Capn's Blog

My beer audit

2010-10-21T22:36:00.000+11:00

Recently I organised to show the folks at my hackerspace how to brew beer:

Discussion: Brewing beer at the 'space

We started it off on the 19th of October, and we plan to bottle it on the 30th.

Some people bottle their beer in glass bottles. But if a glass bottle explodes, its neighbor might explode too, and it's common to lose several dozen bottles. Imagine the mess of glass and beer on the floor!
Instead of glass, I bottle my beer in plastic bottles. Plastic bottles are good in that they can't explode like glass bottles can. But one problem is that over time (more than six months), the CO₂ of the beer escapes and the beer goes flat. No bubbles.

I just did an audit of the beer I have at my place, as I want to start brewing again straight after the 30th, something I've only done once since 2007.

I have four crates, and a crate can hold 16 bottles. It seems I have two crates each of two brews. I opened one of each brew to do a taste test.

I tried the first brew. Nice darker beer, with no obvious bad smell, and no obvious bad taste. Only a small amount of fizz. While not so strong on mouth feel, it was very flavourful and tasted ok, giving me a hopeful feeling.

I tried the second brew. A lighter beer, with no obvious bad smell, and no obvious bad taste. Almost no fizz. A great mouth feel, and while I couldn't taste "cardboard", "vegetable flavours", "fruit flavours" or "skunkiness", I just couldn't reasonable say that it tasted like beer. In other words, not possible to taste it and say "oh, there's the malt, and there's the hops".

The upshot is that I think I will throw away the second brew, and keep the first brew. But the first brew doesn't have any bubbles? What to do?

I will open each bottle, and put in some carbonation drops. The yeast that's still in the beer will consume the sugar in the drops, produce gas, and make the beer fizzy again.

Oh and yes, after having drunk 2 bottles (1.5l) of the first brew, I'm now feeling very relaxed :-)

Merry Christmas to all

2009-12-28T17:08:00.002+11:00

Hello,

Merry Christmas to all my friends. I hope you had a happy and nutritionally excessive Christmas.

My boys sing in a famous choir. Each year, this choir is part of a Christmas concert in Melbourne, which is shown on TV across Australia. This year, Bob was in the singing group for this event.

You can see him dressed in red at 3:29 to 3:52. He is the left-most boy, looking from our point of view. He said it was very cold, even with the lights. Some of the performers were blowing steam!

Bagels from Glick's

2009-08-13T12:09:00.002+10:00

I like to eat bagels for lunch. I like to get my bagels from Glick's, which is a chain of Jewish bakery stores across Melbourne. Their logo is a picture of the founder:

I went to get my bagels yesterday. I was served by Mr. Glick himself!

Two things about Mr. Glick:

He thinks tongs are unnecessary: Just grabbed the bagels and shoved them in the bag. Hey, when you're a baking god, germs just run away, right? Right?
I ordered 7 bagels. He said "now how much is that". I said "7 8s are 56, so that's $5.60" and offered him $5.60. He looked totally lost. He started muttering "Well, I know 6 bagels is 4.80, that must be"...
Several more confused seconds. I repeated "7 8s are 56, so that's $5.60". He's still completely at sea. Finally he just agrees to take my money.

So he may be a baking god, but it's a fair bet he's innumerate.

Still, he runs the biggest Jewish baking chain in the country. Well done, eh?

Back from China

2008-08-12T09:38:00.003+10:00

Hello everyone. As you'd know by now, about three weeks ago I arrived back from China.

Best thing about being back: Family and food.

Life in China is so strange. Shop attendants very rarely smile or seem glad to see you. Some seem quite annoyed if you ask them a question. Chinese shop staff just don't have the "service oriented" attitude of people in the West (and in fact, of places like Hong Kong and Singapore).

And yet, my friends in China were just so overwhelmingly generous and helpful. Time and time again, as soon as I said that I was looking for something or planning to do something, my friends were thinking about how to help me, and often spent a great deal of their time helping me. They were so helpful it was often quite embarrassing for me, because I'm a very independent person.

It wasn't just my friends, it was perfect strangers too. Several times I would talk to people on the bus or the tram, and if I said I was going somewhere, that person would insist on coming with me to make sure I knew the way. And they didn't even know me!

How can friends and strangers be so friendly, yet people in shops be so cold? I don't know. But I know that the thing I miss most about living in China is my Chinese friends.

Heading off

2008-02-24T12:41:00.001+11:00

Well, in 10 minutes I'm leaving for the airport. Fly to HK, stay a night, then fly to Beijing, stay a night, then catch the train to Dalian.

Been working so hard at home to get everything shipshape before I leave. But I haven't done any Chinese practice! My characters are so rusty. I'm going to practice them on the plane with the use of the character program I wrote for my phone.

Bye Australia! Back in July!

Countdown for launch

2008-02-23T05:30:00.000+11:00

Worked like a crazy cat getting stuff ready at home. The garden now looks pretty damn good. Pity I left the house in such a mess. Finished outside at about 10:00pm, and started on stuff indoors. Making notes of phone numbers, charging batteries, copying music and files to my portable hard disk, etc. Finally finished about 5:30am. This is going to be one short sleep.

Linux Conference 2008

2008-02-04T00:13:00.000+11:00

Well, the conference is over. Heard some really amazing talks, caught up with friends, and got some great ideas. Probably the best talk I saw was Doug Chapman's talk about a robot he built to go through a maze and find a burning candle. When it found a candle, the robot would blow it out (and the audience would clap and cheer). As well as some interesting ideas for building the robot, I really like the approach he took to the software which controls it.

I heard a talk earlier that day where another guy showed a movie of a walking 6-legged robot he'd built. The walking looked so unnatural and "forced". It looked to me as if he had one main program that was telling each leg what to do. And the robot seemed to be doing a really bad job of coping with unexpected situations. It would only work well if the environment around it didn't have any challenges. Watching his movie frustrated me so much that I wrote down some notes on what I thought was wrong with his approach, and how I'd do it if I was making one.

To my surprise, Doug Chapman's robot is very much along the lines of what I'd written down! I spoke to him and found out some more about his ideas for software for robots, and what references he used. It's definitely given me
many ideas for how I can write software in the future, especially software which has to interface to the real world.

I started putting insulation into the roofspace tonight. It's a very difficult job because the roof is almost flat where the insulation needs to go, and so moving around in the space between the ceiling and roof is extremely difficult. Night time is best because then it's cooler. On a hot day, the roof space can get to 60C, which is very unpleasant to work in.

I haven't started studying Chinese yet. As I mentioned earlier, I'm leaving Australia on the 24th. That means there's now less than three weeks to go! I have to start studying soon.

Finishing work, now for the visa

2008-01-25T23:28:00.000+11:00

I have two pieces of news. The first is that I finished working at my company today. Although the deadline we were working under was extremely tight, the team worked very hard and very well together, and the goal was reached. I feel proud of having been a part of this team.

The second news is that the invitation from 大连理工大学 (Dalian University of Technology) has arrived. What that means is that I can now apply for my visa. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit that in with the conference next week, but we'll see what happens.

I'm really under time pressure here! I have a placement exam at the university on February 29, and I'm flying out on February 24. After the conference, I have three weeks to fix everything up at home, and study Chinese like crazy!

Feeling very nervous!

Gadgets

2008-01-19T15:58:00.000+11:00

One way of lightening the weight of baggage when travelling is to take something which can do two (or more) jobs. For example, it's really no fun to have a bottle of something that needs opening, but you have no bottle opener. So it's a good idea to carry one. But for only a small increase in weight, you can take a multi-purpose tool that opens bottles, but does so much more. This picture shows one like I'm taking.

Electronic things are another good chance to double up on functions, and it applies not just to baggage, but everyday use. There are two areas I'm hoping to do this with:

Phone

Here are the things I will be using my phone for. (I already use it for most of these functions):

Camera (it's 2MP and good enough for everyday shots, as my Wilson's Promontory blog article shows).
File storage (2Gb card, which I can take out and put in someone's PC to copy files). I also use it for my spreadsheets of financial information, website passwords, photos of passport, credit cards, account details, ticket photos, etc, in case I lose them. It's all encrypted of course, so if I lose my phone, that information is not revealed to people.
Chinese character learning tool. I wrote my own program to help me learn and practice Chinese characters.
MP3 player, video player (I don't use these at the moment, but it may be useful for my course later).
Alarm clock, address book, countdown timer, calendar, and TO-DO list.

I think the biggest weight saving is in renot taking a separate camera, if I'm willing to put up with a drop in image quality, and poor low-light performance.

Computer

As well as doing the boring stuff such as email, chat and websurfing, I want a computer with Chinese input to work on assignments, and to use as a dictionary. The latter two don't need an internet connection. It would be really useful to take the computer with me to class, to a study room, downtown, etc. But one problem is that like most average laptops, the size of my laptop is just too large to carry conveniently. So I have been thinking about getting a smaller laptop for my trip.

The one I'm looking at is the ASUS Eee PC. I went to look at one in the shop today. It's seriously small! There are several good things about it:

Really small, this is something that can be easily thrown into a schoolbag.
Quite cheap as far as laptops go, about US$500 for the top model.
Has Chinese input.
Has English/Chinese dictionaries built in.
Uses Linux, which I'm very familiar with.

The biggest negative things are:

The size of the screen, only 7" from corner to corner.
The size of the keyboard. Those keys really are tiny! It's only just possible to touch-type on it, and when I tried it out today, I found that when I wanted to press the right Shift key, I always hit the up arrow instead. Still, people say they get used to it after a while.

Here are some pictures. I've tried to choose the pictures to really give an idea of how small it is.

An over-all view. The thing's about as wide as two hands next to each other.

Here's the Eee put on top of a regular laptop.

Here's someone's hand near the keys. That's not some giant freak of nature holding it, that's a regular person's hand. Fitting both hands onto the keyboard is a real squeeze.

Having said that,I really want one. Not sure whether to get it here, in Hong Kong, or in Beijing...

