Steve Mactaggart's Blog

I think thats a common headline around here, but its been a while since the last update. So whats been going on. Lachie's now about 6 months old, a couple of our friends are pregnant, and another has just had a little girl 3 months ago.

It seems like its baby season, and it doesn't look like it will stop any time soon.

Things at Best Bets are going great, we got purchased by TVN and so now you can see Peter Lucas' ugly mug on the TV every Friday morning doing a TV version of The Right Odds.

Speaking of The Right Odds, its still going strong. We're in the process of recording episode 80 at the moment and the stable of stars has expanded to even include a regular phone in guest.

Umm what else.. The dev team is working on some new cool things that will be hitting the web in a couple of months so stay tuned to that. But I guess the big news recently on the development front is that we now run the Racing Victoria website.

This has been a great success for our development process and technology, although we did have a few days of server issues, these things have now been cleared and the site is running like a charm. Keep an eye out there too about new developments.

So in all things are great, the puppies are healthy, Rach is loving being a Mum, Lachie is becoming a little man, we're winning at Cricket and Soccer, and work is keeping m busy..

A great time to be alive.

CYA

Posted by at 11:37 AM | Permalink

Lachlan has his own website now, so for news on his progress and all the photos head over there to keep up to date.

http://lachlanmactaggart.com/

Posted by at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

He's now 4 days old and already much more alert.  Mum and Dad got lots of big hugs today.

Posted by at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome Little Dude, although you are real early, you still understood to get a corporate plug in.

Too bad we don't work for them anymore..

Continue reading "Little Lachlan" »

Posted by at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I’ve failed..  I didn’t post evey day of January, so I could just give up and consider myself beaten.. But no I won’t. Its more like the world has been conspiring against me in not being able to post. 

I could have copped out and said, nothing much happening so not worth boring the world with random dribble, but thats not true, so lets recap. The last post was last Thursday night, so I’ve got nearly a week to catch up on.

Friday 12th – I’m sure it existed

Friday was such a long time ago I can’t remember what I did.  I expect very little, as it was the start of my blogging down time.  If I remember I’ll post an update.

Saturday 13th – Home body

Saturday was basically WOW.  I slept in (as Rach had to work), got up, WOW’d, had lunch, WOW’d, that was the day. Nothing exciting… See why I didn’t post about it.

Sunday 14th – Ten Pin Tupperware

The girls had organised a tupperware party, and so in good guy fashion we decided to vacate the house and leave the plastic container fondelling to the chicks.  We trundlled of to Knox to go tenpinning. 

Kev’s played a bit recently so we all expected to get crushed, and Garth had never played, so it was going to be a mixed bag. As expected Kev crushed us, I got 101, not that great.

We had paid for 2 games, and so took into the second.  Kev choked early, and from nowhere Garth found form.  Kev eventually found his rythmn again but Garth had a handy lead.  It came down to the final frame, and Garth needed 14 or so to win.  9’d then spared and then got 7 with the last ball to win by 3.

Monday 15th – Is you phone engaged?

Big news day… We headed out to Knox for Michelles birthday, and wouldn’t you know it, we also find out that Matt and Michelle are engaged. Big congrats to them both, with a bub on the way it wasn’t going to be long. and after all the effort Matt went to for a special weekend, how could she say no?

Tuesday 16th – Hot in the city.

Hot, Hot, Hot. Thats all I can say. oh also Blackout.  Tuesday was the day Melbourne went into meltdown. I really couldn’t have posted if I wanted as the server was down overnight due to power failures.

Something like 1200 traffic lights were out in Melbourne, as well as trams and trains running on a very restricted timetable meant many hot and bothered travellers had to sit around in a 40C afternoon in Melbourne.

Our office power went out at about 5:45, so I jumped in my air conditioned car and had a normal trip home.

No ride this evening, way too hot and it was Sharkey’s mums birthday anyway.

and the all imporant Wednesday 17th – umm Today?

Garth had the day off, as he and Kim got the keys to their new place in Forest Hill.  They started moving over some of the smaller stuff and just get a feel for the place.  Rach is helping out with their re-location on the weekend, but I’m going to be away (more on that later).

