not enough, really!  been kind’ve caught up between gaming, coding, working, sleeping (a bit at least..) and fixing things that were broken.

got into some c&c3 action a couple of weeks ago, but either due to hidden EA copy-protection code or just crappy network code, it took around 1 hour to get six players into the same server.  i’d really like to get a few lan games of this going, but lans aren’t cool anymore apparently .

coding comes with binary productivity lately – sometimes i will get some really good progress going, other times i end up planning and thinking about logic problems and get nothing done at all.  needless to say, forward progress is being made, and i’d like to make a few public releases over the months to come.  i’m sure most of you already know the projects i am working on anyway, so i can’t surprise you with the releases .

work has been kind of a drag lately though, as it really owns my productivity for the rest of the night.  it is quite hard to keep up a routine of 18-hour coding days.. really feel like going travelling sooner rather than later, but that will come in time .

we recently got a new aerial installed on our roof (the last one was actually inside the roof, and also ancient).  its kind of nice upstairs, but with the 15+ metre cable to my room, the reception becomes barely watchable.  i tried installing a masthead signal amplifier, and while it did wonders for SBS/Ch31, it was actually degrading the VHF signal..  ok, so there IS nothing else worth watching other than SBS, but still!  I think I will get a powered signal splitter and give that a try instead.

also got some response from  amnet/tel$tra on my phone line.. which resulted in a telstra technician “fixing” my line which had a faulty earth link.  its still not perfect, but a lot better than before.  i think i still get some packet loss when a phone call comes through, but i can live with that.

ssup?! did anyone notice the downtimes my server has been experiencing over the last few days? seems my tel$tra adsl modem from 5 years ago is finally giving in. i just grabbed a cheap netgear to replace it today – so lets hope things become a bit more stable again. i was hoping not to spend any money on computer related stuff this year, but i guess this one can’t be helped!

went to karaoke last weekend! albert just happened to SMS me out of the blue as i was leaving work – such good timing. we sung lots of jpop and a bit of western stuff to top it off. was a really great night, and saw quite a few faces i haven’t in a while :d.

is anyone going to complain about the grainy-ness of my photos? if not, then i will! they look so horrible ever AFTER resizing to an absurdly small res. i want to get a digital SLR.. that folds down small enough to fit in my pocket. that would be very handy.

i recorded good-bye days on acoustic piano . turned out better than i expected – considering my dv cam was in the next room sitting on the stove (nowhere better to put it). have also been spending a lot of my time on a new coding project (one that can be released publicly *cough*) which i will hopefully reveal in the next week or two. its quite a complex app which will probably need some beta testing, but has the potential to be very useful to most of us!

also – chatmonchy’s new single is pretty awesome! in fact chatmonchy in general are pretty awesome. i’d love to see them perform live.. *addicted*

you can’t say i didn’t give it a chance. i wanted to like it – the interface was quite usable and there were a few cool new features… but it just isn’t going to work if vista decides to randomly crash out of the blue… its been too long since my PCs have done that and i’ve become used to the stability of xp. so i will return for now!

so it wasn’t only stability – i could also mention that power consumption was up 50% on my laptop, gaming performance was down a LOT on my desktop..

in other news, my sister had a party in our backyard on saturday. i was reminded why i dislike large social gatherings as i was deafened from behind two wooden doors over a five hour period. i woke up sunday to a very strange problem with my desktop. i can’t even be bothered explaining what has happened to it but i spent all of today trying to fix it and mostly failed . bye bye productivity.

wow i have nothing positive to say! oh wait — ouendan2 is awesome! go play it!!

the bad thing about working is having no time, no energy, and no shortage of false transperth infringement accusations. the good part is having a bit of money to throw around. of course, then you have to find time to enjoy what you spend the money on. which means the end result is 睡眠不足 (lack of sleep).

i decided it was about time i got my own pair of headphones for my yamaha keyboard – i have been stealing my dads at every opportunity over the last couple of weeks. after doing a bit of research, i was pretty keen on the audio-technica open air AD900s.

they are ever so comfortable, and the sound quality is unquestionably better than any headphones i have heard up until now. works especially well with the keyboard – the grand piano soundbank sounds nothing short of awesome!

i also didn’t pass up the opportunity to pick up something to replace my falling apart 3-year-old sony headphones. enter the Ultimate Ear s3 canalbuds. while i haven’t really tested these out, they definitely put out sound that at least equals my old sony headphones, in a much smaller footprint. it will probably take a few days to get used to having plugs in my ears, but will be good for blocking out the idiot aboriginals that catch the train at the same time as me every day!

(｀□´)　以上である!(爆)！