Holidays 2011

Well, what a week it's been.

Our family had it's first proper holiday in almost 5 years, and it was brilliant.

We left Perth just before the rains started, and managed to avoid the rain until we got to The Gold Coast. Ironic. Brisbane saved the best to last, and as we waited for our flight home, we witnessed a big cold front speed over the airport, and settle into some decent rain; decent enough to delay our flight about 30 minutes. Which, incidentally, means I maintain my run of never leaving Brisbane on time.
Anyway, our first stop on the holiday was Sydney. We visited specifically for Taronga Zoo, Australian Museum dinosaur collection, and so the kids could experience the 2 quintessentially Australian icons. We figured that seeing as every time some US movie or TV show wants to represent Australia they will always and without fail show the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, we should make sure the kids have seen them in real life. They were definitely most impressed. As well they should be, when standing near them they are quite a sight.

Taronga did not fail us. The kids had a great time, and although there was some disappointment at the elusiveness of the platypus, and at the chimpanzees being locked away in a cage while their proper enclosure is built, overall they were very impressed. Favourites were the snow leopard, baby elephants x 3, gorillas, bird flight show, and of course all the reptiles. We easily spent the whole day at the zoo, and still didn't see everything, missing the ostrich and oryx in particular.

On the second day in Sydney we visited the museum in the morning. My intention was to get in front of the youngest son - who is a total dinosaur fanatic - as he entered the exhibit, so I could capture his excited expression. However, real life got in the way, and as soon as he saw where he was, he raced off, cheering, looking at every display for mere seconds so that he could experience every single dinosaur as quickly as possible. Only once he had glimpsed everything did he then slow down and look at each in detail. We spent a goodly portion of time with the dinosaurs before wandering off to look at all the other exhibits. Once we had seen everything, the boy insisted we visit the dinosaurs once more before leaving.

In the afternoon of the second day we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens to witness the camp of fruit bats. Luckily for us, they had delayed the plans to use ultrasonics to relocate them, so we were still able to view these wild bats so close to the CBD of Sydney. After the bats, we visited the Opera House, and did the usual tourist thing of taking photos of each other from different angles with different backgrounds.

For the late afternoon the eldest son and I went "boys-only-shopping". We started with Kings Comics, which is always a fun browse. I think this is the first time I have visited without buying anything, and that's not to suggest there wasn't anything worth buying, it is more a measure of my self control. Afterwards we embarked on a search for Tin Soldiers, which isn't the easiest to find, I accidentally stumbled on it once before. We didn't make it though, as on the way the son spied something exciting...Games Workshop!

The boy has been a big fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe for quite some time, since I introduced him to the Dawn of War series of computer games. Since then he has discovered the Ultra Marines movie, and some novels. I have regaled him with tails of a shop dedicated to Warhammer, and he recognized it as soon as he saw it. Of course we went in, and after some time being wowed by the assorted figurines, the shop keep offered him a game. The boy dived right in, and picked up the rules quickly. Much of the game is based on the roll of the dice, but as a gamer from way back, I know that lucky rolls alone are never enough to guarantee victory if you have poor tactics. Well, I stood and watched, and I can tell you that he won his first game fair and square. He played Orks to his opponent's Space Marines, and recognized immediately once the rules were explained to him that his best chance was to rush his opponent and close to hand to hand combat range. He took some casualties racing across the battlefield, but once there he swiftly overpowered his enemy for a convincing victory. And the proud dad beamed from ear to ear. The boy has now decided on his new hobby.
Early the next morning we left Sydney for the Gold Coast, which was cooler and wetter. With time to spare, we decided to head straight for Sea World. We arrived just in time to watch the pirate show, and the eldest son was picked from the crowd to go to the front and face off the pirates - which he did to good effect. He spoke nice and loudly and clearly into e microphone, showing no signs of shyness or nerves. Good lad.

Our apartment was 3 bedrooms and well appointed at the Diamond Sands Resort. Unfortunately, it had obviously been unused for some time, so it was quite musty smelling. Other than that, it was very nice - the TV even had a USB port, so we were able to play movies from my travel drive.