Continuing on with the theme of multi-purpose gadgets, I think the Eee, with an external keyboard and hard disk, might be able to do all the things I want a computer to do, plus I can take it with me to school, on the bus, etc, and if I get stuck with something, I can use it as a dictionary.

I'm almost certain I'll get one.

Going to China V: Vaccination

2008-01-15T18:57:00.000+11:00

I went for my vaccinations today, against tetanus, polio, typhoid, pertussis and diptheria. My arm is a little sore, but I'm one step closer to China. Yay, I can cross something off! :-)

Going to China IV: Travel plans

2008-01-15T10:53:00.000+11:00

I organised my tickets last Friday. So far my itinerary looks like this:

Depart Melbourne 1535 on Feb 24 arriving at Hong Kong 2145. Stay one night and day, visiting my mother-in-law.
Depart Hong Kong 1655 on Feb 25 arriving at Beijing 2010. Stay one night and day, visiting my Beijing friend.
Depart Beijing 2157 Feb 26 on the train, arriving at Dalian 0805. I'll be met at the station by someone from the company.

Depart Dalian 1825 on July 15 arriving at Hong Hong 22:05. Stay another night and day with my mother-in-law.
Depart Hong Kong 1915 on July 16 arriving Melbourne 0620. Happy day!

Apart from the joy of seeing my family again, I think the most enjoyable thing will be sleeping in my own comfy bed again.

Going to China III: Preparation

2008-01-15T00:37:00.000+11:00

I'm going to be living in a foreign country for several months. I want to do whatever I can to make sure I'm prepared for it. I have been reading internet forums about living there, and asking people for their advice. And I have bought a notebook where I put my planning notes, so far adding about two or three every day. I have two categories:

"What to do before I go"

For example, fix the broken window frames, mulch all the garden beds, make sure all the insurance and my will is up-to-date, tidy the garage and several junk-filled rooms in the house, go to the dentist, have a haircut, arrange for continuing mortgage payments, put away all my beer-making stuff, get vaccinated, arrange a fee-free credit card so I can get money in China, get the possum out of the roof(!), put insulation in the roof, clip the nails of the guinea pigs, trim the trees outside, spray the weeds so they don't grow back, fix the holes in the flywire screens, replace any blown light bulbs in the house, return books I've borrowed from Greg, trim the hedge, fix the broken upholstry under the couch, and spray the perimeter of the house with bug spray. What a list! I think I've ticked off two so far, but the list keeps growing.

"What to take"

Here's a partial list: Deodorant (apparently it's hard to get. One person I emailed told me, "they don't believe in it"!), shaver, traveller's cheques, credit card, tissues, toilet paper, gifts, coffee, drugs for pain, asthma, fibre, nasal drops for hay fever and colds, anti-diarrhoea pills, vitamins, my pillow (I get neck-aches unless I have my pillow), first-aid, moisturiser, lip balm, sunscreen, phrase book, multi-purpose tool, cassette player (the school still uses tapes), batteries, battery charger, gloves, hat, coat, raincoat, computer (I'm thinking of getting a newer, much smaller one), card reader, shampoo, Vegemite, sunglasses, and Tabasco.

So far, I haven't been able to cross any of these off! So the lists get longer and longer and longer. (It's not as bad as it looks - the second list will be ticked off as I pack them into my suitcase).

How can I possibly get all this done before I go???

Going to China II: My job

2008-01-15T00:28:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking of going to study in China for several years, but it never seemed to be the right time. At the end of last August, my previous company decided to change its business, and as a result, the team I was in was disbanded. At that time, I was considering the China idea, but didn't feel comfortable making such a big decision so quickly. Meanwhile, word got out that I was available, and another company made me an offer I couldn't refuse. But before I accepted with them, I told the boss that I was considering this China decision, and that I'd know what I wanted to do around January. Knowing this, he still wanted to employ me, and I've been working there since then.

There are a number of dates which are driving my timetable:

School starts in Dalian on March 1, and I need time to travel there and settle in.
I want to spend a few weeks at home fixing up the gardens, doing handyman things, and revising my rusty Chinese.
There's a Linux conference during the week of January 28-February 1.
The date for finishing my three-month probation with this new company ends on January 25.
The team I'm part of are desperately working to finish some software ready for January 21.

For that reason, I chose January 25 as my last day, and told the boss about it on December 28. Surprisingly, he wasn't angry. In fact, he said to me "you don't have to resign, you can just take a 'leave of absence'". Knowing they have appreciated me being there, plus having already discussed the China possibility with them before joining, makes me feel better about leaving them after only three months.

The other members of my team don't know about my China plans, and I think that when they find out, they'll be a bit shocked. For this reason, my boss and I decided that we wouldn't tell the other team-members yet. Partly this is so we can avoid distractions and concentrate on our software for January 21, and partly because I think that if I tell them I'm going, it's human nature that they will start to make an emotional distance between me and them. Since I'm trying hard to make cultural improvements within the team, I don't think I can do that as well if they know. It's been a difficult few weeks, pretending that I'm going to be with them for quite some time. I hope it all works out well in the end.

Going to China I: Making the decision

2008-01-03T01:25:00.000+11:00

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.
Franz Kafka, Austrian author (1883-1924)

A few weeks ago I wrote that I have been considering going to China to improve my Chinese. After a lot of deliberation, I have made my decision. I'm going!

Two natural questions are, when, and where?

Regarding the when, my plan is to study there for the first half of 2008. And about the where, well, I investigated many places within China, but have finally settled on the city of Dalian.

Dalian

There are a number of reasons why I've chosen Dalian:

Being on a peninsula and next to the sea, Dalian isn't as polluted as many Chinese cities.
The sea makes the weather more moderate. It snows a few times in winter, and summer temperatures are in the high 20s.
Living costs are cheaper than Beijing and Shanghai.
I'm told the people are friendly and the crime rate is comparitively low.
For a language learner, Dalian doesn't have the problem of "too many" foreigners that Shanghai and Beijing has. And the language people speak on the street is close to Mandarin.

Most of the foreigners in Dalian are either from Korea, Russia or Japan. The buses run every 10 minutes or so, which sounds like their public transport system is useful, not dysfunctional like here!

This is the company that I am going with:

http://www.chinese-in-china.com/

They act as a middle-man, doing the organising, finding accomodation and tutors, arranging social activities, and being there for advice or when something goes wrong. I wrote an email to some of the current students going through this company, and the responses were very very positive.

Family

Leaving my family isn't something I choose to do lightly, and I couldn't do it unless I had their full support, especially from Jenny. It's funny really - she jokes about it as if she can't wait to get rid of me! Maybe it's true. Maybe it's her way of being supportive, and not holding me back. Either way, her support is a comfort. And my boys are now at an age when they are capable of doing a lot of things on their own, so the workload on Jenny, while it will be hard, won't be impossible.

I'm planning to use my computer and webcam to keep in touch with them, daily if I can.

By going, there's one thing I will certainly be missing out on. My good mate Greg says that there is a position opening soon at his company, and by the sound of it, it would be a very good match for me. Unfortunately it won't be there when I return from China. This is perhaps the one thing that made the decision about going to China difficult for me, as job satisfaction is very important to me, and I don't think an opportunity quite like that is likely to come again soon. Curiously enough, Greg, whose opinion I rate highly, is the only person I've told who hasn't been completely supportive. My family, parents, family friends and work colleagues have all been excited and approving when I've told them of my plans. I guess that for Greg, being there for your kids is the most important thing of all, and in terms of my role in the raising of my boys, there will be a cost to going. Well yes, there will be. But I think the cost won't be greater than we can accept, and I hope the benefit will outweigh it.

Crossing the mountain

2007-12-21T09:44:00.002+11:00

It's been a while since I wrote about learning Chinese. And indeed, it's been a while since I did any Chinese study at all. What I wrote in March last year still applies:

I need to find a way to use Chinese every day, not just learn in a classroom. I need to start living what we are learning, not just keep studying as an academic exercise.

It's a chicken-and-egg situation. While I have a basis, my ability in speaking and listening is not good enough to communicate with others in Chinese, so it's really hard to get into the sort of dialogs that will help me improve. Also, the hours I put into my job and family mean that I have very little time or energy left for learning Chinese. Hence no progress.

I feel that if I can live in an environment where Chinese is spoken all the time, and I have the time allocated every day to study, I will be able to get over this hurdle, to the point where I can start to talk with people. From there, I can teach myself again.

As far as getting that learning environment goes, there's really nothing to compare to studying in China. The upside is that studying in China presents both the opportunity and the means. The downside is leaving my family here while I study, and the financial impact of not having a job for a while. Basically what it comes down to is looking at where I want to go, whether I can accept the downsides, and deciding what I'm going to do.

I'm close to making that decision.

Camping at the "Prom"

2007-11-25T09:17:00.000+11:00

Camping at Wilson's Promontory

Last weekend my boys and I went for an overnight hike and camp at Wilson's Promontory, a national park containing the Australian mainland's most southern point. The "Prom" would be an island, except it is connected to the mainland by an isthmus of sand.

The park is about 200km from Melbourne, and it takes about three hours to drive there. We're about 50 kilometres away, on the isthmus.

The granite outcrops of the mountains are getting closer.

This is a longshot down to one of the beaches on the eastern side, called Squeaky Beach. The shape of the grains of sand mean that it squeaks when you walk on it. Really cool!

The lower parts of the prom are covered in sand dunes and coastal scrub. Every few decades, fire renews the vegetation.

Most people who go to the prom stop at Tidal River, where the road ends. There are many campsites and a shop there, but no electricity. We stopped here to pick up our hiking permit, and we saw this kookaburra on the roof.

Kookaburras are very communal birds, with brothers and sisters and cousins helping raise the young. They like to eat insects, small lizards and snakes. Their territorial call sounds somewhat like someone having a mighty laugh, so it's very cheery to hear them.

