Oshkosh Airshow

Unfortunately the Oshkosh Airshow has made the SMH after one plane taxied into another as they were about to take off on Sunday, killing a passenger. This is the third death at the airshow which attracts about 250,000 participants and over 10,000 aircraft... Earlier in the show a couple died when their plane crashed on approach to the airport.

I meant to post this earlier, but I found out that the Computer HDD is about to turn 50. And for the size, I would not suggest you use the old IBM Hdd for your iPod. Even if the HDD was fast enough which I doubt, and even if the CPU was fast enough to decode the MP3 datastream, which it was not since it was using valves, the HDD was not big enough. Or was it too big. It was the size of two oversized fridges, containing 50 magnetic HDD 'platters'...

And in one of the cabinets was an air compressor so even if the other technology worked you certainly could not hear the MP3 player. Air compressors are fairly noisy. You certainly do not want one in your lounge room... Anyway the entire HDD could not even fit two MP3 copies if the Elvis Presley song Hound Dog on it since the total capacity is 5 MBytes. All this for only the equivalent of US$250,000 in todays dollars... Good value I guess :-)

Personally I like the 40 GByte HDD in my iPod... It does not weigh much, uses almost no power, and is quiet. Amazing what 50 years of development can achieve.

When I was cleaning yesterday I managed to find a heap of my papers from when I went around the world last time. Essentials like a map of London, and brochures of what to see over there. I found these by accident, which is sort of cool since it may have taken a long time to find them if I had gone looking.

Speaking of which I have chosen a hotel that I want to stay at in London. Firstly I found it was cheaper not to buy direct on the Internet. This is not surprising... What was surprising was that it gave an email address for asking questions about the hotel. So I asked how much internet was, and making sure they had internet access in rooms. The response was that I needed to contact the hotel direct. Thanks for nothing. Replying asking for an email so I could contact them direct was met with silence.

I have not managed to get much useful work done today - lots of minor things - such as a SKYPE to a clinet in the middle of the Pacific, and a trip to the local electronics store for some parts. Now I need to actually do something with the parts that I picked up. I was scared that some of them were going to be too big, but it does not appear that this will be the case.

I spelt in this morning, obviously catching up on sleep - and must have got about 8 1/2 hours rest. This is a lot for me - not that I am complaining of course - it is nice to wake up after sunrise. It happens too rarely at this time of year.

And according to the BBC, it looks like the new James Bond movie is going to be delayed somewhat after a sound stage at Pinewood Studios in the UK was destroyed by fire overnight. The last time that the studios had a fire it took 12 months to rebuild the building. My guess is that they will be looking for a new hanger space to build a set in PDQ in an attempt to rescue the movie.

The PoliTech Web Site has a story about how more members of US Congress have been stopped by watch lists than terrorists themselves. Also, of the 400 people charged with terrorism in the USA, only 10% have been convicted of charges relating to terrorism. However of the 400, 50% have been convicted of something, which could be as simple as speeding. Still saying that 400 have been charged and 50% have been convicted of a crime is a great sound bite for the news.

I had a productive time in my office earlier - not doing work stuff, but doing domestic tasks, like vacuuming the floor and dusting the bookcase. So much so that I actually needed to empty the vacuum cleaner. Some time in the garage allowed me to also fill up the garbage bin I keep in there with junk. I want to throw more stuff out, but I just need to find it.

Tomorrow I have a heap of programming to do - I hope to get some work back from a colleague tomorrow afternoon which I need to integrate. But until then I have a heap of work to do with the WebServices stuff. One thing I want to do is save some of the intermediate data downloaded from the server to reduce the bandwidth requirements when the application starts up.

I still have not re-installed Norton's AntiVirus. My computer just seems to work better without it. I will see when I have the courage to do it. And when I do it will only be for incoming email I think. Border security in other words. I do not really need it to be seaching files that are already on my PC... I could probably get by without the anti-virus, but I should install it. I just should

Yesterday I was looking at Wikipedia, just looking at holiday stuff - and found that the Bangkok airport was about to be closed, and a new airport opened. It took some research to find that the new airport will open at the end of September. I should not have spent so much time on research since I found a story on news.com.au about the first flights to the airport to test it out. From the reports that I have read I would stay away from Bangkok Airports about 27-September to about 3-October. Actually probably a few weeks after that would probably be a good idea, but it is my guess that things are going to be chaos between those dates.

Also looking at Wikipedia I saw that Bletchley, the home of Bletchley Park, has a tiny bit of history just near the railway station. Hey, it is in the UK, and everything has history. Anyway, I found out that Marshall Amplifiers, who are really popular with modern musciians, has its factory at the railway station... I will have to drop by and see if they have a Museum or anything - Marshall is *THE* standard brand for modern bands.

Rebooting my PC today I found that my PC was giving me Nortons Antivirus errors... So I removed it with a view to reinstalling it... Funny thing is that my computer is now running a heap faster... Anyway I have to go - I have a SKYPE to answer

I grabbed the new Shakira album today - and I have listened to it and really like it. By 'Listened to it' I mean I had it on and then layed down in the lounge chair in my office. Next thing I knew the album had finshed and I was trying hard to wake up after a short nap. Normally I have no problem waking up... There are times though that I just cannot seem to drag myself fully conscious and awake.

I have had a mostly productive morning today - let me list the ways... I have done the paper work for my BAS for GST. I have done my group certificate. I have paid the tax department my Tax. I have even sent off the paperwork including the group certificates. Then I have sent off the paperwork to my accountant to do my personal tax return. I have sorted my business accounts for last finanical into phone statements, receipts, invoices and filed them all in a folder for archiving. And then I have quickly gone through files and worked out that I can throw some out, and I have!

I have placed an order for some hardware for a client and invoiced the client too - and arranged for the supplier to ship direct which is even better since it saves some money on shipping and it means that the client will get the hardware sooner. And I have also gone through some boxes in the garage and determined that there are some things there that I can get rid of too. And done some shopping too.

And to top things off I have also done a bit of programming - well, enough to work out that I have a few more functions that I cannot finish writing code for since I forgot to specify a few functions. Like, I got functions written to add data to a database, modify it, and even delete it. Only thing I forgot is the function to get the data once it is in there. Without that the functions are not all that useful since the only way to access the database is through the Web Services. And the WebServices do not have the Get function.

I am up to about 150 function calls in the WebServices. Unfortunately there are a few missing that I wanted to play with over the next few days - ones that I had forgotten to define... Still, in the next few days these will be definied so things will be working well. The functions that are there are generally working well, although I am finding the occasional strange result. With such a complex system it is only with using the software that bugs are detected.

Tomorrow I have about fix minutes work to do on my tax. I need to fill in my group certificate and my bas. I have done all the work - I now just need to fill in the paperwork. Then I can put in my tax return - and i should get a nice tax return.

Right now though, I am reading an article in the gardian about a move to clone Coca Cola... and the results are fairly close. The group is even publishing their recipe and describes the problems they are having with manufacture. Really insightful.

I am getting used to the beast called SQLserver. It really is not that much of a beast, but it is a pain to use at times. I just got in my new WebServices stuff from my programmer overseas, and I needed to delete a single table so that an upgrade database script would work. As much as I tried nothing would work. Nothing. It kept telling me that I could not do what I needed to do. Fine. I will delete the database and loose the data and import the database my programmer sent me. Great idea, except it kept saying it could not get exclusive access to the database. WHY? I just blew it away. Nothing is connected to it except me. Ah, well.

After a while I eventually get the new database imported. Probably 15-20 minutes of my time wasted for some reason that I have no knowledge of. Just wasted. But there is one thing I do need to say. It is better than Oracle. I find Oracle just 'strange'. They are about the only company in the world who could send a consultant to your business at $1500/day who litereally does not know a thing about the product and needs to spend most of the day on the phone - so much so that the phone used by the consultant runs out of battery. I guess the charge is to pay for both people and the phone charges.

I just got invited to a PocketPC programming day - it sounds really really interesting. It is being run by one of my clients, although I think I was more invited as an expert rather than an attendee :-) Anyway, I cannot go - I will be out of the country at the time. Ahh, well. Maybe I will think about the training course whilst lying back on a beach somewhere. Maybe not!

I have lost count of the number of times I have lost my pen today. It just goes missing - AWOL if you like. Then I find it and I lose it again. And then I find it somewhere dumb, like in my pocket - which I am sure I have already checked about three dozen times. And no, my pen is not in my pocket right now - I am not sure where it is.

One of the things that has never really been, um, exploited, is a 'Mickey Mouse'. That is a Mouse with Mickey Mouse on it. So someone has come up with a mouse with a small video screen on it which you can display a mouse with. Cute...

Bugger

Bugger! I just have to say it again. Bugger. I have been searching for some connectors for some trackers I am getting in. I can buy the connectors in Australia for about $2.50 per connector. But the pins are extra, and cost about 10 cents each. And the connector uses 12 pins. Sure, I can use only the three pins I need, but I would rather put all in so that the wire does not pull out. Provides some more mechanical strength.

So I am seaching using the Google Toolbar... I normally add 'Site:au' to the end of the line... but this only works the first time you use the toolbar with google results... The Site:au goes missing from the top and only appears on the google page. So I did another search and found the connectors I wanted. They ended up being about $1.50 for 10 of the connectors. Pins are about another 20 cents. Great. Where is this company. USA. Ok. I can have them here in under a week.

Oh, But they do not ship internationally. Bugger!!! Canada is the only exception. Bugger. Ok... Where are they. Maybe I can get someone to pick them up and send them to me. Ahh... Santa Ana. BUGGER. I was there last year for the conference. BUGGER. BUGGER. BUGGER. BUGGER. What you need to realize that I do not know anyone who lives in Santa Ana in California.

But a very good friend of mine was there this time yesterday. We was driving through the place in a Taxi! 24 hours ago!!! BUGGER!

Hmm... Final check inside Australia. Ahh, Altronics has the connectors. PERFECT. Only $1.45 each with the pins. Still about five times the US price, but I can have them here tomorrow!

Unsecured access points can be a problem... they are a double edged sword... they allow other people to use your internet access - but on the other hand they allow you to use someone elses internet access. This is great if you are at a hotel that is charging US$10 per day for accecss.

So a guy in the USA has come up with a solution to this... He has created a rule for his access point where people who are recognised get one set of IP addresses, and others get a second set. And if people come from this second set of addresses, they have interesting things done to their internet experience. And the results need to be seen to be believed. They are hard to explain. He calls it the Upside-Down-Ternet rather than the internet. He takes any images on a www page and turns them upside down. Or makes them out of focus.

It does not stop browsing the net, just makes you realise that you are using someone elses resources. Please do check out the link as it is worth it.

Also news today is that JetStar is charging its new international pilots about $33K to be trained to fly their Airbus planes. They have decided to do this rather than forcing pilots to be trained to get a job, or be bonded to work for the company for some time. This might sound a lot until you recognise that they are getting about $180K per year once they are qualified.

I think I had too much caffene yesterday - rather than falling asleep immediately I kept waking up, and I was rather restless during the night. Note to self - do not drink so much coffee... I really love coffee, always have. But I do not tend to drink it at home, and yesterday I just had too much instant coffee... I will learn.

Another lesson - if you run a company that sells software that checks for spelling and grammar, make sure you cheque your owne presss releaze. Othewize u might find thingz are rathar embarrasing. Four Example, according two the BBC, a Kanadian Kompany selling sayd softwear. The release listed "the 16 million we (sic) pages it has spellchecked over the past year". The press release listed words including "independent", "accommodation" and "definitely", which were spelled "independant", "accomodation" and "definately". As bad as my spelling is, I do not think I will be getting help from them!

Two pages... Firstly, the WikiPedia page for Oxford, and secondly, the English Heritage page for Stonehenge

Finally, Greenpeace has been prohibited by a french court from creatig a map of where the genetically modified crops are in france despite a EU ruling that this information must be publically released. So they have placed real life crop circle markers on the fields to mark them. Vandalism yes, but it shows ingenuity!

Not sure why but I have felt a bit tired for the last few days. I know that I have not been getting as much sleep as I would have liked but I think it is a bit more than that. I do not feel like I have the flu or anything like that, just a bit tired.

I was speaking to a friend of mine today who was filling me in on some of the politics of satellites - and how there is a company trying to convince the Autsralian Government to use some satellite uplink and downlink frequencies on the ground for anti-collision systems for vehicles. This would have the potential to cause a lot of interference to the operations of the satellite. Thankfully the satellite people are working on the issue, but I am not convinced that they will prevail.

I found a new Web Site this evening... Well, not a new Web Site, but I just found it. It is WikiTravel and is sort of a Wikipedia for going places. It gives the important information like what accomadation is available, what the local sites are, and where you get internet access... Sure, the last one is probably taking things a bit far but it gives you a good idea of the site.

I have solved why my Wireless was not working here for the past week or so. I have no idea what went on, but it had to be me who made some changes. When I went to look at my router I found it was plugged into my firewall in the LAN port rather than the wireless port. Strange. No wonder why it was not working. Resetting it and plugging it into the Wireless port of the router fixed things so now I have wireless at home again. Fantastic!

