Cameron's uninteresting ramblings

New Blog, syndicated accounts for LJ-ers

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:49:59 GMT

It mightn't have occurred to you good people, but I don't blog here very often any longer. This is partly because I don't really have much to say, and additionally because I've moved to my own personal blog, in my own personal fluffy webspace.

Where's it at? http://justcameron.com

Those of you who use a feed reader to get your news and subscribe to blogs can decide which feed you want for yourself (Wordpress has feeds for most things, just tack /feed/ on the end of the url, there's also /feed/atom/ for those of us who like standards.)

For the dedicated lj-ers amongst you, add cameron_atom to your friends list. It appears to show everything as posted just then because the syndicated account was only just created (cheers to uniquewonders for that!) I'm also not sure how it'll handle me editing stuff on my blog, and it doesn't seem to like the whole timezone conversion stuff very much, but ah well :)

If you want to comment, please go to my blog and write your comment there, I'll get notified about it that way. If you just comment on livejournal then I probably won't know about it - there's no way I can figure to subscribe to comments on a syndicated account :(

The LJ category on my blog, and thus the feed and syndicated account are designed with you people in mind and I'll try to keep the geekyness down to "high" (as opposed to "uber") - if you want to see every post I make to my blog, you can use justcameron_syn (one of my failed attempts.)

Sorry I didn't get around to this earlier.

Enjoy :)

www is depreciated

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:02:51 GMT

Why should you have to type www. at the beginning of all your urls? It's pointless. When you send mail to someone, you don't have to send it to someone@mail.hotmail.com, it just does it automatically. Since web browsers are configured to use http:// and prepend it to the location/address bar automatically, the www. is pointless.

As such, anyone trying to access http://flashrovers.com, http://rowallan.superheapsgood.com or http://justcameron.com on a url with www., will have the www. automatically removed.

This is in accordance with a class B rating at http://no-www.org

Rowallan website - all systems go!

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:25:01 GMT

The Rowallan website is back! And better than ever. Thanks to a little help and LOTS of twiddling, it's sleeker, sexier, valid xhtml & css, the urls are cruft free and the old urls even redirect to the new ones! Very proud.

I'm off to Port Noarlunga tomorrow morning, and I haven't even bought bundy yet! Eeep! See you all briefly in 3-4 days.

Engineering

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:21:43 GMT

I really like taking stuff apart with my pocket knife. Yesterday I took the oven apart so mum could clean it. For some considerable time she's been leaning over the whole door (it actually comes off) and not taking the sides out and it really wasn't all that clean. The gap between the bottom of the door and the oven (not actually in the oven) was filthy. I've twiddled around inside our pc a few times, and also the pc of my second uncle or whatever he is, without actually breaking anything :) Understanding how things work is really cool. Kinda reminds me of working on the Suzuki at Blinman. I still don't know enough about the insides to be able to fix something deep inside the engine, but we've taken apart the radiator, the carburetter, the air intake, etc.

This brings me around to the purpose of this post. I've been volunteered to be the Chief Engineer at the Bogong Rover Chalet. I'm not quite sure how I managed to be saddled which such responsibility.. presumably because there's only a dozen or so people going... but anyway it means I'm in charge of running the diesel generators and the wood-burning hot water system, Theodore. I don't know much about either of them - I saw them last time I was there, but didn't operate them, so hopefully the documentation that should be heading my way sometime will help and of course there'll be plenty of people to help me learn when I'm there. I'm really quite looking forward to it. Additionally, I might get to sleep in the nobs room, the only one in the whole place with carpet :)

Friday and Fire

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:48:07 GMT

Well Friday is Kate day, so met in town shortly after 3. Apparently Kate wants to climb over the Uni foot bridge sometime, and well, she kinda dared me to do it then and there, so I thought why the hell not? You could crawl under below the bridge if you had the patience and nerve, but I climbed along the side instead.. t'was easier. On looking for photos of the bridge I noticed that the Wikipedia article on The Torrens didn't even mention the bridge, so I added it in, also citing a reference as to when it was built (that's a first time for me) even though the reference actually says when the bridge was designed, not built. Apparently there's many different methods of citing stuff on Wikipedia, and nobody's yet put their foot down and declared one to be the one that's to be used, but eh, I just chose one and ran with it.

