I’ve spent seven weeks looking for a one bedroom flat somewhere around either Kensington, Flemington, Yarraville, or Northcote. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been the #2 applicant. I’ve certainly lost count of the number of places I’ve applied for. I’ve offered two year leases. I’ve offered months of rent in advance. I’ve offered more rent than they’ve been asking for. I’ve included pay slips, references from previous landlords, and cover letters.

I still can’t find a place.

Anyone out there know of any share houses looking for people?

One of the side-effects of re-ripping your CD collection into iTunes is that you get an idea of which CDs you used to own have disappeared. Can anyone help me out by admitting they borrowed one of these CDs and have neglected to return then?

(Rob and Karen — I’m looking in your direction…)

Excel is annoying to use (you can’t edit a cell without using the mouse), and OpenOffice still needs X11 to run (and don’t get me started on that set up guide). There has to be a better spreadsheet application for Mac OS X … doesn’t there? Or is the Mac software community petrified that Apple are about to release that spreadsheet product that’s been rumoured for years now?

Last week, I finally sent my iPod off for repair. It had been showing the dead iPod icon for quite some time, and the only advice I could get from Apple was “I’m sorry, but it’s cheaper to buy a new one.” I’m happy to report that I got it back today, and everything’s working hunky-dory.

If you’ve got an iPod that needs repair, I can heartily recommend Steven Svitek’s iPod repair service. The entire process cost me less than $80, and he’ll offer to buy your broken iPod from you if it can’t be repaired.

Karma’s a bitch. After spending most of the previous few days giggling to myself while replaying the music video to Living with a Hernia to myself in my head, I did something odd to a muscle somewhere deep inside my gut. Don’t ask me which muscle it is, but it’s the one that you really need in order to get up out of a seat, roll over in bed, bend over to pick something up, sit down on the toilet … you get the idea. Doing any of these things result in incredible pain.

I think I got this injury on Saturday afternoon by getting into Rob’s car (an average-sized Subaru station wagon from the 1980s), but I’ve got no idea how. Maybe I was tense from listing to Rob and Sam bitch and bicker like an old married couple. Regardless, I’m well on the road to recovery now.

I’m hoping I’ll be close to 100% by Saturday, as I really want to go to The Tote to see The Bakelite Age’s CD launch. Fans of good time rock ‘n’ roll should do the same.

Anyone else interested in coming along to “Weird Al” Yankovic on March 23rd at Hamer Hall? I’ll be getting my tickets later this week.

I’ve finally figured out a way to run Impulse Tracker under Mac OS X.

1. Download DOSBox and Impulse Tracker. DOSBox emulates the DOS operating system and some common hardware, including the SoundBlaster 16 and Gravis UltraSound sound cards.

2. Unzip Impulse Tracker and put it inside an otherwise empty folder. I created a folder named DOS inside my home directory, then copied Impulse Tracker into another directory inside of that.

3. Install and run DOSBox. Installation is as simple as copying DOSBox.app into your Applications folder.

4. Once DOSBox has fired up, you’ll need to mount a directory on your hard disk as your C drive. To do this, type MOUNT C /Users/craiga/DOS into DOSBox (where /Users/craiga/DOS is a folder that contains Impulse Tracker).

5. Switch to the C drive by typing C:, then fire up Impulse Tracker using the command line IT s7. This will force Impulse Tracker to use the emulated Gravis UltraSound (there seems to be some trouble with the emulated SoundBlaster 16).

6. Impulse Tracker will now be running and will be usable, though playback will be a little jumpy. To make it smoother, switch to full-screen mode by hitting Command-Option-Shift-Return. To switch back to a windowed view, use that same key combination.

Friday, 23rd March, 2007. It’s gonna be awesome.

Here is some more. Plah…

I can forgive Oxford University Press Australia for having an ugly, poorly laid-out web site. Building web sites ain’t their bag. What I can’t forgive is poor grammar from the publisher who is supposed to define the English language. From their Site Map:

• Is Oxfords site secure?
• …
• What is Oxfords return policy?
• How do I get my name on Oxfords mailing list or obtain a catalogue?

It’s pretty simple stuff. Oxford is a proper noun. When it posseses things, it has an “’s” tacked on the end. Oxford’s site. Oxford’s return policy. Oxford’s mailing list.

MacBook Pro

It finally arrived last week. I love it. Oh, and I finally got Skype — I’m craigeanderson.

