Crisp

Blogotomy: A Little Bit Of CSS Fun

Thu May 5th 22:03:59 2005 *

Well I was a bit bored at work, so between watching the election and helping out clueless people, I thought I'd do a bit of Tyler style CSS fun. I messed with a couple of tags before hand in the sidebar content part, but never thought much of it, so I put it back. This is looking a lot more like it, and it's spurred me on to add anchor tags to everything and give you all a big text area to put your own CSS in fully. At the moment there are certain limitations doing it with the side bar; you can't manipulate everything fully and of course you have to have the sidebar enabled. Look out for a new custom CSS feature next week or so.

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Oz Trip: I've got a job

Thu Apr 21st 02:06:51 2005 *

So the time came to settle down for a while and get a job. I knew this time would come, and after weeks/months of intense drinking etc, my bank is looking empty. And my credit card is looking fairly high. Never being one to want to do manual labour or anything (especially not in Darwin heat, but not ever really) while all my friends were out looking for labouring jobs, or even bar work, I managed to sort myself out a full time job in an internet cafe. Now this is pretty cushy, basically it's just me in charge of a 15 box network and it's up to me what I do with it really. The guy who employed me doesn't know too much about computers, and he works in the travel agent part, so it really is just me running things. Today is my first day, and I've already managed to really impress the guy, and I've been left to cash up and lock up etc. Not bad if you ask me, I might be asking for a rise if things continue on this course over the next few weeks. So, while all my friends are getting up at 7am to go and do hard work in the heat, I'm sitting in an air conditioned room where 75% of my day is doing what I would be doing at home anyway, but getting paid for it. Oh, and I dont have to get in to work until midday, and finish at about 8pm; early enough to go and party after work, but a late enough start for me to recover from the night before.

As if I'm getting played to install Counter Strike etc on a network, and "test run" it over and over. I even get a strange sense of well being helping old german etc pensioners send emails to their grandchildren etc. The only thing that I nearly pissed myself laughing at, was when this girl (I say girl, she was probably about 20) walked up to my desk, and in a very small voice asked me "whats an internet?" I shit you not. Anyway, as you can clearly tell, things are looking up.

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Oz Trip: Ayre's Rock (Uluru)

Wed Apr 6th 04:17:15 2005 *

I'm now right in the middle of Australia, there's been a lot of desert driving but it's not half as bad as I thought it might be. I'm camping in a site about 10km from Ayres Rock, which I had a quick look at today. You are allowed to climb the rock, but 1) it's fucking huge and steep, looks like one wrong step could cost you your life from the bottom, and 2) the aboriginies really don't like people climbing it, due to it being a sacred place etc. I'll decide if I'm going to climb it at the time I guess. I've gotta be up at about 5am-ish tomorrow because we're going to drive down and see the sun rise, I'm not looking forward to that but I'm sure it'll be worth it once I'm up. I thought "it's just a rock, who cares..?" but when you're there, there is actually something captivating about the thing, and it's huge. The only thing that pisses me off out here is the flies in the day time, they just wont leave you alone. I could cope if they wanted to stay on your back or whatever, but they seem insistent on going for your mouth and ears and general face area. It gets even worse when you're eating, and I suppose I could get one of those fly net hats, but then I don't want to look like a dick. I think I'll just put up with it for another week or so.

Oh, and last night I seriously nearly ran over a Kangaroo when I was going at about 140kmph; now I don't so much care about the Kangaroo (although there would be some minor guilt, you see road kills every few hundred metres) but the damage it would do to the car, especially at that speed. I don't fancy shelling out a big repair bill. You see a lot of eagles eating freshly killed Kangaroo's, which is pretty interesting, the road trains you get out here don't stop for anyone or anything, and a kangaroo would just bounce off one like a fly. We're headed off to Alice Springs in a few days, and back in Coober Pedy we camped in an underground cave which was pretty cool. The town was a little bit shady though, so we moved on pretty fast. We'll be meeting up with some people we met out here 2 months ago and have been travelling with ever since (up until about a week ago) if all goes to plan in a few days too, which I'm looking forward to; it's been a little bit lonely with just the 4 of us travelling after being in such a big group.

Anyway, internet access out here is expensive (satellite all the way of course) so I'll wind this entry up. I'll try and post some pictures when I get to Darwin, there're hundreds of them at the moment. Now it's back to trying to use the world's most sensitive mouse, I'd hate to try and play a FPS with this thing...