Once again my Laptop failed to restart once it came back from hibernate mode. I hate it when this hapens... it SHOULD NOT happen. I will have to attemp to work out from log files what is happening... If such a thing is possible. Depending on what is happening it might not be. The window just stays black.

Some other news... Microsoft is going to release Internet Explorer 7 by Windows Update later this year according to news.com.com. This has major implications for people who have not yet made their eCommerce sites compatible with IE7 - but this is probably the right way to get IE6 out of the way. IE6 is just so buggy, and IE7 is so much better. That is not to say there are not issues for companies in microsoft doing it this way.

Once again my PC refused to start up from standby. Great... That is the 2nd reboot this morning. VisualStudio crashed last night so I needed to reboot the PC this morning. Thankfully the software that is built with VS.2005 is more stable than the application. Then again given the complexity of the code that is getting written I am not surprised...

When the PC restarted and outlook came up, for some reason there were no new email notifications. I saw the 14 messages download but then there was no message saying I got any new messages. Great. 14 SPAM messages. But when I actually looked outlook had about six or seven emails in my inbox that were new. In other words, outlook for some reason just silently delivered them and didn't bother telling me. Thanks Microsoft. The good thing though is that one of the emails was offering me some money...

Anyway I have to send some money by PayPal for a friend and then get some work done...

Looking round the net I found a web page that lists Some power outlets in airports around the world. This list is being worked on at the moment and should get a heap better over time.

Netgear are releasing an expensive WiFi based SKYPE Phone... Great idea... but $450 is a bit too expensive I would guess. The SMH is also reporting how high speed internet access has reduced the number of bicycle couriers in Sydney significantly

I really need to stop playing Billiards on MSN... I am enjoying the game far too much... It is a great distraction though... You can also choose options like turning off hints on where the balls will go. That I think makes the game more enjoyable.

I have been searching the net and found another museum in the UK that I want to visit. This one is in Bradford so it is a bit hard to get to, but it is the national museum of photography and television. Maybe on a future trip...

It has finally been revealsed how google is managing Click fraud. This is people who are fraudulently clicking on WWW sites adverts in order to earn revenue for the site from google, or to financially imact a competitor. Interesting reading...

Two bits of news in the SMH about JetStar. First is how they are starting cheap flights into Asia. More interesting is how their WWW site died... and how they have cut costs so much that they use MySQL which is free rather than Oracle or SQLserver.

Back in may I mentioned how an idiot had put a toddler in a drier... Well the guy is now standing trial for this absolute act of stupidity.

One other thing I needed to do was to put in another power outlet. For some reason there are never enough outlets in any room, and they are never where you need them. Same goes with data and television outlets. It is very hard to have too many of either. Thankfully installing new powerpoints only takes a few minutes - at least when you have done a few... And it is almost impossible to stuff up installing them too, unless you drop a drill bit in the wall.

Tomorrow I have a couple of meetings over at Pymble... Basically a technical implementation meeting to try out some ideas, and this will be followed by a sort of project review. I expect both of these to be fun... Some of this will be to sanity check the work I have been doing with the WebServices - and believe it or not I have found a few things that have failed sanity check and need to be redesigned.

Inside this software I have been wanting to store a few bits of information... Some user id's, as well as the complete message database row. Unfortunately there is only one 'TAG' row... I was wondering how to solve this, until I realised that I could store this data in a new array. Sometimes I forget about the basic way of doing things and only try the advanced. In five minutes I guess I will be testing my new code and I will see how it goes...

My Internet is back up... Web sites work. MSN works. Email from all parts of the world is coming in. What could be better? Don't you just love it when things just work?

The SMH has a list of five british 'Follies' in architecture. I am guessing that when number five is the Millenium Dome then the other four must be pretty amazingly useless. And they are. Imagine a building officially called 'The Pineapple'! And then there is 'The House In The Clouds', and such like. Sounds like a great list of buildings to visit myself.

iiNet has been providing some updates on the likely time for the internet issues to be resolved. According to their Web Site, a fibre optic cable was cut in Orgon and it will be another hour before the engineers can even get to the remote location. Something sounds fishy here as the site does not look that far out of seattle. However with fibreoptics you can actually work out where the break is without people on site.

Seems like the Monopoly game is changing again... A cashless version is being released in association with Visa that uses debit cards... Sounds like a strange variation... I think part of the fun of the game is playing with the money...

In the UK a game has been started where people try to 'assasinate' other people using water pistols. The police are warning the participants that they might be commiting a crime. Meanwhile, the USA is really hot with a large number of blackouts possible...

My westnet is still down internationally... Thanks to using the Telstra Web proxy things are not bad for browsing... But it does mean that my MSN is out of action... MapPoint would be as well if I was using it... But thanks to the P2P technology, SKYPE is actually working quite well... not only for chat but also for voice. I just spent some time on a conversation with a friend in the USA, and there was no lag or anything. And yet their was no direct TCP/IP Path between us. Something or someone was relaying, and it was doing a really really good job at it too.

I have to order some parts this morning for a job - looks like an interesting project, and one that I should be able to get working fairly cheaply and quickly. This is probably my most critical job for today since I have to get some PCB's off to the maufacturer today, and if I need to do a PCB for this job then I have to do that rather quickly. And then I might be able to get some programming done... Hopefully!

My internet access is playing up... Well, most of Westnet is actually. The problem seems to be with some international sites, or most international sites. And given how international things are, this does have some interesting implications. Some Australian sites are hosted outside Australia, and some have their DNS servers outside the country so they are uncontactable right at this minute. I am hoping things get back to normal soon...

So right now MSN is down too... but SKYPE is up since they have a strange distributed architecture.

The meeting this evening went fairly well - enough so that I was home just after 8pm. This is good. Some of the news from the meeting was not good, but that was to be expected.

There is a facinating show on Discovery about the CERN facility on the border of france and switzerland and is reported to be the worlds largest machine. Basically this device is underground in a 27 km ring, and cost a heap anount to build. They use it to smash atoms together to work out what makes atoms stay together. The site really needs to be seen to be believed - I know you cannot tell the scale of this thing on TV but I think you come close.

Anyway I think it is almost time for bed... I want to get a tiny bit more programming before going to bed, but I will see how it goes.

I have a borning meeting at the local child care centre tonight - it is a pain but it is not really that bad. The meeting is on early so I hope not to be out too late. But we will see. And before the meeting I have some preparation to do too...

In the USA, self service terminals for purchasing groceries are becoming quite popular. However what shopkeepers are finding is that Profits are down. No, it is not because of theft - it is because the person doing the scanning is now actively doing things rather than just waiting for someone else to scan their purchases. And since the point of sale purchases are some of the most proffitable in the store, this is taking a major hit on the bottom line...

Back to the programming...

Once againg the programming is not going as fast as I had hoped - other distractions. People wanting to talk to me, and needing my advice... and sending me orders. Not that I am complaining. It is just that I would like a chance to get some other work done.

To top it off, a friend introduced me to biliards on MSN... You can tell them that you want a 14 day free trial. The game is not bad and there are heaps of variations... and you are playing a real person, not a computer which makes it more fun... And you can bait your opponent, making comments as they are preparing their shot.

I got a strange letter in the mail today - from a insolvency solicitor. I got contacted because they found an invoice from my company in the records of the company, and were unsure if it had been paid. Thankfully it had although at under $50, I would have written it off even if it had not been paid. The paperwork is rather an interesting read. It never ceases to amaze me that people do things like not pay tax for over ten years, and don't do BAS returns and the like.

One of my least favourite tasks is working on my tax. Thankfully the grunt work is done - the accounts are balanced and I just need to do some reports and write out my group certificate, and then get my tax stuff to my accountant. Actually after a few years I am working out how to do the data entry so that it really is not that much of a pain. I just hate doing it.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting project called CubeSatKit. Basically this is a KIT SATELLITE... it contains, for a few hundred dollars, most of the things you need to build a real working satellite. The major thing that it does not include is the launch, which is getting increasingly difficult to obtain now that building satellites is becoming more popular. I know a few people who have built satellites, although they have built much larger ones, and basically kicked off the micro-satellite industry.

Finally, there are reports coming from Melbourne about how photos of buildings have been banned on 'terrorism' grounds. I somehow do not think that this will stop terrorism, any more than a national ID card would. link.

Moving the furniture here last night was a slight disaster. Getting the desk out from upstairs was much easier than I thought - it was fairly light. What was less than ideal was moving the old desk out of my office - not my main desk but another one that was sitting in the corner. It was REALLY heavy. Too heavy really for two people to lift. By the time my brother came to help me it was dark outside. And of course the outside light outside my office door is blown... I will get the ladder out to fix that later.

Anyway with difficulty we get it out of the office, and then realize that it is too heavy for us to get up the stairs. So drag it through the car port and into the garage. The only problem was that the carport is also not lit, so I put my car headlights on. That worked well, although I forgot to turn them off. Normally this would not have been much of a problem. But I do have a car alarm... so just as I was about to sit down for tea the car alarm went off...

Now, of course, since the battery voltage was too low, unlocking the car did not help. So I needed to open the bonnet and turn off the alarm. But that requires a key. And I did not have the key on my ring. Race up stairs with the alarm running to find the key. Found it. Grabbed a torch. And then need to shove the key into the back of the siren. Which of course is still screaming at this stage... Get the key in and turn it off. Finally!

After that things were simple... Charge the battery and the car then started without problem. Mind you I did cheat... I have a charger set up to keep the car charged when I go away so it only took a moment to get the car onto the charger... Fantastic.

Half a days work today has been translating 996 lines of user interface code to the following line :-
outlook = New Outlook(fGridOutlook, fGridOptions)
Sounds simple doesn't it? Well, it took many many hours. For an hour there I think I had something like 2-300 error messages up as I was modifying code. I have no idea of the exact number since Microsoft Visual Studio stops counting once you get to 102 errors [Yeah, and that is the other thing... Why 102 errors? Wht not 100 error messages?] I now need to add some more code, such as the code to select which columns to show on righ-click, but it should not take too long. The code was there but it was bloated so it got removed. Actually, there was a heap of code like that in the program.

I want to get that added this evening before bed, as well as a function to add messages based on the webservice rather than random numbers. Neither of these functions should take too long - just depending on how long I last until I fall into bed. I am already starting to crash, and it is only 5:30. The quality of the Coke at lunch did not help either - the syrup was running out so the coke tasted watered down. I my brother is coming soon to help move some furniture so there is potentially less programming time...

Back from lunch... One of my friends rang earlier asking if I wanted to meet for lunch... Why not - what else am I going to do? Work? When he arrives he told me we are going to Sizzler's since it is his birthday... OK - Sounds good, although I was not planning to spend so much time out and about today... I should say that I did get back from lunch at some stage before 3:30PM... It is just that we were talking about various projects after lunch, which as always is enlightening.

What this means is that I am now about four hours behind in the work I was planning to get done for the day... Not complaining mind you, but I am behind. The work I was doing this morning was going really really well, despite telling me that I had 102 errors in my code at one stage. I have been working on breaking up the code to display new mail messages in my software. At the moment the code is really bulky and horrible, so I am trying to split it off so I only need to worry about the interfaces to this code most of the time.

Normally this does not become much of a problem, but in this case there are close to 1000 lines of code that someone else has written, which to be frank was confusing me a lot. The code is now running, but more cleaning is needed before things are in a suitable state!

It is now something like 10:30 am and I still do not think I have actually done any work. Sure I have made and receieved a few phone calls, and made some, but I do not think I have done anything that I would actually call work. I have programming to do, and paperwork to do, but there have been other things to do. Like re-arranging some stuff in my office. And chatting to a friend whilst he is waiting for a flight... That sort of thing.

These days planes are getting what is called a 'Glass Cockpit'. This used to mean that the cockpit contains video screens, but now usually means that it contains a heap of LCD and plasma screens instead of dials and switches. Generally this works really well, and can be somewhat more reliable whilst weighing less. Garmin has just released a new cockpit panel for experimental aircraft. The screens are large and look absolutely amazing. Unfortunately the price is also rather hideous at about $100,000. I can only suspect that not too many of these will be sold until the price can come down a bit...

Now that I have had some food I am feeling a bit more human and alive. I am normally definitely a morning person - except when I suffer from a chronic lack of sleep.

I have been doing more work on my holiday in september - I was planning to drop in on Paris on the way around the work. The problem is that a single night in paris would probably cost about $1000 once I take into account the things that I would want to do in Paris - such as going to the Moulin Rouge and also the Eiffel Tower and the Louve. For this type of money I can spend a few more days in the UK. This might not be quite so glamourous but would still be somewhat amazing... I woucl have a chance to see some of the places in the UK that I have not previously had a chance to see.... Or more correctly would not have a chance to see.

There is a site on Science Addition.COM that contains 95 thesis of activism... it is an interesting read. So is Microsofts 12 Princlples for Windows Development.

I slept well last night - at least until I woke up about 4:30AM, and i could not get back to sleep. This is FAR too early to wake up... I really hate it when I wake up like that. I suspect I will need a nap later, but right now I am wide awake but in need of some breakfast and a coffee... Maybe not in that order either.

My main task today is programming - some fun tasks with regard to messaging. Basically I need to write a PC based messaging client program for sending and receiving messages similar to SMS messages, but within a mobile pc environment. The back end web services need some more work, but they are complete enough for testing... And then of course I have my BAS to do too.

