Creative Ministries Department Production Member of the Year 2007 award photos

Here we go: PHOTOS!!!

Announcement (read the projector screen contents)

The award itself

Good stuff I reckon! Unexpected, but very very good :)

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Aftermath - Part 2

It's looking good now! The 24 hours are up and here's the result:

Start remaining download quota: 13.8432Gb
End remaining download quota: 13.7260Gb

Download quota usage: 117.2Mb (approx)

Seems that a normal day of download quota usage, without downloading big files, racks up to somewhere between 100Mb and 150Mb. I didn't know about that previously but there you go.

Citipointe Creative Ministries Department Christmas Party

Well, tonight was the Citipointe Creative Ministries Department Christmas Party. It was Hollywood style so I dressed up as Jack Sparrow. Not completely or properly as I couldn't find a vest/coat, the right belts, boots or... well, anything. The only thing right I think was the hat :) Thanks Kylie!

I was also presented with an unexpected award! Creative Ministries Department Production Member of the Year 2007! It's great! If anyone out there who had a hand in picking me is out there, thanks very much!!! Also, thanks to everyone else on the team that I work alongside with. You guys rock! I don't know if any of you will see this, but just in case... :P

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Aftermath - Part 1

Well, download quota usage seems to have slowed down now but just for an after test, I'll record the next 24 hours.

Start remaining download quota: 13.8432Gb

The last 24 hours were approximately 100Mb but that's only been estimated by glancing at it. The real results will be interesting.

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Day 5 - PROBLEM SOLVED!

Hey look! DAY 5!!!

Well, sort of... I'm posting late but you know... Even if I don't...

Everything's back online now so here's the results for all THAT:

Day 4 results
Original remaining download quota: 15.4834Gb
End remaining download quota: 14.83804Gb

Day 1: 116Mb (approx)
Day 2: 465Mb (approx)
Day 3: 121Mb (approx)
Day 4: 645Mb (approx)

And... it's pretty much over. Looks like I've found the source. I installed a program called TVersity on Garfield a few weeks ago to try and stream video to my xbox 360. The program wanted to convert everything to some sort of different video format so I cancelled it, stopped the background service and just left it alone. In the last 2 days I've been getting notifications from Garfield saying it's out of disk space. I had no idea why so I downloaded TreeSize to tell me where all the space had gone. Turns out TVersity was still running and has been downloading podcasts and youtube videos even though I was pretty sure I'd killed it... I never subscribed to those things either! >:-(!!! Stupid thing... It's uninstalled now and I will not be putting it back on in a great hurry... if ever!

Culrpit: TVersity via Garfield!

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Day 4

Generic greeting day 4.

No more testing to be done! So it's rest time... Thank goodness!

Day 3 results
Original remaining download quota: 15.6042Gb
End remaining download quota: 15.4834Gb

Day 1: 116Mb (approx)
Day 2: 465Mb (approx)
Day 2: 121Mb (approx)

REALLY looks like we have a winner now! Next I'll be trying out invidual machines offline most likely in this order:

Leopard
Simba
Garfield
Jaguar
Cheetah
Sylvester

But for now... well, until tomorrow morning or something... break!!

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Day 3

Evening went and morning came. This was DAY 3!!!
Today's test box: Jaguar

Jaguar is my brother's self-administered box. It runs Windows XP SP2 and is just a desktop machine providing no services to the network.

Day 2 results
Original remaining download quota: 15.9689Gb
End remaining download quota: 15.6042Gb

Of that, I personally pulled down about 100Mb worth of stuff (including e-mails, webpages, images, etc). So taking that out...

Day 1: 116Mb (approx)
Day 2: 465Mb (approx)

Hmmm... Might have to give Leopard another go offline when all this is over!

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Day 2

*yawns* Day 2 eh?
Today's test box: Cheetah

Cheetah is my Primary Domain Controller (PDC). It handles user accounts for an Active Directory domain as well as user profiles. It hasn't been used for this as much lately with the introduction of laptops, non-Windows machines and stand-alone, user-administrated machines. It's basically a glorified file server now. It has just over 1Tb of space in it to store any files necessary... or even those not necessary.

Just a side note from yesterday that I forgot to mention: Simba was kept offline too. Simba usually travels with me and isn't online much anyway though. Today, alongside Cheetah, Sylvester will be kept offline too. Also, yesterday's download quota remaining was 16.085Gb.

Day 1 results
Original remaining download quota: 16.085Gb
End remaining download quota: 15.9689Gb

Looks like we could possibly have a winner... Nevertheless, the testing shall continue.

Who's stealing my bandwidth!? Day 1

All my download quota from my ISP is disappearing :S It was happening last month after the introduction of the xbox 360 so I just assumed it was that but now that it's been off for 2 days and the amount of data downloaded from the internet is still increasing, it appears there's something more sinister afoot... So, starting today, I'll be disconnecting 1 computer at a time for 24 hours to see if it stops the download quota disappearing.

Welcome to day 1.
Today's box: Leopoard

Leopard is my web/proxy/dhcp server. It runs the website http://seto.no-ip.org through Apache, PHP and MySQL and shares the internet among the LAN here via Squid filtered by DansGuardian. It also hands out IP addresses using DHCPD. It's powered by OpenBSD. The only reason I can see it using up download quota is if somehow the server has been exploited and someone is uploading data to it. We shall see...

