Owner: Tasweb URL:www.tasweb.org Join Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:41:38 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The ongoing story of two Tasmanian school children and their dad. Lots of games, stories, webcams, photo's and fun! Site statistics:Click here
Nature Nic 2007-07-20 06:22:23 There was a good news story on Southern Cross TV tonight about a student at St Aloysius Primary School in Kingston Beach. His real name is Nic Bonnitcha but apparently they call him Nature Nic. He has raised a heap of money for research into the facial tumour disease (http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/index.html) that is killing off the Tasmanian Devils (http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/wildlife/mammals/devil.html). It's the noisy little furry devils that I'm talking about, not the football playing ones, I don't think even Nic can save them this year! Schools all over the state of Tasmania have been holding events to raise money as a result of Nic's work. I have a copy of the news story for you to view here (pictures/page,view/catid,7/PageNo,1/key,2/hit,1/)(I hope this doesn't create a copyright issue). If you look closely you will see our mate Tamsyn (pictures/page,view/catid,27/PageNo,6/key,94/hit,1/)and it's also another chance to see the lovely Jo (http://en.wikip
Spider Pig 2007-07-04 22:26:13 Jason at work was telling me about a funny movie trailer that he saw the other day so I had to go and find it on YouTube. I know that the Sipmson's isn't everyone's idea of must see TV, but I think this particular bit is very funny and worth sharing.
5XQ_GWKvDE0 Read more:Spider
Game updates 2007-07-04 08:06:28 I mentioned in a previous story that I was doing some testing for the guy that writes the game system that I use for the high score games on this site. It's all going well so far, however you may notice weirdness whilst I play a bit. Folders of games may come and go, things might look all squished up and un professional, and scores may come and go. Feel free to play anything that you find, but please be aware that your high score may not save properly on some of the new games and some new games may appear that I haven't had a chance to check for myself. If you come across a game that has inappropriate content then please let me know by leaving a comment on this story. Read more:updates
Potteroos win 2007-07-02 21:52:34 Brads table tennis team, the Potteroo's have won their competition. Two teams finished equal on points, but they won on a count back. There was an award ceremony last night ( which I missed ) where each of Brad's team mates were presented with a really impressive looking trophy. It's one of those cup like ones that should be filled with champagne (am I still allowed to call it that?). They have all improved heaps lately. Brad was the only player from his whole division that played in a sponsored tournament a few weeks ago and he also attended a two day training camp with an Australian representative. The down side is that the Potteroo's have now been moved up from division 5 to division 3 so the competition just became a whole lot harder. One of their best players is also overseas for the first half of this term so that will make it hard as well.
Speaking of camps, Emma has been at Conningham since Sunday for a two night band camp. I think it is probably one of
Arcade games upgrade 2007-06-29 08:36:44 The guy that crerated the bit of code that allows me to bring you the high score enabled arcade games is looking for people to "beta" test a new version. I've offered to help him out, so over the next week or so I will be playing around with the games. If everything goes to plan none of the existing high scores will be lost, but I can't guarantee anything. I'm hoping that the upgrade
will allow me to exclude guest users from the high score lists. I'm also hoping it will allow me to add more games and create tournaments where I can reset the high scores every say month, but still keep the overall high scores.
End of financial year 2007-06-29 08:29:35 Well thats another financial year gone and it's been two months since I started trading shares. I've been keeping a trading log in an Excel spreadsheet that I've built up as I've gone along. Excel is cool because it can create charts of the figures really easily. Below is the chart of my progress to date. The actual figures aren't that important (well they are to me!), but the graph tells a pretty picture. The blue "Share Value" line is the actual value of shares held plus cash left from my initial stake. The purple "6.8% Cash" line is where I would be at if I had left my initial stake in the bank. The spotty "Linear" line is just a trend line for the share value. As you can see I've been a lot better off taking that money out of the bank and putting it into shares. Unfortunately it doesn't tell the full story as there will be capital gains tax, but then I would have paid tax on bank interest as well.
Google cheque 2007-06-25 19:45:44 It's finally happened. Tasweb turned two the other day, but it's birthday present was delayed in the mail. The present arrived yesterday but I was a bit confused as to how to present it. Tasweb isn't exactly a person and the server is in another country, so I decided to submit it as another news story. Cheque it out below!
How cool is that. After all these years of using Google
to search for stuff they are now sending me money. That's proof that there is money to be made by running websites. This is just a hobby for me, but imagine how much money big sites with tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors a day must make! Tasweb is averaging about 200 unique visitors a day (http://topsites.blogflux.com/sitedetails_35523.html) at the moment. There are lots of terms and conditions that Google impose on me as a result of my running Google Adsense ads on this website. A lot of them restrict what I'm allowed to say about click rates and stuff, but I'm pretty s Read more:cheque
ducks mini golf and snow 2007-06-23 05:16:43 It's probably time for another update. Last weekend we went to Richmond to grab some lunch and lollies. We did the whole tourist thing and wandered around the streets a bit. The teddy bear shop on the green is pretty cool, but people that lived in Richmond about a hundred years ago must have all been midgets as the ceiling in the back room is soooo low. We grabbed some "duck bread" from the bakery, but the ducks were lucky to get any as it turned out to be a bag of really yummy looking fresh bread rolls.