There's a shuttle bus from Tidal River to another carpark at the start of our walk. We parked our car, sorted out our stuff, and caught this shuttle bus.

The hike is in three parts:

A climb from the carpark to Windy Saddle. The environment is quite dry and gravelly.
A descent through wet forest down the mountain.
A walk along boards to cross a swamp.

Windy Saddle. We were tired after climbing to Windy Saddle, so we put everything down and had a rest. It was raining, so we covered everything with a poncho. Although this picture doesn't show it very well, the animals keep this area as a short lawn, whereas all around is forest. Because it's between two mountains, it can get really windy here!

The track is gravel in the first third, and dirt most of the way in the second. This area was logged for timber a hundred years ago, but now it's a national park. This big tree crossing our path may have grown before that time.

The final third is the boardwalk. There's nearly 2km of boardwalk across the swamp. At one point I stepped off the boards and onto the swampy land. Big mistake! My shoe was covered in seven or eight leeches, all desperate to climb up my shoe, onto my leg and suck my blood! Bob also got one on his leg, but we got it off before it started to feed.

The swamp drains into a creek. When you get to the bridge over the creek, you know you're nearly there!

Finally we've arrived at Sealer's Cove! This is the view looking north along the beach.

Looking south, plus my thumb. On the far left is a large rock. That's where the campsite is.

Just before the campsite, there's a creek. You have to cross this to get to the campsite. Unfortunately we arrived just in time for high tide. If you're not really careful picking your way across, you can get quite wet! Boys took off their clothes to cross, as the water level was up to their armpits.

Bob having a rest on a rock after crossing the creek.

Setting up the campsite. I'm unpacking the tent and Bob is running around exploring. Tim is sitting on an enormous boulder next to our campsite, taking this photo. You can see his finger, and his shoes.

Here's the tent all set up. Even though our tent is bigger than anyone else's (and heavier too!) it's still dwarfed by the rock next to us.

After everything was set up, we went down to the water for an explore. The sun was just setting. We walked a long way that day!

It was about this time that we struck up a friendship with Phil and his son Michael, who were camping next to us.

Next morning we went down to the sea, and climbed on this large rock, which looks very whale-like. It was a lovely place to have our breakfast. The smaller rock in front of it is about the size of a car, so we had a lovely view.

Time to pack up. I've cleared everything out of the tent, and placed it on the rock in the top left corner. The fly's off, and I'm about to remove the poles. You can see Tim, Bob and Michael.

This is Michael and Phil's campsite. Their tent is very compact, and they've got real camping equipment :-) Phil lent me his ceramic water filter. It means you can filter water wherever you are, and you don't have to carry water like I did! I wish I had a filter like that.

The weather is darker today, and clouds are hiding the tops of the mountains.
It was low tide so the creek was easy to cross. This is looking along the beach and across the creek. The campsite is straight ahead in the trees. I'm glad about the weather because it means it won't be too hot.

The tide going out reveals a large sandy tidal flat. The boys are enjoying exploring. From left to right is Tim, Bob, Phil and Michael.

If you dig in the sand, you can find small blue crabs about the size of a thumbnail. The boys collected several dozen, and imprisoned them in an arena made of shells.

Tim's extending the shells of the arena.

Because the sandy plain is so flat, the water level is just below the surface. You can dig a hole and scoop wet sand out to make walls and castles.

Setting off for home up the beach.

This is where the track meets the sea. Phil is doing his putting-on-the-pack ballet.

Heading home along the boardwalk.

We've finished the first third along the boards, and we're taking a break before heading up the moutain. My boys were very envious of Phil and Michael's hiking poles.

When we got back to the carpark, we thought we'd have to wait for the bus. But Phil gave us a ride back to Tidal River in his car. The thought of an icecream at the end was quite an incentive!

On the drive home, Dad was feeling a bit tired and the boys were a bit hungry, so we stopped at McDonalds. All that camping must have sent Bob a bit crazy!

It seems they really liked the weekend, as they're asking me if we can go camping again soon.

Work and play, work and life

2007-09-10T10:44:00.000+10:00

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

James A. Michener (U.S. novelist and short-story writer, 1907-1997)

Perils of Biking

2007-05-08T09:58:00.000+10:00

Lately I've been riding my bike to work. It's cheaper than a train ticket, is great exercise (2 x 20km each day), it's better for the environment, and it only takes about 15 minutes more than the train.

One of the dangers of bike riding though, is having some sort of accident. Unlike in a car, you have no shell of steel around you to protect you. It's just you hitting the road, and if you're unlucky, another car.

Because having a collision with a car is so bad, I try as much as possible to avoid busy roads, favouring parks, bike tracks, and quiet back streets. But there are some places on my route where I have no choice but to share the road with cars.

Since bikes have two wheels, and are very light, it's easy to have an accident. The question is not if, but when. And for me, the when was this morning.

I was on the road with cars ahead and behind me, traveling at about 30 km/h, into a busy intersection. I needed to turn into a side street, so I raised my hand to indicate. Unfortunately, the road is very bumpy at that place, and with only one hand to steer, I lost control of the bike. I hit the road on my side, and my bike helmet hit the road very hard. For a moment, everything looked blue and green.

I guess I was pretty lucky to not get run over by the car behind me. I pulled myself and my bike onto the footpath and let the cars have their road to themselves again :-)

The next ten minutes were the worst. I tried sitting a little and standing a little, but I blacked out three times. A shopkeeper came out and was trying to help me. I knew he was there but I couldn't hear a word he was saying.

I have badly scraped my elbow, my shoulder and my hip, and I also think I'll get some bruising on my hip. My bike isn't damaged, but my helmet is broken in two places. They are designed to break and crush on impact, so I'm not surprised. I remember the force of my head hitting the road, and I think that if I wasn't wearing a helmet, I would have been in deep trouble. This morning, the helmet did the job it was supposed to do.

As you can imagine, I didn't feel like riding any more this morning, so I wheeled my bike to the nearest train station, and finished my journey to the office by train. I tried to sit so that others could not see my bleeding arm - my day may be spoilt, but why spoil it for others?

By this time, I was starting to feel quite a bit of pain. I was hoping and wishing for the train to go a little faster so I could get to work. Once I got to work, first thing I did was take some strong painkillers. Fortunately they have now taken effect! I have washed the bloody areas with a disinfectant, and soon I will go and buy some bandages.

I haven't yet decided whether I'll ride home tonight. It's likely I'll take the train, but I think I'll see how my hip feels.

How do I feel about riding now? I still want to do it. Falls are part of riding bikes, and my other reasons for riding are still the same. I have to work harder on minimising the time I ride near cars though. I'm quite fearful of an accident with a car. The car will win for sure.

Immigration nitwits

2007-04-16T22:45:00.000+10:00

Here's a story of one man's experience with US immigration:

http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2007/03/crossing-border.html

I have my own true story.

I went to the US in 1998, about a month before my eldest son was born. Last taste of freedom, etc etc. Went through immigration in L.A. I had a long list of LA backpacker hostels to stay in, but I didn't have any kind of reservation or definite plan.

The immigration form asked for my place of residence. I left it blank. I asked the immigration "person". He said, "That's where you'll stay tonight. Unless you write an address in that space, I can't let you in". I said "but even though I have a long list of places to stay, and will stay at one of them, I don't have one preorganised". He said "then I can't let you in". I looked at him. He looked at me. An æon lasting several seconds passed. Then he rolled his eyes, sighed, grabbed the form and wrote "1600 Spring St, Downtown" on it. I asked him what it was. He said "I think it's City Hall". I said, "Local government offices? I have no plan to go there, and even if I did, how can you live at City Hall?"

He said, "You want in, you have to sign here". I said, "I can't sign that, I'd be making a false declaration, you'd know it was a false declaration, then you really could kick me out". He said "I can anyway, and if you don't sign it, that's what I'm doing to do".

He looked at me. I looked at him. The crowd behind grew longer. Well, I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't, so I might as well sign it. And I did. After all, I was following the direct instruction of a US immigration official, one who himself wrote a fake address on my form.

What is it about US immigration? Is it really the worst in the world?

He'll be an engineer

2007-01-31T09:24:00.000+11:00

I'm weird. Intense. Geeky.

But it's not just me. There's a reason for it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMzfgnTted0

It's not my fault! :-)

Hello blogspot!

2006-10-03T12:01:00.000+10:00

Hello blogspot!

From my last blog entry:

Most of the people who read (or who want to read) my blog are in China. That's a real problem because Blogspot blogs aren't readable from China!

Good news, it seems that since a few weeks ago, Blogspot blogs are readable from China!

Yay, I'm so happy!

Writing articles on Blogspot is so much easier than Microsoft Live Spaces, so I'm very glad to be back. I might celebrate by actually writing some blog articles!

Goodbye blogspot!

2006-08-17T10:00:00.000+10:00

Most of the people who read (or who want to read) my blog are in China. That's a real problem because Blogspot blogs aren't readable from China!

I've been looking around for other alternatives. The two I've looked at most closely being Microsoft's Live Spaces, and Yahoo! 360.

I'm going to miss Blogspot, because the editing tools on Blogspot just work better. They're not slow and buggy, it's easy to flip between preview and edit, and it allows for the mixing of text and images. Both Live Spaces and 360 don't do it as well.

Still, I have to move.

For the next while, every time I write a blog entry at one of the other sites, I'll post a link here so you can follow it.

See you there.

Beer I: I'm making beer!

2006-08-17T09:59:00.000+10:00

Check out my latest blog entry here:

http://capnkernel.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7575877A8EC2FE5F!169.entry

Tell me what you think!

What a bird taught me

2006-07-27T01:06:00.000+10:00

When I was growing up I lived on a farm. And being a boy, I was as curious then as I am now about the way things work. I guess that's why I'm an engineer.

One day I could hear an Australian magpie singing in a tree. I realised that I could see the nest of the magpie.

