The Little E

Soccer

2010-05-14T21:35:00.000+10:00

ARCIA Award

2008-12-06T16:59:00.003+11:00

Jason Cox has been awarded the Australian Radio Communications Industry Association (ARCIA) Customer Service Award for 2008

Each year the Australian Radio Communications Industry Association (ARCIA) hosts a gala dinner and presents a number of Industry Excellence Awards to promote pride, passion and professionalism in our industry. Jason Cox was selected by ARCIA to receive the Customer Service Award for 2008, which was presented on the 18th November in Melbourne. A photograph of the presentation is attached.

Jason is based in Melbourne and provides dedicated support to Telstra’s statewide TaitNet MPT 1327 network in Victoria and to the customers of that network. Jason has worked in many roles for Tait around the world, and this week we also congratulate and thank Jason for 20 years of service with Tait.

Throughout the year ARCIA takes nominations for the following award categories:

Jonathan Livingston Award (for lifetime achievement)
Professional Sales Award
Customer Service Award
Technical Excellence Award
Engineering Elegance Award
New Talent Award
Apprentice Trainee Award

Determination of the award is based on specific criteria for each award, which incorporates the following:
Commitment - Provides a superior and sustained contribution to the promotion and growth of the Australia radio communications industry
Leadership - Demonstrates leadership excellence, encouraging ongoing improvement, learning and knowledge sharing in the workplace.
Innovation - Exhibits innovation or creativity, promoting operational resourcefulness and performance improvement.
Team work - Exemplifies excellence and integrity in workplace relationships and contributes to a respectful and collaborative work environment.
Service - Continually contributes to the maintenance and growth of customer relationships, ensuring individual and business practices encourage long-term customer relationships, repeat business and customer satisfaction.

Jason was nominated for both the Customer Service Award and Technical Excellence Award, and received the Customer Service Award.

Sunbaking at Telstra Dome

2008-11-19T21:59:00.002+11:00

I've been at a conference at the Telstra Dome over the last few days, the writing on the sunlamps says: "Reducing Greenhouse Gasses - one pitch at a time" I wonder how the work that out when they're using coal fired power stations.

Yes, were still alive

2008-02-04T22:01:00.000+11:00

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.
Just been really busy at home and at work for the last we while.

Been expanding the pogola out side, about to rip up the deck and start again, and work is flat tack.
Not to mention that my laptop went for a swim at the end of last year, and is up for a new LCD - at $1800 - which I don't have at the moment.

So yes, we're still alive, and I'll post some more photos soon.

Sir Angus Tait Dies at Age 88

2007-08-08T16:48:00.000+10:00

Sir Angus Tait, or as I called him, Mr Tait, died today.

I've known Mr Tait since December 1988. Back then I used to work in the Christchurch factory at Tait Electronics. Every Friday Angus would come out to the factory and do the rounds, talking to all the workers.

Back then he knew everyone by name, but there was only 300 employees.

As time grew on, so did the size of the company, and Mr Tait no longer came out for his Friday afternoon stroll. When I spoke to him about this much later, he said that it was because he couldn't remember everyone's name. I'm not surprised! By that stage Tait had grown to over 1000 employees globally - It would hard enough for anyone to remember that many people!

So when I think over Mr Tait, the one thing that I'll remember was our Friday afternoon chinwag.

More information regarding Mr Tait is available at the following websites:
http://www.taitworld.com/main/index.cfm/1,412,1610,46,html/Team-Mourns-Great-Kiwi-Export-Icon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Tait
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4156405a19719.html

Harry Potter goes to Lake Mountain

2007-07-22T20:14:00.000+10:00

Man, what a weekend.
Yesterday was the release of the latest Harry Potter book. Shelley had it on pre-order, so we had planned to go down to Borders in the morning, have a nice breakfast at Ozone, and then pick up the book when the commotion had died down.
Somehow that plan didn't come to fruition. Instead, Shelley went into Borders and stood in the line to pick up the book with Eli, while I went and stood in the line to pay for the book. That seemed to work out quite well, and by 25 past 9 Shelley was reading her book while Eli and I had breakfast.

So that Shelley could read her book in piece, Eli and I had planned to go to the snow for the day today. So we packed our lunch last night ready to leave first thing this morning. At 6am Eli come into our room to wake me up - I guess he was a little excited!
All his excitement woke Shelley up, so soon all three of us were on the road for Lake Mountain.
What a great day! The snow was great, the weather was great. We got up nice and early and Eli and I had a great morning tobogganing while Shelley drunk coffee and read Harry Potter.