After Kate beating me up for scaring the shit out of her (I'm innocent here!) we went to a park and lit a fire :D That was awesome. Demonstrated my incredibly manly fire-lighting, wood-gathering skills and had a small inferno going in no time. Also had chocolate and marshmallows! :D

Chocolate = I can't go to bed

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:36:39 GMT

I was about to go to bed and then I discovered a block of top deck chocolate in the kitchen, so I decided I'd best eat it before someone else does :D And with my spare time I s'pose I should blog too :)

What needs discussing? World cup!! Last night! Australia 3, Japan 1. Awesome! Thank soccerus I don't bite my nails. Stayed up and watched it live. I must say it's really a bit embarrassing the "confetti" of yellow cards we got. Callum said the referee was biased and the commentator questioned how much "big match experience" referees from smaller countries have had, but I maintain that if you play cleanly the referee will have nothing to pick you up on. I've never umpired any sports, but I'm damn sure it would be VERY hard. The Japanese goal should have been a foul, but there were so many players there that from the ref's angle he probably couldn't see anything.

When I played soccer I always tried to play clean. I never grabbed anyone's shirts, or deliberately tripped people, or dived. Any fouls I made were accidental. I guess some people just become so obsessed with winning that they can justify breaking the rules on purpose :s

Meh. Monday daytime we went hiking. Got up at 7:30 am and rode off into the freezing cold. Didn't have any breakfast at home but I was riding past subway and could smell the fresh bread, so I had to go in :) Kate was running 25 minutes late or something, which is really quite slack when you're holding up a big group of people. Eventually arrived up at Belair, hiked around a bit. Rested, hiked more, etc.

According to Kate I "tried to kill myself" climbing up a cliff. Let me point out that I was not, in fact, trying to kill myself, as if I was, I can think of plenty of more reliable ways to do so. In hindsight, as it was a scouting activity and such, I probably shouldn't have. However that is the only reason, I think, why I shouldn't have.

Yes, climbing without ropes is dangerous. Yes people die, break bones, become quadriplegic etc. etc. from falling off stuff, but then people die and get injured just walking down the street. You're probably at more risk climbing, yes, but that's what's so awesome about it. The adrenalin pumping through your veins, your every thought and muscle focused. That risk is what makes it so much fun. And yet on the other hand, it's a calculated risk. When you're climbing, you're in control. Every movement, every reach, every pull, is controlled by you. And believe me, climbing without ropes, I don't just think "ooh that hold looks nice" and jump for it. I move slowly, I test, analyze, check, doublecheck and recheck before doing anything. That's the beauty of it. When you're just walking down the street and get run over by a bus, you didn't get to make any decisions there, you weren't in control. If you fall while climbing, it's your fault, and frankly, I think that's a much better way to die, doing something that you really enjoy, rather than just something random happening to you. Note please that I didn't die. Now that I think about it, there is a difference between "risk" and "uncertainty." Every time you walk down the street, there is the uncertainty that you may get run over by a bus. However, if you are a bus driver and there are no other drivers on the road, there is a risk that you might lose control and run over someone - but you are in control because you are the driver. The risk is controlled by your skill as a bus driver, and as such, if you drive carefully and stay alert, there is far less chance of you having a crash. When you're just waling down the street, we're assuming you never saw the bus coming. So um yeah, getting back, the uncertainties in that situation (earthquakes, trees falling on me etc.) were pretty minor. I was in control of the risks, and remained in control.

I did not make it to the top of that wall. I wasn't worn out, I wasn't scared, I just thought about the whole scouting activity thing and decided I probably shouldn't, and Kate was whimpering like all hell at the bottom. If there had been less people and less whimpering, I think I probably would have gone further, maybe making it to the top, maybe not. Obviously with ropes I would have been about 50 times as quick, but as I said, you just don't get that rush.

Okay, chocolate's gone :(

Slack!

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 01:12:25 GMT

Yes, that's me, I've been slack lately. Very slack. No updates since goodness knows when, and Kate's been scolding me. What've I been doing with my time? I went on NONT (that was awesome) and I've been working on a number of websites (Flash Rovers, Rowallan Venturers mark 2, and even a new design for Kate's venturer unit) Please note that all except the Flash Rovers one are still "under construction.

I also finally decided on a domain name for myself - http://justcameron.com :D There's nothing much there yet, but once I get the blog going, I'll find someone with a paid lj account to syndicate it over here (not all of it, I'll make it so lj people only see personal stuff, and skip the techy stuff that I plan to blog about) so all you people can add it to your friends lists and be happy. I've basically taken over the Flash Rovers web hosting (I paid for it anyway) so now it's my hosting, and I host the flash rovers site as well.

On the weekend I had my second uncle (or something)'s PC around for a bit of a hospital visit. I cleaned a bit of spyware off it but nothing serious and also cleaned the physical insides of it out (it lives on a sheep station) - it was FULL of dust, I'm surprised it didn't go up in flames. The heatsink was just like a rock.

