I got a present today... One of the old ladies at our church is very sick, and one of her sons is staying here at the moment looking after her during the day, and staying here each night. Anyway, as a way of thank you, I got given a large picture frame containing three A4 sized animation cells from The Simpsons. Looks fantastic... I have never owned any animation cells before. And it being The Simpsons makes it so much better. I will grab a photo later and post it...

In the last few days in the USA, the Washington Correspondants held their annual dinner. This time they invited a comedian to talk at the dinner, and he presented a highly satirical view of George W Bush. Well worth reading the transcript, and I would assume that the video will be even more hilarious.

I got some of the things that I had planned for today actually done... or my accounts are almost done, and I have done some work on a consulting job... So if I am going to spend a weekend at home working then I may as well do something useful. The consulting job is cool, but unfortunately I cannot say much about it. The client has asked me not to say anything for commercial reasons.

What I can say is that I purchased a new digital multi-meter for this project today... A meter with an RS232 interface so I could get the measurements that I am making into the computer. And tomorrow I need to write some software for the software part of the project... Actually, that does not sound sensible. I have done some hardware already, and tomorrow I need to work on the software.

And apart from working this afternoon I also spent some time watching a SciFi show from the UK called 'A for Andromeda' which is a sort of mash up between 'Contact' staring Jodie Foster and something else... Basically, what happens if aliens send us a message, and it describes a machine to build... and then what if the machine is not good for mankind... It was not a scary show at all... More of a thought piece...

I am within minutes of getting my BAS done. So, why am I wasting my life with writing here when I can be getting my paperwork done and out of the way? Simple... I have been dumb, and I forgot to write in the deposit book who wrote a couple of cheques to me... And now I need to follow up with who I think they are. Actually... I have just worked it out. I could not work out why someone would pay be $xxx.53... Turns out that the 53 cents is from GoogleAdsense. Some of the remainder is from Google (they do not send out cheques for less than US$100), but the rest is from other clients... Now I know!

Half of the work on getting the accounts done is complete. And there are only three pages of bank account to reconcile. I might be done today :-)

First job on my agenda for today... Update my blog... Then I MUST do my accounts, including my BAS, and then I have some other things to do... Some TV to watch. Stuff like that. But I seem to be getting distracted even today. I must say though that it does feel a bit strange being at home on a sunday. It seems that I am out most sundays working on the plane, so one at home is something unusual...

[Include a short break for another distraction...]

For some reason I am feeling tired today... I think I am glad not to be plane building - the last two weekends have been four day sessions working on the plane and this is a LOT of work. So much so that in my mind I am beginning to think of the planes home as my home... Well, not quite, but I think it is getting there.

Anyway, I need to grab some food for lunch (another distraction) and then do this darn paperwork...

Last night I needed to fill up my car with petrol before jumping onto the M7 coming home. I think I could have probably got home without filling up since the fuel light had only just come on, but I decided not to risk it. Anyway coming home I needed to drop someone home first, so I decided not to pick any fuel on Windsor road... Bit of a mistake really I think now.. The fuel there was 131.9 and 130.9, but since I had a passenger with me I decided to get fuel a little later. Which I did, but the only place I managed to find was the service station on NorWest Blvd. When I got there, for what I think is the first time ever with this car, I only got $10 worth of fuel... After all the price of petrol was $1.39 per liter which was just a bit too expensive...

A few days ago there was a SMH Blog called Lost In Transit about the worst airports in the world. PNG's Port Moresby was the worst, but that is not the reason for this post... There was discussion about the Sydney Airport, and the following gem came out...
They are issued by the airport, not any government agency that can actually enforce it. Macbank need to take you to court and the fees involved in finding you and getting you to court normally exceed the 70-100 dollars they wack on your car.
I work at the airport and have a million placed on my car due to the parking officers misreading my parking pass. Never had a note, never had a reminder and no one I know who works at the airport and has a fine has ever paid the fine. They hand them out to everyone regardless if they are actually allowed to stop in certain areas for airline reasons.

What a day... It has been fun, but it has also been a LONG day. I was tempted not to drive home, but in the end I decided that the allure of my own bed was stronger than my tiredness. Besides I am not building tomorrow since i have some important things to do here...

So what did I do all day? Simply put, I worked on the landing gear of the plane - which involved getting the wheels onto the wheel struts. This was not particularly hard, but did involve getting quite dirty slowly rubbing the steel struts down whilst keeping a mirror finish. Following installing all three wheels on their struts we then acutally installed them on the plane... This was not all that easy, since it involved some lifting, but was not all that hard.

We also drilled the engine mount to the firewall at the front of the plane so we could install the front wheel. And also we installed the brakes for the plane too... Most of this was temporary, but looked fantastic. Everything seems to fit which is great. And it all looks amazing.

V for Vendetta fans will love this... It is a trailer for a movie called 'C for Cookie', which is a combination of Sesamae Street and V for Vendetta... Quite funny, but with some work it could be excellent!!!

For some reason I cannot get the Green Day song 'American Idiot' out of my head. I have loved this song since I saw the pure energy of their Live-8 performance in 2005. It hass a catching musical riff, and memorable lyrics... or at least the chorus is memorable... How could you not sing along with the following lyrics :-
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria,
Calling out to idiot America

A week or two back I was looking through some Sydney Olympics photos, and found one that I had totally forgotten about. I was working for an American company during the Olympics. Our team had three or four broadcast vans, a motorcycle trailer, and four motorcycles. Each of these were imported from the USA for the Olympics. And most had Pensylvania number plates on them (apart from the one which had a plate stolen at the Sydney wharves).

Anyway, all these vehicles were left hand drive... Maybe not the motorcycles, but anything with a steeting wheel had it on the wrong side of the vehicle. So for the Olympics, our vehicles were given 'Unregistered Vehicle' registration papers which is apparently normal. There was no requirement to do anything with our vehicles except drive them like normal.

But one of the team members decided that this would not be 'Legal', and decided to 'fix' the car. He decided that the van needed a right hand side steering wheel... So bought a steering wheel cover from K-Mart, and duct taped it to the dash. This worked well...

Except for one minor problem. The person on the right hand side was being driven through traffic and they were pulled over by the police for using a cellphone whilst driving. This is illegal in NSW without a car kit. Anyway, they were pulled over, and the police officer started telling the passenger off for using a cellphone, and was about to give them a ticket before he realised that the steering wheel did not move. Being embarrased and not ready to admit this, he then quickly appologised and reminded them not to drive whilst using a cellphone!

I reported earlier about the cipher in the judgement for the Da Vinci Code copyright infringement lawsuit in the UK. The cipher is now being called 'Smithy Code', and has been decoded according to the Wikipedia. The text is actually playing homage to Jackie Fisher, an Admiral in the UK many moons back.

I have been rather successful this afternoon. I am getting a major webservice written, and I sent off much of the first work package today to one of my programmers. There is a LOT of work in this - something like 220 function calls and about 40-60 database tables. The first lot of work is about 60-70 web service function calls. Then I need to write up a manual to describe how all this is used. Maybe I should just outsource that too.

All I need to do now is fill in my client and let him know how things are going with this. I am sure he will be rather impressed....

Finally home from the install job. It has got to the point where I can do an install into a truck in a touch over an hour. This not too bad... I am also learning how to start the motors on these beasts - the main problem is that the machines use icons which makes it hard for someone who does not know what the icons stand for.

I also needed to modify the hardware from my last visit... Two units needed modifying, or so I thought... When I went to do the 2nd one I was told that there was no problem. But only after I had been waiting 25 minutes for the operator to get back from lunch. Argh.

So, judges *DO* have a sense of humor. The judge from the Da Vinci Code lawsuit in the UK inserted a code into his judgement, according to the SMH. There are reports that no work is being done in London today by legal firms as everyone from legal secretaries to baristers, solicitors and partners try to unravel the judgement.

This is really cute... I am sitting in my car with the screen opened up, and both sitting on the steering wheel and my lap with wireless access... Just waiting for another truck to come in so I can do more installation work. Vodafone 3G is working really well... I am somewhat impressed... I normally am.

I hate just waiting around for things to happen... As soon as I have finished writing this entry I will do some more work on a web service I am getting written. I have to define up to about 200 or more function calls... This is a LOT of work....Must go... I think the truck is here

I finally saw the film clip to the DHT version of the song 'Listen to your Heart', and I must say that I think that the film clip mostly does the song justice. The piano in the background is just as powerful as the lead singers voice. I can just see that her voice can only improve in the next few years. I will have to keep my ears out for more music by DHT.

For those who have not seen the film clip, the singer (whoes name escapes me) is sitting on a stool, respendant in an evening dress and pulled back hair next to a grand piano. The piano is being played by a band member in an attire somewhat reminiscent of Dave Steward from the Eurythmics. Surrounding the two performers are hundreds of small candles, highlighting the performers as they present their interpretation of the music. And intersursed with the live performance are cuts to what are obviously memories from better times shot to resemble 8 or 16mm film. Simple but effective.

I think I like the new Beta of Internet Explorer. There are a few subtle changes to the User Interface, although there are probably some changes under the hood too... One of the big changes is that IE opens the new tab next to the one where the information is being opened from if you Open In New Tab. There are a few other improvements to the user interface, although they are harder to describe.

When you download this, you also get the option of installing microsoft's spyware protection tool (which is also available for download here for a free download. Microsoft is doing some good things, or so it would appear...

Today I have a morning install to do... I hope that does not take more than a couple of hours but you never can tell... Actually it should be reasonably quick... I did the majority of the learning last time...

I am not happy about my new Cellphone. It is hanging up after 1-2 minutes on most calls. I have emailed the company who sold it to me asking about exchanging the phone - else I will be returning it and buying it elsewhere.

I did get my new phone... I must start with the standard complaint of the battery not being charged - although there is probably a very good reason for this. Some other things are not as good as with my Nokia, although some are probably better... I still need to get used to it. The phone in question is a Motorola V3 RAZR, which looks OK, and from all accounts works well.

