I have an important meeting at lunch time tomorrow - it should be interesting. Meeting with another client for the first time although I have been dealing with his business partner for the least few weeks. I was hoping to have a lot of things to show him tomorrow, but there have been some technical issues meaning that this is not possible. Not that he was expecting to see anything, but it would have been good anyway...

I get to hear about the moral inside Telstra from various sources. Apaprently the place is a fairly horrible place to work at the moment. The fact that the Telstra board now wants to get rid of more people has made things worse. I found the following comment on the ZDNET www site... 'Lucky for Telstra, a raft of new Industrial Relations legislation is on the near horizon. That should help them get over a few hurdles that were previously insurmountable.'. Unfortunately this sounds too true.

I have been thinking more about the Telstra stratergy with CDMA, announcing that they want to get rid of CDMA. The really strange thing here is that for Telstra if they implement WCDMA on 850 MHz with 3G that they are only partially solving their issue with reducing infrastructure costs. In order to fully reduce the infrastructure costs they also need to kill off the GSM network and transition that across. I think I need to do some more research on this subject.

I think the battery in my old dell needs replacing... I was using it outside in my car for a project for about 10 minutes before the battery died. That would be the second battery in this computer - with the first lasting about two years I would guess. This is not my main laptop where the battery still performs well. I might need to get the pack re-manufactured as this is often a lot cheaper than getting a new pack.

A journalist in the UK has been sacked over a Rigged Brake Test on a Mercedes car. The car had intelligence that would automatically apply the brakes if the car was going to collide with another car. But in the building where the demonstration was being performed the system did not work. So the journo decided to fake the test for cameras. Beucase of the special effects fog in the building the car could not see that the car in front had stopped. But they knew that this was going to happen.

So the engineers had placed a plank on the road to say when to brake. But the active suspention caused the driver of the vehicle at the back - the one with the anti-collision technology - to not feel the bump and ran into the back of the other car. All in front of TV cameras. OOps.

Quickly: The BURKE and WILLS bottle from the 'Dig Tree' has been sold for $250,000. And an Open House in Darwin gave an off duty Police officer the hint that drugs were being grown inside the house hydroponically.

In what must be a unique divorce settlement, a man in Iran has been ordered to pay his wife one gold coin a month for the next 10,000 years; or about $2000 per year. Under Iran's marriage law, couples sign a pre-nuptual agreement where the bride must stipulate the level of compensation they can demand during the marriage or in the event of separation and divorce. So in this case the court decided to effectively reduce the alimony by spreading it over a longer period. Hmm.

Computer systems in emergency serivices are strange at times. A person who tried to ring an ambulance from Park Central in the shadows of Campbelltown hospital was told that she did not live there since the road she lived on did not exist. The ambulance eventually arrived 2.5 hours later with lots of directions. To place this into context, the Ambulance station in Campbelltown is on the corner of Hurley st and another street. Park Central is off Hurley Street about 1.5km away on a straight open major road. And I am pretty sure that every house there would have a view of the hospital. In fact for some of the houses, it would be quicker to jump the fense and get to the emergency ward than it would be to get from the emergency ward to most of the rest of the hospital.

The problem appears to be the Computer Aided Dispatch system which has outdated maps. Argh. Why does this not surprise me. And this type of problem is the reason I have stayed away from that part of the business!

Anyway, back to work...

I have just got back from my run. I was not running quite as fast as I thought I was, but I did go well. I ran 6.1KM in 42 minutes. That is not bad. I did take the GPS and I have a dump of my run in the file below. 6.1KM is not bad I dont think...

Right now I think I need to have a shower and some breakfast...

Yesterday when I was using GoogleEarth over the Vodafone 3G I was having huge problems. I found out what they were after a little while. Turns out that the 3G application that comes with the card had the option to block certain content, and also had the ability to compress images. Well, that really stuffed up GoogleEarth, and meant that most of the user interface did not work, and the software effectively crashed. That is turned off, and things should be working a lot better now.

Durning the meeting yesterday I was told about an interesting free program called FreeMind which is a mind mapping program. It is a program to sort ideas based on lines on the screen, and their relationship. This is great for planning when there is very little inherent structure and you are searching for the structure, or where your mind just loves to go wild. I have not downloaded this one yet but I will. I have tried a similar program in the past and it was good. It needs the java runtime which can be an issue but is not bad.

Anyway I need to get going... I have a run to do... I will be doing the marathon before I know it :-)

Many people it seems make hand movements in time to music. Sometimes this is playing an electric guitar in the air, or hitting an invisible drum kit. Some other people may mime singing the lyrics of a song. I am one of the invisible drum people, but I am un-coordinated enough so that it would be a real disaster if someone gave me a real set of drums. Anyway, some students in Helsinki have developed computer software that will record the image of someone playing a guitar in the air and will turn that into music. I suspect that there is a long way to go on this project, but this is quite amazing.

Since I have almost no musical tallent (apart from a great love of listening to it) I do not think I will be setting up a system like this in the near future. I would love to be able to play an instrument like the piano, but I never learned.

The SMH has a story about how Vodafone is restricting premium SMS from some prepaid plans. Speicifcally they are restricting the ability to use premeum SMS as part of the capped calling on certain plans. I would have thought that any premium SMS would have been in excess of the cap, or part of it until it got to the call limit. Anyway they are advising people who want to use premium SMS to get a post-pay account or not get get a capped account. In some other vodafone news, apparently I am one of only a handful of people with a vodafone data account, and no voice account. I am told that this is VERY rare, and unusual.

Australia Post never ceases to amaze me... I have a POBox as this is a better way to get stuff delivered... In theory all letters and parcels to the address should find themselves in the post box regardless... Some companies refuse to deliver parcels to a street address, which is strange when they use Express Post, or Australian Air Express, which both deliver to a PO Box.

Yesterday I ordered a radio modem - and lets just say that it was not cheap. So I was rather surprised for it to appear under the front mat. This was a box about 5cm tall, so I have yet to work out why they put it under the mat, but they did. Maybe to keep it dry. Normally they just dump it at the door after knocking once.

Right now I had better get going... I need to get my beauty sleep, and I have a lot of things to do here tomorrow...

One of the coolest things you can do with food now in the USA is getting custom printed M&M's. Basically, you can get M&M's with your own words added to them... Cute concept.

Yahoo News, has an interesting article on how Introverts are thought of as being less intelligent than extroverts, whereas this is probably not the case. Provocative read. They also outline the differences between new versions of Web Browsers.

The Wall Street Journal has an article describing why BETA software is lasting so long. The reason is basically it provides the companies with an excuse if the software is stuffing up.

Finally, given the weather, I thought I might show an image of the output of a lightning detector. This is on a WWW page, although it is on a frends WWW site, and is not online fully yet. Soon I will provide a link to the real time data...

The News.Com.Au site has a story on visiting the Harry Potter locations in the UK... It would be interesting to visit all the locations from the movie... I have been to some (Kings Cross station) but there is some beautiful countryside in the movies.

I have been listening to the Green Day song 'Good Riddance (Time of your life)'. This is a song I like, but I have not known the words. For example the song starts 'Another Turning Point, A fork stuck in the road'. I thought that this was 'Another Turnip Boy, A long way on the road'. And so on. Lets be frank... I had no idea what was being sung.

Another Turning Point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go
So make the best of this test
And don't ask why
It's not a question
But a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable
But in the end is right
I hope you have the time of your life

So take the photographs
And still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf of good heath
And good time
Tattoos of memories
And dead skin on trial
For what its worth
It was worth all the while
I hope you had the time of your life

Back from the meeting... Went well... Really interesting, but I cannot say much more than that unfortunately. My notes from the meeting make really interesting reading and maybe one day I will be able to share them here. We will see how that goes. It was a meeting where I was sitting back listening... Sometimes I find that is ite best way to run a meeting... One day I will publish some stories on meetings I did that way...

A friend of mine forwarded me a personality test... It is on Tickle.COM, and you can find it here. It has some strange questions. I would advise you not to carefully read the screen about what sort of personality test it is until you have done the test... It is worth it. And unfortunately I cannot give the answer as to my results without giving some of that away... Good laugh...

In the meeting today I got to use the 3G... Signal strengths between 3G and GPRS are significantly different. Also it appears that not all cell sites are 3G. The ones inside the Macquarie Centre are not yet 3G. And I would guess that a lot of other places are like that too. It will be good when every base station is 3G... That might take a while to be implemented though.

