The Mad Peeps

Delicious steak

2010-09-03T14:38:03+00:00

I'm posting this after being asked for my steak-cooking technique. Even Mark agrees that I do it better than him :)

- Leave meat out of fridge so that it gets to room temperature.
- Slather in salt and leave for at least 15 mins.
- Rinse salt off and dry on paper towel.
- Lightly season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Get the pan HOT HOT HOT.
- Seal on one side for about a minute, then seal the other side and turn the heat right down low.
- Cook until there's a bit of spring left in the middle of the meat, feel it with the tongs. This bit is hard to explain as it comes down to experience and how well done you like your steak.
- Rest for at least 5 mins in a super-slow oven.

Eat and enjoy! Our steak last night was particularly well accompanied by mashed potato that I put through the sieve twice, so it was creamy and velvety. Yummo :)

Lists

2010-08-14T10:09:44+00:00

Someone asked me the other day 'does doing all this cooking mean you use a lot of flour?', to which my answer was 'no, just lots of butter'. And so here I am writing a mental shopping list of ingredients I need for my next few recipes and my star ingredient 'butter' is as always at the top of my list.

So I'm a good way into the book now, but I would say I've still only covered about a 5th of the recipes. Cakes are done, biscuits are done, and I now move onto a few muffin recipes and pancakes.

Biscuits of note include Ricciardeli which everyone at TFG loved, with their irresistable chewy almond sweetness. I am also impressed with the Irish Blue biscuits. A savoury biscuit using lots of blue cheese. There were 3 savoury biscuits in all, none of which I would have chosen to make had I not been making everything. The 'hot discs' are almost like a water cracker, and I find a certain delightful satisfaction that I can make this sort of 'store bought standard cupboard fare' myself. The oatcakes were interesting in that it lead me to making my own version of baby rusks. Saskia Hyndman seemed to enjoy the one I made her and I plan on making a batch for Josie as well. When Ollie gets older I'm sure I will make him a batch too.

Next recipe is Strawberry Shortcakes which is a very traditional American recipe, and then Blueberry Muffins which will no doubt make their way to West Perth and be eaten with gusto.

Demands of a NBN: a fresh look

2010-08-13T13:45:06+00:00

I just read this article by Gareth Parker at The West. This article sparked a series of comments which pretty much sums up that a lot of people who are commenting and voting down the idea of a national broadband network have limited idea about its actual benefits, or why people support it.

I’m not even sure the NBN is the right choice, but there is a need for improved infrastructure and it should be taken seriously if this country is actually going to continue progressing at an acceptable rate. I don’t know if Labor are proposing it based on the reasons here, but this is my take.

Gareth describes the NBN as a “nerd’s wet dream”. Commenters claim “why would I want to download a movie in 10 seconds”, “how fast do you need to access a web page”, “my son already uses up his bandwidth quick enough”, “We don’t even need the Internet”. People actually insult other people who have an interest in a better Internet solution for Australia.

Sure there’s a lot of education to be done here for those people, but lets look at it logically from a today-forward point of view.

Most homes I visit have at least 1 computer. The average in my social circle (which is probably a fair representation moving forward) is a family computer, a business laptop, maybe a laptop for a child, Internet enabled phones, and a games console (maybe foxtel too). And that’s today. 6 or 7 Internet-enabled devices, right now.

I would imagine in the next 5 years, the average number of Internet enabled devices will at *least* double. The content distributed down onto those devices will increase tremendously with HD content, updates, human behaviour. So how does all of that operate all at once on your “Lite” ADSL plan. It doesn’t. Not even close.

Maybe they can get more out of the faltering copper network. Maybe they can patch up the system and stop going in to exchanges and manually switching ports to solve customer complaints ad-hoc. There’s not a lot more to gain out of that crusty network. And then what? Keep revisiting this issue every year for the next 15 years?

So, is $43bn the answer? I’m not sure. Is fibre-optic the answer? I believe so. This is a valid issue, just like every other being debated. I just hope the right people start debating it soon and come up with the answers to spend the money to get on track.

Foursquare – The verdict on the location-based service.

2010-08-11T13:34:51+00:00

There’s been a lot of publicity surrounding Foursquare lately, both good and bad. Having used it for a month now, I’m unleashing my point of view.

Why is it good?

Helping you find venues – If you’re driving around, or walking around trying to locate a business, open up the Foursquare app and you can view the business and the map, even without having to search in most cases.

Making businesses focus on people – Foursquare gives you the ability to have “specials” if you’re a retail business. This has provided an opportunity for many brands to put the focus back on their customers. Check in at Starbucks and get a free coffee, check in at the local pub and get 2 drinks for the price of 1. Considering you’ve usually got your phone with you at these venues, claiming (and offering) specials is easy. Foursquare is about the customer, not the business.

Find your friends in same venue – Going to a concert or a restaurant and wondering if your friends are there already? Foursquare shows you who’s currently checked in at that venue.

Travel – The app is awesome for travelling to a foreign town or country. Seeing things to do in the area you’re in, or tips for that exact venue, meal suggestions, ways to get more for your money, all by real people who have been before you. Like Lonely Planet in real time.

Integrate with other applications – Foursquare has an API, which means software developers can take advantage of their location tools and implement applications that complement or replace Foursquare.

Number of users – There is over 2 million users, with over 6 million venues as of last month. With approximately 30% growth per month, Foursquare isn’t going away any time soon. More users = more useful platform.

Getting users into the real world – Foursquare isn’t a way to hide on the Internet, it’s bringing the online into the offline world. Twitter and Foursquare are actually causing people who would have never met, to socialise in real life. This to me is a great thing.

Why is it bad?

Privacy – There’s a lot of discussion over the fact that you’re letting people know where you are. There are websites that announce when you’re not home, so thieves can take advantage. In my opinion this doesn’t really make it any easier for thieves. Thieves have been operating for a lot longer than the Internet existed. Maybe this helps them, but the only burglaries I ever encountered were before Foursquare and Facebook existed.

Constant updates – Foursquare shares information with your Foursquare friends on the website. The applications allow you to share check-ins with Twitter and Facebook. Some people have written off Foursquare for this reason. When I check in, I make an active choice not to share outside of the Foursquare website (unless it’s something I would have updated separately anyway). If your friend stream is bombarding you with annoying updates, I’m sure that goes further than just Foursquare. A friend on Foursquare should really be a friend that you’re ok having them know where you are (if you so choose).

Round up

Personally I think this has a lot of promise and could be moulded into something that is a real benefit to most smartphone users. Like most things, dislike starts from a lack of knowledge and it would be a shame to see Foursquare disappear, or just be labelled as another “thing for teenagers”.

I would expect Foursquare to start rolling out more functionality in the coming months too. I’m looking forward to it.

sed not awk

2010-08-09T23:50:36+00:00

Here’s a short snippet that I always forget, or confuse for awk:

Joining the AWIA Committee

2010-08-09T15:08:55+00:00

The Australian Web Industry Association AGM was held on the 4th August at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. 5 committee members were elected (or re-elected) and I was one of the new members elected.

It’s exciting to be part of the committee that can hopefully take AWIA to a new level this year. I’m looking forward to our first committee meeting to get the ball rolling.

Joining the AWIA Committee

2010-08-06T14:37:35+00:00

The Australian Web Industry Association AGM was held on the 4th August at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. 5 committee members were elected (or re-elected) and I was one of the new members elected.

It’s exciting to be part of the committee that can hopefully take AWIA to a new level this year. I’m looking forward to our first meeting to get the ball rolling.

AWIA – Australian Web Industry Association Committee

2010-07-26T15:42:47+00:00

What is AWIA?

From their website:

Formerly Port 80 Inc, the Australian Web Industry Association represents businesses, individuals and students involved in the web industry and aims to:

Further the advancement of the web industry within Australia;
Educate the general public about the role of professionals in the web industry;
Foster greater ties with like-minded organisations.

The Committee

As Managing Director of The Frontier Group, I have nominated to be on the committee in one of the upcoming vacant positions.

As a reasonable size business in the industry it would be good to have a voice within the association and help craft the future of the web industry Australia wide. Paid AWIA members can vote at the AGM (as well as submit a proxy vote).

The 2010 nomination statements are on their website today. AGM details can be found here.

Rails camp Perth – November 2010

2010-07-19T20:10:01+00:00

Today we announced that tickets go on sale for Rails camp 8 on Friday 23rd July.

Rails camp will be running from Friday 12th November to Monday 15th November.

When the tickets go on sale, you can head over to Eventbrite and grab them.

How much does a website cost?

2010-07-13T18:33:02+00:00

The question

This question has been asked for nearly as long as web design companies have been in existence. If you spend 5 minutes doing some research on Google, you will find the answer lies somewhere in the vicinity of FREE to upwards of $100,000.

I’m not sure this helps with making an educated decision as a consumer.

Having met over 200 small business owners in the past few weeks as part of the Achieve More Online workshops, I’ve seen first-hand some extremely bizarre website pricing and fielded many a question about what an appropriate cost might be.

The extreme

Unfortunately, I came across a business (single operator, home-based) who had shelled out over $7,000 for a basic templated web site with 4 pages (Home, About, Photo Gallery, Contact) by a Perth web design company who shall remain nameless. They had also paid for a content management system (CMS) which they had not received. The site would have taken less than a day to put together.

On the contrary, there seems to be an expectation from the SME sector that a high quality website should be somewhere in the vicinity of $2,000 or less.

The price is right?

While I don’t think there’s an easy general answer to the title of this post, here at The Frontier Group we have our own reasons on why our websites are priced the way they are.

The breakdown of a typical small business website:

Research – This is the first stage in the project, where requirements and the purpose of the website are determined. A website needs a real business reason to exist, and we need to know what that is.

The website needs to pass the what, why, how, what if? test. ie what/who the business is, why they should deal with you as opposed to a competitor, how you work, what the benefits are of using your product/service or alternatively, the downside of not using your product/service.

Content – This component is often overlooked or left until last. How can your website be effective in communicating to your customers without content? Just what content you want your website to have will determine how the site will be designed and structured. Knowing and planning for this upfront is key.

Think about the problem/s you’re actually trying to solve with a website and how that might potentially need to look, do some research on competitors who have successfully achieved a similar outcome in your industry.

Accessibility – Now we’re moving towards the design phase, so it’s time to start thinking about accessibility. We’re committed to complying with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 when it comes to developing a website for all. This makes sure online information and services are accessible by people with disabilities. We adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible.

Most people designing their own website or using an online site builder will miss this step completely. On the other hand, there’s plenty of companies who will also leave it out, or fail to inform you about it due to price or ignorance.

Wireframing & Visual Design – At this stage in the project a designer may present wireframes of the concept ideas to develop an outline with the customer. Once a layout structure is agreed, they then develop the visual design of the website. At the completion of this stage images or “flats” are produced for each of the individual page types.

If you’re after a unique business look and feel, don’t succumb to the temptation of a templated site. While this may reduce barrier to entry, chances are, there’s a hundred other sites out there that look identical to yours.

Prototyping – We produce a prototype website for our customers allowing them to view it in a web browser. This allows them to “click around” the site and get a better representation of how different effects or transitions will appear. At this stage, cross-browser testing and necessary website code validation occurs.

