The Tenacious Wombat's Journal

mr_wombat @ 2008-07-14T20:36:00

2008-07-14T19:54:31Z

Life is increasingly revolving around Baby Wombat's refusal to leave the presumably comfortable confines of followthebird's womb. At this point I'm actually considering getting on a bicycle for the first time in about eight years so I can get from work to home more quickly and readily. I'm worried the child might be an idiot actually, it seems to have tried to make an escape through her ribs, her belly button and her lungs. One would expect that gravity would give it a clue but if the exceptionally strong genes on my side of the family are dominant then it is entirely possible that the child is just getting started early on the tradition of being contrary and taking the opposing viewpoint for shits and giggles.

So, an idiot OR it takes after me, which to some people is one and the same.

Once more I am perplexed by social networking sites. Yesterday night I joined Linkedin because a few people at work mentioned it and I'm a sucker for anything that has my name associated with professionalism instead of carefree alcohol abuse but by the time I'd had time to scratch myself and choke down the first mug of repugnant coffee substitute (which is still infinitely better than the swill served by the Insomnia cafe beside the Luas stop where I get off) this morning I already had several invites to join networks and I'll be damned if I can even figure out how to find people on the rather large and widespread work network I'm already on so I have NO earthly idea how they found me, mere hours after doing a half assed job of creating my profile. I am a very particular kind of luddite, the kind who, upon installing a web server, SQL database and hacking together a Wiki will get pissed off trying to figure out how to add a logo to the damned thing so don't be surprised if I somehow mess this thing up to the point where I'm the last man on earth.

Comic book guy moment - Dr Who Finale

2008-07-05T18:47:55Z

That may have been the worst thing I have ever watched - there are zombie movies languishing, half watched on my hard drive that were better than that. Tonight I will pray to a wrathful God that Davies be punished for finishing a season that had so many wonderful and fun episodes in such a way.

mr_wombat @ 2008-07-01T21:57:00

2008-07-01T21:02:49Z

Note to self:

You do this every time, stop listening to fucking speed metal when you're lifting weights you fucking goon. Sure, you feel manly at the time but afterwards, when your arms are flopping around like a tiny baby bird you look like a twit.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-28T13:52:00

2008-06-28T13:04:07Z

So, after doing a fair bit of research I'm leaning to the conclusion that I had a drink spiked on me last night at a work party in the laughter lounge. After only a couple of glasses of wine, a beer and a couple of shots of rum I was hallucinating, passing out, vomiting, ranting, raving and completely enfeebled - and those are the bits of the night I can remember because of the gaps in my memory.
I got home as soon as I started feeling wrong, made myself sick and followthebird tended to me until I was fit to get myself to bed.

Edit: As followthebird pointed out, I was in the bathroom for roughly three hours and I don't remember more than ten minutes of it.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-25T22:40:00

2008-06-25T21:50:04Z

I'm watching a movie called Rec at the moment, its a spanish horror film along the lines of the Blair Witch Project, Diary of the Dead and Cloverfield - the whole camcorder point of view thing. Unlike the others though, this one feels very distinctly and frighteningly real, from the incredibly natural performances given by the supporting actors (not to mention the lead actress) to the authentic sound effects and unprocessed audio during the louder scenes. One or two pieces break the sense of immersion like the video actually rewinding when one of the characters tries to watch a recorded sequence from earlier. Overall though, an excellent film and well worth watching.

It leaves me wondering whether the "authenticity" of the performances are because of fantastic acting or if my lack of familiarity with spanish leaves me unable to distinguish flat spanish acting from a hole in the ground.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-25T21:24:00

2008-06-25T20:26:40Z

One is left wondering why Mugabe had a knighthood in the first place, was there some category based around eradicating black people that qualified him?

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-23T23:38:00

2008-06-23T22:42:03Z

Sometimes democracy *does* work. For example, this travesty was voted the worst cover of all time. This is how they should run constitutional referendums in future - tack on a simple question we can all understand like
"Do you think Ireland should make the following five hundred ammendments to our constitution covering article 3, subsection 1, paragraph 3 and also articles 4........ AND do you think Celine Dion needs to be fired into the sun?"

