1. December 7, 2008

      Australia: Day 3

      Yesterday was full of driving. Sam rented us a car, he doesn’t drive, and I can clearly see why. Traffic isn’t as chaotic as Seoul, but I keep thinking we’re going to have a crash every 30 odd min. Completely different to traffic back home.

      Now, being the geek I am, before we left I upgraded my Okta Touch to Windows Mobile 6.1, and hence unlocked the GPS. I then proceeded to load it with some software, and a map of Australia. This is probably the best thing I brought on holiday. Unless you’ve had a GPS, you hae no idea just how much stress it alleviates. When Telecom turns off it’s CDMA network or I get an iPhone (whichever comes first), I plan to mount it in my car for those times that I can’t avoid Auckland.

    2. December 6, 2008

      Australia: Day 2

      What, so I didn’t tell anyone I was going to Australia?

      Sorry, between work, sleep and play, I forget to update things on the internets, such as my blog, Facebook etc. Anyway, I’m in Melbourne on holiday from the 5th till the 13th (next Saturday)!

      Myself, Beverley and her family are visiting Beverley’s brother Sam. Beverley’s parents Bill and Louise are attending a conference in Cairns on Tuesday, and so will be leaving for that early. Beverley’s sisters Jenny and Nicky have things on, and so will be joining us Monday.

      Pacific Blue is a really good airline. Sure, you don’t get any of the niceties that Air New Zealand gives you like… … a blanket. It is a nice, cheap flight, and the cabin crew is friendly and energetic. Kinda reminds me of Mile High. The only thing that concerns me was the lack of water handouts. Yes, they offered for you to buy some, but I thought they were required by some air safety something?

      Landed in Melbourne safely, where we encountered new ePassport booths, a “quicker” way of clearing customs. Being the digital natives we are, we had to try them. Insert your passport and answer 4 questions; have you had tuberculosis, are you a criminal, have you been to a place with yellow fever, and have you lied. Afterwards, it prints out a little ticket. You then take this ticket to a gate, look into a camera (facial recognition stuff), and proceed. Now that we know what we’re doing (it took a second to figure out the order of operations), I reckon it’ll be much quicker. One disadvantage though:

      I don’t have an Australian stamp in my passport!

      Upon leaving the airport, the heat struck us. Not as bad as entering Seoul, but still very noticeable. Also, Australians seem to have an interesting sense of art, as the “artworks” along the motorway just seemed to be rectangular pillars arranged in some weird fashion. Except the huge concrete ones on the bridge, which didn’t actually support the bridge…

      Was mostly uninteresting after that. Went to TGI Fridays, went to Borders, went home and slept. More as I encounter it.

    3. September 25, 2008

      Time for some updates

      For those of you out there disappointed at the lack of content lately, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about my little site. I’ve just been busy with work (seriously cool stuff which I hope to share soon) and getting the backend working. Now that it is, you’ll start to see some changes around here.

      For example, you can now see my latest Twitter up at the top of the main page. Nifty eh? Next up, I’m almost done my admin interface, so I’ll be able to tell if people are writing comments, and actually respond to them in a reasonable timeframe. You know, like I should have done in the first place, instead of relying on phpMyAdmin.

      Watch this space.

    4. August 7, 2008

      Yay for backups!

      About 15 mins ago, I managed to do something utterly stupid (it involved VMware snapshots) and reverted my server to the state it was in as of 31 March. Notice how it only took me 15 mins to get this post out?

      Before you start thinking it, no, this post doesn’t just exist to boost my ego (I already know I rock). As I keep telling the masses; everyone needs backups. Drives are cheap these days. Storage on Amazon S3 is dirt cheap. Whatever solution floats your boat, make sure you’re taking regular dumps of your data.

    5. August 4, 2008

      Yahoo sucks again!

      I have a domain. Big surprise. What may come as a surprise to some people though is that up until a month ago I used Yahoo Domains, and until today, I had no complaints.

      A month ago I noticed Yahoo was increasing their renewal price to $34.95. I had already planned to move to Godaddy this year due to their sponsorship of Diggnation (go Diggnation!), so while being a little more motivated because of the price difference, I thought little of it. I switched, and have had no problems. I clicked all the buttons I could find in Yahoo, and thought it was all done, as I had no more correspondence from them.

