Thoughts from the ...

Quick note. Free pen giveaway over at carpelibris reviews

2009-04-18T11:07:00.001+12:00

Not sure I’ve talked about pens here. But I’m an avid Fountain Pen enthusiast and use one every day. I’ll probably blog again about pens, however in the meantime I’d like to point you at a Giveaway over at carp(e)libris who are offering to give away one of the fantastic handmade pens from Ryan Krusac Studios. Have a look if you’re interested.

Been a while & change of direction

2009-01-22T15:15:00.003+13:00

Sorry for the "long time of nothing"

Hi there, It's been a while. Much longer than I expected, so apologies to those still reading looking for information. My last post was while still in Hospital care, just before being discharged. That was now nearly 3 months ago. Basically the short version of what's been happening since, is that it's been going well. Very well in fact. I'm doing part-time work back at work - part of a graduated return which so far (touch wood) has been going fine and doing a Gym session 2-3 times a week as part of my physical recovery. I'm physically and mentally in better shape than before. The cognitive fatigue issue whilst still there is hugely better than on discharge from Hospital - progress is still being made and I think I have a pretty good handle on it's effects and how to manage it. There are lots of little details, but they're not necessarily so interesting in their own right. Therefore, it's time to kick this blog back into life and change direction a little.

The future of this Blog

So It seems a little silly now to use this blog as a week by week , blow by blow account of where my recovery is. For myself I am now keeping a shorthand day by day written diary/journal, to track things. Rather than repeating myself here, in a what may simply seem a self-obsessed way, I have decided that it's time to move on. If you are interested in knowing more about how I am in a more general way, please feel free to contact me.

In the meantime this blog will revert more into a discussion of those ideas, pieces of technology, music and other items of interest, that catch my attention in a wider sense. Inevitably you can't come through this sort of experience without it affecting one's outlook on life or indeed channelling one's interests in someway, so I'm sure that there will be mention of the effects of my medical event and my ongoing recovery along the way but not as the main subject of the blog. There are other more general topics to discuss from here. I'm working on some ideas on how to give this blog some more thematic unity than previously, but as of yet I don't want to publish those ideas until they are fully formed. More to come on that. As always I love to hear that people have been reading so feedback as always is most appreciated. If you started reading because you know me personally and wanted to follow my recovery, hopefully you'll stay around a while and see where my ramblings go now. Many thanks to you all and belated wishes for the New Year.

Home for the long weekend

2008-10-27T12:28:00.001+13:00

Hi there,

Sorry haven't been keeping the blog up todate. Been busy as you can imagine. So I'm walking now without aid. Indoors is fine, outdoors and when I'm tired, I still need a stick - more from safety reasons than anything else.

The left hand and arm is also making good progress. I can type a lot better (still slower than I'd like but getting better) now.

My Discharge day is now moved forward to next Friday, which is really great news. From there I will need some time at home to readjust to life and then start looking at doing more work related activity. I will still have outpatient appointments for physio and the like so life is going to be more about managing time and energy.

The main issue now is to do with pacing myself and managing the fatigue issue - which is a major thing to get right. There is no way to do what I previously would have done - if I felt tired, just push on through until the job was done. This does not work at all following a brain injury - just no way. If you don't notice the signs of fatigue and do the right thing (and resting is the only option) then you will end up seriously in a mess with an even bigger problem to deal with. Pushing it further lengthens the amount of rest it takes to recover properly by a factor of 2-3x the time it took to get in a bad state in the first place. So I can see that managing this will be one of the greatest challenges over the next wee while - particularly when out of the well controlled and regular environment of the hospital.

A Tuesday thought

2008-10-14T09:47:00.004+13:00

So it's tuesday. Progress still being made. The Violin felt a bit more under control this morning, still slow and weak but the fingers had a little more stamina and were staying mostly where I put them.

My balance while walking is improving for the moment. This is good news and obviously helpful for the practicalities of getting around.

Yesterday was my "Family Meeting" which was where you see your whole therapy team with relatives in attendence also. Basically a mid way status check and a chance for everyone to report and checkout where things are at. From my point of view there were no hidden surprises. It seems that everyone is very happy with my progress, so that's good news.

In general, I feel like I have a little more stamina. Mainly I think that may be a consequence of the day to day ordinary things being easier, meaning that my brain is not struggling so much to make things happen. In general I feel pretty good about it all. Keeping positive is also very important. That's not at all too hard as my team here are all so good to work with!

Weekend Home

2008-10-12T17:52:00.001+13:00

So I've just had a weekend home. Great again to see everyone and be comfortable. Also interesting as although it's only a few days since I came home previously, things are still easier to manage. So continuous progress is being made.

I'll try and post more this week. There are some goals I'm hoping to be able to manage and I'll report on those as they happen.

Back again

2008-10-09T10:54:00.003+13:00

So I'm back at BIRS. The trip home was great. Being back is fine too. It's a little like being here is about the work to be done, so that means going home is a bit like R&R.

I can walk around the ward now with the walker without supervision. So some independence is great. Basically the walking is coming along well. I also have a different type of foot splint, more of an ankle splint for the moment which is there to help support my foot from turning over when I walk. The dorsal lifting the foot motion has returned so my physiotherapist is happy that unless I get tired I'm walking much better without a full AFO (Ankle-foot orthosis), the previous style of splint I was using.

The arm and hand are improving too. I'm beginning to incorporate using my left hand for eating more now. I can also do a little manipulation of objects with my left hand fingers now as well. All good and positive.

Post from home

2008-10-07T15:36:00.001+13:00

So I'm home for a visit. I can't explain how great this is. Very great to be here in familiar surroundings. Things are getting better every day, so I always feel like there is progress being made every day. I'll say more later, this is just a quick post to keep everyone up todate.

Another Saturday

2008-10-04T10:11:00.003+13:00

Wow, so it's a week since i posted last. Sorry about that. It's been a busy week and I haven"t managed to get to a computer since last weekend. Well progress is being made, little by little. I can transfer safely into and out of a car now, This is relevant as there is a home visit organised for this coming Tuesday which will be scary and also really great all at the same time.

