Monday, December 13

New Camera Woes - The Camera Strikes Back

In-case you missed Part-1 of the Camera saga you can find that here http://shaddowofadream.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-camera-woes.html

If you're like me and kind of lazy, here's a tl;dr version
- Wanted a DSLR
- Found online retailer with a good price
- Shipping company really dropped the ball at the end of the journey
- Camera itself ended up not actually working properly anyway
- Lodged RMA with online retailer

Okay now that you've caught up, I can start explaining how much more fun this tale becomes....

So the online retailer, who I'm happy to divulge at this point in time is B&H Photo/Video based in NYC and for their part have been exceptionally understanding and helpful in all aspects of the purchase (with the slight exception of sending me a faulty unit, but that isn't entirely their fault).

So they reply to my RMA request saying yep, camera looks defective, send it back and we'll organize a replacement (YAY), they even comment that they will cover the cost of shipping it back to them, despite the website saying otherwise (here's hoping they actually follow through with that!)

So now I just needed to find someone willing/able to post my package to the US for me that can do it fairly quickly (the RMA has a 10-12 day expiry on it), cheaply (in-case they don't follow through with reimbursement) and that I could track/insure (it is a $2000 camera after all).

My initial thought was to try Australia Post, they are usually fairly reliable and their online prices don't look too terrible... and I can track and insure it too, wonderful...

-I feel I need to interject here-
Anyone who has never been to an Australian Post outlet might not quite comprehend the sheer frustration of the queuing system, I'm not sure what it is but it seems every single Australia Post outlet is ALWAYS busy
-End Interjection-

Where was I, okay so I went to Australia Post and lined up like all the other complacent sheep in the store, waited my turn (felt like eternity, was probably only 10 minutes) only to be told by the kind cashier that since my package contained a Li-On battery they would not be able to send it for me (more details on that here)

She mentioned if I wanted to send it I'd have to remove the battery from the package and send it separately, something I'm fairly sure that B&H wouldn't appreciate in their RMA process...

After heading back to work with my continued defeat in tow, I tried calling a few other international courier companies (DHL, Fed-Ex etc) only to be told the exact same thing, it seems Lithium batteries were seriously scary shit!

There is one shipping company which is allowed to send Li-On batteries but their prices aren't exactly the cheapest, so... I've contacted B&H again and asked them if they are okay if I just send the camera sans battery and they can just dock the battery out of the replacement kit, however given they are about 23 hours behind me I wont find out until tomorrow morning....

The real icing of the cake in this situation is that if they don't declare the replacement camera properly I'll likely have to pay import duty & GST again, so to heed that off I'm going to try and make it super clear that they do that for me.



tl;dr
- It's okay to send Lithium batteries INTO the country via air, but you definitely can't send them back out again, no no!

Saturday, December 11

New camera woes

I think I've always had some interest in photography and in the more recent years purchased increasingly better (and more expensive) hardware to accommodate.

Quite a few people I know have their own Digital SLR's and I've always been a little jealous of the amazing photo's that they can produce and so I decided that I would make the move from simple point-and-click photography into the scary realm of SLR.

After a fair amount of research I narrowed down my choices to two Canon bodies, the EOS 550D and EOS 60D and after considering the pros and cons of each I felt the 60D probably offered the best long term choice.

From here I started looking around at various places that sold cameras, both online stores (within Australia and international) and also retail stores. Unsurprisingly the online stores completely smash the retail stores for price competitiveness, with the difference being nearly $800 for exactly the same product...

Then it was simply getting approval from my better half (yay) and then placing the order, which I finalized on the 6th of December. The online retailer (based in New York City) estimated that delivery of the package would take about 4-5 working days.

Now that the order had been placed, I was anxiously watching the tracking page for any updates, no matter how seemingly insignificant and then on the morning of Friday the 10th the package arrived in Perth, I was pleasantly surprised that it got here so quickly and I'd be able to play with my new camera over the weekend...

Little did I know that I would encounter problem number 1, that being the complete inability for the shipping company to pass on information between its various internal departments. I called the customer support team early that morning to let them know to call me on my mobile number once it got released from customs.

After 6 hours had elapsed and the end of the business day was fast approaching I was getting noticeably frustrated at the lack of updates, so I again called the customer service line who repeated they'd call me once it had processed through customs, at this point I felt I should just call customs myself and find out wtf was going on...

Another 5 minutes wasted on-hold and the companies customs department informs me that the package was cleared at 9:30 AM this morning and they've been trying to call me all day to pay the duty/GST...

So after 3 calls and about 45 minutes of life wasted on hold, I finally had my item released and ready for pick-up (YAY!)

Little did I expect Problem Number the Second, as my work had their Christmas function on, I couldn't exactly unbox my (very expensive) new camera and play around with it so I waited until the following day (today) and methodically unboxed everything, made sure it was all there and put my camera together for its first use...

The result is below...
60D - 0001

Now at first I thought it might just be my lack of experience with a DSLR and the myriad of settings now at my finger-tips, but no after some more experimentation (and confirmation from some nice guys online) they confirmed my camera body is borked and definitely should NOT be producing those results....

So here I am now, with an amazing camera, lenses and tripod all ready to "enjoy" my new toy but completely unable to do so....

I've since lodged a RMA request with the online vendor and I believe that will work out okay as they have a really good reputation but at this stage it feels like I've bought a brand new Lamborghini and gotten a flat tire halfway home....

Thursday, November 25

Things that make me RAGE!


It's been quite a while since my last blog update, which I'm going to put down to simply lack of motivation to keep up with the 30-day thing... anyway enough about that...


Today's post is going to be about something that inevitably makes me RAGE, much like the very angry looking fellow to the right...

Now I don't know about you, but when I'm driving along (and doubly so during peak hour traffic) there are a number of things that are probably quite minor in the scheme of things but really get my blood boiling...

So here goes; by the way if you know you are guilty of any of these bad habits please take a moment and appreciate how much of a dick you actually are ....
  • Turning from the middle of the lane.
Okay so you might be driving a whale sized vehicle, but seriously if you are turning right on a busy 2 way (one-lane) street, pull the fuck over to the right hand side so we can at least attempt to sneak past on the left hand side... guess what Mr Fail most roads are actually designed with this in mind, this is also true of those who feel they must turn SUPER WIDE when turning to the left thus forcing all of those behind them to slow down to a snails pace....