My first complaint is that I needed to copy all my contacts from the SIM to the phone to use voice dialing. Fine. But now I have two copies of every number in my address book. Not sure how to fix that. The battery indicator does not work all that well... After about three hours charging, and two of the three bars of the battery are on, and I still had phone calls die when I was at the shops at lunch time... Not good.

I have not worked out how to send files to the phone either - new programs that is... There are a few things that I would like to install, such as a version of MSN.... Could be quite useful...

There are various news stories reporting that some of the asian carriers are looking at Real Cattle Class... A class of service that makes Jetstar look like Qantas First Class. The reports are that some of the carriers in the region actually want to get rid of seats and install back boards with straps.

My new cellphone is arriving today I hope. For the past few days I have been getting error messages on my Nokia 6600 warning about a SIM card having issues. So, either a new cellphone will help this, or I have a new cellphone anyway except I need to get a new SIM card from Optus. Either way I have the new phone...

Yesterday was an important anniversary for the world economy. Apart from being a friends birthday it was also the 50th anniversary of the shipping container. Before that the world just packed parcels into ships with cargo nets and the like. The container was a real improvement for international trade.

One of my friends has been working with VisualStudio 2005, and has been having problems with the application sometimes creating a file called app_offline.htm and things would not work correctly when attempting to publish the site. After some reading and some investigations, it was found that the file is created if the particular web site being published is open in the web browser when the publish is attempted. Basically it is a cute way of saying that there was an error with the publishing.

Finally, MakeZine has linked to some photos on Flikr on what must be one of the worlds most customized motorcycles.

I am starting to fade... I am getting drowsy, and I will soon need to get some sleep... The weekend certainly took a lot out of me...

Quote of the day... "When you want a computer system that works, just choose Linux; When you want a computer system that works, just, choose Microsoft."

Yesterday when I was listening to the radio I heard a Belinda Carlisle song... I cannot remember which song it was... Maybe 'Leave the light on for me'... Whatever it was, it was not performed by her but by another artist... With a slightly faster beat and some more drums. Whilst I liked the song I found that the remake was not really worth it at all... I could not see the point in re-recording it.

Microsoft has just released a new beta of Internet Explorer 7. I have not installed it yet, but I will soon. I need to uninstall my existing copy of IE first and reboot the PC, but I would rather wait until I need to reboot before doing this.

The SysInternals web site has a program that will allow you to show what your serial port is doing... Oh, and today I got a USB socket for my car so that I can charge my iPod or my new cellphone in my car...

Definitely time for a break. Right now I am sitting in my workshop with the laptop on my lap preparing to do a bit more electronics work, having just finished a couple of trackers off for a client. I was thinking I was not going to get these units out the door... I help doing stupid things... I could not tell male from female (which I hope is as concerning to me as to all the readers out there)... I came really really close to soldering on male 9 pin serial plugs onto a PCB labelled F for Female. And Likewise I almost soldered the Female where I should have installed a male.

Thankfully that did not happen... And I have learned what the difference between males and females are. Then I soldered on an IC socket onto the board. Only an 18 pin socket, but I did not realise until I had 14 pins attached that the socket was on the bottom of the board. Desolder and place a new socket on the top of the board. And then I kept getting solder into the wrong holes. I dont know what is up, but it is NOT good. Still the trackers are done. Tomorrow (or later today) I have a collection of trackers to get out the door after some testing...

One of the features of MSN I love is the ability to display what song is playing. The problem is that right at the moment this feature is not working on my PC. I have tried telling MSN to use this... and not got much further... It just is not working. The problem started when I entered some custom text in the MSN message... I have since deleted this message, but MSN is playing up. Maybe time for a reboot :-)

Blogger is still having issues publishing posts... Often I post and then assume it is saved... and then only when I come to create the next entry do I find out that there was an issue with the upload. Argh!

My breakfast meeting went well... Although it did take somewhat of a chunk out of my day unfortunately. The M7 was pretty clear as I expected, and I did not hit any traffic until the M2... And even then I only hit it at the start of the M2, and it seemed to open up after Windsor road or so. It was not too much slower getting into Pymble rather than getting home.

And I have so many things to do right now. The two long weekends in a row has not helped... I am now trying to catch up on the public holidays. And trying to get some hardware out the door too. And emailing proposals to people. To top that off I had a mobile call from a potential client in Indonesia and a definite client in New Caledonia MSN for assistance. The latter is a real pain since French Telecom seem to be blocking VNC this week meaning I cannot seem to work on the PC directly. Even if I had it would have been really really slow since they seem to rely on a satellite link for internet access...

And to top that off, French Telecom over there is what you would get if Sydney Airport ran a phone company. What a scary thought...

I definitely slept well last night... I needed sleep... I was exhausted. Four days building is enough in a row I can assure you. It was fun though, and really really awarding...

I have a breakfast meeting this morning at Pymble, which means I need to face the M7/M2 combination. Actually, the M7 will be fairly tame... The M2 is the killer, and I doubt that it will be all that bad really. I will grab my vehicle logs later and will check out the average speeds... See what the road is really like, rather than just my perception of things. What I have found with the freeways is that they make the journey repeatable. This is definitely a good thing.

I have ordered a new phone, and I hope to get it tomorrow express posted. I doubt that it will come today, but it is possible since I ordered it yesterday morning. You never know. I will check the post office when I get back from the meeting on the way home. Great thing about a post box is that you do not need to be at home if a parcel comes, and normally the parcels and mail is all there at 9:00 AM. Normally - the one exception I guess tends to be Australian Air Express which does not arrive until after lunch.

Today I have a critical task to do - well, one critical and one important one. I need to do my accounts for my business for my BAS... This should take a couple of hours, but will probably take more. And then I have to find a new accountant... My existing accountant is unable to continue in this job as her two daughters were involved in a car accident and she needs to dedicate time to them. So I have some work to do!

I have more to post, but it will have to wait until after my meeting...

I am HOME!!! Well, at my normal place of abode rather than the place that I seem to spend a lot of my time... I am home from a LONG weekend working on the plane, and I am EXHAUSTED! Four days in a row is too long. About 4pm today it was so bad that I was told to go and get a coke for the sheer caffene! I could have had a short sleep without issue I can tell you.

Not that I have been getting not enough sleep... It is more that working on the plane is work, and it is surprisingly hard work. The modus operandi seems to be that we work as a team, with one person doing the work, and the other being an assistant, getting tools, parts, etc. Also making up pieces when needed... Things work surprisingly effectively that way.

Today we got sick of working on the canopy and decided to work on the rear of the plane. This entailed lowering the plane, and then leveling it before adding adding the horizontal stabalizer. This is now attached to the plane, and makes the entire device look really really serious! I will have to get a photo since it looks great...

Last night I was talking to a friend about encrypting passwords... and he suggested that the Rijndael algorithm be used. Now, I have a pretty good knowledge of what crypto systems are out there. It is not my field, but I have a working knowledge of the systems in use, and I had never come across this one. Or so it seemed. Once I did a bit more research I found out that Rijndael is actually the algorithm used in the AES, or Advanced Encryption Standard. It was approved by the USA government in 2001 to replaces DES or the Data Encryption Standard. DES used to be used in every ATM in the marketplace, although they commonly now use AES or TrippleDES.

The SMH in their 'Lost in Transit' Blog has a story about the best and worst airports to sleep in. Port Moresby is the worst, and Singapore is the best. The Port Moresby airport is often the scene of gun battles and robberies. Remind me to stay away. Singapore often has live music, a hotel inside the passport control area, free movies... The lot!

Some of my friends have been experimenting vehicle tracking using a satellite uplink. This is somethig I would like to try as a once off just to say that I have have done it... After all I have enough equipment in my car to do this... The photo below is from a friend in brisbane. The uplink is actually going via a transponder on the International Space Station [and doing it quite legally... ]...

I was having problems with posting to Blogger. It seemed that I had set Blogger up to contact my hosting companies server by IP address rather than by name to fix a previous issue with posting to my Blog. Well, that backfired, and it seems that the company hosting my Web Site changed an IP address and broke something. Anyway, it is working now.

I cannot believe this... I was speaking to a client earlier and I was told about a person who had tried to return a PDA under warranty... According to my client, the touch screen on the PDA was no longer responding correctly. On closer examination it was discovered that the screen was slightly damaged. There were slight marks on the screen. Looking even closer it was obvious that the owner had decided to use a small stanley knife to select items on the screen. From what I heard it was decided that this was owner abuse. Images of a PDA with a knife sticking out the top come to mind...

Earlier today I sent a Microsoft Access database to a colleague, and he could not access it. The problem is that Outlook does not by default allow you to even save an access database that has been sent... The rationale is that these documents can contain viruses or other harmful code, but the fact that Outlook doesn't let you disable or at least customize this feature is just plain stupid. Here's how to do it:

To solve this, open the Registry Editor (Regedit), and Expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 10.0\ Outlook\ Security
Create a new string value by selecting New and then String Value from the Edit menu. Name the new value Level1Remove. Double-click the new Level1Remove to edit it, and enter the filename extensions you'd like to stop Outlook from blocking. Extensions should be typed in lower case, without the dots (.), and separated by semicolons (;). For example, type exe;mdb;vbs to allow .exe, .mdb, and .vbs attachments, respectfully.
Then Click Ok and then close the Registry Editor when you're done. You may have to restart Outlook for this change to take effect.

So simple, but poorly documented...

I was helping out a friend last night with a computer problem... The computer would not seem to be able to connect to the Internet. After some time I worked out that it was connecting to the Internet fine (with some minor settings changes) but it was Internet Explorer that was playing up. Well, anything that used the InternetExplorer libraries. Given how networked the world has become this is a REAL problem. Internet Explorer 7 beta requires online authentication to verify that your copy of Windows is legit. And this is the problem. If IE is not working you are stuffed.

