MDA was cool on the ABC this evening - it was really interesting. MDA stands for Medical Defence Australia, and it tells the story of a fictional medical insurer, combining two of the classic subjects for TV dramas (Medical and Legal). MDA has not been on for about 12 months so it is like an old friend returning. I am sure it would look fantastic in HD on Digital TV

I love this rain - although I doubt that we are going to get enough - particularly in the right areas. The right areas being the catchments. I love the sound of the rain on the roof and the ground and the trees and all that. It is so relaxing. I could sit here for hours just watching it and listening to it.

I have the iPod on again... Before going to bed I am going to be reading more of the Bill Bryson book... But I have my friend Kevin Crossley's album on the iPod whilst I am writing this, quiet enough so I can still hear the rain. and as soon as I press publish I will also be putting this away and starting to read for a short while...

I am still running behind with everything I need wanted to do today. Thankfully the day is not over... I have fixed some software bugs, some of which I knew about, and some that I did not. I did not get as much programming done, but it was not essential that I get it done today.

I heard from Richard... We will probably be building saturday. Sunday is definitely out for me... Saturday will see a lot of work done I suspect. We must soon be getting ready to do a huge amount of painting... That is my guess anyway.

I just found out about a conference I wish I visited in the USA over the last few days. It was called Where2005, and was for mapping and GPS. There was one
highlight, where David Rumsey did a walk down map memory lane. Drawing on his collection of over 150,000 historical maps as well as his work with geographic information systems, he showed how information of all kinds has been mapped and will be mapped in the future.

I am SLOWLY getting work done. I now need to get a work package together for some outsource work. And there is lots of programming for me to do... And some emails. A lot of small things, and some more major things to be done. I think I have spent too much time on the phone today too..

I am in the mood to go for a run, but I do not feel like going running in the cold and wet outside. It really is pouring here at the moment. Which is great since the rain really was needed.

I have done some work in New Caledonia today... Using VNC to connect to a machine over there and work with a tracker. This involved VNC to one machine, and then VNC to another machine. It was slow, although I think that was the connection to New Caledonia. Seemed like a satellite connection. I am waiting on some information from the Phone Company to get the tracker working.

FedEx yesterday really wanted to get in contact with me... They sent me eight copies of the same email. And it was not even an automated emailer - this came from a real person. Not sure what happened there. Really strange.

Oh, and SUN have released their 'First' laptop according to news reports everywhere... Slashdot covered this amongst others. The only thing is that they released their first in 1994 and it seems that most people forgot that it existed. Oops...

Photo of the Day

Music:

I slept well last night... I did have a dream but I cannot remember what it was about - But I did wake up refreshed. I needed the good night sleep I think - I really did.

Today is liable to be a busy day. I need to work on a few emails. Try to debug some hardware in the South Pacific somewhere. This could get interesting. I have a phone number to ring thankfully, and I am told that the person also speaks english. This is a bonus - really it is.

And I have more programming to do, as well as outsourcing some work too. I have found a good programmer to do work for me, and he is progressing well. So when I do not have the time (or maybe the right skills) I get him to do the work, and he does not charge much either. Anyway I had better get going... I have a call to make

I have just got home from a few errands.... I met a client for dinner - we went a local Thai restraunt for dinner which was good. I had not been to this one for a sit-down meal before, but I will have to go again. The food was good and hot, although the drinks in the fridge were not cold. I had my normal - the Pad Khi Mau Gai, and as you might have worked out I loved it. We then needed to visit another client together meaning some driving, but it was quick. Comparitively that is anyway.

I did not get as much programming done today as I had hoped. Needing to visit clients caused lack of time. Maybe I will get more done tomorrow. Some of the debugging functions I have built in are working well. They are helping me a lot. Well, that is what they are designed for.

Friday I need to install an ADSL splitter at a neighbour of a friends. This may be a quick job - we will see. I hope it is quick - but these jobs can also be a real pain. Just depends on the work of the people that have been there before me. We will see.

Anyway Law and Order is about to start and I want to concentrate on it...

Photo of the Day

Music:

I have just got home after a short meeting with a client. Interesting meeting - although once more I cannot say anything about it. A case as always of pitching ideas and thinking on my feet. The sort of thing that I love. I was amazed at how good the roads were this afternoon. I would have thought that they would have been more congested. Thankfully not.

I have not seen any changes with the iPod update... I know there is the capability to upload PodCasts... But apart from that I cannot see any changes. I have yet to see a description on what Apple has changed with the device.

Before going out I was having fun programming. Not everything was working how I expected. I was trying to add some icons as images on buttons. Strangely they could be added to the image list but would then give an error. It turns out that many icon formats are not totally supported inside an ImageList in VisualStudio.Net... And it only took an hour or so to find this out... .

ARGH MSN... Just disconnected for some reason. Not sure why. Looks like the MSN service is like a YoYo at the moment. I love it when technology works. And hate it when it does not.

It is almost time for breakfast. I definitely need some food. This is too late, and I have not really got any work done today yet. I will go and grab the mail and grab something to eat in a moment - as soon as I finish writing this entry in fact.

In the USA, according to BoingBoing, the supreme court in the USA has decided that it is legal under certain circumstances for property to be acquired by businesses by using the court process where it is in the public good. A group has now put in a planning application for the judges house...

'''The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. '''

I just thought that the name of the Cafe is so cute....

I did not get to sleep until close to 1:30AM last night... I watch The Bill until midnight, and then I did not want to sleep so I did some emails. I just did not feel like going to sleep. Strange feeling - and one I do not get all that often.

After spending too much time in bed with the laptop I put it away and fell straight to sleep. I woke up at about 7am this morning which is too early given the lack of sleep but I am feeling not too bad... An afternoon sleep might be needed...

I have a few things to do now... So I had better get them done... more later

I have just got home after a long day - with a long board meeting. The meeting was in the city, in a suite in the Grand Mercure at Darling Harbour. Right now I am sitting here watching The Bill on video. Looks as if it will be an interesting episode.

I commented a week or two back about how I hated MOLEX plugs. According to the Makezine Electronic Magazine, crimping such connectors is not all that hard. With practice I agree.

For all those like me, Apple has just released iTunes 4.9... I am in the process of downloading it as we speak...

I went to Darling Harbour for lunch, at some place at HarbourSide at $10 for a steak. Not bad, but I guess you get what you pay for. No salad or anything like that. So I was a bit dissapointed.

I am just sitting here... surfing the internet... Listening to the meeting. And participating when needed. With some luck the meeting will finish tonight... But I do not think it will. We can hope, though.

I have to get some development work done now though - mostly outsourced of course. So much easier. Sometimes unfortunately the programmers take some time to work out what I need... And I still find bugs. It sometimes takes some time to find things...

I saw This cute link - it contains a demo showing how the trains are in london, and what the performance of the system is like there. I would love to see what it is like in Sydney with CityRail.

Time for lunch I think... The meeting is going well... I am at Darling Harbour... The GPRS is too slow but it does work. I am trying to send a 1.4 mByte file through GPRS right now and it is taking about 5 minutes to send or so.

I am now in the City waiting for the board meeting to start. I am on Vodafone GPRS which is sort of cool - being able to be in a office or somewhere and work is useful. It is a bit slow but it works.

I thought this was really cool. It is a weather radar built into an old weather radar unit... Using some PC based software. Looks like a cool use of some old technology.

My father dropped by this evening... I was wondering when he was due back from Scotland and London... He arrived yesterday morning - and commented that he was really tired after having flown the London/Sydney leg in one go without more than a one hour stopover. Yuk.

The main reason that he dropped by was that his memory card hard disk device failed. The micro-USB connector on the edge had failed. This small connector had just broken off - really strange. Looked like metal fatigue. I tried re-attaching it without luck. In the end I took his USB cable and soldered it to the PCB. It worked, but required significant epoxy to make sure it stayed. I am not sure how long it will last.

Dad was also telling me about my grandmother. She is not well at all - and is going down hill fast. It is so sad. She really cannot work out who is who when they visit, and is just confused all the time. It must be really horrible for him since he has known her for so much longer than I have (obviously)...

Anyway it is bed time... Good Night

I went out for lunch with a client today. It was my first export sale of my new tracker - so I was in a mode to celebrate. My client however decided that he wanted to try something different - and had found KFC on the way to visit me... So we had a business lunch at KFC... My client was happy since they do not have KFC in New Caledonia.

It was great to actually meet the guy - we had spoken on the phone a number of times - and there is nothing like talking when there is no international phone bill mounting up quickly.

Tomorrow I have a board meeting in the city. This is a real pain - I think it is at Darling Harbour. I will cope, but it is a pain. It will probably continue on wednesday too. I am not looking forward to the meeting.

