Oh, perhaps if I wrote more my own blog stats on Google Reader would look far more impressive!

Sick, sick, sick. I hate being sick. Even when it happens mid-week and you get a day or two off work, it still doesn’t make up for it. All it means is that you mope around the house all day feeling a bit sorry for yourself, and then when you get back to work, you’ve got to catch up on twice as many emails and go from there! If only it were a clean slate.

I have been sick these last couple of days; I left work early on Tuesday and did not make it in today. I’ve been feeling better this evening and I think I’ll probably be alright to go back in tomorrow, with a tickle in my throat and still feeling a bit rubbish, I will put my headphones on when I start and take them off only for lunch and when stepping away from my desk. I’ll try!

After a short break, my blog and most of the rest of my website is back. It didn’t go away due to any kind of failure or anything like that — actually, it was mostly just laziness. But today it is restored and so if there is anybody out there who actually reads it, please post a comment so I know who you are I’d like to hear from you.

Thanks!

Regulations are usually very limited in their effectiveness, as they do not break the law and the enforcers of regulations do not have as much power.

Here in the UK you are entitled to opt-out of all unsolicited marketing calls to your mobile phone by putting yourself on the Telephone Preference Service but as far as I know, this only covers calls.

When it comes to text messages, the email below outlines the regulations and it specifically states that a prior relationship must already exist between the business and the recipient. Considering Lindsay and I received our SPAM SMS’s within mere minutes of one another, it is clear the company was using a bulk SMS delivery service to SPAM their unwanted services.

The UK newspapers have recently been discussing a controversial company by the name of 118 800 who claim that you can gain access to their directory of mobile telephone numbers for any purpose and that you can use this service to obtain the name and number of any mobile user for only £1. Apparently all of this information has been obtained from marketing lists and the like. Yes, I have so much trust for these companies and their use of my personal information. Sarcasm mode off.

So with regard to my dealings with Utext, I have sent this email along and I will see whether or not they are willing to respond. I don’t hold out much hope but sometimes companies like this are just unaware that they are doing the wrong thing. (Did I say Sarcasm mode off?) I did not know my rights until I researched this this evening, and I think it pays to make the effort to badger these companies directly who use these kinds of methods, whether they are in the right or the wrong, so that people like them know that people like us won’t stand for it. It’s also a massive time-waster for them having to deal with the likes of us, and as I see it, they’ve already wasted my time enough today so it’s comeuppance!

(Here’s a trick for the willing: Next time a company you don’t like sends you advertising material in the post with a reply-paid envelope, fill it up with junk mail, seal it, and post it back. They have to pay for the postage on the reply and waste their own time and effort processing it. It seems only fair — an eye for an eye.)

My email follows:


To: help@utext.tv
Subject: Unsolicited Commercial SMS
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:20:31 +0100

(2) SMS is covered under the guise of e-mail as electronic mail (see: http://www.the-dma.org/international/articles/UKElectronicprivacyreg.PDF page 2).


I use Safari 4.0 Beta on my Mac, and I’ve been using three useful JavaScript Bookmarks (though one more than the others.) So in order of preference, here are three interesting bookmarks that you should consider adding to your own Bookmarks toolbar. They’re similar in effect to GreaseMonkey scripts but suit me better because they apply to any page and can be clicked on at your preference.

1. Readability

Readability is a script that transforms a cluttered web page into something actually readable. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you visit a news service that has a thousand ads, side bars, menus and all sorts of other links cluttering your screen, when all you really want to read is the main content. Just like the old Internet!

In steps Readability. In one magic click of a button (or menu-item, depending on your way of looking at it) your page is transformed; the clutter is gone and all that remains is the main article you wanted to read in the first place. If you want to go back to the original page, just click reload.

Readability is customisable so the pages you choose can be output to a few different styles of your preference.

Here’s a before-and-after shot as one example of an article I clicked on today:

And after:

The transformation is very cool! You can go to the Readability website here, and there are links and instructions on how to add it to your browser.

2. Google Translate on-the-fly

Here’s all it is:

javascript:void(location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate?u='+location.href)

and this script will pipe your page through Google Translate as quick as that!

Bookmark it here. You probably won’t use it too often unless you visit any foreign websites, but on the occasions that you do you’ll be glad you’ve got your quick and easy link! Do you need some news in French?

3. Subscribe…

A little superfluous considering most modern browsers auto-detect RSS, but it can’t hurt, but this little script finds any RSS Feed within a page and takes you to it in Google Reader. Unless you’re using a third party RSS utility like Reader Notifier (also quite useful) then this will be of some use.

Here’s the code:

javascript:var%20b=document.body;
var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain='http://www.google.com';if(b&&!document.xmlVersion){void(z=document.createElement('script'));
void(z.src='http://www.google.com/reader/ui/subscribe-bookmarklet.js');
void(b.appendChild(z));
}else{location='http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)}

And a bookmarkable link.

I hope you enjoyed this little venture and I hope you can take away at least something useful! If you have any other ideas or suggestions feel free to comment and tell everyone. If I’ve helped anyone by posting this information then please comment and let me know!

And finally… go and check out Cool Iris. Yes, it does seem to be “professional software” but for the moment it’s apparently free. I usually don’t bend for these sorts of plugin things but I tried this one and it really is quite good. It’s a full-screen interactive media plugin for your browser and is extremely useful for Google Images, Flickr, sometimes Facebook and probably several other media sites. It’s pretty snazzy. Check the website out and you’ll see what I mean.

