Posts from 2009
-
The future of the music industry?
Ten years ago I wrote this blog about how the music industry doesn't get it. It's interesting that also today Apple bought the subscription music site lala. Subscription is definitely where it's all h…
-
How not to compete with free
So I'm a bit late, but I wanted to grab the latest Decoder Ring album. Logically, I started at their site, which certainly talks about the album. With no link to somewhere it can be purchased. Next st…
-
Louis is growing
It's about time I gave an update on our son Louis. He's doing great, putting on 200 grams a week for the last two weeks and growing 3cm since his birth. All that growth requires a lot of food, which m…
-
Welcome Louis Anthony Rumble
After a long and quite painful birth, Holly delivered our son Louis Anthony Rumble on Thursday 30th September 2009 at 22:53. He was 2.7kg (5lb 15oz), 48cm and all the bits in the right places. And abs…
-
Rollercoaster ride: birth imminent
Holly and I have had a bit of a rollercoaster ride the last six days. On Friday she woke up with a headache in the early hours that stayed with her until it was time to get up for work. On her visit t…
-
Guide to the government's insulation rebate
I've built a site that's a guide to the government's home insulation rebate programme. My aim is to provide a fairly quick and simple guide, given that the government site is all full of legalese like…
-
Get a response from your local member: be rude
Yesterday I sent a rather terse and rude email to my local state member, Carmel Tebbutt complaining that I'd received no response from my email sent last December. It seems being rude helps! Does she…
-
What is it with recruiters?
Why are all IT recruiters: English? Almost every one of them. Completely unable to communicate in any method other than the telephone? Unable to accept any format other than MS Word. Even for Web and…
-
My new blog: Informed consumer
I've regularly thought about the imbalance between consumers and companies providing services. Having worked in telecommunications, it's really obvious. We have whole teams of people sitting around wo…
-
Start your own social network
Many employers view social networks as time-wasting nonsense. Can building your own workplace social network deliver all of the productivity and none of the problems? Simon Rumble finds out. My articl…
-
Latest ultrasound
Here's the latest scan from this afternoon. 28 weeks and 2 days. Diagnosis: Normal growth and wellbeing. And here's Holly brandishing her disco biscuits.
-
It's Lovely! I'll Take It!
Have heart-to-heart discussions in the intimate conversation nook! I've been reading this fantastic blog, It's Lovely! I'll Take It!. Weird photos from real estate listings, and great captions. Simple…
-
Sydney FC fixture calendar
I've entered all the upcoming fixtures for this season into the public Sydney FC calendar I maintain. It means I know when games are coming up as I live by my calendar and refer to it constantly. Time…
-
Untitled
-
Untitled
-
Untitled
-
Untitled
-
The music industry as we know it is over
Something big is coming to the music industry. The smart ones have already worked it out, and it scares the crap out of them. The really smart ones are getting ready. Weird music When I was young, my…
-
Confusing pictograms
Jason Parker-Burlingham posted a confusing pictogram so I thought I'd add my own. This is from the path to the beach in Nida in Lithuania, which is at the Lithuanian end of the Curonian Spit. That's t…
-
131500 site is the reason people are developing third-party apps
Back in early March I wrote to the NSW Transport Minister by email about Shittyrail threatening developers of third-party apps using Sydney timetable data. Late last month Parliamentary Secretary for…
-
Announcing: Swedish Chef wave robot
I managed to score myself a Google Wave account by promising to write a Swedish Chef robot. So this afternoon I wrote one, in a language I've never used before (Python) and to a target platform I've n…
-
Acer Aspire One D150 and Ubuntu netbook remix
Earlier this week I bought an Acer Aspire One D150 to use as my new portable and, possibly, desktop. Most of these new netbooks are pretty much the same inside, so a few things won me over to this one…
-
Why display advertising sucks
I've been working on a fair bit of marketing-related stuff over the last few years, and we've been spending pretty big on online campaigns. Much of this money has gone on display advertising, the kind…
-
Moving into the cloud
For the last five years I've run a virtual server from the excellent Linode which has hosted a number of services including this web site, a Jabber server, some other web sites, and my email. Initiall…
-
Tashman: an excellent driving instructor
I've been learning to drive in Sydney for the last few months with an excellent instructor who's been patient, thorough and reassuring. Tashman driving school has seen me through a bunch of lessons at…
-
Eulogy for Anthony Rumble: 1972-2009
Below is the eulogy I gave for Anthony at his funeral yesterday. It outlines his life, and his achievments. I have had many comments from my family that they didn't know he had achieved so much, and t…
-
Anthony Rumble: 1972-2009
My beloved brother Anthony died unexpectedly last Friday in his flat in Belmore, Sydney. He will be remembered as a devoted father to his eight year old daughter, as a loving brother and son, and as a…
-
Important announcement
Holly's pregnant. We're having a baby. Didn't wanna beat around the bush on exciting news. Holly's 15 weeks up the duff, and we'll be parents in October. Very exciting, very life changing, very bloody…
-
So that's why The Hub is empty
I heard from The Mayor that The Hub's development application has been rejected by the council. As such, it's now for lease, either long or short term, pending resolution of the DA issues, and I imagi…
-
Food: Have you...
