RIP Arthur C. Clarke

It was a sad day for me on March 19th as my favourite author, Arthur C. Clarke, passed away aged 90. I had just finished reading one of his best books 'Rendezvous with Rama' the night before.

RIP Arthur, thanks for the inspiration and all the good reading :)

Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini

Last Friday we were at Macquarie Centre for 2 reasons. One was to get our new Mac Mini (10% off at JB HiFi!) which will become our new media centre (more on that in a later post). The 2nd reason was to go to Borders to meet Matthew Reilly and get a signed copy of his new book Six Sacred Stones :)

Also last Friday at 6pm Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, though it is probably better known by its code name, Leopard, which Apple is also using in its marketing. I didn't get a copy on Friday (despite NextByte and JB HiFi being open after 6pm) as I qualify for a $13 upgrade with the Mac Mini purchase.

It has been interesting reading the reports on Leopard (mainly since I am seeing what people's overall experiences are). I generally try to ignore the more sensationalist stuff and instead read sites whose authors know their stuff and give praise or criticism when its due (such as John Gruberor the always excellent Mac OS X reports by John Siracusa's reports).

However, I am really disappointed in the Sydney Morning Herald's incredibly poor and badly researched report "Spotty Leopard makes Mac users catty". The report implies that Apple's latest operating system is flawed and Apple have been deluged with support requests. This is simply not the case and the fault of this error lies equally with a 3rd party hack by Unsanity and Logitech. Unsanity provide "extra" functionality to the Mac by installing stuff in into the parts of the OS that Apple say not to. Generally users who install this stuff keep the hacks up to date, but what is worse, Logitech have installed this as a part of a mouse "driver".

The lesson here is when installing a new OS (whether Mac, Windows or Linux) it is best to start from scratch. Leopard (and Tiger before it) provide an option to "Archive and Install". This copies your old system files (including all the 3rd party stuff into a separate folder) and installs a fresh copy of Leopard, it also can (set by default) copies across all your user and network settings.

Back to the SMH. I have noticed of late there has been an anti-Apple bias in the reporting there (or at the very least they just copy their news from blogs). With a small amount of research (like I did above) the article could have been balanced and less sensationalist and instead provide a bit of guidance to users. At the very least once new information became available the article could have been updated to indicate it was a problem with the Unsanity hack and that users were at risk if they had installed Logitech stuff. Newspapers have a responsibility to report critically and fairly, many people read this stuff and just believe it (I had a few discussions on this at work today trying to dispel the fallacies in this article. So Asher Dunn you are now on notice.

And, yes, I will be doing an Archive and Install on our iMac

UPDATE: Apple have sold over 2 million copies of Leopard. It took Tiger (10.4) a month to sell that many!

Canon 40D, Holden Utes and Google Maps

Well it has been a couple of months since I started this blog and the regularity of posts has faltered somewhat! However whilst there have been things I have wanted to blog about I have had writers block. Oh and the fact that about a month ago I discovered Facebook...

I do have a few ideas for blog posts (damn writers block, well that's my excuse and I am sticking with it!). We will see :)

Anyway this week I don't have writers block and there are things I want to write about! Firstly I have been thinking for some time of updating my Canon SLR to digital. Until this week it was an easy answer as I would get the 400D which I have found for under $1000 at Photo Buff. This week Canon announced the next model up, to 40D which is tempting but probably outside my price range.

I am bummed that this week's Top Gear was the last one on SBS until summer. But to keep the inner car buff happy Holden has obliged and released details on the VE based ute (which we have waited nearly 12 months for). Tempting as it looks great!! But practically I will still keep my new Golf turbo diesel. It was only this time last year I sold my VR Commodore for it even though was very very very tempted by the new VE SV6. Hmmm, if they had a diesel version...

This week Google has announced two new items. Google Sky is an addition to the Google Earth app where you can reverse things and look at the night sky. In fact many of the southern sky images were taken at the UK Schmidt telescope in Sidings Springs near Coonabarabran in NSW. Also you can now embed your Google Maps into your own websites, which reminds me that I need to sort out our Cairns photos! Here is the map from our NZ trip.


View Larger Map

Stuff from this week #8

I think Ross Gittins article on the Work Choices legislation is spot on. Howard's recent minor changes to it does not change a think. This is bad legislation and must go.

