Storage in the Workshop

I have been cleaning the workshop. Some items are stored in cases, and other in crates. The cases contain things like old circuit board, connectors (when I have 1-200), some cables, etc.

The second area is crates. Crates are great for lots of cables, old radios, some tools etc. The shelves for the crates are most interesting. They may not be great looking but I built them. They are built to be really strong since the crates can be very heavy.

I actually designed the shelves as well as building them. I have a second set of shelves next to the first ones.

Now, the final set of shelves is specifically used for plastic containers commonly used for hardware or sewing. The containers have 12-18 components, and just slide in.

All this storage equipment enables me to keep the entire workshop fairly tidy.

Doing Stuff

The last few days have been a good excuse to clean up. I have been working on getting stuff cleaned up for the last three months or so, but it has accelerated in the last month just since I am findinig it a to be a good project to work on. For me it is something with a visible outcome.

I have bits and pieces from past jobs. Some of this can be thrown out. Some can be recycled. Just depends on what the item is. But much of it needs to be dismantled. With old wires and the like thrown out.

I have been thinking of getting a SKIP bin in, but then I realised that most of the stuff that I want to get rid of can go to the local tip in the back of my car. At somewhere between $7.50 and $15 that makes things a whole lot cheaper than a large bin. Even if it takes a few trips. Right now I am working out what bits of wood and other rubbish I want to get rid of. Maybe over easter I will do that job.

I also have a briefcase here full of audiotapes... I am moving those to MP3 format so I can get rid of them. Basically digital data is so much easier to keep than analog stuff. And the tapes are getting old. I have some video tapes to convert but I will probably get them professionally converted... Like my Year 12 video yearbook... I have the master here in storage.

Music:

Mainly Music.

Music: I am listening to a group from the USA that is about to release an album. A friend asked me to have a listen to it, and I can assure you that as soon as it becomes available I will be buying a copy. The music is well produced, and I only wish I could provide everyone with a link to it. I love it.

The album is obviously very well produced, and I am sure that they will do well if they get the airplay that they deserve. One of the strange things (at least from my perspective) is that the songs are available in English and Spanish. I knew that some artists did this, but had never actually come across this before.

Back in the beginning of 2002, I was walking arround the back streets just south of Hollywood and came across a spanish record store. It certainly was an experience concidering I did not know a work of the language. From the looks I was getting, I don't think they get many white anglo-saxons in the store.

Quote Database

Wikipaedia, the free encyclapedia has started a new project - called database of quotes called WikiQuote. This I am sure will be a wonderful resource for anyone looking for quotes for papers, debates, talks etc.

It's War

I have just read in the paper what one of the other policies by Mal Lees who is contesting the local by-election. He wants a 'Short but glorious war with new Zealand'.

More Cleaning Up

I have been doing more cleaning up this afternoon. I was about to say I did not realise how much junk I had. But the thing is that I think I actually did. I got more of it thrown out today. Remember the old plastic and steel garbage bins that used to be used. Well, I filled one of those today with just rubbish. Things are getting tidier, but I am not finished yet.

There is stuff that I bought for my business, or have been given which I have never used. Some of this gets thrown out. Other stuff gets just given away. Sure, I could try to sell some of this, but really that is more effort than it is likely to be worth. I might sell one of two things, but not all of them. And I have to invest a lot of time to get the few things sold. And the items will generally not sell for very much money.

Right now I have finished 80% of friday's To-Do list. This is not bad. More than I had ever expected to really. Getting the entire list done was a bit over-optimistic I think. There is probably 2-3 days full work there for me just on the 6 items left from the to-do list.

I have missed not working on the plane this weekend. I actually look forward to working on it, strange as that sounds. It is just a chance to do something totally different.


Music:

A survey

Writing a Blog can be hard. Not only do I need to write what I want to write, I need to write what other people want to read. With that in mind I have devised the following survey. Please take the time to fill it in. And do not feel compelled to fill in every question. You may leave any question unanswered.
Darryl

What type of content do you prefer on this Blog?

Technical information and fights with technology
Personal Information and Stories

How often do you visit this WWW site and Blog?

One or more times a day
Several times a week
Once a week
Once a Month
Rarely

What do you think about the technical content here?

There is too much technical content
There is too little technical content
There is about the right amount of technical content

What do you think about the personal content here?

There is too much personal content
There is too little personal content
There is about the right amount of personal content

Why do you visit here?

Are there enough pictures in the content?

There are too many photos
There are not enough photos
There are the right amount of photos.

Do you have a Blog? What is the URL?

Do you have a WWW site? What is the URL?

What is your name?

Email Address

Comments

May we contact you to follow up your answers and comments?

Yes
No

Mown Lawns...

OK. The lawns are done. What I find as my fitness level improves with running is that the time it takes to mow the lawns decreases. This is definitely a good thing...

Earlier today I managed to see a few seconds of the audio commetry of "Muppets In Space". In most movies the commentry is interesting, but only interesting. In this case the commetry is really funny, probably more so than the actual movie. You see, instead of getting actors to directors to talk, in this movie they have Rizzo the Rat talking, as well as Gonzo (The Great). The result is simply amazing.

Right now I have found an old 1.6 GByte HDD for my old laptop and I am installing Windows XP on it. That should not take all that long as the machine runs at 1 GHz from memory. Not bad for a laptop of 2001 vintage. [P.S. Service Pack 2 of WindowsXP is actually taking longer to install than WindowsXP. I think there is something wrong with that :-) ]

Todays sermon in church had an interesting question... "How do you feel when bad things happen (especially when you don't deserve it?". I will not go into the answer here, but it definitely is one to think about.

There is an interesting article on the SMH WWW site. Actually it is an article by the High Court's Justice Michael Kirby on his opinions on the operations of the high court, particularly when he does not agree with a majority opinion.

Music:Bette Midler on Random Play.

Sunday Morning

Today will probably be another day at home, apart from church. There is the chance i will be going over to work on the plane after church, but I guess not since I have not heard anything yet. Still, I have a whole lot of things to do here. Too many things in fact... Something that I have mentioned before.

It is a real pain having a faulty HDD in my old Laptop. The laptop is good for monitoring things whilst I work on my main laptop for other work. I guess this really means that I must put that service call in for my main laptop now.

Yesterday when I was attempting to give a demo of the work I did to a ham radio friend, I found a problem with the software I am using to send data to our outsourced server in New Zealand. Looking at it right now the server has died over there. Unfortunately no trip needed for me to go over to fix it. I would be tempted not to get on the plane to come back if I did :-)

I think I will mow the lawns in the next little while... They really need doing.

Music: I have mentioned my MP3 playing jukebox a lot on this Blog. I have created a demo account on the jukebox is people want to have a look around. This password will not let you actually play any of the music, but you still might find it fun to look. If any readers wants the URL and the password, just send me an email.

A Saturday at Home

Hmm... A saturday at home. How relaxing and at the same time how boring. I almost got the to-do list finished from Friday which is a good thing. My problem is that there is only one of me - which I am not sure is a good thing, and I am not sure that is a bad thing either.

This coming week should be a rather interesting one for the business I think. Lots of orders coming in (I hope) and also lots of paperwork to work through. The paperwork is something that I am dreading. It has taken so much out of me in the last few weeks. With some luck the paperwork will be acceptable to the other people involved and things will be fine. We will see.

Some Programming

One of the disadvantages of working for yourself is that there is no boss to be angry with for any reason. Nor is there any way to have a weekend free of work if you know that you must do the work.

An example of this is a job that I have been working on since November for a client. When I went away at christmas I was stressing out since the application was not finished as much as I had wanted. Well, right now there seems to be one last bug-fix needed, and then the client should be happy.

This project is cool though... I get to play with satellites. I always love playing satellites... My first experience was with MIR, the Russian Space Station. I didn't get a chance to speak to Andy Thomas when he was up there, but I heard him early one morning. Since then I have had a chance a few more times to play with satellites. It always gives me a thrill.

Then I will need to do some horrible things like write doccumentation. At some stage soon I think I will need to employ someone to write documentation for me. I even have a person in mind too.

Old Laptop

I think the HDD on the old laptop has finally died. I am now getting disk errors on it when I start the computer. I just checked. The HDD warranty expired 2004-12-20 which is not so great. I just wished it had failed back then. Right now I dont think I have any data on that HDD that I dont have anywhere else. Since the drive is not yet dead I will let it cool down overnight, and copy any data off tomorrow using a USB drive.

I now need to get a new laptop HDD for that machine. ARGH. It is also a pain since that is the only working CD burner in the hose. My main laptop has a faulty DVD burner that I need to get fixed. One more thing on my

Something Small

I thought people might be interested in some of the things that I work with. The photo below is of a microprocessor in my tracking unit. I program thie device, and get it to do what I want it to. And I actually soldered it to the circuit board. Each of the eight pins needs to be individually connected without being connected together. This can be challenging at times. And my fingers are not large, it is the part that is very small.



