Archive for July, 2005
Well, as you may know (and probably do if you read my blog during LCA2005) Linux.Conf.Au 2006 will be held in Dunedin, New Zealand. Seems slightly odd to me to have the Australian Linux conference across the Tasman, bu so be it.
Anyway, they now have their website up and running, and it looks like the Call For Papers will be opening very very shortly, and when it does, I’ll be putting in my submissions. I have a few interesting topics in mind, any of which could be (and hopefully will be) accepted by the organisers. I will admit that I have an ulterior motive for submitting papers, I have no real chance of being able to make it to Dunedin for LCA2006 so I am hoping that they will accept one of my papers and provide me with some assistance in getting to the Conference. I can pay for some of the journey, but I don’t think I could pay for all of it.
Samuel
July 9th, 2005 at 08:17pm
I got my new ACTION School Term bus ticket yesterday, which will be used for term three.
If the ACTION School Term bus tickets’ serial numbers are issued & printed in order then my new term ticket is the 2297th term ticket issued since the last one I got.
By now you probably think I am completely out of my mind, why do I care and why did I bother to check?…well, I’m glad you asked!
I was sitting down in the lounge room and noticed that my new term ticket was on the seat next to me, as was my St. George Bank card holder (which holds my bus ticket), and so I thought that it would be a good time to take out the old one and put in the new one. At that stage I noticed a similarity, the serial number both started the same way and seemed to have a lot of numbers in common (I gathered that from a quick glance at them near each other), this made me think “How similar are these numbers?” and so I checked.
The old ticket has serial number 05 -270704- 02522
The new ticket has serial number 05 -270704- 04819 which make my new ticket the 2297th ACTION Term Ticket issued since my last ticket.
ACTION School Term bus tickets sell for $55 which means that ACTION have made $126,335 in term tickets sales since my last term ticket.
Now, my new ticket goes into my card holder, and my old ticket goes into my bus ticket collection. (It is a bigish collection, it contains most of my bus tickets from the last 5-10 years.) Actually, to be more precise, the collection has a main pile of credit card size reusable* bus tickets, and a seperate collection of small paper single ride only tickets.
*Reusable tickets are only reusable as per the terms of purchase
Samuel
July 8th, 2005 at 09:59pm
I wish to send my condolences to all who have suffered as a result of the despicable acts of mass murder that occurred in London. The first I heard of it was at the end of 7 News (around 6:30pm Local Time) which was about half an hour after the event. It sounded big, but I didn’t grasp the event until later on in the evening when the various TV & Radio station canceled normal programming to take the coverage of the event.
I wish all the people well that were affected by the London Bombings, and hope that such events don’t happen again, although that is probably just wishful thinking.
Samuel
July 8th, 2005 at 06:50pm
As you may have noticed, some of the images and links from here haven’t been working over the last 48 hours. This has been due to some minor physical relocation of the goggo.dyndns.org server which hosts my photo gallery amongst other things. The relocation has been completed and that server is now back online.
Samuel
July 8th, 2005 at 06:48pm
This week (backdated to Sunday) the award goes to…………….The Beatles.
And my current favourite song from them:
It was twenty years ago today,
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play,
they’ve been going in and out of style,
but they’re guaranteed to raise the smile.
So may I introduce to you,
the act you’ve known for all these years,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
we hope you will enjoy the show,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
sit back and let the evening go,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It’s wonderful to be here,
it’s certainly a thrill,
you’re such a lovely audience,
we’d like to take you home with us, we’d love to take you home.
I don’t really want to stop the show,
but I thought you might like to know,
that the singer’s going to sing a song
and he wants you all to sing along.
So let me introduce to you,
the one and only Billy Shears,
and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
(reprise)
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
we hope you have enjoyed the show,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
we’re sorry, but it’s time to go.
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely.
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
we’d like to thank you once again.
Sergeant Pepper’s one and only Lonely Hearts Club Band,
it’s getting very near the end.
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Samuel
July 6th, 2005 at 12:49am
There were plenty of instances of stupidity in the last 24 hours, but one in particular takes the cake. Near where I live there is a large communal rubbish hopper, somebody in their infinite wisdom decided that the best orientation for this was on it’s back. How they managed this I will never know, what I do know however is that the hopper was more or less full at the time and as such has now left a rather unholy mess.
I was going to take a photo or two of it, but before I had the chance the rubbish truck company (I think it is Cleanaway) came and returned the bin to a more natural orientation. They did however omit to clean up the mess and move the bin back a metre to it’s normal location.
The bin is now roughly a metre forward of it’s usual undercover location (bin now subject to rainfill) and has an incredible mess behind it.
I must remember to take the digital camera out to photograph this absurd mess tommorow (erm, today)…stay tuned for the photos.
Samuel
July 6th, 2005 at 12:42am
I know I’m constantly taking swipes at Internet Explorer, but it’s fun.
The latest IE flaw can allow an attacker to take over control of your computer, the funny thing is that Microsoft have decided that the best short term approach to the problem is to set security zone settings to high, effectively making a lot of websites impossible to use….hmmmmm, I think the better solution is 
It’s not all bad news for Microsoft though, Bill Gates has acknowledged that internet security is Microsoft’s greatest challenge, which I think is at least a step forward. I think that the next thing they should try is acknowledging that IE is insecure trash and work out ways to make Firefox work with Windows Update. Over time, making Windows Update work the way Firefox wants it to would be a good move, but in the short term we need to get all those IE centric sites working in Firefox, which really means altering Firefox. Perhaps take a Netscape approach and have the IE engine available inside Firefox, maybe even have it automatically switch over to the IE engine for IE centric sites, there are some security issues with that, and that is why it would be a temporary measure until Firefox understands IE sites or IE sites and redesigned with Firefox in mind.
Perhaps I am just being far too optimistic, but I would like to think not.
Samuel
July 5th, 2005 at 12:27am
You could be forgiven for thinking I have disappeared off the face of the earth. Luckily, that hasn’t happened, instead I spent most of last week in Mitchell “The garden suburb of the North” on work experience, and due to a non-disclosure agreement I am unable to say much about it.
I’ll have a think about what I can and can’t say before I say anything.
Samuel’s Blog will return to normal shortly (tonight or tommorow), so stay tuned.
Samuel
July 3rd, 2005 at 11:12pm
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