Extension Finished

I am pleased to announce that the extensions are all finished. Phew!

It took a while to wrap up the finishing touches, with the biggest headache caused by the carpet. But all done and dusted now and I have also taken a buch of photos and thrown them up on flickr.

We are yet to finish up outside as we had some clearing done and the grass was taken out as a result. We are also going to move the fence forward to give the boys more room to play in.

The extension is awesome and we love it. It had transformed our family and our lifestyle. We now have segmented living areas and some space to get some time out. Entertaining will be a lot easier now and we also have room for guests!

Take a look at the flickr page as pictures speak louder than words.

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House Extensions Update 1

Finally found the time to take some photos and write about the new house extensions that we are doing. After much planning, measuring and revising plans and waiting for everything to get through council we have started!

So I got out today and got some photos so that I could post an update. Yesterday the concrete was poured for the footings. Now the builders won’t be back for the rest of the week because they want these to settle and set. Then we should see some real progress. The small slab was poured for the new stair well last week but that was not that exciting. But now we can actually see the beginnings of something.

See not that exciting, a slab of concrete. The window that is there will disapear. Not even sure why it is there as it is under the house.

This is looking from the side, that slab is to the left. The 2 metal poles are holding the front of the house up. The ground floor joists and bearers are partly in place. This extension is going to extend out towards the front and this is the begining of the ground floor. The footings in the foreground are for the new upper deck. Here under that deck will be a water tank. To the right in front of the lower floor are some more footings for a smaller lower deck that will open out from the 4th bedroom. The office that will be most distant in this image will have a small deck as well and will join by a walkway to the lower bedroom deck.

This is exciting for me because this is my new office. I know it doesn’t look like much now but it will! The concrete slab to the left will be the stairs. The office will have it’s own external access and a small deck landing. Not huge but big enough to have a few chairs and enjoy a beer in the hot summer evenings.

There are more images on my flickr page, I have linked these to there. I am trying to keep this up to date now things are started. Sorry if it is boring everyone to tears. But this will be great to look back on over the years. Pkus the listeners of the podcast are wanting some photos and a blog post. See I do listen! More updates to come.

Another Frog Finally Poses

I say another because I have a fair number of frog images and pictures around the place. I love frogs. They say they are a sign of a healthy environment. So I was pleased when we moved into our new place that we have frogs here as well. While not as many as Far North Queensland, I am sure that every downpipe has one in it!

So I was really pleased when I found this one sitting on the bird feeder where I could get a decent shot of him. I think I took about 10 goes to get one that was good (well good enough to post on flickr).

I have been following them around for ages but they are usually not locatable or are high up on something where a photo would be difficult. In my tracking I have often seen one that jumps from the roof to the grass on his nightly outing. I have never seen a frog jump off something so high willingly! I think this is the same one. Kate is yet to see it, she always hears me say – “there it goes again and you missed it!”.

There is a larger size on flickr, but remember this work is licenced under creative commons.

Moving House

So no blogging, I know… But I have a really, really good excuse. We have been moving house! Right now I am still breathing a sigh of relief.

So the blog has been neglected and we have taken a short hiatus from the Podcast to enable myself and attached family to move and settle in. I have enjoyed the break and it is one that was needed. We are currently not working and taking some time for us. It has been good although we really have not stopped. Settling into a new house has it’s teething problems. However, things are starting to get sorted and we are feeling like this is more home than not.

The move was a huge one, we moved from Cairns in Far North Queensland to a small town in Northern New South Wales called Modanville. A distance of 1, 876 km. Interstate and to a much cooler climate, well one that has a winter at any rate! The weather is actually one of the things we are finding that hardest to get used to. To top the whole weather thing off, it is one of the coldest on record! We arrived right in the middle of it. We think it is cold when the temperature gets below 20 degrees Celsius and I think we have one or two days when it has been above.

So as you might imagine pretty big and unsettling. The kids have found it tough but adapted quickly and are now having fun and like the house. Although the 2 year old is asking every now and then when are we going home.

The great thing for us about moving this time is part of a dream realized. That is that we have finally got out of the suburbs and into a semi rural setting. We have come from a block that was 800m² to a block that is over 2000m². The gardens are beautiful and will be better as we work on them as we did at our previous home. The gardens as they are okay but in need of a bit of attention. Pruning and cleaning up mainly. As we start to do that, I will add some features and “interestingness” to the garden.

We are enjoying the wildlife that is attracted to the large native garden. Already I have seen an echidna and today I have spotted a Satin Bower bird. There are heaps of other birds that visit and we are loving it. As we move into warmer weather we hope to see an increase in the visitors as the native trees flower.

The house is great. It has the start of everything that we need and want. One thing that we did not manage was the inclusion of an office to house the computer and a getaway for me. But we have a heap of ideas about how we are going to get this much needed feature added onto our new house. We are hoping to get some advice in the next couple of weeks.

So a lot has been happening and we have been very, very busy. My apologies for the comments that have not been moderated and the lack of posts. But as things settle things will get back to normal. We are hoping to resume the podcast soon and look forward to a great year. We have a great promotion in store and some interesting guests coming up.

Please check out the Flickr page for more photos of the new place!

New Home for The Global Geek Podcast!

This is important! Everyone should be aware that the Global Geek Podcast has a new abode. We have moved over to The Podcast Network! This means a few changes for our regular listeners.

First up it is almost D-Day as far as the URL is concerned. We want to keep the http://www.globalgeekpodcast.com URL for the show. That means that I do some DNS mojo and direct traffic to the new site. That in turn means that you will not be able to get to the old site using that URL. The other thing is that there will also be a change to the feed URL, yes that has changed! Here is a summary of changes:

New site on TPN: http://globalgeek.thepodcastnetwork.com/

[ the same URL will work as soon as I redirect the the traffic, the website was a redirected and masked web page meaning that as far as you were concerned you were looking at http://www.globalgeekpodcast.com but in reality it was http://www.globalgeekpodcast.libsyn.com/%5D

Old RSS subscription:

http://globalgeekpodcast.com/rss

New RSS Subscription:

http://globalgeek.thepodcastnetwork.com/feed/

If you have no interest in our podcast I urge you to support The Podcast Network and find something that you like and take a listen. There is a great show called The Best of TPN which is just as it says and features segments from different shows on the network, check it out.

You can still access the archived material held on Liberated Syndication at the old Website if you want to check out older shows, but remember that to subscribe use the new details, I am going to flip the Name servers soon!!

So please everyone, update your feed readers and podcasting software. The details for other types of subscriptions (iTunes etc) can be found on the new site.

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