We went out to the National Gallery yesterday to see the Caravaggio exhibit. It wasn't just Caravaggio, though, but also other artists who were his contemporaries, and some artists whose work shows clear Caravaggio influences.

In case you're not aware, Caravaggio is one of those artists whose work totally and completely changed the way people make art. His use of light and dark was revolutionary, and it can still be seen in a lot of modern media like art photography and cinematography.

Anyway, I confess that I'm not all that much of a fan of Caravaggio's work, specifically, although I do recognize his tremendous influence (I studied art, you can't really miss it, heh).

One work of his that just blew me away, though, is a picture of fruit. Yes, really. I saw it from across the room and got a little closer and started to giggle and just kept on giggling. Talk about sexual innuendo. I'll never think of plums the same way again. Of course, it's just a picture of fruit, right? (And yes, Caravaggio was certainly a bit of a perv, and he drank too much, brawled a lot, slept with most anything that would hold still, and carried on horribly a lot of the time). I actually bought a print of the fruit painting, although the print doesn't really do justice to the original. Something about the brush strokes, maybe... (There's a digital version of the fruit picture if you want to take a look, but as I said, it really doesn't do the original justice, and a lot of the very clear sensual element is lost or difficult to discern.)

I also got to see one of Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith paintings. I knew a fair bit about Artemisia and her work, but seeing the painting for real was amazing. It was pretty intense, lots of gore, wow.

I also saw several other famous (or not so famous) paintings that I knew from studying them. It was wonderful. One of my life goals is to see with my own eyes the great works of art and architecture that I've read about and admired from studying them (or hearing about them on one of the art history documentaries I like so much).

It was good. Really good.

I also got some really nice pictures of the city, including a couple of night shots, which was tricky because I didn't have a tripod. I'll get them in the gallery soonish...

Well, this month it's ten years since I first put up a graphical homepage (I had a text-only one earlier in 1993, though). Some parts of that site are still visible in my personal pages, including the anthropomorphic unicorn, although she's been digitally repainted several times (at one point, she was an animated .gif and she winked!). Some of the content in those pages goes back that far, as well, but not much of it. Just bits and pieces.

My unicorn pages were originally part of my personal homepage, as well, so they're about ten years now, too.

Anyway, my first homepage was designed for Netscape1.1, and I used Paint Shop Pro (I believe it was version 3, but don't hold me to that; it ran in Win3.x, at any rate) to make the original graphics, although not all were original. At that time, there weren't actually that many pages on the net at all and I was very well known in a particularly well-read Usenet group, so I got a fair bit of traffic to those pages. I was even in the local newspaper in 1993 because I had any homepage at all, that's how unusual it was at the time.

I'm still using Netscape, for what it's worth. I did switch to Internet Exploiter for a few years because NS really dropped the ball after version 4.x, but I came back to NS when version 7 came out and it's my primary browser of choice (I only use IE for testing and downloading Windows updates).

And I still use PSP, although not that often any more. It's got some really good features, which is why I keep upgrading it, but I switched to Photoshop sometime in 1998 or so (maybe it was 1999) and I haven't looked back.

Today I was pondering the line of bull that I was fed about how I was "addicted" to the internet. Well, I'll admit that for a while I was using the net addictively to escape some of the crap that was going on in my non-virtual life, no argument there, but the fact is, hardcore net-heads like me are part of a sub-culture, and that's all there is to that. I'm part of that culture. It's no worse than any other sub-culture. It has its good points and its bad. It's just part of who I am. I don't think that bikers are "addicted" to their bikes (and leather, mmm) or that surfers are "addicted" to the beach or that any other sub-culture are "addicted" to their particular culture. They may well be very into it, sure, but that's not an addiction. It's a lifestyle choice.

So, there you go. Ramblings from a ten-year veteran of the internet. Does it mean anything? Probably not. Doesn't have to, though. This is my blog and I can blather on endlessly in it and waste as much bandwidth as I darn well please. After all, I've been wasting bandwidth for ten years, why stop now?

A man who sent 850 million junk e-mails through accounts he opened with stolen identities was sentenced to up to seven years in prison Thursday.

Atlanta-based Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. said it hoped the sentence and an earlier $16.4 million civil judgment against Howard Carmack will deter other spammers.

Ugly Zoo is a lot of fun, and has some really clever Photoshopping. Warning: page is graphics intensive and slow to load, but be patient. It's pretty cool.

