Rubénerd!

We're all familiar with dryers that produce a spare sock from a bunch of pairs. I propose this scientifically reproducible phenomena also extends to packing boxes, given yet another maddeningly fruitless search this afternoon.

When we operate a clothes dryer, we place our perfectly matching pairs of socks into it, then let it spin until the moisture has been adequately expelled for the subsequent comfortable wearing of said devices. There'd be little point throwing in a spare sock, because we can't just wear one. Yet, whenever this time honoured tradition of the suburbanite is performed (a rite of passage if you will), we are left pondering why a spare sock appeared, or another sock went missing.

House moving is no different. Over the course of my sister's and my life, we've lived in 14 houses in 6 cities in 3 countries (if I count Adelaide when I was in student housing and living with friends). During each of these moves, we've had our entire lives thrown into boxes, taped up and shipped somewhere.

Without fail, we lose things to breakage, or other things simply vanish without a trace! With this latest move to Sydney I can add four more things to the list:

• my Yuki mug (from the Haruhi Suzumiya series)
• my Gundam ZAFT uniform
• my Star Trek DS9/VOY science uniform (still got the badge!)
• and my Ouran High Hosts Club blazer.

The problem with losing things from moves (other than the actual losing) is that you never have closure. You're never sure whether the items are in a box that never got unpacked, or whether it fell off a truck. It could be under your nose the entire time and you don't know it, or someone else is using your stuff. It doesn't matter if the boxes are numbered and catalogued, or who you ship with, or whether it's a blue moon, it doesn't seem to make any difference.

A Buddhist would tell me that it's my attachment to material possessions that's the problem, and that it's the ultimate symbol of a first world problem, but I really liked that stuff, and I could have really used those clothes for SMASH! on Saturday. Bummed out beyond all belief.

Guess it's just time to start from scratch again... though too late for the one event of the year when it mattered. F*ck.

The 29th of February! Such a monuments (though chronologically predictable and necessary) occasion warrants a post I have precious time to write, so instead of a well thought out, logical post I've decided just to ramble for a bit. That's so unlike me.

When did this happen last time

To get into the spirit of writing, I thought it best to check out what I was blogging about the last time it was the 29th of February. Given this happens every four years, I was able to ascertain I needed to look up the 29th of February 2008. No, I'm not a mathematical genius, I just used a calculator to deduct 4 from 2012.

What happened last time

Turns out, the post I wrote for the 29th of February 2008 was a rather unsalubrious rant regarding sites taking my blog posts and wrapping them in ads. No, I'm not talking about Google (haiyo!), I mean spam sites. Ironically, those that Google used to be infested with and are starting to slowly creep back.

Let's take a look! Step into the four year time machine!

At first spam bots harvested email addresses from search engine indexes of web pages, then when the concept of posting comment on blogs started reaching critical mass spam bots started pumping spam through those [..]

It seems to me though that blog spam in itself is evolving though. I used the word "though" twice in that sentence. When previously they mostly consisted of masses of links to get more Google juice, now they seem to be latching on web feeds that blog software exports and creating more and more junk blogs with this plagiarised information. Some of them try to pass themselves off as legitimate by creating faux introductions that go along the lines of "Hey I found this blog entry and it's really interesting, here's a summary!".

I even took a screenshot of Camino showing one of the spam sites in question.

29th of February 2012

So now we return to the future, or the present, or whatever this period of time is. Einstein's Law of Relativity would imply that in this current time we would see it as the present, but had we stayed in 2008 we would have seen the present as the future. Right?

This reminds me of that episode of Star Trek Voyager with the USS Relativity where the first officer is trying to explain to 7 the idea that time travel is plausible if one understands effects often precede causes, and that temporal paradoxes can cause headaches. Wait, that was Captain Janeway, never mind.

So-called "True Trekkies" aren't supposed to like Star Trek Voyager, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching it growing up. That could be read as me watching it while I was growing up, or that I was watching the show itself grow up. English is such a clumsy language, one need only be a programmer or know other languages to be aware of this. Hey, at least we don't have seven different tenses! Right?

What was the photo?

