Through the Lense

Quirky news site Annanova ran a story on this Chinese photographer, lying in wait to see passers-by trip over a pot hole.

"A photographer has come under fire in China for his pictures of a man falling off a bicycle."

"The man came a spectacular cropper in Xiamen city after his bike hit a pot-hole submerged in rainwater.

But photographer Liu Tao was accused of lying in wait to take his pictures instead of warning people of the danger."

"Readers of the Beijing Youth Daily, which published the shots, wrote in to express their feelings.

One wrote: "The pictures are well shot, but the person who shot this is disgusting. He knew there was a pit, but was waiting there for someone to fall over."

And another said: "The photographer should really be condemned since he knew there definitely would be other victims."

Liu defended himself, saying: "I just knew that the city government has paved the pit, and without my pictures, the pit would not be noticed by the government, and there would perhaps be more people falling over."

Bugg's Take

Ok, so not much harm done right? The only thing bruised in that accident was probably the cyclist's pride, and maybe his 4th and 5th ribs, and perhaps some road rash on his face.

But reading this bit of news brought to mind a decidedly more serious matter.

I had found out about the story of Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Kevin Carter a few years ago, and the Annanova article stirred this memory.

Kevin Carter (1960 - 1994)

Kevin Carter was a South African photographer whose startling photo of a starving Sudanese girl collapsed from hunger, being stalked by a plump vulture, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.


This shocking photograph was bought by the New York Times and quickly splashed over newspapers worldwide. This image quickly became the image of Africa's anguish, struggling in the grip of famine and disease.

The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl. Mr Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre. He chased away the vulture. Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying". His father, Mr Jimmy Carter said: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did."

Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child; a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside. "I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

I remember watching a BBC special feature on war photographers and reporters. The photographers there said that they were forbidden to interfere with any war situations. In fact, one photpgrapher was particularly haunted by the fact that there was a dying Iraqi casualty, who was screaming for his help, but all he could do was snap photos. He ended up walking away from the scene. Shortly after his return to the UK, he left the BBC , saying he was blighted by that inccident. Many war photographers are treated for depression, upon their completion of their assignments in war zones.

The very same happened to Carter. As photographers, they want to give a snapshot of a moment in time, be it joyous or horrific. But photographers are human too. What price, the images that we see on our TVs and newspapers and websites? Far too easily do we take them for granted.

The Modern Library of New York's 100 Classics

Bugg's Take

It's Christmas Eve.

In the words of a popular Christmas jingle... "He's making a list, and checking it twice."

I stumbled across this list the day before yesterday.

It's the Modern Library of New York's 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century.

I decided to see just how many classics I've read to this point.

The answer....

*drumroll please*

a whopping 4 out of 100. (as at 26 Dec 2005)

Ok, so one of my New Year's resolutions is going to be to up that statistic by a bit.

Next on my reading list:

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

The complete list follows: (titles I've read have been crossed off the laundry list)

1. Ulysses - James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgaerld
3. The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce
4. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound And The Fury - William Faulkner
7. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
8. Darkness At Noon - Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
10.The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck
11. Under The Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
12. The Way Of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
13. 1984 - George Orwell
14. I, Claudius - Robert Graves
15. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
19. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
20. Native Son - Richard Wright
21. Henderson The Rain King - Saul Bellow
22. Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
23. U.S.A (Trilogy) - John Dos Passos
24. Winesburg, Ohio - Shwerwood Anderson
25. A Passage To India - E.M. Forster
26. The Wings Of The Dove - Henry James
27. The Ambassadors - Henry James
28. Tender Is The Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell
30. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
31. Animal Farm - George Orwell
32. The Golden Bowl - Henry James
33. Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
34. A Handful Of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
35. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
36. All The King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
37. The Bride of San Luis Ray - Thornton Wilder
38. Howards End - E.M Forster
39. Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin
40. The Heart Of The Matter - Graham Greene
41. Lord Of The Flies - William Golding
42. Deliverance - James Dickey
43. A Dance To The Music Of Time (series) - Anthony Powell
44. Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley
45. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemmingway
46. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
47. Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
48. The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence
49. Women In Love - D.H. Lawrence
50. Tropic Of Cancer - Henry Miller
51. The Naked And The Dead - Norman Mailer
52. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
53. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
54. Light in August - William Faulkner
55. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
56. The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammet
57. Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
58. The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton
59. Zuleika Dobson - Max Beerbohm
60. The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
61. Death Comes For The Archbishop - Willa Cather
62. From Here to Eternity - James Joyce
63. The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever
64. The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
65. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
66. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
67. Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
68. Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
69. The House Of Mirth - Edith Wharton
70. The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durell
71. A High Wind In Jamaica - Richard Hughes
72. A House For Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
73. A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
74. The Day Of The Locust - Nathanael West
75. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
76. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
77. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
78. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
79. A Room With A View - E.M. Forster
80. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
81. The Adventures Of Augie March - Saul Bellow
82. Angle Of Repose - Wallace Stegner
83. A Bend In The River - V.S. Naipaul
84. The Death Of The Heart - Elizabeth Bowen
85. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
86. Ragtime - E.L. Doctrow
87. The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett
88. The Call Of The Wild - Jack London
89. Loving - Henry Green
90. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
91. Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell
92. Ironweed - William Kennedy
93. The Magus - John Fowles
94. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
95. Under The Net - Iris Murdoch
96. Sophie's Choice - William Styron
97. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. cain
99. The Ginger Man - J.P. Donleavy
100.The Maginficent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington

