Category Archives: General

I was woken this morning by a knocking at my door. At first I thought it was someone knocking on a door in my dream, so I answered my door in the dream. No one was there. Then it hit me “Your dreaming, wake the hell up”.

I get up, trying not to smack my knee into my bed post because I can’t see anything through my blurry, sleepy eyes. Open the door and some boxes are shoved into my arms. “Package for you” said my brother, although it sounds more like “Markage por boo” due to my brain still being half asleep.

I sat down on my bed and tried to rip open the first Amazon package, they really should have some sort of instrument to help you here. Like a complimentary tape ripper thing. Excitement alone doesn’t help. I found a sharpish bobby pin (Don’t fuck with me, I have sharpish bobby pins lying around) and tore the tape on the package. It’s a book, Diary: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Thank you, Chris S. I read a page or two and forget about the other package for a minute or two.

The second package is easier, it has a ‘tear here’ part to it. I knew those people at Amazon were thinking of the half asleep package openers when they made this box. It’s another book, Angelina Jolie’s Journals by Angelina Jolie. Fantastic, I really wanted this book. Thank you, Robert S.

Harry walks in, he has that ‘I’m not well’ stare is his eyes. Yes, even though he’s my brother’s dog I know all his stares. From ‘I’m hungry’ to ‘I have fleas’ and even ‘There a storm coming, please let me in for I am scared’. I get up, sigh, give him a cuddle and start singing some Hunna’s and he perks up, then he lays down abruptly on one of the Amazon boxes.

Do you know what bugs me? Bad phone manners. I rang up somewhere today to find out some prices and they answered with “Fhathy dasskit plbuoof”. I couldn’t understand a thing they said because they said it so fast. I replied “Excuse me?” and they said the same thing, except this time much faster. I asked for the place I was ringing and they said “Yeah” (finally a word at normal speed) and then I asked about the prices.

That really bugs me. When answering a phone, you should say “Good morning/afternoon/evening, [Name of business]. [Your name] speaking, how may I help you?” and say it at normal speed which people can understand. Otherwise I might be put off from buying products/services from the company you work for!

Kitta: dude, do you have an icon of zeldman as your aim icon?
Tay: uh oh
Tay: hehe
Tay: maybe
Tay: you’re jealous arent you
Tay: you are
Tay: i can tell
Tay: you heart zeldman
Kitta: lol
Kitta: yeah, I want to have zeldmans babies
Tay: Don’t WE ALL!
Kitta: haha
Kitta: you’re a dork
Tay: mm zeldman babies
Tay: little semantic toddlers
Kitta: little bundles of validating joy
Tay: valid zeldman 2.0’s
Kitta: zledminis.com

On New Years Eve I made a resolution. It wasn’t to quit drinking so much coke or to go join a gym, it was something I thought I could achieve within a month. I was so wrong.

That resolution was to reply to all my emails sitting in my inbox. All 200 of them. I did start with good intentions, one afternoon I sat myself down told myself I would not move. Even if a pack of rabid monkeys were chewing my arm off, I would not budge (unless they started to eat away at my brain, that’s never good). After 2 hours I was hungry, headachy and bored. So I gave up, and now 2 month after new years my email has reached 300+. Clearly, I didn’t even make a dent in it during those hungry, headachy 2 hours.

Maybe I’m doing this all wrong, take a home loan for example. If you try to pay off a home loan with a medium amount of money at one time you’ll get no where. But, if you pay it off with small amounts of money at a set time you’ll slowly eat away at the home loan until your debt free.

So let’s do some math. There around 300 email in my inbox right now. I get about 5 emails a day which aren’t that important and I don’t reply to right away, if I reply to at least 15 emails a day I’d be making a 10 email dent in the build up. That’s so long as my email doesn’t increase by 5 daily.

Hmmm. I’ve just realised that during the time it took to write this entry I could have replied to at least 10 emails. Bugger.

For a while now, I’ve wished for a WordPress hack that would utilize Amazon’s web services and allow you to update my music and books with a click of a button, and a few days ago my wish came true.

Denyerec emailed me a few days ago and asked me if I’d test an Amazon Media hack he made for WordPress, of course I would. After a few days of emails being sent back and forth, Amazon Media 1.0 has been released to the public. With it, you can add books, music or DVDs and display them in variety of ways. I’m currently using it in my side bar and music/book sections of my site. It’s been tested on WP 1.0 and up, but will not work with any earlier versions.

