A plague of rats
On The Bulletin, May 31 2005, page 10 is a story on people throwing eggs at journalists and photographers waiting outside Kylie’s parents home and a general feeling of disgust toward these people.
Well, perhaps the people throwing the eggs should think twice the next time they buy their Women’s magazine to read “Kylie’s heartbreaking story, her courageous fight with cancer”, complete with a three page spread of photos, because if they didn’t read that shit, there would be nobody outside her parents house trying to record it.
Will.
Schapelle Corby — The LIVE Verdict
Channel Nine’s LIVE Verdict, this Friday from 11:30am EST. Please check your local viewing guides.
All New Look!
Your eyes to not deceive you, OmegaDelta.net has an all new look!
For over two years Omega Delta has had the same, blue look and I thought it was getting rather dull.
First, a history lesson with links to archived designs supplied by archive.org :)
OmegaDelta.net was born on the 7th of January, 2001, during the university holidays between first and second year. Being the author that I am, years prior to this, in December of 1998, I created my first we side creativly titled “Will’s Web Page”. Since then, I had been thinking about purchasing willswebpage.com (I would check it’s availability by typing that into my browser, not actually the correct way to check for a domains availability). By January 2001, someone had put a web site up. Omega Delta was an alias I had used previously when programming (a story but one I will not explain here), so I then looked at omegadelta.com. That wsa gone too – so I decided to snaffle omegadelta.net while I still could.
Soon after registering, the first design was created. This was a rather plain design but it served the purpose well. Will’s Web Page was still operational at this time, and omegaadelta.net was more of an entrance page.
About a year later, the original blue design was created. The fundamentals of this design were not altered – menu on the left, news on the right, although surprisingly, this site was more interactive than the one that proceeded it.
At the start of 2003, while I still considered myself a university student despite deciding soon after that I would graduate early, I had started to learn about Databases and how to use them with PHP. Subsequently, I overhauled the content and comments system for most of my web sites, replacing text-driven systems. For reasons I can’t remember, this involved removing content from OmegaDelta.net such as the poll. The design, archived here was then used for two years.
Now, I have grown tired of the old design, and moved to a more modern look. I have reverted back to using text files for many aspects such as the quotes and link menu, rather than databases (I have learnt that databases really are overkill for more simple and less frequently updated items).
The new look features a photograph of mine, and a colour scheme to match. I apologise if the colours look a little odd at times, what can some times look really good on my monitor can look bad on yours (differences in colour calibration). The menu data is the same, although the backend is now a simple text file, and the front end is a new creation of mine, the details later I will reveal. You will notice that the site, including the menu will still even work with javascript disabled (try it through lynx even!).
I plan to change the style every few months, with a new arty photo and colour scheme to match. Everything is pretty easy to move around now, so that might happen too.
Please don’t complain if when the comic is shown it doesn’t fit into the design – the dimensions of the comics outside my control, hence the reason the thing is hidden by default anyway.
Oh, and please partake in the poll fun! 
Will.
See Star Wars in Melbourne!
The premier of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is fast approaching.
Be sure you see it in the best location!
Will.
Airline bloody prices
Wow, talk about bad timing. I look at a flight yesterday – hmm $99 (plus $40 taxes). I look at it today – $139. Gaa!! I just wasted $40. Then to my surprise, when I checked out, it was only $139 – total.
Turns out that Virgin Blue reverted back to the old style “all inclusive” pricing at midnight last night.
I was going to write a post here with a link to Virgin’s reason for switching to seperated pricing (it was because Qantas did – they didn’t want it at all), but before I got the chance it looks like their lobbying of the government paid off and the ACC is going to enforce “all inclusive” pricing.
This is all great, except I wound up very confused as the change just had to happen while I was booking my tickets. grr.
Here’s Virgin’s original announcement
Now out of date with this announcement:
Virgin Blue Airlines has announced it will move to all-inclusive air fare pricing from Tuesday May 10 following months of lobbying various organisations including the ACCC, the Australian Consumers Commission and the Federal Government for an across board regulation on advertising practices.
The low fare carrier has been a strong advocate of all-inclusive pricing as an airline industry standard, but was forced earlier this year to follow the advertising practises of other Australian carriers in order to remain competitive
Well done Virgin! There is no sane reason in splitting the prices, makes no difference to the hip pocket.
Will.
The Thin Red Line – review
I had a free weekly DVD rental, and was looking for a movie to rent. I picked up The Thin Red Line – I remembered it got a bit of publicity when it came out. Shown prominently on the back cover and in the text is George Clooney. This was a negative point for me, and I almost didn’t hire the movie because of it. Luckily, in true hollywood style, he was only in the movie for about 40 seconds (*phew*, and lol).
The odd thing about the movie is that there really isn’t a main character or any real story. The cover dubbed it as a movie which showed the moral values of soldiers in the heat of battle — an interesting topic for sure, but the movie failed to deliver, we saw a few Japanese POW’s getting shot but it wasn’t elaborated on. There was also a scene where a soldier disobayed a direct order to saved many of his men and still complete the objective, ultimatelly to be congratulated then dismissed. Indispersed thoughout the movie were a bunch of pretty nature shots, which could have been taken with a still camera and shown in an art gallery (and one wounders why the director didn’t do exactly this).
The character’s are so shallowly developed that when there are acts of defiance or bravery, they just fall flat since you don’t really care anyway. Even John Travolta makes an appearance, a longer one than Clooney (and he isn’t listed third on the credits, thankfully) but his character is also rather strange.
This movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and for good reason failed to win any. The director was clearly gunning for an oscar. He seemed to have a big message to tell but completally failed to deliver.
The music was by Hans Zimmer, a great composer, although the score was nothing spectacular. The best melody he ripped straight out of Perl Harbour (the score of which he also composed). Is Zimmer starting to follow Horner’s lead? Cheap shots aside, it is a very good melody and fitted the scene very well.
The actors did a good job of playing their respective characters, it’s a shame the story and directing let them down.
If you want a war movie with a cohesive plot, Saving Private Ryan is a much better choice, or perhaps Windtalkers. Of course, as with all American war movies, you have to remember though that there were no non-Americans fighting in the World War II for the Allies (in fact, “The Allies” is really a misnomer). If you want a good film on the morals of war, then see “Born on the Fourth of July”, a movie that did win some Oscars though lost best picture to the amazing (-ly boring) “Driving Miss Daisy”.
Will.
