Newington Armory

Visited Newington Armory area for the first time. Close to Olympic Park and Bicentennial Park, but not sure exactly where it is. It's a very nice place, I must say. The Blaxland Riverside Park has ample parking spaces with bike paths and fountains and BBQ facilities. There's the Armory Wharf Cafe with indoor and outdoor dining areas. There's the actual wharf with the cranes still standing. Bike hire is $15 per hour. Nearby is the Newington Armory, which used to be a naval depot. A few hundred meters away is Armory Gallery (Building 18). At 500sqm, the building is the largest single room gallery with uninterrupted wall space in Australia. It hosts ArtExpress, currently featuring Art of Darkness with works from 2008 HSC Visual Arts students.

Movie 2009.04.25 - Transporter 3

This movie is no good. The action sequences are over-the-top and only so-so. They're so obviously fake. The leading lady (if you can call her that) is so annoying, I would've thrown her out of the car a long time ago. Never mind that I'll get blown up to bits a few minutes later. Most of the scenes have to relevance to the plot (what plot?), and should've been edited out. If the editor did his job, the movie would've lasted only 30 minutes. The plot just doesn't make sense. The bad guys kidnapped the girl, but then hands her over to Frank. After so many car chases and shootings, they demand the girl back. Meanwhile, the girl's father, who is the environmental minister, signs a document allowing a ship with toxic waste to come into the country. Instead of taking the document immediately, the bad guys sit around the table doing nothing. The minister gets word that his daughter is now safe with Frank, and promptly tears up the document.

2-for-1 at LG IMAX Theater

We knew Monsters vs Aliens 3D is a very popular movie, so we bought our tickets way in advance. An hour early to be exact. While waiting outside the theater, we saw people going in already. Might as well go in early and get some good seats, right? By the time we went in, the place is half-full. Some ads were being shown, a few trailers for upcoming movies. Then there's this long trailer for Under the Sea 3D. The trailer has been going on for more than half an hour already, so I jokingly told WHQ maybe we went to the wrong movie session. After the trailer, everyone started standing up and leaving the theater. Uh-oh, did we just watch the wrong movie. Well, we showed our tickets to the door lady and she didn't say anything. Anyway, we lined up again for the real show. We do have valid tickets, and if the door staff objects, we'll just buy new tickets. We got to the head of the queue. The guy didn't even look at our used tickets, and waved us in. Probably figured we came out to buy popcorn and drinks.

I found Monsters vs Aliens quite funny. Earth is having an alien problem, so General W. R. Monger brings out his collection of monsters (each sold separately) to fight them off. You've got Dr. Cockroach, blobby B.O.B, The Missing Link, Insectisaurus, and supersized Susan/Ginormica. Obviously, Susan is the main character here. Due to a freak chance encounter with a meteorite, she becomes a giant, and now her fiance doesn't want her anymore. Realizing that she's now big and strong (literally), she ditches her loser fiance, and goes on to become a full-time monster.

Photoshoot at The Rocks

Funny how things work out in the end. We're supposed to have this 9am photoshoot at The Rocks with Fotoexpression. As it is ANZAC Day, I thought of just parking in the office, then taking the bus through the city to Circular Quay. First, I woke up later than I wanted. On my way to WHQ's unit, I find Beamish Street blocked in preparation for the local ANZAC Day parade. I take to the small side streets, and even some of them are blocked. Then WHQ calls up asking if I can bring along a few of my shirts, so she can decide what to wear. That means I gotta go back home. By the time I got to her unit, her sister's still getting ready. We quickly drove to the city (within speed limits, of course), and got on the bus just in time.

Photoshoot went pretty well. The sun was out. There's a light breeze, but not too cold. I thought we were gonna take pictues with the Harbour Bridge as a backdrop, but apparently not. Right beside the Argyle Stores (corner of Argyle and Harrington Streets) is a quaint red phone booth. That's the starting point of the photo shoot. Moving up the road, more pictures outside the front door of Argyle Venues, then along sections of Cambridge Street, all the way to Susannah Place. The whole e-session took about an hour, and by then we're both tired from smiling and hugging and pretending to be models. :-)

Nybble Issue No. 210

N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R

A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else

2009.04.15 Issue No. 210

I'm cleaning up my mailboxes again, and I suddenly realized how many e-newsletters I have subcribed to that I don't read anymore. When I first got on the Internet bandwagon, I subscribed to Bob Rankin's Tourbus. Back then, I had enough time to read through the whole newsletter and visit all the interesting links mentioned. I also subscribed to Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome, the geek newsletter. At that time, it was only the website and the newsletter. That was before Lockergnome had the blogs, the forums, the Youtube channel, Gnomedex, etc. Another fixture is Randy Cassingham's This Is True and his sister newsletter The True Stella Awards. Very funny, smart, and interesting read.

