Last week was O-Week at work. That's when the new years students come and make a mess of the campus before the campus is fully set up again to handle that mess. For me anyway. I found out early on that various people had booked the labs (some of which we should have expected anyway, but ho-hum).

So that was fun. Running around preparing the labs, making sure they all work and redeploying all the images... I finally finished on Friday, and am satisfied with the results.

The Curtin Budokan club was asked to do a demonstration on Wednesday to try and entice new students to join. Although I'm not part of the Curtin Budokan club, I was asked along with a few others to come along and help make the numbers for the demonstration. There were 5 of us on this tiny stage doing Iaido and Jodo demo's. It was pretty good fun, but we definitely got some odd looks from people as we were wandering around before and afterwards :P

But as all things do, O-Week came to a close, and semester starts tomorrow. Things should be fairly busy for the next week or two as everyone settles into the new semester.

(Chris catches up on the backlog)

And it likes the mechanic.

Not a full two weeks after I got my car back in January id it decide to fail again. Notice how in that blog entry I mention that they decided that they’d only replace the one core plug instead of all three? I was a little suspicious then, but now I think I know why. There’s actually 4, it’s just that the last one is one that’s very hard to get to, and costs a lot more than they quoted in labour. So, I reckon they said that they others didn’t need it instead of replacing all 4 core plugs across the front at cost or admitting that they didn’t replace all of them like they quoted me for.

But anyway, it was that one hard to reach core plug that decided that enough was enough - it was time to blow. And it did. Thankfully I noticed it as I pulled into work, so I wasn’t stranded anywhere. I’d just hoped that it was a small amount from the overflow tank, but as I approached the car at lunch time, the large dried up puddle from under my car was evidence that it was anything but. I spent a total of three hours waiting for the RAC and their tow-trucks, but we managed to get it down to the same mechanic as before. It certainly put a downer on the Friday night that I’d had planned.

It took them a week, a new water pump, and some dicking around with the air-conditioning to finally get it back to me. I had issues with the price, given their previous quote and that they’d already done part of the work already on the previous trip, and managed to get away paying only $500.

Since then the slight oil leak has developed into a not-so-slight oil leak, which means that I’m going to have to fix that too before I can sell it.

And the air-con still doesn’t work.

(Chris catches up on the backlog)

As people do, people keep blogs. As people do, people make comments in blogs. As people do, people may not agree with things said in blogs, especially when they're comments about them.

This recently happened to me - someone made some comments about me in their blog, which I found quite insulting, to say the least. I tried to respond pointing out why I thought their comments were wrong an unfounded (basically telling my side of the story), and said that I would have rather that person come and speak to me about their problem instead of me having to find out about them on some blog somewhere. The reply I got to that was that it was pretty rich of me to say that, as they were sure the people that I comment on would like the same treatment.

And I do make comments about other people. I do bitch and moan about the way they affect me.

Initially I accepted this as a fair call, but something wasn't sitting right with me about it, and it got me thinking: am I the pot calling the kettle black? I mean, I try to practice what I preach, to keep free of hypocrisy as much as possible. But sometimes I feel that my actions probably do seem hypocritical unless you know my reasoning behind them. Sometimes you don't fully understand it yourself, unless you're called out on it.

So I've had a think about it. There are two fundamental differences about the two situations: the people I make comments on (the ones being referred to anyway) are not my friends; and the people I make comments on already know how I feel about them (at least, I've tried to make it clear and resolve these issues on any number of occasions). I think that they pretty much speak for themselves, expect that differences between people and definitions will probably lead to some differences in interpretation and reaction, but that's to be expected (and encouraged!).

I think that a lot of the problems between what I do and what people interpret about me stem from the fact that I tend to think in abstract ideals, and act in accordance with those ideals. That is, I rarely think about specifics, but am focusing on the meaning and ideas behind the specifics and how they're applied. This doesn't come across very well though, and because of the complexity of the issues has led to confusion and even conflict on the odd occasion.

