Rabaelthazar

My "Old Faithful" patch is fruiting as of this week. I'll put some snaps up soon.

Thanks Tripsis.... best thread I've seen on here for a while. Really beautiful photography.

The dialogue in the animation was quite different from the original call... I started watching the animation thinking it would be the call Mac posted, but decided it was either another very similar call or, more likely, a recreation of the original call made to be a little more entertaining to stoners. I like the original better, but the animation was a good watch anyway. Cheers. <edit> or else, I only ever saw an edited version. The voices do sound the same in both clips.????

Yes, it was very hard for me. Sure.... my wife probably had a bit of a hard time too, but my hardship was compacted by the fact that I had a painful hangnail of my right index finger. I even needed a bandaid. Thanks all for the congrats.

I'd like to welcome introduce my daughter to the forum.... Rabaltharina. She was born just before midnight last night (Sunday) and 24 hours on, both she and Mrs Rabalthazar are happy and healthy. Ridiculously short labour, recorded at 2 hours, 20 minutes. Went by so quickly I didn't even get a chance to have a suck on the gas. Tried to wrestle the mouthpiece away from my wife a few times but she was clutching on for dear life I am buggered after spending the last few days at the hospital but proud and happy to have a new child in my life. Last chance for seed.... I think I'll be getting a vasectomy once things settle down. Two is enough. Thanks all. (all names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals involved)

PMd

Yeah, happy birthday bro (late as it is). Only met you the once, but you certainly made an impression. Hope your energy's putting out to the world and being paid back in kind. All the best.

The music industry is struggling, in virtually all areas. Professional studios are closing down as the output quality of cheap home studios increases, quality musical instrument sales are down due to cheap Chinese manufactured equipment becoming more prevalent, CD sales are down as internet sharing becomes easier and more accepted. Australian retail sales are down as internet shopping becomes easier and safer. Musicians study for longer than medical students to become proficient in their craft and 99% are unable to survive on music alone and live music venues find it harder and harder to find it financially viable to keep their doors open. From a consumers point of view, cheaper technology and free music is great, but the reality is that it is taking money from the industry and the industry is suffering from it. Smaller record labels are finding it harder to make a profit and justify investing in smaller, less commercial bands and as a direct result the number of "artists" (read commercial products) that grace the mainstream airwaves has reduced significantly. Even twenty years ago, when taping songs off the radio or copying a tape in real time were the main forms of piracy, we'd have a top fifty that consisted of probably 45 different artists, now we've got Lady gaga, Rihanna, Katy Perry and a handful of others generally with a number of songs in the charts at any one time. It's a cycle. Commercial music gets shitter, so we don't want to pay for it and as we don't pay for it, commercial music gets shitter still. The current model of the music industry is slowly dying... that doesn't kill music, but it does make it harder for people to make a living from it, which makes it less enticing for truly artistic people to pursue a career in it, which means we lose a lot of our artists to non-artistic professions. The industry needs to change and we as consumers need to be responsible for supporting the change. I believe that free music is the way we're headed.... I think downloads are going to eventually be replaced by on-call, high quality streaming, ie: the ipods of the future won't necessarily store music but you will be able to search for any song and instantly have it playing on your portable device. The majority of people seem to not care so much about actually owning music anymore... they just want to access it. If this is where we're heading, there needs to be something put in place for the artists and labels to see some reward for their labour. Support free music, but please also support the industry. Only a very very small proportion of the industry are the champagne sipping money getters.

I'd be concerned that plywood wouldn't hold up to being stomped on regularly. Doesn't have to be super expensive (just realised how much Koa wood could set me back) just solid and somewhat good looking. Merbau would be fine in the looks department... and I'm assuming it would be good and solid. Cheers, Ra

Hmmm.... googled Koa wood. Very beautiful. Would certainly look great. Thanks for the suggestion.

Lol... really well put together.

I've got no beef with Teotz... I always find his posts either interesting, entertaining or ridiculous... any of which are ok in my book. I think he's a she, or else that she's a he.

I'm pretty sure Teotz wrote that wiki entry The discussions page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Teotzlcoatl seems to suggest so at least.

Some of the mods are definitely on to it. A post appeared yesterday from a member with 2 posts basically asking for someone to sell him magic mushrooms The thread was gone within ten minutes. There're a lot of threads popping up, so I guess it's a big job. Good work to whichever mod caught the mushroom one.

Betadine throat gargle works a treat (I use it myself), but from memory there are potential health risks associated with it. I can't find the link now, but I checked up on its safety during pregnancy a while back and there were some reports of it having potential to cause birth defects. Not sure how reliable the reports were, but I thought it worth mentioning.

I'm not going to get involved in the argument, just tell a quick story. When I was in early high school (all boys school), I had a wonderful teacher. An amazing musician who inspired me to pursue my musical dreams. He was involved with lots of extra curricular activities and clearly loved spending time with the young boys. had he wanted to molest me (or any of the other kids) he could have easily done so... I went camping with him on numerous occasions, watched tv with him in a hotel room. He never treated me with anything other than respect and kindness and certainly never touched me or tired to touch me in an inappropriate way. A few years after I left school, he turned up in the newspapers, convicted of having sex with underage boys in the seventies (when he would have been in his 30s). He was labelled a child molester, and yeah... that's what he did. Regardless of what he did beforehand, when I knew him he was a good role model, an excellent teacher and, in my opinion, an honest and good hearted man. I won't defend his actions in the seventies because I wasn't there and I'll never know the full story. Obviously somebody had been hurt enough to raise the issue after a couple of decades, but it was sad to see a man I had known be brought down due to desires he obviously had come to realise were not appropriate to be acted upon. Anyway, not sure of the point of saying this... just wanted to share.

Whoops... my bad. That's twice in less than a week that I've misidentified a language. The other time was in the SBS movie thread. Apologies to anyone offended.

Thanks mate.

Hey Ubza, thanks for the offer. Maybe we could chat about it more at the Autumn meet. The home brew definitely sounds tempting... I'll shoot ya a PM.

I love those japanese animated news stories. So much more interesting than the regular doom and gloom.

I got talking to god at a party once, and geez it was a bore. He was one of those guys who goes on and on about his job and just doesn't get that it's of no interest to anyone but themselves. "I just finished a project involving the balance of good and evil and you wouldn't believe the amount of programming and organisational skills involved". Jeez, give me a break. I tried to excuse myself to go get a drink about 15 times but each time he just seemed to ignore it and move on to the next part of his story.... and there was that eye contact thing, you know where they lock onto you and after a while you're so bored that your eyes start drifting to that cute chick sitting by the fireplace or to your watch and then you realise that they've been looking at your eyes while you're looking elsewhere and then you feel really guilty as if they might twig that you find them absolutely boring and, as boring as they are, they seem kind of nice so you don't want to offend. Anyway, I finally got relieved of the chore when god realised he hadn't checked his iphone for prayer updates. As soon as he logged on, I buggered off out of there. Never even got a chance to talk to that chick by the fireplace cos I got snagged up listening to god's monologue so long she must have left. Shithouse party.

Maybe it was a bit of S&M gone wrong?

Mutant, you are an absolute legend!!! I have asked so many people about this film over the last fifteen years and you are the first to positively identify it. Thank you!!!! Just checked it on Youtube and it is definitely the flick. Now, to find myself a subtitled copy.