New Business card

Two posts in one day!

Yesterday I got my new business cards. I got them from a site called http://www.cmykcards.com.au/ and they look great!

I designed my own card, being a cartoonist in my spare time, and their site lets you download a template. You then upload the template when you place your order. I got 1000 cards for $99. Ordered them on the 12th and got them on the 20th so 8 days. Thats half the time I was quoted in a printing shop in Perth, and about $150 cheaper for twice the number of cards!!

I've only been meaning to design my business card for the last 5 years... The design finally popped into my head and I think it was worth the wait. :)

Tabbed Debugging

I just noticed a surprising thing with tabbed browsing and Visual Studio (2003 in this case). If you run a web project in debug mode it opens your default web page and when you close the web page the debugging session stops as you would expect. But if you open new tabs on your browser (talking IE7.0 here of course) and then close the tab with your web app in it, leaving the other tabs open (could be any pages here at all... Google, Microsoft.com, whatever) then the debug session stays running.
So I tried this again only this time clicked the "Stop debugging" button in Visual Studio and the whole browser closed. All of the tabs I had open, along with the page being debugged closed without the normal "Do you wish to close all tabs?" prompt. No sign of it. Nothing. No warning...

I was expecting to see either the prompt, or the debugging to be linked up to the tab, not the browser. I can understand why it happens so I guess the prompt would make more sense. I guess the "stop" button means stop NOW, not exit what you are doing.

The Singularity Is Near

The Singularity Is Near - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Does this spell the beginning or the end? It certainly seems like its a case of when will this happen, not will it happen.

If the human brain can exist then surely it can be reproduced artificially. Computers of the future may actually be grown, not built. If there is a biological component to an artificial life form and it becomes self aware then should it have rights?
Recently, I read that they had introduced human genes into rats and sheep so that they can have a more human like model to perform medial research upon, but does this not mean the animals are part humans? At what point do they have rights?

The future seems to be filled with peril. one slip up and our fragile existence could be snuffed out in an eyeblink. Watch this space...

PopFly

Microsoft have a new project which looks fun. http://www.popfly.com. If you have seen the Yahoo effort called Pipelines http://pipes.yahoo.com/ then this may well be Microsoft's version of the same. I'm not sure yet but basically it will allow people to connect together various web services and create their own applications.

Anyway, the name they chose inspired a new Aphobia cartoon so here it is...

IEBlog : Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar - Get it Now!

IEBlog : Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar - Get it Now!

Every now and then a tool comes along that stops you in your tracks. You wonder how you ever got by without it. I've just discovered this IE add in that I think will be invaluable if you are a Web developer!!

It basically gives you a whole load of information about the current web page, stuff like div tags and tables, properties etc. The amount of time I've spent trolling through the "View Source" page trying to figure out how a certain effect has been achieved makes this tool a winner.

I've only just installed it but it looks great! check it out and let me know what you think.

REMIX07 - Helping you redefine the online experience

REMIX07 - Helping you redefine the online experience

I just caught wind of Remix07 and it looks like it's going to be huge.

I've booked my accomodation ($28!!), the event ($140) and my flight ($78 tax - My wife let me use some of her frequent flyer points as I've run out) so it looks like I've managed to do the whole thing for less than $250. Not bad eh!?

Venom rules!

Just got back from Spider-man 3 and I've got mixed feelings... It was awesome. Venom was spectacular. The fight scenes rocked. I was even happy with the ending (won't spoil it for you). I did however recall thinking as I was leaving the cinema "I hope they stop there..."

Not sure why... could be the slight changes to the story line for the big screen? Anyway, mission was a success for me, I enjoyed it.

On another note, I had a big evening. Tonight (actually it was yesterday now) I presented at the Perth .Net user group meeting. It was my first presentation and I counted 20 people. Overall I think I'd call it a success. People thanked me and told me it was a good presentation. In hindsight I'm remembering all the little things that didn't quite go as I had planned but I did learn a LOT both in the last few weeks leading up to the presentation, and the actual presentation. They even laughed at the jokes I cracked and didnt laugh when I was trying to be serious. :)

The presentation was on Microsoft's WPF. I did a quick demo of the four products in the new Expression suite and then walked through a few samples of code that I picked up from Charles Petzold's book, Application = Code + Markup. I've read some pretty harsh reviews but also some positive ones. My view of the book is a positive one. Lots of content, loads of examples and Charles's writing style is quite clear and concise. It's argued that pictures and screenshots and colour make for a better book. I wouldn't mind the code being in colour (using the same colour scheme as Visual Studio) but to be honest it really wouldnt have added that much to the book. The book is thick enough without wasting space with screenshots and pictures.

I did come unstuck at one point when I had deviated from my practiced demo and lost my train of thought. It's quite difficult to sit and debug something that won't compile with people sitting waiting expectantly. I fortunately got back on track pretty quick. I also learned that using snippits in Visual studio are great for not having to type code but remembering which ones you want and which is which was a challenge. More practice with the demos and sticking to the plan in future.

Anyway, a big thanks to those who attended. I hope it was informative and gave you an insight into the upcoming technologies, it's pretty exciting stuff!

What Will Microsoft Office Diagnostics Do?

A friend of mine pointed this out to me, saying it caused him to have a little accident. I think I might have had a similar accident. In Microsoft Outlook 2007 click Help then Office Diagnostics. There is a link at the bottom that says What will Microsoft Office Diagnostics do?

Click that and you will see a web page. See point 4 below.
Access, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word
1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Access Options, Excel Options, PowerPoint Options, or Word Options.
2. Click Trust Center, click Advanced Trust Center Settings, and then click Privacy Options.
3. Select the Download a file periodically that helps determine system problems check box.
4. Wait about a week to allow the file to be downloaded, and then run Microsoft Office Diagnostics again.

Mozy

I stumbled upon https://mozy.com/?ref=BABF67 not so long ago but for some reason I didn't download it. I think the thought of paying for backups put me off but they do have a 2Gb free service.

Anyway I was at the Tiger Tiger today and Dave mentioned he uses Mozy and said some good things about it. So I've just created an account and downloaded the client. I had a bit of a read of the FAQ's and unfortunately they don't support network shares.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but if you have noticed lately I've blogged a fair bit about Windows Home Server... and guess what. The files are only available via the shares, even when you are locally logged into the server, it is recommended highly to access the files via the \\servername\share otherwise you would never know if the file you are accessing is the only copy... (It does duplication for redundancy if you configure it to).
So it looks like I couldn't use Mozy to do backups of my WHS files if I wanted to.
I think that might be over kill anyway... I'm going to try out the 2Gb free service and then if that goes ok I'll upgrade to the unlimited. Its way cheaper than buying your own hardware for an offsite backup. Will use it for my documents, cartoons and photos. Not fussed about movies/Tv shows and music.

So far I'm impressed. If you want to try it out let me know, they run a referal system where you can get bonus space on the free account... Click the url https://mozy.com/?ref=BABF67 and if you start using it I'll get bonus space. I'll most likely be upgrading but will give a try to make sure it has no issues.

More WHS...

Seems like all I'm doing lately is blog about WHS. The CTP came out a few days ago. I've downloaded it and after a bit of research to see if anyone else had had issues (there were some but I did it anyway) and it all went very smoothly.

Some extra polish is noticable and the upgrade process was straight forward. It basically formats the system drive and installs a fresh one. All of the tombstone data lives on the data partition (it splits your main install disk into a 10Gb system and the rest data). It was nice to see this data partition was left alone.

Interestingly two disks were missing until I installed the Sata drivers, but all the data seemed to be there. I suspect that was because the data I was looking at was not located on those disks. Installed drivers and everything is working nicely.

Am currently backing up my laptop and my wife's laptop (both via wireless) and a backup takes a few minutes (only changed clusters are copied to the server). The restore I did a few days ago is going fine. all the backups were still available after the upgrade. I read that was a problem upgrading to the beta2 from previous version but beta2 was my first install.

