Adventures in Laundry-Land

Scientific breakthrough...

2010-01-09T11:47:00.002+11:00

Let me start by laying out my position on whaling (please understand my knowledge of whales and the whaling industry come soley from watching re-runs of "Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home" and "Free Willy"). Basically I think there is probably a sustainable level of whaling, but not now, not yet... maybe sometime in the future. Most species are endangered as far as I know.

Anyway, I was recently incensed by the deliberate ramming by the Japanese whalers. But maybe I am missing some understanding of the Japanese... and like the Japanese whalers, I think scientific research will yield an answer.

Therefore I propose the following experiment to find out what enrage the Japanese to kill whales and try to kill Sea Shepherd activists. The experiment basically involves throwing eggs at staff from the Japanese Embassy to elicit rage from them and measure this through detailed observations of their rage reflex mechanisms. I am exluding the general Japanese population in Australia from this experiment as I think their mingling with other Australians might increase the scientific margin for error. I think the Embassy staff are a great sample of live Japanese specimins which are perfect for our scientific research. For a control in this experiment I will use my Japanese flatmate who returns from Japan soon.

Until my control returns from Japan, I cannot proceed with scientific observations of the rage responses. However I will refine my egg throwing technique (henceforth referred to as my scientific input) in the meantime.

White jelly beans

2009-07-09T18:56:00.002+10:00

I don't know who eats these first, or who's favourite they are. They are always the last ones I eat.

Seriously, what flavour are they anyway?! I could understand if they were lemonade flavour but who the hell needs lemonade flavour when you have yellow lemon flavour ones.

I would like to put forth the motion that they are removed from circulation immediately. They are like the freaking caps-lock key. Noone knows who put it there, or what it is there for... but it is still fucking there!

Feel free to join in my campaign by sending your white jelly beans back to Allen's or whoever... and tell them some androgenous unidentified flavour of jelly bean came in your pack and could they please send them back with the correct flavour and colour added.

I am bored at work, someone come do something interesting.

Test from Madonna

2008-05-23T15:41:00.002+10:00

Test video from Alona

2008-05-13T19:01:00.001+10:00

While it logs. Kind of perverse.

Working at home

2008-05-13T18:54:00.001+10:00

Test this

Testing

2008-03-11T12:50:00.001+11:00

@home

Abducted by QANTAS

2008-02-02T04:37:00.000+11:00

I have been fortunate enough to "score" an extra night in India, courtesy of QANTAS maintenance and their lack of a part which can fix a fuel leak. Yippee.

The flight was meant to leave at 7pm, which became 10pm when I arrived from Chennai in Mumbai, and while sitting in the lounge became 11pm, and now 1pm the next day.

It is 11:10pm and I do not hold high hope of them getting the hotel and busses sorted in the next 3 hours. In fact I think the part will arrive in Mumbai before we arrive at the hotel. There are people just milling around... standing. I never understand this behaviour at airports. People feel the need to queue, even though they have no idea when said queue is going to move or, in this case, whether the queue is going anywhere at all. I sit, as I have (excluding toilet breaks) for the past 4 hours. And I am not going to get up unless someone actually says to. That, or something shiny distracting me.

Oh, that thing is shi

Trip to Pondicherry

2008-01-29T21:42:00.000+11:00

I went and visited Pondicherry on the weekend. Stefano, the father of a friend of my girlfriend invited me to stay the night at his place in Auroville. It was a very interesting 2 days.

Firstly, finding a bus there was not as easy as popping on trans-info website and looking up the timetable, nor was it a case of going to Greyhound.in and booking a ticket. Those websites I did find didn't meet my "Secure Online Shopping" policy. Long story short, I had to catch a ride to the bus terminal on Friday and pay a guy 50 rupees to find me a seat on a bus and then pay for the seat. Don't get me wrong, the guy seemed like lastminute.com in human form, he had a pretty good idea who had seats left to where and the timetables for the 20-plus operators; his abilities were impressive. I ended up with a 260 rupee seat on an "A/C Semi-sleeper", a bus with air-conditioning and reclining seats.

The bus ride itself was uneventful, aside from the hundred or so close calls as it weaved through the traffic on the highway. This is an eighty kph version of how they drive in the city (i.e. lane markings are just for decoration, and the horn is used as a warning that you are coming through... right-of-way be damned).