Some of it’s other features are:

• Associate ID support for .com or .co.uk
• Display by book, DVD, music or any combination media type
• Display most recent, recommended or random items
• Filter items by personal recommendation
• Customisable output similar to standard WP template functions

Screenshots – 1 2 3 4

If you want to grab a copy, go here and download it. Or if you want to check out the forum topic on this hack, go here.

I spent an hour or so looking around WordSpy.com today. WordSpy is a web site devoted to indexing new words and phrases that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, web sites, and other sources. Here are a few of my favourites…

• Wardrobe Malfunction – A problem with a part of one’s clothing or an error in fashion judgment. Made famous by Justin Timberlake after the boob incident at the super bowl.
• Movieoke – A form of entertainment in which a person acts out scenes from a movie while a silent version of the movie plays in the background.
• Heteroflexible – A heterosexual person who is open to relationships with people of the same sex.
• Bridezilla – A bride-to-be who, while planning her wedding, becomes exceptionally selfish, greedy, and obnoxious.
• Puppy Leave – Time taken off work to care for and bond with a new puppy.
• Stendhal’s Syndrome – Dizziness, panic, paranoia, or madness caused by viewing certain artistic or historical artifacts or by trying to see too many such artifacts in too short a time.
• Joy-To-Stuff Ratio – The time a person has to enjoy life versus the time a person spends accumulating material goods.
• Presidentialness – The physical and mental qualities that make a person appear to be suitable for the job of United States president.
• Quirkyalone – A person who enjoys being single and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately.

I’m going to tell everyone I’m ‘Quirkyalone’ whenever they ask if I’m dating anyone from now on. It’ll be fun to watch them try to figure it out. 🙂 And I think that ‘Dooced’ should be added to the web site. What’s it mean? Well, when you lose your job due to your blog, you’ve been ‘Dooced’.

I think I speak for most people in Perth when I say ‘fuck you western power’.

We pay our bills and you order us to not use any “non-essential power” today (i.e. air conditioning, pumps, ovens, microwaves, dryers, washing machines, computers, and probably even life support). You practically shut down half of the industry in Perth and if we didn’t do as we were told you threatened to fine us $1000 to $10,000. Yes, we did what you said, but we are not happy about it.

It’s officially ‘I can’t be bothered Wednesday’, a day in which everyone was grumpy, hot and couldn’t be bothered doing anything. Business’s were shut, pools were full, and western power was hated today. I think it should be made a public holiday to pay tribute to West Australians that had to put up with today’s bullshit.

It’s currently 40.5° in Perth and even with the air conditioning up high and blasting out of the air vents I still feel uncomfortable in this humid weather. They say there is a chance of a thunder storm, so I am hoping and dreaming of thundery things today.

Kitta.net is up for Best Australia Camsite in the 2004 Cammies, please go vote for it. I want to say thank you to all the people who nominated Kitta.net and to anyone who’s voting for it. Also I’ve noticed there aren’t many prizes for the winners, so donate something fun if you can.

I’m going to go find a friend with a pool before I start to melt.

I thought that picture would be fitting since its Valentines Day, the day when roses are three times their normal price. So happy Day Of The Expensive Roses to you all.

What a nice surprise. Kitta.net was mentioned in Lars Holet’s entry on ‘Well-Designed Weblogs‘ yesterday. Its volume 2 in a series of entries on good design and lists some inspiring sites and I was happy to find Kitta.net in the mix.

I’m never really satisfied with my site, I tweak daily, but it feels good to be recognised and know that my tweaking is worth it. Thanks Lars. 🙂

Speaking of design, I have no idea where I got the link from, but this color wheel is fantastic. It informs you if a color is web-safe, web-smart or un-safe. It’s one to bookmark.

Some wanker(s) thought that it would a fantastic idea to edit out every acceptance speech during last night’s Grammy’s on channel 7. No, it wasn’t a fantastic idea. I wanted to hear Justin Timberlake’s apology for the super bowl boob incident (or ‘malfunction’ as he put it).

So I have no idea who thanked god, who cried and who has way too many friends and should have just thanked the whole entire world.

Bugger.

I downloaded the new Firefox today. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, I urge you to do so, it’s everything you need in a browser and more. Also, check out this post on the design process that went into the nifty Firefox logo.

Me: “Mmm, cheese.”
My Brother: “What?”
Me: “Lets play the mmm game, I say ‘Mmm (a food type)’ and you reply with ‘Mmm (another food type)'”.
My Brother: “Ok. Mmm, money.”
Me: “You can’t eat money.”
My Brother: “Yeah you can.”
Me: “Alright, eat some money then.”
My Brother: “Nah, I’m not that hungry.”