abates

Hi Livejournal

abates — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 06:31:10 GMT

Long time, no write. I hope everyone is keeping safe from the pandemic and not going out much.

I started working from home earlier this week when the country went to alert level 4 and a full lockdown. The company I work for is classed as essential, but only our technician can go in to the office to do hardware repairs and stuff.

So I get to sit at home and do programming. Slowly getting used to it!

Wait

abates — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 22:12:02 GMT

What happened to my friends page? Clearly I have been away from LJ too long and they have changed things.

Look, I'm a big subscriber to the idea that if a thing works already, why would you change it?

I've been playing Fallout 3 a bunch recently

abates — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 10:53:41 GMT

I'm playing it as an evil character because I already did a good playthrough.

Reminds me of someone...

A long-forgotten Christmas story

abates — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 23:14:31 GMT

I remember seeing this on TV when I was young. A wee tale about a young girl who helps monsters defeat a wicked witch which manages to be both charming and surreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIL3pyxhIV8 (apparently embedding video is broken or something)

The bit I vividly remembered was the monster which ate pictures of flowers (and not actual flowers, because that would make sense).

I'm just going to leave a link to this Doctor Who fan video here.

abates — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 06:24:29 GMT

BMOG

abates — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 08:20:56 GMT

Just in case anyone's interested in this sorta stuff, there's a Kickstarter some people I know have set up for a toyline they're working on:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1822390380/bmog-bio-mechanical-ordnance-gestalts-ursenal-vs-m

The concept is to make a bunch of weapons that work as accessories for other toylines, like, say, Transformers (they use 5mm posts, which a lot of toylines use). The weapons can also be assembled into animals, so the two toys they're working on putting out are a manta ray that turns into an axe and gun, and a bear made up almost entirely of guns.

The Kickstarter's only got three days to go, but I'm hoping it'll reach its target, cause it looks fun.

Worst Ad award

abates — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 06:46:27 GMT

The ASB advertisements with Brian Blessed won the Fair Go Worst Ad of the Year award.

What?! How can that be?! It's BRIAN BLESSED!

I can only assume the people of this country are all mad. Though to be fair there were pointers in that direction already.

Plagiarism news now!

abates — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 09:58:41 GMT

Apparently one of the comic strips in a Pat Troughton era Doctor Who annual was almost totally stolen from an earlier comic. Wow, that's an impressive piece of thievery. I wonder whodunnit...

Who is this Brian Blessed fellow?!

abates — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:57:08 GMT

Apparently ASB Bank have replaced semi-controversial Goldstien in their advertising with BRIAN BLESSED. This is one mighty step up as far as I'm concerned. wait oh god who gave him a megaphone you fools!!

Here's one of their adverts featuring him:

And here's another one:

Normally I can't stand adverts, but seriously, BRIAN BLESSED.

Can we keep him? :D

Prime playing the Christmas Special on boxing day

abates — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:36:52 GMT

Prime is playing the Doctor Who Christmas special on Boxing day, a mere 13 hours after it screens in the UK. That's pretty cool-I bet they'll get a boost in ratings.

Have suddenly discovered Honest Trailers on YouTube

abates — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:17:34 GMT

Transformers:

So accurate! I hope they do the other Transformers movies.

Hey, Youtube! Stop sucking!

abates — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 06:36:36 GMT

Recently YouTube have done some sort of thing where when I load a video, it will only buffer up to 45 seconds. And since my connection downloads video slower than I can play it, that means that I get to play about a minute of the video, and then have to stop and wait for it to buffer another 45 seconds so I can play the next minute.

This is not ideal.

Anyone know any way to fix this so I don't have to download videos using Keepvid just to watch the things without stopping all the time?

In the interests of Kiwi Music Month

abates — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:41:04 GMT

Since southerndave has been posting Kiwi music videos, I thought I'd have a go. And what could be more Kiwi than singing about being a sheep?

So here's Gin Wigmore doing just that:

My new car needs work!

abates — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 22:42:13 GMT

Apparently there's a possible fault with the fuel hose on that model, so they want me to take it in and get the pipe replaced. They note that it will go faster if I take the car in with the petrol tank "less than half full". What if I'm a "more than half empty" kinda guy?

Have some Kiwi music

abates — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:49:58 GMT

Babysitter Circus' "Everything's Gonna Be Alright", video filmed in Auckland via flash mob.

Warning: Song may get lodged in head.

Oh hey, an actual official Doctor Who/Star Trek comic crossover

abates — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:58:37 GMT

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/10/scoop-doctor-who-star-trek-official-crossover/

The BBC actually approved that? Wooooooo

So Firefox is my primary browser again now.

abates — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:28:30 GMT

I'm not sure what Google Chrome's beef is, but I watched a YouTube video earlier and when I finished and tried to close the tab, Chrome locked up. And when I restarted and it reopened all the previous tabs, and I tried to close the reopened YouTube tab again, guess what happened? Yep, Chrome crashed.

I figured it was A Thing. Then later on I watched a YouTube video and when I closed the YouTube tab, guess what happened? Nope, this time my entire computer reset.

So Chrome* is in the doghouse and I'm using Firefox, which doesn't seem to have any trouble at all with YouTube pages. Luckily Mozilla has a page on importing bookmarks from Google Chrome which is very helpful.

* For the score, Chrome version 16.0.912.77m which says it's up to date.

Law suit from Terry Nation's estate in three... two...

abates — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:16:45 GMT

Apparently a NZ company is using things which look extraordinarily like Daleks in its advertising.

They even have an online game where you drive a Dalek around.

They are going to get so badly stung.

I broke my chair... again...

abates — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:28:31 GMT

This one lasted roughly 13 months. The good part is that it has a 2 year warranty, so I'm going to take it back to the store tomorrow. :P

Well, it's 2012

abates — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:05:56 GMT

So far nothing's exploded.

If I put money on Australia to beat NZ in the next World Cup game...

abates — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:38:03 GMT

would it technically make me a traitor to my country? :)

Day of the Daleks!

abates — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:44:45 GMT

I'm watching the Day of the Daleks: Special Edition - they updated all of the special effects, but left the honking great bright-yellow CSO wall in the doorway of the Doctor's laboratory?

Got the headphones in the end, BTW!

More progress on my previous entry!

abates — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:36:11 GMT

On this issue there was no progress! It was raining all today, so I figured rather than risk walking down there and having the same thing happen again, I'd wait until they rang up to say my order was ready. But they didn't. Oh well!

Ordering online is fun!

abates — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:44:02 GMT

I have some wireless headphones at work that are just about had it, and I noticed Bond and Bond had some nice ones on sale today. Since it was hosing down with rain and the special said it ran out today, I ordered them online this morning, but said I'd pick them up at the Lower Hutt branch.

Fast forward to later today, and I got an email headed up "Order XXXX is ready for pickup". It had stopped raining, so I walked over to the Bond and Bond and was told that they wouldn't get the order details through until tomorrow, and since I didn't have a printout of the receipt from online, they couldn't give me the item I'd ordered.

It didn't say anything about needing a print out of the invoice on either of the emails I got, but then it also didn't mention the need for photo ID, which I remember the website flashing a message at me about at one point. Their customer service FAQ only says about the need for photo ID.

So, uh, no headphones.

Google's Freddie Mercury tribute hope page tribute is awesome

abates — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 05:35:14 GMT

Kudos to whoever at Google did that!