What was I listening to during the warmer months of 2007 and 2008?

Here’s a hint:

1. “Invisible Touch” - Genesis (from Invisible Touch, 1986)
2. “Just What I Needed” - The Cars (from The Cars, 1978)
3. “Moonlight Shadow” - Mike Oldfield (from Crises, 1983)
4. “Reggatta de Blanc” - The Police (from Reggatta de Blanc, 1979)
5. “The Gold It’s in the…” - Pink Floyd (from Obscured by Clouds, 1972)
6. “Love Is the Drug” - Roxy Music (from Siren, 1975)
7. “One of These Nights” - Eagles (from One of These Nights, 1975)
8. “Golden Years” - David Bowie (from Station to Station, 1976)
9. “Go Insane” - Lindsey Buckingham (from Go Insane, 1984)
10. “Maneater” - Hall & Oates (from H2O, 1982)
11. “The Boys of Summer” - Don Henley (from Building the Perfect Beast, 1984)
12. “You Got Lucky” - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (from Long After Dark, 1982)
13. “Normal” - Porcupine Tree (from Nil Recurring, 2007)
14. “Solsbury Hill” - Peter Gabriel (from Peter Gabriel, 1977)
15. “Sara” - Fleetwood Mac (from Tusk, 1979 (single released 1980))
16. “Little Red Corvette” - Prince (from 1999, 1982 (single released 1983))
17. “Running Up That Hill” - Kate Bush (from Hounds of Love, 1985)
18. “Africa” - Toto (from Toto IV, 1982 (single released 1983))

I’m going to attempt to upgrade to WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1 this morning. This will involve deleting the current installation, uploading the new version and updating the database tables, then praying that everything works.

Here goes nothing…

Update: it seems to be working, though the changes aren’t obvious to the reader. I’m now going to take a crack at using the new randomised display feature for tag clouds.

On Monday I had a Java project due, today I’ve got a Perl assignment due and next Monday I’ve got a Java assignment due.

The Java project was (for the most part) fairly simple, though I didn’t manage to create all the required functionality. (I was able to implement roughly 90-95% of it.)

The Perl assignment was also fairly simple, though there were two very curly programming problems that took a lot of thinking to figure out. It’s done, and I’ve submitted it, so at least that’s out of the way.

Now there’s this other Java assignment to do, and, to add insult to injury, it’s due on the Monday immediately after Easter!

The good news is that I’m feeling productive, at least.

Update: I just did two more assignments today: the next Java assignment (due Monday) and a C/UNIX assignment (due 05/04). Sometimes I amaze even myself…

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So wrote Roger Waters in his lyrics to “Time”, one of the best tracks from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic, The Dark Side of the Moon. The day just gone, 17 March, marked the 35th anniversary of its release, and Vega actually played it in its entirety as celebration.

It was ten years ago that I actually bought the album myself — I was 20 at the time, and here I am now, quickly approaching 30 and realising by the day just how true the quoted passage above is.

Life doesn’t begin tomorrow, or next week, or next year. It’s been happening since the day you were born, so you can either make the most of it now or keep waiting for something that’s already arrived. I’m personally choosing the former.

Tonight I went out to The Factory (an Anglican church whose name puts in mind a certain scene from Pink Floyd The Wall) to see the Easter debate between sceptics and Christians.

I had low expectations. I expected two people who were talking past each other. The topic was “The resurrection: long on faith, short on evidence”, and the only question that came to my mind upon hearing it was, “Where’s the debate?”

But I was pleasantly surprised. The Anglican pastor, Sandy Grant, approached the topic intellectually and honestly, and was fairly compelling to listen to.

On the other hand, the sceptic, whose position I’m more sympathetic to, was scattered, awkward, and quite boring, frankly. His opening argument, running 15 excruciating minutes, seemed to bounce around the general topics of scepticism and how badly atheists are often mischaracterised without actually addressing the topic of debate. This was Martin Hadley, the President of the NSW Branch of Australian Skeptics and a barrister, no less.

Overall, the night felt like a great opportunity squandered. I had a better time socialising after the actual event.

So despite my low expectations, I still managed to be disappointed.

I’m a perfectionist. This is a tendency that I recognise as a weakness, and certainly, university has beaten some of that out of me, sometimes with a figurative crowbar.

To continue this particularly nasty metaphor, today uni gave me a black eye. Next time it may be an anal rape in the showers.

For my Java unit, I received my results for my first assignment: 100%. Excellent. I’m happy with that.

But I just submitted my first major project for this same unit, and I just couldn’t crack one part of it. Because of that, I perfected everything else, but boy was it a kick in the pants.

Still, let’s think of this as a learning experience…

What a game!

The Bulldogs thrashed the Eels in the first half of the game, 20-0. How could we recover from that? One of my companions, a died-in-the-wool Doggies supporter, let me know in body language (if not words) how dire things were looking for my team. “I’m so glad I’m came,” I said sarcastically. “It’s humiliating.”

And yet somehow… miraculously… the Eels came through, totally dominating the second half to win 28-20. Can you believe it???

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Bulldogs had looked to be coasting to an upset win at the break but the Eels came from the clouds to score five unanswered tries and record their second biggest comeback ever.

It was the biggest lead the Bulldogs have surrendered in their history.

The strangest thing is that the game took place almost entirely in one half of the field — the opposite half to the one we were sitting in. Clearly, the players were trying to avoid me. Maybe they could sense my lack of footy fanaticism.

Photos:

This afternoon I’m going to that long-awaited, much anticipated Eels vs. Bulldogs game at ANZ Stadium (which is also where I saw The Police perform in January).

Now, technically the wiring between the ventilator and the external battery isn’t “fixed” per se, but by using some insulating tape, my stepfather has patched things up nicely — nicely enough for me to be able to drive into Homebush and brave the crazy Bulldogs fans (and we all know how crazy they really are, particularly those weirdo face-painters).

Who will win? I’d like to say the Eels, but the chance of there being a riot will decrease with the Bulldogs winning, so maybe I should hope for that instead.

Addendum: TAB odds have Parra to win. I’m packing heat just in case.

After getting negative feedback from a few different over-50 types on the (un)readability of the previous ChaoticSoul/KaoticControl theme, I’ve switched to Talian 1.0 as my blog’s new theme.

It’s actually not a bad theme, though I might tweak it some more later.

Thanks to my mum for taking the photo below of the bush in our area — I turned it into the header image above.

I’ve just added a page for my own version of ChaoticSoul, creatively called KaoticControl.

The page is here and the zipfile is HERE.