Archive for September, 2008

Happy Train Day!

8:21 pm, September 30th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, cuteness, girlthings, local, photography, traaiiiiin by Liz

Happy Train Day!

It’s been a whole year since I picked up the tiny, tiny Train with Jarod.

When I first met her she had just face planted her entire body into her food, so was a little mess, but crawled all over my shoulders, and looked at me with her adorable kitty eyes.

That weekend Jarod and I picked her up and bought her home, and we declared 30 September every year was Official Train Day! This was the dodgiest camera phone photo ever, but I’ve never seen her look this innocent since:

She’s quickly turned into an adorable little shit. Don’t get me wrong, I love to her death and would never give her up, but sometimes the morning ankle attacks get a bit too much. She also has a stunning ability to jump on my head in a major ninja attack just as I’m drifting off to sleep.
And she wouldn’t dare treat Jarod in the same fashion, probably because she knows that he would kick her furry ass out and lock her in the spare room.

She loves ring tops from peanut butter jars, biting you when you least expect it, and attacking electricians and sisters. I have many scars thanks to her enthusiasm for protecting the house, but unfortunately she’s not too good at picking the baddies.

So, Happy Train Day everyone! Enjoy an onslaught of Train photos for your troubles.

And one of the ‘cake’:

There’s a Worm in your Apple! Abort!!

8:06 pm, September 30th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, photography, worms! by Jarod

An update on Flash B

7:18 am, September 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, photography by Jarod

Thanks to a comment or two in my flickr stream and a few google searches, I still think it’s the flash tube that’s dead on dear old Flash B.

For those that asked, the series of events that took place on the night where everyone had an alibi but me was
- The SB600 crashed to the floor and the batteries popped out.
- I chucked them back in and the unit charged back up.
- LCD Panel turned on and was fully functional.
- Charged ‘ready’ light was red as usual.
- The slight whine of the capacitor charging was heard when the test flash button was pressed.
- No bright hurt your eyes stuff coming out of the light making end when the test flash button was pressed.

At this point I shook the flash and was pretty sure I heard the sound of expensive to fix broken xenon tube. But with my continuing efforts to poke and prod it I adjusted the zoom setting. My thought is that this wedged the broken tube between something** and something** causing it not to rattle anymore.

So yes, my assessment is that it’s still a busted tube as the capacitor still charges and I swear I heard broken glass before fiddling with the zoom setting. It’ll most likely go in for a service/free quote later this week. Which will probably be after I order another SB600, SB800 or SB900. The juries still out on which I’ll be getting.

** Highly technical terms, don’t feel bad if you don’t understand them.

Now for an About Page and Photo Gallery

10:48 pm, September 29th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, internets, photography by Jarod

If you’ll be so kind as to notice up there top there, on the left, there’s two new links. An about page which has been about two months overdue, and a photo gallery.

This has basically tripled the funtastic things you can do on the site now. First there was reading blog posts, now reading crazy facts about myself, Liz and the site and browsing photos we’ve taken. It’s insanity I tell ya!

And yeah, you’re right, there’s not many photos up there yet. I’m working on getting Liz to upload more but she really can be quite stubborn at times.

Old things

4:47 pm, September 29th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local by Liz

I’m at home sick today, so what better way to spend my waking hours than on the internet.

Of the variety of things I looked up, one of which was the place we are currently living. I’ve been here for a year and a bit now (Jarod only for about 9 months), and keep meaning to look up it’s history to see if it’s as old as I thought it might be.

This place was two separate houses, which have since joined and split up into 6 apartments. Our apartment runs the width of both houses, which means we have a great double brick wall splitting our place down the middle. Of course, some of that wall has been removed so that we can walk to the other side of the place…
It has great high ceilings (not so great when you’re trying to reach the smoke detector to replace the batteries), and elaborate moldings around some of the light fittings and brick vents. And the ‘original’ walls have about 10 coats of paint them, plus at least one layer of wall paper. I don’t think it’s been stripped back in a long time. But, it has a lot more character than you find in your stock standard modern apartment, so I love it. Even with the ugly mustard yellow tiles in the bathroom.

