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I’m going to spoil this from the start: GO SEE THIS FILM NOW.

Directed by Ang Lee, based on a book by Yann Martel, I went to see it tonight with RMB. Words to describe this experience are hard to find.

There has (and will continue to be) many, many things written analysing the amazing story told by both of these works, and I don’t feel the need to add my terribly uninformed opinion to the flow.

Take note, if you park your four-wheeled contrivance in a motorcycle parking bay, you’re probably asking to be keyed. Bike parking spots are limited at the best of times, normally ten or so in a facility of thousands for cars - and yet car drivers complain when a “bike takes up a whole park”.

Well, you have people like this to blame…

How not to park your car - unless you hate your paint.

It seems that I’m being followed by a fantasy account, woo! Why do they do this? Are they trying to scrape more importance by changing their following:followers ratio, or does this strange Canadian posing as a Mad American think I have something to contribute? 🙂

I’m not sure how much sense it’ll make to anyone else, but this was a hilarious (to me) train of thought when a moth caused me to trip in the bathroom, grab the shower wall and steady myself.

Bored pondering turned to hyperbole, wondering how far that turn of events could have taken. Grab the shower curtain, slip on a mis-placed bottle, take out the toilet cistern and flood the house? Fall through the thin gyprock wall and take out the power to the house, causing a fire and burning down the street? It’s the thing of children’s fiction, amazing campfire stories or timeless mythology.

So, we’ve got a home-grown device/IP/network management system at work. Backend’s Postgres/PHP, front end is horrible and hilariously ugly. It works, mostly. Since I’m the only one with any skills in the space, it falls to me to find ways to Make Things Better.

Today’s fun was making the search box a little less horrible - searching for devices in in a subnet wasn’t easy unless you wanted to find the subnet’s location, then drill down from there.

So, the xmas period is over, with the requisite gorging oneself on food and drink. I don’t have a set of scales so I can’t punish myself with the thought of weight gain - good!

Walked over 10km yesterday, it took about two hours, exactly what google maps said it should (seeing as I spend half the time stopping to SMS people, :))). I took my 5kg red ball with me, certainly is a good way to work the wrists and hands, I was sore as crap by midnight.

Here’s a quick couple of photos of the installation of the aforementioned rack. I got it from RMB for xmas 🙂

I’ve been looking for a low profile way of carrying things on my bike, and this was the least offensive looking option. Givi’s rack looks like someone gave the apprentice a pipe bender and said have at it. 🙁

It’s a rather simple affair, with a couple of spacers sit where the original rear handle bar mounted, a couple more into the helmet hooks and bob’s your aunty. They sell adaptor modules to take all the major brands of top boxes, but at this stage I just like that I’ve got a flat, solid place to tie stuff to 😀

I’m sure no one will mind that I’m a little later with this post - it’s only one year and one day late 🙂

Santa and a fire place

Santa and his modern sleigh

Technology helps all of us - why would Santa not take advantage of motorised methods for delivering presents - giving the reindeer a much-needed night off 🙂 This is the third snowmobile set I’ve gotten from the Advent Calendars so far - I’m really starting to get a collection 🙂

Sith Santa :)

This one should come as no surprise to anyone - it takes up 1/4 of the front of the box 🙂 It’s definitely a nicely designed interpretation though, with a cool little cape and a fuzzy hat 🙂

This won’t be the last post for the LEGO Advent Calendars for 2012, I’m going to do some overview shots and a “list of the codes” post just in case. These will come after christmas as I’m sure tomorrow will be busy for all of us.