The surprises from Apple this year were not that exciting. New iWork stuff including iwork.com for online office work, which seems to be a big thing lately. Apple, Microsoft and Google are all doing it. It may be interesting to see what comes of that but Apple’s online services have been of very little interest to me so far, considering how little Mobile Me does for me at the moment.

iLife ‘09 — about the only useful part of this package is iPhoto, if you even use it. The main problem with iLife is that you need to buy it as a whole package, even if you don’t want iMovie, iWeb and GarageBand. And I don’t. I’ve used iMovie before, for a while, but that was in my YouTube hey day.

Until recently I have been keeping my photos in a directory structure on my computer (backed up of course) and not used any particular software to manage it. Even more recently I was toying with Aperture. Now the Keynote came out with all of these cool-sounding features in iPhoto that I WANT!

A library that allows you to organise by event/place, facial recognition that will find faces and let you tag who they are, then intelligently guess who it thinks faces belong to in your other photos. But not only that, there is Flickr and Facebook integration which means that if anyone tags anyone else in your photo, that tag is instantly downloaded and merged into your library. I’ve often found having your own private meta-data that isn’t compatible with other systems most annoying!

I’m quite interested in this facial recognition stuff, and I really want to see what it’s all about.

Geotagging - again, totally cool and being used more and more. I’m eager to play with iPhoto ‘09. Sadly, Apple does not offer a trial version if iLife, so I’ll be waiting to play with it by some other means, and hopefully these features make it to Aperture quickly!

On other notes, the MacBook Pro 17″ with the new unibody is not much of a surprise, not not of great interest to me because I don’t use the 17″. No news on iPhone, and some stuff about iTunes store, which I don’t use very much for music at the moment. At least there’s a general price reduction on music and it’s now DRM free. Yay!

So Apple won’t be at the next one, so what does that mean for next year?

The MacWorld Expo 2009 is between January 5-9 this year, so there’s not long to wait!

Finally, what is the http://www.macworldexpo.com/ website doing running Microsoft’s IIS?

The proof is in the pudding!

Our household’s Apple product collection seems to be increasing, though some are becoming redundant now.

2x Apple iPhone 2G 8GB
1x Apple iPhone 3G 8GB
1x Apple iPhone 3G 16GB
1x 64 (I think?) GB iPod Classic
1x iPod Shuffle
1x MacBook Pro (2007 series)
1x MacBook Black (2007 series)
1x Mac Mini
1x 1TB Time Machine + Airport
1x Airport Base Station
1x Bluetooth Mighty Mouse
1x Bluetooth Keyboard

I think that’s it, anyway!

My 2008 finished off with a 5-year work permit which I am proud to say will allow me to remain in the UK for pretty-much as long as I want. That’s awesome. I’ve never said this country is the place that I’ll spend the rest of my life but it’s where I want to be right now, so I might as well stay here for a few years yet. There’s so much to see out there!

Lindsay and I are lucky to have a great place that we rent at a good price. Although the financial crisis is hitting people hard, we will be OK. Lindsay has become redundant at his work with many other people but I know him and it won’t take him long to find more work, even in these so called difficult times.

The final 48 hours of my 2008 were quite frustrating, as I went home from work on Tuesday feeling sketchy and ended up waking up on New Years Eve with full-on flu symptoms. Last night I powered on however, and went out to dinner with Nick, Bec and Lindsay, then drove up to Hamstead Heath to see the fireworks display from atop the hill. Cold as it was, we didn’t stay long. I did see some pictures of the London NYE Fireworks display and it was quite spectacular. It would have been fantastic to see it from Southbank but it just gets so, so busy down there. And last night it got to about -3 degrees C, so pretty cold.

As New Years rang in I ended went home and went to bed feeling pretty terrible. I’ve woken up this morning feeling much better and should be over it all in a day or two. Thankfully!

Wishing all my friends and family and any stray readers a prosperous 2009! Happy New Year.

I love the map. Maps are cool.

Cool stuff:

Interactive map of the Tube problems
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/im/RD-T.html

London Underground Forecast map for 2010:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/resources/corporate/media/pressimages/rez-high/h-tube-map-2010.jpg

London Underground Forecast for 2016:
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/transport/docs/transportmap2016.pdf [ This link has disappeared! ]

Lindsay and I visited the London Transport Museum on the weekend. It’s fairly swishy and modern, and has several old trains and buses, but the main drawback for me was that there were too many kids (it was a Sunday) and that there weren’t enough older tube stock that you could explore, which would have been cool. You didn’t get a chance to see any of the current stock up close either, and I would have enjoyed seeing a proper drivers cabin! I thought that the museum would be cooler if it were further out in the ‘burbs, so that they could fit more in.

There was a fair bit of information about the future of the tube and a really interesting map of the tube as it was over a hundred years ago, and it showed how the map changed as the lines grew and rearranged in a slide show. I asked them for a copy of it but they said I couldn’t have it!

The shop offered so many different books about the tube, buses, trains, tracks, rail stock, history and so forth — many more than I ever thought would have been published. This country really, really is full of rail enthusiasts.

A Micro-Blogging platform that lets you post messages of up to 140 characters in length. You follow people and people follow you. It has been very high profile, is used by a large number of news and tech-news sources. It has an abundance of clients for OS/X, Windows, Linux, iPhone and probably other phone platforms as well. It has an extremely large userbase and is, as far as I know, the first one on the scene.

What is Identi.ca?

Identi.ca is a similar service based on http://laconi.ca/, an open source “equivalent”. It has a smaller userbase and lesser third party applications but way more potential for growth and expansion because it’s open source.

So what’s the difference?

