Here is a video showing a plane being fixed with duct tape. Yes. Duct Tape. On the wing! And someone in the USA has managed to get 75,000 AA Air Miles by buying US$300 worth of cheese.

And I love this... A steam powered motorcycle.

There is a story on news.com.au about a company in berlin offering tours for Teddy Bears. They offer to take photos of your bears, give them a picnic, have them send a postcard home, all under the expert supervision of a qualified physiotherapist. How cute... I wonder if I have any bears who would like an overseas trip.

On WikiPedia is a story about a Jiffy. It is defined as either 1/50th of a second, 1/60th of a second, or the time that light takes to travel 1cm.

I have found a story on how to install vmware on a linux box. Also, there is a story on the death of a former member of federal parliment who also had a ham radio license, and started the radio station 2KO.

New Scientist has story on how air bubbles might be able to be used to improve the performance of boats, reducing friction. There was also a story about a company that scans postal mail and emails it to you. Cute

Telstra is about to charge more for mobiles. They are mostly increasing flag fall charges. Here is a very large readymix sign in the outback. In the UK, people are unhappy that the government might be listening into people talking.

And most bizzare... Some schools in the UK are shutting down Wifi because of health concerns. I can assure you that thanks to the inverse square rule WiFi is completely safe!

I found an article on VLan's for Linux. Interesting concept.

Something buried in the SMH. FOr the first time ever, the Senior Vice President of the NSW Law Society (known informally as the president elect) was not voted to become president. It would seem that interesting political games are being played.

I have spent much of the last two days at Pymble doing some work. This has been a bit tiring.

The phone company '3' has an interesting condition of service for its cable TV on the move service in The UK. A condition is that you are only allowed to watch SKY TV at your registered address... That is, AT HOME. Some of the other video may be watched anywhere, but if the person does not have a TV License (in the UK you need to buy a license to watch TV), then it is illegal to watch the video whilst the phone is plugged in being charged.

Spin Internet in Canberra has a 'free internet' deal where you get free wireless internet at up to 200 MBytes/month if you buy the modem and pay a $150 registration fee. And if you are prepared to pay $220/Gbyte for excess usage.

Some californian cities are rejecting Coal Power. This comes at a time when Australia ia looking at Nuclear Power. But the californians are not looking at Nuclear - they want to replace coal with alternate fuels.

The Register is reporting that Continental is suggesting 28 hour 'stop overs' to change planes in New York. link. Also SIM cards with USB may be On their way with cheap 3G handsets coming too.

I am writing a listener for the Transcom VTX3000x GPRS/GPS tracker so that it will integrate with my TeamTrack software

Here is a mirror for google!

Firstly, some people decided to Smash a new PS3 as soon as it came out. In front of people who had been waiting for hours. Just to see their reaction. Priceless.

Yesterday I spent some time working on my new Unix server. One issue was getting mail across. It took probably about an hour to work out that the main.cf file from Postfix has had some settings added at the bottom that were interfering with my own setting. Still, mail is now working. And the server seems to be working well. More memory will be good, but that will come with a new server.

The NSW government has installed some new High Definition cameras on railway stations which identify faces to 'stop a future terrorist attack'. Link. The problem is that most terrorists in western societies have no record, and have had no contact with the police. This was even true of most of the september 11 hijackers.

Telstra Europe has been having some issues with reliability in Europe. And in New Zealand a cop managed to shoot himself with a stun gun by accident, and use pepper spray on an inocent person. When using his stun gun, four times he missed altogether and shot himself once.

I have found just the thing for my Mother as a present for getting her Doctorate. It is here. A steal at only $24,500! Why this present? Well, for those who cannot remember history, one of the main characters was a Dr Smith!

A hotel room in Germany painted like a cartoon with black edges.link

And the CSIRO wins a Wireless Data patent in the USA. I wonder if I have some prior art against that one. Interesting. Probably not, but I do have a thesis from about the same time on about the same area.

My windows server has been up for something like 7.47 Million days. I did the calculations, and that is something like 86 days. Since the windows server only has 750 MBytes of ram this is not too bad. I am installing the 33 updates as we speak.

