October, 2006

Ive decided to make a conscious decision to start using the services menu in OS X. Its been sitting in the application menu since OS X came out yet ive never really utilised it to its full extent.

I figure this is mainly due to forgetting its there when i could use it and i end up just doing the task some other way.

I browsed through the whole list tonight to get some idea on what exactly is in there and i was quite surprised at what atcually lives in there. Heaps of shortcuts for common things i do.

So yeah, my goal is to start using the Services menu a lot more.

On a side note, there’s lots of little things in OS X that are there to make common things easier. I really need to start finding quicker ways to do common tasks. Launchbar is a good example… i own a license for it and use it for application launching but that’s it, yet its so much more powerful than that.

Finished reading iWoz, written by Steve Wozniak last night. I picked the book up a few days before i left Rocky to come home to Inverell.

The book starts out pretty slow but does come through with the goods. Ive always known Woz was involved with Apple from the start, but i never really realised what exactly he did do. Reading about how he created the Apple I, Apple II, the floppy drive, etc amazed me. The guy must be one smart cookie thats for sure.

The second part of the book is a lot more interesting then the first in my opinion and the last 2 chapters close the book off well.

Well worth the read for Apple fans. Non Apple fans might not be as interested, but i would encourage them to at least give it a try… Woz did pioneer the personal computer as we know it.

Went around to try to help a guy fix his adsl connection this arvo. Turns out i couldnt do much even after spending an hour or so fiddling with 2 different modems. In the end i went back to the default ‘bigpond provided’ modem *piece of shit*, put in the bigpond provided cd and then went through the setup. After stepping through the whole process, from plugging in the cables, plugging in the network card, turning on the modem, etc I got a wonderful message saying “the setup program could not connect your modem to bigpond”.

Bloody wonderful. In other words there was somthing wrong with the BigPond provided service *as usual*.

Mum and I left the place, having made no progress at all. No doubt the guy has a nice evening of sitting in the BigPond tech support queue to eventually get answered by someone with a strong accent who is going to tell him to reboot his modem and restart his PC.

I often wonder how much money BigPond make from ADSL connections that arent actually in use by the people who are paying for it because there is some kind of problem with the service. My guess is its a fair amount.

I also often wonder how many unsecured wireless internet connections there are around Australia from the dodgy piece of crap modems BigPond provide by default. None of the ones ive seen have any kind of firewall or wireless security enabled and from what ive seen the setup program doesnt mention anything about it either.

Keep up the good work Telstra /sigh

Installed another plugin today, this one lets me add source code to posts without wordpress doing weird things to it.

NSSquirrel *aSquirrel = [[NSSquirrel alloc] init];

Its pretty cool, not sure when exactly ill use it but its nice to know its there for when i need it

Another blog update! Good thing about WordPress is the constant development that goes with it.

So begins the upgrade process for all the other wordpress blogs i look after

Another cool feature of the new K2 theme is the ‘built in’ random header image option.

Upload a heap of images (of rough size) then select the ‘randomly pick header image’ option, and watch it do its magic. Its rather cool, cooler than just a static header image… or at least i think so at the moment. Maybe ill change my mind later, but for the time being it is good.

Just as a side note, all the images were taken by me! Yup! thats right! I didnt plagerise a single one of them.

So im fiddling with the theme on this blog again. I was browsing through the pages and pages of themes over at the wordpress.org page, but couldnt decide. Then i remembered reading about K2… the next version of the Kubrick theme that is currently the ‘default’ theme of any wordpress blog out of the box.

So i headed over to http://getk2.com/ and downlaoded it. Was simple to install and withing 2 mins i was fiddling with settings.

Its a really neat package. So far i like it a lot more than my other theme. It handles all the sidebar things as well, so you can add all sorts of sidebar info and configure it. Im guessing more sidebar addons will become available sooner or later.

Its still relatively new, and im expecting some bugs, but ill fiddle with it for a while and see how it goes.

Just gotta figure out how to change some colors colours or somthing, but then again i dont mind blue.

Now i guess i wait for Thomas to see how awesome it looks and ask me to install it on his blog.

Wow, the past week has gone pretty fast. Ive been working with dad and its going good.

Nathan and Grant were up as well, so Nathan came working for the week which was cool.

We started out by stripping a bathroom out, which included ripping out the hand basin, and ripping the wall sheeting down, etc. The room had to be resheeted and in some cases restudded where white-ants had eaten it away.

We managed to get 2 bathrooms done at the motel in the week, which was pretty good going. Im pretty slow when it comes to tiling especially when it comes to dad. He managed to throw up all the wall tiles in a room before me even though i had a good 2 wall head start

I really should take some ‘start’ and ‘finish’ photos of work we do, would be cool.

This coming week we are off to a different job. Uncle Steph is apparently helping out which will no doubt be entertaining.

So yeah, thats about it. Ill try posting more often with updates through the coming week.

So im heading home (Inverell) tomorrow morning. Going to try to leave as early as possibly and do the whole 10ish hour drive in one go. Ive done it before, and i take regular breaks so its no big deal. I dont find i get overly tired during the drive, its more boredom then anything (which i guess in some ways is a form of tiredness?), but anyway, i have loaded up my good ol chunky butt ipod (the one with the dud battery) with heaps of songs and interesting podcasts, so all should be good.

Plan is to head back to Rocky end October / early November. Ima ctually looking forward to helping dad out on some tiling jobs.

Giving Grant a lift from Ashford to Inverell as well, Nathan is already up there. Apparently Jodie is flying back next week as well… the house is going to be packed and highly active, just like Mum likes it

So yeah, thats the plan. Should be good.

Another year older, another year wiser? hrmm

Yep, melanie is another year older today (american time) or yesterday (australia time).

I’ve no doubt she will have a good time.

So i polished my car over the weekend. I thought id get it done in one day, and got close, but it started get too hot outside so i retired on saturday arvo with only the right side doors and bonnet to go. Sunday morning i finished it off.

Looks all shiney and flash now.

I did notice though that the paint on the bonnet, that was replaced after i hit a roo a while back now, is started to crack and bubble. This kind of pisses me off considering the paint on the rest of the car isnt, and its only this part that was redone.

Im going to ring the insurance people and see what kind of warranty they have on repairs. Ill have to try to find when that all happened. Still, the fact that the ‘new’ repairs are bubbling and cracking before the other paint that was put on the car when it mades is somewhat annoying.

Also noticed the seals on my doors are starting to crack and break away. Might have to look at getting them replaced sometime soon.

The joys of owning a car