I haven't written an entry for a while now. To be honest I haven't felt like it, the time I have spent with my computer has been focused on ordering new bike parts to turn my crappy Avanti Escape work bike into a lean mean street machine. I think I want to put down some thoughts and observations about being a courier in Perth, Australia.

These are my experiences starting out as a bicycle messenger. Today was my first paid day working for Mercury, who are one of the companies under the corporate umbrella of C.T.I. in Perth, Australia.

On Monday (yesterday) I just shadowed a messenger for half a day to learn the ropes and try to get a handle on how it works. I guess it was also a chance to back out if the whole experience freaked me out, which it didn't. Instead I sped down to Crumpler to buy myself a messenger bag.

Today I went for an interview to become a bicycle messenger. It went really well, the people I met were very cool, friendly and welcoming. I'm doing a trial morning ride on Monday following one of the couriers around so I can get a feel for it.

This is a version of the TextilePHP code wrapped in a Xaraya module format. I put it together ages ago and posted it on my company web site, but as that is going to get a re-design soon I thought I'd also post it up here. What follows is the original text from my previous post and a link to the module.

When I say vanishing dollar signs I'm not implying that the Xaraya team are extremely poor and getting poorer; what I mean to say is that for about two weeks I've been struggling with a Xaraya site that refused to display a monetary value denoted by a dollar sign, for example $5.50 would not show up in its complete form, but instead as .50

First of all, let me state that I'm no expert on these matters, but I have now got a successful install up and running using Capistrano on DreamHost. It wasn't all that simple, at least to a novice like me, but maybe my notes can help someone else who is struggling with this.

First let me start with a warning: *Do not rename your home folder in Mac OS X 10.3-10.4*

For some stupid reason OS X lets you rename your home folder without issuing any warnings. Unfortunately your system will then create a new home folder named the same as the old one but in a fresh and empty state, so it will look like all your data and personal settings have vanished! This is quite worrying for the novice user.

I've arrived safe and sound in sunny Perth after a boring but surprisingly restful flight. For some reason there were quite a few seats free for two thirds of the flight so I got to stretch out over three seats most of the way. Kind of like traveling first class I guess. My new iPod Nano was also a saviour, I could tune out the usual background of crying babies and elevator music.

On an impulse I bought myself an iPod Nano, second generation. I couldn't resist temptation and grabbed one when I went to visit my friend in a nearby town. I've been playing with it and its perfect for what I want it for, playing music while cycling.

Mephisto now has an implementation of the MetaWeblog API so you can post articles (like this one) from your favourite Weblog Editor. I've been trying MarsEdit by Ranchero. The API seems to be working ok although when I post a new article it seems to be saved as draft rather than published which kind of defeats the purpose. I'm also not seeing a way to enter an excerpt either.