      Until I check my credit card bill today, and notice a nice $50 NZD charge attributed to my domain. WTF!?!?!?! Yahoo still wants money for a service I’m not using!!!

      Yahoo has really screwed up this past year, and I can only hope the next .com burst will finally pop the bubble on the company that really doesn’t care about customers.

    6. July 21, 2008

      Sorry Nexus readers

      If you’re coming here to watch me dance… Sorry, but you’re about to be disappointed. I’ll upload it to YouTube hopefully tonight.

    7. July 12, 2008

      @World Cyber Games NZ, part 2

      Ok, I have a little more time and brain function to type now…

      For those not in the know, I’m the network admin for the biggest LAN party in NZ, The World Cyber Games NZ Qualifier. It’s a big job that involves lots of sleep depravation, but it’s fun in a sick way. It started at 12:30 on Friday (today), and will go till Sunday. Here are a bunch of photos, and maybe tomorrow I’ll post some more…

      It’s been a hectic few days. To start of this picture trail of some of my experience, I think the most fitting is an image of how my flat looked the night before setup day. In this picture you should see a switch, my laptop, my server, my HP 90/700 terminal, 4x Cisco switches resting on a firewall, 1 massive switch, another terminal, and Jono (aka Sheep) on my laptop configuring the switch.

      My living room

      Next up is two photos of the WCG banner and TelstraClear Pacific banner. Just to prove we made it.

      TelstraClear Pacific roadside sign

      WCG NZ roadside sign

      And the communications room at TelstraClear Pacific stadium, the place where we ran our 100m ethernet internet link out of, as well as patch to the rest of the building…

      Patch room

      My laptops and Jono…

      Laptops and Jonathan

      My 42″ plasma, which displays a graph of the internet usage, as well as a warning to n00bs…

      Plasma screen

      The lights of a switch.

      Network switch

      Endless rows of people… (760 total really)

      Rows of people

      So ya, thats what I’m up to this weekend. Don’t blame me if I don’t text back, I’m busy blocking network ports.

    8. July 11, 2008

      @World Cyber Games NZ…

      Finished. 2:30am (30 mins better than last year), I’m done. Much more complex setup too. Pictures after I get some sleep, I’ve been up for nearly 24 hours now…

    9. July 8, 2008

      Vodafone + iPhone == Fail

      I know, I’m probably the last kiwi to blog about this. Hell even the mainstream news had a go at Vodafone after today’s announcement. But what did people really expect? The fact that they wouldn’t use their standard plans should’ve tipped everyone off to what was going to happen. That’s not to say that Vodafone’s pricing is in any way understandable or acceptable. After all, who in their right mind would need that many call minutes and that small of data allowance with a device that’s obviously going to be heavily data-oriented? To quote Beverley;

      Regular phone calls to the butler to get him to check on the sports car collection? … And to call people to get them to Google stuff for you cause you blew your cap in the first hour.

      That said, it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m happy with my mac laptop and Windows Mobile phone, and who knows, in a few months when Telecom rolls out their GSM network (and I know for a fact they’re keeping to schedule), they’ll lay the smackdown on Vodafone, and all will be happy.

      Back to networking… Pictures coming soon.

    10. June 12, 2008

      Always the simple things…

      So for the last hour, I’ve been trying to get Microsoft Messenger:mac working with the Office Communications Server. I try using my credentials, and the only error I was getting back was “sign in to Microsoft Messenger failed because the service is not available”.

      So I busted open WireShark and had a look. It was constantly getting a 200 (OK) back, right before Messenger threw the error. I tried turning off my firewall (10.5 has it’s issues…), and it still won’t work. I try manually setting the server settings, nothing. So I head over to the Microsoft page, to see if I had an outdated version. And that’s where I saw it…

      Turns out, Microsoft Messenger:mac won’t work with Office Communications Server 2005, only 2007. WTF!?!?! C’mon Microsoft, why won’t you let your client connect to your own server, just because it’s a little outdated!!!! Anyway, the moral of the story: If you get this error, just downgrade to version 6. It works as expected

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