We had Misty’s final puppie shot, (at 12 weeks) and then headed over to have pizza in their new place with no power.  Looks nice, will be better when there is acutally furniture in it.

Also today we confirmed my travel details to London then home via LA.  What didn’t I tell you?  I’m heading out of the country for a week, so now I will really have a real excuse not post. The purpose of the trip is to go to a mobile gaming confernce and so I should have lots to report from my hotel room each night.  Its then back via the US to see a company over there about some work we might do together.

I fly out Friday at about midnight for a wurlwind trip of the globe. More details in tomorrows post.

Night

Posted by at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sharkey and I headed out for our regular ride, I can call it regular can't I it has been 2 weeks in a row. So anyway we headed out after work like usual leaving FTG and met up at knox and headed out the same path as usual, down the track to Jells Park then on towards Dandinong.

We seem to have this magic distance of 18ks, as it seems no matter where we start or where we ride get get abou 18ks before deciding to turn around. Today was no different, still 18k's for a round trip of just over 36. I really want to work on getting to 20k's each way in the next week and then add an extra 2-3 each week or fortnight.

Plans will be to head out on a much longer trip at some stage, something like a trip to Carrum and back, which from our place is probably like 80-90k's.

What else today, headed into the city for a couple of meetings, was really nice to take the time in on the Tram then stroll around the city to each of the meetings.

We really are lucky to live in such a great city, the CBD is really cool and its been a while since I've been in there but still amazes me each time I head in to the city and look up at the buildings. Cool.

Today's special code is: 103 +U

night

Posted by at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Very hot Saturday. The one thing I notice is that the Study has no cooling, and with all the electrical equipment around it gets hot.  The back story is that Melbourne had another 30+ day, and we have air con in the house.. So obviously I turned it on. But alas, there are no vents in the study and so cook did I.

What else today, watched more of FifthGear, up to the last episode of this season, so I guess that means I watched episode 11 and 12. Got the last episode of the season to go, its one where they give awards for the year so is partially a clip show.

Waiting for TopGear to come back, after Hammond’s bad crash I wasn’t sure if the show would even continue, but it seems that his recovery has been great and so on with the show.

So what does the title of the post have to do with my rants, so far nothing….

But dinner tonight was Garlic Prawns, and It seems I purchased way too much and I had to either eat huge helpings of prawns, or get some assistance.  The call went out to Matt and Michelle who luckily enough were not busy and so joined us for dinner.

At some point post prawns Sharkey asked to check out blacksmithing on WOW.  He’s the lvl 50 odd whos miles above my lowly 37 but he wanted to see some blacksmithing and so we got online. The next thing you know its nearly 2 hrs later and we’ve been doing blacksmith quests all the time.  Off to the auction house to buy the mats, back to the forge to make them, etc…  He burnt nearly 10g of mine tonight.  I’m a gatherer who only really sells at the Auction House, but tonight was talked into, after a bottle of red, purchasing the mats from the Auction House.  It did make the lvl’ing up faster, but seems a bit like cheating to me.

So anywho, am a lvl180 blacksmith now just don’t have the money or mats to make anything else.I leveled up today to 37 with my Warrior by spending some time in Arathi.  Got a few areas to work on at the moment and XP is not to hard to come by.

Anywho, seeing as this post is actually late I should hit submit.

night.

Posted by at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I bet you thought I wouldn’t even stick with this month of blogging for 2 days.. But HA, here is the 2nd post, so hold on tight it’s going to be a long month… Now I come to think of it why didn’t I choose February, only 28 posts…

So today… The garthman is taking some time off so we can actually get work done in the office..  Got a bit of coding done, actually got some cool stuff (well cool to me) done.

I’ve just added a JavaScript popup calendar tag to the WAF tags, (not sure what WAF is then you might not want to know), anywho this new tag handles taking any sort of data, a String date, a long value or even a Date itself and renders it to a defined format into a textbox and then (here’s the kicker) renders a link to a JavaScript popup that allows the user to browse dates and select the one they want.. Neat Huh..  Really it is..

