fwaggle.org

I don’t know if this is the post that people are talking about some apparent “negative comments” on, but I think this is fantastic. I’ve toyed with the idea of adding SVG images to some of my websites before to improve how they look on really small or really big resolutions, but I never thought of the font glyph idea. It’s a good idea for things like icons, when you think about it, because you can give specific sub-pixel rendering instructions to the browser.

The new Github loads fantastic for me, even given our really spotty connection here.

When the cat’s away, the mice will play!

There’s been a couple of piles of garbage wood sitting on my parent’s place for ages, and now that we’re into Autumn/Winter, it’s safe to set them ablaze.

The transit’s out of commission for the time being, but Dad’s picked up a few jobs here and there and Mum’s gone with him… which means we can have a good time with impunity! Yay for feeling like I’m twelve again. \o/

All juvenile jokes aside, it was a bit too cold for Duncan to be out too late, so we didn’t stay out with it too long. Luke and Jess did, to keep an eye on it.

Once most of the sticks had burnt down and there was only coals left, Luke came up with the brilliant idea of doing a camp oven as well. It turned out really well, though his oven’s a bit small for the number of people we were trying to feed.

Given the amount of wood that goes into a decent sized bonfire, it’s probably easier just to check out something like GrillsDirect.com grills rather than build a bonfire every time you want to cook something, but when the occasion strikes, it’s fantastic.

Unfortunately, we’re still mostly grounded. We snuck the van off for a “short” jaunt – a 720KM round-trip to do both parts of the course for my accreditation over the course of two days. The van actually ran moderately well for those trips, but it was still pretty stressful.

The local Ford guy still has to wait for a few more emails and read more on the technical bulletins to try and figure out what’s going on, but it’s looking like the problem may not be fuel related at all and may in fact be the pedal sensor (it’s drive-by-wire).

The good news is I passed the course with flying colours - I basically 100%ed the exam. There was one multiple-choice question where I picked two of four potential answers and only one of them was correct, but apparently I wasn’t penalized. I think that’s pretty neat, and it’s funny that in my thirties I finally have my first qualification and it has absolutely nothing to do with IT.

We passed up another job through SA, this time going across the Nullarbor, because of the shitty condition the van’s in. It turned out for the best, as Dad picked it up instead. He also knows the driver and the other pilot (who’s the driver’s wife), and then to make things even better Mum went with him.

I have absolutely no concerns about our chances of getting another crack at going across the Nullarbor and that’s not really the area I wanted to take a sick van anyway.

In our downtime, I’ve managed to get quite a bit of stuff done on MumbleDog, things that I’d been procrastinating for quite a while. I’ve made a flurry of commits to our new “beta” admin panel (unfortunately one of which breaks support for “non-beta” servers, but that’s okay as I want to phase those out anyway and I don’t think there was anyone using that panel with those servers), fixing a ton of bugs and just generally making things look and work a lot better.

It’s good to be back doing what I’m good at, but man I’d really like to go out and see some shit again.

I actually stumbled upon this when trying to find out what exactly got updated in the Google Sitemaps Plugin for WordPress, but it’s kinda neat. I’m not sure if I’ll keep it, since I had a horrible experience with Outlook Express’s preview pane back in the day, but here goes anyway:

1) Activate the preview pane for Gmail.

2) Block the sidebar with the ads and shit in it.

Arne’s post says it works in Firefox, but it worked for me in Adblock for Chrome as well. I’ve found it a ton quicker to go through email that way.