Check that the site functions correctly and give it a thorough test. Select a handful of your best customers and give them the option to test it for you.

Deployment – The website is then deployed to a test server, so the customer can approve that the website has been produced to the required standard.

Hosting & CMS – Domain name, Email and Website hosting needs to be considered at this stage. Also licensing and setup of a CMS product for content management. For our customers a CMS is non-negotiable, as it enables the customer to make basic changes to their content on an on-going basis. This negates the need to contact us and pay for changes.

Watch out here for vendor lock-in. If you want to pick up your site and change hosting company or web designer, can you do so?

Other Considerations – You might think that the website is now complete, but a website needs constant revision and updating to remain relevant. Other options at this stage involve setup of specific analytical tools, search engine optimisation techniques, email marketing tools and maybe a complete online strategy.

The answer

Armed with all this information, how much would you now pay?

You should be able to make an informed decision as a consumer that you are indeed getting what you paid for. If you’ve got a specific budget in mind, you need to appreciate and understand what that will get you from a reputable company. The value of the website to your business is the single most important point to remember.

Finally, I’ve included a guide to fairly common pricing structures by companies who follow this similar process for small business websites:

$0-$3,000 – Simple templated design or inexperienced student or freelancer.
$7,000-$15,000 – Small business website with a unique business look. Reputable company/freelancer.
$20,000+ – Custom website with unique requirements. Usually requires a large amount of additional programming.

I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below, as a customer or web design company dealing in this area.

Filled cakes & fruited cakes

2010-07-08T08:15:02+00:00

Ah so many cakes since my last post! I have now finished the filled cakes section, am almost through fruited cakes and will be onto biscuits before I know it.

I'm quite surprised that I'm still doing this, I'm one of those people with a short attention span who gets bored easily. Obviously this little project of mine is interesting (and yummy) enough to keep me going. I'm also surprised at how quickly cakes leave my kitchen and make their way to other people's homes, and tummies. I must have at least 2 social occasions a week where it has been handy to have a freshly made cake in the kitchen, and the rest seem to have been readily devoured by hungry mouths at TFG. Tony's 'cake reports' have been a little lack luster of late though, so I'm relying on mostly my own opinion as to how good the cakes are.

So The courgette cake way AMAZING. Filled with lime curd and slathered with cream cheese icing. The Victoria Sponge was nothing like a sponge, but still tasted nice. The Boston Cream Pie managed to do a total back flip off the cake plate onto my kitchen bench. Despite this looking like a possible disaster (and at this point I envisioned myself having a tantrum on the floor a la' 'Julie and Julia') it was quite easily put to rights. The Autumnal birthday cake was a total triumph and ended up looking like something a professional cake maker would make, and I will certainly be making that one again. The 'icing' was incredible. It was basically a cooked meringue. But not in the traditional sense where you put it in the oven and the outside goes all crispy. This was meringue that was cooked as you whipped it with a handheld beater. So you end up with this fluffy, sticky, marshmallowy coating on your cake. It was full of maple syrup too, so it had that gorgeous golden, toffee, earthy taste that you can only get from really maple syrup.

Onto 'Fruit cakes', and there has been Banana cake which has walnuts and sultanas in it. Very nice and moist, but Banana cakes don't overly thrill me at the best of times. After that a Rhubarb and cornmeal cake. I thought I wouldn't be able to make this due to it not really being rhubarb season, but low and behold I found some! It was $8 a kilo though, and so I only bought a small amount, substituting the rest for apples which worked very well. The polenta (corn meal) gave the crumb a lovely grainy texture and helped soak up the juices of the fruits within the cake.

Tonight I go home to make a marzipan fruit cake. I adore, no LOVE fruit cake. It is my one weakness, and so I am very excited to be making this! Instead of the usual mixed peel it contains only sultanas, dried pears and cherries. So it does away with the sometimes nasty bitter mixed peel. Instead the recipe calls for a teaspoon of orange flower water. I doubt though that such a delicate flavour like orange flower water will even be noticed in this cake, and so I'm not too worried that I can't find it. I will use a drop of orange essence instead.

My students seem to be enjoying the steady stream of cake also! Being 15 and boys they are veracious eaters, which has also helped with using up cakes.

Two or three more cakes then I'm onto biscuits. I'm still trying to cook a cake a night, so hopefully by the weekend I will be onto biscuits. The first of which I think is rosebud madelines. I've always wanted to make madelines, they look so pretty and delicate. The sort of thing you'd serve as a petit four with tea.

Until my next post
Happy eating.

A lucky in love girl;

2010-07-03T15:09:03+00:00

It’s the school holidays. For the next two weeks I can leisurely do as I please and that makes me feel weightless and happy. I have a to-do list longer than my arm, but at least I am not held down by 8:30am – 2:30pm time constraints. It’s a nice feeling. Last night Adam and [...]

Specjour with Custom Bundler and Database Setup

2010-06-25T14:51:27+00:00

We have a test suite here that now is rapidly approaching 2 hours using a single core. Let me just repeat that. A developer realistically would have to leave their machine testing overnight to see if the suite is working. That’s really not good enough.

Specjour has been a bit of a turn-key miracle worker with our RSpec suite, however lately we’ve started to require some custom database setup that we do in a seeds.rb file as well as some custom bundler install parameters as most of our devs don’t have MySQL installed. Both of our needs were being nicely stomped on by Specjour so I thought it was time to look elsewhere.

I took a trip down Hydra lane and while getting to the point of having a working, local, dual runner system was a piece of cake, getting something working remotely via SSH took me hours of pain. Debugging the remote SSH workers was a nightmare and I spent a couple of hours running through code before deciding it was probably better to update our existing solution rather than tooling up a brand new one.

Back to the Specjour code. Specjour includes a rails directory inside which is an init.rb which Rails will run at initialisation (it’s part of what Rails does) but the Specjour initialiser will always just run the default database setup task no matter what initialiser you’ve got setup. We had a specjour initialiser that runs if ENV['PREPARE_DB'] was populated, which it is by Specjour, the problem was that the Specjour initialiser ran in the Rails after_initialization hook and therefore stomped all over our database setup.

The first step was just to have our initialiser write to another ENV element and then to have the Specjour after_initialize handler respect this. This isn’t too hard to implement as the after_initialize handler is just a block that is attached and so inside of this block you just need to check that ENV element. In my case I created a new ENV['DB_PREPPED'] element when my database setup had completed and then when the after_initialize block runs it checks for ENV['DB_PREPPED'] and will do nothing if that’s been set to true.

Easy. I now had Specjour respecting our database setup task.

The next step was to try and test this outside of a Rails application, not only that but to test the operation of a block (anonymous function?). To do this I setup a stub on a mock Rails class and let it capture the after_initialize block and then I ran a number of specs against this block.

module Specjour
  module DbScrub
  end
end

DO_NOT_REQUIRE = true

describe "Rails Initialiser" do
  before :all do
    ENV['PREPARE_DB'] = "true"

    stub(Specjour::DbScrub).scrub

    class Rails
      class << self; attr_accessor :configuration; end
      class << self; attr_accessor :test_block; end
    end

    config = Object.new
    stub(config).after_initialize { |args|
      object = Object.new
      Rails.test_block = args
      object
    }
    Rails.configuration = config

    require 'rails/init'
  end

... tests ...

This code essentially mocks up Rails.configuration and then stubs the after_initialize method. This stub then places the block that after_initialize yields to into Rails.test_block. When I require 'rails/init' it sequentially processes the file (as with all Ruby) and the stub will capture the block. After this is a bunch of tests I run an whether the Specjour::DbScrub.scrub method is called or not, so it’s nothing special.

I felt like at this stage I had fairly well tested the main aspects of the database setup.

The next issue was with how bundler was being handled. We have a situation where we would like to install sometimes without some gems. Some of the gems we use and have written use applications we’d rather not maintain in development and get tested in our staging and production environments. We generally will run a bundle install in development without the production or metrics groups so I wanted to have the ability to pass through a custom bundler command. That’s pretty easy now with my gem. Inside .specjour/bundler.yml there is a command property. I think this is more complex than what’s required, but I can foresee us needing a number of custom rake tasks and shell scripts so this bundler.yml should have probably started life as a settings/commands/something_generic.yml

To test this part of my changes was pretty simple. I basically just stubbed the system calls to bundler to give certain return values and checked to make sure the correct program flow happened.

describe ".bundle_install" do
    let :manager do
      stub.instance_of(Specjour::Manager).project_path { "/tmp" }

      stub(Dir).chdir(anything) { |args|
        args.last.call # This yields to the block for Dir.chdir()
      }

      manager = Specjour::Manager.new
      stub(manager).project_path { "blah" }
      mock(manager).system('bundle lock')

      manager
    end

    it "should perform a bundle lock" do
      stub(manager).system('bundle check > /dev/null') { true }

      manager.bundle_install
    end

    it "should check if there are gems required" do
      mock(manager).system('bundle check > /dev/null') { true }

      manager.bundle_install
    end

    context "when gems are required" do
      before :each do
        # Not a before :all as it needs to hook into the let hook above

        stub(manager).system('bundle check > /dev/null') { false }
      end

      context "and there is a bundler YAML file" do
        before :each do
          config_file = ".specjour/bundler.yml"

          mock(File).exists?(config_file) { true }
          mock(File).read(config_file) { "" }
          mock(YAML).load(anything) {
            { 'command' => "do it" }
          }
        end

        it "should get the bundle command from the YAML file" do
          mock(manager).system('do it > /dev/null')
          manager.bundle_install
        end
      end

      context "and there is no bundler YAML file" do
        before :each do
          mock(File).exists?(".specjour/bundler.yml") { false }
        end

        it "should perform a bundle install" do
          mock(manager).system('bundle install > /dev/null')
          manager.bundle_install
        end
      end
    end
  end

You can see that I stubbed our the Dir.chdir block to just yield directly to the call, otherwise it’ll throw an exception. Then I stubbed and mocked out the Kernel.system calls as necessary. Kernel methods are generally included into Ruby objects so you don’t stub Kernel, you stub the object that has the Kernel methods. Most of the testing is pretty basic, but I’d be keen to hear if I’m doing anything incorrectly!

This was my first major venture into adding functionality to a public project and it was good fun. I think it made me do a little better work than I might normally, it’s a great motivation to potentially have peers look at how you do things.

After bundling it all up and testing it here with over a dozen developers and even more machines I’m pretty happy with how it functions. I’ve made a pull request back to the original gem creator and hopefully he’ll like what I’ve done. In the meantime if you want to check it out then my Specjour is available on Git Hub.

Parallel RSpec Performance Testing

2010-06-23T11:24:01+00:00

We’re currently deciding on hardware to build a bit of a testing cluster on which we’ll run whatever the current best remote testing package we can find. At the moment, for us, that’s ended up being Specjour. We ended up pitting one of our i7 iMacs against a $400 Acer box we bought. We installed Ubuntu’s REE 1.8.7 on the Acer machine and RVM and REE 1.8.7 on the iMac.

i7 iMac – Quad Core Hyperthreading

real 11m14.131s
user 0m0.776s
sys 0m0.348s

Acer – E5200 Dual Core E5200

real 35m56.658s
user 0m0.870s
sys 0m2.500s

It seems like the little Acer box offers slightly better value for money in this case. I’d like to see how we’d do with some virtualisation sitting on top this, but I think the included memory will be quite limiting in this regard. I wonder whether the processor resources are actually being fully utilised.

