Summer is getting closer |
September 27, 2008 |
The weather has been warming up already so this morning I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to go for the years first swim. As you can see, the conditions were great, although the water is still a little cool!
It was so cold each time I went under a wave, the coldness took my breath away!
Posted by grahamh at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
Nightwish Concert |
February 01, 2008 |
Nightwish concert number 4 was the first with new lead singer Annette. And we were not disapointed!
Here are the photos from the concert
Posted by grahamh at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)
Theatre upgrade |
January 27, 2008 |
For christmas this year, I decided to buy myself a home theatre upgrade. I've now almost finished the upgrade to a full High Definition experience.
The upgrade has included:
- Playstation 3 (for Blu-Ray movies)
- Sanyo PLV-Z2000 (1080p projector)
- Brightvision 92" screen
- LG 5403P Dual HD tuner, HDD recorder set top box
I'm still investigating options for a High Def receiver to get the most out of the new Blu-Ray audio formats.
Along with the new theatre room, I've also made a few changes to my Movie web page, so go over and check things out there.
Continue reading "Theatre upgrade"
Posted by grahamh at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)
Garden goodness |
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While it is a little hot for hiking over summer, I've been putting the hard yards into the vegetable garden here at home.
I've probably planted a little too much variety, but it is hard to resist when everything is growing so well!
Continue reading "Garden goodness"
Posted by grahamh at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
New Job |
May 26, 2007 |
Has been a while since I last added to this site so I thought I'd write a few lines before the Rugby starts!
I've been working hard at Andrew Corp. and finally have been offered a full time position. I had to wait until the Support team needed an extra person to support the new MLC customers. So I will be starting the new job on Monday.
Of course with a new job, comes the opportunity to get myself a new car :) I've been out test driving today, and it looks like this will be my next vehicle:
I have to work out the financial things next week.
And I have also being working with Eddy to create a web site that documents all of the hiking information we have, and solicit information from other hikers. It is early days yet, but the development is coming along well. You can check out the progress here:
Posted by grahamh at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
New Movie Database |
January 25, 2007 |
I've been working very hard lately on a new interface for my Movie collection. I used to manage a spreadsheet with all the details in, then have to upload that to a blog entry, or sometimes to my SQL database. Well those days are no gone!
I've created a fresh new front end to the data base, which will enable you to browse my collection much easier. Try it out:
And let me know what you think.
Some details on the implementation:
* Written using WICKETS framework
* Uses MYSQL database
* Web server is TOMCAT 6.0
* Running on Grandma LAMP Virtual Machine on my Linux box at home
Posted by grahamh at 08:21 AM | Comments (0)
Growing Season |
August 26, 2006 |
Over the last few months I have been trying to get a vegetable garden going in the back yard. Well now that the weather has been warming up, the garden has really taken off!! I'm now eating food from my own garden!
I have planted:
Bok Choy
Rocket (i'm eating this already)
Iceburg Lettuce
Broccoli
Silver Beet
Cauliflower
Posted by grahamh at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
Summer is coming |
August 20, 2006 |
It is very hard to believe that another winter is almost behind us. We have had some amazing weather these past six months, which has included very little rain!! Fortunately, my rain water tank is now full and I am able to keep my garden watered and my car washed regularly :)
This week has marked my first visit to the beach, and first swim in the ocean!! I made it to the ebach not just once, but four times this week for a quick dip and a rest on the sand! Ok, the swims were pretty short, but really the water is pretty good temperature, as long as the wind is not blowing it is very pleasant!
Posted by grahamh at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)
Queensryche |
July 16, 2006 |
Last night Darren and I went to Sydney to watch one of Darrens favorite bands, Queensryche. In the past I have learned that following Darren to events like this will usually end up in a very entertaining night!! First time I was exposed to some new music, and culture was by following him to Bloodstock, a metal festival. There we were amazed by the incredible talents of Nightwish!
But last night we had an amazing time watching Queensryche at The Metro. I have only been listening to their music for a few weeks, but loved every minute of the concert. They are more than just a band that plays music, there is a story running through each album and they actually act out this story on stage during their performance. It was excellent!
Posted by grahamh at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)
Back to work |
January 01, 2006 |
After many months out of the IT work force, working on my yard and other such stuff, I've rejoined the IT work force. It is just a six month contract for now, and working back at Nortel, AKA Andrew Corp.
Andrew Corp took over Nortel Wollongong middle of last year, and I'm now back working with all the guys that I used to. Slight change in situation though, I'm now back into software development rather than management and I'm really enjoying it!