Movie World was Lots of fun for everybody. I'm not really into rides, but I enjoy watching the family on them, and the daughter dragged my wife onto everything she could. My new camera provided plenty of zoom and fast shutter speed to take care of the action shots. The youngest son was very confident with the rides for little kids, and deftly drove himself around a few times in the bumper cars.
We visited the Stunt Driver show, and this time both boys were picked to get involved. The premise of this show is that a film crew are trying to shoot the final scene of a movie - a chase scene. They have numerous cameras around, and the cinematography director selects a few volunteers from the audience to film some segments to be edited into a short movie sequence they show at the end. My two boys had it worked out by now, and both were jumping madly up and down to get attention. He picked them both out, and they faithfully acted their "there he is!!!!!" parts with energy. The cameraman zoomed in on the youngest boy quite close, and captured the most beautiful smile and giggle on him as he saw his own face on the big screen in the centre of the stage. We caught most of the action of our boys on video.

So the stunts happened, the "scene" was cut, and it was shown on the big screen. Our boys were on quite quickly with their pointing and yelling, but magnificently a still of our youngest's little face, with that big natural smile was the final image before pausing and fading to black. Now, we of course believe our kids to be cute and adorable and won't be told any different....but there is nothing like hearing a crowd of maybe 400-500 people say "awwwwww" at a still shot of your kid. This was the highlight among highlights of my holiday, and it brought a tear of pride to my eye.

The following day we returned to Sea World. This time it stayed dry for the day, making it more enjoyable. We saw the sharks being fed, which was interesting, the daughter was brave enough to do some of the roller coasters by herself, and I managed to get a great dolphin-jump shot, which I posted to Twitter/Facebook as a proof that the dolphins were successfully ascending first in the supposed rapture that was happening that day (all a bad fairy tale, as usual. Evidence for rapture: 0, evidence against: 60+ now I think?). The youngest participated in a Q&A session with the penguin keepers, and had the keepers very surprised that he seemed to be the only one there who knew that pet cats are the biggest land threat to Little Penguins.

Back at the apartment, the youngest son found a small gecko in the house. I tried to rescue him to put him back outside, but he was too quick for me, and disappeared under the fridge, so I had to let it go. My wife stressed for the rest of the holiday that he might find his way into one of our bags, and become a stowaway back to Perth. I guess we will find out later.

Final day on the Gold Coast, and we returned to Movie World once more. The daughter braved the Superman ride alone, which is saying something - zero to 100kms in 2 seconds is pretty damn quick! Eldest son was selected again for the Stunt Driver participation, and again executed his lines perfectly. The boy has such stage confidence.

Home was via Brisbane, where the kids enjoyed a visit to Mr Toys Toy World, a shop they had heard much about from me. Only the youngest and the daughter ended up buying anything; the eldest was saving for something yet to come...

We found another Games Workshop! The boy was overjoyed, and as this was the end of the holiday, he was not afraid to commit some money to a purchase. With some small encouragement from me, he purchased a pack of 5 Space Marines, with paints and brush. A good beginner's pack. It's fun watching his agony on the plane home, because he desperately wants to open the box, but knows he can't, for fear of losing or breaking a piece.

I used to paint figurines some 20 years ago, before the Warhammer series really got big. I'm not sure my eyes or hands are really up to the task anymore, but I will enjoy passing on the hobby to my eager son. I also enjoy tabletop games, being a Dungeons & Dragons gamer from way back, so I guess I will be joining him in his new obsession, and become a Warhammer gamer too. At least it makes his birthday and Xmas easy!

Currently we are mid-flight back to Perth. The meals were not to the kids' liking, nor the movie to anybody's, but overall the flight is not unpleasant. We are all eager to get home, as a week away seems to be just the right amount. For a 4 year old, it is tantamount to an eternity!

This was a great holiday, and it achieved everything I was hoping for. Everybody is happy and had a great time, and have new memories to share for a lifetime.

Return of the Blog

It's been quite some time since I last wrote here. I decided recently though that with our impending holiday, I should start again. That way I'm in the habit for writing while we are away.

It's also probably no coincidence that I start urging to write after 5 days break from work. I feel quite intellectually drained after a day at work, so writing is usually one of the last things I feel like doing once I'm home, fed, and the kids are asleep. The first few days of this break I was quite exhausted. I just could not wake up in the morning, and I was getting up aching all over. Now the break is at an end and I feel almost normal again.