Last night I had a remarkable realization that I had planned to do a cabling job today - and had to be there at 9:30am - so I have spent the last 20 minutes going through my inbox cleaning it out and filing messages. Sure, I could have just done a quick search using Lookout search for Outlook, but I needed to file everything anyway. Thankfully I did not actually book an appointment for today - I need to get some parts to do the job... I will book it today for later in the week... Anyway time to grab that coffee...

Two SMH stories... Firstly, Bob Geldof has apparently cancelled some italian concerts due to lack of interest. 45 People purchased tickets for one, and only a couple of hundred were going to a second concert... both attendances significantly lower than the break even point even just for renting the auditorium.

Secondly, in the USA, A plane crashed after one of the passengers proposed to one of the other passengers. The woman said yes by the way...

Home, Sweet Home.... It is good to be home... I have spent most of the day working on helping a friend clean his workshop as he prepares to go to overseas... This was not too hard a job, but it was none the less exhausting... Sounds strange I know, but I think that accurately describes things.

Driving over there and back was really useful. I have managed to solve a few work problems that I have been trying to solve for some time. Some of this will require some database changes, but they will be fairly minor. I will have to spend some time with a notebook to work out all the details but things look good. I guess that is tomorrows job... Right now I am a bit too exhausted to work on the details :-(

Whilst out today I managed to see a rather interesting site... I was going over a speed hump and I noticed that the shrubs on one side was slightly damaged... And then that the thick white poles had totally come out... Then I saw a car with a tow rope behind it with some damage.... and behind that a 4x4... I am guessing that the poor driver and lost concentration and tried to drive over the bushes of the speed hump and got rather stuck, and had to call to get pulled off... Oops - I am guessing that the poor driver was rather embarrased!

And the NY Times has an article on how naieve consumers are subsidising the ones who do careful research... The article is surprisingly easy to read despite being essentially a rehash of economic theory. What I did not realise is that some hotels in Florida decide to cahrge a US$25 RESORT fee which you do not find out about until you check out... Rather nasty if you ask me. link

I had to chair a meeting this morning - went well although there were some interesting bits. The idea was that we needed to approve a budget for this calendar year. Some minor changes needed to be mad but overall things went OK. There was another item on the agenda where we decided not to make a decision... Too easy...

Last night I started watching a BBC series called 'Building London' about some of the history of london - such as it's defenses, bridges, roads and the like - and I found the series absolutely facinating. This is the type of show that really helps you to get to know a city - like why 'London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down...' The reason is because of shoddy workmanship and cost cutting. I have only watched two parts of the series and I expect the rest of the series will be just as enlightening.

Another thing I have just found out. Many people have heard of the name 'The Clink' being referred to when someone has goes to gaol. For instance 'John Doe is now in the Clink'. I did not realise why. The Clink is NOT the sound of the door closing, although this is a great guess. The Clink was actually a prison in London on Clink Street. It was not actlly called The Clink, but people started referring to being sent to prison there as The Clink much as they refer to Wormwood Scrubbs as The Scrubs. Enlightening.

And in the SMH comes news on how a trainee policeman at Goulburn decided to bring replica firearms to class and gave a demonstration. As you would expect this did not go down well, and charges may be layed after a search of his house.

I have managed to get a heap of paper work done today - well this morning anyway. Which means that monday when I do my Tax things will not take too long to enter and reconcile. This also allowed me to throw a heap of paper into the recycling, and archive some other project folders. Much of this work cannot really be done by an accountant - I just have to work through it.

Looking around the net I found a Wikipedia Page on london. More of a portal actually with links to all the museums, great buildings, parks and everything. There are a few places that I found out about that I want to visit after this. There is a heap of stuff on Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution, A statue of Padington Bear at Padington Station and a few things like that. It is a great resource, and I am definitely going to spend more time reading through the site.

Apart from being particularly dumb when it comes databases today I have been doing some rather more useful things - such as working on my business paperwork, getting my books up to date. Once the books are done I can then do my BAS and my End of Financial Year stuff for the business. Then I can also do the group certficiates. Then I will be able to put in my personal tax return. Sure, I only got my refund a month back from last year, but I would like to get this one in much sooner.

I dont think I will get all of that done today - I think I would go very quickly mad if I tried. I will get all the paperwork sorted out so that when I work on it early next week it is a 'simple' case of just entering the data into the accounting software, reconciling the accounts, and writing a cheque out to the ATO. That is the theory. However the are distractions and complications - Well, they also seem to come up. ALWAYS!

Following that I might grab some DVD's to watch. I have not been to the video store in ages and there must be heaps of movies I have been meaning to watch... And probably do some more programming too :-)

There are some times when I am just plain DUMB. OK. You do not all need to agree with me - I can hear the chorus now of people agreeing with the statement... But I suppose I had better say why I am dumb. I suppose I had better explain...

Last night I got in the new WebService stuff. This is fine and good. This included a new database and a new script. There was a minor problem with this - one of the functions in the script would not work. And I could not work out why. VERY STRANGE. The stored procedure in the database was missing. After a lot of mucking around this morning I found out that the database did not import correctly and I was too dumb to recognise that the big red icon when I tried to import was an error message and not a green icon saying things went well. So, all I need to do is to re-import the data into the database and try again?

Well, YES. That is what I did. But for reasons which I will not explain I imported them into the SQLserver 2005 instead of SQLserver2000 instance. It just sounded like a good idea at the time. Then I imported some vehicle positions and started testing. Brilliant. The positions showed up in my viewing software.

Then I realised one thing about 15 minutes later... I was getting two vehicle positions displayed, but I had only set up one vehicle. What is going on? Hmm. Lets look. Dumb me! When I had imported the database into the 2005 server I gave the database a new name... and the server software was pointing to the old name. D'Oh!

A friend of mine MSN'ed me rather board... He was wanting my ideas of something to build since he was rather board... My idea of making some jewelery for his wife was accepted in good humor... In this case he decided to do some radio project...

My head is a bit of tapioca at the moment - working on WebServices... I am building an abstraction layer to ease dealing with the server, and to reduce the communications load. And this means that I need to write a few different functions that are essentially identical, but all slightly different. And this means that I need to take a lot of care with the programming. For the next hour or so I plan to work on a small email type application - which will be a major selling point for potential clients, because messages can be used to allocate jobs until the job interface is written.

I will not be working on the plane tomorrow so I guess I will be spending more time working on this application... That and doing my TAX stuff. I have a BAS to put in and my group certificate to write. Then I will be able to put in my tax return.

I just got some more work back from my programmer working on my WebService stuff, and it looks fantastic. I am really really impressed with the programmer, and I think that results will be fantastic when it gets done. The bits of work that were delivered gave enough bits and pieces to work on to last a week or two I suspect - The major part I got sent were messaging database function calls which will allow me to implement a simple job system.

I did make a minor mistake when I moved the new software across. I forgot that the settings were stored in one of the files, and I blew it away when I installed the new version of the files. The worst part was that I had to reconstruct the connection string... This was harder than it sounds as I can never remember the format of the line. For my future reference it looks something like
connectionString="Database=TTAS;Server=localhost;User ID=userid;Password=password;"

I guess all this sounds a bit boring, but it is what I am working on right now... Right now though I have a new toy to play with, so I had better go and play.

A few moments back I was looking at the software I was writing as it was being tested. I only have data from one vehicle going into the server that it is using so testing can be 'interesting'... I just happened to be watching it a few moments back and saw the code that I have been working on actually work. The vehicle as driving around so it had a green 'W' displayed... Then the driver stopped and the icon changed to an orange 'P' indicating that the engine was running but the vehicle had stopped. Then finally the icon changed to a blue 'P' indicating that the driver had turned off the ignition. Exactly what I wanted.

There was an article in the Daily Telegraph today about the tracking of pedophiles in Western Australia using GPS. They have decided there that tracking by GPS is unreliable, and that it is probably not wise to rely on the technology at this stage to track potentially dangerous former prisoners. This is my view too... The technology is not really there yet. Besides which knowing approximately where someone is does not really hep that much - at least in my experience - not when you need absolute proof.

Back from Lunch - I ended up grabbing some hot Thai, and my mouth is still telling me about it, although that is disappearing as I drink more water. Foods with lots of chillie are really good for ensuring that you drink lost of water [I did say eat water, but that was a mistake as this is somewhat difficult and problematic unless you decide to freeze the water - and then you are eating ice and not water anyway].

I was going to post a screen dump of the software but for some reason Paint Shop Pro will not start. Probably needs a reboot. The graphics I have been adding is working, and just makes the application look 'friendlier'. When a car is parked i now have a blue 'P' come up in the software, just like the sign they use in parking stations. And other letters when the car is moving, or has not been heard from for a while. Looks nice.

Earlier I was listening to 'Minnie Driver' with 'Everything I've got in my pocket' - which I got from the 'Late Night Moods' CD. The lyrics are just so beautiful..
I wanna lay down with you
Forever
Or just this afternoon
Watching the shadows getting long
I'll sing you a quiet song
Watch you sleep, slow and deep

I have solved the icon problem - I have found a series of free icons and PNG files with solid borders. They look professional, and allow me to provide a similar but different icon for each application in the suite of programs. I was unsure what they would be like in practice, but they provide the exact image I need. I have fixed the timezone issues, as well as giving the ability to see the speeds in metric rather than in marine units (knotts). Too many functions to add, too little time.

I am finding the USB phone charger for my phone great - I keep it in my Laptop bag, and it works really really well. I have just plugged it into my phone now since the battery is dieing and my charger is upstair away from my office.

I think I will have Thai for lunch... I have not been further than the front letter box since tuesday, so it is time I think too see the big wide world, rather than hearing about it, and trusting that it really does still exist. But I probably should stop procrastinating and get some more work done before that.

I mentioned yesterday how I was trying to work on icons for my TeamTrack application - well, this morning I got the new registration code for the IconEdit2 application that I use for converting graphics to icons for the applications. This works to a certain extent. The problem with most icons these days is that they are intended to have transparent backgrounds which is remarkably hard to get right when you want to have it work on a light or a dark background. Look at what Microsoft did for their Office Icons... They changed them to square icons with hard borders. So much easier.

The other thing that was happening was that the software was leaving the occasional white patch inside the middle of the transparent area of the icon. Editing the icon again with VisualStudio fixed this... I might just bite the bullet and pay an artist to create some icons for me... I think it would be easier...

First thing this morning (well, after writing here and grabbing some breakfast) I have a SKYPE teleconference for about an hour followed by tons of programming. Today I hope to get more work done on my TeamTrack client software - one of the important things I need to add is some exception handling so that the application does not crash if the network is unavailable for a short period of time. The application has been engineered so that all the network code is in one library so it will not take too much effort to change this.

I also want to build a queue system for the reports and history functions... Since the telecommunications links are the slow part of any history query I want to be able to have these process in the background, with the user then offered the chance to view the report or history data on the map once the results are in. Normally this will be fairly instantanous, but it might also allow for reports to be retained for a short period... The only thing I do need to watch is ensuring that the user interface works.

The other thing I want to start working on is messaging functionality. Not the back end things - they need a heap of work in the web services - more the front end where I need to be able to bring up a list of users and add them to a message for sending. I would love to emulate the new message box from outlook but I am not sure that is realistic, at least on a first pass. Anyway that is my plan for the day...

I found a link (without looking) to red and green wing lights for the RV7... What makes these ones special is that they are LED based, and therefore use a heap less power and weight than normal globes, whilst being significantly cheaper and more reliable. Cool.

I spent some more time reading 'The Daily WTF'... And I found what everyone describes as probably the worlds worst Hotel Booking System written in Microsoft Access... The user interface just looks completely horrid... The site is just so funny... I did not want to stop browsing - but I just had to...

I think I have had a productive work day... I got a heap of programming done, and got to cross off some of the objectives. Others will have to wait for another day - probably tomorrow. Just depends on what else comes up tomorrow. If someone comes up with a consulting job for me to work on I guess I will be doing that rather than working on coding... I do have the consulting job, but I just need to organize the commercials for the job.

I didn't end up having a nap today, and definitely wish I had... I am fading more and more. I do not think I will be staying up until after midnight tonight - I do not think I would survive.

Some links... Woman was sacked whilst on maternity leave, and has decided not to do anything about it because her employer has under 100 employees and she would need to go to the federal court to do anything. Also, Archiologists in rome believe that they have found the birthplace of Rome's first emperor on a hill in Rome. And Surgeons in the USA are operating on Python who ate an electric blanket... A queen size electric blanket...

And finally, forcing a woman to do housework (through physical force) has been deemed as illegal in Italy.

I stumbled onto a free VB.NET project called .NET Fireball which has written some user interface elements for VB.NET. The results look great - and I have decided to use one in my new version of TeamTrack. The control I am using right now from them is the panel that outlook uses on the left side to display the folders, mail, calendar and the like. The program took about 30 seconds to install, and then about the same time to integrate into my program. Things are looking great visually. Now all I need to do is put code behind this!

