@hotmail.com) or by txt (0212029356). If you txt let me know who you are please. This is all in aid of money going missing and me trusting you and making up the difference myself. If you screw the system and say you put money in the letterbox and didn't, well fuck you. If you abuse the fact i put my cell number here, fuck you too. Its your 20c. Or time if you're with telecom. And if you screw me and I find out, no prob. I'll just kill you one day.

So get dropping-in-letterboxing! tell your brothers, tell your sisters, tell your parents, friends, aunts, uncles, children and grandchildren! And if they donate too, put their names in the envelope + number too (home number i might add, will be fine) so I can put them in the draw and on the letter to the Red Cross.

If you don't understand just send me a message.

You're all awesome, I love every single one of you, even you guys and gals I haven't met yet. It's ok, you wouldn't want to meet me. Spread the word, drop it to me or justin or my letterbox, do the electronic communication thing, and help people. Pretty cool eh, that helping people thing.

I'll post updates as stuff happens,
Cheers very much guys.

There's been a few additions to the statistics pages. Just before you get all concerned - the two dates near the top of the statistics are very pessimistic, because they use the last 30 days of figures and the statistics module hasn't been up that long. The actual date for reaching 200,000 is likely to be in February.

Also:

Just wanted to share my latest fancy CSS trick with everyone. You'll all want to click this here link, then hit the back button on your browser and take a look at the link text. And this is despite Internet Explorer's best efforts at stopping my fun.

Luckily, I found a rather hard-out javascript effort to plug some of IE's worst sins - it's called IE7. You know things are bad when independent developers need to misappropriate a client-side scripting language to piece together a working browser. You can take a look at their work here. Of course, the name has been the source of some hilarity and confusion. And yes, I'm just looking for excuses to use links in news items now.

So, don't use IE and you won't be stuck with that ton of javascript slowing you down.

I'm at work.  This morning I really didn't want to get out of bed.  So I left the house half an hour late.  But for some fucked up reason, I still got to work on time.  I didn't drive faster than I usually do and I took the same route.  It's just wierd.  But I forgot my cell phone, so I'm gonna be bored all day, and I might actually have to do some development work.  On second thought, I doubt I'll get the desperate.

So this comic needs no explaining.

And it's finally summer. Well, it's starting to feel like it, what with the sun and all. So anyway, today, NCEA results came out. How'd everyone go? Big sighs of relief all around? Hooray.

So yes. I started to run out of stuff that was even halfway decent to read, so I took myself off to Takapuna Library and got some books out, at Dom's reccomendation. And I highly reccomend that you get Betting on the Muse by Charles Bukowski. It's awesome. The headline is from a poem Dom pointed out to me, named Panties . It's all fairly random and nonsensical, in a strangely sensible way. You kind of have to read it to get it. And even then you don't really get it. But it's enjoyable, none the less.

Indeed. People heading away anywhere? I'm off to Whangamata tomorrow. Yay. Whores in bikini's and lifeguards on steroids. Awesome.

All of you Incubus fans out there should go on over to here. They're kind of Incubus meets A Fire Inside. Really good stuff. My personal favourite is Jesus Rides The Subway. But yeah, check them out, and if you wanna join the mailing list or whatever, message me.

Anyway, I'll leave you all to it - apologies for the BOLDNESS and the LINKS everywhere.. but I felt like taking them for a test run. SE4 is awesome, Dom.

--Alyx

Hi Faithful Something Emporium Viewers.

I've recently joined a fantastic band called "These Four Walls" as their new bass player. This weekend is going to be my debut playing live gigs with the band. My debut kicks off on the 14th of January at the Masonic in Devonport. This will most probably only be a small time gig. But I'd still appreciate some form of support...

The big gig of the weekend is The Brownzy in Browns Bay on the 15th. This is going to huge, and it will be an especially good night for me if These Four Walls had lots of support! The bands gracing the stage at the Brownzy as special guests are: This Found Flavour and Viracocha. The price of this gig is $5 which is not a hell of a lot, especially for a great band like These Four Walls...I'll admit I was envious of them when I first saw them.

