August 2008 Archives

all my troubles seemed so far away..

oh wait.. that was Frankie.. in Fruitylicious.. yesterday .... get it.... hheehe

ok so nothing to report here .. other than we (mostly) had a lovely day ... photos tomorrow...

A function that worked quite happily last night (uploading pictures) is completely broken today.  I get a horrible Apache permission denied when it tries to create the file.

Also, the "Tags" metadata of the blog entry is not loading my previous tags when I put in a keystroke.

Also, the gallery app I have on one of my other sites is broken in a similar way.

*however* the gallery app *can* create images from another web site, but not uploading through my browser.

Tried rebooting, another browser, even another computer, all with no luck.

I haven't done anything to my site that could affect this, and it's the weekend so doubt my hosting provider has done anything (although you never know)..

It's exceedingly distressing :(

UPDATE:  /tmp is full on the host.  This may or may not be related to problems that MySQL had on Friday morning which also broke my blog and gallery.  *sigh*
UPDATE: /tmp has been cleared somewhat, picture upload ability restored!  woot!

K: "I'm the green fairy"
S: "Huh?"
K: "Kylie Minogue"
S: "Huh?"
K: "She sings the Sound of Music"
S: "Huhhhhh???"

I swear, he totally thought I was making it up ;)

Man I'm tired.  Just need to collapse into bed. But a few photos first.

Pool balls in the sunlight..


Tonight we met up with Nat and Andrew and went to IT in the Pub - pirate night. It was a little freaky lol. But Nat totally pulled off the pirate look :)


Then went and had a look at Pablo.. which was even freakier.. heh

Andrew and Nat went off to see a movie, so Stu and I went for dessert at Koko Black..
The iced chocolate I had was quite good - two scoops of ice cream! But they forgot about me, and Stu had finished his coffee before they brought out my thing. Oh well.

And finally took a quick snap of reflections over the lake on the way back to the car..

Sooooo tired!!

Saw this on Dooce tonight ... and spent the next twenty minutes or so reading it.. soo sad.. wish could skip forward a few years to find out what happens to her...

(yes I am that far behind with my news feeds)

Tonight I had a craving.  Well you see I'd had a big salad for dinner, so I felt like something warm and sweet.  Maybe like a danish or pie or pop tart or something like that.  But we had nothing of the sort in the house.  Whatever to do?

Which is when I remembered Murray Fraser's coconut cake!

The Frasers were a minister family at our church a very long time ago, and he had a specialty - coconut cake.  One day he wrote it down for us.  At the end he'd written "Yum, delicious!"  Well ever since, this recipe has been known as the Yum, Delicious recipe.

It's about a simple a recipe as you can get:

Coconut Cake

1 cup coconut
1 cup self-raising flour
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup milk

Mix all, put into greased loaf tin, bake 40-45 minutes, 375°F

Yum, delicious!

My brother used to do it in the microwave (6:30-7min in a 700W oven).  But then he also used to triple the sugar quantity heh :)

So anyway, craving satisfied... :)

Urghh... tiring weekend....

Saturday morning had to go shopping and clean the house.

Found this recycling bin at the markets in Gungahlin which cracked me up..

So then the parents arrived. Stu made a delicious vegan-friendly fried rice for lunch, and then we looked at honeymoon photos. Pretty much all afternoon. :/

Around 6pm we headed off to Della Rocca for dinner (our birthday dinner, the parents' shout). I had a veal dish (allan pana I think) which was pretty good. But we still had room for dessert, so had some.. heh. Even managed to convince mum to drink a little of the sparkling cabernet we took along (!)

So came back and finished going through the honeymoon photos. Mum liked the Legoland and Alps pics the most. Dad didn't really care for all the "city" photos.. but as that was about 95% of the trip, he got a little bored.. hrmm..

This morning we sat around wondering what to do when Potty called up and said they were heading out to Casuarina Sands for a picnic, so we tagged along.

The ducks came to be fed..

Walked down to the weir which was very pretty..

Scott made Jake a raft, so they brought it down to launch it..

The boys scrambled out to the middle..

It took a couple of relaunches to get it to finally go..

Having done that, we wandered home again.

The parents left, and just after that, Annie and the kids arrived. We all went for a little walk.

This galah watched us..

It was very bright in the sun..

And then home again.

I slow cooked a roast pork for dinner. We considered inviting people over, but we were a bit peopled out by this point. The pork turned out really well, and really cheaply too - the bone was very small, so mostly meat at $4.45/kilo.

