Robert’s Ramblings

It is not often, well not often enough 😉 , that I buy new toys but when I do I have a knack for doing it well! I have just become the proud new owner of a Sony NW-E005F MP3 player.

The interesting thing about this cool new gadget is that I did something I said I would never do and that is to buy a DRM ( Digital Rights Managed ) mp3 player. Well, enough pro’s finally outweighed the con’s and it hit my performance sweet spot so I now own a Sony DRM based player!

Firstly it’s a USB flash key with 2GB to play with and finally enough to at least keep me happy. Secondly, I can still put all of my favorite MP3’s, both music and podcasts. Last and just as important, it is absolutely beautiful both in visual design and in the user interface.

Sure it has its con’s but for now I will put up with them because it ROCKS!!!! 🙂

Most mornings I ride the bus into the office rather than compete for road space, parking and sanity with all the other motorists out there. I find this a wonderful chance to read and respond to mail or to catch up on other documents I am required to read. Most of us know that to do this we need a mail client which downloads, ie pop mail. But what about blogs! It is all well and good to read your favorite blogs at their respective websites but not so good when you are “on-bus” and not “on-line”.

Welcome to RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication”. Nearly all blogs and many websites now support a feature called RSS which allows you to subscribe to websites and blogs you are interested in. This in tern allows you to aggregate all of your RSS feeds into a single reader. This is pretty much like having your own custom news/magazine prepared for your every morning!!! Great for “on-bus” reading.

So go to Wikipedia and look up RSS and explore from there!!! …. oh and subscribe to my blog too!! 🙂

This week’s photo was taken back in January under Rapid Bay Jetty. Same time as my last photo, in wonderfully warm summer!

Perhaps now best known as the home of the Leafy Sea Dragon, Rapid Bay Jetty is a wonderful dive all of its own. The tall close packed pylons create a deep forest feel within which hundreds of schooling Yellowtail, Olds Wives and other fishes meander.

The old jetty is falling down now but the marine life does not mind one bit. Rumor has it that a facelift of sorts is in the pipline so keep an eye out for future developments.

Get down there and see for yourself just how fantastic a dive site we have here! 🙂

Douglas Adams once wrote, "Cleanliness may be next to Godliness but
tidiness is the the result of an S.E.P. Field".

Creativity in the office often goes hand in hand with a noted lack of
tidiness. There will always be those who make it their responsibility to keep a
sense of order and tidiness, to other’s, myself included, we are happy to make
it Someone Else’s Problem. So what happens if you work in an office
lacking an S.E.P Field? "CHAOENTRAPY"… The place where both chaos
and entropy eventually turn the office into a non-functional tip of boxes,
paper and broken equipment…

So today’s mission is to create a new office environment for everyone. One
which is not only functional, but self organising and regenerative. In short
the challenge is to embody the new space with its own S.E.P. Field so we can
all get back down to the business of being creative and messy again!

🙁 🙁 Sorry to all those who’s internet connection crashed and burned today trying to read my website. I had the main page forwarding on to itself via remote proxy bla bla bla….. The end result was that it not only brought the client to its knees but crashed my router and bumped my IP address. All fixed now, but oh the joys of running your own site! …Robert 🙂

This week’s photo was taken back in January under Rapid Bay Jetty. Ah, remember way back when the water was a balmy 22degrees! Jennifer was almost in tears the very first time she met one of these beautiful creatures. They still take my breath away even now…

Leafy Sea Dragons are actually quite common along all of South Australia’s more protected coastal waters. It’s just that they are so good at blending in with their surrounds. In my first 14 years of diving I had only seen two of these amazing dragons. In my last two I have seen 50 or more.

Popular locations to see Leafy Sea Dragons include Rapid Bay Jetty, Edithburgh Jetty, Wool Bay Jetty and The Bluff at Victor Harbor. So brave the cold, open your eyes and behold one of natures most extraordinary creations! 🙂

Ok, so who is the General and who is the young lady? Well in both cases you’d most likely be wrong and wrong! Well maybe the picture might just give a little clue!

For the last few months I have been fretting and imploring my Girlfriend to get new tyres for her 900S SAAB. The last straw came after realising she’d been driving around for a month on her spare because no tyre place would repair a flat tyre with bits of steel wire poking out from all directions! Being the typical male and a bit of a closet car enthusiast I decided to take matters into my own hands!

Hmm now, a set of decent tyres would set her back somewhere around six hundred for a new set of boring old R15 tyres to go on the OE steel rims. Ok, start shopping around for new rims! Ok, start shopping around for second hand rims due to severe financial constraints!! Oh, and make that a set of second hand rims with good tyres all for less than the cost of four new tyres. Ok, so now I had a goal! Why do we always turn the simplest of things into a challenge?

So, after much shopping around the prognosis was looking pretty grim. Does anyone ever part with SAAB wheels?? Ok, new angle, back to fundamentals and let’s look at the actual dimensions of bore, PCD, width and diameter. Oh look, Opel/Vauxhaul use the same dimensions on late model Astras and Calibras. Hmm, interesting. …. Well you get the picture so to cut a long story short I found her a beautiful set of 16″ Holden Astra alloy rims that fit just perfectly with good tyres to boot! There was even enough change left in the budget to pay for balancing, an alignment and even an evening out at a very nice restaurant!

So, the General’s wheel’s adorn the Lady’s body and just like my Girlfriend, she’s looking mighty fine indeed!! 🙂

This week’s photo is a semi-silhouette of a Grey-Nurse shark taken earlier this year. The location is Fish Rock, South West Rocks, NSW, Australia. This trip will be one of my most memorable ever. The site easily deserves it’s place in Austrlia’s top dive locations.



Just imagine being in a 20m deep gutter, 25m visibility and 40+ silent sentinels cruising up and down as if to guard the secret entrance to Fish Rock Cave. Yes the cave is something special too but really the entire site needs to be experienced for its sharks, rays and abundance of tropical and temperate life.

Plan to visit it at least once, expect to go back for more!!! 😉

I have just experienced a day of getting my crippled laptop back to life again. 😐 It’s no fun when you are trying to meet deadlines and fix your PC!

Finally I had to resort to reinstalling XP and my troubles went from bad to worse! XP refused to activate an promptly logged me off every time I tried to log in. It seems that as I had recently replaced both the motherboard and the hard drive, Microsoft refused to believe I was the legitimate owner of the XP license!

At least to their credit Microsoft were able to fix the problem over the phone but it took some time and a lot of numbers were involved! Ah Microsoft, You’ve Done It Again! 🙂

I have updated the links section in the on the left side bar to include all of Jennifer’s really cool stuff!! Please go have a look and make her day! 🙂