Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

I use multi-million dollar satellites to find tupperware in the bush!

Archive for September, 2008

New job? Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No..

Friday, September 26th, 2008

I just got word that I am NOT starting my new job position with EDS on October 6th either.

First I was starting about 3 weeks ago. Then that got put on hold. Then they told me Oct 6th. Now that is on hold for the foreseeable future. They don’t know when but it’s definitely not going to happen in the next 2-4 weeks.

Now the issue is the HP takeover.. Er I mean.. MERGER.

Frustrated Incorporated.

Maybe it’s time I send out my resume to stable companies.

IP violation!

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Dear Shopkeeper,

 

Thank you for using CafePress.com! 

 

In accordance with our Intellectual Property Rights PolicySharon R. Smith on behalf of Diageo North America, Inc. provided us with a notice stating that your use "Guinness" infringes upon their intellectual property rights (trademark).  Please click here for more information about intellectual property.    

 

Accordingly, we have set the content that is alleged to infringe the rights of the third party to “pending status” which disables said content from being displayed in your shop or purchased by the public.  You may review the content set to pending status by logging into your CafePress.com account and clicking on the “Media Basket” link.  The content set to pending status will be located in a “pending images” folder, which can be accessed via the pull-down menu bar on the left hand side.

 

If you believe that you hold the rights to the content alleged to infringe the rights of the third party, we encourage you to contact the alleged rights holder directly for a resolution to this matter.  Below please find the contact information for the party alleging infringement. 

Ah well. Who cares? Nobody bought that design anyway :)

Sharing your Windows XP Ad-Hoc WiFi connection with your iPhone

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

Since I keep forgetting how I’ve done this if something happens and I have to redo it, I’m posting it here to remind me.  I have a PC with a LAN connection to my ADSL2+ modem and a WiFi card inside the PC sharing out WiFi to my iPhone and visitors. The connection is best set up as "Connect to PC to PC Ad-Hoc networks".

Set up your SHARED+WEP ad-hoc Wifi connection:

The thing I kept forgetting is to SHARE my LAN connection which goes to my ADSL2+ modem.

The circled option is the main point. Without this, your iPhone will not get an IP Address (as shown in the iPhone screenshot above). This was driving me crazy trying to figure out why it had a ‘169′ address. 169 means the DHCP didn’t work.

You will find out, if you use something like Air Sharing on your iPhone, that the iPhone IP Address changed a very large number of times. I think possibly when it goes into screensaver mode it gives up the IP. When you try the Wifi next it gets yet another IP Address.

Note that from what I can work out Ad-Hoc networks can ONLY be encrypted with the easily-breakable WEP encryption method. But, something is better than nothing, right?  You need to chuck on a 5 letter password anyway, so without that it’s a bit harder for the Average Joe.

The only issue I find is from time to time my Windows PC will pause a second or two when browsing webpages while the Wifi connection is enabled. If I disable the Wifi while not using it, my web browsing is instantaneous.  However, when I try to re-enable the Wifi while the PC is on I get an error ‘10′ cannot start and I have to reboot the PC.

What’s going on lately?

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Wednesday we went shopping at Garden City Westfield. Mum picked up her 40th anniversary ruby ring.  I went to Big W and found 5 nice shirts at $10 each and bought some shoes for Sienna as hers were falling to bits.  We popped into Super A-mart and mum and dad bought me a nice recliner chair for the lounge. I had a slouch chair but while sitting on it recently with Sienna on my lap the screws broke and it bent so this is much nicer.

I bought a new inner spring mattress for Sienna’s bed since she only had a thin foam mattress which has been uncomfortable for me to sleep on the last week.  Sienna was sleeping on the floor on top of a thick doona. Now she has the thin foam mattress and I have the inner spring one.  I figured it’d be handy with some friends coming to stay during the next couple of months.  We fit the recliner chair into dad’s car after pulling the back off, but had no room for the mattress.  Yesterday morning we grabbed the courtesy trailer from Super A-mart and drove the mattress home.

Wednesday night we drove to Redland Bay and went to the local golf club there and had dinner with many relatives. Mum’s sister was over from New Zealand so it was great for them to catch up after so many years not seeing each other.  Sienna was yet again overwhelmed with the amount of cousins some of which I had not met before.

Yesterday we went to Sizzler for lunch then drove up Mt Coot-tha and through the botanical gardens.  We went to the top of Mt Coot-tha and checked out the view then went into the shop and had afternoon tea.  I had a mocha and an ‘ebony and ivory’ chocolate cake.  Sienna had an ice cream and we looked through the telescope and headed back to the car. We also stopped near the river and Sienna fed the ducks with a boy who was with his father while we rested.  We came back home and relaxed for the afternoon.

Today we are going to go to the shopping centre so mum can have a bit more of a shop around.

Mac vs PC spoofs

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

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Google Chrome

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

I thought I’d give Google Chrome a go.  It seems to render pages really well and is fast.

However, I’ve discovered something weird.  While viewing a page of screenshot thumbnails, when I click on a desktop-sized screenshot one of the Google Chrome processes goes up to 40-75% of CPU usage and causes my iTunes to hiccough and jump while playing.  That is going to be enough to drive me batty! I hope the next update will fix this issue. There’s no reason to use 75% to download and view an image!

It works better with Simple Machines Forum (SMF) than Safari which does not even render the images which let you BOLD/ITALICS/etc so there’s no Rich Text posting which is very annoying.

The 28 Best Wii Games!

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

 Nintendo’s most popular home console since the 16-bit era is providing some amazing new gameplay experiences. Here’s 28 games no Wii fan should miss.

Nintendo’s fifth video game console, the Wii, has only been on store shelves for less than two years (and that’s not counting the months after its release where it was impossible to find in stores), but the its already building an extensive library of excellent games. Read on as GamePro names the 28 games every Wii owner should play!

Check out the article.