Music: I picked up a 3CD set called All That Chill today. I have not yet had a chance to play it since I had a friend come over for a few hours this afternoon. Maybe this evening I will get a chance to play some of it.

At home today... Strange...

For the first time in a *LONG* time I am home for a saturday. I cannot remember the last time I was home for a saturday? I have a feeling it might have been just before I went on my trip in September. That is a LONG time ago. I have been shopping, and I might mow the lawns in a little while.

Intellectual Property

The World Intellectual Property Organisation is offering courses in IP. More information can be found on the UN Web Site. The actual Web Site for the courses can be found here. I am thinking of doing some of the courses. Realistically it cannot hurt, and given the amount of time I have been spending in the last few weeks with IP related issues I think it would be time well spent.

Shopping

My existing sandles are in need of replacement so I picked some new ones up at Rivers today. I got a really nice pair of sandles for $40, and a new pair of shoes for $80. Colorado had nothing that looked nice when I went there. Rivers had a far better collection. I did give up when I went shopping for running shoes. I didnt find anthing that I felt compelled to get. That will be my next shopping trip I suspect.

DVD Player

I gave my brother the DVD player last night. He was really happy with it. He paid me most of what I had paid for it, which is not bad concidering it was not quite new, having been purchased a bit over two months back. I just hope that I get a similar return selling some other stuff.

Music: Phantom. Track 11 of the 2nd CD is Learn to Be Lonely performed by Minnie Driver. This song is so far out of the style of the rest of the album that it is not funny. This almost sounds like it could be played on commercial radio, whereas the rest of the album is more, well, part of the soundtrack. Personally I find the title of the song rather depressing. Learn to Be Lonely sounds so depressing.

On my shopping trip I also picked up a 3CD collection of Chillout Music, with a copy of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA for only $30. Unfortunately they neglected to put the right CD in the case so I now have the cd of his Born To Run CD, which is a poor mans best of album. Next time I am down there I will exchange the CD.

Server Crash...

Very strange one. I went to my brothers for dinner tonight. I left home at just after 5:30PM. At about 5:40PM my Linux server rebooted. I have not been able to work out what happend. The logs tell me nothing apart from the fact that it rebooted. There have been some hackers just 'trying the doorknobs', but that is it.

I just cannot work it out. The other strange this is that one of the other laptops here also crashed, but has been having some greater problems rebooting. I am just wondering if there was some sort of power problem about that time. No matter what the situation, something strange has happened.

The laptop is having huge problems booting. First thing this moring it worked better, coming closer to booting, bringing up the "Do you want to check the disk" screen. And then stopped there. And now it is not going any further. Sounds like the HDD has failed.

Oscars

The Oscars, also know as the Acadamy Awards are on this weekend in Hollywood. It would be good, sort of, to be over there to see the awards; at least as a once off. I suspect that being in the audience would be somewhat like being at a school presentation night where you dont know any of the kids, and where the presentation goes on far too long.

I have a friend with an acadamy award. He didnt get a statuette though for some reason. Bill Kovacs got his award for the work he did with starting the computer graphics company Wavefront which really was the pioneer for computer animation. Bill also worked on the movie Tron. Around that time of Tron, Arnold Schwarzenegger did some work for the company Bill was working for. The company needed a new reception area built, and Arnold and his mates from the Hollywood Gym came in to do the carpentry.



The location of the Kodak Theatre is on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. This is about a block from the Holiday Inn where I normally stay. The new Highland centre is probably the nicest part of Hollywood, but the entire area is really not what someone would expect. I mean, it is not as sophisticated, clean or as opulant as I would have expected. Think of somewhere like downtown Kings Cross or Redfern, or maybe Newtown and you will not be far off. It was a shock to me.

This first photo is of the entrance to the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars are being held.

This last photo is of Sunset Blvd looking south. It is one of the nicer photos of the area. The Kodak Theatre of to the north-east of the where the photo was taken and I didnt get any good shots. This was taken from the top of the CNN building, from the roof. A friend of mine took me up there to let me take some photos back in 2002.


Music: I have been listening to the 2CD Phantom of the Opera. I will be buying this when it comes out on DVD. But in my opinion, the 2nd CD is more boring than the first. The 2nd half of the movie is far more visual, with the fright at the cemetary, and the decent under the Opera House. These scenes were designed to be more visual and therefore they are not as pleasing to the ear when placed onto a CD without pictures. I think that is the best way to describe it.

An Underwater Hotel...

The News.COM.Au www site (the second WWW site I visit each day after slashdot.org) has a Article about an undersea hotel that is being built. There is already one somewhere in the south east United States somewhere from memory. This type of place would be on the top of my list as an unforgettable honeymoon location, apart from the extreme cost.

My ToDo List

I am halfway throgh my ToDo list. I am really impressed. I will not get it finished but I will get close. Then again I never did intend to finish the list today.

Running...

I just got back from picking my car up. To get it I decided to jog down there. It was 2.5km, of which I walked for the first 500m or so since I got a work phone call. Then I ran most of the test of the way. I averaged 7.9km/h for the 19min 28sec journey, including the walking part. This is not that bad. Particularly since this was the 2nd run of the day.

To get this data I used my GPS receiver. Seems that the last time I used it was when I was in Rome, and I still had all the Rome street maps loaded in. And to top that off, it was programmed to take me to the offices of GPS Italia SRL on the eastern outskirts of the Italian capital. Not all that useful when you are running in the suburbs of Sydney. I can download the track I took regardless.

I definitely need a new pair of running shoes. The eyelets for the laces are tearing. I would demand a refund, but the shoes were only $14. I have promised one of my friends that I will buy a better pair of running shoes. I might even pay $30 ;-)

Election

Seems that there is an election taking place soon, thanks to Mark Latham resigning. I have not seen a date for it, but my mail box has been stuffed with ALP material for weeks. ALP will win with a HUGE majority since the Liberal Party is not fielding a candidate. According to the Daily Telegraph, radio presenter Mal Lees, who is running on a ticket of free beer, tollways to be abolished and a loud shirt once a month in parliament. Nominations closed yesterday at Noon, and there will be 16 candidates for the federal seat of Werriwa.

When Latham resigned he did so across the road from my church. And the hall attached to the church will be used for absentee voting in the fortnight leading up to the election.

Reading

In my cleaning up of the house I am finding books that I should have got rid of years ago, and then gems that I should have read again. One of them is 'Phantom' by Susan Kay. I really cannot remember too much about it, but I seem to remember that it is in general terms a romance, and I think I read it on a trip to the USA in 1997.

Legal Files

In the legal files, according to the Daily Telegraph, an ex-lover has been given a suspended sentence for accessing his former partner's email account and deleting messages from her new lover, probably breaking the telecommunications (interceptions) act by intercepting communications.

Music: Rocky Horror Picture Show on Random Play on the laptop. Phantom of The Opera in the Car.

Good thing I dont wear nail polish

OK. So what am I talkingt about? Well, I mentioned earlier that I needed to dismantle some tracking units, reprogram them and then seal them back up. I have done this during this morning. This was fine, but my hands got really covered with the sealant that I have been using. And of course it had not had a chance to dry yet in the units.

This meant that a messy job was even messier than normal. My hands got covered with this sealant - similar to Silicone Sealant. And I mean really covered. And about the best thing to get the stuff off is Nail Polish Remover, also known as acetone. Bunnings Hardware stores actually sell this stuff in 10 litre tins if you need it; much to the disgust of a person I know when he was buying it at the chemist in 100 ml containers, five at a time.

Even now after using a significant ammount of acetone on my hands they are still a bit sticky. This will come off fairly quickly.

Comic - PhD.

There is another good edition of PhD Comics on their Web Site. I wonder if I can type at 60 words per minute. Maybe I should get a PhD :-)

Order

I just got a great order from one of my suppliers. It is a REALLY good order. I guess I will be celebrating all weekend on with this order.

Cool Suppliers

One of my suppliers/friends has a great way to improve customer relations. He places a small mars bar in with his orders. A great way to thank someone for their order I think. The only problem was that the delivery I got before this one from him had been left in a hot dlivery van for too long and was not looking it's best.

Plane Building

I have no idea if I am plane building tomorrow. I assume that I am. Else I guess I will get to mow the lawns and do more work around the house here. But building the plane is a good chance to get out of the house, unwind, and make some noise. And maybe even hit some rivets.

Run

I have just been for another run... About 1 Km again. I could have gone farther but I will need to pick my car up later, and I will need to walk (run) the 2-3 Km to get it. It is a bit warm outside. High 20's I would guess... But it is not all that humid.

Music:

Writing and more

Writing

I find writing relaxing, and a great way to get my thoughts in order. Not all my thoughts go into this Blog. Some thoughts stay in my head, and others go into my diary. I sometimes think that I could have been a journalist or an author in another life. There are times that I love writing, and others that I detest it. My main problem with writing is my typing speed, or more correctly my typeing accuracy.