I was in Borders a little while back, and I saw a book near the checkout... It was called "I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE: 50 OF THE WORLDS MOST DEPRESSING SONGS". I did not buy a copy of the book... But it did look interesting... The have books on everything these days... What looked better was the TOP GUN DVD... This is a MUST for any DVD collection... I think I might get it for a friend for Christmas... I think this would be fantastic in surround sound. Played at top volume...

The other cool thing I saw was at the Australian Geographic store and they had a 'working' model of an internal combustion engine for only $70... How cute. I wonder if it will power an plane!

The weather outside is definitely improving... That is if you do not mind the rain stopping, and the humidity rising. How do I know this? I just got back from my run. It went really well. I ended up running for about 35 minutes, and I believe I ran about 5.2KM or so. I think I now need to start taking my GPS to measure distance. Once again I am feeling fairly good right now, and my heart rate is almost back to normal.

The one issue that I was having was that my glasses were beginning to slide down my nose. This does not feel all that comfortable, and each time I would put them back they would slide down within steps. Still, that is better than running without glasses on which would be an unmitigated disaster.

Anyway time for a shower and then over to North Ryde...

Listening to the radio during the last week I have been hearing the song 'Take Me Away'. This seems to be a remake of a snappy song I last heard performed by I think the 'Four Seasons'. And I think that this new version is better. I just have not managed to work out who is performing it yet. I love the song... Definitely one of my favourites, at least at the moment.

I just saw an advert for the Vodafone 3G card that I got for free in the SMH in the computer section. They are offering the same deal as I got, BUT normal people need to buy the new 3G card for the bargain basement price of $399. Or only $16/month for 24 months. I am glad that I got that offer - as it saved so much money!

I will probably go for a run in a little while... It is starting to warm up slightly and there is no rain around, so the conditions are fairly good. I am not sure how far I will get, but that does not really matter... Exercise does not need to be taken seriously, only regularly.

This morning after I grab some food I have a PCB to finish designing. I then need to visit a client to find out what modifications are needed to the design. There will be some... There are always changes that need to be done! And then I have to visit North Ryde. I might drop in at Borders Bookstore on the way... There is a book I need and I am hoping they might have it...

Christmas and New Years is coming up meaning lots of parties. And parties sometimes means champain and champange corks... So a company in the UK has released a little toy to exploit champange. They call their device the champichute and is a 9cm parichute for champagne corks... That is something different - great for those outdoor parties. I wonder if they are available in Oz. Maybe I should just get some FedEx'ed from the supplier

Some reports from Microsoft indicate that the new version of Windows, VISTA, may actually ship quite early - next year in fact. There was a story on Business Week, but you can definitely find the story on ARS Technica. Evhead has a story on 10 simple rules for Web Startups. Not a bad little article really.... Some good ideas...

Oh, no... According to News.Com.Au JetStar was planning to paint one of it's jets in the Yellow of the new Lynx deodorant advert showing on TV. Aparently Jetstar had no idea how sauct the adverts were going to be. Jetstar was to do a promotional deal with deodorant brand Lynx but the company has severed all ties with the brand.

A friend of mine suggested that I read this article about a spy ring in Russia. One more thing to add to my to-do list I guess. Just one more thing... Scanning the article makes interesting reading but it looks all together too long.

CNN has a story about the movie ratings for the weekend in the USA. Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter came first. What did surprise me was that 2nd was a biography movie about Johnny Cash. Number four was the Chicken Little animated movie which I thought would have been more popular. [This movie was being advertised when I was in the USA in september].

One of my friend MSN'ed me... He has just got a job at Brisbane airport as a radio technician. I am still waiting to see when he starts his new job, but as soon as he does I think I will be having to go up there for lunch one day, but I will have to find a work reason to visit [P.S. Just heard - he starts January next year].

Reading BoingBoing, I found that Raytheon has a new way to get rid of mines in a field - they are planning to send a shell into the minefield which seperates near the ground into hundreds of metal arrows which set off all the mines. Sure, this is destructive, but it is a whole lot safer I think than having humans clear the mine field.

I was speaking to a friend in the USA earlier today about hardware and software for volunteer emergency services, which we both have an interest in. Anyway in his latest reply he suggested I look at the CNN home page about a job he was called out for this morning his time - his first bad accident for a long time. The story can be found here but a lot of that is just speculation at the moment.

Don't ask my why, but I tried connecting my new flat panel monitor to an old DVD player I have lying around here being un-used. By old, I mean 18 months old. Not all that old in the scheme of things. What I did find was that the monitor did not like the DVD player. The screen made comments along the lines of 'Please set the PC to 1280 x 1024 Pixels 60 Hz'. This would have been fine if I could actually change the settings on the DVD player. But I cannot. [Actually, I just had a thought... I wonder if there are any settings I can change... I would need to plug it into a normal TV set first though]. Something to try later.

Tomorrow I will be out of the office some of the day. I have two meetings... One morning, and one afternoon. The morning one may be re-scheduled just depending on some things. We will see. I can see the second meeting taking 4-5 hours again, but we will see. I am enjoying the work with this client though... It is fun.

News.Com.Au is reporting that Telstra shares are down to Record levels. It might be time to buy some more. I was one of these people who did not buy T2 because I had a feeling the prices would go down. Unfortunately I was right. But I did not expect them THIS cheap. Also, TechUser has a story on Lego mindStorms and why it is not going well.

It was only when I started going through my address book working out who needed to get christmas letters and christmas cards did I realise how many I needed to send out. Some people will get theirs electronically which will reduce postage... But apart from that I have something like forty cards to send out. I will have to pick up some more cards as I currently only have about 25 here... I bought some last year on special, but I did not get enough. [Yes, I planned ahead at least, but not enough].

At the same time as going through my address book (Contacts list in Outlook) I have been working out which addresses have changed and need to be updated. And who I do not have a physical address for - just an email address and phone number. This is particularly the case with some friends overseas. Who needs an address when they pick you up from the airport - apart from the customs and imigration forms that is.

From the SMH, James Moginie from Midnight Oil is on tour. Also, they interview Shakira is which is an interesting read to say the least. And finally SMH also has a thought piece on how much legroom there will be available in Economy class of the new Airbus A380

I have just been to get new tires on my car. I was not planning to spend quite so much on new tires, I think getting new tires rather than retreads is worth it. After all this set of tires have lasted over three years and they came new with the car. More strange is the conversation I was having with the guys at tire place. I was their only customer, So they had two of their mechanics talking to me whilst a third replaced the tires.

During the discussion they asked what I did.... And when they found out they asked about Vanu Bose. Not many people have heard of this character. They have heard of his father with the speakers. But Vanu is the son, and he has his own big business working on digital voice products and software definied radios. They were slightly blown away by the fact that I knew who Vanu was. They were more blown away when I told them that if you searched on my business name, the second query returned was from Vanu. I did not know this when I chose the business name. Not at all.

I mentioned before that I have been playing some old photos as a slideshow on another PC. One thing I forgot about was the photo below. This was from the sydney olympics... A left hand drive vehicle from the USA. But to 'Make this Legal', they added the steering wheel on the far side. You can just see the duct tape... Funny thing is the person in the passengers seat was pulled over for using a mobile whilst driving... OOps.



Not the worlds greatest photo... But it is real!

I have just done it... The run... I did about 5km in 35 minutes, and I am feeling a whole lot fresher than I have after my last few shorter runs. That might be because of the weather. I do not know. But I feel fairly good at the moment... Cooling down for a few minutes before a cool shower.

I tried the breathing exercises mentioned earlier but they were not much use since I tend to take a number of steps between breaths, and also I tend to exhale slowly, at least at the beginning of the run. My fitness is certainly improving. I just need to keep this up.

Anyway time for a shower.

I did 30 situps this morning... Five more than yesterday. And in a few minutes I will be going for a run.

There are reports coming in from the USA that the XBOX 360 dies after a short period of time. Initial indications are that this is a fault with the power supply, and it would appear that microsoft will need to replace at least some power supplies. But there is a solution according to The Inquirer. One user suggests suspending the power supply from the ground by a piece of string to improve the ventelation.

People wanting to run Asterisk Open Source PABX at home on their windows box can. A site has release an image for VM Ware that will work on a Windows Box using the free VM Ware emulator. Cute idea...News.Com tells of students in Victoria who used SMS in their final exams... And got caught. Oops.

