Archive for the ‘tech’ Category
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
hey blog, how are you doing? feeling neglected? yeah yeah, suck it up.
i’m ok… been having some tech dramas lately.
that draft post is still sitting in the queue, i was supposed to blog all about how quickly and easily i jailbroke my ipod touch after upgrading to v2 firmware and successfully installed cydia… but no. instead i managed to brick it. pretty much beyond repair. i’ll go to an apple store **eww** tomorrow to see if they will help me out, i say “will” because i know they “can”, but probably won’t want to. omission and feigning ignorance will be my defence. we’ll have to see how it goes.
did i mention how much i hate closed platforms? so so much.
also, mate and i bought an eeepc901 each last thursday (i think it was thursday?)
it’s awesome, i mucked around with a couple of things and him being the SOE guru he is, gave me a dual booting image of XP-SP3 and gOS sah-weet.
my hands are adjusting to the keyboard ok, i didn’t realise how much i use the right ctrl key until now! …you know what they say “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone you lose it”… um ok… i may or may not have just quoted phil collins… ahhh! and then i googled the correct lyric and corrected it, i need help!
also in my attempts to free my ipod touch of itunes, a lot of software was installed on my pc and i became increasingly frustrated and ended up rebuilding it… and then got a bit excited and installed windows7 and gOS on it, along the way creating four primary partitions and accidentally making the boot up process kind of complicated as far as choosing an OS goes… so, looks like i’ll have to rebuild it AGAIN. terrific huh.
ok well, hopefully next time i’ll have some better news…
Posted in generica, tech | No Comments »
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
ok so, after writing and re-reading the previous post, i thought; stuff it. i’m not gonna apologise for anything, i’m going to write in this blog, whatever i feel like, whenever i feel like it.
i made the mistake of quickly checking out problogger the other day… ugh. the title bar pretty much sums up why i hate that site so.
“blog tips to help you make money blogging”
to quote reel big fish:
sell out, with me me oh yeah,
sell out with me tonight,
record company gonna give me lots of money,
and everythings gonna be alright.
etc
ugh, “here’s my blog about helping you make money blogging, all the while, help me make money blogging and you don’t get anywhere”. the site itself is not only disorganised and really difficult to read but gives me the feeling of those real estate entrepreneurial seminar types.
and no, i’m going to link to his site, you’ll have to find it yourself.
back to the point, i tried re-writing the “about” page at the top in the hope it would focus this blog… but couldn’t, i had to write my own mid-year performance evaluation at work this week and that was bad enough.
in reality, i’m an extremely fortunate guy living in melbourne with an unbelievably great family, and truly excellent friends… i work in IT, i like tech, gadgets, music, movies, football, motorcycling, etc.
this is my blog about stuff, if you came here from google or facebook or twitter or tumblr or whatever, you’re going to have to deal with my content, because that’s the point…
there’s no money to be made, no pop-ups, no adwords, no click throughs…
just me, writing content.
Posted in family, generica, melbourne, tech, twitter | No Comments »
Saturday, October 25th, 2008
so apparently, for those that care, blogs are dead
no sooner had i read this article, i got an email from a friend announcing he was disbanding his… citing; various reasons for closure.
and fair enough i think, sometimes, in trying to post twice a week i feel like i’ve somehow signed up for my very own “thing a week“… now that i have a tumblr i’m VERY tempted to stop digging crap i find on the web and just link to them in my tumblr and make comments… but that effort would take away from time actually writing stuff here… so why not just link and comment here? because apparently (i need to find a better word), blogs are for long form writing and nobody has time to write them any more… let alone read them!
so i guess, i’ll keep posting news and long form thoughts, and keep posting other random internet stuff over there and even shorter tidbits here and we’ll all get along fine for the moment ok? ok.
my problem is i don’t put enough planning or effort into proper posts, i tend to give each one about half a day of thought and about an hour of drafting, editing and publishing… hmm, maybe that’ll change… maybe.
if you’re still reading, surprise, i put up some new photos too
Posted in family, generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
you can file this under need-to-know but, you know why i don’t really drink water during the day?
the constant bathroom breaks.
everyone hates interruptions, and i think it’s worse when your own body won’t let you get on with some work… apparently the more water you drink, the more accustomed your body becomes the bathroom breaks become fewer, but still… for fear of damaging my bladder because i refuse to leave my desk, drinking water is not really a happening.
if common sense is to be believed, i would probably work more efficently and harder if my hydration didn’t consist of the 150ml milk that comes with a cafe latte, but whatever…
speaking of, i’ve had some peeps in melbourne say to me;
“if you asked me for a latte, i’d give you warm milk”
“ok?”
