REverberations - Blogging

Europe 2002-3 Blog Fixed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:23:14 -0500

The link over to the left goes to the almost-daily blog and pictures we kept during our Europe 2002-3 trip. When I moved webhosts I neglected to quality check it and have only just fixed a few little issues which were stopping the blog from working.

Also, the "Time Machine" which provides a quick link to a certain number of years ago today is fixed so that we can re-live our trip each day, but in a much cheaper fashion.

This is all custom code and today (or even when we went again for our Honeymoon in 2006) I'd do it quite differently, using flickr and/or one of the many online travel blogging services which did not exist in any form in 2002.

Insulated Twitter

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:33:23 -0500

Two tweets landed side-by-side in my Twitter feed the other day, highlighting the difference between our current government(s) and optimal reality:

plumbing x2

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:51:00 -0500

So, by plumbing the tubes of the internet - connecting this bit to that bit, if I post a blog post here, it appears on Facebook, huh? Cool.

As for the non-virtual plumbing, looks like we'll be spending some unfortunately non-virtual cash on getting our kitchen re-piped as there's a stink there that refuses to die.

But, the end of renovations is sorta kinda in sight!

Baby's room - just some wall decorations then done!
Study - painted, new light, new floor just waiting on floor sanding and oiling!
Lounge room - rising damp fixed! Skirting boards almost re-attached! Painter back soon!

You have to be optimistic with this stuff.

Facebook

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:38:12 -0500

As Kung pointed out a little while back, Facebook is dangerously addictive. Far more dynamic than MySpace, which has proved little other than a spam magnet since I signed up there.
I'm just riding these waves right now, not sure where it will all end up. But the social aspect is pretty cool.

Not Enough Happy Posts Recently

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:12:36 -0500

So here's one. You may not have yet discovered Cute Overload.

If not, the best introduction I can think of is this post.

Always a great site for a lift when you're in a less than 100% mood.

Sorry World

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:14:22 -0500

Yes, the rumours are true. I do infact have a MySpace.

I know, I know. MySpace is a hive of scum and villany, and since I've joined the spam has been pretty crazy. However, it's where lots of Sydney musos appear to be so I've started up shop there on that basis.

The blog will remain here, as will the vast majority of the content, as I can genuinely control how it all works, rather than relying on the ugly slow brokenness that is MySpace.

But I am trying to get some of my previously produced music available online - I had a listen to some things I did about ten years ago that are no longer available on the web, plus there's some more recent stuff I'm recording now, all of which I think may interest at least some of my audience.

Infrequent posting: B-

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:20:00 -0600

Bean has prompted me into action by noting that my blog has interesting content but I don't post often. I appreciate the first part and couldn't agree more with the second.
Except for one major problem - I do too much stuff. Here's a short listing of some of the things I've done since last posting:

Had a gig with Jersey Kerb down the coast. Great fun, not many people turned up due to awful weather but can't have been all bad as we got about four gig offers as well as a semi-permanent spot offered. Not sure what will come of that but we have another gig in a month or so where I have changed instruments and will now be playing keyboards/sax/flute/bass. Oh dear.
Got our good car serviced and bid the old one farewell. It was interesting to note that the amount we got for it is what we typically withdraw once a week or so to use as spending money. Better than the wreckers, it went to our mechanic's apprentice who is going to make it betterer and hence not get to work wet from riding his bike. An improvement!
Didn't care much about the Melbourne Cup.
Went ring shopping where Liz ordered the wedding band to match her engagement ring and I selected mine. Both should be ready in a week or so.
Had coffee with the folks and their folks at Short Black café at Penshurst - our local café and good enough to win the Leader Small Business Awards. Pretty noisy for a family get-together inside though. Outside means the heat plus eating other people's nicotine.
Went in yet again to James Squire Brewhouse for Jane's birthday beers. The food was still great, the service excellent and the prices, well, let's not talk about those. Governor King is a great beer brewed on site.
Mowed the lawn a few times - have to do it every week! Remind me never to fertilize it again...
Had three-day weekends. Very good to get house work done, but after the blitz of a week Mon-Thurs I typically don't want to touch computers all weekend, hence no blogging there.
Went searching with SES for a lost/abducted little girl out at Lurnea past Liverpool. Drove trucks around and did land searches operating with the Police. Quite a good experience but no trace of the girl.
Walked from Circular Quay to Town Hall as part of the SES 50th Anniversary Parade. There were more people out clapping and whatever than I was expecting, and it was good to be part of such a big thing.
Had dinner at Kelly's place Saturday night, meeting up with old friends and watching other people try tuna tacos. Couldn't quite drum up the enthusiasm myself, sticking to the more reliable bean variety.
Walked all the way to Como and back for morning tea with Liz, Jono and Penny on Sunday, after they came over to watch the first leg of the Socceroos world cup qualifiers vs. Uruguay. Well, Jono and I did - the girls went back to sleep. What a rip off that penalty was.

