Some people have a friend's only banner. I hopefully will never have one. Instead i'm choosing to have an open doors banner. Why? I figure i don't get into too much drama, and when i do, its direct and with the people in question. I also think it represents what i personally think an LJ is about - sharing -of information, of ideas, maybe even of insecurities. I *do* have protected/friends only posts where the subject material is of a personal nature, or just a little out there,or uploads but the majority of my posts are and will be publicly viewable.My doors are wide open and will be.

There's no strings attached, if you disagree with me, within reason, well, a good healthy discussion never hurt anyone. If its not within reason, well there's ways to deal with it.It'll take something huge to change this policy though.

I'd like to ask of one small thing of anyone who choses to add my LJ to your friends list(which is the point of this page). I don't often check my friend's list management page, and so i never actually know when someone's added me, or removed me, and as such would like you to post below that you have added me, and where i know you from if it isn't obvious, and to let me know by whatever means you feel is best if you remove me, or wish to be removed from my friends list.While i've been bad about it in the past, as long as a journal has been active in recent times and/or i can contact its owner, i'll try to reciprocate this.

For all of y'all who don't know what DNS is, its basically the phone exchange system of the internet - when a user requests a URL (www.foo.bar) its a system of servers that look up where foo.bar is, based on its ipaddress, and tells your system so - which means you don't need to remember a long string of numbers to go to a site.

While most ISPs run their own DNS servers, some tend to be unreliable (in the case of my ISP, the only thing that fails), or might have other issues. I personally find that some of the alternatives are faster, or have other advantages.

Of course, you can set up and run your own server - however, you'd need a static ip address to connect to from outside, so unless you want to run it only for systems in a lan (which does mean lightning fast lookups), you'd need a static internet ip address for one accessable from the outside

OpenDNS is what i used to use. Its probably the best known public DNS service, and both its strength and weakness is that it provides additional services. If you require a network wide (or multiple networkwide) content filter, and arn't willing to run your own, opendns supports that (assuming your users arn't smart enough, or have the right priviledges to change their DNS server). On the other hand, it 'hijacks' incorrectly spelled domain names - Its improper behaviour, as far as DNS service is concerned, but keeps you from accidentally being re-directed to a nasty site.

There's quite a few publicly accessible DNS servers that are just that, with nothing on top. I've used the 4.2.2.x servers (4.2.2.1-4.2.2.6) quite routinely, they're fast, reliable, and i have no idea who runs them. I've also added the two google dns servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to my list. All these are anycasting so you'll likely get a fast, reasonably local server.

Kinda related to an earlier post, but more in a general sense..

My mom was asking 'what's the advantage of the thing we had installed?' (referring to the fiber optic installation we has done). Immediately, none - none of the ISPs have fiber optic internet services at the moment. In the medium term, we had an installation that would cost upwards of 200 sgd done for free. In the long term, well we have the option of it when it comes out, and chances are some of the older internet services might be phased out anyway.

On the other hand, my moms one of those people who has her head stuck in the past. She believes indian culture is superior in every regard to everyone else, and tends to get annoyed at anyone who dosen't follow her norms, even if its someone who is of another culture. Pretty much all she does is go on and on about hinduism, and how we're superior to everyone- which after a while gets tiresome.

In a sense, to her technology is a another culture, and as such evil and inferior (granted, its *my* culture, and one i'm expected to deny). Bits of higher technology are 'wasteful'- by default, and she thinks of the internet as 'a world of illusion'- in the negative sense. Its evil, and addictive, unless she needs something looked up and printed out, and she gets annoyed when it dosen't (yanno, you CAN look up things yourself. it won't eat your brains). By extension, the fiber optic point is a frivolous, and evil- since its technology. Course this is the same person i passed alice (my old laptop to) and never used it - dad did, and it broke (again. Alice is a bit of a lemon ;p) - and she was complaining - despite the fact she never used it when she worked.

Ludditry annoys me ;p

We got a fiber optic access point installed today. Its.. wierdly low tech (a 2 stranded cable stuck into a box, pretty much, though the cable fusion device wasn't low tech at all ;p). Hopefully we get FTTH while i'm still around- i want to re-arrange our network a little.

So.. I'm thinking of taking a diploma course at TAFE NSW, as my uncle had suggested (yes australia) next year since, obviously i'm not getting anywhere sitting on my rump, and i have the option of working and earning money (and possibly treating myself to something shiny should it pay well enough ^^) while studying a course that seems to have absolutely no coding in it, and looks neat. I figured 'hey, maybe i can use my credits from UWE there, so i could skip a few modules' so i asked mom if she had the cert with the credits in it.

And..

