The Grax Domain

28 Jan 2007 Hard evidence of global warming

I remember a time in the south of England where in January the weather was very cold, grey and miserable. The only sign that Winter was over and Spring was beginning (besides looking at your calendar) was by the sign of the humble daffodil popping up everywhere.

These yellow-flowering weeds would normally show their faces around March time and die off around April time, the Easter season. This is tradition, this is how the world is suppose to work. End of discussion.

This is what I saw today outside on a not-so-cold January day...





Don't you people realise what this means?! Daffodils in January?!? IT'S GLOBAL WARMING HAPPENING IN FRONT OF OUR EYES!! THE EARTH IS COOKING LIKE AN OVEN DAMMIT!!

WE'RE ALL DOOMED!! DOOMED!! DOOMED TO THE POWER OF THREE!!! DOOOOOOOMMMMMMMEEDD!!!!!1

27 Jan 2007 Sketch: Showdown

A new year a new doodle. I knocked this doodle up whilst I was at work (I think I was on hold on the phone or something.) Just something to pad things out a bit:

Showdown at The Art of Grax

24 Jan 2007 Super Heroes and Villains: Who am I?

Superhero

Your results:
you are Spider-Man



Blimey!



Super Villain

Your results:
you are Magneto



Well I never!

19 Jan 2007 The day The Grax Domain was famous

A few months ago I submitted The Grax Domain to I Talk 2 Much, a site that reviews other site and give them some critical pointers. Today I got my review from Heartless Lass and I did feel good about it. Her main pointers included "Not boring, but not exciting", "had some nice touches to it (namely the theme preview pop-up)", "had fun with the Magic 8 Ball", and "need more interesting flash than finding love or making a cup of tea". Overall I got 1 smack out of 5, which was better than I thought it would be, I was expecting a kick in the nuts.

Now you'd think that this would be enough excitement a site should have for one day. Oh no, it gets better than that.

Later one today my site got hacked.

A humble little site like The Grax Domain, getting hacked by some punk-ass kid with a kiddie-script that was probably found online and ran the script on his PC while he was jacking off to his latest daily harvest of pornography wearing his mummy's bra and panties. You can only imagine how happy that make me. And he (or she, equal rights and all) managed to pull the old 'index page switcharoo' trick on me, leaving other files intact. How talented. Truely I am blessed.

Think of the ratings!

Naturally when the people at I Talk 2 Much found out my page was hacked they rightly crossed out my review (with a strike tag) and said "Fuck off. kthxbia", thusly screwing over my credibility there and no doubt screwing my chances for a re-review in the near future. But I don't mind. I'm still feeling the high that is my site being hack. How many people can say that? I think I'll go and buy a lottery ticket tomorrow, I wanna use my lucky vibes while I still got them.

This stuff is liquid gold!

So I want to thank everyone at I Talk 2 Much for all the useful comments, I've taken them on board. But I want to give a special thanks to my hacker, Mr.BuRzUm, who has not only blessed my site, but many other sites with his 'leet' skills and his trademark front page. I wish everyone to join me in his appraisal. Thanks every so much Mr.BuRzUm, ya numpty!


That Mr.BuRzUm, what a guy (or girl). There's just not enough nice things to say about this legendary hacker. I'm feel all glowy inside.

Yes, we have no bananas!

17 Jan 2007 New Skin: Pink Angel

Feeling inspired I have whipped up a new skin to go onto this site called Pink Angel. You can view it by clicking on the Pink Angel link underneath the navigation buttons to the side. Or to view the Pink Angel Skin click here.

It's pink and girly, but I like it too.

17 Jan 2007 Kitty go wee-wee

I had a dream last that featured a lot of things happening throughout the nights sleep. The only part that I can distinctly remember is this....

I was back at home in my old home town of Fareham. I had my work colleagues over (which is quite improbable as they all live in Andover/Basingstoke area, a good hours drive away from Fareham) and were all chilling and stuff. I went to my kitchen, which has a glass door that leads to the garden. It was raining outside.