“you need to say cafe latte, it’s italian”
“…umm…. right”
insert smooth segue here, cafe 53 is still my favorite coffee place in the city, but now gattaca is coming a close 2nd for best overall. we haven’t been there for breakfast but generally it seems busy AND they have an old-school table top arcade system running a couple of classics like 1942 over mame!
Posted in family, food and drink, generica, melbourne, tech | No Comments »
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
hmm, i guess this is what happens when i don’t get enough sleep, work till midnight for months on end and my sense of humour disappears completely… i saw the below on tumblr and i figure this is better than reblogging it there, it is actually worth some proper words.
in short, i’m over it, about 90 people got unfollowed today and twitter is going to get checked a lot less.
catbird:
When I decided to stop reading Twitter, I found that, on a daily basis, my moods were improved significantly.
yewknee:
Despite knowing full well that Twitter is a place of narcissim and meaningless updates I have to say I get legitimately agitated when I read overly vague and dramatic posts. If I read one more “too f***ing sad” or “overcoming adversity despite the depression that plagues me” i’m going to quit the whole thing. why do people use these insipid web 2.0 services as a place to passively cry out for help?
Posted in generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »
Monday, September 29th, 2008
i was listening to BOL-816 the other day, it contains some interesting discussion about online profiles, facebook and i guess narcissism… i was reminded of the ever-so-snarky merlin mann’s twitter feed (when he was using it) and of this gem;
If you’re really worried about your “branding,” try to stop thinking about life as a press release and just focus on _making something_ (twitter)
…just last week i decided i was tired of the majority of people from the tech news industry that i follow, and for the most part, unfollowed them, and honestly, cannot understand why people would ever follow problogger let alone the all the other wannabes. i got to thinking, what value are they actually adding? twitter is for (officially) “what are you doing right now?”, and the last thing i want to hear or read about is barely famous people doing ad-hoc press releases for their barely famous acquaintances… for me to follow someone now, they almost have to live in melbourne, not annoy me, and limit the swearing…
poignant quote from the arstechnica article:
“…researchers caution that those who are overly fond of themselves tend to cultivate a wide-but-shallow social network…”
so yeah, i think in the grand scheme of narcissism, i’m ok… i recently pared my facebook “friends” down to a reasonable number, revisited my “info” page and made sure there isn’t too much there… and i’m considering removing the “about” tab from the top of this site, hmm, would that make a difference?
Posted in generica, melbourne, tech, twitter | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
just a quick note, there a few people upset that they’ve been told they can’t subscribe to and download podcasts on-the-fly with their shiny new iPhone…
…isn’t that weird, the Apple hardware is tied to the Apple software, but you realised the hardware is powerful enough and capable enough to do without iTunes and Steve tells you;
“you don’t really want to do that”
…but for once in your life, you think Steve might be wrong! you start thinking maybe he doesn’t really want to help you after all? maybe the platform isn’t as open as you thought it was? maybe it could all just boil down to his business plan?
“oh noes, Apple doesn’t just work, Steve doesn’t really heart me after all.”
btw, my nokia n95 has this functionality natively, using wifi, the built in media library, and a scheduler; easy.
yeah yeah, any chance to sink the boot in.
Posted in generica, tech | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
not sure what i really want to say here right now, i read this the other day and i liked it.
i’ve always thought social networks or socnets **groan** don’t really hold much water without actual real life contact… merlin is right, people can spend all their time grooming online presence but in reality, it all could be completely made up and no one would know any better.
i can’t stand the bickering, the evangelical atheists,and the snarky people with nothing better to do on digg; just sad.
so yeah, umm, i’m really actually really enjoying browsing around on tumblr in all my spare time, there’s some really interesting actual art out there… yes i used the A word.
i guess… filling the web with your lifestream is pretty pointless… but really, there are no rules, are there? do what you want. for me, it’s a little concerning how egocentric the people seem to be getting… he says blogging.
people have public flickr portfolios, then whinge when someone rips off their photo!
to (sort of) quote jeff, gimme a break.
Posted in generica, tech, twitter | No Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
i’ve been putting off this post for a while, saving a choice rant for when i could articulate it properly… unfortunately i doubt that’ll ever be possible, so;
what is the worst alarm clock noise you’ve ever had?