I've been testing out the newest version of Firefox which is funky. Codenamed Bon Echo (so people don't think "Oooh new Firefox version, must download") it's still in alpha (for those of you that don't know what that is.. software that's still in development is in alpha, it can crash, delete your hard drive, whatever, when it gets to beta it's mostly stable but still not good for mission critical stuff, then you have release candidates and then the actual release version) so there's a few bugs here and there, but overall I'm impressed. I love the new spellcheck for web forms (although it needs work - it doesn't like x/html or BBCode, and the dictionary doesn't even have "Firefox" in it hehe.) Tab close buttons are nice, but nothing special. Feed viewing is nothing special to me as I use Wizz RSS to read them anyway, but when it's easy to hook Wizz up as the default viewer, that'll be great. I also really love the session restore functionality that restores your tabs if your browser crashes - it even restores information that you had typed in forms before the crash. It really pisses me off when I have a dozen Firefox tabs open, go away from the computer, Callum goes on and restarts it, so this is a welcome feature for me.

Stopwatch

Mon, 15 May 2006 13:32:11 GMT

I'm fixing a stopwatch. Anyone know where I can get one of these?

It'd be kind of difficult to make - I don't think I have any tools small enough, nor any thin enough metal.

Pool cues

Sat, 13 May 2006 10:43:27 GMT

We have our free pool cues :)

Here's mine:

I like it, stylish, yet traditional :)

Callum chose an ugly black modern AFL one.. it says bombers on it but he doesn't even know who the bombers are. Neither did I for that matter (until I looked it up.) You can see a picture of his here.

Firewood

Thu, 11 May 2006 08:26:54 GMT

Today I stacked wood.

To do.

Tue, 09 May 2006 13:22:49 GMT

Do you keep a to-do list in your head? I do. I also keep one on the computer, which remembers things far better. It's an amusing stage when you're lieing in bed at night, and on the to-do list in your head is a reminder to write an item on your to-do list on the computer. It's also amusing to think that you thought of the same thing the night before. And the night before.

Today I defrosted the freezer. Wasn't as much fun as the one we did at the unit management course. Mum wanted me to use the hairdryer to get some ice out from above the coils at the top, I didn't think that was such a great idea so I used a squirty thing (go on.. search google images for squirt.. like I did) filled with hot water. It worked well.

Also practiced a bit of pool (I'm still nothing special though, so don't expect anything special tomorrow night, those of you who are going to be there.)

Pool table!

Mon, 08 May 2006 13:09:25 GMT

Huzzah. Played a game of snooker against dad which I won (he said he expected to win the first one, and wanted me to bet that if I lost I'd get a job, because as soon as I get a bit of practice in he expects me to thrash him... but I won the game anyway.) Then two games of 8 ball against Callum (1 all,) then a game of snooker against grandpa (different rules. I won.) And then another game of 8 ball against callum which I lost :(

We've got 4 cues already, but the guy said my brother and I could go and pick a cue each for free from his showroom because the table is late. So I'll be researching about what to look for in cues over the next couple of days - at the moment, a cue is a cue to me *shrug*

Firefoxflicks

Sun, 07 May 2006 13:23:45 GMT

I've been watching the ads over at Firefox flicks for some time now, and while I reckoned the winner (Daredevil) was good, it didn't actually mention any of the good features of Firefox or why it's so awesome. Breaking up is one I like a lot. The shooting could be better, but I like the idea and script. Although instead of "more... grown up" he could say something else more applicable.

Don't know what Firefox flicks is? Try this.

Don't know what Firefox is? You read my blog and you don't know what firefox is? Gee. We gotta talk!

The pool table has arrived!

Sat, 06 May 2006 11:18:49 GMT

Finally :) The guy said yesterday but he couldn't do it because it was raining, (getting stuff out of truck, carrying to house) so they came today. Set up the legs, frame and slate top. It's all levelled out but now he's going to wait until Monday to see if there's any settling that takes place (table squishes into carpet, minor earth tremors, what have you.) And then on monday he'll come and put the rails and felt on and hook us up with cues, balls, chalk, brush etc.