  • Driving 10 to 20 km BELOW the signed speed limit
Note this doesn't apply to school zones or during mass traffic or other times when its actually too dangerous to drive at the listed limit, but I can understand driving at 60 in a 70 zone if you've never driven the road and aren't quite sure what the limit might be, but Mister... if you drive past that sign and don't increase your speed you're just playing with fire. Okay okay, if you're a bit lost or don't quite know where you're going... PULL THE FUCK OVER don't drive at 40 in my 60-70 zone...
  • Trying to "jump" the queue in a fail-merge zone
Anyone who's lived in Perth for a decent amount of time is quite aware for some reason the "lets merge like intelligent people" gene was left out and a result most of the time when someone needs to merge its a huge clusterfuck, I mean seriously people how fucking hard is it... let one person in from the left then one from the right (imagine how a zipper works people)... but merging doesn't really make me rage, I just accept that most people obviously don't need to be a brain surgeon to get their drivers licence... no what makes me really mad is the rude fuckers who notice there is a cluster-fuck merge up ahead and then try to zoom up the (left/right) side to jump in front 50 metres...

Seriously if everyone just "took their turn" we wouldn't have half the problems we do... but nooooo you think zooming ahead and then FORCING your way in with your massive 4WD urban-tank will get you home just that iddy-bit quicker...

SHIT, just writing about it is making me mad...

Anyway there are other things that make me mad when I'm driving but those 3 in particular really fire up the demon inside...

What do you think, am I just a rage-a-holic or are some drivers really mentally retarded?

Also what makes you mad, and how do you deal with it?

Tuesday, October 19

Day Nineteen - Whats in a name

So I was thinking that perhaps the reason that my blog updates have been more and more sparse recently is that perhaps I quite like having a preset subject each day and don't want it to end too soon...

Or perhaps it's just that I'm lazy and haven't set aside some time to actually write about my day (or the subject matter on hand).

The optimist in me says its the former but the realist in me knows that it's probably the latter, what do you think?

Anyway today's post is meant to be about nicknames, but that's boring since my nickname is almost always just my last name with +Y tacked onto the end, not very interesting subject to talk about I'm afraid.

Tomorrow's post is .... a bit interesting subject again I believe whom ever wrote this initial list was single and such some of the questions don't really make much sense, but I shall see how I go.

Monday, October 18

Day Eighteen - Plans,Dreams and Aspirations

If you have been following on from the start, you'll know that this post is quite a few days late... which if you read my day Eight post is one of the small goals I set myself.

Strangely enough I found the topic surrounding this post to be rather difficult to write about, not because it is a particularly tough subject but because I (refering back to day four) have a really bad habit of self doubt and find it difficult to write long-term goals and dreams down because the little-voice inside my head keeps reminding me how silly, dumb, unachievable etc said goals are...

Despite all of these hurdles I do want to continue with my #30daychallenge so I will persevere (hah I make it sound much more difficult than it should be)

So Plans, Dreams and Aspirations...
First and foremost I want to be able to retire comfortably without having to break my back, which means I want to have enough passive-income so that I can stop working and go travelling and all the other things people do when they retire (I'm not sure what else that really entails)

Obviously between now and the time I do actually retire I will have to work out how to acquire said passive-income but I will keep working on that for now...

What are your life aspirations (do you have any?)

Sunday, October 17

Day Seventeen - Swap Places with

Continuing on from my #30daychallenge which you can read about here

Almost fully twenty-four hours late (whoops) I figured it's time to do today's post, and then I'll back-date it so it looks like I haven't really cheated (or I could just leave it as is...)

Well I was thinking about this question for a while, "who would I swap places with and why?" and I thought to myself...

You know I've done this whole guy thing for my entire life it'd be interesting to try out what its like to be a female at least for a day...

Following from that I figured I don't quite think I'd like to see penis, so it would have to be a lesbian, (what can I say girl-parts are just better...)

Once I had that figured out, who I wanted to swap with for a day became pretty bleedingly obvious.

So in-case you haven't worked it out just yet I would quite like to be Ellen for a day, which I think would be cool for other reasons than just I get to see Portia de Rossi naked (but that's pretty high up on the list)

What do you think, who would you swap with for a day if you could and why?

Saturday, October 16

Day Sixteen - Another Picture of Myself

Now up-to Day 16 of the #30daychallenge and todays post is Yet Another Picture Post (YAPP)

I'm starting to think that who ever came up with this challenge ran out of ideas of stuff to write about and hence put a heap of picture posts in...

Ah well, today for your enjoyment I present to you a photo of me...



I was borrowing a friends hat at the time and someone obviously thought it would be funny to get a photo of me... and now you all get to see it aren't you lucky...

Tomorrow's post (looks) yep that should be slightly more interesting than Yet-Another-Picture-Post!

Friday, October 15

Day Fifteen - 1st Ten Songs on Shuffle mode

So continuing on from my cheating post yesterday (which I technically posted about an hour ago) I am now up to day 15 of the #30daychallenge or thats what I'd say if this was twitter... but it isn't so I get heaps more than 140 characters...

Anyway since I don't have an iPod (well I technically do but I never use it and it's not charged) so I'm going to use my iPhone which isn't loaded with all that many songs so I'm not so sure this will be interesting but hey what ever right...

- I quite like this song, it's closer to their original dance/electronic stuff than the "metal" / rock stuff they started to move into.

Song #2 - Armin van Buuren - Ocean Drive Boulevard (from ASOT 383)
- Don't really have much to say about this except it's a fairly good track and it's part of ASOT-383 which is AWESOME!

Song #3 - Tuneboy - Re-Generate It (original mix)
- First time I've really listened to this song, I think it's from a compilation I've loaded on /skip

Song #4 - Armin van Buuren - Walk The Edge (also from ASOT 383)
- Another song from ASOT 383, sorry for being boring but I'm pretty sure I warned you at the start...

- One of my favourite all-time dance songs, even if it is a little sad

Song #6 - Da Hool - Meet Her at the Love Parade
- Hmm I'm pretty ashamed that this is actually on my phone

- Probably my 2nd favourite dance song of all time (or at least up there!)

- Song is pretty good the first few times you listen to it but less so the more you hear it...

- Another pretty good trance track!!

- Again another of my very favourite trance songs!!

So there you go, not much variety there but given I have probably a total of ~100 songs loaded on my phone it's not surprising (I have about 200+ podcasts so thats how I get music fix on my phone at least) ...

Let us know what you think,

Thursday, October 14

Day Fourteen - A picture of you and your family

Don't really have any recent photo's of me and my family so i'll have to come back to this one at a later stage.
#cheating

Wednesday, October 13

Day Thirteen - A Letter to someone that hurt me recently

Continuing on from my 30 day Challenge, todays post calls for something a little unusual, well I guess most of the days post requests could be considered unusual but I digress...

Yesterday one of my work colleagues asked me to assist him with a problem he was having, fair enough I thought I like solving problems and generally being helpful, so how can I help you here?