So I climbed that tree, probably about twenty metres above the ground, and found the nest. I couldn't believe it was so large, probably about 80cm cubed, made of masses of intertwined small twigs and grass. It must have taken the magpies weeks, if not months to build.

I was fascinated by how the magpies had put it together. So with my curious fingers, I started to unravel the nest. And once I started, I was just so fascinated that I couldn't stop. Several minutes later, there was no nest left.

I climbed down the tree and went onto something else. But later that day I was shocked by something. The two magpies were high up in the tree, and I swear, they were crying.

Australians love the songs of magpies, especially first thing in the morning when their warbling tumbling song greets the sun as it rises. But this time their song was nothing like it. I never heard an animal make such a sad, devasted noise like those birds.

I find it hard to describe now, but the sound and the realisation of what I'd done pierced my heart as surely as an arrow. With nothing but beaks, claws, and two hearts full of love, they had created a home. A home I'd destroyed.

That day their sad song cut straight through my heart and I felt like the lowest human on the planet. More than twenty years later, the memory is still fresh.

I know it doesn't change the badness of the thing I did, but I hope I have at least learned something from it. Certainly, I used that feeling to change myself, so that now I always try to consider the effect of my actions on others.

Those bird sang so sadly as their reaction to losing their nest. To me their song was and is a lesson I'll never forget.

Anime concert

2006-07-05T17:57:00.000+10:00

A while back I bought a box set of the films of Ghibli Studios, featuring the work of Hayao Miyazaki. The set has fourteen beautiful animated cartoons, some of them of feature film length. The three best known films are probably Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. My kids love these films.

Recently I saw a poster for a youth orchestra performing selected works from Studio Ghibli films, plus music from the Final Fantasy series of computer games. The performance would be played simultaneously with footage from the films. (Concert information, have a look at the video).

I don't think my boys have the patience to sit through something of the length of a usual classical program, so I thought that seeing the films they know and love on a screen would make it more interesting, help them enjoy the experience of live classical music, and give them an idea of what they can do if they keep practising piano and music.

So on Sunday, the four of us went to see the concert. Tickets are very expensive even for the C class, so I arrived early - 12 noon, even though the concert started at 3pm. That meant I was first in line and I could choose the best seats - ones on the closest corner so my boys can clearly see the orchestra. Good thing I took a book and a fold-up chair!

The concert was good. The orchestra were very good, with a good balance, expression , accuracy and proficiency. The 1st violinist did a top job. The piano could have been a lot louder - I think it should have been miked. The editing of video for the screen could have been done more carefully and I think the idea would work better if the orchestra played in sync with the video, but it was still really enjoyable. I don't think it was quite worth the $180 we paid for tickets for four, but I hope it's one of those events which my boys will clearly remember later, when they think back about their childhood.

Kidfree

2006-06-19T11:56:00.000+10:00

Sometimes (or so I'm told) couples will do something special and go away for the weekend, maybe to a fancy hotel. This is our version.

Yesterday we took the kids to my mum's place, and after a lovely dinner, left them there. Then we drove home.

Our house has a front room which we never use. It has a lounge (convertible to a bed) and an open fireplace.

Last night we pretended that room was our fancy hotel. We had a lovely roaring fire going and talked and read books.

Very relaxing :-)

The boys are still at my mum's place. They come home tomorrow. Hmm, I wonder what's for dinner tonight?

Bob's New Bike

2006-06-17T22:52:00.000+10:00

My eldest son Bob loves to ride bikes. He wanted (and needs) a new bike. How much does he need it? Well with Bob's old bike, his knees were hitting the handlebars. Ouch.

He's been borrowing his mama's new bike, which is a mountain-bike style, with gears'n'things. He's worked out how the gears make it easier on the hills and faster on the road. Time to get him one.

Bob's 8th birthday was a month ago. Every weekend since then, we have been looking at bikes. We finally bought one today. He is soooo happy.

With his new bike, his toes only just touch the ground. So there's plenty of room for him to grow into this bike.

It's great to all ride together. Once or twice my boys and I have ridden nearly 20km. They are tired by the end but it's a good feeling.

Now that we all have a bike, we can go riding together as a family. It's just a pity it's winter though - makes it hard to go out and have fun when it's cold and nasty outside.

Where is your Inner Child? Have a sense of humour!

2006-06-02T12:56:00.000+10:00

I went to the train station today. There was a guy with one shoe off, emptying out a stone or something. I said to him "I guess we're going to hop¹ on the train..."

He mumbled something like explaining what he was doing, even though it's so obvious. Didn't want to acknowledge my joke. What a boring fart!

So I hopped on the train for him.

When the train came, hop hop hop, I hopped on one foot onto the train.

Sometimes I feel sorry for people who have lost the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child.

1. "Hopping" means to jump using only one leg. "To hop on" some form of transport is a very casual way of saying "to catch" or "to take".

I fixed my computer with glue and newspaper!

2006-04-17T16:16:00.000+10:00

My Windows computer at home has three fans in it - one for the power supply, one for the CPU, and one for the video card. Amongst owners of this model computer, the fan on the video card has a bad reputation for failing after about a year. If it completely stops, the video card overheats and sometimes dies. Since a replacement is about US$250, it's an expensive failure.

The video card fan in my computer has been noisy for many months. Sometimes it spins faster, sometimes slower, but always it's groaning and making "I don't want to do this" noises. I knew it was only a matter of time before it failed.

Last wednesday night, I was using the computer and I heard the fan slow and finally stop. To the friends I was chatting with at the time, I had to say "bye, I must go before my computer catches fire!". Stretching the truth a little, but it sounds funny :-)

I pulled the computer to bits and removed the graphics card. The fan was very hard to turn, and wasn't fit for duty anymore. Time to replace it!

The only problem is that the fan doesn't have the standard square cage. Instead, it 's fastened to the heatsink by three tiny screws at the end of three legs.

Well, here's the space the card goes in. There's nothing next to it, which means I have room to make an airpipe to carry air from another fan.

My idea was to mount a new fan at right angles to the old fan, above the Wifi card (that tan-coloured rectangle). Then duct the air from the new fan onto the heatsink of the video card.

First step was to get a block of polystyrene foam. I carved the polystyrene into a shoe shape, being careful not to touch the foam onto any of the circuit boards because of static electricity.

After making the shoe shape, I got a page from an old newspaper and tore it into squares of about 1 inch. Using water-based paste glue, I started gluing the torn-up squares onto the foam, covering it on every side. After applying several layers, I dried the glue in the oven at 60°C until all the paper was dry and hard.

Once it was hard, I cut the square "heel" out of the shoe for the fan, and the "sole" out of the shoe near the toes for the heatsink. I then extracted all the polystyrene, leaving an empty shoe-shaped shell.

The paper had become surprisingly stiff cardboard. It held its shape very well and knocking on it made a very pleasing rigid hollow sound.

I then took some solvent-based craft glue and glued the fan onto the end of the shoe. When I applied power to the fan, there was an impressive amount of air coming out the bottom of the shoe.

Finally, I glued the shoe onto the heatsink of the graphics card. After drying in the oven, the whole card-shoe assembly became very solid, with the new fan really feeling part of the card. I used an elastic band when drying it, but I decided to leave it on permanently.

Here's a closeup of where the pipe attaches to the heatsink. The glue forms a seam around the top of where the fan used to be.

For power, I used the old trick of running the fan under the rated 12V. This is much quieter, if you don't need full airflow. In this case, I run the fan at 7V by connecting it between the 12V and 5V wires on an unused power connector. You can find out a lot more at 7 volts, a first-rate site.

Finally, I plugged the card into the computer and connected everything up. Fortunately, everything seems to have survived the static electricity, ovens, glues and everything else, and is now working fine.

The video card fan is still the noisiest in the computer (the CPU fan in this computer is wonderfully quiet) but it's a lot quieter than it used to be, and will do the job for another year or two.

Technical details:

Medion MD8083 3GHz P4.
ATI Radeon 9800XXL graphics card.

"Flexible working hours"

2006-04-02T23:34:00.000+10:00

It's half-past-11 on Sunday night, and I'm at work. Why? What would possess someone to leave their family and come to work?

My present company (OPEN Networks) produces ADSL modems. In particular, the modems are manufactured in Asia but we put our own software on them. The special software makes the modems substantially faster and more reliable that anyone else's, and it's because we have a team here (which I'm part of) that has worked hard to improve the software and fix so many bugs.

Some bugs are easier to fix than others. Usually a customer or our testing department tells us what to do to cause a problem. We can do that ourselves, find out what's happening inside, then fix it.

Some bugs are much harder to find. We may not know of a way to make the bug happen, and we will have to wait months to see the problem again.

We have one such fault that was reported nearly a year ago. It happens to quite a few customers but I've only seen it once before. And that means it's not possible to find and fix it.

On Friday, someone in the office had this particular problem with one of our modems. So I want to investigate the problem - haha, finally we caught a "live one"! And I have to do it before someone reboots the box, otherwise the problem will go away.

Sadly, I didn't get a chance to look at it on Friday. And I don't like doing it with people looking over my shoulder. So I'm at work tonight to investigate the problem.

I had one hypothesis for what's causing the problem, but I did some tests tonight and my hypothesis is wrong. Now I have to do some more thinking, imagine what else it might be. Then I have to work out how I can prove or disprove my theory. I'm going to keep doing that until I find the cause of the problem.

I always imagine customers using our products, and how frustrated they must feel when it doesn't work properly. If I can find and fix the problem, I will feel a great sense of satisfaction because I've made something that people can really use in their lives, and the product works well. That for me is why I like being a software engineer.

Which doesn't explain why I'm at work on a Sunday night. Well, it's give and take. I'll be getting in late to work on Tuesday morning and I have to leave early on Tuesday afternoon. My company is flexible about this. As long as I'm more or less spending enough time in the office and enough time working on problems, I can choose my own hours.

If I come in tonight, I have the hours to make up for Tuesday, I can work in peace, I'll look good to my peers tomorrow, and maybe I can even find the problem and get a buzz!

