Vómito del perro

Blowing Smoke...

2011-09-11T17:12:00.000+10:00

up my own bottom!
I once built a 2 dimensional cross sectional Stockpile management system in Visual Basic 3 for a mining client of a software and engineering company I was working for. You can see an example of a circular stockpile/reclaimer next to the road just before Aberdeen on the New England Highway at the mothballed Dartbrook mine.

As usual the management troglodytes had given us insufficient time to effectively develop the application thoroughly and we were beset with performance issues from the get go.

VB3 came with the code for an icon drawing package and I hacked out relevant bits to generate the rendering of the stockpile using the Windows drawing APIs. The idea was the the circular stockpile was metaphorically split open and displayed in 2 dimensions and when you dragged a cursor representing the reclaimer over the stockpile, a calculation of the approximate coal quality was displayed - sulphur and moisture content etc.

One of the main problems was the ODBC driver for SQL Server was abysmally slow to the point of useless.
ODBC is a protocol - not a standard - so you could be served up a pretty sloppy driver if you weren't careful and the driver we were using at the time was pretty sloppy.
Every time you would drag the virtual reclaimer over the stockpile it would take minutes for any numbers to appear. The app was busily querying the SQL Server db with the offsets of the start and end points of the reclamation and extracting data harvested from the Citect SCADA system. But it took freaking forever!

What to do?

I managed to get hold of a book that detailed the ODBC api with enough information to enable me to roll my own ODBC 'driver' making direct calls to the DLL. It reduced the time from a couple of minutes per query down to a couple of seconds.

Looking back it was a masterful solution - I'm forever talking myself down in an industry populated by people that constantly spend most of their time telling everybody how wonderfully clever they are but this was one time where I think I delivered some pretty nifty code. The source has been lost to the sands of time but I look back on this particular project with a bit of fondness because it provided a workable solution with the shortest amount of time and with pretty inflexible specifications.

Political Ambition - without the Ambition

2011-05-30T19:25:00.004+10:00

I asked myself a question a few weeks ago:
"Is it possible to have a tilt at political life while harbouring little or no political ambition, no membership of a political party and absolutely no budget available to invest in this little folly?"
Then a thought struck me - use the internets! Its what all the kids are into! Harness the power of web 2.0 and get enough attention to propel me into the stratospheric heights of political life.
So it is without further ado, that I announce the commencement of my campaign to get elected to the Legislative Council of the Parliament of the Colony of NSW!!
It all makes sense: no need to limit my charm to a single electorate, I can go state wide! Let's face I'm know throughout the length and breadth of this wide brown land. I just need to get all my friends to tell their friends to stick a '1' next to my name on the ridiculously wide ballot paper on election day in 2015!
I am being enjoined in this enterprise by my teaching colleague Matt Bower. When I told him of my crazy scheme he just shrugged his shoulders and said "sure, why not!".
Come along with me for the ride. Its early days yet. Keep watching this space, my Facebook page and my yet to be created Twitter feed for further details.
The future is just a click away.

Personal Best Achieved!!

2011-04-04T10:32:00.003+10:00

Flightlog 03/04/2011
Flight time: 2 hours
Distance flown: 30km!!! (note the exclamation marks)

