At some point, the United States Customs and Border Patrol decided that the current administration's blatant disregard for the Constitution of the United States trickles down to them as well...
Huge News! VMware ESX 3i is free from 28 July!
Significant competitive move from VMware to counter the threat of Microsoft Hyper-V . . . not that 3i was expensive before, but this price is certainly better :) This is part of a new strategy kicking in after co-founder Diane Greene's departure. ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz is running the show now.
Read more in this article at Redmond Channel mag.
I've had it up to there with Orcon
You can read the rest of my story on my WordPress blog, but the service these guys have given me is unbelievable, BAD that is.
This is my status for today for the rest follow my link below.
So if you read my previous blog you will know that our phone line died yesterday. So This afternoon I rang Orcon to find ut what is happening. I rang the 0800 number and selected landlines and waited for a response which came pretty quickly and I got a very polite response from Jamie who advised me that she had to pass me on to a different department because the other department was responsible for the port change. She also explained that the port change affected the landline and the broadband connection.
So off to another department and another woman who advised me that they were still waiting for a technician to advise the date when someone would do a port change!
I said “Are you telling me that I have no phone and that you can’t even tell me when someone will advise when they will look at it?” Correct, it might be this afternoon, they do work on Saturdays so someone might turn up then or, well they just don’t know because it is another department.
I asked if they would forward incoming phones to a mobile and they have agreed to do that, but why couldn’t they suggest that in the first place? Basically this now means that people can contact us without having to know our mobile numbers and without having to pay for the toll call, but it does also mean that we have to pay mobile call rates for the outgoing local calls, but at least we have communications.
But we have no idea when our home phone line wll be reconnected.
Since last night I have had 2 people come to me saying that they had been planning to move to Orcon and now won’t. Would you like to be in on a sweepstake as to when I will have a home phone line? Or perhaps hw many times my internet will disconnect today? Yes, funny isn’t it, I still have a Broadband connection at home even if I don’t have the phone. I just checked, so far my broadband has disconnected 18 times today.
Lenovo posts ingains on strong laptop sales
Lenovo reports strong results for its most recent quarter
Cyber attacks knock out Georgia's internet presence
Some Georgian government and commercial sites unavailable, others may have been hijacked, says researcher
Photographic Evidence of the Conspiracy...
As I promised my faithful reader, I have obtained at great risk to my life and well - being, photographic evidence of the conspiracy!
behold!
See the difference in the packaging? subtle very subtle...
Again! further subtley, notice the difference in sizes between the matches! they are reducing the capacity of fire!
you cannot claim you weren't warned! its going to happen!
Microsoft wants to fire your receptionist, are you and I next?
Every year robots get a little more capable. In Japan where there has been a short supply of security guards they've built security robots to patrols malls at night.Now Microsoft are showing off there latest foray in robotics with a new rec... (more in the full post)
What makes life? (Kinstens Interpretation)
Is it a rose that opens in the morning light?
A new leaf upon each twig, that grew from humble beginnings?
The branch that broke will turn into the scar for life.The scar of emotion runs deep within us all, this injures everyone slowly but surely. Until the only way out of your own emotion turns to destruction. Destruction turns to chaos. Chaos turns to the way the world is operating at present with only a small amount of reason and intelligent thought.
Don’t believe everything that you see,
Because seeing isn’t believing,
Feeling is.
If I was to die today,
Would I be remembered tomorrow?
Would life go on without me?
Or does someone else’s existence end with mine?
If truth is letting people know the details of something real,
Does that mean reality is a truth only known to you?
Or is truth and reality far more complicated than that?
You could believe anything that someone tells you,
Or decide to think they are lying.
Either way your own decision is what you choose to believe.
Which in turn makes reality your own creation of thoughts comprised of facts given by not only yourself, but other people as well. How these facts are interpreted depends on the translator. You!
If something is too difficult, would you try your best to solve it, or simply give in and let someone else figure it out.
Thought, emotion, truth, justice, wisdom, creation, intellect, visualisation, hands on experience.
Does everything come down to what the individual is capable of, or rather what the individual is willing to accomplish.
You have to experience happiness to know sadness. You have to experience love to know hate. If there is one thing that lives alone in this world, without needing to relate to another. Show me this thing, for it will be a beautiful thing indeed.
To fly is to fall,
To swim is to run,
To walk is to crawl,
To speak is to be silent,
To create is to imitate,
To build is to destroy,
To make peace is to make war!
