Archive for the ‘ Blogz ’ Category

Blog update

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Just updated to WordPress 2.5. So far I am impressed. It is easier to embed flash and video/audio now without having to mess around. If like me, you don’t have the time to upload and play around with html, its good to see these additions to WordPress. There were probably similar features or abilities before, I just haven’t noticed or had the time to mess around.

My next task is to find a new theme and for me to add my own image and a few other personal touches. I have even been looking at updating my normal site…not that I have much in the form of groundbreaking content to put up there. Still looking for inspiration, as yet not found

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The Festive Season

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

How long does the build up to Xmas take? And how long does it take for Xmas to pass by? Too long and too bloody quick. However, this season saw something different for me. Not as much Booze and no cigarettes. The drinking was cut down, although I did enjoy a few drinks here and there, not too mention the build up to Xmas. Getting the lawns into shape, was priority, the bad weather we have had has made keeping the gardens at bay extremely hard work. Fortunately, some good days before made it possible to attack the feral lawns and make them safe. Every time someone went into the garden, I could here the cries ‘don’t go into the tall grass’ – Jurassic Park came to mind.

The Works Party was awesome. I had planned on not drinking, so I had decided to drive to the works party, but, I decided that I had earned the right to have a few drinks, so I did and in moderation. The night started off good and got better. The food was an improvement from last years party and a better choice of drinks for the most part. Karaoke was a feature to be endured. I had planned to partake in making a fool out of myself, either sober or under the influence. Normally it wouldn’t even enter my head to consider singing, but I did. I did it My Way. Yes ‘My Way’ that old classic, that anyone can sing, except me.
I started off all serious, then progressed to a crazed Pub singer from the UK. I definitely did it my way, there wasn’t a dry eye or crotch in the house, they were pissing themselves. Needless to say, everyone knows I can’t sing, but I gave it my all. I was also conned into singing ‘Like a Virgin’ and two other songs, which names fail me at the moment. At the end of the night I won a $15 gift card at a music store called Sanity.

So Xmas day came and was spent up at Karen and Paul’s, just up the road with all the family. Turned out to be a good day, not too much silly water was consumed and so everyone was a happy bunnyip so to speak. The only issue with Xmas day – It Was COLD!!! For gods sake, normally it would be hot, but no, nice cold breeze from the south, kept everyone cool/cold.

The presents were handed out and the usual thank you’s and ‘Ive still got the receipt if its too big’ were being uttered. Sam did well this year and still have one present to get still, her Bike. I finally got my Digital SLR. YAY!!!!! The twin lens outfit in black. I also bought a 2 gig CF card for it and seems to work quite well. It really does make a world of difference using an SLR over a standard Digital Camera and the quality is so much better. Even taking some drunken snaps of the friends and family, they turned out really good. I printed a few off on the Canon Printer I bought. superb quality and so nice to have large sized sharp and crystal clear photo’s. And so now we head off into 2008. My new years resolution is to get even fitter. I am going to learn to swim and take up Scuba Diving. That is the plan. I am also going to seek out a Gym and work on the whole body. This time next year my plan is to be able to maintain a weight below 80 Kilo’s and be able to swim a good few lengths of a large swimming pool and have done more than one dive. More on all of this later. It remains for me to say, I hope all who read this had a really good Xmas and have a great new years. I hope health and wealth find you all.

Posted in Blogz, General, Life Down Under, Life In Oz, Personal Blog, health | No Comments »

How Long?

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Well, it has been quite a while since I wrote anything here. I have been taking time out from messing around on the puters and just chilling. I am still off the smokes and enjoying my new found fitness, although I still have a very long way to go, before i can call myself ‘Fit’, however, I can call myself ‘fitter’. My Cycling is still going good and stronger. My Airport Cycle Route has now been broken down below the 30 minute mark. Yesterday I managed a respectable 27:00 minutes dead and today I managed an even better 25:44 minutes. Cycling times to work have been cut down to 33 and 34 Minutes, with similar times on the ride back home.

I am losing weight and I am enjoying life a lot better. I have even cut down alcohol intake down to next to nothing. Sugar intake, Junk Food and Chocolate has been dramatically cut down too.  All in all, I am looking forward to Xmas and the New Year. I have some plans ahead for the new year, more on that later.

