the Instant Case
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the Instant Case, Personal blog for Bryn Davies. Law, software, gaming.
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Technical
This flavour is derived from "Easy-Kubrick" for Blosxom by Michael Calleia, based on Sivert's version for Textpattern, based on Michael Heilemann's original for Wordpress.
Fri, 05 Sep 2008
Little Nemo In Slumberland
Winsor McCay's opus, Little Nemo did not enjoy great popular acclaim during its original run 1905-1913. However, there's a beauty about it that makes me suspect this was due to it being ahead of its time as opposed to any material defect.
Today the strip enjoys a prominent critical following, with Fantagraphics and Taschen issuing editions and it's influence has been seen in works such as Alan Moore's Promethea (definitely in my top 5), Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen and even a work of erotica, Little Ego by Vittorio Giardino.
Little Nemo is beautifully drawn, intricate, whimsical, frightening, dreamlike and uplifting. It's also, at least for the original run, out of copyright. Do yourself a favor and take a look.
Mon, 01 Sep 2008
Tzatziki
Tzatziki is my favourite food in the meze family (I actually like the Turkish variation, cajik, best of all - it's a little thinner). It's easy to make (particularly if you're ghetto like me and just combine 150g low fat greek yoghurt with 65g grated cucumber and garlic to taste - about 200 calories) or you can just follow a proper recipe with drained yoghurt, lemon juice, olive oil etc.
Instead of wasting money on "pita crisps", just grab some pita from your local bakery (Omara - 69c for 5 the day after they were baked, what a savings) and toss them in a sandwich press until the water leaves them. Better result than commercial, imho.
Fri, 29 Aug 2008
"The Vioxx 'V' Squad: Reps From Another Universe"
An interesting rep training video from Merck. Keep in mind they eventually withdrew this product ("voluntarily") in 2004 because of cardio problems linked to long-term high dose use.
The weird "mission" style orientation, the jargon, the general bullshit level reminds me of nothing so much as internal Scientology videos.
Pharma marketing annoys the hell out of me, because patient outcomes are too important to stake on who has the glossier brochure, or in this example, the most ridiculous "The Matrix" inspired training program. That's big business for you though.
p.s. I! BU! PROFEN!
Sat, 23 Aug 2008
Seen in a community law zine:
May 2008 edition, back page quiz:
"2: I recently retired as a justice of the High Court. Who am I? (Clue: I am fat and mean.)"
(Rot13 Answer: Vna Pnyyvana)
Wed, 13 Aug 2008
PidginEmote
I wrote a very simple blosxom plugin that lets me integrate pidgin emoticon themes. It's a bit yucky and makes some possibly unwarranted assumptions about file format, but I think it's a lot nicer than a few of the alternatives like smilefie (no disrespect!) and it can load SAGF directly.
Code release tomorrow, if I have time.
Heroes - Judge Stern
Judge Herbert J. Stern was a US District Judge for New Jersey between 1973 and 1987. In 1979, he was named US Judge for Berlin for it's one sitting - United States v. Tiede (86 FRD 227). This court existed by virtue of Berlin's formal status as "occupied", and was convened because of West German reluctance to prosecute.
In Robert M. Cover's Violence and the Word (Yale Law Journal, V95: 1601, 1986), there is an excerpt of his sentencing of skyjacker Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede. At this point, Stern has already fought a protracted battle over whether a jury trial should be granted and whether the U.S. Constitution was to govern the proceedings. It is a rare case of cracks emerging in what appears usually to be a smoothly coordinated mechanism of punishment.
"Gentlemen [addressing the State Department and Justice Department lawyers], I will not give you this defendant. . . . I have kept him in your custody now for nine months, nearly. . . . You have persuaded me. I believe, now, that you recognize no limitations of due process. . . .
I don't have to be a great prophet to understand that there is probably not a great future for the United States Court for Berlin here. [Stern had just been officially "ordered" not to proceed with a civil case brought against the United States on an unrelated matter.] . . .
