New Version of Metapad!

I discovered only today that, late last year, Alexander Davidson released a new version of my all time favourite text editor, Metapad!

Metapad is one of the most lightweight, simple, and yet powerful text editors out there. I love it for its tiny footprint, portability, multiple font support, block editing functionality, and transparent window capability. It also looks really nice :)

Before I upgraded this afternoon, I’d been using its previous version for at least ten years (via a recommendation from Chris Pirillo).

The latest version has a higher quality icon (which is really cool) and integrates fully with Windows 7 so it’s now my default text editor. Yes, you have to do a little OS-level tweaking and hacking to make that work…but it’s so worth it.

Yaay!

I Can Has HDTV?

Yes, you can has!

After years of wanting a large screen HDTV, on Friday I finally went out and bought one. And boy was it worth it!

Sitting on the sofa in our living room, this is what our old 32” CRT TV looked like:

And this is what our new 50” Plasma TV looks like:

The larger screen makes a big difference, doesn’t it? :)

What Did You Get?

For those who are interested, I ended up getting the Samsung PS50C7000, which is a 50” (127cm) Series 7 (i.e. 2010) Plasma TV:

I did quite a lot of research before selecting this model and reviews like this from CNET were very encouraging:

The Samsung PS50C7000 is one of the best plasmas on the market and boasts one of the most complete feature sets available. Not quite deserving of full marks, though. [CNET Australia]

As well as this one from PC World:

The Samsung Series 7 (PS50C7000) plasma is very nearly the best television we've tested. It's got an excellent design and generally great picture quality, only falling short in overall black levels. 3D is handled well but there are still a few aberrations; it is fine for occasional casual viewing. The Series 7 (PS50C7000) does a great job on Internet connectivity as well, making it an excellent all-round performer we'd happily recommend. [PC World]

My main research source was CHOICE, though, and they recommended this as one of the best 127-132cm TVs to buy (Note: Report viewable by members only):

CHOICE also named Samsung the ‘Best Television Brand’ in its 2011 Choice Awards. Panasonic and Sony were the other two TV brands that received the highest overall performance and CHOICE member customer satisfaction scores.

This TV also met all of my basic requirements:

• 40-50”, Full HD (i.e. 1080p), LCD or Plasma
• HDMI, Component, Composite, USB, and Audio In/Out connectivity
• HD tuner built-in
• RGA port included (i.e. it can be used as a computer monitor)
• LAN/wireless connector
• DLNA certified (i.e. works with streaming media players/servers on your network)

Basically, this was last year’s top end Plasma model from Samsung so it had everything I wanted and even a few things that I didn’t want (like 3D capabilities).

Timing is Everything

The best part is that, in the annual consumer electronics cycle, April is when most new TV models hit the market. So, if you’re happy to buy the previous year’s model, March and April are when you get the best discounts(assuming the TV you want is still in stock). As it happens, I got this TV for about half its market launch price :)

LCD vs Plasma

In the choice between LCD and Plasma, I’m an audiophile and videophile so the superior picture quality of Plasmas has always appealed to me.

Also, in our price range of “just over A$1,000”, I had a choice of getting:

• a cheaper brand LCD,
• a better brand LCD from 2-3 years ago,
• a more recent model of a better brand LCD that had a smaller screen (e.g. 32-40”), or
• a better brand plasma from last year.

When you look at it that way, the choice of getting the plasma was obvious (assuming your aim was to get the largest screen size appropriate to your TV/living room).

Which Store?

I ended up getting our TV from RetraVision, which has one of the best range of Samsung TVs.

I got there at about 8pm on Friday night and, fifteen minutes later, I was done. The TV got delivered the next morning and I spent much of yesterday (Saturday) setting it up.

Yes, this has been a fun weekend :)

What Next?

Now that we have an HDTV, we need high definition content to watch.

We already get some HD stuff from our free-to-air digital channels but my next step is to upgrade our Foxtel set top box to the iQHD and our subscription package to include HD channels (21 of them).

After that, we’ll think about getting a Blu-Ray player and some Blu-Ray discs. And, once we do that, we’ll think about getting a home theatre audio system. None of this will be any time soon, though. Certainly not till next year.

Fortunately, this is only the start of our life in HD so there’s a long way to go, yet. Let the fun begin! :)

My New Casio Watch

I love Casio watches and, since the early 80s, haven’t bought anything other than a Casio for myself. (I’ve also never bought anything other than a Casio calculator but that’s another blog post.)

When the battery on my latest watch started to die for the second time a couple of weeks ago (I’d owned this one for about 5 years) I figured it was time for me to buy a new one.

28 years of Casio Watches

But, before I get to that, here’s a quick trip down memory lane of the Casio watches that I remember owning over the years (thanks to Watch Shock and their awesome watch archive).

I owned this watch when I was six or seven years old (i.e. in the early 80s):

And this one some years later:

I then got this fabulous calculator watch in the early 90s (which I loved dearly):

Through the rest of the 90s I owned G-Shock watches; first this one:

And then this one:

Finally, in the mid 00s, I got myself a ProTrek:

My New, Simple Watch

My newest Casio is one of their basic models (the AE-2000W) which really just tells the time (though it does do that across 31 time zones):

I bought this simpler type because I don’t use my watch as often as I used to. That’s mainly because the ProTrek was too bulky to wear under business shirts so I couldn’t wear it to work every day. This new one isn’t much thinner but I’ll certainly give it a try.

That said, I do still wear my watch whenever else I’m out of the house and I do keep it next to my pillow every night.

And now I have this shiny new one to help me keep track of my day :)

Testing the Ink Blog Plug-in

Being Bored, Processing Your Life

Following on from my post on ‘How to be Alone’, I have two articles two share. One that I remembered from earlier this year and one that I read today.

In ‘Why I Returned my iPad’ Paul Bregman talks about the importance of boredom and unproductive time in his life:

Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises.

