Schinckel.net

I saw an ad for Werthers Original, available in traditional Hard and new Chewy. Wouldn’t the chewy one not be original…?

I learned something last friday, and I learnt it from some juvenile delinquents. I’ve often wondered exactly what signals, so to speak, a train is coming. What is it that enables the boom gates to come down and the light to start flashing? Last friday, I found this out. Some students, a couple from Scotch College, and a couple I take to be from Underdale High School, got off the train at my station, and one of them proceeded to run back towards the nearest level crossing. He squatted down over the state railway line, which seems to be marginally lower gauge than the local system. I was getting relatively close to where this boy was, but I don’t think he’d seen me. He reached his arms out perpendicular to the tracks, and pressed something, I assume a coin, onto each of the tracks. The lights then began to flash, and the gate started to come down. By this time, I had approached to being about two metres away from the boy. He saw that I wasn’t one of his cronies, and jumped up. A car had pulled up at the tracks, and thinking a train was coming, had stopped. The driver had their window down, and the boy said to him that no train was coming. I continued to walk, but as I was about 10 metres past the crossing, I took my phone out, and turned around and very blatantly took a photograph of the group. I very shortly turned around the corner into the street I walk down on the way home, and I think the gang had begun to disperse, perhaps fearing I had called some sort of authorities, as I did hold my phone to my ear. • So, what is it that makes the signals know when a train is coming? I assume that there is some sort of Ohm-meter, that measures the resistance between the two rails of the track. Normally, this would be very large, as they are not connected. It should, in theory, be almost infinite. That is, it should be an open circuit. When a train approaches, it acts as a conductor between the two rails. Since the rails have a resistance of some sort, albeit quite small, it would be measurable over the distance a train needs to be away from the crossing to trigger it. This, and the fixed resistance of the actual train would be a threshold. When this threshold is breached, and whenever the resistance of the system is less than this value, the lights would flash, and the gate would come down. The whole time the train is going past, it would hold the resistance below this value. After it has gone past, and exceeded a certain distance, the resistance would then have gone above the threshold, and the system would revert to the open state.

Well, it’s been a bit over a month since I first got World of Warcraft, but almost exactly a month since I first finished downloading the updates and started playing. So, what’s to know? In one month, I clocked up around 7 days of play time. That is, over 170 hours. In a month that only had 30 days, that’s almost 25% of the past month I have spent in WoW. My main character, the Night Elf Druid, is now up to Level 39. I haven’t decided which specialty I will move towards: Feral looks the most fun, but Moonkin (Nature spec) form looks kinda nice too. The next big thing is the mount I can purchase at Level 40. I think the 150-odd gold I have saved up should cover it. Although upgrading spells is starting to become rather expensive too, at around 8 gold for the last batch. My big tip to new players is to have an Auction House character, living in one of the big cities, that just picks up stuff from the mail, and sells it straight on the AH. Mine is in Ironforge, but I think Darnassus would be even better – the mailbox there is just steps away from the auctioneers. Basically, everything that is surplus to requirements gets sent to this character, and sold for whatever I can sell it for. Because some deposits are quite large (>50s for some items), you’ll want to pick your prices carefully. You don’t want to sell for too little, but by the same token, you’ll lose money if you pay a large deposit three times, and don’t end up making this much on the final sale. The other trick is to get a couple of items you can manufacture that are reasonable earners. There is at least one item that is required for a quest that various trades can manufacture, and watching the AH means you can ensure that when that item isn’t available, you can charge a hell of a lot more than it’s worth. I’ve sold an item that costs me about 30s to make for upwards of 1g 50s. I also have another character that just stores my surplus items. For instance, learning First Aid is important, but you don’t want to have to waste all of that Silk Cloth until you are ready to use it, but neither do you want it taking up space in your pack. So send it to your Müle (as mine is called), and when you need it, send it back. If you Return an item, it appears immediately, but if you collect and re-send an item it takes about an hour.

