July 30th, 2006
This is way cool, my mate Rodti has been going on about Parallels heaps and he was good enough to create a wee video to illustrate it.
I have been looking into how I can possibly run Windows within Ubuntu and the general consensus is that I should use VMWare but I have to say, this is rather sexy and deserves some further research!
What do you think of it?
July 28th, 2006
Yee Haa! Just been wakeboarding with the family, the Scottish Waterski Centre happens to be a just a couple of miles from where I live so yesterday I went out with my Dad to check it out and had a quick session and today I returned with the whole family for some action.
I have been wanting to do this for a while, I used to water ski years ago and loved it so wanted to get up there and try it. Not only that but I reckon it is about time that me and the family got active and did something fun that we all enjoy doing together.
Charlotte was a little scared yesterday and copped out of standing up on the bar but today she managed to stand and even gave the rope a try. It is really cool watching your kids face their fears and persivere with something they want to do but are a little frightened, I really want to do more things like this as it is not just good fun but I get to spend non argue time with the ones I love.
I think it helped that Caroline went on first, she took the bull by the horns even though she was out for a drink yesterday showing a relative the sites & bars around Edinburgh. The look on her face was a picture when she first got in the water and then also when she was standing for the first time, I love the feelgood factor of watching folk do things for the first time and also getting to share the excitement they are going through. Caz managed to progress to the rope and was pretty comfortable with going around the corner when it came to turning at the end.
Yesterday I was a little ropey when it came to the wakeboarding, my posture was a mess and when I tried to do a little jump on the wake I bailed out and ate plenty of water, it then took me about 3 attempts to get back up event though I had gotten up first time when I got in the water.
Today was a slightly different story, I was probably still buzzing from my riding yesterday but today felt real good and I even managed to get about a foot of air over the wake.
Would’ve been nice to actually been nice to clear the wake but I guess that is for another day as I know for a fact that we are going to go back again. I don’t think we will go for a membership just yet but it looks like everyone enjoyed themselves so we will return ad hoc a few times and see if we can get Charlotte standing on the rope…
Oh yeah… One last thing, in case you are wondering what Elsie was up to whilst we were doing all this…
July 28th, 2006
Alright folks, I have been out wakeboarding today so excuse the slightly late Bad Joke Friday post. The topic for this Friday is Electrical Goods! I am quite astounded at how difficult it is to give a good handle for creating a joke, I believe there is perhaps a science behind making a devastatingly bad joke or even a funny one at that. I have a lot respect for those of you that have been good enough to contibute to my little project and I hope that we can continue to experiment with laughter.
Without much further ado I present you with my opener…
A toaster goes to the Dr and says “Doctor, Doctor… I don’t appear to be getting any power…”
Dr says “leccy see what we can do about that…”
July 21st, 2006
Once again we return for some bad joke action in Bad Joke Friday and this time I have decided that some fun and games could be had with food. For those of you that are new to Bad Joke Friday, it is pretty straight forward, all you need to do is try and make up jokes based on the theme or if you can make a pun somewhere along the line then feel free.
You better be quick on the draw though as Mr Paul Samat seems to be on fire and I have to give credit where credit is due, his jokes suck ass to the point of hillarity and I hope you all join in.
I will start you off with a Samat original…
Q: What is the difference between a loaf of hovis and an alsatian dog?
A: They are different breeds!
July 20th, 2006
For those of you that don’t know what I am up to, I got made redundant recently so have been picking up the slack with some freelance work which has been fun and I am away to go and actually put a front to my business. I really like the sound of running my own business and doing it for myself although I ain’t gonna lie, I have a wife to be and 2 kids to look out for so the money thing is kinda necessary!
I have a meeting tomorrow morning with a Business Gateway advisor to bash about some ideas and make sure I am going through the right channels. I am quite excited about the whole thing and have decided to give myself a new routine to give myself the best chance of being productive and getting things done. I have decided to try and be started on my computer for 7am each day so that I can get a good 2 and a bit hrs of solitude on my computer getting some hardcore work done!
Anyway, I possibly have a few good leads in the pipeline and am looking to continue building up business and mutually beneficial relationships, I am a big fan of back scratch networking as it means everyone gets a little benefit and it isn’t just one sided.
So… I now have to go and thrash out the cash so to speak and come up with a viable business plan and all associated bumf, I’d imagine that I will have some fun whilst doing it as I am genuinely interested in all aspects of what I do. One of the reasons I am writing this post is so that I can maybe learn from other peoples mistakes and maybe get some advice from others on the do’s and don’ts of going into business.
I’m not sure I want to go down the studio front and open up a web shop, I don’t think I need to and besides, there is bound to be way to much overheads associated with it. I do realise that it raises the bar and that it would be good to have a dedicated environment to work in but I would rather get my loft sorted out and get my studio set up in my own house. It looks like I am possibly going to manage to go down the contractor route or just working freelance from home or even on placement in other studios so I am quite happy with that, I just need to translate this into a business plan.