My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These "wasted" moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.

They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They're the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.

While in ‘How Do You Process Your Life?’ Tara Sophia Mohr talks about the need for downtime during which she reflects on and process what’s been going on in her life:

I need reflective processing time desperately, I’ve learned. Not because I’ll stop functioning without it. On the contrary, I look more “normal” to others when I don’t have it.

[…]

But to be the woman I want to be – emotionally generous, not cranky or erratic or jaded; to be spacious and open and deep, to have a presence that feels to myself and others to be grounded and alert and graceful; to be someone who brings more sanity into this world instead of contributing to the craziness, then I need downtime. To deal with colleagues and professional partners in a rational and calm way, to manage the challenges of my work effectively, to show up creative and focused everyday, I need to process what comes into the ecosystem of me.

I agree wholeheartedly with both Bregman and Mohr.

3 Mobile Broadband on my Tablet PC

One of the reasons I bought a tablet PC was so I could be truly mobile in my computing. An important part of mobile computing is to have Internet access wherever you go. And the obvious and most reliable way to get that access is to have your own mobile broadband connection.

Last year I got that connection from 3. I bought from them a USB mobile broadband modem and signed up for a prepaid month-to-month data plan.

[Source: PC World]

This year I went one better. I bought and got Lenovo to preinstall an internal broadband modem (the Qualcomm Gobi 2000) when I bought my tablet PC.

I did that because I didn’t want to carry around a USB modem that I’d have to plug in every time I was out and about and wanted to connect to the Internet.

My plan was to transfer my existing 3 connection over from the old modem to the new one. I considered going to a 3 store and asking them to do that for me but then realized that, being a technology geek, I could probably do all that (i.e. the SIM installation and network configuration) myself. And I was right :)

So, here’s how you do it…

First, Get a Connection

If you don’t already have a mobile broadband connection it’s pretty easy to get one from one of your local mobile carriers.

If you go with 3 in Australia, for example, you:

• go to one of their stores,
• sign up for an account (in my case, a prepaid one),
• tell them you’ll be using your own modem, and
• pick up the ‘3 Mobile Broadband Prepaid Starter Kit’ (which will include your SIM card).

Do read the BYO Modem page on their website before you go ahead and do that, though.

In my case all I had to do was take the SIM out of my USB modem.

Insert the SIM Card

Inserting the SIM card into your laptop (or tablet PC, as the case may be) is really easy.

In the Lenovo ThinkPad X210 tablet PC – as in other ThinkPad X-Series computers – the slot for the SIM card lies behind the battery bay (click images for larger photos):

Take the card, orient it according to the etching on the metal plate below the slot, and push it all the way in:

Then put the battery back on and you’re done.

Power-On the Modem

Assuming that you actually have a broadband modem installed in your computer and that all your drivers are up-to-date, you now need to turn your modem on.

To turn it on, use Lenovo’s Fn+F5 keystroke to bring up the ‘ThinkPad Wireless Radio’ window and press the ‘Power On’ button for the Wireless WAN Radio:

That should change the colour of the ‘Wireless WAN Radio’ text to green and should also light up (again, in green) the WWAN status indicator light just below the screen:

[Source: Laptop Mag]

If this doesn’t happen you probably don’t have a modem installed (check in Device Manager in Windows) or your modem isn’t configured properly (run Windows Update to get its latest drivers).

Configure the Connection

Next, you need to set up the connection to 3’s mobile network.

Since I use Lenovo’s Access Connections utility to manage my connections that was pretty straightforward to do. All I had to do was create a new Location Profile by clicking on the ‘Location Profiles’ tab:

And then pressing the ‘Create’ button:

Since I already have a Location Profile for my connection – called ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ – I’ll show you what its configuration is by clicking the ‘Edit’ button instead.

Under the ‘General Settings’ tab I’ve:

• named my profile,
• said that I want to connect using ‘Mobile Broadband’, and
• selected the Gobi 2000 modem (the only option in the list):

Under the ‘Mobile Broadband Settings’ tab I’ve said that this is an HSDPA/GPRS network that requires ‘Custom Settings’:

These ‘Custom Settings’ (which you get to by clicking the ‘Edit Settings’ button) are:

• the ‘Known WAN service providers’ option is ‘Other’,
• the ‘Custom service provider’ name is ‘3MobileBroadband Prepaid’ (this will be ‘3Mobile Broadband Postpaid’ if that’s the connection you signed up for),
• the APN is called ‘3services’:

There’s no need to change any advanced or additional settings. Click all the ‘OK’ buttons and you’re done.

Connect to the Network

Go back to the ‘Connect to the Internet’ tab and you should now have ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ listed in your Location drop-down list. Select that and click the ‘Connect’ button next to it.

In this screenshot I’ve already clicked ‘Connect’ so that button has changed to ‘Stop’:

It should take about 10-20 seconds to connect…and off you go!

If the connection doesn’t take place then something hasn’t been configured properly or your account with the mobile carrier hasn’t yet been activated. I can’t help you with the former (because I’ve already told you all I know) and the latter you should already have worked out with the salesperson at the mobile carrier’s store.

If further tweaking fails and you can’t find the answer on the Internet then you should take your laptop to the mobile carrier’s store and ask for help (or, alternatively, call them up and get help over the phone).

But if all this has worked then you should now be connected to the Internet via your mobile broadband connection. Yaay!

Time to Upgrade Our Website

Nadia and I have maintained our website at insanityWORKS.org since 2004. It was overhauled once (in 2007) and is past due for another major upgrade.

Moving to a Content Management System

This time, though, the plan is to move it on to a Content Management System (CMS). Much as I love getting down and dirty with HTML code (via Dreamweaver, of course) a CMS-based site will be much faster and significantly easier to maintain. At the very least we won’t be stuck managing it from only those computers that have Dreamweaver installed on them.

