And of course there is Macintosh's OSX which I have been using extensively over the last year and a bit. I class it as one of the greatest operating systems made, its UNIX, Windows and Mac OS combined into one trendy GUI that is not only easy to use but jam packed full of functionality.

I started my new job this week, and its been a Microsoft wake up call, almost everything is Windows based. This means only one thing in regards to myself, that is I need to start learning how to use Windows again - well use it to its most functionally best (I am not sure how good that really is). So appart from taking a crash course in using Windows, I am pacing myself towards the fine art of MS-SQL and XML as these are two of the major components that the applications use. So as I usually do, I want to know how things tick and I am going to have to learn these two aspects to acheive this.

By the way, I am no longer a Radiographer, I am now an Applications Specialist :-)

After about 12 months of drought the Turon was flowing strong with recent rains helping water levels. The only problem here was that prior to the wet weather we have had the Turon became very dry, in fact in some places it came to a grinding halt with very little if any water flowing through it, so finding fish was going to be the challenge, especially since the water was very murky due to the rainfall.

Enjoying an afternoon cola at the pub in Sofala it was discovered that the last decent sized trout was caught way back in the early months of 2002, quite a large brown trout as the photo illustrated and it wasnt caught on fly either! My chances of catching anything (even a carp) were very slim.

A quick fish at the Cudgegong River in mudgee (a notified trout water according to NSW Fisheries) yielded nothing aswell, and these waters are supposed to be stocked! There was a nice spot to fish, but to get to it meant walking through shoulder height grass - being summer time and quite a warm day I didnt want to risk running into a brown snake, so fishing that spot was definatly out.

Well it was an enjoyable weekend anyway, the water was nice to wade through (in waders of course!), the scenery was spectacular as it always is in the Bathurst/Mudgee area and the only thing missing was the fish. But I couldnt really complain as I had an enjoyable weekend away. The first three photos are at a particularly still (with only a slight current) spot on the Turon and the final photo is at the Cudgegong. Thanks to Brad from iserv for the photos.

So shintara.org will become the shintara.net test environment. This means that when I develop something new for shintara, such as a new look, backend or a new content feed/stream I will test it on the shintara.org server and document any problems that I am having with this and what I have done to rectify it. A good place for me to get better at what I do and for you to learn from my mistakes! So keep a look-n-see over in that direction, you might just see the development of the next shintara.net front and back ends.