So got that tag into most places we use dates in the admin system, works real nice. And due to the fact that it’s backed by a full date formatter I can use any date formats I like, including times.  So the old Date selects can now also be more exact and show the time of the day too..

So enough geeky stuff, not much else, watched some of the 5th test, looks like England are going to actually be competitive this time..  Not sure what the final score was at the end of play as it was a rain delay when I left work but it was pretty even going into the end of the 2nd day.  Tomorrow will be interesting, and then to see if the poms can stand up in their 2nd innings..

Went with Phil Z to play tennis, blowing an absolute gale!  Threw my game right off but was enjoyable, in the 32C temperature.  He took the first set 6–4 then kamesh turned up and we played some American singles which I think I took 6–3, but was really hot and had to head home.

Been home, had dinner… mmmmm spag bol…. and thats about it..

And for those keeping score I didn’t get to WOW last night, but I'm blogging this from my WOW box so there's a chance tonight.  Might even start my new Tauren Mage if I feel lucky.

Night.

Posted by at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not one for New Years resolutions but seeing as this blog is in serious need of content I decided that I'd try something different. Its been cool this year to look back at the past years posts and see how things have changed and whats still the same. So to try and get some content here I decided I'd try and blog each day of Janurary and see if it works. So heres the commitment, as long as I'm home on in contact with the internet I'll make sure to get a post up.

So given i've already failed, as this is the first post on the 2nd I'll make it a big one, wrap up the end of 2006 and include today.

New Years was at Matt and Kylies with all the normal crew, plus the 2 new additions to our crew, Alanah and Kaitlyn. Great night, we left about 2 for the drive home so got to bed after 3:00....

Most of New Years day was in bed recovering from..... partying... yep thats what it called..

So today was back to work, had the last week or so off (give or take a day) all the crew were there. I actually got some work done, we're working on V2 of the Editorial system, and as ususal I'm holding up the project. It doesn't work to be some sort of manager dude and try and cut code too. I'm to busy in meetings, writing plans or something else, but I think thats slowing down and get more time to do real developer dude stuff.

Last night got updated version of utils, waf and waf-plugins out, might write the release notes for that soon, but also thinking about an ant task that automatically creates the post and uploads it, I already have the rest of the release process automated, one last step.

Umm what else.. Not much at work, recorded the review for this week, and watched the raw video of the other weeks right odds that we recorded as a sort of pilot..

Headed home on time for once, and as my previous post shows I've got back on the bike again. The plan for tonight was to meet up with Sharkey and get some more K's under the belt.. Yep thats right, a Tuesday night. Had a good ride around 2hrs and got another 30ish kms done. We plan to try and get out each Tuesday night, with bigger plans every weekend or so.

Anywho, think thats about it.. Might try and get 30 mins in on WOW before bed.

Night.

Posted by at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After way too long, I have got whitesquaresoft back online. I've had to move the server to work and hopefully we shall remain online.

Posted by at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve had issues with my blog posting application but thats all fixed and have heaps of news to catch up on.  There are also intermittent issues with the site being publically accessible, but those issues are also being looked into.

Posted by at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After an extended hiatus off the web, my servers are now publicly routeable.  With the move to the new house we got connected to a different DSL service that meant some configuration changes were required on the server end, after weeks of trying to get stuff done, Ross (ie.net.au) came over this morning and we got it licked once and for all. 

The servers now have a new IP and it seems that everything is routing fine.

Phew…  We now return you to your scheduled programming.

Posted by at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday morning (31st March) Matt and Kylie became parents.  Alanah Grace was born at 10:35 Friday morning, both mother and daughter are doing well, the dad's hand is a bit sore though...

Rach and I went down to Weribee hospital today to meet the new Collins, and she is tiny..  There were a troop of us there with Dave and Nicola along with the Purcells deciding today was a good time to visit.

Now that makes me feel old..

Congrats new mum and dad.

Posted by at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I updated BlogJet last night and now I have problems with it, will have to reinstall I guess, but thought I'd try out ecto..

So this is my first post from the ecto 2.0 beta, had issues installing the .NET framework, but now its on and fine.

Will see....

