I am basically packed... I have a few things to do in the morning, but basically I am fully packed. I did have a minor horror thought that I had lost my iPod. I could not find it, no matter where I looked. I was scared that I had dropped it somewhere and I could not remember where I had left it. I could not even remember when I last used it. Eventually after watching TV for an hour or so I worked out that I had been using it today, and therefore it must have been in the house somewhere.

And I still could not find it. But since it was in the house, I had to have it somewhere. So I kept looking. And after ages I found it. It was in my old laptop backpack. In one of the many many pockets I had the iPod, and after a few searches I could not see it. But on my last search I found it. Finally. What a releaf.

Radio Shack (Tandy) in the USA has decided to sack about 400 people. The interesting part is how they did it... They sacked the people by email. That is not nice. If I was being sacked I would want to at least be told in person. link. Also, CNN is reporting on how lots of confidential data has been retrieved in a research project from cellphones purchased off eBay. The people deleted the information, but it was recovered without too many issues.

I had lunch with a friend today, and will be having dinner with another friend. Busy social life of mine. And I will have some work to do this evening too! Argh! And I have to pack. That should be easy. I have my laptop bag organised. It is the other bag that I still need to organise, although that should be a ten minute exercise.

I would love to know what mailing list I am on. It must be a doozey. The latest piece of junk mail was inviting me to a 'PA Seminar'. I am not talking about Public Address here... I am talking Personal Assistants. Why I would be interested in this I have no idea. Normal junk mail has some type of use... That... Nah! Still I guess it is more use than the bronzing being sold by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes

I have been thinking about the Ashes eBay thing. Getting the seat numbers is not that hard. All Cricket Australia needs to do is to buy a few tickets on eBay and cancel all the tickets that were bought at the same time by the same person. Hey, they can even make money on this since they get to resell the seats. But the real fund bit is CA not saying which tickets are cancelled. That means they do not need to cancel many tickets. They have just killed off eBay as a way to buy tickets for fear they may not be valid any more.

And provided that people believe that the tickets may not be valid, eBay is effectively killed off except for people who bought some tickets and then work out that they cannot attend. The fear factor of not knowing and not being able to verify is really strong I suspect. I think there will be some people who risk it, but in general I suspect that the prices are going to be kept way down. Very cunning plan. Of course such a plan relies on no-one working out that no tickets have been cancelled.

It should be fairly simple to work out by looking at the stats of purchases on eBay and correlating the bidders and winners of each auction who was buying for Cricket Australia. And you can then do other data matching. A heap of work but I am sure that it would make an interesting magazine or news paper article.

And before I close this post, it seems that Jetstar Asia is recruiting Flight Attendants from Thailand. This is not surprising as a way to reduce costs.

New battery ordered for my laptop. Should be here about 5pm or so from experience. It was only $167 for a new battery. It should improve my battery life significantly. With some luck I will get to be able to watch a movie or two, particularly if I turn down the brightness of the screen and do not use the DVD. Pretty obvious really. Unfortunately I will not have my wireless card at the Qantas Club - the Vodafone one that is - since I will be leaving it here in case the internet access goes down.

I am going down to Jaycar in a moment to pick up some parts so I can get a repair out the door - some transistors which will cost all of $1.50 for 10. 50 years back the same parts would have been about ten times the price for a single transistor. How things have changed. Then again looking the other way CPU's have maybe 20 million transistors for $50, making individual units for 15 cents quite expensive.

And the SMH is reporting that there are rumours that the 2010 World Cup could be moved here to Oz. That would be really great, but I doubt that this would happen in reality.

I am getting really excited about my trip. I cannot wait. So much so that I woke up at 5am this morning and as much as I tried I could not get back to sleep :-( So right now I feel like I should be getting a cup of coffee. Todays job is to get everything ready for the trip - the bag packed and all that sort of thing. And to see if this laptop will fit into my backpack. I have not used the backpack for a while and I have never tried it with this laptop... But given the distance I will be travelling I dont want to have to carry my normal bag. It just gets too heavy.

The Inquirer has released information about a new Small HDD Array that uses almost no power. A 120 TB rack would only use 3.2 kWatts, which for the amount of HDD space is quite minimal. Probably a bit too much for home use, but interesting none the less.

There are reports of people being refused permission to take a ball point pen onto some flights. This is despite advice saying that normal pens and pencils are permitted. Great. I love confusion.

There is a report in the SMH about how Cricket Australia has cancelled a heap of Ashes Tickets sold on eBay after the purchases sold them for more than their face value. They did it since the tickets say that you cannot resell them like this. Not sure on the legality of not being able to resell... And they are wanting legislation to outlow selling tickets on eBay.

Anyway, the way to fix this is simple. The tickets were purchased in a bunch... Simply require at least half the people in the bunch to enter at the same time. That is, if there eight tickets were bought together, require the people to enter in no more than two or three groups. That way if the people who bought the tickets from the scalpers do not enter all together they do not get in. Simple.

Short post, but this should explain why I have been a bit slack in posting today. When I got up this morning I found that the Web Browser had no news.com.au or SMH.com.au news showing. And I was logged out of MSN. Not good. So I did some investigating, and found I could not log into the ADSL modem. Also not good. MODEM is fried. Reset it. That does not help. PING is fine but HTTP is no good. What is going on? Change a few settings thinking it had been really reset. That did not help. But at least I could log into the modem.

So I rang Westnet. No joy. They indicated that I had dropped out about midnight, and other users had too. Great. They would ring me when it was back up. Then 90 minutes rang again and they were unable to tell me much more. I had two appointments on today - one at Holroyd and the other at Pymble. So I drove over to Holroyd and home. Internet was still down. Westnet was not able to tell me much.

About 10 minutes later my network came up. Sort of. Some lights would flash but things would not work. The NAT settings were fine, but I found that the STATIC ROUTE was wrong. Set that and things suddenly start working. The network activity goes ballistic. By this stage I am running late for Pymble so I raced over there before even any of my Email came through. Now things are up and running. Perfect!

Files copied across to my laptop without too many problens. I now only have 3 GBytes of free HDD space which should be more than enough for me.

I got the presentation schedule for the conference. I am down to do a 45 minute talk, as well as a three hour introduction session. The three hour session is a lot of work, and I am not sure what exactly I am going to talk on. This was a heap more time than I had planned on using... I am thinking of co-opting a few other speakers to come in and talk on their specialities for a few minutes during the session. This will take up time and break the session up a bit. I just need to decide who now.

News.Com.AU is reporting that the IT Goddess calendar has got a few errors. Like getting the days of the week wrong on May and October. This is a big OOps. They are offering free replacements or a free screensaver for people who purchased them.

And I have been looking at tours of the River Kwai. I have a great uncle who died there during the war, so I think it would be interesting to visit. There are a few companies offering tours which look reasonable.

More things have dissapeared off my to do list which is great. Most of the remaining things are not all that urgent either which is fantastic. I still have some paper work to sort out before I go. Knowing how I would be a bit excited and unsettled I have planned to spend tomorrow over at Pymble working. This should distract me for the day. Who knows what thursday is going to be like.

In the background right now I am copying a heap of files from my server in preparation for going away. This did mean that I needed to clean out some old files on the HDD... About 10 GBytes of junk got deleted. It takes surprisingly a lot of time to move that many files. And it also seems to happen really quickly. I am really glad that I am not trying to do that on a wireless link - I think things would fall in a screaming heap rather quickly.

YES! Items are coming off my to-do list. I cannot believe it. I have not yet added 'pack bags' but that one is so darn obvious that I have not even bothered to put it on. I have ordered new business cards (to be picked up friday morning in the city), emquired about visa travel money, emailed heaps of people. Heaps and heaps of people actually. There are 41 messages in my sent items for yesterday, and that is only from 10:30am yesterday.

And I have even repaired some tracking units today. All fairly simple things really, but the client will be happy to have them before I go away... I repaired some yesterday, and I did not think I would be able to get to the others before I went away. Thankfully I was able to repair a few more. Of course this was about 30 minutes after the courier picked up the first batch of them. Cest La Vie.

Right now I need to get going. There is an express post envelope with my name on it at the post office and I need to get some work done with that today.

Items are coming off my to do list. The world is good. not only that I have now got my Phantom of the Opera ticket - and strangely it is for the friday night performance which is really strange since I am sure that the travel agent said it was going to be saturday night. Still I guess this means that I can do some serious partying on the saturday night in London :-)

My next trick is to put together an itinery of all the documentation so that people will know where I am if they need to contact me. Which hotels I will be staying at and the like. This is not as easy as it sounds since not all the hotels were booked in the same way. It is not going to be too hard though.

