shimweasel

please ignore this - this is solely so i remember this the next time i do this stupid dance.

For DC, I need

Ruby
RubyGems
Rails
Postgres

For ruby, i seem to need to build all the external stuff separately. I don’t know why, but this fixes it:

cd ext; for i in */;do cd $i; make clean; ruby extconf.rb; make; sudo make install;cd ..; done

RubyGems just needs the above to work
Rails is the same
Postgres needs the marc liyanage package, and “sudo gem install postgres – –with-pgsql-dir=/usr/local/pgsql”

argh. I need a personal wiki or something. Until I get that, you get my backwash. Sorry.

I’ve always wondered why coffee from the clubhouse was a little subpar. Turns out:

1. They froth the milk while it’s in the cup with the coffee.
2. The brown stuff on top isn’t chocolate or cinnamon. It’s Nescafe Instant.

Ah well. Happy New Year to everyone - I’ve been a bit quiet recently, for the simple reason that there hasn’t been much going on.
For a while it looked like I might get the job at Georgetown, but I heard recently on the grapevine that even though they couldn’t get an internal hire to come out (there being a very strong preference for main campus employees), they’ve declined to offer the job to any of the local applicants, instead choosing to fly a succession of temps out. While this is entirely their decision to make, a pettier man than me might have called them up and bitched a little about their lack of elementary courtesy in informing potential hires of what’s actually going on. Me, I’m just going to bitch here, to my audience of three. (You know who you are, you special, special people.)

In the meantime, my time has been consumed with XBox games (until some trivial flaw like lack of inverted controls drives me insane enough to throw the controller at something), programming (until something shiny crosses my field of vision and my ADD kicks in), and lengthy gym sessions. I went to a kickboxing training session with Hamad yesterday, and, to my surprise, enjoyed it quite a bit: it’s quite a different physical discipline to judo, and needing to learn how to walk again is a humbling experience. My right hook is hard but extraordinarily slow, and my kicks resemble the flailings of enraged chickens, but it’s remotely plausible that if I dedicated ten years to this particular brand of bad-assery, I might attain mediocrity. (We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars)

In any case, I’m out of here in a few days: I have a ticket booked for Bangkok on the 13th, and very soon will be celebrating freedom from the jackboot of Muslim oppression. (Hamad, if you’re reading this, you know I’m joking. Right?) Qatar’s a nice place in a lot of ways, and the locals are far more friendly than I’d previously thought, but it’s very hard for an alcoholic music snob like myself to live in a place where Jane’s Addiction and Cooper’s are equally haram. Ma-salaama Qatar, sawa-di-krup Bangkok….

No caption necessary, I feel.

mad max, eat your heart out

The sambuk on super-happy-fun-disco mode. alas, these never flew in the ceremony, even in their boring white “on” configuration

The flying machine, lit up pretty-like

I loved the Qaf boat, not least because I had a controller in there to meter the speed and force of the rocking.
(Now I driiiive the bus!)

He bestrides the world like a colossus

City of the future in training

Fritz: his usual cheery self

This is what happens when your electricians are bored and you ask for one volunteer.

Behind the scenes - this is the lower chamber, where all the different stages are wheeled on and off. This is the sun stage: the horse for the final run was loaded in here.

The view of Asia from the winches in one of the rehearsals. It wasn’t always this smooth…

Oops.

Electronics repair, Fritz-style. Yes, that is a saw.

Workers from the future, deep in conversation.

The boys in full regalia

Lighting of the cauldron

Where do these odd post titles come from? I’m glad you asked! They come from one of the best albums I’ve heard all year: Gala Mill, by the Drones. The Drones are from Melbourne, Australia, and are kicking my arse hard. I saw them a while back at the Jerome’s Laneway Festival and was moderately impressed, but didn’t get into their last album much despite its ridiculously cool title, “Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by”. The new album is a little more relaxed, with country elements seeping in at the corners, and (thank fuck) they’re totally unapologetic about it. If you get the chance, check it out: “Jezebel” in particular is absolutely amazing.

