Congratulations, you have passed

I can now say with all truthfulness that I passed my driving test first time! Something that rather irritatingly has been denied me for ever since I failed my first test in the UK. You see I have just converted to an Australian license, and to do so I had to answer a serious of very complicated questions about the Australian highway code.

The tests are computerised and require that you sit in a little booth and with a touch screen and an optional telephone for audio. It all felt a bit strange being surrounded by nervous teenagers all desperate to pass and me hoping they fail. Its clear to me that half the people in here should never be allowed to drive, ever. In fact I should be employed by Vic Roads. Who sound to me more like a contemporary artist; "'ello darlin'. Vic Roads, Artist, winner of the Turner prize, you may 'ave 'erd of me. Fancy a dwink?" but are in fact responsible for dishing out driving licenses. But I digress, Where was I, oh yes - Vic Roads should employ me to vet all the applicants based on nothing more than my immediate and no doubt biased opinion on who I feel should be allowed to drive.

Anyway I rather smugly completed the 32 questions in record time. Terri, the officer on duty, was somewhat shocked at the speed at which I completed the quiz. I finished so fast that at first she thought there had been an error with the machine. She was equally shocked that I aced the test. I made sure the smug grin on my face remained as I caught the eye of as many eager greasy teenagers as possible. The poor nervous fools.

I was also very pleased that Terri choose not to cut up my UK license. She clearly respected my superior intellect and driving prowess. Apparently they are rather lax at that office and often bend the rules. She instead discreetly stamped it "VOID". Which is good news, because an Australian void stamp means bugger all in the UK and so I know have two licenses. Of course I could just have ordered a new one from the DVLC in the UK, but now I wont have to bother and can keep my old skool green and pink paper license.

The only downside to the whole experience is the photo on my card. She kindly took it twice, as the first one made me look like a serial killer. However the second one, and the one I am stuck with for ten years, makes me look like a fat jolly retard. Ho hum. I think I would have preferred the serial killer look.

If you fancy a go you can take a practice test here:

A kangaroo jumps into the road ahead of you. Should you:

A: Try to avoid it by swerving wildly.

B: Apply your brakes firmly and smoothly.

C: Accelerate hard and hope to catch something for diner.

Dammit, if you're going to fellate yourself, do it on pure strength and flexibility or don't do it at all

Go take a look. Its well worth a quick read. Its the blog of girl who works in a large video store that carries a lot of porn.

David Hyatt
Gotta blog something at least more than once in a week. So theres a link.

The Little Green Desktop
I could be doing something usefull with my life. But instead I am looking at sites like that.

I so have ADD.

btw

The new version isnt uploaded yet.

Hand Coded

In less than an hour and using a third of the code I have replicated the lash up of a layout that GoLive put together. My version is faster and has far greater compatibility across browsers.

Oh yes, I never really explained why I was messing with GL and DW in the first place.

You see I am often called upon to recommend or provide an opinion on either DW or GL. Whilst I am happy to do this I actually didn’t really have an opinion either way. Most of what I knew came from other peoples recounts of using the sw. The problem is I now don’t feel inclined to recommend either.

DW not looking good

After spending ten minutes with DreamWeaver trying to edit tables I am not impressed. It was useless for editing the bizarre nonsense that GoLive had written, and when I decided to try to recreate some table from scratch it was just as unhelpful.

I've used DW before, but only really for creating multi rollovers in JavaScript. Which it does just fine.

But the support for table editing is worse than pointless. It just doesn’t seem to do anything useful.

I should qualify my use of the word useful. For something like DW to be useful it has to be quicker and easier than for a similar task to be carried out by hand. So far it is not. I just cant get on with it at all. Its just rubbish.

Also on my PB G4 screen it feels cramped which quickly becomes annoying.

It does have one thing in its favour: The icon for it is nicer than GoLive.

And that’s it really. There endith my experiment with graphical web design tools. I shall never touch them again.