What’s crazier than Crazy Domains having a major outage?

2010-06-22T23:02:26+00:00

I’ve just spent the last half an hour reading some of the amusing comments from customers of Crazy Domains (or soon to be ex customers).

Ask yourself a question – does your business rely on a website with maximum uptime?

If you pay between $2 and $4 per month for web hosting, you probably should expect serious regular downtime.
If you will lose thousands of dollars of business when your website or email goes down, think about finding a provider who offers a commercial grade hosting package with a fair price attached.
Take uptime guarantees with a grain of salt. Do some online research and see what other companies/customers are saying about their experiences.

I feel for Crazy Domains. It’s a tough situation and they are going to be under fire for this for a long time. All it’s highlighted to me is that there is a big lack of education in the hosting and web space and that needs to change.

Update: Netregistry voiced a similar opinion

and the cooking continues

2010-06-22T05:09:24+00:00

In my last post I had made the easy almond cake and was about to try Gateau Breton and I'm pleased to announce both were a huge success.

The almond cake was beautifully easy to make (as the recipe promises) and a moist marzipany delight to eat. The gateau Breton, although easy to put together, was a bit more fiddly in the cooking process. I had to cook it quite a lot longer than the recipe suggests, however I suspect that is due to my terrible cheap and nasty oven rather than Nigella's recipe.

None the less, it was worth the mucking about and was amazing! It doesn't look like anything much, but the chewy butteriness of it makes it simply divine. This recipe gets 4 3/4 stars, and I will certainly be making it again.

I have also now made the almond and lemon cake, again another incredibly moist cake, and the zestiness of the lemons cuts what can sometimes be too much sweetness. I especially found this advantageous having sampled so many cakes of late. you do find yourself getting a bit sick of eating the same thing. 4 stars.

Last thing I have cooked is lime curd, or lime butter. My Mother used to make lemon butter quite regularly as children and it was one of my FAVOURITE things in the entire world to eat. My sister and I would go through a jar in a matter of days, applying it to everything we could think of! Ice cream, toast, biscuits, cake and even by the spoon full on it's own straight from the jar. For some reason I always harboured the idea that it would be difficult to make, but having now made it myself I am blow away by just how easy it is! The only 'tricky' part is making sure you stop cooking it at the right time so the egg in it doesn't become scrambled and the whole lot splits. You want a lovely velvety smooth emulsion.

Although the lime curd is at the back of the book and I kind of intended to make everything front to back it is something I need for the 'courgette cake' that I will be making soon, and so I thought it best to make it early. At the rate it's being eaten, I may have to make a second batch for the cake.

Next recipe is a lemon syrup cake and that is the last of the 'plain cakes' chapter! Chapter two and we move on to 'filled cakes', the first of which is a classic Victoria Sponge. You know the type your Nana makes filled with jam and cream. Old fashioned simplicity at is best I feel, and a great one to share with friends as it should be consumed as soon as possible. The cream in it means it won't keep very well.

Grand Slam + Raindance = Slamdance!

2010-06-19T19:39:18+00:00

I bought another Acer X1800 desktop machine today (dual core 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD for only $380 from JB Hi-Fi!) with the intention of creating the first node in our specjour/Hydra test cluster. You might recall we name all the computers at work after Transformers characters, which meant I needed to determine which sub-group these machines would live under. We have already used a few of the Decepticon mini-cassette names like Ravage, Rumble and Laserbeak, so I had a look at what the Autobots provided in the same suite.

I found this site which outlines the Autobot mini-cassette characters, and decided our first node would take on Grand Slam’s name. I was sold when I read that Grand Slam combined with Raindance to create Slamdance! These guys sound like the perfect machines to tackle the task of running our automated test suites.

Agile Development – Myth or Magic?

2010-06-18T10:00:22+00:00

On the 21st July, I am presenting as part of a one day seminar at the Sheraton Hotel in Perth. The event is organised by Savile House and sponsored by Thoughtworks.

Global Companies are increasingly employing Agile development techniques to gain an advantage. It seems so obvious – increase the collaboration between different experts on the project and you will deliver results quicker and at a lower cost. But is it really that easy?

Hear from our first class panel of experts who will share the high’s and low’s of their experience in adopting Agile.

I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with the presenters (download the full brochure – Agile Development – Myth or Magic?):

Nigel Dalton – Lonely Planet
David Joyce – Thoughtworks
Mike Allen – Agile Alliance
John Townsend – NOPSA
Adam Fitzgerald – The Frontier Group
Dr Ashley Aitken – Curtin University
Angela Ferguson – Thoughtworks

Achieve More Online Workshops

2010-06-18T09:58:28+00:00

The past two weeks have seen me travelling around the state of Western Australia and the Northern Territory as part of the Achieve More Online program. This has been a great experience both on a professional and personal level.

Travelling as far south as Albany, and soon to be as far north as Darwin, our team has experienced first hand, just how much value the program is bringing to the small business owners we reach.

Some of my favourite feedback so far:

“Best investment of time & money. Tell your friends – these sessions will be booked out when people realise the quality of the material & presenters. Tell your best friends but NOT your competitors!”
– Keith MacAulay, 2 Oceans Adventures (June 2010 Margaret River event)

“A friendly, knowledgeable team. Loved Matt’s unbridled enthusiasm, Adam’s quirky sense of humour and the whole team’s willingness to help in any way. Go to it! A worthwhile investment of time!”
– Kylie Byfield, Illuminaire Pty Ltd (June 2010 Margaret River event)

See more of the action at the Achieve More Online Facebook Page

How to be a Domestic Goddess

2010-06-17T19:09:41+00:00

In times of financial 'famine', it's nice to have one of life's simplest pleasures at my finger tips. How can anyone feel poor and down about their life when their kitchen is filled with smell of butter, sugar, warm spices and other delights? For me life's riches are held in the joyful look in a friends eye when they take that first bite into something you've made with love and care.

Never in my life have I gone through more butter, sugar, eggs and flour! I thought as my hens started to lay eggs that I would never be able to use all their eggs up in time, instead I am finding myself buying store bought ones to make up the difference. Of course now having chickens and seeing their delight at scratching in the dirt I am always mindful of buying the best welfare eggs I can afford/find, and I encourage you to do the same too.

So my current project is to cook Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic Goddess' from start to finish. I have a million cook books, but I have always used them for inspiration instead of following a recipe to the letter hoping to arrive at what the picture in the book tells me I should have accomplished. With this thought and realisation in hand I wondered what would happen if I did follow the recipes? Would I find a hand full of precious recipes that will become family favorites for years to come? Will I cook something that someone else will enjoy so much that it becomes a favorite tried and true recipe for them? Or will I just put on 5kg? Although at the rate I am sending cakes to The Frontier Group with Tony, maybe it is the TFG boys that will all put on 5kg and not me!

So I am 3/4 the way through the first chapter which is on 'Plain Cakes'. The kind of basic base cakes that you can tart up in a myriad of ways. I am finding it an odd sinful pleasure writing little notes about each recipe in the book itself. The angel on my shoulder tells me I am defacing a lovely book, the devil on my shoulder thinks it's a wonderful idea and that I am just improving on what is already before me. This time the devil wins and so each recipe gets a brief note about how it could be improved, or what I could have done better (over mixed, cake tin too small, could do with a pinch of baking powder, eggs cold instead of room temperature, oven too hot etc, etc) and then my score out of 5. Here's where I'm at:

Madeira cake: 3* - a very plain cake, but good none the less. Would be lovely cut into layers with jam and cream.

Easy Almond Cake - I made this today but am yet to taste it. It looks lovely, I'm going to guess it will get about 4*

Rosemary Loaf cake: 3 1/2* - similar base to the Madeira cake, but with chopped rosemary throughout. This is what I sent Tony to work with today. An odd thing to add to a sweet cake, but I found the subtle spicy green of the rosemary was just lovely. Next time I make this I am going to add the zest of a lemon and twice the rosemary. I ate my slice with stewed apples, definitely a winning combination.

Next will be Gateau Breton. Nigella describes it as a cross between shortbread and pound cake. This looks like the kid of short buttery confection my Mum loves.

So be warned all those who come to Alonso street or work at TFG in the coming months, you will be plied with cake! I would also love to hear your thoughts if you get to try any of them. Good, bad, your rating out of 5 etc.

Happy Cooking!

Hiring again at TFG

2010-06-14T18:56:51+00:00

Once again we’re looking for some more full time developers. If you know someone who might be interested, let them know.

Full details are over on The Frontier Group’s blog.

Do you want to work with us?

2010-06-14T18:48:06+00:00

The Frontier Group is a boutique software development company based in West Perth. We have a strong focus on web software, and utilise Ruby on Rails and JavaScript to build web applications. Our team has grown to thirteen staff and we’re looking to take on more experienced web developers.

Is this you?

You understand the difference between websites and web applications, and you want to write apps that matter for people that care about them.

You’ll have a track record of working on completed projects. You’ll have a few years commercial experience, probably working as part of a team doing solid but under-appreciated work. You will have experience with Mac, Linux or UNIX, but it might not be your daily environment. Similarly you will have an opinion about vi vs. Emacs or Python vs. Ruby, but you’ll understand that they’re just opinions.

You’ll care about your tools and will take real, genuine pride in the quality of the code you create. Learning new programming languages and getting more out of the languages you already know will excite you. Efficiency will be important too, and you’ll be looking for ways to automate your workflow and push the repetition off to a script.

You’ll be confident in your programming ability, regardless of the web language you prefer, yet humble enough to seek guidance when needed. You’ll know how JavaScript can be used to enhance the web, and will have demonstrated experience with a leading JavaScript library. You might even care about SASS and HAML, if you’re really cool.

Using the right tools is important and we realise that. We don’t have a parent company dictating how we do things or what our “standard operating environment” is – you’ll get to make those decisions with us. We all use MacBook Pros for development, but you might want a new iMac, for example. You’ll keep up to date with current trends and care about using modern techniques and practices, as well as tools and technologies.

What we give you

$76,000 per year salary
9% superannuation (on top of salary)
A MacBook Pro with SSD (yours to keep, replaced every two years)
$1,000 travel allowance per year (parking, bike servicing, public transport)
Internet and mobile allowance ($80 each per month)
Current and relevant books, training, tools and gear
Opportunities to work from home/flexi-time
Pay reviews every 6 months with no ceiling on earning potential
Freedom to grow your role with our organisation

What you give us

38 hours per week
Your creative genius and passion

How to apply

Send a short email to jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au and reference your Github and Stack Overflow accounts, along with any Open Source projects you’re involved with. Include a resume if it’s three pages or less.

Vodafone, you’re making things difficult

2010-06-04T08:36:36+00:00

In a few weeks my contract with Vodafone is expiring. This coincides with the (suspected) release of the iPhone 4G.

