Paul McCormack’s Web Site

Miranda Lucy Lilly McCormack was born at 20:29 (Sydney time) on Monday 30th June 2008 weighing 4.16kg (9lb 2.8oz).  Both Deborah and Miranda are doing remarkably well.  Photos are in the Gallery.

We are now pleased to be home after spending five nights in hospital - one having been induced and waiting for labour and then four further nights for recovery (this is standard for a natural birth at our hospital).  Deborah was in labour for five hours and despite the epidural only partially working, there were no problems with the delivery.

As requested, the obstetrician passed Miranda to me and I then placed her on Deborah’s chest before cutting the cord.  Miranda has lost a little more of her birth weight than we would like, so we need to keep an eye on her feeding until Deborah’s milk comes in fully.

It is great to be home and sleeping in our own bed, despite it only being for two hours at a time due to the feeding plan to increase Miranda’s weight.

Speaking of which - I need to have a nap now!  More news later.

I use Firefox as my browser of choice for all of the usual reasons - security, stability, extendibility …

I recently had a problem with one of my favourite add-ons after I deleted and recreated my profile.  Foxmarks is a great utility that allows you to synchronise your bookmarks across multiple Firefox installations (study, laptop, work etc).

I use Foxmarks to sync with my WebDAV server over HTTPS.  The problem was that when I deleted my profile and tried to set up Foxmarks, I was getting “Unknown Error 8179″ when I tried to sync.  Google wasn’t helping either (hence I thought that I should post something).

The error was caused because I was using self-signed SSL certificates and I had not yet told Firefox about my own Certificate Authority.  As soon as I downloaded my CA file and set it to trusted, everything worked again.

Hope this helps you.

E-mail is great, but it has many problems. Did you know that it is very easy to send messages that appear to be from other people? Spammers do this all the time in an effort to encourage you to open their mail. The big problem with e-mail is the absolute lack of security.

There are two parts to security - authentication and encryption:

Authentication is checking that the message is really from the person that it claims to be from. Was is really your bank that sent you that message about your account being suspended?

Encryption is scrambling the message contents so that it cannot be read in transit. This is often compared to the postcard vs. sealed envelope for mail.

The problem with securing e-mail is that it relies on both parties having the desire and the software in order to participate. I cannot simply send an encrypted e-mail to my accountant if she does not have compatible software - and I would need her credentials (public key) in advance. Read more…

Finally, after many months of tiring work, the nursery is complete and ready for the little one to arrive. We completed the painting last weekend and added the finishing touches on Sunday. We didn’t finish until late on Sunday night, so we’re pretty broken today, but the euphoria of completing it is keeping us going!

Not being satisfied with just a lick of paint, I started by ripping out and rebuilding the window frame. The old window sill was badly warped and anything placed on it would simply slide off!

After that, I ripped up the carpet and pulled off the skirting boards so that I could lay a new laminate floor. I then realised that the wardrobe frame was not fitted very well, so proceeded to rebuild that and re-wire the electric socket on the landing to hide the wire on the inside of the wardrobe.

There was a fair bit of damage from my enthusiasm with the crowbar (that’s a crowbie to Aussies) so I had to patch up the walls before we could even think about painting. Debs had seen a photo of a striped wall in a magazine, so the trusty laser level came in very useful marking up the wall.

Photos of the end result are on the Humblebee web site here.

Debs went bargain hunting on Monday and bought the final items that we needed. Just little things like the car seat, rocking cradle and baby bath! She bagged some great bargains, so we’re all set for the arrival. The due date is 3rd July, but Deborah has been suffering with a painful unstable pelvis which may get worse as the baby grows to full term, so she may be induced up to two weeks early to ease the pain.

You can be sure that any news will be published here as soon as possible, so stay tuned!

Well, the snake was still draped across two patio chairs this morning and was looking even more settled than before. Having read that the Diamond Pythons are often tree-dwellers that lie in wait for prey to pass, I was a little concerned to see the snake with its tail wrapped securely around the chair arm and it’s head coiled up read to strike anything that scurried beneath the chair.

The patio chairs are favourite relaxation spots for our cats. I wonder if the snake could smell the cats and was ready to ambush them! Little did he know that the cats were safely in the house.

Anyway, I decided that it was time to “encourage” the snake to move on. Having donned thick gloves and being armed with two brooms, I started wrangling the snake! It wasn’t too pleased and struck the brooms a couple of times, but then it was being taunted!

After it climbed up the fence and looked as if it was going onto the roof, I was almost tempted to grab its tail and pull it back! It was a very strong snake - not easy to get into the box that I had ready. Eventually, it wrapped itself around one broom and I was able to carry it into the open where Debs moved the box and stood ready with the lid.

Once in the box, it was a different matter of getting the snake off the broom! Constrictors are not the easiest thing to get off a broom handle, but it eventually unwrapped itself and hey presto, one snake in a box! Debs fearlessly moved in (despite being six months pregnant) and closed the lid on the box to secure the monster.

I was a bit unsure of the length when posting the images yesterday and I thought that it was a little under two metres. When it uncurled along the fence, it was obviously a lot bigger than it looked on the chair. I’d say it was definitely over 2m - probably about 220cm.

We were too excited during the wrangling to record the action, but we did record the release. We took it to the end of the street where the National Park track starts and released it a short way up the track. Here’s the video: