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zzzzzzzzzzz
2008-03-19 13:38:00
You could be excused for thinking that I've been asleep for a few weeks. I know it's been a while since I last posted here, but my life has a blur of tennis, injury, crappy landlords, P&F, blown up vacuum cleaner, broken plates, house move, swimming, no Internet (aaarrrggghhh), cracked tiles, lost keys, dead man ferns, heating oil, missing curtain hooks, lost pole, school trip, sunburn, filthy range hood, missing instructions, boxes, boxes, boxes and pizza (oh no, another box!). I'll explain some of these things some time real soon.

Free Hugs
2008-03-01 01:01:00
Now if this doesn't leave you with a smile on your face then nothing ever will. I stumbled upon aYouTube video made by a guy called Juan Mann. He was feeling a bit lonely after arriving back in his home town of Sydney from overseas and just wanted someone to greet him at the airport with a big hug like all of the other happy families. He then embarked on a "free hug" campaign.  Check out his website here, but be sure to turn up the speakers and watch the video first (over 24 million others have!). {youtube}vr3x_RRJdd4{/youtube} 
More About: Free , Hugs

February 2008 Share Update
2008-02-29 13:36:00
Time for another update. Things have started to look up. Two of the companies that I'm holding have really taken off. Minemakers (MAK) is going gangbusters at the moment. I've sold half my holding in the company to lock in the profit which means that the remaining half is completely paid for so there is no risk at all as I'm now playing with someone else's money! Accent Resources (ACS) has been doing very badly. I was meant to sell that one off for a loss months ago, but I missed the sell and decided to ride it out. I'm glad I did, because it has turned around and is now in the black. The other winner at the moment is Australian Education Unit (AEU). This is is a complete gamble as I've gone out on my own and decided to buy without any recommendations. For that reason, I only bought 1000 units. AEU is the company that owns the buildings that ABC childcare centres rent. As you probably know ABC has taken a huge dive and trading has been stopped on the ASX. Tha...
More About: Update , Share , February 2008 , February , 2008

Lego Town
2008-02-26 04:13:00
As some of you may know, the old guy who used to own the house that I rent passed away a while ago. That's obvioulsy a sad event, however it also meant that I may have had to look for somewhere else to live. His two daughters inherited the house and were happy for me to stay on as a tennant, however they now need some cash and want to sell. That's a bad thing for me. I have tried to come to an agreement on price so that I can buy it myself, however we have very different expections. That lead me to look for another rental property. The rental price of a three bedroom house has gone through the roof latley. I just couldn't find anything that was half decent and affordable so I started looking at villa unit's. I actually signed the forms on one before I realised that there wasn't anywhere to store all of the stuff that I currently have in my garage. Last weekend I looked at the private rentals in the paper and found the one.  It's in the fai...
More About: Lego , Town

Free stuff that really works
2008-02-17 01:50:00
Many of you are already reaping the benefits of the free stuff that can be had from Australian websites. Some of you may have already seen the story I wrote on some of the great survey, competition and free give away sites there are in Australia. If you haven't seen my previous story, then click here. I wanted to let you know of my personal experience with two of the biggest Australian sites. I've been a member of Emailcash for about a year. In that time I really haven't participated in much of their extra activities that can give you bonus points. All that I have really done is click on the email's that they send me to earn 5 points every time. The email's are all for really big well known Australian brands such as Telstra, news.com.au, Quickflix, P&O Cruises etc. Most of them are actually invitations to enter some great competitions. I haven't won any competitions (yet), but the email's and the sites that they take you to are always interesting, s...
More About: Free Stuff , Free , Stuff , Works

spam that looks like ham
2008-02-16 02:53:00
This one was interesting. For some strange reason I decided to check my spam email folder. I found an email that looked legit asking for a price to advertise on Tasweb. This is the email;         Good day, My name is Edward Johnson and I am looking to buy links from good websites as yours (tasweb.org). I will be glad if I can have a text link or a text box 120x60 or 125x125 on your site. Please advise what what will be the price for each of these ads, if it is placed: 1. On your homepage only 2. On all site pages I will be very thankful to you if you take into consideration my requrest. Kind Regards Edward Johnson  I question everything that I receive in email, but at first I thought it was real. The fact that there was a real link to my real website gave it credence and the request seemed reasonable. People really do this sort of stuff. Then I noticed the slightly dodgy grammar/spelling and decided to look a bit further. Whilst the email wa...
More About: Spam

