I’ve written in the past (1, 2) about the Australian government and their misguided attempts to censor the internet. The EFA are a non-profit organisation that defend against the freedoms and rights of online users and one of the (many) battles they’re fighting is against mandatory filtering in Australia.
The EFA do good work.
They’ve recently launched a fundraising campaign so if you like what they’re doing and have a few clams to spare, throw ’em their way.
A couple of months ago now I finally jumped in and bought an iPhone 3G S. I love it! I’m definitely a gadget-y kinda guy but this device is one of my favourite purchases ever.
The iPhone. Photographed in a rare moment when we were separated.
Some history.
I’d had my Nokia 8210 since first year uni – truly amazing to think that I’d used it for almost a decade. It was a pretty amazing device – well ahead of it’s time – with a lithium battery, brilliant interface, exceptionally good predictive text and, best of all, was small and light at only 79 grams. Tiny!
(Although the Nokia is smaller these pictures are not to scale!)
Arguably the best thing Nokia has released.
However I keep a constant eye on the gadget market and had been watching phones improve over the years. The whole smart phone craze almost sucked me in early on but having used Windows Mobile phones I was distinctly unimpressed. They were capable of so much but were horrendous to use. Whenever I picked one up it was only a few minutes later that I’d be fighting a desire to throw it hard at something solid. BlackBerry’s nearly won me over too, having used one in the US for six months it almost had to be pried out of my fingers when I left. But they were frustrating devices too; RIM only really got email and scheduling right – it wasn’t a good phone, had a terrible browser and couldn’t do much else. "Play music? No, this is a business device!"
So I waited.
The first generation of the iPhone came out and I was impressed. Finally a powerful device is in a form that is acceptable. And the interface! Beautiful, innovative and easy-to-use, classic Apple. But it was lacking in some areas. No 3G was the killer; in Australia it was the only real option. But battery life was poor, the camera crappy and storage space was stingy. Further, it was impossible to create applications for the device except as web apps. Crazy talk!
I waited some more.
The iPhone 3G came out a year later and resolved most of my issues with the device. It still had the crappy camera, underwhelming battery life and storage was still a little on the tight side. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and figured I’d be happy with 32GB as a minimum.
More time passed.
The 3G S arrived. I bought one. Me = Happy!
However it’s not perfect. Next I’ll share some of the issues I have with the iPhone…
I’ve finally got my hands on an iPhone! This is just a quick post I’m writing while on the train. Will write more soon!
Screws (real name Mark), Jiggy (Jeremy) and I likes us some music. We all keep an ear out for new interesting artists and songs and, when we find something we like, we let the others know.
Awhile ago we started Music Appreciation Day (actually, the first one was Night but it did feel weird saying I was having a MAN with Jiggy & Screws!). Simple concept. The three of us get together and take turns playing music that we like – music that we think the others may like. Typically we hear new albums that we must have and end up at JB HI-FI a couple of days later giving our credit cards a workout.
This time around I kept a few notes about some of the music we played.
Jiggy kicked it off with a track he later tried to deny was a real entry…
Jiggy, first set:
Screws, first set
Matt, first (only) set
Jiggy, set two
Screws set two
The last couple of sets were so short because I had to leave early…a pity as the three of us were just getting warmed up! Still, as always, I had a good time, we’ll have to have more of them!
[Check out Wireless Cranium, Jiggy’s blog, predominately about his love of music. He’s currently working on his Top 100 of all time!]
Nikon have been busy recently. Two lenses I own have been replaced with new models and my current body has also received an overhaul.
Apart from the drop in value of my gear (if I were thinking of selling, which I’m not!) this is all great news.
The 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 now has the "II" moniker and they’ve reduced the zoom creep (which never bothered me) and added a zoom lock (more useful; keeps the lens locked to the shortest length). Improvements to the optics system are going to be marginal at best with the only change a different lens coating. While these are quite minor refinements this was already an excellent lens in it’s class. For me it’s the perfect travel lens.
