September 2006 Archives

Say whatever you want about Steve Irwin and his death, but for me the saddest part is Terri (and the kids). Seeing her grief is heartbreaking. She was obviously so in love with him and her loss so obviously devastating. My heart goes out to her.

I'm very sad this morning. I accidently left the lid off one of my tanks last night, and this morning found one of my favourite fish on the floor :(:(:(:(:(:(:( He wasn't actually dead, his gills were still moving, but he was quite dried out. For what it's worth I put him back in the water and gently swayed him to get water over his gills. He's breathing on his own, but still quite stiff. Not holding out much hope :(:(:(

Update: he died :(

OK so this meme has been haunting my feedreader since *July* .. urggh ..
Time to actually do it and clear it out :)
As seen at various locations..

GRUB-OLOGY

It wasn't my fault! The weather was too nice.. the flowers were too beautiful.. I had lots of memory and battery power... my boy was unbelievably patient....

So I took 430 photos at Floriade today :) And got rather sunburnt in the process... oops......

Small(ish) selection of photos in an extended entry .. :)

Did this today. It was pretty cool. Looking 260m straight down to the street below, over the edge of the tower, and being so close to the panelling I'd only ever seen from afar, and seeing the windows from the *outside*, and seeing the view without having to look through a window.

It was a bit pricey for what it is, but the mid-year special certainly helped (at $50 off!). And they get you again with the photos ($20 for a single print-out?? hrmm).

But it was a great afternoon, and spent nearly two hours doing the whole process. I think Mum enjoyed her birthday present :)

ok so it's Tuesday .. :) Saw this at Michael's and thought it would be fun.

1. How do you eat an Oreo cookie?
Well Oreos came here far too late for me to think up clever ways to eat them (and I'm not a huge fan of them anyway). But Mint Slices on the other hand. Well. First I would take a small bite at the front. Then I would nibble all around the edges. Then I would eat off the top layer of chocolate. Then I would eat off the bottom biscuit, then finally eat the icing. :)

2. How long does it take you to eat lunch?
er, never actually timed it. Probably 20 minutes? But total time away from the office is usually about an hour cause we walk a good 10 minutes away to get food, then there is the chat time after.

3. Caffeine or decaf?
In coffee? Well neither cause I don't drink the stuff :)

4. Chicken or beef?
If I'm eating out it's more often chicken, because I'm a bit picky about my beef and it's easier for them to stuff up beef I've found (too dry/chewy etc). At home I love a good steak.

5. Pen or pencil?
Depends what I'm doing really. I really like the Pacer style of pencils though.

6. Autumn or spring?
Spring

7. Baseball or basketball?
Neither really heh :)

8. 'Survivor' or 'The Amazing Race?'
Now that's a tough one.. probably The Amazing Race though.

:)

Looks like we're going to have to spend $60k to get a new hydrant put in for fire safety. *yay* :/

Other than that the general meeting went fairly smoothly.

My betta at work is now called "Mr Marley". Because Tim walked into the office and said "it's Bob Marley ... and the whalers .. get it!" heheh. It's true, he does look a little like Bob Marley :)

Well Saturday I bought a betta. (Betta splendens, Siamese Fighting Fish). I took him to work today and put him in the Macquarium with the three guppies. Well he'd been looking a bit listless over the weekend, but perked up when he had some little fishies to chase :) The guppies are quick enough to keep out of his way, so I might keep them together for a while longer.

Then we thought some more about lighting the tank. We were still thinking a lamp mounted over the hole might work, and then one of us had the idea to dig out the little fluorescent light I'd been hoarding for just this purpose. At first I just stuck it over the hole, but it didn't really make a big difference the light levels inside. Then Luc tried sticking it down between the glass and the back of the case. And suddenly the whole tank was bright! It's still not perfect, because the fish are backlit, but it'll do for now :)

Since Stu was offline most of the day, I took the day off from my puta. OK so it wasn't very exciting. I mostly just watched videos and tv, and started putting my lego away again.

Which means I don't have much to report heh :) The TV turns 50 show tonight was a bit of fun (preceded by Where are they now?).