Classroom study on hold

2006-03-16T10:32:00.000+11:00

Even though I want to learn Chinese so much, after a lot of soul searching, I have decided that I won't continue studying Chinese at university this year.

While I'm comfortable with some aspects of learning Chinese (especially vocab), I feel that I am falling further and further behind in all the other areas. In particular, I feel very inadequate in the areas of speaking and listening, and the gap between me and my classmates is only increasing.

As a result of student feedback, this year's course has much more interaction than last year, and I think Jiang laoshi's instruction using only Chinese is very good. But I think that unless I can find a solution to this problem of really using Chinese, further classroom study will not help me.

I need to find a way to use Chinese every day, not just learn in a classroom. I need to start living what we are learning, not just keep studying as an academic exercise.

If I can develop some firm foundations, I will be ready for more classroom study. Otherwise, class will just become more and more painful.

There will be a few things I'll miss. In particular, Yao laoshi's teaching. Classes with him are always fun and rewarding. His willingness to answer questions made all the difference last year, and his responses are always thoughtful and easy to understand. That helped me greatly in knowing how to use words.

This is a very hard decision for me to make. I don't like to give up, and my desire to learn Chinese is as strong as ever. But I need to find a way that is effective for me.

I have no idea of what that way is, and I'm so depressed about the whole thing that I'm getting depressed about being depressed. If anyone has advice (apart from the banal "加油!" or "should watch movies"), I would gladly receive it.

Republishing my blog on my website

2006-03-14T09:26:00.000+11:00

If you're reading this, you know I like to blog. Not often enough, and probably not interesting enough, but there you go.

One problem is that I have many friends in China, and they are unable to visit blogspot.com to see my blog. So I want to find a way to copy my blog pages from blogspot.com to my own website. That way, people in China can read my blog by visiting my website.

Here's a rough outline of my plan:

Grab an XML version of my blog from blogspot.com.
Find the links to my other blog pages, and rewrite them.
Find the links to Wikipedia articles and make a copy on my website. Rewrite the Wikipedia links.
Use XSLT to convert the XML into XHTML.
Put the XHTML page on my website.
Add the blog page to an index.

That's easier said than done. At the moment I am struggling with step 4. While I can find plenty of XSLT transforms to convert RSS-to-XHTML, the blogspot.com XML feed is in Atom format, and I'm having trouble finding ATOM-to-XHTML XSLT transformations.

Been working on this for a couple of weeks, so far without success. Hope I can work it out soon.

"Are we there yet?" - I want to speak Chinese so bad.

2006-03-10T11:17:00.000+11:00

I'm so sick of not being able to speak Chinese!!!

I started learning for a while way back in 1991 but didn't keep going. I seriously started again last year at University, and I'm continuing this year.

My marks at school last year were good, but I'm feeling very very frustrated at not being able to use the language. It's all very well to know a lot of characters (>1000 now), but without the ability to listen and speak to even the most basic of sentences, it's useless. To understand, it has to be slow and simple, or I just don't understand.

When people ask me why I don't practise with my wife, I usually point them to here:

http://www.afork.com/her.html#language

And as you can see from that, we have never made a real effort to communicate together in Chinese before.

Finally my sense of frustration, knowledge of basic Chinese and my desire to learn has reached the point where it's more than the reasons we didn't talk with Chinese before.

I have a plan. The plan is that two nights every week, after our boys go to sleep we will only talk in Chinese. If it's necessary to say something in English (because I don't know the Chinese), she will tell me the Chinese for it and I have to repeat it.

I'm hoping that forcing the conversation to be in Chinese is a big help for both my listening and speaking ability.

We both did this together on Wednesday night - for the whole night, we only used Chinese. And actually, it went a lot better than either of us expected. It gives me hope that this plan can work, if we continue to do it.

We will do it again tonight, and I hope that each night, my ability grows a little more.

It's hard work and I feel a little scared, but I have a lot of desire.

Wish me luck!

Your carbon footprint

2006-03-06T09:20:00.000+11:00

The first world is addicted to energy. From our cars, our houses, the food we eat and the things we buy, nothing happens without energy.

Most of the energy is produced from fossil fuels. Such fuels are a convenient and high density source of energy, but they are non-renewable and result in the production of carbon dioxide, a contributor to global warming.

While the impending shortage of oil may force a global rethink of the way we use energy, I've been thinking of the maxim "Think globally, act locally", first used at the June 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment.

How can we best act locally? And which areas should we concentrate on?

This calculator lets you assess your lifestyle and find out how the things you do and use contribute to carbon emissions.

www.bp.com - carbon footprint calculator

Once you've answered the questions, you can go back over each page and alter your choices (clicking on numbers 1-6 for each page), which lets you see the impact of each carbon-producing area of your life.

For me, things were looking pretty good until I added the car. Oh my! Carbon output nearly doubled to 11 tonnes per year.

I've recently been thinking about hybrid cars. That is, cars with both a petrol engine and a motor/generator/battery system. My understanding is that the petrol engine is there to charge the batteries, for distance, and to provide peak performance when accelerating.

But I don't need peak performance. I have no need to scorch rubber at the traffic lights. And we rarely need to travel more than 50km. So why do I have to buy a car with a petrol engine I don't really need?

Here's my ideal solution: To buy a hybrid-car-without-petrol-engine (should be lighter and cheaper than existing hybrids), and charge it at home from the mains. Although most of Australia's energy is generated from coal (our major source of CO₂), it's still more efficient and less polluting than the petrol engine in a car.

Even better, get a solar array and use that to charge up the car during the day. That way, the only carbon emitted is due to the manufacture of the car and the solar panel, and every kilometre is, more or less, completely carbon-free.

According to the calculator, doing so would reduce our carbon output from 11 tonnes/year to 7 tonnes/year, which is less than half Australia's average.

How much carbon does your household produce per year? I'm very interested to find out. Use the calculator then make a comment below or email me, along with where you live. I think comparing different countries would be very interesting.

Mitch.

Free Krispy Kreme donuts

2006-03-03T09:47:00.000+11:00

I visited the USA in 1998, just before my first son was born. A kind friend of mine who lives in Alabama looked after me when I was in the area. Showed me the sights and made sure I had a good time.

One of the places we went was a donut chain called Krispy Kreme. They make the most wonderful, heavenly donuts.

Krispy Kreme has opened a few stores in Australia, but they are all in the state of New South Wales, not in Victoria where I live. They have, however, announced they'll be opening a store here in June.

As a promotion, Krispy Kreme handed out 10,000 donuts free yesterday morning. I got there half an hour early but the queue was already 100m long. By the time I got to the front of the queue, it was 200m long.

I got my free donut, ate it (oh so heavenly, no-one makes donuts like Krispy Kreme, no-one), found the second shorter queue (50m long) and got another one. I also asked for an empty box. I put the second donut in the box and shared it with my buddies in the office.

The best bit was walking through the city with an empty box, people giving me the most hateful looks because they all thought it was full... :-)

I really want another one. Maybe I'm addicted.

Wednesday night: Teacher only speaks Chinese!

2006-03-02T15:46:00.000+11:00

Wednesday night we had a new teacher for our Chinese class. He's from Tianjin and although he speaks English, he speaks to us only in Chinese.

Woah. Haven't had that before. I think we can all understand about 20% of what he's saying. The dictation he gave us was a bit of a farce, because he'd say a few words, then offer some explanation. We didn't know what was dictation and what was his comments and it was very confusing. Also, since he wasn't looking at his page carefully, his rereadings of a sentence would sometimes be different from the first reading. And we just finished our holidays, so we were a bit rusty on our characters. Hope things improve!

Then there's the "mouth full of marrrbles" problem. He's from Tianjin, so his "rrrr" sounds are very thick. That's ok, we have to understand everyone's Mandarin, but he's also giving us special instruction on how to make those "rrrr" sounds.

While I'd rather say 哪儿 (nar) than 那里 (nali) and 点儿 (diar) rather than 点点 (diandian), I don't know whether I want to learn to speak with such a mouthful of marrrbles. He seems to think that southerners don't use all the arrrs because they can't. But really, maybe it's because they don't want to!

Having said that, I think it will be very good in the long run. I think the dictation especially will keep us on our toes, and the strong verbal component is enough for me to want to continue this year. Could be just the thing I need.

If you're interested, the dictation for last night can be found here:

http://www.afork.com/hanyu/20060301-jiang-1.mp3

Right-click on this link, and choosing "Save Target As...". You can then play it as you usually would for MP3 files.

First chinese class this year.

2006-02-27T17:16:00.000+11:00

Tonight is the first class for my Chinese class this year. I have forgotten so much over the break, especially the writing. So I think I have several weeks of review ahead of me. Break out my flash cards, and use that time sitting on the train to practise, practise, practise.

Last year I wrote about how I hope the course is different. More practical,having more aural and oral exercises. We will have a meeting in class tonight where I hope the teachers will commit to making the changes. I really hope it's possible. I will go to class for the first few weeks to see if it's possible.

Class starts in 25 minutes, I better get moving :-)

Internet again!

2006-02-10T10:57:00.000+11:00

Yay, I have internet at home again!

I know I'm a very spoilt westerner, but internet has become so much a part of my life it's been stressful to live without it.

So many things to do now! Happy!

Internet, coming to a home near me!

2006-02-09T16:25:00.000+11:00

Yay! The DSL light is green on my modem at home. Hopefully when I get home tonight, the Internet will be available!

Also, I have an ATA. That will let us make nice cheap phone calls, using a regular phone.

So many toys to play with!

In other news, having Internet at home again means I can publish some more blog articles. I have 14 I've been working on, but I haven't had the time or Internet access to polish them up.

Also, some of my friends can't see my blog entries because their country restricts access. I can take these old articles and put them on my website.

So happy, so much to do!

No internet access at home

2006-02-06T10:51:00.000+11:00

Because I've moved my phone number from the old house to the new house, and because I'm likewise moving my internet access across, I'm likely not to have internet access at home for another week. That means no evening chats. I miss my friends!