I have been typing since I was at primary school, well before it was fashionable to be able to type. I knew it was an important skill back then. But what I find is that my typing speed is too slow for my thoughts. I would love to be able to keep up with my thoughts when typing. I would love to know how fast I can type. The last time I checked it was about 40 words a minute, and I am pretty sure that I have improved siginificantly in the last 10 years.

Telstra Bills

I have mentioned before about some of the bills I get thanks to the type of work that I do. One example of this is the photo below that is my monthly Telstra bill. This was for December, and the last page is labeled "Page 136 of 136". That should give you an idea of the physical size of the bill. Right now it is on a pile that will be scanned as soon as I get my scanner back from Richard. The pile of bills to be scanned is about 3-4cm high.

This bill was only for about $300. Most of this was mobile data services which cost about one to five cents per connection. Thanks to the poor coverage in some areas, connections might only last a minute or so. Ideally they should last days or weeks.

Busy Work Day

I have written a To Do list for today. I hope to get at least 50% of the work on the list completed. We will just have to see how I go. You can never tell in this business how things will turn out. And I tend to go from rush job to rush job too. There are only seven things on the list at the moment. I would guess though that things will change as the day goes on...

More Paperwork

Right now I am close to having that horrible paperwork done. Not the horrible tax stuff, but the horible stuff where I needed deal with the too expensive solicitor. I am waiting for some more information for my document, but I am fairly happy with the way things are coming out. Unfortunately the additional detail is not available until monday so it will remain in draft until then locked on my PC.

What I found was that I just needed to analyse the problem another way, and the solution jumped out at me. I will not describe what the solution is here as there are confidentiality issues involved. All in all, I am happy with the format and the logic in what I have prepared. At least to me, the document makes sense. Of course you, my dear reader have no idea what I am talking about. Unfortunately that is just how things must be.

Getting it to this stage is a load off my mind. This has really been stressing me for a while. It is easy to say, "dont worry, it will be fine" but when someone has a concern the concern must be addressed.

Office Managing

Late next week a friend of mine is going away for a few days, and I am looking after his office for him. Thanks to cellphones and phone diversions I will be looking after his office as well as my own business. Judgeing from the times I have done this in the past it should not be too big an issue. My friend is going to india for a day to have a look at the airport there before he installs some equipment there.

Accounts

OK. The accounts are all done. I have even written the BAS cheques, and entered them into MYOB. Entering the details usually waits until the next BAS is due. Just how I work. This time I have been good. It was interesting going through my accounts seeing what expenses had been incurred in the last few months, finding all sorts of strange receipts. One thing I managed to find was the receipt for my brother's 'new' DVD player which I purchased just before christmas. [BTW, the DVD player plays DVD's of MP3 files. You can easally get close to 1000 MP3's on a single DVD]

Some other things turned up when I did my accounts. One of my suppliers charged me twice for their services back in december. It was good to pick this up. They are cutting a cheque on monday to pay it back. It is a supplier that I will *NEVER* use again because of other reaasons. And I found another supplier charged me an extra 50 cents on a $3 item, claiming it had gone up in price. It should have come down in price actually, and their WWW site still has the old price. So I will be following them up. The parts might be cheap but when you but a lot of them, it adds up.

Survey

Pretty soon I will be doing a survey of Web Site and Blog users. I would love suggestions on questions to ask. If anyone has any idea please let me know. What I want to know is why people come to the WWW site, what makes them come back. That sort of thing.

A Dummer School

According to a CNN story, the USA's oldest independant boarding school is looking at changing it's name. At the moment it is called "General Dummer Academy", named after William Dummer, a former acting Governor of Massachusetts. Before the middle of the 20th century it was just called the "Dummer Academy". Now they want to change it's name to the "General's Academy".

Music: Not much today. Playing random play when I was doing the tax. Then nothing now.

Accounts are done

Wow... I dont believe it. My accounts are done. They only took about 5 hours. This is a real improvement. I am really happy about this. Just so happy. It is strange how much pleasure you can get from doing something so boring as accounts.

OK. Technically the accounts are not finished. I need to do my BAS which should take about 5 minutes of which four of those minutes will be copying what is on the screen...

OK. Now it is time to shread some working papers, and then go for a run. See Ya
[Somewhat Later]
I went for the run. The log is in the picture attached. I did about a Km, which is not bad concidering the weather.

Returns

The GPRS trackers I delivered yesterday have been returned. Turned out that there are some incorrect settings in them so I need to open each of them up and reprogram them. This is a REAL pain. But it needs to be done.

Paperwork Stuff

The legal stuff to do with my business is causing me a huge amount of stress. The implications as so huge, and I really am out of my deapth. I dont have enough information to make the right decisions, and I am close to just throwing my hands in the air and giving up. It really is stressing me out. And I dont like that. This is not fun.

[short break for an ice block]

That feels better. Right now I am going to do my accounts for something relaxing. It is horrible when doing accounts is relaxing but right now they have to be done and they are not concerned with this other stuff I need to deal with so that is an improvement.

Right now I am taking the laptop upstairs and setting where I can see the trees and the real world. Some perspective...

[Update a little later]

Every time I do my accounts I promise to do them monthly. Ha. Not this time. It has been three or four months. YUK. When I make my first million I am going to employ someone to do this stuff. Having said that I would be rather working on this stuff, than the other stuff right now

Paperwork

I *MUST* do my accounts today. I really have no option. Since my car will be in getting the hail damage removed and I am stuck at home I guess I have no excuse. Well, apart from the other things also on my to-do list. Unfortunately the to-do list never seems to get shorter. I really wish it would. Not that things are not being removed from the to-do list, but when they are, new things get added... And it always seems that they are added faster than things being removed.

Also today I need to write some software. This is a given. And build up some hardware. This is a simpler task thankfully, and should only take about 20-30 minutes and then that will be out of my hair. And then I need to spend more time working on the business documentation... Related to the $450/hour lawyer. This is stuff I find really stressful, and that I cannot really get someone else to do either. It has been suggested that I get a lawyer to assist me with this, but right now a lawyer will not really help. Once I work out what I want I can then get a lawyer to help me get there.

Anyway, time to dash. I have to do some work on that document, and I just had a brain wave on what I need to say.

Strange Mood...

[ARGH! The tickets for the concert have fallen through. It is horrible when one of the main performers cannot get tickets...]

I am in a strange mood today. More relaxed. I dont know if that is because I have handed in the work that was outstanding, or that I have not been dealing with any of the business paperwork, or that I have done almost no software programming today. All I know is that I feel a bit happier than yesterday.

I am also throwing stuff out. More stuff. I really want to make sure that my rubbish bin is full every week if possible. Today it certainly is, not only with the normal household waste, and with the waste from cleaning the garage, but also throwing out some old bricks. Yes, bricks. I really am cleaning up this place. These are left over from when I built a retaining wall under the house following the great flood of January 2001.

[Yeah. The Great Flood. From the USA I was able to ring those at home to tell them there was something wrong. What was wrong was that understairs in the house was under 1-3cm of water. My mail server had died when I was at the beginning of a 10 day consultancy in the USA. Very inconvenient I can tell you.]

[What happened was that some of the dirt collapsed and forced storm water into the garage. And then into the rumpus room. I designed and built the retaining wall myself using besser blocks, filling each with concrete, and using steel reinforcing. There are about 100 large besser blocks in the wall. That might not sound like muc, but they are all filled with concrete. There are probably 40-50 bags in the wall. Maybe more. A lot of work]

Concert Tonight

Guess what... I am going out tonight to a concert at the Opera House. A friend of a friend is playing with K.D.Lang so my friend has arranged ticksts. How cool is that? The concert is sold out, so I guess I am really luckly to be able to go. I just wish I was able to take someone.

It was quite surprising to get the email telling me about the tickets this morning. So I am really looking forward to it. I will drive in and park probably at the Opera House if there is parking available. At that time of day it should only be a 35-40 minute trip in.

I delivered my work to my client this morning... I am really happy to have that work out of the way. Now they want more units. Lots more. I doubt I will be spending the profit from this next lot the same way, although it would be nice.

Music: Random Play... Which is why I am listening to Amy Grant's "The Night Before Chiristmas" . I love the lyrics of this one... "Children carry through the streets, a brightly coloured star" and "If your heart's been longing, You've been afraid to try, Sorrow's kept you company, And the dance has passed by, I?ll lift you up and blaze with you Across the moonlit sky. On the night before christmas."

In the car I am playing the 2CD soundtrack from "Phantom of the Opera" which seems to be just like the film. I'll bet the DVD is cheaper than the CD though...

Stuff

What a better title for an entry in my Blog but STUFF... Describes things so much and so little...

Top 100 Gadgets of all time

Mobile PC Magazine has a list of the top 100 gadgets of all time listed on their WWW site. Very few date from before 1900. The sextant, abacas and telephone telephone make up the majority of them. There is some interesting trivia there too. They list the Taser electronic gun, and the history of the name...

