SurfiOnline

Okay, so today I was playing with the final copy of WordPress 1.5, figuring out just how much work needs to be done for me to upgrade and how i’m going to use the new features such as the page management. I don’t think i’ll be using that specific feature because alot of my pages use actual PHP and MySQL to determine the output and the page management feature doesn’t support this.

With the update, i don’t think i’ll change much of the layout, if at all. I’ll be updating a lot of pages such as the portfolio page to contain more information on specific projects, updatin the about page and pretty much redoing both the links section and the gallery.

Recently I just haven’t had the time to write like I would have liked to. Numerous thig such as work, Tafe, and now MyBB 1.0 Gold going in to the private Beta – things have just been so hectic. Not to mention the fun i’ve been having with Tia, fixing a few peoples computers as well as working on the server administration interface for the new Messenger Plus! Custom Sound Messages feature – something really to look forward to.

Now that Apple have once again done a supurb job with the new iPod mini (6gb) as well as the 30gb iPod Photo – they’ve also updated the firmware for my 3G iPod! The long waited features that we saw in the 4G update: Shuffle Songs selection in Main Menu, Music menu item in Main Menu and Support for iTunes 4.7 and later.

Alot of other things have been floating around the internet such as Paris Hiltons phone book.. Why do I roll my eyes at that? *oops*. We also have those stupid things like this, and the stupid virus pretending to be from the FBI.

We also then have this incredibly stupid, arrogant, crap.. I could go on for ever but i’ll leave you to judge it yourself.. Mac Mini: The Emperor’s New Computer which is just a complete load of crap, But i’ll probably rant more on it later.

Managed to get my father to buy me two $14.95 4 port USB 2.0 hubs today, they’re powered and for that price (in AUD) they’re very much worth it. Now when I tell you the brand name is Tevion which is for sale by ALDI stores, i’ll have you know that it is all standard components just with a ‘Tevion’ logo on the case – there isn’t much to a USB hub. It was bloody cheap and apparently someone bought 3 boxes of 20 each! These hubs make it a lot easier for me to quickly hotswap things on my laptop, or even on my desktop..

Peace out, for now..

Everyone, i’d like you to meet Tia, the new lady in my life. She’s a Maltese cross Shitzu, just over 7 weeks old (Born on 24th December). She’s so cute, playful and a whole load of fun.

No guesses to what my wallpaper is right now..

Normal broadcasting should resume soon, I think i’ve had a tad of bloggers block and haven’t felt like writing much and when I do i’m usually at work, at Tafe, or doing something else..

God I love Thermaltake’s current line of products. They’re very stylish, well designed and they look great. Wait, did I just say the same thing three times? Well it’s true.

Okay, so today I received the ThermalTake SilverRiver 3.5″ “High Quality Aluminium HDD Enclosure”. It had to be sent all the way from Queensland to New South Wales for me because it was the closest store I could find that had it in stock, but that’s alright. I didn’t mind waiting. So right now I have: ThermalTake 7000SWA Shark Case, ThermalTake SilientTower Heatpipe CPU Cooler, Thermaltake Volcano11 CPU Cooler, and the new SilverRiver 3.5″ Enclosure. I’d say i’m a bit of a fan.

Lets take a look at the sexy thing:

Features:

• Stylish Tough Aluminium external enclosure
• Sharp LED Status indicators
• Hot-swapping capability
• Veritcal stand to save space
• System fan (1500RPM), Excellent Heat-Dissipation
• Interface rate: 480Mbs/USB 2.0, 400Mbs/IEEE 1394

Sure, all things you would expect from a drive enclosure but this one just tops all of the others I had looked at.

Installation of a drive is simple, you just remove the top cover by removing these little rubber stoppers and lifting the cover off. Install the drive and connect the IDE/Power cables, screw it in to place, put the top cover back on and put the stoppers back in. After connecting it to your PC you just turn on the power and plug it in to your USB/firewire port. Once you turn the drive bay on with the sexy switch you’re presented with a cool orange LED light on the front of the enclosure and Windows picks up the drive and mounts it.

Simple and stylish. My current desk looks a bit like this.. (Look at the crappy monitor I soon hope to replace with a nice 19″ LCD!)

Okay, so I got in a bit of trouble because I didn’t put up any pictures of my cousin, Simon, and one of the other people who went down with us, Britt, wakeboarding. I still have more to write about so here we go:

Britt Sundstrom
Taught by the “professional” Paul Boulton, and now what we’d call a converted Water Skiier, Britt learnt how to wakeboard this year and was up first go!