I have now built in the functionalit to display when a vehicle ignition is on or off in the software. This was not painful at all, although I did need to much around a tiny but to get it to work how I wanted. Right now the important thing is that it adds a tiny bit of colour to the form which is what I was really after. As a benefit it tells me when the vehicle is turned on - but that is a side effect at the moment. A little later I will post some preliminary screen dumps - It is looking good. I am sure there are some subtle things I can do to improve the look and feel but I am getting there.

Right now I think I will need to grab a nap soon... I am starting to wilt, and I think that closing my eyes for a few minutes could do wonders for my productivity...

I have been looking for icons for my application, and found a great graphics site. This one contains some images of the Linux mascot, TUX. They have him in the Uniforms of all the world cup teams, and another with him as Mickey Mouse

The programming going well, with many many features being added. One of the things I have been adding is a toolbar - but I want the toolbar to be on the same line as the Menu Bar. This is rather difficult to arrange in the software. Most programs have lots of toolbar entries, and lots of menu items. And this does not look strange. When you only have a few items on the menu, and a few on the toolbar things look strange. I now have seven of the items from the to-do done.

CNN has an overview of the Artist at Google who is responsible for their graphics. During the world cup he produced a graphic for each of the 32 teams in the competition... I have not managed to see any of these unfortunately... I am sure that the Australian one would be good...

It would appear, according to Tech Republic that Microsoft used pirated software to produce some of the audio files in Windows. If you look in c:\Windows\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav\ there are a number of WAV files. Each of these is tagged with the name "Deepz0ne" and "Sound Forge 4.5" indicating that they were using the version of Sound Forge that was cracked by Deepz0ne... Oops.

Today I plan to get the new version of TeamTrack to the point where it could be released to a limited number of people for testing. Last night and this morning I went through working on a list of 20 or 30 features that need to be added to the software to improve it. So far this morning I have removed 1.5 features. I am almost finished adding a login screen - which is mostly a copy/paste from existing code (and in which I found a Bug doing this BTW)... Much of this work is adding settings which changes the functionality of the software to user requirements.

Something I just noted on the SMH WWW Site... Australia Post are scrapping the Economy Airmail Service which means that costs are going to increase for people who use it. This has really annoyed many online 2nd hand book retailers who fear that this is going to kill their business.

Music:

Enrique Iglesias with Don't Turn Off The Lights - In Spanish from the Album.

I definitely should be in bed - I got to bed about 12:30AM this morning, and for some reason I woke up just after 6AM. So right now I am feeling a tiny bit tired and in need of some serious caffene. That will come in a little while - or maybe I will just fall asleep in my lounge chair in my office a little later.

BusinessWeek Online has a strange slideshow which lists Some of the accessories you can get for your iPod. They include am iPod toilet paper holder and a bullet proof case for the device. There is obviously a huge market for strange accessories... You can even get gloves that work with the iPod!

And Microsoft have released the source code to the Windows CE hardware emulator that comes with Microsoft Visual Studio. Nice to know it is available even if I know I will never use it...

And GeekStuff4U in japan has the ultimate PC accessory... A USB device. Missile launchers and fans and the like are common place for USB... This one is better... It is a huge red Self Destruct Button for your PC! Must be seen to be believed... Worth the US$60...

Crystal Reports for VisualStudio 2005

I have been having an issue with Crystal Reports for VisualStudio 2005 (VS.2005), where I was getting an error message saying 'ABSOLUTE PATH INFORMATION IS REQUIRED'. Some of this problem I solved by using System.Windows.Forms.Application.StartupPath in front of the filename for the RPT report file when I tried to display the report. But that did not fix all the problem. In fact that did not fix any of the problem as far as I could tell.

So, I googled 'ABSOLUTE PATH INFORMATION IS REQUIRED' and I actually visited EVERY single link. And there was generally not much that was relevant. Adding the startup path was all that was mentioned. Great! And it didnt work. Then I looked at the BusinessObjects WWW site, and found exactly one suggestion for a fix. Go to My Computer | Properties | Advanced and look at the PATH environment variable. Change this from something like %WinDir% to C:\Windows. But this only related to VS.2003, not VS.2005. I tried it anyway, and it did not work!

After a while I had a brainwave... Why don't I just try running the compiled version of my code. And guess what? It worked. It should not have worked but it did. That was more confusing... WHY?

Then my computer needed a reboot thanks to too many copies of VisualStudio running... and when it restarted guess what happened? It worked... Changing the environment variable, and adding the full path, and a reboot fixed everything!

Home again after a day over at Pymble... It was a fun day - with lots of in deapth discussions as to the direction of the product... and it was good to use the WebServices from a distance for once - highlighting issues that I need to resolve. I have a function called something like
GetVehicleHistory (Vehicle,FromDate, ToDate)
And if the span of days is too long then this will not work well since it will take ages to return. So I came up with a solution to this, and it is brilliant even if I do say so myself. Each record that I am returning has a unique record number... So I am going to get a function written called
GetVehicleHistory (Vehicle,FromDate, ToDate, FirstRecordID, MaxRecords)
What this function will do is return a maximum of MaxRecords. Now, the intelligent bit is that I will also tell it the FirstRecordID. This will be 0 to start with, and will be one higher than the maximum RecordID returned for other queries. This will allow the system to work more dynamically, and act more responsively to the user. They will also be able to get a better idea of the progress of the query.

I had problems getting out of the driveway coming home tonight. Someone had parked their truck in the way, put the hazzard lights on and went next door to finish up for the day and have a chat before comining out a litle later. And all the time I was stuck trying to get out, and someone else was trying to get in. I am just glad that one of the workers knew it was their truck and went in to find the driver. Otherwise I would probably still be there!

As expected the reporting is actually a pain, but improving the code somewhat. Well, mostly improving the code. To ensure that I do not duplicate code I have needed to put some functions into libraries which has made the software somewhat yukier. What used to be simple code now looks untidy. As an example
AddColumnCompany(dsVehicleCompanyPos, "c_")
became
LibraryData.AddColumnCompany(dsCompany, dsCompanyParamaters, dsVehicleCompanyPos, "c_")
Still, this is something that I can live with.

We all know that Pizza is one of the five major food groups... Now comes news that the 000 Call Cantre in NSW is offering staff pizza as one of the incentives for reducing their average call lengths...

Another use for Microsoft Project - working out holiday itineries. Once you get your head around the program it allows you to play with schedules doing quick recalculations. Sure, it is not set up for this type of application but it does work. You can set certain events that must happen at certain times, and then see where you can adjust your schedule to fit in. Things like 'Can I spend that extra night in Paris?'... It also highlights when certain things are - To be in Tuscon for a meeting on the 14th of September, I need to be getting to Thailand about 1st September.

I just found one gotcha with project... If you are planning a holiday where you are using the number of days as an indicator, make sure that you mark the weekends as working days. If you neglect this things will not work out how you hoped, and you might find yourself stuck in somewhere a lot longer than expected - for instance I was scheduling myself two extra days in Bangkok, and another two days in London... Something i can deal with I suppose :-)

The reporting work is getting 'fun'... I have realised that I need to do a heap more work thanks to the new way I am doing things. The good news is that then reporting will be better than ever. I don't think it will be too bad - I have my head around what I need to do now... I just need to do it.

Off to Pymble this morning... I will probably aim to get there about 9:30, or a bit after so I miss the school zones at the other end. Although before that I will need to get some petrol. I finally have proof that my cars fuel gauge is not linear... I had done 320 KM to get down to 1/2 a tank, and now I am down to about 1/8th left I have only done 500 km... I guess the tank is a bit smaller at the bottom...

House pricecs in London are pretty high, which is why, according to the BBC, an increasing number of people are not living in London but Spain or Eastern Europe, and commuting to london by plane. Normally they do not work in London every day, but do it a couple of days a week. The reason why this is economical is thanks to some really cheap discount airlines which make commuting by plane almost the same price as commuting by train over a much shorter distance. The strange thing is that when some of these people moved, their average commute went down thanks to not having to put up with the extreme congestion on some of the british motorways.

Advertising is everywhere... One spot that I did not expect to find it was on chicken eggs. According to the New York Times about 35 million eggs are going to be laser etched advertising the latest series of CSI, asking if you can 'Crack the Case'.

I have imported the report writing code from my TeamTrack 2006 product into the new version and I immediately got something like 30 errors - and I must be honest here - I did not expect quite so many errors, although now I look at the code I see how many structural changes are needed. The code is designed to take a few paramaters about which type of report is needed, what vehicles it applies to, and what date range, and then produces a report using the embedded version of Crystal Reports.

Apple users now have no excuse for not eating properly after some someone worked out that you can coop an egg on some apple laptops. Not sure I would eat an egg cooked this way, but it is a great concept...

For some reason my laptop is having some connectivity issues on the network - I am not sure what the problem is, but it seems to be related to some work I did yesterday with my wireless router. If this does not fix itself soon I will have to investigate further.

There is a great site for determining distances between airports world wide - it is called gs.kls2.com, and even takes care of ETOPS rules that state that a plane must be no more than a certain distance from land. Great site, and actually has a fairly reasonable translation between city names and airport codes.

Finally, The Register is reporting that Vodafone is sueing Telecom Italia for about 500 million Euro for mis-using their market dominance to illegally compete with vodafone.

The History function of my new TeamTrack application is done, although of course there were a couple of complications. There always are - this would not be programming without them! The first one was needing to sort a dataset in VB.NET. The quick answer is that this is impossible. The slightly longer answer is that you move the data into a DataView and then sort it. This is an easy fix.

The other issue is that the retrieval functions only seem to work with whole days. If I tell it that I want all the position reports between midnight and now it will round the now back to midnight and not return any records. I am guessing that this is a bug in the webservice and not my code, so I have emailed the author and I will get this fixed. Until then I just need to add another day to the end date and it will sort of work.

Right now though I am watching Hey Day! on cable whilst doing some other work... And I have not seen such big over-acting in such a LONG TIME. You can see the characters acting up to the camera... Even worse, Martin the Architect speaks to the camera at times. I am so glad that comedy has moved on since then... The show is still really funny, but things have matured a bit since this was made.

One item in my office which may be good or bad depending on your point of view if the armchair in the corner next to the bookcase. And I am not just talking any armchair here - I am talking a rocking armchair with an extending footrest and fabric covering rather than the original vinyl. The seat is really comfortable - perhaps too comfortable at times really. Like this afternoon when I had a short snooze on it. I suppose that keeping junk off the seat is encouraged since I cannot have an afternoon nap if there is junk in the way.

According to the SMH, a computer heist has been solved thanks to GPS tracking. No much detail as to which system it was... But it is good to know that what I do for a living does have a positive impact on society. Well, apart from the negative impact on the crims who just go nicked :-)

Australia Post have just rung to say they will be dropping in sometime in the next hour to look at the water meter that was damaged a couple of weeks back. They noted that there was no damage to their bikes reported, which is unfortunate for me. But the guy looks like he is keeping an open mind. Given the locations it is unlikely that it would have been anyone but Australia Post. Oh, and others have reported that the postal workers sometimes put their foot on our water meter to ballance themselves as they put the mail in our next door neighbours box.

After the meeting this morning that went for double what I expected (two hours instead of one), the coding is finally getting done. I am finally getting somewhere with this code - I am working on the history functionality at the moment, and later this afternoon I might get onto the reporting engine. Initially I thought the reporting side would be really simple as the code will mostly be identical, but thinking about things more I have realised that the business rules in the back end will need to be re-done. Argh! And it will be harder since the business rules will be working on a generic database...

Not sure why but my computer crashed when I tried to restart it earlier from hibernate - the green on light came on, but the screen stayed black. I really hate it when that happens - normally things just work. What I have found is that my computer has not been as reliable as it hsa been over the last week - but I am assuming that it is because I am using too many copies of Microsoft Visual Studio... This is a program that you can almost be assured of crashing your PC if you have too many copies open (for me more than three copies, for friends two copies will do it).

I grabbed a brochure for Paris today - well, actually for Europe, but it included Paris. It looks amazing... I just saw a tour which includes dinner at the Eiffel Tower followed by visiting the Moulin Rouge, and looks positively amazing - the only problem is that it seems slightly a waste to be going to those sort of places alone - Paris is one of the most romantic cities in the world from all accounts... and dinner in the Eiffel Tower must be one of the most romantic places in the wonderful city to eat... And I would be alone :-( Still, it would be so much better than eating in some hotel restraunt I guess... And Paris does look so delightful!

I think Paris would be an interesting place to visit... I have been there only via the Midtown Madness 3 video game on my X-Box, and I would guess that it does not accuately describe the city... I will be sure not to rely on the X-Box game map for directions :-)

It looks like Australia is getting some Case Law on the use of data extracted from vehicles engine management computers to prove guilt in the case of an accident. The engine computers in most modern cards also record details just before a crash such as the speed leading up to the crash and when the airbag deployed, and how hard the bang was. Of course the defense is trying to argue that the data is unreliable, which I would guess is relatively unlikely. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out.

In the USA there was a scandal a couple of years back with some of the car manufacturers paying tow truck drivers and the like to inform them when an accident happened so that they could get the black box. The only problem was that they were doing this without the concent of the owner of the car.

And I just found out that the Acadamy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood has a museum. Having walked past this on previous trips I had no idea. They have just opened a special exhibit on Animatronics in Movies whick looks amazing. Unfortunately is closes on September 10 so I will not get a chance to see it... Looks like an interesting place to visit.