She dosen't seem to know- she went 'dad threw it aside angrily, but i kept it somewhere, and its in an envelope like this' *pulls out and waves about a rather tattered envelope that could hardly hold anything bigger than letter paper*. I'd look myself, but my parents (and i say this with the utmost charity) 'filing' system is two drawers everything gets thrown into, and is currently made inaccessable by a huge pile of clothes atop a stool. Its been the the two drawer filing system as long as i can remember, and its not classified in any way (everything gets taken out when the smallest scrap of document is needed) so.. its a total pain to dig through.

Then again, part of me is convinced she's not much good at anything but nagging ><

EDIT: dad had it in a undrawerly location. Win!

Well, i've just started pretty much - playing a siren, so my review won't go beyond general impressions. For starters, its an INCREDIBLY newbie friendly FPS (on account of you getting resurrected if you die, and get extra life if you're NEARLY dead and kill some, and you can always go back and fight again if you die), with a load of combat role playing elements

In terms of general spirit, i find its a lot like dues ex - you have a charecter (well one of 5 'classes') who gets experience. Your skills with weapons goes up independantly as you use them, and you can put points into skills. Much like dues ex - each level is a relatively large area, with quests scattered around. You can do the quests, or go around killing enemies at random to level up. Other than that, weapons have random stats and you can only carry a certain level

Unusually, i found that the difficulty of the game tended to drop a lot just after the first few quests, so don't get discouraged if you're getting your tail whipped at first.

Graphics wise, it apparently scales down OK, but on my not exactly top of the line 8800 series graphics card, its one HELL of a pretty game. Apparently it also runs on my laptop with some tweaks so i might give that a try too.

EDIT: i'd note though, the difference between normal and hard enemies is huge. Also, when in doubt, run em over ;p

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8359512.stm
This is awesome at multiple levels ;p

Well, i'm thinking of having a bilingual signature for some forums and well, i'm trying to decide what word to use.

Wolf is straightforward - oh-nai ஓநாய் - angel on the other hand.

I suppose to most westerners the obvious term would be 'deva' (தேவர் in singular i suppose ).While you could, simplistically, take 'deva' to mean angel (and asura to mean demon), a more accurate way to see it would be to look at them much like the norse gods and frost giants, or the roman or greek gods, and a competing panthethion- one sort of won out, but then was displaced by other gods, so devas are more demi-gods, or gods that have lost their importance, in a social sense, than angels.

The term most people use for spirits, usually benevolent ones is thevathai (தேவதை).It does imply gender (for some reason female, though i suppose the same word applies for male spirits. The problem with that for me is for some reason i associate the term with pixies for some weird reason. Its also not 'accurate' enough since i consider my sort of angel physical, as opposed to a spiritual entity.

The closest thing to a text book angel - a entity in the service of a deity might be a bootha ganam (பூத கணம் )(which very loosly translates to 'spirit host' or the member of one (host in the sense of an army).I'm not a textbook angel though, and not all our 'angels' are winged humans, some of them apparently look quite scary.

I'm still thinking but i got an excuse to try typing in tamil ;p

I know i don't use my phone much but, i won't access to it for about two weeks. Got visitors, and the phone is being lent to them. Communication by e mail, IM and other things will be as per normal

தமிழ்யில் ஜிமெயில்லில் அச்சு இட முடியுமா அன்று பார்கிறேன். பரவாயில்லை சற்று புத்திசாலி தான்

I had the first nightmare i had in a LONG time - it was that my room had been attacked by insects, and the walls were peeling off like they were made of rotting wood, and i could see outside through the holes. Someone decided to pull out a chunk more and suddenly there's a swarm of palm sized brown SCORPIONS streaming in through the walls. I ended the dream screaming (well in the dream).

I also slept rather badly that night, possibly relatedly- woke up at 2am and was up till about 6, then fell asleep out of sheer tiredness until 9

Internet scuttlebutt is the first release of chrome os is some time this week

I LOVE rumours and the good sorta internet gossip ;p

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/12/sales-guy-v-web-dude-parts-2-4-oh-yeah/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

i think fax might appreciate this

https://www.google.com/dashboard/?pli=1
Its a site which collates a lot of the info google has on you in one place.

http://www.dataliberation.org/ data liberation front - google actually has an engineering team whose job is to get stuff OUT of google's apps. kinda meta innit? ;p

my google wave invites got topped up (use the invites thread ;p) , in addition, i have THREE google voice invites if anyone wants one. Just let me know ;p

saw this cute 'little' fella at the vet's - he's an irish wolfhound mix who looks rather like a little fella i know, but bigger ;p

I dreamt at least twice that i was zooming around, floating in a sorta sitting with legs in sit up position but straighter. It felt like my butt was repelling the ground like a magnet, and it was a smooth ride. People seemed to take it for granted too, more curious about 'if i used a table to get that high' than that i had a antigravity butt.