Frog dreaming, articles

The End

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 09:12:01 +1000

All things come to an end. All of them.

After nearly three and a half years, my relationship with Rachel has ended. It's also ended nearly two years of my life in Melbourne.

Relationships, especially three and a half year relationships, in my view, are all about honesty, patience, commitment and compromise, and I'm sad to say that I've not being seeing very much of that of late. What pains me is that I have been very patient, waiting up till the early hours of the morning for shifts to finish, I've never been dishonest in my life, never looked twice at another woman in any relationship I've ever been in, and as for the compromise? Well I think leaving everything behind in England to make a new life for Rachel and myself on the other side of the planet says all that needs saying about compromise.

With lack of any indication, I was always under the impression that this was just a bad patch, that due to Rachel's recent increased work schedule from a few key people leaving her kitchen, and it being around the busy Christmas period, that the lack of time spent working on our friendship and relationship would pass with the coming of the new year, and maybe a few more staff being employed and taking some load off, that things would start getting better when we started spending, even a little time together.

How wrong was I.

Looking back on it now, for the past three or four months I've been the passive witness to our relationship drifting further and further apart, and for what I can see, I couldn't of done anything about it, because quite simply, I've hardly seen Rachel at all over that period, and she's made no effort to spend time with me. As I said before, with a lack of anything being said about her feelings toward me, I thought that this was just part of the efforts she was putting into her job. She's been getting home later and later, and more and more drunk each time on the free drink they get served at her work. Now there's nothing wrong with a wind down drink after work, but she's spent no time at all working on us, in favour of her after work drinks and as a result she's changed. It's no wonder that things fell apart.

Black Sunday was when the whole reality of what was really going on came crashing down on me, when I was told that she wanted to break up and she didn't want to at least give it one shot at trying to make it work. What I still don't understand is that after three and a half years she was unprepared to at least give one try? Its clear that I have EVERYTHING to lose here and that I would want to give it at least one try, but what really gets to me is that she never mentioned anything about this sooner. Why leave it right up until the morning when you cant take it anymore to say anything, by which time its too late to do anything about it. Especially at this time of the year. It makes no sense me at all.

I guess it doesn't make any sense to me, because I was always willing to make sacrifices in my life to work at what we had, waiting for her to get home on a Friday and Saturday evening at midnight, not going out myself so that we could spend a few minutes together before she fell asleep, only for her to wake up a few hours later and disappear for another double shift. Not complaining when the time she got home got later, having a few more drinks at work before coming home...drunk. What could I have done when she was never there?

I found it hard to see last week through the tears, but I see what's happened now. I've been giving her, what I thought was room for her to give her choice of career her best shot, and in return she has completely neglected our relationship and I've been taken for a ride.

I really feel that she has made the wrong decision here, and that with more honesty about how she was feeling, and a commitment to spend a few choice weekends together and coming home when she actually finished work a few nights a week would of put things right and we would have been great together. But she's made her decision, and the damage has been done. And because of what she's done, what she is now clearly capable of doing to me after all that I've given, and the complete lack of compromise she's shown me, I realise now that I'm better off with out her. I've done nothing wrong, and anything that I may have done wrong I was willing to work at to make things good again. I deserve someone who will treat me with the respect I give them.

I couldn't possibly have been dealt a worse a hand through this, for all that I've put into the relationship over the years, all of the sacrifices that I've made to be over here with her and to make a good life for us, staying at work all night to earn some extra coin because the alternative was going home to an empty house with no girlfriend as Rachel was working all the time, what do I get in return? Someone who neglects me, doesn't work at the relationship, and drifts off.

What hurts now more than the relationship breakdown, because I can see now that I'm better off without her, is that I have to leave the life I have worked so very very hard at behind. I came here with nothing but Rachel, no friends at all, none, even my work experience and skill set was low. And now I'm surrounded with the best set of friends and colleagues I could possibly ever hope for, truly I am. I've worked harder in Melbourne than ever before in my life and achieved more than I ever have. I'm now a qualified Microsoft professional, I've got a solid years worth of corporate development under my belt and I had another qualification up my sleeve to work on over Christmas and the new year. I've got a fantastic job offer lined up that I was going to start in February after some time off to read and study, and Rachel and I were going to move to Richmond to a bigger, nicer place. Life was moving in the right direction, the pages were turning over nicely and things, I thought, were unfolding the way we both wanted them to.

This is my life, this is where I live, these are my friends, this is my career. That was my girlfriend.

And now it's all gone.

And I now have to start it all over again, somewhere new.

I'm not sure of where I am going to go at the moment, it's still too early to make that decision, it's not even been two weeks since I though things weren't going all that bad in our relationship and that things would get better...if she tried. And I leave the country on the 18th. Some time at home with the family over Christmas is exactly what I need right now, I need to clear my head of all this anger towards what's happened to me so that I can start thinking again with enough clarity to make some big decisions that will span the next few years. Something I'm not going to take lightly or rush over.

As for this web site, well it was the Chris Browne Australian story, and its severed me very well, but as with everything in life, nothing lasts, and so this is the penultimate post, after this Frog Dreaming will be no more. I'm going to leave it here, in a static form, so that I can flick back through the pages of the last few years.

But as William Blake said nothing is lost. And he's right, it's time now for me to move on, to find some new adventures and new mountains to climb. Only this time I'll be starting the climb on my own.

Peace and love.

Chris

Black Sunday

Tue, 5 Dec 2006 10:56:10 +1000

An all time new low.

This Sunday just gone will go down in my history as the worst day of my life so far.

Prepped For Earthcore

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:07:53 +1000

Only a day away now!

The summer is very defiantly on its way, the days are getting damn hot, I'm beginning to even feel the sun's burn when I go walking round the park on my lunch breaks to get out of the stale office I'm working in.

Its defiantly on its way.

And so, with the coming of the nice weather also comes all the parties and the next one on the list is Earthcore...this weekend! This week I've been out and about talking with various people about it, making and breaking plans, and I'm getting really excited about it now...and now only a day away :)

This means that I've been out every night this week drinking, and am feeling the drain of the alcohol abuse I've been giving myself, but its all in preparation for this weekend. I've got Monday off work so ease my way back to the real world so all is good.

Keep an eye out for the photos and video.

Good Bye Dave

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:57:15 +1000

I only saw you a few times, but it was damn good fun, as always!

So Dave left on Sunday, only just making it to the hire car place by the sounds of it, after we both went to a Halloween house party on Saturday night and things got a little messy.

I've been at work this entire weekend (I've actually done 76.75 hours this week - a very tiring record for me), so when I was walking home with the sun well up in the sky on Sunday morning I was wondering to myself how in hell I was going to make it to work on time. Well Dave didn't have work so stayed there and very nearly didn't make his 4pm hire car pickup appointment.

I only just made it to work around lunch.

Dave, it was damn good to see you man, and we had some memorable times, just as always. Say hello to every one back home for me, and hopefully its not going to be as long until the next time our paths cross, although I'm fairly sure it will be :) At least this time the memory of the last time we saw each other wont be scared with me face down, hurling in the gutter outside Fabric! No, this time it would be you screaming past our place to pick up your shit and give me back my shoes!

Take it easy Dave, safe travels man.

Quote Of The Day

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:43:23 +1000

By Rockford Lhotka

"You should expect and plan for growth."

Rockford Lhotka.

Phonoscope

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:17:26 +1000

Vibrasphere goodness

It's been just over a week since I got back from Phonoscope, and still the sounds of Landmark crashing down on the dance floor at ten in the morning are still reverberating around inside of me. The video I've got up on You Tube of the break just doesn't give it justice, and not because it was recorded on my cheap arse Cannon Ixus I camera, but because You Tube decided that the last few seconds were not worthy of encoding, so actual break is cut off and you cant hear everyone start screaming. I would of recorded more but it was far too god to be standing there filming it.

The night time was very very interesting. I got rather wasted and have hazy memories of drifting between the dance floor and the car to get ever more beer. I can piece the whole evening together, but on the details of it all, I have nothing more than a few blurry, out of focus shots to remind me. Never mind, that's probably how I was seeing things at the time ;) I did wish I recorded more video on my camera of the evening bit though, especially the bit where I remember the aliens landing. All that darkness, flashing lights and pounding psytrance can certainly play havoc with your mind!

But in the end, all I was really there for was Vibrasphere. The whole weekends party was awesome, every little bit of it, but Vibrasphere was the reason I was there and I've been looking forward to it ever since I got an email from Rickard telling me they were coming to Melbourne, and that was back in July! Man I've been pumped for a while!

And the wait was well worth it. I missed seeing them play at the EQ Warehouse in hackney back in 2003, when I foolishly went to the Mansion Party instead...Jon, if you're reading this, no offense mate, but Vibrasphere playing live in the EQ Warehouse would have kicked arse! So there was no way I was going to miss seeing them play this time.

I hired a car and me, Dave and Andy went down Saturday arvo, following Damion and Maddie. Got there set things up and started drinking. At seven in the morning I remember seeing Kim back at the camp and remember yelling out to her 'get your arse down there...this is WHY we are here!'

Well it was why I was there anyway, and I loved every groovy, dusty minute of it, especially Landmark :) I also really enjoyed the Vibrasphere remix of Fresh by Lish, which I'm told is out in November...go get it, its fantastic.

The whole following week (last week) and this weekend I've been feeling on top of the world, I've had this bounce in my step and a clearness in my head that I've not had for a while, and I put it down to the first party of the season. I've been in hibernation all winter, as have most, and now the days are heating up and the weekends getting longer I'm looking forward to a whole summer's worth of fun and shenanigans.

Check out the photos, and the videos.

Vibrasphere In Spring

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:24:47 +1000

Its been one damn hot day

The temperature hit a high of 36C today, and its still only spring!

The air conditioning in our building broke down yesterday, which was also another stinking hot day, and as a result of it has put more stress on the lift mechanisms and put out most of the lifts! I'm glad to see its not just England that isn't 100% prepared for changes in weather.

One thing that amazes me is the hot wind, stepping out of the building to go for the daily walk around Fawkner park to get out of the office and eat our lunch, was like walking in to a fan assisted oven. First of all you walked into the wall of heat, next the wind caught you and it was like having a hair dryer pointed in your face!

And this is still only spring! I'm trying to imagine back to last summer and remember what the weather was like, I'm sure I wasn't thinking, 'blimey if this is still spring, what the hell is summer going to be like', but that's exactly what I'm thinking right now. I'm back at home now, and its still boiling hot.

I'm hoping the weather will hold out for this weekend because me, Dave and Andy are off to see Vibrasphere! I'm really looking forward to this, and I really think that it, just behind Rainbow Serpent, will be the second greatest thing that I would of done music wise this year. Of course Earthcore hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure the music will be better this weekend, Earthcore's line up doesn't send shivers down my spine, like the thought of a Vibrasphere morning set does.

I'm even going to take the inlay to Archipelago along with a marker, boy band and school girl style. Hey I missed out on seeing them play at the EQ Warehouse in Hackney in October 2003, and this will be the last chance for a very long time, so I'm allowed to get a little excited about it :)

The High Speed Super Highway

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:12:42 +1000

The net just got a lot faster

I've been getting emails for the past 6 months or so from my ISP informing me of the Telstra whole sale ADSL price hikes, and the unfortunate fact that it must be passed down to me, the poor old customer.

I was moved away from my 1.5Mb, 20Gb per month plan quite a few months ago, and put on the 1.5Mb, 10Gb plan. This wasn't all that bad actually as after 8 months of downloading all kinds of complete rubbish from the net it brings you to the door step of the harsh reality that there really is a lot of very very poor quality material, not just on the net (and there's a lot of that) but every where. How a lot of today's broadcasted publications make it on air is really beyond me.

So quite frankly the drop in the download quota each month went completely unnoticed in this household.

I got another one of these emails about a month ago, but this time my monthly quota wasn't being slashed once again, this time it was the end of the high end ADSL plans all together. It seams that Telstra have raised the prices once again, and this time my ISP is phasing all of them out, in favour of the ADSL 2+ plans they have. I'm assuming that the ADSL 2+ technology enables many more people to share the one line than ADSL did, and hence Telstra can rake in more money as a result of squeezing more people through it (note to self, a Telstra boss squeezing loads of people through a small pipe wringing out money from their pockets, would make a great Viz cartoon). But then again, I am turning thirty next year, so maybe I'm just growing more cynical in my growing age...

Good news is that I've not been charged a cent (sorry, a penny) for both these migrations, the last of which has just occurred, and the even better news is that I'm now surffin' the crest of the internet wave at the quite horrendous speed of 24Mb and with the colossal download quota of 30MB per month.

But really, what does this mean? It means that I'll most probably be leaving my computer on for the next few days, downloading once again, all kinds of complete rubbish, but at least this time it should take one sixteenth of the time to do it.

But what does that really mean? It means that I'll be downloading sixteen times the amount of complete rubbish and deleting it as soon as I re-confirm the sub-standard quality of it all, and re-affirm my disgust in all things 'reality'.

Quote of the Day

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:38:26 +1000

By James Lovelock

"We live in a necular-powered universe. We're the oddballs by getting energy from burning carbon"

James Lovelock

Running

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:57:42 +1000

A run round Como

Woke up this morning at about seven thirty, put my shorts, trainers and a t-shirt on and headed straight down to Como park and did a lap.

