Mayhem-Online

Archive for August, 2006

It’s a fairly insignificant birthday marked by a fairly insignificant day lol. I actually did stuff yesterday, mostly going out shopping and have lunch out with family. The reason behind this is because my birthday falls on a Sunday, and usually I just like to veg out and do my own thing on a Sunday rather than do anything special, so we did everything yesterday. I’m also going out for lunch on Monday with some work mates who decided to arrange it for me.

Speaking of events, there are a few things happening these next couple of weeks, all of which use up the precious moolah of which I have so little of :\ As I mentioned, we’re going out to lunch tomorrow at one of the local restaurants. Its a nice restaurant, Pauline (co-worker) and I go there for breakfast every second Friday morning. We’ve been there on numerous occasions for lunch too. This coming Friday I have the day off but don’t get to sleep in late as I’m due at my sister’s early in the morning to get my hair done. Not sure if she wants us to help her with the decorations or not but she is heading to the hotel in the afternoon to set up everything for the dinner we have that night. Its my niece’s 18th birthday. Originally I wasn’t going to have the day off, I was just going to take a half-day flexi, but my sister could only do my hair early in the morning so I took the whole day Suits me anyway lol. Then the Tuesday following on from that is a dinner out with some friends from my previous workplace. We’re meeting at a hotel near the city which has had some good reviews of it. Then the Friday after that I have the day off again! Woo! This time I can sleep in lol, as I don’t have anything early in the morning. Again I was going to go with just a half-day but changed my mind at the last minute. Its a get-together happening in the late afternoon/early evening at my previous workplace with drinks and nibbles and prizes. Its actually in relation to footy-pools which I became a part of before I left and returned to my old job in the city. Funnily enough though I don’t actually follow the footy lol, I’m a rugby fan actually considering I’m originally from NZ But its actuallly all in good fun and I’ve had some assistance in terms of picking the teams lol.

The VisualKei/Indies stuff has been blasting out of my computer speakers for the past two days now lol. I’ve been listening to more and more of it and hearing a lot of bands for the first time (which gets me hooked into it even more!). There’s no main favourite group at the moment, even though I do play 12012′s “Icy~cold city~” several times a day lol, 12012 are not my favourite out of the lot. I guess they would be a close second to one band that I find intrigueing as much as anything and that’s Vidoll. I was intending to spoil myself and order a few singles from Vidoll and a couple of other VK bands, but the purse is empty and so is the bank account, and until these darn bills are payed off (or at least I’m in front of them) I can’t order anything new for a while yet ;__; (And no, nobody bought me any VK stuff since not many in my family would know what the heck I’m talking about >_<)

I’ve been reading this book on and off for quite a few months now. While I was at my other job I saw this and the other books that make up this trilogy in the local bookstore. This particular volume was listed as “One of the 50 remarkable books from 2005″. Paying full-price for the book from a bookstore kind of threw me a bit but I forked over the money as the story tantalised me.

As I mentioned, I read this book on and off for a while, mostly due to me putting the book down after I’d read a chapter and then forgetting all about the book the next day and the next day and so on. Until a month or so later I’d pick it up again and read the next chapter. However, I think from chapter 5 to the end of the book I basically read almost non-stop. Thankful that I have a long journey to and from work, it gives me the opportunity to shut out the other passengers (though I also have my mp3 player playing quietly in my ears) and concentrate on the story. I was pretty much engrossed through to the end of the book which I finished up today.

The story focuses on a boy named Takeo. That’s not his original name but he is renamed this fairly early on in the book. He is born and raised amongst a group who are referred to as “The Hidden”, a fairly peaceful group who live up in the mountainous regions. However their peace does not last long and they are invaded by Lord Iida, who is seeking power over a number of regions (as most warmongers did back in those days). Takeo manages to barely escape but just as he comes under attack by a couple of Iida’s men, he is rescued by a passerby on his horse. He soon learns that this person who saved his life is Lord Otori Shigeru. Shigeru is not the leader of his clan, this was taken over by his uncles who are rather nasty and inconsiderate to most people including Shigeru. Lord Otori recognises that there is something else in the boy Takeo that perhaps even Takeo does not realise.

Eventually after Takeo arrives at Lord Otori’s home, he begins to notice changes in himself, abilities that he did not know he had or understood why he had them. Kenji Muto then appears and divulges that Takeo is one of “The Tribe”, a group of warriors that his father belonged to, and now Takeo was also a part of. Despite this heritage, Takeo is determined to avenge Shigeru’s brother’s death and the deaths of his own family members under Iida’s reign.

The story continues on, swapping between the first-person telling of the story by Takeo, to the third-person telling of the story by Kaede, a young woman who is destined to become Takeo’s lover. Its a riveting story for the most part, the descriptions of the countryside, the noises that Takeo is able to hear with his super-sensitive hearing and the world that they live in are well written. My only gripe with the story is that when it got closer to the end, suddenly about 10 things happened in one chapter and then the book ended. It was kind of like Lian Hearn (the author) suddenly realised the story was getting a bit too long with all the descriptive words and so chose to quickly end it so that the next book could be written. Though on the “Tales of the Otori” website, Lian Hearn mentions that the book was supposed to be just one volume, and realised that when getting towards the end of this first book, that the story itself would still flow on and thus two more volumes were born.

The ‘Nightingale Floor’ actually refers to a floor in Iida’s residence that ‘sings’ (I would say its been made to be squeaky) whenever someone walks on it. This was done because Iida feared he would be slaughtered in his sleep so the residence where he sleeps is practically surrounded by this floor. Takeo has to train himself on a floor that Shigeru has made up at his own residence, so that he can walk across it lightly without making it creak or ‘sing’ at all.

I’m now about to pick up the second book “Grass For His Pillow” which focuses on Takeo and his life now belonging to the Tribe (which to me seem like they were the early formation of what we now call ‘Ninja’). I’ve yet to buy the third book but will be doing so if I’m reading this second book as quickly as the first. But before I do that, I’m heading off to read more about the Otori and the books on the official website

It was a gorgeous sunny day today, but I was stuck inside all day. I’ve spent the bulk of the day looking at various content management systems and wiki software to see what will suit me for my ReBoot Mayhem webiste (currently under construction). I started out going for MediaWiki, which is what powers Wikipedia, but the installation mentioned that it wouldn’t work on a safe-mode server, and since I’m on a safe-mode server…. well it wouldn’t work. Talk about complicated anyway! The number of files and folders blew me away! So then I went looking for an alternative and came across one called DokuWiki. It doesn’t require a DB as it uses flat files, but again it has difficulty with running on a safe-mode server. It does have a work around, but I kept getting these access errors, despite making all folders that needed to be chmoded to read/write access. So I gave up and deleted it.

So now its back to square one. Searching for something that will suit my needs or just giving in and recreating everything from scratch (not what I have the time to do). I’m not really all that keen on content management systems, and while WordPress is really good for blogging, it doesn’t really suit my sites needs. The problem for me is that the site is so big, which is why I wanted to get something that could help organise it a bit better. I think I will have to resign to rebuilding it myself… It just may mean that it will take a lot longer before it goes active again. I did, however, keep the message boards alive so people can still post up stuff about the series and chat to each other. I’ve also got Coppermine ready to install which will help me a great deal with the image side of everything, that will probably cut down about half the site lol. I think what I would like to do is create a site that’s more user-interactive but still with the ability for me to control how that interaction happens. Most CMS programs do that but not other things, so its always hard to decide which is the best to use.

Time to watch “Australian Idol”….

Oh and in regards to Tidus… I ordered him from HLJ today ^^