I am down to NINE unread messages in Outlook. Everything else has been filed or deleted. Sure, one of the files is '2006 messages', but even so I think this is still a really really good effort. I am just wondering how long it will remain in single figures. Not long I would suspect. Please be warned that unless you are offering me $100,000 in work, then all incoming emails will IMMEDIATELY be deleted. Without reading them. Regardless what it is about. So how will I work out if it is offering me $100,000 in work. Well, the only emails that offer that seem to be in my SPAM folder so I do not need to read those either.

Hey, I just found another email message to get rid of. Eight. Some kind of record I think. Actually I have found another two that I can delete, so it is down to about six. Wow. I just need to send out a short email message to get rid of one of the messages... Not a big problem at all.

I am feeling a slight bit uneasy today - somewhat ill at ease. I just want to get out of the office and break free. I am going away on friday, and right now I just want that to happen NOW. I cannot wait. I have a heap of things to do between now and then, but that is not the point. I WANT TO START THIS TRIP. NOW! Not on friday.

I have paid some bills today. A bit later I will order a new batter for my laptop ($167 from WES Components wholesale). Business cards to get made up. And a few ongoing projects. The important this is if these projects do not get done now I will have to do them when I am away, and that is not fun. Thankfully my to-do list is having items removed from it, although I suspect that I am not subconsciously adding items that maybe I should be. Ones that are just in the back of my mind.

Last night I did not really feel up to updating the Blog. I felt really tired actually - maybe I should get some more sleep. Well, I spent some time working on the plane yesterday, and also went to the Computer Market at North Rocks. This is the first time I had been to the market since it moved to the highschool rather than being at the Westfields. I am not sure that the move has been the best, but I guess it really had out grown the shopping centre.

Anyway it was hard not buying anything, but the thought that this time in a week I will be in Thailand where a heap of this stuff will be a heap cheaper makes it easier.

Saturday when I was out I decided to get myself a thickshake, and I actually looked at the menu at McDonalds. Dont worry, I didn't buy any food... Just a drink. So I ordered a Coffee Thickshake. You should have seen the look on the girls face, thinking I came from mars or something. WHen she told me that they did not have coffee I chose another flavour, but I checked the menu whilst she was getting it, and found that it actually did offer coffee. Her reaction? Not my problem. So I asked to speak to the manager. He was rather amazed when I pointed it out and immediately pulled down the sign. no-one else had ever noticed.

More on Time Team at Buckingham Pallace. The Telegraph has a story on this online, and they reveal that Prince Charles is really really interested in Archeology, even to the point of knowing many of the technical details on how a dig is done. More details are on the Time Team Web Site

According to The Register, Microsoft has released a new version of IE7. You can download it from here. They have also release a new tool for developing databases in VisualStudio nicknamed Data Dude.

And the BBC has an article about how Starbucks does not have all its products on its menu. If you know it is there, a short capacino will save you money and is aparently really good value.

So what have I been up to today? Well, firstly I went through some accounts, and sorted them out, working out which needed to be paid, and which just needed filing. Then I mowed the lawns - the first time since Autumn. And then I put the path back after the plumbing work. And I went shopping too. So rather a full day all in all.

There is a great quote from The Simpsons where Homer Simpsons says to one of the kids 'In this house we obey the laws of Physics'. The kid (who I assume was Lisa but I cannot remember at this stage) has built a machine that kept getting faster and faster - a perpetual motion machine. Well an Irish company has stated that they think that they have done the same thing. I am not convinced. I do not think I am the only one. There is even a story in The Guardian about them.

The BBC has released a list of their top eight Unsung Landmarks. I do not plan to visit any of them in the coming weeks when I am in the UK... None are in places I want to visit. The BBC is also reporting that Time Team is digging in Digs will take place in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh this weekend. They were specifically invited by the queen to dig so that she could learn about what she has been walking on top of all these years.

The Register is reporting on an interesting fraud mechanism. They managed to convince a telephone company in the USA that a phone line was faulty and to redirect it to their prepaid cellphones. Then they took orders requiring credit card numbers. And used the numbers elsewhere. Apparently it was a rather successful operation.

Given that Pluto may not be a planet any more, there was a competition to help people remember the order of the planets. The winners were... "My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums" and "Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet". Quite funny.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now that I am calm I can describe the last few hours. Firstly pick up my mother from the Hospital where she is getting a Scan done. I left at 12:30 to do this, and thankfully I my phone diverts to my mobile so I was able to do some work on the way. Then when I got home I had a problem to solve. Dealing with a CDMA modem.

Most of the Telco's realize that us consultants are not always authorised to make changes to the accounts we need to ring up about. They realize that we just need to see if there is something wrong with the account, and they are able to do that without divulging privacy information. [Knock at the door. Dell to work on my PC. Shut down etc.]

Then I tried something dumb. I connected up the modem to an old laptop and installed the MAXON software and connected to the Internet. Modem works. Therefore it is a BUG in the software that does TCP. So ring up MAXON to complain. I am not happy. And their tech support person put me onto someone else who asked me about the AT$$IPCFL command and the TCP value. It was 0 and should have been 1. Changed this and things suddenly worked.

And in the middle of this a friend of mine has been asking me about writing windows services. I think he thought I was strange when I presented a five part project to do the service work. Now he is not so sure. My solution is to put the common code together, and have a service use this common code, but also have a seperate GUI using this client code. and then there is the two install programs. Sounds complex but it makes things easier!

Oh, in the middle of this I went down to the local hardware store to buy some plumbing supplies. And get some lunch at the lunchy time of 3pm... LONG DAY

Oh, yes. I have my tickets. Well, all except for the tickets to see Phantom of the Opera. It is geeting really exciting now, and I cannot wait until next Friday when I leave on this trip. I still have a heap of things to do before I leave, but apart from that I am more than ready.

Right now though I am a bit tired. I dont think I had enough sleep last night, and I have a bit of a headache. I really should have slept in but I had an early teleconference as well as needing to take mum to the train station so that she could get to Liverpool Hospital for a PET scan. She will not know the results of that until I get back unfortunately.

Anyway I had better get going. I have heaps to do

I cannot believe how dumb security can be at times. According to a few sources, Qantas is forcing some people with DELL laptops to tape over the battery contacts on their computers, even if the battery is not part of the great DELL battery recall. I guess this is another reason to buy an after market battery. But I can hear it now... 'No sir, I do not care if your laptop has a genuine battery or not. We are required to tape the batteries of all DELL laptops....'

I have been doing some software development, and I was wondering why the software was not running correctly... And realised how simple the solution was. Rather than run the routine every 15 seconds, I was trying to do it every 15,000 seconds. Needless to say I really did not want to wait the four hours to see the program run. Fixed now... I just need to test it.

Interesting online discussion. I have just managed to get a tracking unit to work and connect to my server. It was decoded on my server and the position became an XML file. So I sent the file to a friend, and this person mentioned an 'obvious error'... That being that the time was off by a couple of hours. Then I pointed out that it was 10 hours out, and not 2! It took some time to realize that the time was in UTC or international time. This is the time that all GPS units talk.... and most computers talk internally.

There is also some politicing in Thailand at the moment with their new airport and how it is not friendly to people with disabilities. Things like lack of lifts things like that.

A page on BoingBoing provides some great photos of a volcano from SPACE!!! the astronaughts saw the eruption and reported it... Just imagine getting the phone call from the International Space Station... We have just seen an eruption. So where are you? About 200km above it!

Another busy day... Things just get added to my to-do list. And nothing seems to come off it. The problem is that the things that need to come off are often unable to come off until someone else dose something, and that then allows me to then cross it off. Complicated. Sure is!

I have been doing some programming for a web listener program - I am about to install it and then test it. I hope it works. Not sure why it will not. Then I need to do something with the data once I have it in.

I ordered a service call on my DELL today. They are going to replace the main board to fix an issue with the network dropping out. They are also going to fix the palm rest moulding, but strangely I had to say that I pushed too hard on the plastic to get it fixed. Dropping the PC is OK, but general wear and tear is not covered. Really really strange. And this is for the coverage I pay extra for.

I am even more tired that yesterday. I was planning to get an early night and then a few things conspired against that. Mostly it was the fact that I needed to send an update to a client on some things and it came out to be a bit longer than I expected. These things are normal.