Tomorrow I need visit my travel agent and pick up a booklet for paris. I really want to visit it on my trip. I wanted to the year before last, but I could not fit it in. Maybe this time. Now all I need to do is work out if I will drop in on Dayton, Ohio; how long I stay in Tuscon; and how long I stay in New Zealand. Auckland is easy since I should be able to change the ticket without too many issues if I needed to, and my friend over there has an office so I can catch up on work if I need to...

I also have a meeting tomorrow morning to go through some budgets. Boring stuff really. If that finishes in less than an hour I will probably whip over to Pymble and spend the rest of the day there... With everything pulling together I have so much to do over there too... Fun days...

But to do that I have a few word documents to read... and then some major design work to do. Definitely something for the morning I think.

Futurama is a great cartoon. It was pitched to the TV network as being just like The Simpsons, but different. I think this is a great way to describe the show - the one on this evening on cable was just so hilarious. They had the women with one eye visit a planet with a man who wants to marry her. The voice of the woman of course is the women who was the wife in Married With Children. So they named him after Al from the show, and did a scene from the TV show in the cartoon. I was almost on the floor I was laughing so much.

Seems that every time I tried to do any work this afternoon I had an interruuption... Important (and unimportant) phone calls and emails... Instant messages. Everything. Why? I had such high hopes... I guess there is always tomorrow...

I do not understand some newspaper articles. The SMH talks about how a stabbing victum has been airlifted to Sydney from Central Western NSW, from Ophir Road. The article does not actually say where Ophir Road is... The only hint that it might be in Orange is that it talks about the assailant appearing in Orange Magistrates Court. Unfortunately journalists of all type occasionally make this type of mistake. Hey, I even do it in my blog, but not very often :-)

Interesting some of the stories you hear in this game.... It is now Monday here in Australia. I just heard of a person who believes that there are absolutly no issues in importing tracking units from the USA to Australia ready for delivery this weekend. In all my experience with importing from the USA I know that this is probably going to be pushing it. Particularly since this would need to be cleared by Customs... My guess is that the guy does not even have a FedEx account... It will be interesting to see when the hardware turns up

Anyway back to my coding... Slow going, but the software is getting there...

One of my friends sent me a story head had read on the The Daily WTF WWW site... A programmer wrote code that said 'Start Database; Wait 1000000000 Seconds; Stop Database'. Unfortunately the wait translated into 'wait until 1 billion seconds after now', and then continue when this happens. Sounds fine? Well, most mainframe systems have an issue with the year 2038, and if the time goes over that, time goes backwards. 2038 is about 2^31 (or about 2 billion) seconds from 1-January 1970. So the database started up and immediately stopped.

Also on the site was a dialog box for Remedy's Call Tracking System. Being rather helpful to those doing data entry, they allowed people to enter BC or AD on the year when entering when the problem needed to be fixed. And a Pizza place that will not let you enter an order if you are more than 1000 miles from the shop... I wonder if there is free delivery on Pizza's delivered 900 miles away. There is also a photo of a train in london with the sign above a door 'Coach number 12 of 11". And then there is the billing system that lets you enter dates from 2005 to 2016... With the exception of 2008 which is set to be a rather lean year.

I guess you could say that I find The Daily WTF seroiously funny... You just cannot make this type of stuff up!

OziExplorer... Normally I love OziExplorer. Unfortunately it is infuriating at times. I have probably spent the last half hour searching for a 'BUG' that does not actually exist. In OziExplorer you can creat a waypoint which is a point on the map. When you create this point, OziExplorer returns a number which is the internal ID of the point. Fine. Until you delete a point in order to move it. When this happens everything changes... The ID's of previously created points change. And thus you have two points with an ID of 3 for instance.

Thankfully with the API you can add and delete by name so things are not too bad. I just use the ID as an indicator that the point has been created. I probably should change from storing the number to just saying true of false. That way it will be less likeley for me to be caught by this once more. Yes... Once more. This is not the first time I have made this discovery...

A few months back I got a research question that asked if I would be more or less likeley to buy a car if the price of fuel got to $2.50 a litre, or even $5 a litre. At the time I thought yeah, sure. It will never get to that price. Well, news.com.au is reporting that lebanon and korea might actually push the fuel price to $2/litre. Ouch!

Pipe Networks had some major power supply issues last night... Because of this many westnet connections, of which I have two (one in albury), went off line a couple of times during the night. Unfortunately the Albury one refused to come back online... Meaning that until the issue was fixed several hours later I was getting email messages every five minutes telling me the server was down. That made about 150 email messages. Thankfully they were easy to delete and made sure that I did fix the server. I am thankful for backup links to reduce the impact on customers.

I just got an email from New Zealand with a copy of the brief given to the lighting person for the tibetan performance tomorrow... I think I have just done enough work to get the credit for 'lighting design'... The brief is basically a synopsis of each act with my lighting notes next to it... Cool!

There are some *COMPLETE IDIOTS* around. Take this as an example. About 3AM this morning an alarm went off in a general store in Sydney's west. When the police and the owner got there they found that someone had stollen about 500 liters of fuel from a storage tank. So what did the police do? Simple! They followed the trail of diesel on the road for about six kilometers until they found the truck with most of the fuel in it. They found one man in bushes hiding, and another in a nearby house. I do not know about you but I would be making sure that I turned the tap off before leaving with the fuel.

Today I plan to work from home - I have a few programs that I am working on, and I think I can get a heap of that work done. That is my hope... By the end of the day I hope to have a working tracking application, albeit without some of the nicer features. I will NOT have the reporting built in, and I doubt that I will have history, but apart from that I expect things to be somewhat complete. It will be left up to the reader to work out what 'somewhat complete' means.

Personally I think that spending 250 pounds on a coat hanger is rather expensive... Maybe it is just me. Anyway a company in the UK is selling coat hangers at that price which contain a CityScape of one of the worlds most beautiful cities. They have London, Paris and New York, but alas, no Sydney. I guess that means that I have just saved 250 pounds!

And Escape on News.Com.AU is reporting on Australian Artists in Paris. There is a new indigenous art museum in Paris, and Australians are over there painting and supplying artwork. Another excuse to swim the channel on my trip.


Microsoft has just made their Virtual PC software free. VirtualPC is a progra that allows you to effectively run more than one 'machine' on the same machine at the same time, given enough CPU power and memory. The idea is that you buy a big powerful server, and put a number of virtual servers on it... And the other thing you can do is save the machine to a single file, starting and stopping it at will... You want to try out some new software package? Run it on a virtual machine... and it is effectively sandboxed. Cute.

Starngely I have been more productive today than most work days - not sure why. I have been working on a couple of new products - my new TeamTrack client and a library I am working on for dealing with the WebServices. I am developing both at the same time, and although I do not need to develop the library at the moment, I am learning a heap about how things work together, and the library is becoming more complete because of it. This is also encouraging me to make the user interface side of things as generic as possible.

There is a story in The Times about how there are a heap of new IP addresses available with the move from Version 4 to Version 6 of the Internet Protocol. There are currently only 4 billion IP addresses out there... which is not really enough. The new version has something approaching an unlimited number of IP addresses... But the other statistics mentioned in the article are interesting - of the 50 billion emails sent each day world wide, 88% are spam and virii. These virus emails make up 1% of total emails.

At my brothers party last night one of the people there asked me a really strange question... I was talking to this person, and at one stage he asked in all seriousness 'so, how do you know Duncan? Where do you know him from?'. Needless to say he was slightly embarassed when he found out who I was. I must admit that I have made similarly innocent comments in meetings and parties, but that does not make it any less interesting from the other side.

I saw an article about the time and frequency standards in the USA, and how they have managed to make a stable optical atomic clock. This new clock will not gain or loose a second within 400 million years. This is amazingly accurate. When I was in the UK a couple of years back I managed to get the to Science Museum where they had the worlds first atomic clock. This is several times more accurate than the most accurate modern versions of those radio based clocks.

And according to APC Magazine, QANTAS is getting in-air broadband when its new planes get delivered... If in fact Airbus ever actually delivers the A380's. This would be so great for the long distance plane journeys...

Finally the Internet in Australia is slightly problematic this evening. PIPE Networks has a power outage, and Telstra is fixing some issues with their ADSL network due to hardware failure... I think things are returning, but really slowly.

I have a programming problem in VB.NET. There is a thing called events. If something happens in one program (class) I can 'raise an event' which is called asynchronously soon after in the second program. This sort of thing really works well, allowing the 2nd program only to listen in for the events that it is interested in. Common events are the mouse moving, a button being pressed, or a key being pressed. Now, I have an interesting challenge.

I want to raise an event, but only if I know if someone is listening for it. Why? Well, I want to do some processing first and then raise the event. If noone is listening there is no point in doing the back end database work that woule be sent to the event handler. I have emailed a couple of friends but neither have got back to me yet... I guess some people have weekends off.

On another subject, Microsoft has released a program called Personal Folders which are encrypted local folders stored on a lock machine. The idea is that you can store your personal files on a work machine, and have them being unable to be accessed by anyone but you. The problem is what happens when work files get in there... So there are reports that Microsoft is going to remove this tool PDQ. Pity really, but I can see their point.

The BBC has an article called '10 Things' which reports on 10 things that the world really did not know last week. And there are some doozies This week. From this list, the top three are the most interesting. For instance people added uranium ore to their water jugs in the 1920s as it was thought to improve health. It did exactly the oposite... As did Radium-brand toothpaste, condoms and shoe polish were sold as the word was indicative of quality, much as "platinum" is today - or at least it would have caused health problems if they had actually included radium. And in the UK, 48% of phone numbers are unlisted.

At least on the last point I am doing my thing to help the stats here in Oz. Because of the work I do I have three landline numbers (Outsourced Fax, Outsources VoIP and voice line), and about 7 SIM cards (2 x Telstra Prepaid to test SMS with at 1 cent per SMS; a vodafone GPRS card with unlimited usage, two Optus GPRS sim cards and two telstra ones... and my normal mobile). That makes 12 phone numbers assigned to me. Of those, only my landline and my mobile are listed. As for the others mobiles, apart from the two I use for SMS I would not have any idea of the actual numbers of the cards since they never have calls on them. Well the numbers are on the bills, but apart from that I do not use the numbers.

And in case you are wondering, Australia has a greater than 100% mobile penetration thanks to people like me who have GPRS devices... And this is only set to increase...

I have just got home from my brothers birthday party - and as usual it was a fun night... A few regulars were unable to attent which was disapponting, but apart from that things were good. I installed his wine rack before the party which simply involved drilling a couple of holes into the brick wall and screwing the rack to it. Simple really.

The weather outside was a bit foggy and damp on the way home, although the pea soup fog did not hit until I actually got back to Ingleburn. As noted before I actually enjoy driving in the fog, although I should note that I enjoy fog much more in the daytime, and even more when the roads are not wet.

Before going to my brothers party I actually made a breakthrough with the new TeamTrack software. My challenge was to bring three or four database tables into one dataset in a way that allowed me to specify the linking relationships without doing database queries... That is do the link on my end rather than on the server end. I now have the code to do this - I do not know if it is the most efficient, but it does work... And given that computers are getting faster all the time that is the main thing.

I love the show Fawlty Towers staring John Clease. What I did not realise was that some of the events in the show actually happened, with the hotel manager telling Clease and the rest of the Monty Python crew how to hold knives, and thowing a briefcase over a wall because he thought that it was a bomb. I kid you not.

Now comes news that the hotel is undergoing a refit and is about to reopen after more than 1 million pounds spent on it. Prunella Scales who played the wife of Basil Fawlty in the show is actually going to be openning the hotel on September 18 in the UK.

Also, 'The Chasers War On Everything' is in hot water again over a skit at the football last night. Chas Licciardello was filming a prank at last night's NRL clash in Sydney between the Bulldogs and St George-Illawarra where he was selling a fake Canterbury kit, containing fake knuckle dusters, balaclavas and the like. Most people thought that this was funny or ignored it, although some people got upset causing police to be involved. The comedian has now been charged with offensive conduct and will soon have to appear in court...

When I was out earlier I saw the result of another Ram Raid on an ATM at the local shopping centre. Monday morning the shopping centre had an ATM nicked. Of course this prompted a security upgrade of the centre including placing steel poles at the entry to the centre where a bench seat was located. But they forgot about the empty shop next door to the entrance. The people this time drove through the sliding doors to the shop and out the other set of doors probably doing less damage to the car than when they drove through the seat. My guess would be that the banks are going to start putting dye packs in the machines.

I have started working on a new revision of my TeamTrack tracking software. This will probably become TeamTrack 2007, and I have decided this time to start from scratch. That way I can design the software from the ground up to do what I want. That does not mean that I am throwing my existing code out by any extent of the imagination - NO WAY. It means that I will import code as required to get the program working and to add features. But features that I do not need will not be copied across...

In this itteration, the entire software package is going to be a heap more generic. Instead of having data structures holding static data I will have the datasets holding dynamic data. What this means is that adding fields to the application will be really really simple.

Having just been out to the local shops I can assure people of two things. Firstly, it is wet outside. Wet enough to be cold and damp, but unfortunately not wet enough to fill the dams to any extent I would guess. The other thing I can assure people of is that it is much nicer to be inside again now... With the heater on, and with some music on it is much nicer. Even in the cold garage it is much nicer than being outside.