I ran out of Espresso Grind coffee last week, and, not having enough money to buy anymore, went without until the cashflow had fined up a bit. Rather than drink the posh that passes for instant coffee, I went without. And it was horrific. I didn’t really realize how badly I need a coffee in the mornings until I actually had my first coffee in some time this morning. And immediately I felt better. So, it seems I am totally addicted to bass, um, coffee. Caffeine is something that is quite unusual in my body: I can have a coffee right before bed and yet drop right off immediately, but if I go without in the mornings, I am my normal, grumpy self. It’s not until I have the drop of Java that I become a shadow of a respectable person. Anyway, whilst the cashflow is still looking shaky, it turned out I had enough on my Hudson’s card to grab a bag of freshly ground good stuff. And I’m sure my students will thank me.

Scheduled downtime tonight on my WoW server – so rather than do anything else, I created a spreadsheet showing costs and potential profits for various items my characters can make. So now, I know the lowest price I can sell stuff for, and what items are the most profitable. And, it’s not always the more expensive items that are, percentage-wise, the most profitable. But, you do need to make and sell less of them. Which means you aren’t relying on 100 people to all be wanting a particular item, just maybe one or two. However, it has given me a lot of ideas about where to spend time in terms of manufacturing ocer the next little while. And, I’m not making this data available, for a couple of very good reasons. I worked very hard to input the data, and I don’t want anyone knowing what my profit margins are like, and undercutting me, or anything like that…

Someone told me today when I mentioned I had seen this film that this title is what they know James Bond as. Because, that’s what he does. Kiss, Kiss; Bang, Bang. Even with the colloquial meaning of Bang here in Australia, that’s still somewhat true. This film nearly lost me in the opening sequences. Sure, the young magician act was magnificent, and well done, but the party was poor. It was almost like the pre-screening audiences had totally missed all of the salient points, and there was a percieved need to bring in a narrator to bring everyone up to scratch. And if it can’t be done subtly then they took the easy way out: stopping the film mid-frame, and having the narrator talk over the top. Cheap. Luckily, as soon as the party was over, things settled down to a better tempo. The parallels between the film, and lives of Robert Downey Jnr and his love interest neatly intersected with those that were present in the novel on which the film touched many times. Downey Jnr himself was good as the lead character (and narrator – Grr), although since he was supposed to be playing a 34 year-old. Surely they could have actually found someone a bit younger, or who looked a bit younger to fill this role. Or did they find a nobody, train him up nicely, giving him detective lessons, just to get Downey at a cheaper rate? (In joke – watch the film and you’ll get it). The star of the show was undoubtably Val Kilmer, in the delightful role of Gay Perry, a formerly (?) gay private detective. Michelle Monaghan makes a very good struggling actress, and looks very nice with not much on. The big surprise is that of Harlan Dexter. A very old, very balding Corbin Bernsen is almost unrecognisable as the former star of LA Law. I didn’t even realise until researching for this review that it was indeed him! This film is most definitely worth a watch. I’m half tempted to re-edit this and remove the silly narration scenes, but I’m way to lazy to do that.

…that’s Dreamz with a Z.

I went into this film with an idea in my head as to what it would be about. There has been a significant amount of advertising, and, to be honest, it looked good. With not being a real fan of the Pop Idol-type shows, but knowing more than enough about them to understand even the most in-jokes, I felt I was fully prepared for whatever the movie threw at me. I was surprised. Whilst the film was poking fun at the popularity contests that are the current crop of New Talent shows, it went far deeper than this into it’s satire of American family and political life. With a title sequence that had music reminiscent of a civil war flick, I was unsure as to if I was in the right theatre. If it wasn’t for the teaser where we see just how shallow and self-absorbed Hugh Grant’s character is, I would have asked around, or even ducked out to see the number on the door. And the opening scenes, with Dennis Quaid took a few seconds for me to adjust. He is clearly a parody (and a very close one!) of the current US President. Whilst at times he looks a bit like George W. Bush, as soon as he walks, talks or moves, he clearly becomes the kind of person you clever Americans have elected again.

Maybe it is time I read newspapers. I’ve learned a lot this morning. It turns out North Korea and Iran are not like Doctor Octopus and Magneto at all…

The lack of understanding of current affairs, the ease by which he is pushed around by his staff, the cluelessness as to what to say, Quaid certainly hits the nail on the head. It seems like it’s way over the top, but this nagging feeling inside me keeps saying this is exactly what Bush is like behind closed doors. A spoiled little boy who was pushed into the presidency by his parents and advisors, and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Someone who doesn’t realise the laughing stock he is internationally, and possibly even nationally. Perhaps, if Bush read the papers, then he might not be so likely to follow the whims of his handlers quite so easily. And the characters involved more directly in the show are magnificent as well. Mandy Moore in her second real satire movie (she was in a rather anti-fundamentalist christian movie some time ago) simultaneously manipulates the population and her family and loved ones. She certainly is shaping up to be the next anti-establishment sweetheart.