Turns out we have a back-log of paperwork that goes back about 5 months (3-400 pages worth) and he wanted me to help out with the data entry into a rudimentary database (excel spreadsheets were never designed for this!)

So I approach it much like I would approach any problem, that is try to understand the root cause (i.e. why these weren't entered in the first place) and see if we can address that issue rather than the symptom...

Dear Colleague,

I appreciate that you don't fully understand my workload and how it seems I'm not actually 'busy' but if you come to me with a problem, I'm going to try and solve it the best way that I can...

I realize that this might not be the outcome you were initially expecting, but I hope that in-time you will understand that this approach is worthwhile.

Perhaps we can come to a compromise where-by we satisfy your original request while still addressing the underlying problem so that it doesn't become a problem in future, but I feel that will only delay the resolution of the real problem.

Finally I'd ask that you don't insult my intelligence when you try to play the "I'm experienced" card as essentially it seems like what you're trying to say is "you should do it my way instead because I think your way is bad"... I would much prefer if you just said that outright so that I could address your real concern(s).

I hope you appreciate my point of view in this matter, however I'm more than happy to discuss it further if you would like.

Regards,
Me

Tuesday, October 12

Day Twelve - How/why Blog

It seems I am now up to Day 12 of the 30 day challenge, with the first eleven days behind me, the daily habit to write doesn't seem as difficult as I first imagined.

Today's topic seems slightly redundant but I'll run with it:- How you found out about blogging and why you have one?

How I found out about blogs in the first place, I think it was about 2 or 3 years ago and MySpace was going and LiveJournal (which would count as my very first blog) and it just seemed like an interesting idea: Write down your idea's and thoughts and put them out there for the world to review (or not as was more likely the case)

The Why, is probably a little more complicated, but makes me consider my very first blog post (here at least) which was quoting Descartes Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) or in my post "I blog, therefore I am".

Having a small place of my own where I could write down my thoughts, feelings, concerns, joys and a whole gamut of other emotions helped me to get some grounding or I think for a short while allowed me to do a brain-dump and try and work out what was going on...

Since then I've abandoned the project and recently re-started it, with the new goal (why) to try and improve my writing skills over time by forcing myself to write more frequently.

Those who have been following along with my 30 Day Challenge, hopefully have seen some improvement (or can leave some feedback in the comments)...

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post, which should prove super difficult!

Monday, October 11

Day Eleven - Another Picture Post

Today's post is meant to be Yet Another Picture Post (YAPP) as I've mentioned before I'm not exactly one to get in-front of the camera as I don't think I am particularly photogenic... so I'm usually the one taking the photos (for better or worse!)

Most of the photo's I have are from social gatherings with my old work, which bring back fairly sad memories so I'll rather not post any of those...

Instead I'm going to post kittens... I hope you don't mind








Hang around for tomorrow's post... hopefully I can give you something more interesting than Kitties

Sunday, October 10

Day Ten - Music Influences

So checking on our Day Zero list, we can plainly see that today's post is mean't to be all about music and stuff that I listen to when I'm happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad (wait is that the entire list...)

This post is going to be quite tough (mostly because I've cheated and haven't had any time to think about what I'm going to post) but I digress...

For me music plays such a large role in how I'm feeling at any particular moment, it can be really difficult to define just one song (or even a genre) that I listen to at any time (or perhaps it's because my emotions are like a roller-coaster most days)

Happy:-
Probably anything dance/electronic or just with a decent beat (Tiesto - C'mon is very good)

Sad:-
Some sad songs or rather songs I listen to when I'm sad (Pearl Jam - Last Kiss, Pink Floyd - Wish you were here, Powderfinger - These Days) I could probably list 100 songs...

Bored:-
Not really sure of any songs I listen to when I'm "bored", mainly just turn on the radio and settle for what ever the masses wish to deliver at that particular time, mind you some of the "pop" songs of late really shit me

Hyped:-
Any dance songs, (Youtube Playlist) Pendulum, Tiesto, Armin ... anything with a really decent beat is good!

Mad:-
Any heavy metal/rock gets a good going, Metallica, Pantera, Rammstein, Offspring (old stuff) can be good too...

the list forgot Love songs:-
Again there's certainly some dance songs I quite like here, but still find myself coming back to Guns N Roses.

Now you know a bit more about my music tastes (or lack of) feel free to write a rage reply about how everything I like is shit and I should listen to "insert latest craze here" instead!

Saturday, October 9

Day Nine - Proud of

So this post is a few days late now (edit: so I cheated and back posted this), which if you're following on from my previous post, you may realize that I'm missed my own goal the very day I set it... poor form on my part I know.

Alas a few things happened over the weekend which I shan't repeat here as it's not really the place for it.

Going back to my original post, (should I call it Day Zero - The Beginning ?) today's post is meant to be about Pride or rather something I am rather Proud of...

Well one thing in particular I am quite proud of is the house renovations that have been taken place the last few weeks (months?) at my house, with the new kitchen finally being installed and more recently the new floor tiles that have gone down the house is finally looking kind of nice (what ever that is)

Anyone who has done house renovations before will certainly know that while they are being done it's not really all that fun, but when it's all coming together that's when you sit back and go... "mmm"

So if anyone is actually following my blog (or reads it after I spam it to my twitter account), given that I'm technically still 2 days behind should I back-date this post and do Day Ten and Eleven anyway?

Friday, October 8

Day Eight - Short Term Goals

If you have been following my blog posts for any time now you'll know that I'm currently undertaking a 30 day challenge

Today's post calls for me to write up some short term goals for the month and why...

Goals and setting them has always been a bit tough for me as I'm either too ambitious and fail miserably or I set the bar so low that I achieve them within a day or two and then wonder what I'm meant to be doing for the rest of my time...

But here goes:-
  • I will keep posting daily as part of the 30 day challenge for the remainder of October
  • I will utilize my new chin-up bar at least 3 days a week for as many repetitions that I can do in any one go (x3) for the next 2-3 weeks
  • and while I'm at it I may as-well track my progress (or lack of) here or somewhere else public so I'm held accountable.
Umm, that's all I could really think of which is pretty lame really... if you have any other suggestions for me please let me know in the comments section

Thursday, October 7

Day Seven - Biggest Impact

So following on from yesterday's post, in which I declared my everlasting admiration for all things Super and Hero like... todays post is about those thing(s) that have had the biggest impact on me...

So I have been thinking about this one for a little bit today and I have to admit that I'm drawing a blank at the moment, which is a slightly disappointing as I'd hoped to have something interesting to write each day...