Mac OS X Leopard and beyond

Well, long story short I've got my hands on a copy of the retail version of Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard. I installed it on Friday morning and am currently writing from the MacBook (SIMBA!!!) that it's running on now :). So far the experience has been pretty smooth. A few applications have had to be upgraded and a few tweaks here and there to get some programs to work properly (e.g. Journler) but on the whole, I think it's great! I don't use spaces as much as I thought I would though. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's just like virtual desktops that you'd find on Linux. Shut down seems to be quicker, booting up takes fractionally longer and surpisingly battery life seems to be better. I've had the battery time tell me it had over 6 hours left at one point. Previous record was something like 5 and a half. Not sure what's going on there but it was a nice surprise. Connecting to Windows network shares no longer creates an icon on the desktop. I think I miss that :(. As many other sourced have pointed out too, the icon for Windows network share computers is a monitor with a Windows 9x-ish Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). The interface is a lot nicer now too. The menu bar is semi-transparent now and I think I remember some place saying that it's vector-drawn now instead of bitmaps. Shadows of windows seem darker and I'm liking the new shiny look of the dock. I've also read a few complaints about Java not working properly or something but it must be a developer thing as I've had no problems whatsoever running my java programs or online java applets. I haven't tried the new BootCamp yet aside from installing the update on the Leopard install disc. Nothing seems to be different on it though just from the brief look I had. I'll have to update my Mac Apps list soon. I've taken to using osx.iusethis.com along with AppFresh. Unfortunately this doesn't work with Leopard yet so I'm kind of holding out until it does.

Now to the beyond... This is the more personal section :P I've started working fulltime now. I've moved up a bit and taken over the position of someone who decided to leave and run his own business. This has left me pretty flat-out but it's still been good :). I've also been told I probably have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia :(. If you don't know what they are well... Google is your friend :) It'll probably do a better job of explaining than I can. Anyway, this is why working fulltime has left me pretty flat-out. Thankfully, my boss is pretty understanding of this so it's working out well. Not much more to report...

Dear Loyal Blogfan

Anonymous said...

Why have you not blogged in so long? What've you been doing?

-Loyal Blogfan.

Indeed. As you can see on the left-hand side of this blog, I now have a Xbox Live gamer profile. As you'll see from that, most of my activity has been on Halo 3. This in itself should explain a whole lot. Mind you, I've only had this for about a week now. So where's the rest of the time gone?

Well, let's sum up first:
Why have you not blogged in so long? Because there's not really anything to report.
What've you been doing? Taking it easy

As most of you who know me personally would know, I've been sick for a while. Many tests have been run, many diagnoses given but nothing that's actually helped me much yet. So until such time as that happens... I have to sleep lots. When I'm not sleeping I'm either at work, at church or just taking it easy to try and let my body recover, sleeping somewhere between 9 to 13 hours a day for 2-4 hours of actually feeling alert :P. If you want to know what the current diagnosis is, contact me personally and I'll let you know.

For the record, Halo 3 and other such games are one such way of taking it easy. As is talking to people and, well, not really going anywhere too often. I'm pretty much a shut-in :P. How's this work? None of it involves much thinking. Talking is just typing whatever comes to mind, Halo 3 is just push buttons (I don't use any form of strategy besides run, shoot, die, repeat - makes me sort of a bad player but hey, at least I'm taking it easy!). Very little physical activity is involved, just moving fingers, and very little thinking :). Sounds perfect for "taking it easy". I'm not sure how long I'm supposed to do this for though :-/... I guess until I get better.

So... until I get better:

Takin it easy,
Seto

Citipointe Live - You Reign album highlights

I've had just over a week to listen to the new Citipointe Live album now (almost constantly) and come up with a list of favourites or highlights... The whole thing is great but these are the parts I like just that little bit more ;)

Track 1 - Love Prevails
Track 2 - All for the One (especially the intro - listen with headphones!)
Track 3 - You Reign
Track 8 - In Truth and Love (the instrumental section toward the end)
Track 11 - Forever We Worship
Track 14 - It's Time (Play it with a decent sound system including a sub woofer. You'll understand.)

I'm sure there's more but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. That's pretty close to half the tracks listed there anyway. I hope those of you out there who have it enjoy it as much as I do!

Lossless Audio Compression (Free and Apple)

I've discovered Lossless Audio Compression and it's all thanks to, well, it comes down to Simba, my MacBook :). When setting up Simba, I was looking for a CD ripper. I read around a bit and heard a bit about Max so I went with that. Now, that was all well and good until I needed to actually rip a CD. See my last post about the release of Citipointe Live's new album and you do the math :). I like having my music available without needing to use and potentially damage my original discs. I usually rip to 320kbps MP3 files which I did and that was all well and good until I saw the option for FLAC. Now, I'd heard of FLAC before, heard many people swear by it in fact... well, more read, but still... So I did a bit more reading up and discovered what it actually stood for (Free Lossless Audio Compression) and that it meant that the audio quality would be the same as the original but just a smaller size (like an archive file). Sounded good to me so I ripped the CD again in FLAC format and played them both. Not at the same time obviously... well, truth be told, I did try that, but it didn't sound so great. This was done from Simba through my Logitech Z-5500 digital speakers. FLAC sounded marginally better. The file sizes are much bigger though. The full album is about 450Mb in FLAC format while it's about 160Mb in MP3 320kbps format. This posed another problem though. iTunes doesn't play FLAC files natively, at least not at this point in time. VLC does which I have installed as well but I want to manage my music and copy it to my iPod. So... off to find FLAC support for iTunes. I did manage to find it by way of a QuickTime component (I'll post about that later when I post some more Mac OS X software I've started using). Unfortunately, another brick wall yet again. iPods don't play FLAC files without a third party firmware like RockBox. RockBox doesn't let you use your iPod with accessories that connect to the dock connector. This includes my car's head unit so that wasn't an option. I did find out that Apple have their own lossless audio compression called ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Compression) which iPods DO play. Unfortunately, this meant more converting and hard drive space. FLAC support is said to be coming in Mac OS X Leopard. Apparently it works in the betas but whether it makes it to the final or not... well, we'll see. Here's hoping! Hopefully this will come with a firmware upgrade for iPods to support FLAC :D For now though... I have ALAC M4A files on my server to load onto my iPod via Floola along side the FLAC files on my server and my MacBook. I want Leopard though :) I'll probably still rip to MP3s for portability and do away with ALACs once FLACs can be played on iPods. Where possible though, I'll be steering away from MP3s for playback and definitely staying away from AACs.