Its part of my on going fitness routine, and I'm hoping to do the Como run a few times a week, before and/or after work. That on top of the cycling to work, and now that I know that there is a bike track round Albert Park lake which is about 7km or so, which I'm planning to do on the way home, I will get there before the summer :)

I was totally knackered when I'd finished this morning, illustrating just how unfit I am, and driving my urge to get fitter even more. I haven't been this unfit since I was at Uni ten years ago, and its not going to last much longer.

Cosmosis And Earthdance

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:34:32 +1000

This was an amazing weekend...

Well well well, what a weekend its been.

Friday was a boozy evening down the Lion catching up on all the stories from Mark and Corrie after their honeymoon in New York, London and Thailand. Wasn't a late one, never is at the Lion, so I was home by elevenish.

Saturday was a wonderful day, after a quick trip upto IDO, where I used to work, to have a chat and get my group certificate I spent the rest of the day chilling out at the flat, enjoying the weather and switching between reading and mucking around on my computer.

I was supposed to be meeting up with our kiwi mates somewhere on Smith Street, but things back at the flat just dragged on a bit longer than I expected them to, and ended up going down to Parhran to see some other kiwi mates, before jumping in a taxi at about elevenish and making our way up to Rachel's work. When she got out we made our way straight for the club, and as soon I got in there I got a huge smile on my face :D

Mr P's girlfriend, Auricle, was playing when we arrived, and the most amazing music was coming out of the speakers, really psychedelic, fullon trippy music, it was just incredible. I've been waiting for a night listening to music of this calibre for a very long time, even the psy at rainbow wasn't like this!

I spent most of the evening dancing, and when Cosmosis came on at half one, the roof just got blown off the place. Putting the music aside for a second, he was one of the most amazing Dj's I've seen for years, maybe ever. He looked like he was having the time of his life bouncing around the equipment, big smiles, really involving the crowd in every blippy twisted moment. He was even walking around the stage checking all the speakers, just to make sure that what he was hearing in his headphones, was what we were hearing down on the dance floor!

And the music...The music was just fantastic, I've been listening to Akashic, Intergalactic and Synergy for the past week at work and really getting in to it, and his set was even better, I loved every drunken minute of it! It was one of those evenings that when I got home I felt completely satisfied, I'd been waiting for a decent night out, and everything and more was delivered.

Got home, watched Shawn of the Dead, then Waking Life, got Rach out of bed, showered, and made our way to Earthdance, only to get as far as Flinders Station to have Rach say that she really was too tired to make it, and stay on the train and go back home, leaving me to find the place on me own. I met two blokes on the way, Terry and Quentin, who were trying like me to find the place, and not long after getting in there found Damion and crew. The weather started off amazing in the morning, but by the afternoon it had got a bit cloudy, but it was still nice and warm. Wasn't long before we were in the 'wet' zone, and not long after that the sun went down and so did our level of soberness :) Damion looked like he was having a ball, and so he should of been, Happy Birthday mate, hope you enjoyed your present ;D

I had an such an amazing time this weekend, I'm almost lost for words, and my excitement for this coming summer is growing with every ray of sun and everyone I speak to about whats in store.

Bring on the summer!

Mattress

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:44:55 +1000

Our new mattress arrived today

When we first moved into our flat over a year ago one of the first things we bought was a mattress. Nothing fancy, just a standard double mattress to get us started. We didn't even have a bed, it just sat on the floor in the bed room for the first few weeks until I got something to put it on.

The only thing was that is was a queen bed, and we only had a double mattress.

Well all that changed today when we had our new lush queen mattress delivered!

And whats even better is that we're going to Cosmosis tonight and have our new bed to come running home to! Can't wait.

The Weekend

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 19:36:08 +1000

I haven't been this excited for a while...

I'm buzzing with excitement for this weekend...more excitement than I've felt for a long time!

This weekend Cosmosis are playing at the Brown Alley, and I can't bloody wait. I've been listening to Intergalactic and Synergy and also a various album I've got called Psychedelic Visions, which I bought back in 1997 when I was living in Germany.

Man, I forgot just how much I love that old school psytrance sound, listening to it really brought a flood of memories back from a long long long time ago. It really is back to my roots in terms of electronic music, this was the kinda shit that really turned me onto psytrance ten years ago, and hearing it now for the first time in a very long time has re-awakened some thing inside of me.

It's also getting into summer, and with the summer comes out door parties and the festival season...another thing I really cant wait for and a great chance to have some big fun!

Bring on Cosmosis this weekend.

Watch this space.

Window Cleaning

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:33:34 +1000

Haha, just had the shock of my life!

I'm sitting at my desk, getting on with some work on the fifth floor where I sit at my window seat, which is a prize position as most of the rest of the people in the building can't even see out side, when all of sudden this guy just drops down out of no-where!

We've just had the windows cleaned!

Now my window seat has increased in value enormously, cus I've got a fantastic clear view, albiet of the office block next door :)

ANL Cycle Time

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:29:41 +1000

Managed to get the stats for the journey into work.

Right, here are the stats...

Total trip time: 21 minutes and 42 seconds.
Average speed: 22.2km/h
Max speed: 44.5 km/h
Total distance: 8.05 km

Not bad, the way I'm cycling to ANL is actually a longer journey than the cycle to IDO, but because I'm avioding a lot of the roads and hitting hardly any traffic lights the trip takes less time. And its nicer too as I'm cycling right along the river into the city.

The Cycle Starts Again

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 08:34:56 +1000

This would be the first time I cycled to work since Feb.

What a glorious day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and I've just got to work, and I'm stuffed. Because today was the first time I've cycled to work since I left iDesign Office back in February.

I woke up on Saturday and granted I had a bit of a hangover from the hundred shots round Andrews place, but I realised that I've not felt this unfit and out of shape for years.

IDO was a good 7-8km cycle every morning and evening, and after three months of that I was getting into pretty good shape. I was feeling healthier had loads more energy and just felt all round better.

Now I'm working at ANL Container Line which is a 2km walk to work, the level of exercise I've been getting since April has been close to zero. Not quite though cus there are a few hills along that walk into work, but basically nothing.

I'm walking to work these days as I reasoned that the 25min walk was probably better for me than the 5min cycle, and I think it probably is, so I'm not going to cycle in that same way I walk to work. I'm going to cycle up to the river from our place, along the Yarra into the city then down St Kilda road to work.

I forgot to time and measure the ride this morning, but I'll do it tomorrow. I cant even remember what time I left our place, but I think it was about a 20min cycle, and I get to take in the river vistas for 75% of the journey.

Am I'm getting fitter.

The Centurion

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:32:20 +1000

I've tried this a few times, but this was the first time I did it.

If you haven't heard of this drinking game, then I'll give you the run down...You drink one shot of larger every minute on the minute for one hundred minutes, those of you who get to the end win.

Doesn't sound all that bad does it? Well it is, especially for a short bloke like me who has never been able to burp on demand, and my lack of burping skills really let me down.

The first time I tried this was quite a while back now, back when I was living in the UK with my parents. Quite a few of us ended up back in my room with, if my memory serves me correctly, loads of bottles of Beck's and a few rather tall shot glasses. They weren't really shot glasses, I'm not too sure what they really were, but they were able to hold fifty milliliters of liquid, so instead of doing one a minute, we did one every two minutes. I recall someone getting to around the fifty minute mark and pleading for just a few slices of plain bread to try and soak up the alcohol, and not long after that dropping out. I managed to make it to seventy five minutes then couldn't go any further.

We tried it a second time, but used Guinness instead of larger and that was a complete walk in the park, we all made it to the end and even went out into Camberley for a nights worth of drinking. That was too easy and for the simple reason that its not the amount of alcohol that your consuming, it's the gas in the larger that makes you feel so rotten and gassy that its a struggle to keep the liquid and the gas inside you, especially if you can't burp! The Guinness was easy cus it doesn't have the gas.

The time after that was another party round mine, basically the same deal, but this time we were drinking down stairs, probably cus my parents were away or something, and this time I made the hundred shots, but it took me a hundred and twenty minutes or so, closer, but still no cigar.

Well on Friday after work me and Macky went back to his place, went and picked up a few cases of Carlton Cold larger and set things up at his place for another stab at glory. Macky had written this kick arse VB.Net 2005 application that had a count down timer from sixty seconds down to zero and another counter that was counting from zero to one hundred. This made the whole experience far better than the other attempts to do this cus we didn't have to worry about keeping track of the time or how many we'd already had. I read on the net somewhere that its best to have a sober(ish) person around as a time keeper when you do this, but that's no damn fun for them, they should be playing! But, the most amazing thing about his app, was its ability to play a sound file when the count down reached zero seconds.

This means that we could never miss a drink. It also means that I'm currently being haunted with the sample we chose it to play, and for those of you back home, you'll appreciate it...I demand to have some booze!

It was one of the funniest nights I've had for a very long time, we even recorded most of it on the web cam, and if I can, I'm going to stick them up on You Tube soon.

And I made it to the end this time! And we were drinking with 30ml shot glasses, which means just under five and a half pints in an hour and forty minutes. The gas from the beer got a bit too much for me about half way through and I had to chuck up just to get the blockage out of my chest, and when I got back I had three shots waiting for me to down. Nice, just like the good old days in Utopia when the watered down beer was a pound a pint, and after the fifth one you had to go and make your self sick just to fit some more in.

Macky being the northern lout he is sailed through and carried on to do the hundred and fifty shots in a hundred and fifty minutes challenge! And Vanessa made it all the way to the end too, wicked night, although the end of it was a bit blurry, I'm hoping that watching the video on Monday morning when Macky brings it in will bring back some memories.

One other thing you learn from doing this drinking game is how precious time really is. Sixty seconds is really not a long time at all, make good use of every one.

An Auzzie Dinner

Wed, 6 Sep 2006 20:17:51 +1000

The walk home from work tonight was rather fruitfull

Walking home from another last night at the office, slaving away over my new Crystal Reporting Framework I've developed, when I decided to see if Brubmys (the bakery on my way home) had any banana bread left. They usually don't, I guess cus its soo damn nice and by the time I get round to getting in there its all gone.

But this time they did, and thats not all I got! Cus the place was just shutting and they don't keep any of their stuff so the lovely lady serving me just gave me bags and bags of bread, rolls, cakes and loads of hot food, meat pies, sausage rolls, pasties the works!

So I'm putting my feet up and watching a Futurama and having dinner, Auzzie style, meat pie and a stubbie. Does it get much better?

Then it a decision to get stuck into either the .NET Data Access Architecture Guide, The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene or a SQL 2005 book I've already started.

The way I'm feeling, I think it will the .Net Data Access Guide. I've just finished The Fifth Miracle, a fantastic book trying to figure out the origins of bio genesis, a very good read that's left me thinking a lot about the origins of life, a lot of things that have been floating around in my mind for years actually, mostly to do with complexity.

But that's for another time, for now I'm putting down the science book and reaching for the computing one.

Spring Is Here

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 10:37:24 +1000

The first day of spring is here, also my Physics book and our Earthcore tickets!

It's been fantastic weather for the past few days, but today is really kicking some sunshine arse.

Meteorologically speaking today is the first day of spring, and also the day our Earthcore tickets arrived! And I didn't mind one bit standing in the post office for thirty minutes while the bloke was hunting around for them. Turns out that the postie wrote the wrong date on the slip of paper he left in my letter box, he wrote down to pick it up today, in fact what he should of written was yesterdays date. Funny thing is, that I went into the post office yesterday to see if was there, and the same dude flatly refused to even see if it was there. If he had of done he would of found it and I would of had my tickets yesterday, instead he spent thirty minutes pulling his hair out hunting in today's pile of registered post letters for a letter he wasn't ever going to find.

I didn't mind tho, the weather is far too good.

I also got my Physics book in the post today, Ohanian Volume One. Let's see how far I can take this...

Spring Sofa

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 19:58:28 +1000

Two marvalous things have heppened

Even though we're about four weeks away from the spring equinox the weather and the wildlife are already showing signs of shaking lose the Melbourne winter and starting the journey into summer.

There is a block of flats to the north of us which blocks out a lot of the light in the height of winter as the Sun stays very low in the sky, but for the last few weeks the Sun has risen high enough in the sky to let in Sun light into our front room all day long.

This was the first sign that I noticed that winter is coming to an end, and the summer is fast approaching, with the days getting longer and me not having to walk home in the dark any more. But the real sign that winter has really finished (in my book) are the tiny fresh green leaves that are growning on the Oak trees in Fawkner Park, which I walk past (sadly not through) on my way to work every morning. I've been checking out this particular tree every day since I started work at ANL, and have been following its life all the way through the end of last summer, through Autumn when it shed its leaves, and now back full circle as it starts to grow new ones.

I get a real kick out of seeing life flourish, I remember last spring, not long after we moved into our flat, noticing for the first time ever in my entire life the fresh green leaves and shoots growing every where I looked. Back home its a lot more greener than it is here, and I never noticed it before, but here I remember walking down my street thinking what an amazing pure green colour the new leaves were, and wondering why I hadn't seen anything like it before. I did think that it might of been because I was driving every where back in England and the last thing your going to notice are the tiny new leaves on the trees.

This spring is going to be amazing, I'm really looking forward to it. And then there's the summer with the BBQ's and the parties, can't bloody wait mate.