I heard from my father today - he is back in the country. He arrived back yesterday from three weeks in the UK - mostly in Scotland. Not sure exactly he was doing - I will probably be seeing him this evening for a few minutes.

Dealing with Telstra can be interesting at times. I just went to pay a Telstra bill for the church and noticed that some of the numbers looked a bit high. Like phone rental of $3/month for a phone we own, and paying for a business line for the church which should be under a not for profit plan.

All in all this will save us $18.49 when it is put into place. But to do that we first need to fax them a copy of the 'Not For Profit' certificate from the ATO. Fine. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first question I asked was if I could get myself added as an authorised person on the bill. Stupid question. Because of how it is set up this is not possible. After some protracted questioning I then found out that I just needed the bill in front of me. Then I asked if there was a better plan... Oh, yes. There is this more expensive one. WHat about a 'charity' plan... Oh, yes. It is half the cost. I needed to know that it existed for me to ask about it... This is normal Telstra... Unfortunately

It seems so much later than just after 9am. Not sure why. Just a feeling.

There are a whole lot of tools in the office that I love. My Label Printer is very important... My writing is not all that great, particularly when I am in a rush. And I always seem to get addresses wrong, so the label printer is great. I need to send a parcel off to Albury express post so I have just done three labels for the box.

Then there is the shredder which is great for destroying confidential documents and also making up packaging material. Then there is the Laptop. And then the scanner - sheet fed which makes things so easy... All in all lots of useful tools for the business, and I become lost when they are not available.

Today is filling up with things - too many things to mention. And some contingency plans to since some things have not worked. ARGH. Time for work-arounds

Music:

Sade on the iPod with Jezebel.

Another short post... And another nice gloomy day in Sydney. Lots of work to do today. But things are quieting down which is good. Hardware is being built and delivered. Software is working. Money is starting to come in. The world is good.

The iPod is controllable by a serial cable. The details on how to do this can be found here. Also, here is a site telling you how to install Mac OS/X on an X-Box.

This will be a short entry... I was building this afternoon and evening over at Richards. We got some good work done - assembled the brake pedals for the first time and did some work on the seat backs. This was enjoyable since I was telling Richard what needed to be done after studying the plans.

This plane is going together well. I am sure we looked at some other stuff, but I am not sure what. Ah, I remember. One of the cordless screwdrivers which has been modified to clean drill holes died, meaning I first tried to repair it, followed by modifying another cordless screwdriver for constant power. Works well. It looks like we blew the motor on the old unit.

Anyway I need to get some sleep - should be nice falling asleep with the rain in the background. It has been too long since that happened last

I am off to Richard's to build today. The weather is good for Sydney - some drizzle rain. I was woken at 5AM with really heavy rain and then went right back to sleep. The forcast today is for occasional showers and 17c. Not bad.

-----
A couple of weeks back when I went to Albury I mentioned that I had done a lot of thinking during the drive, and that I would note down some of my thoughts here at some later point. That later point is now.

I spent about 12 hours driving to Albury and back. That is a huge amount of time to just think, and look at the beauty of nature, and listen to music and think. The countryside is so beautiful, and lets face it, empty. And then during this last week I have needed to drive into the city every second day giving more time to just think.

Some of this thinking time has been work related, and some has been personal. You see, in the last few weeks a couple of people I know have come to me wanting to talk about their relationships, wanting advice – and needing longer term support, so I have needed to think how I can best help them. [I am not going to mention who they are or what they wanted to talk about obviously]. Normally I am the one needing to talk to people – and people wanting my advice is a new experience.

This next bit is hard. I know what I want to say… I just need to work out how to put my thoughts into some semblance of order – something that makes some sense to you, the reader. Bits of this may sound like they are written in double-speak. I am trying to respect the everyone’s privacy, whilst saying what I want to say.

Since I broke up with my ex-fiancé in January, I have done a lot of thinking about many things. During this thinking time I have come to understand things more from her side as time goes on, and at the same time learn more about myself. The more I think about the situation, the more I understand things from her perspective.

On the drive to Albury I did a whole lot more thinking about it. I definitely see her point of view – and I tend to think that if I was in her shoes then I would have probably felt the same way she did. I now better understand what she was going though, and why she felt the way she did about me.

And that is an important realization. Understanding what we are going through ourselves is an important step on the road. But it is only one step. There are other important steps, like understanding what others are going though.

And by seeing ourselves through the eyes of others we can then learn more about ourselves, and what is important to us as individuals. What makes us unique and what makes us a part of a society. About how we make decisions, and why we are really making decisions, as opposed to why we think we are at the time.

I am sure that I must have appeared to be a really horrible person at times – and I did make mistakes. These mistakes hurt people, which make’s me unhappy. It also upsets me that the consequences of decisions and actions I made caused people to be unhappy.

It is a fact of life that people are hurt when hard decisions are made. I can only pray that the next time that I need to make decisions like that, it will be done with fewer mistakes and with as much compassion as possible.

Would I do things differently today? Yes. How? Honestly, I do not know exactly. But I do know that I now have some inkling on how to look at a situation from another persons perspective. Some things are a balancing act, where I need to keep in the middle, not going too far to either side.

And I am consciously putting things that I have learned into play in my everyday life...

I love Sydney weather. To the north it looks like we are about to have the storm of the century. To the south is blue sky and sunshine. Who knows what way it will turn out. I am hoping for more rain since we need it so much. But I dont know how much chance there is of that.

My client with all the tracking units is really happy - well happy with my stuff. He is not so happy with a certain un-named carrier but that is another matter. So things are going well. Hopefully we will have another order real soon for more trackers...

Something else - I just heard that friends of mine from the USA will be moving here to Oz. The husband has been offered a job in Brisbane doing malaria work, subject to the normal checks. He also needs to get an Australian medical license which should not be too hard...

At the momemnt I am a connected to the internet at Richard's through GPRS. Richard has Wireless but it never seems to let me in - well, not for ages anyway. Just as I wrote that the gods must have finally seen something wrong, since my computer connected to his wireless network - FINALLY. After only six hours. And a reboot too, when my computer got a blue screen of death.

This morning I needed to visit a client to fix some connectors. Some of them were loose, so I needed to solder about 210 wires. [It only took about 2 1/2 hours...] This was not too bad. I feared I would need to cut all the plugs off and try again, but thankfully the client had worked out how to extract the pins from the connectors. Smart client this one.

Well mostly... A programmer working for him asked why I was sending the time from my GPS trackers off by exactly 2 days and 30 minutes. I am not sure how they are working that out - something definitely wrong there, and since my software is decoding things correctly I dont think it is the trackers.

I am not quite sure if I will be working on the plane tomorrow. Depends on the weather. If it is good Richard will be flying in the afternoon and there is not much point in me coming over. If the weather is bad we can build all day.

Strangely it is not all that cold this morning. The SMH has the temperature at 15 degrees, meaning that it got warmer overnight. I am not sure I would agree with that but it is a bit warmer. I guess it is the winds that came overnight that caused the temperature shift.

Typeing this entry has taken a bit longer than I thought it would... I have been interruped a few times with Emails to and from one of my resellers. Given the time difference it is really important for me to reply as soon as possible so that we can exchange as much information as needed before needing to wait another day. Things like working on a price and feature list and the like.

The other thing I needed to do was place a copy of my latest TeamTrack software on my server so that I could have some people using it fist thing this morning. This software is working well. So I am releasing a beta version of the configuration screens.


On the technology front, some details have been released by about the new hardware being used by Apple for their developers. Basically it is a generic PC with a few minor mods like a hardware dongle to make sure that you are using a real apple.

Music:

On the iPod was Delta Goodram's The Analyst... I like this song... The words are cool...

It is really cold today in Sydney, at least by Sydney standards. According to the SMH, it was 11 degrees at 11AM, with a forcast maximum of 14. That makes this the coldest day this winter, and maybe this will be the coldest day all winter. The temperature maxed out at 11:07 at Observatory Hill at 12.7 degrees. This is rather cold for Sydney.

On the professional front, I had an article I wrote published in the 'Risks Digest' mailing list. This is probably the fourth or fifth that I have had published there. The Risks Digest is a mailing list of computer stuff ups of various types. If you do a search on the internet for 'Risks Digest' you can find the archive.

Right now I wish I was in the UK... There is a New verson of Monopoly being played in London. They have a number of Taxi's being tracked by GPS, and have a competition to see who can get the best 'income' from building houses and hotels on places like Mayfair and Park Lane, and collecting the rent when the Taxi's visit the area over a 24 hour period.

