how to save water
Few months ago, I signed up to Blog Action Day...
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment
If you haven't guessed from the title, and from that short intro, this post will be about the environment - namely how to save water.
The reason for this topic is simply because Australia is facing severe drought conditions. A quick Google gives us an article from Wikipedia with the different water restriction levels currently in place:
- Brisbane: Stage 5
- Adelaide: Stage 3
- Canberra: Stage 3
- Melbourne: Stage 3
- Sydney: Stage 3
- Hobart: Stage 1
- Darwin: none
- Perth: permanent restrictions
As you can see pretty much all the major cities have some form of restriction in place. I'm not quite sure what 'permanent restrictions' for Perth really means, but either way it doesn't sound good.
» Continue reading "how to save water"
Who Moved My Cheese?
On Monday my family and I arrived at the airport nice and early to be sure that I would not miss my plane, only to find that the flight had been delayed by an hour. So what was there to do in that hour? Visit the newsagent and read books of course!
Unlike most times where I just randomly pick up books that look interesting and read snippets, a particular book caught my attention: "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Being one of the books on my 'To Read' list, I was happy to see that it was only about 100 pages with nice big font. The blurb claimed that it would only take half an hour to read, so with one hour to kill, I decided to stand there and finish the book.
If you haven't heard of this book, it is one of the best selling motivation books. In my opinion, a quick and simple summary is:
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
upgraded to WordPress 2.3
As some of you may or may not know, WordPress 2.3 was released about a week ago on Monday 24th September. So since I had a bit of time, decided I should upgrade from 2.2.2. After some drama with the incorrect file permissions of the uploaded files I finally managed to get everything working (I hope!) so now I'm using the brand new WordPress 2.3 release 
With this upgrade I've also upgraded to K2 RC1 as on their page it is suggested to use RC1 with 2.3. The front-end should look relatively similar, with the exception that tags are now only shown when you view the full post - since I've disabled Ultimate Tag Warrior and now using the inbuilt tagging system that comes with 2.3.
If you do find any problems with my blog, please send me an email and I'll go and try to fix it up!
6 simple tips to help you snack less
If you know me, you'll know that I'm not a picky eater and I can eat a lot - especially when it comes to snacks. And if you're like me once I start eating/snacking I just can't seem to stop! Initially, I tried the approach of no snacks at all with the reasoning that if there are no snacks then there's nothing to snack on.
However, since I hadn't snacked in ages, and knew I didn't have any snacks in my room it failed horribly whenever sweets and junk food were in my reach - I just pigged out on them. Considering this "free food" is semi-regular (team meetings, birthdays etc) it doesn't help with reducing the amount of snacking.
» Continue reading "6 simple tips to help..."
dragon illusion
Another great illusion - and this time you get to make it! Have a look at the Three Dragons from Grand Illusions - the movie clip is really quite cool! After seeing the clip I actually went and made it straight away (much easier to make than the penguin) but sadly it didn't turn out as nice as the illusion in the video clip. It seems like you need some light behind the dragon for it to work. Though I'll still put it on my desk at work and see if I get any weird looks
Forgot your password?
Not so long ago, I was reading Coding Horror and came across two rather interesting posts: Passwords vs Pass Phrases and Passphrase Evangelism. If you don't want to read those posts (though I highly recommend you read them) the golden rule is "stop thinking of passwords as single words, and start thinking of them as pass phrases".
A few people I know (including myself) have problems coming up with strong passwords and remembering them - and I think this is the solution! From psychology we learnt that on average people remember 7 things - be that 7 letters or 7 words. So that means, a password is usually 7 characters, but if you remember a pass phrase that will be 7 words - which is approximately 28 characters if you average 4 letters per word!
» Continue reading "Forgot your password?"
clear as black and white…right?
The image above probably looks very normal - a set of everyday chess pieces (without pawns). White pieces on top covered by black clouds, and black pieces at the bottom covered by white clouds. If they don't look like chess pieces, try clicking on the picture to enlarge it - my friend thought they were teeth when he saw it on my msn display pic!
So, if we are imaginative, and assume the chess pieces are real, it would make sense that we can use them and play a normal game of chess...right? Well, not quite - because the chess pieces are identical. They are the same - pixel for pixel. If you don't believe me 'cut and paste' the chess pieces and they will magically "change colour". Even if you believe me you can give it a go, quite mind blowing if you ask me!
my first plugin!
After a few nights of "Just 5 more minutes...", I finally finished writing my first plugin for WordPress The More Link Modifier. Not long after 'hacking' some files to change the 'more link' to behave as I wanted, I started thinking about the possibility of writing a plugin to prevent the need for the 'hacking'. After some research I decided it would be very possible; so despite my lack of time started coding the plugin. The final product is a bit different (it's better!) to what I had initially in mind, but I'm sure there is still more room for improvement - so any suggestions welcome!
Finishing the plugin gave me a very nice sense of accomplishment - though realising that I had used camelCase, but WordPress uses underscore_notation was a bit annoying. Got plans for a few other plugins (must remember to use underscore_notation in the future), though they'll probably have to wait until after assignments are done...unless I start procrastinating...
shoe print illusion
Was going to post this up last week, but then saw the free penguin/tux and I just had to post that first Anyway, this is the first of hopefully many cool optical illusions that I will post up. I love optical illusions, and I'm going to try and post up "rare" illusions on my blog - so stay tuned!
In my opinion, this illusion is extra cool because nothing was done deliberately to get the illusion effect. The photo was actually taken by Marty, and every now and then it appears on her laptop slideshow screensaver (everytime it appears I point at it and go psycho )
free penguins!
After taking a nice long nap after work, opened up my laptop with the intention to do some work. However, I realised that the Internet was free! (it's usually 1c/mb) So anyway, plans of study/work disappeared and just started randomly surfing the net
In my procrastination, I had google reader open and saw this...
» Continue reading "free penguins!"