The Taser's name comes from another book, written by Victor Appleton in 1911, called Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. Our senior acronym cryptologist broke down the name as follows: Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle, or Taser.

It's Time, but not as we know it

I can't find reference to this in my Blog, but I thought I had posted it. In December I went to Parkes Radiotelescope with a friend. This was cool. My friend posted a story on his Web Site. It is a good read. And there are some photos of me there.

Now, there is a Story on the SMH WWW site about how Australis is moving from GMT to UTC. This may not mean much, but basically means that Australia is going from astonomical based time to more accurate atomic clocks.

The article is not totally correct in noting that Atomic Clocks sell for $120,000. Some are that expensive. Some are cheaper. My friend in the USA who went to parkes with me has a few of these clocks. John's atomic clock from memory is accurate to one second in 76 million years.

The photo to the right is of me in Greenwich in September last year.

What I have been doing today...

So what have I been up to all day? Well, here is a photo. I have been building these. I designed it. I built it. So what is it? A GPS tracker for a motorcycle.

The top of my finger is no longer throbbing if I push it hard for a few seconds. The burn seems to be deep, with the only pain arround the edges. I guess I will be more careful next time. I am normally fairly good with not burning myself. I guess today I had a few things on my mind.

Right now I am feeling a bit exhausted, having just finished watching The Bill. Time to do some reading and then off to bed. Right now the book I am reading is called Enigma, about code breaking in World War II. Once I finish that I might pick up something more humorous. Dymocks here I come.

Another Long Day

Today has been another long day. Too long. Too much work of the non-fun variety. Right now I have had enough, but I have more work I must do. I have almost finished the work for the courier company. It would have been finished now but one of the units has a hardware fault that should not exist. A very strange one.

For lunch rather than going for a jog I had some CC's. Some Mud Cake with some cream would have been better but I didn't have any of that in the house. When I was working for Pacific Power we had a Mud Cake offence. If you really stuffed up in a way that required the help of others you were required to bring in a mud cake the next day.

Anyway I feel like going to a desert island and getting sunburnt.

Ouch...

Ouch? Well... let me tell you a story. I have been working doing some work for a courier company. The cases that I had for their tracking units were not really good enough for their environment so I needed to get some different cases. I had the cases in stock so this was not too much of an issue.

The problem was the aluminium ends. These were machined down in albury for me on the weekend, and I got them this morning. But the holes were too small. So I needed to drill them bigger. Thanks to Richard I knew which tool to buy, and picked up one, and started drilling the parts. The problem was that they got VERY hot, and I tried to pick up the 2nd one and burnt the tip of my index finger on my right hand. Right now I have a blister on the top of the finger, and it is not too sore. But it would have been better not to have done that...

Darryl

Sunday SMH

In the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday there was a comment about a book called "Court in the Act" which is a collection of some of the best court room exchanges in Australia over the years. Angus and Robertson Bookworld have the book available through their online store for about $22 and I have just ordered myself a copy, with some other books. But, they also mentioned another book called "Disorder in the American Courts". According to this book, the following exchange took place:-

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No
Q: So, then, is it possible that the paitient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting in a jar on my desk.
Q: But could the paitient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes! It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

More work...

As much as I would like to continue this I have more work to do and it must be finished today. I wish I actually got a paid for this delivery, but since I got paid for it at the beginning of december I cant complain too much I guess.

Whilst we are at it...

Whilst we are at it, there is an interesting article in the SMH today by Lisa Pryor. I dont know that I agree with all of it, but it certainly is a good read

Time Off...

There are times when I just feel like having some time off. Right now there is too much stress in my life, and there is too little I can do to reduce it unfortunately. Some of it is personal. Some is business. Like everyone I do not like stress. I can cope with it fairly well, but that does not mean that I have to like it.

One stressful thing - a company here in Australia has applied for a provisional patent on a GPS tracking system based on radio. Their system is aparently highly innovative. Their system is not actually patentable in the form that they are protraying. You see, I started using an almost identical system 4-5 years before the date of the patent. My friend who actually developed the system I use published his first paper on the subject in 1992. Of course this is not mentioned anywhere on the prior art for the provisional patent.

Also I will have to spend more time with the horribly expensive lawyer later this week with some business issues. I have a real problem with paying $450 an hour for the services of anyone. I dont know about you, but $1 for 8 seconds of anyones time is excessive.

And then there is some other stuff. Unfortunately my copy of the Copyright Act is getting Dog Eared. Not a good sign. I have better things to do than reading legislation. OK - I know I can pay someone to do it for me, and that they would be trained to do this. But in this case I am the one who needs to know since there is too much information to wade through in order to make a conclusion.

Anyway I have some more work to do... And I MUST do it now.

Speak later. Ciao

Music:For once the music here is not something I am playing. It is something that I am singing in my own head. There is a song from The Wall by Pink Floyd. The lyrics go something like "I want to go home. I want to take off this uniform and leave the show." I cannot think what the title is, and The Wall is one of the few Pink Floyd albums that I do not have.

I need a holiday

Ok. I know I have just had one but I need another one. And I need it right now. Maybe somwhere with broadband internet access and no cellphones.

I got a bid in to write some software for me a few days back. It came through some time Sunday.

Hello,
I'm sure I can do it. I have GPS and can help you with doing this project. Dont stall for time, send me the funds and contact me ASAP if you want to get quality solution for your task. I think US$2000 is not so big money for you.


I have decided not to get this programmer to do the work. He might do some good work, but I really did not appreciate his manner. I will not be getting him to do the work.

Five of the same thing really!

What am I talking about? Well, in Married With Children, they were discussing the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral". Peg replied to a comment that that sounded life five of the same thing really, and I don't think she was referring to the the fact that she thought that funerals were a time to celebrate.

Saturday night I got the chance to see the first half of "Four Weddings" at a friends house, and I must admit that I really was not sure how I was going to cope with that. I know that a few weeks before it would have been too much for me. I was pleasantly surprised with how funny the movie was, even watching it for the 20th time or so. All the jokes were fresh, and I really enjoyed the movie. I guess I really am feeling a lot better and really am moving on.

Humor

There was a good quote in the inside front cover of the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. Maybe I will quote it here in the next few days. Anyway, a while back I heard this one...

4 Litre tin of Tar - $48.95
20kG of feathers - $123.23
Map to bosses house - Priceless

Repairs

I spoke to my insurance company this morning, ALLIANZ. For some reason they are getting a number of calls from concerning hail damage. This is not all that surprising really. The woman who I was speaking to on the phone had problems getting into work this morning thanks to train problems too.

When I said what road the car was in when it was damaged, she said 'Ah, yes' suggesting she had needed to deal with other claims from the same street. She let me know that my no claim bonus is protected, but there will be a $450 excess. Argh. They said I could go to any repairer and get them to arrange it all. I asked about preferred repairers and they suggested on in Ingleburn. Perfect.

So then I went down there and got a quote, $2,335. This was not all that surprising. What did surprise me was that they can do the repair on Friday for me. On thursday they are getting the car in the morning for an assesment, and then will have the car back to me sometime friday afternoon. This is what I like. They are going to be using some type of paintless repair technique. Excellent.

So I guess I will have a car this weekend to do more building :-)

Broadcast Services Act

From EFA.org.au

The Broadcasting Services Act (C'wlth) ("the BSA") provides a statutory defence to an ISP/ICH who carries/hosts Internet content in Australia and who was not aware that they were carrying/hosting a defamatory publication.

Clause 91(1) of Schedule 5 to the BSA provides that a law of a State or Territory, or a rule of common law or equity, has no effect to the extent to which it:

(i) subjects, or would have the effect (whether direct or indirect) of subjecting, an internet content host/internet service provider to liability (whether criminal or civil) in respect of hosting/carrying particular internet content in a case where the host/provider was not aware of the nature of the internet content; or
(ii) requires, or would have the effect (whether direct or indirect) of requiring, an internet content host/internet service provider to monitor, make inquiries about, or keep records of, internet content hosted/carried by the host/provider.

The definition of "internet content" in the BSA excludes "ordinary electronic mail", information that is transmitted in the form of a broadcasting service and information that is not "kept on a data storage device". Hence, the Clause 91 defence will not be available in cases involving such material, although other defences are available.

Storm Damage

I got an email from a friend overnight who had some storm damage on Saturday. He lives at Berowra somewhere, and had three direct hits on the house, and lost about an inch off the top of his lightning rod. He had very little in his house killed by the lightning, but it certainly did do some damage at his house.

On the December 19th when I was in Baulkham Hills, a bad storm hit then too. But it was worse here in Ingleburn. The photos below are of a house that got a new roof as a result of the storms. The roof came from one of the shops in Ingleburn, probably about 50m away. These photos were taken the next day on my phone, so the picture quality is not great. They were taken a few doors down from both Craig Knowles and Mark Latham's electoral offices.

