I have an important meeting at lunch time tomorrow - it should be interesting. Meeting with another client for the first time although I have been dealing with his business partner for the least few weeks. I was hoping to have a lot of things to show him tomorrow, but there have been some technical issues meaning that this is not possible. Not that he was expecting to see anything, but it would have been good anyway...

I get to hear about the moral inside Telstra from various sources. Apaprently the place is a fairly horrible place to work at the moment. The fact that the Telstra board now wants to get rid of more people has made things worse. I found the following comment on the ZDNET www site... 'Lucky for Telstra, a raft of new Industrial Relations legislation is on the near horizon. That should help them get over a few hurdles that were previously insurmountable.'. Unfortunately this sounds too true.

I have been thinking more about the Telstra stratergy with CDMA, announcing that they want to get rid of CDMA. The really strange thing here is that for Telstra if they implement WCDMA on 850 MHz with 3G that they are only partially solving their issue with reducing infrastructure costs. In order to fully reduce the infrastructure costs they also need to kill off the GSM network and transition that across. I think I need to do some more research on this subject.

I think the battery in my old dell needs replacing... I was using it outside in my car for a project for about 10 minutes before the battery died. That would be the second battery in this computer - with the first lasting about two years I would guess. This is not my main laptop where the battery still performs well. I might need to get the pack re-manufactured as this is often a lot cheaper than getting a new pack.

A journalist in the UK has been sacked over a Rigged Brake Test on a Mercedes car. The car had intelligence that would automatically apply the brakes if the car was going to collide with another car. But in the building where the demonstration was being performed the system did not work. So the journo decided to fake the test for cameras. Beucase of the special effects fog in the building the car could not see that the car in front had stopped. But they knew that this was going to happen.

So the engineers had placed a plank on the road to say when to brake. But the active suspention caused the driver of the vehicle at the back - the one with the anti-collision technology - to not feel the bump and ran into the back of the other car. All in front of TV cameras. OOps.

Quickly: The BURKE and WILLS bottle from the 'Dig Tree' has been sold for $250,000. And an Open House in Darwin gave an off duty Police officer the hint that drugs were being grown inside the house hydroponically.

In what must be a unique divorce settlement, a man in Iran has been ordered to pay his wife one gold coin a month for the next 10,000 years; or about $2000 per year. Under Iran's marriage law, couples sign a pre-nuptual agreement where the bride must stipulate the level of compensation they can demand during the marriage or in the event of separation and divorce. So in this case the court decided to effectively reduce the alimony by spreading it over a longer period. Hmm.

Computer systems in emergency serivices are strange at times. A person who tried to ring an ambulance from Park Central in the shadows of Campbelltown hospital was told that she did not live there since the road she lived on did not exist. The ambulance eventually arrived 2.5 hours later with lots of directions. To place this into context, the Ambulance station in Campbelltown is on the corner of Hurley st and another street. Park Central is off Hurley Street about 1.5km away on a straight open major road. And I am pretty sure that every house there would have a view of the hospital. In fact for some of the houses, it would be quicker to jump the fense and get to the emergency ward than it would be to get from the emergency ward to most of the rest of the hospital.

The problem appears to be the Computer Aided Dispatch system which has outdated maps. Argh. Why does this not surprise me. And this type of problem is the reason I have stayed away from that part of the business!

Anyway, back to work...

I have just got back from my run. I was not running quite as fast as I thought I was, but I did go well. I ran 6.1KM in 42 minutes. That is not bad. I did take the GPS and I have a dump of my run in the file below. 6.1KM is not bad I dont think...

Right now I think I need to have a shower and some breakfast...

Yesterday when I was using GoogleEarth over the Vodafone 3G I was having huge problems. I found out what they were after a little while. Turns out that the 3G application that comes with the card had the option to block certain content, and also had the ability to compress images. Well, that really stuffed up GoogleEarth, and meant that most of the user interface did not work, and the software effectively crashed. That is turned off, and things should be working a lot better now.

Durning the meeting yesterday I was told about an interesting free program called FreeMind which is a mind mapping program. It is a program to sort ideas based on lines on the screen, and their relationship. This is great for planning when there is very little inherent structure and you are searching for the structure, or where your mind just loves to go wild. I have not downloaded this one yet but I will. I have tried a similar program in the past and it was good. It needs the java runtime which can be an issue but is not bad.

Anyway I need to get going... I have a run to do... I will be doing the marathon before I know it :-)

Many people it seems make hand movements in time to music. Sometimes this is playing an electric guitar in the air, or hitting an invisible drum kit. Some other people may mime singing the lyrics of a song. I am one of the invisible drum people, but I am un-coordinated enough so that it would be a real disaster if someone gave me a real set of drums. Anyway, some students in Helsinki have developed computer software that will record the image of someone playing a guitar in the air and will turn that into music. I suspect that there is a long way to go on this project, but this is quite amazing.

Since I have almost no musical tallent (apart from a great love of listening to it) I do not think I will be setting up a system like this in the near future. I would love to be able to play an instrument like the piano, but I never learned.

The SMH has a story about how Vodafone is restricting premium SMS from some prepaid plans. Speicifcally they are restricting the ability to use premeum SMS as part of the capped calling on certain plans. I would have thought that any premium SMS would have been in excess of the cap, or part of it until it got to the call limit. Anyway they are advising people who want to use premium SMS to get a post-pay account or not get get a capped account. In some other vodafone news, apparently I am one of only a handful of people with a vodafone data account, and no voice account. I am told that this is VERY rare, and unusual.

Australia Post never ceases to amaze me... I have a POBox as this is a better way to get stuff delivered... In theory all letters and parcels to the address should find themselves in the post box regardless... Some companies refuse to deliver parcels to a street address, which is strange when they use Express Post, or Australian Air Express, which both deliver to a PO Box.

Yesterday I ordered a radio modem - and lets just say that it was not cheap. So I was rather surprised for it to appear under the front mat. This was a box about 5cm tall, so I have yet to work out why they put it under the mat, but they did. Maybe to keep it dry. Normally they just dump it at the door after knocking once.

Right now I had better get going... I need to get my beauty sleep, and I have a lot of things to do here tomorrow...

One of the coolest things you can do with food now in the USA is getting custom printed M&M's. Basically, you can get M&M's with your own words added to them... Cute concept.

Yahoo News, has an interesting article on how Introverts are thought of as being less intelligent than extroverts, whereas this is probably not the case. Provocative read. They also outline the differences between new versions of Web Browsers.

The Wall Street Journal has an article describing why BETA software is lasting so long. The reason is basically it provides the companies with an excuse if the software is stuffing up.

Finally, given the weather, I thought I might show an image of the output of a lightning detector. This is on a WWW page, although it is on a frends WWW site, and is not online fully yet. Soon I will provide a link to the real time data...

The News.Com.Au site has a story on visiting the Harry Potter locations in the UK... It would be interesting to visit all the locations from the movie... I have been to some (Kings Cross station) but there is some beautiful countryside in the movies.

I have been listening to the Green Day song 'Good Riddance (Time of your life)'. This is a song I like, but I have not known the words. For example the song starts 'Another Turning Point, A fork stuck in the road'. I thought that this was 'Another Turnip Boy, A long way on the road'. And so on. Lets be frank... I had no idea what was being sung.

Another Turning Point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go
So make the best of this test
And don't ask why
It's not a question
But a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable
But in the end is right
I hope you have the time of your life

So take the photographs
And still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf of good heath
And good time
Tattoos of memories
And dead skin on trial
For what its worth
It was worth all the while
I hope you had the time of your life

Back from the meeting... Went well... Really interesting, but I cannot say much more than that unfortunately. My notes from the meeting make really interesting reading and maybe one day I will be able to share them here. We will see how that goes. It was a meeting where I was sitting back listening... Sometimes I find that is ite best way to run a meeting... One day I will publish some stories on meetings I did that way...

A friend of mine forwarded me a personality test... It is on Tickle.COM, and you can find it here. It has some strange questions. I would advise you not to carefully read the screen about what sort of personality test it is until you have done the test... It is worth it. And unfortunately I cannot give the answer as to my results without giving some of that away... Good laugh...

In the meeting today I got to use the 3G... Signal strengths between 3G and GPRS are significantly different. Also it appears that not all cell sites are 3G. The ones inside the Macquarie Centre are not yet 3G. And I would guess that a lot of other places are like that too. It will be good when every base station is 3G... That might take a while to be implemented though.

I was in Borders a little while back, and I saw a book near the checkout... It was called "I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE: 50 OF THE WORLDS MOST DEPRESSING SONGS". I did not buy a copy of the book... But it did look interesting... The have books on everything these days... What looked better was the TOP GUN DVD... This is a MUST for any DVD collection... I think I might get it for a friend for Christmas... I think this would be fantastic in surround sound. Played at top volume...

The other cool thing I saw was at the Australian Geographic store and they had a 'working' model of an internal combustion engine for only $70... How cute. I wonder if it will power an plane!

The weather outside is definitely improving... That is if you do not mind the rain stopping, and the humidity rising. How do I know this? I just got back from my run. It went really well. I ended up running for about 35 minutes, and I believe I ran about 5.2KM or so. I think I now need to start taking my GPS to measure distance. Once again I am feeling fairly good right now, and my heart rate is almost back to normal.

The one issue that I was having was that my glasses were beginning to slide down my nose. This does not feel all that comfortable, and each time I would put them back they would slide down within steps. Still, that is better than running without glasses on which would be an unmitigated disaster.

Anyway time for a shower and then over to North Ryde...

Listening to the radio during the last week I have been hearing the song 'Take Me Away'. This seems to be a remake of a snappy song I last heard performed by I think the 'Four Seasons'. And I think that this new version is better. I just have not managed to work out who is performing it yet. I love the song... Definitely one of my favourites, at least at the moment.

I just saw an advert for the Vodafone 3G card that I got for free in the SMH in the computer section. They are offering the same deal as I got, BUT normal people need to buy the new 3G card for the bargain basement price of $399. Or only $16/month for 24 months. I am glad that I got that offer - as it saved so much money!

I will probably go for a run in a little while... It is starting to warm up slightly and there is no rain around, so the conditions are fairly good. I am not sure how far I will get, but that does not really matter... Exercise does not need to be taken seriously, only regularly.

This morning after I grab some food I have a PCB to finish designing. I then need to visit a client to find out what modifications are needed to the design. There will be some... There are always changes that need to be done! And then I have to visit North Ryde. I might drop in at Borders Bookstore on the way... There is a book I need and I am hoping they might have it...

Christmas and New Years is coming up meaning lots of parties. And parties sometimes means champain and champange corks... So a company in the UK has released a little toy to exploit champange. They call their device the champichute and is a 9cm parichute for champagne corks... That is something different - great for those outdoor parties. I wonder if they are available in Oz. Maybe I should just get some FedEx'ed from the supplier

Some reports from Microsoft indicate that the new version of Windows, VISTA, may actually ship quite early - next year in fact. There was a story on Business Week, but you can definitely find the story on ARS Technica. Evhead has a story on 10 simple rules for Web Startups. Not a bad little article really.... Some good ideas...

Oh, no... According to News.Com.Au JetStar was planning to paint one of it's jets in the Yellow of the new Lynx deodorant advert showing on TV. Aparently Jetstar had no idea how sauct the adverts were going to be. Jetstar was to do a promotional deal with deodorant brand Lynx but the company has severed all ties with the brand.

A friend of mine suggested that I read this article about a spy ring in Russia. One more thing to add to my to-do list I guess. Just one more thing... Scanning the article makes interesting reading but it looks all together too long.

CNN has a story about the movie ratings for the weekend in the USA. Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter came first. What did surprise me was that 2nd was a biography movie about Johnny Cash. Number four was the Chicken Little animated movie which I thought would have been more popular. [This movie was being advertised when I was in the USA in september].

One of my friend MSN'ed me... He has just got a job at Brisbane airport as a radio technician. I am still waiting to see when he starts his new job, but as soon as he does I think I will be having to go up there for lunch one day, but I will have to find a work reason to visit [P.S. Just heard - he starts January next year].

Reading BoingBoing, I found that Raytheon has a new way to get rid of mines in a field - they are planning to send a shell into the minefield which seperates near the ground into hundreds of metal arrows which set off all the mines. Sure, this is destructive, but it is a whole lot safer I think than having humans clear the mine field.

I was speaking to a friend in the USA earlier today about hardware and software for volunteer emergency services, which we both have an interest in. Anyway in his latest reply he suggested I look at the CNN home page about a job he was called out for this morning his time - his first bad accident for a long time. The story can be found here but a lot of that is just speculation at the moment.

Don't ask my why, but I tried connecting my new flat panel monitor to an old DVD player I have lying around here being un-used. By old, I mean 18 months old. Not all that old in the scheme of things. What I did find was that the monitor did not like the DVD player. The screen made comments along the lines of 'Please set the PC to 1280 x 1024 Pixels 60 Hz'. This would have been fine if I could actually change the settings on the DVD player. But I cannot. [Actually, I just had a thought... I wonder if there are any settings I can change... I would need to plug it into a normal TV set first though]. Something to try later.

Tomorrow I will be out of the office some of the day. I have two meetings... One morning, and one afternoon. The morning one may be re-scheduled just depending on some things. We will see. I can see the second meeting taking 4-5 hours again, but we will see. I am enjoying the work with this client though... It is fun.

News.Com.Au is reporting that Telstra shares are down to Record levels. It might be time to buy some more. I was one of these people who did not buy T2 because I had a feeling the prices would go down. Unfortunately I was right. But I did not expect them THIS cheap. Also, TechUser has a story on Lego mindStorms and why it is not going well.

It was only when I started going through my address book working out who needed to get christmas letters and christmas cards did I realise how many I needed to send out. Some people will get theirs electronically which will reduce postage... But apart from that I have something like forty cards to send out. I will have to pick up some more cards as I currently only have about 25 here... I bought some last year on special, but I did not get enough. [Yes, I planned ahead at least, but not enough].

At the same time as going through my address book (Contacts list in Outlook) I have been working out which addresses have changed and need to be updated. And who I do not have a physical address for - just an email address and phone number. This is particularly the case with some friends overseas. Who needs an address when they pick you up from the airport - apart from the customs and imigration forms that is.

From the SMH, James Moginie from Midnight Oil is on tour. Also, they interview Shakira is which is an interesting read to say the least. And finally SMH also has a thought piece on how much legroom there will be available in Economy class of the new Airbus A380

I have just been to get new tires on my car. I was not planning to spend quite so much on new tires, I think getting new tires rather than retreads is worth it. After all this set of tires have lasted over three years and they came new with the car. More strange is the conversation I was having with the guys at tire place. I was their only customer, So they had two of their mechanics talking to me whilst a third replaced the tires.

During the discussion they asked what I did.... And when they found out they asked about Vanu Bose. Not many people have heard of this character. They have heard of his father with the speakers. But Vanu is the son, and he has his own big business working on digital voice products and software definied radios. They were slightly blown away by the fact that I knew who Vanu was. They were more blown away when I told them that if you searched on my business name, the second query returned was from Vanu. I did not know this when I chose the business name. Not at all.

I mentioned before that I have been playing some old photos as a slideshow on another PC. One thing I forgot about was the photo below. This was from the sydney olympics... A left hand drive vehicle from the USA. But to 'Make this Legal', they added the steering wheel on the far side. You can just see the duct tape... Funny thing is the person in the passengers seat was pulled over for using a mobile whilst driving... OOps.



Not the worlds greatest photo... But it is real!

I have just done it... The run... I did about 5km in 35 minutes, and I am feeling a whole lot fresher than I have after my last few shorter runs. That might be because of the weather. I do not know. But I feel fairly good at the moment... Cooling down for a few minutes before a cool shower.

