I know its been quiet around here lately. I just wanted to reassue everyone that I’m still here, and will still continue to update this site. A lot has changed lately, much of which I’m not quite ready to talk about just yet, but I’ll update the site as soon as I’m able to.
Jeremy discovered that he’s been publishing
stuff on the web for 10 years, and issued the challenge…
Anyone else wanna showcase your ancient web sites? The more ugly and personal the better!
I certainly haven’t been at it for 10 years (probably closer to 8 years), but my personal home page has been through several evolutions. Each of the versions is named after the dominant background colour of the page…
“Grey” - Was the original version of my home page at http://www.senet.com.au/~jim/ … I can’t find it online anywhere anymore, but I do still have the HTML on my home machine. Grey was created using MS-DOS Edit, and was basically an edit of my Netscape Bookmarks file. In fact the page was created because my bookmark menu got too long.
“Blue” - Came a couple of years later. I downloaded a Beta of Microsoft Frontpage (probably 97) so I created a brand new site with it to celebrate. Wayback machine has a copy of “blue” from July 1997. Despite the promise on the home page I didn’t ever update the site. IE5 broke the ActiveX puzzle thingy and I never got around to fixing it. This was obviously during my “pro-Microsoft” phase.
“Black” replaced “blue” early in 2000 sometime. Again I think acquiring another web design tool prompted a brand new web site. Although this one was updated with new photos from time to time it largely didn’t change at all. The final version of “black” has been linked from my weblog ever since I did my current design. Black started life on SE Net, but was later moved to work, them moved again when I got my own domain name.
“Blog” - Okay, its not a colour, but its been the most sucessfull oy web sites. I installed MT on a server at work to play with it, and it went through a couple of host names there before it got moved onto www.jimohalloran.com where it now lives. Initially my blog used Jeremy’s CSS, but that was soon changed to a very similar design which moved a few things and had a maroon theme instead of Jeremy’s blue. Later the design was changed again to what you see here today. There’s still things I’d like to sort out with the design, but I’m very happy with it.
My blog seems to have been the only site which I’ve actually stuck with and kept updating. In fact I my blog is almost 12 months old now!
Unfortunately the wayback machine doesn’t have copies of some of my other early web design efferts either. The first pages I did for Pedders was a beuty (I think they (the customer) called the background colour “porn Star Yellow”), and the KCS one wasn’t much better.
For those who’ve noticed its been a bit quiet here lately… Last Saturday afternoon I lost one of my contact lenses, which has meant a trip to the Optomitrist to get a new prescription, then the usuall three day wait for the new lenses and the usual large bill as well. Of course I lost it immediately prior to last weeks race meeting so I had to miss that, and I’ve been unable to work this week either because I can’t even read a 25 point font without my contacts.
As of this morning I’ve got new lenses, so I’m back in business again.
After a very hot day yesterday (top temperature of 37.9 deg C), the area of Adelaide that I live in got a pretty impressive hail storm late yesterday afternoon. I’d been working at home, and I heard the dogs start barking, then the rumble of the thunder. Of course, I went outside to have a look because I like watching storms.
The cloud formations were like nothing I’ve ever seen before, so after watching them for about a minute I decided to go back inside and get the digicam to get some photos.
When I got back outside, I took a few cloud photos, and I could hear this continous rumble, like thunder, or a heavy wind in the trees, but it just didn’t stop. After a couple of minutes the rumble seemed to get closer.
By the time it was about a street away I realised it was hail, and figured I’d better get under the verandah just in case. A few seconds later we had chunks of ice raining down on us.
Well, the hail was being blown in at an angle, and was landing about a metre in from the edge of the concrete, then bouncing once before it hit our back windows (which are “protected” but a verandah about 3-4 metres deep).
As you can see in the photos, some of the hail stones were the size of 20c pieces (an Ausiie 20c piece is about an inch across for anyone reading this who doesn’t know)! Afterwards it looked like we’d had snow on the lawn. Now, the roads around here are covered in leaves, gum nuts and crap which was litterally “stonned” out of the trees.
I’ve never seen anything like it, like I said, it was very impressive.
This sounds like me…
I don’t really go to bars or parties or participate in the stereotypical “dating scene.” Remember, I’m a geek. I have an aversion to big groups unless I’m standing in front with a microphone. I’d rather stay at home and read something. Or go to a movie with some friends. I really don’t need all the fake pressures, expectations, and other bullshit that goes with the dating scene. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m a little surprised at how many people do put up with it.
… but its not. Jeremy is talking about himself here. I can feel his pain though.
When my wife and I met, neither of us were actively looking for a relationship, and neither of us are really into the whole dating, bars and clubs thing. As it happened, meeting first in IRC worked out well, because it gave us a chance to get to know each other without having to make that “first impression”.
Later when we did meet, it was as friends, where there was no pressure or expectation that it would ever lead to anything more than that. That it eventually worked out that way is something that we’re both grateful for, but thats not what we were looing for in the beginning.
I’m back from the show, and convinced that Murphy is alive and well. It was one of those trips where nothing goes right from start to finish…
1) TNT Lost our Gear. We freighted 7 boxes of gear to Sydney for the show. TNT lost 6 of them, and didn’t deliver them until late on Monday (fortunately Monday was a set up day).
2) The Expo Hire people didn’t deliver all of the furniture that we ordered. Finally got the last of our benches late on Monday after a lot of hassle.
3) USB Port on one of the machines died, as did the USB keyboard we’d planned to use.
4) Mid way through the first day of the show, we were hit by the MSBlast worm and had to shut down all of our machines and install AV software and patches.
5) Strong head winds delayed my arrival back in Adelaide.
6) I lost my car parking ticket, and had to find someone to let me and my car out of the car park.
7) In my car, on the way home, just when I thought nothing more could go wrong I got lost trying to find a shortcut between my normal route home and where I wanted to get dinner from!
Despite all of the porblems, our stand looks good and everything worked well.
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Despite a few dramas the day before (heavy rain, flash flooding), our wedding went off without a problem, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the occasion. Last week was spent touring around the south east on our Honeymoon. We both had a great time, and we’re feeling refreshed and ready to get back to the real world again.
586 messages in my inbox when I arrived back at work yesterday, and the usual pile of SysAdmin and upport work has kept me pretty busy yesterday and so far this morning. I’ll probably be pretty quiet here for a few days to come as I get things sorted out.
I’ll post some pictures from the wedding in my next entry.
Just a quick post to let everyone know that I won’t be posting here for a a bit over a week. Tomorrow I’m getting married, and next week we’re going on our honeymoon. More from me when I get back!
Strangely enough I actually seemed to spend most of today hacking at software… Very unusual for me lately. Even better I’ve been hacking in Perl, and learning a fair amount in the process. All good stuff, and I hope to be able to release fairly large patch for LogWatch in the next couple of days.
