Kitta

Back to The Future

When I first registered the domain Kitta.net and started blogging, I used Greymatter. If you know what Greymatter was, you probably laughed and need to start using retinol; if you don’t, be glad that you never had to use it and setting up a blog these days is as easy as a 5-minute install or signing up for Tumblr.

I used it for about a year before switching to B2/Cafelog, then WordPress version 0.71, which was released in June 2003, and I have been using WordPress for over 21 years. The reason why I switched was due to a critical database error, which turned all my former Greymatter-run blog posts into mush. For years I thought the mush was unretrievable, until recently when I went way back, way way back, using the Way Back Machine and found all the old blog posts that I assumed were lost forever in the ether of the internet.

I found funny entries, poorly written entries, whiny entries and entries which sparked memories. Amongst them all, I found my first ever blog post at Kitta.net, posted when I moved from a shared host on a subdomain to my very own domain.

Date: 07/25/2002
Entry: “Welcome (back) to greymatter”

After a lot of waiting…

Swearing, things not working, domain registrations not happening – and basically things going wrong. My site, kitta.net, is now online.

*sighs in relief*

Anyways, I hope you like my site. There are still some content I need to do, like photos, hosting and all that. I wont even try to do it tonight, I’m dead – I have to go out soon too, my brother wants me to buy him some fudge hair dye. He wants red, green and blue streaks in his hair. I’m gonna steal some of the red and do some in mine =) Well, leave me a comment or a tag, I wanna know what you all think. Thankx everyone.

P.S. there’s 8 days till my birthday, and I still have no idea what I’m doing for it lol.

Kitta xoxox

I know. It was a masterpiece. I would have been around 21 at the time, and my use of ‘x’ instead of ‘s’ in thanks makes adult me cringe.

And I did eventually dye my hair red and it’s also currently red.

Catfishing

Let me dust off the old blog (seven years after my last post) to bring you a hilarious tale of how I was accused of using my own photos to catfish on Reddit.

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of catfishers using my photos and identity to catch victims hundreds of times over the seventeen years my website has been active. Normally, someone contacts me via my email address or social media accounts to alert me about a faker or a catfisher. I then report the catfisher using my photos and/or identity on whatever website they used me on. Eww. That sounds dirty. This used to happen a few times a week when my blog was active, but these days I have someone contacting me maybe once a month to report someone using my photos or identity. You know how it is estimated the average person spends five years waiting in lines and queues in their lifetime, I wonder how long I will spend replying, reporting, threatening legal action, etc catfishers who use my photos?

Recently I was returning to Perth from a holiday in Bali. As I was about to board the plane I jumped on the wifi to soak up some sweet delicious data before boarding a flying metal machine and staring at the heat cream adverts in Balinese on the overhead compartments for hours, wondering exactly what the cream is meant to heat and why the girl in the advert was smiling in a sly manner. My money is on boobs. I checked all the usual suspects; Instacrack, Facepalmbook, YouTubbin and of course my beloved, Reddit. I noticed a direct message, which was new, no one ever contacts me on Reddit. I rarely post something of substance. I mainly lurk, upvote dog pics or gaming-related posts and make sarcastic comments. I was surprised to see some random wanting to message me. Maybe they want to send me a photo of their dog because said dog is so cute? Maybe they knew the worlds best cookie recipe to eat while gaming?

I opened the direct message in anticipation and was greeted with the following exchange…

Continue reading “Catfishing”

Let It Snow

candy cane

Happy holidays!

It normally doesn’t snow down under in sunny Perth, Western Australia – unless you count fake snow made with diapers and water – and we tend to spend our holidays trying to escape the heat while dreaming of a white Christmas. To rectify this predicament, I have installed the Snow Storm WordPress plugin to simulate cyber snow on my website. Please try to refrain from licking the screen.

