..of stolen wifi and furniture workouts

Greetings dear reader,
I must first apologise for the sparseness of this post, you see, I don't get the internet connected in this, my new place, for another week or so, which is simply horrible for a internet addict such as I am, but this is only made worse by the fact that I also have no television as of yet either. That's right, tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1989.

How is he sending this here email then, the more astute amongst you may ask, well, joy of small joys that it is, I have discovered that a car dealership just down the road from my house appears to have a severely restricted, but still lovingly unsecured wireless network within range of my shiny new coffee table.

The range of sites I can get to without soliciting a message recommending me contact the administrator to continue is apparently very small, but I can connect to IM, access smh.com.au and also my gmail and google calendar (but strangely not blogger, another google service). No facebook or youtube alas, but not really that much of a surprise.
What IS a bit of a surprise is that the ports for bittorrent are not blocked, so even though I cannot get to any bittorrent search engine, I can download torrents I already have the torrent files for. I can also download the torrent file using my 3.5g phone and then copy it across to my laptop, as I have just done in order to get the latest 'animal collective' album. Whimsy, persistence & the requirement for new tunes are the mothers of invention.

.. And I have a shiny new coffee table too. On saturday previous, after scouring through the catelogue, I packed my little backpack, ready for the journey down to Rhodes, the suburb two train stops away where Ikea lives. My tightass technique was to carry everything back on the train and then assemble it in my loungeroom, once I recovered.

On the way I passed a little pine funiture shop though, and while I thought they'd be too expensive, I dropped in anyway to check out their range, because if I managed to find something, it was only a block's walk back to my place.

Lo and behold they were not only reasonably priced, but midly stylish too, so I bought a raw pine wood coffee table for $160 and carted it home, then went back to the hardware store nearby and bought a stain and varnish and spent the afternoon staining my new acquisition (and my balcony and hands too).

The instructions said to wait 24 hrs between coats, but I sensibly ignore the instructions and therefore managed to have 4 coats of stain and varnish completed in about 18 hrs. I'm thinking it looks pretty good too. It certainly seems to be upholding its side of the bargain and keeping my coffee mug off the carpet.

In substantially more important news, my wife arrives from Malaysia in the morning, which is going to be brilliant. I have the day off work and a couple of bottles of wine in the fridge to celebrate.

.. Hope this finds you, and finds you well.
... More soon.

Signing the new lease and buying stuff..

Thursday was a very busy day. I took the day off work to do lots of new house stuff. I signed the lease and got the keys for our new place in West Ryde, Sydney and then ran around buying stuff to put in it. I had no furniture at all after returning from Malaysia, so something needed to be done.

I actually wasn't thinking too straight that early in the morning, so caught the bus to the suburb the unit is in (West Ryde), rather than the suburb the real estate is in (Eastwood), so I had to catch the train again between the two, no matter it's only 2 stations. Whoops.

After that I caught the train again into the city and then back out to Newtown where I bought a nice futon bed and ate a beef and mushroom pie for lunch before catching the train again to Strathfield then changed to go to Clyde, near where 2nd's World is.

After walking for over a km in in the wrong direction, I sought directions, walked all the way back, and actually found the place. Glad I found it, these guys have heaps of electrical goods with small defects or damaged boxes etc, all with full manufacturers warranty.

I bought a nice big fridge, a 37 inch samsung lcd tv, and a washing machine. The naked DSL internet connection with VOIP gets connected on the 24th and the wifey arrives a few days before that.

So everything is pretty much in place. I think all I need to buy yet are a table and chairs, a couch and a heater.

Where the Wild Things are.. trailer

Here's the first full-length trailer for the upcoming movie of Maurice Sendak's classic book "Where the Wild Things Are".

Wake n' Bacon alarm clock

Check out this gizmo by Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini & Hsiao-huh Hsu

It's an alarm clock that wakes you up with the smell and sizzle of cooking bacon.


No one likes to wake up, especially by an alarm. This clock gently wakes you up with the mouthwatering aroma of bacon, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of Mom cooking breakfast. Unless you're Jewish or Islamic.


A frozen strip of bacon is placed in Wake n' Bacon the night before. Because there is a 10 minute cooking time, the clock is set to go off 10 minutes before the desired waking time. Once the alarm goes off, the clock it sends a signal to a small speaker to generate the alarm sound.



The clock has been hacked so that instead of the alarm being sounded, a signal is sent to two halogen lamps that slow-cook the bacon in about 10 minutes.

...mmmMMMmmmMMM

2 wheeled PUMA from Segway & GM

A solution to the world's urban transportation problems could lie in two wheels not four, according to executives for General Motors and Segway.

The companies announced on Tuesday that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world.

The Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or PUMA, project also would involve a vast communications network that would allow vehicles to interact with each other, regulate the flow of traffic and prevent crashes from happening.

"We're excited about doing more with less," said Jim Norrod, chief executive of Segway, the maker of electric scooters. "Less emissions, less dependability on foreign oil and less space."

The 136 kg prototype runs on a lithium-ion battery and uses Segway's characteristic two-wheel balancing technology, along with dual electric motors. It's designed to reach speeds of up to 56 kmh and can run 56 km on a single charge.

The companies did not release a projected cost for the vehicle, but said ideally its total operating cost — including purchase price, insurance, maintenance and fuel — would total between one-fourth and one-third of that of the average traditional vehicle.

Larry Burns, GM's vice president of research and development, and strategic planning, said the project is part of GM's effort to remake itself as a purveyor of fuel-efficient vehicles. If Hummer took GM to the large-vehicle extreme, Burns said, the PUMA takes GM to the other.

Ideally, the vehicles would also be part of a communications network that through the use of transponder and GPS technology would allow them to drive themselves. The vehicles would automatically avoid obstacles such as pedestrians and other cars and therefore never crash, Burns said.

As a result, the PUMA vehicles would not need air bags or other traditional safety devices and include safety belts for "comfort purposes" only, he said.

Though the technology and its goals may seem like something out of science fiction, Burns said nothing new needs to be invented for it to become a reality.

"At this point, it's merely a business decision," he said.

Burns said that while putting that kind of communications infrastructure in place may still be a ways off for many American cities, the automaker is looking for a place, such as a college campus, where the vehicles could be put to use and grab a foothold in the market.

There's currently no timeline for production, Burns said.