Download:
Soundtrack to The ceiling fan is going to fall on me [sixthseal.com]
This will be an experimental multimedia (or do they call it rich
media now?) post implementing photos, text, animated gifs, mp3
downloads and a Divx encoded short film of the ceiling fan in question.
I really did think it was going to fall on me for a second. It’s not
that I’m afraid of fans…it’s more like I have…er, a manly apprehension towards these things in general due to some childhood issues I’ll rather not talk about. 😉
Anyway, it didn’t help that I’ve been up since Friday morning with
just one day’s rest in the middle before going on another high
intensity caffeine run. My apologies if I mislead anyone, the straw
containing crystalline wonders that’s depicted above is not
methamphetamine (That’s Illegal!), but plain caffeine, the stuff you
can find in coffee. Kuching just got way colder ever since I met up
with this…er, coffee barista. *cough* He’s a nice enough guy, always
on time, with the goods at reasonable prices too.
The only thing about him is his fondness for meeting in hotels. I
didn’t think much of it the first time I was introduced to him…I
suggested we meet behind a local disco/karaoke in Sekama and he didn’t
think that place was safe (it comes with the lifestyle, you think
everyone’s after you, including ceiling fans ;)) so he asked me to meet
him at the 3rd floor of a nearby hotel. The transaction went well and
I’ve since consumed the straw of quality caffeine crystals (not meth,
mind) so I met up with him again today…
He was going, “Would it be convenient for you to meet at Telang Usan
Hotel?” I didn’t even know where that is…and to be honest, I don’t
know why he’s so interested in doing business in hotels. He told me
today that is apparently safer. *shrugs* It seems like we were
attracting attention from the hotel staff to me. Anyway, I finally
found the place and we met at the 3rd floor again. Well, actually I’m
obligated to tell you that there are two third floors at that hotel,
strange as it may sound. Naturally, we both went to the different one.
Fire – the gift of the Gods.
Anyway, the picture above might look a little dodgy, but please, let
me explain. I have a sensitive stomach (stomach ulcers), so the only
way I can consume caffeine (which is the stuff you get in coffee and
tea, for the ones amongst us who’s lagging behind ;)) is through a
combustion procedure. IV works wonderfully too, but that’s not
something people talk about in polite company. 😉 Back to the
apparatus, it can be easily rigged from any small glass bottle
(my personal favorite is Livita). The most important doohickey is a
small glass tube where the combustion will actually take place.
Well, some people would prefer a bulb, but there’s nothing that can
beat this for rapid and hassle free deployment. It can be assembled
within seconds – empty out both the glass bottle and glass tube (get it
from Chinese herbal shops – it’s sold as Sha Yau Wan, and as far as I
know, the only people who buy it are tweakers) and wash them. It’s just
a matter of making two incisions at the anterior of the bottle after
that. Oh, and the previous phrase is a pretentious term for “jab a
screwdriver through the top of the bottle cap”. 😉
I’ll write about it someday on castitas.com, but basically that’s
all there is to it. The caffeine crystals goes into the tube, which
goes into a small plastic straw, which in turns goes into the sealed
glass bottle and comes out the other end from another plastic straw.
The one that’s not occupied by the glass tube is where you inhale from.
😉 It’s simple, and detachable for fast refilling, and most
importantly, it gives you one good lungful of smoke. Just don’t put
water in it, meth, er, I mean caffeine is soluble in water, so that
would be wasting things.
Here’s an animated GIF of me smoking the home made pipe.
I did that all today in Adobe ImageReady. It’s amazing how fast you
can learn when the brain is allowed the proper nutritional supplements
it needs. It’s also amazing how you can spend hours and hours just
perfecting an animated GIF; even going to read whitepapers about what
the standard for encoding is…sheesh! Anyway, if you’re not in Sarawak
– “Ha! Ha!”
We have a public holiday spanning two days – the Dayak Harvest
Festival or Gawai. I had wanted to go with a couple of coworkers to
their longhouse…until I found out that it was further than Sibu (!)
and they took annual leave. Myself, I wasn’t prepared to use up my
annual leave quota yet, I’m planning something big end of the year. Oh,
I just remembered something funny – I was getting some spare Sha Yao
Wan when one of my friends drove by and saw me in that shop…
It would not have been an issue if he didn’t know what I was there
for. I have no good reason to step into a store like that except to
purchase glass tubes recycled from medication. I felt like a guilty
little boy, being caught with my hand in the cookie jar, but we seem to
have made a manly unspoken rule not to talk about it. It’s
complicated about why I don’t want him to know about my, ah, caffeine
indulgence, but I have my reasons.
Anyway, we’re digressing…about how the animated GIF was made, it
was quite fun to do. Then again, what isn’t fun to do when you have
enough caffeine crystals to last you through the holiday. 😉 I recorded
a MOV (Quicktime) movie with my digicam and then imported it in, frame
by frame. I was surprised that it could do that. It’s easy to arrange a
set of frames and set the time before each slide flips, so to speak. I
had to take out a lot of the frames and also had to compress the
animated GIF to a nearly unrecognizable degree, because it’s about 650
kb, and that plus the other stuff and assorted CGI requests this site
gets, might just kill my server (or make me have to reboot anyway).
Well, the weather forecast for Kuching is slated to be cold, cold, cold for the next couple of days.
Wash
Rinse
Repeat
=D
It wears you down after a couple of cycles though, as the fan can attest to. 😉 You will need to download DivX 5.11
[divx.com] if you don’t already have it. It’s a codec that just makes
the file smaller while preserving quality, so it’s more suited for the
net than Quicktime. Here’s the .avi of the DivX encoded movie of the
ceiling fan, which I see as quite sinister in nature.
What do you think?
Download:
Death from above [sixthseal.com]
