Ben Boyle lives here!

Big pain in the Pond

2009-10-25T16:48:00.005+10:00

Today I got bill shock. Well, not bill shock exactly. More like, quota shock. Here's my email to BigPond's contact us form.

I wish to make a number of complaints.
I am a wireless customer. I have just reached the end of 12 months so the price for all plans has doubled. Due to situations explained in this email, I am set to embark on this second year paying $90 for 2.5 GB for this first month. I am extremely unhappy.
Complaint #1: I wish to complain about the high prices. At half price, the plans were at the high end of broadband pricing. At regular price, now, they are ridiculously high.
I have limited choice in broadband provider. ADSL is unavailable at my residence, due to a technology blocker (pair gain). Telstra have not fixed this in the years I have lived here (since 2000) and BigPond profit as a result by charging a premium for wireless broadband. Complaint #2: pair gain system still limiting my choice in broadband. Complaint #3: BigPond not offering discounts to customers suffering due to technology limitations with Telstra infrastructure
So having just entered the second year as a BigPond customer, knowing this would cost more, I switched down to the 5 GB plan. Someone at your end chose this time to link my BigPond and Telstra mobile accounts, with the result two days were shaved from my last month (ended yesterday, 24 October). Complaint #4: don't merge accounts (for simplicity on your end) at the customer's expense.
Because of this account merge, my usage meter — which I check regularly — was saying the monthly period was September 27 to October 25. I assumed this was inclusive and today (25 October) learned it was not. Thinking today would be my last day before changing to the 5 GB plan, I left Steam to download a new game. This morning I learned that 2.5 GB has already been consumed from my new (5 GB) quota. I hoped it would download the files from the (unmetered) gamearena steam server. Apparently this was not the case. Complaint #5: get the gamearena steam server working so customer's can benefit from unmetered content.
All of this has made me very disappointed with the service. Can you do anything to help me? Here's a summary of those complaints and the actions I would like to see in response.
Complaint #1: I wish to complain about the high prices.
Action: please offer better prices!
Complaint #2: pair gain system still limited my choice in broadband.
Action: remove the pair gain (or please explain to me why I suffer pair gain, and when — if ever — this situation will be resolved!)
Complaint #3: BigPond not offering discounts to customers suffering due to technology limitations with Telstra infrastructure
Action: offer me a discount! Broadband costs me so much more because of this pair gain :(
Complaint #4: don't merge accounts at the customer's expense.
Action: don't shave days off account/quota, add days on. Make this a win:win situation for customers, not an opportunity to steal a few more bucks.
Action: reset my quota for October-November. I lost 2+ GB because of you ended the last billing period prematurely. Don't make it cost me this month's quota.
Complaint #5: get the gamearena steam server working so customer's can benefit from unmetered content
Action: Unmetered content is used as a major selling point on BigPond, start delivering on the promise! I've read gamearena can't control the steam server. I don't care about excuses. Fix it!
In much anticipation of your reply, by which I will judge whether I can remain a BigPond/Telstra customer. Between my wife and I, we have 2 iPhones, a home phone and Internet. We've taken it all away before and can do so again — it's painful though. Here's a prime opportunity to help a customer and win some loyalty.
Hoping you can offer us a reason to stay.

With Left 4 Dead 2 (another big download + gaming time) due out 17 November, I hope something good happens to allow me to enjoy the Internet. $90 a month for 5 GB though, it's just too expensive. Is it time to move house? Somewhere with broadband, like say, California?

GTA IV on PC: first impressions

2008-12-04T01:09:00.003+10:00

The good

Independence FM. Having your own music just makes the GTA experience that much more what you want it to be. We all have our own favourite driving/party/cranky music, it's nice to finally be able to play it. And commentary that relates to the audio track metadata, nice touch!

Mouse. Nothing beats the mouse. Nice camera control. Nice easy yes/no buttons. Useful for target and attack in combat. Love the mouse.

The bad

Driving with a keyboard — augh! OK, this one is all my fault for not configuring my gamepad — yet. Keyboard control for driving is awful, truly, terribly awful. In any game, this is not a GTA issue.

Antialiasing. Needs to be turned on! Even 2× AA would be nice. I guess this is related to …

The ugly

Graphics performance. I look forward to a patch or new nvidia driver (or both) that brings the framerate up. FPS is hovering in the 16–22 mark and that’s noticably poor. Strangely, dropping the resolution and graphics settings down as low as they go doesn’t improve the situation. I mean, it is good I don’t need to run it on low quality. It’s bad I can’t get the framerate up. So, bring on a patch. It seems to be a hot topic on the GTA forums. Glad it’s not just me.

