A response to my anti clean feed letter

So today I was excited when I received a letter from the office of Stephen Conroy.

But I was disappointed when I got a fairly flat letter.









I wanted to put this up because I don't think many people that wrote a letter would have put their return addresses down.

I guess I need to do some work to find out if the filters in UK, Sweden, Norway and Finland are mandatory or by request. I would like to say that I think a clean feed as an optional feature from an ISP is an awesome idea. But I fear if we give them an inch on the subject, they will just keep running with it.

The interesting bit about the letter is that they think they can control the content on the Internet like they can control movies and games. All I can think of is my .NET lectures, if all you have is a hammer, all problems start looking like a nail.

Another interesting note is the "live trial" mentioned so that they can be sure that the performance issues are as minor as possible. Who conducts a live trial starting 24th of December. Most of the technicians that would implement the features would want to be on holiday. Families usually try to get away for Christmas and there are lots of things to do outside. I also thought I heard that the live trials were no longer going to be live, they were going to be tested by a task force and not citizens. GAR!

From their FAQ:

Parents rightly expect the Australian Government to play its part in helping protect children online.

Really? We expect the government to assist in babysitting our children? Do parents really just want to have kids so they can palm the responsibility off to someone else?

I love their use of numbers. ACMA has a blacklist of 1300 URLs. Performance may be an issue at 10,000 URLs. Who hands them this information? I mean if I add some GET parameters to the URL, does that mean I can get past the filter (ie. ?filter=lame). All you have to do is get a couple of domains pointing to the same server and you are increasing the number of items on the list. Hell, even subdomain (somthing.domain.com) would cause chaos for whoever needs to look after the list. Regex and wild cards do I hear you say? Is that why people are getting upset at the potential for overfilter. Oh sorry, you're freely hosted webpage on cute kittens is hosted on the same domain as someone who shows a nipple, bad luck for you.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get the letter from Stephen Conroy out to the nocleanfeed people or even the EFA. Whilst it would be cool to have them link directly to this post, I think they could do a better job of disecting the letter. I just feel let down by the government.

Please note that I have no problem with the letter being used on any other page. A link back to me would be handy so that people knew where the letter originated from.

iPod shuffle no longer charges / mounts

I thought I'd write this one up since I did win the shuffle via a Byteclub quiz (or whatever it was).

The other day I found out that my shuffle wouldn't mount. Either under linux or windows. So I ran it flat to see if it would charge. No luck in a computer. Tried charging it via an AC adapter, still no luck.

Googling turns up a lot of results of owners with similar issues. So I believe the shuffle is dead :(

I'm currently in the process of pulling it apart to see if I can play with anything on the inside. I might be able to replace the battery and have it charge from a different source. My music will be locked but at least I'll still have some portable music.

Currently trying to follow teh instructions from http://homepage.mac.com/bner/iblog/B1570693677/C1723801931/E303819815/index.html but I only have a stanley knife which could be a bit big for the task at hand.

Action on Australia's "Clean Feed"

I was going to wait until I got all of my old post back before starting up the blog again, but lets hope that when the old stuff gets imported, it doesn't cripple the new stuff.

So a while ago I decided to do something about the Clean Feed that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy wants to bring in.

With the template of what is provided at No Clean Feed, I wrote a letter to Rudd and Conroy.

Bitten by the GPS update

So I was thinking about upgrading the maps on my GPS because I noticed a few round-abouts the have become lights, lights that have become round-abouts, new roads and changes in which is the “main” road at T intersection.
But hang on, how much are the maps. $150 AUD. What a joke.
I can buy a melways for the next 5 years or so at that price, but who buys a melways every year.

So I’m looking at other alternatives.
I noticed a N810 in Dick Smiths today and I wasn’t quiet sure if it had a GPS unit in it. It does, but it doesn’t seem to come with any Navigation software (for australia).
Roadnav seems to be the one at the top of everyone’s list and apparently it is aiming at integrating with Open Street Map which I have used before.

Just another bad day

So here is the day I was hoping to enjoy, just another 4wd adventure.