Under those circumstances, who will be here to protect Tiede if I give him to you for four years? Viewing the Constitution as non-existent, considering yourselves not restrained in any way, who will stand between you and him? What judge? What independent magistrate do you have here? What independent magistrate will you permit here?
When a judge sentences, he commits a defendant to the custody — in the United States he says, 'I commit you to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States' — et cetera. Here I suppose he says, I commit to the custody of the Commandant, or the Secretary of State, or whatever . . . I will not do it. Not under these circumstances. . . .
I sentence the defendant to time served. You . . . are a free man right now."
I have to admit, I tear up a little bit at "I will not do it." That's principle.
Mon, 04 Aug 2008
Bleh, or The Case of the Missing Mason
I thought I'd found a weak piece of argument in the judgment of Mason J in The Tasmanian Dam Case ( 158 CLR 1 ). I mentioned it in passing to the lecturer during break, and then she called on me to explain it during the second half.
I wasn't prepared and flubbed the explanation. Other people rightly called me on it, and now I look stupid. Coming off losing the witnessing practice round (which was quite funny, all the same), today has not been a good communication day for me.
For the sake of posterity, I am going to try and explain what I meant.
Mason J, @ [9]:
It is submitted that the suggested requirement that the subject matter must be "of international concern" means that it must be international in character in the sense that there is a mutuality of interest or benefit in the observance of the provisions of the convention. Thus, we are invited to say that a convention by which the contracting parties agree to enact domestic laws requiring persons in motor vehicles to wear seat belts does not deal with a matter of international concern because no nation can derive a benefit from the wearing of seat belts in another country. This is by no means self-evident. Drivers and passengers cross international boundaries. They are likely to observe in other countries the practices which they observe at home. International cooperation resulting in a convention insisting on compliance with uniform safety standards may well benefit all countries. The illustration is instructive because it demonstrates how difficult it is to say with accuracy of any treaty or convention that observance of its provisions will not benefit a contracting party.
I read this as follows:
- It is implicitly claimed that some treaties lack an international character (here, a mutuality of interest or benefit in the observence of their provisions).
- For example, a treaty regarding the domestic use of seatbelts.
- But this treaty does indeed have such character.
- *waves hands*
- It is difficult to predict if and how a treaty will benefit its signatories.
Justice Mason is correct both in saying that the benefits of treaty can be difficult to predict and that the hypothesised seatbelts treaty has benefits of an international nature, but this isn't, as I understand it, the question being put forward by Tasmania. In fact, the digression does not speak to the first point at all. If the seatbelt treaty provides benefits of an international character, it is worthless to discuss it in the cause of determining whether a formulation grounded in the idea of mutuality of interest or benefit is the correct construction of "international concern". It is comparable to producing a multitude of white swans in an attempt to disprove the existence of the black. What is needed is an example that lacks what Tasmania claims to be the defining characteristic, and then a verdict on whether it nonetheless maintains the dependent characteristic.
Paragraph ten goes on to argue that the existence of international co-operation necessarily connotes international character, a different view of the term which I do not necessarily disagree with. This answers the question put at [9], and it does so without a requirement to consider benefits at all. In my humble opinion, a better framing of the ninth and tenth paragraphs would have been to remove the seatbelt analogy from under the proposed construction of "international concern", cutting from the end of the first sentence of paragraph nine to the beginning of ten.
Wed, 30 Jul 2008
Annoying Chinese Advertisement
Hengyuanxiang, a leading Chinese wool producer and clothing retailer, is a major sponsor of the Beijing Olympics. And this is not the first time the company has caused Olympic-related friction.
This year it was forced to pull a commercial described as "the most excruciatingly annoying ad on Chinese TV".
"When they first saw the ad, some people thought their TV sets were broken," The Wall Street Journal reported.