My Left Hand is little by little getting more involved. Actually it is helping type the odd letter here so that's definitely a lot better. It can help with socks when getting dressed also as well as holding things while my right hand does things. Also the big news is that my Doctor here suggested that I should get the Violin and start trying to work with that; which I have (it's not every day that your doctor tells you to practice your scales!) It's very slow and tiring, but I can get my left hand to start holding down some notes. It's very like an absolute beginner in that the fingers are not quite strong enough to hold in place and slide a little. Those string players amongst you will understand how that is. The other issue is that the left arm is not very strong at holding the instrument up. So little 4 finger exercises are the thing for the moment.

Walking is coming together too, although again I'm limited in how much due to tiredness issues. There are two types of tiredness involved with everything for the forseeable future.Firstly muscles that haven't seen much use can obviously get tired quicker. However as a stroke is a brain injury it's actually the brain (that is working very hard to try and make things happen) that's the main source of fatigue. Given that I've always been used to a lot of intellectual stimulation which also will tire the brain, figuring out how to "pace" my self is one of the biggest things I'm learning here.

I enjoy the therapies very much as every day I can see something little that is making a difference. Lots of little things are coming back. I'm deemed to be basically safe in the bathroom these days - meaning that I have enough left leg strength to stand on my own and enough right hand strategies to be able to shower and toilet fine. This independence is a great feeling.

Well that"s enough for now. I hope everyone reading this is fine. I'll update again hopefully soon.

Quiet Saturday

2008-09-27T16:24:00.003+12:00

So it's quiet here. Ellen and the girls have just been visiting. It's great to see them of course. Ellen reckons that my walking is showing some real improvement which is encouraging.

Also I can do more with my left hand and arm like being able to operate the wheelchair brakes on the lefthand side, which may not sound like much but it definitely is a bit better. This thanks the physio work which is obviously having an effect. Little by little it is getting there. More later.

More progress

2008-09-26T10:35:00.003+12:00

So I'm here making progress. I've even found a computer!

So yesterday's procedure went okay. Well so I'm told. I can't remember much about it to be honest. That"s what happens when you get given something that takes away some of your recent memory. Basically the procedure involves sticking a transducer down into your oesophagus which is behind the heart so that they can do ultrasonic imaging from closer than is possible from the front. I haven't had a full report yet about what they found, however from the short report it appears that there was no obvious source of clotting found so that is most definitely good news.

So today is back to something a little more akin to normal life (well what is currently normal). I can pretty well shower and dress myself now with minimal assistance. Which is really good. Even things like putting socks on one handed seems to be happening. (You should try it some time - it's amazing what you take for granted that can provide a real problem without one hand working properly.)

Also I'm feeling a bit better about it all. I can see progress being made, so that helps hugely. Thanks yet again to everyone who has been sending best wishes and offers of help to Ellen an I, It reallly is much appreciated.

I know I keep saying it to everybody I see, but the staff here at BIRS and also at the Acute Stroke unit in CPH are really just great I've had nothing but the best assistance from lovely smiling really great wonderful professional people. It's a real joy to be around them all!

Making progress

2008-09-24T18:36:00.005+12:00

So this place is really not quite how I imagined although it's really good. The staff are really great and I seem to be making progress. Chrissie my physio was working with me today. I have a sligh tlack ofbeing able to differentiate and detect blunt vs. sharp and hot vs. cold on my lower left leg. Just something to watch out for. Otherwise most sensations seem to be ok.

I have a different wheelchair now and can get around by myself to some extent. Walking is a little better also. I went further with the walker today. Than I have previously. I have to be careful when walking that I don't over strain or rely on my right leg as that won't help me for the long term.

I also had a cast taken for an orthotic foot splint to help my foot when walking. This is a plastic assist that goes inside my shoes. All in all ieeallydeel likei'vemade some progress so that's really good.

Tomorrow I'm off in an ambulance in the morning back to CPH for a test called the TOE. Which stands for Trans-oesophageal echocardiogram which looks closer at the functioning of my heart. Still looking fir possible causes for the stroke. The whole process will probably be quite tiring so it may wipe out most of the day.

Starting recovery

2008-09-23T09:31:00.005+12:00

Well as some of you know. Last week I suffered a stroke. At present I am in BIRS. which is the Brain Injury Recovery Service at Burwood Hospital. Christchurch.

I'm starting recovery here now and am determined that I will be back to things,as soon as is reasonable. I will probably turn this blog into something that documents my recovery. I have loads of thoughts piling around the brain so will attempt to get some of these down as I go.

Now the "from the dots" thing of the title probably means more! I always felt that in some way the ... Elipsis somehow represented "the void" iat least virtually. So now "from the dots" really is coming to you from somewhere that is a bit unknown. Hope you all stick along for the ride. I'll update more actual details about what I'm doing as and when I can at the moment this is done through Safari on the iPhone which is a little slow and awkward. If I can get some time behind an actual computer, then it may be easier to get things out. I hope everyone reading is well and ok. Fell free to leave comments. I will get them.

Thanks, John

One Week With the iPhone 3G

2008-07-19T18:45:00.001+12:00

One Week

So this is a collection of thoughts and reactions to my first week with the new iPhone 3G. Although there are a number of people here in New Zealand who managed to get the first version if the iPhone during the last year, I have not been one of those. This is my first iPhone.

Deciding to Buy It

The process of deciding to buy, was a real mixture of worry, suspense and even distaste. Here in New Zealand, there is only one Mobile network that currently will run the iPhone, that being Vodafone New Zealand. Also as Apple do not own their own retail chain - only selling direct through a Web site, they t themselves did not participate directly with selling the phone. This left it up to Vodafone themselves very much in charge of how the phone was going to be introduced.

The delay between Apple’s wordwide announcement of the iPhone’s International launch (including that New Zealand would be one of the 20 countries to get it first); and the announcement from Vodafone about prices and plans (only released 3 or so days before the actual release) probably led to a lot of the publicity that the plans and cost announcements finally garnered. There are plenty of online sources for comment about the actual plans including the online forums at Geekzone hosting a huge amount of discussion, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say, that it made a lot of news, not much of it particularly complementary for Vodafone itself.

