January 2004 (Month View)

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01.01.2004 – Thursday 1 January – New Year’s Day

Midday: • I guess it’s the two thousand and fourth day of our Lord, or thereabouts, and the world still hasn’t ended – perhaps next year, perhaps tonight, who knows. So far, it has been a hot, moist, humid and damp but not raining year, and I’ve been able to do things for the first time “all year”, all day – but that got sort of clichéd a few years back now.
IRC: • I felt all righteously indignant at the stupidity exhibited by the majority of humankind, but in particular the admin of Bohica, so thought I’d satiate my indignation with a pointless email.

  Hello,
  It has recently come to my attention that DCC (filesend) is blocked on at least Bohica. It appeared to work on the other servers I tried. I believe, as is rather obvious, that DCC is an integral part of IRC, and that blocking it is a stupid step towards a molly-coddled network that does not put its users first.
  I’m not sure what the logic behind this is, perhaps an attempt to protect users from the transferral of viruses? Regardless, I’d like to officially complain and request that either DCC be re-enabled on Bohica or the server be removed from Austnet. DCC is direct client to client, it does not affect server bandwidth and is not the server’s responsibility to attempt to control or limit.
  I, for one, do not wish to have my IRC limited on the off chance that someone may send something undesirable. It is a case of ruining it for everyone for the sakes of a few.
  Please de-link or re-enable DCC on Bohica.
3:30am: • I’ve been for a walk out to the halfway spot, then up to Dad’s, then back in the dark barefoot on the very sharp cracked gravel – so my feet hurt. Dad wasn’t there but I met him just after I’d left, driving back, so spent a while there talking before heading back here, eating some two minute noodles, and watching “The Majestic”, which was better than I was expecting. I’m now tired and needing sleep, and a bit fed up with people who seem unable to fathom anything logically, and end up distorting the truth so badly that nothing is even distinguishable anymore – and they don’t even seem to know they’ve done it.
: • “I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

02.01.2004 – Friday 2 January – Mum’s Birthday

Morning: • I woke up a bit earlier than usual, excited to give Mum her present, but just missed her as she went to town. I then became tired and lay down again.
Afternoon: • I set up Mum’s new stereo and Mum enjoyed playing her music. It seems to be all good, which I guess it would be, being brand new.
  Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking, I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC; I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress, he threw it into my microwave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said “Do not worry, it is unharmed.” After a few minutes, he took the CD out, gave it to me and said, “Take a close look at it.” To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first, I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole, I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:
  4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746F
  2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20
  616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D
  “I cannot read the fiery letters,” I said. “No,” he said, “but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:”

  One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
  One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Evening: • Jade drove over and I took my camera, with the wedding photos I’d taken at Shan’s wedding, back over to Joneses and picked up some photos Shan had sent Jade from Thailand, and then drove up to Shan’s place where, with much trouble and waiting, I managed to burn three copies of my and their photos onto CD’s.
Night: • Mum and I listened to some of the music I’ve got on this PC on her new stereo, and then watched “Black Robe”, which is almost too realistic to be enjoyable, but impressed with its realism, realism of a level not often seen nowadays with all the politically correct garbage surrounding indigenous peoples and their histories.
2:06am: • Loreena McKennitt’s “The Mystic’s Dream”, from her “The Mask and Mirror” album is astounding, and reminds me of “The Lord of the Rings”, in which I believe it is featured. I can’t even begin to describe it – it’s like perfect music, and on that note (no pun intended), I shall retire for the night.
Comment by kathryn – Monday 25 October 2004, 10:00 AM: Loreena McKennitt's heaps cool. I was going to sing Come by the hills for the HSC music but then i bailed.
Comment by Ned – Tuesday 26 October 2004, 1:07 AM: I agree. Some of my favourite music at the moment is hers.
Comment by kathryn – Saturday 6 November 2004, 7:30 PM:   he he he you wrote back. It's funny cause i expected to comment and then for it to get lost in cyber space. I only have one of her CD's at the moment from my old music teacher so by the sounds of things i should get a wriggle on and get her most recent stuff. I'll tell you who is really groovy Karl Jenkins Adiemus- the eternal knot.
  kat
  ps i sent u an e-mail so check it O.K
Comment by Ned – Tuesday 9 November 2004, 7:16 AM: I’m afraid I never got an email?

03.01.2004 – Saturday 3 January – Ghosts, Creed and the Astral

Day: • I chatted. It was hot. It seems to have cleared up now, there’s not even that many clouds left.
Evening: • I went for a walk out to the halfway spot and swam in its icy cold spa – it was a bit late for swimming really, but I’m so tough that I did anyway.
Night: • Mum and I watched “Shanghai Knights”, which is actually quite witty at times, and an enjoyable, fun movie. I then spent some time chatting online, listening to some music, and reading various forums before heading to bed. Some of Creed’s songs are quite good – but not quite right, there’s always something that lets them down. I have so much music, and so much of it is bad – lacking skill or sounding awful.
3:53am: • This monitor looks like it has a bruise – the top left corner is gradually going a bluey-green. It needs degaussing, and I need sleep.

04.01.2004 – Sunday 4 January – Nude in the Flow

Midday: • I awoke, and spent the evening online, chatting, procrastinating, emailing, “surfing the net”, and so on and so forth.
Evening: • I walked out to the halfway spot, which was cold as it was a bit late, but I forced myself into the water, he-man style. I’d been relaxing and thinking about ice bergs for a while, so decided I aught to get out before I froze to death, so stood up, turned around, and saw two people sitting on some rocks – not facing my way, fortunately. Had I known who they were, I’d simply have got out, dressed, and left, but I had no idea who they were and didn’t want to embarrass them – or me, so I lay in the water, closed my eyes, and pretended it wasn’t cold. After a while, I got used to it and it seemed warmer. There’s that many bubbles in the water it’s pretty much air, and as I just lay there, plummeted by the water falling and rushing around me – I realised I could no longer tell what was air or water, whether my arm or leg was under water or not. It’s very peaceful in a funny sort of way, and I quite enjoyed it for a bit, until I began to get sore from the water pounding against me, which is quite strong, but gladly, just before it became uncomfortable, they left and I was able to get out and walk home.
Night: • I’d thought on my walk, how I should add the capability to my online journal, of representing linefeeds (or carriage returns). It sounded like a simple idea, but like many simple ideas, wasn’t as easy in practice as it sounded. After a few failed ideas, and a search through Google, I ended up having to use a recursive XSL parser, just to replace carriage returns with line breaks. That’s the problem with XSL, it’s so hard to do deceptively simple things – it took me ages to work out how to count words and truncate a paragraph, for example, and Meunchian grouping still boggles my mind, it’s like recursion without the recurs.











  Oh, and now that I have a fancy journal that supports linefeeds, I shall use them!






















  He he.
Comment by keight – Monday 5 January 2004, 10:52 PM: you forgot to mention your awesome chat in hashmaths
Comment by Ned – Tuesday 6 January 2004, 1:36 PM: Oh yes, I went to #maths, a channel on Austnet, and left in disgust after being informed that engineers are scientists, as part of an argument on why the Information Technology degree is somehow worse than any engineering degrees.
Comment by DM – Thursday 8 January 2004, 1:34 AM:   Ah, I guess this linefeed stuff would explain that exclamation of yours I somehow recall seeing in #bits.

  I wonder if comments like them, too.

05.01.2004 – Monday 5 January – Second-hand Fire

Morning: • Mum and I drove to town, where we picked up Sarah, and did some shopping. The second hand shop burnt down last night. It was the first thing we noticed upon arriving in town – it is totally burnt down, just a blackened pile of tin and old chairs. Two fire engines and a pile of fire fighters, including Matthew, were sitting outside along with some police. It’s all taped off with police tape and looks a bit sad. Apparently, the butcher next door has suffered some damage too, and people were complaining that it took half an hour for any fire engines to arrive. I’m surprised Cooktown has two fire engines, unless one was sent up from somewhere else, which seems doubtful, the nearest place being four hours or so away.
Evening: • I walked up to Shan’s, where Jade and Ella were copying some CD’s, and talked for a while, before heading down to Nui and Koi’s to have a look at their computer, or computers, as it turned out. After a quick trip back here to get a dialup phone number to authenticate their satellite, I installed their various bits of software they wanted installed, and set up the satellite stuff. There’s only a very small window of time to get a transmitter lock, before the auto-phase protection stuff shuts you down, and we couldn’t get a lock on any valid transmitter rate. Because they’re so paranoid about VSAT’s (you need to be a registered transmitter site to actually use one, which are they’re location-sensitive, and they’ve got to have safeguards built in so you can’t do anything bad, fry people, or interfere with anyone else’s services), any transmit error shuts down the entire system – so shut down it is. Telstra is going to send someone around to have a look tomorrow morning apparently.
Night: • I had planned to chat online, as per usual, however I kept getting disconnected, which was rather annoying – not to mention expensive. After being disconnected for the umpteenth time, I decided I’d have an early night instead, and went to bed.