I have been really busy today doing programming of the Windows software that works with my trackers. Basically I am working on some automated testing software for the trackers, and also software to monitor the status of the equipment. This is something I have wanted for a while and I am only now getting a chance to write it.

Also, I will probably be building tomorrow... Richard has the day off. I just need to visit my major client on the way across to do a little work there soldering some connectors. I also found out today that they are looking at ordering a whole lot more units real soon which is fantastic. They are really happy, which is a load off my mind...

It is now the winter solstice here in the southern hemisphere. That means that the days are now getting longer... Although many people feel that this is the true start of winter.

It was a strange time at the conference yesterday. The guy on my left was a client of mine. The guy on my right was a vendor who I had been trying to get in touch with for a week or so to get some technical information out of.

More interesting was that there were a few people there from UTS. And I knew one of them. More importantly he remembered me. It was one of my lecturers from first year uni. Someone who I actually did not even spend any time with - it was either the first year programming course, or first year digital techniques which was digital circuit design.

According to Texas Intruments, Jack Kilby, Nobel Prize winner and the co-inventor of the IC died a few days back. He intented the IC whilst he should have been on vacation. A very sad day for the world. Last year the IC business was valued at US$189 Billion.

The drive into Milson's Point was quite easy... Actually I was able to get here only going through two traffic lights. Unfortunately I had to go through one of those sets of lighs about three times whilst I looked for a parking station. I eventually found I could park at Luna Park. What I found was that it was a lot of effort to walk quickly up the hill. Maybe I was trying to walk too quickly....

The thing has been OK... I managed to see a lecturer from a few years back when I was in first year uni. He recognised me - meaning that I was, in his words 'One of his outstanding students'... It was good to catch up.

Anyway I will update things more a bit later..

I know that a lot of people need to leave for work early, but I think leaving home before 7AM is just somehow wrong... Well, sort of. I used to like to get into the city early when I was working for Pacific Power, since I could get a lot done before everyone arrived at work...

In a few minutes I will be leaving for the city (well, North Sydney) and I am glad that I will be driving... I just do not feel like the crowded platform at Town Hall or Central, and the cold trains and all that. Sure the road will be busy, but I can cope.

I will try to post from the event today... Should not be too hard. Batteries on my laptop is my only concern. And I can fix that. I must remember to turn my phone off too...

Tomorrow I have the Rabbit Semiconductor session all day at Milsons Point. I think I will drive over there - the hotel has parking for $16.50 all day so the price is about right. All I have to do is work out how to actually get there. How hard can it be?

It has been a productive afternoon for me this afternoon. One of the things that I have been putting off a bit is writing a PC application to connect to my trackers, to configure them. I have not fully finished the admin program but it is doing the importany things.

The most important thing is the ability to see what the unit is doing. This is important when SIM cards start playing up, or servers stop working. Take the instance of what has been happeing this afternoon with one SIM card. It is operating on a custom GPRS APN. In the course of the afternoon, it swapped APN a few times. This should not have happened. Thankfully the client is meeting with the carrier tomorrow to discuss the issues.

Photo of the Day

Music:

I went for a run a little while back - probably getting back 30 minutes ago. It was good to have a run. I have not been for about a week, and I think I am still recovering from the virus. Still, I managed to run about 2.5 - 3Km. I did not take the GPS so I am not sure exactly how far I ran, but given I was running for about 22 minutes or so I guess it is about that far.

I could have run futher but I did not want to exhaust myself totally. I think the amount of running I did was enough for the day. Tomorrow I will be at Milson's Point at a vendor conference, so I will see about going for a longer run on Thursday. If I am to be serious about running I really need to run a few times a week. Once a week is not enough to keep speed and distance up.

I need to have a shower in a moment, and then I will be doing some programming - Although I need to solder up a cable to connect the tracker to a PC so that I can configure it without needing GPRS access. This is really important since the tracker needs to know the SIM card PIN number. And at the moment the only ways to change the PIN are to re-compile the code, or connect to the server. And if you connect to the server, you already have the correct PIN number entered. There are a few other features that I want to add to the trackers too.

Some links... Firstly Hexus has a link to a story of how ECS manufactures computer main boards. This is such a cool story. I have only read some of it so far, but it looks really cool.

MakeZine has an article on building a rotary cellphone. This looks sort of cool too... I am not sure how useful it is, but it does look cool.



CNN has a story on the first reporter into Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was exploded. All his stories have just been found after they were censored. The article makes an interesting read, and details stuff they had no idea about at the time, but is self-evident today, like radiation poisoning.

Finally, here is a link to someones RV7 plane being built in the USA.

Ok... Some news... Firstly, according to CNN, Peru has just introduced the worlds first train running on Compressed Natural Gas. They also have a story on the falling fortunes of the 70's and 80's video game company. Concidering I am sure that they went bankrupt in the 90's

And now comes news of a reall problem in New Zealand where mobiles, internet and phones were cut when there were two seperate fibre paths got cut in seperate accidents. This is the new world of telecommunications carriers. Where cost cutting is everywhere and the way that things happen

I am home now, but I have not yet had lunch. This is not normal for me. I must say that I am a bit hungry. I am also a bit tired - I have coped rather well with being unwell, and after having a 'relaxing' day yesterday today was full on. This right now I am starting to wilt ever so slightly

I have a few emails to reply to... By a few I mean far too many. I have decided to go to a forum on Wednesday in the city so I guess I will have to catch up for then in advance.

Thankfully the work today seemed to go well. Anyway I will post more later

I am just operating on wireless at the moment at a client whilst waiting for some tracking units for reprogramming. For some reason today GPS has not worked well. Not sure what is going on there. But we are inside, and mostly looking south which is probably why it is not working great.

Still, I would have expected better GPS performance. Not much you can do with that unfortunately - apart from taking the GPS receier outside. Which is not really convenient at the moment. So we are stuck without GPS.

I am feeling a whole lot better today that I have. I guess I just got a 24 hour virus. I wish that was the worst I ever got when I got a virus but unfortunately that is not the case. Anyway I cannot complain too much since it has been last year since I was last sick.

I may need to go into the city today - not sure yet. I have to speak to a client first - and I will email him as soon as I finish this entry. I have some cases to put on some trackers too after quickly programming them up.

Wednesday there is a thing on at North Sydney that I would like to get to, I will see how it goes getting there since this week may be otherwise busy. That might mean also taking the train across there - something I have not done for so long...

Anyway I should get some breakfast and email my client.

I have finished watching Beaches, and it was a challenge at times. I found bits of the story so emotional. I really love the movie, and I know I have not seen it for years. I suspect that I have not seen it since I recorded the movie, which was from before Channel 7 had Today Tonight.

I suspect that this movie was partially a vehicle for Bette Midler to show her singing ability. Which this movie did. It also showed her acting ability - and you could just see her personality come through.

I will have to get this movie on DVD as soon as the special edition is released in Australia.

Last night I was feeling not all that well. The Blog entry from last night highlights that. I just felt horrible. Normally when I get sick it is a cold. This was more of the Flu thing with sore joints and that sort of thing. And that is the type of illness that I do not have much experience with.

I slept OK last night - I woke up a few times during the night, but fell asleep almost immediately. Today I am taling things fairly quiet - checking my email so far, and I will watch a video or two once I finish this entry.

Yesterday was good, with the work on the plane. Mostly we were working on the fuselage, preparing parts so that they could be painted in a couple of weeks, and then assembled. The plane is going together quickly. Richard was commenting yesterday how we have just about finished all the yucky parts of this project... Apart from stuff like wiring.

Anyway I should be back on board fully tomorrow. I am felling so much better now...

Music:

This morning earlier I was listening to my iPod. I just love putting it on Shuffle - Random Play. Gwen Stefani is growing on me... I am getting to like her music more... And I also heard Dido's 'This Land is Mine' again... I just love this song...

Short entry... I am not feeling all that well. I was at Richard's today building, and I was finding that I was rather tired, and had some chills... Overight I had an upset tummy, and I assumed that it would improve quickly. Alas not.

I left Ricard's about 6pm, and then when I got home I had some sleep, and fell asleep until 8:30 when I watched The Bill... I have just had a hot shower which helped, and then I will go to sleep as soon as I finish this entry.

The plae is going well. Subject to health I will publish details tomorrow. Good Night

I am about to head over to Richard's for work on the plane... Should be a fun day... I probably will not get anything written here of course until I get home... Whenever that is...

The Register has a story about itunes.co.uk, and how the person who registered this domain in 2000 has lost it to Apple. This is three years before Apple announced anything about iTunes. They claim he was cybersquatting. They also have a story about the Microsoft Research Centre where they have developed a few apps that would not be out of place inside Harry Potter books.