Yesterday's Work

Waiting to fall asleep last night, I was thinking about the circuit I had designed. I know I should have been thinking about something other than work, but it did make me fall asleep quickly. Anyway, I was reviewing the design in my head and actually found a problem with it. I am thankful that issue will be easy to fix, just requiring that some more connections are made to the circuit. It is better to know know than once the board has been built.

Sometimes things do go right.

Sometimes I do love this job. I have been putting off some work since I thought it would take ages to do. In fact I thought it was going to take a full days work, with lots of issues, and problems at every turn. This time I started working on the project and I have done 95% of the schematic diagram done in 15 minutes. The remaining 5% may take another 10 minutes, but so what. I have just saved myself at least 8 hours work. What could be better.

The 5% remaining is just numbering some pins. It should not take too long at all. Knowing my luck, doing that minor work will take all the time. I doubt it though, it really should be simple.

Then I just need to give this to someone to design a circuit board for me and we will be done. I could do the board myself, but there are experts who do that sort of thing. I am not an expert at that, and I have not done a serious circuit board design in years. The last complex one I did was when I was doing my thesis at Uni. The picture of those PCB's are below. I would rather not comment on when I did these PCB's... Lets just say it was not in the last 12 months and leave it there, although if you ask I might just tell you.

Sore Throat

My throat is actually a bit sore now. I did too much talking today, almost shouting at times. I can also tell you I am starting to get tired. I am glad I did not drive from here to Wyong this morning, but it would have been an OK trip if I had.

A Long Day

It has been a long day...

OK. Where to start. I woke up too early and could not get back to sleep. Still I left at the time I intended and there was not too much traffic on the road. Which was about what I expected.

I got up at Wyong about 7:00 and set up within about 10 minutes. We didn't have Internet access, so my demo was not as good as I had hoped. Still there was a lot of interest as always, and it was great introducing more people to the hobby. I was up there promotingt technology, rather than selling anything. Even so I made about some reasonable sales for the day.

My talk was disjointed unfortunately. I have a feeling that I never got around to finishing or editing the talk I gave. I decided to go back to basics this year, and it seemed to work well. The turn-out was about 30-40 which was close to my best ever for talks at this event. I was happy.

The talk was disjointed, and I was scared whilst going through it if I would finish it too early. With some questions it finished right on time. And the audience really enjoyed it. They laughed at my jokes, and seemed to understand what I had to say. Even the more advanced in the room seemed to learn something which was good. If the people were not learning it would be a waste of my time quite frankly.

The event was also good to fill people in on what has been going on in my life in the past 12 months. Unfortunately I see many of my friends so rarely. I did get a congratulatory handshake from one friend who I had not had a chance to speak to since we called the engagement off.

My Poor Car

Now that the water has dried off, I have now been able to see the condition of my car after the hail. I would guess that there at least 30 dints from hail on the roof, and at least 10 on the bonnet. This is not good for a car that is just over 2.5 years old. Still, the insurance will fix everything. That is what it is for.

The Storm.

Today I have been at richards all day, building. We were working on assembling and riveting one of the wings after undercoating the parts last weekend. This meant that we were well on the way to actually doing something constructive today.

Well, that was until about 4:00 when it started to rain. And then it hailed. Initially the hail was small but got a bit bigger. I didnt think it was prudent to race out to my car to put towels on it to protect it. That is what insurance is for. Richard only got his car back from the Panel Beaters yesterday did go out to try to protect his car. He mostly suceeded, with the exception of a big mark on one side near the drivers back window.

My car did not survive so well. It got probably 5-6 small dents on the bonet, and about 2-3 on the roof. None are bad, but they are bad enough that they are noticable. It might be really easy for them to remove the dents from the roof and bonet but I am not convinced.

About the same time as the hail hit, we lost power. This was the real problem since it also stopped us getting news of the storm from the Internet. There was a branch on the 11kV power lines just outside here, and it was glowing at one stage... Might have actually caught fire. I was glad I was not out in it all.

There are a lot of trees down around here. There is even the ocasional telegraph pole snapped. Given the damage here I am amazed that I cannot see anying on the man pages of the SMH or NEWS.COM.AU Web Sites.

Lots of Stuff

Hospital

Firstly, my father gave me a ring this evening. My grandmother is apararently in Hospital right now. Admitted yesterday I think. She has a bleed on the brain somewhere, but is now sitting up in bed so that is good. She was in the high dependancy ward but aparently they are moving her to a general ward. Not good, but it could be a lot worse. My grandmother on my mothers side had a similar thing for a number of years without much problem.

Talk

My talk is on at 10:00 to 10:55AM on sunday morning. I will be staying at a friends house saturday night, and will work out what I am talking on then. Sounds hap-hazzard. Well, not really. I am to the point where I only need 3-4 minutes notice to talk for an hour and a half on a subject - and that is only to load the powerpoint slides.

Are you an Alien

I was just reading an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and it mentioned that visitors to Norway are called Aliens. The USA does the same thing. Back in 1997 I was going there on a holiday, and as a licensed Amateur Radio operator, I decided that I would buy a handheld radio over there and use it. To do this I needed to apply for a license. I promptly got it, and in bold letters at the top it said:-
"ALIEN LICENSE"
Obviously I was allowed to be an Alien.

Work

I actually comissioned some software that I got written at the beginning of January for the business. There are a few issues here and there that I am working on fixing when I find them but I am amazed at how powerful the software really is. It has exceeded my expectations.

Now all I need to do is actually document the work there - without documentation I will have issues over the coming months and years getting the software to work how I want it to. And like all of us, we are getting older and forget the details of things.

Today I started making a change. Something seemed to me to be inconsistant. Then when I had almost done all the work on the change I realised that the change I was making did not actually make sense, and there was not much use in making the change. Sorry about talking in riddles but the work is commercially sensative, and even if it wasn't there would need to be lots of explanations to explain the situation anyway.

Mobile Phone

My phone has turned itself off twice today. Not sure why, but it has just gone black for no reason. Maybe it has a 'Peril Sensative Screen' where it works out that I realy dont want to answer the call so turns the phone off :-) It tends to do it at all the wrong times. In this case it is probably a good case for charging the phone. In case anyone is interested it is a Nokia 6600

Credit Cards

I love them. I think most readers know that I run my own business. These days electronic transactions are popular. Paying bills by remote control is just so easy. Going through my accounts for the last month I found about $700 in cheques from businesses for various reasons - mostly refunds for varuious purposes although in one case it was for an item that a client had ordered but was not yet in stock.

I love credit cards. People can ring me up and pay bils, or go to the Post Office and pay though PostBillPay, or BPay me. It is so easy. I never need to see an actual Credit Card. Though my accounting software, I get a 1-300 number which people can ring to pay bills anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. Then the next day I get an email that I click on, and the email automatically tells the software that the clients have paid, and that the money is in the account. This is too easy.

My Superanuation is paid the same way. I just log into the software, say how little I have paid myself, and the money is transferred automatically. I also write some software that is fairly non-commercial. There are two pieces of software - one for US$20 and the other for US$5. I get paid through PayPal for these. I normally offset the income with software I get others to write which I also pay with PayPal.

Basically the world is changing. When I went to the USA in 1992, I took a Visa card, and it was great. Most things were pre-paid so I didn't use much money. 1997 I took some traveler's cheques but that was for hotels, and I used my card for everything else. 2000 in the USA I used my Credit Card until the company I was working for paid me, which would have been find if the hotel had not placed a hold on US$500 of my funds when I checked in.

My world trip last year was booked through a travel agency, mostly, and I just used my card for spending money...

When I went to New Zealand a few weeks ago I just booked the flight one way on my Visa card. Over there I went to the bank after a few days to get some spending money which was mostly used to buy some presents at the airport when I left. And when I was ready to come home I booked a flight.

With electronic money, the world really has changed.

Oops...

I have stuffed up... I just had a phone call from someone asking me if I was going to be up at Wyong this weekend. OOps. I thought that was the sunday after. That really causes me some issues. I have some planning to do for what I will be doing up there and I have no time to do it.

By sunday morning I need to
* Produce a 30 minute talk
* Work out what I will be demonstrating on the stall
* Pack everything up
* Pick up brochues

Bascially the Event is the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club Field Day. It is about 2-3000 people converging on the racecourse for the day talking, buying, selling, and more talking. I look forward to this event every year... And would not miss it for the world.

Slow Day

Ever have one of those days when you have work to do but have no desire to do anything? Well, today is one of those days for me. I dont know why, maybe it is just that it is a friday. I dont know.

My internet connection has just gone slow uploading a file to a server in Albury. It has been good all day. It is taking ages to transfer a small file. The stupid thing is that I am pulling it from the Albury side, and using far more bandwidth that the file transfer is using watching the file transfer very slowly download. Restarting the download fixed things.