The in the afternoon we headed off home, stopping off to catch some fish along the way. We found a Salmon farm just outside of Marysville where they let you catch your own fish, or they can catch it for you and clean it, and even fillet it!
So to top off our great weekend, we had a great feed of Salmon for dinner tonight.

Ikea

2007-07-10T22:16:00.000+10:00

Having problems with Blogger lately - not playing well with either Safari or Firefox :(

Anyway, spent three days this week in ikea. On Saturday, Shelley decided that she would like a new laundry - we had been talking about this for a while, it's just that we finally decided to do something about it. So we headed off to Ikea to get an idea of what was available.
We spent most of the rest of Saturday and Sunday morning deciding what we wanted, and finally coming up with a layout that we both agreed on.
So we when to ask one of the sales guys on how to buy the stuff. When we explained what it was we wanted, he took us off to some hidden part of the shop to show us some new layouts - effectively wasting our whole two days prior.
The end result (3 days and $500 later) is that we now have a new laundry, that we are both happy with, just waiting on one cupboard door.

Speaking of Ikea - when we drive into the car park, Eli starts singing this song... http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Ikea

another month already

2007-05-17T23:53:00.000+10:00

I can't believe another month has flown by already.
I was 'sposed to be in NZ next week for some P25 training, but I can't get anyone to look after Eli for the week. The next door neighbor has offered to look after him after school, or if I want a night out, but I think asking her to have him for 3 or 4 days is a bit much.

The car went in for its first service this week - 5000km already. I tried to give it a wash in the weekend and took it down to the local car wash, but now it looks worse than it did before. It's raining now, and I'm tempted to leave a couple of buckets outside to fill up with rain water and then wash it properly in the morning - hopefully it will still be raining so it'll get a rinse as well.

I've being playing around with apple script over the past we while and have managed to make a small program to fix my two gripes with OS X. Address book not auto connecting to my phone, and iSync not auto syncing.

There are few programs available that seem to now offer this type of functionality, Home Zone (http://metaquark.de/homezone/) is a nice one, but they tend to fill up the menu bar.
So I had a go at writing my own app that would just run as required. The result is "AutoSync" which was my first attempt. It basically just ran a script every 8 hours to run iSync. My reasoning that my Calendar and address book don't change that much, so if it updates once a day I'm set.
The next challange was to get address book to auto connect to my phone so that any SMSs were automatically displayed. I get about 20 SMSs a day, so it gets a bit annoying to have to pull my phone out every time I hear "You have a new SMS"

So now I have AutoSync 2.0 which now includes Address book re-connect.
The code is below...
-------------------------------------------
property interval : 480 * minutes
-- 480 minutes = 8 hours, 3 x a day
-- The intention is that it will sync at least once a day, and once overnight
-- Addressbook connect is to display any SMS's received overnight

on run
addressbook_Connect()
sync()
end run

on idle
addressbook_Connect()
sync()
return interval
end idle

-- Do the sync and wait for it to finish
to sync()
tell application "iSync"
if last sync is less than ((current date) - 600) then
-- Don't sync if less then 10 minutes since last sync (gets around the problem with doing two syncs when first run)
synchronize
end if
set miniaturized of first window to true
-- minimise the window while syncing
repeat while (syncing is true)
delay 25
-- wait 25 seconds for it to finish
end repeat
quit
end tell

end sync

-- Reconnect to the Address Book
to addressbook_Connect()
tell application "Address Book"
if not unsaved then
try
quit
delay 1
end try
end if
end tell
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABCheckForPhoneNextTime -boolean true"
try
tell application "Address Book"
launch
end tell
tell application "System Events"
set the visible of process "Address Book" to no
end tell
end try
end addressbook_Connect

-----------------------------

to make this in to an application, save it as an application bundle and tick the "Stay open" option. The program will then run every 8 hours (or whatever you set the "interval" to).
I've given it a nice icon, and also managed to stop the application from being shown in the dock, but I can't remember how I did that now. I thought it was a line that I added to the plist file.

A copy of the application is available here

GPS EXIF data

2007-04-14T00:40:00.000+10:00

I've started to take my GPS with me when Eli and I go out on our bikes in the weekend. Not because we get lost (very often) but because if I take any photos then I can match up the location when I get back home.
I used to use an application called "PhotoGPSEditor", which was quite simple to use. You loaded all your photos (dragged them out of iPhoto) and then used "LoadMyTracks" to grab a GPX file with all the track information out of the GPS. It used to work a treat - the software matched the photos with the GPS locations based on the timestamp. But that application reciently got updated, and now I can't get it to work at all. It has a fancy wizzard, and all this offset stuff, but just doesn't seem to be able to get anything to match.
So I've trashed that.
In the mean time I've added GPS data to most of the photos on my Flickr account, as many as I can. So I thought it was time to update my Flickr Map...