And that was our weekend. I could use another one...

Remember I was excited the other week because my *car* was on Street View?!?  

Well *I AM ON STREET VIEW* !!!!

Was showing the parents street view tonight and went down the street and there I am waiting at the bus stop!!  I would have seen the Google car and not even realised!! Fail!! hehehe

I don't understand how people could be upset about themselves being on Google Earth - I think it's fricken awesome!! :)

ok this news is a little old now, but still amusing because *I was there!!* ... er... well I was watching the show that night when it got pulled.  They claimed "technical difficulties" at the time, and put on an episode of Frasier or Seinfeld or something like that.  I thought it was highly amusing at the time, and wondered what all the fuss was about.  It was basically just a show of animal sex you might see at the zoo....

Edit: It was Cheers

I'd have a yokult but I really don't think it'd mix with all the orange juice...

Long day at work :/

But I did manage to get this (pretty crap) photo of Venus and Mercury in the early evening sky..   They'll be even closer tomorrow night, keep a look out for them :)

Urghh.  Sunday was tiring.

So we were out the door at 7:20 to be in town by 8 to pick up Rully for breakfast.  We toddled off to My Cafe in Manuka which was one of only a couple of places open so early.  Stu had French toast, and I had the mushrooms and capsicum on toast..

After breakfast we headed for the hills .. Red Hill in fact. Nice view, but looking into the sun..

Stu wanted to be friends with kangaroos..

I don't think they wanted to be friends..

There was even snow on the Brindabellas over Woden..

So by now it was mid morning, so we dropped Rully off and headed out to Yass for lunch. Which was very pleasant, and had a delicious lunch and Little Squishy was being very cute..

And took a walk in the sun and photographed the flowers..

So that was all very nice, but we didn't get home til after 5pm .. and so after having been out *all* day we were pretty exhausted. Felt like crawling into bed when we got home. But after *stopping* for a bit felt a bit better.

As part of science this week, there was an amateur astronomer's night up Mt Stromlo last night.  So we drove up the denuded hills (I still miss the Canberra pine forests :( ) and met up with Natalie and Andrew.

And proceeded to get third-degree moon-burn!  Seriously who the @#% decided to have an astronomy night on the night of a full moon !?!?  The astronomers didn't know but were equally dismayed.

Still, it was a bit of fun, if very cold.  Got a spectacular view of Jupiter, Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, and nearly blinded ourselves looking at the moon.  Didn't look at too much else.. spent most of my time playing with some long exposures of the observatory buildings...







It was really sad seeing the building that was burnt out by the 2003 bushfires..

On the way down the hill we stopped so I could take some Canberra by nights shots..



Apparently they'll be there next week too... maybe we'll drag the parents up there...

I haven't had the energy to even download today's photos, so here's some of yesterday's...

The first bit of exciting news was the arrival this week of my Blogography package, consisting of t-shirts, a Try Evil cap, and ten (!!) packs of playing cards.



I've been hanging out for these just to see what the stories were on them!  They're pretty sweet!



Although the Queens with five o'clock shadows were somewhat disturbing!



Even the backs of them are beautifully done

Had a photo-filled day today.. but it's too late to decide which ones to blog, resize and ©-ify.. so I'm going to bed and will do it tomorrow some time :)

I finished Rocheworld today. For once Stu picked a book for me that I actually enjoyed ;)

It's written by a physicist (Robert L. Forward), so the science in it is a lot more believable than a lot of other science fiction.

It could have done with a bit more character development, and the plot was quite simple, bit a good read nonetheless.

At the end is a whole lot of technical specifications of the various ships, and character bios. I was kinda wishing I'd read them more as I was going, especially the character stuff.  Would it made it a bit easier to remember who was who, and picture the ships a bit better.

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes today .. yes I am an old fart now at 35... :)
Celebrated with many drinks at work, and dinner (of rabbit) at Bella Vista and more drinks afterward.. :)

Update:
Was a little fizzled last night... heh..
I told CH quietly it was my birthday, and he mostly kept it a secret.. until I was about to leave, when he told PK, who promptly led all the guys to sing happy birthday to me!  It was somewhat embarrassing, but awfully sweet to hear all these slightly drunk guys singing for me :)

The dinner we had was quite nice, although I got a bit of a shock with the rabbit.  I don't think I've ever had rabbit before, so wasn't really sure what to expect.  I think I must have got some liver or kidney or something to start with, because it was very odd, and that very icky texture of offal.  But after that, the meat was white and stringy, kinda like chicken I guess :)

Feeling old this morning.  Maybe I'm just tired...

