As well as the Cairo Curse, I’m also having to put up with the Curse of Being a Web Designer.
Category: Uncategorized
Last week in Cyprus blues…
Well, we’re back in Cyprus. Egypt was fun, I like Cairo. I don’t like the Cairo Curse however.
Last week in Cyprus blues…
Well, we’re back in Cyprus. Egypt was fun, I like Cairo. I don’t like the Cairo Curse however.
Preview of waterman video
(may or may not work. try again if it doesn’t. Google video doesn’t seem so reliable with this for some reason)
More photos, and not much time left
Dear readers,
I saw 2 ships come sailing in …
I’d like to spend a few minutes waxing lyrical about ArtRage2.
This is one of the coolest programmes I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a computer art / painting package, is relatively cheap ($25 USD), and very easy to use. Here are a few of my latest works:
Which is my dad and I sailing, on his boat. (Wayfarer, MK2). And…
I feel kinda homesick for the big ol’ rust bucket named Doulos. Both from memory, (well, I did check the number on the sail for the wayfarer, and I did have to check where the name was painted on in relation to the Anchor (sad!), but other than that, no ref. photos or anything.)
The North, and sailing
I was just up in Famagusta over night, meeting the Anglican church there who’ve been praying for me while I’m on Doulos. I’m slowly putting together a video about Cyprus, and so while there was able to get some photos and a bit of video footage which hopefully I can use.
Cyprus is beautiful. The Anglican church there meets in an old old church which has been in disrepair for quite a while, and now is actually a cultural centre for the university, or something like that. So there are plenty of old icons around.
We’ve been out sailing a few times now, it’s great. The boat is pretty well amazing with all the new ropes and such we’ve put on it.
Here’s a quick photo of the Out-haul on the mainsail (the yellow lines and tackle which pull the sail out along the boom, making it slightly wider, and the shape flatter, which can help to get ripples out of the sail, thus improving the shape, and speed, take a bit of power out of the sail in heavy winds, and so on.)
Dad’s quite happy with it all, but alas last Saturday when we went out sailing, the waves were very big, and while coming back in we managed to damage the centreboard (the big wooden thing I spent time sanding and varnishing a few weeks back). So now we’ve taken that out again, and today I’ve added some glass-fibre filler stuff, and will try and finish it back to decent shape again by this Saturday. Yes, I did leave it a bit late.
Last Saturday’s sailing was fun though. We and our sailing friends went out only for about an hour, and crossed pathes a few times while tacking, so when we did the first time, I put on my best piratey third-mate voice and roared “Port side cannon teams 1 3 and 5 fire a full broadside! Naaar!” and then the next time we crossed, they made cannonball flying and splashing noises, so just as they passed us, again I shouted “All torpedo tubes togeather, fire!”
So. There you go.
3 weeks until I’m back to work, for a while I’ll be in the UK working at the office there doing mediary things, and learning stuff to bring back to the ship.
Still almost 3 months ’til I’m on Doulos again though.
I was about to slightly repremand a friend for not updating their blog recently, but realised that would really be far to hypocritical from me.
So. OK. Now I’ve updated mine, I can go winge at them….
Maybe not.
I’ve kind of given up on those wretched photos for now. I’ll try again sometime. Maybe. Seriously, I uploaded them about 4 times. Those photos just *dont* want to go online. Weird.
We’ve been out sailing a few times. It’s cool. I love it!
I have some photos of that too.
I re-installed my comptuer. Again. I took it apart, and put a new hard-drive in. Replacing HDs on iBooks is a *seriously* over-the-top procedure. about 45 screws came out, and it took me 2 HOURS just to ge the old HD out of the box! OK, admittedly, we did have to go buy a new set of screwdrivers and a mini-mini torque wrench.
You know, big water valves are a lot easier and less fiddly than computers, when it comes to overhauling. With computers, if a bit get’s stuck, you can’t hit it with a hammer until it comes loose. Well, you can. but it tends to STOP it working, rather than make it work better. The engine-room motto is something along the lines of “The bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer”. Doesn’t work with computers. If I get tired of A/V, maybe I’ll go work in the Engine room.
