Welcome to David Tangye's petonkrafied superblog

A hive of activity at Permaculture Gold Coast HQ

2011-08-30T00:18:00.000+10:00

Just a few months old: features include:

A large garden, of mainly veges has already grown to harvest stage.
Weekly workshops are held each Saturday. Anyone is welcome to attend. Cost just $10.
The house is somewhat renovated and in now inhabited.
Chooks! and therefore eggs!

See the pics below: most are of the workshops held on Saturday 20th August 2011, focussing on Herbs and medicinal plants, and herbal and spiced teas.

Broadbeach Community Garden springs up

2011-04-24T10:56:00.001+10:00

No council red tape involved, this garden took days, not months and years to start up.

These pics are from the first working bee day, Saturday 23rd April 2011.
See also, Lyn Mansfield's pics on Facebook.

Great Turnout to GC Organic Growers AGM

2011-02-18T01:09:00.001+10:00

A fairly packed room, with perhaps a 50% better turnout than last year's AGM. The majority of office-bearers agreed to be returned this year, but there were also a few newcomers joining in. Most notably: Maria Roberson is President again, having founded the organisation about 13 years ago. Ross Davis stood down from the VP position, and Lise Racine has taken that position up. The website and library system have some additional new folk, and Justin Sharman-Selvidge is the new Trip Coordinator and has indicated some very interesting club trips this year.

Posted via email from davidtangye's posterous

If you are still in bed, you have missed it

2011-02-12T06:32:00.004+10:00

Another typical morning at Surfers Horizons Absolute Beachfront Holiday Apartments, 17th Avenue, Palm Beach. Phone +61 7 553 55 333. It is already 6am, and people have been out here from 4:30, and earlier, to see first light, and sunrise.

A shot at midday. The swimming flags are right out the front today.

Geek heaven: reading techical docs on the PC or an E-Reader

2011-02-11T15:00:00.002+10:00

Now that I have a Kobo Reader, and have also installed the Foxfox E-book reader add-on, I can easily read .epub books with either. However, it is quite a bit quicker and easier to read technical manuals in Firefox than in theKobo e-reader. The latter seems great as an occasional quick reference, when mobile, or for reading sequentially, eg fiction.

Posted via email from davidtangye's posterous

Mobile Hut panel set to go West (epoxy) when thunderstorms pass

2011-01-20T13:43:00.001+10:00

After 5 years in mothballs, the Mobile Hut has been unwrapped from it tarpaulin, and a complete renovation has started.

Two panels to be belted back and sheathed with 6oz glass cloth and West epoxy. One is in this pic.
The rear door to be replaced with a heavier one, and also glass-sheathed.
The trailer repainted.
Inside
1. stripped, and repainted
2. remodelled, with a clear runway all the way up the centre, so a bicycle will fit inside.

I had intended to live in it next week at the Linux Conference in Brisbane. However we are still getting thunderstorms here in the afternoons, and the West System epoxy needs less humidity to set properly. The delay means that the hut will not be sufficiently refinished, so it will stay home, and I guess I get to just sleep in the car instead. Mirages are definitely less than ideal for this.

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Helidon - The Flood

2011-01-15T10:59:00.001+10:00

Received via a small email list this morning.

Helidon 14 January 2010

We are feeling rather useless as there were more than enough volunteers at the Evac.Centre , I wasn't sure what we could do to help. All of the people living there (100+) want to keep busy, so volunteers are starting to get in the way a bit. You can see the people developing their own community and trying to do as much as they can for themselves rather than sit around and let others do it for them.

The town has electricity, intermittent phone and internet and mobile phones. Texting seems to work all of the time.

We have no water. The army has delivered palets of bottled water and we have tank water but its not connected to the house. So at the moment its dip baths only for us and the poor people at the Evac Centre cant even have that.

Access situation:..road is open to Gatton along the bypass so we can get some supplies from there (life is normal in Gatton). Heading west to Toowoomba - The Bridge on the Highway at Helidon has been deemed not structurally sound, so they are only allowing one car at a time over it and due to the massive landslide on the Toowoomba Range, they are allowing ten cars at a time up the range under escort only. The travel time yesterday was approximately 4 hours Helidon-Toowoomba (usually 15-20 minutes).

Grantham was a town with a population of around 400 people, 8kms from where I live. Our town is celebrating 170 years of settlement this year and Grantham would be around the same. Most people have been there 3 or 4 generations. Grantham has been totally flattened. There are only a few houses at the top of the hill, but most houses have been knocked down, carried away or are half standing and are not structurally sound. No-one is allowed into Grantham yet, even the people who live there. Yesterday,
anyone who still had their car keys on them where escorted by police to their cars at Grantham, were allowed to check that their cars were OK and if so, allowed to bring them to Helidon. If people didn't have their car keys but knew where they were then they had to write instructions on a piece of paper and the police went and tried to find their keys and their cars and bring them back to them. Many people don't know if their pets are alive or dead or dieing.

I think that the people are much better off psychologically if they are staying in the Evac Centre with their friends and family rather than being billotted out to other people and becoming a bit isolated from the information and support.

