1) kernel-xen packages have been updated to 2.6.32.50.

2) Started up a new photography site to try and get some great images to people. I really enjoy taking photos, but DAMN the equipment is expensive. I’m hoping to invest anything made on that site back into equipment to take more photos etc..

3) Damn, Christmas AND New Years has passed. It was the first real Christmas dinner with family and friends that I’d been a part of in my own home for waaay too long. Emma really pulled it all together and I couldn’t have done any of it without her.

MP Bob Brown has recently voiced concern with the media and the news sites have pounced!

I would like to think that journalists have integrity and believed that the truth is the most important thing to publish – however in recent times I have found this to be something that you only really see in Hollywood movies.

One such topic was The NBN. The Australian’s IT section has seemingly become the laughing stock of many internet forums due to the wildly inaccurate and highly biased stories. This particular example was headlined ‘NBN could cost households ‘an extra $3000′.

Now the internet is great for researching facts – something journalists should learn! After a few days of that article doing the rounds, a post appeared on Whirlpool from the person the journalist used as a source for this article. Here is his quote:

In mid August I was called by Journalists from the Australian to quote on the cost of wiring a large house (4 bedrooms, 3 studies, rumpus room plus dining and living areas etc) for a fully wired solution.

They tried every option to make the prices higher (older style, large, non-radio, stone construction etc), and their end result was a worst-case high costing that was well over budget for a typical home / home unit. It was very clear to me that the good story was never going to be compromised by the facts that most homes could be wired for about 50% or less than their “quoted” costs but they were not listening to my rationale. (Not Happy Jane!)

Reading The Australian’s article however, and you see choice quotes like:

It has argued that some households could pay up to $3000 in rewiring costs to take full advantage of the superfast internet service.

Mr Tinslay said a standard retrofit could cost up to $3000.

Ms Gillard clashed with Sydney radio personality Ray Hadley when questioned on whether it would cost between $2000 and $4000 to rewire his house to take full advantage of the NBN.

If this is how badly the media presents one story, I would not hesitate to believe that many, many topics are also being distorted in this way.

I once found myself watching a recording of parliament on a late night television slot and took note of what was said. Upon reading a news article from it the next day, I had to wonder if the journalist actually watched the same things that I did – the two seemed like polar opposites!

So what can we do? I believe the only thing we can do is to do our own research on topics that we care about. Dig a little beneath the surface. HANSARD is the name given to transcripts of parliamentary proceedings – these records are transcripts of almost everything that happens in parliament. Read the information for yourself – direct from the horses mouth and then make a decision for yourself on how honest the news outlets are.

1) I’ve updated all my home systems from CentOS 5.6 to Scientific Linux 6.0. Its the same code base as CentOS – however the release of CentOS6 has been slipping and slipping. I’ve been more than happy with the results at this stage.

2) I did a solo navigation exercise from Melbourne to Brisbane a couple of weeks ago. Clocked up 19.7 hours command time. Was an awesome trip and great experience. Did most of this using just the magnetic compass and my watch – nothing beats the basics.

3) Got my CSU and RG endorsement.

Thats about it for me at this stage, now back to work

#5 – Multiplication

#4 – The Senses Song

#3 – Yakko’s Universe Song

#2 – Yakko’s Nations of The World

#1 – Star Truck – the Star Trek Parody

In the phone world, I’ve moved on to a HTC Touch Pro 2. This is a fantastic phone. I did have an issue with the USB connector on the phone and had to send it in for a warranty claim, however it seems to be much better now. There are still a few minor issues with keyboard LED brightness on one key – I can live with that though. The stock ROM from HTC is pretty damn good – certainly a big step from back in the Hermes days where the stock ROMs were full of crud. I’m even liking WM6.5 – which was something I found VERY hard to do on the old Hermes – probably due to the lack of CPU/RAM on the older models.

I’ve started doing from night VFR for my flight training – however as the beginning of winter is rolling in it is making it difficult to get suitable days. Due to the height of the Melbourne CBD the cloud base needs to be 3100ft or heigher – which is rare right now.

I’ve also rejigged all my home systems to run on Xen in CentOS 5.5. I upgraded my old fileserver to an Intel Core i5 CPU which supports hardware virtualisation and now have many linux VMs and one Windows XP VM. Much more useful than running a single instance on a physical machine! I now have 1 PC for Asterisk (as it doesn’t run in a VM well!), 1 PC for my VMs, 1 x Via CN1000 as my router (using a CF card as a HDD), my Mac Pro as my desktop, a Dell Inspiron 8600 as my girlfriends main system, and a new ASUS EEEPC 1005P as my netbook. I think this is the favourite setup I have ever had for computing!

1. I lost nearly 1Tb of data when 3 x hard drives died within 24 hours
2. I’ve had to restructure my entire backup system
3. I’ve been working my butt off at Melbourne Airport
4. I’ve been working hard to get my PPL happening
5. …. and probably more!

Talk about exciting! I’m trying to save up some cash to get myself a HTC Touch Pro 2 to do some development work on and provide a port of my ROM for owners of that device – it shows a lot of promise! If you feel like helping out, feel free to throw $1-5 my way via paypal

At one particular home in Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat . It’s just scorching. It seems that the people are not the only ones suffering.

Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!

Enjoy browsing

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

Preserve the Net and make things a better place for all Australians!