Without naming names (or posting pictures), there was one person in particular at my old job who everyone looked up to (even the owner/managing director of the company) and was a massive inspiration to those around him.

I'd have to say he had a rather big impact on me, by giving me some of his time to listen and develop me into a better leader and highlighting area's for improvement in a way that didn't make me feel inferior...

So yeah Mr X thank-you for listening to my random rants and trying to point me in the right direction (whatever that is) I very much appreciate it!

Wednesday, October 6

Day Six - Favourite Superhero

Yesterday's post was hopefully an interesting insight into somewhere different (Adelaide lol!) but for today's offering I'm meant to post my favourite superhero and why.

Having grown up with a large variety of different cartoons and comics this one is fairly difficult to answer with just the one person...

I could go with one of the fairly easy offerings, Superman, Batman or Spiderman but I think that would be just too easy...

Depending on your definition of Superhero, I was considering one of (or all?) the X-men (Wolverine is so bad-ass) or perhaps Iron-man (he has an awesome flying battle suit made of win)...

Just now I thought of doing something completely different but I'm not sure anyone would know who he is any more... (With your powers combined, I am Captain PLANET!)

I think the appeal of most Superhero's is that they aren't real and get to break most (or some) of the conventional rules of society...

So ... with all that in mind I think Mr Tony Stark does win the day... even if he has a "broken heart" he has bucket loads of money, seems to attract women like a magnet and has a freaking flying robot suit!


Tuesday, October 5

Other 30 day Challengers

So it seems the 30 day challenge thing is fairly popular at the moment, (does that make me trendy, wait nevermind)

Here is a short list of people that I know are doing the challenge, if you are reading my blog and are also doing the challenge feel free to leave a comment and I'll update this post.

So in no particular order::
You're already on my blog - http://shaddowofadream.blogspot.com/

- @tiffanyff (Tiffany)

-@sebsharp (Sebalicious)



@cathroxx (Cathy)





Edit: found another one

You should probably read all of them now :)

P.s. If I have you listed here and you'd rather I didn't please let me know and I'll quite happily take you off "The List!"

Day Five - Places I have been

So hopefully you've now caught onto the fact that I'm posting daily...

Or perhaps this is your very first time here, if so I recommend you start back at Day Zero or you could just scroll down and work it out ... but whatever floats your boat really.

So today's challenge post is a picture of somewhere you've been and ... uh ... well that's all really but I'll try to include a bit of story with the pictures so they make sense too.

So back in May of 2009 my girlfriend and I were graciously invited to go to South Australia (Adelaide) for the Harcourts Conference (lots of really great speakers and interesting Property topics)

Anyway here is the first picture...

I took this from our bedroom window (7th floor of the Hyatt?) because I thought it looked like a funny smiley face... (tell me you can't see it now!)

This next photo I took because I kind of like sun-sets/rises, it's not the "best" photo I've taken but I quite like it because its the first one I took outside of Western Australia


This last photo is a view looking out from our room and I think is quite nice.


So there you have it, I went to Adelaide, had some amazing food and listened to some very talented motivational speakers on a broad variety of topics, and I took some random photo's that look like smiley faces to prove it.

Stay tuned for tomorrows post which should prove super interesting ;)

Monday, October 4

Day Four - Bad Habits

Well if you have been following my posts for the last few days (or even if you haven't feel free to go back and have a read) you would know that I'm currently undertaking the 30 day challenge

Todays subject matter is all about Bad Habits (no not the Offspring kind, but damn that song brings back memories!)

I'm pretty sure I have more than 1 bad habit but I'll try to just focus on the one for today...

For the longest time I have always had rather large (excess?) amounts of self doubt, you know that nagging voice in the back of your head that makes you really wonder if you can actually "do it" yeah amplify that by about a thousand.

Now you're probably thinking what a lame habit to write about, but as far as habits I wish I didn't have that's pretty much top of the list.

Sometimes it feels like I'm constantly in internal dialog mode, trying my best to anticipate the situation, preemptively counter any arguments and just generally talk myself out of things...

I'm certain that I wasn't always this way but sometimes it's tough to "switch off" that voice as it definitely seems reasonable most of the time, but I have been told it's probably a good idea to work on it regardless.

I know I promised a 100% sun-safe post and hopefully you're reading this inside somewhere, if not you can't exactly blame me...

Stay tuned for tomorrows post which will include 23% more me...

Sunday, October 3

Day Three - A picture of you and your friends

So continuing on from the 30 day challenge (original post here) today's offering is meant to be a picture of me and my friends...

Unfortunately I don't really have all that many photo's of me and my friends (either I have no friends or no photo's or both you decide...)

Trawling through my facebook photos (all of which are quite old now) I think this one will be suitable...

On the left hand side is a good highschool friend of mine (Damo) and I'm in the background (hiding as usual) and to the right is Damo's brother in law (Will).

We went out to Spring in the Valley and played some SupaGolf last year and finished it off with some food and drinks at a restaurant (winery?) was a pretty good day over all.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update which I promise will be 100% more Sun-safe or something like that....

Saturday, October 2

Day Two - Meaning behind my Blog name

In-case you missed the original post here, I'm trying to participate in a 30 day "Challenge". With the main challenge actually taking the time out each day to update my blog (with some fairly set parameters thankfully!).

Yesterday I revealed some (hopefully?) interesting facts about myself and today's challenge is to describe the meaning behind my blog name.

Shaddowofadream

It's actually the nickname/alias that I have been using for quite some time, note I'm well aware I spelled shadow wrong with the extra D there, but it's actually been quite useful as time goes on with others registering shadowofadream prior but hardly anyone seems to go for shaddowofadream.

The idea behind the nickname/alias is fairly deep (poetic?) but the idea originally was that I had very grandiose dreams of greatness but for what ever reason I was destined to be but a shadow of them.

As time has gone on I think there's probably other stuff I could attribute it to (every dream we have leaves behind a shadow of ourselves?) but thats why I originally chose it (some 5-6 years ago now it seems).

Tomorrow's post will be interesting...

Friday, October 1

Day One - 15 Interesting Facts

So continuing on from yesterdays post, I'm participating in a 30 day challenge (that is post a blog update every day for 30 days).

Today is Day 1 of the challenge and asks:
Day 1- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself:-

While it's not exactly recent, its probably the most recent photo of me, I will obviously have to get a new photo eventually...