The 60-second commercial promoting the Olympic sponsorship deal featured what the newspaper described as a "squeaky girl's voice [that] chirps out a triplicate list of each of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, interspersed with repetitions of the company's slogan by an adult voice".
The newspaper said the ad was so bad that other advertisers using the same TV channel complained because viewers were changing stations as soon as the spot appeared.
-- The Age
Wed, 16 Jul 2008
Webcomic Pick of 2008 - Kate Beaton
Webcomics are hard. Writing is hard. Writing comedy is arguably harder, and intelligent comedy perhaps hardest yet. Drawing is also equally difficult.
I don't read a lot of webcomics anymore. There are a few that I'll put aside time for however - Achewood, Girl Genius, Erfworld (uneven), The Non-Adventures of Wonderella and Penny Arcade. There was a time when this list would have been about twenty comics long, and I'm very reluctant to add anything new to it.
That said, I recommend Kate Beaton's work, reminiscent in some ways of a beloved paper comic, without hesitation. It really is very good.
My only complaint is that I wish Kate would watermark her comics. It took me an awfully long time to figure out who she was after I saw her "George IV, You Are Too Fat To Be King" in a forum signature.
Tue, 15 Jul 2008
Cutter / Plotter
This is coming along too - I have the blade mounted up, etc, and actually cutting acetate! Of course, once it cuts something out entirely, the blade tends to tear against the hole, and there are some problems with the scratch-guard I built ( vis if it extends all the way on both sides, the sandground rollers can no longer get traction on the paper - not doing so exposes the ends and also means uneven paper pressure ).
People cutting adhesive backed vinyl don't have this problem because the vinyl is on a substrate. Perhaps I need to bond the acetate to heavy cardboard with spray adhesive or something.
Escalator (Comic Anthology)
This is an anthology of work by Brandon Graham, an independent comics artist. The art is very good, and the stories, while short, are interesting and serve as a workable substrate for the visuals. Interesting to note the change in tone in the two stories he composed for Heavy Metal magazine ( toned catholic buttocks ).
Incidently, this tag isn't just comic reviews, its just that I can blast through a comic in a day or two, everything else takes longer. I'm still reading The Justice Game, Heavy Weather and (struggling with) Ulyssees.
Thu, 10 Jul 2008
Smax (Graphic Novel)
A lovingly crafted and rendered homage to fantasy and the comic book. A highly intertextual tale of dragonslaying, patricide, questing and giant blue incest.
The Ring (Manga) Vol. 1
Underwhelming, protagonists extremely unsympathetic.
Thu, 03 Jul 2008
Hurf Durf
Uni results are in:
| Code | Semester | Year | Description | Mark | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 733511 | 1 | 2008 | Principles of Public Law | 078 | H2A |
| 733512 | 1 | 2008 | Torts | 071 | H2B |
| 733513 | 1 | 2008 | Obligations | 080 | H1 |
| 733514 | 1 | 2008 | Dispute Resolution | 079 | H2A |
I spent all of yesterday wrestling with a decrepit HP printer (7550a), including having to build it a new cable. The HP hardware is really weird and has strange ideas about the correct functioning of XON/XOFF.
It now seems to be printing some stuff ok ( "The Clash" logo ), and some stuff not so ok ( Burmese National League for Democracy Peacock - maybe my printer is a fascist? ). That's good enough for me though, so I've ordered a blade holder and a set of carbide blades from Hong Kong. When this whole thing finishes up, I'll write an article on converting old plotters into stencil cutters.
Sun, 29 Jun 2008
Clash on Broadway
As the other reviewer said, this is probably the best bargain on the iTunes Australia store right now (if you like The Clash) - $16.99 for a three disc career retrospective that has all the important songs and a bunch of single only material. Not sure why it's so cheap, but get it while you can.
Wed, 18 Jun 2008
Magneto Was Right
"Commission" for Dre.