They did play a movie on the bus, and they put on the English subtitles for me (without asking which was very courteous). The translation was fairly rough ("Be correct men, the rice let us talking!"), but not so bad I could not understand the plot at all (e.g. that bootleg copy of Harry Potter from China, that had english subtitles translated from the chinese subtitles). The reason I mention this is that there was a very disturbing "lost in translation" moment... the girl had a crush on the protagonist, and kept referring to him as her uncle!

When I got to Pondicherry, Stefano was waiting for me. We promptly set off on his scooter (without helmets!) and he showed me some of the sites and some shops. It was very crowded as it was Republic Day. My friend Muthu told me this is a favourite period for terrorist threats from various groups... which makes no sense as it comes across as them saying they would prefer the good ol' days of British Colonial rule!?! We had dinner at a joint called the "Promenade" which had a great buffet and lots of different sweets. Stefano's English is not the best, but we managed a conversation or two about various topics. He then took me to Auroville where he, Donata, two dogs and a cat live.

The next morning I got to see the garden where Stefano grows various herbs, fruits and vegetables. I had fresh Pawpaw for breakfast. We went for a ride around and Stefano took me to his friends place where I met Jaqueline, Danip and their daughter who looked exactly like my friend Isabella. I will have to find a photo when I get home of Isabella and send it to Stefano to show them, the resemblance was uncanny! They made us pancakes with a variety of preserves (including pear jam which is now my favourite), butter and passionfruit (which was yellow, unlike the normal purple at home) and it was all organic. In return I fixed the email on Jaqueline's Sony Ericsson P1 (it was Blackberry being silly!).

Stefano then took me to a jewellery shop where I bought some presents for Sylvia.

For lunch, Stefano made fresh gnocci with a pepper-cream sauce and a baked fish. It was delicious and not good for my BMI. :-)

Later Stefano took me to the visitor's centre for Auroville, where my suspicions about the town were confirmed... Auroville is a new-age mecca! I encourage you to look the place up on Wikipedia, honestly the way they have transformed the land over the past two decades is amazing. But I still find it funny how they all have mobile phones (with the required network coverage) in there sustainable living paradise.

After a some more shopping for gifts in Pondicherry I took a taxi back to Chennai (so I would have a seat belt).

N.B. the Indian's like to have various melodies play when they are reversing their car (instead of the usual warning tone on a truck). So be careful when out and about. When you hear "Fur Elise" playing, someone is getting a call or you are about to be run over.

Training in Chennai

2008-01-21T20:31:00.000+11:00

I am in Chennai, India for 3 weeks (Madras for those that missed the memo). It has been a week and a bit now and not too shabby so far. My body (and for the best part my health) is intact and I have avoided causing any international incidents so far.

I had arrived a day early due to flight availability, so I was able to explore a bit on the first day. I soon found the hip happening part of town was nowhere near where I was staying. This is OK as I was in walking distance of the office. The walk to work is along a main road which seems the be the lighting district. So if you are looking for a lighting fixture or some lamp-related items then I highly recommend the northern end of Anna Salai.

Obtaining a prepaid SIM was an adventure to say the least. Vodafone had some competitive rates to Australia so I decided to head out and buy a prepaid SIM. This is harder than it sounds.

Firstly, the guy wanted proof of address and photo ID... he suggested I go get a letter from the hotel (obviously this is a common situation, as the hotel already had a Word template for this). But the SIM remained elusive.

Secondly, he didn't want just photo-ID, he wanted an actual passport photo (the prepaid 'application' form had a spot for it). I asked him whether I might go ahead and get an Indian passport while I was at it since it seemed the same level of ID would be required. He just waggled his head at me... which is a common way of saying "you're a looney!" I think.

Thirdly, the only photo-studio he knew of was across the road... but was closed. I asked him whether I could get him a bed-side lamp instead as there seemed to be plenty of those shops around, but only got a waggle of his head in reply. I then found a "passport" sign in an alley, which I headed down and found inside a shop that while they could help with passport applications, they could not help with a passport photo. I marked this place on my map in-case I did want to apply for a passport once I had the photo. They where able to point me in the direction of a Konica photo-studio... which after an hours walk turned out to be a Kodak photo-studio. I suspect I took a wrong turn and just got lucky, as opposed to the kind lady getting her photography brands confused. Kudos to the police who did the best to direct me to their interpretation of my bad pronounciation of Nungambakkam Road.