Twitter has been on the scene for a long time now and users are still being drawn to it based on the hype and discussion going around on the Internet. But people aren’t talking about this cool new thing called “micro-blogging”; they’re talking about Twitter, the current king of micro-blogging.

Twitter has a well established, well known presence on the web now, and is commonly discussed. It’s also becoming somewhat of a household name which is the best way to market yourself. Consider other biggies like “Coke” which can also refer to any other cola beverage. Well OK, so Twitter’s not as big as Coke, but you get the drift.

These micro-blogging services allow you to tap into their network and control them or display them from external sources, including Facebook, blogs, RSS feeds, Instant Messenger hook-ups, your iPhone or BlackBerry. I can sign up for an account with Identi.ca that is able to push updates to Twitter so that if I update on identi.ca, my twitter followers don’t miss a trick. They instantly see the update because my identi.ca account has a one-way link from identi.ca to twitter. But what about the other way? I can’t. Twitter doesn’t work like that and they choose not to. It’s fundamentally flawed because I can’t tie it in reverse. I can’t go to Twitter and update and expect my Identi.ca followers to see my update. If Identi.ca implemented something like this they would need to poll the RSS feed from each twitter account constantly just to receive new updates. A nightmare. Also, my friend might have an account called purpleman on twitter and one called terrytips on identi.ca. When I reply to him on identi.ca I am saying “@terrytips ” which also appears on twitter, but doesn’t readdress that to purpleman.

So Twitter have decided to close their doors opening only a few cracks. Nobody can see their platform code and nobody can peer into their data store, which is the opposite of ideas like identi.ca. Is it always the case that an idea will appear on the scene, become “uber-popular” but far too late for any other, better, or more open similar ideas to surface?

If you consider that in Australia, the UK or the USA our supermarkets are very much driven by these giant corporations who dominate over all of the little guys. The big ones made it, they are household names and are ubiquitous throughout society. Nobody has heard of the small guys other than the “locals”. The small ones might be better with their friendlier staff, local knowledge, family values, but ultimately the big guys will win in terms of traffic because that is where everyone is. What’s the point of a social networking site if none, or only a handful of your friends are on it? None. If they’re all elsewhere you might as well be there too. Just as it is when you go out with your friends who mostly decide to go to a pub you don’t like, but majority rules, you don’t want to go elsewhere without your friends, so you suck it up and go to that venue instead. Majority rules here!

MSN, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Explorer, Windows, Microsoft Office, The QWERTY keyboard! And they’re just some geeky ones.

Jabber (an alternative to instant messaging and the technology that drives Google’s GTalk) did the right thing — it built a network standard that was completely open source, allowed an API to other Instant Messenger networks, allowed you to run a complete Jabber server on your own computer, set up an account on it with your own email address and you’d be able to add contacts from any other Jabber server that exists out there in the world. My traffic goes out of my own server and directly to my other contact’s. It doesn’t rely on third parties. It’s that flexible. With Jabber you can do super-cool things, for instance, at your workplace you can run a server internally for internal communication between staff. You can have your server plug into your LDAP tree. You can create a contact like “Alert” who is really a bunch of scripts on a back-end receiving updates from your alerting system. Server breaks and not only are oncall notified but so are all of your tech staff because they receive an instant message.

With MSN messenger you’re stuck with a proprietary and closed protocol, no plugins to other networks and if the central servers go down you’re out of luck. Add to that your messages and conversations are transmitted around the world to those central servers and who knows what happens to them in transit or when they get there. Did you know that the only reason there are alternative messenger clients for MSN is because the protocol was originally reverse engineered? When they change the standard, it still needs to be reverse engineered. Madness? Maybe — but do you have an MSN account? I would guess that the answer is yes and this is because the rest of the world uses it.

Oh with Jabber I could easily set up a Jabber server, my own Jabber account and install an MSN transport — a plugin that was written with code that reverse engineered the MSN Network protocol — I’d be able to use a client of my choosing and it would all appear rather seamless, but it’s just not happening around the world. We should be in a position where these networks (Twitter, MSN and the like!) are all configured in such a way to allow openness and intermessaging. I should be able to have an identi.ca account and subscribe to someone’s Twitter feed or their uber-micro-blog feed and it should all just work. PEOPLE want this, but BUSINESS doesn’t. Will the world ever catch up?

A few links for you:

Twitter: www.twitter.com
Identi.ca: identi.ca
Jabber: www.jabber.org

(Look at that, I even put Twitter first without even thinking.)

Lo and behold I check my bank account details and I’ve been charged £59! I checked it out and sure enough, it’s a charge for “17 Nov APPLE COMPUTER INTL INTERNET GBR 59.00″.

I was able to log in to the service with my old details however, I had thought that it was cancelled, so shouldn’t my account and password no longer work anyway?

I checked on the Mobile Me help website and you are able to cancel your membership with a full refund within 45 days, so I logged in, went to account details and cancelled my subscription. Their website did say my credit card would be refunded. Unfortunately they don’t give you an opportunity to explain in words why you have cancelled your membership and I am still going to write to them to find out how this happened, as I am unimpressed!

I sent the following to Apple:

Hi Apple,

Sadly I have lost a little faith in Apple after my experience today.

I’ll wait and see how it goes!

Since we’ve been back we have been seeing some friends and family as well as seeing all the Adelaide things we’ve not seen in ages. I’m driving Mum’s car, so that really helps. How easily I am reminded of the things I like and dislike about Adelaide.

