Froosh. Stuff.

Old Blog, New Blog

Welcome back, I guess? The old blog is dead, long live the new blog!

TL;DR: I’ve tossed out wordpress and switched to static files – just as it was when I first created this blog 😃

Except, instead of GreyMatter I’m now using Hugo

OpenPGP Key Transition

Note: expired signature, though the transition and new keys are still valid.

Rebuilding the Holiday - Pt3

Short-form notes on rebuilding the MooresCloud Holiday Lights from scratch and making the lights work.

This is part 3/3, it covers building the fresh OS onto a memory card.

Rebuilding the Holiday - Pt2

Short-form notes on rebuilding the MooresCloud Holiday Lights from scratch and making the lights work.

This is part 2/3, it covers building a custom devicetree blob for the Holiday.

Rebuilding the Holiday - Pt1

Short-form notes on rebuilding the MooresCloud Holiday Lights from scratch and making the lights work.

This is part 1/3, it covers getting access to the memory card and serial port.

Time passes ... more time passes ...

Fast-forward another 4 years and we find the plucky Froosh family in a slightly different part of Greensborough, debt free, renting a nearly-new house in a great leafy setting.

Nearly 3 years...

Hmm, so it’s been nearly 3 years since I posted here. Can I get away with this:

Stuff. It happened.

Perhaps not.

The Plan

I have a plan. Well, a strategy. Or something like that. So begins the rambling.

Currently we live in the middle of fscking nowhere aka Doreen, Victoria. This is not surprising to us, we bought the house. But we bought it when our life was quite a bit different, then it took far too long to build, and we came to resent it … it is not home, it is just a house.

Delicious Super Fudge Brownies

Update: Stashed this brownie recipe here years ago but have no recollection from where or why, other than I could.

Tech.Ed 2009

[This is a belated and incomplete post, but since I’m unlikely to finish it, might as well publish what I threw together in the airport on the day after]

Wow, where to start? Tech.Ed is the Microsoft IT geek yearly pilgrimage, held this year on the Gold Coast, as it was 2 years ago for my first attendance.

Filter CFA incidents by region

With all the focus on bushfires in Victoria and the close proximity to my house of some of those fires, I’ve been checking the Country Fire Authority (CFA) website to see what is going on in the area. The CFA are kind enough to provide a RSS feed of all incidents, but I don’t really need to know all incidents in all Victoria, just the ones near me.

iPhone Headphones

I’ve had an iPhone for several months now, and am enjoying it as both the most usable phone I’ve ever owned and also the most enjoyable PDA I’ve ever owned. Except, that is, for the headphones.

Twitter updates re-enabled

I’ve started using Alex King’s fabulous Twitter Tools again. I’ve used it in the past to great effect but was disturbed by how noisy it made my blog – normal posts got lost in a sea of tweets that most people could care less about – and so I turned it off.

Stupid stuff

I occasionally post stupid things to my Stuff section to see track what seemed fun at the time and I’ve noticed something: They are all at least as accurate as the daily astrological rubbish in your paper/magazine/website of choice. I know, it’s not really that profound…

They are fun though, just don’t run your life by them! 😀

Find my most recent one here: http://froosh.net/stuff/whats-sexy-about-your-name/

New Addiction

I’ve developed a new addiction, or perhaps merely a new obsession: Pokemon. Specifically, Pokemon Pearl on Nintendo DS. This is probably not news to the geeks out there, but it’s good!

Taxi drivers vs Melbourne

This is not so much a comment about the safety of the drivers, but taxi drivers in general. Inspired by a post over on Melbourne Metblogs.

Taxi drivers, I believe, are professional drivers. Professionals in that they get paid to drive you from one location to another location of your choosing. Lets break that down shall we?

How to flub a job interview

As many of my Twitter followers will know, I interviewed for a job on Monday afternoon and was very excited about the opportunity. I was not chosen to progress to the next round of interviewing and I’m somewhat crushed by that. The painful part is the reason I was given for the rejection. But 1st, some background.

CSS Naked Day

Yes, the site looks awful. That is the point. Without friendly CSS written and provided to me for free by the internets, this is somewhat like it would look all the time!

TimeShift your life part 1: DVDs

I’m a moderately busy person. Not “Cory Doctorow” busy, but busy enough with family, work, personal projects, and keeping up with the current state of IT geekdom that stopping to watch the TV, go to a movie, or listen to radio just doesn’t happen on a schedule. I’m documenting my current methods of coping, with the intent to check back in a few years and see what I’ve been up to. 🙂

Read on for more, but I’ll warn you I ramble and get a bit verbose.

Blogger Lunch Panel

An interesting mix of panelists at the Blogger Lunch: skeptics, business advisors, content providers, Microsoftian enterprise blogger.

Tech.Ed 2007 Bloggers Lunch

So, might as well blog from the Tech.Ed 2007 Bloggers Lunch. We got our lunches in nifty little esky’s that we get to keep (logistically, too much trouble for them to dispose of them I’m betting 😛)

Twitter updates

While the twitter daily summaries have been handy (for me) to see who and what I’ve been talking about, I’m turning them off for now as I intend to start posting real entries more often and they would be lost amongst the twitter noise.

The may return at some time in the future in their own feed. Or they may not. Just follow me on twitter if you want to keep up.

Twitter: shiny hotness, or brown and sticky?

Daniel asks:

So what’s so different about Twitter? Or is it just another case of a new, shiny, evolving (but not revolutionary) thing getting all the hype?

Testing some existing RSS to Twitter tools

I was writing an RSS to Twitter cross-poster when it occurred to me that I couldn’t be the first to try this.

So now I’m trying some of the existing ones to see if they do a good enough job…

It's Conquest time!

Oh noes! I haven’t blogged about Conquest soon enough and now I have guilt!

Yes it’s Easter (insert other full-moon at spring/autumn festival of your choice) , which means that Conquest is here. It’s too late to register on-line, so don’t bother.

Roof Damage

It would have to be the two hottest days this year that a visit to the rooftop became necessary…

After the large dust-devil or whatever whooshed past yesterday, I went up to investigate today. Yes today, even th0ugh it’s 38C (100F) in the shade and much much hotter up on the dark-tiled roof.

