I guess it's obvious that every now and then I find out what Laurette has been writing about... but this one - Four jobs you've had in your life - was through a very cryptic phone call during a busy work day. (yes, I *am* actually busy - it's not Christmas where I am at the moment - I have a project which we're trying to wrap up before I head off for Lotusphere - at the current plans, it will go into production on the Tuesday night before we fly out on the Friday afternoon so it has to be shipshape so I can support it from the US).

Anyway, I get a phone call from Laurette saying "name my top 4 movies that I can watch over and over" - to which I hesitate to answer in case it's one of those trick quizzes in chick magazines that helps to identify that your relationship is in trouble by taking any reasonable answer and reversing it to get to the desired outcome (which is apparently that everyone is better off single and in a night club)... I digress... I note a couple of movies that Laurette could watch over and over and she says thanks and hangs up...

now.. after reading it on her blog I know what's going on...

so - to keep up the fun, here's my (similar) list:

Four jobs you've had:
paperboy, project manager, karaoke host, it consultant
Four movies you could watch over and over:
The Blues Brothers, The Fifth Element, Sneakers, Dumb & Dumber
Four places you've lived:
Sydney, London, Canberra, Oakey (good luck finding Oakey on google earth! - about 3500 people)
Four tv shows you love to watch:
West Wing (the Rob Lowe era), The Simpsons, Red Dwarf, M*A*S*H
Four places you've been on vacation:
USA, Italy, Thailand, Paris
Four websites you visit daily:
daily? other than my mail... www.smh.com.au maybe www.boingboing.net and www.wired.com are getting more current attention
Four of your favourite foods:
does beer count as a food?, steak, vegemite (on toast is a winner), oh.. and boiled peanuts (yep - they're exactly what they sound like - most people can't handle the taste, but to the privileged few they're fantastic!)
Four places you'd rather be:
not that Sydney is a bad option (especially at New Year's) Sicily, New York, London, anywhere I don't have to work to survive...

"A British man is giving a whole new meaning to begging to be loved as he set off on an 88-kilometre crawl on his hands and knees to find a partner"
Love may find a way if crawler keeps his nose to the ground - Unusual Tales

umm.... there's not a lot I can say about this one, but I think the terms "37-year-old performance artist" and "no stranger to bizarre stunts" speak for themselves... he's crawling 88 kilometres with 18 boxes of chocolate tied behind him in an attempt to find a girlfriend...

well... obviously a lot of you know already, but we're off to Lotusphere 2006. A few of you might have guessed because some of the referrers I've been getting from frappr.

Laurette and I are making the trek across to the USA in January (spare a thought for us on the epic journey from Sydney-LA-St Louis-Orlando without a bed or a shower!) and will be braving the US winter as we travel around for a couple of weeks afterwards. I don't know if many of you have done the trip from this part of the world, but it's kind of weird booking a flight which leaves at 3pm and arrives at 10.30pm on the same day, but takes 30+ hours to get there.

After Orlando we're off to Washington, NYC, San Francisco, Las Vegas and then home again so if anyone knows of any user group meetings in those places in the couple of weeks after Lotusphere let me know as we'd love to drop in and see what's happening in your part of the world.

I won't be packing any Fosters or VB (not that I would anyway as being a born and bred Queenslander requires me to remain forever faithful to that nectar of the hop Gods - "XXXX"), but I'm sure we'll be more than willing to savour the taste of the local product whilst we're there. If you see us, stop and say "G'day", we're looking forward to finally putting a face to some of the personalities we've been following online for the last year or so.

"In the year 2009, on April 25, a man named Greg is supposed to get an email. The email will remind Greg that he is his best friend and worst enemy, that he once dated a woman named Michelle, and that he planned to major in computer science."
Send email ten years down the line - Technology - theage.com.au

I don't know whether I'm more disturbed by the fact that these sites exist (including ones which promise to send emails to people after you've been dispatched from this mortal coil), or that I'm tempted to send myself an email in 5 years time. I think I'll resist the tempation... by the time 5 years rolls around, anything that I can send myself now will probably qualify as spam in the future!

