Just a quick update - I've decided that the registration process for comments isn't working out - several people have requested their passwords as they forgot what they set.

There is now a primitive captcha in place to complete, not that I expect any automated comment spam or can protect against it, but I thought it would be fun to learn how to make one.

So, I'm going to drop the table that held your registration data - no need for username/password anymore! :)

I suppose if Marcus makes a post (even if it is just quiz results) then I should at least make one too. I started out with the intention of making some meaningful posts in this space, but got as far as 'woohoo I can make pizza' before events in my professional life put me into a mood for only the blackest of rants, which I didn't want to put on record.

The short version of the story is that I resigned from my job in November and as of the 18th of December am no longer employed by Raytheon Australia. There were plenty of reasons past, present and future for my decision which I won't repeat in this public space. If you want to know more feel free to IM or email me, or even better: buy me a drink :D

On the whole I don't regret my time at Raytheon. I learned a lot about software change process and about engineering processes in general (even if what I learned was how not to do things). I learned Python and developed my first multi-threaded application (which I accidentally used during development to crash a dev server when my threads began recursively creating new threads). I improved my shell scripting and Linux administration skills. I learned how to use some of Outlook Express. I worked with a mostly great (but frequently changing) team of people.

Even though I've decided not to continue down the defence path, I'm still glad that I had the job, and I hope I can use the experience to be happier and more successful in my next job. I don't know what the next job will be yet as I resigned without having one lined up, but I'm hoping to make progress on that soon :)

It's nice being a bum for the moment though.

As Friday night was my turn to try cooking something new, I decided I would try to make pizza. Not exactly a difficult recipe, but I'd never tried to make them before and I wanted to learn how (as for me the frozen pizza is not a nice option).

I found a simple recipe for pizza base, bought all my ingredients, and started to prepare the bases. I soon discovered that I'd made a mistake when checking our stock of flour - plain flour comes in green packets and self raising in blue, not the other way around - and so I had only just enough flour to do the 3 bases I wanted. Focusing too much on finding the flour and not on the recipe, I dumped the flour straight into the mix of yeast/water/salt without sifting it first. I think this made stirring a little more difficult, and I was worried about breaking my wooden spoon until I found a large plastic spoon device left behind by Daniel which was more than up for the task.

The instructions then said to knead the dough for a little under 10 minutes. I didn't really know what kneading was all about, just that it involved working the dough around with your hands. After the dough stuck to my hands quite strongly and refused to let go, I decided I should check to see what the internet said about kneading. I learnt about the purpose and technique of kneading, but wasn't any clearer about whether the dough should be as sticky as it was. So, I asked Anne, who as usual had the answer I needed:

I added self raising flour (all I had left) and suddenly kneading became easy. With the bases ready, some toppings were prepared, including: button mushrooms, red and green capsicum, diced bacon, sliced ham, italian sausage and grated mozzarella cheese.

When everyone that I was cooking for had arrived, we added tomato paste and decorated with toppings, and cooked in the oven for 20 minutes. See picture for results, I thought they were quite tasty. I can now make pizzas! Perhaps I'll try a dessert pizza next time!

After a development period of epic proportions and numerous short-lived attempts, I've finally cobbled together enough strands of spaghetti code (Python this time as opposed to Perl) to produce functioning blog software! It even has comments!

Unfortunately when I say functioning, I mean that I can post blog entries and you, the viewer, can see them. You can comment on blog entries (provided you register and are flagged by me as a responsible commenter), and can see comments by myself and others. Thats about it :)

The appearance/design is about 18 months old by this stage, but I made a decision to press ahead with the back end using the design that I had, rather than spend effort redoing a design that I couldn't use anyway. Some of the appearance (such as forms) is pretty raw, my apologies!

That said, now that I have my core functionality online, I hope that there will be a long stream of improvements and enhancements. Up the top you can see the 'Blog' button - this is the only module I currently have functioning. Soon I should have my 'Articles' module online, within which I will be placing content not suitable as a blog post - content that will change over time. At some point once I've acquired a digital camera there may be a photo gallery module too! Before anyone asks, I will also look at RSS and Avatars and all the other little widgets usually found in blog software.

But wait, where are my manners - I have not introduced myself! My name is Darrell Rodgers and I'm from Western Australia. I'm a Software Engineer currently working in the defence industry, but am looking to change this as soon as possible. I play Badminton and Netball, I like reading and watching the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, and occasionally play the piano. I don't really know what this blog will become, it may slide into disuse - but I will give a decent go at getting some content in place that others may find interesting to read!

If you discover any bugs/issues with the site, please leave a comment or email me (if you know my email address) so I can hunt the problem down and fix it. Thanks!