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New Template up and running. Perhaps.

As well as the Cairo Curse, I’m also having to put up with the Curse of Being a Web Designer.

That is to say, never being happy to leave something well enough alone.
Anyway, on this machine the blog looks fairly happy now, using the new blogger template system, and some new stuff I’m playing with.
Some random geek knowledge for you:
The traditional/oldschool method of introducing new technologies/research,  or protocols for public use was to write an “RFC” or “Request For Comments”.
Basically those were (usually) longish documents available online freely, waaay back even on ARPANET, and have shaped the internet as we know it today.
More information about RFCs can be found on the wikipedia.
What was the reason for this brief history lesson?
Well, none at all, really. Except that I would like to request comments on the new theme / style of this blog. Any comments?
(yes, I know the images are missing from the side-bar. I’ll try and code a new sidebar image thingy tomorrow in perl or something so I can get the more modern pics too…)
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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.

The Cairo Curse is the euphamism for a local stomach bug which quite a few people seem to get.
I got it.  Woke at 4am on the day we were travelling back, and wished I hadn’t.  Not a very pleasant day, all in all. Anyway, I’m mostly recovered, I guess. Still don’t feel to wonderful, and realised today I leave Cyprus in 7 days.  So that means I have a heck of a lot of stuff to do.
So I started doing the ones I can manage without leaving my room, speaking, or walking too far.  Such as updating my blog to the new blogger template system… Alas, it’s all going a bit pear-shaped right now, and as I have to finish making a slideshow for tonight (I’m doing a Doulos presentation thingy at the Anglican church “upper room”, if anyone sees this and is interested, 7pm, all welcome….), and the template thingy didn’t quite back up all as I wanted it to, it may take a bit longer for me to update to the new template than I hoped.
 So if the site looks a bit of a mess at the moment, I’ll get it fixed and pretty for tomorrow.
I’ll also blog about Egypt as well.
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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.

The Cairo Curse is the euphamism for a local stomach bug which quite a few people seem to get.
I got it.  Woke at 4am on the day we were travelling back, and wished I hadn’t.  Not a very pleasant day, all in all. Anyway, I’m mostly recovered, I guess. Still don’t feel to wonderful, and realised today I leave Cyprus in 7 days.  So that means I have a heck of a lot of stuff to do.
So I started doing the ones I can manage without leaving my room, speaking, or walking too far.  Such as updating my blog to the new blogger template system… Alas, it’s all going a bit pear-shaped right now, and as I have to finish making a slideshow for tonight (I’m doing a Doulos presentation thingy at the Anglican church “upper room”, if anyone sees this and is interested, 7pm, all welcome….), and the template thingy didn’t quite back up all as I wanted it to, it may take a bit longer for me to update to the new template than I hoped.
 So if the site looks a bit of a mess at the moment, I’ll get it fixed and pretty for tomorrow.
I’ll also blog about Egypt as well.
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Preview of waterman video

OK, so here’s the project I did yesterday and this morning for fun. I like keynote.
It’ll be much better, the timing is rubbish, and audio isn’t very good, and the graphics are in need of much work, but I’ll be away for the next 4 days, so I’m sure the vast community of brummieatsea readers will tear it to pieces by the time I’m back.


(may or may not work. try again if it doesn’t. Google video doesn’t seem so reliable with this for some reason)

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More photos, and not much time left

Dear readers,

I’ve found that blogger has kindly been putting my photos I upload here to the blog into a “Picasa Web Album.”. Wasn’t that kind of them? So, it’s possible to look at all the pics in one place. Very spiffy.
The link is right here:

brummie@sea

It also can do flash slideshows and all sorts. So I’ll be playing with that. I need to update this blog design a bit anyway.  I also will try and write a perl script to make the picasa album appear as the old fliker one does in the sidebar ->.
I don’t have much time left in Cyprus.  We’re going as a family to Egypt this evening, for 4 days, and then after that I leave about 5 days later.  Kind of scary how fast time has flown.
Then it’s off the UK for 2 months, then to Doulos.
Here’s another couple of boat/sailing sketches. The one on the left could be a Wayfarer, but the one on the right is way bigger.
I’ve been trying to make a video about Doulos to show later this week (once I’m back from Egypt) to people, and will probably post some of that later on.
I’m not very happy with Apple right now..  I had to reinstall the computer *again*. That’s like 7 times since I got back from Doulos. Why? Well, many of the times is not Apple’s fault, it’s true.  I did replace the hard-drive, with a bigger one. That was moderately monstrous. They really hide those hard-drives well inside the poor laptops. Virtually impossible to get out.  Anyway, the reason I had to this time was because I upgraded to Leopard, but alas, half my software doesn’t work properly with it.  It’s a much nicer OS than tiger (looks-wise, but also technology like Quick-View, Spaces, and so on.
The version of Garageband that came with my laptop (only 3 years ago) doesn’t work with Leopard. I’m supposed to pay for the upgrade, which I’ve read may not work on this old a mac. This old?! Good grief.
Then Final Cut Express 4 doesn’t capture video properly on Leopard.  It does about 3 mins, and then freezes.
Also Protools doesn’t work (even though I don’t have a copy, we were using it at the office for the show of Esther audio last month, and had to keep a Tiger machine around to use it…).
Anyway.
However, Apple Keynote is a very nice programme. I’ve used it to make some presentations, about Doulos, and now I’m actually working on an animation about the ship.  It’s so basic, for animation. Almost too basic, I think I’m kind of pushing it’s limits, but it works.  Once I’m done, I’ll post the video here.
I really have so little time left, and so many ideas and projects I wish that I’d spent more time in.  Part of me feels really worried that I’ve wasted this time, and not used it as I could.  On the other hand, I have this other either lazy, or else wiser, part of me saying 
There’s *always* good projects about mate, and if you try to do all of them, all the time, you’ll never get any of them done, and, you’ll burn out.  This is the only time you’ll get for just reading and reading and hanging out with your family and cats, so enjoy it.”
Oh well. I need to start cleaning up my desk…
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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.