Okay, in what should hopefully be the last major thing I add to the website, I have gone and added an Amazon section to the right of this website. Headings include “What I’m Reading”, “What I’m Watching” and “What I’m Listining To”. I have done this for two reasons, one is because I am a complete camwhore and I love adding to my site, the other is because I am hoping it will make me read more and save the embarrassment of having the same book sit under my “What I’m Reading” heading.
I know I have added a lot to the site lately, so I really want to know what people think. I really want to know whether the few people who come here like the way my site looks now or if they think it is becoming cluttered. Is there anything in particular that you do/don’t like? Anything you think they site could do without or anything you think the site is lacking? Comments, please kids! :-)
So, for those of you who don’t know; I am a huge WWdN fan. I think he is a kick ass writer and he often inspires me when I really can’t think of anything to write here. I was looking around today and he had a link to the Planetary Photojournal. As I write this, I am downloading a 44.3MB TIFF File from that website, it’s a picture taken of the horizon that has all the mountain ranges labeled.
My Friday Report will be out this Friday. It hasn’t been a while, but it is finally happening. I have already written it, so I can absolutely guarantee that it will come out this week. From now on version numbers will be as follows
Fridays Repot will be V4.011
This is derived as…
4 = 2004
01 = January
1 = First report this month.
So therefor, if I was to write the 2nd report for November next year, it would be V5.112, get it? If not, click here.
Well I am off to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Special Collector’s Edition), because very sadly, I haven’t watched it yet. I know, it’s pathetic and almost worthy of revoking my geek-hood, but luckily, I’ve done plenty of coding to make up for it! :-)
I have just built a very nice and simple stardate calculator in PHP. It’s pretty simple to install really. Just make sure that you are editing a .php file and not a .html file and add the following code at the start of the file:
require(”starDate.php”);
And the following where you want the stardate to be output to:
echo starDate(time());
Too easy. I will be adding functionality for it to work with graphics and also to act as a counter for your website (i.e. You are the nth visitor since stardate XXXXX.XX). Stay cool kiddies.
Credit goes to John Voysey, who coded the original Javascript that this file was the basis of. Thanks John.
Well day 3 of the holiday was pretty boring, apart from the white water rafting, which was awesome. We all got up very early and packed the cars. The final bills were paid at the Hotel and we checked out and made our way home. We had a 12-non booking for all 8 of us to go to Penrith for an hour of white water rafting. There is an Olympic course there and it was really cool. For anyone who knows about white water rafting, it is a Type-3 river (not a simulated Type-3).
We arrived with about 15 minutes to spare and everyone got into (and out of) their clothes in preparation for the white water rafting. We finally get our gear on and are in the rafts (I will spare you the boring safety talks - lol). We push off and I am sitting next to Peter. We begin practicing scrambling from side to side to even out the boat if we get into trouble and we begin.
After about 3 laps we get to learn how to “surf” a wave. This is where you go to a spot where the white water is really curling back onto itself and you try and stay in position by moving the weight in the boat from side to side. We managed to keep our boat afloat for about 10 minutes straight until we didn’t get on the side enough and the boat flipped completely. I am told that I had a “ride ‘em cowboy” look on my face as it went down, but everyone else was in absolute panic. I thought it was really great that we were going to get wet, up until I came to the surface and saw the look on Mums face. She was panic-stricken and so worried, but not about herself, about Josh and I. She came to the surface spluttering the words, “Where’s Mitch and Josh?! Where’s Mitch and Josh?!” I giggled for a second, until I realized that she was actually putting her life in danger because she wasn’t worrying about her own safety. Well I started floating off and there wasn’t much I could do. I just put my legs up the way the guys told me to and just kicked back and enjoyed the ride. Luckily, Mum was quickly dragged out of the water and everyone was fine.
Josh, Steven, Myself and our Instructor has one last “surfing” experience, when we purposely took it into the hardest part of the course with the intent of flipping the boat. I felt my side go up fast, so to make the most I jumped and did a back flip off the side. It felt pretty cool.
Other than driving home, nothing much happened at all. Mum was *very* sick and still is, and all in all it was a pretty good holiday.
