It was years since I last watched "My Left Foot", we watched it last night and it was as brilliant as ever. I have been busy in work so I haven't been able to update that much, I did manage a new favicon today 🙂 (A favicon is the icon that appears to the left of the url in the location bar.). I am still loving the IBook and have just installed Macromedia Flash MX and Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop so If time permits I should be churning out some quality graphics soon. All the work crew went out for our christmas dinner in the "The best Thai restaurant in Sydney" on Tuesday….. It was a really really nice meal and I am starting to really like Thai, apart from the whole stick a peanut sauce on it philosophy. I found today another Macromedia Product (a free one this time), Macromedia Central, a really neat cross platform web application framework, You even get a few bundled with the install, including an RSS Aggregator which seem to work well (not as well as Aggreg8 of course). I got some MP3's from Endas IPOD so my Iriver is now Jam Packed with nearly 2000 songs… should be wnough to keep me occupied on my train journeys…. anyway that's it for now :).

At last I win some dollars in Tab (bookies)… only about $20 mind you. For all you England haters out there 🙂 :). Result aside it was a thrilling match, a fitting final. I watched on a Huge Screen in the Rocks in Sydney with Thousands of English and Australian fans …. really good atmosphere.

On another note.. Happy Birthday to my Dad today (http://www.gerryroche.com)

My Ibook is the sweetest thing I have ever used. I have all the needed software installed now.

Browsers: Firebird (Default), Safari, Camino, IE (arghhh!!!!)
Email: Thunderbird (Default), Mail, Entourage.
Chat: iChat (AIM), MSN, ICQ, Chatzilla
Graphics: Photoshop, iPhoto, iResize
Dev: Zend Studio, BBEdit, XCode
Multimedia : iTunes, Audion, VLC, DVDPlayer, OggDrop
Others: Transmit (FTP), CandyBar (Icons), Adobe Reader
Office: MS Office V.X

And many more.

I am really really impressed with the iBook and Panther… i would recommend it to anyone.

Here i am with my first update from my brand new ibook…. woo hooo, this thing is sooo sweeeeet

Gill an myself went to the Blue Mountains for a long weekend last weekend. it was really really good and was great to get away from the city, We saw all the waterfalls, cliffs and went to see the Jenolan caves too. We also went horseriding for 3 hours (my muscles are still aching from it). I have a load of photos and i'll put the   when I get some time. The bed and breakfast (http://www.sheltonlea.com/) we stayed in was absolutely wonderful with our own ensuite and living area with gourmet breakfast served in our suite every morning.
We did have one problem though… the car rental. We rented a car from Apollo for 4 days and all was well, a nice car and a reasonable price. We got there on friday afternoon and drove about, all was fine. On saturday morning I noticed a leak coming from the engine, this turned out to be coolant leaking from the radiator. I rang apollo and was told to bring it to a garage to confirm the leak, which we did and it was confirmed. Apollo then went on to tell me to get it fixed and I would be refunded for the time without the car… my hoop. I asked for a replacement car to be sent out… no they don't do that. I couldn't get it fixed as it was saturday afternoon and only one garage was open but was closing soon (not to mention that garage wouldn't do it as they don't deal with rental companies as they never pay). Apollo could not offer any solution other than waiting till monday and getting the car repaired or to go back to sydney and get a new car… what a load of bullshit. I had had enough and rented another car from a company in the mountains (RediCar– excellent service). I had the RediCar until monday so on monday morning I rang Apollo to ask what they wanted me to do… again the same bullshit so i rang the RACQ (similar to AA) and got their car towed and got the train home. Apollo have the worst customer service I have ever had the displeasure of having to deal with….. Apalling. They will be receiving a letter of complaint from me demading full reimbursement for rental of the apollo car and the differnence i had to make up to rent the RediCar car and the train ticket too….. Never ever ever deal with Apollo folks.

My graduation was yesterday but understandably I couldn't go (As I am here in OZ). Well done to everybody.. Ste, Paddy, Donal, Rob, Ronan, Neil and all the others… :). I would have liked to have been there but alas, maybe i'll do a Masters just so i can go to the ceremony. So from now on you can refer to me as MR. Philip Roche BSC.
More Photos added to Gallery… "DreamWorld","The East Coast in a rented campervan" and "Life in Sydney" Albums.

First Off .. this is my 312th Blog Entry since January 19th 2002. Quite proud of that.
Second and more importantly .. I have ordered a 12" iBook. WooHooo. You might be wondering why I got a mac:

• It was cheap $2320(Euro 1412) for a fully spec'd notebook.
• Mac OSX (Panther) is based on Unix.
• Many of my favourite apps are available for mac: Firebird, Thunderbird, Zend Studio.
• OSX comes with X11 allowing apps like OpenOffice to be run.
• With the Fink Project (http://fink.sourceforge.net) , many Linux apps can be installed, KDevelop, Gimp, Gaim, Ximian Evolution, Apache and many more.
• I am bored of Windows and Mac is sure to keep me occupied .. during my changeover period anyway.
• I get Wifi (802.11g) on board and bluetooth too.
• It's small with a 12" screen and only weighs 2.2 kg.
• Battery life is superior to any other Notebook I have seen. Up to 6hrs.
• Finally … iBooks look amazing.

Full Specs:
Processor : 800Mhz G4
Ram: 384MB
Hard Disk: 40GB
Combo Drive: DVD/CD-RW
Connectivity:
56Kbps Modem
10/100 Lan
802.11g WLAN (Airport Extreme)
BlueTooth
2 * USB 2.0 ports
1 * Firewire port

There is also tons of software thrown in. Now you try anf get all that for Euro 1400…no chance. It should arrive in the next few days and then the fun begins. There is quite a large Wifi community in Sydney (http://www.sydneywireless.com/) so I am hoping that I can get some free internet acees in my area (doubtful but I can dream). I will have pics as soon as it arrives so watch this space.

Australia beat Ireland but we are still through to the quarter finals (I win $15 because of that, UPDATE : Turns out I would have won $32 but it seems the bookie placed the bet for ireland to win their group and not just to get to the quarter final 🙁 ). All the lads are there and it sounds like they are having a ball. I am in fear of my well being when they get back as Ken and Enda have a few weeks of re-educating me (supposedly I'm not one of the lads anymore ??). Oh Oh :(.

Finally ImageMagick was installed on the webserver so I can start putting new images on the Gallery. I have put all of the Australia Zoo (Australia Zoo Official site)ones up and a good few new East Coast ones. I'll be putting more up over the next few weeks, after work and during lunch… I still have 3cds to upload.

There is massive , that's MASSIVE, talk on the net about the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) 2003 currently going on in Los Angeles, I would love to be there, it sounds awesome. There is also huge talk about the the next release of  windows (codename longhorn) which isn't even out for a coule of years… Oh the Hype.. don't the people love hype.