stuart midgley

Just finished educating myself about XHTML and CSS - thoroughly recommend the book ‘Head First HTML with XHTML and CSS’ for anyone else trying to understand the underpinnings of web design.

In celebration I’ve given this tumble blog a new theme. The old one has been in use since I first signed up, nearly two years ago now. It’s also amazing to see how far tumblr has come - at that time there were only a dozen themes to choose between, now they have hundreds.

Now, all I’ve got to do is learn basic programming, then learn the popular server and client-side languages, and then I can finally relaunch my business website!

Should all happen by 2015…

I made the most of the fine weather we had this week and got out into the Royal National Park.

Leaving my motor scooter at Wattamolla car park I headed south along the Coast Track to the broken, rocky inlet of Curracurrang. A hidden gem there is the natural waterfall-fed swimming pool about 200m upstream of the cove. Delightfully cold, yet the water cascading down the waterfall is warm from the heat of the sun-exposed rocky stream bed above.

I’ve seen up to a dozen Water Dragons at this swimming hole in the past, sometimes sunning themselves on the flat rocks that people swim off but mostly inhabiting the shelves of the waterfall rock-face.

This time, as I sat reading my book quietly in the shade for an hour, one particular dragon got very curious about this strange creature sitting on her rock, so she slowly proceeded to get closer and closer to investigate. By the end of the hour she was sitting only eight inches away from my face as I lay on my towel, peering into my eyes and watching me watching her.

Eventually I continued my walk south to Curracurrong and the spectacular cliffs and waterfall at Eagle Rock, before a hard slog up the hill over the Curra Moors Trail to the main road and a return to the carpark.

An adult echidna, cliffs, ocean, native flora… click on any of the following photos to see the full gallery. Enjoy!

My business, AEA, has grown enough that the time to leave the spare bedroom at home has come!

The spare room has served me well since February 2008 - although of late it has gotten altogether too crowded for comfort! Stock in cartons everywhere, two desks jammed in, several bookcases of files and catalogues and a big rack of hanging stock in the corner. Also, too many customers and deliveries are now coming to the house each week; a more professional look is required.

After several weeks of searching for suitable premises (and there isn’t much out there at the entry level, let me tell you) I found a newly-refurbished building in Marrickville that ticked all the right boxes.

It’s cheap, clean, carpeted, well lit, solid brick construction, the landlord is friendly and - bonus - the old air conditioner in the window still works. A lease was duly signed, phone and internet connections are underway and the moving day is fixed for this coming Friday. (Try and have friends with utes if you can - it makes life much easier!).

It’ll be sad to say goodbye to the old office after almost two years. Still, onward and upwards!

I sure am looking forward to working in air conditioning this summer.

The 33rd America’s cup has been bogged down in legal challenges for the last two and half years but both sides have been building ever bigger boats in preparation for the eventual one-on-one showdown that everyone knows is coming.

The American challengers - Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison’s BMW Oracle Racing Team - built a 90 foot long carbon-fibre trimaran only to be outdone by the Alinghi team’s 90 foot super-lightweight catamaran two months ago.

Yesterday BMW Oracle struck back, unveiling the largest hard wing sail ever seen. 53 metres tall. Exotic composite materials. And the speed… yesterday they puddled around San Diego harbour… pushing 30 km/hr in 12 km/hr winds.

Today they took her offshore for the first time. These are the photos. Check out the one below that shows a crew member half-way up the wing for scale.

Holy crap.

My small business has grown to the point where the processes I started off with are getting annoyingly cumbersome. Manually copying information from our contacts database into our sales and accounts software for each sale, accessing product information from printed materials, supplier catalogues and online websites… the busier we get, the longer it takes.

So the search is on for a good, all-encompassing software system that will cover all area of our business operations - in short, an ERP system.

And what a revelation this process is to me. Business software is complex, difficult to install, takes a long time to customise to the needs of any particular business and, in the case of commercial packages, damned expensive.

Examples of failed ERP implementations are everywhere. $100 million law suits from major companies against their ERP vendors (such as SAP or Oracle) seem not uncommon, and smaller companies seem to be avoiding the whole area as much as possible.

When I said all this to a good friend (a software engineer) he simply replied, “Welcome to software”.

I’m proceeding very carefully.

- Sailing has started again. The opening regatta for the summer season was held last Saturday. A non-pointscore race, with a pursuit start. Our yacht, being known as fast, was given a crippling 54 minute handicap - in a 2 hour race! Needless to say, we didn’t do very well. Serious racing starts in two weeks time, Friday night twilight racing (for all those friends I’ve promised a ride to) starts in October.

- Business: software development is fun hell. Trying to create an integrated DB system for tracking my accounts, sales, stock, contacts, customers, payments and supplier stock information. Success is not assured. Grey hairs are.

- Motorbike: finally repaired, after 3 months in the workshop. Still being held by Aprilia as we are now in dispute over who should pay. Arguing over who pays for the damage - acceptable wear and tear or fundamental design fault? I say one, they say the other.

- Travel: Had a quick four days in Auckland two weeks ago, for a family birthday party. The Great-Aunt celebrated 95, so all and sundry attended. Nice to see family, also found time to wrangle two sails with boats at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Photos will follow.

Saturday dawned clear and bright… which was a good thing too, as I had organised a motorcycling run down through the Royal National Park with two friends who had just gotten their L-plates.

It was a great day, the run through the park was fantastic - Gymea Lillies abounding, birds tweeting and the sun and shade making fantastic patterns on the road. Heaven!

The photos are of myself, Joanne and Andreas.