I tried the breathing exercises mentioned earlier but they were not much use since I tend to take a number of steps between breaths, and also I tend to exhale slowly, at least at the beginning of the run. My fitness is certainly improving. I just need to keep this up.

Anyway time for a shower.

I did 30 situps this morning... Five more than yesterday. And in a few minutes I will be going for a run.

There are reports coming in from the USA that the XBOX 360 dies after a short period of time. Initial indications are that this is a fault with the power supply, and it would appear that microsoft will need to replace at least some power supplies. But there is a solution according to The Inquirer. One user suggests suspending the power supply from the ground by a piece of string to improve the ventelation.

People wanting to run Asterisk Open Source PABX at home on their windows box can. A site has release an image for VM Ware that will work on a Windows Box using the free VM Ware emulator. Cute idea...News.Com tells of students in Victoria who used SMS in their final exams... And got caught. Oops.

I slept well last night... Apart from it being a tiny bit cold and needing an extra blanket. After two days working on the plane I needed a good sleep... And that is what I got. I am planning on going for a run this morning - the weather does not look too bad, so I am guessing that I will be able to do about 3-4km. But as normal we will have to wait until I get outside to see how that goes.

The iPod is a great piece of engineering - they have put so much technology into such a neat package. From an expandability viewpoint there are some cute interfaces available on the iPod through the bottom connector, such as the ability to move between tracks and the like. This would give the ability to place navigation buttons on the steering wheel if one wanted to do that... So the Panocamera web site has some instructions on how to build a breakout box to assist you in working on some of these hardware projects.

The same site as suggested that side also showed a link to the mens health magazine, and an article on 18 body tricks. This list includes suggestions like rubbing your ear to fix a tickle in your throat and even coughing during an injection if you cannot stand the pain. One of the most interesting suggestions is for people who get a stich when running. According to the article this is caused by the diaphram and the liver hitting. The answer is to exhale as the left foot hits the ground!

Finally, the government is looking at nuclear power. The view is that Australia is exporting Uranium, and if it is OK to export then it is OK to use locally. In the 1960's I believe it was, and few people know this, the government started building a power station at Jervis Bay. They got as far as building the foundations, and got no further because of political issues. The foundations are still there and are aparently used as a car park.

I have just got home from doing some work on the plane - which has been productive today. We finally got the longerons finished today, basically. By finished, I mean we got them fully drilled, and they are the correct shape, basically which is fantastic. I think we will need to do some cleanup of the metal - basically just fixing the tooling marks from the bending and removing them.

We also decided to work on front of the plane - arround the instrument panel. This looked really amazing. We also placed the frame from the cannopy on... I think the reaction from all those who saw the work believed that this was becoming a really serious plane.

During the week Richard is planning to spend some time getting parts cleaned up during the week, and we are looking at doing some painting of the parts on the weekend. Then we will be able to start riveting the plane together. And the riveting should come together rather quickly from all accounts.

Before leaving this morning I did some more sit-ups.... I managed to get 25 done. This was 5 more than the last time. I also have no ill effects from the exercise too. I just need to keep this up... What I find is that exercising is a great time for me to think. And becomes really really productive time for me...

Last night I neglected to make some comments about the longerons. Basically I hate them. They are a real real pain. Prior to yesterday we had spent hours on them. Probably two or three sessions working on them. And they were just not right. Yesterday we probably spent about three hours on the left side to get it to an acceptable state. Three hours. That is a lot of work. Do you want to know the most horrible bit? Well, the thing is that I really could not see us doing the right side one in much less time.

I have not worked out if that is the horrible bit, or this next piece of inforation is. When we actually did the other side it took us about TEN MINUTES to get it to a simialr state. TEN MINUTES!!! Yes, that is good. BUT, that means we wasted about two hours and fifty minutes on the left side. Both sides need adjustment... But that is more just to make them perfect.

Also last night I had another thought on the Harry Potter movie on TV. They normally go to great lengths not to indicate the era that the story is from - be it present day, the eighties, seventies or sixties, or whatever. You can probably get an idea of the vintage by looking at the models of cars on the roads, but generally, cars are cars. One muggle artifact that dates things is when Harry's uncle places bars on the windows of Harry's room at home, he uses what appears to be a Black and Decker 12V cordless drill, definitely dating the time to the 21st century.

I am sure that there are other clues in the movie, but that is one that I have picked up on.

The following was forwarded to me...
----

You know you're living in 2005 when...

1 You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2 You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3 You have a list of 16 phone numbers to reach your family of 4.

4 You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5 Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6 When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.

7 When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial " 0 "
to get an outside line.

8 You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.

9 You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news .

10 You read this entire list, and kept nodding and smiling.

I have had a fun day today, working on the plane... Richard and I worked on the longerons again. These are the pieces of angle that go the length of the plane, and keep it dimensionally stable. And I must say that they are a pain to deal with. They need to be bent into shape. And the bending experience is an interesting one.

Building an aeroplane is generally an exercise in careful work. Even when you need to use force to do something, like using a rivet gun, it is generally carefully applied. Which is why placing a longeron in a vice, and hitting it with a rubber mallet with all ones might is rather strange. Since I tended to be the one holding the metal stable, I needed to make sure that I stayed out to the way... Well out of the way. Thankfully this time I did not get hit...

Right now the Harry Potter movie is on TV... I have it on DVD, but it is cute to watch on TV for some reason too... Anyway I think that I have mentioned this before but I totally love the Weasleys clock... It gives an indication of where every one is... I am thinking of adding this to my WWW site... Since I have the GPS in my car I have the data for something like that. Anyway time to get going...

In the SMH, Richard Glover has taken the Australian Princess story, and used it as a base for translating other fairytales into Australian. He tells the stories of 'The Princess and the Pee', 'Cindyrella' [Which sounds like a name from THE RUGRATS show], 'Rumplestiltskiiin' and 'Rapunzel'. Interesting diversions on the old tales. The SMH also has a story about the new Harry Potter movie and why childrens movies are getting darker and more adult.

I did some more sit-ups today - I think I did about 20 of them, and they seemed to be a bit easier than yesterday. I was amazed at how much easier it was. I guess I just need to keep up the practice and my fitness level will just keep improving. I tried to do some push-ups but I think I did a bit too much yesterday, and pulled some muscles in my shoulders.

There is a story on ZD-Net about how Kazza have been forced to implement a system which blocks certain search phrases from the software. These seach phrases would be supplied by record companies mainly, and implemented in the software. The article shows what sort of politics is going on behind the scenes to come to a conclusion as to the sort of software that will work in a P2P arena. The record companies are wanting audio-finger printing, and a 10,000 term search filter; whereas KAZZA are just implemented in a 3,000 term filter. .

Every year around this time I start working on my christmas letter to all my friends. This is a letter that basically brings all my friends up to date with my life. So I have taken some time today to work on that. I have more to do on the letter, but I think that the majority of the work has been done on this. It has been hard to write this year, working out what I have managed to do, and where this year has gone. Seems to have gone so quickly.

I have a subscription to a program with Microsoft called Empower for developers. This is a special plan where developers get access to MSDN for two years worth about $6,000, as well as other support. 18 months back I paid $875 for this program. Unfortunately my membership dropped off. Contacting microsoft they told me to re-subscribe, paying my money again. The good news is that I have extended my subscription by 18 months saving me a lot more than I will be spending. Still I would rather not be paying the money to Microsoft at this stage.

[Short break... Just got a phone call from the USA... Just got some consulting work. Fantastic. ]

The LowEndMac site has a look at how and why Apple developed their Powerbooks, and how revolutionary the Powerbooks were. Findally, the SMH has a list of the Top 10 presents this christmas...

Here is a cute project for those with pets - particularly with the hot weather coming up here in the Southern hemisphere. It is an Automatic Pet Water Bowl that works in the same way as water coolers in offices. And it looks really really easy to build. Full instructions on the site.

Also, there is a story on the SMH about how Hollywood is going crazy for a new teddy bear from Australia. It's called the Flatout Bear and is billed as "the ultimate luxury teddy bear". The bears - made "flat" from Australian sheepskin - are used as baby comforters or toys. So cute.

So, what have I been up to this morning... Well, I had an answer back on a problem I had been having with some software. It comes down to definitions. What does 'Relative Northing' and 'Relative Easting' mean?

Well, the first way is that these are relative to your position and to your heading. If something has a relative northing of 1000m, and you are facing north then the object is 1000m to the north. To complicate things, if you look east, and there is a relative northing of 1000m, because it is a 'Relative Northing', then the object would be 1000m east of me. This is because of the assumption that the 'RELATIVE NORTHING' is relative to what direction you are pointing.

This is not what the people who are supplying the data thought. Their view is that the 'Relative Northing' would always be north regardless of which was I was looking. This is a totally reasonable point of view. It makes sense. It is just not how I thought things would work. Looking back though this is the logical way for things to happen. I guess I would have tried to come up with a better name than 'Relative Northing' and 'Relative Easting', maybe something like 'Northing Offset' and 'Easting Offset'.

Not sure what I have on today yet. Probably some more programming, and some system design and phone calls I would guess. I have a teleconference on tuesday to prepare for... At least if i want to be building this weekend...

There is a story on News.Com.Au about how a cathedral in Melbourne is offering immortality to patrons by allowing them to pay $50,000 for their likeness to become a gargoil during the restoration of the cathedral.

There are reports of an experiment to attempt to Shoot a lock open. The result of the test is that basically the best thing to use to open a lock is a shotgun, at least if you are attempting from the side like you normally would in a movie. None of their other tests using rifles and pistols worked. ZDNet has a review of what is new in Visual Studio 2005. I have a copy here but I have not yet installed it. I have been busy with other projects. However given some of the new features I might need to. They have by all reports improved some of the report generation tools, and also the ability to have software automatically check for updates on startup.

TechCrunch contains a list of companies the author would like to review. The problem is the companies do mostly not exist yet. I wonder if there is a business case to do any of these... Probably not at the moment. Not enough time.

Last night before falling asleep I started reading the History of The Black Box Flight Recorder. This is an Australian invention, and I had bought my brother a copy of the book for his birthday this year. The book is an interesting read, and it appears it will only get more interesting as I get more into the guts of the book.

Slashdot provided a link to a DVD called The Goodfather which is a training guide for new fathers based on the humor of The Godfather series of movies. It provides, according to the Web Site, hundreds of baby lessons designed from a "mans point of view", definitions, thousands of baby names, and a baby card maker all set to a hilarious gangster parody, including baby toting mobsters & the Goodfather himself. If I ever have a child I think this will be on the top of my shopping list... Or on the top of the list of presents to give to friends who have kids....

The SMG has a review of Popetown which is a highly satirical view of life in Rome. Personally having watched it once, I never really got into the show.

Lastly, there is a short project to build a cheap LED torch here. It involves an LED, transistor, resistor, some wire and a ferrite, and works even when the AA battery is supposed to be dead... Interesting.

New Years Eve this year is going to be fun. There is a leap second being added on 31/Dec/2005 at the end of the day. That means that the final minute of the year will be 61 seconds long. What does that mean for us? Well, not a lot. You see, it is added at UTC (Commonly known as GMT) and this is out by 10 hours. So there will be a second added just before 10:00AM on 1/1/2006.

Uncommon Goods have some cute items on sale. One of the cutest is a necklace made from an old credit card. The effect is quite amazing, thanks to the clear glass top on the pendant. I managed to see this linked to from Boing Boing I think. My compliments to the designer. The site contains a lot of other cute items for sale too.

There are lots of people who add content to Google to make a point. For instance if you search for a word like incompenent or worthless you get a picture of George W Bush. So it should come as no surprise then that a Radio show in the USA has offered $10K for the first person to put a sign on their home saying hello to the presenter of the radio show. The Register is also offering merchandise if that person advertises The Register!

I have just got back from dinner with my brother - always good to catch up with him. He needs some help installing new lights in his unit - and I really did not understand the scope of what he wanted done. I had a feeling that I would be doing it tonight - yeah, sure. He has a three bedroom, two bathroom flat, and wants to replace every single light fitting.

And to top that off each light needs to have holes drilled into the concrete to mount them. This is going to be messy if nothing else. This is thanks to drilling into the concrete. Particularly from below. I have a really good drill that makes things easy, but it is still really really messy.

The conditions outside were too good not to go for a run, so I have just got back from one. And I am glad that I did. I did really well... I was running for exactly 30 minutes, and I guess I did about 4.2KM judging on my past experience. I only did one lap of the oval, but I did a half lap on the way back. Time for a drink of water before a nice cool shower I think... And yes, my foot is a bit sore... Only a tiny bit. And it is no worse than it was earlier...

I was going to do a run this morning, but the sole of one of my feet is a bit sore - maybe burised or something. So I just did some other exercise... I did 20 situps, and 20 pushups. I did cheat with the pushups, doing them on the stairs. This makes them easier since I have not done any for a while. I dont think it would have been a good idea to do any more either pushups or situps... 20 of each was enough.

Last night I was working on debugging code... Or trying to. I think that the code I was looking at is actually working, unfortunately, and I think I have found a bug in an external system. This is both good and bad. If it was an issue with my software it might be easier to fix. With external systems it can be a lot harder. Such is life. Not much you can do about that unforunatly.

I was talking to an ex-box of mine last night on MSN, and he used the expression "festina lente", which sounded completely latin to me. [I was going to say it sounded 'greek to me' but I was pretty sure an expression like that was latin]. I did a lookup on google, and found that it means 'Hurry Slowly'. This is a cute expression, although I am not sure I will ever use it myself. My favourite latin is "Caveat Utilitor", or Let the user beware, a great one when it comes to computer software.

By looking at the Business Week Web Site, you will find a story on how Microsoft is going to be loosing money on the XBOX. By loosing money, I mean it will be losing about US$121 on a $399 machine! And that might even be without retail margins. In 2006 Microsoft intends their gaming division to be revenue neutral, meaning that games revenue will offset the console price. Then make money the year after. The device will ship in Australia at the beginning of march.

There was a story on the SMH yesterday about how Sydney airport is installing a system to keep the runway clear of Debris. In this case the story is on video, available here. It turns out the system is known as Tasier, from QinetQ. And, no, Qinetq does not have any connection with Qantas. The Tasier WWW site is www.qinetq.com. What is interesting the the frequency being used - 94 GHz... This is about 100 times the 900 MHz used by most GSM cellphones.

Firstly, Pizza is one of the five major food groups. It is one of the foods that should be eaten as part of a healthy diet (In moderation of course). Which I suppose is why Pizza is sometimes delivered to police stations. The problem comes when the Pizza Delivery guy gets pulled over by police for speeding (100km in a 80km zone), and they find that he does not have his license. Being a good employee, after being told that he could not drive any longer, then proceeded to deliver the pizza on foot. The police spokesman comments that he would have got off if he had offered the police officers the pizza, with tounge definitely in cheek.

The Californication Blog has an article on how to repair the Garmin ETrex which commonly has problems with the miniture joystick. The Likelysoft WebSite has a great listing of resources for converting laptops into picture frames.

Airport security is an interesting subject - and is one that has to be carefully discussed. Bruce Schneier has some interesting comments on Airport Security and how poor it really is. Or more correctly how dumb it is sometimes. I will not put words in her mouth... A worthwhile read.... In related news, there was a story showing how many aviation security cards were lost last year.

And LaCie has released Lego Style HDD Cases that are stackable. Comes with a USB interface, and designer colours!. Intereting concept.

I have been setting up a new PC today for a project and it has been *interesting* at times. Getting the operating system installed was fairly easy and straightforward. What I did find was that I needed to install the drivers that came with the motherboard to get the video to work properly. It worked without that but there was some flicker. Not a lot, and not all the time.

I was having some issues that the system would go into sleep mode when I plugged in a PCMCIA card. adding the drivers and making sure that the system was updated fixed that problem.