I know what I can do, I have toyed with the whole idea for years now as I am always working on something, why not work on it for myself? I like the idea of taking control of my destiny but I also see a darker side looming in the sides waiting to pounce. The balance of work and family life! I have been there before where I have been working on things for little or no money, trying to get portfolio work together, knowing that you have to do everything within your power to do as much as you can to further your opportunites but then I have other people that need me in this house too.
Life doesn’t stop just because I have a business to run, so how do you take a really positive thing and harness it to make more positives? I don’t want this to be a negative experience in any way whatsoever so I want to make sure do things the right way and make sure that both me and the people around me are happy. After all when you take your destiny in your hands, you should then be able to build a custom life solution that’ll make you rich, make you happy and give you enough time to shower love and affection on those that are around you and need you in their life…
I guess I have some planning ahead…
July 17th, 2006
I just fired up Blogbeat and was faced with some rather good news, Feedburner have just aquired Blogbeat.
In recent times I was close to ditching Blogbeat because they kept on going on and offline but I decided to perservere and I have to say that I am quite happy that I did. Whenever I have mailed them I have always had a prompt response and I have always enjoyed using the service, the only gripe I have had through the time I have used it is the fact that my feedburner subscriber stats were always wrong. I guess they will fix that now though huh?
So, here I am looking forward to Q4 2006 and what it might bring for me. Feedburner really are the defacto when it comes to managing your RSS feeds, if you haven’t done so already I recommend that you get an account now, and now that they have made the aquisition then they will be even better 
One downside for any of you wanting to get in on the blogbeat action, they are not actually taking any more subscriptions until later in the year…
Hopefully see you then!
July 14th, 2006
What a bummer, I don’t think I have seen anything like this happen before but my XBOX just died on me. I just got a cheap copy of Ghost Recon 2 to play with my daughter and stuck it in the machine to take it for a whirl and low and behold… Nothing!
On closer examination it sounds like the hard drive has gone or something. At first I thought it was just an exceeding loud noice in the CD drive, a sort of loud spinning noise with a little click in it, when I ejected the CD though to try again it would seem that it was thw hard drive that was making the noise.
This has to be bad news, I am a little bemused by it though because I was playing Conker not that long ago and it was working fine. I dunno whether to open it up and see if my baby has put something in it or whether to write it off and just go get me a 360 (err… when I win the lottery)… what a bummer 
Has anyone else out there experienced something similar? I haven’t been onto google yet to have a look for an answer, after all, google does have all the answers right?
Any help on this one would be massively appreciated but failing that I’ll easy take a shot of your 360 till I get my box fixed… no seriously 
July 14th, 2006
Yikes, I need to wake up… Spent the morning in the park with the family and then came back to do some freelance stuff and I once again forgot it was Friday.
Well here it is folks, I leave it in your capable hands, Bad Joke Friday #4 will be a Cowboy Theme so have some fun with it and see what jokes you can make.
I will start it off again with this:
Q: What does a Wild West Marshall say to an illegally parked cowboy?
A: Mooove along please!
July 12th, 2006
Oh my god, I just had a wonderful moment in my life! I was busy trying to get Paypal re-setup (looks like they have changed the way it is done because I could no longer transfer funds) and Caroline says to me that she thinks Elsie has a new favourite program.
I turn round to see the most amazing look on my daughters face as she points to the screen, you don’t get much better than that
She was stood there absolutely mesmorised at the screen, pointing at the little characters on the screen and touching the trains as they came towards her. I know it is probably bad for your eyes standing as close as she was but I’ll let it pass, seeing that look on her face has just made my day
Just thought I would share the moment, very special and that is a testament to the power of Thomas the Tank Engine…
July 11th, 2006
Wow, what couple of days I have just had! I have been trying to get a 2nd machine up and running as a web server in my living room so that I have a totally separate development area from my desktop and what a load of fun I have had doing it.
I have had the pleasure of looking after a dedicated linux box before for a website I was responsible for but that was fairly straight forward, in the last 2 days I have have had to build the lot from scratch and then get it networked to my main pc.
One of the problems I had was the fact that the server box doesn’t have a monitor so I needed to set up some sort of remote desktop to manage it, the other problem that I had to overcome was the fact that I had never done any Linux networking before. I am glad to say that I have now overcome both with a little helping hand here and there.
I have to say it is a total refief to have it all set up now, I still have a couple of things (well one in particular) that I would like to have set up before I can can call it a done deal but as far as I am concerned it has been an interesting learning experience.
Now that I have this set up I have a shiney new Apache2 / PHP5 / MySQL dedicated box to look after all of my development sites. I may look into adding in some other stuff at a later date but for now I have some coding work to get on with, only this time in a fully Linux environment.
I’ll tell you something for nothing… Feels good to be leaving Windows behind and I have never been so excitied about the possibilities that lay ahead now that I have been baptised in Ubuntu!
Here’s to the future
Oh yeah, I will try and write my own version of the how to when I get a chance and list all the resources I used so that any of you out there thinking about making the leap can do so…
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