Technorati Tags: Tag 4

Continue reading "Trying out ecto 2.0 beta" »

Posted by at 3:38 PM | Permalink

Rach and I were at Glens engagement party on Sat night, but rocked up to Garth and Kims on Sunday for lunch..

These are just a few shots from the slow Sunday.

Isn’t it nice to have a wife that loves you……

Nearly a foot photo….

Ok. For all the foot photo fans, heres one for you.

Posted by at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nick from work is heading out of the city for a while and has his house up for rent during the Commonwealth Games.

If your in town during that time and looking for a Private Rental then drop him a line and let him know your interested.

Posted by at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas has come and gone again, and now its time to sit down and watch the cricket.  Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you have a great New Year.

This year we are not at the MCG for the game, as dad couldn’t get tickets.  But as it seems to be a sellout they are beaming the game live into Melbourne so I get to sit here in my dressing gown and watch the game.

In all another good Christmas day has come and gone, good food, good family, good times.

I just hope that you all were able to have a good Christmas and that the good times continue through into 2006.

Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Given the amount of work I've been doing over the last few weeks, and also as I worked Saturday I decided to take today off and catch up on all the things that I haven't had time to do.

So far today I’ve been out to rebel sport and bought an entirely new Outdoor Cricket set of gear. Then had lunch with my wonderful wife, and then it will be back to Maddock Sports to get a new Bat.

After that I think I'll contact Holden about getting my iPod wired into the stereo.

Not sure of the plans after that, but seeing as I have the time, its “Roast Lamb” night tonight.

Also in other news, Sharkey should be getting his new HD Plasma delivered this arvo, so we might head over after dinner to check it out and help with any of the setup that may be required.

Posted by at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the last weekend Rach and I relocated our humble abode just down the street.

We’re still in blackburn, just in behind laburnum station now.

Big thanks to all that helped us move, it was so much easier with all the hands helping.

Now time to plan the housewarming party, and the next poker night.

Posted by at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know its a bit late, but heres the wrapup of the the weekend.

Friday night, a quiet on watching the footy, bed earlyish for a Friday night.

Saturday we got up early, Rach went to the chiro then we headed on up to see some of the family in Nathalia..  Got up there just after lunch and headed to the local footy to catch up with the family and the newest inclusion Zoe. We left the footy late, hoping to get back in Melbourne by 6:00, but we only left Nathalia just after 5:00.

We got back to Melbourne late, as we had a 40th birthday to get to at 7:00 and we weren't even home by 7:00. A quick rush to get ready saw us at the party around 8:00.  As it was from Rach’s side of the family I didn’t know too many people, but found the TV to watch the swans and the crows with all the other guys there.

We didn’t stay too late, I think it was about 11:30 when we left, just after cake!

Sunday was another packed day, up early to be at Sharkeys for 9:30 and a quick ride to nearly Jells Park and back.  Matt had to be home for 11:30, so after doing 15k’s we turned around to make it a nearly complete Jells Park ride of just over 30k’s.  We did it in pretty good time, only taking just under 1.5hrs for the ride.

After the ride, I was straight back off home as I was going to the footy and wanted to be out of the house by 1:00.  I had an hour or so to shower, change, feed and work on my new project (FeedListener).  Keep tuned here over the next few weeks for more info.

Then it was off to the footy to see the pies go down to the dockers, but probably only due to poor kicking and the umpires.. I’ll say no more.

Now playing: Adam Curry - Daily Source Code for July 29th 2005 #217

Posted by at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Been a while since the last post, things are hectic at work as we are pushing towards getting the new stuff out the door so this post aims at recapping all the stuff thats been happening.

Went for a ride with Sharkey yesterday, did our big eltham circut, which head from my place up to the eastern freeway, along that east till we get to springvale rd then up along springvale rd till it ends.  There is then a trail (the yarra creek trail I think) that winds its way west underneath eltham and all the way up to burke rd.  The trail then turns south and links back up with our normal trail along the eastern which we then take back east to my place.  Its about a 45km trip, which we did in just under 3 hours.  We did stop a couple of times to watch some local footy and hockey so would probably be 2.5 hrs if we hadn’t stopped.