My iPad is using Telstra Next-G for mobile coverage, so I used the SpeedTest iPhone application to check each carrier’s connectivity from my office.

Each test was run once, so the results might vary if I used actual science and statistics to even things out, but that doesn’t reflect my real-life usage, so I opted for the “one chance to impress me” approach.

	Download	Upload
Telstra	1429 kbps	252 kbps
Vodafone	946 kbps	103 kbps

As you can see, Telstra’s network was about 1.5x faster downloading, and 2.5x faster uploading. Certainly, they’re different devices, but I think it’s comparable.

I just wish Telstra wasn’t, well, Telstra.

Specifying a Default Sort for Dojo Datagrids

2010-05-26T17:37:42+00:00

I spent five minutes finding this today (don’t get me started on Dojo documentation!) so I thought I’d try and put it in an easier to find place – Google.

I wanted to specify my sort order declaratively as part of the tag defining my Datagrid and this is what I found to work :

table dojoType="dojox.grid.DataGrid" store="store" sortInfo="-4"

This will tell the datagrid to automatically sort the Datagrid in a descending manner on column 4. If I’d used 5, or “+5″ then that would be in ascending sort order on the fifth column.

Annoying Jesus

2010-05-23T02:46:19+00:00

Stolen from here.

Achieve More Online: Workshops

2010-05-19T15:03:30+00:00

During June & July I will be travelling around WA & NT participating in a series of web workshops as part of the Federal Government’s Small Business Online program. A summary of the workshop is below.

In just 1 day ($49), you’ll learn the 8 fundamental building blocks of a successful online marketing and website strategy and have a complete action plan to help you put that knowledge to use.

The 7 small business owners and specialists in their field will show you how to use the Internet to promote your business and create a website that works to deliver real dollars to your bottom line.

From business planning through to optimising your site for search engines and simple online marketing tools, everything you need to know about developing a better online business will be delivered to you in an interactive workshop and 1-to-1 mentoring sessions where we will help you solve your business’ specific problems.

At the end of the 1 day workshop, you’ll understand the 8 building blocks of a well balanced, effective online marketing plan:

business plan, target market & purpose
website design
content building & copywriting
graphic design & layout
website imagery & photos
website traffic generating tools such as pay per click advertising (PPC) & search engine optimisation (SEO)
website promotion & relationship building tools such as Twitter, Facebook & other social media
and the often underutilised and powerful email marketing tools you have at your disposal

You can find more information about the workshops and how to register here: Achieve More Online

Named Scopes with Joins and Default Block Arguments

2010-05-04T15:19:56+00:00

Today I was fiddling with some code to get particular types of payments that are due on particular days and I ran across a couple of things I don’t want to solve again.

Firstly, the problem of being able to have default arguments to a block in ruby. It’s solved nicely in Ruby 1.9 but we’re using 1.8.x on our boxes at the moment. The work around is incredibly simple though and goes something like this :

lambda { |*args| date = (args[0] || Date.today) .. remaining code .. }

That’s all there is to it really. You could go the whole hog with hashed attributes and so on but I think it starts to get a bit smelly if your anonymous functions are taking more than one argument.

The other issue I had was whether a named scope can include a join, and it can.

named_scope :credit_card, { :joins => :subscription, :conditions => "subscriptions.method = 'credit_card'" }

You can hash it all out if you want to, though if it’s all about readability I find the above to be more suitable. However this will also work :

... :conditions { :payment_plans => { :payment_method => "credit_card" } }

The coolest thing about all of this though (and I feel I’m very late to the party here) is that I now get to do things like :

Payment.credit_card.due_on(Date.today) # or Payment.credit_card.due_on # or Payment.due_on(Date.today + 1.month)

In the above I had just used the default argument to the due_on named scope to be today’s date.

I mean, I’d seen a bunch of tutorials on named scopes and how they worked but hadn’t found a use case in my work. I think it’s finally twigged for me though and will be making use of them a bit more in the future.

Running RSpec in Distributed and Parallel using Specjour

2010-04-23T18:27:20+00:00

Just to cut to the chase, Specjour will easily allow you to run your tests in parallel on your local machine, or in a distributed way on your network. It cut our test suite from over 11 minutes to under 2.5 minutes. We went from one Macbook Pro to a Macbook Pro plus an iMac. Specjour is gooood, but continuing …

We were running into issues with our testing suite running past 15 minutes to run. It caused a number of issues, firstly it disuaded people from running the suite for small changes they thought would be okay, secondly people tended to slow down or not work at all when the suite was running. Given we were building tests into an existing code base and coverage was running generally under 30% this was already really worrying.

We’ve been concentrating primarily on functional testing with RSpec so I went looking for solutions for trying to parallelise RSpec specifically. I tried parallel-tests but I couldn’t get it to work. Then I heard about Specjour on a Hashrocket video so I decided to give that a try. It worked pretty well out of the box, I just had to plug up a wayward plugin, update the rsync config file for the project and change one of the files in the gem to call a different rake task.

Specjour essentially uses Bonjour to find workers on the network and dispatch tests to them and it uses rsync to synchronise the project you’re testing to the remote server. Once the sync has happened then runs the rake task to setup the databases, loads the environment and starts accepting the tests that are dispatched to it.

The instructions will work for the majority of people, I only had some hiccups due to our project. Essentially I gem installed specjour which gave me a specjour executable which I ran to create a dRb server that communicates via Bonjour. Then in my project I added specjour to my Gemfile (all managed via Bundler!) and ran rake specjour.

For me, I ended up having a few hundred failing tests, all to do with the Ruby version of a stack overflow (stack level too deep). It turned out it was caused by a plugin calling alias method chain twice so that the original method ended up being aliased to the replacement method and so there was an infinite loop. Once I applied a fix then we were only down to a few failing tests to do with seed data.

I changed the db_scrub.rb file to perform a different rake task for us as we do require some seed data and then we were on our way.

Previously on my Macbook Pro the suite ran in just over 11 minutes, after turning on a four core iMac and my Macbook Pro I had six workers ready to go and it took about 2.5 minutes to run our tests. I’d really like to crank up the other few iMacs and the 10 or so Macbooks and see what happens then.

I think the only changes we’ll require is to be able to specify which task is run to create the databases, other than that it works perfectly.

In closing I’d say I tried a number of distributed and parallel methods for running our tests and I like Specjour the best. Apparently it will run Cucumber tests as well, I’m hoping to move on to that soon enough.

Because I can

2010-04-14T10:08:37+00:00

Did you ever as a kid wish you could be locked inside your favourite shop and then have a ball that night whilst no one is around?

Well today I kinda did my version of that. The shop is quiet, no one has been in here for hours, I'm bored. Solution: do some stupid stuff.

1. Pretend to dance a waltz with a hat rack
2. try out every chair
3. talk to the ceramic rabbits, ask them for some advice on your love life
4. prance about wearing matching garden apron and gloves
5. turn off the main lights so only the lamps light the place and pretend your hunting for fairies.

It passes the time.

BarCamp 4

2010-04-12T11:49:13+00:00

On Saturday I attended BarCamp 4 at East Perth TAFE. It was a really well organised event (Matt and Darcy did a great job) and the content presented by the speakers was really engaging and interesting.

I saw Jessica Ender’s talk on form design as well as Samuel Spencer’s talk on the Australian Bureau of Statistics and their adoption of open data formats for delivering data sets to the public.

My talk was on after lunch, and I think me wandering around in a blue gi drew a little bit of attention (which if I’m being honest, I was banking on) and had people interested. Aaron helped me with the talk and received a few knocks to the head as thanks - his noggin was determined to meet the carpet-covered-concrete as often as it could.

I talked about the overlap I see between my jiu-jitsu training and every day business life, and my hope is that I’ll get the audience thinking about all the areas of their lives, which they may have previously considered insular or separate, and how they might in fact be connected and relevant.

I personally had a great time at the event, and The Frontier Group will be sponsoring it again in the future. I was disappointed that another engagement meant I couldn’t stay for the whole day, but I was very pleased with what I did get to partake in. There were a few of us pressuring Matt to plan for the next BarCamp in 6 months, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve uploaded the slides from my talk if you’d like to check them out.

Score

2010-04-11T05:43:27+00:00

Today when I went to go talk to the chooks, I saw my neighbour 'the garden lady' start taking plants from her car boot so I went over to say hello. Normally I score all kind of little seedlings and the like, but today was a super mega score, I got 2 lemon trees from her for nothing!!! (note my excitement with over use of exclamations) One a Myer lemon and the other a Eureka lemon. No backyard is complete without a lemon, and this is something I've been wanting for a while. They are quite sad looking all leafless and spindly. One had a huge big green lemon hanging for dear life to an arched over branch. Despite lack of leaves, they are still well at truly alive, which attests to the hardiness of citrus.

I think half the fun of these plants is they are a bit sick to start with, and I get to nurture them and bring them back to life. Sometimes however there seems to be nothing wrong with them, and it feels like I've unlocked a cheat code in my 'gardening game' so I get unlimited free plants!

So first step, remove the fruit, that means the plant can stop putting all it's energy into trying to reproduce and can concentrate on leaves and root systems. Next prune back all the spindly stuff to encourage new healthy strong growth. After that, find the perfect spot, dig a huge hole, fill it with all kind of yummy stuff, I might even take my time and fill it with rotting veg scraps from our kitchen over the next few weeks. If I do that though a very thorough dog proofing will be required. Lots of blood and bone will go into the mix as will extra trace elements, magnesium and iron chelates. Might even take some soil from the chook pens as it's full of high nitrogen chicken poo. Then plant my little babies, stand back and whatch them go crazy. Any fruit formed in the first 12 months should be removed for the same reason as before.

Quick lesson on citrus problems:

*Loosing it's leaves - not enough water. If your plant is in a pot, it doesn't take long for this to be a problem over Summer. The heat we had did a real number on my kumquat despite what I thought was regular watering.

*Green veins on leaves, the rest going yellow - iron deficient, very common in Perth's alkaline soils, use iron chelates. I use the powdered form in water that way the plant can use the nutrient faster. Or use a trace element rock mineral that has iron.

*Leaves curling - citrus leaf curl, usually cause by a fungal infection, I use eco rose to fix this, it's an organic anti fungal with no withholding period for the fruit, so you can spray then eat fruit straight away.

*Track marks all over leaves - citrus leaf miner, use a white oil/soap solution to suffocate the fuckers. Or just cut out the damages leaves from the tree and throw them in the bin.

*Wart like things on the branches - gall wasp. Cut them off, put in a plastic bag and throw in the bin.

If you treat all these problems organically as soon as you see them you'll never have to get out the 'big guns' and use anything toxic which can hurt birds, frogs or even you.

Happy Gardening!

Scream for your team

2010-04-06T17:12:53+00:00

Most people have a team. In Australia it’s likely to be your state’s AFL team, or either Ford or Holden if you’re a bogan, or maybe an English Premier League team if you’ve got an international flair. I don’t have a team.

Or rather, I didn’t have a team, until last week.

