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Journal

Relay For life

Bern\’s family recently (end of May) lost their dad to cancer.  He battled for 2 1/2 years.  Due to this close encounter with Cancer (and the fact that Bern\’s mum, Marie is a breast cancer survivor), they have decided to join forces as a team for the Cancer Council\’s fundraising initiative Relay for Life.
Link: http://www.relayforlife.org.au/

What is Relay For life?

Relay For Life is an overnight team event to raise funds for cancer research, education and patient support programs.

How does it work?

It&rsquo::s a team challenge!

The challenge is for teams of 10 or more to complete a relay-style walk or run at selected venues throughout Australia – in our case the team is running at Morrison Reserve, Mount Evelyn. Team members take turns to keep their baton moving overnight, enjoying the sensational festive atmosphere created through entertainment, camping, spot prizes and, most importantly, the vibrancy of the hundreds of lively people on the track!

The highlights at each event include the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the Survivors&rsquo:: Walk and the Candlelight Ceremony.

Prior to the event – each team member is encouraged to raise much-needed funds to go towards research, education and patient support programs.  If you are interested in supporting this worthwhile cause, you can go to the Relay for Life website and search for Windmill Warriors or click on this link http://tinyurl.com/6evzsp

Wish us well with our fundraising efforts and for the walk itself!

Categories
Links

Pinouts.ru

I found this great site (pinouts.ru) full of  hardware pinouts, cables schemes and connectors layouts

Categories
Think

Solo

If two people drink from the same can of Solo, is it a duet?

If you don’t find this funny, you’ve obviously getting more sleep than we have, or you have no sense of humour…

Categories
Journal

Lizzie Loves Books

Lizzie just loves books, despite being only nearly three, she is constantly picking up books and just flicking through the pages. She seems to prefer thicker books over the thinner ones, and I’ve already had to take a couple of bibles off her as the pages are so thin they tend to tear easily.

She was sitting up on the couch the other day, and I asked her what she was reading. She said “A rainbow book”

Lizzie

For those who cant see it clearly, the book is none other than the Oxford Paperback Dictionary. She wouldn’t put it down either, until she had found something to use as a chapter (Bookmark).

Another (related) favourite is the “rhetasaurus” aka Roget’s Thesaurus

Categories
Journal

Hello Cruel World.

I\’ve decided to give Ubuntu the flick and rebuild my desktop machine with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate*

Here\’s what I\’m installing:
Intel Drivers (UAC) (5 reboots)
Firefox 2.0.0.14
Flash player (UAC)
nvidia Drivers (UAC) (reboot)
Thunderbird 2.0.0.14
Steam (free games with GFX Card driver download…)
Vista SP1 (took ages &amp:: at last 1 reboot)
more Windows Updates (reboot)
Twhirl &amp:: Adobe Air( UAC)
Openoffice 2.4 (UAC)
Adobe Reader (UAC)
Windows Live Messenger/Writer/Mail/Photo Gallery (UAC)

Todo:
WinSCP
Putty
Paint.NET

Tweaks:
set firefox to search as i type

Firefox Extensions:
Google Browser Sync
Uppity
WebDeveloper
Tinyurl Creator
Firebug

*Why Ultimate? Because Business &amp:: Home Premium have different features, and I need to be able to know both to better support my customers.

Categories
Journal

Linux on the Desktop Part 2

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks, and to be honest I’m really not sure….

Here is my list of things that bug me:

I still can’t find a good twitter client
Audio is patchy at best
I can’t find a good program to open and edit files over scp/sftp
Searching for files is weird
My podcatching software gives random names to the files
Applications don’t always remember where they are supposed to be (screen location)
Lots of software isn’t available to do what I want. Even Firefox extension are not cross platform. Adobe air is supposed to be cross platform, but that means Windows & Mac. Ditto Silverlight, not that I’ve found any great use for it (yet)
My scanner doesn’t work (HP Scanjet 3500)
I can’t even be bothered setting trying to set up my Brother Label Printer (P-touch QL500)
None of the free virtual machine apps seem to work properly
Help is patchy at best.
Can’t see network shares via name (e.g. \\techdr\patches)
Hibernation/sleep doesn’t work properly

Ubuntu is free, and that’s great, but to be honest, it’s probably cost me hundreds of dollars in the time it took to setup and get it even close to right. Windows is not that expensive, especially if you buy it with a system.

The other problem is that most of job is supporting windows, so I need to spend time in it. I cant really afford to waste any more time, so it is quite likely that this blog post will be one of the last things this ubuntu machine ever does. Goodbye cruel world..

Categories
Think

Ironic

How ironic Is it that an email called:

[IVT News] Managing email overload

has sat unread in my inbox for 4 days because I\’m too busy to read it?

with thanks to Jonathan and the guys at IVT from what I assume will be a great newsletter article, when I get time to read it…

Categories
Journal

My geek wife

Bernie is no slouch when it comes to technology, She\’s up there with the best of them as far as using a computer goes, and she\’s also an excellent tech receptionist, meaning she understands much of the technology people are asking about and can often give great advice without having to refer to a dedicated technician.

On a lighter side, she is also occasionally up for some mutiplayer first person shooter gaming, and she puts up with me..

but a few days ago she stepped further into the realm of geekdom, she sent me a tinyurl. For those who don\’t know, you use tinyurl to shorten those ridiculously long web page addresses some sites have into something that is much more easily manageable.

Well done princess.

Categories
Journal

What a marketing slogan!

Microsoft: Try Vista, it\'s not as bad you think
Categories
Journal

Linux on the Desktop

I’ve tried running Linux on my laptop before, with great success, but I ended up renting that laptop to a customer to take overseas for 3 months, and buying myself a beautiful black Macbook. So the next step was my desktop, and I’ve done it. This time it was Ubuntu 7.10 which was replaced a few days later by 8.04LTS.

The transition was basically pretty smooth, I got rid of a few Windows only applications (I put Bernie in Charge of Quickbooks, so it is on her machine). Pretty much everything else I’ve found a linux equivalent of.

I bought a new machine to start with, so it means my old box is still there for the moment in case I need it, and I will probably package it up as a virtual machine in case I need anything later, as Bern is supposed to get the previous machine to replace her aging box. Building a new Windows box would have been a 2 day exercise (finding and installing & configuring all the right software) , and this took about the same length of time.

Outstanding issues:
* The digital 5.1 output that I think the sound card has doesn\’t work, had to resort to 2 front/rear cables.
* gTwitter sucks for using Twitter
* I haven’t set up my podcatching software yet
* sound is not working in skype
* I haven’t imported my address book from the old machine
* cant access the fines on the server

More updates to follow.