Everything exists for a reason, and there is always balance. When there is too much of one thing there has to be an equal amount of the other to compensate for the balance lost with the first.
Begin your day with birds in mind,
Never let the dawn show its face,
You will crawl upon any road given to you,
And you will find the path that suits you.
Am I going insane or is it just a figment of my imagination. If I was going insane, would I be trying to figure it out, or would I just ignore it and let things happen as they do. Because when thoughts take over my life, I feel responsible for all the thoughts that are approaching my life.
Never get too involved.
Never hold a grudge.
Never begin something if you do not intend to finish it.
Optus introduces unlimited calling plans in Australia
Isn't competition in the mobile marketplace fantastic? It's a concept that unfortunately New Zealanders are missing out on due to the cosy duopoly that exists between our two mobile providers - Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone.
Optus have just launched unlimited "timeless" mobile plans into the Australian marketplace. For A$99 per month you get unlimited calling to other mobiles and landline phones in Australia as well as unlimited SMS and MMS messages. This $99 pack however isn't quite $99 - it requires the purchase of a A$14.95 mobile pack that gives you 200MB of included data.
For A$129 however you receive unlimited calling, SMS and MMS along with 2GB of data.
Now compare that to what you're paying in NZ. Competition really is a great thing.
So what is this MythTV anyway?
OK so I have already talked here about why I prefer mythtv to MediaPortal, it’s not an exhaustive list but I think it makes a pretty compelling argument for Mythtv. However what makes an even stronger compelling argument for MP is its support for NZ's DVB-T broadcasts, and hence I use it. The latest from the mythtvnz mailing list is that Freeview HD is now working well in myth with the patches from pkendall, so hopefully it is just a case of getting the updates to ffmpeg etc into the main mythtv 'trunk' (is that what it called?) and we will be away!
Anyway I should get to the point of this post. I want to list a couple tips I picked up for improving mythtv here, as I alluded to earlier, myth does require more work than MP or GBPVR but it’s worth it:
1) Adding FM radio. I have no idea why this isn't included by default, it can't be hard and all other major HTPC programs have it. To get it in myth requires a bit of a hack, the setup instructions are here. As they note on the wiki page, it is a hack but looks like a plug-in in the end. It doesn't perform like a plug-in (in terms of sharing the card with recording etc) but it is good enough. Also this page gives an idea to the sort of changes to the menu structure that could be made if so desired.
2) By default myth only allows one job (such as commflagging, or a user job such as a special transcode) at a time. Assuming you are running a somewhat modern processor you can get away with a lot more, especially if you have a dual core. Under the 'general' settings in mythbackend setup, change the max number jobs to say 3 or 4. Also set mythcommflag to begin at the start of the show rather than wait until it has finished.
3) Make sure you enable plugins such as mythmusic, mythvideo and mythweb. If you are using Mythbuntu the Mythbuntu Control Center is the easiest way to change these settings. Mythweb in particular is great, and if you can successfully enable access through your router you can check out your computers status, and create recordings even when you are way from home.
That’s all can think of for now, but there are plenty of other settings worth investigating by hunting through the menus. There are some other good features that I never managed to fully implement, such as http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Mythwelcome and automatic sleep/wakeup.
Next I will spill my thoughts on Media Portal, and the improvements made now we are at RC2.
Wellington City Council: where the process dies...
On a rainy day I parked on Tory St, Wellington and used the convenience of paying my parking via SMS. That would be $4 for two hours, plus $.50 for the privilege of not having to carry coins. But instead of getting the little piece of paper with the ticket to put in my windshield, I got an error message:
"Transaction rejected"
Interesting. But I immediately got a SMS back from Telecom saying "thanks, we debited your account for $4.50".
Bummer. So instead I decided to use a credit card. Again I got an error message:
"Transaction rejected"
Hmmm. It looks like the machine may be out of paper, but the developer for this company decided to stupidly save some bytes instead of providing a meaningful message - and a transaction rollback.
So I walk to the next machine, pay and display the ticket in the windshield.
But I wouldn't be short of $9 today, right? I called the Wellington City Council, explained what happened, and was assured someone would call me back to arrange the refund.
You guessed right. No one ever called me back.
Like so many other New Zealand businesses, getting you off the phone is what they want to do. The Wellington City Council is quick to slap a fine on your car if you are over five minutes in the parking lot, but they don't want to move a finger to refund you money that they took without providing the service.
By the way I am looking at my credit card statement. This was on 17 June. More than enough time for the Wellington City Council to come back to me.
End of rant of the day.
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