15 interesting facts about myself (this one is going to be tough, mostly because I don't really think I'm all that interesting but I'll persevere)
  1. I'm the second child from my parents, but the only one that isn't technically a bastard (born in wedlock)
  2. I was born without a fully formed Anus and subsequently had to go into surgery pretty much straight from the womb.
  3. When I was younger I had pure yellow blonde hair but has transitioned into light brown as I grow older (will have to find that photo of me and link it here)
  4. I consider myself to have green eyes, but others say they are probably closer to hazel
  5. I tried my first alcoholic drink at 15 (goon) and hated it so much that I never touched any alcoholic substance until I was 17 and a half (Bourbon)
  6. I have never tried any illegal drugs, ever and don't plan on starting any time soon
  7. The only problem I've had with my weight is that I find it very tough to put any on and have been "skinny" or small build for my entire life.
  8. Despite this I have tried numerous times to put muscle mass on with weight training and gym sessions (and have seen limited success)
  9. I'm an avid gamer and thoroughly enjoy playing most computer games (with Team Fortress-2 and Starcraft-2 being my current vices)
  10. I have a dragon tattoo on my right shoulder which I got shortly after my 19th birthday, funded entirely by the Burswood Casino.
  11. I'm missing 1 vertebrae from my lower spine which causes my back to curve to the right quite a bit and also gives me slight back ache constantly.
  12. I'm a massive fan of Italian food and cooking, but don't particularly like any sea-food
  13. My first car was a 1983 Ford Falcon XE, and cost me $1000.00 I had it less than a week before it was written off (car ran a red light and side swiped me) neither of us had insurance!
  14. When I was 11 I had a massive kidney operation and I've since been left with a massive (10cm+) long scar on my left hand side, which matches a similar scar I got when I was just 11 months old on my right hand side.
  15. Up until a few years ago I had never left Western Australia, with my first interstate trip being to Melbourne for a week and then shortly after I visited Adelaide for a week. One day I hope to travel much more.
Hmm well that wasn't as difficult as I first thought, but I'm not sure any of that is interesting or just lame... let me know what you think (or not) :)

Thursday, September 30

30 day challenge!

Shamelessly stolen from the Internet (in true internet style) I'm going to participate in the 30 day challenge...

Here's how it works - A post every day for 30 days :
Day 1- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
Day 2- The meaning behind your blog name
Day 3- A picture of you and your friends
Day 4- A habit that you wish you didn’t have
Day 5- A picture of somewhere you've been to
Day 6- Favourite super hero and why
Day 7- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
Day 8- Short term goals for this month and why
Day 9- Something you're proud of in the past few days
Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad
Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends
Day 12- How you found out about blogging and why you have one
Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you recently
Day 14- A picture of you and your family
Day 15- Put you ipod on shuffle: first 10 songs that play
Day 16- Another picture of yourself
Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have
Day 19- Nicknames you have and why you have them
Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future
Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy
Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else
Day 23- Something you crave a lot
Day 24- A letter to your parents
Day 25- What I would find in your bag
Day 26- What do you think about your friends
Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge
Day 28- A picture of you from last year and now, how have you changed since then?
Day 29- In this past month, what have you learned
Day 30- Your favorite song
________________________________
Hopefully this will give me the motivation to revive my blog and get me writing again.

Thursday, July 1

Dawn of War 2 - Update


As a follow-up from my Letting off some Steam™ post a few days back, I thought it would be good to post my thoughts now that I've actually been able to play the game (and some other general feedback).

I remembered reading somewhere that Dawn of War-2 was quite visually stunning and quite a good game. Having played the first iteration DoW, I was expecting more of the same Squad based RTS that really set the first game apart from its RTS brethren.

What DoW2 delivered however, was something quite vastly different from the first game. It's some-what difficult to describe it exactly, but it's somewhere between a RTS and a RPG taking some of the good elements from both genre's into a single experience.

The gameplay takes place with you controlling a commando squad of Blood-Ravens, with no resource gathering or base building some hard-core RTS fans might be disappointed, but the strategy component is definitely a strong point in the game.

The first few missions teach you how to control your squads and move them in and out of cover (this probably could have been handled better but it does the job okay) and these first few missions are fairly forgiving in their difficulty without feeling like baby-sitting.

As the game progresses and you level up your squads and pick different abilities and start to outfit them with some of the random pickups you find and earn the game really starts to shine, as you can customize your squads to your preferred play-style.

I personally favored the ranged heavy-bolter squad and the tactical marines, out-fitting them with the best gear I could find, but I could easily imagine another player going heavily into the close-combat squads with a completely different strategy for each mission.

The game does ship with online multi-player (unfortunately this is forced upon you via Microsoft Games for Windows) and offers some interesting modes. One in particular I quite liked was the "Survive the Horde" mode, which is played with 2 friends (or randoms) and pits you against ever increasing difficulty waves of enemies.

Overall I was very impressed with the quality of the game, and I expect to put many more hours into both the campaign (hopefully I can organize co-op) and also the multiplayer missions. I'd highly recommend the game to any RTS fan's who also like RPG's/MMO's as it does borrow a few elements from both genre's.

Now I have a few gripes about the THQ pack I bought with DoW2 but I'll save that for another post/day...

Tuesday, June 29

My Opinion:- Why Email Signatures are wasteful

For today's post I will be serving a dish that is heavily saturated in my personal opinion.

I am of the firm belief that email signatures (as they are currently being used by 99% of businesses and private consumers) is entirely wasteful and is exceptionally redundant.

Before you disregard me as a heretic, let me explain why I believe this is so...

The majority of email messages that are sent (not including unsolicited advertisements) will include some kind of message signature, which depending on the company or organization that you work for may include some logo, accreditations and even perhaps a legal disclaimer.

So email Sig's are trying to fill these basic needs
- Tell the person who you are
- Who you work for
- How to contact you
- Legal disclaimers

Telling the person who you are, well the very first time you communicate with someone this could be quite useful to confirm to the other person who you are, but it's certainly not necessary to include your life story.

Regards,
Karl

Who you work for, for most people this should be pretty obvious, if I have a message from Joe@Blogs.com it's pretty likely that Joe works for Blogs.com. Only exception could be very large companies with multiple branches, however that could be explained in one line.

Regards, Joe Blogs
Accounts Team
Blogs.Com

How to contact you, do you end end every single call with "if you want to call my mobile number is, if you want to call my office number is, if you want to email my address is...", probably not (and if you do, it's likely you wont have any friends) and the reason being is if the person wishes to return your call its a good chance they will have your number, with email they will definitely have a way to contact you (reply address) and if they need to call you can simply provide the details in the body of your email.

Hi Joe,

Can you please call me on 040x xxx xxx, when you get a chance so we can discuss the project.

Regards,
Karl

In my current job the policy is to include the company logo, contact details amongst other things in every email. This doesn't particularly take up that much space (~13 kilobytes) but I would estimate it is on the lower end of the scale.