Television statistics

2008-11-14T23:34:00.005+10:00

Forget ratings. MythTV keeps pretty detailed records of EPG data (TV guide), what you record, when you watch it, all that jazz. Ew. I just remembered I watched some of Chicago this week and I didn't like it. Now I can't say all that jazz. Hmmm.

Stats! Mythweb has a neato stats page that shows some interesting TV viewing habits in this house! We've been with digital TV for quite some time now. We used DNTV Live! on Windows XP for a bit, before I bit the bullet and switched to MythTV on Ubuntu linux.

And just how long have we had MythTV? 2 years 6 days 12 hrs 27 mins. 13% of that time was spent recording TV. Top of the list was Toasted TV with 598 recordings! Good Game just made the top 10 with 62. Neighbours also contributes a lot, which places channel TEN first with 1199 recordings. ABC2 comes in second — for those great kids shows!

In total we have recorded 3 months 5 days 21 hrs 58 mins of television viewing. Which explains the 1.5 TB that we need. I'm certain there is absolutely no way we have watched all that, but we do watch more telly now we can watch what we want when we want.

If you haven't switched to digital TV yet, you really should. But it isn't worth making the switch unless you get a DVR (digital video recorder). There are lots of options. Myth is free and pretty darn good. Of course, you need to build yourself a linux box to get it up and running first … If that sounds daunting, there are TiVo and Foxtel IQ and I dunno what else. Just go get it!

Easy rounded corners — playing nice with borders in IE6

2008-11-11T20:04:00.008+10:00

When a graphic designer gives you a mockup full of rounded corners, you just know you’re in for some pain. Why can’t they be satisifed with Comic Sans fonts instead of delving into techniques that haven’t quite penetrated the user-agent landscape yet. Ah… just jokes of course!

Andrew has published a technique dubbed “cornerise” over at irama, that neatly wraps up what we discovered when implementing rounded corners. As noted, border-radius does all the magic in newer builds of gecko and webkit, but that leaves us with a good chunk of Internet Explorer users needing some love—cornerise is such a technique.

It works by using javascript to insert some tactically placed <span> tags into a document. These spans are positioned in the corners, and background images provide the corners. The overall footprint can be kept lean by utilising css sprites (like this one).

If you happen to be using borders with corners, you have a bit more to do. Firstly, the background images must include a border strip the same size as the border — pixel widths only here. Secondly, the corners need to be positioned on top of the border which means moving them slightly beyond the bounds of the containing box. Thirdly, you will enounter a quirk in IE6 that results in a 1 pixel border on the right or bottom of the box. Try as you might you won’t get rid of it — without compromising the corners in IE7 and IE8 that is! Actually, this quirk presents even without borders.

To solve this quirk, we need to understand it. It is caused by a rounding issue (measurements are rounded to the nearest pixel when a layout is drawn on the screen). It only occurs when the width or height of the box is an odd number of pixels. And it only affects the right or bottom edge, the top and left are always ok. Because this only occurs on an odd number of pixels, you might not even be aware of the issue straightaway. Ah, these are the challenges that web designers live for!

You could specify the dimensions of boxes so that they are always an even number of pixels, but that’s a poor compromise. Here’s a simple solution we discovered that allows you to have any size box, and support resizing on the fly (due to viewport or text size changes). It requires a css expression. Yes, expressions only work when javascript is enabled. Since the cornerise technique itself utilises javascript, this is completely suitable. (And it’s not like corners need to be accessible, this is just sugar.)

For corners on the right edge:: _margin-right: expression(this.parentNode.offsetWidth%2==0 ? '0' : '-1px');
For corners on the bottom edge:: _margin-bottom: expression(this.parentNode.offsetHeight%2==0 ? '0' : '-1px');

What does it mean? Well, this will set the right/bottom margin to either 0 or -1px depending on whether the width/height is an odd number of pixels. That’s what the %2 is for. Yes, another use for modulus arithmatic!

Now, as stated, this problem only occurs in IE6. We don’t want this expression interfering with the nice positioning in IE7 and IE8, so we need to hide it from those browsers. You can do this with conditional comments if you like, but if you don’t want to maintain separate stylesheets for individual versions of IE, you have another option: prefix the property name with an underscore. Yep, it is that simple to hide a rule from IE7 and IE8.