Bought a betta for the Macquarium yesterday. I wonder if he'd eat the guppies in there already, or if I should remove them first.. heh.. ;)

As mentioned by Dave the other day, the original original Star Wars movies have been released on dvd. Yes, the actual theatrical releases, as opposed to the Star Wars Fantasia collection of releases where each version was different, but not the original. But as he also mentions, they are in letterbox format not widescreen. So I'm still in two minds about whether to buy them or not. I have refused to buy the Star Wars films on dvd until I could get the theatrical versions. Well now they are out, but the question is, will they ever release a widescreen version? Big W has all three of them in two-dvd sets - a newer version with commentaries, and the original theatrical release, both letterbox format - for $20 each, but labelled "limited edition" ... if I don't act now will I miss out forever? The dilema....

Had a bit of fun with this this morning.. Drag the Dot.. have fun :)

From Missyisms

ok so I've had quite a lot of sangria tonight ... enough to make it feel a little premature to put my head horizontally for the night just yet .... we did indeed get a pig, but it wasn't entirely in one piece, even when it was presented.. although I haven't reviewed the photos from the night just yet..... :)

I actually got something in today's crossword that Peter didn't know (which never happens cause Peter knows everything...!) The clue was "Wooden shoe". We had _ _ B _ T .. and I got it - Sabot. The only reason I knew this? Star Trek VI. Where Valeris is explaining the origin of the word sabotage - where disgruntled workers threw their shoes (sabot) into the machinery to break it. Peter thought was pretty cool (that I knew it from Star Trek heh) :)

And now I'm off to eat pig........

Why do they advertise movies as "Only in cinemas"?? Because there's no such thing. A few weeks or months later it'll be "only on dvd" and a few months after that on tv.

Except Disney movies that never make it free-to-air. And ET which took ten years to make it to television.

Has anyone *ever* heard of a movie that's been on "only in cinemas" ?

My favourite black angel died today :( And most of the guppies Stu brought up on the weekend are dead too :(

/me sad

Cause I was feeling down ...

I finally got around to putting the mosaic of the Hogwart's logo with all the Harry Potter lego.. ok so it was over four weeks ago now.. Stu was the photographer :)

Saw this walking from the carpark at work - a crow raiding a garbage bag, seemingly for a piece of pizza :)

Two inflatable frogs at Josh's party

One of the kribs born in July is growing up fast

Small orchid at my parents' place

V bottles

Latest batch of baby kribs, born on the weekend (they're just little blobs really heh)

Dory fillets with vegetables, cooked by my master chef Stu

A daffodil I had to rescue off the balcony from the wind on the weekend

MSR Groupshot has been released for public download. "What on earth is that?" I hear you ask. Well. You know how you take a group photo and there's always someone blinking, or pulling a stupid face, or some kid that's just not looking at the camera. Well, enter MSR Groupshot. Let's just say you're trying to get everyone to stick their tongue out at the same time. But only one at a time does over three photos (ok, so for the purposes of this demonstration this was a deliberate process :) ). We end up with three raw images:

Then you use MSR Groupshot to take your favourite image, and add the bits that you want from the other images. To end up with the result that you wanted:

And so another lovely weekend draws to a close.

This morning we slept late again yayy. By the time we got out the door it was nearly lunch time. But this time we only went a couple of kilometres away to a pet store I haven't ever been to, even tho I live just up the road from it. I got a nifty decoration for my smallest tank - it doesn't have any lighting, so trying to keep plants alive in it is too hard, so fake things will have to do.

Patchy rain all day today. Mostly the rain patches fell over us while we were walking between stores. None from the pet store to the pide place for a pastrami pide for lunch, but then a bit on the way to the coffee shop, not much on the way to the supermarket, but then whole dumploads of it fell while we had the longest walk from the supermarket back to the car. And we didn't have wet weather gear :) oh well.

Quiet afternoon. Stu had a nap in preparation for his late night. We watched an episode of TNG season 3. And all afternoon the lamb slow roasted. And it was good. Was a pre-marinated thing we found in the supermarket. Also had some potatoes and garlic. I didn't actually get to carve the roast. It just disintegrated, so it was a case of take a couple of tong-fulls of meat :)

Then we just watched an episode of "The worst jobs in history", and then the boy left to go home :(:(:(:(

So the boy left work early last night and came up in time for dinner, which was lovely. A rare treat :) Watched some bits and pieces on tv, then Fantasia 2000.