50 rupees and two sore feet later, I was back in the shop getting a Vodafone pre-paid SIM. The taxes and hidden fees also turned the 249 rupees for a SIM and my first recharge got turned into 46.81 credit on the SIM. Which lasted all of a few minutes of hearing my sweet-heart Sylvia on the other end of the phone. This made it all worthwhile.

Started new job today

2008-01-07T17:19:00.000+11:00

I started my new job with the handset vendor. Interesting first day as I actually did some work, in stark contrast to most other jobs where you spend the first day fart-arsing around doing administrivia. On a sad note while I get to use really early prototypes... I can't show my mates as they are super-hush-hush "not announced" products. But there are still bragging-rights I guess.

My farewell gift was awesome

2007-12-20T15:42:00.001+11:00

Tribute to protective plastic

2007-12-20T15:19:00.000+11:00

Phones always come out of the box with a bunch of plastic sheets attached to the shiny plastic parts to protect them from minor scratches that can happen during assembly and bundling.

Some insane people insist on leaving this on their phones "cos it makes it look nice" or some other crap.

This video is for them...

Mmmmm...

2007-12-19T10:37:00.001+11:00

Donuts

Cool trick in google talk

2007-12-12T14:08:00.000+11:00

I just figured out by accident that putting *'s at the start and end of the message makes it go bold. Hazzah!

I am starting a new job

2007-12-10T14:14:00.000+11:00

It's official, I am going into the world of contracting.

This is a steep learning curve for me as there are so many complexities added to your life for the sake of making life easier for the client I guess. They can just pick an hourly rate and agree to pay you that for an agreed period, whereas you need to get insurance and workers comp sorted out, and compulsory superannuation, and incorporation etc, and tax, and expense management and time reporting.... the list goes on.

Wish me luck.

Extreme talk time

2007-12-10T14:11:00.001+11:00

With this box two phones get 6 hours talk time each.

LAN party of merit

2007-12-03T12:26:00.000+11:00

Went to a LAN party on Friday night and we played TF2 till 6am Saturday morning.

I brought the test laptops from work again and this provided 2 more people the opportunity to enjoy the gibbing goodness on offer.

So kudos to Chesh, Joe, and Scott for the great hospitality and ethernet.

LAN party at my place, sort of.

2007-11-20T13:48:00.000+11:00

On the weekend, I invited my partner's brothers around for a LAN session. She was not too impressed that I was re-inforcing a bad habit (in her opinion). I bought them both a copy of Team Fortress 2 on Steam. It almost didn't happen when I tried to buy two copies (too fast I guess) as the bank declined my purchase of the second one. Sylvia came to the rescue with her Visa and it was all on.

I brought home two test laptops from work which have pretty decent graphics cards. It was one of those moments when you get a "home truth" shaken out of you. The "home truth" in this case was my assumption that laptops never had good 3D games performance (I remember when laptops had monochrome displays after all) unless you had a Alienware one. So congratulations universe... you have suprised me again!

I added up their stats afterwards, we got in a solid 9 hours. Sunny played the engineer mainly, and Sheng sniped away after getting sick of spies killing him (he figured out the spies rarely ventured up to where the snipers hide out).

So here are some lessons learned (which makes this an educational exercise I guess):
- Everyone loves TF2 once they have a go at it (Sunny was worried that he would just get pwned the whole time like in Counter Strike).
- Wi-fi will always cause problems when you try gaming over it (even with only one client using the AP)
- Sheng learned not to play music over team speak (I told him: No, you aren't the first person to think of it. Yes, it is annoying for others on the server. No, it doesn't come through clearly. Yes, we will get banned from the server if you keep doing it.)
- Everyone loves to tell the engineer to what to do but no-one loves to hang around protecting the engineer while he builds.

My mac is now even cooler

2007-11-13T16:18:00.000+11:00

Accelerometer = Lightsaber

2007-11-13T13:43:00.000+11:00

The latest phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia are coming with built in accelerometers. And I have noticed the inevitable application for this technology is lightsaber simulators!

First there was the Mac Lightsaber tool, then the Wiimote lightsaber, and now I have just tried a Symbian app on the Nokia 95 8GB. (Get it here.)

I am yet to see one for the Sony Ericsson's, but given the sensor is part of the Java API's for this phone, it is only a matter of time.

