with apologies to Clement Moore.

twas january 1st
and all through the house
not a creature was stirring
not even a mouse

the kids were still snuggled
asleep in their beds
late nights and much walking
had addled their heads

we olds were enjoying
a morning of peace
the dogs werent yet barking
no-one on the streets

we pondered again
how our plans went awry
for a hot spicy midnight
under fireworked sky

the odds had seemed good
that the kids would be dozy
near midnight, allowing us
time to get cosy

but alas, they’re now teens
with parties to go to
one under the bridge
another the zoo

we couldnt enjoy
the bottle of moet
we had to stay sober
til all were home safely

one came home quickly
1 am’s not too bad
but as expected a call came
could we get a lift home dad?

and they were all starving
mcdonalds was full
new years resolution broken
to eat healthy food

we tucked in to hotdogs
as 2am beckoned
not quite what the plan was
their dad and i reckoned

but january 1
has a night of its own
we claimed it as our night
and partied at home.

My favourite Christmas present this year was from my youngest son.

He likes to make things (especially if it doesn’t cost anything). And also leaves things to the last minute. So on Christmas Eve afternoon he was running around, trying to find a blank CD at home. He didn’t say what for. I didn’t suspect anything.

I couldn’t find one, so he disappeared back into his room, and played with his laptop a bit more. Stayed up late.

On Christmas Day (after finally getting out of bed at 09:30!)  he showed me what he’d made.

A powerpoint presentation set to music, of lots of loving, kissing pictures. Mostly free pictures with watermarks that he’d downloaded from Google, they were soppy pictures like Minnie and Mickey mouse kissing.

At one point the music got out of sync, so he improvised on the spot, republished it without sound, and played the music direct from his iTunes account. Very resourceful.

But I couldn’t get over the fact that he had done for fun, what they had been paying me to do at work last week, synchronising sound (and voiceovers) to powerpoint presentations.

(Yes, his copy is legal. I bought him the student version of Office for his Mac, as thats what they use at school).

We should subcontract to him – its much better than waiting for the local papershop to give him the paper-run, after 2 years of  being on the waiting list and then seeing them advertise the next street  (Cumberland  Newspapers – you are sooo disorganised!).

I went into his room yesterday (you have to be brave), and he was there on his laptop, with two other laptops next to him. “I fix things”  he said. Although the fan problems on the Lenovo were beyond him, and the battery problems on the Thinkpad. But he happily wiped them, to use them as backups.

Scott, you’ve got a great future ahead of you in IT.

Just having a look into easy slideshows for WordPress. The mother would be the NextGen Gallery, at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/, however there’s a simple cut-down version that does the job at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-gallery-slideshow/.

This only took a few minutes to find and install. Getting the images the same size, formatted nicely, might take a little longer, but it’s all that most people would need.

These pictures of Spike are about 2-3 years apart.

Interesting though – a few minutes after installing and using the plugin, it self-deactivated.  The slideshow.php file was suddenly empty. Even after having seen it work once. Reuploaded it, upgraded WordPress, and all seems fine, but….  see how it looks tomorrow.

Driving home from Woolworths (not game to use home delivery), I saw the corner hairdresser was open, and grabbed a haircut. And said I’d give him a plug for doing such a good job:
David and Sasha, 52 Avenue Rd Mosman. He doesn’t have a website yet, or else I’d plug it. Anyway.

Before (Note the cousin IT glasses)

And this is after:

All neat!

Didn’t he do a good job?

I finally have my new site about online shopping in Australia ready. It’s called MyOnlineShops.

It’s a replacement for the shopping site that I lost last year, when the domain renewal email went to an old address I wasn’t using any more. Someone quickly grabbed it, as it had a great ranking at Yahoo, and solid PR, and then offered to sell it back to me for $800. No thanks. I did the work for that once, so he won’t get any profit from me. And it no longer ranks anywhere useful.

MyOnlineShops was completely created with Drupal, an open source Content Management System. I didn’t have to do any code at all – it is pure core Drupal, a large number of contributor modules, and CSS. OK, maybe 10 minutes of html for the page layout, moving a few things around from the default layout.

I obviously have a thing about My…. websites. This is my third, after MyDogSpace and MyDogSite.

The reason for calling it MyOnlineShops, is that it lets me (and free members), create my own list of favourites, have my own shopping blog, my own profile, and make my own reviews and comments on shops I’ve used.

I’m still busily adding more online Australian shops, but feel welcome to suggest any missing ones through the contact form on the site.