The situation here in the valley was so different to Rocky, Ipswich, Brisbane. We had no warning at all for the first wave of water. People were at work and at home doing their normal daily things and a wall of water like a tsunami came rushing at them and knocked them off their feet. The only warning was the sound of water like a train coming at you and by then it was too late. People saw their friends, family, pets and livestock drowned before their very eyes. The force was so great that many people had their clothes ripped from them.

Toowoomba got a huge storm unparalleled in their history. Toowoomba is 700m above sea level. Helidon is 150metres above sea level. The water rushed down the range, through Withcott, Murphys Creek, Helidon, Grantham and further down the valley. It was almost a sheer drop of 550metres. Imagine the force of Niagara Falls and it is only a drop of 60 metres. This was even worse than a tsunami because it was carrying trees, rocks, houses, cars, machinery, people - you name it.

We have set up a bit of an internet cafe in our garage. The people over at the Evacuation Centre have no internet access (Wireless doesn't work in Helidon) so we have had a steady stream of people coming to use it to do financial transactions, check emails, contact insurance companies, put messages on Facebook and the like. We are hearing horror story after horror story but we have also been talking about lots of other things - everyone has thanked us for having somewhere to go to use the internet but also to
talk about things other than the flood. It's the first time my endless meaningless chatter has actually been put to good use. I've had people helping me plan the trip to Ireland, help Graeme fix the bore, do stuff just to keep them occupied, and its us who are trying to help them??? Our dogs have never been hugged and loved so much. Levi is loving it. I have never been hugged so much, and I'm kind of liking it too J

EVERYTHING: the word everything has been bandied about and I never realised before that there were different degrees of EVERYTHING. There are people in places like Brisbane who still have houses, but they are covered in mud and their possessions are gone or destroyed and they say they have lost everything. There are people whose homes have been swept away as well as their cars and all of their possessions and we say they've lost everything. The next extreme are those who have lost all of those things as well as their workplace and livelihood, their local pub, the local shop, school and all of their lifestyle. Then there are the ones who have also lost their beloved pets and livestock. There are people who have lost all of the things above and loved ones. And there are those who still have homes and
cars and possession but have lost that one person who was their reason for living. Who out of all of these has lost EVERYTHING. I just shake my head.

We met a great guy yesterday who has lost his house and his possessions but still has his kids. He recorded his first song last month ironically called "The Flood" . I am urging people to buy his single off Itunes - its called The Flood by the Beau Rivers Band. You can listen to the song at http://www.reverbnation.com/beauriversband by clicking on the PLAY ALL tab about half way down the screen. He was moving from the Gold Coast to Grantham to be close to his kids. In the middle of moving, he and everything he owns got swept away. He rescued his kids and his ex-wife (what a man) and they found high ground. The rescue team came through about midnight (the flood hit at around 4-ish in the afternoon) and he got their attention by waving his torch around. They said they'd come back for him but didn't. At about 2am he and his family walked 8kms down the trainlines through mud and deepwater in places to get to Helidon. All they have is the donated clothing they are standing in. They will be at the Helidon Evacuation Centre for some time, I think. He also has a Facebook page Beau
Rivers Band if you'd like to put some words of encouragement on there.

Well, we'll be opening our doors again soon, so I'd better have a 'wash' and put some clothes on.

Best wishes to everyone and please send my love to anyone who has lost anything or everything.

[I want to thank Jacqui for writing this to me she is quite exceptional and it is very hard to read without feeling it. Thankyou so much for sharing with us, Jacqui. Big Al]

[NB: ex Big Al - Perhaps we can bring the song and his story to all our local radio station's attention, ask them to play it and tell his story and where to get it. Seems very fitting somehow. Especially you pls Annie, John R, Barb, Joanne and Sandy as who knows what a difference it might make if it got picked up over there!]

Death by Powerpoint

2010-06-23T00:51:00.007+10:00

How to do good presentations ...

(Best played via the "Open in new window" button)

Gliding into Green Day Out inspired me to update my ebike log http://goo.gl/R2o6

2010-06-14T16:48:00.001+10:00

Some of the many features of Green Day out: Meeting and talking -

about other eBikes and bicycles, especially to Mark Allen and Peter Gorden, who have built a few e-cars and e-bikes. See their websites, Plugincars and HybridHonda. Having read their websites, I thought I had better get my own one updated. Also bicycle restorers (recyclers?) at the Bicycle Revolution.
about great and tasty organic food, eg from Roar Food
to solar panel installers

Dozens of other stalls

Live music

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The end of an era of printing

2010-02-15T21:44:00.001+10:00

My 2nd ever printer, a faithful old HP Deskjet Plus, bought late 1980's, is finally sent to printer heaven, aka the Gold Coast Suntown tip. Since I have not used a printer for several years now, preferring to leave trees where they are, in the ground, growing, I finally got around to clearing this old workhorse out from under a bed. Its ink cartridges are too expensive to buy, at $50 each, or $30 for refills, when I might then at best print 10 pages per year before they would dry up. Better to get printing done at Officeworks if necessary. Mostly however, documents are exported as .PDF files and emailed for people to read using Acrobat, xpdf or a browser-embedded whatever. Farewell 20th century. Farewell printer.

The guy at the tip gate said to chuck it in the landfill. The council has no recycling facility for electronics hardware on the Gold Coast. I left it where metals get put for recycling. Hopefully one day plastics and electronics hardware will be recycled from there too.

