Yeah that thing that makes all life on this planet even possible.

No, I haven’t become some sort of vampire. Or mogwai (I’m not quite that cute).

No, my fears about the sun are based more on things like:

“A strong wave of charged plasma particles emanating from the Jupiter-sized sun spot, the most powerful seen in four years” – Huge solar flare jams radio, satellite signals: NASA

The size of freaking Jupiter people!

Ok, so you might be thinking: Sure Scott, that’s pretty big, but so what?

Problem is that those waves of charged plasma particles cause all sorts of havoc when they hit our little planet. The Earth’s ionosphere does its best to block these storms, and ends up funneling most of it to the North and South Pole (which causes the aurora borealis).

Now the aurora borealis is beautiful and all. I would like to see it in person one day.

But they are symptoms of huge amounts of radiation from the sun slamming into the earth’s “shield”. And it turns out that earth’s shield does an admirable, but not entirely effective job.

As a result you get disruptions to electrical power grids, radio, electronics (anything with a circuit board) and satellite communications (including GPS).

Now imagine your day today without any of the above. No radio. No GPS. No Satellite TV. No iPhone. Oh yeah, and no power.

Eh, you might be thinking, I’ve had to do that before. No biggy.

Ok so then, maybe imagine the next few weeks or months like that. And not just for you. Everyone around you. Potentially whole countries of people.

Bit of a different story now? Imagine the social chaos.

I’ve done a lot of reading on this topic. Watched documentaries. Makes me want to go into survivalist mode and start putting away food and making preparations for life without electricity. Read NASA’s Severe Space Weather – Social and Economic Impacts report, and you might too.

If you’ve purchased Yankee Candle brand jar candles, you’ll know that they cost an arm and a leg.

So when I had a Yankee Candle jar candle with an entirely defective glass jar (no seriously, look at the picture), there was no way that I was just going to throw it out, and there was also no way that I was going to light it so that it could spew its molten love wax all over the place…

Initially, I thought… Mmmm, this is the perfect job for the Handy Man’s ultimate – DUCT TAPE! But the crowds of uncouth heathens shouted me down, and I was forced to come up with a better, more destructive alternative. Damn. Luckily, I had a spare jar from a spent candle. So I went to work on my fallback, and I might add… devious plan…. transplant one candle into the jar of another…

Step one involved a hammer (and quite frankly was the most fun and satisfying step).

Once I had beaten up all the defective glass, and peeled it away (with only minor wounds suffered by yours truly), I was left with a amusingly naked candle.

Which was unfortunately, too girthy to fit into the glass jar of the expended one that I had intended to use as its replacement vessel. Bugger.

So then, out came the serrated knife and Step Two (which happens to be the second most fun and satisfying step of the whole process) – trimming the excess body fat.

Once the candle was taught and trim, I was FINALLY able to get it into the spent jar. And viola a brand new candle is born.

It’s alive… its ALIVE!

All part of the blurb describing Dark Fall: The Journal, a point and click adventure game that I was playing last night.

The should have added “A pissy PDA.” to that blurb as well.

You play the brother of an architect whom is redeveloping an, as you soon discover, haunted hotel and train station. He leaves you a troublesome voice mail, and filled with fear for your sibling, you rush off to help him.

But he is nowhere to be found. *cue spooky music*

After bumbling around for a bit you do stumble across his PDA. Fiddling around with it you get this error message (click for a larger version):

Perhaps he didn’t meet a grisly end at the spectral hands of some nasty otherworldy spooks after all…

If his PDA knows what it is talking about, maybe his debt collectors finally caught up with him.

A baby inside the yellow bell pepper (capsicum) that I was cutting up for dinner is not something that I had expected to see that evening. Click the image for a bigger version.

Related posts:

1. Pretty Sky

Meet Romeo -Click For Larger-

Meet Romeo. He is the new cat in the house, and I have to admit that I am already smitten, having known him for less than four hours.

He’s a fairly standard male short haired black cat with white splotches on his chest, throat, chin, belly and each of his paws.

But its not his physical characteristics that draw me to him.

It’s his personality.

The moment I picked Romeo up, he embarked upon a non-stop program of rubbing, purring, making biscuits in my shirt, and general cutes-y-ness. It was like he was auditioning for a part he knew that he could nail.