Just discovered a really interesting food blog, STUDIOKITCHEN, written by chef Shola Olunloyo. It's got lots of cool technical experiments, and good ideas. Most interesting post I've found so far is t…
-
More lair plans
Last night I knocked up a couple of changes to the shed plans, taking out the windows on the "shed" side and removing the door between the two sections to reinstate the separate doors. So we'll have a…
-
Hedge down and Myth in lounge room
Over the weekend we made a few changes around the house. The hedge out the front came down, which means the front looks quite strange since we're accustomed to the hedge. I'm thinking of growing a lem…
-
Designing my lair
I'm planning an office/shed in the garden of our house, to provide an office for me and storage for the household. I've been mulling over the design for quite a while and now need to finalise it and g…
-
Silence at last!
Having shamelessly stolen Danny's excellent research I've finally finished building my new quiet server for MythTV, Squeezecenter and other serverly duties. It's brilliant! The Antec Mini P180 case an…
-
Tories are kinda right on the NBN
There's a bit of a furore over the costings of the Notional Broadband Network, with the Conservatives claiming $150 a month or more. I thought I'd do someback-of-the-envelope calculations. Assumptions…
-
Cops kill man in London
After Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered by London police in 2005, you'd think the press would be more skeptical when the Police make claims. But no, when Ian Tomlinson was assaulted and, ultimately…
-
Notional Broadband Network smells of fail
So we've finally got the non-announcement of the winner of the National Broadband Network tender, and the winner is... everybody loses! Thanks for playing kids. So instead of awarding the tender to th…
-
Blackouts and their causes
Back in 1998, Auckland had a major blackout lasting five weeks. Oh how we mainlanders laughed. The cause, we were all told: privatisation. Now we've got regular blackouts here in Sydney. Oh how the Ea…
-
Crotchety old buggers
Now I thought I'd become suitably curmudgeonly with age, what with still using a text-mode email client and grumbling about HTML posts. But it's always good to know there's someone better at something…
-
The search for quiet
I've had some big hardware failures of late in my computer infrastructure. My previously rather good and quiet IBM Intellistation (dual Xeon) MythTV server's power supply died. The PSU, being IBM, is…
-
Baaaaa
Well it had to happen, I suppose. Julie was talking about using Twitter to find out the buzz around what your company is doing. And so I searched a little and intrigued me enough to sign up. So you ca…
-
Godwin invoked in censorship debate
Uh-oh, someone just invoked Godwin's law in the internet censorship debate. Or view it on YouTube directly.
-
Wikileaks hosts ACMA blacklist
Whoopsie, the inevitable has happened and the ACMA blacklist genie is out of the bottle. Gee we didn't see that coming! We can now all see what Conroy's great firewall of Australia will block, should…
-
Small business web analytics
I'm writing a tutorial for a magazine about web analytics and its use by small businesses. I'd love to include a case study of how people use such tools. I use web analytics every day in my real job,…
-
JQuery and Drupal book suggestions?
