Summer Bug Swarm

I got home from work last week and saw these little bugs at the front of the main entrance of our apartment.



On closer inspection, some of them looked like they were mating.



I thought that was funny until the next night. They little buggers had spawned into a swarm and it was freaky man! I drove home that night at about mid-night and could not believe my eyes! Imagine this, driving home and your eye catches a glimsp of a dark patch on the ground. What the!



The next morning, those the swarm looked for the shade. Those left in the sun died.



Ah... the shade.



My neighbour's car provided shade all through the weekend.

WoW on Wine on Linux

One way to run Windows applications in Linux is to use Wine.  This is not an emulator (so says http://www.winehq.com/site/myths ). Anyway, I was checking out the status of running World of Warcraft using Wine.

On this page (http://appdb.winehq.org/ ), they have a list of "Gold" applications.  These are "Applications which install and run virtually flawless on a out-of-the-box Wine installation".  And WoW is on the top of the Gold List!  Yeah.  Let's learn more about this by clicking
on the "World of Warcraft 1.3.0" link on the left.

That would take you to this page ( http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=2581) where it lists more details about running WoW over Wine. ...

Description

This is World Of Warcraft 1.2.x US and Europe

Wine compatibility
Note: Always run in opengl mode. (-opengl flag for WoW.exe)

What works
All seems to work, except the selection of things in the universe. The
infamous mouse selection bug... :(

What Doesn't
The mouse can not select things.

What wasn't tested
A lot, because can not select things with the mouse

.... ah ha ha ha ha!  What doesn't work?  Mouse cannot select things.  What wasn't tested?  A lot, because can not select things with the mouse!  Ha ha ha!  And WoW in on the Gold List?!!?  What a bunch of jokers!

Dead Duck on Campus

Heading to Calypso for coffee (Purple Pickle was closed), I took the scenic route via the stepping stones behind the Sports Hall. I notice a flock of ducks on the oval (which was closed); more like a herd actually. Their numbers caused me to start thinking about the fact that I've never seen one of them dead! Amused, I trained my eyes at the surrounding bushes as I continued my walk. It wasn't long till I spotted what seemed like a dead duck! It had a white strip on its wing, so I thought maybe it was a magpie. But on closer inspection, it had a duck head. There it laid, belly up on one of the rocks beside the stepping stones. Its chest was ripped open such that you could see its spine (or some kind of bone). Obviously the result of an attack. Hmm... what animal attacks ducks? Cats? Dogs? No idea. But its my first Dead Duck sighting in The Australian National University!

Dialup...

After weeks of unlimited broadband Internet access in Singapore, dialup (in Canberra) is so slow slow slow! And there's some "kernel_task" associated with the "Internet Connect" application on "dial-up" mode that uses up all the CPU cycles. This really sucks! :(

Google Earth

I found out yesterday that Google Earth is now available for Macs. Excitedly, I downloaded the .dmg image and installed Google Earth. Despite all the disclaimers about how computers older than two years or four years may not be able to run Google Earth, my iBook which is about one year now cannot run Google Earth!!! The Mac version of Google Earth is built for OS X 10.4 Tiger! Chey! Hmm... this meant that my iBook was outdated the moment 10.4 came to market. Which was about two weeks after I took delivery of my machine! Argh!

Nevertheless, I installed Google Earth on our media PC in the "AVA-room". Google Earth on a large projector and screen setup is absolutely fantastic! So is World of Warcraft! I managed to find our old and current homes in Singapore and the three points just about forms an equilateral triangle! How cool is that? Very cool.

Panning across the globe to Canberra, I found my crappy and depressing rental Canberra apartment. Then my brother came in and we twirled the globe again to Vancouver where I see, for the first time, the fantastic apartment block he lives in; right by the water front! This just makes the Hackett apartment look like shit. Got to move out! I've got to move out!