Category Archives: Life

Kevin Rudd & The Australian Labor Party Victorious

Life, News

After quite a long pre-election lead up, the 2007 Australian Federal Election was held today throughout Australia.

In previous federal elections, my vote has been in favour of the in power Liberal Party, however 2007 is a time for change in my eyes. For the first time in my voting history, I have cast a number 1 vote in favour of the Labor Party and am backing Kevin Rudd to lead the country forward.

For the last eleven and a half years, the Liberal Party have been in the drivers seat, which has by and large done great things for the country. While the coalition has had it’s successes over the last decade, it’s also had its share of failures. I believe that the Australian Liberal Party have been in power for as long as they have, not necessarily because they had better policy all the time – but that they haven’t had any real opposition.

In 2007, the Australian public have had an alternative to the coalition – it came in the form of Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party. It has probably come as a surprise to many of the Liberal Party constituents that as soon as the valid alternative was provided, that the Australian people have swung so strongly in favour of it.

As I mentioned earlier, I was among the people who have swung their vote to the Labor Party. If you’re wondering why, for me is has become quite simple; I don’t think any political party should be empowered for as long as the Australian Liberal Party have been. If you’ve stayed with your historic voting pattern or swung your vote in either direction, what was your motivation for the Australian Federal Election of 2007?

Toowoomba Man Impaled On A Tree Branch

Life, News

That was the headline on the five o’clock news tonight and it isn’t something that you hear every day.

When the actual news item was covered in full, I find out that it was from an abseiling accident. Next up they mention that it happened on Mount Tinbeerwah, followed by it being a 27 year old male and that he was from Toowoomba. All of these things start to hit a little close to home as a bunch of my friends regularly go hiking and abseiling in that neck of the woods. When the video footage starts rolling, who do I see laying flat on his back being winched into a helicopter other than one of my best friends.

After talking to another mate on the phone tonight, I find out that Anthony was abseiling down a 100m face on the mountain at pace. What he didn’t realise was that there was a branch of some sort sticking out from the cliff face that he couldn’t see coming and at great pace, he essentially ‘sat’ onto the branch. The branch was approximately an inch thick and it entered him through the groin and exited through his stomach. Incredibly, Anthony says he didn’t realise exactly what had happened at this point and could feel the stick in his pants but didn’t think anything of it – so he continued to abseil the next 50m to the base of the cliff face!

Nearly as soon as it happened, thanks to the miracle of modern technology – they were talking to him at the base of the cliff face and called through to 000 for assistance. In a very short amount of time, the emergency services were on scene and providing first aid while the Energex Rescue Helicopter was en route.

Anthony was flown to Nambour Hospital where he underwent various scans and ultimately surgery. At this stage, we’re told that while it was very serious it looks as though he might have escaped relatively unscathed.

Update:

After going into surgery yesterday afternoon, Nambour Hospital have confirmed that the surgery was successful. The branch has been removed and in an amazing act of good fortune, it has missed all vital organs as it passed through his body. To my surprise, he is already up and about but will remain in hospital for a couple of days for monitoring, to make sure that no infection takes place. I think a lottery ticket or three are in order.

Coverage:

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Family, Life

Since 2002, Claire and I have been decorating a five foot Christmas tree with much delight when the festive season comes around. For the last couple of years, we’ve been wanting to replace our Christmas tree with something a little newer as the old one was showing its age.

Last week while kicking around in Myer, we happened to go into the Christmas section and they conveniently had 25% off sale on. While we were there, we picked out a new seven foot Christmas tree and placed our order. We were a little nervous at first, as the sales man had just informed us that the last tree of that type was sold to the person on the opposite counter. Fortunately, he was able to track one down from a Myer in Brisbane and had it shipped down to the Gold Coast.

Someone from Myer called on Wednesday to let me know that it had arrived and on Thursday afternoon I decided I’d go down and pick it up. I was expecting it to be an enormous hassle to collect the fancy pants Christmas tree, however I was pleasently surprised that it took all of about 3 minutes and no I’m not kidding!

Decorating the Christmas tree this year is going to be a bunch of fun, we’ll no doubt pick up a swag of new decorations for it too – can’t wait!

Multiple Personalities

Blogging, Life, Websites

I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2004 on various topics ranging from technical to personal and everything in between. For quite some time now, I’ve been thinking that I’m not really meeting anyones reading needs, as the content on the site flip flops between technical and personal so often; such that people that only want technical are forced to filter out the personal fluff and visa versa.

To solve that problem, I had a couple of different options available:

  • separate the current site in halves using a category, such as personal and technical
  • move the technical content onto a subdomain, such as http://technical.lattimore.id.au
  • move the technical content onto a completely different domain

I currently make fairly extensive use of categories within the site to organise my posts. I could have gone through and uncategorised the current posts and placed each post back into one of the two new categories or sections. To help with searching or stepping through the site, tagging all of the existing posts would have aided in that area. While it would have worked, it didn’t feel right to inject ‘useless’ categories into the mix to solve the problem.

Option number two would require multiple WordPress installations. There is nothing wrong with that and it’ll obviously work just fine on a technical level but without a little bit of upfront work, seemed as though it’d end in tears some point down the road.

In the end, I chose door number three and set about finding a new domain name that fit the bill. I wanted something that had a clearly technical inclination and after using a handy domain utility, couldn’t believe my luck when I found that ifdebug.com was available.

At the moment, I’m undecided as to what I’ll do with the existing content on the site. I’m inclined to just leave it here as it’s the simplest option, however there are benefits to moving it over to if debug; we’ll see how it pans out.

In the meantime, expect a steady stream of personal content to be published through this site and the technical goodies to land on ifdebug.com.

Simple Man

Life

Mark Pilgrim once said that the number of keys on his keyring was a measure of the complexity of his life and that longed for the day that he no longer had a requirement to have any keys.

This week my life got a little tiny bit simpler as I removed yet another key from my keyring – I now have three to go:

  1. Front door
  2. My car
  3. Claire’s car

I know some people who have key rings that have so many keys on them that you nearly need a wheelbarrow to carry them around. I grapple with that whole concept, a little while ago I even separated my ‘must have’ keys from my ‘lesser have’ keys to keep it a little simpler but that was an effort as well. I’ve now got it down to three, which I think isn’t too bad – how many do you have on your keyring?