The Emperor's New Walking Stick

Bugg's Take

My colleagues are probably sick of hearing this question from me by now.

"Hey... have you ever wondered how penguins stand back up after falling down?"

"Hey... have you ever wondered how penguins stand back up after falling down?"

"Hey... have you ever wondered how penguins stand back up after falling down?"

Ok, so I'm nothing if not persistent.

So here's some random musings on why I find this question so compelling...

I admit I have some morbid fascination with these fellas.

I mean.... when I look at them, they just look..... WRONG...

1) Look at their feet. They have small tiny feet, and so close together. This gives a very small base of stability. I'm sure they fall over pretty often.

2) They're top heavy. High centre of gravity. Also, prime conditions for falling over easily.

3) They have almost no upper limbs to speak of. They have these flaps for wings/arms. Kinda like the T Rex with the tiny forearms. What are they FOR???

4) THEY'RE SO DARN CUTE, IT'S NOT FUNNY.

Ok ok... to be fair, my scientific and logical brain says that this animal was probably engineered for swimming in the sea, rather than walking (or standing up) on land.

1) Sleek insulated fur. To keep the cold water out. Plus, their tuxedo design makes them look spiffily dressed, all season round. Some things just never go out of style.

2) Torpedo shaped body. To glide through the water. Hardly ideal for standing on land though.

3) Those silly feet on ground, make great flippers in the water to power them along.

4) Those flappy arms, would make killer rudders in the water to steer with.

Right.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, which Basement post would be complete without something obligatorily shocking/gross/awe inspiring/shockingly awesomely gross.

So I found this question posted on a Penguin FAQ (I didn't ask this one ok? I simply wanted to know how penguins stood up after falling over):

"What colour is penguin poop?"

And here's the answer, complete with pictorial evidence.

Hole left by the body heat of an Adeile penguin who waited out a storm for several days...with skidmarks! And those are feathers at the bottom of the hole.

"It's kinda white with greenish and darkish streaks when it comes out, but when it dries it turns to reddish for Adelies and greenish for Emperors. The red comes from all the krill that they eat and there are large quantities of this red 'mud' accumulated around the rookeries (sometimes as much as 10cm thick).

The green is probably bile due to the fact that the Emperors fast for a long period; the ice is covered with it in spring and melts back into the sea.

The fact that adelie penguins nest on rock outcrops makes it so that the higher ones 'shower' the lower ones. Just like in our own society I guess... "

Awesome.....

Ma, what's for dinner?

Bugg's Take

Errrmm...... ahh.... ohhh kaayy...... ummm...... yeah. Sure.

Salt Lake City, Holland Village

Bugg's Take

Last Friday was Gentle Giant's birthday and we went to Holland V for lunch.

Ended up in a "popular, noodle cum dim sum place".... identity withheld due to last minute intervention from Wei Yun. Anyways, we all settled down and ordered and our food came. Well, mine was Crispy Noodles with Beef and it was ultimately SALTY.

Exhibit 1: "Killer Beef"

Now, I'd like to think that I have a rather high tolerance for saltiness, on the account that I eat out at every single meal, and we all know how much salt and MSG are in our hawker fare. But this salt lick absolutely FLOORED me. My tongue went numb. Gentle Giant wasn't faring any better with his Preserved Vegetable Fried Noodle either.