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-23T23:32:00

2008-06-23T22:37:16Z

"I'm saying to those drug dealers, and they know who they are, if they are supplying crack to Amy, then they've got to take responsibility," he said.

This must be that new crack that sets fire to itself and teleports into your lungs.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-15T23:22:00

2008-06-15T22:38:26Z

With poor followthebird more or less housebound these days I spend most of this weekend indoors trying to learn something productive in between making dinner, massaging backs, doing the shopping and generally being an awesome husband. I decided that I was going to teach myself a program called ZBrush. Its a nifty little program that lets you import a model and paint or distort the model as if it were made of real clay. Needless to say, what *I* wanted to do was unreasonably complex and the source of a huge amount of confusion and discussion amongst the casual 3D community (specifically, importing and painting onto the humanoid models from Daz3D because of something I don't fully understand involving overlapping UV maps and supposedly poor construction of said humanoid models. That said, it took me two days but I finally managed to pull it off. The image after the cut should give you some idea of the kind of things the program can do on a terribly terribly basic level (mould and distort the basic model, apply texture and colour, that kind of thing)

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-15T13:22:00

2008-06-15T12:56:14Z

Did you know that Lordi have made a movie? It is really rather good by monster movie standards.

Oh... spoke way too soon. Nothing like having to watch an ending three times to fail to understand what the hell is going on.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-08T20:17:00

2008-06-08T19:37:05Z

I have skimmed the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and DM's guide. I like what they've done but they've clearly been heavily influenced by World of Warcraft. I'm not sure whether this is for good or ill I cannot say - I've always liked WoW's artistic style and it definitely lends itself to the newer, more heroic tone of the 4th edition style but not every sword needs to be glowing and run encrusted, nor does every axe have to contain a gemmed centerpiece and floating blade sections. All that being said, since D&D is the precursor to damned near all types of fantasy gaming you can't really fault them for ripping off one of their own ripoffs.
Now, for the game itself, it is harder to say and I assume this edition will do what all previous editions have done. There will be a period of confusion where people like me wonder if a relatively simple system needed to be streamlined and simplified some more. There will be a six month stretch where people piss and moan about Wizards of the Coast having the sheer fucking GALL to be a business that needs to make a profit and release a new edition. The obvious period of people complaining that they're being forced to buy new books (particularly ironic given how incredibly broad the official expansions have been, never mind third party supplements meaning that almost every concievable setting and rule has been done twice over) The Open Gaming License advocates will whinge for some time too about how this is going to destroy their business (of mainly providing pointless, shit supplements) but overall this is going to be a success one way or the other.

The basic first impression is that the streamlining of the rules and generally bombastic illustratative style means we're supposed to be playing much more epic games. The system feels a little like the new World of Darkness rule set and this is definitely for the positive, particularly for magic users who are now in a position to be chucking out a lot more spells and contributing to every fight, not just the first tough one of the day. Where previously a lot of D&D games felt like a protracted session of Baldur's Gate where premature use of your Mage's sole fireball would mean the party had to head back to town to rest for eight hours and tended to make them a somewhat useless knifethrower at the back, praying that no one flanked the party, now they can keep on trudging until the bitter end.

mr_wombat @ 2008-06-05T01:38:00

2008-06-05T00:41:24Z

It is an enduring mystery to me that while a man will crawl naked, over broken glass, to see boobs, once a baby is attached to the business end it becomes freakish and awful.

Mr Wombat's Guide to:

2008-06-03T22:20:22Z

Job Interviews.

I have done a *lot* of interviews these past few weeks. Enough to speak with some authority on the subject. Here are some tips.

1) Wear a shirt and slacks at the very least. A tie is good, a suit is better. Regardless of how casual the job you're going for is, you should make some effort to have a visual impact. It shows you're taking the interview seriously. It shows that you are behaving in a professional manner. Showing up in jeans and a tee shirt only gives the impression that you rolled out of bed and came in for the job and honestly, if you can't make that tiny amount of effort for an interview, why should we believe you'll make any more effort to do the job well?

To that end, I will slap the next person who thinks it is okay to come in in ripped trousers.