It was a much more serious ride than we have been doing recently, but the type of thing that we should be doing all the time.  Once we got over the initial 10k mark the body had warmed up and it got easier from there.  Only the last 5k which is up and down was a bit hard, but I'd hope that it was after 40k or we should be riding further.

So what else is going on.. Crickscore is back. I had an issue with the database corrupting and had to get help from the guy that built the database software to fix the errors.  So a big thanks to Toby and his Mckoi database. 

Given that Cooltools is on a break this season it wasn’t super important to get Crickscore back, but now it is it must be time to do some serious interface work.  We’ll see how time goes over the next few weeks.

Downloaded KnoppMyth to try it out.  Was ok, couldn’t get the Australian channels to load but the install was pretty painless..  Good to see development making this sort of technology more like an appliance. Now all I need is a machine capable of running MythTV happily and I'll be happy.

After playing with KnoppMyth, by torrent download of Fedora Core 4 (FC4) was complete, so decided to install that on my test machine.  Yeah its nice. Got the latest firefox pre-installed and Gnome looks really cool..  I’ve been a kde guy for a long time, but on this install left Gnome as the default.  I really like the menu bar and task bar separation. And the UI-themeing looks really clean.

The only problem with FC4 is that is so new that the apt-get repository's haven't been updated yet, to even a point that the apt-get rpm from freshrpms.net hasn’t even been build.  But I can wait.

I’m planning on updating my main server, the one u got this from, from an older Redhat 9 release to the latest FC4.  Just need to plan a backup first, just in case.

So what else has been going on???  Went and saw the Bahrs last night.  Good to catch up with them again, its been a while since we have.  Jessica (the latest to the clan) is so small and cute and Rach looked right at home with a new baby in her arms…

Not much else, and I think thats probably enough for now.  I’ll try and get back soon with more details.

Oh, one last thing is that I'm working on a new whitesquare software development site.  Thinking of using a blog engine to distribute news about all of the whitesquare products..  The current trial is over at dev.whitesquaresoft.com and I hope to get some content and the current beta downloads up in the next few days.

C ya!

Posted by at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rach and I headed out after a yummy dinner of Pasta to the movies.  Rach wanted to see the chick flick Mr and Mrs Smith.  How is this a chick flick I hear you ask?  All the guns, knives and explosions..  I’ll say just two words..  Brad and Angelina..

Onto the movie, it is again a very plot-less movie. A couple who are both hitmen don’t know that about each other. They then find out that they are each others target but are torn between their job and their partner.

Good for bangs and explosions. Brand and Angelina basically have 90% of the show time, so its good eyecandy. Its a movie that you won’t fall asleep in, but also not a lot of substance.

Not one i’d buy on DVD, but be happy to sit through and watch again.

Posted by at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a few weeks of discussion, we decided to bite the bullet and invest in a manual pasta maker.  So this afternoon we played around and made a couple of batches.. The actual pasta is simple, flour and egg.. Thats it.

Then run it through the machine a few times to combine it, then flatten it to the required thickness and either cut it manually or use the provided cutter to make spaghetti or  fettucini.

Yummy..

Tonight the plan is to make another batch for dinner and work on a from-scratch bolognese sauce.

Posted by at 3:48 PM | Permalink

Went to see the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy with Matthew.  The plan was to go and watch Star Wars, but he had already seen that, and Rach was going to her mums.. 

Seeing as the movie was about to finish its run, we decided to head to Forest Hill and see one of the remaining screenings..  We got to the 9:40 screening, and were 2 of 13 people in the cinema to watch it.

Not being a big fan of that world, I expected the movie to not be that great, and all though there is basically no plot to the movie, it was very entertaining and had some seriously funny scenes.

If u havn’t seen it, and have a slight interest in the sci-fi world, then I’d recommend checking it out.  I’m not sure how it stacks up to the book as I've never read it, but it was entertaining all the same.

Posted by at 10:40 PM | Permalink

Today we move one step closer to finishing off our A/V system with the purchase of a new  entertainment unit.  Its a low line unit with enough space to fit in the center speaker, dvd player, HD set top box and A/V receiver.

