thinking out loud
Many people sell second-hand computers on eBay. I think it’s a good idea to format the hard drive before you do. The following is a website that shows what might happen to you if you don’t.
The story is that Amir sold his laptop to a guy on eBay. The purchaser said it wasn’t working but managed to fix it. In the process he accessed all the sellers old info and posted it on a website to “get even”. A half interesting read if you’ve got a spare 5 minutes.
I’m making slow progress on the integration of my Gallery into the Wordpress theme. I have successfully installed the necessary plugins and they seem to be working fine. As you can see, I can add a photo from the gallery to this post quite easily.
Now I just need to make sure everything fits together nicely. Shouldn’t be too much longer I hope.
**EDIT (01 June 06 - first): D’oh, now the Gallery is buggered. Who knows whats happening?!?!?
**EDIT (01 June 06 - second): It seems to be fixed now. I think everything got mixed up after I put another installation of Gallery in a sub-domain. I have sinced removed that installation, and before testing if it had any effect on my primary Gallery, I also added a new DB user to the primary Gallery DB.
So, by employing very poor experimental technique and procedures, I can’t be sure which action helped to resolve the issue. Oh well, at least it’s all working again.
…I don’t like our chances!
This photo was taken yesterday. Still plenty of work for them to do by the looks of things.
See more photos of the house in the Gallery.
We are just about to head off to watch Essendon thrash the pants of Pt Adelaide (wishful thinking perhaps?) at the Telstra Dome. This will be my first live AFL match for 2006, hopfully the boys can do the right thing by me.
Back in February when we signed the contract on our new house, a 3 month settlement was decided on by both parties. We were told that 3 months would be heaps of time to finish the construction and we could walk into a brand-spanking new home with nothing more to do. That settlement date was May 26. For the observant ones amongst you, you will note that today is May 26. We should not have gone to work today. Instead we should have handed over the money and collect the keys to our new place. Alas, it was not to be.
After a few set-backs in the construction (namely, ripping down the walls) the settlement date has been pushed back indefinitely.
I was talking to our solicitor on the phone today, to see if she had heard anything from the vendor’s solicitor. “No”, was her simple answer. We still don’t know if the subdivision has gone through, we haven’t seen their Land and Building Stat Dec., we don’t know when they’re planning on lodging the other necessary paperwork, we don’t know the Body Corporate and insurance details. Needless to say, there is still plenty of work for the other party to do (including the completion of the actual house building stuff!)
On top of all that, we are quickly approaching the borrowing deadline that was set by the bank when they approved our loan. If that lapses, we will need to go through the whole application process again (including paying a new application fee).
I think there’s somthing to be said for buying a house that isn’t under construction. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to move in, and it has been fun chosing all the bits and pieces, but it’s the waiting that’s getting hard. It doesn’t help when every time you ask the builders when everything will be finished, they answer with “3 weeks is looking good!”
Melbourne is buzzing with “world cup fever”. Tonight’s match between the Socceroos and the ______ (whatever the Greek team calls themselves) should be a corker. I know there are lots of Melbournians who hate football (soccer) but I think you should still get into the spirit.
Even at 4:30 when I was riding home from work, there were soccer jersey-clad fans all around East Melbourne and the MCG. Hopfully we will see a few flares and plenty of Oscar-winning injury fakes to add to the entertainment.
My prediction: Aus 2 - Greece 1 (only because of home ground advantage, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because the crowd will probably be mostly Greeks and the Socceroos don’t really play on the G very often, do they!?)
As for the World Cup propper, I don’t think the Aussies will progress very far, but there will still be plenty of good matches to watch.
Hello visitors. As you can see, I’ve changed the site yet again! I decided that the extensive set of features that Joomla provides is a bit excessive for my humble little website. I wasn’t using half the features so I’ve decided to go back to a simple WordPress powered blog site.
I’m still running the Gallery in the usual place, but I hope to integrate it fully into this blog interface in the next few weeks, so you don’t have to hop backwards and forwards between the two sections.
I also plan to make my own theme, so I don’t have to be “just another WordPress weblog”. I don’t actually know how to do this, but there seems to be plenty of tutorials available. It could be a very interesting experience. Make sure you stay tuned for all the fun.
You might also notice that I seem to have lost some of my earlier posts. This is because the transition from Joomla back to WP didn’t work very well. I have a backup of the old posts and will restore them soon. I will also move most of the content from the old site over to this one. If there’s somthing specific from the old site that you’re looking for that you can’t find, let me know and I’ll try and fix it up for you.
**EDIT (25 May, 19:10): I have finished restoring all the old posts and comments. I feel complete again.
It seems that everyone wants a bike as cool as mine!
——————-
China’s bike fades to black
By Tianjin
May 23, 2006
ONE of the most iconic symbols of old China — the sturdy, gearless black bicycle ridden by the masses — is running out of customers in Lycra-clad, mountain-biking modern China.
Sales at Flying Pigeon, the state bicycle company set up after the Communist revolution in 1949, have plummeted so far that the company is considering outsourcing to South-East Asia and Africa to cut costs.
Tens of thousands of Flying Pigeon and the other two former state brands, Forever and Phoenix, still travel the cycle lanes of China’s cities. But cars are now king and the cycle lanes are being rebranded highways.
Bicycles have been banned in parts of Shanghai to ease congestion and cycling in Beijing has become a daily suicide mission with 1500 new cars a day swerving onto the capital’s roads.
In a cut-throat market, the only bicycles selling well are racers and mountain bikes. Most up-and-coming Chinese would not be seen dead on Flying Pigeon’s sturdy 20-kilogram bone-shaker with its reinforced crossbar to carry pigs.
Sales have plunged since the 1980s when 4 million cycles were sold each year. Last year 1.5 million were made, 30 per cent of which were exported.
Yet the company does not believe in advertising. “We have no need to advertise. Everybody in China knows Flying Pigeon,” the company’s export director, Wang Dajian, said.
Asked if he was willing to enter a joint venture to help to modernise the company, Mr Wang was horrified. “Never! No! Too much history, too much culture. We can never have joint venture here. Flying Pigeon is too Chinese, too traditional.”
Traditional perhaps, but many of the young employees who make up the 500-strong workforce arrive at work on stylish mountain bikes.
Source: theage.com.au
The house is progressing nicely. Today Jane and I spoke to the vendor, the builder, the electrician and the floor people. This week should see the rendering completed, the painting of the inside done and all the electrical fittings (lights, switches, ducted heating etc). I think next week they will do the tiling and carpets, and at the end of next week we can get the floorboard people in.
We should have a certificate of completion at the end of next week, after the driveway has been finished (they need to dig up what’s there to do the plumbing and power etc). At that stage, we could settle, but they still need to do the landscaping.
Before we know it we will be all ready to move in. It’s very exciting! Hopfully we can settle before the long weekend in June, which would be a perfect time to do the move. Anyone who can lend a hand, leave a message below.
Yesterday I went to a special screening of uber-cool MTB movie Roam. It’s made by The Collective, who I made mention to a few posts ago. I must say, after the ground-breaking work that was done for the original Collective film, I was expecting Roam to be very new and different again. Unfortunately, it was very similar to its predecessor. There were lots of the same riders (including Ryan Leech, who is a superstar), some of the locations were the same as was the camera work. Don’t get me wrong, it was very entertaining and I will probably buy a copy on DVD, but I thought it could have been better.
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