My son broke his arm today. I’m very proud. I’ve never broken any
bones (well, except my big toe, but that hardly counts), and he’s gone
and busted his arm before he’s even four! He did it riding his new
bike, of course; lost control going down a little hill.
He was obviously in pain, so Jo took him to the doctor, where he
got x-rays and the whole deal. They said he was exceptionally brave,
even when they had to put his are back in place before applying the
plaster. And the first thing Kian does when he gets home? Goes outside
and climbs the freaking fence! There’s no stopping this boy.
In what will be the first of many frequent updates, we look at the
current state of my blosxom blog!
Well, I’ve got that out of my system. Phew. I’ve been playing
around with a couple of plug-ins for Blosxom, and you can see the
output of some of them on the left. I’ll probably end up ditching the
calendar, since there’s not a lot of point when “frequent” is likely
to mean once a week or so.
Two other plug-ins you can’t directly see. They are flavourdir,
which allows you to put flavour files (which are more or less HTML
templates) in a sub-directory so they don’t litter the blog root dir,
and timezone, which allows me to display time stamps (the “Posted at”
time below) in my local timezone (Australian Eastern Daylight at the
moment).
In other news, not directly related to Blosxom… Last week was
quite eventful at work. On Monday, I resigned! I’ve decided to do some
contracting for a while, for the dual benefits of some more in-depth
J2EE development experience, and a much-improved cash-flow
picture. Yeah, yeah, I know, security, blah blah… but things
definitely seem to be picking up in the local market, so I’m not too
worried about my medium-term outlook.
On the home front, things are moving along at a rapid pace. Jo has been buying and putting up
blinds, which is much more convincing than the sheets we have had on
the windows. I’ve been doing some traditional blokey stuff, pulling up
the temporary fencing from the backyard and turning a small patch of
hardened clay into soil. That’s not as much fun as it sounds, and I
have a whole new appreciation for the term “back-breaking work”. I’ll
no longer be applying it to debugging even the worst spaghetti
code.
I’ve played around a bit with the HTML “flavour” (template), and tried
to make things look a bit like the main mojain.com site. I’ve also been
experienting with plugins, as you can see on the left (and in
described in more detail below).
Trying out some new blogging software, Blosxom (pronounced
“blossom”). It’s actually rather neat, in a minimalist kind of way. A
simple Perl wrapper that turns text files into — optionally templated
— HTML. Much more light-weight than big old database-backed stuff
(like drupal, which I’m also
using).
I’ve set up my blog directory as a CVS module, with a check-in trigger
to automatically update the live web-sever directory whenever I check
in a new (or updated) file. For the curious, the follow entry in
CVSROOT/loginfo in my CVS repo does the trick:
^blog (date; cat; (sleep 2; cd /home/mrowe/www/blog; cvs -q update -Pd) &) \
>> $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/updatelog 2>&1
This means: match any check in for a module starting with “blog”, then
wait a couple of seconds (for the check in to complete), change to the
web server directory, and run a cvs update.
Wait, there’s more! You also get… syndication to the main mojain.com
site. I’ve added a block (currently custom—you have to add it in your
account set up) that displays and links to the latest blog entries.
How cool is this? Blogging made almost transparent! Just dump current
brain state into text file, and commit to cvs! How much easier could
it be? Still remains to be seen how often I do it, of course…
Up early this morning. Went down to the shops to get the paper, but
The Age was late from the printers :-/ . After breakfast, I went over
to Rebel Sport to change my cricket pants. They didn’t have any in the
size I wanted, but they called up the Greensborough store, and they
did. On the way there, I dropped past our new house.
Between all this and messing around in the shopping center, it was
time to head home and get ready for cricket. The first day of the
match was pretty uneventful, we batted out the day. I went in at
number six (was meant to be seven, but the previous guy went missing)
and lasted a few overs for 2.
Since it was the first day, we all headed back to the club’s rooms
for a couple of beers with the guys. Cheap VBs! Went out for dinner
with Andrew, Belinda and Lynn to some Malaysian place Andrew had
seen. Which turned out not to be licenced (even byo!). The food was
ok, but it took forever to come.
Old Man Michael was exhausted by the end of dinner, so I went home
to bed.
Sunday
Quiet day at home. Had the usual for breakfast. Caught up on some
email. Went for a drive in the afternoon. Still someone working on the
house, so I couldn’t snoop around. Watched a couple of Black Adder
episodes in the evening (don’t tell Gav!).
… so here is a sort-of diary of what I’ve been up to, mostly for
her benefit. Like anyone else would find it remotely
interesting…
Friday
Went straight to work from airport. I was surprised how quick the
trip is now, with the “new” (well to me anyway) CityLink freeway
taking me all the way to the bottom of Spencer St. Since I am working
at that end of Collins St, I was right there. Well, apart from the 10
minutes it took to drive up to the 10th level of the fscking car
park.
After work, went to the pub with a few people from work. Only
stayed for two pots, since I had to drive home. Once home I had a
snack (dry crackers *sniff*) and then sat down in front of
Chopper. Actually stayed awake until the end,
remarkably. Just.
Well, as expected, I’ve left it too long between drinks, and I’ve
forgotten most of what I did last week. No doubt beer was involved. Or
maybe I’m just getting old. Most of my waking hours were spent at
work, of course. Still plenty of left overs in the fridge, so sign of
any cooking activities yet.
Thursday night I went to cricket training, and then dinner at Gav
and Emma’s. Pizza! Beer!! Black Adder!?! It doesn’t get much better
than this. Had a couple of drinks after work with Janis and Craig,
then stopped by Andrew’s on the way home to have a beer and try to
watch the rugby. Odd game, really.
Saturday
Woke up early. Had a fight with the cat. Went back to
sleep. Eventually got up around 8am, went down the street to get bread
and the paper. Came back, had breakfast and read the paper. How about
Matty Hayden?! Wish I could bat like that…
Took the obligatory trip up to Greensborough to check out proceedings
on the house. They’ve built the fscking walls!! So much for letting me
know so I could run cables. :( Called Jo to tell her the (good|bad)
news. Spoke to Kian, who told me he’s missing me. *choke* He’s too
cute! I assured him I was missing him very much too (which I am).
Anyway, by time I got back home it was time for cricket. It had been a
pretty miserable morning, weather wise, but was clearing into a
perfect afternoon for it. I was one of the opening the bowlers, but
had a bit of trouble with consistency. Ended up with 0/31 off ten
overs, not too bad but not great. We finished our game early with a
win, so I was settling in to watch the firsts when Kemp called and
said they needed an extra fielder in the 3rds game, so I drove into to
the Brunswick St oval to help out.
With my outstanding contribution (well, I stood in the outfield,
that’s the same thing), the 3rds managed an outright win, to make it
four wins for the club! Great opening round. Had a beer with the boys,
went home. Aimee SMSed to say she was going to the Harp, but I was too
sore and tired so stayed home and went to bed.
Sunday
Quiet morning, tried to sleep in. Bloody cat. Spoke to mum (it’s her
birthday), had leisurely breakfast. Decided to go and see Whitehorse’s
production of 42nd Street. I got there, and discovered that none of
the usual lighting crew were doing the show. Oh well, pretty good show
anyway, but I’m really not a fan of Jamie’s lighting. The sound was
surprisingly good. Band and cast good as usual.
Went home feeling all melancholy, wanting to run away to the theatre
again. There’s a surprise for you! Anyway, I offered to help with the
bump out next week, so I’m going back at 7:30am on Sunday. Good grief.