And the last thing I'll mention is that over the weekend we got two new sofa's, not spanking new, but just about. A good friend of ours was needing to get shot of them as the place he's just moved into has furniture, so for next to nothing we took them off his hands, and it has completely transformed our flat. The difference is just astounding. Cheers John, your a star mate.

For the first two weeks of moving into this flat last year we had nothing more than a few folded up towels to sit on, in an almost totally empty front room (apart from the TV which sat on the carpet). We upgraded to a bean bag each shortly after this, and what luxury that was after the towel experience, and we were comfortable like this for a few months, until our backs started to hurt from the bad sitting position. We decided to look around a few Op shops in the area and ended up with a reasonable three seater sofa. And this was fine for me and Rach, with just two people in the flat we really didn't see any point in anything else, but when it comes to having people over it was a bit hard, luckily enough we had the bean bags so again it wasn't so much of an issue.

Well we now have a two and a three seater in the front room, and the change it has brought about on the dynamics of the front room is incredible. Its a far bigger leap in perception, comfort, sociability and looks than any of the other seating configurations we've had in our flat its not funny. I've actually been waking up a lot earlier this week just to go and hang out in our front room on the sofas!

And all this just as spring is starting, I can see my self spending a lot of time just chilling in the sun on our new sofas reading the many books that have been pilling up this year, expanding my mind and working on the tan.

Bring on spring.

Happy Birthday Mum

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 07:01:25 +1000

I hope you have a very happy birthday

Hi Mum, it doesn't seam all that long ago that I was sending you last years birthday wishes, can't believe how fast the time has flown by.

I hope you have a great day, I really wish I was there to share it with you, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be there for next year!

Many happy returns,

Loads of love,

Chris.

A Death In The Family

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:16:17 +1000

Yesterday was a sad day, poor old nibbler.

Its been a very long time since I wrote about anything, but we recently suffered a loss in the family and I need to say something about it.

I've not had a chance to write as I've not ever been as busy at work as I have been for the past 2 months. The hours I'm clocking up are nearly catching up with Rachel's, and that's saying something since she's in the hospitality industry and they work some of the longest hours of any profession. But there is something quite mentally draining and exhausting about sitting in front of a computer for fourteen hours a day for a few weeks. Well things are going to change, my hours have calmed down and my computer at home is back online after three months of being out of action, so I'm going to try and write some more. Even if its just a few sentences about the weather.

A few of you maybe aware that I got a fish tank a few months ago, again I didn't have the time back then to write about it, I really wish I did now as I can't remember the date that I actually bought it. It started off badly and there were a few casualties in the first week of adjustment, but after the initial 'dark times' the tank settled down and my tetras have been happily going about their business of swimming about all day. I've got a few plants in there which are also doing really well and my indoor gardening has now spread to trimming back the plants in the aquarium as well as the many we have in the flat.

Life was so happy in my little water world that about three or four weeks back we got three more fish, Rachel got a beautiful Siamese fighting fish and I got two peppermint catfish. Rach wanted something a bit more animated than the school of seventeen tetras and 'Murry' is certainly that. I wasn't so sure of it at first, but after having his curious little character swimming about for a few days I was glad that we got him, he brings a whole level of intelligence and intrigue to the tank and he's always happy to see you, of course that maybe just be because he wants food. I've wanted to get a catfish for a while now as my tank gets quite a build up of algae due to the sun it gets all day, and catfish do a fantastic job of house keeping, and when I got 'Fry' and 'Nibbler' they immediately went to work and in the space of two days the green sides were licked completely clean.

All was well in aqua land.

Until Monday night.

Nibbler was acting a bit on the strange side, they do tend to hide away in the corners of the tank and aren't the most outgoing fish I have, and so to see him just handing out at the front of the tank on the gravel was a bit weird. I had a feeling that some thing wasn't right. I got up Tuesday morning to go to work, and he seamed to be washing around with the current on the bottom of the tank, not actively keeping his spot on the floor. Needless to say, Nibbler didn't last the rest of the day and by the time I got home, the poor little fella was well and truly gone. To be honest I think when I saw him in the morning he was probably a gonna already.

I thought a sea burial was only fitting, and after a half-flush he was on his way to fishy heaven, where the water is actually champagne, and there is more fish food and algae than his little stomach could ever eat.

Rest in peace Nibbler.

Rock And Roll Star

Tue, 30 May 2006 13:33:07 +1000

A week into my guitar adventure and my finger tips are killing me.

10 days ago I did something I've been meaning to do for years, I bought myself a guitar.

Its something that I've always thought of doing since I was a kid strumming away on my air-guitar to Guns 'n' Roses, but I just never got round to doing anything about it. I remember when I arrived in Germany in 1997 for my industrial year from Uni, living on my own and in a country who's language I spoke none of, saying to myself this would be a great opportunity for me to teach myself how to play. I knew no one at all when I got there, and those first few people I did meet were either too old to want to go for beers after work, or lived miles away, so I should of took the bull by the horns got the damn guitar and taught myself how to play it while I had the chance. But this story ends in exactly the same way as all but one of the other times...I met a few mates and started going out and getting drunk, which was much more fulfilling in the short term.

The only other time was 10 days ago, and now, I'm a guitar owner and on my way to rock and roll utopia! Albeit if it's with the cheapest axe they had in the shop, but hey, at least its a start, and I don't even know at this point if I'm going to have the staying power to keep it up, although I really think this is going to be something I'm going to stick with.

There were two things that pushed me over the edge 10 days ago, and they both played an equal part in my decision to take the plunge:

One of them was starting my current job and working with a bloke called Matt. Matt's been playing for years, has loads of guitars, does open mic nights, has a brother who's has his own band, basically comes from an entire family of musical people and also plays the piano! I've been talking to him about different types of guitar and the first steps to being about to play, ever since I started here about two months ago. He's been a great source of inspiration and knowledge and last night spent four hours over at my place having a jam, strumming away and showing me some nice easy entry level things to get me started ASAP.

The other thing was that recently I've heard one of the greatest albums I've ever heard in my life and the intro track has an amazing piano and guitar riff which I'm determined to learn how to play. This album I'm talking about is Vibrasphere's latest masterpiece, Archipelago. Do your self a big favour and go and get it now, its brilliant.

So there you have it, the two reasons that led me to get my guitar the other weekend, and unlike the other times I've failed to get one, this time its not because I still don't have any friends in Melbourne and have loads of time on my hands, on the contrary, I'm having a whale of a time over here with some of the soundest people I've ever met and I've not got a lot of time on my hands. But things change and I have to...I'm not at Uni anymore, I'm not going through my London clubbing phase, I've got my relationship with the amazing Rachel, new friends, a career, our cool flat, living in a new city and not forgetting my new visa! But as I've got older my priorities and interests have changed, and my time these days is spent doing many different things, and I think finding the time in the week to play my guitar is not going to be difficult.

I'll be twenty nine in a few short weeks, and I made a promise to myself when I got my guitar...I'm going to learn how to play it by the time I'm thirty. That gives me a year to nail this thing and be doing open mic nights in front of people down the local (only if I'm any good of course!). But one thing is for certain, my finger tips are going to be in a lot of pain over the next year. I was playing on and off for a few hours last night and my left index finger fecking kills.

My Visa Is Here

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:33:51 +1000

I've been waiting for today for a long time.

We got the letter from the department of immigration in the post a while back now, informing us of our interview to discuss our case. I wasn't really worried about it as we put together such a comprehensive application that I'm sure they would have given me the visa based on just the weight of the paper alone!

Putting the application together was a great exercise all in all, and I was very happy when they gave me back my folder with all the hard work I'd done to get it together still in it. I now have a complete history of my relationship with Rachel all documented, dated and certified! Not something that's going to happen very often me thinks, except when it comes round to getting this visa re-newed in two years time. I've been told it's a simple process, but I can see myself going through the whole process again. We'll see.

The interview was at 1130 and wanting to give the right impression we got there early, half an hour early as it goes, but when we got to the reception desk we were told that we might as well go for a walk as our interviewer wouldn't be ready till 1130. Gutted, all that rushing for nothing, well I felt better inside for it anyway. So we went for a walk for 20 minutes to get some air then made our way back, all the way up to level 23, only for me to then need the toilet, which is convently located on the ground level, nice. By the time I'd got back Rachel was already in the interview room chatting away, great start for me, and I bet they didn't even tell the interview lady that we were half an hour early!

Everything went really well, it was basically just a chat about our selves and our relationship just so that she could tick off that she'd spoken to us, because as I said our application was so complete. At the end of the little 'chat' we had, she told us that we'd be sent a letter in the next week and with that letter I can go get my new visa stamped (or rather stuck) in my passport.

All in all, it took 42 days from when we lodged the application to when we got the all clear yesterday. Rather quicker than the 6-8 months we were told that it 'could' take when we spoke to the various people on the immigration help line, but I guess they have to say that, and when I asked our interviewer she said that a lot of people don't bother to hand in all the information with their application and therefore it can take a long time to get everything together. And to be fair, it did take us from January to April, three whole months, to get all the things done that we needed, so that's not too far off.

Anyway, it's all done now and I'm able to stay here for good. A massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I really feel like I can start with the rest of my life. Its difficult making decisions on things like flats, holidays and even jobs when you don't have any idea in which hemisphere you're going to be living. Well now I do, and I'm well chuffed. We've started to look for a bigger and better place to live already.

Something freaky also, is that we arrived in Melbourne a year ago this weekend. One year on and I've got the permanent residence...we certainly have some celebrating to do this weekend ;)

Can't wait, let stage two commence!

Bill Bailey

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:47:48 +1000

Live at the Apollo DVD.

I've just finished watching Bill Bailey live at the Hammersmith Apollo for the second time. And I don't think I've ever laughed this much ever. Really, ever.

The first time I saw it was very early this morning when me and Rach got back from an evening round the newly married Mark and Corrie's flat just up the road. We were quite drunk when we got back from their place and I stuck the borrowed dvd straight in when we walked through the door and watched the whole thing before getting to bed really late (or early depending on which way you look at life) and waking up this morning still feeling quite drunk. Incidentally the walk to work this morning flew by as a result of the red still in me and the psytrance on the iPod up rather loud.

I remember way back around the time of Uni in the mid 90's when I discovered Lee Evans and thought that was the greatest moment in comedy that I'd ever seen. Well I had the same vague memories of that happening to me last night, and when I got back home from work me and Rach sat down to give it another shot, and yes, the alcohol faded thoughts I had early this morning of Bill being the funniest fucker I'd ever seen in my life were well founded, as a few minutes ago I was gutted to see the credits roll on the most hilarious piece of television I think I've ever seen, ever.

This really is a moment in my life and I needed to write something about it here, I now only wish I'd caught his live show when he did the precious few nights back in the UK. That really would have been something.

Here's to the West Country!

A Smart Life

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:25:51 +1000

A lot has happened over the past few weeks, one of them being that I now have to wear a tie.

I've been meaning to write on here just about every day for the past few weeks, but I just haven't got the time to go into the detail I would like to, so I just don't bother at all. Which is crap as this is supposed to, amongst other things, serve as a kind of travel diary of the things I'm getting up to, more for my own records than anything else.

Well what's been happening then...

The first thing that comes to mind is the games, and second is...wicked. I got right into the games when they were here, I caught quite a lot of the action and spent a lot of my time just hanging around the city as there were loads of free things to do all day everyday, and I was unemployed at the time. Rather good time waster and money saver that one. I'll get round to posting up my photos and videos some time real soon.

The next thing to say a short few words about is Mark's wedding. For those of you who know him, you now know that he's married! For those of you that dont, he's my best mate, I was his best man, and now you know he's married! There were three days really to write about, the first was the stag night (or bucks night if your an Aussie) that happened on the 1st of April. GoKarting, the most amazing meal at Water and Grass on Bourke Street, naked ladies at Centrefolds, then dirty electro house at The Lounge. Wicked night, say no more. The next would be the 7th of April, the day before the big day. The wedding party went up the night before to get settled and get to know each other, I for one hadn't met over half the people that were there. It wasn't a late one by any stretch, but it was the final night of Mark being single, and for that reason alone it's worth mentioning. The following day, the 8th, was the big day, and as far as I could see, just about everything that was supposed to happen, happened, and everyone involved had a great time. Some of them had to be told that they did in fact have a good time as they had that good a time and with that comes the inevitable memory loss! Let me congratulate the happy couple and wish them the greatest of happiness in this next stage of their lives.

The next thing would be the visa situation. For those of you who remember (thanks Sarah) it was my year anniversary of leaving England on the 4th/5th of April, and with that ment that my visa also expired. Never fear, I'm not here illegally, the application for permanent residence went in on Wednesday, and I'm waiting to here the result, which I'm told will take a few months. It's been a very long and tiring process getting the paper work in place for this, and the greatest of thanks goes to all of you that have been involved in helping me do this. I owe you all big time.