I was down at Gecko today. Every time we spoke of an event, the nice old lady there tried to foist another page of A4 or a brochure related to it onto me. People have to stop consuming forests every time they go to communicate something!

Happy ensconsed at Fisherman Wharf tavern. FIRST beer going nicely.

2009-12-18T01:36:00.001+10:00

(From my mobile phone)

As a boatload of people arrive to witness the event!

Google holds back on hiring the best talent - Techworld.com

2009-12-03T08:23:00.000+10:00

Google holds back on hiring the best talent - Techworld.com

"It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google"

A great example of why Google will succeed in the long term where Microsoft is a failure.

Google, Oracle and many other companies have always looked at their position as being co-operative where possible, whereas Gates and his bastard son Ballmer never understood that. They wanted to crush everything around them, seeing them as competition to be eliminated. Like only children, they never learnt to play with others unless it meant they could incorporate a Machievellian scheme in the plot somewhere to wipe out the others one by one. They never wanted to play the game, but to own and control it, and be the star and only player on the field. To their credit Google and Oracle have always had a more civilised view of the world around them, and their more respectful place within it.

GCLUG meeting topics

2009-12-01T10:51:00.002+10:00

Add your topic to present at a Gold Coast Linux Users Group meeting.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Business phones, personal tools, employee choice and empowerment.

2009-10-16T22:18:00.000+10:00

To me, this article "Is the Apple iPhone a business phone? - Mobile OS - ComputerworldUK" raises a more interesting issue. It implies that many corporates never did understand and take on the cornerstone concept of "Universal Responsibility" within the world of Quality. They still try to dictate and control their employees, instead of guide and learn from the smarter and more progressive of them. They try to dictate which mobile device is "approved". The same "Network Nazis" block access to many internet sites and facilities on the basis that any visit to them could not be for any corporate benefit. This is an arrogant and/or outdated military attitude that assumes that quality and excellence flows from the top of organisations to the serfs at the bottom. In many institutions this is a great indicator of the abundance of mediocrity that is deeply embedded into the institution, and a good sign to not have anything to do with them, beyond perhaps a quick "hit and run" sale.

Sending blog posts with photos from the mobile phone

2009-09-22T02:00:00.008+10:00

This photo was sent from my mobile phone directly to this blog. It is promising technology, but something (perhaps either my LG phone, or the Virgin email setup, or both) is still a bit buggy. I have so far had success sending:

simple text emails;
this photo with a text signature (sent via
- selecting a photo, then selecting to send it, rather than
- select to compose an email, then attach the photo file).

The objective is to take a photo when out and about, and add a minimal amount of text at that time, since I find it too inefficient to do this via phone keypads, then send it as a blog post. More text can be added later, as I have done here.

15 Rules for Business Bloggers | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing

2009-09-11T19:42:00.003+10:00

The article "15 Rules for Business Bloggers | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing", which I found at The WebMarketCentral Blog, has some good ideas about blogging: why one might do it and how to be effective. It skirts the issue of ROI, an issue I find most interesting.

I think that many people simply blog because they feel the need to do so, with little regard for any reader. Is this the tormented artist in many of us, struggling to express themselves? How many artists, say they produce their art for themselves, and as a therapy with little regard for any consumer. ROI is therefore not expressed as a $sales return / hour expended, yet in the long-term there is either a perceived sense of satisfaction, or a real $'s return somewhere. Anyway, I do not intend to start blogging about blogging. It a tool to use presumably for a greater end than itself.

The future of collaboration - here now.

2009-08-11T00:04:00.003+10:00

Two great reasons to clear your desktop and move to a world of better communication and integration with your associates, customers and audience.

Google Docs in Plain English: collaborative creation of content, made easy.

Add in Google Wave for a full and rich collaborative environment.

Flogging Molly - The Worst Day Since Yesterday

2009-05-23T16:16:00.001+10:00

Larf til ya cry, cry til ya larf!

Meetups: where cyberspace REALLY supports the real world

2009-05-16T00:16:00.000+10:00

Now here is a shining example of a really useful Web2 facility: The Meetup website. I am using it quite a lot lately, to get about and interact with like-minded people here on the Gold Coast. Meetups is an especially useful facility, as the Gold Coast is a place where many newcomers are always arriving and many are 'net savvy and therefore look to this sort of facility to find their way around.

'Green Drinks Gold Coast' is the first Meetup group that I am involved in.

I have just found how to get Meetup notifications via an RSS feed, ie into my Google Reader account, which is where I get all my news etc. This results in all the local meetings that might be of interest to me being aggregated into my favourite feed reader (Google Reader), where I can keep track of them... Nice.

Worldfocus.org’s OLPC Rwanda Video | One Laptop per Child

2009-04-25T17:23:00.001+10:00

Worldfocus.org’s OLPC Rwanda Video | One Laptop per Child: March 30, 2009: Worldfocus.org has produced a good video report that describes OLPC Rwanda’s plans to provide computer access to the country’s 2.3 million schoolchildren. Note the discipline and pleasant respect shown by the children. How does this compare to those in the Australian educational system? Which group even speaks English better, and is better spoken? Which group shows more courtesy, respect and self discipline?