But I came around a corner, fish tailed and hit a tree (then did a 180, don't know how that happened though).

This was on the way home so I still had a good 4wd, it just took a little longer to get home than expected.

I’m lost on feeling though. I’m confused how it happened. I came out of it ok, mum is shaken up again.
I’m sad that I won’t be able to drive anywhere, but it is not going to bring me to tears.
The tow truck guy suggested that the car will be a write off, so I guess all of the work I’ve put into the car just dissapears.
I’m not particularly worried about the money on the car, because I’ve had a blast in it. But I kinda wish it lasted longer.
I could just replace the car, but does that mean I would have to go back to work to build the funds up again…
Does the freedom the car gives me outway the freedom I wanted from my own project…

-= Comments
1. Intrinsic | September 29th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Nasty,

I’d get a proper assessment before writing it off, looking at that external damage the only thing I can think of that I’d write it off for is kinked chassis rails.

That is assuming you’re willing to do the work on it yourself, if you were going to get it done “professionally” it’s probably a write off on cost.

2. RuF! RuF! RuF! | October 2nd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
OOoooo slow down you hoon its not a race (unless it was)

Yarr Har

Well ye dirty land lubber.
We made it to international talk like a pirate day and some of us take it the extra step.

Spam on the rise again

For the longest time, I was getting next to no spam.
Now it seems that I am getting 3-4 every day.

I’ve started turning off comments for some of the posts that keep getting spam to stop the emails coming in.

One thing I noticed was that they all come from the same ip address (200.63.42.136). I would normally expect it to come from many addresses.

Just wondering if anyone else is suffering at this point in time?

-= Comments
1. Zooba | September 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I agree, spam is on the rise.

Most of mine are from various IP addresses, I can’t see any pattern.

2. Lucien | September 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I don’t seem to be having that problem. I’ve switched of trackbacks on all posts. I leave comments open until I start getting spam on that post, then I switch comments off for that post too. Perhaps you are just more popular than me

If a code monkey goes on holidays…

...but doesn't upload any shots: Does anybody know about it?
Well very few, but the worst bit is I can't show it off.

Back near the start of August, my brother and I took our patrols over to Tasmania for a quick whip around. Goals were:
1. Cadbury factory tour
2. Drive in some snow
3. See an old Huon pine tree
So here is us on the first day at some lighthouse.

Stopped off at some falls.

Some more falls

A small snow fight

Spotting a rainbow

Crossing a lake

And on Mt Wellington where it snowed for all of about 30 seconds

Is was just 4 full days in Tasmania, but worthwhile. Some say “what a waste” bringing two cars but it meant all 4 of us got a front seat and if anything went wrong, the other car could probably do some towing. The only thing that bothered me is that you can’t drive and take photos (Mum still needs to pick up on the finer details of the camera).

When we got home we got some tickets to some races that I went to but caught a cold from. So I haven’t had the energy to put these pics up previously.

So we seen the Huon pine, We got to play in the snow. But the Cadbury factory was shut on the weekend, which is when we pulling into Hobart.

-= Comments from previous blog instance

1. Emma  |  August 24th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Those pics are beautiful honey

2. Emma  |  August 24th, 2008 at 12:17 am
wish i could have gone with you actually

3. RuF! RuF! RuF!  |  October 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
FUCK DUDE the waterfall ones ARE AWESOME you should blow them up (wall sized) and make some kick ass prints : )

Dynamic instanceof?

Just came across an interesting line that I thought was worth sharing.
[java]
public static boolean isInterfaceOf (Object o, Class interfac) {
return interfac.isAssignableFrom(o.getClass());
}

Now java obviously has a instanceof keyword that allows you to do this, shorter to type and more recognisable.
The project I’m having a peek at (Archimedes an open source CAD program) only has one use for this where instanceof couldn’t work.
It hides the collection of objects and you can get all of the objects of a certain type. You could get around this by exposing the collection.

Just thought that this method actually makes the coding longer than what it actually does.

When people fail

An alternate route must be found.

I got such a laugh out of this one.

Just make sure you read grog free and not free grog :D

Solving the timing issue - Overkill?