And the last thing I want to say is that I've entered yet another new stage in my life (I seam to be doing this almost monthly recently). I am no longer unemployed, but that isn't the stage, that's just another job, the stage, and the title of this article, is that I am now in the having to be smart to go to work stage. Admittedly this is a product of my new job, but it's almost an inevitability that sooner or later you start wearing a shirt (and maybe a tie) rather than the record label t-shirt you've had for years. At first I was really unsure of the dress code at my new job, but over the weekend I've had a think about it, and I'm glad that I now have to wear a shirt for a few reasons. One of them is that at least now when I get home I have something to change out of. In my last jobs I would be wearing the clothes that I would normally wear around the house, so when I would get home from work I would just walk in and sit down, and it could sometimes feel like I was still at work, especially if I was surfing the net or writing on here (granted that didn't happen very often, but you know what I mean). Another reason is that I am getting older and I am tending to wear a few more shirts rather than t-shirts when I'm out and I'm now embracing this at work as well.

Bring on the smart life.

Psyonara

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:04:25 +1000

Free beach party at Half Moon Bay

Damion had mentioned a few days before that he and Dale were playing at a free beach party 15 minutes out of Melbourne, the same day as Earthcore In The Park, bank holiday Monday (Labour Day). There was no way I was going to the Earthcore gig, there was no one there I had any inclination to listen to at all, so this was a result.

But first a little story about the location...

We went down to St Kilda a few weeks ago now for the first day on the beach I've had since getting to Melbourne, almost a year ago. Its criminal I know, but you know how it goes, you just never get round to these things do you?! Well we finally made it and it a was a nice day out, the weather was hot and sunny and we had a bit of a swim and some Aerobie in the water. All good wholesome fun.

Expect St Kilda isn't the nicest beach in the world, for those of you who have been I'm sure you'll agree. We got chatting to Rich about our beach outing on Saturday at our weekly juggling get together at Fawkner Park and he mentioned Half Moon Bay as an alternative for some beach action if we wanted somewhere nice to go. Its a bit out of the city, the end of the Sandringham line, not too far. We could even cycle it. So, mental note, must get round to visiting Half Moon Bay, but looking at our track record of getting to the beach so far, I couldn't see it happening this side of winter.

Well that all changed when Damion called me up on Monday morning with the location of the party, and its doesn't take a genius to figure out where it was! So in the space of two days I'd found out about this awesome place to visit a nice beach from one friend, then partied through the day and into the evening right there with another friend!

What a wicked location, right on the beach with the sea lapping at your feet, the sun setting behind you into the ocean and trance pounding around the cliffs. I wasn't expecting anything like this at all, I thought that we'd be spending the rest of the day sitting on our rug drinking beer with a few friends. You can see from the photos that there wasn't a lot of chance to sit down, there was barely enough room to dance what with the ocean only leaving a few meters of beach before the cliffs! Sunday had started out badly, it was raining when I got up in the am, but it had got progressively nicer throughout the day and ended with this on the beach. How wonderful :)

There is something quite magical about dancing outside, especially with sand between your toes and the ocean round your ankles. And if you can squeeze in a sunset, and maybe even a few stars...there's not much that can beat that.

Check out the Psyonara photos

It's Offical: I'm A Good Boy

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:33:29 +1000

My UK police clearence came through today.

I've been waiting for this form for freaking ages now, and was getting to the point of panic as if by FOURTY days you haven't heard anything you have to get back in touch with them to find out what's wrong, and I simply don't have that time left. Forty days? What's all that about? I sent my German Police clearance off and with in a few days got air mailed the result. I guess that's German efficiency for you.

So I've been given the all clear by the UK authorities, which I was certain I was going to get, but I was always hoping in the back of my mind that some speeding fine didn't go a stray and that there has been court summons pilling up back home that nobody saw, and I was going to get a "Wanted By Hampshire Constabulary" written at the bottom.

Next will be the Statuary Declarations I've got to round up from people, and also the collection of evidence for my relationship with Rachel, and what an invasion of privacy that will be. They want just about everything personal from our relationship, and if we don't want to provide them with the genuine artefacts (photos, letters etc), we have to get certified copies made of everything, which again will cost. If we do decide to give them the real things there is no guarantee that we will get them back, and if we don't they burn them!

The New Valentines

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:03:15 +1000

A slightly different take on our usual yearly event

This will be the third valentines Rach and I have spent together, and although I'm not going to compare the other two times to this one, I had a wicked time this year, and spent a tiny fraction of the money that we normally do.

We dropped the usual expensive hotel and champagne experience for a more down to Earth cheap BYO Japanese and two for the price of one bottle of wine from the bottle shop. I've just done a quick calc in my head and I reckon that the previous London valentines evening would of cost around £300, and that was for the accommodation, champagne and room service. This year however there was a drastic change in the pricing for the evening! All up we paid $48, $33 for the food, and $15 for the wine, and we only drank one of those bottles and took the other home, so really only $7.50, so $40.50 which at the current exchange rate works out to be about £17. A saving of £283, or $667! And I had no worse a time sitting outside this cheap restaurant drinking our BYO. Fantastic.

Also after speaking to a few people over here, valentines is not as widely accepted as it is back in the UK. Most of the people I've spoken to consider it to be an Americanised excuse for getting us to part with more of our cash, and I'd agree, but I always liked the extra excuse in the year to go out and do something different, like a night at a hotel, or some nice dinner out. Which is why I'm so chuffed with this years effort, with its minimal cost and maximum fun! (the bottle of wine sorted that one out).

So here's to a change in paradigm in the way we celebrate valentines, at least while we're in money saving mode I guess :)

PS. The reason this post it up here so late is that I broke my content publishing system last Wednesday morning when I tried to post this the first time, and have only just got round to fixing it...damn DBNull's)

Bike Update

Tue, 7 Feb 2006 19:18:13 +1000

Second day in, and I've smashed yesterdays record.

I'm not going to make this an everyday update but now that I've got some figures about the ride into work, thanks to my new bike computer, I've got to say that today I made it in in 20m 22s shaving about 3 minutes of yesterdays time and topped out at 53km/h a good 3km/h faster!

I'm sure the time in will differ dramatically depending on the amount of traffic, level crossing timings and the almost hurricane grade winds that I seam to battle on a daily basis. And the top speed I'm sure will stay at that for a while, it was fairly hairy dogging railings and trees at that speed.

Don't worry, as I said, I'm not going to be banging on about this every day. Just every now and then.

On Yer Bike

Mon, 6 Feb 2006 15:39:04 +1000

Got me bike serviced the other day and bought it a six month birthday present.

My bike went in for its long over due post sale's service over the weekend and has come back a new beast.

When I bought the bikes back in July for Rachel's birthday (and to give us a new lease of life, get us fit and give us mobility in this new city) I was told that they came with the first service for free, and that I was to bring both bikes back in six weeks after I bought them to get everything tightened up and re-aligned. Each service after that will cost $60.

Well I was studying for the next three months, and Rach was getting the tram to work every morning so the bikes just sat around for the next three or so months not really being used at all, so there was no need to take them back for their services, cus they were basically brand new, not ever used. As summer got started and the days got longer Rach started to ride her bike to work, but mine just sat there until the end of November when I finally found work.

Well it only took a few weeks of me hammering my bike to work and back every day to start to notice the wear and tear on the bike. The breaks were wearing down fast and the gears getting out of sync. And by this time the six week window of getting the bikes in for the free service had well and truly passed! Well it's been over six months since we got the bikes and I had basically no front brake, the rear one was wearing extremely thin and I couldn't use the four lowest gears on the back cog as the rear gears were so out of alignment. I'd also given up hope of getting the free service done as we'd left it so damn late.

In steps Rachel with her very persuasive female telephone voice to ask nicely if we could, after such a long time, bring them in for the service. Now if it were me talking to them I'm certain that they would of made me pay the $60 for each bike to have this service done, but Rach has a wonderful way with words which I simply don't have (and they were all blokes working there), and she managed to persuade them to do the service for free. Result.

So I picked up my bike yesterday afternoon and for the first time in about 3 months I had a front break and could use the lower gears. This was very useful cus I've got some quite steep hill climb sections on the way to work where I need the low gears, and what goes up must come down, and when your going down the other side, its useful if you have some breaks to stop.

I also got my self the cheapest cycle computer I could find in the store ($30) and fitted it last night when I got home. Here are the stats for my trip to work this morning:

Distance: 7.61km
Time: 23m 28s
Average Speed: 19.4km/h
Max Speed: 49.7km/h

I was very surprised by the distance, I really didn't think it was that far into work. I would of liked to have had this information when I first started ridding into work, so that I could compare it, to see how well I'm progressing. Lets see what happens over the next few months (if I'm still working here).

I was thinking about getting some new tires for my bike, I've got these rather large and chunky off road monsters on there at the moment, and I was told by a few people that it would make my riding about twice as easier if I had some decent road tyres since I almost never leave the tarmac. But I thought about it some more and decided that I'm going to stick with the chunky ones, as their giving me much more of a work out.

Rainbow Serpent

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:07:56 +1000

This is what I've been looking forward to ever since I found out about it. And it didn't disapoint.

It's only Tuesday afternoon and still Rainbow seams so far away now. I was there this time two days ago saying my good byes, having one final groove on the main dance floor and wishing that it wasn't all over quite so soon. Things are going to be different next year, I'm taking Monday and maybe even Tuesday off of work and staying till the end, I might even end up helping out as I know a few of the people involved now.

And it wasn't as if we got there late either, we set off from Melbourne just after lunch and got there around 5pm, plenty of time to set things up and get drunk and chatting around the camp site and to get a bit of a groove on at the Red Bus which was parked right next to us. But that only really gave us two days left, Friday and Saturday, cus we would be packing things up most of Sunday morning, and setting off at 3pm. Not enough time at all. And to top off my sadness for leaving, they played one of my current favourite tracks just as I was walking away from the festival, back to the camp, for the last time. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound.

I remember talking to a few people about the festivals that go on over here and the two names came up, Earthcore and Rainbow, and I was told that you couldn't compare them they were two different beasts and that both had their place. When I went to Earthcore I had a cool time, the music was above average (if only for Juno!) the weather was brilliant, and the whiskey was good. But apart from that (music, sun and beer) there wasn't really much going on at Earthcore. I had the entire Saturday night planned out in my phone, every hour or two I would get a reminder that the next artist that I wanted to see started in 5 minutes, and I managed to make it to them all, and most of them were alright (especially Juno). And when Sunday afternoon came around and we had to leave, I joyfully helped pack up the tent knowing that I'd done what I came to do.

This time though, I was really in the mood for packing up the tent when Sunday afternoon came round. Quality music was still pumping out at the main floor, the place was still full of smiles, as it had been ALL weekend, and a lot of my friends were still in amongst it all. I'm not one for missing out on things so I hated walking away from it all when it was still happening and happening big.

Why oh why didn't I take Monday off of work (well the short answer is that I would be missing out on a load of money that I could really do with right now, but I digress!)

The people. The people were amazing at this festival, every one I spoke to in the festival was happy and friendly and wanted to chat to you, and all answered 'the people' when I asked them what their highlight of the weekend was. We're meeting up with a few of the people we were hanging out with on Saturday night as it goes, dinner and a few beers, wicked. You couldn't go anywhere at Rainbow with out being smiled out by the people walking around, I started to get achy cheeks at the end of the weekend! There were a lot of your hippy types (for want of a better descriptive phrase) as there always are at event like this, but what I also liked was that there were a lot of people like me there too. I met quite a few blokes who do IT in the city, and who were carrying a hip flask of whiskey in their pockets. My kind of people.

I also knew a fair amount of people this time. Its the first festival I've been to where I've known a few others outside of those I've travelled with, and that was wicked cus you were bumping into them all over the place as you walked round. On our very first night out clubbing in Melbourne we met a girl called Stella, who turns out to be a photographer and who has been at every single clubbing event me and Rachel have been to ever. And Rainbow was no exception.

A while ago I got chatting to a English bloke called Damion who runs PsyReviews, and he's just recently moved to Melbourne, we've hung out a few times and he was also at Rainbow with a whole bunch of quality people, so not only were there plenty of simling faces, a few of them at the festival knew my name!

Big shout to you all.

The music. For only two dance floors, the music was well varied, and there were only a few times I got bored with the current track and started to walk back to the camp, when all of a sudden they would play a stonker (Midnight Oil anyone?! how about Mars? Or Pink Floyd, or even ACDC!) and we'd have to run back to catch the last of it, and there we would stay for another few more! Quality.

But there are always going to be my favourites, and they were (in order that they come into my head): Mr Peculiar, Bamboo Forest, Beauty and the Beat, Jonny Mac and Panick. I've had Mr Peculiar's album Mind-Dala ever since Damion gave it a 10/10, and a well deserved score that was, its fantastic, and so was his set. It was really chucking it down at this point in the night which just added to the whole experience, watching the rain belt down through the green lasers.

Bamboo Forest I wasn't going to go down for. His album Revival I've had for a month or two and didn't think it was that bad, but I was in bed at that time (7am Sunday) and was rather tired and was going to give it a miss, but as soon as it came on and I heard the first track, Voyager, I jumped out of bed, threw some clothes on and ran down there to catch, in my mind probably the best bit of the festival, fucking wicked, the bass nearly caved my chest in! I've got a whole new wind on the album now I've heard it on some proper equipment (my iPod just doesn't give it justice).

