Its been a long time now since I’ve had to check into an office every day of the week to put bread and butter on the table. I know though that for many of you reading this, that the workaday routine is the daily reality. Get up, go to the office, return home, go to bed…repeat until insanity, retirment or check-out-of-hotel-de-vivre ensues.

Of course, I am extremely grateful that every day some (most) people choose the 9 to 5 life, and that there are still others who actively enjoy it, thrive in it, need it, want it, aspire to it, and don’t seem to go insane at all. I salute all those of you who keep the wheels of industry turning  and operating within normal parameters.

I am one of those people who has a propensity toward madness when confined by a cubicle. Luckily in the past  I mostly worked in jobs where the senior cubicle dwellers thought that my crazy shenanigans equated to creativity, out of the box thinking, and actual productive work. Even turning up with a half shaven pink mowhawk could not convince them otherwise. They gave me a prize and more staff.

I digress. Really, we all have a duty to play at least some part in it, performing some kind of ‘useful to society role’ no matter how much the ‘get rich quick’ merchants proclaim how daft we all are for trading our time for money. Hey, you can only sit around a pool for so long sipping pina-coladas before you actually get a bit bored and say to yourself “there must be more to life than this!’

Productive usefulness beckons…

The wonderful thing about how how our society operates though (at least in my part of the world) is that we do have choices. To opt in, or out, or try something different if the mood takes us. I have chosen to do something different. Maybe you would like to do that too.

I often think back to how things were done in ye-bygone days, way way before any of us here on this planet were twinkles in anyones eyes, when people worked at home, made things at home, grew things at home, loaded up the cart with things from home, took the occasional trip to market with the things, to swap them for other things to bring back home again.

Its called Cottage Industry…

I often think of what my wife and I do as a cottage industry (yes my wife works at home too), but in the 21st century, with the marketplace now being the internet. We make our online art courses, we teach our art courses, we make our WordPress theme, we help people with our WordPress theme, all from the comfort of our ‘cottage’, surrounded by our lively young children, only emerging from the home to get supplies, engage in some kind of sporting activity or do any one of the myriad of things that I’d probably never get round to doing if I were clocking on 9  to 5. In short, we ‘got a life’, ie we are living it on our own terms, making a living off our own ideas. Useful ideas. Ideas that can make a difference to others (not only ourselves – and thats the really special thing we love).

So, maybe now you are saying to yourself “hey, this cottage industry gig sounds like something I should do!”

That’s great! Welcome to the ‘out-of-office-rollercoaster-fun-ride-of-your-life’. The catch is though that on this rollercoaster you lay the track as you go, and determine the direction, up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards or otherwise, even though you are mostly staying put in your cottage. Its amazing how thrilling staying in one place can be in that context.

I recently had the pleasure of laying down some more track; a website in fact. DrawPj.com. It’s a place where beginner artists and art instructors can come together, to jump out of the day-to-day routine to learn how to create art, or even learn how to teach the course themselves so that they too can make their own cottage industry. I like the idea of a whole community of little art teaching cottage industries springing up all over the world, and us all being connected over the internet.

So there you have it, thats my cottage industry; my escape from the getting on the bus twice a day world. If you are ready to start your own cottage industry then I can heartily recommend it to you as a lifestyle choice. Are you really happy with someone telling you that you can only have 45 minutes for lunch, and that you must be interred in a grey carpetted cubicle in front of a computer screen that could very well have been accessed from your home anyway. That’s just plain craziness!

Oh, yes, the website for our online art course is DrawPj.com for anyone who is interested, and, of course, Heatmap Theme is always there for you when you want to monetize your ideas with a little Adsense, if thats your ticket out of the termite hills of corporate life

Gardening seems to be regarded as a gentile occupation, mainly for people who like to wear woolly jumpers when its a bit nippy outside, and retired people with far too much time on their hands. I seek to redress this image… at least around my own garden anyway.

Here’s my thinking…  I see people jogging on the street, cycling in chattering packs, working out in the gym, and yoga-ing until their yin fully is yanged.  I don’t have time for all that. I have to combine my exercise regime with the practicalities of directing all that energy into something useful (in addition to all that healthy mind, healthy body stuff)

So Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce to you the Art (and Sport of) EXTREME GARDENING.

