::peeto.net

Wow, I feel old as I am about to see my fifth decade on this spinning rock. It's been a good one, probably better than the last especially in terms of new music.

I can't wait to see the expected reviews of the last ten years that will invariably show up in the media. I'm also looking forward to see what happens in the next decade, even though I can foresee an economic depression.

I wish to extend a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you. Let's enjoy the last few days of 200x.

So I've always wanted to do a comic strip on the web but never had enough time. After working for way too long on my first commercial Microsoft .NET application I realised I have enough time to create a comic dedicated to it:

After a few years of upgrades to the hosting of my web site (PHP 4.2->5.0->5.1->5.2) and expected changes on the world wide web my site became pretty broken. I can now proudly say I have fixed most of the bugs on this site. The biggest problem was updating how I was aggregating news feeds, I only had to update my code to support RSS 0.91/2.0, RSS 1.0, RDF, ATOM "channel", and ATOM "entry". Yay for standards.

Grr, f***, sh**, a** f***! I am setting up one of my PHP CMS's and was having trouble with non-ASCII characters. After pulling my hair out and endless googling I found the problem, htmlentities(). It turns out that htmlentities() is set to ISO-8859-1 by default and needs a specific parameter to be UTF-8.

I found this:

/**
 * Encodes HTML safely for UTF-8. Use instead of htmlentities.
 *
 * @param string $var
 * @return string
 */
function html_encode($var)
{
 return htmlentities($var, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') ;
}

Here:
http://developer.loftdigital.com/blog/php-utf-8-cheatsheet

A friend of mine has created this site that sells freaking cool contact lenses. I've seen fashion / colored contacts before but Coco Contacts has a huge range of really cool contacts that I've never seen before such as soccer balls and smiley faces.

Persoanlly I'd like to get some for the next Halloween / StarWars / cross-dressing party I attend.

Australia is having a federal election, I've been watching too much Chasers, and it's freakin hard to blog on a Wii. Seriously, one of the apparent big election issues has been broadband access in Australia. Being the eve of the election, I figure it couldn't be a better time to vent my thoughts on broadband Internet.

I got myself a Wii a while back and have now got the Internet Channel. Please e-mail me if you want to swap Mii's with me. My Wii ID is 7446 5474 7096 6442. If you haven't already, download the new Mii Contest Channel as it's the easiest way to get some extra (and good) Mii's.

I'm on Facebook now just like everyone else.

Since I drive an R31 to work everyday...

This post used to contain a countdown to the launch date of the R35 Nissan GT-R. I've seen it at the 2009 motor show and on the road and have concluded that the Nissan R Series (Skyline) is still well and truly dead. The new GT-R is impressive and looks great but I can't deny that it's a Z Series (Fairlady). That's not a bad thing, I've always liked the 300ZX, the 350Z, and I must say the new 370Z is sex on wheels.

I'm going to miss the Skyline and the RB engine. I find it hard to believe that 2 turbos staged in series on an inline 6 isn't as powerful as a turbo for each bank of a V6. Mark Skaife's and Jim Richards's R32's will one day be a museum masterpiece.

Samuel Michael Petersen was born 21:10 20 Aug 2007. Stay tuned as I get around to posting some photos.

I have found that I have suddenly turned into a MySpace addict. I spent the whole weekend customising my page, stalking people and meeting new friends. Then on Sunday MySpace stopped working, so I decided to make myself useful around the house by watching Syrianna on DVD. I liked it, I thought it was a constructive and educational movie for all the wrong reasons. Anyway, afterwards I go to get back into MySpace, which still doesn't work, except now they reveal that L.A. has been suffering from power outages. At first I laugh, then I get angry, and then I worry. I feel very selfish, here I am bitching about MySpace not working when George Clooney is probably getting his fingernails ripped out. I'm only just beginning to realise how dangerous the energy industry can be, on the same weekend a couple of South Australian's got radiation poisoning from some uranium that apparently doesn't exist. I still need to drive to work and I want to access MySpace, but I don't want to do it at George Clooney's expense.

So, I found this site today that let's you create your own pet as a shockwave applet. Here's mine, isn't he cute?:

adopt your own virtual pet!

I don't know about you, but I've been living and breathing Big Brother for most of this century. I don't think it's anything like the best show on television, but it certainly keeps me entertained. I almost boycotted it this year, the show has clearly been injured by some consequences of what happened last year, but the show has managed to limp along despite the bleeding. Today I have found out that the most popular segment of the show has been cancelled because of strong complaints from certain people.

To put this in perspective, we're talking about one of the most popular television shows in Australia. We're also talking about a show that has complied with OFLC guidelines and is perfectly legal. Yet somehow Channel Ten have been bullied into cancelling one of their most popular programs.

What I want to know is, who are these bullies and what can we do about it? Also, who is the moron at Channel Ten who decided to cancel one of their most popular shows as a result of this bullying? Luckily all this fanfare has caused a bit of actual news reporting from the media.

