Apologies for the work in progress, trying to be modern and testing it all locally with my WAMP install didn’t work, so I’ve reverted back to the old fashioned way: installing a template by tweaking it live.

It was time for a new template. The old template, live for maybe 5 months, as much as it was smart at times, other times it just didn’t work for me.

The new template goes back to basics, complements of the brilliant WordPress theme generator. It’s basic, core stuff, but it works.

Forgive me for a couple of days if things aren’t overly pretty, but I needed that extra column space and I intend on making good use of it.

Update: switched back to the old template for now. The new one just wasn’t doing what I wanted it to. Might be time to bite the bullet and get one designed.

In the cool I want category, the Keyport, via NotCot:

“KeyPort – an all in one key fob?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ just get specialized blanks cut to match your car, house, boat, locker, etc keys and the slot right in. In the press kit it says that it is ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcreated to complement your personal style and organize those jagged objects you can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t live without.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù And currently under development are RFID for remote keyless entry, Alarm Remote and Flashlight”

Must. Have.

The irony of this blog remains every day that it was only ever an after thought to my main projects, The Blog Herald, then Weblog Empire, the other blog network, and probably soon the next big thing or two, and yet somehow appearing in Top lists sort of creates this guilt that personally I should feel obliged to actually try a little harder, actually take this whole site a bit more seriously, and yet trying too much would make it not fun anymore….this from istartedsomething, clipped from The Age:

From the official Crowded House email list:

On 2nd July Crowded House release ‘Time On Earth’, their first studio album since 1993, with a line-up featuring founder members Neil Finn and Nick Seymour, former member Mark Hart and new drummer Matt Sherrod

‘Time On Earth’ tracklisting:

1. Nobody Wants To
2. Don’t Stop Now
3. She Called Up
4. Say That Again
5. Pour Le Monde
6. Even A Child
7. Heaven That I’m Making
8. Silent House
9. English Trees
10. Walked Her Way Down
11. Transit lounge
12. You Are The One to Make Me Cry
13. A Sigh
14. People Are Like Suns

You ripper!

The SMH reports on some chaps getting the arse from their waterfront jobs.

Here’s some choice quotes:

Mr Copper, 49, who has a mortgage and two young children, said he felt “sick in the guts.” implication being that he now cant pay it

John D’Arcy, 56, who has been at the company for 17 years, said he was annoyed by the way he had been told to leave the work site and was trying to come to terms with looking for a new job to pay his rent of $325 a week.

OK, so losing your job isn’t fun, but putting on the waterworks is a bit rich when you look at this line:

Vopak Terminals Sydney managing director Ron Dickinson …said the workers had all been given redundancies worth between $96,000 and $136,000.

Oh yeah, those families will be going hungry tonight, mortgages wont be paid, rent in arrears…blah, blah blah, blah blah.

Again, these things are never nice, but here’s a company thats rightfully paid out entitlements: not a single worker is going to starve for at least the year ahead, possibly longer, and that’s presuming they’re all going to sit on their arses for the next 12 months and not look for new jobs. Chances are, most of these guys will probably walk into another job within weeks, if they want to, and if the job market isn’t as flash in NSW, they can always hop on a plane to WA, a state where basic truck drivers start on $100k and there’s companies begging for employees of any shape and form.

Ive been tagged by Meg.

The meme: “The idea is to compile your top 20 favorite music videos, as you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d like them played on the television show rage”

The 99 million dollar question is can I actually remember the music videos, or just the songs? probably the later, but I’ll give it a shot. Also not sure if there is an age restriction either, after all, Rage does play some classics on occasion, although I suspect a couple of these won’t be in the Rage Archives 🙂

In no particular order:

Crowded House: Don’t Dream it’s Over
Crowded House: Better Be Home Soon
Crowded House: World Where You Live
Crowded House: Distant Sun
Crowded House: It’s Only Natural
Crowded House: Now We’re Getting Somewhere
Crowded House: Something So Strong
Crowded House: Fall at your feet
Crowded House: Four Seasons in One Day
Dave Brubeck: Take Five
Dave Brubeck: Blue Rondo ala Turk
Billie Holiday – Lady Sings the Blues
Pete Murray – So Beautiful
The Cardigans: Lovefool
Don McLean – American Pie
Cold Chisel – Khe San
The Doors – The End
Bobby Darin – Beyond the Sea
Ella Fitzgerald – It don’t mean a thing
Frank Sinatra – My Way

I tag Yaro, Martin, Darren and Alister.

Iconic Australian newspapers the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (The Smage collectively) are downsizing, not only jobs but print size as well, shriking to the tall sheet size I blogged about noticing in North America last November. It’s been 10 years since I read a print version on the SMH regularly, and I remember it being a particular pain (indeed near on impossible) on Sydney trains, so the new size can only help.

Interesting though that it’s a lead story on news.com.au, but only rates a mention way down the page in Business @ smh.com.au 🙂

Good news from el Reg: “U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s press office has confirmed that Thursday at 10am Frank will introduce legislation to repeal the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)”

Now if only we could someone in Australia to overturn our ridiculous laws 🙂

Thanks to Lifehacker (once again) for a very handy tip. If you’re like me, you use the search box in FireFox regularly, and in doing so I usually open a new tab for the results, this hack sets search results to automatically open in a new tab:

Type about:config into the address bar, and then put the following into the filter box: browser.search.openintab. Double-click the value to change it to true.

Simple, yet totally useful.

Fark has a new design. It isn’t pretty, but probably worse still is the loading times, it’s beyond slow to buggery. What in the world were they thinking? Took me over a minute to get to the bottom of the page to leave a comment, and longer again to actually make the comment, and this with a TotalFark subscription as well!