The question then becomes: Which CMS do I choose? I’ve been using both proprietary and open source systems since 2001 so I know a lot about a lot of them. That means I can use pretty much any one that’s out there quite effectively; though I do plan to use an open source one for this site.

Fortunately, my choice is limited by the ones that my web hosting provider, E-Starr, provides automatic support for (specifically, installation and upgrade support). I’ve used a bunch of these CMSs in the past, too, so I’m already quite comfortable with most of them.

My Needs Have Changed

What’s also good is that my personal website needs aren’t what they used to be three years ago. For example:

• A lot of information about me is now available on my Google Profile
• I now host my photos on Picasaweb (albums) and Flickr (photo stream)
• I do most of my writing on my blogs (this one and my professional one)
• I no longer need to maintain a PDF version of my CV for people to download because most of that information is available on my LinkedIn profile
• A lot of the other content that I host on the site can be moved elsewhere (like Slideshare or Google Docs, for example)

What’s left, then, is mostly text content and a couple of archived websites. Any old CMS can handle the former and latter will remain the way they are so, all told, my CMS requirements are actually quite simple.

So, What Now?

What I think I’ll do now test a bunch of the CMSs available to see which one I like the most. I do have lots of options, including:

• Drupal
• Geeklog
• Joomla 1.5
• PHP-Nuke
• phpWCMS
• phpWebSite
• Siteframe
• TYPO3
• Xoops

Not to mention WordPress, which can be tweaked to make a pretty good CMS itself.

So, if all goes well, I will report back in a few weeks, by which time I hope to have the newest version of insanityWORKS.org up and running.

Wish me luck!

I Bought Myself a Cowon S9 MP3 Player

So, after much research and analysis I bought myself a Cowon S9 mp3 player which arrived in the mail yesterday:



[Source: Trusted Reviews]

Why a new MP3 Player?

I’ve been wanting to buy myself a new MP3 player for a while now. The iriver E100 that I have is decent enough, but it does have a few problems.

For example, its UI is rather clunky and I didn’t want to deal with slow menus, slow scrolling, and the inability to quickly forward through an audio track or podcast any more.

I was also feeling limited by its 2GB storage space and lack of good quality video playback (though the latter was more of a secondary concern).

Research Mode

So, last week I went into research mode and started to build a shortlist of players that met my needs.

My needs, by the way, were:

• Excellent quality sound


• Podcast support


• Audible support


• Small and light (so, most likely, a Flash memory based player and not a hard disk based one)


• Plenty of storage space (at least 8GB)


• A good UI


• Ideally, good quality video

My early first choice was the Microsoft Zune HD but that’s still not available in Australia so it dropped out of the running pretty early on.

Most of the Sony and Samsung players dropped out, too. They had good quality sound but were lacking in one aspect or the other. The ones that fit the bill were out of my price range. I considered briefly the thought of getting an iPod – either the Nano or the Touch – but the iPods have always far to limited for my liking.

FYI: If you’re interested in this kind of thing, check out Pocketable’s ‘Apple iPod touch 2G vs. Cowon S9 vs. Samsung P3’ comparison.

Shortlist, then a Selection

So I ended up with a shortlist of three players:

• Creative Zen X-Fi: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews


• SanDisk Sansa Fuze: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews


• Cowon S9: Cnet US, Anything But iPod, Trusted Reviews, DAP Review, Engadget

All three met my needs but the S9, though it cost more than the other two, gave me more than what I wanted while remaining within my price range.

Specifically, the S9 had excellent quality audio while the other two had merely ‘very good’ quality audio.

It also had excellent quality video on a fabulous widescreen display, which was a big bonus. The Fuze’s video quality, meanwhile, was terrible while the X-Fi’s was good, though not widescreen.

And, while the S9 didn’t have the additional features the X-Fi had, I really didn’t want or need all those additional features.

So that was that. I ordered the S9 from Eljo Media last Sunday and it arrived in the mail yesterday. I also bought for it a leather carrying case and a mains charger.

I have since spent the day exploring it, updating its firmware, and copying my media onto it.

My early thoughts: it’s awesome :)

Good Quality Headphones to Match

To round off my move into ‘excellent’ quality audio, by the way, I also wanted to buy a pair of quality earphones.

I ended up getting the HiFiMan RE0 In-ear Earphones Headphones (i.e. canalphones) from Headphonics:



[Source: HiFiMan]

FYI: If you’re interested in quality headphones, by the way, check out Headphonic’s Top Picks in headphones.

These haven’t arrived yet because I ordered them a day after I ordered the S9 but I trust they’ll be awesome, too.

UPDATE: The headphones arrived this morning and they are, indeed, awesome. First off, they're made of lightweight metal and not plastic, which is brilliant. They also have five different eartips of different lengths (i.e. both single and double flange) and diameters. Finally, they come with a detachable clip (to clip the cord to your shirt) and five pairs of fabric mesh filters (i.e. covers) for the micro-speaker bit of the earbud. For much more on these these earphones, check out this awesome review by ClieOS.

Post Script: Being an Audiophile

So, now that I have excellent quality music equipment (and most of my music is encoded in high bit-rate MP3 format), I can go back to being an active audiophile.

I’ve actually been an audiophile – though not of the insufferable variety – since I co-produced an album for the band I used to be in back in 2004. During that period I trained my ear to listen to music much more deeply and I haven’t looked back since. So much so that badly produced, over-produced, or over-mastered music now really irritates me.

