On Christmas Day, 2006, my family and I opened a bottle of 1976 Penfold’s Grange Hermitage. Such a bottle, well preserved (cellared) fetches about AU $750 (or $590 USD). I’ve held this bottle since mid-2005 when I won it at auction for AU $550 ($430 USD). It’s a […]
So there’s been a bit of hoo-hah over Microsoft’s publicist(s) offering free laptops to bloggers. Joel Spolsky’s (JoelOnSoftware) blogged about the whole thing here. It’s an interesting dilemma. I don’t think there is anything wrong in accepting gifts. Yes, to an extend it can create an unwritten (fair) expectation of a […]
Rain!! Like an early Christmas present, rain has hit Sydney and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Dam levels are down to 30%, and the country is barren dry. Sydney is destined for level 4 water restrictions which would mean no watering of gardens or washing of cars. […]
I was writing a document in Word 2007 when I noticed that the program was underlining (faulting the spelling of) the word ‘harbour’. I realised that the langauge settings were probably set to US English (where they drop the ‘u’ vowel). I changed the language to English (Australian) and continued […]
Humour: The council in Manchester (UK) installed some retractable bollards (video footage) to stop people using bus lanes. It’s causing a bit of uproar with the public. This is funny for the sadist. Technical: Team Foundation Server for the Visual Source Safe developer A good read, for those […]
Well, the official inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires which destroyed almost two entire suburbs and claimed the lives of four people, has concluded. In January, 2003 a large fire front destroyed more than 500 homes in the western Canberra suburbs of Duffy, Cotter Dam and Stromlo Forest. There was, […]
So, I’ve started taking a big long look at where I’m at. It’s Christmas, 2006, so I’m in a reflective mood. It was funny, because it was only last month that it hit me, that I’d been coasting for about the last 18 months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked […]
Thanks to the many known and anonymous readers and RSS subscribers who have helped rack up these very nice statistics: These numbers started 17 October 2:25 PM, 2006 and the stats below are good as of 9:40 AEST on Sunday 17/12/06: Total page views: 662 Page views […]
From the news desk, in case you somehow managed not to hear about it.. Futurama returns for a new season to debut in 2008. Reading an amusing interview with Futurama producer David X Cohen*, I’m particularly interested in the 22 min Hypnotoad episode.. Everyone loves Hypnotoad 
What I […]
What I […]For most Australians, free-to-air TV is both the bane of our existence and a right (such as breathing). The former annoys us to no end, but without the latter we’d be extremely annoyed. Presently there is some contraversy about Free-To-Air having the broadcast rights to live sporting events, and […]
Good news for classical music lovers. Hot on the heals of this author’s attempts to get popular, but copyrighted, content into the public domain comes this great bit of news which is filed accordingly under the ‘Free Stuff’ category; LONDON (Reuters) – Mozart’s year-long 250th birthday party is ending on […]
In Australia we’d probably have a similar range of stickers, but replace ‘Bush’ wih ‘Howard’* Bumper stickers and other political messages recently sighted in US** Is It Vietnam Yet?That’s OK, I Wasn’t Using My Civil Liberties Anyway.Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.Let’s Fix Democracy in This Country First.If You […]
Using this sample, you can create a C# based utility which creates stored proc text using some of the nifty new features in SQL Server 2005. This is a little tutorial I posted on my original code blog at http://code.blogdrive.com. I have rewritten most of the original post. […]
Yesterday I read this rather interesting "Ask Slashdot" post on Slashdot.. There are a plethora of reasons why a computer takes time to boot. For the moment, let’s ignore Power On Self Test (POST) and various other hardware and CMOS related tests which are run automatically when a computer boots (this […]
In a recent ‘news’ article, the country Brazil recently applauded (all at once, quite a feat?) when US critics panned a new horror film which depicts US backpackers/tourists being lured into a trap which ends up with their bodily organs being harvested for sale on the black market. Now, I […]