I have been home now for about 48 hours. I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken last night and got my second lot of food poisoning from them. My message to the boys and girls at KFC: I don’t care how many secret spices you have, you need to make your chick not make people barf. Anyway, I want to post a wrap-up of my holiday.
After I posted the last entry we left the beach and went back to the hotel. Things were boring so we decide to go to the Star City Casino. Dad, Peter and I all make our way there and after being rejected for entry because we were still wearing thongs, we return home to get properly dressed. Our second attempt is far more successful and we get into the casino and have a great time. We spent the whole time watching Peter winning at Pontoon and just chatting, it was great fun. I was tempted to pull out a 50, but I resisted the urge, wisely so, considering my current financial state.
We are making our way home to meet the girls for dinner. We get close to the sign that says, “cash in your chips here” or something like that. Peter turns to me with two $25 chips in his hand and smiles. “Let’s go to that $25 Blackjack table. We’ll have one bet each. If we win; we win, and if we lose; we lose.” Under normal circumstances I would *never* gamble someone else’s money, but Peter convinced me.
We sat down, side by side, and threw down our $25 chips. Peter turns to me and says, “all I need now is an Ace and I’ll be happy.” I nod in agreement as moments later we both get dealt an Ace. We both laugh and watch the rest of the cards being dealt out. Dad whispers in our ears, “all you need now are picture cards and we can get out of here rich!” Before we knew what has happened; Peter gets dealt a Queen and I get dealt a Jack. Blackjack for the both of us!
We cannot believe it. It was really a one-in-a-million thing that happened and it helped pay for all our dinner that night. We had collectively won about $150, which I think is pretty impressive considering we sat on a table with a $5 maximum for most of the day.
After that, we went and had dinner. Pretty straight forward, then a stroll on the harbor before we all went to bed ready for the final day of our holiday.
Well I am sitting inside a little Internet Café, because I am a little bored. The surf was flat and breaking too late to go body surfing and I didn’t want to go into any of the shops for fear of spending money that I can’t *really* afford.
This morning we went on a speed boat ride from Manly Wharf out past the heads near there. Apart from the boat having engine problems it was a really fun ride. Sometimes we were hitting bigger waves and going about 1-2 meters in the air, it was really cool.
Well this place charges an arm and a leg for it’s net usage and I’m not really that desperate to blog. So, yes Kevin, I will be seeing someone about my Computer/Internet addicion. I am off to look at a few shops to kill some boredom, with any luck I will find a Sony shop and manage to buy a new battery for my Palm Pilot. Stay cool kids. This is Mitch, over and out. :-)
From: “Mitch Malone” [via e-mail]
If you are reading this, I now have the ability to send emails to my weblog and have them posted as entries. Cool huh? </geek>
Yay! It worked! It’s now 9am and I’ve been awake for about an hour. Hell, I almost got 12 hours of sleep, but at least I am now going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. I feel good, baby! Rawk! \m/
Well I am off on holidays tomorrow, so I am going to try and set up my weblog so that I can email the program and still write weblog entries. That way, I can use my phone to make a few blog entries while I am away, sounds like fun, eh?
You know, one of the integral parts of being a real Geek, is that, every now and then you will do something so incredibly geeky, that you say to yourself, ‘holy crap, I’m such a geek!’ I just did that then. I am preparing to go away on holidays and part of my preparation involves making sure that I can write in my weblog while I am away. Pathetic isn’t it? NO!
I have some lavender incence burning and two tablets on stand-by in order to knock myself out; with any luck I might get some sleep tonight and get my sleep patterns back on track before I go away with the family on our weekend holiday.
Today was a pretty average day, but saw the downcoming of the MITCH @ Home project. I guess the point of the project was to learn, so I guess having the server stop working is a good thing. I mean, it’s not like it was actually being used for anything at the moment anyway. Apache has died, well and truly, but the rest is working. I think I might download the latest release anyway, and then give it a go. I also think I might try and save up for another 128MB Ram stick for the server; it should really give it that much more power.