True, it's a bit hacky, but you can’t argue with the results!

Conversation breakers from kids

2008-10-14T19:34:00.005+10:00

How do you stop another person from parrotting everything you say? The tried and true method was to say the person is “a silly duffer.” Of course, they can’t parrot this or they’ll be admitting it. It’s foolproof. Or it was…

Me:: “Daniel’s a silly duffer!”
Daniel:: “Daniel’s a silly duffer!” *pause* “Ha ha! I called you Daniel!”

Now what about those neverending yes/no debates. How to diffuse them without the tears? Impossible you say? Emma knows the way.

Daniel:: “Yes!”
Emma:: “No!”
Daniel:: “Yes!”
Emma:: “No!”
Daniel:: “You’re lying!”
Emma:: *pause* “No, I’m Emma.”

Can’t beat that, can you?

Now a Telstra customer

2008-09-27T12:06:00.003+10:00

Luckily I never got that 3 Internet key for mobile broadband, nor the $20 Telstra phone plan, because Christine and I have opted for something much more fun: iPhones!

And yes, they are with Telstra, which let's us get Internet access via NextG when VirginBroadband@Home plays up (due to congestion on Optus 3G according to Whirlpool forums). That makes it our third wireless Internet carrier. Third time lucky?

Proof of identity was still a little troublesome, but a birth certificate, 18+ card and credit card got me through. I avoided the Telstra shop and went to NextByte — the friendly local (next door to work) mac experts!

Rejoice! GST cancelled!

2008-09-09T23:27:00.004+10:00

Today I received the scoop from the ATO (Australian Taxation Office): Notice of cancellation — goods and services tax (GST).

No more GST? You’d think that would be bigger news, but there was nothing on TV. Just this personal letter. Well, not too personal. I was greeted as “Dear Sir/Madam”. But it was addressed to me by name — in fairness, as a sole trader, that may be my “registered business name” which only coincidentally happens to be my real name. Oh wait. I see this cancellation thing only applies to me.

You are not carrying on an enterprise
You cannot be registered for GST
We have cancelled your Australian business number (ABN)
The cancellation is effective as of 11 August 2008
If you are not satisfied … you may request a review. A fee will usually be payable. Your application must be in writing, setting out the reasons for your application and be lodged with the AAT within 28 days of the date of receipt of this notice.

Whew. Some of that was in a second letter. Cancelling my ABN. On my birthday. They only issued the noticed on 5 September and I only received it today. (Perhaps it was nice to not receive this on my birthday?)

Wow. Seems I haven’t worked since June 2006. That’s worked as a sole trader mind you, I’m still happily employed at Smart Service Queensland where I work to make user interfaces — and thus customer experiences — better. Which brings me to Tim Turner’s interesting work on government market segmentation. It describes four different market segments for government organisations. One segment is subject relationships.

The ATO have got this down pat. Australian business and taxation are their jurisdiction. They got the law on their side and they tell you how it is. Even if it is a month after the fact.

If you need to design a “government to subject” user experience, take note:

Apply the rules without informing the subject, as is your right.
Give the subject a token notification afterwards.
Do not address the subject personally: Dear Sir/Madam is appropriate.
Tell the subject how to appeal the application of rules, but warn them that they must pay for the privelege! To reiterate: do the thing, and then explain appeals. Don’t ask before doing!
Specify a different appeal process per rule applied. All appeals must be in writing, but they can go to different recipients. They are likely to be treated as entirely separate cases.
Remind subjects of other (potential) outstanding obligations. This is a blanket warning. Do not personalise to the subject’s circumstances.
Use “must” and “have to” a lot.
Do not engage in communication with the subject: no email or phone call, use the postal service.
Use a separate letter for each rule that has been applied (even rules that flow on from the application of previous rules).
Do not put your organisation name on the envelope, only a return address. Let your organisation name be known only when the letter is opened.
The letter must be signed (use a photocopied signature) by the highest ranking official within the organisation.

11 techniques to apply! Does this sound tongue-in-cheek? It isn’t supposed to. It's a list of observations from these letters that I feel effectively reinforced the “government to subject” experience.