I’m enjoying Cyprus. But I really feel like I’ll be ready when I can go back to work. I got an email saying I’ll be working with the UK office doing media and getting A/V training for 3 months, not 1 month, so still 4 months until I get to see my beautiful ship again.
Old rust bucket that it is.
*sigh*
I’ll post soon about life in Cyprus. I have a few stories about kind of reverse-cultureshock coming back here.
But right now, just to add some tofu to this post, I’ll talk about Opera Web-browser. I decided to try it out, about 2 weeks ago, and so have been using it since then, as my web browser, and also email client.
do I like it?
Well, some of it. It’s quite fast, most of the time. And has a lot of features. And integrating web and email is alright. Some things I just don’t like though.
It doesn’t seem to cope with more complex web stuff so well. Like now, on this blog typing page, for some reason it’s not put the images in for “insert link” and so on. It just has the alt text. It usually shows them.
It sometimes goes *very* slowly. Like, almost freezes, but not quite.
I like that it nicely links up my RSS feeds, email, and webpages though. And for most things, it’s really fine.
It’s really slow when trying to switch tabs which show video in. Especially if they are both *playing* video at the same time. That could be pushing it a bit with any browser, I suppose.
Anyway, it’s doing an OK job, and I’ll probably stick with it until I go back to Doulos. Then I’ll go back to the simpler Safari/Mail.app combo. Mail.app deals with the on-board exchange email system better than opera. The reason I won’t go to that now, is I can’t get Mail.app to work properly with the secure email system I have back to the ship now… and I tried the opera mail client, and it just worked. So.
So. It’s late. I have to get up early tomorrow to play music for the Western Easter sunday service down at the salt-lake. 6:45am pickup. Sometimes I let my mouth run away with itself, which is how I got into that one.
Happy easter, western world.
The Austrailians have a great phrase. Actually, they have lots of really great phrases. But this one is obscure to the point of being silly, and yet apparently universely understood by Aussies.
“Not Happy, Jan”
This phrase is generally used when something stupid happens and the person is, in fact, not happy. It came from a TV ad a few years ago they had. Bridget, this video is for you.
ok. so now, you’re probably wondering “Why did Daniel post this?”
Well, firstly, it’s because I’ve been having Aussies telling me “Not Happy, Jan” for the last 2 years, and finally I’ve got a chance to go looking such things up online. Now I know.
Secondly:
I took a bunch of photos of work on Dad’s boat, got them all colour corrected and so on, and uploaded them into blogger to post. Whereupon, I must have pressed the wrong buttons, and it’sjumped me into the address bar or something, and took me to a different page, lost the pictures somehow from the Auto-save/draft thingy, and I could find no way to bring them back.
Not Happy, Jan.
So. Here are some more pictures of Dad’s boat.
No. Here are not more pictures of Dad’s boat. I just tried to upload them again, and after uploading 1.3 meg, it then told me “failed!”.
Not Happy, Jan.
See how useful the phrase is?
I’ll post the photos tomorrow. Or later. Or something.
The Austrailians have a great phrase. Actually, they have lots of really great phrases. But this one is obscure to the point of being silly, and yet apparently universely understood by Aussies.
“Not Happy, Jan”
This phrase is generally used when something stupid happens and the person is, in fact, not happy. It came from a TV ad a few years ago they had. Bridget, this video is for you.
ok. so now, you’re probably wondering “Why did Daniel post this?”
Well, firstly, it’s because I’ve been having Aussies telling me “Not Happy, Jan” for the last 2 years, and finally I’ve got a chance to go looking such things up online. Now I know.
Secondly:
I took a bunch of photos of work on Dad’s boat, got them all colour corrected and so on, and uploaded them into blogger to post. Whereupon, I must have pressed the wrong buttons, and it’sjumped me into the address bar or something, and took me to a different page, lost the pictures somehow from the Auto-save/draft thingy, and I could find no way to bring them back.
Not Happy, Jan.
So. Here are some more pictures of Dad’s boat.
No. Here are not more pictures of Dad’s boat. I just tried to upload them again, and after uploading 1.3 meg, it then told me “failed!”.
Not Happy, Jan.
See how useful the phrase is?
I’ll post the photos tomorrow. Or later. Or something.