I had the normal problem where the GPS receiver was detected as a mouse. I tried a few things to fix this, and none seemed to work. Eventually I found a page that told me what to do. I went into the device manager in the control panel, and found the MOUSE driver for Microsoft Ballpoint, and disabled it. That is the fix, and it works really well.

The other thing I wanted to do was to use VNC to connect to the computer, in a way similar to Remote Desktop. This just would NOT work. Not at all. I could not work it out. Using NetStat, I found it was not listening for the connections externally, but only on the same computer. Eventually I found that the FIREWALL in Windows XP was blocking incoming connections. Disabling the firewall partially helped. Then I needed to restart the VNC service, and things worked. But this took too long to work out. Getting the PC set up should have taken about an hour but took more like about four hours.

Welcome to my world!!!




http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2003/Sept/CrystalReportsIntroduction.asp

I tried out my 3G card from Vodafone in a 3G area, and it seems to work well. I did it from the parking lot of a client at North Ryde using the external antenna. It had about 50% signal strength which was not idea. Using remote desktop seemed to work really well. SKYPE... Well, I tried to connect to a friend to test, but he was busy and did not allow the call. So I then tried the Skype Call Test number, and it seemed to work fairly well, although there was a delay with some of the voice messages.

They provide some velcro to attacke an external antenna to the laptop if you want. I have attached a picture here of the laptop with the antenna and the card on the left. The blue thing on the laptop is a note reminding me of someones new email address...


I was looking at some photos earlier, and found this cute photo. This is a friends work vehicle, just off Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. I find the vehicle rather cute.



In the SMH there is a story about the Governments reprt on VoIP. You can actually find the report on the DCITA Web Site. We might be seing the 05 area code being used soon for mostly VoIP numbers which have no geographic region connected to them. Interesting concept.

I really need to start going for runs in the morning. I went for a run yesterday afternoon, and it was a tiny weeny bit warm really. Once again, I only did the short course of about 2-2.5km. It is good to get out, and just relax, and think. I find it is really good for me. I just need to keep at it.

I was looking for a program to do random slideshows of the files in the MY PICTURES directory of my main laptop from my 2nd laptop so I could display them on the flat panel. I found Picture and Slide Show which gets set up as a screensaver, but can be run in preview mode. It runs in full screen, and has a LOT of options as to audio effects, transitions, everything. And it allows you to play your pictures in random order. And even for a random time. I am very impressed. And it is free.

The Register has a story how Apple and it's iTunes store is now the seventh largest music retailer in the USA. Also on the same site is information on the Hauppage USB TV Tuner that can receive digital TV, and is in a can a bit bigger than a memory stick. And also news that Microsoft is to open it's file formats. And finally, Apple is paying companies about US$1.2b to ensure supply of flash memory devices for iPods until 2010.

Short Post... More soon...

I need to visit north ryde a bit later this morning... I have to pick up some hardware, and have a short meeting... Should be really interesting. Before then I need to get a few things worked on as I may not have time after. And in the christmas light world, I think this is going a bit far!!!

I was watching TV during the thunder storm, and it was on digital free to air, and there were pops in the audio when there was lightning. What I cannot understand is why the pops are there. Surely the CODEC (or more correctly the decoder) can work out that there is an interrupted signal, and then turn off the audio before the pop. Is that too simple? Am I just looking at things with too much of an engineering mind? Or is this just the difference between the cheap and expensive boxes?

I was looking for some other photos today and came acorss these ones. These were of some equipment used in EcoChallenge 2002 in New Zealand. I designed some hardware to turn a generator on and off inside the box. This box Iwas a radio repeater system with a number of channels so that people could communicate over the course.



This next photo is of my hardware and the repeater being airlifted in.


As an aside, the owner of the company I did the work for loves to go around in his 'Survivor' jacket. This was for the first series of Survivor a few years back in Bornio, where he provided most of the radio communications for the crew. [Believe it or not, there are something like 300 or more crew working on shows like Survivor, and logistics can be a real issue.]. Anyway he loves to comment that he wears the jacket now since borino is far too hot to ever need a jacket, even in the middle of winter!

I have just had a really bad thunder storm... Foxtel was cut off for a few seconds, and there were a few short power outages. One of which dropped out my Linux server from power and caused it to reset. This could have been fine except for one thing... The computer did not restart.

When I put the new HDD drive in a few days back it had the wrong order for the booting from drives. It was set to boot from the secondary drive and if that did not work try the primary drive. And this was fine until I formatted the secondary secondary drive. Then the next time the computer tried to restart (which was tonight) it refused to since the computer could not find the operating system.

Changing some BIOS settings fixed this. And the computer has now been restarted. Things are working again!

My Vodafone 3G modem arrived today. This worked properly one one of my laptops, but did not work at all on my main Dell laptop. I eventually rang Vodafone support, and they got me to uninstall the driver, and then download the new software from the Vodafone WWW site. This made it work. Unfortunately I only have GPRS here, and not 3G so I will have to try this out in the next few days in a 3G area. The coverage area is available here

I have a photo of the unit connected to my laptop with the external antenna connected, but I cannot find the cable to download the photos from my camera. I will probably pick up a new cable tomorrow as the one I have is a bit old, and does not read many of the new types of cards. So the photo will follow...

The News.Com.Au Web site contains a story about the Centre of Australia. They describe the four or five different places that might be the centre of Australa - Ayeres Rock, Johnston Station which is the surveying centre of Australia, the point furthest from all the oceans, and the gravity centre of the country. I would love to visit each of them - it might make an interesting trip I think.

Lastly, a company in the USA has promised to break the iTunes encryption system so that they can license it to other companies who want to sell music for the iPod. This is an interesting stratergy which I suspect will turn up in court eventually. We will see.

This morning I have been busy with a couple of tasks. Number one I have been backing up my PC onto the network. This is running in the background, and the program I am evaluating looks quite good. I am using "Auto Backup 2.4" and for US$20 it looks great. It has scheduling, compresses backups, splits them as required. Everything.

The more that I use ToDoList from AbstractSpoon the more impressed I have become. I have been slowly looing through the options as I was getting annoyed at to-do lists not being saved. This was a real pain, and I lost one when my PC crashed [ARGH. Horrible Broadcom Drivers]. Anyway I found that I can auto-save i the options. And I found other things. You can have shared network to-do lists. I think you just save the to-do list to a network drive and have two people open it up.

The other pain was that it would not allow multiple to-do lists open at once. I am working on what is becoming a major project, and I wanted to do a mini-project plan, and I was having problems managing my normal to-do list. Then I realized that it would open additional files in tabs. Perfect! Maybe it is time to read the instructions.


So you think that you have been having a bad day. If so you MUST look at this following sote containing some disasters involving transport. It looks like a big OOps to me! These are the sort of photos that insurance companies have nightmares with.

I have been listening to more of Kelly Clarkson, and the more I listen the more I think she sounds like Avril Lavigne. In particular listen to the song "Since you been Gone". This really is of the style of Avril. Dont just take my word for it... Have a listen.

Speaking to a friend this morning revealed an interesting story. This friend needed to test Voicemail functionality. This is fine, and is part of his job. There was only one problem. He needed to get a managers approval for this since someone thought that they could save money by not having voicemail on phones. Voicemail is essentially a free service. It is even more so when you are a phone carrier!

There are some projects that should be illegal. For some reason building a plane is one that many people think should be. Well, maybe. But I know of one that really really should be. That is >building an engine. This one is a V8, and looks great. It takes about a year to make, but I would guess that depends on how much time you spend on it. The price is about right, except for the time needed to work on it. You need to visit the link. If you do you will see that it is made of paper. It is an origami engine!

I have not found the story yet online, but the print version of the SMH has a story about moving the QANTAS Data Centre from George St in Sydney to Baulkham Hills to the IBM Data Centre. Since this was a switchover I suspect that they were outsourcing the servers at the same time. Like any big organisation, QANTAS has a number of mainframes, and something like 300 servers. It is about what I would expect. There will probably be a link in the SMH soon.


There is a funny document on How to write un-maintainable code. This is a strange look at how not to write Java. It goes into too much deapth, but I thought I would include the link for completeness.

I have been looking for backup software for my computer. I want something that I can back up the HDD and send it to a server, scheduling it as required. I found AllSync, but somehow it MOVED my backup files rather than copied them. This was not what I wanted. It was nothing important... Only MY DOCUMENTS, and my MYOB file. This is one program I WILL NOT BE USING AGAIN!

The PBS website has the latest installment of I, Cringely has a thought piece on Google and what it's stratergy might be in regards to servers. He thinks that Google is working out how to put 5000 processors in a really small area [maybe even a shipping container] for placement in perring centres and major ISP's. This will make Google at the centre of the Internet. The cost of doing this is not really all that high in the Google way of doing things.

And also on the Google side comes the competition over there called Doodle For Google. This was for 4-18 year old children, and the above link contains the five winning entries.

The Guardian in the UK did a survey of the Top 20 Geek Novels. They had to be written in English since 1932. The list was....
1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson 59% (66)

I have needed to do some hardware repairs on a tracking unit. Strangely, both units had the same problem with them - both had a faulty LED because a miniture resistor had been damaged. I could not (and still cannot) work out what happened to cause these resistors to be 'destroyed'. Very strange. But replacing the minute parts was fairly easy.

In an aviation story, in the SMH there is news of a Light Plane that landed at Sydney Airport today. The plane was caught above cloud over the great dividing range, on route to Hoxton Park. But he could not find a path through the clouds so he got sent out to sea by Air Traffic Control to find a space in the clouds and landed at Sydney Airport. He had 20 minutes fuel left so he was rather lucky.

The SMH is also reporting that the government is releasing a report tomorrow about VOIP, and the requirements for VOIP service providers, according to Australian IT. Should be an interesting read.

I went for a short run this morning - only probably about a couple of KM. I wanted to build some speed rather than build distance. It was good to have a chance to run since I have not been out for a week or so. I would like to build the distance too, but I really have enough to do at the moment that I did not feel too bad for having done a shorter distance.

I also picked up a copy of the Kelly Clarkson CD. I am listening to that at the moment, and I like the sound. It is nice background music, and she is a good vocalist, with a great voice. I don't know how much of her sound is thanks to the experts in the background, but in the end that really does not matter. The important thing is how she sounds in person and in concert.

I have spoken to Vodafone about the 3G offer. I rang them up to get connected, and the first thing they did was place me on hold with music, without even saying the company name. That really is not professional at all. Then when they were processing my order they advised me that there would be a $10 delivery charge. This was not listed anywhere on their offer. I just keep shaking my head with them at the moment. They seem to have got some of their technical things fixed, and now their business processes need help.

The SKYPE handset works... But it is rather strange. When I then went to use the CD player in the laptop I did not hear anything. Nothing at all. A little while later I realised that the Skype handset had taken over as default input and output of audio for the PC. That is now fixed! and the handset still works.

I am going through my emails after a couple of days building with little chance to catch up on such things as well as a few days before that being flat out. So I had an interesting collection of things waiting for me. Firstly an email from Norway where a person was asking about a project I was working on a while back and I have not finished since there is no commercial market for it. Then I had a query wanting a quote for a tracking system from Costa Rica, which is realistically too far away foe me to be able to service. And there were some other things in there too.

Yesterday I mentioned my new monitor from philips. Looks fantastic, and the colors are so vibrant. Right now I only have it connected up as a 2nd screen for my spare laptop, and... Hold that thought. I was going to say that I would have to find something to put on to just test the monitor... And I almost did not finish that sentence, since I found a copy of Open Space containing chillout music with video clips. When I put the DVD in the monitor went full screen. But not the laptop. Finally, windows working with two screens. I was impressed. So right now on that laptop I have its screen with the windows desktop with WinDVD minimised, and the external monitor playing the DVD full screen. I am impressed.

The CD based manual for the minitor itself was a bit useless... It was for the 19" version. Oops. I think someone put the wrong CD in it. Still, realistically I cannot see any use for reading the manual. Things are fairly self explanitory these days.

Anyway, time for more work... And I will probably get a run in this morning so that is more time out of my schedule...

I think it is time to get a new cellphone... Once more last night driving home I needed to reboot my cellphone when it would not connect to the bluetooth hands free in my car. More correctly it thought that it was and the car knew that it was not. I guess I will be looking around in the next few weeks.

The Web Site Space.COM has a list of the >top 10 space moviews of all time. Apart from StarWars and StarTrek, items on the list include Alien, Contact, Apollo 13 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Actually I have never even seen Alien. Contact is an interesting movie featuring Apollo 13. The start scene where they travel through time showing the different radio and TV signals that have been sent from earth is really cool.

The Austalian IT has a story about how Telstra is behaving so stupidly to its staff. Whilst big organisations seem to have a inhernent ability to get staff off side, this is different. Telstra are proposing a huge change to their mobile business, but need the staff to do this. From the article comes the following quote : "Telstra's employees, who have been subject to reorganisation almost every six months in the last decade, are now highly de-motivated and cynical about the company's multiple strategy tacks,"

Music:

Last night during Australian Idol I heard a few tracks from the Kelly Clarkson CD called breakaway. The songs sound decent, and I might get a copy of this. Hearing about this CD prompted me to have a look at the top 40 chart, and I found a couple of other interesting CD's... Firstly there is a new Kate Bush CD called AERIAL, her first for 12 years. And also Green Day have a live CD out which I am guessing is phenominal.

When I bought the HDD I got a SATA drive... Serial ATA. Less wires. The only problem is that I do not have an adapter for power. So this will be connected up in the morning when I get a power adapter. Then things will be set up. I will have to set some things up to move automatically to the new drive. That should be fairly easy.

LED Traffic lights seem to be being rolled out at the moment. It seems that about once a week I see a new set of lights that has been upgraded to LED's. There is significant cost saving to be made by doing the upgrade. The interesting thing is that the crossing indicator was not replaced on one of the sets of lights I saw. This tends to indicate that the reason for the upgrades is to save on maintainence costs, but not on the electricity costs. I would have thought though that they would have done the complete job and just replaced the entire lights to LED. It would have been a better solution all around.

Today has been good... Let me explain...

Firstly, I needed a new computer monitor for a project I am working on. I was going to get this through mail order, but it turned out that Richard needed to return a printer to someone at the North Rocks Westfields Computer Market. So we arranged for me to go there to also pick up some stuff. I ended up getting a 17" computer monitor which I must say looks really amazing. I also picked up a SKYPE USB phone also for a project, and a 512 MByte USB Memory Card. And a 200 GByte HDD...

The HDD is for my server here... For a shared drive so that I can send 100 GBytes of data to a friend for backup, and I can backup 100 GBytes for him. This is a great idea, and thanks to WestNet we can use ADSL to keep the entire archive up to date. An amazing concept.

The Plane: We were working on the longerons today, the angle that goes the length of the plane. Tring to bend it the correct ways. And this was a real pain. So we turned the bathtub upside down so that for the first time in a really long time it was up the correct way. This allowed us to more easally fix the longerons. But more interestingly it allowed us to place the seats and the upholstry in for the first time.

I must say that the plane really is going to be amazing inside. The coloring of the fabrics is just perfect, and we cannot wait for the plane to fly!!!

Firstly, Burce Parens has an interesting story in his Blog about how Richard Stallman was accosted by security at the WSIS Internet conference in Tunisia. Richard Stallman started one of the huge open source projects, probably starting the open source movement. He started the GNU project which is an important part of Linux. Bruce Parens is someone I have had an interesting Linux Vs. Windows discussions with a couple of years back after he attended a conference I went to.

The reason for the entry was that Stallman was detained after handing out alfoil during a talk to stop RFID enabled ID tags from being read at places other than checkpoints. This rather annoyed secrity personel... And they refused to allow him to leave a conference room for two hours. Interesting...