Given I haven’t worked in 2 years, I really don’t need that ABN. And now I won’t have to fill out quarterly business activity statements. Nor request new digital certificates every time I rebuild my PC at home. And that is all good news! Woot :)

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people …

2008-09-03T20:46:00.003+10:00

“Going incognito doesn’t affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of … People standing behind you”

— Google Chrome

Darn tootin’!

Customer service disasters

2008-08-30T10:03:00.006+10:00

August has been a busy month for us. Yes, in just one month we have enjoyed all this fun!

I ordered 3 mobile broadband. I waited at home all day for delivery. Nobody turned up. I rang them and was told I had not supplied enough identification (even though I had filled out their arduous online signup form completely). I could scan and email (or fax) further identification, and then wait at home another whole day for delivery. No thanks.
Our dishwasher played up. We called Electrolux to come and look. They couldn’t make an appointment time any sooner than two weeks later (two weeks washing dishes, ugh). The service guy got sick so they cancelled the appointment and rebooked for a time an additional two weeks later. We tried another company, Drac Services. They didn’t show up and told my wife she hadn’t been home when she rang to query. Turned out they’d gone to the wrong customer. Booked another time. Finally made it to our house a couple of days later. Five minutes to assess the problem ($70): motor burn out. Said it would be an easy fix, like pick it up and return the next day ($370). Didn’t pick it up until after the weekend. Didn’t return it for another two weeks after we rang to complain (twice). Charged more than $370 when additional GST slipped in there, even though we’d been told it was included in quote — which is their legal obligation. Haven’t paid them yet — hey, it has only been one week!
Last week, twice the go card readers have flashed red when I ‘touched off’. I interpret this as not working, so I swipe the card again. Both times this has resulted in an extra $5 charge, followed by a call to Translink to get the money credited back to my go card. Which takes 10 working days. Too bloody slow, Translink. I’m still watching my go card account, where is my credit?
Transferred a mobile phone, still under contract, to my wife. Ticked the boxes to transfer the commitment (new owner continues to pay contract). Billed $112 for “phone payout”. Three phone calls to Virgin Mobile to fix this. Standard answer from call centre staff is “We pass it on to the billing department. Call back in 10 days.” Oh, and of course, “No, you can’t talk to the billing department. We’re not allowed to do that.” On third call, ranted a bit. Threatened TIO and backcharging. Have been told it’s fixed. I am watching activity on my bank account very closely…
The oyster light was not working in one of our four new ceiling fans. Electrician struggled to install them and recommended using a knife to prise off the glass covers. We couldn’t get the cover off to fix the light ourselves. Went back to Beacon Lighting to complain. Said they’d come check it that week. We called them the following week and they finally came around, and couldn’t remove the light cover without a hammer. Waiting on a replacement oyster light. Have light working with cover removed. Looks ugly.
Decided to give Telstra a go for wireless broadband. After years of resentment that their landline quality is so poor we get substandard dialup and are blocked from ADSL. Worked out the maths and it is cheaper to bundle with a $20/month phone plan than buy BigPond wireless alone. Went into a Telstra shop yesterday to pick up a $20 plan. Seemed so easy until “We don’t accept 18+ cards as primary identification. We need your passport or birth certificate.” Stunned. Tried online signup for a laugh — where I learned they don’t even accept a birth certificate. It is impossible for me to identify myself adequately to Telstra online. However, I did note Telstra do accept a ‘Shooters License’. Tempting…
Our washing machine was playing up. Still under (extended) warranty. Rang Horizon (Good Guys) and they can’t find our records. Washing machine broke yesterday — it does not turn on. Washing piling up quickly. You try it with a family of 6 (2 adults, 1 teenager, 3 kiddlies). Can’t call them until Monday. This is going to go well…

Our consoles days are numbered

2008-08-10T13:10:00.004+10:00

Big fans of gaming that we are in this house, we have 2 PCs for gaming, a Wii, PS3 and gamecube. There are more: N64, SNES and even an Atari, but they’re all packed away. Oh, and a handful of DS Lites and Gameboys are floating about. But I wonder about the consoles …

The PS3 exists here for one purpose only: GTA IV. With the announcement that GTA IV will be available for PC in November, will there be any reason to hang on to it? Sure it’s a blueray player, and a fine one at that, but DVD beats it hands down for price and availability and I’m not convinced the quality difference is noticeable (although I did enjoy Die Hard 4.0 — excellent quality. I’ll need to watch the DVD to compare). The games? Nothing has really struck me as “must have” yet. Other than GTA of course. The dualshock 3 controllers are great, and the USB charging is a great idea (that the Wii should borrow asap). They work great on the PC too, and xpadder is awesome at mapping the buttons. It’s a shame their isn’t better native driver support, or they’d be one of the best gamepads available for PC! So I might hang onto my dualshock, but I think the PS3 will be for sale soon. Just as soon as I complete GTA. Have I mentioned how awesome this game is?