My friend Adam, for instance, lives up in Mawson Lakes and while up there we had a couple of beers (yes Mum, light beer) and the pub we were in was a giant modern oaf of a pub with bright lighting and modern fixtures. It was quite unpleasant. Pubs in London are a treat in comparison because they are so cosy and ancient.

Wednesday was a particularly stressful day for us, as Lindsay and I flew to Canberra to process our Work Permits for the UK. While mine is approved on paper, I still have to go through this submission process and what’s worse is that Lindsay and I have to provide proof of our relationship akin to marriage and the likes, so that Lindsay can be approved as a dependent on my permit. This means that while my permit is basically approved and this is a formality only, Lindsay’s dependent permit is a complete grey area until we receive the permits back in the post. This means that if Lindsay’s is denied, then our plans are completely out the window.

Why might his be denied? Well, we have very little paperwork to establish our relationship from a over a year and a half ago, and we are supposed to prove a marriage-like relationship for a minimum of two years. Though we have been together longer than that, we have not lived together that entire time nor have we had combined assets or bank accounts together. We had a tenancy agreement in Adelaide on which we were both named and in the UK we are joint on most things so that’s OK. Hopefully the officer at the British High Commission can see the clues we’ve laid out.

After finishing up there, we walked through Canberra to the Old and New Parliament Houses. What a fascinating place, the old Parliament House is! It was turned into a museum during the Hawke Government and most things of the period were left, including the furniture, fixtures, House of Reps and Senate, etc. You can walk through almost the entire facility, even into Bob Hawke’s old office which is left pretty much the way it was when he left. Everything was so retro with big clicky buttons and things.

All of the rooms were much smaller as was the standard of construction for the day, so the only wide open spaces were the Senate/House of Reps and the main reception hall. Everything else was a rabbit warren.

Pictures will be on Flickr as soon as I’m able and I’ll stick some in here, too.

The current Parliament House building is not as interesting, as you can only go into the Senate and House of Reps balconies, main reception halls and on the roof. Everything else is in use for everyday governing and therefore closed!

Last time we flew over, Lindsay and I had a seat along a row of three by the window, which is always preferable. Sadly, last time we ended up near the galley and had light thrown in our faces every time they opened the curtain. This time was better, again in a row of three. Unfortunately for us a guy came and sat down in the aisle seat on our row. On a 12 hour flight this isn’t ideal as it really, really doesn’t give you any room to spread out. Here’s our stranger:

I was quite annoyed, as our row was now full but the one in front of us was completely empty, and there was only one guy in the row behind. Oh why can’t they spread things out more nicely. We considered hijacking the row in front of us so we could spread out before anyone else did, but just before we were about to taxi to the runway a lady sat down and got the whole row to herself. Maddening!

But seriously, are those flights ever completely full? I don’t fly internationally all that often but on the two long-haul flights I’ve been on, not every seat is taken. What’s the average seat utilisation on these flights? If it’s 70%, that’s 30% extra room that they could be giving to economy! We want more leg room!

I don’t mind flying and I shouldn’t keep going on about the negative aspects! Oh, but surely I can at least finish on this note. When you are done with your 12 hours of flying you walk towards the front of the plane and you exit through business class and realise that they have all this nice leg room, no strangers sitting next to you and a whole lot more luxury. Then, if not just to rub your economy nose in it even more, you walk further forward and exit through a first class section, which you never really get a chance to see properly because you’re on the move but it’s full of funny looking pods and so much room. About six in an area of space that would usually fit about 30 economy class customers! So sad.

Here’s one of the pods. Compare it to Economy, somewhat illustrated in the picture above!

I am sitting in KL at a Starbucks, re-fueling both myself (with caffeine) and my laptop, with power, and my iPhone, with USB power! It ran out of batteries on the flight over and I need to escape into some music to pass the time!

I am going to go for a walk with Lindsay now… back later!

As for the Bye, well, when I’m back in Adelaide I plan to collect nautilus’ hard disk and take it with me, effectively taking my website offline. This will be for at least a few weeks until I get things back online. I went down just recently, too, sorry. But this is just a quick message to let you know why I’ll be down

Cheerio, until next time!

And wish Lindsay and I luck with the permit…

Sponsor him.

Ahh, Britain. I have been working for many, many months now, and have established myself quite well in my job although I do work very, very hard and long hours. Work has finally got the paperwork in place to sponsor me — let me give you a bit of background here.

Lindsay started working in Mid December 2007 and I started in April 2008. We’re only allowed to work for 12 months maximum so very soon he will be unable to work. Under my work permit he will be allowed to remain with me as a dependent and in order to have the UK Government accept this we will have to prove that we have been in a relationship for at least two years in a marriage-like capacity. This should be easy enough (I hope.)

During November the requirements for work permits change significantly; so much so that I may not even qualify after that date however, because my work permit is now in progress for acceptance I am hoping that it still qualifies under the old scheme and all goes through nicely. It’s really quite disconcerting having one’s own life in the hands of work or the UK Government. I am (well we both are) feeling reasonably stressed at the moment about the whole thing but I do think I’ll feel better once I know the permit has been accepted.

Lindsay and I will be back in Australia in late November and I’m hoping to catch up with whomever I can. Due to the lateness of my application going through I might even have to come back a second time, as during the work permit process we are both required to go back to Australia and present at the UK Home-Office, and we may even need to remain for up to three weeks. We booked our trip back to Australia some months ago and hoped that it’s timing would match up with the permit but I’m starting to seriously doubt that considering it’s now less than three weeks away. But who knows!

IT MAKES ME SO MAD!!

Now I have to start again, because it doesn’t save sets.

