Sad, so very sad

The girl at the local Blockbuster video store not only remembered my but remembered my password. Its so shameful. Do I really get so many videos out that I am now among that elite consumer class known as "a regular"? Why cant I be remembered at the swankiest restaurants in town, or the coolest bars, or even just the local cafe? Even the hairdressers would do.

But no I am a "face" at the local Blockbuster super store. Sheesh....

Whilst considering this it occurred to me that staff at a video store know an awful lot about you. Maybe even more than your bank!

Firstly they have all your contact details, date of birth, drivers license number, and your mothers maiden name. They also have your credit card number. They can get a fair idea of your financial state from a number of key indicators. For instance:

1. Does he rent DVD or VHS movies?
The implication being that you are more well off if you have a DVD player

2. PS2 or PS1 games?
PS2 owners have more cash, and are prepared to spend it on frivolities.

This type of information puts them on a par with your bank.

But the video store has more info gathering techniques up its sleeve.
They know the kind of movies you watch, how often and how many. This is perhaps a truer indicator of the type of person you are and your current social situation. For instance:

1. Good even spread of movies of various genres rented on 3-5 nights of the week.
Means you have nothing to do ever and except watch movies.
You have seen most things in the store and will watch anything.

2. One Hollywood action blockbuster every couple of weeks.
Means you may have a decent balance in your social life, but you have little taste.

3. Rents anything once a week on a Friday night and a huge selection of chips and dips and soft drinks.
Clearly a sad lonely workaholic whose highlight of the week is a movie in front of the TV on a Friday night. This has now become so ingrained in them that even if they were offered a drink after work, they would have to decline, for fear of not getting to the video store before all the good new releases got rented out.

I could go on....

Of course all of these things depend on various factors such as age, sex, do you rent alone, rent in couples or rent in a group, and so on.

Your video rental habits do not lie. You can lie to the bank, oh sure that’s easy, but you cannot lie to yourself and you cannot lie to Blockbuster.

New thing at the top

Yep, I have at last made a new thing to go at the top of the website. Also known as a Masthead in publishing circles ;-)

I think I now need to tweek the rest of the site design to reflect the new thing at the top of the webpage.

I think I need some more pics for the circles, but I guess they will be OK for a while. I thought about doing those sinister blinking eye rollover things. But then thought better of it. ;-)

Stickies unstuck

I didnt get a backup of stickies either. I assumed they would have a data file stored in my user folder. But I cant find one. Maybe the note data is stored in the app. I dont know. Some investigation is required. Under Classic they are stored in the "Preferences" folder. I cant find any related files under OSX.
All my precious notes gone forever. :-(

Drat

I just knew I would forget to backup something. I forgot my blasted network configuration. All those well configured settings for various different networks and ISPs have vanished.

Its not too bad though, as I now only use my cable modem, and I have the details for my main ISPs.

Its just annoying to forget something!!

OSX Redux

Like a geek possessed, my hands seemingly not under my control, I did a clean install of OSX. I hadnt meant too, but for some reason when I sat down it just happened. There is something cathartic about a clean install.

Actually it wasnt totaly unexpected. I had been considering it for a while. I had been running the core OSX system in a 2GB partition. The remainder of the disk contained OS9 and all other apps and data. This partitioning is a hang over from when I used OS9 more, and it wasnt working out. It is a clear indicator of how OSX has improved, not just itself but 3rd party apps as well, that I have now reversed this situation. I now have a 1GB partition for classic and the rest given over to OSX.

The only reason I now need Classic OS9 is for Quark Xpress. Even StarCraft is Carbonised. So I reckon I shall never need to boot natively into OS9 again. :-)
They sound a little like proverbial "famous last words", but we shall see.

lard

Today I am 86kilos. Which according to onlineconversion.com is 13.5 Stone, 190 Pounds, 0.086 Metric Tons, or 66358.02469135803 Apothecarie Scruples.

In June of this year I was a blobberous 15.3 Stone (fully clothed) according to the "Print your weight" machine in Boots the Chemist. So 86 is a great improvement. But a long way off the 10.5 Stone I was when I was 21.

My actual measured weight loss has been slow, but this is due to the huge amount of training I am doing; I am putting on muscle in place of the fat.

So to measure my fat loss I am using the tried and tested method of checking how tight my jeans are. :-)

There is still a lot of lard to lose. But I am getting there.

Telephones

You may consider it an easy task buying a new phone. I don't mean mobile phones. I mean normal house phones. After all they have been around for a while. It is however a tricky task. One that has taken a gigantic amount of research and some serious consideration.