We also checked out the mini golf at Cambridge. E&B had been here before, but I hadn't and I was very impressed with it. It's a great little course and a lot of fun. Brad was on fire and thrashed us both. He actually did so well that he made it onto their top ten board, not to mention the hole in one and beating par on the special hole winning himself a free entry to ......... hmmmm, I can't remember what it was and I have no idea what happened to the pass
US Open 2007-06-17 16:05:49 I've been sitting in my lounge room, eating my breakfast and watching the US Open golf on the telly. I just can't believe the way those crazy Americans carry on. Tiger Woods will hit a metal off the tee and they all shout out "Oh my God", "In the hole", "Amazing", "Yeeeesssssss", "Yeah, get in the hole" etc etc when everyone else including Tiger can see that it's a shocking shot that's gone way left and is going to bury itself into the front edge of the biggest bunker on the hole requiring an excavator to get it out and up onto the green. What planet are they on???? Probably the same planet as the guy that drives the little ride on mower. What is with the knee high grass on the edge of the fairways and then there's the bunkers. There must be a child care centre on every hole because they have the biggest baddest sand pits I've ever seen!
Virtual makeover game 2007-07-21 04:41:37 Well the masses have spoken and it seems whilst many of you love the two virtual hairdresser games, there were just as many who wanted something else. I have been sent the makeover game below via email. It's a large download so it may take a few minutes to load. If you are reading this on the home page then you will have to click the "Read more" link below. Give it a go and let me know what you think via the comments form.
Car problems 2007-06-15 23:38:53
Unfortunately there have been a few car problems
lately. Maret was driving their car in Launceston recently when a guy went straight through a red light in front of them. They couldn't stop in time and their car collected the side of his spinning him around before they all came to a stop. The whole family were in the car at the time so their first concern was for Luke and Zac, but luckily they were all OK. The old guy who ran the red light was very lucky as well because they hit him just behind the drivers door. Just one second earlier or later and the result would have been much worse. There is a photo of their Nissan Xtrail below.
It doesn't end there though. Today we were driving down the Southern Outlet towards Kingston when we saw thick black smoke billowing up into the air. Everyone was trying to move out of the left hand lane so we assumed there had been a car accident, but it was actually a Volvo station wagon that had caught fire. Luckily
Happy Birthday Liz 2007-06-11 00:02:09
Well it's the Queen's Birthday
public holiday today and my place is very quiet after Brad and Emma went back to Donna yesterday. I thought I was going mad a few hours ago when I heard voices somewhere in the house. I was convinced there was someone about. A few days ago the owners of the house that I rent sent a guy around to trim back a rampant vine that has been threatening to engulf the house next door. The trouble was they didn't tell me about it and he didn't knock on the door first even though my car was in the drive way. I heard a noise in the backyard, saw some dodgy looking guy "hiding" in the bushes and bolted out the back door. I ripped into him and was ready for a fight until we both worked out what was going on. I'm still not happy that he didn't knock on the door first, but at least we were both able to laugh about it. Today's noises made me think he might be back, but I couldn't find where they came from. It just happened again, Read more:Happy
, Happy Birthday
Birthdays 2007-06-07 22:11:26 There have been a few Birthdays
recently. Happy Birthday to Sharon and to Tasweb. Tasweb turned two the other day. I'm not sure how old Sharon is but I'm sure it's not much more than that! Tasweb is expecting a nice Birthday present from Google, but we have been waiting two weeks and it still hasn't arrived. You know what they say about the cheque being in the mail!