I live with a subtropical garden out the back, a garden intent on taking over the very space that I inhabit. You don’t so much garden in Queensland; what you do is engage in a constant battle with nature in a bid not to be outflanked by plants of all tropical persuasions.  It takes a lot of energy to keep this garden in check. It just grows stuff when you are not looking. You turn around for a second and whoosh, when you turn back there’s a whole new tree where it wasn’t before. Extreme measures are needed. Extreme Gardening is needed.

So what exactly is Extreme Gardening? In its most basic form its doing gardening very very fast so as to get a bit fitter than you were when you started. Granted most times I come away from the garden feeling like my legs have turned to jelly, but after a good lie down, a nice cup of tea and a soothing ‘there, there’ from the wife I do start to feel the benefit of all that healthy outdoor, not to mention USEFUL, activity.

Yes of course I could have gained all the same health benefits by joining that crowd of road cyclists who come blethering past my home early in the morning like some kind of fast moving business networking group on wheels, but, that wouldn’t have got the garden done would it. I’d be out on those bikes, puffing, grunting, and wittering for hours on end but the garden would STILL need doing. Complete nightmare. Knackered with an untidy garden taunting me with its unruly twigs and fronds.

“Hey I cant find a WordPress theme that does just what I want…you know what.. I think I’ll design my own!”

and then after you’ve finished creating your theme you get the second brilliant idea… and it goes something like this…

“Wow my WordPress theme is pretty cool now, and seeing as everyone is asking to get their hands on it, I’ll release it to the world!”

For many WordPress Theme designers this is the kiss of death for their actual blogging. The writing gets put on hold while theme designing grows into a magnificent obsession. I have not been immune to this. Alas and alack, I too have been caught up in the cloistered codexed world of theme-ing and diminished my word output!

No more I say… time to start blogging again. So having given my blog a freshen up with my latest Heatmap Child Theme we’re off again into the realm where only words can take us… until at least the time comes when I get obsessed with the next theme update again.

As a youth, pop music ranked alongside soccer as something you must be into.  I never liked soccer that much though as I only ever seemed to reach the position of ‘substitute’ on the infant school team. I never scored any goals and I was better at fouling other players by kicking them than actually kicking the ball. I never kicked any pop stars though.

No, I loved pop music, and even wanted to be a Pop Star, but never seemed to find the time to do anything about it, though I did write many songs and developed a musical style reminiscent of a monotone Pet Shop Boys, complete with 80′s st-st-st-st-stuttering ssss—ssss—samples. (n-n-n-nineteen anyone?).

I’m glad I’m not one. I’ve read many pop star autobiographies and while the bit which involves going on stage and playing a gig in front of 100,000 screaming fans seems fun, the road to the top and back down again seems altogether too smelly, unsavoury and filled with people who would induce anyone to become paranoid (with or without the seemingly obligatory hard drugs). So, when it comes to the pop world the nearest I have got is standing or sitting next to some now reasonably famous people.

Vince Clarke

I once stood alone at the Uni Bar next to Vince Clarke of Yazoo, Depeche Mode, and Erasure fame. I wish I had said hello. I was a shy youth.

Stephen Duffy

I met Stephen Duffy twice (of 80′s Tin Tin and now Robbie Williams co-song writer fame).  He signed my record and I snuck backstage after the gig for photos. For a long time my photo was on his website. My fashion sense of the time though was sorely lacking and shall for ever more be etched in internet history. I also interviewed him once for the ‘Friends of the Lilac Time’, but I was too worldly naive to impress him with my interview technique and he disappointed me by being just an ordinary person with an extraordinary ego. I can’t blame him for that. Artists never match up to perfection of their artistic creations. The interview never saw the light of day.

Mark from ‘Take That’

I sat next to Mark from Take That once outside a solo promotional gig, after Take That had split. He was busy fuelling an unhealthy habit. I always wonder how people who live unhealthy lifestyle can even make it out of bed on a morning, never mind expend massive energy on stage. I guess that’s why the unhealthy habits start in the first place.

The (EX) Prime Minister of Australia

So that’s about it for Pop stars I have met… Apart from one. Even though he’s not a pop star, in the Australian media his persona sometimes takes on the aura of one. I gave Kevin Rudd a hug (now of  ‘I am the (now EX) Prime-Minister-of-Australia’ fame) when he popped into our church. Its a very huggy church, and no-one was hugging him, so I went over and made him feel welcome. He was mildly surprised. I forgot his name and said “welcome to the church PHIL” (temporily confusing Kevin Rudd with Phillip Ruddock). Later that year he became Prime Minister (Kevin, not Phil). I don’t think the two events are related but you never know;  a butterfly flaps its wings here and an earthquake is triggered on the opposite side of the world.