We have tickets to the next qualifier tomorrow night out at Telstra Stadium, which should totally rock. Don't have any green/gold gear to wear though, and apparently it's quite expensive. Might just wander around the city and buy some tacky tourist version.
We're off to the Hunter this weekend to hopefully talk with the wedding cake, hair, photography and flower people. No, not the same person, although that would make life much easier.

Flickr

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:55:18 -0500

I'm playing around with Flickr, an online photo-sharing site.
All of my photos are stored in iPhoto, and there's a great plugin you can load into it to give it the ability to upload photos to Flickr from right within iPhoto itself.
So, it happens that about an hour after I had finished a gig with The Honeymakers today, I uploaded a couple of pictures and within five minutes other people somewhere had viewed them. You can find photos based on "tags", so for example I tagged these photos as "jazz", "music", "saxophone", etc. Anyone who searches for these keywords will find my photos, along with those of anyone else who has used the same tags.
Also, if you scroll down this page and look on the left you'll see the latest three photos I have put up on Flickr, without having to leave this page.
If you already track my RSS feed, you may also like to add this one, which will give you an entry every time I upload a photo.

SMH vs. SMH

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:19:02 -0500

I love the way the Sydney Morning Herald can run a story, then a few hours later, hosted off the same site, simultaneously pull that story apart piece by piece. The latter matches exactly my thoughts when I first noticed the former this morning.
The Radar blog is well worth reading.

New Blogging Software

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:35:00 -0600

I have been toying around with the idea of doing some internal blogging at work for a while now, and yesterday I finally got a small patch of time and sufficient links that I wanted to post to become inspired.
My previous blogging software, Blosxom has been working fine for me for years now - that's what I used while travelling around Europe, I've hacked the code to bits and know it inside out.
However, it wasn't going to work for me here. Mainly because the software I use to post to it, Blapp is quite limited and doesn't support multiple blogs.
Plus, there's plenty of new features around in other software, and Blosxom hasn't seen a release in quite some time.
So, I went shopping. Eventually I turned up the brilliant Open-Source Serendipity system. It has two main features I've always wanted in Blosxom - written in PHP and with a MySQL backend.
Up and running in minutes at work, I quickly got to posting through the web interface. Since it supports XML-RPC I could concievably use a client on the Mac, but I haven't explored it much yet.
As you have probably guessed by now, I liked it so much that I moved this site over to it also. All post-Europe2002-3 posts have been imported, along with comments (comment dates are all wrong though). Since it supports RSS importing, this process was relatively pain free.
Sure, there's quite a bit to learn, but it seems to be working nicely thus far. I've hacked the Idea style a bit to get a look I'm happy with for now.
Sorry to everyone though, you're going to have to do the update bookmarks thing. The URL you have bookmarked should be http://www.reverb.com.au/tgould/.
Also, if you are a user of RSS, you'll have to get a new feed into you aggregator, although I put an entry into the old one to point this out.
Post any comments if you find any problems, I'd like to get this working smoothly.

Anyone up for a trip to Melbourne?

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:01:00 -0600

Looks like some crazy lads are running an Aussie blogging conference down in that "other" city. Might be work a look.
But then again, there's also linux.conf.au coming up in Canberra in April. Should I go to both?