InfoWorld has a story on IT disasters... It only has overviews of four systems. What I could not believe is that the Department of Defense in the USA has 200 systems for managing inventry, and 450 for managing personel. The biggest of them all is the new UK Health system.

Airbus is deciding on if they will actually continue with their A350, or give that market to Boeing. link. Also, a few airlines are about to allow you to watch iPod videos on your in flight entertainment screen. link.

A couple of things. Firstly today I installed Microsoft Office 2007. This was released in the last few days to MSDN people. It crashed my PC once with the blue screen of death, I think when it was removing the Office that was there already, and then I needed to reboot a couple of times to install the product. Could be better.

I needed to then download the Desktop Search in order to search my emails. And that was a pain, both to index the mail and to install. And the syntax is not ideal. Not like Lookout where you could type 'Darryl lastmonth' to see everything in the last month. Now it is something like 'Darryl date:past month'. I guess I will learn this syntax soon.

Excel and Word look, well, strange. The menu bar looks wrong. VERY WRONG. Looks like a graphic designer had a bad acid trip. Not as user friendly I dont think.

Anyway, finally, you MUST have a read of This story on IT departments!

A few things. Firstly, I am installing Office 2007 as we speak. Professional edition. I downloaded it earlier today, but my MSDN serial number was not available for a few more hours after that. It allows you to do an upgrade without needing to uninstall. I will see how it goes - I really only wanted Outlook, bit the rest will be good.

According to a survey in Brittain, Sydney Harbour is the best place in the world to have a glass of wine. Also, forty years on, there is a copyright suit about the song A whiter shade of pale. 40 YEARS... And the SMH has a great photo of a plane crash in W.A. where Everyone survived.

I heard a new phrase today... Rather than 'worlds best practice', this is 'Worlds best Malpractice'

Some great news... The trailer for the new simpsons movie is out. After seeing The Trailer I was just shaking my head. Well, actually the start of the trailer was rather, um, un-simpsons like. I was wondering if I had somehow started to watch the trailer for the wrong movie. OOps. It is in the theatres on July 27th 2007. A little while off yet.

Great News

Some Great News...

My mother has finally been notified that her EdD Thesis has been accepted and therefore she is eligable to graduate. What that means is the my mother has completed her Doctorate and in a few days will be able to call herself a Doctor! She will have a Doctorate in Education, which puts her a few levels above normal medical people who normally only have a bachelours degree.

This does have one negative impact. I am now the least educated of the family, with both my parents having Doctorates, and my brother having a Masters Degree.

Remotely unlocking Windows passwords with locked screens Link

Fixing XP networking when Adware destroys it link

Blue Screen of Death Screen Saver Link

Helicopter Parents Link

API for MapPoint Link

What a great idea. In the USA, banks have started allowing businesses to deposit cheques Electronically. The scanner reads the cheque and sends it to the bank automatically. What a great idea. Then the bank can send a scan of the cheque out to the person who wrote it with the monthly statement. [For some reason in the USA they still send cheques to the person who wrote them. I can remember my father getting his AmEx bill, and having all the slips come in too. That was a while back].

A DELL customer has managed to get a refund for the Windows that was shipped with his PC link

The NTSB has released an interesting report on a pipeline that burst a few years back. One of the main problems was that a contractor damaged the pipe and did not tell anyone. link

There is a story in the SMH about how there was a Transformer explosion at Vales Point Power Station. I did some work there so this is rather interesting. Also, Google is calling new copyright rules 'Restrictive'.

And the Lets Go company is operating probably illegally in the ADSL world. They are offering discounted connection if you promise not to do Customer Service Guarenttee against them. The problem is that this is not allowed.

This morning I have an interview to go to concerning a complaint I made. I do not plan to go into the details here, apart from saying that it is on and I am looking forward to it. What will happen as a result I have no idea, but I suspect nothing will happen.

Also, AustralianIT has a story about how Australian Piracy Statistics do not seem to add up. They are also reporting that Defence is finally encrypting Laptop HDD's.

Tomorrow I need to ring the RTA about thier Cashback. They have now started using cheques with fibres in them. The problem is that on the side they say 'Security feature in this cheque is a microprinted signature line; the absense of which could indicate a fraudulent cheque'.

