Standing desk: Day 1

I've had a few back problems of late, a herniated disk from lifting my daughter basically. My physio suggests that sitting all day is a big problem, so I've decided to experiment with a standing desk.

I was looking at this particular DIY standing desk but saw you couldn't buy the components separately on the Ikea site. Then I realised my existing desk is an Ikea Galant already, and when I tried extending the legs up they do come up to the right height. With a few boxes and books (including two editions of Programming Perl + Learning Perl), I've managed to get a reasonable trial standing desk going.



Today was a bit of an unusual day. I'm coming down with what feels like it's going to be a shocker of a cold, so I ended up going back to bed when Holly woke up and slept through until 11:30. So it's been a bit of a half day. Good idea for the first day of this experiment.

So far so good. I've found myself a bit more able to focus on tasks, and combined with a Pomodoro timer to ensure I give myself breaks (as well as the more traditional "Get Shit Done" reasons for it), I feel okay. My back feels like its done some work today, tired but not sore. That's gotta be a good thing.

I'll keep trying this whenever I'm working from home and report back. If I make it a couple of weeks, I'll buy the Ikea TV unit and bolt it on. Also looking around for a small desk to continue as a sitting desk, so I can quickly switch between the two modes with a KVM switch. Probably clean my shed up a bit too and re-arrange things.

Fuji Xerox ApeosPort-IV C2275 on Ubuntu and Linux Mint

Just to save anyone having to bugger around to set up this printer, it's dead easy. This printer is in HUB Sydney, and I wanted to use it.

Go to the CUPS configure printers thing. Open up Network Printer and click Find. Wait a bit and it'll show up, assuming you're on the same network as the printer. Select it and click Forward.

Select "Generic" and click Forward. Then choose Postscript and the default sub-selection for it and click Forward. Name the printer, click Apply and you're done. That's it!

I was duped by a microparty

My first real job after high school was working for a mail order porn video company. It was a great job, management was very professional and I got really great opportunities after showing aptitude in my work.

I was recently approached by my old boss there to help with digital marketing for the Sex Party, where he's running the national campaign. I've been a Greens member for many, many years so helping another party isn't something I'd normally do, but as a favour I agreed to help sort out the party's web analytics.

Now the Senate preference tickets are out, which is the list that determines where your votes go if you vote Above The Line in the Senate. To my dismay, I discover the Sex Party are preferencing One Notion and the gun nuts above the Greens. That's it for me, no more support whatsoever.

What appears to have happened is that serial microparty deal maker Glenn Druery cut a range of deals that resulted in Sex Party and Wikileaks ultimately passing preferences over to One Notion. Pauline Pantsdown has done some fantastic analysis which describes how the game is played.


Polly Morgan also has some interesting insights. Really interestingly is it seems one person was responsible (and failed) for submitting the voting tickets for five parties, which kind of puts the lie to it!


More disappointment comes with news that anti-gambling campaigner Nick Xenophon has preferenced the two major parties, who have worked together to stymie his proposed gambling reforms, ahead of the only other major party that has supports his goals.

The safest approach this election is to vote 1 Greens above the line in the Senate. If you want to have complete control over your vote, try out the Below The Line site, but be sure you don't mess it up and end up making your ballot informal!

Underbelly Arts

We went out to Cockatoo Island on Sunday to the Underbelly Arts Festival. It was a stunning sunny day and the kids had a fantastic time. Kids seem to immediately understand that "art" just means "play" and get right into it.

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No Marque, you can shove your environmental "concerns"

"Due to environmental concerns Marque Restaurant no longer uses bottled mineral water. In this regard we have installed a chilled, filtered, carbonated water system. To support this initiative $5 per person will be added to every bill."

Marque menu

Environmental "concerns" that give you an excuse to add $5 to everyone's bill. Riiiiight.

This is a restaurant that charges $245 per person for food + matching wines, yet they think adding a mandatory $5 so the pampered diners can have water a grade above Sydney's perfectly fine tap. No, you can shove that right up your clacker Marque. I can't stand bottled water, but paying for tap water is even more outrageous. Can I order un-wankified tap and get it free?

Shopping around for a fancy restaurant for our 15th anniversary. Marque just moved off the consideration list.
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Our new local: Young Henry, The Cure's a Forest, brisket sandwich and a kid play room

The Henson opened tonight in the old "Henson Park Hotel" premises around the corner, after a short hiccup with their license. They've done a great job, stripping back some of the covers over the original art deco features, installing a kiddie play area, opening out the old back room as a great bistro. We were walking back from the park and thought we'd check it out and decided to stay for dinner. I think we were the first official customers in the place. This is probably the first blog post reviewing it.

Excellent beers on tap: we sampled the Young Henry's Real Ale and Matilda Bay's new Minimum Chips golden lager. Delicious. Dinner for me was a "knuckle sandwich": brisket, pickles, coleslaw on rye. Holly went the brown rice kimchi goreng and the kids had real fish fingers and chips. Yummo! All excellent.

Smokers are confined to a small section of the outdoor area, so you can eat outside without having to breathe that. What's more, the tables in view of the kiddie play area are smoke free and heated. Brilliant!

Welcome to the area Henson. We'll be back for sure. Possibly even tomorrow night if you're gonna have the Australia vs Japan match on...

The photos below are from the Powerhouse Museum and show the pub in 1936.

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Awesome weekend camping

We had a fantastic 4-day  weekend camping with our kids down in Bundeena. Bit of a risk this late in the season but we got extremely lucky. 26 degrees every day! Our kids were a bit unwell at times, with bad colds and Louis seemed to have a short bout of gastro. But we still had loads of fun.

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Snorkelling photos

I've been getting into snorkelling a bit recently. I've always enjoyed it but recently I bought some good quality gear, replacing the toy shop crap I've been using. It's another world with good equipment! It's not easy to get time, but so far I've snorkelled Jervis Bay, Bushrangers Bay, Clovelly and The Haven in Terrigal.

My son has been asking what it's like, so I bought the Kogan waterproof camera case for $19. Took it out last weekend for a spin at The Haven but the visibility was terrible. The camera case works a treat though, and I'm looking forward to using it some more. Need to work out a strap to attach it to my arm or something though.

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Current status

Chilling in Jervis Bay. Weather has turned out much better than the forecasts. Lovely.

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Alternatives to Posterous?

My blog has been on Posterous for some years now and it's been awesome. The best thing about it is that you just email a bunch of stuff, with whatever attachments in whatever format are relevant, and they just work.

Sadly they're shutting down following their talent acquisition by Twitter. That's a real shame. Now I have to find an alternative.

Requirements:
  • Hosted. I'm not going to maintain a server just for blogging thanks.
  • Allows custom JS. I'm always testing out new analytics tools on my own sites.
  • Post through email
Squarespace is lovely but pretty expensive for what I need, unless I can consolidate all three sites into one platform while keeping the domains (waiting on their ticket response).

I had high hopes for Markdown-based blog tools like Jekyll, but I find them a bit clunky. Posterous has got me used to a really easy blogging workflow that works well for me.

Any suggestions? I'm happy to pay.