Archive for November, 2004

Welcome to 2.5!

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What first started as me playing around trying to create a Christmas stylesheet for here, quickly turned in to a bit of a redesign. Not enough in my mind to call it version 3 (That will be coming when I upgrade to WordPress 1.3), but enough to call it 2.5. Most of the changes were simply CSS changes, as well as the actual images for the logo, menu and the side bar.

For this layout, I decided to step a bit out of my comfort zone of the usual blue layout, wanting to try something a little different to blue which I have always seemed to stick to when designing sites.

Hope you like it..

November 27th, 2004 9 Comments

My Formal

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Some may already know, whilst others don’t but last night (Tuesday, 23rd November) was my Year 12 formal. This was actually the last time I would see everyone from my grade together again as a group, this was a night for us to celebrate our achievements at school, our completion of the Higher School Certificate, and just to have a fun night together with our peers. That, it indeed was.

Formal’s involve a key element which I despise: photos. You can’t go pointing a camera at me and expect to get a decent photo of any sort. I’m not a natural lens hog, in fact I actually hate being in front of the camera, i’d rather be behind. It all started at about 4:30pm after I had finished getting dressed up in my suit and all. My mother, and my brother dragged me down the back of my property to get some photo’s of me. After kicking my shoe in and doing a bit of complaining about the amount of photo’s she intended to take (She had a film of 24 photos, plus my brother had my digital camera), I had to “pose” for the camera. < — Something else I am attrocious at!

Me!
Me Again!
Pose For Me?
Le Casual
From Year 6 1998 to Year 12 2004

After that we moved on to Shelly Park down at Cronulla where everyone was meeting for the pre-formal get together. That meant more photos too :( . On the right, is a photo of those of us who continued on from Year 6 at the same primary school (Yowie Bay PS!) and are still here in year twelve this year. Some people are still with us, they just weren’t at the preformal get together when the photo was taken.

My table at the formal

Eventually the buses arrived (thank god, no more photos!) and we piled ourselves onto the double decker party buses, driving down the streets at about 60km/h the whole way. Eventually we arrived and were breath tested and “metal detected” before we were allowed to enter the function room. We all quickly got seated and the evening was quickly under way. We had food (generally that’s what people eat), and we watched a slideshow of all pictures that have been submitted, then we had the speeches, awards, cutting of the cake, then we just hung about until 12 dancing, talking and you know, socialising!

The best part of the night was still to come though, I managed to get in on a hotel room at Star City with some of my friends. We staggered on over and went up to the room. Those that were over 18 went to the pokies to blow some of their cash (no one came back with any winnings, some even lost money.)

Kirby, fast asleep!

People started disappearing to bed, but I didn’t particularly have any plans to go to sleep that night, and I wasn’t really tired. Elle and I managed to survive the whole night without sleep, but there was always at least someone else awake at the same time. We just bummed around, talked, the usual stuff you do. Poor little Kirby on the right there, fast asleep, probably dreaming about some of his “women”.

Eventually it reached 5am and we were in need of something to do. We went in to the room next door where the girls who were sleeping were asleep, stole their TV remote and turned on their TV as we left. We soon realised that from our balcony we could also control their TV with the remote. As soon as they had turned it off, we were quickly sticking our heads around the screen on the balcony and turning it back on, turning the volume right up. This continued for about 30 minutes before they decided it would be easy for them to close the TV cabinet doors. Fun over

Time ticked by, the sun rose, the clouds parted and everyone slowly woke up and rose out of their beds. They all went down to the pool to go for a swim. I didn’t take my bordies or anything suitable to go swimming in so I just sat on a sun lounge and gathered a tad of sun before the clouds came in, and sort of fell asleep (not for long! – I was resting my eye lids!). Went back to the rooms eventually, cooked pancakes. I don’t believe that Rafki had never had them before! And that nobody but me knew how to cook them! Finally packed up by 11, checked out and began on the trip home in the car.

Damn, i’m so tired..

November 24th, 2004 10 Comments

Down Time

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It seems that the ZeonHost server that this website is currently on was hacked yesterday and much destruction to server configuration files was done. Craig was quick on the scene at the data center and managed to rebuild the server (we’re now on a nice P4 2.4ghz/2gb ram server too!) as well as restore all of the users data. I’m very pleased to say that I haven’t lost anything due to this.

In other news, after 5 years stuck on horrible dialup plans, running the phone bill’s huge i’m finally on OptusNet Broadband. Theoretically speaking this connection is 10Mbs, meaning I should be able to download at around 1.25mb/s. However, due to the number of customers on the node I am on, as well as infrastructure problems in Australia, this doesn’t happen! It’s still alot better than dialup though, no waiting long amounts of time for pages to load, no complaining at brothers when I am unable to use the internet due to them downloading something.

Currently on a 12gb “Unlimited” plan, and have 10 more days to use all of it up.. Fun :D

November 20th, 2004 5 Comments

Assortedness

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According to the Wheelman, I don’t update this place as much as I should be updating it and i’m inclined to believe him. I mean, why is it so hard for me to spend 10 minutes of my not-very-precious time writing out a new post? So, from now on i’m going to try and keep this place updated a couple of times a week and have a few ideas for a bit of interesting content such as tips and tricks for developers, designers, and just general tips on software usage.

I signed out of school yesterday as my exams finished last Thursday for good. So many people have gone around asking me how it feels to be free, and to be totally honest, to me it doesn’t feel a piece different from before.

