I am just taking a break from the TAX stuff. I need to report on today's exercise. Apart from the mental exercise of the TAX/BAS stuff. The exercise I am talking about is doing sit-ups and leg raises. I did 10 of each, and I think that was enough. It is certainly strengthening my abdominal muscles...

I completed the TAX stuff. Would you believe it took less than an hour. Not sure what the reason was... But things just seemed to work. I did not even need to open my bank statement in Microsoft Excel which is my normal trick to finding entries - I just sort the amount column and it makes things easier to find when reconciling the bank account.

That does not mean it was all plain sailing. I did stuff up and almost sent me BAS statement from last quarter to the ATO. I had opened the previous BAS statement and not closed it... and then when I tried to calculate the new BAS it didn't do it. It did warn me, but it could have done a better job.

Tomorrow I am having a day off from everything... I am going over to Richard's to help him with his plane... Time to finish the wings...

Music:

Fields of Gold from "The Celtic Chillout Album". A remake of the classic Sting song of the same name.

I have been busy with some housekeeping stuff this morning. Like recording DVD's of the 50 GBytes that I have on Hard Disks that needs to be transferred to something more permamemnt. When I do I can take some paper for recycling, and start doing something fun with 150 old data CD's. Long overdue. I have recorded three DVD's already today, and I have more to be done.

The main thing I *MUST* do today is actually get my BAS done. This should not be too hard. But I say that *EVERY* time. It *WILL NOT* be that hard this time. I promose myself. Once I finish this entry I will print out my bank statement, and then enter that into MYOB. And enter in the receipts that I have got... and then get the two to reconcile. How hard can than be. After all I did do university maths...

[You might notice I said *DID*... I actually failed Engineering Maths II the first time. I will not place the mark that I got here to save myself from a public humiliation. And yes, it was in the double figures before you ask... And if anyone wonders how I could fail maths I will show you the textbook at some stage. I still do not know what they were teaching in the subject, apart from the fact that I scraped by the 2nd time, and that the subject was hard. Actually, Engineering as a degree is hard, period].

Anway, it is time for me to grab some lunch and do my tax. If you don't see any posts for the next three weeks, just search for me under my desk in a quivering heap mumbling something about the numbers being out by three cents.

Oh, well. Last night I thought I was going to sleep really well. But I woke up after about 45 minutes and could not get back to sleep for about an hour or so. Actually I grabbed a book after a little while and did some reading - finishing off the book, making me wonder why I had bought that book in the first place. To top that off I woke up early since there was a party still going on quietly in the distance which is probably why I could not get back to sleep in the first place. The party finially finished at about 7am. It was not loud, but did have people talking and listening to the radio. Enough to disturb my sleep unfortunately.

I don't think I mentioned this... I had a SKYPE call from a friend of mine from New Zealand. He was in Washington DC, and needed some help getting a Windows 98 machine connected to a network. After trying everything I could think of I could not get the thing working. If only I could have used RemoteDesktop to fix the problem, but that is sort of the point isn't it... If I could do that then the network access would have been working in which case I would not have needed to do it.

Reading a web site this morning brought a story that will fill every motorist with fear - the thought of getting bogged. Except this story comes from NASA and involves the Opportunity Mars Rover which is Stuck in Sand up to it's hubcaps. Obviously sending the NRMA, or whatever the martian equivalent is might be a bit difficult. So right at this moment NASA are thinking about the problem, and taking a lot of photos to work out what to do next.

I will post more later, of course. Right now I have some email to look at...

I was reading a web site which suggested checking out the following email on the US mailing list called CraigsList. The subject was 'Why Geeks and Nerds are Worth It.'. The email really is worth a read - and you can find it here. I am not sure I agree with all the items but I think it is right a lot of the time. Personally I don't drink mountain dew so that part is definitely wrong. I have another one somewhere about engineers, and it is surprisingly similar. Well, what do you expect :-)

I have spent about half of this afternoon on the phone to various people. One call after another. Not all was work, but most of it was. And in my line of work it is often hard to work out the difference between work and not-work. Some times catching up with people is work. Actually I think it was more than half the afternoon... More like most of the afternoon. I did not actually manage to cook myself dinner until about 8pm or so. I think I had about three hour long phone calls, and another at about 30 minutes.

Anyway it is time for bed for me... I should sleep well tonight after the run earlier I would think. I am definitely starting to droop. Good night...

Google

Archive.Org has an old Web Page available showing the old hardware for Google. To say that they have changed in the last five years is an understatement. They now have computer centers rather than hardware on someone's desk.

I promised that I would go running today, and I promised an update when I got back. So here I am with my heart racing typing in this update whilst taking swigs of water between keystrokes. Right now dear reader, I guess you are wondering how the run went. Well, that is an interesting story. I had a phone call during the run - and this was good for a number of reasons.

So how did I go... Well, 4.35 KM in 30min 20sec which is 8.6 km/h. This is a bit slower than previous runs, but this was a good speed and a good distance. I now need to build both distance and speed. I had a phone call in the middle of the run, and put it on speaker phone. This was good since it forced me to take deep breaths whilst I was running so I could talk, and diverted my attention from running too... What I found is that the run went VERY quickly.

For the fist Kilometer or so I was listening to my radio which was good. Unfortunately the in-ear earphones make my ears sore if they are put in properly. I guess I just have strange ears - or does everyone have this problem and suffer with it so that they can hear the music?

[Short break whilst I have a shower to cool down]. That is better... feel almost human now. I am sure that running is good for me. Reduces Stress and all that (although I must say that I dont think my life has been as stressful in the last few weeks as it has been. This is definitely a good thing.) Whilst I was in the bathroom I also weighed myself. It looks like I have lost about 1-2kg.


Following the run I was feeling a bit hungry so I grabbed some Thai for lunch, as well as the mail. I got some JunkMail from Western Union. I used them last year when I was paying for some more work to be done by a code I had found through Rent-A-Coder. The guy lived in Argentena - so today I got an offer from Western Union of up to five $5 gift vouchers for Myer or Optus if I introduce friends to them. Well I think that was what they were offerng since most of the item is in Spanish. Well, I think it is in Spanish.

When I was growing up I really wanted a microscope... And I got one when I was about 10. I am not sure what I wanted to do with it, but I really wanted one. Fast forward a few years, and Intel released a USB video microscope. Basically a webcam with a different lens. Fantastic. Then they removed it from the market. Well, it looks lika a new company is going to be selling it after intel sold them the product.

Quote

"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver" -- Foghorn Leghorn

A little later after breakfast I am planning to go for a run. I will post here as soon as I have returned. I am feeling good, so I will see how I go. I will need to get some more fluid into my body first. So that means I should have breakfast sooner rather than later. If I feel really energetic I could have a short run this afternoon too. I will just have to see how it all goes.

As an aside, my spelling has always been a bit poor. The important thing is the idea behind what is being said, and not the spelling. Well, that is my excuse anyway. But the proviso is that the sentence structure needs to be correct. That means that the message I saw at the ANZ yesterday, which although used correct spelling left something to be desired. "We are sorry for the delay. Of our computers are down". The exact words might be a bit different, but I think you get the idea.