There is a link in the SMH about how a company in Western Australia is marketing radar detectors in the eastern states. The article notes that the owner of the site has sold more than 100 radar detectors and about five radar jammers since establishing his website dontgetcaught.com.au earlier this year. The interesting thing is that he is relying on the fact that it is not illegal to sell the devices in W.A. Well, actually it is illegal. Radar Jammers need to be liecensed under the Radiocommunications Act, and if they are not they can be liable for a $250K fine. The other thing about radar jammers is that they also jam other radio services that operate on the same frequency. And this is why the jammers are illegal.


Firstly, there is a story in the SMH about the changes that Telstra are proposing to their mobile network. "Telstra's 8.4 million mobile-phone users will need to buy a new handset when the company switches to its proposed new-generation technology, beginning next year." according to the SMH. However this has to be a gradual straturgy. Hmm... What could the real agenda be?

Could it be that by offering hardware (that still probably uses SIM cards) but that is incompatible with other cariers then customers of Telstra will find it harder to move from telstra. They will also find it harder to move to telstra, but Telstra have a whole lot more to loose in the mobile world since they have the most customers who might transfer to other cariers.

BoingBoing has once again a cute link to a site... It is to the FrogReview site that has two frogs reviewing web sites and the like. It has a good review of the ticketmaster site, and I guess when things go along further will have other things on it too...

Today I have had fun working on the plane... Getting some work done in the front compartment where people sit. This is in addition to also getting the landing gear on too. Right now the plane is upside down without the wings on with the landing gear without the wheels sticking up. Basically it looks like some strage upside down grasshopper. I will be back tomorrow to do some more work on the fuselage. Should be fun.

Finally, according to The Register, Cisco has purchased Scientific Atlanta. For those who do not know, Scientific Atlanta make set top boxes, mostly for satellite. Interesting purchase.

I guess it is time to get some emails replied to before I start work on the plane. I just have so many things to follow up... I am not sure what we will be doing on the plane, but I am guessing that we will be working on the fuselage so that we can get that put together. There are some parts that need painting and we need to prepare those parts so that they can be painted. Whatever we end up doing I guess will be something interesting and different. After all, if I did not enjoy working on the plane I would not be doing it :-)

Acording to the SMH, the new Harry Potter movie will be out soon. This one will be rated M rather than PG, restricting the audience. Previous movies should have have been similarly rated in my view, but the cinemas are still hoping for a big hit as revenue has been down this year thanks to a lack of blockbuster movies.

It looks like SONY is in more trouble over copy-protected CD's. It now seems that they have broken copyright on the software being used to protect the CD's using other peoples work in violation with their copyright. Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

The GRYNX Web site has an interesting project - a wide angle 802.11 High Gain antenna. This is a cute project, and unlike many on the internet, this one looks like it might actually work.

I really do not think I have got much work done today - of the work that I wanted to get done anyway. I did get the work done which I described here earlier, but I had other things I wanted to get done which I didn't. This has meant that I have spent even more time on the phone this afternoon... And tomorrow I will be building - working on the plane - so I will not get a chance to do anything then either. On the subject of building, it has been a few weeks since I have done any actual building of the plane so it will be good to do that once more.

The SMH has a blog entry about how to behave at the cinema. I think it is somewhat tounge in cheek, suggesting what people are doing anyway when they go to the cinema. The YouTube site has a video about Corn Starch and what happens when you vibrate it. It is one of those liquids that acts almost as a solid when it is vibrated, and as a solid otherwise. Strange.

This site from brazil has All the google header graphics. This is a better collection than the current one on the Google Website itself.

This morning amongst other things I re-mounted my E-Tag. A week back I got a new mounting kit for it since the previous one had fallen off. Unfortunately this one just did not stick. This was not good. After thinking about this long and hard I decided to stick the bracket on with Epoxy. On the off chance that I ever want to remove the bracket, it can be removed if I am really careful. I was probably a bit too careful when I was using the epoxy on the screen, by using duct tape on adjacent areas of the screen where I did not want the epoxy to go. I think it worked well.

In probably what is one of the coolest toys I have seen in a long time, comes coloured bubbles. You will soon be able to get them in many colours. But the cool thing is that if the bubbles burst over clothing (like a wedding), rubbing will make it go clear. So will time - with the bubble residue turning totally clear within 30 minutes. I can just see this being used in weddings....

Anyway I need to get some items ordered for a project... And it is already late in the afternoon... They will probably not be ordered before monday, but you never know...

For some reason I seem to be getting no work done today. Actually I am getting work done, but it does not seem to be things off my to do list. It is things that have never quite gotten onto my todo list. That is life. And in a little while I need to visit a colleague for lunch. Each time we try to meet up other things come up... Just how it goes I guess...

In the next few days it looks like I will be building a prototype system for one client... Seems like an interesting project, which I really really wish I could say more about. But this is my world at the moment and I just cannot say too much. What is that old saying? I could tell you but I would have to shoot you. Not quite, but I think you get the picture.

In the strange story department, comes news that a number of statues were found lined up at a crossing in Warrnambool. POLICE spotted a menagerie of zoo animals crossing a busy road in Victoria's south-west early today.

The sixteen statues were lined up overnight on either side of a pedestrian crossing in Warrnambool, Acting Sergeant Chris Moloney said. "There's one gnome, the rest of them are a collection of animals," he said. "We've got crocodiles and a pig towing a cart,(and) there is a small bird bath - all classy, tasteful stuff. But there's no chickens amongst them."

CNN has a review of the XBox 360>X-Box 360 that says that the X-Box is good, but it is not a great improvement right now from the existing X-Box. When new games come out things will be different. And also an article notes that the Government is looking at ways to improve the takeup of Digital TV. How about mandating digital tuners in TV's and VCR's. That would be my first step.

Last night whilst I was working on a white paper for the client I visited yesterday, I was watching a Dan Aykroyd movie, and I loved it. The movie was The Couch Trip, with a plot that involved a mental paitient escaping after taking a job as a psychiatrist. I know, sounds far fetched, but it does provide a large number of laughs... I am not sure I would watch it again, but it was funny.

As for the white paper... The client wanted it on monday at the latest so I thought it might create a good impression to get it done overnight... We will see what the client things. I still need to expand one section of it, but that is relatively minor, and needs thought more than anything else.

COMP.RISKS has an interesting story about a STAFF BOOKING SYSTEM for an AIRLINE.

In a Q&A session about our airline's new staff travel online booking system,
the following was asked:

Q. I am unable to book [a flight] online because my date of joining is
February 29. What should I do?

A. Because you joined in a leap year the system is unable to identify your
date of joining. You will need to ask Employee Services to change your date
to February 28 for staff travel purposes.

I certainly hope that there are not too many systems in the world that work like that. I was going to say that I find it strange that the system would need to know the start date for employment. Then I realised - this system includes employee travel for pleasure. Some airlines give higher priority to staff that who have worked for the company the longest. I guess the system assumes that every year has 365 days, and works out who started the earliest based on that. [Shakes head in wonder...]

PC Magazine have just released a review of the new version of Microsoft Office. This is only a review of the beta, but still, it gives an idea of what microsoft is doing. From what I can work out user interface changes are what is mostly happening. But there are also good features like fast seaching in Outlook. ABout time.

The SMH has a list of the Top five 'the PC is not being PC or how I stopped worrying and let the evil computer take over' films. Included are Electric Dreams and 2001:A Space Odyssey. Hack-A-Day has a story on recovering data from a Dead Laptop HDD

Being single, I hope the answer to the next question is YES. Anyway, the LA-Times has a review of a book called 'Are Men Necessary?'. You just have to have a look at the review, particularly at the journalists new vocabulary to make her more appealing to guys...

On a mailing list I belong to, one of the members posted a question. He wanted a list of the phone prefixes in use, and the suburbs they covered. This used to be in the back of the telephone books. All his investigations inside a certain carrier tended to suggest that this was now commercially sensitive information, and it had to be protected even internally. Would you believe that all this information is actually on the Telstra Web Site as part of the SFOA (Standard Form Of Agreement) that we agree to when we sign up for a Telstra service. I found that I did not know of a number of the prefixes used in the suburb that I live in... Stange..

In the SMH there is a story about how old textbooks are being used in japan to treat dementia paitients. That is the textbooks are being given to the paitients in hopes that the books would raise the old memories of the paitients. Apparently there are some good results from this.

In News.Com.Au there is a story about how there are a whole lot of speeding fines being overturned because the operator of the camera forgot to set the speed correctly when starting up the device. This was in Victoria where there has been a huge outcry over the accuracy of speeding fines.

Right now I had better get back to the design work I am have been doing...

I have just got back from a three and a half hour two hour meeting that turned out to be really really interesting... It was one of those meetings that was broad and seems to be one of those meetings that might turn out to be a turning point for my business. Unfortunately I am under NDA for most of the work, but I need to have a system design proposal available in the next few days.

I am glad that I have a mobile. In north ryde it seems that most of the buildings are not marked with their physical addresses... And of course I only had the physical addresss. Thanks to caller ID on my phone I was able to ring my client without getting my laptop out - I had forgotten to write out the phone number.And then I was able to get talked into the parking lot. Too easy.

----

Slightly later - I have just finished watching HOUSE from last night... It was absolutly hilarious. What made it even better was that before each ad break there was a 2-3 minute session behind the scenes of House. I love the sarcasm of the show... The comedy of Hugh Laurie is just great - I think things have improved since his time in Black Adder

I had to meet a colleague for lunch today at the Macquarie Centre before a meeting nearby... Macquarie Centre has always intrigued me with the architecture - with the spiral structure. And the fact that it has an icerink. It has been a few years since I have been Ice Skating, but it would be good to go again one day.

Anyway I have been good. Dymocks had a clearence centre here oposite their store, and I said 'Oh No' to myself as I went in. I fully expected to come out with many many books. But despite there being some of interest I was good and did not buy a single one. There was also a store nearby called Charmers which had some really nice stuff... Basically a gift type shop. They had some excellent Australian christmas cards, with Santa in a van with his reindeer and the like. Again I was very good...

The only thing of interest in the window of the computer store was a remote control helicopter. I have loved the idea, and I would love to be able to put a wireless video camera in one just to copy the TV advert of a few years back when a boy used one with a hook to sneak out of his house to buy some McDonalds... Somehow I dont think that for $250 that the helicopter would be very stable, nor do I think it would be able to lift the weight of the camera.

Until then I guess I will just have to use full size ones like I did in the Olympics :-)

It has been too long since I have worked on PCB design, meaning that I need to re-learn how software dose things. To be honest I am having some issues with the software. Things that should be simple like combining tracks and holes into components are a real pain. In fact I have not managed to work out how to do that yet. If this was a microsoft product you would select the items and say group. But that does not work. Love them or hate them, microsoft has spent a lot of time on usability analysis. There is a lot to be said for a consistent user interface.

The other trouble is working out what components to use. Spacing between pins can be an issue - particularly when attempting to work out what a part is. I think I have worked out that one part has 1.25mm between the pins. The other option is 1.27mm. 0.02mm does not seem like much does it? Well, when there are ten or eleven pins in a row this does add up. But 0.2mm does not sound like much either, until you realise that the hole for the pin is only 0.6mm, meaning that it would not fit into the hole.

These are the reasons I do not do this work very often. The other is that there are two standards for pin sizes. The first is imperial, and the second is metric. Half the parts are metric, and the other hald are in imperial. Things are becoming metric, but you are always needing to move between metric and imperial grids. This becomes a real pain!

Anyway I have work to do... But before I go comes news that a girl in the USA has worked out how to fold a piece of paper 12 times.... Most people believed that it was impossible for you to do it more than 8 times...

Some links today... Firstly the bizzare. Not the concept, but the engineering involved. iPowerWeb has a story on a person who has built an >anchient Atari Computer/Video Game into a laptop. I can only imagine the amount of work involved... And the result looks fantastic.

Anandtech has a revire of the internals of the XBOX 360. They have gone for an external power supply which is a bit dumb... At least from the look of the thing. And from reading the technical details I would guess that modding an XBox 360 is going to be much harder than with the older XBox. I do not think I will be able to use one as a cheap server unfortunately...

Anyway breakfast time followed by PCB Design.

I have been watching more of 'This Is Spinal Tap' on DVD, and parts are so crazy. At one point one of the band members comments that their band is louder since their amplifier goes up to 11 instead of only to 10. And the interviewer takes him to task asking if it really is any louder, and the guy cannot see that 10 or 11 on the volume control is only a relative measurement.

For the person with everything comes iStones which is a cradle for the iPod made out of carved stone. They look rather cool, but do take up a lot of desk space, and are rather expensive, at about US$2500 each. Still, for the person who has everything this might be an interesting christmas present.

News.Com.Au has a dog story... This one is a bit strange though... A tiny fox terrier called Mitzi and accomplice known Bundy the scottish terrier are now two of southeast Queensland's most dangerous dogs. That is according to Logan City Council, which yesterday brushed aside pleas for leniency from Mitzi's keepers and maintained the dog's dangerous status. I know that the story is written from the point of view that the dogs are entirely harmless, and that there is obviously another side to this story. But if even half the things in this story are true then then I cannot see the why the logan city council did what they did.

I would guess that these little dogs would more likely lick people to death than actually hurt either people or animals. It would be a pitty if their owners could not afford to keep them...

I have also worked out a few things about MSN Messenger 7.3... I do not like it. MSN is refusing to automatically reconnect when it looses internet connection - such as when I unplug from the internet. It is rather picky about reconnecting to the server. The first time you try to connect it always refuses to connect. You then need to cancel, and then connect, and it works.

Finally, the NZ Prime Minister has once again been involved with an plane with a fuel issue. In this case, Qantas FLight QF25 from Auckland to Los Angeles returned to Auckland soon after leaving with a fuel leak. The Prime Minister was en route to Ireland to help present a bid for New Zealand to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Boy, my week is filling up... I have a lunch to attend tomorrow, and friday. And now I have to go to a meeting at North Ryde... That could be a really interesting meeting, and I am really looking forward to it.

I decided to email the PR department of Vodafone about the 'Speeding Notice' and I am more hopeful hearing back from them as opposed to customer service. Well, I did CC Customer Service on the email to PR, but the Customer Service email bounced saying no such address exists. Why does this not surprise me one but. It will be interesting to see what the response I get is. I suspect that the PR head will not have heard about this mailout, and will now be working to put out fires. We will see.

There is a story on News.Com.Au about how the Ashes of James Doohan from StarTrek are going to be raised into space aboard a rocket. Well, the story actually says that the rocket is going to be delayed for liftoff until February.... James Doohan plaed the engineer Scotty in the original StarTrek series. They also have a report on a Map from the Enola Gay selling for just under $100K at auction. The Enola Gay was the plane that dropped the Atomic Bombs on Japan in WWII.

Dateline: Eastgardens...

I am here to talk to a client of mine. He wants a circuit board designed... I first met him in 2002 when I needed a weather station and came over to pick it up. And we started talking, and through the process I got occasional work from him... Like today...

Dateline: Home...

I have just got home and I have a 'Speeding Notice' in the mail. Yes. A Speeding Notice. From Vodafone. This would allow me to 'Accelerate to broadband speeds whilst on the move'. I have a photo below of the envelope. To say that I am not impressed is an understatement.



Just have a look...

My first job this morning is to spend some more time on the OzFlarm collision detection software for gliders that I have been working on. I will not go into the full details of what I need to work on, as potential users may see this, and it would then reflect badly on the product. The issues are relatively minor things, and i need to make these changes and then test them out. Thankfully this time I will not need to take my life in my hands by going on a glider flight. I do have a simulator to emulate a lot of the things I need to do.

