I’ve had four pints of Guinness. Temper my following answers with that knowledge.

1. What was your first Halloween costume?

I think I was a garbage bag. I got a big bag and filled it with crunched up paper. I had feet holes and arm holes and a head hole. Problem is, the paper kept leaking out of my feet holes. Oh well.

2. What was your best costume and why?

I went one year as “confused”. I borrowed a bra from a friend, and all kinds of other male/female stuff from other various friends.

3. Did you ever play a trick on someone who didn’t give you a treat?

Nope. Sorry.

4. Do you have any Halloween traditions? (ie: Family pumpkin carving, special dinner before trick or treating, etc.)

Roasted pumpkin seeds. Since I’ve moved here, that doesn’t work anymore.

5. Share your favorite scary story…real or legend!

http://www.microsoft.com/ This is such a geeky answer, I know, but see the disclaimer above. Other scary stories include bad dates, but those will only come out after even more pints.

This is so politically incorrect.

I’m sick. Again. In the past four weeks, I’ve been sick three times. Always only a day or so though, since I’ve mastered the trick of getting rid of colds. Or so I believe now since I’m feeling overconfident. Hello, hubris!

So, I’ll present for your greater knowledge, gentle reader, Jurgen’s recipe for getting rid of colds. The point here is to make the germs think you’re completely insane, and make them leave of their own accord.

I usually start with hot spicy Vietnamese pho for lunch, with lots of chilis. Pop a vitamin C. For dinner, sushi with lots of wasabi, or at least something with garlic or hot stuff in it. Pop a vitamin C. I had leftover goulash with paprika. Then comes the serious artillery. Get some whiskey. Then get some more. Add to that some honey, cloves and lemon. Pop it in the microwave at 50% heat for about a minute. Drink it as hot as you can. Feel the frikkin’ burn. Pop a vitamin C. Then make a glass of Lemsip hot lemon relief™. Ignore the warnings not to mix with alcohol. The point here is to pass out. Drink it as hot as you can. Pop a vitamin C. Then the pi�ce de r�sistance – VapoRub. Shove a bunch of Vicks Vaporub up your nose. It clears the sinuses in the same way that Ex-lax clears the bowels. That way, you don’t choke on your snot when you pass out.

I’ll be just fine tomorrow.

Does anyone have a USB (should that be “an USB”? Hmm) cable to connect an old style Palm handheld to a computer? I’ve got a Palm III that I haven’t used in quite a while, and don’t really plan to use much anymore. I want to get the data out of it and into my Mac, but I don’t have any cables (not even serial) that will let my old Palm III talk to anything.

Anyway, if you’ve got one, and you’re in Melbn, and you’ll let me borrow it for a short while, I’ll buy you a beverage.

The Rugby World Cup is on right now, I’m told. There are games happening all over this fine country, apparently. You might be able to tell I don’t really care all that much.

I was taking the tram back home from seeing a friend up Smith St way, and as we passed by Parliament, about a half-dozen white-and-red clad Poms got on the tram. One of them had his face painted red and white. They were drunk, but not obnoxious. The tram turned onto Burke St and there was a mob of English Rugby Hooligans waiting to get on the tram. I gave them the benefit of the doubt since the first batch was well-behaved.

And did those feet, in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

This new batch was, well, drunker. The ringleader got the mob singing that song, and then when that was over, they sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (I didn’t realise that was a drinking song, but anyway. Perhaps they were serenading the tram itself?). Each tram stop down the hill, one or two more England fans would get on the tram. The ringleader started yelling at everyone to move down to let the new fans on the tram.

Then came the Samoans.

“No Samoans on this tram!” yelled the ringleader. He even made it into a repetitive song. Then, the painted-face guy yelled (louder) “Let the Samoans on the tram!”. The ringleader, sensing that he might be alone in his opinion about the Samoans, decided to switch sides and started yelling for the Samoans to get on board. They declined, as there was simply no more room. Shortly afterwards, partway through the second singing of that feet song, I had to get off to change trams. My seatmate wished me luck.

Everyone there was good-natured and (aside from being drunk) rather pleasant to be around. I was laughing out loud for much of the trip. I can see how that sort of thing could get ugly though. If they were drunker, and if the game hadn’t gone as well, and if they were somehow riled up – the mood could quickly change into a tram-trashing episode. An England-Australia game might lead to bloodshed in the streets…

Well I know you think you’re a star,
A pill-poppin’ jukebox is all that you are.
_(Rollover DJ, Jet)_

For some reason, I’m always a little bit behind what the rest of the world is listening to. For example, I just heard Jet – a band that apparently everyone else is sick of hearing because they’ve been all over the radio. Oh. Maybe I should start listening to a bit more radio then. So much of it here is crap though, and the stuff that isn’t crap is only that way relative to everything else.

But I digress (and have probably broken a few “cool rules” in this self-consciously cool land of coffee and trams). Jet rocks. Bands like the White Stripes might rock this way too, but only when they’re jumping around in their lounge room, singing along to old Aerosmith songs. Get Born is a diverse release, ranging from folky blues/country to a kind of hard, gritty pop, to full-on, unrepentant rawk with tinges of the surf/ska/punk thing that the Red Hot Chili Peppers used to be pretty good at.

But because you’re cooler than me, gentle reader, you already know about them, you’ve already heard the music, read the stories, and might have even jumped around the lounge room, singing along with Are you gonna be my girl or one of their other very singable tunes.

In a futile effort to regain some cool points, I’m off to see Human Genome Project this evening at The Tote.

Swinging back into the geekiness we’ve all come to be used to from jurgen dot ca / jurgen id au, I’d like to present something I’m excited about, without even having seen it. Gentle reader, I present to you The Regex Coach.

Apparently, it allows the user to interactively see what various regex strings do, what they do to data and why. I’m told it even translates regex into oddly funny English phrases. Problem for me is that it runs on Linux or Windows. My Linux machine sits at the office, behind a firewall. And it’s off. I’ll be downloading this baby on Monday.

I love regex, but in kind of an abstract way. I’m still learning the finer points, but it’s saved my ass many times when I’ve had to do interesting find and replace functions across a lot of data. I reckon it will be more important in my day job as time goes on. I do, after all, work at a data cleansing company.

Thanks to NTK for the link.

This just in from Tullamarine: At Melbn Airport an individual, later discovered to be a school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a graphing calculator. Authorities believe he is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement.� He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

I love echidnas.

(And here’s the original image from Yahoo).

Trivia question: What legendary Australian singer mentions the echidna in their most recent CD? I’ll buy you a drink if you get it.

Heh heh. Thanks, Jo.