The Dark Knight: Batman remodeled.

I took the opportunity to see "The Dark Knight" on saturday night, (in Reading Cinemas Gold Lounge)

and I have to admit, the hype is not totally misplaced, it is a stunning movie,

Heath Ledger truly played the part to a legendary level, the gadgets again are fantastic,

the sheer grittyness that was brough about made it all the more real, rather than having a fantastical approach, it gave it a realisticness lacking in many hero movies.

I'd love to write more but I'd hate to spoil it,

I think this movie will go down as a definite movie to watch.

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On a rainy day I parked on Tory St, Wellington and used the convenience of paying my parking via SMS. That would be $4 for two hours, plus $.50 for the privilege of not having to carry coins. But instead of getting the little piece of paper with the ticket to put in my windshield, I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"

Interesting. But I immediately got a SMS back from Telecom saying "thanks, we debited your account for $4.50".

Bummer. So instead I decided to use a credit card. Again I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"

Hmmm. It looks like the machine may be out of paper, but the developer for this company decided to stupidly save some bytes instead of providing a meaningful message - and a transaction rollback.

So I walk to the next machine, pay and display the ticket in the windshield.

But I wouldn't be short of $9 today, right? I called the Wellington City Council, explained what happened, and was assured someone would call me back to arrange the refund.

You guessed right. No one ever called me back.

Like so many other New Zealand businesses, getting you off the phone is what they want to do. The Wellington City Council is quick to slap a fine on your car if you are over five minutes in the parking lot, but they don't want to move a finger to refund you money that they took without providing the service.

By the way I am looking at my credit card statement. This was on 17 June. More than enough time for the Wellington City Council to come back to me.

End of rant of the day.

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Some bits sound like meetings I attended... Other bits sound like exactly what I expect "Big Telco" would be talking when creating a campaign for their new JesusPhone offering...

Warning: some heavy NSFW language. But worth watching the whole thing.

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There are subtle changes around the world all the time, some of them more obvious than others,

As many suspect, some know and some redicule,
These changes are effected by the annoymous controllers of the world, the ones who cause wars for financial gain, those who control the world economies, those who ensure the greater populace is kept in the dark from knowing the real story, and keep us from interacting with our friendly Aliens from neighbouring systems.
Some say they are really members of the ruling lizard Army,
others swear its the illuminati, perhaps its the government, or those with the black helicopters and red sports shoes.

I cannot say for sure who these anonymous fellows are, but I do know one thing for sure. they are at it again.


this time with the humble Match. the unobtrusive supplier of fire, lighter of ciggarettes, cigars, candles and incense sticks,



How many Matches in a standard box of Beehive "Safety Matches"???

I bet many of you will state "50" and in the better, more positive days of old, when the future was bright and mankind controlled its future you would have been correct.

I your intrepid investigator, went deep in the depths of the conspiracy, risked life and limb and discovered an earth-shattering revelation, something that could rock your perception of reality to the core.

be prepared for this. it is a shocking, terrible revelation.

THERE. IS. NOW. ONLY. FORTY FIVE matches in a box of "behive safety matches"

Surely this is the beginning of the end, the controllers, those secretive evil overloads are plotting to de-evolve the human race,

sure you say, it could be a cost cutting measure, who really uses all 50 matches in a box of matches, BUT NO!

At the same time this sinister ploy was rolled out, the cost for a humble box of matches rose by 10 cents!

Again! I hear you say, surely this could be coincidental, the cost of everything is rising due to the cost of fuel for transportation, and this surely will effect matches too.

WRONG AGAIN!!!  Pull the wool away from your eyes! that is exactly the sort of thinking they want! they want you to believe it is a result of a highly complicated series of economical factors locally and abroad causing the costs of manufacturing to increase.

AHA!  I hear a few of you say, you think you are smarter than that, you think that you have seen through this, you think,
This is a straightforward capitalist move, in which they are covering increased costs while increasing margins by dropping the number of items per unit by 10% meaning they can produce 11 units for at a cost only slightly higher (the cost of the extra box) than the cost they previously had for 10 units.