Tennis update
2008-02-15 22:48:00
Remember when I said this about my tennis "I'm going to enjoy the winning feeling whilst it lasts as I'm pretty sure I will come crashing back to earth soon." ??? Well the winning feeling continued right through until I received my first serve last night. That was when I realised I was back in reality. I lost my singles match last night 0 - 6 !! I am supposed to be ranked with similar players. My "ITN" ranking is 8.5 (out of 10, where 10 is really bad and 1 is perfect), however when I asked someone how they come up with that she made a reference to her bottom, so I don't think it's very realistic. The fact that the guy I played last night has been playing tennis off and on for all of his life and yet he is also ranked 8.5 proves that the system isn't perfect. It was still a lot of fun and I can only improve from there! Our team (Evermore) were way out on top off the ladder, but I'm guessing that will have changed after last night. I lost a...
More About: Tennis , Update

Comments system upgraded
2008-02-10 11:46:00
I've upgraded the comments software used on Tasweb. I was never very happy with it, but it is much improved now. The main differences you will notice is that you now don't need to enter the Catchpa anti spam image stuff if you have created a Tasweb account and logged in. You can also elect to receive an email if someone else adds their own comment after yours. Please let me know by leaving a comment on this story if you come across any issues.
More About: System , Comments

The games are back bigger and better than ever
2008-02-07 12:57:00
O.K. It's taken me a little while, but I have finally found a bug in the arcade game code and have hacked it to work on my server. I've also found a more recent backup and have restored the game scores back to the beginning of January. Any scores recorded since then by logged in users have been lost - sorry! J.D. and R.D., your new account has been lost, so you will need to recreate it if you want to log in again. The upgraded games software has some funky stuff like a tag cloud, ratings, favorites and a proper leader board. You will have to have created an account and logged in to use any of those features, although guests can still play games.The leader board is much better than the old "top players" list as that only gave 1 point for every high score you achieved. The new leader board gives 50 points for a first place, 40 for second, 32 for third, right down to 2 points for a 20th place. This means that most players will be on the board and everyone has a chance...
More About: Games , Back

Tennis
2008-02-04 06:53:00
Weird stuff just keeps on happening to me. Last year I enrolled in an Adult Education tennis course for beginners. It was a lot of fun and the rest of the guys in the group were great to be around. At the end of it we decided to keep it going and Nick (our coach) was happy to accept our money. That all ended before Christmas last year, but then out of the blue I had a call from Nick last week asking me if I wanted to play in a tennis pennant run by the club. I stupidly said yes, and now I'm playing competition tennis! I think I suck at it, but I won all three matches on Friday so that's a good thing. I won my singles match 6-2 (we only play one set), and then my two doubles matches 6-3 and 6-2. I did have some help in the doubles as I was paired with some "pro's". Actually one of my team members is amazing. She won the doubles in the recent Tasmanian Open, but the biggest surprise was that she is only 11 years old (it was the junior open!). I'm going to enj...
More About: Tennis

Aracde games are still snapped
2008-02-03 05:58:00
I've mentioned this before, but I'm getting a heap of new visitors to Tasweb today because of the story I did about cracking open VB Warnie, so I thought I should bring it up again. I've snapped the arcade games. Sorry, but I'm old and stupid! I'm still trying to fix em and hope to resume normal programming rooly soon.
More About: Games

Games are back the way they were
2008-01-30 14:49:00
Earlier today I updated the games software on Tasweb and posted a story here about it. Unfortunately there were a few problems that I didn't discover until much later today. I have rolled the site back to a backup that I took just before I did the upgrade (backups rule OK!). I do have a development site and I tested the upgrade there first and it worked fine, so there must be another difference that broke things. I'll have another go at this the next time I'm feeling a bit bored. [UPDATE]...No they aren't!  I've broken it again and I've decided to leave it broken for a bit until I can work out what has gone wrong. Only the 5 standard games are there and all scores have gone. Don't stress though, because I have a backup and should be able to retain the old scores as long as I can identify and fix the cause of my problems.
More About: Games , Back

