Welcome to Rob's World, the (cheesily titled) homepage of Robin Rainton.
It's hard to describe yourself in a line (go on then - you try it!) but if I had to: I work hard (some say too much) but can't complain as I have plenty of spare time for eating, drinking, sports and travel (some say too much - I often get told my whole life is a holiday!).
As things here don't get updated that much, check out the feeds below from my NoBMoB blog (MTB riding), Garmin Connect (GPS based exercise and other fun) and on the right there, shared items from Google Reader (items from around the web I thought were worth a look).
Being a Robin I'm now trying to Tweet a bit so have included them 
From the 'net
- Hackers Often Accidentally Send Code to Microsoft
- Advanced Task Manager developer is making up to $10,000 a month
- The 300,000 Biggest Websites, Visualized With Their Icons [Internet]
- The Most Dangerous Threat to U.S. National Parks: Idiots Armed with the Latest Gadgets [National Parks]
- Russia in color, a century ago
My Tweets
- Hmmmm... Japanese food and German beer. Not that Japanese beer isn't good... Just don't have any ;) — 1 hour 34 min ago
- @eldrade Rotorua :) — 3 hours 7 min ago
- 3 men do not have the right to decide government for a whole country. Back to the polls I say! Will they do the right thing though? — 1 day 13 hours ago
- Was dreaming about where we will be on Jan 1 last night. Bring it on! :) — 4 days 14 hours ago
- Wow: http://www.khanacademy.org/ — 6 days 56 min ago
- Cheapest lampshade ever: 2 sheets of white A4 paper + 50cm of sticky tape. Note to self: 10 year old plastic lampshades are very brittle! ;) — 6 days 3 hours ago
- Shopping for 'item X' online. An unusual item, hard to find. What joy to randomly discover one of my favourite online stores stocks this :) — 1 week 1 day ago
- Xmas in July... erm... August? 4 boxes of bike bits arrived today. 2 more to go and the build can begin! :) — 1 week 4 days ago
- Thanking the Westbrooks for a beautiful afternoon. Very enjoyable. We wish young Lyndon all the best for his future :) — 1 week 6 days ago
- How come our lounge looks so bare with all the spare bike frames and parts are gone? Plus side is there's now room for a wind trainer ;) — 2 weeks 2 days ago
17 Jan 2010
Just posted some pictures from a very nice trip to New Zealand over the xmas break. This trip was absolutely amazing, mainly due to the seven days of bike riding in Rotorua (click for NoBMoB post) but almost as good was the relaxation that followed and trek across Tongariro Crossing. Ahhhh... 
14 Mar 2009
Better late than never, some pictures have appeared (OK - they've been there for a while) from our xmas/NY trip to Tassie.
Highlights have to be xmas day where we spent close to 8 hours walking up to the summit (almost - it was a bit scary up there for some people so didn't get right to the top 
) and back down, round Dove Lake. Hotel staff told us it's not unusual for guest to wait a whole week for a clear day to do this so we were really fortunate to get clear skies the whole day which really made it as the views were astounding.
25 Oct 2008
Call me the Grinch if you like, but this is ridiculous. I saw some trees and decorations on sale earlier this month. OK - so you have to plan ahead sometimes - this can maybe be overlooked.
But today Coles gave us a green & red bag with "Merry Christmas" written on the side. Erm... they know it's not for two months, right?
What with the economic tough times coming you can imagine how bad the season is going to be for retailers but please people - if you want this holiday to continue to mean something (if indeed, the whole meaning hasn't already been beaten out of it in previous years commercialisation) you really can't abuse it like this by bringing the dates further and further forward.
Humf!
30 Sep 2008
As I may have mentioned earlier, this site has been running on pretty much the same software (a home grown PHP templating system) for over 10 years now. Strange but true though - it might be time to move on, and as Drupal sites are kindof my thing (well sometimes) the front page and stories at least, are now driven by this CMS.
So does this mean we're about to revert to a more 'blog' like site? Not sure, because the rest of it (travels for example) is still running from the old code. Ah you see - the wonders a modern nerd can achieve... ten year old code and a shiny new CMS mixed in perfect harmony!
Anyhow - hope things might get updated a little more frequently now. Plus, there's that feeds pane up top now that might give you an idea of what I'm doing and interested in right now even if I can't be bothered to log in and write something once in a while.
17 Apr 2008
Hey, so guess what? I'm now a real Aussie. Well, half of one - I'm keeping the pommie passport too. Of course, who wouldn't? No pictures or anything (well, the ceremony was, afraid to say, not that riveting).
When thinking about what this actually means only two things spring to mind... I can now vote (which although is often a futile experience, at least gives one a minuscule hope of influencing what goes) and can come and go as I please.
It has crossed my mind to go back to Europe to work for another year or so, but just mulling that over conjures up thoughts of crowded commuter trains, the cold, filthy and dingy streets on dark mornings and the like. Hmmm... to visit a different country & culture on the weekend is fun, but is it worth the other associated pain? Sorry, but I'm really not convinced!
Plus - life is all good here, so why change?
Search rainton.com with Google. Only as of when it last crawled these pages, but hey, better than nothing!