AydsBlog

Some thoughts from me to you.

2009-10-04T22:34:00.001+10:00

So as I sit back reflecting on another weekend I notice that much of this weekend has been dominated by activities which were organised via Twitter. Yes! Believe it or not a website which gets you out of the house and doing stuff. How does it do this? Simple, it does the one thing the internet was built for; it connects you to people.

The way which I connected with most of these people is BTUB – the Brisbane Twitter Users Brigade¹. As a regular attendee to BTUB functions organised via Twitter I’ve met many lovely and interesting people. Some of these people I like to think have become friends rather than merely acquaintances.

So if you’ve got this far and are still asking “what the hell is BTUB?” then here is a quote shamelessly lifted from the BTUB About page:

BTUB is a loose association of Twitter users located in Brisbane, Australia.

Similar groups exist in other Australian cities, using the *TUB format, such as STUB (Sydney) and MTUB (Melbourne).

Mostly, a BTUB occurs when several Twitter users publicly get together in Brisbane for any ol’ purpose. It’s always social and it usually includes drinking.

So as I understand it a group of Twitter users got together at a pub for a few drinks to meet people they’d spoken with online in person. They liked what happened and so more events were arranged. This became known as BTUB.

Recently I’ve seen and heard some discussion around BTUB organisation and the events via Twitter and in person. I felt that I had a few ideas to put forward about this and the best way to do that was via my blog so I can express them at length and everyone can read and comment.

I like the fact that people are questioning and discussing BTUB events. It shows there are people out there who care about the Brisbane Twitter community. It is through these questions, comments and opinions BTUB as an idea stays current and relevant to the wide range of people it is made up of.

There is no doubt in my mind that most of the people who I’ve met at BTUB activities I would never have met in an alternate course of events. Even if I did meet them some other way I doubt that we would have maintained contact without Twitter and, more specifically, BTUB. I’ve met teachers, musicians, lawyers, lecturers, students, IT professionals, librarians and so many more. I’ve re-connected with people from my past and met people who I’m sure will part of my future.

The challenge of having all these wonderfully interesting people together is that their likes and dislikes are obviously going to differ. Some people don’t like crowds and pubs while some can’t get enough of mosh pits and loud music. Others enjoy relaxing with a coffee while some are out playing sport. So surely this can’t work – right?

I think it can and my reasoning for this can be summed up with a quote from The Matrix changed around a little:

Do not try to bend BTUB - that’s impossible - instead only try to realise the truth.

There is no BTUB.

There’s no constitution, no charter, no president, no clubhouse, no meeting room, no committee, no membership fees & no membership card. Sure, I’ll admit there are a few individuals who guide the group by posting contact on the BTUB Twitter account and btub.org website but that’s as organised as it gets.

What this means for you is that your idea for an event can happen. All you need to do is put the details together, ask @BTUB to put it on the calendar and tweet about it with the "#BTUB" hashtag. There are some tips you can follow on the BTUB FAQ page and plenty of other Twiter users who'd be happy to help.

I don't want to go to every BTUB event. I don't even want to want to go to every one. What I do want is for everyone to have the desire to attend at least one event. That means there's a variety of events going on to cater to this crazy variety of people who just happen to all identify themselves as #BTUB.

1: I know originally the "u" stood for "underground" however I personally feel the group is a bit big for that now. I also feel that "users" better explains what we are. YMMV

Didn’t realise it would be about privacy…

2009-08-08T23:23:00.001+10:00

So welcome to another Aydsblog post. I’m not sure who out there in the big wide world actually reads this blog but since it’s also posted to Facebook automagically I’m pretty sure the numbers are larger than when I first started writing.

When this blog first started it was basically just so I could muck around and say I had a blog. True to my character there wasn’t much of a plan and wasn’t much of a direction. Which can be seen - even with the small number of posts I’ve made – from looking at the content and how different it is. Some posts are short, some posts are long, some are related to my work, some are related to me, some are personal, some were about events and some posted live from events. The advantage of this lack of a plan is I can write just about anything and be fairly confident that it will fit into the grand scheme of things.

The question I’m asking myself is, should I be posting to this forum?

