Offline for Christmas

Back mid-January.

Stay safe and have fun.

Christmas break

Well, the end of the year and Christmas is upon us all once more. As is often the case, it's time to rest, take stock and plan for the year ahead.

After an extended period of quiet from me, there's going to be another one. I need to reconsider much of what I do in my life (time online is just one of these things).

It'll be interesting to see what the new year will bring.

Peace and goodwill to you and yours...

Back again

Sorry, life's been hectic.

Apart from Elijah not wanting to sleep, I also started a new job on 16 November. It's been hard to find time to do anything but exist at the moment. Hopefully things will ease up again soon.

In the meantime, gratuitous footage of Elijah being cute at bathtime (for anyone who hasn't seen it on Little Elijah...)



I know, life's got so desperate I'm pinching content from my own blogs...

Shake shake shake

Shake shake shake

Shake your booty, oh yeah, shake your booty!

Since I've declared I'm never going to put video of my victory dance online, this narrative representation is just going to have to do.

I got my marks back on my final assignment, and they were good enough to tip me over the edge for the clean sweep - 4 from 4 High Distinctions!

Awwwww. Yeah.

Oh, shake shake shake...

Meh. Still sick.

Still whingeing too.

I've been poked, prodded, given erythromycin (a broad spectrum antibiotic) and blood tested. Hopefully I'll soon know why I'm coughing all the time and have a sore throat. The latest guess is bacterial bronchitis with a remote possibility of whooping cough, which the blood test is meant to rule out (and is mainly just a precaution as whooping cough and babies don't play nice together).

After taking today off work, I do feel much better albeit still a little tired and still with a sore throat. Now that it's night time, the cough is starting to return and the tiredness is creeping back.

Off to work again tomorrow. I have exactly one week left in this job before I start my new one. The next 6 work days are going to be a blur of tidying up loose ends and writing up some handover. Woo.

And then there was none...

It is done.

The final assignment has been submitted electronically.

I've had headaches, a continually sore throat, constantly dripping sinuses, hacked up my lungs on a number of occasions and slept on the lounge the entire week so I don't keep my wife awake with my coughing, but I did it.  I don't think the marks will be good enough to make it a clean sweep of High Distinctions for my Grad Certificate (there were some intricacies of Open Office Base that I couldn't quite work out and to be honest, I'm not sure if it's me or the software), but quite frankly right now I could not physically care any less.  It is done and it will just have to do.  I only need 12 or 13 out of 25 to claim a Distinction and I'm almost certain to get at least that many marks.

So, it's off to the doctor again tomorrow because apparently I should be much better by now, and then after some more sleep, life will return to a semblance of normality.

yay.

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Boo-yah!

I'm still sick (turns out I had laryngitis) and struggling through my days, but one small piece of news caused me to do the most joyful victory dance I have done in a long time.

I got the marks back tonight for the final assignment of one of my subjects (Introduction to Data Networks), and the mark (14.1/15) was high enough to push me over into the High Distinction category with 87.7%.

Awwwwwwww yeaaaaa-uh.

Of course, this is pending final weighting of marks but I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm going to just scrape in there. This makes 3 from 3 HDs for my first year of part-time study/full-time work/full-time dad/slightly neglectful full-time husband. I had convinced myself that I wouldn't get the marks required to push me over 85% into HD territory, and this made the victory dance that little bit sweeter.

Just one assignment to go. I really don't think I'm getting the required marks to make it 4 from 4, but it is within the realm of possibility. It's just not all that likely.

*victory dance including obligatory butt wiggle*

(no, I will not tape it and put it up on YouTube)

I hate being sick...

It's weird. I get sick maybe once a year (twice at most). I generally complain about this because it means I don't get time off work. Problem is, when I do get sick, I complain about endlessly. In fact, I'm so pathetic and needy and whiny when I get sick that my wife usually can't take more than a day of it (two at most) before telling me I must be feeling better and shouldn't I be going back to work now?

Right now, I'm sick. Sore throat, dripping sinuses, aching back and neck and pretty cranky (actually, that last one is true on just about any given day). I've got an assignment due in just over a week, but that can wait until tomorrow.

I hate being sick. Bleh.

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Taking better pics

There's some great tips here for how to take a better photograph. Some of my favourites:

• tilt the camera
• get up close, don't use the zoom
• stop looking through the viewfinder (you'll have more fun this way)
• turn off the flash (the difference can be amazing).

I know that for the photos of our trip to Tasmania, the ones I liked the best were ones where I went for different perspectives or just snapped off a quick shot without thinking too much.

I'll post my favourite Tassie photos later, but they're all in our Tasmania Gallery.

New Shoes

Last Friday I bought new shoes.

This may not seem like a monumental and earth shattering activity for normal people but as a quick perusal of this blog would demonstrate, normality is not my "thing". My recently departed shoes (actually they're sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to remember to remove the shoe laces and then dump them in the industrial bin) had a small hole over the left big toe (I have no idea how it got there but the leather just got thin I guess) and the sole of the right shoe had begun separating from the upper, leaving a gaping chasm where, if it ever rained here, water could seep in when splashing in puddles. My shoes have been in this condition for about 3 months, which is a conservative estimate.

I last bought new dress shoes for wearing to work in the months leading up to my wedding (which was in July '03). I had had those shoes since 1999. They replaced shoes that I had for seven years. I had got those shoes at the beginning of Grade 11 and only replaced them after I slipped over in the kitchen of the restaurant where I managed the bar and fractured my elbow. They had already been re-soled once and I didn't see the value in doing it again as the soles wouldn't be non-slip (nor were the new shoes for that matter - curse you lying sales assistant at Colorado, Myer Centre!)

I don't replace shoes very often, although football boots is another matter (if they last two seasons, I've done well).

I don't have much of a point here except to say I like my new shoes. Comfy. Shiny. Leathery.

I wonder if I can break double figures with these ones...

US bans vegemite

Edit 29/10: As has been pointed out, this is in fact not true: http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/vegemite.asp

Heresy!

The US government has banned vegemite! Apparently it's because vegemite has folate added, and in the US you can only add folate to bread and cereals. Bah! Weak excuse if I ever heard one.

This should be considered a declaration of war, in my opinion. Vegemite on toast is one of the finest delicacies known to man (to this man anyway) and now thousands of expat Aussies will be denied this simple pleasure unless they can smuggle it in from Canada or Mexico.

Is this any way to treat an ally, Uncle Sam?