I have also been gifted an iPod, Sam got a new 4 Gig Nano for free so I got her old one. Goes nice with the cycling and better quality sound too. I have loaded some techno/remix crap onto it so I can get my little legs moving quicker. Sure does help. I managed a really good time at my first checkpoint today, 12.33 at my halfway stage, which is about 5Km into the ride, just at the back end of the Airport. I need to do more Hill work, as I still have issues with some of the big hills, even dropping down onto the Granny Cog, still feks me over, however, I did manage to get 3/4 of the way up my big hill today, stopped for water and catch my breath, started off again and powered my way home for the final leg.Maximum speed was 50.4Km and my average was 22.4Km which is my highest yet (average wise anyway) I have managed to get a 51.9Km as my Maximum speed.

The fact that I am actually getting out on my bike is a definite plus. Eating breakfast, also a definite plus, getting up half an hour earlier for work and having time to relax, drink a cup of tea, shower, watch tv, all helps me get my stress levels down. My sleeping habits have improved. I am normally in bed for 9pm, as opposed to my usual 12 midnight or even later which I have done for the past 20 years or so. Now, I even wake up refreshed.

I have turned my life around and feeling alive and well. So for all you smokers out there, just quit! Get help! I did and it works. I am never going back to being the Slob/Sloth that I was. Eat healthy, eat in moderation, if you feel like some choccy, then have some, if you feel like some drinks, have some, just do it in moderation. I never thought I would hear myself saying all of this, but its true, it works.

Posted in Bike, Blogz, General, health | 4 Comments »

Bizzare!

Monday, September 10th, 2007

At first, I thought it was a case of good fortune, but now I am not so sure. I will explain. When I log into my blog to delete the endless offers of Gay sex, Anal probing and drugs to make my manhood shine like Darth Vaders light Saber. I happened upon – incoming links? Yes I have seen these before, but now I have an addition to the fold. One was based on Web Hosting, but now I have one with regard to my MP810 post. Naturally the Vain side of me had to go see. I read with interest and found my <snippet> at the bottom of the post. It would have been good, if they had bothered to keep things in context, but it stood out like Dogs Bollocks on a Goldfish.

No matter how you read the Blogs post, it had absolutely nothing to do with what they were talking about?!?!? Is this a new form of Spamming by Proxy? Stealing others posts and adding it to their own site? What utter nonsense. I suppose it staives off the boredom and pain of typing, so lets just cut and paste some body else’s words and make us look – well, Lame.

If there was a genuine reason for the post, even though a link direct to my site is present, thank god for small mercies and it included valid points that I had made or otherwise, then it would make sense. Unlike what I am doing here.

So if you are going to include any of my inane drivel on your site, then at least make it look good and stay within context.

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Update to my links

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

Hmm, thought I had done this already, obviously not, but then I have changed hosts since then. Confused yet? I am! And I am writing this. So what am I prattling on about? My Link to my Gallery. You can’t miss it. Its listed under My Sites and there is an image as the link. Pretty cluey stuff this blog thing. Shame the owner isn’t half as brainy :-)

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Monday, bloody Monday

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

If there was one day in the week, that i could give up. Monday would be the day of choice. You work all week, aim for Friday arvo, then home time. The weekend starts then. Ours was good. We went out to the Revesby Workers. now lets just ponder on that name. Revesby Workers. I was expecting some dirty grotty shack, sawdust and spittoons everywhere. But no! Revesby workers is a white palace, big, organised and spacious. The food was good, considering it was a bistro affair, prices where average and the drinks weren’t too bad either, except the choice of beer was limited. I had just the one, as I was the designated driver.

We settled into a night of a few drinks and watched the footy (Rugby League). After a few hours had gone by, we decided to head back home and buy some more booze, so at least I could kick back and unwind. Jim Beam, my saviour. I only had the one glass, as I wasn’t really in the mood to get wrecked, nor did i want to anyway.

Saturday night I cooked up a curry, complete with naans and poppadums. The curry was ok, but for a jalfezi it was a wee bit bland, not as hot as I recall from my days in the UK. i could have added more chilli, but I had to consider everyone else. Beer consumed at a steady rate and Apple Crumble for desert. All in all a pleasant night.

Sunday was a lazy day, however, I did get to goto IKEA. Damn I hate that place. Having worked there, it was nice to wander round and walk out, only buying a few items. Came home and settled into the haunted fish tank, the TV. Watched yet more episodes of Stargate Atlantis, season 3, yes downloaded from the net, but soon to be purchased, that way, you get to see the extra features and interviews.

The beast that was is still serving as a media centre, it just needs a decent tv/capture card in their to really make its life worth while.

Now back to Monday’s. You have the weekend off and start the week off, with a Monday. Its slow, chaotic, people are grumpy and you still have over 4 days to go till the weekend again. Look i know you have to work to make your way in life, unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but hey, can we cancel Mondays? Please?