Currently I have a profile on Facebook and also an account on Twitter which I use frequently. Both of these accounts have been great for interacting with both friends I had met before and also, particularly in the case of Twitter, new friends who I’m still getting to know. An interesting thing has happened which I’ve recently started to notice and that is everyone seems to know everything. Each group of people I know, however, has a different set of experiences and a different set of stories which make sense to them. The only commonality in some cases is me.

In the past this wouldn’t matter because the stories were shared through experience, verbally or even in the modern world via separate websites. However these days that separation seems to be diminishing. While certainly this is a great thing to happen if the information is simple and of a wide interest (well, to all 3 of you guys who are actually interested in me anyway), it isn’t so great when the information is open to interpretation or requires some context to be understood.

I’ve certainly been surprised a few times at people who have made it known that they’ve seen things I’ve done or posts I’ve made. Not that there’s been anything I didn’t necessarily want them to know but it was just not something I’d always considered before I posted.

Just like any other piece of new technology we’ve seen eventually the general etiquette, moral and social structures will be in place to guide us in the right direction. They’ll be taught and learned just as all the other rules and guidelines of society are passed from one to another. Software (well, good software anyway) will be written to take these conventions into account so it will compliment how their users expect to interact.

Of course what might be most interesting is to turn that last paragraph on it’s head and ask yourself how much the websites of today such as Facebook and Twitter will change the way everyone defines acceptable communication in the future.

Angels

2009-08-04T01:53:00.001+10:00

I have some guardian angels who sometimes talk to me.
They've not got harps nor feathery wings nor halos I can see.
But when I'm feeling down or blue and I stumble and I fall,
They are there to catch me and set me straight and tall.

They do not carry trumpets to herald what they do.
Cause anything that's said to them is a secret they hold true.
They have the skill of listening with a sympathetic ear,
So that I can always talk things out when an angel is near.

Now I'm not much the poet, and simple is this verse.
Perhaps you would've liked me to be a bit more terse.
But I'm blessed with my angels and, if you look carefully around,
Some angels of your own my friend you may just have found.

Chance Taken

2009-08-04T01:20:00.001+10:00

I'm not sure if you noticed, not sure if you know,
I feel inside a sadness, every time you go.

If you walk into a room, my heart flutters like a bird.
Before we've shared a single touch, or said a single word

These two facts I've said above, make it obvious and clear
I'm happier when you're around, joyful when you're near.

Perhaps you'll never see this verse, read all that it does say
For my nerves and my embarrassment may just get in the way.

But if, by chance, I've published this allowing you to read,
You need to know I offer you all the love you'll ever need.

Love Buckling the Angry Birds

2009-07-16T23:49:00.003+10:00

So it seems that I only post here once a year or so. I've been prompted to post because, as some people who know me from a band forum or two **cough** MFN **cough** Small Mercies **cough** will remember, after I go to a gig I like to write a bit of a blow-by-blow account. Usually it's a chance to spark some comment and also share the night with people who couldn't be there.

Unfortunately for me, the artists I went to see this evening don't have a forum (at least not one I'm aware of) so therefore I required an alternate outlet for this little monologue. I thought to myself "...remember that blog thingy you've never really used..." so here I am.

Well I had a busy night tonight for a "school night". It began with a quick stop back at home to change clothes. After that I jumped in my car and headed off towards The Zoo for the first performance of my evening.

After parking my wonderful vehicle safely at the Warner St carpark I got out to hear the sounds of The Love Buckles doing their sound check. I then ventured into the brisk Brisbane night air and crossed Ann St to get to The Zoo just as the doors were opened at 8pm.

For a few moments I wandered back and forth not recognising any faces. The Buckles boys were obviously chilling backstage (or whatever they do back there) so I thought I'd pull out my mobile and check Twitter...

What's this?! No mobile? **cut to image of mobile in centre console of car** DAMN!

So then there was a quick trip to retrieve my communications device. During which I greeted @NicoleJensen, @theroundup and others outside the venue. Back inside and I chatted with them for a while until @iCharlotte appeared to say hello. She introduced me to some more wonderful people who had come out to support the guys.

So The Love Buckles appeared on stage, picked up their instruments and without much ado launched into their first song. This prompted a quick shuffle of Love Buccaneers (I just made that up! Cute, huh?) towards the front of the venue. I have to say, from the very first song they sounded great!