What I forgot about last night was a couple of un-orthidox solutions... The first would be to Uninstall Internet Explorer... Thanks to some court cases this can be done with Add/Remove Windows Components, under Add/Remove Windows Components... Once removed it could then be added, providied the spyware did not detect this trick.

The other option would be to edit the HOSTS file... This is a local copy of the DNS system, and is designed to bootstrap things if DNS is not working, or for local machines. The file is located in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc directory.

This file contains the IP addresses and sites, and normally gets processed before the DNS. So where the DNS part of Internet Exploder has been damaged to redirect redirect you to websites the spyware wanted to send you.

Editing the hosts file is easy... The first thing you need to do is do some research... This involves getting the IP addresses for some important hosts so that Windows can then repair itself...

C:\Documents and Settings\Darryl Smith>nslookup windowsupdate.microsoft.com
Server: server
Address: 192.168.20.2

Name: windowsupdate.microsoft.nsatc.net
Address: 207.46.225.221
Aliases: windowsupdate.microsoft.com

So you can then edit the HOSTS file with Notepad or wordpad with another line like

207.46.225.221 windowsupdate.microsoft.com
58.6.37.173 radio-active.net.au

With this file, when the IE install cannot find a page, like when it tries to make sure that it is genuine, just find out the name it is looking for, and add the IP address with the name to the HOSTS table.

I think I need to get myself a new cellphone finally... I charged it yesterday morning, and it was running low on batteries this evening. Strangely I had not even used it in the intervening time, except for an SMS or two. I find this really strange. I would have thought that the battery should be lasting a little longer. So I guess I have two options... Get a new battery for this phone or get a new phone. Given some of the phones on the market I think I will choose the latter... A friend has a nice Motorolla which seems not to eat batteries so I might get one of them.

Windows is a pain at times. Well, a lot of the time. With a Mac with OSX you can get under the hood and thinks make sense. Under Windows a lot less things make sense. Spyware has more of an impact, and removal sometimes breaks software (Thanks Microsoft)... And it seems that often the only way to fix things is to reboot or reinstall from scratch. As an example I just needed to reboot because Nortons had crashed checking my email. The only way to fix this was to restart the machine.

There is an old joke... Windows has detected your mouse has moved. Restart? This is unfortunately too true. The other thing is... Your computer has detected that your computer is running a non-microsoft product... Reinstall windows? This is getting close to being true...

One of the friends has a Mac, and one of the cute effects that I see on his PC is a screensaver where the image seems to slightly zoom and pan. The effect is really cool, and brings some life to the photos. The one I love is the tropical beach... and on a screen saver it makes me want to just sit there for hours on end and not do any work at all!

Well, reading an article on IBM's Developer Works I found out that this effect is called the Ken Burns Effect after the person who popularlised it in his documentory films. Greg Man has released a windows Screen Saver which is not only free, but also does the same things. Later I am going to install this and try it out!

When Al Gore was the Vice President of the USA, he once claimed to have 'Invented the Internet'... Unfortunately this slip up followed him for the rest of his career in public life, probably contributing to his defeat in the presidential election with George W Bush. Well, now Bush has made a similar remark. According to Engadget the US Government funded research for "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

Right now I am using RemoteDesktop to administer a server of mine. Generally it works really really well. But right now there are two issues... One which is self-inflicted and the other is a pain. Starting with the pain first, what I find is that sometimes when trying to copy files from the server to a network drive is that for some reason the system tries to copy the files via my PC over the remote desktop connection. No idea why. At least that is what it looks like is happening. I need to resolve this since it is a real PAIN! It seems to be related to how I copy the files... Right Click Vs. Edit Copy Vs. Ctrl-C Vs Drag and Drop, but since many of the actions are instinctive, I have not managed to put my finger on it.

The other issue is more of a problem... One of the HDD's on my server is about full up... I need to pick up a new HDD in the next week or two... Time to get a multi-terabyte disk array :-)

This morning I had a memorial service at the church for one of the old members who died just before easter... She had been a member of the church as long as I had been there, and it was interesting to hear some of the things that she had done in her life - things that I had no idea about despite knowing her for years. Things like the fact that she had been doing underwater welding just after the war, worked on the ANZCAN transpacific telecommunications cable and more.

Following that I spent a good afternoon working on the plane... This was fun, although we only really got the rail on the top of the plane installed. That was important enough to install since we can now move the canopy forwards and back. Tomorrow we will probably install permamently the rails that the canopy slides in. These are already on the plane, but need to be bolted on.

Working on the plane later today, but first I have some other things to do...

The BBC is reporting on the economics of concerts showing that whilst music prices have been increasing fairly close to CPI, the price of concerts has been rising significantly faster. Modern concerts tend to be a bit more elabourate than in the past, leading to increased costs... But that would not account for the entire difference in price.

I have discovered one of the tricks to defrosting a freezer... Use a fan to blow air into the freezer. It reduces the amount of time that the defrosting takes significantly. I can assure you that I know why people go for frost free fan forced freezers... Despite the help of the fan it is still a pain.

I found an interesting collection of photos about a jet fighter in the US Air Force. The canopy would not close properly. Finally when it did it jammed closed and would not open. The manufacturer then advised how to open the canopy through 'Alternate means'. This was a petrol recipricating saw causing about US$175,000 damage including replacing the canopy. Not cheap!



Finally, the SMH has a story about the new Bruce Springsteen album which is full of songs popularised by Pete Seeger. I expect the album to be quite interesting when it is released in a few weeks time.

Junk SMS

I have been getting some junk SMS messages over the last few days.

The latest one was from 19735555, and the text was :-
"FreeMSG. You have a secret admirer! Reply CHAT to this message to be connected! For help call 1300885902. Average msg cost $2.70'.

Whilst I have no doubt that there are lots of women out there falling into the category of being my secret admirer, I am slightly suspicous about the message. Well, more than slightly! Lets think about this logically. If there is someone who does admire me why would they use a service like this?

The chance of embarrasment (which I think is the reason you would use a service like this) is almost the same as if the person was to SMS, eMail or phone me direct, or even speak to me in person. In other words, there is little reason for using the service if the person really does exist. Sooner or later I would find out who the person was. I am prepared to be proved wrong, but I doubt it.

I just went to post this entry, and the previous one had not properly posted. I hate blogger at times!

Wired has an inside look at the Microsoft Mac Lab which looks somewhat impressive. Lots of cool hardware there... They are also reporting on an error with the Kryptos puzzle sculpture at the CIA HQ... Cool.

I was supposed to be doing an install job today. Supposed. I only got the confirmation at 8:50 that I was expected sometime between 9am and 9:30. Well there would be a 30 minute drive in there. And, oh, by the way, we are having some intermittant problems. Oh. So I have delayed the install for a few days so that I can arrange to get some hardware to help. Just one more complication on this job. Cest La Vie.

So that means I can get some other bits and pieces done today rather than have to spend most of the day (or so it would seem) doing this install. I certainly have enough to do, particularly if I intend to spend much of the next few days working on the plane. Which is something that I am planning to do.

The Register has a piece describing some of the possible product paths for Apple with the iPod lineup. They sugest that Apple will be releasing a 10 GByte Nano soon for people interesting in Music playing, and will keep the iPod Video lineup with a HDD for people who want to use video. Makes sense to me. link

They are also reporting about a woman in Malibu who is building a house from an old 747. Cool.

WebServices is doing my head in. So much to do... And what makes this worse is that I need to document what I want with enough words so I can hand it to someone else to code. And then I need to use the work that I am doing to come up with some documentation to use the WebService.

I am working on low level functions as well as the higher level functions. The higher level ones are more interesting, but also need more thought which is sort of the stumbling block.

Sometime next month the Da Vinci Code will be released as a movie. So Google and Sony have got together to release an online competition...

I am really energized after yesterday evenings meeting - I have not felt this way in a little while. I can just see the potential, and the fact that I am now taking the concept and running with it does not hurt my ego. I have been doing more documentation today, and I am just trying to make sense of things. At the moment I think the critical path on this project is getting things out of my head. And unfortunately, despite what some people say, I only have one head, and it is fairly well screwed on. Which means that I need to schedule downloading onto paper with other tasks...

Right now I am designing a Web Service, and this is taking some time. The back end database is now up to about 32 tables or so. That is a few that need to be dealt with. And they all need paramaters to go with them, functions, everything. And eventually programs to use the function calls and the data in the tables.

There is news in the SMH about a company that duped many other companies into getting their Microwave Ovens tested for microwave leakage by suggesting that this was a government requirement. Nice business to be in - and quite lucrative at $45-90 per service. And Australian IT has a story about how Unwired is putting Google on their home page in return for a percentage of revenue. Looks very similar to the Adsense program I belong to in fact!

I dont know what is going on with the weather. Here it is at the end of april, and it is 6pm, and I have the front door open. I have bare feet, and shorts and a polo shirt on. No socks. No jumper. And I do not feel cold. THIS IS NOT RIGHT! There is something wrong with this picture. It is supposed to be cold. You never know, it could be raining this weekend for the greek easter... You never know.. .

I had tons of fun reading the review of The Veronicas in the SMH... With a jems like the quote below how could you not laught... "...They (the audience) are too old for the Wiggles, too young for Green Day, but ready to rock as hard as their watchful parents will let them... if anyone doesn't belong here right now, it's the 34-year-old guy making notes - which pretty much renders this show critic-proof"

Judging from the review I don't suppose you go there to hear the singers sing... Really it appears more visual than anything... "You can't hear much during large portions of the set, either, because these fans chant along boisterously to the Veronicas' every lyric". But the reviewer left the best for last... "..And the music? Imagine anthemic-rock titans Bon Jovi's adoring kid brothers fronted by a pair of Kelly Clarksons alternating between tough and tender, and you're close."

Despite being an experience, and loving to hear live music, I think this is one concert I was glad to miss out on.

The SciSpot has an article on how to make liquid magnets! Sounds rather cool, and not particularly dangerous either.

