Plantagenet Penguinista

Thanks to Dr Chris Newall, of the Cottesloe Medical Centre in Perth. Chris has been a patient and imaginative GP and deal competently with not only my own oddities but with the administrative maze which Centrelink respresents. Chris has an ability to do things according to the rules, but with his own flair, so both the rule-makers & his patients are satisfied with the outcome. Thanks also to Dr Lulama Ntloko, of Rosebery General Practice. “Dr Lulu” has picked up the reins on this strange patient (me), halfway through the case, & also dealt strongly with Centrelink’s maze. She is very careful in what she does, but is also not lacking the courage to step out & do things the hard way when needed. It’s inspiring to see that care in someone who evidently knows so much, because otherwise the expert becomes “full of themselves” & starts making knuckleheaded mistakes. No such risk with Lulu! Also, she has had another advantage fall her way whi...

Ran across these random words from an old mate of mine, Remo Ponta. Thought that they might add some polish to your day, as Miss 6 belts away at Commander Keen 2 next to me (the virtues of DosBox) and from the sound of it, Master 7 is doing the same around the corner. Latest terms to add to your vocabulary for the 21st century office: ADMINISPHERE — The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. ASSMOSIS — The process by which some people seem to absorb success andadvancement by kissing up to the boss. BLAMESTORMING — Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or project failed and who was responsible. CHAINSAW CONSULTANT — An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands. CLM (CAREER LIMITING MOVE) — Used among microserfs ...

I’m facing writing a passel of web-based applications. So I started doing what any self-respecting semi-sane geek would do: started writing web applications to help write the web applications. OK, so far I’ve got a skeleton which lets me design and to a certain extent lay out PostgreSQL tables within a web form. Yes, I’d be delighted to be motivated by the MySQL people to make MySQL a participant in this system. (-: Rather than write a bazillion reports, I’m about 2/3 of the way through a thingy which turns a PDF into a report. The benefit in this is that the user hits a button in their web browser and is suddenly facing a PDF (which they can print) of the results. I’m highly tempted to add this capacity to an ODF document, so one can sit down with OpenOffice Writer & churn out report templates effortlessly. Spitting out .odt files to be saved is easy enough, but I’ll have to look into automating a shell-based ODT printer to basically turn an .odt...

I went for a few days’ break at the Rocky Cape Christian Community, which was a nice change & nothing like church. I got to pick up some eggs, helped to slaughter some turkeys, did some woodwork, went for a walk along the creek to the beach, & saw a Platypus. Break from doing nothing? Well, even that gets wearing, & as well as a change of scenery & people, I got to do some useful stuff (such as untangling a computer which had somehow been set to boot from just about every device attached to it, so started v-e-r-y slowly) & chat on completely random topics with some very knowledgeable people, including folks from Holland, Germany, the USA & Canada. These people are immensely practical in their faith, & not nailed down to some remote authority. It reminds me a great deal of Open Source: whatever works is accepted, modulo some very minor quibbling. I watched them help a pair who had arranged to have a baby together, but didn’t like each other (what a...

If you have ADSL and it’s too slow, then this is for you. I walked in this morning after leaving my laptop doing a set of updates overnight. It was about 1/3 finished, so I left it for half an hour to get done with the current update, to see how long the next one would take. OpenOffice 2.0.4 — 7.5 hours — oh, well. Tonight, then. ^C. BorderNet, it seems, have given up on the government’s remote access subsidies, waiting until July when a better plan comes out, maybe. Meanwhile, I’ve given Active8me a ring. Their prices aren’t so crash-hot, but they look like they can install within about a fortnight, & like BorderNet it’s an appliance-style device rather than a funn card and lots of MS-Windows-specific special software & drivers. We’ll see.

These things have a couple of oddities worth watching for. One of them is that adding a port-forwarding rule (“Virtual Server”) doesn’t automatically grant any access through the firewall, you have to add a separate firewall item to allow the traffic that you’ve just enabled. The next thing is that saving to Flash doesn’t always work across the board, so do your saves, reset the modem, & test it. One place this bit me was that setting up port-forwarding rules, then firewalling rules, then saving the lot resulted in only the firewalling rules being saved. The next thing is also port-forwarding: the forwarding won’t change the port, so a connection to 1.2.3.4:22 might be forwarded to 192.168.1.250 on the LAN, but always to port 22. So if you want to do my typical security trick of putting things like SSH services on odd ports, this has to be done on the machines themselves as well as adding a port-forwarding rule & a firewall rule to the ADSL ...