A new job

Most people who read this would be aware that I'm merely a small administrative cog in a large, federal, administrative wheel.  On 16 November, I'll officially enter the lowest rungs of management as I become the least powerful executive level administrative functionary.

It's actually pretty cool to me and is the culmination of my 5 year plan when I moved to Canberra back at the start of 2002 (which means it just scrapes in to my 5 year plan, but it still made it).  One of the positive personal benefits is that it provides just enough security of income that my wife can continue to be a stay at home mother for the forseeable future.  This, more than anything else, is what I love about this promotion.

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4 down, 2 to go

I did the exam tonight and got 37 out of 40 (I did it online through WebCT which means it got marked straight away), which translates into 14 out of 15 (there's some beneficial rounding going on there, I'll concede but that's the way the system does it). That leaves me sitting on nearly 84% for this subject, but there's still 45% of the marks to go (one assignment submitted but not yet graded and one due 27 October).

I now have just 2 assignments to go and then I'm free for the year and Helen can have her husband back and Elijah can have his Daddy back (although I always try and make room for Elijah, but I have been woefully neglectful to my wife - I am well aware that some things must change).

Yay. The end of the year is in sight! Woo!

3 down, 3 to go

Assignments and exams still suck, but at least there is a whole let less of them now...

Creative void

How do people manage to be creative and still live the 9 to 5 life?

When I get home after work, I can barely find the energy to feed myself, yet alone spend precious mental energy doing anything creative, whether it be writing, composing, playing my guitar or even free form day dreaming.

Admittedly, I'm probably burning my mental and physical reserves pretty low right now, between work and study and a lad who has decided that, at nearly 6 months of age, sleeping through the night is for little babies and since he's a big baby now, he'll wake up and scream when he wants to, but still...

Two things of interest:

1. Creating Minds.org - tools, techniques, methods on all matters creative. It fits well with my renewed interest in lifehacks and when I've got some time to breathe again, I'll see if I can combine this with some of the things I'm learning off 43folders.
2. You too can be creative; it just takes hard work - great, more hard work. Woo.
   

Maybe I'm just stretched too thin to create right now. I can feel the creative burn, but the flame is so faint and struggling for oxygen that sometimes I'm scared it won't come back. Ever.

Perhaps what I really need to do is to just go to bed.

Good night.

Fat, scrawny, infertile and impotent

Judging by the email I'm getting lately, this must be what I am. Why else would I be getting all these emails selling "v1@gr@" and cialis (what? no levitra? are they too good for me or something?), weightloss pills, steroids and medications to increase the number of "swimmers" I can produce (but clearly only after I've taken the viagra), which is apparently what really impresses the ladies. Oh, and I'm not as big as I could be either, apparently. Yeah, and steroids will help that problem...

The weird thing is pharma-spam is the only spam I get. Do I have a file somewhere marked "erectile dysfunction only. Has no money so no emails from Nigeria. Try Euro lottery in 6 months if viagra works"? I remember the good old days when spam tried to help me work from home, send on mail, help me to update my bank account details and inform me that Paypal needed me to log in straight away.

Spam just isn't what it used to be when I was a lad.

Assignments suck

'nuff said.

Between doing assignments and the boy's currently unsettled sleeping patterns, I haven't had more than about 6 hours sleep (and often much less) in almost three weeks.

Thank god for caffeine.

Crunched

Four assignments and 1 exam due between now and 6 November.

Temporary promotion leading to longer work hours on top of my standard full-time working week (and then there is the hour each-way commute on the bus).

A sad, weed infested lawn and garden with not enough hours of daylight (yet) after work to do much with it, which just leaves me with spare hours here and there on the weekend (I sowed some lawn seed yesterday, covered it with some granulated wetting agent and watered it in - a small patch of lawn still took two hours to do!).

A nearly six month-old son who insists (quite rightly) that he is the most important thing in the whole wide world (and the cutest, too) and that everything else should come second to him.

Somewhere in there is cooking, cleaning, ironing, sleeping and (gasp) spending some quality time with my wife.

*sigh*

If you don't hear much from me over the next six weeks, I'm bound up in all of that. Somewhere.

Getting things done

I'm an incredibly disorganised person. You can usually tell where I have been in residence as there is always stuff everywhere, generally accompanied by teetering piles of paper which in turn are occasionally balanced or weighed down with a collection of stuff that is separate from, but related to, the other stuff that is, as I have already mentioned, generally everywhere. This habitual habitation ritual can be witnessed at work, in my car, my desk at home, my coffee table at home, my dining room table at home, my side of the bedroom floor and in large piles of bank statements, paid bills and other receipts in the study, which are often weighed down by obsolete pieces of computer hardware that no longer fit on my desk.

I'm a big procrastinator, which goes a long way towards explaining the preceding paragraph. I am also very easily distracted and I am sure that this is strongly linked to my procrastination. It is amazing what mundane item of trivia will catch your attention and leave you engrossed for hours when you are supposed to be sorting through old telephone bills from 2002 which for some reason you have kept but you cannot for the life of you work out why.

Being like this actually offends my geek sensibilities and my almost obsessive desire to categorise and order just about everything in existence.

(this last point will confuse my wife no end who would probably argue quite convincingly that she has never seen me exercise a desire to organise and categorise in the 8 years she has known me. In my defence, I'm easily distracted and just because you don't act on the desire, doesn't mean it isn't strong, obsessive and tears you apart inside when you never quite get around to doing it)

The thing is, I should know better. Late last year and early this year, work paid for me and five other people to undergo a Personal Efficiency Program, or PEP. PEP is full of incredibly useful, but also painfully obvious ways of improving your own productivity and helping you keep on top of things. Possibly the biggest driving force behind the PEP philosophy is "Do it now" which translates to "If it can be done in under ten minutes, do it straight away and then it's out of your way. Don't let it sit there, nagging at you, festering, sneering at your ability to keep control of your own life and circumstances, mocking and deriding your organisational skills". Something like that anyway. PEP was useful, but it is all too easy to stray once more.

"Do it now" seems to have a lot in common with the "Getting things done" movement, based on the book by David Allen titled, strangely enough, "Getting Things Done". I haven't read the book myself, but I have found something that seems just as inspired (and indeed has been inspired by David Allen) - 43 folders.

43folders falls under the category of "lifehacks". Little things you can do to try and be a little bit more productive. There's more than the website - there's a 43folders wiki, a 43folders Google Group and it's a blog and community as well. So much stuff to look at. So little time to look at it all (largely because I'm not as productive as I could be).

This time, I'll try harder. With Web 2.0 on my side, how can I fail?