I have to go down the the post office soon. I am waiting on a parcel, and it was not there when I went to collect the mail earlier today. Maybe it will be there some time this afternoon. We will see. It was sent yesterday from Brisbane. Still, when it gets here there will be more work for me.

I am looking forward to having some time off tomorrow... So long as we are building. That is the plan anyway. A good chance to get out of the house and do something useful. And a chance hopefully to make a lot of noise.

The garage is getting tidier. I managed to empty three briefcase road cases, and now I have to work out what to do with the last remaining empty one. That will quickly get used. They always do. Time to go... I am getting peckish.

Music: Mark Knopler...

Cleaning Up

I have been cleaning up the garage. I know there is a lot of junk there but I really had forgotten how much. I am getting rid of stuff all over the place. There is a whole lot of stuff which I thought I wanted to play with at the time, but now I know I dont have the time or the inclination. So I am finding homes for some of it. Other bits are being thrown out.

My goal for the next few days is to fill a large box I have with stuff to be thrown out. I think I will get there.

Readers should ask if they want any of the stuff I have lying around here. Like I have some graphics tablets from 4"x5" up to 12"x18". Stuff which any artist would kill for, which leaves me out in the cold. Basically I am wanting to give these away. A donation would be cute, but really I just dont want to thow them out - not since the 12"x18" one is worth about $1200 or so new. I also have found 8 GPS recievers with tracking units to be plugged into radios. And other stuff which would bore most people to tears.

Long time readers will know that I have an event at Wyong Racecourse on the 27th, and I can take some of the stuff I want to dispose of up there. The only thing I need to ensure is that I dont bring too much other stuff back. I still need to write my talk the event.. And decide on a subject...Hmm.

When I was in Des Moines, I gave three talks... Maybe I will give one of those. That might be the easy way out... Now I just need to choose which one to give.

Tomorrow I will probably be building... All the parts we painted last weekend are now dry, so things can start in ernest.

Music: Right now Evanescence is playing on random play

Running...

I went jogging a little while ago, and it was good. I did about 12 minutes running. Assuming that I was running at my normal speed of 7-8 km/h that means I did about 1.5 km. I was impressed. Maybe I am a bit more fit than I thought I was. Should be no problem to get up to 2km by the end of next week.

I really need to get the GPS tracker out to plot my runs. After all that *IS* my job - tracking. If I can't track myself, what good am I tracking anyone else? Hey, dont answer that one :-)

Music wise, I have just mostly been listening to random play from my jukebox. I am up to 5888 songs and 17 days 8 hours of music. In the car I have Belinda Carlisle, and I have not yet grown out of it. I do think her anthem "(We Want) The Same Thing" would be good with slightly revised words as a christian song. It sounds like HillSong could have written it how it is.

I have a Maroon 5 acoustic album here to put into my car. I will let you know what I think of it. The random song playing now is Tina Arena's "Now I can Dance". I find this is a really powerful song, and I really love it. It was one of those songs that caused me to buy the album.

Four Weeks

It has now been four weeks since I broke up with my now ex-fiance and my life is returning to normal. I did not even realize it was four weeks until I looked at my calendar above my workbench. In some ways it feels like an eternity. In others it seems just like yesterday.

I would like to thank all those who have helped me in so many ways over these last few weeks. It has been hard at times, but generally since I have got back from my escape to New Zealand, my life is returning to normal.

Some people know how much they have helped. Some don't. Sometimes it is the little things that have helped more than the big things. I probably need another month to fully get over my her, but I know I am well on my way. At some stage I will start looking again... Just not today.

I Hate Microsoft

My feelings for MicroSoft vary by the hour. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I hate them. Just depends on my mood and what idiotic things that they have been up to. Today for instance I have been working on some software. What I have been trying to do is convert a string like
"Darryl Smith Was Here"
to
"Darrryl%20Smith%20Was%Here"

That is, I wanted to convert spaces to other characters that the other end of a communications link could work out. Sounds Simple doesnt it? Well, I wanted to do this the right way, and there are other characters that I should not use over this link. I have been searching and searching for the right solution.

A few times I came up with
url = HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(url)
But it didn't work. It could not find HttpUtility for some reason. Usually at the top of the document you need to add something like
#Imports system.web
But in this case, that did not work. I could not work it out... Then I finally found a site that said Microsoft forgot to get some things to work automatically. HttpUtility was one of them. To get it to work all you have to do is "Add Reference" to System.Web.DLL

Anyway enough technical stuff... Time for a run.


Music:

Getting There...

I am getting there with the major project that I have been working on today. It is a hardware project, and I have almost all of it done... Except for some soldering, uploading some code, and then just installing the boards in their cases. This is the holdup. The aluminium ends will not be available until monday in Albury, so that is putting things off a bit.

Slightly unfortunately I have already been paid for this job so there will be no rush of joy and partying when I get paid. That came at the beginning of December when I went out and spent the entire profit in one place in one go. Still, there is more work out there for me to do once I finish this job.

Running

This afternoon I plan to go running again. This time I should be in a bit better condition. My aim is to be able to run a couple of KM by the end of next week. I dont think that should be too hard. Then I want to be able to run 4km by the end of April at the latest. I dont expect there to be a problem with that. Provided I keep working at it of course. That is always the challenge.

Computers

My computer crashed today. Again. I think that Windows complains about me running three or four copies of Microsoft VisualStudio. For those who are not aware of this piece of software, it takes about two hours to load. On a fast computer. I kid you not. I think it comes on 5 CD's. A great case for DVD's if I ever saw one.

Tracking Crininals

There is a proposal in Massachusetts to GPS Tag some criminals whilst on Parole so that they are tracked, and can be sent back to prison if they go into a restricted zone.

This is a cool use of technology, except that :-
* GPS does not work inside or underground very well.
* It actually does not work covered with tinfoil.
* I can build a GPS Jammer from parts from Dick Smith for $5. Although I have been asked in the past to do this, I have never built such a device.
* GPS Simulators are available and are coming down in price. A drug dealer could afford one, and have it in their car, and the tracker would say they where anywhere they wanted.

Work

Today will be busy... I have some tracking units to finally build up. I was going to be using some cases we got designed but I realised last night that they will not be suitable. So today I will be racing to the hardware store to buy some metal to manufacture some ends.

And then there is software that I need to do as well for another client...


Music:

VoIP

So what is VoIP and why am I writing about it? It is Voice Over IP, or phone calls over the internet. It is a way of having conversations without needing to actually use the phone. Or in the case of some systems, then using a special phone. Why am I mentioning this?

Well, firstly Skype allows me to make person to person phone call over the internet. And why is this important? Well, a couple of hours back I got had a call over the net with my friend in New Zealand. This was really cool. I am starting to used this in the business too and it saves real money.

My ID with Skype is VK2TDS... Anyone with broadband using Skype can contact me using that ID.

Another cool thing that I use is a WWW site called www.ebroadcast.com.au. It is an Online TV guide. I use it a bit when I am in my office and I am working out if I want to watch something on TV... Rather cool really.


Music:

I love writing software... Sometimes

There are times that I love writing software. Other times, well, I dont. I am not sure right now if today one where I love it or hate it. There is the frustration when things do not work how they should for one reason or another. And then there is the exhilaration when things just work. After spending a day working on things.

I wont go into the details today with what I have been working on, but it is Web Services, Databases, Client Software, Server software. I have something like 26 programs on the task bar... Well some are Web Browser windows, and others are folders, but there is still a lot there. One of the windows is a remote desktop connection to another computer which has 8 windows open. Then there is my old laptop which is monitoring some stuff off to my left which has three programs running. All in all I am in information overload here.

One of these days if people are interested I will do a screen dump and post a photo here... Might be *informative*. The good thing about today is that I have not needed to deal with writing any long reports or anything like that. And the closest I have got to accounts is 15 minutes this morning, and adjusting a quote for a client.

Time to go... I have some more work to do.

The Real Purpose of Valentines Day

Valentines Day was not too bad, and right now I am feeling great in singleness. I think I have coped very well with the last month...

Having said that, one of the online comics came out with a cool St Valentines Day cartoon... It expresses the true meaning of the day from the point of view of the single persone. You can examine the comic on the PHD Comics WWW Site. The comic is great for anyone who has every studied in a university... And struggled to do their own independant study.

What does today hold?

So what does today hold for me? Well, hopefully a run this morning. The temperature sounds right. I just hope I can find some running shoes - I know I have some here somewhere. [P.S. 9AM. Found the shoes. Went for a jog, but didn't take the GPS this time. Did probably just under 1km. If I got the map out I could calculate it, but right now I couldn't be bothered. I will probably go jogging again tomorrow.]

Then there is my accounts to be done. I am SLOWLY working through them. Of course I need to go to the bank too to deposit all those cheques. I haven't discovered any cheques for $300,000 yet, but I am hoping I will find a few of those ;-) I must say I doubt that I will.