To be frank about this, some of this work scares me. People will be relying on the work I to do protect themselves from dangerous situations. I know this is only a tool to tell them what they should already know, but even so it is a concern to me, if only in the back of my mind. And something that I need to be mindful of all the time. What is it that the hypocratic oath says - 'First of all, do no harm'. Same here I guess.

The SMH has an article written by Tim Brunero who came second in the last series of Big Brother. In this article, Tim describes his stratergy going into the Big Brother House, and he provides some interesting insights into his thinking. This goes from how to act to get onto the show, to a statergy once he wass inside. As an anthropology student I am sure he had some interesting insights into the way that the show worked, and you can see those come out in the article.

Right now I had better get some breakfast, and look at the OzFlarm collision detection project...

My next big project is a data logger for gliders to record their flights for official recognition. Basically it stores enough data to prove that the glider went where the pilot said it did. This includes things such as the GPS position and speed data and the like. And the unit needs to be sealed so that if it is a record breaking flight then everyone can be sure that it really happened. We are getting orders already, and we do not evem have a price, nor have we officially announced the product.

Right now all I am doing is documenting my design, since the design needs to be approved for it to be officially approved. And they want design details early. So that I do not waste time and make mistakes with the design. So I have a word document that is getting longer all the time...

When the product is designed I am guessing that I will have more people wanting to take me on rides in gliders... I am not sure that I am ready for this, but it will be good to get the offers...

On monday night on SuperNova I saw a new sport - Roof Rack Surfing. Basically this involes getting on the top of a land rover whilst it is driven at speed... I do not think that this is a sport for me... It is just one that I have never thought of before...

I had a meeting last night with a client. He suggested I look at a couple of programs to assist in my productivity - not that there is anything wrong with it - just to manage work and my ToDo list. This client suggested that I have a Look at ToDoList2 on the CodeProject. This is free software in simply is amazing. Basically it is a micro version of Microsoft Project, without the stupid reports that generally are not needed. I think I will be using this software a lot more. You can download the software here

I dont think I mentioned this the other day. Gliders are supposed to, well, glide. Well, there is one exception which is gliders which have a motor in which to use to get to off thr ground, but we will ignore that for the moment. Right now, we are assuming that gliders do not need any fuel. Which is why I felt rather strange having to help my client fill up the tanks to his glider when before his flight. And make sure that they were full. We had to add 60 liters into each tank. And he came back empty too.

I suppose I really should explain here what was happening. We were adding water to the tanks. And no, we were not using the water for fuel. The water was to make the glider go faster. AS it was explained to me, if you put a slide of some type at the top of a hill in the snow, the heavier you go the faster you go down the slide. The same works in the air aparently. I think you also climb more slowly in a thermal, but generally you get better performance by adding water.

SO before each race they add water up to a certain level. But before landing the pilot must get rid of the water as it makes the glider too heavy for landing. There are weight limits on each class of glider so that everyone is on a level playing field.

Outside the weather is bad, but I thoght it would have been a lot lot worse. The weather pattern on the radar with the rain looks strange... Down south of sydney it is moving from the ocean inland. And north of Sydney it is moving out to sea. Almost as if there was a huge fan somewhere in sydney circulating the rain. I know that is impossible, but that is what it is looking like to me.

Definitely no run today. I was really hoping to get some exercise... It is about to start pouring down... With a big thunder storm

I have just got back from a meeting, and the weather is horrible. The wind is the worst - at one point I was having to aim the car to the right a bit as the wind was trying to push me so far to the left. This is unusual - normally wind is bursty - in this case it was just strong. Also I was afraid it was going to start with the hail at any moment. The good thing is that the front of my car got a bit cleaner from some rain... Probably...

I was actually coming from a meeting with some associates who want to team with me on some work. This sounds hopeful, and they have some exciting projects to work on. During this meeting I also got some other work to do, so I guess that this afternoon will be busy for me.

The Linux Phone Standards Forum have created a Web Site that attempts to create some standards for people who are using LINUX on mobile phones. This is such a good idea, and is probably really needed.

Anyway, time to go... Work calls.

I love SKYPE... Skype is great for teleconferences. You can have three or four person chats, and it works really well... If you have people around the corner or around the world. The sound quality drops out at times, but overall it is pretty good with how things work. I love the ability to put a headset on, and have a meeting. It is not as good as being in the same room, but it is close. Without the headset you tend to have issues when people type, but apart from that it works well.

In the SMH comes a story in Ireland that a Nursing Home Has opened its own pub. The Pub opens at 11am and closes at 9pm, has apparently increased the number of visitors to the nursing home. Good idea I think provided that the amount of alcohol is restricted to stop bar room brawls... But apart from that I can see it being expanded...

In the internet word, Network Solutions runs some of the root servers, as well as internet domain registration services. They also have some dodgy business practices. One of these is registering domain names if you express interest in one on their WWW site, and then do not register it yourself. This is an interesting business practice that I find dodgy. If they were not a law unto themselves I am sure that this type of activity would be banned...

After the popularity of climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it seems that the idea is catching on all over the world. The Purple People Bridge in Ohio is only about 40 meters tall, but is the first bridge in the USA that people can legally climb. I am sure that this will catch on to other parts of the USA.

Walrus.Com has an MP3 player Kit. This sounds like a cool project, but given that I have an iPod it is a bit useless, and a waste of time. Still, it would be cool to build.

Finally, SilentBob is a utility that records your soundcard audio allowing whatever is playing to be recorded no matter what. This is useful if you want to keep a copy of a streaming audio programme and they will not allow you to save it.

I saw something cool at K-Mart a week back that I meant to mention... I was on my way to the music section through the toy section, and came across the board games section, and found a cute toy. It was SIMPSONS CLUEDO which I found had a bit of thought put into it.

They have Mr Smithers as Mrs White; Bart, Marge, Homer and others. Along with the normal objects such as candle stick, lead pipe and such. I have not played the game for ages, and thought that modeling it with The Simpsons revitalizes it... It would be good to play at some stage.

As chocolate is one of the five major food groups [Along with Coke, Lasagne, Pizza, Coffee, Ice Cream], it might be interesting to know how it is made. The USA US National Association of Manufacturers contains a cool video on this history of chocolate as well as how it is made. Delicious.

There has been some discussion recently online about how SONY secretly installs software on your compute that hides itself and maybe other software when it installs. Now comes news that SONY has probably been breaking copyright with their MP3 player included in the software. Sony have appear to have included the LAME software that is licensed under the L-GPL license.

I have looked at the back of my car... It definitely does need another wash... The back window is covered with marks just showing how darn dirty the entire car was... I am not sure if a quick wipe down will fix things...

It is a beautiful day outside, and in many ways I wish I was back up at Lake Keepit. But some of us have to work for a living. [I think it would be wonderful in a light plane out there today, apart from some of the clouds]. One thing that I want to get started is a spec for a data logger to be approved by the International GLider Council for flights.

I had more of a think about this on the way home, and I think the effort would be worth it. I need to do some preliminary stuff first, but I believe that what I want to do is very achievable. There are some technical issues to be solved, but generally they should be fairly easy I think, at least on the hardware side. On the software side there are some complications but I suspect they should be fairly quickly solved. This will not be a product that I can bring out before christmas. I suspect that it might take six months to get done thanks to approvals.

I was speaking to a supplier this morning and he commented that he was looking at gliding has a hobby... Something that he had always wanted to do. He was somewhat surprised at how much flying costs, and also the risk element. The risk is something that I still cannot get my head around... Maybe my spacial visualization is not as good as other people but I just could not see most of the other gliders in the air...

I have got my car washed... When I went there I realised that the last time I got it washed I got a free voucher to get it cleaned. The front needs to go through again, but the car now looks like it should, rather than looking as if it had not been washed in the last twelve months. The nice thing about red cars is that they hide the dirt a bit better than white cars. White cars can be a pain to keep clean, if you even try.

Driving back last night I needed to keep putting sunburn cream on my arms as I got them sunburnt over the last few days. Not badly thankfully, but enough for me to need to put on the cream to sooth the skin in the hot sun. Of course this could have been fixed by wearing a long sleeve shirt, either on the airfield, or on the way back.

I have upgraded my MSN Messenger to the latest version, and there seems to be less advertising on this version. Maybe microsoft worked out last time that too many people were hacking messenger to remove the advertising... People like me in fact. Anyway I have not seen any differences yet in the new version. I have no idea what the differences are either.

Oh, and on the way to Lake Keepit, I found a strangly named town. Obviously named from its aboriginal ancestory, it is canned Goonoo Goonoo... I just find that this is a strange name... Also a sign I saw on the way, talking about the 'Murrumbindi Motel'. They were advertising 'Dinner To Units' as being available. I thought this was really coll until I realised that this meant Room Service was available.

Now that I am back home I guess i can get some other real work done. Not that visiting the NSW Glider Championships was not work, but I do have other things to do too.

One thing at the top of my list is to get my car washed. Unpacked first then washed. Normally washing my car is not a top priority, but after having driven over 1000km since friday it does need a wash. There are the insects on the front, and the back... Well... I suppose you could say it is slightly dusty. By slightly, I mean when I was leabing Lake Keepit I blew on the back window and dust just blew off. And if that happens with blowing you can imagine how dirty it is. That is thanks to driving on dirt roads at Lake Keepit.

Given the dirt roads things just get covered with dust. Thankfully there has been enough rain recently that it is mostly stuff that is on and near the roads like cars and gliders, and not the contents. Still, I wish I had taken a photo of my car before cleaning the back window at a serice station last night.

Anyway some other stuff now... A Boeing 777LR has done a world distance record... Flying 22 hours from Hong Kong to London Non Stop. Am I the only person who thinks that this is just TOO long to sit in a plane? According to The Register, this was just a Test Flight. Personally, I think I would rather have a stopover somewhere on the way...

What I had know but not realized until today was how important the work I have been doing with the OzFlarm collision detection system. The 'gaggle' which is the huge number of gliders in a thermal climbing is really dangerous... And too many pilots have been killed by a mid-air collision. At an event earlier this year there were aparently six near misses, or which two were really really close near misses. Gliding is apparently one of the most dangerous sports.

Most of the world champion gliding pilots have had collisions that they have survived - which surprised me. And this is why the people at the competition were so enthusiastic about having out device in their planes. I have some software to be modified, but it seems to be mostly doing what it is supposed to. This is fantastic news.

I think I have travelled about 500km today. Correction: I have driven about 500km today. I also went in the glider so that was more distance. Driving back was not too bad, but took longer than I expected. I ended up coming back via the putty road and Windsor. I decided not to come back via Newcastle this time... Maybe my next trip up north...

The Putty Road is always interesting... I have not been on it for such a long time, and it does not seem to be as twisty as I remembered it. I think I actually enjoy bits of this road.

But one day I will have to do a day trip to Putty to visit. It is in a valley about 4km off the main road. It would be good to see what it looks like. On the Putty Road you dive though a number of valleys - and it is such amazing country. I could just imagine the name of any of these being called 'The Secret Valley'...

Freaked Out...

You might have guessed by my last post that I was slightly freaked out by my Glider flight. I was in a two seater glider, in the front seat. Thankfully I had a pilot in the back seat who could actually fly a glider, and could actually do it quite well.

The first thing that freaked me was that we were being towed by such a flimsy rope out the back of a Cesna plane. Being attached to a plane was sort of freaky. The Cesna seemed so far above, which it probably was. I found it quite bumpy on the start of the tow, and quite bouncy.





The plane just seemed to climb further and further. What really freaked me was when I saw about 20-30 gliders circling in what appeared to be a huge cylinder, which was actually a big thermal. And the gliders looked so close to each other. When we got closer it was almost a game of cat and mouse, with only a few hundred meters between gliders. You might think that is a lot, but just remember that we are all going at least 100km/h, and we can all move in three dimensions, and move at any time.


What made all this worse, was that we were under a G-force, and also under turbulance from the thermals. At one stage we were raising about 1000 feet/minute. This is a lot.

The OzFlarm collision detection system seemed to work. It really scared me when it gave a 20 second warning of a collision at one stage. This must have turned me white, but I don't think that the pilot the colour drain from my face. After the first lot of testing the pilot asked me if I was ready to go. YES... Definitely.

Then he found another thermal, and told me that it was too good to pass up. This one had him pulling more G's, and chasing more gliders. I could probably cope with the G's but the other gliders actually scared me. Basically since they can go anywhere this was scaring me. I gingerly asked if we could land... Once we got on the land a comment was made that I was looking a little green before landing.



Anyway I was happy to get on the ground, even on a grass strip. I think that I would go in a glider again, but I do not think I would want to go into the air where a lot of gliders were around. Or where there were any gliders out there really... I can assure you I am happy to be on the ground.

I will soon be leaving Keepit... I can assure you all of one thing... I will NOT be getting a glider license... I may go up again, but frankly I find it stressful to fly with lots of gliders around...

Anyway I need to get going... More later

Sundat morning, Lake Keepit... There is not a cloud in the sky. The weather is beautiful... really is. The sun is up, and the birds are singing... And the internet is working... The world is good.

I am not sure when I am coming home. Could be today, and it could be tomorrow.. That just depends on how things go today. I have some minor software modifications to make to the software, but they are not major at all. We are planning to do some field work this morning working on this. Mostly there are usability things to improve.

Coming home I may drop in and visit a cousin in Newcastle. I will have to see how that one goes because I really do need to get home to get some work do, so I may not be able to afford the time. Anyway, I really need to get going... More later...

It has been a busy day here at Lake Keepit... And it is now almost 7PM, and I have still not had lunch. Yes, I have been really really busy. Anyway where do I start. Firstly, I have wireless internet... They have a two way satellite link here through Bordernet, and have that connected to an 802.11G access point, allowing all and sundry to get internet access.


Today we distributed about five OzFlarm units into the field, and I am about to get a report of the test. I know one of the issues, since I also went up, but I need to tell that story separately. The issue with the unit that I was using was that GPS was being interfered with by ignition noise from the motor of the plane. I am not sure what model motor this is, but I suspect that by changing the location of the GPS antenna then things would be better.


The morning briefing was uneventful. A few questions were asked about the OzFlarm, but not to me. I am sure that I could have answered most of the questions though if I had been asked.

Following that I went for a ride after helping to get a glider ready. Believe it or not (and I do not have a photo of this), you normally fill a glider with water before you take them flying. I am talking about 120 liters of water. This is a lot of weight, which is why you add it. It helps you go faster. The water is dumped before landing to reduce weight. Of course the glider I was helping with had a flat tire so I needed to lend them my tire pump from my car.


[Interestingly this is the 2nd aircraft that I have used this on. I have also used it on Richard's RV7]

Then I went up in a Jabaroo. The one I was in was registered as an Ultralight, and it surprised me how quiet it was. It started more easily than most small planes I have ever seen, and looked like a responsive aircraft. It flew really well, and we ended up cruising at about 7000 feet. The plane behaves in many respects as a glider.


You could really tell as the plane hit the thermals, and feel the plane rising... Then there were times with a downdraft where the plane just seemed not to want to stay at altitude...

The Jabaroo seems like an interesting aircraft to fly... What I found strange was that there was no control stick as such. I think the controls were in the middle between the seats.

The landing in the Jabaroo was interesting. This is the first time I have ever landed at a grass strip, and it was bumpier than I would have expected. Then again we were probably going a lot faster than I would have expected too.

I really enjoyed my flight. I am not sure that I am yet convinced to get my license, but I am getting there. Not yet though

Early Morning - Lake Keepint...

I slept well last night... Although I could have slept better if my air mattress did not leak, and if I the pillow on the air mattress had worked at all. The former will be fixed today with some sealant, and the latter is easily solved too.

I have not checked out the broadband situation yet. That is a job after I have written this entry. It will be good if there is broadband there but all is not lost if not... I can always just used GPRS like last night. It works well, surprisingly well actually.