Posted by grahamh at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)
Motor Show |
October 18, 2005 |
On a trip to sydney a few weeks ago, I stopped in at the Motor Show. It wasnt too impressive, not too many new things to see. But the Chysler 300C did take my fancy :) Available here in November for around $50,000 its good value for money for a big luxury car.
Posted by grahamh at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
All quiet on the work front |
September 25, 2005 |
My site has been a little quiet for a while, and there is a very good reason for that. I've been contemplating my future, and if working for a big corporate company is what I actually enjoy doing anymore.
And after many hours of contemplation, I decided to resign from CSC (yes after only 5 weeks) and start up my own business. I'm now getting a business started where I will be my own boss. The business will be producing videos, wedding, personal, corporate and anything else I can get! It's early days now, and I hope to start advertising around 10th October, and then hopefully the work will start rolling in!
The business:
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Posted by grahamh at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)
Footy Season Ending Soon |
September 11, 2005 |
Well the end of the NRL season is nearly upon us, with just the finals left to play. So this brings us to Craigs Crazy Tippers presentation day!! Once again, I turned out to be the bridesmaid, and received the prize for second place :) Perhaps next year I'll knock fatboy off his podium, and take home the big trophy!!
We had a good day of celebrations, with awards going to the two youngest tippers in the competition, plus a number of others in the competition.
Posted by grahamh at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)
Big day in the office |
July 14, 2005 |
Ok, so not technically in THE office, but working at home anyway! I spent most of the day sorting through my DVD collection and getting them all back in alphabetical order! And they are also now all installed in my new DVD cabinet. And of course the cabinet is now full! Thats ok, there are plans for a second unit, which will give me capacity for another 600-700 :)
Also spent a bit of money today preparing for our next hiking trip. We are leaving before dawn tomorrow morning for 4 days hiking in The Budawangs. Yes same area as the last walk, but getting to see more things this time. But I really needed a proper rain coat, and some thermal underware! Mostly so that I could lighten my pack a little so I dont need my heavy rain coat, and the heavy warm clothes. Amazingly, my pack now weighs only 15kg, including food for the trip :)
I still hope it doesn't rain though!
Posted by grahamh at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)
Office Closure |
July 01, 2005 |
Well finally after many weeks, I have a chance to update my pages.
The major event that has happened recently is that I have finished up working at Nortel after 14 years and 6 months! They officially close the office at the end of July, but right now there is only a skeleton staff in the office shutting things down and cleaning up. I officially finished on July 1st, and have been home since then working on the house. I do have a new job to go to, and will be starting on August 15th at CSC.
I've set myself some pretty serious goals while off work, as I have many things that need to be completed here at the house. I've made some progress already, but it is very slow going!
Posted by grahamh at 08:52 AM | Comments (1)
I'm still alive |
June 20, 2005 |
It's been a long while since I updated anything here, there have been several reasons. The first is that I am totally sick of using a slow dial up connection from home!! I am lucky to get a 28.8kbps connection these days and its just not conducive to getting anything done!
Secondly, I've been too busy at work to find time there to do anything on a true braodband connection! But tonight I am making time!
So I have put up a bunch of new photos, in the photo areas, and I'll put up a quick link to some cool stuff here too...
Posted by grahamh at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
Broadband or not??? |
May 20, 2005 |
I've been trying to get a broadband connection to my house now for at least three years. Each time I am told that the exhcange cant do it, or the cables aren't good enough, or telstra is too cheap to install the correct muxes.
Well recently, I had a phone installed at my new house and the techie who did the installation told me they had just resolved the issues and that I can now indeed get ADSL!!
I was over the moon, so I put in my application the very next day to sign up to TPG for a new ADSL service.
Very quickly my equipment arrived, then I waited, and waited. A couple of days passed until I was given the very very bad news that the exchange now had now free ports on it :( I guess I am one step closer now though, as it appears that I CAN get ADSL, I just have to wait until middle of june until they add some more ports and connect me up.
Until then, I will continue on in the incredibly painfull world of dialup internet!
Posted by grahamh at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
Holiday Update |
March 31, 2005 |
Well its been a while since I made a post, that is due to my recent holiday. I'm not ready to post the trip report just yet, as its going to be a LONG one, but thought I'd put up a couple of my favorite pictures from the trip. These are just a few of the short list of 150!!
Posted by grahamh at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
Alarming Sounds |
March 17, 2005 |
Several months ago, my car was broken into on my driveway during the night. I dont blame myself for the event, but I do think I left the car unlocked.
Last night, at 4am, I was woken by the sound of a car alarm going off and thought "geez that sounds close"! When I looked out the window I realised that it was MY car alarm! I quickly went outside and switched it off, checked it was all ok, and went back to bed. Sleep came very hard from there! A lot of people in the area work unusual hours, so there was people getting up and going to work, and everyone of them woke me up!
