June 26 Dumb

Having returned from the land of Chocolate, I finally found time to reflect on something DUMB I did just before I left....backed one of my cars into the other in my own driveway...naturally the bigger car (with the towbar) was quite Ok...the smaller was not, having had a nice, neat towbar-shaped hole punched through its front...and, the creme de la creme of this situation? Neither car is insured against the other because I own them both !! Bah...may as well have thrown $1200 in the street!

Well, I guess I have a few mates out there like these Dumb Criminals and Dumb Crooks. The Law is an ass and does not escape dumb scrutiny - just check out some of the evidence at Dumb Laws out there.

......and finally, here's DumbFind..which actually doesn't appear dumb at all to me, but maybe I'm missing something ??? (maybe I'm just dumb enough not to get it?)

All criticism accepted!

Phooey...

June 20 Football

Well, I find myself in downtown Lausanne Switzerland for the second time in a month - working again, but thankfully the weather is much better this time around (high 20's) and, of course, it's World Cup Football (still soccer to me) fever time.

Lots of coverage on the Net at the FIFA site and Yahoo also cover the situation in a similar vein. Historical information is available at the BBC.

Naturally, being an Australian, I'm keen to see how the Socceroos are performing - the Football Australia and the Age sites cover the Aussie scene well.

Australians are very keen sports people and we even excel at Robot Dogs Soccer !!!

Well, good luck to the Socceroos, and here's hoping for a good result against Croatia, but for me, I'm also looking forward to the Aussie summer where we can get back those Ashes from the Poms!

Go Aussie!

June 16 Rainyday

A rainy day, maybe a day for (big) downloads to while away the time and use up all your excess bandwidth ?

Microsoft has released a beta version of Windows Vista Ultimate which clocks the scales at a mere 3.5 Gb !! This release is available in three languages (English, German, and Japanese) and in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. According to good old MS when you register for the Customer Preview Program you will receive the Beta 2 release plus Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) — the next major pre-release of Windows Vista — when it is available later this year. So ....up to you - Windows Vista Beta

Maybe you'd like to fiddle with photos instead and catch up on the millions of digital images you've poked away on that hard drive ? Google has released Picasa Web Albums and you can sign up and wait for an invite - you'll need a Gmail account to do this.

If that's all too hard, just play a game of Sudoku instead !

By the way, Microsoft announced a whole bunch of security updates yesterday.

Till next time...

June 12 Tools Part 2

Continuing the Tools thread - today the Text Editor and FTP.

As far as developing my sites, I've always used Multi Edit. Originally, they used to have a fairly function rich free/demo version which did most things I wanted in a text editor. They still have the freebie version, which is now called MeLite which is probably only free for thirty days, though.

Anyway, I also fiddled marginally with FrontPage and people have recommended DreamWeaver to me, but I've always stuck with coding things myself and MultiEdit. I guess I prefer to control what I do and I'm not a big WYSIWYG fan. MultiEdit is still a terrific text editor, probably a bit costly now, but I'm in system doing the upgrade thing from time to time so the expense isn't too bad.

As far as FTP is concerned, I've used CuteFTP forever, probably since when it first hit the market (a long time ago). It's just so simple to use and it does everything I need, so I've never seen any reason to change. Like most things, it's probably added a load of new "features" over time so it's probably more bloated than it used to be (and more than it needs to be for me), but I still only use the most basic functions (like drag and drop a file to send it to a server).

I recently heard about a freeware program called WinSCP which is supposedly Ok, but I've not yet had the inclination to try it. Also used WS-FTP way back but didn't like it at the time (can't remember why) although a lot of people use it, so I presume it must be Ok.

Anyway, thats it for now.

Take it easy!

June 7 RIP

Office RIP ?

Coming soon...Google Spreadsheet

Already there...Zoho

Already there...Writely

Where's Powerpoint ?

Happy Days!

June 5 Overflow

Nine new links to check out...the Black Stump overflow....

1. The Web Riddle
2. Anxiety Disorders
3. History of Money
4. Stolen Jewelry Website
5. About Belly Dancing
6. Jesper's Blog ...security
7. Brain Maps
8. Leonardo's Last Supper
9. Magic Gallery ...vintage magic posters

Happy Linking

June 2 Maps

I know Google Maps have been around a while and, of course, there are many other Map and Atlas sites around.

It seems that maps (and satellite images) of most of Australia are now available on Google which you can check out at the Google Maps site. Just to help you a bit, I created a couple of pages for Melbourne and Sydney. Its easy enough to scroll around, but I'll try and add a few new direct links to major cities soon.

Happy travelling!