Linking to an OLPC XO via vnc

2009-04-25T15:35:00.003+10:00

This screenshot is taken from my desktop, running the Vinagre vnc client on Ubuntu Intrepid. I can move the XO's mouse cursor from the desktop PC, and hovering over menu items pops the menus open. However that is as much control as I can currently achieve. I cannot send keystrokes nor mouseclicks from the desktop PC to the XO, so I cannot control the XO from the desktop PC. It wold have been especially nice to be able to use teh desktop PCs keyboard. Perhaps I should forget the vnc approach, and just plug a USB keyboard directly into the XO.

OLPC XO testdrive

2009-04-25T12:19:00.008+10:00

This post is created on an OLPC XO. The keyboard is far too small for an adult touch typist though, so the rest of this post will be done from a standard PC.

Now editing from the 'safety' of my normal PC.
I have borrowed this XO from the OLPC Club Gold Coast to check it out, and see what if anything I might do with them, especialy to support development of software for them, or support their adoption in general. Findings so far ...

0. The XO found our local wifi router, and accepted the WPA passphrase. On reboot it's automatically reconnecting - nice.
1. My PC here has a normal keyboard, so I can touch-type. One downside of the XO is that it might give rise to a generation of kids that type via "hunt 'n peck".
2. The XO has just been tested in sunlight, where ...
2.1 ... I downloaded the vnc server "Activity" (ie software package) from the OLPC support wiki. This should allow me to control the XO from a vnc client on my desktop PC.
3. It's not fast, and its not hard to have it appear to freeze while its beavering away in the background trying to play catchup. This must be a plan by the OLPC folk to teach kids patience.
4. There is no point 4, mate. :-)
5. The camera tool (Activity) is nice. I took the pic shown onscreen, and shared it. I guess the other 3 or 4 nodes that I see in the 'mesh' view might be able to see it.

Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ

2009-04-09T22:41:00.004+10:00

Gary Hamel on The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500: an interesting article on where progressive ideals embodied in the Web 2 world contrast with traditional concepts embodied in the traditional commercial world. The big unknown of the current age is what does one do that could be called 'productive' or 'valued' work, and if value is not recognised, why would you get paid anything? So then what do all the people do who are not needed in the workforce - ie there is no work of value for them to do. Is the next age to be one of a new type of communism: from a select few rather than from each according to their ability, yet still to each according to their need?

Making the Future Happen In Linux - Linux Today Blog

2009-04-09T14:25:00.002+10:00

Making the Future Happen In Linux - Linux Today Blog seems to be a nicely written piece on why many people could find Linux better than Windows on their PC. What i like especially is the sentiment "joining the 'wah, Linux isn't 100% ready for me yet, and dangit someone needs to do something about it' chorus isn't the best way to get there". In this day and age too many people are mindless passive consumers. Consumerism is at the root of today's economic mess, and needs to be countered. People need to educate themselves to not be mindless consumers. The Open Source approach implies an anti-consumer approach which is not implied in commercial systems. The Open Source and anti-consumer approach is what we need in order to slow the cycle of mining, manufacture, consume, destroy that is now failing badly on this planet from both a commercial and an environmental perspective.

Exetel ADSL - Whats the best way to get naked

2009-04-04T12:59:00.000+10:00

We are now running naked ADSL here :-), and I have also helped a friend via the Exetel User Help Forum - Whats the best way to get Naked ADSL from nothing.

So phone calls here are all working nicely via VOIP. The VOIP service providers I am using are Exetel, & Gizmos5, and the for client VOIP apps I use Ekiga, and Gizmo5.

Inside A Google Data Center

2009-04-03T20:24:00.001+10:00

Your data and much of your software need not reside on any specific PC anymore. Just leave as much as you can up in "the cloud", eg up here somewhere, where its free, secure, and accessible from wherever you might be.

Twouble with Twitters

2009-04-03T19:41:00.001+10:00

Just what I have been since about 10 days after I started using it. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w)

Wheels in danger of falling off the hub!

2009-03-25T17:07:00.003+10:00

(As 'borrowed' :-) from the article with a very similar name at a soon to be shelved website. (Cut 'n paste is your friend :-) ))

In a shock announcement that reverberated around the planet today, David Tangye, CEO of the imminently defunct Systemeta Pty Ltd, parent company of the Systemeta Business Hub, announced; "Bloody hell, business is slow today. We might as well shut up shop and head off down to the beach ... again." Which was an odd thing to suggest, because he then wandered off over to the nearby Gold Coast showgrounds racetrack to join the 2009 Interdominion Carnival 'Breakfast with the Stars' and get into a few photo-opportunities with Auckland Reactor.

Industry pundits are kept guessing, but it appears that the Systemeta Business Hub is headed very quickly down a track that leads to an enormous brick wall. "The fallout for this could be catastrophic. It could get very ugly indeed." one expert analyst was reported as suggesting. It is thought that the subscription for the Hub's domain name is due in early April, and for the hosting service in early May, and some analysts doubt that Tangye will be interested in pursuing this business direction at this time. Tangye was quoted as declaring "I am not really interested in pursuing this business direction at this time. Since the main sponsors have taken it upon themselves to up-sticks and swan off to Europe, its a question of needing to secure a replacement smartly or call it a day for now at least as far as the Hub is concerned." It is unsure whether this is a tactical marketing move to foil competition, or a genuine change in strategic direction. Opinion seems mixed. Certainly the entire environment is thought to be captured offsite, and is likely to be recoverable in a similar guise with minimal effort in the future, should it be worthwhile to do so when global market conditions change.