This product is going to do really well. It's awesome!

More WHS...

Seems like all I'm doing lately is blog about WHS. The CTP came out a few days ago. I've downloaded it and after a bit of research to see if anyone else had had issues (there were some but I did it anyway) and it all went very smoothly.

Some extra polish is noticable and the upgrade process was straight forward. It basically formats the system drive and installs a fresh one. All of the tombstone data lives on the data partition (it splits your main install disk into a 10Gb system and the rest data). It was nice to see this data partition was left alone.

Interestingly two disks were missing until I installed the Sata drivers, but all the data seemed to be there. I suspect that was because the data I was looking at was not located on those disks. Installed drivers and everything is working nicely.

Am currently backing up my laptop and my wife's laptop (both via wireless) and a backup takes a few minutes (only changed clusters are copied to the server). The restore I did a few days ago is going fine. all the backups were still available after the upgrade. I read that was a problem upgrading to the beta2 from previous version but beta2 was my first install.

This product is going to do really well. It's awesome!

WHS

Last night, after doing a backup of my laptop from Vista (built in backup) as well as a manual backup with the Windows Home Server client, I did a full restore.

The reason I did this was that Dell kindly put a restore partition on my hard drive. It was 10Gb in size and when you have a 100Gb drive which ends up being 81Gb after losing the 10Gb you feel like you have been short changed. I dont need a recovery partition as Dell use it for the poor people who kill their system. They tell you to run the recovery tool and it reimages your Dell back to the original. I'm sure its great for those that need it but I'd rather get my full 100Gb (or as close as I can get).

I was nervous. It's beta software after all, but everything went fairly smoothly. I had to switch to a network cable as it would not restore over wifi. (a good thing). I had the option of opening the disk manager, which is essentially the same tool you get under Manage in Vista. I deleted all of the partitions and created a new one. I did a quick format, and in hind sight I probably should have done a full format.
It saw the server and gave me a choice of all the available backups after asking for my password. I selected the manual backup and away it went. I then went to bed but it was showing a restore time of 1hour and 20 mins.

This morning it was sitting on the finished screen so I clicked the finished and it rebooted. It booted into Vista (it did show that it had not been shut down properly but i selected normal boot). Once I was in windows It told me that it had a bunch of problems with drivers etc telling me i should update them. I rebooted and it did a check disk on boot up and found a whole load of problems. I'm not sure why this happened but It seemed to fix them (orphaned files and that sort of thing) all and everything is now working normally.

This leads me to a question. Do I trust that everything is ok? How do I know? Is there a tool that one can run that does a full integrity check of all of your files? Much the way a clickonce application checks no files have been modified. It would be nice if there is a tool (and there may well be) that checks your system files are all healthy.

I just got an email letting me know that Windows Home Server CTP is available so I'm hoping that Beta 2 upgrades ok. The manuals say that it will be upgradable when it is released.

Family PC Support Helpdesk

While on the subject of fixing family member PC's (my last post was about removing viruses from my mother-in-law's PC)... I've just reinstalled Windows XP onto my brother-in-law's laptop because of the issues he's been having with Vista Home. Personally, I love Vista, but acknowledge it's still got some teething problems. It seems to be the norm with new OS's. It takes a while for drivers to catch up.

Anyway, he had some photos on the laptop which he wanted (no, no backups anywhere) and he said other than the pics, I could wipe the laptop. First couple of attempts I thought I would just install XP over the top. No can do. When I told it to install into the same Window directory, overwriting the old (Vista) version it came up with a number of xml files that it could not write to disk. The install failed so I retried with my own XP disc and got the same errors. I figured there must be some permission issues overwriting some files so installed into a new folder (called it WinXp). I got another error trying to boot up. So having already copied the photos to a DVD I went the format approach. No problems...

Well, except for one. While the format was happening I put the DVD into my laptop to check the photos were all there ok (before I started the format of course) and it was all fine. I was looking at a power point funny on the DVD when my laptop hung. Everythign stopped responding and the DVD drive would not eject. After about 5 minutes of nothing I powered off my laptop. On rebooting and looking at the DVD it showed it as blank. Copy your files here it said. It showed me nothing on the DVD. I felt horrible as I looked across to his laptop as it was 60% through a format. Crap.

I took the DVD out and you could see the session on the DVD so I thought maybe Vista had opened a new session for burning and that hid the previous one temporarily. I left the DVD alone until I had reinstalled XP. On putting the DVD into the freshly built XP system I could once again see the photos. Man that was a LONG install. So I copied the pics all back to his laptop with a sigh of relief... I'll have a look at the DVD on Vista later and see if closing the session brings back the files. If thats how DVD's work under Vista it makes me wonder if that is a good thing.

What stories of family PC support have you got?

Virus world

I've not usually had much problems with viruses. I keep the kids away from my PC's as much as I can, and the number of sites I visit myself is quite small with the majority of them being return visits to sites I trust.

My mother-in-law on the other hand... Last week I dropped over to fix a problem she was having with some pop up ads. After a couple of hours I still had not fixed the problem and had to leave. Last night I returned to fix her machine while she is away over east. I spent about 5 hours trying to find a tool to remove the virus(es) that had infected her machine. The first visit I had upgraded IE to IE7 in the hope that it would prevent the popups. It didn't. I had installed AVG antivirus when I originally set it up for her and that didn't stop them. I tried spy-bot search and destroy, which found a number of cookies and virus entries in the registry. It happily removed them, but next time you ran a scan they were back. It might have been a false positive, except the ads were still poping up in new windows. Frustrating.

I then tried Avast which didn't seem to find any issues. Pop ups still occuring. My recent purchase of a new laptop (Dell) included a three year subscription to McAfee (Security Center) so I thought i'd give that a try. It removed 20 threats (most of them cookies) and since then two different applications that looked suspicious were blocked giving me the option to remove them. Finally, the ads seemed to have stopped.

This has altered my view of McAfee another step towards the positive. I used to hate the thing, but granted this opinion was based on an old version (some years ago) which would chew up huge chunks of CPU processing, slowing down normal activities. Doing a compile with McAfee running would increase the compile time considerably. I've not done any recent benchmarking but I wonder if now, with dual core CPU's if this is finally less of an issue.

I'm still stunned that IE7 along with several different Anti-spyware tools (I tried 2 blockers, 1 scanner and 3 antivirus programs) that none of them stopped this virus. One of them was WinFixer which I've read about having infected several big name web sites (including Microsoft and AOL I think)

I think i'll recommend my mother-in-law gets the McAfee subscription especially if it keeps her machine clean.

Vista Pain

Found a good write up on WHS here A Week with WHS.

Still moving data from my drives and adding them into the WHS pool. Have set up redundancy on my photos... It's like Juggling moving the data off a drive then adding it into the pool so I can then add the next one.

I finally got Vista installed on this here desktop. I must have tried a dozen times, downloading different SATA device drivers for the VIA chipset. The motherboard is an A8V Asus mb and as far as I can tell there is no way to get around the problem. I could install XP and begin the install, and about 27% through the "expanding" step it would reboot (normal behaviour I think) and after rebooting it would come up with an 0x80070008 error. Googling shows this to be an Access denied error message. So I eventually put in a PATA drive and used that as my system drive and it installed first go, so it was as I suspected, an issue with SATA drivers.
Am happy to leave it as is, as I can still access the SATA drive now that Vista is installed.

I do like the new feature of Vista that allows drivers to be loaded from floppy, CD/DVD or USB. You have no idea how hard it is finding a floppy disk around here that still actually works! Not to mention a floppy disk drive!

More WHS

Update on how the Windows Home Server install went. Not too bad.

I ended up going with a 300Gb drive as my system drive as it is a PATA drive and the 500Gb drive is SATA. Why? I've had so many problems installing stuff onto systems with SATA drives, having to find the correct drivers etc and the old PATA (IDE) drives just work.