I need a house
2008-01-29 01:25:00
For the past few years I've been living in a rented house. The day before we left for a one week camping trip ( we are back now, I'll write a story on that soon) I was told that the owners want to sell and need me out, so now I'm looking for somewhere to live. I have no idea how long I've got, so if you have a property to rent not too far South of Hobart please let me know! Oh yeah, talking about my house, the young lady next door (they moved in a few months ago) told me the other day that her Staffordshire Bull Terrier was about to be moved to their house and that I shouldn't go anywhere near it as it is very aggressive and she was going to go to all of her adjoining neighbors to warn them. I did ask about the gaping holes in the fence and she said she would fix them, but that she might not bother with a side gate as it would "stay in it's house all day". I didn't want to jump to conclusions, so I didn't cause any grief but it wasn't th...
More About: House , A House

Field service mode LG TU500
2008-01-10 07:57:00
I used to know this and then I forgot it, and a guy asked me for it today, so I had to look it up again, so now I'm writing a story here so that I can easily find it the next time I'm asked for it. Gosh, that was a crappy sentence! I have an LG TU500 3G phone on Telstra's NextG network. This and it's equivalent, the TU550 and the Canadian CU500 are all really good phones with great reception and there is a hidden service code that unlocks a feature that allows you to view the receive signal strength. Type the following code from the idle screen just as if you were going to dial it as a number; *748#96 . Don't dial the . thats just there to end the sentence (not that there is a dot on the phone anyway). A yellow box will pop up with a bunch of useless information, but next to "RSSI:" you will see the receive level. I can't tell you what is good or bad, but whilst I'm sitting in my office in the centre of Hobart I see about -60. Every time the num...
More About: Service , Mode , Field

Whats inside VB Warnie
2008-01-09 08:16:00
VB Warnie has been sitting on my coffee table completely silent for a few days now, so I decided to pull him apart (as you do). The instructions clearly state (they even give you a picture) that he must be sitting approximately 2 metres in front of your telly and that he would only talk during the Commonwealth Bank one day series. That's what made me think he must listen for tones during the telecast, but by pulling him apart I could tell for sure. Read on to see my thoughts and pictures on Warnies gizzards.       If your on the home page then click the "Read more...." link to see the pictures...
More About: Inside

Bingle
2008-01-07 12:19:00
Sorry, this is not a photo of Lara Bingle (of "So where the bloody hell are you" fame), it's a photo of the back end of my car. I park down by the water at the Hobart Regatta Grounds (my car has a better view than my office!) and some mongrel cut a corner and swiped the back bumper then took off without leaving a note. All I know is that their vehicle was white. Because they didn't leave a note I now have to pay the excess (fair enough) but I also loose my no claims bonus (this stinks). They reckon I'm at fault because I can't supply the name of the other party. I was about one kilometer away at the time, so how can it be my bloody fault?!?! I'll have to go and get a quote to see if it's worth claiming on. It doesn't seem to be too badly damaged other than the slice out of the plastic and they might be able to plastic weld that up. I had no idea the bumper was full of foam. I wonder if the car would float? .    

Backyard Bunny
2008-01-07 12:08:00
I couldn't believe my eyes the other day when I saw a wild rabbit munching on the weeds in my back yard. If I lived near the bush I could understand it, but I'm only a 10 minute walk from the beach. I guess there is some bush about a 10 minute walk in the other direction, but it's still a long way through suburban streets for a little bunny to hop. I told Emma and Brad but I don't think they believed me until they saw him for themselves. Then the next day there were two! They both stayed around for about a week so I was under strict orders not to cut the grass weeds as it was the flowers that they were eating. Unfortunately I haven't seen them for a few days now, so I cut the grass on the weekend. They are probably in someones tummy now!    
More About: Backyard , Bunny

December 2007 share update
2008-01-03 06:29:00
Well, that's 2007 over and dusted. From a share trading point of view, it has been interesting and a very steep learning curve for me, however at least I havn't lost a heap of money. It's been seven months now since I started this stupidity and I've finished up the calender year $50 down on where I would have been if I had just left the same amount of money in the bank. That's not a bad thing really, however the shares that I'm still holding are all (except one) performing very badly. If I were to sell them now I would take a fairly significant loss. Here's hoping that 2008 brings a bit more joy. There were times during 2007 where I was well and truly ahead of the cash interest, I just couldn't maintain that pace. Here is the end of month graph showing the ups and downs of the past seven months.    
More About: Update , Share , December , December 2007