The damage is not extensive, but it was inevitable – the landlord has not done any maintenance or repairs to the roof in a very long time. We do however have a wide open hole in one of the ridges and a broken regular roof tile (apparently where one of the ridge caps landed).

They tolerate me, they really really tolerate me!

I am buzzed and a little freaked out right now.

A while ago, I was playing around with Trac (the open source wiki/fault tracking/software project management tool) and felt the need to make it do something it didn’t already.’ So I created my first Python “Egg” and Trac plugin called TracHtgroups (or HtgroupsPlugin). As a lark, I uploaded it to the awesome Trac Hacks site so that others could benefit from my (very minor) work. Of course, I thought that “benefit” to be entirely hypothetical…

Be considerate!

Along with incosiderate pedestrians, what gets me fuming are the twits who ride on trains and trams. The have a sinister modus opperandi, one that makes me look like the twit when I protest their actions.

Test mobile posting on 2.1

Yep, testing posting from email/mobile with WordPress 2.1 How’s the formatting?

WordPress 2.1 Released

I’ve been using WordPress for a while now and it just keeps getting better and better. I actually started blogging with Grey Matter but changed over to WordPress fairly soon after and for a while updated regularly to the bleeding-edge-sometimes-broken-but-always-better SVN versions. Until 2.0. When 2.0 launched, I was content to stick with it and only bothered with the security updates along the way. I haven’t even really neem paying attention to the development of 2.1.

Wow. The end of 2006.

It’s hard to accept the reality of the year ending. It seems to have passed so quickly; every year it seems a little quicker than the last. Remember when you were a kid? It seemed eternity between Christmas/New Year (“Holidays” now) celebrations. Ahh nostalgia, I remember you well 😉

So, what’s news around the Froosh-iverse? I guess an update is in order…

Ahhhrrgghh! I've just bought a house!!!

Exclamation marks…!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so maybe I’m freaking out just a little bit.

How. Embarrassment.

In one of the most unprofessional IT moves ever, my domain expired over the weekend.

I am so ashamed. I rant and rail at other who do this, yet when the time comes apparently I can be just as incompetent. 😳

Feedback for MetLink Melbourne & Department of Infrastructure

My regular commute requires catching bus (571), having that meet a train (Epping station), in to the CBD, and back in the evening.

Battle of the postcodes!

Props to Dylan who sent me this piece of semi-useless trivia:

Post Code Power

Discover how different postcodes live, starting with your own. Brought to you by News Limited Community Newspapers, Postcode Power shows you just how well community newspapers know different postcodes and how you can use that knowledge to target any audience more effectively.

How awesome. Not a lot of variation between suburbs, but some of them are very telling and closely match my experiences.

Birthdays, Weekends, Work.

Oh well, I guess I can only enjoy two out of three.

I guess there’s nothing else to do except admit to being 33 years old. Last birthday was a fun one – I got to say I was 5 (2^5 = 32). This one, not so interesting. Just 33. Although, I’m thinking a 33.333* party in December could be fun.

Rant against the abuse of "Podcasting" popularity!

I take exception to the mis-use of the term Podcast in the recent [redacted] issues.

New Books

Ive just bought “Snow Crash” and “Smoke and Mirrors”. 1st new books in ages! Podcatching has a lot to answer for…

Update: Added links and fixed formatting. WP-Mail is not handling my SMS’s correctly. I sense a plugin about to be written.

Train blogging starts here...

Since the blog merge, I can sms a blog post in – and plan to do so more often. It may even be worth reading!

Blog merge in progress...

I used to have an “aside” kind of blog in a sub-site here, but haven’t really been using it recently. It was meant to be a test site for wordpress upgrades, plugins, development, etc but I’m spreading myself too thin and getting nothing effective done. I didn’t want to lose the content (such as it was) and I like the idea of never breaking a link once established. I know I have broken some links, but the bulk of the content has been imported and most of the links are still working.

Awesome BOFH quote

“Backwards compatible just means that people who are backwards can use them!”

Thank you BOFH!

Lego Goodness ... and Badness!

My 33rd birthday is soon (well, 17 days) and family are starting to ask what I want as a gift. Last year I had suggested the unrealisticly priced Death Star.

More Beer

Fedeeration Square’s Atrium will be hosting another Victorian Microbreweries Showcase tonight and tomorrow night (Wednesday 19th/Thursday 20th July 2006).

Best. Party. EVAR!

We had a 6.5 birthday party for Seb last Saturday evening, and it was without a doubt the best kids birthday party we’ve ever been to or hosted. Utterly awesome.

Sent to Connex's Customer support

I will not be recommending the SMS alerts service to anyone, and will likely unsubcribe from it due to it’s extremely poor performance.

Melbourne, get your game on!

It’s Retrocon time!

Good News! (and some bad)

Are you a fan of Jonathan Coulton? You should be.

Anyway, the esteemable (is that even a word?) Chris Miller of Unquiet Desperation has an interview with Jonathan, discussing his history, motivations, plans and how he managed to get the millionaire girlfriend and a wife. That last part isn’t really true though.

Now the bad news:

Chocolate is cold comfort
A review of scientific studies has found that chocolate, long used as an emotional pick-me-up, more often prolongs a bad mood rather than helps it.

Huh? SPAM?

Granted I’m not a high-profile site and I certainly don’t get a lot of traffic, but I get no spam. And I don’t resort to what John Dvorak used to tell us to do: Drop everything that isn’t from a known good address.

I had three problems with that concept:

  1. What about e-mails from old friends who changed address (or current friends who like changing e-mail addresses every few months. Hi Andrew! 😉)?
  2. It was never a good idea to depend on a completely spoofable “from” address.
  3. There is plenty of great software out there to stop spam in a much friendlier manner, and it’s been around for quite some time!

So what do I use an what are my results?

You can really taste the goat!

I am generally not a beer drinker. This is for two reasons:

I’m alergic (or used to be) to something in a majority of popular beers. Just one beer would make me violently ill almost exactly 12 hours later. As the joke goes, I was never sure if it was the 13th or 14th 😀 But seriously, just the 1st and only beer would make me sick and so I learned very quickly to avoid beer. Guinness is about the only beer I will drink on a regular basis.