OH I F’ING HATE THIS PROGRAM. But what alternative for Mac *IS* there?

GAHHHH!!!!!!

I decided to reinstall my MacBook Pro the other day because it wouldn’t install the 10.5.3 update properly, and I had also recently installed some software which didn’t remove itself properly and tainted the system. I thought it would be a good opportunity to clean out the cobwebs. I carefully backed up my data however, due to a bug with the Western Digital MyBook which causes it to stop with a “permission denied” error and requires you to reboot it, I was having trouble backing up. The bug is so annoying that you have to carefully check what has been copied and what has not, because the only method for copying you’ve got is Samba.

Anyway the fact of the matter is, I backed up my photos carefully. The Time Capsule wasn’t in use yet, as it was new, and I decided to start doing regular Time Capsule backups AFTER the fresh Leopard install. Anyway, it was over a week ago when I performed this backup and with all the issues and what with having a new Time Capsule and all the issues with the MyBook I couldn’t remember which device I’d ended up backing up to. I was confident it was the Time Capsule because of the broken MyBook but alas, when I went looking for them tonight I couldn’t find them anywhere! After looking everywhere around on my MyBook and the Time Capsule, my heart sank. I couldn’t find my damn photos anywhere and I realised that I may have just lost 10Gb of photos and many, many months worth of snaps. I was so upset when suddenly I remembered my iPod! I had backed them up to my iPod! Oh wow, I was so relieved.

Lesson #1 - BE CAREFUL when you’re doing this kind of thing!

Lesson #2 - Get an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive and start using Time Capsule NOW. If you don’t you’ll regret it. We so often forget to back up and disk is cheap. When it comes to things like your photos, the couple of hundred pounds spent on backup disks is worth every penny. Nobody wants to lose their memories!

It is amazing how quickly the sunrise and sunset can change and for the past couple of months the days have been getting longer and longer, usually by a few minutes each day. Today the sun rose at 5:16AM, last week it was 5:30, and next week it will be rising at 5 o’clock. Sunset is currently 8:39PM! The longest day of the year last year was sunrise at 4:47AM and sunset at 9:21PM!

With all this nice weather one would think that it would be a great opportunity to go out and see some more of London’s night-life, but alas, everything closes at 11PM! Confused? I am! One of the biggest drawbacks about London is that when you go to a pub, you’re often booted out before midnight. If you travel, you have to contend with the tube, which closes often around 1AM as well. So what are people supposed to do late at night if they want to make a night of it? I’m not sure! Go into the inner city and go to a few late bars and night clubs I suppose, but you’re not always in the mood for that kind of night, and you don’t always want to wait until the first tubes start running again. There are always 24 hour night buses but they are not always as easy as the train.

Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London has instigated a ban of drinking alcohol on the tube and bus network effective June 1st. I’m glad I’ve had at least one beer on a train, and boy did it feel weird having come from Adelaide where it’s always been disallowed. Oddly enough, the rail staff are complaining that they will have to be the ones to enforce the regulations, and they are not happy!

Any travel plans? Well, Lindsay and I will be going to Berlin in a couple of weeks and that should be great. We know Justine who lives there (Hi Jus!) and she’ll be our guide, which is always awesome because you get to go to all the places you never would have seen before. Now that Lindsay and I have been to Paris once, if we go back we will probably go to different places to see different things, now that we’ve got all that main tourist stuff out of the way!

Here are a few snaps from a recent trip to Brighton:

I’d hardly call it a beach, considering the whole beach front is made up of pebbles!

Don’t forget, there are many more photos here!

Work is keeping me very busy and I have learned so much about the company in the past three weeks. I’ve asserted myself as Team Leader moreso and am settling in now. It’s tiring work and the days are longer than I’m used to (think 50 minute commute, working 9-6 with a one hour lunch break, and then another 50 minute commute) but I’m happy to be working. Lindsay’s got it easy, working 9:30-5:30 means he leaves for work after I do and arrives home before me! Gah! We may look at moving soon, either somewhere closer to each of our workplaces and Lindsay has suggested perhaps even moving to Brighton, which is quite some distance, but the rail system is faster so the commute is not too much longer. Time will tell and we will see what’s around!

What else is there that I should cover before I go? I’m not sure, but if I think of it, I’ll let you know!

I think the biggest challenge is moving into new territory as the “new boss” and having to gain a respect from your peers. The people working in this team have been working together already, and know the company better than I do. It will take some time but I intend to get to know everything as quickly as I can.

And, wow! In the mean time so much else has happened. Lindsay and I went to Paris, I visited Oxford with Justin, Col, Nick, and Amy (unfortunately Lindsay couldn’t get out of work) and it snowed. Yes, it snowed in London! Nick arrived, Justin left, and Ash visited.

Instead of linking in so many photos, here are some links to some previous galleries on Flickr!

London Snow

Oxford

Paris

I will endeavour to write more frequently, I promise

I haven’t really been keeping up with this but run into stories about it from time to time when a newly remastered episode comes out. This weekend they are airing the remastered ‘By Any Other Name‘.

Due to budget constraints on Star Trek they could only ever put together a couple of sound stages for any beam down to a planet and the rest had to be done by transposing the filmed image onto a matte painting to give some idea of the scale of the area. In this episode they have taken a scene where the crew beamed down to the planet, shrunk it, and neatly embedded it in a brand new and brilliant looking matte painting. Here’s a comparison:

The original beam-down sequence (click the images for a larger version):

The enhanced version:

The crew materialised on the planet’s surface, giving you a much more imaginative idea of the planet’s surface. Sure, in the original series’ time you would have stretched your mind and imagined what else was out there, but because many sound stage settings were so similar you ended up with no sense of identity of any one planet to the next. I think this is great, because it gives this planet it’s very own identity and when you see the crew materialise and look around them, now you know exactly what they’re seeing before their eyes.