And this leads to the core of the issue. I'm certainly not free of hypocrisy myself (I don't think that anyone can be no matter how hard they try). The difference is that people will make reasonable allowances to themselves in each situation that (as long as they're genuine) their actions are not hypocritical. Without knowing those reasons it would appear to other people that the actions are hypocritical when in fact their not. That is, don't take things at face value, because there's usually something else going on that you don't know about.

Now, am I still the pot calling the kettle black? On the original issue, I think it's a resounding "No". But by expecting that person to talk to me instead of blogging about it? Perhaps. After all, that person may have had their own reasons for not discussing it with me first - I don't know. And if that's the case, then that's fine.

At the end of the day, I can't complain. Blogging is just another way for us to express ourselves. I think the difference is what we get out of it. I do ramble to a certain extent, however I try to form some sort of structure and meaning from it (for me, if not for other people), and I'll stick by what I say until discussion makes me feel/think otherwise. I feel my comments are quite justified, and nothing to date has changed any of that. Regardless, there are no set rules to blogging, and only sketchy guidelines at best. Probably the only guideline that I write to is that you can't choose your audience (okay, technically you *can*, but I've chosen not to), so you have to be prepared for anyone to read it, and how they're going to react to it. Anything that I write here has that in mind.

So the blog code is updated. It’s messy, it’s not compatable with all browsers (eg: lynx), but blog comments work, and they’re pretty nifty :P I’m moderately happy with it anyway. Next stop, XML + XSLT. Maybe as part of the CMS that I want to put together.

There was actually a purpose to doing the blog comment system, which I’ll actually get around to bloggin’ about one day. Not today though. Using the javascript, the funky XMLHttpRequest thingo, and playing with the DOM tree directly was an interesting excercise. I’m sure that I could go back and rewrite that code to make it look nicer (there’s a *lot* of room for improvement), but I think I’ve learnt what I set out to learn.

recently started playing with some old fountain pens, which got me interested in resurecting mine. My dad has given me a couple of good pens over the years which I’m quite fond of, however either they’re too good, or too inconvenient to use.

rOtring 600 Series fountain pen, however mine seems to have a different cap. Apparently it’s an older discontinued model, however I can’t find any pictures of it. Dad had the black version of this pen, and I liked it so much that he bought me my own. Unfortunately some bastard in Egypt stole his off him, so he had to go buy another for himself. I really like the pen, and I think the silver is better than the black. It’s sturdy and hefty - got a good weight to it. The reason I didn’t use it was that it came only with replaceable cartridges - and getting replacements is (was) way too much effort for me :P It turns out that you can actually buy convertors so you can use pump cartridges (of various descriptions) which actually makes it convenient again. Especially since I have this full bottle of ink here that needs to be used up.

The cap can be stuck on the end of the pen when in use. I tend not to do so because I find that it makes the back end too heavy, and it results in smaller writing that doesn’t show any benefit from using a fountain pen. With the cap off, though, it’s nicely balanced in the middle of the pen (in your hand), which results in a nice neat script, with reasonably sized letters.

I can’t actually properly identify this pen. The closest I can get is that it’s a Generation de Montblanc as pictured above. The problem is, as far as I can tell they didn’t make that pen in black, but their online catalogue seems suspiciously incomplete so I can’t verify this for sure. and I are heading into a pen shop tomorrow and we’ll ask them what they think. I suspect that it might end up being a fake after all, but I’m hoping that it’s not.

Either way, it leaks. You have to store it upright to stop this. This is fairly common, but from what I read this shouldn’t be the case from Mont Blanc pens, especially since I don’t think I’ve mistreated it. The pen itself is very light, and flows easilly across the page, and lends the script a slight slant. It’s great for those people that seem to want to write on the side, because you can do a very nice script without any effort :P It’s an okay pen to write with, but because of it’s apparent expense and fragility (resin scars easilly), and that it leaks a little, you wouldn’t want to carry it around with you. Shame really, because it’s a nice pen to look at :P

Been a while since the last update, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing to say. First off, there's been an update to the blog code, as a precursor to further updates. I've thought of this nifty idea for a comment system, which I'm going to implement later. Sure, you can't see anything different yet, but that'll change over time.

More blog entries when I write them.