Ah my poor, naive populace, oh how I envy your blissfull sleep wrapped in your dillusioned reality.

This is only the start of the plan, these "Men X" have a sinister plan to de-evolve the human race into cavemen level humanoids.

You see. we have grown too much. we have too much of the Internet, at first they thought "Aha this internet. it is the new Television, in which we can place many time-taking activities, more intellectual soylent green, we can use this to gradually increase the depth of the reality disfunction"

-But Alas for them and fortunately for us! we have moved past.

whilst many get trapped, and sucked into the mass mind control vortices that have been created, projects with codenames so terrible I cannot mention, but which were re-branded into friendly sounding names until you realise the ominous portents of what these names portray.

these mass mind control vortices such as "MY SPACE" a secret covert program derived from
Mind Yoke, Situation Programming And Control, and another similar covert black op "FACE BOOK" a name that fills me with such ominous dread  I dare not delve far for fear of causing horrors such as were envisioned by HP Lovecraft, but let it be said it was a covert operation linked to Fully Assimilated Control Environments..

But these vortices were still not enough. they had to push further least we discover the truth.

and that is where the diabolic plan to de-evolve the human race has sprung.

it starts of small. they reduce the number of matches in a box by 5 and increase the cost by 10c.
that looks innocent enough on the purpose, but if you look further you are getting 10% less, for  20% more cost,

That is only the beginning. soon they will perform this step again, and gradually spread it out to other devices in which to make fire, gradually decreasing the resources and increasing the cost for us to create fire to such an extent that we no longer have the facility for fire,

One may point out that "what about friction - rubbing two sticks together" - this is one of the reasons their plan is soo diabolically cunning.

Citys were created for just this purpose. to eradic the availability of "sticks" and make us wholly dependand on store bought combustion created materials.

Soon we will be stuck wilth very few sources for ignition, and fewer for burning and keeping those fires lit.

"Environmental Sustainability" = "systematically remove mans capacity to make and keep fire"

if we do not prepare ourselves. we will become what the goal of their master plan is, a sub-human race of cavemen like bipeds the perfect slaves t operate their intersteller fastfood chains and cleaning resteraunts whilst they put their hyper intelligent robots to valuable tasks such as enabling awkward teen overlords to score with the hot overlord teen chicks who know about cars, by changing into a car with a cool engine then becoming a futuristic robot that deathmatches other robots before amusing crowds with puns involving Ebay.

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Is it a rose that opens in the morning light?
A new leaf upon each twig, that grew from humble beginnings?

 The branch that broke will turn into the scar for life.The scar of emotion runs deep within us all, this injures everyone slowly but surely.  Until the only way out of your own emotion turns to destruction.  Destruction turns to chaos.  Chaos turns to the way the world is operating at present with only a small amount of reason and intelligent thought.

 Don’t believe everything that you see,
Because seeing isn’t believing,
Feeling is.

 If I was to die today,
Would I be remembered tomorrow?

 Would life go on without me?
Or does someone else’s existence end with mine?

 If truth is letting people know the details of something real,
Does that mean reality is a truth only known to you?
Or is truth and reality far more complicated than that?
You could believe anything that someone tells you,
Or decide to think they are lying.
Either way your own decision is what you choose to believe.
Which in turn makes reality your own creation of thoughts comprised of facts given by not only yourself, but other people as well.  How these facts are interpreted depends on the translator.  You!  

 If something is too difficult, would you try your best to solve it, or simply give in and let someone else figure it out. 

 Thought, emotion, truth, justice, wisdom, creation, intellect, visualisation, hands on experience.
Does everything come down to what the individual is capable of, or rather what the individual is willing to accomplish. 

 You have to experience happiness to know sadness.  You have to experience love to know hate.  If there is one thing that lives alone in this world, without needing to relate to another.  Show me this thing, for it will be a beautiful thing indeed.

 To fly is to fall,
To swim is to run,
To walk is to crawl,
To speak is to be silent,
To create is to imitate,
To build is to destroy,
To make peace is to make war! 

 Everything exists for a reason, and there is always balance.  When there is too much of one thing there has to be an equal amount of the other to compensate for the balance lost with the first. 

