Docile Tree » General

Blog update

aubrey — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:34:50 +0000

Ai, so I’ve not updated this blog for many moons. Yes, I’ve been lazy, and I’ve kind of been keeping busy writing twice a week (mostly, twice a week…) for The Incredible Blog, so my blog’s been taking a backseat.

I’ve always threatened myself that one day when I have a portable-enough laptop, I’ll be *that* guy that goes to sit in a coffee shop, sips a Latte while churning out a blog post or something. Well, I traded in my ugly 15″ HP work-laptop for a new 13″ Macbook Pro, which at some point in the future I will fully own. So, now I’ve got the “portable enough” laptop part done, and hell, it’s pretty enough, so now I just need to find that (a) time, and (b) motivation and (c) coffee shop, and (d) topic to write a blog post. Or ten. I really don’t want to become a “I had Marmite toast for breakfast” blogger, I’d rather write about thing topical and interesting and about things that I love. That’s what this new Docile Tree home was going to be, so, look forward to more Linux, Mac, gaming, development, movie, gadget, techie and geeky blog posts in the near future.

I also decided to update the theme of my blog along with the upgrade to WordPress 2.8, browsed through the new WordPress themes, and came across this one. It’s called “Inanis Glass”, I love the boxes around everything, even though it does make the page load time a bit heavy, I dig it. The “Start Menu” thing at the bottom is a bit overkill, but it’s sufficiently out the way to not be a bother.

Here’s to new beginnings! Again!

Articles on The Incredible Blog

aubrey — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:52:23 +0000

I was recently approached by Jason Bagley to write some gaming-related articles for The Incredible Blog, Incredible Connections online blog where they connect online with gamers, techies, gadgetphiles and more. Now, before you starting throwing up your arms and going wild, this is actually a good thing. I don’t see any other major retailers doing any kind of attempt to connect with *their* loyal and/or pottential customers, things can only go well from here on out, and I’m happy to be part of the team that is giving them that edge.

At the moment, I will be contributing about two blog posts per week to The Incredible Blog, so go on, look over there and subscribe to the RSS feed, you’ll find a nice steady source of gaming, gadget, hardware and software news, and every now and again you’re sure to find some news on incredible specials and great competitions for lovely prizes.

I’ ve written two posts for them so far, firstly a “confirmation” of Harry Potter and a second Indiana Jones outing into the Lego world, and then a note about Halo Wars being the best-selling strategy game on the XBox 360 by selling over a million copies in less than 3 weeks.

Braid on XBLA now only 800 MSPoints!

aubrey — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:56:59 +0000

It seems like for a limited period only, the fantastic Braid on XBLA, a game that I’ve been avoiding paying fullprice of 1200 MSPoints for, will be discounted by 33% to 800 MSPoints!

Rocking! It seems this is an Exclusive Gold-Only deal, and forms part of a new “Deal of the Week” feature on XBox Live. The Deal of the Week feature seems to be available in all territories, to see what is the most recent deal for US accounts, here is the link for that.

If you’ve been like me and put off buying Braid due to it’s higher price-point, now’s your chance to own it for only 800 points. Hurry, the deal starts today (23 February 2009), and will end this Sunday.

If you’ve been like me and were put off by the higher price-point for Braid previously, now’s your chance to own it at a nice discount. Don’t delay, go now.

Skittles ads are disturbing

aubrey — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:21:39 +0000

It’s no secret around these parts that I like Skittles. I also eat them in a, shall we say, non-conventional way: I group them into colors and eat them in order. (Obsess much? heh-heh) (Let’s not talk about the fact that I count and graph the color distribution… ahem…)

I came across a creepy Skittles ad on digg this morning, and went to find what other Skittles ads there are.

Be warned though, some of these are rather creepy.
Instead of embedding them all, I’ll just paste the links here:

Geekdinner #8

aubrey — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:46:36 +0000

So it was the 8th Geekdinner tonight. And I think 4th one I’ve attended.
Another success I’d say.