06.01.2004 – Tuesday 6 January – Till Human Voices Wake Us

Morning: • I went and looked at the phone line, to see why it was being so bad yesterday. The reason why was obviously apparent – it was snapped, totally snapped, not connected in any way whatsoever. This begs the question – how then did it work at all last night? I swapped to another two different wires, and it seems to be working again.
Evening: • I walked out to the halfway spot, dipped my toes in the water, decided it was too cold for humans, and walked home again. I had planned to bring Shan’s wheelie bin down to be emptied tomorrow, but their drive sort of opens onto the telephone and it looked too open and public, so I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the poor wheelie bin there by herself. I’ll have to go bring her down early in the morning instead.
Night: • Mum and I watched “Till Human Voices Wake Us”, a somewhat disturbing, but brilliant, Australian movie. In fact, it has really impressed me – just brilliant, the sort I’ll think about all night, rather like “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, but not grim. That was terrible the night I watched that... watching it at 2 AM in the morning and then staying up all night while remarkably stressed probably wasn’t such a good idea either. At least this movie, while suspenseful when watching it, is over now and I’m not bothered by it.
New Year’s Resolution: • I thought of a New Year’s Resolution I could make, but didn’t, and probably shan’t. I could resolve to write not only a journal, but also a diary – to include how I feel about things, not just the things. The problem with that is... I don’t know how. Like today and tonight – how do I feel now? Well, I’m not sure. I feel normal, perhaps a little saddened by the speed with which time passes, and the changes that brings – things that were, that never will be again, things that weren’t, and now never can be, things that should have been, had I only known, and things that aught never have been. Or something like that.

07.01.2004 – Wednesday 7 January – Enrolling Woes

Morning: • I walked down to Shan’s and put his wheelie bin out for the rubbish collectors. I then went online, of course, and that was that.
Evening: • I walked down to the pump, taking Karl’s wheelie bin back down on the way, covered it up, and then walked up to Shan’s and took his wheelie bin back inside. I stayed up there for a while messing around on his computer until a big storm began to brew outside – very dark and foreboding, with deep, scary, rumbling thunder.
Night: • I tried to enrol in next semester’s subjects, but had difficulty figuring out what to enrol in, and then, just as I began to figure it out, SINET, UQ’s online student information portal thing that is usually overloaded and failing, went down for its scheduled nightly downtime. I reckon they’ve stolen its server for the holidays, and are away playing network games on it, while it’s left running from an iMac.
Lightning: • The lightning and thunder, which seemed to pop up randomly and ferociously throughout today and tonight, made me remember when I was in Cairns last, walking down the esplanade. Sarah and I were walking along when Sarah noticed that my hair was standing on end – literally. As was hers. I’d not seen such a strong attraction before – any loose bits of hair were raised straight up towards the sky, trying to get the lightning to hit them... it was a bit scary and we left pretty quickly.
Comment by DM – Thursday 8 January 2004, 1:39 AM: Funny. I was just musing today about what subjects I'd be doing next semester, too. Haven't come up with a good way to balance the engineering and the arts subjects, though, so I've decided to find out how to talk to an academic advisor. After all, it's their job to know this sort of stuff.
Comment by keight – Thursday 8 January 2004, 3:15 AM:   Oh, and Ned forgot to mention that he enrolled in SPAN1010 -- Introductory Spanish A.

  :)

08.01.2004 – Thursday 8 January – Big Shed Website

Morning: • Dad, Mum, and Ned drove into town. They dropped Ned off at the supermarket, where he bought a milkshake for breakfast, and then walked up to the Big Shed Hardware. Once there, he quickly disabled the guards and made off with the loot. No wait, he actually spent an hour or so discussing things, before beginning to design a website, eventually finished several hours later. It was very hot outside and nice and air-conditioned inside, so this was good. Ned charged them $130 for his services, which he thought was reasonable considering the site, borrowed several CD’s, and walked back down to the supermarket where he met Rick, of Rick and Kerry fame. Rick drove down to the wharf and had a look at a sunken and now beached boat, which was too far gone for anything more than a bonfire, and then out to the Maxwell’s Transport depot where he picked up eight chairs and a table. He then drove back to the supermarket, picked up Jolene, and drove Ned back out to Rossville.
Night: • Later, just after dark, Ned walked up to Shan’s – he is still overseas on his honeymoon. Ned then used Shan’s CD’s and his computer to copy the discs he’d borrowed – all fourteen of them, which took ages. He was very glad to be finished, as it was hot, stormy, and towards the end, swarming with mosquitoes.

09.01.2004 – Friday 9 January – Cooktown the mighty, the brave

Morning: • Ned was woken up by someone arriving – in this case Jean. Fortunately for him, she only wanted to see his mother, so he was able to go back to sleep, only to be awoken shortly after by Ella. Mandi had driven up to get the key, as they needed to access Shan’s computer for some tax records or something exciting like that. Seeing as the key was in Ned’s caravan, along with the sleepy occupant, she had to come and get it. Luckily Ned has known Ella forever, because he doesn’t sleep fully dressed.
Afternoon: • Ned had to drive into town to drop off the CD’s he had borrowed yesterday. He noticed a few some fires on the way in. Once in town, he checked his mail, posted a letter, dropped the CD’s back, bought a thickshake, a punnet of salad and a few bottles of soft drink, and then drove home again.
Evening: • By the time Ned got home, it had clouded over, and was threatening to storm. Thunder was rolling in the distance, and it didn’t look like very good weather for walking. Undeterred nonetheless, he decided to not only walk out to the halfway spot, but to also lie in the rock pool spa watching the lightning overhead – hoping none struck him or the water nearby. My, what a daring lad he is.
Just as he decided the water was very cold and got out, it began to rain. By the time he was home, having walked through a true tropical downpour, he was as wet as it is possible to get without actually being underwater. He’s quite glad it’s not cold up here, or it wouldn’t have been much fun.
Night: • Only a few minutes after he had arrived home, it began to thunder and lightning. Ned made his way out to his caravan, where he started up his computer, just before an immense thunderclap, so he quickly unstarted up his computer, and cowered on his bed waiting for a tree to javelin through the roof. One lightning bolt sounded as though it hit a tree in the bush just beside his caravan – making such a loud and thunderous noise that his ears rang for quite some time after.
After sleeping for a few hours until the thunder had gone Ned again started up his computer and spent the night online, doing things, as he is wont to do.
Comment by keight – Saturday 10 January 2004, 4:44 AM: Did your money order arrive yet?
Comment by Ned – Saturday 10 January 2004, 9:41 AM: No, it hasn’t. I don’t know what’s up with it? :-(
Comment by keight – Sunday 11 January 2004, 10:58 PM:   Well, it is in the hands of Australia Post. God know.

  If it dosent arrive soon, I'll see if I cant cancel it.

10.01.2004 – Saturday 10 January – To Cairns we go

3pm: • Jade and Ella came around and we left for Cairns. The drive was rather uneventful – the road is bad though. We hit some pretty big and nasty potholes, which probably isn’t too good for Jade’s small Asian car, but it’s even worse trying to go slowly.
  We drove straight to Jade and Ella’s grandparent’s place, where we picked up a gate key, and drove into Cairns, parking at the new car park beside the new lagoon on the esplanade. Jade and Ella went swimming, while I checked into the “Bellview Guest House”, at $18 a night for a bed in a six bed dormitory, although I was the only person there.
  Half of Rossville and Mungumby were also enjoying the new lagoon, apparently also down there for Jenna’s going away party tomorrow.
  We had dinner at McDonalds, or at least I did. I bought one of their new “Salads Plus” veggie burgers, which aren’t too bad really and actually contain some real, live salad, while Jade and Ella had some disgusting thick shake and apple pie monstrosity.
9:30pm: • We went and saw a romantic comedy, “Love Actually”, at the City Cinemas. While definitely not my style of movie, it was enjoyable nonetheless – and I think the girls both liked it. It was going on midnight by the time it finished, so the girls drove back to their grandparents and I went to the Bellview and slept. It was quite hot too, and I was too stupid to close the window and turn the air-conditioning on, so I sweated all night instead.

11.01.2004 – Sunday 11 January – Raymond and the Rings

Morning: • I woke late, showered, found an internet café, checked my emails, chatted, found Raymond online, and arranged to phone him back and meet him in a while. I then went to the night markets and bought some pasta for lunch.
12:30pm: • I phoned Raymond, who happened to be nearby, and then found and met him. We went and saw “The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King” at Central Cinemas, and it was good, although I can see that as a standalone movie it doesn’t really make much sense. After that, we spent the evening wandering around the pier, until I got a message from Joneses that I was to meet them at 7 PM.
7pm: • Jade and Ella turned up, and we drove and bought an Eagle Boy’s pizza, which we ate on the esplanade, and then went to an internet café for Jade to find out something about guitars, which took ages and I wanted to go see a movie.
9:20pm: • We went and saw “Cold Mountain”, a somewhat depressing romance set during the American Civil War. It was a good movie, but the tinging of sadness at the end wasn’t exactly what I needed before bed.