Melbourne weather

2006-01-25T12:40:00.000+11:00

It's summertime in the southern hemisphere. That means the daytime temperature here in Melbourne is often hot. We've had four hot days in the last week:

Day	Max temp
Saturday	40C
Sunday	41C
Thursday	40C
Today	35C

Our old house had air conditioning, but the new house does not. It relies on the two layers of brick in the wall to keep the heat out. This works for one hot day, but if it's two hot days in a row, the house gets very hot inside.

I did find one great way to cool off - a high pressure water sprayer, similar to this one:

It's usually used for cleaning things like concrete and paving stones. But when it's sprayed into the air, it atomises the water to make a very fine mist. You almost can't feel the drops. The mist swirling around you is totally refreshing.

My boys really enjoyed it.

Melbourne's weather has a reputation for being extremely unpredictable. We have a saying: "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes". It's the unpredictability that makes it an interesting place to live. But why is it so unpredictable? One reason is that Australia has a very long south-facing coastline.

According to this
Bureau of Meteorology page, most of our weather comes to us from the west. As the winds travel along the coast, the cool wet air from the ocean has lots of opportunity to mix with the hot dry air from Australia's inland. This creates unstable weather systems which then come to visit us.

After a hot day, we often have a cool change come through. The temperature change can be extreme. For example, here's a temperature chart for last Sunday:

That's a 20C drop in two hours! That sure felt good when it came through.

Finished the windows

2006-01-25T09:42:00.000+11:00

A few weeks ago I said I had to strip and repaint these window frames:

Yay, I finally finished.

Now I have to look at the other windows around the house. They aren't as bad as these ones. I shouldn't need to strip the old paint, just wash them with sugar soap then put some new paint over the top.

Oh what it is to be a home owner...

Friends II: Soulmates

2006-01-13T02:23:00.000+11:00

I want to reflect for a while on that concept known as a soulmate. While it means many things to many people, to me it means someone you can relate to deeply, who you can communicate all you have to say with only a few words. Someone who understands your heart, and whose heart you can understand, almost before the words are spoken.

In our lives, we will meet some thousands of people, and become friends with maybe a hundred. Over time, I think it's natural for these friends of varing degrees to come and go, according to where you work and which stage of life you're at.

The notion of soulmate is not necessarily about love in the romantic sense. It could be that the soulmate you find may even be the same sex as you. It's about a common frequency on which you both resonate, about a level on which you can both communicate. Talking and working together lifts you both higher.

While it's worthwhile and very satisfying to cultivate and enjoy friendships, you can't make someone be your soulmate. If it's going to happen, you will know about it because of the feeling in your heart. And given care, such a relationship can last a long time.

I think each person may only find at most a handful of soulmates in their life. Indeed, I think it's more difficult to find a soulmate than a wife or husband.

In Chinese, the closest word I can find is "知己", or "zhījǐ". While it's close, I'm really not 100% sure 知己 truly captures the essence of soulmate. Still, it's the best I can find.

I have heard some sayings in Chinese that are pretty good:

"人生得一知己，足以。"
"Rénshēng dé yī zhījǐ , zúyí."
"In life, to find a soulmate is sufficient."
"海内存知己，天涯若比邻。"
"Hǎinèi cún zhījǐ, tiānyá ruò bǐlín."
"If you have a soulmate, wherever they are, it seems they're never far away."

As you may have guessed from my first article, I have the pleasure of being married to my soulmate. Marriages are common, soulmates are few, but to combine the two? It doesn't happen often I think.

I am blessed.

Friends I: Enduring love

2006-01-13T00:35:00.000+11:00

Every day I feel lucky. Among all the other reasons, I feel lucky because I have the pleasure of spending my life with my dearest friend.

I'm sure that sounds like the talk of young lovers. How can such affection last the test of time? Hmm I'm not sure, but it has: In two months, we'll have been together for 18 years. And I think it comes down to friendship.

People get married for all sorts of reasons, but I believe that friendship is the strongest possible basis for marriage. With friendship as a foundation, love will never grow old.

How we met.

The year was 1988. I moved from the country to the city to get my first job. I was a computer technician in a school.

At that school, I met a girl, an overseas student, who had just started year 10. In some countries, that's form 4 or the first year of senior high.

She and I were both lonely people with no family and who didn't know anyone else. We were both interested in computers, and both enjoyed each other's company a lot. We started spending time with each other because we felt happy together.

Over the course of a year, our friendship grew stronger and stronger. But even though we both felt the other person was very special, we wanted to stay just friends. After all, even though there is only 18 months' age difference between us, we were still student-and-staff. Plus, we both wanted to concentrate on studying and working.

After nearly one year, we had become such close friends. Every hour together was a celebration in our hearts. But as time went on, it became harder and harder to just stay friends. How can you stay friends when you care so much about someone?

So on a certain day (March 27, 1999), we decided that we would stop trying to just be friends, and start trying to make a life together. To make a "partnership of the heart" and live each day in celebration of our love for each other.

Since then, we have done many things together. University, career, and the best thing of all, children.

Of all the things we mean to each other, and after all this time, the dearest one is still "friend".

Stop-motion animation II

2006-01-10T11:36:00.000+11:00

The other day I posted about doing some simple stop-motion animation:

Stop-motion animation

I also talked about how I hoped to do some more animation with my boys.

Well, we did.

Storyboarding took one night, prop construction (the house, the backdrop [tablecloth over two chairs]) took one night, filming took one night, and image assembly took one night.

Click the play button. You may need to wait a minute. If it still doesn't work, you can see it here.
This video stored free at Putfile. Thanks Putfile!

The steps were more or less the same as last time - same camera, same programs. The people were filmed going into the house in forward motion, but the construction of the house was done by filming the brick-by-brick removal of the house, and assembling the images in reverse order.

There are three things we'll do better next time:

Lighting and exposure control (to stop the flickering)
Better focus control (stop the blurriness), and
A better attempt to control the wobble of the base.

Still, we're happy with the result.

I don't think we should lose sight of the number one reason for doing it - to have some fun doing something a bit out of the ordinary. And it was fun!

Perhaps the thing my boys enjoyed most was that a few times, the timer went off with my hands still visible:

They thought that was a hoot! Each time they just went off their nut.

And a good time was had by all.

Dostoevky - Is it me?

2006-01-06T15:26:00.000+11:00

For Christmas, a good friend gave my wife a collection of stories by 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Now all I've heard about Dostoevsky is that he is one of the great Russian authors, along with (for example) Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekov and Solzhenitsyn.

I read the introduction by the translator and it whetted my appetite for what might lie ahead. So far so good.

As the first story ("A Nasty Anecdote") progressed, I couldn't help but cringe at the descent into social disaster, which was good, because that's what the story was supposed to do. The story wouldn't have worked unless set in a highly classist society such as in Tsarist Russia but was on the whole, pretty good. I was hoping for more.

Then started what I guess I can call "the rest of the book". With the exception of "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", the remainder of the stories seemed to rely on pitting neurotic characters against each other, nowhere more so than in "The Eternal Husband".

Not that there's anything wrong with using the neuroses of characters to provide the underpinnings of a good story. It's just that to me, Dostoevsky seems to do it over and over again.

One device was particularly prominent: The protagonists don't speak to each other for a while, so without the communication that would settle matters, the author allows the characters to take flights of ever more neurotic fancy, in their attempt to second-guess the mind and motivation of the other character. This leaves the character with such a churning boiling mass of neurosis that the next meeting will sure to produce a big impedance mismatch between them and plenty of opportunity for lashings of relationship right-sizing.

What annoyed me particularly was that it was so obvious. Story slows down, Dostoevsky thinks to generate some more angst and neurosis. Rinse, repeat. From my decidedly unlearned point of view, Dostoevsky may as well have been sticking pins into the characters. Hey, let's watch'em jump. Jump little characters, jump! Pah, voodoo literature.

So why do those who know like Dostoevsky so much? Where does the reputation come from? Is it because it's great literature in and of itself? Or is it just that he was a trailblazer in a mode which has since seen far better work?

Curiously, one of the customer reviews of this book on Amazon says "Warning: this story may make you cry." Sadly, I'd have to agree!

Sigh. Kafka's better. And none of them make me squirm nearly so much as a good Roald Dahl story.

New Year's II

2006-01-05T17:08:00.000+11:00

I've heard it said that how you spend New Year's Eve is an indication of how you'll spend the rest of the year.

In that case, it's going to be a nice and calm but happy year!

Stop-motion animation

2006-01-04T12:46:00.000+11:00

When I was in grade 5, I went to a primary school in the country. This school had one teacher, and six (yes 6!) students. We had such a family feeling in that school. I still can't forget it.

One thing I remember doing was stop-motion animation, using a Super-8 movie camera. We did storyboarding, cut shapes out of paper, and did the composition and shooting. I think it took us a couple of weeks to do, and ran for about two minutes.

For our project, we did the launch and lunar landing of an Apollo-style rocket. As far as I remember, it had three scenes. The first was the Saturn V launch sequence, the second was the docking of the Lunar Module with the Command/Service Module, and the third was the landing of the Lunar Module on the moon.

Now I'd like to do similar things with my boys. And in these modern times (hah!) technology makes it better and cheaper than ever.

To show them what's possible, last night I made a simple animation. (Yeah I know it's not very good. But it only took about an hour for shooting, and an hour for production).

Click the play button. You may need to wait a minute. If it still doesn't work, you can see it here.
This video stored free at Putfile. Thanks Putfile!

Here's what I did:

Attached my Canon 300D digital camera to a tripod, and mounted it horizontally over the edge of a table, so the camera was pointing down to the floor.
Put an old piece of blue card on the floor, and aligned it so it's in the camera's view and taped it down.
Used counting rods to write the names of my boys in a 5x7 "dot-matrix" style font. (Each length is of a particular colour).
Starting at the last stroke of the last letter ("m") and working backwards, replaced each rod in turn with a shorter one.
After each change, took a photo (70 photos in all).
Copied these photos into my computer.
Used ULead Video Studio to arrange the images in reverse order for 40 mSec, thus creating a movie of the images.
Used CyberLink PowerDirector to encode the movie into .wmv form.