Wood -> Fire

Fri, 05 May 2006 15:44:32 GMT

Earlier in the week I spent a goodly number of hours breaking up wood with my foot. In a previous life, it was the fence between us and our next door neighbour, but the fence was falling apart so we put up a new fancy galvanised iron one instead. So getting back to my foot - it was a little annoying at the time when stuff would break and then one side of it would spring up and hit the side of my shin. I was wearing glasses and gloves... but not shin guards. Mistake. Next day there was bruises all up my leg :(

Anyway, today we had our first fire for the year at home :) The fireplace is warm when you're standing next to it, but it's mainly asthetic - you feel warmer just by looking at it, rather than it actually heating the room much. Most of the heat just goes straight up the chimney :(

You Schmuck!

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:08:24 GMT

A photo from Sarah's recent trip to Germany.

Welcome to Cameron's Journal

Tue, 02 May 2006 05:10:54 GMT

Hello and welcome to my journal. If you're not familiar with Livejournal (the site this journal is hosted on) then the first thing you need to know is that I have many friends only entries. This means that only people I add to my friends list can see them, and is so that I can post photos of (for example) the family car, without having to edit/blur our the number plate or whatever. Apologies that it's yet another site to register an account for, it sucks, but you can tell it to remember your pw in a cookie and then you won't have to log in again :)

So yeah - PLEASE, register for an account if you want to read my journal in it's fullness. I suggest you select the free option as it doesn't contain any ads, but whatever works for you. If you don't have a blog yourself, you could use your new account to start your own :) Once you've got an account, add me to your friends' list and comment here and if I know you, I'll add you to mine and you can start reading!

Doctrine of procrastination

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:33:05 GMT

I told myself I'd update yesterday. And the day before. Damn I'm slack.

Sometime, I shall update with photos from blinman :P

Blinman

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:40:19 GMT

Hoorah for blinman! :) Plenty of 4wding and dust! Gave the suzuki it's first windscreen clean for many years and it's like a new car. It was a bit sick thursday but a bit of driving and a hug (?) and it's all cheered up.

It still feels odd using the net in blinman - heh. This "computer lab" is swanky as. Just about to upgrade their version of Firefox since they only have the version that I installed on here last time I was here lol.

Catch you all when I get home sometime this week :)

*group hug*

To EV

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:43:37 GMT

I'm off to E V today. Back monday :)

Ebay Box Sale

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:25:28 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/31/ebay_box_sale/

Hehe :D

Sorting, sorting

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 16:19:10 GMT

In the pursuit of perfection, I've recently been sorting music (tagging) and sorting contacts (combine gmail and msn contact lists, try to associate names with email addresses)

I have over 400 email addresses in my contact list and over 3,500 songs in iTunes. This is a battle I cannot win, yet I fight on.

Finished sorting email addresses A-C. I think I'll go to bed now.

Google has done it again

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:03:28 GMT

http://google.com/romance/ - yup, another one of Google's ingenious ideas.

Double life

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:17:54 GMT

Has it ever bothered any of you that I don't seem to do anything? Wouldn't your head explode if you sat at home all day and did nothing? Well yeah, anyone's would. I figure it's about time I revealed that I've actually been living a double life for some time now. In one life, I am Cameron. I go to rovers, I see Kate, I chat on msn, I go to parties, I get drunk, I sin. In my other life, I'm a devout Catholic. I don't quite know how I manage to reconcile these differences in morals, but almost every day I go to the church and pray. I pray for others, but most of all I pray for myself. When I see a bottle I just can't help drinking. When I see a woman, I just can't help but.. well, you know. I sin every day, we all do, and I pray for all of us, that the Lord may forgive us. I've actually been volunteering to do work for the church, and this is how I use up much of my time. I clean the windows, I mow the lawns, I wash the minister's feet. I feel it's what God intended for me to do with my life. All you people go to school, you have jobs, or whatever, but from where I'm standing it just doesn't make sense. I follow God.

Please, don't disrespect what I've chosen to do with my life - honest comments only.

Update: Incase you didn't realise, this was posted on April 1st ;)

Quiz from Kate

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:32:17 GMT

Name: Cameron
1. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?
None

2. WHAT TIME IS IT?
11:25pm

3. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE MAT?
My mouse

4. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE BOARD GAME?
Monopoly probably, it's got so many possibilities.

5. YOUR FAVOURITE MAGAZINE?
Magazines with "articles" in them..
nah actually I don't read any magazines. A more modern question would be "What is your favourite RSS feed?"

6. BABIES?
Later, maybe.

7. FAVOURITE SOUND?
Okay I probably shouldn't put that here. We'll just say music for the moment :)

8. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?
Hating yourself. Planning ways to die.

9. FIRST THING YOU THINK OF IN THE MORNING?
Damn radio! Then I roll over, turn off the radio and go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

10. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?
Most of the time I'm home by myself. It's often two.