I'm 40 years old today. I'm not bothered by it. I've been kind of looking forward to it, actually. My teens were spent in a state of perpetual and frantic dysfunction, my twenties were spent in a state of oblivion and foolishness, my thirties were spent in a state of metamorphosis and change, much of it painful. I'm hoping that my forties will be when I finally get to start really, truly BEING the person I've become.

The spam was entitiled, "Stop these annoyying messages here". Naturally, it was in my spam filter (and NOT in my inbox).

But I was so intrigued I had a look at the contents:

Hi Candy,

If you received this email then whatever s.p.a.m filter your using is not working properly.

If your one of those people that are sick and tired of sifting through your in.box looking for the "good" emails
then we have the product for you. Your time is valuable, so having your inbox flooded with junk messages is not
only annoying, but also costly.

The answer to all your problems is here...

[url deleted because there's NO WAY I'm giving them a free link!]

First of all, I'm not Candy (although if you are what you eat, I might feasably be chcoolate, but I'm more likely to be Diet Coke).

Secondly, my spam filter was working perfectly, thanks.

Thirdly, although generally speaking I think spammers are the absolute scum of the internet, at least this one (or whomever came up with this spam campaign) was somewhat clever and a little bit funny.

It's better than asking me if my penis is big enough, anyway.

Just got this spam message in my spam can:
learn how to dialate! wichita

Uhm.... Does Wicheta actually need dialation? If so, why?

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

TIM: There he is!
ARTHUR: Where?
TIM: There!
ARTHUR: What, behind the rabbit?
TIM: It is the rabbit.
ARTHUR: You silly sod!
TIM: What?
ARTHUR: You got us all worked up!
TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh.
TIM: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
GALAHAD: Get stuffed!
TIM: He'll do you up a treat, mate.
GALAHAD: Oh, yeah?
ROBIN: You mangy Scots git!
TIM: I'm warning you!
ROBIN: What's he do, nibble your bum?
TIM: He's got huge, sharp-- eh-- he can leap about-- look at the bones!
ARTHUR: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
BORS: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin' right up!
TIM: Look!
[rabbit leaps at Bors and rips his throat out gruesomely]
BORS: Aaaugh!

Wild hare attacks man

So, do you think the technical name for the species Donald Duck and family (Daisy, Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, etc.) belong to is Duckus Erectus or Duckus Sapiens?

The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

The White House put up three soldiers for court-martial, saying the pictures were all the work of a few bad-apple MPs who were poorly supervised. But evidence was mounting that the furor was only going to grow and probably sink some prominent careers in the process. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner declared the pictures were the worst "military misconduct" he'd seen in 60 years, and he planned more hearings. Republicans on Capitol Hill were notably reluctant to back Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. soldiers and CIA operatives could be accused of war crimes. Among the possible charges: homicide involving deaths during interrogations. "The photos clearly demonstrate to me the level of prisoner abuse and mistreatment went far beyond what I expected, and certainly involved more than six or seven MPs," said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former military prosecutor. He added: "It seems to have been planned."

Okay, so Gwynneth Paltrow named her baby girl "Apple". Yeah, it's a little unusual, but it's certainly no worse than "Olive", you know?

NOW THAT Google's IPO is running, the company is on the verge of being sued by the family of a man who invented the word 'Googol' to describe a very big number.

What nonsense. Even if they did get into court, no court would rule in their favor. Google's been around since 1998, first of all, and secondly, you can't copyright a word, and thirdly, "Google" is not the same as "Googol" and fourthly, there was an old cartoon character named Barney Google (for his "goo-goo-googely eyes" according to the novelty song).

I hope this story is a hoax. If not, it's just about the most lame thing I've seen in ages.

Well, this chart comparing all major blogging software packages is pretty useful.

I'm pleased to report that a Nokia 3310 Mobile Phone (that's a "cell phone" to you American sorts) can survive being doused in ice cold Diet Coke in a freak accident (in the car, no less) and keep working.

Mind you, it didn't work yesterday, but I took it to the phone shop and and them take it apart (I couldn't manage to get the stupid thing open!) and they recommended I just let it dry out for a while and see. And today, lo and behold, it seems to be fine. I had to reset the date and time, but otherwise, it seems to be perfectly intact.