2) Arrive absolutely no more than ten minutes early. That way if your clock is off by five minutes you'll either be just on time or acceptably early. If you arrive too early then the interviewers will feel obliged to take you in for the interview before they're ready, they're flustered and pissed off because they probably haven't had time to prepare properly themselves. They won't get to ask you the questions they want to, you won't get a chance to answer the questions the way they want you to and you'll lose out. Arriving more than ten or fifteen minutes (and fifteen is the absolute upper threshold of tolerance here) is a no no. Never ever be late. If you are late, call ahead and let them know. If you are late and you are asked "Did you have any trouble finding the place?" then say "Yes" because that placates us and answering "No" leaves us wondering why the FUCK you left us waiting and created a situation where we're going to have to rush the interview to catch up. We have better things to do than wait for you without explanation.

3) After arriving no more than ten minutes early, wash your God Damned hands and dry them thoroughly. Keep some tissues on you to keep them clean and dry. Nothing makes an impression like a cold, damp handshake that ends with a film of your sweat on their hands and a good case of the grossout. If you have a cold or are otherwise unwell, call to cancel and explain the situation. If you come in with a cold then you're being a dick. You're going to give it to us, make us miss work, miss interviews, cause way more work for our co-workers and generally screw things up. You are not so important that we're willing to overlook that.

4) It does not matter how skilled you are at the job. It does not matter how much you think you know about it. Your experience does not speak for itself. We are not telepathic, you need to tell us.

5) Answer the question at hand, do not digress or otherwise go off on a tangent. Do not say "Umm", "Ah", "Err" or anything similar. If you need a second to think then simply pause. You will not look stupid for stopping to think for a second before speaking, quite the opposite. You will look like an idiot if you punctuate every second or third word with a vowelly grunt.

6) If you are doing a phone interview then get to a quiet place half an hour beforehand. Get yourself a cup of tea, a cigarette if thats your thing, get the computer running in case you need to look up some answers. Make sure your keyboard is nice and silent because we can hear you type and that makes you look like a cheating, clueless asshole. Get someone to call you before the interview to make absolutely sure you have a good reception. If they're calling from abroad then do some research and give them the number they have to dial from their office. Trying to figure out international dialling codes and which zero you're supposed to drop is a pain in the ass. Do not move from your seat until the interview is done. Do not, under any circumstances do the interview while walking down a street. Once again, if you can't make the time for something as simple as the interview, why should we believe you're going to devote your time to the job? If you absolutely must break this rule, explain why this is the case and apologise because it is hateful to try and speak to someone who can't hear you and have to repeat questions or ask them to repeat an answer over and over again.

7) Research the company and the specific role you are going for. When you're asked what your understanding of the job is you should damned well be able to tell the interviewer what it is. Misunderstanding the role or getting it entirely wrong is interview suicide. If you think you're suitable for something entirely different to the job then you've just applied for then you've applied for the wrong one and you're useless to the interviewer. If it is a summer contract then telling us you're available in september just pisses us off because you've wasted half an hour of our time. Do not apply for something on the offchance, or just to have a go, we'll know by the end of it and if your application says one thing and you say another then you're a God Damned liar and not to be trusted.

8) This will lead on into #9 but - Stick a picture of yourself on the CV. A good one mind you, not that one where you looked dark and mysterious at a convention or where you were a bit out of it with your mates - something of you looking amused but serious (preferably in a shirt, which will go some way towards tricking the interviewer's memory should you transgress against rule #1). Interviewers only have a memory span of about a week. By Monday morning, you will be a dim and distant memory, deliberately obscured by heavy drinking and while usually a decision will have been made by then this is not always the case. You have to ensure that your impression can last through a week and probably fourteen other candidates (most interviewers do no more than three per day)

9) Timing is a bastard but here are some rough guides.
Before lunch on a monday is a good and bad slot. The interviewers aren't in their swing yet and they're probably not that awake. It is easy to make a good or bad impression here. Be clear and concise. Don't waffle and just answer the questions you're asked. If you drag the interview out and keep talking then you're annoying us.

Between post Monday lunchtime and roughly Wednesday afternoon are all good times. The coffee has kicked in and we're not tired yet. Just follow the rules above and you'll be fine. Be bright, charismatic and outgoing.