Stars 2007-06-07 22:02:20 The other day Donna called to say that the Hobart Aquatic Centre were looking for teenage kids to have their photographs taken for use in promotional material, web sites etc. My guys leaped at the opportunity and it worked out well because Emma was planning to go to the pool with some mates on that day anyway. I called in the day before and collected a few release forms and then spent half the night driving all over Kingborough dropping them off to the parents of the other guys. In the end we had Brad, Mitch, Emma, Tamara, Tahlia and Chloe signed up and organised. It was funny when they blew up one of the big inflatable things for the photo shoot. Every kid in the centre queued up to climb on it. Our guys had to wait until they had all had one go before they got exclusive use and had to perform for the camera. They then had some close up (as in really close up!) shots taken in the pool. In return for all that they were allowed to eat and drink for free in the cafe, they were given free
AMD Dual Core optimizer patch 2007-07-26 00:29:35 When I built my own funky new computer the video card came with a free game. It was Peter Jackson's King Kong and it sucked. The first thing you had to do in the game was climb some rocky stairs and enter a cave. Try as I might I just couldn't do it because the graphics were stuffed and the character would jump, stutter, go black and generally misbehave. Once or twice I did manage to enter the cave, but then you had to protect yourself against a heap of crabs, but because of the stuffed graphics you couldn't see the crabs and I kept dieing. When I built Donna's new computer Brad told me that Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) would go weird sometimes with his character changing to a different colour. He also had trouble with Knights Of The Old Republic (KOTOR) and Mount and Blade. When you do a Google search for these issues you find heaps of other people with the same problem, but it's really hard to find a solution or fix. Here it is (warning, techy geek talk coming Read more:AMD
Suits Talk and Food 2007-07-28 05:22:55 I received an invitation to attend a special announcement by David Bartlett the Minister for Education about the new Kingston High School that was held yesterday at the Kingborough Sports Centre. I wasn't too sure what to expect, but I assumed he would just re confirm his Governments commitment to the project and announce the actual location within the Sports Centre grounds. When I arrived I was confronted by more "important" people in suits than I have ever seen before. All of the television networks had cameras there and there were heaps of newspaper photographers as well. There were even radio people there with microphones and recorders. There were names like Michael Hodgman, David Bartlett (of course), Kevin Harkins and Nick McKim as well as the Mayor and a heap of councilors. The Minister, the Mayor and the Principal all went for a walk across the grass for the benefit of the cameras and then we moved inside the soccer club rooms out of the cold. There were a heap of Read more:Suits
Most popular Google search keywords 2007-07-28 03:19:55 I don't know about you, but there is a little part of me that is kinda curious about what other people might be searching for on Google
. I have no idea how I ended up there, but today I stumbled upon a way to find out. What's more, I was very surprised with some of the results. Which Tasmanian town do you think would be the most searched for of all time at Google? Yep, it's Kingston! Devonport is second and Hobart is a distant 5th. If you don't believe me then see it for yourself by clicking here. Other search engines give you even more information. AOL for instance let you know that the hottest search keywords at the moment are OK! Magazine', Skip Prosser and Oscar the Cat. Google have another site with a really freaky name that says these are the most popular
Australian search keywords at the moment; i killed the prom queen, krispy krem, My Chemical Romance, sophia bush and cirque du soleil.
July 2007 share update 2007-07-31 06:04:09
Another month has gone by so I'll post another share trading update. I don't know if anyone else is interested in this stuff, but I want to document it anyway because I'm sure I'll look back on this one day and laugh. I just hope I'm financially comfortable when I do the laughing! This hasn't been a very good month, but I'm still well ahead on where I'd be if I'd just left the money in the bank. I bought shares in Mine Makers (MAK) and Anglo Australian (AAR). Both are mining companies, but Minemakers is interesting because they have discovered Uranium in Tasmania! I sold my Gunns (GNS) shares for a loss this month. I had to put my own personal thoughts aside when I bought Gunns shares and now I wish I had let my heart speak a bit louder than my calculator. Other than the Gunns loss things were going OK until the American market took a big dive last Friday. The Aussie market followed suit on Monday and has struggled to recover all week. I lost over $
Spider Pig Animation 2007-08-05 06:08:22 My beautiful daughter Emma found this funny animated gif thingie of Homers very cool little Spider
Pig. If you have no idea what it's about then you need to go see the Simpson's movie! Read more:Animation
Another game update comming soon 2007-08-19 01:00:33 I'm working on another update to the high score games. I have heaps of new games to upload and some cool new features and bug fixes as well. I've got them installed on my development site and all looks good so far. Expect an update in the next few weeks, and remember that you need to create a Tasweb account and login before your scores will be saved.
Bloody banks 2007-08-21 23:20:14 I thought I probably should bank my first Google cheque before the silverfish turn it into dust, so I took a walk to the Credit Union today. I queued up for ages waiting for a customer "service" person to become available (it was lunchtime and there were only two people serving). When it was finally my turn the pretty young girl (person number one) took all my details and entered it all into her computer, but when she hit the last button it went "bing" with an error. Turns out that cheques in US dollars need to be done at the enquiries desk. How stupid of me, why didn't I realise that myself! I wandered over and waited in the queue at the enquiries desk (only one person serving here). The guy (he wasn't at all pretty - person number two) saw me waiting and pressed a bell that made a sound a lot like the ding of the pretty girls computer and that made me a bit anxious. Another lady (person number three) came out and told me that we had to go behind a wa Read more:banks
August 2007 share update 2007-08-31 04:46:29
What a crazy month it's been in the world of shares. The bottom dropped out of everything I was holding. I sold some taking small losses and held some others that had dropped so much that it wasn;t worth selling them. Things have recovered somewhat over the past two weeks, however I'm still well below where I would have been if I had just left the money in the bank. Still, it's a long term thing, so I'm not too fussed.
