Happy 4th of July of July

Happy 4th of July everyone.

I snapped this photo of the flag hung by our neighbours across the street.......i didn't have the heart to tell them they hung it the wrong way around.

BTW funny article; "America's wall, like it or UnFriend it"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/04/opinion/20110704_OPART.htm

Zarkana

We went to see Zarkana last night.

O is still my favorite and although i didnt like Wintuk, last night was fantastic and a heap of fun.

Do yourself a favor and get yourself a ticket up the front as there is so much amazing stuff to see.

 

Winklevii-Myspace

made me chuckle so passing it on….

GSM 20 years old today

Engadget posted an article about GSM turning 20 years old today.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/01/gsm-turns-20-today-still-rocking-the-world/




having moved to Verizon....i really miss not being able to swap my sim card from device to device. (also not being able to use my phone in australia with a local sim card).

cdma sucks in regard to this.

having said that ATT sucks worse....so stuck with verizon for now but i'd change back to gsm just for these features.

Grecian accounting

lol in the book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Follyit talks about how in the 19th century Greece was in default for 53 straight years.

Personally i'd be happy to lend Greece money at 10% - i wouldn't however be happy to lend money to the USA at 0.25%, i think the chance of getting paid back from both is fine.....the issue is kind of moot about reliability of being paid (when is a different matter), the bigger issue with the USA raising the debt ceiling is how this affect the ability in the long term to pay for "other" stuff apart from interest repayments...you know like schooling.health care, space exploration etc.....oh and sending $1m tomahawk missiles to blow up rocks is an expensive way to do landscaping as well.


Cheers,
Dean

California just called Amazons bluff

California just called Amazons bluff.


In March, Amazon told California tax officials that "it will cut ties with thousands of California affiliates if the state passes pending legislation requiring the online retailer to collect sales tax from California customers," Internet Retailer reported.

I guess we’ll see what happens from here.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2083119/California-Affiliate-Tax-Becomes-Law?


Cheers,
Dean

A dogs life

lol it's a dogs life, Lou Lou hanging out on the deck in the shade.

End user report about NBN in Australia

Makes me a little sad to be living in New York today :(

http://www.raajmenon.com/2011/06/the-nbn-is-here-an-in-depth-review/

In case you are wondering about pricing
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/fibre_to_the_home/nbn_plans

So basically 100/40 with 200gb download $140 a month......hmmm time to move home maybe?

Cheers,
Dean

Melissa Ferrick - Rubin Mueseum of Art

Jodie and I got to see Melissa Ferrick play at Rubin Museum of Art on Friday.

You have to go and check out this museum and see someone do a gig in their music room, its amazing.

Basically the entire room is quiet, I don’t mean, sort of quiet, I mean you can have 100 people in there and it’s acoustically perfect, they’ve done something with the sloping roof and baffles to make it perfectly quiet, I mean in between songs I could hear the girl next to me breathing kind of quiet

Because the walls are all solid wood you can hear what the performer is playing without any amps etc at all, basically Melissa just played un-mic’d and with an acoustic guitar and although we were at least 10 rows back you could still hear her perfectly even when she was speaking to the room between sets with a normal speaking voice you could hear everything.

I'm not quite sure how they do it but it's an amazing experience to hear, even for someone who is as "natural" as Melissa Ferrick you still pick up on nuances, lol especially when she was in such an upbeat and funny mood.

Only problem is because they turn the air-conditioning off….gets a little warm with everyone after an hour or so.

Cheers,

Dean

BTW yes the normal gender bias was in the audience, jodie counted 7 guys in the room including myself. I dont get it, i think she's got an amazing talent so dont understand why she is seen as so lesbian niche. 

MsTags ....still suck regardless of what Microsoft brand evangelists tell you

MsTag evangalists for Microsoft are hitting LinkedIn 2d code groups trying to convince people over to the dark side....

My response;
Nick, if Microsoft really wanted to add value they could have deployed a backend analytics solutions with QR codes, (better still built the management platform into an IIS module.......) but no they chose to be painful and deploy proprietary.


MsTags offer NO value to end users 'except' they can be 1/4 the size (roughly) based on the colour shifts.

The url shortening etc offers no advantages not available from any other vendor, and when offset with the lack of deployed readers and proprietary code generation....is painfully a waste of space and just confusing the market.

Microsoft are never benevolent and learnt nothing from Denso.....i appreciate you have a job to do but consultants also in the space also have a job to do in advising their clients to stay away from MsTags.


I cant advise people stay away enough from this disaster enough.
Cheers,
Dean