Strontium 90 removed from milk as curious an entity as bullshit writ on silk

It walks through religion, the middle east, nuclear war and radioactive milk in one ramshackle, sprawling, 8 minute mess of a song, and I’ve not been able to stop playing it.

“Work for Me” is likewise addictive, if a little subtler. Most of the songs have Gareth Liddiard’s gravelly voice and his hyper-literate lyrics front and centre, but “Work for Me” features Fiona Kitschin’s lazy, knowing vocals in a seductive jam that is far and away the sexiest song that I’ve heard all year.

i am not an apple i am not a plum you can’t know the worth of my seed … he don’t make me shake he don’t make me vain need a man had to work for his name

It doesn’t hurt that she’s a stone cold babe, either.

The single off the album is “I don’t ever want to change” and it’s more four-square rock. Gareth still manages to cram some pithy lyrics in, though:

I know my limits well, seems they’re never too far away … alone getting drunk on a beach ain’t a bad way to be

Just go get the album, ok? It’s wonderful.

I have emerged, blinking and squinting, from 4 of the weirdest months of my life. The ceremony is over, obviously, and suddenly I have time to stop and take stock.

The event itself went ahead in total chaos. The weather on the night was the worst that I’ve seen it here: torrential rain, howling wind, and lightning.
Large parts of the show were cut, especially flying sequences: if you were watching the storm sequence and wondering why not much was going on, there ought to have been about 8 boats descending from the heavens and disgorging pearl divers. It looked terrific in rehearsal, and I’m desperately sad that it didn’t go out, but in the show, all we had was the Seeker trying to look fascinated for five minutes.

Done and dusted now, of course. I made an entirely unnecessary visa run to Bahrain yesterday - apparently my work visa is still good, and they wouldn’t give me a tourist visa, so there’s a day wasted in airports. Still, I made friends with the barman, had a bacon sandwich, and chatted to the stiltwalker who’s been circling the flask for the last three or four weeks. (I wasn’t sure it was her - people look quite different in gold lycra and silly hats.)

Taking stock of it all:

1. It’s dumb to take a job where the contract states they can work you as hard as they like without overtime. I won’t work 16 hour days again except for my own company or for overtime rates.
2. Embedded programming is fun and different and not nearly as difficult as I expected.
3. Being part of the show crew was fun, but endless rehearsals and hours of standby are not for me. I’m running away from the circus to join an IT support unit.

I have an interview for Georgetown on Monday. If that goes well, I may be in Doha for a bit longer.

Everything I’ve worked on for the past four months comes down to today.
I’m so nervous I can barely talk - we had more rain last night, I think, and it’s entirely possible that the neon tubes could turn into another impromptu fireworks display. We had a good rehearsal of City of the Future last night, but we haven’t run through the whole show with all the elements yet, which does scare me just a smidge.

For good or ill, it’ll be all over in 16 hours. 2pm Saturday on SBS, for those of you watching at home.

I was just let off work an hour and a half early. What did I do with this bonanza of unexpected spare time? Did I hit the rugby club, take a sixpack and a deck of cards next door, or talk to another living soul?

No. I took my shisha, a sixpack, and my xbox, and ignored the rest of the world for 3 hours. And it was glorious, dammit.

Work continues in fits and starts at the stadium. We don’t have an overwhelming amount to do, but it has to be done when nobody’s using the stadium or the equipment, which constrains us a little.

(Comment-fixing coming soon. Hold your horses, Bean.)

Tomorrow, I start work at 11am, to finish at 11pm.
This will continue without weekends until the 21st of December, apparently.
It’s possible I may be even slacker about updating this blog than I am at the moment (on a puny 10 hour day, with a day off every week!)

Please, continue to mail me to tell me about how much fun you’re all having. I need the reassurance that the real world is still out there…

or picture, should I say - all the others seem to have gone MIA.

.

The dancer on stage is a whirling dervish. I was under the impression that it was a more solemn, religious, rite: this guy was almost a Vegas performer. Regardless, it was certainly a spectacular act, and the food was amazing - I practically rolled out the door.