Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

When it comes to a declining economy and everyone, including the media, always reminding you so, begins to sink into your mind. You begin to think, that your calm little world is about to explode into a chaos of havoc and crime and will to sink into a demise similar to Gotham. That's kinda how I feel this week.

At work, people every other day come into report that their computer/ iPod/ hard drive, etc. was stolen and we are meant to do something about it. These people, I do take seriously and we send out emails to staff reminding them to keep an eye out for so forementioned stolen object. That gets 10X more serious when your own sister experiences her first break in by some desperate meth head/kid who saw her shiny white laptop and made a run for it. The guy (we'll assume its a guy) busted in through her bedroom by pushing in the air con and the continued to scavenge his way through the small apartment, nabbing a backpack in order to throw the laptop and a digital camera into. On his way through, he spots Kim's vintage cookie jar with "Munchies" painted on the side in old 70's style. He snags a chocolate bar and takes a bite of it. Upon realizing its baker's chocolate, he abandons the unsweetened bar and proceeds to grab Kevin's screwdriver in order to hit up the next door neighbors' apartment. (They had fortunately moved out the week before). The police made their stop at the apartment and went through the protocols but the forsenic inspector found the best fingerprints, nonetheless, on the abandoned candy bar in the kitchen. If this guy has every had his prints logged before, an arrest can be made on account of a CANDY BAR.

Meanwhile in other news, that same night, the lights were stolen off my bike. This is very unfortunate for me because if I get anywhere, its on bike. However, the situation is almost laughable.

Meanwhile today, two more people reported stolen laptops. What kind of country are we living in?

The best part about living in economic decline is seeing your friends on the daily news – alone sitting at a bar, as was the case with a co-worker friend of mine. The story was about how not as many people are going out to eat or drink in this past few weeks. I'm going to vote that drinking has not been affected.

But there's hope!
Get out and vote!

Posted in: chaosgurl, portland, technology, united states on September 28, 2008 at at 9:47:00 PM 0 comments    

I saw on the news the other day that the US Mint is planning to introduce new designs for the penny in 2009 to celebrate the bicentenary of President Lincoln's birth. I have a better idea - get rid of the useless things.

Coming from a country that discontinued use of its one cent coin in 1991 (the year after I left high school!), the use of the penny here shocks and astounds me. If I get one in change, I just don't take it. I see no reason to clog my wallet/pocket/house up with a coin that I'll never actually be able to use as a meaningful piece of money. The sooner the Australian system of rounding purchases to the nearest five cents happens, the better!

On a side note, one bank here does do rounding up to the nearest five cents - but on electronic purchases. Let's say, you spend $24.43 on something and pay for it with your debit card. The bank extracts $24.45 from your checking account, but puts the extra two cents into your linked savings account! Clever! One could imagine that all your transactions over a given period of time might add up to a considerable boost to your savings.

On a further note, when the designs for the new penny were unveiled, certain conservative members of the community worked themselves into a lather. According to them, the words "In God We Trust" had been removed from the penny – a sure sign that atheists and communists were running the country and the end of the world wasn't far away.

What they were (conveniently?) forgetting was that all the images of the new coin designs are only showing the obverse of the coin. The reverse of the coin is remaining the same, and on that side of the coin is Lincoln's head... and the words "In God We Trust".

Posted in: chaosboy, united states on September 25, 2008 at at 8:25:00 AM 0 comments    

I was a little surprised the other day when Christine brought home a new computer game for us to play. Christine's not much of a gamer, thinking that everything since Super Mario Bros 3 has been unworthy of her efforts. However, the concept and potential of this new game had her itching to try it out. The game? Spore.

The only way you couldn't have heard of Spore is if you've been hiding under a rock or have negative interest in games, your brain actively repelling all the hype that's been thrown at you about it. Basically, it's the ultimate God game - in the vein of, but far surpassing, all the "Sim"-type games that have been around since Populous and the original Sim City. You start the game with a single celled creature and evolve it all the way into a space-conquering civilisation.