Anyway, to sum up my rant, I would really appreciate people coming to see These Four Walls play at the Brownzy. $5 for a ticket. 8pm Till Late.

If you want tickets, give me a private message or a txt on 021701145. Don't forget to say who you are...

Cheers

Chris (T4W Bass Player)

Well, I saw Phantom of the Opera last night.

First of all, I warn all of you, DON'T go see it at Berkeley Mission Bay. The sound was about four or five frames behind the visual for the whole movie, I shit thee not. You'd see the actor enunciate the consonant, and about 1/5 of a second later you'd hear the consonant. Maybe that's a problem common to all the cinemas, but in any case, don't take the chance.

Other than that, it wasn't all that bad. It's a pretty accurate depiction of theatre life:
- Carlotta, the lead soprano queen bitch who can't sing, is a lead soprano queen bitch who can't sing;
- The crew are always drinking;
- The musicians always play everything perfectly, no matter how trying the circumstances;
- One of the crew falls off some scaffolding above the stage and kills himself (Matt in Rosencrantz, anyone?);
- In the big catastrophe at the end, the musicians are the first to die.

On the bright side, there's a cool camera shot involving the double bass guy. I give it... an x out of 10.

I have just managed to get my hands on a $100 voucher for anything from Westfield Shopping Centres. This is awesome. I'm stoked. However, I don't know what I should get. I just don't know... Does anyone have any ideas?

I have been working real hard on my arcade machine the last few days - yes I'm building one too. Here's the latest concept render of the main control panel. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Even negative ones, it's up to you.

I got my coin mech and Justin got his cool-ass joysticks. (Was that appropriate usage of the hyphen?)

We even had a car issue in that I had to get some new valve caps for my car after some SOB stole the cool aluminium ones I had.  We had a brush with the law, as we went past a cop on the side of the road at about 115kph.  Justin even allegedly discovered himself.

So a successful road trip it was, and into the annals of history it goes.  Years from now we will reminisce about "that road trip".  Or not.

I finally managed to track down that speeding ticket letter thing that I could vaguely remember. It's just as funny as I remember it.

Here.

Dom: And I managed to post it a whole day before it was mentioned on 'Common Law'. First saw this a few months back - I figure I'm at least 6 months ahead of mainstream.

Ok so this isn't exactly "news" but I found it in my files the other day while looking for something and thought, why not give the good people of SE a look at it.  It's quite catchy and rather amusing in some places and does present a couple of pretty good arguments at one point or another. But I warn you now, if you're religious you may find it slightly offensive.

Watching the video of it is best. So click one of the first three options underneath "Add a comment to the message board" depending on which option is best for you.

Happy viewing : )

With 43 members it's fair to say that SE has a pretty big community, but there's always room for improvement. I recently found a webcomic list and was shocked to see that SE wasn't on it! :O

Well not anymore, here we go. You can also check out how other people have rated SE

Today, anyone online at 2am would have seen me there.  I was at work.  lol.  Canadians.

Tonight is the last gig for a while.  So if you're otherwise unoccupied, head over the the Dogs Bollix and rock out to These Four Walls.  We hit the studio soon, so save your pennies for the 10 song EP.

There might even be a comic on Thursday.  But then again maybe not.  I've got a few ideas brewing, but I might be asleep so I can come to work at midnight again. 

In other news, there’s no way I'm becoming a misogynist.  Quite the opposite, eh girls?

I got something delivered today:

The other day I was /.ing and I came across a link to Minty Mp3, which I of course thought was an insanely cool idea. Unfortunately it looked just a tad too hardcore for me to even attempt. One thing did catch my interest though and that was the fact that "half of the parts can be sampled for free".