After 15 years of tooling around with the wretched activity known as Paragliding, I have just cracked my first cross country with a distance of 30 kilometres (or 30,000 metres - it sounds bigger).
Truly, its a momentous occasion.
If you take into account the actual ground covered it would be more like 60km but I wasn't carrying a GPS so I'm only speculating here.
The flight went from the West launch at Borah to the bomb out paddock at the foot of Red Jack Mountain.
The Saturday was pretty hairy on launch with quite gusty conditions so I elected not to fly - didn't want to risk my dignity being dragged on launch in front of all the gun pilots.
Didn't worry JimmyT though - he tried to loft his wing just as a gust blew threw and it dragged him for a couple of metres across the artificial turf.
Saturday night saw a gathering of pilots from near and far at Godfrey's place to watch the paragliding film festival. Quite entertaining and it was good to listen to stories from persons far more committed to the sport than me.
I was safely tucked into bed by 10pm which was in fact 9pm due to daylight saving finishing up so I got a good night's sleep. Having a non-existent night life in Manilla sure helps.
Next day, Sunday saw us up on launch about 10am.Cracking day - beautiful weather. Irish Simon threw one of his compatriots off the north east launch and he enjoyed a nice sleddy to the bomb out.
The brains trust thought the East launch offered the best prospects for the day so we moved across there and started pretending to get ready. JimmyT nominated me as wind dummy so I nervously started getting set up.
I no sooner had my kit organised when the wind shifted noticeably over the back so it was off to the West launch once again.
I courageously resumed my role of wind 'technician' but waited while others launched before me - I'm such a coward. It turned out to be the right thing to do as the early launcherers went straight to the bomb out.
I waited alongside the legendary JJ Bastion - if he launched first, I could follow him around for a bit I thought to myself. About 3 of us launched at the same time - I went straight after JJ and a tandem.
The glider - which had given me grief last time I tried to fly it - came up nice and steady.
I turned and ran like buggery - the thought if embarrassing myself in front of a legion of paragliding experts was foremost in my mind.
I ridge soared for a few passes to try and get some height but by now the take off area was getting quite congested with everyone taking to the air. I moved to the south side of the take off and followed a ridge line down in the general direction of the bomb out. My idea was to land, get picked up by the Basher then start again. Rinse and Repeat.
I was heading downhill fast with my vario saying I was at least 500 ft below where I took off. Things were looking grim but I noticed a few of the gun pilots had nailed some king of thermic activity and were heading up.
I casually mosied over to their approximate location (about 200 feet below however) and found what appeared to be consistent lift. I started banking the glider and commenced a climb that saw me go from about 500ft asl to 5,500 ft!!!
The climb was quite gentle and I was able to just hold the left turning configuration and rejoice in the sound of the vario cheeping cheerily. At around 1700 feet the cheery cheeping turned into rather agitated squawking and my rate of climb increased somewhat.
The ride was a bit bumpier but I just hung in there as the clouds got closer and it all got a lot colder.
I was cursing having put the flying suit on at launch and thought I should have just put a jumper on but at cloud base (or close enough to it) I was glad of having the more robust apparel.
I topped out at 5,500 feet and headed over the back following the other guys. There was a bunch of pilots in the air now going in roughly the same direction. I was think now that I f I could just make it to Godfrey's I'd be happy. I concentrated on keeping high for a while and my altitude varied between 5k down to 2.5k. Godfrey's farm house passed way down below so I thought I'd keep on going.
My next big adventure was to fly to Manilla but I needed a bit more height and to crab across the wind to the right.
Flying into the sun always delivered fruit so this was the pattern I employed - that and my new flight rules: IFOG (I follow other guys). The move towards Manilla was slow and painful and I was in danger of not getting there when I saw one of the guns on a high spec Advance glider heading towards a paddock about 1000 feet below. I figured I'd land with him and we could grab a retrieve together and engage in friendly bomb out banter.
The next time I looked he was heading up past me and he kept on going. The nerve!
I turned and followed him and managed to find the tail end of the lift he was on. I kept dropping out of the thermal but would pick it up again eventually. After a time I was back at 4k and by this time Manilla was way behind me in the distance.
I didn't realise it but I was actually flying the task! I kept following the remainder of the pilots and topping up where I could all the while looking for safe and easy bomb outs close to a road for easy retrieval. At this time over the radio a pilot was reported to be coming down under reserve over near Split Rock Dam. Suzy was then heard describing her descent and was sounding understandably shaky and scared.
She landed OK and was being assisted by other pilots so I pressed on.
Everyone seemed to be funneling into a smaller valley with nasty tiger country at the back so I was hoping that a suitable LZ would appear soon.
Everyone by now was looking for a landing so I followed them down. The wind on the ground was gusty to I had an almost vertical descent into a paddock about 5metres from a tree.
I banged my knee on a rock which didn't impress me but I was down. Iwalked up to where the other guys had clustered and found that I had made goal!!
I then endured a 3 hour wait with Irish Simon and Andy MacMurray so we swapped tales of derring do until the retrieve vehicle (Josh from Newy) showed up.

Race Day with Year 1 Parents

2010-09-27T10:05:00.005+10:00

Went a racing with a selection of Year One parent (sans kids) on Saturday, 25th of September.
Check out the photographic evidence. Didn't win a freakin' cent!
Tonni Jensen showed off his lucky $2 note which didn't work.

Ponchos Ahoy!

2010-06-01T21:24:00.002+10:00

Paddy's 7th birthday at the footy saw us reaching for the polypropylene poncho.
21st May, 2010.

Fun times at the footy

2010-06-01T21:23:00.002+10:00

Gus McCloud, Paddy Robinson, and Liam cheer the Knights (they lost) at Paddy's birthday bash May 21, 2010.

Flightlog 19-Sep-2009

2009-09-21T09:46:00.003+10:00

Wind was moving from SE to NE rather quickly. 11:30am seemed to be the best time to get going according to Seabreeze.
I threw the glider in the Zook after doing some chores and headed for the hill.
The wind was ever so slightly crossed at El Strez but no-one was flying.
Walked down towards the Coastal Patrol building and noticed a para flying off Watt St.
I hate launching there so I figured I'd flew down from Strezzie rather than embarrass myself trying to get off from Jimmy Fletcher Park.
As I was setting up, Tony Barton came in to land. He'd just flown back up from Watt St and said it was ok.
It was my first flight with my new Go Pro Hero helmet mounted camera system so I was keen to get at least a little bit of airtime.
I launched OK and headed left (north). I faffed around the fort/Bogey Hole end for a bit until I realised I hadn't clipped my speed bar in. I fumbled with the connections for a bit and got it assembled. I then decided to get some height and head to Watt St.
There was one other para down there - Brent - who had landed. I made it to the cliff with a fair bit of height and Brent took off again.
The two of us flew around for a bit - getting pretty good height and having a pretty good time of it all.
I top landed after about 40 minutes flying time at JimmyF Pk. It was lifty on the grassy bit and the wing dragged my a little bit but no real problem.
The problem came when Brent landed and talked me in to having another fly. He took off with ease.
I got the wing organised and built a nice wall but hesitated when trying to launch instead of just going for it. The wing got a bit tangled so I sorted it out.
I raised the wing again and it was a bit crooked and got a big surge in the compression. It flew straight over my head and dumped me on my arse!!
Nothing damaged except my pride as Coxy from the Central Coast had shown up just in time to witness my clumsy launching attempts.
I decided to quit while ahead and packed up.
Coxy got away OK, Brent landed and gave me a lift up the hill.
I'll get the video sorted and put up on Vimeo or YouTube - it came out Ok.

