Am developing a bit of a thing for climbing in the Blueys. You can possibly see why if you examine this little lot. The first photo of the set is a climb called Mezzaluna, which is about 16ish. We did it as a warm up on our visit to Mount York not so long ago - I'll be posting some shots here shortly - and it's well worth the three starrs the guide gives it. I was grinning ear to ear after my lead, despite the fact that pretty much the entire route is on (yeuch) carrots. I'll update this post...

Crag X Forum has some climbing vids up. One of the routes documented, Goofy Foot at Mount Kuring-Gai, was subject to a James Taylor ascent this weekend as Viv and I were dangling off a 23 (Devil Inside?) to the left. Looks really good. I've been doing a little video myself, and once I've got enough footage I'll be posting some to Aus Climbing. In other climbing news I left a pair of Boreals at Mount K this weekend. They weren't holding edges very well so I swapped them for something stiffer, next thing you know I've left them behind. Bugger. [Update...

The ever trusty SMH (yes, I know, I read little else it seems) is reporting that sharks are coming closer and closer to the shoreline as a consequence of rising water temperatures. Guys, I've already sounded the clarion call. You don't have to pretend any more. It's not 'due to rising temperatures'. You're in denial. They're coming closer in because they're amassing their forces for the forthcoming invasion. They're not content with having the deep ocean to themselves - they're out to reclaim the inshore zones too. Stay out of the water, mark my words. Remember what happened to Steve Irwin!

A colleague just forwarded me this little script for tracking down SQL Server database tables which don't have a primary key assigned. It's cute and useful, so I thought I'd blog it, as much for my own archiving purposes as for anything else Use <databasename> -- where <databasename> is the name of your database Go select o.name from sysobjects o join sysindexes i on o.id=i.id where o.type ='u' -- user table and i.indid=0 -- no index order by o.name Go enjoy

I just passed by the Aria Awards on Channel 10 and happened to see one of the new McDonald's ads. You know the ones, where a couple of fresh-faced, demographically targeted kids go off on a mission to prove to their mates that McDonald's food is not artery-clogging crap. Well, in this edition, they head off to Sydney to consult a “deititian”. Yes, that's right. The caption read “dietitian”. Not Dietician, then? Now, it must be noted that the seppoes sometimes spell this with the second 't', but we're in Australia here. It's Dietician. Not the yank version, thank you very much Ronald. Do what you...

Clarity1 Pty Ltd have been fined $5.5 million under the Spam act. There is justice after all. Now if the company directors and all employess were flogged from Perth to Sydney in chains, I might feel a sense of closure. As it is, it wouldn't surprise me if they offshored and jumped through hoops to keep their parasitical practices going. There are a few items I've been holding back on blogging. If I get a few beers in me over the weekend, expect some bile, and perhaps a little humour. Depends how I feel.

My favourite Penny Arcade Cartoon well, maybe we should make that one of my favourite Penny Arcade cartoons. The wisdom of Gabe and Tycho is not to be sniffed at. In other news, I have a hangover and don't feel like doing any work. In view of this, today will inevitably be the day when everyone tries to consult, call, cajole and threaten me into doing stuff, and I'll be overworked, angry and tired. Fuckers.

Now that North Korea has THE BOMB, I thought perhaps it would be appropriate to share this important safety information.

Stingray leaps on boat, stabs man in chest. Face it. It doesn't get more obvious than this. The invasion has begun, with Stingrays at its vanguard. We've been fucking about in their realm for too long. Sea creatures have seen one too many fat bastard human picking the cozzie out of his ass-cheeks, and now they're out for revenge. They're coming! Keep out of the water. Mark my words. On a lighter note, I dig the headline. Can't help but visualise a stingray clutching a flickknife, with a bandana on, shouting “Gimme the money man, gimme the fucking money!!”

It seems the bolt that crashed through a Five Dock resident's roof earlier this week came from a Singapore Airlines 747-400. Logically, it was an outbound flight - how unlikely would it be for a loose bolt to make it all the way over from Singapore before dropping off a few miles from the airport? In other news, Climbfit can take a running jump, and my internet connectivity is pissing me off royally, dropping out every few minutes.