Normally this is the part of the review where I relate half the set-list from memory. Unfortunately I'm not sufficiently familiar with these tracks to do that as yet. I certainly recognised (and sung along to) "Dave Grohl" and thought "Blues" was another stand out.

What I was familiar with was how the guys sounded at the other two gigs I'd seen. Compared to those two this evening they sounded fantastic. They were tighter, the drums were sharper and cleaner, the vocals were clearer and louder in the mix (without being too loud). A venue designed to be a music venue, rather than a pub, was partially how that was achieved. I think the other part was Frank, Brady, Aaron and Matt rising to the occasion.

All in all, a fantastic show guys! I'd love to see the boys do a few tweaks with a couple of the songs though. For one, I think Blues is a great song to end the set. However what it does need once the song breaks back down to the blues riff, rather than just ending, is to build it up again to a big finish. That way there is a bit of a flourish to wind things up. As it was I felt the end lacked a full stop.

Next I said some hasty goodbyes (apologies to any I missed) and jumped in my car to head to the Treasury Casino. Performing there was Ben Stewart along with a few special guests. I arrived late unfortunately. However I was just in time to see Ben's bass player take Ben's acoustic. He started playing a haunting and beautiful song which I believe was an Irish tune. I quickly secured a drink and settled in to watch.

After that Ben took the stage again and they did several tunes. The night, as jokingly mentioned on stage, seemed to be the "Ben Stewart Variety Hour" with several performers joining Ben on stage even in the relatively short time I was there.

The final song turned out to be "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago which Ben performed along with the help of both his bass player and three lovely ladies from the audience. No, they weren't chosen at random. They were the always fantastic Emma Dean, Jill Geurts (who I recently saw as "Miranda" in Zen Zen Zo's rendition of "The Tempest") and another friend of Ben's whom I did not have the pleasure of meeting properly.

All up I had a great evening thanks not only to the many amazing performers I saw, but also the wonderful people I shared it with.

So now, since it is the wee hours of the morning, I must sign off this post and find my blankets. If you enjoyed reading this let me know and I'll try to ramble more frequently in future. Until next time, farewell!

AydsBlog in Plain English

2008-05-23T22:40:00.002+10:00

I was listening to the latest .Net Rocks! podcast and one of their guests mentioned some posts about public speaking on Josh Holmes's weblog. I decided that I was interested in reading them so I slapped his blog URL into Firefox.

I didn't find the posts i was in search of, however I did stumble across a post which told me about a great video explaining Twitter. It's fantastic! It's all done using animation and paper and it's all "in plain English". The best thing about these videos (apart from the fact I found them entertaining) was that despite it being something I think my Mum would be able to understand there were none of the factual errors which seem to plague most "plain English" descriptions of technology.

If you'd like to check them out ("Zombies in Plain English" is great fun) head over to http://www.commoncraft.com/show.

Ok, so I'm a geek - but...

2008-05-16T21:46:00.003+10:00

I just wondered if you could, at first glance, tell me what is wrong with my username here?

So "aydsman" would be allowed but not "Aydsman". Huh? You can't simply make the username oh, I don't know, case insensitive just like every other username on the planet?

The second reason this message sucks is that they didn't have any text on the page letting me know about the username restrictions up front. It'd be great to know that I only had a limited character set to play with BEFORE I went to the trouble of typing in a username.

You know, perhaps I'm just getting old and grumpy but silly things like this in software just make me annoyed. Anyone else?

Today's Template Tinkering

2008-01-08T23:49:00.000+10:00

So for no apparent reason I decided to alter my Blogger template. I changed all the containers so that they get their width as a percentage of the browser window. This means when you make your window bigger my blog will follow suit.

It always annoys me a little when a website author assumes I have a screen the width of a matchbox to view their content on. These sites always end up with huge expanses of barren, abandoned and unused screen real estate on either side of an impossibly thin column.

Of course, when I do have a screen the size of a matchbox (AKA my mobile) I also hate sites which don't accomodate that as well - but that's a rant for another day.

Strange, random...

2006-08-25T16:48:00.000+10:00

For no particular reason I thought I'd tell the small part of the world who read my incredibly infrequent postings on here that I just found a pen with the name "Yvette" printed in nice cursive writing on it's side.

The astute amongst you will note that isn't my name and obviously this writing implment has lost it's original owner.

I wonder what made me think to blog this?

