This is how it goes when you hear about something awesome coming up and decide to organise attending it. You will ask others to come. Some will simply say “no.” And indeed, no means no. A significant number (say, 100%) will say “maybe.” Maybe pretty much always means no. And, holy Moses, a select few will say “yes”! Do not be alarmed by this. Yes, in a surprise twist, also means no.

Now, this is not an “everybody sucks!” post. Many people have completely valid excuses. It’s just unfortunate, is all. When something awesome is on, you want, ideally, the entire world to be there too. Because it was awesome.

I have a couple of crappy 3GPs if you prefer your pictures moving (and accompanied by beats).

So at this juncture I should give due props to Lo4d3d, proprietor of a highly successful website, and also present for Minuit’s The Guards Themselves Tour.

You may have heard that Lo4d3d is a fast eater. In person, it is terrifying. Upon receiving his foot-long Sub, his hands went into a blur as he devoured it within seconds.

Ruth Carr, and in fact the whole group, had a fantastic stage presence – reminiscent of Elevator. This is to say nothing of the music. I mean, within seconds, I had made up my mind. The Fear will now be an electronica/breaks act. No amount of Audioslave covers can compare to the stuff in their catalog. At my earliest convenience, I went straight to Trademe.

After an absolutely stonking (yes: stonking) rendition of I Hate Guns, they returned for an encore and encouraged people to get up on stage and dance with them. While I thought this was totally cool, I declined on this occasion.

FYI: having four Vodka Bulls thinking it’s the perfect way to get amped for an electronica/breaks gig while still being able to drive home will not seem like such a good idea at 7am when you are sleeping awake. Man, that was fucked up.

so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell

The Commonwealth games are on at the moment. (I quite liked the “Stolenwealth” take on it. Cough, cough. We don’t like to talk about that bit.) I was introduced to a new sport yesterday: Synchronised Swimming Solo. Let’s all ponder that for a moment. I feel it’s a sport I could do well at. A couple of further observations:

1. Judging by the swimsuits, they were going for the camel toe vote. It would be interesting to know how many of the judges are men.
2. It’s one of those things where you feel, I’m sure they train hard and everything, but is it really a sport? Still, I’m sure there are much more unlikely examples. Meanwhile, let us pray Twenty20 never makes it in.

Have you heard about Desert Bus? Awesome. I know there are those of you out there who, after playing Pend, declared they would never play another game again, as it would only be a disappointment. Well, now you can.

Microsoft continue to stun us with their interface design. Apparently this is the result of actual usability studies. As The Pretender would say, how many users have died because of what I thought up? When I saw the title of this, I thought they were joking: Fix My Settings. They were not. One of the comments summed it up nicely: if you can break it, it’s already broken. In the case of IE, true and true.

But – and I hear this is what makes America great – there will always be someone worse to make them look (relatively) good. That’s right, I’m talking about Fox News. They recently ran a poll. Will Hillary Clinton win the primary (ie. will the Democrats vote her as their presidential candidate) and lose the election? A reasonable question. The voiceover added “that’s as opposed to losing the primary and losing the election.” I was about to say, hey, I think you might be missing an option there, but I guess not. No one watching Fox would have voted for that one anyway.

If I may make a general observation, the future will be both sarcastic and a lot like The Matrix.

Anyway, here’s what’s coming up: Minuit “The Guards Themselves” Tour. Saturday 25 March, 10pm at Rising Sun, K’Road. Apparently DJ FunknSlocuts will also be there. Now, what did you get the first time you read that word? I got fucken sluts. I think that was only half of the intended. At any rate, you should come. It’s probably going to be cheaper than a good CD on trademe.

Beautiful one day, perfect the next. Buy a house on the beautiful North Shore and pay off the mortgage for the rest of your life!

(Originally I was going to write my own caption, but man, that Chubwokken. He is a supastah.)

My house is not what you would call tidy. Well, my room is (relatively at least), but let’s just say we have nothing to fear should a natural disaster arise and self-sufficiency be required. Unless it’s an earthquake. Then we’re screwed.

One example is our couch. Its design has so many nooks and crannies that, should you take a seat, it will almost inevitably provide what you need. The couch will provide. Last night we went to play Pictionary and before you knew it, a couple of pens had emerged from its folds. This is just your typical stuff though. Earlier in the evening, just as it was getting dark, Bartleby, sitting on the couch, was holding a torch. We looked at him.

“Where’d you get that from?”

He looked uncertain.

We sagely nodded at each other. “The couch will provide.”

So, good story? Yeah, a bit middling. I might just resort to a picture.

Where to begin. Well, that big pink thing in the top corner? I think it’s one of those L-shaped pillows. By the way, it is actually possible to reach that computer. There’s a small gap between the second chair and pile of boxes and bins there. As long as you are very skinny, you can squeeze through and then walk across the old papers and you’re good. Unless there’s a fire. Then you’re screwed.

Now, recently our favourite person linked to a couple of examples that humbled me. Our mess is nothing. Not compared to Crazy eBay Mom. And not compared to Kimmy from Squalor Survivors. I suggest you take the time to read through them a bit – you have to let it sink in to really appreciate it.

And this is the funny thing about the internet. It provides so many windows into so many worlds. Livejournals are one example. And it is great, because it teaches us many things. One, that these things are indeed possible – never underestimate the human being. Two, perhaps we might catch ourselves saying “how ridiculous, I would never let it go that far” and we could learn humility (reality?). And lastly, that no matter how bad we have it, someone is probably much worse off than us. And hey, they’re doing something about it. What’s our excuse?

Javascript is an interesting little language. In terms of people who have used it at least once, it is probably amongst the world’s most popular languages. And yet very few people have anything more than a bare minimum understanding of it. Generally you get pretty good at HTML, CSS and maybe PHP etc, but Javascript tends to only come up when the client says something awesome like “I want it to pop up in a little window!” or “dropdown menus would really make my site better!”. In fact before the proliferation of CSS it seemed that Javascript was a language that existed purely for the purpose of constructing image rollovers. Because you could never raise a million dollars in venture capital without image rollovers on your site. You can’t sell usability.

In fact a lot of people don’t even realise that Javascript is not Java. Simple mistake, but a pretty big one. Java is the one that occasionally throws errors and will take down your entire browser, and possibly your operating system, with it. Javascript, on the other hand, throws errors constantly and you wouldn’t even know. Seriously, have a look in the Javascript console now and chances are better than 50/50 that at least one of the pages you have visited will have thrown a JS error. That’s how critical Javascript is to your browsing experience. I generally use it about 5 lines at a time for clever little usability improvements. I pity those poor bastards who have to develop entire applications in it.

The other thing about Javascript is that even people who use it know almost nothing about how to. Sometimes I have to do a separate Google search for every line I create. And always I thought, is there, like, an API? A hitchhiker’s guide? Anything?

Not as far as I know. But here, have a look at Javascript in Ten Minutes. It is a great little primer on the basics. The first half is anyway. The second half, I got a bit lost, but once again I pitied the poor bastards who develop entire applications in it. All the complexity of OO, with all the ugly of procedural! I love you PHP.

No offense to Perl. This was the only PHP image I had.