http://www.maestrosync.com This is the personal website of Dashiell Dunn, a South Australian student with an interest in technology and a song in his heart. Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:34:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en You might recall that in January of this year Australia's psychic of the year made some predictions for 2009. It's now December, and I thought I'd take a look back at the year that was and see how Stacey Demarco's predictions have faired. 1. Was Barack Obama assassinated? The witch was concerned ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/12/13/psychic-predictions-reviewed/ Late last year, I started writing some NES-inspired 8-bit music---I say 'inspired', because I used OpenMPT and YMCK's Magical 8bit Plug instead of the original hardware. The method might not be much like the real thing but the sound essentially is, including all the original constraints (e.g. being limited to ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/05/16/void-in-quebec/ The powerful pork lobby has managed to get the WHO to call the current worldwide influenza outbreak 'Influenza A(H1N1)' instead of swine flu, because they believe consumers may believe pork products are now unsafe. Instead of asking for a confusing and unnecessary name change, Big Pork should be actively trying to ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/05/03/how-to-combat-swine-flu/ I made some Iron Chef wallpapers a few years ago, but they weren't that good. These new ones are more stylish (click the thumbnails for the full 1600x1200 versions): http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/04/22/new-iron-chef-wallpapers/ There are a few ways to get your hands on Kevin Rudd's stimulus package. One is to qualify for the $900 tax bonus payment. Another is to be Thérèse Rein. But, there's something else Australians can do to get free stuff from the government, and all you have to do ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/04/11/fight-the-power/ The McDonald's Breakfast At Any Cost Calculator can roughly determine the best location to fly to to get access to the McDonald's breakfast menu, based on flight time and whether it will be breakfast time once you arrive. It is perhaps better explained with an example: it's 1700h (5 PM) in ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/03/28/the-mcdonalds-breakfast-at-any-cost-calculator/ Written in PHP and tailored to my needs, Avocado is a free lightweight personal online image gallery application I have been working on. I'll be using it for my own gallery, so you can see it in action there. This first release of Avocado is a beta version, 0.5, and it's ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/03/07/avocado/ Tonight, viewers of Today Tonight were in for a treat: Australia's psychic of the year, Stacey Demarco (who technically calls herself a witch), offered her predictions for the coming year. As the presenter promised, the details really were spine-tingling. There was one especially serious prediction, concerning Australian Prime Minister Kevin ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/01/26/psychic-predictions/ Today's episode of Today Tonight included a segment which featured a number of classic shonky current affair themes: today's children being too insulated, political correctness gone mad, youth gone wild. It was rather impressive for a total non-news story. The start of the segment included the presenter making a comment ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/01/05/facts-and-figures/ The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought by Japan and China between 1937 and 1945, around the same time as (but starting before) World War II. There is a collection of civil defence posters from 1938 on the National Archives of Japan website. They're available in ultra high resolution but at ... http://www.maestrosync.com/archives/2009/01/04/1938-japanese-civil-defence-posters/