Update!  Poor old Kevin is now no longer the Prime Minister. He has been usurped by the Ginger Ninja Julia Gillard. I don’t expect to be giving her a hug any time soon. I promise though that if I ever meet her I will endeavour to get her name wrong too.

When I was a kid, bananas came slightly blackened and over-ripe. We squished them up and put them in sandwiches. I liked banana sandwiches a lot. I ate a lot of them. My bones are probably built from one third banana sandwiches, one third milk, with the rest being made up of liver, onions and mashed potato.

When I first saw bananas ‘in the wild’ I could not believe they were actually real bananas. I guess its the same kind of disconnection that some people feel between a cow and a steak. I’d never seen a banana tree before. Now there are lots of banana trees in the garden. I had to move countries for this to happen though. There are also paw-paws (came in cans as a mysterious ingredient in fruit salad when I was a child), pumpkins (only seen in American Halloween trick or treat references on imported movies), lychees (they grow in chinese restaurants don’t they?) and Custard Apples (a freak of nature never seen in my native UK). There are also lemons, limes, oranges and mandarins (only ever seen in a christmas stocking previously).

Its a race to eat them. You see, where I live the animals also have an eye on the garden. To me, its a wonderful compendium of exotic fruits for my delectation. To them its just lunch, breakfast and tea, and they seem to have a knack of grabbing things off the tree the instant they become in any way edible, or, more annoyingly just nibbling a little bit of the end, so that you don’t really want to eat it yourself.

There are bananas sat in front of me as I type this, lined up in a row, ripening on the front deck. About 10 bunches. My wife makes great banana cakes with them. You see the problem is they all get ripe at once, and eating 100 banana within the space of 4 days is not really possible for me, much as I like them, and much as the novelty of chopping them out of the tree with a machete never wears off.

My wife tells me that we have Monsterio tree somewhere in the garden. I’ve never got the hang of those. Maybe its the name. Who would want to eat a monster fruit?

Here’s how you do it:

• You see a placename on a signpost.
• You come up with a definition for that word, using it to describe a concept, feeling or thing that currently has no word attached to it.

Here are some of my own examples. These are real Australian placenames. You’ll get the idea.

Goondiwindi:
A small embarrassing fart unexpectedly expelled when laughing out loud in quiet company.

Ardleton:
A person of advancing years who drives at a speed so slow that they could possibly pass away before they reach their destination.

Barrogan:
A frustrated person who is in a hurry to drive somewhere quickly, and who is being prevented from doing so because they are stuck behind an Ardleton.

Conway:
A road that you drive down for a considerable distance before you realise that a prankster has in fact turned the sign at the last junction in the opposite direction.

Hindmarsh:
An inviting patch of lawn which appears to be dry and the perfect spot for a picnic, however, after sitting there for an extended period you discover that your bottom is actually wet.

Bangalow:
A car which has had its suspension lowered so as to increase performance, but which is in such a decrepit state of repair that you wonder why the owner would bother in the first place.

Andover:
The act of hanging around for as little time as possible at a car dealership when you trade your old car for a new one, knowing that the old one is on its last legs and will probably never start again.

I was doing my early rounds, checking my emails and replying to a HeatMap theme user who was having a few problems (in the end completely unrelated to Heatmap theme) when, during the search for the non-existent bug, I found a different bug altogether…

HeatMap Theme 2.2 coming soon (sort of)

I had recently upgraded all my sites to HeatMap Theme 2.2 (beta) (no you can’t have one yet…its not ready) and when I checked my sites using Internet Explorer I found to my complete horror, dismay, chagrin (cue gnashing of teeth) that my carefully constructed sites had exploded; CSS boxes all over the place. Aack! But ONLY on Internet Explorer (all versions – including the brand new exploder, version 8).

Normally I check and check things until they can be checked no more, but this one completely got by me. Maybe its because I secretly harbour a longing for a world where Internet Explorer does not exist (possibly this world, possibly around 1985, except that I’m still the age I was back then, but I know everything that I know now).