I did it in reverse to make sure the letters would look good - much easier to start with placed letters and work backwards, than try to build them on-the-fly.

This morning I talked with my boys about storyboarding, and I roughed out some sample storyboards on paper.

I hope they'll find it interesting and we can make some good animations together.

One down...

2006-01-04T10:22:00.000+11:00

Yay, my mother-in-law left yesterday!

No major incidents this time, thank goodness. I'm putting it down to major dollops of staying late at work, I think.

Can't wait until Friday - the rest of the horde depart. Then I can finally relax.

New Year's

2006-01-03T16:49:00.000+11:00

"So, how was your New Year break?"

Well, apart from having a lovely New Year's party at some friends place (the kids stayed up to 12 midnight. Boy were they grumpy the next day!), most of it was spent scraping paint off window frames.

You can see the frames here:

The window frames are cedar, and were previously coated in polyurethane. But over time the sun has attacked it, and in places, the coating has come off and left bare wood. Bare cedar in the weather isn't good. It starts rotting very fast, so out with them paint scrapers!

I'm using a hot air gun, and nasty paint stripping chemicals, but it still takes a lot of physical work. In particular, cedar is a very soft wood (you can mark it with your fingernail), so it's hard to get the coating off without damaging the timber.

I've stripped about half the frame. Once it's all stripped, I'm going to paint it with timber oil. It'll need reapplying every year, but it will rot-proof the timber.

Lest it all seem like too much hard work, one nice consolation is that I'm surrounded by the lovely smell of cedar. Quite satisfying.

ICQ under Linux means Licq!

2005-12-30T11:49:00.000+11:00

Last entry, I wrote that I use Linux:

http://capn.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-use-linux.html

That means that when it comes to ICQ, I can't use the ICQ program that everyone else uses, because that ICQ program is only for Windows, not Linux.

Instead, I use a program called Licq.

Licq works in two ways. When I'm at home, I can run it in "graphical mode" and it will look very much like the ordinary ICQ program that everyone uses:

Licq on my home computer has my friend list, and all the histories, etc, that I like to have available.

But what can I do when I'm at work?

For that, I connect from work to my computer at home, and run Licq in "text mode". It's a lot plainer, but it's easy on both work's budget and mine, and because it's not graphical, it's very responsive even when the Internet is slow. Here's how it looks:

Hmm, that picture looks a bit muddy, but if you click on it, you'll get a better idea.

There are a few things that don't work so well (or at all) when using Licq in text mode:

File transfers (such as photos).
If I'm entering a message and make a mistake on the first line but don't see it before I move to the next line, it's not possible to fix the mistake on the first line. I have to cancel that message and start again.
It's not possible to receive and send Chinese characters (hanzi, 汉字). When people send me hanzi, it looks like this: ÈÈÃÅµÄ

That last one is a real shame, because most of my ICQ friends are in China.

That means my Chinese friends and I are limited to either talking in English, or using pinyin, the romanised form of spoken Chinese. So instead of writing 我去买东西 (I'm going to buy something), we have to write wo qu mai dongxi. And it's not even true pinyin. True pinyin would have accents. For example, mǎi for 买 (buy), and mài for 卖 (sell).

Instead, we have to append numbers, for example, mai3 and mai4. Very unsatisfactory.
And not to mention that while everyone in China can speak Mandarin, not everyone is so crash hot with pinyin, especially in the south.

I want to use hanzi!

Despite all my complaining about Licq, there are two unbeatable things about it:

It's free of advertising, and
Because it's Open Source (开放源代码), I can get the source code (源代码).

This last point is especially important. Because I'm a software engineer (软件工程师), I can take that source code and modify it. Given enough time and skill, if there's something I don't like, I can change it.

For the last couple of months, I've been working on some changes to Licq so it can do hanzi. I don't get much time to work on it, and I'm still a long way away from my goal, but I still keep trying.

Wish me luck, I need it.

I use Linux

2005-12-30T10:44:00.000+11:00

Whereas most people use the Windows operating system on their PC, I have since 1993, used Linux. It is free, and works quite differently to Microsoft Windows.

You can find more information about Linux here:

English:

Linux

Chinese 中文:

Because I'm a technical kind of guy, I like Linux a lot. It's fun!

Where I used to live

2005-12-29T20:04:00.000+11:00

If anyone is interested in seeing the country village and countryside where I spent my teenage years, here's a page with lots of really good (=representative) pictures.

http://www.travelvictoria.com.au/mirboonorth/photos/

Zebras

2005-12-29T01:42:00.000+11:00

I once saw a sight at the zoo: Two zebras, standing face-to-face, with their necks crossed, making an X shape.
So peaceful.
I don't know why they did it. I think they just liked standing that way, keeping each other company.
For some reason, it always seemed romantic to me.

Unscheduled Mitch Outage

2005-12-27T01:01:00.000+11:00

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas. Greetings from my car!

At the moment my sister-in-law is here on vacation and living in the house across the street where we used to live. That's the house where my internet connection is.

Yeah, sadly I still haven't been able to make a choice about what to do about internet access in the new house. The sheer number of ADSL providers is just intimidating. Totally depressing.

Anyway, what I did was run an ethernet cable from the old house out into the garage. So if I'm desperate for internet, I can sit in my parked car with the laptop.

Needless to say, this is a pretty poor arrangement, as far as convenience goes. At least I have the car radio to keep me company.

So if you're wondering where I've been over this Christmas period, well, I've been here all along but just couldn't Get To The Net, so to speak.

I'll be back at work on Wednesday the 28th. Looking forward to catching up with everyone.

Mitch.

Not wasted at all

2005-12-21T08:40:00.000+11:00

My parents-in-law are here in Australia at the moment. They live across the road. I suppose it's better than being in the same house, but not the ideal case of them being several continents away.

They come here in the heat of summer, won't go outside even in the cool of the morning, and end up just so bored in their little bubble that they start to grizzle about everything and nothing. From past experience, it's only a matter of time before we get dragged in. Sigh.

Anyway, I went to speak to my mother-in-law last night. I had a family photo to give her that I took yesterday morning. And thanks to studying Chinese this year, it's actually easier for me to speak with her in Chinese than in English.

Yay. Feeling good. Sense of accomplishment. I never thought this year was a waste of time, but it's certainly gratifying to get a reward from it.

Where is he?

2005-12-13T17:11:00.000+11:00

I've been a bit "missing-in-action" recently. Unfortunately, it's likely to continue. While the problem of getting the internet transferred from the old house to the new continues, I'm not going to be online much at night.

Lord of the Rings

2005-12-07T16:07:00.000+11:00

I'm so happy!

We had our company end-of-year "celebrity" joke awards today, and I won the award I've been trying for all year: "Garbage Guts".

At last year's awards, I'd only been in the company for three months, so I didn't win it. I felt so robbed!

Anyway, I've worked hard all this year. Always trying to best myself, eat more and more. At the staff Christmas party last year, my colleague and I slipped out after the main course, grabbed a burger, and came back for dessert. And most recently, I ate 20 cinnamon donuts. In a sitting.

That's on top of my effort last year, which was to eat four fully-stocked 12" Subway subs in an hour.

Today in the award ceremony, I heard our MD reading out the achievements of the winner, and I knew I had it in the bag.

My prize: A box of 40 (yes forty) cinnamon donuts.

(You can see I've made a start on them...)

You may not realise this, but it takes serious effort to be able to do it. If you slack off for too long, your stomach shrinks and you can't do it any more.

I love me, I love me, I love me!!! :-)

I'm so happy! All that hard work payed off!

(Thanks to Serguei for the pics)

Sleep

2005-12-07T16:04:00.000+11:00

Grizzle grizzle. I didn't get enough sleep last night.

Going to bed at 3:30am and getting up at 8 isn't exactly the best idea, but we had a terrific storm at 6 this morning, and the thunder was so loud it woke everyone up.

Grr.

2005-12-02T10:37:00.000+11:00

Why have a blog?

Hmm, for two reasons.

The first is simply laziness on my part. Although I do a lot of talking with people on ICQ, if I put my thoughts in a blog, I can share it with more than one person. Hmm, that begs the question of whether it's worth listening to, but that's another matter.

The second reason is that by writing about how I feel, maybe I can try to recapture some of the creativity I lost when I repressed it in my teenage years. Maybe. Worth a try.

If you would rather my blog be delivered straight to your Inbox, follow these instructions.

Being drunk

2005-12-02T00:16:00.000+11:00

People say I'm funny when I'm drunk. I mean it's natural to think you're funny when you're drunk, but people say I'm funnier than that even.

Being drunk is fun. It doesn't lower my inhibitions (since in general I really don't care what people think of me). What it does do is give me a great excuse to be more like the real me, the me I keep hidden. It gives me a chance to say things I wouldn't ordinarily say.

When I feel drunk, I can hide it. Totally. But why should I? That'd be missing out on the fun.

The way I see it, I think "people know I'm drunk, I may as well use the moment to let my hair down." So I trot out the standard devices of comedy - puns, sharp relief and timing.

Last night I had a few drinks at a meeting. And I know the humour thing was working because people were laughing at just the right time.

I like being drunk.

2005-12-01T23:52:00.000+11:00

Each day in life is training
Training for myself
Though failure is possible
Living for each moment
Equal to anything
Ready for anything

I am alive
I am this moment
My future is here and now

For if I cannot endure today
When and where will I?

Soen Ozeki
Daisen-in Temple, Kyoto
(From this wonderful esr essay)

Relatives

2005-12-01T09:14:00.000+11:00

I have a dear friend who is in real trouble.

