Posts for the 'WWW' Category (Feed for this category)
Flight of the Conchords
29th May, 2008
Life, WWW, Music,
These guys are hilarious.
If you haven't checked it out, check out their TV show as well - It has stars Arj Barker and Kristen Schaal.
Here is an example of one of their songs. I think it's one of their better ones ;-)
0 Comments
Add CommentPOP
31st December, 2007
Life, WWW, Music,
Well this year is almost over, and as the year starts to fade into the sunset and while we wait for the sky to be lit up with taxpayers money, I share the following YouTube Clip with you (care of James Dumay).
Life Status Update
2nd July, 2007
Blog, Life, Ubuntu, University, WWW,
With my last blog entry being back in March, back when I was just starting my last semester of Uni, a lot has changed, and that semester of Uni is now over, so I thought I would give a kind of status update.
University
The current semester is over, and it will most likely be my last semester at Uni at this time. I did my last 40 credit points (4 units), this semester, so now I just need to wait on results, and make sure that I have passed everything. If I didn't, I am going to have to go back for another semester, but at this stage, everything looks good. fingers crossed.
Work
Still working with the same company, and still enjoying it. Just last weekend, we had the Guns 'n Roses concerts in Sydney, which were an interesting night, but fun none the less. On Saturday is Live Earth, which means a full day for me, hopefully without too many dramas.
Coming up in the next few weeks is Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and Disney on Ice. August is set to be big as well, and most likely will be a busy end of the year.
New Phone
I made mention to a friend a while ago, that I would discuss my new Phone, so now's the time.
Just before the Sydney Royal Easter Show, my Motorola V3, which I had for almost 2 years, suffered a painful death after a night alone with the condensation off a McDonalds drink container.
But thankfully for insurance, I was able to get the same phone, but in black for $0, or pay the difference in cost between that phone and a phone I wanted, and get that instead.
So, naturally, I chose the later, and for now almost the last 3 months, I have a Nokia E61, a great Phone/PDA.
While it does have a few quirks which I can easily live with, it does make a great phone for someone continually on the go. ATM I use it to store rosters for work (as the .xls it comes as, as well as in the calendar), documents and contact info.
I also have PuTTy for Symbian loaded on to it, so i can use its inbuilt WiFi to connect to a box at home, or elsewhere, if I have internet access. Saves carrying a laptop in case a server dies.
The phone also has a SIP Client by default, which means it can also do VOIP calls. I have it set up at the moment, to be a client for my asterisk box at home, which it connects to over the wireless. This means I always can have my Phone book in one place, and with me. Security is not a problem for the WiFi, as it has support for WPA, which I use for all communications.
The keyboard did take a bit of getting use to, but it really is quite easy and friendly, once you use it for a bit. And boy does it make typing a SMS fast. The wide screen is great for playing games (while travelling on trains), and surfing sites (tho that is still costly to do all the time).
It has a Mini-SD card slot for storage, apps or files, and also has a movie and media player, as well as voice recordings.
I really love the phone :)
SCM
Source Code Managment rocks. I don't know why I didn't set one up earlier, as it has really helped with me being more energetic to get this new site up and running. Not sure why, but it just has, and that is for the better.
*
As mentioned above, I set up a asterisk server recently, and It now handles incoming and outgoing calls for both my VOIP line and PSTN line. Wasn't easy to get started, as came to a few problems with Arch Linux's asterisk packages, not really being up to date, or complete. I tried out both TrixBox and Elastix, neither of which I liked, and in the end, installed Ubuntu Server, and tried again with what on Arch Linux, and it worked, first time.
Future
While I am still doing my casual work, as noted above, it is almost getting to the stage, especially once my grades come out for this semester, and I graduate, that I will need to start looking around for full time work, hopefully this can be in the same industry/employer as at the moment, tho I feel that I may need to look outside it.
I am looking at getting some of my projects which I had planned under way, hopefully including some stuff which may generate income.