Exhibit 2: "Killer Preserved Vegetable Noodles"

iBon and Ben on the other hand, seemed to be munching away happily at their totally UNSALTY food. WEAKLINGS!! SCARED OF A LITTLE SALT ARE YA?

Exhibit 3: "iBon's Duck & Chicken Meat Porridge"

By the time I had gotten around to taking a photo of Ben's noodles, he was already almost completely through with it. Man.... I've heard of faster than a speeding bullet and all that, but YOU DA MAN!!

Exhibit 4: "Call in the CSI Team.... we have a situation here..."

So, after gutting it through and eating the SALT noodles, I decided to conduct a straw poll of the general saltiness level of the food at the "popular noodle and dim sum place".

The benchmark for the saltiness level would be this:

Exhibit 5: "10 on the Saltiness Index"

So here are the results:

- Bugg's Crispy Noodle with Beef: 9.5 S.I.

- Gentle Giant's Preserved Vegetable Noodle: 8.0 S.I.

- iBon's Duck & Chicken Porridge: 5.0 S.I.

- Ben's Roasted Meat Noodle: 5.0 S.I.

Needless to say, I'm a little hesitant to eat there again... unless I have room to spare for another kidney stone.

On a slightly unsaltier note, here's GG's birthday prezzie! It's a spanking new Creative Muvo V200! wooooootttt!!!

"Vader, 3 Eyed Toy Story Alien and the latest addition"

Vader: "Luke..... wa si lim lao peh....."*
Luke: "Bo koh leeeenggggg...........!!"**

[For the non-Hokkien speaking]
* "Luke..... I am your father....."
** "NOOOOooooooooooo........!!!"

This food review is endorsed by Bugg's Basement, in conjunction with Hikaru (Hikawwuuuuu!!).

These Hands Were Made for Writing

Bugg's Take

Happened upon this interesting handwriting test while over at Catherine's blog.

Bearing in mind that the test asks you to write something or sign your name USING YOUR MOUSE.... which, in my book, hardly qualifies as my own handwriting... but anyway, I'm game for anything right?

So here it is:



What does your handwriting say about YOU?

The results of your analysis say:

1) You plan ahead, and are interested in beauty, design, outward appearance, and symmetry.

Bugg: Design and symmetry! Right on! Love em! Once... in Secondary school, I lost my geometry set... and I cried the whole day (ok... maybe not the WHOLE day... ok... maybe I didn't exactly CRY... but I sure was upset). I missed my Compass, Set Square, Protractor and all those other fiddly little bits and pieces in the box.

2) You are a person who thinks before acting, intelligent and thorough.

Bugg: "Thinks before acting"? Sure. Why not? I'm certainly a thinking man's actor. In primary school, I had to act in a play... and I forgot my lines on stage. Boooyyyy....was I thinking before acting right there....


3) You are diplomatic, objective, and live in the present.

Bugg: See... this is where I have to disagree. Who says I live in the present? I bought these clothes MYSELF. No one gave them to me as presents. If anything, I'm living in the self-obtained.


4) You are not very reserved, impatient, self-confident and fond of action.

Bugg: A test of my English and punctuation skills eh? (Sorry Miss Bok, Sec 1 English teacher)

Either this line says that I'm:

- Not very reserved
- Impatient
- Self-confident
- Fond of action

OR

It says I'm:

- Not very reserved
- Not very impatient
- Not very self-confident
- Not very fond of action

I don't know which to be more appalled at...

- The analysis that the line provides
- Or my shockingly poor understanding of punctuation

5) You are self-confident and like to bring attention to yourself.

Bugg: Like to bring attention to myself? why..for the life of ME ... would.... I.....like to bring attention to....MY....self...?

My conclusion on this test (sorry Cath, borrow your line)
90% accurate :)

Last Look at my Office Desk

Bugg's Take

First off, many thanks to iBon for lending me her camera to take these shots! You've unwittingly ushered in a new era of pictorial ecstacy in the Basement. mwahahahahahahahahh!!!!!!

Right. Now that I've gotten that out of my system....

As many of you know, I'll be leaving my current job at the end of this month. So I thought I'd take some pictures of my desk to preserve for posterity. I'll be cleaning it up soon after and it'll be gone forever. So without further ado...

"Ladies and Gentlemen (and Giant), children of all ages... The Basement is proud to bring to you..... Bugg's Cube (in 5 acts, plus 15 min interval, latecomers will not be admitted)"

Act 1 - "Is it just me.... or did it just get messier in here?"