So, while I’ve had this love of quality music for a while, I haven’t always had the equipment to enjoy my music to the fullest. Well, with the Cowon S9 and the HiFiMan RE0, my situation has changed: I’m back :)

FYI: If you’re interested, here are some articles for your inner audiophile (with a focus on MP3 compression, modern music mastering techniques, and the loudness was):

• Why we need Audiophiles [Gizmodo]


• Loudness War [Wikipedia]


• Imperfect Sound Forever [Stylus Magazine]


• The Death of High Fidelity [Rolling Stone Magazine]


• The Big Squeeze [Mix Magazine]


• How to get the Most out of your Speakers [Sound & Vision Magazine]

Data Backup Plan: Phase I Complete

I'm done with the first phase of my comprehensive data backup plan.

In this phase I backed-up all of my data (about 180GB of it) and all of Nadia's data (about 60GB) to our network attached storage drive. That got completed last night.

For those of you who missed it a few blog posts ago, I bought the awesome 1TB My Book World Edition hard drive from Western Digital to do our our local backing-up. The best part of this solution is that it comes with Memeo's WD Anywhere Backup software which automates backing-up over the network. Not only is this software really easy to use, you get five licenses for it so it's a great solution for networked, multiple computer households (it works on both PCs and Macs).

The next phase will be to organize online backups for both me and Nadia using Carbonite. I'll probably start that over the coming weekend. I won't backup all my media online, of course, so hopefully it won't take more than 2-3 months to get done. (It'll take this long because my Internet upload speeds isn't all that great and, besides, I don't want to use more than, say, half my monthly bandwidth cap on this initial backup.)

The final phase -- which will kick off once I get a tablet PC -- will be to use Live Mesh to sync my tablet PC to my desktop PC. That way I won't need to install any backup software on my tablet PC since all its data will always be replicated on the desktop and, thanks to Phase I and II, all that desktop data will be automatically backed-up both locally and online.

I feel safer already, but there's still more to do. On to Phase II...

Recent Life Recap

My blogging has been sporadic of late (I’ve been very busy at work) so here’s a quick catch-up on all the exciting things that have been happening in my life recently. This works quickest as a Q&A.

Q: How’s life?

A: It’s going well:

• We’ve moved apartments so we’re closer to the city. Nadia can now walk to university and my daily commute to work is shorter by 20 minutes each way.
• We now have high speed, large bandwidth broadband Internet (ADSL2+) at home thanks to awesome iiNet. This also means we have a land line telephone, which is nice.
• We have a bigger TV (inherited from my sister) and Foxtel have added new channels to their line-up. I’m particularly enjoying SciFi+2 (which is the SciFi Channel time-shifted by two hours) because I can now watch shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation at more convenient times. I’m also watching a lot of Inside the Actor’s Studio, which I’m really enjoying.
• Work is going really well. Melbourne Water is an awesome place to work and I love my job (I’m the Websites Manager there). Importantly, I’m having lots of fun.
• Over the last six months I’ve had much dental work done from the excellent dentists at East Melbourne Dental. And, though this had hit my wallet quite hard, it has made me a much more pain-free (and, therefore, a much happier!) person.

Q: What have you been up to?

A: Plenty!

Last month Nadia and I visited the Gold Coast for the first time.

We stayed at the excellent Watermark Hotel & Spa in Surfers Paradise and, though were only there for three days, we had lots of fun. Our trip to Sea World was particularly enjoyable.

I’ll upload a photo gallery from that trip to my PicasaWeb account some time soon. We hope to go back for a longer trip in the future.

Right after the Gold Coast trip we attended the Australian Skeptics National Convention in Brisbane (hosted by the Queensland Skeptics) which was both exciting and hugely inspiring. More on this in a later blog post.

We also saw the fabulous Tim Minchin (official site) perform at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. In a few days’ time (3 Jan), I’ll be going to see Moby (official site) perform at the Palace Theatre on Bourke Street! :)

Q: What else is happening in your life?

A: Well, starting with the geeky side of life, I’ve made a few excellent purchases.

For backup and media storage, I bought Western Digital’s My Book World Edition external hard drive:

This gives us 1TB of storage and lets us do daily backups over the network. It’s a fantastic network attached storage solution for the home.

I bought a 7” digital photo frame (via the brilliant Catch of the Day website) which we’ve placed in our living room.

I downloaded and installed Amazon’s Kindle for PC software, though I’ve only bought one book for it so far (‘Groundswell’ by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li). I’ll probably buy more once I get myself an actual Kindle device (which I hope to do some time in the near future).

Finally, I went ahead and bought two pieces of software I’ve been meaning to get for a long time: WinAmp Professional (my favourite media player) and Webcam Saver (my favourite screen saver).

On the music side of life, I joined the Melbourne Water Choir (which was lots of fun) and I bought myself a drum kit. That drum kit is the really basic Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite:

I bought an electronic kit because an acoustic one, no matter how muffled, would be too loud for the apartment. I bought this particular one because it’s the quietest, most acoustic-like in its price range. It’s also one of the cheapest electronic kits available :)

I have discovered since that not playing the drums for about a year makes you a little rusty!

Q: What else?

A: That’s about it, I think (though I will probably remember more later). Well, other than the fact that we’ve been watching lots of movies, listening to lots of music, hanging out with lots of friends (including one who was here from overseas), and generally doing stuff we enjoy.

All in all, life is really busy (mostly because of work) but it’s going well and we’re having fun.

Conroy Wants Australia to be a Nanny State

In case you don't keep up with the news, there are two major Internet-related issues being considered in Australia right now. The first is the National Broadband Network (which I'm not going to talk about here) and the second is mandatory national Internet filter that Senator Stephen Conroy wants to introduce.

So what are people saying about the filter?

It's Not Going to Work

Nina Funnell, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (and quoting Kathryn Small), makes a very good point'. She says the proposed filter will not be censoring the Internet, it'll be censoring the people who don't know much about the Internet (i.e. the people who won't know how circumvent the filter):

Small says anyone with a vested interest who knows enough about software design will be able to circumvent the system. "The real problem is Conroy will create a two-tiered system [with] a massive disparity between the 'haves' and 'have nots' of computer literacy."