Citipointe Live - You Reign

It's here! AND IT ROCKS!!! Citipointe Live's new album titled You Reign is finally here :) I'm loving it! This week is also international conference for COC (Christian Outreach Centre) so most of the songs can be heard live for this week. Anyway, there's a CD and a DVD. The CD this year was studio-recorded but the DVD was recorded at the Love Prevails concert which I'm pretty sure I mentioned in an earlier blog post. This time the DVD has behind the scenes work for setup and pack down of the live event which I think is a brilliant idea! I did notice that my name has been left out of the credits but I still appear for a few seconds in some of the footage. I'm effectively anonymous! I think that makes me somewhat unique :P Although, I think there may be others not credited either. I bought 5 copies 1 of which I'm keeping, the other 4 I'll be giving away. I haven't decided for sure who's getting them yet so if you're interested, let me know!

Mac side refresh

Well, the wiping is done. Nice, clean new Mac :) Setup the way I like it. Next, it'd be nice to get 2Gb of RAM for this to run virtual machines more efficiently and a bigger hard drive (160Gb anyone?). There's a few other things to take care of first though... I have to rebuild my website, do some jobs, sort out TAFE, sleep A LOT and... actually I think that about sums it up... so there you go...

Mac side complete

It's been a little while but I think my Mac is now completely setup. Here's the last few things I did after the last post:

Coconut Battery (monitoring battery usage + wear and tear): http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery
Installing XCode: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301408#5
Changed the logon screen background: http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/22/customize-the-mac-os-x-login-screen/
NeoOffice (OpenOffice for Mac): http://www.neooffice.org
SilverKeeper (backup): http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/index.htm
Paintbrush (come on, you gotta know what this one is!): http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/
Google Earth (you all know it and where to find it)
InsomniaX (disable sleep on lid close, control hibernation a.k.a. safe sleep): http://www.semaja2.net/insomniaxinfo/
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Max (CD ripping): http://sbooth.org
Mac The Ripper (DVD ripping): http://mactheripper.org
Witch (Alt-Tab add-on): http://www.manytricks.com/witch/
FAT32 partitioning: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040724110933265
File sharing guide: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20011108161839416
OnyX (Mac OS X tweaking): http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html
MacDaddyX (MAC address imitation): http://www.updatesoup.com/macdaddy/
KisMac (Wireless hacking): http://kismac.macpirate.ch/about.php
X11 (on Mac OS X install disc)
Gimp.app (Free, open source alternative to Photoshop): http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/
Text Editor (links to CyberDuck): http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler
iStat menus: http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=28
Email Backup: http://homepage.mac.com/minge/emailbackup/index.html

Now... to reformat :P I've figured out what I do and don't like as well as what I do and don't use so it's time for a nice fresh start :)!

*almost splat*

Another random encounter... not involving a fly this time :P I almost ran over someone the other day... keyword: ALMOST! Why? Not because I'm a bad driver, honest! I was coming up a 3-lane road in the middle lane through an intersection with a green light then this guy starts talking across just as I enter the intersection so I slow down and let him walk in front of the car (as opposed to the splat). The car next to me came closer to hitting him than I did. There was a screech of tires and much beeping of their horn. Come to think of it, I don't know why I didn't beep at him too. The guy was wearing headphones and didn't really seem to be paying attention to what was going on... Maybe he was high or something? Who knows... He seemed pretty out of it though. Hopefully nothing like that happens again. It's slightly scary...

You're all witnesses!

Session Start: Monday, 17 September 2007
Seto://Sylvester
Stacie

(9:44 PM) Stacie: do you know where adam went?
(9:44 PM) Seto://Sylvester: no idea
...
(9:45 PM) Stacie: damn it
(9:45 PM) Stacie: im going to kill him
(9:45 PM) Seto://Sylvester: I'm a witness
(9:45 PM) Seto://Sylvester: you said kill
(9:46 PM) Stacie: guess ill have to kill you too then
***
(9:53 PM) Stacie: ill make it look like an accident

There. You're all witnesses. If I suddenly disappear, you know why!

*zzz*

I've been sleeping. Lots. Unfortunately it's not doing much for me :S So, I'm going back to see the doc man tomorrow...

Fly

Just a bit of randomness... There's a fly in my room. It seems to be drugged out or something. It keeps flying around in a fairly off-perfect circle around my ceiling hitting the roof all the time before stopping then doing the same thing again.

Told you it was random :) Back to resting... if the fly shuts up...

Further into the Mac side

I've installed Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 on it's own 20Gb partition now. I've also gone and done the following:

Installed VirtualBox for virtual machines

Show all files in Finder
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/07/showallfinder/index.php

Enable trackpad tap-to-click on login screen (not actually activated but activated on my login)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070224105049800

Installed:
CyberDuck FTP client http://cyberduck.ch
Burn OS X http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net
Handbrake http://handbrake.m0k.org

NTFS support (not finished yet)
MacFUSE http://www.soft32.com/download_197021.html
Fink and NTFS-3G http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/06/howto_readwrite_to_ntfs_drives.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558
XCode http://developer.apple.com

Not sure where to go from here... I think I'll just play around and get used to Mac OS X a bit more. I'm still liking it so far though. Much easier than Linux :) Much more stable than Windows. Much less annoying than Vista.

I've tried Front Row. Sort of like Media Centre for Mac OS X. It's very similar to using an iPod which is pretty easy. I'll have to do some more playing ;)

Turned to the Mac side

Aaand...

