RapidWeaver 4.0 has arrived. Usually this would be a paid upgrade however, as I found out today, owners of version 3.6 get a free upgrade to 4.0. That includes me...woohoo!

RapidWeaver 4.0 is built using Cocoa, OS X Leopard’s native language and takes advantage of Core Animation and Quick Look(available in 4.0.1).

The interface has also had quite an overhaul and looks very fresh and, well ... Leopardy!

The good news is, if you’re wanting to try it, RealMacSoftware are offering RapidWeaver for $59. That’s a $20 saving.

Tags: rapidweaver, technology, mac

Then: "Oh thank God I'm alive"


Now: "Who will pay me the most money for my story?"

My first attempt at Saturn.


This was shot through the eye piece of the scope with my Canon 5D, hand held. Of course, it's much better viewing by eye... crystal clear and you can see the moons.

Tags: photography, astronomy, astrophotography, telescope

Worth reading: Yes

Summary: Mike Haller, defense lawyer. His office is the back seat of a Lincoln. His driver, one of his ex-clients.

His clients are the criminals looking to get off. His job is to create enough doubt, enough grey area, to get them off.

His latest client looks to be a windfall. A franchise client. One with a lot of money.

The victim is a street-walker. She has been seriously beaten and the evidence is pointing to Mike's client.

Twists and turns abound as Mike fights for his life both in the courtroom and out of it, and as the case unfolds Mike comes to face his greatest fear.. not recognising innocence when he's faced with it.

I usually find it hard to get into Lawyer tales but this one is a cracker.

Tags: books, michael connelly

The screws that hold the finder-scope to my Meade 10" LX200GPS SCT telescope are too short. I remember thinking this the day I first assembled the scope. But in my eagerness to use the scope this niggly little issue was shoved aside.

That was until a few days ago when I went to move the scope outside for use. My shoulder hit the finder-scope and it popped off, hitting the concrete. Lucky the lens cap was on, and no damage was sustained. This brought the problem crashing back to the fore-front of my mind.

Easy fix.

Counter-sink the screw heads a few millimetres into the bracket.


After counter-sinking the head of the screws, they now have a good 5 - 6 millimetres of thread to hold the bracket onto the scope.


And fully mounted.

Tags: astronomy, telescope, astrophotography

If you're after a pleasant day ride in South-East Queensland, try the trip from Kilkivan to the Kinbombi Falls.

I've driven past this turn-off hundreds of times, and every time thought to myself "I should duck down there and have a look". Today I did just that. I wasn't riding past, I rode there on purpose.

Kinbombi Falls is a stepped water fall that has carved it's way through the rock conglomerate of an ancient river bed. There are many rock pools that follow the path of the creek and a number of paths that wind along the ridge and through the gorge. The falls aren't flowing at the moment due to lack of rain, but it's easy to see how spectacular they would be if the water was flowing. The pool at the base of the falls is reported to be over 10 metres deep and perfect for swimming on hot summer days, with the cliffs providing cooling shade.

At the camping/picnic grounds there are no signs to the falls. I found the path by heading toward the only building...the loo.
The path starts as concrete steps and there must be over 200 of them down to the base of the falls. There are also unmarked tracks that take off from the path, they are unmarked and have no hand rails so be careful following these.

From the base of the falls you can see two other observation points on the cliff walls. However, finding the path to these is not obvious. At this time of year (Autumn/Winter) it is obvious the trails are not well used and have become overgrown. The silk webs of Golden Orb spiders are everywhere. My tip is to take off your sunglasses to see them better and hopefully you won't walk into one.

The path to "Smith's Steps" is just a dirt trail that takes off to the left as you head down to the bottom of the falls. I did notice some pink marking ribbon on a few saplings but the path is not obvious. Don't worry though, you won't get lost and the walk it worth it.

The path along the cliffs provides an excellent view to the base of the gorge. On the opposite side you can see grass trees and I'm told, rock wallabies on occasion. If you have children along, take care, the drops close on either side of the path at one point is very steep and very deep.

I spent an hour walking around and could easily have spent another 3 or 4 if I'd taken my full set of camera gear.


The facilities at the camp ground are basic. No drinking water or firewood, and only basic BBQ equipment. Firewood would be fairly easy to find depending on the time of year, but you should think of taking everything with you. If, like me, you chose to ride here, consider having lunch at the Kilkivan Takeaway. They do a mean works burger.


Kinbombi Falls is about 18kms on the Goomeri side of Kilkivan along the Wide-Bay Highway. The exit off the highway is well signposted and is only 5kms from the main drag.

If you're coming up from Brisbane or the Sunshine coast, you can do a loop by continuing on past Kinbombi Falls to Nannango and on to Kilcoy. The ride on the Wide Bay Highway is very easy and the road is better than average in most places. The Kinbombi Falls road is a single lane bitumen strip in excellent condition.

Tags: road trips, motorcycles

Beware the lollipop of mediocrity.
Lick it once, and you'll suck forever.

Tags: humor

Home is not where you want to live.

Home is where you want to die.

I was driving home this afternoon and my mind was wandering as I travelled along well-known paths.