12.01.2004 – Monday 12 January – Lingerie, Guitars and Falafel

10:10am: • I was supposed to meet Joneses at the Bellview at 10 o’clock, but due to my watch being three or four hours wrong, I hadn’t even got up or got ready when the Bellview man came in and told me Ella was downstairs waiting – and checkout time is 10 AM.
After a mad panic rush to get ready, I went and met Jade and Ella, and we went shopping. I bought the shoes Mum had requested from Woolworth’s, dropped Ella’s photos off for printing, and went to a guitar shop. Jade spent quite some time playing various electric guitars, before finally choosing one for Craig – and then we went and spent quite some more time at an op-shop, where I amused myself by trying to get Ella to buy sexy things, looking at belts and ties, playing with kitchen utensils, and various other exciting things.
We went and picked up Ella’s photos, which weren’t at all suitable for framing in her frame, so we had to leave them there for another hour and have them enlarged.
1:20pm: • I bought a nice, large, falafel roll, which I then ate half of and got full. Jade and Ella shared a small bucket of horrible potato chips and some silly fruit juice, and then tried to finish off my falafel roll but also got full. Jade drove off to a flute lesson, and Ella and I went and watched “Honey” at Cairns Central. Ella really enjoyed it, and I didn’t mind it either – although mainly because she enjoyed it so much.
Evening: • After the movie, Ella and I walked down, picked up her photos, and waited for Jade to return – which she did. After checking the photos against the frame we found there wasn’t any way they could fit, so amidst Ella’s instant plunge into the realms of depression, we took her photos to another photo shop, along with the frame, and had a chat to the woman there who says she can print them to fit, but it will take an hour.
To fill in the hour, we drove to Earlville and went to Stocklands, bought some chocolate wafer things for Craig and some women’s panties (oh, what exciting shopping), and then drove back to the photo place. This time they pictures did fit, and Ella was happy, so we all lived happily ever after.
Actually, we drove back out to the girls’ grandparent’s place and dropped Ella and her pictures, happily in their frame, off at Jenna’s place, and then me back at the Bellview, where I checked in again, this time for $20.
7:30pm: • I phoned Sarah, having phoned Kelly an hour ago and found she was at training, but she was too tired to do anything. She had worked ten hours today, and had to be up at some horribly early time tomorrow, so I went and bought myself a mini pizza from a shop on the Esplanade, ate that, and then went to an internet café to await “Welcome to the Jungle”.
9:30pm: • I watched “Welcome to the Jungle” at Cairns Central, and really enjoyed it – it being a fairly mindless but amusing sort of Hollywood action movie. After the movie, I planned to go straight to bed, as I have a wakeup call scheduled for 7:30 AM tomorrow morning, but it was not to be.
When I got back to my room, after a quick (and free) drop in at an internet café to check for last minute email from Shan, I found one Swiss girl, one German man and three Swiss men. They were hiding from the fearful prowler, that mighty guarder and noise-killer, the night watchman of the smoking-not-allowed-inside. Women aren’t allowed inside either, for that matter – how potentially immoral!
3:30am: • My throat got sore, having been talking non-stop for the past few hours, so I went to find a shop selling drinks. Amusingly, some of the Swiss were there buying drinks too, on their way home from the Woolshed. They’d gone out a few hours ago, after a bit of a chat, and I’d been chatting to the others ever since. It was quite interesting – they were very inquisitive, and intelligent, as was I (especially the intelligent part!), and we discussed a wide range of things from our different perspectives, from world politics through to the important matter of the relative size and weight of our respective coinage and the fancy see-through window in our notes, compared to the silly all-one-sized American notes, and wondering how blind people deal with that. We all need to get up around seven...

13.01.2004 – Tuesday 13 January – And home again

7:30am: • I am awoken by whomever it is that wakes people up at the Bellview.
8am: • Jade and Ella picked me up, and we drove, stopping only for petrol, back home. The road was as rough as the way down, and it rained on and off. The drive was enjoyable, and seemed to go faster for some reason – probably because Ella and I are so simple-minded and easy to amuse, and both tired.
Midday: • I arrived home, and promptly retired to recover in front of my radiation-emitting cathode ray.
2:45am: • Here I am, still awake, and stupid. I’ve spent most of the evening online messing around reading things, chatting, doing a few things on my website, configuring the new version of Dreamweaver – nothing too exciting. Now I’m hugely sleepy and off to bed.

14.01.2004 – Wednesday 14 January – Mowing

Morning: • I was woken by Jade and Ella banging on my door. This was the start of a rather unpleasant day. After quickly gulping down a glass of soymilk, we drove up to Shan’s place, unloaded two mowers and a whipper-snipper, and began the ordeal.
The grass is hugely long, three or four feet high in spots, and very thick everywhere else. The mower I’m using can’t handle it. I have to mow backwards, at an incredibly slow speed, lifting the mower – basically carrying the mower into the grass. Anything else and it stalls. Four hours later, and we’ve succeeded in mowing an area that would take not more than half an hour normally. I’m dripping in sweat, my head pounds, I feel sick – what is it about mowing that makes it so much hotter than any other sort of task? The on and off rain didn’t help the humidity any either.
Just before collapsing entirely, we stopped and went for a swim down at the Home Rule Bridge.
Evening: • I spent the evening recovering from the morning, quietly online.

15.01.2004 – Thursday 15 January – Ranting and Raging

: • I have had a quiet day so far, nothing much has happened. I walked down to the hall, and saw what I believed was Shan getting home, and then confirmed on MSN with his sisters that he is indeed back. That’s about all that has happened so far. I ate a chilli in my soup for lunch and it was hot. I changed the location of the files used for various hit counters across my site, so they’re all in a central location. Silas’s payment for hosting was denied due to possible fraud. Oh, and I’ve probably almost got indigestion – apparently eating chillies and ice cream and nothing much else isn’t that good.
UQUnion: • From the scum who steal our money while lying about representing us, comes this:
“The University of Queensland Union will actively fight to remove the Liberal Party from Government at the next Federal election. UQU will further move to exclude through democratic means, from within the organisation members of the Liberal Party.”
I might not mind so much if I weren’t legally obliged to belong to, support, and pay these vile creatures. So much for that farce known as democracy – the sad and scary thing is that so many believe it.
IRC: • I have regularly been disgusted with the management, or mismanagement I should say, of the IRC network I frequent ever since I had a series of disagreements with some of them ages ago, but today a series of wallops went too far, and I had to complain. After receiving these wallops, which potentially anyone on the network can receive:
  15•09 ••• !Kwahraw! I AM A STUD, THE REST OF YOU ARE NOT!!!!
  13•08 ••• !Kwahraw! I am a f*ckin moron, just thought I'd let the world know.
  15•16 ••• !Zardoz! [16:14] <reverend> someoen needs to tell that kwharawh to stay the f*ck off wallops [16:14] <reverend> he is always telling me about his friend's birthdays and sh*t <–– everyone take note please
  15•16 ••• !Kwahraw! I don't have friends, and if I did, they wouldn't have birthdays.
  15•18 ••• !Kwahraw! since the ONLY thing on wallops is oper comments, if you don't like it, you can -w
  15•18 ••• !Kwahraw! thats done by /mode YOURNICK -w
  15•25 ••• !Kwahraw! noteeth says he is lonely, and wants to be messages. He especially liks poofts. /msg noteeth
  15•26 ••• !Warder! poofts? sounds like a cereal
  15•27 ••• !Kwahraw! i think its like queers/fags/butt pirates/anal spelunkers
  15•27 ••• !Warder! oh poofs
  15•28 ••• !Kwahraw! yeah, thats what noteeth likes
  15•28 ••• !Zardoz! Are you drunk?
  15•29 ••• !Kwahraw! no, just.... out of my mind. I agreed to have dinner tomorrow night at my ex-gfs place-– the one that I've been spending the last month trying to get over.
  15•29 ••• !Warder! haha ive just had 10 or so ppl ask me that as well
  15•29 ••• !Kwahraw! alcohol doesn't drive me this insane.
  15•31 ••• !Akron! Kwah dude hasent anyone ever told you never to go back? bad bad idea!
  15•31 ••• !Warder! unless u r desperate and have low self-esteem
  15•32 ••• !Akron! rofl so true.
  15•32 ••• !Kwahraw! what if I'm in love with her?
  15•32 ••• !Akron! same thing?
  15•32 ••• !Warder! then may god have mercy on your soul. never love them, only use them
  15•33 ••• !Kwahraw! or if I just miss the sex?
  15•33 ••• !Akron! isnt that expensive down the street....
  I felt required to send this email:

  Hello,

  I would like to officially complain regarding the use of various global services, in particular wallops, in a manner that is both reprehensible and not suitable for the general public, or Austnet's image.

  I understand that IRC is an unmoderated medium, and as thus, users are held responsible for whatever they may see or do while on IRC, however I feel that certain aspects should be suited to any audience. These would include the official channels such as global messages, wallops and so on.

  I do not think it is right that one should be required to shield their children or themselves from wallops (or any other official Austnet service) in order to avoid their exposure to coarse language, racist, sexual, or other slurs that I feel are totally inappropriate for any staff member acting in an official capacity.

  I would hope that those involved are reprimanded and that this does not occur again.

  In addition, I question the legality of using offensive and mature orientated language, as shown by various people when involved in their official Austnet duties, in a medium that has global exposure across a network supposedly suited for all ages.