There are 4 speakers still missing from the final solution, but this was one of the hardest pieces to find.  I wanted somthing low and flat to highlight the widescreen tv while still having enough storage space for all the equipment. I’m looking at getting free standing floor speaker boxes for the fronts leaving all of the units space open for other stuff. Then run some cables around the other end of the room to some wall mounted rear speakers.

With the new speakers in place the entire system will be complete, but it’s still a few weeks away until we have the spare cash to afford to grab them.  I was going to head to JB today to price the 4 speakers, cables and mounts but ran out of time waiting for this to get delivered then getting all the stuff in it.

We’re very happy with it, and also the fact that the colour matches nearly exactly the other box type thing that was already in the loungroom.

Thanks to Sharkey for the help cutting out the extra holes needed to run all the cabling.  If I get a chance I’ll pull the unit out and show off all the cabling and such thats hanging around behind it.

Posted by at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was not able to convince sharkey to actually go to the game today, so given that he has Optus cable he conceeded to watch the Collingwood V Hawthorn game at his place.  The game started out well with us kicking away in the first quarter holding a sizeable lead and looking to blast the game open.

But in the second and third quarters Hawthorn hit back and were only 2 points behind heading into the final quarter.  As we did against West Coast last week we came home with a solid performance kicking 5 goals to 2 in the last quarter to run out 28 point winners.

And boy was Sharkey pissed… I think the Hawks kicked 6 or 7 unanswered goals at one stage looking like stealing the game away, but it was the determination of the pies in the last quarter, along with the hawks running out of legs that let us take the game back and run out winners.

It was good to see Blake and Didak play a great game dominating the forward line kicking 5 and 4 goals respectivly.

Posted by at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its only the second time this year that I’ve been able to scream the theme song at the end of a Collingwood game, but this was one to savor in its full.  We set out to tackle the West Coast Eagles who were undefeated after 8 rounds….  But now they are defeated, and beaten by the team on the bottom of the ladder.

What a great day, beautiful weather in Melbourne for football.  The new stand at the MCG is in the last stages of completion and is looking excellent.

Went to the game today with Puss and we thought that it was going to be a long one when the eagles kicked the first 3 straight.  But we fought back well kicking the next couple finishing out the quarter only 2 goals down, 3.1 to 5.1..

The next quarter we came out blazing, anchored by the back line of Prestie, Wakes and Jimmy-James we launched many attacks with solid running through the center with pinpoint delivery into the forward line..  Dominating play we kicked 7 goals to the eagles 2 to lead 9.3 to 7.2 at half time.

After the long break we came out with gusto, but the eagles had turned it up a notch and reversed the form of the second quarter kicking 6 to our 2 goals.

So at three quarter time it was 11.7 (coll) to 13.3 (wce).  But the final term showed that we did want to win and were willing to run and push to make it happen.. We dominated play again as we did in the second quarter kicking 7 goals 3 to the eagles 2 goals 2.

Final score Pies 18.10 118 to Eagles 15.5 95…

Was great to see the dependency of the solid back line didn’t back down again, and this week our midfield decided to play the game and actually run the ball through the midfield, find space, back themselves and deliver with accuracy.

If there was one stat that showed how we won it was the tackle count. At the end of the game it was 52 tackles to the pies and only 29 to the eagles.. That is a total reflection of how much we wanted the ball, and were willing to put in to get it.

Go the Pies….

Posted by at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Saturday we spent the day loading and unloading gear in the “Move the Purcells”-a-thon…  We started semi-early and they were pretty well organised…  Took about 3 hrs to load the truck and then an hour or so to head up Kilmore way.

They arn’t actually moving into the house for 3 weeks so that they have time to do some renovations, already pulled up all of the carpet and planning the sanding/staining of the boards.  So the plan was to dump the stuff in storage in Wallan for a few weeks until the main reno work is done.

Congrats to them, and hope all of their plans don’t run too expensive and long.