New Microsoft article about Linux - done the right way

It’s actually a support article: The system time runs too fast on a Linux-based virtual machine that is hosted in Virtual Server 2005 R2

I’ve always* used both Windows and Linux in my personal and professional lives, so have basically ignored most of the Microsoft vs. Linux (and GNU/OSS/etc) rhetoric out there. Hypocritically though I was suprised by the article – it was straight-forward, accurate, and there was no taint of “it’s all the fault of the open-source-hippies”. In fact it was the opposite, with an educational piece about the nature of Linux timekeeping systems at the end. Huh. Who’da thunk it? Learning something about Linux from Microsoft.

Exhausted ... Still!

Ok, so Conquest was on over the Easter weekend and it was fantastic as usual. Of course I’ve actually only been twice now… 😆

For me, it was four intense days of gaming and helping out and even two days later I’m feeling exhausted but happy about it. I may have a problem though: I’ve bought some miniatures and become addicted to a 9 book series.

The miniatures: Urban War – a reasonably new 1-inch base miniature game. The Junkers (Gladiators) are my chosen faction. I bought mine from Olympian Games who are the only Australian distributors for the Urban War kit at present. It’s been so long since I’ve painted miniatures or played a miniatures game … I’m quite excited!

Easter! Means! Gaming!

Well, it does if you live in Melbourne that is! 😀

That’s because it’s time for Conquest again. w00t!

We haven’t signed up for the same “Get Wrecked” plan that we did last year with Andrew – but we’ll being helping out at the rego desk amid the rest of the con-fusion. 😉

My Nerd Score

Oops, it didn’t occur to me that I would score this high… 😳

General comments now available again

I had left comments set to require you to be registered and logged in to comment – not that good for encouraging feedback! 😳 I turned it on when I installed the OpenID plugin for authenticating comments and forgot to turn it off. Why did I install the OpenID plugin? So I could comment on Mur’s LiveJournal of course! 😀

Stop the Administrator insanity!!!

Bloody hell! 😡 Why do so many things needlessly require administrator privileges???

The latest culprit: Apple iTunes on Windows

Ok, so I bought Kim an iPod Nano for her birthday – she’s only been begging for one for about 3 years…

Mur Lafferty is my (Geek Fu) master now!

I have been listening to podcasts for a while now and one of the very first podcasts I started listening to was Mur Lafferty’s Geek Fu Action Grip. I’m hooked and can’t get enough Mur goodness 😀

  1. Geek Fu Action Grip
  2. I Should Be Writing (Very relevant to anyone writing anything, not just fiction. e.g. Software Developement)
  3. Lessons From A Geek Fu Master
  4. Voices: New Media Fiction

And of course, Mur appears as a feature on The Dragon Page every so often.

Being IT - Try it out

http://www.dice.com/beingit/

The Pizza Launcher was my fave.

Bing me!

There are a large and growing number of Instant Messaging systems out there and just as many ways to ask someone to contact you. Given that I normally only have 1 or 2 methods in common with a particular individual, it’s redundant to ask them to Skype/MSN/GoogleTalk/Jabber/Gizmo/Yahoo/ICQ/etc me. And so, I’m throwing my vote to Tristan’s proposed usage of the word bing:

Bing!

Synonymous with “instant message”.

verb: “Bing me!” noun: “I got a bing from Dennis…”

It's disturbing how much fun this is.

It’s an odd choice … but my first post after a long hiatus is this:

Try this out – it’s fun in a disturbing way.

More posts to follow, probably with better content – but I’m not promising anything… 😀

Oh, and thanks to Anthony for the link!

Holidays should be a time of rest...

Oh poo, I was enjoying being totally ignorant about work stuff whilst I was on holiday – until this found it’s way to my personal inbox: Zero Day Holiday

X-Box Live Gamercard

Whew – it’s been ages.

This is just a quickie to turn off the piratey theme and post a link to my X-Box Live Gamertag. Feel free to add me to your friends list – preferably with an audio note mentioning who you are and how you know me. 😀

I’m really only playing Halo 2 and Doom 3 at the moment, but I’m willing to entertain other games – once I buy them… 😛

Systm.org - Better than I had expected

I’ve been holding off watching any of Kevin Rose’s Systm – mainly because he’s a dork 😛

However … I was pleasantly surprised! I watched their MythTV episode, and while their hands were hyperactive, it was totally watchable.

The coolest thing about their show, that will probably bring me back every time, has to be their main logo – a stylised Commodore PET.

My 1st computer was a Commodore PET 4032. I learned to program in BASIC and 6502 assembly on that. I learned by digital electronics with it, hacked extra devices into it’s memory space, and created my own custom OS (and OS extensions). It’s interesting how certain memories can trigger strong emotional responses. I loved that machine.

So, I went to the meet-up - and it was good!

Apparently I didn’t shut up about pod-catching… 😳

Tejas, I’ve dumped all my podcast feeds into a Podcast category list in my sidebar.

For general IT related feeds, IT Conversations has to be my favourite, with the Chris Pirillo Show in a close second. These are usually not podcasts in the “traditional” sense – they’re more often recordings of various IT forums and conferences and offer the chance to hear some amazing speakers that I would never normally have a chance to hear.

Hmm, Geek Dinners ...

I used to go to geek dinners. Back in the day. When BBS’s were the blogs of the time.

I’ve never thought of them (BBS’s) like that before… It probably doesn’t fit too well now, but when blogs were kicking off, there were some similarities to BBS’s – built by geeks, used primarily for geek-to-geek communication, and Real Life meet-ups were curious events that meant you got to put faces to FidoNet nodes. 😀

I just drooled a little...

LEGO Death Star II [via Jake]

Co-incidentally, my birthday is on the 18th and you can pre-order it starting on the 18th. It’s fate. So, who wants to buy me a shiny noo birthday present? 😀 At nearly AU$570, there is no way I can even pretend to justify the purchase. 😢

Maybe in another lifetime.