So I sent away for a couple of ICs that I thought I might be able to use in my 'testing'. A 'qualified design engineer' I am not, but who can't find a use for the insanely cool MAX2606 6-pin all-in-one low-current FM transmitter?! And if I ever do need to buy a couple of thousand ICs, I'll be sure to remember the time Texas Instruments rushed me a few audio amp ICs in three days flat!

I think there should be a new course offered at UoA. Planning 369 - 'Advanced University Course Planning'. The prerequisites for this new course should be two courses that have mutual restrictions, thus barring anyone from entering, ever. And if anyone ever did manage to enter that course, they should be automatically eligible to graduate in Planning, having well and truly proven themselves capable.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.
Those of you who missed seeing 'Animal Crackers' on 'The Vault' tonight deserve to be shot. And now, pardon me while I have a strange interlude.

Hey people, cheers to all of you who donated to the fund, we managed to get $250 (i think its something like $258.35c but I'd have to go count it right now). Jack really, but it'll feed, clothe and medicate a family past the intital emergency stage of the aid operation. Kudos to you guys!

Regret to inform the scenic flight was won by a dude at work, scott meikel, tall red haired guy of scottish descent. He gives me shit every day, I drop my guts silently near his work spot and comment on him putting his cock into 12 year olds. I wish everyone was as mature as I am.

Cheers again for the donations, I'm dropping it into the Red Cross in a few days when a bit more trickles in. If you didn't win the flight (yeah thats all of you) its allright I've taken a few of you up before, and I have to do 3 takeoffs and landings every 90 days anyway (= 3 takeoffs really, because hopefully you do land after every takeoff), so I'll be taking people all the time:)

Catch your arses later, if you know what I mean

Yes, indeed, a second package arrived at the 'Something Emporium Testing Division' today. This one contained two of the most-excellent LM4766T 'Overture Audio Power Amplifier Series Dual 40-Watt Audio Power Amplifier with Mute'. This one I could actually use, especially as the datasheet includes a circuit diagram for how to use it bridged.

The actual IC package bit had the following notice on it: "Made in one or more of the following countries: China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom. The exact country of origin is unknown." - Now that's patriotism for you.

You, er, saw it here first. Probably.

Weezer have a new single coming out on the 21st of March, called 'Beverly Hills'. The tipoff was here, and was confirmed over at weezer.com. My arm is tingling.

That is all.

If you're like me, and I know I am, then you've always wondered what would happen if Mr T went up against a foo' like, oh, I dunno, Jim Carrey.

Well wonder no more! Thanks to the wonders of modern imaging technology, we can realistically simulate what would happen in such a match-up. You want to see Mr T take on Steve Irwin? Well, now you can.

I love the internet.

I've been trying to restrict myself to a single news item a day, on average. You might have noticed the new article. It's there because I can't fit all the photos I wanted to post into this news item without making the page too big. But you'll want to check the article out, it's got some aerial photography that I've been looking up - the whole thing with my address being blurred was what got me onto this. See if you can figure out where each picture is of.

Also, John Conway, of 'Game of Life' fame - a comsci/maths/doomsday/philosophy/game theory master - is lecturing at Auckland tomorrow. He's a professor of maths at Princeton. Should be very interesting.

All you people over 18: Read on!
All those under: Return to your homes - there is nothing to see here.

On Tuesday 8th February I will be playing my last gig with The Forcefields. It'd be great to see you all at the K' Rd Ballroom from 8pm. There are some other bands too. A pop punk band called Nevertheless and maybe Quarter2. Don't know about that one yet.

It's going to be awesome. Rock On.

This morning I wrote a letter to the editor of the Herald.  Now, thats pretty unlike me.  Normally, I read the letters to the editor and either get really depressed because our country is full of imbiciles, or I get really angry and have to stop reading before I explode.  But this time, I managed to contain my rage long enough to write down a strongly worded argument.  We'll wait and see if it gets published

In other news, my mum had something published in the Herald today - see if you can find it!