As something of a post script, Merlin Mann, founder of 43folders is an interesting guy. He's a regular on MacBreak Weekly (an Apple based weekly podcast on the TWiT Netcast Network) and will also be featuring in an upcoming Inside the Net podcast (also on TNN).

White & Nerdy

Edit 6/11/06: For some reason, the video shows up as currently not available on Google Video. Maybe Weird Al thought there'd been enough viral marketing and took it back down again. Link left for posterity.

Yes. Yes I am. It's probably not a surprise to anyone who knows me that I understand everything in this song (even identify with some of it). I've always had a soft spot for Weird Al and it's comforting to know that as I get older, some things will never change. It's also comforting to know that once again I'm a little late to a bandwagon. Some other things don't change either...

Marmaduke Explained

When I was a kid, we had this giant book of Marmaduke cartoons. I used to love reading them while eating my breakfast in the mornings. However, a large book of Marmaduke cartoons quickly brings the reader to two conclusions:

1. they don't really make a lot of sense
2. they're not actually all that funny.

These two conclusions held true for many years, but now all that is about to change.

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke.

Gold. Pure gold.

Found via Boing Boing (permalink)

A few more days away

I'll be off-line until Monday evening as we're having the boy christened this weekend. Yay.

The coolest bookshelves I have ever seen...

Tangram.

I could have a lot of fun with these. There's a bunch of other cool products around on their site as well. I'm fairly sure I could never afford any of them...

Two steps forward, one step back

This time of year has traditionally been a good time of year for us - Tax Return Season. I don't think there has been a single year when the ATO hasn't given us both back at least a little something. For a change, both us have got a decent return so we've been able to retire some of the credit card debt that has been mounting since we reverted to one income.

Today, we've changed debt situation. Again. We have been in need of a new refrigerator for quite a while and we have known that as soon as Bugs moves onto solids we were going to have to replace it with something bigger. Harvey Norman and Domayne have been offering a large amount of goods on 40 months interest free. This is an offer that is very hard to resist, and it proved impossible in the end. We now own a new refrigerator (to be delivered), digital camcorder and a printer. The printer was dirt cheap (and in the end I paid for it with my credit card anyway because we had reached my limit with my GE Creditline - which is not as bad as it sounds as it's purposely a lower limit) and the camcorder was reduced, but still...

Yay. Debt. Woo. We've made a calculated decision to enter into interest free debt, and we have the means to pay out the amount well in advance of the due period. That doesn't mean I have to like it though.

Preserving the ozone layer

The ozone layer is one of things we probably can't do without. It blocks large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which is responsible for sunburn and, if exposure is high enough, skin cancers. We've all heard for many years that the ozone layer has big "holes" in it at the poles (which is more like an extreme reduction in the concentration, but the idea's the same) as well as a general depletion of levels in the atmosphere.

Recent press reports would indicate that while the ozone layer is recovering, it may not be doing so as fast as we originally thought it might. Indeed, some skeptics question whether there was ever a problem in the first place. Arguments aside, living in Australia I'm a prime ozone depletion sufferer, so I'm inclined to side with the green and unwashed on this one, which is why in support of the United Nations International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer (September 16) I bring you this:



In 2006, Al Gore spoke at the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference. It's worth watching, and at about 17 minutes it won't take much of your time.

Thank you.


Edit: If you don't want to (or can't) stream the video, it's also available in mp4 format at http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/.

Trying something new...

pixelated dreams

Let me know what you think...

Stalk much?

Got your next victim lined up but no subterranean stronghold to contain them? Then you need to check out this place.

Creepy.

I'm guessing the fortress was built by "end of the world" survivalist nuts, and I must admit that I would do almost anything in the world to have a fortress of my very own (mainly because then I could pretend the rest of the world didn't exist and both myself and the rest of the world would probably be much happier as a result), but still... Just think of the weirdos lining up to buy this place.

I guess it must be some consolation that most creeps or freaks wouldn't have the cash to shell out on this baby.

Boonie's back!

For a brief few days, Boonie was back, asking for a VB like the little champion and loyal servant he has always been.

Yesterday he started speaking constantly for about half an hour (although I use the phrase "speaking" rather loosely as it was more an unitelligble mutter) before the unthinkable happened: his battery ran out, and Boonie was silenced, I think this time for good.

Given his battery was supposed to run out back around March, and he's already arisen from the dead once alread, it's been a bloodly marvellous effort from the little Aussie battler.

I can't wait for this season's VB Series of One Day cricket, where a new Boonie will be unleashed on us all (yay!), and rumour has it that this time he'll have a little friend as well.

Off their trolley

If finally had to happen. The trolley is gone.

On the weekend all the tertiary institutions in Canberra had an open day, where prospective students would be shown around the campus and the institutions would have an opportunity to offload all the pamphletts that they had lying about the place because someone accidentally added a zero the Quantity column on the printer's order form. This time last weekI figured that if ever there was a time when CIT would want to not look like the dudes from Animal House had just visited after yet another giant kegger, this would be the time.

Monday morning, bright and early, I mentally waved to the trolley still sitting in the tree as I sped past on the bus. I guess CIT was about more than looking good. "We're not shallow" the campus seemed to say. "We are all about the learning here, we are. Frankly, we're a little disappointed that you could think so little of us. For shame."

Tuesday morning I drove to work as I had a lecture in the afternoon, so I did not pass the trolley. In a way, I'm sad, because on Wednesday when I passed CIT on the bus, the trolley was gone.

I never even got to say goodbye...

Writely

I'm just testing out Writely, Google's latest in a line of Ajax dealys on their way to conquering the world.

I don't think I've quite got the hang of using a web-based word processor, and I don't think I could ever use it for serious work, but it looks like it could be handy. You can blog from it as well, which makes it yet another in a long series of geek toys I play with for no reason other than I can ;)

Edit: Well, there's still some issues, including not publishing titles in Blogger, but since publishing to blogs is still a beta feature, and isn't the main point of the service anyway, I'll forgive them...

Impressions of the Tasmania Trip #2

You can change a nappy anywhere you want, as long as you do it with confidence.

