Inverted Reality

We’re having a bit of a Gas supply crisis here in WA (Western Australia).

Not too long ago, a gas line at a gas facility blew out. (I don’t know the details because I don’t watch or read the news, because it’s MOSTLY all bad news, no thank you)

Initially, it was said that there would be no affect on the states gas supply, and that everything was all good.

Now I’m getting email’s here at work telling us to shut equipment off if we’re not using it and try to conserve electricity and gas!

I’m happy to help where I can, and as I get older I’m becoming more aware of the environment, our natural resources, etc.. (esp with the rising cost of fuel!)

I’m keen to do my part, so I’ve started shutting my work PC down before I go home, set my work a/c to a more ‘economical’ mode, use my desk lamp less, etc.

I’ve even started looking a little more closely at hybrid vehicles (elec cars).

I wonder how I can be more efficient at home. I’m curious. I reckon it would be kind of cool and maybe even fun to set aside one night per week at home where we do not run any luxury appliances. Perhaps I could call it ‘no power night’. Could setup some candles, not use the TV or computers, just relax with some wine, maybe play some cards, have fun with my baby girl, spend some quality time with my wife…

Maybe everyone should have a ‘no power night’ once a week?

Tags: power, gas, electricity, hybrid, tea

Today I upgraded this blog to the latest Wordpress (2.5)

It took me 5 minutes.

• I backed up my entire blog directory on my web server (moved it to another directory name)
• Disabled my plugins
• Installed a fresh wordpress (wget www.wordpress.org/latest.zip)
• Unzipped it (unzip latest.zip whilst in my root web folder)
• Renamed it to my blog dir name (mv wordpress/ invertedreality/)
• Copied the wp-config.php file, plugins and themes from my old install to the new install.
• Ran the upgrade script from myurl.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php
• Logged into my admin panel, re-enabled my plugin’s, all done.

Easy, fast, and the site seems a little fast when browsing it too!

Tags: wordpressupgrade

I’m a dad, I’m a dad, I’m a dad!

Can you tell I’m really excited?

Our little girl was born at 6:21pm on Tues 11th March, 8lbs 8oz. She’s a cutie!

She’s even got her own website, how spoilt! http://www.charlottemandy.com/

We’re pretty much calling it a ‘life blog’ and we will contribute to the site until she’s old enough to do it herself! I wonder how many other ‘life blogs’ there are out there?

Tags: Charlotte, baby girl

Ho Hum, off to legit world I go.

After many years of leeching, scouting and looting , I  have finally settled down and INVESTED in some legit production software:

The Adobe Master Collection!

I now own CS3 versions of

Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator,  Acrobat, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects,  Premiere Pro, Soundbooth and Encore!

And the best thing about owning your own software?  You get to read the manuals and the tricks docs

I really need to burn off the Christmas kilo’s, having put on about 6kg in around 6 months.

I just realised, I’m just not working out enough! (at all) I need to get out more, walk the dog more, etc.

Check out my last run with the Nike+ kit (iPod accessory, very cool)

Whats wrong with this picture? I’ll tell you. There’s a car missing. I just waved goodbye to our N15 Pulsar SSS which was sold to a young bloke who worked a year at bunnings (hardware store) to buy his first car. I’m glad it’s going to someone thats worked hard for his first car! It was sad to watch it go, memories there! And thus concludes my on going family of Nissan cars which included two pulsars and a micra.

So what’s next I hear you ask? Well our baby girl will be due soon, Melissa will be at home with bubs while I continue to work. The WRX will stay home equipped with baby seat. I no longer need a car to drive to work (because I used to drop Melissa off at the train station on my way to work every day) so I’m going for something different. I’m going to buy a scooter! (and bank the rest of the cash from the sale of the car)

I’m looking at just a 50cc that I can ride on my regular car licence (and Melissa too after bub is born and she’s able). I’d love to get a Vespa (The Ferrari of scooters), but we will see what happens! I’ll have updates soon on the scooter thing, and no doubt end up blogging about it for a great deal of time (until i get bored)

Let me tell you something. When your wife tells you she’s pregnant you know your life is going to change. When Melissa told me she was pregnant I was pretty excited, time goes on, a Dr confirms it, and everything is as usual. Then she starts to show. She gets bigger, wow there’s a baby in there (reality check). Then you start visiting your ‘Obs’ and you get another reality check (or should I say the Dr gets a fat cheque from your wallet?)

More time passes, you start thinking of baby names, and organising a space in your home for this new addition to the family. After a while you look at your “list” of things to do and realize that you’d better start on it. More time passes, the list is still there and you realise theres about 8 weeks until your new friends arrives. REALITY CHECK.

