Greg Bradley

Last night we went to see Coldplay play a sold out show at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. We had great front row seats and they put on an awesome show. Chris Martin was as fervent as ever jumping around like a madman. They are one of the best bands ever and I’m happy now that I’ve seen them play live.

I recently moved the site to ASP.NET 2.0. It was a pretty simple and quick migration. It's on a new server too which might explain why everything feels a bit quicker.

You might also have noticed the updated design which still needs to be polished up in a few places.

Took the opportunity to assess some of the projects on the site. I have decided to discontinue development of the Simbolic Simple Dashboard. I don't think too many people were actually using it. Microsoft's Windows Live site does everything I was trying to accomplish and is much better than anything I could come up.

Lookout for some .NET 2.0 versions of the Simbolic Software applications coming soon.

I've had my WebShots account for a few years now and have generally been happy with the service. When I last renewed my account I actually paid up for a full two years. That two years is about to finish so the time has come to decide whether or not to renew my account again.

I checked out Flickr a while ago and signed up for a free account and was very impressed with the service. They had a lot more features than WebShots and the site seemed to be a lot faster to use.

When I first looked at Flickr however I still had a few months remaining on my WebShots account. What I've noticed in that time is that WebShots has started adding a lot of the features that Flickr has. It's a bit of a shame that WebShots had remained the same for so long and didn't give us any new features until a strong competitor came along and they were forced to start playing catch-up. It's great that they have given us these new features now, but I still consider them behind Flickr in terms of functionality and speed, and I get the impression that Flickr will continue to innovate much more than their competitors. Their premium service now also happens to be slightly cheaper than WebShots .

Because of these reasons I have decided sign up with Flickr's premium service and go through the initial hassle of moving all of my photos from WebShots to Flickr . So from now on you'll find my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregbradley/ (and via the RSS and Atom feeds at the bottom of the page if you're into that sort of thing). It might take me a few days to move all my photos and setup the groups again so bear with me.

Did some work on the JP Imports website to try and improve the search index ranking. The original site was designed using Photoshop and the HTML and images were exported using ImageReady so that the entire site was made up of images without a single word of text, so there was nothing for the indexers to find. I converted all of the text images to text, cleaned and validated the HTML, and added alt tags and metatags. Hopefully in a couple of weeks they'll be getting a few more hits.

Saw Duppy play at The Basement on Sunday night supporting Diana ah Naid. I hadn't seen the guys play for a while so was really looking forward to the gig. They only played a short set but it sounded great and the crowd were into it. They are looking really polished now and sound really tight on stage. Can't wait to see them again.

We used to go to The Grampians a lot when we were kids and it was always a favourite place. Although we talked about going back all the time now that we are all older it wasn't until now that we finally got organised enough to make it happen. We stayed right in Halls Gap at Grampians Holiday Retreat which is a big house that we all managed to fit in together. Almost everybody was there - Mum, Dad, Grandma, Grandad, Nanna, Michelle, Jason, Madeline and us.

It was a long drive for us from Sydney but we broke the trip by staying at Elmore. Was hoping to make it to Bendigo but was running a bit low on fuel - unfortunately in central Victoria there aren't any 24 hour service stations like there are all over the place in Sydney. Had a quick visit to Maldon which is another favourite place to visit.

We spent eight days in The Grampians which we filled mainly with walks and sightseeing but also eating, drinking, board games, snooker, minigolf and the wildlife park. The ruggedness and beauty of the countryside is indescribable and you just feel like going for a walk every day. We also enjoyed everybody being under the same roof which doesn't happen enough and four generations of the family hanging out together.

Really didn't want the holiday to end and thinking about going back to work and not being able to explore more of The Grampians was very depressing. Hopefully we can make it a regular thing to look forward to each year.

Very cool sidewalk chalk drawings.

Last week we launched Noodolbot.com for Maggi to promote their 2 Minute Noodles brand. It was built using Flash MX and requires the Flash 6 plugin. It's aimed at younger children and is very interactive. It was one of the easiest projects I have worked on for a while, but probably one of the largest also. The site looks great thanks to the designers and animators who worked on the project. If you are in Australia and New Zealand run down to your local store and buy some noodles and register to check it all out. Otherwise, have a look at some areas now without having to register.

I'm thinking of making this a new section on my site. Starting to become a common occurrence.

Again Telstra is causing me grief with their trouble prone online billing system. I received my latest paper bill and then went online to pay it like I normally do. However, the online billing system is showing that the last bill is still unpaid and shows no information about the new bill. Luckily the new paper bill shows that the last payment was received and they were able to confirm this when I called support. They told me that a few people had reported problems with the online bills and hopefully somebody was looking into it, but they didn't sound too sure. I'll just wait a few weeks and see if it gets sorted out.