Bono's 47th birthday this week (10th May). Happy birthday mate, keep up the good work :)

Were you one of those people who thought Marty McFlys shoes were cool in Back to the Future? Someone has set up a petition to get Nike to put these up for sale. Hmm I would much rather the flying DeLorean...

Looks like New Order have officially broken up (unlike going on hiatus like in the mid 90s). I wonder where the album worth of songs that were recorded during the Waiting For The Sirens Call sessions will get to...

YouTube video of a car owner revenge on a traffic light window washer :)

The Federal Budget was released this week in Australia and you can't half tell they are buying votes in this election year (as they have done in the past couple of election year budgets). Also they have plenty of cash left over for some election spending and wasting it on advertising for Work Choices or Superannuation. I would have preferred that instead of a tax cut and all those payouts that they invested in more infrastructure (like water tank rebates, better public transport, improvement to hospitals).

UPDATE: The New Order break-up seems to be only the bassist Peter Hook. A source close to the band says they are still together.

Stuff from this week #7

Oh no! You can now buy baby clothes to match up with your iPod!

Telstra starting on the broadband propaganda wagon. I getting really sick of Telstra's propaganda on this broadband issue, I have been getting stuff in the mail from them too!

Cool pics of Jupiter from the New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto and Kuiper Belt.

Stephen Hawking takes a zero-g flight. Looks like he had fun too!

Finally Australia has implemented a Do Not Call register for telemarketers. I signed up yesterday, pity it takes 30 days to activate and only lasts 3 years...

Funny stuff from YouTube: Darth Vader calls the Emperor after the Death Star is blown up and Darth Vader vs Japanese police.

Stuff from this week #6

Kylie to star in Dr Who! Apparently she will be a cyberwoman (perhaps with an Aussie accent “G'day, you will be deleted, maaate!”)

Hmmm, I am also wondering when the ABC will show the new season of Dr Who here. My guess is Sunday night at 7.30 after Robin Hood finishes (mid July I think) as the Saturday night slot is now taken by The Sideshow (not sure how long that will go for).

Plasma Pong. Whoa! An interesting take on this old game :)

Amazon is hoping to sell non-DRM songs in its digital music store (and not just ones from EMI). Apple has also let all its iTunes partners know they can sell higher quality and DRM free songs from May.

Hubble had its 17th birthday on the 24th April. Despite its troubled beginnings it has turned out to be a big success. 500,000 images in 17 years!

Another Exoplanet planet has been discovered by the European Southern Observatory, interestingly this is the first one that is in the habitable zone...

Stuff from this week #5

15-year old pretends to be the ABC and gets the Chaser's content removed from YouTube. Funny bit is the ABC does not mind it being there! The kid has since apologised.

Australia is in big trouble with the Murray-Darling water system having very little water. Hopefully this will force a rethink on some crops grown which use too much water such as rice and cotton. Also mining out in the west of NSW uses a lot of water too. Perhaps there is opportunity to move to recycling more water for the townships.

Customers are not happy with Microsoft Vista. Dell has changed their policy and is now allowing users to specify Windows XP instead of Vista.

Consortium wants to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait linking Alaska and Russia.

Stuff from this week #4

5th paying space tourist arrives at ISS.

Apple has now sold its 100 millionth iPod. Only took them 5 1/2 years! Worth noting that Sony sold 350 million Walkmans over 15 years and that the sales of iPods have been accelerating...

Next update to Mac OS X has been delayed until October.

RTA gives up on priority traffic light system for busses on the North-West T-Way. This system would have been a good idea, allowing busses to get green lights all the way, now the RTA wants to wait until a Sydney-wide system is implemented in 2009. Knowing how things work the Sydney-wide system will be delayed a year or 18 months. You would be better to bring this system online and gradually work on other parts.

Daylight savings to be increased!! Nooooo! This is a bad idea. If anything it should be reduced back to the first weekend in March, the extra week will mean getting up in darkness and having very little extra light in the evening.

John Howard says Work Choices has increased jobs. What a bunch of crap, there is no way this can be reliably measured. This could be due to the minerals boom or the lack of sunspots. Anyway, even if Work Choices has increased jobs it has decreased the bargaining power of employees and reduced their opportunities. Whilst I am not advocating increasing union power, we need to have a good balance between the rights of workers and the rights of the business. We have swung too far towards business with this bad policy and it is time to redress this. I doubt the current Federal Government will change this so it is time to vote them out.