Ahh, I almost forgot. Whilst in IKEA, Sam, Karen and myself were making our way up the escalator and I saw someone, I hadn’t seen in ages. Andy from Canada. I shouted down to him as I was swiftly launched upto the showroom, he looked, but obviously didn’t see me. Andy if you are reading this…Contact me. Let me know how your doing these days.

Anyway. Monday is all but over – thank god! And Tuesday is approaching. Another early start for me, so we can get cleared away all the cardboard boxes we have accumulated again.

Posted in Blogz, General, Life Down Under, Life In Oz, Personal Blog | No Comments »

Gallery is up and running

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Here is the link

http://andybarrow.com.au/gallery/

Posted in Blogz, Foto Gallery, Site Updates | No Comments »

Server up and running

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Ok, all running and should have propogated through most/all/some of the dns servers now. The site can be accessed through andybarrow.com.au/blog or the-keys.com.au/blog and finally the-keys.co.uk/blog

Posted in Blogz, General, Site Updates | No Comments »

I got the new Mac

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

Hence why I havent spent any time on here. Sadly this last purchase off ebay was BAD! A Decent looking machine, quicker and …..also fekking useless!!!! The poor old 800 Mhz Quicksilver just doesnt want to run.

The story thus far. Bought this mac for $400 plus postage and GST (same as VAT in the UK but only 10% here in Oz). The listing on ebay stated no OS, which is fine, as I am getting OSX 10.4 familly edition. So to get the beast running when it arrived, I installed 10.3.5 which came with my Graphite. Yes I know!!!!! Naughty of me using a single user liscence on 2 machines. AS you will notice, I have no OS installed on the quicksilver, only limited warranty, so need to install something OK!!! (more on this later). So booted up the MAC, all the usual gongs and whirring noises, so far so good.

Got to open the CD tray holding the mouse button down whilst booting, novell idea, but why no option to just be able to open the tray???? Anyway, inserted unopened 10.3.5 and closed the tray….by pushing it in…no button to open close (unlike my 400Mhz Graphite, which works perfectly and has said option to open and close via button on front of door)

Selected the OSX install disc and went on my way. Basic system installed, BSD subsystem……….. OOOPS Failed!!!! Ok, lets try again, cleared off the drive this time, removed 4 partitions one called Photoshop scratch disc!!! hmmm wonder if this was used in a design house? God knows how thing doesnt fekking work. Ok, tryed again, after veryfying, partitioning to one partion, checking permissions on disc and reparing. Onwards to the install again….Same issue. So checked the install logs. Fekk me!! The thing was lucky to get as far as it did, started off with a Bootstrap_look_up error(): unkown code and so on.

So I tried 9.2 which came with the iMac G3 400 Mhz. Well would you believe it, thats been running 9.2, 10.3, and 10.4 which was a naughty download and was installed over USB 1 via the external DVD drive, which was starting to look like we didnt really need it, thank god we bought the bloody thing..

So tried installing that Disc, via the external drive, NADA, got a bit further and once again shat itself. Ok, no probs with the dodgy copy which is now serving as a coffee cup coaster and doesnt reside on any of the macs. So I e-mailed the guy i bought this mac off and he is now looking into why it should be doing this. He has a copy of the error messages and logs, so his ‘tech’ guy can get back to us. 2 Days later…nothing.

 The only OS I can get to run is 9.2 which is an iMac install disc???? Madness

Now onto my !!!!! with regard to installing more than machine with a single copy of OSX, yes I do agree it is wrong, but seeing as I need to test the machine out, I have to start with something. I was trawling the google site for my error messages and found a few sites that highlighted this issue – Faulty disc’s was one answer, which got the reply of having installed same said doftware on another machine and that worked fine! Same here, however the forum admin spat the dummy out and used the cop out clause, ‘you shouldnt be using the cd/dvd to install on more than one machine ya di ya yada da de dum. Point taken ass hole, but do you have to be so anal….? yes, coz he is an ass hole dummy.

So, my G4 400 is working great, the iMac is just as good and the iBook is doing fine also. So why wont the machine run? Hmmm, I tried pulling the SCSI card out that came with it, no difference, tried another HD and set that up…no difference, tried with both in, no difference. Took one stick of memory out, no difference, moved the memory up one slot…AHHHHHH!!!!! Machine no boot and get the Ghost buster sign up minus the Ghost.

So me thinks bad board, very naughty board. Tried my memory out of Graphite…no change. So all in all its ROOTED. Give me my money back. I will save up and buy a G5 if I have to or even a Mac Pro – may take a little while. Have you seen the price? Wow, need to sell your first born to get one.