Today has just been one of those days... I am about to escape from the office to get a coffee and some food and do some thinking with the laptop and the wireless card... If I can find anywhere quiet. The library is normally good, but this is School Holidays!

I have decided on my next project... a Jet Homebuilt aircraft. According to the story, After seven years building the three-quarter-scale Grumann Panther in his backyard shed, John Gross took to the skies this earlier month at the Kingaroy Aerodrome. Aparaently it is Australia's first home-build jet and the first light jet plane built by an individual in the world. Actually it looks like too much work... Maybe I should get a pilots license first...

I think I know what to get my brother for his next birthday... A bookcase lounge chair. My brother has more books than almost anyone I know... So this might go well in his unit...

Yesterday one of my clients had a minor phone outage. Well, maybe not so minor. Some contractors doing some tunneling to install some new phone cables to the new building next door managed to kill the cable coming into their offices. This would have been fine, except that not only could Telstra not work out how to get the cable into their offices, they could not even get it into the pit at the other end since the splice to the main cable was hidden under concrete.

Right now they have a half inch cable crossing their garden and winding the way down the driveway into the carpark and attaching to the buildings main phone patch panel. This is not permament by any stretch of the imagination, but right now it is all that they can do until some major works are done to place a new cable path into the office. It was a reall stuff up!

Coming home from Pymble today I tried coming via the M5, and found that it probably saved 5-10 minutes... Only because it was after hours. Getting there during peak hour is definitely faster via the M7... So in future I just need to think which will be the best based on traffic volumes, and based on the cost... Hmm...

Finally home after this afternoon's meetings... I found the meeting entirely enjoyable - I was basically in control of the meeting, proposing an application architecture. There were so many lightglobe moments during the meeting where the participants said 'wow' and 'why hadnt I thought of that before?'

There are so many things for me to do following the meeting... So much work, so little time. Things are a bit harder mostly because I am the one who has the system design in my head, and just need to fill in the details. Filling in the details can be time consuming, and requires a lot of thought too. If I can get enough details worked out for someone else to then expand on then that will be good.

More about that soon...

Late last year I was somewhat amazed at the Holden advertising for new cars with a discount called 'you pay what we pay'. The thing is that people did not actually pay what employees paid since accessory prices and dealer delivery charges were discounted. I am not surprised!

One of the unintended consequences of publicly showing your music tastes is that people (friends) can see what you are listening to, and actually suggest music to you. In this case I was listening to the John Denver song 'Thank God I`m a Country Boy'. The tune is up-tempo and it sounds great, if it is somewhat dated.

So one of my friends MSNs me and tells me that there is another version of the song - techno style, and asks me if I have a copy of it. Not yet. Quick search on iTunes reveals that 'Hampton The Hamster' released this on their 2000 album 'Hamsterdance: The Album', and from the 30 second snippet on iTunes the new version sounds cool. From what I heard of the rest of the album there is no way I will be buying the entire album just for the one song. With legal music downloads these days thankfully I do not need to buy the album!

The Discovery WWW site is reporting on how dumb one of the members of the Marfia was. He decided to ecrypty some of the messages he was sending using a Ceasar Cipher. In the normal cipher, A is replayed by 1, B by 2 etc. In this case he replaced A with 3 and B with 4 etc. Slightly more secure but this has been cracked by kids for 2000 years... Some people just deserve to be caught!


Now Playing:
Pachellbel's Cannon in D. I really need to get a copy of the Brian Eno version of this music... Followed by the Pet Shop Boys with 'Always on my Mind'.

One cute feature of iTunes and I think Windows Media Player is that it sets the text on MSN to let other people know what you are listening to. This is fine until so called friends start MSNing with their own interpretation of the lyrics... Things like "Did you ever know that you're my herooooooooooooo....." and "you are the wind beneath myyyyy wiiiiiingsssssss"... I just cracked up when I got these...

I have been playing rated tracks which has been cool... hearing the music that I have rated over the last 12 months or so. And I love most of the music in the list although some is dependant on my mood. Stuff like Grinspoon doing a cover of the INXS song 'Dont change a thing' is fantastic. So is Sharon O'Neil with Asian Paradise... And of course there is also Color of the Wind by Vanessa Williams. This is just an amazing piece of music. The lyrics are so poigniant...

The SMH today has a story on how price is being used to differentiate almost identical product... Interesting read...

Music Playing right now? Harrison Logan with Since I've known you.

One of the more interesting artists on my iPod is Tina Cousins. She has a wide variety of music - although most really is related to dance rather than other styles I guess... For some reason I cannot get the song 'Pretty Young Thing' out of my mind. For some reason I cannot find the lyrics online... Here is the chorus... Typed from what I think the lyrics are at least. [I don't want to embarras myself again by thinking that the Green Day song 'Time of your Life' with the words 'Another Turning Point' was really 'Another Turnip Boy'... Don't Ask!]

Someone get a priest
Or Maybe the Police
I think that we should call
A Justice of the Piece
Your A pretty Young Thing
Its a Damn Cool Thing

I Gotta Tell the World
In case they havent heard
There never was a doubt
Oh Baby hush your mouth
Your A pretty young thing
It's a damn cool thing

I was following some links from YES on Wikipedia to Trevor Horn. Trevor Horn is famous not only for his work with YES, but also producing bands such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, Marc Almond, Seal, Tom Jones and even the Do They Know Its Christmas album.

Anyway the point that I am getting to is that Trevor Horn put together the band The Buggles who had a hit with the song Video Killed The Radio Star. The link shows some of the trivia with regard to the song. What I did not realise was that this song was the first song ever shown on the MTV network. Obvious in retrospect but I would not have guessed it if asked [No idea why... My lateral thinking must turn itself off when I get tired.]

Before I go to bed, I found a great article in the Washington Post. The article is promiting nuclear power. Why is this article special? Well, the author is the co-founder of Greenpeace...

I am beginning to feel a bit, well, um, tired. I am still recovering from the weekend. I need to take care of myself a bit better I think... Forcing myself to sleep later in the morning... Waking up at 6am or 6:30am is normally far too early.

I have just had the Foxtel Music station MAX on in the background, and noticed who performed 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'. What will not surprise many people is that the performer is 'Yes'. The band is one of those that I have heard of over the years but never quite placed into context. The lead singer is Jon Aderson who went on to do vocals with Vangelis with amazing results.

One of my friend asked if I wanted to attend the Yes reunion concert in San Franscisco just over 12 months ago from memory, but the concert did not actually come off. Would have been an amazing event...

My meeting this evening has been cancelled. One of the participants has needed to pull out thanks to a pressing engagement... So I am in the process of rescheduling the meeting. A pain really.

Right now I am in the Garage building up tracking units for an export order. This is a pain of a job but the profit margin is such that it is not worthwhile not to do this work. And since I am building this batch up I need to put a quick order into the USA. I should have new stock in a about a week. I dont like keeping too much stock here, but sometimes you get big orders so I just need to get new batches sent more often. Such is business life these days. Thankfully transport is quick.

I have the iPod on the in the garage here... I have some PC speakers - really cheap ones - and I am just playing all the music that I have rated on the iPod. There are 143 tracks out of the total 6500 or so... Some great music there. I just had Nina Gordon with Tonight And The Rest of My Life, followed by Stay by Shakesphere's Sister... Some really great music... I just need to remind myself not to sing too loudly!

Note to self. Do not kick your shin on a plane. Not only does it hurt, it takes some time to fix. My leg is still sore from where I kicked the plane on Saturday. Come to think of it, running might not be my wisest move right now. Maybe tomorrow after it has even had more time to heal.

This evening I have another meeting at Pymble for some ongoing work... There is a group looking on working on the software, and for some time they have not known which way to move. So right now I have been working with a friend to produce a framework to move towards. Our first meeting with the client was monday of last week, and the document is now running at sightly over 50 pages. There are LOTS of holes in this document, but it provides when I think the client needs.

My next step will be to find an office somewhere without too many interruptions to work on this. Maybe a coffee shop somewhere... where I can just keep ordering coffee and snacks whilst I think about all the options on how to move forward. Anyway, that will be at least a few days off!

Music:

Green Day with Time Of Your Life.
For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

I slept well last night, although I have not caught up on sleep by any stretch of the imagination. Neither did I get to bed as early as I should have. I guess I drank a bit too much Coke yesterday... I will see about going for a run today. I sure need it!

Worth1000 had a great contest... This time to do a piece of artwork by a famous artist when they were a child. In this case the entries included the Da Vinci with Mona Lisa, Michaelangelo with the ceiling of his childhood home, and my favourite, M.C. Escher with his sketch shown below!


And finally, a New Orleans woman is looking to become mayor. But from her publicity photos it looks like she wants to be mayor of Disneyland. Rather than taking the photos for the election in New Orleans, they were taken in New Orleans Square in DisneyLand.

Finally home... And I just turned the TV on to watch some stuff that I recorded earlier.. and James Blunt is on the ABC. How cool. The song playing is 'Goodbye My Lover' which is a song I love so much. It turns out that this is Andrew Denton with 'Enough Rope'...

Working on the plane was really cool. We got some work on the canopy done. I built a wedge out of some aluminium for the roll bar... then we worked on adjusting the size of the perspex canopy... finely scraping away the edges of it to get the correct size. Then we worked on the windscreen and got it so close. The windscreen is really much easier to get to size than the sliding canopy...

The whole last few days has been exhausting, but really amazing. So satisfying getting things done. The plane is really really starting to look like a plane!

Ok... It is now 7:30 AM and by all rights I should be in bed asleep for another few hours - preferably until close to midday. But we cannot always have what we want, and it seems that my body clock likes to wake me up at about the same time regardless of what time I get to sleep. So here I am working on this entry, having a healthy breakfast of leftover corn chips, thinking about getting around to doing some work for tuesday...