Time passes...

2006-05-10T01:27:00.000+10:00

So I log into Blogger (the marvelous Google-owned company which hosts this blog) and it tells me I last updated the AydsBlog on the 18 December 2005. That's about 6 months ago. Yes, I did think of doing the maths and giving that to you in seconds or something but I can't really be bothered.

I can hardly believe that it's been that long, but I am quite astoundingly lazy sometimes. There is a motivation for posting this, and I'm sure you're all eager to find out what that is. Well, to be honest - it isn't the happiest of circumstances.

I'm just feeling a little wierd right now. Mostly a little down, a little sad and a fair bit tired. The reason I'm feeling tired is it's running up quickly on midnight. The reason I'm feeling down is that my family's beloved canine companion, Sooty, was put to rest earlier today.

Unfortunately my first, and so far only, pet dog had grown far too old. Due to his age and various ailments which numerous trips to the vet (and no doubt much of Mum and Dad's money) could not alleviate Mum and Dad made the hard decision to have him put down.

They'd told me of this so I went and saw him for the last time on the weekend. I tried not to think of it too much that way, but I did try to say a quiet goodbye to my old pal.

Even though I know and agree that they have done the right thing it's still a bit of a shock to know that he's really gone.

I'd moved out quite a while ago and I do miss having a dog (especially when a piece of food hits the floor) but due to the fact that I'm renting and out at work all day every day a pet isn't really practical. Also because I'd moved out I didn't get to see my beautiful little puppy all that much anymore. It did make me sad sometimes when I did see him because you could see he was trying to be alive and spritely but just didn't have the strength or agility to pull it off.

So farewell my friend. You'll never be forgotten.

From the days when I used to sing to you and stroke you in your cardboard box to calm you down during a storm. To the walks I used to take you on. To the frights you'd give visitors putting on that tough-dog act. To your distinctive bark, which it seemed made every pooch in the neighbourhood sit up and take notice. To the lick of my hand you gave me just two days ago. May the almost 14 years you spent on this earth have been the happiest anyone can wish for.

Just when you thought I was dead...

2005-08-21T12:31:00.000+10:00

Wow! Can you believe it! I've actually posted on my blog!!!!

Well to anyone who stumbled across this in cyberspace and doesn't know me in meatspace probably thought that I'd shuffled off to meet my maker. As you can see now with your own eyes, those rumours are not true. So I've got a couple of links I've gathered which I thought everyone might enjoy.

I Park Like An Idiot - You suck at parking! Let the world know it!: I'm not exactly sure about the point of this website (although that statement can be applied to most things on the web) but from what I can gather they are encouraging you to put stickers on cars which have parked badly. Then take a photo and send it to them. I stumbled on this link ages ago and the photos haven't changed to so it must not be very popular. The idea of whacking a big yellow sticker on that car which has just been beached on the footpath is still pretty funny.
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About: Well I've just spent the last hour or so reading this webpage. It's gold. Pure gold. I suggest you actually follow the above link and have a read.
Ming The Merciless: I have to give the credit to teamRobin for finding this link. It seems to be random flash animations and/or images. Most are amusing. I quite enjoyed Mingdows myself. Go, click, enjoy.

It's a beautiful thing

2005-05-13T20:25:00.000+10:00

I was chatting to a good friend of mine online the other day and was reminded of this poem. I like it very much so I've decided to share it with you, my adoring AydsBlog audience.

Morning Poem
I woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still
When suddenly a tiny bird
Perched on my window sill.
He sang a song so lovely
So carefree and so gay,
That slowly all my troubles
Began to slip away.
He sang of far off places
Of laughter and of fun,
It seemed his very trilling,
brought up the morning sun.
I stirred beneath the covers
Crept slowly out of bed,
Then gently shut the window
And crushed his fucking head.
I'm not a morning person.

Shamelessly ripped from this URL http://www.jardmail.co.uk/misc/morningpoem.shtml however that was just because it was pretty high up on my quick Google search.

You Know You're Addicted to Coding When...

2005-05-13T20:05:00.000+10:00

Blogthings - You Know You're Addicted to Coding When...

Ok, so it's probably pretty lame that I'm posting a link to a site called "Blogthings" which specifically exists to host useless, but still somehow amusing little things designed to be blogged about.