Status Date Time Depot Electronically Lodged 29/08/2007 11:35:49 Sydney Mas. PRI Collected-Cust Premises (CIT) 29/08/2007 15:44:15 Sydney Mas. PRI Received in Depot 29/08/2007 18:50:42 Sydney Mas. PRI Paperwork Printed at Depot 30/08/2007 00:14:03 Brisbane PRI Late Linehaul Frt Delayed 30/08/2007 07:16:14 Brisbane PRI Received in Depot 30/08/2007 07:16:17 Brisbane PRI On Board For Delivery-Full 30/08/2007 11:16:34 Brisbane PRI Delivered in Full 30/08/2007 13:33:44 Brisbane PRI

That's right! It's here! For those of you who don't know, this one has been dubbed Simba. All my computers are named after cats. All my portables are named after fictional cats. I'm planning on buying a MacBook Pro next year. For now, the MacBook is Simba. The MacBook Pro then logically will be Mufassa. Funtimes! After only a few hours of using Mac OS X, I've got to say, I'm a big fan. Not a 100% convert as yet but not far off I'd say. I'm really really liking it :)

So, here's what I've done with my Mac so far...

Locked down security
http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6938


Started learning keyboard shortcuts (I live off the keyboard in Windows)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

Enabled the root user
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1549.html

Installed media players: Windows Media components for Mac, DivX for Mac, VLC for Mac

Visited MacTopia to install Windows Live Messenger for Mac and Remote Desktop Connection for Mac
www.microsoft.com/mac

Started playing with QuickSilver (according to this guide)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EBvFUhTqKK4

Enabled fast user switching for quick locking
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/01/lockscreen/index.php

Stopped .DS_Store being created all over my network (or anyone elses)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005070300463515

Enabled 'cut'... sort of... Hopefully Apple fix this one in Leopard?
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060626085238931

Learnt how to take screenshots:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/02/28/screenshot.html

More to come sometime! For now I think I'll head off and install BootCamp to see how Windows runs on the new cub ;)

The end of Autopatcher

Autopatcher is no more! NOOO!!! Saved me many Mbs of downloads before... whyyy???
http://www.autopatcher.com/134
Seriously, who on earth thought this up?? Autopatcher is such and bandwidth saver! It's a great tool too but it's no more! GRRR!!!

One more reason I'm happy I'm changing to Mac OS X...

Turning to the Mac side progress

It's been shipped!! w00t! Status according to the consignment tracking history:

Status	Date	Time	Depot
Electronically Lodged	29/08/2007	11:35:49	Sydney Mas. PRI
Collected-Cust Premises (CIT)	29/08/2007	15:44:15	Sydney Mas. PRI
Received in Depot	29/08/2007	18:50:42	Sydney Mas. PRI

It's on it's way! Apple says it should be due, well... you read it for yourself:

Shipped on: 29/08/2007 via TNT EXPRESS AUSTRALIA

Product

MB 13/2.0/2X512/80/COMBO:WHITE-AUS Delivers by: 30/08/2007

Can't wait! Well, can wait, but it's not pleasant. I'll post a review and some experiences when I get going with it all :)

Turning to the Mac side - part 2

Well, I decided I've had enough of screwing around trying to find a superseded MacBook and decided to buy a bottom-of-the-range new one with educational discount. At least I know it'll be the latest (for now) and it's completely brand new... Now, the dilemma with this was trying to actually find one that I could buy. See, Apple only allow certain resellers to sell products with the edumacationaliseded discount so I looked up a list of them in Brisbane on the Apple website and did some ringing around this morning. Turns out after about half a dozen stores, there was no Apple educational reseller with one in stock. A few told me that they had the mid-range model in stock but for another few hundred dollars, I wasn't keen. I'm already stretching it as is to buy the bottom-of-the-range one. I was also told there's a shipment of ... I think it was somewhere over 1000 coming into the country tomorrow. Tomorrow just wasn't good enough though, I wanted it TODAY! There is a reason for that, I'm not just stuck-up :P I had some spare time today and was already going to TAFE which happens to be at Southbank which then happens to be near the city. The city is where most of the Apple educational resellers seem to be based. Makes sense now eh? Well, maybe not completely... I won't have any spare time again AND be near the city until Thursday. Thursday might not seem that far away but most resellers were telling me it won't be available until Friday or possibly Monday... Anyway, I decided I'd just order online from the Apple store. This way it gets delivered to my door and I don't have to worry about when I have spare time and can make it to the city. According to my order, it's supposed to arrive sometime in the next few days :) It's already been prepared for shipping :D I'm loving it :D!!!

Turning to the Mac side

Well, trying to but it ain't easy!! First up I tried to buy a superseded MacBook from NextByte's clearance items. I rang, placed the order and thought it was all good but a few minutes later, I get a call back saying that particular item is in pieces in a workshop because there's a problem with it so it can't be sold... BUMMER! Specs and price for that one are as follows:

$1049: Intel Core Duo 1.83Ghz/512Mb RAM/60Gb HDD/DVD CD-RW combo drive/White/12 month warranty

So after a bit of a hunt around, I've found another superseded on on eBay. Specs and price for that one are as follows:

$1299: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83Ghz/512Mb RAM/60Gb HDD/DVD CD-RW combo drive/White/12 month warranty (+3% surcharge for credit card)

Seems a little pricey but it might be in my stretchable budget...
After a bit more of a hunt around, I've found yet another one! This time from Mac1's firesale listed just this morning. There were 2 available so I rang up to enquire about it but they're already sold too! They were only listed THIS MORNING!! :( Details for that one:

$1199: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83Ghz/512Mb RAM/60Gb HDD/DVD CD-RW combo drive/White/3 month warranty (refurbished)

The last one would be the ideal one but I don't know if I want to fork out quite that much for it...

$1699: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz/1Gb RAM/80Gb HDD/DVD super drive/White/12 month warranty

Of course there's always the NEW path:

$1449: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz/1Gb RAM/80Gb HDD/DVD CD-RW combo drive/White/12 month warranty (educational discount)

I'll keep looking... Anyone else know where to source a cheap macbook?? TELL ME ASAP IF YA DO! Ta.

To all you cheapskates out there...