I slept well last night... Apart from it being a tiny bit cold and needing an extra blanket. After two days working on the plane I needed a good sleep... And that is what I got. I am planning on going for a run this morning - the weather does not look too bad, so I am guessing that I will be able to do about 3-4km. But as normal we will have to wait until I get outside to see how that goes.

The iPod is a great piece of engineering - they have put so much technology into such a neat package. From an expandability viewpoint there are some cute interfaces available on the iPod through the bottom connector, such as the ability to move between tracks and the like. This would give the ability to place navigation buttons on the steering wheel if one wanted to do that... So the Panocamera web site has some instructions on how to build a breakout box to assist you in working on some of these hardware projects.

The same site as suggested that side also showed a link to the mens health magazine, and an article on 18 body tricks. This list includes suggestions like rubbing your ear to fix a tickle in your throat and even coughing during an injection if you cannot stand the pain. One of the most interesting suggestions is for people who get a stich when running. According to the article this is caused by the diaphram and the liver hitting. The answer is to exhale as the left foot hits the ground!

Finally, the government is looking at nuclear power. The view is that Australia is exporting Uranium, and if it is OK to export then it is OK to use locally. In the 1960's I believe it was, and few people know this, the government started building a power station at Jervis Bay. They got as far as building the foundations, and got no further because of political issues. The foundations are still there and are aparently used as a car park.

I have just got home from doing some work on the plane - which has been productive today. We finally got the longerons finished today, basically. By finished, I mean we got them fully drilled, and they are the correct shape, basically which is fantastic. I think we will need to do some cleanup of the metal - basically just fixing the tooling marks from the bending and removing them.

We also decided to work on front of the plane - arround the instrument panel. This looked really amazing. We also placed the frame from the cannopy on... I think the reaction from all those who saw the work believed that this was becoming a really serious plane.

During the week Richard is planning to spend some time getting parts cleaned up during the week, and we are looking at doing some painting of the parts on the weekend. Then we will be able to start riveting the plane together. And the riveting should come together rather quickly from all accounts.

Before leaving this morning I did some more sit-ups.... I managed to get 25 done. This was 5 more than the last time. I also have no ill effects from the exercise too. I just need to keep this up... What I find is that exercising is a great time for me to think. And becomes really really productive time for me...

Last night I neglected to make some comments about the longerons. Basically I hate them. They are a real real pain. Prior to yesterday we had spent hours on them. Probably two or three sessions working on them. And they were just not right. Yesterday we probably spent about three hours on the left side to get it to an acceptable state. Three hours. That is a lot of work. Do you want to know the most horrible bit? Well, the thing is that I really could not see us doing the right side one in much less time.

I have not worked out if that is the horrible bit, or this next piece of inforation is. When we actually did the other side it took us about TEN MINUTES to get it to a simialr state. TEN MINUTES!!! Yes, that is good. BUT, that means we wasted about two hours and fifty minutes on the left side. Both sides need adjustment... But that is more just to make them perfect.

Also last night I had another thought on the Harry Potter movie on TV. They normally go to great lengths not to indicate the era that the story is from - be it present day, the eighties, seventies or sixties, or whatever. You can probably get an idea of the vintage by looking at the models of cars on the roads, but generally, cars are cars. One muggle artifact that dates things is when Harry's uncle places bars on the windows of Harry's room at home, he uses what appears to be a Black and Decker 12V cordless drill, definitely dating the time to the 21st century.

I am sure that there are other clues in the movie, but that is one that I have picked up on.

The following was forwarded to me...
----

You know you're living in 2005 when...

1 You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2 You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3 You have a list of 16 phone numbers to reach your family of 4.

4 You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5 Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6 When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.

7 When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial " 0 "
to get an outside line.

8 You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.

9 You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news .

10 You read this entire list, and kept nodding and smiling.

I have had a fun day today, working on the plane... Richard and I worked on the longerons again. These are the pieces of angle that go the length of the plane, and keep it dimensionally stable. And I must say that they are a pain to deal with. They need to be bent into shape. And the bending experience is an interesting one.

Building an aeroplane is generally an exercise in careful work. Even when you need to use force to do something, like using a rivet gun, it is generally carefully applied. Which is why placing a longeron in a vice, and hitting it with a rubber mallet with all ones might is rather strange. Since I tended to be the one holding the metal stable, I needed to make sure that I stayed out to the way... Well out of the way. Thankfully this time I did not get hit...

Right now the Harry Potter movie is on TV... I have it on DVD, but it is cute to watch on TV for some reason too... Anyway I think that I have mentioned this before but I totally love the Weasleys clock... It gives an indication of where every one is... I am thinking of adding this to my WWW site... Since I have the GPS in my car I have the data for something like that. Anyway time to get going...

In the SMH, Richard Glover has taken the Australian Princess story, and used it as a base for translating other fairytales into Australian. He tells the stories of 'The Princess and the Pee', 'Cindyrella' [Which sounds like a name from THE RUGRATS show], 'Rumplestiltskiiin' and 'Rapunzel'. Interesting diversions on the old tales. The SMH also has a story about the new Harry Potter movie and why childrens movies are getting darker and more adult.

I did some more sit-ups today - I think I did about 20 of them, and they seemed to be a bit easier than yesterday. I was amazed at how much easier it was. I guess I just need to keep up the practice and my fitness level will just keep improving. I tried to do some push-ups but I think I did a bit too much yesterday, and pulled some muscles in my shoulders.

There is a story on ZD-Net about how Kazza have been forced to implement a system which blocks certain search phrases from the software. These seach phrases would be supplied by record companies mainly, and implemented in the software. The article shows what sort of politics is going on behind the scenes to come to a conclusion as to the sort of software that will work in a P2P arena. The record companies are wanting audio-finger printing, and a 10,000 term search filter; whereas KAZZA are just implemented in a 3,000 term filter. .

Every year around this time I start working on my christmas letter to all my friends. This is a letter that basically brings all my friends up to date with my life. So I have taken some time today to work on that. I have more to do on the letter, but I think that the majority of the work has been done on this. It has been hard to write this year, working out what I have managed to do, and where this year has gone. Seems to have gone so quickly.

I have a subscription to a program with Microsoft called Empower for developers. This is a special plan where developers get access to MSDN for two years worth about $6,000, as well as other support. 18 months back I paid $875 for this program. Unfortunately my membership dropped off. Contacting microsoft they told me to re-subscribe, paying my money again. The good news is that I have extended my subscription by 18 months saving me a lot more than I will be spending. Still I would rather not be paying the money to Microsoft at this stage.

[Short break... Just got a phone call from the USA... Just got some consulting work. Fantastic. ]

The LowEndMac site has a look at how and why Apple developed their Powerbooks, and how revolutionary the Powerbooks were. Findally, the SMH has a list of the Top 10 presents this christmas...

Here is a cute project for those with pets - particularly with the hot weather coming up here in the Southern hemisphere. It is an Automatic Pet Water Bowl that works in the same way as water coolers in offices. And it looks really really easy to build. Full instructions on the site.

Also, there is a story on the SMH about how Hollywood is going crazy for a new teddy bear from Australia. It's called the Flatout Bear and is billed as "the ultimate luxury teddy bear". The bears - made "flat" from Australian sheepskin - are used as baby comforters or toys. So cute.

So, what have I been up to this morning... Well, I had an answer back on a problem I had been having with some software. It comes down to definitions. What does 'Relative Northing' and 'Relative Easting' mean?

Well, the first way is that these are relative to your position and to your heading. If something has a relative northing of 1000m, and you are facing north then the object is 1000m to the north. To complicate things, if you look east, and there is a relative northing of 1000m, because it is a 'Relative Northing', then the object would be 1000m east of me. This is because of the assumption that the 'RELATIVE NORTHING' is relative to what direction you are pointing.

This is not what the people who are supplying the data thought. Their view is that the 'Relative Northing' would always be north regardless of which was I was looking. This is a totally reasonable point of view. It makes sense. It is just not how I thought things would work. Looking back though this is the logical way for things to happen. I guess I would have tried to come up with a better name than 'Relative Northing' and 'Relative Easting', maybe something like 'Northing Offset' and 'Easting Offset'.

Not sure what I have on today yet. Probably some more programming, and some system design and phone calls I would guess. I have a teleconference on tuesday to prepare for... At least if i want to be building this weekend...

There is a story on News.Com.Au about how a cathedral in Melbourne is offering immortality to patrons by allowing them to pay $50,000 for their likeness to become a gargoil during the restoration of the cathedral.