Anyway, why am I mentioning this. Well, blogger does not have auto-correct like Outlook and Word for spelling mistakes. I had to check a moment ago and ask myself if I had used the correct spelling for 'Breakfast'... It looks as if I did, but there must be a better way. So I did a search of PC programs to upload to Blogger.Com. I have found one that looks intersting called BlogJet. If I get a chance I will download this and let you know how it goes.

There was an interesting experiment done where some people compared carrier pigeons with ADSL. I think I might have mentioned this earlier. Anyway, I found the article describing it here. The path was over 100 km, and transferred about 3 GBytes of data in about three hours using the pigeon. This was faster than the ADSL connection though...

Music:

All That Jazz - from the musical of Chicago. When I was in year 9 or 10 I needed to perform in the school fashion parade to this piece of music in a 1920's suit that I had made. I am not sure what happened to the suit... It was an interesting exercise since I was also looking after starting and stopping the music for the show. So I would start the music, race into my part, and after I got off stage (before the end of the music) I would race back and stop the tape machine. And all this is on video tape too.

Music:

I was watching Medical Investigations on the TV, and the DIDO song See The Sun came on when a little girl's father was dieing. So sad, and poignant. It is a beautiful song. The lyrics are available here. They talk about how the writer is trying to help a friend who has lost someone that they love. Seems to describe about half of Dido's songs, but it does sound great. "You can wear anything so long as it's not black... "

She is one of the many artists that I want to see in concert... I would also love to see Pink Floyd but I doubt that would ever happen... I did see Roger Waters a few years back and really loved it... I suspect that is the closest I will get...

Software

I have been doing more work on my Tracking Software (Called TeamTrack) and I remembered that I have a copy of Microsoft MapPoint on my PC. Actually I have the USA and the EUROPE versions, and I also have parts on my PDA too from when I went around the world last year. Anyway, about a year ago I was playing with using MapPoint as a viewer for an older product. That was fine - but this is a new product, and I had not even thought about sending positons to MapPoint.

About 10 minutes work and I had things running. The functionality is very basic, with pins in the map only, and no snail trails or colour coding. But as a proof of concept it is fantastic. It is a way to show to a potential user what we can do with a small amount of time.

Anyway I think I need to get to bed. I have had a busy but productive day... Good Night to one and all. Tomorrow morning I think might get busy

I posted earlier that I was planning on going running today. Well, I didn't. I do not need to explain myself, but I will try. I went upstairs to go running, and just didn't feel like it. I will go tomorrow. I promise to you, dear reader that I will. I will try to do the 4km, but at least three. I will post here about it tomorrow...

With my own company, I have now appointed a distributor in Canada to sell my software. This is great news. The details still need to be worked out, but I have now got a supplier in North America. When everything is finalized I will post details here. I cannot say too much yet since they are a publically listed company and this may have a material impact on their business, in a good way of course. I am really happy. We were going to work through some of this today but they had some IT issues that needed to be resolved.

Telstra had a mobile outage today, according to News.Com.Au thanks to a machine in the Telstra Kent Street exchange failing. The machine failed at about 10:00 and came back online about 2pm. From the description in the article this was in the 'Home Location Register' which is an integral part of the technology that allows a GSM phone to Roam, be it to the next cell site or around the world. It contains all the administrative informtion for the subscriber including the location of the mobile on the international GSM network.

There is a site called GeoUrl.Org which is a database of Latitudes and Longitudes. It allows WebSites to say where in the world they are located, making it easier to find websites in a geographic area. That is the concept anyway. There is also a project for GPS on a Gameboy Advanced that looks interesting.

A paperless office. Ha. I don't know how less paperless my office could be. Well, I do, but realistically it could not be too much more paperless. Modern business lives on paper. Next to my desk I have a scanner, shredder and paper recycling bin. What is missing from that list. Printer. I do have one - on the other side of the room. And it is almost never turned on. I only turn it on if I need to operate it to print something.

I have two ways of refering to materials when programming - firstly I do online searching for the information I need. This is using google. When Microsoft went to VB.NET their online help actually got a whole lot worse. It is very hard to use. I find it easier just to google. And I also have a professional library. I needed to program a "File Save" function a few moments ago, and so I looked at my copy of "Professional VB.NET 2nd Edition" from WROX. This book is about 1000 pages long, and a few of the pages are falling out. It is a great reference book, which is why some of the pages are starting to malt.

Reference books and Google are why I am not as productive programming away from my office, or away from the Internet.

Music:

The Miracle of Love - The Eurythmics

I plan to go running a little later. As normal I am not sure how I will go. 2.5KM should be no problem. More than that I do not know. I just have to see how it goes. It is probably slightly warm to run too far so I don't think I will get the 4KM run done. Maybe tomorrow. We will have to see - but the weather for tomorrow looks better. Meaning that I might be able to run 2.5km today and then 4KM tomorrow

I have come across another interesting WWW site. This one is called O'Reilly Make which is a Magazine/Blog for people who like making things. Such as electronic picture frames, MP3 players from scratch. Sound Systems for scooters. That type of stuff. They even have a link to a SKYPE Payphone. Really cool stuff...

Apart from that I have been really busy doing programming stuff...

Darryl

I will probably be working on the plane on Sunday afternoon... Looking forward to seeing the new Landing Lights that Richard has picked up for it. 100W per side they are apparently quite bright. He also has some 130W units but quick testing indicates that they are only working at 100W as well.

It looks like Apple is opening an iTunes store in the next few days. I love digital media, but I would prefer to buy a CD than a digital download. Sure I can save it to CD myself, but I do prefer it to come that way from a store. The other issue for iTunes is the price... $1.80 seems to be a bit high. And that is me being kind. Economically that means that this is being tagged to the price of a single, not an album. Given that many of the distribution costs have been significantly reduced, $1.80 does seem to be quite high.

Of this the iTunes store is probably getting no more than 30%, probably much less. The rest is going to the record company and the artists. My guess is that the record company is getting most of the money from the sale, and that their actual costs are fairly minor in terms of expendature to make the sale. I would be surprised if their actual costs are more than 10%, with most of this being the admin cost of getting the royalties paid, and the digital file created in the first place.

The other problem with digital is that it is hard to share the files since they have DRM (Digital Rights Management) reducing the ability to lend the music. I can legally lend a friend a CD I own... Provided we do not create copies of it. This is not possible with digital downloads. And I cannot sell the digital file since it has encryption. I can sell my CD collection to the local 2nd Hand store. I cannot do that with my digital collection since it is sold as non-transferable.

Lastly the quality of the files is good, but they are not as good as CD. It is hard to tell the difference but if I am spending good money on it I want it to be good quality.

There is an article on ZD Net about an anti WiFi 'film' to be placed over windows for secure environments. the film would not allow WiFi signals in or out. That is the plan anyway. From my experience things are not quite so easy. There are whole industries set up trying to stop signals getting in or out of an area....

The ATSB is the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, and is responsible for investigating aircraft incidents. They have published a report of an incident from June last year where an aircraft was damaged. The devices used to move planes on the ground are just large remote control cars these days, allowing the crew to do their job quicker and with less staff. Anyway, to cut a long story short the groud crew could not get one of these units to work... Turns out they were using the wrong remote. And the car they were controlling was connected to a plane connected to the aerobridge. Some damage was done but it was fairly minor thankfully.