Then I started subscribing to Dictionary.com's Word fo the Day, WhatIs Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, tech newsletters, market alerts, news, jokes, etc. At some point, I just slowly stopped reading all those newsletters. They're still archived in subfolders, piling up everyday. Good thing there's a search-and-delete function. Very handy.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the email hoarders about it. Thanks.

_________STINK-FREE UNDERWEAR_________

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090323/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_space_underwear

Japan has the answer for teenagers who dislike changing their underwear - a line of odour-free underwear and casual clothing called J-ware. Created by textile experts at Japan Women's University in Tokyo, the clothes are designed to kill bacteria, absorb water, insulate the body and dry quickly. They are also flame-resistant and anti-static, not to mention comfortable and stylish.

Japanese astronaut Takao Doi gave the clothes a trial run during a shuttle mission last year. Even after a vigorous workout, Doi's clothes stayed dry. Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the International Space Station, is testing the clothes. J-ware should reduce the amount of clothing that needs to be sent to the space station, which has no laundry facilities. Toting cargo into orbit is expensive, so having clothes that stay fresh for weeks at a time should result in significant savings.

The Japanese space agency plans to make the clothes available to NASA and its other space station partners once development is complete. A commercial line also is in the offing.

_________LOSSLESS MP3_________

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49301678,00.htm

French media behemoth Thomson has announced mp3HD, a new lossless 'hybrid' MP3 format, which not only offers the sound detail lost in a normal MP3, but remains compatible with your existing MP3 player or iPod. Simply put, it works by storing a conventional lossy MP3 track that standard players can play, alongside a 'lossless' version -- both audio streams are contained in one single MP3 file. It's similar to how hybrid SACDs work. Ideally this would appeal to users who want to enjoy lossless audio at home, and universally compatible MP3s on the commute, without having to rip two versions of the same song.

There are some issues though. Firstly, file size. A normal 320Kbps MP3 of a sample Pink Floyd song was just 14.6MB, and 320Kbps is all you'll hear if you listen to an mp3HD track on your iPod. But the lossless audio stored in the file will be stored on your iPod nevertheless, taking up precious storage space. (Although it should be pointed out that the hybrid files are smaller than the combined size of a FLAC and 320Kbps MP3, although are less efficient to encode than FLAC.) The second problem concerns compatibility. The reason for MP3's ubiquity in the marketplace, is their small size and compatibility with almost anything you throw at them. With mp3HD, not only are file sizes massive (making them impractical for small flash players), but you need to install plug-ins on your computer. True backwards compatibility would mean no additional software or updates were required.

In conclusion, mp3HD will undoubtedly appeal to archivists with hard drives in their portable music players (such as the iPod classic or Archos 5). But for the chap on the street it'll be small, convenient, decent-enough-sounding MP3s all the way.

_________FASTEST WIND-POWERED CAR________

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7968860.stm

Richard Jenkins, a British engineer from Hampshire, has broken the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. Mr. Jenkins reached 126.1mph (202.9km/h) in his Greenbird car on the dry plains of Ivanpah Lake in Nevada. American Bob Schumacher set the previous record of 116 mph in 1999, driving his Iron Duck vehicle.

The Greenbird is a carbon fibre composite vehicle that uses wind (and nothing else) for power. The only metalwork used is for the wing bearings and the wheel unit. The designers describe it as a "very high performance sailboat" but one that uses a solid wing, rather than a sail, to generate movement. Due to the shape of the craft, especially at such high speeds, the wings also provide lift; a useful trait for an aircraft, but very hazardous for a car. To compensate for this, the designers have added small wings to "stick" the car to the ground, in the same way Formula 1 cars do.

Mr Jenkins, from Lymington, spent 10 years designing the vehicle, with Greenbird the fifth vehicle he has built to try to break the record.