OK, so having moved into my new place over a month ago, I'm still finding moving-related fuckups. Case in point, last night I plugged in my exercise bike for the first time in a while (yay, first gym session at new house). Unfortunately, during the move the power adapter for the magnetic resistance and metering stuff would appear to have been mixed up during the move. Result: about two minutes into the circuit program I'd selected, the resistance started to grow, and grow, and then suddenly got really, really tough, accompanied by a smell of burning electrical wires. I've essentially...

... and shower down your blessings in Content-Type: text/html. So it seems an organisation with its roots still firmly trapped in the Bronze Age is gittin' jiggy wid “new media” and “blogging” and “online communities” in order to avoid “becoming an anachronism.”. Newsflash, jeezuz freakz0rs! Your entire philosophy is thousands of years out of date, and a thin veneer of silicon is not going to help in the long run. Anyway, you're not the first. Seriously, though, the Anglicans may see some gains by embracing technology, but as with all religious endeavours, they're ultimately beating an empty drum. My hope is that by embracing...

Being a homeowner in Sydney's Inner West, right under THE FLIGHTPATH, this story in today's SMH is kinda, well, interesting. Ever see the appalling Michael Caine movie Blue Ice? Well, as that film amply demonstrates, things do occasionally fall from planes and often those things aren't soft and cuddly. In this case, though SMH is hedging its bets, the object appears to be an 11cm aviation-class metal bolt, which would have fallen pretty damn fast from a plane overflying Five Dock. I'm not sure how likely the papers will be to follow-up on this, but I'd be intrigued to see whether...

further to my previous post, it appears much of my ISP's IP range has been under some sustained pressure/attack from somewhere. Yesterday morning this website, and all others hosted on its server, went south. It appears (for the moment) that something has killed off TCP access to one of my IP addresses, though UDP seems to work. Luckily I have multiple IPs and could shift to a secondary, though some sites hosted on the box may still have issues. On examining the security logs for the period, I have something like 50,000 failed login attempts from an 0wned machine (or machines) somewhere, and...

202.8.85.112, also known as: ppp-202.85.112.revip.proen.co.th has been trying to force a login to one of my FTP boxes for the last few hours. I'm assuming malware is to blame, judging from the pattern of traffic. I closed the door a few minutes ago (and in doing so stopped one of my own pending transfers), so Mr Fuckwit's infected p.os. machine in Thailand can no longer come knocking. I've mailed Proen Internet, but I'm not expecting a positive response - after all, ISPs aren't usually proactive in stopping malware. They don't care how the bandwidth is being used, as long as someone...

Lynne Truss holds forth on the state of written English in today's Sydney Morning Herald. I, for one, agree heartily with Lynne's stance on poor English, and freely admit I'm imperfect in my own on occasion - but I make a conscious effort to get it right. Poor grammar and spelling are two things (of many) which make my blood boil, to the point where I generally go hungry rather than eat at a restaurant or cafe with a menu written by a functional illiterate. Lynne puts her finger on the nub of the problem - people who say “as long...

I've just installed Build 5754 onto my Alienware Area51m Notebook, and can report that finally, joy of joys, I finally get to play with Glass/Aero, the nifty and much hyped “new UI”, on one of my own machines. Wow, it's taken a while to get a driver and build combination which likes my 256Mb GeForce Go 6800 (on a fairly nifty machine with 2Gb RAM). I was worried for a while I may have lumbered myself with an underspecced machine* What do I have to report? Well, not a lot so far. Everything I've got installed seems to be running OK....

The world's largest international Muslim body complained of shrinking tolerance in the west yesterday http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony    

Note the file size of this image. Suggestive, eh?

It seems an odd combination to me, but Freak Out! The Frank Zappa Story, narrated by of all people, Germaine Greer, is currently available on listen again at the BBC website. Check it out while it lasts.

iTWire is reporting that, and I quote, “Vista costs more than a computer in Australia”. Sure. Let's talk about that though, shall we? Windows Vista will be available in a number of flavours, among them Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. In Australia, the just-announced pricing for Ultimate will be $751. Which is pricey, sure. Looking on the Dell.com.au website, I note that desktops come, and I quote again “from $798”. OK, so close. But iTWire is comparing apples with solid gold bricks. A cheap, low-end, I-Wouldn't-Be-Seen-Dead-With-It desktop machine is only slightly more expensive than the “holy crap, this thing does everything”,...