OPML

I’m trying to get my head around OPML right now, and it’s not going so well. I can see it’s worth for passing lists of non-time-based data (as opposed to RSS/Atom which is great for time-linear data lists). I’m just not sure what “Outlining” is right now … perhaps it’s just a little too late, too much working on a Sunday, and far too much NASAtv and following the Return to Flight.

Site Updates and administrivia

“That’s the second biggest one of those I’ve ever seen.”

I got a little bored of the default Kubrick theme from WordPress, and so went hunting a new favourite via the WordPress Theme Browser and settled on Russell Tanton’s “Yaaarr, tis me blog!”. It’s camp and piratey, and I like it! It probably wont last a long time, but enjoy it while it lasts… (Agregator-only readers will need to visit the site to see the theme in action)

I feel dirty

I just pawned my personal information with 20+ vendors for the chance to win a 42-inch plasma display. Can it be worth it?

Desktop Trebuchet on the cheap

How to make a desktop trebuchet from popsicle sticks

Gotta MAKE me one of these! 😀

Bribes...

I had to come to work on a Saturday – so i bribed Seb with $25 worth of Lego…

I [heart] Skype

Skype. It’s closed. It’s proprietary. Yet it still manages to be cool…

I only use Skype occasionally and haven’t yet paid for any additional Skype services – I’m just not sure I’d make much use for it. Not to worry though, Skype have recently revealed that they will be releasing packets of free SkypeOut time to users. The only catch is that you have to check your Skype account page regularly to find the parcel of free time when it appears (on selected days, yet to be announced). From the details, it appears you may collect 10 minutes of free time on each “Free Skype Day”.

Ob-Blog: London Bombings

Like the rest of the world, I was shocked by the bombings in London. I felt this a lot more personally this time as it’s the first time I have had friends or family in close proximity to the attacks.

My brother and his wife are now living in the central London area, but thanks to Google Mail I was able to re-assure my parents (and myself) that they were OK.

Why I love free software

There are so many points of view both for and against open source software, and I’m definitely in the “for” camp. I could spout all the usual party lines regarding the ability to check code for security flaws, free speech vs. free beer, etc, but why do I like open source software? (Incidentally, I haven’t noticed hackers and analysts having much trouble scrutinising closed source code for security flaws. e.g. Windows)

I'm seriously addicted to PodCasts

Oh. My. God. OMG ❗

Podcasts. I’ve been technically aware of them since they started mid last year, and impressed by the seemingly obvious extension of RSS and the subscription/syndication distribution model. Of course I say seemingly obvious, because everything is obvious in hindsight. Like the cat-flap. 😉

I won’t innundate you with links on podcasting other than these two: * iPodder application to automate the download of casts and insertion into your media player. * iPodder web directory of a gazillion casts on just about any topic you like.

Lego Goodness

I’ve been re-discovering the joys and delights of Lego for a while now, thanks (mostly) to my son and his natural inclination towards creative and imaginitive play.

I don’t think people really give Lego enough credit for stimulating and encouraging children. Sure, everyone recognises the link with engineering but often don’t consider the versatility and potential of the humble brick.

Solo play includes the obvious tower/bridge/fortress options to build the tallest/longest/stongest construction and learning the associated science and engineering concepts, but why stop there? I think Lego could be used in just about any area of childhood (and adult) development.

Excellent article on why network and computer security is so bad.

SecurityFocus has an interview with Marcus Ranum which details many reasons why network and computer security has not improved significantly in many years.

The most appropriate line for me is at the end: “Blame the IT managers who overrule their security practitioners’ advice and put their systems at risk in the interest of convenience.”

Now this is cool

http://osx.portraitofakite.com/

Tipster: Jason O’Donnell

No Time...

The only time I get for blogging recently is when I’m on the loo … But that’s probably more than you wanted to know.

Fiction

Found in the fiction section at Borders: PL/SQL Programming

Bleeding Stats

Gave blood today: * 13 mins bleeding * BP 130/80 * Iron count 16 * Chocolate shake, cheese & crackers * 15 months late…

Windows Administrator vs. Games

I’ve been tearing my hair out with frustration, and ranting (unfairly) at my neighbours and colleagues about this: Why should anyone need to be an administrator of a machine to run an application or game – especially the games?!

I recently spent some time rebuilding my neighbour’s PC and locking it down so that SpyWare, Tojans, Viruses, etc would virtually be a thing of the past for them … Until their 7 year old daughter wanted to play the latest Barbie game. A game that included the “Designed for Windows XP” logo on the box. Sure, it had to be installed as an administrator and I can accept that. But why on earth would you require the 7 y.o. to be an admin just to play a Barbie game???

Toilets

Why is it so hard for people to keep the office toilets neat and tidy? Todays mess – urine, blood, semen(!), used paper, and crap.

Diverting Procrastination

Not so much diverting procrastination itself, but more of the diverting into procrastination… 😕

Tonights form: Another silly “What am I?” meme … now, don’t be offended – I’ve just filled it out myself 😆

Very Cool Hiring Requirements

I wish I could enforce this hiring requirement for any and all that I worked with:

Help Wanted We always need Heavy Lifters in code. If you’re excited about web browser technology, why not get involved in the premier Open Source browser project? We’re especially looking for people with skills in Mac OS X programming and Windows developers. Get started today by finding and fixing something. Instructions are not provided here since figuring out how to do all of this can be considered part of the “entry requirements”. 😉

One persons view of the Blogger Lifecycle

What is the life progression of a blogger? I think it’s too soon to be really sure, but this is a very good starting point: Lifestyle of Bloggers

I can’t quite fit myself into the later steps, but 1 through 5 seem close enough to be true… 😀

Now that I’ve had my first “retirement”, it must be time to “get serious”

Happy blogging people 🙂

(via PhotoMatt)

Testing new e-mail server

Looking good. I quite like the Dovecot IMAP and POP3 servers. Easy to install (with Debian) and configure.

I’m also loving the Maildir format instead of MBox – why did it take me so long to try it out?!