Yesterday on the plane we worked on more of the canopy... making some minor adjustments to the canopy frame to open the canopy up slightly. Then we moved onto the roll bar - and worked out that it needs to lean a few degrees back. After a few attempts in the late afternoon yesterday we decided to come back to working on that today. So my job this morning will be to get the roll bar installed in the right place.

The MakeEzine site has a really really bizzare photo.. It is of a wooden motorcycle!


And finally cellar.Org shows what happens when you fill a hanger with foam!

Happy Easter

Given that today is Easter Sunday, I guess the first thing I should do is offer everyone a happy easter. Given the weather this weekend I am convinced that this is NOT easter. The easter weekend is supposed to be cold and wet, and so far at least this has not been the case.

Yesterday working on the plane was fun... Mostly. The mostly includes a couple of really minor perspex cuts on my fingers, and a more major cut on my shin. The gash on my shin came from hitting the plane as I was getting down off a crate... Being on the shin the cut was probably a bit nastier than it would have been if it was elsewhere...

Whilst not cutting my fingers and the like, we spent the time cutting the perspex sliding cover size, and then drilling it. Cutting was not hard, albeit messy with bits of powdered perspex flying everywhere. As we did more cuts we got better at actually finely cutting the pespex. We also worked out that using the scraper was probably better for fine tuning... Even if it was up to 1/4 of an inch!

Drilling was slightly stressful, but turned out fine. Getting the holes lined up with the metal tubing... Gaffer Tape on the tube with some water on the tape made it easy to line up where the holes needed to go onto the plane. Amazingly when we put the perspex on the plane things just lined up. We were just amazed.

Not sure if I mentioned this yesterday, but I now have a material that I hate more than Stainless Steel. There is a material that is more hideously dangerous than perspex... More able to cut hapless fingers. Just more dangerous... It is PERSPEX. I actually got a couple of cut fingers yesterday from Perspex. With some luck today things will be better!

This being easter I guess I have to provide some chocolate links... Number one is an explosive chocolate bomb. Just what you need give a bang to the end of your dinner party... These might be the perfect acompanyment to edible chocolate rooms - including chocolate fireplace, vase, skirting boards and lickable wallpaper!

And just to show that the world has gone completely nuts, an American Marine reserveist returning from Iraq was refused access to fly since he was placed onto a watch list as a possible terrorist. He was trustworthy enough to fight for his country, but not to fly inside that country. That is just dumb. link.

Finally, windows keeps coming up with a message telling me to reboot since there is a patch that needs installing. I wish the message would go away. I will do it when I am good and ready.

The perspex canopy of the plane is now in pieces... No! This is a good thing. More work is needed but the canopy has been at least patially cut to size. The windscreen and the slide back part are now seperate, and we have not managed to do any major damage. Not yet at least.

Looks like I spoke too soon to a friend of mine. We were talking about ATM's and how Australia has not seemed to have many instances of any people placing devices onto the machines to capture the card information. That was at the beginning of the week. So a few minutes ago I saw an article in the SMH about how a device has been found in Sydney again... Oops... It will be interesting to see if any more devices are found.

Lomont.COM is about to release a 3D LED CUBE as a kit or fully built. The colour version looks so cute... Great as a sculpture in an office building, but probably not great in most homes. I think it would be fun to build this...

And a Uni in Germany has a project that also looks strange... They call it Snoil, and it uses a black 'feroelectric liquid' that sort of grows warts when the surface underneath is heated or something, and becomes flat when that is removed. They have used it in some type of weird game - like those where you have a ball bearing in a box with a maze and you have to navigate the ball by moving the box...

Whilst writing this entry I saw the video of The Buggles classic 80's song 'Video Killed the Radio Star'... I think this is only the third of fourth time I have ever seen this film clip... It is so 1980's...

Saying of the day

Today is friday, but Synday is coming!

I just read in the paper version of the Sydney Morning Herald that one of the original Pointer Sisters has died in L.A. I suspect it was complications following years of drug abuse, but that was not noted in the article. The Pointer Sisters were popular years ago with 'Jump (For my love)'.

A girl in the UK has been cured of cardiomyopothy which is an inflamation of the heart. For some reason when she received a heart transplant at age two, they left her heart in, and put her new heart on the other side of her body. Now, ten years later, her body was rejecting the new heart, so the doctors decided to reconnect her old heart back up, and use it. Surprisingly not only did it start, it no longer has signs of cardiomyopothy.

And The Register is reporting on a High Courty case in the UK that has found that an unsigned email was not legally binding even if it came from the person that the email address said it came from. Various lawyers suggest therefore that adding disclaimers to the bottom of emails may increase legal liability rather than reduce them... Interesting.

Midas in the USA ran a competition for the longest commute to work. The contest was won by a Cisco Employee who drives just under 300km each way between home and work. Yes - 300KM EACH WAY!!! The poor worker lives on the edge of Yosemate National Park. It takes about three hours each way, and he drives to and from work EVERY DAY. 2nd and 3rd places were about 15 and 30km shorter near Chicago and North Carolina.

I just find that these distances for a daily commute are far too far. I have a friend who drives about two hours each way each day... I just could not cope with that... Thankfully my daily commute is about 16 steps to get into my office down stairs. Much more civilised!

I don't drink... If I did I would love a new type of drink that mimics the results of alcohol, but without the horrible side effects. In addition, at the end of the evening there is actually an antidote that allows the person who was drinking to actually drive.

News.Com.AU is reporting that two Australians have been elected to the Italian parliment to represent ex-pats. Soon to be former president Belisconi is rather annoyed since the vote was rather close and Australia had a record number of infromal votes. [Many people did not realise that they needed to stick a barcode onto their ballot, and also needed to only vote one square, and not all of them like in the Australian elections.

Finally, the Finish town of Nokia is dumping all it's municipal landlines and replacing them with mobiles. Nokia is where the company Nokia started 140 years ago as a foresty company, and has no presence in the city any more.

The SMH has a story about a book that suggests childcare is not ideal for children. I guess I was under the impression that childcare was there for when parents were not able to look after their kids because of other commitments, not because it was the best thing for the child. I guess over the last few months I have seen that childcare can have a positive influence for a childs development, but I am still not convinced it is essential or ideal.

A company in the UK have started a huge business selling 2nd hand Windows XP Licenses. This is somewhat unique, and saves companies a lot of money. It is something that Microsoft does not really like at all, but they cannot do much about it...

You can tell it is easter... One whiff of easter and it startes to rain. We have had no rain for weeks, and now with the long weekend almost here we have had some rain... It does not matter when easter is... It always rains at easter!

I have just found a strange problem in some tracker code. I have implemented a 'state machine' does a number of things in a sequence. The best way to think of a state machine is thinking of a recipie... Do step 1 and then step 2 and then 3 and four and five. In my case what I said at step four was that rather than using step five of this recipie I should then use step 5 of another recipie. Not good. Thankfully it is now working a bit better. I still have another bug to resolve, but I think it will be somewhat easier to track down. Well, that is my hope.

I am trying really hard to get it out the door today so I can ship it off... So that it can be at the client by first thing tuesday morning. Funny thing saying that on a thursday, but tomorrow and monday are both public holidays here in Australia for easter. Thankfully the code seems to be working really well... Post office here I come!

Some people are seriously twisted. This being easter, someone has decided to make themselves an 'Easter Egg Cake'. No, not using the chocolate from Easter Eggs, but using the creme from Cadbury Creme Eggs. The cook decided to use the yolks from the eggs in a cake, and then threw out the chocholate shells... The cake did not turn out all that well...

The Random Good Stuff blog has details of a strange USB memory stick. This one is just really strange. It inflates, getting bigger as the memory gets filled up. Really, well just strange!

Today I have so much work to do... I am working on the plane much of the weekend so I need to catch up in advance....

Today I have got exactly ZERO things done from my to do list. Yes, NOTHING! Well, apart from a couple of meetings which did not actually make it onto the to do list anyway. And then there were some other bits and pieces, but in essence I have got very little done today :-(

The day was very disjointed... I did not get breakfast until about 9:30 and then I did not get lunch until 3:30 or so, basically when I got home. Much of the day was spent driving or waiting for meetings. Thankfully there was wireless access at one of the places so I was able to act on a few emails. I hope that this evening I will be able to get some items removed from my to-do list.

Anyway, some links... Firstly, comes an Interview with Steve Wozniac who invented the Apple computer... And here is a link to some formerly classified details of the Air Force One plane used by the president of the USA...

Back in Sydney... My trip to the central coast was fairly quick... I think the slowest part of my trip was the M2 from the western side to Pennant Hills road... At least that seemed to be the slowest. I think I was only up there just over an hour meaning that my travel time was more than the time on site. But it looks like I got more work from the trip!

Now I am just waiting to meet with another client. So I am on Wifi catching up on my eMail and doing things like updating my blog.

A quick post before bed... I have an early morning tomorrow as I need to drive up to Berkley Vale on the central coast so I need to get some sleep. Since I MUST be there early I need to also set my alarm tonight. I cannot remember the last time I set it.

Cryptome.ORG has an interesting link. They have details on the internals of the Airforce One plane in the USA - the plane that the President of the USA flies in. Most of this plane is classified, which made it rather strange that the US Government would release floorplans, vulnrabilities as well as listing areas that people should stay away from when the plane is operating... Very interesting.

My eyelids are about to close so I must wish all goodnight!

I have been really really busy today. My to-do list just had things added to it today rather than having things completed. So much so that even writing this entry in the blog has taken something like a few hours to get finished. As soon as I started writing something would interrupt me. I think I spent half the day on the phone with various people.

And emails were coming in all day. You name it, it was happening today. MSN messages too. Tomorrow morning I will be leaving home early to visit the central coast for a meeting - I wrote the address down on monday evening and now I cannot find the address... I guess I will ring up for it on the way up there.

Anyway I had better get back to work... I have emails to wade through...