Emma's netball team (the Aviators) finished up second on the ladder and were odds on to play Taroona in the grand final, but unfortunately Tegan tried to slice her finger off with a scalpel in the science room and the school theater production clashed with the semis meaning they were missing a few players (including Emma) and they dipped out ending up in third place.
Brad's table tennis team are pushing into second place on their ladder with a few games to go. They were moved up a division after winning the trophy for first place Read more:August
Myer building destroyed by fire 2007-09-22 07:11:53
Amazing. Between Harris Scarfe and Myer they probably take up half of the main city block in Hobart and now both have suffered from major fires. Harris Scarfe was lucky that theirs was contained within the electrical switchboard, although they still had to shut for a week whilst the damage was repaired. Now Myer has caught fire and been completely destroyed. Yep, completely destroyed. The roof has collapsed and the floors have collapsed in on them selves. Unlucky me happened to be on call this weekend and I had no idea it was happening. I was pulling my hair out trying to work out why most of the major Government sites in the CBD were going off the air. Turns out Aurora were turning the power off to parts of the city as necessary to support the fire fighters. Most of the major Government sites have UPS (battery backup) power so it was weird as sites would die, then come back, whilst others would be fine only to die again later as the batteries ran out. It all means lots of recall mone
Me Wah Restaurant Sandy Bay Review 2007-09-20 18:37:33 Last night I had a meal at the new Me Wah Restaurant in Magnet Court Sandy
Bay. I have been eating food from the Launceston Me Wah Cafe ever since I was a little kid. I remember going in with my Dad and getting a pineapple hamburger. He still has some receipts from those old days which I will have to scan and post here because they make for very interesting reading (ie the prices have gone up a bit in the past 30 years!). Even back then they knew him well enough to send the food to our home in a taxi. I was a little bit worried prior to going in because the Launceston restaurant is probably one of the best places I have ever been to and it is definitely the best Asian restaurant in the whole entire world (at the least that small portion of it that I know!). I thought that I might be let down. The entrance impressed me for a start and we almost didn't go in thinking we were under dressed and under financed! Once you open the grand glass doors you find a floor to ceiling glass wall w
Weekends are popular 2007-09-18 16:22:45 A while ago I added those little rectangular icon thingies (they are actually called chicklets!) down on the left hand side of the page. I did it because it's meant to be a great way of publicising your blog, but it has an interesting side effect. I have always been able to look at all sorts of stats and graphs and stuff to see how many people come to Tasweb, where they come from, how long they stay, which pages they view etc etc, but now you can all see some of those stats yourself. If you click on this link it will take you to Topblogsites and you will be able to view a graph of the unique visitors to Tasweb. I was looking at this today and noticed that it goes in waves that peak at about 200 visitors a day with lows of about 125 unique visitors a day. I wondered why this happened and then I noticed that the peaks were always on weekends. Looks as though all that talk about workers spending all day on the Internet may not be true! Read more:popular
Caloundra view 2007-09-17 23:16:26
Here is the photo that Emma MMS'd me from Caloundra.
September 2007 holidays 2007-09-16 21:57:17 Well that's another school holidays over for me. For Emma and Brad it just keeps on getting better as they are in Queensland with their mother this week. Emma sent me a photo of the view from their penthouse apartment at Caloundra and it looks awesome. Whilst they were with me we went fishing twice. The first time we went down to Southport for lunch on the beach. Southport has to be one of the prettiest places in Tassie and the weather was beautiful. Mel was at a loose end so we took her along for the ride. She enjoyed my BBQ vegetable cob loaf thingy that I built, but bagged me out for not bringing any wine. E & B had a go at fishing from the beach with no luck so we moved onto the long jetty at the Dover pub only to find it locked up. As a kid I remember tying up there in our old boat and going ashore to get ice and beer, but that obviously isn't the done thing these days. We drove around to the fishermans wharf but we still didn't catch anything. There was a bogun gu Read more:September
What not to do with a $2M boat 2007-09-08 07:10:36
Club Marine are boat insurers and they usually run an ad in the
Saturday newspaper. When they do they have this weird little black and
white photo that I just couldn't make out. It kinda looked like a boat
standing on it's bow, but I knew that just couldn't be right. That was
until I stumbled upon this photo. It is actually a brand new $2000000
motor yacht being loaded onto a cargo ship for delivery to it's new
owner. Something went terribly wrong and it fell into the sea. If (like
me) you still have your doubts about this photo, then look closely are
the rear right hand side of the boat and check out the poor guy hanging
on for dear life as he rides it into the water!
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