The irony is that it is children and young people who will be most likely to get around the blocks.

Children are more computer-savvy and literate than any other generation, precisely because they have grown up with computers. This was demonstrated in 2007 when a 16-year-old, Tom Wood, took just 30 minutes to crack the Government's super-filter that cost a whopping $84 million to develop.

What a shame the Government hasn't learnt from that embarrassing bungle.

Funnell's whole article is really good, by the way, and I suggest you read it.

It's Politics, Not Child Protection

Another good article to read is Stilgherrian's 'Evidence-based policy? Not on this filter!' on the ABC's The Drum Unleashed website:

Politicians use the term "evidence-based" quite differently from police detectives or scientists.

Senator Stephen Conroy provided a glorious example earlier in the week when announcing that Australia will indeed get mandatory ISP-level internet filtering some time in...well, maybe in 2011.

For politicians, "evidence" isn't something to be gathered with forensic precision and preserved through a documented chain of custody. Nor it is something to be compiled transparently, justified through meticulous research and refined in the purifying fire of peer review.

No. For politicians, "evidence" is something to be plucked from wherever it can be found and sprinkled to justify a previously-chosen policy like so much magic fairy dust.

The Rudd government's internet censorship proposal is not about protecting the children. It's about politics.

If the plan were really about protecting the children, and if it were really evidence-based, the government would have first have figured out what risks children actually face - online and everywhere else. They'd then figure out the best methods of countering those risks. Then they'd figure out the most cost-effective ways of implementing those solutions.

If we did that, we'd probably find that the risks are the very same ones that child protection experts keep banging on about. Bullying by their peers. Abuse from within their own homes and families. Poverty and its associated health risks. Obesity.

But this is politics, not child protection.

Google & Kirby Weigh In

Finally, two more opinions worth reading are:

• Google's opinion on the filter: 'Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering'


• Asher Moses' article in the Sydney Morning Herald: 'Net filters 'thin end of the wedge': Kirby'

What Next?


Well, Conroy has released a discussion paper on the topic so, hopefully, people will submit in response to that excellent, well reasoned reasons for not using the filter (of which there are many). Ideally, our policymakers will then look at those arguments, realize the filter is useless (indeed, it's a case of minimal effect for maximal cost), and will stop wasting our time and money on it. More likely, though, they will forge ahead for a while longer. That's politics for you.

And if, despite all reasonable counterarguments, the filter does get implemented then two things will happen. The first is the broader "epic fail" of not, for example, making any difference to the sharing of child pornography. The second is the creation of whole new industry devoted to providing filter-circumvention services to people living in Australia. Certainly the latter is a service I'd pay for and I'm sure many others will as well.

So, basically, we'll be back to where we are now...though with a few key differences:

• ISP costs will be higher (to pay for the filter)


• Internet connection costs for most of us will be a little higher (to pay for getting around the filter)


• Some third party service providers will be a little richer (for providing filter circumvention services)


• The Internet will be slower (since we'll be going through a filter and, most likely, a proxy)


• The country will be about $40 billion poorer (to pay for the filter)

All so a bunch of politicians and self-appointed keepers-of-our-morals feel better about themselves and all the "good work" that they're doing to "PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!!".

Further Reading

• Electronic Frontiers Australia: 'Filtering coming to Australia in 2010' (or the EFA site in general)


• EFA: 'Filtering Fact Sheets'


• No Clean Feed website


• Somebody Think of the Children! website


• #nocleanfeed hash tag on Twitter

Lenovo Lets You Switch Ctrl & Fn Keys in BIOS!

I really like having the Ctrl (Control) key located at the bottom left hand corner of my computer's keyboard.

It's one my most frequently used keys — which I press using my left thumb or, simply, the side/edge of my left palm — and I like its location to be consistent across all the desktops and laptops that I use.

I use the Control key to:

• cut-copy-paste (ctrl+x, ctrl+c, ctrl+v)


• select all (ctrl+a)


• select entire words/paragraphs (ctrl+shift+left/right/up/down arrows or ctrl+shift+page up/down)


• move to the start/end of documents (ctrl+end, ctrl+home)


• move forwards/backwards by one word (ctrl+right/left arrows)


• delete the rest of the current line in a text editor (ctrl+delete)


• undo/redo (ctrl+z, ctrl+y)


• zoom in/out of PDFs, documents, browser windows, etc. (ctrl+mouse scroll wheel up/down)


• duplicate drawing elements in Microsoft Office (ctrl+click & drag)


• move between worksheets in an Excel spreadsheet (ctrl+page up/page down)


• create a page break in a Word document (ctrl+enter)


• open files/documents (ctrl+o)


• save files/documents (ctrl+s)


• switch between window panes (ctrl+tab)


• select multiple items (ctrl+mouse left click)


• (and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now but I probably do unconsciously)

Many laptops, however, have the Fn (Function) key located at the bottom left hand corner of their keyboards and, though it's not the end of the world, this placement irritates me no end.



[Source: Engadget]

That's why I'm really excited by Lenovo's recent announcement that it will let users swap the functionality of the Control and Function keys directly through the BIOS!

They plan to offer this in "all future ThinkPad models" so I have a bad feeling it won't be available on the ThinkPad X200 tablet PC that I'm saving up for these days. Still, it's a step in the right direction and the Lenovo keyboard — which is already one of the best out there — just got a whole lot better.

You can read more about this here, by the way:

• Lenovo goes crazy, lets you switch Fn and Ctrl keys in BIOS [Engadget]


• World Turns Upside Down: Lenovo Allows CTRL Key Switching [GottaBeMobile]

And speaking of my plan to buy the X200 tablet PC, so far I've saved-up about 60% of the funds needed. However, I've had to put this saving on hold because we're shifting to a bigger, better, and closer-to-work apartment early next week and doing so will cost us quite a bit of money (especially since we're breaking our existing apartment's lease).