You and your wife (and the rest of your extremely excited family) start shopping for baby stuff. (I’m at a stage now that when we walk into a baby shop I throw my whole wallet over the counter, it saves time)

The weekend just passed, we bought a Cott and a Change Table (and a pile of other stuff), it was expensive. Babies are like weddings, when you want to buy, it costs more. (Why are babies socks more expensive than my socks? FEH!)

I assembled the Cott and Change Table and arranged it in the babies room. Whats next? new chest of drawers, some bookshelves, it’s endless.

When you’ve got a Cott and Change Table assembled in your babies room, you get…. a REALITY CHECK. She’s due eight weeks from today, 8 WEEKS! cool

hrmm. I just realised I don’t have a category on my blog to post baby stuff in. Do I add a category or start a new blog? Might liaise with the wife on that one

I was having a day dream just earlier and was thinking about some cool ways to make it look like your at work, and working hard, when your not. You might be out on your boat, or cruising in your car, at home with your family, in another country, etc. Here’s 10.

1. Divert your office phone to your mobile phone
This is a great tip and especially useful for when the boss calls and your out fishing. If you cant divert it, take it off the hook

2. Schedule your email app to send important emails/memos/updates to important people at silly hours of the day (Eg. 8pm)
This works very well. Write up some random information about something you’ve been working on (or not working on haha) and schedule it to send out to important people you work with during strange hours of the day/night. Your boss will think your a really hard worker.
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My mum (mom for the rest of the world) knit me a woolen sweater for christmas, it’s really nice, I love it. There’s just something nice about wearing something made of wool. Funny considering when I was a kid I hated the itchiness and scratchiness of wool. Perhaps you learn to appreciate the natural feel of wool with age. (and I don’t mean the wool is aging, *sigh*)

Anyway, wool might look nice and feel nice, but it needs to be well kept and maintained. YOU CANT throw it in your washing machine! *gasp*

Here’s instructions on how to care for your woolen garment so it lasts, as written in an email from my mum!

wash them like this:
1. in the laundry basin in luke warm water with a squirt of baby shampoo
2. squeeze it out
3. rinse it off in luke warm clean water
4. put it in a pillow case and throw it in the washing machine in the ’spin’ cycle for a few minutes.
5. lay out a towel on your coffee table, or floor, and lay out the sweater to dry.

Perhaps if there’s enough demand I’ll model the sweater for ya’s hahaha

urgh! I don’t know how else to explain how my body feels right now. I’m too old for parties and constant drinking! Melissa and I went to a party last night, it was fun, we had BBQ, and tequila jelly shots. Enough said.

The last couple of weeks off work has been great. My mother came from the UK, we went down south to Margaret River and stayed in a lovely cottage on 5 acres (same one we stayed in for christmas ‘05). What a nice break away. The wine was GREAT this year.

Melissa is 29 weeks pregnant now, coming along nicely! I’m very excited about being a dad and have lots of work around the house on the go, in preparation.

I’m going to try and get fitter this year. At least walk the dog more, and do some sit ups or something. Beer gut is nasty! I also want to landscape the front and back yards, make more money with my own business, learn something completely new, get a pay rise at work (no chance, govn jobs, urgh), get a phat new monitor for my desk at home (when my own business makes more money!), and just be a good father to my little girl when she comes into my life.

I’ve had a terrible ebay experience over the last couple of months. I bought a pocket bike off ebay (those little 49cc mini bikes). I thought it would be fun to ride around with some mates who have them. It still hasn’t arrived after paying for it in mid-Nov. I’ve raised a dispute on ebay, and hope the seller gets my bike or money back to me really soon. I’ve heard some great excuses! anyway….

The in-laws are finally going to buy a MAC. We’ve convinced them. Yay for that. No more viruses and spyware to kill their machine. We’re going to get them the top-model 20″ iMac. I have no doubt they will just love it!

My websites are going okay, not much has progressed on a lot of them. My popular site leopardtricks.com is doing fairly well, and has over 11,000 subscribers. I did have almost 13,000 just before Christmas! Amazing! I expect to have a lot more visitors during January as people get Mac’s or Leopard for Christmas.

I’ve got two websites to build for a client. I’ve already started on one. Thats good. All of my sites and clients sites were down the other day for over a day. Thats bad. My server seems fine, but my host/provider had some kind of network issues *sigh*. Lucky I don’t have any super critical web sites on my server!

Anyway, it’s 9:30 AM now, enough dribble. Have a great 2008 (that rhymes!) and smile!