Daniel Stuart » Dan Update

Sock Guinness

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:38:35 +0000

I’m just back from a cycle and I just realised that my right foot kind of resembles a pint of Guinness. Must have looked funny to drivers while waiting first in the queue at the lights with my foot propped up on the pedal I’m also sporting my new shoes that my girlfriend got me for my birthday!

My tiny room now has more space

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:08:03 +0000

I recently made a trip to the new Ikea in Dublin last week. I was fed up being stuck in a tiny room with no space for all my stuff, and I have a lot of stuff! I had a look around their website and came across their selection of loft beds. They seemed pretty childlike but after spending some time thinking about them, a loft bed would give me a lot more floorspace.

I finally decided on this one and I’m really happy with it, although it took about 4 hours to put together with my girlfriend. Not to mention losing my temper a few times with the stress of trying to make heads or tails of the instructions.

I also got a few other things too; new shelf, clothes organiser, table for the telly and some hooks to mount my snowboard on the wall. It took a bit of time and a few headaches thinking about the layout of everything but I finally got there! It’s one hell of a pad

Take the tour

I took some photo’s with the fisheye to help make it look a bit bigger, take a look.

My New Percussion Instrument – Cajon

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:01:13 +0000

I bought a Cajon box drum a few weeks ago from www.thomann.de, I’m really enjoying it!Its a pretty simple design; a hollow box with a hole on the reverse side, and behind inside the front panel, there’s a series of thin guitar like strings to give it a nice snare rattle.

As you play you notice the different tones you can get out of it. The top edge sounds like a snare and closer to the middle, a bass drum. You can fill in the rest with delicate ghost notes, these can be your hi-hats. You can also change the pitch of the drum by running your foot up the front panel as you play, do this with a nice fill pattern and these could be your toms.

So there you have it, kick, snare, hi-hats and toms in one box!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9l4Pu8SdGE

My Brother Got Married!

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:33:01 +0000

Big Congratulations to Peter & Katherine Stuart. They will be off soon on their honeymoon to Thailand!

Web work in New Zealand

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:21:01 +0000

Since living in New Zealand for the guts of 7 months I have managed to get a little bit of web development work here and there. Back in Queenstown I did some freelance work for local web development company, Kelpdesign. They took me on for a few weeks and I managed to get a few site’s done for them. Nice bunch of people and I’ll never forget William’s two dogs lounging around the office in front of the gas heater.

The first bit of work was a simple WordPress website for a local tradesman. They were looking for something quick and it was basically a free theme, some plugins and some content put together.

www.queenstownconcretegrinding.com

The second website on the other hand was a custom design by Kelpdesign and it was for a local construction project management company. I had to convert it to xHTML and CSS and set it up as a WordPress template. This was the first time I have created a template for WordPress and it really opened me up to what WordPress could do. I have created so many templates for Joomla in the past and developing one for another CMS was pretty interesting. This WordPress template had everything from custom fields and separate layouts that could be assigned to specific pages and categories. As well as clever bits of PHP and nice usage of WordPress’s API.

www.triplestar.net.nz

New Zealand Update

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:16:25 +0000

Well well… it’s been an awful long time since I have managed to get back to updating my website. I’ve been able to update Twitter easily enough as I can update it from my phone via text. But I just didn’t have the time and net connection to update this blog!

A lot of stuff has happened since my last entry. It’s going to take me many more to fill you in on what I’ve been doing and how awesome our New Zealand road trip has been.

Here’s a quick overview on what we’re been up to:

Went to Milford Sound
Snowboarded at Treble Cone
Left Queenstown and started our road trip
Hiked Franz Joseph Glacier
Kayaked in Abel Tasman National Park
Wine tasted in Cloudy Bay vineyard
Saw a lot of seals chilling by a car park.
Got the Ferry from the South Island to the North.
Met up with my good friend James in Wellington
Went white water rafting
Saw a geyser and smelt some eggy geothermal activity in Rotorua
Went Caving, abseiling, tubing and saw some glow worms.
Ate some sushi
Got to the northern tip of New Zealand at Cape Reigna
Tried sandboarding!
Saw some wild dolphins
Sold the van in Auckland and made a fantastic profit!

At the moment I’m compiling a google map with the route we took, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to share it easily but I will go in more depth at some stage.

Here’s a few pics!

Will update again soon!

NZ DIY Camper Van Conversion

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:39:51 +0000

Over the past few days my girlfriend Trish and I did some camper conversion work on our Toyota Hiace we bought last month.

We took out the bed that came with it and decided to make a new one down the back, nearer the boot. We also made up a tall storage unit for our stuff and there is also plenty of storage under the bed too!

Today we did some work on the floor; we got a thin piece of MDF, cut it to shape and stuck on some simple lino tiles so it can be cleaned easily! Looks great!

Hopefully we will make a bit of a profit on it when we sell it on and hopefully it will make a great New Zealand road trip vehicle for more backpackers.

We have a few little bits and bobs left to do now but that’s mainly it! Can’t wait to hit the road and explore this amazing country!

Check out the photos!

The Boots Situation

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:00:02 +0000

Well still no luck getting my boots back from the guys at Small Planet in Queenstown. As I have said in a previous post, I dropped them in as they were a little worse for wear and they said they would bring them to a local boot repair shop somewhere in town. But it turns out that the bloke who works in the repair shop has gone to hospital and since he’s the only guy who works there the whole place has been shut down until further notice. Not good for the relationship between me and snowboarding.

One of my housemates, remembered that there was a pair of boots hanging around somewhere in the house. She fished them out for me and they fit perfectly and they are a really nice pair of Burton boots, all I needed were some new laces. The guys in Small Planet hooked me up with a free pair of laces because I know them almost at a first name basis now as I’ve been in so many times asking about my boots! So at the end of the day, I now have boots and I can head up the mountain again! Plus my ribs are a lot better!

My Ribs and My Boots

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:47:12 +0000

On Saturday I spent most of my day up at Coronet Peak snowboarding. It was a bit cloudy now and again but the snow was great. I also noticed a slight pain early on on the day on my left ribs but I didn’t really do anything about it, I just ignored it and ploughed on! Me and my girlfriend Trish hung around for night ski too, so it was an extra long day! On the last few runs it was very sore to bend down and do up my bindings and by the time I was on the bus back to Queenstown I was in bits! Had to get some bandages from the pharmacy too, which really helped hold them together with a slight bit of pressure! I have been told that there is really nothing you can do except to take it easy when your ribs are sore. So I decided to do a MacGyver on it and take care of them myself and if the pain didn’t go away, then I’d see a doctor!

Now that a few days have past they are much better, still a little bit of pain but no where in comparison to Saturday evening! So I have decided to give it a rest for a good few days and sort out some other stuff!

My snowboarding boots have gotten a little worse for wear so I brought them back to Small Planet (the shop where i bought them in) and they were happy to send them to the repair shop free of charge. Two of the laces are almost broken and another fully broke, I just tied a knot to join it back together last week! Also the velcro strap on one of the snapped! Anyhoo, look forward to getting them back so I can head up to The Remarkables again, my last session up there was last Friday and it was brilliant!

A Nerd’s Bag

admin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:37:18 +0000

It’s came to my attention that my luggage contents is about 30% practical and 70% nerdy.

By far the most nerdy thing I have packed is the Joomla programming book i brought with me… Or is it the 10 xbox 360 games… or my laptop?! At least I have things like the grioch badge to keep me sane