Status update: where am I?

G'day Everybody,

I've been very quiet lately and there is a reason of course.
In June I had to relocate from NZ to Australia temporarily. I knew this for quite long time, but at the end everything happened very quick: they came, they packed everything and put it into a container then the next thing I remember we are already in Sydney. :) Our stuff arrived just 3 weeks after.

And now we are here, settled in slowly.
I am very busy in my work therefore I have not much time for blogging or checking the Forum, but I will keep going back sometimes.
I miss this community here. :)

Cheers,
Pete

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Over in Europe, the Large Hadron Collider has gone online to much fanfare. It is the hope of the researchers that the most fundamental nature of matter can be explored, looking for the so-called "God particle". Of course, there is also a vocal minori... (more in the full post)

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The Venue for Software Freedom Day is both the Wellington city Town Hall, _AND_ the Michael Fowler Centre. Town hall provides the bar camp rooms, barristers serving free Havana coffee and breakout rooms - as well as the Buffet table and bar. In the Michael Fowler Centre, we've got couches galore, and table+chair for the SuperHappyDevHouse HackFest, and the WellyLUG installfest. All with a harbour view, and blinds so the sun it doesn't burns us. The two venues are links via this glass air bridge: There's free wireless internet access via cafenet in both venues.. The whole venue was hired by our Sponsors: CWA New Media!! REGISTER AT FOR FREE @ softwarefreedomday.org.nz

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The Microsoft MJPEG codec is vulnerable to multiple stack-based buffer overflows when parsing specially crafted files. A remote attacker could overflow the buffer and execute arbitary code within the context of the user viewing the malicious file. Read More

News / Web Happenings:

Windows Home Server v2 set to offer Time Machine-like backup UI, Media Center and Live Mesh integration
Game update notifications coming to Vistas Games Explorer
How A Botched Web Story Wiped Out UAL's Shares - I love it.
Going Zero G - and please update your Geekzone profile - Sunday around 9am NZ time Mauricio will be floating like an astronaut.
TVNZ7 Internet Debate in association with InternetNZ - participate through the Geekzone ICT Policy and Regulation forum.

Apple:

Apple September ’08 Keynote - watch it online.
Apple releases iTunes 8
7 Years of iPod: What You Paid and What You Got - Wow.. 7 years.
iPod Touch Version 2 Review
4th gen iPod Nano Review

General Interest:

Salling Media Sync Puts iTunes Music on Your Non-iPhone Cell
The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome
Esquire's E Ink-infused magazine cover shown on video
Interesting project which allows anyone to graph anything from their daily life
Tikitag promises to bring RFID tags to everything - interesting concept.
TeamViewer Desktop Sharing - Remote Control - Support tool - very handy for those times you need to play the family 'tech support' role remotely. Crossloop is another good one.
Tokyo's Robotic Bike Parking Garage is Awesome - this video did the rounds some time ago, but worth a look for those who missed it.
Dr. Pic: A no-Flash online image editor
What Your Global Neighbors Are Buying - interactive metrics graph on spending by country.

Fail of the week:

Phone fail

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I got a huge surprise! It's quicker to sync and eject and scrolling through things has less lag.
But it IS bloated. The grid view wants to thumbnail all your art everytime you start unless you tell it "never" and the "genuis" feature is still sorting my library after 4 hours.
I made the mistake of closing itunes while this was still running, and while this didn't restart the whole process, it did make me go through the terms and conditions again.
Overall, I'm pretty happy so far... but time will tell (if genius bizzo ever finishes).

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I can really understand why there are more infections with malware on computers running Windows than those that run other OSs. Firstly, there are of course less people using those other OSs, thus the distributors of malware naturally... (more in the full post)

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