Still As Life

Today, along with plotting to take over the world with Rhi, I rearranged me desk setup, and for that matter, most of that side of the room.

I've chucked one of my bookcases up on the back of one of my desks. I've run out of room on the ground level, so logically, start building up. Tetris style.

It turned out that the bottom shelf of the bookcase is the perfect size to fit my pair of 19" widescreens with about 3mm to spare above them and about 2cm in total to spare horizontally. Sweet.

I've migrated the main work stream applications over to Quadzilla. As a result of this, I've noticed about a 50% performance decrease in the performance of Adobe Photoshop CS3 when working with large files compared to the old XP box that is around a quarter of the power of Quadzilla. That doesn't make any sense to me and I sure hope it's just a temporary problem.

I have left the old box up and running next to the new one. I need it for access to the RAID 0 array in it. At the moment, I have it plugged in to the second input in my secondary monitor, however I am accessing it predominately via the Windows Remote Desktop Connection software as this saves the trouble of switching the inputs and the keyboard and mouse.

Since moving the bookcase, I all of a sudden seem to have so much extra space. I need it since I'm planning on getting a filing cabinet soon, all the same though, it's remarkable the amounf ot space it seems to have made. I'm also thinking about getting a fourth desk from somewhere to get myself some more desk space since I seem to keep running out.

Labels: other, software

Thanks to Tim and his wife Judith of Spy Journal and Jethro Consultants for inviting Rhi and I over for dinner last night. We had a great time and the food was awesome.

Tim and Jude keep Stimsons Pythons, bearded dragons, lizards, heaps of fish, and even more pets. I got to hold a snake and a dragon for the first time! Probably something I should get used to since Rhi is hoping to get her spotted python on Thursday (she didn't get her license in time to get it this weekend).

It still amazes me how placid they were, and how content they were to be held.

Tim also has a very, very awesome computer setup. 4 screens in a curve following the curve of the desk, 80" of screen, nice.

They also showed us some interesting games I have never heard of before, Tim, you are going to have to show me the computer version of Carcassone (is that how it's spelt?) sometime.

Thanks again Tim and Jude.

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As promised earlier, here are some photos and a run down of my Australia Day.

My family had come up the coast for the long weekend, so I went down to visit them there and we went up to O'Reillys in Lamington National Park for the day.

It's been quite a while since I was last up there and it has changed a lot, but it's still a very nice place. In the photo on the left, there's my sister and brother with a king parrot and crimson rosella, with myself in the background.

I really enjoyed the day, as you can see the view was absolutely amazing and there are quite a few houses hiding away up there. To be honest, I would love to live up in an area like that, aside from the lack of a decent internet connection.

I expect, aside from getting a satellite connection, the fastest available would be dialup speeds.

There is phone reception in some places, so mobile internet is a possibility, but I expect speeds would still be limited to GSM which is no better than dialup anyway.

On the way back down, we stopped at this place, a tunnel that had been carved through solid sandstone back in 1901 by the Lahey brothers for a private tramway to haul logs instead of bullock trains. Due to the steep inclines the trams often had to climb, specially geared trams had to be imported for use on it. Apparently $60,000 was spent on it at the time which would be quite a lot really. The line ran from Canungra, a really nice little town that sprung up around the Laheys sawmill. Have a look at the Canungra website for some more info on it.

And this, the last photo, is an Australian mouse. We came across it while we were out in the rainforest, it wasn't worried about people at all and we were able to get to within about a metre of it.

Okay, so it's not really a mouse, I don't remember what the actual name for them is though and it looks like a big mouse, so there you go.

I hope everyone else had a great Australia Day long weekend!

Labels: other

I was reading some interesting little facts in an email that I received today. Yay for completely useless but interesting forwards. Anyways, one of the things it said was, "what number do you have to count to before you reach the letter A?".

That's a good question and something I've never thought about before, and if I hadn't read this, I probably never would.

Anyways, when I started to think about it, I got up to about fifty seven and then realised, hey, I could be here a while, I still haven't gotten an A, so I started skipping up in ten's, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. I gave up then realising that everything from then on is just repeating something that's already been spelled out.

