Rubenerd

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.

First, make sure you're proactive about privacy and security by using NoScript and a cookie manager. Head to a Blogger powered site, like this one. Marvel at the blank page! Temporarily allow blogger.com in NoScript. Marvel at the spinning gears… that just don't stop! Spin spin spin!

It's pretty poor form for a company as large as Google to require JavaScript to even load content, but to require a cookie? Madness.

In a related note, @hanezawakirika forwarded me this epic flowchart showing when to require Flash when loading a site. Same principle applies!

This post originally appeared on my university's anime club site, but preserved here for posterity. In hindsight I should have posted this on Monday. Whoops!

That’s a big picture

We're going there? Really? There? THERE? Oh yes, yes we are. SERIOUSLY? Yes, stop asking me!

Oh lordy, here we go…

The year was 1996. We hadn't yet moved to Singapore, and my sister and I were living with our parents in Brisbane (as we had made it habit of doing). It was a crisp early morning and we'd woken up against our wishes to get ready for school. Making our way up the rickety wooden stares of the Old Queenslander, we longingly reminisced about our house in Melbourne that didn't require us to walk up flights of stairs.

While we're on the subject, allow me to digress for a moment… who designs a house with a kitchen on the second floor? A room people need to access first thing in the morning!? For various reasons there will always be cynical architects, but that's just out and out cruel! CRUEL I tell you!

Through the shivering and tiredness and other worries that children have before they suddenly and shockingly learn later on are largely inconsequential compared to problems Grown Ups have to contend with, there was one thing that made waking up worthwhile.

Three words: Agro's Friggen Cartoon Connection.

ASIDE: One of the words included above was not in the original title; rather it was added for comedic and dramatic effect. To keep you on your toes and guessing however, I won't tell you which it was.

There has to be a reason for all that…

So why am I bringing up a morning show for children with questionable hand puppets? For one reason, and it's three words: Agro's Friggen Cartoon Connection. Wait, I already said that, let me try that again. Duck season. Wabbit season! DUCK SEASON! WABBIT SEASON!

So why am I bringing up a morning show for children with questionable hand puppets? Because aside from several other programmes shipped in on a tight budget from the massive production houses of the British Isles during that period, it was also my sister's and my first experience of watching anime. Perhaps it was yours too!

Yes, some genius at the DIC production houses had thought it rather sporting to pull an anime series from Japan, take out the "unconventional" sexuality, pantsu shots (or leotard shots, or whatever they were), tack on some horridly cheesy moral lessons at the end, and show it to children early in the morning in the Anglosphere. And we never missed an episode!

This, ladies and gentleman, THIS was the theme song of our childhood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6_RZhh44NY

I feel a fool for doubting you Ruby!

It would be the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya over a decade later that would get me into anime in a somewhat more serious capacity, and even then I would refuse to watch dubs. Still, I've always had a soft spot for that terrible English theme song!

As I got more into anime, I went back to Sailor Moon in a fit of childhood nostalgia, and was delighted to find an entire universe of stuff, including the original anime series that hadn't been hacked to bits. Rather than just being a fairly cheesy story about a crybaby who transformed into a tiny skirt and chased taking cats, there was more depth. The episodes were darker, more involved.

Each series from Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon Super-S and Sailor Moon Stars had their own twist to the original music, to say nothing of the live action! One can spend hours looking through YouTube, which I was almost tempted to do this evening if it weren't for the fact I had to do something… what was it… oh yeah, write this post!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vza-IN0D0LE

The 90s music! The graphics! Aaaaaaah! Frankly, if you don't find these awesome, there's something Wrong With You™

Sailor Moon R had my favourite OP, it just seemed more dramatic somehow! o/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE5ytLd-zxQ

Of course, I bring this much and the series upon which it was attached because we've been informed there will be a new Sailor Moon series coming out in 2013. I'll admit I'm a little nervous, series that tend to have large gaps end up being hit-and-miss, and they have a large canon universe to follow and respect, but it they pull it off… we may have another Music Monday on this venerable series next year!

Fighting evil by moonlight, win love by daylight yo! #nerddance.

To drastically improve virtual drive performance of qemu guests, create images with metadata preallocation:

% qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o size=2147483648,preallocate=metadata disk.qcow2

Then if you're on Linux, use fallocate to preallocate space:

% fallocate -l 2147483648 disk.qcow2

Passing this on for what it may be worth, they both saved me a lot of time copying files this morning. :)

Jokes aside, it's easy to see how people get "theories" and "scientific theories" confused. Conjecture satisfies the former, the latter follows strict rules. So humble and precise are scientists that even the most accepted theory isn't referred to as fact. Of all the reasons why I'm an atheist, that's high on my list.

Yay, got some more spam DMs from cracked Twitter accounts this afternoon!

Hi this user is making really bad rumors about you [dodgy link redacted]

And one I haven't seen for a while.

lol…omg i am laughing so hard at this pic of me my friend uploaded [dodgy link redacted]

On the one hand I find it hard to believe anyone still falls for this stuff, but I guess they are if the spammers can still justify sending them out.