Bulk Frozen Foods (385 Bass Highway) do, as one might suspect, good frozen foods including stuff like bulk-packs of raspberries and peas, but also non-frozen stuff like eggs, 3Kg tins of tomato soup, choc chips & so on. A couple of doors down the road (East), we have Youngs Vegie Shed (yes, that’s how they mis-spell it), which does bulk fruit, veggies & Ginger Honey, amongst other things. Actually, I need to correct myself, as that chunk of Burnie seems to be called Camdale. There’s also a trendy-looking wholefood place on Cattley Street in Burnie’s little chunk of sawn-off city that I haven’t looked into yet. Pretty good for a country town (sort of, the CBD looks like someone sliced a section out of a city & pasted it onto the map, including (grumble) parking meters). Nathan’s taken one of my ancient laptops & squeezed it into a flat-looking standard-ish PC case to become a DVD burner for a Tullah bus... driven by a Chef. Passengers will be...

It ain’t Winter here yet, but some people seem to not realise that. This “Drive Scribbley When Frosty” sign has been neatly hit so that it’s spun to a right-angle. Not only that, it’s on a straightish bit of Murchison Road, a 5km bitumen road leading up to the Murchison Dam, not out in the middle of a wiggly highway somewhere. One of the handy driving tips I was given by Ronn, manager of the Tullah Tavern, was “Don’t pull over.” Change flat tyres in the middle of the road, that kind of thing. The ice tends to slide off to the sides of the road, and get slushed there by cars driving past, so when you pull over, you tend to keep right on pulling over, and your car sits there until Spring. I’ve seen photos of cranes, vehicle-moving flatbeds and all sorts of heavy, stable, won’t-happen-to-me vehicles sitting sideways (or upside down!) on the side of the road because of this. Suddenly, the unending lengths of Armco we have lining th...

Targa was more fun than I expected. We started at 6AM sharp, which means that it’s too dark to see around you. We set up signs, posts & an overhead gondola/sheltery thing, then waited while the Touring class racers lined up, then sent those off en-bloc, then waited as nearly 200 standard racers went through. Each car was checked for certain safety points, given an arrival time (written on their folder, too), then lined up to start. The start went whizzing off through the Sterling River bridge, then whizzed up the hill towards Rosebery. When I say “whizzing”, even the lighter, smaller cars disappeared in an amazing hurry. The expensive-looking Lambo made a lot of noise but took about as long to disappear as the Minis, Austin Healey, Shaker or old Monaro. Or any of the Mercedes, Porsches, BMWs, the Fiat 124SPORT, Lancers, Skylines & WRXes. Etcetera. I got to spin people out by swigging some loverly Ginger Beer from a stubby bottle, then wore my hands out struggli...

I was quietly perusing an aritcle about Brian Behlendorf, when I syumbled across an important freedom that I hadn’t thought much about: “The most important freedom: the right to fork”. It is important, too, as all of (for example) Microsoft’s mayhem & monopoly quest has been about denying that very right. Most governments get more than a tad upset if a bunch of their citizens decide to start a fork of their own, also. Forking, in a way, represents the ultimate freedom: the ability to start from here (wherever “here” actually is) & go your own way. Vive la différence! I was made in Canada, so I'm supposed to know some of that stuff. (-:

We have a working ’fridge & freezer now, & an actual table to put the computers on. Today was rain from about 11AM onwards, so I didn’t get to walk up the hill. Hopefully it’ll all be finished before I start doing the car-rally managing thing at 05:45 tomorrow morning. Had the unique experience of seeing the nearby hills fogged up in the afternoon — as well as providing a level grey horizon this morning. Ginger honey tastes really nice. You can get it from the Veggie Shed on the coast — 317 Bass Highway — West of Burnie (the train tracks are genuine 2' gauge running right along the beach), with some excellent mini-mushrooms on special, some raspberries & bucketloads of crunchy, sweet apples, plus scads of really nice grapes from about $3-$5 a kilo. Went chasing some chickens with our furry little mates up at Rocky Cape on Friday, & discovered that the little blighters (the chickens, not the mates) can figure stuff out really, really ...

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates dropped this one while under trial for heresy & sedition. Here’s a couple of bursts from this fascinating discussion: After his accusers presented their argument for the death penalty he had the opportunity to argue for an alternate punishment. Things like a fine, a fine with imprisonment, exile, or some other punishment. His first suggestion was that the government give him a reward for his selfless contributions to Athenian society. He acknowledged that this suggestion probably freaked some of them out but he assured them that he was serious. He believed that the actions his accusers called criminal, were actually actions of the highest value to the health of the state. He admitted the jury would not be able to comprehend that argument so he went on to consider the appropriateness of imprisonment. [...] If they thought he could just keep his mouth shut and stay out of trouble, that would be impossible. First bec...

