ajft

Yay, finally! After four months of battling “Ubuntu who knows best,” I've finally managed to convince it to reinstall a current NVidia driver that works on my PC and gives me back the 1280x1024 resolution that I'd been using for four or five years! For some reason the 8.10 upgrade had removed all traces of the NVidia packages and refused to recognise that I had hardware that could use them.

Now if only I can get it to fix my local cyrus IMAP installation that also went belly-up with the Ubuntu 8.10 “upgrade.”

Only two more months until the Ubuntu 9.04 “upgrade” happens and I find out what wonders it manages to break….

http://www.9gridchan.org

Building a decentralized grid with Plan 9 and Inferno

http://j.9souldier.org/

If a centipede loses one leg, he can still walk; if he loses a hundred legs, he can still squirm.

http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/

This site contains a collection of articles about Plan 9, Inferno and the technology transfer of their technologies to other platforms such as Linux. It will include articles about ongoing development, novel applications, and step-by-step tutorials on using the various technologies.

No thank you Senator Conroy, I do not want mandatory internet filtering of all Internet content in Australia, slowing everything, especially when the blacklist that is filtered is a secret from the very people it is "protecting". Communist China filters the internet to "protect its people," lets not have that sort of protection from our government.

Around and around we go; Connex and Monash City Council, Monash City Council and Connex....

Every couple of weeks someone decides to ignore the no parking signs, to ignore the huge white markings on the ground, to ignore the fact that they're blocking the footpath and bike path, and decides to park illegally at the end of the Oakleigh station car-park. Anyone on foot who is skinny enough can squeeze past, anyone on a bike, with a pram or shopping trolley or who is fatter than average either cannot get past at all, or has to scrape along the side of the idiot's car. The council — Monash City Council — seem to ignore this and rarely police the car-park and even more rarely book the cars. Understandably, a number of people on foot or on bikes get annoyed, but unfortunately a lot of them take it out by ripping the mirrors and wipers off the offending car, an act that is hardly likely to give the driver charitable thoughts towards the next cyclist they meet.

One too many cars parked here, this morning I rang up Monash City Council and spoke to their “local laws” officer and asked to have the offending cars ticketed. As usual, whenever I speak with the council a Kafkaesque miasma descends. The staff member I spoke with insisted that the car-park is a railway car-park and is the operated and policed by Connex, and that the council is not allowed to enter it and issue any tickets. OK I thought, I'll just ring Connex… ha ha, not so easy. After the usual voice mail menus and irritations I got to a human and they insisted most strenuously that Connex is only responsible for the car-park and surrounds — an area that I have never seen them clean or maintain, but that's another problem — and that only the local councils are legally allowed to issue parking tickets and that I will have to speak with the council. Pointing out to Connex that this was the opposite of what the council said I was politely told “Not our responsibility.” So thank you everyone, thank you for buck passing.

At least I know that at some stage in the past the council has got off their lazy arse and booked at least one car that parked there, I've got a photo of it from back in September 2007!

Oh well, here's hoping that either the council starts to book them or a few cars get torched, maybe then people might stop parking there!

I don't know what I want to say, how I'm feeling, its all just a bit numbing.

Bushfires are a normally just a part of the Australian summer, eucalypts and the bush burn. On this scale though, and with all this warning so many deaths?

Two weeks ago Melbourne's weather set a record for three days in a row over 43°C, then on Saturday another record with the hottest day ever at 46.4°C — and with howling hot winds, fires broke out all over the state and continued through the night. Sunday in Melbourne was grey and cool and drizzled with rain, but just out of the city to the north the fires raged on and now 108 are confirmed dead.

Places I'm familiar with have been devastated, a map in the paper shows one of our cycling routes; Wittlesea, Humevale, Kinglake and St Andrews, only in this case each town is accompanied by a number, the number of people confirmed dead.

• http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/bushfires/

http://abandonedshoe.blogspot.com/

“Haven't you ever spotted them and thought; where are the owners? Do they not know or notice that they lost a shoe? Did the parent of that baby shoe feel sad at the loss? I recently began taking photographs of the phenomenon. So please do take that photograph next time you spot an abandoned shoe, then email to abandonedshoe@googlemail.com with the date, time and place you found it - and any theory or words you'd like to share with the readers of this blog!”

http://abandonedshoe.blogspot.com/

“Mysterious doorways, curious windows, fascinating glimpses and interesting signs... all those moments that make 'enchanted glimpses' when out in the world.”

Given the enormous number of toys that young Cam has to play with, what do you think would be his favourite things? Is it the stacking cups, the boxes, the wobbly inflatable thing, the mirror or the rings?

Of course not. Like kids everywhere he has more fun with the cardboard box than with the toy that it contained. Having stocked the house with far too many baby toys he finds the most fascinating things are; the track pump, a length of aluminium tubing, the cast-iron door-stopper, the door itself and the rattly handles on the coffee-table drawers.