... have a read of this: http://www.esquire.com/features/money/ESQ0205NEGO_114_1. It's about a guy who haggled over every transaction for 3 months. I read about it from the front page of OCAU. Those of you who are stingy enough to want to save a few bucks might find it interesting as well as those who are into business, etc... the list of possible interest goes on. Just read it already :P

Can't find your keys?

Maybe you left them in my car! I just found a Häfele key in my glove box. A quick Google search tells me that this company make furniture (http://www.hafele.com.au) so I guess it's to something like a filing cabinet, desk or cupboard. Anyway, if you can't open some piece of furniture and you've been in my car, give me a yell and see if it's yours! Oh, it also has a round green tag with "030" on it. If it doesn't belong to anyone, maybe someone's trying to get me started on some sort of bizarre game.... but as if I have the intelligence to pickup and play along with that :P

Busted!

71Km/h in a 60Km/h zone. Bummer. -$100. -1 demerit point. At this point in time, I'd like to reference a quote that I read over my mate's shoulder at TAFE :P

Every K over is a thriller

Not completely accurate but it came to mind so now I'm sharing with ... well, blogspot.

Edit: Also, my wheel alignment is done so I can steer properly again :)

Cruising to the coast, consuming, coming back

Today's been great fun! It's the Ekka holiday for Brisbane so I went down to the Gold Coast with Shane, Matt, Jen, Fiona, Yumi, Georgia, errr... sorry to everyone else, I forget your names! My memory's terrible... Pretty sure they were all from Citipointe or at least linked to Citipointe in some way. Anyway, we piled into a few cars and like I said, cruised down to the Gold Coast. We pretty much split up into different groups over different periods of time during the day. The highlights though:

There are next to no fish and chip shops around Surfer's Paradise, Cavall Ave. However... there are plenty at Burleigh :P Every third shop or something like that was a fish and chip shop. By the time we were there, we weren't looking for them anymore...

Driving with Matt was a great experience too. Anger/stress/etc leads to fast driving :D High revs, wheel spins, screeching, it's all good :) It's all stuff I'd never do in my car so it's great to have had the experience anyway :P I didn't drive my own car as I'm not keen to drive long-ish distance before getting my wheel alignment done tomorrow.

There were a lot of photos taken too. They'll probably go up on Facebook... one day... when I sort out all my photos...

Volleyball with strangers on the beach was great fun too :) Most of that will have to be seen in the photos that I just mentioned though. Point is that it happened!

Traffic on the way back was horrible. Took ages to get back to the highway to get out then there was a lot of traffic on the highway on the way back after passing the theme parks (I think?). Those of you who live in the area probably know the area I'm talking about.

That's all that comes to mind for now but there you have it. Hope it's enjoyable... or at the very least, informative :P.

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Sleep - or lack thereof

My quick summary before probably didn't explain much and I don't think I've ever explained on here so here goes. I can't seem to get to sleep easily. This has been going on for a few weeks now. It takes about an hour-ish for me to finally get to sleep once I'm settled and ready to sleep. Once I get to sleep, I can't seem to sleep for more than 7 hours straight anyway. Now, most of you are probably thinking 7 hours isn't all that bad but if I sleep a night with only 5 hours, it means I can't catch up at any point. It also means that if I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier, then it'll take me another hour to get back to sleep and by then it's time to get up. There's been a few 5-6hr nights (have to get up in the morning and go do stuff. Usually TAFE, work or church.) and it's starting to get to me... Last week I went to see a doctor about it and he reckons it's just sleep deprivation. No kidding(!)!!! He told me to go to stop working and go to bed earlier which is fair enough I guess but it still doesn't solve the problem of taking an hour to get to sleep when it used to take me no more than about 15 mins and only being able to sleep 7 hours instead of up to 9 or 10 sometimes if catchup was needed. Grrr... this is why I'm tired, and probably somewhat sore. Just pushing myself to keep getting up and doing stuff that needs to be done... Anyway... back to it [/rant]

Car related stuff

I've discovered that playing with the EQ settings on my iPod still applies when I plug it into my car. This doesn't go well with Bass Booster... At least not with my current sound settings already in there. Anywho...

My car is also in need of a wheel alignment now :-(. My bro (hey if you're reading :P) is starting to learn to drive now. Unfortunately this involved hitting a kerb so now my steering is out a bit... It veers left when the steering is straight. Hopefully I can get this fixed on Wed or Thurs when I have 2 days off from TAFE. 1 for the Ekka public holiday and the other one is a planning day for the TAFE instructors.

Edit: forgot to mention, that little incident also knocked off and smashed one of my hub caps so I'm down to 2...

Citipointe Live - Love Prevails concert

It absolutely ROCKED!!! From a multimedia/tech point of view, there were a few issues... but it's all over and all ended up going well in the end. It's been a long day and then some (7am - 12:30am) before finally getting home. Also been a bit of an expensive day... I've spent about $50 today on transport and foods... Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!!! Anyone and everyone in the area should've been there! That reminds me, I've really gotta start getting up to date with upcoming events. I know they're coming but don't remember to tell people. I guess my main focus is what time I have to be there, what I need to bring to use or possibly use, etc. In trying to sort it all out, I forget that they're actually events to invite people to. The concert tonight was broadcasted live by webast so even those who couldn't make it might've been able to see part of it anyway.

I'm off to try and get some sleeps now. I'll leave you with the words to one of the shorter songs from tonight. Hopefully it'll go on the new album (Love Prevails or You Reign -- I'm not sure which anymore... it used to be Love Prevails but the last advert material I saw was calling it You Reign...) which, while I remember about telling ppls about stuff, gets released on Sunday, 30th September. Not too far to go! I'll be buying the 5 for $100 deal and giving away 4 just like I did with the last one (Anthem of our Heart). If money permits, I'll probably buy 10 and giveaway 9. Anyway, if you want dibs on one, let me know. If I was already intending to give you one, I'll let you know when you let me know :P. So without further off-on-a-tangent thoughts:

I will rise and stand
I will lift my hands
Holding high the cross that saves the lost
I will lift Your name
I will not be ashamed
I will give my life
To the cause of Jesus Christ

Citipointe Live - Rise up and Stand

It probably doesn't sound so great as just words, typed out but it sounded awesome to say the very least. That's just a little factor though, I think it makes a great ... I don't know what the term is, but sort of like a mission statement for life.

