It’s now Day Two of the No Internet At Home Crisis and tensions are soaring as a twitchy Chris Tan continues to stare at his empty web browser windows in an attempt to meld his mind to the internet and download lolcat images directly to his brain… Actually, it should be all up by the time I get home, but I thought I’d write a little something on just how horrible and sad it is for me to wake up with no connection sometimes.

In some good news, I finally got my Nokia N95 phone back today and thank sweet baby Jesus riding a Giraffe, my contact list and all my data is still intact. Forgot to back it up before taking it into the repair shop and have been paranoid ever since they’d do a hard wipe and send my life spiraling into more chaos than it currently is. Still, it was a fairly expensive repair, even after a discount for all the screwing around they did on me and something I totally should have done on my own for near half the price and within a few days. Ah well, maybe next time, not like anything was throw outta whack because of the loss… sarcasm.

Anyway, just thought I’d post about this one thing found on Warren Ellis’ blog… The best damn writer’s retreat I’ve ever bothered to read about and totally wish I could go to.

The Jura Malt Whisky Writer Retreat
Scottish Book Trust and Isle of Jura Single Malt Whisky are working together to offer writers the opportunity to spend a month living and writing on the idyllic island of Jura. Each selected writer receives a month’s exclusive use of the luxurious distillery lodge, a bursary and travel expenses. [link]

Copies of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and a Criterion of Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well arrived today and that was awesome. If you’re not aware of the awesomeness that is Darkplace (a believable, yet fictitious 80’s horror/drama by the well fictitious Garth Marenghi), then shame on you, or more likely shame on me for not spreading enough word on it.

Woke up with the modem and router completely missing from the house and the kitchen rearranged around and smelling of wet paint. Always hate being severed of a connection to the net. People wonder whether they’d survive living a hundred years ago. I wonder how I’d cope with twenty years ago before the internet boomed as we know it. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting on the asshats who’ve now held my phone hostage for two weeks and still no real garuantee they’ve actually fixed it yet. Heads will soon roll.

Gonna be in Auckland this weekend for a mass screening of Tarantino’s new film Inglorious Basterds and while I’m not holding my breath for it to be awesome, what I do hope to go to and experience awesomeness of is a sneak preview screening of the first 15 minutes from James Cameron’s new film Avatar. For free and in 3D. Further details on the event and session times can be found at https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0908/S00244.htm.

Still the strong obsession of the week, this is Dream Girl from The Lonely Island’s Incredibad album. Quite possibly my favourite and features the hot talented awesomeness that is Norah Jones.

Gwaaah… the start a new week. Always so much fun.

Woke up retardedly early today with two tentative filming gigs offered, which is always a fun start, followed by chasing some growing rumors of a new radiohead album possibly appearing soon, though I’m not holding my breath on that being the cynical bastard I am.

Also caught up with a surprising number of people I’d not talk to in a while and some I just like talking to and then proceeded to get annoyed at the useless bastards who are taking way too bloody long to fix my cellphone. Something I could have and should have done on my own now that I realise how bloody long it actually takes the bastards just to replace a screen.

Wandered the streets crying out for my cellphone to return to me till I realised I was hungry and then proceeded to eat a bunch bakery foods while watching How to Lose Friends and Alienate People which is good, but not great, but still amusing. Paid some bills, sent some emails, fought a mountain lion and then went to work.

Hopefully that fills my personal blogging quota for now.

Been enjoying just posting odd links here and there, it ain’t quite as interesting to post things about myself, which are just boring to read as you can see… Well, except for posts about how awesome I am at playing guess who for the future of the human race against robot invaders (their rules of conduct are dumb).

Oh and big congrats to two lots of friends who’ve announced their engagement recently, Art and Judy; and David and Brooke. I look forward to being drunk at your weddings.

Police were called to Sager Road property in Whatawhata after a homeowner found four burglars at his address, one of whom was armed with a shotgun.

“The homeowner managed to disarm the offender who had the gun and hid it in some scrub,” a police statement said. [full article]

Ain’t no other way to put it. That’s just pure baddass.

From their debut album incredibad, The Lonely Island has Jack Black special guest on this track and while I’ve got a lot of love for the both of them respectively, the two together is just the best combo ever. Check it out.

The awesomest job requirement, a real life jewel heist, space stuff still rules and freaky gross nature video…

Shooting the boss (and getting paid for it)
To thank him for letting them spend the last two hours of their workweek playing video games on the company dime, Kevin Grinnell’s employees often single him out and shoot him in the head.
&nbsp &nbsp To be fair, the employees at Grinnell Computers aren’t firing real weapons at their boss but are instead releasing the stresses of their week in a multiplayer online game known as Combat Arms. [full article]

>£1m reward offered over gems raid
A £1m reward has been offered for information leading to the capture of robbers who stole jewellery worth £40m during a raid in central London. [full article]

US probe captures Saturn equinox
Raw images of the moment Saturn reached its equinox have been beamed to Earth by the US Cassini spacecraft. [full article]

‘Alien scene’ of tadpoles’ feast
“Alien-like” scenes of tadpoles feasting on eggs emerging from their mother have been caught on camera. [full article]

With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he’s a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur—an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson’s many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility.

Great series of videos, worth checking out for any fan. Posting just the first video, the rest are through this page here.

Naked Man in Wrong Room
The man told police he been brought back to the hotel from town by a woman but at some point wandered out of her room into the hall stark naked.
” He then wandered into another room, occupied by a husband and wife, had curled up and gone to sleep, he said.” [full article]

Spy probe images Apollo landing sites
NASA’s newly launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped images of hardware left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts… [full article with gallery]

Giant ‘soap bubble’ found floating in space
It looks like a soap bubble or perhaps even a camera fault, but the image at right is a newly discovered planetary nebula. [full article]

NASA Wants To Move The Earth
Scientists have found an unusual way to prevent our planet overheating: move it to a cooler spot.
“All you have to do is hurtle a few comets at Earth, and its orbit will be altered. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.” [full article]

My brother sent me a video this week of a 3D render of the galaxies imaged in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (wikipedia entry): a series of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2003 and 2004 that looks back approximately 13 billion years ago and images about 10,000 galaxies.

Not stars mind you. Galaxies. Each one possible of holding billions or trillions of star systems.

And this wasn’t through a big patch of the sky either, but in a tiny region of space the size of a square millimeter held a metre away from your eye. That leaves out 12.7 million single cubic millimetre patches of sky that possibly yields some similar results.

Like the following video says, all those figures are too huge of a figure to just compute in the human brain. And I’d agree.

I read of this image being taken some years ago, but it wasn’t till about a year ago when I stumbled across this image file that compares the scale of our solar system to that of the known universe and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field itself, that I had the pleasure of properly getting my brain’s nutsacks blown off.

It’s a big file (approx 1.5megs), so I’m not gonna post it here directly, but check it out and scroll through from the top and It’ll be sure to put some decent insignificance spice into your food for thought soup. Trivial things happen every day and our lives continually shift because of it, but with a little science, it’s pretty easy to put things into perspective of how tiny we all really are and blah, blah, blah, the existential thinking, just check out what I’m talking about here.

Anyway, going back to the original point of it, here’s the video and a full in depth examination article of the Ultra Field worth checking out here.