Steampunk Revisited

Some people like technology. Some people have too much of an affectation towards the Victorian Age. Some people spend far too much time dreaming up ridiculously amusing projects which combine these features. Case in point. Exhibit A, a steampunk inspired keyboard

The keyboard however is but the mere  tip of the iceberg. Today I bring you the brilliance and demented idea of… a Steampunk Laptop

Hrrm. I’m almost tempted to consider working on a Steampunk genre… Nah. I couldn’t. I already have three campaign ideas that need to be finished before I attempt anything more. Still. It could be fun.

Virtual Housecleaning Revisited

As some of you might have noticed a little earlier today, I took the site down to clean up some back-end code, update my WordPress version and to just fiddle around a bit. You shouldn’t see any visible changes to the page as most of the changes I made were on the back end. All in all the site should run a bit smoother now. And to top it all off, I managed to find a fun little plugin that will block your views of site with a splash page should I ever do it again.

I’m rather proud of my splash page and all it’s geeky glory. Rather than actually activate it so as you’re all subjected to it’s brilliance I’ll just paste it below so that you can bask in it’s awesomeness and if you ever come to the site in the future and see it you’ll be a hoopy frood who knows exactly where his towel is.

FNORD!

As you can see, The Gnomes of Zurich are currently in the process of upgrading The Website to better integrate the Orbital Mind Lasers currently on loan from the Discordians. As this usually involves such intricacies as defenestrating the idiots involved in maintaining the Database, perpetuating the latest conspiracy theory with the local Templar sect, consulting the Illuminati’s star charts regarding Great Cthulhu’s imminent re-awakening, whipping the Gerbils running the servers, and quite possibly disemboweling the Site Admin with a spoon (because it hurts more you idiot) we can only give you a rough estimate as to when the site will return to it’s usual state of abnormal malcontentedness.

Our Magic Eight Ball suggests you ‘Ask Again Later’, whatever that means.
Why not try back in approximately — X minutes.

Sorry for the inconvenience… actually sod that. We’re not really. We’re just saying that to sound compassionate when in truth we couldn’t give a steaming pile of dingoes kidneys about you. The site will be back when and if we’re finished. You should be mature enough to cope for now (or at least more mature than we were when we wrote this page). There is a whole internet filled with enough pr0n and crap to satisfy your cravings and amuse you until this site returns. Go on now, be free.

Hail Eris!

As you can tell, I’m easily amused on my birthday.

November 28, 1973

“The stars are thin,” said Grey Brother, snuffing at the dawn wind. “Where shall we lair today? For, from now, we follow new trails.”

– Rudyard Kipling, The Spring Running

Virtual Housecleaning

You may or may not have noticed that I did a little bit of virtual housecleaning on the blog tonight. I cleared all my Categories and Tags with the intent to go through all 630 odd posts (Is that all? That seems low!) that I’ve made in the past 5 (almost 6) years and reorganize them into something resembling… err well, something anyway. Knowing me as well as I do however, I suspect what will be a one, or possibly two night task will end up dragging on for about three months before I eventually give up and start retagging everything willy-nilly.

Either way, you’ve been warned. Carry on.

PS — It’s finally snowing outside right now. ROCK THE FUCK ON!

Five Things

Five things I have, but do not want:

An increasingly insurmountable level of debt. While I believe that in this day and age, with all our crass consumerism and living beyond our means, that some level of debt is inevitable it certainly would be nice to not have to worry about it affecting me.

A bothersomely nosy family. I love my family dearly, don’t get me wrong, but I’d love them all the more if I could just not have to see them regularly or justify my life to them on a daily basis. I like my personal space and solitude and it’s long past time that I had some of it.

Bad eyesight. I hate having to put my contacts in to practically do anything these days. There was a time when I could putter around the house comfortably without any sort of ocular assistance (and despite the relative blindness I still do on occasion) but when you have to squint to watch television that’s only a meter and a half away you know those days are long done. Oh for a pair of brainy specs…

Insomnia. While I love being a night owl and find that I am much more productive during the hours of 5pm and 3am than any other time, it currently doesn’t lend itself well to socialization with the rest of the world. Even when I want, nay, need to get up early my sleep habits don’t often approve and I end up going to bed around sunup regardless.

A dog whose gaseous discharges smell worse than the deepest, dankest Hadean pit imaginable.

Five things I want, but do not have:

A job. Currently this is my highest priority. I’d love to be doing something I enjoy and getting paid well for it but barring that I’d be satisfied with having something that will keep the debt collectors off my back for another month or two.

A significant other (a.k.a. a girlfriend). Odd as that may seem with my penchant for solitude but I really would like to have someone in my life that actually understands me, has similar interests, is easy on the eyes and isn’t going to disappear like mist come morning. Any takers?

A talent for writing. I can write, as the archives of this blog can readily attest to, but I have no illusions as to my ability. I’m mediocre at best and I really wish I wasn’t. Is there such a thing as having perfect pitch and range in writing?

Somewhere to store all my stuff. While I’m sure cluttered disorganization and precariously stacked piles of books are all the rage in clichéd descriptions of academia everywhere, I’d much prefer to have a series of shelves to store and display them on. It’d be nice to also have drawers to put clothes in as well instead of the five or so packing boxes that they currently exist in. A place for everything, and everything in it’s place. Wouldn’t you agree?