Movember’s coming along nicely, although I’m looking forward to December 1. If you’d like to see it stay a little longer sponsor me and I’ll consider it. If you want it gone, sponsor me anyway.

I love moving. You get to find long-forgotten treasures such as the original cassingles for Ice Ice Baby, Do The Bartman, Super Mario Land (by M.C. Mario and the Ambassadors of Funk) and the pièce de résistance, Check Out The Chicken by Grandmaster Chicken and D.J. Duck.

Now all I need is something that can actually play tapes.

…my MacBook Pro with a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (whatever the hell that means … it’s supposed to be pretty damned fast), 2GB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive … it’s even got an integrated camera so I can post photos of my trashed camera phone to Flickr!

I wrote about it a while ago, but the Nintendo Wii is hitting the shelves soon and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on one. Not only do the actual Wii games look like great fun, but the list of old favorites you can buy from the online Virtual Console service just keeps on looking better.

Nintendo have just announced that The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (probably the best video game ever made) will be available for approximately $15 AUD, along with other favorites like Sonic The Hedgehog and ToeJam and Earl from the MegaDrive, Gradius from the NES, Super Metroid from the SNES, Lylat Wars from the Nintendo 64, and many more. Of course, not all of these games have been confirmed for Australia, but Nintendo wouldn’t hold out on me like that … would they?

It will also be interesting to see if they release the TurboGrafx-16 titles in Australia. The TurboGrafx-16 console never saw the light of day in Australia (probably due to the fact that it never really took off in Europe where it competed with the MegaDrive), but from what I understand the games are quite good.

I won $115 on the cup yesterday; I had five $5 bets: Art Success to win, Art Success to place, Delta Blues to win, Delta Blues to place, and Tarqueet to win. My winnings covered the cost of a boozy afternoon out very nicely.

Today I start with a clean slate. It’s Movember 1st, and I’m clean shaven. Hopefully, in 30 days I’ll have the meanest moustache this side of Chopper Read.

While I’m doing this, I’m also trying to raise money and awareness of male depression, and prostate and testicular cancer. If you’d like to sponsor me, head over to the Movember web site and search for me — my rego number is 2146.

Bowie asks about “anymore” vs. “any more”.

“Anymore” is a word in American English, but not in British English. According to the Oxford Manual of Style, it means “nowadays”, which is a separate meaning from “any more”. It does have an entry in the Macquarie Dictionary (the definitive resource when it comes to Australian English), but I can’t tell you any more than that without paying AUD 12.95 plus GST to subscribe.

P.S. the Macquarie Dictionary is on my del.icio.us wishlist if you’re looking to buy me a gift.

I’ve just taken a look at the Dogs’ 2007 fixture, and I’ve got to say that it looks really, really good. Highlights for me include:

• Only one game at both Adelaide (against the Crows) and Subiaco (against West Coast). Sure, it would’ve been even better if the games were against Port Adelaide and Fremantle, but you can’t have everything.
• We only play Sydney once at a neutral ground. The Dogs haven’t played the SCG well, so I’m more than happy to give it a wide berth.
• The only back-to-back interstate games we have are Brisbane at the Gabba followed by Fremantle in Darwin, which is then followed by the mid-season break.
• Twelve games at Telstra Dome, including a run of six straight in July through to the first half of August.
• We play Geelong twice at Telstra Dome again.
• Four Friday night games, three of which are in a row, and five Saturday night games.

The only thing I’m a little disappointed in is that the last of our five fixtured games at the MCG is on the 1st July. It would’ve been nice to get a little more practice at the ‘G closer to the finals series, but it could be much, much worse — West Coast only play there once for the entire home and away season.

From The Age, via elrobbo:

Burger Burger
Style: Hamburger simulation
Developer: Gaps

Instead of designing theme parks, this sim lets you design hamburgers. How does it go again? “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…” Burger sims are huge in Americana-obsessed Japan, and after tinkering with Burger Burger, we’re inclined to see why. Coming up with your own creation to rival the Big Mac or McTeriyaki while beating your competitors into a ketchup-splattered pulp is a right laugh. Players can customise everything on their menu, hire pre-pubescent staff, select the site for their burger empire and even choose novelty items to keep the kids happy. Just don’t dream of running some ill-conceived Monopoly competition with last year’s tickets…

Hell yeah. My double-chicken-’n'-beef chilli burger* would kick some serious arse.