The 70-200mm f/2.8 however has been given a completely new optical design. This is my favourite (and most expensive) lens and it’s sublime on my DX D300. It has been criticized (by pixel peepers if not commercial shooters) on FX bodies for being soft, particularly in the corners, and an update has been expected for a long time. I’m sure this update will improve this fantastic workhorse.
The D300S (more info) replaces my D300 and some nice features have appeared. Video, of course, faster shooting, SD card slot (to complement the CF) and a slew of other refinements. Although there’s nothing here that are making me think "upgrade" all of the changes are welcome. New owners are spoiled with a sensational camera.
There were other announcements (particularly the D3000 to replace the entry-level D60) but these were very relevant to me since they upgraded so much of my own gear! Good work Nikon, these are all solid refinements.
[This post has been in draft for months. Waiting at the E&E has given me the chance to finish it!]
At the beginning of every Melbourne International Comedy Festival I am determined to go to a bunch of shows but only ever end up seeing one or two. I continued the trend this year seeing two, but they were both quality.
Daniel Kitson
Kitson, one of my all-time favourite comedic performers, slipped mostly under the radar this year, performing a string of small shows at RRR studios. Tickets were sold at Polyester records and, despite very limited advertising, sold out quickly. Thanks Desci for the heads-up!
The show was called "Work In Progress" as he was trialling out new material to be complete for the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. Tickets were remarkably cheap at $14 contributing to the rapid sales.
Work in Progress was an apt title. The show didn’t have his usual…flow. Numerous times he rhetorically asked "What was I saying?", his stutter was stronger than usual (less rehearsed?) and his material still needed some polish. However, it was Kitson. The man is a genius; I’d listen to him talk about tax returns. I just love the left-of-centre way he looks at the world and his emotional, human, stories. Funny, funny man. If you’ve never seen Kitson live go do it next chance you get.
Tim Minchin
Australian lad Minchin kinda exploded on to the Comedy Festival scene a couple of years ago winning over audiences by performing his rare breed of musical comedy.
Obviously a talented musician – a gifted pianist with a great voice – it turned out that he also had a talent for writing insightful lyrics that were intelligent and funny as hell.
As expected, Minchin nailed every one of his songs. From Ginger (a song about redheads – he’s a blood-nut himself though you wouldn’t know it with his crazed hairstyle) to I Love Boobies he was pitch-perfect and hilarious. However the most memorable part of the show was where he delivered a nine-minute spoken-word piece about a dinner party he attended where he argued with a beautiful woman who rejected scientific claims (Minchin, a self-professed geek, was completely in his element). The delivery was extraordinary. Nine minutes, no prompting, nothing written down, just Minchin and his killer diatribe. Sensational!
His only real weakness is with audience interaction. When he’d get out from behind the piano and start talking with the audience he was only adequate. Some people have that knack (Ross Noble and Arj Barker come to mind), Minchin hasn’t yet acquired it.
Still, a very polished, funny show and I can recommend him to anyone. Thanks to Jen for organising the (front row!) tickets.
Oh, you should also go check out Rock ‘n’ Roll Nerd. It’s a documentary about his early days as a struggling comic and is both touching and inspiring.
Hopefully next year I’ll see more shows!
I’m writing this from the waiting area of the Eye and Ear hospital.
All this week I’ve had a "mangy" right eye. Bloodshot and weepy I’ve got some sort of irritation that isn’t going away on it’s own. More worryingly, the past couple of days have revealed a new symptom: slightly blurry vision. Ick. Saw a GP today (tried to get in yesterday; no dice, all busy) and she was very thorough, careful and understanding 1 but was unable to pin down the exact source of the irritation. She recommended I bite the bullet and go to the E & E.
Expected waiting time is around four hours. Can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday evening… 😉
I’ll let y’all know what’s going on when I find out…
[Update]
It wasn’t four hours. Oh no. Five and a half. The staff were very friendly, patient and efficient but damn are they understaffed. And apparently the government wants to close them down and push everyone through the public system…
Anyway. Turns out a small ulcer on my eye is causing the irritation. It’s treatable with antibiotics – I have to squirt some goop on my eye three times a day. In parallel they’ve taken a swab of my eye and are going to see if any bacteria grows on it. If my eye doesn’t respond to the current treatment they’ll know if it’s something more exotic and can use the bacteria to figure out how to progress with further treatment.