I have just looked at my photos from yesterday, and they look fantastic. I will post them here.... The photos...



This is Bayswater Power Station where I worked for nine months as an electrical engineer... I think that I have noted before that I really did not like the place, but I did learn a lot from working there. It really was not where I wanted to spend my working life, and the work was not what I wanted to be doing.



This is a photo looking north from the Keepit site. I think this looks absolutely fantastic, as does most of the Australian landscape. What more can be said about it?



Some of the 60-70 gliders we have up here.



This was just before sunset... I have no idea what type of plane this is, but once again it looks good with the Australian bush in the background.

Live From Keepit...

I am now online in Lake Keepit... The drive from Tamworth was uneventful. I
was a bit surprised being allowed into the park for free. This is really
good, saving me some money. They just gave me the PIN number for the gate,
and that was that. I have set up my tent. And set it up. I even have power
in the tent.

GPRS is working through OPTUS. Strangely, only OPTUS GPRS is working.
Vodafone and Telstra do not have a base station here obviously. So I am
limited to Email to reduce the cost of access. Tomorrow I will probably
drive to find the closest Vodafone base station to get some higher bandwidth
data downloaded.

Conditions here are interesting... I cannot believe how many flies they have
here. There is a huge market for face nets to keep the flies away. At $3
each they are cheap, and work reliably. I have asked my client who is still
on his way to bring some aeroguard. I hope he got the message.

I have just heard a rumour that there is WiFi here... Hope so... I will
check that in a minute

I am sitting in a Gloria Jeans in Tamworth just checking email before I go into the probable black hole of Keepit... I am almost there... The trip has taken a bit longer than I expected, but then again I did take more stops than expected. Having the GPRS card is so cool. So is having mobile access... I have had a few work phone calls so far, and managed to solve some issues.

I have some photos from Bayswater Power Station to publish a little later, when I get a chance to download from the digital camera. One thing I forgot to mention.. In Singleton my digital camera refused to take photos. I replaced the batteries. No Go... Then I took the memory card out and put it back in. That fixed things.


Whilst I remember it, a friend of mine gave me a link to the flight radar at Melbourne Airport. This is not all that accurate but does provide a visualization of the information that helps with understanding things...

Right now I am having lunch in Muscwellbrook... Somewhere I have not been for so long... The worst thing I think about this place is that it does not seem to have changed one bit...

The drive up here was good... I took the Putty road, and although I do not love the road, I do like the drive. There are so many beautiful valeys on the way, each similar but different in their own subtle ways. The whole area os so green, and would be a nice place to live if it was not so far away from everything. The area does not even have cellphone service... And that did surprise me.

In Singleton I saw a giant sun-dial, and so I had to stop to take some photos. I am not into such things, but I have a friend in the USA who is. He was the one who took me to the conference a couple of months back... So I owe him. He was looking for a southern hemisphere sundial, and eventually found one. Given that this one that I found is supposed to be the worlds biggest, and is in the southern hemisphere I am sure he will love it.

I had better get going... I have more drving to do...

Since I woke up early this morning I might be leaving here earlier rather than later... I have a few things to do before I leave - mostly getting hardware together, stuff like collecting a few GPS antennas, and repairing a OZ-Flarm Tracking unit prototype that has a few wires that need replacing after they broke off. All in all it should not take me too long to do all that stuff. Then I need to pack. I am not sure how long this trip will take... But I have time, and I have a camera and an iPod so I will be fine.

My thumbs are a bit sore with blisters from yesterday. Not too bad really, could be a whole lot worse... I will see how it goes in the next few days... I do not expect it to cause me any problems...

iPodLinux has a project on Interfacing the iPod to an intelligent amplifier system, one where the remote control can control everything... And now even control the PIC. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that DIgital TV is not taking off. Seems that there are three reasons for this. TV's do not have cheap decoders built in. VCR's do not either. And generally digital TV does not offer much extra.

For the musicians out there, Brian Eno is auctioning off one of his vintage Synth's for the 20th Vintage Electric Musical Instrument Auction.

I have a lot of driving to do tomorrow... It will be interesting to see how long it takes - I expect to have the iPod playing all the time, and this will help stop the boredom of driving. Then again, I expect the country to look fantastic out there since the Australia outside the cities is always so spectacular.

I will be taking the Spinal Tap DVD with me, and I might get a chance to watch that when I am away... That is one of the advantages of having a laptop I guess. I hope to get GPRS access there but I do not think that I will... I have a feeling that I will not... But you never can tell... I found out that I can buy food up there so that is good... I just hope that the food is worth it and not too expensive.

The Register has a story about a technology called xMax. It is supposed to be Many many times faster than WiMax, WiFi, or any other technology. I suspect that this whole thing is a fake. There is now way this can work with the basic theory of telecommunications links. It just does not work. Despite the Snake Oil peddled by some of these people it just does not work that way.

On the music front, aparently the new Madonna CD is coming out this weekend. If I get a chance I will pick up a copy...

News which I find Interesting... Grace Bros Megamart is closing. On Sunday. Some shops are becoming Harvey Norman (AKA 'Hardly Normal'). There are also plans for an expressway from Windsor to Lithgow. Not sure if this one will come off. And strangely, DELL is now selling AMD CPU's. Not AMD motherboards, or even motherboards that accept AMD's CPU... Very percular mama...

The LA Times has a story about the new rules for pets in Rome. Under a new ordinance, the city's goldfish are entitled to a proper, full-sized aquarium. Quite rightly so. It would be horrible to be a fish with no room to swim... Or a dog with no room to run. Policing this rule would be interesting... Particularly in a place where no-one worries about rules banning smoking in restraunts and dont wear seatbelts in cars.

And finally for the person who has every gadget... Comes the shower cleaner... It cleans your shower automatically after every use. I hate to think how much it would cost!

Finally a use for Google Video. I think I noted recently that I loved the Space Mountain ride at DisneyLand. This ride was great, and I just wish I had been able to ride on it more - it is such a cool ride. For those who have not ridden it, and for those who just want to relive the experience you can now do so, from the privacy of your own home, by visiting Google. Someone has modelled the ride complete with music in Roller Coaster Tycoon III, and placed the video online.

I picked up a Dome Tent today at K-Mart for about $50... The price was good... I was expecting to pay a lot more than that for a tent. That price is cheaper than a single nights motel accomadation. Sure, the accomadation is not as nice, but oh, well. You cannot have everything. I also picked up a new 300/600W 12V to 240V inverter so that I can run the laptop from the car, as well as lights, chargers for other stuff. Everything I need. It was only about $60 from Aldi. You cannot go wrong at these prices.

Real soon I had better make a list of what I need to take tomorrow... I am sure I am going to forget the useful stuff, like Cat-5 cable, Antennas, or something like that. The important stuff. I had better find out if I am expected to bring my own food... I dont think so but you never know... I am not sure that Pizza can be delivered thr 50KM from Tamworth and still be hot! We might have to find out though!

I have just had a nice shower... I really really needed it since I have been doing real work today... That is I have been doing manual work - down at the church repairing a fense. This involved about three people working for four hours in the heat. And it was a lot of work. We bolted new steel uprights on the verticals, and then dug holes around the old ones, and concreted them in. I think we did about 9 poles with their uprights, and then nailed in most of pailings on with a nail gun... Such a cute toy.

As soon as I finish here I need to go and buy myself a tent... I will be camping out at Lake Keepit, and I do not have a tent... I could stay in my car, but I think the tent will be a bit better... I will be going by myself this time... Leaving sometime tomorrow morning, grabbing a wireless card at Castle Hill, and then venturing to Tamworth via probably the putty road, and Singleton. I might drop in at the powerstation on the way dependind how I feel... I have a few ex-co-workers who probably still work up there...

It would be interesting to see my ex-boss. I did not get on with him at the time, but I did learn a lot from him... Probably too much. I just think it would be interesting to meet him again...

I got a parcel yesterday of a book for the ASTERISK VoIP PABX... I got it through Amazon.COM and it took a few more weeks than I expected to get it here. I think it was delayed getting published. The exact title is 'ASTERISK - The Future Of Telephony', and from what I have seen, it makes the whole piece of software more understandable.

APC Magazine has an interesting look at the Unwired Laptop PCMCIA Card, in all its detail. This card looks larger than normal cards with a bigger antenna (and with external antennas), and pulls a whole lot more power. Having done my thesis on this type of technology when I was back at Uni I am pleased to see the technology getting developed.

There is a story in The Register about a band member buying his own pre-release album on eBay. He saw the single copy of the album and decided to buy it to find the culprit. Each copy they sent out has a serial number, so it will be easy to find who leaked it... The singer is not happy I can tell you!

Right now I need to get some breakfast and make a call before I go out for the morning... I will post some more news a bit later...

The Surj Patel Web Site has details on a project that sounds sort of cool... It is a Linux based Cellphone. You purchase a GSM module, and build up the phone from that. Believe it or not I have already done a lot of the work on this myself. Most of the technology is in the module, and the only hard work is in displaying the information, and providing the user interface.

And believe it or not, most of the modules on the market have the same interface so changing between modules is easy. But given the price of cellphones these days I dont know that there is any use in doing an open source cellphone. It does give control, but I dont think the results would be as good. Companies like Nokia spend a lot of money designing their cellphones.

Wired magazine has a story about the 10 worst software bugs ever. It makes an interesting list, with some being intentional and some being unintentional. Some were lethal, and some were just a pain. It is an interesting read, although I have read about these stories many times before.

Thankfully my day has calmed down somewhat... By somewhat I mean that it is now not quite so hectic, but there are still more things to do that can ever be done, to quote a song. Two trips to the post office today, which whilst not normal it is not unheard of. I really need to buy up a stock of express post satchels and envelopes since I use them so often. When I did my BAS, I worked out that 90% of the petty cash that I used was for Australia Post. And that is having a good stationary section in my filing cabinet.

There is a story in the SMH today about how the Queensland contestant for Australian Idol was 'robbed' by lack of daylight saving in Queensland. The contestant was voted off by 27 votes, and people are fuming up north. There are reports that this has highlighted the issues raised by not having daylight saving and it looks like this could be just one more thing to push them to have daylight saving.

This weekend I will be at Lake Keepit doing some work. This is just the other side of Tamworth, and GPRS access will be problematic unfortunatly. They do have some internet access there but it will probably be dialup. So GPRS might be the best option [If I can get my GPRS card back after loaning it out!]

My software for Keepit is looking good... Probably a first flight test on Friday, and we are not expecting any issues... but then again with software you never expect the bugs to come up anyway.

It is after lunch time, and I have not eaten yet. I should have grabbed some food a while back, but another of those phone calls happened... The type that distract and cause me not to get any work done. The main reason though is that I have been waiting for a phone call back from someone about a parcel I need to post... And I have finally got the call. Now I can get the parcel that I need to send together and get them out the door. I think Australia Post will be wondering what has happened since i am normally there every day it seems.

I have just tried my VoIP phone, and it dials OK, but it is not ringing after I call. Not sure what is going on there. Might be issues with call waiting, or it might be waiting for a trunk at the far end to become available. Since I am calling a small part of southern queensland, I would not be surprised if they only have a few dialouts in the general area. Then again this would be a bit surprising since the service provider is based on the Gold Coast which is only about 90km away.

[P.S. Works Now]

BoingBoing have some nice wooden volume controls for an amplifier detailed on the blog. These sell for $485, on the basis that "the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound)." Presumably, wood dampens the vibrations.

And the coolest. According to CNN, the MIT Museum has a display of a demo of the Maruders Map except that this one is based on where real people are. It uses WiFi position technology. I would love to build something like that...

Finally comes a tap that has LED's that illuminate the water red or blue depending on the colour of the water.

Some days I seem to get nothing done. This week seems like one of those days. I have parcels to send waiting here from Monday... Maybe I will actually get to post them today... I hope that will be in the next hour, but that just depends on how chaotic my world is today. It seems to be quieting down, but that could change at any minute. And my to-do list just seems to be adding to itself. I am expecting to find an entry there saying 'Add stuff to the to-do list', and 'Do stuff on the to-do list'.

I like StarTrek, but not THIS much. Amazon.Com is selling a complete StarTrek Collection on DVD. This contains 212 DVD's, and is as complete as is humanly possible. Given about two hours for each DVD that seems like about 400 hours. That is just TOO MUCH of a good thing.

On the Telstra front, they have announced that they are increasing wholesale rates on some ADSL stuff, in some cases by 100%. It is also closing down NDC which offered services to rivals. This was a company that became a subsiduary, was amalgamated, and is now being shut down... Strange...

The results to the 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Basically this is a contest where the idea is to write the worst code possible. I have never even thought about entering this one. I am not that strange. Some of the programs are just bizzare

I finally have some breathing space... I have been building trackers all morning, and I have finally got them all done. Thankfully! And right now I have a chance to write only because a visitor is running late [He was due to be here 45 minutes ago, and only has a 10 minute drive, and rang just before he was leaving]... So I have not had breakfast yet, and my office is a real mess! [Just saw him on SKYPE... Argh. He checked his email first! Bad move]

I just had a phone call from a client... We think we have resolved an intererence problem with a design... Basically bad soldering on prototype units we think, or maybe a CPU config byte. You would not believe how much trouble we have had trying to get this to work... And it seems that we were chasing our tails with searching for a problem that really should not have been there... But such is life, and such is wht there are times I think of taking up farming (which would drive me completely nutty, and I would not last the week doing).

I have another revision of my software for the FLARM to write... A minor mod so that we can upload new software to one of the two processors in the device. But it is one more change... And one more thing to be documented in the manual. And because of the problems described above I have been writing the manual... Hmm...

Anyway I need to get going... Breakfast is calling, and there is a load of washing to be put on the line

It is definitely too late, but I am up once more getting trackers ready for delivery to a client tomorrow. All I seem to be able to smell at the moment is nail polish as I have used enough of it to secure bolts on the trackers. I think I am fairly close to having these ready for the morning.

Currently on DVD is QUEEN from LiveAid. This was a spectacular concert... The music was amazing, and Freddie Mercury just put in so much effort into performing. And the audience just loved it... And he was so in tune with the audience. I just wish that I had been able to see him perform before he died a few years back.

I think I will leave things here... I am starting to droop big time. and I have a word document to update and get out before I get to bed... So I guess I will leave things there...

Earlier today I promised that sometime in the next 'day or two' I would post some photos of what I have been working on. What I did not expect was that I would actually get around to doing it so soon. Bear in mind that I did not actually do the layout myself for these, but I did actively participate in the design. And the software for one of the CPU's is all mine.



The CPU I have been working on is the black square in the middle of the right hand board. Under the silvery square above that is another CPU which I have not needed to work on. The square is a piece of tin to remove some low level noise from the CPU.



A little earlier I did the run... I think I did it at the wrong time of the day - 2pm is not really the correct time to run in November in Sydney, even if it has been raining. There was a nice breeze at times, and when I was in the shade it was really nice out there. Slightly humid, but really nice. When I was out of the breeze, and when the sun was hitting me things were a lot worse for running. The conditions were horrible in the sun.

Once again when any perspiration gets into my eyes it does not feel good... And once the temperature gets up things get worse in that regard. It really was pleasant when I was running in the shade... Very pleasent.

So, how did I go... I guess I did about 3.5KM, maybe 4km, but I think 3.5km. I did about 28 minutes, and this would have been longer except a neighbour arrived home and I chatted to him. Otherwise I problably would have tried to break the 30 minute barrier.

Right now Pink Floyd is on the DVD, and although I watched this live it is still good to see it on DVD... One dissapointment is that I never saw them live. From what I have heard, they are an amazing band to go and see. I have seen Roger Waters, and he is a great musician, and showman, but the entire group together would have been something else.

