New website coming...

Yeah, watch this space for announcement of a major rewrite of www.rickclise.com. Not long now!

Ooh, I'm so excited!

Halloween in Adelaide - a bit of a fizzer...

What's happened to the wonderful costumed kids who used to visit each 31st of October to trick or treat? Last night we had only 3 kids in 2 groups ring the bell. Leaving us now to eat a lot of chocolate.

What's happened to the scary ghosts, the monsters, the fairies? Have they all grown-up and gone to parties where something stronger than Freddo Frogs is consumed?

We gave it a shot though - the kids carved a wonderful 'jack-o-melon' as I was too late to buy a whole pumpkin. The idea of gluing together a few pumpkin segments from Coles didn't really excite me.

But eldest daughter celebrated Halloween in Ashland, Oregon and texted that her trip to US is now complete, having Halloween'ed in America. I knew she would love it!

Miserly computer owner...

When I was a small child my parents were very strict about not wasting food, and we kids got praise for being in the 'clean plate club' after eating all of our dinner. Surprising that we aren't all obese as a result!

I think some of this 'clean plate club' mentality has carried-over into my use of technology. When I worked in the computer industry it used to frustrate me seeing all those PCs turned-on but not doing anything while their users were away from their desks, talking on the phone or whatever. Couldn't they even just look busy? Sorry, screen savers don't count. Maybe I'm a closet timeshare mainframe user, dutifully wanting to feed those valuable CPU cycles with 'real work'!

So I was thrilled to learn about SETI and other distributed computing projects that would occupy one's unused computing resources for the betterment of mankind. Actually felt good leaving the PC on (using electricity I wouldn't otherwise be using) while it checks to see if there's a pattern in a bunch of radio waves that would confirm an alien burping after a particularly large meal.

But I hate throwing-out old PCs. Surely they can be used for something useful... Why, only last year did I finally get rid of that old IBM PC XT bought as a souvenir from the kids' school.

Take the example of an old work PC that Beth bought when her employer did a technology refresh. 'Yep, buy the machine and we'll use it at home,' I said to her. So we did. Then had to add a bigger hard disk, add a sound card and a new video card. Throw-in a Firewire card for good measure. And her work forgot to include an original operating system CD and license so better buy one of those too.

Create the user accounts, upgrade the service pack and apply all the Windows patches. Install the antivirus software, update it. Install Office, apply the updates for it. Now run...

Oops, it's running too slow - seems to be paging-out to disk all the time. Youngest child, who inherited this lipstick on a pig of a PC says, 'Dad, it's too slow to use!' Crikey, what do they want?

Oh, should have checked earlier, but it only has 512MB of memory. Easy fix, RAM is cheap. right? Normally, except... for this motherboard it has to use a special kind of RAM that isn't cheap. In fact, to upgrade the RAM to something that is usable these days is going to cost about what the second hand PC did when we bought it from dear understanding wife's place of work.

Nope, I don't think so. [Major cursing session]

So off to Officeworks or somewhere like that to buy a new PC. But what to do with the old one with all these cool cards in it?

Aha, Windows 7 release candidate is now available for public testing and a few good people I know have raved about it. Apparently it works well in low configuration PCs. Were they thinking about my situation? Fingers crossed!

Inspired again!

Downloaded the Windows 7 RC software onto my New PC. Have to download and install other software on it to create an .iso DVD to actually install the new operating system on the Old PC. Humh, the Old PC has a CD-ROM drive, not a DVD drive. Don't know enough about .iso files to see if it can be split across multiple CD-ROMs. Easy fix, buy a second hand DVD drive on eBay. Did that, installed it on the old PC and it works fine.

But Windows 7 RC won't install. DVD seems to be blank in the Old PC. Fart around with the start-up routine, set 'boot from CD drive' as the first option. But it doesn't work. Problem with the DVD I created or with the PC? DVD reads okay in other PCs, and Old PC with second hand DVD drive reads other DVDs. Scratch head... Do I need to update the Old PC BIOS? Can't be bothered!

Oh, now read the system requirements for Windows 7 RC which say it needs 1 GB of RAM or more. Oops. Seem to be back at the starting point again. Bugger. Buy more RAM? Nah, don't be stupid.

Not wanting to 'waste' this PC then thought of what else could be be done with it - too big to use as a door stop, too small to be a refridgerator.... what about running a Linux distributable? Heard good things about some of them, especially the Ubuntu one. Always took pride in being able to truthfully say that I had written the 'Hello world' program in C and had compiled and linked it on a unix machine A Long Time Ago. Shouldn't be too hard to do something useful with Linux.

Thought, could use a file and printer server in the house, why not set-up Old PC as that? Installed Ubuntu server. Created a user account. Started the server and logged-on. Boring... not doing anything, yet could do everything if only I knew what to type...