Perhaps it's a reflection of some deficiency in the way I structure my life that gave me the time to read this, and more importantly post about it. Perhaps it's some indication of a social problem I'm facing which prevents me from having enough things to fill the day. Perhaps I'm just crapping on so this post will be of decent length.

Whichever way you look at it, I have enough of these qualities to be worried. Perhaps there's a patch? Some chewing gum? I can see it now "Codabate C# - Stop Coding Aid" and people walking around with embarassed looks on their faces saying "...it's OK, I've really cut down. I'm only doing a bit of social scripting languages now...".

I suppose everyone has to have their addictions, and there are certainly worse one's out there. Perhaps I'll just be happy with mine...

Ahhh! Sweet internet - how pointless are thee?

2005-04-25T21:41:00.000+10:00

I just happened to be Googling along and I found this little URL: http://www.bovinebazaar.com/hallofmoos/gals.htm.

I'm not sure why it's there, and most aren't really that great (not that I've listened to them all, just a few) but it is an example of some of the wierd things which pop up on this great information super-highway.

Enjoy!

Delivering dynamic infomediaries

2005-04-24T18:06:00.000+10:00

I reckon I should aggregate killer markets and unleash efficient web-readiness with some sort of new idea.

This idea would revolutionize integrated initiatives and assist the user to engineer 24/7 technologies.

It's obviously important to transition cross-platform web services so we can exploit distributed e-business. This would facilitate proactive platforms and allow us to syndicate value-added networks which will, in turn, drive efficient relationships.

This opportunity to exploit plug-and-play ROI has arisen because we can now reinvent synergistic architectures which will empower revolutionary technologies to envisioneer clicks-and-mortar content.

Indeed, there is much to do.

This post made possible by the Web Economy Bullshit Generator

Email worse than the wacky-tabacky

2005-04-23T20:54:00.000+10:00

Apparently email (and other forms of electronic communication such as IM and SMS) is worse for your attention span and concentration than cannabis, according to a study reported in this story on the Guardian

You know, I can't help but think that they might be on to something here. I mean, there's nothing worse than that new mail sound going "ping!" right in the middle of something. I'm the type of person who won't wait to see what it is, I'll just have to know what has just come in otherwise that's all I think about...

Who could have emailed me?
What do they want?
Will it be interesting?

...and so on and so forth.

Ok. So we open the email. Most of the time it's just someone at work who has emailed me. Most of the time it's just another job they'd like me to do. Most of the time I'd rather not have to do the job, but would rather just get on with what I'm doing now. So as you can see, answering an email is often a traumatic experience.

I'm not sure that there is any way around it though. Email is an important and critical part of everyday life these days. All those hundreds of thousands of messages zipping around the world are really very useful sometimes.

I just wish that there weren't people like one person I know who will send you an email and wander up to you 2 mins later to ask "Did you get my email?"

That sorta annoys me.

Been a while...

2005-04-18T21:24:00.000+10:00

Gee... it's been a LONG time since I posted here. Life just got the better of me I think. I won't promise to post here more often - dont' want to let you all down - but I will make an effort to make some more regular appearances.

Well, one of the reasons for this post is to point you all to the blog of a good friend of mine: Yvette. Why? I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you.

The reason it's SOO important that you head over there is that there is a post about - ME! So go on - enjoy!

Javascript upgrade

2004-10-20T23:54:00.000+10:00

Greetings all!. I've just made an upgrade to my Blogger template. You can see it in action in both this post and the post below (as long as you have Javascript turned on OFC).

This feature is to make sure that huge long posts don't take up too much room on this front page.

Basically I just enclose some of my blog posting with a <div> tag which gets shown and hidden as required by the link below.

The cool little feature is that the link will be removed if I haven't included the appropriately classed div tag in the post. This means that short posts will display as they always have.

The next step might be some look and feel updates...

Bug 258077 - TB will not authenticate with POP3 server -since 20040824

2004-10-19T23:37:00.000+10:00

I installed Thunderbird 0.8 and thought everything went well and dandy.

The trouble was that one of my email accounts actually wasn't getting the email correctly. I didn't notice this all that much as most of the email that comes through that account is either spam or mailing list messages. Until one day I wondered about the absence of the (usual) 100 or so spam messages which should have been coming down with my mail check.