So hooray for Finnish technology, for it can withstand the ravages of Diet Coke.

I've just watched a broadcast of highlights of the royal wedding. Cool. I love a royal wedding. Can't say I knew much about the royal family of Denmark, but since an Australian got engaged to their Crown Prince, I've certainly learned a lot more!

Among the guests was, of all people, Roger Moore. You know, the English actor who was James Bond for so many years? Apparently, he's married to a well-known Danish lady. See the stuff you learn when you read my blog?

The bridegroom wore a dress uniform with a very funny hat, one of those boat-shaped things you'd expect to see on the head of Trafalgar or something. Apparently, the Danish call it a "Napoleon hat," and there's a pastry with the same shape and name. Anyway, I do realize it's a historical thing, but I have to say it's good he took it off when he arrived at the church.

I must say, when the prince came down the ailse in a small procession with his best man (his brother) and other supporters, he had the good grace to actually look nervous. Good bloke!

Here's another factoid. Apparently, the Queen of Denmark is over six feet tall. She's also greatly beloved by her people, and she seems to be genuinely fond of her children.

Representing England were Edward and Sophie, the Earl and Countess of Wessex arriving. Their wedding was the last royal one I got to see, back in 1999.

Apparently, next week a Spanish prince is getting married, so al lthese royals will have to turn up to attend that, as well....

Anyway, this wedding had a lot of great music. I'm a real sucker for a trumpet voluntary (note, there are LOTS of trumpet voluntaries; some people seem to think that Clarke piece is the only one or something).

The bride, I must say, really looks like a princess. She's beautiful and very elegant. And her dress was a lovely "candelight" satin (that mellow golden off-white color), with her hair up and a lovely lace veil (but not over her face, which is nice). Her father wore a kilt to walk her down the aisle, which is kinda cool. And her bridegroom actually got tears in his eyes when the music began (awww, what a guy).

She walked down the aisle to the most extraordinary choice of music, Handel's "Zadok the Priest", with the full choir, trumpets, and timpany drums! Talk about impressive and regal and royal.

The commentators for the television presentation were Danes who have immigrated to Australia, and they explained various things and did rough-and-ready translations of the ceremony, which appears to me to be just a standard formal Lutheran service (no, (I'm not Lutheran, but I'm very familiar with the traditions and such). I certainly recognized the tunes of several of the hymns!

The recessional drove me nuts trying to place it (I definitely knew it). I finally figured out what it was after rummaging through my CDs. It was the Toccata from Organ Symphony No. 5 by Widor. No, I didn't remember that until I found the CD, but I did remember that it was Widor after I puzzled over it for a while.

After the ceremony the couple rode around Copenhagen in an open carriage pulled by six white horses, and then there were scenes from the reception and dance.

The Queen gave a speech about love and duty and such, and the cameramen were right on the mark. I laughed SO hard... Just after the Queen mentioned doing one's duty with a smile, the Prince sort of rolled his eyes, probably because he's been hearing that all of his life. I just laughed and laughed...

And apparently, the bride's father wore a kilt because he is, actually, a Scotsman. His speech was delivered with a very noticible Scottish brogue.

The speech made by the bridegroom brought tears to my eyes, and to the bride's. Very sweet, and very lovely, and he's obviously utterly in love with his wife.

So there you go. Australian Girl Makes Good, Becomes Crown Princess of Denmark.

And next week, the Aussie tabloids will be brimming with pictures, and I can tell you, I'll be buying them (I normally do, anyway, heh).

UPDATE: CNN has pictures online now.

Lottery winners, trust-fund babies and others who get their money without working for it do not get as much satisfaction from their cash as those who earn it, a study of the pleasure center in people's brains suggests.

Well, SixApart have released a new statement about the pricing and licensing and such. You can (and should) read it for yourself. I have, and frankly, it's more confusing than the original licensing structure, which I thought was weird, anyway.

The MOST confusing part is that using several "weblogs" to run a single site only counts as one "weblog" on the licensing. I've got five or six on this domain (two are just plain "news and updates" pages, and one is so simple it saves as a plain text file and is imported as an SSI inclusion), and a couple others on other domains that are on the same server. So, how many blogs do I ACTUALLY have? And how am I supposed to figure it out, and how will the software know?