Whatever the outcome, most agree that anything could happen where Tangye gets involved. At the time of compiling this report he was unavailable for further comment. "I am not available for further comment." he reportedly said. He then commented that the Hub had served a useful purpose for the past 12 months, and when he found out what it was, he would make the information available to the public for a seven digit fee.

Update: 9/4/9. As forshadowed above, an order to "nuke the hub" was released recently. Japan insisted that strategic warfare planning was involved, but the statements deny this and apparently insist that this was part of a program to refine and improve communications although paradoxically no clear and unambiguous statement was actually released.

Now podcasting: Audio blogging

2009-01-13T23:11:00.002+10:00

For the record, I am now set up to broadcast in any of three formats:

Text and pictures: right here. Some of these are also indexed on my base website.
Moving pictures: eg captured via webcam, or computer desktop capture: posted to Youtube and indexed on my base website.
Audio only: posted and indexed on another page of my base website.

Police Look To Hack Citizens Home PC's

2009-01-07T23:00:00.001+10:00

This probably affects only PCs running Microsoft Windows. This is yet another good reason to run Linux (or Mac?), so YOU are master of your PC, rather than Microsoft, virus writers or the police.

Christmas New Year stuff #2

2009-01-04T16:44:00.003+10:00

More stuff that has kept me busy over Christmas. In this case a client site that I had performed some consulting at and continue to support systems for had trouble with a new hotspot. In summary, I arranged to take over provision of this facility. The new hotspot was installed after three or four days investigation of the technology, assembly of hardware, software and support services, and configuration of the hotspot for this location.
This service is now added as an offering under the umbrella of the Systemeta Business Hub, and will be especially targetted at the tourism industry in Queensland.

Christmas New Year stuff #1

2009-01-04T16:18:00.003+10:00

I try to make Christmas a fairly interesting time for me. I remember feasting and saying hullo to plonk back in Christmas 1970-something, then spending the night returning it to the environment. Since then, I have usually eaten little heavy and drunk nothing, especially during the heat of December, and felt a LOT better for it. Besides, for several years, there was an offshore race to prepare for on Boxing Day, or relocation and travel some years. Some years I have been alone, though lately this involved being very much in touch with people via the internet. Many years I had some sort of project on the go. This year I have two. Here is the start of one: repainting the first of three cars that are on my todo list. This pic was taken on the second day of work. Today, after a couple more days of filling sanding and spraying, she is ready for the final coat. Tomorrow I hope to receive a filter (Ebay: $26) to add to my compressor (Ebay $25), so I can apply a good final coat on Tuesday.

Hello Grails

2008-12-05T09:06:00.003+10:00

Well now, this Grails development framework seems to have a lot of promise. After 15 years, and several steps backwards towards hackland, its nice to see a framework that leverages the power of Java while providing a layer that heads towards a RAD / agile development model. This product is not the ultimate though, but might be a key part of the mix. I still want to see an IDE that includes something like,

a smart screen painter, that is productive in ways similar to 4GL desktop IDEs of the 1990's, such as Oracle Forms, Powerbuilder or Delphi, and / or
a GUI and logic generator, with equivalent power to Oracle Generator for Forms and for Reports

Oh and of course they should be open-source and free.

I am about to plug Grails into Eclipse. Let's see how much more this will give. I might need to try a few IDEs yet. It also seems that there might be a few good plugins that will provide GUI painters, as web pages and screens for mobile devices. Then next I want to export or recreate a data model that I had in Oracle Designer2000 into Grails as a domain model. So much to do ... so little time.

Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 - part 2

2008-11-22T10:27:00.001+10:00

Time to re-read all of this opinion, and get my thoughts in order.

"The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths."

This is probably right. But does that matter? It depends on why you are blogging in the first place. its a personal thing...

"It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers."

Um, Ok so you are blogging to get noticed. I understand that many artists and authors do what they do because they feel happy, driven, compelled to do so, and many have not the remotest thoughts about nor wish to to noticed. They produce because they can, and want to, irrespective of who might or might not notice. Personally, I might not consider myself to be an artist, but I am happy to write stuff from time to time, ie get thoughts on paper so to speak. So I do. Hecklers; yup, you get them. I problem with the internet, and especially if you produce anything to do with software or internet technology etc, is that you are likely to attract young juvenile nerdy guys who have low social skills and no interest in relating positively to others. So you will get rude, arrogant (often very badly written, and misspelt) responses. My advice about this: accept it, and ignore it.

"And why bother?"

See above.

"The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter."

Twitter is designed for 160 character max thoughts. In this day and age of sound-bytes I can see its appeal for many. I am on Twitter, and see its use. However a blog is a different animal. Its a vehicle for writing anything from an opinion piece to an essay to an opus magnus. You don't usually go hooning round the beach in an offshore yacht, nor do you usually sail a sailboard offshore (well not very far anyway). Its all about horses for courses.

