Ostara (Spring Solstice) has Occurred

Ok well the Southern Hemisphere's spring solstice was earlier this week, officially marking the beingging of spring. Outside looked rather welcoming last afternoon, so I decided to go for a stroll and take pics. Mainly I wanted a pic of "mattt" Apparantly there is one that exists. I had been planning on taking a shot of this for sometime now. I know WallyBert will get a kick out-of-it.

Friday night I met up with some of the Ruxcon peeps. Had fun hangin' out with them. The meeting was more of a demo on SQL-injection and remote shell/webshell execution. Louie did a great job with the talk. Afterwards, I went to Lord of The Fries (veggie and vegan friendly fast food joint) and then met back-up with the hackers at a cafe/bar. And last night I went to the Vegie Bar with my boy Dave, and we met a few others there. One dude was in town all the way from Alice Springs, so that was kinda the reason Dave setup the meeting. Great food and good times. We went out for coffee later!

Enjoy some pics.


-Matt

Bitten

So I had a pretty interesting day. It started off with me missing the tram I was hoping to score, and then taking another tram. But, if I didn't take the alternative one, I wouldn't have seen the dude ralphing into the trash can. Definitely an awesome wake-up for the morning! Well, it wasn't a lot of spew, just some orange crap into the trash can. Looked like he was just spitting when I caught him.

THEN! After work I went to the Victorian Skeptics meeting where Lynne Kelly gave her mega-awesomeness thesis on Stonehenge. Freakin' amazing! I was utterly overcome by the way cool research she has conducted. Amazing speaking skills too. I later realized that my research has an easier means of expressing results, numbers! I can show the efforts of my research via measurements and not historical "facts" that are related against multiple cultures!

After that awesome and quite enjoyable lecture, I decided to walk home. In doing so, I strolled through the Carlton Gardens, it wasn't terribly cold so the walk was rather peaceful. Anyways, I came across two females in the park, apparently possum-whisperers! They were feeding possums in the park! A bunch of Australia-style possums (not the Virginia Possum), some in the tree, the others on the ground. Well, at least one in the tree. One had a baby on its back! Well, I strolled up, quietly, to the girls. I had to greet a possum! One of the ladies gave me an apple to feed the possums. The little critter mistook my finger for the apple and bit me, not hard. It was so cool! It made my night! And you know what, it was a little later after I was back on the trail home, that I realized. Life should have a unique definition per individual. However, as a species, we have a few traits that we have yet to evolve from. Mainly, it seems many of us, including myself, and probably most people in corporate America, turn into robots. Like fearing change, we do the same thing every day. Robot. However, it seems a trait that has been ingrained in our species is that of the enjoyment for sheer experience. So my definition of life is merely the following: experience, and learning. The possums opened my mind!

-Matt

My list of 0x0A Australian Surprises for an American

So I have been here for about 2 months now (arrived on July 16th). I have been asked a few times, what really surprises me about this land. Well, here is just a few, I'll do a non-prioritized list of 0x0A surprises.

0x00: Toilets flush pretty powerful and often have two buttons. This presents a decision to be made when you flush. Press the button for a weak flush or a serious flush. And its all button driven, if there is a user-assisted flushing mechanism. I have even seen pee-walls, which I was not using properly. You stand on the step in front of the wall-urinal and not behind the step. Its not a barrier. Also, the engineering of the flushing system makes testing the Coriolis effect rather difficult.

0x01: It's hard to find free Wi-Fi.

0x02: No corn (high-fructose corn syrup) in Coke. And probably numerous other products. Bread is really easy to buy for a vegan, seems fewer ingredients in the store-bought stuff and they often list the emulsifiers as being "vegetable" emulsifiers.

0x03: Houses do not seem to be insulated. And people comment negatively on this. However, supposedly, newer houses have ameliorated this.

0x04: Maccers. Even McDonalds calls themself this on TV commercials.

0x05: It's called the "toilet," not the restroom or bathroom. So when you gotta burst, you ask for the toilet. Heck, that makes sense. I know it sounds rude, but apparently it's normal and not rude.

0x06: Many seem rather interested in the environment and its wellbeing, environmentally conscious.

0x07: If you have to use the toilet, you best prepare for a walk. A few venues I have been to make finding the ole porcelain beauty a hike, sometimes actually having to go outside the venue to the get to the turd-smuggler.

0x08: DSL is rather common.

0x09: The El Camino style of cars, you know, like a pickup-truck and sedan fornicated and had a hybrid.

0x0A: It's nearly impossible to find brewed coffee at any cafe.

-Matt

I wonder...

Are the constants of the universe signed and susceptible to a negative rollover?

Cap 'n Crunch Frequency

Wow! So I sit here, again, in my room (one of two) in the sharehouse, typing this in vim (no network connection, we just switched DSL providers). The second room I can now have, since Louie moved. That room will probably be my "office." I do have plans to look at two places today. Ideally, I'm willing to part with more money to have a place on my own; however, one of the places is a really cheap apartment (called flat here) with a just one vegetarian guy.