*– No such burger exists, and if it did I’d strong discourage anyone from actually eating it.

If you’re going to put together a spreadsheet for your personal budget, make sure that you get all your formulae right.

If you’ve got a big long column of monthly expenses with a total at the top of the list, make sure the total includes those little items at the top of the list. You know, things like rent and car repayments.

Check your projected balance at the end of the month. If it’s -$350, something’s probably wrong.

The discussion between Andrew and Polly about cover bands (and why they’re hated) has really got me thinking.

Writing a good song is really, really hard. Walking into any original music venue in Melbourne will tell you that. While I’ve got all the respect in the world for bands getting out there and plying their trade, most of their songs suck. The bands I’ve been involved with are just as guilty of this as anyone else.

So why wouldn’t you start a cover band? The hardest part of starting a band is writing songs, so why not draw on the collected efforts of every songwriter who has gone before you? You could say that it’s the difference between being a musician and an artist, but who would deny the artistry of Johnny Cash, Miles Davis or the multitude of other great artists who have made great careers out of (at least in part) performing the songs of others?

Most successful bands get around their average songwriting by being entertaining. I don’t think that U2 have ever written a really great song. U2 became popular by working hard and having a really good live show; not by being great songwriters. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Most successful bands are in the same boat. Many of them have written one great song that got them noticed, but their continued success is due to hard work and providing entertainment.

This is why most bands fail. They’re just plain boring, or they just don’t work hard enough. Again, I’ll put up my hand and admit I’m guilty of this, too. I guess a bad band is just a bad band, but a bad band playing good songs is better than a bad band playing average songs when you’re trying to sell bourbon and coke.

The Melbourne Atlas 2006 has been made available for free download. From what I’ve seen it pretty much reinforces the stereotypes you probably already hold — Melbourne’s public transport system hasn’t really changed since the 1950s, the highest rates of domestic violence occur in Frankston and Hume, 20-29 year olds live in the inner suburbs, and so on. Still, I love stuff like this.

I haven’t written anything substantial here for a long time. I’ve been up to a lot, but nothing much that’s appropriate for writing about in such a public forum.

Other than the things I’d rather keep un-public, I’ve been doing all the usual stuff — watching football, working too hard, buying Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie records, taking bad photos with my phone, and playing Nintendo.

I just discovered my first grey hair. I was about to pull it out, but I’ve decided to keep it. I’ve always wanted to grow old.

Check out www.thekarateparty.com — a Craig ‘n’ Cat Joint.

I was browsing the iTunes music store last night when I noticed they were selling this box set of three Bob Dylan albums (Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and Love and Theft) for $0.99, which is even cheaper than the equivalent on allofmp3.com. If you’re interested in Bob Dylan, you might as well grab a copy while the going’s good.

I just realised that I haven’t written anything about my recent trip up to Sydney.

For the uninitiated, I was invited up to Sydney last weekend to do a DJ set at the launch party for Chaos Is An Order Edition #2, which features an interview with Look Who’s Toxic. I’d always wanted to DJ, so I jumped at the chance to do it — my theory was that if I stuffed it up badly, at least I wouldn’t know anyone in the audience

Despite a serious lack of sleep and the beginnings of a cold, I had an awesome time.

After getting home from Buck 65 the previous night around 1:30am, I was up again at 5:00am and in Sydney by 8:30am. I spent most of the morning wandering the streets of the city, drinking coffee and trying to find some clothes to buy. I didn’t find anything.

My hotel room became available at 2:00pm. I’d never DJed before and was feeling pretty nervous, so I spent most of the afternoon listening to tunes on my iPod, making little notes that would help me along the way and drawing a big, convoluted chart of what songs I felt would run into with other songs well.

Around 7:00pm I found the venue, had a few drinks and met up with the organisers of the party. I wasn’t supposed to be starting until 10:00, but I figured I’d need a few drinks to calm my nerves. Thankfully I got to have a play with the CD players and the mixer, so I was kind of familiar with what I was doing.

The turnout for the launch was pretty disappointing, but that was fine by me — the combination of the whiskey and lower than expected numbers meant I went into my set with my confidence sky-high.

The first song I played (Dang by Buck 65, taken from Strong Arm) was recieved very, very well — pretty girls and record nerds (two of my favourite kinds of people) were coming up to the desk, asking about the song and letting me know they thought it was awesome, which was really cool. Unfortunately some of the record nerds bum rushed my set and started playing an obscure 7″ record from the 80s which was a bit of a bummer, but I got to play out the rest of my set, so that was cool.