On our trip, we changed Elijah's nappy in a variety of public places including, but not limited to:

• on a picnic table of a busy rest stop near Bookham on the drive down to Melbourne;
  
• on a packed City Circle tram in Melbourne;
• on the bonnet of the car in a back street in Perth, Tasmania;
• on a picnic table on the way to Tahune, Tasmania;
• on a picnic table at the water front at St Helens;
  
• in a restaurant during the reception for the lovely wedding of Andrew and Jacinta;
• on a picnic table outside of Tasmazia (you should be detecting a pattern here); and
  
• on the bonnet of the car outside of a Shell road house about half an hour north of Melbourne (yet another pattern)

Edit 20 August: Ooh, and I forgot, on the bonnet of the car in the car park at a Maccas in Devonport

At a couple of places, some people looked a little surprised, but no one objected (not even on the tram and it was packed) and no one even really looked shocked or outraged.

The same goes for breastfeeding, but these days breastfeeding in public is no big deal (which is the way it should be).

Non-photo #1: Redux

The shopping trolley I wrote about earlier is still there, many weeks later. Maybe it's too hard to get out of the tree.

Before my computer went tits up a while back, I managed to squeeze off a few shots that then sat on my camera until the computer was fixed and I could download them. The story didn't make much sense written down, and I'm not convinced the photos help, but I just had to give credit where it was due.

The bus stops are probably about 8 feet high. It's going to take a little bit of effort to climb up on top of one. It's going to take a lot more effort to haul a shopping trolley up on to the roof.






This photo should give you an idea of both the height of the trolley from the ground as well as the distance between the tree and the top of the bus stop. That must have taken a hell of a lot of work to wedge that trolley in properly. I wouldn't be surprised if it took two or three attempts.





And finally, so you can see just how firmly wedged that trolley is...


I wonder just how long this trolley is going to stay up there. Installation art at its finest!

Just leave the car alone. Please.

Stop breaking into our fucking car. Seriously.

4 times in 3 years is too much, and we're really not that impressed about having to replace the driver's side door lock (again) and the lock on the boot so that they can once again be key operated.

Serious consideration is being given to becoming a one car household as too many people seem to see a Hyundai Excel as easy pickings (I know the link is for the Accent but it turns out that in Australia, between 95 and 2000, what was an Excel was an Accent in most other places. Stuff you learn) .

Nothing was stolen, but it still gives me the shits. The damage caused will be inconvenient enough, and as usual, will be less than the excess on our insurance policy so there's no point making a claim.

*sigh*

Everytime I start to feel good about humanity, some arseclown goes and ruins it for me.

Impressions of Tasmania #1

One thing that really stands out in my memory of our recent trip to Tasmania (apart from the gorgeous scenery and the nightmare drive between Scottsdale and Launceston at dusk) is that everyone drives so slowly.

In my daily existence, most people tend to drive at least 10km/h over the posted speed limit. I often find myself doing 10km/h over the speed limit in the right hand lane (that's the fast lane for those who drive on the wrong side of the road) and still have someone tail gaiting me because I’m just not driving fast enough for them. In Tasmania, the rule seemed to be that driving 10km/h below the speed limit was an acceptable and much more civilised way of getting around. This was most obvious in the central business district of Hobart (Tasmania's capital) but was also a popular philosophy on major highways between towns.

Driving speeds are a useful indicator of how laid back and relaxed citizens really are. Canberrans like to think we are laid back and relaxed. We promote our home as the "Bush Capital", boast of the many parks and recreational areas and steadfastly believe we are living the dream of a stress-free lifestyle. This has been one of the major selling points of a campaign to attract more people to live in Canberra (warning: site is Flash heavy).

How many Canberrans are relaxed? At social events conversations quickly turn to work (if they didn’t already start out that way). I find that public servants are the worst serial offenders (or maybe I just hang around with too many public servants) as it takes only the smallest prompting before we all "talk shop". (Happily, I do this less and less. Without even the slightest prompting I now enter New Father Mode, regaling people with stories of vomit and poo and watch the eyes of the childless glaze over at record speeds. I’m a real riot at dinner parties.)

As Canberra is a town with a highly transient population, it can be hard to meet people. If it's difficult to get out and about socially, work can become the focus. I find that people lose perspective and seem to develop this bizarre tendency to believe that what they do is vitally important and requires every spare shred of their energy, including evenings and weekends. Too much focus on work leaves too little focus on other things like exercise, balanced diets with home cooking, sleep(!) and downtime where unwinding is necessary (and that doesn't include downing a bottle of red at a dinner party while complaining about how little work your Manager does while you take home a ream of print outs to read at the dinner table every night). People rush around to meetings, to supermarkets late after work trying to find something that will take 10 minutes to cook and 5 minutes to eat, to the gym because they feel guilty that they haven't gone in a week because they were working too hard, and back to work again. If you're not relaxed and you're rushing, you're more likely to be right up my arse on the highway because you can't wait two seconds for me to finish overtaking the semi-trailer struggling up the hill and move over into the left lane so you can hurry up and stress yourself to an early grave.

This is supposed to be an impression of Tasmania isn't it...

Tassie seemed so very relaxed. People were friendly. No one was rushed. There always seemed to be enough time in the day to do stuff (I'll concede that being on holiday helps immeasurably here). Everything seemed cleaner, brighter, less uptight and less self-important and self-involved.

Impression of Tasmania #1? If it didn't mean that Helen would be even further away from her family, and if I didn't have concerns about finding a fulfilling job, I think we could quite easily make the decision to stay there on a more permanent basis. As the guy at the Tourist Information shopfront at Sheffield said, most people visit Tasmania more than once, but be warned - on your fifth visit you'll be bringing your furniture with you. I'm beginning to understand why.

Oops

Forgot to mention that we would be in Tasmania for 10 days. My bad. We only just got back under an hour ago (in time for Helen to watch Home and Away).

Normal service to resume very shortly (complete with cranky rants and purdy pictures).

-s

And we're back

If you can forgive just one more geek out.

My computer problems appear to have been an aging CPU, which was an AMD AthlonXP 1800+ (Palomino core). Very much old technology, although it was top of the range for about 2 weeks when I bought it in late 2001.

Tonight I installed a new AMD Sempron 2500+ (Socket A, not Socket 754). This is also very much old technology, but it's absolutely smoking my old CPU, not to mention that it's running at least 10° cooler, notwithstanding the Vantec cooler I bought last week as well.

Aw.

Yeah.

The real test will be how well this boots up tomorrow, but I've got a good feeling about this bad boy. A really good feeling.

Also, much love goes out to Stonebridge Computing, where I purchased this new little lovely. The Express Post parcel, which guarantees overnight delivery did not arrive yesterday as it should have. I let Stonebridge know (mainly so that they could claim their money back from Australia Post because they broke their guarantee), but they were also suitably concerned that the parcel arrive to me. They also began making arrangements to hold my parcel to one side if it ended up being returned to sender.