11. FUTURE CHILDS NAME
Not Gwendalin or Kenneth or Hurtle or Doreen (Grandparents' names.)

12. FAVOURITE COLOUR?
Difficult. Probably orange.

13. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN YOUR LIFE?
Difficult to say.

14. FAVOURITE FOOD
Chocolate's up there. But when I'm hungy, most stuff will do.

15. IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Well lets see.. the sax so I can play really awesome jazz, and acoustic guitar because if I could sing aswell that'd be cool, and the electric guitar because it's awesome for rockin out, and the drums because they're loud, and the piano because lots of people and places have them. I think that's about it.

16. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST?
Well I like to drive about 60 or so in the suzuki along the runway at blinman, but that's not really that fast, and I only do it sometimes. Most of the time I like driving really slowly.

17. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A FLUFFY ANIMAL?
Nope.

18. STORMS - cool or scary?
Pretty cool, especially tropical storms.

19. WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST car
The suzuki isn't really mine, but it's an LJ-50.

20. WHO IS THE ONE PERSON FROM YOUR PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK WITH?
Matt Furse I think. We were great friends at burnside but I've no idea what happened to him.

22. WHAT'S IN THE BOOT OF YOUR CAR?
I don't have a car. In the back of the suzuki is an old dusty mattress and an even older ex-landrover hydraulic jack.

23. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?
Well the little stemy bits that come with the bits that you eat, yes, but not the big stem of the whole plant bit.

24. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE
Me? Get a job?

25.LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Anita. She deleted her lj account and she's in china.

27. IS THE GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY?
There's not enough water.

28. FAVOURITE MOVIE?
The matrix? Pirates of the carribean? There are lots of good ones.

29. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS?
Nope. I can go fairly fast though.

30. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?
Nothing I don't think - most of my stuff is my floor for easy access. At one stage there were even cobwebs there hehe. I think my telstra rope might be under there now that I think of it.

31. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER?
17

33. SAY AT LEAST ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
She's beautiful, intelligent, helpful, talkative, huggly, good at listening, good at understanding, unique, fun to be with, and her smile is bloody awesome.

34. IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE, WHERE WOULD IT BE?
Not even the foggiest idea.

35. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING
eeuh... I just wear whatever clothes are handy. Actually no.. Firefox tshirt! :D

36. BEACH, MOUNTAINS or CITY?
Variety is the spice of life.

38. COMEDY or HORROR?
Comedy. Well, I've never actually seen a good horror so I dunno, but yeah.

39. FAVOURITE PHYSICAL FEATURE OF THE OPPOSITE SEX?
Boobs. Mmmm.. nice, soft.. er hang on, I have another 20 questions to do.

41. THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT
Blank CDs? :P

42. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE TO BE MASSAGED?
Social conditioning would tell one not to say one's genitals, because of course my favourite place to be massaged would be my back, wouldn't it?

43. WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU. STRONG IN MIND or STRONG IN BODY
Don't know.

44. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
My alarm goes off at 10, although sometimes I don't get up in the morning hehe

45. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE KITCHEN ITEM?
The fridge?

46. WHAT MAKES YOU REALLY ANGRY?
Not many things. Mainly my family.

47. WHAT DO YOU PREFER, A SPORTS CAR or 4x4?
Difficult one. The sports car is tempting, but the 4x4 would be far more fun :)

48. DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE AFTERLIFE
Dunno. I don't believe in one as such, but I don't believe in there not being one, so yeah, I guess I'll just wait and see.

49. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SEASON?
Summer methinks.

50. IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Dunno. Maybe flying? heh, they'd all be good.

51. IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
I don't ever want to get a tattoo. That said, I thought I would never drink or smoke.

52. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
Yeah, 3 balls, for quite a while.

53. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE DAY?
Doesn't really bother me. Fridays have been good of late, but yeah whatever.

54. WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SUSHI or HAMBURGER?
Hamburger, far more filling.

55. FROM THE PEOPLE YOU E-MAIL THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
Erm.. I think nat.

56. WHO DID YOU RECEIVE THIS FROM?
Kate

57. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE CARTOON?
Simpsons.

59. IF YOU COULD TAKE A VACATION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, WHERE WOULD IT BE?
Anywhere's good.

60. DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?
2 cats, 1 chook, 10 fish.

Ooh, they've just added a new field to the update journal thing. Or at least I never saw it before :s The "Current Location" field doesn't appear to be documented anywhere, but I suggest you don't just put "home, where do you think?!" like I did for the first time, because it searches on google maps. I suppose it could be kind of funky for when you're posting when you're on holidays or something.