When I was in Vancouver a few years ago I saw the Canucks play the Edmonton Oilers (in ice hockey). I had a great time, and made some instant-friends in the process. I picked up a Canucks cap at the game and still wear it with fond memories, however I haven’t watched a game of ice hockey since I left Canada. Incidentally, I was watching NHL on TV nearly every night we were in North America. I think the lack of exposure made it easy to forget.

I decided I wanted a new team, but didn’t want the usual Eagles or Dockers. A quick search showed that the US Major League Baseball season was about to start, so that’s the sport I chose. As a kid I used to wear my grey Cleveland Indians beanie and the Indians are not a super-common team (which was another requirement) so they were a fine choice for this adventure. You can expect to see the beanie in the cooler months.

I decked my Xbox Live avatar out in a Cleveland Indians cap, and bought one in real life (which arrived today, prompting this post and the above photo).

We lost the opening game to the White Sox yesterday, but tomorrow’s a new day, and the season has only just begun! Starting next week, One HD will be showing up to five games live, which might mean a few 6AM wake-ups for me if the Indians are playing.

What’s your team, and what drives you to support them?

I heart

2010-04-01T09:37:51+00:00

Planting a garden in a pot hole, cute overload.

German Coast guard trainee

2010-03-29T13:57:02+00:00

Huge Big Fail

2010-03-23T04:05:41+00:00

Damn it, HBF. This is truly the last straw. You have broken the camel's back, sunk the boat, and... well, you get the idea.

Here I shall detail my grievances with this popular health insurer, for the annals of time.

1. Your customer service staff are outrageously unprofessional and unethical. I have heard countless reports of patients ringing to find out what their rebate will be, only to be met by an HBF staff member sounding shocked at the 'high fees' that their dentist is charging. They then suggest that the patient seek treatment with an HBF preferred provider. Yes, this may save the patient some money. It certainly saves HBF a whole lot of money. Did you ever consider that perhaps the patient attends the dentist they do because they have built up trust, a rapport, and value the high quality dental care they receive? Patients who have private health cover deserve the right to choose their own doctor, and receive the same rebate no matter where they go.

2. Your provider relations are inconvenient, and your staff in this area rude and abrasive. Any time I have had to deal with HBF as a preferred provider I have been offered a fax number for contact, not a telephone number or email address. When I have finally had the chance to speak to someone, she was extremely rude and confrontational. A specific example was when we changed to a new computer system at work, and one of our fees was mistakenly entered as $3.00 too high; It was a typo. After receiving a fax from HBF, to which we were asked to fax in return (?), we managed to contact by telephone to explain the simple clerical error. The HBF staff member was quite rude about us 'overcharging' the patient, and indignantly reminded us that even after we sort out the error with HBF, we 'still owe the patient $3.00'. Yeesh, do you think I was planning to flee to Majorca with the proceeds of this lucrative fraud? We had already credited the patient's account.

3. You cannot ask me to provide treatment plans and appointment schedules as part of an audit. Fair enough, now and then you may want to audit providers to make sure no insurance fraud is taking place. I am happy to provide copies of the invoices, which detail which treatment item numbers were charged when, and the associated fees. Actually, you should already have these. I fail to see what future planned treatment has to do with the insurer. That is a private matter between me and the patient. It only becomes the insurer's business once the patient decides to lodge a claim. This has been confirmed by the ADA. You must know this, it's common sense. It's pure cheek to be asking dentists to provide you with confidential information so you can make more accurate projections on what future claims will be.

4. You do not have the right pick and choose your own definitions for item numbers, particularly when the ADA alters them. This one really highlighted the arrogance of HBF for me. The item number '222' used to represent scaling and root planing of one quadrant, or 1-8 teeth. The ADA changed the definition in the latest schedule to be a 'per tooth' fee. The other insurers adjusted their rebates accordingly, as dentists adjusted their fees to better reflect the new definition. HBF said, 'Nah, I reckon we'll just keep the old definition and rebate'. That doesn't make a lick of sense. The schedule is set out by the ADA, you have to follow it!

5. The recording of an item number IS the record that a treatment was carried out. Once again, we received at the practice a fairly rude letter which insinuated fraud. An audit had been carried out by HBF, and for a number of restorations the item number 577 'cusp capping' had been charged. HBF claimed that because it wasn't specifically written in the notes that cusps had been capped, the procedure must not have been carried out. Personally, I don't write this into my notes unless I'm removing the cusp for the first time. If it's the replacement of an old restoration that included cusp capping, I considered the inclusion of the 577 item number to be sufficient, along with the fact that the old restoration will have been charted as covering the cusp, and the treatment plan chart will show that cusp capping was planned as well. Besides, the restoration is right there in the patient's mouth. There's a cusp cap on it. Do they want photographs of finished restorations sent in with claims? If I was going to commit insurance fraud, wouldn't I go to the trouble of writing it in the notes to cover my tracks? I don't appreciate the 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude.

6. Premiums continue to rise, while rebates do not. This is a simple ripoff for consumers. They are paying more each year, but getting the same crummy rebates back. Do the maths.

7. I did not sign a $cientology-esque contract for 100 billion years binding my professional self to you. This is my latest gripe. I used to be an HBF preferred provider at Melville, and also joined at Mandurah a few months later. That's right, your preferred provider contract is location specific. It's tied to your Medicare provider number, of which you have a unique one for each location. I have a new provider number at South Perth. HBF contacted the practice complaining that we had 'overcharged' a patient, over and above the 'agreed fee'. Excuse me? I don't believe I agreed to anything with relation to my South Perth provider number. Again, I don't appreciate the tone of an accusing letter, and being asked to defend myself when the error is so clearly on HBF's part. This latest encounter has got me hopping mad. I even sent an indignant email :)

I shall be strongly encouraging everyone I know to avoid the HBF preferred provider scheme as a dentist, and seek dental insurance elsewhere as a consumer.

Other dental professionals, want to let HBF know what you think? Shoot them an email: askhealth@hbf.com.au

EDIT: To their credit, today I received what was actually quite a polite reply to my email from HBF. They apologised for their error I outlined in point 7. If only they had been so polite in the first place when our practice manager contacted them about this :/

A garden tour

2010-03-22T03:01:52+00:00

A quick look at some of the weird and wonderful fruit trees I am collecting

The Omnivore's Hundred revisited

2010-03-19T03:12:00+00:00

I first posted this back in August '08. On reading it again, I was surprised to find that I'd actually tried something that was on my 'never eat' list. Hence the revisiting.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. ~~Fugu~~
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. ~~Eel~~
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. ~~Sea urchin~~
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. ~~Abalone~~
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. ~~Haggis~~
69. Fried plantain
70. ~~Chitterlings, or andouillette~~
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. ~~Snail~~
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. ~~Horse~~
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Biography of a lunatic

2010-03-18T14:51:11+00:00

I need to write a short bio for the Elegant Smiles website. I'd already read Chanel's, which made it exceedingly difficult as our backgrounds and philosophies are nearly identical. After procrastinating for a while, I asked Mark if he'd mind helping me out. I thought he'd agreed far too easily.... then he came up with this:

"Emma Weatherill is perhaps the most famous dentist of all time. She revolutionized the field of dentistry through her groundbreaking discovery; the toothbrush. Whilst stranded in the deserts of Tunisia, dehydrated and starving, she turned to eating rocks. It is here, close to death, that she found a geological anomaly formed deep in the Earth's crust, which left her teeth sparkly clean. Embiggened by the enormity of this find, and feeling of clean teeth, she managed to crawl over 100km's to civilization. Toothbrushes (or teethbrush as she prefers to call them) are today mined worldwide and come in a variety of colours and styles, each unique to the region of their origin.

Not content with her already remarkable success, Emma went on to upturn the mouthwash industry. Her work in toothbrush mining with longtime friend and collaborator, Alfred Nobel, produced a high explosive; nitro-glysterine. A labeling mistake at one of Nobel's factories resulted in the explosive accidentally showing up on supermarket shelves. The new and improved formula had a big impact on consumers, and continues to put patients in dental chairs to this very day."

Sigh.

Technical explorer

2010-03-03T18:35:17+00:00

Today we bought a new network switch for work. It’s a managed switch and provides a few different ways you can configure it, including telnet, SSH and a web interface. It’s a Cisco/Linksys SRW2024, which is part of Cisco’s small business networking equipment offering.

I’m configuring it to have two VLANs; one for regular IP traffic and the other for our iSCSI network. I managed to lock myself out of the web interface by assigning all the ports to one of the two VLANs I’d created, and not leaving any ports attached to the default VLAN. This default VLAN had the management IP is attached to it.

Thankfully my new Acer Aspire X1800 desktop (which by the way, for $398 is a totally awesome Ubuntu desktop) has a COM port, so I connected up the serial cable and used screen to bring up a console connection:

screen /dev/ttyS0 38400

With this I could log in, then access the lcli command to give me a more meaningful console.

srw2024# configure
srw2024(config)# interface ethernet g24
srw2024(config-if)# switchport access vlan 1
srw2024(config-if)# exit
srw2024(config)# exit
srw2024# show vlan

Vlan       Name                   Ports                Type     Authorization
---- ----------------- --------------------------- ------------ -------------
 1           1                 g24,ch(1-8)            other       Required
 2         DATA               g(1-7,13-20)          permanent     Required
 3         ISCSI              g(9-12,21-23)         permanent     Required    

srw2024#

With that I had successfully removed the port from the ISCSI VLAN and replaced it into the default VLAN, making the web management console available.

I’ve never played around with Cisco gear before, but I suspect that this is similar to how IOS works.

I was happy that, even without any IOS experience, I was able to dig about inside the switch and get it back to being usable again. Now to try and attach g24 to multiple VLANs.

Becoming the person I never thought I'd be

2010-03-03T05:56:06+00:00

Today I found myself again contemplating the changes I've seen in myself since becoming a parent. An arse-hat in his ute was zooming around the gym carpark, squealing his tyres and such. I'm assuming this was some sort of mating display intended to attract a reproductive partner, but I haven't seen a David Attenborough documentary on the life cycle of the Ute Bogan recently. I was carrying Josephine in my arms as he whizzed past, had I not been still on the footpath he would not have had time to avoid ploughing us down as he came around the corner. I gave him a death stare, a lovely old couple yelled their lungs out at him, "Slow down, it's a carpark! There's kids around!" He responded in kind by flipping off said couple as he departed. "Same to you!", shouted the woman. It made me smile.

As I was trying to put Josie in her car seat I realised I was physically shaking, I was so angry. I really doubt this is a response I would have had pre-Bean, but the thought of anyone so carelessly putting her life in danger boiled my blood. I've noticed that I respond so much more emotionally to anything that involves kids now, it must be a seriously primal instinct to protect my offspring.

Another example is the video everyone has seen of the pram rolling off a train platform and underneath the train, it was on the news a few months ago. I can't watch it, it makes me feel physically sick even though the baby was unharmed.

Here's the kicker, and it's actually really shameful, but in the interest of exploring the topic I will share. I can remember in my early twenties thinking, "Sure, it's sad when a young life is lost, but how attached could you be to someone when they haven't been around that long?" Holy Jesus on a crumpet, was I wrong. From the moment I laid eyes on Josephine she was instantly the most precious thing in the world to me. The thought of losing her is beyond comprehension, and I never understood this until I had a child of my own. The sense of loss is not the same as you'd feel from losing a partner, friend, or grandparent. You'd be grieving the loss of so much potential, the happy daydreams that will never be experienced, simple milestones like the first day of school unachieved.