Original comic frame:
Shirt:
The print went really well, at least for the face. It came out really crisply. The lettering was alright too, although the paint mix was a bit thin. I think I'm going to swear off mixing my own textile medium. The big problem was that I stupidly went to seal it before it was fully hardened, and I think the calico I was using was dusty - a bunch of dust fused into the paint, which I had to pick out with jewelers loupe and tweezers. Goddamn. Next time, I will iron from the inside out.
This isn't my pattern, by the way - you used to be able to get these on CafePress before Marvel brought down the hammer.
Somethingawful Forums Differentiated
I don't think this will make sense to anyone not from S-A.
Mon, 09 Jun 2008
Something is eating all my bandwidth.
And I have no idea what. As a pre-emptive step, I'm shaping my machine for a while. There's an interesting article on doing this on OSX using the BSD dummynet interface here.
Sun, 08 Jun 2008
Straight Talking Lords
I think I've discussed my love of the straight talking, and perhaps slightly insane, Law Lords before. Here's another example, this one from Froom v Butcher, [1976] 1 QB 286, one of the "seatbelt cases", and a clear announcement that damage reductions for contributory negligence were about who caused the harm, not who caused the accident:
... Quite a lot of people, however, think differently about seat belts. Some are like the plaintiff. They think that they would be less likely to be injured if they were thrown clear than if they were strapped in. They would be wrong. -- Lord Denning
"They would be wrong." has to be the judicial equivalent of 
Fri, 06 Jun 2008
Mac Screensavers
I've re-added the "fruit" of my 2004 screensaver writing binge to the software page, for what it's worth. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who has ever used these.
Updates on the Graffiti thing
Since I posted my trite and overwrought letter to the justice department here, I should mention that they've actually responded with two well thought out, polite and reasoned letters, so that's great. Unfortunately, in the first one I somehow morphed into "Ms. Bryn Davies" and now in the second "Ms. Byrn Davies".
Oh well. If the world ever turns into a 1984 style dystopia, I guess that's one more watch list I'm not on.
The letters are in confidence, but I'm sure I can disclose that at this time, Justice has no plans to revisit the legislation or the consultative process, but that they might do so in the future.
Wed, 04 Jun 2008
Law Smackdown
From the sixth Sir David Williams Lecture, "The Rule of Law", Lord Bingham of Cornhill:
In our country, and in the United States, decisions have been made of which neither country can be proud.48
48In this country, one would instance R v Halliday [1916] 1 KB 738, [1917] AC 260 and Liversidge v Anderson [1942] AC 206; in the United States, notably, Korematsu v United States 323 US 214 (1944) a decision which Scalia J has put on a par with that in Dred Scott, thereby assigning it to the lowest circle in Hades.
Sun, 01 Jun 2008
Re: Moe-tan
股間に装着された中華キャノンが、オレの最終兵器だ。
"My ultimate weapon is the Chinese cannon attached to my groin."
Sat, 31 May 2008
Moe-tan's Revenge
This is a comment I posted on Kotaku, in response to the news that another jailbait English tutorial program is being published for the Nintendo DS.
Once upon a time, I spent two years in Japan on a working holiday teaching English. I taught at a junior highschool.
A lot of the lesson plans were really boring, so I was always on the lookout for new materials. One night, I was browsing the language section at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Kawagoe, and I saw one of these "Moe English" books ("Moe-tan: Methodology of English, the Academic Necessity"). I opened it, and the first example sentence was something like, "I will destroy the world with my army of killer robots."
"Fuck yes!" I thought, "These will be great." I bought one, and the girl behind the counter wrapping it up in brown paper didn't really tip me off, because they do that for everything.
Fast forward to Monday, and I threw it down on my hardass co-teacher's desk. "We're going to find a way to use some of this vocabulary. Kids love robots." He opened it at random to see "Magical Henshin #11", a picture of a ten year old girl having her bare ass molested by a wisp of smoke or something. Silence. Throat clearing. "X-sensei, I'm not sure this appropriate."