  -thei

  Printed on 100% recycled electrons.
  http://nedmartin.org
Browsers: • Without wanting to get into the issues of rendering, standards support, vulnerabilities and other such exciting things – I thought I’d mention that I have found MyIE2 to be markedly faster (in all ways) and less resource-intensive than Mozilla, Firebird or standalone IE, and I have used it on several computers ranging from old, slow, memory lacking machines up. Also, MyIE2’s user interface, with its excellent tabbed support, mouse gestures, shortcuts and so on is rivalled only by Opera – none of the Mozilla family can match it.
  In my opinion, Mozilla and the various other Gecko based browsers are the most up-to-date insofar as rendering and such – although this is seriously offset by the fact that most sites are designed for and tested with IE. Their actual interfaces and the application itself I find to be clunky, slow, buggy and basically not as good as either Opera or IE. They have the best rendering engine... but that’s it.
  Opera has the nicest interface and “user experience”, but isn’t free and has a few “interesting” features/bugs. It’s nice and fast, and all current browsers could take a few hints from some of the non-traditional functionality they’ve added, especially their accessibility support. Their tabbed interface is the best, no questions asked.
  IE is... well everyone knows what IE is – basic, functional, most widely supported and used but rapidly becoming outdated.
  My personal preference is MyIE2, a wrapper for IE. It adds the best functionality from Opera (which Mozilla/Firebird etc cannot yet match) and combines it with the integration and compatibility you get from IE. The main downside is IE’s age – it simply doesn’t support the latest “cutting edge” stuff. Avantbrowser is similar to MyIE2, but not as good, I find.
  Of course, this only applies to Windows.
Comment by Raina – Friday 16 January 2004, 10:21 AM: Ok, where do I get MyIE2 ? And what functionality does it add apart from 'tabbed support' and mouse gestures? (I like the idea of tabs)
Comment by Ned – Friday 16 January 2004, 2:06 PM: Their site at www.myie2.com sums it up nicely: “MyIE2 is the most powerful and fully customized browser on earth”. I agree, and I have used the majority of browsers currently available under Windows. It took me a while to get used to using it, now I couldn’t do without it – I have my own customised keyboard shortcuts, am used to using the tabs and drag and drop to open new windows, save pages, organise things. Oh and mouse gestures are excellent once you get used to them, I can’t do without them now... never again click a back button :-)
Comment by Ned – Friday 16 January 2004, 2:11 PM: Oh, one other thing... don’t necessarily install all the crud that comes with it. It comes with all these bundled roboform auto password filler-outters and stuff. They’re probably really good for all I know, but if you don’t want that stuff – ensure you don’t select it when installing, not that it’s hard to uninstall again.

16.01.2004 – Friday 16 January – Cooktown, Shan and Kylie

thei.com: • I wouldn’t mind purchasing thei.com, and they had an advertisement on their site that it was for sale so I sent them an email and got this reply:
  “Dear sirs:
  Thanks for your interest in Thei.com.
  I would like to quote you the price range from 2,500 to 3,000 USD for the domain name.
  Then, I will be pleased to release it to your company.”
  Now, they’ve updated their site with details of an auction for the domain name, which I quote:
  “Sorry to announce that this website was closed due to our financial problems.
  Therefore, we wait for a new owner or investor of this website. If you are interested in purchasing this website or domain name, please make your best bid via e-mail.
  Anybody can bid from US $3,500 up to US $5,500 for this domain, the highest bidder will get this domain.
  The auction will be done by email. The starting price is US $3,500 and if anybody reaches to US $5,500, this auction will be automatically closed. This auction period is 45 days from the first bid.”
  It’s annoying. I have checked thei.com often – it has never been used, it’s always some stupid holding page type thing mentioning that it’s for sale.
  Is “thei” the most wanted name in Asian business or something... or are they just insane?
Morning: • Mum and I drove to town, where we did shopping. How exciting. We also got a few DVD’s: “Mean Machine”, “Hidden Agenda”, “The Cat’s Meow”, “Liberty Stands Still” and “Hamlet”.
Evening: • I went for a walk around the school loop and then out past the Home Rule Bridges, missing Shan and Kylie in the process. They dropped by here, and went looking for me but Mum told them I’d gone the other way, so they missed me.
Night: • Mum and I watched “Mean Machine”, or we were watching it, right up until Shan and Kylie arrived. We didn’t hear their car over the movie, so it was a bit of a shock. Mum went inside, and Shan and I played some computer games he’d bought over in Thailand until Kylie got very sleepy, and they drove home. Mum and I resumed watching the movie, which ended up being good. Not much really happened, and that which did was quite predictable, but it managed to predictably not really happen in an interesting and involving sort of way, and I enjoyed it. British films are just somehow different to American ones.

17.01.2004 – Saturday 17 January – Black Image

Afternoon: • I walked up to Shan’s. It began to rain just as I left, of course, and I got wet – my umbrella leaks. Why they don’t make things like umbrellas out of something waterproof has me stumped. Shan and Kylie were halfway through watching “Hidden Agenda”, so I got to see the end half of that, which, not surprisingly, made no sense. Jade and Ella arrived not long after I did, and we spent most of the evening playing computer games, talking, and laughing at Shan and Kylie wrestling. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and I guess wrestling is about as intimate as you can get without it being erotic.
Evening: • Jade dropped me home, but just as I got out of the car, Shan pulled up behind and asked if I wanted to go out to Home Rule, which I did. We spent an hour or so out there, looked at Shan and Kylie’s honeymoon pictures, and generally messed around before they drove me back up here.
Night: • Mum and I walked down to the hall, to see how “Black Image”, who were playing there, were going. Ninety-nine percent of the people there were murris, and eighty percent of them were standing around outside the hall listening and wouldn’t have had to pay, so I’m not sure how their cover charge was going to cover anything. It definitely wasn’t my crowd, so we left.
10:24pm: • Shan and Kylie walked up. I got a bit of a shock when they silently arrived at the door whilst I was chatting online. Apparently they were having trouble sleeping, and probably bored too I guess, so had walked up to see if it was any more interesting up here. We looked at pictures and talked until midnight, and then walked back down to the hall to see how that was going. It was pretty much the same as last time so we didn’t stay. We’d discussed dark evil presences and all those other sort of scary things that lurk in the dark on the walk, which made me a little freaked on the walk back by myself, especially after seeing a star with an interesting sort of mist effect – I hope no one reads this.
I then chatted and read online until the wee hours of the morning.

18.01.2004 – Sunday 18 January – Pumping Up

: • I have had a lovely quiet day, disturbed only by Mum ordering me to pump up. This involves a dangerous and very hot trek through the jungle, during which I have to carefully jump across mud-filled ravines, navigate slippery mountainsides, treacherous riverbanks, and dangerous suburban areas – twice, once to start the pump, and once to shut it off. This is all assuming it starts of course, which it did. And that’s assuming it runs after I’ve started it too, which it didn’t, so I had to start it three times – stupid small motors. Jean came around at some stage too, to get me to have a look at her computer, which I’ll try to do on Tuesday.
10:51pm: • I got disconnected, and when trying to reconnect, received an “Error 691 – Access was denied because the username and/or password was invalid on the domain”. After several attempts, I decided either Dodo is having problems, or my account has been disabled. Hopefully not the latter, and hopefully they’re transient problems and I’ll be able to connect again soon. If not, I guess I’ll have to phone them tomorrow. Perhaps I should go watch “S.W.A.T.”, which I have here on DVD. It’s still showing in the cinemas so I’m guessing it’s probably reasonably illegal to have a DVD. Perhaps I should point out that I do not own the DVD, and, technically, do not know from whence it came.
11:29pm: • Yay, online again! It must have been a transient fault. What a relief! How traumatic that was. Now I’m all stressed that I’ll get disconnected again and have to go to bed or something terrible like that.

19.01.2004 – Monday 19 January – Symlinks at last

5:34am: • After a hard night’s chatting, I finally went to bed.
1:10pm: • I woke up, and, of course, went online.
5:39pm: • Shan and Kylie came around, and proceeded to make Ella very angry by threatening her, via MSN, that they’d come around and borrow her satellite decoder and she’d not be able to talk to all her lovers – she’s such an angry girl. They also borrowed a few DVD’s.
7:34pm: • After an abortive attempt some time ago to figure out a way to mirror my content in two locations (on the same server), I again and successfully tried using symlinks. I can now serve my journal, for example, from nedmartin.org/journal and journal.the-i.org without affecting its existing structure – something I have wanted to do for some time.
9:27pm: • Mum and I began to watch “The Cat’s Meow”, but it was terrible so we stopped. Plus, it had awful audio and we could hardly hear it over the rain, so we watched “S.W.A.T.” instead, which was much better and we both enjoyed it – although it’s very predictable and typical and not that good.
4:21am: • I went to bed, late – yet again.

20.01.2004 – Tuesday 20 January – Jean’s WordPad

12:20pm: • I wake up. I thought Mum was going to town, but she decided not to, so I spent most of the day online chatting instead.
3:48pm: • Jean’s computer has some problem apparently, so I walk down to see what it is. I meet Jean just before I get to her place, and get a lift the rest of the way. It ends up, she’s printing a document she typed, and there are a few errors and inexplicable formatting problems in it, but each time she prints it, it comes out just the same regardless of what she does. She even went so far as to retype a page. She’s using WordPad, which I’d never really bothered to look at before – but it’s remarkably poxy. It doesn’t even support pages – instead everything is one long line, and you can wrap it at a specified ruler width if you want. Her print queue had about 20 documents in it, all in various states of failure, so that probably has something to do with her problems. Over two hours later, which involved such enjoyable tasks as feeding paper into a printer, one page at a time, removing large chunks of jammed paper, waiting considerable amounts of time for printer to return to life and rebooting an old Pentium 2 with 64 megs of RAM.
6:09pm: • I got back from fixing Jean’s computer.
8:34pm: • Shan turned up, dropping off the DVD’s he’d borrowed. He only stayed a few minutes – he and Kylie both looked very sleepy.
4:04am: • After messing around with my site all night, updating and changing things, I finally went to bed.

21.01.2004 – Wednesday 21 January – Liberty Stands Still

5:36pm: • I phoned Dodo technical support, because I got another of those “Error 691 – Access was denied because the username and/or password was invalid on the domain” errors. They said they’d phone me back, which isn’t much use as either I’m not here, or I’m connected to the internet, tying up the one phone line.
Evening: • Seeing as I can’t go online, and because I usually go for a walk anyway – I went for a walk. It’s nice walking in the rainforest once the heat of the day has passed. Everything is so green and lush, there’s so many different types of plants, trees, vines, grasses, ferns, berries, birds, bugs, insects – even just the noises. The place is teeming with life – little life, the sort you miss if you’re in a car. I enjoy the peacefulness and find I can think really well when I walk up here.
Night: • Mum and I watched “Liberty Stands Still”, which was actually thought provoking, so not too bad really. Not the most exciting movie around though. I then stayed up way too late online trying to get rid of a crappy problem with my website – I ended up having to copy another several hundred line file, checking through it line by line, before it would work.