I’m not physically attracted to other people, but if you want me, I’m yours.

I’m not sure who this movie is aimed at. If it were my audience, then I’m sure it would be a hit. Those people that couldn’t stop watching Farenheit 911, loved Three Ki_ngs, and were somewhat scared by Wag the Dog. But Mandy Moore seems to still have a younger, less politically astute or aware following. And the lack of impression that this is actually a political satire in the advertisements seems to indicate that it is a film for the fans of American Idol, a chance for them to laugh at the show they love and themselves for loving it. Don’t get me wrong: this is not a film that was funny all of the time. There were plenty of moments that just didn’t ring true. However, it kept me entertained for most of the two hours. Certainly looks a whole lot more fun than The Da Vinci Code_.

I have my own domain name, schinckel.net, which is registered with MyDomain.com, and has several sub-domains, which are mainly shortcuts to other sites I manage. Including this one. I also use their email forwarding service, and have it forwarded to my Gmail account. Which is pretty good, but occasionally they have a glitch, and email doesn’t get through, or is delivered late – in some cases up to a week late. This is usually not a big issue for me, as most of my email contact is not urgent (I tend not to use it for business or work purposes), however for my partner it is a real issue. Having a reliable MX server is important for her. I’ve also recently been accepted into the Gmail for Domains programme beta, and am going through the process of setting this up. I won’t create a tutorial – if you don’t know enough about how to do this, I’m not going to try to help you out for free, but I will detail some of the issues I have come across. The first account you create will be the admin account. I set this up as an admin@ address, and then decided I wanted a matt@ address also. I then deleted this, and created a pointer from matt@ to admin@. Later, I decided I would recreate the matt@ address, and use a seperate account for admin related email, even though I will have my email client check both accounts. But, I get the error:

We were unable to create matt@schinckel.net as a new account because you recently deleted an account with the same username. If you or one of your users needs to receive mail at this address, you can create matt@schinckel.net as an email list or nickname.

The Read More page then indicates:

I deleted a user, and would like to recycle the username. What are my options? There are a couple of things you can do if you’d like to recycle a deleted username.

• Create an email list with that username immediately.
• Wait five days, and create a new user with the deleted username.

Guess I won’t be going live for another 5 days… The other main issue I am having at the moment is with account creation. Sometimes (rarely) it works, but mostly I get the following error:

Failed to create account! Service is unavailable, please try again later

I’ve also set up a URL forwarding, so that mail.schinckel.net points at the right location on the gmail servers. This is seeming to take a while to propagate, but it will make it much easier for other users.

Well, my character in World of Warcraft has made it to Level 30. Last night, after a massive 9 hour session, I finally got there. It’s funny, but I think I’m spending more time in Azeroth than at my job…

We’ve recently gotten a heap of new iMacs (the intel ones), and I’ve been helping the IT guys set them up – including things like cloning the partitions from one machine to the rest. We did come across an issue where the cloning seemed to fail – the way we solved this was to format the drive first. I think it was a permissions issue: because the files were write-protected, Carbon Copy Cloner failed to overwrite the settings. Which meant that they booted up looking the same, although all of the new applications were installed. The other problem we had is that the Proxy Server settings needed to be changed. The new machines were fine – the settings were made before the cloning occurred, but the old machines still had an invalid setting. I tried using AppleScript, but since the only way to do this is with UI scripting, which is notoriously hard to do right, and tends to break when applications are updated, or even just recompiled. Finally, it twigged that I could just copy the preferences file from one machine to the rest. Because the file is protected, you will need Administrator rights, and you may need to move the original file out of the way first, via the Terminal. You could also do this using ssh, which would mean that the other machines wouldn’t even need to be logged in. And the file in question is: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/network.plist or something similar. I’m not at a Mac to be able to check right now.