That's not the only confusing thing. I'd actually rather not fool around with it. Too much hassle, too much trouble. I'm happy to pay a software license, but only if I understand what it's for and how it's structured, and in this case, I can't work out WTF they're talking about, not clearly.

So, I'm still not going to upgrade to MT3.0. Nothing about this new announcement has changed my mind. I'll keep right on using the version I have now (which is usable under the same license as it had when I downloaded it) and just sit tight and see what happens with WordPress. When they've got multiple blog capabilties, I'm definitely there. I might even convert a couple of my sites (are they blogs or not? I dunno) to WordPress starting more or less now (or whenever I can be bothered to do it).

My reaction isn't one of outrage or anger. It's just a matter of, "Well, whatever." Sorry, SixApart, but I don't really care what the new licensing is or how much it costs. I can't figure out what you're on about with it, so I'll just do something else. Pity, really, since I quite like MovableType and I would have happily paid a reasonable licensing fee, but since I don't know how many blogs I "really" have and I'm not likely to pay a couple hundred dollars, I think it's pretty much not worth my effort. I wish you well, SixApart, no hard feelings. And no more of my money, either.

EDIT: Tim dropped me a note to help clarify a couple things for me (thank you, Tim). He suggested that I'm reading more into the licensing than is there, and he may well be right (I do have a tendency to do that, heh).

Apparently, the new version of MT isn't actually crippled. The licensing is on the honor system. A "blog" is basically a single domain, so you could put several individual weblogs on the same domain and that would still count only as one weblog as far as licensing. Okay, so I have uhm... at the moment, I believe, two domains (used to be three) with one or more MT blogs, and I'm the only one who ever writes in any of them, so the multiple author thing isn't an issue. Hmm. I might even fully qualify (legally and honestly) for the completely free version, too, which allows for three weblogs.

This is good to know.

The thing is, at the moment I don't have that much desire to upgrade anyway, and I tend to prefer Open Source software when and where applicable (not just because it's free, either), and the MT3.0 upgrade isn't all that big of an upgrade anyway, so I may as well hang around a while with my 2.661 and see how it all unfolds and such. I don't mind not getting the "introductory" price if I do eventually decide to go for an MT license.

So there you go. I was confused (won't be the last time, either).

What if an author wanted to re-license their book like software?

Well, I like Movable Type. I've used it for a couple of years now, and it's good software. Dependable. Customizable in lots of ways. I like it enough that I gave them a voluntary donation, in fact, because I appreciate their time and effort. And I don't really object to a company making money on their software, certainly, but the announcement that they're now going to be charging anywhere from US$99 to US$600 for a license that allows more than one blog author and/or more than three blogs is a bit of a kick in the head, particularly since I run more than three blogs with MT, and I'd end up paying several hundred dollars just to keep using them.

You can read their side of it, of course, and decide for yourself, but judging by the reaction of the community, I'm hardly the only one who feels like they've just yanked the rug out and turned their back on people who made them what they are.

Maybe it's the way they did it, I dunno. Maybe it's the way they're wording it. Maybe it's that they've stated in the past that they didn't expect a pay version to be much higher than $50. Maybe it's that MovableType benefitted from so much free software evangelism and a spirit of community. Maybe, bottom line, it's that the new pricing structure is fairly stupid (I honestly don't mind paying for software; I do it all the time, but there's no way I'm going to pay hundreds of dollars for something I've used for a donation for years, particularly when there are appropriate alternatives available). Whatever it is about this, the announcement rubbed my fur the wrong direction.

So it looks like I'll be moving to WordPress. It's Open Source. I like Open Source software (and I've been known to sleep with Open Source developers). It's not going to suddenly turn into crippleware. And it's got cool features that I may actually bother to learn (since I never took the time to learn some of the extras in MovableType). Granted, it doesn't do multiple blogs (yet), but I'm told it's very easy to install and the installation is very small, and I've done the multiple blog installation thing before, and it's not a big deal to me.

Since the price change on MT doesn't go into effect until version 3 of Movable Type and I'm still running version 2.661, there's no tearing hurry to get it done, of course. I'll keep with what I'm doing for a while and see how it goes. And, hey, the Movable Type people are welcome to keep the donation I already gave them, but I'm afraid they won't be getting any more money from me. Or at least, they're not going to get the kind of money out of me that they, for some reason, think I'm going to give them...

On a whim today, I created a new webring for people whose name (middle or first) is Elizabeth (or a spelling variation of it). If you qualify, check it out and sign up!

