Stephen Witherden’s Website :: Technology

Ok, first thing I have done you may not have noticed: I have added subscription functionality to my blog. So now you can receive an email every time I make an update.

Cornelia: I have subscribed you already, because you were complaining before that I don’t tell you what’s going on. You have no excuses now, since you’ll receive an email every time I write anything :p

Another thing I have been working on is my Geographical Positioning Systems. I bought a GPS receiver (the last one on that site) which I have been playing with for a while now. I am quite impressed. It was cheap, only about AU $130, but it comes with all the trimmings: car charger, wall charger, USB charger. (more…)

Ok, most of you are fully aware that I am a geek. As such, I like geeky toys and whatnot. That said, I haven’t had much reason to buy anything suitably geeky in, well, forever. The technology has just never been cool enough in my opinion. A pocket PC I can also use as a mobile phone? Yawn, snore.

For years I have had this romantic notion of a personal area network (PAN) in my head. The PAN is the backbone of your own personal (some say wearable) computer which is always at hand (some say pervasive or ubiquitous). I originally thought the PAN would piggy-back on the body’s own electromagnetic field but when Bluetooth came out I decided it would have to do for now.

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I have been on training for the last 1.5 days. This is the first training I’ve had at Beca (I don’t count TechEd and Health & Safety training.. no, really, it doesn’t count). It’s the first time I have actually learnt something completely new in about 5 years (new programming languages don’t count, that’s just too easy). I am so excited I can’t contain myself, so many new concepts and moving parts that could go wrong, I love it! Most fun I’ve had in ages.

Link 16 is a tactical data link used in the military. It’s about 20 years old but it’s still considered state-of-the-art. I kind of like it, it’s cool. I would tell you about it but then I’d have to kill you :p

As for Texas…

There is even less certainty around whether or not I will be going to Texas. Katie from HR suggested I keep my South African citizenship so that they don’t have to re-submit my paperwork for visas etc.

-.-

Only, you see, the whole problem is: if I am a South African citizen (even if I have dual citizenship) I can’t have the technology exported to me. That’s kind of the whole point. Of course, Beca spent over 3 months checking my “security clearance” to see if I would be allowed to do the job in the first place. Um.. yeah, well, turns out that a a few weeks after they tell me to start packing, I am not allowed to.

So, my faith is rapidly waning. The window of opportunity apparently closes in the middle of next month. So either I am leaving by then or I am not. Although I do still hold out hope, what with the way things are going at the moment, I don’t think they’ll be able to get me much further than Sydney.

I feel most sorry for Sarah, but I will make sure she will be able to live where she is at least till the end of the year.

What will I do if I don’t go? Well, I guess I could do almost anything. I have always wanted to live in New York, just for a little while.

So, we got the goods and it was all very exciting, just like Christmas. Then…

Aaaaaaaarrrrggh!
The graphics cooling down thingy didn’t work. It was the wrong make. Good waste of $30 (but it was so pretty). Before we had any bright ideas, we tried wedging the graphics card fan under the graphics card with a few chopsticks (I shit you not). Needless to say, that didn’t work.

To top it all off, the stupid thing still overheated even with the new PSU. We were going to need to cool down the CPU…

So, we ordered even more hardware and waited a week for it to arrive.
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It all started with a break-in. Our little flat was broken into and the bastards stole both of our laptops, the playstation and a few games. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to us considering that we live very near to Glen Innes. (more…)