What’s wrong with the Wii? Gotta admit I haven’t been playing it much, enjoying BHD on the PC more. But we love our Wii and it will stay. Very irritated at the long delay and inflated price of Super Smash Brothers Brawl here in Australia (and all PAL regions) and that Nintendo have used the Wii system update to block the freeloader that allows NTSC games to be played. Forcing consumers towards the slow and expensive local market for games is very, very disappointing. Of course, faster releases of games at better (internationally comparable) pricing is the real solution to this! For now, we're faced with buying another (local) copy of Brawl, or never updating the Wii system again … Please note I’m talking about purchased games, from overseas stores yes, not pirated copies.

Now when GTA IV is released for PC, in the USA first (followed by Europe), nothing will stop me buying the US version cheap from playasia the day it becomes available. And it will install and run on my PC without an issue. That’s how gaming should be. Go the mighty PC!

Props to Sony for keeping the PS3 game releases region free though. Learn this lesson Nintendo, and learn it fast. Your future revenue (from this household) depends on it.

Despite all this, I still love my games :)

Never a better time for gaming …

2008-04-30T21:45:00.004+10:00

… and never a worse time to watch TV! Big Brother is back. Not only that, but the finale of Biggest Loser has kicked Smallville from TEN HD for the week and the Logies means waiting an extra week for part 2 of the CSI episode shown last Sunday. TV has never been such a bore!

The gaming scene is alive! Brawl is out (well, we have to import NTSC versions, but it is out), Mario Kart Wii is out, GTA IV is out — I’ll need to buy a playstation 3 for that — and Wii Fit is out next week. Holy how sweet!

If you’re not gaming — what are you waiting for? Get into it!

Job security as long as there's stupid design

2008-04-21T21:07:00.000+10:00

Hallelujah! See 25 Years in Usability.

Pee in store for details

2008-04-20T22:16:00.002+10:00

The best typo I have encountered to date was in the Sunday Mail TV Guide today, in the small print of a full page advertisement for Barry's — “Pee in store for details”.

Now you know what to do — hop to it!

Public transport dystopia

2008-03-02T20:25:00.009+10:00

Welcome to 2008. For public transport in southeast Queensland, it is the dawn of the go card. Note that it is virtually impossible to mention “go card” to people without them hearing “go kart” instead. A go card is apparently a smart card, but you know what they say: Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.

There is a lot of propaganda around the go card. Here’s my experience:

You can order online with the Safari web browser (despite claims you cannot), just type junk into the username/password box when ordering.
If you try to get off a bus and the card reader isn’t working, all kinds of exciting lights and alarms will go off—it is very bracing!
Forgetting to “touch off” will cost you $5 ($10 from July).
It is hard to remember to touch off, especially since hardly anyone else has to.
When more people are using go cards, they’ll touch off and this will help you remember, but there will be more queueing to leave the bus/train station.
The card readers on buses rely on GPS — no bribing the driver to let you off at your house or flagging them down if you’re not quite at the stop, you cannot touch on/off.
It costs the same for Monday–Friday commuting — 10 journeys, to and from work per day — as a weekly ticket costs.
You won’t pay for trips you don’t make — due to illness, public holidays or flex time.
Travelling 4 days (8 journeys) in a week is cheaper with go card than any alternative because the last 2 journeys will be half price.
Extra journeys throughout the week (more than the typical 10) — which would be covered by a weekly ticket — will cost you extra.
… unless you can squeeze these trips into a 3 hour window of opportunity, but this requires math to work out the most cost-effective way to travel, and math is tiring.
If/when you own a go card, you can still buy other tickets if/when you like — no-one will know or care.
The fare machines at train stations are atrocious! You can only pay cash for large amounts (over $100 in my experience), EFTPOS for smaller amounts using a pokey pin pad. Terrible machines.

The dystopia, however, stems from a different source. Once upon a time, ticket conductors on Queensland Rail services — we used to call ’em “trains” like in Thomas the Tank Engine, now they’re “services” — would check for your ticket and sell you one if needed. This was a convenient, customer-friendly service. One was especially appreciative if one had arrived late and had to jump on the train without time to buy a ticket. Perhaps if services were more frequent this would be less of a concern.