In closing screw the makers of this entire segment of the educational sector for what was possibly the most embarassing thing that has happened to me at work, ever.
Go with WzDD
WzDD and I had a game on IGS, and apart from the two these-are-the-rules games I've had at university, this was my first game against someone who wasn't Cassie. As you can see, it was very narrowly contested. 
White took 9 prisoners, Black 1.
I just crept ahead as White by 2.5 points ( I think - I hate scoring this game ). If I could have kept my spoilers at E8-9 alive, it would have been an avalanche! While I'm wishing, I'd like a pony.
Fri, 30 May 2008
Attn: Melbourne law students.
The vending machine on 2F is stocked with chunky Kit-Kat caramels for $2.20, which come with a code for a $1.69 iTunes song. If you buy music off iTunes, and you think an effective 51c pricepoint counters the fact they're caramel, hit them up.
There is of course a catch, and it's that you can only load 5 per iTunes account. I used mine to buy the Sexual Healing B-Side from King of the Mountain, because I have no shame and I'll pick up the A when I get Aerial after the exams.
Tue, 27 May 2008
Virtual marker by colour capture.
I've written some stuff in processing that lets you draw realtime marker graffiti via webcam, by clicking on something and then using it to draw in the air. It uses colour matching, and it's pretty gross and simplistic.
Yeah, I guess it's a totally ghetto and horrible version of Ethan Roth's graffiti analysis capture idea.
Here's a fifteen second clip:
Youtube.
Quicktime.
Sun, 25 May 2008
Consenting to Form Contracts, Randy E. Barnett
(2002) 71 Fordham Law Review 627
But the law does not, and should not, bar all assumptions of risk. Hard as this may be to believe, I know of people who attach waxed boards to their feet and propel themselves down slippery snow and tree covered mountains, an activity that kills or injures many people every year. Others for fun freely jump out of airplanes expecting their fall to be slowed by a large piece of fabric that they carry in a sack. (I am not making this up.)
Cantonese for the young Imperialist
From Walter Brooks Brouner's "Chinese Made Easy", 1904.
Reminds me a little of a controversy while I was in Japan about an English school that taught employers how to effectively bully English speaking workers in their own language. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any mention of it on google anymore.
My order from DealExtreme arrived.
All the bits and pieces are there, and it was well packed too. While this would seem to indicate the too-good-to-be-true deal is in fact true, I wonder how much money they lost on the transaction.
Wed, 21 May 2008
Did I win?
Today may (or may not) have been a big milestone in my Go play. I think I won a game against Go169 on my Palm, but I'm a little unsure. This would be the first time I've beaten... anything. Yes, I am aware of the lamentable state of Go AI. I am just that bad.
No handicap, 13 x 13.
I made a lot of mistakes, passed and then had White move, and even used the undo button twice.
*guilty*
The reason I'm unsure if I won or not is down to scoring. With the dead groups killed, I have a territory of 48, less 16 stones captured by team White for 32. White has 30, less 5 stones I captured for 25. The difference is 7 moku minus 6.5 komi. I win by half a point.
Go169 thinks I win by 18.5 points, for reasons known only to it and the eldritch horrors of the night.
Sente Goban seems to think 12.5, when I backfill the captures onto the board, mark dead groups and then order a count.
What's going on!!
edit: Thanks to WzDD and Hiroki Mori who pointed out I was forgetting to fill territory with the stones from the killed groups. After doing that and resquaring the board, I get Black 48 - 16 - 3 = 29 against White 30 - 5 - 14 + 6.5 = 17.5 for an 11.5 moku win.
Tue, 20 May 2008
.
woke up this morning
feeling excellent
picked up the telephone
dialed the number of
my Equal Opportunity employer
to inform him
I will not be in to work today
"Are you feeling sick?" the boss asked me
"No sir," I replied,
"I am feeling too good
to report to work today.
if I feel sick tomorrow,
I will come in early!"