I just cleaned my wallet from and got rid of all the old receipts. $30NZ needs to be put into my safe with the Pounds, Euro, Singapre Dollars and US Dollars... But I found a voucher for a free cheeseburger at Burger King... But it expired on Valentines Day, and was only valid in New Zealand...

According to a Story on the BBC, a group in New Zealand have built their own StoneHenge just north of Wellington. Next time I am in the area I think I will drop by and have a look. I would love to see the original in the UK one of these days.

Hopefully today in the real work side there should be some hardware and software work. Writing software and actually building things. I could not stand doing either exclusively, but the combination of the both works well...

And some good news... Looks like Life Line will receieve the funding it needs. There is a proposal in the government that it should be funded through a compulsory fund by telstra as a 'Community Service Obligation' under the Telecommunications Act.

From SlashDot.Org... "California has a new excuse for more taxes. Claiming losses due to fuel-efficient cars, such as Gasoline/Electric Hybrids, California is cooking-up a new system to punish people who aren't using enough gasoline. They want to tax commuters by the mile. How would this be accomplished? By requiring everyone to install a GPS device in their vehicle, and charge them their "taxes" every time they fuel-up. From the article: 'Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that.. [a] team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.'". More information can be found on CBS News



Anyway time to go. I need to get breakfast.

Music: Well, I have listened to the Delta CD... and there are only three songs that are decent... Mistaken Identity, Out of the Blue and then there is a duet but I can't remember the name of it. All the other tracks seem to sound the same. Disappointing really.

Jogging

OK... I was bad. I woosed out of running this afternoon. It seemed too hot for running, and I was doing some other work. Programming work that is, or more correctly testing some software that I have got done in the past. The work on coding is taking a bit longer than anticipated. I need to do it using a computer in Albury so that is making things a bit harder. I have found some bugs, but most of the problems are my own fault doing things that I do not understand.

I have been doing some of my accounts today too. I did not realise that I had a few cheques here to be cashed. I guess I need to go to the bank tomorrow...

What I do...

I dont always sit behind a computer all day every day. Below is a circuit I designed. Two of the black IC's are microprocessors. A friend programmed one. I did the other and designed the circuit. This device is a prototype called an AntiTracker.

Cool Photo

I was just looking through some old photos... And this one struck out. It was from the Big Island of Hawaii back in 2002 when I went over there to work on IronMan...

Oncologist etc

OK. Good news. The Oncologist does not need to see mum for six months. The last appointment was three months ago, so this is a good sign. I think we can safely say that she is in remission.

The oncology part of the hospital is actually rather nice with free coffee and biscuits for visitors. And if you are getting Chemo they have small DVD players for you to watch, and a movie library.

Last night I was playing arround with some mobile phone related hardware. Things were not working properly, and I was a little annoyed. I was reading the manual, and doing what it suggested. Then I realised that the manual did not actually line up with the device I had... Hmm... So I asked the supplier, and got an email with the manual at 2AM this morning. That is service.

But the manual was missing a feature, so I asked the supplier about this... They just rang me to tell me that their supplier had not yet finished writing the code for the feature, and hadn't told my supplier. Such is the life of an Engineer. Trust but verify.

Sometime this afternoon I plan to go running if it is not too hot. I might take a tracker with me so people with access can see me on the net. Otherwise you will need to wait until I come back to see where I have been.

A long day

Right now I am on MSN with a client in Rome. We are working on a project together. Last year I managed to drop in on them on the way home. Way cool :-)

This is me outside the Vatican in Rome last september.


There are times like this that it would be good if I could just spend a couple of hours in the car and driver over there. It would be so much easier than text messaging. I have tried to get them to use SKYPE for voice communications without success.




I dont know about anyone else, but I like to add photos to my Blog.

This photo is from the office door.



Today did not turn out how I expected it. I did not get as much work done as I had hoped. Then again I usually do not get as much work done as I have planned. I am just dreading doing my accounts for last quarter, and my tax returns for the accountant. I can see that taking 3 days... which is about that many days too long. If any reader would like to help, I would appreciate the assistance, or even the company.

Tomorrow I need to take Mum to the oncologist in Campbelltown for a checkup. It has been three months since her last one, and there is very little chance of the doctor saying anything bad, since they have done no tests since last time.

Music: I finally purchased Delta Goodrem's latest CD. Some of the music is actually not bad.

Post Office...

No, I didnt get any Valentines Day Cards today in the post... And I didn't send any either so I cant be too disappointed.

It is interesting looking at the price of calculator batteries... The ones the size of a 20 cent coin. At the local shopping centre the price difference is amazing. They sell for between $4 for four and $5.95 each. Anyone want to guess which ones I am going to be buying? [Well, the batteries ended up costing $3 each.]

One of the things that I forgot to mention about working from home is the ammount of junk that you tend to accumulate. Some of this is just paper doccumentation, then there is the other stuff. On the paper side, things are fairly easy. I have a very nice scanner so I can just sheet feed all the papers in. Once the files are in the computer I can then shred the original. Some of these things are thinks like a 173 page *MONTHLY* Telstra bill for myself. I will post a photo of the thing at some stage. I have two boxes of papers to scan here for myself, and another box for my father. Right now Richard has the scanner so he can tidy his home office too.

As for the other types of junk, I hate throwing stuff out when it has some value to someone. So far I have given away three radio transmitters, a frequency counter, a three line telephone system with five handsets, five power supplies and other junk. I have already thrown out a large bag of clothes (to the Smith Family), a carload of wood, lots of old computing gear and probably a lot of other stuff. All in all I am getting rid of a lot of stuff.

Anyway I had better get going... I need to buy some batteries and some Kwik Grip and just look around K-Mart. Speak to you all later.

Working From Home

Right now I have been working from home for approaching three years and I should say that I love most of it. Take today for instance...

I woke up sometime before 7AM. Not sure exactly, but it does not really matter... I woke up when I woke up, rather than having an alarm tell me when I needed to wake up. In the last six months I have probably only used my alarm a dozen times or so, mostly when I have to take flights. And even then I have usually woken up just before the alarm went off anyway.

Anyway this morning I got out of bed and came down to my office without getting changed, and checked my overnight email, and three WWW sites (www.smh.com.au, www.news.com.au and slashdot.org) before starting on my to-do list. For once, there was nothing in my email that actually required any attention than simply getting deleted. And I dont think there was even any spam there [Most of that tends to be filtered out automatically].

Then I did about an hours work for one of my clients - He wanted the work done by 8AM this morning. I took friday off to work on the plane. Saturday too, and I needed to work on a business proposal. By saturday night I was exhausted so I did not get a chance to do the work then. Yesterday I had church in the morning, interspersed with writing this report. Sunday afternoon I had about three hours of meetings followed by writing another report, but in this case I was paid handsomely for the job.

So that left writing the code until this morning. My schedule for the rest of the day:-
Teleconference on the first report; Reply to some email from the last week; Go to the Post Office and send some stuff, as well as verifying that no-one has sent a Valentines Day card; Do my tax (BAS and Personal), or at least feel guilty about not doing it today; do a powerpoint presentation for a potential client on why he should spend a lot of money with me; and finish some work for a courier company where they have paid me a lot of money and I still need to supply some of the goods, and all the profit has been spent....

What I miss about working from my home is having workmates. At least having workmates working next to me...

In Flight Hardware Failure

When I flew to New Zealand on January 27th for my post-breakup escape, I took with me a LinkSys Wireless Access Point (WAP) since I knew Kevin had a network in his house, but did not have network in the guest house where I would be staying. So I took the WAP with me. It worked well, but only gave me coverage to the poll, and not to the guest house as I had hoped.

Anyway I returned January 31st, and since then at home I have used my home network rather than the wireless network. With a network in most places I need to use the laptop arround the house there is not much need for a wireless network. Well, except for wanting to watch TV in a few places.

So I dragged out the WAP a few minutes ago, and tried to get it to work. The lights lit up, but my computer did not connect. Strange. But hey, this ain't supposed to rattle. Hmm. Time to open up the box. Hmm... Should those pins be bent? Shouldn't that card be plugged in? Time to fix the pins and plug the card in. The fixed board is below with the card the centre silver device with the pins at the bottom of the photo...


I can only guess that the vibration in the plane caused the card to come partially away from the pins. So, is it working? You tell me... This entry was written using the wireless connection whilst watching Junkyard Wars

A lot of bits...

Remote Control Tank with Live Video - DIY

There was an interesting link from SlashDot.Org listing details on how one person had placed a wireless video camera onto a children's remote control tank. The link is here.

The following picture is from the Sydney 2000 Olympics where I had GPS tracking equipment in the helicopter... The white thing on the side is the video camera.... Now, if I could only remote control this aircraft the same as a toy tank then things would be cool...

SuitSat

There are a lot of satellites out in space. Some have strange names like SloshSat, InMarSat, AusSat etc. A good friend of mine, Steve Bible, in the USA has been working with some friends on SuitSat for the past few months in his part time to build another satellite. This one will be called SuitSat.