Some time ago it was decided that we should all go on a family holiday. We tried to do it last year, but those plans fell away when our longterm rental was sold out from under us and we had to find somewhere new quite hastily. This year I finally sacrificed my motorcycle (a black & silver 2005 Honda CBR 600RR with custom brakes and exhaust) and used the proceeds to purchase flights for Sydney then Gold Coast. An 8 day trip. The whole family are excited - although both the girls are worried. A is worried about her school work (but I've assured her she'll be "allowed" to do homework), and L is worried we won't have enough money once we're there. We might have to sell some bits and pieces at the last minute, but I'm sure we'll be fine.

In my last job I travelled quite a bit, and did a trip to The Australian Museum and a trip to Taronga Zoo. The kids were impressed with the pictures I took, and with a couple of zoo shows in Taronga, so we are visiting Sydney specifically to see those places. Sure, the iconic Opera House and Bridge might get a viewing along the way (hard to miss really!).

So that's what we have planned. It should be a highlight for the kids for the next few years. We can't wait!!

LOGITECH'S 100% CASHBACK IS A SCAM

http://www.logitechcashback.com.au/

Well this is bullshit, and a scam. I have a mind to complain to fair trade.

The $300,000 Logitech allocated to this cashback offer for the month of February has been allocated on the FIRST DAY.

The maths simply does not add up to a fair offer, and Logitech has either unwittingly been exploited by scammers, ineptly made the rules/system exploitable through lack of planning/design, or had no intention of paying up in the first place.

Some simple maths:
Cash back funds available:     $300,000.00
Most expensive item:     $59.95
Total cost for maximum of 5 of the most expensive item per person:     $299.75
assuming every person bought 5 of the most expensive item, number of transactions:    1000.83
assuming every person bought 5 of the most expensive item, the number of this item sold:     5004.17
Total number of trading hours across all timezones in the country available for items to be sold:    11
Total number of items sold per hour for the 11 hours of trading hours available:    454.92

This is simply not credible, on a "normal" Tuesday.

Love Logitech products - but now convinced the company are stupid, liars, or both.

Shame Logitech, shame.

Martian Life - Is It?

The Sun has an article about a big NASA press conference today, where it will be revealed that large clouds of methane gas have been confirmed to exist on Mars, usually in the same areas as clouds of water vapour. This is significant, because the two main causes of such amounts of methane are volcanoes (Mars doesn't have any active volcanoes) and biological waste.

How awesome is this news? What does this mean for the likelihood of life evolving on extra terrestrial bodies? Is it coincidence, or does it mean it is more likely than many scientists have previously thought? Did life on the two planets evolve separately, or was one planet seeded from the other, as some theories have suggested? Or from comets? So many questions! One thing is for certain, if this does indeed lead to the discovery of microbes on Mars, surely it changes our perspective on ourselves?

Australia's Internet Future?

This article on The Register describes problems with the mandatory internet content filtering being employed in the UK.

The service being used is filtering archive.org which is a free online archive of "the internet" for historical reference. This comes only weeks after the whole wikipedia.org service was also blocked due to a historically significant image (this article refers to the ban, which started due to a small image of an album cover from the band Scorpions from 1976).

These are two very high profile examples of how internet filtering cannot guarantee "false-positives", where legitimate websites are blocked from access. 

The scary thing is that this is exactly the same technology being proposed by the Australian government to filter our internet access. The same technology that Senator Conroy says is unlikely to falsely block anything. Now we have two very well known legitimate reference sites that have been blocked.

The moral - FILTERING WILL NOT WORK.

A Little Rant About Web Filtering

Great Firewall of Australia: What’s not mentioned makes it even more scary

The article above by Duncan Riley on The Inquisitr sums up much of the problems surrounding the Australian Government’s “filter”. I’d like to add my two cents worth, with a few analogies mixed in.