So we finally come to the photo from the very beginning of this post. As I did while looking for previous blog entries written on the 29th of February 2008, I ran my master Swiss Army Chainsaw Perl script to spit out photos on my SLR backup drive taken on that day. I didn't take many, but one was that view above from my bedroom balcony at the time. You can view the full photo here, if you really want to.

Suffice to say, set homesickness mode to full! It was such a shock to have a quiet, dark bedroom when I came back to Sydney, I can tell you that much!

Another photo I had for some reason was this "screenshot" of installing Nvidia binary blob drivers for my FreeBSD tower.

The End

The irony hasn't escaped me that I spent my 29th of February 2012 post taking about the 29th of February 2008. That's fine, on the 29th of February 2016 I'll talk about the 29th of February 2012. Better make notes about Raspberry Pi for that day. The system works!

This could very well be the greatest idea of all time: a Star Trek Voyager Christmas ornament! Not only does it look spiffy, but it can be lit up from the inside by plugging it into any standard standard string of incandescent Christmas lights!

I can already hear Tuvok telling me it would be illogical to get one of these.

Lawmakers propose back-up capital in Osaka in case of quake

TOKYO - Japan's government should turn Osaka's old airport into a site to handle administrative functions and economic activities in the event an earthquake, or other disaster, knocks out Tokyo, according to a group of lawmakers.

I would have thought Kyoto would be a more fitting locale given it's the historical centre of Japan, but I suppose refurbishing an existing site makes sense.

In any case, having a backup is a great idea. The USS Enterprise D had an auxiliary "battle" bridge, and Australia has Canberra.

Star Trek meets Gurren Lagann in this second story arc. Kinda.

Plot: Having finally understood and come to terms with the imminent lunar based threat against their species, our humans in this saga demand restraint and discipline against the one person who has defended them.

Art: At the risk of repeating myself (repeating myself, repeating myself) from the previous episode, the cityscapes and art were even more breathtaking than before. The fact Gainax hasn't released Gurren Lagann in Blu-Ray or another form of 1080p media was once a major inconvenience, but now it borders on criminality. Just saying.

Light: Supreme ditto. Does that exist, "supreme" ditto? Sounds like a pizza. Wait, we're discussing Gurren Lagann, not Railgun, Angel Beats or Code Geass.

Explanations: Amongst the issues I've raised with this series in the past, one has been their incredibly speedy technological progress from subterranean dwellers to futuristic city dwellers. After reanimating the former Spiral King in a large, Futurama-esque jar, Rossiu learns of the spiral power that gives humans the power to progress so rapidly... and pose a threat.

Mindf*ck: I'd long anticipated the enemy's actions weren't as black and white as they seemed, but it does seem Our Heroes really had no idea who the real enemy was. That said, that Spiral King was still incredibly obtuse, and only by reanimating his corpse without emotions were they able to learn the whole truth (Nia aside).

Science fiction: Lots of Star Trek here. Their enemies fly ships that bear an uncanny similarity to the Enterprise-D, defended by energy fields we'd call shields. Finally, the idea of a civilisation wanting to neutralise a potential challenger before they can advance was the plot of Star Trek First Contact. The anti-spirals are The Borg!

Quotable quotes: "Shame he's not a mecha... THAT we could fix".

Relationships: In his (albeit understandable) capacity as scapegoat hunter, Rossiu further strains his relationship with Simon. I hope we see a resolution of this, they worked so well together in the past.

Homages: Was it just me, or did it look as though Evil Nia transformed into an Evangelion-eque character with one of their plugsuit things? I know very little about Evangelion, but lived with people intimately familiar with the series a few years ago!

Heart tugging Will Simon get his beloved Nia back, and ipso facto will we, the viewers, get her back? That reminds me, I still haven't found a[n affordable] Nia figure anywhere.

Absense: Yoko, and the fabled "Gainax bounce" which I was informed of today. Are they setting it up so she's instrumental in saving them in the future?

Meaning: Essentially, this series has taken the concept of Fibonacci numbers we see in nature but can't yet explain, and added meaning to them, and the plot for a story. The idea of everything from galaxies to the double helix being a spiral, and therefore the essense of who we are... I thought that was a really beautiful concept, and only makes me want to get a drill to wear around my neck even more!

