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