The problem with the cheque is that there is no signature line.

A toddler has been placed on the 'Do Not Fly' list in the USA. And an arrest warrant has aparently been issued for the two year old too. The father offered to hand the child over when first told as a joke. It is slightly concerning that a two year old could be placed on the list. The best bit is that the list even listed his age! link

Also in the USA, Army Recruiters are telling hopefuls that They are unlikely to get sent to Iraq or that the war is over. They have targets to meet and are doing everything they can to meet them.

And in Japan there is a HUGE market for Fake Priests!!!

Dumb McDonalds. They have a multiple choice 'Get the Facts' advert at the moment. In the last year, McDonalds used more than XXX Kg of Chicken. And answers were 1 million, 4.35 million and 12 million. Clicking the answer they said 1 million was wrong. But the problem is that 12 Million is over 1 Million!

And I dunno how I did this but I just sent an invoice to a client for -$22.50. I have no idea either. To say the client was rather confused is an understatement. I was rather confused too.

A friend of a friend made this comment about Australians...

"You know... I think Australians are genetically predisposed to 'breach of contract'"

Slightly rude, but probably somewhat accurate.

DieHard Movie Freeway Closure in L.A. Link
No left turn on every exit in a round about in the UKLink
Technical Interview Questions Link
Apollo 11 Tapes - Some Found Link

Todays meeting was certainly interesting. At almost three hours it was also far too long. That was not my fauly, for once. I can say one thing though - I think it was the most honest meeting I have been to for a *LONG* time.

I was having a copyright discussion after church today. Actually the subject was not copyright, but the subject came up for various reasons. I was talking to someone who made a commet about some unauthorised clipart. The case in point was related to some images taken from a web site. The person I was talking to brought up an interesting defense for when an item was not under copyright.

The person noted that a TAFE teacher had reported that Copyright did not subsist on FLICKR images. Rubish. Copyright subsists on all images unless they are in the public domain. Regardless of if someone has uploaded them to a WWW site.

Norfolk Island is set to get what is apparently the worlds smallest Cellphone Network with a total of four cellphone towers. I would guess that this network is going to be international with high roaming charges for everyone. Also on the subject of radiowaves, the FCC in the USA has stopped people banning Wifi, particularly in airports. Boston Airport had tried to shut down alternate providers of WiFi, illegally as it now turns out.

The TSA in the USA has also said people cannot wear sunglasses inside LAX Airport.

Also on News.Com.Au is a story about a Tsunami warning email that has been going around. I got one of these, and rang the company advertised on it. They said they had no idea about why the emails were going out. link.

I went into Bondi Junction today. Great fun. I tried to use the Cross City Tunnel, and I did. But the wrong way. Maybe I could not use it to go where I wanted. The sign posts on the Eastern Distributor. Eventually I went down Bathurst St in the city and hit Oxford St. Great Fun. Not.

There is a story on Daily Tech about how the NSA in the USA and Google might be in bed together. Everything I have heard suggests that this is a maybe - if not for sending raw data then at least for Google boxes.

And here is a great You Tube Video. Just watch it, and enjoy the posibilites.

I found a presentation from an Oracle Conference on Everything you should do to be a great database person, if you do not want to be a great database person. Basically it is a satirical look at databases. I have also found a company called 'Skytypers' which are like sky writers, but they use five planes in a line to get their message across.

And it looks like satellite radio in the USA is in a bit of trouble. Seems that a heap of the repeaters in the USA are either unlicensed or putting out too much power. And since they are being given away there is the argument put forward that they should be under the same rules as normal radio stations, which would shut up Howard Stern. Link

According to News.Com.Au, one senitor has eight, or maybe nine taxpayer funded mobile phones. Not sure what he does with them all. Link. ALso news is that ABC is axing The Glass House which is one of their better rating shows. There is the suggestion that this is because Corinne Grant is the public face of the Labour PR campaign against WorkChoices.

Also there is a Linux distribution called MythTV which does a fairly good job at deleting adverts from recorded TV programs. One of the ways that it does this is by detecting the horrible watermarks used by some TV channels (all of them) to remind you what channel you recorded!