Please head to Bushfire Housing and sign up if you have a place to offer, or if you know of anybody who needs temporary accommodation.

Any feedback is also welcome on the functionality of the sites or bugs you may find!

Thanks again! Lets help out however we can.

It’s very odd that on the past 4+ years I’ve been building Wordpress-based sites for clients and friends out, but this site is still on MovableType, since it was launched in 2000. It’s received a few facelifts between then and now but it’s always been on MT, only because I’ve been very reluctant to migrate all my blog posts, and to rebuild all the templates for a new platform.

I know I’ve been neglecting this blog for too long now. I need to figure out what I want to do with it and the site as a whole. Perhaps moving it over to Wordpress I might be more inclined to post more often if I can do it easily on the iPhone while I’m on the train or even on the couch at home, but then again, one of the main reasons for not posting as often as I should is that I feel a responsibility to compose meaningful posts up here and not just ramblings which would put me in the same class as the emo kids and their LiveJournals. Well, i use Twitter for that. :) This site needs more than just a new coat of paint. I don’t feel that it represents me anymore.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments or via email.

When you look back they seem small and insignificant, but at the time, it’s like the biggest thing ever, and you don’t know what the future holds. I’m feeling the same again right now.

My life has never been better and I feel like I’m in a good space. I’m now working full-time at a great creative agency, producing good work and earning a decent paycheck, which has lifted the constant and stress of working freelance. Sure, it does get stressful at work with some tight deadlines, but at least I can just focus on my work and not be juggling a million things in my head.

Many of my friends are already getting married, and while my closest friends haven’t had kids yet, but I’m sure it’s gonna start happening soon. It is weird how friendships and relationships evolve and change as circumstances change.

I know 30 is just a number and tomorrow I’ll wake up feeling no different — I’ll still be the very same person I am today, yet there’s a sort of line that is being crossed. Getting older. Ticking a different ‘age bracket’ box in forms. Becoming an adult and having to ‘act your age’. Being sensible and pragmatic. Making big decisions about where I’m going in life.

It’s all irrational, really, all these worries and anxieties. But I just can’t help it…

You always read about young hotshot 20-somethings setting up successful Web 2.0 companies and selling out for millions. What have I achieved before hitting 30? Well, I’ve moved to different country and settled myself down here, established new social and professional networks over here in Melbourne. I’ve worked for myself and made a living doing freelance and contract web design and development work. Got headhunted for a couple of jobs and eventually placed at Sputnik Agency where I am now. I also finally did a bit of traveling and went to the UK, Germany, Netherlands and the UAE for the first time, something I’d been thinking and talking about for a long time. My friends tell me that’s all admirable achievements and some don’t even get to do that, so i guess it’s all relative. I’m thankful for all the opportunities I’ve had and being where I am. Still doesn’t help with the uncertainty of the future though!

2007 was a bit of a rough year with more than average low points but it ended on a good note for me, and 2008 has been good so far, so I’m optimistic. Being 30 will be exciting so bring it on!

Things have been so busy and moving so fast lately that I’ve realised how bad I am at keeping in touch with my friends, and I really miss them, the old gang from Ipoh with one in Manchester and another in Singapore… you know who you are! Also my college friends whom most of them are still in KL, where we shared some great times together and enjoyed those long, deep discussions late at night at the mamak stall or Coffee Bean.

It’s the Queens Birthday long weekend and I’ve been really looking forward to some time out for a quite a while now. I’ll be going with a few friends down to Wilson’s Prom for some quiet R&R away from the city. The house we’ve booked is even off the grid, being completely solar-powered. Talk about isolated! It would be great to go for walks in the country or just chilling out reading a book or watching a dvd. We’ll be leaving tonight after work, so we’d have the most of the 3 days we’re there.

As I was telling Chris last night, I’ve just been completely slacking in the blogging front as it just takes some effort to write something meaningful, and I’ve just not been able find the time to do that. Despite that, I think I’m gonna have to make some time for it and start posting regularly again.

