Tagged again.

Ok, me ol'mate Nath has asked me to name 6 wierd things about me... Well where do I start?

1). I have multi-coloured facial hair (which is why I shaved it off a long time ago)

2). My foot is also exactly one of my feet long :-)

3). I enjoy the occasional hot chilli pepper complimented by a variety of fine cheeses.

4). I also combine my long term interests in martial arts with a little Yoga on the side (people tell me this is a little weird, but I can't really see why).

5). I have an irrepressible habit of manipulating or turning things on and off with my feet (such as light switches, oven controls, doors, etc.)

6). I love Funk, soul, classical and even hip hop music. I even like some heavy metal too. In fact, I also like a lot of acid jazz, and dance music including electronica. Come to think of it, There are very few genres that I do not appreciate in some way or another.

Until next blog. Adios Amigos!

Life’s Conundrum.

Life is so much more complicated now they say. We have all forms of technology to contend with. Computers are supposed to make things so easy for us. They do assist us with all sorts of mundane tasks such as calculations and simple mathematical equations that we can easily get wrong. The great thing about computers is that they are never wrong in their calculations, given that they have the correct formulae to work with.

Nature however, is unpredictable and almost never capable of producing exactly the same thing, save for certain things such as day and night. Nature however, is irrepressible. It never gives up while there is still hope. Life it seems, by its very nature, is inherently adaptable and forever changing.


From the dead, life is given new hope. Even in the devastated fire affected area of Tambo Crossing in Gippsland, Vic, the bush has recovered from the fierceness of mother’- nature’s fury. New shoots are appearing everywhere and green grass has appeared since the last downpour of rain in the area. Life will not stop. When the conditions are ripe, the fruits of life will flourish.
Through devastation of this kind, it is often hard to see how anything could ever recover, but where there is a will, there is a way. The human spirit is not so easily crushed either. We are all born into this world with an overwhelming desperation to survive. We call it the will to live. Although strangely, we lack the physical attributes seen in other land dwelling animals to survive on an individual basis, we are blessed with supreme dexterity and the unique application of conscious mind. We are also (as are other primates) social beings . Occasionally our resolve is tested to its limits, but few of us ever give up. This is because we know intrinsically that we can survive, given the right tools and a little ingenuity. Humans now inhabit almost every conceivable area of the Earth’s surface, which we did not achieve by giving up when faced with challenges. We are the master species. We have the power to control the destiny of every other animal on this Earth.

I have never considered myself to be overly concerned with such matters, but occasionally I am overwhelmed by the harsh reality of our predicament on planet Earth. In relation to climate change, it seems like everyone wants change; as long as it doesn’t mean that they themselves have to make the changes.
The past few days we have all been smothered with bureaucratic bullshit. The debate about whether to pull our troops out of Iraq or to increase our commitments.
Alexander Downer said this week in response to the question of why Australian troops still remain in Iraq, that the British forces are not withdrawing troops... No, they are reducing in numbers, merely downsizing. It’s no bloody wonder that Australians want a change of government. Crikey. What do they take us for?
Anyway, enough of that.
Tuesday saw me in Wonthaggi sorting out some printing issues for one of the local banks.
Wednesday saw me off to the highlands via the Great Alpine Road to a little town called Swifts Creek, and Thursday I was queued up in the Gippsland Lakes in the morning and back in the old town of Wonthaggi in the arvo for yet another printer call. I dare not complain about having done 600km in that day, as I realise that for some people this is a short trip. But my arse was numb by the time I got home I can tell you. I’m not cut out to be a driver, that’s for sure.

Its been a very busy week for all of us at work and even more so at home. We are all hoping for some relief from this heat. It’s very tropical weather at the moment. Our little air conditioner struggles night after night with the heat. Ah well. Enough of my whinging. See you all again soon.
Cheers!

The Wow Starts Here!

Wow, with the new Windows Operating System that has changed my life, I am now a new man. I lack stress in my life, I have a new found sense of achievement and I am more productive with my time. Here is a picture of myself and the lovely wife after installing Windows Vista for the very first time. We were on top of the world.

If only we could have seen the bastard smash into smitherines at the bottom of this **@$ing mountain. Let the wow start there Bill Bloody Gates! Crikey, if anyone can screw up a perfectly good day, its Microsoft right? Well er, not exactly. Before you all go off venting your spleens over Microsoft's latest bungle, take a deep breath and think of Windows XP, ok now take another deep breath and think of that paradise wallpaper in XP instead. Calm thoughts wash over your mind... Now I think it helps to realise that a). No operating system is perfect, b). We all need a computer to blame stuff on and c). Perhaps it's not really the Operating System at all that is to blame here.

Here's my biggest problems with the average computer users, or the laypersons (in general)...

They cannot appreciate the incredible complexity of the development of computer based software. Remember folks, its not an exact science, its more like trial and error and patching up holes in a bucket that leaks forever, because some bastard keeps poking holes in it. Now some die hard hackers would argue that they are merely exposing the holes already within microsoft's bucket, but lets face it, you can poke a hole in any bucket if you try hard enough and poke around in the right places.

Getting back on the subject, Vista is here and it's here to stay. I am wondering if it will have the same longevity as Windows XP, but one thing is for sure, it will challenge the way we see desktop computing as a whole. Vista is able to integrate into the family lifestyle much easier than any other OS. While Windows 95 revolutionised gaming on the PC, Vista is set to revolutionise the home entertainment system as a whole.

Ages ago, roughly 2001 -at a function for IT dudes (maybe a Canon product launch I think) some old dude predicted that the home PC, as we know it would become extinct... He concluded that he had seen a demonstration of how the home PC would be fallen and evolve into the all around entertainment hub of the home. In fact he predicted that the whole house would be computer controled... The fridge, the hot water, the washing machine, the toaster and so on... Now his timing was way off as he predicted that this would all happen before 2007, but his point was not lost on us. The PC is evolving. It is becoming more dynamic, more flexible in it's role in the home. It is definately taking on the role of entertainment centre, but I think that it will be a long time before we will be plugging in 'Matrix' style and uploading programs directly into our little skulls. As for the toaster, I doubt that a computer could improve it all that much...

I shudder to think of the possibilities of a kitchen run by windows... Imagine waking up to the Blue Screen of death flashing at you instead of the clock radio alarm tuned to your favorite radion station, as you stumble to the electronic kitchen. Imagine your toast burning due to a compatibility issue it has with the kind of bread you bought at the supermarket. You have to dowload updates just to get the milk out of the fridge and your coffee machine has crashed again! Cursing, you pull out the newspaper on your tablet PC that is built into your breakfast bar, only to find that it has a virus and has turned the thermostat up on your fridge. As you pour your lumpy offish milk into your half brewed coffee, you wonder why you ever threw those old appliances away. Sure they're crude, but hey... They work, unlike windows Vista at the moment.

So there is this customer that bought this rather flash PC from us. It started out like this....

Then we transformed it to this....

And now that she proved to be such a pain in the arse, it looks like this again...

Now don't get me wrong... i love Vista really, I think there are some fantastic improvements. But If you have old stuff that you want to hang on to and it all works fine on your Pentium 3, Pentium 4, or your Athlon XP, FFS: keep it that way, cause' if the Wow starts here, you aint gonna see nothing but Woe baby...

My point being... If it aint broke, don't fix it.