There are reports of an experiment to attempt to Shoot a lock open. The result of the test is that basically the best thing to use to open a lock is a shotgun, at least if you are attempting from the side like you normally would in a movie. None of their other tests using rifles and pistols worked. ZDNet has a review of what is new in Visual Studio 2005. I have a copy here but I have not yet installed it. I have been busy with other projects. However given some of the new features I might need to. They have by all reports improved some of the report generation tools, and also the ability to have software automatically check for updates on startup.

TechCrunch contains a list of companies the author would like to review. The problem is the companies do mostly not exist yet. I wonder if there is a business case to do any of these... Probably not at the moment. Not enough time.

Last night before falling asleep I started reading the History of The Black Box Flight Recorder. This is an Australian invention, and I had bought my brother a copy of the book for his birthday this year. The book is an interesting read, and it appears it will only get more interesting as I get more into the guts of the book.

Slashdot provided a link to a DVD called The Goodfather which is a training guide for new fathers based on the humor of The Godfather series of movies. It provides, according to the Web Site, hundreds of baby lessons designed from a "mans point of view", definitions, thousands of baby names, and a baby card maker all set to a hilarious gangster parody, including baby toting mobsters & the Goodfather himself. If I ever have a child I think this will be on the top of my shopping list... Or on the top of the list of presents to give to friends who have kids....

The SMG has a review of Popetown which is a highly satirical view of life in Rome. Personally having watched it once, I never really got into the show.

Lastly, there is a short project to build a cheap LED torch here. It involves an LED, transistor, resistor, some wire and a ferrite, and works even when the AA battery is supposed to be dead... Interesting.

New Years Eve this year is going to be fun. There is a leap second being added on 31/Dec/2005 at the end of the day. That means that the final minute of the year will be 61 seconds long. What does that mean for us? Well, not a lot. You see, it is added at UTC (Commonly known as GMT) and this is out by 10 hours. So there will be a second added just before 10:00AM on 1/1/2006.

Uncommon Goods have some cute items on sale. One of the cutest is a necklace made from an old credit card. The effect is quite amazing, thanks to the clear glass top on the pendant. I managed to see this linked to from Boing Boing I think. My compliments to the designer. The site contains a lot of other cute items for sale too.

There are lots of people who add content to Google to make a point. For instance if you search for a word like incompenent or worthless you get a picture of George W Bush. So it should come as no surprise then that a Radio show in the USA has offered $10K for the first person to put a sign on their home saying hello to the presenter of the radio show. The Register is also offering merchandise if that person advertises The Register!

I have just got back from dinner with my brother - always good to catch up with him. He needs some help installing new lights in his unit - and I really did not understand the scope of what he wanted done. I had a feeling that I would be doing it tonight - yeah, sure. He has a three bedroom, two bathroom flat, and wants to replace every single light fitting.

And to top that off each light needs to have holes drilled into the concrete to mount them. This is going to be messy if nothing else. This is thanks to drilling into the concrete. Particularly from below. I have a really good drill that makes things easy, but it is still really really messy.

The conditions outside were too good not to go for a run, so I have just got back from one. And I am glad that I did. I did really well... I was running for exactly 30 minutes, and I guess I did about 4.2KM judging on my past experience. I only did one lap of the oval, but I did a half lap on the way back. Time for a drink of water before a nice cool shower I think... And yes, my foot is a bit sore... Only a tiny bit. And it is no worse than it was earlier...

I was going to do a run this morning, but the sole of one of my feet is a bit sore - maybe burised or something. So I just did some other exercise... I did 20 situps, and 20 pushups. I did cheat with the pushups, doing them on the stairs. This makes them easier since I have not done any for a while. I dont think it would have been a good idea to do any more either pushups or situps... 20 of each was enough.

Last night I was working on debugging code... Or trying to. I think that the code I was looking at is actually working, unfortunately, and I think I have found a bug in an external system. This is both good and bad. If it was an issue with my software it might be easier to fix. With external systems it can be a lot harder. Such is life. Not much you can do about that unforunatly.

I was talking to an ex-box of mine last night on MSN, and he used the expression "festina lente", which sounded completely latin to me. [I was going to say it sounded 'greek to me' but I was pretty sure an expression like that was latin]. I did a lookup on google, and found that it means 'Hurry Slowly'. This is a cute expression, although I am not sure I will ever use it myself. My favourite latin is "Caveat Utilitor", or Let the user beware, a great one when it comes to computer software.

By looking at the Business Week Web Site, you will find a story on how Microsoft is going to be loosing money on the XBOX. By loosing money, I mean it will be losing about US$121 on a $399 machine! And that might even be without retail margins. In 2006 Microsoft intends their gaming division to be revenue neutral, meaning that games revenue will offset the console price. Then make money the year after. The device will ship in Australia at the beginning of march.

There was a story on the SMH yesterday about how Sydney airport is installing a system to keep the runway clear of Debris. In this case the story is on video, available here. It turns out the system is known as Tasier, from QinetQ. And, no, Qinetq does not have any connection with Qantas. The Tasier WWW site is www.qinetq.com. What is interesting the the frequency being used - 94 GHz... This is about 100 times the 900 MHz used by most GSM cellphones.

Firstly, Pizza is one of the five major food groups. It is one of the foods that should be eaten as part of a healthy diet (In moderation of course). Which I suppose is why Pizza is sometimes delivered to police stations. The problem comes when the Pizza Delivery guy gets pulled over by police for speeding (100km in a 80km zone), and they find that he does not have his license. Being a good employee, after being told that he could not drive any longer, then proceeded to deliver the pizza on foot. The police spokesman comments that he would have got off if he had offered the police officers the pizza, with tounge definitely in cheek.

The Californication Blog has an article on how to repair the Garmin ETrex which commonly has problems with the miniture joystick. The Likelysoft WebSite has a great listing of resources for converting laptops into picture frames.

Airport security is an interesting subject - and is one that has to be carefully discussed. Bruce Schneier has some interesting comments on Airport Security and how poor it really is. Or more correctly how dumb it is sometimes. I will not put words in her mouth... A worthwhile read.... In related news, there was a story showing how many aviation security cards were lost last year.

And LaCie has released Lego Style HDD Cases that are stackable. Comes with a USB interface, and designer colours!. Intereting concept.

I have been setting up a new PC today for a project and it has been *interesting* at times. Getting the operating system installed was fairly easy and straightforward. What I did find was that I needed to install the drivers that came with the motherboard to get the video to work properly. It worked without that but there was some flicker. Not a lot, and not all the time.

I was having some issues that the system would go into sleep mode when I plugged in a PCMCIA card. adding the drivers and making sure that the system was updated fixed that problem.

I had the normal problem where the GPS receiver was detected as a mouse. I tried a few things to fix this, and none seemed to work. Eventually I found a page that told me what to do. I went into the device manager in the control panel, and found the MOUSE driver for Microsoft Ballpoint, and disabled it. That is the fix, and it works really well.

The other thing I wanted to do was to use VNC to connect to the computer, in a way similar to Remote Desktop. This just would NOT work. Not at all. I could not work it out. Using NetStat, I found it was not listening for the connections externally, but only on the same computer. Eventually I found that the FIREWALL in Windows XP was blocking incoming connections. Disabling the firewall partially helped. Then I needed to restart the VNC service, and things worked. But this took too long to work out. Getting the PC set up should have taken about an hour but took more like about four hours.

Welcome to my world!!!




http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2003/Sept/CrystalReportsIntroduction.asp

I tried out my 3G card from Vodafone in a 3G area, and it seems to work well. I did it from the parking lot of a client at North Ryde using the external antenna. It had about 50% signal strength which was not idea. Using remote desktop seemed to work really well. SKYPE... Well, I tried to connect to a friend to test, but he was busy and did not allow the call. So I then tried the Skype Call Test number, and it seemed to work fairly well, although there was a delay with some of the voice messages.

They provide some velcro to attacke an external antenna to the laptop if you want. I have attached a picture here of the laptop with the antenna and the card on the left. The blue thing on the laptop is a note reminding me of someones new email address...


I was looking at some photos earlier, and found this cute photo. This is a friends work vehicle, just off Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. I find the vehicle rather cute.



In the SMH there is a story about the Governments reprt on VoIP. You can actually find the report on the DCITA Web Site. We might be seing the 05 area code being used soon for mostly VoIP numbers which have no geographic region connected to them. Interesting concept.

I really need to start going for runs in the morning. I went for a run yesterday afternoon, and it was a tiny weeny bit warm really. Once again, I only did the short course of about 2-2.5km. It is good to get out, and just relax, and think. I find it is really good for me. I just need to keep at it.