Using some simple maths, I know that company wide we sent approximately 4,000 emails in the last 2 weeks. Based upon that small sample my 13 kilobyte sig would count for a massive 1.3 Gb over the course of a year.

What does that 1.3 Gb email tell you that you don't already know (or can't easily find out)... extra downloads from your ISP that you probably don't really need.

If this is scaled to the entire Web with the millions of emails that are sent every day, the simple email sig starts to add (in my opinion) an unnecessary overhead.

Do your bit for the environment and don't send me your email sig!

Saturday, June 26

Letting off some Steam™

Digital Distribution gone wrong?

I guess that I'm not afraid to admit that I am a pretty "hardcore" gamer, in that I like to play games a lot. With my current Steam stats showing approximately 49.2 hours in the last 2-weeks (and a life-time total of 550+ hours in Team Fortress-2 alone)

If those numbers shock or surprise you, then I should explain that before I quit World of WarCrackcraft I had clocked up a ridiculous 130 days of /played (which worked out to about 3200 hours of continuous play!)

So now that I've covered off my addiction hobby I can explain why I felt compelled to write this post in the first place.

Other gamers may have noticed the portmanteau in the title of the post, with me letting off some Steam and Steam being amongst other things a games portal & digital distribution client.

So as usual Steam was having one of it's regular sales, only this time the specials they had on offer actually convinced me to whip out the credit card and place an order (or two or five...) alas at the end of it I now have a veritable butt-load of new games.

One game in particular I was looking forward to playing (and quite pleased with myself that I was able to get it cheaply) was Warhammer® 40,000™: Dawn of War® II and after setting my computer to download it overnight (yay for 6.5 GB downloads) I figured I'd fire it up and hopefully confirm my bargain purchase.

Game loaded fine, intro movie piqued my interest in what laid ahead, and then... Games for Windows kind of just happened. Essentially the game wanted me to sign-in with my Games-for-Windows account to get the most out of the game, such as online ranking, achievements, community etc... wait a second... isn't that exactly what Steam does already?

Obviously THQ the developers of the Warhammer games have some kind of deal with Microsoft (perhaps to ensure better Xbox publishing rights?) to use their online connectivity suite (or perhaps the Steam API is just too difficult for THQ to implement?).

At any rate I couldn't remember if I had ever signed up for a Games-for-Windows account, so I plugged in my trusty gmail account only to be told, "yep this is in use, please give us your password to login" after about 20 minutes of frustration I determined that no my gmail account wasn't actually a login but my @hotmail account I hadn't used in ... 5 years was and my gmail account was linked (but the login script didn't inform me of this in any shape or form) and so my attempts to login with my @gmail account were in vain.

After trying my best to navigate the Games for Windows horrid site (it is obvious the site has been built for Xbox users and then attempted to ported over to Windows) I realised I couldn't even change my Windows login from my @hotmail account at all and so I have given up.

What I don't understand is why the developer would force its players to use such a inhibiting tool that is Games-for-Windows when the alternative (Steam) is much better?

Now I still haven't actually been able to "play" the game that I purchased but I expect that without using the Games for Windows plug-in I will probably be missing out on a large proportion of the game, which is quite disappointing and leaves a bad taste for any future THQ purchases.

Monday, June 7

Empire Avenue

So it seems that I have been sucked into yet another web-based social networking game...

This one in particular is called EmpireAvenue and is about buying/selling shares in your friends. With the share price being determined by what the site believes your influence is.

I think the long term goal of the site is to link advertisers to people with high influence to do direct marketing.

I'll give it a decent go and report my findings here...

Oh and secret code is EAVB_QUDLDSDIEH

Thursday, June 3

An unashamedly honest recollection of my Terrible Thursday!

To say that my day has been a disaster would be a massive understatement...

Now I was fairly nervous this morning before work as today marks my 90th day or put another way today was my 3 Month Probation review. I wasn't expecting to be fired or be told off or anything, but still found myself quite nervous regarding my position in the company.

In my typical morning routine, shower/dress, breakfast & morning news I was interrupted by an urgent report from the HR manager... (this I would realize would be just the beginning) ... it seemed that for some reason the MS Exchange server was down which resulted in everyone's emails being unavailable (about a 9/10 on the oh-shit meter)

And so I skipped breakfast and rushed (possibly breaking a few traffic rules to do so) into work to asses the situation and try and resolve it as promptly as possible. On my arrival I was presented with not just one problem but a magnitude of multiple (in hindsight minor) issues, but fixing the Exchange was top priority.

The exchange server/server was configured entirely by someone else as was the scheduled back-ups and the hard-drive configuration, while this is the case I am obviously hamstrung in what I can and can't change

Okay so it seems that the disk partition that the exchange public folders was residing on was at capacity and so exchange wasn't able to steam/load up. Now given that this partition is only used for the public folder database files it was peculiar that it was now full as it was quite happily at 95% for the past few days...

I have to admit right here that my experience and knowledge of MS Exchange administration is quite rudimentary, however I am fairly intelligent (or so I have been told) and research as diligently as the internet will allow

Upon inspection of the hard-drive there seemed to be an alarming number of 5,120 KB text documents (log files) in the format E000000x.log where x was a different number. I say alarming because I hadn't seen these particular log files in the past and they seemed to be the exact reason that the disk partition was now full... and so I deleted most of them (there was a few that were write protected)

Pleased that I had identified the cause of the problem and had also rectified it I re-mounted the Exchange Database files (innuendo much ?) and as expected the companies emails started working again. Yay little pat on the back for me and back onto trying to solve the million + one other issues staff were having...

Day progressed as typical with my probation review being quite anti-climatic as I had half-expected, with the exception that for some reason those log files that I had so brazenly cleared out previously (I would soon realize the error of my ways) were constantly being re-made, only with ever-increasing numbers...

I soon determined that as I was accessing the Public Folders more (I was attempting to reduce the overall size of the public folders by copying emails to my personal store and then using Outlook to Archive them to a .pst file to be stored elsewhere) the more of these log files were being made.

Now I didn't want the disk partition to fill up again and cause the exchange database to fail (in hindsight that would be much preferable to what actually occurred) so as I was moving/archiving old public folder emails I would watch the folder where these log files were being propagated and as I had done previous, remove them without a second thought.

I must admit I was curious as to why these log files were appearing and for what reason and in hindsight should have investigated that before doing anything further, however I felt that I was making good progress on archiving the ridiculously old (from 2007!) emails.

I had finished copying over one section of the public folders into my personal mailbox and had an archive process starting up, so I did what I had been doing for the last hour or so and deleted what I thought redundant log files.... and this is where it went haywire...