The SMH has a story about how Kath and Kim are taking the UK by storm, and how some of their language translates. They also have a story on the copyright situation in India with the licensing of songs. And The LA-Times has a story about how amusement parks are going to need to take more care of their riders.

I hope this weekend is more relaxing for me than last weekend. I have some of the trackers basically complete except for some connectors and uploading the latest software onto them. I have some more that I cannot do any more on until I get new cases. What this means is that I probably have some free time for other tasks.

I made Stirfry beef for dinner tonight. Tasted really nice. I made creamed rice for desert with the leftover rice - probably one of my favourite deserts, and one of the easiest to make. For those that do not know the recipe - rice, evapourated milk and some sugar. Boil the rice; and then mix the rice with the evapourated milk and the sugar, and then heat it up in the microwave. As deserts go this is not too un-healthy, and so simple to make.

I have been reading more of Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. This book contains so much research, and is written in a really entertaining way. I would call it a must read.

Music:

I turn to You... By Mel C on the iPod.

Definitely building tomorrow. I will be going over tomorrow early to build - when I wake up - actually not before I wake up. I am not sure exactly what we will be working on, apart from the fact that it will probably be the fuselage. I might manage to get some photos for the blog even.

On the subject of building things, this site has directions on making your own baby wipes. Not that I have any need of it at the moment by any stretch of the imagination. But the idea is a good one.

On the TV side, Firefly is being shown on the SciFi channel in the USA. I have not seen this show at all, but one of my friends thinks I might like it.

Music:

Not really a music thing, but the SMH has a report that The Queen has been given an iPod. She is reportadly a big music listener. One of the newspapers in the UK suggested that Abba's Dancing Queen and Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears might be on the royal iPod.

Running did not go all that well... I decided that since i have not run for a couple of weeks that I would try to go about 2km or so. Which is what I tried. About 1250m into the run I had a phone call... and then another phone call. I did keep walking whilst talking but this did not help fitness wise. After that I ran the last 500m home - faster than normal. No GPS plot since I did not take anything apart from the iPod and the phone.

Monday I will probably have a day off from building trackers. My client who is getting the trackers is having some issues with their software, and they want me to come over and give them a hand. This is not a problem for me, and will keep the client happy - particularly if it happens to be my problem.

There is an interesting article on CNet about a hacker's conference at Microsoft. The thing is that Microsoft invited some hackers to teach Microsoft about some security things, and to give microsoft an idea of where the hackers were coming from.

I will probably be working on the plane tomorrow. Probably not Sunday though... I need a day off from things. Today I am busy building trackers, and they are going well, is not slightly slowly.

One of my regular WWW sites showed a link to this site showing some office pranks. Such as filling a computer keyboard with Alfalfa sprouts, lining the cubicle with Alfoil, or filling it with packaging. But the best was the keyboard through the desktop. Well, it was not really through the desk, but it looked like it.

Pacific Power in my past did not have much of that type of thing - the best we did was a sign on our office when the government wanted to start looking at privitization. This sign read "Welcome to the Hunter Electric Light Ltd", with the acronym of HELL. This was even funnier since my boss called Liddell Power Station across the road 'Little Hell'. So obviously Bayswater became 'Big Hell'.

In a show of mis-management, the givernment mis-named the place when they split it off from Pacific Power. They called it 'Macquarie Energy', after the lake the power stations were on. Unfortunately they got the names switched so Maquarie Generation is 90 minutes drive from Lake Macquarie. OOps.

Again I am still in bed... I slept well last night... I would be out of bed by now but I got a SKYPE connection from a client in Canada, but Skype was playing up. So I am about to get a phone call from him. I am not sure where the problem was - it could mean that my firewall needs upgrading. Maybe.

I just got off the phone... Probably a good 30 minutes on the phone to canada... Very useful call... Just pitched a new product.

Last night I watched Labyrinth that I recorded on video years back. Some of the movie is so 1980's... Really a cool movie. Very much the Muppets, but not the normal warm and fuzzy creatures, but darker versions. Labyrinth is a must see if you have never seen it.

I need to build some trackers today... I will also be going for a run a little later I hope... We will see if I actually get out of the house to do that... We will see

Photo of the Day

Music:

I am just exhausted... And I think some of it has to do with the fact that I have more trackers to build. I am sick of them. In a minute I am going up stairs and watching some mindless TV. If I can find some.

I do not believe this... A Casino in florida won an award for Pedestrian Safety, according to This news report. The casino's stretch of Orient Road, the so-called model of pedestrian safety, lacks entire chunks of sidewalk. No sidewalk actually leads to the casino. A bus shelter is stashed in the rear of the property, near a trash bin. So why did it win? It was the only application!

Another interesting site lists Open Source Robot planes. This Site contains computer case modification winners, including one that looks like HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

As for another mod, here is a Clock for a Mac G5. And here is a guide to reverse engineering.

Toms Hardware contains details on how to build a coffee making machine.

Photo of the Day

Music:

Work went well this morning dropping the trackers at my clients. Only arrived 45 minutes late but I knew that was going to happen. Thankfully I managed to fluke getting into the Eastern Distributor without many hassles. In fact it was too easy. Someone was looking after me there.

Cleaning up my office this afternoon I found some grommets that I had thought I had left in Albury. I looked everywhere, except in this one box which I thought only had boxes in it. At had boxes, and all my grommets. I got this batch of trackers delivered, and just need to work on the next batch.

I am getting through a week's worth of email.... Some days I have caught up with... Others I still have things to do. All in all things are going well. I did not manage to get breakfast until 11:30 this morning... I was going to go for a run this afternoon - well, about now, but a cool change has hit and it looks like it might rain soon. Unlike Summer Rain (Belinda Carlisle), I do not want to be caught in Winter Rain.

Anyway, back to Emails.

Music:

I have decided that it might be a good idea to do a travel related playlist for the iPod. Stuff like 'Life in a Northern Town', 'Queen of Hollywood', 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan' by Marrianne Faithful ("At the age of 37, she realized she'd never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair...")...

Today is NOT the day to steal my car... I have just loaded it up with A LOT of GPS tracking units... Far more than I can use on a single car... They are heavy, since there are so many of them. I do need to finish the order, but it is close to being done.

Photo of the Day

Music:

I found it quite cold this morning... Not sure why since it really was not that cold. Maybe a blanket came slightly off during the night... Anyway, since I was so tired last night I wanted to update my Blog from my room, so I grabbed my laptop and updated the Blog from in bed. Which means that right now I can do the same from in bed too. Wireless is so cool.

This morning I got an Instant Message from a friend in Italy. He resigned from his previous job, which is where i met him, a month or two back. He was interviewing for a new job, and they had chosen him. And then said that he would be contacted soon by the head of the company from France. Of course he has not heard from that person, and he was told by a secretary that they were now looking at employing someone later in the year.

This is common in Italy apparently. His words to me were that "The job was a fake".

And I just learned some Italian.... Magicians say "Hey Presto" when they want something to appear. This is really "A Presto", meaning "See You Soon"

It has been a long day. My fingertips are hurting from all the work. The trackers are basically complete. The world is good (until I need to build another 28 units).

But let me tell you the SIM Card story... After all I had promised it. A certain carrier issued my client with 80 new SIM cards for GPRS. My client wated their own APN, or Access Point on the GPRS network for security purposes. And the carrier said that this had been done. On the weekend, I found out that some of SIM cards worked on the default APN, and others did not work at all.

So I emailed my client. And they emailed the carrier. My client had been provided with a list of the serial numbers from the carrier, and just forwarded this back to the carrier, saying FIX THESE.

And so the carrier did. They ensured that all the SIM CARDS were connected to the correct APN. And when I tested them some of them rejected, and some worked on the normal (wrong) APN. So I rang my client. He asked for the serial number of the SIM. I read this out to him, and he could not find it. He then looked for another, and could not find it. So I sent him my spreadsheet of SIM serial numbers obtained from the SIM CARDS directly.

He rang me back, and let me know that only 3 of the 80 SIM cards that I had were on his list. It seems that the carrier gave him the wrong SIM CARDS.

And when they first fixed the problems they just fixed the problem - and ignored who owned the cards. Meaning that close to 80 other devices just stopped working whenthe APN was changed. Basically they just believed my client and did not check things themselves.

One big oops.

More trackers... More and more trackers. I am almost finished phase one of the big order. I am delivering a lot of them tomorrow, but I have to get some parts on the way over. I have been working on trackers all day - and I will be happy when they are out of my hair for a while.

Working on all these trackers is tiring - I would rather not be doing this - I would rather be doing some hardware design, or software, or writing or something. This is getting monotonous. Still it needs to be done. And the income will be good.