Why David Sedaris Doesn't Use Twitter

I was lusting after the buttery popcorn infiltrating my nostrils as I waited in line to have my book signed by David Sedaris. My eyes drifted towards the sign that read ‘BAR UPSTAIRS’ and ‘NO CAMERAS OR PHOTOS’ in threatening capitals. Devar asked me what I was going to say as he ignored the threatening sign and took a photo of the line. I didn’t know. Although he is one of my favourite authors, I assumed he would ask the typical questions authors ask their adoring fans – “know any good jokes?” or “what do you do?” – and I wanted to get it over and done with to reduce the risk of saying something foolish. Like the lady in front of me who was contemplating boasting about how she named her imaginary boyfriend after him. David started signing my book, he asked me how much money I earn and in return I asked what he thought of Australia. “It is expensive” he said, “and hot” I added, just in case he was needing another adjective to explain Australia. It had been quite humid that day and Perthians love to complain about the weather. My interaction with him was short and sweet, he wrote “I’m so happy you can walk” in one of my books and drew a dog in another book.

The show consisted of David reading essays from The New Yorker, a piece he wrote for British paper entitled ‘If I Could Change The World’, diary entries and questions from the audience. The most amusing part of the show was a story about his female friend, who preferred to remain nameless, she also preferred to catch her poop in her hand when using the toilet instead of letting it make a horrid plop sound in the toilet bowl. That would be so embarrassing.

During the show Mark Trammell replied to my tweet, “Get him on Twitter!” he exclaimed. After two glasses of wine I decided to line up again after the show to ask David why he doesn’t join in on the Twitter fun and tweet about eating sandwiches, crazy dreams he had last night, how losing socks really sucks and other random observations or thoughts in 140 characters or less. I didn’t ask it in that way. It escaped my mouth in a more “me again, so that Twitter thing, a guy I follow who works there wants to know why you don’t do it?” manner of speaking. He hungrily consumed a plate of chorizo and salad had been placed in front of him while I asked my twittastic question. He made the ‘let me just finish chewing this’ universal motion and then tried to explain the Twitter predicament. Apparently someone had already created a David Sedaris account on Twitter, he then paid someone to switch the account over to him, but didn’t really know what it was or what to do with it once it was his. So there it sits, with over 4000+ followers and no actual tweets. I tried to convince him he should tweet (join the cool kids, drink the koolaid, follow the leader) but he didn’t seem convinced. I wanted to say “no one understands Twitter, David” but I didn’t want to scare him with inception like comments. I instead urged him to tweet and wrote down my username and the address of my account in case he wanted to see what it was all about and required guidance. In that moment I thought of myself as a sort of Mother Teresa of tweeting – I could guide him into over one million followers and we would DM about what type of background colour he should use. It would be awesome.

As he put another forkful of sausage into his mouth I came back to reality and thanked him for the performance as he waved on the next question. Later I pondered if he would screw up the piece of paper from the Aussie girl who totally thought he should tweet or figure out what Twitter was at least. It then occurred to me the kind of subjects I tweet about.

So if you’re ever at a David Sedaris show or book signing and he mentions this strange Australian girl who tweets too much about Skyrim or boobs and tried to ~~force~~ convince him that Twitter was the shit and he ~~laughed about it later in his hotel room~~ wasn’t convinced. Please don’t judge me. At least I’m not the girl who pooped into her hand and gently lowered it into the toilet bowl because she didn’t want it to make that socially unacceptable plop sound in the toilet bowl.

If I was her I would at least tweet about it.

TopGeek 2.0

Australia’s second largest DSL broadband provider, iiNet, has announced the return of the TopGeek competition. I entered the iiNet TopGeek competition last year and after several rigorous geeky challenges, where I invented an iPhone app and turned my friends into zombies, I leveled up and made it into the top ten before I took an arrow in the knee, resulting in game over. In the end there could only be one Top Geek, that honour went to Cassandra James, a talented comic book artist from Tasmania.

TopGeek 2.0 follows last year’s highly successful inaugural contest, and will once again see geeks of all types show off their geeky prowess in an attempt to take out the title of Australia’s next TopGeek. The winner will also score an all-expenses paid trip to attend one of four geeky events – including ComicCon, Consumer Electronic Show, South by Southwest or Penny Arcade Expo. Last year’s winner will head to San Diego in July for ComicCon 2012. She’ll report back to TopGeek HQ with all the comic news and make you wish you were there, and you could be, if you enter TopGeek!

I won’t be entering the TopGeek 2.0 competition this year, instead, I shall be judging it along with last years finalists, Andy Wells, Jason Cartwright, Jess Watson and Cassandra James.