I’ve also been playing around with Twitter for a few months now, barring it’s sporadic downtime, it’s been quite an interesting paradigm in the blogging space, almost like a cross between IM and blogging. Being able to send a SMS to Twitter also makes it even easier to post to than setting up a moblog which I’ve tried before. My Twitter ID/profile page is http://twitter.com/jonathanpoh if you want to keep up with what I’m up to.

If you’re a web designer or work on anything related to the web, regardless of your job title, take the survey and be heard.

Inspired by Chris DiClerico’s Toy Dubai photo, I followed the same tutorial and made this fake tilt-shift photo of the Melbourne skyline taken a couple of weeks ago.

The tilt-shift effect makes the photo look like it was taken of a miniature model of the city. I’d seen this done before some months ago but never looked into finding out how it is done until now. It’s actually pretty simple!

Yes, yesterday was my birthday. Another year older, and my final year of my 20s. Hmm, that sounds a bit scary.

I overslept and only woke up at 10am which is quite unusual for me. I left making any plans for a party too late and so I sent out a mass email invitation to everyone I know in Melbourne for drinks at the Belgian Beer Garden on Saturday 29th Jan. It would be the Australia Day long weekend and I’ve already gotten some responses that people will be away or have other things on. Oh well. The perils of leaving it so late. I hope the weather will be good then.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Got a few birthday emails and SMSes. Simon took me out for dinner last night at Sails on the Bay which was a very nice restaurant by the beach in Elwood. It had spectacular bay windows that you can watch the sunset while dining. Food was nice, though the portions were a bit small. Typical fine dining style. The desert I had, the Blackcurrant Delice was just absolutely yummy though.

After dinner we walked along the beach and there were unusually many people out and about, and many of them with cameras and tripods. It then occurred to me that they were probably trying to catch a glimpse of the comet McNaught that’s been sighted around here. Shame it was a bit cloudy last night. We hung around for a bit but didn’t see anything and just went back home.

On a totally unrelated note, Wordpress 2.1 came out yesterday, and today 24 Jan is the 23rd birthday of the Apple Macintosh.

My brother Tristan mentioned last night that the comments form on my site wasn’t working. No wonder nobody was commenting on my blog anymore! I was feeling a bit distraught that all my readers have disappeared with my long absence from blogging. It seems when I moved the site to Media Temple, I also took the opportunity to upgrade Movable Type to the latest version, and I had forgotten that I renamed the comments script file to something else in effort to curb comment spam (didn’t really work). The fresh install of MT was looking for this renamed file which obviously doesn’t exist in the default installation. I’ve fixed this now and comments are now working again.

As for stuff happening offline, New Years Eve was nice. I went to a friend’s house party in Hawthorn. It was a very pleasant and chilled out evening. Weather was perfect and we sat outside in the garden with some drinks and good company. It was a nice way to usher in the new year away from the heaving crowds in the city that night. A stark contrast to last year in Sydney.

I’ve been spending way too much time playing Zelda on the Wii this last few days. Getting really engrossed in it. I’m slowly weaning myself back into work mode again and getting a few outstanding things done.

I couldn’t wait and had to set it up immediately and it came with everything in the box, including Wii Sports, a collection of sport games that show off the use of the Wii’s innovative remote/controller.

We went off to the Grampians the next day and I brought the Wii along and we had a few sessions at the cabin we stayed at.

I went shopping yesterday and picked up a few games and another Wii Remote. I got Zelda: Twilight Princess, Rayman Raving Rabbids and the Wii Play bundle with a Wii Remote. The games are all fab and brilliant use of the controller. It just feels very natural and easy to pick up.

We had dinner with some friends last night, and everybody came over to mine and played on the Wii for a while. It was hilarious! Everybody was getting quite into it, even the ones who would not normally be interested in games.

My Wii Number is 7379 8788 7464 8405 if anybody else has one and wants to send messages through the Wii message board function, or whatever online features Nintendo decides to come out with. Send me an email with your number if you decide to add me so I can add you on mine too.

I can’t believe it’s less than a week till Christmas, and how quickly it’s crept up. Didn’t seem so long ago I was scoffing and how ridiculous the department stores started putting up Christmas decorations in October!