From BoingBoing comes a dress for the woman who has everything - although it is probably better in colder climates - it is a dress made of chocolate. Not sure how practical this is in real life, and I also suspect that the women who can wear the dress never eat chocolate themselves.

Back to work. I will update later...

My thumb is feeling a whole lot better today. Whatever was irritating it seems to be gone. It is still a bit sore, but I think that is related to the fact that I had something in it... Actually now a few hours later it is feeling good...

Now for soemthing strange... I have some pink nail polish on. I will not be offering prizes for the first person to email saying how good I look with the Nail Polish... The Nail Polish was cheap, and I am using it to hold screws to the trackers. And it works really well for this job. Which is of course why I am using it. And like any nail polish, it gets on nails no matter what you do.

I saw a review of the Coldplay album basically saying it was brilliant, and saying that the song "Speed of Sound" is so fantastic. I would say that this song is OK, but I would not put it in the great category. Maybe that is my personal preference. I would call songs like 'Rush of Blood' from their last album great. Not this song.

Trackers are going together slowly. I will be delivering a lot of them to the client tomorrow... Stay tunded for a story about GPRS and a stuff up.

I did sleep well last night... I did some reading for a little while and then fell asleep quickly. I think I was tired. As I suspected I woke up a bit early this morning thinking about the issue I have been having, and while lieing in bed I made a list in my head of some things to check. Unfortunately none of them seem to actually help. I do have some other things to look at now - and I am thinking about how to test things.

Today is likely to be a busy day. I have so much to do. Overnight I got a number of emails that need attention. Then there is this software issue, as well as building trackers. Then there is all the normal work things that I need to do as well.

Anyway, I need to leave it there... I have a lot of things to do... More later

Right now I have a software/hardware problem that I need to fix urgently. I am feeling tired, and by writing here I am trying to work out if I do things now, or if I have a good night's sleep and work on it in the morning. I am thinking about the symptoms and working out what will cause the issue. It has to be something simple but complex.

I have one thing that I will change, and there are some things to try, but I am not sure that it will help. The way my mind works I think the best thing is to have a good night's sleep. I suspect that I will wake up knowing exactly how to solve the problem. It seems to work like that with me anyway.

Anyway, I think I will grab my iPod and go to bed... I have had a long day, and tomorrow might be even longer. Good Night.

p.s. If you see an update at 3AM that is good news... it means I have solved the problem overnight...

I did a whole lot of building trackers today - and I did not get all that far. I have been learning more about how to build the devices, and how to design things for manufacture. We will have a good percentage of the order available tomorrow. And I have learned how to do some more thing like crimping Molex connectors.

The drive to Albury and back was interesting - I got a chance to do a lot of thinking... About so many things. It would have been good to have company, but it was good being alone with my thoughts.

Right now I have a really saw thumb... I am not sure what happened - I think I got a splinter on Friday or Saturday but I cannot find it... Touching it in the wrong place generates a small sharp pain. I hope it resolves itself soon. It is my right thumb too...and I am right handed.

I found a cool article on some multi-player online game where a player has added their own schools of fish. The thing with these fish is that they evolve, learning behaviour. Of course this is all programmed, but it really is cool.

On the MakeEzine site is a cool article on making eBooks for your iPod.

I am in the middle of assembling trackers. This is something that should have been able to be finished on Saturday, but for various reasons was not. So I am stuck with this job at the moment. And it is going slowly. And I need to get these out since the client is screaming for them.

I will not be building the next batch... I think I will find a collection of Uni Students (What is the collective noun for Uni Students anyway? Mob? Racket? Not sure... ) They can do the assembly under contract at some decent rate. Let them use up their free time, rather than me wast my time. Well, not waste. But I am sure that I can find better things to do with my time than build trackers.

I managed to hurt one of my knuckles on the weeked working on Richard's plane... Just scraped it. Thankfully it is healing nicely. Far less painful than accidently drilling a fingernail paralell to the bone which is what Richard managed to do. Both of us were careful to keep our fingers out of the way after that.

Richard took a whole lot of photos of me working on the plane... Many just with the back of my head or my feet under the plane for some reason. I will publish some here when I get a copy. Anyway I have more work to do... More later.

Photo of the Day

Music:

I have a lot of work to do today. Essentially I have to finish building a whole lot of tracking units - soldering parts on, assembling, programming. All that sort of stuff. Too much work. It is a pain. Next time we need to outsource this. It is too late to outsource it for this job. Next time definitely.

I have spoken about SuitSat before a satellite is being launched from inside the International Space Station. Well, there is finally story about this on The Web. Not many details, and I think there have been more technical details on this on my blog...

I am helping a friend to learn windows programming. So he has borrowed one of my laptops with the compiler on it. And he has lent me one of his old machines. Unfortunately the screen for this has now died... And I need to find a monitor. I found one in the house... Only one... And I am working on getting the laptop working with it now...

Photo of the Day

Music:

OK. Right now I am about to fall asleep - and I am not sure how much of what I want to write here I will get done. I am tired, having been away most of the last few days. My typeing is getting bad, with bad spelling, and spaces being put in the right spot.

It was good working on the plane. We worked on the middle of the fuselage today, assembling it again, and then pulling it apart. This is an evil that you cannot escape unfortunately. I had to remove the rough edges from hundreds of holes - probably well over 500 holes, on both sides. The end of the job for the day was using a hammer to bash a dimple into a large number of holes. Thankfully they all went properly, and we did not stuff up by putting a dimple where it was not required.

Once again I found myself increasingly working on the plane from below, lying on my back. Once you get used to this it is not too bad. Working with all the tools is certainly building upper body strength...

All in all I had an enjoyable time... Looks like I will be doing much of the same much of next weekend too...

I just got home from Richards... More soon... Anyway we were really really busy...

I will post about that a little later. Until then, some important links... Firstly, a map of The Internet, jave a look here. There is also a link to a site showing 'network maps'.

And some important news... According to CNN, Pink Floyd are reforming for the Live Aid type concert in a couple of months...

Anyway will post more more soon...

I was quite tired last night, but that did not stop me from being woken up by the Garbage truck at about 6am. Today will be another day full of working on the plane - today is the base of the seats and the baggage compartment. In a few weeks we weill be doing a huge painting event - but hopefully before it gets too cold. I have memories of coming away from preparing the parts with wet overalls and soaked shoes, with socks drenched.

Something I did not mention about albury... Many parts of the town need a street sweeper thanks to the leaves falling off trees. It was so bad that I found it hard to work out where the road was at times. I am not kidding. It was worse when gutters were blocked and the leaves were on top of water in the gutters making it even harder to use the gutter as a visual reference.

On the way to Albury I saw a sign to a place called 'Jinderlic'. What a strange name. I had heard of ths before... The old Aunty Jack show on the ABC (which I have seen a couple of episodes of as re-runs) has a character called 'Flash Nick from Jinerlic'.

This site has how to build a spot welder. Cute. And this one has instructions on building an acceleration meter.

I have been rather busy today working on the plane. Basically we have been working on the middle of the fuselage - the part that people sit on. Richard and I did the first assembly of the seat bottoms today, and tomorrow we will be drilling much of this. Thankfully much of it is already drilled, and just needs to be 'Match Drilled' where the two holes are lined up and elarged.

It is now 11pm at night and I am a bit exhausted... We did do a lot today. I would be in bed asleep but I am just waiting on my email to download. Richard and I could not quickly get my WiFi working here, so I am on GPRS which is a bit slow. I have 47 email messages at 3.22 mBytes.

Anyway, my email has downloaded, so it is now bed time... Good night...

It is now Sunday morning and I am feeling a whole lot more human. I did not get lunch yesterday, and I did not get dinner until 8:30pm. The breakfast at the Motel was overpriced and pretty poor. And I was constantly moving yesterday, not getting a chance to update the blog or check email. I have not been so busy for ages.

If it had been another half hour later leaving Albury I would have tried to stay at a motel somewhere along the way. I was a bit tired, but not too tired. Driving back there was mist and fog at times. Bits of rain here and there. Generally though the conditions were fairly good. Not many cars on the road at all.

I really did want to get back home... for many reasons. Not the least of which to help Richard with his plane.

I had to bring so much stuff up to Sydney for this client... I am sure that I used more fuel than I would otherwise have used. Unfortunately I cannot provide a log of my trip... Someone (me) needed to reprogram my tracker as a test, and I forgot I had changed a setting... So my tracker was not working on the way back. This first map is my full 586km trip to albury. The second is a colleagues drives in Albury yesterday showing how the intelligent features in the tracker I have designed allow you almost to create your own maps.

