I’ve had this blog URL for many years and never really been sure what to do with it. Do I use it for posts about my family, or use it as a general blog for anything I want to go on about?

Obviously there is different audiences for both – direct family members just want to hear about Eliza, and not necessarily about the latest widget. Other friends might want to see what I am interested in – but could care less about what Eliza did last night that was sooooo funny. I know – bloody “Breeders”.

So during my work-break over Xmas 2009, I decided to split things up – the bleeding obvious after years of indecision. This blog – MichaelQuinn.com.au will be particularly directed at friends and family who just want to keep up with what myself, Fiona, Eliza and Jhett are up to. My new blog – MichaelQ.com.au will be my “personal” daily blog for whatever stuff happens to come along. I’ve also set up Down Under Geek as my tech blog – it’s been around for a while too but hopefully I’ll be using it a bit more in 2010. We’ll see.

As you can see I’ve changed the look of this site. Had a lot of fun the last week or so updating my skills with WordPress sites. After sifting thru themes I had bookmarked over the last couple of years, I ended up looking at about 40 of them and those were quickly shrunk down to a list of about 10 I’m using across about 6 sites.

I like the simplicity of this one, though I have modded it quite a bit. Added the FlickRrss feed you see on the left of the homepage, changed the navigation and a few bits down the bottom. Still would like to work on it a bit more but for now I’m done playing and its time to actually write stuff.

Hope you like the site – check out some of the others too.

All the best for 2010

She arrived 2 months premature. 30 weeks and 5 days. But she has been an amazingly strong little thing so far – was only on direct assisted breathing for 48 hours or so, and was breathing just air by herself after a few days. She will be in her incubator for a few more weeks and wont be home until around her original due date of July 23. But we go to the hospital several times a day to see / feed / care for her.

She is awesome.

She does have her own domain already at elizaquinn.com.au – but nothing is there yet. Soon.

I have started to post a few pictures of her on my FlickR site – flickr.com/photos/michaelquinn/ Not a lot so far but I am going through lots of them and doing a bit of a crash course on iPhoto 09. More soon.

Fiona is doing great – no problems at all. Dad is getting over the shock of it happening way before he was ready – but expects it won’t be the last time that happens.

Anyway. Will write more on it soon….

As always – big plans to blog more blah blah blah. Please follow me at twitter.com/michaelq Most of my ramblings come out there for now.

Shine on.

Had a lot of fun with it so far – definitely the big time sucking vortex it has the reputation for.  But after a couple of days finding friends and playing around with some widgets, its not so addictive.

Add me as a friend.

You can find / follow me here on Twitter – twitter.com/michaelq

I’ve heard about Twitter for around a year or more. It sounds a bit silly but once I tried it I really liked it. I find it a lot easier to throw up a quick Twitter on “what I am doing now” than compose a blog entry for some reason.

4 years of Blog – 17 entries give or take.
1 week of Twitter – 70+ entries and counting.

I’ve also found a lot of people using it in the same way. By following people who I normally read their blog or follow their website, I’m seeing a lot more small and interesting messages flowing through during the day. It’s like the little details to the big post at the end of the week.

I’ve posted my personal Twitter feed here on the site – the last 5 entries are listed at the top of the column on the right. At the bottom of the column I’ve got my feed which includes all the people I am following and comments etc – last 20 entries for that one.

Quick plug. Normally you can just go to your Twitter page to read / post Tweets. A great desktop application I’ve found is Twitterific which pops up when you have new tweets to read and also lets you make a post from it too. It’s normally free – an ad pops up now and then which you can pay $14.95 to get rid of. I’m trying to work out how to pay $15 for it and keep the ads as some have been useful and certainly not a pain.

Last couple of years I’ve been so busy with one thing or another – work, life, whatever else came along.

So I thought it was time to get back into writing more for myself – both here and on my other blogs like Down Under Geek and 360Mac. I’d like to be doing a bit more writing in one form or another. Jerry Pournelle says you need to write a Million Words before you can be a writer. He seems a smart man – no idea how to count them though.

Recently I’ve been going through all my old photos on my FlickR account. Nearly all of them had bad titles – usually the default image name off the camera like DC32453.jpg. Plus the tags were all a bit wrong, the descriptions weren’t very descriptive, needed to set up collections and sets. 3 years down the track I didn’t need all of the wedding photos on there anymore. So I went through and deleted most of them. Still lots on there from the wedding – but a better sample now.

Today I also added some new pics – hope to be doing that on a regular basis. We have lots of great photos on the iMac, need to share them. Put up a few today from the Wentworth Show, and a nice one of Fiona and Kellie we took last year.

