Brice Figureau (aka masterzen on IRC and elsewhere) has started up PlanetPuppet. This is a planet devoted to discussing Puppet and I’m pleased to say he’s added my incoherent ramblings on the topic to it. Thanks to Brice for registering the domain and installing moonmoon and doing all the hard yards! Another drink owed to you from the Puppet community! 
Posts Tagged ‘planet’
Planet Puppet!
August 3rd, 2009Dante’s Inferno – Canto I
April 12th, 2006Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little more. But in order to treat of the good that there I found, I will tell of the other things that I have seen there. I cannot well recount how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that point where I abandoned the true way. But after I had arrived at the foot of a hill, where that valley ended which had pierced my heart with fear, I looked on high, and saw its shoulders clothed already with the rays of the planet that leadeth men aright along every path. Then was the fear a little quieted which in the lake of my heart had lasted through the night that I passed so piteously. And even as one who with spent breath, issued out of the sea upon the shore, turns to the perilous water and gazes, so did my soul, which still was flying, turn back to look again upon the pass which never had a living person left.
Spiders scare the shit out of me
February 8th, 2005I am deathly afraid of spiders. Totally intimidated by them. Complete arachnophobia. They scare the shit out of me. Where does it come from? Doctor Who. The “Planet of the Spiders” episodes in the Jon Pertwee as Doctor years. The spiders in those episodes freaked me out. Totally.
The Big Red Rock Part 2 – Saturday
January 25th, 2004Slept in. Which is a fine thing that doesn’t happen enough to me. After enjoying the realisation I didn’t have to go to work and therefore make myself depressed and miserable I lounged around in bed and eventually decided to find food. We decided to try the Sails in the Desert breakfast restaurant. Big mistake. Hugely expensive grease infested food. Typical hotel fare. Heavy on the grease and light on the taste. And pricey. Full breakfast $33. Not fun.
Sat next to this guy and his daughter (aged somewhere in the region of 3-4). She went to the toilet and the father grabbed her chocolate muffin and ate it whilst she was gone. When she got back he told her that I had stolen it. Little kid glared at me and stomped her feet and had a full on temper tantrum at the table and the father had to get another muffin for her all the time saying he’d protect this muffin from me. What a shithead. Imagine lying to your child like that. It’s just mean. I hope to hell that dickhead grows up and becomes a real parent before he starts lying about the big ticket items.
Then onto the pool to which Lu has developed quite an attachment. She is swimming laps and I am sitting in the shade watching her swim laps and reading the Economist. Perfect division of labour as far as I am concerned. Lunch was take away hamburgers from the ye olde take away store – we’d been monetarily bitten for breakfast we decided cheap was best for lunch.
Then it was off to Kata Tjuta – The Olgas. They are incredible. We both seem to think now that Uluru is incredible from a distance but not so imposing right next to it but Kata Tjuta is not much to look at from a distance but once you get close it’s amazing. 500 and something metres high and made up of about 32 ‘domes’ of rock all of which are made up of millions of compressed tons of rocks and silt that was forced up out of the earth by tectonic activity whilst the center of Australia was an inland sea. They dried into these incredible domes.
Much better guides this time around – much more knowlegable and far more entertaining. We did a couple of walks – well I did two and Lu did one – she was going low so she went back to the bus half way through the second one. But the bloody flies – millions of the bastards trying to grab whatever scraps of moisture they could. Very annoying but I suppose after a while you get used to it. Took some great shots to show all and sundry when we get back.
From there is was off to another area to watch the sun set on Kata Tjuta. Very pretty, drinking champagne and watching the giant rocks change colour as the light hit them. I can understand why tourists come here. There must only be a handful of places on Earth where you see such incredible natural beauty or where you seem to sense the immense age of the planet as compared to us. The first stages of the creation of the two rocks formations was 900 million years ago! Considering we were still hunter gatherers who wore furs and foraged for food 28,000 years ago it shows you what a mere spec we are on the planet’s timeline.