Unplugged all drives and plugged in 300Gb system drive. Installed Windows Home Server. It was hands off and it even downloaded some updates (at least thats what it said it was doing). I was surpised to see a Windows Small Business Server screen during the install. I didn't realise that was the underlaying technology but it made me feel somewhat happier to be running it. Vista is still so new, and with the driver problems I've had along with other problems I've heard about I'm not so sure its ready to be a server. Longhorn will hopefully be better, but for now WHS appears to be a modified SBS.

The good news is that plugging in my other drives with data on them did not wipe them. Doing the install wiped the install disk (with plenty of warnings, so that's good). You can log into the server locally and copy the files to the server shares. There is a really nice full screen warning letting you know that traditional windows tools can break WHS.

On another note, while WHS was installing, I took one of my spare drives and tried to install Vista on my recently repaired server. My laptop hasn't been as good in the games department (bit dissapointed there but it's a great laptop for development so oh well) and it just would not install! It's an ASUS motherboard and it recognises the SATA drive but when it begins to expand the files it gets a little way in and then gives an error. Windows XP installs fine so I tried to do an install from within XP and got the same error. Will have to investigate this further. Might have to try a PATA drive and see if that works. No Vista drivers on the ASUS web site but I think that is because Vista already has them??

Windows Home Server

After a long weekend that took forever to end (I was waiting for the computer shop to open so I could pick up the new power supply and 500Gb drive I had ordered) I'm now on the way to installing WHS.

Put new power supply into Athlon 64 machine (old one fried when fan died) and installed new 500Gb hard drive. Drive would not be recognised by server. The damn thing was so quiet that I didn't think it was even powering up!! Tried it in my other server (the server that will eventually have WHS) that currently has 5 drives in it. No go. Checked invoice... ahh... It's a SATA2 drive. Cool! Not cool. Doesn't seem to be backward compatible with SATA1 controllers.

Did some research and found the drive can be put into SATA1 mode (The drive does Auto speed detection but the controller has to support it.) First hurdle sorted. Got drive going and then discovered that machine only has a CD drive, no DVD. Not wanting to steal a DVD drive from any other PC's I decided to install XP instead of Vista. Might be able to install Vista later across the network.

So now i'm moving data from the WHS server (currently running Vista) to the new XP machine. Need to get everything off the Raid0 drives so I can break the raid into seperate drives, as well as clear a 250Gb drive to install WHS onto (with all other drives unplugged). I'm hoping once I have WHS installed on a single drive that I can plug in the other drives without formatting them and then copy the data to the WHS share. I've learned how to add and remove drives (its in one of the manuals) and it seems straight forward but the drives get wiped.

The next week or so is going to be juggling data from drive to drive etc. I'm just thinking now while I type this that maybe I should start over... moving this amount of data across the network is too slow. Think i'll put the 500Gb drive into the WHS server and make that the system drive. The recommendation is for the system drive to be the largest drive and it will get rid of the issue of trying to clear a drive for the install.

WHS Update

This weekend I decided that it was time to take the next step towards installing Window Home Server (Beta 2). One thing that prompted this was that I discovered the power supply on my Domain controller was fried. The fan wasnt working and there was strange plastic smells coming from it. Also I kept finding the server off and because its up high on a cupboard to keep away from kids I didn't notice the problem initially.

So I pulled apart my domain controller and my old desktop and spent the morning swapping motherboards. I had planned to put 4 drives into the new machine basically merging two PC's into one. I then realised two things. 1. Domain controller motherboard (only about 2 months old) only has 2 SATA ports. I need 4. My old desktop (3+ years old) was a good one (not counting the NIC had stopped working) so it has 4 SATA ports. 2. I realised that my desktop pc has 2 x 250Gb drives striped in RAID 0. I thought it unlikely putting these two drives on the other motherboard would recognise the RAID 0. It's backed up but I still have stuff on there that isn't and I didn't want to risk it...
I also discovered while trying an install that WHS wipes ALL hard drives when you install it. What the...??? Where am I supposed to put all of my data that I want to store onto WHS while i'm setting it up?
So I installed Vista onto the new machine (old desktop with 4 SATA drives. 3 x 250Gb + 1 x 120Gb. I order a new powersupply (430W should do) and a 500Gb SATA2 hard drive. (would have gone the 750Gb but none in stock...) Then i discover the computer shop is closed for the long weekend. Doh!!

So i'll be spending the next few days sorting through this PC seeing what crap I can delete before shuffling what I can onto the new 500Gb drive so I can install WHS and let it wipe everything.
Once it's set up I can transfer the data back to a share on the WHS box and then swap the 120Gb drive with the new 500Gb. End result should give me a huge storage area for backing up all the PC's in the house (currently 2 laptops and 2 desktops). One question springs to mind though... how do you remove a drive from a WHS? Adding them is easy (apparently) using the wizard but can you remove drives as well? Time will tell.

Back from Code Camp Oz 2007

Well I'm back now from Code Camp Oz and really enjoyed it. Definitely worth going even if it was a long way to travel. It would have been much easier to get to if it had been held in Sydney or Melbourne. The extra travel to Wagga Wagga makes getting there an extra step I can see some might baulk at.

I support Nick's suggestion to moving it to a more friendly location. Some advantages I see would be increased numbers from people who are close to the venue. Alternating between Sydney and Melbourne each year I think would work well. The down side is you miss out on the visit to Wagga Wagga. Some would say that would be an advantage but I admit I did enjoy seeing Wagga, and the University/Winery etc was nice to visit.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlevoices/sets/72157600044370982/

I’ve added mine pictures which you can find at the url above. If you go to the url below you can see some pics from other people who have put stuff up on Flickr.

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/codecampoz

Think I'll be going next year too. Might even become a .Net Code Camp groupie... travel the world going to Code Camps worldwide. Hmm... interesting idea, think I'll look into that. :)

Code Camp OZ 2007

This weekend I'm at Code Camp OZ 2007, geeking on. It's going great... almost at the end of the last session of day one. Wine tasting is next.

The best part I think is meeting a whole bunch of other .netters. Networking with other people who are doing the same stuff.

More later... am in an interesting session. Dan Green's tips...

Rosey Outlook

Spent about an hour and a half troubleshooting an issue with Outlook 2007 tonight.

Problem: Navigating emails was slow, often a 5 second delay, with Outlook periodically coming up with (Not Responding).

Initially I blamed Mcafee Antivirus. I wonder why I paid for the subscription when I'm so against it. It slows me down at work, and antivirus is SO often the cause for problems. I must admit I jumped the gun a bit this time, being to quick to point the finger. The strangest thing was that disabling McAfee's email functions actually made the problem go away so you wouldnt blame me for thinking it was the problem.

So I thought I'd try out the support seeing I paid for it and all. I very quickly found myself in a one on one chat with a McAfee helldesk operator. She was quite helpful and in about 20 mins had given me instructions to disable ALL of the addins in outlook. Too bad if I actually wanted any of them, but I'll assume this was just to narrow down the problem. Unfortunately you CANT disable the Addins in Outlook if they are in the registry. So I turned off what I could and loaded up Regedit.
I exported the whole Addin Key so I could easily revert back and turned off all of the addins. To do this I changed each Loadbehaviour to a 0. The problem went away. Yay. So I turned them back on one at a time and fortunately started at the right end.
Solution: The problem Addin was OutlookAddin.Connect. A quick Google showed this was possibly related to Business Contact Manager. I dont really recall getting excited about this and thought If I miss the addin I can always turn it on. I'm guessing I wont notice it missing.

So although it doesn't seem to be related to McAfee SecurityCentre at this point they pointed me in the right direction regardless. A refreshing change from the usual "lame everyone else and handball" that seems all too common.

I still don't like stuff hitting my every file load, that has got to add overhead. How much of my life has been wasted from the accumlative effects of waiting for stuff to happen?