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Oz Trip: Leaving Adelaide

Thu Mar 31st 22:46:32 2005 *

After spending about five weeks in Melbourne, I bought a car and drove in convoy with 11 people I met, along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide. I've seen some pretty amazing sights so far, and today I'm about to do the biggest drive I've ever done. I don't know how well you lot know your Australian geography, but I'm leaving Adelaide and driving to Darwin. Adelaide is right at the bottom, and Darwin is right at the top, so I'm driving through the Desert over the course of about 2 weeks to the top of the continent. We'll pass Ayre's rock and numerous other sights, but generally it's going to be a pretty harsh environment. I've got to stock up on water and a spare petrol can, and some extra cooking equipment etc, but it should be all good fun. It'll be weird leaving civilization for a few weeks, although there's plenty of small places along the way. Anyway I have to fly now, that's all for the moment.

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Two Weeks In

Sun Feb 13th 23:36:31 2005 *

I'm sitting here in Melbourne, Australia. It's 2 weeks into my half year long trip, and I was in Thailand for the first week. The next six months will be spent travelling up the east coast of Australia. Both climates are far hotter than England of course, and I've done quite a few things already. There was a big festival here in St Kilda yesterday, and Thailand held a lot of activities, some of them obvious, some of them less obvious. Thing's I've done have included zipping around a Thai island on a motorbike and watching one of my mates drop off his (wasnt as bad as it could have been considering he had no helmet/skin protection), got a bit sun burned and got blown by a thai bitch =)

That's all for now, don't know when I'll be on a computer next. And Tyler, that streaming media project sounds good, can't wait to see it in action.

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OK...

Sat Jan 15th 22:40:28 2005 *

'Nuff Said...

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OUCH

Sun Jan 9th 05:03:50 2005 *

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/09/0737248&from=rss

EDIT: I was in a rush this morning when I posted this, but now that I've had more time to have a look and check this out, it's huge. About 93% of the internet browsing public are affected. It's only a matter of time before some kind of worm is developed, and if it is, it'll be huge. This could potentially cost business' millions, if not more, yet Microsoft will get away with it. If any other company was so grossly neglegent, they'd be sued to fuck.

Now, I'm not an anti Microsoft bandwagon jumper, and I have no problems with the average user using Windows. However, there is now simply NO excuse for using Internet Explorer, and anyone who does so is either 1) stupid, or 2) ignorant and need to be educated. I'm going to step up my campaign to switch users over to Firefox or an alternate browser now, not because I "hate M$-ux0r" or anything like that, but because the risks presented with using IE are very real. Apart from anything, alternate browsers such as firefox are genuinely more feature rich.

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Bwahaha

Sat Jan 8th 16:43:08 2005 *

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/08/web_surveillance_cams_open_to_all/.

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No More Telemarketing For Me!

Thu Jan 6th 09:00:42 2005 *

I was back to work after the Christmas period on Tuesday. The plan was to hand in my notice, and work the weeks required notice, before going on to prepare for Australia. However, while I was there, I was discussing everything that I had to do before hand with a close friend who works there and is also travelling with me, and it wasn't until I started saying everything out loud, that I realized I had to quit there and then. There is literally not enough time, the list of things I have to do is immense. So, I went to my manager, and explained the situation and how I'd have to leave then and there (well after the day had ended). He got his manager down, and we talked about it for 2 minutes before they said "well if there's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can do. The only thing is that if you don't work your notice you wont get your holiday pay." Well, everyone got their remaining holiday pay given to them at the end of last year in our final pay day of the year. That means that I have less than ten pounds of holiday pay accrued for the year, sweet! So, they let me go after saying good luck, and making an announcement to everyone etc.

I must say, that as good as I was at the job, I'm really glad I've left now. It's nice knowing that at this exact moment everyone else is putting on their headsets getting ready for 4 hours more of calling. I'm not :) Anyway, the list of things I have to do IS huge, so I can't waste any more time writing here for the moment. I have two pretty major site contracts to finish off before I can go to Australia too. The only problem with working from home, is that I never know when to stop. Last night, I found myself finishing up at around 10pm, then at 2am there I am writing code again.

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2005 and all that...

Sun Jan 2nd 13:30:52 2005 *

I had a pretty crazy new year, it lasted a full three days, and I'm feeling pretty wrecked. It's back to work on Tuesday, but I think that will be my last week then, because I have far too many other jobs and loose ends to tie up before Australia. Now that it's the month I leave for Australia, it all suddenly seems so close, and I realize just how much Ihave to do before it creeps up on me.

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Current Location:
England

Robbed from Snags ;)