I found out yesterday that I need to do a couple of talks at the conference in the USA. This should be fun. Of course that means that I need to prepare them. One of the talks is half written from last year and the year before so not too much work will be required. The other talk... It is a new one - I will have to get started on that. I dont want to need to work on it on international flights...

I just found out that my laptop is about to run out of warranty. I guess I need to get everything fixed sooner rather than later with it. I did not realize that it was now close to three years old. WOW! I think this really is a record for me for laptops.

The Bangkok Airport Web Site has details on the transition plan for changing airports at the end of the month. Interesting read - they are sending something like 2000 truck journeys to do the move overnight. They will also be flying planes at 2000 feel at 3am to move planes between airports. Fun.

The server software for the Aplicom GPRS tracker from Europe is working really well. There are some bugs in the code, but they are minor. More of data not being stored correctly rather than anything else. It will soon be time to more this code into more of a production environment. I still cannot get over the fact that I have never even seen a photo of the tracker, but I have software using it!

My travel agent just rang with some great news. I am seeing Phantom of the Opera in London in a few weeks. Wow, that is exciting. I was not sure that I would be able to see this, but I will! WOW. This is absolutely fantastic. My only decision now will be to decide what clothing I want to buy... The phantom t-shirt, jacket, key ring and backpack. Or maybe I should just get the phantom mask. That might be the best... Less people would be offended then. The agent wants to wait until the ticket is there before handing over the paperwork for my whole trip - spoil sport. I am so looking forward to picking everything up.

This afternoon I spent some time fixing the sewer that I had to break into a couple of weeks back. I ended up fixing the pipe with a resin, and I am just waiting for that to set. The hardener no longer comes free with the resin, but is a seperate purchase. And rather than provide an eye dropper or something like that, they just provide the little bottle. Use 1g per 100g of resin. How much is 1g? Scales really do not work well at that end. An eye-dropper cannot be that expenseive.

I love documentation - particularly when it is correct. Take the following example. The protocol for a GPS tracker I have been working with is somewhat strange. The header says that the length of the data is 105 bytes for instance, whereas the packet is 111 bytes long in the payload. Ahh. The 105 bytes does not include the size of the header. Problem solved.

By hey, only the first position report looks fine. The others give locations that are on the far side of the black stump, or in this case somewhere on the far side of the north pole, and given that the coordinates do not make any sense I would guess they are totally wrong. I am decoding the data using the manufacturers '29 byte data format'. But something strange is happening. I cannot get the 29 byte payload to fit into the packet evenly, unless there is another 24 bytes somewhere. Well, maybe.

The thing is when I check the size of the position reports size field it says 35. Something does NOT line up here somewhere. What is going on? Ahh, I know. They have added another 6 bytes to the position report without updating the documentation. And guess what... It now works. The only issue is that I need to ignore the extra five bytes totally. But who cares. I am listening to a GPRS tracking unit that I have NEVER seen... and the unit is on the other side of the world, in one of thouse countries where they do not put air conditioners in cars, and put a jumper on the radiator to keep it warm... Fun

What a morning... It is right now just after noon and I have not had breakfast yet. And I have just sent off an email to day that the project that was pushed on to me earlier in the week which both arrived and had to go out today will not since some hardware is not working and for once it is not my fault at all, and I am slightly annoyed by it all, as you might be able to tell from my language in this email, and I have other things to do which got pushed off my to-do list to do this. Well, now the must get out project is at the bottom of the todo list and may not get done until i get back from my trip and maybe not even then. Arr... I only spent more than two hours on this today, probably more like three. Too long for what I needed to do.

Now, with that off my chest I will get back to normality, or whatever this is. A friend has asked me to test a bluetooth handsfree device... I am wearing it now, and I am just waiting for someone to ring me. And no-one will. Why is that. Dont you people like me now? Or is it that you know that secretly I do not want anyone to ring so that I will get some real work done.

Anyway, better get going before I completely loose my grip. I... am..... sli...ppp....ing.........!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is beginning to be one of those days. My to-do list is filling up with things that MUST be done today. For some reason it feels like a thursday more than a wednesday. No idea why.

One of the strange toys I picked up yesterday was a tracking unit small enough to fit into my pocket. I was really really amazed at how small this unit was. One of the tasks today, if I have enough time is to actually program settings into this unit and test it. Easier said than done unfortunately since you need to use SMS to program it. And I have no idea of the phone number of the GPRS SIM card I have. I guess I will just grab out a phone and use caller ID to find out. Then I can have this running, and test it. If the battery life is good then there are a heap of applications for this device.

If I get a chance today I need to get the sewer closed up after unblocking the drain a couple of weeks back. This might sound like a dirty job, but it really isnt. It should be a fairly quick one, once I find what I need at the hardware store... Putting the path back might be more fun... The path is actually a concrete path, and I managed to get the two sections out without causing too much damage. Now I just need to level the soil before I put it back.

Home, Sweet Home. Long day, but I got some toys to play with so that will be fun. Too many toys... Some tracking units, a hands free bluetooth headset to play with and test. I will post more on the details of all this a little later. Right now though I am just a bit exhausted and need my beauty sleep.

Argh. I have just found out about a meeting on the first of September. The meeting is in the city from 11:30AM to 1PM. So why is this an ARGH. Well, I have a flight around the world leaving Sydney at 5PM. So I will be going to the meeting and then direct to the Airport. Wow. That will be an experience. I will probably grab the train into the meeting and then from the city to the Airport. I think it will be a bit strange going to the meeting, and then getting to the airport like that...

Many, many things on right now. I just got a courier package from over seas that I was expecting to get yesterday. By 'Just Got', I mean the courier arrived at 7:30 in the morning. Not sure why it was not delivered yesterday, but I suspect that my client yelled at them when it did not arrive. The CD could not be read on this PC so I needed to copy it off on another PC and then use a memory stick to move the files around. Yes, I could have used the LAN, but the memory stick was just as fast.

I did a bit more reading about 'virtualized' servers last night. It seems that VMware are trying to make their money on the value-add part of the business - that is, providing fail over should the machine need maintainence or fail, and doing this automatically without loosing state. Whilst this sounds like a great idea, it is not something that I really need.

They are providing, however, their server products free of charge. This is amazing... you just need to provide a base operating system for the virtual machines to run on, and that is that. I love this idea. I just need to decide what the best base operating system is for this application - is it Linux or Windows? I do not truely know. Both have some advantages and disadvantages I would guess. But the idea is that it becomes a base level install with almost no services running... Just the bare basics. You then run the virtual servers on top of this.

You can also have two machines running, taking a snapshot of each other periodically. And have both machines host both virtual machines. Then if one virtual machine fails, just start the 2nd virtual machine from the backup. How does this all work? Well, imagine a laptop that is suspended... The CPU is not running, and the entire state of the machine might be stored to HDD or memory. Well, imagine that you could take a snapshot of this for later. But also snapshot the HDD...

That is all we are doing here. So simple, yet so powerful!

Tomorrow I will be spending the day over at Pymble. I have some hardware to play with which should be quite fun. But in order to play with the hardware I will need to write a bit of software which might be a bit more of a challenge. I can never remember how to write the VB.NET code to do the job that I need to do - that is to take a URL, and decode it into something that looks like it should make sense. The fun part will be that I will be debugging the setup of the hardware over at Pymble, and the software both on my laptop and at home. I really do need to work out how to do remote debugging and execution.


More research on Thailand. I have found that there is a Science museum and an Imaging/photography museum in Bangkok. Sounds like a great couple of places to visit. I found these on the Thailand Guidebook.COM Web Site which looks great. I also found a list of shopping on their Site. It is a bit less gloomy and better set out than the one on BangkokBob.COM. It looks more up to date though.

Worth 1000 has a competition with the concept of 'Saving Pluto'. As just to be sure, we are talking about keeping pluto as a planet.

And Boeing is shutting down its In-Flight internet access system as not many people were using it. Only about 1000 people per day were using it. This is partially since not many flights offered it, and also many carriers still restrict access to power in flight to encourage people to go business class.

I have been thinking about the options for taking money around the world... I found a SMH article on the subject... I am thinking of using a Travelex Cash Passport which is basically a disposable credit card.

The other cute thing about it is that I can top it up with BPAY no matter where I am. I think this feature is really cool. They charge A$3.75 per withdrawal and 1% or 1.5% to add funds, but apart from that it is good. It may not be as cheap as travellers cheques, but it is sure much more convenient. They cannot be used as a credit card, but that really is not that much of a problem either. I can cope :-)

I am looking at my server needs here, and I am thinking that with the developments in faster dual core hyperthreaded processors and cheap memory, and developments with virtualization, it might be time to radically change my IT environment here in the office.