Zappa plays Zappa, Civic Theatre, Newcastle

2009-04-12T20:43:00.003+10:00

Just like seeing Frank, but I didn't have to travel to London to see him!

Saw Dweezil belt out some of his father's more famous tunes and some of the less well known songs from the Zappa catalogue.
As a guitarist, Dweezil sounds as good as his dad. Every quick little note comes off clean and precise.
The gig itself was well attended and DZ seemed pleased with the decision to include our fair city in his itinerary.
His band was comprised of a keyboard/sax player, appropriately named Sheilah. Appropriate for an Australian gig anyway. Also featured were a percussionist/vocalist, drummer, bass and second guitar.

I did a quik 'n' dirty review on the Zappa Plays Zappa message board. Check it out here.

More photos to follow soon.

Flightlog 28th March, 2009

2009-03-30T09:45:00.004+11:00

Spent the morning shopping with the young gentleman as the forecast called for a quick change from SE to NE. I figured it would be too crossed by lunch time so I thought I'd indulge the little bugger instead.
Upon returning home I noticed it wasn't as bad as I thought so I grabbed the Live and headed to Strezzie.
Tony Barton was flying a paraglider and Jimmy T Thompson had just taken off so I set up and made ready. The wind was appreciably to the east but not so bad as you couldn't get away.
First attempt saw the wing swing with the breeze to the southern end of launch and land in a bit of a heap. I built the wall again and walked it back towards the middle of the launch and got on with it.
Heading into the wind was painful and a bit slow and the downwind leg was quite brisk.
JT had headed over to Watt Street and was getting good height, but then again he should as he's flying a top of the line Advance wing and had just returned from the World's in Mexico. I decided to stay at Strezzie and was joined by Anton and another hangie.
It was quite nice but a bit light - I should have brought the Confidence - so there wasn't much opportunity to get out away from the ridge. Conrad was flying Tony's UP at this stage and made several attempts to top land but finally nailed it. After he had packed up the paraglider the launch site was clear of all craft and I briefly thought about top landing but then a few hangies threw their wings over the fence and started to get unpacked.
At this stage I had the ridge to myself so I tooled around for a bit then headed down to empire park as Anton and his mate had landed and I figured someone would give me ligt back up the hill.
As I crossed the park, I hit a bit of rotor off the headland which made me sit up and take notice a bit more as normally its pretty smooth sailing all the way in to the LZ.
The landing was Ok and my lift-up-the-hill prayers were answered when Anton's chum - Al - offered me a ride. Hurrah!
All up about an hour's flight (60 min).

Liam gets cranky!

2009-03-22T11:12:00.001+11:00

liam shows off his cranky face (for demonstration purposes only)

Dining out with the Lavs

2009-03-21T21:47:00.004+11:00

Brettles and Natasha asked us to join them for dinner at Restaurant II in Bolton Street. Superb meal! Brett brought along some of his wine stash of which we had much.
At one stage I was gesticulating (as I am wont to do) and ended up smashing my wine glass on the floor. How embarrassment! Fortuunately for us, we don't get recognised - unlike our hapless dinner companions!

Liam at Speers Pt

2009-03-16T17:04:00.001+11:00

We attended Jimmy Vale's first birthday on Sunday

Flightlog 7th March 2009

2009-03-09T10:15:00.001+11:00

Wind was forecast to be NW all day but swung around about Midday.
I headed on up to Strezzie where there were 3 hangies flying and a few more setting up.
It was a beautiful day and conditions were spot on if a little bit light.
Launched well and did the usual traversing of the ridge between Fort at KEP and Monument.
Hangies were by now in abundance but spread out over the ridge.
After 40 minutes Neil Bright, who had been flying at Merewether showed up and launched so it was starting get more crowdeder but he ended up going to Watt Street.
I decided against it as there was still a bit of south in the wind direction.
After an hour I burnt off some height over Susan Gilmour and headed for the park.
Made a nice landing and Anton cam down and gave me and Gary - a hangy who landed just after me - a lift back up the hill.
All up 60 to 75 minutes flying. Very Nice!!

2009-03-08T14:39:00.001+11:00

2009-03-07T10:58:00.001+11:00

2009-03-06T12:53:00.001+11:00

Took the kids to the seaside last Friday. Beautiful evening. Drank a bottle of flat white with my favourite wife whilst the kids frolicked on the sand.
Gotta love Newy!

Run Aftermath

2009-03-06T07:40:00.001+11:00

I got this new phone (Sony/Ericsson C902) that allows you to post photos directly to your blog. So I do.
I ran with the McPherson/Rabbitt chicks tis morning (6-March) and took this afterwards. We did about 7km in 35 minutes which we're all pleased with.