I love cube, and it loves me

2007-11-13T10:40:00.001+11:00

My kind of movies are coming again

2007-11-12T10:55:00.000+11:00

It seems there is this cycle in holywood where they only make my kind of movies once every few years. The rest of the time is filled with lame-o crap. During this time I only seem to watch political documentaries.

But it seems things are coming up Neil! I just saw "Across the Universe" on the weekend and it was awesome! Next month "I am Legend" will be released. Then the month after is some monster flick by JJ Abrams, which is unnamed as yet.

I cannot wait to go spend $50 at the cinemas. :-/

Best snack ever.

2007-11-09T15:15:00.001+11:00

I discovered these recently at the bakery across the road and I don't know what they are called, but they are great. They have a sausage wrapped in pastry with sweet chilli sauce and cheese and pack in more than $2.40 worth of awesome.

Daylight saving

2007-11-09T15:05:00.000+11:00

Has landed recently... and it does my head in.

Firstly, even with all the latest updates etc... some of the test laptops and machines at work still manage to screw it up and have the wrong time. And given my job, half the phones I test will screw it up too.

Secondly... I still don't understand the point of having daylight savings this time of the year! Why do we want to have more daylight in the half of the year that already has plenty of daylight and is hot too? It makes much more sense to me to conserve this daylight for winter.

The problem with socialised health care

2007-11-08T10:53:00.000+11:00

I think socialised medicine has been crippled by the actions over the last few decades by the politicians.

I think the biggest problem is the cost of new cutting-edge medicines and technology. Any budget for socialised medicine must cater for the astronomical costs for the latest cancer and heart disease treatments, the current killers in our world. These medicines cost so much because they are protected by patents held by the drug companies that developed them; and fair enough as long as they are not exploiting their position, as the research costs a lot and involves a lot of trial and error. But what happened to government funding for research? If there had been sustained government funding of medical research, a lot of these breakthrough drugs would have been developed in public institutions without profit being the motivation. The motivation would have been keeping people healthy and contributing to the economy and paying taxes which funds more research and so on.

That said... I don't have a clue how to fix this problem.

Cube food

2007-11-05T12:31:00.001+11:00

The green man now has a garden!

2007-11-02T12:18:00.000+11:00

R2D2 cam

2007-11-01T17:24:00.001+11:00

I did this by hanging the K850i (which I use for blogging) from Artoo's storage compartment. Hence the funny angle...

My own robot

2007-11-01T17:20:00.001+11:00

What more could a geek want?

Now that I have a tie...

2007-11-01T17:09:00.001+11:00

I better get some respect!

USB hub of doom

2007-11-01T17:07:00.001+11:00

My package arrived from think geek...

2007-11-01T16:31:00.001+11:00

Plus an extra suprise! Along with the package was an R2D2 Interactive Droid, which I guess has come from my brother or mum, as I sent them an email with a link to the ThinkGeek site and the item in question as a Christmas wish. I guess Christmas came early this year!!!

*my mum got it for me, thanks mum!!!

The eighties called...

2007-10-31T11:52:00.000+11:00

And they want their technology back.

More tilting madness!

2007-10-26T15:12:00.000+10:00

This is the coolest mobile game we have ever seen at work. The steering works by tilting the phone, and you can drift by holding the center button but then you have to balance it a bit like grinding in Tony Hawk Skateboarding (if you have played it).

One of the two legitimate copies

2007-10-25T11:25:00.001+10:00

That have been purchased

Sylvia gets her birthday present

2007-10-25T09:56:00.001+10:00

She had guessed somehow but she was still suprised, and I had convinced her that all her guesses were wrong. She was very pleased though, and is already thinking of things to use the herbs in. The list is:
- use the mint to make mint tea, which shouldn't be a problem as it is growing like crazy already so she can use that often
- use the rosemary for lamb chops, but I am not sure how to prepare the rosemary for use, or how much we can use from the plant sustainably

She already wants more plants, including dill so she can make her famous mash potatoes!

The love of my life returns tomorrow...

2007-10-24T10:31:00.000+10:00

She has been on holiday for 2 weeks and it is her Birthday tomorrow too, so I have a suprise for her. I will video her reaction and blog it.

My own little piece of paradise

2007-10-23T11:32:00.001+10:00

Plant life comes in inflateable form now, apparently.