Thank you Stonebridge. Your concern (and the fact that you actually had some Socket A chips in stock!) means that you guys will become one of the first places I check online when looking to order stuff.

Geeking out for just a second

Actively maintained, currently in beta browser - iCab. Can't use Blogger.

Out of date, legacy version of a browser built upon the strong and robust Gecko engine - Netscape. Can't use Blogger (and pretty sluggish in normal use too).

Bug laden, crash happy, long since abandoned browser - Internet Explorer for Mac v5.0 (.0, people - that means no patches or updates). Can use Blogger - after a fashion. Less of the pretty pictures come up but at least I can actually type in the text box when creating a new post.

Browser incompatibility must be a very frustrating thing. I'm most definitely glad I am not a web designer.

Edit: 25 July to fix a link. 1 time in total.

The Perils of Geekdom

My geek pride has taken blows and boosts of equal measure this week.

Firstly, the blows. My PC just plain does not want to work. Over the last couple of months I have replaced the hard drives, PSU, motherboard and now CPU cooling unit. After replacing the HDDs, PSU and mobo, I thought I had the problem all sorted out. The computer was working fine (more or less - it was still a little flaky but I put that down to usually Windows instability). In the last two weeks it started randomly rebooting and not POSTing. I reapplied some thermal paste with the old stock cooler I had and it seemed to work - for a while. I then replaced the stock cooler with a shiny new Vantec one, but that only worked intermittently and now, not at all.

The beep code errors when it does POST have told me at various times that it's a heat issue, a bad RAM issue and a video card issue. I've got a new CPU on order (a Sempron 2500+, which is way better than my old Athlon XP 1800+) and I'm preparing myself for the possibility that I might need a new video card as well (I've got my eye on a model that retails for about $200 - we'll see). If I had known that all of these problems were going ot happen at once, I would have just sucked it in and bought a new bare bones system rather than do this piecemeal trying to minimise expenditure (because we didn't, and still don't, really have the money for this). Instead, I'll probably spend just as much and end up with a significantly inferior system.

On the upside, I've managed to get ADSL working on my wife's old Mac G4, without having any real idea of how to do it. I even managed to apply some of the telecommunications/networking stuff I learnt last semester at uni to set up a new ethernet connection. I've also discovered a new web browser in iCab, which is possibly the only OS9 browser still being actively maintained. It's not perfect, but it does have tabbed browsing. It doesn't work with our bank's online banking (which bank doesn't really give a rats about Mac users? Exactly), but I've downloaded an older version of Netscape Communicator that is apparently supported.

Geek pride at equilibrium. If the new CPU (which hopefully will arrive this week) doesn't work, it'll be sliding down pretty quickly.

When the cat’s away….

… the mice will play. Apparently.

The boss has been away today so this particular little phrase has been tossed around the office with restrained abandon (if you think that’s a tautology, you’ve clearly never been a public servant).

The phrase might be fine, in and of itself, except I’ve never actually seen a mouse do anything that would suggest to me that it was in a particularly playful state of mind (excluding, of course, these two. However, I have been (un)reliably informed that they are, in fact, not real mice. Sure. Next they’ll be saying a weird little chick in a tu-tu didn’t buy all the teeth (at greatly reduced rates, mind) I put under my pillow when I was a kid). Every mouse I’ve ever seen was desperately emaciated and scrounging for rancid scraps; skittish and fleeing in terror at the slightest movement; mindlessly running around and around in some sort of wheel-like device, never going forward, never going back, just spinning and spinning, trapped in a lab; or cruelly crushed in a spring loaded death-trap.

If that's play, I think I'll pass.

EDIT: And then the boss returned, discovered there were a couple of things that needed to be updated yesterday (literally, not figure of speech) and we've all been hammered with work in the last 45 minutes. Woo. And now I go home...

Driving me crazy

(it seems that posting via emails is an inexact science at best. I'm posting manually now, and hopefully this won't show up as a dupe)

People do stupid things that I plain don't understand. The stupidhuman activity currently bugging me is commuting somewhere (usually towork), getting out of the driver's seat and farewelling your partnerwho then proceeds to hop into the driver's seat and drives away.

Why would you do this?

Obviously, you are both going somewhere, and one person gets droppedoff and the other person continues on their journey. It doesn'tmatter where that journey is – workplace, doughnut shop, back home –the important thing is that the journey is clearly ongoing for oneperson.

Here's what I don't get – why is the person being dropped off the onedriving? Huh? Surely it would make more sense to have just the onedriver. It has to be more efficient for a start. Changing driversmeans changing seat positions, rear view mirrors, steering columns (ifyou have a la-di-da car that allows that level of customisation) andradio stations (maybe that one is just me). Even more confusing isthat more often than not the kiss goodbye means that these people, ifnot living together, are at least intimately acquainted on some level. What kind of message does this send?

"Honey, I love you and trust you with my deepest emotions but there'sno way I'm going to be a passenger when you're driving."

I don't get people. Really, I don't. You're all weird.

Not OK, Computer

Stupid computer is refusing to POST again. I've ordered a new CPU
cooler, but in the meantime I'm just going to have to deal I guess.

At least with access at work I won't have complete withdrawal...

Non-photo #1

A common Canberra bus shelter is a cylinder for concrete with a large opening (about one third of the cylinder) as an entrance and a hole in one side as a window (so you can see oncoming buses). The roof is flat, solid and generally grimy and slimy with algae (I’m sure following a nuclear armageddon the only survivors would be algae and the cockroaches that eat it). The roof bus shelter has to be at lest 3 metres (9-10 feet) off the ground.

This particular bus shelter is on a well-trafficked road (Constitution Ave in Reid if anyone is local). It sits underneath a collection of dead-looking trees as it’s winter and all the leaves dropped months ago. It also sits outside a tech college.

One tree stands directly above the shelter, its lifeless branches forming a substantial fork about 2 metres or so (6-7 feet) above the roof of the shelter. Firmly nestled in the cold embrace of the barren fork rests a shopping trolley, empty and alone.

The sheer effort and ingenuity to haul a shopping trolley 3 metres off the ground, and then wedge it into fork of a tree that is at least another 2 metres off the ground, all the while standing on a filthy and dangerously slippery and slimy surface, simply astounds me. I hope it was worth it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera on me when I saw this slice of human endeavour while staring out the window during my morning bus commute. Some things just need to be acknowledged or recognised whichever way you can.

Forgotten Updates...

Two quick things....

