Monthly Archive for August, 2006

The Heart Breaks

Published
by
Simon
on 29/8/2006
in Photos and Politics
. 0 Comments

diagonal carWhen I got up this morning, Laura told me that today it has been one year since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and I didn’t think much more of it. While surfing around today I stumbled across a Flickr photo set that documents some of the devastation that still remains there.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I took the title of this post from one of the comments on the photo set. When you see the images, your heart might break a little too. It’s difficult to believe such a prosperous nation could respond to such a disaster so devastatingly badly.

A while ago I started a post about how I seemed to be finding something more to hate the US Administration (read George Bush) for every day. It has sat in my drafts for a long while, unpublished because I don’t really think I want to get political here, and it will probably stay unpublished because many of the issues it mentions are now long past. However, this will surely be added to the list. What a horrible situation.

The bloke who took the photos gives his thoughts about them on his blog.

Check out the slide show, but be ready to feel a sickening mix of sadness and fury.

P.S. If you’re reading this you’ve probably noticed some changes to the design. It’s getting close to being done, and I think this is my best design yet. I’m going to do up a post on all the changes I’ve made in the next couple of days.

GAAA!!!

Published
by
Simon
on 23/8/2006
in sw'as
. 3 Comments

It has come to my attention that this site is totally borked in Internet Explorer[1]. Exactly why this is so, I can’t be sure since I haven’t changed the design here for quite some time. Rest assured all you die hard IE users, I will be implementing a fix as soon as possible. In the mean time, why not try a better browser.

Update: Done! Let me know if you still think this site looks shit in IE.

Update 2: It’s come to my attention via the comments that this site is still “funk & wagnalled” in IE. After some testing I’m concluding that this is probably because of cached CSS files. If it looks “funk & wagnalled” for you hit the F5 key and it should, by magic, be healed.

  1. Not my favourite browser after a recent development issue. [↩]

Erratic Update

Published
by
Simon
on 22/8/2006
in Business, Family, Friends, General, Laura, Music and web development
. 2 Comments

Well, things have been a bit slow around here, but I can assure you that is no reflection of the pace of my life right now. So much stuff is happening it’s really fairly hard to keep up.

Wedding

We’re just over a month out from the wedding and things are all go. The invitations have gone out and we’re getting RSVP’s left, right and centre. There is still plenty of stuff (but just small stuff) that needs organising. Time sure is ticking by quickly.

Without Pockets

I’ve been hard at work on the website withoutpockets.com and it is slowly but surely getting closer to being ready for launch. For now, I’ve put up a pre-launch site, which Tony has already been nice enough to plug over at Primordial Ooze[1]. And as at today has generated a full 25% of the visitors to withoutpockets.com.

Laura

Laura’s flat out at school at the moment. She is putting on a musical this week and is out at rehearsal tonight. Apparently she told the kids at school today that I’d be there to see it on Friday and they were so excited that they announced it to a bunch of other classes. Apparently they ask about me all the time. They all seem to really like Laura, and I’m not surprised (I do too), she’d be a awesome teacher.

TV Boycott and an Attempt at Early Rising

Prompted by an experiment conducted by Steve Pavlina I’m in the middle of a 30 day TV boycott, just to see how it goes. I don’t plan to never watch TV again, but it’s nice to be avoiding Australian Idol.

So far I’ve found that I’m listening to a bunch more music[2] [3]. I had hoped that I would find myself reading more as well, but so far that hasn’t happened. I just started Memoirs of a Gesha.

As well as avoiding TV, I’m trying to establish a habit. Early rising just seems so much better to me, however I find it really hard to do, so I thought I’d use the same 30 days to turn rising at 6am into a habit. Jiselle told me the other day that habits are established after 21 days, so I should be sweet.

The Eels

I’ve only mentioned them in the footnotes so far, but I’m listening to them right now and I love that band so much that I thought they deserved a bigger mention. Go check out the Eels J Files. You might notice the most played albums over to the side which are conveniently recorded and supplied by Last.FM. I wouldn’t be surprised if an Eels album features at the top of that list soon. To be honest, I’m not sure why the aren’t there now.

  1. On a side note, Tony seems to be becoming fairly prolific over there. [↩]
  2. I’m pretty bored with my current collection, got any suggestions? [↩]
  3. Oh, except the Eels. OMG I love that band!! I don’t know how I managed it, but I somehow neglected to post anything about seeing them live recently. I hope to have that horrible oversight corrected soon. [↩]