22.01.2004 – Thursday 22 January – Dean’s Commendation

8:30am: • We all did go to town, at which we set upon the post office to discharge its mail, being as it was ours. I was pleased to obtain, in a large manila envelope, a Dean’s Commendation for Excellence. Dad and Mum were well pleased.
A milkshake, a talk to Bob and Peter, and some shopping later, and we drove home. We met the Jamaican and another bloke broken down near Ron’s, had a quick look, and then helped them phone the RACQ. I then collapsed in front of the fan and went online.
Evening: • Mum went to get a can of three-bean mix out of the cupboard, but got a black snake instead. For some reason, she didn’t like this, and screamed and threw the can on the floor and made quite a fuss. The poor snake was very alarmed and angry. Mum wanted it to go away, but it decided not to, so it’s still there now. It seems to be a bit happier now, all curled up behind some jars.
1:13am: • It’s raining nicely. I’m slowly getting sleepy, but don’t think I’ll go to bed for a while yet.
Comment by DK – Saturday 31 January 2004, 9:04 AM: Well done re: Commendation ;)
Comment by Ned – Monday 2 February 2004, 1:20 AM: Thanks :-)

23.01.2004 – Friday 23 January – Cooktown, Pizza and Chips

2:04am: • I sleep.
2:49am: • I enter a deeper state of sleep.
6:35am: • I enter a semi-awake state of sleep, during which I dream a lot, but I forget this by the time I wake.
10:58am: • Wake.
5:30pm: • Walk. The spa is intense. Rain has swelled the waters. I am pummelled.
11:23pm: • I arrive back from town. Shan turned up a few hours ago, with Kylie, Jade and Ella – on their way to town, a spur of the moment anti-boredom measure I think. We had a good time – bought chips, milkshakes and pizza from Joe’s, which we ate down at the wharf, and some drinks from the servo, before driving home again. I really quite enjoyed it – it’s nice to be able to do these sort of things with Joneses (and now Kylie), as I’ve never been able to before, as they were too young.
3:14am: • Sleep.

24.01.2004 – Saturday 24 January – Reign of Darkness

12:15pm: • I woke up, to hear Mum screaming and carrying on. She’d put her hand in the cupboard to get a plate, and got a snake instead. I suppose I can understand that making her scared, but I can’t understand her stupid insistence that I not go near the snake. It’s the same snake from the other day – about five feet long, quite black, with a pink tinged greyish underbelly. Mum seems to think that it can magically morph its way through jars of food, leap through the air, and bite me – all in the twinkling of an eye. This necessitated Dad and Ron arriving, complete with a broom and a rake, and poking the poor snake until it fell out, ran under a cupboard (from whence emerged a rat – very amusing) and then outside.
5:24pm: • I decided to go for my normal evening walk out to the halfway spot. I was about halfway back from the halfway spot when I met Shan and Kylie, driving out to Home Rule, about halfway to the halfway spot. I got a lift out to Home Rule with them, where they planned to use Ella’s satellite dish and phone line to authenticate Shan’s satellite decoder. Unfortunately, they’re experiencing power problems – apparently there’s air in the pipe, so we didn’t have any power for a few hours so stayed for dinner.
By the time we got the satellite stuff done and left, it was bucketing down rain, and going on midnight. Jade and Ella came along, and we all drove up to Shan’s and watched “Reign of Darkness” – a very B-Grade horror movie, but I didn’t mind it too much.
1:45am: • It was funny – they all fell asleep watching the movie, even Shan. I hoped I didn’t offend any of them, but I snuck out and walked home, rather than wake anyone up.
1:53am: • Sometime around here, my site would have been moved across to its new server, although DNS will take much longer to propagate so I don’t expect anything to actually change for a while.
4:13am: • After messing around with the new server for a while, and chatting online, I went to sleep.

25.01.2004 – Sunday 25 January – Server Move

9:54am: • I wake. I have a bit of a sleep around midday because I feel terrible.
1:52pm: • I shower because I still feel terrible.
5:29pm: • I go walking, to try to come alive. I then spend the night chatting and waiting for DNS to resolve and messing around with my sites, which were moved to a new server not long after midnight last night, trying to fix them.
3:27am: • I finally go to bed.

26.01.2004 – Monday 26 January – Australia Day, Bruised and Battered

: • I am so tired and worn out, aching and sore. I’ve been swimming for hours, being bashed, battered, bruised and gashed against rocks – and to top it all off, scratched, bleeding and lacerated from an ongoing altercation with some violent femmes.
10:19am: • I woke up, which isn’t that hard to imagine. I then did the obvious – and went on line. I was trying to fix up my website so it will work, as well as possible, without XSLT, but every time I tried to something went wrong. FTP died, DNS resolved at random, randomly – the power even failed for ten minutes and kept playing up after that.
11:46am: • In fact, that was a little scary. The power cut out for about ten minutes, just as I was finally about to upload a fixed page for my journal – having already tried several times before and been unsuccessful due to stupid text encoding problems. I leapt up and pulled the plug on the PC in case the power came back on suddenly and blew it up, and then wandered around aimlessly inside, getting some ice cream. After the power came back on, and seemed to be staying on, I rushed out here and started up the PC – and it made about 30 little beeps, but then booted normally.
1:01pm: • Not long after the power failure, Shan messaged me on MSN and asked if I wanted to go out to Home Rule for a swim, which I did. We drove out there and walked up to the Blue Marker, and swam. That is somewhat of an understatement. We actually fought the current, and each other, getting smashed against rocks, scratched, gouged, and generally exhausted and bruised in the process. Kylie managed to take skin off fingers on both all of my hands – which hurts now that I’m typing, and my sore ankle was the only one anyone ever grabbed.
After our exhausting ordeal, we spent some time at Joneses, before driving up to Shan’s and walking down to his pump. Small motors, and pumps in particular, are horrible sadistic things. After we’d got the water out of the exhaust, we spent quarter of an hour pulling its stupid little starter, before I cunningly tricked it into starting. Small motors are bad, there’s no two ways about it. It sure didn’t do my already very exhausted right arm any good either.
Night: • Shan and I spent a while looking at the new GameDude site, and picking mulberries, before I walked home. I then had dinner, which was nice but made me feel so exhausted and sick. I think I’ve overdone the exertion today.

27.01.2004 – Tuesday 27 January – Town and CD’s

Morning: • Mum and I drove into town, I’m not quite sure why. We didn’t really do anything. Sarah is back, having left her wallet on the bonnet, driving off and losing it with her licence and Vince’s credit cards in it. To top it off, their phone died while they were away and they’ve lost a job.
Evening: • I walked up to Shan’s, talked about blank CD’s, and then out to the halfway spot. I ordered 50 “Laser” brand 48× 700MB blank CD’s for $25 from GameDude, having priced them in town where they cost over twice this. I chatted to Silas, who is trying to figure out which MP3 player to buy.
2:45am: • I’m listening to Loreena McKennitt’s “The Mystic’s Dream” from her “The Mask and Mirror” album before going to bed. It’s such a good song.

28.01.2004 – Wednesday 28 January – The Man in the Iron Mask

: • I slept in late, being woken by someone looking for Sarah, and spent most of today online chatting and messing around updating bits of my website.
Evening: • I went for my normal unexciting walk out to the halfway spot and back again.
Night: • Mum and I watched “The Man in the Iron Mask”, which I quite enjoyed despite its somewhat predictable plot, horrible accents and Leonardo DiCaprio.
3:43am: • I can’t believe it’s so late and I need to get up reasonably early to go to town. Argh!

29.01.2004 – Thursday 29 January – Cooktown

: • Mum and I drove into town and did shopping. I had my traditional milkshake followed by a punnet of pasta salad and felt traditionally sick afterwards. We also got another five DVD’s, “Born Romantic”, “Rush Hour 2”, “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?”, “Blade” and its sequel, “Blade Ⅱ”.

30.01.2004 – Friday 30 January – Site Moved

: • What an ordeal that was. I woke up to find that Robert had moved my site over to another server, as promised, because with the crazy random problems they are having on the new SolidInternet server, he wasn’t willing to mess around trying to get Expat, mod_ssl, Zend and Sablotron to co-exist peacefully.
  I updated my site to use all its XSLT features again, but my syndication feeds update script gave a “404 File Not Found” error. This seemed odd because the file definitely existed. After some messing around, I realised it was actually giving a “500 Internal Server Error”, but due to the way I’ve handled unfound pages, that gives a “404 File Not Found” error.
  Once I’d figured that out, I thought it would be easy to fix, but no. First, I discovered that every time I attempted to execute the file, it caused a 10 MB core dump in its directory. This was exciting but unhelpful. I rewrote the script – several times. I then tried copying other existing scripts I had that did almost exactly the thing, and modifying them to work – but they didn’t. I figured it must be some sort of file permission problem, probably caused when my files were copied from the other server, so I chmodded them to every known permission, changed the directory they were in, changed their name and type, overwrote existing files, used rename() to copy them to other files, and anything else I could think of, before deciding it must be something else.
  I then attacked the XSLT file that performed the transformations, thinking that perhaps this server had a different version of Sablotron installed, which was having problems with something – but it’s such a simple transformation that I couldn’t really see any problem with it, there’s just nothing that I could change.
  Fortunately for my sanity, I had the rather obvious brainwave to change the input data file to a last year’s journal – and it worked. This narrowed down the possible problems to this year’s journal data file, which seemed very odd and hence why I hadn’t considered it could be a problem. Once I’d worked this out, it was easy. I truncate the output to 30 words, by trimming on word borders, and if I’ve an element in the input that is the first content element for a specific day, and has only one word, it tries has a heart attack and dies. My shoddy coding I guess, although I’m not quite sure how to fix it yet.
  I skilfully changed the one word element “Sleep” into the two-word element “I Sleep”, by the dexterous placing of a single “I”, and all my troubles went away. Or rather, they should have... I tested it and it worked, so I fixed up the original files, copied over the working code from the files I’d been testing it in, and uploaded everything. Clunk. It all died. Totally. Everything stopped working. FTP didn’t work, XSLT died totally – it was a shambles.
  I was just about to give up and go back to using HyperCard on a Macintosh, when I remembered the 10 MB core dumps. Now that I’ve deleted them, and freed up some space, everything works again.
Night: • After a walk out to the halfway spot while it was drizzling and a nice warm shower when I got home, Mum and I watched “Born Romantic”, which Mum quite enjoyed. I liked it too, but it’s not really my style of movie. British comedy is usually good though – leaves for dead that incredibly obvious rubbish the Americans call comedy.

