The design is fairly simple, just a two column type using negative margins to line up the sidebar and content sections. Screenshot below:

At the moment the shop pages only have a description of the shop, contact details, and the latest news (taken from the Google News RSS feed). I used the LastRSS PHP class to do the work of pulling in the feed and then I wrote some preg_replace rules to clean it up. I do have some more features planned however, maybe a ratings/comments system on the shop pages.

Hosting was a bit of trouble. I normally use free hosts (paid hosts are just a bit too expensive for me at the moment), and the host which I use for this website, Yeppoon Info and briter:webdesign doesn’t allow the PHP method used to grab the feeds, which I think is fopen. Instead I had to go looking for a free host that supports this method. Eventually I found freehostia.com, which seems to be a very fast host just right for my needs.

Anyway please go over and have a look yourself at the Yeppoon Central website: yeppooncentral.net.au. And yes I am trying to get some nice links for Google :-).

Queenie as a very young cat with unproportionally large ears.

Queenie paying attention to something interesting.

Keeping a watchful eye on the photographer.

Her grave which my sisters made. Rest in peace Queenie, we loved you.

We chose Skymesh as our service provider, mainly because they have very competitive plans and they don’t charge extra if the data allowance has been used up. Instead they do something called shaping which limits the speed of the connection to 64kpbs, which is about twice as fast as the dialup I’d been using.

Another two very useful features are data blocks, which allows you to buy extra data for the month, and the ability to upgrade to a higher priced plan, whenever you want at no extra cost (except for the difference between the two plan’s prices of course).

My modem and computer

Probably the only major difference between satellite broadband and normal ADSL broadband is something called the ping speed or latency. This occurs because when I request a webpage, the request travels something like this: computer to satellite dish, 36,000 kilometres to the satellite, 36,000 km to a base station, base station requests webpage and transmits 36,000 km to satellite, then another 36,000 back to my computer.

That is about 144,000 km all up, not counting the route the webpage travels from a server to the base station. Add the time taken for the data to be processed properly, and you’ll be looking at over 1sec response rates. This might not seem like much but imagine that you’re playing an online game. Someone’s about to kill you so you defend yourself, but by the time your signal has traveled 72,000 km or so you’re dead.

This wouldn’t happen on normal broadband because there are no nasty 144,000 km stretches for the signal to travel. You can find out more about IPSTAR satellites here.

The satellite installer putting the dish up

When I click the more details link I have the option to remove the personalised search results:

This feature is definitely good news for SEOs and web developers who don’t want to have to worry about cookies interfering with web search results. Oh and BTW, don’t go accusing me of lying. Often Google only unveils new features to a small percentage of web users.

The specs are as follows:

• Processor: 1.42Ghz PowerPC G4
• Ram: 512MB
• Optical Drive: DVD Burning Superdrive
• Operating System: Mac OS 10.3.9 (which I’m going to upgrade to 10.5)
• USB: USB 2.0
• Hard Drive: 160GB

Those are the important specs. In contrast, my old emac was only 800Mhz, 384MB or ram, a combo drive, USB 1.1, 40GB hard drive and Mac OS 10.2.8. Big difference between the two!

Anyway, because the eBay buy it now price was so cheap for these type of specs in an eMac, I decided to buy it right then instead of bidding and potentially losing the auction. You see, I was desparate for a computer because my old one was totally out of disk space and I had a about 10GB of unbacked-up photos stored on the hard drive.

After I’d ordered the computer it took about 10 days or so to arrive from a suburb near Perth, in Western Australia. The seller, assorted-it-stuff, was very helpful and prompt to reply to my emails.

I can’t really think of anything else to tell you about it. It’s running really well, the speed is just such an improvement, and so are the superdrive and fast USB connection (essential for downloading photos).

The good thing is that I’ve actually been getting more visitors than I thought, and that’s enough to make anyone happy :-).

Please tell me if you’ve ever done something like this so I’m not alone in my embarrasment!

We chose the area down near the house pad back fence, which has a sort of round shape with bamboo and lots of thick grass in it. First of all Dad put the metal wire support poles up, then we unravelled the wire that we were going to use. Some of it was so tangled up with grass that I had to use the ride-on mower to pull it out!

The first side of the pen that we put up was running parallel with the house pad fence, and that was easy because we just lent the wire against the existing barb wire and wrapped a few pieces of wire around it so that it didn’t fall.

On the left is the house pad fence which is the back of the temporary chookpen.

After that we got out the higher wire and started from the northern side of the pen (behind the photo above) and wrapped it around the metal posts in an arc shape. That wire went nearly all the way around, but stopped just right of the above photo so that an entrance could be made.

The third and last wire that was put up went from where the 2nd wire stopped, and stopped in the middle of the above photo. There it joined up with the first wire that we placed.

The chookpen was finished! Now they have somewhere to scratch away the day. The main chookpen is only 20m away, so we don’t have very far to carry them :-).

A happy chook.

The bamboo and grass area. The chooks love sitting in there to hide.

Anyway you’ll soon be reading more about this over on Jylanization :D.