There is some more information on the ARRL WWW site but what this does not mention is that much of the work is being done by TAPR, an organization which I am a board member of.

SuitSat is a satellite built into a surplus russian space suit! The idea is to put a video camera, some antennas and radio equipment in the suit and send it into space during a space walk. This allows them to do some experiments with satellites as well as get rid of some junk. Stay tuned for more details.

Did you know that Australia's first satellite was designed and built in 1965 in Melbourne? It was launched about 5 years later, known as AO-5 from memory. This pre-dates the AusSat/Optus satellites by about 20 years.

Armless

I couldn't resist the pun... My arm is feeling a lot better... I have almost all the movement at the moment which is good. And not much pain when I do twist it too far. I am so glad that it is better since I needed to finish off a response to a proposal concerned with my business, and that has come out to about 7 pages.

Theatre Review

There was a review of a play in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. I have no idea what the story was about, or anything else about it apart from the title and the fact that it was on at the Bondi Pavilion. The title is so funny as a commentry on the human condition. The title is...

"I love you. Your Perfect... Now Change"

Valentines Day

It is St Valentines Day tomorrow.

This year I was actually looking forward to Valentines Day - to finally having the chance to exchange cards with the one I loved. Well, since the relationship is over and there is no one else on the horizon then I guess I will not be getting any cards this year either.

That means it will be one more year without a Valentines Card. I did have a girlfriend for a Valentines Day when I was at Uni, but I cannot remember if I even gave her a card. I am sure I would have but I cannot remember it. I guess that memory goes as you get older. Things that are vivid at the time are no longer so memorable. And I did not really keep a diary at that point - I did keep some notes every now and then but no diary.

I was working in the city at the time doing an industrial semester in my Electrical Engineering Course. There is very little from 1994 in my archives. [Well, I did take 8 weeks sick leave a few weeks later thanks to a bad case of Glandular Fever...]

All in all, I think Valentines Day this year might be a bit lonely for me. And hopefully St Valentines Day I will actually be able to exchange cards and gifts with someone.

LifeLine

There are reports in the Sydney Morning Herald that LifeLine might need to close if it does not fine alternate funding at the end of the financial year.

According to the SMH, "It is the nation's only 24-hour general counselling service, with has centres as far afield as Karratha, Alice Springs, Charleville and Broken Hill."

When Broken Hill LifeLine commenced on 6th December, 1964, my Grandparents were one of the foundation members. For SIXTEEN years my grandmother served as a senior counselor, and was Broken Hill's first LifeLine counsellor.. This involved both telephone and face—to—face counseling at the centre. In the evenings, the LifeLine phone would be forwarded to my grandpatents home to provide after hours counselling if required.

An Evening Update

Firstly, why is an evening update being posted at 6AM? Well, that is because I originally wrote this update last night, and the upload failed. Oh, well. C'est La Vie.

Yesterday afternoon was spent preparing plane parts for painting... A glorious six hour job playing with acid and other noxious chemicals. This time I let Richard do the fun stuff with the more horrible chemicals.

My arm is still playing up - I right now have about 90 degrees of rotation instead of 180 degrees... Last night I actually had trouble eating Thai for dinner with a fork. I had to hold the fork mostly with a clenched fist to be able to eat. I sure hope it gets better soon.

I am glad that this is not normally how I am. I feel sorry for people who are like this all day every day. About 18 months ago my mother had problem with her shoulder which turned out to be a rare form of lymphoma in the bone. 12 months ago today she was in hospital recovering from one of the rounds of the Chemo and was given three units of blood. Thankfully she has regained most of her movement too.

Last night I was up late working on stuff for my business. I need to make a few decisions very quickly, and present them in a logical manner. The financial impact is likely to be significant, particularly if the job is not done correctly on my side. I have some paperwork developed by an IP lawyer to respond too.

Anyway it is time to get back to that before starting on painting of the plane parts.

I have now added an article I wrote back in 2003 to my Blog, where I attended a Conference in New Zealand. It was fun. I also have to give a presentation at an event on the Central Coast on the 25th... All I need to do now is to work out what I want to talk on, and prepare the presentation!

My brother has bought himself a DVD player during the week. He purchased what is probably the only one on the market without a volume control on it. Not much use when you have speakers without a volume control. He also didn't realise that I actually had a spare un-used DVD player at home. So he is returning the DVD player and buying mine off me.

Daily Update

Last night my arm was getting better... This morning it is not quite so good. I can still type and all that but I will have to see how I go scrubbing aluminiumn this afternoon and then painting tomorrow at Richards. Before that I need to visit a client in Auburn to do some well paying work there.

I finished the O'Malley series of books last night. The last book feels that it finished about 2/3rds of the way through. Just my opinion... Not that things were not settled, but there could have been some more added to the ending.

Right now with my business I am trying to work out what direction it should take. I dont want to say too much about it here. But it is another thing that I am needing to work through and there are a lot of things to take not of.

Exhausted

Right now I am rather exhausted. Some of today has been useless, some has been better. To show you how exhausted I am, I just typed the word twoday. Now, what is wrong with that spelling?

One of the jobs had a computer where email did not work. When I got there the client pointed out that the keyboard, mouse and monitor were not plugged in. I tried to plug them in, and they would not fit. When I looked at the connector, the pins were bent. The toddler had pulled them out and broken the pins somehow. I told the client to purchase himself a new keyboard and mouse and see how things went. No wonder email did not work :-)

Another thing I needed to do was visit another client of mine - although we were only meeting for lunch. He took me out to lunch at the Helenic Club. Rather a nice place to visit - I will have to go there again. One of those restraunts that you need to know it exists. It has a nice view overlooking Hyde Park from about five stories up.

Another stop on the way home was to install an ADSL splitter in another clients home. This was rather a quick job since I knew where all the wiring went since I had spent a week installing it late last year.

On the way home one of my clients rang me to order some tracking units. I was really happy. The money for these might actually get to my bank account. The profit from the last lot got quickly spent the week they got paid for.


Music:

Qantas Service

Qantas Service is getting worse, in flight. It is now almost what I would expect from REX.

On REX I got a little orange juice and a small muffin. With the option of tea and coffee. This was going down to Albury. Coming back I flew Qantas. They had a snack - this time it was two packets of three savory biscuits, some tomato dip, and a small chocolate bar. Well, and also a still mineral water.

They did offer everyone red and white wine. Which is nice if you drink. If you dont then they didnt offer anything else. I did see the crew member give one person a Coke, and I was waiting for him to offer others of us who did not drink something. It never happened.

Still, even REX service is better than American Airlines. If you look at our previous Blog Page you will see how they supplied a knife, fork and spoon to eat Yogurt and a muslic bar.

Sore Arm...

Last night I don't really know how I did it but I know I hurt my left arm in bed. I think I lied on it at one point, and now it is sore. It is bad enough so that if I try to put my hands out with my elbows by my side that I can only get my hand facing down or vertical. I cannot twist the 90 degrees more to get my palm up.

Hurting my arm did not help me sleep... I think it woke me up early and I have not been able to get back to sleep. So here I am at 6:15AM writing in my Blog hoping that I will be able to drive a but later. Maybe a good hot bath will fix it, but I dont think so. I am really thankful that I can still type.

The sore forearm actually makes it hard to shave... But not impossible. Actually the arm is not sore most of the time. Just when I try to rotate it... Hopefully it will be better by tomorrow

Darryl

Albury Post Script

I have just returned from an overnight trip from Albury. I should say I love driving to the airport and leaving the car there overnight. So much faster to get home. The major delay getting home was the 10-15 minutes waiting for my bags to come. I dont know why it took so long.

The trip home was on a Dash-8... Flying through cloud most of the way. I love this - so relaxing until the turbulance hits. Which it did - the worst that I have been in for a long time. I flew into Sydney somewhat over the parramatta river - but I did not see anything because of cloud until the Shell Service Station on (I think) lane cove road just before the M2. It looks like a huge surf board from above.

In Albury one of the things was that I finally got some paperwork for the joint venture company. Both the documents are draft, and they both need a lot of work before I will sign them. We had a teleconference with the solicitor today and although he seemed nice, i do not think he was worth the $450/hour.

Lets just look at that figure for a moment. According to research, at least in the USA, solicitors are usually required to bill over 2000 hours per year on clients. Associates commonly get 33% of the income, and partners something like 70%. For the 2000 hour year, that puts this guy on between $313K and $665K. Although he seemed to be good I dont think he was that good.

Tomorrow I am meeting with the Navy for some work followed by a trip into the city for lunch with a client to return a couple of umbrellas. Yes, you heard right. I helped him move his office last year and he managed to leave them in my car. I have been meaning to catch up for ages. I also need to visit one of the consulates to fix an email problem before visiting another clients place near Long Bay Goal on the way home.

Then friday and saturday I will be over at Castle Hill painting the plane. Or more correctly plane parts.