Right now I have a home LAN with a few printers, Laptops, Xbox (Only for displaying video you understand... not for Games) and VoIP. And I have a Windows 2003 server running VisualStudio/SQLserver 2005 for debugging and development and some low bandwidth network GPS listening applets. I have a Linux machine running Mail and mostly WebServer and an insecure file server. And I have an online archive. And I have a separate industrial strength firewall. Obviously the load on the servers is not very high at all.

I am thinking that maybe it is time to replace the physical Linux and Windows servers with virtual servers. The firewall would remain by itself as a standalone machine.

However I have no experience with Virtualized PC's.... I know that you can have multiple images running on the same machine, and I think this makes sense to me, but how should I do it... I guess I have some basic questions :-
0. Is this scheme sensible?
1. What should I use as a base host O/S for the virtualization?
2. What should I use as the virtualizing software? VM Ware? VirtualServer?
3. What Gotcha's are there in doing this type of thing?

Hmm... Lots to think about!

I guess you could call this one of those mornings, but really it is not. It is fairly quiet apart from a few catch-up items that were left on my to-do list from friday, and a few that were added on the weekend. Still, some of those have been a bit distracting. I have just finished one job off for a client - it will be good to get that one off my hands. I have another job to get out later day, and a heap of things to follow up. And I have just put the washing on.

I am really looking forward to my trip away. This time in a couple of weeks I will be in Thailand enjoying myself in the metropolis of Bangkok before flying to London. I cannot wait. Apart from 24 hours I spent in Singapore a couple of years back I have not been to asia before, and I am really looking forward to it.

Last night I did not sleep at all well. I had a real trouble getting to sleep - I have no idea why. As a result I am feeling a bit tired today. Hopefully I will be feeling a bit better either later today, or more likely tomorrow

I have not managed to get much posting done in the last few days. To tell you the truth, I have not reallt felt well enough. I have been rather tired, prefering just to veg out watching a heap of TV rather than doing anything - all as the result of the virus. My appeditite has returned so that is good. I can now eat real food again to which I am eternally greatful. Now I just need to catch up on all the emails and other things that have come in since Friday.

It looks like Jetstar might be in a bit of trouble. They have a heap of posters of a really nice beach with the word BALI in great big letters on the front. There is only one problem with these posters, the photos were taken in Phuket in Thailand. OOps. The ACCC says that it seems these could be breaking the trade practices act, but need a complaint to act. I am guessing that someone will now complain.

And an article that was burried in the paper. David Hicks who is being detained in Guantanimo Bay received british citizenship. However thanks to the delays in him gaining citizenship, the UK had introduced a new law seemingly targeted at Hicks allowing the Home Secretary to strip anyone of British Citizenship at any time. Interesting politics here.

I really am feeling a heap better today - I am not feeling any of the tiredness that I felt yesteday, and I slept really well last night. Like most people, I do not enjoy being well. I will post more later.

I have spent most of the day just watching TV relaxing... I am feeling a heap better but I have also had a couple of naps during the day. The virus has really knocked me around... so much so that I just spelt the word knocked as nocked. That should give you a good idea... By tomorrow I am guessing that I will be back to normal... That is my hope at least.

Short post before I go back to bed... Yesterday I basically did not touch my PC from midday. My gastroenteritis got worse and I just did not want to do anything other than lie on the couch. There was a point where I did not want to even watch tv because it would mean turning my head towards the TV.

I did not sleep all that well last night, but normally I just woke to sdjust the blankets and get a drink. I am certainly not drinking as much as I should but I am getting there. I have not had anything solid to eat since breakfast yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon my legs were really sore. Seemed to be coldness related, although not even two doonas and the air conditioner seemed to work. This leads me to think I got some type of virus rather than food poisoning, since I dont think food poisoning would give those type of symptoms.

Right now I am going to put this PC away and get back to bed, and hope that there are not too many email messages when I get back to it.

Right now I feel exhausted... Trying to stay awake. This is the way I normally only feel in the afternoon or evening, and not the morning. I might actually have a short nap. Not sure yet.

I woke up before 6am this morning with an upset tummy... I would have actually liked to stay in bed asleep, but that was not to be :-( I have a board meeting teleconference this morning followed by a quick trip to grab some parts from Jaycar. I have a project almost complete for one of my clients, and I just need some bits.

Last night I heard from my Travel Agent about the tickets to see Phantom of the Opera in London. Strangely she was letting me know that there were no tickets available for the show - I suspect that this is just at the Qantas price. I just checked an online place for tickets and found some free seats. So maybe I will be able to see the show after all. This is good news. I was starting to think what else I would see when I was there instead. But now I probably will not need to make that choice.

The USA is in a bit of a trouble at the moment... A judge has ruled that the National Security Agency cannot legally spy on americans without a warrant. This will be causing all sorts of issues in the white house.

With the issues of people being forced to check in their laptops into their bags, DesignNews has looked at what various people in the industry suggest you do with your laptop. One of the more useful ideas is from dell which is to remove the battery from the device. From the article... Dan Gordon, the shock and vibration test engineer, doesn’t travel on planes, but he knows what he would do: “I’d either wrap my laptop back up in the original manufacturer’s packaging, or I’d build my own case out of some type of plastic foam, bubble, wrap, and corrugated.” Spoken like a true engineer..

A friend of mine has just been to the USA, and has realised that it is probably not a good idea to go onto airlines that are not associated with the other airlines you are travelling on that day. NorthWest Airlines is one airline he has promised never to travel on again, and many of my friends call it NorthWorst! It comes as little surprise then that the airline is suggesting to soon to be former employees that they should not be above looking inside dumpsters for stuff, and suggest dates involving walks on the beach rather than movies.

The SMH has a story on former IceHouse front man Iva Davies being inducted into the Roch and Roll Hall of Fame. What I find interesting here is that they mentioned that he did the music to Master and Commander. I didn't know that...

And Schwepes is reducing the size of their softdrink bottles once again from 315ml to 300ml. They say they are doing this to meet the ergonomic requirements of a new bottle. But they are not reducing the price, leading most to suspect that this is being done just to save a tiny bit of money.

One of those days... For the past little while I have been getting off the phone and getting another call straight away. It is as if people are snooping on me. Spooky really. Then again some people feel that it is spooky when I answer the phone saying hello to them by name when they have caller ID blocked. The trick there is that only two people generally ring me without caller ID, and one of them is STD and the other is local so I just need to wait for the pips, and if they are not there then it is local.

A friend was asking me about uploading files with VB.NET and ASP.NET. I found an article on The CodeProject that was over-complicated, so I took the hint and told this person just to create a new ASP.NET project and put a FileUpload control on the form. Then I told him to look at the return value. This worked without too many hassles.

One of the things I have been working on today is programming some GPRS modems. This is done with a serial port. I found that Hyperterminal would die horribly if you set the line delay to 1000 mSec, and the character delay to 10 mSec. But without these settings the hardware would not work. Hyperterminal started using 100% CPU. Strange. Using WRQ Reflections seems to have fixed that issue!

I am glad that Australia is mono-lingual. It seems that bi-lingual countries are always running into problems. Canada has lots of issues having to produce information in French and English. And cyclists in the UK have been asked to beware of 'Bladder Inflamation' according to the BBC. Rather than get someone who knew the language to provide a translation the rumour is that they got a computer to translate a sign and it got it horribly wrong.

Also in the UK, the DesignVerb Web Site has a first hand account of the chaos in the UK thanks to a flight being cancelled. Their flight however was cancelled after they had got on board. But the flight actually did fly, but it had no passengers. They also had great fun trying to get back into the UK where imigration kept asking where they had arrived from, and they kept saying they had not left the country. Great fun!

Anyway, back to work for me. I have a heap of programming to do...

I have managed to get some programming done - but the work is not as useful as it sounds. The majority of the work is for a project that sounds useful but I have not actually got yet. I am working on the basis that I will get the job so I will be prepared. And given that they are most likely wanting something when I am away I have worked on the code now. The really good news is that it works, and looks as if it will work really well.

Time have released their list of the top 50 Web Sites. I think I must really be somewhat uncool since I have not heard of most of them. In fact even the few that I have heard of I have not really spent any time looking at either.

I have found a cute file manager program that I might need to look at.... Looks useful.