First, a rather interesting rant on the torturing of Iraqui prisoners and on the character of Americans and how we claim to believe in certain values and then don't actually seem to want to apply them. It's a pretty good read, anyway: The Danger of the Single Standard.

Secondly, I think The Onion has a pretty good satirical commentary on the whole issue with this week's What Do You Think?

I've noticed an anomoly on our server. Andrew hasn't seen it firsthand because it always seems to take place late at night, and normally I'm the only one using the server that time of day.

Huge amounts of system resources were being gobbled up, to the point of visibly slowing down a lot of stuff (like, say, the web server). I kept reporting it, but I couldn't pin it down (I'm more or less competent in a Unix system in a limited way, but really, the workings of the mail server and a lot of other processes are beyond me). I did get some basic information on what was going on, though, and it seems that there were mail spools backed up in the system. Several spools of "outgoing" mail, several of them over a hundred megabytes in size. YOUCH!

Well, Andrew investigated today (with the information I gathered last night) and it seems it was due to -- don't look shocked now -- spam. No, we weren't being used as a spam relay or anything (which was what I feared), but it seems that our system receives around 300 spam messages a day that are addressed to addresses that the spammers just "guess" at. You know, webmaster, dns, info, contact, etc., and then a lot of common names and so on. Three HUNDRED of these a day, every day (now tell me that spam isn't a problem, how much bandwidth is that wasting?).

So the thing that was happening was all these non-deliverable messages were being collected and our server was trying to figure out where to send the bounce message. Since 99.9999% of spam has forged headers, obviously the poor mail program couldn't work it out. So it was just going a little loopy, and gobbling up system resources while doing it. Nice, huh?

Andrew's reconfigured the system now so that it just plain rejects mail for non-existent users, which means it's the problem of the mail system that sent the mail out. Since that system is the one spewing out the spam (presumably; there's only so far a spammer can go to forge the headers), they're the ones who ought to be dealing with it, anyway.

Of course, this means that people who send mail to our system but use a poorly formatted address (typo or whatever) will get a bounce message that isn't very helpful, but unfortunately, that's just the way things are and have to be.

Spammers are the absolute scum of the earth. They use up everyone else's time and resources, they abuse other people's servers and exploit open services and ports, they deliberately do stuff to bypass spam filters (Hello! If I have a spam filter it means that I DON'T WANT SPAM!), and they're basically just disgusting and sleazy as hell. As far as I can see, no matter what other redeeming quality a spammer might have, their deliberate abuse of the system earns them a LOT of bad karma. I hope they're all reincarnated as slugs or some other creature that crawls on its belly and eats decomposing organic matter.

In a case that threatens the complete demise of the Internet, spammers won round one early this week but SpamCop came back to take round two.

Let's buy an email list from some spammers and make this a opt-out class action suit. Anybody who doesn't want to sue Snotty can just email us and be removed from the list.

Okay, this was fun. I paid a visit to Googlism and put in my name. A lot of the responses that came up really were about me, but plenty more weren't. Here are a few of the ones that weren't about me that I found entertaining:

bonni is one of our placid bitches who gets along with everyone

ROTFLMFAO!

bonni is one of the most respected professionals in law enforcement

That's right. I'm secretly a cop.

bonni is

Ooooh, very Zen, don't you think? Or is it more Cartesian?

bonni is a wonderful dog

Hey, now....

bonni is an american military brat

Hey, so am I! Oh, wait.... (okay, so that one really is about me)

bonni is the best selling cappuccino in poland

Bwahahahahah!!! That is a tidbit worth knowing.

bonni is eagerly anticipating his return to the manitoba moose lineup

I dunno why I find this one funny, other than just generally thinking moose are quite humorous.

bonni is a bubble boy who has something to look forward to even if his bubble bursts

What on earth are they on about there?

bonni is the sweetest

Only if I've drizzled chocolate syrup on my shirt or something.

bonni is off to an excellent start despite having spent most of last season in the east coast hockey league with the columbia inferno

I went to a fight the other day, and a hockey game broke out!

bonni is right

Yes! I am! I'm so glad someone FINALLY recognized this!

bonni is pleased to now offer her services to assist you in your personal soul quest

Just cross my palm with silver....

bonni is available to study the intracellular signal transduction

*serious nod* Right after I assist you with your personal soul quest.

bonni is smart

Why, thank you!

bonni is the current trainer aircraft in goodyear

Oh, crap, I'm a BLIMP?!

bonni is sending them over to bring you doughnuts

And when they're done, they can bring ME doughnuts.

bonni is interested

You know I am.

bonni is over the ocean

And bonni lies over the sea, yeah, yeah, like I've never heard that before....

bonni is saying that we shouldn't apply for jobs when we don't have the specific experience the want ad says

Well, that's damned good advice, don't you think? Hmmm?