Some of the things I’ve been up to in the last couple of months:

• Got a new phone - Nokia N70
• Been to the UK (all over) , Netherlands (Amsterdam) and Germany (Berlin)
• Been to Dubai
• Took lots of pics but haven’t sorted through them yet.. have put up a few on Flickr but there’s LOADS more
• Got a 5-week contract job with HugeObject, which was interesting and a fun office to work at.
• Attended my first Web Standards Group meeting
• Participated in my first protest rally - Walk Against Warming
• Paid off my credit card bill racked up from my holiday
• Bought a Macbook - white, 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM
• Done my taxes (got a bill, not a refund this year)
• Learnt how to use Subversion for version control
• Trying to learn Ruby on Rails
• Wanting to learn AJAX
• Moved this site and a few others to Media Temple’s (gs) Grid Server
• Launched a few new web sites - Gemstone Brokers, DJRW, Friday Club Central
• Been to several Christmas parties (already)

So there you go. I’ll be around Melbourne for the next few days, then going to the Grampians on Christmas Day for 3 days, then Warnambool overnight then back in Melbourne for New Years. Really looking forward to a break and chill out a bit.

Merry Christmas everybody and to a great year ahead!

We’ve been really busy all week cleaning and clearing out the house which Simon is preparing to rent out while he’s in Australia working. Among the things I’ve done on the house, I’ve put up curtain rails, plastered, sanded, stained doors and painted door frames and doorsteps. We’ve had to make a few trips to B&Q, a huge D.I.Y. warehouse to pick up a few bits and pieces for this maintenance work.

Occasionally I’d go over to Tosh’s place (one of Simon’s friends) to use his broadband internet connection to check on the eBay auctions and catch up on emails.

Yesterday was the first time I’d gone into Leeds city centre proper, apart from that day trip to Doncaster where we got the train from Leeds station, and dinner one evening with Caroline and Jackie.

Simon’s nephew (Jamie) and niece (Emily) are here to stay for a couple of days, and we went into town to do a bit of shopping and for me, some sightseeing. As the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, we headed straight out to catch the sunshine while it was out so I could get some photos taken. It was a whirlwind tour of the major spots in Leeds.

I saw the imposing, but magnificent Town Hall, Millennium Square and the adjoining Nelson Mandela garden, the Civic Hall with the gilded owls and clock, down a few of the shopping arcades including the beautiful Victoria Quarter. Popped in briefly to the only Harvey Nichols outside of London, which is priced waaaaay out of my range. The Corn Exchange however was a very interesting and eclectic mix of shops. I absolutely love the roof/ceiling of the building, which is an oval, exposed lattice dome and because of the sheer size of it, it has a mesmerising, hypnotic effect when you look at it.

Simon, Jamie and I were in the Corn Exchange when the skies opened up and it was absolutely pouring down and we just couldn’t make it back to where the car was parked and rejoin the other half of our group, Emily and Mrs Robinson. Just had to stay put and wait for the rain to die down.

Tomorrow we’re going out to York, a historical city that was conquered by both Romans and Vikings, and one of the few cities left in the world with an intact city wall around it. There’s also the National Railway Museum which I’m really looking forward to.

Going across that many time zones was a bizarre thing. It just felt like a very long night. Arrived in Dubai at about 5:30am and there was a big queue to clear security just to get into the public area of the airport. Once through, I got some money changed so we could get some coffee.

Dubai International is a very busy airport, even at that time of the day. It was telling that the facilities weren’t quite able to cope with the number of passengers going through. There weren’t enough seats and there were lots of people just sitting and sleeping on the floor.

The whole terrorist situation had just happened on the day of our flight and information was still scarce before we boarded our flight. Upon arrival in Dubai we found out a bit more and that for all flights to the UK, they were screening hand luggage more thoroughly, and making passengers check-in their hand luggage except for essential items like travel documents.

This led to massive queues and delays with the boarding of our flight. We were in the queue for about 45 mins just to get through into the gate, and behind us there were many, many more people by the time the flight was scheduled to take off.

Once in the boarding gate area, there was a lot of activity among the airport ground staff, and while we were bagging our hand luggage to be checked in, they suddenly told us we didn’t have to do that anymore, and we could take our belongings on board.