My code is slowly being debugged... I am playing back that my client recorded on his property in Queensland yesterday and I am playing back thanks to the wonders of modern technology, and it seems to be working. I have found a minor issues, but it is a minor bug rather than a show stopper. Without a video recording showing where he actually went and what he was doing it is hard to detect bugs, but everything looks basically correct.

So I have a few more tests to do then i will send a copy to my client for his further testing before I get around to documenting this work, explaining to pilots what this actually does. I am not sure if that will be before or after my run. I will just see how things go I guess. Right now I have work to get bach to. ARGH!

Finally... I have this batch of trackers finally done... Some units need to be just boxed up, but that is fairly simple. Then there is the next batch. ARGH. Normally I do not do these, but because of stock levels and timeframes I have needed to. NEVER AGAIN!!!

I am really really hungry, but I really really needed to get these done. There is the old phrase if I don't work I dont eat... Well, I guess I dont eat if I work or not :-) Right now my fingers are covered with the purple nail polish... But I will clean that off quickly... Acetone will fix that one! I definitely need a run. I will try to beat the distance I did yesterday, and provided I eat something this should not be too hard. I may be wrong.

The other thing that I need to do today is work more on the Oz-FLARM which is the collision detection system for gliders. I have some test data to look at, and I have had a bug or two reported. I have to look at them. I will post a photo here in the next day or so... Maybe even today.

Must run... My stomach calls!

This is a pain... My VoIP phone lost its registration... It has dropped off the network and will not reconnect. Just when I need to use it... Then again, I think that I do not notice it is down until I try to use it. I think it was the PROXY on my firewall that failed. Argh.

I still have not had breakfast... And I hope to have lunch soon... I might also grab a run soon too... I think I need it. Some food will be first though.

I have been watching the "LIVE 8" on DVD... This is looking good... It was interesting to see the Pet Shop Boys perform, looking slightly grey...

I have been a bit quiet this morning... Mostly because I have been busy working, doing a test of trackers. Right now I have four being tested in paralell. I need to wait for each of them to get a GPS lock, and also attach to the GPRS network. And surprisingly I have not yet had a single failure of a GPRS unit in this batch, due to any reason. Normally I would have expected a SIM card to be bad, given the history!

And it seems that every time that I start writing here a new unit gets lock and I need to switch it over. And that all takes time. And as soon as this batch gets done I need to switch over some sim cards in some other units where the SIM cards are somewhat faulty. Of course all this is in addition to my normal work. [Short break whilst I swap units over]. And I have enough of that to go on with believe me. I have some documentation to write which is needed before Lake Keepit, and software to modify. Settings to check. All manner of things. So I guess I have a busy day!

Later today I hope to get a shipment of some more tracking units that also need the same things done that I have been working on this morning. Anyway, it is probably time to stop there... and I really need some breakfast now too

There are two main items to this post... See if you can pick up the theme...

Firstly, yes, I know it is late. I have been finishing off some tracking units that should been delivered a week or two back, but have been delayed thanks to SIM cards not being available. Anyway that means that I have managed to get some more of the 'Wild Cherry' nail polish on my fingers. For those who are not in the know, I use nail polish to stop nuts coming off - and it works really well. But the problem is that sometimes I get it on my fingers, and my nails. Wild Cherry is so my colour :-)

Secondly, Cold Case was really cool... I wish I had recorded it... It was one of those episodes that plays homage to popular culture. Cold Case has always done this with music anyway. But this episode was even more so... It started with some of the music from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then had Barry Barstow as a baddie who they were trying to keep in prision. Now, Barry Barstow is the Mayor in the sitcom 'Spin City' staring Michael J Fox.

What people might not realise is that he was in the Rocky Horror movie, playing a naieve Brad Majors, alongside a young Susan Sarandon playing Janet Weiss. Throughout the episode they play more of the songs from the Picture Show. But more than that, near the end they show a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the occasional snippet of Barry Barstow in the background on film, whilst the young person who grows into the character Barry Barstow is playing is in the foreground. This was a interesting use of actors. I can only guess that Barry Barstow just loved the idea.

Anyway I need to get some sleep... I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.

Right now I am at Fox Studio's waiting for... well, just waiting... I am killing time before I need to go to the airport to pick up my mother... She was quite prepared to grab a train home, but I needed to be in the city, so I decided to pick her up. So here I am at Fox Studios waiting in the italian restraunt, typing this.

I knew that this would not be a good move, coming here. Well, depending on the point of view anyway. I picked up the simpsons number 6 box set which has come down in price. That was for me. Then I picked up a box set for my brother. On the off-chance that he checks this site I will not say what I have got him, but he will love it. Then lastly I picked up another DVD. Why did I say lastly. Well, I saw this one as I was leaving the store on the way out, and went back to get it. This movie is 'This is Spinal Tap' which is a spoof of all Rock and Roll. Spinal Tap is not really a band, and my friend Kevin Crossley in New Zealand actually auditioned for the position of the drummer in the movie. I cannot remember why he did not get it, but there was some intelligent reason.

Unfortunately the book store here at Fox Studios was closed. Not sure if that was because the chain is in the process of undergoing changes thanks to liquidation, but it was closed. Bookstores are always a great way for me to kill time. Not as much time as other people I know, but still, I can find myself spending a lot of time in them.

And onto the bizzare, I somehow managed to get my name onto a mailing list for sculptors, and other people involved in the art community. Since july I have been getting spam from this organisation. Not hard core spam, but it is spam. And they could not work out how I was on the list. Finally they did a seach by email address instead of contact name. Which they should have done in the first place in reality. I cannot work out why they didnt do that. Somehow my old ozemail email address got down as the contact for a club that I am no longer a member of. Totally un-involved with the arts.


It is now a bit later at Krispy Kreme at Mascot. When I left the restraunt, I looked at the bill, and I asked what the surcharge was for. That was the 'Sunday' surcharge. They forgot to tell the register that it was monday, and have been charging 10% more all day. Given how quiet it was I do not think there was too much brought in through the surcharge but I could be wrong. And the thing that I wanted to comment on at the time was that I thought that Fox Studios was a cheap imitation of either Disneyland's Downtown Disney, or the Universal Studio's Citywalk. Or any of the newer open-air shopping areas with a cinema. Sure, I was only there from 5pm to 6:30pm on a monday afternoon, but I would have thought that it would have been a bit busier

Krispy Kreme... Here you can get a coke, coffee, donuts, whatever, and it is cheaper to buy something and throw it away whilst waiting rather than parking at the airport. So the trick is to wait here until the person you are waiting for rings, and then pick them up from departures. It is the easiest way.

I am about to go out, and have no wireless access... I have lent my modem to a friend, and now I need to be at Artarmon by 5, and then have two hours to play with until being at the airport a bit after seven... Still, I should be able to find a cafe somewhere to get some work done... I am just not sure where yet!

Since wednesday last week I have been waiting on some CPU modules to be delivered. Today when I finally got onto the supplier I found that they only had 10 of the modules in stock, and that the remainder were due in later today. And thanks to the timeframes it means I will need to go in and pick them up late this afternoon. And given that I need to pick someone up from the airport at about 7:30 I guess that means I will be finding somewhere in the inner city to have dinner tonight.

Sign of the time of year. Yesterday I was driving through smithfield, and there was a person dressed in a full santa suit drawing our attention to the fact that a christmas warehouse was open for business for a somewhat seasonal festival that we call christmas. Thankfully by christmas the M7 should be open and therefore i will not need to drive that way as much.

Speaking of which I just needed to visit the M5 WWW site to order a new bracket for my eTag. My old one has come off, and I need the superior sticky that comes on a new bracket. So I tried M5Motorway.com and it went to the RTA... M5Motorway.com.au goes to the M5 Motorway. Seems that there are companies actively marketing for your eTag business... Unfortunately I doubt that there will be a price war :-(

I was unpacking my bag earlier yesterday, and found something in my bag... A tool I purchased in 2002 when I visited Hawaii for Ironman. I thought I had lost this tool somewhere... Since I purchased it my bag has been around the world once. And to the USA as well. And to New Zealand. And Albury. And Brisbane. And I have only just found this tool. I am really surprised to find it - It is a tool used to locate wires that have power going through them. Maybe I should check in the pockets of my other bags... Maybe I will find some $100 notes.

I did the run this morning... I left at about 6:35 and arrived back at home about 25 minutes later... This is not a bad effort, and I am guessing I ran about 3.5KM. So my fitness is not too bad, although I would like to get fitter. Maybe if I have a chance to have a run tomorrow I will go a bit further. I thought I would only be able to do about 2.5KM, but I felt so good that I decided to do another partial loop.

The only problem with exercise is that when you include getting ready, and then colling down afterwards and having a shower it takes about an hour out of the day. I am not complaining because I find it relaxing and a good way to think, but it does take time out of the day.

I am slowly getting through my to-do list. Right now I am about to race down to the post office in the hope that I have a parcel there... before a teleconference at 9AM. And unfortunately things are adding to my to-do list at the same time as thing are being removed from it. Such is life.

In a little while I think I will put on some running shoes and grab the iPod and go for a jog before breakfast. I have not been running for a week or so I think, so this will be a good chance to get out to do that. Then when I get back I can start work. I have a few things to catch up on today, so I will probably be busy. Definitely a day for a to-do list unfortunately.

I forgot to mention this last night... I was with some friends last night and it was suggested that I get a dog... And a name was suggested... I think the name was a joke - well, I hope so... It took me a bit of time to catch on to the double meaning of the name... like, I am not normally *that* clueless and dumb... It must have been a good 15 seconds before I caught on. So, what was the name that my friends suggested?
BYTE!
I hope you can see the dual meanings in the name... If not, think longer. I just loved it, and thought it was such an interesting name. Can't you just hear the words... "Byte, Stop Biting!". And just try explaining the name to the vet.

Anyway, enough frivolity. Time to grab my shoes and go for a run... Wish me luck!

For the second day in a row I have got home after 10pm... It was not as late tonight thankfully, but it will be good to have a rest tomorrow with other work. Let me bring you all up to date with a few things.

Firstly today was my church congregational meeting. At this meeting two of us announced that we were prepared to sit on the board of management for the child care centre... This is Barry Sullivan and myself. Neither of us want the job, but we both feel that this is something that we need to do. We have an idea of what we want to see happen, but we need to decide what our priorities are with getting things changed.

Secondly, the device I was working on in Brisbane is getting closer to being a commercial product. Nigel has traced the hardware issues we were having, and it looks like he might have the problem licked. This is good news. The test of the system will (hopefully) be this coming weekend at Lake Keepit, near tamworth. Richard and I intend to go up there for that event. Should be cool.

I picked up the Live 8 DVD today, and I am presently listening to REM while I type this. I did not know it was coming out... and I happened to be in a shopping centre getting some lunch, and I grabbed it, I just had to.

Anyway it is almost time for bed... More tomorrow...

I am not quite sure what is on my agenda for today. Well, I have church followed by a meeting... After that, if it does not go too late I will see if Richard wants a hand organizing his garage. I am sure that he could use the help!

I have finally managed to download some of the pictures from my digital camera. And I should note that I was not all that impressed with the photos that I took generally. I was hoping for better results, and the photos I took were not up to the usual standard. I am sure this is totally my fault. But the photos are OK anyway. I think a whole lot of the issue was the weather - since the conditions were not the greatest for taking photos, and also I was generally wanting to take photos to the north.

This first photo is taken to the north from the house I was staying in. I found the whole area so beautiful and green. Down at the bottom of the hill near the main gate is a grove of olives, planted a few years back. In the distance on the right side you can just see the lake. This is not the best angle, and the lake is much bigger than it appears, and is much closer too. Boonah is over the hills to the right of this photo I believe. And the great dividing range is a few KM to the left.



This photo is looking out towards the back of the property to 'the rock in the back yard'. Technically the rock is in the national park, but that does not change the fact that it looks spectacular. There are two lighter coloured areas on the rock that were caused during World War II when the air force used the rock for bombing practice. I am not sure if there is a trail up there, but if there is I think that the view would be spectacular. From the ground, the rock has more shades than Uluru.

It really is an amazing location... I hope to get back there one say - it is just so quiet and serene.

Stand up... Close your eyes... Repeat after me...

There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home.

And before you know it... You will be at home. Just like me. I walked in the door about 50 minutes after touching down. Not a bad effort. I managed to pick up seat 23F on the plane, and for once I had a person sitting next to me. I was in the front non-business row in the aircraft, a 767. I think there were only about 25% of the plane filled - it really was rather empty.

The flight was a bit bumpy at times, but not too bad. Having a window seat I found it interesting looking out. On the brisbane end the cloud was illuminated from below by lights, and this looked rather creepy, somewhat like a halloween vista. On the sydney end the clouds were more black, and the clouds were higher. It made things creepy in that you would think an area did not have lights, until we moved and worked out that the clouds were in the way.

The thing was that I had no idea the cloud was there... I could not see it at all... I guess that is what makes night flying dangerous. And it gives me a new appreciation for night flying, and why special training courses are needed.

Right now I think it is time for bed. It has been a long day, and I will be glad to sleep in my own bed.

Brisbane Airport: Qantas Club

I am now in the QANTAS CLUB in Brisbane Airport - the second airport I have been to today - waiting for my flight. I think I have about another 80 minutes until I need to board my flight home. I was going to be meeting a friend up here, but he is not available. Such is life. I get the chance to have some food, and then maybe watch a DVD, surf the web or something else.

Today has been frustrating at times. We have been battling RF interference all day. Well, we think that RF interference is an issue, and I think we have confirmed it. Yes, we have. GPS works by receiving signals from a number of satellites. And I finally twigged that we should not be getting good signals from all the satellites we were randommly trying to listen to in a sealed metal room where we should not have been getting any satellites.

Thankfully we think that we have traced this issue to a CPU that is very noisy, and interfereing with lots of things. By placing a metal plate over the CPU things have got a lot better - at least until we got to Boonah Airport for a test flight. Then things did not work so well. On the way to the Brisbane airport we summised that we probably had a device at the Boonah airport that was interfering with us. This was also evident when we found that the devices would work one way and not the other...

The upshot was that I did not get a chance to do any flying... I am actually a bit dissapointed.

What I found commical was seeing an ultralight land and take off... This really reminded me of the Mad Max movie, with this device that looks like a bicycle with wings land and take off with people wearing helmets with earmuffs and goggles. The goggles just topped off the image!

After all this I have one unit in my bag to play with... And we have a product that is not yet flight testes, and has some issues... However the issues should be fixed within the next few days!

Intermittent problems are a real real pain to deal with... You are never sure what has caused them to fail, and then you are never sure when you have fixed them. (Un)fortunately, one of the units here has now got a permament problem so we can actually work on fixing things. Still, the results we are getting are really really strange. Thankfully all the issues are outside my control - and I am just offering moral support at the moment rather than being responsible for solving the hardware/software issues. As noted before, my part seems to be working well with the exception of some human factors on the user interface.

The low cloud has burned off but there are some rain clouds definitely around. They are a bit higher up and seem to be relatively harmless at the moment.

Right now I am looking into a valley towards the north... Just to get the imagery right there is a lake about 1km to the north of me, looking through the window, with a small mountain a bit beyond that. There are another couple of large hills or small mountains to the left, and a nice hill to the right. And everything is so green. I was walking in the grass bare footed a bit earlier, and it felt amazing. I could live up here if it did not get too hot and humid. Well, apart from being so far away from everything. It would be nice to go for a run around the lake but it is about 12km, and I am not up to that definitely. Maybe if I need to come up here again...

The air smells so fresh up here too. So sweet... And yesterday when it was raining it had that nice rain type smell...

My flight tonight gets in to Sydney at about 10:10... On Qantas. By the time I get my bags and find my car I guess it will be 11:00 before I am home. The QANTAS www site allowed me to add my frequent flyer number without issue very quickly which was good. The mist seems to be lifting a bit so that there is an increasing chance of actually flying today... And some of the lower level cloud is burning off.