Then I noticed a little black kitten with ginger stripe patches at the door looking wet and miserable. Feel sorry for it and wanting to so it some pet affection I let the kitten in where it shook its fur and cleaned itself up. I layed beside it in a playful manner and stroked it and played with it a bit.

Then the kitten proceeded to lift its hind leg like a dog and pee on me... For about five minutes...

I layed there unable to move whilst I was getting drenched in cat urine. I was saying things like "OK you can stop peeing on me now. Seriously, anytime now!" but furry lump ignored me and carried on with its business.

When it had finished relieving itself on me one of my work colleagues came into the kitchen to see where I went. He saw me on the floor in a fetal position (and now completely naked somehow) drenched in cat pee with the kitten next to me. He put two and two together, found the situation funny and proceeded to tell the other work colleagues what had happened, in which they found it funny too and laughed.

Understandably I felt a wee bit embarrased.

The dream carried on with the same co-worker talking about a cat he once had, my old ginger cat named Mustard (whom I have dreamed about a few times already). I can't remember exactly what he said but it came out something like this:

"So yeah I use to have this cat, it was a lovely ginger cat. Unfortunately it passed away a short while ago. But I figured that it would be most respectable just to leave him alone, just to lie there and bask in the warm sunlight. Y'know all wrapped up in a bin bag and thrown in a dustbin."

After that I woke up.

15 Jan 2007 Addiction to petitions

It started off innocently enough, I gets an email at work from a coworker. I read it and it describes an online petition, a petition of UK Road Travel Tax. It reads:

The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working Mum who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one month. On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect a NIP with your monthly bill. If you care about our freedoms and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website.

This is not on I thinks. I don't want to pay more money I thinks some more. Fortunately there's a link to the page where you can leave an online signature against this proposed tax which I promptly click through and sign.

The thing that struck me about this site was that it is an official UK government site. It's like having a direct access to No. 10 Downing Street, home to the Prime Minister directly... In a not really kind of way. I rummaged around the site some more to see what other kinds of petitions they had. They have hundreds of petitions on different categories. I found myself signing a half a dozen petitions for things I thought would make the country I live in a better place.

Although the petition for standardised umbrella sizes I feel is a little silly...

People of the British community online go to the 10 Downing Street petition site and sign some petitions or even make your own up. Make the British people's voice heard! The Prime Minister will probably stick his fingers in his ears saying "LalalaI'mnotlisteninglalala", but at least you'll feel better with the illusion that you tried to make a difference.

12 Jan 2007 School chum Xmas present

Hmm, it's been a since I've added anything to the Art of Grax. Fortunately I have something to add.

I did a few pictures for my old friend Harlandos for a present last Christmas and, with his permission I'd like to share them with you. They can be found in the friends section:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

9 Jan 2007 Help! I've been spoofed!

Over the holidays I've noticed that my email account was accumulating lots of "Undelivered Mail returning" emails from various place. The trouble is I didn't actually send out any emails to all those people. Which leads me to one conclusion; my email address is being ill-used for spam emailing.

I takes a closer look into the failed email and it's plaster with my @graxdomain email address with various characters bolted on to the begin. So far I've received 168 failed emails. I hate to think about how many successful spams have been sent out.

I am quite miffed, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I've notified my webhost provider, who says that they'll look into it. I did a quick search on the Internet and learnt that this kind of spamming is called 'Spoofing' or something like that. I need to do more research to see if it's actually possible to stop this abuse.

Has anyone else been a victim of spoofing? How did you cope/deal with it?

4 Jan 2007 Happy (belate) New Year, 2007 style

A bit of friendly advice. If you ever plan to celebrate New Years Eve on the streets of St. Ives, Cornwall in fancy dress costume (like I did, I was a pirate! Albeit a bit of a pantomime-style pirate) wrap up warm! Whether you wrap up in many layers or in a thick beer coat is purely up to you.

At least I managed to see some fireworks on the beach.