As we found out later, the UK authorities had issued instructions that the hand luggage ban was lifted.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, arriving in Manchester, where immigration and customs clearance was pretty smooth except for a technical fault with baggage handling. Simon’s friend Trish had taken the day off to pick us up from Manchester Airport to take us back to Simon’s house in Leeds.

The first night we had a curry dinner at an Indian restaurant where I met some of Simon’s friends. Halfway through dinner, I suddenly felt very sleepy. Jet lag hit and as it was the first time I’d experienced it, I wasn’t prepared for it.

The next morning, I woke up at 4:30am, despite going to bed at a sensible time of about 10:30pm the night before. Tossed and turned for quite a while before settling down and caught another couple of hours more of shut-eye.

This however had the positive side effect of being up and awake bright and early in the morning and being able to get things done. I helped Simon sort out some stuff he had and put them up on eBay to sell off.

This morning, we set out to Doncaster by train to visit Simon’s mom, and to bring her and her car back to Leeds. Simon’s mom is a lovely lady and she made us lunch of quiche and salad while we were there.

Back into Leeds we had a quiet night in, and just about to go to bed now. Feeling sleepy again…

It would be the furthest I’ve travelled and the longest time spent on a plane, though the flight stops at Dubai, so it’s not too bad, I hope.

The trip will be a welcome break for some R&R (Chinese New Year back in Ipoh hardly counts, with all the festivities), and also a chance to do a bit of sightseeing that side of the world. I’ve been telling myself that I’d go do some travelling when I have some money saved up, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Just bit the bullet and put the airfare on the credit card. If I keep holding back I’ll be in a wheelchair before I see the world! Will figure out how to pay it all off in time.

I’ll probably be based mainly in the northern region, in and around Leeds, staying with Simon. Would be popping over to Manchester for sure, and I’ll catch up with Jason there. Might make a few day trips to the other towns and villages, and definitely going to London for a few days. Need to do the touristy things there and visit the Apple Store :). I’ve got some relatives there which I’ve not seen for years and would be visiting.

If I have the time and money, I also hope to hop over to Europe and see a bit. Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona have particular appeal. Have to check out the budget airlines and see what’s available. I also want to ride on the Eurostar in the Channel Tunnel. I know it’s just a long ride in a dark tunnel but still, the idea of taking a train under the sea is a fantasy come true.

On the way back, making a 3 day stop-over in Dubai so that should be interesting as well, seen and heard quite a lot about it.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with my friends, and also make some new ones along the way. I’d also be looking to establish some contacts in the web design world over in the UK, so if anybody in Leeds, London or anywhere in the UK wants to meet up, please get in touch!

There were no block-long queues like in Japan, or the opening of an Apple Store, though. The first place I went to was EB Games in Melbourne Central, where I noticed some boys milling about in the store and I overheard them saying something about ‘..another hour to go’, and figured they must be waiting for the DS Lites to be delivered. EB was selling for the RRP of $199, with some free plastic game cases. They did however have a ‘deal’ where you can get the DS Lite for $99, if you trade in your old DS, along with 2 DS games. Not that a good deal to me, considering my old DS sold on eBay for $96, and i still get to keep all my games!

David Jones is having mid-year sales starting today, so next stop, DJ. $199 too, but all DS games 20% off. They have a poor selection though.

I had read on some forums last night that Myer was going to sell the DS Lites at an introductory price of $188, so that was where I headed to get mine. To my surprise, it was actually cheaper than that, because they are having a 1-day sale. I ended up paying only $179.10. According to the register chick, they’ve been flying off the shelves, and it was only 10:30am. If you’re in Australia and wanting to get one, quick, head over to Myer while they still have stock!

So $179.10 - $96 = $83.10 Not too bad at all. Pat on my own back for netting such a good deal! (oops, is my kiasuism showing? :) )

As I got on the tram to head back home, I saw the same group of boys at EB Games, and some of them had bought DS Lites after all, as I suspected.

My new toy is now charging up, and I’ll need to pack up my old DS and ship if off to the guy who bought it.