There is a story in the SMH today, as well as most other news papers about a Uni of NSW student who did work on a search engine, who is now working for google. This sounds really really interesting. A friend of my brothers who just got a PhD from the Uni of NSW working on Artificial Intelligence is now working for google too. I am just wondering if the two are related. And since the Uni of NSW is not talking about the content of the technology, I am wondering if the PhD of my brothers friend might contain some more interesting revelations. A visit to the UNSW library might be reallly interesting.

Yesterday I commented about phone bills... But nothing is quite as bad as one from malaysia where a bill was received for about US$218 trillion. That is a lot of money. And they threatened legal action if it was not paid within 10 days. After all the interest on that money would be maybe US$30 billion each day. I am hoping that the bill was an error in data entry!

Some sort of good news... Qantas is probably killing off Australian Airlines today... The bad news is that it is most likely to pull this into Jetstar International, doing this as a way to concentrate on that brand.

The TV business is changing world wide... ABC in the USA have just announced that at the end of the month that their popular programs will be made available free on the internet with adverts. This will have a large impact in the USA... In Australia I expect the networks to find themselves in a difficult position when shows suddenly become hits in the USA but have decided not to broadcast the show here in OZ for a while.

And I have decided what I want to build when the plane is finished... A limousine!... Like this one.

Finally home... I had a meeting at Pymble this evening... Went well, although I now need to write up about 10 pages of notes, and then do design work. In other words I have a lot of work to do. Looks really interesting though - and the client seemed happy. Much of the meeting tonight was a brain dump of what the client wanted.

I was thinking of staying up on the central coast tonight but I decided against it for some reason. Thankfully I did not decided to do it since the meeting I thought was tomorrow is actually wednesday meaning that it would have been a wasted effort. Not sure why I was thinking that.

Whilst I was out I also spoke to a possible new reseller in scandenavia... Could be interesting... A site trip would be good!

I got an email today from a uni in the USA wanting to set up tracking equipment on their fleet of busses for students. I am just wondering if I can get a trip to the east coast of the USA out of it... I hope so, but I am not convinced. Might provide some interesting logistical challenges none the less... Unless I can provide someone local to do hardware and software installations. Hmm. How hard can that be.

According to the BBC, The FBI is investigating a hole in the cooling water system in a nuclear reactor in the USA. They believe that the whole was deliberately drilled, but are unsure if it was drilled by someone wanting to do something wrong, or if it was someone who who believed that they needed to do it as part of their job as part of an plant outage. The FBI are not playing games either with a $100,000 reward being offered.

You know you are about to have a bad day when :-
* Your phone company rings you up asking if they can provide their bill on CD instead of on paper.
* Your monthly phone bill comes by Parcel Post
* And it says on the outside 'Box 1 of 10'
* Your local post office rings to ask if you can collect your bill as it is blocking their deliveries
* You tell them it is OK to have the bill delivered by CD, and they ask if multiple DVD's are acceptable.

Ok. So most of these are not real life examples, but I think they could happen...

This photo is a classic bill from one of the Australian phone carriers. It is for a month's GPRS usage for 14 phones. The dollar amount was reasonable, but this is a great reason why itemmised billing is not good for GPRS! There were tons of free connections on this list!

I found something interesting about the various UNIX and LINUX distributions today. Commonly they limit the number of incoming TELNET and other sessions to something like 30 or 60, but finding how they do this is a real real pain. The settings are contained in the file /etc/xinetd.conf which is the process that spawns all the other listening processes. Notice the instances = 30 below.

defaults
{
        log_type        = FILE /var/log/xinetd.log 
        log_on_success  = HOST EXIT DURATION
        log_on_failure  = HOST ATTEMPT
        instances       = 30
        cps             = 50 10
}

Well, this can be changed to instances = 128 or instances = unlimited. Once this is changed, xinetd needs to be restarted with the command service xinetd restart or /etc/rc.d/xinetd restart.

I am feeling rested now after building yesteday... This week is liable to be a busy week so I was glad I got enough sleep last night. Tonight I have a meeting, and then tomorrow I have an early morning one on the central coast... I have not decided if I will stay in a hotel the night, or come home. Probably come home... Only adds an extra 40 minutes or so, and I am not planning to be up there quite that early... Maybe ariving up there at 8AM or a bit before. And maybe a meeting tomorrow night - we will see.

I have so many emails to go through today - needing to catch up with things from the end of last week. Programming to do, hardware to work on, and emails to send. I need to also catch up on all the things that I will not get a chance to do tomorrow... Need to go... A friend has just MSN'ed needing some assistance... more soon.

Finally home.. Long day. I have been building this afternoon, and I am about to fall on the keyboard asleep. But I wanted to get my Blog updated before that. Today we spent more time working on the canopy frame. Well, mostly richard since this is one of those jobs where a 2nd person is needed, but mostly on demand as required rather than all the time. Something like one minute every four minutes to do really instensive things like act as ballast whilst bending the steel. After spending about another six or seven hours the frame is now the correct shape.

And we WILL NOT be trying to get it any better. It is good enough. This means that over the next couple of weeks we will be installing the tail and cutting the perspex canopy. That will be fun. And potentially expensive if something goes wrong... It will be an interesting experience no matter what!

Anyway bed time for me! Good Night

I just saw that the greatest movie that I have never seen has been awarded the greatest script ever. Casablanca was awarded the best by the writers guild in the USA. I have it on DVD... I will have to watch it one of these days...

I have found a news story that suggests that Microsoft is looking at buying Sony.

Another of those songs that I love and cannot get out of my head at the moment is Madonna's Take a Bow.

Take a bow, the night is over
This masquerade is getting older
Lights are low, the curtains down
There's no one here
[There's no one here, there's no one in the crowd]
Say your lines but do you feel them
Do you mean what you say when there's no one around [no one around]
Watching you, watching me, one lonely star
[One lonely star you don't know who you are]

Brainiac has come up with an even worse excess with microwave ovens... And they came up with one that I would never ever have thought of. They put a stick of dynamite and some ball bearings into a microwave oven. Actually I think it was one of the more dangerout ones since the ball bearings caused the microwaves to eat through the door mesh before exploding. A couple of liters of liquid nitrogen in the microwave was also rather explosive... perhaps even more so than the dynamite.

And Oh, No! They have just worked out what the smallest room you need to swing a cat... No, they didn't use a real cat, but a stuffed one, and found that it was 2.5m x 2.5m...

Every time I go back to VB.NET and work on the toolstrip I get different results. Right now I have managed to get all the toolbar items and the menu into a single line, but not only do I not know how I did it, but now I have managed to get the menu to be the 2nd item on the toolbar, and not the first. The problem is that I cannot find much documentation on the new toolbar system.

There are times that I cannot get a tune out of my head. Right now it is 'David Bowie's' Life on Mars?. I have not quite worked out what this song means, but the lyrics are certainly telling a story.

It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go

But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen

But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

On other subjects, authorities are looking at cell phone jammers in the states prisions. Actually maybe the best way is to build a microcell inside the prison, and force nearby cellphones to use it... Interesting idea.

I was going to say something profound here, but then I got distracted and I totally forget what I was going to say. Ah, now I remember. A friend fowarded me a link to a heads up display for motorcycles, and I thought this was cool, and suggested it might be good to use as part of a geographic game using GPS and TRON type Light Cycles. The response was 'Uh?'

Doing a little searching on the Web I found a link to Light Cycles on Wikipedia. Basically LightCycles are a life size computer generated 3D version of SNAKE that is often found on Mobile Phones. Except that this is multi-user, and in 3D. That is the trails become walls, and you can only see in front of you rather than from above. This puts a different view on the game, and makes it somewhat harder. What I was suggesting that using a heads up display in a huge field with very good communications links would allow this game to be played in real time in real life.

Quote of the Day

'I photocopy, therefore I know'.

Another saturday off with no building one. I should be building tomorrow though. Today I will be catching up on some work that I did not get done in the last couple of days... I have some emails to work though, and some other things to work on. I might need to buy a new pair of side cutters - I managed to loose a pair yesterday I think too.

I have worked out why my Internet connection was having issues last weekend. I discovered that somewhere in the connection between me and the outside world was a piece of hardware that did not like it when there were somewhat more than 250 outgoing connections open at any one time. Since I did not seem to have trouble with incoming email or Web traffic I am guessing that it was outgoing packets only having an issue.

And once a connection was working (such as remote desktop), the speed on the link was good. Therefore it was not a bandwidth problem. This leads me to think that either my firewall or my modem were having issues with the number of connections with 'NAT' or Network Address Translation. NAT is only really used for outgoing connections since incoming ones get forwarded to a specific machine. So my guess is that the NAT table was getting filled up meaning that more outgoing requests were failing - for things such as WWW or anything else. I suspect that this is actually my ADSL modem that has problems.

And a link... Qantas has decided to charge people using credit cards to book $12 for an international ticket, and $4.50 for a domestic one, but they will be offering BPay. Also, Telstra will be offering selected people a $90 / month all you can eat local and long distance phone plan. About time really.

There are some days when I feel as if life would be easier if I quit doing what I did and decided to take up something like, i dunno, um, sweeping streets. Opps... Actually that is what I was doing today. Literally. I was working on street sweepers at a council depot. I was installing some GPS units onto the vehicles, which might sound easy, but it was anything but.

The first unit took about four hours to install. Things were not going my way. Installing the antenna was easy... Powering it was a real real pain. It just was not working. Sweeper goes up. Sweeper goes down. Sweeper goes up. Sweeper goes down. Eventually I got the thing installed. Installing unit number two took just over an hour. I guess experience is what was needed. I still have one more unit to install. I am hoping that it might be even faster to install. I am not sure when that unit will be available.

All in all I did not get home for lunch until about 3pm, and I needed to go down to the child care centre for another few interviews at 3:30pm. And now I am finally home. Right now I am definitely putting my feet up and relaxing. Boy, do I need that!