I got a lot of business stuff done this afternoon - well quite a bit at least. The most frustrating was trying to get some printer code to work correctly. It worked without issue. But formatting the text was a bit of a pain to say the least. There were issues all around getting things lined up. All because my client asked 'Can you move the text over a bit to make it easier to staple together?'. That simple statement took at least an hour to fix. C'est La Vie.

On my to-do list there is to investigate about signing my software as windows sometimes warns users about software from untrusted people such as me. There is some information on this blog about signing assemblies.

My software is looking great... Very colourful and easy to use. I am getting more suggestions for features that various people want. Some of these features I have been resisting, but I think that I really need to add them into this software. Things like changing the name of a vehicle. Adding a vehicle will still very much be an admin feature in a seperate program, but changing the name and how often a vehicle reports are things that I think I will implement soon.

Tomorrow morning my client will be playing Satellite instead of me so I guess I will be stuck in the office here working. It is nice to actually get some really productive work done today too. This last week as been *SO* productive...

Music:

Icehouse with 'Sister'

I have been playing satellites once again this moring. This is always fun. I have just delievered a program to send some data to a satellite and return the data to a device here on earth. My client just needs to test it for me - I don't have a connection to their satellite base station from here unfortunately.

The bugs are quickly being removed, and I am running out of features that I want to add. Well, that I can add without too much work. Anything is possible given enough time and resources... At least with software. But it is not always possible to invest the required resources to solve a problem. Sometimes the technology just does not exist...

I also spent about 30 minutes on SKYPE with VoIP to a business partner somewhere in Victoria. The thing is that he was in a hotel room, and was using CDMA 1x. The performance was generally quite good. I was plesantly surprised. Isn't it good how technology just works, sometimes. It was certainly cheaper than a phone call...



From Comp.Risks, comes news of a news story on CNN about how US Air sold 1,000 tickets for $1.86 round trip. The airline has promised to honor the tickets.

The airline also was hit by what its chief executive termed a "meltdown" of
its baggage system during the Christmas holiday. That problem resulted in it sending some flights out of its Philadelphia hub without any bags.

Also, on stupidsecurity.com is a story which refers to WRAL News...
Wake County, N.C. uses a central computer to lock 50 of its buildings in and around Raleigh. The Wake Country Animal Shelter was closed on Easter Weekend, but the computer didn't know that. The doors were left unlocked and several animals were stolen from the shelter.. OOps.

I have just been on SKYPE with Canada... The audio part was not working so we did keyboard to keyboard. It works fairly well, but it would be better if you could see keystrokes being typed like the older systems. There must be a chat like that around, but none of the popular ones seem to offer it. ARGH. Skype is not working well for us at the moment. I think it is on the Canada side. He could hear me talking, but I could not hear him.

The testing of my software is going well... One of the vehicles I am tracking has *THANKFULLY* managed to develop a mechanical problem, meaning that I can test the funcionality of my software with ease. Turns out when I looked at it that my software was not working correctly... the vehicle was though. I found a bug by mistake.

I have just rebooted my machine twice. The machine needed a reboot and restart, and when it restarted the mouse was behaving 'eratically'. I think that is the right word for what it was doing... It would move without commands, and move my task bar onto the sides of the screen... Everything. Very strang. It has settled down. It might have been related to the touchpad overheating somehow. I have had that before - since the touchpad is heat sensative. And I have found why my software was crashing this morning which is good... In certain circumstances I was telling it to draw some coloured lines. But I was forgetting to saw what colour to use sometimes and it did not quite know what to do.

ARGH! It has happened again. Not sure why... Ahh... That is it. I plugged a GPS into the serial port and it is killing the mouse. Oh... When the computer restarted it saw the serial stream and thought that the GPS was a mouse... Well, when it moves it does tell the computer that it has moved... But that was not really what I meant. Disabling the hardware driver for the extra 'mouse' fixed things.

I have also found a link to a GPS Game.... It involves an iPod and a GPS... I have not looked at all the details - YET.

Music:

Lou Reed with Perfect Day... You can find the lyrics here

A Collection of Links

ScientificsOnline has a high-security toy vault that's a safe-cracking challenge! This safe has a maze stylus for you to connect the circuits without touching the sides, a digital readout, a keypad where you can enter the secret numbers to open the vault, a speaker, and a sonic dial where you can match tones to defeat the combination lock! Choose a secret PIN number and protect your favorite stuff, OR go up against 3 security systems to try and disable the locks.

F+R Hugs has a soft Lycra shirt with embedded sensors and electronics that allows to feel the physical closeness of a distant loved one, aparently bringing the sensation of a hug. The system works through a mobile phone network. The shirts receive the input of heart beat, touch and body temperature of the remote loved one, recreating (through actuators embedded in the shirt) over distance the pulsation, physical pressure, and warmth of a real hug.

Aaron Tang's Anemone Clock awakens you by means of sound, light, movement, and interaction. When the alarm goes off, it rumbles intensely, making it harder to find the off switch. Due to the rumbling, the clock also bounces away from your bed table, so you have to get out of bed and chase it like a pet around the room if you want to silence it.

MobileReadtalks about a stable Wi-Fi broadband internet connection via satellite was successfully tested aboard a high-speed train – the Paris-Brussels route operated by Thalys. The record bandwidth attained was 4 Mbit/s downstream and 2 upstream at 300 km/h, comparable to the quality of an ADSL connection

One of my friends emailed me a copy of a Web Page describing an Online Chat Session where a user was boasting that he was a great hacker, and a member of the chat session gave him a challenge. To attack 127.0.0.1. This is the 'Loopback' address on every machine on the Net... And points back at the same machine. So the 'Hacker' tried, and his machine died. Then a couple of weeks later tried again with the same results. Then he accursed the people he was attacking of attacking him... You can read the details here if you really want too.

International day today. I have been emailing a supplier in Eastern Europe last night and this morning. I am now on MSN with a client in Italy. Tomorrow morning I will be dealing with a client in Canada. Or I am due to. I hope to speak to the supplier in Eastern Europe soon too. This is the advantage with Internationalisation. Now if they could only agree with how to spell those 20 letters... Many people just call it I18N to make it simple... I, followed by 18 letters followed by an N. That way you dont get the people off side who cannot agree if you should use and S or a Z. And the like. As Rear Admiral Grace Hooper once said 'The advantage with standards is that there are so many to choose from'.

I have just heard from my Eastern Europe friends, and they have suggested something to find the issue with the software. It seems to be working better, and if this fixes it then it was my problem. If not, then we continue back again working on it. So far, so good. It seems to be working really well. And when it is no longer crashing I think the client will be really happy.

OK... It started crashing again. Ok. What is going wrong. Ahh... I see. I stuffed up. I was trying to store two values in a single location, and one was obviously getting blown away. But what none of us could work out what was causing it to fail since the operation that was failing was happening in the background some time after the actual event. Not long, but long enough.

My vehicles are travelling far less, but it is not to the point where it should be. Vehicles are travelling thousands of KM instead of hundreds of thousands. But many of these vehicles should be stationary. Ahh... I know what the problem is. I have now got the ability to quickly change between databases... But when I did the track data is was still there.

I think I have found a bug in my software. The image just below is from some software that I had running for about 15 minutes. And the distance is in KM. That is, according to the software, the vehicle has traveled 856,647.87 KM.