31.01.2004 – Saturday 31 January – Dad’s

: • I had planned to go over to Home Rule and try to install some stuff for Ric, but was advised by Ella not to – so that sort of messed up my day and I spent the rest of the day doing not much and wishing it wasn’t so hot.
Evening: • I went for a walk up to Dad’s and had dinner there.

01.02.2004 – Sunday 1 February – Very Hot

: • It was an incredibly hot day, and I sweltered uncomfortably all day long.
Night: • Mum and I watched “Rush Hour Ⅱ”, which I have seen before, but is quite amusing. I then stayed up late online, updating my links page and a few other similarly exciting things.

02.02.2004 – Monday 2 February – Lightning

10:55am: • Joe phoned up and left a message for me to call the uni dentist, which I did. I now have an appointment to see the oral surgeon – something I’m not looking forward to.
1:55pm: • Mum woke me up to see if I wanted to go to town with her, but I was too sleepy and the only reason I had for going was to buy chocolate – something I haven’t eaten in ages now – so I went online instead, and I’m still here.
Evening: • The usual evening storm began to brew and move across towards us, so I shut down and unplugged the computer, and went inside. The lightning got closer and closer, thundering all around us, before it passed over towards Home Rule and the rain began. Then, just when we thought the worst was over, there was a loud hiss and a bright flash, followed immediately by a huge, rolling thunderclap and then an ominous silence – no thunder, no lightning, not even any rain. This lack of ferocity was scarier than the lightning, but not for long – a huge spark, with its own huge spark noise, hit down just outside somewhere, which was the worst. Another closer raging thunderstorm followed, the highlight of which was when we had a spark from within our inside meter box, and the smell of burning plastic.
  Once the storm had passed, the power tried to come back on. The lights were a dim orange for a while, then some fellas from Ergon turned up at the power pole up the road and did their magic, and the power worked. Surprisingly, after resetting the core balance breaker, everything seemed to work again, so whatever plastic melted obviously wasn’t too vital.
  Once the power had been on a while and seemed to be staying on, I reconnected the computer and went to go online – but there was no modem found. After a bit of fiddling around, it became evident that the modem was fried. The phone would work when the computer was off, but turn it on and the phone stopped working. Now that I think about it, it was pretty stupid – but I used to unplug the phone line from the wall jack inside, but leave the other end connected to the modem, so it had fifty metres of buried extension lead joined to the modem. I would probably have been better off leaving it plugged into the wall, where at least it would have been connected to some lightning protection.
  I walked up to Shan’s to ask if I could borrow his modem. They were about to go over to Home Rule for dinner, and said they’d pick up the modem while they were there.
Night: • Mum and I watched “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” – which is very stupid, but so stupid it’s almost funny. Not long after we’d finished watching the DVD, Shan arrived with the modem, and I tried installing it. The computer won’t even boot with it in the same PCI slot that the old modem used. Sometimes it will initialise the graphics card and fail on memory test, other times it won’t even initialise the graphics. I’m guessing that means either that slot is dead, or, probably less likely, the BIOS still thinks the old card is there. I couldn’t be bothered resetting the BIOS or ESCD. The borrowed modem will detect and seem to work properly if I put it in another PCI slot. It will even pick up the phone, but won’t dial. It simply fails to dial, saying no dial tone is present until I told it to ignore dial tones, and now it just dials for a while, and after a few attempts gives a generic 777 hardware failure error.
After a while, I got sick of it, and plugged in a trusty external modem and used that instead, but storm circled around and came back, so I had to shutdown, unplug and go to bed anyway. I’ll try to borrow another internal modem tomorrow and test using that.
I slept hoping the tree above me doesn’t get hit by lightning and fall on me.

03.02.2004 – Tuesday 3 February – Rocks, Rapids and Vampires

Morning: • I vegetated, suffering slightly from hay fever.
Afternoon: • Shan and Kylie picked me up and we drove out to Home Rule, where we walked up to the Blue Marker and went swimming. The creek was stronger than last time, having flooded and been over the bridges some time during the night, which made for fun, although sometimes painful, swimming. I strained a muscle in my right leg, was battered and bruised, and rather nastily scratched by Kylie – who is quite vicious, even though she’s just playing. It was good fun though, and good exercise and I enjoyed it.
After our swim, Shan and I played around with the network, trying to figure out what, if anything, had been blown up by the lightning and why nothing worked. We spent ages messing around, eventually admitting defeat. It’s a bit hard with someone else, every time I would go to do something, Shan would do something different – so I said I’d come around tomorrow and have a look while Shan was at work.
Evening: • I installed Jade’s modem into the same PCI slot that my modem was originally in, and the computer booted up fine – even detecting the modem. However, while I can communicate to the modem, I can’t get it to dial. I took the network card out, and swapped the modem into its slot – and voila, it all works. I haven’t got around to testing anything more, but it’s a bit confusing. My modem doesn’t detect in either of the two lower slots, Shan’s modem detects in one of them but won’t dial, and prevents the BIOS from initialising in the other one, and Jade’s modem seems to work fine in both of them, but won’t dial. They’re all reasonably cheap software modems, so they should really work. I’ll have to play around with them a bit more tomorrow.
Night: • I walked up to Shan’s, and we watched “Blade”. It’s not actually scary – in fact, I wouldn’t classify it as a horror movie at all, despite its horror rating. I enjoyed watching it, although a fifteen-inch monitor isn’t the best way for three people to watch a DVD.

04.02.2004 – Wednesday 4 February – Stupid Girls, and a Little Water

Morning: • Well, that was an annoyance. I walked four kilometres, in extreme humidity, out to Home Rule to troubleshoot their lightning-struck network. Only Kylie and Ella were there, and Ric down in his van. I went and installed a few games and things on Ric’s computer, which, apart from one game that has exciting fatal errors, mostly went well. Kylie and Ella came down after a bit to tell me Mum had phoned and that they were going up to Kylie’s place. Considering that I’d come over specifically to fix their network, which is a huge pain in the posterior, and I am not being paid for it, I thought them leaving was a bit rude. The other problem is that I don’t know Ella’s password so can’t really reboot her machine – very handy when trying to fix it.
I used Ella’s computer to ask her, via MSN, what her password was, so I could reboot her computer. Not only did she not tell me, but I was rudely ordered to go offline immediately because their limited download quota was nearly up – and when I didn’t go offline right away (ironically, I was actually offline because their satellite dropped out due to the inclement weather, but MSN didn’t register it), I was yelled and sworn at. I was a bit surprised with how rude they were, considering I’m not obliged in any way to help them out, but Kylie has been consistently rude and offensive to me – I can actually tell when it is Kylie using someone else’s MSN because the level of conversation degenerates. Perhaps as Shan’s friend, I’m still posing some kind of threat to her even though they’re now married – I don’t really know, but if Ella wants me to fix her computer again, she’ll be paying and I’m hoping it breaks down. Unfortunately it is Ella’s computer that has the internet connection out there, so when the network is down, it disadvantages Jade and Ric and doesn’t really affect her, so I’ll probably end up out there again trying to fix it for Jade’s sake.
3:26pm: • I am very, very annoyed – the power just failed, and if it weren’t for Word’s auto recovery, I’d have lost half my rant, and all of yesterday’s journal entry. I’m glad Word managed to recover the bulk of my rant, but I’ve now decreased its auto-save time from ten minutes down to three. I am not having a good day, it’s horribly humid, hot and sweaty, Sarah isn’t coming out after all, and my leg hurts quite a bit – I guess it’s one of those strained muscles that are supposed to be kept off, not walked on.
2:53am: • I need to get to bed, but first I must write this: I’ve just finished watching the demise of a certain family of vampires, and the continued existence of Blade, and his friend Whistler, in “Blade Ⅱ". The DVD was scratched, so I couldn’t copy it and had to watch it tonight. I’ve installed PowerDVD, which is better than WinDVD on slower computers like this one.
Earlier in the night it rained – and rained, and rained, and rained. Tropical downpours – the sort that would drown a weak Melbournite, have been sadly rare up here recently, so it’s very nice to get some rain. Unfortunately, not long before midnight, Shan came over and dropped off some DVD’s for me to take back to town tomorrow, and said that Joneses Causeway was over. I got him to check the Home Rule Bridge on his way home, which he did, and told me via MSN that it’s about two feet over. The inexorable law of cause and effect took hold of Mum, and she walked down to the pump to check how high the water was. Twelve feet below the pump, and worryingly high she reckoned – statements which are mutually exclusive, as twelve feet below the pump would put the water lower than its normal level, if anything. We then did the only logical thing to do, and disagreed. I pointed out that if the water was twelve feet below the pump, not only do we have nothing to worry about, but there’s obviously no flood either. Mum pointed out that if I weren’t so lazy, I would have walked down with her. I wasn’t impressed, seeing as how I’d offered to walk down with her, several times, but she had said she would be Ok, and in fact had rudely walked off.
Several disagreements later, Mum came back out and suggested we go move the pump anyway – which we did. Sliding down the cliff, sludging through the mud and flooded gully – at midnight in the dark and pouring rain isn’t my idea of fun, although I can think of worse things to do. The water was around five, perhaps even less, feet below the pump – who knows how Mum estimated twelve. After painfully removing the stupid hoses and spraying water everywhere (not that it made any difference in the rain), I lugged its awkward weight up the hill a bit and out of harms way, covered it in plastic, and fought my way back home. Sheets of almost solid water were falling from the sky by this time, and that’s the end of my story.
Comment by chrisj – Wednesday 4 February 2004, 9:36 PM: MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE WORN LESS CLOTHING AND A LARGER WIG.
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHH WIGGY WIGGY WIGGY WIGGY WIGGY.
Comment by Ned – Wednesday 4 February 2004, 10:34 PM: I have always thought that sometimes when women wear less clothing, it solves problems, but that doesn’t apply to men. As for the wig, it’s an admirable idea, but I’ve no idea where I could buy one up here.