I must say these remastered episodes are getting better each time!

As soon as you exit the train station you walk out and are faced with the castle, which sits atop a hill overlooking the town of Windsor. From down in the town centre you can see it from almost everywhere. It’s a very large castle, much larger than Buckingham Palace by the looks of things. The main street heading towards the castle wraps around its outside edge, so as you approach the visitors gate you are walking around the edge of one of the castle buildings. As we climbed the hill we discovered what we feared the most — a huge lineup.

We joined at the end of the queue and eventually made it through to the front doors of the visitor’s entrance. When we finally got the chance to see the ticket counter, we realised we were really only half way done queueing, as there were huge queues inside the ticket counter, and at least 8 ticket counters open. At around £15 per adult on the door, they must make an absolute fortune. We had purchased our tickets at a discounted rate of about £10 through the Great Southern Rail offer. We still had to queue

We finally entered the grounds and you are offered an audio tour. It’s a device that you carry with you and hold up to your ear so that you can listen to the guided tour. In each of the rooms there is a small transmitter broadcasting information. I found the device very annoying so chose not to use it. Wherever we went throughout the castle, there were people walking around with these things pressed up against their heads. Weird. I might have missed out on some of the facts because we chose not to use them but instead we were able to look around for ourselves with our eyes.

The public are granted entry to a very limited area around the back side of the castle grounds and the “State Apartments” block. You can’t go anywhere near the actual internal residency of the castle nor can you enter the courtyard in the centre of the castle grounds. While disappointing, you can understand why. After all, this is a residency, not a museum.

Windsor Castle	Estate Apartments entry/exit
Windsor Castle Courtyard	Windsor Castle Courtyard
Windsor Castle’s very own post box	Castle Heads

You can view more photos on my Flickr feed.

Photography, mobile phones, prams and dogs are all banned inside the estate apartments and the guide staff are very quick to pounce on people breaking the rules. On the occasion that someone’s mobile phone will go off, they’ll prick up their ears to localise it and immediately try and silence the offender.

During visitor mode, the State Apartments are set up with rope barriers in every room, encouraging the public to follow a single loop around the castle. At one stage we walked through a large dining hall, and on the other side of the room you could see people walking in the opposite direction. It took us about half an hour to get around to the opposite side of that room, and it gives you some idea of the scale of the place!!

If you’ve ever watched any of the documentaries about Windsor Castle you’ll know what to expect when you go in, and that is some rather elaborate rooms, all extremely clean and well kept with that “royal” feel about them. Most rooms contain nothing more than some furniture (mostly “acquired by Queen Victoria”) and most of the furniture is carved wood with a felt-style material. Most of the walls are wall-papered with a textured red fabric. Some rooms have what look like “secret” doors, which go who knows where, and they are rectangles of the wall with hinges and handles, so they blend in with the wall rather than being actual doors.

Each room in the Estate Apartments was set up with a specific purpose in mind, yet they all look rather similar. There are several drawing rooms, in which the centre piece is a large desk. One bedroom is shown with a dressing room and a closet however, the dressing room and closet are just rooms with chairs in them, as these are just for show.

According to one of the human guides we chatted to, when the apartments are used for estate functions, the rooms are reconfigured for the purpose. Undoing “visitor mode” means removing all the roped barriers and any signage, replacing the walkway carpet with a much better carpet, removing all the protective plastic barriers and so on that surround the doors and some walls (to stop visitors touching/damaging things) and reconfiguring any furniture as required.

Most of the rooms have a hand-painted 17th Century baroque ceiling, and those that don’t have a fairly elaborate ceiling, usually with a large chandelier hanging from the centre. Of the rooms you are allowed to tour through, there is Queen Mary’s Doll House which is a dimly lit room (preserving the centre feature) with a large doll-house of the castle in the centre of the room. It contains many rooms and miniature furniture and trees/shrubbery. Without the audio tour I couldn’t tell you very much more about it but I’m sure you can look it up on the web

Following that, a China room containing a large collection of elaborate china dinner sets from the 17th century onwards. Each set is probably around 50 pieces and most of them are fairly ugly, although you can appreciate their historic value. Many of them are used for actual functions and this is clearly visible by the chips and breakages on some of the pieces. Again, according to the tour guide there is a large rubber sink installed elsewhere in the castle which is used to clean these pieces, very, very carefully!

Beyond these rooms you enter into the rest of the castle. The first area appeared to be a weapons display, with suits of armour hundreds of years old, hundreds of pistols and rifles from every era, swords and other weapons all on display. Glancing around you and looking in the glass cabinets, you are looking at an evolution of flint weaponry and guns. Look up and there is more, as the ceilings are all at least two stories high, walls laiden with more and more displays.

Beyond this room are dining halls, the crimson room and the turquoise(?) room, the apartment areas I mentioned earlier (drawing room, bedroom) a hallway and chapel. I managed to take a few photographs but because of the amount of people and staff around the place it was very difficult to get any good snaps. With respect to the castle I won’t post these on Flickr so unfortunately they won’t appear in this blog. You’ll have to go and visit for yourself

Our day ended with a trip to the gift shop, where I asked if the Queen ever comes through. “No,” was the answer, “Maybe once a year.”

Lindsay bought me a Windsor Castle scotch glass, and I bought Lindsay some Windsor Castle fudge.

