Cheap Therapy

Someone commenting on the Slashdot discussion about Rupert Murdoch’s Pay TV hacker pointed to his blog which has some pretty awesome chip-level hacking information.

Spent the day up at A+K’s, much of which was spent with Puggle learning how to play with a playful and very licky puppy Zoe. A yummy lunch, (Bilby kept wanting all the cherry tomatoes from the salad). Puggle and I also got to play some Wii.

The rest of the week and a bit, redux:

• Easter, see Swancon. Plus chocolate eggs
• Swancon, caught up with lots of people. Despite much discussion elsewhere the only problem I had with the programming was that it seemed a bit light on for Friday and Saturday (Sunday and Monday were fine though). Ken Macleod, Rob Shearman and were great, Karl Schroeder had some very interesting information about forecasting future possibilities, and unfortunately I personally didn’t see much of Glenda Larke (although I know she’s great from chatting with her at previous cons) or the academic stream. Some wonderful moments at the awards ceremony. We now know how to herd fans (tell them more bar tab still needs spending Puggle amazingly lost interest during the Dalek voiceover. He did however pick up some tips from the Jedi training as he repurposed some coloured cricket wickets as a sith lightsaber later on in the week!
• Got to watch some of Puggle swimming (thanks to an outage at work :() and all of Bilby’s swim.
• Plumbing a solenoid into the back reticulation. Now just needs to be leakproofed and connected up to the X-10 system once I find the bits.
• Got a MacBook Air for the evening, which conveniently I could show off at Pancakes If only I got a commission…
• Caught up with the ‘local’ FileMaker Rep. Has certainly evolved since last I saw it, some nice plugins available.
• Jamie’s Steak, Guiness and Cheese Pie (this online recipe is missing that it’s 1kg of beef and 3 red onions, and we used no stock, just water). Unfortunately we were out of Guinness so I was forced to go out and purchase a carton
• Upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5, still waiting on some more plugins to become compatible before the sidebar is back to normal.
• The end of daylight saving for another year. Yay!

Just in case you were wondering how your moggy got its spots. Or check out the cat colour calculator.

This morning Triple J were playing “The King is Dead” by The Herd, a song celebrating the downfall of John Howard. Highly recommended. IIRC “We partied like it was new years’ eve”

Set your TV recording devices for “How Art Made The World”, Tuesdays at 2030hrs. on Channel 2 (Sorry, ABC1 Dr. Nigel Spivey hosts a very cool show about how art came about, and what it’s done since then. Next week’s episode, The Art of Persuasion. This week’s episode included some pretty cool cave paintings.
[Edit: Next week is The hunt for HMAS Sydney in that timeslot, so the next episode of How Art Made the World is 8th April 2008]

Check out isitferret’s Swancon 2008 photobucket here. Leece and Rob’s photos from the Heroes and Villain’s Ball are here. Suggested flickr tag swancon2008.

Google Transit will provide public transport information for Australia, and they are trialling it for Perth initially. Hopefully this will be a nicer site than Transperth’s current offering (functional), and accessible from mobile devices.

We wandered down to Cottesloe to see the last day of Sculptures by the Sea. It had obviously been too long since I’d been to the beach. I found it very relaxing to paddle my feet in the water, even though there was hot sun at 6pm in the afternoon (well, 5pm real time). Cottesloe beach has fond memories for me , going there with Mum or Gran to swim, and a few times to fish, generally unsuccessfully (I remember the old concrete boardwalk before it fell over in a storm, and the sea water swimming pool). To round the day off there was a twinpole conveniently split between Puggle and Bilby. I think my favourites were the snake, the sundial or the peapod tree at the end of the groyne. I asked Puggle which sculptures he liked the best, and he said “the elephants”. Of course, they weren’t actually part of the art exhibit, they were the garden ornaments outside the Indiana Teahouse.

If you’re the nerd, you may wish to point your partner (assuming you have one) at the very amusing Nerd Handbook to help them understand you better.

• Software goes live. Nobody dies. Yay!
• MacGeeks at Agni. Mmm.. Curry.
• iPhone SDK amongst other things
• More busage plus walking. More weight loss.
• Lay my hands on an OLPC XO
• Finish Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe
• Mum’s birthday, book club.
• Music night, we have a band (of sorts :). Violin, guitar, and whatever else Bilby and Puggle pick up.
• Take Bilby shopping for the first time although she’s too tired to enjoy it.
• Bilby takes a fall She seems less fazed by it than I am.
• Jamie’s Sausages and 1kg of cherry tomatoes, followed by another mulberry pie thanks to our tree. Now if only the mango tree was as productive!
• Looking forward to the dentist on Monday