Recently in byteclub Category

As many of you would know, I have just been on a short trip/holiday to Sydney. To distill it to its shortest possible length, I had a "great time." In the likely event that you are interested in slightly more detail, though, I'll try and give a brief outline of the shenanigans I got up to in the Harbour City.

The trip started well, when Jetstar put me in an exit row for the flight out. Smooth flight, clean aircraft, helpful staff - just the thing to get a holiday off on the right foot.

Unfortunately, that was dampened when, upon landing, I discovered that my mobile had died. I was worried that it was on its way out after my trip home to Melbourne, and this suspicion was confirmed when it stubbornly refused to boot up. Not an ideal state of affairs - thankfully, I had my phone book backed up, but a nuisance nonetheless.

Upon arriving in the CBD and checking in at the YHA hostel (conveniently located right next to Central Station), I decided to sort out the "no mobile" predicament, and headed down Pitt Street. The 3 shop I came across ended up making me a deal - I got one of their Skype phones for nothing, in exchange for a 12-month contract. Oddly (but pleasantly) enough, this 12 months will run concurrently with my existing contract, so I effectively agreed to a 5 month contract extension for a new phone. It almost makes up for the fact that I really don't like the phone itself... Ah well, it's functional, I suppose.

Anyhow, I digress. Most of Saturday afternoon was spent meandering around the city, exploring QVB, Circular Quay, and of course the Apple Store!

I was glad to catch up with a new friend of mine in the afternoon - she wasn't feeling very well at all (and had missed exams because of it) so we just hung out and chatted for an hour or so. Good times :)

But the biggest highlight of Saturday was the miniSTUB in Glebe. Enjoyed some good food and great company - thanks Ali, Luke, Jodie, Linda, Matt, Pong, Stilgherrian, and Robyn! Thai food + chocolate affogatos + James Squire + good live music = WIN :)

I'm excited - in 7 hours or so I'll be flying to Sydney for a few days; a chance to catch up with friends from all sorts of networks and circles. One of the highlights of this trip, though, will be a miniSTUB just for me! I can't wait to meet all you crazy Sydney Twitter people - I know a number of you are coming already, so I hope to meet as many as possible tonight...

Now, to go and pack...

Came across a new web browser for OSX today, called Plainview.

It's based on WebKit, attempts to fill an interesting niche: that of presentations. a few browsers have some form of full-screen mode, and some even have "Kiosk mode". Plainview, however, is full-screen by default. While this in itself isn't particularly remarkable, it does have one really nice feature: presentation mode.

Presentation mode allows you to build up a queue of sites, much like you would slides for a Powerpoint/Keynote presentation. You can then move between these "slides" by the use of hotkeys, removing showstoppers like typing URLs, or pausing to load bookmarks. I guess it's similar to that of tabbed browsing, but without all the clutter.

The marketing blurb on the site seems to place more emphasis on the full-screen part, and the presentation mode is presented more as an afterthought. Also, their screenshots don't do much to recommend the product from a visual standpoint. However, for what appears to be more of a proof-of-concept app than anything serious (for now, at least), it looks like a great idea, and one worth following.

Came across the Art of Manliness blog today (via Reddit or HackerNews, can't remember which) and found this post , which gives aspiring "manly men" 100 essential books to read.

It looks like a pretty interesting list - some of them I've already read (like 1984, Call of the Wild, Swiss Family Robinson, etc), others were authors I've been meaning to read (like Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley, and Dostoevsky), and some that I'd never heard of before (which I won't mention to cover my ignorance!)

I'll have to start reading properly again, and this list looks like a good place to start...

I apologise for the delay between posts, but things have been a little hectic of late. However, I'm now back on top of my ironing (sort of!) and can sit down and write a post.

Actually, that's something of a lie - I haven't really been up to much that's exciting, just the hum-drum of the daily grind.

Indoor cricket has been fun, although my team has come up against some of the better teams of late and we've had some rather poor results. We did, however, win this week, and myself and another guy from my team stayed to make up the numbers for another game afterwards. I'm glad I did, because I bowled the best I've ever done in that game, and even got a hat-trick! Pretty pumped about that :-D

Also, my volleyball team at DSTO did rather well, finishing in 2nd place after the regular season finished. The finals start next week, so stay tuned for further developments there.

As far as work goes, I've had a bit more to do of late, but I'll probably put that in a post of its own.

We held the second ever SATUB (South Australian Twitter Underground Brigade) meetup a couple weeks back - I was a little disappointed with the turnout (we had 6 people show up, same as the first time) but the weather was poor, so hopefully we'll get more next time.

Other things on the horizon: I'll be travelling to Sydney for a few days in June, which I'm looking forward to. Will be catching up with friends, and hopefully getting to meet some of the Sydney twitterati for coffee/beer/hugs (@Alegrya, I'm looking at you ;-))

I'm also working on a new design for this blog/site in general, so things should look a bit more organised when I'm done...

Ciao, & God bless!

&y.

Got up to a lot of stuff over the weekend just gone, most of it good fun :-)

Saturday morning was mainly taken up with domestic duties: catching up with ironing, then spending time in the garden. It never ceases to amaze just how grass ends up where it does - and its network of roots is nothing short of insidious. Big nuisance when it starts growing through mulch. Grr.

After that, I took a drive through the beautiful Adelaide hills, up to Gumeracha. It was a stunningly beautiful trip - although I was frustrated at the lack of places to pull over on the road. There were many occasions when I would have loved to stop and take a snap, only to be foiled by the absence of a shoulder or verge of any sort. Most unfortunate.

I did, however, get a few nice photos of the Gumeracha Medieval Fair - the reason I was headed that way in the first place. There were quite a few re-enactment groups present, providing much entertainment in the form of music, dance, food, craftsmanship, and of course, fighting!

After spending an enjoyable couple of hours watching people party like it was 1499, I drove back into the city to say farewell to one of my newer Adelaide friends, who is on her way overseas for 5 months! That ended up going a bit later than I anticipated, so I didn't get home until around 11:30PM!

After church on Sunday morning, I went down to North Adelaide, and enjoyed a Turkish coffee and delicious cupcake at Cikolatté on Melbourne St. After that, I went along to a training/info day for a friend's Ultimate Frisbee team. Throughly enjoyable, although jeans don't really make athletic endeavours easy or comfortable! Enjoyed another great church service at night, and then hung out at Najjar's for a while, chewing the fat and just idling in general. A perfect end to a great weekend.

Needless to say, after all the activity, I found being productive tough going today :-)

&.

P.S. Oh, photos from the fair, etc, can be found in my Flickr photostream.

Came across this from Fake Steve Jobs, loved it, had to repost...

For some strange and inexplicable reason, I've been receiving a whole stack of new Twitter followers - 21 in the past 4 days. For the past few months, the number of new followers was relatively stagnant, not growing much at all.

makes an IBL student healthy, wealthy, and wise. Well, not so much of the wealthy. Maybe not quite so wise, either. Hmm.

As of this morning, I'm trying out coming in to work super-early (like 7am early) and leaving early too. This is not an original idea, but one I've borrowed from a couple other IBL students. The theory goes that allowing oneself to leave early makes managing personal affairs a lot easier, because the shops and amenities are still open after you've finished work. It also means that if, for some reason, you have to stay later anyway, then your flex-time goes up substantially. So, in theory at least, a win-win.

The only downside? Having to get up earlier. Let's hope it works.