05.02.2004 – Thursday 5 February – Cooktown and Drama

Morning: • Mum woke me up, and Dad, her and I drove into town. We had a late breakfast at the Mad Cow with Sarah, did some shopping, and then drove home again. The creek still looks like it’s pretty flooded, but I haven’t been down to check. I should probably go down and have a look now.
Modem: • The modem I bought seems to work fine in the same slot the old modem was in. This is strange – I’ve tried four modems now, including my old one. My old one doesn’t work anywhere – simply isn’t detected. Shan’s modem, when in the same PCI slot that my old modem was in, prevents the machine from booting. The BIOS has major problems – actually stalling halfway through writing the POST messages onto the screen, and that’s just if it actually gets around to initialising the graphics. I tried it in another slot and it detects and installs and responds, but won’t dial – and similarly with Jade’s modem, although it did actually dial and work in one slot, and then this new one I bought (which I believe is identical to Jade’s) works just fine. Strange, yet typical.

06.02.2004 – Friday 6 February – Rain and Car Sales

: • I added the capability to my journal to authenticate users, so that I can allow certain people to view private entries, based on specified levels of privacy. So far, it seems to work well.
Rain: • It has been raining a lot – it seems like proper wet season weather at last. I hope we get enough rain to make up for the dry years.
Evening: • Adam came and wanted to buy the old Mazda for parts. He’s gone up to see the car and Dad about it now.
Rory came and tried to buy the old Honda. He said his parents knew, but Mum phoned his Mum, who said she hadn’t heard anything about it – so he was sent on his way.
Night: • Shan, along with Kylie, Jade and Ella dropped in for a minute to pick up his and Jade’s modems. Telstra reset his satellite account and he needs to re-authenticate it.

07.02.2004 – Saturday 7 February – Voting and Flooded

Morning: • I slept in, and then spent most of the middle of the day online. The new modem I bought still seems to work quite normally in the same slot the old modem was in, and due to power failures, I’ve had to reboot several times since then, so I guess it’s ok.
6:27pm: • The power failed, and I lost most of what I’d written here – which is annoying. I’ve decreased the auto-recovery period to one minute now. I’d written how I walked down to Home Rule Bridge, and it is considerably flooded. I’m not quite sure how high the water is, but much too high to walk or drive across. I estimate it is five feet over the bridge but it’s hard to tell – it has been so long since I last played around in a flood down there. I met Rory on the way back and he asked if Mum had mentioned anything about the car, and if “thingo” had come to fix it yet. I don’t want to get involved, and didn’t know anything about it anyway, so said I had no idea what was going on.
6:42pm: • Apparently Mandi, Jade and Ella are stuck up at Shan’s place. They went in to vote and now it’s too flooded for them to get home. Shan says he was there up until around lunchtime, and back by about three o’clock, so I’m guessing the bridges weren’t too flooded at lunch but were by three.
9:25pm: • Someone from DEVNULL.megaprovider.nl [80.71.71.164], port 2263 keeps wanting to send UDP datagrams to port 1026 owned by ‘Internet Information Services’ and 1027 owned by ‘SYSTEM’ on my computer. The strange thing is, I have a dynamic IP, so I wouldn’t expect the same host to keep trying after I’ve been disconnected and changed my IP.
Comment by Soren – Tuesday 24 February 2004, 7:39 PM:   Hi
  This person keeps doing a port scan on my PC, very annoying.
  You talk about home Rule, is that the place near Gulgong?

  cheer
Comment by Judy – Monday 1 March 2004, 3:26 PM: DEVNULL.megaprovider.nl [80.71.71.164] I keep getting this annoying message (very regularly)and decided to type it into Google. Yours was the only link that appeared. What one earth is this message all about? I am sure it not your "job" or even interest to answer this so please feel free to ignore and I won't feel at all rejected.
Comment by Dirk – Tuesday 2 March 2004, 1:35 AM: Same here, Also got a dynamic IP¨but he keeps showing up. IP is 80.71.71.3 anyway of finding out who it is ?
Comment by Raul – Tuesday 2 March 2004, 1:22 PM: You are all hack by devnull nederland power!!!!!!!!!! especially you dirk!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Ned – Tuesday 2 March 2004, 7:46 PM: I’m not “hacked”, but I am quite curious – especially as it has now happened from two computers across two totally different internet access accounts.
And no, “Home Rule” is the name of a mine, or what used to be a mine, now a resort, in north Queensland.
Comment by Dirk – Tuesday 2 March 2004, 9:14 PM: You mean "hacked" ?
Strange... you have not showed up today :).
Comment by moses – Tuesday 9 March 2004, 6:49 PM:   ok me too just last night. i strayed over a couple of porn sites, and whether it was a co-incidence or not, now the bastards have messed up my internet explorer, cause i can't load google (neither www.google.com or www.google.com.au). This devnull.megaprovider.nl really wants to hook into my ports !!!
  btw - you can get around it temporarily by using the ip address of google, http://216.239.53.99 - has anyone worked out how to get rid of this nuisance
  and restore Iexplorer (for at least access google) ?
Comment by Ned – Wednesday 10 March 2004, 1:46 AM: It’s highly unlikely being port scanned is going to affect your browser in any particularly long lasting way.
Comment by Ned – Wednesday 10 March 2004, 1:47 AM: Try either Adaware or your favourite virus scanner, or preferably both.

08.02.2004 – Sunday 8 February – Happily Drowning

Morning: • I had a bad morning – doing nothing online and in a mood.
Afternoon: • Shan picked me up, and we drove out to Home Rule where we went swimming at the Blue Marker. It was considerably flooded – much higher than the previous time. I nearly drowned – or at least I think I did. I am not sure how easy it is to drown, but being caught at the bottom of a waterfall is probably a good way to find out. Each time I managed to come up for air, I was sucked back down to the bottom again.
When I wasn’t drowning, I was being smashed against rocks, logs, or fighting my way against vicious undertows and currents. It was great fun, but very, very tiring. Kylie, Jade and Ella nearly drowned too – I think Shan managed to escape.
Night: • I watched “Bare Witness”, which I’d borrowed from Shan and Kylie. I didn’t mind it, as I managed to get engrossed in the plot, but the acting is definitely poor.
5:09am: • I’ve downloaded the latest version of ACDSee, which seems to have major bugs – it crashes every time I change directory. It does, however, allow me to add EXIF metadata to images without existing metadata – something I needed and something the previous version did not allow, so that’s good at least. I’m trying to upload some pictures to my web server, but it’s being very slow. I am suffering mild shock from the time. I thought it was around 2 AM. I can’t believe the time has gone so fast. I had planned to get up relatively early, and perhaps go over to Home Rule and have a look at Jade’s PC, but all that’s in doubt now because I’ll probably be asleep all day. At least it’s raining a little now – not very heavy though. The more rain we get the better really, to a certain extent anyway. I wish these uploads would hurry up so that I can go to bed. I suppose I could go lie down and leave them going.

09.02.2004 – Monday 9 February – Uni Enrolment

12:30pm: • After a measly six and a half hour sleep, I woke up to find people in the uni channel saying sign-on had opened for university courses, and I hadn’t even enrolled in all my subjects yet. I did a quick and complex comparison in Excel, and have now selected:
  INFS2200 — Relational Database Systems
  COMP2301 — Systems Interface Programming
  COMP3601 — Software Specification
  COMP3300 — Operating Systems
  They all sound bad and I’m now traumatised. On the bright side, sign-on for my subjects doesn’t actually open until early Thursday morning – so that gives me a bit of time to figure out my immensely complex timetable.
Dusk: • I went for a walk just on dusk. It was very beautiful; very clean after all the rain. I walked down to the Home Rule Bridge, dangled my feet in the icy flooded water, and enjoyed the peacefulness. The mountains formed a lovely backdrop. I met Shan and Kylie walking their dog, and went up to their place to pick up a DVD to take back to town.
Comment by Tjousk – Monday 9 February 2004, 3:17 PM: Ooh, I can comment!
not that I have anything useful to say...

