My old website blew chunks, so it was time to just blow it away and start from scratch. It was written in the pre-CSS days of the internet and used PHP for almost no reason.

The iTurd

Or why I hate my fucking iPhone

Things I like about the iPhone:

• Sexy exterior case

Things that make me want to throw my iPhone against a wall everytime I have to use it:

• No Copy & Paste. I can't copy text from an email into an SMS or vice versa, or from a webpage into an email, or from a webpage or email into Notes or from Notes into an Email, or...
• Corrective text thing. Its learnt a few things like "teh" and "Ayesha" but it refuses to learn many other words I type on a constant basis. Examples include "fuck" always being changed into "duck". It's like an epic battle every time I have to type an email.
• The virtual onscreen keyboard. It drives me nuts. I've had this phone for a few months now and there is no getting used to this piece of shit. And don't even get me started on having to switch keypads to get to numbers or symbols. Switching keypads TWICE to get to an asterisk so I can type an emote like *hugs*. My previous phones had qwerty keyboards (ie. Sony Ericsson P990) or let me just write on the screen with a stylus (Sony Ericsson P990, P900, etc). I could express myself and write or type exactly what I wanted without it constantly changing what I fucking wrote and without constantly fighting with the shit changing keypads and stuff.
• The slowness. I dunno why but my phone gets really damn slow switching between apps at times.
• Not being able to run apps in the background?! WTH? My ex-gf's P800 from like 2003 could run multiple apps, as could my P900 and P990. A true multitasking OS with sufficient RAM to actually run multiple things at once. I could switch between an IM app, email, and a webbrowser (Opera) all I wanted without having to close apps and start over every time like on the iPhone. What a stinking crock of shit. We are going BACKWARDS in tech here people. (Okay, yes, I know iPhoneOS is a unix operating system and can multitask; and yes I know there are apps after you jailbreak that will let you background any app so it doesn't quit. But 1) It shouldn't be NECESSARY to do this, and 2) it doesn't really work anyway because the iPhone has insufficient RAM to run multiple things at once.)
• The stupid 'iPod' music player. Crashing. Many times. I've discovered its mainly due to the phone being on silent (the way I like to always keep it) and then if I plug it into my car it will crash randomly. The music starts skipping because its stopped getting a music stream from the phone, so I check the phone and iPod has crashed. WTF. 2.1 firmware, still does it.
• Randomly loses emails I write when I hit send. This was a serious problem until 2.1 where it is mostly fixed, but I have still had it happen once or twice. Before 2.1 it was extremely common for me to hit send, it would try to send email... and bam. Back at inbox, email not sent, will never retry, not even tell you it failed, everything I wrote gone. I learnt a long time ago to select all, and do copy on buggy PC apps that might crash so I wouldn't lose what I wrote (this was back in windows95 or earlier days) but WAIT, the iPhone won't let me do copy/paste! ARGH@#$*#$@
• Can't install what software I want without jailbreaking it. Traditionally phones were at least open without DRM and other stupid restrictions like Consoles (xbox, PS2, PS3, PSP, etc) so you could run what you wanted. The consoles needed to be modded and hacked so you could run your own homebrew software. Now the iPhone seems to be copying the console world doing the same. You can only get apps from the apple store; only apps APPLE will approve. All the USEFUL apps don't get approved, like tethering, thus forcing us to jailbreak our phones. *big sigh*.
• Can't use my phone to store files. I can't connect it to my PC or Mac with the USB cable and have it present itself as an 8gb or 16gb USB stick like other phones do? My P990 required no special software, I just plugged it in and any Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OSX, etc computer saw it as a generic USB stick which I could store any files on there that I wanted, as WELL as manipulate music, documents, photos, etc that the phone sees and uses.
• No way to edit files, not even TEXT files let alone Word or Excel files. My P900 and P990 could do this.
• Bluetooth. Is. Totally. USELESS. The iPhone cannot send or recieve files using bluetooth, so what point is there to it? My P990 could pair with a bluetooth keyboard AND IT WORKED, though technically useless since I could write on the P990 with a stylus or use its qwerty keyboard. So what is the point to bluetooth on the iPhone? Is it just for bluetooth headsets? Who uses those anyway? The borg?
• No way to even get the data out of the 'Notes' application whatsoever.... no copy/paste on the iPhone, and no way when connected over USB and iTunes makes no mention of it anywhere.... great app, put your notes in there and never get access to them again! Ha Ha laughs Jobs!
• No MMS. But I kinda consider this to be a feature to be honest. I never did use MMS in any of my previous phones.
• The camera is a stinking Piece of Shit. 2mp? Phones 2 years before hand were coming out with 2mp cameras, now days phones are far beyond that...
• TO BE CONTINUED....

Work

I work as a Systems Administrator and Software Developer for a consulting company.

Travel

I like to travel. I haven't gotten to travel much thus far, but am planning to travel extensively in the coming years.

Places I've visited:

• Los Angeles, USA and Victoria, Canada in 1992.
• Auckland, New Zealand in 2008.
• San Francisco, USA in 2009.