About 30 seconds after I had deleted the log files my email client stopped responding (it's about this time I started freaking out) so I attempted to re-create the steps that had seemingly saved the server this morning, un-mount the exchange server & re-mount, only this time when I attempted to re-mount I got a wall of nasty error code.

I had hoped that rebooting the server itself might re-create the necessary log files and then I'd be able to resolve the problem and get on with reducing the public folder stores, unfortunately this was not the case and I soon discovered that I was in much deeper shit than I first expected.

And now I am sitting here almost 9 hours later still trying my hardest to recover the database files on the server, and I expect it will likely take 9 hours more before it is even up and running, and this is IF I'm very lucky and the repair utilities actually work... if not I have a feeling that the information stored in the databases is quite possibly totally lost.

Wednesday, May 26

Daily Writing ... too tough?

At the start of the month I set myself the task of writing on a daily basis.

It has now been 17 days since I started, and today's post will be number 10 since the resurrection of this blog (I originally started it 2-3 years back).

Now I make no attempt to hide the fact that I'm a big fan of numbers and statistics and analysing things (perhaps too much, but more on that later). So basically I'm a self confessed stat-whore, so I figured what better to write about than some numbers...

So this is post #10 in 17 days, so thats roughly 1.7 days per post or a post every 1 day 16 hours 50 minutes, a post every 147,000 seconds.

Including this post, I've written 2,827 words, which is an average of 282.7 words per post and approximately 6.92 words per hour (assuming a full 17 days).

Now while I may not have actually succeeded in writing each and every day, I have at least started writing a bit more frequently and hopefully my posts improve with time and practice

and now I will have to think of a way to measure post quality... (any suggestions ?)

Sunday, May 23

Philosophy and Sci-fi Fiction...

Before I begin to delve deeper into my post I have to admit that I have a bad habit of devouring books, much like one might devour some fast-food. Where others reading-pace might compare to savouring all of the flavours in a fine cuisine.

Recently I have been reading some Science fiction, (which I have to recommend) and the current book I'm currently reading now is on Philosophy and it got me thinking about Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" and how if these laws/rules were applied to humans and society it might lead to some sort of utopia?

The first law is fairly straight forward, with exception of the second condition "or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." I imagine in practice this law could prove quite difficult to enforce, the closest thing that comes to mind would be criminal negligence.

The second law would need some sort of implied total trust in the ability and guidance of the governing body, in Asimov's example the second law sets the robots in total subservience to humans. However as a law applied to society I'm not so sure it would work in practice...

But lets assume that every single human (including those who gave instructions) had to follow the first law explicitly the outcome of the second law might not be as grim as Orwell paints it...

Now the last of Asimov's laws "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." has interesting implications if applied to my Utopian society example...

The first observation is that suicide or self harm would be prohibited (which I believe is an actual law in most modern societies anyway) however given that the first law says "do no harm" and the second law says "follow all instructions unless it might lead to harm" and now the last law says "protect yourself except where instructed to otherwise and where it will lead to harm" ...

Where I'm going with this is I believe that this last law (with the other laws in place) suggests a society of Non-violent resistance, which seems to agree/fit-in quite well with the idea of a Utopian society.

Now that I have committed my thoughts to paper (in essence) I'm certain that this isn't the first time that someone has considered Asimov's 3-Laws in such a manner, I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts or comments on the topic?

tl;dr version
Asimov's 3 laws present an interesting way to govern a utopian society if they could be implemented & enforced fully.

Friday, May 21

New Computer Conundrum

So I have been recently been given the go ahead to purchase/build a brand new computer. Having done this in the past with my previous computer and also for a few computers for friends, I figured that this would be a fairly simple task.

Unfortunately I was wrong.

In the last few months there has been quite a lot of new specifications released, which make the simple comparison between X part and Y part not so easy any more, I'll explain...

My old computer was an Intel Core 2 Duo e-6600 with 6 GB of DDR2 memory (amongst other things). Comparing it say to an Intel Core 2 Duo e-8400 is a fairly trivial task, it's obvious that the e-8400 will be faster/better than its e-6600 counterpart.

However when specifying (read: browsing online stores and putting prices together) my latest machine I encountered a few areas of uncertainty, which CPU to get, which motherboard, which case etc...

The main problem that I encountered was with the release of SATA-3.0 standard and USB-3.0 standard, which with all new things can be difficult to dissect. Essentially the new standard allows USB devices and Hard-drives to run at much higher speeds, the downside being that (on some systems at least) this speed is shared with the graphics card (which if you are trying to play the latest games isn't exactly a good thing)

The next issue that I came across was with the Hard-drive(s), initially I thought I would just run 2x mechanical drives in a RAID-0 configuration, but with the price of Solid-State-Drives falling recently they present an interesting alternative. The specifications/speeds of SSD's are incredible but they are much more expensive than their mechanical brothers (i.e. $240 for 60GB vs $129 for 1000 GB)

In the past you had the option of 2 main CPU makers (AMD & Intel) and that was really the toughest choice, now days you have 2 CPU makers, 20 different variations on actual chips, 6-8 different memory speeds, 2 different Hard-drive technologies and that's just the tip of the iceberg...

I have to ask, in this circumstance is more choice better for the consumer or does it just lend itself to confusing specifications and difficulty in comparing these?

Monday, May 17

Mondayitis

So I figured today I would post a short summary of my day today.

Many people despise Monday's and it's not too hard to see why... it signifies the end of the weekend and the start to (yet) another working week. Now I'm going to say that I love Monday mornings like a fat kid loves cake, but I like to see some positives about the return to work if I can.

One of the biggest pleasures that I get from Monday, and something I certainly enjoyed today was catching up with everyone and what adventures they got up-to (or in some cases didn't get up to).

Today was no exception, however I got to work and was immediately put into crisis-mode (not by choice mind you) one of my colleagues was experiencing some strange behavior with their browser. This is the same workstation that had a rather nasty Scareware "virus" just a few days earlier, I was certain that I had found and removed it.

Turns out that I was right and did clear out the previous infection, but they had allowed/installed a brand new one(!) before I go any further really must plug Malware Bytes as it's super-awesome at finding these infections and removing them (even if you do need to jump into Safemode just to get it to run!)

Being a Monday, part of my job requires that I check the integrity of the server backups from the previous Friday which typically is a 5 minute job... remote into the server, open up the backup program check the log... yep all good and move on to other stuff.

No not today, it seems the backup logs weren't as complete as I would have hoped, with this line in particular ensuring a quick headache ... "The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted. The operated was ended." ... Now if that sentence confuses you, I'm not surprised... but essentially it (should) mean that for what ever reason the tape drive couldn't load/be accessed any more so it gave up.