Now there are a couple of problems here. First as this is approaching the speed of light, you are unlikely to get anywhere near this speed on Australian roads. Which is where this vehicle was.

The other problem was that this single vehicle should have been about ten vehicles meaning that there was a huge collision somewhere - which is presumably how come the object is moving so much. Humor aside, what is happening is that the software thinks that the positions coming in from all vehicles are really for a single vehicle, moving in circles really really fast.

Music:

DJ Sammy... Boys of Summer. Remake of the classic 'Don Henley' song from the 1980's. I was going to say that I think this version is more modern, which it obviously is. And fresher. It is certainly a good interpretation of the music, and I think it is an improvement. The synth in the background at times, as found in techno is there, but not too overpowering. Overall a great piece of music. I wish all I could play that well. All I can do is mimic the movemant of the hands of the keyboardist or the drummer as if I knew what I was doing, and as if I could keep time to the beat.

One of lifes great ironies is that I have this great love of music, and have almost no ability to actually play.

I have had a really busy morning today... I had a phone call at 8:10am from a client and and that lasted for almost an hour. The good thing is that I got a siginificant amount of work out of it. Well, technically it was the work I was doing yesterday, but what I was showing him really blew his socks off. He loved it totally! But he does want much of the work done this week if possible. Which means some work filled days. I will try to keep this Blog updated as it is a great way to document what I am working on.

I really wish I could count... In year six I basically failed a mental arithmatic test. Of four classes they put me into the 2nd bottom one. Come to the first exam Not only did I beat everyone in the 2nd top class, but most of the people in the top class. They could not move me up to the highest class since that would have pointed out to the teachers that they had made a mistake by basing their placements on mental arithmatic.

Why I am causing myself heartache by telling you all this? And really embarrasing myself in the process? Well, during the programming I have been doing, I have been searching for a BUG. I could not work it out... I was trying to sort a column of numbers and it would not sort... Well, I found the reason... I had created a list of numbers like
1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
And thought that this list contained 10 numbers. It *SHOULD* except I could not count and left the number '3' out of the list. And to remove any confusion, I LEFT THE NUMBER THREE OUT!!! Oops.

Neither can I spell... I just had a BUG when I tried to type .visible as .visibe. Obviously that one did not work all that well. Maybe I should go back to school.

Programming

I am not sure exactly how I did it, but I needed to return all the field names and all the values in a structure, and display them. This is hard, but I found a link to an message board here that describes how to do it. Or some of the details on how to do it at least. Unfortunately the description on how this is done is poor and I do not understand much of it. Still, it works which is what I needed. Maybe I should comment the code 'Deep Magic Goes In Here'.

Music:

Software

Yesterday I really buried myself in work. Richard was not building, so I decided to get some work out of the way. I got so much work done - I was really impressed with the results.

I have just done another re-organization on the code for the program I am working on. I have added a screen capture below. I have moved the buttons to the side, and I am adding Tool Tips for them. I know I can make the screen look 'sexier', but I am still working out the details on how to do that. The Icon's are not really self-explanitory, but at least they look user friendly and moden. And that is half the battle.

There is a lot of technology hidden in this program, and the hard part is to hide it from the user - and make it so that simple users are not intimidated whilst power users are given the tools that they need. I need to do things like add more colour and icons in the table. But it needs to be subtle. And not just added for the sake of it.

The ability to click on the top of a column and sort the data is really an advantage. As is the ability to 'sort' or 'group' on several columns. What I really need to do now is to set the order of columns, and work out the widths. Then I need to save the positions and widths. Anyway I really need to get some sleep. I will finish this tomorrow.



Today I will speak to my client and ask him about this... I think he will be happy. There are definitely some things that we need to work out, but this will meet the client's requirements I should think.

The Simpsons

I have not need much of the Simpsons in the last six months. I think I have seen most of the first few series of it. Why am I mentioning this... Well, there is a story in the NY Times, which you can get if you register for free, that says that The Simpsons is about half way though it's life. Basically since the show is 17 years old that means it may still be going in another 17 years... Exxxxceeellleeeennnnttt as Mr Burns would say.

Music:

Phantom of the Opera is playing with The Music Of The Night as I post this item...

I just received an email from a potential client in Bagdad, Iraq. I think I wrote about this before. The problem is I can give him a solution, but it is likely to make it more likely that the client would get killed thanks to remote controlled bomb's. Something like this. The way some of these go off is that if they detect a radio signal nearby then they just go boom... And if I get such equipment added to vehicles then I am potentially making them more of a target. Also, right now I have no desire to visit that part of the world, and I can see trying to debug a system from here in Australia will be a pain.

Coding

I have been very busy today, and the good news is that the software is getting close to being what I think the client wants. Right now though I am trying to find a bug... Something funny is happening with the code... And the other issues is that I cannot do much testing without moving vehicles.

The screendump shows where the software is up to right now. It does need more work but it is really amazing at the amount of work that has gone into this in the last day or so. It needs to be made to look more user friendly. The icons need to be made to look nicer too - not in their look but their layout.

Music:

I had Elton John with Tiny Dancer on the Jukebox earlier. I love this song. I listened to the Evanescence album too and found it good, but you can only listen to it for so long. It is one of those albums....

Articles

News.Com.Au in their travel section has a story about travelling to Hawaii and going inland rather than staying on the coastline. If you are looking at visiting Hawaii, I would suggest having a look at this article. On a different subject, the SMH has an article asking how environmentally friendly the 'green' shopping bags are.

Software

Not that the diagram below shows anything but I was working on it last night so I thought I might add it here anyway. It looks sort of cute, showing the flow within the program - of what routines are called where. The reason I needed to do this is that I need to significantly modify one of the major functions, and work out the best way to do this mod. This major function is called by six other functions. So I need to work out the best way to do the changes I need to implement.


OK. I have just finished the re-organizing of the data, and trialed a new user interface for the software. The software started off today being called 'TeamTrack II', became 'TeamTrack Pro' and is now 'TeamTrack Pro Beta'. Actually Beta is the wrong word since it is not up to that stage yet. But it is not production which is what I am wanting to indicate.

I am taking a few minutes from doing that work whilst I think about how to implement the next bit. I am not really sure what I have to implement at this stage. I just have some ideas in my head, and I need a few minutes before I start coding them.

Diary

Other than a Blog, I do also sometimes write in a Diary. It has been months since I last wrote in it. I have been doing this on and off for a few years. Back in 1997 I was looking for some software to do this and found It's Personal. This software managed the diary entries, and also had password protection. Those are the two features needed for any decent diary program. It works fairly well, and I don't have any issues with it. Sure, it could be improved, but it suits my need. The Blog is good for things I don't mind other people knowing. The diary is for all else, my private thoughts.

Music:

I have had a weird collection of music being played. Firstly 'Blade Runner Blues' by Vangelis. Then some Evanescence followed by 'History' from Robert Palmer. I think I will play some more Evanescence now...

Don't even try to work out how I found this (BoingBoing.Net), but I found a site that gives instructions on how to build your own Bath Bombs... Sounds like a fun little project...

News.Com.Au has a story about how a woman in Afghanastan was stoned to death for adultory, and her lover received 100 lashes and was then freed. The stoning was the sentence of the district court. What I found most horrible was that the woman was stoned to death by her husband. This is saying that she is more responsible than her lover, which I find very wrong. I find it unbelievable that a man could stone his wife to death too.