(This is partly an opinion piece, and partly done to test writing a quick post via linking on an email hyperlink/email client (See "How do I post via email?")

Home ‎(David Tangye, Gold Coast, Australia‎)

2008-11-22T09:11:00.002+10:00

Home ‎(David Tangye, Gold Coast, Australia‎): "Welcome! to my base website featuring the following areas of expertise and interest ..."

Amazing! Web 2.0 at its best!

This blog shows how utterly cool it is to post articles to the internet, and blog and share them. This post is a great guinea pig. What I have done is:

Set up the "Blog This!" link in my browser's links toolbar (see this Blogger help page). Now I can simply select any text on any web page and click that "Blog This!" link to initate a popup whereby I flesh out a quick blog. The popup editor to do this is a little basic but is adequate. For instance I had to switch it to html-mode to add code to make this list. Also I am not sure about how or whether I could add an image in. I think I would need to do that from the main editor at the blogsite. It would not be hard to add one later,eg a snapshot of me creating this now. However the editor has a standard button to add a link, eg to the "BlogThis!" help page, and also handles text Bolding, Italics, color, quoting via buttons. So this will be posted to whichever of my Blogger blogs I select.
My Blogger blogs appear in my Google Reader, and from there, I normally Share the post, so it also appears in my "Google Shared Stuff"...
which itself has a link on my Base Website ...
which itself is the subject of this post.

Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004

2008-10-23T20:49:00.002+10:00

Oh dear, just when I felt good about starting to write the odd blog, an expert tells me how old hat I am, and that it is time to give it all away.

Kiwi has a Skyline that runs on water

2008-08-16T11:29:00.001+10:00

Another item on Youtube. I get the impression that there are a lot of people out there that have actually created serious alternatives to petro-carbon fuelled vehicles. In addition, my own neighbour here built an electric car about 20 years ago and ran it for a few years in Victoria, before he moved up here to the Gold Coast. It seems pretty obvious to me that petro-carbon fuelled vehicles will not exist within about 15 years. For existing vehicles, I guess there will be a massive industry in conversion of existing engines to run on the type of water-petrol source that is shown in this video.

JAPANESE WATER POWERED CAR!!

2008-08-16T11:28:00.001+10:00

Where is Linux and LinuxWorld going?

2008-08-14T15:35:00.004+10:00

Channel web reports that -

The LinuxWorld/Next Generation Data Center Show in San Francisco was expected to attract some 10,000 attendees. But some exhibiting vendors complained that attendance seemed far below that. Has Linux become so mainstream that a Linux-specific show no longer makes sense? ...Toward the end of the final day the announcer making a pitch at the Fusion IO booth called out: "And what do we call today? Vendor day! Where half the audience is vendors waiting to go home."

...booth for Canonical and its Ubuntu distribution of Linux also seemed popular with show-goers. Other major Linux distributors, including Novell and Red Hat, did not exhibit at the show.

Canonical had already cancelled their show that was planned for slightly earlier, presumably for lack of interest. So why are Linux shows failing to attract attendees? Here are my thoughts.

Re: 'Linux has become so mainstream that a Linux-specific show no longer makes sense?' Name anything that is mainstream, homeshows, boatshows, camping shows, pet shows and it always has plenty of attendees. However are Linux shows attended by a specialist interest group, not the general (computer using) public. If so, perhaps as soon as those specialists see all the trappings of mainstream dominating the show they opt out. I recently lead an exercise to gauge whether our local Linux users should incorporate to address and engage the business and the wider world more. There was almost no interest. So I see a pattern here? Are Linux users mainly developer types and software techoes who have little interest in the business world and the way it works. Are they composed of more than those who are just focussed on the technical side of creating stuff? Do they have any interest in anything beyond that? Or is the lack on attendance more that the wider business world has (still?) little interest in Linux? Or is it that they are running out of money in the USA to spend attending trade shows?

I also wonder how long it will actually take for Linux to become mainstream. I think the answer to that is in what we think of as 'mainstream'. As it stands, with what I take to be the general attitude of Linux people to the rest of the world, it seems to me that:

Linux will continue to slip quietly into corporate mainstream in various areas as if by stealth, but actually as much by chance and circumstance as anything. Linux as a community will continue to exist at level 0 of the CMM model, so individual successes in the business world will be by a combination of the achievements of individuals multiplied by the mass of the entire community, not by any formal systematic approach. Perhaps it will be be a 'natural systematic approach': as inevitable as the planet revolving round the sun, and the ultimate decay of the universe into atrophy.
Linux will not take on traditional proprietary technologies eg Microsoft windows and many business applications in head to head contests, simply because there will not be the infrastructure around it to compete, eg in contested contracts to supply.

5 Most Popular Linux-hackable Gadgets

2008-07-19T02:02:00.001+10:00

Linux is a powerful and versatile operating system that can be utilized to hack just about any electronic hardware device. To prove it, I have here a list of popular gadgets that are already known to run Linux.

read more | digg story

Lady on bike

2008-07-19T01:49:00.001+10:00

Class act

I mark Kevin Rudd's performance

2008-06-05T21:15:00.006+10:00

Our new leader declared that he would be repeatedly marking himself and his government's performance. Nice sentiment Kevin. I think its the least we can do to help him out and do the same.