Gotta (re)start somewhere. This seems a good place.

Michael

This site will be focused on tech news, my views and opinions in that area and whatever else fits.

Yes this is something that 1000+ other guys do but I really don’t care. I want to have my little slice of that too. It will let me keep this website a more personal one – any techy stuff I can indulge myself there. I know your supposed to have one blog you focus on – once again – don’t care. I’m going to be doing both.

I’m actually really excited to be getting Down Under Geek up and running. For the last 4 months I have been working my butt off to get all of my “old” projects – all of the things that I have saving that “round tuit” for. I promised myself I would get the old ones done first. Well they are all done and now it’s time to get into all the new projects I have been coming up with.

What’s next on the list? Well first I have to fill out DUG – a few stories I have been saving up. But after that – we shall see…

Been updating the website for my company – Mildura Internet. Site desperately needed an update. It was quickly put together last year when I first moved to Mildura. Didn’t mean it to last this long but being so busy this year with work I haven’t had time to update it.

Need to update Mildura Victoria next – another one I thought I would have gotten back to by now but haven’t. Fiona and I went to Adelaide last week for a weeks holiday. Stayed at the Grand at Glenelg which was very nice. Bit of indulgence works wonders. Had a great time catching with family and friends. And bought a few pressies for ourselves as well – iPod for myself and Fiona, new Motorola v620 phone for me, some books, clothes, some wine and cigars, new cigar lighter and cutter.

I’m hoping to get some photos up online in the next week or so. Took a heap of them in Glenelg and some came out really well. Also hoping to get a moblog up and happening with the mobile phone. That’s where I can take a photo with the mobile phone and get it up online asap. Might check it out this afternoon.

Got a digital TV tuner for the computer. Looks pretty good so far – ABC & SBS are great and I think (hope) WIN/9 and PRIME/7 are still testing their signal.

Enjoyed watching the cricket from India on Austar/Foxtel. Was brilliant being able to work at home, notebook in the loungeroom, watching the cricket. Love my job. Watching the NZ series now. Don’t think the Kiwi’s have much of a chance. The Pakistan tour could be good though.

Mum is a lot better now. Finally got herself on a course of anti-depressants to help her even things out. After 3 weeks of getting the dose up she is looking great now.

2 weeks to go before Dad retires. He is pulling stumps on Dec 6, 2004 – 50 years to the day that he first started work!

Awesome effort.

Work with the internet stuff has been very busy. Got a few websites to do locally – mostly from word of mouth which was cool. Didnt really have time to do them with all the other stuff I had planned but did them anyway. Good experience and the money was OK. Didnt take too much time.

Also been maintaining the Mildura BEA website as that happens, and also the Chamber of Commerce site. Started doing some major updates on that today – Members Directory, Forum, Committee page, advertising, and some other great ideas I have for the site. I nominated again for the committee and got on. Doing lots this year for planning for the next few years. Good stuff.

Built a vege patch in the back yard. When Fiona and I decided we were staying here in this house for another 12 months, I wanted to build a vege patch and make this place feel like home a bit. Plus its a good chance to have a trial run and make all the mistakes here. And somehow – after checking etc – we still managed to pierce the back sprinkler system underground. So now we have to use a manual sprinkler to water the back yard. Bit of a pain but wont be hard to fix. Got lots of tomatoes, capsicums, spring onions, carrots, corn and other stuff planted. The herbs from last year have virtually all come back to life and are firing along.

We have also set up curtains in the house to try to keep it a bit cooler over summer. That was fun – me and a drill attacking some walls :)

Bought a colour printer for fiona so she can print off some photos. Got a Canon i905D unit which is great. I am planning on organising a photo album online so I can post some other photos etc. Still got the Canon Ixus 400 camera but just waiting on replacement for Fuji F610 to upgrade.

Also built a new computer from scratch but thats another blog…

Putting together this weblog and my own site was all part of Michael Day. I also watched a couple (OK – three) episodes of The West Wing Series 2. I got the Region 1 Complete Season last week and this was the first chance I’ve had to watch
it a bit. Love watching the episodes with the writers / directors commentary.

Its been good to take a bit of a break from things and look after myself a bit.

Yesterday I decided to finally do my own website. I’ve had the domain name registered for almost 12 months and I’ve been using it for email since Christmas. But I have been too busy to sit down and create a website to go along with it. www.michaelquinn.com.au

This weblog will be my main website for entering thoughts and links and stuff. But I wanted something on that domain name that would be a bit of a summary with a link to here and a link to my work.