Get your own Trippermap!

View from the top

2007-04-11T16:57:00.000+10:00

Went over to Lyn's in the weekend for a nice walk around her place.
Here is the view - you can see the Dandedongs, the city and Mt Macedon.

Oh, and it's still hot!

2007-02-18T23:35:00.000+11:00

Must have been over 38º today.
It was 37 when Eli and I went down to the river at 10am. It's still 32 inside the house now, too hot to sleep, but I need to get an early night tonight.
Shelley's back from a week in NZ tomorrow, and I have a software upgrade to do tomorrow night (starting at 1am).

Eli's had a few bleeding noses this week, and I'm guessing its related to the heat. Hopefully the rain that I can now faintly hear on the roof means that another storm is comming and the temperture will drop down.

The New Car has arrived

2007-02-18T21:21:00.000+11:00

On a hot and wet Friday afternoon, Eli and I made our way up to Subaru to pick up the new car. We were 'sposed to be there at 3:30, but we missed the 3pm bus (it wizzed past us while we were standing in the minimal amount of shade from the bus stop), so we didn't get there until 4pm.
We had to wait a while because we'd missed our spot, and we had to go through the last of the paper work etc.

Finally we got taken through the "Majic doors" to see the new car - all clean and shiny...

We'll that didn't last. The heaven's opened up about the same time as Eli opened the door so we could drive out. By time we got home the car was as dirty as the one I'd dropped off.

So, today we headed down to Warrandyte to take Boots for a swim in the river. The car is really dirty now, but at least the rubber matts in the back have stopped Boots from making a mess of the carpet, and he doesn't slide arround so much!

First day of school

2007-01-31T19:25:00.000+11:00

Today was Eli's first day at "Big Boys" school

... and now a new car!

2007-01-24T16:19:00.000+11:00

After 18 months we're finally getting our new car. To cut a long story short, when I started my new job it came with a vehicle allowance, which I could use to buy the car of my choice. We had already deciced on a Subaru Forester, we had use of a Forester, Impreza and Outback while we were in Singapore, and the Forester was probably the most practable (although I do love the Impreza).
Anyway, about the same time I started, one of the sales guys left, and his company vehicle (a toyota camary) became available. I took that with the understanding that I would give it back when the new salesperson started - but I still have it :(. This poor thing has been dragged up repeater sites, filled chocker with test equipment and radio gear and it absolutly knackered.
So, last week I was notified that the lease is about to expire. Yipee!!!! good ridance you petrol hungry beast.

Subaru just happened to be having a sale last week, so Eli and I went down for a test drive after work. We took out both an Impreza, and a Forester. I so could have driven off with the impreza, but I would have got 3 speeding tickets before I got home. Shelley went for a test drive the next day and loved the Forester, so I went back after work and put a deposit on one.

Now I've got to wait for the finance company to come through with the goods and were all set.

New year, New house

2007-01-02T09:54:00.000+11:00

At last were in the new house. Most of the boxes are unpacked, a few of the pictures are hung up, and its starting to look like a home. Thanks heaps to Lynette who helped clean both houses - no mean feat.
Shelley spent the first week as she does in every new house - ripping out all the overgrown trees and plants. When we first viewed the place it had a beaut simple garden. We've now found out that the previous owners hated gardening and simply stick a few plants into the ground for the open home. They havent't watered the garden since, and so most of the plants are now dead. What had survived was an overgrown Wisteria plant, which had taken over most of the back deck and BBQ area and was threatening to destroy the spouting.

Shelley also got in touch with her creative side, ripping out the old pond and giving it a face lift, complete with waterfall. My job is to source a suitable pump - which is not as simple as I thought. I decided to go solar - for two reasons, but mainly beacuse of the cost involved in getting a power socket fitted outside near the pond. There was one there previously, but the previous owners have ripped all that up and just left the wires sticking out of the ground - too short to do any thing with.
It seems that most of the low voltage water pumps available on the market at this time are 12V AC, what I need is some 12V DC pumps to work with the solar panel. The only thing I can source is one by a company called OASE, there are a couple of suppliers, mostly in SA or WA - they must have better rebates for Solar than in VIC. (http://www.creativepumps.com.au/Pumps/Oase/Solar%20pump/Solar_pump.htm).