1. I have a nano again! Using some loyalty points from my credit card and some top-up cash, I picked up a black 2 gig nano. Once again I am happy with my piece of wanton gadgetry.
   
2. We finally won another football match. It's been weeks since we last won a match and it means we've only won three this season and still sit second bottom on the table. It's been a bit of a humbling experience for a team that played the grand final last year and only lost in a penalty shoot out. We are pretty much only playing for pride at this stage of the season.

Happy birthday to me...

...happy birthday to me,
I've been looking after Elijah,
And now I smell like wee.

Flexed the day of the work which meant I got to spend my little day at home doing not very much. I had planned to reinstall a whole heap of music software that I hadn't done since The Upgrade but instead I battled a computer that once again wouldn't even POST.

In desperation I dug out my old tube of thermal paste, cleaned up the CPU and heatsink and reapplied the paste. Seems like the computer is working fine now, but we'll see if it boots up tomorrow before I get too cocky about it. The plan to reinstall the software will perhaps eventuate tonight, or maybe later in the week. It may sit off my hard drive for even longer as uni starts back next week, although they are doing their best to keep my away it would seem (a SNAFU with my fee payments means that at this stage I am technically behind $3,732 in tuition fees when that should already have been taken care of).

I'm not going to list the pressie I got, but suffice to say I'm happy with all of them (including the funky little cuff links my brother sent over from London - OK, so I'll list one pressie).

Back to reality tomorrow...

Why keep studying?

I stumbled across a story on Slashdot that discussed whether or not going to graduate school was a Good Idea™? . The Slashdot Effect is still in full swing so I haven't read the linked article yet (or, since my geek is already showing, I have yet to RTFA, but that's never been counted against anyone on Slashdot anyway) so I'm not entirely sure what the original article was about. Since I don't live in the States, I'm not overly familiar with grad school but I'm assuming the following:

• people in the States do a three (or four) year bachelor level degree
• if they want to, they then go out and get a job
• if they want to specialise, they will go to a different university (or should that be college? I don't know) and study for 2 years for a Masters level qualification in something or longer for a doctorate

I'm not going to prattle on about the Australian education system (if you want to know more, let me know and I'll post about it) but it's enough to say that most people will only do their three year degree (four years if they do an Honours year like I did, or 5 years if they do a double degree eg B Laws/B Arts or something). If they want to research a specific topic, the student might do a Masters research degree or even jump straight to a PhD. If they just want to do further study (or looking for a career change) they'll do a Masters coursework, which involves post-grad level subjects but doesn't have any research or a need to write a thesis. I'm not sure where the US system of grad school falls here - maybe a combination of the two? I'm off track here anyway...

The thought of "grad school" got me thinking, given that at the start of the year I re-entered the world of study to (eventually) obtain a coursework Masters in Science (IT - probably Systems Administration but I've still got some time before I sort that one out). More specifically, it got me thinking as to why I'm doing it all.

When I finished school I originally wanted to do an IT degree but changed my mind at the last minute after being put off by my abysmal maths efforts (I could have passed maths but I had no motivation to do so - boring teacher and the rest of it - at least I wasn't disruptive in class I guess) as well as a horror last semester struggling with the joys of SQL in Oracle (gah!). I changed my mind and decided to do Psychology and then changed my mind at the last minute to do Journalism instead (big mistake - maybe I'll blog about that some other time). After a year of Journalism, I switched majors and studied Sociology before doing Honours (First Class - yay! I worked damn hard for that, too) with a thesis topic that examined the impact of globalisation on rural and regional areas. (as a side note, it's strange how globalisation just isn't sexy anymore. In the late 90s it was all the rage, and now it's just, well, accepted I guess. Makes all my hard work seem a little redundant when I look back on it).

There is a point here. Trust me.

I've spent the last 5 1/2 years working as a public servant (or civil servant or government worker - however your culture defines it) doing "knowledge worker" type roles using all my research, analysis and critical thinking training (on a good day anyway). Deep down inside I was still a geek at heart who just wanted to fool around with computers. I didn't know if I had any particular talent in any particular area of IT, or even if I would be any good at any of it at all, or if it was all just a flight of fancy and one day I would look back and laugh at my follies.

After playing around with the thought of going back to study, at the start of this year I made the plunge. Studying part time, working full time, paying a mortgage and raising a baby boy has made this a considerable challenge. So, why am I doing it?

Because I need to know. I have a burning desire to discover if the flood of bits in my blood is a temporary affliction or if I really have missed my calling. It's got little to do with money. In fact, when I graduate and start looking for work in my chosen field, I will likely have to take a pay cut of $10,000s in the short term, which is not something to be entered into lightly. In recent years, the pull of tech has got stronger, not weaker.

Because I need to keep learning. If I stop learning, I stop moving. I stagnate. Sit still. Tread water. Run on the spot. Sure, life is one big lesson. I get that. Experiential learning without structure doesn't sink in with me. I need lessons. I need directions. I need goals. Without these, my life starts to drift and my brain starts to atrophy.

Do I need to be paying what will be close to $20,000 once it is all over? To learn with lessons, goals and directions and receive recognition of my learning outcomes - yes. To see if this is a lifechoice (it's probably not a real word but as a trained Sociologist I'm good at making up new words) I want to make - maybe not. I think only time will tell on that one.

I promised a point somewhere in there, didn't I. Sorry. I'm not sure I ever really had one. I think I was hoping one would materialise as I went along. My bad.

How's this one?

That's why I continue to study.

And if you got to the end of this, no, you can't have those 10 minutes back. You probably were only going to waste them on something else anyway.

Hmmm....fruity *drool*

Mosquitos don’t dig fruit smells, apparently.

Some scienticians in the UK have been conducting research into why mosquitos will attack some people and not others. It would seem that everybody produces a cocktail of odorous chemicals when they perspire (in other words “you sweat you stink”). Some of this cocktail smells pretty good to mozzies (eg lactic acid). However, some people produce these other chemicals which mask the smell of the first chemicals which in a concentrated form “have a fruity smell”.

It is likely that these chemicals are in everybody’s sweat, just some produce more than others. Who says we are all created equal? (it was probably Oscar Wilde).

The researchers constructed a Y-shaped chamber and wafted the scent of the subjects (probably grad students) towards the swarm and then studied which people the mosquitos avoided. They then collected the sweat of the unattractively odoured ones by, and here’s the fun bit, “sealing their bodies in a foil sack, tied under the chin, and collecting and distilling the seat that poured off them”. How’d you like that job?