I was looking for a program to do random slideshows of the files in the MY PICTURES directory of my main laptop from my 2nd laptop so I could display them on the flat panel. I found Picture and Slide Show which gets set up as a screensaver, but can be run in preview mode. It runs in full screen, and has a LOT of options as to audio effects, transitions, everything. And it allows you to play your pictures in random order. And even for a random time. I am very impressed. And it is free.

The Register has a story how Apple and it's iTunes store is now the seventh largest music retailer in the USA. Also on the same site is information on the Hauppage USB TV Tuner that can receive digital TV, and is in a can a bit bigger than a memory stick. And also news that Microsoft is to open it's file formats. And finally, Apple is paying companies about US$1.2b to ensure supply of flash memory devices for iPods until 2010.

Short Post... More soon...

I need to visit north ryde a bit later this morning... I have to pick up some hardware, and have a short meeting... Should be really interesting. Before then I need to get a few things worked on as I may not have time after. And in the christmas light world, I think this is going a bit far!!!

I was watching TV during the thunder storm, and it was on digital free to air, and there were pops in the audio when there was lightning. What I cannot understand is why the pops are there. Surely the CODEC (or more correctly the decoder) can work out that there is an interrupted signal, and then turn off the audio before the pop. Is that too simple? Am I just looking at things with too much of an engineering mind? Or is this just the difference between the cheap and expensive boxes?

I was looking for some other photos today and came acorss these ones. These were of some equipment used in EcoChallenge 2002 in New Zealand. I designed some hardware to turn a generator on and off inside the box. This box Iwas a radio repeater system with a number of channels so that people could communicate over the course.



This next photo is of my hardware and the repeater being airlifted in.


As an aside, the owner of the company I did the work for loves to go around in his 'Survivor' jacket. This was for the first series of Survivor a few years back in Bornio, where he provided most of the radio communications for the crew. [Believe it or not, there are something like 300 or more crew working on shows like Survivor, and logistics can be a real issue.]. Anyway he loves to comment that he wears the jacket now since borino is far too hot to ever need a jacket, even in the middle of winter!

I have just had a really bad thunder storm... Foxtel was cut off for a few seconds, and there were a few short power outages. One of which dropped out my Linux server from power and caused it to reset. This could have been fine except for one thing... The computer did not restart.

When I put the new HDD drive in a few days back it had the wrong order for the booting from drives. It was set to boot from the secondary drive and if that did not work try the primary drive. And this was fine until I formatted the secondary secondary drive. Then the next time the computer tried to restart (which was tonight) it refused to since the computer could not find the operating system.

Changing some BIOS settings fixed this. And the computer has now been restarted. Things are working again!

My Vodafone 3G modem arrived today. This worked properly one one of my laptops, but did not work at all on my main Dell laptop. I eventually rang Vodafone support, and they got me to uninstall the driver, and then download the new software from the Vodafone WWW site. This made it work. Unfortunately I only have GPRS here, and not 3G so I will have to try this out in the next few days in a 3G area. The coverage area is available here

I have a photo of the unit connected to my laptop with the external antenna connected, but I cannot find the cable to download the photos from my camera. I will probably pick up a new cable tomorrow as the one I have is a bit old, and does not read many of the new types of cards. So the photo will follow...

The News.Com.Au Web site contains a story about the Centre of Australia. They describe the four or five different places that might be the centre of Australa - Ayeres Rock, Johnston Station which is the surveying centre of Australia, the point furthest from all the oceans, and the gravity centre of the country. I would love to visit each of them - it might make an interesting trip I think.

Lastly, a company in the USA has promised to break the iTunes encryption system so that they can license it to other companies who want to sell music for the iPod. This is an interesting stratergy which I suspect will turn up in court eventually. We will see.

This morning I have been busy with a couple of tasks. Number one I have been backing up my PC onto the network. This is running in the background, and the program I am evaluating looks quite good. I am using "Auto Backup 2.4" and for US$20 it looks great. It has scheduling, compresses backups, splits them as required. Everything.

The more that I use ToDoList from AbstractSpoon the more impressed I have become. I have been slowly looing through the options as I was getting annoyed at to-do lists not being saved. This was a real pain, and I lost one when my PC crashed [ARGH. Horrible Broadcom Drivers]. Anyway I found that I can auto-save i the options. And I found other things. You can have shared network to-do lists. I think you just save the to-do list to a network drive and have two people open it up.

The other pain was that it would not allow multiple to-do lists open at once. I am working on what is becoming a major project, and I wanted to do a mini-project plan, and I was having problems managing my normal to-do list. Then I realized that it would open additional files in tabs. Perfect! Maybe it is time to read the instructions.


So you think that you have been having a bad day. If so you MUST look at this following sote containing some disasters involving transport. It looks like a big OOps to me! These are the sort of photos that insurance companies have nightmares with.

I have been listening to more of Kelly Clarkson, and the more I listen the more I think she sounds like Avril Lavigne. In particular listen to the song "Since you been Gone". This really is of the style of Avril. Dont just take my word for it... Have a listen.

Speaking to a friend this morning revealed an interesting story. This friend needed to test Voicemail functionality. This is fine, and is part of his job. There was only one problem. He needed to get a managers approval for this since someone thought that they could save money by not having voicemail on phones. Voicemail is essentially a free service. It is even more so when you are a phone carrier!

There are some projects that should be illegal. For some reason building a plane is one that many people think should be. Well, maybe. But I know of one that really really should be. That is >building an engine. This one is a V8, and looks great. It takes about a year to make, but I would guess that depends on how much time you spend on it. The price is about right, except for the time needed to work on it. You need to visit the link. If you do you will see that it is made of paper. It is an origami engine!

I have not found the story yet online, but the print version of the SMH has a story about moving the QANTAS Data Centre from George St in Sydney to Baulkham Hills to the IBM Data Centre. Since this was a switchover I suspect that they were outsourcing the servers at the same time. Like any big organisation, QANTAS has a number of mainframes, and something like 300 servers. It is about what I would expect. There will probably be a link in the SMH soon.


There is a funny document on How to write un-maintainable code. This is a strange look at how not to write Java. It goes into too much deapth, but I thought I would include the link for completeness.

I have been looking for backup software for my computer. I want something that I can back up the HDD and send it to a server, scheduling it as required. I found AllSync, but somehow it MOVED my backup files rather than copied them. This was not what I wanted. It was nothing important... Only MY DOCUMENTS, and my MYOB file. This is one program I WILL NOT BE USING AGAIN!

The PBS website has the latest installment of I, Cringely has a thought piece on Google and what it's stratergy might be in regards to servers. He thinks that Google is working out how to put 5000 processors in a really small area [maybe even a shipping container] for placement in perring centres and major ISP's. This will make Google at the centre of the Internet. The cost of doing this is not really all that high in the Google way of doing things.

And also on the Google side comes the competition over there called Doodle For Google. This was for 4-18 year old children, and the above link contains the five winning entries.

The Guardian in the UK did a survey of the Top 20 Geek Novels. They had to be written in English since 1932. The list was....
1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson 59% (66)

I have needed to do some hardware repairs on a tracking unit. Strangely, both units had the same problem with them - both had a faulty LED because a miniture resistor had been damaged. I could not (and still cannot) work out what happened to cause these resistors to be 'destroyed'. Very strange. But replacing the minute parts was fairly easy.

In an aviation story, in the SMH there is news of a Light Plane that landed at Sydney Airport today. The plane was caught above cloud over the great dividing range, on route to Hoxton Park. But he could not find a path through the clouds so he got sent out to sea by Air Traffic Control to find a space in the clouds and landed at Sydney Airport. He had 20 minutes fuel left so he was rather lucky.

The SMH is also reporting that the government is releasing a report tomorrow about VOIP, and the requirements for VOIP service providers, according to Australian IT. Should be an interesting read.

I went for a short run this morning - only probably about a couple of KM. I wanted to build some speed rather than build distance. It was good to have a chance to run since I have not been out for a week or so. I would like to build the distance too, but I really have enough to do at the moment that I did not feel too bad for having done a shorter distance.

I also picked up a copy of the Kelly Clarkson CD. I am listening to that at the moment, and I like the sound. It is nice background music, and she is a good vocalist, with a great voice. I don't know how much of her sound is thanks to the experts in the background, but in the end that really does not matter. The important thing is how she sounds in person and in concert.