After the first few times he bonked his head against my chin, I was sold.

Welcome Romeo.

Wait, You Bought A Box of Communion Wafers, And WHAT!?

In an unusually funny collision of buying habits and technology, Amazon.com makes a social comment on some portion of the community. I’d like to think its was an error, or perhaps some snarky developer pulling a quick one over us while giggling and showing his friends. But what if it isn’t?

Take a look at this product in a screenshot from Amazon (click on the thumbnail to see the larger image).

Its a box of Communion Wafers. Not exactly bestseller material, granted, but it does have an unusual distinction that you probably wouldn’t expect from a box of Communion Wafers.  Take a look at the section “Customer’s Who Bought This Item Also Bought”.

Related posts:

1. Ecommerce Internal-Only Product Management Interface

Inevitably, when I look, I’m not moved by what I see. I don’t know if its the fact that I have been seeing the sky for the past 37 or so years of my life, or that I have been spoiled by amazing graphics on computer games (eg. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) or the special effects in movies (eg: Avatar in IMAX 3D), or even, believe it or not, gorgeous scenery (too many to mention).

It’s kind of sad really. I feel like I might be missing out on something. That maybe I am not able to appreciate the subtlety of beauty that may be laying all around me, if I would only just look up with new eyes.

Recently, it happened again.

“Look at that pretty sky”

Like many of the times before, I looked.

And like many times before I didn’t really see anything that grabbed me. I tried looking harder, and maybe this is where my problem is – I look too hard.

Perhaps if I can just relax, maybe I will start seeing better.

I took a resigned sigh.

Turned to my right.

And I saw the pretty sky.

A shot of the sky heading out to Farmersville, TX, USA -click for larger version.

Related posts:

1. Hello Romeo!
2. Pregnant Bell Pepper (Capsicum)!

Union Workers Credit Services Merchandising Interface Main Menu

This is the main menu for the Merchandising interface where the user can determine the function that they want to perform. The ‘planner’ design stems from the fact that the head of the Merchandising department always seems to be carrying around an overstuffed real life version, and it made for a good way to lay out a menu system. [View Larger]

Union Workers Credit Services Merchandising Interface Add A Product Menu

This interface is one of the functions and allows the user to add a new product. Unfortunately, what is half chopped out of this screenshot is the power button on the monitor – when moused over the power indicator changes from green to red, and when clicked it returns the user to the main menu (shown above). [View Larger]

Related posts:

1. Release of the Redesigned Chapman Data Services, Inc. Website

Screenshot of the redesign for chapmandata.com

I’ve just released the re-design of the Chapman Data Services, Inc. website that I co-designed, and developed with Rob Busby. I am very happy with the end results – a huge improvement over the previous site that I inherited from the previous web developer. I would appreciate it if you took a moment to check it out, and if you have any feedback, I would be happy to read it.

Related posts:

1. Ecommerce Internal-Only Product Management Interface
2. Would You Build A House Without A Plan? Why Your Web Developer Shouldn’t Either.

I have known both of them through my work with EVXLabs (I co-designed, and developed their website) for some time. Brent I have known pretty well – being a foreigner (South African), like me (Australian), it was easy to bond over things such as language, cultural, and food differences (he is the only other person I know in the company besides me that will touch black licorice). Phil, however, I have only spoken to a handful of times – so I looked forward to getting to know more about the man over some lunch.

And he is quite an interesting character. At what must be nearly 300 feet tall, he is quite imposing, yet when you speak with him you quickly find out that he is friendly and open and has a lot of interesting stories and thoughts to share. I learned about some of his previous ventures, some of his outlook on life and  about some of the adventures of his younger days. I was thrilled to find out that he had vacationed in Australia in the past and enjoyed discussing his experience with him.

I also got to know Brent better as well, learning more about him as a person (yes, he actually appears to be a real, nice, guy and not some corporate drone whose only purpose in life (when he is not snagging some of my licorice), is to hand me work requests with no supporting information and tight deadlines. He seems just like me, just a guy with a nice family, interesting background and outlook on life.

It was quite an enjoyable lunch. And the German food at Kuby’s didn’t hurt, either (I can recommend the Chicken Schnitzel Ceasar) .