I should add that a while ago I looked at Quark Xpress 5. I was surprised at how well it turned a page into a web page. I don’t know what the code was like, but it all looked good in the web browser.

GoPants

Its official. Adobe GoLive is pants. It really is shite. I dunno if its better or worse than Dreamweaver, I shall find out soon enough.

But I do know enough to be sure that I shall never be using it again.

I really cant see what it is good for. OK so it may have some site management tools and stuff, which I'll admit I haven't even looked at, but the basic features are useless. So who cares about bells and whistles.

It has a seemingly nice feature that allows the use of a layout grid upon which you can place text or picture boxes. You can then easily move and resize them allowing quick and easy layout of complicated elements. However it has severe limitations. Its essentially just an interface for laying out tables. But if you have a table cell that is auto filled with large amounts of copy as mine is then it becomes a nightmare. You cant really set the span values for cells. Not without dipping into the unusable slow and shite editor it has. And if you have to hand code what's the point of this tool.

It also kept changing my pasted in code for the blogger stuff. Why cant it just leave it alone! It kept, without warning, encoding stuff that it shouldn't. Which meant I continuously had to keep changing it back via the editor.

Even the basic HTML code it writes is a nightmare.

I also expected there to be some drag and drop java scripts or something. On this site for instance when you click a link to a picture it opens a window and makes it an exact size etc... which is done with JavaScript. This is a pretty common thing to do and I had expected some cool stuff in GoLive to help me make those. But no. Once again I had to use the code editor and coble together some JS to make it work. I am pants with JS so I had hoped it would make some uselfull stuff for me.


Essentially due to the mess GoLive made of my site I am now going to recode the whole lot by hand in my trusty copy of BBEdit.


Now I am not a pro web designer person by any means.

So maybe I am missing something here?

Is GoLive useless to all but the really stupid and lazy who wont learn some basic scripting & markup?

I'm going to give DreamWeaver a try as well to see if that’s any good.

I am not hopefull.

Site news

Most of the hard work for the new site design has now been done. There is still more to come though. I'm pleased with design for the most part. It wont win any awards, but its simple, easy to read and fast. Which is how I like things. :-)

I'm not that happy with the photos in the Visualise section. I applied a medium level of jpeg compression and I think they look a bit flat and gritty. But I guess its a trade off between quality and speed. I wonder if I should make some high res versions available. There are plenty more photos to come btw. Not that I am king of photography or anything, but its good to share and some people may find them interesting or like the photos.

Well I think that’s enough for a Sunday afternoon.

I might have a quick game of WC3 now I think. I need the practice after dd235 spanked me 2 to 1 last night. I need to work out the other Night Elf units. I think I need to tech up more and use the flying units and the magic druid dudes.

Update check

Just checking stuff is working.....

Graphical Web Design Tools

These things are useless. Its impossible to do anyting usefull with them. Its so frustrating.

More on the reasons why I am doing this to myself later.

site updates coming

I'm having problems....

aha! It would help if I published to the right place.

Geek notice

OSX server has a huge gapping hole in the mail server. One of clients is getting spamed to bits. I dont have all the details as of it. Apple doesnt have a fix yet either.

Geek Post

I'm thinking of getting a hardware router for home. I came across what looks like a handy article here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,36134,00.asp

I'm thinking of getting the Linksys LBEFSR41.

Cost to me is only $174 ex gst. Pretty good value I reckon.

Its either that or something from Netgear. I'm not sure what yet.

Note to self: Try not to say "roo-ter" when refering to Routers. Try to say "row-ter" instead. The word root has other meanings down here.

Officer Tony Tancredi

Damm. I got a parking ticket. The annoying thing is it sort of wasn't my fault. Apparently I was in violation of code 0745 - Parked not facing direction of travel.

How was I to know you couldn’t park facing the other way?!
I suppose I could have read the local high way code, but that’s not the point. Well, it might be the point but I don’t care.

Its a bloody stupid law and I am annoyed. The fine was only $60, but its the principal of the thing.