Firstly, is this about censorship, or child porn?  It’s either one or the other, it can’t be about both. The Minister needs to decide once and for all which of these two reasons he has given are the true and total motivation. It must be one or the other. For example, the police are absolutely clear that targeting speeding is about saving lives, not revenue raising. Now this could be debated at length, but the police have always said that there is only one reason to target speeding, and that is to save lives – which of course is the politically and socially acceptable reason to be targeting it. Fair enough. If they were to say it were about both – well that would be ridiculous, because the revenue raised depends on people speeding, (otherwise no fines can be handed out), speeding which would keep people’s lives at risk, therein creating a conflict of interests. To continue the analogy, if the police expanded their targeting, to include cars painted particular colours, certain makes of car, if they prevented people travelling particular roads because they caught somebody speeding there once, all to “save lives”, people wouldn’t stand for it at all. If the police started stopping people using “the fast lane” on the freeway, the freeway would slow to a crawl, and there would be a huge outcry. Rightly so.

I work for an organisation that used to have a web filter. This filtered all web traffic except “approved” sites for 250 users. I had 4 helpdesk staff who spent 60% of each of their days approving websites for business use. I turned this ridiculous situation on it’s head. I turned off the filtering, and turned on logging. We have a code of conduct that everybody has signed agreeing to abide by. My helpdesk staff are now freed to work on real problems. If an employee’s manager requests web traffic logs for a particular period, it can be provided, as long as a process is followed, whereby the manager makes a request through their Director for the logs. In this way, IT are not the “policy police”, instead focusing on the technology. The managers manage their staff, and request information only where enough suspicion or reason is provided to a higher authority. This sounds pretty similar to me to the due process of the legal system, whereby a citizen is presumed innocent, where suspicion rises about an individual, the law enforcement bodies apply for access to higher levels of information, and based on the strength of the case, the higher authority may or may not grant access to information and or premises. Having changed our practices regarding internet usage, there have been two requests for access, one was granted, and one was denied. I have been through the raw logs looking at what has been accessed, and found no porn, nothing illegal at all in 12 months. There is an increased use of social networking, but these are not illegal, and are only “unwanted” by those not using them. In this analogy, my helpdesk staff were freeing websites from false arrest every day, whilst end user’s poor performance was going largely unnoticed. Now, focus has shifted onto the poor performers (or “criminals” in the analogy), and all users are presumed innocent. The Directors are the judiciary in the analogy, ensuring fairness in pursuing individuals, and that privacy is not breeched. Where is this check and measure in the Minister’s filtering proposal? It seems to me that there is an assumption of guilt in the approach used in this filtering, everything will be checked and filtered all the time. In addition, to take the “child porn” aspect further, if it is merely filtered, what happens to the perverts looking for this stuff? Nothing. Or are identifiable logs being kept of access attempts, and perverts will be visited and arrested for attempting to view something that was filtered? Where does it stop? Will I get arrested for attempting to view a preview of the latest edition of Playboy on their website, even though I can go to the newsagent and buy it? Taking this thought one step further, isn’t this then protectionism of print media and affiliated businesses?? Perhaps protectionism of the paper industry? Logging? You see where this goes. As soon as you start arbitrarily filtering based on a closed set of criteria, it is manipulated, and benefits somebody, anybody but the people it was designed to protect.

I have another take on this whole thing, and it starts with a fairly rhetorical question – is the Minister religious? I know the Prime Minister is, and most politicians are, if only to win votes of the religious majority. There are a couple of aspects to this I want to explore. Firstly, as an atheist, are anti-religious websites going to be filtered? Am I going to be targeted by police because of my anti-religious views (reference Duncan’s article and his mention of “inciting racial hatred”)? Further, there is a similarity between this approach to filtering and the take on morality that many religious people share. The religious view on morality is generally that without god or religion, we would have no morality, and therefore would descend into anarchy and debauched chaos. There are many rebuttals to this argument – not least of all being the number of devout religious people committing heinous crimes (i.e. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Osama Bin Laden etc), (and the unfortunate lack of debauchery in my life!), but this is a similar view. Without the filter making sure we don’t look at anything “bad” (and we don’t know what is bad, we need the government to decide for us, but they will keep it secret from us) we’ll all be downloading porn. I suppose the Minister also thinks that gay is something you can “catch”? If I walk down the street today, there are windows I could throw rocks through, cars I could steal, men I could kill, and women I could rape. But I don’t. Why? Because it’s wrong, and I know it’s wrong, and it’s not something I would even want to do. I don’t need a law or a policeman watching my every move to prevent me doing those things. Similarly, the vast majority of people don’t need to have an IT department, a policeman, a web filter or a government standing over them to make sure they don’t look at child porn on the net.  Just because a person can do a thing, it doesn’t mean they will, social conventions generally govern behaviour without the need for enforcement.