For me, I had been waiting for quite a while for this sort of device. My old phone was failing and I really needed a newer phone with good capabilities. Given that I use Apple computers a lot, going for an iPhone made a lot of sense - both as I knew the functionality would work and integrate well with my computing environment, but also as I appreciate where Apple seem to be taking this type of device - somewhere which is really quite different in intent from a traditional smart phone. So, I had to reconcile this in some way with the costs associated with getting the phone on a plan that would work for me. Without going into details, I did not sign up for one of the special plans, choosing instead a plan that fitted best what I consider my usage on the phone to be.

Buying It

The phone went on sale here in New Zealand at 1 minute past midnight on the 11th of July - the first country in the world to sell it. Only three stores in the whole country opened at that time though. I was not going to go and queue outside at that time of the morning, preferring instead to get up early and get to a suburban Vodafone retail shop, for their 9am opening. This is what I did - queueing for around 1.5 hours waiting for the shop at the Northlands mall in Christchurch to open. As it happened I was 2nd in line at this particular store and having spent 15-20 minutes in signing up for the contract etc. came out holding my brand new gleaming phone.

The queueing was easy and enjoyable. There were around 10 or so others there by the time the shop opened. We all seemed to get on reasonably well and spent time discussing options, plans, the publicity and associated discussion. (If any of you were there, please drop me a comment).

Using It

The most obvious reaction to actually having an iPhone in your hands for the first time was how different from any other phone I had used, this actually is. The experience is one of understanding suddenly, that the rules have changed and that the possibilities are different from what you imagined. This is something I had not experienced with any gadget since the first Palm I owned, sometime over 10 years ago. I know that for a lot of people who started perhaps with the 1st generation iPhone last year, this may be old news. Indeed it is something I have read and heard a lot about, however understanding this isn’t quite the same until you have held and started using one.

The inbuilt functionality has been written about a lot. For me, the stand-out things are the fact that I can actually browse the web without the restrictions that other mobile devices have. The email client is better than I expected - it’s actually quite usable for the IMAP accounts that I want to use. (I’m rather fussy about email - it takes quite a lot for an email client to be acceptable to me.) The contacts and calendar apps are perfectly usable and offer well done and functional syncing to my computer - something that has been a problem in every other phone I have used. The Google Maps (including the GPS functionality) is extremely useful and functional. The handling of SMS (although managing conversations could be extended more) is still better than on any other phone I have used.

This is not to say that I think it’s perfect. In fact I would go as far to say, that the iPhone reminds me a lot of the early iPods - revolutionary in an interesting way that points towards the future, and for now does very well what it does - but doesn’t do everything. It seems as if Apple have decided to choose the features that they are going to do, they do them to their best capabilities, make them very functional and usable and then leave room for future features to be added. (This is exactly the same as with the iPod line of developments - for example it amazed me how long it took Apple to provide an iPod that would do gapless playback of audio.)

Obviously for now, the main thing with the iPhone 3G is of course the ability to extend the basic functionality via the download-able applications. The App store has been very busy. I don’t want to spend time reviewing it here and now, suffice it to say that to me the extendibility of the phone, because of it’s Internet platform capabilities, is probably the most exciting feature for me. Already I am able to use it with very simple (but nevertheless useful) little tools for interacting with others on the Internet. I’m looking forward to more.

Conclusion

Overall, for the first week - I’m pretty blown away and happy. The device is different from what I expected in detail, but providing all the interest and functionality I had hoped for in the wider sense. I’m looking forward to where the iPhone story goes from here.

Waiting for the iPhone

2008-06-22T23:17:00.001+12:00

Yes, so like many of the others waiting for the new iPhone; I’m also waiting. Here in NZ we haven’t had an “official” release of the iPhone. Not that it hasn’t been available. Our open market legal framework allows anyone to bring any device into the country and sell it, as long as they give basic support. Therefore a small number of them have found their way into the country being distributed and sold via online auction sites as well as some Computer parts stores.

However for me, I haven’t been out and got one. Although I’m interested in technology and gadgets, I’m not the type of person who will run out and get the “latest and greatest” just for it’s own sake. Currently, I’ve been using with the Motorola V3X - a phone I bought around 2 years ago. While it was still working, there was no justification to upgrade or change. However recently the V3X has started misbehaving, becoming unreliable, dropping calls, missing txts, turning off at random times and generally giving strong hints that it is no longer in a sufficiently reliable enough state to be in permanent use.

Given the upcoming July 11 launch of the iPhone 3G, I am interested to see whether the pricing and cost model will fit within my budget. Therein of course comes the issue. While Apple have made a big announcement and confirmed the launch date of July 11 and it has been confirmed that Vodafone are the local launch partner - no details of pricing, data costings/plans etc. have been released. Nearly two weeks after the news that NZ is getting the iPhone - no one really knows under what terms it will be available. The only thing that one can hope for is the enigmatic quote from Steve Jobs during his speech; “…in almost every one of these countries, the price is a maximum of $199 all around the world…”. Lots of time and effort, is being spent trying to understand the implications of that. Does this mean $199US converted into local currency? Are we the implied exception to the “almost every one of these countries”? What does this mean for data?

Hopefully Vodafone NZ will announce things soon. To be honest, holding off and missing the opportunity to get anticipatory exposure, is probably hurting them in some way.

For me, I simply need to be able to plan what to do for my increasingly alarming phone situation, to be able to understand whether I can afford an iPhone or whether I should be looking for some other alternative. Hopefully we all find out soon!

Vodafone NZ will now not lock phones

2008-05-28T14:04:00.001+12:00

So to follow-up from my previous post about Vodafone now selling locked phones in New Zealand, it seems that the Government’s Commerce Commission (regulatory watchdog) has applied some pressure. “For now” Vodafone will not be proceeding with locking handsets.

Coverage here from Stuff:

Vodafone has backed off a controversial decision to lock its mobile handsets under pressure from the Commerce Commission.

Telecommunications commissioner Ross Patterson told The Independent Financial Review he had expressed concern about Vodafone’s “intentions”. The mobile firm had said it would charge $50 to unlock new handsets from April if people wanted to shift to another mobile provider in New Zealand or use a provider other than Vodafone for overseas roaming.
[From Vodafone relents on mobile lock]

Geekzone again has comment from Paul Brislen from Vodafone:

Here's the link to our letter to the Commerce Commission BEWARE: it's a PDF.