First, it looks like Xena is now a planet... The IAU have come up with a definition of a planet, and decided that a planet needs to be mostly circular and orbiting the sun. It was a brilliant definition... and it means that Pluto is still a planet. Pluto, and the other planets like Xena have been nicknamed Plutons. School just got more complex... The models of the solar system now are much bigger with 12 planets in the solar system!

Network world has a list of the top pieces of software ever written. And the BBC has a list of the UK's greatest unsung landmarks

Thanks in part to the SMH, I found a list of Murphy's Laws for Frequent Flyers. Things like planes are only on time if you are running late, If you arrive very early for a flight it will be delayed, and the distance from checkin to the plane is inversely proportional to the time until the flight leaves. Well, not always. I have a friend in the USA who was running late for a flight, probably due to get to the airport about 40 minutes before his flight. But he managed to crash the car thanks to another driver changing lanes without seeing if anyone was there. His flight was delyed for some reason, so this friend of mine says that this is the first time in history that anyone has managed to write off a car whilst running late and still get onto the flight.

Also on the subject of aviation, the BBC is reporting that 10,000 bags were 'lost' during the problems in the UK. The baggage systems were not designed for so many small bags and it was overloaded. Planes left without the bags in many cases. About 5000 bags still need to be delivered to their owners.


The SMH is reporting that they think that J.K. Rowling made about $190 per miniute last year. That is a huge amount of money. WOW...

My mother is looking at getting a new Laptop so I was looking at the Dell Web Site, and it was *Interesting* to say the least. One laptop came with free ADSL, Delivery, HDDD Upgrade and Memory Upgrade. But there are the options there not to get these things. So I deselected them thinking that this might actually save money. Well, actually getting the ADSL Router saves $88, getting the HDD saves $30, delivery saves $99 and the memory saves $97.90. But what is stranger is that selecting 'No Printer' is $11 more than selecting 'NONE'. I find it strange that if the items are free that it would cost more not to get them. Or have I missed something here?

I have booked my accomadation for my trip. With everything else I have booked to see a couple of shows in the west end. I have booked for 'We Will Rock You' which is a Queen musical, and 'Phantom of the Opera'. Both of these start at 7:30pm, and come with a meal. I am really looking forward to both of these. I have never seen either of them - although I have seen the movie Phantom of the Opera and loved it. I find the music great, although given that it is Andrew Lloyd Webber I am not sure I should admit that in polite company.

Pain and Suffering. I have a friend of mine working on a PIC project for me. This is taking MUCH longer than any of us thought. It is a really quick and fast project. There is almost nothing to it. And I thought that since he needs some work that I would give him a couple of hours work. It is not turning out like that unfortuantely. Like today my PIC programmer refused to program the parts so we needed to race down to Jaycar to pick up a new programmer.

And this programmer seems to be eating chips. I think I have only ever managed to kill two in my entire career... And then today we have killed another two. Not that they are expensive - they are not at only $3 each, but they should not be being killed. Why doesnt it just work?

Thankfully the job should be finished tomorrow I would guess... My friend will get a bit more than I originally agreed, but the project is on a budget, and I need to keep to it. Besides it is slightly over time as well, as I had hoped to have it complete last friday. Maybe tomorrow! I Hope!!!

The DELL battery site is now up and online. Typeing in my serial number of the battery here told me that I did not need to replace the battery. This is disappointing. I was hoping to get a free battery out of Dell. Too bad.

Doing a bit more reading on the Secret Nuclear Bunker I found that it is only 7 miles from a tube station. Yeah, 10KM is a bit further than I would have wanted to take a taxi, but it still seems like a great place to visit... and the money I save by using The Tube and not needing to take the train I can spend on a Taxi. It will cost me about 12 pounds each way I think for the taxi. Not cheap, but it sounds like a fun destination

I found a really really bizzare photo on the Web linked to from News.Com.Au. It is the SECRET NUCLEAR BUNKER just near Brentwood. This is about 20 miles out of london so it might be a great place to visit... I just found it bizzare that they would have street signs that say that. The site is here. I will go there next month, unless Qantas runs out of planes!.

One of my friends suggested that the Phillips Screwdriver was inveneted by a person living in Hornsby. The truth is that the person died in 1959 and he lived in the USA.

According to the SMH, DELL will be starting a major Laptop Batter Recall soon. The details will be on this page but they are not there yet. They will be recalling about 18% of the batteries used in laptops manufactured between two dates. I hope mine is included... I think I need a new set of batteries in this machine. If not it will be a $170 battery for this machine. And if things work out I will get a new battery for my older laptop too :-)

SLATE has an Article on what people are searching for, or what type of searchers they are. They put people into seven different categories. And they seem to be a logical seperation and do seem to make sense.

I think I have missed something with the government plans to subsidize LPG installation into vehicles. So the government is paying people to change their vehicles to LPG which is less fuel efficient than petrol. You end up using more fuel, but it costs less because the fuel is cheaper.

But the reason why the fuel is cheaper is the taxation on the fuel to pay for roads. So the government is subsidizing LPG which will mean less tax revenue to pay for roads. Which means worse roads. What is going on here?

Some links... Firstly News.COM.AU has a story on David Tetch which is a computer generated interviewer on TV. They also have a story about a grown up version of The Muppets. And the SMH has a list of 10 great hotels

The threat level in the UK has been slightly downgraded meaning that you can now carry luggage onto planes. There are still some restrictions, although I have not managed to work out quite what they are at the moment. Then again I do not need to for a few weeks anyway.

So far it has been one of those days. Phone calls, emails, chat messages. And whilst most of them are work related I just do not feel that I have got any actual work done. Thankfully though I am getting some work done by a friend for one consulting job. This time I have arranged a computer for him to work on so that I can get some productive work done. But that still does not stop the distractions. And I have some great distractions today believe me.

Right now I am not even to the point of writing my to-do list. That should explain something of where I am up to on this process.

Seen on a garbage truck - 'Satisfaction Guarentteed or double your rubbish back'.

Last night when I got home I was truely exhausted. Not the type where I was about to fall asleep, just to the point where I needed to just sit in the corner with the TV on. I managed to sleep until 7am which was good... Not much work got done on the plane yesterday - although we did remove the fibreglass tip on one of the horizontal stabalizers since it needed some work.

Last night I got given a link to a hilarious web site about French Milivary Victories. Put those words into google and it comes up with a fake google page asking if you really meant french military defeats. The page is hilarious - and is available here.

This site produces some rules...
* The First Rule of French Warfare "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."
* Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."
* First Rule of Italian Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.

When all this was on the screen I was just laughing and laughing... A well needed diversion!

Room 101 has a list of GUI Designs over the last 21 years. Interesting to see how things have progressed. And PC World has a list of the top 25 pc's of all time...

Finally home... I have been out all day. More later

I slept well last night, except for one thing. About 4:30am for some reason I was awake, and after a couple of minutes there was a huge bang. And then nothing else happened. No car alarms went off. No sirens. No voices. Just the big bang. Strange. Maybe this morning I will find out what happened.

In the UK there is news that insurers are not covering valables placed into luggage. The old 'All car, no responsibility' line. If the ban is still on when I go though the UK next month I might get a solid case for my laptop so at least it will not get smashed in my bag.

Also on the Times Online in the UK is a story about how the son of an Auschwitz victim found a case belonging to him in a paris museum. The case was marked as being on loan from the Auschwitz Museum. Wanting the case to stay in france he requested that the ownership of the case be transferred to the museum in Paris. They refused. So he started legal action against the museum. The museum and the polish government are fighting this on the basis that it would create a precident. Sounds like a good precident - returning property to the rightful owners.

I am trying to work out all the places I would like to visit in the UK. I would love to visit Faraday House but as far as I can tell there is not too much there. I would love to visit the home of the Royal Institution and its museum to see the works of Faraday but it is most likely that this will be closed for building work :-(

Another place I would love to visit is Rugby. Not for that reason. Seriously. Well, maybe, but there is another reason. The Rugby VLF transmitters are where british time signals have been sent from. This site is closing down so they are removing the historic antennas; antennas which really are a local landmark due to their sheer size.

Today I also grabbed a few highlighter pens, and I was puzzled to see a comment on the side saying that the pen "Conforms to ASTM D-4236.". I have only come accross ASTM when I was doing a subject called Materials Technology at uni where the ASTM standarised the tests on the hardnesses of materials. ASTM stands for American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). So, how does this relate to a highlighter pen. Well, according to this site, in 1988 the US givernment required that all art materials be analysed for their long term toxicity, and they be labeled if they were found to be toxic. Those that were not toxic are labeled as complying to the ASTM standard. So there!