Junkyard Wars

Junkyard Wars on Discovery was cool tonight. There was more evidence that this series is being filmed in the UK rather than the USA. It is fairly hidden, but there are the signs... Some language features such as commenting '... in the USA we call that...', the fact that most of the vehicles in the junkyard are right hand drive, and the occasional UK license plate.

The task tonight was to build speed boats... And the team that should have won did not since they capsized. The reason for the capsize was that the team placed the passenger in a position where they made the vessel unstable, rather than positioning him to balance the load.

Right now I am busy documenting some code... One of my clients has requested a whole lot of features, and this will require some work... If I want to do it in a way that is maintainable into the future. So I have got out Microsoft Visio and I am documenting the code that I have there already. Once I have done that ( and I have already finished that task) I can then work on the improvements for this client.

There are some interesting links that I have found. The first is a link to a program on Microsoft's MSDN site called Fiddler which is designed to sit between a web site and a Web Browser and allows the traffic between the two to be monitored, and changes as required. This is useful for debugging, both of a browser and of the server software.

On a different subject, there is an entry in a Blog showing how to start a fire with a coke can and a chocolate bar. Basically you use a chocolate bar to polish the end of the coke for use as a reflecting lens. It does actually work, aparently.

Then, CNN has a story about a hotel in the Middle East that has significant amounts of technology in it, and cost US$3b to build.

I just finished watching 'The Incredibles' and I liked the 2nd half more than the first half I think... The animation was fantastic, and the story did improve. I just loved the hair on Helen Parr/Elastigirl... So much detail went into the rendering of the hair. I was very impressed with it...

Music:

The Natalie Merchant song 'San Andreas Fault' was on the MP3 player again... The lyrics are available Here

"paradise is there, you`ll have all that you can eat
of milk & honey over there, you`ll be the brightest star
the world has ever seen, sun-baked slender heroine
of film & magazine, go west

paradise is there, you`ll have all that you can eat
of milk & honey over there, you`ll be the brightest light
the world has ever seen, the dizzy height of a jet-set life
you could never dream, your pale blue eyes
strawberry hair, lips so sweet
skin so fair, your future bright"

Airport Security

If there was any further proof needed about the need to change airport security in the USA, I would advise looking at TheDenverChannel.COM. You must see this to believe it. "Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector. (Pat is the good looking one)"


There is an interesting story on the BBC about the mobile phone business in Ghana in Africa. Strangely, mobiles are really taking off in this poor country, since the infrastructure costs are so much cheaper than for landlines. And the fact that business people are offering the mobile equivalent of a payphone on streets for people who do not have a mobile - which is much of the country. This is a country where ther number of phone lines has not increased much over the last 40 or so years - but there are now double the number of mobiles than landlines in only the last few years.

Photo of the Day

This is a photo of Universal Studios in the foreground from the top of the hill. The white buildings in the foreground is the Universal Backlot. The white campus in the centre distance is the Warner Bros Studios. It is in the 2nd photo. Dolby Labs at least used to be based just in front of the big office building on the left hand side, along with 'Robet Abel and Associates' where much of the work on the movie Tron was done.

You can see the Warner Brothers Water Tower in this photo on the left of the picture.

Be warned... This Blog entry might contain too much engineer technical stuff. Then again it might not... I will leave the exercise of telling of determining that up to the reader. And I will not be building this Weekend. Between us, Richard and I have too many things on.

Outlook Style Grid

I was been looking for a Grid Control for much of yesterday afternoon. I actually found one at 10 Tec from Eastern Europe. This company should not be confused with Ten-Tec in the USA which sells radio equipment.

I wanted something where I can add data as required, and move columns around with a 'Field Chooser', and sort data and group it too. And there is very very little on the market. Most of the products assume that you are going to be connected to a database, and are quite aimed at that market.

I do not want that. I have different needs. I want to display data, and allow different users to see different amounts of information. And to choose columns. I want the user to be able to sort the columns too, move them around, hide them. Add them as required - well, from a well defined list. For the last few weeks I have been fighting with a marketing person who wanted the software more 'User Friendly' and I could never understand what his ideas were to improve it... Now I know. Like, I knew I needed to improve the user interface but I just could not see how. Now I do know.

Speed Camera

Sometimes I just like to think about solutions to problems that I have no need to solve. Just like crossword puzzles, but without the constraints. It keeps my mind active. Just academic exercises, to be done in my mind only. This could be anything from how I would go about building more lanes for the M5 East to what the how I would fix the environment of south east Australia if I had unlimited funds.

Why and I talking about this? well, I saw an article online somewhere a few days ago about police somewhere looking at using a video camera to detect speeders. Not speed cameras like we have in Sydney where they put sensors in the road, or like in Victoria where they time your travel between two points, but a single camera. The idea is that the device looks at you driving on a road and works out how far you have traveled in a set period of time.

If you use a video camera recording traffic and play it back you are able to work out how fast the cars are going but it requires work. I was thinking about how this would be done. And I came up with some steps... And please bear in mind that these steps are full of buzzwords that the people who know those words will understand, and other people will probably not understand.

1. Remove any shakes. This technology is commonly in video cameras anyway. I think it uses a cross-correlation function between frames to work out if the image had moved when it should not have. There are probably IC's to do this job.

2. Find the Differences between two frames. This is called Image Subtraction. With the shakes removed, the images will live up. This will remove the background detail from both images.

3. Apply a software 'zoom' function to the image with the car furthest away, and then working out which 'zoom' provides a picture closest to the image closest. This would be done with a cross-correlation function with the zoom level being one of the variables. This will return a likely zoom level needed to make the two identical. Have a filter on the Cross-Correlation Function that places more emphasis on the readings in the centre of the screen, and less on the outside.

4. Knowing the lens paramaters, and the zoom level needed, and the time difference between readings you can then determine the speed of the vehicle.

Bit-Tech.Net has an article on the computing power of spacecraft. Actually the article is a bit light on the technical details but is a good introduction. They mention that the shuttle has 'State Of The Art Computers', pointing out that they are referring to state of the art from the 1970's and 1980's! The most powerful computers on the International Space Station are actually the laptops used by the crew. And these are used more for things like Email rather than controlling the spacecraft.

None of this surprises me, since I have friends who build satellites as a hobby. With a budget of $2-3000 in Sydney I could build a satellite, assuming that you wanted redundancy with the hardware. If you don't care about duplicating hardware the price is halved. This does not include labour, but it would not be that expensive even at consultancy rates.

Washing

I looked at the washing a little while back... And the clothes are clean. All the fibers in the clothes washed off. Thankfully. I still have not worked out why the fabric failed like that. It seems that the individual fibers in the yarn making up the fabric were too short leading to lack of tensile stregth, particularly when wet. Put simply, the fibres would just pull past each other without enough friction to hold them together.

Photo of the Day

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was using Wireless in Albury. I have attached a photo of the wireless router here... I needed to place it in the bathroom above the vanity to get access. The cables were long enough to reach around the corner to a table - but I needed to make sure I didn't pull the router off the wall and damage it. So that is why I used electrical tape.