“worst” is an interesting word, because it may translate to “most effective”
insert invader zim quote here
i’m yet to find an alarm that has me springing out of bed happy to be alive, further, my first thought in the morning used to be “what time is it” but now it’s “no waking, only sleeping”…
did you ever use that old school “beep beep beep beep” on your clock radio? i have in the past, just so i would get up to watch motorbike racing when we didn’t have a VCR (hardcore huh) , but otherwise i’ve used my mobile or the radio… which is fine… and then I started having to be “oncall” for work… it’s like having an alarm clock that could ring at any time, sounds FUN huh.
answering the oncall blackberry isn’t optional, it is, for all intents and purposes, a wake up call. so it needs to have a ringtone that is so loud and obnoxious you cannot sleep through it… with all this in mind, the default blackberry ringtones are abysmal.
the loudest, most likely to wake a person up ringtone is the default “old timey bell telephone” ringtone.
…but this is where we run into problems, this ringtone is the default for incoming voice calls for every blackberry on the planet.
imagine for a moment, every “manager level” desk jockey having your alarm clock noise, as their ringtone.
**shudder** is an understatement…
“so why don’t you just change the oncall phone ringtone?”
yeah, i know, next time i have the oncall phone i will, but the noise is so ingrained now, it’s a little bit late.
the fact that they don’t change it, feeds into another theory i have about middle-management, but i’ll save that for another time…
Posted in generica, tech | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 18th, 2008
as an australian, can you still support vale rossi, while casey stoner is racing?
i can’t link to any videos and show you any footage (or even interviews) of the laguna seca round because dorna is so tight with the licensing… but anyway… after the race, casey voiced some concerns about rossi’s lines; apparently he was coasting mid to late corner and pushing casey wide intentionally, and then there’s that pass on the corkscrew, crazy, but again, i can’t link to it… and the way rossi behaved post-race… not cool.
so now, to me, the rossi camp has lost a bit of sheen, i guess he never was a gentleman, but none of them are, are they?
then again, casey had a pretty wild temper when he was in 250’s, racing against dani pedrosa… he has to beat rossi on the track, he’s certainly quick enough, just stay rubber side down for the most part.
weird, i used to be neutral about it, not any more.
Posted in bike racing, generica, tech, youtube | Comments Off
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
i’ve officially decided, it takes more effort to post here because of twitter and tumblr .
as said previously, i was on a course last week… and as usual, it was interesting for all sorts of reasons… it was a class of 3 + the instructor for 5 full days, one of the other students worked at in the IT section for a state library, and honestly, i’d completely forgotten what the public servant world is like.
during the week, i was treated to a couple of sterling anecdotes about how work days start at 0930 and finish at 1530, and how the IT department was made of at least 20 people, around 60% of which are “managers”… gold.
…so while i was trying to give all these stories the attention they deserved, my mind wandered into the realm of oversharing… normally (according to urban dictionary) the term is used for things of an intimate nature, but i disagree… sometimes, i just don’t need to know how something i mentioned earlier relates to another one of your hilarious/amazing/noteworthy 10 minute stories, especially when i’m actually trying to learn about something completely different.
you probably think this is pretty hypocritical coming from someone who uses twitter… but if i’m your only exposure it, you probably should be made aware, in varying degrees, it is chock full of what the internet loves to call “attention whores“… and it is these people that are doing the oversharing.
i know twitter is pretty much a vehicle for it, and you think the followers/following ratio would remove the “issue”… but that would only happen if the majority of users weren’t so similar…
so, i’ll say it again;
- good morning
- good night
- need coffee/sugar
- too much coffee/sugar
- i can has foodstuff, nom nom nom…
- the weather is cold
- the weather is hot
**groan**
so yeah, after the week i had, i unfollowed about 25 people… so now my feed is nice and quiet, i may miss the odd inside joke, but meh, it’s not worth fighting through the noise for…
Posted in generica, tech, twitter | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 4th, 2008
the weekend gone was pretty good, i didn’t have to work for a start, woohoo!
umm, we watched the golden compass on friday night, i really enjoyed it but am surprised at what passes for a kids movie these days; it was pretty scary and dark in parts…
on saturday liam was back at swimming lessons, it’s weird, he just won’t lie still, he always wants to be on his tummy thrashing around and dunking his face in… one of the other onlooking mums told kim he is going to be a great swimmer, hopefully not seriously, i don’t want to be dropping him off at a pool at 4am for the rest of my life…
saturday night kim made some sort of asian bbq chicken dish for dinner… i LOVE the sweet soy sauce we got from the chinese grocer the other week.. and sunday we caught up with some friends in yarraville for brunch… liam behaved really well, we just stretched his out lunch for an hour and he didn’t get too restless… he even did a few of his tricks for the applauding masses!
ok well, this week should be interesting, i’ll be doing classroom training this week instead of going into work… and hopefully there’ll be an exam at the end of it… we’ll have to wait and see… talk to you later.
Posted in family, food and drink, generica, melbourne, tech | Comments Off