Why Internet Explorer exploded my WordPress

From a couple of hours of fossicking about, I now know that he problem was thus…

I had somehow managed to place a HTML comment right above the php call to get_header();

I don’t know why I got it into my head (no pun intended) to put the comment there, but I did do it, and it did explode my XHTML and CSS when viewed through the less-than-thrilling-to develop-for Internet Explorer. For those XHTML-o-files who like to nitpick, yes, I know its not really very good practice to put a comment there anyway, but it is easy to forget that the very top of your WordPress index.html file is actually the very top of your XHTML output in WordPress (because index.html calls header.php in the normal course of events – and not the other way round as might seem logical).

Anyway, the long and short of it is – don’t allow anything to appear in your code above the DOCTYPE (accidentally or intentionally) or you will incur the wrath of an exploded website on IE. All things being equal though, all the other browsers should have exploded too, but they were being very kind to my code, in a similar way to your friends politely ignoring your fart at a quiet afternoon tea.

This is as much a message to myself, as any other hapless WordPress / XHTML debuggee. Doh! Doh! Doh! (cue slapping of forehead).

This, I decided, should be a pie to be savoured. It must definitely be award winning, preferably with 5 stars from a local festival of pie eating.

I really don’t want to throw just any old pastry entombed cow bits down my neck. These must be quality cow bits, prime juicy cow bits, in the most golden of perfect pastry crustiness…at least that’s what I hoped for…

The Best Pie In The Entire Universe!

I perused the local pie dispensing storefronts (there are four here) and noticed that two of them claimed ‘award winning status’. One of them even claimed to be the home of the Sunshine Coasts best Pie.

It seems that of the many things in life that are deemed important to award things to, meat pies are one of them, in company with bottles of cheap wine (the more medals on the label the better) and 1st place in the sack race at the school sports day. Obviously in today’s cut-throat ‘pie eat pie’ fast food sector one cannot simply hope to compete at the forefront of pie-dom without displaying a sign outside of the shop that emphatically declares ‘Voted best pie in the Universe’ (*Weasel Handlers weekly issue 59, page 6, paragraph 31)

The Accused

This brings me to the pie in question, ‘exhibit A mi’lud’. An innocent enough looking character, but not, it seems, the stand-up citizen of Award Winning Pie-Land that it’s oh so enticing Golden crust may have you believe. I’m not going to name the perpetrator of this pie, as it goes against my grain to give any promotion or link love at all to any organisation that might not be doing the very best of work. Yes, fellow pie lover, I will only name names when I have something nice to say (with the subtext being that if I do actually say something good about something, then you really know that I think its really really good).

And so to the pie. Served on a white plate, this was a beef, burgundy and mushroom pie. The crust was lovely and golden, and had a nice soft crunch to it when my fork cut into it. A good start. I looked inside, and there was definitely meat in there, but not enough I personally felt to be deserving of award winning status. Oh well, lets give this pie the benefit of the doubt as the crust looks so good. I put it in my mouth. Oh oh… this pie is not very warm. DEAR PIE VENDORS of the world, please take note. YOUR PIES MUST BE SERVED HOT! If its not hot then that conjures up all sorts of visions in the mind of ‘health concious’ pie eater. We returned the Pie.

After a couple of minutes of nuking in the Microwave, the pie sat innocently before me again. Lets try this again shall we. Nuking a pie does not do good things to the pastry. It goes all flippy floppy. I examined the interior of the pie once more, with echoes of “Where’s the Beef?” bouncing through the space between my ears.

On the Gravy Train…

A vital ingredient in a pie is a really good thick meaty gravy, and as this was a beef burgundy pie I was expecting a rich full taste. This pie did not have either. In fact the gravy was sort of gloopy in a similar fashion to my childs snotty nose. Way too much thickener, not enough Gravy. There are a lot of things in life that I feel are like that. Mars bars for one (if you substitute chocolate for gravy and nougat for thickener (what?)). I remember when it seemed Mars Bars were coated in so much chocolate that you had to book in for a major tooth reconstruction if you tried to eat a cold one ‘straight from the fridge’. Where did the chocolate go? I digress.

The Award Winning Pie Criteria

Back to the pies that claim to hold trophies aloft in celebration of their third-party endorsed tastiness…

PIE VENDORS of the WORLD, here are my criteria for an award winning pie, if I were to actually award some awards for award winning pies:

1. Crispy golden crust, not too short, but ‘juuuuust right’
2. No soggy bottoms (nobody likes a soggy bottom)
3. A rich meaty gravy which is thick and tasty
4. and most of all, it must be absolutely and utterly be packed with lots and lots and lots of juicy and tasty prime cow chunks.