VB Warnie
2008-01-03 01:29:00
Last summer I got sucked in by the talking Beefie and Boonie dolls , so this year I though I should get hold of the new talking VB Warnie doll. He arrived today, but the instructions have left me a bit disappointed. It looks as though he only talks during the Commonwealth Bank one day series and will be silent after the last match. It also looks as though they have gone back to the "sit him in front of the telly and he will talk when we tell him to via funky noises from your telly" mode. That didn't work too well with the first Boonie doll so it will be interesting to see how he performs. He doesn't have a mobile phone so at least he will have to talk and won't be able to resort to txt'ing! Last years dolls spoke when you least expected them to, but this one looks as if he will only chat during the games. He doesn't even have a button you can press to wake him up if you get a bit bored. The price has doubled from last year, but you only have to buy one ...

Wild Oates wins the Sydney to Hobart yacht race
2007-12-28 00:53:00
How cool is this. I have to work, but we have the best view of the river from our office so I get to watch the yachts come over the finish line. I took the photo below from my office of Wild Oates taking line honours. She is only the second yacht in history to be the first across the line three times in a row. I like my work!    
More About: Sydney , Race , Wins

Google Adsense earnings graph
2007-12-27 05:29:00
"Do you make any money from the Google ads on your website?" is a common question I get asked. The answer is "kinda"! Yes I have received a few cheques from Google for the Adsense ads on this site. Do I make a lot of money? No! Could I make a lot of money? Yes! Google have very strict terms and conditions that prevent me from giving you click through rates and stuff like that, but I am free to discuss more general stuff. I obviously know what my own click through rate (Page CTR) is, and I also know how many page impressions are delivered every day. If I had 10 websites just like Tasweb then I could make enough money to eat out at a fancy restaurant on Google's account each week. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the want to do that. There are many people who do just that and must be making a lot of money out of Google Adsense . There is a very interesting trend occurring though that I've found a lot of other webmaster's talking about. The num...
More About: Earnings , Graph

Brad the award winning musician
2007-12-23 05:13:00
Schools out for another year. This year was a bit different to most in that it was the last time that we will be associated with a Primary School. Brad finished at Blackman's Bay this year and will be in Grade 7 at Kingston High School with Emma next year. It's a bit weird saying goodbye to the teachers and staff that you have become so used to over the past 8 or so years. As usual there were a few tears during the leavers assembly, but even I shed a quite tear or two when Brad was announced as the winner of the Arts award. That makes him the best male musician in the school. It came with a $50 gift voucher which was pretty cool as well. Words cannot describe how proud I felt. It was just reward for all of the hard work that Brad has put in during the year on the saxophone and guitar. I had his music teacher at my place one night last week because she had re written a section of The Final Countdown that the Grade 6 band were playing to give Brad a bit of a solo. Brad didn...
More About: Musician , Award , Winning

Guitar Hero III
2007-12-18 02:06:00
A few weeks ago I went out and bought Guitar Hero III for the Playstation 3. Emma and Brad have the previous version ( II ) at Donna's place on their PS2 and when they bought it around to my place last Christmas holidays I fell in love with it. It is VERY addictive. Unfortunately (for me) III is a bit harder than II so I've run into a bit of a wall at the moment. I've completed all of Easy and Medium (the final battle on medium is pretty hard if you aren't a full on addict) but so far I've only been able to complete one song on hard. Brad on the other hand is amazing. He was able to complete one song on II with his back to the telly. That's the sort of stuff people video and post on YouTube so he really is pretty good at it. Think about the fact that I have completed every song on Easy and Medium and have now gone back and completed all bar about 6 songs of easy without dropping a single note (i.e. 100% correct) and yet I can't complete any more than one ...
More About: Guitar Hero

Jelly the cat
2007-12-14 06:23:00
This is fairly unusual. A local family were a bit amazed to see their cat wander in with a live copper head snake wrapped twice around it's neck and then knotted under it's chin. They had to call the animal rescue people who managed to untie the snake and remove it from poor Jelly 's neck. Jelly then fell very ill as she had obviously been bitten so she was rushed to the vet where they pumped her full of $1000 worth of ani venom and now she is fine.    