Bugg: The general chaos. I managed to capture part of chioJess in the background too! Generally a non-descript cubicle. Standard attractions include my CD pile, iPod ads and my Mac-rigami corner. (more on that below) Alas Wei Yun...I've let you down... my desk will never be as clean and neat as yours.... *sniff* *sniff*

Act 2: "....meanwhile.... on the other side of the OK Coral..."

Bugg: Wei Yun's desk. In all it's pristine splendour. Every. Single. Day. (how DOES she do it?!?)

Act 3: "The Pods are aliiiiivveeeee... with the sound of musiiiiiccccc"

Bugg: Here's my CD pile, iPod and iPod ads. The 2 little stone elephants beside my phone are souveniers from Bangalore, and the Thank You card above my biscuit bottle was given by John-san. The styrofoam cup is the first of many coffees I consume throughout the day. Yes, in case you're wondering, that IS a giant Viagra pill.

Act 4: "Don't......ask......."

Bugg: Here's what I usually get up to in the morning. Coffee, Viagra and a prostrate, gel-filled hippo. And there you guys were, wondering where the heck I got all my boundless energy from. pfft.... (notice the horrid coffee stains?)

Act 5: "That's some fine coffee you have here in Twin Peaks.... and gooood Apple pie..."

Bugg: Here's my Mac-rigami corner. Yup, you read it right and your eyes are not deceiving you. For those who doubt how much of a Mac-head I really am... here's my collection of Origami Macs. Ok, I'll give you 2 minutes to stop your hysterical laughter.... :) Pictured are also my Hello Kitty magnet collection from 7-11. (Special mention goes to the green one on my notepad which was a gift from a Hong Kong 7-11! Million thanks to the person who brought it all the way back for me... *wink wink*)

And which guy's cube would be complete without the obligatory babe picture right? The beauty in the green tanktop is Dongli 88.3FM DJ Shi Han. Woooootttt.....

This shall serve as the last record of my desk and cube in the office. It'll all be cleared up by sometime next week. People come and go, but Music, Macs and Babes are forever....

The Day After Tomorrow?

Bugg's Take

Ok.

So I admit it.

I'm a closet tree-hugger.

You know.... save Mother Earth, save the Whales, save the beaches and all that.

Ever since I played Sim Earth way back when, I've held a silent interest in the welfare of our planet. Yes, I try to do my little bit... I recycle whenever and wherever I can.

Just ask my housemates in Perth. No doubt Sulphurous will remember our zany escapades with the recycling bin, sneaking off in the middle of the night to dump our stuff for recycling into the recycling bin of the apartment block beside our house. We had a couple of scary encounters with the guardian of the refuse area, whom we affectionately dubbed "The Colonel". We even had our escape plan down pat, in case The Colonel actually caught us in the act. Bug us hard enough and we may reveal our brilliant scheme of misdirection and deception. *singger*

The Colonel was....well.... The Colonel. So named because he looked just like someone out of World War ONE. Not WW2 mind you..... ONE. Complete with stiff upper lip and grey handlebar moustache, he was a terrifying sight to behold. With his walking stick, he would soldier (obligatory bad pun for the day) on faithfully, tending his grounds and keeping louts like Sulph and me off the compound. And we 2 would try to ninja our way into his recycling area to dump our plastic bottles and Coke cans into it. It was the proverbial cat and mouse game. And let me tell you.... he almost caught us a few times. Now that I think about it, 2... count em...2 undergrad brains didn't think enough to muffle the sounds of our rattling Coke cans while we conducted our surgical strike deep into enemy territory. The racket roused him from his pipe and evening paper and he came down on us like a Sherman tank into a German trench. I still vividly remember us dumping our payload into the recycling bin and causing such a din that our poor "fallguy" in Unit 8 *wink wink* *nudge nudge* would probably have woken from her slumber too. Hey Sulph..... "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!"

ANYWAY...

On to what I really wanted to post about.

While sick as a dog with tonsilitis on Friday, I watched a captivating and thought provoking National Geographic feature on the plight of the people of the island nation of Tuvalu. The Tuvaluans live on islands only 2 meters (on average) above sea level. With global warming and rising sea levels, climate scientists expect Tuvalu to be totally submerged by the year 2100.

Yeah, we'll all be dead and dusted by then right?

Wrong. We'll be dead, but the next generation will be left with the bleak prospect of having their island home disappear under the waves like some modern day Atlantis. Tuvalu has already seen worrying signs of the effects of climate change. Tropical cyclone activity has increased TEN FOLD since 100 years ago. Their airport is already showing signs of water seepage. The runway is showing puddles and sandy beaches are becoming marshy quicksand.

