Law Society Big-To-Do

Last night Kasey and I went to the Law Society Ball here in Brisbane. For family and friends who wanted to see our swanky outfits here are the photos


Kasey and Justine



Jusstine (left) Kasey and Gina (Right)



Kasey, Justice Kirby, Chris


Kasey and I :)


Check out the flash!


End on a good note :D

IT was a lot of fun and the speeches were excellent. Plus all the free grog you can pour down your gullet! I am paying for it today though. All and all well worth it.

Too many projects

Not sure if other people feel this way but I have soooo many small and major projects going on at the same time I never seem to complete any on time (my time frame).

I do my day job but what about the evenings? Do I spend them painting my war gaming figures? Programming online geek tools for D&D? Levelling my character(s) in warhammer? Or getting those plants in the ground that we bought ages ago, or have been grown by seed? Or should I be working out?

It is funny. At work I have this same problem but I organise myself, at home it all goes out the window! At work I use Freemind (google it) to organise my projects and time, it was also used to time the wedding tasks etc. I do have one for home but I never open it ;-)

Ahh well - that’s life.

At least I finished my linux server! (See post below).

Damn the man!

It has been a long long time since I have posted but I hope to have a few more things to write about these days.

Lately I have been on a quest to damn the man! Which means I am F'N tired of paying for shit because some monopoly forces us to. When I say paying for shit I mean MONEY or even worse MY TIME (which is worth way more then money :P ) The two big offenders?

Phone and TV

Both of these areas are full of big fat companies who make loads of cash exploiting you either by charging way too much for a simple service OR in the case of TV waisting your life away with commercials for shit I don't need to buy.

So! the quest has come up with a few treasures.
The first to get the boot is the phone company. We got a new service called Naked ADSL which is a new ADSL style that does not require an activated phone line! :D So you call the phone company and tell them to go drown themselves. Next you contract for your Naked ADSL. They kindly provide you with ADSL over a phone line AND give you VoIP with a REAL phone number.

So we now have
* A real phone number
* Free calls anywhere in ozzie land
* No fk'n bill from the phone company :D

Next? TV
This was a little harder to crack. We recently bought a new computer to act as our linux server for home (Web proxy, DNS cache, file server, file download system, etc). So I installed the MythTV software which specializes in capturing TV and allowing you to setup recording times and the big kicker? It can "save space" by stripping out commercials!

So I went and spent 70$ on a HighDef TV capture card and set to work. After awhile of reading bad info on the net I finally got it all working! I am going to post up my solution later for others.

Now I can record, digital TV and HD TV which are free in ozzie land and all the commercials are being stripped out :D So we can watch shows now without all the crap!

TV 0$ a month!!

Damn the man! :D

Future work is to get these videos to play on the TV downstairs over the network. This isn't hard just need more equipment. I'll build a slick looking system that can do all kinds of playback. Blue-Ray, MythTV, Music, Etc etc.

Traveling rock

In my old leather jacket (you know the ratty one I have had since I was 15) I felt something strange today in the liner. Maneuvering it to the hole in the liner I found it was a smooth round blue rock about the size of my thumb (I'll have to send it off to Eric for analysis :) )

And I started to think; Where did I get a rock in my jacket? This jacket has been with me everywhere I have gone. Could have come when I was sleeping in the park over night in Japan and used it as a pillow? Or camping when I didn't have a proper sleeping bag and used it to lay on between me and rocks? Or maybe coming off the BMX and hitting the pavement at some point.

Still - wonder where this rock came from and how long it has been with me? I think I'll put it back in the liner - just in case.

Garden Plants

Here are some photos of our plants :)

Potato Plants - Two of them, they are massive!


New tomato plants, the potatoes help to shelter them.


Passion Fruit - Kasey and I built the lattice


Argentina Garlic - We found this sprouting at the farmers market put it in the planter and BAM


Cos Lettuces


Japanese Clumping Onion - Why not!


Ozzie Garlic


Shiso - Japanese herb


Tomato plants and Basil - They help keep bugs off each other


Our big tomato plant. Go punk go


Yellow Bell pepper / Capsicum - looks orange t0 me!


Little chili plant with a big chili! Hang on there champ


Habanero


Basil


Oregano


Thyme


New tomato plant - sheltered by the potatos


Mint - This punk started off as a bunch of mint from the supermarket, it grew like wildfire and then got a white fungus and just about died. Kasey cut it back to just sticks and we moved with it. For weeks we thought it was dead then BAM! It comes crawling out. Tough bastard. 2 years old and kicking.

Ozzie Hotel Room

We are having out first guests come stay with us, friends from here, so Kasey and myself (dragging my feet and muttering) bought a bed (large double! You lucky bastards), mattress, etc etc.

SO! We now have somewhere for people to stay :)

Please start booking in your trips / times and we'll send you a quote :D

If you can't afford to pay us we have plenty of work around the house to do ;-)

Who is first?!

House Videos Part II

Holas!

Here are the videos of downstairs (finally!)

Video1
Video2
Video3

Enjoy!