Wow, that was amazingly stupid and fun. Try it yourself and see.

Oh, and just in case you wondered:

andrew bromage is right here
andrew bromage is working on remedying this problem

Few could imagine what was about to happen at Abu Ghraib. The photographs featuring piles of naked Iraqis seem as though they were taken from a pornographic magazine, not from the digital cameras carried by American servicemen and women. But an examination of military investigative reports and interviews with soldiers and officers in Iraq at the time reveal that there were early warnings, and that a combination of conditions inside Abu Ghraib produced a culture of licentious behavior and abuse.

I got elizabyte restored. Took several days and was a major pain in the arse. And all because I used a space instead of a slash, can you believe it? Bleah.

Ya know, nothing will take the wind out of your silly sails quite as quickly as somebody with ZERO sense of humor jumping into a thread where you've posted something funny and "explaining" to you what the thread is "really about".

And you know what? I even included a disclaimer stating that it was a joke and I used four -- count 'em, FOUR -- emoticons, all versions of laughing, grinning, or smiling.

Hmph.

I think this is probably the first time I've ever linked to "The Daily Texan", but:

FBI investigates underground tunnel requests: Student interrogated after filing FOIA request with UT

I wrote this in a forum I participate in, and I liked it enough (and thought it would stand out of context well enough) to put it here, too. I think you'll pick up the topic from the question (I shan't name the author, because it doesn't really matter) that set me off on my little rant/reflection.

Quote: "What the hell is a 'fake mormon'? Jeez, you never hear of 'Fake pagans'."

Uhm, I'm sure that there are "real" pagans who have a definition of what a "fake" pagan is. Seriously.

One aspect of a certain kind of personality is that they HAVE to set themselves and their beliefs (or lifestyle or habits or nationality or whatever) apart as being "right" and since everyone knows that the opposite of "right" is always WRONG, everyone else must be WRONG (or not "real").

Because I've had a lot of personal experience with Christians, I've seen a lot of people who comment that so-and-so can't be a "real" Christian because they don't do Thing X (or, worse, they DO Thing Y!).

I also have a lot of experience with geeks, and I've seen a lot of geeks who will say that so-and-so can't be a "real" geek (read: programmer, web developer, sysadmin, etc. etc.) because they do Thing X (or, worse, they DO Thing Y!).

I've seen this attitude in absolutely EVERY area of endeavor that humans do, and in EVERY culture and sub-culture. You're not a REAL artist. You're not a REAL writer. You're not a REAL parent. You're not a REAL biker. You're not a REAL [whatever]. (When, of course, the speaker IS a real [whatever].)

So yeah, you see it a lot in religious circles because the sort of people who go for ostentatious displays of religious beliefs are frequently the same sort who need to be all vocal about what they believe (and how "right" it is), but you see it everywhere else, too.

Humans. *spit*

That nice shiny new domain I had all set up? I just deleted it. I hate Unix. *sigh* Thankfully, I think I have all the customized stuff saved on my hard drive, the database is still there (although I don't know if I'll be able to restore it or not) and hey, it'll be the third time I'm installing Mambo Open Source, so I'm getting to be quite the expert...

Have I mentioned that I hate Unix? No? Well, I do.

This is the second time in my life I've done this. Every time I do it I just want to kick myself all the way to Perth and back.

Yippee. *sigh*

I've been really, really busy lately. I know people always say that when they want to make excuses as to why they haven't updated their blog, but in this case it's true (and longtime readers will know that I sometimes update this blog semi-obsessively, so it's not like I don't love my blog). I've just redone my digital art site (as noted) and that took several weeks (I had to learn an entirely new system to do it, and a bit of php as well!). I'm planning on a rework of one client site and my web design site is desperately in need of a facelift and content freshening (I'm planning a LOT of new graphics sets, but so far it's all still forming in my mind and not yet in Photoshop), I'm doing a lot of stuff with Zoë (therapy, early intervention playgroup, taking her to pre-school and back, etc.), and I'm working on a new genre of art (more on that as it develops).