I've decided to create a local gallery section and try and see how I go adding photos here instead of using Webshots. Webshots is great but I want to try using a gallery without albums. That way I can add just a few photos at a time and they don't necessarily need to belong to any particular album. I will still put photos on Webshots occasionally but I'm hoping to have more regular additions to this new section. The layout of the gallery at the moment is very simple but I will be working on it over the next few weeks to make it more usable. It's been a good exercise in some more .NET development to get it to this stage. Soon I hope my whole site will be migrated to .NET.

After staying at this place a few years ago we have been looking for an excuse to return. So when my family was visiting recently we decided to stay a couple of days at Kanimbla View. Located near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains and set amongst beautiful bushland with amazing views this place is everything you need to forget about the city. The perfect size for 3 couples we had the best time and none of us wanted to leave.

We have an ongoing problem with Australia Post and the delivery of our mail. Ever since we moved into our new unit a few months ago our mail occasionally gets delivered to the wrong address. It ends up at another address with the same unit number and same street number but it's the wrong street. We only know this because the people who live at the other address have been kind enough to forward our email to the correct address. But I have no guarantee that all of our mail has been safely forwarded. Our street is clearly marked at both ends and the street number is easy to spot. I have rung Australia Post on four occasions now but the problem persists. They promise to fix the situation but it still happens. Actually, the other day we received mail that was meant for the people in the other street, so the problem seems to be getting worse. Each time I've called I've also requested that the local manager contact me once action has been taken and even though I'm told I will get a call I never have. Reliable mail delivery should be something that we can all take for granted but it's frustrating to have the uncertainty that you never know if you will miss out on some important piece of mail.

The company that I have the most problems with has got to be Telstra. I can remember a few years ago when I got my first mobile phone it was late arriving and when I did it was the wrong handset. It took another couple of weeks to get the correct handset but they were already charging me for the phone service from the date I was supposed to get the handset rather than from when I actually received the handset three weeks later. Then there was the problem we had when we moved a couple of years ago. We organised the new connection a few weeks in advance so that we could be sure that the phone would be connected the day we moved in. So when we moved in of course there was no phone. It actually took a few days for them to work out what had happened because they were sure it had been connected. After several phone calls I finally got to speak to somebody with some initiative who traced the request and discovered that the manual transfer of the request from one Telstra system to another Telstra system resulted in the wrong address being entered. I wonder if the people at the other address ever knew what happened to their phone connection. The latest problem has to do where their online billing system. I signed up months ago but none of my bills were appearing online. After a few phone calls they gave up and had to reset my account and I had to wait another month to see if it was working this time. In the meantime we never received our latest posted bill (maybe that was Australia Posts fault) but eventually got the overdue notice. So I paid it straight away and now two weeks later when I look at my bills online it says the last two still require payment. I know it has been paid because they charged my credit card. Their online billing and payment system looks nice and is easy to use, but it seems to have a few problems that still need to be sorted out.

Lastly, we had an interesting exchange with Sydney's Baby Kingdom (in Bankstown) this weekend. We bought a pram (and some other baby accessories) from them several weeks ago and went to fold it up and put it in the car for the first time this weekend. As soon as we went to do this we noticed that one of the zippers was broken. This was disappointing as we had paid several hundred dollars for a good pram that we planned to get a lot of use out of. So we rang up straight away and explained that the pram was broken and we wanted to bring it in and have it replaced. The first person we spoke to gave us some story about needing to have it checked out by their repairman and he doesn't work on the weekend so we would have to bring it in during the week, and we would possibly have to do without the pram for two weeks. They also told us they were out of stock of the model we had so couldn't just swap it. This is a brand new pram that we need to be using now! So we rang back five minutes later and a different person answered the phone. This time they told us that they did have some in stock (hey, I thought they were out of stock) and that we could bring it in straight away, but they would still need to check it out and might need to keep it in for repair. When we got there 45 minutes later they were a lot more helpful and didn't even look at the zipper. They grabbed another pram, but rather than give us the new one they insisted on swapping just the lining with the broken zipper. We figured this would be ok as long as it was all working when we left the store. As they were unpacking the new pram it was at this point we realised that they hadn't sold us a brand new pram in the first place. Either it was a demo model or one that somebody else had previously returned because it was never packed as well as the new one that they were unpacking. Some of the pieces on our pram were already assembled which had to be assembled on the new pram. And we also discovered that a couple of straps and springs were also missing on our original pram that were on the new pram. It's very frustrating to be sold something that you are led to believe is brand new but is actually used and somebody has deliberately repacked the item so that you wouldn't even know that it had been opened. Not until we discovered the broken zipper and then got to watch another pram being unpacked did we realise what had happened. This is very dodgy and I feel like reporting it. I'm relieved to have a complete pram now and hopefully we never have to deal with Sydney's Baby Kingdom again.

Olivia Catherine Bradley was born today at 4:59pm AEST at the Mater hospital in Sydney. She weighed 3.075kg and was 49cm long. She is healthy and doing really well. Simone was excellent and is also doing well.