That is enough for a recap for now, does feel good to blog again, and to have the new site up and working (which you should check out if you are reading this via a RSS Aggregator - www.nullis.net.
iiChurned to iiNet
30th January, 2007
Life, WTF, WWW,
Yes.. Westnet has finally been given the flick, and I have churned (tho techincally not), to iiNet, to their ADSL2 service.
After spending the last 4-5 days waiting for the service to be provisioned, it has finally went thru, and it is now up and running. Seem to be syncing in at about 6/1, which is giving me a nice download speed of about ~500K/S depending on where the download originates.
Have some new toys to play with, (VOIP, Sipura 3000, and a GigE switch), so lots to do until I go back to uni.
In a side story, after having my ADSL2 set up, i got a scan from a curious IP. 207.46.197.32. According to whois, it is a microsoft IP, and if you try and resolve the ip to a hostname, you come up with a stack of domains microsoft seems to own.
Ignorance is Bliss, apparently.
16th November, 2006
Life, Linux, Programming, Python, WWW,
So, today on a random IRC Channel, the following definition of Django was given:
< freespace> jsp for python
The comparison seems like chalk and cheese. What I do know about JSP, is the fact that to do even little things would require a lot more code than the task was worth, where with Django on the other hand, it is simply a simple task. Create Models, views, and URLs, and you are done.
If you are wanting to know what Django really is (and what wouldn't you? It's fabulous!), have a look at: The Django Overview and Django FAQ
Meanwhile, Linux Australia, has announced that they are going to re-do their current site, and need to come up with something that better integrates, and provides a more modern, look.
Suggestions have already come up, for what should be used as a starting base. Drupal, Django and Ruby on Rails have all been mentioned, with embperl and slashcode being mentioned by people with more time than sense ;-).
Hopefully they go with something sensible (Django), and not end up with something clunky (Drupal).
Free Web Hosting
23rd February, 2006
Google, WWW,
Well, this blog title will surely help get a few more hits to this page now, won't it? ;)
So like, check out google's free web page hosting.
Is it good? Is it bad? Work it out for your damn self!
no, just do it
18th February, 2006
Linux, Rants, WWW,
unless of course you can find an EXTREMELY GOOD reason, please make sure you do the following:
grep -v register_globals php.ini > php.ini.new echo "register_globals = off;" >> php.ini.new mv php.ini.new php.ini
that is all.
Broadband still sucks, atleast in Australia.
16th February, 2006
Linux, Rants, WWW,
I have been on ADSL since November 2004, I guess it is time for me to talk about my thoughts on how the future of ADSL in Australia is shaping.
During this time, I have been with WestNet, on a 512/128 plan. This has suited me well most of the time, but there is often times when I want more download speed. This includes situations such as downloading Ubuntu's "Dapper Drake" Flight CD's for testing, or when I periodically <a href="http://gentoo-wiki.com/Advanced_Emerge_World">emerge world</a>
But most of the time my down speed is fine. However, it is usually my up speed that annoys me. Being limited to 128 kilobits (or 16 kilobytes) of upstream can be very disadvantaging when you wish to use SSH to connect to things at home. Often it can be quite slow in response, especially if I am utilising the ADSL line to do anything else.
It isn't just me who is getting feed up with things like this, it is anyway who uses depends on their broadband for either work, education or whatever other means.
Some Australian ISP's have started to roll out their own DSLAM's in an attempt to fix this situation, which is fine, but in many cases, the cost can be significantly dearer to go with these options, as there is additional cost of buying, installing and configuration of these DSLAM's by the ISP. But these options are better than what we have ATM, so I Commend ISPs such as Internode, TPG, Adam Internet and iiNet for doing so. If Telstra doesn't start to upgrade their network infrastructure, I will most likely being going with one of these companies. (For these who aren't in Australia, Telstra owns most of the ADSL infrastructure in Australia, and resells this to most ISPs, hence my ISP Westnet, relies on Telstra's infrastructure to be able to provide faster service).
