McBlog

I went down to Repco and picked up some spark plugs and a fuel filter. Spent a while installing them but still no change. Hopefully it’s the timing or a blocked jet but I’m starting to wonder if it’s not something much much worse :(

Looks like I’ll have to organise towing down to Mentone where Rank Rotaries are (recommended by the guys at AllMaz). Guess we’ll find out soon enough…

My car is not running very well at the moment. It’d been running a bit rough for the past couple of days and I’ve got it booked in for a dyno session on the 31st. Unfortunately, on Friday evening as we left the airport to head for home (I’d been out picking up Kitt’s sister) the engine lost power and we pulled over to the side. It was running terribly and stalling out at idle, so I called up RACV and we waited.

Over an hour later, the guy finally arrived, took a bit of a look and suggested that we head for a late night RACV service center near the next off-ramp. We couldn’t even get past 80km/h and finally limped into the center. There the guys made similar comments and indicated they didn’t have the parts/gear required to service a rotary.

We wound up waiting another hour for a tow truck to arrive and, $70 later, deliver the car and us to home. Hopefully it’s nothing too major and I can get it up and running again soon.

Tonight we had our grading for Tae Kwon Do with both Nykolai and I passing. We’re now yellow belts and can start working on the next pattern. Nykolai surprised the teacher by doing the whole Taeguk 1 pattern (kids his age only have to do the first 9 moves to pass). He got a round of applause from all the people watching. We’d worked pretty hard on it to get him into shape and a couple of our “home practice” sessions had included his mate Nicholas (who went from yellow to yellow+one stripe).

We’re both very happy with it, although I’m sure that now I’ll come under even more pressure to come along to some of the adult classes :)

A friend found the Red Bull Air Race on Channel 10 this morning – I received an urgent message from him saying I should get on and watch it ASAP. Holy shit – talk about a fantastic thing to watch (and to dream of doing).

Take a high performance aerobatic aircraft with a “best in the world” pilot in it. Now send them through a series of pylons at high speed in a tight space so they’re pulling lots of g’s and racing the clock to get around the course. Do all this at ground level.

Have a few pilots and aircraft competing against each other based on time.

Now do this a few times over a year at locations around the world.

Incredible!

Yet another of my phones has gone to meet its maker. First was a 6310i that just refused to talk to the network – all the lights are on, the SIM card is in but nope, no signal, no carrier name, no nothing.

Fortunately, I was able to scrounge a 6310 to replace it – not as good as the 6310i but still good. Sadly, that one was in my shirt pocket as I was preparing a bath for Nykolai. Ooops – its glowing screen last seen disappearing into the depths, the damned thing was never to work again (even after being left for a few days to dry out).

So, I’m back to an antique brick of a 5110 that at least works, even if it does have a cellular net monitor/debug package in it that’s busy displaying Matrix-like numbers and info. Wonder how long until that one carks it :)

We’re making progress with the new server (“soju”) – rather than try to create the whole new environment then port everything over, we’ve decided to set up a chroot’d environment on soju that replicates everything on the old server (“arethusa”). This lets us run the old server on the new without it (or anyone else) seeing a difference.

Once this is up and running, we’ll be able to replace old with new and then start phasing domains into the new environment we’re planning.

It’s a great idea but we have a LOT to sort out and test before we can consider it ready for deployment. So far we’ve copied a large number of files onto the new server and will be testing the “chroot jail” concept tomorrow night.

There are a number of us currently objecting to a proposed development over on Smith St in Collingwood. It’s all being coordinated by the Collingwood Action Group (CAG) and you can read all about it at SmithStreet.org. A record 1,500 objections were received last year and the local council (eventually) knocked back the proposal. The developers (Banco) have now taken it to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to get it pushed through.

A bunch of us are submitting our Statement of Grounds documents with objections and CAG is organising another ePetition trying to get various ministers to block it. After all, they blocked a proposed development at Wheelers Hill with only 400 objections.

Hopefully this one gets stopped too. We’ll know for sure after the VCAT hearing on Friday.

Things are pretty busy at the AWU – I’m got the following projects underway:

• changing email providers
• dealing with a cranky server
• adding & tweaking some new building systems
• two new software packages
• updating an industrial strength printer/copier/scanner

Add to that the usual day-to-day issues of networks, workstations, laptops, systems, airconditioning, security systems and so on… Lots to do but progress is being made.

We finally have a functional Mac in the house. While Kitt’s got a G4 with a mega screen, it’s still in storage and we’ve not managed to extract it yet (not sure where to put it :). A friend gave me an old G3 that they had spare – 300Mhz with 256Mb RAM – not a bad little machine. I’ve loaded it with OSX 10.3.9 plus a stack of open source software (FireFox, OpenOffice.org, etc), hooked it into our LAN and set it up on Kitt’s desk. She’s now using it for all her webmail, searching, etc. Given that she was using an antique little laptop, she’s ecstatic to have something a little faster.

So, Windows, Linux and OSX – wonder what else we can bring in and hook onto the network here. Perhaps a SUN box? My friend Jim would say it should be an AMIGA but maybe it’ll be a games console :)

For the past six months I have been using FireFox as my web browser, Thunderbird for email, Open Office.org for documents/spreadsheets and the Gimp for graphics. I’ve also just started to use the FlightGear flight simulator.

Like the Linux operating system, all of these packages are Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). You can download, install and run them without having to pay anything. If you like them and keep using them, you have the option of donating towards their expenses but it’s up to you.

The concept of FLOSS has been around for a long time but it’s starting to peak as more and more people start using it. It’s being considered for more and more work environments, not just in homes. Lets face it, FireFox is an excellent browser, Thunderbird’s anti-spam filters are great and OpenOffice.org does Microsoft Office’s role better than MS Office (well, MS Office 2000 crashes when trying to read some documents created in Office 2003, OO doesn’t :)

We made a concious decision within APC.au to switch over to FLOSS software where possible. As part of the work we do with non-government organisations such as human rights groups and so on, using commercial software was no longer viable from both the “tied to/trusting a coporation” perspectives and from the financial aspect (less money spent on infrastructure = more money available to help others, etc)

At this point, I am now able to seriously consider converting to Linux instead of Windows. All my applications are available on Linux and it’s an extremely stable platform to operate from. Hopefully I can take this step in the near future when I pick up a new laptop.