Clearly this is a win for customer feedback. Our customers told us they didn't like the move so we've changed what we're doing.

Any handsets that are locked will be unlocked for free. Just follow the instructions on the box.

The linked PDF says that Vodafone is changing its policy “as a result of the responses it has received from its customers”. It also states that Vodafone had already imported and started selling locked handsets to customers. They will continue to sell those handsets already in their “supply chain”. Any customers who wish to unlock those phones, will be “able to call a freephone number and do so free of charge.” However Vodafone, apparently “reserves the right to review in the future its decision on whether to lock handsets” and also raises the future possibility of “charging differentially for locked and unlocked handsets”.

Comments on the Twitter Outage discussions

2008-05-23T20:13:00.001+12:00

So, given the popularity of Twitter there is a lot of commentary going around the blogosphere and tech news communities, due to the last couple of days' outages. The article at Tech Crunch is typical of some of the attempts to characterise the issues. Their article really annoys me.

The source that I spoke to also commented on how ill-prepared the Twitter team were and are for their current and future challenges. The small team contains a handful of engineers, with only a person or two committed to infrastructure and architecture. He goes on to point out that at Digg the team for network and systems alone is bigger than the total engineering team at Twitter, and that at Digg they are lead by well-known “A-list rockstars”.
[From Twitter At Scale: Will It Work?]

This type of journalism really irks me. It's very difficult for anyone to form a reasonable opinion with this type of reporting as it's completely based on hearsay, with no way of validating the comments. Critically, the "expert source" is not named, or quoted in any way that gives the reader any hope of validating the opinion. If a "source" is not prepared to be named and stand up as an "expert" allowing the rest of us to judge their credentials - really we have no option but to disregard the information entirely. The quality of the opinion or accuracy of assessment here simply cannot be determined.

To discuss the ideas from the unamed source; it's really easy to think that all of a company's problems can be solved by "Big Engineering". Often that simply adds complexity to the situation. It seems that Twitter already have a project to improve their site in progres. Trying to add to a development team halfway through what is obviously a project already in train, just does not work. Twitter themselves are quoting a process already in train:

Essentially what has been happening is that we've been trying to make changes in order to improve the long-term reliability of the service. Those changes have introduced instability in the short-term, however. We need to be able to make these kinds of changes and do so without affecting the service. That's our goal and what we're working toward.
[From May 20: Twitter Downtime]

Often as not, a really focussed but small team can do wonders. Just because an application is managing a large scale problem, doesn't imply that the team has to be big.

Tech Crunch goes on to talk about Ruby on Rails.

The problems at Twitter are often attributed to their use of RubyOnRails, a web development framework. Twitter is almost certainly the largest site running on Rails, so fans of the framework and its developers have been quick to deflect the criticism and point it back at the engineers at Twitter. Utilizing a framework that has never conquered large-scale territory must certainly add to the risk and work required to find a solution. As an out-of-the box framework, Rails certainly doesn’t lend itself to large-scale application development, but was a big part of the reason why Twitter could experiment and release early.

Rails has enabled Twitter to prototype quickly, to quickly launch and then to easily iterate with new features. But the old adage of “Good, Fast, Cheap - pick two” certainly applies; and Rails would do itself no harm by conceding that it isn’t a platform that can compete with Java or C when it comes to intensive tasks. Twitter is at a cross-roads as an application and Rails has served its purpose very well to date, but you are unlikely to see a computational cluster built with Ruby at Apache any time soon.
[From Twitter At Scale: Will It Work?]

This comment is simply misleading. Apache is a web server. It is often used in conjunction with the other systems that run sites of this nature. I'm sure that somewhere in the Twitter setup Apache is being run also. The Apache Web site is the place from where you get the software. Whether we'd be likely to see a computational cluster at apache.org anytime soon has no bearing whatsoever, as to whether Twitter is engineered well.

In conclusion, I have no idea whether the issues at Twitter are a result of questionable engineering decisions or not. The issue is however, that the FUD from sites like Tech Crunch (who I would expect to have at least made an effort to do some good research on this), doesn't tell me anything more about the situation.

Monteverdi for working

2008-05-11T21:46:00.000+12:00

When I'm working, I often like to have some music playing. Nothing too over the top. Most often on a pair of headphones (Sennheiser P100 foldables that go with me wherever the laptop is) so as not to disturb others around me. What I've found, is that for the sake of concentrating on what I'm doing, it helps not to have too much of a strong lyrical or story telling set of music around - particularly if I'm programming, working or concentrating hard on a particular activity.

For quite a while the favourite "working music" has been some type of Baroque music - most often played on original instruments. For quite a while it would inevitably be Bach - most likely one of the Cantatas. Recently it's been Monteverdi. Often the Vespers (Vespro della Beata Vergine - see Monteverdi Vespers for more info), but sometimes other religious motets or one of his Masses.

Although it would seem that my selection seems to be religious in nature, however I don't think that that fact is particularly important. I think it more tends to reflect the composers' of that time and their common interests, in producing a music that was meant for the soul in some way. Most notable, in particular with the early baroque is a different sense of time - a feeling that perhaps has been lost since.

All I know is that at the moment, there is nothing much better for soothing the soul and allowing concentration on intense programming work, than "Ave Maris Stella" from the Vespers.

Lovely day at Governers Bay

2008-05-10T21:04:00.003+12:00

Had a nice day with the family today. Went to Governers Bay, at the end of Lyttleton Harbour. Lovely day with gorgeous scenery.

Charles Stross - On writing long series' of novels

2008-05-10T00:05:00.002+12:00

If you're into Science Fiction novels and you've been asleep for the last few years, you may not have heard of Charles Stross (in which case you really should not get out so much and spend some good quality stay-at-home time reading).

Seriously, if you haven't come across Charles Stross he's one of the most interesting and captivating authors of the last 10 years in the SciFi genre. He has a wonderful collection of books, particularly including a sequence of novels called "The Merchant Princes" series. Therefore when he starts writing (on his blog) about the process of dealing with long large works made from smaller pieces, it's very interesting to hear. It's also worth having a look at the rest of his Blog/Diary online as there are lots of different gems there.