This startling new research follows hot on the heels of some stuff in the 1990s that revealed that mosquitos are just bang up for the waft of a bacteria that grows on human feet and limburger cheese. I couldn’t find any full text of the article, but a Google Scholar search will show this study has been cited out the wazoo, and this United States Department of Agriculture article can give you the low down as well.

The moral of the story? If you don’t want to be bitten, you need to wear a little less of this and a little more of this.

Screening into the night...

I had a minor (major?) rant on Little Elijah about the impact of electronic screens on the development of infants. It got me thinking about how many electronic screens we face in our daily existence.

There are TVs in shop windows. There are the TVs in our homes. For many of us, we work on computers every day, in some form or another. For less of us (but probably anyone reading this), not only do we spend all day working on a computer but large chunks of our leisure time on the computer as well. There are closed circuit TVs that we can see at the shop counter when we duck into the servo for a chocolate fix. Airports and bus terminals provide scheduling information on electronic screens in various forms.

Our digital cameras have LCD view finders. Our digital watches have LCD screens. Sporting grounds have large screens for the "instant replay". In fact, I once found myself at a rugby union ground watching the game televised on the big screen at the ground almost as much as I watched it happening right in front of me!

There are kids toys with screens! In fact, there's a growing market for "new media" toys for little 'uns (this NY Times gives you a run down of that).

I'm pretty sure that, in the end, the revolution will be televised. We'll all watch it, too. It'd be damn near impossible to escape it.

Do I have a point? Not really, apart from take a look around you tomorrow. Take a good look. See how many screens there are? Smile. You're probably on most of them...

The Return of the Beardies

I have finally got around to downloading the photos off of the camera. I don't remember my photography being this sucky though. Stupid camera goblins. Why do they always play with the quality settings after I've taken the photo?


















And then, about 15 minutes later, this facial disaster occurred (although I must admit that I was quite fond of it at the time but Helen wouldn't let me keep it...)




Oh well..

I'm now back to the normal goatee again. 'Twas fun while it lasted and I now understand why there is a subset of people (mostly men) who grow winter beards for warmth.

I really do love my ISP...

Over 60 internet radio streams, from a big ass range of genres (not that I care, I basically only stream the DI stations when I'm not streaming from Magnatune - after all, they're not evil), all unmetered.

God Bless you, Internode. If you were a hot Irish red head with green eyes, I'd so totally daydream about doing you while being too intimidated to ever actually talk to you...

www.internode.on.net/radio

I'm back! W00t! (Minor Mega Update)

After much computer misery, I have returned. Hard drive corruption, severe booting issues (eg not powering up except for the fans), major stability problems and overall system flakiness appear to have been fixed now that I have replaced the motherboard and PSU on my system. The PSU had three leaky/burst capacitors, which probably explains why the old mobo was reporting the 12V rail as only providing 10.4V :0 The motherboard itself was a bit of a deadend as well (AGP4x, only supported up to 2100+XP chips, and I think the onboard RAID sockets were dying) so it's been good to replace it as well.

While I didn't end up needing to buy the future-proof(ish) components that I thought I might (and was starting to think might be nice to have) such as a Socket939 mobo, PCI-E gfx card and a beefy PSU, I did end up finding a SocketA motherboard at the local computer fair that will at least allow me to update to a Sempron chip in the future as well as an AGP8x gfx card if I find for some unknown reason that I have too much money. Oh, and now I have SATA headers as well! Tasty.

What doth this meaneth to the peopleth? Beardy pics will be forthcoming. Once my last assignment and two exams are complete (a networking assignment, networking exam and Java/programming exam), I'll have the time to pull them off the camera and upload them.

Having a brand new hard drive also means that I was able to take the opportunity to remove the last piece of "dodgy" software off my system. Instead of using a dubiously obtained copy of Microsoft Office 2000, I'm doing a test drive of OpenOffice.org 2.0. I'm hoping to discover that OOo has everything I need. If it turns out either Helen or myself need something that only MS can provide well I'll break down and get an Academic version. They're not upgradeable but I wouldn't want to. Besides, my next system is going to be a Mac anyway (when I can afford it).

One final point - I take back all the nice things I said about A.i.tech and their webfront pc.net.au. When trying to source parts for my dying computer, I found that they were one of the few places that still stocked Socket A motherboards. I placed an order on a Friday morning before the long weekend. I wasn't able to determine with them until 4:30 that afternoon that despite the fact that they had quite a number of different models listed on the website, they didn't actually have any Socket A motherboards in stock. To make matters worse, these guys charge your credit card first and then check to see if they have the stock at hand. While they offered to cancel my order and refund my credit card, it left me in a difficult place financially in the weekend before payday with several hundred dollars floating around in the ether while I waited for my card to be credited.

Thankfully, the good ol' ACT Computer Fair came through. They had a nice ASUS A7V-600-X motherboard for around $90 (I have no idea if that's cheap - the important thing was that it was available on a long weekend and I had assignments to do). I also managed to pick up an Antec SmartPower 2.0 PSU for a good price. Of course, changing motherboards meant that I then had to go out and find somewhere that stocked thermal paste on a Sunday of a long weekend. I eventually found a small shop open in Civic and I got to geek out, hardware style, and apply my first ever lashings of thermal paste to a CPU stock heatsink. Next upgrade is some decent cooling I think :)

-s

Quick! Get me a VB! The cricket's about to start!

Boonie is still powering on! Good work, mate, although I have noticed that your speech is getting somewhat slower and increasingly slurred. Some might say that your battery is finally fading.

Me? I reckon it's all the VB.

Edited for typo in title, 28/5

Still no photos

I'm aware that there are still no beardy pics. My hard drives are still fairly rat shit. However, when I rectify the situation, the photos shall recommence.

Trust me.

Would an ex-beardy lie?

Spammed

Seems like my free and easy commenting policy has been abused. I've just deleted 29 comments that, in various ways, said my site was nice, I was nice and oh, by the way, hidden in my post is a link farm for you to click on.

Moderating is tedious so I've enabled word verification to begin with. We'll see how it goes.

-s
(oh, and more beardy pics coming. My hard drives are rapidly dying and until I can replace them, having a functioning computer is a gamble on a boot by boot basis)

Hair raising adventures

I hate shaving. I really do. It sucks having to do it 5 mornings a week. When I'm on holidays I shave as little as possible. Unfortunately, I generally only go on holidays to go back home for Christmas and it gets too hot and humid in Brisbane at that time of year to go without shaving for too long.