I found Big Red!

2007-10-23T10:36:00.001+10:00

This is the most awesome chewing gum ever invented.

My latest money saving method...

2007-10-23T10:15:00.001+10:00

Making my own coffee at work!

Latest victim

2007-10-19T13:14:00.001+10:00

W900 with a broken camera.

This is my phone museum

2007-10-19T12:23:00.001+10:00

I have taken apart various dead phones and put them on display at work. The phones I have dismantled are:
Motorola A830
Motorola A920
Motorola A925
Motorola E1000
Nokia 7600 (this one was difficult)
Nokia N73
Nokia N90
Sony Ericsson K770i
Sony Ericsson P990i
LG LGC-120 (very old CDMA handset)
LG U970 (the most screws I have ever seen and they are phillips head, unlike torx used in the rest)

The Orange Box

2007-10-17T15:26:00.000+10:00

I bought "The Orange Box" on Steam last Friday and it is the best bang for my buck I have ever got from a game.

Firstly, the exchange rate for USD is pretty good right now, so the 49.95 USD turned into about 55 AUD.

Secondly, I got HL2:Episode 2 which is the primary reason for my purchase as well as two other games (well three actually, but Peggle Extreme doesn't count... I mean I had never heard of Peggle and I was meant to be enticed by the fact this was an "Extreme" version!?!?) . This is in stark contrast to other game bundles you normally find, where you actually buy the pack for one actual good game that you can't find seperately.

Kudos to Valve for recognising and risking innovation by developing Portal, and not just making another FPS (are you paying attention EA?).

I have finally set up Orb again

2007-10-11T16:56:00.000+10:00

Orb is awesome, after about 30 minutes you are setup and able to stream all your media to your mobile phone or some other PC on the internet. It works with ffdshow which means if your PC or device streams WMV, RealVideo, 3GP you can use Orb to get your media from home. Combined with an X-Series pack from 3 you can stop worrying about the data charges too. Given you are running some service on the internet from a Windows machine though, I think some security tips are in order.

Here are my tips for using Orb securely:
1. Disable the file browser. Once you have you need to stop Orb, exit it, then start it again for the change to take effect.
2. Change the default port configuration. It will default to 554 for RTSP and 80 for Windows Media. These are both known ports, so you are going to be easily port scanned. You must hit the "Check" button before Orb will let you save the changes.
3. If possible, in the port forwarding of your router restrict the IP addresses allowed to connect to your Orb server. Restrict it to the IP's of the Orb site and the IP range of the mobile carrier. On your mobile phone go to www.whatismyip.com and then pop that IP address into www.arin.net to find what range it came from.

PC has been recovered

2007-10-09T00:11:00.000+10:00

I have just now got things back to normal... still need to install a few crucial applications but I am back with shields up!

Me and unknown hench man at work.

2007-10-08T12:55:00.001+10:00

Actually, he sits next to me and i know him well.

View from the top of our building.

2007-10-08T12:50:00.001+10:00

Panorama feature is cool.

Guy from work...

2007-10-08T12:43:00.001+10:00

Becomes unwiting test subject.

Worst morning ever...

2007-10-08T11:06:00.000+10:00

Found my PC infested with malware this morning, and I don't know how it got compromised. I consider myself really careful, so I have no idea how this shit got here. My plan tonight after I get home from work is to run Knoppix Live DVD (so I can read NTFS partitions) and copy the important files to my backup drive and then blast way the drive and reinstall XP.

My new media center

2007-10-06T14:48:00.001+10:00

I have just finished setting up a media center PC as my ex-flatmate absconded with his xbox to the UK.

It is a P4-2.8GHz running XP Pro. I made it from all those old computer parts that I never chuck out and my girlfriend whines about laying around the house. I am going to hook up an old Web-cam as soon as I buy a small microphone (which I never seem to have collected somewhere in my stash) so I can set up Skype and video-call my relatives overseas!

Firebat

2007-10-04T13:21:00.001+10:00

He in cahoots with the green man.

The green man is watching me

2007-10-04T12:44:00.001+10:00

I know he is up to something, but I don't have any proof... yet.

Marble madness!

2007-10-04T12:35:00.001+10:00

So retro!

The adventure starts here...

2007-10-02T12:58:00.001+10:00

in my living room with the SEM K850i