This year the competition encourages everyone to discover their inner geek and embrace it, as geeks come in all varieties. The iiNet crew behind TopGeek has introduced multiple categories – including art, tech, fandom, gamer and internet – bigger and better challenges, TopGeek TV and runner-up prizes. I’m looking forward to TopGeek TV, a fortnightly series hosted by award-winning comedian and self-proclaimed geek, Lawrence Leung. The series will take a closer look at the nerdy stories behind the competition and the geeky finalists.

As a Fandom category judge, I’m looking forward to seeing the creative and geeky entries. I’ll be picking contestants to go through to the next round, show off their unique geeky talents, and compete in knockout challenges before battling it out during an epic final event on May 10th, 2012. The last geek standing will be crowned Australia’s ultimate TopGeek and winner. I’m looking for something that sets the contestants apart from the cookie-cutter-hipster-geek-is-cool-now type of geek – contributing to an open source project, running a meet-up or group, designing or developing a website from scratch, building your own robot butler, learning for fun not profit, amassing thousands of online followers, designing you own costumes, changing the world and thinking outside of the box. Pro tip: You don’t just watch/play/read/collect [insert whatever geeky interest here] you live and breathe it, you’re THE BIGGEST FAN and have amassed your own army of fans for your aforementioned fandom. Your profile should describe your geeky attributes and make me want to see more of you. Last years top twenty set the bar pretty high.

The search to find the Australia’s most talented geek is currently taking submissions. If you’re a geek (or you know a worthy geeky) head the the iiNet TopGeek 2.0 website. Good luck, geeks!

Complimentary Spam

I’ve received an enormous amount of spam comments on my blog – over 740,000 spam comments have been caught thanks to Akismet – blog comment spam was a hot topic at the October Perth WordPress Meetup. I remember the days when blogs were spam free, roaming the internet without a care in the world, and you didn’t have to be concerned if a comment was real or spam. Over the last few years there has been an influx of what I like to call complimentary spam comments. To the untrained eye these comments seem to look and act like real comments, however, they are complimenting the author to try and secure comment moderation approval. The spam filled website link or fake email address is normally a dead giveaway.

“I love this site/post/opinion, you’re awesome/great/informative!”

I know a few bloggers who approve such comments and remove offending website address. A comments is a comment, right?

A few months ago I received a spam comment that caught my eye, it’s the holy grail of spam comments…

Continue reading “Complimentary Spam”

Open For Business

Earlier this year I moved to the city to be closer to friends, study and work opportunities. My address now contains the words and numbers ‘Perth 6000’, when I was young I assumed anyone who lived in the 6000 postcode wore top hats and swam in pools full of money like on Duck Tales. Silly young me didn’t realise that anyone can live in the city, if they pay a decent amount to rent for a small apartment in a complex with a shared pool that is full of water instead of money. Top hats are optional.

Living in the city has its pros and cons…

Pro: Ten minute walk to Murray Street.
Con: Ten minute walk home at 1am will might result in a brisk mugging or assault.

Pro: Closer to friends.
Con: Further away from family.

Pro: The man with a cockatoo in a basket on his bike is cool.
Con: The crazy flag lady is not cool. Run away.

Pro: The apartment is nice and has faster internet.
Con: IT DOESN’T HAVE A BATH TUB, WHY DID I AGREE TO A BATHLESS APARTMENT? NEVER EVER AGAIN. EXCLAMATION POINT. ANOTHER EXCLAMATION POINT.

In the end the pros and cons level out. Except for the bath. I’m so traumatised about my lack of ability to relax in a bath that I ask everyone I meet if they have a bath that I could use. So far, only one person has said yes.

Although my mother worked in the city when she was in her early twenties, it didn’t help her come to terms with the CBD I now live in, full of crazy people, one way roads and stairs. Oh, don’t get her started on the stairs. There are nearly 40 of them leading up to my front door and she hates every single one of them.

As I was riding shotgun in my mothers shiny new car we passed two of the local whore houses. I gather one is like the Hungry Jacks (Burger King if you’re American) of hookers, while the other is like McDonald’s – both serve the same items and one always claims their burgers taste better.

“What is that place with the flashing lights?” asked my Mum.

“It’s a whore house” I replied, as if whore houses are on every street in every neighbourhood and everyone is cool with it.

“A what house?” she exclaimed, as if whore houses are not on every street in every neighbourhood and everyone is not cool with it.

“Hookers.”