— Pedro Pietri
Sun, 18 May 2008
MrBaliHai's guide to Psychotronic Movies on Archive.org
Christmas came early this year? A list of all the movies available freely on Archive.org that also feature in Michael J. Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.
How great is this! Especially after I tried and failed to talk Cassie into buying a copy of Hammer Films' awful The Satanic Rites of Dracula on DVD with me on Friday night.
Fri, 16 May 2008
User created content, aka "Why we can't have nice things":
From the IMDB page for Lord of the Flies (1963):
"Plot Keywords: Dead Children | Overweight Child | Bare Butt | All Male Cast | Disturbing more >"
Indeed, these are truly the core themes of this monumental work of English Literature.
You're making a mockery of the product!
Sun, 11 May 2008
Classical Music
Sometimes, when I'm sick or upset, I like to listen to classical music - usually Sky.Fm's 'Mostly Classical', because my ISP restreams it as free bandwidth.
The third song I heard after turning it on tonight was Handel's Water Music Suite #2, one of my favourite pieces of music. What are the odds of this happening?
Well, despite the sheer amount of music output by classical composers in Handel's period, pretty good, and largely because music stations are run by people, who play records selected by A&R folks, who listen to tapes from performers who read from sheet music republished by printers. Each have preferences and tastes as to what they like, and to some extent, those are formed by the music they themselves were exposed to. Is the ongoing popularity of say, the Water Music Suite or the Brandenburg Concerto #2 (a record so good we sent it into space) a true barometer of quality, or are these pieces in the grip of a self-fulfilling prophepopularity? Is that even a word? (Spoiler: no.)
Where am I even going with this? Who knows.
Sat, 10 May 2008
Some kind of Hong-Kong treasure house...
Your one stop shop for console bits and pieces... PSP service mode batteries... pig shaped flashlights... rifle scopes??? I'm not quite sure what the unifying factor is here, but they seem to have a lot of... stuff. A lot of it is quite interesting!
There are a few sites around like this, and it's always interesting to see wht the skunkworks of HK are churning up, often being produced side by side in the factories that provide the "name brand" good we buy in western stores. This one has free worldwide shipping and no minimum order quantities though, so I bought a pair of Triwing screwdrivers for $1.49. These are about $7 each from somewhere like Techstuff. Let's see if they turn up!
Completed: Cave Story (Easy)
Cave Story ( 洞窟物語, Dōkutsu Monogatari ) is a freeware videogame written by one guy, Daisuke Amaya ( "Pixel" ) over five years. It is excellent, and is pretty much the only game I have forced myself to make time for since I started in law school. I highly recommend everyone plays it.
I finally finished it this morning while eating breakfast, and I am very glad I did. I've played without the use of spoilers or guides, although I did go looking for help on one or two things, and I'd heard a fair few spoilers just floating around the gamer scene. With what I know however, I can say that I took the "easy" route through the game.
Thank you, Pixel!
[/games/completed] permanent link
Tue, 06 May 2008
Life in Japan
From the adorable Yotsuba-to Volume 1, Number 4 ( ed note: don't forget they read right to left ) - I think this sums up the experience of being tall in Japan quite well.
Gaoooo,
Bryn.
p.s.
Sun, 27 Apr 2008
eels at the Palais
It was so good. It was all so good. Everyone who wasn't there was chumped.
Highlights include E and The Chet switching places several times without dropping the beat on 'Flyswatter' and E calling out 'Drunk Asshole Man'.
Tue, 22 Apr 2008
Some nice new Tarot designs.
Despite having 'history of occultism' in my profile, I rarely get a chance to post about it. After someone posted some terribly mind-bending SHODAN/GlaDOS slash art, I poked around the rest of the artist's site, and found some nice new card designs.
Egypt Urnash - warning, contains breasts and Furries.
In particular, I like her Three of Cups (nsfw - breasts, serpent girls) which looks like something Josh Agle would paint after a night on the town with Alan Moore.