If all goes well, however, I should have enough saved-up by the middle of January 2010. Here's hoping there are some good sales or deals to be had around then!

CSIRO

If you've ever wondered what the CSIRO is, you could either go to their website and read this:

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.

Or you could just watch this video:



:)

New Lenovo ThinkPad X200T Reviews

NotebookReview.com's Kevin O'Brien recently reviewed two Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet PCs and had this to say:

The Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablets we reviewed performed very well in almost all categories. Battery life was excellent with the 8-cell battery, reaching 8 hours and 48 minutes on the sunlight readable version, and 5 hours and 32 minutes on the touchscreen model. Screen quality on both models was phenomenal, with the sunlight readable display being one of the best screens we have ever seen in our office. [...]

Overall performance was very good on both models, with little impact to battery life or system temperatures. Considering the low starting price compared to the Dell XT2, the ThinkPad X200 Tablets are a clear winner. For its amazing screen, great build quality, and excellent battery life we are also awarding the outdoor viewable X200 Tablet with our Editor's Choice award.

Now, I'm not getting the outdoor viewable X200 tablet PC because I am willing to sacrifice awesome screen quality in favour of two-finger touch capability but the "touchscreen model", as O'Brien refers to it, is pretty awesome too. Read the review for more.

Meanwhile, the two new touch-enabled ThinkPads models – the X200 and T400 – also got a mention in a blog post about crapware on Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows.

Crapware, which you get on all new PCs, is irritating even while it makes PCs cheaper to buy. According to Thurrott, Lenovo partly redeems itself by adding bundled software that "expand[s] on core Windows capabilities or, increasingly, simply provide[s] new capabilities that are not present in Windows at all". Read his post for details.

Tablet PCs – Comparing Specs, Keyboards

Now that I’ve narrowed my tablet PC options down to three –  though I may add to this list over the next few months – I can start comparing them to each other.

My current options are:

• Lenovo ThinkPad X200
• HP EliteBook 2730p
• Fujitsu LifeBook T2020

Basic Specifications

Their basic specifications are similar. Though, as you can see in the summary below, the ThinkPad X200 edges the other two out slightly:

Item	Lenovo ThinkPad X200	HP EliteBook 2730p	Fujitsu LifeBook T2020
Processor	Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz L9400	Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz L9400	Core 2 Duo 1.2GHz U9300
RAM	3GB	3GB	2GB
Hard drive	160GB, 7200RPM	120GB, 5400RPM	120GB, 5400RPM
Graphics	GMA X4500	GMA 4500MHD	GMA 4500
Screen	12.1" WXGA	12.1" WXGA	12.1" WXGA
Digitizer	Active, multi-touch, in/outdoor	Active, anti-glare	Active, in/outdoor
PCMark05	4,318	3,489	2,983
3DMark05	1,307	1,278	802
Input	Trackpoint	Trackpoint, trackpad	Trackpoint

All of these specs were taken from Tablet PC Review, by the way, and they’re based on the specs of review units. You can, of course, customize these specs when you actually by the computer.

Comparing Keyboards

Moving beyond that, the next thing I always check on a laptop is its keyboard. This is because I do a lot of typing and constantly use keyboard shortcuts so having a great keyboard is crucial to both my productivity and sanity.

As a benchmark, this is what the Toshiba Satellite M750’s keyboard looks like (all photos from TabletPCReview.com):

Note the Control key in the bottom left hand corner. This is good because most keyboard shortcuts involve pressing that key and it irritates me when the Function key is in the left most one in the bottom row.

Also note the convenient location of the Page-Up and Page-Down keys next to the directional arrow keys on the bottom right hand corner.

The Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys on the top right hand corner aren’t at their optimal positions, I know, but their relative ordering isn’t terrible. Ultimately, that not-so-good location was the sacrifice I was willing to make in order to get this laptop.

Finally, the laptop uses a track pad (as opposed to a track point), which is something I like and am accustomed to.

Let’s now look at the Lenovo ThinkPad X200’s keyboard:

A number of things stand out. First, the Function key is at the bottom left hand corner. That’s not good, but survivable. On the other hand, even though they’re located on the top right hand corner, the placement of the Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page-Up, and Page-Down keys is beautiful!

That said, the one big adjustment I’d have to make if I got this tablet PC is switching from a trackpad to a trackpoint.

Next, let’s check out the HP EliteBook 2730p’s keyboard:

I like this one because its Control key is in the right place and it has both a track pad and track point. On the other hand, I hate this one because it’s Insert, Delete, etc. keys are very unfortunately placed.

Finally, here’s the Fujitsu LifeBook T2020’s keyboard:

The Control key is in the right place and the Page-Up and Page-Down keys are good, too. The Insert, Delete, etc. keys are survivable but we’re back to a track point instead of a track pad.

So, overall, my least favourite keyboard is that of HP 2730p. I really don’t like that they’ve placed the Home, End, etc. keys in a line on the top right hand corner. The Fujitsu T2020 and Toshiba M750’s keyboards, meanwhile, are both okay and I’d be fine with using them.

The keyboard that stands out, then, is that of the Lenovo X200. Yes, I’d have to use a track stick and, yes, I’d have to get used to the new placement of the Control key…but I did manage to get used to the latter on my previous keyboard so it won’t be the end of the world. On the other hand, I love how the Home, End, etc. keys are placed and this makes up for most of its other shortcomings.

Preliminary Conclusion

So my preliminary choice of tablet PC is the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. The added benefit of this is that the X200 is the only one with a multi-touch screen.

There is more to explore and examine – like cost, for example – but I’d say this was a good start.

A Quick Aside About Lenovo Design

By the way, Lenovo are generally praised for their excellent keyboards and, having used them on and off in the past, I tend to agree.