When I was out I also visited the local hardware store - it is closing tomorrow having been run out of business by Bunnings and the like. I have been going to this store most of my life, so it is a bit sad that it is closing. It is a bit ironic really, since this same store has outlived a number of competitors who would not compete...

I have thrown a few thing out from the garage. Like a few old remote controls that I thought would be nice if I ever needed to repair that model of DVD player. I have only ever repaired one DVD player, and it had a remote anyway. And when a DVD player is $50 or so, why bother? Unless it is something really really simple that is. So they went into the bin. So did some old cables and some other rubish.

One item that will be going into the bin, unless someone else wants it (for free) is a 19" Panasonic monitor. And unfortunately it is not an LCD one which is one of the reasons I am getting rid of it. Great for a kids computer or something. FREE!

Not sure what I will be doing today - I may be cleaning a garage at one stage, although for once it will be my garage. Depending on how that goes I might also take myself to the movies. This evening I will be going to my brothers place for his birthday party - it was his birthday on Monday. His parties are always interesting...

Some tech news... CIO Magazine is reporting that the SKYPE protocol has been reverse engineered meaning that it is possible for compatible products to be produced.

Also, the SMH is reporting who Jack The Ripper is. There is no point even mentioning the name since I had never heard of him. They are also reporting that the Fun with LowDoc Home Loans has started with the ATO comparing income declarations with tax returns. This is sure to shake up the LowDoc industry.

I have worked out that it probably is not a good idea to have four copies of Microsoft Visual Studio running at one time. I can assure you that this is NOT a good thing to do. Earlier today I managed to get my computer to toally lock up - requiring a reboot. Only by presing the ON button for something like 10 seconds did the machine even reset. It was some type of cascading failure that I think I can associate with VisualStudio. It is not that VS.2005 is a bad or buggy product. It is more that it does require significant resources to run.

So what have I been up to this afternoon? Well, if you have not picked it up already, programming. I have been working on the administrator program for my WebServices application. As much as anything else I am using the Admin program as a way to learn how to drive this new tool that I have got written. It is like building a car (or a plane)... After you have spent the time working on it, building it, you want to take it out on the highway, open up the throttle and see how it performs. And see if it performs badly going around corners. For that matter does it even go around corners.

In my particular case I am finding that the breaks work, the windscreen is good, and the suspension is good, although there are a few bolts that need tightening, and the back seat has not yet been installed. And of course there is a single red light on the dash. And an experienced mechanic will know exactly what this light means if it ever goes on.

Thankfully in this case I have a really good mechanic...

I think I just paid for my holiday in September - assuming that the client goes for the solution I have just proposed, and I think they will. This is the part of the job that I love - where I can put a solution to a client, working out quickly what their needs are, and they understand that I do know what I am talking about - well, most of the time. I still need to actually get the work, and then do it, but that will NOT be a major hassle. Now I need to get a quote out before grabbing some lunch.

A new product. You can now get a Gas Cylinder for a BBQ that you can see through and see the contents of. In this way you can instantly work out if you have enough gas for the dinner party. Fantastic idea. According to Bruce Scneier, cell phones were significantly limited following the indian bomb blasts. Unforturnately this had a significant impact on supporting the injured.

I have just read a great article in News.Com.AU about a journalist who has been training her husband using animal training techniqes. That is, now when he misbehaves she does not loose her temper any more, she just ignores him. And she has found that this is significantly improving their relationship. The theory goes is that any attention is good attention in a relationship, and the bad stuff will therefore feed on itself. Unfortunately, (or fortunately depending on your view), being a male I am far more likely to have this tried on me than to use it myself.

Also in the paper is a story how the Vetrans Affairs minister got the wrong impression on POW Camps from watching Hogan's Heros when he was a kid. In essence the series coloured his view of what prison camp life was like... And didn't make it sound as bad as it really was.

One meeting down... A SKYPE one so I have not been outside the yet today. I am still waiting on finding out if I need to whip over Pymble at some stage for a meeting. Assuming that it is not on I will be comissioning another version of the WebServices. Lots of work is happening with that right now, and my main task is to effectively manage that process.

One thing that I have been doing for the last couple of months is using a spirax notpad to keep notes in, and I have been finding that this is a perfectly wonderful way to keep notes. I wish I had done this ages ago. When I record phone numbers and to-do lists I can then look back on them later - just what I needed. Yeah, I could use programs like OneNote, ToDoList, Outlook and others; and I do use these; But I find that this is a better way. I can use the notbook even when I do not have the PC with me. Or when it is switched off, or rebooting. Or when I just want to write notes as to what a variable name is called.

I found a link today on gramatical errors which are actually not gramatical errors... That is they are errors which everyone suggests are errors but are not actually errors...

I am up too early this morning - getting up about 6:45. Normally this would not be so bad, except that I went to bed about 12:30pm. I would have stayed in bed but I should be having a Skype conference at 7:30AM, and I might need to get over to Pymble after that. So right now I feeling a tiny bit tired...

Looking back on yesterday I dont think I actually got too much work done... Maybe today will be better - I will have to make sure of that. There are some things to follow up on from yesterday that I absolutely must get done today too - as well as getting the programming done.

Last night at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts performance I was amazed to see the monks in the audience with their mobile phones. It is not as if I am naieve enough to think they would not have mobiles, but it is still slightly strange to see a monk in traditional robes using a mobile.

The Tibet Institute of Performing Art tonight was interesting - you could see the chinese and russian influence in their art... It was certainly better than I thought that it was going to be. I also met I believe the foreign minister in excile of Tibet. I think that is his title. I had never been to the City Recital Hall before, and I found that it was a really nice place. Somewhat of a rabbit warren, but nice anyway - modern but timeless. An amazing space really

I took tons of photos - exactly as required. The people in New Zealand were really happy with them...

Driving from Pymnle to the city... It was interesting. On lane cove road I was thinking how glad I was I did not need to drive during peak hour every day. And how bad the road was in parts thanks to the roadworks... Half an hour from Pymble to the Southern side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was not too bad...

But then 40 minutes from there to the MLC centre car park was a joke. I have always heard that George St was slow in Peak Hour, but I just did not realise it was that slow! YUK. More on this all soon.

According to The Guardian, Duct Tape has saved the day on the Space Shuttle where it has been used to hold an space walking astronaught to jet pack. Duct tape was first used with great success in the Apollo 13 Drama, and has been used on numerous occasions since then. Also in the news is reports of an incident in the USA where a person was allowed on a plane with all the parts of a bomb except the explosives itself... And he also had hollowed out shoes.

Lastly the tibet thing is definitely on... There have been hassles getting this set up but it has been organised! Fantastic.

I find it strange how many quotes I get asked for at night... And what sort of work people are after getting done. It will be great if any of last nights queries come off - it would be really really fun to be honest. And to be honest they should pay well too... Just waiting to hear back from them right now... Given that they are not all in Sydney it may take a few hours.

SKYPE is great - I am at a clients premises at the moment, and a colleague in New Zealand who I am doing the work for tonight just VoIPed me through SKYPE... We were on the phone for about 10 minutes, and it was just so convenient not to need to worry about the cost of the phone call... Not that New Zealand calls are expensive, but even so - this was cheaper. Like a mobile phone but without the charges :-)

I have found a phone I like... The new iMate Flip Phone. It is not cheap, and i suspect it eats batteries, but it looks great. It runs Windows Mobile, and has an MP3 player built in... Hey, it runs windows so I can run my own software on it without too many problems too... Now, if only the cost would come down a bit.

More on the Tibetan thing. Basically I need to take photos from each of the 14 songs and dances so that the lighting people in New Zealand can have everything set up before they arrive. Why this is important is that they arrive from Australia on the afternoon of their performance, leaving little time to actually get the staging set up correctly. So it will be my job tonight to record things for them - take lots of photos and send them across when I get home.

Anyway, it is time for me to dissapear... I have to get to Pymble...

One of my friends has asked me to attend the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts concert tomorrow at the City Recital Hall... They are performing in New Zealand in a few days and need some help with working out what they need for the lighting design. Still waiting to hear about all the details...

I was doing some work earlier interfacing some software with OziExplorer. This is something I am doing a lot, and I think I am an expert at it. But today I was finding that if I stopped the program by using the 'x' on the top right corner of the window the program would crash on exit. I was getting a 'Runtime Error 217' which told me absolutely nothing. Google told me very little too, but did give me one hint.

The hint was to use the oziCloseAPI function when the form was disposed to close things properly. When I tried to do this I found that this function was not found in the DLL. Hmm.... Investigating things I found I had an old version of the OziExplorer DLL loaded... I upgraded the DLL, and added the function call and things now worked without error. Not sure what fixed it, but that really does not matter does it.

Tomorrow I will be spending most of the day at Pymble... working on some more of the travelling salesman problem, and improving the software.

You know something is up when the main phone and internet companies in Australia (excluding Telstra) decide to get together and develop a plan how they can compete with each other going forward. Or more importantly, how they can compete with Telstra and Telstra's wish to push Fibre to the 'node'. Basically what Telstra want to do is to have Fibre going to cabinets serving every 200 or so homes, and in these cabinets put much of the technology of the telephone exchange.

The problem with what Telstra are proposing is that it makes it really really hard for competitors to get access to the copper lines... and makes it uneconomical. So what the carriers have suggested is forming New Company to own the new nodes, and the cables back to the exchange. And then once inside the exchange, competition is much easier. A lot of effort has been put into this proposal, and I hope that it is the one that goes forward.

What I found interesting was that it was going to cost about $175K for every 200 or so households for the external plant. This did not include costs inside the exchange which would be minimal... nor did it include Telstra's cost in removing huge aounts of obsolete copper cables from the ground... Professionally I found the whole thing facinating.

Some of the numbers do not make sense though. They mention a 50% penetration which is fine, but they are talking about switching over 100% of customers in an area onto the node, since the node will do voice services as well. But the economic evaluation assumes that this is not happening, or that this service is being supplied at a zero cost, subsidized by the broadband users.... Interesting.

Today I have literally been working on the Travelling Salesman Problem which is a logic problem that asks what the shortest path a travelling salesman can use to go to visit a number of cities. This is one of those problems that has significant ramifications for the real world - it is a generic version of finding the quickest road between two points; or working out which is the best way to fly around a country based on what cheap tickets are available.

I still have some work to do on improving the program... And to be honest some of the hassle is working out what exactly what I want it to do. Although working on it is fun, I am glad this is not my day job... I think I would go crazy with some of the math involved. In fact I opened my text book which included this problem from uni today, and I could not understand what the textbook actually said. Most of the words made sense, but certainly most of the symbols did not.

This blog is a bit later than normal... Blogger was down for maintenance... so it is now that I am updating things.

Some bad news... Syd Barrett who founded Pink Floyd has died... Unfortunately he was affected by LSD for many many years, and has not had the chance to perform as he could have had he not taken the drug.

One of my friends from the USA invited me to stay at his house in Dayton, Ohio on my trip to the USA this year... I will see how things go - It would be good to get there but I am not sure I will be able to fit it into this trip.

A friend saw that I was listening to Warren Zevon's Porcelan Monkey, and found that this was strange. What is even more strange is this song... Lyrics like 'I can cut a woman in two, but you dont want to look in the box when I am through'.

I got offered some more work from one of my existing clients today - some embedded hardware work with a small display... Unfortunately I cannot say much about the product at the moment, but it will be quite useful... Another fun project. The client now needs to write me a spec and then design the hardware...

Tomorrow I will be actually working from home - I have enough projects to keep myself going - more than enough. The program I have been mostly working on today is debugged as far as it is written, but needs more work. I have not put in much error checking yet. What is it they say about all software... any program that is fully debugged needs to be extended. In this case that is definitely the case.

I have mentioned in the past that I have got some work done from Eastern Europe - some web services stuff. The coding is running a bit behind, and I emailed the programmer if he wanted to outsource some of the work with me paying for the outsourcing... The response came back that things should be back on track now, and I can then get about 3-4 function calls written per day from now on... So I replied back saying that I loved his work, and letting him know that he was definitely getting a big bonus, and I would be happy to be a referee if he ever needed one...

And the response was that working on the job was enough - he was enjoying the work so much... That is the type of contractor that I love... Of course he will get paid more too...

Today I have been hacking up some VB.NET code to interface to OziExplorer. A client suggested that he needed a product, and I joked that I could have that ready by the end of the day. And by the look on his face I do not think he believed me. I have actually managed to get a basic version of the software done already. More work is needed of course, but it actually does work. I need to add things to OziExplorer like callbacks so I can have the software that does things when I click on the map.

BaseLine magazine has an article on how Google manages it's IT infrastructure. With the number of computers that they have, this is an important operation for their business. This is a remarkably good read into a rather secretive company.

Anyway time to get going... Time for the commute home

The drive over to Pymble is certainly not a bad one... Traffic never seems too bad, and the main problem is staying to something approximating the speed limit.

I had a strange networking problem earlier today - I was trying to get a GPS tracking system to report to a new server... I have been testing the software on my Laptop, and I wanted to have things run on my Windows server for when I do not have my laptop plugged into my home network. Fine. I have a NAT rule that allows for routing the packets as needed.