Despite the long wait the E&E staff did a great job.
Now it’s midnight and time for some dinner!
[Update #2]
All’s good! Well, on the mend anyway. I visited the E&E again Monday and the doctor took a look at my eye…"It’s actually a textbook case of marginal keratitis". "Ohhhh" I replied. Internally I’m wondering what the hell is that?! "Yeah, it’s due to posterior blepharits.". Naturally. "Doc, am I going to see properly again?". He laughed, "Yep, no problems – use these drops and you’ll see a big improvement in the next day or two and you should be at close to 100% in a week."
Now, two days later, my vision is at about 80-90%, the redness and irritation has all but disappeared. I’ve got a check-up with them next Wednesday but it’s looking really good (pardon the pun).
1: Thanks Dr Alison Sands (at the Ivanhoe Doctors Clinic)!
You may think – given the title – that I consider Max Barry to be part robot. But no. Max is a wonderful Australian author that is, as far as I’m aware, totally human. He’s currently writing a real-time serial story titled Machine Man and I’m really enjoying it.
This is a pretty cool concept. Max is writing this story day-by-day and posting it straight to the web without publishers or anyone else getting in the way. Like a blog but written by a talented author who’s committing to roughly a ‘page’ per day.
The first 43 pages are free but then it’ll cost you US$6.95 to receive all the rest. How many more pages are there? No-one knows, not even Max, but I’m at page 63 now and there’s still a lot of legs left in the story (hehe, Machine Man readers will get the pun!).
More conventionally you could start by reading his books Company and Jennifer Government (I haven’t yet read Syrup but I’ll get to it). Keep up the good stuff Max!
I’ve blogged about my MythTV setup before. MythTV is the system I use that lets me watch and record TV the way I want to. View the channel guide, click to record a show. Pause and rewind live TV. Remove ads from recorded shows. Myth does all this and (much) more and the software responsible for all this magic is free.
The hardware is mostly a vanilla computer. There’s a good chance you have an old PC lying around that you could turn into a MythTV system. I often get asked (hi Adrian!) about what hardware I use and, since I recently upgraded some of the components, I thought I’d discuss it here on the blog.
Here are the specs of my current system:
Now this is well in excess of what you need to run a MythTV backend (though you will need a bit of grunt if you’re using the same PC as the frontend) but I also use the same computer for a number of other purposes. And the only components I’ve paid for is the RAM, power supply and tuner cards – I’ve spent about $300 total. The other parts I’ve just scrounged for over the years.
If you were building you own system from scratch you could get away with much less. The specs of my original system:
Which was cutting-edge in 2000. Although it was working a little hard the two main reasons for upgrading were 1) noisy primary hard drive and 2) no expansion left on the motherboard. The older motherboards didn’t have many onboard features and my ASUS was no exception. I had PCI cards for sound, video, USB2, SATA, 10/100 ethernet and by the time I’d added my first tuner card there was no expansion left. Modern motherboards with onboard everything are wonderful for a Myth installation.
Anyways, if you want to know more please just ask!
The Apple WWDC is over and there were many announcements that interested me. Snow Leopard for US$29, a new MacBook Pro 15", a reduction in price to the MacBook Air (about time) and significant performance improvements to Safari.
But – more importantly – I want an iPhone 3GS!
The iPhone has matured to the point where it now does just about everything I want and does it better than just about any other device. The 3GS will be on my shopping list as soon as it hits Australia.
[Update: Congrats to Talia!!]
At the risk of placing my masculinity in doubt…
I’ve really been enjoying So You Think You Can Dance this season!
I’ve always been surrounded by people who’ve been involved with dancing in some form. My Dad danced in his youth, my sister spent her childhood in ballet, jazz or whatever classes. Melissa has danced since she was this tall. Since learning a bit of salsa I’ve even had some first-hand appreciation of the skill and dedication that dancing requires. Anyways, for as long as I can remember I’ve enjoyed watching good dancers do their thing.