Flightlog March 1st 2009

2009-03-02T10:15:00.000+11:00

Nice, steady onshore breeze a blowin' so I headed up to Strezzie around 3pm to give the new glider another hit out.
Neil Bright was flying off Dixon Park and a couple of hangies were aloft off Strezzie.
Ray Dunne had just shown up and Stewy Coad was setting up ready for a fly. Wayne Collison and Mick the Fun Flyer were narkling around and had been for some time.
The breeze was a little stiff but it wasn't white capping so I went ahead and unfurled the Live. Ray checked my preparation out as he's on the cusp of a paraglider purchase.
I got clipped in and ready. The launch was good if not a little overcooked as I hauled on the A's a little too much. The glider rocketed up so I had to dampen it a fair bit. I need to remember that its a lot smaller than the Confidence!
Once the glider was flying I spun around and was airborne before taking a single step. I traversed the ridge and made the occasional trip out over the rock shelf to try a few wing over/chandelles etc.
It really is a fun glider! Its a lot more nippy than the Confidence but still manages to feel quite forgiving. 2 punters in Gins were flying over at Fletcher Park decided to join us on the main ridge so now there were 3 paragliders, and 4 hangies now that Ray had launched as well.
The pilot of the orange Gin (who looked female and looked to be on the phone) seemed oblivious to the right of way rules and continued to hug the ridge in both directions! I made a few more passes and at one stage got quite low over Monument after doing one too many wingovers but pushed on in a northerly direction and regained my height. Susan Gilmore is once again a landing option with plenty of sand and a few topless chicks.
I flew for about an hour and then headed for Empire park.
Made a good landing and Mick drove me and some frog back up the hill.
Very enjoyable!!

Gfc

2009-02-26T23:00:00.001+11:00

Sally snoozes

2009-02-26T07:00:00.001+11:00

The luckiest dog in the world!

Buggered!

2009-02-25T11:29:00.001+11:00

Just ran 9km

Crazy kids

2009-02-24T16:06:00.001+11:00

Flightlog 22-Feb-2009

2009-02-23T14:36:00.000+11:00

Forecast was for onshore breezes.
I had the kids down at Bar Beach and watched while 3 hangies forlornly scratched at Strezzie in nary a puff.
A couple of punters made an appearance but not for long - I think they headed across to Newcastle Beach.
Lisa arrived at the beach about 1:30 to take over from me in baby sitting duties so I headed on up to launch, conditions having picked up a bit by this stage.
The breeze was a bit cross but strengthening. Adam Parer was waiting for a tandem customer and told me how a punter had fluffed his launch and hit the fence, bobbled over it and eventually took off from the adjacent bit of land next to launch (the same way I had done back in 2001!!).
After Adam launched I got ready. I was flying my recently purchased (but not yet paid for...) Edel Live - Rossco's glider. At 93.5kg I'm at the top of the weight range but its practically brand new and still very crispy.
Heeding Adam's recounting of the punter hitting the fence I made sure I had a secure and stable wall before popping the glider up.
The breeze was of a fair strength and consistency and by the time I turned to face the sea I was starting my ascent.
Got away nicely and got some height over the fort at KEP. I made a few passes sticking mainly to the northern end of the ridge as the downwind leg was very swift. The glider penetrated well back into th ewind, however. I tried a wingovery thing in front of launch and nearly brought up my lunch! The glider is way more twitchy than the Confidence - the higher wing loading must be the main contributing factor but it was a hoot. Rossco used to complain about pilot oscillations and this was a evident but due to his harness settings with his chest strap being set fairly wide. The glider is a lot more lively than mine in general.
After about 30 minutes I headed over to Watt St to take advantage of the more easterly aspect of the wind direction. Got a bunch of height over the bowl near the old bowling club. I made a few passes along the ridge there - and waved to Lisa and the kids who had driven up to see me. The glider was performing well - it turns on a dime - very handy for tighter situations.
I noticed that the breeze was picking up - wind lines were apparent on the water so I headed out over the rock shelf to lose some height. I had considered top landing but with a new glider and stronger conditions I thought better of it and ended up landing on the beach.
All up about an hour's flying. I think that the purchase of Rossco's glider was a good idea - I've now got 2 gliders for different conditions. The big fat Confidence for inland and the Live for fun coastal flying.

My Shot at Fame Misfires!

2009-01-27T19:52:00.005+11:00

Had a callback for the Outback Steakhouse commercial today.
I though a callback was a function you pass as a parameter to another function in javascript but in TV speak its when you are "called back" to an audition! Those theatre types - they're so literal!
When I arrived at the casting agency, it was festooned with beautiful people, the like of which I have never before seen. There was a rock climbing chick with arms as big my legs and a flat stomach you could crack walnuts on. There was a young christian dude auditioning for a part as a waiter and a cool glider pilot/skydiver with snakeskin boots plus some young ingenues all looking gorgeousy and very Sydney.
Then the sea of buff bods parted and in walked this veritable amazon! She was at least 6ft 2 in the old scale with hair as blonde as Paris Hilton's and skin as smooth and as polished as alabaster - except it was tanned. She strode in and went straight into the casting studio to emerge some minutes later looking a bit flustered. The higher up the beautiful scale you are the more likeley you must think you are for the part.
I was called in after a succession of spunks did their thing for the assembled creatives in the studio, with a guy called Fabian, a sailor.
There was a bunch of people in there, a bit of a contrast from last week when there was only me, the kids, and Ally Fowler - the principal of the casting agency - Fountainhead Casting (I'm not sure if the name of the place reflects her politics or if she thinks its just a catchy name - but she was in the Chantoozies and on All Saints if that helps).
There was the director - a yank - 2 ad agency types (I think) and 2 of Ally's minions.
She had Fabian and me position ourselves in front of the camera and basically repeat what was said last week - how long have you been [insert adventure activity here] etc etc.
Afterwards we were told we had to look at a mark on the wall and pretend we were digging a groovy party and to respond when our name was called out. Ally was just prepping us for this staged improvised banter when the director interrupted and said "No, we don't need that!" (he said it with a smile though, and kind of offhandedly so it wasn't at all nasty).
I walked out with Fabian the sailor, grabbed my backpack and kept on going. Fabs was heading towards Central as well so we had a bit of a natter.
I asked him if not doing the party scene was a bad thing, he said it was. He's in advertising so I suspect he knows.
Well, that's it. There goes my part in 'Home and Away', the ensuing hit single, the raunchy video clip, the relocation to LA, the checking into rehab, the newer younger wife.
All gone. In as long as it takes to say "No, we don't need that".
I sat dejected on the train back to my normal non-celebrity, non-groovy life back in Newy.
Liam was there to greet me at the door with a big hug so I guess its not so bad after all!