Raised Security Levels

One of my friends forwarded this to me....

The British are following the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved."
Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated"
or even "A Bit Cross." Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940, when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been recategorized from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French Government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate."
The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing."
Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday, as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

I think I have found one of the more useless Web Sites available. It is for Whiteleys which was the first department store in the UK, but is now a shopping centre. They say that car parking in london is expensive, so they try to keep their parking prices down, to 50 pounds for between 12 and 24 hours. This just sounds somewhat expensive. But you click on most of the sections and it wants to download about 2 MBytes of graphics before showing the content. And there is nothing there.

Frequently asked questions include the classic 'I want to make a phone call now!', and they give the answer saying where the phones are in the place. I would not be going to their Web Site wanting to locate their public phones. To be using the internet I would usually be at home. Basically the site looks good but is somewhat dysfunctional. I am guessing though that those involved think it is just wonderful. It just seems to have that feel.

I picked up a copy of V for Vendetta earlier today - I went down to pick up a birtday present for a friend and picked up the DVD for me. Getting a chance to re-watch this movie has been good - and pick up on some more of the ideas presented inside the movie. I guess the message is even more striking because the character V is not only a terrorist, but a freedom fighter too.

I have been doing some reading and thinking about the luggage restrictions in the UK. They tell you that you may only carry from a list of items that they specify. I have few problems with that. One report I saw - I think it was on the Qantas WWW site then added that fountain pens with ink were not permitted on board. This infers that other pens are being allowed on board. Which begs the question WHY? They are not on the permitted list. And if these are being allowed on what else is?

The BBC has a report of the issue that Musicians are having with the restrictions. They ofetn travel with very expensive instruments, and sometimes even book seats for them too. I guess if I had a musical instrument made from 200 year old wood that was worth the best part of $100,000 I would be doing the same.

The other thing I am wondering about - with international flights between Australia and the UK, technically only the UK leg needs to have the items restricted. Are flights from Australia really having carry on bags banned, or does the ban only exist from Bangkok/Singapore? Interesting question.

I am just trying to think what I have done today... To be honest the answer seems that I have done very very little at all. And Realistically this is the truth. I might get some more done later today but this is not certain because I have a colleage using my PC at the moment to do some work for my whilst I am relegated to another PC in the house, where I am logged into my server using Remote Desktop.

I didn't quite go on all the toll roads today... I did do the M7, M4, Sydney Harbour Tunnel, Eastern Distributor and the M5. I missed the M2 and the Cross City Tunnel. I came close though by driving over both of these.

I was interested and shocked by the roadworks on the Gore Hill Freeway - the road is in a horrible condition thanks to the roadworks. A few times I found it really hard to work out where the road was, yet alone stay in my lane. Thankfully I thinkw ith some luck I managed to stay in most of the time.

Also, to get from Castle Hill to Pendle Hill it was suggested I go on Old Windsor Road, starting at Norwest Blvd. I was frankly amazed at this road. I can see how it will be really really essential really soon, but once the roadwork is done it just had the feeling of being a freeway. I know, there are traffic lights, but it just had that feel.

Finally home... Long day - and it aint over yet. Home to Castle Hill to Pendle Hill to Pymble to Eastgardens to home. Ok, so it is not as long as other pople have had, but it is long enough for me. And I dont think i have actually got anything really useful done. Well I did pick up some PCBs from Pendle Hill but I did find an error in the main boards - not my fault thankfully, but still a pain.

Strange place too. I never before have seen anyone here in Oz park a car in the centre of a small street. And it was not as if there was not room on either side. Crazy. I ended up parking my car in the cross street - I think the local smash repeairer was trying to get his own business...

More on yesterdays appointment - Having had to take mum to various appointments over the last few years, I have been interested in how friendly some of the centres are. Campbelltown Hospital is amazing in their cancer centre. Often you will be asked by a volunteer if you would like a coffee, and they will bring it to you whilst you are waiting. They have a small garden to sit in if you would like, and often have a person playing a piano. Volunteers mostly. In the chemo centre they have portable DVD players, and cannot do too much for the paitient and whoever came with them. Parking is available right at the door. Things are serene. It is almost like this is a private hospital.

Liverpool hospital is a bit different, it is not quite so serene. They have more people, and things are 'grittier'. The staff are still friendly, but it is more like a public hospital. It just has a different feel - like you are in a hospital and you are sick - not like you might be waiting for a business meeting or waiting to see your accountant or something. You either need to pay for parking or find on the street parking, which is often limited to two hours. The two hospitals are really different.

Of course I needed to take Mum to Liverpool hospital yesterday, which I should say was somewhat disconcerting. It just had a different feel to it, which made things a whole lot more unsetling. I really did not want to have anything for lunch even though I was hungry and it was an afternoon appointment. I would not say that I felt horrible but it was close. I can only guess how mum felt.

Going into the appointment it took a little while for the good news about the CT scan being fine to sink in.

Tomorrow I probably have to go over to Pendle Hill to pick up some PCB's for one of my clients. But I will be dropping in on a clinet of mine too provided that the schedule of things actually lines up. The problem is that I have no idea what time they will be available... So I am hoping that I will manage to get a heap of other work done whilst I am waiting on the PCB to be available.

Mostly some links right now... A friend of mine earlier asked about the checksum on Barcodes... I could remember most of the details, but I did find a great page on this... It contained all the information I needed. Link.

The Digital Music Blog has a list of some of the tactics of the RIAA with filesharing. The Guardian has a story on a guy who has dug tunnels under his house in london, and now the council has ordered him out in order to fill the tunnels. And SlashDot has a story on Bruce Parens... And how he was asked if he wanted to join the board of TAPR of which I am also a board member. Bruce is one of the greats in the Open Source community.

I have just got back from a run. I think I doubled the distance of my last run which is good, but that is not saying much really. With a very little bit of work I should have my fitness level back in no time.


Microsoft has this thing called Windows Genuine Advantage. There are a lot of reports about people who have been caught with an authentic copy of windows and it failing for some reason. Well, a journalist tried to go the other way, using a Pirate serial number he found on the net. The problem was that no matter what he did he could not get Windows to believe that this was a bad serial number. So WGA stops people who have a good copy and doesnt stop people who have a dodgy copy... Great.

Blast. Just got some more work... Research time...

Just got back from taking Mum to the oncologist. The results of all the tests are fine - apart from the fact that she might be getting a kidney stone. This is REALLY great news.

I picked up a present for a friends birthday... I am hoping that he does not see this post, although I think that is unlikely for a number of reasons which I will not go into right now. I picked up this device at a local store and has the immortal words 'Thank you for your kindly patronage and please care to use to avoid hurting yourself', as well as 'Covering five pieces of specific exchange blade inside'. There is a logo on the bottom corner noting '2005-2008 double customers service planned'... as well as a stick on label saying 'WARNING: This product contains a sharp edge which is essential to its operation'. Concidering the product has the word cutter in the name I would guess it would have a sharp edge. Welcome to jinglish, or in this case Taiwish.

I just got another nice order today - this one will be dispatched tomorrow probably, and will pay for half of my coming trip... The sort of jobs that I like really. They are getting a great product that does what they need, and it does not take too much effort for me to provide it.

Anyway I have to get going - I have to get ready to take mum to her appointment.

More from my friend in London who will be away when I am over there - he sent me a few links to places to visit - as GoogleEarth placemarks... Billionairs Row on the western end of Hyde park, the Science Museum (And how to get there from his place since he logged his trip with GPS), and even a local electronics store. How cool. Yesterday I got a phone call from the travel agent suggesting that because I wanted to stay at the Quality Hotel Hyde Park, and the Express Train stopped at paddington that it might be better to take the bus.

Once again GoogleEarth worked really well... Once she saw that the hotel was about half a block from the entrance to Paddington Station she agreed that the train was probably the best choice. If there is a back entrance to the hotel, it will be a 100m walk. Otherwise it will be about 300m or so. Either way it is not worth getting the bus, or a taxi or doing anything but walk.

I found a paper on the Usenix WWW site on how to 'bug' a computer keyboard so that it is possible to extract information of what is being typed. The theory is that if you change the timing between keystrokes slightly, this is then detectable on the network even if the packets are encrypted. This scheme is commonly used for telecommunications networks and is called pulse position encoding. Normally though the pulse is not a network packet.