This guy has generally impressed me here and there, in a token sort of way mind you:

He ratified Kyoto. At least that was some sort of leadership step forward, even if somewhat token, and qualified by declaring that Australia's main policy would wait until a certain boffin's report was released. However when the said boffins report was released he said he would file it for inclusions with other files and reports. Sweet sidestep there Kev.
He had the strength to say 'Sorry' a few months ago, when arguably there was no political necessity nor gain to make of it.
Now he is taking a leadership role in pushing Australia towards new types of vehicle engine technology, as per his announcement in parliament. I just hope this announcement will amount to more than that commission and subsequent filing of another boffin's report. Personally I want to see a Holden uranium powered ute come out of this initiative, or I am going to feel quite let down.

Anyway kudos for Kevin for at least trying to show some sort of leadership on a couple of issues. Can you imagine that wasted space PM that we had before ( what's his name again, either Robert Menzies II or was it George Bush III?) taking those sort of initiatives.

How to merge two national losses into a win.

2008-05-23T16:18:00.022+10:00

According to ABC reports today:

Losing space race: Aust lags in space race: Andy Thomas It seems apparent by the comments on this article, that your average Australian is totally confused about this issue: confusing the space-race and its possible spinoffs with science in general. The need to engage in the science, and in a space-race seem to be inextricably merged into the same argument. The space-race is at the heart of science, right? The best way to further science is via the space-race, right? That's the trouble with democracy: total idiots get the same vote.
The Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has lost a last ditch attempt to stop the logging of Tasmania's Wielangta State Forest.

How to turn two loses into a win? I await the opinion to appear, that the fix for this problem will be to push harder for Australia's re-involvement in the space-race on the grounds that it will be instrumental in us finding a good place to live after we have logged planet Earth dry.

Will only the rich and powerful get to ride the dreamship to our new home in the next galaxy. If so, cant we get them into a rocket now, and launch them all soon, before they do any more damage. All the leaders in the logging industry will be in there, plus those from the mines, and Silicon Valley. After they are gone, perhaps everyone else will get to turn the logging machines off, and the fill back in the holes in the ground. We will have to make do with less silicon, so computers and artificially magnified breasts will all be lost in the dreamtime of your average nerd, logger and stripper.

Then again, will the rich and powerful round up the rest of us and send us off instead, while they stay here? Afterwards, will they and their robots fix the place up here for themselves. I wonder how they are going to pull that scam off. Let's see...

They covered up the Kennedy killing well so far, and
got away with complicity in the drug trade to fund the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 80's even though the product was heading to their own GIs in Vietnam, and
got away with the WMD spin for long enough for their needs, after which only a few bush idiot's get the blame anyway, and
have covered up the 9/11 issues like 2 totally vapourised aircraft, and how the towers fell, and who really was pulling the strings there.

But conning an entire global population minus 5% to step off the planet, now that will take some doing. Is religion the answer? It worked in the past. It has kept man killing man in the name of God for centuries, at least until recently. The trouble lately though is that religion does not have the pull it used to. Even by Hitler's time they needed to move onto a ethnic/cultural issues, and exterminating Jews was not really the main thrust of Hitler's show. Political dogma like Communism vs Capitalism ran for less than one century. Since then, religious ferver has become more visible again, thanks in part to global telecommunications. On one side we have the religiously led nut-case God-fearing loonies in the USA, and on the other the entire Muslim world, if you want to believe the Yanks. However while American policy and spin goes round the world in a millisecond, the negative effects of Islam fervour only directly affect a few hundred at a time, as the odd religious loony has been convinced to step up, out and off, and take a few near them along. If it weren't for global telecommunications we would hardly know of it happening. (Q: How many died in Africa yesterday? No news = 0 died, right. Yet everyone gets to know that 3 died on the West Bank or 30 in Iraq.) Terrorist bombings has been a very fragmented effort so far, and I do not envisage your average Muslim taking it up as their new sport. To get 95% of the population to depart Earth one way or another, as shrapnel-fodder or in a rocket, is just not going to happen.

So the rich and powerful won't leave because they are too smart to commit suicide in a rocket, no matter how big it is, and the great unwashed will not leave because there is unlikely to be a single sufficiently powerful religion for them to follow into that abyss.So where does that leave us?

Right back here on Earth.
All of us.
Together.
Fighting to get to the top of the pile, that sits on an ever more barren and toxic dump.

Nice going religious loonies.
Nice going space-race nerds, and rat-race leaders.
Nice work.
Choice.

Anyway, back to the topic:

Q: What is going to happen next in the Wielangta State Forest?
Its going to be logged in an 'environmentally responsible and sustainable' fashion.

Q:What are the long-term prospects for the Wielangta State Forest?
A:What Wielangta State Forest?

How to improve Australia

2008-05-14T00:08:00.006+10:00

Taken from discussion posts at the ABC website following the release of the Australian Federal Budget tonight.

steve:13 May 2008 7:50:31pm

All Labour really needs to do is to reduce the level of government in this country. A good start would be get rid State Government across the nation and move services between Federal and the councils. In this all list of unnecessary tax's would be abolished and that would really help working family's.

