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It has been a week of farewells: “see you in a year…”. Perhaps the most poignant was afternoon tea with “my oldies”, the friends I have made at Fairway, where I have helped them use the computers that are available to the residents.
Thank you Tonianne for organising afternoon tea and bringing cake and chocolates.
Keep practising Margaret, Malcolm, Josie, Win, Odette and Dot who was busy with her great-grandson.
For the last 6 months Sally and I have joined a gorgeous group of dogs with their delightful”mums” for a walk-and-talk and coffee/chai on Wednesday mornings.
Sally has become very attached to her doggy friends, especially young Chloe, whilst I have loved the company of their owners.
Today was the last doggy walk for Sally and me, before we leave these fair shores and Sally moves to 4 Paws. Harvey, Piper, Louis & Chloe will continue their walks, and hopefully we will see them in a year.
Back Row: Ali, Margaret, Phoebe & Elizabeth Front Row: Louis, Harvey, Piper, Sally & Chloe
UPDATE: This photo is even more precious since Louis (Elizabeth’s gorgeous Schnauzer) went to the big kennel in the sky. Vale Louis 12/02/2012.
UPDATE: And sadly, I also have to report that Piper also went to the big kennel in the sky. Vale Piper – August 2012.
Well we are officially “homeless” – we have no home to call our own, having vacated the apartment this morning. Life at the Sandy Pub is interesting, but the view not as good.
But we have a plan – a little couch surfing until 12 February then off on the biggest adventure a couple of retirees can dream of, complete with backpacks and computers. The itinerary is…
After that we have Lonely Planet Guides for Jordan and Turkey and hope to reach Spain in August.
You will just have to watch this space to see what really happens!!
And if you are wondering about Sally – she will be the favourite resident at 4 Paws in Pearcedale, loaded up with special food, low-fat biscuits and a year’s supply of HRT.
So I was hacked. Truth is, every time I removed the malicious code, it reappeared with 72 hours. I do not understand why it happened, but Hayden believes there may have been a WordPress bug.
I used the opportunity to rebuild my site, using the TwentyTen theme, with modifications. I also changed the rotating images to a selection I have taken from our balcony at sunset. I use Photsynth on my iPhone which does a “good” job of stitching my pics to create a dramatic panorama.
So hopefully stainsbyte.com is up and running, ready for our big adventure starting mid-February.
I have been hacked.
I am not sure how or to what extent or even who did it. All I know is that this web site didn’t look right – just the header with the flowers and menu were displayed and no body. Lucky you can see text now!
It took some work, but I finally discovered that some of my .PHP files had some strange code tacked to the bottom of them that started like this
A quick Google search told horror stories of compromised code and a fantastic blog explaining how code can be compromised at Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else.
I also discovered that I can check the code at Sucuri SiteCheck, thanks to a post on WordPress.
Interestingly, I found each theme I had installed was compromised for both this site and Ev’s at The Silent Partner. The compromised files included (but not limited to) index.php, header.php, footer.php – common files in WordPress. All the compromised files had the same date/time stamp of 21 October 2011 at 6:33:05pm – a date and time that I was not logged on to my computer(s).
The theme PrimePress caused most issues, and I had used snippets from it to build the rotating pics in the header. Other themes didn’t display the issues, although they were clearly compromised.
I didn’t investigate what the compromised code did, but surely it was pushing another web site for Google analytics or sending spam or viruses around the world. Something that was not nice.
I suppose it is time to change passwords and secret keys to better protect myself.
It took 4 Sundays and the 18 days in-between for our “Sunday Drive”. We got all the way west to Cape Naturaliste and south to Albany and covered 9,044 km.
It was a great journey of stunning Aussie landscapes, beautiful Western Australian wild flowers and lots of good food and wine.
We saw the big koala, the big galah, the big orange and the super pit at Kalgoorlie – biggest, thanks to Alan Bond.
Now to edit the 2,365 photos we took between us, and to get some of them onto this site. Places first, flowers to follow at stainsbyte/Travelling/Nullarbor 2011
We reached the western edge of the South West region of Western Australia, and felt closer to Hayden in Barcelona from there, at least 3,000km closer!
By now we have travelled 4,500km and we are ready to turn around and go east – home.
We started and finished the Cape to Cape walk. The walk is about 138km long. We managed just a few km at the northern and the southern ends.
The walks were extremely different – a well paved and beautifully managed track full of wild flowers at the north from Cape Natulaliste and a rugged track, overgrown, with discreet wild flowers, at the south from Cape Leeuwin. Both walks were beautiful.
More details at stainsbyte/Travelling/Nullarbor 2011. More photos will be added in time!
We made it! Crossed the Nullarbor – in the Astra. A lone “car” amongst the trucks, 4-wheel-drives pulling caravans and camper trailers and motor homes of all shapes and sizes!
Blue sky and gums blowing in the breeze at Norseman for proof.
After expensive food, wine and fuel en route, it is off to the south west corner to eat, drink and be merry, before the return trip.
For more on our travels watch the “Travelling/Nullarbor 2011” page.
It is delightful to walk on the beach as the days get warmer and brighter. However Sally’s Winter coat was catching everything – sand, grass, seed pods, burrs. So it is time for a haircut,
Here are the befores and afters – yes it is the same girl!!
Sally after 5 beach walks and before her wash-and-groom
Sally, washed-and-groomed for Spring
We have completed part of my quest to search for water bubblers between Port Melbourne and Mordialloc. Now we just have to cover the Port Melbourne to North Road bit.
Steve from the City of Kingston was very helpful with a list of bubblers in playgrounds around Kingston, however I had to find the GPS locations on Google Earth. That challenge took me deeper into Google Earth as I came to understand the KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files and zipped version of KMZ files.
Our walk last Sunday took us to Mordialloc pier, where I found the new bubbler version – it is neat…
Drinking fountain near the playground at Mordialloc Beach, with doggy bowl