.... It's a RAT!! Isn't it great? Look how its head is almost hanging off! See how I efficiently broke its neck and carried it way up here from where I found it, onto the kitchen roof, up into the upstairs window and onto your bedroom floor, lovingly tucking it under the bed where you had to hunt it down, just like an easter egg! And look at the size! Hefty one, isn't it? Aren't I a Good Cat? Don't I deserve a treat? Praise me and my hunting expertise, which is second to none in this neighbourhood, let me tell...

.. having a couple of VBs and installing Windows Media Center Edition 2005 onto my chunky home server box and I got to thinking; I spent about 25 minutes trying to find my MCE install media, and some other time trying to track down the product key (which was, for some reason, not in the same place). And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if we had the equivalent of RIS (remote installation service) over the net? I may or may not be “ahead of my time” here, but bear with me. I've had a couple of beers and...

Comedy Trivia at the Southern Cross Hotel last night, finished one point short of prizes! prizes! prizes!, which was a shame, but there's always next week. Nice to hook up with Stef again - which brings me to the plug. Stef's MySpace sites: The Genuine Hoots of Joy and Dolphin Juice. Don't get too trapped in the never ending corridors of MySpace though - it can be a major IQ-sapper to stray off the original tack. Get in, get what you want and get out fast, that's what I say. It's gruesome in there.

The above title phrase takes on a special aptness given that with most castles these days, all the interesting stuff is found via archaeological digs. So too in my study downstairs at my new secret base in Sydney's Inner West - to find anything interesting or useful, expect to dig deep, as these pictures clearly show. We've been in about three weeks now, and I'm discovering, or rediscovering, several fundamental tenets of “The Move”. To whit: Moving two people's belongings from two three-bed houses into one two-bed house is an excercise in spacial dexterity of the highest order Our dogs have trouble grasping the fundamental...

The SMH is reporting that J*mes Bl*nt's 'Goodbye My Lover' is the most requested funeral song. This means a great increase in life expectancy as the terminally ill struggle to hold on to that last breath of precious life, knowing that if they shuffle off the mortal coil they'll be seen into their eternal rest by one of the most annoying songs ever. Bonus item: Mitch Benn's “I May Just Have To Murder James Blunt”. And to close, an announcement: At my funeral, I demand the Dead Kennedys' “Too Drunk To Fuck”.

Kevin Rudd is calling for Christian Organisations to take a bigger role in national politics. Yeah sure. Good idea. Because we really want Intelligent Design taught in schools and the Ten Commandments posted in public buildings. What, I ask you, is wrong with the separation of Church and State? If Christians were politically inactive, I wouldn't say so much, but the Jesus Bloc seems to already have its mitts well and truly on the political chalice, not to mention some recent political dirty tricks in New Zealand by nutcase hardcore christian group The Exclusive Brethren, who are incidentally based in Australia....

Guess where this story has been reported from? Sterilise delinquents' parents plan 'crazy'

Here at Castle Microsoft, things are slowly moving from simmer towards the boil on the Vista and Office launches. To this end, I'm running Vista on three machines, and Office 2007 B2 Tech Refresh on two of those. My findings so far, I have to say, have been more positive than negative. Particular highlights? Well, the new UI is fresh without being obtrusive (despite my lack of driver support for enabling Glass/Aero), and ReadyBoost has become my new favourite feature. For those who are unaware, Vista's ReadyBoost feature allows you to use fast removable storage devices as a kind of...

Well, it's not impossible that you've already seen this (hence the category choice) but my B-Movie gland got all excited over it. How could it not? For an extra bonus, may I present... Them! In other news, we're over the SMH's fascination with YouTube. Have you no work to do, you so-called quality journalists?

Welcome. you must be new here. let me show you around. Would you like a scone? This is my new blog, and I have great expectations for it. It's far more general than my other blog, so there'll be some variety in what I'm posting. A glance at the categories I've already defined should give you a good idea of what I'm preparing to unleash upon the world, for better or for worse. Now, on to the dreaded “Who Am I”. Well, I'm Jason Brown. I am many things, principal among them being Computer Geek, Contractor at Microsoft, Rock Climber, Music Lover,...