If you want to know more about Lenovo’s design ideas, be sure to check out their Design Matters blog.

Good posts to read are:

• The Keyboard You Helped Design – about their latest updates to keyboard design
• Fn Versus Ctrl: Let the Games Being – about the Control versus Function key in the bottom left hand corner of a laptop’s keyboard debate
• Touch is a Natural – about their introduction of multi-touch screens
• ThinkPad Case Study – about ThinkPad carry case designs

My Tablet PC Plan Changes

I haven't written about my tablet PC obsession for a while but three recent events and two technology lifestyle trends are prompting me to do so now.

The trends have made me re-evaluate my reasons and primary selection criteria for getting a tablet PC. These trends are:

1. After five years of having a laptop as my primary and sometimes only computer I have recently started using a desktop. And I really like it. What with a good processor; lots of RAM; a huge, high-speed hard drive; a large, widescreen monitor (like I have at home) or two large monitors (like I have at work); lots of USB ports; and all my accessories close at hand…how could I not like working on one?
2. With so much of my life in the cloud, an increasingly mobile lifestyle, and the ready availability of mobile broadband Internet, small and light mobile computing solutions like smart phones and netbooks are becoming increasingly interesting and useful to me.

As for the three events:

1. Windows 7 is due to be released on October 22 and its tablet-specific features are really good.
2. Both Lenovo and Fujitsu have announced that their flagship tablet PCs – the ThinkPad X200 and LifeBook T5010 respectively – now have multi-touch screens options. Till this announcement, only the Dell Latitude XT2 had one of those. 
3. If I continue to consciously save money, by the end of the year (or the start of next year) I should finally be able to afford a tablet PC.

What Does This All Mean?

Two things:

1. The end of this year is a good time to buy a tablet PC. Not only will I able to afford one, it’ll ship with Windows 7 and will have the latest touch screen on it.
2. I’m not sure any more if I really need or want a high performance tablet PC. It might make more sense for me to get a less powerful one for mobile use and an upgrade to my home desktop (if I really need one in the future) for power use.

In short, my front runner tablet PC choices – and, in particular, the Toshiba M750 I was planning to get – are now no longer the ones I’m looking at.

Instead, I’m looking at one of these:

• Lenovo ThinkPad X200
• HP EliteBook 2730p
• Fujitsu LifeBook T2020

All three are less powerful than my previous choices (also, they don’t have optical drives) but, instead, they all have longer battery lives and they all weigh less. Oh, and they don’t cost as much, either.

Only the ThinkPad X200 has a multi-touch screen at this time but I’m sure the others will have one in time for the back-to-school or Christmas shopping seasons (particularly since HP is targeting the consumer market).

So, What Next?

My task now is to start the tablet PC comparison process once again and, over the next few months, keep an eye out for updates to these three systems.

Unfortunately, because these tablet PCs are very similar to each other (particularly the Lenovo and HP), it’ll be hard to choose among them.

Fortunately, all three are excellent and all come highly recommended. That means, regardless of which one I end up going for, I will be getting a great tablet PC.

Meanwhile, I’ll start the preliminary comparison process and will proceed to bore you with my ruminations and computing preferences :)

Switching to Gmail Becomes Easier

Long-time readers of this blog will know that, just over a year ago, I moved all of my e-mail to Gmail. I wrote about this in some detail in these three blog posts:

• Switch to Gmail and IMAP?
• Creating a New E-mail Taxonomy
• All E-mail Successfully Moved to Gmail!

I absolutely love Gmail and making this shift is one of the best technology, usability, and productivity decisions I’ve made so far.

However, switching to Gmail wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do – particularly since most of my e-mail was stored locally on my laptop (in Thunderbird) and the rest was distributed across various e-mail accounts. (You can read more about this in the blog posts listed above.)

Things have changed since then and, as announced today on the Gmail Blog, importing contacts and e-mails from other online e-mail accounts into Gmail has just become a lot easier because the whole process has been automated. This won’t help you if all your e-mails are stored locally in Outlook or Thunderbird, of course, but it will make it easier to switch from services like Yahoo! and Window Live Mail.

If you’re still using one of those services, I suggest you try Gmail for a while to see how you like it. Indeed, one of the new import features is that you can have your e-mails forwarded to Gmail from your other accounts for 30 days while you try Gmail out. I’m confident that many of you will like it so much that you will want to switch over permanently.

Yaay! I Have Ubuntu

So a couple of days ago I installed the latest version of the Ubuntu operating system (v9.04, called Jaunty Jackalope) on my desktop computer. I did this via Wubi, which lets you install Linux from within Windows without your having to re-partition your hard drive or do any other advanced Linux, Windows, or hardware configuration. The installer basically creates a folder in your C drive (called ‘ubuntu’, in my case) and everything to do with your Linux installation goes in there.

What Wubi does do is make your computer a dual-boot system which means that, from now on, whenever you start your computer you will be given the option of booting into (in my case) Vista or Ubuntu. Vista does remain the default boot option which means that, if you don’t choose otherwise within ten seconds, your computer will automatically boot into Vista. You can, of course, make Ubuntu the default boot option if you want.

Later, if you decide you don’t want Ubuntu you can always uninstall it from within Windows as well. This is as simple as going to Add/Remove Programs and uninstalling Wubi from there.

Why Did I Do This?

So why did I install Ubuntu? The simple answer is: because I wanted to. The more comprehensive answer is: Ubuntu is fast, Linux is fun, I love open source software (and support the FOSS movement), and am a little nostalgic. Oh, and I am a geek.

Let me unpack my comprehensive answer a little bit.

Ubuntu is fast. On my current desktop, from the time I press the power button to the time I can type a URL into Firefox and start browsing, it takes me less than one minute. Doing the same thing on the same computer in Vista – though with Chrome as the browser instead of Firefox – takes me just over three minutes (and the PC still hasn’t finished booting-up by then because complete boot-up takes about five minutes).