According to Antony Reeve-Crook of c21media.net, Liberal MP Trish Draper and National Party MP Paul Neville have been making in complaints about the program, to the audience of the Australian Parliament no less!!! Unfortunately us Plebs do not have the luxury of being able to address the Parliament of Australia about our personal concerns, but we can write letters and make phone calls.

If your a Big Brother fan you might be interested in voicing your opinion on the show too. You can get Trish Draper's address, phone number, or e-mail address from here and you can get Paul Neville's address, phone number, or e-mail address from here. With the show being such a personal interest to them, they should probably be well aware of your opinion, especially since they are being paid by us to be public servants.

Edit: Family First have also voiced opinions against BBAO.

Anyway, this the second year in the row of this and I want to see the end of it so I can get back to watching Big Brother and forget about worrying about the children. Please help me out by voicing your opinion and encouraging Family First to release their criminal findings to the police. The faster and louder it gets done, the quicker we can get back to just kicking back and watching the show like we did two years ago.

It's been ages since my last post so let's get on with it - I have a Mitsubishi Magna to sell for my wife. From memory, it's a Red 1986 Series 1 TN Magna, 5 speed manual, 2.6L Astron2 (4G54) carbie version. It's got the standard Magna problems, the paint's stripping from the bonnet, the valve seats and timing chain are shot (totally, 70W oil and still smokin!), but the C.V. joints are still okay. I think there's somewhere between 300k and 350k on the clock, I'll get the actual reading and post some photos soon.

The top end problems probably won't be getting fixed (it smokes terribly) so it will most likely go without an RWC. The only other problems is the cloth trim is missing from the roof. Everything else is good, the AC even works. Also comes with a pair of near new Toyo 800 tyres.

We're hoping there some 1st gen Magna lover out there with a 4G54 who will want this car. Sabine wants about $600 for it, considering we can drive it to you and it is manual, it seems reasonable. So if your interested send Sabine an e-mail.

Personally, I'd like to keep it but that just doesn't seem to be possible. The best offers I have got have been $1600-$2500 to restore the 4G54 to it's original crapiness. If someone can help me find the mountain of missing Magna information or a FWD 4G54 engine specialist I'd be most appreciative. But I should probably just give up and get back to the point of this post, the Magna is for sale.

Also while I'm talking about Mitsubishi: I just read the Evo 9 has gone MIVEC and is in mass production (no more of 100 a year). Apparently the MIVEC doesn't have MIVEC (no variable lift) but stacks well against the 4G63 anyway. This is going to have a significant effect on Australian roads. The 6MPS, XR5, WRX, the new Evo, and what else is the beginning of turbos and AWD being common place in the mass market.

So I am kinda freaking at the moment as I'm about to turn 30 and start a new job, both on the same day. My new job I am very excited about, turning 30 I am not. They say never trust anyone over 30, luckily I stopped trusting myself years ago. They also say that people tend to freak out a bit when they turn 30, and I'm certainly feeling it. I've got the whole "what am I doing with my life" and "what does it all mean" thing going on.

For me, I've been a geek for as long as I can remember and I'm thinking back to all the aspirations and desires I had before I started growing up. I loved sitting up at night back in the '80's watching Amanda Keller on Beyond 2000 taking in all the cool new technology I would have by the time I was 30. Ahh, it's got me feeling uneasy and frustrated. I don't have super fast electric car and even if I did I be in jail for driving to work at 400km/h. My personal robot, holographic displays, automated house, and wristwatch supercomputer don't even exsist. I don't even have a pilots licence let alone be in the middle of an intergalatic war fighting Zentraedi in my Veritech Fighter or the Intergalactic Empire in my Incom T-65C A-2.

Where did I go wrong? Now I remember, I was too busy being a geek and daydreaming about it all and the world changed on me. Innovation gave way to patents on everything, profiteering changed from being a crime to a business goal, and I, didn't change too much at all. So for turning 30, I'm going to have to pull my finger out.

Within the next ten years I'm going to have to make 2.4 children, with the 0.4 being a self made R2 Astrodroid. I have to build an elite class of space capable star fighters and find an alien enemy to make war with. I have to buy a house and teach it to talk and make sacastic remarks. Invent the Intel Pentium 15 and proxy it to my brain. Find a powerful renewable energy source that will power my jet pack to get to work each day. Find a way to balance becoming the world's greatest porn star and the greatest husband of all time. Of course I have to cure world poverty and unite the world so we can all conquer other planets.

Baby steps Chris, baby steps.

Wow! I recently got married to the love of my life and am still high from the experience. I got back from my honeymoon last Saturday and thought at the least I should explain my absence. A massive thank you to all my friends and family and all the people who helped make it happen. It was a total success and absolutely perfect, if I could do it all again I wouldn't change a thing. After being with my Angel for so long I didn't think it would change much but life seems to be a whole lot easier and less complicated now we have tied the knot. A special thank you to my new wife, for marrying me, and making me the proudest husband.

I have got myself a new blog thanks to blogger.com. I have set it up so it can be viewed directly from my web site and anyone can make comments. Comments won't appear directly on the web site until they have been approved and comments may be removed if they are deemed inappropriate.