Finished the night with BBQ dinner under the stars – which was pretty good and concluded with a session of star gazing. I have never seen the night sky so clear and the constellations so easy to spot. Would have been worth the trip out just to see that.
CNN.com – NASA rover lands safely on red planet
January 5th, 2004Crash landing in Planet Boredom
November 12th, 2002Not feeling so crash hot today. Was up very late reading and crawled into bed about 4.00AM. Did not want to get out of bed today either. Nothing happening at work either. Very bored. Perhaps a bit depressed too. Just want this to be over and get on with my new job. I just feel this week is going to continue to drag out. Today has crawled along. Ah well. At least I’m going now.
Going to hand back my laptop this week too. That’ll be interesting. I’ve gotten used to the mobility of it around the house. Have to hit up my new employer for one. Or lease a new one. The new job contains some salary packaging which I will probably use for this and the good old ‘dead hand’ mortgage. I like the look of the new Dell Inspirons – the 8200 with a gig of RAM would do me just fine. Something to think about I guess. And playing around with different configs will be fun and give me something to do. *grin* Oh to geek out so…
Reading: Finished Michael Connolly’s Chasing the Dime
Listening to: The Whitlams, Sixpence None The Richer
After some irritating delays Blogger
February 19th, 2002After some irritating delays Blogger now seems to be letting me add stuff. Don’t know what was going on there but since it doesn’t cost me anything then it doesn’t do to complain! They do a bloody good job given the volume of blogs and the load that must be on their servers.
So I had my chat with my bosses and I don’t believe they’re overly happy campers with me. So I’ve started looking for another job and had some small initial luck with what’s out there but I’ll have to see. More later on that…
Wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald after reading about the death of the first Australian soldier in Afghanistan. The letter:
Whilst reading about the death of SAS soldier Andrew Russell in Afghanistan (SMH 18/2) I was reminded that nearly 39 years ago Sergeant William Hacking became the first Australian to die in Vietnam. Over the next 12 years 507 other Australian, 58,000 American, and several million Vietnamese names would be added to that list. All of whom died in an American-instigated ‘war against Communism’ that had murky aims and dubious benefits. I can only hope there won’t be 500 more Australian names added this time.
Andrew Russell from Adelaide, with a wife and new born child, dead after the vehicle he was travelling in hit a land mine. At Anzac Day we always say “Lest We Forget” and now we get to add another name to the list of men and women whom we have to remember. In this case yet another Australian who died helping enforce American foreign policy in a war not our own. Enough to make me quite depressed really.
The crazy jingoism we seem to experiencing at the moment in conjunction with the equally naive and probably ultimately pointless ‘war on terror’ really makes me wonder about the world we have made. I wonder whether me, and hopefully others, feeling this way is sign of the potential for greater enlightenment. Then I think about the philosophers, humanists, and political scientists have had similar thoughts for centuries and little seems to change. As the philosopher George Santayana, wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Perhaps we are beyond hope, devoid of merit, or as some of the more extreme environmentalists believe, a pox on the planet. Or more importantly perhaps a desire for humanity to be different, to be more cooperative or peaceful is wrong within itself. Perhaps we are forcing humanity into a mould that it does not fit into – that our natural state of being is one of chaos, disorder, violence and individualism. That cooperation, communication, and community are concepts forced upon us and ones not suited to our basic natures and desires. It is often hard enough for us to communicate at a micro level that it is no surprise that the macro level is a disaster. Personal vested interests always seem to override any community feeling we try to generate. Selfishness and fear work together to overcome any attempt to at mutual aid. It’s ironic, given the medium I am communicating in, that many people believed closer communication and the elimination of the tyranny of distance would induce world peace, mutual understanding and global cooperation. It seems, however, to merely highlight faster the inequities, suffering, misery and pain which humans inflict upon each other. I’ll leave you with a quote from Tesla that shows the hope for universal peace which he and others believed would be fostered by the growth of human inter-communication:
War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment… (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982.)
Signing off in a melancholy mood…
Listening to: Pixies – Doolittle and Paul Kelly – Songs from the South