Thankfully I am feeling a whole lot better today. In a few minutes I am intending to get ready for the work I have on this moring, although I have not committed in my own mind to doing it. I think right now that I give myself a 90% chance to doing the work. But I need to do some things first to get ready... Like finish building the units to be installed. This should only take 20 minutes I would guess... I also need to think in my own mind how things need to be connected up. And then document some things.

Around the time of the Olympics in Greece, it became aparent that about 100 cellphones in the country were being bugged. This included people like the prime minister and top members of the Government. The greeks are still trying to work it all out - but the bugging was technically interesting. They modified the software in the cellphone network to put the calls from the cellphones of interest into a one way conference call, where another cellphone could be used to listen in. Being wireless there was less chance of being caught even if it was discovered.

The interesting thing is that the main suspect in the is the american spy agencies.

I am feeling a bit disappointed with myself today - I have not managed to get much work done today because I have not really felt up to it. I have work that I have wanted to do, but I have not felt up to doing it. This afternoon I did not even want to look at my email shows that I have not been totally well. But the problem is that I do not feel totally horrible means that I am finding it hard to take it easy when I know that I need to do that to get better...

[OK, I am not as well as I thought... I just had another low intensity dizzy episode for about a second]. I can see myself having an early night tonight... Probably sooner rather than later...

Right now I am actually feeling a bit tired... And that I dont think is because I was awake at 3:30AM... I think it is other things, although I am not sure what. I managed to have a small nap a little while back, and it was quite refreshing. Sometime after the nap I raced down to Blackwoods to pick up some industrial velcro, and found that Blackwoods have closed down their local shop. Thankfully it was only a short trip and did provide me with a chance to get out... Tomorrow I am due to install some hardware, although I am still not sure if I will be up to it yet. I just need to see how things go overnight.

I just had a phone call asking if I can also attend an interview tomorrow at the child care centre... Should be interesting... I just hope that my install job is finished by the time of the interview.

I am actually feeling a bit better than I was earlier. I have not been outside or anything like that... And I feel a bit strange though if I tilt my head back - slightly queezy and dizzy. Not a good feeling I can tell you.

Artificial ears are not commonplace with the cochlear implants... Now there are a few people around the workd how are getting optical implants with a video camera to bring some sight to the blind.

Right now the plan was to be visiting a couple of people doing some work for me. Unfortunately I am not feeling up to it - I am slightly uneasy on my feet and feel a bit giddy if I move my head too much, or even worse if I tilt my head back. Strangely typing and watching TV are not too bad, but I did not think that an hours drive each way to the meeting was going to be entirely safe. Given the weather outside it is probably a good idea that I am safe and sound inside. It is really blowing a gale outside, and I would not be surprised if tree branches were coming down all over the place.

So I have been here in the lounge room watching some TV... Amongst other things life on mars which is not actually about life on mars, but the life of a police officer who has been transported 33 years into the past... Not a bad show from the BBC really... Quite enjoyable.

Why is it that sometimes people cannot sleep in the middle of the night sometimes, even when they know they are tired? Right now it is 3:30AM and I have been awake for probably 45 minutes, and since I could not seem to get back to sleep I thought I would get up and check my email and the like. Living in a global economy I often get interesting emails overnight... Alas, not tonight... Just some spam and a few mailing list messages... All of which got put into the deleted items bucket. Ok... One of the mailing list items I forwarded on before deleting...

One of my friends found a strange item... A USB flash drive. What is strange about that? Not much, except that this one is 64 GBytes in size. Not a bad capacity. Finally a size that is reasonable. And if you can put it in a flash drive, I can see a 32 GByte version of the iPod NANO coming soon too... Unless Apple is scared of using the worlds supply of FLASH memory... If I was Apple I would be scared of that.

Anyway I think I am now ready to go back to bed for some more sleep... Good Night

The interview panel for the child care centre was interesting. I cannot say much about it because of privacy issues, but I learned some things about the dynamics of interview panels. Being a smalller organisation, interview panels are less formal than I had experienced in my time at Pacific Power. In the end one of the interviewees was not able to come, and we adjusted the interview times accordingly. Thus I was out of there sooner than I may otherwise have been. Each of the interviews was also shorter than I had been expecting... In the first couple of interviews I was somewhat timid not wanting to ask much... but I improved as time went on.

All in all I found the panel very useful. Next week I will be on another panel for other positions in the centre. Should be more of a learning experience.

I tried ClickOnce a little while back - which is a way with Microsoft VisualStudio to create a program that installs from the web and automatically updates itself everytime it runs. This worked well on my own laptop, but it did not quite work with my old test laptop. When you try to run the program an XML file comes up in Internet Explorer. Not sure what is happening there - it just does not work properly.

I love this... I just had a call from a client... They needed some help getting a printer to work. So I got them to use Remote Assistance, and I used remote desktop to get into their computer. I was able to fix their problem very very quickly, remotely. They loved it... Now to invoice them :-)

One of the the things that I promise to get done this morning (in the next hour) is to implement the auto-sort function in my TeamTrack application. Right now over time the table showing vehicle details gets un-sorted... I have wanted an auto-sort feature for some time, and the control I have been using to display the table has not had the required functionality. Thankfully there is now a 'stay sorted' mode which I intend to add today. How hard can it be?

There are some things which deserve to be illegal. This is one of them. I was just on a SKYPE call with a friend of mine - and someone in the background comment that it was the captain speaking, and that they were soon going to be starting their decent, and that the temperature in Sydney was 25 degrees today... My friend was using their laptop using WiFi on a 747 probably 500 miles out of sydney. Cute!

The roof of the new Westpac building in Kent street in the city has a sculpture on the roof... But this is something different... it is a Life Size Barometer.

In the USA, Coca Cola has released a new drink. This is a drink that was designed for the Australian market amongst a couple of others, but is now being introduced to the US market. It is an energy drink based on a combination of Coffee and Coke. I cannot wait until it comes to Australia to try out.

And finally, according to the SMH, Digital Radio is coming to Australia in the next few years... Interesting...

Not sure where I saw it, but it looks like Australia is going to introduce a DO NOT CALL register for all telemarketing calls in Australia, and all calls from overseas on behalf of Australian companies. And there would be legislative restrictions on the times that calls can be made, and identification requirements and the like. This is not before time.

The NY Times is reporting that Showtime in the USA hasv been given first right of refusal to the Smithsonian archive. Basically this would give them first access to anything in the archive and restrict access to others for public domain material.

Finally, looking at the SMH showed that one of the most popular articles was one on how New Idea were telling WHY TOM AND NICOLE SPLIT. Well, it seems that 'FBI tapes tell why tom and nicole split', but from what I can work out there is no detail in the magazine as to the contents of the tapes. But the tapes are actually made by a private investigator, and are probably a violation of US law. And publishing details would get you in serious hot water. Here in Australia the 'Telecommunications (Interceptions) Act' would really put you in hot water.

News.Com.AU is reporting that officially the new Simpsons Movie is actually being made, with a release in the middle of next year. One of the graphics that has been released shows Homer in a Christine Keeler position behind a chair.

The IMDB page for Stephen Fry has a great quote... "The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail". Stephen is in the movie V for Vendetta... Speaking of that movie, Larry Wachowski is reportedly becoming Lana Wachowski... He also did The Matrix with his brother Andy.

Finally home after a 6:30 meeting at the church. I learned so much about what is happening in the Child Care arena... And what is happening with church finances... More soon.

Windows is starting to annoy me. Take the following example from a piece of software I am working on. This is a toolbar that should be all on one line.

Can you see the minor problem? How did I get to this? Well, I was clicking to edit the event on the pulldown, and that is what happened? How? Not sure!

How do I fix this? I do not really know. Moving things by hand sort of works, but I think I have missed something. I do not understand!

I had a phone call from the preschool... I am on an interview panel tomorrow for some new staff members... Something that I volunteered about because I have never been on a panel and I thought it would be good experience. The questions are being emailed to me later today so I have some time to prepare... It will be an interesting experience...

Daylight saving has lots and lots of advantages. For better or worse, the sunrise and sunset times change throughout the year, and it makes sense to vary the time of things in relation to these. But what this does mean is a type of jet lag effect when the times change. For instance I woke up at about 5:30AM this morning. This was not the time I wanted to wake up, and I could not get back to sleep. So some time before 6AM I am out of bed doing stuff. In the old daylight saving world, this would have been 6:30 AM which is a more respectable time for voluntarily getting out of bed.

In what has to be one of the strangest pieces of logic ever, the LA Times is reporting that some companies in the USA are about to offer movie downloads for US$20-30. This might not seem too dumb, until you realise that the DVD could be bought at Walmart for $15. They claim that there is the convenience factor for downloading the movie... Maybe if it took the 30 seconds it took to download an MP3 file, but movies are a lot bigger, and therefore take a lot longer to download. Also if you buy the DVD you get the case and all the extras. Hmm..

During my run today I did some more thinking about the movie 'V for Vendetta'... The more I think about it, the more I feel that this movie (or the comic that it is based on) is a possibility to replace 1984 in secondary schools for study. The movie is really a cerebral movie requiring thought. There are certain paralells between V and 1984, and certain differences. Whereas 1984 is is a pessimistic view of the world, V is more optimistic - apart from the fact that the 'V' world got there to begin with.

I really need to re-read 1984... It is a classic book, but I have not read it since Highschool. And thanks to the Australian Copyright law, it is out of copyright in this part of the world so I have the option of downloading it legally rather than buying it or downloading it. You can get your own copy here...

The I, Cringely article on PBS.ORG has some interesting microsoft facts. The first thing is that the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, owns a large number of microsoft shares, but has a 'collar' on them so he is protected from the Microsoft Share Price going up or down. The important thing here is that this protects him in case he wishes to give evidence against Microsoft. And given that Iowa is not likely to settle with the anti-trust case against microsoft, things might get interesting. Cringely makes a few interesting statements about the business ethics of Bill Gates in the early days of the company...