Seto:// (away)

Weeelll... I'm back online! But online for me is usually 'away'. I don't know what time the internet started working again but it was working this morning so it's all very very good!

Anyway... next on the agneda... There's a webcast tonight of the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition party talking to the religious leaders of Australia. That includes the senior pastor from my church (Citipointe) so I'll go have a looksee at that tonight.

Tomorrow: LOVE PREVAILS! Citipointe Live's concert at the Princess Theatre. There'll be recording for the DVD to go with the new album. So... I'll be going there straight after TAFE tomorrow and should be there for the rest of the day and night :-). It'll be great!! I dunno if there's tickets left but if you can make it, you should come! No excuses!

Seto:// (offline)!?!?

That's right, I'm offline... Well, MSN/WLM me is offline... I'm currently online at work. Why? Well, the following AoE2 taunt sums it up nicely:

Sir, blame it on your ISP!

The website of TPG (my ISP) has a better explanation:

QLD ADSL 1 Customers
Wednesday 8 August 2007, 2:15 PM
Some customers may experience connection difficulties and slow browsing due to a third party carrier fault. TPG apologises for any inconvenience caused.
Outage Started: Wednesday 8 August 2007, 8:15 AM AEST
Outage Window: It is estimated to last 1 day
Outage Window: It is estimated to last 6 hours
Outage Window: It is estimated to last 3 hours

Just in case it wasn't blindingly obvious already, the strikeouts are the changes that I've noticed during the day while waiting for the problem to be flagged as fixed. Anyway, because of this, there probably won't be a random quote sent out for today as they come from my remote desktop gateway at home... that and I don't watch videos at work usually so I can't get one :P Aside from that, I'll probably also be unable to finish my assignment for TAFE that's due tomorrow...

Hopefully I'll be back online soon... Seriously though, how many of you noticed I was gone and thought to check here anyway?? Let me know :P

quick summary

I've been out most of the weekend. Not enough sleep x_x... sooo tired... and sore... *zzz* </quick summary>

What weekend? What sleep x_x?

Well... the weekend was great! Busy, but great! Most of it was spent at the CitiMen's conference at Citipointe Church Brisbane. Pastor Peter Pilt was the main speaker. I was rostered on multimedia for the Saturday sessions but still got a lot out of it. I'm going to see if I can get a copy of the recordings. Yes, I think it was that great. If you're a man and you're reading this, you should've been there! The theme of his messages was being the CEO of your life. C = Creativity, E = Enthusiasm, O = Organisation. Part of the creativity section was a challenge to make a list of things you want to do but instead of a list of 100 things to do before you die, it was a list of 50 things to do over the next 5 years. The list is supposed to be created in the space of a week. I thought it was a great idea so I've made my list of 50 things and am going to have it finalised by Friday night. What's on it? That's for me (and a few close friends) to know and you to find out when they're completed. Sunday was mainly at church which was a bit busy too but I'm out the other side and enjoyed the journey :P.

Unforunately I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights :( It's taken me ages to get to sleep and I wake up extremely early for no apparent reason. It finally got to me on Monday morning when I got up and didn't trust myself to drive to the bus stop without falling asleep behind the wheel... Hence, I skipped the day at TAFE. I've got no idea what's going on but if it doesn't stop soon I suspect I'll have to go see a doc or something...

bleurgh, great day and change of Linux distro

Let me first start off by saying that I really don't feel great. I had a rest this arvo, woke up tonight and now I just feel... x_x... very sore, I'll probably spend tomorrow in bed and sleep early tonight. Now, that covers bleurgh.

Great day

It's been a great day. First up it was pay day and now that I've got my Cert IV I'm pretty sure I get paid more. I have the moneys in my account but not sure how much I'm getting paid exactly because I had a load of extra hours to be paid from the holiday period.

After finding all that in my account, I headed off to TAFE for the day. When the bus arrived, the ticket machines were broken so everyone with 1o-trip saver cards (such as your truly) were just told to get on the bus and that was the end of it. FREE BUS TRIP ^_^!!

Next up, during my first TAFE class everyone in the class had to write something on the whiteboard that we would check if we couldn't access the network. Everyone had to have something different. After that we all had to pick one (other than our own), rub it off the board and explain it. The teacher's name was written on the board so I was considering rubbing that off then Kenny comes to me and tells me he'll buy me a drink if I do. So... I get up there, rub it off and explain that a lot of problems are user error :). She thought it was creative, allowed it and I got a free bottle of juice at lunch :D

I get the feeling I'm missing something but that's pretty good as it is! WAIT! School zones! On my way to and from TAFE today I managed to get home just outside of the school zone times. I checked my clock and the times were 6:59am and 1:59pm. School zone times are 7am - 9am and 2pm - 4pm. The result? +20km/h ^_^!!

Ok ok, change of Linux distro. I'd had enough of trying to get Gentoo Linux to work properly with the Linux drivers for ATI or nVidia. Both seemed to need recompiling of the kernel... So, STUFF THAT! I had a look at my Linux distro collection to pick another one to try. I was considering openSUSE 10.2 but was deterred a bit by the need for 6 CDs so I kept looking and noticed Ubuntu 7.04. I've heard a bit about Ubuntu. Mainly that it's easy to use and seems to be growing in popularity so I thought I'd give it a go. On to [a single] disc we go, boot up and install. Worked straight up with no issues! I installed it in under an hour but realised I'd forgotten to remove the old install first so I re-installed it again this afternoon removing all partitions and it's now up and running. I'm still yet to try to install the nVidia driver but things are looking up so far. At this very early stage, Ubuntu Linux definitely has me interested. I'll report back on future experiences.