My final main point is about wasted or misdirected effort. The internet is full of many things it should not be. Some abhorrent, others simply unfortunate side effects of culture. The existence of child porn on the net is not in any way without it’s victims – the most important of which is of course the children depicted. However, these crimes have limited victims, in that the damage is isolated to the individual and their family. Right up front, I want to say that I do not in ANY way suggest that these crimes should go unpunished, that there is any devaluing of the victims involved or anything that in anyway downgrades the horrific nature of such a thing. What I will say is that the time, money and effort going into building a national filter may be better spent targeting the true crimes, of which child abuse and porn is only one. Does anybody truly believe that filtering all of our traffic will stop child porn? That paedophiles will simply give up and “return to a normal life”? For one thing, these people did not make a decision to be a paedophile, they didn’t wake up one day and decide that it was ok, they are sick and in need of help for whatever is wrong in their heads. Blocking their access to one small aspect of their sickness does not make the sickness go away. Until their sickness is dealt with, this problem will not go away. Will the filter block all zip files? Will it block anything that is encrypted? AES 256 bit encryption is readily accessible – does the Minister really thin that paedophiles will simply give up? I would wager that these people are already using encrypted zip files and SSL encrypted websites to share their illness with each other, so what would the filter achieve exactly? The very people it was supposedly targeting will continue with what they are doing, and the only people affected will be the innocents. Which of course brings us back to the question is this about child porn, or about censorship? There is a widespread scourge of the internet, that until now has not been fixed. Spam. Spyware. Malware. It is no longer true that viruses and malware are written by “bored misguided brilliant teenagers”. It is widely known that much of the malware today is written by professional programmers working for various organised crime bodies. That stolen credit card details are now sold in the thousands, and that organised crime is behind that too. It is also well known that when computers are infected with malware, many times the malware itself is downloading porn and other material, all of which profits some organised crime group somewhere, all the while slowing computers and the internet around the world, causing lost productivity in businesses, leaking of sensitive material, and growth of the profiteering anti-virus industry. If the Australian government wants to make a real difference to the law abiding citizens of the net, perhaps it would do better to narrow it’s aim at malware and the scum who use it to make money off other people’s computers. The time effort and money spent on this filter (which is bound to failure by the way) would surely be better spent on pursuing and treating paedophiles for their illness, and pursuing the organised criminals who profit from the malicious software they distribute. However, I suppose Joe Bloggs doesn’t understand malware, trojans, botnets and the like, so it’s easier to sell the idea of protecting against child porn – because nobody could be against that could they??

This whole thing smells of amateur hour, of a Minister who has an agenda, and is too afraid to spell it out, instead hiding behind the deflective notion of “protecting children from harmful internet content”, who is not aware of all the technical issues it raises, and the reaction overseas to this idea.  As with prohibition in the US in the 1920s and 30s, preventing access to alcohol simply drove it underground, and allowed organised crime to prosper at incredible levels. Over restrictiveness of access to information will simply make dissidents out of mums and dads, who could potentially be made criminals for looking for information on abortions. Perhaps an alternative may have more success, where there is a nomination procedure for sites to be blocked, that is public and accountable, but to have a closed black list is surely illegal in itself, and must only be a short time away from being challenged in court. How about posing  a question to the tech community - “How can we best protect kids from viewing adult material?”, instead of this totalitarian tool that is going ahead with trials without waiting for any kind of input from the community. Is this the beginning of the end? The government may as well stop progress on the National Broadband Network – nobody will be allowed to use the net anyway, so what’s the point?

Much Better Second Day

Whilst the first day with it’s rainy afternoon provided some brilliant displays of riding skill, it was not the most fun to sit and watch.

Today though, the weather is much improved, as you can see from the below photos.

I saw a number of riders breaking the long standing lap record today, and the best was set by Casey Stoner, which was a crowd pleasing moment. The final crowd pleasing moment was when Casey came out with only a few minutes to spare in the session, and qualified on pole position for tomorrow’s race. It’s going to be BRILLIANT!

Also….got mildly sun burnt today.