Optus let us down big time - All my pre-planning fell through with trying to get the phone and internet set up in advance. To cut a long story short, our internet is now with Telstra, and we are using SKYPE for our phone calls. Skype has made a few improvements since we last used it on Shelley's iMac. The audio quality with the built in mic used to be shit, but now it's really good. 2 cents a minute to call NZ is pretty goo as well. Skype still crashes Shelley's mac when it goes to sleep though. I think this might be related to bonjour not working properly if the airport doesn't connect quick enough when it wakes. We get the same thing with iChat crashing, but that seems to be stable since I disabled bonjour. Perhaps it will be ok with a wired connection.

On the plus side, we've got to meet most of the neibours already. Everyone seems really nice and we've already had one offer for babysitting. (Fantastic!!) At the end of the court is a nice common with a play ground, and not far (within walking distance) are some wetlands - fun for Eli to explore.

42 in the shade

2006-12-10T22:10:00.000+11:00

It's Fecking hot today.
42 degrees in the shade, and not a lot cooler inside the house.
I had to go back into work this morning - it was 30 degrees at 9am. Bit clearer today, but the fire alarm was still going nuts. The VESDA system was off the scale.

Eli was still a bit sick today. I think he's like me and just can't stomach the heat.

Got some more boxes packed, but not as much as I would like.

Melbourne central covered by smoke.

2006-12-09T23:07:00.000+11:00

We Woke this morning to a thick blanket of smoke covering the city. I went back into work today to set up some additional equipment for DSE. We had been advised that two of the sites, Mt Useful and The pinnacles were likely to be burnt this weekend. With no spares, I had to strip out most of my test system to get enough kit for two sites. That's going to make it awkward to test any new software in a hurry. We'd only been at work less than an hour when the VESDA system started to alarm. It was picking up smoke inside the building. Another half hour or so then the main alarm went off, you could actually smell the smoke inside the exchange now.
Eli Come into work with me and was really good. He played a couple of games, watched a movie, and helped me with the radio tests. He got a bit worried when the Fire Alarms went off, but Chris took him outside to see the firemen. On the way home we called into Jaycar to get some connectors and stuff when Eli said he wasn't feeling too good. It was pretty hot - high 30's at least, probably hotter in the car.
We got home and he just wanted to lie down in his room. Then, about 7pm, just as I was cooking Shelleys dinner, he come out and power chucked all down the hall in up to the kitchen. I couldn't believe that so much stuff could fit in his tiny stomach.
Shelley got home just as I had finished cleaning up the chuck, but the house still stunk of it. Then I realised that the cat wasn't anywhere to be found. Eventually I found her under the house, She'd slipped through a gap in the boxes I'd piled up in the door way so that the door could be open to let soom cool air in. She didn't want to come out and I ended up having to tease her out with some food. Know better next time - fill in the gaps!

Just over a week to go 'till we move house

2006-12-06T19:32:00.000+11:00

Our house is a mess at the moment with boxes everywhere. I was going to take next week off to do all the packing in one hit while Shelley was at work and Eli at Kinda, but doesn't look like that is going to happen now.
We've got a new kitten, "Princess Ralph the 3rd", she gets on really well with Boots, so that's a relief. Very tiny, but house trained already.
Last week I went out for dinner with some of the big bosses. We went to Fortyone at Railto, nice view (This is looking up the Yarra towards the Dandedongs in the distance. The MCG can be seen in the middle of the photo), nice company, but food wasn't anything great. Next time were planning to go to Jamie Oliver's Fifteen resturant. Bookings are available now for March, which is when everyone will next be down in Melbourne.

Cup Day

2006-11-07T21:49:00.000+11:00

Melbourne Cup day today - the day that stops a nation.
Typically today is a day spent at the races, sipping glasses of champane in the sun, and generally getting pretty happy.
Unfortuntally todat was a little tooo cold for sipping champane on the lawn.
Eli and I headed off to the Melbourne Musuem for the day, while Shelley did her last minute study before tomorrows law exam. The Musuem was holding a best hat parade, so we had a go at making at hat. Eli is getting ready to go onto the catwalk to model his "Ant-Tenna" hat.

36 Deg

2006-10-13T21:44:00.000+10:00

It was the hottest October day in Melbourne for 92 years yesterday.
Hot dry weather means that I can't do much work, as the total fire bans mean no work on DSE sites.
On the plus side, this has meant a good opportunity to work on the customer reports and get some long outstanding work finished.

Tomorrow I am helping out at Eli's Kinda's 30th birthday celebrations. I'm doing the bouncy castle - which should work out good for Eli as well.
Shelley has arranged for Eli to play at Emilio's place afterwards, which Eli has been looking forward too for a long time.

Eli In the Newspaper

2006-10-02T21:43:00.000+10:00

Eli's Kinda's 30th birthday seems to have been a great day.
Eli managed to get his photo taken hovering around the cake.