About.COM has some information on the controls that are new in VB.NET 2005. What I did not realise was that Microsoft FINALLY released a new serial port control. I might be able to finally stop using the third party control that I needed to pay for... MSDN has some complaints about VS 2005, including that the new version is slow and slightly buggy. Given the issues I am having with Toolbars I agree!

Also, according to the News.COM.AU, Australia has sophisticated coffee tastes, and are more demanding than any other countries in the world.

Begin an rant... And more... on VisualStudio 2005.

The first thing I wanted to do was to create a new thread to do some work. So the first thing that I need to do is to create a thread - an empty one. While we are at it we will also create a semaphore to indicate when the thread should be run.

Private thdLiveUpdate As Thread
Private Semaphore as Boolean = False

Then we just need to tell the thread to run out code... creating an instance of the thread if needed.

private sub RunThread()
    If thdLiveUpdate Is Nothing Then
        thdLiveUpdate = New Thread(AddressOf ThreadLiveUpdate)
    End If
    Semaphore = True
End Sub

This next bit of code will run a thread called ThreadLiveUpdate whenever Semaphore is true. In this case UpdateStatusBar is also important since we need to update the GUI from the thread.

Private Sub ThreadLiveUpdate()
    While True
        If Semaphore Then
            UpdateStatusBar("Updating Positions")
            DoSomethingUseful()
             UpdateStatusBar("")
            Semaphore = False
        End If
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000)
    End While
End Sub

We wanted to use Me.StatusBar1.Text = "StatusBar1", but this would be running in the wrong thread. So we get the update to run in another thread. Do do this we create a 'Delegate'

Delegate Sub UpdateStatusBarCallback(ByVal [TEXT] As String)

Then we use the InvokeRequired to see if the function is in the correct thread space. Strangely I could not find an InvokeRequired function in the StatusBar that I was using so I used another graphical element.

Private Sub UpdateStatusBar(ByVal [TEXT] As String)
    If Me.grdOutlook.InvokeRequired Then ' Not the right onject but it works
        Dim d As New UpdateStatusBarCallback(AddressOf UpdateStatusBar)
        Me.Invoke(d, New Object() {[TEXT]})
    Else
        Me.StatusBar1.Text = [TEXT]
    End If
End Sub

As I mentioned, I have a rant too... The problem is that I cannot work out how to move items on the TabStrip. It does not behave itself. Notice the place of the menu on the graphic below? I cannot work out how to move it... Can you spell BUG?

I did about 3km in my run. Not bad. Near the end I started to feel out of breath. I will have to take note of that in the future and see if I can run without feeling that way.

So many projects... So little time. If I did not have an antique dining table, maybe I would build one of these. Then again I might not... It is a classic - with close to 450 LED's built in. You can read about it here.



The other cute project I found is a serial multiplexor, that converts one serial port into 20 serial ports...

I am busy getting through some email messages... So many to go through. Sometimes I just need to spend some time going through messages that I have promised to come back to. Things like my ISP changing the dialup options and other things.

I have had an Ozemail account for about 10 years... on the basis of only paying for hours I use. But now they are killing that account type off, and want to charge a per month charge, and then an amount for excess usage. I have an email account attached to that ISP (VK2TDS@ozemail.com.au) which thankfully is not being used by anyone anymore. But I think it is now time to kill it off. Westnet have global roaming for no extra per month, and the per hour rates inside australia are actualy cheaper than Ozemail were. So easy

When I went to the cinema saturday I tried to use my Cinebuzz customer loyalty card to get a discount... The person behind the counter had no record of the discount being available - it was released a few days before on the Greater Union web site... Rather than fight it at the time (hey, I might have been wrong about what I read), I decided to contact them today... There are no phone numbers on their web site so I have submitted an online form... We will see what happens.

In a little while I will be going for a run. The weather seems good so I should be able to get a good session in...

It has not been reported widely, but there was a satellite outage over Australia over the last few days. Many of the Foxtel/Austar and NZ SkyTV channels were off air after an Optus satellite had some issues following slightly adjusting its position. Not much information is available on what went on, but some information is available on Whirlpool.

UKTV has had a documentory on called 'To the Moon'. This has been a facinating story on the moon landing - detailing things I had no idea about some of the issues that were faced on the hostoric and epic voyage. One of the things that it told was the story of Earthrise, which I must say is one of the most fantastic photos ever taken. I don't know why, but I always assumed that this photo was taken from the surface of the moon itself.

I am not sure what is going on with my Internet access at the moment... The speed seems fine, but HTTP (web) traffic seems really really slow. I suspect that there might be a faulty web proxy somewhere, but I am not sure here. WWW access from two of my machines is problematic, but connecting to a machine elsewhere on the same ISP using Remote Desktop yields fast web browsing.

I dont think it would be my firewall acting up but it is impossible to tell really. Looking at the ISP's WWW site says that nothing is wrong. If things are not better tomorrow I will investigate further. But I am finding the performace really really strange. Doing some quick tests it seems to be limited to traffic outside the 'free' part of the net... That is I have no problems connecting to another user on teh same ISP.

Anyway tomorrow I will see what happens, and investigate as needed...

One thing I forgot to mention is that a friend of mine was off to the Philapines today for a few days for a work job. I got told to stay on SKYPE since he told me that the business class on the flight had satellite internet access... I was not quite so sure as they want to cache web pages where the can. Since I have not heard from my friend all I can guess is that there was no internet access available on the flight.

I got an SMS from my father from CHINA... He let me know that he was having fun, and was at the Yanze river... And that he was about to be outside mobile coverage for a period of several days.

Watching a show on TV there was a quote... 'If your first footstep is up to your ankle, and your 2nd footstep is up to your knee, make sure that your third footstep is backwards.' Fairly good idea I think.

And strange for April 1, the BBC have Accounced that not only have scientists proved that the neutrino exist, but that the sub-atomic particle has pass. When I was at school we were taught that the neutrino had no mass, and that there was not even any proof that the neutrino existed. How times change.

I have just been watching a show from the UK called 'Beauty and the Geek' which is absolutly hilarious. This is a show that has seven models and seven geeks and puts them in a reality TV competition where the geeks are having to learn about things such as womens fashion, and the models are having to learn about things such as science and technology - or in other words it is a fish out of water type reality TV show. The difference here is that they have to form pairs, and then need to bring each other up to speed on the topic. It is hilarious.

Wikipedia now has a list of this years April Fools Day pranks... The one I loved the most was that Google added some visitors to GoogleEarth... And also a dog to the White House.

News Story of the Day... The Register is reporting that Google has been purchased by China! Yeah... Happy April Fools Day!

The Mobile Gazette is reporting for April Fools Day that the UK government is shutting down the countries GSM phone networks to set up a mobile gambling network. YOu can tell that this is a April Fools day thing since you can actually run gambling machines over GSM...

OpenOffice.Org is reporting on their homepage that they have been purchased by Microsoft. They are reporting that Microsoft will offer OpenOffice 2.0 file formats in office sometime in the next 15 years.

Finally, The LA Times is reporting that a poor person in California was charged about US$4300 for four hamburgers. This is not an april fools joke. The assistant accidently charged $4,334.33 instead of $4.33 when entering the details for processing on the poor consumers credit card.

As people might have worked out from my previous post, today is April 1. That is April Fools Day. And the internet is full of April Fools Day things. SlashDot for instance has gone PINK for the day. That is a light ping on a white background.

Think Geek have released a Wireless Extension Cord... But alas, I think it only works at 110V. And LucasFilm releasing a new line of Adult Starwars Novels.

The Economist is reporting that Scientists are close to creating a dragon.

Now, finally a Google service for me... Google Romance Beta... Or as Google put it, Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google! According to Google you can

• Upload your profile – tell the world who you are, or, more to the point, who you’d like to think you are, or, even more to the point, who you want others to think you are.
  
• Search for love in all (or at least a statistically significant majority of) the right places with Soulmate Search, our eerily effective psychographic matchmaking software.
  
• Endure, via our Contextual Dating option, thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date.

It is worth while checking out!

On the subject of GPS Receivers, Navman have released a GPS with an internal HDD, and some photos of landmarks on the way. The best feature I like is the 3D graphics showing where you should be going. The 3D graphics looks better than the 2.5D used at the moment...

More on V for Vendetta... There are some fantastic quotes on IMDB... Like when V introduces himself... 'This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. '.

And...

Evey Hammond: Who--who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what... and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking on the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.

There are so many classic lines in the movie... The other thing was that this was my first time at the new Campbelltown cinema... I liked it. The new chairs were reallly comfortable, and the armrests were really wide. They have assigned seating which can be a mixed blessing... But I liked it...

I have just returned from the movies seeing 'V for Vendetta'. I am not sure how to describe this movie - maybe it could be described as half way between 1984 and Phantom of the Opera. Actually I think it is more of a modern day 1984... The movie had many of the darker elements from Phantom, as well as many of the elements from 1984.

There is violence in the movie, but there is also subtlety in there too. The movie comes from the makers of The Matrix, and was initially going to be made before The Matrix movies - however it is probably better that it was made in the post-September 11 political climate... I am not sure about any other members of the audience but I certainly saw some similarities with current climate and that in the movie. And just as with Phantom we learn that we can lover a murderer.

There are a few things that I would love to talk about but which would spoil the movie for others. Needless to say that tou should not believe everything... Some things are there just to teach a lesson... There are a couple of things I do not understand about the story, but these will need to wait until I get the movie on DVD... And I will be buying it on DVD...

I found myself sitting there in the theatre with my mouth open for the first 10 minutes or so.. I was just amazed at the message... What is it the say... those who do not learn from history are doomed to relive it.

I am looking at going to the cinema today... Something different. V for Vendetta looks good... I guess I need to make the decision in the next little while, but I will just see what else is going on...

I was interested to read an article in the SMH about the Funnel Web Spider antidote. What was most interesting here was the fact that the Australian Reptile Park was involved in extracting the venim from spiders... And they mentioned the Worrell family. Di Worrell was the HR manager at Pacific Power when I was there... Interesting.