A late late night.

After an impromptu late-night-picnic-and-beer session in the Botanical Gardens with my flatmates + friends, I headed off to the Interislander ferry terminal to meet one TmsT at 10:30, texting him all the way, and wondering why I wasn’t getting any text back. 11:30pm rolls around and the Interislander still hasn’t arrived, and wasn’t due to arrive till 12:30am… something is wrong.

Turns out I was wrong. They hadn’t caught the Interislander, but had caught one of the other, faster ferrys and had been in town for over an hour now. And I didn’t know this because Andrew’s cellphone was flat and he hadn’t been getting my messages.

One taxi ride later, a dash to get my wallet from inside, a dash to the ATM to get some cash for the fare and a dash back to the taxi to pay the bill, I proceeded to idle up Cuba St and finally we meet!

Andrew’s stuff was in his friend’s car who was stuck somewhere deep in the one-way system that is the Cuba Quarter. Told to go meet him at a particular corner, Andrew’s friend was a no-show. Call Andrew’s now charging phone, and get dispatched to some unknown cul-de-sac in Dixon St. A quick jog and I am able to guide the driver to Lower Cuba St.

After unloading some of TmsT’s gears, and me getting drive-by-egged in the process (I actually came out of it unscathed – I took the egg on the shoulder, it ricocheted off me and hit the inside of the open boot door where it released its runny yellow payload), we ride the lift to the roof and chill out there for half an hour, admiring the city scape. Andrew meets his biggest fan in Wellington.

We retire to the apartment, set up Andrew’s computer and get down to animutating. At some point we get the munchies and make a quick raid to the corner BK, and get back into it. About 4:20 we decide it’s Z-time. Glutnix set up TmsT the spare mattress, and we crash about 4:45am, not before setting the alarm clock for 7am, only a little over 2 hours away.

A Klaxon sounds. Rising from our slumbers quicker than a zombie on guarana pills, we pack up Andrew’s computer. We pose for a photo, and when we get the word that Andrew’s ride to Auckland is en route, move his stuff all back downstairs again. He hands me a copy of his graphic novel “The Fisherman” and we bid each other adiau.

That’s when I crawl back into bed and sleep till past noon. We had a grand ol’ time 🙂 Best wishes for art school in Auckland, Androo 🙂

Friends Rant 2 comments

New Fandangled Camera

So I bit the bullet and bought a digital camera — a Nikon Coolpix 3700. It’s 3.2 megapixels, takes SD cards, and supports video up to 640×680 at 30fps, and can do time lapses. So while I’m writing this post, my camera is on a mini tripod and is taking time lapse photography of my hands typing this post. I haven’t done any before this, so what you’ll see linked to this is my first attempt!

Camera cost me NZD$449, and the metal mini-tripod was NZD$21.95, both from Photo Warehouse in Wakefield St., and they threw in a free carry case 😀 I had the manager, so he was real nice and cool. The benefit of buying from a store is you can do a little barteration: put them up against their competitors, get them to throw things in for free.

So hopefully you’ll see more photos in my flickr photostream, and not crappy 128×128 pics from my Alcatel 735 (more like alca-smell!)

Andrew Kepple is dropping by this evening — I think we’re gonna do some collaboranimutation… more on that next post!

Here’s that timelapse (715kb 640×480 QuickTime file)

Hardware 4 comments

WP Plugin: Official Comments

I just whipped up a quick WordPress 1.2/1.5/2.0 plugin that allows you to distinguish comments made by WordPress users. It also will automatically approve comments made by WP users.

Current Version: 1.1

How It Works:
If you are logged into your WordPress admin panel, and you make a comment, the plugin will see that you are an official WP user of your blog and mark the comment with your WP User ID.
When the page is rendered, that User ID is called up by the plugin functions, which you can use to change text, change CSS class, add images, whatever your imagination desires.

Installation
Either:

  • RECOMMENDED: Install WordPress Plugin Manager then use the One Click Install for Official Comments. This will also make it easier to install other plugins and upgrade them in the future.
  • OR: Download Official Comments, extract and upload official-comments.php to your wp-content/plugins directory. Log-in to your WP admin panel, go to the Plugins tab and activate the Official Comments plugin.

How to implement:
Simply add this somewhere within the Comments loop in wp-comments.php and/or wp-comments-popup.php:

<?php if(is_wpuser_comment() != 0) {echo "Official ";} ?>

Or get tricky and add a CSS Class to the LI:

<li class="comment <?php echo (is_wpuser_comment() ? ' commentOfficialUser' : ''); ?>" id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

and this very basic css example:

.commentOfficialUser { border: 1px solid black; background-color: #999999 }

Documentation
View Official Comments Readme.txt

Examples
There is a very basic example on this post, but more exciting examples available at Webfroot.

Known Issues
It only works with official comments made after the point of installation, as WordPress doesn’t automatically add the WP user ids to the comments field it already has.

Bugs and Suggestions
Any bugs or suggestions, please email me — email link in the sidebar (RSS readers: drop by the site 😉 ).

Blogging Coding Software WordPress Plugins 159 comments

Ninja Vs Pirate: Milk Menace

Frame 5 of 'Ninja vs Pirate'Inspired by Kepple‘s A Weapon of X-Mass Destruction, I decided to make my own 24-Minute comic.

I present to you:

Ninja vs Pirate: Milk Menace!

Yeah, this actually took me more than 24 minutes to complete. So what, sue me! 😉 I don’t get analog very often, so pencil work doesn’t come naturally. After completing the pencil work, I showed the comic to my flatmates who liked it, and to my cartoonist friend Matix who said I should ink it. So I did. Then I scanned it and put it here for your benefit. Enjoy 😀


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Funny Reading 6 comments

20Q and Sex Ed – Pizza anyone?

So I decided to buy myself a 20Q. NZD$20 from The Warehouse. So Andrew Kepple and I tried to confuse it with words like Ninja, Dildo and Condom. Hilarity ensued.

Glutnix: wow i got me a 20Q and I was guessing CD and it guessed DVD ROM
TmsT: o.o layman’s terms?
TmsT: is this on Trademe?
Glutnix: no
Glutnix: 20Q is a toy that plays “20 questions” with you
Glutnix: you press buttons on it
TmsT: aha
TmsT: so it guesses stuff and you teach it new things?
Glutnix: i don’t think the handheld learns
Glutnix: but it has a pretty big database of stuff
Glutnix: it got CD-ROM after 5 more questions
Glutnix: it askes 20 questions, you say yes, no, sometimes or unknown
TmsT: oh yep
Glutnix: after 20 it guesses, if it’s not right, it askes 5 more
TmsT: and if it hits a blank you enter the name of the thing?
Glutnix: no, it’s only got 6 buttons
TmsT: try “Colin Mochrie” 😀
Glutnix: LOL

Read the rest — warning, hilarity about adult related subjects ensues.
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Funny Rant 1 comment