So after sleeping on the problem, I came up with a solution. I need to touch the latch after the task has been done.

private Future makeMove(final Player player, final int round, final CountDownLatch latch, final ExecutorService executor)
{
  return executor.submit(new Callable()
    {
      public Choice call() throws Exception
      {
        try
        {
          Choice result = player.brain.makeMove(round);
          gameEventListener.moveMade(player, result);
          return result;
        }
        finally
        {
          executor.execute(new Runnable()
            {
              public void run()
              {
                latch.countDown();
              }
            });
        }
      }
    });
}

The trick is that I need finer control over the executer.

ExecutorService p1Executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1, new DaemonThreadFactory());
ExecutorService p2Executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1, new DaemonThreadFactory());

The reason I need an ExecutorService for each player is that when the first player finishes their moves, when the second player submits the “hit latch” task, it is possible that task gets executed and finished before the current task ends.

So I can finally access the get method with a 0 wait time: return future.get(0, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);.
I need some input though:
Is this overkill?
Is this ugly?
My first thought was that it gets the job done in very few, readable lines. So no.

Java Out of Order

So I've got a fairly consistant output now, and its the out of order or "optimisations" being made that I think have screwed me over.
Not really a gotcha, it's just I let him sneak up on me.

return executor.submit(new Callable()
  {
    public Choice call() throws Exception
    {
      try
      {
        Choice result = player.brain.makeMove(round);
        gameEventListener.moveMade(player, result);
        return result;
      }
      finally
      {
        latch.countDown();
      }
    }
  });

Now I don’t think there should be anyway that the latch.countDown(); could be re-ordered to come before the makeMove().
This allows me to get the result of the Futures with a very small wait: return future.get(1, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);.
But it still isn’t instant. My problem now being that the Future isn’t being set with the result in time. If you look at it from the other side, I’m not really hooking into the right part of the Future. I really need to trigger the countDown() after the future has been finished. The Callable interface doesn’t have any other methods I can hook into and my first search of the package leaves no leads.
At least I’m a little bit happier.

More Rock Paper Scissors

Long long ago, I wrote an Interface for people to write Rock Paper Scissors Bots.
We were playing around with them on one open day, I can’t believe that I didn’t blog about it.
Anyway, to distract me from my actual project, I’ve started working on it again, simplifying code and extracting out interfaces with the intention of providing more that one way to join in the tournament (which is currently only if you are specified in code).
IRC seems like a perfect alternative.
One of my first challanges was how to ask two bots for their choices, but only give a limited time before giving up. It would be cool to let humans play as well so my limit is 10 seconds at the moment. The reason I have to ask two bots at once is that I don’t want to ask bot 1, wait at most 10 seconds, then ask bot 2. Both of these can be done at once.

So, using the java.util.concurrent package, I whip up an ExecutorService. The problem with the Executors.defaultThreadFactory() is that when the program ends, those threads from the factory prevent the application from ending.
That’s easy enough to fix:

class DaemonThreadFactory implements ThreadFactory
{
  ThreadFactory impl = Executors.defaultThreadFactory();

  public Thread newThread(Runnable r)
  {
    Thread t = impl.newThread(r);
    t.setDaemon(true);
    return t;
  }
}

Now, I need to wait on two different threads, sounds like a semaphore, or a CountDownLatch in Java. I pass the latch to the Callable that will be done in the other thread.

executor.submit(new Callable()
{
  public Choice call() throws Exception
  {
    Choice result = player.brain.makeMove(round);
    latch.countDown();
    gameEventListener.moveMade(player, result);
    return result;
  }
});

Then it is just a matter of CountDownLatch.await(long timeout, TimeUnit unit)

When you submit a task to the ExecutorService, you get back a Future object which can be check if the task is done and what the result of the Callable was.

future.get(2, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

And this is where the fun begins.

You’ll note that I am waiting 2 milliseconds to get the value, after waiting at most 10 seconds from the latch. I know that the methods were completed because the event “moveMade” was raised.
But sometimes, just sometimes, they get call timesout.