Windsor Castle Scotch Glass

Windsor Castle Fudge

Firefox and Opera both have a built-in feature in which you can use keyword shortcuts to quickly search specific websites for information. When I was working for an ISP in Australia I found this extremely useful, not only just for searching for information on the web, but also for quickly searching for things on our Intranet and various in-house troubleshooting tools. In a moment’s notice I could have whatever information I needed up on screen without having to navigate to the Intranet, click on the tool, enter the information, submit and wait for the results. With one keyword I could have instant access to the results.

Consider a tool as powerful as Wikipedia, where you can search for just about anything or anyone and be presented with (mostly!) accurate information about that item. If you wanted to look up steganography for instance, most web users would do something like:

1. Click on the Wikipedia Bookmark
2. Wait for it to load
3. Use mouse to navigate to the Search box
4. Enter the word ’steganography’ into the search box
5. Click search or hit enter

Consider that with steps 1-4, you don’t really want to visit the Wikipedia front page; you only want to use its search features but in order to use them you had to visit the Wikipedia page first. It’s cumbersome, slow and annoying!

Imagine if you could access those websites with the following sequence instead:

1. Hit -L (to get to the location bar)
2. Type ‘wp steganography’
3. Hit enter.

You avoid having to go through the website’s front door and can go in straight to the results you want. It saves you so much time and you can use it on any website with a search box. You also don’t have to use any mouse clicks!

In order to take advantage of this on Safari, you need a plugin called Keywurl. It’s a bit irritating to install but once it’s done it will work like a charm.

To install and set up, do the following:

A: Download and install Keywurl

1. Download Keywurl
2. Open up the contents of the DMG file in Finder
3. Double-click the SIMBL package and follow the instructions to install

B: Create the Plugins Directory manually

4. Load up a new Finder window (press -n)
5. Navigate to: HOME/Library/Application Support
6. Create a new directory called ‘SIMBL‘ and navigate into it
7. Create a new directory (beneath SIMBL) called Plugins

C: Copy the Keywurl Plugin

8. Go to your Finder window containing the Keywurl files
9. Go into either the Leopard or Tiger directory, depending on which release of OS X you’re running.
10. Drag the Keywurl.bundle file into the SIMBL/Plugins directory you just created
11. Restart Safari and launch it

If you check your Safari preferences, Keywurl should now be installed!

Keywurl comes with a set of default keyword searches which you can add/modify/delete at your leisure. Try one out. Go to a Safari window’s location bar and type ‘imdb Jumper’ and it should take you to the IMDB.com results page for the search ‘Jumper’. It will work with multiple words of course, such as ‘imdb The Brady Bunch’.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

It’s pretty easy. If you do a Google search, you might notice that your URL will always look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Safari&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

The part after q= is the interesting bit, because that’s what we’ve searched for. If you look at almost any other search results you will see something similar. All you need to do is create a new Keyword URL in the Keywurl preferences, give it a shortcut name, put in the URL just like the one above and then replace the keyword “Safari” with “@@@” which is what tells the script where to put the search string. In keywurl your Google search URL would look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=@@@&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

You add these searches into Keywurl in Safari’s preferences, and the searches are stored in a file called Home/Library/Application Support/Keywurl/Keywords.plist so be sure to back that up.

Personally, I have shortened keywords and have added some more of my own. Here’s a list of the ones I use:


amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dblended%26field-keywords%3D@@@
asx http://finance.google.com/finance?q=ASX:@@@
do http://www.discogs.com/search?type=all&q=@@@
ebay http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=@@@
ep http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aepguides.com%20@@@&btnG=Google+Search&btnI=745
flickr http://flickr.com/photos/tags/@@@
gg http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=@@@
ggi http://images.google.com/images?q=@@@
imdb http://imdb.com/find?s=all&q=@@@
map http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=@@@
mini http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=@@@
news http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=&q=@@@
thesaurus http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=@@@
tla http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/search.aspx?tab=32&charset=iso-8859-1&SearchBy=0&Word=@@@&TFDBy=0
wp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=@@@&go=Go
yt http://youtube.com/results?search_query=@@@


You can download my file and copy it if you wish.

To add one, just search for something on a website and copy the URL to the clipboard. Go into Keywurl and click the + button, type the keyword, press tab, and paste the URL. Replace the keyword you searched for with ‘@@@’. Make sure that if you’ve searched for something with two words, it will get replaced with ‘coca+cola’ or ‘coca%20cola’. You will need to replace that entire string with ‘@@@’.

GOTCHA’S

Watch out for some clever sites like Wikipedia which will always take you to the results page if there is only one hit. Search for something like ‘Japan’ in Wikipedia and you’ll be taken straight to the page on Japan. To find the URL, the trick is to search for something that it most likely won’t match and it will send you to a results page. Here you can grab that special URL. An example on Wikipedia is searching for something like ‘gadeo‘ which is a word I made up and so no page should exist.

TRICKS

Some sites don’t have their own search engines, so consider using Google to search them instead. For epguides.com for instance, go to Google and search for “site:epguides.com Frasier”. The URL you get is:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=site%3Aepguides.com+Frasier&btnG=Search&meta=

The magic for turning that into an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search is to add ‘&btnI=745′ to the end of the query, turning it into:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=site%3Aepguides.com+Frasier&btnG=Search&meta=&btnI=745

Have fun! Please remember to post your comments below about your experience with Keywurl, as well as any useful website you’ve made search shortcuts for!