Now I wanted to go see Sally Doolally when she played at VooV, and I was fecking gutted that I missed out, so I wasn't going to miss out again. Sally makes up the beauty on Beauty and the Beat, and they were on at 11am Saturday, a few hours after it started raining. I'd got woken up by Freq's, Time Stretcher, being played at the Market stage a few hours earlier, around 7.30am, and made my way down (on my own) a while after that when Jonny Mac was on. I met this guy last year while in Pure Sounds in Smith St, and got chatting about music, he was the first person I had spoken to who knew anything about psytrance since I got to Australia and it was like a breath of fresh air. I didn't know at the time he was a local DJ, and make an effort to go see him play when ever I can, and this time he was awesome, really funky, groovy, housey trance, perfect for the am in the drizzle :) By the time I got back it was raining quite hard and 11am was fast approaching, and everyone else didn't look like they were going to move from the camp, and I almost stayed too. But I thought fuck it, what's a little rain going to do? So I suited up and got down there. A few minutes later I was sweating, and had to go back and de-robe! Although it was raining it was still very hot, and the rain was a welcome splash of cool on what otherwise would of been a very hot sweaty, dusty dance floor. It was at this point that my whole outlook on the weekend changed, bollocks to the weather, its the festival I was there for, and if it gets wet, who cares, luckily my skin is water proof, and my clothes are washable, so from that point on I forgot about the rain and grooved to a wicked set by Beauty and the Beat.

I've not got anything by Panick and to my knowledge not never heard anything he's done. I know the record label his on very well though, Neurobiotic, from Italy, and love all the compilations I own from that label. And although I didn't recognise anything I heard from his set, it was wicked. Right in the middle of the night, and the music matched, very dark and hard. I'm going to get some stuff from this guy, it was a great set.

The weather. I've written quite a few things about the weather already so I'm not going back over it all, but I'm just going to say that it wasn't any rained out, mud bath Glastonbury. The dance floors were covered in fine gravel, which stopped everything turning into mud in the rain, and also stopped everything turning into a dust cloud in the sun, amazing idea. The rain was also very special for all the rainbows that happened over the festival, and for one in particular that happened right when the opening ceremony was in full swing, as if Thor himself was looking down on us and gave us a little treat. Looking back and seeing that rainbow just at the start of the main floor was another one of my favourite moments of the festival. The whole time I was there there was an overwhelming feeling of nature and organicness all around, just about everything was made of material or wood, there was recycling everywhere, and to have the rain pour down on us and have rainbows flying out all over the place was nothing short of magical.

I've had some amazing experiences at the festivals I've been to, and met some wonderful people, but this really did top them all. I only wish that we all didn't have to leave so early and that we could of stayed and soaked up some more of the atmosphere for another day or two. But there is always next year, and however far away it seams right now, it'll be here in no time at all.

I've also found that the more good things I do like this festival, the more happier I am just sitting around at the weekends and focusing on some personal things, like my education, rather than wishing I was out all the time going clubbing and drinking. One really good event like this can more than cover a whole year of shit money wasting clubbing nights.

Rock on next year.

The photos: Rainbow Serpent Festival 2006.

Things Are Moving Forward

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:56:32 +1000

Today I got the first piece of paper to support my visa application

I know things have been very quiet around here for a good few months, believe me, it doesn't reflect on my life right now. I'm working more than I have ever done in my life, and enjoying it more than anything I've done so far, which makes for a busy busy life.

But today was a milestone in the Australian thing I've got going, and I wanted to at least write a paragraph or two about it, just for the record.

I got my German police clearance through the post this morning, with a big 'We've got no idea who this guys is' message written in bold at the bottom in German. Hurrah!

An so it begins, the next is the UK clearance, you might of thought I would of sorted that one out first, but you'd be wrong. I got so carried away with getting the German one sorted that I almost forgot about the UK one until one day when I was talking to a friend, moaning about how much the German one costs when I got asked how much my UK one set me back. Well, I shit myself and got on the phone back home to arrange for all the stuff to be sent out. They've been and gone, and now I'm waiting for the result.

This is the first step in getting all the paper work together for the application that I'll make at the start of April. And there's a lot more to go, if I can keep on top of things and get the rest of it sorted piece-by-piece I'll be fine. Only problem maybe is that we've just started on the first season of 24, and its overtaking the evenings where I should be filling out forms!

Happy Birthday Dad

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:27:14 +1000

A very happy birthday to you

Happy birthday Dad, I hope you have a great day.

Love Chris.

Happy New Year

Sun, 1 Jan 2006 22:24:03 +1000

Another year has flown by.

Well that's 2005 over with (very quickly too), so on to the next years instalment of fun, excitement and adventures.

This year is a very important year for me, I need to sort out my visa, and sort out my job. Everything is on track at the moment, the visa application is being put together right now and the job I'm in currently may well be keeping me on (fingers well and truly crossed). I'll find out for sure in the next month about that. I really don't want to leave after the three months are up, its a fantastic job, a real opportunity to do some great work and expand my experience. I'm going to write about my job soon, the progress I'm making at work and with myself, what I'm doing and the tools I'm doing it with, so expect another post about that.

Not too sure when though, I'm finding it really difficult these days to get the time to do anything computer orientated at home. By the time I get back in the evening, the last thing I want to do is get on my computer and type a long article. I will be doing as much as I can, as often as I can, I enjoy reading back through all the things I've written, but I can see a change in this place coming soon, reflecting the changes that have happened in my life since starting this new job.

I wish all the best to everyone for this new year, good luck in whatever your doing. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Merry Christmas

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 09:36:07 +1000

Ho ho ho from Melbourne!

Its been a long while since I last wrote anything, and so much has happened in the past month. Its been a non stop four weeks of drinking and working.

I hope you are all having fun where ever you are and what ever you're doing.

Merry Christmas!

Employment Has Arrived

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:50:02 +1000

After just over a month of looking for work, I've scored a three month contract.

It's taken a lot longer than I first thought it would, to get a job. I think that's got everything to do with the fact that I got employment straight out of Uni with the last company I was working for. Hence, no experience looking for work.

I've got qualifications, and at the grand old age of 28, a fair amount of experience since I've been employed ever since I graduated in the summer of '99. Never the less it's taken roughly five weeks of hunting, looking every day at the various IT job websites, sending god knows how many CV and Cover Letters to just about every employment agency I could find that delt with the IT industry, and going to countless interviews. This has really been a full time job. But it's paid off now, and it's happened in exactly the way I predicted when I came home from the very first interview I had.

I found out a few truths along this journey about the employment agencies that due to me not having ever delt with them before, I was blissfully unaware of.

The first is that just like any other company trading in a commodity, the employment agencies trade in people. To them you are just another trade item and this can make the whole process of job finding extremely depressing and soul destroying. As I've said, I've got the qualifications and the experience and I know that I could handle just about any programming situation given to me. But if the agencies don't think so, a job that you felt you were qualified to apply for, the agencies don't even bother calling you back over. Very heart breaking. This also makes a lot of the people I've spoken to on the phone act like they are on some massive power trip, talking like they are leagues above me, when in fact its they who are in the shit jobs, and its me who is the professional and will go onwards and upwards. If only I can speak to someone who can understand me, cus the dicks at the agencies sure as hell don't.

Which brings me to truth number two.

Employment agencies, although placing IT professionals, have no IT experience at all. Well the vast majority of them anyway. They basically just know the terminology of the industry and nothing about what it actually means. And more often than not, its just the acronyms they know and not what they expand to or what they mean. This is very frustrating and has taken me about a month to sort out my CV and the way I talk and act in interviews so that I don't get asked stupid questions about my CV that are plainly there if they could only understand it or just get stared back at blankly when I'm describing what I've been doing in software development. If I were talking to a fellow programmer I'd be showered with definite positive yep's and good stern smiling nods of the head, indicating that although I wasn't using the industry standard ways of describing processes, that knew completely what I was on about and more importantly that I knew what I was banging on about. I did have this recognition once in an interview with an agency, and that was only because the bloke was an ex programmer him self, and actually shook my hand when I told him about the exam I've just completed. That never happened with any of the other agencies.

This particular scenario has arisen I think, because of my very informal IT training. I'm entirely self taught when it comes to all my previous IT skills (before VB.Net). I've learnt everything my self on the job, from the internet and from friends, never from any professionals, and so have developed my own terminology and ways of describing the techniques and methods I use. This is a massive problem when your witting a CV to give to an agency who have no IT personnel as they just bin it cus they can see none of their precious 'buzz words' in it. Getting past the agencies is by far the hardest part of this job hunting process.

I've have had success, as I stated before, in exactly the manner I had expected to, from the moment I started speaking to these unhelpful money grabbing agencies. I said at this time that if I could only talk to the employer, someone who I would be working with, someone who understands my skills for they are actually worth and not just the count of key buzz words I have in my CV, then I'll have a chance. And I was right.

I saw an ad on the web for a Dot Net Developer, and to my excitement it wasn't through an agency! Result! Well, I sent my CV off and not more than 4 minutes had passed when my phone rang. I'm not joking, 4 minutes. I was in for an interview first thing the next morning, and got a call the following morning (yesterday) telling me that I've got a three month contract! It was the longest of all the interviews I've had by a mile, I was there for over two hours, rather than the 30 minutes in the agencies, chatting about my background and the work I'll be doing. I'm going to be working with Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and GDI+, re-developing his current VB6 application. Exactly the job I was after. It's also only a few blocks away, so I'm going to cycling to work every day, and it's only going to take a few weeks of that and I'll be back in shape for the summer!

unfortunately it's not a permanent position, I've got a three month contract, so I'm not out of the woods just yet when it comes to staying in Australia, but it's a damn good start, and I'm going to be doing some real fun stuff for a great company. I've got a few more options left when trying to extend my visa and I'll be going into them in the new year, but for now things are sweet and I cant wait to start work.

AJaXaA

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:40:43 +1000

Its been a while since I last posted, here's a little mod for the site.

Its been almost two weeks since I last wrote something, I've been snowed under with the process of getting a job. That process is still in full swing (and will be for a while so it seams) taking up all my time leaving me no spare moments to write about all the things I would like to. And I do have a few...anyway on with the post...

I've been wondering about AJaX for some time now, the web seams to be shouting about it all the time and I get newsletters daily telling me how wonderful it is. So I thought I'd give it my own shot, basically so I don't get left behind once again with another technology.

A slight problem is that I'm not all that hot with JavaScript, I can read and understand the stuff, I'm a programmer, and when you can understand one language, you can pretty much work most of the rest of them out. But this in the end didn't matter at all, I got one example from W3 Schools and I was off.

The project I chose to tackle was my links section. My links up until today were pulled, just like the rest of the content of this site, from a MySQL database and I've got various admin pages and ASP scripts that enable me to add the link, toggle its visibility, edit it, and even give it a rating (you don't see the rating, its for my eyes only). I also have a del.icio.us account where I have a few public bookmarks. The good thing about del.icio.us is that you can get to your links from any internet connected computer, and also they have an array of different RSS feeds for all your links.

So the project spec I gave myself was to use AJaX to populate the links section on this site using the RSS feed from my del.icio.us account for all my links tagged 'fdlinks'. I would lose all the effort I put into making the admin pages, the MySQL database tables and the rating scheme I came up with, but I would be gaining a little more experience in all things web. And that was all the encouragement I needed.

The title of this post is AJaXaA and not just AJaX for a specific reason. I'm using Asynchronous JavaScript And XML And ASP. The reason for this is that I'm not just using AJaX to pull a plain XML file (in this case the RSS feed) from a server somewhere and displaying it (raw or styled with XSL), I'm using an ASP page to load the RSS feed from del.icio.us traverse it using the MSXML Document Object Model and output the content in an XHTML format that suits the framework of this site. JavaScript asynchronously loads my ASP page, which in turn synchronously loads the RSS feed and formats its correctly. You'll see a slight delay when viewing the links page, this is while your browser fetches the content without reloading the page. Magic.

I think the only problem I had other than syntax was that I added all the links to my del.icio.us account today for the purpose of this 'project', so all the dates for the links say today. A small and liveable problem though, and in a few months, if I add lots more links, no one will even notice.

I've tested it on the usual, FF/IE on the PC, I've got no idea about any other OS's or browsers. If you are using some thing else and it doesn't work, let be know.

Frog Dreaming; A Destination

Sat, 5 Nov 2005 09:27:44 +1000

This is the story of my re-design of fdv1 into the marvel that is fdv2...be warned, its long.

About a month ago Frog Dreaming Version 2 (fdv2) came into existance when I needed a break from the study and couldn't stand the sight of fdv1 any longer.

I've decided to publish the following text for a few reasons. The first being that this site is all about me and the things I do, and this document is both a part of me and the ongoing evolution of this site, from its early roots back in the days of Job Shy (js) and back even earlier for those of you who remember back that far. So it belongs here. Anthother is that its taken me enough time to write, its a shame to keep it locked away, and another is that some poor sole might want to read it for some bizzare reason. I had fun writting it, maybe someone might reading it.

Beware, its uncut, unsensored, unspell checked and very long. Its raw and unedited just the way it should be, so the very start might not make much sense, basically I was going to use it as an ideas list for the new version of the site, but it transformed itself into a record of the re-design. If you are going to attempt reading it, you might want to grab a coffee. I've only read through it once and that was just to see if I had missed anything out.

This is the story of the re-design...

This will hopefully be an ongoing work, and record of my site.

It will contain my thoughts on it, what I would like to see on it, and where I would like it to go.

So lets go.

I would like to clean up the CSS, its very messy spaghetti code all in one file at the moment and I would like to separate it into modular CSS.

