Category Archives: General

Bigger, Faster & Better Web Hosting

General, Internet

I last wrote about web hosting back in May 2005 when I changed from HostCentral to McGooHQ on the lead up to our wedding for price reasons. Since then my site has been sailing along without a worry in the world, super fast and with next to no downtime.

I’ve been blogging away since then and not so long ago Andrew & Belinda also started blogging which has been great. I set them up with a sub-domain and we kept on trucking along but it wasn’t too long before I was getting warning emails about disk space usage and the like.

A quick email conversation with the fine folks at AussieHQ about an upgraded web hosting plan and I was en route to a bigger, faster & better everything. Gone are the days of using Cpanel and I’m back in the high gloss world of Plesk – which is what I was using when I was at HostCentral many moons ago.

The migration staff at AussieHQ moved everything for me from server to server and I provided a few bits of vital information via email to smooth things over. Everything has gone smoothly, all data migrated successfully and the server configuration was spot on. All that was left for me to do was a simple change to DNS and away we went.

I hope the next few years of this hosting plans life are as pain free as the last few have been, keep up the excellent work AussieHQ!

Finely Tuned

General

On the way home this evening, I noticed a car parked on the side of the motorway and shortly there after, a guy walking. Aside from the weather not reflecting the post card that the Gold Coast is known for, it was getting dark so it wasn’t all that safe for him to be walking beside a four lane motorway. As I approached, he popped a thumb out asking for a lift – so I obliged.

The unfortunate bloke was a strapping middle aged New Zealander and wasn’t in the car for two minutes, when he asked me if I was from New Zealand as well. For those that aren’t aware, my family are from New Zealand (specifically, my parents and oldest brother were born in New Zealand, while myself and other two brothers are born in Australia). It took me by surprise a little as I haven’t lived in New Zealand and I’m not around any New Zealander’s with an accent with any regularity; despite which he picked up something in my voice that made him comment on it.

We weren’t in the car long enough for me to ask about it further but it did get me wondering if I carry an accent from my parents that the average untrained ear can’t hear. A few minutes later I dropped him off at the closest service station to his car and we parted ways but not before he asked me a timely and mandatory question – who was I barracking for tomorrow night in the Bledisloe Cup!

Seiko Chronograph

General, Photos

Seiko alarm chronograph watch model SNA767P, square face, stainless steel construction and 100M water resistanceOn the same trip to Brisbane when I  overcame temptation, I put a new Seiko chronograph watch on lay by.

This Seiko watch is part of their Conceptual series, though you’ll have a hard time finding information about them on the Seiko web site. As an aside, having to stumble around their site to find information it really does drive home how important having a quality web site that is up to date with product information is. In the end, the only way I could find information about it was going through the advanced search page and applying the appropriate number of filters to whittle the results down.

As you’d expect, It comes with the standard set of features:

  • water resistant to 100m
  • date
  • 1/5s high precision stop watch
  • alarm

An alarm isn’t a revolutionary feature on its own, however it isn’t something that you normally see on an analogue watch. I don’t expect it is something I’ll use all that often, I use my mobile phone as my alarm clock but in the off chance I don’t have that with me – it might prove useful at some point.

I think it is a pretty snazzy looking watch myself, what do you think?

Remembering 8 Seconds Of Titanic Proportion

Family, General, Sport

Remembering

April 25 is ANZAC Day in Australia and its a time to remember the Australian & New Zealand armed forces who fought to provide the citizens of our great counties the freedom we enjoy every day. Last week when Claire and I talked about it, we wanted to attend the dawn service at Currumbin but that didn’t pan out this year for health reasons. Even without our contribution to any of the dawn services, the Gold Coast saw record attendances right across the coast, which I personally think is excellent. Hopefully we can make it to next years dawn service at Currumbin.

8 Seconds

This weekend we ventured out to Somerset Dam, near Kilcoy for my oldest brothers’ 40th birthday bash. It was a great day and we were blessed by absolutely beautiful weather. Cameron & Phil brought their new jet ski’s with them which was a blast. The 8 seconds I’m referring to was what it felt like when I very very nearly got bucked off the back of the jet ski as it bit in hard during a fast, tight turn.

Titanic

Sunday afternoon I attended the Gold Coast Titans versus New Zealand Warrior’s NRL match at the new Skilled Stadium at Robina on the Gold Coast. I was accompanied by a couple of work colleagues, other halves & two consultants from Germany.

It was going to be a true test about the mixed reports regarding the accessibility of the stadium, as there are no facilities to park a car should you want to drive. Instead, you are encouraged to take advantage of the free public transport to and from the game.

Brendan, Lin & I left the Helensvale Train Station at about 1.30PM and were able to get a seat on no problem, arriving about 15 minutes later. It’s a short walk of about 10 minutes amongst other fans from the Robina Train Station to Skilled Stadium. Heading home took a little bit longer, as we had to wait in line for the next train but we would have only waited 10-15 minutes and we were sitting in an air conditioned train again. As far as I’m concerned, the public transport aspect of getting in and out of Skilled Stadium is fine – especially considering that if you have a game ticket you can ride for free!

More importantly though, the Titans got up over the Warriors 36-24; look out grand final – here we come!