Vista + Windows Media Player = SLOW! - Page 2 - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

Vista + Windows Media Player = SLOW! - Page 2 - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

Had a weird problem in windows media player on the new laptop. Periodically the music would stall and stutter. Watching movies over wifi at home was quite painful pausing and continuing the movie like a streaming problem.

The link I just found above described that it took a long time to change songs. So i tried changing songs and sure enough it took about 10 seconds to change to the next track. So I tried the fix which for the sake of convenience (and its slightly different for my audio drivers) will repeat.

Problem: takes ages to start/change songs. experience stuttering and freezing as the DMR stuff does its thing.

Here's how I fixed it:
Start > Control Panel > Sound > Playback Tab > Double-click "Speakers/Headphones" > Enhancements Tab > Check "Disable System Effects"

I figure most of those effects wont make much difference for headphones... but I might experiment with it later to see if i can tell the difference.

Anyway, it's not skipped a beat since so hopefully thats that. (touch wood)

History & info - Daylight Saving Time idea from Benjamin Franklin

History & info - Daylight Saving Time idea from Benjamin Franklin

< RANT >
WTF were they thinking?!

Ok... personally, I'm against daylight savings. If people REALLY wanted an extra hour of sunglight in the evenings they would move to the other side of the planet. They would follow the summer around the globe, turning into a nomad. It's been done before... It's not a new thing to humans.

Here in Perth we have been trialing daylight savings. It's been horrible. So far, I don't think I have met anyone who actually likes it. Microsoft have yet to sort out their patches for Exchange server, so you never quite know if the meeting in your calendar is for the right time. Not being able to trust it means you can't count on it. They (politicians) didn't even ASK us (the people) if we even WANTED daylight savings. I seem to recall a few years ago that we were asked and the outcome of the vote was NO. So they wait a few years and then implement it regardless. Why do we need it? So businesses can deal with Sydney easier? Who cares!! We've dealt with it until now, why mess with it? WTF??

I've noticed Microsoft are also having problems with daylight savings patches in other parts of the world. It can't be easy having a moving goal post.

Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so. It is something we have created in order to introduce structure to our day, but if there is no consistency what is the point of structure? It's just chaos! The sun does not care what time it is. The earth spins and the sun becomes visible. Why don't we just get out of bed when the sun comes up and go to bed when the sun goes down? There would be no need for lighting so think of the environmental impact.
< /RANT >

I'm done now. Moving on.

JasJam USB Modem

Today I visited the local Telstra shop where I bought my JasJam. I asked one of the sales guys there about expresscard laptop options and the answer was there are none. (Yet. I'm sure they will come). I showed him my phone (JasJam) and asked if there was a way to share the Next-G account with my phone and he told me I could use my mobile as a wireless modem. Dang, why didn't I think of that?

I know why... not being used to the new technology, I just assumed that hooking my mobile to my laptop would enable me to dial up as in the analog voice call kind of dial up. Wow, if this is true then maybe I don't need more hardware etc.

I found a pdf describing how on the clubimate.com web site, as well as on telstra.com (after some searching). The Telstra one is more specific to using it with Telstra. There are a few config settings which I made and I had to find some Vista drivers - the ones supplied on the cd are for XP and give an error when you try to install them. I found a thread here XDA USB Thread which has some drivers for Vista, including 64bit.

First attempt reported the modem was in use and could not dial. rebooted and tried again and this time it connected.

So it all worked after a bit of fiddling around, but now i've disabled it and won't be using it. Except in an emergency. Such as when i'm in a hotel and they want $30 a day to use the Internet. This is because the plan's available for mobile phones is SO expensive that text only browsing on a mobile is as much as you can afford. $29 plan would get me 70Mb of traffic before I get charged at 0.26c per K of traffic (both ways!). Bastards!

Oh, and Telstra has the most horrible tool for checking your data usage. It shows each individual session and does NOT tally them up. I mean come on! How hard is it to add up some numbers?? I called Telstra to ask them how much I had used for the month and SHE had to add them up too!! Someone needs to have a word with the developers there. I asked her to pass on my suggestion for a total. Not to mention it would make her job easier, she said she has to add them up all the time.

Next thing i'm planning on looking into is broadband for my new laptop. (The mobile option is too expensive). The new laptop should be here this time next week and if what I read is correct it has some form of inbuilt broadband wireless. (In addition to the wifi/802.11g) I might be able to use it with Vodaphone as the mention it on their web site. If I don't have to buy hardware, and just have to activate it then that may be a much cheaper option. Time to do some research, I can't be the first person to be doing this!

New Laptop

I’ve just ordered my new laptop. Hopefully it will be here before I leave for codecamp at the end of the month. Should be here just before I leave if they can deliver inside their 2 week estimate.

The main reason I went with this one was the size. It’s the same physical size as my current laptop (Dell 710m) but is a major upgrade on the innards.

Dell XPSTM M1210
Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7600 (2.33GHz, 667MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Ultimate
2Gb of Dual Channel DDR2 memory (667Mhz)
12.1" Widescreen XGA (1280 x 800) display with TrueLifeTM .
256MB NVIDIA® GeForceTM Go 7400 with TurboCache Graphics Card. (Not the best on market but possibly better than my 6800 in my desktop!)
9-cell extended battery
100GB 7200RPM
Combo Drive - 24x/10x/24x CD Burner and 8x DVD-ROM 8x DVD/CD Burner (DVD+/-RW)
4 USB 2.0
5-in-1 removable memory card reader
Built in web cam and mic for using with skype
2 x stereo headphones/speakers miniconnector
Express Card (Don't seem to be many Express cards around yet)

$3850 after adding all the fruit.

In a previous post I mentioned I'm beta testing Windows Home Server but the install didn't go ahead due to my old laptop (Toshiba 3000 not the Dell 710m) not being high enough spec in the RAM department. This new laptop will replace my desktop which will then free it up to become my WHS. It should be good for the job too, it has 910Gb of storage if you count the external 300Gb USB drive.

Human Jet Airplane

OMG this is THE coolest thing I've seen ever! Takes me back to my Hang gliding days... and makes it seem tame!!

http://jet-man.com/playervideo.swf?video=jetman2007.flv
http://jet-man.com/

.Net Cafe meet

Not a bad turn out for the Perth .net coffee meet this week.

Dave Gardner
Hadley Willan
Keith Woods
Mike... um... dang not sure on his last name.
and me...

Spruiked on about geeky stuff for an hour or so. Solved world hunger... starting with my hunger. Will get to the world next. I'm still here at Tiger Tiger with Dave. I think he's working, where as i'm doing some study... (Wireless vulnerabilities). I've got the afternoon to kill as the pMug meeting is this afternoon.

For those not in the know, pMug is the Perth Mobility User Group which is all things mobile... i figured my laptop battery should get me most of the way to 5pm and the meeting is at 5.30. http://www.aususergroups.org/pmug/ for more info.

Whiteboard stop motion

This really impressed me. Must have taken forever to create.

Thought for the day...

If we had the technology to reproduce a human being in 100% efficiency, and we were then to remove parts of the brain from the original and implant them into the copy, with 100% accuracy, what part of the brain would give that person the experience of waking up in the new body? Would moving part of the brain give this effect? Or is the whole brain in its entirety what comprises our soul. Are the two even related? In other words, where is our consciousness physically located?

Perth bus pass

This only applies to Perth bus/train goers but should save you some dollars. We have a new bus pass system which uses a swipe card. Unless you go looking for it you might not know there is an autoload option. You fill in a form from the transperth web site (www.transperth.wa.gov.au) and nominate a bank account and how much you want to autoload. It took two weeks to process but I will never have to go and load my card again, it happens automatically when the balance gets low. You also get a 25% discount! (without auto load you get 15% so its an extra 10% on top)

Moblog

Moblog
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

I thought I'd get my blog set up for when I go to code camp and 'll be able to upload pics too.