So off I went and read the answer. Lo and behold, one thousand is the first number with an A in it if you spell it out. I then also felt quite stupid for not realising this when I reached one hundred.

And now I have written four paragraph's on something that could be said in one sentence, as well as state the obvious. But hey, you learn something new everyday.

Labels: other

Rhi formally moved in this afternoon which is pretty cool.

While we were waiting for our landlord to turn up with her key, she gave me what is meant to be the last part of my Christmas present.

Two boxes of Nerds, Nerds Gumballs, and even Nerds Rope!

Apparently I was meant to get it with the t-shirt that implies I shouldn't be allowed to touch anything still under warranty, and caffeinated soap that I thought was the entirety of my Christmas present from her, but she hadn't had a chance to pick them up yet.

I can't help but think she is hinting at something...

Then of course there is the t-shirt I got from my parents for Christmas. I Google myself regularly, do you?

Thank's heaps mum, dad, Jess, Nick and Rhi!

Labels: other

According to an article on eMarketer, gift card sales this past year have reached near $100 billion.

"Gift card sales totaled $97 billion in 2007, up from $83 billion in 2006, according to data from The Tower Group cited in The New York Times."

Thats not all. The amount of gift cards that aren't used, or have money left over on them is near $8 billion!

"Tower put that amount at $7.8 billion in 2007."

That's a huge amount of money that is basically free!

So what does this mean? From where I'm sitting, it indicates pretty clearly that gift vouchers are a great idea and are very worthwhile!

Retailers can't lose anything on them since they are paid for when they are purchased. Then if they don't get used before they expire, that's money for nothing!

What a great idea. If anyone wants to give me money for nothing, I wouldn't mind at all.

Labels: other

Lismore is one of the last places you expect to see a dozen helicopters, especially all in one area. Specifically, all on one sports field.

Normally there are 2 helicopters in Lismore that are seen on a regular basis, both of these are operated by the Westpac Rescue Helicopter service. Aside from that, there is rarely any other helicopter presence in Lismore. I believe there are 1 or 2 smaller one's at the airport on a regular basis, but I am not certain on that.

However, with all of the flooding and people being stranded and cut off from any supplies in Coraki, Woodburn and surrounding towns, it seems our house is right in the flight path of the helicopters running regular supply and surveillance flights, including the state premier's personal tour of the natural disaster zone. I decided to go and find out where the helicopters were all coming and going from as I couldn't see where they were all coming and going from. The airport has been partially flooded and thus really unusable until possibly this afternoon, and aside from that there are only a few other open level places in Lismore that could be used, the down town sports fields, the various school sport fields, and the sport's field at the Goonellabah RSL Club. I hadn't seen any helicopter activity in downtown Lismore whilst I had been down there so the first place I checked was the Goonellabah RSL, and yep, it has effectively become the base for 12+ helicopters.

There were 8 helicopters on the ground while I was there having a look and taking photo's, a 9th landed just before I left, and there had been another 3 in the air. Whether there are more or not, I don't know.

None of these helicopters were the Westpac Rescue Helicopters, and the majority of them were bigger choppers than any you would expect to see in somewhere as small as Lismore.

The past few days there have been 8+ flights directly over our house each day, some days more. Given that our place is only a couple minutes drive from the RSL, these helicopters have all been quite low already when they have been flying over our place, so they have seemed quite a bit louder than usual.

It really was quite a surprise to see so many out there. It is kinda cool though.

It seems my flood predictions weren't so bad, just not for the right area. Lismore didn't flood much due to the flood levy, but downstream further, Coraki and Woodburn have got it pretty bad. Evidently, the flood waters aren't expected to recede for the rest of this week. Lismore ended up getting within about a metre of the top of the levy to my knowledge.

Kyogle also got some major flooding up river from Lismore earlier that is still gradually receding.

As far as I know there haven't been any casualties or major injuries as of yet, so hopefully things will stay that way.

Labels: other