Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

Movember stage #3

Please donate at: http://au.movember.com/mospace/241713/

It’s for a good cause!

Movember second photo

Please donate at: http://au.movember.com/mospace/241713/

It’s for a good cause!

I just noticed that my blog posts were not being Tweeted to my Twitter account.  I had a search around and found a really neat WordPress plugin called “Twitter Blog“.

Current Features

• Tweets about your blog post on posting
• Creates a bit.ly link when your blog post is tweeted and adds it to your bit.ly link history
• Checks for replies to the tweet hourly and converts them to comments
• Direct Message is sent to the user notifying them their tweet has been added to your blog post
• Comment will be moderated and administrator will be notified according to system settings.
• Customizable Tweet format
• Converts tweets with #blog hashtag to a blog post. (Hashtag is customizable)
• Allows for Start and End parts of tweet to be customized.

Future Enhancements

• Use the Twitter user’s image for the comment image
• Add Twitter hashtags to tweets for individual posts

I registered a Bit.ly account since I was using that to post IT News when I was going to do the Where IT’s At Show site and set up my Twitter login details for the plugin.  These features look really neat so I’m glad I found this plugin.

I went to the Allergy Specialist a couple of times and after being pincushioned I found out I’m very allergic to: Mould, Grasses and Cockroaches (eiuw!).  Since the ceiling of the place I was living in at Marrickville had a leaky hole and was mouldy and rotting I had to get out of there.  Around that time, my good friend Lord Striker’s mum died in a car accident.  He decided to move into her home, but could not without help.  Before I found out about the allergies I had offered to stay with him for a couple of weeks while he settled in.  I asked if he would like me to move in permanently, thus benefitting both of us and he agreed it’d be a grand idea. Since I’ve moved out I am no longer coughing and sneezing constantly.

We’ve spent the last week moving and settling into the new place.  Lisa helped out Saturday when I hired a ute.  We have most of our stuff moved in now and I spent all yesterday afternoon moving stuff out of my room and putting my stuff in there.  I’m really enjoying living there and feel much better all for it.  I also appreciate the company.  Striker and I get on really well.  He has some big plans for the place so we will work on them over time.

Yesterday I went to the AEVA electric vehicle show day. Striker is their webmaster and a member and he showed me around.  I got to ride in an electric Go Kart.  This thing goes about 90km/h and I put the pedal down and flew along with the wind blowing in my hair. It was a blast!

Electric Go Kart

Lisa arrived after I had already left and I think she enjoyed the electric vehicles too!

A friend of mine (Briget) asked me to join her husband’s Movember group “The Techmos” and grow a moustache for Movember.  I joined their group and have since been asked by a couple of other people to join their group too.  I don’t think I’ll be able to raise much money but joined the Techmos anyway.

Movember Stage #1

“I am growing a moustache for Movember to join the fight against prostate cancer and men’s depression. Please give so that my Mo may grow: http://au.movember.com/mospace/241713/“

Last week my dad’s PC died. He phoned to say when it boots up it says “Disk Error”.  So I decided to go on a Road Trip to visit him and see what’s up.

I was going to leave at about 9am but woke at 4:45am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I had already packed my bag the night before so I grabbed it and my other stuff and headed on to my car.  Grabbed some fuel and headed for the Mid North Coast.

I arrived at about 9am which surprised mum and dad as they expected to see me about 2pm.

I booted up dad’s computer and was greeted with the same message.  I took the Hard Drive out and plugged it into my work laptop via my IDE-TO-USB cable.  My laptop recognised the hard drive type but could not read the data and suggested formatting it.  I ran CHKDSK over it but that just generated a page full of errors.

Dad has most of their data backed up onto a couple of USB Thumb Drives I gave him and so he didn’t mind throwing out the new 200Gb HDD which had died.  My friend Jiba had loaned me an 80Gb IDE drive and said I could keep it (for the cost of a can of JB & Coke! Neat!).  I put that into dad’s PC and installed Windows 7.  It worked beautifully, so I also installed Microsoft Office for him since I’d bought that from MS last year.  I phoned my friend Brad and went to his home to activate Windows 7 and MS Office and install a couple more drivers and Antivirus.  It turned out the AV didn’t actually install, but I can do that some other time. For now, they have a wonderfully working Windows 7 PC with MS Office and are delighted it’s all working.

I took about 20 photos of their Chinchilla cat on my iPhone 3GS and plugged it into the PC and downloaded the photos to make into a Windows 7 photo slideshow screensaver.

I stayed overnight and around lunch time the next day headed back to Sydney.  It only took about 3.5 hrs to drive back so I arrived within plenty of time to go to Trivia with Lisa.  We had a fantastic time and came 2nd so won a $25 voucher for the Inn the Trivia is hosted at.