I take great care with my parking. I always have. The only other ticket I have ever received was a work related parking offence; Basically I was forced to park somewhere I knew I'd get a ticked, but the job had to be done, and work picked up the tab anyway. So if I had known about the stupid little law I wouldn’t have done it. I'd write to my MP if I was a registered voter and a citizen.

Yours Faithfully


Bloody Annoyed of Melbourne

Geek News

http://graphicpower.com/

Blimey. He's not happy.

You cant blame him really. Its pretty sucky of Apple to ban reporters just for printing rumours and opinion. Apple feel, rightly perhaps, that rumour sites hurt sales. Apple say people hold off purchases because a rumour site predicts a new product just around the corner. Apple are trying to smooth out sales figures. So don't expect to hear big announcements at the a Mac World Expo any more.

Perhaps if Apple had a current range of compelling products people wouldn't speculate so much about coming releases. Also if the current range of Macs was strong enough people would be happy to buy now as opposed to waiting for what may be around the corner. Everybody with even half an interest in Apple's current HW line knows its old tech.

And of course its not like Apple are getting desperate or anything. Oh no, its not Apple that have hoards of unsold G4 iMacs, eMacs and PM G4s. They don’t need to clear out old stock and fast. Watch out for eMac bargains in a store near you soon.

However do expect to see updated PowerMac G4s at MWNW. Updated that is to at least XServe spec. If not at MWNW then take a look in six weeks.

The Eagle has landed

A Blizzard War Craft III eagle that is. That little baby winged it way over night to arrive in my warehouse this morning. I was not expecting it until Friday. So once visual confirmation had been made, I was understandably excited. WCIII is mine. Its in my hands. Now enter the Fun!

I should add (or should I?), that no less than four people commentated on how sad I was. They couldn’t understand why I was buying Software; with my own money, for me. A couple of people offered to "lend" me a copy, but when I pointed out that I needed my own boxed serial numbered copy to enable me to play on Battle Net, they slowly backed away smiling and nodding.

The fact that I had it couriered from Sydney to be sure to get my hands on one of the first copies that entered the country failed to enhance my image.

But I don’t care.

Just don’t bother phoning for next few weeks.

Stop Moaning

So I have stopped moaning. I feel more positive today.
As has been pointed out to me, Cold Calling is just the start of a long term relationship with a client etc... Which is very true and I know this. I am just impatient and want everything all at once. I should take some of my own advice really, which I only to happy to dish out to other malcontents.
(if you would like some of that advice please email me at the usual address)

Its good for me to be challenged and to be in a position where I have to learn stuff. I spend far to much of my time being Mr Know-it-all-pants. So its a humbling experience to have to concede that you don’t know what you are doing.

I've had a nagging cold all week as well. Which is almost better. I hate being sick. Being sick sucks.

Plus I haven't been able to get to Hapkido, which is really annoying. Sickness and work are getting in the way. I need to get some balance back into my life. Once this cold is over I'm going to be making some changes around here. Oh yes, "La Casa del Moi" will be ruled with an iron fist from now on.

Hmmm... This has been a very honest and introspective few posts. Don’t expect it to happen too often!! ;-)
Its back to the usual irreverent nonsense from now on. Actually irreverent is too kind for my ramblings. Irreverent suggests intelligent or witty satirical comment. I think "inane nonsense" would be a better description.

Unreadable

This site is unreadable in Mac OS9. I wonder how it looks on Windows? Time for a site update I think.

B::O::R::E::D

I am so bored. This job is so boring and this is the digital equivalent of scratching my name in the desk. The only thing I have to do is cold call people. And I hate that. Its so pointless. Its just not my bag baby. It sucks. Cold calling is so intrusive. I don’t like being cold called so why should anyone else. As if people pick up the phone and think oh yes, this stranger seems like a good person to buy computers from, I've never heard of him or his company but I'll invite him over to quote on the major purchase I am about to make.

So here I am bored with a negative attitude. This is never going to work.