Changing the rule did not work. Nothing happened. After probably 15 minutes I tried running the software on my laptop. It still worked! Strange. Delete the rule and it still works (but incorrectly) even though the rule does not exist. Recreate it, and things still do not work as expected... VERY STRANGE.

In a last effort I decide to restart the tracker. Things suddenly come to life. What was happening is that the firewall remembered where the packets used to be going, and though that this was still an old connection that needed to still work. When I restarted the tracker it got a new IP address, and this caused a new 'connection' to be created... which worked as it should have!

If you have been wondering what I have been up to this morning, and I am sure you have, then the answer is the graphic below. It is a circuit board I am attempting to design for a project - the most complex one I have designed for a while. It has a microprocessor module on it, and a couple of RS232 ports, and that is about it. It is designed to allow me to interface between two significantly different systems without needing to put a PC in between. Basically, it is a swiss army chainsaw.

Dinner with my brother went well.. He has been and gone - and apparently has had a good birthday which is good. I am going over to Pymble tomorrow, which is slightly inconvenient since I was planning to be doing some work with a tracker today, and that work is now on tomorrow. The problem on my side is that the tracker is not here but several hundred miles away. Which means that debugging is going to be fun. And not being at home during debugging is going to make things worse, although Remote Desktop will help.

According to Australian IT Roaming charges within europe are set to reduce significantly - at least for SIM cards from within Europe. One of the interesting things is that incoming calls are going to be free - although there are suggestions that mobile prices are going to increase to make up for the drop in revenue...

It is my brothers birthday today so he is coming across for dinner... I have grabbed a book for him, and will probably get him a DVD of some type too... My brother absolutely loves reading, and I am sure he will like the book I got him.

Today in the background I have been running a program to do some billing reports. i think I mentioned this yesterday. Well, the reports have been running for the last 20 hours or so; meaning that I would expect that the reports will be finished first thing tomorrow morning. The reason that this is taking so long is that the access to the database is only through the Web Services for security, and there is no function that returns just the count of the records being selected. When I get the next lot of function calls written I will have to add one for this purpose.

Thanks in part to the Internet and the mobile phone there is now a thing called a 'Flash Mob'. These are groups of people who suddenly converge on a location to do something strange and then dissapear. Well, people on BoingBoing.NET have worked out where the term comes from. The FLASH part comes from the australian definition meaning grand or upper class. And Mob is the collective nouns for Kangaroos. The first Flash Mob was a group of women in Tasmania in the 1800 protesting against someone - in essence a large civil disobediance project.

The problem with going away is that I keep thinking of more places I want to visit. For instance Qantas was VERY crafty suggesting a day trip to Paris on the EuroStar... This is great, except for one thing. Some activities cannot be done in one day in Paris. I would love to see the Moulin Rouge, and the performances for this are later in the evening than would be allowable by doing a day trip... So that means an overnight in Paris. Hmm... It would be fun though I think. I was able to survive in Italy without knowing the language although that was mostly in well contained areas, and not for a long time period.

Mind you, when I found that the hotel restraunt was not open on my first evening on the eastern outskirts of Rome I did not dare venture outside... This was 10km from the centre of the city, and I did not have any local currency. And it would have needed a Taxi to get to a Restraunt... Still, I did not have to pay for it which was good. More on this can be found in the September 2004 Blog entries...

Newswire has a press release on how scientists in the USA have decoded the infromation being transmitted on the European Galileo GPS type satellite system... This links to a Cornnel uni Web site which links to a GPS Course that looks interesting...

On another subject, an Australian company has released a calendar of IT People in attempt to get more women into the profession. On a similar subject, The Register has an article on what Color is most attractive

A moment ago I took my laptop into my office, and when I plugged in the power I got the message "The AC Power Adapter type cannot be determined. Your system will run slower and the battery will not charge. Please connect a DELL 65W power adapter or higher for optimal performance". I have NEVER seen that one before. And I am pretty sure that the power adapter is at least 65W.

So, I am a WIMP!!! I admit it... I admit it all... I could not even stay awake for the entire World Cup game... I went back to bed at about 6am at the end of full time, but recorded the rest of the game... The extra time and the penalty shoot outs. I think I like the idea that Italy won - it means that we were knocked out by the champion!

Yesterday on the TV I heard a TV advert that was using a song called "The Perfect Day", which with some research I found was an Australian song from the 1970's from The Little Heroes. I found the lyrics here. The bit I love is 'So tell me Is it still raining there in England'... I love the lyrics. They sound a bit dated given that they mention telegrams, but at the same time they still work...

Right now I have some work to do... But I will post more soon...

4:50AM... Half time with the Soccer World Cup... Italy vs. France. And for some reason I am not finding this match as good as the Italy vs. Australia match... It was really tempting to just turn the alarm off and go back to sleep when it sent off just before 4am to wake me up to watch the match. I WILL be going back to bed once the match is over...

Bed time... But I will have a 4am start for the soccer world cup... Fun

Another movie - Fast and the Furious - the original, not the new one. Near the beginning of the movie they have a heap of cars coming up to a diner and people getting out of their cars... The only problem is that this movie is set in Los Angeles... and most of the cars are left hand drive. Well, all of them really. But with the diner scene they have the driver getting out of a car with a steering wheel on the right hand side.... which should not be happening in the USA where they drive on the other side. I am guessing that they needed to reverse the film to get it to fit with the look.

And a link... MSNBC has a profile of a SpyWare company and how they operate. Interesting read on this seedy part of the computer business...

And a hint for suppliers... If you are going to get a client to stand up in front of a conference, make sure you know what they are going to say. According to ZDNet, SUN made the mistake of asking the NSW Department of Primary Industry to participate in an interview. After 20 minutes SUN asked them to recount the initial design phase of the project, and all of a sudden they didn't seem to be describing Sun as doing the "terrific" work he'd said they'd done earlier. "We bought a design I believe ... whereas Sun sold us a set of hardware and software and professional services during the implementation,". OOPS!

What I cannot believe is how little plot some movies have. Take an example I saw yesterday... I have always loved the music from the movie Flashdance, but have never actually seen the movie - I dunno why. I actually saw the movie yesterday on DVD, and my over-riding view was that this movie contains almost zero plot. Sure, the visuals are good, and so is the music; but normally I would expect some level of detail in the plot.

Unfortunately in this case there was basically nothing there. Then again you could just call this a dance movie and it would improve things. Still, I would have expected a better plot. The music and dancing were wirth it...

One of the WWW sites I visit had a banner advert for a strange thing called The DaVinci Coder. This is just a hilarious advertising campaign for an SQL product as far as I can work out. Quite satirical really - although I suspect that it would be a heap better if it were an English campaign rather than an American one.

I have been hacking together a billing data collection routine today - the software seems to be working well... creating excel spreadsheets showing the details for billing. Normally I would have been using something more advanced for reports, but in this case Excel is better since I can then post process things to generate the invoices.

The other thing... friday night I wanted to record Silent Witness on the TV since I was going out. I only made one mistake - I had been watching a DVD, and paused it. And then I changed the channel on the Foxtel box. The only thing is that I didnt change the channel on the VCR, and managed to record many many hours of the DVD screensaver... OOps!

I was surfing on the Foxtel channels and came across the HowTo Channel, and the show 'A year at Kew' talking about the british Royal Botanical Gardens. After seeing this I am not totally convinced that I want to visit given the other things to choose from, but I am certainly going to concider it... Just depending on exactly where Kew is. [Time to get out the map I think...]

The more and more I think about doing an around the world trip, the more I am taken with the idea. Doing a day trip to Paris looks like a great idea - but right now I am thinking that maybe I should just bite the bullet and stay in paris overnight... Definitely more thinking to do on that. Then there is Stonehenge that I want to visit, and also Bletchly. Hmm... So much to see, so little time.

Dell makes good laptops... Now, I can tell you who does not make good ones - Aldi. I think they are under the Medion brand. I tried to get one working with a video projector today - and for the first time ever I could not get it to work. Not even rebooting the PC and projector helped. And not even trying to use the TV out. No idea what was going on, but I am sure that the projector was fine. I am guessing that there is some utility to play with the chipset settings that I did not know about... Fn-F8 certainly did not work

Travel tip of the day... If you are going to be flying on a plane, do not set the ringtone of your mobile phone to say I AM A TERRORIST. This only leads to trouble in the long run according to news reports... I cannot believe that people would be THIS stupid. Then again, there are some dumb people in this world.

There is a great video on YouTube. It is George W. Bush singing the U2 song 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', and is very well edited. It is worthwhile watching for anyone who loves 80's music. about 10 years back someone did a version of We Will Rock You with his father that was nowhere near as well done.

And CNet has a review of the worst technology from the 2nd quarter of this year. One of the items on the list really interests me... Someone has a GPS navigation system with built in MP3. Except the navigation does not work really well. And will not allow you to play MP3's when you are navigating... Great technology.

No plane building today, so I have been doing some shopping - I found a great store called Socrates. I guess it is somewhat like Australian Geographic, but more oriented towards games and science rather than nature. Whilst I was there I grabbed a retractable USB charger for my cellphone for only about $12. The charger is good value, and is very small. I am a bit concerned with the comment on the instructions that say not to use it for more than 20 minutes at a time, and not to use it to charge the phone more than 50% full, but I am guessing that these can be ignored... Instructions like that normally can be.

In another case of regulation going too far, there are reports in todays papers about how biscuits would be banned from child care centres by the state government, and how they want to make exercise compulsory. Reducing childhood obesity is a great idea, BUT unfortunately this will also increase prices for parents. Of course there is no extra funding to pay for this extra work for staff...

Anyway, time to pay some bills...

I have now got back from tonights performance of Liquid Animation 7... It was interesting. The theatre is only small, with about 80 people there with seating for about 100. The first performance was probably the most unique that I have EVER EVER seen or heard. They had an electric guitar. That was fine. It was turned up, with a single person playing it. OK. For about 20 minutes. That is OK too...

Playing it was interesting. This meant placing it horizontally on the musicians lap. And that is where things got strange. He took a buzzer and placed it on the neck of the guitar, and moved the guitar slightlt to make different noises. Notice I did not say music. Noises. What was even more bizzare is the strange effects if you slightly moved your head... you would get a totally different effect. And the other thing that was happening is that your mind would try to make sense of the noise and try to fit music to it. Bizzare.

Then came a duo... Their first piece involved taking a lute, and bending the sound with a wacom graphics tablet, creating feedback sounds at the same time. Then they used some signal processing engine to play lots of percussion doing sampling and playback in real time. Slightly strange, particularly when the sounds were played back backwards.

And the final lady performing was using large delays on microphones and had the sound repeating too... Which made a really interesting, albeit bizzare sound scape. I did not enjoy this performance as well as the others. Although the first one was just way out there and seemed to be devoid of musical content, I did actually find it to be probably the most interesting piece.

I found it quite interesting... the entire event. I will probably go to it again next year, but it really is one of those type of events where you need to discuss the performaces with others... Makes a lot more sense that way.

The following is a posting I made to the OzAPRS mailing list talking about tracking systems based on HF radio. Forward Error Correction, or FEC is a way of removing errors from a signal transmitted over the air. The problem is that FEC makes certain assumptions which are not valid in the manner it was suggested to be used on the mailing list... And if you look at this and understand nothing, you will then realize why I have not gone back to get a masters or PhD.

Actually, lack of forward error correcting on AX-25 is not really all that much of an issue, at least from my point of view. I am happy to be contradicted, but if someone placed an FEC'ed payload inside an AX-25 packet, and if there was a single bit error, it is unlikely that the FEC would be able to recover the payload, even if it were able to recover 100 bad bits.

The reason for this is that FEC requires a physical layer where a single bit error will not corrupt the bits around it by the mere fact that it happened. The AX25 physical layer will not allow this - with single bit errors corrupting all the bits following!

Eh? Why? Well, the physical layer uses NRZI coding, or Non Return To Zero Inverted. Basically what this means is that if a single bit is of the wrong state, all the following bits will be inverted. Well, that is, all the following bits until we get another bad bit. All the data between the two bad bits will be inverted, but the rest will be good. But the odds of having only two bad bits and having them close together is not good.

Oh, but FEC will detect that first error, and correct it, will it not? Well, no. FEC will not detect so many errors. It is very hard to work out which the first error is. VERY HARD!

What this means is that AX25 is bad on air. NRZI is really really bad on air. If we add FEC to an AX25 packet things will improve, but only if we remove NRZI coding.

Over the last few days I have been looking at my options for what I do in September for the conference in the USA. This year it is in Tuscon, Arizona. And I want to drop in on my friend in Auckland either going there or coming back. But getting to Tuscon is a real pain. American Airlines only flies to Dallas/Fort Worth and Chicago, and they are the ones I want to use because of frequent flyer miles.

But looking at the fares, it is not much more expensive to get an around the world ticket and do things properly. So what I am thinking of is flying from Sydney to Bancock, and spending a couple of days there. I have a client there who I would love to actually meet, and he might actually be funding my trip if I can get him to buy more software. Then fly to London for a few days. Then onto Tuscon. Obviously Tuscon International Airport only handles flights from Mexico from Outside the USA so I would be flying in to Chicago.