Treachery 2008

2009-01-05T13:35:00.002+11:00

Went with the Donnelly Cooks to Treachery Beach where they go annually for a post Xmas, pre NYE sojourn by the seaside.
Lisa stayed at home an painted the family room with El Fozzo. I took one for the team and had to endure drinking, surfing and camping with the kids.

Flight Log (FLOG) 02/01/2009

2009-01-05T13:23:00.000+11:00

Friday, 2nd Jan.
First flight of the year and the first for some months.
Started out as a glorious day and by 11:30am I was on deck at Strezzie where Cottsy was about to launch after having a verbal joust with Matt.
It all gets rather silly at times.
James T had just launched and Matt had just top landed (to applause from the gathered throng). Tony Barton was about to take a customer aloft as I was making ready.
After Tony B got away I got sorted and waited a bit so Anton could grab some footage of the majestic Edel taking flight.
Launch was good and I was away after one step in the direction of the coal ships. Lots of consistent, fun lift. I flew out over the rock shelf a few times and tried a bunch of easy wingovers and some 360's and stuff. After a bit I flew to Watt St to see how it was going there. Got good height going over and managed to maintain it while I was there but it wasn't a abundant as the lift at Strezzie so I thought I'd head back. I applied 3/4 speed bar to cross the bit between the bowling club and the Bogey Hole and was sinking substantially. In a moment of panic I thought about heading back to the cliff at Jimmy Fletcher Park but held my nerve and pushed on.
By the time I crossed the Bogey Hole, I was about half way down the cliff face but by the time I'd reached the Fort at King Eddie Pk, I was back at launch height again.
One long pass down the cliff to Monument and I was back about 100ft above launch. Just goes to show!
I made a few more passes along the ridge and more hangies were setting up, plus the white caps were developing over the water so I headed down to the park for a nice landing. Mick - a hangy who was flying a fun - was packing up and took me back to launch. Hurrah.
All up about 90+ minutes. Excellent!

Modern Day Tragedy

2008-01-25T11:04:00.000+11:00

Its tragic that a talented bugger like Heath Ledger goes toes up and that idiot turd Cory Worthington lives on!
Life's unfair.
If I wasn't eligible for jail time (ie was 16 years old), had no responsibility and my parents were away, I could throw a pretty mean party too.
What's the big deal?
There's a comment by the editor of the Site Point Tribune (an email for nerds about marketing web stuff) who fluffs on about this Corey clown's wearing of those ridiculous yellow sunnies and how its a brilliant marketing ploy.
The fact that the mainstream media is giving this gonad such attention must mean that there's no news in stock market crashes, sub prime lending blow outs or potential genocide in Kenya.
Its the kind of frenzy that gave Big Brother contestants the idea that they were somehow 'special'.
If there were a god he'd have thrown Corey under a bus and spared Heath.
Do the world and yourself a favour, visit this site and slap the unrepentant little bastard.

Microsoft The Evil Empire

2008-01-22T09:19:00.000+11:00

I'm in the process of writing an Outlook AddIn for a FrOGTech project.
As you may or may not know, I am a staunch Microsoft dislikerer because, well, they make you pay for stuff and everything. And just when you're settled into a nice development routine, they go and release a newer, shinier version that you have to purchase, adopt and learn.

The nerve.

Don't get me started on Internet Explorer. Internet Deplorable more like.
Microsoft only like utilising standards they make up themselves and bugger the rest of the world.
That being said, I'm in the midst of writing this AddIn for Outlook and I gotta tell ya, its quite a snap to develop.
The AddIn takes a selected mail item or contact and extracts the data and throws it into a database via a webservice. Neat.
So even though they're a bunch of greedy bums, their stuff actually works!

Buman runs for Parliament!

2007-11-23T11:10:00.000+11:00

The news we've been waiting for! Arguably the dimmest of our elected council representatives, Aaron Buman, is running as an independent for the House of Representatives.

The ABC radio news article says that he is confident voters would realise the benefits of living in a marginal seat blah blah blahdy blah blah.

For a preview as to how this clown will perform in office, wander down to a council meeting or a development committee meeting and check him out. His infantile enthusiasm, while refreshing for a tot, is somewhat out of place in this environment. He's a bit of a joke.
Save your vote and keep Grierson in. She mightn't do much but she does it well and is less of an embarrassment!