And the dancers on SYTYCD this season have been bloody good. The top four are all very versatile dancers, able to whip out different style on demand. Quite amazing when you consider they may go from contemporary to latin to hip hop all in one show.
While Talia is my pick to win – she’s just an extraordinary dancer – it could go to any of them.
Looking forward to Sunday’s finale.
For me, the highlight of last Sunday’s show, the Tango with Ben and Talia
Last weekend Nicki, Tim, Dave and I (and new dive buddies James and Mark) went through the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver training. We had all held the Open Water certification but the Advanced allows us to dive deeper – increasing our maximum depth from 18m to 30m – and hones many skills. The training was really interesting and great fun!
An amazing photo of a pair of divers by arno gourdol from Flickr
Tim and Nicki had used the folks from Aquability for their Open Water cert and had been more than happy with them. So when they organised the Advanced training we went with their recommendation. Mark Ryan, assisted by his wife Vicki, took us for the training and I felt we struck gold; you couldn’t ask for a better instructor than Mark. A highly experienced technical diver, Mark is not only knowledgeable but is patient, calm and blessed with oodles of common sense. He also spins a gripping yarn! Vicki too was a wonderful teacher and a lovely person to boot.
The course was run over both days of the weekend. Saturday there were three dives at the Rye pier, all shallow (<5m) aimed at building fundamental skills. We developed our ability to control buoyancy (and learnt that we should have no more weight than absolutely necessary), practiced underwater navigation skills (compass work, measuring distance, using natural markers) and did a ‘naturalist’ dive. No, this doesn’t mean diving nude! It was designed to focus on marine life and how to be responsible divers in the underwater environment.
We saw seahorses like this one at Rye pier. Photo by Saspotato.
After a meal and beer or two at the Rye pub we all retired to the Rye Beach Hotel where we practically collapsed from exhaustion. Three dives in a day is bloody tiring!
The next morning we woke up fresh to take on the ‘serious’ dives. The first was highly anticipated – diving on the J4 submarine wreck just outside the heads. The J4 was a WW1 British submarine that was given to the Australian Navy toward the end of it’s military life. Our navy used it mostly as a training vessel before scuttling it where it now lies in 28m of water. For all of us this was our first dive over 18m and we were pretty pumped.
Unfortunately, while wrestling with a vicious wetsuit, I hurt my back. It wasn’t crippling but, carrying the 25-30 kg of gear, it was pretty painful. Frankly I don’t think I could have done the dive without Dave really helping me out carrying the gear around. Thanks mate! Anyways, once in the water – almost weightless – it was fine and we quickly descended to find the well-kept wreck. The conning tower was well preserved and you could look straight down into where the periscope used to be. Visibility was a little poor (maybe 8m) and there was a fair bit of surge to fin against. That, combined with it being our first deep-ish dive meant that we consumed more air than we hoped and our bottom time was shorter than we’d have liked. Still, it was an awesome dive. Some of us surfaced with very little air though! 10 bar on the gauge would feel uncomfortable I reckon!
Check out this video of some other group diving on the J4 to get a feel of what it was like; they had excellent conditions!
The next dive was our official ‘deep’ dive and we’d be descending down to 28m – allowing just enough wiggle room to ensure we didn’t go past the 30m limit (instant fail). We were going to part of the Lonsdale Wall which is just inside the heads and renowned for it’s marine life. This dive was more technical than our others with Mark and Vicki watching us closely to ensure we dove competently. We quickly descended and performed a couple of exercises including a “narc” test. You see, when you’re in deep water, typically below mid-20m, your thinking can become slower and concentration can be harder. The effect is known as Nitrogen Narcosis and occurs because the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in your bloodstream is affected in the deep water (O2 compresses more so you kinda get high on nitrogen). Being ‘narced’ is not dangerous in its own right but it can slow you down and cause you to make mistakes which, when you’re under, can cause serious problems. Anyway Mark whipped out his slate (effectively underwater paper) and wrote a math problem on it. This was mine:
3 x your age
+ your age
I remember staring at it for a few seconds before I could absorb what I had read. Then I struggled to remember my age. Then I slowly worked out the math. It was like I had cotton wool stuffed in my head! It really made it obvious that you had to beware of the narcosis effect.