 Begin your day with birds in mind,
Never let the dawn show its face,
You will crawl upon any road given to you,
And you will find the path that suits you.

 Am I going insane or is it just a figment of my imagination.  If I was going insane, would I be trying to figure it out, or would I just ignore it and let things happen as they do.  Because when thoughts take over my life, I feel responsible for all the thoughts that are approaching my life.
Never get too involved.
Never hold a grudge.
Never begin something if you do not intend to finish it.

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So you complain about Windows Vista but actually never used it? Maybe what you need is Microsoft Windows Mojave.

In summary, a set of people were asked what they think is bad on Windows Vista. Their answers were recorded.  They were then shown "Microsoft Windows Mojave".

One of the subjects in the study even said "Wow", the word Microsoft used in the "The wow starts now" campaign for Windows Vista.

Microsoft then revealed "Windows Mojave" and "Windows Vista" are the same one.

I know a lot of Linux and Mac OS X users who bash Windows Vista without ever having touch a computer running the OS. How can they "know" so much? Or perhaps they don't.

Isn't this a big perception problem?

All the details here.

UPDATE: The Mojave Experiment results are coming on-line!

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I have just received the confirmation I will be running the Windows Mobile Roadmap session (UNC117) at Tech Ed New Zealand 2008.

At this stage I don't know the exact date/time but it's all go.

See you there!

... (more in the full post)

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It took a while, but I'm finally at it - iPod touch 2.0 now jailbroken for me, using WinPwn.



You'll need:

• WinPwn (2.0.0.3 is what I used, since some bugs were apparently fixed)
• Your iPod 2.0 restore file (please note that it must be 5A347)
• iTunes 7.7
• Some patience

Step 1

Open up WinPwn.

Click "Browse .ipsw" and find your original iPod touch 2.0 restore file.

Step 2

Click "IPSW Builder"

You don't really have to do anything here, but you can select "Install Cydia" if you want it.

Step 3

Click "Build .ipsw", save to a location, and wait a while.

Step 4

Once the whole process is complete, click "iPwner" and click OK to the confirmation message.

Step 5

Open up iTunes, and put your iPod into DFU mode.

I tried to do this a few times, but having a counter on hand is best.

• Connect iPod to PC
• Turn off while connected to PC
• Press Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for exactly 10 seconds. Leave iPod connected.
• After the 10 seconds, release the Sleep/Wake button. Continue to hold the Home button. Leave iPod connected.
• Windows will now see the "new hardware", and iTunes will give a message that it has found an iPod in recovery mode.
• Click OK.

Step 6

In iTunes, hold Shift while pressing "Restore".

Find your custom restore file and Restore. And wait for an extremely long time.

Step 7

Afterwards, iTunes may prompt for a backup restore.

It worked for me, but I'm not 100% sure if this affects anything, but if you don't mind, you can set it up completely from scratch.

The restore took around 25 minutes. Maybe it's because of my apps, but expect to wait.


... and now you should have a jailbroken iPod touch with Software 2.0!


There was one problem - Cydia always hangs when downloading or installing software. A hard reset is required. (Hold Sleep/Wake and Home buttons until it shuts down, then start up normally)

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Should State insurance offer 'market value' payouts on a set amount policy?

My parents car was recently involved in an accident where their car received significant damage after a truck hit the car. No one was hurt but we got the details, went to the police and got the stuff rolling.
The car is sitting in my driveway, not safe for road use.

Anyway, the insurance policy was insured for a set value rather than market value. The assessor for state insurance (IAG?) has basically offered approximately $5600 for repairs or replacement. This is below the set amount that was insuranced and the assessor only viewing the exterior of the car and not assessing potential damage to the car.  The understanding is that anything above ~$5600 would be out of pocket.

When we contacted the assessor for further comment, he advised that this was because the car was only worth a certain amount, a market value and that we are lucky that we got offered that amount. That would be ok if it wasn't insured for a set value.

Clearly state insurance can't have their cake and eat it too? To me it sounds like a scam.

Whats your thoughts?

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