Thursday can be dodgy, we're sick of interviews by this stage and have probably seen a dozen people. Our memory span only lasts roughly a week anyway so on the positive side, you're at least towards the memorable end of the week. On the negative side, we're sick of the sight of you people by now.

Friday is dodgy as well but for different reasons. The end of the week is in sight but your interview may have been pawned off by the original interviewer and onto someone else because the thought of listening to the same tired, trite responses for the fourteenth time in a week makes us die a little inside so you really have to pull out all the stops. There is no middle ground with fridays, you'll either be the person who came in and brightened our day or the cunt who we're not sure, but we could swear found our interview questions on the web somewhere. As the day progresses it becomes increasingly precarious to the point where the final one on a friday will determine the mood we go into the weekend with and you do not want to be the person who pissed an interviewer off on a friday evening.
In short, if your interview is on a friday morning then keep it brief because we're quite possibly hung over. In the afternoon and evening, inject some humour into it, try to make us laugh.

10) Be careful what you mention as your interests, no matter how relevant they may seem. I've interviewed people who informed me that they loved computer games, they were raiders in World of Warcraft, their guilds were first on the server or in europe or in the world to reach certain achievements which is well and good but what you're really saying is "I'm going to be spending my time in work looking up strategies. My evenings will be filled with gaming and I'll probably be up very late. Chances are I'll be knackered in the morning and do sod all for the first hour before the coffee kicks in and I can start researching strategies again. Oh and since I'll be playing games at home all evening and then going into work to play them again, I'll be tired of seeing them and my skills will not be what they should." He was an exception due to his extreme dedication to the game but you should examine your interests and look for ways they could be a problem for the job.

11) At the end of the day, interviewers are like those horrible fucking shrieking harpies in that "Sex and the City" show, you know how they're continually dumping guys for entirely trivial reasons? Well we're a lot like that, except we don't piss and bitch and moan about not being able to find anyone afterwards because we're not blonde retards written by fucking cretins. It does not take much to turn an interviewer against you, you need to be good for the job, a good fit for the office environment, good for the projects we need people for and not annoy us in the slightest because you'll be doing that every - single - day and we're going to end up murdering you.

Tempting fate

2008-05-31T12:44:24Z

Its almost as if they want robot armageddon.

Mr Wombat Reviews

2008-05-22T23:31:08Z

I don't know if it pissed me off because it was absolutely ridiculous or if I've run out of goodwill for Lucas and Spielberg. In essence it is Revenge of the Sith all over again, a decent movie with some "Hmm..." moments until the last half hour when it shits all over itself.

mr_wombat @ 2008-05-06T12:26:00

2008-05-06T11:28:05Z

Right, time to pry the gun from his cold, dead hands.

mr_wombat @ 2008-05-06T02:04:00

2008-05-06T01:29:24Z

I'm having a mild addiction to David Attenborough shows at the moment. I'm going through Life on Earth, Planet Earth and Life in the Undergrowth and I know full well I'll be getting more of the DVD sets before the end of the year, once I've stopped watching Life in the Undergrowth several more times.

Lisbon

2008-04-30T00:40:36Z

While I'm getting things out of my system, I'm going to nut the next person who hands me another "informative" pamphlet about the Lisbon treaty that contains absolutely no information whatsoever. Statements without backing aren't information and regardless of how many pictures of Lucinda Creighton smiling in a manner I'm sure she thinks is reassuring (it isn't, she looks like a pasty rapist), it doesn't alter the basic lack of facts provided.
I'm not asking for much, just that you provide me with the passage concerned along with your interpretation of it (or at least the page number) so I can judge for myself. Calling yourself the "Lisbon Treaty Information Campaign" doesn't grant you any weight in the eyes of the "Angry people with an IQ in triple digets committee" neither.

The thing is, as a rule of thumb, Fianna Fail are never in favour of something that'll work out well for me as a middle-income peon with a tendency to yell at people in the street so under that tenuous logic I'd do well to vote no. On the other hand, Fine Gael, who oppose anything Fianna Fail support simply on principle (and this will work against them the minute FF get wise and propose that Fine Gael should totally not disband) seem to be supporting the Lisbon vote so something is terribly wrong OR theres a clause in there that excludes political party members from a hidden "Logan's Run" clause.