One thing's sure: our willingness to absorb fiction is geared to our attention span. A book in a series might structurally serve as a mere chapter, but it has to deliver as significant a cognitive reward to the readers as any other 300 page book; otherwise they'll feel cheated, after putting 5 hours of their life into reading the thing, and they won't pick up the next volume.
[From Charlie's Diary: Bang, Bucks, and Delivery in Recompense]

Vodafone NZ locking handsets now

2008-05-09T10:50:00.001+12:00

The following was posted the other day, so I'm a little late in seeing this - but I still had to comment.

It's amazing how, when push comes to shove (i.e. Vodafone finally gets a GSM network competitor) that the old solutions come out to play. Surely there's someone there with some creativity who can think a little outside the square.

Hi all,

Vodafone’s mobiles are sold exclusively for use on Vodafone New Zealand’s network.

From 1 May we are locking new handsets to our network. All new handsets sold will include information about handset locking and how to unlock handsets.

Locked handsets can be unlocked for a fee of $50.

This is being done to protect the customers’ experience of the Vodafone brand. Vodafone brands its mobiles with both the Vodafone and Vodafone Live! look and feel. If a customers takes a Vodafone mobile to another network, the customer won’t be able to access the Vodafone experience and services.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
External Communications Manager
Vodafone
[From Vodafone NZ locking handsets]

Mac OS X 10.5.3 - not yet

2008-05-08T23:30:00.001+12:00

It seems that the latest Leopard patch is still being tested. I'm waiting for this one with real interest - hoping it fixes a few of my niggling left-over issues from Leopard.

Ars Technica as always has the good info:

Apple continues seeding test builds of Mac OS X 10.5.3

Vodafone to offer apple iPhone in ten markets - Vodafone NZ

2008-05-08T22:58:00.005+12:00

This looks interesting. I'm hoping that the pricing is reasonable and affordable:

Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.

Vodafone to offer apple iPhone in ten markets - Vodafone NZ

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta Released

2008-05-08T22:40:00.003+12:00

It seems that OpenOffice3 Beta is released with the native Mac Aqua interface. Let’s hope that it turns out all okay. I’ve not been at all impressed with OpenOffice for a while. I actually think it got worse there for a while - particularly on the Mac where everything ended up horrendously slow.

Anyway, have a look at Ars Technica for an in depth look:

First look: OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta a big step forward

Photographic Experiences

2008-03-15T19:59:00.002+13:00

This year is a little different for me. I've become much more interested in Photography. Well saying that I've become "interested" is a little misleading. I've always been interested - but perhaps I've become more than the "casually interested" me of before - excited being a much better word now.

I've had access to a camera right since I was at least 6 or 7. In fact I recently came across an old photograph of our family with a visiting cousin from back in 1970. There I am at age 6 or so, with a camera hanging on a strap around my neck. Something like an old 35mm Ilford (or maybe Minolta) camera. These days, we'd mistakenly call them a rangefinder camera, however strictly speaking there was no rangefinding capability on it - you had to figure out focus by dead reckoning. All the way when I was growing up, I had a 35mm camera and used to take photos on holiday - using the handheld meter and trying to figure out the distance to focus with best I could. I used to shoot mainly on Agfa 64 slide film.

Having grown up, finished school and gone to University; when I had finished my undergraduate degree, I felt the need for something a little better and more usable as a camera. I'd been looking around at SLR 35mm cameras for a year or two. Finally, I bought a Nikon F301 camera and a couple of lenses. This mainly as I was involved in the creative arts (as a musician and composer) and wanted the ability to document performances, for myself and other creative artist colleagues. From here on, I ended up shooting mainly print film, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was a little cheaper (University students not being known for lots of money), secondly I could shoot faster film which was better for indoor work and thirdly the extra latitude of the film helped get over any inconsistencies that the lighting or situations provoked in getting a good exposure.

Time passes (boy isn't that the truth) and other things become important, like family, work, career etc. The photography, while not at all major, was still there to some extent. Photos of family mainly. The biggest issue, probably was that lack of consistent practice, means that one's skills and confidence with the camera are affected. I ended up not shooting because I was only putting a couple of films through the camera per year. Not enough to be confident of getting the shot or knowing really what I was doing.

Come the new Millenium and I was in a different sort of job. Working for a network development company in a fairly senior role. Travelling on business frequently and needing to document locations and events. Basically the company decided to buy a couple of the new latest Sony Cybershot F-505 Digicams. The first time I used one of these was on a trip to a conference in Europe in 2000. I was with a colleague and we had the camera with us at the time. I remember suddenly understanding the point of the immediacy that digital offered. Being able to see immediately, what had happened. I really enjoyed the experience and became quite excited by the future, until I realised how much still that a digicam cost. On that trip, I took some photos that I really liked (and would like to see again) - but that's the problem when you are sharing a camera with someone else - things get lost along the way. Over the next year or two, I borrowed one of the Sonys here and there for special occasions and found the experience wonderful.

So, somewhere around 2004 we bought a Nikon digital compact, a Coolpix 4300. The prices of digital had been coming down sufficiently that we could afford to do something about having one in the house. Of course this revolutionises how you and the rest of the family relate to photos and photography. The move to having pictures on a computer. The ease of having immediate feedback of what happens and the low cost of taking a photo of any occasion you can think of means that the who family gets much more photographically aware. What it didn't really do however, was give me sufficient flexibility and scope to feel properly creative and able to photograph what I wanted.

Somewhere around the last few months of 2006, I started feeling like I wanted to get back more to the "hobbiest" mode of photography that I had enjoyed when I was younger. To me this meant some sort of decent camera - most likely of the SLR type. Having looked around - I wondered about a so called "Bridge" camera (sometimes called a Super-zoom as they often have fixed lens zooms with a large range). I figured out that given the way photography was going, having a camera with RAW capabilities was much more flexible and most likely the better way to go. Most bridge cameras were in some way compromised, either in image quality, lack of RAW or suffered from noise issues in low light. Having realised this, I then started concentrating on finding an appropriate DSLR (in kit form) that did what I wanted without breaking the bank. Finally, just before Christmas, I went out and bought a Nikon D50 twin lens kit (18-55mm and 70-300mm zooms included). The reason for buying Nikon was simply that I already had some Nikon 35mm gear, and figured that it was reliable, good quality and I might be able to use some of the lenses I had.