I have spoken to Vodafone about the 3G offer. I rang them up to get connected, and the first thing they did was place me on hold with music, without even saying the company name. That really is not professional at all. Then when they were processing my order they advised me that there would be a $10 delivery charge. This was not listed anywhere on their offer. I just keep shaking my head with them at the moment. They seem to have got some of their technical things fixed, and now their business processes need help.

The SKYPE handset works... But it is rather strange. When I then went to use the CD player in the laptop I did not hear anything. Nothing at all. A little while later I realised that the Skype handset had taken over as default input and output of audio for the PC. That is now fixed! and the handset still works.

I am going through my emails after a couple of days building with little chance to catch up on such things as well as a few days before that being flat out. So I had an interesting collection of things waiting for me. Firstly an email from Norway where a person was asking about a project I was working on a while back and I have not finished since there is no commercial market for it. Then I had a query wanting a quote for a tracking system from Costa Rica, which is realistically too far away foe me to be able to service. And there were some other things in there too.

Yesterday I mentioned my new monitor from philips. Looks fantastic, and the colors are so vibrant. Right now I only have it connected up as a 2nd screen for my spare laptop, and... Hold that thought. I was going to say that I would have to find something to put on to just test the monitor... And I almost did not finish that sentence, since I found a copy of Open Space containing chillout music with video clips. When I put the DVD in the monitor went full screen. But not the laptop. Finally, windows working with two screens. I was impressed. So right now on that laptop I have its screen with the windows desktop with WinDVD minimised, and the external monitor playing the DVD full screen. I am impressed.

The CD based manual for the minitor itself was a bit useless... It was for the 19" version. Oops. I think someone put the wrong CD in it. Still, realistically I cannot see any use for reading the manual. Things are fairly self explanitory these days.

Anyway, time for more work... And I will probably get a run in this morning so that is more time out of my schedule...

I think it is time to get a new cellphone... Once more last night driving home I needed to reboot my cellphone when it would not connect to the bluetooth hands free in my car. More correctly it thought that it was and the car knew that it was not. I guess I will be looking around in the next few weeks.

The Web Site Space.COM has a list of the >top 10 space moviews of all time. Apart from StarWars and StarTrek, items on the list include Alien, Contact, Apollo 13 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Actually I have never even seen Alien. Contact is an interesting movie featuring Apollo 13. The start scene where they travel through time showing the different radio and TV signals that have been sent from earth is really cool.

The Austalian IT has a story about how Telstra is behaving so stupidly to its staff. Whilst big organisations seem to have a inhernent ability to get staff off side, this is different. Telstra are proposing a huge change to their mobile business, but need the staff to do this. From the article comes the following quote : "Telstra's employees, who have been subject to reorganisation almost every six months in the last decade, are now highly de-motivated and cynical about the company's multiple strategy tacks,"

Music:

Last night during Australian Idol I heard a few tracks from the Kelly Clarkson CD called breakaway. The songs sound decent, and I might get a copy of this. Hearing about this CD prompted me to have a look at the top 40 chart, and I found a couple of other interesting CD's... Firstly there is a new Kate Bush CD called AERIAL, her first for 12 years. And also Green Day have a live CD out which I am guessing is phenominal.

When I bought the HDD I got a SATA drive... Serial ATA. Less wires. The only problem is that I do not have an adapter for power. So this will be connected up in the morning when I get a power adapter. Then things will be set up. I will have to set some things up to move automatically to the new drive. That should be fairly easy.

LED Traffic lights seem to be being rolled out at the moment. It seems that about once a week I see a new set of lights that has been upgraded to LED's. There is significant cost saving to be made by doing the upgrade. The interesting thing is that the crossing indicator was not replaced on one of the sets of lights I saw. This tends to indicate that the reason for the upgrades is to save on maintainence costs, but not on the electricity costs. I would have thought though that they would have done the complete job and just replaced the entire lights to LED. It would have been a better solution all around.

Today has been good... Let me explain...

Firstly, I needed a new computer monitor for a project I am working on. I was going to get this through mail order, but it turned out that Richard needed to return a printer to someone at the North Rocks Westfields Computer Market. So we arranged for me to go there to also pick up some stuff. I ended up getting a 17" computer monitor which I must say looks really amazing. I also picked up a SKYPE USB phone also for a project, and a 512 MByte USB Memory Card. And a 200 GByte HDD...

The HDD is for my server here... For a shared drive so that I can send 100 GBytes of data to a friend for backup, and I can backup 100 GBytes for him. This is a great idea, and thanks to WestNet we can use ADSL to keep the entire archive up to date. An amazing concept.

The Plane: We were working on the longerons today, the angle that goes the length of the plane. Tring to bend it the correct ways. And this was a real pain. So we turned the bathtub upside down so that for the first time in a really long time it was up the correct way. This allowed us to more easally fix the longerons. But more interestingly it allowed us to place the seats and the upholstry in for the first time.

I must say that the plane really is going to be amazing inside. The coloring of the fabrics is just perfect, and we cannot wait for the plane to fly!!!

Firstly, Burce Parens has an interesting story in his Blog about how Richard Stallman was accosted by security at the WSIS Internet conference in Tunisia. Richard Stallman started one of the huge open source projects, probably starting the open source movement. He started the GNU project which is an important part of Linux. Bruce Parens is someone I have had an interesting Linux Vs. Windows discussions with a couple of years back after he attended a conference I went to.

The reason for the entry was that Stallman was detained after handing out alfoil during a talk to stop RFID enabled ID tags from being read at places other than checkpoints. This rather annoyed secrity personel... And they refused to allow him to leave a conference room for two hours. Interesting...

There is a link in the SMH about how a company in Western Australia is marketing radar detectors in the eastern states. The article notes that the owner of the site has sold more than 100 radar detectors and about five radar jammers since establishing his website dontgetcaught.com.au earlier this year. The interesting thing is that he is relying on the fact that it is not illegal to sell the devices in W.A. Well, actually it is illegal. Radar Jammers need to be liecensed under the Radiocommunications Act, and if they are not they can be liable for a $250K fine. The other thing about radar jammers is that they also jam other radio services that operate on the same frequency. And this is why the jammers are illegal.


Firstly, there is a story in the SMH about the changes that Telstra are proposing to their mobile network. "Telstra's 8.4 million mobile-phone users will need to buy a new handset when the company switches to its proposed new-generation technology, beginning next year." according to the SMH. However this has to be a gradual straturgy. Hmm... What could the real agenda be?

Could it be that by offering hardware (that still probably uses SIM cards) but that is incompatible with other cariers then customers of Telstra will find it harder to move from telstra. They will also find it harder to move to telstra, but Telstra have a whole lot more to loose in the mobile world since they have the most customers who might transfer to other cariers.

BoingBoing has once again a cute link to a site... It is to the FrogReview site that has two frogs reviewing web sites and the like. It has a good review of the ticketmaster site, and I guess when things go along further will have other things on it too...

Today I have had fun working on the plane... Getting some work done in the front compartment where people sit. This is in addition to also getting the landing gear on too. Right now the plane is upside down without the wings on with the landing gear without the wheels sticking up. Basically it looks like some strage upside down grasshopper. I will be back tomorrow to do some more work on the fuselage. Should be fun.

Finally, according to The Register, Cisco has purchased Scientific Atlanta. For those who do not know, Scientific Atlanta make set top boxes, mostly for satellite. Interesting purchase.

I guess it is time to get some emails replied to before I start work on the plane. I just have so many things to follow up... I am not sure what we will be doing on the plane, but I am guessing that we will be working on the fuselage so that we can get that put together. There are some parts that need painting and we need to prepare those parts so that they can be painted. Whatever we end up doing I guess will be something interesting and different. After all, if I did not enjoy working on the plane I would not be doing it :-)

Acording to the SMH, the new Harry Potter movie will be out soon. This one will be rated M rather than PG, restricting the audience. Previous movies should have have been similarly rated in my view, but the cinemas are still hoping for a big hit as revenue has been down this year thanks to a lack of blockbuster movies.

It looks like SONY is in more trouble over copy-protected CD's. It now seems that they have broken copyright on the software being used to protect the CD's using other peoples work in violation with their copyright. Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

The GRYNX Web site has an interesting project - a wide angle 802.11 High Gain antenna. This is a cute project, and unlike many on the internet, this one looks like it might actually work.