When I was working with Threading in Advanced .Net, I was happy debugging this sort of code because all of the utility methods were my own. I wrote them, I should know what is going on. Here I am just going off the API.

Time to “Mind Meld” with the source code of the FutureTask me thinks. It seems like there is a missing synchronized keyword somewhere but I would have thought that the FutureTask would have taken care of that for me.
I’m almost putting money on there being a “Gotchas” post being made after this one.

Wander down to Warrnambool

So I went away for the weekend. Something the family hasn’t done in a while.
Went down to Warrnambool just to see if we could come across some whales.
I borrowed a friends camera for the occasion and took some shots.

Screwing around with focus:

and finally, we saw a whale.

-= Comments
1. Emma | June 29th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
HEHEHEHE… it looks like a rock. Nice photos though

2. jay | June 30th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
nice whale

6 month review

Sunday marked 6 months of unemployment/self-employement/holidays.
I feel it is important that you get reviewed and get a feel on how you are going at least every 6 months. 3-4 months was working very well when I was working. Since I only really report my progress to this website, I guess this is where I should do my review.

December - Was really just about me. Unwinding, playing around and catching up on things I had missed out on.
January - Was filled with a holiday, some new toys and generally consuming time with no goals (Except for the purchase of a 4wd).
February - Finally got my car so spent a bit of time cleaning it up, getting it on the road and getting to know the car. I could actually feel time slipping away from me at this point so I bought a diary and started recording what I did with each day.
March - The website project started to have some visible functionality. I was still spending too much time playing games. With my diary as reference, I started to notice that I didn’t spend much time at all on the developement. This was also when I bought my eee, so I was playing with that a fair bit.
April - I think I spent far too much conceptualising what I wanted to achieve rather than just implementing and throwing away if it didn’t work.
May - I moved away of developing on my laptop to on my desktop. When I started the “dream” I thought I would dev on my laptop most of the day, away from games, IM, emails etc. But I installed openTTD which can just suck the time out of a day. I also missed casually chatting to some people and keeping up with what is going on. After this, I started spending a lot more full afternoons on coding because I had read slashdot, I knew I had no emails and I knew that no-one was playing games. Although I have lost some days when something interesting was on slashdot, or a new upfate for a game came out .

I mentioned that I bought a diary because the days seemed to slip away. It definitely helped slow the weeks. But after reviewing six months like I have, I don’t think I’ve achieved all that much.

One of my goals 6 months ago was to get the site I am working on ready about March/April and have it up running with some users in May/June to see whether it is worth continuing as a project. I am a little dissapointed that I haven’t got the site built by this time but am not going to give up on it just yet.

I see my 2 problems as sleeping in and motivation.
I really need to get back to working on the project at standard hours, say 9-5. At the moment I am waking up at 12:00, having lunch, reading news and then being ready to code between 2-3:00pm. Then there is 2-3 hours of code before people start jumping online and playing games.
Motivation is a little more tricky to work out because I don’t know what motivated me whilst I had a job. It was just a routine I did on weekdays (which could be a reason why I quit). Maybe it is because I’m working on a dull part of the site at the moment. I plan to implement the storage engine with a Java Content Repository but because the tools to integrate with it are currently ‘in developement’, I’ve sort of held off. I’ve considered buying a Wii as a sort of reward for getting to a milestone like implementing the storage engine in a JCR, but the Wii would just be another thing to distract me from coding.

One thing I don’t have is a task tracking tool whilst working on the project to give me feedback on how close I am to completing a stage. A while ago I decided that I should try to break the project up into stages I want to achieve.

• 0.1 - Working front end with dummy, in memory back end


• 0.2 - Change back end to be persistant


• 0.3 - Give the site a fair skin. (I don’t think pure css will cut it)


• 0.4 - Review, Check that it will handle at least some load. Probably a closed beta so I can get other people to check bugs and comment on skin


• 0.5 - Working release. The project is to help 2 groups of people connect. I need to get a minimalistic site going and see what people think and find out what they want next

Done, now where is my IDE…..