We swam around for awhile enjoying the marine life on the wall then began our ascent. As a group we formed a pretty tight circle and controlled our ascent reasonably well. You could tell the dive masters though; Mark and Vicki were practically motionless, conserving their energy and air, hovering effortlessly. The rest of us were relatively flapping about as we fought to maintain neutral buoyancy. We got the job done but we’ve got some way to becoming elegant in the water!
After we surfaced and debriefed (naturally over beer and munchies at the Rye pub) we were told we all passed and were fully fledged Advanced Open Water divers!
A big thanks to Tim & Nicki for organising the weekend and to Mark and Vicki for running such a smooth course. Finally to Dave, mucho grazies mate for being an awesome dive buddy. You can be my wingman anytime. 😉
KRudd’s big announcement recently was the new National Broadband Network.
Lot’s of interesting viewpoints emerging post-proposal.
Here’s a grab-bag of my thoughts…
43B is a lot of money. I’ve dug around a little and cannot find any significant explanation as to how they arrive at that figure. As far as I can tell it’s a sound bite for KRudd to throw at the media. "43 billion! See. It’s a big number so we must be serious!"
Is it coincidence that Japan recently media attention over their 160Mb broadband that is available right now?
Glad to see that the government is considering working around Telstra (by proposing fibre to the home instead of running it over existing infrastructure). Their monopoly on our telecommunications network should be brought to an end. Especially since most of their services are overpriced and poorly implemented, IMO. If I were a Telstra exec I’d be nervous. The proposal covers a lot of ground that I interpret as "how can we limit Telstra’s power".
I’ve never had confidence in any of our recent crop of communications ministers. Richard Alston, Daryl Williams and Helen Coonan were all technically incompetent and did little, if anything, to improve the IT landscape. Senator Coonan – while a polished and seemingly decent individual – also exhibits an apparently vague grasp of technical concepts. So my confidence is low that the government can get this right.
BUT, if they do it could be great. The promise is cheap, fast internet connectivity with a boost to local jobs in the process. I’ve long wished that the government invested in local IT and this is exactly the kind of commitment I’ve been hoping to hear.
Let’s see if the government can deliver because KRudd is good at making promises but hasn’t really delivered as much as I had hoped. Hopefully the NBN will be a success.
Not usually my favourite people, the ticket inspector I bumped into on the train this morning was a legend. He was super-polite. Happily wished everyone a good morning, apologised for the inconvenience and then went about his job. Gave most people a respectful "Hello, how are you doing sir/madam?" as he checked their tickets.
When he found an offender he handled it discreetly lowering his voice so as not to make a scene nor embarrass the person.
Sure it helped that he was about 6’3" and built like a tank – no-one was going to argue with him however he handled the situation. But kudos to him for doing his job politely and respectfully.
For the past couple of months, I’ve been going indoor rock climbing once a week. Every Monday a few friends and I gather at the HardRock Climbing Centre in the city and punish our bodies by trying to haul them toward the top of the 25-odd metre roof. Sometimes we even make it.
Thanks to Madjock for the cool photo of Hardrock!
For some reason, I find it really good fun.
I can’t put my finger on exactly why. It’s satisfying, sure. When you tap the pulley at the top of the wall you definitely get a sense of achievement. It’s decent exercise; the heart rate certainly increases and, particularly on challenging climbs, you work up a fair sweat (well I do). It’s a great combination of strength, will-power and technique – all are required to be successful.
Thanks to freelancing god for the shot of the ‘big pillar’ inside Hardrock.
I don’t know, it’s probably all of the above. But climbing has become one of the highlights of my week.
We’ve got a fair-sized pool of regulars now, so there’s usually at least a few of us that go. If you want to come along please get in touch!
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