News

After running on "a custom lightweight PHP system" for the past 6 years or so, Jaza's World has just been rebuilt in Eleventy, a static site generator (SSG). This has allowed me to move Jaza's World to be hosted on Netlify, instead of on my ol' VPS. I recently did a similar migration of Jaza's World Trip to Hugo, another SSG. Expect a tech write-up of the Eleventy experience on GreenAsh soon. Anyway, sorry to disappoint those of you who are awaiting the overdue demise of "that lame prehistoric blight upon cyberspace" known as Jaza's World. Not dead yet!

After running on an increasingly crusty install of Drupal 4.7 for the past 8 years or so, Jaza's World has just been converted to a custom lightweight PHP system, with no database and with all content living in plain ol' files. I migrated Jaza's World Trip over to this system last year (also from Drupal 4.7), and blogged about some of the geekier details on GreenAsh. In a nutshell: the new system is perfect for a site like Jaza's World, which is basically (long since) retired / archived, and which should ideally run with minimal dev requirements, and use up minimal server resources. So, enjoy the same old Jaza's World, preserved in all its bizarre hippo-trumpeting glory for a whole lot longer.

After being left out in the cold for almost 3 years, Jaza's World has finally been relocated to GreenAsh, and converted over to Drupal! This has been on my to-do list ever since I first launched GreenAsh, but getting round to doing it took a bit longer than I expected. This new edition of Jaza's World maintains the same design as its predecessor, except that it's now using tableless, standards-compliant markup, implemented as a Drupal theme. It also has (almost) all the same old content, which turned out to be over 500 nodes once it was all migrated into Drupal. Now that Jaza's World is dynamic and CMS-powered for the first time in it's history, it will be easier to update it than ever. Nevertheless, I probably won't be updating it much more often than I have done in the past: i.e. not much. So enjoy the same old Jaza's World, but with a new address, and with all-new bells and whistles going on behind the scenes.

New book in the Library, 'Marching Powder', which I highly recommend to all of you.

I am very proud to announce that the Israel diary is completely finished, and is now online in the library! Fellow Academy-2-ites, friends and family, enjoy my epic account of our 42-day tour of Israel, complete with photos (borrowed from the gallery), and a table of contents that also serves as a summary and an itinerary reference. This is the biggest thing ever to hit Jaza's World, so don't miss out on seeing it: because it will only be here for a very unlimited time!

Over the past week, I've been working extremely hard to get as much of the Israel trip stuff finished as possible. You'll be pleased to know that every single Israel photo in the gallery now has a description, which you can see by hovering the mouse over the thumbnails (all other photos still have none). My mammoth project, the Israel diary, is now half completed: you can find the first 21 out of 42 entries in the library, and the other half are on their way ASAP. Once again, my apologies: I hoped to have everything done before Uni (which starts tomorrow), but typing up this diary is just taking forever!

I've been back in Australia for 3 weeks now, and as of today my photos from Israel are online and ready to view in the gallery! As well as almost 200 photos and thumbnails, there's also a fun little animation for you all. I know some of you are waiting for me to publish an online diary (extracts from my Israel diary, along with some photos), and my apologies that this is not ready yet. It is on the cards, and it will be finished in the near future. Also, good luck and all the best to everyone starting Uni, TAFE, apprenticeships or work this year!

School is far behind, the HSC is over, results have come out, and I'm off to Israel tomorrow. Life is GOOD! But seeing as I'll be away for so long, and as I haven't made any updates for (exactly) 2 months, I thought I'd give everyone some light holiday reading. The library now has more than just book reviews: it also has a number of stories written by me! In particular, due to several requests, my Extension 2 English major work 'Running Rings' is now online in full (i.e. the story and the reflection statement - but not the journal). You will also find the popular story 'Traffic Light', as seen in the 2003 edition of the Killara High 'Green Years' magazine, and much much more. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year... and Happy Holidays!

First update in two months (hey, this is the middle of the HSC - gimme a break! New addition to the library: 'White Jazz', by James Ellroy.

For all you people that are here to sign the Guestbook again, I'd like to make it quite clear that it is now FIXED! And I am extremely sorry that it wasn't working for so long, and that so many entries were lost. Please feel free to sign the guestbook, and try to make this entry as good as your original! Also, two new entries added to the library today ('Dead Famous' and 'The Master of Rain').