Interests

• IRC, Bots, Developing Bots
• Programming, both Traditional (C, Perl, PHP) as well as Object Oriented (C++, C#, Java)
• Astronomy
• Astrobiology
• Space Technology
• Physics and Quantum Mechanics
• Anything UNIX (FreeBSD, Solaris, & OSX)
  

Forex

I've been interested in Foreign Exchange trading ever since Economics class in Year 11 & 12 highschool as well as University.

Yes, I actually have a real trading account. I am currently shorting the AUD.

Being a programmer my entire life, I am greatly interested in mathematical analysis of historic Forex data as well as writing my own automated (or robot) trader.

I have a database on my Solaris box that is currently many gigabytes in size containing historic tick data of numerous currency pairs. I'm working on writing some algorithms to see how effective they are at automatically trading historic data. Then I will test them on live data in a game account.

Gaming

I was always an avid PC gamer. I never got into console gaming. (My only console I ever purchased was an xbox, and even then it was to run Linux on it.)

Blizard Games

• Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness
• Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal
• Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos
• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne)
• Diablo 1
• Diablo 2
• Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction
• Starcraft
• Starcraft: Broodwar

Other Games

• Quake 1, 2, 3
• Unreal Tournament, 2003, 2004

World of Warcraft

WoW was my first MMORPG and I quickly turned into an addict. :(

• Played Original from release until expansion came out on Illidan. Had three level 60s.
• Played The Burning Crusade until expansiom came out on Kirin Tor. Had four level 70s.
• Quit at the imminent release of Wrath of the Lich King. :D

My main was Leela (a cute adorable pink haired female gnome) and Sal (my female white haired nightelf rogue).

I still use Leela as my online persona. For example, I now hang out on nonoba (mostly to chat) and go by Leela.

Why I'm leaving Adelaide

People always ask why I'm wanting to leave Adelaide. Like its some kind of surprise. I think people that live in Adelaide are mostly blind.

Main reasons include:

• Adelaide is a stagnant hole. Read the AdelaideNow story Why we hate our own city. (The comments Adelaidians have posted on that story are truly classic. Seriously, give them a read, its definitely worth the time.)
• Nothing ever happens here. Ever.
• Adelaide's growth is stunted. Most of the younger Y-Generation is leaving Adelaide, me included. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth are all happening places.
• Adelaide is thus rapidly turning into a "retirement village".
• There is a strong "Adelaide is a Country Town" mentality that persists all the way through council and the state government that retards any sort of development.
• We talk and talk and talk, but never do anything. What is happening with the RAH? Are we building it or not? Have we even settled on a fucking name yet?! What about the new Stadium? Grandstands? Do something useful with the Torrens lake?
• The SA plastic bag ban has really made me mad.
• Constructing things like the Bakewell Underpass, South Road Underpass, and Tram Extensions takes FOREVER. Why is it that any sort of construction project takes 10x longer in Adelaide compared to interstate or overseas? Are we really so slow?
• If you want a career in anything other than working at maccas or professional whinging you need to get out of here.
• And the final, big, personal problem for me is Adelaide is very geek unfriendly. I don't know if you noticed. Geek is in now. (Just not in Adelaide?) Generation-Y is a generation of kids brought up in the computer and internet age. Oh yeah. Generation-Y is leaving Adelaide in droves.

Personally, I'm just sick of it and can't be bothered caring anymore. Auckland, here I come!

New Zealand Stuff

Random things about New Zealand

• Why New Zealand did not become an Australian State. (original on geocities, local mirrored copy because geocities is going offline soon.)
• A Yahoo answers question with some good responses on why NZ chose to go it alone and not join the Commonwealth of Australia
• An article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a push for a union between Australia and New Zealand, and talk of a common currency.

FWIW, I am in full support of New Zealand becoming a member of the Commonwealth, but to be honest I don't ever see it happening. A common currency would be very nice too, but I would be sad to see the kiwi disappear. But it would certainly make life easier for us.

Quotes that i love :)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or villafy them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-- Unknown

Space Shuttle Columbia...

These were taken from a space.com forum post many years back.

I really hate loosing that piece of space history that should have had its right place in the Smithsonian or some other museum one day.

A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
- William Shedd

This is often quoted, and I think it sums up Columbia. If I can be anthropomorphic for a while, I think she would have taken museum duty and done it well - just as she handled every other mission she was given. Much like you I would have liked to be able to walk up and touch her, and I shed a tear for the fact that I never will. But in a way I am happy with how she went out: she was an aerospace plane. She bridged the gap from air to space, and that's where she left us - she was flying, fighting, doing what she was built to do. And then she was gone in a blaze of glory. A Viking funeral. If I can quote Robert Crippen:

"I'm sure that Columbia, which had traveled millions of miles and made that fiery re-entry 27 times before, struggled mightily in those last moments to bring her crew home safely once again. She wasn't successful."

(C) Leela teh gnome, 2009