Sorry if the pic scares anyone. :p

Windows Home Server

Lucky me, I'm beta testing Windows Home Server. I found a pretty good review of what WHS is all about so I won't cover that but I will blog about how it goes for me.
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Windows Home Server Preview

I started off by downloading the images. There was one DVD image (Server) and two CD images. First CD image was the client install CD and the other was a home PC restore cd. From reading the docs you install the client install on each of your home PC's that you want to talk to the server. The other CD is used to do a PC rebuild/restore. The idea is in the case of a complete failure you can restore your Pc from scratch. The whole thing is backed up on the server. Cool!! I guess that gets around my recent frustration when i discovered that Vista's built in backup software is limited in control.

My progress hasn't been so good. I burnt the images to DVD/CD which required me to find something that allowed me to actually burn images under Vista. I found a free tool that works well. (the name of it escapes me). I then grabbed my old Toshiba laptop which currently has the CTP build of Longhorn on it and booted up the DVD. I didn't get very far... I got an error that basically told me 368Mb of RAM isn't enough to install WHS. I was really surprised... firstly that my laptop only had 367Mb of RAM (I thought it had more!!) and secondly because Longhorn installed onto it with no problems. Minimum memory requirement of WHS is 512Mb. Strange, the docs say that WHS is designed to be able to be put on your old computer that you are not using anymore... I have about 8 computers at home, more if you count the ones that don't have enough working parts to be functional and I still don't have a spare computer i'm not using.

I priced up some parts for a new server to be my WHS server and ended up going high end with all the parts essentially making a better Pc than my desktop/gaming PC. So I scrapped that idea and decided to buy a whole new system and make my current desktop into the WHS. Business plan approval rejected by the missus... Doh! Ok, so that project is currently on hold until I get the funds (and approval) to proceed. :)

Stay tuned for more WHS beta testing when I get it installed... Hmm... might try a couple of installs on a virtual machine!

Blogging

I found this interesting link FOCUS where they discuss using virtual reality to help treat the fear of speaking in front of an audience.
I think this is a fantastic idea. Instead of seeing a room full of threatening people you only see your mum and that chick from down the street you want to shag… people you want to impress with your verbal prowess.

Then again that might have the opposite effect. Ok, so lets go for the naked audience. Who needs to visualise when you can have it with VR!? Lets hope the speaker has a podium to stand behind...

So how does this relate to blogging? A friend of mine, a brilliant, but somehow yet undiscovered author, told me that he doesn't have a blog. It's a shame. I know he will read this entry (I'm going to make him) so just to reiterate my point... I think hes scared of having a blog because he doesn't want an audience. He also mumbled something about relating to people, something about Namibia and Aardvark testicles.

I won't go too much into it, but he's quite happy to post comments on other people's blogs. Fear of commitment maybe? Lurking in annonominity perhaps!? Obsessive compulsive comment spammer? Now we know how some spam gets by those little "pictures of letters that you can't read" spam blockers.

I've forgotten my point...

Desk Pic

Thought I'd take a pic of my desk at home. Had no end of troubles with the camera on my phone, it kept changing the light depending what it was focused on. Focussing on the screen made everything else too dark but focussing away from the screen made the screen super bright. Ah well, you get the idea anyway.

I've had lots of problems with my JasJam's camera. It seems to kill the camera if there is too much light. Sometimes when outside in the sun I either get a completely black or grey picture (as if the lens cap was on!) or the camera application just completely closes as if I had pressed the X. If i try to open the camera application again I get an error saying "The camera device is in used." Yes, it has the spelling mistake!! I then have to reset the phone to get the camera working again... And there goes the photo opportunity.

I think my phone is trying to be too many things at once. Everything else it does it does pretty well...

Michelle lost my digital camera which was a Sony cybershot. Cost me $1000 about 4 years ago. I think i got a few thousand photos out of it and it might turn up again... It went missing once before and just as I was about to buy a new one it turned up.

Vista Dreams

A few minutes of looking at my desktop and i'm starting to feel a bit seasick.
Deep Ocean Dream

I remember trying out Dremples a few years ago and after the novelty runs out (about half an hour) and you need the CPU its chewing up you quickly turn it off. Granted its using the GPU now which is good but I think if the background is too busy then it will reduce productivity via distraction. The default one that comes with the Ultimate Dreams patch is nice, it's very subtle.

Code Camp Oz

Well it looks like i'll be going to Code Camp Oz this year!

A friend has an unwanted ticket to Melbourne and if she is booking the flight for me for the dates for Code Camp. Yes, i know its in Wagga Wagga but there are some Melbournites travelling up for the weekend so i'm going to hitch a ride.

Should be a blast. Any other Perth people going? Let me know - yet to organise accomodation.

Things I'm up to at the moment.

• Doing tax stuff. Tax agent has been taking aaages and now someone else at their office has taken over and is asking lots of questions. Some of which I've previously answered. You get that.
• Weblogging. I should be asleep, i'm not feeling 100%. Got the sniffles and a pre-flu back ache.
• Setting up my web site again... http://www.littlevoices.com. I somehow trashed DotNetNuke. I have a feeling if you even go NEAR the Application installers on DotNetPark (my host) it trashes the database. I tried a restore but it didn't help, so I thought Ah well I wanted to try out Community Server anyway for another project.
• Avoiding gaming. I want to code and I want to play WOW. (World of Warcraft). Can't do both unfortunately.
• Today I went to a .net coffee meeting, a really good idea. Met some new guys in the .net world. Its a regular thing and Nick has a post or two about it. I was pretty impressed to see Nick did his homework and the cafe has wi-fi! Nice one! http://community.softteq.com/blogs/nick/archive/2007/02/19/week-1-synopsis.aspx for more info about that.
• I just signed up for a beta for http://outbackonline.com/ which looks to be a kid friendly SecondLife. I've beta tested a LOT of MMORPGs. Some of which include;

1. Star Wars Galaxies
2. World of Warcraft
3. Anarchy Online
4. The Matrix
5. D&D Online
6. GuildWars
7. Possibly others...

Ones i've played'

1. Active Worlds (kind of like SecondLife I believe)
2. Everquest
3. Everquest 2
4. Horizons
5. Eve Online
6. GuildWars
7. Asheron's Call
8. World of Warcraft

Hmm... quite an impressive list when you look at them all at once. No wonder my wife complains. hehe...

• Oh, also in the process of organising finance to bulldoze my house and build a new one!! Exciting times!

New content

Well it’s been way too long since I’ve posted to this blog. A whole host of reasons as to why… Too busy, not focused, no reason etc etc.

 

One thing I’ve been thinking about, and I’m sure it comes up for all bloggers, is how much information do you blog? Do you blog about a specific topic with the aim to become an expert? Or do you blog about general stuff which might appeal more for people interested in what *I’m* talking about rather than what I have to say about something. Subtle difference.

 

Anyway, I thought I would fire up this blog again and make it my “Dear Diary” so to speak. I’m going to blog about the things I’m interested in, in no particular order. I would love to have a big reader base as I believe I have some things to say that may make a difference to some people. The most mind boggling thing is, I have no idea who that might be. I’ll let chance decide who that may be.

 

I’ll keep the posts as short as I can as I think long blog posts take up too much time. Short and to the point… I’ve got a lot of ideas I would like to get out there. I’ve even thought that a history of what I’m thinking etc would be great for my kids to read in years and years when I’m no longer around. (hopefully a LONG time from now!)

 

This is one of my favourites. :)

Enjoy...

I think this one is silly, but my wife doesn't. She says to stay away from the sex jokes. I like sex! Hmmm... I think its a guy thing. What do you think? Are there any girls out there who like the sex ones or just guys?

Enjoy!

Oh cool. I did some digging around in the shed and found some old Aphobia (well it wasnt called that back then) strips and so i've scanned one in and coloured it. I've got some more there so i'll pick out some favourites and do them too.

Enjoy!

Exams are over, so lets celebrate with a cartoon! Yay!!