Finally, the SMH is reportingt on Child Care Centres that have excess places, and how councils are unable to do any planning on centres based on the need... They can only stop new centres based on factors such as traffic and the like.

What is the world coming too? In the USA they have banned showing cleavage! Ok, it is only being banned in a local High School but that is not the point :-)

I just got an email from a friend of mine from Uni... He now lives in London with his wife and child, and I was planning to catch up with him when I was in London. There was only one problem with doing this. When I am over there he will be back in Sydney. I do *NOT* believe this - it is EXACTY the wrong timing. Things just worked out exactly the wrong way in terms of timing.

Anyway I want to get some more programming done before going to bed tonight. Tomorrow I am going to the Oncologist with mum so I may not get as much work done as I might hope.

Today I have mostly been working on my TeamTrack application. In this case however I have been working on the administration console. The admin program is taking more work than I thought it would, and it really does not have the same pay off as the client end. After all, all the cute features in the software will only be seen by a handful of people. Depending on how the product is sold, maybe only one person per company will have access, and that person may be doing the admin for many companies.

Still, from my point of view the Admin program is really important. It is where many of the gains come from with implementing the system. Through careful design, I have managed to reduce the implementation time from weeks to minutes. Yes, that does have an impact in consultancy rates, but it does give a heap of flexibility to the customers.

In other IT news, it seems that Paul Allen who co-started Microsoft has himself a new yacht. This one is about 120m long and comes with a hospital and helicopter. Wow. If only I had that sort of money.

I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft at the moment. I have an issue with VisualStudio where the compiler keeps crashing. Great. Just what I need. Thankfully the IDE/GUI does not crash so I am not loosing any work. Just the compiler dies. Doing some searching I found a knowledge base article which described the problem. Microsoft allows you to put in a support call to get the fixed software.

I tried to do this online without success - in fact I kept going round in circles. I would say VisualStudio 2005, and then it did not have the VisualBasic on the list so I said display more items. Which displayed the original list again. Repeat this a few times. There was a link up the top saying that I could phone, but noted that maybe I would need to pay for this. Thankfully it does not look like I will need to do that they are going to email out a link - the guy on the phone is just arranging that right now.

I do not know why I could not get the patch in the first place by a straight download. Nor do I know why the online system is not working. All I know is that I am now being served by microsoft, it probably will not cost anything, and the call was answered very quickly. I cannot complain too badly I dont think.

Some people just do strange things. I know that I could be called strange for even posting about this one... But a chemist in the USA has decided to determine the composition of his ear wax and blog about it. What is even worse is that when he worked out two of the three components, someone else was able to correctly guess the third one. Surely this person must be nominated for an Ig Nobel prize later this year.

In other news, Australian ex-pat and designer of the Applix 1616 computer Andrew Moreton has got himself employed by Google. Andrew is the maintainer of the current Linux Kernel and the right hand man to Linus who originally wrote Linux. I have never met Andrew, but spoken to him and his wife online many times.

Last night I was watching a BBC documentry on Live Aid back in 1985. I found the majority of the story hilarious - how disorganised people were, and how Bob Geldolf was bending the truth to get people to participate. Because of the number of people attending they were flying artists in by helicopter. But the only place nearby to land was the cricket pitch, and a game was on... So when the chopper came in they would grab the stumps, go inside, wait for the people to get out, and then finish the game.

AOL have got themselves into some deep water - they have released a heap of search queries which their users have made. Google used to return the results in real time and show what other people were searching for. But AOL provided several months search data for hundreds of thousands of users. Sure, they removed the screen name, and replaced it by a random number. But the number still allowed people to line up all the queries from one person and put them together. And given that people often search for the names of friends, family and even themselves, a huge amount of information was leaked.

Yahoo is reporting about a woman in the USA who had her house attacked by teenagers using toilet paper, dog food and the like, causing a heap of damage. So she decided to do the detective work, finding out which local store had a run on toilet paper, and then getting access to their video surveilance to get photos on the purchasers. She then used the schools yearbook to identify the names of the people, which was possible since they were wearing highschool jackets. The teenagers have since been convicted in this case.

I have also been doing a bit of reading with what to expect i Bangkok when I visit there next month. I found a site with heaps of information called Bangkok Bob and contains a heap of useful information...

I went for a short run this afternoon. What with some work commitments and also the weather and the like I have not had a chance to run for a while. I was not able to do much of a run, but I will hopefully get more fit in the coming days and weeks...

It truely has been one of those days... Mornings actually. So far I have had skype conferences with the USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Fiji again. And MSN with Sweeden. And it is only 10:30AM. I have had a chance to have breakfast. Just. That was between other calls and conversations. Surprisingly my phone has not rung yet - I am just waiting for that to happen too - I am sort of surprised that it did not ring whilst I was typing that sentence. Things like that happen way too often!

I would love to know what happened during the night. Something surely did. My upper back is somewhat sore. I didnt notice it until I got out of bed, and then it hit me. I am sure some demented burgler broke in and started using my back as a punching bag. That would be about the only thing that would explain what I am feeling. My neck is fine, just my back is sore between my shoulder blades.

There are two news stories I never thought I would ever see. Firstly comes a fireman who took a 'spin' in a clothes dryer. Surprisingly he complained of being dizzy after a few turns. And the most disturbing is about a school that has banned junk food deliveries by parents. It got to the point where up to 20 parents a day were delivering KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut to this one school each day. Wow!

I just got back from dinner with a client... It is great hearing how people use my software - he is using features that I didn't think would be all that useful and tells me that they are about the best for his needs.

I got my itinery from the travel agency today - it turns out that there are no flights straight out of Tucson or Phoenix to Los Angeles available on the ticket that I am interested in. I need to make sure, but I think that I can save about $350 by buying a seperate ticket for Tucson to Los Angeles. This ticket would be about A$150, so I think it would probably be good value. I can then catch a later flight out of Arizona. I just need to check the pricing on the ticket with the agent tomorrow.

In New Zealand, the agents from France who bombed the Rainbow Warrior are about to be emarrased again with their guilty pleas about to be shown on the TV following a court case which gave permission for this to happen. Interesting.

Sometimes things just work - Other times... Well, lets ignore them for the moment. I mentioned earlier that I was having some plumbing problems - the downstairs laundry was well and truely blocked. I knew things were bad when I found the sewer inspection hole. This probably took a good 15 minutes since it was underneith a concrete path and buried. I forgot the inspection hole was there even though I had installed it. But it was not in the right place. Argh.

I needed to get into the join between the plastic sewer pipe and the ceramic pipe under the house. Thankfully a couple of years back I bought a 'Rotary Hammer Drill'. Normally a hammer drill hits the entire chuck so the bearings tend to fail and the drill cannot hit the end too hard with the hammer. With a rotary hammer drill, ball bearings are used to allow the shaft of the drill bit to go in and out with the hammer action whilst the chuck turns the bit. This allows a heap more power to be available on the hammer action. It also allows you to turn off the rotating action and you have a small jack hammer.

It is this jack hammer that I was able to use to remove the concrete from around the pipes. And rather than spend a few hours and probably damaging the ceramic pipe, it took probably 3 or 4 minutes to clean away the concrete, and break into the pipe. Then I shoved the hose into the blocked pipe, and it did not want to go in. Then rubish started coming out. The blockage was right at the join between the two pipes. And it seems that the blockage is now cleared. And what I thought would take the best part of a day took under an hour.

As I said, sometimes things just work.

It looks like this morning I have a plumbing job to do here - great, just what I need. The pipes for the laundry are blocked, and requires some work to clean the pipes out. Draino normally works, but not in this case. The pipe will be filled with tree roots, but the problem is that it is under the slab of the house. There are probably a total of four metres of pipe in this house that are not plastic, and it is now giving me trouble. A few years back I replaced the rest of the pipes with plastic which worked really really well. Now it is just this last bit that causes the problem. With some luck fixing it will not be a major engineering challenge.

The SMH has a story about couples who Email, Blog and MSN each other despite them being in the same room. I have seen this happen too many times, and I think it is a bad idea - it can be a real problem with things work really well online and not in real life. It is not all bad... couples surfing the internet next to each other has got to be better for them than if they were in seperate rooms... At least they can discuss anything they see online.

I am sure I have mentioned this before, and it is not as if I will need it any time soon, but the SMH has a review of a DVD for first time fathers called 'Being Dad' which is a humorous introduction for fathers for everything they need to know about pregnancy. Well maybe not everything, but many of the things...