I went for a run a bit earlier. I ended up doing 2.5km. This was a bit less than I wanted but I had not run during the week... And it was good to get me back into it. I also sprinted the last few hundred meters... Or at least the best that I could. Whilst I was meeting with a client yesterday he commented that I was looking healthier, and that the exercise was working.

Yesterday when I was working with the Spanish stuff, I needed to type the replies on a MAC. This was slightly strange - and it is interesting how many things become second nature in windows which have to be unlearned.

Things like the shift key not working on the MAC if you have the CAPS LOCK on. But this is a minor one. Other things more major are about the right click options you get when you select a word in Microsoft Word. Well, under the Mac version of Microsoft Word, of course Right Click does not work most of the time since there is rarely a right mouse button to click.

But there are certain features of the Mac that I love. Such as moving the mouse to the top right I think places ALL your programs on the desktop in a small version and you can then click on the one you want to run. If you move the mouse to the top left corner something else happens. Not sure what though. What I did not like was that Microsoft Word would not let me save a file with a filename that was longer than some length which was too short for me. ARGH. Finally a reason to stay with Windows :-)

Washing Issues

I have just been doing the washing, seperating the dark from the light... I had been cleaning out stuff in my room, and one of the things to throw out was a black cape I made a few years back for a fancy dress party. Anyway, it ended up in the washing, in the blacks. This would have been fine, apart from the fact that this material actually disintegrated. Totally fell apart. Leaving black lint on all the darks, and the water black. I am on the 2nd wash of the clothes and the water is still really black. You can see a photo of the water here... Thankfully this is all fibre and not die, so it is all washing out. And I did wash the dark stuff all together too so it will not have much of an impact.

Project of the Day

This is the photo of a project from about three years back... I built myself the MP3 player, but I needed to play the music. So I wrote software to provide a user interface with a keyboard and screen. This is OK. But that was not enough. So I then interfaced an infrared remote control to control it... and also built an LCD screen for the device. This is a text screen similar to in taxis, and worked really well.

News.com has a funny story about a poor man in Melbourne who had to get the fire department to rescue him from a bin in the early hours of this morning after one of his friends through his mobile phone into it, and he could not get out.

There is another strange story on News.Com.Au. According to the story, POLICE in England have appealed for help to trace a swarm of up to 30,000 missing honey bees, a day after they were last seen at their hive in Worcestershire. The bees are worth about $100. I am not quite sure why this story has been sent around the whole wide world.

Printing Problems in VB.NET

Last night and this morning I was having a printing problem with one of the programs I was hoping to finish off yesterday. It would print-preview correctly, and then only print the last page. This was SO confusing. Then after a while I worked it out. The code to print the pages was being called TWICE. Once for the PRINT PREVIEW, and once for the PRINT. And when it was being PRINTED, I was only telling it to print the 2nd page because the PAGE COUNTER was set to page 2 once the first page was printed.

The solution was to reset the PAGE COUNTER on the Begin Print EVENT. Then things just worked. The thing is that I can see the entire logic in this now that I have

Music:

I am playing Enya on the music player. I normally just listen to music on my laptop speakers, and this sounds good. But I have plugged some external speakers in, and I started playing 'White Flag' from her 'Life For Rent' album. The start of this blew my mind in sterio. It just sounds so fantastic - sound coming from everywhere...

And also there is "Mary's in India" which is one of the tracks I love... Like I have said before I just love the words in this on... Along with "This Land is Mine". One that I don't think that I have mentioned before is "Take My Hand"...

"Touch my skin and tell me what you're thinking,
Take my hand and show me where we're going.
Lie down next to me, look into my eyes,
And tell me, oh tell me what you're seeing
And Sit on top of the world and tell me how you're feeling

What you feel is what I feel for you
Take my hand; and if lying to you
I'll always be alone if I am lying to you

See my eyes, they carry your reflection
Watch my lips and hear the words I'm telling you
Give your trust to me, and look into my eyes
and show me, and show me what you're doing
And Sit on top of the world and tell me how you're feeling

What you feel is what I feel for you
Take my hand; and if lying to you
I'll always be alone if I am lying to you

Take your time, and if I'm lying to you
I know you'll find that you believe
You believe me, you believe me, You believe me"

I watched half of The Incredibles on DVD last night. I will watch the rest tomorrow... I don't think it is as good as the other PIXAR stuff which is unfortunate... Pixar have some talented animators, and they have done a good job. I just think that the story is a tiny bit weak...

I had an email from a client of mine. Their client are really happy with the tracking software that I have written, but want me to extend it. They are even happy to pay for me to upgrade it. That last bit is the best bit. The things that they want done are things that I would want to do anyway, but I have not really had the time to do... Or the need if the truth be told.

So right now I need to think about their list and work out what a reasonable price is for it. And how to implement all the required features. I like this... I get a client to pay for modifications to a product that I am selling to other clients. They know this and are fine with this too. They get an improved product out of it... and if other clients do the same, they get improved results too... Well, another client has already done this and they like the feature that this client has comissioned.

One of the other programs I was working on today is just about finished. The issue I am having right at the moment is related to printing - and print preview. I have print preview working correctly with my software, but the printing will not let you choose a different printer, and it will not print the first page of a two page document. Apart from that it is looking good.

I have just got back from Eastgardens... And I thought I would have been longer. I need to grab some lunch in a minute, but I thought I would post a new entry here first.

Things were certainly not what I expected over there... I needed to go through an email my client receieved from one of his clinets. The work involves a speach synthesizer making different statements about the weather. This is fine, apart from two points. Firstly, I dont speak spanish, or any of the other languages with a major french basis. By that I mean I only speak english, and not any language with a concept of masculine and feminine adjectives.

Spanish (and we are talking European Spanish here specifically, although latin american spanish is most likely the same) has modifiers on words later on in the sentence. Temperature might be masculine, and wind speed might be feminine. So when you make a statement like "The {Temperature|Wind Speed} was 100 {units} *AT* 10 O'Clock", the word *AT* changes depending on if we are talking about wind speed or temperature. This complicates the sentence structure, particularly when you have someone like me who needs to code this.

I at least knew about masculine and feminine words which at least put me ahead of my poor client. Although I should say that he does speak more than one language so had some idea at least. Anyway that was this mornings fun... Time for a slightly late lunch...

ARGH… A Blogger just ate my post. Yeah. I wrote a Blog entry and the Blogger ate it. Not like normal. In this case it just came up with a message saying that Blogger.Com is down for maintenance. Frankly I am not surprised thanks to some performance issues on my last post, but it did mean that I did loose my last post. Thankfully it was only a few paragraphs.

I was saying that I was hoping to get a couple of programs out the door today… I am not sure how successful I will be with that. The programs both need a bit of work. I just today found an issue with one of them – but it can be fixed quickly being just the “Help About” dialog box needing some work. I would guess that will require very little work. I cannot see how it could be anything but a simple fix.

[Update slightly later… I just got an email from the client. He has a few more issues to fix… May not get it done today… Well… I don’t think I will get everything in the list done… Not unless I have a time machine that is  ]

The other program needs more work, but I think I can get it out to door today all the same, provided that things do not take too many hours at Eastgardens. But I will have to see how that goes. I have an interesting product idea to talk to this client about… I just had an interesting idea… Unfortunately commercially sensitive… I will think about that one… I may have just picked up a whole lot more work.