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"Using a bulit in speaker that refracts the sound off your wrist through the solid stainless caseback it sounds out the time in Morse Code.
If thats to hard to follow, you can press a button to see the time in Morse Code on the LED display.
If that's still too hard to decipher or your running out of time, one more press of a button you can see the time in regular digit form."
Audio watch by Morse Code

I have a bit of a soft spot when it comes to watches... as one of my best mate claims "you can never have too many watches". This one might make catching the 2.13am train home after a night on the town a little interesting though...

"Tip the head back and IT WORKS! Simply plug in any small appliance: lamp, TV, stereo, lighted collectible showcase, etc... use your imagination! The bust works as a switch to turn your appliance on and off!"
Shakespeare Remote Control Bust

Here's one for those of us who are old enough to remember Batman as the guy in the grey tights who sometimes danced to the "Batusi" as opposed to the guy in black played by various hollywood hunks. This is a replica of the bust that Bruce Wayne used to flick open before he and the Boy Wonder slid down the firepoles to the BatCave... now you can have your very own - a pretty cool way to turn on/off your playstation!

"A BlastWrap-lined garbage can will dissipate a backpack-size-bomb blast in less than one thousandth of a second."
Blastgard International Blastwrap - Popular Science

Despite the fact that the purpose and reason that technology like this has been recently developed is disturbing, you have to marvel at the simplicity and ingenuity sometimes...

here's a picture to what is basically big bubble wrap filled with powder to help contain and extinguish potential bombs

We were discussing how Notes shows categorised dates in view columns the other day and I made a reference to the way it was done in the "old days". After explaining what I meant, a couple of people replied that it was the same as the way they're doing it now, so I thought I'd outline a couple of different processes that I've seen/used in case it's useful to anyone.

Let's assume you want a view categorised by the creation date. Firstly, you create 2 columns (one for the year, and one for the month), the goal being to get something like this:

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well... We're back from a relaxing weekend away in the North Queensland sun, only to find it was a weekend filled with unprecedented violence in Sydney. We live about 15 minutes from the main flashpoint and about 5 minutes down the road from the secondary area to which the violence spilled over - in fact Laurette grew up in the "Sutherland Shire" region to which Cronulla is the heart. To say that it's a nasty shock is an understatement, however, I think with many things like this, once it happens you can use 20-20 hindsight to suggest that it was becoming more and more likely.

In some cases you see that it started with a weekend of young Australians "taking back the beach" in an area which had become more and more dangerous - there were recent attacks on the iconic life savers by youths in the area recently which is a cheap shot in anyone's language - attacking those who volunteer so many hours to making the beaches safer for others. Some of the "rioters" initially appeared no more dangerous than the crowd at a football match following their teams victory - it was hard to consider them to be capable of turning to such violent acts when they were in the middle of singing our national anthem - a song with "girt by sea" is not exactly what you would consider "hard as nails".

I don't really want to add too much at the moment as it's still sinking in as to the impact of the riots, the driving force behind them and to just what extent people have taken advantage of the opportunity to rebel against so many constraints in today's society.

As for the Australian "Lucky Country" image - sadly, I think it is under threat of being revised following our recent track record - international drug smugglers, terrorist activity and now racism riots have become the imagery attached to this land that I love so much...

so.. we're off to Cairns this weekend for a friend's wedding so I was contemplating what to pack (pretty much a big packet of sunscreen, floppy hat and "flip-flops" I guess!), so I checked out the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's site to see the weather forecast... whilst I was there I thought I'd check the recent history of weather in this region (it's been pretty hot around here...)

For all you guys enjoying a white Christmas, here's an image of the recent top temperatures in Australia - yellow is around 30 degrees Celcius (86 F), and it just goes up from there... pink is quite warm, red reflects what your face looks like after about a half hour in the sun, and the brown... well that's just getting into the "stupid hot" territory (110+ F)!



