I remembered a weird dream I had and wrote about it:

Nicholas, you drunk bum, get off your ass and help me find the toys.” Wife shuffled into the room, where Nicholas’s watery eyes gazed in the direction of the blaring television set. He burped loudly through his overgrown mustache and tapped chubby fingers against the beer bottle which balanced on his bloated stomach.

“Be quiet, woman, lemme watch the game.” he mumbled as Wife stood in front of the TV. She wiped her hands on her stained white apron and tapped her foot on the floor.

Wife shoved her face in front of his, spittle flying from her mouth as she hissed “The kids will hate you for what you’ve become, Nicholas. You’ve really out-fucking-done yourself this time.”

With these words she stomped away.

A purple vein slowly began to bulge out of Nicholas’s crimson forehead. His cheeks, already red from the alcohol, grew tomato-crimson and his drooping white eyebrows knotted into a frown as his expression grew into a grotesque mask.

“Oi!” He roared, smacking the beer aside with one fat hand. “You don’t talk to me like that!” Nicholas squeezed his hands around his black belt as he forced himself to his feet. He wobbled in the spot, this way and that, before shuffling to find Wife, boots scuffing against the stone floor. He huffed and puffed as he moved. Beads of sweat dripped down his face and chin, salt mixing with the rotting stench of his gray unwashed beard.

“Wake up, Nicholas.” Wife shrilled from the next room. “It’s the 23rd already, you fool. You’re going to show up drunk off your nut again. Pitiful, pitiful man.”

Nicholas glanced at the torn calendar on the wall. He pressed his nose against the paper and squirmed to see the date. Wife was right. As always. Nicholas spat and curled his lip up in a snarl.

“Where are the toys, woman?” He rammed a fist against the wall. “I’ll be late.”

Wife appeared in the doorway, hauling the maroon bag behind her. “There. I just patched it up.” She pointed to the patches sown in on the side.

“About time.” Nicholas growled and jerked the bag out of her hands.

Wife made a rude gesture. “Just get out of here, you old drunk. And don’t whip the deer to damn hard. We can’t afford to lose another one.”

Nicholas slammed the door behind him as he left. He swung the bulging bag onto the sleigh, and waited for the wood to stop creaking and groaning when he planted himself in the seat. He poised the leather whip in his hands and cracked it loudly over the deers’ heads.

“Go on, ye dirty animals!” He yelled. The deer dug their hooves into the ice and snow, breaking the overloaded sled out inch by inch before finally ascending into the dusk sky. The bells jingled a merry tune and all the children cheered as they struggled on.

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There’s more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There’s far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

One of the most amazing songs ever? Yes, I think so. I’m listening to The Lion King soundtrack while Triple J is blasting out of the radio in the office.

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy for me and this one is no different. Tonight straight after work I have to go and work on my driving instructor’s website, tomorrow I’m going to play squash straight after work, Saturaday I have a driving lesson early in the morning and then going to Fremantle, and Sunday I have to be in Fremantle by 9:30 to go to Rottnest. It should be a great weekend, but won’t leave much (or rather any) room for sleeping in. Thankfully, I have Tuesday off for my laser eye surgery consultation appointment and should be able to snooze a bit that morning before having to get ready and leave. I wasn’t designed to not get some morning sleep-in time and have decided to not do anything next weekend except walk my dog and cycle and sleep.

HHRay is going out on Saturday night with some friends, which is great. Not because he’ll be away, just because I think it’s good for him to go out with his friends more.

When RB tweeted that Tweetie 2 is out for the iPhone I immediately bought it. I bought it because 1) I heard great things about Tweetie 1 and have never used it before and 2) I am on a crazy app buying spree which is probably going to leave me broke in the near future.

My very first impression of Tweetie 2 was not good. I put in my Twitter details and when the app sent me to view my tweets, a keyboard immediately popped up. I could not make this go away to view my tweets properly, but what’s worse, the keyboard looked completely screwed up. It was still usable…if you managed to find the keys properly.

I restarted the app and have not been able to reproduce this problem again, but to be honest I didn’t exactly try very hard. I couldn’t be bothered uninstalling Tweetie 2 and re-installing it again to see if the issue would pop up once more.

Anyhow, I haven’t seen this happen since that first launch of the application and since then I’ve been loving it! Tweetie 2 originally looked much more bland than the free version of Twitteriffic I’ve been using until now, but it is much quicker and more polished looking. I love the Nearby filtering feature, where you can actually view tweets near your location on a map or in a

list. I loved watching people Tweet in the city as I did my shopping earlier today.

So far I would say the $3.99 AUD I spent on Tweetie 2 is well worth it, despite the freaky keyboard issue on my first launch of the application. I’m just aching to submit a bug report somewhere, though.

I’ve been wanting to change my permalinks from the default post ID links for months. When I started this blog I knew nothing about SEO or how ugly the default permalink structure was.

Below are the plugins I’ve tried to implement 301 redirects from the old default URLs to my preferred version: /%category%/%postname%/

• Advanced Permalinks
• Dean’s Permalinks Migration
• Permalink Redirect
• Platinum SEO Pack
• Redirection

None of these plugins worked. I kept getting 404s when changing the default permalink structure.

I wasted all that time trying to work out how to change my permalinks that I didn’t realize it would be so easy. I edited my .htaccess file to just say this:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Then I changed the default structure in WordPress. And Voila. Everything magically worked. Finally.

I just watched the first episode (well, a double episode) of Stargate Universe. So far so good! Watch out, there are spoilers ahead.

