March 2007 Archives

Another Austrian import. Good on for them for going against the flow and having a short squat can instead of a tall thin one, but unfortunately this is the only notable thing about Power Horse - it tastes very similar to Red Bull and Shot and Go. Seriously, it seems like every energy drink to come out of Austria tastes the same. Man, do I miss the days of Dirty Dog and its five or six different flavours (Cactus!).

And, really, a black animal on two tone background screams "Red Bull knockoff".

Also "Power Horse" sounds like the name of an anthropomorphic horse super hero.

Actual text from the Network Solutions whois page: [screenshot]

Announcing a great NEW feature for WHOIS users -- you can now start a WHOIS query directly in your browser!

Use the format: www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=netsol.com and you'll come directly to our results page. Stay tuned for more useful features coming soon to WHOIS!!!

So... typing a URL manually into your browser is a "great NEW feature"? Man, the boffins at Mozilla are going to be fuming that they didn't think of THAT one....

Because I refuse to grow up and therefore still like Transformers, stumbling on this webcomic filled my heart with joy:

Lil Formers Because giant robots are inherently funny! Don't believe me? How about after seeing the morning after? Or perhaps now? (poor poor Megatron) Though this public service announcement is my favourite so far....

This weblog is now located at www.aldenbates.com, because I can. And also because it's easier to remember than 'abates.tetrap.com' (the old subdomain redirects here, of course). Please update your links and bookmarks. :)

So this post isn't a total wash, here's a picture I took last weekend from the top of Cannon Point:

In the foreground is Upper Hutt, with the Hutt River winding its way up the right-hand side. The bridge at lower right is the one I mentioned in this post last year. Beyond the hill in middle centre is Lower Hutt (It's actually quite a lot bigger than it appears in that photo. Yeah, as if we haven't heard that one before), beyond which is Wellington Harbour, on the other side of which is Wellington (yes, where Peter Jackson lives). In the far far background, you may be able to make out the very dim outline of the South Island.

This photo was taken with my shiny new Canon Powershot digital camera. :)

I've been missing a few emails (mostly from mailing lists) sent to my gmail account. Now, at the bottom of the page whenever I access my gmail account is something like "You are currently using 33 MB (1%) of your 2831 MB." so you'd assume by that that there isn't a problem with disk space, however Yahoo groups says that the emails have been bouncing with the following error:
Remote host said: 552 5.2.2 User over quota 26si6202460aga [RCPT_TO]

There's a Gmail help center but I couldn't find anything relevant (even searching for "over quota" didn't help). I've reported it to Gmail support, so we'll see what happens...

Mind you, it looks like this is a common problem. Yahoo blogged that they're working on it with Google, but that was several days ago now...

Sometimes the most unexpected things happen on this site. For instance, so far this month the five most popular archives TSV items are:

1. What's really inside a Dalek
2. Who Killed Kennedy eBook
3. Cyberman shot by an arrow
4. Is that a Sonic Screwdriver in your Pocket, Doctor?
5. The Doctor and Rose standing over a Slitheen

Why is a crumby cartoon I drew back in 1993 the most popular? Because when you do an image search on Google for inside a dalek, the first result looks like this:

...which looks deceptively like something the searcher would be looking for. I feel vaguely guilty now!

I say not. I mean, seriously, look at this image of Amanda Tapping from today's Stargate SG-1:

Need I say more?

NZ Gamer has some photos up from Video Games Live - you can find the photos here. Including some of the fellow dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog who won the costume competition. For painting himself entirely blue, I think he deserved it.

Unfortunately I also got caught by the camera! That'll teach me for loitering outside the venue.

A couple of months ago I bought my current computer from First In who had it as their daily special (they've featured the system several times since then). So how's it looking so far?

Well, it's nice and fast, particularly when playing Unreal Tournament, and I've finally been able to play Doom 3 (I wasn't brave enough to try installing it on my old PC). It hasn't crashed except that one time but that was because XP doesn't really deal with dud drivers well and no reflection on the hardware.

The only problem I've had with it (other than the absence of a floppy drive, though that's not really much of a handicap in this day and age, plus it has a flashcard reader instead) is that every time I play a video file, I get this popup in the top-right corner of the screen saying "Powered by ASUS Splendid video enhancement technology".

Although, I've just discovered how to switch that off, so, er, never mind! (it was hiding in the display settings)

One of my many comment spammers keeps sending spams that I should share some of my bookmarks, so here's a few of the sites I've been visiting recently:

Steampunk Star Wars Actually I nicked this link off Boing Boing last night. It is very cool though. DM of the Rings Jamas and Peter (who doesn't have a blog) mentioned this in the pub one night, and I googled it when I got home. A very funny comic imagining Lord of the Rings if it were being played by D&D gamers. This installment has been one of my favourite so far, but do start reading from the beginning. The Transformers Wiki Which I end up spending hours reading every time Dave Willis at Short Packed links to it. I'm so sad. Bowmaster Prelude Pictured left, a shockwave flash game in which you defend your castle against hordes of oncoming enemy fighters. Which I appear to have just broken. Ooops. Warning: playing this game warps the space/time continuum. You will find after you've been playing for what seems like half an hour, three days have past!