10.02.2004 – Tuesday 10 February – Cyclone

Morning: • Jade and Ella drove over and picked me up, and Kylie on the way back. I messed around with her PC, eventually getting it to work. It was a typical stupid problem. Her onboard network interface is dead, and the PCI network card simply does not work. Another PCI network card I took over worked fine, and, crazily enough, the other PCI network card would also work after I installed my other one. After installing my network card, then her modem, then swapping my network card for my other network card it all worked – and that’s the only possible way to get it to all go. Logic need not apply.
I disabled Word’s auto-list conversions for Ric and cleaned up a document he was writing. Word can be so hard to use sometimes.
: • My new modem seems to be working: Dodo Internet via ESS ES56H-PI Data Fax Voice Modem @ 31200bps for 1d 16h 14s (13.02MB up, 46.78MB down). I also got this message: “ISP does not support modem on hold. If you accept incoming call, your internet connection will be terminated. Do you want to accept the call?” Unfortunately, I was asleep at the time so I couldn’t click “yes” and see what happened.
Night: • I watched “12 Monkeys” – a good movie really, but with an annoying end. It was also scratched in several spots, which is annoying.
I was informed of a cyclone threat. We are currently under a Cyclone watch. While waiting for the 2 AM advisory, the power failed so I left the lights on and went to bed.
3:20am: • I’ve woken up and the power is back on. It’s still raining quite heavily. I hope it’s not flooded. I still have hay fever too, which really isn’t pleasant.
At 2 AM Tropical Cyclone Fritz, Category 1, with gusts to 100 km/h, was located 52 km east of Cape Melville moving west at 22 km/h. Cyclone Fritz should cross the coast between Lockhart River and Cape Tribulation just south of Cape Melville in the next 2 to 3 hours. Gales are likely to persist mostly just south of the cyclone for the next few hours then gradually ease as the cyclone moves inland.
Heavy rain and local flooding are expected over the Peninsula and Northern Tropical coast.
Comment by Lucas – Friday 13 February 2004, 12:24 AM: funny, i have a friend named fritz....

11.02.2004 – Wednesday 11 February – Flights, Floods and Fear

Horribly Early: • Mum woke me up to tell me that it is flooded. I didn’t have a very good night’s sleep, staying up until the power failed some time after midnight, then going to bed for a while and waking up when the power came on again around 3 AM, getting back to bed sometime around four o’clock and then being woken up before six by Mum. The 11 PM cyclone advisory put us in a warning zone, so I was staying up to check the 2 AM advisory when the power failed – or rather my fan stopped. I turned on the light to see why the fan had stopped, but it didn’t – only glowing a dull orange instead. I pulled the plug on the PC, turned all the lights on, and went to bed. The power tried to come on a few times, glowing orange and then dying, before I fell asleep. After a while, I began to have funny dreams about bright lights ala “12 Monkeys”. I then woke up to find the power, and lights, were back on, so I checked the cyclone advisory, saw we weren’t about to be exterminated, updated my journal, and went back to bed.
  I walked down to look at Joneses Crossing, and it is indeed flooded. I believe we could drive through, but Mum doesn’t and she’s not going to risk losing the car. I went online and contacted Shan, who had already been down to the bridges and taken a photo, which he sent to me. Not bad considering it’s before six. The creek is high, the bridges are deep under water, and Mum needs to be at the airport by eight o’clock.
  Mum phoned up everyone she could think of – not what you really want to do early in the morning, but no one was home, or willing to risk getting to town. Eventually, I went back online and arranged with Shan to get a lift in – or at least as far as the next bridge and see if it was passable. He actually drove through Joneses crossing without being washed away, so there’s a reasonable chance we could have too. Each crossing we came to, we expected the worst – but they were all just under. The water was almost lapping on the Mungumby Bridge.
  After what turned out to be a rather uneventful drive into town and out to the airport, we were told that Cairns Airport was closed and to come back at ten o’clock, so we dropped Mum at Vince’s and bought breakfast at the bakery.
  An apple turnover (with fresh cream) and milk drink later and we were actually awake. Once the supermarket was open, Shan and Kylie did some shopping and I bought a few emergency supplies just in case I can’t get back in for ages, went and fuelled up and did some hardware shopping. The hardware has its Chinese imported motorbikes now – and they’re very cheap. $1,299 for a Coyote, from memory. We then hung around down near the wharf until the video shop was open, took back our old DVD’s, got some new ones – two lots of five, and drove home. I (randomly) ended up with “Gone in 60 Seconds”, “Dungeons & Dragons”, “The Truth about Cats & Dogs”, “Pitch Black”, and “The Quick and the Dead”.
Afternoon: • I went online, felt tired, and decided to have a little lie down. An hour or so later I was awoken by Shan at the door, wanting to go out to the Blue Marker. We arranged with Jade and Ella to get picked up from other side of the Home Rule Bridge, and drove down there and waited, and waited, and waited. It was just low enough that we could struggle our way across without having to walk miles upstream and swim. While we were waiting, a young girl jumped in, went under water, came up, went under again, and managed to swim her way across to a tree and sat there screaming. Shan and I were on the other side of the bridge, and we weren’t quite sure if she was just screaming as girls do, or screaming for a reason – and it was too hard to tell if the redness on her face really was blood. Kylie went down to her and seemed concerned, so we struggled our way back across. She’d hit an underwater rock or something and cracked her head open by the looks – but it was a bit hard to tell through all the blood. Someone ran and got her Mum, and we continued waiting.
  After waiting half an hour and still no Jade or Ella, Shan and Kylie drove back up to their place to go online and see what was happening. Of course, as soon as they left, Jade and Ella arrived. Apparently there’d been six small trees across the road and they’d had to stop and clear them off before they could get through. We drove up to some person’s place to drop off Jade’s power steering pump, then crossed the creek again and, after Shan took their dog back home, drove out to Home Rule. The silly dog turned up on the other side of the creek just as we were about to go. Kylie freaked out that it would try to follow us, and be swept away, and Shan had to get across to it as fast as possible and take it home.
  After pumping up my tube with Joneses compressor (so much faster than a bike pump), we walked up to the Blue Marker. It was huge. Jade, Kylie and Ella weren’t game to go in. Shan and I carefully made our way across to the other side by swimming flat out while being washed downstream, and moved some sharp and dangerous logs that had fallen in the water, before trying to get close to the rapids. It was too strong – we had very little control, having to go with the flow. There was a calmer spot close to a waterfall, where the rush of water came up, and we could just manage to stay in there. It wasn’t too bad really, because when we were sucked under we’d be thrown out further down where we could swim to safety – but it’s hard to override the body’s natural instinct to try to stop itself from drowning.
  After we’d declared it semi-safe, Ell

Menu Ned Martin’s Journal — January 2004 (Month View)

January 2004 (Month View)

Customise Journal Display

01.01.2004 – Thursday 1 January – New Year’s Day

02.01.2004 – Friday 2 January – Mum’s Birthday

03.01.2004 – Saturday 3 January – Ghosts, Creed and the Astral

04.01.2004 – Sunday 4 January – Nude in the Flow

05.01.2004 – Monday 5 January – Second-hand Fire

06.01.2004 – Tuesday 6 January – Till Human Voices Wake Us

07.01.2004 – Wednesday 7 January – Enrolling Woes

08.01.2004 – Thursday 8 January – Big Shed Website

09.01.2004 – Friday 9 January – Cooktown the mighty, the brave

10.01.2004 – Saturday 10 January – To Cairns we go

11.01.2004 – Sunday 11 January – Raymond and the Rings

12.01.2004 – Monday 12 January – Lingerie, Guitars and Falafel

13.01.2004 – Tuesday 13 January – And home again

14.01.2004 – Wednesday 14 January – Mowing

15.01.2004 – Thursday 15 January – Ranting and Raging

16.01.2004 – Friday 16 January – Cooktown, Shan and Kylie

17.01.2004 – Saturday 17 January – Black Image

18.01.2004 – Sunday 18 January – Pumping Up

19.01.2004 – Monday 19 January – Symlinks at last

20.01.2004 – Tuesday 20 January – Jean’s WordPad

21.01.2004 – Wednesday 21 January – Liberty Stands Still

22.01.2004 – Thursday 22 January – Dean’s Commendation

23.01.2004 – Friday 23 January – Cooktown, Pizza and Chips

24.01.2004 – Saturday 24 January – Reign of Darkness

25.01.2004 – Sunday 25 January – Server Move

26.01.2004 – Monday 26 January – Australia Day, Bruised and Battered

27.01.2004 – Tuesday 27 January – Town and CD’s

28.01.2004 – Wednesday 28 January – The Man in the Iron Mask

29.01.2004 – Thursday 29 January – Cooktown

30.01.2004 – Friday 30 January – Site Moved

31.01.2004 – Saturday 31 January – Dad’s

01.02.2004 – Sunday 1 February – Very Hot

02.02.2004 – Monday 2 February – Lightning

03.02.2004 – Tuesday 3 February – Rocks, Rapids and Vampires

04.02.2004 – Wednesday 4 February – Stupid Girls, and a Little Water

05.02.2004 – Thursday 5 February – Cooktown and Drama

06.02.2004 – Friday 6 February – Rain and Car Sales

07.02.2004 – Saturday 7 February – Voting and Flooded

08.02.2004 – Sunday 8 February – Happily Drowning

09.02.2004 – Monday 9 February – Uni Enrolment

10.02.2004 – Tuesday 10 February – Cyclone

11.02.2004 – Wednesday 11 February – Flights, Floods and Fear