This triggered a year of playing around, using the camera where I had been previously (on holiday and family gatherings) and a little bit of trying out some other things I wouldn't have (see the previous post re: comet photo). I guess that while I had the camera, that wasn't still sufficient. Making time to actually go and do things is important and also working on my skills of "seeing" the photo first, being able to work with composition within the frame was just as important.

So, then we come to this year. I had decided by the end of last year, that I wanted to know more, get involved with others in some way and basically improve my ability to "see" a photo. Basically the aim was to deliberately go and enjoy taking photographs, but also to find some creative outlet and direction for what I was doing. Therefore, this year I've joined the local Photographic Society - looking for enthusiasm, expertise and camaraderie along the way. So far I've found all of that and more. For the first time for quite a while, I've been consistently enthusiastic and excited about photography for 2-3 months now and getting out and taking photos.

I've also started contributing more to Flickr, joining a few groups and enjoying interacting with other photographers there. You will notice that this site now has, a side bar with a slideshow of my current Flickr photos. Please feel free to click through there, and leave comments on individual photos.

So far, that is what there is to say. However if you keep watching the Flickr feed you will see more. Also, I'll see whether I can document and discuss a little more on this blog, some of the experiences as I go on the journey.

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Leopard adventures

2007-10-26T23:47:00.002+13:00

Well, here in NZ 6pm on the 26th comes before everyone else virtually. So having obtained my copy having watched the unboxing at the local dealer (thanks Magnum Mac), it was home for dinner while the laptop backed up and then put the DVD in the drive.

The install went pretty well fine with only one little hiccup. Somehow it didn't detect the internal hard-drive and the installer couldn't offer it as an install target. After a little digging with Terminal looking at what was mounted where, I managed to provoke it into correctly mounting the disk and then I could select and install on it.

Everything else has gone rather sweetly. It really does look rather nice and is behaving very well for me so far (knock on wood). Outstanding good impressions so far: how fast Spotlight is now, how much faster Safari seems to be, the use of Cover Flow on folders with graphics, the better Terminal, the "Quick Look" functionality of Finder and just how good an "upgrade" install really is on Mac OS.

Questions still to be answered: Where my iCal calendars have gone (currently they're empty and they really shouldn't be), can I selectively choose some folders in the Dock not to be a stack (my Applications folder is really too big and unwieldly as a stack - however I'm used to having it down in that location), why the dock seems to have taken up more space horizontally for the same number of items and wondering when Acid Search for Safari is going to be updated.

Overall, for a .0 release a pretty good version - better than the developer releases I saw!

Well done Apple!

Technorati Tags: Apple, leopard, Mac OS X

iPod Classic - First Thoughts

2007-09-20T20:29:00.002+12:00

Well, I'm now the proud owner of an iPod classic. Having posted my ruminations on the prospects before Apple announced their new line, I watched with heightened interest a couple of weeks ago. I guess I was sort of disappointed that Apple didn't release a Hard-Drive based iPod touch - however I'm not really surprised. Probably the power budget for that sort of device would not have been at all realistic.

So the decision for me came down to a question of "fancy features" where management of the library would have become more of an issue (I have quite a bit more than 16Gb of media) vs. size and practicality. Well - my practical nature won as it usually does. Basically I placed an order on the same day of the announcement.

What I didn't quite predict was that it was going to take nearly 2 weeks for stock to come to NZ retailers. It seems that some units have arrived, but it seems that there are still not that many available. Anyway, I've now got my new toy and so far I'm really enjoying it. Probably waiting, wasn't too bad as I managed to get the new update for the firmware before I came to load it - apparently the very first users had some issues.

The device sounds really nice. I use Sennheiser PX-100 headphones (foldable portable real headphones) that really improve the sound amazingly. I highly recommend these with any portable media device (even with a laptop) as they seem to be the best sounding portable small size set of headphones I've ever come across for the price. I tend to prefer real (i.e. headband over the head) headphones as earbuds really end up hurting my ears and don't fit so well, which also obviously affects the sound.

Anyway enough for now. I'm off to listen to a couple of Podcasts while the rest of the family are watching T.V.

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New iPods? - My Wishes

2007-09-02T17:40:00.001+12:00

So, if you at all follow the tech and gadget news, you will no doubt know that this coming week, Apple are supposed to be releasing some new products that it is rumoured will include one or more changes to the iPod line-up. This is good news for me personally, as I'm most probably a customer in waiting for whatever is coming.

A couple of weeks ago, I was ready to buy an iPod (a full iPod Video - I'm not interested in the current Nano). I went to our local Apple supplier to see and talk about it and found that they didn't have any stock, they had no idea of timelines and that it seemed that there was no stock available anywhere in NZ or even Australia! Given how Apple seem to handle stocking, backorders etc. this seemed very unusual unless there was a new model set somewhere on the way - therefore I wasn't at all surprised to hear of next weeks coming announcements.

So, I've been reading around some of the rumour sites. I've heard what the Apple pundits seem to think might be on the way. I listened to last week's Mac Break Weekly (including Scott Bourne's display of being seemingly ignorant to anything other than a "died in the wool" Apple fanboy's opinion - thankfully Leo and Merlin were making sense) which tried to predict what might be coming. (For the record, no I'm not the guy with a neck beard that lives in his parents basement either!). However as an actual potential customer, I thought I might share some thoughts about what I'm looking for.

For me, I'm not interested too much in the smaller iPod concept. The Shuffle is simply not interesting at all - I want to see what I'm going to hear. The Nano's are a bit too small for me. I'd rather carry my music collection - all of it - and still have sufficient room to carry a reasonable number of podcasts, videos and still use it for some external storage if I want to. (The argument about having an external drive for that doesn't work for me. I really don't want to have to carry even more devices. Generic storage on a device I'm going to carry is good). For me, I don't see that a flash based unit can meet my price expectations for the size I'm looking for. I know flash is getting cheaper, but I still don't see 2digit-Gig flash based storage being cheap enough. I'd really like some sort of touch interface like the iPhone. We don't have it here in NZ and it will probably take a while yet - so something of that style of device interface would be really great. The larger size screen for video content would also be great, even at the expense of more storage requirements for video. I'm not too sure about WiFi capability.

