The world adores matt hayward

Sure you might not think the Olympics even matter or are interesting. I would certainly agree with you on that point. The spirit of the Olympics is an entirely different matter though. Wars are meant to stop, soldiers down guns and leave all prejudices left aside to compete as equals on a level playing field.

Sadly this won’t be the case from hereon in. In preparation for the Olympics, China is becoming so procifient in dealing with dissent that they’re simply killing dissentors in record numbers and in record time. No trial, just incarceration. If you’re thought to be a threat, apparently you could be dead in a jail cell within hours.

Weapon of choice, well an electric batton of course! Just get 7 or 8 cops in a cell and beat the shit out of the prisoner (no phone book required). After all they’re just doing their job. Oh just don’t damage the internal organs, because they harvest and transplant human organs to party faithful, and one can only guess the very, very rich.

This die in custody bit is a bit unusual. Usually the prisoner at least used to get the firing squad, or death by lethal injection. The later is typically done in specially designed trucks, so they can quickly operate on the victim in remote provinces and recover the organs on site.

So rest assured, some Communist Government cadre or rich Hong Kong guy is going to get a healthy new set of lungs for someone else’s free will. Geez I hope someone pisses on the Olympic flame. This is just not cricket! My condolences to the victims of these most recent and heinous human rights violations - even by Chinese government standards.

But remember kids, it’s important to hate the government, not the people. So if ever you needed an excuse not to watch the Olympics, I hope this helps.

Do you have a Mac, a Windows PC and most importantly stairs? Would you like to use the first two in a way that doesn’t always involve the later? Well have I got a tool for you! Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection beta for Mac means you’ll never have to get up off the couch again!

Clearly the problem with having two computers is that you constantly have to transfer stuff from one to the other. Or if you’re like me, you have one pristine new computer that has the bare essentials, and one old workhorse knee deep in elbow grease. What this remote desktop utility is use your sexy computer to manipulate the workhorse. And that’s what you want!

It’s a relatively simple exercise to install. Just download the five meg zip file onto your Mac and off you go. On the other end, you need to enable remote connections in the Windows control panel. So yes it is a bit fiddly, and to be frank the help files could have been a lot better. But once it’s up and runnin’, oh joy of joys. You can run your Windows machine’s desktop on your Mac just like you were there. Over a wireless LAN, it’s not too jerky either. So why not give it a crack?

Importantly, it’s optimised to interact with Vista based Windows machines (call it optimism) but it will work with XP. Be warned though that the help files are based on Vista.

Before you shirk at Microsoft products, there is a bunch of other remote desktop solutions for Mac. All are infinitely more confusing - and expensive - than this one. Microsoft Remote Desktop seems to do the job pretty nicely, and that’s all I really care about.

Download Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection for Mac Beta 2 (look for Remote Desktop at the bottom of the poorly designed page!)

Tonight was the big night. I’ve made the move from ADSL 1 with iiNet to ADSL 2+ with TPG. Fingers crossed, I hope they keep up the good work. So basically I’ve churned to TPG for free (on an 18 month contract) and the speed is blindingly quick so far.

Oh yeah, and I’ve gone from 20 gig a month (10 gig peak, 10 gig off peak) to 150 gig (40 gig peak, 110 gig off peak) for $70. So yeah, save $120 bucks a year and get 144 bonus gig of downloads. You don’t have to read between the lines for this one….

With iiNet, the support used to be brilliant 18 months ago. As you can tell by my last post, you’re going to spend a minimum of 20-60 minutes waiting for an operator to answer. I’ve made about 5 phone calls so far to TPG, every one has been answered well within 5 minutes - well within! Admitedly they use Indian call centres, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The quality is quite good. And that’s what’s really important to me, the quality not the nationality.

No doubt there will be more news to come, so watch this space. I’d also love to hear what anyone who’s on iiNet or has recently changed from iiNet to another ISP has to say. So please, leave your comments. But if you are having second thougts about second rate service, don’t waste any time. It’s clearly not worth it.

Watching the news just now on Australian Channel Ten, I was simply flabbergasted at how a report on anti-whaling protesters completely missed the point. Apparently one of the Sea Shepherd crew was shot by a Japanese  ’scientist’. What really amazed me is that the bullet was lodged in one of the protester’s “Kevlar”. Now this can only mean one thing. Kevlar body armour.

Kevlar is strong enough to make ship hulls out of. So you can be damn sure it wasn’t thermal underwear the protester was wearing. You don’t have to be a security expert to realise that this is getting a bit bloody serious. Military Kevlar vests weigh approximately 20-30 kilos as well so you  wear them because your life’s in danger, not to pull chicks. Furthermore one or two of the Japanese coast guards (surely just a little bit out of their jurisdiction) were wearing full riot gear sans shields and weapons.  Apparently we’re not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

SBS coverage was a little more interesting. Announcements in English from the Japanese ship’s bullhorn threatened the protesters with arrest under Japanese law. Now again, I ain’t no lawyer but aren’t they in Japanese waters?
Yes this is the clandestine side of what are genuine cultural differences. Like bulls to the Spanish, our Asian brethren tend to think you eat meat or you don’t. So once you cross that divide, there’s no difference between a cow and a whale, an abalone and a sardine; if you’re eating meat, you accept the cruelty and get on with it. An attitude definitely backed up by long time friend and Japanese host brother.

