What's this at my front door?

And I arrived home to find the second part of my order.

Yeah!!!! More Threadless Tee’s.

How did I celebrate the find? Actually I can’t remember, but I did open the bag, checked to make sure all the Tee’s I’d ordered were in there (and some bonus stickers) and danced around with joy.

Now I wont have to buy another Tee Shirt until 2010.

 

You’ll notice that I said “wont have to”. That doesn’t mean that it wont happen. ;)

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CSS Naked Day

April 8th, 2008 1 Comment

What happened to the design?

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

If Annual CSS Naked Day is over, then everything will be back to normal again. How did I do this you may ask. I used Aja Lapus’ Word Press Plug-in.

Over the Easter weekend Threadless had a US$9 sale of their Tee's, and I got sucked in. :)

I had been looking to get one of their Tee's for a friend for his Birthday, and this gave me the perfect excuse. Which Tee you may ask??? (or may not) He's a Geologist, so it made sense to get him their Tee called Geology. So that was cool, but I couldn't order only one… It just wouldn't be worth it. So I ended up ordering another 5 Tee's for myself.

Great, I'm really happy with that, and they should turn up in about 2-3 weeks. (END 17th March 2008)


The Sale still goes on, cos of some glitches on the, and then what happens?!?!? They decide to reprint one of my favorite Threadless Shirts that's been out of print for Ages… Which Shirt? Sublimi'mAwesomeinal :)

I had to get it… I'd been hanging out to get it ever since I first saw it (and it was already sold out) and it was only US$10. So only 5 days after ordering some Tee's.. I was at it again. So what did I get this time?

Also another 2-3 Weeks away. 


So today, as I was leaving the house, the Postie comes by with my snail mail (just bills). Then she doubles back and hands me the "you have to collect a parcel" slip that she forgot to give me with my other mail.

w00t!

Off to the Post Office to get my Parcel.

My related tweets…

and also

And now I'm wandering around Uni wearing my New "Put The Needle On The Record" Tee. :D

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This recipe is one that I grew up with at home. I have bragged about this recipe to different people, so I only thought it would be fair if I Provided it to all and sundry, so that they can test it… and agree with me. ;)

Brazilian Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup self raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
1/2 cup milk
60g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping
1 1/2 cups boiling water (if too dry increase amount of water next time)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa
2 heaped teaspoon of instant coffee

Method

  • Sift sugar, flour and cocoa into a bowl.
  • Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter melts.
  • Add the vanilla to the butter.
  • Add the liquid ingredients to the sifted dry ingredients.
  • Beat well for 1-2 minutes or until light and smooth.
  • Pour into a greased baking dish (good size is 6″ x 10″ = 15cm x 25cm)

Topping

  • Mix sugar, cocoa and coffee granules in a bowl and sprinkle on top.
  • Gently pour the boiling water over the top.
  • Bake in a moderate oven for approx 40 minutes.

Can be cooked in a microwave for 12 minutes on high if short of time but tastes better baked in the oven.
A compromise between th two cooking methods can be 6 minutes in the microwave followed by 20 minutes in a moderate oven.

Serving Size: Feeds 4-6 Adults = 1 Teenage Boy!
Other Notes: Recipe can be doubled for a crowd (but use a little less water) and takes a little longer to cook.

 

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I’ve now got 2x 300Gb Maxtor HDD’s in my LaCie Drive. They took about 2 days to do the "7-Pass Erase"… Nothing’s gone bad so far.

:| I have had 1 issue though.  I came back to my PowerBook at one point, and tried to access something on the drive, and it said that it was disconnected.

It seems to be all good now though after a restart…. I’m not sure the +35C days have helped either. It’s all now just a waiting game to see if it fails again… I sure hope not.

Maybe I should setup a RAID 5 or 6  NAS.

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Monx on Burwood Road

March 12th, 2008 1 Comment

Well, I have some time to kill, so I’ve dropped into Monx to see what it’s like. First thing I found out was that I can’t get a student priced coffee until next week. The are waiting on a deal from their coffee supplier to bring it in.

First Coffee at MonxIt only cost $3 for a coffee, which isn’t to bad round here, but I’ll be interested to see what the student pricing will be like. *UPDATE* the student price for a coffee is a reasonable $2.50. The coffee wasn’t too bad either, I’ve had worse from Haddons, as good from HQ, as good from Mario’s… I’ll just have to see how it pans out.

The other cool thing about this cafe (as anyone that used to go to Ruby’s would know) is that I can access the Swinburne Uni WiFi, so I can type this up while siting on the couch.

