whiskey_kitten’s Neighborhood

For reasons too confusing to understand the "Hello My Name is Jeff Vader" merchandise has been relocated to Printfection.com.

The move added a few dozen more items and in some cases lowered the pricing.

So it's that time of year again. I suspect I may be a little earlier than usual, but if I am I lay it at the feet of the Royal Mail who have me in all of a tizz trying to work out how late I can send Christmas presents to Australia without strike action meaning they won't arrive till March or something.

So the usual applies - this is intended to guide those who want to give me a present but have no clue where to start - it's not intended to beg for gifts from anyone who didn't intend that thought when they came here! It's a long list for the simple reason that I like Christmas to be full of surprises and a long list gives more scope for surprise. I've also tried to include a variety of budget- and long-distance-post-friendly options so you should find something appropriate here - if not, feel free to deviate and invent - hopefully this should give you a few ideas.

If you do decide to send me something from this list, please email djelibeybi what you've chosen, to avoid possible doubling-up. If you don't have his email, let me know :-)

(Sorry it's a little half-baked - one of the problems of blogging a list like this on your iPod on the tube is you can't look anything up and I'm past my bedtime now)

So without further ado, here we go!

Vefa's Kitchen - Phaidon's big Greek cookbook Thank you, Buffygirl!

Hummingbird Bakery cookbook

Le Creuset Poterie lasagne dish in red or red-orange
Le Creuset Poterie ramekins or mini casserole dishes w lids - 6 for pref in red or red-orange but 2 would make a perfectly acceptable start

Amazon vouchers *again* - I think this is the third year in a row that these have been in here and still no takers *sigh*

Book of David Hockney UK paintings from Tate shop (when I get a chance, I'll hunt out the actual name of it. Big book. It's got all his Yorkshire paintings in it, including the ones he's started doing which are a combination of photos and painting)

CD: Nico Muhly  - Mothertongue

Camera - Canon G11 or Panasonic Lumix TZ-7 (I think - need to double-check the Lumix number. Will do that this weekend. I doubt there'll be a rush for this one in the next couple of days though...)

An original artwork by Simone O'Callaghan - I've always wanted one of her prints and her prices are ridiculously reasonable. Ask djeli if you need her email address.

Wooden knitting needles - interchangeable ends circular set (link will come when there's time...)

Row counter

Shoulder massage device - something designed to remove tension knots, not just feel nice. I would love you forever if you can really find something that will take out knots. Doubly so if it will fit tidily into a handbag.

Colinette chunky yarn - yah. yummy stuff. can't remember the name (see earlier note re: weekend)

Sock knitting books! There's a couple of them, but (again), I'll need to look them up

2 skeins Koigu sock yarn - so can actually make socks with it this time (one skein per foot, in case you're not a knitter and you're wondering - can't get a whole pair out of one skein!)

Artists' sketchbooks book

iTunes voucher (must be in ££s though - AuD can't be used in the UK store) - lots of little digital helpers I'd like to get - the full version of Karajan ear training for a start!

... and if all that's not enough, there was a lot left over from last year's list too - anything not formatted with strikeout is fair game :-)

Just happened: A guy walked in my office with a small box and says:
Guy: Can I leave this here for Dr Williams?
Me: I don't know Dr Williams.
Guy: For Doc-tor-Will-iams
Me: I don't know Dr Williams
Guy: He's a professor.
Me: I don't know him.
Guy: Dr Williams.
Me: No, I don't know him.
Guy: Are you sure?
Me: Never heard of him.
Guy: I thought this was his office?
Me: No, but it is my office.
Guy looks at the name on the door.
Guy: Do you know where Dr Williams office is?
Me: I don't know Dr Williams.
Guy: Where should I leave this package?
Me: In his office?
Guy: Do you know where that is?
Me: I've never heard of him.
Guy: Maybe I am on the wrong floor, isn't this 418?
Me looking at the number on door: No, it's 223
Guy walks out.
This building only has 3 floors.. *sigh*

i've suspected awhile that i'm a very picky individual. today i think i have confirmed it. i've been looking at online accounting packages. my issue is that i have myob accounting plus for windows. i've had it for years, and it's been pretty good. i went for accounting plus because i wanted the ability to track stock of scores (which i've never had a need for) and for time tracking, but that came with a bunch of payroll rubbish, and i haven't upgraded since about 2003 because they've never implemented multi-currency support (or hadn't when i checked a couple of years back. i've stopped bothering to look) and i didn't need all the super-dooper payroll calculations that seemed to be the only true upgrades in the rather pricey package. the real issues with what i have are that:

1. it's windows-based, so i have to get at it via parallels, which is simple, but slow, so i avoid it
   
2. it offers way more features than i need and then i get confused
3. because i don't use it often, i go through a steep learning curve every time trying to remember where to put stuff, and - most heinous of all -
   
4. it draws its currency based on the system currency, so i can't even have one account for australian dollars and one account for pounds - it's all of one or all of the other. and it drives me nuts working with my uk finances with $$$ everywhere

so yes, i'm picky, but because it has so many issues and i'm avoiding using it, i'm really not in control of my finances (slim as they are, but that's all the more reason to understand them) and am always horrendously behind with working out stuff like, y'know, tax and invoices and things.

so today i went a-hunting for an online app that would help me out. something to manage my personal finances, at least in the uk, preferably in australia too (hey, i'm not unreasonable - i don't expect it to do everything!), although with the acknowledgement that separate accounts might be best for maintaining separation between the two (because i lodge tax returns there and here - must look into what i can do to stop that). ideally i'd like to be able to shift my own australian business finances into the australian part and generate invoices, pay bills and whatnot and produce the reports that my accountant needs. and i need it to preferably be free or at least cost seriously minor ducats - i don't earn that much in a year and the aim here is to at least get a grip over my finances, not work my way to a vast fiscal empire. so i've been ahunting and i've found it particularly interesting noting what is disqualifying all these services, none of which seems to be quite right. it's a learning experience - and especially from a web design perspective - that i think will be valuable for djeli's and my super-secret project which we're working on right now. so i thought i'd inflict what i found on you, dear reader. sorry about that. you can stop reading, you know.

• free agent central: fantastic support for UK finances, import and easy categorisation of bank statements, at-a-glance charts, money owed/owing, etc., subscribable calendar of tax due dates (nice touch!) and on-the-fly calculation of tax due. even a nice little page for working out one's self-assessment tax return which looked like it would help do away with the accountant a little. but: minimum £15 a month - ouch! £150 a year gives a nice little discount, but is way, way way out of my budget. free 30-day trial is nice, but pointless if the monthly fee is beyond me. sad about that
  
• freshbooks: i've heard quite a bit about this one, but it looks very US-centric, couldn't find any indication that it supported UK requirements at all
• curdbee: great-looking service, nice site, seems easy to use, multi-currency support - set your base currency then you can set each customer's currency individually (nice!). free account does almost everything except estimates, pro account only $5 a month, so eminently affordable. but it doesn't do banking, only invoicing, so doesn't help with tracking the overall state of my finances.
• mint.com: i had high hopes of this one - all about budgeting and so on, but seems to be US-only. i guess you might be able to use it if you entered everything manually, but that would just be stupidly painful. shame. they have an iphone app and everything :-(
  
• workingpoint: looked quite good... until i found that it auto-generates a public profile for you (why??) which put me off a bit... and then i discovered that it's US-only which wiped it entirely
• openair.com: i was interested in my initial reaction to this which went: 'eugh! ugly site. omg they've used the word "solutions"! this ain't for me'. so i gave it a moment and analysed. the ugliness of the site destroyed any hope i might have had that the user interface would be clean and easy to use - it was cluttered with banner ads and hard to read. 'solutions' is a word i associate with high-end corporate business - definitely not for me. even when i made myself stop and look closely at the site to try to find information about the product i wanted, i actually had trouble. the solutions page did list their various levels, but the pricing page just said to contact them. poa? no thanks!
• saasu.com (formerly netaccounts): another messy site. hard-to-read navigation is never a good way to start. i got excited when i saw the 'use it free' button, but alas it was a red herring - the free account only allows 15 transactions a month - who thought that one up? the next level up is $AU25 per month - about £12, which is still a bit steep. multi-currency is supported but you have to pay an extra $10 a month for that... no chance. shame. i like supporting the australian option in software, but not for that kind of outlay.
• easybill: well, that was kind of expected: invoicing only.
• blinksale: likewise
• iggsoftware.com: at first i was put off by this. it's not a web service, which was what i was hoping for - they do mac apps, plus the layout of the site has the app iBiz (invoicing and time-tracking) larger than iBank (finance management) so i didn't even register that the latter was there for a moment. then i didn't like the idea of separate apps, but on revisiting the site, iBank could well be an option for me. for $59.99 it's a modest-ish outlay, no ongoing fees. nice that it has an iphone app; annoying that you need mobileme to run it. it does multiple currencies, but doesn't seem to do invoicing at all... i guess that's why they do iBiz, but why not integrate them? feels messy... and from what i can see from their forums, some users are feeling this too. intrigued, but hesitant. i like the idea of being able to track my banking both here and in aus from the one place...
• lessaccounting: this one looks pretty good, but the pricing and signup page is vague at best about what you get with the free account ("limited use of invoices & expenses, accounting reports") but it's made clear that bank accounts aren't available until you pay $20 a month. so cheaper than the others, but still more than i'm willing to pay for something that doesn't do everything (it can't support bank accounts in more than one currency, although it supports multi-currency invoicing) but it's probably on the consideration list.
  