I did not sleep all that well last night. I got to sleep rather quickly, but I woke up about 4AM with the rain. It was rather heavy, and the tin roof did not help much either. This place does not offer much in the way of sound protection.

This first half of the Blog entry is written in my Motel room, and I am printing off serial number labels as we speak...

I Cringely from PBS in the USA suspects that the reason for the shift to Intel for Apple is so that Apple and Intel can merge. Interesting concept, and I can see his logic. I am just not sure I agree with it.

eWeek.Com has an article on how Microsoft Security Patches are done. I will have to read that today. Also on the Microsoft front, they have released a new Photo Editing program, called Acrylic as a free (77 mByte) download. The name just sounds like something that Apple would use.

And from SONY comes news that the PlayStation 3 will come with Linux when you purchase the Hard Disk option.

Just got home. Left Albury about 5:30. Got home about 10:45. Not a bad trip. Too Long. I listened to 'The Games' on my iPod most of the way home. This was great,and the time flew by. It is good to be home I can tell you. But I will be building at Richard's tomorrow and monday. Well that is the plan anyway.

Here are some photos from my Motel room from last night. I had work to do... I left the room in a good condition, even taking all my rubbish. Today would have been a disaster without doing this last night...


For the yuppie who has everything, comes href=http://www.sprayonmud.com/index.html>Spray On Mud for his 4x4....

I think I have mentioned about Denver International Airport before, and their baggage system. Well, it was a disaster when the airport opened in 1995, and the baggage system cost $100m. Then they spent $300m to fix it. United are paying about $60m/year lease for the airport space - including the baggage handling facility. But they will be saving about $1m/month by using the manual baggage system. OOps.

Anyway, bed time. I need some sleep

I am not sure if this is civilized, or obsessive. I am sitting in the bistro of the motel right now waiting for my food... It is just after 8PM, and I had completed about 50% of the work that I need to get done tonight. Another 15 minutes and I think I will be 75% complete. I will have to take a photo of the motel room... It is some stuff in it right now I can tell you...

One of my business partners needed to drop some stuff off, and came in, and all he could say was 'Oh my...' followed by asking if I had internet access... Well, if you call 40 kbit/sec Internet access then yes. I declined his offer of a 768 kBit wireless connection since I have too much to do.

The iPod was great today. I played Gwen Stefani and Coldplay, then random play. That reminds me, a review. Gwen is definitely good for the collection, but I doubt that I will listen to it all in one go very often. On random play it is not bad. I would call her style somewhere between a female rap artist and Kylie Minogue.

Coldplay is a bit different... I would say that this Coldplay album (X&Y) is almost the same as the previous ones, without the anthem'y type songs. Their last album was better I think - this one is less of a classic. Actually it was disappointing. Musically things were so similar to the last on...

Anyway my dinner is almost here and I have some email to look at...

I am in Albury. It took about 5 hours of driving from home... But I was not driving from home unfortunately so it took a bit longer. The roads were not too bad. I saw a couple of RBT units on the way down, both on the other side. And one person done for speeding. People were behaving themselves generally which was good.

It started getting overcast about Yass, and got worse as I went south. Just before Albury it started raining. I must say that the country looks like it needs it.

Right now I am on GPRS in my motel room, and I am taking a break from working on Trackers. I want to get to a point where tomorrow it will be a quick job to assemble and program the units. I am not sure how long that will take tomorrow, but I want to get out of here probably by about 3 or so. I am not sure if I will be successful or not.

Anyway I need to have a shower... After driving most of the day I need it... Then I will do another batch of boards...

This is being written in YASS... I wanted to check the tracker... and the results are in the graphic below. I think this is rather cool. So far I have done about four hours driving today...

On the Code Project is some C# code for sending data in audio. I have in the past written a decoder in VB.NET to decode audio in digital data. My code looked a whole lot ugglier than this code. Then again, I was tring to do a bit more with the data.

In that case, I was dealing with a video camera system where GPS positions are stored on Audio tracks. This is a project I need to get back to, and finish. Anyway there is another system on the market and I was able to decode the data from the audio tones. Really Cool project that one.

And one of the Loch Ness Monster believers (not me), comes a new toy to be released next year by Takara. It is a remote control Loch Ness Monster, albeit on a Much Smaller Scale!

I went back to bed, but I did not actually get back to sleep. Still, I think I had enough sleep... I will be fine. Provided I get enough sleep tonight I will be fine. Come to think of it maybe I should arrange some accomadation for tonight...

I just put some equipment in the car - I now have three GPS tracking systems on the car, with 3 GPS antennas, two cellphone antennas (one of which is hidden), a Ham Radio antenna, and my car radio antenna. It does look like a porcupine

This is cool - a commentry on User Interface design. This site has a suggestion on what a house would look like if software engineers designed it. I am not sure that I disagree. Unfotunately.

News from news.com.au that NASA plan to send a space probe into a commet on 4/July whilst watching the impact from the other half of the space probe. Should be interesting, if it works, and if it does not then it should be even more interesting.

I have a minor programming issue to fix... I know the symptoms, and I have been trying to work out what is wrong... Which is I guess why I woke up so early this morning, and also the fact that I cannot read my watch correctly. I am about to go back to bed, but I thought I would update this blog first.

The programming issue - I think I have found it. Small buffer over-run issue in a few rare cases. The thing about programming is that these rare cases do come up... Things happen...

Linked to from SlashDot is this article in the NY Daily News titled 'Nerds make better lovers'. I do not really need to make any comments there I don't think.

Anyway I need to get back to bed... Good Night

For all THE SIMPSONS fans out there, according to this story on Yahoo, there is a Simpsons Movie in the works. What very little details there are make it sound cool. It is about time.

Now, on the SMH WWW site, there is a story about a new Pink Panther movie, with Kevin Kline and Steve Martin; and how it has been pulled from a release date of August 5 until next year to give it more attention with marketing.

From the SMH article, "The movie has been panned on internet chat forums and movie websites, with one review on JoBlo.com reading: 'How could anything with Kevin Kline and Steve Martin be so unfunny?'"

On the work front, I found a new Surface Mount station at Electus. What makes this cute is that it is only about $300, not $1000. I may be able to justify this soon.

Tomorrow I am leaving later than I would have liked... I will be leaving here about 9:00 going to pick the boards up and then driving south to albury. I hope to be there only one night. I will see how it goes though... Watch this space. I would imagine that the trip to Albury will be fairly simple...

Thankfully I will have the iPod with me which will help pass the time. I expect it to go fairly quickly... Well, as quickly as a 6 hour drive can ;-)

Tomorrow morning it looks like I need to drive to Kings Park and then to Albury. This is only 'slightly' out of my way, with some sarcasm noted. I hope that the company i need to visit at Kings Park is open early tomorrow so I can get an early start. It would be great if the M7 was open, but it is not. Cest La Vie.

Getting software updates to clients is always a challenge. One client is using software of mine and is needing some updates - which is a problem since the PC is not connected to any network, and the computers nearby that are will not allow programs to be downloaded of the Internet. The local Library is helping out - giving access to the downloads thanks to 'Sneakernet', or CD's carried by hand. The only problem this morning was that the Library was closed when they needed a software update and needed to wait until it opened.

On another front, Google is scanning major US cities with a laser scanner and digital photographic equipment. They want to create photorealistic models of all major US cities.

The InternetSeer Web Monitoring is telling me that sometimes my WWW site is timing out. If you have any problems accessing the site, please send me a short note. Also try a refresh and see if that helps.

Music:

I have just picked up the new Coldplay and Gwen Stefani CD's and I am putting them into my iPod as we speak. As soon as I have listened to them I will publish a review.

MakeEzine has a story on things you can do with an iPod Photo and the connector on the bottom of it. Basically you can use the device as a huge HDD for digital camera photos, as well as some other uses, including sending files to an iPod Shuffle.

From an MSDN Blog
Adding only management to a flawed software development process makes it worse.

I have just receieved some work which I outsourced. I will have to test it of course, but it looks really good. I have found a good sub-contractor here - he even produces amazing documentation - with lots of pretty pictures. His english is not perfect, but it is not too bad.

I am almost prepared for Albury. My intent is to spend less time down there awake than I spend driving there and back. I will see what I can do on that side. I will have my laptop with a GPRS card, and in the office there I will also have a very large internet link to play with... and also access to a wireless link if needed...

Photo of the Day

Music:

Last night on TV I tried watching Boston Legal taped from Tuesday Night. I am glad I taped it, and did not watch it live. That way I did not need to waste the time on watching all of it... The storyline seemed to be on a par with Ally McBeal or The Practice, but without the warm and fuzzy feel. Sure, I did not watch a lot of it, but I would hope that this program gets better. I suppose that William Shatner was in it was a give away to what it might be like, but I did expect better than this.