My brain is so occupied with all that stuff that I can't find much to write about, let alone write anything entertaining or interesting.

I will note that it's quite cold lately. Damp cold, which I find quite uncomfortable. Melbourne's winters aren't that cold as these things go, but they're quite wet and that makes it doubly icky. And yes, it's cold, and it's wet, as well. When is the solstice? Hmmm.... about six weeks. And then a few more weeks of YUCK weather, but at least the days will be getting longer instead of shorter (and yes, my usual Seasonal Affective Disorder is bothering me, although the anti-depressants help with that significantly).

My 40th birthday is later this month, incidentally. Not asking for cards or gifts or anything, just mentioning it since I'm blathering on about minutae and mundane stuff, anyway. I'm not too fussed about it. I'm kind of looking forward to it, actually. My thirties were a time of tremendous change and metamorphosis. Perhaps in my forties I can finally start to BE the butterfly instead of just turning into one...

Starting next week, on Monday afternoon, I'm putting both kids in childcare for three hours in the afternoon. This was suggested to me by the child care director at Zoë's early intervention center. Miranda goes to childcare while Zoë and I go to early intervention playgroup, and she's doing better, but she's still go some separation anxiety. The director thought it would help for Miranda to go two days a week, and I think she also probably guessed that I could use a little break.

So, one day a week I've got three hours all to myself. I think I'll just go somewhere QUIET....

Well, I've been busting my butt to get this done, and it's been a pretty frustrating experience, but I finally got it going. I had to learn a LOT for this project. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, I must say...

*drum roll*

elizabyte digital art

New domain, new design, new code base, new gallery script, new everything other than the art.

Just had this in my spam trap:

codiene will ease pain

Really? It WILL?! Who knew?!

Found this spam title rather amusing:

only you can defy bar

And so I do! Bar, consider yourself defied!

A corpse with a false passport spent 16 days at Cairo airport before Egyptian authorities agreed to release it for burial on Friday, airport sources said.

Fraternity Blows Cannon Into Apartments: Members of the Kappa Alpha fraternity tried to load an antique cannon on their front lawn with fireworks, but destroyed the cannon and blew out the window of an second floor apartment across the street.

If the United Nations did not have enough on its plate already mediating in Iraq and the Middle East, a new dispute has emerged to tax its dispute-solving powers -- over the size of Edinburgh's dustbins.

Rapist carrying blow-up sheep attacks teenager

So I was wondering why my shoulder was so sore and I finally had a look at it and noticed a really big, dark bruise from where I got my flu shot. The pain radiates from that spot. Bleahhhh. Sore arm and I've got a cold. Well, at least I won't get the flu...

You know that thing about how if you get a flu shot you'll get sick? Well, I keep hearing that it's not true, but I got a flu shot Thursday and last night I started to develop a headache and stuffy sinuses, and today it's blossomed into a full-fledged cold. Ugh. Can't breathe well, neck is stiff, feel generally icky. Bleah.

I do think it's coincicence, because Andrew and the little girls aren't sick at all and they got the same shot at the same time, but still... Makes you wonder. *sniffle*

Someone who has one of my unpublished addresses in their address book (possibly because they have their mail program set to automatically add addresses) has a virus on their system. I know this because I just read the email the virus sent. It says this:

Dear user of Alicorna.com,

Our main mailing server will be temporary unavaible for next two days,
to continue receiving mail in these days you have to configure our free
auto-forwarding service.

For details see the attach.

For security reasons attached file is password protected. The password is "63124".

Sincerely,
The Alicorna.com team http://www.alicorna.com

Point one, I am not "a user" of alicorna.com, I am the owner of alicorna.com. Point two, the "main mailing server" is THE server, i.e., my server. Point three, "the Alicorna.com" team is mostly me, and a bit Andrew. Point four, there is no "www" at the beginning of the domain name. Point five, I don't download my mail to my home machine except under extremely rare circumstances (and I do mean extremely rare). Point six, even if I did download to my home machine, I'm not stupid enough to click on an unsolicited attachment apparently sent from myself regarding my own server.

I wish more people were less inclined to click on strange attachments...