So what the hell does this have to do with me right? I suppose it struck a chord with me as I too live on an island nation. And while Singapore is, for now, safely above sea level... I really feel for the plight of the Tuvaluans. Many of them are faced with the terrifying prospect of having to leave their homeland, to move to a safer country. Countries like New Zealand and Australia are accepting Tuvaluans already.

What can I do about it?

Well.... nothing that will make any immediate difference. But what I WILL do, is to shift my distributed computing focus to Climate Prediction. Yes... my solution to global warming is to throw terraflops at it. Geeky? Definitely. Will it make a difference? I can only hope. It's my small way of helping my kids to live in a safe, and better world after I'm gone.

On a side note, I have begun dedicating some of my crunch power on Climate Prediction's ultra tough Sulphur Cycle project. This experiment attempts to model the effect of sulphur on global surface temperatures. I'll throw in a couple of images here to break the monotony of text. (plus i love dem purdy peektures...)

Figure 1 shows one model's surface temperature response to increasing sulphur emissions from pre-industrial levels (natural) to present day levels (natural plus anthropogenic). The cooling effect of sulphate aerosol can be seen throughout the whole northern hemisphere and corresponds to the high sulphate burden of the northern hemisphere shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows the 1985 distribution of sulphate in the atmosphere over the North Atlantic, North America and Europe. The regions of high anthropogenic source emissions of sulphur dioxide leads to high concentrations of sulphate aerosol over the northern hemisphere continents. Unlike greenhouse gases, the distribution and concentration of sulphates varies a lot with location, as can be seen by comparing the sulphate concentration over the North Pole with that over North America.

Those of you who are not ask geekily inclined as me, and have still read on gamely to this point, will get a layman's explanation of what's going on. See? Who says I don't give out cookies...

Basically, what I'm doing here is to run a program on my computers that use their idle processing power (like when I'm not using the PC) to process ("crunch") a mathematical model of the climate change. These models work on "timesteps" which model days and minutes of weather activity, from a mathematical perspective. Believe me, it's a mammoth task that requires a horrendous amount of computing power. I'll keep it simple and leave it as that.

Here's a nice, succinct description from the BOINC-Wiki.

"Networked computing, also called Distributed computing, grid, or mesh computing is a system whereby many small machines are connected to perform work. Instead of one large computer working on the entire problem using all the data at the same time we "eat-the-elephant" one bite at a time. The problem space and data set is divvied up into smaller "chunks" and those are processed one small bit at a time."

One day I'll post in more detail about my involvement in the BOINC projects.

In the meantime, if any kind soul'd greenie out there is interested to sign up to help Climate Prediction, drop me an email.

Or join the team!

"SAVING THE PLANET, ONE TIMESTEP AT A TIME"

Fable-icious!

PineappleT writes

Pine: Whatever happened to the good 'ol RPGs?

Pine: Ultima 6 was my first ever RPG. Ran it on a mondo powerful Wearnes 386SX. It had a HUGE 100MB hdd! Years later, Fallout and its sequal proved pretty fun too... especially the combat which allowed you to pick which body parts to aim for. "Hmmm.. should I blow a hole through his eye socket, or just disintegrate one leg and watch him fall over in pain, and tHen blow a hole through his eye socket?". It was turn-based, stats-mad, and all quite sedentary.

Pine: Anyway, its gone all 'console'-like these days. Furious clicking and keyboard tapping in Fable gets you monstrous "combat multipliers", which in turn affect how much you can boost your XP gains from each kill. And no saving when you start your quests... Much like in a Nintendo level I guess. You can, however, do "Hero Saves" in the midst of quests. And oh yah, let's not forget the Gold, Bronze and Silver categorisations for quests (let's not get started there). Makes me wanna plug out the mouse and stick in an XBox pad (which, btw, you can now do with the XBox 360 controllers which use USB plugs). Gotta admit though, all that twirling around and combat acrobatics with that flamin' Sword of Solus is just toooo cooool.

Bugg: Apparently, in Fable you start off as this little fella, and you can grow and develop him from this harmless, innocent-looking little Frodo-like critter....... into.....


Bugg: ... this huge buff dude with the kickass platemail and glowing, flaming, rootin-tootin Sword of Solus...


Bugg: When you're packing that sort of heat.... it doesn't matter if you're facing down a towering Earth Troll of something something.... you still end up kicking ass and taking names.