One can only dream

alex: 13 May 2008 8:42:31pm

What do you suggest the thousands of state government workers do?

Rechoboam: 13 May 2008 9:14:28pm

Something productive, such as not working for the government.

Don: 13 May 2008 9:31:10pm

Many create work for themselves; or fight amongst themselves and need mediation. The "test" is/must be do I/does my job or output or input really add value to the nation as a whole?
If not, it is a government job that should go viz. police, traffic police, teachers, medicos sitting in offices faxing paper from Canberra to Sydney, Sydney to Darwin, George St to Albert St and back. Is that really work or is it simply "work" for the sake of "work". How does it add value to the nation as a whole?

craig: 13 May 2008 9:38:03pm

I agree the public service should be trimmed - many people who cannot find a job in the real world end up and public servants. I would however object to cutting nurse, doctor or teacher numbers - although I would agree there needs to eb more emphasis on removing dead wood, especially from teaching.

Nice sentiments Don and Craig. In an ideal world/country, I am sure that this is how it would work. I just wonder how do we get Australians to head towards this sort of ideal?

Linux and Microsoft Windows; and computer viruses and karma

2008-05-13T23:02:00.008+10:00

Viruses: Many people probably disbelieve my assertions that its virtually impossible to get viruses in Linux. The article 'Spyware/Viruses in Linux' by David Stone is worth reading.

"Creating a Linux virus is trivial but getting it out in the wild and infecting large amounts of systems is very difficult."
"Anti-virus software will never be needed in Linux..."

And to echo my more general feelings, that I have held for many years:

"The sooner Microsoft goes the route that IBM did the better for them, their stockholders, and everyone else. They need to find the niches they're best at, concentrate on those, learn to play well with others, and stop trying to compete against everyone else in the technology industry."

("zeebo on 05/11/2008 at this Digg article".)

If you read the book "Hard Drive", the story of Bill Gates and Microsoft, and follow the antics of the Monkey Man, you will not be holding your breath for this to happen though. Then again, perhaps its a case of 'one down, and only one to go". The problem even then is that institutions breed their own kind. How many more monkey men are there in there?

I remember that Gates was quoted as stating that 'open source' is 'anti-American'. I agree, you are correct Bill. and THAT is the trouble with America. The Great American dream involves freedom to succeed ... by "laissez-faire" capitalism? by trampling all over the rest of the world with your MacDonalds and your B2s and your Raptors? what exactly?

On a related note, I have always liked the way Oracle has viewed the software world, its place in it, and its take on such problems as Microsoft. (and that is not because I worked for them at one time.) For instance in the article "The State of Oracle Linux", Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect said:

“Microsoft and Microsoft Windows,” are the real enemy. “You know, we, as a company, we have a few large primary competitors. One of them is Microsoft. So Microsoft wants customers to deploy Windows as a vehicle for locking them into Microsoft’s monopoly. Linux is an important counterbalance to Microsoft’s strategy. We view Linux as a much better open choice for enterprise customers running x86 computers. So we really want Linux to succeed in that space. You know, of course we fight with Red Hat over customers, we fight with SuSE over customers. We’re competing with each other in this Linux space. But the real opposition here is Microsoft.”

And now for something completely different

2008-05-07T21:50:00.004+10:00

Just this once, I shall mindlessly clone a web item from somewhere else, mainly because I think it is interesting.

Um actually, this is the second item in a row that I have mindlessly cloned from elsewhere.... oh well.

I will use the "Shared Items" facility within Google Reader to do this sort of thing in future. In fact I will place this item into there too, so that should set up an infinite loop between here and there :-)

Global ... or US meltdown

2008-05-05T18:59:00.005+10:00

"There's going to be more pain." (WARREN BUFFETT: the world's richest person, warning that global financial markets still face further losses from the credit crisis)

OK, so the planet will be affected, but isn't this in fact mostly only a concern for the USA? It would be kinda nice to hear a few yanks say something like "I think the chooks are coming home to roost in our all American 100 trillion dollar deficit." instead of implying that whatever is their problem (in this case bankruptcy), is by implication a global problem. It might be a problem to varying degree to other economies that are closely linked to the USA, but surely there are a lot of countries that are not in marching towards the cliff in terminal lockstep with Uncle Sam.

OH, OK, so Warren is not predicting anything so dire. Fair enough, he has to keep a brave face doesn't he. After all he has quite a few pesos riding on not panicking the horses, doesn't he.

Yet another home

2008-04-19T22:35:00.003+10:00

I have now set up a hosted website that will probably be the permanent home for my professional stuff.
My personal cyberhome with links to whatever is current, and a description of their status remain at Google Groups.

Hello World

2007-09-20T19:34:00.001+10:00

Excellent: Here's a toast to this successful blog launch, and the arrival of yet more noise to jam up the Internet :-).

My main websites are:

Personal website - which is blogless and thus is serviced by this blog, and
my Systemeta (Business Hub) for business stuff
- which has its own blog

This is where I might write personal raves ... one day ... maybe ... maybe not.
Ennnnnnnnn .... joy.

ps. I shall add comments about this blog itself and general nerdy administrivia as ... well ... comments to this post.