New House

2006-09-30T16:07:00.000+10:00

At last we've found a house that both Shelley and I agree on, and that is within Eli's school zone.
Our offer has been acepted, but we don't move in until December. The process of buying a house here is a little different to what I expected. Not to mention the stamp duties and everything else that eats away at your deposit.

Happy Birthday

2006-08-21T01:38:00.000+10:00

It was Eli's Birthday today.
5 Years Old!!!
We had quite a good turn out for his party, 15 screaming kids in all, not bad.
Shelley was stuffed when we got home and had a wee sleep while Eli and I watched a sponge bob DVD that one of his friend got him.

We had his party at Kidz Play, which is an indoor playground. No stress, no fuss and the kids got to go wild.

It must be the month for birthdays. Eli had one to go to last week (Mitchell), and one next week (Sam) with Emilio's the week after.

Wild Thing

2006-08-14T23:33:00.000+10:00

Eli and I went to the "Where the Wild Things Are" at the Jewish Museme. I didn't even know that there was a Jewish Museme in Melbourne!
The place was packed with heaps of 30 something parents and their kids trying on Max's wolf suit, and jumping into a bowl of chicken soup.
Eli loved it - He knows the book well and often reads along with me when I read it to him at night.

Flickermap

2006-08-06T22:35:00.000+10:00

Garmin GPS

2006-07-25T22:06:00.000+10:00

I've been watching with interest a yahoo group on using GPS with Macs (macmap@yahoogroups.com). I brought a Garmin GPS over a year ago, and at the time the sales assistant assured me that.
A) Mapsource would work fine in Virtual PC
B) Garmin were soon to release a Mac version of Mapsource, and my maps would be compatable.

I didn't really believe that the PC maps would be compatable with any mac software, but hey I needed the GPS and figured that by time the software was actually released the maps would probably need updating anyway.

So I installed Mapsource onto my Mac, running windows XP under virtural PC. Mapsource ran ok, I could register the software, load the maps, but it just wouldn't see the GPS.
I read somewhere that it was probably a problem with XP - which I find easy to belive, so I trashed XP and installed Windows 98. Windows 98 is my favorite of the windows OSs (if I can say such a thing) and is by far the fastest for what I want to use it for.
Still no joy.
Futher reading pointed me to new USB dirvers, problems with USB on virtural PC and whole host of other issues. So I gave up and brought a windows PC which is soley used for Mapsource, and a couple of games that Eli plays. It doesn't have a screen, or keyboard - we just connect to it using Remote Desktop, but it shows just how far you sometimes have to go to get something to work. All up, this software has cost me a few grand (the orginal Mapsource software, the Ozzie map set, Virtual PC with windows XP, and finally a PC) and I still can't upload maps in the field.

Now I'm looking at a GPS for Shelley. Part of me says go with Garmin - I've already brought the maps (and spent the money to get the software to work), the GPS I have is really easy to use and Shelley has no problems with it. But there are other "Mac Friendly" products available. So what do you do? Continue to support a company that promises Mac support, but never delivers? or go out and buy a new product from someone else.

I now have basic GPS support for my Mac. I can load all the waypoints into Google Earth but the one thing that I can't do is upload maps - that is the only thing I thought that the mapsource software would be usefull for. (The GPS doesn't have enough room to store all the maps I need to cover the places I need to go to for work). So along comes this new company offering the "Holy Grail" of Mac Mapping software - but with no map support? What is it that they do? They can import your waypoints into google earth! Something that Google Earth can do quite happly by itself thank you very much!!!

Anyway, that's my rant for today. I feel much better now :)

Field trip

2006-07-12T23:13:00.000+10:00

Had a nice class outing today to celebrate 100 years since the Marconi company compleated their first radio broadcast across water.
We all made the trip down to Queenscliff for our regular Friday morning meeting (today being Wednesday) then meandered across to Point Lonsdale to watch the re-enactment. All very swish!
The local ham club had a spark gap transmitter, just like the type use 100 years ago, although they used a more moden HF transmitter for the re-enactment. A message was sent by morse to Devenport, folowed by the local MP, and her Tassie counterpart having the usual "were a better state than you" banter.

Nothing New

2006-06-17T22:25:00.000+10:00

Had Level "0" training a Eli's AusKick today - basically its a way to take all the parents and make them look as silly trying to kick a ball around as the kids.
I found out that I'm not too bad at handballing, which surprised me since I grew up playing soccer, no touching the ball allowed. I also managed to take a few good marks as well - even more of a surprise. But my kicking is still crap. I can't get the hang of dropping the ball on to my foot. If it was on the ground then that would be fine! Although it's not really the right shape for sitting on the ground properly.