In case you're not Aussie-Aware, Sydney is in the bottom right hand side about a quarter of the way up, and Cairns is in the top on the right hand side. Given the way the temperature has been it's going to be a hot ol' weekend in the Sushine State!


for more info - detailed australian temps for December 2005

so.. here's something high on my wishlist for Christmas - O2 Mighty Atom

With the red suited big man's visit just around the corner I'm looking for a present as I'm certainly in the "nice" list this year - well, that's my opinion anyway...

The dilemma with the Atom though, is the pricetag - it's expected to come in at around AUD$1100 - which is a little pricey. I haven't had a PDA since my handspring (back in the days of AAA batteries instead of an internal one) but I think I'm at the stage where I'm ready to get back the control of my diary away from the desktop and mobile phone combination. The thing I have to consider, though, is whether I get a PDA/Phone combination or if I just buy a normal PDA and use it in conjunction with my existing mobile (Nokia 6230) - mind you, it's been about 18 months since I bought the mobile so surely it's time for an upgrade to something a little more shiny!

Anyway... that's a sneak preview to my list.... it's either that, or I get my own robot to answer calls, take messages and wrestle with any roboraptors that get in the way - RoboSapien v2 - I read somewhere that someone had bought a small army of the original version of these for the sole purpose of being the army to his Darth Vader doll... yeah - geeky.... but cool

Sedition fears unfounded, says PM - National - smh.com.au
"Mr Howard said today there was no difference to what the government proposed in its terror legislation with regard to sedition, to what has been in the Crimes Act for the last 50 years.

He told ABC television arguments that the laws were outdated were no excuse for accusations that the government was attacking free speech.

"Can I just express my total astonishment at the argument that is being mounted about these sedition laws," he said.

"Can somebody please tell me how in substance the sedition provisions in the counterterrorism bill are different from the sedition law that we've now had for many years."

Sedition fears unfounded, says PM - National - smh.com.au

umm.. ok.. can I just ask the PM one question then?

"If the provisions are no different from the laws we've now had for many years, why then are you pushing through an amendment?".

And, if you're feeling generous enough to allow me a second question - "why are you rushing them through both houses in an act that stifles debate and arguably abuses your current authority, raising serious questions as to the amount of respect you have for the legislation, the process or the viewpoints of anyone who could possibly have a differing opinion to your own?"

This from a government that has a fear campaign on the one hand, and attempts to dispel fears on the other with a "be alert, not alarmed" campaign against terror - I don't think I could get out of the carpark after a sitting of parliament without being alarmed!

sorry about that... I'll try to keep my political content to a minimum...

Laurette and I braved the crowds of 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 year old students out of school early to go and see the latest in the Harry Potter septology - Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.

Well... actually, it seems that we managed to pick a good timeslot as the cinema was only about one third full and mostly with "adults" like us - we went to a screening on Friday in between the one after school and the one after dinnertime for kids - a calculated ploy on our part.

So - what's the verdict? Well - I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan, so I guess that means it automatically gets 3 stars out of 5 just for appearing on the big screen, but overall I'd say it's somewhere between 3.5 and 4 out of 5.

The movie itself develops well, it was a detailed book and has been relatively well reproduced on the big screen - sure, there will be some people who are disappointed that it doesn't include certain elements, but there's just so much celluloid that can be shown before the bladders of 14 year old children reach breaking point. As it was, with the trailers and ads for singing popcorn included, it took just under 3 hours to get from getting seated to fighting past the queues lined up for the next session.

**warning** this may contain spoilers (it depends on whether you've read the book before I guess)

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I thought I would share something about the way I write my code in LotusScript that seems to help with readability (at least that's the comments that I've received - what people say when I've left the room is nothing I can control ....yet).

My expectation is that everyone does something similar, but just in case it's not the normal practice, and if there are people looking for something different, I offer this as a suggestion.

Now, bear with me as it's kind of hard to explain.

Essentially, I'm a bit of a fan of the "if/then/else/end if" combination and this will come out in the example.

Basically, if I have a piece of code that requires a few tests before I can get into the nitty gritty, I test these conditions, reporting any errors that I find, and then set a variable which identifies if I can progress onto the next stage - I know that might sound exactly like everyone else does, so let me elaborate with an example.

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