Now as my eyes are misty with just the thought of life without my daughter, I'm off like a creepy person to stare at her while she sleeps :)

Karen, Em and Josie; I get all the girls when Mags is away

2010-02-17T15:08:58+00:00

I just spent almost two hours with Karen (Luke’s mum), Em and Josephine over at Mark and Em’s place. Karen had been wanting to meet Baby J and I don’t need an excuse to spend time with her or her folks, so I arranged a lunchtime meetup for today. I’ve had the past three days off, Karen is semi-retired and Em works Tuesdays now so it all worked out nicely.

I’ve spent the last few days cleaning up around the house, doing some computer-related house-work, playing with the puppies, reading, shopping and even laying down a few laps in Forza 3. With Magdalena away on school camp for a few days, it gave me a unique opportunity to get some of the things done that I’ve been putting off for a while, without impacting on her. It also meant I could spend some time doing the chores that I’ve neglected for the past few weeks due to the hectic work commitments, and two lil’ black time sinks. Plus I snuck some time to myself, to play some Xbox and read some magazines and start my next book - Peter Pan and Wendy.

I’m glad I got to cap off my three-day-break with the visit to Josie - it was really relaxing and comforting. Emma and Mark are always down for a relax, and having Baby J in their lives now hasn’t changed that.

Tomorrow night Josie’s spending some time with Mags and I whilst Mark and Em go out. I am really looking forward to the responsibility, even though I know Josie’s going to lie there asleep the whole time, and I think it speaks volumes to the open parenting style Mark and Em have.

I really respect and admire them as parents, and I feel very fortunate to have them as role models.

Why I bought a TapouT shirt

2010-02-15T19:59:35+00:00

Many of you will know that I train Brazilian jiu jitsu, and have done for some time now. I first became interested in BJJ, like many others, when I saw Royce Gracie’s dominating performances in the original UFC tournaments many years ago. A guy weighing 170lbs was able to defeat much heavier opponents by using joint locks and chokes instead of strikes. This was something that I could see myself enjoying, and so I took up BJJ.

Back then mixed martial arts, or MMA as it’s known, wasn’t super popular. In fact the sport was only just being invented, as various fighters began training across multiple disciplines, mixing strikes, wrestling and submission grappling to become a complete, rounded fighter. From the beginning, the TapouT brand has been associated with MMA, and I’d argue it’s become the defining brand, in the same way as Intel, Oakley and Coca-Cola each define their product space.

The three personalities behind TapouT were Charles “Mask” Lewis, Jr., Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and their tall friend Tim “SkySkrape” Katz. What’s with the nicknames you ask? That’s part of their catch, or gimmick, and it works pretty well. They each have larger-than-life characters that they play up to, and it’s given their business a highly appropriate public face. In March 2009, Mask was tragically killed in a car accident. The MMA world was full of grief, and the genuine friendships that Dan and Tim shared with Charles were exposed and explored for all to see. I was personally upset at the news, even though I’d never met Charles. At the recent MMA Awards, both Dan and Tim were still visibly moved when accepting awards on behalf of Mask and TapouT. They were a family, in all sense of the word.

As with all brands, when MMA hit the mainstream a few years ago, TapouT exploded. I started to see t-shirts popping up in day-to-day life; people in pubs or guys in the city - I even saw a bogan mum with TapouT head-to-toe the other day. It’s no longer a niche brand for those “in the know.” As with MMA, the brand is appealing to a large range of people now, and that’s not always a good thing. My fear is that MMA will become too popular and we’ll start to see the rules modified in ways that create a more exciting experience for the fans. What do I mean? More average people are watching MMA, and they want to see people slugging it out rather than rolling around on the floor. These kinds of people don’t necessarily understand the nuances of MMA and just want to see some fights, some blood and some knock outs. Check the footage of the crowd at any UFC event and you’ll see more blood-thirsty morons than ever before. And most of them are wearing a TapouT shirt.

Now that you’ve got some background, I can focus on my initial point - what drove me, personally, to buy a TapouT shirt. I don’t want to be associated with this meat-head culture, that’s for sure, so why dress like them?

There’s a few reasons, the first being that I feel like I have a better understanding of the TapouT company, including their intentions and influences, than the average person. I have watched a few TV series that the guys did where they highlight an up-and-coming fighter, and follow them through the preparation for their fight. In numerous cases, the humanity and genuine good will that Charles and the other guys showed was heart-warming. I hear the critics and cynics out there saying that they were just presenting a face for their show, and whilst that’s true to some degree, I never felt that it was manufactured. Often they’d genuinely help fighters, providing motivation, support, or even paying their rent in some cases. TapouT cares about MMA, because they were there at the birth. I admire that.

Secondly, I can relate to the almost whimsical approach the three friends had towards their business. Being a partner in a small business, I know how hard it can be to stay true to yourself, and not bend to other people’s expectations. The TapouT crew are eccentric, no doubt, and that’s hard to maintain when you’re running a business.

When people see me wearing a TapouT shirt, I want them to know the real reasons that I admire and respect the company. I want them to know that I am supporting, in my very small and own way, Mask’s legacy and his memory. I hate to sound like the guy that was “into the band before they were mainstream”; that’s not my intention. I want people to know that I’m supporting a brand because it supports a sport I love.

That probably won’t happen, and people will probably presume I’m just another meat-head who likes watching people get beaten up, but I can hope. Does this make sense, or do I just sound like an elitist?

Using bwm-ng to monitor disk usage

2010-02-14T00:42:51+00:00

If you’ve used UNIX-based systems for any length of time, there’s a good chance that you’ve come across bwm, or the next-generation version, bwm-ng. It shows real-time data flow across your various network interfaces:

  bwm-ng v0.6 (delay 0.500s); press 'ctrl-c' to end this
 /proc/net/dev
 |         iface                    Rx                   Tx               Total
 ==============================================================================
              lo:           0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s
            eth0:         707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           total:         707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s

I was wondering if there was a similar tool to monitor the flow of data across disks, and asked the mighty Google as such. Through the results I gathered that in bwm-ng v0.6 the tool gained this feature. I checked my local copy of bwm-ng, and sure enough it was v0.6, so I had this functionality I just needed to specify the input as disk (all disks visible to the system, including RAM disks) or libstatdisk (just the physical hard disks - much more meaningful):

mlambie@falcon:~$ bwm-ng -i libstatdisk

Results in:

 bwm-ng v0.6 (delay 0.500s); press 'ctrl-c' to end this
 libstatdisk
 \         iface                    Rx                   Tx               Total
 ==============================================================================
             sda:       11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s
             sdb:           0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           total:       11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s

Google Superbowl ad: Parisian Love

2010-02-09T11:29:57+00:00

*tear*

Field testing the iPhone 3G

2010-02-08T06:34:45+00:00

I have an iPhone 3G, and lately I’ve been saying that it’s the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and the worst phone I’ve ever owned. There’s been two main reasons why, one of which Tony helped fix a few days ago. Allow me to tell you a story.

Firstly, ever since I installed the iPhone SDK (software development kit; the tools necessary to build applications for the iPhone) I started getting an error everytime I tried to sync the device. Tony pointed out that leaving tethering enabled caused issues, and disabling it on the iPhone has meant this probem went away. I think it was just a co-incidence that I’d installed the SDK, but it might not have been; it didn’t cause that error previously when tethering was enabled.

More importantly though, in the last few months I’ve had more dropped calls, failed calls and general frustrations with the iPhone than I’ve ever had with any phone, ever before. There’s a specific section of Berwick Street that, without fail, will disconnect any calls as I drive through it. My tech-mind put that down to the phone jumping from one cell tower to another, and that made sense. Then the calls started to fail anytime I’d attempt to make them. Then they’d start dropping with a “call failed” error when people called me. Not to mention that the mic stopped working for a while, and I’d have to switch to speaker mode to talk to anyone, though I think that’s more to do with crap getting in the headphone jack (which I use all the time in the car, for music and podcasts) and it thinking that an audio cable is attached.

As you can imagine, this is all quite frustrating, considering how important my phone is for work, let alone socially. There’s little relief in the knowledge that it’s fairly well accepted that 3G on the iPhone uhh 3G isn’t all it’s cracked up to me. The problem is, who’s to blame - the carrier (in this case Vodafone Australia), Apple, or Infineon, the 3G chipset manufacturer?

My short-term solution has been to disable the 3G network, and stick to WIFI when I’m at home or in the office, and regular ol’ 1G (or is it 2G, or 2.5G, or 3.14G?) when I’m making calls. That works kinda OK, but it’s annoying having to go into the settings to enable 3G anytime I check Twitter at a cafe, for example. I know, it’s such a first-world-problem, isn’t it?

Earlier this morning I found out that the iPhone supports a field test mode, which you can access by dialing:

*3001#12345#*<call>

Don’t forget that last star - I was missing it off and getting a “Error performing request No Network Service” message popping up.

There’s a whole raft of information that’s available here, but the only bit that interests me is the signal strength indicator that appears in the top left corner, where the “bars” normally are. This turns into a negative integer, where the higher the number (closer to zero) the better the signal. For the mathematically-challenged, this means -60 is better than -80. According to TestFreaks (when they tested the Cell Ranger Port, an interesting signal amplifier):

Signal Range	Result
-80 to -70 dBm	Reasonably strong signal
-107 to -90 dBm	Weak signal
-113 dBm	No servicable signal

For me, sitting at my desk in West Perth I get -81, which shows up as 5 bars. To be fair, the downstairs office is three walls of concrete, with three storeys of concrete above above, and a wrought iron clad window. It’s pretty much impervious to radio frequency signals. If I cover the antenna area (which is at the base of the handset, incidentally right where people tend to hold their phone) then the signal drops to -95, which is a significant change. I figured I’d check out the reception on Wellington Street, where to my surprise I get a solid -57.

OK… now we’re getting somewhere.

Further investigation also revealed an CNet article which suggests that you can boost the signal by attaching a piece of sticky-tape to the backside your SIM - it’s got something to do with the SIM making firmer contact with the phone. They also recommend using an eraser to remove any oxidation that might have ended up on the SIM. It’s all about the contacts, baby!

And then it hit me - a few weeks ago my phone reported that it had no SIM! I rebooted the phone and it worked fine, so I had just dismissed it as the phone being silly. Maybe there was a connection issue that was causing problems?

I dug out some scotch tape and found a paperclip on Hale’s desk, and went to work. I stuck two pieces of tape to the back of the SIM, just to be sure. I cleaned off the oxidation with an eraser. This changed resulted in -81 inside, -51 on Wellington Street, so no change inside, but a jump of 6 points outside. That’s not bad, but might just be a regular fluctuation.

As a last test, I checked the inside strength again. I saw the inside value change from -73 (momentarily) to -79, and then hover around -75. Then back up to -81.