Posted by at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has got to be one of the best uses of a blog that I have ever seen, this guy is super serious about being Darth Vader…  This entire blog is a running diary of Vader’s life and thoughts about the events behind the scenes.  It follows the Star Wars stories that we all know but adds some depth that makes Vader seem like a real person again.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster: It's Christmas On Hoth

Admiral Ozzol took the fleet out of hyerspace too close to Hoth, and the Rebel Alliance were -- you guessed it -- alerted to our approach. The cornerstone of Ozzel's arrogance is his insistence that rebel technology is so vastly inferior to Imperial technology that we need broker no caution.

Posted by at 9:44 PM | Permalink

This morning I checked out of my room at The Grace in the CBD of Sydney, and headed to North Sydney to work for the day.  During today I needed to find another place to stay for the next 3 nights until I get to fly home on Friday night.

So I asked around the office, and no-one had any real good ideas, so the suggestion was again back to wotif.com for help in finding somewhere. The plan was to stay somewhere in North Sydney to be closer to work but it seemed that there were not many places that had rooms for the time I'll be here.  The only one that seemed to fit the bill was the Glenferrie Lodge.

So here I am, sitting in a room 3x4, a bed, tv and fridge…. Thats it.

Can you guess which room is which?

That said, I have nothing against the room, its just a bit of a culture shock coming from a 11th floor “Heritage” room in the CBD, to a 1st floor box in the backstreets under the bridge.. 

But the 1 super saving grace is that we have a WIRELESS BROADBAND network here, where at the Grace it was a pay-for service and I had to plug a network cable in..  How 2003 is that?

Posted by at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems that WS had a bit of outage over this weekend, not sure if it was a power issue at home or what but the website has been uncontactable.

That said the website has been the furtherest from our minds as we have had a super great weekend starting with meeting Katy and Brett for drinks Friday night.

Rach and I headed down to the King St Wharf for dinner about 6:30, and after a great dinner headed back up the wharf to the aquarium to wait for Katy and Brett to arrive. We got to the dock where they were to come in on a Taxi boat about 5 mins before the docked. They didn’t see us sitting there, but Brett knew we were to meet them and was looking around for us.  Ridd was in her own world on the phone and didn’t see us approach until we were only 3 meters from her, then she screamed “Steve and Rach are here”, and she was crying…  I said hi to Brettly and Katy ran over to give Rach a hug, then she said…  “We just got engaged…”. 

It seems that this was the end to an elaborate plan that Brett had devised to propose.  Ofcourse she said yes and when we met them she was on the phone to her mum telling her of the good news.

So that started of a super weekend, we ended up heading out for drinks with them till about 1:00, then back to our room for another bottle of red then to bed.. ~3:00ish we eventually got to sleep.

The next day (Saturday) we were a bit seedy, and didn’t crawl out of bed until about 11:00 and so missed breakfast at the room. We wandered off down the road in search of somthing to eat. Found a little cafe where we got a toasted sandie and a coffee.  That seemed to get us going so we decided to head back to the room, pack a bag and head off to Circula Quey for a bit of an explore..

We wandered down King St and found the little market down in The Rocks, had a look around there then headed down to the water..  Wandered around down there a bit, then headed towards the bridge…

From there we decided to head back around to the Opera House to have a look when we ran into Katy and Brett again.. They had just had lunch with Dougie and his girlfreind.  They were about to turn around and catch a ferry around to Darling Harbour and head to the aquarium so we joined them on the trip.

So we made it around to Darling Harbour and on into the Aquarium.

So then after having a late night, and being on our feet all day it was a tired 4 that tried to find somewhere to get somthing to eat and a seat.  We wandered down King St Wharf and found that most places didnt start dinner service until about 5:30 or 6:00 and it was only 5:00..  Ridd was eager to get somthing to eat, so we found a place that served atg 5:30, sat down for a drink then dinner. KnB had a 30th to head off to so after dinner we walked back towards our rooms and said goodbye to them on the way.

We headed back to the room where I was exhausted and fell into bed being asleep by 11. 

Today we took it much easier getting up in time for breakfast, then heading out for a walk.. Headed up Martin Place and saw the Channel 7 studio where they do Sunrise.. Then just wandered around, and ended up at Hyde Park, given today was Mayday there was a march by the unions around the city and we just happened to be at hyde park just as it started.