I logged on to my email through it's web interface and lo and behold! - over 1200 messages greeted me!

I checked my POP3 access manually, then tried with Thunderbird again. Still no messages could be seen.

A little concerned by this, I whipped out Ethereal and started a sniff on port 110 traffic. Sure enough, Thunderbird and my email server were getting confused. Turns out that it was this bug: Bug 258077 - TB will not authenticate with POP3 server -since 20040824 and the workaround in comment number 8 worked a treat and right now I'm downloading a whole heap of email. This bug has been fixed so 0.9 should work fine.

This has got me thinking though; since I didn't seem to notice this missing account for about 10 days - perhaps I should get rid of it (and it's SPAM) altogether?

Gmail+Anything

2004-10-06T23:00:00.000+10:00

Every now and then you stumble upon a nugget of pure gold on the internet. This is a great little bit of info which I found out about in a Slashdot comment.

Ever wished that you could have two or more email addresses? Well wish no more! This little trick works with Gmail and other MTAs as well.

The trick? This little character here --> +

If I'd like to give out an email address and use it to filter on (for example) I can give out aydsman+foo@gmail.com and it will be delivered to my inbox. In fact, I can put anything after the "+" that is allowed in a normal email address. See? Pretty darn cool isn't it?

Freaky optical illusion

2004-10-05T01:11:00.001+10:00

I found this linked from one of the comments on a Slashdot story about optical illusions. I quite like optical illusions - especially ones which I can twist in by brain and "break". This one I couldn't do that to though. I even cut some of one square out and moved it around. As I moved it closer to the darker one the piece I was moving seemed to darken and vice versa as it moved to the lighter one. Totally Freaky!

Small changes

2004-09-27T01:41:00.000+10:00

Gee, hope you aren't too surprised to see a post from me! It has been a while. <words type="famous last" >I am going to make an effort to post more often on here...</words>

I did make one little change to my blog layout. Bet you can't see what it is! Yes - it's the "Get Firefox!" button. I've decided that I should proudly display my browser preference (which I also share with Blogger.com) for all to see.

This is the part where I really should let you know about the advantages of Firefox but there are many others who have gone into that in far greater detail than I care to here.

Well, my bed is calling so farewell from another post.

"My name is mister Aydsi"

2004-09-16T23:53:00.000+10:00

Pretty funny little virus story on The Register about a worm called "Amus"

Now, worms and viruses aren't funny at all - however this one has a twist. It uses the Microsoft Speech Engine which is built into Windows XP to talk to it's victims.

In case you're "clickaphobic" (or are just plain lazy) and don't want to click on the Register article link here's what the virus says:

How are you. I am back. My name is mister hamsi. I am seeing you. Haaaaaaaa. You must come to turkiye. I am cleaning your computer. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 0. Gule. Gule.

...which I'm sure leaves you all much more enlightened.

Number One

2004-09-06T23:48:00.000+10:00

I always wondered what it would be like for people to be number one in a Google search.

Well, thanks to my gorgeous girlfriend Melinda, I need not wonder any more.

What is more interesting than just the fact that the profile which is attached to this blog is number one is the fact that I've gone through the whole result set (the extended one that is) and every single page linked to in the results was a direct reference to myself.

I've always been pretty pleased with my nickname as it usually seemed quite unique and now I've got Google backing me up! :)

Neat little trick

2004-09-02T22:46:00.000+10:00

I don't use Windows and Outlook at home, however it is standard fare in my work environment. One of the things that I like about Outlook 2003 is the fact that it can be configured to sit in that over-used, over-burdened but still useful system tray.

The trouble is, the context menu really sucks ass. Why, oh why, isn't there a New Message item in that menu? Why isn't there, now that I think about it a whole bloody new item sub-menu! It could have included:

New Mail Message
New Contact
New Note

...and all the other crazy stuff which I usually never use. See, that would be USEFUL. Instead we have to drag Outlook's lumbering bulk up onto our screen and then locate a little "New Message" button and click it.

At least, that's what I *used* to do. Now I just click the quicklink icon for "New Email Message" which I created with the tips from Spongemental's weblog.

Give them a go. I have only used the new email one because that's what I do with Outlook most often. But you're free to go wild.

ENJOY!

RiverFire

2004-08-28T21:58:00.000+10:00

Got back from Riverfire for another year. I can't believe that we're already at this stage of the year. Time does fly sometimes.