-= Comments
1. Tim Rowe | June 2nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Wait, you’ve spent *six months* unemployed!?
Holy crap dude. Why??

2. pimaster | June 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Have you missed the parts of the blog that relate to me starting my own project?
I wanted to do my own thing whilst working for Hyro, but it becomes too time consuming to do both at once.
Following a dream is important.
I think it is important that I tackle a whole project on my own to improve what I can bring to a team environment.
It may also give me a chance to give back to some open source projects. Something I could have done at my old job, but not under my own pacing.
Most importantly, because I can.

3. Xavier | June 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
“Wait, you've spent *six months* unemployed!?
Holy crap dude. Why??”

You’ve got this around the wrong way. If you’ve been employed for 6 months you better have a damn good reason.

It’s like when people ask ‘why are you vegan?' Worrong question. Why are you not?

To the death of Outlook Express DAV protocol

So today I got a rather interesting email from microsoft (I snipped some out because it is long and boring).

Dear Microsoft Outlook Express customer,

Thank you for using Microsoft® Outlook® Express. Our information indicates that you use Outlook Express to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account via a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol). DAV, like POP3 or IMAP, is the way that a mail client communicates with a web-based mail server.

As a valued customer, we want to provide advanced notice that as of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more. This next generation of free e-mail software will allow you to easily manage multiple e-mail accounts—including Windows Live Hotmail, plus other e-mail accounts that support POP3/IMAP. Better yet, Windows Live Mail integrates well with other Windows Live services, and downloads in minutes. After you provide your user name and password, you will automatically be linked to your Hotmail account, providing continued access to your email and contacts.



Frequently asked questions:
Why are we disabling DAV?
DAV is a legacy protocol that is not well suited for client access to large inboxes. Over time, as we’ve provided more e-mail storage to our users—and now offer 5GB inboxes for free—a more efficient access protocol is needed.

What are we replacing DAV with?
We have developed a new, much more efficient protocol called DeltaSynch that is far superior to DAV especially for large e-mail inboxes. It enables email clients to only download changes since the last time the client polled the email server for changes. This is much more efficient and high performing than having to download all the headers in every folder as is the case with DAV.

Is there a different or new mail client I can try that uses DeltaSynch?
Microsoft is providing Windows Live Mail, a free e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more. This free, next generation email client enables users to easily manage multiple e-mail accounts including Windows Live Hotmail and other e-mail accounts that support POP3/IMAP. Windows Live Mail also integrates well with other Windows Live services, is optimized to work with Windows Live Hotmail, and offers:

To which I firmly wrote back (and quoted exactly)

I’m sorry guys, but I’m going to have to rock the boat on this one.

Years ago you created your own protocol to deal with mail problems. Now it is obsolete.
So you go and make another one. Does this not sounds like a bad circle to get into?

You say that Windows Live Mail is the new software that will connect to hotmail using the new protocol. You also state that this software will connect to other, standard IMAP/POP3 email accounts. That is a good thing because my client needs to connect to more than one account. If there is validity in the need for your software to connect using these protocols, why don’t you provide an IMAP/POP3 connection to the hotmail servers? I understand that you want to be able to sync more than email (contacts, notes, pictures etc) and I understand the benefit of providing a service that does that for some people.

But I just need my email.

So, I have been unable to find any details on the implementation of the new protocol.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeltaSync) does not provide any information about the use or other clients that may support this protocol.

Please get back to me with what my options are. If you are happy to provide the spec for the protocol I will be happy to write software to integrate it with my current setup.
I will not be backed into a corner.

Regards,
Russell

ps.
This email was generated in Opera - M2 (http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/m2/)

I’m so not looking forward to getting a way around this.
I will also be dissapointed if I have to leave my email addresses behind and just use the one at gmail.

-= Comments
1. Xavier | April 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
oh jesus when will people learn that making your own protocols is generally a Bad Thing? IMAP may have its flaws, but at least it’s a starting point.