I guess, the ideal would be a Hard-drive based iPod, somewhere in the 40-80G range, with the iPhone interface minus the cellphone capabilities, costing around the same price as the current iPod Video. That would be ideal. However I guess we will see what is available in the next few days!

[composed and posted with ecto]

New Flock

2007-07-16T17:04:00.002+12:00

Flock has a new version of their browser. For any of you who don't know, Flock are a company that publishes a web browser specifically aimed on online "Social Interaction" sites. Based on the codebase from Firefox, it has a number of specialised tools that aid interaction with a number of online services and websites. In particular, it has extra support for Blogging (both reading and writing), Online Photo services and similar media streams.

They've recently updated to a new release 0.9, with a much more streamlined UI and interaction with services. This version is also the first that features a codebase based on the Firefox 2.0 browser.

Anyone who hasn't taken a look at Flock previously, should take a look - you may like it. Even if you have, the updated version seems to be quite a change and has a number of different methods for dealing with features compared to the earlier 0.7 release and previous.

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Comet McNaught

2007-02-05T23:27:00.001+13:00

So like most people, I've been looking at Comet McNaught to see what I can. Here's a photo taken last night from my front lawn. It's quite a bit harder to see with the naked eye now. The photo's taken with Nikon D50 and 50mm f1.8 lens, ISO 1600, exposure of 13seconds at f8.

Richard Hammond

2006-09-21T22:33:00.000+12:00

If you're a fan of the BBC Top Gear programme, you probably already know this:

TV host 'improving' after crash. Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond is improving but remains seriously ill in hospital after he crashed a jet-powered car during filming for the BBC show.The 36-year-old was thought to be driving at about 300mph on an airfield near York when he crashed on Wednesday.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | North Yorkshire | TV host 'improving' after crash

If you're not a fan - you really should have a look at this program. These guys (Richard is one of three) make some of the most entertaining TV out there. Not particularly "politically correct" and most probably therefore the better for it.

Get well Richard, there's a whole bunch of fans on this side of the world who want to see you back on the screen!

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New MacBook Pro

2006-09-21T22:15:00.001+12:00

It had become time to upgrade. My old favourite PowerBook was slowing down - mainly due to lack of memory. It seemed time to pass it on to someone else in the company (we have a policy of rotating good gear from "power users", down to "medium users" as it seems that they get a better run of it with older good gear, than with newer "not so good" gear) and getting something that will do the job for longer.

So, it's here. It's rather interesting. Not quite what I expected.

As is often the case, some things are quicker/easier than others - and as is even more often the case, predicting which will be faster can be difficult. My biggest worry of course was dealing with the issues of changing from Power PC Mac OS X and Applications, to the newer Universal or Intel binaries. Whilst Apple provide "Rosetta" a emulator for the older binaries, I was aware that problems can come from more complex applications where any dynamic linking or "plugin" architecture is used.

The first surprise was how quick it was to install the OS, migrate my Home directory, settings and Applications. This took around 2-3 hours. Add another hour to do the typical OS upgrades (only one reboot) and basically I'm ready to go within 3-4 hours of unpacking the box! Very impressive - I can't ever remember doing anything that major, that quickly before, on any previous operating system.

The second surprise, was just how much Apple have changed their concept of the hardware. No modem, no PC-Card socket, no Firewire-800 (not that I ever found a use for that), no S-Video or TV Out. The things that mattered for me out of these missing bits; were not being able to use my PCMCIA<->Compact flash reader, not having dial-up capability (Broadband or WiFi is just not quite so universally available everywhere here in New Zealand), not being able to play video files through the TV with a cable that came with the machine. All of this is simply fixed with extra adaptors, however it's a little disappointing to have to go and pay extra for the functionality that was just there on the PowerBook.

It's when you start exploring the software a little bit more, that you find a few more surprises - all of them to do with third party software. Surprisingly it wasn't MS Office that caused the problems (I've had issues with that on a previous temporary migration from a restore). The most annoying was that my Thunderbird setup ended up crashing. Now before anyone starts blaming Thunderbird, you have to understand that I had Thunderbird with around 20 extensions and a history of running various other extensions in the past - i.e. a history of severe change in my Thunderbird profile. I suspect that somewhere in one of the extensions, was some piece Power PC binary code that didn't work inside Thunderbird. The solution was to start a fresh profile, download new versions of the Extensions I was using and migrate my address-book across. This solution of course, was only after I had tried unsuccesfully to remove them one by one.

Other things just worked well. I have been looking at most of the apps I have installed (a worrying amount when I look at my Applications folder) and updating those that have updated versions to capture Universal Binary version. Some of this, has taken a lot more time than I would normally have recommended, as in each case I want to look at the apps concerned and figure out exactly what compatibility issues they may or may-not have. There are still a few bis of shareware I've bought, that haven't been updated and won't run properly - nothing major or show stopping though.

It also triggered a look around at my Web browser situation, as it has become quite clear where the drawbacks of each browser that I sometimes use (Safari, Firefox, Flock, Opera and occasionally Shiira) are. Basically, I seem to be using Flock at the moment (mainly because of it's nice UI and News Reader) with Safari as a more than creditable backup that actually runs faster with a way lower "hit" on the memory usage. Firefox seems to run a little bit faster than Flock, however suffers in the UI space as it's default theme whilst usable is a litte less "mac like" than I would like, and also it's extensions do not always work so well in the Mac space. Also it's built in RSS "Live Bookmarks" support is insufficient and Sage whilst functionally OK - is not quite as straightforward to use as the Flock newsreader.

Most other apps are just fine. AdiumX is just superb as always. Quicksilver the same. ITunes now finally has some of the features I had been wanting (have a look at some of my back posts) and most of the rest "just work" a one would expect on a Mac.

All in all, a rather nice upgrade.

Guitar amplification ... My History. Part 1

2005-06-13T10:15:00.001+12:00

I've been spending some time recently looking at the options for updating my guitar amplification system.