I did have a good time there, although am I the only one who goes along to this thing and sees the fireworks and feels a little let down? I don't know if it just wasn't as good as last year, or if it just is me expecting too much. I don't know.

Well, best get back to my friends and the post-fireworks drinks. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Live from the Qld Seafood Festival

2004-08-27T19:45:00.000+10:00

Well I'm out & about so I thought I'd try out this email submission feature.

Just a little while ago I was listening to Stringmansassy who are an INCREDIBLE Brisbane guitar & vocal duo. If you ever get the chance to experience them (and it is an experience) jump at the chance.

There aren't as many people here as I thought there would be. Perhaps everyone is saving it up for RiverFire tomorrow night.

Well I'll best be off to locate some food now. :)

aydsman at gmail.com!!!

2004-08-24T23:27:00.000+10:00

Ok - it's official.

I have a GMail account. This is thanks to, and with encouragement of, my fantastic friend Joseph Cooney.

I had already passed on the offer of one invite from him, which he gave to Robin - a mutual friend of ours. This was because I really didn't see a huge need for 1 GB of webmail. I had thought myself quite happy with my current email software

Upon reflection though I thought about it. Exposing my email online would be more difficult while using a thick client, and I did enjoy the idea of being able to have access to my emails from work and while on holiday etc.

I only have two problems with it so far:

my inbox is empty (save the welcome message) so 1 GB of space really looks funny
it doesn't work from my phone

However - the first point should be cleared up pretty quickly and the second - well - perhaps someone out there has a workaround?

Hmmm...

2004-08-13T23:17:00.000+10:00

Nothing wacky to post here (yet - just sat down in front of my monitors) but I was thinking before I wandered up to the computer...

I've posted three (count 'em below - 1, 2 3) times and have got no comments (nada, zip, none). Now I'm quite fine with this - AFAIK only one person knows about this blog right now - but it got me thinking about the strange "place" the internet is. I was thinking about how you float something out there on the web and then people - who you'll never, ever meet or talk to - will wander along and take a look.

Some of the time you don't even know it has happened. 6000 people could have read my blog since I created it last night. They could even have enjoyed it. However, I won't ever know that they've been.

It's a strange feeling. I can only liken it to giving a speech while standing blindfolded in the middle of a room - which might or might not have people in it. Since I've started thinking about it it sorta wierded me out.

Hmmmmm...

Ah well, new places on the internet await.

ROFL!!!

2004-08-12T22:39:00.000+10:00

OK - I know I just posted, but I couldn't let this gem slip by.

Courtesy of this entry on cyron.id.au I found this gem of a game: ROFLcopter.

A quick warning that Flash is required but it's definately worth a look.

Firefox + MSDN = Garbled Code

2004-08-12T21:58:00.000+10:00

If you've looked at MSDN through Firefox (or any Mozilla browser) you may have noticed that the code samples aren't displaying properly (they're all run together).

I pulled out the DOM Inspector - great tool, love it - and found it is a problem caused by one of their stylesheets setting the CSS "white-space" property to "normal" which tells the browser to collapse all white-space characters into one space. Obviously this ruins the formatting of the code blocks.

If you don't believe me head on over to a sample MSDN article - such as the String.GetEnumerator() method. See what I mean?

To fix this problem we can apply a user stylesheet to override their CSS white-space setting. Here is the fix...

Locate your profile directory. This should be at the following location on Windows with Firefox 0.9.x: "%home%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name].[something]"
Open the "Chrome" sub-directory of your profile
Create or open the file "userContent.css"

Cut and paste the following CSS rule:

/*
* Microsoft seem to have stuffed the MSDN stylesheets by adding "white-space: normal;"
* to "pre" elements.  Undo that here.
*/
pre
{
 white-space: pre !important;
}

Restart Firefox and browse to your favourite MSDN code snippet!

There you are! Easy when you know how. :)

It's new! It's shiny!

2004-08-12T21:00:00.000+10:00

Oooohhh!!! Aaaahhhh!!! Anyway - well I've made myself a little place to put down some thoughts. I've seen other blogs and sorta liked the idea and thought "well... why not?". I hope that I can write some interesting stuff. Failing that, I just hope I can write some stuff. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it. :)