It's times like these that odd stuff floats around in my head. This is what floated to the surface of the soup today.

Being a parent, what would you say to your child?

"Be careful, you may get hurt".

or

"Don't do that, you'll get hurt".

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ~ Hardy Heron has been released.

The reviews of this release are glowing and all said and done, a worthy upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon.
Lots of new stuff including (copied from the Ubuntu site):

Productivity tools: Ubuntu supports all of your favourite web-based mail programs like Yahoo(TM) or Gmail (TM). But for the office, Evolution provides all the calendering, contacts and full function office email you need. Pidgin IM also puts you in instant touch with colleagues and integrates with your personal IM services simply and easily.

Browsing: Including Mozilla Firefox (Beta 5) - tested and stabilised for a platform. Faster, safer and themed for Ubuntu.

Photos: Upload from your camera or phone to F-Spot and manage, tag, share and sort your photos and upload easily to you favourite social networking sites.

Music and video: Plug in your PSP, iPod, MP3 player; share playlists with your friends; buy in the creative commons online music stores, stream more live radio and plug in more devices with UPnP.

Office applications: Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations can all be delivered through Open Office 2.4. And, they completely integrate with the proprietary office applications out there. The big difference is that they are free.

Accessibility: At the core of the Ubuntu philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone and access should be free and complete whatever your economic or physical circumstances. Ubuntu is one of the most accessible desktop operating systems around.

This is a long term support version, so updates should be coming thick and fast for about 18 months to 2 years.

I've been running Gutsy Gibbon on my PC at home and was considering changing to Suse Enterprise Desktop from Novell. I think I'll upgrade Gutsy to Hardy and stick with Ubuntu for a while longer.

Remember two things:

1. Ubuntu runs also as a Live CD so you can try before installing and,

2. Ubuntu is completely FREE

Tags: technology, Linux, ubuntu

OpenOffice.org version 3.0 beta has been released, and finally drops the X11 requirement on OS X.

Open Office is everything you need and nothing you don't. Why pay money for Microsoft Office (over bloated behemoth that it is) when OOo is FREE?

I've been using OO for a while now on Linux(home) and Windows(work) and I've been waiting for a Aqua version of it so I could run it on the MAC without X11. NeoOffice is available (and I do have it installed) but nice as it is, it was a change in interface/icons that annoyed me.

Now that particular issue has vanished.

There are a number of nice new things in version 3.0 and you can read about them here, but mostly I'm impressed with the compatibility with latest version of MS Doc and XLS files, as well as the GoogleOffice format.

Version 3.0 is still in beta and it is rather obvious. It is horribly slow on Windows and passable on OS X. I'm still using version 2.4 on Ubuntu and will wait until the final release before upgrade on that OS.

If it's been a while since you last looked at OOo, it is time to have another look.

Remember:

OpenOffice = FREE
MSOffice = $$$

Tags: openoffice.org, Linux, mac, OS X

It was a reasonably cool night last night. Perfect conditions for star-gazing. Almost perfect conditions for imaging.

I have the equipment (mostly) but until recently didn't move in that type of photographic circle, preferring to be just a viewer of the universe.

The pursuit of astrophotography can be as expensive, or as cheap as you want to make it. I'm trying to keep the costs down, but have decided to move on from the classic "star-trail" photos. Don't get me wrong, I will continue to take such photos, they're easy and if done right, rather spectacular.

Here is a couple of photos from last nights viewing/photographing session. I had to focus by eye - the most unreliable method - but I think I came close enough for the moment. I'll post a review of the scope I use, shortly.

And now in the interest of keeping the photographic content down on this particular site, I'll sign off.

Tags: astronomy, astrophotography, telescope, photography

Today I filled up my car with fuel. Total cost: AU$83.00

$1.36 per litre.

I remember a time when the litres counted up faster than the dollars.

I guess if we ran all our vehicles on ethanol, food would become too expensive to eat.
I guess if we ran all our vehicles on hydrogen, water would become too expensive to drink.
I guess if we ran all our vehicles on air, it would become too expensive to breath.

Does anyone else think that we have reached a point that, no matter what we decide to fuel our cars with, there will never be enough?

The combustion engine. It's life or death, but which one will survive?

Tags: changing times

Worth reading: Yes

Summary: Kate is sick. She's endured a life spent mostly in hospital fighting and then awaiting the return of leukemia. Kate was not expected to live past the age of 5. She is now 16.

Anna is 13 and isn't sick, but she is the reason Kate has been able to fight for so long. She has spent almost as much time in hospital as her sister. Anna was brought into the world to be the bone marrow match for Kate. She was conceived with that possibility in mind.

Anna has not been more that a step from her sisters side her entire life. Now Kate needs a kidney if she has any chance to survive her latest battle. Her chance of surviving is only slight and there's every chance she will not survive the next battle as her body continues to deteriorate due to intensive chemotherapy.

But the circumstances have changed. Anna's mother assumes the operation is a foregone conclusion. Anna has always been willing to help her sister in the past, but Anna's health could be seriously effected, both now and in the future.

And Anna has reservations. Reservations that will have dire consequences for the life of her sister.

Tags: books