The ability to travel in time. Honestly, I’d love to be able to go back and experience (and change) history. I’d love to see how events unfolded, how things were made and how people interacted.

Five things I neither have, nor want:

Infinite power. As the adage goes, power corrupts and I know full well that I’m of the corruptible sort, regardless of how rose-coloured my self perception may be at times.

Fame. I don’t even want my 15 minutes (or seconds these days). I’ll just continue to hover anonymously in the background and laugh at the rest of you.

A Macintosh. Honestly people, what’s with the perceived elitist crap attitude? It’s just a computer. Get the fuck over it and yourself.

A kitten. Cats are all well and good, but I’ll take a big, idiot dog any day of the week (despite his gaseous nature).

A sexy underwear drawer. Yeah, scary thought isn’t it. Let’s not go there.

Now With 65% Less Emo!

After my little emo filled wall of text from the other day I decided that I wasn’t going to post anything more until after my birthday or until I had something useful to say (read: I found work). It seemed like a fine sentiment to live by but it’s kind of frustrating when your own website is your startup page and you keep sighing because the twat who runs it hasn’t updated the content and then you remember that it’s you. Okay, I know the reason is simply that I haven’t had anything to say but it still irks me. Hell, even the stupid memes that I usually get attracted to during these bouts of melancholy haven’t held much appeal this time around and I’ve really just been posting them out of habit rather than having any real conviction in the humourous nature of their content. Until now that is…

I have discovered one that I can wholeheartedly get behind and it has not only cheered me up a little, I managed to change the poll to coincide with it.

I challenge you all to find out what your viking name is! It’s fun, or my name isn’t

Gríss Foemangler

Your Viking Personality: You’re a doughty, stalwart Viking. You have a thirst for battle, and tend to strike first and think later. You’re not a “berserker”, but you’re among the toughest sane Vikings around.

You might grumble a bit at the lack of amenities on board a Viking longboat, but you can handle it. You possess some skills which other Vikings respect.

You have a fairly pragmatic attitude towards life, and tend not to expend effort in areas where it would be wasted. Other people tend to think of you as manipulative and conniving.

You can find out your own Viking Name here.

In other news, I watched BSG: Razor tonight on Space and I was a little disappointed. It was fun and all just for being BSG but it didn’t satisfy me. I liked seeing more of the old toasters and ships and hearing “By Your Command” again but the story itself lacked in my opinion. I never really cared for Admiral Cain when she was in the show to begin with so more of her and her “maverick” crew wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Even the brief glimpses of the rest of the fleet just didn’t sit well with me though so it wasn’t just her.

I found the flashbacks to be muddy and they always seemed to be placed at the wrong point and managed to break up the tempo of the story each and every time. Irritating to say the least. I suspect I would’ve preferred either a wholly flashbacked episode without any reference to the current arc (though with my distaste for Cain — which I’m sure is shared — I can’t seeing that one being popular) or one that was just bookended by current events and told the story in one piece.

Meh! what do I know. I still haven’t even finished watching Season 3 yet. Maybe it’ll all make sense and I’ll “see the light” then but right now I think I’m going to go and watch the Children in Need Doctor Who Special again. I got more sheer joy out of the 8 minutes of it than the 2 hours of BSG.

Oh yeah… I suppose I need to change the poll again like I said I would…

[poll=5]

Et Voila! Enjoy

Life: The Update

As you may have noticed, this blog has become a somewhat barren landscape as of late. My usually fun diatribes and egomaniacal rantings have dwindled to a trickle and I’m back to posting useless internet drivel, memes and other crap because quite frankly that’s all I’ve had the mental capacity for.

I’m not going to offer any excuses for this. That’d sound just too damn emo, and I’m not even feeling up to that these days. I’m pretty sure my loyal readers (all 4 of you) are smart enough to deduce the reasons why though. Yes I’ve been stressing out over things lately. A lot more than usual sadly. This week has just been one big stress-fest and it doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon. I still have no job and no decent prospects, hell not even a crap prospect either; my attempts at fixing my computer have failed utterly, despite the help of overly generous friends; the bill collectors are starting to knock on the door and I don’t have a thing to tell them; my birthday is looming in a little over a week’s time and quite frankly I could give a fuck less because I’m seriously doubting that I’ll get anything that I truly want — (Note to everyone: Practical gifts can go to fucking hell in a flaming handbasket!); there is no sympathy on the home front, in fact the stress from there is getting increasingly worse as the days go by and it isn’t helping one fucking bit. Hell not even my Doctor Who post from yesterday wants to even fucking publish properly, so you can see why I just really haven’t felt the urge to post anything more compelling than what you’ve seen.

In fact, this post itself is becoming more and more arduous as I type it and I’m constantly (and consistently) flipping to a different tab to amuse myself elsewhere rather than blather on about how my life is currently crap-tastic and not getting any better…

I can’t even set aside my worries long enough to enjoy a show or even concentrate enough to work on either my game world or my story. I’m in a deep melancholic funk. Bleeeaarrrrgh! To top it all off, I’ve got a brain the size of a planet and all anyone ever wants me to do is go down to the airlock and pick up a couple of hitchhikers. You call that job satisfaction? ‘Cause I certainly don’t and don’t even get me started at the pain in the diodes all down my left side…

Meh. I think I’m just going to quit while I’m ahead and end this blather filled post while I can. I doubt I’ll post much more in the foreseeable future either so buh-bye for now.