From SlashDot comes a link to a poor company that gets over 1,000,000 SPAM emails a day. That is huge. I think this is just a one or two person company. The owner describes how he keeps his spam level down. I have a friend who gets about 100,000 a day on an old mail address and I thought that was bad...

From the USA comes an interesting Taxi Ride, where a vintage blue taxi is converted into a seagoing vessel carrying several Cuban immigrants. It was off Key West, Florida by the Coast Guard. It had been modified with a boat prow in front and appeared to have at least four immigrants aboard.

I have just programmed well over 100 GPS receivers, and it was a pain. I worked out how to do it properly. I created a text file with all the commands for programming them, and copied it into the clipboard. Then Pasted it from the clipboard in the DOS program. This worked remarkably well. I did not expect it to work, but it did.

I have lost count of the number of deliveries today - it was a few. I am now waiting on a few final bits and pieces to come it - and I need to check that I have all the parts for the trackers. I think I am only waiting on two things - the circuit boards and some connectors. The connectors are coming by courier, but I need to go over to Kings Park to pick up the boards. Then I need to work on them before taking them to Albury.

My code has had one change today - not bad really. It was really minor - I was counting 4x speed, and part of the program thought that it was only going single speed. Quick fix, and things are fine.

I will probably drive to Albury early Friday morning, and return Saturday afternoon or sunday morning depending on how things go. Going down there is a pain, but an evil I need to put up with.

I saw this link to the National Geographic Web Site. This is video from in a twister. Unlike the movie, the device is desgned to stay on the ground, and did. The video is cool, and it would have been even better if it had hit more than a glancing blow to the camera assembly. All in all it was a WOW.

On the LA Times WWW site is a story about a short concert. This one is a bit unusual - the performer is a 90 year old with arthritis. The concert is actually being played by the 90 year old Guitarist Les Paul for his birthday. Les was the person who invented the electric guitar.

This photo is from one of my trips to Hollywood, and shows his handprints in

ARGH. I need to race down to Albury at the end of the week to work on some tracking units. I hope to drive back Sunday morning, but I am not sure yet. I am intending to definitely be working on the plane Monday for the public holiday. How much more? Not sure about that. We will need to see.

There is an interesting story on The Register about how Windows 2000 has been Microsoft's most successful failure.

For the traveller comes this... It is GPS Airtrack. It shows forward and bottom views of the aircraft flight on the video screen in the cabin of commercial aircraft, as well as computer generated models for night time viewing.

On the Legal Front, The US Supreme Court have refused to hear a case involving Lexmark. This is great news. It means that it is legal in the USA to make compatible printer cartriges even if the manufacturer does not want you to. More information is available on slashdot.org

These Free Spirit Spheres look so cool. The are effectively spherical tree houses... I can just imagine a restraunt of these in the Daintree or something - I can just imagine how romantic such a place would be. They have another treehouse here

I like the Melissa Etheridge song 'Dance without Sleeping'. It came up on the Random Play on my iPod. I forget I have some of this music... And Random Play is a great way to get re-aquainted with it. [I love my iPod if you had not guessed.] What I am finding that I am doing is listening to music in bed when I am reading a book for instance. It just works so well. the iPod is just so cool.

It will be cool when iPod Linux works properly on the iPod Photo, and the software, with user interface is mature. Such a cool product. I just wish I had a commercial need to use the iPod in a project. I will have to see what I can think of.

You know that there is not enough rain when the SMH online publishes a front page article on how there might be rain on Saturday. Well, I should be indoors most of the day working on the plane...

I have been debugging trackers, or more correctly, making sure that things are working as they should. And they are. Eith the exception of the previously mentioned issue with the PIN number.

Anyway this evening I was testing a unit for a client - part of an order with their SIM card in the unit, and the next thing I notice there is no GPS signal. nothing. I have a light that turns on when there is a GPS plugged in. This light wass off. Totally off. Very strange, since I was sure that it had been lit.

So I restarted the unit. Try again. Hmm... It has GPS... Then I do some other stuff. No GPS. What is going on. Very strange. This baffles me for a while... Then I worked out what was happening. I am connected to a server owned by the client. The client wants to use all the advanced features of the tracker, including turning the GPS off when it is not needed.

And this is what is happening. It is now after hours, so they turn the GPS off as soon as I connect. Of course I could program my tracker to ignore this, but it does not really matter. The software works just as it should. Sometimes software issues are like that for a reason. Sometimes they are not.

In another case, I have been decoding GPS positions, and displaying them to three decimal places in one case. One of my clients rang today, saying that they want more accuracy... Four decimal places if that is OK. But they mentioned that they always seemed to get a 0 in the last position when they used three places. I changed the number of places for them... And compile the code. Then I thought about this last statement, and went looking...

I checked the library which I wrote when my mother was sick with cancer last year, and found that I had cheated decoding the GPS position. I assumed only two decimal places. This is accurate enough for most people. This client wanted more... I improved the library so it allowed for as many decimal places as needed...

I am having another background check done on my, according to the SMH. "A separate review would also be carried out on the background of all airport workers issued with airport security cards." says the article. I am just glad that I have nothing to hide - at least not from the security people :-)

I have been working on trackers all afternoon - I have found a bug that was causing me some issues on Friday. When I was entering the PIN number into the phone, I needed to send the line like 'AT+CPIN="0000"', and I was sending it like 'AT+CPIN=0000', and this was not working very well. I guess the syntax varied between modem firmware releases, and the correct form that works everywhere is the version with the talkies.

I had a slight panic with the new tracker - the GPS was not working... I worked out what was wrong after some time. A transistor got left off the circuit, so when I told the unit to turn the GPS on, it turned it off, and vice versa. Simple fix...

Anyway, back to verifying the code... This one is VERY important for me.

OK. I am still waiting on the CPU modules. I guess they should be here really soon now. I hope. It has been TOO LONG. I just wist they would get here... Oh... And I was complaining that it was starting to get cool here at times now that it is Winter. He was complaining that the 18C in Sydney is about the same as it gets in Canada this time of year in Canada - at the start of Summer.

From a Blog comes this cute idea - a WebCam in a car. This sure beats the trial I did where I needed to do some work recording some video and taped a webcam to my car.


From the Upront.Ezine
"No Artificial Sweetener!" - Found on box of Froot Loops cereal
"Nutrition Information" - Found on can of Pepsi drink

Also from SlashDot came the following comment on Apple and Intel... "I felt something, a disturbance in the network, as if a million Mac zealots cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced."

The SMH is running a Story on how the TV networks are just storing up TV shows from the USA, and not actually showing them at the moment, but showing other shows (Big Brother) and repeats of popular shows (like Law and Order). For instance, Nine has 40 episodes of Judging Amy, 31 of The West Wing, 29 of the Gilmour Girls and the list just goes on...

Firstly there is an interesting story on The Wall Street Journal about the day that email died in the office. It is an interesting look at how much email is a part of life in the modern company. I have had email fail a few times and it is not good. The worst was when my server died dur to a minor flood when I was in the USA. With the help of friends I was able to point email to another server and I continued on.

Next comes a WWW site called HomeBrewCPU.COM about a guy who has built his own CPU, and then run's TCP/IP on top of it. This is really amazing. There is a photo below from the site - and the whole thing looks great. I am not sure about the time investment - I would get rather frustrated I suspect...


Lastly, Apple have announced that they are moving to the Intel Processor for their computers. Their operating system has been running on Intel for the last five years, secretly. Over the next couple of years they intend to transition to Intel. This does not mean 'Windows Compatible' but it does mean that an emulator will be easier...

North American Distributor

Radioactive Networks is pleased to announce that MountainMobile of Canada have been appointed to resell our solutions in North America. Our software is now listed as a soluton on their WWW site. MountainMobile is a subsiduary of Aspire Capital Inc. that trades on the TSX Venture Exchange on the Canadian Stock Exchange. More information will be released in the coming days and weeks.

According to BoingBoing, scientists have taught monkeys to use money. This is so cool. The monkeys need to make decisions on how to spend the money - albeit in the short term. Another experiment is aimed at teaching and looking at trust, where one monkey can provide food for a second monkey by pulling a handle, and vice versa. The monkeys must work together to both get food.

I am still waiting for the parcel. It did not arrive yesteday and I am not happy. I am NOT impressed at all. I suspect this is more the problem with the supplier than with Australia Post - although I cannot prove this yet.

Engadget has a story about a paintball tank that you can remote control operate over the internet in some guys house, so long as you are prepared to pay for the service.