Sure most of us whitey’s are a little less black and white. If somethings endangered, you do something about it; the beauty of grey persists. Often we’ll put animal welfare before that of refugees, the homeless, even extended family. I don’t really buy into that.

While I adore protest and support it wholeheartedly, it just makes the whole thing stink. What is going on! Of all the Military bases in Antarctica e.g. those of Argentina, Australia, US and Chile(?), why can’t the be called upon to get both parties the hell out of Dodge? After all if they really love warm furry animals, they’d be really giving them the shits with all that noise? Secondly, I plead my naiveté to the issue here, but why doesn’t anyone persist on the Japanese publishing some findings or data on the issue [perhaps they have. This is a rant not an essay!]?

And finally, can someone just outline how stupid hunting these animals is!!! The animal is bloody useless and apparently quite salty! How can they justify the expense of killing the things? How can the justify the cultural connection to the Japanese people without a PR firm? It’s not as if there intuits or Scandinavians which still probably give it a red hot go - as they always have.

Anyways, someone should ‘bitchslap’ both parties hard ‘upside the head’ and remind them how bloody petulant the whole exercise is. Here we are living in a quasi-fascist, one state world and we can’t get our act together over a few blubbering whales?

On the lighter side, the Japanese are apparently threatening to use tear gas in their defense. Now again, I ain’t no munitions or combat expert, but this sounds preposterous to me. How is the gas going to ‘hang around’ on the deck of the protesters’ ship? No doubt it can be used but it sounds like a ridiculous tactic. Would love to hear if it is plausible to use tear gas on the water! It sounds like threatening to nag your wife or partner: you know it’s futile so why try?

A matter of opinion all too quickly becomes a war. Can’t we be more cunning in getting the Japanese to see the grey side of the argument rather than pushing time and resources into military action? What a waste of time.

Well at least you’d be saying this if you were Karl Rove. Whose apparently Norwegian, pierced penis, queer pioneer adopted father is meant to be according to this article. Some bloke who claims that Louis Rove used to go to piercing parties with him in the seventies, where they’d pierce each other on coffee tables, claims to own Mr Rove’s favorite golden cock ring.

If you’re really game, read the source article here. The alledged Louis Rove has so many piercings, he’s like an inverted colander or a gold plated, purple headed Darlek. Well at least he can follow in his son’s footsteps and join the Conservative Party in the UK…

Aah when the truth comes out about neo-cons. Oh dear god I hope that this is true. This is funnier than the refugees that snuck into England in Tony Blair’s customised BMW limo… Pure gold! Ironically I found this because I was searching for the apparent new You Am I album title “I’m Proud Of My Gay Son”. This find was almost as good as a new You Am I album. But please Timmy, top this one!

I had a broadband dilemma a while ago. My dad needed broadband. So we were already to go ADSL, but the house has a back to base alarm. This meant that the alarm is wired into the phone line for emergencies and required the security company to add in a splitter. Let’s face it, that security company could charge whatever they want to install a simple $20 device.

Second option was cable. But Telstra is prohibitively expensive and that too would’ve required either a cable to be run up the house or a wireless network. Either way, it wasn’t a serious option for us.

That’s when we found 3 with their Wi-Fi USB modem deal. For all intents it’s a mobile phone without a speaker and a keypad. You buy the modem with a garden variety sim card. Once you set it up, you’re basically on the 3G network.

As soon as we plugged it in, download speeds were pretty average. It takes a day or so to hit HSDPA speeds, which are basically the same as 1.5 DSL. But once you’re there, it’s pretty fast.

So how fast is it? Well this one is installed in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, near the Dandenongs, and it’s reasonable. Downloads will stay around 45K on the 3G network and way above 100K when in HDSPA mode.  HSDPA mode seems to be a bit intermittent though.

One big tip we’ve discovered is to improve reception, get yourself a 5 metre USB extension lead. No this won’t act as an antenna, but mounting your USB modem as close to the ceiling (and a window) as possible greatly reduces interference, thus greatly improving speed and reliability.

So far so good. Yes the device is mobile, but more importantly it could save you a few hundred bucks in installation, even if you never use it on the road. An option worth thinking about.

Broadworks Pty Limited are now live with a brand new web site. This web site is based around the latest version of the Wordpress Content Management System (CMS) that this very blog is based on.

For a low cost and quick lead time, Broadworks now have a web site show casing their latest projects. Particularly important with property development. The CMS means that Broadworks aren’t dependent on me to make trivial updates. With a few clicks, they can do it all themselves. Meaning they take care of their own business, and I’m only involved with the technical stuff (adding functionality, look and feel etc) - as it should be.

Broadworks specialise in consultancy and project management for construction and tele-communications projects.

If you’d like to find out more about getting your own web site using the Wordpress CMS, please get in touch with me.