LG TU500 ( CU500) Google Maps fix
2007-12-09 02:46:00
Warning, boring techie talk! I have a Telstra NextG LG TU500 mobile phone. I'm very happy with the phone even though it does have a few quirks and problems that can be a bit annoying. I'm even happier with Google Maps . It's a great application that you can download to the phone that allows you to see satellite photo's and then overlay street maps and directions. Unfortunately Google just upgraded this application to version 2.0.0 and now it's broken for the Australian TU500 and the Canadian Cingular CU500. It gives an "Invalid class error" when you try to start it. For those others who now have the same problem, you can click here to download an older version (1.5.4) of the same thing direct from Google to fix the problem.
More About: Google Maps

Comments gone mad
2007-12-04 12:51:00
I receive an email every time someone leaves a comment on Tasweb, but I hadn't seen any email's for a long time. I've only just discovered them all sitting in my gmail spam folder. Sorry to those people that have commented on stories that aren't on the front page as I simply haven't seen them.  Sorry also to those people that may have read some dodgy comments. I usually clean up anything unsavory straight away.
More About: Comments

Pot holes
2007-12-03 12:46:00
I've hit a few pot holes lately. We organised a BBQ at the school for federal election day as it is a polling place and heaps of hungry people come in and out all day. We were hoping to make a few quid for the school so Lisa and I put a lot of effort into ensuring that everything was sorted and ready to go. I turned up at 9am on election day to meet the groundsman so that he could unlock a few doors and get the school's BBQ out for me only to find the local footy club already setup and selling what looked to be very tasty egg and bacon rolls. Apparently the school had forgotten that they had given them the OK to setup in the same spot a few weeks before we asked. There was no point in us setting up beside them as we would have been out in the full sun and no one would have walked past us so we pulled the plug and went home. What a waste of effort! We split most of the food and drink up between us at cost and ended up loosing only about $40 on the day. Then I was invited to r...
More About: Holes

Happy Birthday Emma
2007-12-03 12:17:00
What, another Birthday ? I can't believe how quickly these guys are growing up now. Emma scored fairly well with presents, however her main Birthday present this year is her trip to Canberra with Kingston High School next year. Emma and a bunch of her mates celebrated her Birthday at Woodies Roller World at Glenorchy. I booked a kids party during a public session on the Saturday night and can you believe that apart from us not a single person turned up. Emma's party group had the whole place to themselves. Tegan makes a habit of hurting her self, so guess who did a big flip and landed on her head! I was just putting my own blades on when one of the guys came rushing over to tell me that Tegan was hurt. I had one roller blade on and the damn buckle got stuck so I had to rush over on only one blade. It was a bit like riding a scooter without the handle! Actually I probably had one of the biggest crashes of the night. I need to realise that I'm too old to enter limbo competi...
More About: Happy , Happy Birthday

November 2007 share update
2007-12-03 11:49:00
The months seem to come around way to quickly at this time of the year. The gains I made towards the end of last month have been eroded somewhat towards the end of this month. To be honest the whole stock market thing is confusing me at the moment. It seems as though all the Australian market does is follow the American market and they can't seem to work out if this whole sub prime mortgage thing is really that bad or not. The American market had a day off for Thanks Giving, and the Australian market did nothing the next day because they didn't have anyone to follow. I still don't understand why someones dodgey lending practices in another country affects the share price of a mining company in Australia. I've moved almost half of my portfolio into cash this month as it's all a bit too hard to follow at the moment and there is talk about another fairly large drop.    
More About: Update , Share , November , November 2007

Tom Darcey Tasmanian Olympian
2007-11-23 02:26:00
I've been working on something for months now and it has finally paid off. The Examiner newspaper published a list of Tasmanian Olympians a while ago that left out my Grandfather. Thomas Darcey represented Australia in rowing at the London Olympics in 1948. He was my mum's father and we were all a bit miffed that he wasn't on the list. I did a bunch of research and found a number of issues that could have led to him being omitted. Whilst he was born and died in Tasmania, he was serving in Melbourne with the Australian Air Force after returning from PNG during World War Two when a local rowing club at the time decided to enter their coxed eight in the Olympic trials. As Tom had been rowing with that club whilst he was in Melbourne he competed with them. Tom's team won the trial event and went on to represent Australia in London, however since it was a Melbourne club that entered the selection trials there could have been some confusion over Tom's allegiance. Anoth...