The story of how they got Eli, the genius teen, on board with the Stargate team seemed a bit gimmicky to me, but I like the character. Apparently Dr. Rush, the super duper scientist of the Stargate project and the man in charge of dialing the ninth chevron, couldn’t figure out the equation that would allow them to dial. So he put the problem into a video game which Eli Wallace then beats. The next morning he is forced to join the project because he solved the puzzle. He resists at first, but the promise that his ill mother will be taken care of and the taste of adventure get the best of him. Not that he ever had any choice.

Anyway, like I said, that part seems a bit gimmicky to me. But Eli’s character is the funniest and most entertaining to watch so far. Basically the ninth chevron is dialed just as the planet on which the Stargate base is located is attacked. All crew members are forced to go through the Stargate even though the location to which it leads is unknown. They end up on an Ancient ship with a malfunctioning life support system and if Rush and the rest of the crew can’t figure something out soon, they’re all going to die.

Brian  J. Smith, who plays Matthew Scott, is a complete hottie and is forced into being in charge of the situation when his superior Colonel Young is injured upon being thrown through the Stargate. Scott has trouble adjusting to the pressures of command in such a life threatening situation on the ship, but handles the responsibility fairly well all things considered.

I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say I can’t wait until the next episode. That and I’m finding Dr. Rush a very suspicious character.

I’ve been playing Mini Ninjas on the PC and it is awesome! The art style really appeals to me, which doesn’t aim to look realistic. It’s colorful and fun and the game just strikes me as being so creative. By far my favorite Mini Ninjas concept is being able to possess animals and use their abilities (like heightened sense of smell), as well as hide from enemies in animal form. I also love that you can pause the game mid-battle. Some might not like this, but to me it just feels more relaxed and fun. That isn’t to say that the game isn’t challenging – it is. But I like knowing that I can go into my inventory, think about what I need to equip to my hot bar (not sure if it’s actually called a hot bar), switch things around, and then get back to the battle. I also love being able to switch between ninjas depending on which is the most appropriate for the task.

When people ask me what the first video game I ever played was, I say Warcraft 2 on the PC when I first moved to the U.S.. Recently it dawned on me that this isn’t exactly true. In fact, the first video game I remember playing was The Lion King. These were the days when we just got a VHS player. It was all the rage in our area at the time. The first movie we got was Anaconda, but my favorite movie in the world at the time – The Lion King – followed soon after. There was this toy, game and video shop in our neighborhood. I remember they had three or four computers set up, where they would charge kids to play The Lion King for about 15 minutes or so. There was always a group of kids waiting to play. I remember sitting in the chair and roaring at the  porcupines, fighting the hyenas, jumping from rock to rock and tree to tree. I also remember the second level, which I think I actually passed only once in the time that was allocated – the level where you had to jump from animal to animal to the “I just can’t wait to be king” theme music.

The game brought back such great memories that I decided to download it. I got it from Best Old Games, along with DOSBox, and fired her up. And holy crap, I’m in love all over again. You have no idea how excited I got to play this game again. Sure, it’s a bit frustrating with the whole “You can only ‘continue’ once after you lose all your lives and then you have to restart the whole game” thing, but it is so worth it. I know what  I’ll be doing my best to pass. It’ll be great to get to the end of the game like I never could in Ukraine.

The Lion King has always been one of the most inspiring movies ever to me. I used to watch it every single day as a kid. For months. And when Lion King 2 came out I would watch that every single day for months, too. It’s only years later that I found out the movie had Christian connotations and themes to it, but I never saw that when I was younger so I don’t really see the movie in that way now.

The song in the first scene always sends chills down my spine. That’s how great it is.

As I type this I’m laying in bed, rubbing my head and trying to figure out what the heck happened.

Earlier today I stepped out of the house in my running leggings and top, feeling good and stretching on the doorstep. It’s a warm day, bordering on what I would call ‘hot’, but not too scorching. I made sure to drink water before my run and felt great. After having sudden trouble running my usual distance of 5km in my last run I was totally confident about today’s attempt.

So I set off down the road on the usual running path I take around the neighborhood. Two and a half laps of this path add up to 5km. I was holding my pace down on purpose, trying to forget about speed and just completing the distance. I was happy with a slow pace of about 5:30 per kilometer. Before I even finished the first lap I felt fatigued. I’ve been running 5km regularly for the past couple of months, what the heck could be happening now? My throat felt like sandpaper as I breathed and the top of my mouth was rough when I tried to moist it with my tongue.

I made sure to drink plenty of water before the run, but there I was – feeling dizzy and dehydrated and hot. The sun felt like it was burning a hole in my head, but I made myself keep going. After all, 5km was my goal today and no way was I stopping again.

I didn’t stop, but eventually my thighs began to cramp, my vision became disoriented, and it hurt to breathe in my throat. With half a kilometer to go, I gave up and slowed to a walk. Not only did slowing down not make me feel any better, but a flood of nausea instantly washed over me. My head was pounding and my legs felt as though they were about to give out from under me. I heard my heart racing as if it would break out of my ribcage any second.

“Please don’t let me throw up.” I thought as I passed by a park with kids playing with their families. I did not want to hunch over in the nearby bush and gross out the kids. Thankfully, I didn’t throw up and made it home without the fall that I was expecting to have any second. I stepped through the door on the 5km mark, feeling sick and defeated. When I looked in the mirror my face wasn’t red as I was expecting, but so pale that it looked almost white.

I’m now in bed, feeling a bit better but still really out of it. I know I have to get up and go to the shop soon as there is no food whatsoever in the house for me to eat. I was going to ride my bike to the shop, but catching the bus is probably a better option. Or maybe I could just go without food today, feels more tempting than getting up right now.

Amazing