The rest of my day was spent trying to find the needle in the hay-stack that is the solution to the problem (which I'm sad to say I haven't yet solved) and some other minor things...

So lets hope Tuesday is much better and I can close the case to my backup woes.

So do you hate Monday's ?
Did you have a good day today or have some fun aswell?

Thursday, May 13

The Daily Rant

So I missed one day in my goal of daily writing... funny thing is I did start to write a post late yesterday afternoon, however I couldn't really think of anything worthwhile to post. (not that I'm making any promises about the quality of this particular post)

Today at work one of my colleagues asked me to help him with a print problem he was having, being the helpful IT Support person I am I investigated further...

I found out that he was attempting to print of a PDF catalog of products & prices from a certain supplier. (no problems so far) However he was attempting to print said document in colour, but the printer was just spitting out blank pages (strange).

First I thought it might have something to do with his colour access code not sending through to the printer correctly (nope, I was wrong) so I asked him to send me a copy of the document so that I could attempt printing it myself (... and here is where it gets interesting)

After having a brief look over the document I was perplexed why he needed the document in colour when the only colour in the entire document was the suppliers logo/colours as a background image (think an A4 page just obliterated with darkish blue hues), so I questioned if he even needed to have the document in colour at all ? (fairly straight forward question I thought)

In an attempt to be useful I figured I'd print the document in it's glory in wonderful Black & White, so to highlight the fact that no information was lost in the process (this didn't work either). The printer not playing fair decided that it would have a bit of a "brain-fart" in the middle of the day, so I rebooted it (powercycle FTW) and re-sent the black & white print request.

Shortly afterwards the printer buzzed to life and started to spit out the document as I had asked it to (awesome problem solved, or so I thought). Once the printer had finished I wanted to be thoughtful and stapled & hole-punched it all ready for my colleague to use.

To my surprise it seemed that my efforts were in vain, despite the document being a perfectly valid and useful piece of material (it's at this point I would like to apologize to any tree's reading this) he declared quite boldly... "this isn't any good to me, I want it in colour" and then proceeded to re-print the suppliers information in it's full (hideous) colour glory.

While I don't have to personally pay for the paper or the toner that was wasted, I feel somewhat diminished that my suggestion to just use a black & white copy fell on deaf ears and also made me consider just how wasteful some people can be.

On that last point I feel that I really should try my hardest to waste as little as possible in order to balance out others.

So do you know people like this, is there a Wasteful Wayne (not his actual name) in your life?

and if so is there anything you can do to help?

Wednesday, May 12

Money the root of all evil?

After yesterday's post I feel that I should elaborate slightly on my comments on "things I like"

Now I feel that the pursuit of money in of itself can be a bad thing, but conversely having enough money does allow particular freedom(s).

I may only be in my late 20's but I do consider retirement or at least, what I want out of retirement and the overwhelming thought that comes to mind is that of financial freedom. Which I would define as not being constrained by my finances.

Obviously their are many different paths to achieve this, but the simplest method that I'm know is passive income(s) or put simply, income that you can earn without you having to actively work at it...

There are different forms of passive income each with their pros and cons
- Rent returns from Investment Property(s)
- Dividends from a Share portfolio
- Interest from bank deposits/cash assets

I'm sure that there are some other passive forms of income that I've missed, but for the most part these 3 are the main ones...

Now to link this back to my original retirement thoughts, the idea is that when you retire you have enough income/savings to allow you to live comfortably in the last parts of your life.

The difficult part is that $50,000.00 in 2010 won't be "worth" $50,000.00 by the time you retire (thanks largely in part to inflation and rises in living standards, which I believe Accountants calculate at around 4-5% per year). So $50,000 in 2010 would be equivalent to $25,000 in 2020 (in buying power) (at least thats how I think it works)...

As you can see obtaining financial freedom isn't exactly straight forward, hence why most people will pay someone else to work it all out for them (financial advisors,Accountants etc)...

I'll post more tomorrow, but if anyone has any questions/suggestions please leave a comment below...

Tuesday, May 11

Things I like...

Yesterday I opened the door for suggestions on topic's to talk about in today's post, however it seems that my loyal readership of zero hasn't been particularly forthcoming.

So for today I figure that I would write a short post on some of the things that I like or "I'm in too..."

So in no particular order here are some of the things that I'm interested in, maybe have a bit of knowledge about and could be interesting to read.

Money
Now some might argue that the pursuit of money is the root of all evil, however I believe that money is neither good nor evil, but simply an object for people to do either good or evil with.

Fast Cars
Now this one might seem a no-brainer, but it's not just the fast cars themselves, but also the incredible amount of engineering behind them to make them fast. The thought of tiny little cylinders moving around at insane speeds per second to propel a 1,000kg metal shell towards the moon is really amazing (at least I find it interesting)

and finally...
Womenz(tm)
I think this one is obvious but figured I'd post it to round off the blog...

So what are you interested in and why?

Monday, May 10

Day Two of the Daily Dump...

So it's quickly approaching the end of the second day and as promised, I'm posting for the second day in a row.

Unfortunately at this stage, I'm not exactly sure what to write about, which given that this is only day number two, is a concerning trend. I did have a quick look over a few friend's blog posts and some of the topics that they themselves write about, however simply regurgitating someone else's words as my own would be cheating myself.

So I think my new goal should be to find some interesting topics to write about, with bonus points for a topic that I'm:-
  • knowledgeable in
  • passionate about
  • is interesting to read
Now if by miracle chance someone who read's this blog wants to suggest something for me I'll greatly appreciate it.

Sunday, May 9

The Daily Dump...

So I have read in some on-line blogs amongst other places, that it can be good to write daily. Both for creativity purposes and also simply to get thoughts down on paper (so to speak).

With that knowledge I will attempt to write some thoughts down on a daily basis, now I can't promise that any of these posts will be interesting or informative but that isn't really the point.

Hopefully over-time the quality of my posts will improve as I write more frequently, but I suspect that the opposite maybe true... I guess time will tell.

That is if I can keep up the daily posting...

There was something else that I was thinking of posting, but can't remember what it was now... ah well perhaps I can redeem myself tomorrow.

Saturday, May 8

What's on my mind...

I think there are sometimes that I simply think too much.

Often there are times where I will try to plan out a whole conversation in my mind, debating with myself with what I might say and attempt to guess what others might respond with. Sometimes I will surprise myself with how accurately I can predict what the other person replies with.

Depending on how I think the conversion might turn out, there are many times where I will not even say anything out of fear.

It's been said that I don't always have to listen to that little voice inside, but it can certainly be difficult to switch-off, especially if it's been a habit for so long.

I will probably post more on this later... or not depending on how I think it'll turn out...