After that, the story follows the usual downhill path you’ve probably come to expect from me. I ran into Spod and got talking with the pretty girls from the party, but the ol’ memory starts getting a little shaky after that point. The next thing I remember is waking up in my hotel room alone and fully clothed at 4:00am.

Anyway, in summary, if anyone needs a DJ to play Rock, Pop, Electro, Hip Hop and Country music, give me a call. I’d definitely be up for it again.

Like any good upwardly mobile young man, you’ve got your record collection in iTunes (probably on an external hard drive, because you’ve got way too many tunes to fit on that piddly 60GB drive that Apple shipped the computer with). You also like the idea of making a mixtape for your sweetie (a-la DJ Rob Gordon), but iTunes gives you no option for doing mixing tracks, which is essential to the carefully crafted emotional message you’re trying to convey.

Your options are to shell out hundereds of dollars for something like ProTools (you’re not that upwardly mobile), or hand-crafting your mix in a wave editing program and losing the ability to mark tracks on your CD. This just isn’t good enough.

Enter iMixtape.

This simple application will allow you to grab tracks from iTunes, place them on a grid, fade them in and out of each other and place track markers. iMixtape will then burn it to a CD for you. It’d look something like this:

Those ‘volume envelopes’ indicate the volume of the track. The top of the track indicates 100% volume, the bottom indicates 0% volume. The ‘envelope points’ are the parts that are dragable. There’s always an envelope point at the start and end of each volume envelope. Additional envelope points can be created by clicking on any point of the volume envelope. You can drag these envelope points around inside the track, and the volume envelope will move to create straight lines between them.

Does this make sense? I think I’d buy this application for $20. It would be fun. Would anyone else?Is this a dumb idea or a good idea?

Buck 65 on Friday night was the best show I’ve seen in a long, long time.

I was pretty skeptical when I saw that his “band” was a CD player and a single turntable, but within five minutes the entire audience was hanging from his every word. It was inspirational.

The show basically comprises of the character Buck 65 standing at the microphone, delivering his poetic ramblings to backing tracks built from sampled guitars, pianos, synths and long-forgotten country records, punctuated with some extremely sensual appearances from Mrs. Buck 65 (Claire Berest) and some of the most bizarre, poignant stories you’ll ever hear at a hip hop show.

I really don’t know how to describe it properly, but if you’re a fan of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Hip Hop music or storytelling, check out sides one and two of Strong Arm, the downloadable mixtape he’s made available on his web site.

The new housemate has just pulled out.

And the ads at Readings went up last night, meaning I’ll have to wait another full week before putting another ad up.

F*&k!!!

We have a new housemate!

Welcome Rob from Dr. Invisiablo to the Roden Street fold.

Speaking of Roden Street, I did finally fall down those stairs at home (just after showing a prospective housemate through the place and making the comment “I’ve lived here for two and a half years and have never fallen down them”), but thankfully I was sober enough to get away with nothing but a sore left leg and arm.

P.S. After deciding that fuckinghelldude.net wasn’t such a wise choice of domain name (Google doesn’t like swearing), I’ve registered craiga.id.au as my domain name. WordPress.com now has an export function, but I need to wait for WordPress 2.1 for the import function (EDIT: it looks like I might be waiting a while; it’s only 34% complete at the moment).

Since the last time I thought about the progress of the Dogs' season (which was just after our round nine loss to Collingwood in which we lost Bob Murphy to the Dogs' knee curse), things have gone a lot better than I had imagined. We've racked up wins against Hawthorn, Fremantle and Brisbane, despite Grant being our only regular tall option up forward. The wins weren't always convincing, but we've shown enough to score the four points, which is all that matters in the end.

We're now sitting fourth on the ladder, a position we'll still be in at the end of the round if Collingwood can get over Sydney. We have eight wins so far, and only need four more for the rest of the season to secure a berth in the finals. And if the Dogs can keep up the classy, gutsy performances, we'll do more than just make the finals.

…and just to prove it…

Anyone want a pet mouse? His name is Gerald, he's got his own cage, wheel, and so on. Free to a good home. Hell, free to a mediocre one — it's got to be better than Roden Street, right?

"Doukutsu Monogatari" (that's "Cave Story" in English) is a side-scrolling action adventure game that's very reminisient of games like Castlevania and Metroid, right down to the NES-era graphics and sound.

