Michael Gorey

Is my blog the only one in the world to have brown in its theme color? I haven’t seen any others.
Why is brown so disdained? Apart from being the color of faeces I can’t see any marketing/style reason why it should be snubbed (probably just nailed it).
Brown has never been fashionable in clothes, apart [...]

I installed the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for WordPress yesterday. It’s a good way of organising the site and making related content easier to find.
It’s a little trickier to set up than typical plugins but not too difficult if you’re prepared to devote half an hour of concentration.
Not that I’m fussed about web traffic, but [...]

A friend tipped me off there was a problem making a guestbook entry on this site. I looked into it, and sure enough, it wasn’t possible to make any comments anywhere.
I don’t know why this happened. I think it was probably something to do with alterations I made to the former theme.
I’ve now installed the [...]

A free online service called Browsershots is available for web site developers to test how their sites look in different browsers and on different operating systems. You’re able to select from various options and then submit for screenshots to be created.
In my case it took over half an hour. I had gone with all the [...]

Okay, this fits into the silly category but it’s also good fun. Ever wanted to make a picture of the boss with devil’s horns and strange expressions? Visit PikiPimp.
This picture of me simply adds a Merv Hughes moustache and a bird’s nest hairstyle. There are lots of options in various categories including ears, eyes, eyebrows, [...]

A Kalgoorlie Miner columnist, Kitty Prodonovich, wrote today about “phone tone rage” (PTR).
It is quite amazing how the repetitive tones from an innocent little phone can incite so much anger and frustration, but they do. And it’s not just the phone rings; you can also have different sound for message alerts and other thing. One [...]

Charles Wright has an interesting column in The Age called Razor. It covers technology and "computer sociology".
A recent article about Australia’s best blog caught my attention. This was a competition run by a hosting company.
Some 513 entries were culled down to 11 for a panel of judges to assess. The winner was Singing Bridges, [...]

I discovered an innovative anti-spam tool today while browsing SourceForge. It’s called Spamgourmet and at no cost it’s worth every second it takes to register. From the web site:
If you give your email address to everyone, you are bound to receive spam emails, and you won’t know where they came from. Wouldn’t it be convenient [...]

I can’t understand the fuss regarding a possible identity card for all Australians. Forget the “war on terror” and think about how practical such a card would be.
Opening a bank account or seeking a credit card is a difficult process that involves digging out birth certificates, licences and various other forms of identification.
We already have [...]

I flirted with Fedora as my Linux option of choice for a couple of months, but I’ve now returned to Mepis.
I first used Fox, which is a promising Fedora derivative. I’ll revisit Fox when they move out of beta mode and improve their English version. It has a great look and feel, and the update [...]