I didnt think too much of it and although the alarm has never gone off before, I didnt think too much of it. But when I got home this afternoon, the neighbour came up and had a chat to me. Apparently, they SAW a guy running down the street and into a "getaway" car when my alarm went off!! So yes, my car was a target of thieves, again, and this time, my $200 car alarm saved me a big insurance claim!
Posted by grahamh at 07:35 PM | Comments (2)
Touch and go |
February 24, 2005 |
I'm not sure what is going on with our Touch Footy team, but we just dont seem to be able to keep enough players on the paddock. We started the saeson with 10-12 players, of which 7 play at a time. Now we are struggling to get 6 players to the game!
Fair enough there are a couple of injuries, but even still, playing with 6 players is just like not playing at all. The last two weeks we have had 20 tries scored against us and only 2 for us!!
Looks like we are out of the finals race now though, and only one more round to go. Lets hope we get enough players for the last one!
Posted by grahamh at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)
Stormy Saturday |
February 19, 2005 |
Well I spent most of the morning trying to reinstall windows on my desktop PC. It had become a little unreliable so took advantage of the weekend to get the job done. Well I had no end of trouble, and two installs later, 4am bed time, and much frustration, I finally have it going again!
The trouble maker is the Hauppuage TV card I have installed. It is the main thing I use the PC for, so I had to get it working!
So after I finally got it worted, Kathy convinced me I should leave the house for at least a little while! As it had been a lovely warm morning, with the sun streaming into my office area.
After only a half hour down the beach though, a huge storm rolled in! I got off the beach in time, and was driving around just as the hail started! And this was serious hail! I got the car home covered it up a little, but gave up as I got hit once in the face and one on the hand by large marbles of ice! I havent checked the car yet for dents, but I am sure there will be a few more than the last hail storm :)
And another victim of the storm, was Kathy and Graham Chili :( I watched as their leaves were destroyed by the ice storm right before my very eyes.
There was also lots of thunder and lightning, which I recorded, and when I get some time, I'll get them on the PC and up here on the blog.
Continue reading "Stormy Saturday"
Posted by grahamh at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
Best beach day of 2005 |
February 06, 2005 |
Well yesterday I took a trip 100km (60 miles) south to Jervis bay to find a beautiful beach and beautiful beach weather. Today, I travelled 2km to my local beach and think that I managed to find something even better!
Ok, so there was no chance for any surfing, or drowning in the breakers. But the water was warm, the sun was shinning, and there was not a cloud in the sky.
Continue reading "Best beach day of 2005"
Posted by grahamh at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
Chili Growth |
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Well who said that plants dont grow while you watch them??? I potted up a couple of chili plants last week, and aptly names them Kathy and Graham. I took a photo after potting, and again this weekend, just seven days later. Check out the growth, and see how dominating Kathy is gettin!! (She's on the left ;)
Continue reading "Chili Growth"
Posted by grahamh at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
I live in paradise |
February 05, 2005 |
Well I havent been out driving for a while and when I got up this morning, the day was looking pretty good outside. So I decided to scope out a few of the places that I will be taking Katherine to when she is here. So I decided to head south to Jervis Bay!
There was a couple of places that I wanted to see down there, the first was Greenpatch, where the Kangaroos hop along the beach. The second was Hyams Beach which has some of the whitest sand in the world.
So when I reached Greenpatch I realised it has changed ALOT in the few years since I've been there. It's now very commercial, very busy, and NO kangaroos! So I finished there pretty quickly!
Next stop was Murrays beach, which is a little further into the park, and that too was a little busy. So the next place to go was to Hole In The Wall beach :) Yeah really, there is a hole in the wall!
And of course this was the best of all, and only a couple of people there, beautiful white sand, calm warm waters. So I lay in the sun, swam, watched the birds (you know, the ones with feathers and wings), and just soaked up this little place in paradise!
It makes me think sometimes though that we really dont appreciate the amazing places that we live. I imagine most people have places like this in easy driving distance, but how often do we actually go there? Not often enough I'm sure. Well I'm sure glad I went there today, and in just a few weeks time, we'll be going there again :)
Continue reading "I live in paradise"
Posted by grahamh at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
Slowly Moving |
January 30, 2005 |
Well the movement to the new blog format is taking shape. I have all the entries now imported into the MT database. Also played with the template formats so I knew what I was doing for the site face lift.
In between all this, I've been out taking a few pictures this weekend of the local area, the local fauna, and some new shots of the chili plants from eddy.