The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that moving to Germany wouldn't be such a bad idea.

mr_wombat @ 2008-04-30T01:16:00

2008-04-30T00:22:48Z

"I've had two death threats, I've been held up against a wall, I've been grabbed round the throat, I've been manhandled by relatives - verbal abuse is almost day-to-day," says Andy.

"You have to have a very thick skin."

Maybe being less of a smug, hateful prick would work better there Andy.

mr_wombat @ 2008-04-30T01:00:00

2008-04-30T00:14:02Z

Right, Madonna - fuck off you irrelevant, second rate Bono shitmouth. Fuck off sermonising at us about obligations and messages, take your entire fortune, your shit movies and your flash in the pan, pain in the ass, idiot named husband and send the whole, disgraceful lot to the people you think you we owe so much to. Put your fucking money where your mouth is and get that fucking gap fixed. You whore.

Dr Who Villains

2008-04-29T02:20:13Z

Daleks - reasonably scary.
Cybermen - Fairly damned scary.
Slitheen - Not entirely scary but they have an ironic sort of creepy factor.

The Sontaran Penis Eggcups - Fucking ridiculous.

mr_wombat @ 2008-04-13T00:03:00

2008-04-12T22:59:40Z

I really really never expected to say this but Catherine Tate is really quite good in the latest Dr Who.

mr_wombat @ 2008-03-21T22:35:00

2008-03-21T22:57:41Z

I'm not entirely sure what chain of links led me to this video but I *really* like it and I think its well worth a watch.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of something I occasionally detest, something that is generally at the root of most of society's problems - lazy thinking. Clever people (and I only occasionally count myself amongst that group) have a terrible tendency to assume that other people are dumb or incapable of understanding the complex issues the clever people struggle with so when the evidence mounts that, for example, we're all going to die in a hail of fire and garbage they give the problem a catchy title - like "Global Warming" or worse still let stupid people (and I count the media amongst that group pretty constantly) coin that phrase and let it spread, misunderstanding widespread use of the name as understanding of the underlying issue.

So we end up with the clever people trying to explain that actually no, despite the name it isn't actually the planet getting warmer, its that the climate is *changing* but... well not really because its actually our approaching a critical point in the global climate where things could switch into apocalpytic mode over the course of a year and before long you have people with ... what? four, maybe five versions of the basic story. Global warming, climate change, approaching mass climate change, complete horseshit spread by a media controlled by a group who have a vested interest in the status quo and finally utter ignorance because the whole damned thing is too confusing.

You see it everywhere, people who can just about manage maybe one degree of thought before they give up and arrive at a dumbass conclusion like (to take an example I was just reading) female genital mutilation or an arranged marriage is okay once the woman is volunteering for it, like cultural conditioning, familial expectations and an underlying threat of violence should she not "volunteer" aren't all factors.

So, watch the video, its an enjoyable explanation of the entire issue at a very high level and a good debate about the nature of uncertainty and inaction (not to mention a good example of scientific thinking in general) and when you're finished, do yourself and everyone else a favour and don't dumb these issues down because you think the other party isn't smart enough to understand the finer points of the story and especially not if they actually *are* too dumb to get it.

equilibrium

2008-03-17T20:12:44Z

The balance of stupidity is levelled out. After successfully diagnosing and fixing a problem that everything on the internet claimed would require at best a reinstalling of windows and at worst some new hard disks, I managed to seriously burn some fingertips by grabbing a baking tray out of a 230 degree oven.

Murphy, you are a tossbag.

2008-03-17T17:39:08Z

I'm not really into the whole St Patrick's day celebration thing so I figured I'd spend the day backing up the contents of my PC. I have a few series of shows on it, several games downloaded through Steam... forty or fifty gigs of stuff in all. Naturally when I turned the PC on this morning it had crapped out completely and is reporting nothing more informative than "a disk read error occurred".

EDIT: Some bios repairing and tweaking fixed it. Time to do some backing up while the getting is good.