Active Directory Site Link Costs Formula

Cost = 1024 / log( BW in KB)

E.g.
10Mb Link:
Cost = 1024 / log(10000)

128Kb Link:
Cost = 1024 /log(128)

Purely Co-Incidental

Ok, so probably not 100% co-incidence, but certainly more than I’d intended …

There have been a few occaisions where I have chosen not to blog because my primary motivation has been guilt, but mainly I’ve just been busy and feeling too weary to bother about blogging.

Quick update: Everyone is fine, healthy and happy. 😀

Recent acheivements: Convincing Kim’s Grandmother (“Nanny”) to buy a Mac Mini for her foray into modern PC ownership. So, maybe it was motivated by me wanting quick access to one, but mainly so I wouldn’t have to support the usual “My PC has been attacked by viruses/trojans/etc” issues that I get from the rest of my “client base”.

Tanning District in Kew

Le Skin, Tan-Trum, Cafe Tan, Charcoal Chicken

Dont argue

Dont argue with the wife when she is driving and has just almost caused a serious accident … You may have to walk home!

Update: It took just under an hour 🙁

Time to report

… The bus driver who keeps leaving early. Bus #191 should have waited until 6:24, but left at 6:17

In Soviet Russia ...

… your blog owns you!

Discussions with various other bloggers has revealed a common theme – when we have not blogged for a while, we feel guilt, a pressure to blog – about anything at all if necessary. I’ve certainly done it before. We are letting our blogs own us, control us. It’s time to take back the blogs! 😀

I find that many people seem to end up as “Blog Lemmings” (as opposed to Bog Lemmings [2] [3] [4]) – that is, they blog about the same topics, link to the same sources, and generally have the same paraphrased content that all the other lemmings do. (Yes, I’m also guilty of this. :eek:)

Drunks on trains

Much as I detest drunks on public transport, I’m glad they’re not trying to drive!

Worse than a late bus

What’s worse than a late or cancelled bus? An early one – and not just by a little bit … It was 10 mins early!

Crime Stopper?

Something is wrong when the CrimeStoppers sign has to be chained down so that it doesn’t get stolen…

"Rance" ID?

I’ve been vaguely following the Rance blog mythology for a short while, but for some reason I’ve become addicted. And I’ve previously been sceptical of friends, colleagues, and other bloggers for doing just the same … bloody hypocrital bastard! 😉

I’m liking the Museum of Hoaxes theory about Keith Thomson after today’s Whale-Killing Journal entry … but then again, that’s probably the desired effect (The April 1st publishing date makes it rather suspect I think).

Geeky Christmas Rewrites

I’ve see far too many rewrites of Christmas carols/hymns/poems/stories/etc to find many of them even remotely entertaining. I think this is because they usually try to fit too many geek references into a barely humourous framework – and fail.

I did find William Gibson’s altered “The Night Before Christmas” tale entertaining: Cyber Claus

Extremely good value for the price: free! 😀

If you’re looking for a late Christmas present, leave a comment with your e-mail address (It won’t be shown on the site) for a GMail Invite. I only have a few, so first come, first served.

Quick Christmas Eve Items

Two quick items on the evening before Christmas – and they’re not even Christmas related!

Have a Merry Christmas if that’s your thing, or at least a government endorsed break from work! 😀

Which File Extension Are You?

Ok, so I was in the mood for a silly Meme… 😀

Which File Extension Are You? (via Geek Rant)

Blogging Code of Ethics

I have decided to adopt the following Code of Ethics (taken from Desirable Roasted Coffee via Scoble):

To write, publish, and be read is a privilege and responsibility. Being mindful of that privilege and responsibility:

I have modified #10 from it’s original as it was not particularly relevent. I believe my variant to be in the same spirit however. (Original text reads: 10. I shall, as a member of IABC, a trained reporter, a resident of the European Union, and a citizen of the United States of America, remain mindful of the IABC Code of Ethics, the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the laws of the European Union and the United States.)

Can Scoble truly be a geek, or is he faking it?

If someone claiming to be a geek is completely unaware of one of the greatest Sci-Fi writers of his time, can he truly be a geek?

Robert Scoble calls himself a geek, but has just outed himself in the worst possible way: He did not know who Greg Bear is!

I’m still unsure how that influences my view of Robert – ultimately, probably not that much at all…

Hopefully he has heard of some of my other favourite greats, otherwise I might have to re-write this post (And my opinion):

Automated Wireless Security

It’s probably nothing new to anyone interested in easily securing wireless networks, but I thought it was hilarious:

Timers on the power cords.

I have no idea if any other security measures in place, but surely turning the AP off on a schedule guarantees it cannot be abused!

Maintenance at daylight savings change-overs would probably be a pain though … one timer per AP, one AP per room, and over 100 rooms. Each timer had to be changed manually with little pegs in holes. Glad I’m not running that network…

Test your puzzle skillz

Try and get past each page.

Do this on your own time … http://deathball.net/notpron/

Andrew Denton: Interviewed

I drafted this from a borrowed Pocket PC whilst sitting in front of Andrew Denton – one of my favourite Australian comedians/interviewers as he was interviewed by … Andrew Denton (via Jon Casimir). Jon is the producer of Andrew’s ABV TV series Enough Rope and editor of Andrew’s books “Enough Rope” and “Enough Rope 2” The books are essentially transcripts from the TV series, with further commentary/tidbits/etc.

Jon asked Andrew some of the same questions that Andrew has asked various interviewees during the series, making it essentially Andrew interviewing Andrew. Overall it was an entertaining event with several interesting insights into Andrew’s mind and purpose.

Font downloading continued

Ok, so I have inserted some @font-face elements into my CSS, and referenced the fonts for the header style. The HTML Validator and CSS Validator return PASS results. IE6sp1 on WinXP SP2 even appears to attempt a download of the font files.

But it doesn’t work… ❗

Mozilla Firefox doesn’t show the fonts. IE doesn’t show the fonts. If I install the fonts locally, they display just fine.

Is there any CSS2 compliant browser out there that will actually download and use the fonts??

Blog Flood!

Why have I been blogging so often recently (at least compared with my previous average)?

I have borrowed a laptop from work, run a cable from the study to the lounge, and have been spending my evenings reading, coding, learning, blogging.