• liquidaccounts: another ugly, hard-to-read website. far too much information in all-caps, making it hard to read. oh, except for the bit about £15 a month plus vat. after that what it did was pretty much irrelevant.

so that's twelve options, no sale. but i've narrowed it down to a shortlist at least, consisting of free agent, ibiz/ibank and lessaccounting. if anyone knows any alternatives, i'm raring to keep testing!

update: an addition to the list, but not, i fear, the shortlist: jumsoft money for mac. it has all the functionality, but unfortunately lacks finesse, so you can't link transactions together (withdrawal from one acct to a deposit in another, or a withdrawal from a bank account to pay off a loan account) plus it doesn't export proper accountant reports, but it's a nice start on an accounting app - give it a few more years and it could be a real contender. so heigh ho. back to the drawing board.

another update: found another 4 options. quicken online is actually free(!) and while information about things like multiple currencies was limited, i figure i might as well sign up and see what they had... but their registration will only accept a US postcode and wouldn't let me leave the field blank, so that one's out of the running. geezeo hides all but the most high-level info about their service inside videos. i couldn't be bothered sifting through them and frankly it all sounded a little mickey mouse. perhaps this is lame and i should be pursuing these sorts of things further, but really - there are so many products out there, if they can't be bothered to differentiate themselves, then i can't be bothered to waste time on them. sorry. next! buxfer has the benefit of providing, nice and upfront, a demo version of the site - don't read about it, have a wander! it looks pretty nice, but there are no tooltips that i can see on the buttons (in firefox) which means the interface would take me too long to learn. and finally wesabe, which looks like it could be quite good but they seem focused on the community aspect of their service, which is something that doesn't interest me in the slightest. i'm testing ibank at the moment, and so far am pretty impressed with it! pretty straightforward, easy to import data, categorise it and do things like pay off loans that aren't using regular payments (e.g. family loans), and it seems their iphone offering has been updated so that mobileme is no longer a requirement for syncing. we could have a winner?

whoops. just trawling through the facebook backlog while i wait for very large, very slow files to upload and discovered that back in april i was tagged by not one of my friends, but two of them for this meme. guess that means i should do something about it :-) and now you should too, eh? consider yourself tagged!

alcohol: lyme bay blackcurrant wine
believe in god?: yup
chocolate: hotel chocolat. i don't think i need to be more specific than that, but if you insist, this season's must-have chocolate is their strawberry & mint cream, enrobed in vanilla-ey white chocolate. i don't think 'enrobed' is too strong a word for this one.
d&d character: pass. the closest i'd get to this is the cyberbunny
eggs: omelette with ham, cheese, chives and a few little mushroom slices
food: greek. or french. or italian. something simple, no cumin.
gemstone: peridot
hairdresser: vicky at vidal sassoon
icecream: pine-lime splice
jeans: m&s bootcut (cos they do a short leg-length so i never need to get them taken up!)
karaoke choice: last thing i sang at karaoke was mika's 'grace kelly'. whether that was something people would want to hear again, i don't actually know.
i want 100Mb Internet access to my home: no. i NEED 100mb internet access to my home. especially right now when i've been waiting about 4 hours for this wretched file to upload
left or right handed: right
music: oh do i have to answer this one? too bloody hard. today have been listening to delius and grechaninov. oh and lots and lots of rowley while i write this film score :-D
nationality: australian with aspirations to become british as well
operating system: os x. never thought i'd write that one.
perfume: ck one
my mp3 player is a: red ipod nano. well, they call it red; it's sort of pinkish really.
quest: fame and fortune
rant: lack of support for proper tagging of classical music
seafood: not really. prawns are ok. i prefer fish.
twitter: tweetdeck
uncontrollable urge to: not have a dayjob
vice: twitter
what i wear to work: pyjamas
x-men character: wolverine
yesterday i: worked on a film score, watched warren beatty and ben kingsley in bugsy, ran a sound test on digital sound file formats (we're sticking with mp3 because the sound improvement of lossless over max-quality mp3 isn't enough to justify the effort of converting our 700+-album soundfile collection) and ripped 15 cds
zodiac sign: aries