Democracy in Action

2007-10-04T16:44:00.000+10:00

...or should that be "democracy inaction"?
Just sat through a developmet application session of Newcastle Council. What a strange event.
Councillors Buman and O'Neill giggled and passed notes and talked almost throughout the entire session. They behaved worse than schoolkids. If I had a blackboard duster I would have thrown it at them like we used to in the good old days of pedagogical instruction.
The councillors from our ward, our actual elected representatives, the ones that actually showed up, were keen to just vote the development application through and be done with it. It was a complete joke. The council is totally hamstrung by its own seemingly incompetent members and a fear of the dreaded Land and Environment Court.
Councillors Gaudry, Eade, Parsons and McKenzie were on our side in opposing the development. Bless them. The rest couldn't give a bugger. "Heritage heretics" Keith Parsons calls them.
Here's the gist of an email I received from Barbara Gaudry:

Thank you for your email.
I am very disappointed for you and the other local residents.
I really believe in the merits of the case you were putting and Ihad hoped that by drawing the analogy with the Glebe Road decision that the other Councillors might see it in that light and think that it was worth the chance of our decision being upheld.
I don't believe in risking ratepayer's money if there is no/little chance of succeeding in the Land and Environment Court but I thought that a precedent was there with the Glebe Road decision.
The houses are in the section of Glebe Road between Watkins Street and Union Street and I managed to get Councillor support (on the previous Council) to reject a DA for the demolition and replacement of one of these houses.
The proposed new house was totally out of character with the other houses in the block.
The developer then went to the Land and Environment and lost the case.

From memory Keith was not correct in saying that the Glebe Road houses were already on a list being considered for some kind of protection when we made our decision to reject the demolition of one of the houses and its replacement with a new dwelling.
I think that the decision to consider possible listing of these houses came later when we were reviewing our LEP (Local Environment Plan) which is a statutory document.
I don't think that these houses still have any statutory protection as the assessment process wasn't funded by Council (I am relying on memory and haven't checked the current status).

Unfortunately, there are some Councillors (4 at least) who vote for a Development no matter what.
They invariably put the rights of the developer ahead of the residents.
This is extremely disappointing as we are meant to look at each DA on its merits.
Our decisions about the 'merits of the case' are subjective of course but there needs to be some flexibility in decision making.

I am sorry that we failed the other night.

Regards
Barbara."

What a top lady. I was considering joining the Labor party until they dumped her hubby and replaced him with the execrable Jodi MacKay but now I might reconsider.
It still leaves us with the constant irritation of Buman and O'Neill. If ever there was a case for the Local Government Minister to sack the council it would be these two dullards. What a waste of oxygen they are!

My little corner of the Internet

2007-09-06T12:17:00.001+10:00

Just added a new link to this here blog. Its my new home page. More of an application than a static home page.
http://thechums.dyndns.org:9090/cocoon/vomoir
I wrote the application in my most favoured of all the web application development frameworks: Cocoon.
I love it. Once you get your head around it, its an absolute snack to implement fairly complicated interactions betwixt user and server. You can upload photos with previews, add new links to the page, dynamically show different menu options according to your access rights etc. Its all done with XML and relies pretty heavily on XSLT to weave the magic.
I'm currently working on base64 encoding of image thumbnails. Cocoon can rescale an image on the fly which saves you having to generate a separate thumbnail but it takes a bit of a belting on the server while its processing this request. When you have a bunch of photos in your album, the app can grind to a halt or stop generating the images altogether.
I create a separate xml file that contains metadata about the image. I extract EXIF data from the photo and save salient items into the metadata xml, like date taken, image dimensions etc.
I figured that while I'm doing this, I could generate a base64 representation of the scaled image and save that as a CDATA element in the xml. I could also go one step further and XmlHTTPRequest (XHR - the cornerstone of AJAX) to display the thumbnail that's built into the EXIF data from the browser. Hmmm. Better start thinking about this.

Why State Rail sucks

2007-07-08T23:12:00.001+10:00

Last week (first week in July) I had a week in Canberra working from FrOGTech's worldwide headquarters (the FrogglePlex). The Froggies graciously paid for my flight down to Canberra and I was going to travel by train back to Sydney on the Saturday so I could catch up with Lisa, Mark, Emma, Tim and Michelle and go and see the Rugby test.
So far so sweet.
I turfed myself out of bed at 6am in order to get ready for the anticipated train journey scheduled to depart Bungers at 7:14am. I knew the train was fairly regular as I had heard the bloody thing leaving at this time every day during the week.
Brother in law Keef and I sat chatting in the car waiting for the conveyance along with another bunch of potential travelers in a car next to us. Shivering on the platform but out of our view were a bunch more people (about 5 or 7) all eagerly awaiting the Carriage of Destiny to whisk us away to Sydney.
40 minutes past the allocated time there was still no train.
Someone on the platform put the call to the rail guys in Canberra to find out what was happening. It transpires the train was canceled and they were going to provide us with coaches instead.
Fine, I thought. As long as I'm in Sydney by mid afternoon, I don't care how I get there (as long as its before kick off).
Another 20 minutes elapsed and again the call was put to the rail guys in Canberra. Oh, they remarked, the coach driver couldn't see anyone at Bungendore so he's moved on to Goulburn!
Now I'm all in favour of positive discrimination but giving bus driving jobs to blind people can't be too good for business, even one with as poor a reputation as RailCorp's.
There were at least 10 people at the freaking train station in various stages of hypothermia. How could he not see any of us!!
Even if he were totally blind he could have heard us from the chattering of our teeth due to the aforementioned hypothermia.
I say 'he' because dare I say it, no woman would have been so cavalier in the commissioning of her duties.
Let's just say that blind, ex-truckie bloke bus drivers tend to take things a little easy!
After the shock of being abandoned by our erstwhile rail friends wore off, we hightailed it back the the Young residence where I hit the web and hastily booked a flight on QANTAS to Sydders.
Another hour and $270 later I was Sydney bound. Thank god for the flying kangaroo and VISA card!
This might sound like a cheesy advertorial but if it wasn't for some regular flightage out of our National Capital, non-car bound travellers would be screwed. If you had the misfortune to be relying on the flimsy non-service of State Rail but without the wherewithal to have ready cash in the form of a credit card, then you'd be screweder and probably still stuck on the frozen platform of Bungendore Rail station.