A good question for Telstra at the moment is when are they going to start rolling out ADSL 2 capable DSLAM's into their infrastructure. Personally, I can't see Telstra being in a hurry to do this, especially since they have proven they don't want to share anymore. Oh and this is probably already proven by the fact that Telstra/Bigpond like to charge excessively high rates for their services, such as Bigpond ADSL, which is currently $29.95 a month for their cheapest plan, on 256/64. You are probably thinking this would be quite cheap for someone who is a light internet user, and it would be. But when you look at the fact it comes with only 200MB of quota and it costs 15 cents per megabyte after that (that's $150 per 1000 megabytes), it isn't that cheap at all, especially when my ISP, WestNet, for the equivalent price, you can get a 500MB plan, on the same speed. Not that much of a difference, but there are many more cheaper ISP's out there. Just check out this listing on Broadband Choice. So to summarise this little rant, I think it's easy enough to say that ADSL, in Australia, sucks.
Race to Linux
24th September, 2005
Linux, Programming, WWW,
Aaron talks about Race to Linux having the prize as an Xbox, ironically something opposite of the goal they are trying to achieve. While my feelings on the point are neither here nor there (the Xbox is a decent piece of gaming equipment, as is the playstation), I do think the race is a great idea.
Simply put, it is trying to get coders, of ASP.Net web applications, to convert examples of current ASP.Net implmentations, or designs, into an open source language, such as PHP and Mono. So if you have some free time, might be an idea to check it out. It sounds fun, and looks fun, and you can get yourself a nice gaming machine.
TV IV
16th September, 2005
WWW,
It was mentioned on slashdot a few days ago, but TV IV really is something that needs to be checked out.
It is trying to be the Ultimate TV guide, but in a wiki format so everyone is able to contribute and add their own ideas to it.
It's a great idea in light of services such as TVTome disapearing (even though TVTome did reappear as TV.com, run by c|net, it isn't as good as the old verison).
Google, Talk and more.
24th August, 2005
Google, IRC, Life, Linux, WWW,
For those that have been living in a cave this week, Google has announced it's Instant Messenger client, namely 'Google Talk'. While it is in beta (is anything at google not in beta?), thanks to its use of the Jabber/XMPP protocol, it means that already there are clients for all operating systems available (well, any that supports Jabber, naturally).
This means that you don't need to download yet another IM Client, or wait for GAIM or BitlBee, to update the source, to include the protocol and functionality for it. However, BitlBee users should note, that they will need to apply this patch to order to be able to use the gmail service, due to minor account differences in gmail's set up. See www.bitlbee.org for more info. (Yes port 5223, the default Jabber port works for me, where 5222, the google talk port, doesn't).
Meanwhile, I now have another means of contact that I will never use. I do use bitlbee for my instant message conversations, as it moulds nicely into my IRC Client, but i still converse mostly thru IRC. I guess IM is just there for the people who need to contact me and are bedazzled by all the shiny parts of IM clients (fuck you emoticons).
And while I have your attention, on a side note, has anyone noticed that Google is doing similar things to what Microsoft do, in regards to how they name their applications or services. That being, naming the product simply after the task it does, in order for it to become more "easier to remember", I would imagine. To compare:
Microsoft Products: Word, Paint, Office, Messenger Google Products: Talk, Search, Desktop Search, Alerts.
The only products which seem to have a unique names, are products they have gained due to the purchase of/from other companies.
Your thoughts on google talk and the rest are welcomed.
Piracy is Good?
16th July, 2005
WWW,
So says Mark Pesce, in a recent presentation held at the Australia Film and Television school.
A copy of the presentation is available from archive.org.
In the talk, Mark mainly focuses on Television, and how technologies (Bit-Torrent), have boosted ratings by them being "pirated". For example, Battlestar Galactica, and the new BBC Dr Who series; which were available on the internet hours after being shown, and now had some of the highest Television ratings in the countries they have been shown.
He highlights however, how the change to Hyperdistribution for television, would mean a change in the normal television distribution chain, which isn't that much a good thing.
It is a very informative talk, and worth the hour long sit and watch.