I hope everyone remembers this guy. Recently there was a YouTube video that surfaced and got a lot of publicity. Usually one would post a blog entry about something like that as soon as they discovered it, but at the time I really didn’t think it was a huge deal, even if it was bloody funny, and very Australian!

I’ve searched for Peter on the web before and there is very little on him, so I thought it would be up to me to put together as much information as I can collate.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

From Peter’s Bio on Myspace:

I started my career as a freelance cartoonist working for all the top advertising agencies in Australia and overseas. Later employed as a Food Consultant, I wrote for years for New Idea, Woman’s Day and various other magazines, as well as producing my own cook books. I have been the senior cooking demonstrator for the Gas & Fuel Corporation where I originated many recipes for them, and have demonstrated cooking for many shopping centres around the country. I have also owned and cooked for Melbourne’s most prestigious restaurants, and cooked the Silver Jubilee dinner for Prince Charles. I have cooked by invitation for Governors and Premiers, and have also written twelve cookbooks!

NAME: Peter Russell-Clarke
STATUS: Married
DATE OF BIRTH: 1935
CATCH PHRASE: “G’Day”, “Where’s the cheese?”, “I’ll see ya later!”

Winner of the Wilkie Award, 1987. The Wilkie Award is an award presented by the Anti-Football League, given to the person who did the least for football in the most interesting way for any given year.

FIND PETER

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/peterrussellclarke
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Russell-Clarke

COME AND GET IT
During the 1980s, Peter hosted a short 5-minute cooking show on ABC Television which ran for many years. He had a very memorable theme tune which many people remember.

Lyrics:

Come and get it, come and get it.
With Peter Russell-Clarke
In the city, or the outback
He’s Australia’s brightest spark.

Feed your eagle, pack a hamper
Walk you beagle, jump the Tampa,
On a farm or out at sea,
Learn a recipe or three,
Come and get it, come and get it,
With Peter (g’day),
Russell (g’day)
Clarke!

Here’s an episode you can watch:

OUTTAKES

The following clip was recently released to the web. It’s an in-house blooper reel combined together into what television stations usually produce as a ‘Christmas Reel’. Strong language, be warned. But hellishly funny

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In his hype, Peter was very well known for his Coon cheese campaign, with the catch phrase “Where’s the cheese?”, and ran several ads for Australian eggs. Here are a few highlights:

If you have any more information or media, let me know in the comments and post a link to wherever it is! Please feel free to post your Peter Russell-Clarke comments below

Here are some excerpts from within the first comic:

During the 50s and before any animated series was even conceived, a live-action feature-length film was developed. This is really incredible to see, as the first minute and a half were animated and the rest of the film is actually filmed with human actors.

Here’s a clip showing a few bits and pieces of the live-action sequences from the series:

Here is a link to Part One, from the beginning (this clip is lengthy and really poor quality but is interesting as it shows the animated intro leading into the filmed movie.)

Astro Boy was adapted for Japanese television in the 60’s and a black and white animated series was developed. The series intro from the Japanese version in the 1960’s depicts Astro Boy flying around town, waving at a plane, tunneling through the Earth and generally having a cool time. Here’s the clip for the Japanese intro:

The US version is very different. We start seeing the version of Astro Boy most people would be familiar with: helping the good and fighting the evil and generally saving the day. The theme tune is similiar to the Japanese version although probably has very different lyrics given the different animation. Coupled with this new theme, this version has a classic 60’s retroness about it but starts to feel like Astro Boy as we know it.

Let’s take a look at that 1980’s US intro that we’re all so familiar with. The theme gets a little more funked up and the lyrics have changed, and these are the ones most people I know would be able to sing along to. Like before, the intro shows Astro Boy fighting the bad and helping and defending the good, and I think this version is a little more personable than the original versions.

During the 80’s there wasn’t much difference with the Japanese version, except that their version has slight techno beat which is present throughout the tune that isn’t there in the English version. This is about it; there really isn’t much else that is different between the two. Unfortunately I don’t know if the lyrics translate differently. If you watch them in sync, the animation is identical although you can hear that the themes are ever so slightly off between the two.

In 1999 there was talk of an Astro Boy feature film, an idea which was shelved due to other projects.

In 2003, Astro Boy was released once again as an animated series however, this time there was all new animation and of course, a new theme. The animation was specifically done so that they wouldn’t loose the original look of the characters, but were able to enhance the animation sequences and effects using modern manga-type techniques (super speedy blurry backgrounds that shoot past, and that type of thing.) I have not personally seen the series itself and I don’t know how different, or, modernised, the 2003 version of Astro Boy has become.

The Japanese version and the US version have exactly the same cartoon background with some very major differences! The Japanese version contains a theme tune (I can’t translate it) and it seems like the right way to evolutionise the theme following the current trend.

Just what have they done with the US version? No lyrics, a techno/rock theme that makes you feel like you’re playing a game of Burnout instead of watching a cartoon series. There’s a more intense, less personal feel about the whole thing. Give me the 80’s version any day.

In 2009 there will be an animated/CGI version of Astro Boy coming out as a feature film. This was picked up from 10 year prior when it was originally discussed. As yet it is in pre-production and hasn’t even got any cast or director (announced, anyway) and the only thing that has really cropped up about it so far is some concept art, so perhaps this is what Astro Boy will become…

And who knows what from there…

Here’s what I think might happen in the long run…

The lovely Microsoft “Red Ring of Death” consuming Yahoo…

For a good example, here’s a list of all of the fly on the wall and reality style TV shows you can find in just one week of UK Pay TV!

Wow. Are you sure this isn’t enough variety? Perhaps they could put on some other reasonable television instead of the same old stuff over and over again!