Great venue (Thanks Mel’s Kitchen, Rondebosh). Great food (Gluhwein, soup, lamb/chicken/veg curry, pudding+custard). Great people, saw some faces I haven’t for a while (Hi Luke. Hi Allan. Hi all you other people I forget to mention.), even met one or two whose names I know (Hi @kerry_anne) and never met, some interesting talks, good wine (Thanks Perdeberg, I’m not a wine ‘spurt, but I sampled both the Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinotage, and they were both excellent!)

The talks. Oi vei. OK, so Jonathan (I forget which number he is) spoke about Game Theory. Funny that, I came across it on Wikipedia the other week for some reason. Interesting.

And the Jonathan (Yet another one) spoke about 5 ways to live in Cape Town. Very cool, really liked it. Some very true points, I’ve been wanting to do as Romans do for a while. Funds limit the possibilities though I’m afraid.

And then Ian had a nice talk about GM foods and GM products and why it’s not necessarilly a bad thing, but how it’s a bad thing if not tested properly. I think everybody, including the big corporations, know this, but it’s all about money and immediate needs. Yes, we need to cater for the 6 billion people on earth, so let’s do it quick and make money while we’re at it, screw the environment, or the planet. That’s a few generations down the line’s problem. I’m still on the fence about it all, but I’m definitely for proper testing of GM stuff though.

Tim did the Slideshow Karaoke, on the mating and sexual habits of some obscure Australian ant-eater mammal thing. Funny. Seemed like well-researched material, Tim managed quite well, even when the four-headed penis topic came up. Don’t ask.

All in all though, I think it was great, had lots of fun, even the coffee was good. Lovurly.

May Geekdinner

aubrey — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:31:42 +0000

So it’s another other-month, and it’s time for another GeekDinner.
I try to make the GeekDinners when I can, sometimes it’s just too far, and other times it’s too expensive. I count cents you see.
But, this month is different.
This month we’re off the Mel’s Village Kitchen (no site, but see a pic here)for the Geekdinner, on the 28th. Nice, it’s after pay day (My current employer pays salaries *before* the last day of the month, like *normal* people…), and Mel’s is in Rondebosch. And on the menu, for a mere R115, is a typical 3-course meal (Soup, bread, curry buffet, baked choc pudding), and we’ll likely get wine sponsored by one of our previous sponsors. (There’s talk of Perdeberg being involved, more about that later). Previous sponsors included Stormhoek and GetWine and Blank. They all have some awesome wine (I’m not ‘spurt on wine though, but what I’ve had tasted nice, haha), and you can even own a vine in Stormhoek’s vineyard too if you have some cash to help them out.

Anyway, the Geekdinners have always been fun. Lots of interaction with old colleagues (mostly from IOL) and fellow geeks, funny-as-hell Slideshow Karaoke, and some (usually) interesting and (usually) informative talks. It’s very informal, and there’s a small group of people that usually take charge and run the thing, keeping tabs on the time for talks and introducing the next speaker, or generally just talking crap while some poor sod tries to get Windows and the projector to talk nice.

So, I’ll be there, very, very likely. Not talking about anything (I don’t think I have much to say yet…), just enjoying the interactions and the wine. Maybe, the wine.

Oh, and if you use/like/develop for WordPress, you can swing past the 3rd Cape Town WordPress Meetup at the Bandwidth Barn in town, right before coming through to the dinner. I use and like and (can) develop for WordPress, but don’t think I’ll make the meetup. I might have to make a plan though. *ponders*

New blog

aubrey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:10:59 +0000

Welcome to my new blog.
I decided to find a new home for my blog, and decided to start afresh, with a blank slate, instead of copying all the old posts across. I’ll just leave the old blog up and running over there.

This should be the last time I’ll be posting anything about blogging. Honestly. It’s not exactly a pass-time I intend to take up, blogging about blogging I mean…

Anyway.

Stay a while… Stay… Forever! *