An election, eh?

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 23:00:00 -0500

Liz and I have been having quite a few discussions recently about the upcoming election. I enjoy these because elsewhere in my life I find that people just aren't talking about it. Why? Too dangerous a topic? Too boring? Can't be both.
Sure, there's plenty of information being thrown around on the TV if you choose to believe that, but I'm looking more and more online for my information these days and the election is proving no exception.
One of the best sites I've found for providing reasonably unbiassed information is Counter Spin. Officially attached to The Sydney Morning Herald, this is one columnist's wrap-up of the goings on.
One of the best things about the net is that it can be a two-way medium, so rather than being blasted at with 'facts' from your TV you can respond in some form, be it a comment on a website, an email, your blog, etc.
I've avoided thus far talking much politics because I, like may people I think, just don't know much about it. I'm a complete cynic and think that all politicians are as bad as each other. If this statement is not true then they just aren't showing it.
Our two major parties spend most of their time slagging each other off (just check our their websites).
Here's a few choice (paraphrased) Howard quotes which I certainly don't mean to imply Latham will get my vote, but might make you think about whether Howard should be getting yours:

Jobs are more important than forests - hang on, can't people be retrained into new jobs whereas the results of logging old growth forests takes considerably longer to disappear? I know that looking more than two months into the future is quite a challenge...
Pre-recorded political messages dialing you during your dinner are ok.
Junk email is ok.
We are invading Iraq because they have Weapons of Mass Destruction. Here is the reality of people dealing with the aftermath of this complete lie.
Family First are our friends - a party with policies involving homophobia, abortion reform, no right to voluntary euthanasia, and making Australia a Catholic country.
Higher Education should not be within the reach of everyone. This is my pet peeve as when the GST was introduced I was a member of the only group I could think of which didn't get any form of 'relief' package - students.
One final bullet point which isn't a quote but will give you something else to click on.

As for the Latham interest rate scare, the best of many quotes in response to that I have heard is from the rather well known Geoff Harvey: "The Reserve Bank and our economy determine what interest rates are, not what John Howard thinks or Mark Latham - I mean that's just political crap."
But wait, Howard wants me to vote for either him or Latham, not any of the minor parties. Am I the only one left who recognises that the only reason 95% of voters vote for either of those two parties is because of inertia? If enough people decided The Greens, The Democrats or even the Smoke More Pot party should run the country, it would be so.
So what are (generally) young and disillusioned such as myself and Liz to do? I don't know who deserves my vote at all.
I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. How could I? I have no idea. But whoever you choose, think hard and make it count.

iPodder

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 17:39:00 -0500

After noting yet another great hint over at Mac OS X Hints, I stumbled upon the great little tool called iPodder.
To save you following too far through the links, let me summarise what it is all about. With a view to pushing the boundaries of traditional media, some people around the world, including Adam Curry the author of iPodder and one-time MTV Video Jockey, are posting to their blogs in mp3 format. As a radio DJ by trade, he is interesting to listen to, and as usual I'm keen to listen to anything not pushed out by large media companies, in any new format I can discover.
What his software (and other, improved versions I'm yet to try) does is parse RSS feeds of various websites, find any mp3s contained within, download said mp3s, put them in a playlist in iTunes, which is then automatically copied to my iPod. Very neat. So, all I have to do in the mornings is disconnect my iPod and there is some interesting radio by himself, and some new IT Conversations (I've listened to Tim O'Reilly thus far).
If you aren't sure what blog and blogging is all about, It's probably time you found out. What you are reading right now is a blog. Not a very good or actively maintained one, but a blog none the less. The idea is that the little guys around the world just tap out what is of interest to them, and if someone else happens to be interested also, that's great.
iPodder and friends are taking this to a new level, where the content is automatically available on the output device of your choice, and in a format you can listen to in the background while you are doing something else.
I think I have a hard enough time putting text on here to consider audio at this point in time, but it is interesting to see where stuff like this is going to end up.