I sent our RailCorp buddies an email requesting that they refund me the $270 buckaroos I had to drop to make up for their incompetence and now I have to wait 5 to 7 working days for them to get back to me.
I don't hold out much hope.
If ever you're tempted to take a train to our national capital, don't.
RailCorp's website says they're "Safe Clean and Reliable".
Safe: sure if you can't see it or touch it or it doesn't exist, it can't hurt you.
Clean: Yup, same again. You can't get cleaner than absolute nothingness (very Zen).
Reliable: Ah, not quite. Unless they mean Reliable not to turn up.

Nightmare Update

2007-07-08T22:33:00.000+10:00

Thanks to support from the Independents, the development at Blamey Avenue will now go ahead. Yes, you read correctly, the Independents along with a bunch of other myopic dimwits that are our elected representatives on the council, have decided to become pro-development! (I originally thought it was the Greens but they're OK.)
In a 8-5 decision, the developer has been given the go ahead to violate the unique character of the street. This doesn't bode well for the opponents of the Nightmare on Freyberg.

It'll only be a matter of months before the new owners are smugly sidling up to us at the street christmas party and whispering in our collective ears: "See, I told you so!"
Will I be offering them a congratulatory beer and shaking their hands to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Boy Wizard? No siree. They can osculate my hail damaged rear end as far as I'm concerned.

All that is required to get these things through is a dithering planning approval guy on the council who takes his advice from an "independent" consultant who also dishes out advice to development applicants. Can anyone spell "conflict of interest". I don't think the council planning department can!

Return of the Nightmare on Freyberg Street

2007-06-24T20:09:00.000+10:00

It Lives!
Apparently someone at the council said that the myopic design for the house on number 2 was, surprise, surprise, inappropriate.
Hurrah, we cried. The little people have won!
But no. It is not to be.
The decision process at our council seems to work like this:
They devise a series of guidelines that determine the setbacks and boundaries for dwellings on a block. Streetscape rapists come along and pick a design off the internet that is well outside the boundaries and setbacks specified by the "guidelines".
The process is in place.
The council planners correctly flag the design as inappropriate and things are looking good. But wait, lurking around the corner is a planning department superior who flies in the face of the guidelines and returns a positive verdict for the vandals. Why have a guideline? Why have a planning department? Why does the council waste ratepayers' money employing these people if all they're going to do is bend over to the people pushing these out of place home designs?
I can't believe that the developers don't have the resources to employ a half competent architect to come up with a house plan that fits on the block and won't stand out like a sore thumb. But instead they run a quick Google search and come up with a bog standard A.V. Jennings nightmare that has about as much street appeal as a pile of dog shit.
Its the thin edge of the wedge my friends. In 12 years time people will drive into Richley Reserve past rows of soulless A.V. Jennings homes and say to their kids that this used to be a really nice place to live.
Now it looks like any crappy street in Merewether or Fletcher.
Welcome to the future. For a preview, walk down Hooper Street or look at the image of their 'redesign' above.
Note the timber upper bit. According to the council's team of crack development approvers, this makes a lot of difference to the "streetscape friendliness" of the dwelling. It is still an inappropriate kit home.
The council should be renamed the 'Fruit Fly Circus' as they seem to be able to perform multiple back flips in a single conversation.
At one stage they say that the erection of a car port too close to the front boundary in an adjoining property can't be done as it will "affect the streetscape", and before drawing breath, they'll say that relaxing the setbacks so a shoebox can be squeezed onto the block is OK because the guidelines "are only guidelines".
Where does it leave us?
Who the fuck knows! You can't argue against any sort of hideous construction because the council isn't swayed by the character of a street, yet you can't build a half decent car port too close to the boundary because it'll upset the "street scape". I can't figure it out.
There was an on-site meeting yesterday (June 27) with the council's development team, some councilors, the mayor and a whole bunch of disenfranchised residents about a similar proposal in an adjacent street.
The developer guys couldn't wait to get out of there.
The Lord Mayor's response to the proposed building's imposing bulk and its affect on privacy was that these issues can be fixed by "privacy screens"!!!
Stay tuned for an update on that little debacle as well.
I remain,
Your obedient servant
Vomoir.
Check this out. Its Google groups thingy that has a bit more detail (if you're interested).

The Pitfalls of Web Design and a Happy Marriage

2007-06-15T15:27:00.001+10:00

To paraphrase Kid Creole:

"If you want to stay happy for the rest of your life, never make a web designer your wife, so for my personal point of view get another girl to marry you"

My wife's not a web designer, she's a face painter and I'm in the throes of trying to redesign her rather pedestrian website which I threw together in haste a while back. Thing is, I want to try and get my web design chops up to some sort of professional level, where net aficionados can look at it for all its web standards compliance and exquisite design beauty, but Lisa just wants a mid '90's style frames and tables horror show "like everyone else has got". Sheesh.
I spent hours of my own freaking time working and reworking a minor masterpiece of css and xhtml and came up with a relatively palatable site that looked OK on Firefox but, as was expected looked like an unmade bed on IE.
I sent the url to my sister who works for the local council where they run computer specs straight out of the 70's. She's a good testing site for low resolution html rendering as a result of the council's PC frugality and the verdict was negative. I had to virtually start again. I can see why most of the web-design community stick to tables and <font> tags. Who needs this css crap anyway. I'll keep chipping away. I suppose the more I do the easier its going to become.
Watch this space.

