Category: General

I finally got a decent sized desk (Nordic Desk 1600 from Officeworks, $169) and mesh-back computer chair (Seatwell Mesh Chair from Coles, $39):

The chair was a real surprise. I wasn’t really expecting quality/comfortable office furniture from a supermarket, but this chair is really nice. 🙂

I think it’s about time to upgrade my computer. The last time I upgraded (aside from getting a new monitor) was over six years ago. The system is fine for general web-browsing and productivity work, but pretty slow for development.

via reddit.

Heidi’s parents’ PC died last week. It looks like a hard-drive failure, which could be very dissapointing if the data is unrecoverable (let’s hope not!). I’d spoken to them recently about getting a new PC and today I took the afternoon off work to buy the parts, build the PC, and set it up.

We picked the parts up from NetPlus in Osborne Park. They’re in a pretty convenient location (near the Hutton St exit from Kwinana Fwy) and I’ve found them to have good prices and prompt service in the past. The PC I decided upon is basically the cheapest decent machine I could put together from parts they had in stock… with a nice case though. 🙂

Here are the specs of the machine:

• Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU
• Asus M3A78-EM AM2+ mainboard (AMD 780G chipset with ATI HD 3200 integrated graphics chipset)
• 2GB RAM
• 320GB Western Digital hard-drive
• Antec Minuet 350 slimline PC Micro ATX case
• DVD burner from old computer

My first thought when putting the PC together with Heidi’s dad was that the Minuet case was a little larger (deeper) than expected, but it’s still much smaller than a standard tower case. It was a nice case to work with though, and the build was pretty painless.

After seeing that Windows XP would add $150 to the price, Heidi’s dad decided to try out Ubuntu (this made me very happy, although I tried to keep that on the inside). I burnt a installation CD last night and figured that I would live boot it to so that he could check it out and make sure it was really going to be okay (Windows can be a hard habit to break).

Honestly, I expected some things to require some “encouragement” to work, but everything worked flawlessly. Upon booting in Ubuntu, the machine was on the internet (via ethernet via the modem/router), the ATI graphics chip was supported (and then accelerated after the first update), the monitor was working at native resolution (1440×900), sound was working, and even the printer was automatically detected and configured. We connected his Ricoh digital camera via USB cable and F-Spot imported everything just fine.

I also had some apphrension as to whether Heidi’s parents would warm to the Linux alternatives to the Windows software they are used to. However, they seemed at home with Evolution (rather than Outlook), Firefox (rather than IE), and Open Office (rather than Microsoft Office). I think that the general feeling was that they were impressed with the ease of setup, and how everything “just worked”.

Bottom line: Good times Ubuntu. You exceeded even my expectations… let’s hope that you can keep it up (and that they don’t ask for Windows after week or so trial).

I should also extend some kudos to AMD/ATI. There was a time that I would never contemplate getting an ATI card because the Linux drivers sucked so bad, but this machine was running a zippy Compiz desktop on an integrated graphics chip. Sweet and cheap!

And now I’m just cherry picking from Videosift…

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Heidi and I aren’t married yet, but it’s common in Thailand to have photos taken before the wedding so that you can show them off at the wedding.

We’ve been pretty happy with Pichitta Wedding House providing for pretty much all our wedding needs. They’ve made the two wedding dresses (one Thai style and one Western style) and two suits (ditto). They’re also taking care of the invitations and photography.

Here’s a photo of their shop front. It’s a two storey place with western-style downstairs and Thai-style clothing upstairs.

After a fitting day (which was great for Heidi, but I needed some changes to my suits) we spent the next day in the studio (from 10:30am to 3:30pm!). Here’s me getting my hair done:

It’s common to have a few different photo shoots each with a different theme. We went with:

• Cowboy/Cowgirl: which we brought along ourselves. 😉
• Prom/Party style: which they threw in as a “bonus” round.
• Western style wedding: very fun and energetic
• Thai style wedding: much more subdued
• Japanese: a little cheesy… with a sword and kimono. 🙂

I liked the Cowboy one the best, then the Western style wedding one. They had a DVD ready the next day with all the photos and we are getting a photo-book made up. Here’s an unofficial shot of us in cowboy getup just after the photo-shoot (with the fake blue sky background still there).

Overall the photos turned out really well (honestly, far beyond our expectations).

There were a few duds at the end… when we were tired and my cold was really bothering me… I looked pretty… angry. I highly recommend getting photos done early like this. I imagine it’s much less stressful than trying to to everything on the wedding day!

We’re in Japan now, but Heidi and I spent the last few days at the Navalai River Resort in Bangkok.

It’s on the Chao Phraya in “The Old Siam” area of Bangkok, which is a bit touristy (particularly Khao San Road), but with some classy places moving in (such as the Navalai!).

The Navalai website is pretty awesome as well. Everything on it is true. For example, Heidi and I totally did:

Enjoy the optimize of the relaxation, the hip design and the desire of the perfection.

The coolest thing about the location of the hotel was that there was a riverboat station at the back, and it was easy to go down to Sathorn and hop onto the BTS Skytrain to head down to Silom or Siam Square (where I picked up some cool shirts).

Here’s a view from our hotel room:

It was also pretty close to Chinatown and the wedding shop… which I’ll post about next. 😉

I’m on holiday. To Thailand and then Japan. It’s awesome. More details soon.

OneTwenty has been down for around a week. I would have posted about this earlier… but it was down.

I really need to move the server somewhere other than… at home on my ADSL internet connection. It’s a bit too flaky really. This time my port on the Amcom DSLAM died and the new hardware they swapped in isn’t compatible with my router (so I had to get a new one). 🙁

Jim brought over his old Dreamcast so that we could check out the K-Project Beta. We then decided to play some old games such as: Daytona USA 2001, Marvel vs. Capcom, Space Channel 5, and Crazy Taxi.

Unfortunately, his Dreamcast kept randomly resetting. Irritated, we dug up my Dreamcast and gave that a go. Same problem! Ack! I know that this is a common issue and decided to check the Internet for a solution.

I came across various solutions involving different levels of screwdrivering and the like, but this solution stood out:

For those of you without the bandwidth to see the video; it basically indicates that you should give the Dreamcast a few quick smacks on the backside (“naughty console! stop resetting!”) to make it behave. It worked a treat!

Conclusion: Victory!

BTW: Crazy Taxi is still awesome!