With some luck this evening I will be able to meet a friend of mine at the airport for a coffee... One of my internet friends who I have met through a hobby who I have never met in person... It will be good to meet him if I can.

Anyway, must rush. I have hardware to test in a minute...

Dateline: Boonah 5:10AM Local Time [6:10AM Sydney Time]

Last night I was told that the noise I thought was birds were actually fruit bats. They really love this entire area, but are more endemic around the Gold Coast area to the east of here. [Speaking of which, it was sort of cool to see a sign saying 'Gold Coast: 80KM' when I went to Boonah last night.]. I was told that if I pointed the torch towards the trees I would see them hanging on the branches upside down.

Yesterday we could see a whole lot of rain down at the lake a few KM away, but most of it bypassed us on the hill. This morning this rain has caused the entire area to be filled with a mist that might restrict out ability to go flying. Subject to conditions I will be flying this morning in a two seat glider. This will be interesting since I have never been in one. Hot air balloons yes. Gliders no.

I was going to post some photos of the area today, but I realised I forgot to bring the USB cable to download pictures from the cameras memory card. This means I will need to wait until I get home to download these and upload them to the Web Site.

I think I forgot to make one last comment about the virgin flight. Once again I got a seat without anyone next to me. Seems that most times I fly this happens. I am certainly not complaining. This is good.

It is now Friday night, and I thought I will update you all with my progress.

Firstly, I had a meeting in the local chineese restraunt this evening. Being a friday night I guess it was bussier than normal - we were the last ones to leave at 8:15. To be fair another couple of people came in just as we were leaving, but I think they were having take away. This was in central Boondah. The other thing I noticed was that the local Westpac is located inside the furniture shop. I guess they are lucky to have a bank. The food was good, and the meeting went well... This meeting was not with my client, but with a new client who had decided that it was easier for him to drive up here to meet me rather than drive to Sydney!

GPRS worked immediately in Boondah... My phone also worked, with a message being delivered almost as soon as we hit the main road. I was in a restraunt, and pulled the laptop out to give a demo of some software, and it just worked. This is how it should be!

The programming today went well, although there have been issues with hardware and software. The software issues have taken some initiative to fix. What I found was that there was too much CPU time being taken working on useless data through the RS232 on the device I was working on, so I had to reduce the CPU time with some pre-processing. That gave me just the processing time I needed. There have also been hardware issues which needed to be investigated and dealt with.

Thankfully the software seems to be working. I think I will need to work on some usability issues - things that I can fix without too many issues tomorrow. Not being a pilot I have to think what I would want if I was a pilot. And I know that I am not always right.. Some decisions are only a guess, and others are a trade off.

That might need to be all for tonight... I am beginning to crash...

Seems that Blogger.Com has an issue According to this Forum. Other people are having issues FTPing with Blogger.Com

Starange... Posts are not updating... Not sure why... Looking at it... My Hosting company seems fine. I canot see any status things with Blogger... Not sure... things look right... Lets see if this works!

It really is beautiful out here... Right now it is 9:34PM, and things are quiet. There are insects from all directions that can be heard as well as some other animals. I actually saw my first cane toad for this trip a few minutes ago. Above us is what appears to be an iron ore outcrop, and below a lake. And it is so quiet, but at the same time so noisy with nature.

Let me explain a bit about broadband GPRS, and conditons here. Basically I am presently in a valley. And there should be no GSM or GPRS coverage. Should be. But on the hill there is what we call a passive repeater. This is a device that is in essence just a couple of antennas, one on each side of a mountain, and what is heard on one side is just transferred to the other side. It is no more than two antennas conected to each other with some CoAx. And without any amplifiers, things may not work well at all.

GSM seems to work OK around here... Sometimes. Not inside metal sheds, and sometimes not inside, but it does seem to work. This is of course thans to the repeater. But it seems that this repeater does not like GPRS. Or GPRS does not like it... Does it matter which? GPRS does not like to work, and I suspect that it is something to do with timing rather than signal strength. Or noise... Regardless, GPRS just does not seem to work. Then again neither does my GSM. If I come out here again I will bring an old cellphone and add an antenna to it... A big one!

It is now 6:30 Sydney time, and I cannot understand why Queensland does not do daylight saving. Seems dumb to me, when it is getting light so early, but gets dark about 6:30pm. What a waste. What a waste. When I turned the PC off last night I turned the light off and looked outside. Things were so dark. But after a few seconds my eyes started to adust and there were so many stars. Quite amazing, really. Looks fantastic.

And it is so quiet. It took me a while to realise that the occasional noise was not an F111 in the distance but actually a car in the distance (but slightly closer than the plane would have been :-)

Oh, and I have just looked on a map. I think I have located the problem with GPRS. I think I am too far from a base station. I think the passive repeater is working, but the distance is the issue. We are more than 35km from it (just) and the protocol breaks over 35km... And just does not work.

A little earlier I had a quick connection to the Internet through GPRS... But it was one way and did not work at all... It dropped off, and I have not been able to re-establish things. So right now I am on dialup, and it is a real pain. I love always on so much. I am just so tired... It is now 9AM, and I have been awake since before 4am... So Good Night to all

It looks like I will be flying back to Sydney on Saturday after a days flying, working on testing hardware and software. Sounds like a fun day, but I expect it will be a long day. Just like today actually...

Programming and debugging are going well... I was searching for a problem and after about an hour I found a comment saying "Outputs will mysteriously turn on if this is not correctly set... This took me four hours to find". It has now taken me five hours with this same problem. Time to comment more code.

Anyway I need to get going. I have to do some more programming and testing. I now need to test a buzzer...

OK... The flight up here was good. Virgin are efficient at getting people into the aircraft and off at the other end. I was a bit dissapointed with having leather seats, but that does keep the costs down. Being on a three hour flight in the middle of summer I think would be a pain, but on a one hour flight in spring it is not so bad. I found it strange that I could not find any idea of what channels were available on the in-flight audio system. I may have missed something but it did not appear that there was a channel listing anywhere...

After takeoff, the first land I saw was over newcastle. I should say that Australia looks wonderful from the air, and Newcastle is certainly no exception. It is beautiful country, and looks magnificent from the air. Approach and Landing with Virgin were efficient. I get the impression that they chose the most fuel efficient path rather than the one with the greatest passenger comfort. It just seemed to be a fairly steep landing. Just my impression.

Meeting my client was no problem at the airport, and getting my bags were really really quick. Even without priority baggage, things came off the plane really quickly. I guess that improves the turn around time for planes. Driving down to boonah was uneventful, It took about 90 minutes and the country looks fantastic. I will take some photos and post them later. There is a mountain behind the property. And a large lake ahead looking north just out the window. Wow...

The only problem is that my phone only just works (and is now diverted to a landline if it is not available), and my GPRS internet access will not connrect so I am stuck with dialup... Not bad, but it would be better to be always online!

I have arrived in Boonah... I am on dialup right now since my GPRS will not work. I get signal strength but I cannot get a connection with Vodafone or Optus.

I will post more later, but it is really beatuiful here... Fantastic weather, fantastic view. Good flight too.

More later

There are a few interesting stories on the SMH Web Site. Firstly there is a story on how Sydney is living on Burrowed Time referencing the Brian Kennedy story on Sydney tunnels and buildings. That book is an interesting read. They are also reporting that Whilst Optus now has Digital TV on their cable network there is no certainty that Optus will resell rebadged Foxtel for it's broadband network where they are intending to supply television over ADSL.

Wired has an article on the Science and chemistry of Absynthe. This is an interesting read - and there is some discussion of wether it is anywhere near as dangerous as commonly believed. News.Com.Au is reporting that Telstra has some concerns about their network with a key cable operating in Lane Cove being liable to damage from 'The Hole'.

And finally, for those who have a problem with people not emptying bins when they are full, A New York Uni student has designed a bin that burps when it is full!

Right now I am sitting at Gate 40 at the T2 domestic termianl, just waiting for the plane. I think it is just after first light meaning that it is starting to get light, but that the sun has not yet rissen. Therefore I can see the fantastic colours on the horizon - the yellows and reds and blues. It just makes me think how wonderful it must be to see Uluru at sunrise/sunset [That is a trip I *MUST* take one of these days, as well as seeing the Olgas]

I can see the plane I will be flying on, and the pilot with the maintainence staff have started their pre-flight checks, as well as their morning checks. Right now I am torn between writing in this blog, and watching the inspection - not because I do not trust the ground staff - but because I find all this sort of thing interesting.

The drive in was ultra quick - although I am constantly surprised at how many cars are on the road at that time of morning. Dropping off my bags were really quick... And it was strange not being given anything at the end of the process other than my baggage check. I would have thought that would at least give me that normal ticket booklet with the terms and conditions for travel. It is probably assumed that I have already read those.

I have been assigned seat 10F, which should put me somwhere in the front half of the plane. Window seat on the right I would guess. Anyway I had better get going... Too many things to look at...

Recently I was saying where I was going tomorrow, and the person asked why I was flying into Brisbane rather than Coolangatta airport. I really did not have an answer other than it was likely that my client needed to pick some other stuff up at the same time. Looking on the map I found out the reason - the place I am visiting is about 95km from both brisbane and coolengatta airports. You could probably work out where I am going by looking at a map and drawing two circles, both at 95km... and you would get the general idea.

The NRMA national road map shows that the way to get from there to the Gold Coast is via brisbane... Which just shows you how poor the road is going directly easy from the Gold Coast. Also the road is not exactly straight going east/west which more explains things too. But I am guessing that it would be a really beautiful drive between the two.

In the morning I probably need to wake up at 4:30. This is a disgusting time to get up, but 'Cest La Vie'. Part of taking flights unfornately. I will set my mobile I think to go off at this time, since I do not want to leave late.... I love ariving at places early rather than later...

And just before I leave this post... I saw a TV advert for Nine News... And they had a nice version of the 'Mad World' song... I really need to get a copy of that... The 'Tears for Fears' version sounds good...

I was just speaking to a friend of mine interstate... He is as been married for about six months and is trying to impress his wife by making a chicken roast. After I told him how to, and even when to put the vegetables on he gave me a complement... that I would 'make someone a good wife one day'... I think that was a compliment. Maybe.

I also sent him a link to Cooking For Engineers where they had a recipe for Smoked Beer Can Turkey. I do not drink, but this sounds like an interesting recipe. And it is probably very easy to modify to suit non-drinkers. Also any beer would probably cook off anyway so it would not be too bad. Cooking for Engineers is such a cool site to teach those who have no idea on how to cook the basics.

Tomorrow I need to try to get a meeting organised with a new client... And because of where he is located I need to organize it for when I am in Queensland... Might be a bit of a hassle to arrange but it is better than any other option...I had better get going now... I have to pack

Another of those busy days.. You know the sort... I dont think I have done any programming, but I have compiled some code. Write some documentation, and do some paperwork. Basically all the boring stuff. Tomorrow morning my flight is at 6:30AM so I need to be at the airport at about 5:30 or so... This means I need to leave here just before 5:00. All in all it will be a LONG day. Queensland is an hour behind at this time of year, meaning that I should be where I am going by about 8:30AM.

I still need to pack. That will only take a few minutes. I am to the point where I can pack really really quickly these days! I guess I have the experience at tavel by now of being able to just know what I need to pack.

Web Checkin could not have been easier. I just entered the six character record locator, and the city I was leaving from (Sydney) and that was almost that. It asked me if I was carrying anything that I should not, and how many bags I would have. Then it printed my boarding pass and told me to bring my bags to the drop off point tomorrow. Simple. And it looks like there is no problem at this stage with flights coming home.

I got some SPAM this morning about set top boxes. For 500+, the cost is US$35, decreasing to US$33.50 for 10,000+. Looking at the cost for 500, I think that with GST and DUTY this would be about A$54 per box. This is how companies such as Woolwoths and Aldi are able to supply STB's so cheap.

The US National Association of Manufacturers has now got a list os videos online that describe various manufacturing processes. This includes building plastic bottles, steel cans, glass, glass bottles and the like.

Epping road was chaos this morning thanks to a huge hole as a result of the Lane Cove Tunnel being built and there being some subsidance. The builders of the tunnel have admitted to the problem which created a 10m hole about 10m deep. There are some reports that the hole went right down to the roof of the tunnel below. Oops.

Here are a collection of links... Some more useful than others. FunSci.Com has a page showing how to make your own paper. This paper seems to be actually not bad and would be great for craft or other special purposes.

Wired is reporting on experiments that Disney is working on to make things more interactive for their guests at Disneyland.

Australian IT is reporting that AARNET, which is the organisation that basically started the Internet in Australia is working on a project to add interconnects between VoIP providers. News.Com is also reporting that Engineers (Like me) are at the front of the queue for imigrating to Australia since engineers are in short supply here in Oz

CBS News has a report indicating that Missouri is going to use cellphone data to monitor traffic flows in partnership with a private company. This is a cute idea, although privacy advocates are indicating that they are unhappy about cellphones being tracked. What they do not realise is that cellphones are already being tracked to an extent, and this is just using the data.

Now it is time to try the Web Checkin for Virgin Blue... For tomorrow morning...

I managed to get the lawns mown this afternoon... They really really needed doing. They would have coped for another week, but only just. The rain has brought on a growth spirt for the grass - and it will be insteresting to see how much grass grows in the next week...

A friend of my brothers runs the Geek-Girl Web Site. She tutors math students at the Uni of NSW after deciding not to complete her PhD in pure maths. The FAQ for the page has a strange question that I would never have expected to see on a math tutoring site.

"Do I get discounts on salsa lessons?
Yes. geek girl students receive discounts off courses, privates and casual lessons in salsa, tango or bellydance through El Bailongo. Please enquire for details. "

I must say this is an interesting business plan - to teach math as well as salsa, tango, and Bellydance. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bart and Martin Price are teaching each other how to be better people. Martin was reading a math book wrapped in a comic book. Bart was reading a comic book wrapped in a math book.

Some links. You can read more about the OzFlarm device I am working on by visiting these two links. It is just some boring news about the progress of the device. What is probably more interesting is KeepItSouring which is on Lake Keepit near Tamworth. It is a glider competition which will be where our product is released.

Just below is a picture of the circuit that I have been working on for the last few weeks in my spare time. I have been mostly doing the programming for this device. In about 10 days I will have a production unit with photos on show here. Until then you are stuck with this photo.



The FractalSpin Web Site includes some jewelery that is VERY geeky. Basically it is overpriced jewelery made from electronic components, that does look somewhat cool. Not that I would wear any of it, nor do I have anyone to buy any for either. If I did I would probably make my own, either based on these designs or on my own.

When I was at school I made the following pieces of art... I like the person lying down singing into the microphone rather than the other one. It is better proportioned and is more identifiable. The one with the person sitting on the capacitor is supposed to be a drummer. Sure. The drum is even more out of proportion. Still, it is a cute piece of art.

Hidden in the SMH today is a story about how Google has put its fingers into Travel. Now if you enter two major cities it will show a link to Expedia and a few other travel sites offering the best fares. Right now entering Sydney Albury in the seach engine does not work, but something like Sydney Melbourne does bring some results.

I think Google needs to do a lot more work on this, as they are partnering with only three serices at the moment - Hotwire, Expedia and Orbitz. Expedia only brings up Qantas, which is somewhat better than Hotwire could do, being unable to find any fares. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

TheRegister is reporting that a woman in Oregon in the USA won a $1M lottery prize purchased on a credit card. Unfortunately for her, the card belonged to her dead mother-in-law, and she has now been charged with fraud and drug possession. And to top things off, if she is convicted she will loose the prize. OOps.

Time to get some serious work done!