i'm sending out a question for anyone who does web dev work, or who closely follows trends in web interface development (not the behind-the-scenes stuff). i find myself in the position of quietly creeping up on a time when i will need to go forth and find a new dev contract... and the realisation suddenly dawned on me that i actually haven't worked *as* a web dev in over a year now, because my last contract, while having web-devvy elements, consisted of masquerading as an "e-learning technologist". (Edit: I should probably say that I have more than a decade's solid coding experience, so I don't need to learn the basics, just to update my skillset a bit)

of course, i keep an eye on the web standards' group's marvellous "links for light reading", i browse magazines and regularly peruse a truckload of webby blogs, but right now i need to give myself a little refresher course - and i'm being overwhelmed by the information on what's happened in the last year, so i ask you:

1. what new technologies/skills/approaches from about the past 18 months do you think are the most important?
2. what are you most commonly asked for (e.g. ajax, css3, mobile web, whatever)?
3. which dev blog could you not live without?
4. if you read any paper dev magazines, what are they?
5. what, if any, webby book or article changed the way you think or work in the past year?

any and all responses will be leapt upon with delight and a thirst for knowledge :-)

finally, i have finished flim-flamming around and made a big decision. it involves technology purchases, and that is always an exciting sort of decision to make. recently i've been fretting about mobile phones. i want the iphone because it's gorgeous and does everything i want it to (and all my friends have them now too and spend their time comparing apps and i feel left out), but it's useless for the art project i'm working on because it doesn't support flash. so i have to buy another phone sometime for the art project and was looking at android, but that's still too immature and as the project won't really get off the ground for a few months, if i'm realistic (because my collaborator and i need to talk about what we're going to do again now because our last plan was crushed by her phd supervisor, so we need to plan and think before we even start to code and test), it's probably more sensible to look at phones for testing closer to the time we'll be doing the actual testing, to give android a chance to show what it can do. i had been going to buy a netbook for when i go back to work, in the hopes that then i could actually continue to compose through the period of servitude, but i'm concerned about weight, now that i've discovered that my neck is showing signs of greater-than-usual-for-my-age wear and tear and that one of the discs is bulging out of place a bit and getting close to a nerve. so last night i sat down and made up a big table in evernote discussing the pros and cons of all the various devices under consideration, which was a very interesting exercise and i am delighted to announce that the winner is...

ipod touch!

it has all the functionality of the iphone except the actual phone and the camera, for about the same initial outlay (but of course without the phone plan) and not having a plan attached leaves me free, if need be, to get a phone on a plan when the time comes to pick out a testing phone. it's significantly lighter than a netbook and more subtle for new contracts where one might not necessarily want to sit down in sight of one's co-workers at lunchtime with a computer when they could get concerned that you're trying to do two contracts at once or something. it has wifi access. and a truckload of apps - my productivity tools all have iphone/pod apps, plus i discovered some fabulous looking apps for music last night - a keyboard one which allows access to a full piano keyboard which you play with your fingers - should be useful for confirming intervals, working on melodic fragments and multi-touch allows you to play chords too, which would be very helpful. there's also an amazing-looking ear training app which would be incredibly helpful for me. and of course you can get metronome and tuner apps too, as well as a rudimentary notation tool (although it doesn't play back yet, which i think makes it a little limited for now). if i put on my prophet hat, i do feel that if the major notation packages, finale and sibelius, end up making versions for a mobile platform, it'll most likely be the iphone/pod, plus of course there's always the chance that apple will release a version of logic, and there's no way that would be available on anything else.

so i have made my decision. now i just have to try to hold myself back until i have a job. or at least the prospect of a job. or at least am looking for a job. um.

Just a quick post to add images of the new house. Started moving stuff in, changed all the locks on both doors and the garage, have prepared half of the walls for repainting already; and I will finish the rest of them today. Cleaned the kitchen, installed a dehumidifier and replaced several cracked switch plates. Seems to be a problem when people use a power screw driver or drill to tighten the screws on them.

BANGKOK (AP) - Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room and is believed to have committed suicide.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby.

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill."

Reposted from: iWon.com 

Times they are a changing... for me at least. Just finalized my closing date on my new/future home. Seems like every time I speak to my Realtor, or the current owners of the home, my closing date or my property custody date keeps moving up. As it is right now I will be a home owner on June 12th, and over 2000 sqft of living space!

Anyway, this will be my new place:

I will post better bigger images once I have the keys (and garage door openers) in hand. I will have three bedrooms and plenty of room to actually have studio space, and MAYBE a home theater, because EVERYONE NEEDS one of those.

Let the packing begin.