The trouble involves extortion, serious money, bought lawyers, the Mafia and death threats against her and her kids. And she's done nothing wrong. Far from it, her generosity was seen as weakness and has made her a target for rapacious greed.

I'm really troubled by it. Toss-and-turn troubled. The whole matter is just so awful.

I've done a lot of grizzling here about the job and so forth, but relatively speaking, it's so inconsequential. I am alive, have enough of all I need and am in no peril worse than an expanding waistline. I feel like a child who's chucking a tantrum coz I can't have another bowl of icecream. Grow up!!!

So my dear friend, I'm beaming all my best help-you thoughts in your direction. If nothing else, hold your head up high. No-one can take away your dignity.

Passed my Chinese course

2005-11-30T15:57:00.000+11:00

Yay!

Just got my results for 2nd year Chinese, which I've been studying this year. 1st term: HD (High Distinction), 2nd term: DI (Distinction).

Happy now.

Of course, I don't think it really means anything. I struggle in both listening and speaking and that's what really counts.

I just don't know if I can handle the pace of this year's course again. I've got enough time to cram in the new words, but really no time to actually use it or do the exercises.

I'm hearing talk that next year the course will be limited to 8 chapters instead of the 15 we did this year. And that we'll spend a lot more time on verbal exercises (which I think would be really good). On that basis, I think I could do it.

The problem is, can the Uni do that? Just arbitrarily decide to halve the course content? How can it still award a certificate at the end of the year? And won't that devalue the certificates of the previous years?

I don't understand. Scared. Confused.

High School reunion

2005-11-30T10:59:00.000+11:00

My high school had its 50 year reunion last weekend and I took the family. Wow, some people have changed, some stay the same!

You can see the photos here:

http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mitch_davis/album?.dir=/b4a6&.src=ph&.tok=phGA5AEBlKt7qqEt

(If there are particular ones you like, let me know. The Yahoo ones have been cut down a lot)

The reunion was great. I felt very awkward at the start but then it started to be fun. I'm really glad I went.

Missing In Action

2005-11-23T15:30:00.000+11:00

I guess all my ICQ friends have been wondering where I've been!

All this week, I haven't been able to get into my home machine from work. Since that's how I run ICQ, it means I haven't been on ICQ.

As it turns out, after five years of telling people they can't run servers at home, my ISP (Optus) finally stopped people from running SSH on their home machines. No SSH, no me go home!

Anyways, I found a way around it; just run SSH on a different port. I'm back in business!

Breathing space

2005-11-23T11:14:00.000+11:00

We had a meeting today. Our team's project manager is going (poor guy). So far, no-one else. The only thing we've been told for sure is that there isn't going to be a large-scale layoff.

That's a relief in one way, but it doesn't change anything about why The Job Now Sucks: Complete disfunction everywhere outside of engineering, and our company's willfully illegal intellectual property practices.

Spin City

2005-11-23T10:38:00.000+11:00

We all got this mail yesterday:

This is to advise you that the position of Office Administrator held by Kerryn has been declared redundant. Kerryn has taken the option to leave the Company immediately and departs with our best wishes for the future.

aka "The company wishes her a speedy recovery from her knife wound".

And further:

The Directors have requested that costs be reduced and given that people are our major cost that means a reduction in headcount. Costs will continue to be reviewed.

Which reminds me of that old saying, "sackings will continue until morale improves".

I love this place.

Shit happening

2005-11-23T10:18:00.000+11:00

Yesterday the office administrator went to the printer and found an employee termination notice. With her name on it. Yucks!

We've had a lot of problems with this new building. Stuff just not being up to scratch, such a lifts, toilets, security, air conditioning, etc. It was the administrator's job to work with the building management guy to get this all fixed. Important stuff.

Unfortunately, the building management guy is by all accounts a sexist pig who complained to our management about our administrator being "on his back all the time". And even worse, instead of backing her up, our management gave her a serious telling-off.

And I've heard this was pretty indicative of how our administrator was being treated.

Anyway, she's taken her payout and walked.

One think I really don't like is when people are treated shabbily. I hope she will do better elsewhere, and given her talent, I don't think that'll be in doubt.

Natural Wonder II

2005-11-21T08:55:00.000+11:00

The other day I asked the question, "does something have to be fantasy to be fantastic?" and put forward the notion that there are many things in nature that are even more fantastic in real life than fantasy.

Another example is the life cycle of caterpillars and butterflies.

A caterpillar is hatched with all the cells it'll ever have. The cells aren't capable of dividing, they just get bigger and bigger. The body is also seeded with inactive areas of undifferentiated cells.

When the caterpillar forms into a pupa, the body cells break down into a soup, and the undifferentiated cells wake up and take over, using the soup to form all the parts of the adult butterfly.

It's true recycling in a way we can never imagine. Out of the ashes of the old organism comes another. To me, this is a pretty awesome feat.

2005-11-14T10:43:00.000+11:00

I went hiking this weekend to Wilson's Promontory ("The Prom").

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilsons_Promontory_National_Park

The two guys I went with were Fubin, my good friend from Beijing and his friend Zhuzun. Neither of them had been camping before, and it was my first time in several years.

You can see some good pictures of the area here: (look for Sealer's Cove)

  http://www.worldisround.com/articles/4521/index.html
  http://www.latrobe.edu.au/sara/lumc/album/thumbnails.php?album=18

The walk there is about 10km but it feels a lot longer, especially when you're carrying a lot of stuff. Our tent was way too big for the three of us, and I really felt the weight.

The beach there is 2-3km long and absolutely pristine. The weather conditions this time meant the waves broke very quietly and gently, not crashing surf. It's hard to imagine a more natural place.

I feel absolutely wrecked today. I'm walking like a penguin and I have a splitting headache which is only just being controlled with strong painkillers. Might go home early today.

All in all, a most wonderful weekend.

The Job Now Sucks[tm], starting today

2005-11-11T09:44:00.000+11:00

After the dramas I had in 2001 of being owed a shedload of money, and being out of work for nearly a year, I developed a metric of how well I'm going in a particular job.

In essence, the first day you start, you should be able to say "The Job Doesn't Suck Yet". And hopefully, that will continue each day thereafter. If you can't say it, it's time to start thinking about your options.

In part it borrows from a theory someone (Ken) told me at HP: When you start a job, you get an imaginary jar of jellybeans. The jar can't be refilled, and every time something crap happens, you take out a jellybean. When the jar is empty, your time in that job is over.

I guess both "Doesn't Suck Yet" and "can't be refilled" are acknowledgements that there's a use-by date on every job. Jobs for life are gone forever, and the biggest non-financial difference between a contract position and a permanent one is that you know the end date on a contract ahead of time.

The previous job, I could honestly say it Didn't Suck Yet until that fateful day when the axings happened. Hmm, not a bad way to go.

This job? Well then. Until yesterday, I could say it Didn't Suck Yet. Starting from now on, I'm fairly sure we've reached that watershed moment when the job sucks.

I was hired not just as a software engineer, but as an expert in open source and free software. At the time, the phrase on the lips of management was that we would "establish an Open Source Centre of Excellence". Linux was seen as suitable software for our products, we'd use it to make a platform others would want to do value-adds for, and we'd get cred for being a savvy company.

At every step of the way, I have tried to clue management into what OS&F software means: It's not just software falling free out of the sky, but a legal obligation to pass it on. If you can wear that, fine. If not, don't use it!!

Well, now we have software products in the market that mgmt has known since the beginning has open source software inside it. And that source hasn't been published, nor have we made an offer to make it available on request.

Up until now, I have been more or less happy to continue on the basis of:

Management can't be expected to make good decisions with bad information, and
We've been too busy to look at compliance so far.

Well now the time has come. And mgmt have been told what they have to do (it's not that hard). But after hearing it, mgmt have said "we're not going to do it, we'll hide behind lawyers".

Grr.

The GPL works on copyright. Not complying is a clear breach of copyright laws. What that means is that this company's business model is (in terms of IP) no different to a bunch of guys who illegally copy DVDs to sell at the market.

How dodgy is that!

If I wanted to work for a company that was unethical, I could have gone to work for Tattersalls. Lucky me, now I get to work for a company that is knowingly doing things both unethical and illegal.

One thing I've really enjoyed is working as part of a first rate team. My three colleagues simply excel. And mgmt knows it. We're their darlings because we just get on with it and deliver.
And we're being given more and more responsibility outside of development as a tacit admission that the other sections of the company are disfunctional and unfixable. Hah, easier just to shove stuff off to those trojans in the embedded team!

So, the frightening developments in IP and the increasingly disfunctional nature of the organisation means that The Job Now Sucks[tm].

Grr.

Natural Wonder I

2005-11-10T09:44:00.000+11:00

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Rainbow1.png

I saw a rainbow this morning.

Makes me remember the other day that my kids told me that "at the end of the rainbow you can find treasure". I don't know who told them that, but it's nice to know that someone's passing on the same cultural heritage I got when I was little.

Such things are wondrous to kids. As adults, we've "grown up" and we're not so easily moved by such notions of fantasy.

Here's a web page where you can play with a raindrop:

http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/rainbows/primrays.htm

But does something have to be fantasy to be fantastic? Whenever I see a rainbow, I think of the light and it's journey, and while I'm no longer blown away by the notion of a pot of gold, I don't need to be, because the notion of what the light is doing to make that rainbow is (for me) even more fantastic than fantasy.

Hmm.

Coming back to Earth a little, in 1991 I saw a coloured cloud. Not slightly coloured, I mean a cloud fully decked out in rainbow colours. It was about 1pm on a bright summer's day. Not a cloud in the sky, except for this one. I think it was something like this:

http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/droplets/iridim4.htm

But the cloud was much more compact, and the colours more vivid.

I think I will remember that cloud for a long time.

(Found one the same: here

First post!

2005-11-10T00:06:00.000+11:00

Well I gone and done it.

Yeah just like everyone else, I have a blog.

No idea what I'll put here (which is why it's a bit hard to name) but let's see what happens.