Looks like using CDONTS on Brinkster servers is not very reliable. As it turns out only a small percentage of the emails generated from my Contact page actually get through. Brinkster support were helpful at first but then just gave up and suggested I use one of the other email components they offer. I changed the code to use ASPMail instead of CDONTS, and at the same time I added a log function so that even if the email never gets through I still have a record of it on my server. Not sure if anybody has been sending any feedback but if you have I am not ignoring you, I just didn't get it. It's all fixed now, I swear.

Somebody I know - not naming any names - picked up a copy of 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' on DVD from somewhere dodgy like Thailand. Simone borrowed it to watch again because she fell asleep when we went to see it at the movies. The translation on the back jacket is hilarious and I just had to share it.

"Harry Potter is an orphan, he from small have been living delice Aunt's house dark Stairs, his living world is simply to is lawless, desolate and miserable. However in the 11 years old birthday that day, Harry Potter knew the own life experience, originally Harry of the parents is the sorcery teacher of two dociles. In the contesting of bad person the inside was killed by the other party. For arrive ated a specialized professor's sorcery of England and after the ambition, Harry Potter of the parentsing with the witchcraft's Huowage Lodge at the college. Here, the Harry feels a have never fine but miraculous world that saw, and become friends with two faithful of best man of small with Hamien..."

Decided it was time to finally get our ADSL connection organised. The first thing I did was to order a modem. Found out that I could get a good price on the NETGEAR DG814 DSL Modem Internet Gateway and placed my order. Only took a couple of days and the modem arrived. In the meantime I was checking out the forums over at www.broadbandchoice.com.au and Internode's new flat-rate plan caught my eye. Sounds like Internode are very highly respected by their customers and I thought the plan would be a good initial plan to go with. So I sent in my application on 18-Dec-02 and was informed to expect the service to be activated on about 08-Jan-03. But when I got back to Sydney on 06-Jan-03 everything was ready to go so I got my account activated and after only 30 minutes configuring the modem I was online. The whole process was surprisingly painless. I'm paying $99/month flat-rate for a 512/128 speed connection and during peak times priority is given to users with moderate download behaviour. I have been connected for just one week now and managed to download 2.74GB. I don't think I would be considered a heavy user but it's nice to know that I will never be hit with excess usage charges. The speed of ADSL is great but unfortunately I haven't had time to play any games yet.

I thought this functionality had been working but it looks like it hasn't actually been working for a long time. Unfortunately any messages that might have been sent have been lost for good. If you want to leave a message or get in contact it should be working now.

Finally my video card breaks the 10,000 barrier! I downloaded the latest 40.72 drivers from NVIDIA on the weekend and installed them without any problems. First thing I did was fire up 3DMark2001 SE to see what score my GeForce4 Ti4400 could manage. This time I also shutdown some non-essential system services before starting. On the first run I was pleasantly surprised to get a result of 10,286. I was happy with that so haven't run any more tests since. All my previous scores have always been in the low 9,000s. The new drivers also clean up the layout of the display options and even add a few new options.

In preparation for our move - and losing access to Richard's television - we started looking at new television sets a while ago. We decided that we needed a flat, widescreen, 100Hz set and went out looking at quite a few demos and reading reviews. I love the Loewe and Grundig sets but they are too expensive. Was looking at LG for a while as one of the cheaper options then I read a few bad reviews. The new Sony sets look great and I thought maybe we would get a Sony. Then I found out that through work I can get Panasonic gear for near wholesale prices, so we set out to look at the Panasonic sets.

Quickly decided that the model with all the features we wanted was the TX-76PW50A, but I couldn't find much comment on this model. Turns out it is a fairly new model and is the update to the TX-76PW05A, which has had mixed reviews. Sounds like a few people had some problems but then there were lots of people who were really happy with it. I was hoping that the update fixed any problems that people had with the earlier model. I get the impression that generally people are very happy with Panasonic television sets. Unfortunately it is really hard to compare television sets at many department stores. They never have the right connections and have all the adjustments incorrect. Most of the Panasonic sets I saw didn't look great, but when you got one that was setup correctly it was perfect. Of course the other big factor was the price that I was able to get the thing for.

So we decided to go with the TX-76PW50A and I ordered it and was expecting about a 3 week wait but was pleasantly surprised when I received the set 3 days later. It's very heavy and took a lot of effort to get it home and into the apartment but it's there now and looking great. Of course we have only had it for a few days but I can't fault it. I can't wait to watch all our DVD movies again, which is exactly what we will be doing this weekend.

The big move last week went ok. It's always a hassle moving though. We spent many days packing, cleaning and unpacking. Used a removalist company this time to transport all the boxes and furniture but there was still a lot for us to do. We haven't finished unpacking yet but most of it is done. The new place is great and has everything we need. Still in Drummoyne in a nice street close to parks, buses and the ferry. Got our new fridge delivered the day we moved in. It is slowly filling up but I don't know how we will ever use its full capacity.