Pine: Even the hardest of hardcore, mother of all Roleplay concepts, D&D, has gone all click-mad in the most current incarnation of the venerable licence, Neverwinter Nights .... Now, excuse me while I got back to pokin' away at this big white dragon.

Pine *click**click**click**click**click**click**click*

The Old Ones do Christmas

8 inch tall Cthulhu plush - The venerable Cthulhu. All 8 inches of seething, boiling, raging, rampaging hatred. Ahh.... I do love the smell of fresh human sacrifice in the morning....

Toy Vault's first ever specialty plush item is based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. The first figure is Cthulhu himself, 8-inches tall, made of beautiful green fabric and filled with plush and beanies.

Bugg's Take

Anyone who's ever known me long enough will know that I was, and still am, a huge HP Lovecraft fan. I remember pouring over his books and being utterly fascinated by the dark, cosmic tales he conjured.

Well guess what? I suppose Christmas has come early this year, as I stumbled across these totally adorable plush Lovecraftian monsters! From the good folks over at Entertainment Earth. *ahem*....if....anyone is stuck for..... you know..... what to get for me for....erm..... *hint hint*

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. The Cthulhu Plush Slippers are made of quality fabric and your feet will never be warmer than when they're tucked cozily inside a cute pair of demons. One size available; fits men sizes 9 - 12

First Toy Vault brought us the plush Cthulhu. Now they bring us the Nyarlethotep, the Crawling Chaos, plush. "There are also other things, called by some demons and by others Gods. If possible, they are even more mysterious and powerful than the Old Ones: the Necronomicon, dread Book Of The Dead, calls them the Elder (or sometimes the Outer) Gods. Nyarlethotep, called the Crawling Chaos, is said to be amongst their number." Stands 8 inches tall.

According to H.P. Lovecraft, Shoggoths were (originally) mindless creatures created as servants/slaves by the Great Old Ones. They could assume whatever form their master wished in order to perform their task. Shoggoths are unruly servants becoming more intelligent and rebellious the longer the are employed. Eventually they may attempt to destroy their masters. HPL also wrote that Shoggoths are sometimes seen in visions from hallucinogenic plants.

According to H.P. Lovecraft, Deep Ones lives in marine environments, deep beneath the waves. The exact depths are unknown, and some say they dwell at the bottom of the oceans. Deep Ones live off of fish and offerings from human worshipers. Deep Ones are immortal and continue growing throughout their lives. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra are supposed to be two Deep Ones that are over 20 feet tall and several millions of years old. Plush stands 11 1/2 inches tall.

"Honey, better fire up the thousand virgin sacrifices..... we're having demons over for dinner...."

The Face of the Enemy

Bugg's Take

We always welcome guests here in the Basement, and my good buddy PineappleT just happened by. And why not? The beer is cold, the music is loud and the place hasn't been cleaned in months. But heck, the roaches don't seem to mind much. Pine happened to surf by from his spiffy, new, tricked out and totally pimped AMD gaming rig and in typical East Coast fashion, decided to take exception to my Apple-centric garage and dis my rides...

PineappleT writes

Wintel Machines - Superfluous stats, more technical crap than you can shake a stick at...What more can you ask of big-boy toys? Departing from the i'm-too-cool design sensibilities of Bugg's Apple gadgetry, Pineapplet proudly presents the apologetically garish bling-bling neon of his modest gaming rig, with innards on display for all to see like some silicon-based peepshow... 8)

And Now For Something Completely Different:
AMD Athlon64 3200
MSI K8N Neo4
PlatinumLeadtek 6600 GTX 128
Kingston DDR400 512 MB x 2
Hitachi 250 MB IDE + Hitachi 80 MB SATA
Viewsonic VA905
Pioneer DVR109
Onboard audio
Centurion 5
Verudium Vortex 430W ATX 2.03

Bugg: Check out the generation of Intel stickers on the chassis, all the way from the venerable Celeron, to the Pentium III to the Pentium4. Bro.... it's an AMD rig... what were you smoking??

Bugg: Righto, what do we have here...? CPU fan. Neon Chassis fan. AND Dual Neon GPU fan? I've heard of fanbois (bad pun COMPLETELY and UTTERLY intended).... but this is ridiculous...

Sooooo..... rather than spout some Apple talk and defend my turf intelligently, I've decided to fight bling, with bang and say....

"Whatcha talkin' bout homey!? My Apples are da bomb, biaaatchh!!"