Then through Hyde park to the Anzac memorial, down the hill for a coffee and then onto the monorail for a quick trip around sydney.  Its only about a 12min round trip for those playing at home. Silly me didn’t charge the batterys in the camera last night and so there are no photos from today..  Once off the monorail we wandered window shopping till we headed back to the Grace and had some late lunch. Back to the room for a while and to finish packing rach’s bag, then it was time to see her off in a Taxi to catch the plane back to Melbourne.

So thats the wrap of our big Sydney weekend, and HUGE congrats to Brett and Katy.. We were very honoured and lucky to get to spend the night with you guys and I hope that you had as much fun as we do…  YAY another wedding to look forward to..

Posted by at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just finished watching all of the footage that Brettly and Dave took of the Wedding.

Super effort by Brett to edit and mix down all of the content into 1 DVD movie.

He has kindly supplied me all of the raw footage, and I think that there will have to be a special Matty Video created, with all the jug drinking, head banging and all round party action.

There are some super shots and sections in the video that will bring back memories for years to come, so thats heaps again Brettly for all of your effort on the day and beyond to do all of this it completes a perfect wedding.

Posted by at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sharkey has pulled his finger out and actually posted somthing to dead circus, not sure if we’ll c much from him.. but you never know.. I just might be amazed

Posted by at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever since Matty got his new D70 camera I’ve been green with envy..  We were going to get one, but decided to spend the money on the wedding/honeymoon instead.

And now I hear that Nikon have released an upgraded and downgraded version of them. Below are a few links to so reviews and previews of the new cameras…

The new Nikon D50    Nikon D50 DSLR Lets Go Digital has a preview of the Nikon D50 DP Review also previews the Nikon D50 DSLR

The new Nikon D70s    Nikon D70s Lets Go Digital previews the Nikon D70s

Posted by at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a quick note to say that my indoor cricket system is now open to the public, if there are any Indoor Cricket teams out there that would like to use crickscore, then email me, or leave a comment and I can arrange to create access for your team.

My indoor cricket team uses crickscore to manage its fixtures, team status, results and statistics. Check out our site at Cooltools Indoor Cricket.

Update 19/4: Got a query as to why this is included in my Java category. The reason is that the technology behind the development of Crickscore is entirly java..  I posted it to this category to show what can be done with Java technology.

Posted by at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Had a question about the details about where we went for our honeymoon.

We were in Hamilton Island, in the Whitsundays.. Off the coast of Queensland in Australia.

We stayed at the Reef View Hotel.

Posted by at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

its nearly midnight and its nearly the new day….. I have to go riding in the morning with sharkey and i’m still up and drinking with kev…

Its time for drunk steve to get to bed and actually sleep…

night all…. c u in the morning.

Posted by at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m now pretty happy with MT and BlogJet, enough to migrate to MT to be my main blog.  I have posted my last item to SnipSnap, but will watch its development and see if it progresses any.

I’ll be working over the next few weeks to work out how some of the plugins are configured, but the main thing I like here is the ability to use categories.

I’m also happy that I can now post images and files right from the laptop, directly to the blog.

So here is a few more photos from the honeymoon to keep you happy.

Posted by at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brettly is working on the wedding DVD and wanted to know the music that we had, so here it is.

Ceremony Music
Kenny G - The Moment.mp3 (6648 KB)
Jamie Cullum - These Are The Days.mp3 (7870 KB)
Natasha Bedingfield - I Love You.mp3 (5069 KB)

Reception Music
Wet Wet Wet – Love is all around
Lonestar - Amazed.mp3 (3767 KB)
Jet – Are you gonna be my girl

These links are provided as a sample of the music, please make sure you purchase the albums if you enjoy the music.

Posted by at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other day I posted up some images from the honeymoon. See our honeymoon photos here.

Posted by at 9:13 PM | Permalink

This is the first post from our honeymoon, and its just a quick note to test MT with this new BlogJet thing to see how it goes.

This is an image from the balcony of our room.

Posted by at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)