Since A Long Time Ago had forgotten ALL unix commands. Accidently did log-out as the user but now time to go to bed. How to shut-down the PC running Ubuntu linux?... Quick check of the web from a different PC but can't find a 'shutdown' unix command. Too tired, just turn-off the darned PC and hope it doesn't clobber the O/S.

Next day, thought don't want to spend rest of my life retraining to be a Unix sys admin. Feel life's too short to be doing command line editing. (Call me lazy.) Blow away the server installation and install the Ubuntu desktop version. Did so and it looks great. But what am I going to do with it now? Too big to be a doorstop, too small to be a refridgerator... Can I get the kids to use it 'Hey, check-out these cool games on the PC - there's (something that looks like) Tetris!!!!'

Should have predicted their absolute and total lack of interest. Silly me.

Wondering now, anyone want a perfectly good Old PC with a new, fully upgraded install of Ubuntu? Sure that we could work-out a good deal.

[Note to self - forget good Samaritan tendencies towards elderly PCs. Just let them die gracefully.]

A small joy - podcasts and raking leaves...

I catch-up on my favourite podcasts when I'm doing yardwork.

People walking by our place might wonder what's going on as I laugh to myself from some wonderful turn of phrase in News from Lake Wobegon, or they might see my head spinning from the techno world of Dave, Mike, Kent and invited guests at the Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show on The Podcast Network.

There's Amanda Smith from ABC Radio National's Artworks, and Phillip Adams shoving guests around on LNL. What short story is being read at The New Yorker's fiction podcast? Health Minutes with Dr Norman Swan, By Design, Dr Karl, Sunday Profile with Monica Attard... lots of friendly voices at ABC Radio National podcasts.

Our claret ash tree drops a LOT of leaves, so I caught-up with a LOT of podcasts recently! But what a wonderful combination - the old world physical delight of raking leaves combined with the 21st century technology of MP3 playing.

Now if only the council would come around and take away these leaves...

Such a Politically Incorrect day in Adelaide, again...

I almost hate to say it, but wasn't it another absolutely beautiful day that we had in Adelaide today. Clear skies, warm weather. It just begged for us to get out of the house. But could the kids do without MSN for a few hours?

It was too inviting. We did get ourselves organised enough to spend a few hours at Semaphore Beach enjoying a family picnic while catching-up on some lazy reading. Later, enjoyed a drink and a nibble at the Palais at Semaphore listening to a band playing. I said, 'we'll go just after this song finishes.' Smarty pants daughter said, 'Dad, it's jazz, it NEVER finishes.'

But I confess that I felt guilty about it... after all, Adelaide has been so dry for so long, and we haven't had any significant rain for ages. I'm starting to expect our state government to strike a deal with a clothing maker to start churning-out Stillsuits for us all to microrecycle our sweat and urine until the new desalination plant cracks its valve open. For heavy sweaters they might be able to sell their excess water on the open market - I'd pay for some of them to come stand over my dead, brown what used to be called 'lawn' and do some dripping!

Not a bad way to spend this Easter Monday holiday. But still, come on the rain!

'Qudos' for Qantas!

Our national carrier has seen a lot of bad press recently with unfortunate maintenance issues on some of its planes causing a few problems and delays for travellers.

Yesterday, while waiting for my Qantas flight back to Adelaide from Sydney I saw three off-duty Qantas flight attendants do something wonderful that made me feel good about Qantas.

Visible from the gate that we were sitting at, a large Qantas jet was being towed from a terminal gate to somewhere else, looking like it was being towed towards the runways from where we were sitting. All the doors on the towed plane were closed except for one at underside of the back of the plane. It looked like a small cargo door or maintenance hatch, and it was obviously open.

The flight attendants spotted this situation and immediately raised the alarm to the gate staff, quoting the tail number of the jet and saying that it looked like a door was open. One of them was on what seemed to be a private phone call and she quickly finished that call to raise the alarm about the plane, thinking, naturally, that if the plane was to take-off with a door or hatch open that the consequences could be terrible.

It all turned-out well though, as the gate staff reassured everyone that the plane was being towed to maintenance, not to flight.

But what impressed me was that the three flight attendants took immediate action when they saw something that didn't look right. It wasn't a case of 'that's not my job' and then ignoring it. Well done! I didn't get their names but they were waiting at Sydney gate 6 about 7:00 pm on 21 January, apparently waiting to crew flight QF487 to Melbourne.

So 'Qudos' to Qantas for its proactive and safety conscious staff!

Andy Goldsworthy's 'Spire' at The Presidio

While in San Francisco my great artist friend Blazin drove us to The Presidio to see the Andy Goldsworthy sculpture, 'Spire'.

You just keep looking up, and up, and up. It never seems to end!

That's Blazin and me at the base of 'Spire'.

Viewing the US election results differently

A dear relative of mine forwarded me a pretty neat URL that remaps the recent US presidential election differently - showing the election results by population rather than by state boundaries. If you look at how the different US states voted you see lots of Republican voting and may wonder how Democrat Barack Obama became President-Elect.

Have a look - it's informative.