In recent years, the revenue protection unit has taken over. They now check your ticket and fine you if you don’t have one. This is not a convenient, customer-friendly service! ;) As it turns out, they’ve mostly been issuing warnings. This year they have new warnings, spoken over the public address system in Central Station in a lifeless female monotone… the gist is customers are now advised that travelling without a valid ticket, or valid reason for not having a ticket, will now be fined. Fines will be enforced. Hearing that message really did drive home that the dystopia of cyberpunk imaginings is now my reality. It is exactly like living in Romdo (if you don’t understand this reference, go watch Ergo Proxy).

And what is a “valid reason” anyway? It sounds like stock options. I’d like to purchase a valid reason for not having a ticket today, please.

I’m green, if I were blue I would die

2008-03-02T12:44:00.008+10:00

Oh no, have I mixed up the misheard lyrics to Blue (Da Ba Dee)? According to a true colours exercise I undertook at work, I am “green”. According to facebook, I am a mix of Bigbird and Elmo. Who to believe?

There is a lot of talk about being green, or eco friendly, on the ’net these days. I spend a lot of time online and it's heartening to hear—from the awesome ecogeek blog—that online activity saves energy! We’ve noticed a significant saving by turning PCs off at night, at the back of the box (the IO button) if not at the wall. Only the HTPC is left on, to autoboot at 5 am and start recording. Still better than leaving a VCR on all night I think.

But that’s not what being “green” is all about. It’s about being a scientist. A thinker. Cool. I hope they play The Scientist (by Coldplay) at my funeral. Nothing morbid about it, going to happen one day and should be at least 70 years as I plan to reach 100! Sadly a colleague of mine passed away last week … rest in peace B2.

Leaving home, life was never good to me

2008-03-02T12:11:00.003+10:00

It’s nice to see Daniel (5) and Emma (2) playing nicely together. Yes, there are a few tears but on the whole they have worked through them together and I’ve never seen them playing as brother and sister so well. You’d think that would make for a nice weekend—and it is a highlight—but it feels more like one of those grit your teeth and get through it things.

There’s a bit of a cold around the house and Caitlin (4 months) isn’t sleeping so well. She’ll sleep just fine when held—I sat for an impromptu screening of Wings of Honneamise and she slept until 2 am while I did so. Pop her in bed and she wakes to cry in an instant. Yes, there is a bit of a cold and a whole lot of tiredness. Perhaps this is why my wife told me she is waiting for me to “leave”. ’Coz why would anyone put up with this? Her thinking, not mine. I know who, where and why I am.

The whole week has been a bit like that. I did a lot of ironing today.

n.b. the title of this post is from a Jebediah song, not an indication of intent!

Friday night bowling

2008-02-02T20:52:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I went bowling, ten pin bowling with real — heavy — balls, rather than a Wiimote. First attempt: gutterball. Second attempt: 1 pin. So overall, I’m happy with a final score of 84!

Hadn’t been bowling in years. Quite fun. It’s much funkier than I remember, what with music videos and UV lighting. Although I feel inclined to mention, if your name is three letters long — like Ben — you’ll get your name up in lights instead of just an initial. Whether that’s cool, or an invasion of privacy, I just don’t know. Like I don’t know if bowling a strike is a bonus, or a cleverly devised way of giving customers one fewer bowls for their money …

Twin Caitlins

2007-11-30T23:35:00.000+10:00

It seems I am very slow in blogging this important news — we have Caitlins!

Specifically, our second daughter, born 25 October 2007, and our first niece, born 16 November 2007. Both doing marvellously well, and balancing out the genders in our families. Look out boys! (Oh wait… that's me!)

Sonic, Brawl and Jackets

2007-10-10T23:27:00.000+10:00

Nintendo have been busy of late! First, an announcement of free wii remote jackets to improve grip and safety. Today, an update for the Wii that allows a USB keyboard to be used with it (why, I don't know!)—but the news, the BIG news, is (on every blog I am sure) …

Sonic is joining Smash Bros!

broadbandy news

2007-08-29T21:22:00.000+10:00

This has nothing to do with federal government broadband plans (which I am ignoring for the time being) but my own broadband connection(s) here at home.