Ship Ahoy!

2007-06-12T12:09:00.000+10:00

Newcastle suffered the worst storm in 30 years on the weekend just past. Some say it was classified as a Category 1 Cyclone, which is pretty far out.
A ship ran aground in the wee hours of Friday morn right smack on one of the city's most iconic beaches: Nobbies.
No one on the ship was injured but there's the ever present threat of fuel leakage if the ship's hull integrity is compromised. So far so good. As of this writing the port authority is awaiting the arrival of tugs from far afield as Singapore and Melbourne.
Our place only got a bit of water in the garage, no big deal. The biggest tragedy for us was that our internet connection was down for a good five (5) minutes.
Others weren't so lucky.

What Does "My Bad" Mean?

2007-06-04T16:15:00.000+10:00

Seriously, what does it mean?
My Bad. My Bad what. Where's the verb. Why do Americans insist on making nouns and adjectives into verbs.
As mentioned I was at the Google Developer Day last week and one of the presenters had the word 'incentivize' in his slide.
This is up there with 'my bad'. If you stick 'ize' and the arse end of anything it suddenly becomes a freaking verb. You in effect 'verbize' it.
It's this whole verbization that makes me quite cross. You do it often enough and suddenly you've got a whole bunch of new words polluting the wordosphere. Diarize is a beauty. Monetize is another that Google has introduced into the Geek's lexicon.

Google Developer's Day

2007-06-02T18:39:00.000+10:00

Phil the neighbour and I attended the Google Developer's Day in Sydney on the 31st.
Quite a sumptuous affair seeing as they provided lunch, snacks and drinks all day and they didn't charge a bean.
I felt a bit of a hypocrite as I don't use any Google development stuff but did I mention it was free?
Interesting day, with the boffins from Google showing the application of their various apis and javascripty goodness.
Expect to see lots of maps and stuff appearing here soon.
Of particular interest was the new Google Gears api wherein your shiny new ajax application can persist its data locally using a modified version of SQLLite, so if you suffer fomr a network outage, your app will soldier on regardless. Neat.
Also the maps api was particularly interesting. It looks rather straight forward so now I'm going to add maps aplenty to my Hunter Skysailors website. The Google Web Toolkit looks particularly choice: complete ajax applications written entirely in Java. There's a slew of support tools and Eclipse plugins available and you don't get bogged down with all of javascript's inconsistencies. Check it out.

Funky Cat

2007-06-01T11:07:00.000+10:00

This is one Funky Cat! Why, its none other than Liam after getting an instant makeover from the dedicated professional staff at Funfaces (actually that's Lisa, the better half and Liam's favourite Mum).
One day he'll grow up and be really embarrassed but at the moment he's the cutest kid ever, except for Maddison (in case she's reading this).

Lisa's part time hobby

2007-05-29T16:14:00.000+10:00

My wife Lisa paint faces for a part time living. Check out her website here.
I need to improve it (a lot) and stick some nifty ajax eye candy on it and generally make it a bit more sexy.
Stay tuned.

The Internet's latest e-Ontraprenewer

2007-05-28T19:48:00.000+10:00

I got adsense! I don't know what it means but the result thereof is that a river of free cash is supposed to flow into my bank account.
What could be simpler. With my free dough I'm going to buy a Rugby franchise or a yacht, maybe both.
Apparently adsense is what sets Google apart from Microsoft in that Google can actually make money from their biznis model and all MS can do is chisel money out of people too lazy to learn about Open Office or Linux.
At the moment its only for disaster relief and other relatively lame stuff but give it a few weeks and I'm buying a Lexus.

Nightmare on Freyberg Street

2007-05-25T14:12:00.000+10:00

I live in a lovely little street in Newcastle, Australia (latitude -32.933187S, longitude 151.705904 E).
The street itself was established during the forties and most of the houses date from that time.
Unprepossessing, charming yet functional little dwellings for your average Ozzie suburban family just trying to make their way through life.
Each one is single storey and the view up the street is delightful, rows of these little cottages lining the road into the 385 hectare bush reserve of Blackbutt.
I'm stressing the charm and the heritage of my cozy little street because it is about to be shamelessly raped by an ex-resident.
The ex-resident is proposing, along with her lawyer husband, to erect a totally inappropriate dwelling of monstrous proportions that will dwarf all the houses around it and occupy nearly every square centimetre of land of the tiny block.
What is it with these people? The woman in question used to live next door to the house she is about to demolish, in what was her grandmother's house (who would be spinning violently in her grave if she knew of the carnage her descendant is about to unleash on the neighbourhood).
It incenses me that they think they can get away with it. Look at the photo. That's the design they've chosen. 296 square metres of overindulgence on a 340 sq metre block. The mind boggles.

There'll be more on this. Just you wait, you haven't seen the last of me. Oh no.

I've entered the Blogosphere!

2007-05-24T14:51:00.000+10:00

I've done it! I've jumped on another bandwagon.
First it was a mohawk then pierced genitals, now its blogging.
I'm only about 4 years behind the rising tide of irrelevance that is clogging the 'internets' but what the heck. I'll give anything a go. I even tried Ice once but it only served to give me brain freeze. How those skinny guys with scabby faces get addicted I don't know.