I have lots of things going on at the moment such as doing my schools website (still!), the yearbook CD for my year, getting MyBB 1.0 Final ready for release/beta, working at Target, and much more. My spare time is actually more scarce than before! Heh.

Now MyBB 1.0 Final. I’m posting this here instead of the MyBB Community Forums, for a change. Work is progressing along at a pretty ordinary pace at the moment with a few new features whose implementation has been completed:

With the module system in MyBB, we plan to offer a variety of modules such as a shoutbox, gallery, and blog system which are not included in the MyBB release by default, but can be downloaded via the MyBB website and installation is as simple as uploading the required files, going to the Admin CP, modules section and clicking ‘Install’ or ‘Activate’. The module will then be able to be deactivated, managed, or uninstalled via the same modules section.

The new header design resolves the incompatibility problems with various old web browsers (such as Mac versions of IE), and provides a more attractive and ergonomic menu and toplinks section as well as the welcome back message. The new header design incorporates a new clean version of the MyBB logo which gives a stylish look but still maintains the simplistic layout design.

You’ll learn more about these changes when we post more information regarding the new features as well as some screenshots of the new version in the MyBB Community Forums, but i’m telling you now – this release is something to really look forward to!

In that scarce free time I mentioned above i’ve also been experimenting with WordPress 1.3 Alpha 4, the new features it contains – specifically the new theme system, to work out how i’m going to get this website updated when 1.3 is finally released, as well as how I can use the custom page designer included with the release to my full advantage to generate pages as well s the menu’s which you see throughout the site. I’ll probably end up posting more information about this further on in the week as well as some of the code I will be using. The WordPress team have done a really nice job with the release too, incporporating more than I could ever imagine, but just what I need in to their awesome software.

I think its a bit of TV time now, while I get some Windows and Linux updates downloaded and installed.

Catchya later!

November 16th, 2004 2 Comments

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released

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Mozilla Firefox 1.0

Finally, the long waited release of Firefox has arrived. Ben Goodger and the rest of the team at Mozilla HQ have compiled the 1.0 release and put it up for download on the Mozilla FTP servers.

as Ben posted on his weblog, its been a long journey for Firefox to get to this stage, various name and identity changes included.

This is the culmination of over two years worth of herculean work by a great team of people, all dedicated to making the best browser around.

I could not agree with Ben more there.

This day has come a lot later than any of us originally planned, but that’s the way software goes. I’ve learned a lot about a huge number of things in the process, have had the opportunity to talk to a lot of different people about their experiences with the software, etc. It’s been a long road but we’re finally here. No software is perfect, we did not fix every bug, implement every feature, but what we did do was create what we believe to be the best browser around. I want to thank you all again for the support over the past few years. In the not-too-distant future, I will be posting a technical postmortem of the 1.0 release process beginning February 2004, which may be of interest to the technical types. Now, for some beer, some sleep, and then onward to Firefox2!

Make sure you check out the start page after installing the release too! Seems Mozilla/Firefox and Google have teamed up – reminds me of back in the days of Nutscrape.. Err.. Netscape.

Quick! Go get it!

More Coverage:

November 9th, 2004 2 Comments

Utter Disbelief

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Casey Makes Idol History

Australia, what the hell were you thinking?! Courtney deserves to be standing up there with Anthony more than Casey! We want someone who is going to be able to sell records, that can “fit right in” to any song they choose to sing.

With the Opera House performance creeping up, the series drawing to a close, I did hope that Courtney would be able to be there for it – to at least be in the top two. For everything that he has been through, he deserves it more than anything. To think, that his performance last night (Sunday) was not broadcast to Central Queensland due to a technical “stuff up”, is something that could have considerably changed the way people voted.

I’m sure Mark loved every moment when it was announced that Casy had made it through and when Courtney was left standing to sing the last piece he will ever sing on the idol stage. Holden buckled under audience pressure on Sunday to give Casey a touchdown, something which he should not have done as her rendition of “You’re So Vain” was not worthy of it in my opinion.

Show us what you’re made of Anthony!

Grrr…

November 8th, 2004 2 Comments

Aww, look at his wee lil’ boots!

4 Comments

To celebrate the upcoming release of Shrek 2 on DVD and VHS (Released 3rd November in Australia and the 5th November eveyerhwhere else), I decided I would do something a little bit different and out of the ordinary. In case you haven’t realised, i’m talking about the amount of shrek releated images you’ll find whilst exploring the site and viewing posts. It’s all controlled via the CSS and will automatically switch back to the normal site on 7th November (I hope!).

Everyone’s favourite larger-than-life hero returns in Shrek 2, the #1 animation of all time. Happily ever after never seemed so far far away when a trip to meet the in-laws turns into another hilariously twisted adventure for Shrek and Fiona. With the help of his faithful steed Donkey, Shrek takes on a potion-brewing Fairy Godmother, the pompous Prince Charming, and the famed ogre-killer, Puss In Boots, a ferocious feline foe who’s really just a pussycat at heart!

The header image isn’t as best as I had hoped either, I couldn’t achieve the right style or find the right font to matcch the Shrek logo, but the output is still pleasing.

Remember, release dates are Wednesday 3rd November for Australia, and Friday 5th November for the US (and I presume everywhere else.)

Shrek and Donkey on another whirlwind adventure!

November 1st, 2004 4 Comments