I heard back from the Quality Crown Hotel in Hyde Park about the cost of WiFi. It is GBP 2.99 per hour, or GBP 9.99 for 24 hours. This is about what I was hoping to pay. Well, I was hoping to pay nothing, but this is about the price I was prepared to pay. The per day cap is what I was really after. I would not have been happy with only a per-hour cost. I hope it has a decent speed so I can do SKYPE too... So much cheaper than using a cellphone where I can.

I also have a VoIP phone... I might download the software to run this on my PC... Then I can get 10c calls in Australia for when I need to call and cannot SKYPE.

I have been watching the British TV show Rocket Man staring Robson Green. In this show Robson is working on on building a rocket aimed at reaching 62 miles following the death of his wife... Great show... exploring the process. To save money they recycled aluminium cans into aluminium sheets. Actually I am seeing a few paralells between the show and building its rocket, and working on the plane...

The other thing I just realized... Buckingham Pallace is open for people to visit for the next month or so... It would be good to see inside that place.

I was looking at the hotel I am looking at staying in when I visit London. Their web site gave a map of the hotel - and so I looked it up in Google Earth. This actually gave me a great idea of where the place actually is - about a minutes walk from the entrance to Paddington Station and therefore only about 16 minutes away from the Airport. Idea location I think. I am just waiting to find out how much the Internet access is.

I have also been lookinga at places to visit in Tucson. There are a few places I want to visit - The Sonora Desert Museum, The Collosal Cave, the Titan Missile and the Biosphere. My problem is that all the places are in exactly the opposite directions. I might see if there are any locals going to the conference who might be able to show me around. We will see.

One of the more unusual things you might find online is a gallon of Tuscan Milk on Amazon.COM. The strangest thing is the reviews of the product... I dont think anyone has actually taken it seriously actually writing the review. The SMH has reviewed the Original version of Fun with Dick and Jane and found that it was far far better than the modern remake.

The web services stuff I got in last night is really cool. As usual it is taking me some time to work out how to drive the thing, and I am finding the occasional bug. I should say that by a bug I do not mean a major thing... I am talking about a field not being returned from a database here or there, or a hierarchical function traversing down a tree instead of up. Simple things really.

I am very slowly getting up to speed on SQLserver and SQL. I have done bits and pieces in the past, but generally I have not needed to work much on databases on a day to day basis. It is only during development that I learn all the fun things and work out how to do what I need to do. To be honest, it would have taken me a heap more time, effort and money to write just the database stored procedures than outsourcing them. I am definitely ahead.

The latest issue of PHD Comics is cool. I certainly I am not as bad as the woman in the cartoon... I am sure that I am not. I know that I am not. I hope!

And finally, there is a story in the SMH about how NSAS has misplaced the original high quality images of the moon landing. This story has been around for a few weeks and finally picked up by a major paper. I hope they find the tapes.

Almost time for bed... But as expected I got more WebServices work in. This stuff looks great. I did waste some time since I imported the script to update the database with the wrong username which caused me all sorts of problems. The import script was saying that it could not add the table, probably because the table already existed. Obviously it did not, but I could not work out why. Eventually I just tried to run the script in a few ways, including other accouts, and things just worked. Brilliant. With the function calls i just got in I guess I have about three or four days work to do now until I need some more function calls...

Just looking at the ones I got today and my short work was fantastic. Things are turning out exactly as needed... Anyway bed time. Just after I put a band aid on my paper cut.

No results from the CT scan... Probably on tuesday. The major problem with the CT scan today is that mum is slightly alergic to shellfish, and there is a slight danger when the contrast is injected to people with this allergy.

I was watching Kingswood Country from the 1970's on TV, and I was was interested to hear a comment about something being so many miles away. Then it occured to me to ask when metric was introduced in the 1970's according to this page. It was introduced in sporting events first followed by everything else. There are only three countries in the world which have not adopted the metric system - Burma, Liberia and the USA.

In the Uk the road signs are still in Miles. The legislation is actually in place to change over to metric but since there was no date for the introduction explaining why over ten years later they still have not converted across. The stupid thing is that a couple of years back a friend of mine imported a car from europe and had to get the speedo converted to miles, even though at some stage in the future all new cars will be in metric... Strange.

Google has a very different version of the 1980's hit "Total eclipse of the heart". This time it is being sung as a durge with two of the performers doing percussion with kitchen whitegoods. This video really is a classic, although the performer on the right side for the extent of the performance needs some assistance with dressing himself.

Also, the BBC is reporting that the Channel Tunnel operators in Europe have been given six months respite from creditors. This is happening in the bankruptcy court. This is happening becauase the project cost more than anticipated and also the patronage is less than anticipated. When the new line into london opens soon it is hoped that numbers will go up with commuters visiting London but living in France.

Earlier today I mentioned the Sabre system... I looked this up in Wikipedia. Originally I referred to this as SABER, which technically was correct but they changed their name a few years back. The company that owns Sabre also owns the travel site Travelocity. Interesting. Whilst looking at that I found that the system runs on an IBM system called TPL. This is an amazing clustering technology - IBM have clients with over a decade of uptime, even with software and system upgrades. That is what I call stable!

My mother's CT scan went well today - not sure if that means they didn't find anything, or if it means that they didn't have any issues with the CT scan and injecting the contrast.

Wired is reporting that electronic passports have been cloned, and the information put onto a different card. By placing this card into the back of the passport when it is opened up, the copied details will be read rather than the original details. The official response in the USA to this is that the solution is to make sure that the customs officials actually look at the electronic photo and make sure that it lines up with the person with the passport.

News.Com.AU has a story on the 10 greatest movie endings of all time. The one from Dr Strangelove is the best I think, with atomic bombs going off to the music of Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again'. Classic movie. They also list some other classic movies in the article. The Windows Supersite has a story that suggests that Windows Vista may not be ready for release by the end of the year, even if it is released. Probably not a good idea to get a new laptop just to run it just at the moment.

I suspect that my travel agent is going to be somewhat embarrased in a moment - she has been having problems getting me into Tucson airport. I know I want to fly out through Phoenix for a number of reasons. Anyway, she has been unable to find any flights to Tucson, nor even the airport code. It was not TUS in the SABER system... Sabre probably was looking for the ICAO code (KTUS) rather than the IATA one. After that little mixup things are slowly progressing...

The funny thing is that she had this problem once before, and at that time the poor agent made the people take a two hour bus ride south to get to Tucson rather than a few more minutes in a plane.

My mother has her CT scan today - we get the results next week. Fingers crossed it will be OK. Should be. But you never can tell. That is why they do the tests isn't it - just to make sure. We will see how it goes. And it is not even as if we can peek at the X-Rays - the scan is captured electronically. One of her friends is taking her so thankfully I can get some work done today...

Bugger... Raining again. I was going to go for a run, but it is wet outside. Raining in fact rather than just wet. Not enough really to water the gardens but enough to not make it pleasant going running.

I was planning to go outside and go for a run... Yeah, sure. It has just started raining. I do not think I really want to catch a cold at the moment and freeze to death thank you.

After a few phone calls and a meeting this morning I feel like actually doing some work. I am looking forward to doing it after I grab some lunch. It is only 1:30pm and as far as I can tell I really have not done anything all that useful today yet. Well, I did pay an Optus bill I found, but then realised that I had already paid another bill twice. Of course all this was done only an hour before I got my current bill which would have told me that it had been paid, which means that I am now somewhat in credit. Somewhat confusing really.

Some people are just crazy... A Mechanical Engineer in the USA has bought himself a new VW, and put a jet engine into it. The WWW site looks amazing - and somewhat of a waste to be honest. You cannot run the car for long enough for it to be really useful. Still, I like the jet powered moped at the bottom of the page.

There was an interesting story in the paper yesterday about a proposed fight at James Mehan High School. No, I didnt find it interesting for that reason... The paper article quotes 'Inspector Julian Griffiths'. This surprised me a bit - Julian was one of my best friends in primary and high school... Last I heard he was a senior sergent on the north coast. I guess he has now got a promotion. Wow.

Yesterday I saw what I would probably call one of the worlds smallest Notbook Computers. This one is actually mistaken for a video game it is that small, and runs windows XP. It has a 4.5" touch screeen and two cameras. I must say that I am really impressed with it. It even has a slide out keyboard.

A friend provided a link to a site in the USA that provides accesories for amplifiers. In their case they are offering a wooden volume control so that vibrations can be minimised improving sound quality. That is what they are claiming. I think this is a total piece of rubbish.