Eli had a hearing test this week. One of his gromets has finally fallen out, and the other is not far behind. His hearing is great - so we're really pleased. His speech is comming along good now as well. Today we were working on the /k/ sound, playing a few games and stuff when I nodded off on the couch. For some reason I'm just absolutely buggered this week. I've had about 3 early starts, with dropping Shelley off at Uni for exams and stuff, so I guess thats whats done it.

I was going to be working this weekend, but I've managed to put that work off till Monday. Next week is bound to be a bit stressfull, more early starts as Shells has another exam on Thursday and new equipment to cutover.

Famous

2006-06-16T22:38:00.000+10:00

My company did a feature on me for our quartly newsletter. I new that it was coming out soon, but I didn't know when. I got a rark up at a weekly meeting today when just about everyone had been sent a copy, except me. The photo is pretty crappy, given that I don't really take many photos of myself. This one was taken in Singapore for some reason - can't remember why now.

The newsletter is on our web site

No Snow

2006-06-12T23:15:00.000+10:00

No Snow today, but it was bloody cold!
We didn't get to either Buller or Hotham, but had quite a good day at Healsville Santurary instead.
Got to see a mother koala with her joey, which is quite rear apparently.

That's it realy, a quite Queens Birthday weeked.

This comming week is going to be pretty busy. Shelley has exams, and I have a live cutover at work in the weekend, so I have to make sure that all my side of things is good and ready. A bit hard to test at the moment though.

The Ski Season has started

2006-06-10T21:34:00.000+10:00

Today is the offical start to the ski season, unfortunataly, nether Hotham or Mt Buller seem to have any snow. Well not that can be seen from the cameras anyway. Eli and I had planned to go up for a play in the snow this weekend. Shelley has exams next week, so we thought it would be good to get away for a couple of days and leave Shelley to the books. I think we might be a bit optimistic, we'll see what the weather is like in the morning.

Nuclear Power

2006-06-09T17:45:00.000+10:00

There has been a lot of buzz in the news here this week about Nuclear Power. Australia has finally decided that they need to generate more power, and so is looking to build some Nuclear power plants, 5 in fact. Unfortunatally its a classic case of "Not in my back yard mate!". Now this is quite funny because a shit load of the worlds uranium actually gets dug up out of the Ozzie outback. The Government even proposed taking back some of the old uranium to store it in the outback.

When I first came to Australia I thought that they had nuclear power already, but apart from a small test reactor in Sydney, the whole place is powered by coal or gas. The funny thing is that we came from New Zealand, where most of the electricity is generated by Hydro, (clean & cheep) but our power bill here is less than a 3rd of what it was in NZ.
Anyway, back to the nuclear stuff. How stuff works has a neat artical that explains how nuclear power plants work. It also has a link to a BBC program on the Chenobal explosion.

Phillip Island

2006-06-04T21:28:00.000+10:00

Had a great day at Phillip Island. Eli and I went down this morning and walked arround looking at Koalas, then had lunch at on the beach before watching the penguin parade this evening. A real nice day, good weather as well

1 year today

2006-05-30T21:26:00.001+10:00

It was one year ago today that I started my new job. I had kind of expected that things would have dropped of by now, and that I would be working from home.
Unfortunatally that's not the case. I'm still doing long hours and it doesn't look any better. :(

We went out for dinner tonight. There is this resturant just down the road from our place that is always packed, so we thought we would give it a try.
What a dissapointment - Both Shelley's and my meals were crap! We ended up going to Mac'ers for a desert and coffee, but there wasn't any cheese cake, so it ended up being just coffee.
A disapointing end to an even more disapointing day.

On the plus side, I had a hearing test yesterday. After years of my ipod blasting loud music into my ears it was good to find that the damage was minimal and hadn't got any worse over the last year. Time to turn the volume up ;)

World Pinhole Camera Day

2006-05-23T22:12:00.000+10:00

On the subject of cameras, it was world pinhole camera day on the 30th April. Some very good photos to be seen at www.pinholeday.org .
If you want to have a go at making your own pin hole camera - I found these instructions on how to create a flash looking jobbie (see right -->).
Since I have a bit of 35mm film laying around, I think Eli and I might have a go at this in the weekend.

Say Cheese!

