Monday, December 4, 2000

The morning was taken up with tidying the office and reading the email, daynotes gang posts etc. Then off to town to leave the surplus NVidia TNT Riva card with my friendly computer pusher, with the hope of a sale on behalf. Also to get a fresh battery for my good gold watch -- it lasted 5 years, and the watchmaker told me not to expect that sort of life out of the new one. Apparently they put extra long life ones in at the factory so they keep a long shelf life. BUT they won't put *those* ones on general sale! The weather was unsettled with periodic heavy rain, and we were glad to get back home.

I'm thinking of putting a Life in NZ page up -- with things of interest or controversy that I have read and would like to pass on. Readers could email opinions to be included with the appropriate item if they chose. I've got some stuff on global warming that will do for starters. Just as soon as I can do some buttons for the nav bar!

Tuesday, December 5, 2000

I went to assemble a batch of our genealogy book Over the Hills and Far Away, but found to my horror that the copy place had done the whole lot on one side of each sheet, instead of double-sided as specified. I simply couldn't use any of it, as some kind person had carefully offset each page so that the columns were close to the centre of the paper. I had provided a gutter of 12mm on the inside of each page for binding, which made it look a bit off. So I had to take the boxes back for them to deal with. I suspect they'll have to reprint the lot.

The day was fine and sunny; the grass has been growing apace, so got the mower out about 4 pm (when the sun gets less fierce) and mowed the lawns. Came in to experiment with nav bar buttons. I did the original buttons in CorelDraw9, duplicating twice and recolouring to make the three images. Then each was exported as a GIF. I have not been happy with the results, and spent some time tonight with Photoshop6 doing some experimenting. The results are on the Home and Joan's Garden buttons so far. Would some kind person give their opinion on readability?

Wednesday, December 6, 2000

Joan had an appointment with the physiotherapist this morning, so took her in and did a little shopping for myself -- I usually tear through town like a mad idiot because something else needs to be done. I had book vouchers from Whitcoulls, which I duly cashed in on an HTML reference text to supplement what I have.

I devoted an hour after lunch to research ethnic peoples web sites for Don -- we have just been given the OK to go ahead on a site for Best of Maori Tourism. I found a resource site that covered most of the world, but the bulk of them seemed to be Native American Indian. My goodness, what a lot of cheap-jack sites there were -- most of them looked like a job-lot effort from Two-dollar Web Sites While U Wait.com -- but there were some good ones which had been professionally done. He doesn't copy anything when he designs, but likes to get the flavour of what other web designers have done in the field. Made some progress on new nav buttons; found I should have been saving the GIFS with anti-aliasing -- but I had followed a book recommendation not to, when dealing with text.

After tea, we went off with Rebeccah to the End-of-year evening of the Rotorua Camera Club. The judges were a very experienced couple from Tokoroa, who duly savaged every print and slide -- a lot of which I thought wasn't really merited, particularly with the B and C grade work. Much of their advice was inconsistent, and probably confused more than it instructed. Oh well, that's judging I suppose. Rebeccah really enjoyed it, and is itching to get her hands on a camera.

Thursday, December 7, 2000

Started the day with clouds and drizzle, but cleared and had a mostly dry day. Had a busy morning dealing with paper work, then into town at 12.30 to collect Joan from the physiotherapist. More paper work after lunch, then managed to get some time to deal with the frameset on my index page. This had been hastily assembled a month ago, to get started. I changed the background image -- as you will have seen and tidied the masthead up a bit. Rebeccah getting ready for the end-of-year social/disco/dance at school [images on family page] so we had both boys for tea. I have installed Age of Empires II for Ethan to get his teeth into -- the demo has been on the go for months.

Spent some time this evening trying to get to grips with photoshop6 features -- a lot of which I really don't have much idea about. Need to get stuck into some tutorials.

Friday, December 8, 2000

Routine work this morning. Took Joan to her physio appointment at 11.45, had some lunch, then took the car and camper trailer over to the testing station to get warrant of fitness [same as M.O.T. cert in UK] and annual registration for the trailer, and w.o.f. for the car. Waited ages, and was told that the camper towbar coupling had worn out [it is, after all, 20 years old], and I would have to put a new one on before they would give me the warrant. Went back home and dropped the camper off, then down to the auto parts people. I was fortunate to get an exact replacement that even matched the bolt holes. I guess they are still using the original moulds. The old nuts were well rusted on the bolts, and I eventually sought the aid of Mick, our neighbour diagonally across the road -- he had just come back from work and is a fitter-welder. We mangled the nuts off, and he'll bring me replacement bolts tomorrow.

Won't be doing much tonight, too tired, and need to get a lot done tomorrow -- the garage needs to be cleared so the aircon installers get a straight run.

Saturday, December 9, 2000

Up early and rang Ross in London to send birthday greetings. Saturday is odd job day for me, so worked down the list of necessary trivial things like waterproofing Rebeccah's wet-weather jacket. Packed up tools and went over to Jo & Don's place in Lisa Cresc to screw a slide bolt on the front door, also to cut and screw up some clear corrugated plastic sheet to replace the disintegrating stuff on the end of their downstairs porch.

Joan got busy after lunch in her potting shed -- which is actually a lean-to atteched to the side fence. She wanted to get green stain on the fence boards which I had previously waterblasted. I helped her with this, and hammered in more nails to hang things on. Then Mick came over with bolts, and we attached the towbar coupling in its place. I can now get the warrant on Monday.

Sunday, December 10, 2000

Crunch day today -- back the car out of the garage, and set up for woodworking. I have a quantity of 12 and 18 mm ply offcuts left over from past jobs, which has been obstructing shelving and needed to be dealt to. My workbench has an under-shelf which has collected junk and become unuseable, so the plan was to build a carcase to slip in, and put a large drawer in it to hold power tools such as planer, sanders, sundry drills etc. We worked out dimensions and broke down the sheets on the sawbench -- Joan is most useful for catching the ply as it goes off the back of the saw bench; I believe the technical designation is "tailer-out". The pieces are neatly stacked waiting for me to assemble later in the week.

The last job was to make a tall box for Don to put his numerous fly rods into; he has had them in various plastic rubbish containers etc, but they always end up in a tangle or fall over. This was completed by the end of the afternoon -- just as well because terminal exhaustion was not far off. Packed everything back to allow access by the aircon installers during the week.

No web site work, of course -- can't do everything! In addition I have had an odd piece of gear dumped on me to look at. This was from a former neighbour who still owns the house across the road and has her daughter living there. This couple moved up to Auckland late last year and purchased a petrol station in Milford. They also changed brands in the process, and had a surplus dedicated computer, screen etc. which was now useless for its purpose of monitoring the petrol pumps. I've taken the lid off and had a look -- a big board sitting over the motherboard [labelled Production Engineering, Marton! Sue & Ross will know it.] but there is a 486 m/board with 16 MB of RAM, 800 MB hard drive, modem, colour monitor, and an outboard Zip drive. I am to see whether it can be refurbished for the daughter and grandchildren to use. I'll report on it later in the week.

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