I really do not think I have got much work done today - of the work that I wanted to get done anyway. I did get the work done which I described here earlier, but I had other things I wanted to get done which I didn't. This has meant that I have spent even more time on the phone this afternoon... And tomorrow I will be building - working on the plane - so I will not get a chance to do anything then either. On the subject of building, it has been a few weeks since I have done any actual building of the plane so it will be good to do that once more.

The SMH has a blog entry about how to behave at the cinema. I think it is somewhat tounge in cheek, suggesting what people are doing anyway when they go to the cinema. The YouTube site has a video about Corn Starch and what happens when you vibrate it. It is one of those liquids that acts almost as a solid when it is vibrated, and as a solid otherwise. Strange.

This site from brazil has All the google header graphics. This is a better collection than the current one on the Google Website itself.

This morning amongst other things I re-mounted my E-Tag. A week back I got a new mounting kit for it since the previous one had fallen off. Unfortunately this one just did not stick. This was not good. After thinking about this long and hard I decided to stick the bracket on with Epoxy. On the off chance that I ever want to remove the bracket, it can be removed if I am really careful. I was probably a bit too careful when I was using the epoxy on the screen, by using duct tape on adjacent areas of the screen where I did not want the epoxy to go. I think it worked well.

In probably what is one of the coolest toys I have seen in a long time, comes coloured bubbles. You will soon be able to get them in many colours. But the cool thing is that if the bubbles burst over clothing (like a wedding), rubbing will make it go clear. So will time - with the bubble residue turning totally clear within 30 minutes. I can just see this being used in weddings....

Anyway I need to get some items ordered for a project... And it is already late in the afternoon... They will probably not be ordered before monday, but you never know...

For some reason I seem to be getting no work done today. Actually I am getting work done, but it does not seem to be things off my to do list. It is things that have never quite gotten onto my todo list. That is life. And in a little while I need to visit a colleague for lunch. Each time we try to meet up other things come up... Just how it goes I guess...

In the next few days it looks like I will be building a prototype system for one client... Seems like an interesting project, which I really really wish I could say more about. But this is my world at the moment and I just cannot say too much. What is that old saying? I could tell you but I would have to shoot you. Not quite, but I think you get the picture.

In the strange story department, comes news that a number of statues were found lined up at a crossing in Warrnambool. POLICE spotted a menagerie of zoo animals crossing a busy road in Victoria's south-west early today.

The sixteen statues were lined up overnight on either side of a pedestrian crossing in Warrnambool, Acting Sergeant Chris Moloney said. "There's one gnome, the rest of them are a collection of animals," he said. "We've got crocodiles and a pig towing a cart,(and) there is a small bird bath - all classy, tasteful stuff. But there's no chickens amongst them."

CNN has a review of the XBox 360>X-Box 360 that says that the X-Box is good, but it is not a great improvement right now from the existing X-Box. When new games come out things will be different. And also an article notes that the Government is looking at ways to improve the takeup of Digital TV. How about mandating digital tuners in TV's and VCR's. That would be my first step.

Last night whilst I was working on a white paper for the client I visited yesterday, I was watching a Dan Aykroyd movie, and I loved it. The movie was The Couch Trip, with a plot that involved a mental paitient escaping after taking a job as a psychiatrist. I know, sounds far fetched, but it does provide a large number of laughs... I am not sure I would watch it again, but it was funny.

As for the white paper... The client wanted it on monday at the latest so I thought it might create a good impression to get it done overnight... We will see what the client things. I still need to expand one section of it, but that is relatively minor, and needs thought more than anything else.

COMP.RISKS has an interesting story about a STAFF BOOKING SYSTEM for an AIRLINE.

In a Q&A session about our airline's new staff travel online booking system,
the following was asked:

Q. I am unable to book [a flight] online because my date of joining is
February 29. What should I do?

A. Because you joined in a leap year the system is unable to identify your
date of joining. You will need to ask Employee Services to change your date
to February 28 for staff travel purposes.

I certainly hope that there are not too many systems in the world that work like that. I was going to say that I find it strange that the system would need to know the start date for employment. Then I realised - this system includes employee travel for pleasure. Some airlines give higher priority to staff that who have worked for the company the longest. I guess the system assumes that every year has 365 days, and works out who started the earliest based on that. [Shakes head in wonder...]

PC Magazine have just released a review of the new version of Microsoft Office. This is only a review of the beta, but still, it gives an idea of what microsoft is doing. From what I can work out user interface changes are what is mostly happening. But there are also good features like fast seaching in Outlook. ABout time.

The SMH has a list of the Top five 'the PC is not being PC or how I stopped worrying and let the evil computer take over' films. Included are Electric Dreams and 2001:A Space Odyssey. Hack-A-Day has a story on recovering data from a Dead Laptop HDD

Being single, I hope the answer to the next question is YES. Anyway, the LA-Times has a review of a book called 'Are Men Necessary?'. You just have to have a look at the review, particularly at the journalists new vocabulary to make her more appealing to guys...

On a mailing list I belong to, one of the members posted a question. He wanted a list of the phone prefixes in use, and the suburbs they covered. This used to be in the back of the telephone books. All his investigations inside a certain carrier tended to suggest that this was now commercially sensitive information, and it had to be protected even internally. Would you believe that all this information is actually on the Telstra Web Site as part of the SFOA (Standard Form Of Agreement) that we agree to when we sign up for a Telstra service. I found that I did not know of a number of the prefixes used in the suburb that I live in... Stange..

In the SMH there is a story about how old textbooks are being used in japan to treat dementia paitients. That is the textbooks are being given to the paitients in hopes that the books would raise the old memories of the paitients. Apparently there are some good results from this.

In News.Com.Au there is a story about how there are a whole lot of speeding fines being overturned because the operator of the camera forgot to set the speed correctly when starting up the device. This was in Victoria where there has been a huge outcry over the accuracy of speeding fines.

Right now I had better get back to the design work I am have been doing...

I have just got back from a three and a half hour two hour meeting that turned out to be really really interesting... It was one of those meetings that was broad and seems to be one of those meetings that might turn out to be a turning point for my business. Unfortunately I am under NDA for most of the work, but I need to have a system design proposal available in the next few days.

I am glad that I have a mobile. In north ryde it seems that most of the buildings are not marked with their physical addresses... And of course I only had the physical addresss. Thanks to caller ID on my phone I was able to ring my client without getting my laptop out - I had forgotten to write out the phone number.And then I was able to get talked into the parking lot. Too easy.

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Slightly later - I have just finished watching HOUSE from last night... It was absolutly hilarious. What made it even better was that before each ad break there was a 2-3 minute session behind the scenes of House. I love the sarcasm of the show... The comedy of Hugh Laurie is just great - I think things have improved since his time in Black Adder

I had to meet a colleague for lunch today at the Macquarie Centre before a meeting nearby... Macquarie Centre has always intrigued me with the architecture - with the spiral structure. And the fact that it has an icerink. It has been a few years since I have been Ice Skating, but it would be good to go again one day.

Anyway I have been good. Dymocks had a clearence centre here oposite their store, and I said 'Oh No' to myself as I went in. I fully expected to come out with many many books. But despite there being some of interest I was good and did not buy a single one. There was also a store nearby called Charmers which had some really nice stuff... Basically a gift type shop. They had some excellent Australian christmas cards, with Santa in a van with his reindeer and the like. Again I was very good...

The only thing of interest in the window of the computer store was a remote control helicopter. I have loved the idea, and I would love to be able to put a wireless video camera in one just to copy the TV advert of a few years back when a boy used one with a hook to sneak out of his house to buy some McDonalds... Somehow I dont think that for $250 that the helicopter would be very stable, nor do I think it would be able to lift the weight of the camera.

Until then I guess I will just have to use full size ones like I did in the Olympics :-)

It has been too long since I have worked on PCB design, meaning that I need to re-learn how software dose things. To be honest I am having some issues with the software. Things that should be simple like combining tracks and holes into components are a real pain. In fact I have not managed to work out how to do that yet. If this was a microsoft product you would select the items and say group. But that does not work. Love them or hate them, microsoft has spent a lot of time on usability analysis. There is a lot to be said for a consistent user interface.

The other trouble is working out what components to use. Spacing between pins can be an issue - particularly when attempting to work out what a part is. I think I have worked out that one part has 1.25mm between the pins. The other option is 1.27mm. 0.02mm does not seem like much does it? Well, when there are ten or eleven pins in a row this does add up. But 0.2mm does not sound like much either, until you realise that the hole for the pin is only 0.6mm, meaning that it would not fit into the hole.