The game isn't perfect by any means - it's more like five completely separate yet increasingly complex mini-games than a continuous narrative, and a lot of the gameplay is either far too simple or repetitive. I'm not even going to get into the whole storm about copy-protection that's blown up around the game's release, as it hasn't affected me at all. Where the game really shines is in its total customisation abilities. You get to shape pretty much everything about your creature (and later on, their cities, vehicles, planes, ships and spaceships). Think your creature would look good with five heads? Maybe eyes on its knees? Eight legs? Whatever you can think of, it's possible. There's something strangely addictive about creating your own monsters and then watching them interact with other strange beasts, all of which have been created by other people around the world.

So while Spore isn't a multi-player game as such (there's no direct head-to-head competition with other human players), the game is a veritable menagerie of creatures, constantly changing as new creations are uploaded by players around the world. That's what keeps it interesting and fresh - getting to see what other people are doing with the amazing God-like tools contained within the game.

Here's a couple of our creatures as a sample. We've only been playing for a week or so and still have so much to learn about how to make truly unique creatures, but at least we've gotten past our initial, "oh look, I've made a dinosaur!" phase.

Posted in: chaosboy, computers, games on September 24, 2008 at at 8:41:00 PM 0 comments    

Tired of being stuck here in Portland all the dang time (one of the few disadvantages of not owning our own car!), Christine and I resolved to take advantage of a small gap in my work schedule and get the heck out of town for a few days.

So we rented a car and drove on down to Crater Lake, an enormous clear blue lake that is entirely within the enormous (6 miles by 4 miles) caldera of a volcano that blew itself apart a mere 7,700 years ago - a mere blip in time geologically speaking. In a few weeks' time, the area around the lake will be covered in snow that will last until June next year, so this was probably our last chance to see it for a while. The drive down was fairly uneventful and quick - the I-5 corridor may be dull, but it does get you places quickly!

We entered the National Park from the north and soon achieved our first view of the lake. It certainly didn't disappoint!

No photograph can possibly do justice to the scale and majestic grandeur of this remarkable place (although that didn't stop me taking almost 200 shots over the next couple of days!), with sheer, soaring cliffs over 700 feet tall surrounding the bluest of blue waters that you have ever seen.

After soaking in the view from this initial view point, we quickly headed down to the campground, 7 miles south of the rim and set up our tent for the night. We were warned that bears frequented the campground and took all necessary precautions to secure our food in the provided bear-proof lockers before heading back to the Rim Village to view a beautiful clear sunset over the lake.

The small island is known as Wizard's Island, supposedly because of it's resemblance to a wizard's hat. It is a small volcanic cinder cone that rises from the lake's floor, and has a small crater of its own on top - a crater within a crater!

The next day, we drove a complete loop around the crater rim, stopping often for photographs. Our main goal was to walk to the top of Mount Scott, the highest point within the National Park at 8,929 feet (2,721 metres). The trail itself rises 1,200 feet over its 2.5 mile length, making it a pretty strenuous climb, especially for those unaccustomed to exercising at higher altitudes (i.e., me!). However, we made it to the top in just over an hour and were rewarded with absolutely spectacular 360 degree views, including the whole enormous lake laid out before us. Totally worth the effort!

(Our car is parked on the road at the absolute bottom right of the picture, just to give you some idea of where the trail has come from!)

In the evening, we climbed to the top of Watchman Peak on the exact opposite side of the lake (it's just to the right of my hat) to view another sunset - this one completely different to the previous night. Forest fires were raging to the south and the north of the park and had covered large parts of the sky with a thick pall of smoke. So where there had been crystal clear blue skies, there was haze and smoke, which was spectacular in its own (slightly eerie) way.


After the sun sank under the horizon in a blood-red blaze, we descended the mountain ( much easier path than Mount Scott) and retired to our campsite for a very well-earned beverage and meal. We left pretty early the next morning, as we were unable to secure seats for the boat cruises around the lake itself (curse you, large tour groups, for booking out all the early cruises!).

Posted in: chaosboy, oregon, photography, travel on September 9, 2008 at at 9:52:00 PM 0 comments