Its all very complicated because of the configuration of the lines into my house and the availability of sockets. I have multiple lines for business and personal use, but my landlord will not allow the running of cables in the house. I had wanted digital cordless phones because of this, but in the end we decided to go for a cheaper interim solution. I had decided on four corded phones, but I ended up with three as Harvey Norman only had three left of the kind I wanted and so we struck a deal and saved over AUS$100. They also chucked in a free Doro Caller ID unit. Not to bad. :-)

Anyhow these are the phones:
One very stylish and functional Doro X30 (black).
Two Doro X20s(One in terracotta and one in the light green).


I had considered getting wireless phones. But this is a very confusing, and expensive, market. With about 8 different wireless standards, and even more stupid marketing terms to describe them, it is very hard to know what you are buying.

Anyway I have a cordless phone at the moment, which for a while didn’t work. Its a UK phone and after a bit of investigation on the internet I discovered that I needed to do some chopping of cables to make it work here in Australia.

The other annoying thing is that you cannot get two line phones in Australia. These allow you to connect two phone lines to the phone with the obvious benefits that it brings. So I had considered importing phones meaning that I would then need less handsets. But then importing telecoms equipment can have its own problems.

Confusing isn't it!?

Mac OS X Software

This guy has written some great stuff as well.

SharePoints

A great bit of freeware. Why oh why did Apple leave out the ability to configure share points in OSX??!!
mmm...m aybe it was to force people to buy OSX Server!

In OSX by default you can only share your "Public" folder.
SharePoints gives you the ability to share stuff again. And its free!!

Hit me baby one more time

I seem to be getting more hits on my site. I am now averaging more than one unique hit a day. I think its about two on average now. :-)
And thats not me and a relative. Its me and a stranger.

Lager

Top Three Aussie Lager:
3. VB
2. Coopers Pale Ale
1. Carlton Crown Lager

Please note: List is subject to change.

Please also note: List will change when I am sober and can remember more Aussie lagers.

All you fascists are bound to lose

Which has nothing to do with very much, excpet that I'm listening to Billy Brag at the moment, and using Mozilla and thinking about Microsoft.
Anywhow I have noticed how some web browsers choose to import MS IE bookmarks by default. Mozilla does this. Which is OK. But what would be really handy is a shared bookmarks file for all the browsers in OSX. Because if I bookmark a page in a non IE browser it doesnt show up in the others.
I guess I am a little bit weird in that I seem to use three browsers at the same time. But thats not the point damm it. My bookmarks should be non application specific.

updates...

CSS updated. Also made blog frame wider to make it easier to read.

Plus its been two hours and I'm still using Mozilla. Surely a record.

Another reason for cable...

is that I can download MP3s quicker than I can listen to them. Plus iTunes radio now becomes useable. The Optus service really is the king of all services. Given that I only pay about AUS$80 a month and get telephone and cable TV for that cost as well, you really couldnt ask for more.

Kylie Minogue

Kylie Minogue played at the end of my road last night. I however was watching Billy Elliot on video and couldnt be bothered to go and watch. She only did two songs and could be heard clearly from my house so I dont think I missed much. Billy Elliot is much better entertainment anyway. :-)

site update

Time for a site design update I think. I need to sort some CSS issues and add a few whizzy things and some little graphics.

mozilla.org

I had all but given up on mozilla for OSX, but someone suggested I grab the latest build, so I did, and it actually seems to work! In fact it works just dandy. I am very surprissed, people have obviously been hard at work as previous builds have been unuseable.

I am not sure that I like it, and it still has a few issues, not least of which is the often jerky scrolling on larger pages. But all in all it seems OK so I think I'll give it try.

Mastering your Netstats

It seems the average use is 75MB per day. So I can DL 750MB perday on average.

I have just noticed that Optus give you a two week grace period to start with. I dont think I have enough disk space...

622kbps

mmm.....cable modem

The very cool thing about the optus modem is that I just connect to it via ethernet and use DHCP to configure everything. Very nice and simple. Which means it should hock up to Apple's Airport very easily. :-)

560kb/sec!!!!!

Whilst D/L from Apple's site. It just seems to get faster. I need some bigger DLs to give it a chance to really ramp up the speed.

The only snag is the Optus "Ten times average use" policy. Which amounts to around 75MB per day over a two week rolling period. I can see how I could hit that fairly quickly.

Cabled up

I now have cable. This so rules. I am getting 85k per sec at the moment. Which is pretty darn speedy. :-)