I've played electric guitar now for around 15 years, having picked it up in my 20's as a hobby/antidote to the professional classical music career that I was pursuing then. At the time I was playing Violin with a Semi-professional Symphony Orchestra, while doing post-graduate Music at University.

Since then, the guitar has had a varied place in my life, initially being something I could do that was more improvised, through to something I was using as part of the Electro-Acoustic composition work I was creating. Having left University with a Masters degree, I ended up teaching music in various schools; initially teaching Violin. However there ended up more people wanting to learn Guitar! So for around 5 years the Guitar ended up providing a reasonable chunk of my income, such that it was.

Having picked up more of an Internet/Network Engineering career in the last 10+ years, initially I found less time for the Guitar. It's more recently in the last 3-4 years that I have picked it up again, started jamming with a couple of friends and done the odd small gig.

Which leads me to where I am at, which is attempting to update equipment in a usable manner for someone who has been a professional muso, but isn't currently in earning money from this side of my interests.

Initially when I started in 1985, I bought the best moderately playable instrument that I could find that offered as much flexibility that I could get. For amplification, I initially practised at home through an old Stereo (I wouldn't really want to use the term Hi-Fi as that implies something a bit better), that I had previously assembled as a kitset a few years earlier. To get something approaching any sort of "guitar sound" I bought an Ibanez ST9 Super Tubescreamer, which along with a Stereo Chorus pedal managed to tame the bland sound of an electric through a very ordinary amp. So, Stage 1 - very bad semi HiFi amp!

When I got to be able to afford an amp, I ended up buying a Peavey Triumph 60 combo, for the time a really cheap 3 channel tube amp. Well there's a reason that it was cheap, it really isn't that flexible. The Clean channel is rather nice, however it seems a little light on the bass end of things by today's standards. The Crunch and Ultra channels are voiced identically, with Ultra having more gain. They are a sort of 80's super-saturated distortion channels with very little bottom end at all. Additionally the tone controls on the amp are shared between all channels, with only the Treble and Presence controls having an effect on the Crunch and Ultra channels. Basically you get two sounds; clean and distorted with a different gain and level setting for the Crunch channel from the Ultra channel. Not the most flexible.

Some good Torrent material

2005-05-31T20:27:00.000+12:00

From Slashdot, a link to a useful list of Linux torrents.

Find Linux Torrents Quickly: "torrentnerd writes 'If you're on the hunt for Linux ISO Torrents you might want to check out the long list of recently released distro torrents over at LinuxISOtorrent.com. They've got frequently updated torrents from A (Arch) to Z (Zen). The site only does one thing, but does it well - helps you get the latest Linux distros downloaded via BitTorrent, quickly.'

(Via Slashdot.)

Playing with Mac OS X

2004-11-08T18:19:00.000+13:00

So I've been playing around with Mac OS X. Things are beginning to fall into place now. A lot of things are really cool - however there is one big disappointment: Media players and management.

So I have a reasonably large collection of mainly mp3s that I have ripped off my collection of CDs. Nothing that unusual. The main thing is that in the Mac OS X universe, everyone seems to think that iTunes is a great media player - when actually it seems to suck quite badly. I've been running with the J. River Media Center on windows which seems to be way better than iTunes. Major areas where iTunes sucks in comparison to Media Center:

1. Gapless playback. I've seen comments about this for the last 2 or so years - but still it has not been fixed.

2. Ability to easily and simply manage a very large number of albums with simple multiple at a time, tag editing.

3. Offering more than one way of browsing media - i.e. more than "Genre-Artist-Album"

4. Offering more than a flat-list of playlists.

5. Ability to browse the file system and edit, import, manage files inside the application.

6. Importing and managing other than mp3 or aac media - including ogg, ape etc. file formats.

7. Customisable display modes for track information, including lyrics and other info.

8. Completely extensible meta-data tracking against tracks.

9. Multiple zone playback for Home Media installations

etc. etc. etc.

Anyone with some reasonable alternatives in Mac OS X land - please let me know.

New Hardware

2004-11-02T23:58:00.000+13:00

So in the last couple of weeks I've been playing/testing/working with new hardware - specifically a new Apple PowerBook G4 17-inch.

For me this has been interesting. I haven't had the opportunity/experience of getting used to a brand new OS or system "from scratch" since the release of Windows 95. Back then (1995) I had already got my hands dirty with Unix boxes and was working as a System Administrator for an ISP working with SunOS 4.1 while my home machine was an old Atari 1040 ST. Since then I guess everything I have done has involved getting familiar with an OS before actually using it in anger as it were. However this time, there isn't much one can do except, buy the machine and immediately start using it!

So my initial reaction was "why have I waited so long?". The combination of cool sexy hardware, easy to handle GUI with a Unix under the hood is really quite extraordinary. The thing I wasn't expecting (jaded long time sys-admin/developer I guess) was how much it just works out of the box!! So for me, there are things that I am really quite fussy about. One particular areas is email - the result of having worked with so many different email systems in the last 18 years - a lot of which just don't cut it. So to find that the default Mac OS X Mail client "just worked" seems really cool. I have an IMAP setup here, that often a lot of clients wont get right - however the Mac seems to be handling it as good as any. Not perfect - however damned good, predictable and reliable.

The predictability bit is so often not what one finds in clients that have just "bolted on" IMAP functionality. Often email clients, assume that you are only going to use email "their way" what ever that is. When IMAP is added to the fray, they simply extend things by just carrying over the assumptions. So for a new user without any previous email this may indeed be reasonable. HOWEVER! this is now 2004. Most people on the Internet using email will have already been using email previously. If they are using IMAP they will most probably already have been using the server and therefore have a folder structure, way of using it and a collection of email already there. Therefore just assuming that the client can go ahead and create new folders, for Drafts, Sent mail, Junk-mail etc. is not necessarily helpful. Neither is immediately assuming that all folders in the namespace need to be checked for new incoming email and immediately synchronised with the offline cache on the workstation. For me both of these habits are so annoying that I will probably remove any prospective client software that I am testing immediately! Why? because I have a mail-folder collection of around 288 folders, containing somewhere around 6-7 Gigs of email.
Not something I want downloaded (possibly on a dial-up) just because I ran up a new client!!

Enough for now. More ramblings to come about mail and Mac OS X I'm sure!