Java on the eeePC

So after Lucien asked about java on the eee, I thought I’d do him a favor (I think it is a favor) and test it out.
apt-get install sun-java5-jdk after setting up apt to use a standard debian repository (I use “deb ftp://ftp.netspace.net.au/pub/debian stable main contrib non-free” in my /etc/apt/sources.list) and it downloaded install and then caused some errors :(
But I thought I’d try to run java and javac but they both seg faulted. More :(
So I uninstalled and did a quick google. Came up with http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=64687 which was informing me to install it straight from the sun site. One of the comments stated that the second time you run the java or javac command, it works for some strange reason.
So I re-install the jdk and this time it doesn’t error on installation.
java and javac run fine.

Hope that helps :D

teee heee, my new eee PC

So today I walk into Harvey Normans and see the little eee PC sitting next to all the other standard laptops and I think “oh, how tiny”.
I went and had a play with it to find out how small the keys actually feel. They are tiny. Probably a little too tiny for fingers like mine.
On the way home I was thinking that if I was still working, I probably would buy a toy like that…
… after some more thinking, I thought that I really should support something like a quality build and doing a good job of providing linux.
So I stopped off at the Good Guys and bought one for $457

Issues:

• I don’t like laptops suspending when I close the lid. If I want the machine to stop functioning, I will let it know. So I edited /etc/acpi/lidbtn.sh and commented out the line that called suspend2ram.sh
• I don’t know how close the machine is too full charge. The icon in the tray only states the unit is plugged in. There is also a light on the unit that lets me know that it is charging. I have cat’d /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state and /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info but there is no obvious answer as yet. Once it is charged I may be able to deduce it is full based on some information.
• I’m used to NetworkManager configuring the wireless network for me. Need to get myself adjusted to the KDE way of doing things or…
• I’m tempted to find out how well ubuntu or fedora runs on the box just so I can get my gnome life back.

Still to fix:

• I need to turn off the display when the lid is closed. I know the script I need to edit but I don’t know what command to issue.

-= Comments
1. Lucien | April 4th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I am jealousy. I saw a guy at Swin with one the other day which he had installed WinXp on and was very happy with. Anotehr guys I heard about (also at Swin) is trying to install os X on it.

I’m just trying to figure out how to justify buying one for myself. I only just got my new MacBookPro a few months ago, yet…

2. pimaster | April 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
os X would be an interesting experiment.

How to justify. That is really a hard one. The only thing I had to justify was “Do I have the cash on me right now”. Supporting Linux and vendors who are going to support Linux (open drivers and community support) was what I wanted to achieve. What I do with laptop now that I have it. I don’t know.

3. Lucien | April 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I’m right there with you. I can think of one thing to do with it: since it has the VGA plug, I can run a lecture from it. Now if it will just compile java, it could be my complete “java lecturer in a box” solution.

Printing from Windows to Linux (sharing a linux printer)

When I first setup my server in my room (Yes, I finally got there from this post on 30th June last year), printing was high on the list of todos.
After getting the printers to work locally (worked a lot smoother on fedora 8 compared to fedora 6), I got working on how to print from another linux box. After trying to manually edit some of the printers, I got frustrated and deleted them all to start with a fresh slate. Closed the printer dialogue and re-opened it to find that cups had automatically detected them for me. Fantastic.

The next step was to print from windows. I thought this was going to be easy since I had already enabled smb shares. But I couldn’t find settings that would work in the config file /etc/samba/smb.conf. So off to google I go.
http://www.petersblog.org/node/726 has simple working configuration.
I’ll copy the configuration setting just in case the original ever disappears.

# add to [General] section:
printcap name = cups
printing = cups
security = share

# make sure [printers] section looks like this
[printers]
browseable = yes
printable = yes
public = yes
create mode = 0700
guest only = yes
use client driver = yes
path = /tmp

And bam, Windows picked up the shares, I installed them and am happily printing test pages :D

Truck me

Finally, my search for a 4×4 is over.

Just got to get it registered, get some sort of a cb radio, tire mount and possibly new tires and I’ll be ready to go bush with my brother. He has had his patrol almost 12 months and I have enjoyed going 4wding with him.

-= Comments
1. Mark | February 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Cool as.