Posted in Blogz, Computers, General, Mac Project | No Comments »

So Far so good

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

Where to begin. Our trip to Melbourne is booked and paid for, well Frequent flyer points did and I even gained more points for booking an apartment by the docklands in Melbourne, not far from the Casino on the Yarra river. We have also got a hire car for the day before and also to make life easier for getting to Kingsford Smith (Airport) in the morning. Drop the car off at the Hire company and make our way to the terminal.

The plan for Melbourne is simple, arrive, drop luggage off, wander around, get breakfast, wander around some more and get into our room, shower, get changed and out for the day. Sam has got plans for the day and Saturday, albeit once evening comes into play, we will be watching Essendon (an AFL team renowned for choking I gather) playing against Carlton, I think, not sure on that, so will indulge in some investigation. I am going purely for the fact that this will be the first time I have been to any kind of Footy Match, either pommy or Ozzie. Sad I know.

Work has been up and down these past few weeks. Tomorrow is EOM – End of Month, so no doubt it will be crazy, plus I have to prepare some Life Raft’s to be sent to various places and indeed states. Up top far west and all stops in-between. Its only 16 Pallets to organise plus book transport and load them onto the Trucks when they Show up. WA Freightliners are usually very good and the driver is quite friendly, as most of them are. Just the occasional arsehole.

Tonight we went out for a meal at the local club ‘The Willows’, not that far away from us. Me and Sam, Karen, Jean and Adam and Jess (Adams Girlfriend). Chicken Parmagiano, Chips and Salad for main course and Deep fried Cheesy Bites, with Salad and a nice dipping sauce. I even got to have two schooners of New (Tooheys New), the first time I have had a drink since my 40th Birthday. I actually enjoyed having a few drinks, made a change. from not and having to drive.

Came home and started some washing for work, plus some Jeans needed doing and my socks. All I need to do now is setup the HDD recorder to record 3 more films tomorrow and a few more for Thursday, both nightime and whilst at work. I managed to find Short Circuit, I love that movie, well I did many years ago, haven’t seen it in a long time. I also managed to get a film called ‘The door in the floor’, starring Jeff Bridges, Mimi Rodgers and Kim Basinger. I was surprised to see Mimi getting her kit off, quite a bizarre film, raunchy too, without being Porn, got to save the eyes – getting old now. If you google the title of the film, you should pull up the website for it. Im too lazy to cut and paste right now, besides its not that easy whilst balancing a keyboard on your lap with your feet up on the coffee table, sorry remote table.

The Hard drive on the Samsung is getting full, I am sure the novelty will wear off soon, although there are some really good free movies showing at the moment, plus I get to record them without having the machine ban me from doing so, due to copyright laws – bastards. At the moment, I am looking at copying them onto a DVD so I can put them on the PC – More room on there, or will be when I start installing SATA drives in the ‘media PC’ but not yet. I have been putting a few items on watch on ebay, some bloody good prices too, 500Giggle bytes of HD – thats a shit load of eggs to put in one basket, I am not so sure on trusting any manufacturer just yet. I used to trust IBM drives till one day, my bestest drive shat its load, from then on in, I don’t trust. Especialy Western Digital – 3 in one go, bang bang, bang Foooked. Western didge are crap! wouldnt touch with a bleeding barge pole, maybe a hammer, but nothing else. I aint gonna sing the praises of my currently used hardware, just in case i put the curse on them.

Subject change in case I do. Mac. Yes Mac, dvd ripping software, I typed in on googloid and pulled up Mac the ripper. Download it, unstuffit, run it, rip it and bingo, no mess, no faffing around running anydvd or similar proggy, all in one DVD backup to ones hard drive. So I started running this software thinking it would take an age – wrong – My Powermac G4 is only 400Mhz, so I wasnt expecting lightening fast speed – wrong it was quicker than my 3.2 Ghz 2 Gig ram PC.

Speaking of Mac’s My Hard drive is a 160Gig drive set to the standard format that Mac use Mac OS extended, however the Mac only see’s about 120gig of this, so I am missing 30+ gb, even allowing for the usual step down of 8 bits equals 1 byte, this is still a lot to be missing. There are no other partitions, unless the mac was setup to run and dual boot, which if memory serves me right, it can with OS9 I believe, so maybe the drive is partitioned for OS9? I havent actually check to see if I can boot into 9 and see if the HD is set for 30 gb or so for OS9 and therefore maybe hidden as a result.

Ok, I am babling shit here, so must be time to set the recorder to its work and off to the land of Nod

Posted in Blogz, Computers, General, Life Down Under, Mac Project, Media PC, Personal Blog | No Comments »

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