Ok, so wireless & tablet makes a lot more sense now! 😀

CSS Stylings

The CSS Zen Garden is a fabulous collection of CSS style-sheets displaying a wide range of visually tasty designs.

It has actually discouraged me from attempting some CSS stylings of my own. Partly because I know nothing I do will come close (I’m a hard-core tech … “art” is in engineering excellence). Mainly, I am disappointed in the methods used to achieve the tasty designs – nearly everything I’ve seen is an image pasted over or under the content of the page.

Short Bytes

I’ve been using Firefox for a while, and am finding things almost daily that I love about it. Todays major feature is cross-platform usability … Using Firefox on Linux is identical to the Windows version I use everyday. Keyboard shortcuts, extensions ((Sage & Adblock mainly), tabbed browsing options, Live Bookmarks, preferences – everything works the same and is in the same place. This might sound silly to some, but after try to remotely provide assistance to staff attempting to use Internet Explorer on a Mac when only knowing what Internet Explorer on a Windows box – I couldn’t even guide them through basic operations, let alone working out where to set a proxy server.

Unbalanced Australian Agriculture

I’ve thought about Australia’s non-household water usage vaguely before, but didn’t bother researching it to find indicative numbers. A colleague pointed this article out to me – I was gob-smacked: Plunder down under.

For those who couldn’t be bothered to read it, roughly 33% of our nation’s supply of fresh water is used for just 3 crops: Rice, Sugar, and Cotton.

[more rant to be included later, re: ag water, industry water, GE crops]

I'll sleep when I'm dead, thank you.

[sounds like a good line for a song :D]

It’s nothing new, not for these “modern” times, for the IT industry, for single income families, or for anyone really – but I’ve been working too hard & too long. Lack of sleep, disturbed sleep, short temper, impatience, etc.

My short-term memory is offline, and I appear to have significant corruption of my medium-term memory. Long term memory passes CRC checks; restore times are sluggish though. Processes regularly segfault and core dump, my kernel is leaking resources, and I’ve run out of metaphors.

Not the average Wednesday

Started the day early & with some zip.

Pass a massive oil spill on the way to the train station (Watsonia today).

Successfully handed a “problem user” to the helpdesk manager for LART-ing.

Solved a “its-not-freaking-perfectly-configured” issue that has been bugging me for months (turns out it was a fault in the software, not in my work 😀)

Successfully blamed a 3rd party hardware vendor for an unsolvable issue.

Got free tickets to see “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” from the lovely folks at Playstation

Remember 20 questions?

Now play it on-line on an adaptive neural net! [20q.net]

It’s not perfect (I made it to 25 questions first time), but it did get there. Particularly enjoyable were the other “knowledge” items it was generating.

Playstation2 Network Adapter

In a fit of impulsiveness, I purchased the PS2 Network kit a week ago. I really wanted to get an X-Box, but the store was out and I wanted to splurge NOW rather than drive to another store…

One line impression: Good, Bad, Fair, Excellent, Excellent!

Good: Easy to install, no tools required, my 4 year old son could do it (If I wasn’t so grabby, “No, its mine!”)

Bad: The dodgy software included to configure the card. It didn’t actually crash, but it made it very hard in some places to verify that all settings were correct and working.

Lukewarm, straight from the kettle

We have two ways of getting hot water in the office: A kettle (Russell Hobs), or the In-Sink-Erator 190? Hot Water tap.

The hot tap claims to be 190?F or roughly 88?C – plenty hot enough to scald, make tea/coffee, etc – I think so anyway.

Many others in the office use the kettle. They fill the kettle from the cold tap, stand around for ages waiting for it to boil, get bored/frustrated, look at the steam coming from the spout and proclaim, “Ahh, it’s hot enough, it’ll do.” I’m betting the kettle doesn’t even get to 88?C before they give up. Why then to they protest that the Hot Water tap is not hot enough?

The Seattle Times: Health: Scientists find coffee really is addictive

The Seattle Times: Health: Scientists find coffee really is addictive

Come on, are we really surprised?!

Dis-Connex

I’ve ranted about Connex and train performance before.

I don’t read MX often; I feel it’s the type of paper that gives the tabloid format a bad name. When Daniel Bowen is mentioned though, chances are that they are on the right track when it comes to Public Transport Users issues.

If you catch public transport often, the readings on the PTUA site are quite interesting. And particularly relevant to the recent drop in reliability from Connex.

Tranquility?

On the odd occaisions recently, I have experienced moments of “Peace and Tranquility”.

Reflecting on those events now, I can barely remember what it felt like … It happens so rarely these days.

I can’t even identify why, or how, I reached these states but I want more. Five to ten seconds 3 times in one day, and nothing since. 🙁

Catch-Up Time

I have guilt, blog guilt.

In an attempt to expiate that guilt, I offer these tidbits that may or may not be useless:

Band in a Bubble

I couldn’t resist. I went to see Regurgitator appearing live as the “Band in a bubble”.

And I’m still not sure what to think of it.

At face value, it’s a cheap tawdry marketing stunt for both the ‘Gurg and for ChannelV and the Digital Cable “pushers”.

On the other hand, I have found it interesting seeing how dull it can be actually producing an album. And how dull staring at several rather ordinary specimens of the human male species “locked” in a glass building together can be.

#2 - The Fridge in it's natural camouflage

… and I think I’m only responsible for two of the “camouflage” items …

My plan appears to be: release Meme content slower than Daniel and maybe I’ll catch up? Hmm.

WOT? I Thawte.

I have long enjoyed e-mail security thanks to a free certificate from Thawte (Pronounced “thought” I believe), and have been quite happy with the processes and results.

Kitty v2.0

Sadly we lost our family kitty of six years “Brain” to FLUTD. The disease had progressed too far, and last Thursday he had to be put down. 😢

He was epileptic, allergic to cooked meats, disliked the taste of raw meats and was named after a mouse. As several people have been “kind” enough to mention, he would not have lasted long in the wild… I’m sure his pure-biscuit diet contributed to his FLUTD, but we had little choice and did our best to provide the best foods we could. It was not good enough unfortunately.

Windows XP SP2 Release ... soonish ...