Today I am going to Eastgardens to do some work for a friend. I have a whole lot of stuff to do for him. The work involves weather stations, and is slightly interesting. More importantly it pays the bills and gets me out of the office.

Sometimes I love Australia Post. Sometimes I *really* hate them. When they are good they are really good. When they are bad, they are horrid. I have been waiting on a parcel for a couple of weeks. The person sending it was slack, and was a bit late; but he sent it Australian Air Express. And it arrived at my postoffice for collection 10 days ago. But they forgot to tell me it was there. No card in the postbox. Nothing. And not even a 2nd card when I had not collected it in a week.

This happens every now and then. Maybe once every six months. Normally it is not the local staff who make the mistake - at least for the first card as it is filled in by a mail centre in the next suburb. But in this case it was their fault as they neglected to place the card in my post box.

Having said that, I get far better performance out of Australia Post than most courier companies. FedEx is the exception here. They are amazing, and the local FedEx guy always asks me how I am by name... And even delivers parcels if they are addressed to the PO Box without even needing to look up the address. And I dont get that many parcels through FedEx.

Iraq Tracking

Every now and then I get some bizzare requests for assistance. One last year was wanting assistance with tracking people being abducted by aliens! This is in the Blog history somewhere from late last year... OK - the link is here proving how strange some potential clients are. A few weeks back I did get a request from an Australian working in Iraq wanting information on GPS tracking for personal security... I can assure you that I would not want to do a site visit for that job!

Music:

Tori Amos - Cloud on my Tounge

I can tell you it is nice to be home... I dont mind going away... Actually I like it... Just that I don't get much work done usually when I am away, and when I have a lot of things to do then work does suffer. Not that I cannot turn off, and leave the computer turned off... Just that I do have some things to do and so I am having to do them.

One of the phone calls earlier resulted in an A4 page of handwritten notes for modifications that need to be made to a program I am working on. These mods take anywhere from 30 seconds to three hours. Well, I think the upper extent there is a bit high but you get the idea. About half the list is crossed off... I will leave it up to the reader to work out which types of issues have mostly been removed.

Some of the modifications are bugs, some are missing features, and some are features that would be nice to have. After watching an hours TV tonight... Law and Order I think I will come back and finish off the list... Anyway it is that time now so time to put this thing to bed for a while...

I have had a slightly productive day today... I have done some electrical engineering design work... Not much, but I have done some. It was of the style of a pen on a sheet of paper. It is amazing how many of my designs work out that way... With lots of scribbles and lines. And then the papers get either used on the other side, shredded or recycled (or filed).

With my scanner what I commonly do is take the document and write it by hand, and then scan it as needed, and PDF it. This works remarkably well in most cases. I can then email it to whoever needs it, and it works better than a fax. Scanning is much faster than scanning anyway, and I have a record of what I have sent in the past.

I had three long-ish phone calls today... One was on Skype which meant I could wear my headset. I really need to get a new headset for my miniture phone... Or get my Platronics headset working. I really need to look around for a phone system at some stage. I will probably be getting a VOIP unit soon for the business and it would be good not to have to wory about multiple phones on multiple lines.

I still have not heard from Richard about when we are building. I would guess I will hear sometime today... Probably... The plane has a lot of work to get done on it, and it would be good to get it finished at some stage...

Music:

Children by Robert Miles from the 'Open Space' CD. It is also on the DVD by the same name. Great music just to listen to.

I am getting things under control. My inbox has only 35 unread messages. Well, they are not unread really. They are messages that I need to do things on. I have read them using the preview pane in Outlook... This seems to work for me. I have written a to-do list for what I need to do today and over the next few days, and that is not over the top either.

I have already crossed items off the list this morning. Some are permamently crossed off, and some are things that I have needed to do and then have to get other people to reply. Basically things are under control in my world. And this pleases me greatly.

BTW, Last night my plane landed just after 6:00, and it was about 6:20 before I got my bag... Then there was a short walk to my car and a horrible bill for parking. Basically I was home just after 7:00. That is not bad really... It would have taken a lot longer an hour later... But the M5 East tunnel was flowing fairly well, once I actually got into it. After the tunnel I drove home at the speed limit most of the way...

Music:

Over the last couple of days I have had Bette Midler on MP3. I think it is now time for something different. Random Play I think.

From Column Eight

Not that this following joke describes me at all... I promise it does not.

An Engineer, a Lawyer and an Accountant were discussing which was better to have - a wife or a mistress.

The Lawyer was first to talk. He said "It is obvious. If you have a wife they get half of everything, so of course it is better to have a mistress who gets nothing".

The Accountant then pipes up - and notes "You are wrong! There are significant tax advantages to having a wife... you can split your incomes and it better for you financially."

The two of them then asked the Engineer, so that he would have to tell them which of the other two was right. The Engineer replied "Well, you are both wrong!". Not understanding, they asked him to explain...

"You see", the Engineer commented, "you need both." leaving the Lawyer and the Accountant stunned, replying in unison "BOTH?". "Yes, Both." replied the Engineer. "My Mistress thinks that I am with my Wife; My wife thinks that I am with my Mistress, and I am really in the workshop doing cool stuff".

Other stuff

The weather is not great here today... With some rain. There was some rain on the flight back last night, with us flying though a bit of cloud. But not too bad though really. There is enough rain arround to get things wet, but not enough really to do much good unfornately.

My latest Microsoft shipment came in today by Fedex. Well, it came in yesterday, but there was no-one here so they brought it in today... One of the things I have been meaning to look at is the SharePoint server software - and a new service pack of it was included in the four DVD's from Microsoft. So I am copying that to my server at the moment. Why not just put the DVD into the server direct? Well, there are two reasons. Firstly that would mean going to the server area. And the most important reason is that the server does not have a DVD reader. Just a CD drive.

Oops... Just noticed that I need SQLserver running. Now I remember why I have not installed it before. When I do my own similar program I will not require a database... At least not one like SQLserver. OK. Well, I was wrong. It installs a database of its own if you want anyway. So there was no need to install SQLserver.

One of the strange things about the flight from Albury to Sydney today was that they had a passenger seated in the cockpit. I heard part of the story about wanting to get a family of seven onto the flight... Not sure of all the details. I did not know that they could even do this. I think I will have to start checking in using my airport photo ID... That way I might actually get better chance if something like this happens again.

Whilst waiting to be picked up from the motel today I was channel surfing and came across a movie that looked interesting... The movie was called In the Bleak Midwinter (1995) staring Richard Briers, Jennifer Saunders and Julia Sawalha. It was definitely a british comedy, all filmed in B&W. Looked so hillarious.

An intersting project here... A WiFi connection from connected to a EVDO (CDMA Broadband) card to give wifi wherever you drive... The link is Here

I would love to write more but I am zonked. I am already using the laptop sitting on my bed. If I don't shut it down and lay my head on my pillow I think my head will start using the keyboard as a rather uncomfortable pillow (the type that gives me the QWERTY's)... Besides, my typing is getting worse meaning it is time to visit the land of nod, dreaming of silicon sheep, or whatever us engineers dream about...

It is probably 90 minutes before sunset, and about 20 minutes before boarding my flight home to Sydney. I am sitting here with about 140 degree views of the airport field with the long shadows of the April sky. I have music on, and I am looking forward to the flight home.