“Huh?”

“A brothel… a place where men visit prostitutes.”

I wanted to elaborate more about the penis goes into the vagina and money is exchanged perplexities, but decided not to, I was riding in her shiny new car and she would never forgive me for tarnishing its innocence. I had already told it the petrol fairy wasn’t real when she wasn’t listening. My mother was quiet for a moment and then, in a nonchalant tone said…

“Oh, I thought it was a cafe.”

The Big Geekend 2011

I’ve finally recharged my batteries after participating in the Extra Life 24 hour gaming marathon for kids charity this weekend. Extra Life is a charity started by the Sarcastic Gamer podcast network in 2008 to raise money and awareness for cancer research for the Children’s Miracle Network. Money raised is donated to any of the hospitals that are part of the Children’s Miracle Network in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. I was part if team Big Geekend and our local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital is Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney.

Last year was crazy. We dared Antz to wear a dress, cracked an egg on Lab Mouse’s face and cut off his pony tail for donations, we were filmed by crew making a documentary on gaming while sleep deprived, live streamed, played with night vision goggles at 4am, battled Satan’s junk, gamed for 24 hours and raised over $700. Only four of us survived the night – Cuzza, Noodlez, Lab Mouse and myself – and won the game of staying awake. My key to survival was pixie sticks and Coke.

This year, team Big Geekend decided to raise the bar, we set our team goal at $1000 and I set my personal goal at $100. I’m happy to announce that we not only survived the 24 hour gaming marathon, but we beat our team goal of $1000 and I smashed my personal goal, raising over $430 for my team. Over $1,100,000 has been raised this year by Extra Life gaming teams worldwide!

Achievement unlocked: ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

I started off the gaming marathon playing Red Dead Redemption and Assassins Creed, then switched to GTA IV in an attempt to stay awake. It’s been so long since I’ve played GTA IV on Xbox, I kept shooting instead of running and accidentally shot a cop on the corner not once, but twice. I also played a lot of Glitch, Wipeout, Nyan Cat: Lost In Space and attempted to build rockets in the Kerbal Space Program while sleep deprived. That Jebediah guy is crazy. He seems to always be pretty happy about the fact that I forgot to add a parachute, smiling while he’s hurtling towards the earth, meanwhile Bill and Bob sit next to him wearing space nappies because they’re currently crapping their pants.

There were some silly moments, like when I thought I lost my glasses and they were on my face the whole time, ambulance joy rides on the beach or when I kept bending over to change Xbox games, forgetting that the live stream web camera was in front of me and flashing the internet my boobs. The lowlight for me was at 2am during a snacks and drinks run, I hoped out of a friends car and proceeded to walk into a tree branch, scrapping my head and creating a nice red bump. Walking into trees when you’re trying to stay awake for 24 hours is not recommended.

There are no 1UP’s in real life.

I want to thank all of you who stalked us on the live streams, shared and re-tweeted the donation links and a big warm cyber hug to those who donated. I’m proud to have been a part of this years event, thank you all so very much. Donations are still open, so if you have a few dollars to spare, please donate.

Can’t wait for next year, how does a goal of $3000 sound? Game on!

Fake Boobies

Have you ever wondered what I would look like with massive boobs? I’m not talking about a cup or two, I mean, MASSIVE BOOBS! Wonder no more, internet, because someone has stolen my photos, photoshopped huge boobs into the photos, and then posted them on various websites to reap the comment rewards.

The photos appeared on Model Mayhem, MySpace and BodySpace profiles a few months ago. One commenter even remarked, “Your breasts are amazing! Real breasts look better than fake ones!” and another left a compliment “you have a great upper body!!” followed by a smiley face. After lodging complaints the photos were removed from the profiles, I felt kind of cyber dirty and flattered at the same time over the photoshopped boobies incident. A few months passed. I assumed the faker had learnt their lesson about stealing photos and photoshopping fake boobs into them.

Until a few days ago, when I received an email from Eric, who spotted the photos being used again on another BodySpace profile. The boobs are back and they’re bigger than ever!
Continue reading “Fake Boobies”

Blogiversary 9.0

Today mark my 9th Blogiversary. I registered the domain Kitta.net nine years ago today and have been blogging sporadically ever since.

Here are some Lego themed cyber cupcakes to celebrate the event.