For those who choose not to make the switch to a better browser Microsoft will be releasing Service Pack 2 for you … soonish 😛

According to this: “Windows XP SP2 RTM!”, it will be available to average-joe users on or about 16-Aug (For Aussies, this will really mean 17-Aug sometime).

While I’m impressed with the number of security updates and general reduction of attack surface in SP2, I will stick with Firefox as my browser – it’s just better in my opinion. Yes, I realise that SP2 is more than just an IE patch – all of that is still valid and effective when I’m using Firefox, and I’m very happy that so much effort has gone into making Microsoft’s best desktop OS better and more secure.

Stranger in a S.t.r.A.n.g.e land ...

Twice in the last 24 hours I have felt like a stranger to my “home” city. I have been working the “evening shift” a few days each week; starting at 4pm, finishing around midnight-1am. As a result, I enter and leave the city at different times to what I am used to.

And it’s strange!

There are all types of people doing all manner of things that make feel like I’m in a foreign city – I almost wanted to stop and ask directions, that’s how out of place I felt … “Excuse me, can you tell me where Melbourne is?”

Genius at work...

He/She has been absent for some time … but they are back! Yes, the genius at my office who can’t even open milk properly.

I can’t answer for the rest of the world, but here in Australia our milk cartons have two clearly labeled sides: One says “Open Here” and the other says “OPEN OTHER SIDE”.

The afore-mentioned “genius” invariably opens it the wrong way … and then complains when it is so “bloddy” hard to open the “bloddy” milk carton.

Gotta get me one of these!

Robosapien

Update: alas, poor thinkgeek, long gone..

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/6ba5/

I want one!

What would I do with it? Who really cares… 😀 😀

I think I like Memes

Memes are not new, but participating in them is new … for me at least.

Apparently it’s something an “average Australian” does these days. 😀

Trackbacks? What are they?

Now that I’m using WordPress 1.2 I’ve noticed plenty of references to “Trackbacks” and have found very little information about what they are.

What is TB and Trackback are two reasonable explanations … I’m yet to see it in action; must be time to go looking.

An associated concept are the “Pingbacks” and there is slightly more information on those Pinkback and Pingback (official looking).

Hopefully, someone will pingback or trackback me so that I can see the effect sometime (Or perhaps I shall ping/track someone else first).

Sysadmin Day

Yes, it’s time for System Administrator Appreciation Day again, and I’m really hoping someone remembers it this year … not like the last 4 years when everyone just points and laughs when I mention it! 😢

If you’re at a loss for what to get for me, I have gone to the effort of preparing a list of a few “necessities”:

Failing that, cholocate seems to please 😀

Wanted: Logo for the family of Froosh

Amost all the things I think I am, I know “artist” is not one of them… And so, we have no logo/image/icon to characterise myself and my family on letterheads, blogs, etc

Suggestions and sample from any helpful, friendly, neighbourhood designers would be appreciated.

My other option is to use some of Seb’s artwork – at least it’s better than mine! 😲

I find that I’m even at a loss to describe what I would desire such a logo to represent, what values it should reflect, what emotions it should inspire, or just about anything else … about all I can say at the moment is … Green …. and Blue … but little red.

Just in case it's not obvious, I've converted to WordPress

Pros:

Cons:

That said, MySQL is dead easy to set up and doesn’t consume much resources. I was running PHP on my server anyway, so I didn’t have to make much of an effort.

Eco-Fanboy-Ism

Apart from being a nerd and/or a geek, I have to admit to being an “Eco-Fanboy”

What do I mean? Well being of a primarily technical bent, working in a profession that until recently required me to be tethered to a building with network access, and working for companies who think IT staff should be neither heard nor seen (Especially not seen!), I don’t actually get outdoors much…

I have been greatly interested in many facets of “eco-friendly” behaviour and knowledge since I was about 10 years old. I recall reading one of Dad’s chemistry books; particularly the preface which was more a discourse on the scientific method and how it should be applied to discover causes, effects, and an understanding of processes. In this preface, it used an example of over-watering a lawn and the resultant exodus of the worms into surrounding areas. I’m a little fuzzy on the exact interpretation of the example, but it was 20 years ago and I was only 10 😀

Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.

Stuff:

Reasons not to blog:

  1. Lazy.
  2. Holiday.
  3. Sickness.
  4. Other Hobbies (Electronics).
  5. Family.
  6. …
  7. Profit. 😀
  8. Dream On.

Easy & Secure Passwords

I rarely have trouble remembering passwords, so I find it odd when people tell me “Passw0rd” is too hard to remember…

I’ll think this article is likely to get printed and pinned to the noticeboards near the more password-phobic staff.

Mortality

As every (living) post-adolescent boy knows, “I am immortal!”

How do we know this? Because we aren’t dead yet… 😛

Thus it came as quite a shock to me this evening when I saw for the first time a man staring back at me in the mirror. My “Residual Self-Image” is apparently a boy of about 15, which I’m sure says plenty about my states of mind.

I have always scoffed at the notion of a Mid-Life Crisis; I thought it a was bunch of hooey, but today I have felt the first shadow of what it might be like. My mortality is weighing upon me more and more, a shadow measuring the length of my stride, duration of my breath, and clarity of vision.

R.I.P. Chookies

Alas and Woe, our chooks are no more… 😢

In a list of unfortunate circumstances, our dog killed our chooks on Tuesday. We don’t believe he actually intended them to become dead, and he didn’t make any attempt to eat them once they were, but they’re still dead. Kim was quite distraught – chooks are one of her most favourite pets and the first pets she remembers having as a child. For the rest of you, just imagine your cute fluffy kitty, small puppy, or teddy bear had been torn apart and strewn across the back yard. And it’s the first thing you see when you go outside in the morning. Nuff said.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spamity, Spam! (Penguin)

“I’m not mad I just say ‘Penguin’ at the end of every sentence. Penguin” 😛

SPAM is everyone’s un-favourite topic in IT security, and has been for the last few years… Why isn’t it getting any better? Good question, and everyone has a different answer.