The end result: I’m not sure that the hackery did much, in fact I don’t think it changed anything to be honest. I think what’s more likely is that Vodafone are being a little generous with their “convert signal reading to bars” function, and should be showing me less bars when I have a poorer signal.

Either way, I’m now armed with a snugly-seated-deoxidised SIM, and the tools to measure signal strength next time I get a drop out. I’ll keep you updated.

Health hacks

2010-02-08T05:10:17+00:00

Ways I'm tricking my brain into being healthy:

1. Tiny little teaspoon in the sugar bowl.

2. Diluting juice with 50% water.

3. Booking Josephine into the creche, so I have to turn up to the gym.

Anger management

2010-02-04T09:18:16+00:00

I've been making an effort to be less annoyed by the world recently. I think it's working, and meaning that I'm not letting myself get as worked up about stupid things. I'm limiting myself to one angry rant a week, so here it is :)

Dear Cadbury,

Three cubes of chocolate is not one serve. It's not even one row. Please amend your nutritional information panel to reflect a more realistic expectation of human restraint.

Dear lady in the carpark,

Having a 4 year old child with you does not mean you can park in the pram bays, if you are not putting her in a pram. I take particular offence that you gave me the hairy eyeball as you pulled into the bay, because I was taking up some room with my pram as I put Josie into the car. Please be less of a dick in the future, you are not the most important person in the carpark. I am :)

Dear lady in the bakery department,

Complaining that the packs of rolls on special have too many rolls in them is really not making you look your most intelligent. They are on special because Coles can shift more product that way, thereby increasing their profits. Selling you one roll at a time is not going to achieve this. Please be less stupid, or, if you insist on being this stupid, at least do it quietly and don't bother the staff at Coles with your ridiculous questions.

Ahhhh, that feels better.

It’s all about the small victories

2010-01-30T15:23:32+00:00

Last weekend at The Academy we had a jiu jitsu seminar with internationally-renowned Robert Drysdale. We spent three hours with him, going over some of his favourite techniques, and linking together movements and transitions. I found him really approachable and familiar, in contrast to some of the senior black-belt Brazilians I’ve trained with. He was just a guy that was good at jiu-jitsu, or that’s how he came across.

One of the activities we performed at the end of the seminar was an “in the hole” exercise. For this, we have five people starting “in the hole” on their backs with an opponent in their guard. The guard player has to sweep or submit their opponent, whilst the defender has to pass the guard or back out to win. The winner stays in, either keeping or taking the role as attacker and the loser joins the end of a line, from which new defenders cycle in.

I volunteered to be one of the initial hole dwellers, starting on my back with an opponent in my guard. I tend to like fighting from my back so this is an activity that I quite like. I worked my way through three or four defenders until my instructor, Adam, was in my guard. I figured my run would be up, and didn’t have any expectations of beating him. Similarly, he was aware that Robert was doing the exercise with us too, and everyone was anticipating the match up between the two black belts. I think Adam was a little distracted, and wasn’t as focussed on me as he might ususally be.

This was great for me, because as Adam started to pass my guard, I caught him in half-guard, which is a position I’m not very comfortable in. I find people pass through my guard into half, and then straight through to side control. However this time I locked him down and went for a basic half-guard sweep (reverse the positioning and place Adam on his back with me on top). He regained some balance (he has great balance, as you might expect) but I felt he was committed in one direction, so I swept him the other way.

It was only a minor victory, but in terms of my jiu jitsu journey, it’s a milestone. Sure Adam wasn’t at his peak, and if he was concentrating 100% on me then it might not have worked out. But that wasn’t the case, and I won this encounter, this time.

I think it’s what I really needed to kick-start my 2010 training. I have a goal for this year, and if I can string enough small victories together, then I’ll achieve it.

What are some small victories you’ve had in your life that had significance to you?

It's been a while

2010-01-27T05:30:55+00:00

Ah how life has slowed to a comfortable pace in the last month. I still feel like I'm catching my breath from time to time, and so quiet days pottering about at home have gone a long way to remedy that. I'm almost there, still need a little more time.

The wedding was such a wonderful day, and the memory of it will be etched in my mind and heart forever, but oh my how I'm glad it's over. I don't think I have ever in my life put so much thought and effort into something. I think the effort paid off, but I'm glad I'll never have to do it again. If that's not a reason to never split and get remarried I don't know what is!

Work is still great and at a gentle pace. I love days like today when I have the shop all to myself dotted with the odd customer and phone call. Water features trickle in the background, scented wood shavings float their fragrances past me in the warm breezes from outside and quiet piano music lulls any listener into calm tranquility. I must admit I am getting slightly tired of the same old music. I would change it except that we sell it, and so this means I have to play it. Eight albums that all sounds the same on constant high rotation. Oh well if that's the worst part of my job, I think I can cope.

Tony has started coming home from work at reasonable times of the day which is lovely. It's so nice to now be able to share the work when it comes to cooking dinner, feeding the dog, checking on the chickens and well just generally being able to enjoy some daylight together.

I feel like we're slowly clawing our way back financially. It's going to be a good 12 months of us being boring, but future Melinda and Tony will thank me for my strict ways. I can't remember the last time I actually had money to go buy a new dress or pair of shoes. Gone are the days of blowing $600 on a clothing shopping spree. In fact the mere idea that I ever did that (and it was quite regularly too) horrifies me! My idea of 'new clothes' is now unpacking clothes I put away in plastic tubs a year ago and forgot about. Amazing what you forget you have.

My little flock of chooks are doing so well now. Lucky still insists on roosting in a tree and as of last night the second Ancona (which is yet unnamed) has taken to doing the exact same thing. I go to check on them as the sun goes down and two little feathered creatures peer at me out of the tree canopy softly clucky away as they get settled. Funny birds. The rest are quite content to do what normal chooks do and roost in their hen house. I can't wait to be able to get eggs from them. I think my Anconas will be the best layers, and so I need to construct some nesting boxes for them to brood in. By the time I actually get an egg from one of them it will turn out to be the most expensive egg ever laid!

The way I'm feeling about life these days I'd be quite happy to go live down south somewhere have a hobby farm with chooks, goats, ducks, geese and maybe even a Dexter cow. In case you're wondering no that's not a murdering cow that by day is a blood splatter analyst, Dexters are a miniature cow that act almost like the family dog! I'd love pigs too, but then what would be the use, I couldn't bring myself to have one killed and they can't produce any secondary food stuffs like eggs or milk, so in my day dream farm, I don't think I'd have pigs.

If not down south, a life in the English country side would be nice for a while. I watch these gardening shows set in the UK and the rich soil they have to play with is something us WA gardeners can only dream of.

Somehow though I doubt I can convince Tony of any of this. Ah well, I could do a lot worse than our little home in Cooby.

Banana bread

2010-01-20T08:59:08+00:00

Matt asked me to post my banana bread recipe, but the truth is it's stolen from here:

http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001465banana_bread.php

Enjoy!

How do you spend your Saturday nights?

2010-01-16T01:19:01+00:00

Do you fix broken MacBook Pro keyboards for fun?

Well to be truthful, that’s only half of what I did. I also enjoyed dinner and coffee with Magdalena, Fitzy and Kirstie, but the last two hours were spent hunched over Magdalena’s broken MacBook Pro with my mini screw drivers and a plastic spudger. Nope, I did not make up that name, that’s what it’s called.

The replacement keyboard arrived today, just one week after we placed the order online. I can’t recommend iFixIt enough. They not only have great guides, but when I bought the keyboard, they “suggested” the tools I’d need, and offered to include them in the purchase. I thought this was a very handy up-sell.

All up the job was not too difficult, though I was scared for a second that the keyboard wasn’t sitting perfect in the top casing, but some jiggling and prodding saw it seat itself fine.

There were no screws left over, however a generic piece of black plastic did wriggle free from somewhere inside and fall out when the shell was disassembled. It doesn’t look important though, and has probably been floating around inside the laptop for months, if not years. No real loss.

I also thought that the back-light wasn’t working, meaning that the back-light cable was not re-attached correctly, or that there was further damage that the water had caused that I had not detected, but it was simpler than that. Magdalena had the checkbox for “Illuminate keyboard in low light conditions” unchecked. I ticked it and now the keyboard lights up like a Christmas tree.

All in all, Im very happy with how the repair work went and extremely happy with the parts, tools and service I received from iFixIt. Whilst I hope I don’t have to repair too many more Macs, it’s reassuring to know that there is a one-stop-shop with all the parts and tools necessary to get the job done.

Broken MacBook Pro keyboard

2010-01-10T00:19:42+00:00

A few days ago Magdalena and Doug were messing about and Doug caused Mags to laugh really hard, when she had a mouthful of water, when she was using her laptop. As such, she now has a semi-functioning keyboard where some letters, like “S”, “E” and “X”, just don’t work. Or maybe she’s worn those ones out independent of the spill.

Her MacBook Pro is a hand-me-down. I didn’t need two, so when we replaced our units at work last year, Mags got my old one. It’s about three and a half years old, which makes it six months since the extended Apple Care expired. On top of that, I doubt Apple Care covers liquid damage to the keyboard.

The good news is that the rest of the computer seems to be working fine, so a new keyboard should do the trick. I had a look around, and whilst it’s not easy, there’s definitely resources online that provide instructions on how to remove and replace the MacBook Pro’s keyboard. I reckon it’s a task I can undertake.

In the mean time, I’ve bought a wireless keyboard that Magdalena can use. Coincidently, it sits over the inbuilt (broken) keyboard almost perfectly, so it’s a great short-term replacement, as indicated by the thumbs-up in the photo.

The wireless keyboard won’t be useless after I repair her laptop. Tony’s been using one of the pairing keyboards recently and seems to like it, so I’ll bring it into the office when we’re finished with it.

Initially I had some problems with the Bluetooth keyboard not pairing with her machine, and I couldn’t install the system patch because it required Magdalena’s password, and one of letters that’s broken is used in her password. Talk about a vicious circle! Anyway, the patch was for Mac OS X’s Java install, so I didn’t think it would make any difference. I plugged in a standard USB keyboard and used that to get the patch installed, and when her Mac rebooted it was playing nicely with the Bluetooth keyboard. Maybe another coincidence, or maybe the patch was mostly an update to Java, but had other things, or maybe it just “reset” some bit on a chip somewhere. Either way, it’s all good now, and we have a replacement keyboard being shipped on Monday. It looks like I’ll be doing some laptop surgery in a week or so.

Maybe Emma or Chanel can lend me their scrubs and a face mask.

The birth story of Emma and Josephine

2010-01-06T10:54:42+00:00

Inspired by Dione's impending birth day, I finally sat down and wrote out my birth story. It was an event that had such a massive impact on my life, I feel it really should be recorded before the memories fade even more. Mark, I'd be grateful if you add any important bits I've forgotten in the comments, (or correct any gross errors my memory has created!).

It's not too graphic, but if childbirth isn't your cup of tea then don't read it. I don't want to see comments about over-sharing, you have been warned :)

I had such a beautiful and empowering experience, despite the yucky parts. It's such a daggy cliche, and I was surprised to hear myself describing it that way! I wish everyone's birth could be like mine. It was mostly peaceful, calm and exciting. Towards the end of my pregnancy I couldn't get enough of hearing about other people's births for some reason, so that's another reason I've decided to share. I have a few friends who will be experiencing birth in the coming months who deserve to hear a positive story. There is far too much negativity about labour and birth bombarding pregnant women. It can be a wonderful experience, but more importantly, it's your own personal experience. Shut out the negativity, bring in the love :)

And so we have it, the birth story of Emma and Josephine.