In other news, I went to the local Melbourne 2600 meeting last night! Awesome crew. I had a blast, and a tad different from the HR-2600 meeting (alt site). Difference being that we all met in a cafe/bar, Caffeine at ReVault. Really cool place, about 3 others and myself went out for "cheap" food, which ended up being Thai, and then returned back to the bar/cafe. Tons of Asian places around here. After that we headed back to the cafe/bar, yes I know I just mentioned that (redundancy). Sven (the hostel bud) met up with me there too! Anyways, lots of tech talk, and just meeting people, not unlike the 757 meeting; however it wasn't at a mall, and Tony, the dude running ReVault, keeps the place open till whenever it seems; BTW, he makes a killer long-black coffee. I never put sugar in my coffee, he put some in mine, as it was his version of a long black, I suppose. And you know what, it was really delicious!

Earlier in the week I met up with CapnKernel, Gorilla, and one of my postgrad buds for a local CCHS (hackerspace) meeting, the current space was not available, as the dude who the garage was hosting the meeting was out of town. We had fun, just chilled and chatted stuff at the Jawa Bar (yes a 'w' not a 'v'). I'm such a tight-wad, I didn't spend any money... well I did buy Paul (my postgrad bud) part of a drink. I felt I owed him
since he is so nice and his wife made me awesome pizza (mentioned a few weeks ago in a prior post).

Personal rant follows:
I feel so lame not doing much work on PDFResurrect lately. I have some things in place for a newer version, however I just havent hacked it enough lately mainly to test the idea I have added. Mainly, I want to decompress the XRef tables that PDF's based on spec 1.5 or higher add. This, of course, means adding zlib support. Which is there now, but my handling of the decoded stream is not going as smooth as hoped.

-Matt

Induction and some Prestidigitation

I decided to go out to game night at The Yak Bar. Card games and other similar fun activities were conducted. I showed up late, hence missed some drawing based deal that people were humoring upon. Anyways, I met with Chris and Ben, both from the Cafe Games meetup, in a prior post. Ben is a freakin' amazing card-smith, master of prestidigitation (slight-of-hand). He has now inspired me to get back into card-trickery. This kid, relatively young, was incredible, he had the talk, and the card skills, one word... "slick."

I led half of the group in a game of Mao. I first learned of this game via observation at Shmoocon a few years in a row. I never knew what the people were playing, but Mouse would lead up this seemingly fun/insane card game. I actually figured out what game was being played after investigating her website. We had a blast playing it tonight, and I would like to see such fun continue.

After that, we all played a variation of Asshole/Bullshit card game. Lots of fun. I enjoy stuff like this because such events are social in nature.

-Matt

3lection

Wow! Election day today, and they do it on a Saturday! How much sense does that make! Seems logical to me. However, their voting is compulsory, you have to do it or you get fined! That seems kinda dirty, plus the candidates are ranked, so you have to prioritize when you vote. The latter being absolutely hilarious to me, because I feel the government of the US thinks we are all twits and completely incapable of counting beyond 5, none-the-less capable of prioritizing the candidates! You all remember the hanging-chad deal right... because, well the rest of the world, I assume, was laughing too.

I went with one of my vegan friends, this morning, to look for a house. We liked both houses, and then I went with her to vote.

This afternoon was awesome. I went in to Uni, and then the professor took me home for dinner with himself, his wife, son, and another professor, his wife, and their daughter. Amazing vegan dinner! Seriously awesome and hard-working Indian cuisine. Their son made some amazing tea, and I must say, he was incredibly intelligent, cool, and just straight-up. He acted much more mature and intelligent than I ever would have at his age, mega cool. I think he was like 10 or so, totally impressed me as being just incredibly normal and intelligent, and he loved my use of the word "awesome." After the appetizers of vegan coolness (artichoke dip and a mushroom pate), we had an awesome dinner, and watched some of the election results on tv.

Later, my advisor, his son, the other professor's daughter, and myself played the boardgame, Ticket to Ride. But of course, we played the Nordic edition, after-all my advisor is from Denmark! The professor was on my team, and we kicked serious anus! Later in the evening we went outside to visit the possums in their tree! That validated what I saw in a previous blog post. I did in fact witness a possum previously, and not a drop bear, or wombat.

Then came dessert! It was a vegan-awesomeness apple crumble with custard deal. The other professor's wife made this concoction. Amazing. It's times like this that being vegan is mega-rad.

These people are so awesome. I'm lucky to have found an advisor who is much more than an academic, rather a friend/surrogate-family member. He actually cares for me beyond school. The same dude who hooked-me up with an oil heater, and also the same wife who tried to help me find a place! Such nice people. The world needs more caring individuals as such.