2006-05-23T21:16:00.000+10:00

One of the first things I brought when I left school was a Pentax P30N SLR camera. It was this great camera that took great photos, and went with me everywhere to capture every moment of my life. That, unfortunatally was its downfall. One day, while out in my 4WD I managed to get stuck in a rather deep hole in a river. Everything floated out the door of the Subaru, except my camera. As I scurried down stream after my check book and NOW! Cassette tapes, my camera was sitting behind the passengers seat soaking up the river water.
I learnt my lessons from that, and so when I finally managed to save up an replace my camera (with another P30) I didn't take it to quite as many places. The sad thing was that it meant that now I was not taking anywhere near as many photos. Instead of a roll or two a week, it was now a roll every month or two.
Eventually, that would drop right off, so a roll of film could last almost a year. But it sure was exciting to get the film back, you really didn't know what was going to be on it.
When Eli was born, I brought Shelley a new Pentax M50 SLR. This one had two things that my P30 didn't. A built in Flash, and Auto Focus. Now we were taking photos of the new baby doing everything. Eventually, Shelley complained that the camera was too big to take everywhere so it got left behind when we went out. Then, for Shelley's birthday the first year we were in Singapore, I got her a digital camera. They had just come down to an "acceptable" price. I got her a 3 megapixal Ricoh for just under $800 (A Bargin!) Now this camera was small enough to fit in her handbag, So it started to go everywhere with us and it wasn't long before Shelley had over 1000 photos in her iPhoto library. But before long that camera too would be too big - Shelley didn't take a bag with her anymore, so a new camera would have to be got. One that could fit into her jeans pocket. So, we got a 4 MP Casio. Quite a bit cheaper than the Ricoh, but a good camera none the less.
Now, its time for another camera. This time with a phone attached. Which brings me to the orginal reason for this post anyway. I also have a phone with a camera (try finding one that doesn't) and when I was looking for a new phone I was certain that I wouldn't get a phone with a camera. They were just a waste of space as far as I was concerned. But after having it for a couple of months now, I've come to realise that they are good for one thing. Capturing the moment - and that is exactly what I brought my expensive Pentax P30 for 20 years ago!

So long already

2006-05-20T16:24:00.000+10:00

I can't believe how fast this week has flown!!! AFL today, followed by lunch and coffee (Decaf!) at a local mall. The we went to have a look at some new phones for Shelley. I want to get her a Nokia, 'cause the other 10 phones she's had are all nokias, so we can re-use the chargers and stuff, but she's keen on the new Motorola L6. Looks ok, but I remember she tired out a Moto once before and we couldn't work out how to retreive a phone number from the address book. Hopefully they've got a bit better now. At least the Motos will sync with her address book, it has USB and Bluetooth, so we won't have to spend hours typing all the names and numbers in again.

Rick came around to day with Sharla and his new car. He traded in the CRV for a Suziki Swft. Nice car.

SNOW!!!!

2006-05-09T11:18:00.000+10:00

Looks like that crap weather for the last few days has paid off - Its snowing at Mt Hotham and Mt Buller:

Eli Kicks a Goal

2006-05-06T21:28:00.000+10:00

Eli had a great day at AFL today. The parent/kids game went well with the parents managing to get a couple of good goals. But after staying up late last night to swat up on the rules I think I would have been better off to have an early night and have got up early to practice my catching!

With so many kids there today, some of us parents got inducted as coaches - In my keeness I forgot that I played soccer at school - I was good at kicking, but could catch a ball to save myself!

Anyway fun day was had by all, Shelley managed to get in a few cups of coffee with some of the other mums and even did a few laps round the oval.

Rain

2006-05-05T22:51:00.000+10:00

Its raining today - absolutly pissing down!
Took nearly two hours to get home tonight, and even then I had left after the peak flows. It seemed like there was an accident just about every few K's on the Monash.

Eli has his second day of Auskick tomorrow. Shelley and I were meant to study up on the rules for the Kids vs Parents games, but with no time this week I think we will be seriously giving some points to the other side.

Sooo busy again

2006-05-04T22:13:00.000+10:00

Ahhhhh. Just when you think that its time to put your feet up on the desk and catch up on my podcasts, work gets busy again!
This week I've had to train a new operator on everything from the ground up - luckly he's got a strong IT background so understands what routers, switches and Sun Boxes are (at least he can point to them!).

Eli has become very proficient at playing Bugdom 2 - he can easily get through the first level by himself, but is challanged trying to get past the snake on the second level. Everytime he trys to get past the little windmill he gets nocked off the baseball.

I was so impressed I had to get him a gamepad this week - that, and I got sick of trying to clean chocolate of my powerbook's keypad. I got a Macally ishock - quite cool. It's a bit bigger than a PS2 gamepad, but a simular layout (I guess they all are). It is very configurable, so works with heaps of programs that don't normally support game pads as you can program the keys to match keyboard keys.

Excuse the grainy photo, it was taken on my phone.

