Heaps and heaps of updates

/
Ok, heaps of update, stay with me.
(This is what happens when you don't blog for a while - but you ain't getting no apologies from me!)
  • .NET stuff
    • Having done .NET 2.0 for nearly a year, I can't remember what it was like without generics, or anonymous delegates...
    • Spring.NET is cool.
    • ASP.NET AJAX is cool.
    • NHibernate is somewhat cool (but I'm not sold).
    • DB2, the database that's used here sucks really bad.  Like a vacuum combined with a blackhole.  People should use a real, up-to-date database system, like SQL Server or failing that at least Oracle...
  • Work stuff
    • People come and go, I haven't decided whether I want to stay here or get moved to a different project.
    • Oh ya, did so much javascript (in particular, JQuery), I think I can dream in JQuery now.
  • Gaming stuff
    • Following quitting WoW, I played LOTRO initially to help me quit Warcraft.
    • LOTRO turned out to be a bit of a dead-end game at end game.  So we quit that.
    • Got into Tabula Rasa for a while.  That was a dead-end too.  Beta had too many issues and not many impressive moments.
    • Got an XBox 360, just for Halo 3 - that is one good game - probably as good as the hype.
    • Got into Bio Shock which I actually finished (got the good ending).
    • Got into Viva Pineda which was quite fun but I feel not much replay value.
    • Really got into Puzzle Quest - that is the cheapest $12 I've ever spent on a game.  Everyone loved it.
    • Got into Hellgate London - fun but not much things to do - it turns repetitive quite quickly.
    • Got back into World of Warcraft.  There's just nothing on the market that can compete with it for now.
    • Wish List: Mass Effect (will get this possibly after Chrismas)
  • Personal stuff
    • Wifey is pregnant (yay!), we're expecting in May 2008.  All signs are currently normal, which is the best I can wish for.
    • Going to have our last holiday together (since I heard after the baby is born I won't be going anywhere) to New Zealand, where I grew up but haven't returned for over a decade.

Hey what's going on!

/
I am cheating, I post three blogs on the same date but just title them differently.

After being addicted to TiddlyWiki and using it as my notepad exclusively, I've essentially started using it as my blog engine as well.  It works really well.

I considered somehow resurrect my blog, but lacking immediate static IP address sucks a bit.  At the end, I figure I should evaluate both Spaces and Blogspot.
For the time being, I'll use Spaces.  Because I'm an avid MSN Messenger user and Spaces ties in quite well with it.  I do have some issues with automatically updating Spaces from TiddlyWiki - if I can't resolve this soon I might have to reevaluate everything.

Oh well, so much for my own blog...

/
There's pros and cons to everything.  I own a static IP address.  This is a good thing.  It allows me to use a really old Pentium 2 computer to run my own webserver.  Then I can do whatever I want on this webserver, and I can host my own domain on it.

The bad...  Well, the problem of hosting your own web server is that you need to devote time to maintain it.  Not to mention from the barrage of viruses and hackers (more like script-kiddies) out there ready to hack your poor IIS to pieces.  Further more, when you move home and use a different ISP, suddenly you find that it's pretty complicated to keep running a webserver in my parent's home which has an static IP address but no man-power to handle it.

Bummer.

I decided to take the machine offline.  So for now, johnliu.net will lead to NOWHERE...  
I still have all my blogs and wiki and dotnetnuke contents.  Just need to work out what's the next step.
Do I do it all again with another static ip address?  Do I just give up and get it hosted somewhere else?  Questions and questions.