Well I need sleep, so that means no computer. For some reason, the computer makes me think too much and I can’t sleep. I’m off to read my FHM Magazine and take a few pills to knock myself out. Until we meet again! :-)
Wow, what a long time it feels since I have written in my weblog. It’s only been a day or so, but it feels longer because of all that has happened in that time. In the last 24 hours I have:
- Set up my own apache server
- Ruined my modem and fixed it again (4 times)
- Configured my modem to have access to the outside world (i.e. you)
- Began the MITCH @ Home project
The “MITCH @ Home project” (M@H) is a project to set up my own web server for HTTP, FTP, SSH, along with Eggdrop Bot capability. So far, most of this project is functional; the only thing lacking is security. Right now it is very secure, but personally I want to learn a lot more about such things and improve on it. It would take a professional hacker to break in right now (and if they are so bored that they would hack my linux box just to download my weblog, then they deserve it - lol), but when it comes to security I am a little paranoid.
Okay, so about ten minutes ago I made my first real news posting on the Digital Heroine Network. It was about the landing of NASA’s “Spirit” Mars Exploration Rover-A on Mars (Go here for up-to-the-minute updates, btw) and it really got me a little curious. I remembered a friend telling me a little about SETI@Home once; that you can download data from electronic telescopes and analyze the data on your computer.
Well I have the bandwidth to waste now so I figured, what the hey, I’m going to give it a shot. Right now my processor usage hasn’t been below 90% for over 25 minutes and I am still only 10% through my first data unit. I basically intend on running this 24/7 from my system to see if anything interesting comes through, at least for a few weeks. I am making a page that will display my SETI progress, feel free to have a look around when I get it up.
Long live thy Martians!
Check out my impressive looking screen shot
UPDATE: I have just added a cool statistics graphic on the right hand side of this page. It will automatically update with my SETI@Home Statistics. Right now I am a newbie and I am still only about 40% through my first data unit, so it doesn’t look too impressive.
UPDATE: Woo hoo! I have just finished my first ever SETI@Home work unit.
I haven’t been to bed before midnight in a long time. Lately I have been finding it so hard to sleep because of the heat of my bedroom. I finally got to sleep at a decent time (9:30 pm) and it felt good because it meant that I could get up and start the day early and get a lot done.
One hour and fifteen minutes; that’s how long I managed to sleep before waking up soaked to the bone with sweat and having had a really horrible dream. Now I won’t be able to sleep until very late at night and I will wake up late in the day and get nothing done. Gee that shits me. :-(
The Digital Heroine Network needs you!
Are you a bit of a geek, or perhaps, a major geek?
Do you ever program, in any language?
Do you often read geek news and want to share it with others?
Do you hate not knowing where to go when your code doesn’t work?
If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then salvation is at hand. Myself and some fellow geeks have teamed up, in an effort to try and build a community for geeks and programmers and other like minded people. The website is capable of housing discussions, articles, chat, just about anything you’d expect from a site such as Slashdot, with the added advantage of being small enough so that you don’t disappear as a number in the crowd.
So go ahead and sign up. Then create some content for the site. Every single user has just as much right to create content for the website. I personally plan on using it for writing about the geekier stuff that I leave off this website and programming discussions, but how you use the community is completely up to you.
Registration is open to everyone and anyone, so don’t just sign up, tell a friend! Help us make it a great community by coming along and having fun! Enjoy!
I have just uploaded another photo gallery for my New Years Eve Photos. Not much there really, but some okay shots. I’d really like to do a long weblog entry about the party and the entire goings on, but right now it is too hot to concentrate.
At present, in my bedroom, it is 32°C (89.6°F) and way too hot to be comfortable. That is with the air conditioning on and it has been on for about the last 11 days straight. Down stairs, where they have a second air conditioning unit it is still 30°C (86°F), which is still too hot, but walking up the stairs with the 2°C climate change feels like the difference between the polar ice caps and walking on the sun. It has been so hot that I can’t remember the last time I didn’t wake up feeling sick from the heat. Even now, I feel absolutely awful.
Note: I have also added a photo to the entry “Look at my lizard…” so scroll down and have a look.
Holy potatos Batman, it’s a lizard! Kick ass, my little brother, Josh, just bought two really cool baby lizards. About 8 months ago, he applied to get an animal liscence in order to keep snakes and lizards and stuff legally. Well now he has finally put it to use by buying a couple of Bearded Dragons. I have taken some photos of the pair, but right now I am having major issues with my USB ports, so I will try and get them uploaded as soon as possible.