TAFE work: Assigning IP addresses

I had to write this for TAFE so I figured seeing as I put all the effort into writing it, I might as well share it too. Feel free to correct anything that's wrong, I'm just going off what I know off the top of my head.

Share your knowledge it says... well, here we go!

Let me start by saying that I've mainly worked with reserved, private IPv4, addresses (192.168.x.x, 172.x.x.x and 10.x.x.x type addresses). The ranges for these address ranges are as follows:

10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

Source: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1597

I've only just learnt that after a quick Google search so on to what I do know already. IP addresses can either be static (non-changing) or dynamic (changing) and apply to any computer with the TCP/IP protocol installed, regardless of the operating system installed. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers assign dynamic IP addresses to clients connected to the network.

Internet Connection Addresses

Most higher-end, home internet connections these days have a static IP address assigned by the Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are still some (like dialup, plans designed for light usage and older plans) that use dynamic IP addresses.

Microsoft Windows Workstation to Microsoft Windows Workstation

My first experience with assigning IP addresses was with static IP addresses. It involved a 'network' of 2 home computers with a crossover cable. This was shortly after Microsoft Windows XP was released so one machine had that installed (Professional) while the other had Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. At that point I used the network wizard built-in to Microsoft Windows XP but had no success with it. I learnt the private IP address ranges from the settings the wizard setup then went and set them manually. It was not until during the process of messing around with manually assigned IP addresses that I realised nework protocols had to match on both computers. Computer 1's IP address was 192.168.0.1 and Computer 2's IP address was 192.168.0.2.

At a later stage I went back to look at the built-in networking wizard for internet connection sharing and actually got it working. This automatically assigns the computer sharing the internet connection a static IP address of 192.168.0.1 and starts a DHCP server service which sets the IP addresses of any other computers connected to the network. By this stage I had added another 2 computers to the network by means through a switch[ing hub].

Linux Gateway with Microsoft Windows Clients

As my network grew along with my interests in more advanced projects, I needed to reboot my computer more often so I could no longer use it to reliably share the internet connection (dialup at this stage). I had an older computer not doing anything and had heard of Linux distrobutions such as SmoothWall (http://www.smoothwall.org) and IPCop (http://www.ipcop.org) so decided to give it a go. These Linux distrobutions have a built-in DHCP server which took over the role of assigning addresses on my network. The IP address of the Linux Gateway was dynamic just as the computer sharing the internet connection had. This setup worked well and stayed on until broadband was acquired.

Router with Microsoft Windows Clients

When broadband replaced dialup a router was added. Routers for home networks have a built-in DHCP server (most commonly assigning IP addresses in the 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x ranges) so this removed the need for my Linux Gateway which was scrapped.

Dynamically Assigned IP Addresses

Now that there was an 'always-on' internet connection available, experimentation for other services (such as an in-house web server) was now possible. This required port-forwarding to be setup. Port-forwarding works by taking incoming requests from the internet and passing them on to an assigned IP address. This requires a static IP address as having a changing address would mean that incoming requests would be sent to the wrong place. DHCP Servers can have static dynamically assigned IP addresses meaning that the one network device will always receive the same IP address. These IP addresses are assigned by the Media Access Control (MAC) address of the device. These addresses are hard-coded into network hardware although they can be replicated easily. No 2 network devices will have the same MAC address.

Microsoft Windows Server with Microsoft Windows Clients

With the continuation of the growth of my network, a server powered by Microsoft Windows Server was added. This included an Active Directory structure which requires the DNS (Domain Name Server) address to point to the Microsoft Windows Server. Home routers often do not allow you to change the DNS address options for clients that connect to it as mine didn't so I activated the DHCP server service. This allows assigning of many other advanced options to be automatically assigned such as network time servers. If the DNS server is not set then the clients logging on to the Active Directory will have a whole host of problems. This includes (but is not limited to) extremely long logon times and group policy settings not being applied.

Non-Windows Server with Assorted Clients

Eventually my interest moved on to alternative products to Microsoft Windows. I started playing with Linux and BSD distributions. I settled on OpenBSD which has DHCP Daemon (DHCPD) like many other unix-based operating systems however it is not activated by default. DHCPD on OpenBSD is setup by a configuration file (/etc/dhcpd.conf). This allows for many options to be set too but is harder to configure than a Microsoft Windows server. The advantage to using this over a Microsoft Windows system is that it is not only much more stable but it seems to work much faster. Waiting for IP address assignment under a Microsoft Windows server usually took about half a minute (approx) whereas this setup takes a few seconds (also approx).

PXE Booting

Pre-eXecution Environment (PXE) booting is when a computer boots from a network server instead of a local drive. This usually involves Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) and BOOTP for which the settings are set by the DHCP server. This will be something that I will be looking at in the near future and was another one of the reasons that I changed to a unix-based OS running DHCPD as I want to boot Linux from my server for hard disk drive imaging or other tasks.

That's getting a bit off-topic now so that's all from me. Thoughts, comments and questions are welcome!

Gentoo: nVidia > ATI

I had enough of mucking around with trying to get the ATI driver to work on my Gentoo box so I swapped the card out for an nVidia card and whadda ya know! Bob's your Uncle Fanny's your Aunt, Fannie's your aunt, there you are with two ships, the makings of your very own fleet. If only... but the LiveCD did boot straight into a GUI. No mucking around with drivers or anything like that. So what have I learnt? Well, nVidia > ATI. I prefer nVidia nowadays anyway so I'm safe :-).

Brisbane to Warwick to Brisbane

Well, I've been and come back now. It was good fun :-)! I hate bumper-to-bumper traffic though... I'm not sure how my driving is since I got back but it seems to me that every time I drive out to Warwick and come back, my driving gets worse. By worse I mean I take off faster or take more risks or... something? Just doesn't seem as good. The open road does baaad things to me :-P. So, what'd I do while I was down there? I shall tell you.