There you have it. If you have a pie which can meet the above criteria then please do express it to me by courier. I will be more than happy to review it for my lunch.

I have known the land of cubicles though, including a long stint in an IT department. It seemed like it was fun at the time, but really, I was just making the best of a en-cubicled siutation, though I did eventually manage to score a corner cubicle with a 180 degree view of the city (more by luck than corporate management potential though).

Yes, my little team and I were happy-ish little vegimites, grabbing whatever morsels of fun were to be had, building a little world of our own within a big grown up corporate-ish world. The trouble is, it sucks you in, lures you into thinking that you are comfortable, safe, cosseted and well looked after. Therein lurks danger for any freedom loving creative spirit.

Now I work at home, with my Wife, doing our own thing, the HeatMap Thing, The Paint In Your Pyjamas thing, and other assorted art and creativity related things. Good things. People seem to love our things. We are grateful. We look forward to Fridays.

Fridays are the day when we do ‘our thing’, and in the case of the last few Fridays, it has been a ‘chocolate thing’. Yesterday (Friday of course) we decided to go to our local Chocolate Cafe and indulge in a (chocolate) Coffee and some (chocolate) cake. We go to ‘Sweet Tempered’ in Noosa Junction, (tucked down the Lanyana Arcade, fortuitously opposite to a Dentist and Florist’s shop). We had our usual Milk Chocolate Mocha, which is a regular Mocha except it has melted milk chocolate dripping down the inside of the glass cup (you can see its sticky ooziness through the glass) nicely finished off with froth and more chocolate.

We also had two cakes; a classic warm fudge brownie (and cream), with a lovely thin crispy crust on top, and a deliciously moist and chocolate gooey nuttiness inside. Lovely. The second cake was not chocolate based, but instead a zesty lemon slice, again with a lovely thin crispy crust on top, but, upon closer inspection a surprisingly thick base under the zesty lemon. The base was so thick that Dylan (the co-owner of the shop) had thoughtfully supplied a knife to cut it with.

I was initially concerned that this was not a good thing. Having watched many episodes of ‘Masterchef’ of course I have ‘learned’ how to be an ‘expert taster’, probably like the rest of the Australian population.  It must be quite a pain for all the chefs out there. I extracted the knife, put on my best Matt Preston demeanour, chopped off a piece, fearing a tough mouthful of biscuit. I needn’t have worried. The base crumbled to sweet goo in my mouth and mingled with the zesty lemon. Gorgeous. A nice dab of cream took the edge off the citrus. Heavenly.

So to sum up, if you visit Noosa and you don’t visit Dylan and Kate for Chocolate, then you’re missing out. Leave the beach immediately, pop on a sarong, rent a mini-moke and ride over the hill to Noosa Junction and get some Sweet Tempered in you

So, that was my Friday morning. How was yours?

Fortunately when it comes to HeatMap Theme, this checking compulsion does seem to be working though, and working rather well. The quality control department in my brain is giving itself a pat on the back of the synapses. I do check new HeatMap Theme stuff on a least three different blogs before I release it to you, dear HeatMapster (yes I now have invented a new word for HeatMap Theme users).

10 days in and we’re up to …let me ‘check’ … 2597 downloads and I have over 600 referrers in my stats. 10 days ago these stats were 0 and 3 respectively.
This means that there are a lot of bloggers trying out HeatMap Theme for the first time, and a goodly proportion sticking around a while.

The important thing for me is that nobody’s blog blew up when they installed HeatMap Theme (as far as I know) and no small animals were harmed during its deployment. With the above stats I surely would have heard cries and moans (possibly with some biblical style gnashing of teeth) if those fearful things had happened. Actually there are seven 5 star ratings for HeatMap Theme sitting on http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/heatmap-adsense-theme/stats/ as I type, plus some nice compliments and some sensible questions.

So 10 days into HeatMapTheme.com the world did not end. In fact it’s a brand new shiny world. I’m expecting that someone will come along soon and spoil the party by saying “I hate HeatMap Theme because it exists – 1 star” after looking at my three-months of solid work in 5 seconds flat and passing instant judgement. It’s bound to happen, but right up to this point HeatMapTheme is doing its things as I expected it would.

…so a compulsion to check can sometimes be a good thing.

First person to post a comment saying “naa-naa na naaaaa-naaaa, you missssed thii-isss!” will get a custard pie in the face.