( First: Anyone who needs help with storm damage, please call and ask if you see this. Be warned that the storms are not over according to the BOM. )

It hailed inside the office today. Big, plum-sized hail stones smashing through the skylights and bouncing around the office, followed by an incredible torrent of rain. I got hailed on indoors while ( Read more... )

Australians all let us rejoice
for we are young and free.
-- 8cake

Well said - and we're certainly working on it. Say no to Internet Censorship.

I just switched hosting of large files (12Mb or so PDFs) on my employer's website from the existing Australian host to one in the USA. Why? Because it's cheaper to send data from the USA to Australian users than it is to send it from within Australia.About 100x cheaper, in this case, when comparing Anchor Networks per-Gb pricing to SimpleCDN's ( Read more... )

The pricing for Windows 7 is absolutely obscene - and rips Australian users off even more than the US. Pricing comparison for Win7 Pro, with US dollars converted to current AU$ equivalent:
  US AUAU % premium New OEM $110(?)$19563% Upgrade $221 $39964% New Retail $333 $44957%
As a software developer myself, I try to respect ( Read more... )

On try #2, I succeeded so well with my palak paneer making attempts that I don't think I'll ever make it this good again. The first one was ok but lacklustre; this is better than what I've had at most restaurants. You folks know I don't tend to think much of my cooking most of the time, so if I'm this happy about something I cooked that should tell ( Read more... )

The Anchor Networks head sysadmin has an opinion on commercial support for software that's pretty similar to mine - it's garbage. Both of us have learned this from painful experience ( Read more... )

Microsoft Reader run under WINE.

Sigh. Not only is it the best, it's practically the only one unless you're content with fixed-format PDF. Few eBooks are available in, or reasonably convertable to, HTML, and even if they were there aren't any HTML renderers that can do half-decent H&J. None at all can hyphenate even poorly, and justification ( Read more... )

Throat infection day 4 Glandular Fever. Kill me. I get 2 hours pain-reduced sleep from ibuprofen, 1 hour from paracetamol. Yes, it's safe to interleave them, for which I'm eternally grateful. You wouldn't think something like this would be so spectacularly, unrelentingly painful ( Read more... )

I went for a walk along to the end of the main Koh Tao beach. The end past the boat piers, the part that isn't full of dive shops and restaurants ( Read more... )

Night diving rocks. Way less disorienting than I expected and awesome fun. Saw a nice big barracuda, sea urchins out and feeding, all the coral polyps open to feed. Sweet stuff.

It really shows that Koh Tao isn't a marine reserve. Compared to Ningaloo it's dead and in particular there's not much larger fish life. Coral damage is also apparent, ( Read more... )