MY answer is this: Bloody useless ISPs

Current case-in-point is Telstra Bigpond. Most of their SMTP relay servers have been listed in several of the major anti-SPAM blacklists. (SPEWS and SpamCop for example)

Motivation vs Procrastination

I’m fairly sure most people have to work to achieve balance between Motivation and Procrastination, but I’m finding anything approaching balance is fairly distant. I’m motivated to get motivated, but when the time comes I just end up procrastinating"

Chip in from Kim: As Garfield says, “My get up and go got up and went.”

In my more ironic (or moronic) procrastinations, I spend my time imagining what I could achieve were I not sitting around procrastinating! (Kim: That’s just daydreaming, and daydreaming is different.)

Comparitive "Shop-ology"

I have had the title of this entry stuck in my head since Kim and I had a brief discussion when I arrived home. It went something like this:

R: Hi there, how was your day? K: Hectic and tiring R: What did you get up to after lunch? (Kim and her grandparents ventured into the city for lunch with me) K: It was awful! We walked around for bloody hours; Nan couldn’t decide which trousers she liked best, so we visited the same shops over and over; I didn’t get a chance to look at any of the shops or stuff that I wanted to; and my favourite shop is closing down! I’m absolutely buggered – you make dinner and put Sebby to bed. R: Yeah, I know what you mean… 😉

A wonderful evening play-time

I’m sure most working parents know the feeling of coming home and being greeted by a child who hasn’t seen you all day and are jst so excited to see you that you almost think it would have been easier to stay at work. You’re tired, the child is tired, and your partner is tired … the recipe for family brawling if ever there was one.

I’ll admit to the irregular tense home-coming, but tonight was not one of those. Tonight was one of the best and calmest nights we have had for ages. So much so that I just had to try and capture it – not high quality, but it should serve as a pleasant reminder…

The wonders of search engines

Search engines do many wonderful thing for us every day, and we take so many of them for granted…

Today, for example, the mighty Inktomi taught me the folly of not excluding /cgi-bin/ in my robots.txt and thus several erroneous karma and comment postings ensued.

On a more positive note, I was indexed by Inktomi today! 😀 (Google has been over my sites several times now without serious event)

In other news, I have a few quick updates:

Recent toys

We had a ball!

No really, it was excellent.

What was? The fund raising ball for Seb’s school of course.

For me, this was a big deal as I’ve never really been to a formal function in my life. I spent my later high school years in a rural NSW town and the graduating “formal” was at the local RSL with many people (including me) turning up in rather less than black tie.

Even our wedding wasn’t this formal. Sure I wore a suit and tie, but it was at the Melbourne Zoo.

Connex: Crap all over...

On 18-Apr-2004 Connex have been granted control of all trains and trams in Melbourne. Since then, almost every train and tram I have been on has been late, usually by more than 5 minutes, sometimes only 3.

“So what?”, you say, it’s only 3-5 minutes!

Well, I have two problems with it; One philosophical, one practical.

Philosophically, just because they claim to be meeting the minimum standard required of them by the government doesn’t mean they are actually doing a good job. There is always room for improvement, particularly when the two most common causes cited are “Shortage of qualified running staff” and “Defective Trains”. Naturally, I have my own interpretations of these causes: “Staff” equates to “The driver has nicked off for his union mandated break and it’s too much trouble for us to arrange for standby drivers, so you can all just wait around at our leisure.” “Defective” equates to “We are running all the old broken trains during peak hour because we don’t want to cause un-necessary wear-and-tear on our shiny new trains” (Or perhaps “It costs too much to fix the trains properly, so we just use duct tape and it fell off.”)

Knoppix ROCKS...!!!

I’ve been reading about Knoppix for quite some time, and being a fan of GNU/Linux and specifically Debian, thought it has been terribly remiss of me to have not tried it before now. (FYI, Knoppix is built from Debian parts)

And I have to say, it is absolutely the easiest and quickest way to have Linux running on any of my home boxen (It will get run up on a variety of the defunct and offline boxen at the office later today…). For anyone familiar with Linux (or many *nixes for that matter), you have a working desktop within literally seconds of popping in the CD and booting (The longest start-up time was on my puny laptop with 128M ram – about 90 seconds).

Mondo! (It's an improvement on feeling sick with frustration...)

A long time friend of mine made a special call from Coffs to point my TV at Mondo Thingo … and it certainly brightened my day! 😀

On a different, but positive note, the car came back from the repairers today.

History: Kim rear-ended someone on April 1st (not even slightly funny 😒). They took ages to contact us with quotes and the remaining details we needed to lodge our insurance claim and so we only got started on it last week (Thursday, the day this started come to think of it … maybe it’s one of those “nexus” days??).

School Parents' Association Meeting

Kim and I have joined the parent’s association of Seb’s school as committee members. I don’t think either of us really have any understanding of what this will achieve or what we might be required to do, but we’re doing it anyway.

I think both of us hope to have input into the operation of the school and the schooling Seb will get as a result. Whether this will actually happen remains to be seen. Based on one of tonights discussion points though I think we have a chance in directing matters that are important to us in a favourable direction.

Site Design updated...

I wasn’t too keen on the default design of the blog, so a quick 5 minute search located this nifty template by linear

Other than that, it’s been a perfectly snoozy, lazy Sunday … Seb’s has gone to his Nan’s and we had mashed spuds for lunch. Decadent and far to much carbs, but v.tasty!

Of course, I’m procrastinating … Setting up a blog means I have just added a bunch more items to my To-Do list:

Late Night, Phone Day

Between network issues with our primary WAN carrier, totally bizarre routing issues on our WAN, and setting up this blog I’ve spent the last 20 out of 24 hours in front of a PC.

About the only good things are:

  1. It’s not my fault
  2. I’m working from home today (And spending all of it on the phone…)

And look, we even have the coffee mug merchadise for the outage! @ Jase’s CafePress Store

Okidoki then, blog on!

I have a blog…!

Ok, so it’s not much to start with and the site design is the default greymatter templates…

…but it’s a start.

I have been “meaning” to start a weblog or online journal for months/years now and it’s always been on the “when I get around to it” list. I can’t be sure what really prompted me to finally get started…

It could be that a work colleague showed me up by starting his blog first! 😀