Since I've been home on paternity leave, I haven't had to shave and it's been fun. Alas, I return to work on Wednesday, so the stubble must go. There's nothing saying it all has to go at once though...


These hideous photos were taken after soccer on 13 May (we lost so I don't know what I'm smiling about). I hadn't shaved in exactly one month.









These nasties were taken the following night. It's amazing what a trim will do for appearances...










Since I go back to work tomorrow, more hair raising adventures will follow.

I guarantee it.

-s

Is Internet Addiction a Real Problem?

(As seen on digg)

Interesting little op ed piece from Ars Technica on whether "internet addiction" is real or not. I'm inclined to think that an "internet addiction" is just a manifestation of a deeper problem rather than an actual mental addiction.

As an aside, I scored 56 on the linked test which says "You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.".

I could stop anytime I like :D Actually, I think my answers are related to the amount of time I spend online while putting Elijah to sleep. Things will change again once I go back to work next week.

-s

read more | digg story

It burns, it burns!

Installed the DVD "Superwrite" (which means it burns ±R, ±RW and does ± dual layer) this afternoon. There was much cursing as I destroyed the heads of 4 screws (even with WD40 the damn things wouldn't turn without a lot of effort) but I eventually took out my old LG CD-RW drive and threw the new Lite-on one in.

A quick test of the new Nero software (I own the full version of 5.5 but the OEM of 6 that came with the burner craps all over that!) by transcoding the latest DL.TV episode from MPEG4 to Super VCD and a test burn on a new ultra speed blank CD-RW media and I'm now a happy little camper.

I just love upgrading stuff! Next on the agenda is a new hard drive to give me some more space (duh) as well as a chance to have another crack at dual booting Linux. I'm thinking Ubuntu as I've heard from a number of sources that it is particularly newbie friendly, but I'm always open to suggestions from people who know better.

-s
(geeking out when he should be doing his Java assignment)

Boonie: Redux

According to The Age , Boonie is back from the dead because his battery has lasted longer than anticipated.

I prefer the Xenox News angle: Tasmanian Miracle: Miners Free - Boonie Doll Talks!

Hmmmm, upgrades *drool*

My new DVD burner arrived today from A.i Tech. It was a damn good price at just under $90 including postage. I haven't had a chance to install it yet (*sigh*) but I hope to before the weekend. I can't wait to try that funky Lightscribe out.

-s

Boonie? Is that you?

For some unknown reason, today is the day that my talking Boonie decided to return to life, informing me that I should get him a beer as the cricket was about to start, that he loved nachos, and that today's code word was "bat".

Given the VB One Day Series ended months ago, I'm a little confused but pleasantly surprised. May Boonie continue to speak to me for many years to come!

UPDATE 9/5: He's at it again, asking for a beer at 6am! Go Boonie!

"Facts". *pffft*

As I mentioned over on Little Elijah, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revised its Child Growth Standards to replace standards that have been in use since the 1970s. These old standards were apparently based on a small number of children from the USA and provided a measure of growth for formula-fed babies, who apparently grow much faster than babies who have been breastfed.

So, for over 30 years, parents around the world have been pressured to fatten up their babies to meet this standard that in the end seems to me to have been unreliable and unrepresentative. Who knows how many babies over this period of time have been over fed to meet this "ideal", setting them up for any number of health problems in the future? I wonder if there any plans to see if the level of obesity in the Western world can be linked in anyway to things like this...

The WHO report has once again got me thinking about "scientific fact". Ultimately in my opinion, science and scientific fact is just as much a social construct as any other field of human endeavour. I understand the concept that scientific thought is supposed to be developed as part of a trial and error process, building upon the work of predecessors. Good science should be not so much an assertion of truth but a demonstration of what is likely and what has been proven to not be true at a set point in time.

So much research is built upon "black boxes". By black boxes I mean something that has been accepted as true and therefore no longer needs to be explained or justified. For example, you might argue that 4x4 = 16 without having to previously prove that 2x2 = 4 because this is already readily accepted. I don't really have a problem with the concept of black boxes. It's an efficient way of expanding upon previous thought without having to do it over.

However, just how is something black boxed in the first place? Generally, it would appear that for something to be considered credible, it needs to be published in peered journals as well as be accepted by a broader component of the scientific community. I am usually uncomfortable at the thought of something being left up peer assessment as I feel that its a process that is vulnerable to self-reinforcing behaviour. I think it's just human nature that you will agree with something that you already believe and will be more critical of something that you don't believe. I fail to see why scientists who do peer review are considered to be immune from this. They're still human after all. If something isn't acceptable or palatable, it's less likely to become a black box in the future.

Anything radical or new is likely to be met with great skepticism at first, and while it might eventually become accepted canon, for a period of time it would not be considered to be "fact" or "true". I can only imagine how theories like Chaos Theory or String Theory were greeted.

Of course, the key concept here is theory. Science is meant to be about theory - hypotheses and either disproving the hypotheses or proving that for now, they hold up. Too many times these theories are dressed up as facts and treated as the truth by the wider population.

The other thing that bugs me about science is that you can't take research on face value. Further judgments need to be made about who has conducted the research, who has overtly funded the research and who has covertly funded research. Is the researcher dependent on funding grants from a particularly body or organisation? Could a fear of offending the funding body (whether it be a government, corporation, NGO or some other source) and losing a source of funding influence the outcome, consciously or unconsciously? Research supporting global warming funded by an environmental NGO is just as suspect as research against global warming funded by a consortium of energy utilities or oil companies.

Maybe I'm just rambling but fact and truth aren't all they are cracked up to be...

-s

Book learnin'

Being back at uni part time while working full time and raising a brand new bundle of joy is proving difficult but worth it. So far in my introduction to programming course, I've averaged 97.5% for my first two assignments (which are worth 12% each). In my introduction to telecommunications subject, I got 25/25 for my first assignment (25%) and 29/30 for the first exam (14.625% out of 15%).

If I keep this up, in three to four years, I'll be the proud owner of a coursework Masters in IT from ADFA. W00t.

-s

No sign *sniff*

Still no Nano. I'm beginning to fear someone has swiped it. At least I've got a serial number and I can ring around local Cash Converters and see.

I miss it so.

Anyone seen my Nano?

I've lost my iPod Nano, and I'm not happy about it. I put it down somewhere and now I can't find it at all. I had about a week of podcasts waiting to be listened to (I've been kind of busy at the moment) but now I can't find it anywhere and I've got more podcasts backing up waiting to be transferred over.

I knew I loved my gadgets but I never really thought I'd be this lost without one. *sniff*