Anyway. Apparently there is a bit of history to it. According to Marrickville Council it’s a historical item, along with the 4 other houses surrounding it, due to their “Edwardian House” nature. It seems to have been built sometime in the late 19th century/early 20th century, making the house (or houses, really) over 100 years old (if we assume it was built back in 1901).
It was also home to two men who served in the Navy. Cecil was enlisted in March 1916, and Frank in May 1916. Cecil was lucky enough to return home in July 1917, Frank wasn’t as lucky, and was killed in action in October 1917.

And I find that all really interesting.

Oh FLASH-B, how I barely knew thee

9:21 pm, September 27th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, photography by Jarod

The short story is that my second SB600 dropped from about 1.5 metres on the end of a lightstand and now won’t fire.

The slightly longer story is that I’m fairly pissed off at myself for letting go of the light stand when it wasn’t properly balanced. Oh well. Live and learn and such. Google has told me that if it’s just the xenon tube that’s dead then it can be fixed. Fingers crossed on that one. Whether it’ll be cost effective or will be the question.

Perhaps it’s just a convenient time to shell out the extra cash for a SB-900.

*runs off giggling into the sunset*

Hearts you, boyface.

9:08 pm, September 27th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in cuteness, girlthings, photography by Liz

Give blood and stuff.

9:46 pm, September 26th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local by Liz

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service are advertising current blood stock as being ‘dangerously low’. That generally doesn’t indicate something good. So, you should go give blood and stuff.

21,000 blood donations are required each week to keep the blood banks at a good level. And considering red cells only have a shelf life of 42 days, it’s something that’s needed constantly.

Looksee what your blood can be used for:

I gave blood for the first time day, it was overall around 4 seconds of pain, and an hour or so off work. That’s a win, right? I’m lucky that my work encourages us to go give blood, seeing as we’re just around the corner from the Red Cross blood bank in the city. But really, if you’re near a blood bank (or one of the mobile ones is in your area), you can do it on your lunch hour.

While I don’t trust a number of organisations enough to give my money to, giving blood is something that costs you only time and they can’t spend your blood on things other than helping people. Sure, they might offer it up to vampires for cash, but that’s fine by me. Especially when there’s food after the whole blood giving process. No one told me about the milkshakes on offer. Not that I had one. But next time I surely will. I’ll be prepared.

Now I just have to wait a little while and I’ll get sent a little donor card that tells me what blood type I am. Hurrah!

The Ubuntu Experience

2:54 pm, September 26th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, geekery, internets by Jarod

Liz and I installed Ubuntu on her old Dell Laptop and I must say, I’m impressed by the ease of installation and usability. Given that my only experience with Linux was taunting my brother’s Slackware installs and one brief adventure using Red Hat on my own pc, yeah, it was nice to see how far it’d come.

It’s got a very clean user interface, great selection of preinstalled apps, and runs great on a laptop that’s seen more than its fair share of days. But I’m very much left with the question of… what now?

I really can’t see myself switching my normal desktop to any Linux distro… there’s just too many legacy programs that are forcing my hand into Windows. The big three are Photoshop (and the whole Creative Suite for that matter), Solidworks (my 3D modelling program of choice) and random games. From my quick Google searches, Photoshop CS2 should be able to run under WINE. Finding the time to get it to run is a whole different matter tho. Solidworks is notorious for barely running under windows, so I’m guessing it’d be near on impossible to get that working reliably under Ubuntu. As for games, I won’t be holding my breath.

Alas Linux. While you’ve come a very long way, it’s the third party apps that are holding me back from using you for every day use.

As a side note, the laptop will likely end up dual booted with WinXP. I know it should be let go of. But that’s easier said than done.

It’s Survivor Time!

8:00 pm, September 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, idiotbox by Jarod

The only stupid reality show I get into is Survivor**. There. I said it.

Jeff Probst is hosting his millionth^^ season of Survivor and my three survivors in the sweep are going to kick ass. Despite two of them being the usual flirty girl types, and the dude I got is a lawyer.

Hmmm, maybe I won’t do so well after all, but it’s worth it to hear Jeff say “Previously… on Survivor” and “[Random Tribe], got nothing for ya, head back to camp”. Damn Jeff Probst is dreamy.

** And some seasons of the Amazing Race.
^^ Actually, it’s only the 17th, but that’s still a lot.

Not bad

6:20 pm, September 24th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in girlthings, mooosic, photography, roundups by Liz