My plane is already on the field, and in 30 minutes we should already have taken off. I love travelling at this time of day… Although driving home during the daylight is certainly nicer. It is certainly peaceful with the headphones cutting off much of the background noise. Then again since this is Albury, there is not too much background noise anyway.

In the distance I can see green hills covered with native Australian trees. And huge numbers of trees all around actually. And being Australian evergreen trees, they all still have their leaves and are not turning red, orange or bronze as we approach the winter months.

Outside there is a slight wind so the flight should be nice going home. I have not checked the weather in Sydney but I expect that it will be fine up there too… I would guess that we may get a tiny bit of turbulence just west of Canberra but I would guess that would be all.

Basically things are fine and the world is good.

The weather is nice down here in Albury today... The sun is out, althought it was a bit chilly this morning. Certainly not winter weather, but certainly colder than up in Sydney.

I am now connected to a LAN and I am finding the performance of the network is worse than the performance of the wireless. I was actually quite surprised at how well the wirless operated apart from the issues with actually getting a signal. And only that there are not enough base stations in the area so there are problems with buildings in the way.

Skype worked really really well with the wireless... So much so that it was better than hands free is usually. This was a real shock. No delay, distortion or anything.

Soon I will be going to the Airport for my trip home... My flight is at 4:50... and will take about an hour... Checking is quick at Albury... You can checkin 15 minutes before the flight...

I am not sure if this one is real, but it appears that someone has built a PC into a microwave oven
Microwave PC. This one is... Someone decided to build the ultimate shoppingcart for a homeless person. It has GPS tracking, solar power, radio, TV and more. You can read more about it here

I have also come across a Company that allows you to design your own custom computer keyboards at whim... and move keys around. You can have up to 25 keys, meanin that it looks idea for some custom applications.

In the something strange department, according to the SMH, Gloria Jeans Coffee is opening a coffee in a womens jail... Rather an interesting concept. It will be to sell to visitors and staff.

Music:

I found some links to some lyrics for a couple of Bette Midler songs. The songs are I think its going to rain today and Oh Industry

I woke up too early this morning... Part of it is being in a strange bed, but I think mostly it is the trucks on the road outside. Thankfully I keep ear things in my travel kit to keep out the noise, but that only goes so far. Some of the trucks get fairly noisy, and I am pretty sure that a police officer would make a mint on this road at night with a Radar gun.

Joke

Q:What do you get when you cross a chicken with a centipede?
A:media circus about the debate over the morals and ethics of genetic engineering.

SueThePresident.Com

There have been stories in the last week or two about how the President of the USA has been getting staffers to upload music to his iPod. This activity is technically illegal since in the USA you only have fair use rights if you do things per personal use. Not for the personal use of someone else. And since the RIAA in the USA has been sueing anyone they can think of for Piracy, it would not be unreasonable for them to sue The President. So a WWW site has registered the site SueThePresident.Com for a satire site on this 'issue'

Setting Up Satellite

There is a cute article with lots of Photos on a Blog about a guy setting up broadband internet satellite dish in Iraq. This guy went to a whole lot more trouble than the last few times I have played with Satellites. Of course the satellites I have played with did not have internet access, so the bandwidth requirements were less so the antennas were smaller.

I tried to find a photo of the antenna at home I used to try to contact the Russian Space Station MIR (but heard MIR on) but I could not find a photo. I will have to post one in the next few days. But I have found another photo of a satellite uplink antenna on the back of my car for a project... It is the antenna closest to the camera... The black blob in the middle of the roof is a GPS antenna, and the far antenna is for a land based vehicle tracking system.

I am here staying in the Astor Motel in Albury. It is about three stars, and unfortunately there are trucks going past all the time. Shutting the windows will fix some of that, but I want to have some airflow at the moment.

I love this wireless access... I was just using RemoteDesktop to Canada... And I found the performance amazing. Actually it was close to what I would see at home. And this was going about 11,500km or so.

I just played the song 'Sydney from a 747 at night' from Home, and listened to the Lyrics and transcribed them. They appear below. I am not saying that there will not be errors, but this is as close as I can get it... The version I have is sung by Wendy Matthews I think from The Olympic Album...

Have you every seen Sydney from a 747 at Night?
Oh, Sydney Shines such a beautiful Light
And I can see Bondi from my Windows Way off to the right
And the crashing waves on a distant break
And a Sleeping Sydney just about Wake
Have you every seen Sydney from a 747 at Night?

Now the red roofs are catching the first rays of the morning sun
My eyes are full of sand from my midnight run
The captain says better wake up now, we'll be touching down in ten
So I press my seat and I staighten up and
I stow my tray and I stash my cup
Now the red roofs are catching the first rays of the morning sun

Have you ever falled for a boy with different coloured eyes?
Then sent him packing; They were full of lies
Have you ever longed to see the sun fall where it used to rise?
And quit your job on the spot
And bought a ticket, yes spent the lot
Have you ever falled for a boy with different coloured eyes?

The meeting today went well, although there is more to be done tomorrow. I used MindManager to work through the meeting agenda and it worked really well. This software allows semi-hierarchical data to be organized into a format that makes some sort of logical sense, whilst managing links between related data, and then documenting things. I am finding that this was the right tool for the job.

Right now I am connected using Wireless in my hotel room and I think things are working fairly well. Actually I am impressed... A friend of mine has lent me a modem for me to have access... And I am able to do all the normal sorts of things... The only thing that I do not have running right at this minute is outgoing email but I can do that through WebMail until I work out how to get something else to work. One of these days I will get richard to show me how to open my firewall to allow me to send email using my own server for outgoing mail.

Dinner was good here... $20 for the largest Rump Steak I have ever seen. Country towns seem to be fairly good with food like that. Particularly meats. I think the best I ever had was at a small pub in Nanango, about 20 minutes south of Kingaroy in Queensland... Very small community with a single taxi and a Pizza shop that closes at 8:30pm, and a chineese shop that looks like it was refurbished in the 1960's...

The flight from Sydney to Albury was quick and there was no turbulence at all. There are parts of flying I love and parts I hate. Taking off was great… Getting to see Sydney from the air is wonderful. There is a song – ‘Sydney from a 747 at night’ which I think was sung by Paul Kelly. It has the lyrics ‘Have you ever seen Sydney from a 747 at night’. I will post the partial lyrics here later.

The imagery is simply fantastic. Sydney from a Saab 340 in the daytime is amazing too. We took off going south on the old runway, over Kurnel. Botany Bay looks fantastic from above – and so peaceful.

REX might have poor in-flight snacks, but their seats are comfortable at least. They have sheepskin on all the seats meaning that they are not only cool, but even more comfortable than normal. I just spent the entire flight just looking out the window. You can certainly see the impact of farming on the world. I would love to be able to buy a few thousand square KM and plant them with native forest, just because I can.

I would love to be able to fly, but I don’t know that I will ever get a license. I just don’t trust myself enough to handle myself if things go wrong. I am sure that I could, I am just not confident.

Flying over Canberra is always interesting… I love seeing Parliament House and Tidbinbilla from the air. The radio telescope looks so small from the air and so large from the ground. Things are really placed into perspective… Alas, no photos… I forgot to bring a camera… Maybe next time…