This is my god...

There is a song that I like, that really speaks to me, that I would like to share. Anyone out there who listens to Triple J might have heard of Scroobius Pip & Dan le Sac, as "Thou shalt always kill" got quite a bit of airplay there. The one that really works for me, though, is "Letter from God to Man". The film clip is pretty cute, too. It's certainly not my intention to offend anyone with this, so if you do have very strong religious views that you don't like being challenged, navigate away now...

Here are the lyrics, if you have trouble making them out, or don't want to watch YouTube:

This is a letter, from God to Man, it says:

Hey There, how, how’s it going?
Long time no see.
I know I haven't been around much lately
But…it didn't seem like you wanted me to be
The last time I sent down a message you nailed it to the cross
So I figured I'd just leave you to it, let you be your own boss

But I've been keeping an eye on you, I have, and it's amazing how you've grown.
With your technological advances and the problems you’ve overthrown,
And all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and such finesse,
But I admit there are a few things I'm afraid have impressed me less.

So I'm writing to apologize for all the horrors committed in my name,
Although that was never what I intended, I feel I should take my share of the blame.
All the good I tried to do was corrupted when all the religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered

Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
With all these new morals and ethics, survival of the fittest was gone
No longer could the biggest man simply take whatever he needed
'Cause damnation was the price if certain rules were not heeded

Some of the deeds committed in my name just made me wonder were I went wrong.
Back at the start when I created this, the foundation seemed so strong.
See all the elements were already here, long before I began, I just kind of put it all together
I didn't really think out a long-term plan.

I made the sun an appropriate distance and laid the stars across the sky
So you could navigate the globe or simply watch the sun rise
I covered the earth with plants and fruits,
Some for sustenance and some for beauty
I made the sun shine and the clouds rain so their maintenance wasn’t your duty
I tried to give each creature its own attributes without making them enveloped
I gave you all you all your own space to grow and in your own way space to develop

I didn't know such development would cause rifts and jealousy
Cause you to war against each other and leave marks on this planet indelibly
You see, I wasn’t really the creator, I was just the curator of nature
I want to get something straight with homosexuals right now: I don’t hate ya
I was a simple being that happened to be the first to wield such powers
I just laid the ground, it was You that built the towers

It was You that invented bombs, and the fear that comes with them
And it was You that invented money, and the corrupt economic systems
You invented terms like just-war and terms like friendly fire
And it was You that didn't know when to stop digging deeper, when to stop building higher
It was You that exhausted the resources I carefully laid out on this earth,
And it was You that even saw these problems coming but accredited them little worth
It was You that used my teachings for your own personal gain
And it was You that committed such tragedies, even though they were in my name

So I apologize for any mistakes I made, and when my words misconstrued
But this apology's to mother nature, cause I created YOU

Quote of the week... nah, make that decade

"An iPhone is like a penis - fun to play with when you're on your own, but it's rude to pull it out at the dinner table."

Tom Gleeson - Good News Week, Channel Ten, Monday 28th Sept, 2009.

It's all different!

For some reason my beloved Firefox has crashed on my laptop, and even uninstalling and reinstalling it hasn't fixed the problem. I have been doing a bunch of my web surfing on the Mac as of late, so as not to expose myself to the ickyness (and very low level of internet safety) that is IE, but all of the camera software is on the laptop, so to upload pics... blah, blah, blah, you get the drift.

One thing I have noticed is how different the blog looks on different browsers. The mac doesn't seem to recognise the colours that I have chosen for hyperlinks, and puts the little search bar floating into the text. IE, on the other hand, has been chopping off the post titles.

What's to bet that on beloved Firefox, none of these stupid issues would happen? If anyone has any idea why it won't run on my machine, please let me know!

Punching Rusty

When I said a few days ago that I would feel better if I punched Rusty for a bit, this isn't exactly what I meant...
The Rusty I have been punching looks more like this one, with the preparedness and stuff:
And the me that's doing the punching is all girded of fist, and guarding her chin:

All this training appears to be doing nothing other than making me really stiff and sore all the time, but maybe time will tell, and I will get fit and strong and skinny...

The slow death of sound quality.

Buy CDs where you can. Really, unless there is no other option, don't buy albums online as mp3s.

Why? Good question.

I was over at my dad's the other day, and we were talking about music and the amazingness of technology that allows us to store a thousand songs on a device not much bigger than a credit card. There is, of course, a trade off, my dad tells me, and he generally knows these things. The technology behind sound has been pretty much his life's work. 

The main problem is file size. A track taken from a CD is fairly substantial. To transfer that file to mp3, it is compressed considerably. Anyone who thinks that there is no loss of sound quality is deluding themselves. That extra information has got to go somewhere... A zipped document is compressed by taking out the white bits; something in the program remembers where they should be and puts them back when you unzip the file. There aren't any "white bits" in music, so when a music file is compressed, the program takes out what it considers to be extraneous material - most of it is not obvious to the casual observer, but it is there for a reason. That reason is something called soundstage. I can see your WTF expression from here, so let me explain:

If you have ever listened to a really good stereo recording, on a good stereo, through good headphones, you can "hear" where the instruments are around you. You can close your eyes and think "the drums are behind me, the bassist is off to the left and slightly in front, the lead guitarist is to the right, and the singer is straight ahead". I remember this happened to me for the first time when I was 12, and I was so astounded by it that I've never forgotten. This all goes away in mp3s - if you listen for directionality, all you will be able to work out is 'inside your head'. There is still stereo, so you get a bit of left and right action, but the rest of it gets lost in the ether. 

Don't despair, it doesn't mean that you are never going to enjoy listening to your iPod again! When dad told me about this, I thought "oh yeah, you're right!", but I hadn't realised it until he told me. I did an experiment, listening to the same couple of songs from a cd on a cd player, and then via Media Player (which is the same as listening to them through iTunes or similar). The difference is definitely there, but you do need to do a comparison to really hear it.

So why bother? If the difference is not that great, why worry about it? Trouble is, the vast majority of people are never going to know that the music they are listening to is slightly inferior in quality - they are listening to the song, not the minute nuances in the music (and considering some of the crap that the kids consider to be "music" these days... Kanye West and pals, I'm looking at you guys here), so they are never going to know. But, if everyone buys music online, then eventually that will be the only way to buy music, and then the opportunity to buy good quality sound will be gone for good. The saddest part about this is that, for the most part, no-one will even know.

Of course the other thing about cds - if your hard drive crashes, you still have all your music, you just have to go through the rather tedious process of uploading it again.

Mp3s are great - I have bought many of them, but if I want more than a single song by a particular artist, I will always buy the cd. Music makes life better, why should we try to make music worse?

Day of the triffids

Or at least that's what it felt like.

How weird was the weather this morning? I got up early to sort out a dispute between the kitties, and discovered the whole sky a vivid orange. Really creepy - feels like being on Mars.

Now, of course, everything is covered in red dust. Yech.

Word of the day

According to Rusty is "fucking thingy big shit".

This is some kind of soccer trophy, or so I am led to believe.

No, don't ask me - I really don't know either...

Home again!

Loving the home action. Or non-action, as it probably should be called.

Had a really lovely weekend Down South. Started with catching the train to the airport on Friday morning (I do think that $16 is a bit of overkill to get off at the airport station, but it's better than getting a cab), and even getting a seat! Easy flight to Melbourne, and flying with Qantas (the wings stayed on, which is good) we actually got coffee and a snack. Bus into Spencer St Station (I know it's called Southern Cross, but that is such a boring, overly Australiana kinda name) and then walk 2 blocks to our hotel. 

We stayed at the Intercontinental, which was really lovely - and thanks to Wotif for reasonable rates. I do like a flash hotel every now and then - the crisp bed linen, the quality haircare products in the bathroom, the really good shower, and sniggering at the mini-bar price list, and wondering who would be stupid enough to pay $9 for a can of Red Bull. Yes, I am easily amused. We were going to be catching the train to Ballarat the next day, so being conveniently located to the station worked really well. We wandered about the city a bit, went to the Queen Vic markets, found the stall/s that sell the really pretty paper toile cards and bought a bunch, found the jammy doughnut cart and bought a bunch, went back to the hotel for a sleep. I wandered back to the station to buy train tickets and find a timetable, and "accidentally" found my way into DFO. Needless to say, DFO in Melbourne is about eleventy-billion times better than the one in Sydney. This one had a Sportscraft branch, which is my favourite, and I bought a silk dress for $99 instead of $269, which made me very happy, and provides me with a job-hunting outfit, for when I start looking (which will have to be soon, I'm afraid).

Rather than spend a mortgage payment on dinner at the hotel, we went in search of the little alley ways that have some lovely food and fabulous atmosphere. We made a good choice - the food was delicious, the waiters were bouncing with enthusiasm and joie de vie, without being overly familiar, and a little jazz combo set up a little way down, so we had an evening with all the good things that I wanted from a night in a different city with my husband. It rocked.

The rain to Ballarat was on-time, clean, quiet and cheap, in comparison to hiring a car. I really need to make better use of public transport - it's just a bit dire in Sydney. The lovely JD picked us up from the station, and we tootled off to the motel, which was also lovely. The food at the adjoining pub was... edible, but I wouldn't say much better than that.

After some mad roast-chicken wrangling experiences, we got to the park where the wedding of the delightful H & A was being held. The ceremony was beautiful, the rain held off, and all involved looked radiantly happy. It was great to have a chance to catch up with friends from all over, even if it was very briefly in some cases.

Sunday morning was going to see a trip to Sovereign Hill, the gold mining park, but we discovered from the helpful chap at the hotel reception that it was nearly $40 to get in, and 4 hours really was needed to get the most out of the trip. We baulked at the price a bit, and then consulted a map of the city and surrounds, which told us about "Australia's Unique Attraction", the unequalled cheeziness of Kryal Castle. So we went there, instead. It was unsurpassed in its cheese factor, but the layout and design of the castle part itself was not so bad. JD and I amused ourselves by making plans for how we could make it "heaps better". We poked around for nearly 2 hours, feeling somewhat superior in both knowledge and taste, and then it was time to hit the road.

The trip home was event free, although a bit boring once it got dark, thus removing the view. We hit our place at about 11.30, and considering we left Ballarat at about 12.30, and stopped 3 times on the way, we made pretty good time. The kitties were still alive, and didn't seem too put out that we had left them all alone, more of my veggies are sprouting (who out there likes silverbeet? I'm going to have lots soon) and we got to sleep in our own bed again.

All in all, an ace-tops weekend.

Meh

Feeling very flat today. I really don't know why. I have no energy, no motivation, no desire to do anything but sit and stare at the TV.

That's when you know things are really grim.

Erg. Probably need to do some exercise, but don't want to do that, either. I hope this goes away soon, I hate feeling like this. I'm designed for cheerfulness, not grumpiness, and I want to be cheerful and energetic, goddammit!

Maybe if I punch Rusty for a bit...

Meh.

Wanna go to England!

It seems that right now is a very good time to go to England. The GBP will currently cost $1.92AUD.

Oh My God!

I can never remember it being less than $2 before (I'm sure that it has, I just can't remember it).

Wanna go now!

Woo hoo!

Finally got a new template to work! Hooray! No more stinky, boring Blogger templates for me!

Yippee!

That's all. Nothing to see here.