_________500MBPS VDSL2_________

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/98952,ericsson-pushes-vdsl2-data-transfers-above-500mbps.aspx

In a live demonstration of a new VDSL2-based technology, Ericsson has achieved data transfer rates of more than 0.5 Gbps at 500 metres over twisted copper pairs using "vectorised" VDSL2.

Vectorised VDSL2 is said to enable extremely high end-to-end transmission rates, improving VDSL2 performance by reducing noise originating from the other copper pairs in the same cable bundle. This increases capacity and reach, boosting the number of customers that can be connected. Vectoring technology also decouples the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially improving power management, which can reduce power consumption. VDSL2-based technology also offers unprecedented speeds on existing copper lines, opening up new opportunities for operators to provide customers with broadband services such as IPTV. It also makes it possible to use existing copper networks as a backhaul for radio base stations, accelerating future rollout of HSPA and LTE-based high-speed mobile broadband services.

Standards for VDSL2 and line bonding are available today. The standardisation of vectoring is ongoing and is expected by the end of 2009.

_________SELF-HEALING POLYMER_________

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/a-polymer-that-can-fix-its-own-scratches.ars

Material scientists Biswajit Ghosh and Marek Urban from the University of Southern Mississippi have created a new polymer that can fix its own scratches under regular sunlight, a feat that has no end of practical applications.

At the core of their design is polyurethane, which is an elastic polymer that already has decent scratch resistance. To enhance its ability to withstand mechanical damage, Ghosh and Urban added two more components, OXE and CHI. OXE has an unstable chemical structure (a four-membered ring containing three carbons and one oxygen) that makes it prone to being split open. CHI is UV sensitive. The idea is that, if the polyurethane gets damaged by a scratch, the unstable ring structure of OXE will open to create two reactive ends. Then, UV light can trigger CHI to form new links with the reactive ends of OXE and thereby fix the break in the polymer.

In experiments, Ghosh and Urban purposefully created scratches in films of their polyurethane-CHI-OXE material and tested to see if it mended itself under UV light. When they placed the damaged film under a 120 W fluorescent UV lamp, the scratches became negligible within half an hour. This repair reaction can work under a variety of conditions, ranging from dry air to high humidity.

The ability to use natural sunlight for self-repair and the simple design are advantageous, but this polymer system still needs some work before it can be released commercially. For example, the researchers must figure out what happens if a second scratch occurs directly where a previous scratch was mended. They also need to determine the shelf life of their three-component polymer.

_________LOGGING KEYSTROKES FROM THIN AIR_________

http://www.itworld.com/security/64193/researchers-find-ways-sniff-keystrokes-thin-air

Researchers discovered new ways to read what you're typing by aiming special wireless or laser equipment at the keyboard or by simply plugging into a nearby electrical socket.

A team from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne did its work over the air. Using an oscilloscope and an inexpensive wireless antenna, the team was able to pick up keystrokes from virtually any keyboard, including laptops. With the keyboard's cabling and nearby power wires acting as antennas for these electromagnetic signals, the researchers were able to read keystrokes with 95 percent accuracy over a distance of up to 20 meters (22 yards), in ideal conditions. Even encrypted wireless keyboards are not safe from this attack. That's because they use a special algorithm to check which key is pressed, and when that algorithm is run, the keyboard gives off a distinctive electromagnetic signal, which can be picked up via wireless.

Using similar techniques, Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco say they get accurate results, picking out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables. Their work only applies to older, PS/2 keyboards, but the data they get is pretty good. On these keyboards, the data cable is so close to the ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable, which acts as an antenna. That ground wire passes through the PC and into the building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. They believe they could pick up signals from a distance of up to 50 meters by simply plugging a keystroke-sniffing device into the power grid somewhere close to the PC they want to snoop on. Because PS/2 keyboards emanate radiation at a standard, very specific frequency, the researchers can pick up a keyboard's signal even on a crowded power grid.

The Ecole Polytechnique team has submitted their research for peer review and hopes to publish it very soon.

_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________

Diplodocs

http://safemanuals.com/

Search for user manuals online

ShareBee

http://www.sharebee.com/

Upload, distribute, update.

Readability

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

GMail Tips

http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html

_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________

If girls just want to have fun, why do they make it so hard and expensive to play with them?

_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

~ Bertrand Russell

_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________

Where did Arabic numerals originate?

Arabic numerals are not Arabic; they were invented in India.