Don't you love it when that exam that was freaking you out turns out to be a big pussycat. Still... glad its behind me now. :)

Enjoy

My mum (mom for those American readers) didn't understand this one, but one of my mates thought it was great. :)

Enjoy!

Ok, with one exam out of the way I've a little more time to upload a new Cartoon or two. I did this one a week ago, sorry its late.

Oh an just in case it earns me extra points, check out Ensight, its a great read on the world of blogging. :)

http://www.ensight.org

Well, Almost back online. The web server is back but my website is a little munged. The site that the blog is pointing at is ok, except there is one file missing. I think it was not backed up so i'll upload it when i get home tonight... then i'm back in business. :)

Again, my apologies.

Apologies on the links to my cartoons not working right now. I recently went to a web host for my web site and a week later their server has gone down. Big time down. Its been over 24 hours and the server still isnt fully available.

I can see the files now via the web interface but it looks like the Name servers were also affected. I'm wondering if it was all on the same server. If it happens again then i'll be moving to another Web host, 24 hours is rediculous especially seeing they guarantee 99.9% uptime.

Stay tuned for more Aphobia, and check back soon. I'm hoping it will all be back and running today.

I didn't do anything yesterday as it was a public holiday. Also i have exams next few weeks so may slack off in the cartoon area. I'm studying, honest!!

:)

:)


Enjoy

Ok, I just saw The Revenge of the Sith. Had to be done... :)


ok?

This is a toy car being thrown by a child. Its not a real car ok?

Doesnt that give you the heebie jeebies, when you get web on your face?


It does me.

Enjoy...

Think this would make a good spin off character...

DrWho

Its a planet of the spiders thing... meh why am i explaining myself. Just laugh ok? ;)

Boots

Fashion victim...

Shadow

Shadow
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

The fun you can have with a bright light and a dim friend...

Toys

Toys
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

Trying a few things out with colour... What do you think? Please let me know if you like the look. I do... makes it look a little more finished. :)

Enjoy!

It was a dark and stormy night...

One dark and stormy night... our little friend finds it all a bit too much...

New Cartoon

Experimenting with size. This may be too little.

Hope you like it.

Aphobia is Born.

Well, after a few suggestions and much thought i've tentatively decided on a new name for my seemingly regular cartoon strip. Or is that Comic strip. Not sure what the difference is actually, I should look it up. Interestingly when I go to google define: it gives Comic Strip when i search for Cartoon strip. I guess they are the same thing.

Anyway, Aphobia - an obvious shortening of Arachnophobia, is about a bunch of spiders. Is that the correct name for a number of them? A gaggle of spiders? a brood of spiders? Another thing i'll have to research...

The ironic thing is i hate spiders, so its probably an apt name for the strip.

wetfloor

wetfloor
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

I was on my way to the toilet and encountered a sign that was poorly placed... They should have a warning sign for that sign. This cartoon was soon born.

Massage Bunnies...

My latest Littlebites cartoon strip.

Enjoy :-)

I've been busy as a beaver (or is that squirrel?) colouring my latest cartoon. I'm quite impressed with how it looks. Very happy with it!
I'm going to get it printed out professionally in A3 size, and then frame it. It will be on display in May sometime in the Little Creatures Brewery in Fremantle.
Hope you like the sneak preview. :-)

I'm dabbling in some Digital Art these days and when i get a few more images uploaded I plan to open a shop front. I will also put up some of my cartoons as the shop seems a bit cheaper than the current one I use.
Check out my space on http://lythix.deviantart.com and let me know what you think!

Constantine

Rob, Dave, Michelle and myself went and saw Constantine on Saturday night. Not a bad movie… Yeah I enjoyed it. Something about the hero movies that I like. Maybe we all want to be a hero? I dunno. Might be the kid in me, wanting to fly and save the day, or swing from building to building like Spider-Man.

I know I get all excited like a kid when I’m watching these kind of movies… I think the highlight of the movie for me was when Constantine gives Lucifer the finger… hehehe. I won’t give away any more than that or it would spoil it for you.

Go see it, its fun.

Perth Sights

If you are ever in Perth, this is one of the interesting sights you
might be lucky enough to see.

It's not every day you see a silver angel. There is a Brass man around
sometimes. I drew a cartoon a few years back of the Silver Angel beating
the crap out of the Brass man. It wasn't my best drawing but the idea of
these Buskers fighting over their turf amused me. :-)

Have you had a look at Expresso? It’s a Regular Expression builder and can be found at http://www.ultrapico.com/ It helped me out a few times with some complicated regular expressions.

Too much to read

I think I’m hitting overload on the blogging department so I really should make an entry.

Something I’ve been playing with is RSS readers on my Smartphone. The biggest problem I’ve found so far, apart from the apparent lack of a good reader, is that they all want to use my GPRS connection. The only way I can be sure that my phone isn’t jumping online and downloading content is to have it in the cradle. (It disables GPRS while in the cradle, and uses the passthough. Which doesn’t work real well through a proxy but that could be a setting somewhere.)

I’d love to be able to deny certain applications from using GPRS. Of course if Telstra had an affordable unlimited GPRS plan then it wouldn’t be a problem would it? I mean its not like I’m going to be downloading big files is it? It’s a phone with fairly limited storage.

Anyway, I’m thinking I will have to write my own offline RSS reader or something… It has gotten me to dig out my Toshiba Pocket PC and set that up for reading RSS. Maybe an alternate Outlook mail reader would do the job? I could then sync the messages via Outlook/Newsgator and then use a custom reader to view the messages. I wonder if outlook messages are hard to read?

Also I need to cut down on the number of blogs I read. Scobliezer is one I should stay away from. He’s got lots of great stuff to say but GOD he blogs too much. Its like 20 messages a day or something. If I can get this running on my phone then I can utilise the bus time better.

 

Musing of the Muse

The Bunny post was not done by me, just in case anyone was wondering. I find the bunny toons very cool. I like the lines and the ideas are ok, with a few bizarre and some funny ones.

Follow the link under the post to find more of them. Something else that impresses me is that this guy (or gal? I’ve not checked) does one every day. That’s very impressive, I’m hard pressed to come up with something every week. Although I am still trying to find a style I like, I keep coming back to my spiders. The ideas keep coming but I worry that they are too simplistic. How many spiders can you do hanging on threads having conversations. I guess I’ll keep drawing them until there are no more.

I’m going to start using my blog to post my cartoons, and then keep them in a gallery on my web server. I’ve yet to figure out a way to see how many readers my blog attracts.

Stay tuned for more little bites… (that’s the spider strip)

its name was alber

I’ve been looking for my own pet peev… bunny is cool.

 

Related...

[Bunny]

This is my latest cartoon. I sat down and drew it last night, while Everquest2 was offline.

Other news: Just got back from two weeks away on my honeymoon. We had a great time! Went to Queensland and drove around lots. We drove about 1600Km's in 16 days. Spent a week or so with my Dad. Kicked back and relaxed lots. I did some Kite Surfing and got burnt on my front. Mental block forced me to totally forget about suncream on the front side. Duh...

Its good to be back at work... (I'm one of those lucky people who enjoys their job.)

It's all good. :-)

Santa

I’ve painted a Santa on my other window. I left my camera at work so I’ll post some pics on Monday. He looks great. J

Off to do some shopping. Hope the shops are not TOO crazy.  

 

Merry Xmas

 

I got my Uni results yesterday! Yay!

Operating Systems (not so fun unit...) 76% (D)
Visual Programming (fun unit!) 80% (HD)

So that brings my running average (down) to 80.125% which still scrapes in as a High Distinction. hehe...

Am now enrolled in a Security unit, and a Graphics Programming unit. The graphics unit is a prerequisite to a 3D programming games unit. Not sure if i will do that but it sounds fun.

Rudolf

Rudolf
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

Well after I read a post by a fellow cartoonist (Grant Brown) I was inspired enough to give my own front window a go. I think it needs another coat, still a little patchy in spots.