AFL

2006-04-30T20:22:00.000+10:00

Man, a busy week again!
Eli had is first game of AFL (Australian Rules Football - www.afl.com.au) on Saturday. We had been hoping to get him in to soccer, but there does not seem to be a big following for anything other than AFL in Melbourne, so AFL it was.
It's not too bad really. The coaches are really energetic, and they had a couple of players at hand from the parent club, the Hawthorn Hawks. The first part of the time is spent practising ball skills, kicking, passing etc and Eli surprised us with his ability to kick the ball correctly, especially since this was the first time he had played with an oval ball.
After some different games it was time to split all the kids in to two teams for a quick game. That was good to watch - some of the kids were really good with one boy in particular able to kick the ball quite a distance.

Next week is Kids v's Parents, so Shells and I had better swat up on the rules!

Possum

2006-04-27T22:28:00.000+10:00

Eli took this photo of a Possum in our front yard. It's quite unusual to
A) get so close to one with out getting hissed at or your arm ripped of. and
B) to see them during the day. But apparently this one has taken a liking to sunbathing on our garden shed. When we found him he was happy sitting in one of our trees.
Normally they just make boots upset at night by running up and down our roof.

Another Day, Another Dollar

2006-04-26T23:49:00.000+10:00

Quite day today - an unexpected delay from a customer has meant that I have lots of time on my hands lately. This meant that for the first time in ages I was able to get home in time to have dinner with the rest of the family - no microwaved salad for tea tonight! The short weeks really are great when your not so busy. Normally I would have to work twice as hard to make up for the days off.
I also got to beat Eli at Monolopy for the first time! We brought him the game in the weekend, along with a few others, and spent most of Anzac day playing Monopoly - which he managed to beat me at every time. But tonight my luck changed and it was I who had all the houses on the board.

Caffene Free

2006-04-22T19:38:00.000+10:00

Today is the end of my first week of being caffene free! Other than a constant headache since day one, it hasn't been too bad. Shelley and I went out for our usual Saturday morning breakfast, but we both had decaf flat whites today (Usually I 'have' to have real coffee with my poached eggs).
So I'm pretty confident that I can pull this off this time. I tried it once before when I was in Singapore, but it was too hard to resist "Kopi" time in the afternoons.
This time I've got it sussed. We've always had decaf at home (since last time I tried to quit), now I've got decaf at work and lots of herbal teas at home.
Got to admit I'm a lot more tired this week. It's only 7:40 and I'm already getting ready for bed, usually I wouldn't be tired till after 11. But I have been sleeping a lot better - so it's got to be worth it!

Water

2006-04-20T20:45:00.000+10:00

We got our first water bill today for the year. We use an average of 376 litres of water a day! How can that be? Eli and I are away for most of it. It's bloody near impossible to get him into the bath, and he never flushes the toilet after him. Were not drinking that much. I'd be lucky to get my 6 glasses of water a day.
So where does all this water go? According to the nice chart that comes with the bill, we're slightly higher than the efficient 3 person family, and less than the typical 3 person family (at 458 litres per day) That assuming that we don't water the garden, which we do on occasion, and the dog gets a good hose down too.

Easter Bunny

2006-04-20T00:01:00.000+10:00

Well Easter has gone now, but there is still a heap of chocolate in the fridge. Eli managed to catch the easter bunny in the process of dropping a few easter eggs on Sunday.

The Little E

2006-04-19T09:35:00.000+10:00

This is the first blog on this site dedicated to my son, Eli.
Over the last few years since Eli was born, Shelley, Eli and I have moved from New Zealand to Singapore, and now we are in Melbourne, Australia. Who knows how long we will be here. I like Melbourne a lot, but we've only been here for less than a year now.
Eli has seen a lot in his short life so far. Ever since he was a small baby he has been bundled in to airplaines, hung off mountians in the Southern Alps of New Zealand and ridden on elephants in Indonesia and Thailand. Now that he is getting ready for school, things have slowed down a bit, but I'm sure that there will still be plenty of adventures to come.

About Us

2006-04-01T01:10:00.000+11:00

After spending 7 years travelling around the world, I met Shelley on the way back from Scotland. She had just returned to New Zealand from the UK. It was love at first site, well for me anyway. She took a bit more convincing. A year later we were planning our wedding. I stayed at home long enough for Eli to be born, and then the travel bug hit again, Shelley was itchy first, then a job offer came up that sounded too good to be true so we sold the house and said goodbye to NZ.
The problem with things that sound too good to be true is that they usually are. After 3 years of consant travel around Asia, we headed back to the Pacific, this time on separte countries (for a short while) so Shelley could work on her degree while I worked 18 hour days.
After 6 months of 2 hour phone calls at weekends, and the occasional long weekend in NZ we were all back together in yet another country - this time Australia.