Source: Arcamax Trivia

_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________

At the end of a particularly severe winter, we removed the protective covers from our cabin cruiser and found that the weight of the snow had broken the windshield. I drove to the local glass shop, where I paid $110 for a replacement.

The owner asked if I'd like them to install it, but I said I could handle it myself.

I managed to climb up the ladder to the deck before dropping the glass. Sheepishly I returned to the shop. The owner showed no emotion as he cut the second glass.

When I saw another $110 charge, I said, "I thought I might get a break on the second piece of glass."

"I did give you a break," he replied.

"How so?" I asked.

"I didn't laugh, did I?" he answered.

That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

Easter Wedding Rings

Went to Mt. Pritchard to attend an Easter party. Left early and went to the city because WHQ's sister has to attend a meeting there.

Since we're already in the vicinity, we dropped by Ricco Ricco to take a look at their wedding bands. Naturally, we looked for 18k white gold bands that matches WHQ's engagement ring. Each one costs from $700 to $1000. We selected a pair, and the manager is offering us something like 50% off. Either the manager really likes me, or the store is having a massive sale, or maybe this is just Marketing 101. He's even willing to throw in free engraving. Personally, I'd rather check out a few more shops to make sure the price is within range, but this guy is really pushy. So I took his best price, shaved off $50, and asked him if he could give me that price. He laughed out loud and said to me, "That's not how you negotiate." Anyway, he played around with his abacus, I mean, calculator, and we came to a middle ground. As I always say, ask and ye shall receive.

Went back to the unit to find that the phone line is still not working. Worse, even the DSL service is busted. It definitely was working before. Checked the phone box outside and found the cover lying on the ground. Someone definitely fiddled with the wires.

247tint

247tint.com is running a special on their car windows tinting services. The blurb goes "Any car, any darkness - $130!!!" Given that they normally charge $190 for sedans and $220 for wagons and 4WDs, that's a pretty good deal.

So I drop by 20 Consett Street around 8am for my appointment. Turns out it's a home business. No complaints about the work though. I left the car with Boyd, and by the time I came back at 11am (after McDonald's and Bunnings), it's all done.

Minnamurra Rainforest

For the long Easter break, the family decided to go to Minnamurra Rainforest, just west of Jamberoo. Been a while since the whole family went out on a trip. Stopped by Nan Tien Temple in Berkeley, Wollongong as the brother hasn't been there before. Took the Grand Pacific Drive through the Royal National Park to Stanwell Park through the Sea Cliff Bridge.

Today being a Christian holiday, I was confused to find so many people at Nan Tien Temple. The parking lots are almost full. Aside from the pagoda and the shrines, don't forget to visit the exhibition halls with paintings on display and the museum, which can be found inside the gift shop. After a hearty vegetarian meal at the dining hall, we proceeded to Minnamurra Reserve. From Princess Highway, take a right at Illawarra Highway, follow Terry Street, which become Jamberoo Road. Take a right at Jamberoo Mountain Road, then another right at Minnnamurra Falls Road.

Minnamurra Reserve is actually part of the Budderoo National Park. Vehicle entry fee is $11. Should've bought a truck next time. From the Visitor Centre, you start off with the Rainforest Loop Walk. It's 1.6kms and takes about an hour to complete. There's an elevated boardwalk that runs through the rainforest and a couple of suspension bridges here and there. Some sections of the wooden boardwalk have been replaced with specially designed non-slip ripple sole concrete pavers for better traction. To see the falls, you'll have to make a detour and take the 4.2km Falls Walk, which is another extra hour or so. The path is pretty steep and NOT recommended for people who get easily tired. At the end of the Falls Walk, you'll get to a viewing platform where you can enjoy the Minnamurra Falls. Worth the walk.

Birthday Surprise

Two hours into my birthday (read: 2am), I got a call from a colleague saying that the planned CPU upgrade didn't go too well. The CPU upgrade for one node went ok, but the other node got disconnected from the DB cluster. In the middle of our recovery, the whole thing just rebooted itself. Next, we started getting disk errors and read failures. A couple of volumes are in RESYNC mode. Looks like the sync process is gonna take more than 24 hours at the rate it's going. Not able to wait that long, we decided to fire up the application. Good thing everything came up properly.

Birthday dinner at Stir Crazy Thai at Erskinville. Food's all right, not as good as I was expecting. Service is quite good though. We brought along a cake, and the staff served it nicely with sparklers.