Didnt take long and I've actually impressed myself. They say copying is the highest form of flattery. Not bad for a first try, i'm sure i'll get better with practice! :-)

cheat

cheat,
originally uploaded by Lyynx.

Here's a new cartoon that i'm doing a test post to my blog for. Perhaps this would be a neat way to show people my new cartoons, as well as what i'm up to. I probably draw new cartoons more often than entries to my blog.

bugs

bugs-w
Originally uploaded by Lyynx.

Ever had any bugs in your web site? Not always a bad thing. hehehe

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Apologies for the delay in updates lately... In case you were wondering, I got the job!

I've been here three weeks now. I handed in my resignation, two weeks notice. I've been doing .net development on a monitoring service, and working on automating the build process. Its amazing coming to work every day and programming. I'm loving it!!

On another note, my submission to the cartoon competition run by the Cricket museum in Bowral, NSW didnt win, but it DID make it up on the wall. Its there right now (until end of Jan 2005) and was also printed in the catalog. I'm stoked! There were only 33 printed/displayed out of 110 submissions!!!

I'll post it up on my web site sometime soon for all to see. :)

Live life - Love life.
Take care all,
Stephen

This post should be a little more positive than the last... I went for a job last week. It was for a junior developer role and i got positive feedback from the first interview. They wanted me back for another interview, this time to meet the client. That went well too.

Today I got a call, they have offered me the same as what i am on now! I should get the letter of offer tomorrow (it didnt get to me today...) and then four weeks notice and then I'm a real developer!! Oh its mostly VB.NET and i'll be on the Department of Justice contract. I'm SOO excited, you have NO idea!

I could just squeel. :-)

Yaaaay!! I'm all alone!

Michelle, Jessica and Katie have all gone to Rottnest Island for the week. I'm at home left to look after the cat. I've got all my leave booked for Christmas and the honeymoon, so thats why i'm home alone. (Hmm.. conjures up images of that kid alone with the crooks trying to break in...)

I'm cool with that. Its so quiet... Its been aaaaaaages since i've been by myself. I've got two assignments due in the next week and the investment property to get ready to rent. The fence is going up today and the carport should go in sometime in the next few weeks. We'll advertise it for this weekend. Still the garden and reticulation to do, but after that it should be low maintenance.

Anyway back to my assignment and then off to Uni tonight after a two week break... hey... I just heard a sound... I think someones trying to break in!! Quick! I better set up some booby traps to catch the bad guys!

Time for another update on the saga of me.

Spent the weekend painting. We got the keys on Friday, and so Saturday the painting began... we got a fair bit done too, with the help of Lucas, Michelle's brother, Michelle and myself painting like kids at a kindergarden fingerpainting.

The unfun part was the fact that i somehow pinched a nerve in my back and could hardly move. I think i need a medal, i was in pain (still am) the whole weekend, up and down that step-ladder. Aahhhhhhhhhh... now i know how my poor Dad feels. (Damn genetics, i think i inherited a bad back...)

Its almost better now, I can move around now almost pain free. I'm wondering if I did it on the Friday... I was home looking after Katie (she had her tonsils out earlier in the week) and fell. I was stepping over a plastic crate and my foot caught it and i fell full force onto the crate with my knee... landing on my hands. Broke the crate too, but i felt fine once i recovered from the trip. I'm wondering if i jarred my spine or something? Who knows... I should live.

On other news... I got my Everquest 2 character creation kit the other day. EQ1 had me hooked for three years. I can see EQ2 being so much better... for one, they are promising the game will also cater for the casual gamer which is good for me, as I have so much other stuff to do that a game wouldnt get very much play compared to the old EQ1 days. I'll be upgrading my graphics card just before i get the EQ2 which should be in November. Going to get me the latest Nvidia 6800 Ultra, but wont get the 256Mb version.. for $300 less I can get the 128Mb version (hardly a difference in performance) and with the extra $300 I can upgrade my CPU (If it needs it... )

Should be fun...

Other news... I've been playing with DotNetNuke. Used it to create my web site www.littlevoices.com and also my brothers site www.blackcatpcs.com.au
Its pretty cool, and I will get some example code and write a few modules for the DotNetNuke... Its the lazy man's web site... very powerful. www.dotnetnuke.com

Pluck: Search, Retrieve, Organize & Share the Web
I've just discovered a new easier way to read blogs, and news. RSS. It stands for Real Simple Subscription. You seen those little XML orange boxes? Thats a link to subscribe to stuff in your RSS reader. I've had a bit of a look around and am trying two readers at the moment.

First one I tried is called Pluck, and despite the amusing name, is really good. It turns your browser into an outlook look alike. You can share your links if you like, with others. Also you can set up persistent searches on google, etc.

The other one i'm trying out is IntraVnews. Its free for single user, but you are to pay if you use it at work. I installed another called NewsGator, but as soon as i saw it was trial, I uninstalled it. It puzzles me that people charge when other people put theirs out for free. Free is so hard to beat, especially when the free ones are so good.

I'm rambling. Hope you are well...

House is coming along... only about a week or two and we should have the key. Then we have some painting to do, put down some carpets and get the carport (freestanding) put up.

It will be nice (for the bank balance) to get a tenant into the house so we dont have to pay for the thing ourself! Lucky our other investment property is positive cashflow, it at least helps cover some of the interest repayments.

On the programming front, i've been working on my uni assignment, a web site for booking flights on some imaginary airline company. Part A (the design) is due Monday. I have a couple of things to add to the draft and that bit is finished. The programming part i've started but its not due for a while yet.

Cartoon front is quiet... i've had one funny idea lately and drew a couple of pencil sketches of it. I'd like to do some more work on my spider cartoon strip but just havent had the time nor motivation. might do some doodling tonight.

I got an email from Miyuki in Japan, she will be back in a few weeks and will live with some friends. She might come and stay with us again as we are close to the city. Another Japanese student arrives tomorrow morning, Natsuko. Shes 22 and will be here a month.

I cooked a lasagna this week... from scratch. Pasta included. I can't believe pasta is just flour and egg. What a scam. Those italians have a lot to answer for making all this yummy food out of common every day food. ;-)

Cold and rainy night tonight. Michelle is sick. Miyuki is flying out to Japan tonight. She will be back in two weeks, but will be staying with some friends for two months. We have a new Japanese student moving in next week... her name is Natsuko, age 22.

I've got two assignments coming up for Uni. Ever notice how unexciting assignments are, even when you love the subject? hehe. Ah well, at least I have started them.

I went to a .NET meeting on Thursday and it was pretty good. They went over some compact framework stuff for Smartphones, which is perfect as I've just began doing some coding for my smartphone2. Cool phone. I had some problems with the SD reader on it, and ended up having to send it away (when the SD card got stuck in it!) and its been working great since I got it back. i-mate� Smartphone2

Tonight Michelle and I went to the CSC sundowner, and I enjoyed it. It was cool meeting more people who work for CSC who I haven't met. Its kind of strange being in a room full of strangers who all work for the same company as you. Most of the people I work with wussed out so wern't there.

I'm stressing out a little bit about Uni at the moment. I've got a technical paper to write on File Systems for Operating Systems and I didnt do as good as I would have liked in my last essay (it was also my first!). On the other side of the coin i've found some pretty damned cool stuff that I did not know. One part of the paper is to outline future directions in file systems and I've found some stuff outlining the file systems they are planning for the next version of XP/Windows. Basically its a database instead of a bunch of files. It will have a service that allows you to view the contents of the database in the old familiar hierarchical views of todays file systems, but the bonuses will come with the stuff that databases do best. Searching! You will be able to do searches on the database which will be fast compared with today. There will also be some XML features hooked into it so that just makes it more flexible.