Simon Boulton (Cousin)
Simon came down with his girlfriend and decided he would give boarding another go. He too was up first go, having done it once or twice last year.

BMX/Bike Jumps

Okay, so this really doesn’t have much to do with our holiday but this little dude is so cool I just had to feature it. Some of the other kids in the van park we were staying at had been building bike jumps and these was this psycho 13 year old who does actually ride and jump professionally..

Up Towards the Beach

Because Conjola is on the Eastern side of Australia the beach was East of where we were staying. To get up there in the boats we had to go through water which was as little as 50cm deep. It’s a lot of fun when we get up there and the water is nice and clean. We didn’t really go to the beach but left the boats on the sandbanks behind the beach and just mucked about in the lake, not in the ocean.

I decided i’d leave everyone else and go over to a small sandbar to claim my own piece of land. I grabbed my brothers bodyboard and over I went. Being the “creative person I am” I built a chair from the bodyboard and sand. It wasn’t the most confortable but I made do. I had fun secluded over there away from everyone else.

These photos were taken near the end of our holiday when there were only three families left (Us, my grandparents, and the Beattie’s).

Anyway, the point is: We had loads of fun and I can’t wait until we can go again next year! That pretty much puts an end to this serries of posts – we hope you tune in next time when SurfiOnline returns to it’s semi-regular broadcasting!

For now, I leave you with this: Sucked in Pauly!

Right, seeing as though I now have 50 of the buggers to get rid of like everyone else, here why not have a Gmail invite? I managed to write a script to check if they’re still active or not so I’ll run it later and mark the ones which have been taken.

I’ll have some more for you soon..

Another post about Conjola coming later tonight!

Okay, so just in case you haven’t worked it, out the reason we took our boat to Lake Conjola (along with the other families who went) was so we could have a bit of fun: wakeboarding, biscuitting, and at one stage body boarding on the boats wake.

Wakeboarding

First i’d like to introduce you to two people who like to call themselves “professional” wakeboarders. No, they aren’t Ron Marks or any other name in the wakeboarding industry and no they can’t really do anything more than ride the board, jump from each side of the wake, and attempt tricks which end up with them being ‘nailed’.

Paul Boulton
Indeed, he is my brother.

Mark Brown
This is a friend of my brothers and one of the people who came down with us.

Paul and Mark Together
Oh, how cute – what a nice couple. Paul and Mark decided they would both ride behind the boat at the same time..

Blake Boulton
At only 11 years of age this “crazy little dude” took up wakeboarding about a year ago. and just enjoys having fun on the board instead of trying to impress other people like Paul and Mark do.

Biscuitting

For those who don’t know, a biscuit is an inflatable tube (sort of like a tyre) that is towed behind the boat with a person on it. You can have lots of fun on them but they can also be pretty dangerous when you’re thrown in to whips over huge waves. I’m in the last two photos

This is always lots of fun. Usually we’ll go up to one of the many beaches on the lake, park the boat then whoever wants to go out will go out in one of the boats, have there fun and then come back. This year we didn’t really do that. A whole group of us would take the boat out directly from where we leave it, go out for a few hours then come back.

Tomorrow we’ll take a bit of a look at what you do when you’re not on the water, the beach, as well as some other shots of the area.

(Photography by Chris and Paul Boulton – majority are mine © 2005 Chris Boulton).

Related Posts

• Lake Conjola: Part I – The Trip Down

Well over the last 2 days I dragged my father out to the western parts of Sydney (Silverwater, Homebush West and today Rydalmere to pick up all of the parts for my new PC. Specifications are:

• AMD Athlon64 3500+ Processor
• ASUS A8V Wireless Edition Motherboard
• 512mb Geil DDR 400mhz RAM with Heat Spreaders (intend to get more soon)
• Thermaltake SWA7000 Silver Shark Case
• Thermaltake SlientTower Heat pipe CPU cooler (it’s damn massive!)
• 80GB 7200RPM Maxtor Hard drive (has been sitting in drawer for a while)
• 250gb Western Digital SATA Hard drive
• Samsung 16x DVD-RW (+ and -)
• 64mb Nvidia video card (temporary until I decide on a new one – recommendations?)

I also had to pick up my wireless access point for this laptop and now that computer, and some cool thumbscrews (can never have enough), oh and two sata power cables.

And now for the pictures..

I promise i’ll write more about my holiday tomorrow and upload the rest of the pictures I have! That is when I get home from work. -_-