Here is a neat little adaptor that emulates a PhotoShop environment well enough to run its plugins. WINE for GIMP . (-: This could be what you’re looking for if you use GIMP for everything “but...”

Took a few interesting shots of Perth on Friday, and jammed them onto my Tullah photo gallery for your viewing pleasure. Also, I’m off today to learn how to track cars during the coming Targa car rally next week. This will be running through many of those squiggly roads I mentioned in an earlier post, which should, um, separate the real drivers from teh wannabees. (-:

On our way back from Launceston past Cradle Mountain yesterday, we spotted a couple of runny fellows. The large, solid kind who would be a real problem if hit with a Toyota wagon. Not that the runny fellow would be problem-free him/herself. Here’s a shot of #2. By the way, if you think that Hellyer Gorge is tight & twisty (which it is, I was averaging ~60km/h over a big section signed at 100km/h), you need to wander west of Mole Creek for a bit. We’re told that the town of Paradise is even twistier. Helicopter-only territory, methinks. (-:

...and because I repaired it myself when it first died (it was that or wait maybe a month), it’s not covered by warranty. However, there are some bright & enthusiastic people in Perth (Hi, Mal!) who have an answer sitting on their shelves. I’m eagerly inspecting our snail-mail (hi, Sharon!) as it arrives in expectation of seeing one shortly. I know that the same peoples’ DC-to-DC converters work well, or at least that one worked flawlessly all of the way across the Nullarbor, in all temperatures & variable humidity (it started raining on us at Eucla and we brought that with us through SA & Vic to Tas), so I’m looking forward to a longer happier life with this one than the manufacturer’s device. The website doesn’t mention compatibility with TwinHead 15D Notebooks, but it’ll learn soon, I think.

...and scores of other people besides, myself included. How is this done? Suddenly pull the plug on the old remote access Internet funding method, announce that the new method will be public on 01 April, then sit on your thumbs. Yup, that’s our gummint for you. I wouldn’t mind so much but I’m living in a town where the only other connectivity option is either dialup or a internally complicated service called OneWire which here seems to be about 20% faster (whee!). Telstra have a petition form where you can ask for ADSL in your area, but first off — as I’ve said before — it appears to be about as useful as weeing upwind, and second off is Telstra’s ADSL plans. Get, for example, a gigabyte limit, a fixed IP address & 1500/256 kilobits or so (note qualifier about “estimated” speeds), & you’re looking down the muzzle of about $90 a month, or $3 a day.

Went for a stroll up the hill today, & after 45 minutes of 45° slopes headed toward Lake Herbert, I was knackered. I carried a camera, but for a change was glad to not be my esteemed sister-in-law. With her camera gear, & her eye for a good shot, she’d still be up there, cursing the darkness & fighting her way down through the underbrush. I also found out more about Wee Georgie Wood, the little steam loco which runs around tracks here in Tullah, & found that I almost completely lack the skills needed to rebuild various parts of the loco & carriages. If you’re in Western Tasmania & are any good at steelwork or the design behind it, they’d like to hear from you. If you have time to labour & want to put it into a worthy cause, they’d like people to nail and/or weld things together, too, not to mention saw, paint, glue or stitch.

Drove home via Hellyer Gorge recently, and got to see a genuine Spotted Quoll, along with 30 or so wallabies & half-a-dozen possums & maybe a Devil. A handful of wallabies & one possum tried for a sudden Michelin Diet but the road is so narrow & twisty that I was only doing maybe 40km/h at the time, so was easily able to thwart their efforts for linear fame. The road’s very pretty — with plenty of ferns & stuff around about — but one has to go so slowly & put up with passenger abuse about corners (at ~30km/h) & “speeding” (~65km/h in a 100km/h zone) that the longer way is, well, shorter. Time-wise anyway. Also had a look at the Fossey River information bay, with signs warning that the toilets don’t contain drinkable water & that you’re under constant camera surveillance (yes, they are serious, both times). They have some excellent polished pine-looking furniture, & lots of detailed information pasted on the w...

Never say dye ? the 10x10cm green demonstration cells generate enough electricity to run a small fan in low-light conditions — making them ideal for cloudy climates. The dyes can also be incorporated into tinted windows that trap to generate electricity. Another bugbear of solar cells — ecological impact — is also eclipsed by these dye cells: they are made from titanium dioxide — a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand’s black sand. Titanium dioxide is already used in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints & cosmetics. “The refining of pure silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy-hungry and very expensive. And whereas silicon cells need direct sunlight to operate efficiently, these cells will work efficiently in low diffuse light conditions,” Dr Campbell says. “The expected cost is one 10th of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to ...