The wedding plans are coming along. We have a Celebrate and we have some stuff to read over and choose what will be said during the ceremony. Its not going to be a big fan fare event. The girls have chosen their dresses (Jess, Katie AND Emily) and Michelle (and my mum) will be making them. Emily is pretty excited about it. She really growing fast. Shes six now and has such a personality. Shes as bright as a button, and doesnt miss a thing. She also gets on great with Jess and Katie like they are sisters, which is great.

The wedding will be in a park in Subiaco, called Subiaco Commons, its a little park hidden away between a heap of those flash homes they cram next to each other... Its a nice park though, and I walk through it on the way to and from work each day. You wouldnt even know it was there, its tucked away. The reception will be at the parents house of a friend of Michelle's. Then on the 7th of Jan Michelle and I fly off to Brisbane for two weeks. Its the first time we will be alone for so long ever! We will backpack it, and also visit my Dad who lives up that way now. I think we'll also stay on Fraser Island.

Fraser Island

Anyway, the cards are not happening at the moment. After the cards went to a 4 day show in the UK, the distributor decided that the other range (from another producer/artist) was more popular and they werent going to distribute mine. Bummer. Looks like I wont be the over night success after all. Never mind, Dave is looking at other markets and other distributors. Also tossing up some other design ideas, such as arty cards, or maybe occasion cards. Will see where that goes. I think we have the goods, we just have to find the market!

Stay tuned.

Cheers
Stephen

Not so good news from my Agent (for my Greeting card designs). He got an email from the distributors saying they dont think they will be popular. Still to hear what the problem is with them. Perhaps just one person didnt get them.

I heard that three of the agents thought they would do well, so this is a bit of a backward turnaround. Just about everyone laugh at them so dunno... maybe they are just too nice? Someone said that about them... they are not crass or low-brow.

Started back at Uni tonight. Almost missed my lecture because i didnt realise Uni started this week. LOL. I just wasnt thinking about it... anyway its Visual Programming and Operating Systems as my two units this semester. Should do pretty well which is good, I want to get my average up a bit. Its currently 80.89 just scraping in as a High Distinction. :-)

Not giving up on the cards yet. Dave still has some work to do, and theres always other distributors. One door closes and another opens. I'm still pretty damned stoked that he likes my designs so much hes prepared to put money into them. He believes they will do well, and I think they will too. Time will tell. Might try some other designs too, maybe arty abstract ones

Uni Results

Latest news on my uni results. I passed!!

YAY!

Here's my units so far... the ones I just finished are the first two below.

Systems and Database Design HD (82) 
Unix and C HD (89) 
Communicating in an IT Environment CR (66) 
Systems Analysis HD (80) 
Programming Principles HD (91) 
Computer Fundamentals D (77) 

Thats an average of 80.89 which scrapes in as a High Distinction! :-)

 

 

Latest news on the Greeting card front... The promo cards (48 cards, 12 of two chosen designs) have been printed and are with the distributors. They are printing the flyers that have the 12 card images on them. 6 Images on each side of a nice pretty full colour A4 flyer.

I should soon get a copy of the flyer and the promo cards so i will be able to actually SHOW people my finished work. In the next few weeks i should find out how many shops are ordering the cards for the first print run. Excitement eh?!?!

If it all takes off I should be able to quit my day job. I'm not sure if I will thought, I do like my job. Maybe I'll do some contracting and make more money.

On other fronts it looks like I'll be doing someone's web site for them. Should be good for the experience.

Little Voices is my creation, in case anyone didn't know.

Well... its happened. I've been discovered!!

Someone found my web site and we are now making greeting cards. Awesome! My cartoons are in colour now. Stay tuned for more!!!

Epiphany

Reading someone elses weblog is cool. It inspires you, and gets you motivated to keep your own updated as well. Yes, it helps you keep the bigger picture in view.

I've been doing C programming lately... trying to get my head around C pointers (again? haven't i done this language before?). It would seem that C has been around for years and its still used so much, especially in the Linux world. I enjoy it, (programming) especially when i get something working the way I want.

I've been cooking lately. I discovered how to make dough with the food processor. Check out some of the pics of my creations on http://lyynx.dyndns.org under the photo album link.

My brother is coming along with his business. He just got a heap of new parts for his prototype PC. Lives in Mildura, and is building a business making PC's for gamers and musicians. Black Cat computers, I think he's called it. Hope it all pans out for him.

Update: I've been slack.

Too long between entering Blogs, but you get that. I've got myself a mouse mat with one of my cartoons on it. Check it out... you can order them too if you like. www.littlevoices.com

Anyway, more to come. We have a Japanese student staying with us for a few months. Her name is Miyuki and she is teaching us things about her home. I recommend hosting overseas students, you learn lots!

Just got home from holidays. Michelle, the girls and I went to Canberra, my hometown. I took her around to some of the places to see, where i grew up and it was all pretty cool to see it again.

My Mum came up from victoria and stayed with her sister so I got to see the whole family pretty much. It was good to see my Dad. He's selling his house and moving to Queensland with his girlfriend. I'm not sure if hes moving to his new life or running from his old one. Ah well, its his life, and i wish him the best. I'm not so sure my three half brothers are impressed tho, but that could just be because they will have to move out and find their own place.
Should be an exciting experience for em all. :-)

Life is good.

Found this interesting site. Author living in Canberra.

Stephen Turner

Reminds me, I went to the ACA (Australian Cartoonist Association) meeting on Saturday. Michelle came along with me, and she discovered one of the other cartoonists there had done the Landmark Forum as well. Michelle and I have done the Landmark Forum. I got heaps out of it... actually it was THE best thing I have ever done in my life. I got my life out of it.

One of the other cartoonists I met on Sunday there, Jason, works for The WestAustralian newspaper. He told me all the cartoonists use a tablet. I'm going to check into it as it would be a dream being able to draw by hand AND have an undo key. That would rock.

I got one of my assignments back yesterday, for computer fundamentals. Its all logic and truth tables and maths... I had to actually put some time and effort into this one, and it paid off. I got 18 out of 20. 90% isnt bad eh?

Falling behind on my programming unit, so I sent an email to my tutor (online units this semester) and he said it was ok as he was behind on the marking. hehe.

My new TV needs some magnets to adjust the picture. Michelle said the repair man was talking about the earths magnetic field being different in Australia to Europe where the TV was manufactured. Weird that they would sell them in Australia unmodified if its a problem.

Great news site. Well, makes for some interesting reading.

Geeknewz :: News for the anti social nerds that suffer from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Ah yes... Technology. You gotta love it. My work's all singing all dancing web portal isn't working. In their infinite wisdom put everything on their web portal and then shock horror realised the hardware cant handle the demands of 5000+ users and now its dead.

But thats ok. :-)

I've been playing more Star Wars Galaxies. Time to do some Uni homework or i'll fall behind.

I got 6/6 for my Java Programming Principles assignment so happy with that!!

Started playing Star Wars Galaxies today. Very cool game. Looks nice, but i think i need to drop the screen rez as my brand new machine hasnt the grunt to run super smooth.

Its like Everquest but better in that you can do short/mini missions. Also you get experience from the skills you use, and also its very much based on what other players do as well. Ie if you make an item and give/sell it away you get xp for them using it.

Picture of my character

Interesting meanings;

Dictionary.com/singularity

Dictionary.com/Epiphany

Language gives us power over the world. Did you know that you do not have memories from when you were an infant because you did not have a language to describe your experiences?

Juanita just sent me a link to her website. Looks cool. Reminds me, I must dig out my blogger site and update it.

Juanita Fernando: Doctoral student (Health Informatics, Monash University)

Well, what i've been up to... Home; Went to Kings Park with Michelle, Jessica, Katherine and Emily. Walked over the new tree top walkway they have. Looks fantastic. The girls were exhausted, not to mention me. Oh we have a new cat. Hes on my lap right now. Sultan, 3yo black moggie. Work; Been doing some programming, vb.net and some asp. Wealth; just bought a block in Hamilton Hill. Thats property number two. The bank sent me a cheque for $10 because they took more than two days to give an answer.