I'm launching a new site for work in a bit over a week that's built in Drupal and with JQuery used extensively. So far I'm pretty impressed with JQuery, especially how you can string things together.…
-
Shittyrail claims ownership of timetable data
Apparently Sydney's Shittyrail government transport monopoly is threatening an iPhone developer who had the temerity of making their timetables more usable. This from an organisation whose web site pr…
-
IE6 must die
When the revolution comes, the developers of IE6 will be the first up against the wall. Joining them there will be the people at my work who haven't updated the desktop COE to a browser that isn't qui…
-
Smokey lamb
On the weekend I finally got around to trying out the new smoker box I bought for the barbecue. It's just a small stainless steel box designed to hold some wet wood chips, with a couple of holes to al…
-
MythTV and the Playstation 3: current state
So I've had a week or so playing with the PS3 and MythTV. I just posted this to the Myth user list, but I suspect some of the readers here would be interested in how it's going. I'm attempting to use…
-
MythTV and PS3: problems with formats
Michael Fox has commented on the reasonable UPnP client in the PS3 and its interactions with MythTV, and I think he's helped me work out why I've been having some problems. It seems Myth is recording…
-
MythTV and PS3
After my recent hardware woes, I've had a little more success getting MythTV back up and running. I bought another cheap Dell workstation to act as my new Myth server. After a little fiddling, it's up…
-
IBM PSU not standard
Following advice from Graeme and Grant, I bought and tried out an ordinary ATX PSU to solve my PSU problem but unfortunately it hasn't worked out. It fits in reasonably well, with three of the screws…
-
Chutzpah is, Dutch edition
Chutzpah is... being a racist, Islamophobic, populist Dutch politician who calls for the Koran to be banned, then complain that being refused entry to a country is an affront to free speech. In a rela…
-
Having a bad time with hardware
Got home this afternoon and tried to turn my desktop machine on, and got nothing. Looking up the diagnostic lights the Dell manual says "System board failure has occurred." Not good!
-
Is this some standard PSU?
So the power supply on my MythTV server died last weekend with a bang. I'm hoping it didn't take all the other hardware with it, but first I need to get a replacement PSU in there. One nice thing abou…
-
Pro-censorship Morans
You really couldn't make this up. The pro-censorship brains trust has descended on article about a death threat received by an anti-censorship campaigner. SALLY of TOOWOOMBA Posted at 12:54pm today PO…
-
Amazing London snow photos
Westminster and snowman, by Pablo Godoy There's some amazing photos coming through on Flickr of the snow in London. Those of you in London, looks like loads of fun! Enjoy the time off work, those of y…
-
Why Windows will never be secure
While common software applications require that you disable the privilege escalation functions, Windows will never solve its security issues. The concept of running as a low-privilege user, while usin…
-
Fixing a laptop cooler
Our laptop had some problems with heat in the recent spate of Summer temperatures. I pulled it apart and gave it a vacuum. Sure enough, lots of dust and a fair few dead cockroaches. To prevent a recur…
-
Beer's Estate Marrickville
I managed to find a poster for the original sale of the land our house sits on from 1891 in the National Library of Australia's catalogue. $35 later and I'm the happy owner of a CD with a ridiculously…
-
Explaining to an 8-year old
I've been babysitting my niece today and we got to watching a Goodies DVD I have. After getting through three episodes on one disc, she insisted on watching the South Africa episode. Now The Goodies a…
-
All Tomorrows Parties Cockatoo Island
On Saturday we went to the All Tomorrow's Parties festival on Cockatoo Island, curated by Nick Cave and the Bad Seas. Loads of fun and it was certainly nice, for grumpy old man, to be at a festival wi…
-
Do Not Call means just that
We've received two telemarketing calls from the Police Citizens Youth Club soliciting donations in the last week. Being a charity, they're legally excluded from complying with the government's Do Not…
-
Google Reader recommends WTF?
Google Reader has a pretty good idea of what I read, so WTF is it doing suggesting a V8 Supercars feed to me? Hopefully it'll learn the error of its ways when I click "No thanks".
-
Legal music downloads also compete with easy
The major record labels seem to have finally worked out that downloads are the future, that DRM will never work and that people will pay for high-quality music downloads. I've recently been buying a f…
-
Sydney Festival First Night 2009
We went along to the Sydney Festival First Night last night, along with a few hundred thousand other Sydneysiders. I don't think it was quite designed to cater for the numbers they got, as moving arou…
-
Our Nick, improved
This poster around the corner from our place has seen Nick somewhat altered. Fortunately, we have tickets for the Saturday gig. It's gonna be brilliant!
-
Mobile broadband over Bluetooth with Ubuntu 8.10
I've been intrigued since upgrading to the latest Ubuntu release where NetworkManager has a shiny new "Mobile Broadband" tab. This is something I've wanted to get working for a long time. I don't want…
-
Happy New Year
I realise I'm about a week late, but hey I've been on holidays, for the first extended break in far too long, so I've been neglecting my readers. Too bad, I needed the holiday! So, it's a new year and…
-
Dear Embittered
Someone who seemingly would like to remain anonymous (88.209.73.252 252.73.209.88.dsl.monaco.mc) has been reading my blog and getting into a froth about something or other. I have read your Blog and f…