Now I’m not saying this to complain about Vista or to say that my computer is slow. In fact, I really like Vista and the way that everything is set up on my computer. Unfortunately, the downside of having everything set up on your computer just the way you want it is that it’ll be a little slow to start up. And by ‘everything’ I mean things like Google desktop and sidebar; Twhirl and Skype; Zone Alarm, KeePass, and Cobian Backup; and all my Windows settings – all of which get loaded at boot time. My Ubuntu install, meanwhile, is plain vanilla. I don’t even have any major Firefox plugins installed.

So my point is: if I need to use the computer in a hurry – to, say, send a quick e-mail or check on weather conditions later in the day – it’s much quicker to boot into Ubuntu than it is to boot into Vista. And that’s why I like it.

Linux is fun. There’s so much that you can do on Linux that is slower, more complicated, costs money, and is less geeky on Windows. For example, there’s nothing quite like shell scripting using Bash. I also love a lot of the software that is Linux-only; and often that software is both more powerful and much more configurable – though sometimes less pretty – than its equivalents on Windows or Leopard.

I love, support, and keep up with the FOSS movement. The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement is important and I’ve spent a lot of time and effort supporting, promoting, and being a part of it. Ubuntu is a huge part of FOSS – particularly for the non-tech community – and, till a couple of days ago, I hadn’t actually messed around with it all that much. The release of Jaunty Jackalope finally prompted me to jump in and see for myself what Ubuntu was all about.

I have a lot of nostalgia associated with Linux in particular and UNIX in general. I’ve been using various flavours of UNIX – such as AIX, FreeBSD, and (Debian and RedHat) Linux – since 1996. I’ve also done a lot of programming, server and daemon configuration, and shell scripting in Linux. Indeed, the first time I became sysadmin was for a RedHat Linux server – the only student-run server at my undergraduate university, in fact – back in 1998.

Good Tech Ethic

Actually, it more than just those reasons. As someone who is technologically inclined – and also a geek – I want to try every technology or gadget that I can get my hands on. And I do this not just because I enjoy it immensely but also because it makes good sense to learn all you can about every kind of technology that’s out there.

This is why, for example, I have Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari all installed on my computer. This is why I use all the online services offered by Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, and so on. And this is why I have the latest versions of Java, Flash, AIR, Silverlight, .NET, QuickTime, Real media, Windows media, DivX, etc. on my computer as well. Not to mention at least nine media players, four word processors, four text editors, five graphics applications, six audio applications, four video applications, and crap loads of media and system utilities. (I could go on…)

Using all kinds of technology is good tech ethic for someone who is tech savvy and is a fan of technology, a technology analyst, a technology teacher/trainer, and a technology evangelist. Oh, and is someone who frequently gives tech support to friends and family and is a geek :)

Stellarium Is Awesome

I recently downloaded Stellarium, which is free and open source planetarium software for your computer. It’s awesome.

For example, according to Stellarium, here is what I’d see if I was to look due west at the sky in Melbourne, Australia just before midnight on 4 May, 2009:

That’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Now let’s add some labels (planets, nebulae, and constellations) and some lines (constellations):

But that’s not all – zoom into a bit of the sky and add a grid to see so much more (and you can zoom in much farther than that):

But if that’s too much information, you can instead stick to the star lore section with its associated constellation art (which you can turn on and off, of course):

And if you don’t want Western constellation star lore, you can always switch to Chinese, Egyptian, Inuit, Korean, Lakota, Maori, Navajo, Norse, Polynesian, or Tupi-Guarani (though not all of them have constellation art associated with them).

All in all, this is a fabulous bit of software that I highly recommend.

Two Web Milestones for Me

I can now officially say that I have been blogging for two years because on 24 April 2007 I published my first post on this blog. Woo hoo!

On the other hand, today I went and deleted my old GeoCities website because Yahoo! is closing that service down by the end of the year. Here is what the home page of that site used to look like:

I created this site on the free GeoCities web hosting service back in 1999 when I graduated from LUMS and realized that I would no longer be able to host my personal site on the LUMS ACM Chapter’s Student Sever (which, by the way, I was the administrator of). I’d had a site on the Student Server since 1997.

Want to Take a Look?

You can see archived copies of my very oldest websites thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:

• My old site on the student server from September 1997
• The LUMS ACM Chapter’s home page from somewhere in 1998

Make sure you check out my Ameel’s Page o’ Links page from February 1997. Yep, that’s what the web was like back then. I still maintain that page, by the way, except it’s now called Ye Olde Page o’ Links :)

A Quick Trip Down Memory Lane

1997 was also when I became head of TeamWeb, the group of students responsible for maintaining the official LUMS website. There were many first for me in that year: my first job interview, my first professional website management job, my first website re-design project, and the first time I installed and started administering a UNIX server. Good times.

The late 90s, meanwhile, was a time of change with regards to how websites were designed and laid out. For example, when I started managing the LUMS website, the web design ethos was textured backgrounds and not too much colour. By the time I left, however, it was fill colours and information categorized into tables. Ah, the good old days of the web.

Back to the Topic

I stopped maintaining my GeoCities site when Nadia and I got the insanityWORKS.org domain in 2004. And now my old site – which was a very important part of my life on the web – is gone for good. Well, except that it’s still archived in the WayBack Machine.

But still, the shutting down of GeoCities will mark the end of the free website hosting era that began with sites like Angelfire and Geocities. These days, of course, the free web hosting sites of choice are blogging sites like Blogger and WordPress.org in conjunction with media hosting sites like Flickr and YouTube. Times change, eh?

Leaving GeoCities behind, though, I now move into my third year of blogging, my fifth year of running insanityWORKS.org, my thirteenth year on the Internet, and my twenty-fifth year of using computers.

How time flies.