* One for Colour

* One for Type

* One for Layout

* One for Navigation (not too sure if this one will really apply, I'm only doing this for myself, I'm not going freelance, so might not worth the effort)

Going hand in hand with the CSS cleanup would be a slight site redesign.

I really like the idea of having the fluid layout with the extras column on the right, but I'm not fluent enough in CSS to ba able to iron out all the bugs in the div overlapping in ie. So I might move it back to a nice and simple 2 coulmn, extras then content. Either that or just ditch the fluid and go with fixed width. Not too sure yet.

Well well well…I've been a busy boy the past few days.

I'm very proud of whats happened so far, and I'm going to keep this now as a kind of diary, to document the development of the new site. I would like to see how long this takes me to do, in terms of hours work, to get the new site up and running.

Obviously I've got a working code base to work from, there is no re-writting all the scripts from scratch, and the script writting is the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole development process if you ask me. Probably due to the fact that I'm no good at the actual design, and keep everything really simple and easy, and if I were a designer, and not a programmer I'm sure that part would be easier and quicker to achieve results that look more pleasing to the eye than my hash. But at least it didnt take that long.

Prolog.

I've been thinking about the design of my site for a long time. The more time I spend looking at it, the more I dislike it. The colours are just wrong, and it looks messy. I've not really noticed it before, but the right hand side bar looks plain aweful. Fuck knows what I was thinking about when I started putting all those mozilla olny css curves on the corners. Clearly a bad idea, but not very clear at the time. I'm not a curvey person. When it comes to designs, I like the technical, professional look, and its taken me months of staring at fdv1 to realise that.

Thing is at the moment I'm right at the end of the study for 70-306, and doign something like a site redesign is not something I should be contimplating right now. I should be studying, not ‘playing'. It wouldnt be a difficult choice to spend a few days redesigning if it were actually going to help me in the long run with the study. But its not, this is just playing around.

Never the less, I still find my self choosing colours and deciding on borders, margins and paddings. I only hope that I get this done ASAP, so I dont waste too much of my precious time.

At the moment the part of me that wants to get this site re-design done is stronger than my MCAD side. My MCAD side has been worn down for the last two months and its weak and cant fight back. I think I'm going to let it recover for a few days.

Day One (6th October, Thursday)

I woke up in the morning and started to think about what I needed to do to achomplish this, lets call it ‘project' for want of a better word. The first thing I thought about was needing to get control of the crazy css that fdv1 is being dominated by. Its a total mess, and one of the main reasons that I couldnt get it to behave its self in fdv1 has now become apparent to me. Default margins and paddings. I read this fantastic article: http://leftjustified.net/journal/2004/10/19/global-ws-reset/ and didnt really get what he was going on about first time round, not having a lot of experience in web design and all. And I dont pretend to totally understand what he was really getting at now either, but I get the main gist of it and from using his white space reset, its made my life about a trillion times easier when performing this reesign. Its been truely amazing. All hail "*{margin:0px;padding:0px}". I also decided a while back that I would follow the modular css guide lines from this article: http://contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/12 and I have done, and although I'm not totally convienced that its the thing for a single developer like myself, it has at least separated out the css into a few smaller managable files. And if I'm going to do this redesign again some where down the line, it may prove its worth then.

I started with a fresh blank page. Totally blank at first actually, not even the VBScript page directive at the top, but that was a mistake, and along with making it xhtml 1.1 compliant, that was fixed a few clicks later.

I created all the css files I would need and linked them all through a single screen.css file using @imports for the first time. I was surprised how nicely they fit into dw's css editor. Cool.

The only things that I had in mind for the designs were outlined above, basically I wanted to have a fluid design, fonts-n-all and no div overlapping like I currently have in IE.

I wanted to stick with the two column design so that I could display my guests and mobile photo onthe first page, but quite quickly actually dropped it as the design forming on the screen in front of me seamed to look exactly the way I wanted. I decided to go with the one main column and the guests would have to suffer living further down the page. I guess one of the reasons why I stuck with the single colum was reading Jakob Nielsen's top ten web design mistakes of 2005. Not that I've been conciously aheareding to them as I've done this, but I did take note of the layout of his site. Single column. My site is about me and the things I get up to, all of the rest of it are extra features.

If I put navigation links at the top for everything people could want, why would I need a troublesome side bar. Havent spared a thought to it since.

I'm a minimalist. Except on my desk which is fulla crap. I'm also not the worlds best at css coding, or at being an artist, which is why I go for the blocky solid colour css styling and aviod the use of graphics at just about all costs. As it stands the only graphics I've drawn for the site is a new icon. And I'm well chuffed with that. I did a logo graphic for fdv1 and that was the only graphic on the site (bar all the photos), this time I think there's going to be an absence of graphics over the entire site. One less thing to manage as well, how many times have I lost the original png for a site graphic and have to re draw it. Not anymore.

It also loads faster, no images to upload means less round trips to the server. Whos winning? Me I tell you!

I did have a small problem with some floating divs that took up about two hours of the day. I couldnt get firefox to float a unspecified-width'd div to the right of another fixed width div. After a quick question to ee, I got an embrassingly simple answer and I was back on track. I thought to my self that I would alter the picture of the design I had in my mind if it turned out that I would need to implement loads of css hacks to get this working. I'm no css geek and I just wouldn't be able to maintain it if it needed changing or editing. I'd prefer to go with a simplier, easier, more maintainable, smaller solution and sacurfice some fancy bits than to spend hours possibly days getting the css working in all browsers. The simplier it is, the more compatible it is.

And I guess that brings me to another point, I'm doing this for FF and IE on the PC. Not because I think everyone should ditch their macs or change their browser, simply because thats what I have, and I cant test it on anything else. I could install and test on some other browsers for the pc, and I may do in time, but for now FF and IE on the pc will cover enough bases (Me and 85% of the world) and keep me occupied for long enough as it is.

So, I've got the css files sorted, and most of the main divs in place. There is no font, colour or space styling applied yet, its all just 0px margins and paddings, and default fonts. And I'm liking what I see already, this is a good sign. I did have a play around with some spacing and fonts, but I had to stop my self, getting carried away with a new design and going ahead too far with it without thinking about weather it suits all the needs is a distar waiting to happen. Espically since time in my world at the moment is very valuable, I cant afford to commit my self to a design at this early stage and figure out that there is no where to put the damn search panel later on.

So for the next few hours between getting cups of tea, I make sure that everything can be ported over from fdv1 into the new design. And I'm delighted when I find out that it can. I might of had to change a few things but hey, no ones perfect.

By the end of the daylight hours I had the front page almost the way I would like it. I spent about an hour just selecting different colours blindingly experimenting with different shades trying to see what went with what. I have great difficulty when it comes to colour choice, and it takes me a long time to select a few, and even then then its more likely that I'll get tired of trying and just settle for the last one i've done. Why do you think the fdv1 was the colour it was?

From when the sun went down to when Rachel got home at 11pm was spent moving hx headdings around. I had the content there, I just needed to decided where it was all going, so I played around with positioning for a few hours, and when 11pm came around I had the final thing done and was very happy with it. All be it just the index page, but I'd copy and pasted some real content from fdv1 so it looked all propper n'all.

I had a real nice sense of achievment as I dozed off to sleep, just like I had when I first started to really understand how delagates in dot net worked and how I could use them in an application I'm writting at the moment. Ahhhhhh…bisto.

Day Two (October 7th, Friday)

Got up this morning at 8.30am, after having dreams of the worlds most complicated robotic hand with a tiny safety microswitch on the left index finger knuckle, and of being an astronaught, with a girl I used to go to school with and who is now married to and has kids with my old best friend, and discussing that fact that we were both extreamly lucky not to have been killed so far in all these space flights we done, and that we weren't going to do anymore as we thought the shuttle was sure to explode this mission.

Anyway, I fired up FF to see if what I'd done the night before, to see if it still looked as pleasing to me as it did when I fell asleep. And it bloody well did. Bonza! I didn't dream it all!

I got a cuppa and started to decide what the next step in getting this done would be. Would it be to start work on the db scripts? They are fully functional on fdv1 right now, so a simple file copy and fiddle will sort them out. Or should I start porting over some more content and get it all in place first before I get my vbscript hat on and start coding.

I thought it best to start on the latter and get the whole site up and running, although being competely static, it would give me a much better starting point to work from when trying to implement the database scripts that populated the pages.

I've spent today doign exactly that, and I now have a completely working prototype of fdv2.

Things that have been on my mind today:

The first thing I had to contend with was my photo gallery. It is the sole reason I started on this web development path in the first place. I may be bringing up the rear to services like flickr etc. in terms of features, but mine is hand crafted, all my own work, hours of love and sweat have been spent and sore fingers have been got from typing all the scripts. And mine was there years ago, not in exactly the form it is in now mind you. But these photo sharing services are out there and they are good, and dirt cheap, and cant be ignored. It did seam like I had made up my mind last night when went to sleep that I would transfer the management of the gallery over to some else (basically flickr), even if I did have to pay $25US. Well that all changed over lunch, I thought about it long and hard and realised that the main reason I developed my photo gallery was to share with my friends the photos of us all messed up at parties, and to this end, what I have more than does the trick. In fact you can comment on the photos which is something I never thought of doing when I first set out to diaplay photos. So in that respect there is no reason to change. Being with someone like flickr will give my photos a much wider auidence, but who cares? It was for me and my mates to start with, and they know the url. Besides I dont want to have to start deleting and administrating other random peoples comments, I've got enough on my plate. So I'm keeping my scripts and saving my self 25 dollars. I should of thought about things earlier and developed my own flickr and had it bought off me for millions years ago. Arse.

The second thing is that there are one or two pages that look cluttered. Basically the photo album page and the photo page. Its because of the search box and the rss link in the upper right, and the inherient non-uniformality in the photos colour. I could fix it by only posting either very dark grey or mint green photos, or I could live with it. Not too dificult to guess what I've done. I may come back to this point in the future, but for now I have a working site that I'm dead proud of.

I even managed to reuse the callendar code from fdv1 that i spent a whole day creating/crafting. So I'm well pleased with that. It may not be on the front page for all the world to see when they visit, but it is in there. Its not in its original form either, no more tiny right hand side calander, oh no, its now gone full width and not just one, but up to twelve on a single page! Twelve times the goodness! This also represents the only table I have on my site. This is tabular data, so it needs to go in a table. Obviously. One thing about the calendar that really annoys me is that to get it to work on the live remote server I had to change around the days and months in the SQL queries that populate the tables. This is because the site is actually hosted in the US, and they have a weird date format, they would wouldn't they. So what that means is that it doesnt display the correct information on my local system. Not a big problem, it just shows all the wrong dates which have articles. Funny hey, I'm from England, I'm living in Australia, and my site is hosted in the US.

Day Three (October 8th, Saturday)

Got up at 8.30am this morning. What did I have to do today? Well the design is out of the way, got that finished yesterday, so I've got the framework of the site all sorted now, so now begins the mission of porting the scripts over from fdv1, and I've got a chance to upgrade them as I do it, and god knows they need it. Its not so much the quality of the code, its the fact that all the functions are in a single asp include file, included on every page that needs db interaction, email ability, jpeg modifations etc. which has now got so freaking big that I cant find stuff in it easily. What this really means is that making changes to the code is not the easy enjoyable experience it should be, its more of a try and find the function you want to modify (which is like filcking through a novel as my function naming conventions leave a lot to be disired), check again its the one you think it is, then try and figure out what the hell its doing to the page, then change it, then see what mess you've made when you point the browser at it. Well this was the first thing in the morning that I changed. Again I started with a few blank asp pages, and separated out all the functions into a few categories, and created a page for each one. I ended up with a few separate pages of functions that I could include on the pages that needed them. Some pages have all of them, most just the common include. I should of done this right from the start, but to be honest I didn't anticipate the amount of code I was going to end up with.

Once the skeleton include files for the code were done I turned to the index page. This page took the longest, simply because its got just about one of every main function I've written, and once I'd done this page and debugged the functions, the rest of the site was put together quite quickly. In the process of upgrading each function I would copy and paste from the fdv1 scripts, change the name to something more meaningful, change the functionality if I thought it needed optimising, then go back to the index page and insert the function. I ended up doing a fair bit of optimising actually, weather or not its had an effect on the speed of the site I cant be sure, but the code is much more readable and maintainable now. I got a big speed increase when I switched from Jet4 to MySQL a few months back, something like a 40% increase I seam to remember, so nothing I did here would really make much of a difference in responsivness.

I did this for every one of the pages I'd created last night and it took me until 6pm that night to have all the scripts in place and working. Going through each page and replacing the static content with the functions that pulled the content from the db and debugging them. This was the least fun part of the entire project. Not because I dont enjoy the coding, I love coding, but because this was nothing really very new. Unlike the design of the pages which I started from scratch with, I was essentially copy and pasting the code and tweaking it a little which aint no fun. It took a long time and a lot of tea to get it finished, but I did it, and did it with breaks no longer than the time it took for the kettle to boil. My time is precious.

The next thing I turned to was the new links feature I wanted to implement. I've seen a lot of weblogs recently that have a links section somewhere. Things that are too small to warrant an actual post about, but things you want to share with other people. I've come accross some quality pages on the internet by checking other peoples links out. This was a complete new section of my site, so this was all new ground. Well not quite, its just another db table and an almost identical copy of the functions that pull everything else out of the backend db that makes up my site. Well it gave me a chance to refresh my MySQL client skills anyway.