I quite like the sound of Virgin Broadband — you get your home phone and Internet bundled for $60/month. Internet runs off the mobile network: 3.5G (HSDPA), 3G (UMTS) or 2.5G (GPRS). We are apparently in the 3G coverage zone so I decided to take advantage of the 30 day trial.

That was Monday. Apparently my existing net connection got wind of this because it up and died that afternoon (it is still down). With anticipation I plugged in my new Virgin modem and got … GPRS. That's the one they say is “slow” like a modem. They aren’t kidding.

Tonight I was in contact with Unisky, my wireless broadband provider. They suspect my radio (modem) is dead and will need replacing as they can’t get a ping from it. However, it’s $110 to have a tech guy come out to confirm this and $550 to replace the equipment — $660. Yikes. I have asked them to outline my options including other technicians, buying my own equipment and/or cancelling the contract.

I like to be eccentric. So I decided to see if we could get a better signal putting the Virgin modem outside. It’s currently sitting outside on the air conditioner fan housing and we’ve had a solid 3–3.5G connection for about an hour. It’s great. And fast!! Now if only we can work out a way to do this and keep the modem inside the house where it belongs … wish me luck, I hope there’s light at the end of this tunnel!

Ben the BAT

2007-08-08T18:49:00.000+10:00

I’ve been in my new job a month now — a BAT (Business Analyst — Technical). Smart Service Queensland is a fun place to work (very busy, but very friendly) and they sure do pile on the training. I’ve been thoroughly inducted and grounded in project management methodologies (PRINCE2) so I now know a whole lot of new jargon like configuration management and product-based planning. What will I do with this knowledge? According to facebook I will gather friends for my army of darkness …

Actually that has nothing to do with work. I will be helping analyse and define technical requirements for services (from agencies) that are integrated into the whole of government approach to customer service through phone, counter and web. The web seems to be a quiet player in this field, it underpins the other channels but people seem to trust that it will “just work” hehe. I’ve worked in web — I wouldn’t be so trusting!

It’s good to be broadening my horizons :)

Ultimate late night shopping

2007-07-05T22:28:00.000+10:00

Me and my stack of transformers — it's taller than I am!

Tonight we went ultimate late night shopping. There are many toy sales on and transformers are everywhere due to the new movie (very cool, go see it!) The sales are great. I caved and bought the Wii game. And the Harry Potter game. And Bonecrusher. Then we went to another store and I got Megatron, Optimus, Starscream, Blackout, Ironhide and Ratchet. I showed restraint and did not buy Brawl or Jazz. Well, they weren't on special! Maybe tomorrow! ;)

Speaking of tomorrow, and of shopping, I got some Robot Heroes for my work buddies, as tomorrow is my last day. They'll miss me, but this well help remind them there are more important things out there in the world, namely the Autobot–Decepticon war!

We also had Subway (yum) and ultimate shakes from Wendy's

What else is ultimate? Smash Attacks!!

Hooray I got a job!

2007-06-18T20:00:00.000+10:00

I did it, I won a new job. More money, new challenges (hmm do I need challenges with a baby on the way?) All happening soon - gonna be a busy year!

We also got a tank.

Winter Wonderland

2007-06-01T00:17:00.000+10:00

Hooray it's Winter! I don't really like the cold (not that it is cold) but Winter means birthdays for boys in our house. Hooray! Happy 1 June, watch out for those sly pincher-punchers today!

ps: I'll have a shiny new domain soon... for various reasons I can't use "www." as the hostname though. Any suggestions?

HTML 5

2007-05-19T23:26:00.000+10:00

Yes, there is work being done to bring about a recommendation for HTML 5. We already have HTML 4.01 (the most current version of HTML) and XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 (2.0 is still a draft). What will all this mean for web developers? Some of the key aspects of HTML 5 as I understand it are improving HTML forms (it's not XForms, but any progress would be most welcome!) and looking at some of the other limitations of HTML. I believe the browser vendors are also moving to standardise on some of the browser functionality that has become common: WYSIWYG components, and some APIs around ajax and similar (though some of this may be taken up by the Web APIs group). Perhaps it is better if you read the architectural vision for HTML.

Yes that sounds a bit of a muddle. It's not really. If you work in the web industry it should be making sense (go read up if not, your professional development requires it today!). In any case, HTML 4.01 dates back to Christmas 1999. That's 7½ years. Don't you think web development has changed a bit since then? All of this relevant because tonight I "successfully joined the HTML Working Group". Now isn't that reassuring? :)