You start out in a cave, by yourself, with no idea who you are or what to do. Pretty soon you figure out how to get out of the room and enter a town. In this town, you find out you're in the strange world of the Mimigas and they need your help to rescue one of their own.

As far as I can tell, it was developed years ago by a Japanese group calling themselves Studio Pixel and made available for free. Another group translated the game into English, and now it enjoys a huge cult following — so huge, in fact, that a company called Variant Interactive is currently working on a sequel for the PSP.

You can grab the game and the English translation patches for both Windows and Mac OS X over at http://www.gameflaws.com/cavestory/, a site dedicated to the game.

Awesome!

Canadian hip-hop artist, MC and turntablist extraordinaire Buck 65 plays a one-off Melbourne show on Friday 7th July, joined by special guests The Bird and Curseovdialect.

I've never seen him live, but I love the Buck 65 records I have to death. Now to find someone who wants to go with me…

Fighting is way cool.

If you've got the bandwidth to spare, download the 112MB video.

(found via Channel Frederator)

Over the past year, Mum and Dad have collected the components of a pretty good home theatre system. They've got a massive 106cm widescreen plasma television and they've got a surround sound system, but I've got no idea how to hook the two of them up.

Their DVD player and their television have the standard left and right RCA audio outputs, but the sound system has five RCA inputs - front left, front right, back left, back right, and the subwoofer. There may even be another input for a small speaker in the middle.

How is this supposed to work? Is there an amplifier that takes the two audio signals, processes them and outputs five? Is the DVD player or television supposed to have more outputs? I can't imagine that a $2600 television would be lacking such a feature, but I guess it's possible.

Most Bulldogs fans are understandably feeling a little down at the moment. In the minds of most fans, Robert Murphy’s knee injury represents the end of hope for the Western Bulldogs’ forward line. However, consider the tall timber we have playing at Werribee, or out due to short-term injury:

• Will Minson
• Travis Baird
• Cam Wight
• Tom Davidson
• Kieran McGuiness

Travis Baird is, by all accounts, quite a talented forward option with strong marking ability. He was a chance for selection against Port Adelaide before he injured his shoulder, and probably would’ve been selected ahead of Kieran McGuiness in Sydney.

I think Baird will be making his debut for the Dogs very shortly, almost as a direct replacement for Bob Murphy. He’ll get the opposition’s second best defender (assuming Grant’s playing forward), who will probably be able to keep Travis quiet. At best, he’ll be able to create a few spillages to the advantage of our multitude of talented, small, creative types — Johnno, Robbo, Cooney, and so on. The important thing is that Travis is keeping the defender from manning someone else.

Will’s return will not only be a huge boost for our ruck department, but also our forward line. He has history playing forward in the SANFL, and Eade has been working with him to improve that part of his game.

When Minson isn’t rucking, I imagine he’ll be ‘rested’ deep in the square, taking another tall opposition defender, doing his best to create opportunities for those small players.

With the opposition’s best two or three defenders on those players, the small, quick, leading forwards suddenly have a chance in hell of getting their hands on the ball and perhaps kicking a winning score.

Let’s take a look at what lies ahead for the Dogs:

• Hawthorn at Telstra Dome
• Fremantle at Telstra Dome
• Brisbane at the Gabba
• West Coast at Subiaco
• North Melbourne at the MCG
• Carlton at Telstra Dome
• Geelong at Telstra Dome
• Melbourne at the MCG
• Richmond at the MCG
• Adelaide at the MCG
• St. Kilda at the Telstra Dome
• Essendon at the Telstra Dome

Looking through that list, there are at least five games that are very winnable — Hawthorn, Fremantle, North Melbourne, Carlton and Essendon. After last year, we’ll play Brisbane at the Gabba with confidence. We’re a chance against Geelong (especially if their horrible form continues), as we are in the games against Richmond and St. Kilda. The only game on that list I’d put a black line through is West Coast at Subiaco.

Our last eight are all in Melbourne, so travelling won’t be an issue as we (hopefully) storm into the finals.

To make the finals comfortably, we need a total of twelve wins. We already have five, and I’ve pencilled in another five. We’ve only got two more games against any of the current top four sides. All we need to do is pull of an ‘upset’ in two of the remaining seven matches, and we’ll be in the finals. In such an even season, it’s possible that 11 wins will be good enough, too.