This morning was a very slow start, not really getting ready til midday. Then we found a new aquarium to look at, but it didn't have the killifish Stu was hoping to see. Next dropped into work so I could show Stu the new office arrangements and my fishies at work. My kribs have had another school of babies!!! Did a water change in their tank while I was there. Then took Stu to my favourite Thai restaurant for lunch, followed by a shopping trip for tonight's dinner. Also went to Best & Less and got three floor cushions which are way cool.

So dinner was dory fillets fried with spring onions, ginger, red banana chilli and coriander, with asparagus and squash on the side. It was all delicious, Stu is an awesome cook :):)

We ate while watching the last disk of TNG season 2 (the special features disk), followed by ST I the motion picture. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, you could easily watch the movie in fast forward. Nothing much happens. Basically it's just a single episode story that they took a lot longer to film, with the express purpose of showing off all the special effects they could do in 1979.. :)

Anyways, bed time :)

On a lighter note. The other night I linked to the cool lovepixel pixel art. Well I thought it would be cool to be able to see the whole thing at once, but with over 100 images at 500x500 pixels each it was going to be annoying. So I did a save as to get all the files. Used irfanview to resize them all to 50x50, did a search and replace in the index html file, then did a screen dump of the result. Which is here. Enjoy :)

So I'm driving up my back lane this arvo, and there's a small truck coming the other way. Now in the places where there are cars parked only one car can drive through at a time. So I was cruising slowly up the free section waiting for the oncoming truck to clear the parked cars so he could pass me. Note that I'm doing probably 20km/h. So this truck, clears the parked cars and keeps coming straight at me. At the last moment he swerves to his side of the road and shouts through his window "slow down!!" .. and I'm like WTF?????

What a f@#%wit >:(

Bit of a suck day today. Couldn't get to sleep last night. Then had a headache all day so didn't get much work done. Then got home quite late (although it was good to catch up with Campbell) so my time at home was already limited then Thorpey needed some help with fixing up a script. So suddenly it's nearly 10pm and I've barely had time to breathe :/

And the little javascript buttons in Movable Type don't work in the latest version of Firefox. So I *have* to use IE if I want to use them. And the latest version of Firefox also appears to have the "sometimes-won't-copy" bug. Whereby you highlight something and copy to clipboard, but it doesn't actually copy, it just clears the clipboard. For such a massive bug you'd think they'd have fixed it by now. It drives me completely nuts at work. And they say IE is buggy....

Anyway, for a bit of fun check this out - http://www.lovepixel.idv.tw/ - which further proves that some people have *way* too much time on their hands :)

This is the Macquarium, filled last week and populated with three guppies. There's also some moss which would have ammonia-digesting bacteria on it. No flash so you can see how dark it is in there, even all painted white...

Busy day today.

Lunch at the parents' place. Yvonne was there which was good. She had to eat and run though, which Stu thought she'd be "devastated" about.. heh ;)
Played three games of 500 after lunch. Mum did a lose-all three games (you're a loser!). The best game was the last game where David and I staged a brilliant come-back from negative figures, and we won the last hand on an 8 diamonds call I made after Dad had called misere.

Then no sooner had I got home then it was out again to Alan and Marylon's for one of Alan's delicious beef stews... yummmmmmmmmmmmmm.... :)

And now it's off to talk to the boy and go to sleep :)

Got heaps and heaps of stuff done this morning. OK so it was mostly cleaning stuff, but I did also get the little "krib" tank cleaned out and the heater and filter cleaned and it backed with black plastic. I'd really like to get some blue guppies for that tank.. and try not to kill them this time.... :/

Is it just me, or do the buttons for bold, italic and url not show up in Firefox 1.5.0.5 in Movable Type 2.661? Firefox seems to be ignoring the inline javascript and not printing the buttons. Which means I need to go back to IE to post messages if I want to include url links without having to type them manually. Grunties.

Came second to Luc in a game of poker at work tonight. Had a good run of luck in the middle which saw me through final three, but nothing good enough to win against Luc, and attempting to bluff just didn't work. Oh well. :) I think I'm in the black with it all now.....
The best hand(s) of the night was Guy getting an ace-high flush, only to be beaten by Jim with a straight flush!! Guy was a tad annoyed about that heh :)