Ahhh Uni life… ;)

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I received in the post yesterday 2x 2nd hand 300Gb Maxtor HDD’s that I purchased via ebay, and have installed them into the LaCie HDD Case. They had me a little worried at first, as when I plugged the LaCie into my PowerBook, nothing happened for a minute or two, so i tried plugging it into my MacBook Pro… Still didn’t do anything for a minute or so… Then the drives started spinning up (no idea why the delay).

I’ve formatted it once using Disk Util doing a “zero out data” erase (which took about 3 hours), and am now waiting for it to complete a “7-Pass Erase”… ETA 1 day 11 hours ATM.

I’ll see how it’s going later.

 

Well, the 2 Seagate drives I bought didn’t work. :( I went back the next day and returned 1 and exchanged the other for a SATA version to put in my PC.

So I’ve also asked LaCie about the hardware, and what options I do have according to the spec’s of the components involved.

Posted: 4 March 2008 @ 00:00

I bought a 600Gb Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme Triple Interface a few years ago. It’s started clicking. I can read data off it to back it up, but if I try and use a file on the drive (eg playback a movie file) it doesn’t work. I realise that the drive is outside of warranty, but I do like the case (mainly cos of the 2x FW800 connections on it). I am wanting to find out if it is possible to go and purchase 2x IDE HDD’s and replace the ones in the case, so I can keep using it.

If I can do this, are there any limitations as to what I can do? eg, do I have to replace the drives with exactly the same type of drive (2x 300Gb Maxtor HDD’s), or can I use any 2x HDD’s? Are there any limitations of the Bridge Chipset that I need to know about before I purchase some replacement drives.

Thanks and Best Regards,

Griffmiester

to which I received the reply…

Posted: 5 March 2008 @ 00:00

Hi Griffmiester,

I’m sorry the drive is giving you trouble. You can replace the disks, but the maximum that particular bridge ever had on it was 1TB total (so, two 500 GB IDE disks.) Maxtor would be best for that bridge, but WD should also work. I don’t suggest using Seagate or Hitachi (they’re not bad at all, but they have had a few problems with our Oxford chipset RAID controllers in recent models. If you purchase drives that does have the problem, you would have to return them, which can be frustrating.)

Once you install the new drives, you should just need to format the drive.It’s best to do the “Zero out data” format in Disk Utility to ensure the bridge has full read/write access to the disk.

Thanks,

Patrick

So happily there is still something that I can do about using this external drive. :)

Further info to come as I install new disks into the case.

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Well it’s happening. My 3 year old 600Gb Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme Triple Interface is starting to fail.

I’ve been able to back up all the data that I needed off it, but it’s making a clicking noise, and it fails when you try and run data from the drive. By that I mean that if I try to playback a video from on the drive, VLC tells me that it isn’t a valid video file.

I’m now looking to see if I can pull the drive apart and replace the IDE HDD’s with new ones to get it going again. Why bother?… Well I do like the fact that the drive has 2x FW800 connectors on it.

I’ve pulled it apart, and fond that the current drives are 2x 300Gb Maxtor Drives. I wasn’t sure if there would be anything else to it than just buying drives and replacing them, so I asked the masses… Well Macktalk.com.au’s Forums anyway.

There were some questions answered, and some not. I still don’t know if any pair of new drives will work in the LaCie Case or not. There’s some doubt as to whether there is a firmware lock in the Bridge of the drive.

But I’ve gone out anyway to CentreCom and got 2 500Gb Seagate Drives. If they don’t work, as long as I return them in 7 days it’s all good.

I’ll let you know how it goes, and if there are any issues.

Well, today’s the day.

I’ve had to get up at the crazy hour of 9:00am to make it to my first lecture (and only contact time for today) at 11:30am.

I made it… 5mins late, but I need to explain that. I stopped off to catch-up with @mattdelves at the Swinburne CU (other link) stand. No I’m not going to blame Matt that I was late, it was my fault. I was trying to get my Wireless access for Uni active, an cos I didn’t have access, I was getting him to look up the instructions for me. It didn’t get sorted, and I was 5mins late.

My first Lecture was for ”Internet Technologies” which briefly translates as Why the Web and Internet are different, and why there are no current textbooks for this subject. Still couldn’t get internet access working… Interesting Intro lecture. The lecturer, Ken McInnes, pointed out that because the internet is always changing, so does the course. I started setting up Schoolhouse It seems to be a great program… If you are diligent with it. I’ll see how it goes.

I got my wireless working (that’s how I’m doing this at the mo.) by visiting a computer lab under the library (no it’s not dark and dingy, like in The IT Crowd), and getting one of the resident geeks to help me out.

Well I’m done for the day, and writing this. Tomorrow I get a MASSIVE break from 11:30 till 4:30… *sigh*