Continue reading "Slowly Moving"
Posted by grahamh at 11:52 AM | Comments (1)
Back To Sports |
January 06, 2005 |
Well its the first week of the new year, and I'm back into the sporting activities. Last night was our first game back at Touch Football, that's touching with the hands, not touching with the feet! And although we were a little short on our key play makers, we did manage to end the match in a draw. And I even manged to score another try, taking my tally for the season to two! And Darren managed to score also, so we took home the double!
Posted by grahamh at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
Day of Big Things |
December 13, 2004 |
First thing that happened today was the delivery of my new laptop :) Was expecting it to arrive last friday, but instead it came in first thing monday morning. Glad it is here finally, and now tapping out this message to my blog. It's pretty good, nice screen, but I'm having a shit of a time getting my home network up and running! I think network security is the death of us all!!
Next even of the day was a visit to my accountant to lodge my tax returns for 2003 and 2004! Yes I know thats pretty late, but I had more important things to do! Fortunately, it looks like I have about $1000 coming my way!! Which is exactly the amount I needed to get a years membership, and a free set of golf clubs at the Shellharbour Links Golf Club!! Whoohooo!!
Finally, it is monday night so time for netball. We played an excellent game, and came away with a solid win. But then on the way home, I drove through an incredibly violent rain storn! At one stage I was watching a bus dissapear under water on one side of the road, when I looked back, three cars in front of me had locked up their brakes and also dissapearing into a river across the road!! Lucky I had just been going through the emergency stopping procedure in my head (yeah true story, pretty pathetic hey!) so I managed to pull up before hitting anyone. Then I just pushed on through the water, it wasn't too deep, but the other cars looked a little timid! Then for the next 5km, there was a heap of water over the road, and everyone was taking it pretty easy. Then as we passed Port Kembla golf club, the rain and water dissapeared! And above, I could see stars!! It was quite incredible. And once I got home, the roads were dry. But up above, there is this incredible storm cloud, with a large amount of lightning illuminating the sky.
Posted by grahamh at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
Broken Bones, Broken Dreams... |
November 10, 2004 |
It has not been a very exciting week for me so far. On monday night I rolled my ankle again, I've lost count on how many times this has happened to my right ankle, but this time it was enough to reduce my normal enthusiastic running self into not much more than an ornament on the court. Not only that but it has kept me out of basketball, and an inter-office golf challenge this week too.
It seems to be responding well to treatment, but I think it will be another week or two before its back to its usual 75% sufficency level.
Also this week at work we've been doing performance reviews, and this is always a bit of a drag. I've almost finished mine now, just got a lot of typing to go. And ohhh, that Michael, am I going to make up some rubbish about him!!!
One good thing that is coming up though is next weeks road trip to The Gold Coast! Darren and I are taking the long drive up the coast to attend the Revetec AGM which is being held in their new Gold Coast headquarters. It's going to be a long drive up Thursday night, with a quick swim to refresh on Friday morning before hitting the meeting. We are then planning to stay friday night, and hit the casino to pay for the trip :) One down side is that we will be up there during Schoolies week ;)
Posted by grahamh at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)
Weekend Of Activity |
September 26, 2004 |
This weekend was perfect weather, so I thought I would head up to Bowral to check out this years Tulip festival. As usual, it was very busy and very colourful! Good opportunity for me to test out the new camera.
After Saturday at Bowral, it was time to get out to Calderwood for another game of golf for the Sand Wedge golf club. And the days weather could not have been better!
Posted by grahamh at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
Spring Storms |
September 05, 2004 |
Well only a few days into spring and we had a pretty cool spring storm today. Lots of lightening and thunder, but now the sun is out once again. It describes this weekend quite well. After spending a good day yesterday hiking in the mountains, I walked outside this morning to find out that some young holigans had broken into my car. Fortunately nothing broken, and for some reason nothing of value taken! But makes you wonder why people will risk getting caught for no gain.
Mmmmm, the smell of freshly baking cake is calling me, I must go make sure I dont burn it! Having Bec, Sam and possibly Darren over for dinner tonight with Lasagne on the menu, who could stay away!
Well dinner did go well, I dont have to try hard in the kitchen, I guess some people are blessed with having cooking skills, and some are blessed with eating skills :) Well I am glad I have both!
Thanks Sam and Bec, you know you are welcome anytime, to eat, or to just hang out :)
But still waiting for a tear jerking Idol performance!!
Posted by grahamh at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)
Camera Time |
August 17, 2004 |
thats right i finally managed to wait long enough that canon released a new digital SLR. which of course means run out deals on the old Digital Rebel 300D. So now I am the proud owner of a new D-SLR camera! so i guess this should mean better pictures, and more of them....we'll just have to see if that is the case.
Posted by grahamh at 09:24 PM | Comments (1)