Another part of the site that I gave a major overhaul was the administration side of things. Fdv1 was my first real self developed fully featured online administered web site that I got up and running and am going to keep running. Job Shy had its day in my early 20s when I was running all over london and europe with my mates, and it did us proud. It had a thriving online community at one point and I had about 50 people registered on the forums that I used to run on there. They weren't my forums tho, and that did bug me a bit. What I tried to do with js when I moved to Australia was try and re-write the forum aspect of it and wanted to keep it going in a very similar way the forums used to run, with people posting cool links and commenting on them. What I hadn't realised was the amount of effort that I would have to put in, to keep two websites up and running. I wanted js to continue as being the social portal it used to be, and fd to be my new personal photo site. It was never going to work. I did develop a rather nice looking (if you ask me) brand new jsv3, which had basically all the features I needed to get it going, and I was proud of what I did back then in May, but I had no time to invite people to the site, start spreading the word etc. The original js took a good few years to build up the audience it had, I'm not one to go shouting about things, so slowly, but definatly surely, people started to find out about it. Mainly in response to a big night out we had and stopping by to check the photo gallery. But they came. But things have changed, I'm no longer back in the UK seeing my friends all the time and promoting my site, so over the past 6 months, through a lack of my own time, js has withered and just about died.

But something good has come out of this, what I got from the whole experience of jsv3 was the underlining set of scripts that would one day be running fd. They weren't perfect, but they served a damn good starting point for me to work from when developing the administration scripts that I would need for fdv1. And now that I've spent all today tweaking them for fdv2 they are now tip freaking top. Third time around (first for jsv3, second for fdv1...) I've got half the amount of admin pages, and they are sleak and trim. All of the site is online managed, posts, links, all the editing features, deleting, email notifications, the lot. It wouldn't be in the form it is today if it wasn't for the work I did on jsv3. Even if I would of liked js to continue, and it may well again re-surface one day (I do have some plans for it), I've realised that running one weblog is almost a full time job, there is no way I can run two websites at the same time. This is my new life, I've changed and my website has changed with me. Evolution baby.

And that basically sums up todays progress. All the code is in and debugged, and its pulling everything out of the database just the way it should. Joy oh joy.

Thats about it really, I think. I've got some more testing to do, to make sure everything is working the way it should be, but thats basically it, all done. I need to check the administration features are working correctly, need to check the photo gallery is fine and dandy and need to run all the pages through xhtml and css validation. Also should really go through and spell check the whole thing, for those of you that know me you'll agree.

I stopped working at around 9.30pm, chucked some different clothes on and went out to meet Rachel after work. We went for some beers with some of her friends from work then for a Chinese after. It wasn't until I sat down to eat, drunk, at about 3am that I realised that I'd not had a single thing to eat the entire day. I guess thats what doing something you enjoy does to you.

Oh, there is one more thing actually, the RSS feeds. I've not got around to doing them yet, and probably wont for a bit, I'm not sure anyone uses them anyway. I did them to figure out what all this RSS hype sweeping the internet was all about, and the original ones will still work, its the links on fdv2 that wont for a while.

Nothing Day (October 9th, Sunday)

Today was my day of rest. Me and Rachel went to Richmond for some champagne and an all you can eat curry. Didn't do any web stuff today at all.

Day Four (October 10th, Monday)

The weekend is over, I cant spend anymore time on this site. I spent the day studying and got 80-85% on all the tests I did today, so to pat myself on the back I spent the evening checking the admin features were working, and they are. I'm going live tomorrow, after I write a post to start things off with.

Conclusion

Three full days and one evening. Not bad for what I did I think. They were three FULL days, sunrise to way after sunset, but I'm well happy with the results, and very happy that I managed to keep this log of what went on. Not sure if anyone will read it, or even cares, its for me really so years down the line I can look back and see what I did. And there might be a few interested people out there. I got the rss feeds working a few days later, so thats everything. You can even subscribe to a photos comment feed if you like. So you can monitor the comments from your favourite news reader to see if anyone else has replied. Not that anyone will mind you.

Fdv2 is here for a while. Unlike fdv1 I dont mind looking at this new design, I'm very happy with the results and its going to be months, before I even start thinking about doing this again.

For the moment though the js legacy lives on, fdv2 is living in js's sub directory shaddow, and until the time comes when I can find some decent cheap Australian hosting and get fdv2 out of the sub directory its living in at the moment its going to stay that way.

I do wonder whats in store for this site a few years down the line. I should still be living Melbourne and it should still be keeping track of what I'm doing, but I've got no idea of what job I'll be in, or who I'll be hanging around with, and at the end of the day its the people around me and my work that will shape the future of this site, just like it did with the last. It also gets dark.

Chris
www.frogdreaming.com

John Digweed

Fri, 4 Nov 2005 18:07:32 +1000

This is the first time I've seen him play, and it was awesome.

I've been a big fan of John Digweed...ever since coming back from the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in June 2003 in Gav's car and Jono put on Northern Exposure. It was a great choice as we made our way back in the car along the A303 (even if it was only coming out of one shite speaker). When I got back I got straight onto Amazon and went a bit wild and spent loads of money on a fair few albums. Including Northern Exposure 2, Northern Exposure - Expeditions, and Communicate. And a few others.

But until Monday (31st Oct) I'd never seen him live.

Now that the first part of my MCAD is out of the way, I've started the horrible process of telephone interviews with job agencies. And its not fun, and I'm not having a good time. And its only been a few days (basically over the weekend actually). I've been looking forward to this night for yonks, a mixture of not having ever seen him before and not having had much of a social life recently (due to exam), this was the night to look forward to.

Well it got to the evening and I'd been stressing about the shocking telephone conversation I'd had earlier that day with some bloke at a job agency and I was feeling shite to say the least. I hadn't eaten anything all day either and Rach cooked this wicked pasta/chicken/cream sauce/sundried toms/avocado dinner and I ate loads of it, making me feel even more poo. I wasn't in the mood for going out at all.

After a measly one glass of wine we got on the tram to the city and met up with some of Rachel's friends who were over for Melbourne Cup. We had a few more beers with them, a bit of a chat, bit of a laugh, and a few minutes later we were in the casino and I was feeling loads better. Wasted a few dollars at my table of choice...the bar, and made our way to the club.

Queensbridge Hotel (QBH) holds 2100 people. As you can imagine its massive, and was already quite full when we got there at 1130pm. The sound system in there was equally massive, most of the videos I took throughout the night have got distorted sound cus it was so loud, and the ones that the audio did come out on, I was so far away from the dance floor (and hence the lights) the video is totally black. They did had some cool visuals, and even a few lasers, but nothing too special. I guess that was all left up to John Digweed who got on the decks at 1am for five hour set.

The music was awesome, really nice happy bouncy music and we danced most of the night, in-between going to bar of course. The people there were also really nice, cept for your usual few knobs but thats to be expected in a crowd of 2000. It wasn't really an eventful night so to speak, not like some of the other club nights out where you end up meeting some crazy people or ending up in some other crazy place, just a really wicked night out spent listening to some quality music and drinking large amounts of Crown larger.

Next time this guy comes to town I'm defiantly there. Well recommended night out, and one of the best club nights I've ever had. To top it all of, we won $100 on Makybe Diva, the winning racehorse at the Melbourne Cup the next day. Result

Check out the photos.

Good Bye COM

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:14:47 +1000

I passed my VB.Net MCP exam today...all that hard work did pay off.

I've been a software engineer for over 6 years now. If you've read my about page you'll know that before then I took a bachelors degree in Computer Aided Chemistry at the University of Surrey, and got a job as a developer as soon as I graduated. I enjoy programming, I have done for years. I like the designing, the development and the tweaking of applications. Especially the designing part.

I've never been that good at art, I cant draw anything more complicated than a smiley face with a pencil and I'm disappointed with myself for that (it's a damn good smiley face though). I've always wanted to be creative, but have been let down by my own skills every time I turn to art in a physical sense. I think if you're a creative person and you have the interest there, you have the talent built into you to produce something really special, but only if you hone your skills over a long time, and I was never that interested in art at school. I was good at technical drawing, but your using rulers and squares, and that to me is cheating.

I wondered for a long time if I was ever going to be able to quench the creative thirst that I have in my life. For the last 6 years I've been going to project start up meetings, writing functional design specifications, writing the code and getting support calls all day long, and it seamed to be the only thing I was doing. No creativity there.

I came to realise a few years ago that even in my work I could be creative, and I'm not talking about designing the front cover of the software boxes or anything! Oh no, we've already established that I can't draw! What I've essentially been doing for years is honing my programming skills (on my own I might add), and I got to a stage a while ago where I was fluent enough in the language to actually be able to be creative in the programming i was doing, not just solve problems in a linear fashion, but be able to think about the problem as a whole and design an elegant 'solution' (buzz word) around it. Just as a artist has to perfect their skills at home when they are young with a sketch book and pencil, I was unaware that I'd been doing exactly the same thing at work with Visual Basic and my computer.

But there was one big problem. The software I was working on was old, very old. It was written in Visual Basic 6 which got retired in 2001 and replaced with VB.Net, that's almost 5 years out of date, and five years is a damn long time in this fast paced IT world we live in. The time I had available at work and the tools available to me in VB6 were just never going to be able to satisfy me.

When I moved to Australia in April I was a hardcore VB6 developer, five years behind everyone else who had already moved to VB.Net, and not much VB.Net experience. I'd gone to a training course in late 2004, but our workload at work was so much that we could never put into practice these new and exciting skills we were taught, and they were exciting. At the stage in my career where I was able to successfully design creative functional applications with VB6, the new features of VB.Net were absolutely mind blowing. I remember after the course in 2004 having all these new ideas spring into my mind, because so much more was possible in VB.Net. But I never had the time to put any of them into practice. And if I didn't do anything about it quickly, the best job I could hope for in Melbourne would be supporting 'legacy' VB6 applications. And I fucking hate that word, that and 'historical'. When I got here I started to look for work, I put my CV together and sent it off to all the major IT employment agencies around Melbourne selling my self as a VB6 developer. I got nothing.

So I've done something about it.

For the last few months I've been at home everyday constantly studying for the first of my exams, Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (70-306). This is the first of 3 exams I'm going to take over the next few months to make me a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and put me back on track with the rest of the programming world. Good-bye VB6, and good riddance.

The amount of work and effort I've put into this has amazed me. I never thought I'd be able to do what I've done, but I did, and I've learnt an awful lot in the process, not just about VB.Net, but about my self, which is just as valuable to me. I've read more literature and studied harder over the past few months than I have ever done in my life. Some mornings I would wake up with Rachel at 5am and start work and not stop until the evening. I've read almost all of the VB.Net articles on the MSDN, most of the Dot Net Framework documentation and countless other articles all over the web. I've also been developing an application along the way that keeps secure, all my usernames and passwords for all the sites I have membership to, and various utilities to do with the administration of this site. Just to practice my new skills.

I may have gone a bit over the top with what I've done with my studying since moving to Melbourne, I could of done it in a lot shorter time than I did, but there are a few reasons I took my time and not just got the qualification and jumped right into another job.

I've not learnt anything substantial that I've been really interested in for years, it was always work/play/work/play etc. and it's made me feel like I've been left behind by the rest of the world. And I'm not just going on about my work here (but that has been the major part of it), it's been in my personal life to. Over the past few months I've spent more time reading than ever before in my life (and the occasional Futurama every now and then), and not all computer geeky stuff either, but news and current affairs, popular science, books, newspapers anything. I've spent a lot of time catching up on the things I just never had the time to do back home. If I weren't working I'd be travelling to London to hang out and party with my friends. I feel soo much better now for the break, I feel like I've caught up and I'm back on top of things. The self development has been wicked and my brain now feels all fresh and dynamic again, eager to learn new things.

But for now I'm satisfied, I've done a good job over the past few months, and I'm very proud of my achievements because today I got 100% on my exam, and I'm now a Microsoft Certified Professional.

A New Style

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:11:08 +1000

I decided to get a new barnet over the weekend.

I've been thinking for a while now about what to do about my hair cut. It took me a damn long time when I was back in England to find a decent hairdresser that would cut it the way I liked. I've always been bad at communicating exactly what I want done, so I relied a lot on my hair dressers own taste in haircuts to give me a decent cut (big thanks and hello's go to Gary and the rest of the crew at Brushstrokes).

Finding a good hairdresser when I got to Melbourne was something I really wasn't looking forward to at all. It was about 3 months after I got here that I finally got my hair cut, and boy it needed it. I was toying with the idea of just shaving it all off at home with some clippers, but I bottled it at the last and went to the first place I found to get it cut. I wanted it short, basically because I'm fed up with having to do shit with it when I wake up or go out, something nice and easy, and it would be something else I wouldn't have to worry about in my life. One less thing to worry about, one step closer to an easier life.

The time came around to get the second hair cut in Australia about a month ago, this time I went to the closest place to our flat, didn't ask how much they charged and sat down. I told the girl I was thinking about shaving it all off, and she said no, well she would do right, if everyone shaved their heads, there would be no hair dressers. So she cut it really short and did a shit job of it while she was there, and then charged me the most money I've ever paid for a cut in my life.