Right now I am waiting on an express post delivery to the house. If it was to the postbox I would have had the parcel at about 8AM. But it is now 2pm and I am still waiting. Sometimes I love Ausralia Post. Other times... Well...

According to the BBC, the OK is looking at a satellite tracking system would be used to enforce the toll, with prices varying from 2p per mile for driving on a quiet road out of the rush hour to £1.34 for motorways at peak times. If there is community acceptance for it that is.

A friend of mine saw my morse key on my desk and asked me what I was doing with it. He filled me in a bit more about it - letting me know that it was probably an american key from WWII based on the size of the arm, and the style of the handle. I will definitely *NEVER* know that much about morse keys - he was able to tap out a message on one too... And no, I have no idea what it said

AbeBooks.Com have stories of other "Harry Potter's" from around the world - although the one perculiar thing about most of the Harry's on their site is that they are writers.

There is a rumour that Apple will release news that they are moving to Intel processors today. Not sure if the rumour is true, but it would be interesting if it was. Porting the Mac Operating System to 'PC' hardware would be much easier then. The MAC user interface has a lot of features that I would like to see on the PC.

I am working my way through Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I am really enjoying most of it. His style of humor really apeals to me - pointing out the strange, surreal, or just plain stupid and incompetent. There is so much research in this book - and there are obviously so many facts that have been checked and cross-checked. He really has done an amazing job of researching it.

Busy day today... I need to arrange a whole lot of stuff for the tracking unit. I hope I do not need to, but I may need to race into Artarmon to pick up some circuit boards if they have not been shipped. They are on my critical path. I also need to order some connectors today, and wire and some other stuff. A lot of work, but the payoff will be good.

Speaking to Richard Last night, he has ordered an "Angle of Attack" indicator from ACS for his plane. This will tell him if he is going the right speed regardless of anything else he is doing to the plane - basically an advanced stall indicator. I do not understand how it works, I just need to know how to fit the thing... Looks fairly easy.

Music:

Some Middy Higgins on the iPod. Now Natalie Merchant with San Andreas Fault. If I get a chance later I will pick up the new Coldplay Album which is released today.

The thing on the Science of StarWars was not as good as it sounded - at least not the first episode. The 2nd looked better but I am recording it. It was on the machines inspired by StarWars.

One of them was a New Zealand guy who built a hovercraft powered by what looks like a jet engine. But it is actually just a look-alike containing a non-jet engine to power the hovercraft.

I spoke to Richard a little while back - he is planning to build most of the weekend. I will probably build most of the weekend too, but that depends on other work. It should not be an issue I dont think being able to work

On Junkyard Wars tonight the competitors need to build tricycles, and build a jet engine for them. This is a repeat, but I love this episode. From memory, the jet gets really hot, and runs really fast.

I would love to participate on a Junkyard Wars Episode, but I doubt that will ever happen. Besides, my welding is not great so I would need to practice that first.

After Junkyard Wars is a show on the science of Star Wars. This looks really cool too... Sounds like there is three hours of it which is a bit of overkill... I will see what it looks like.

The BBC has a story on the history of the Atomic Clock. Also NIST in the USA has a timeline for atomic clocks. This is all for the 50th aniversary of the first accurate caesium atomic clock. Below is my photo of the first one from when I was in London last year...

One of my friends tried to desribe how this works once - he is a self deccribed 'Time Freq' pronounced Time Freak who runs probably the worlds only mailing list people interested in accurately measuring time. It was strange when we visited the Parkes Radiotelescope last year seeing him talk about his home frequency standard and comparing it to the one at parkes, and I must say that his home one compared quite well. I believe that John is to the level of one second in 25-50,000 years. Not bad for a corporate lawyer for a multi-national who only 'plays' at this.


Anyway I need to get going... The Navy want soem work done, and I promised it to them ASAP. Next week will be pretty busy so I had better do it now...

I just got an email from the Doctoral student in Georgia, USA letting me know that my software was helping in his work. And then now that I have come back from church I got another email from Bishop Dunne High School in Dallas, Texas thanking me for the software too.

For the person that has everything is this MARSHMELLOW GUN that you can make yourself. Even better is this site which has a cartoon on building it. Actualy the Home Page of HowToons is quite fun...

Last night on The Bill there was a quote that I loved... 'Right now I feel like my head has exploded, and I am just waiting for the parts to come back to earth'.

Music:

On the way to church I heard the 'Duran Duran' song Ordinary World. I think I first worked out how cool this was on a Qantas plane where it was on one of the audio channels. I must get a copy for my collection

A few days ago I posted a photo of Darling Harbour from a US based magazine. I will now reveal what the problem was. They edited the control room from the bridge so that it did not appear in the photo. This is sort of cheating, but I think it probably made the photo look a bit better. Now, if they could only do that to the real bridge, and remove the boom gates in the middle...

On the travel scene, Skytrax from London have just released their list of the worlds top 10 airlines. Qantas comes in number two according to the article on CNN. Outside Australia I have flown on Alitalia, British Airways, United, American, Delta, BEX (Business Express - owned by the major three in the USA) and maybe one or two others, and I do like Qantas the most. Then again that could be slightly biased since I am an Australian.

Right now I am feeling a bit tired... Time to go to bed and read some of my Bill Bryson book...

I have been busy doing some work this afternoon doing some prep work for the production run of trackers... This has included stripping some wires, and cleaning the workbench. When I was doing this I came across a dis-assembled Morse Key.

About two or three years back I decided that I would get the key cleaned up and re-chromed. I am not sure exactly about the history of it - I will need to ask my father. I think it might have been my grandfather's from World War II - Or it may have been just a military surplus item purchased by my father when he was young.

Anyway I inherited it when I was young... and it was sticking on a larger piece of wood. Not all that useful. Anyway I removed it from the big board, and it has been my intent to learn to use it one day. About 10 years back I did start to learn but I gave up with the pressures of work and uni.


There have been various reports in the last few months about how morse is faster than SMS. These tests are significantly biased against SMS since they are not a fair fight. I think I would rather send an SMS rather than a morse code message. Then again I would rather send an Email rather than an SMS. And then Have a real conversation than an electronic one too.

I love this... According to the SMH, there will FINALLY be eTags available for motorcycle riders. They will be in the form of Arm Bands. It is about time.

I picked up some CD's at K-Mart at lunch time today... Mostly some singles reduced to $1 eachm but I also picked up a CD called 'Room Service 2' which is full of easy listening tracks. Go-Lo had The Beatles CD '1' for sale for only $15 so I grabbed that too. The one thing that they did not have was the new Coldplay albun which is due out real soon now.

The reason I went shopping was to get some batteries for the tracking units I am putting together. Normally these batteries are $5 each or so. The local bargain shop has them for only $1 each, saving about $600. Quite a good buy I thoght.

I have just seen the movie 'Jack and Sarah' which is a great feel good movie of the general genre of 'Four Weddings' and 'Love Actually' I would guess. Great british comedy withe some seriousness in it too. I had seen it before, and I was glad I saw it again.

On the ultra-cool side, someone has released a video player for the iPod when running Linux on it. You can read more about it here

I saw this on a blog, and loved the concept. It looked so great, if a trifle useless in practice... After all moving candles once a minute to tell the time is not really my idea of fun.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was how much I enjoyed the drive. Sure, it was over two hours in traffic, but it was peak hour. And the traffic moved well. It was worse than it is at midnight but what do you expect?

Rome traffic is horrible, with two hour commutes to travel 10km. I can run faster than that, but I am not sure I would really want to given the polution, and the roman drivers. [They seem as if they learned to drive when Ceasar was the emperour.]

All in all, it was not horrible doing the driving, but it would have been better if I did not need to do it. But that is life.

I have just been to Kings Park to pick up the new Circuit Boards. They look Fantastic. The only issue with them is that I only have one CPU module, and I broke a pin off it today, so now I need to wait until monday to test the PCB...

These boards look somewhat different - I cannot place my finger on exactly what it is - maybe something to do with the green solder mask. I do not know. Anyway they look great, and it will be good to get them into production next week. Did I mention that I was impressed.

It was a pain picking up the boards - I think I spent a good 2 1/2 hours in traffic. Anyone who needs to drive to work every day has my sympathies - I used to go into the City by train and I loved it. A friend of mine has offered me space in an Office in Pymble, and although it would be nice to actually work in an office again, I think the commute would kill me.

No building tomorrow or sunday - Richard is studying for his Instrument Rating theory exam; and he feels that he really needs to study. I know that feeling from Uni. Also from when I got my Ham license - Although in that case I needed to study the regulations since the theory was simplified versions of what I had done in my Engineering degree to date...

Photo of the Day

Music: