Monday 25/05/09 - Farewell to Poppa Ken

On May 11th my dear grandfather - Poppa Ken died. It's never easy to say goodbye to someone who has always been in your life. With Poppa Ken living in Sale, I didn't see him nearly as much as I would have liked to and I am sad that he never got to meet his great grand-daughter Zoe. Loosing my granddad has made me realise how important my family is and how we have to make sure we make time for each other in our busy lifestyles.

Poppa Ken's memory had been bad for years now towards the end he found it difficult to remember much. Poppa Ken wasn't one to complain though - whenever we went to see him he would break into a big smile and joke around. He would do quite a convincing job of covering up his bad memory - to keep everyone around him happy. In the end Poppa Ken couldn't eat or drink, so we were happy that he didn't suffer any longer.

In loosing my granddad, I actually found out a lot more about him. I heard stories from my family about his adventures, his parenting and even his efforts in World War II. Saying goodbye has been difficult for everyone, but at the same time I feel closer to my family than I have been for a long time.

Starting a new job.. and it's NOT Siebel

Over three months since my last blog... and it has been busy. I have started a new job as a Data Migration lead on a project. After many, many years doing Siebel, it's refreshing to do something completely different. While it's great to have technical expertise with a system, after nine years of Siebel, it's refreshing to work on something completely different. I'm working with some great people and we are already establishing a collective sense of humour that helps the day move along.

The amazing Zoe Main - now walking and 'talking'

Zoe turned ONE on the 5th of March... and was making her way about the house using a vigorous form of crawling. She would get moving so fast that her legs would start whipping around behind her and you could hear her crawling from anywhere in the house.

About a month ago she surprised us with her first awkward steps... followed by a big flop onto her well padded bottom. In the next two weeks she really got the hang of things and you rarely see her crawling anymore. She's also started to figure out when it's not such a great idea to go running - like down stairs and on the edge of the bed.. but there is much to learn!

Zoe has a passion for books, a Vicki trait that I didn't expect to see for a bit longer - but she runs around handing books to anyone that will read them. She is also a big fan of her hellos and goodbyes - we sit on the fence outside and watch people driving and cycling past. Zoe yells out hello and goodbye (they both sound the same at the moment) to strangers and it's amazing how many people make time for a one year old with a smile! Also she 'barks' at dogs she sees but it usually a bit too shy to pat them. She figured out recently that if she jams her milk bottle into the ground really hard, the milk leaks out and then she can fingerpaint with milk on the floor - so much fun!

The last two nights Zoe has wanted an early start - at 4am or 5am.. making the next day a bit of a blur for us all.. but you just can't be upset with that little grinning face, even at 4am. I just have to find adults to be grumpy with.

Monday 09/02/09 - Hot in the city...

It has been crazy hot in Melbourne over the past few weeks... I think all the records have been broken and there have been 45 - 47 degree days. When it gets that hot in Melbourne everything falls apart - our public transport, our power supply and subsequently just about everyone's patience. I stood around in my personal sweat shower specifically waiting for a air conditioned tram so I wouldn't bake on the way home - when it finally arrived, it was HOTTER inside than out and stuffed full of people dripping with sweat. I resolved to cycle to work once my bike was out of the shop - at least then I could suffer in a hot breeze by myself, instead of facing off with someone's armpit on a tram. To top it all off, I came home after a 40something degree (C) day to find my precious mint plants, earmarked for tasty cocktails, had turned into dried sticks with leaves that crumbled off when you touched them. Others have real problems....

...bush fires in Victoria take a heavy toll

Bush fires are raging across Victoria at the moment... over 200 have died at this stage and Victoria is coming to terms with the scale of the fires. The state has been so damn hot it's not unusual to have bush fires, but the scale of the destruction this time around is jaw dropping. Some towns that have been since before I was born have simply been wiped off the map. On the upside, the people of Victoria are working together to help those who have suffered and there are charities and communities working to help those in need. Even my old dojo is doing a fundraiser - getting sponsors for 'kicks' trying to raise 20 grand.

The colours you see, the colours I see... Colour management and photography

If you take your digital photography seriously, and you want your results to be consistent, you pretty much have to have an understanding of colour management. For the uninitiated, it seems pretty complicated, but put very simply - colour management is a way of working with your digital images so you can accurately view colours as you work so the image you shoot, looks like the image on your screen which will look like the image you print. Sound easy - well it should be, but colour management was and still is a bit of a mess and an afterthought in most operating systems and applications.

Imagine someone sat down at your computer and made the screen really bright and maybe a bit blue looking - most people actually have their laptops set up in this way. If you work on a black and white photo - it will look abnormally bright, especially compared to a print, and a bit blue on this monitor. If you make the image look 'normal' on YOUR monitor, bit may in fact look a bit dull and possibly RED on someone else's monitor. Colour management helps you ensure YOUR environment is controlled and you have a reliable colour workspace. Heaps more technical information here...

In order to have your screen accurately display your digital images, you need to calibrate your screen so that it is 'neutral' and doesn't display a colour cast (eg. a red tinge or a blue tinge). If you've been looking at a monitor for more than a few minutes, it's really hard to notice - so a hardware calibrator is necessary if you take these things seriously. The hardware calibrator sits on your screen and measures the colours, gamma and brightness of your screen and then can make adjustments to your graphics card so that your screen produces accurate colour - black and whites will not have colour in them and colours will be accurate.... but anyhow.. I'll go into this in more detail soon in Liperty Tech.

I was having a seriously hard time getting both of my monitors to produce accurate colour and I finally found someone who knew what they were talking about and was willing to help me out. The net is a great resource but when it comes to colour management - a lot of information out there is either misleading or even completely wrong. Jeremy Daalder of Image Science (Melbourne), not only understood the problems I had, but also took the time to write me detailed emails explaining the technologies involved and helping me sort out my problems. I was seriously impressed with the service there and will be going back for my photography gear. In the end, it seems I have hit a limitation of the windows operating system where you need TWO graphics cards to maintain TWO monitor profiles for colour managed applications... I'll do a write up in Liperty Tech when I get a chance.

Life after teeth...

Zoe is 11 months old now and is an amazing little lady. She has had so many firsts that they can't all be listed here. She had her first splash in the water at the beach, her first bush walk through the parks in Noosa, her first two little bottom teeth poking out, first time swallowing an ice block whole and realising it's a bad idea.. the list goes on...

She is progressing well now with an advanced undergraduate diploma in cupboard lock picking, an honorary anarchists degree in "DVD reorganisation and reckless acts of speaker wire yanking" and is making inroads with her culinary based abstract art - post dinner time and doesn't hold back letting us know we are destroying precious artwork when we clean it away in preparation for her bath.

 

 

Tuesday 09/12/08 - Cycling in Victoria needs improvement

I just bought myself a lovely road bike - second hand mind you, but it's a big step up from the heavy hybrid that I bought about 5 years ago which had a hard life and suffered when I didn't have a garage to shelter it from the rain. I've been cycling to the city from Elwood regularly over the past few months. It's not a long ride - probably about 8kms. It's faster for me to ride than to drive / catch a tram / catch a train and I get some exercise and luckily we have lockers and showers at work.

Encouraging people to cycle to work would seem like a great idea for state government. It takes cars off the road, reduces congestion, relieves public transport, reduces emissions and also improves the health and well being of cyclists. Riding around Melbourne you hardly feel like cycling is encouraged and there is constant spending on roads to transport cars with 1.1 passengers in them. There are some marked bike tracks but they suffer from the following problems more often than not.

• Cycling lanes often have cars, construction and buses blocking them.
• Cycling lanes are sandwiched between parked cars and moving cars - they are much safer if placed between pedestrians and parked cars as they are in The Netherlands and other countries.
• Cars turn left or go to park and often do not notice bike lanes or check for cyclists.
• When there are left turning lanes for cars, cyclists are expected to cross one or more lanes of moving traffic just to continue cycling straight.
• Some bike lanes simply disappear and may or may not continue down the road.
• Bike lanes are not clearly marked - very few of them are painted green, making them noticeable in a car.
• People open their car doors into bike lanes, trades people load and unload stock from vans in the lanes.
• When forced onto the road, the majority of motorists do not understand a cyclist has the right to share the road and often use horns or abuse cyclists who are 'slowing them down'

(right) - an example of bike lanes that are force cyclists into gutters and then merge into mortor vehicle traffic without adequate signage (Rathdowne Street). From melbournebug.org

Most recently our State government has been pulling out the public purse to treat us with some transport spending - to improve Melbourne congestion, improve public transport and, seemingly as an afterthought, spend some money on improving cycling. The funding for cycling was so low that it will pay for about 2km of bike path per year. It's 100 million dollars over 12 years.. but to put things in perspective...

That's 20 cents extra per year per person. Compared to the other transport projects.. That's less than half of one percent of spending on one of the best forms of transport for our state. For more information see Bicycle Victoria

Type	Cost	%
North East Link	$     6,000,000,000	26.6%
Trams, Trains, Busses	$     5,400,000,000	24.0%
Regional Rail Tracks	$     4,000,000,000	17.7%
Metro Rail Network	$     2,400,000,000	10.6%
Suburban and Regional Roads	$     3,100,000,000	13.7%
Freight Strategy	$     1,100,000,000	4.8%
Trucks off suburban streets	$        380,000,000	1.6%
Cycling tracks	$        100,000,000	0.4%

I personally saw the body of Carolyn Rawlins covered with a sheet on Swanston Street while riding to work - it really made the issue personal for me. She was struck by a bus and killed on 'pedestrian' Swanston Walk which is still used by tourist buses, taxis and motorists - making it far from safe for cyclists or pedestrians. A memorial 'ghost bike' has been placed near a statue on Swanston Walk as a memorial to Carolyn.

I have to say that I see many cyclists doing stupid things on bikes - ignoring traffic signals, jumping gutters, dodging pedestrians on the footpath - all of which makes people resent cyclists and see us as a hazard. We all need to learn to share the road safely.

I'm personally going to write to the Premier, John Brumby, and Melbourne City Council and put forward the case for better funding of cycling infrastructure for the benefit of all Victorians.

Thursday 30/10/08 - Government Internet Censorship - do something before it's too late

Apparently we need to be protected from the evils of the internet and we can not be trusted!
Our government, in its infinite wisdom has apparently seen enough current affairs shows to understand that the internet is full of stalkers, pornography and web sites that teach you how to be a terrorist. Sure - there are a few useful things on the internet too... but basically it's like trying to read an encyclopedia in the middle of a highway full of trucks if you believe what you see on TV.

The only way Australians can be trusted to sit at their computers without turning into a porn addicted, terrorist child abusers is to provide us with a MANDATORY 'clean feed', ensuring the filthy internet meets the standards politicians believe are required. We all know politicians are infallible and don't pander to interest groups and so why shouldn't they be able to provide every ISP in the land with a mandatory checklist of what is decent and what is not, just to be sure that we only see and hear what we should on the Internet. Works in China and Iran doesn't it?

I am truly appalled at Stephen Conroy's current trials. What is being proposed is

• Mandatory censorship imposed on the entire country based on blacklisted sites and real time filters
• Easily bypassed by those with resources and technical skills
• Proven to slow our already poor internet access speeds by a further 30% (possibly 80%)
• May break HTTPS encryption exposing personal / secure details to ISPs
• Ineffective and results in 'false positives' blocking sites unintentionally
• Tens of millions of dollars of public money has already been wasted on this
• There are already FREE and effective ways to block offensive sights using applications on your PC, allowing people to decide what level of filtering they want enforced for their children / themselves

For more information please have a read of -

http://nocleanfeed.com/ - which has lots of media and group links.

I really hope people understand how misguided this type of censorship is before we find ourselves being monitored, censored at the whim of our politicians. Already there have been discussions with minor political parties who would like to further restrict internet access to remove X rated porn and fetish sites, also euthanasia and anorexia have been touted by Government MPs as topics worthy of filtering. The groups the government are attempting to win favour with are proposing their own changes to the filter in return for Senate votes - unless Australians let our government know this is NOT ON we will end up with a shocking level of mandatory censorship.

Recently we've seen our politicians were willing to attack artists and treat them as pornographers to score some cheap political mileage, evidence - if you needed it - that we can't trust our politicians to impose their popularist and politically flexible moral compasses on our freedoms. You only need to look at the television ratings. Sadistic violence, torture, criminal behaviour and illegal activities are prime time family entertainment for most households while showing consenting adults having sex on TV - no way in hell. Something has seriously gone wrong with censorship already and the same people want to decide what's decent on the internet.

I work in a Government office where they have implemented keyword internet filtering. This has resulted in searches such as

'Naked DSL', 'Breast feeding', to be blocked outright because of the limitations of content filtering. Information about sexual health, drug addiction, political protesting, religion could all be 'accidentally' censored, even forums of any type where people use 'bad language' could be blocked - the currently proposed filtering has not addressed these problems. In fact THIS PAGE could be blocked because of words used on it.

I am an adult and I want the right to access everything on the internet and make my own decisions- if the content accessed or my activities are illegal -there is already legislation in place to prosecute me. Treating the entire populace of Australia as criminals in order to 'protect' them from the evils of the internet is misguided at best and a dangerous attack on our freedoms and liberties.

Update : I have sent a copy of this blog entry to the Hon Minister Stephen Conroy if you share my feelings, consider writing to his office yourself.