I'm not doing that again. I was going to get Rach to help me shave it off this weekend, but I've only got this little beard trimmer, and not the hardcore clippers. So as we walked down chapel on Sunday I saw a sign for $1 a minute cuts, so shopping bags in hand side stepped through the Sunday afternoon crowds. 20 minutes and $20 dollars later I'm a very happy chap.

It's very short, and I like it. I'm going to invest in some clippers so I can do this my self from now on and save some of those precious bucks for beer at the weekends.

And now I don't have to worry about my haircut, cus I aint got one.

Greener Pastures Ahead

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 12:24:50 +1000

Rachel gets a new job, and if you ask me a much much better one.

I want to congratulate my baby on making a fantastic career move and getting a new job! I think you've made a great choice moving away from the faceless corporate hotel industry and getting into the face-to-face up close and personal restaurant industry once again. By the sounds of your new job you'll be learning loads more, getting more hands on experience and interaction, and all from authentic Italians! You couldn't ask for a better move.

I must say though, I was looking forward to all the free nights accommodation you got as part of your last job, and the half price curry's that I still haven't tried. But on the bright side of my selfishness, you'll be learning how to make fresh pasta and sauces and you can pass the knowledge on to me! (It will give me something else rather than study to do during the day...make fresh pasta!)

Your new job sounds and will be fantastic.

I guess I'm the next in line for getting a job then, and that's only going to be a few weeks away if all goes well. We'll both hopefully be starting new jobs around the same time, and with the new jobs, come new friends! Win freaking win!

Nice one babe, I'm dead proud.

Happy Birthday Steve

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 18:49:26 +1000

My brother gets another year older

Happy birthday dear brother, I hope your having fun!

Absolutely no doubt that you are, its just a shame that I'm not going to be there this time. Poptastic was a right giggle last year. My how time flys.

Big love.

Technology

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:29:01 +1000

A quote from Simon Schaffer about the role machines and the market play in society reminded me of how I've been thinking for a long time.

I would like to share with you a quote from a show I watched recently about light. The quote was made by Simon Schaffer, a Cambridge science professor, and the extremely entertaining presenter of the four part series, Light Fantastic aired on BBC 4.

I thoroughly enjoyed the series, it's an amazing history of the scientific discovery of light that spans hundreds of years and many religions. But for me, it was the following quote that really stood out from the whole show.

He's talking about the invention of the light bulb, electric lighting and industrialisation.

Simon Schaffer:

Why is it exactly that we live in a 24/7 society?
Is it because we really want to?
Or is it rather because it's the dictates of the machines that they become profitable if they're switched on all the time?
Is it that we live in a world because we've chosen to live in a world that's lit every single day and every single night, or is it not rather the demand for profit and engineering that keeps the world going just as it does?
So it looks as though these technologies of artificial light give us an unprecedented control over the world around us, but maybe, just maybe, we're the victims, we're under the control of machines and the market.

I think it's an extraordinary concept and one that should be taken quite seriously. Think about what he's saying for a moment and it does make sense. For those of you who really know me, you'll know that I've never been quite sure that this technological life we all lead is the right way to move forward, the right way to advance. In a way I think we've distanced our selves from who we really are and have given up a lot of our freedom as a result of it. Lets face it, most of us wouldn't have any work to do in the morning if, God forbid, the company network got infected with a virus. I remember in my last job it basically shut the whole company down for three days when it happened to us. How many of you, if left to your own devices outside of the town or city in which you live, with nothing but the great outdoors would be able to fend for your selves? Not a lot of you, me included, and that to me is a scary prospect.

We're all fast becoming slaves to technology, especially the internet. Ten years ago I was trying to sell computers with modems to the public in a department store and no one could see the point. Why would they need a modem? Ten years later every one I know is plugged in, both my parents have email addresses and are on Skype. They've just switched to 2MB broadband, that's faster than my connection in my flat! Rachel's four year old nephew Jacob can use the internet better than she can!

And on that note, I should be taking the first of my MCAD exams next week, and I wouldn't even be able to make a fire if I didn't have a match! ARGH!!!

Face Lift

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 17:49:11 +1000

A face-lift for Frog dreaming has been long overdue, and now its here.

After studying hard for the last few months, I was in need of a break, just see my last post to see what I mean. Weather it was justified or not, I took the time out to have a play around with the design and code base of this site and I'm very glad I did. I like the new look, its not totally perfect, there are some things I don't quite like about it, but all in all I'm happy with it and I can carry on with my life. Just thinking about this site was taking up too much of my mind space.

I'm my own worst critic, and the frustrating thing about the bits of this site that bug me, is that I'm not all that qualified in the design department to make it look exactly the way I would like it to. Plus in the time frame in which I did this, it was inevitable that I would overlook aspects of the site and mess up the spec, leaving important things out, and I did. I was quite lucky in the end and managed to fit everything together in a nice enough fashion to make it look like it was planned and not just thrown together. I hope.

All in all this took me three and a half days to do, from start to finish. I didn't even know what I wanted it to look like when I started, I just needed a break from studying, and I ended up with this a few days later. I've written an account of this redesign as I went along, and I'm going to publish it here once I've written the conclusion. Mainly to keep a record of the progress of this site, it is after all a journal of the things that I'm doing, and also just in case any of you are interested in what happened over the past weekend. I've been busy.

Apart from starting with a total blank canvas and building it from the ground up, I also tweaked around with the code, cleaned it right up and added loads of administrative features that were missing from the original site. They were missing basically because I didn't think it through enough before I started coding the first time around, and when it got that far down the line when I needed those editing features, the code was far to messy to bother playing around with. I just ended up editing the database directly when I needed to make a change. That's all changed, I will hopefully never need to touch the database directly again. I've even written a backup application in VB.Net that backs up the remote database to XML on my local machine, and a few other handy apps that let me add the links and articles from a program I've written, so that I don't need to open a browser and logon to this site to post anything.

Anyway I hope you all enjoy the new look, I've enjoyed making it.

The Cycle Starts Again

Fri, 7 Oct 2005 10:14:39 +1000

Every couple of months this happens to me, and has done ever since I can remember

I've been studying at home now for over three months and although I believe I'm ready to take this exam, I'm still reading books and books and books. I'm really enjoying it actually, for the first time really since Uni I'm learning new and exciting things that I cant wait to put into practice.

I'm almost there, so close I can almost smell the aroma of a new office to work in. You know, that distinctive smell that all offices have, computers, air-con, machinery, the hardwearing carpet, they all add to the smell and they are all different. You can help but notice as your sat in them most of the day, and for that matter week.

But this close to the end, I'm finding my personal long term attention cycle coming round once again and its getting in the way of my study. The last time it happened was, not unexpectedly, exactly two months ago, where I got a little fed up with studying VB.Net full time and started to play around with my other hobby, this web site. It took me about a week to port this site over to MySQL from a standard Jet4 Access 2000 database, and it was just the break I needed to get me back on track with reading VB.Net Bible or what ever it was back then.

I'm at the same situation again now. But this time its even more frustrating, a week or so away from the end, and I'm finding myself trying to justify spending a few precious days fiddling around with this web site rather than concentrating on this exam. Its been two full time months of study since my last break, waking up and hitting the books at 9am, and working till Rachel gets home at night, and I could really do with another one.

I didn't do any study at all yesterday, I spent the whole day from 9am to 10.30pm working on this site. I think I'm going to spend the rest of this morning/afternoon playing around with it, and the rest of this evening finishing the last book I have to read, on ADO.Net. Rachel isn't getting back till late tonight so I've got lots of time, and only about 200 pages to read through, and its not like its new material, I've covered it all in the study guide already, this is just extra studying. Then I'll be in good shape to skim over all my notes next week, having got this website itch scratched, and get this damn qualification!

Or am I just procrastinating?

Maya Project

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 12:07:53 +1000

A really nice sunday afternoon mini festival

A few weekends ago we went to Earthdance and the benefit night afterwards. If you've read that post you'll recall that I managed to lose just about everything valuable that night, so its no surprise that when we woke up in the morning we had no clue where we got this flyer for the Maya Project from, we can only guess that we must of picked it up as we left (in a mess) from the club.

By the look of the flyer it sounded just the thing to do on a Sunday afternoon, something nice and chilled and laid back, listening to some good music and getting in some massage and Reiki. In fact it was the Reiki that first got my attention on the flyer and sparked my interest in going. I got an email from Cath about the Reiki at Glade, and I'd heard of it before from a few people and was intrigued. What could be better to do on one of the nicest, sunniest Sundays so far, than to hang out at a mini festival, get healed, meet new people, drink, eat and dance? Not bloody much that's what.

The venue was the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES), a really nice outdoor setting with loads of solar panels everywhere, a large wind turbine in the background and a real sense of 'greenness' in more than one sense of the word. A nice chance to get out of the concrete city and relax. Its just north of the city, about 40 minutes by tram from where we are.

When we got there we went straight for the massage and Reiki tent and put our name down, then had an explore of the place and got a few beers and a pie (well, it would be rude not to have a pie with your beer right?) and sat on the grass in the sun. One of the first tracks I heard playing was Antix, Hiding Place. I've got a video of part of the track, from where we were sitting in front of the Reiki tent. The track is awesome as anyone who's heard it will tell you, and they had some live drummers playing over the top of it, it hasn't come out all that well on the clip, but it was excellent if you were there, trust me.

The Reiki tent was packed and they were running well behind schedule. I was hoping to spend a little time with them chatting about it and what it can do for me, but I think with the big back log of people waiting they couldn't really spare the time I wanted off them. It certainly was one of the most relaxing experiences I've had, and it did take me a minute or two to gather myself together and hop off the table. I've got the girls number, and I'm going to follow this up.

We spent the rest of the day light hours sitting on the grass in front of the main area chilling, drinking and chatting. Rachel reminded me after a few beers that I'd made a packed lunch so just as the sun started to set behind us we munched on the sarnies and salad and we were up on our feet and grooved for the rest of the night on the dance floor under the stars and the light of Venus. Nothing like the WA stars, we were too close to the city to see very much, but stars none the less.

They also had fire twirlers that basically went on all night long, and had some pretty amazing people there. In particular this little kid that was much better than some of the other guys there! I've got some photos and a video of him, he's going to impress his friends when he gets older. There was another guy who I've got a video of, that's doing some fire staff really, really quickly, to a fantastic track (if anyone knows the track please let me know what it is) that was amazing. I've got to get my staff out a bit more. I bought it about a year ago now and haven't used it much, it's a little more difficult to do indoors than poi! But we've got a good courtyard outside that I'm going to start practicing in.

The only bad thing about the day was the on set of the bugs. I've got my first mosquito bite since WA, and I don't think its going to be the last. I'm hoping that living in the city where we do there isn't going to be a lot of them about. We'll have to see.

It was a wicked day, beautiful weather, groovy music and beer. We caught a taxi home with some other people who, like us, had just missed a tram and couldn't be arsed to wait thirty minutes for the next one.

Check out the photos and the videos. The videos are quite dark, well actually most of them are pretty much black, but you get the idea of the music they were playing and there are some good fire clips in there. Oh and the occasional bonus 'woooohoooo' from me and Rach. Some of the fire photos have come out really well.

Enjoy.

Summer is on it's way

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:54:49 +1000

Longer days, higher sun in the sky = summer is on its way

I arrived in Melbourne at the end of May, about a month before the winter solstice on the 21st of June, so the days were getting shorter when we got here.

About a week after we moved into our flat I got myself a big desk and set it up in the study which is North facing. Nice I thought, I'd get some sun when I'm working. I started studying full time as soon as it got here, every morning I would get up and start working through my study guides, making notes likes a real student (I haven't worked this hard since Uni, maybe even ever). I would get up with Rach some mornings at 5am and start work, some people have called me mad, but I love it, I get to do a ton more work, and see the sun rise (I love sun rises). I could follow the path the sun traced through the sky all day, a lot of the time it would have to be through the curtains cus I couldn't see jack when the sun was blaring through.

The sun is always a welcome sight, more so for me now I've moved over here and read a few more interesting books and got to see a lot more of our local star. My newly discovered knowledge about the universe and stars, through reading a few choice books, has brought me not only an intellectual satisfaction but a deep interest in anything celestial. And for that matter atmoic. As above, so below.

I was warned about the temperamental weather over here, and was expecting a lot more rain than we've had from what people were telling me. In fact the weather has been awesome since we got here, people blame global warming, and its going to get hotter as we move through spring and into summer. The green leaves are out and the sky is blue, and I've been watching the sun make its journey everyday across the sky since the start of June.

At the winter solstice, as the sun rose in the East, it was so low in the sky that the block of flats opposite would cast a shadow over our apartment as the sun disappeared behind it, causing a noticeable drop in temperature for just under an hour before appearing above them and bathing our flat in light again for the rest of the day.

Things have changed now. We are well into spring and the sun now rises a lot sharper in the sky and we get no shadow...sun all day long.

I met Rach in the city yesterday at 5.30pm and the sun still had a long way to go before it was going to set, and the days are just going to get longer. I'm looking forward to the long summer evenings.

Happy Birthday Mills

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:36:21 +1000

Probably the furthest happy birthday message you'll get!

Hey Mills, just a quick post to say happy birthday!

Right from the other side of this small blue green planet we call home, this will probably be the farthest away birthday message you'll get!

I hope your having a cool time in Belgium, and say a big hello to all the family from me too.