Then after the conference (17-19 September I think), I would get a lift to Phoenix airport with a friend. This would save me many hours of flights, and more importantly would make my trip below the 29,000 miles where prices go up. Then I would fly to Auckland via LA, just stopping in LA to change planes. And then from Auckland back to Sydney. None of this is confirmed yet, but that is my thinking anyway. I think this would be a fun trip.

I have booked for tonights performance of Liquid Architecture 7.... More details on the show available here

I slept well last night - Although that was when I was asleep... When I was awake - well that is a different matter. I woke up about 3AM and I could not get back to sleep so I did a bit of reading. After a little while I went back to sleep and eventually got out of bed around 7am. Much better.

Today I intend to spend most of the day doing programming, although I hope to escape for some time to go for a run or two. This time I am praying that I do not get interrupted by phone calls. Then again I might just leave the phone at home. I will see. It is probably a bit early to go running at the moment - and besides, I have a SKYPE teleconference scheduled at 7:30.

And the SMH has an article on Petrol Prices. Seems that following North Korea and the missile, prices have jumped... and jumped rather too much in Sydney. Great... Just when I need to fill my car.

Right now I am feeling slightly exhausted. It probably has to do with the fact that I went out running twice today - not as long as I really wanted to go, but still it was twice out into the world doing exercise. I will sleep well tonight.

Friday night I am looking at seeing an event in Redfern called Liquid Architecture. This appears to be some type of audio-visual landscape with sound design. There was a mention of it in the Sydney Morning Herald, and I thought that it looked interesting - and tickets are only $20. If I go I will write a review.

The SMH is also reporting that John Hinde has died aged 92 in a Sydney Nursing Home. He appeared in the 1990's in a superman outfit on the Elle McFeast show, starring Lisbeth Gore. The SMH described him as whimsical which is about right...

Back from another run... I went probably 1.5km with it, and I would have been doing more but I got a phone call, and the level of the phone was such that I could not hear the call if I was running at the same time. It was hard enough when I was standing still to hear the call. I knew I should have left the phone at home when I went for the run. This run was a bit easier, partially since I have exercised my body a bit and it is getting used to the experience of running again, and also because it was a bit warmer at 2:30PM than 9:30AM in the middle of a Sydney winter. The weather outside is actually really nice - a tiny bit windy, but great apart from that.

News.COM.AU is reporting on three people who tried to sell Coke secrets to Pepsi. Being a good citizen, Pepsi handed the letter offering everything over to Coke, which allowed the FBI to organize a sting operation. In the end the three people were not trying to scam Pepsi, but really did have Coke secrets to sell.

Oh, and when I was at K-Mart earlier I picked up the DVD of the Wizzard of Oz. This is a movie which I do not think I have seen since I was in Kindergaten - it was actually the first Video tape I ever saw, or at least I ever remember seeing. It will be great to see it again after all these years. And no, I do not remember much of it.

I needed to post a parcel off - so I went to K-Mart in hopes of finding something for my brother for his birthday. No such luck but it was an experience. I think they are having some type of sale on at the moment... And it must be a good one from the 30 or so shopping trollies I saw lined up waiting to get to the lay by window. That is a LOT! They were lined up from the window through the habberdashery department, via sporting goods into the auto section. That is a lot of sales. Strangely there were almost no people at the checkouts.

I did a short run this morning - probably about 1km.... Since I have not run for too many weeks I think this is not so bad - I will think about another run this afternoon, and then some more in the next few days. Within a couple of weeks I hope to be back to my normal fitness level. (yeah, sure. That is likeley to take 1-2 months I would guess... Not weeks.).

Now a new saying... Quote in fact... 'Sometimes there are moments of brilliance in this world. The rest of the time you cannot work out if it is being run by Monty Burns or Homer Simpsons!'

FINALLY... The work that I was working on last night when I had to get the front tap fixed is now working YIPEE. Only about 16 hours later than I had intended. NOW I just need to make up a wiring harness and take it for a test drive. and then once that is done send it off to the client.

With some luck I will get the test drive done in the next 15 minutes so I can get something nice for breakfast, and grab the mail. There should be a heap in my postbox since I did not manage to get there yesterday - I was planning the test drive to take me down there, but that did not happen. Oh, well. I guess that means I should stop procrastinating and do some work now...

Often when I am planning to take long flights I go to the local discount store and buy a novel or two. Cheap ones on clearance. $3 or $5 each. The problem is that I usually decide that I need to make sure they are good enough for the long flight, and then have read them before I leave... Or I do not actually read them at all. Last night I needed to relax so I had a nice soothing bath, and found a book I had purchased for my trip to the USA last year, or around the world the previous year. It sounds like a great book - now I just need to make sure I do not read it before my trip in september.

There is a Story on news.com.au about a man who was caught doing 48 miles/hour in a 30 zone. To reduce the seriousness he stole a 40 mile/hour sign and put it in place of the 30, and took a photo to prove this... He was caught when people were rining to complain about the 40 mph zone which was now 30 mph.

Finally, THE REGISTER is wanting people to vote on their favourit IT Support Anecdote.

The plumber fixed the pipe... only $180. Ouch. I came close to fixing it, but not close enough... For some reason my afternoon really tired me out - not sure why. I did wake up a bit early... But it really was a yucky afternoon. So bad in fact that I needed to watch some trashy TV to recover... Bridget Jones Diary on DVD... It hasnt finished yet, but I think I will stop it and finish it tomorrow... Bed time for me I think!

Great... I tried to fix the pipe, but I ran out of gas... So I got the GAS filled up... And fixed it. Got the pipe put in and all. But the joint did not seal. Great! So I heated up again, Using up all the gas. And it still leaks. Just what I need! NOT! I have given up. I have called a plumber. Of course I came in thinking I would have a nice warm shower. No such luck. Hmm... I will just wash my hands. Oops. No water. I forgot. Thankfully when I was out today I managed to rub my beige colorado pants on the wheel of a car, and got them dirty, so they were in soaking. Not any more. The water was used to clean my hands.

I guess I now have dirty pants (no... I put them in the washing machine to sit before washing my hands), but at least I have clean hands. Oh... And to top this off, I thought I had locked myself into the house. When I got back from getting gas I parked my car in the driveway so I could listen to my iPod. So when I gave up I came into the house, and locked myself in with the deadlocks. Thankfully when I got the gas I didnt bother with one door, so I managed to escape!

Just what I need... 15 minutes ago Australia Post drove a bike over our water meter... And it is damaged on our side. Given they are a government organisation it is easier for me to fix it than get them to fix it!

I am currently doing some work managing a programmer who works in the Microsoft C# language. Sometimes there are issues getting points across since some of the things that I describe mean nothing to him. In VB.NET there is the idea of an array that can be resized. The Syntax is something like REDIM PRESERVE. There is no such command under C#... So I needed to find one... And I did here. With that issue solved software development can continue.

I enjoyed the drive to Pymble today. The fog hit like a brick wall at Hoxton Park, and dissapeared suddenly at Winston Hills. I really enjoy driving in fog... I find it more relaxing than normal driving - I do not know why. Maybe it is that I cannot see all the traffic up ahead, or maybe that it sort of cocoons you against the world. Regardless it was a nice drive. Being school holidays helped too with fewer cars on the road. Unfortunately I guess things will be back to normal in 10 days or so when the holidays end.

I got back some code from a coder this morning - some license generation code. The code looks really really good - it was money well spent. I have already been asked for an upgrade from one of my clients - being able to transfer a license to another PC. This is actually a fairly simple task, but it is one I had not thought of. Great idea. Actually, come to think of it, doing that is not as easy as it sounds. I can remove the access to a PC, but how do I ensure that they do not use the license key again. That will require some more thought. Anyway time to go - work to do.

I decdided not to go to the meeting at paramatta tonight. For some reason I was feeling a bit tired. I have a meeting in Pymble tomorrow and I want to be awake for that - it is one of those types of meetings that I need to be awake for - probably not a good idea when I do design work without having enough sleep.

Today I have been spending most of the time working on a listening program for a GPS tracker. What I was found at one stage was that I could not get a variable to change value. I could not work it out... But after about an hour I found out that I was overwriting the value. The real problem was that once I found the issue I realised that a week before I had experienced EXACTLY the same problem... And I had taken about the same time to find it. ARGH. I hope next time it will not take me so long. I have also commented the code to make sure I remember this time.

I love using MSN Messenger - it is a great way to keep in contact with people - both in my personal life and my business life. So when I saw a story on a thing called Avail-A-Bot this morning my interest was piqued. Even if you do not look at the main link, the one on YouTube is a must since it contains a video of this device in use. The Avail-A-Bot is a small collapseable toy person. When the person logs out of MSN, the person collapses. When they get back online, the person stands up. It really is a good video. I want one!!!

The SMH has a story today about how Uni's are seeing people go online to get work written for them. They mention the Uni of Western Sydney having had a student use the RentACoder Web Site to get work done. I get a lot of work done on that site, and I have also found a student from UWS using the site to cheat in assignments. The Uni was interested to hear about the person cheating I can tell you.

Tonight I might be off to Paramatta for a 'Homebrew Electronics' meeting... This is a group of people who either professionally or otherwise are into electronics. A friend of mine invited me along and I will see what it is like...

For some reason I have been waking up early for the last few days. Not sure why - I would rather sleep in of course. For instance, today I woke up just before 6AM. I would much preferred to have stayed in bed until maybe 7am, but since I was awake I though I may as well get up and be productive. I have not yet decided what I am doing today - either today or tomorrow I will be going over to Pymble... Just not sure when.

Some links... Firstly, Network Magic looks like a cute application that helps people manage their home networks. The user interface looks intuitive and user friendly. And the NY Times has a story on how Google is keeping to its roots in an attempt to reduce costs of its hardware.

I am getting to like more and more the latest version of Internet Explorer. You can download it from the Microsoft WWW site if you want to get a copy - and it is well worth it. As time goes by the software gets better - with the user interface improving significantly. One feature which I initially hated, which I have grown to appercieate is the menu dissapearing until you press the ALT key. It gives you more screen area, but also tends to suggest that you use the shortcut keys like F5 for refresh.

I also looked at Microsoft Office 2007 today - via the Microsoft WWW site. They did this by placing the Citrix client onto a WWW site, and giving you access to their server farm. I dont know that I had ever used Citrix before - but it seemed to work. I use Microsoft's Remote Desktop all the time, and also VNC, but never Citrix. Office looks good, although it would appear that most of the work seems to be user interface type things.

I was impressed by the new version of Microsoft Outlook. I downloaded the trial, but I have been somewhat scared of installing it on my main laptop. I might install it on another computer first, and then see how that goes. Then move towards installing it on my laptop. I will report once I try it.

The SMH has an article on Tennants Insurance and they describe some of the things that tennants have done to their rental properties. The worst I think is filling in a sunken lounge room with soil to grow vegetables. That is quite amazing - imagine the amount of work!

I have been busy working on the GPS tracker, but I have been having some issues getting it to work correctly - or more correctly, work how I think it should be working. There are times when I just want to pull out my hair - when I seem to be getting nowhere. I have a heap to do, but I also have a heap of external constraints (or as I wrote a moment ago, 'Eternal Constraints').

My left knuckle is starting to heal where I managed to burn myself on a soldering iron. It looks much more painful than it is. It is not hurting at all surprisingly, amd i have been able to remove the bandage which is good.

On my agenda for tomorrow is to finish off the UDP listener for a GPRS tracker. This will also be my first oportunity to take it for a drive. Until now I have not had the chance to actually take it into the real world, so I am expecting it to be a fun test.

I found an interesting article on how SMS came about. Basically SMS was never intended to be a useful service - just something else to be added to the GSM specification in case it was ever needed. It was never designed for Person to Person communications - just for machine to person communications. Things like saying there is a voice mail message available. The article is interesting but it is very hard to read because of all the acronyms.

This aftrenoon I have been busy programming rather than working on the plane. The code is getting to be quite usable. Not much error checking, but the functionality is getting there... Once everything is working I can then add the error checking.

Not sure if building is on today. Probably not I would guess. No matter - I definitely have some things here that I can be getting on with - some tidying of my garage might get done, and definitely some programming. The good news is that the administration program that I have been working on for a little while is coming together, and it should be ready to show off to some people by the end of this coming week. I expect it to blow their socks off.

Joke for the Day:

How do you stop your computer getting a virus? Practice only safe hex.

I am going to have an early night tonight - for some reason I have been a bit tired all day - I can only guess what I would have been like if it had not been for that great key component of the five key food groups - Coca Cola. Come to think of it, yesterday I had a few cups of coffee so that might have been why I was tired today, causing me not to sleep well. On international flights it always interests me to see how many people drink caffiene based products just before trying to get a nap - and then wonder why they do not sleep well. Strange

I did go building today - we worked on the rear of the plane mostly. There is very little to show for the work, but we did do a lot. Strange really... Some days you look back and you just wonder if you really did anything, or if you just slept through the day.

Since I burnt my hand on Thursday I have had a large bandaid over the injury. Today I needed to replace the dressing, and the burn is slowly getting better. Much slower than I had hoped but it is improving. I suspect it will be a week before the wound heals.