There’s some great 4×4 tracks up where I live in the Yarra Valley.
I crashed my car not long ago.. I’m driving my sisters old little yellow astra’s at the moment.

Keen to get a new one, but i’m poverty sticken.
Remember not to speed - you’ll stand out like the dog’s proverbial. My patrol driving friend has lost hist license twice now.

Long time no fly

It has been bothering me for about two and a half months, that I haven’t flown my helicopter.
For a while I was looking for the right material to repair the skids with but gave up and just used some super glue.

I have tried to do some hovering indoors to see if I could get the hang of the controls but it doesn’t want to hover. It’ll bounce on the floor or it will take off.
I can’t let it take off for obvious reason inside and you learn very little from bouncing.
I fear the next time I fly it I will make it fly a fair way off the ground, zoom around for a little while and crash it spectacular fashion :|

iTunes fun

I was just wondering if there was someone out there with an iPod video that would be willing to do a test for me.
* Find an mp4 file that plays fine on the iPod.
* Rename the file so that it has -.mp4
* Import into iTunes and try to sync your iPod.
I spent a couple of hours transcoding a file and ended up frustrated when it wouldn’t sync. I noticed that no other video I had previously had a - in it so I tried removing it and everything was happy again.
I really can’t believe that this could be a problem in software today and I would love for someone else to confirm this problem (or if it is just my machine).

Hardware problems just arn’t my thing

So the Dell guy arrives. In and out in 40mins. Doesn’t do any checking of his on. Just comes in with the new motherboard and procedes to take my laptop apart.
The first time he turned it on I instantly new that it was working ’cause the hard drive light be flashing. Check the bios (were he has to re-enter the service number) and the bios reports the hard disk is installed. The thing booted, but I screwed with the logical volume (so I had to fix that later).

I like software, I can fix the problem (most of the time).

-= Comments
1. Zooba | January 29th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
It’s probably cheaper to replace 10 motherboards a day than to diagnose and possibly fix 2-4 issues. (Especially when you consider the difference in the training required)

Hang on, Dell is on its way

To alleviate the problebm of a laptop that won’t boot because it doesn’t think it has a HDD, I called Dell since I have 180 odd days of Next Business Day on-site cover.

They’ll be here on Tuesday or Wednesday with a new motherboard. Hazaar.

Somedays, I just hate computers

So I wanted to resume my 64bit laptop from suspend today and check out a few things.
I’ve had a problem with wireless resuming from suspend but it has never really worried me because I can restart a few services and all is well again.
Except today.
I ran the script twice and there was no sign of life from the wifi light. So I rebooted.
My laptop decided it was not going to pick up the hard disk. It didn’t consider it to be present. Like it had packed it's things and left for the day.
Gar.
So my first goal was to work out if the disk is ok. I plug it into my external IDE/SATA enclosure (and for all who want to know, SATA in a laptop is the same as SATA in a desktop) and check the disk. At first I thought there was a problem, but I had forgot to plug the other end of the USB connection in. Disk is fine.

Since I have two similar laptop models (A Dell M1710 causing me problems and Dell Inspiron 9400 running fine currently), I thought I would take the HDD out of the 64bit model and try it in the 32bit model. It detected the harddisk but wouldn’t boot (stating that you can’t run a 64bit os on a 32bit machine). Cool
Tried the other way around, take the disk out of the 32bit machine (which had already been done thanks to previous test) and place it in 64bit machine. Turn it on and it still doesn’t like the disk.

I have tried some cardboard “modifications” to see if I could lift the disk slightly up or down to see if it was just a connector problem, but I haven’t had much luck there. I’m not prepared to put too much in there in case it gets stuck.

Tried compressed air down the HDD bay to see if I could dislodge possible dust but that hasn’t improved the situation.

I haven’t taken the whole computer apart, but I have started hoping I could see something wrong.

The red circle is where the HDD connects to the board.

I was hoping to upload some high resolutions shots of these just incase someone picked up something I didn’t. I’ll try to upload them later when my brother isn’t playing CS:S.
Basically I’m looking for ideas. No hitting it with a hammer jokes please