I thought I'd have a bit of fun with movie maker.....



:)
(YouTube kinda mashed up the alignment of the photo changes to the music a little.. the original 10mb wmv file can be downloaded here)

See the website for the construction of the Lego Millenium Falcon 10179 at http://kazza.id.au/10179/

This morning we meandered down to the lake to see Stu's favourite family of swans.  We took along some old bread, which they rather enjoyed.  Entirely too cute...!

One of them got a bit agro at a crow..

The grown ups were happy to eat out of Stu's hand

Next we went for a bit of a wander around the lake.

Fed some seagulls..

And kept walking around to find the cormorant we passed on the way in.

Stu wanted to be its friend..

Stretch...

Up close..

Coming back, Black Mountain tower had emerged from the clouds and the weeping willows are budding..

For lunch we went to Satis *again* (third time in three weeks?) .. but this time met up with Sean and Mel. Stu had scrambled tofu and Mel had banana bread...

And then finally headed home. And it snowed!!! Well it was probably more sleet than snow, but it was still pretty cool...

There was even a little bit on the ground when we got home..

Looking forward to a potato bake for dinner tonight..

For lunch yesterday we thought we'd try out the Billy Baxter replacement cafe - Central Cafe.  When I first saw the name I wondered if it'd be anything like the one at Queanbeyan, which is cheap and has massive sized meals.  Well this place is nowhere near as cheap and we didn't attempt any of the king size meals.

Stu got a veggie burger..



and I got a caesar salad...



The caesar salad wasn't bad, my only complaint was that the croutons were a little soggy.  I like them to be really crisp.  But there was a decent amount of bacon and cheese, so all good there.  Stu's only complaint was lack of anchovies (they were listed on the menu but not delivered.. not that I'm complaining cause I hate the things ;) )

Stu thought the coffee was ok, but not fantastic.

It was very crowded, obviously lots of people wanting to try it out.  But for the price, we won't be going there too often.

Finally got around to installing SP1 today.  (I didn't want to try before the wedding cause I couldn't afford not to have a working computer).

Fortunately, it all went well, and successfully installed.

One of my biggest pet peeves is direct image linking bandwidth thieves.  Myspace users are the biggest culprits in this crime.  So today I had my revenge.  I setup some rewrite rules to redirect any images stolen from my site to something more appropriate for the scum that is this sort of thief.


I wasn't able to do this with my blog images before the beginning of this year because the server I was on didn't support it (well it did, but you needed to do it through the sysadmin's admin interface - not an option as a user).  I had it working on my photo server for a while (thanks Dave) but hadn't set it up again after the hard drive crash I had on it.

I'm just blocking myspace at the moment, but may extend it to other sites that offend me the most...

If anyone's interested, the .htaccess file contains the following text:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?myspace\.com.*$      [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://myothersite/naughty.gif [R,NC]
(reference)

Purple

First up, some silly putty... this stuff is hypercolour, so when you play with it, it turns from purple to blue.  I didn't realise the blue stuff shines..





Yellow

Canberra's colours were really intense today.  Dazzlingly so.  I especially liked this bug..



Green

Lunch time's colour was green.  There was the tree sitting atop the new building in civic...



and lunch at Banana Leaf, which is a very green place.

• Damien and Amanda got engaged!!
• Google Maps Street View came to Australia!!
  
• Stu got a promotion at work!!

My car is famous!

Didn't get a whole lot done this morning.

Eventually we headed out.  The jonquils were begging to have their photos taken again, so I obliged them..



We went for a bit of a drive to have a look at some houses for sale, to get an idea of the neighbourhoods.  There's definitely bogans all over Canberra.. :/

Then we went back to Satis for lunch.  Now they do their breakfast menu til noon most days, and all day Sundays.  Except on Sundays it seems you can't get anything *but* the breakfast menu.  Even if you did happen to come at the right time, the "mains" menu only has about three items on it.  The food is good and all, but there's not a lot of variety.  But Stu loves the coffee so I guess we'll be going there semi-regularly.

Today they had these dudes outside entertaining everyone..

Played secretary today, filing piles of crud in various intrays into my filing cabinet. 

Then we watched Secretary.  Very strange sort of movie. 

And also watched Breakfast at Tiffany's which I'd never seen before.  Can't believe they got away with some of the things they did... heh

Generally pleased with how much stuff I got done today.

Should probably clean the house a bit tomorrow though..