It was just over 2 weeks until Splodge's due date. We had spent the day having Tony take some final bump photos in Kings Park, which was followed by a relaxed picnic with friends. I was feeling like Mr Plod, in both shape and ability to move around. Exhausted by the outing we went home, the usual Braxton Hicks contractions annoying me, and I headed to bed at about 9:30.

After lying awake for about and hour I gave up, and concluded that the old BH were just not going to let me sleep well that night. I wandered around the house, ate a cheese roll, and started entertaining the thought that this might be labour... 'Nah, it's too early', I thought. At around midnight I realised the contractions were getting stronger, so I started timing them and trying to contain my excitement. I told Mark why I was up, (he was sleeping peacefully), and reminded him he still hadn't packed his bag for hospital! For about an hour I rocked around on my fitball in the loungeroom and tried to remember everything we'd learned at the active birth workshop a few weeks previously. I was determined to get the baby into a good position so she'd pop out quick :)

Contractions were now about 5 minutes apart, but still quite managable. I was starting to get worried about the timing though, so I woke up Mark and we called the hospital. The midwife suggested a bath and a cuppa, then to ring back if I thought I needed to come in. Not wanting to slow labour down at all, I partially ignored her and had a shower instead. A long, relaxing, hot shower - the water on my back was magic during contractions. When I got out, things seemed to be ramping up a bit. I was needing Mark to massage my lower back with each contraction, while I focused on my breathing. Mark called the hospital to say we were coming in, as I didn't want to get caught having any big contractions in the car. I half sat on the back seat, hanging on to the front seat and wiggling around during contractions. Managed to have 3 in the 10 minute trip, then another 2 in the carpark, and another 2 going up to the labour ward. I was so glad it was the middle of the night, because the carpark and hospital foyer were empty allowing me to just 'do my thing' without people staring!

When we got to the labour ward, Mark went into super-dad mode and made sure the nurses gave me the room we wanted, and got all the things I wanted together. We were able to get the family birthing suite, (big corner bath, couch, double bed, larger room, but no drips or epidurals allowed). I was so pleased about this, because I'd planned to spend a lot of time in the bath or on the fitball, and needed space to move around if I was going to apply my active birth techniques. I was hooked up to the monitor for about 20 mins to record contractions, and baby's heartbeat. The midwife was kind enough to let me sit and rock on the fitball rather than banishing me to the bed. My obstetrician happened to be in delivering someone else's baby, so he dropped in, (disturbingly in shorts, t-shirt and drinking an energy drink), and gave me the all clear to get off the monitor, saying he'd see me at 7am. I then had an internal exam, which revealed 2-3cm dilation, (seemed like it should have been more!). The midwife offered me a sleeping tablet, but again I didn't fancy slowing labour down at all, so Mark and I jumped into bed and dozed for a while until I got too uncomfortable.

This is where is starts to become a blur, as a I was getting more sleep deprived, and into the labour-zone of concentrating. I spent hours moving from rocking on the fitball, to walking around the room, to standing in the shower, to sitting on the fitball in the shower, moving, moving, moving! A lot of the time I had my head buried in a wet flannel we'd brought from home, which was nice because it was cool and didn't smell like hospital. My favourite part was leaning over the fitball on top of the bed, rocking backwards and forwards with each contraction. It was so peaceful and meditative. At 7am another internal showed not a huge amount of progress, and I discussed rupturing the membranes with my obstetrician. He had done a sweep during the internal, so we decided to give it a few more hours and see what happened. Not a lot happened. I did get a bit nauseous and have a spew a few times. That was more annoying than anything, because the nausea was stopping me from doing what I needed to do with each contraction. The midwife gave me Maxolon, and a few minutes later I felt so much better. Go Maxolon! Mark and I continued to walk laps around the nurses station, Mark did his best to eat the masses of food that kept arriving. I just nibbled on raspberry flavoured sultanas and tried to drink as much water as possible. I had a kip on the couch, and the contractions really slowed down. It was nice, because it gave me a chance to rest, but annoying that it all seemed to be grinding to a halt. After my nap I jumped up and hooned around trying to get things going again. I bounced up and down on the fitball a lot, and it seemed to work.

At lunchtime the obstetrician was back, and another internal showed I was 4-5 cm. What?! After all this time? He reassured me that the first 5cm are the hardest, but I was dubious. 'Enough of this', I thought, and we decided to augment the labour by rupturing the membranes. I was aprehensive about this, because it sounds like something that should hurt, but it was fine. Kind of disappointed there wasn't a big POP noise though :) After that, it was all on for young and old. A big contraction hit and I had to get out of bed and into the shower. There was a bit of gooz, so the shower was probably the best place to be anyway! I had a couple of big contractions in the shower, where I need to squat down and hang on to the rail to get through them. I also had a little spew again, which was annoying, but little did I know that I was actually in transition.

It was at this inopportune time that a new midwife came on shift, just in time to see me wiggling around in the shower, grunting like a wildebeast. Poor lady! I decided it was time to bring out the big guns, and I jumped into the bath. After 1 contraction in there I decided I hated it, because I couldn't move around. This is when the bargaining started. I remember looking Mark in the eye and saying, 'I have never been more serious in my life, get me an epidural NOW!'. He stayed remarkably calm, and suggested that I should try the nitrous before going the whole hog, but I was having none of it. It's really quite funny now I look back at it, but at the time I was so annoyed with him! Mark got me out of the bath, and the next part I remember is being on all fours on a foam mat on the floor, breathing in the nitrous with each contraction like my life depended on it. I was still naked from the bath, so it wasn't very dignified, but I really didn't care at all. Another inopportune bout of timing, and a medical student arrives to watch. Ha! I didn't mind, but I did feel sorry for the poor bloke. He ended up being a big help, because he told me I accidentally had my hand squashing the nitrous tube, obstructing the gas flow. The wonderful midwife asked if I was sure about the epidural, and what would it take for me to not want it. I was going to need an internal before they would even call the anaesthetist, so she wanted to be sure. I said that if I was ready to push, then it was ok and to not bother. Another contraction came, and I was involuntarily pushing anyway - I have no idea how women manage to pant through contractions and not push when the time comes - it was irresistable! An internal revealed I was fully dilated, (the last 5cm in less than an hour, those big contractions were working!), but had a small anterior lip which the midwife managed to flip out on the next contraction.

Up onto the bed, and time to have this baby. I was on all fours to start with, then moved to on my knees with my arms wrapped around Mark's shoulders to hold me up. The midwife was amazing and stayed up my end coaching me through each push, while my obstetrician was down the business end. It was so amazing to feel Josephine moving down with each contraction, and the midwife's advice of 'don't be scared' and 'hold the head there between contractions' really helped. She also saved me from a sore throat by getting me to stop straining with each push, and visualise pushing all that energy down and out. After pushing for a while Josephine was so close to being out, so they had me roll onto my side which jiggered her around into a good position, and with the next contraction she was out! 3:15pm on October 19th, 2009. I had had my eyes closed through all the pushing as I was concentrating, and the midwife had to say, 'Emma, open your eyes, it's your baby!'. I opened my eyes to see Josephine being passed to me, all pink and goozy and beautiful. She laid on my chest and said hello, and my life changed forever :)

I was able to hold her for quite a while before she was briefly weighed, measured and checked. A few stitches, some happy snaps, a warm blanket and some light-hearted banter with that poor medical student, and our little family was left alone to rest and bask in the cliched wonder. We spent a good few hours in the birthing suite and had dinner there, (inlcuding Josephine's first feed), before moving up to the ward and settling in for our 4 day stay. Mark rang all the relevant people and spread the word of our happy, happy day.

I'm so grateful for the wonderful experience of a natural birth, it was hard and painful at times, but completely worthwhile and a life changing experience even without the baby at the end! To all my friends who are about to go through this themselves, I wish you love, luck and a beautiful birth!

When I was 29, it was a very good year.

2009-12-31T02:18:14+00:00

January - Rache came to visit, surprise birthday party for Matt at Melinda and Tony's, Summadayze, annoying the Green's and Cock staff with Risk marathon, Alex and Renee's housewarming, Triple J Hottest 100.

February - Last days at Geddes St, Kim's 50th, bought our house, Doug's 21st, D.I.G. at Perth Festival, trying for baby, started tutoring, positive pregnancy test!

March - First ultrasound, Adam and Kirstie's housewarming, Austin's baptism, ADA Congress, Matt and Magdalena's housewarming, Abby's housewarming, told everyone about Splodge, Kirstie's hens night.

April - Plastic-free month, trip to Brisbane, morning sickness, Adam and Kirstie's wedding, Tim Minchin concert, Rich and Kei get engaged.

May - Kei's Mexican 21st, rotary endo, morning sickness, Kirstie's fancy dress birthday party, quiz night.

June - New software installed at work, Chanel's birthday drinks at The Windsor, morning sickness, find out Splodge is a girl!

July - Start pregnancy aqua classes with Renee and my natural birth journey, cousin David's engagement party, morning sickness, Alissa's bad taste bridesmaid hens night river cruise, babymoon holiday in Broome.

August - Alissa and Hosam's wedding, Triple J Hottest 100 of all time, bombardment at the baby expo, morning sickness, hospital birthing classes, City to Surf marathon for Mark, Dinner at Dione and Damien's.

September - Hale's birthday drinks at The Balmoral and the start of the baby pool, my birthday - surprise visit from Rache!, Melville baby shower, Rob and Antonia's wedding, last day of work.

October - Spa party, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mark and Gordo in town, baby shower, learn how to breastfeed on a Cabbage Patch doll, Ikea with Kirstie, Gabi's active birth workshop, weeding with Melinda, Adam's birthday picnic and photos with Tony in King's Park... labour, childbirth and Josephine! My life changes forever.

November - Rache and Lee visit, wonderful friends and family fill our freezer, settle into life at home with Josie, Saskia is born, Melinda and Tony's wedding, baby photos taken at Viva.

December - Christmas parties, karaoke at Zar's 80's hens night, Zar and Giovanni's wedding, selling success on eBay, Hoey meets Terry the Tumour, Josie's first Christmas, last visit with my obstetrician.

What a year. Bring it on, 2010!

White Wine In The Sun

2009-12-15T08:38:12+00:00

Buy it on iTunes.

Josephine plays air guitar

2009-12-10T03:33:45+00:00

Hehe. Hehehehe.

The Count Censored

2009-12-03T01:59:46+00:00

Oh my, this is funny. Watch it, you won't regret it.

From a more innocent time

2009-11-30T15:16:29+00:00

Mum found a set of pamphlets she was given when Rachael and I were born, way back in the early 80's.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

2009-11-25T01:38:33+00:00

Epic. Just epic.

Baby J

2009-10-29T15:09:11+00:00

This is my favourite photo from the birth :)

And the rest are here!