Zanussi

Been agonizing for more than a year how to fix up my cooking area.

Didn't want the stove in my house, cos I didn't want a cooking hood. So it has to be in the washing area.

As a temporary solution, I used a crappy table a tenant left behind, lay out the top with ceramic tiles left over from bathroom repair jobs the building engineers did, and tossed a hob on top of it.

Been that way for more than two years. Always had the intention of building up a proper platform and popping a hob in. There's just the question of whether I *CAN* figure out how to work with cement to do up a mini counter top in an alcove in the washing balcony.

Then recently, in a casual perusal of the forums, I came across a garage sale notice.

A Zanussi 4-hob cooker with electric oven.



Very nice condition. And the oven has hardly even been used!

RM550.

Just a pity that the seller realised at the last moment that he had left a gas tank inside. Else it would have been a steal.

Had to get Moses to use his Atoz to help me transport this back. The stove just barely slipped in his boot with half a cm to spare.
This should finally complete my kitchen... After I'm able to toss out the old hob. If I'm able to find the time to clean it up and polish the careless grime on it, I should still be able to fetch a decent price on it.

I'm harbouring no delusions of baking. But I can offer the use of the oven to friends. And exact a tax from whatever they're baking... Ha ha!

And there's a turn-spit for the oven too. So I could ohways woast a wabbit or swomething.

Lich Lord Terminus

Starting the most visually stunning of Privateer Press' miniatures.



The idea is to turn it into :



But in a cheerier colour maybe... The effect on the sword is very nice, but I'm afraid I'm no where near the artistic level to replicate that...

Lich Lord Terminus, favoured lieutenant of the DragonFather Turok of the Nightmare Isles. Disfigured and empowered by centuries of immortal service.

Came across an interesting technique using air-brush and glazes to paint and highlight the wings quickly. Will see if it works...

Barnyard

Nickleodeon movie. 3-D animation.

A farm where animals walk on two legs and talks when no one is watching.

The protagonist is a cow who protects the farm from coyotes. It could be just me, but there's something obscene about 3-D rendered udders.

The creators of this cartoon is most certainly a Gary Larson fan. Many familiar gags.

Quite a fun watch. Just a funny cartoon with no delusions of grandeur.

Easily accessible visual gags and a moral for the kids.

Yakuza gophers.

A fat possum-like creature wearing lots of bling, singing Shaggy's Boombastic.

That's just too cute.

Invisible Tenors

Happened to be in the area around PJ South last week. Lots of workshops there, so I took my car to a random one that does aircon servicing. And also to have the passenger window replaced at the same time.
Aircon died a few months ago. The Daihatsu service centre quoted me 1.2k to repair. Hmm... 1.2k to repair a 7k car. Didn't sound right. So I bore with till I could get a second opinion. These guys, I think a pair of twins with prematurely greying hair, actually took things apart to look for leaks etc.

The compressor was leaking. I needed a new one. And that's that.

Got a reconditioned compressor. Looked shiny.

But after the compressor went on, the car handles like I'm driving the 3 tenors up Genting.

This is crap.

Thought maybe I could re-tune the engine a bit... Took out the kit I bought in Melbourne and spent a few hours on my car.

Think there may be something wrong with my vacuum advancer. Doesn't seem to do anything to the engine timing... According to the manual, the timing should advance a few degrees when I suck on it.

Sheesh...

For all the tuning... The car still feels like there are 3 fat men sitting in the back.

But at least they're quiet.

More Malware…

Office network down...

After some investigation, I've determined that my PC was the source of the problem.

Although being protected by Avast! AV, something snuck in. When I'm connected directly to the iPStar network for tests, it always leaves my PC very vulnerable.

Checking Network traffic:


Note the regular spikes in the middle of the graph.

Something was spamming the upload bandwidth, such that nothing could come in too. Thus, I threw open the Task Manager and removed suspicious processes. When I hit the right one, the bandwidth graph went back to normal, and the purple line finally moved upwards and stuff started coming in.



lsass.exe is the Local Security Authority Service. But lssas.exe is NOT. And it should not be a hidden file either.
In either case, it should never appear in that particular place in the system registry.

Thus killed the lssas.exe in the Task Manager. Removed it from the registry. Deleted it from C:\Windows\System32.

But this may not be the last of it... It's made it's way in once, it can do so again until my AV software gets a new update. Hopefully.

performance.JPG

Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures!

Just re-read Out From Boneville, again, this morning.

This is book 1 of 9 of the Bone series by Jeff Smith.

Got into this comic a few years ago, when I won my first and only slogan contest for World Book Day, and got rm500 worth of Kinokuniya Vouchers. Also bought Death: The High Cost Of Living and The Time Of Your Life by Neil Gaiman.

The comic is like, Tolkien doing Calvin and Hobbes.

It's an incredibly brilliant and funny fantasy story. And the art is beautiful.

Some time back, there was some discussion about Bone being made into a movie. The whole thing fell through cos a block-head producer insisted that the Bones have kid voices, and that's bound to be the first of many other changes to make the story "fit for children".

Pity pity pity.

Still missing a few of Jeff Smith's books... Need to do some Christmas shopping for myself.