Chaser stunt makes news in the USA. Good also to see the Chaser's ratings are still high (5th spot with 1.3 million for Wednesday just behind Spicks and Specks). It is bad to see even more people watch the diarrhoea that is Today Tonight. Channel 10 has been running repeats of House since the Chaser started 3 weeks ago, with a new episode next week it will be interesting to see if any of the defectors return to House.

San Francisco to London? Google Maps say I need to swim across the Atlantic!! Only takes 31 days. Oh, and I tried to go to Sydney but it would not cross the Pacific!

Soccer Video on YouTube (set to Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life)

Stuff from this week #3

Stuff from this week is coming early this week due to Easter :)

Big news. In fact if this had come out on April 1st instead of 2nd, no one would have believed it! EMI and Apple have announced that EMIs catalog will be available DRM free from the iTunes Store in May. Individual songs will cost more, however they will also be double the quality of the old ones (256K AAC instead of 128K). See this transcript of a Q&A with Steve and EMI boss Eric Nicoli and also a bit more info from Gizmodo.

Make a webpage look like MS Word!

List of April Fools Day 2007 pranks/jokes on Wikipedia. However the snake that escaped in Google's New York offices was not a joke!

The TGV train has set a speed record of 574 km/h. However, I don't think you will see this as a regular occurrence just yet. This was with an experimental TGV with twin superchargers and on a part of the new track between Paris and Strasbourg which has been specially reinforced.

Apple released the 8-core MacPro which is an extra $AUD2500 above the standard 4-core machine.

Wondering what Brett Lee is up to since he is not part of the World Cup? He is training up for his post cricket career in Bollywood.

Update #1: You can now create your own maps in Google Maps and share them! Cool!

Stuff from this week #2

The Chaser rated well in its new spot on Wednesday nights, in fact they doubled their average from last year. Must be those billboards in Iraq...

Arise Sir Bono!

Cool astronomy stuff: Hexagonal feature on Saturn.

Episode 7 of Chad Vader is out. This one is funnier than the last couple :)

Space junk (apparently) nearly hit a LAN Chile aeroplane. The Russians had warned that parts of a Progress cargo carrier would re-enter the atmosphere east of New Zealand, but according to SMH this was to be 12 hours later than the aeroplane's sighting.

The SMH and WWF are encouraging Sydneysiders to turn off their lights for an hour starting at 7.30pm on Saturday 31st March (they are calling this Earth Hour) to help do something about climate change. It will be interesting to see how many people do turn off their lights (we will be!). Good to see someone taking a lead on this, especially since John Howard has only made baby steps on climate change (cough..election year...cough)

Funny answers to exam questions

New Zealand 2007 Photos

Nearly 2 months after our New Zealand trip finished I have finally organised our photos and put them up on our new photos site!
As well as the NZ photos I also included the ones we had previously put up from our USA 2006 trip. Each photo album now includes a slideshow feature (activated by the link on the top right of the individual photo page) and a couple of the photos have a link back to Google Maps for their location.

This is all part of a plan to organise all our digital photos in iPhoto. Once trips/events are done I plan to upload up another album.

Stuff from this week #1

Looks like the Chaser guys are back for another year of pranks. Still we have to wait until March 28th (on Wednesdays instead of Fridays like last year) until the new series starts. Oh and checkout their billboards.

Qantas has landed an A380 at LAX, the pic shows it dwarfs the 747.

Will It Blend? Well according to these guys, yep! They try iPods, Coke cans, glow sticks and light globes.

Further proof that you can sell anything on eBay, a time machine is up for grabs! Quite obviously it is fake. It has neither a flux capacitor or is powered by a black hole!

Starting a blog...

My first ever blog posting! Wow :P

Now seriously, why did I choose to start a blog now?? Well, the simple answer is I want to better exercise my writing skills (creative or otherwise!) whether for my opinion on current events or just something I feel compelled to write about. I am finding that my writing (or getting to writing) has become a bit rusty of late (even for things like emails) and I have gotten rather good a procrastinating about starting writing. Hmmm, I think my procrastination is inversely proportional to my typing speed :)

OK so thats great, what am I actually going to write about? At this stage anything that comes to mind like my thoughts on current events politics (federal and NSW state elections in Australia this year), things Ruby and I are up to, funny stuff I find on the interweb to our photos (yeah the photos part of the website is going to be up soon) and movie reviews.

Oh and no guarantees on updates, that will depend on my schedule. Best to make use of the RSS feed to see when there are updates. Lets see how this experiment goes :)

Muhahahahaha!