Web Essentials ’05 or BUST!

When my friend CJ got back from Web Essentials 04 she just RAVED about it. So now CJ has convinced me to save up and attend Web Essentials ’05 in Sydney! 29-30 of September… It should be really good; the workshops look like tons of fun, international speakers like Dave Shea, Tantek, and my aquaintence Doug Bowman, and it’s only across the ditch! (for non-NZers, the ditch being the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia)

It’s gonna cost me some serious coinage… admission is AU$700, and hopefully work will pay for some of that, but I still gotta get airfares, departure tax, accomodation, spending money. All up I’m probably gonna have to get about NZD$1500 from somewhere, which probably means saving it.

I’ve never attempted to save this much money before, so it should be a good lesson for me. It’s also my first time overseas — I don’t even have a passport! I kinda want a laptop to take too… cybercafes suck.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get some sponsorship. Maybe some of my fellow attendee out there want to help me out? So I’ve put a Paypal button on the main page. But if you want to donate another way, let me know!

I intend to stay at the Sydney Railway Square YHA Wake Up!, which is only 5 minutes away from the WE05 venue. It’s cheaper if you bunk in a same-sex-room with 4 or 8 other buddies, but I don’t have any same-sex buddies who will be attending yet… If you’re going to WE05 on the cheap, contact me and we’ll hook up 🙂 Of course, if someone wants to billet me, that’d be even better 🙂

Update: As with any good donation drive, you need to give something in return. So if you donate more than NZD$5 (read: more than USD$4.00) then I’ll post you a CD-R with loads of legal Creative Commons MP3s on it, just to say thanks! I might even throw some mashups on there too 🙂 Be sure to include your mailing address so I can send you your CD 😀

Update: Thanks to my good pal Andrew Morrison and my good friend CJ, combined they’ve donated NZD$150 😀

Update: Cheers GuruBob for another NZD$25! Someone get that man a pie!

Update: HUGE THANKS to my new employer, 3months.com for pledging NZD$800!

Update: A big TY to Jenny Crumiller for the donation of USD$40! (~NZD$58.36)

Update: A big w00ta to Scott Buffington who donated USD$20 (~NZD$29.20)! Big Ups!

Update: Two updates today: USD$20 (~NZD$29.20) from Smikwily and USD$5 (~NZD$7.25) from David Pickett: Cheers you guys!

Update: Michael DiStefano donated a sweet USD$4 (~NZD$5.80) — Cheers Michael!

Internet Outside Web Design Web Essentials 05 Work 8 comments

Sunday through Friday (or: How I learned to stop caring and bomb the HP)

Below is the log of some of my personal time during the last 5 days. It’s in no way everything I have done.
Update: I forgot to mention my iPod is broken
Sunday:
After having an enjoyable time at my Dad’s place in Otaki, I return home to realise I left my USB thumb drive in my Dad’s computer. I have my IM program and PGP private key on there.

Monday:
I finally spring into action fixing an old computer for a family — it’s an HP Pavillion 4404 (404 not being a good omen). Try to install Windows 98 SE on there, it works. Download drivers for the HP from their website. When I install them, they don’t take hold, and a driver for the video card is missing 😛 That’s not gonna work… Off to MysteryMovieMonday… the world’s most disturbing movie Visitor Q is shown… when it is over, everyone is glad.

Tuesday:
Time for another attempt at this HP. Use the crappy “system restore” CDs which basically factory-fresh the operating system. Try to install Windows 98SE over the top — wrong! I need a Windows 98 SE Update disk… :P. I go to my church cell group (for the uninitiated, bible study group)

Wednesday:
My iPod was being stupid just before I went to work — it didn’t copy the playlists across, probably because it was full. There is lag between docking and windows suddenly recognising it. I was late for work, and got impatient. I removed the iPod from the dock and accidently dropped it on the floor.

DO’H!. I reset the iPod and it went into a perpeptual reset cycle — apple logo, file error icon, reset, apple logo, file error icon, etc. I left it in my dock and went to work iPodless.

I call my Dad and get him to send me my thumb drive. I am getting paid to tutor my friend Bevan in CSS tonight. I get home late and I don’t want to touch the stupid HP.

Thursday:
Tried to get the iPod working before work, No good. Actually, having the iPod in the dock crashes WinXP during boot-up. Weird. Boot up without the iPod, then try to dock the iPod — Windows hard-resets. WTF?

I have lunch with Bevan, and he borrows my Designing with Web Standards book. We pop into Dymocks and I see a copy of The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea, mastermind behind CSS Zen Garden. I buy it 🙂

That night, I had borrowed the Win98 -> Win98SE upgrade CD from work and start it installing… then it bluescreens… 😛 Need to system restore from CD again. SE is no longer an option. I go to Curry. After a restore, I just try to install IE6. It starts installing, but for some reason, it says at the end that it didn’t work properly, and leaves Win98 borked beyond repair, needing another system restore from CD. Something doesn’t want this machine updated 😛 Then the computer spontaniously turns off — the power supply overheated… ARGH. I go to bed.

Friday:
I get my USB thumb drive; Dad has posted it to me. Yay! Zen of CSS Design is pretty awesome, and written really well, but in an interesting style. It looks at the different Zen Garden submissions and pulling out tidbits of design and css wisdom from them, in a very logical and well thought out order. Maybe I’ll write more about that later…

Hardware Life Rant Reading 1 comment

Button, button, who’s got the button?



Button, button, who’s got the button?
Uploaded to Flickr by Glutnix.

Took some photos of the Cable Car and some things in the Botanic Garden near the top. The Cable Car driver was nice enough to let me take a photo of the control panel 🙂 So many buttons!

Outside Photos 6 comments