These are the reasons I do not do this work very often. The other is that there are two standards for pin sizes. The first is imperial, and the second is metric. Half the parts are metric, and the other hald are in imperial. Things are becoming metric, but you are always needing to move between metric and imperial grids. This becomes a real pain!

Anyway I have work to do... But before I go comes news that a girl in the USA has worked out how to fold a piece of paper 12 times.... Most people believed that it was impossible for you to do it more than 8 times...

Some links today... Firstly the bizzare. Not the concept, but the engineering involved. iPowerWeb has a story on a person who has built an >anchient Atari Computer/Video Game into a laptop. I can only imagine the amount of work involved... And the result looks fantastic.

Anandtech has a revire of the internals of the XBOX 360. They have gone for an external power supply which is a bit dumb... At least from the look of the thing. And from reading the technical details I would guess that modding an XBox 360 is going to be much harder than with the older XBox. I do not think I will be able to use one as a cheap server unfortunately...

Anyway breakfast time followed by PCB Design.

I have been watching more of 'This Is Spinal Tap' on DVD, and parts are so crazy. At one point one of the band members comments that their band is louder since their amplifier goes up to 11 instead of only to 10. And the interviewer takes him to task asking if it really is any louder, and the guy cannot see that 10 or 11 on the volume control is only a relative measurement.

For the person with everything comes iStones which is a cradle for the iPod made out of carved stone. They look rather cool, but do take up a lot of desk space, and are rather expensive, at about US$2500 each. Still, for the person who has everything this might be an interesting christmas present.

News.Com.Au has a dog story... This one is a bit strange though... A tiny fox terrier called Mitzi and accomplice known Bundy the scottish terrier are now two of southeast Queensland's most dangerous dogs. That is according to Logan City Council, which yesterday brushed aside pleas for leniency from Mitzi's keepers and maintained the dog's dangerous status. I know that the story is written from the point of view that the dogs are entirely harmless, and that there is obviously another side to this story. But if even half the things in this story are true then then I cannot see the why the logan city council did what they did.

I would guess that these little dogs would more likely lick people to death than actually hurt either people or animals. It would be a pitty if their owners could not afford to keep them...

I have also worked out a few things about MSN Messenger 7.3... I do not like it. MSN is refusing to automatically reconnect when it looses internet connection - such as when I unplug from the internet. It is rather picky about reconnecting to the server. The first time you try to connect it always refuses to connect. You then need to cancel, and then connect, and it works.

Finally, the NZ Prime Minister has once again been involved with an plane with a fuel issue. In this case, Qantas FLight QF25 from Auckland to Los Angeles returned to Auckland soon after leaving with a fuel leak. The Prime Minister was en route to Ireland to help present a bid for New Zealand to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Boy, my week is filling up... I have a lunch to attend tomorrow, and friday. And now I have to go to a meeting at North Ryde... That could be a really interesting meeting, and I am really looking forward to it.

I decided to email the PR department of Vodafone about the 'Speeding Notice' and I am more hopeful hearing back from them as opposed to customer service. Well, I did CC Customer Service on the email to PR, but the Customer Service email bounced saying no such address exists. Why does this not surprise me one but. It will be interesting to see what the response I get is. I suspect that the PR head will not have heard about this mailout, and will now be working to put out fires. We will see.

There is a story on News.Com.Au about how the Ashes of James Doohan from StarTrek are going to be raised into space aboard a rocket. Well, the story actually says that the rocket is going to be delayed for liftoff until February.... James Doohan plaed the engineer Scotty in the original StarTrek series. They also have a report on a Map from the Enola Gay selling for just under $100K at auction. The Enola Gay was the plane that dropped the Atomic Bombs on Japan in WWII.

Dateline: Eastgardens...

I am here to talk to a client of mine. He wants a circuit board designed... I first met him in 2002 when I needed a weather station and came over to pick it up. And we started talking, and through the process I got occasional work from him... Like today...

Dateline: Home...

I have just got home and I have a 'Speeding Notice' in the mail. Yes. A Speeding Notice. From Vodafone. This would allow me to 'Accelerate to broadband speeds whilst on the move'. I have a photo below of the envelope. To say that I am not impressed is an understatement.



Just have a look...

My first job this morning is to spend some more time on the OzFlarm collision detection software for gliders that I have been working on. I will not go into the full details of what I need to work on, as potential users may see this, and it would then reflect badly on the product. The issues are relatively minor things, and i need to make these changes and then test them out. Thankfully this time I will not need to take my life in my hands by going on a glider flight. I do have a simulator to emulate a lot of the things I need to do.

To be frank about this, some of this work scares me. People will be relying on the work I to do protect themselves from dangerous situations. I know this is only a tool to tell them what they should already know, but even so it is a concern to me, if only in the back of my mind. And something that I need to be mindful of all the time. What is it that the hypocratic oath says - 'First of all, do no harm'. Same here I guess.

The SMH has an article written by Tim Brunero who came second in the last series of Big Brother. In this article, Tim describes his stratergy going into the Big Brother House, and he provides some interesting insights into his thinking. This goes from how to act to get onto the show, to a statergy once he wass inside. As an anthropology student I am sure he had some interesting insights into the way that the show worked, and you can see those come out in the article.

Right now I had better get some breakfast, and look at the OzFlarm collision detection project...

My next big project is a data logger for gliders to record their flights for official recognition. Basically it stores enough data to prove that the glider went where the pilot said it did. This includes things such as the GPS position and speed data and the like. And the unit needs to be sealed so that if it is a record breaking flight then everyone can be sure that it really happened. We are getting orders already, and we do not evem have a price, nor have we officially announced the product.

Right now all I am doing is documenting my design, since the design needs to be approved for it to be officially approved. And they want design details early. So that I do not waste time and make mistakes with the design. So I have a word document that is getting longer all the time...

When the product is designed I am guessing that I will have more people wanting to take me on rides in gliders... I am not sure that I am ready for this, but it will be good to get the offers...

On monday night on SuperNova I saw a new sport - Roof Rack Surfing. Basically this involes getting on the top of a land rover whilst it is driven at speed... I do not think that this is a sport for me... It is just one that I have never thought of before...

I had a meeting last night with a client. He suggested I look at a couple of programs to assist in my productivity - not that there is anything wrong with it - just to manage work and my ToDo list. This client suggested that I have a Look at ToDoList2 on the CodeProject. This is free software in simply is amazing. Basically it is a micro version of Microsoft Project, without the stupid reports that generally are not needed. I think I will be using this software a lot more. You can download the software here

I dont think I mentioned this the other day. Gliders are supposed to, well, glide. Well, there is one exception which is gliders which have a motor in which to use to get to off thr ground, but we will ignore that for the moment. Right now, we are assuming that gliders do not need any fuel. Which is why I felt rather strange having to help my client fill up the tanks to his glider when before his flight. And make sure that they were full. We had to add 60 liters into each tank. And he came back empty too.

I suppose I really should explain here what was happening. We were adding water to the tanks. And no, we were not using the water for fuel. The water was to make the glider go faster. AS it was explained to me, if you put a slide of some type at the top of a hill in the snow, the heavier you go the faster you go down the slide. The same works in the air aparently. I think you also climb more slowly in a thermal, but generally you get better performance by adding water.

SO before each race they add water up to a certain level. But before landing the pilot must get rid of the water as it makes the glider too heavy for landing. There are weight limits on each class of glider so that everyone is on a level playing field.

Outside the weather is bad, but I thoght it would have been a lot lot worse. The weather pattern on the radar with the rain looks strange... Down south of sydney it is moving from the ocean inland. And north of Sydney it is moving out to sea. Almost as if there was a huge fan somewhere in sydney circulating the rain. I know that is impossible, but that is what it is looking like to me.

Definitely no run today. I was really hoping to get some exercise... It is about to start pouring down... With a big thunder storm

I have just got back from a meeting, and the weather is horrible. The wind is the worst - at one point I was having to aim the car to the right a bit as the wind was trying to push me so far to the left. This is unusual - normally wind is bursty - in this case it was just strong. Also I was afraid it was going to start with the hail at any moment. The good thing is that the front of my car got a bit cleaner from some rain... Probably...

I was actually coming from a meeting with some associates who want to team with me on some work. This sounds hopeful, and they have some exciting projects to work on. During this meeting I also got some other work to do, so I guess that this afternoon will be busy for me.

The Linux Phone Standards Forum have created a Web Site that attempts to create some standards for people who are using LINUX on mobile phones. This is such a good idea, and is probably really needed.

Anyway, time to go... Work calls.