Conclusion: Despite my two favourite characters being taken out of action for reasons that weren't their fault, I otherwise loved this episode. While I can understand some people may have reserveations about some of the fanservice (of which this episode was surprisingly absent of), I don't grok those claiming the series is shallow. I'm looking at you, Sydney Morning Herald writers!

Sitting in a coffee shop this morning catching up on some assignment work, the kids show playing on the plasma in the corner flashed up a question on screen, presumably for the little ones to answer and win prizes.

If you could travel to the future, what would you do and why?

I'm referring them to the Starfleet Temporal Integrity Commission for financially soliciting a breach of the Temporal Prime Directive. I'm just shocked and appalled.

Here's some random stuff that fell through subspace into this Trekkie's browser over the course of the last few days and thought deserved more than a frantic bookmarking on del.icio.us, et al.

We start with the cast of the original series chibbified! Obviously I'm arriving at this party seven years too late ;). As my sister quickly pointed out, these were clearly based on the original cast not the remake. I like the original Trek timeline, she only likes the 2009 Star Trek film, enough said!

I've since lost where I got this image from, if I find it I'll link to it here. Danbooru has a copy, but it hosts some NSFW material.

A Spock Minifig

I only just found out about CustomMiniFigs, but already I've poured through a ton of their posts and am loving the creativity! This is a minifig of everyone's favourite Vulcan, complete with pointy ears and a combadge!

MiniFig customization is an art, and whilst they can be as simple as mixing and matching logo body parts, they can also be as complex as creating entirely new minifigs and minifig accessories, not necessarily using Lego pieces.

All Good Things...

A press photo from Star Trek Online. For those who remember their Next Generation episodes, this Dreadnought class ship was from the last episode All Good Things set in the distant future.

Star Trek Fish

You know those Christian fish that some people feel compelled to put on their cars, along with the same fish with legs that Darwin supports use to poke fun of the former? Here's one for Trekkies!

The ratio of the warp nacelles to the rest of the graphic and the shape of the fish saucer section suggest to me an Intrepid class, but the nacelles aren't mounted in the right position. Its an Intrepid Fish! I'll stop now.

Warf: Captain, I'm detecting terrible 1980s computer generated graphics from the planet below.
Picard: Warf, how many times have I told you not to break the forth wall? It is a clear violation of the Temporal Prime Directive.

PICARD: Do you not find it even just a bit amusing that you asked me to help you interpret data... given your name is Data?
DATA: I do not sir. The events of Star Trek Generations have not yet occurred and as such I do not currently have an emotion chip installed with which to find such an observation amusing.

This never happened, but it should have.

When the database for my original anime blog was wiped and I decided to start again in the anime category here, even though I still have all the images from it I decided I wouldn't bother recreating all of the posts. I already blog far too much and I have assignments to do!

One of the posts though that generated the most comments (over 20 if I remember) was my simple observation regarding Yoko from the Gurren Lagann series.

Yoko professed in the 5th episode that she chose to wear a bikini top all the time because it was something that "wouldn't restrict her movements in combat" (uh huh, sure) but... she also always wore a scarf, something you'd expect to wear when the weather is... oh I don't know off the top of my head... cold!? While I'm at it, I'm going to the beach to wear snow boots!

The question I posed was: huh?

We devised several theories. We must have been wrong all these years, it's not the top of the head or the ears that lose the most body heat in cold weather, it's the neck! Or perhaps subterranean civilisations have different climate patterns. Or maybe because she was so tall her neck pokes through to a different layer of atmosphere from the rest of her body. Or perhaps she was in fact a vampire the entire time and she was covering up bite marks. Or maybe she was bought off by the evil fashion scarf lobby. Or maybe she was just crazy and made no sense.

I guess they do say anime and manga don't follow any established laws of physics or fashion. What I love is when story writers for these shows attempt to explain such bizarre physics and fashion, it's like watching the characters explain a new gadget on Star Trek that will emit a certain energy pulse to disperse the astronomical anomaly that's affecting their ship's systems. You know it's all bunk, but you suspend disbelief and follow along anyway ^_^.