Friday night I looked at computer stuffs at Kylie's place (which was the main reason I went down there). Fixed all that then spent some time on the internet before going to a park (that's right, at night) with Kylie, Cassandra and Ashley. It was cold but oh so fun! Was it worth it? FOR SURE! Somewhere between that and sleep at 4am, Cassandra and Ashley put makeup on Kylie which was... entertaining? I'll post pics sometime later when I get around to it... After sleep Kylie introduced me to a series called Allo Allo which seems pretty good. It was made a while ago but still very funny :-D. We also watched... I think it was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (feel free to correct me if that's not a real movie :S). I thought it was hilarious :-). Following that was lunch with Amy (and Amanda and Matt) at her place. I seem to remember a lot of time playing with an inflatable beach ball with Kylie while I was there :P. Photos of that will come later too. Finally, before leaving, Kylie had a looksee at all my photos (and I mean ALL my photos) then I packed up and headed home.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out once again that I HATE BUMPER-TO-BUMPER TRAFFIC!!! That is all.

20070720@TAFE

Thaaat's right ppls, I'm at TAFE. Daniel's shoulder-browsing as I write this :P but anywho... I still think 6am is far too early in the morning to be getting up. I'm supposed to be finishing up here today at 3pm then I'll head home, shove some stuff in the car and head out to Warwick.

I probably forgot to mention that yesterday... and the day before... and probably the day before that. I'm heading out to Warwick to do a tech support call :-)... and to get away a little bit I guess? I'll leave this arvo pretty much straight after TAFE then come back by Saturday night in time for sleep and church the next day. It'll be good fun! Maybe a lil expensive though but who cares :-P.


At the moment, I'm just listening to the teacher talk about CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Engineer Administrator [got mixed up with MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer]? I think...). Apparently we can do part of the CCNA as part of our course. It's all self-paced learning though. We're supposed to go lookup everything online, learn, etc... If it doesn't cost anything, I'll probably give it a go. Should be good... if I pass. There's 4 parts to it, I dunno how many we get to do though but it'd be better than nothing.

My install of the ATI drivers on my Gentoo Linux box kept me up a bit longer than I hoped last night. I had to wait for the thing to re-compile the whole kernel... By the look of it, I'll have to do it again too... I've got the driver installed but it can't find the device. From what I found from having a quick hunt around Google before bed, I'm thinking that it's a problem with the way the kernel's handling the connection to the card through the chipset :-(. I'll look at it more when I get back from Warwick though.

Time to wrap it up and get back to paying attention in-class :-P. BYE!

Another... day? thing...?

I spent the day at TAFE. By day, I mean, I got up at 6 like usual (who on earth invented 6am anyway??) got there, finished the first class after 1.5hrs instead of 3.5, went to the next one and finished that in 1.5 instead of 3.25. It was great :-D! Had a nice long lunch break, came home early, started looking at Gentoo Linux a bit more then decided sleep was in order :-P. I still haven't caught up on sleep yet actually... At the moment, I'm just installing the ATI drivers on my Gentoo Linux box. I got the install done (took a while to install all the packages so I left it over dinner). From what I understand, Gentoo Linux builds all the packages from source which it does seem to be doing. I guess that means it'll be optimised for the system it's being built on but it does sm to take a while. It might be an excuse to buy a new system! If I ever get myself out of debt from my TAFE fees and car... but that's another story which I don't really want to share. Back to it!

What have I gotten myself into??

Currently looking into the following things:

• Wikis
• LDAP (OpenLDAP on OpenBSD)
• Samba (in association with LDAP on OpenBSD)
• Gentoo Linux (as a desktop)
• VPN (OpenVPN on OpenBSD)

Today was mainly Gentoo Linux in my spare time at work. I'm looking at dual booting my work computer between MS WinXP Pro SP2 and Gentoo Linux 2007.0. I gave the live CD a shot but it didn't go so well. I booted the system and was met with no GUI and some error about GDM or X Server or something... Anyway, the short of it was that it's an issue with having an ATI graphics card. I need to use the ATI proprietary drivers to get it going but I didn't get time to finish that before leaving work nor did I get time to wipe my system and do a clean install of the system. I'm going to build up a test machine at home in a tick with an ATI graphics card and see if I can get it going. If you know anything about this, PLEASE TELL ME!!! Ta.

IS 5416

Sleep didn't happen... yet... I just remembered something I found earlier that I wanted to post:

Did You Know?
Agent Smith's license plate in Reloaded is IS 5416, a reference to Isaiah 54:16: 'Behold, I have created the smith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the spoiler to destroy.'

Source: http://www.thematrix101.com

I thought that was pretty interesting anyway...

On the run run run!

Not so! I lie! Well sort of.. This is being posted on my phone not on a computer.. I just don't happen to be running. It'll be nice to see if this works!

Edit: Wow... it did work!! How good is that!?

ACTION!

Well... here goes! Another blog that may potentially end up by the wayside with a lot of the other projects I've started and got bored with. This one may last a little while though... I can e-mail to this and post. Seeing as I can e-mail from my phone, that means I can blog from anywhere! I gotta try that sometime when I'm out...

This blog is being started with the intention of recording tech experiences I have as well as any other random thoughts. We'll see which of the 2 wins out over time I guess.

There are a still a few things I want to do with this, the biggest being write my own template but for now this one will do. I also want to find some sort of photo to add and work out how to integrate this with other things such as Facebook, Picasa and anything else I can! I know Picasa has some sort of support for this which is what lead me here in the first place... I have to sort out Picasa at some point as well though... Chuck that on the ever-growing and hardly-ever-shrinking list of things to do! It's taken me a week or 2 to finally get around to kicking this off...

Work is happening in the morning so sleep should be happening in about... NOW!