I've been told!!! so there

iLove my iBook For the last few months my ibook battery has been dead, resulting in me having a small desktop ;-) instead of a portable. Finally I took it back for a replacement battery on Monday...after two days its back and working like charm. I really really love this machine!!! Apple also just released iTunes 4 with a new music store built in. Given that I have a bit of experience in music services I must say I'm amazed with how good the service is. 200,000+ tracks from name artists, great interface, quick etc.. and integrated with the player is just wonderful for listening to clips. All it needs are negative recommendations in the search and more recommendations on the artist pages (this will come). Well done apple.

It happens to the best of them Ted Codd has died. His book on Relational DBs was/is a work to treasure alongside Knuth and has had an equal impact on my career/interests since university.

Wish I was here If only Australia was closer to Santa Clara. The emerging tech conference is "the" of the year. Without being able to visit I'll have to monitor the online happenings. Due to the Alpha Geek nature of it all....this can be done at ET Con Wiki.

bwwaa haa haah!!!

I agreed to a panetone cook-off with my sister-in-law, the chef who graduated top of her year in practical and theory classes...yes boys and girls she is a sensational chef.

So its rooky Ben with the knack (thanks Granddad) for baking vs super chef. As I said on the phone to her...when you are at the top of the mountain you only have one way to fall!!

After making two doughs with sponges and soaking fruit in booze and many risings my masterpieces are ready for the comp.

The family-in-law arrives in 15 mins so we'll see how I go. Needless to say I'm pretty pleased with my effort for a 1st timer.

Update - I won. My panetone has a truely wonderful texture and great fruit. Only improvement for next time is getting some more depth of flavor in the dough....with more booze.

Speedy Safari Apple have just released the latest Safari Beta with TABS and AUTO FILL!!!! Goodbye IE, Goodbye Moz, Goodbye Opera. Apple has now released a fully featured super fast low footprint uber-browser in around 6 months. Without a doubt this is the Best browser around. It makes me wonder why Mozilla took so long to develop or why IE is still bloated, slower and under featured. Amazing effort and makes my iBook a wonder!!

Jasmine Aurora

Last night I became a Dad again!!!

My lovely new daughter is super well as is her mum, babyolder brother is taking it ok for a 2 year old.

I guess I'm a total geek if the first thing I do when getting home from the hospital at 2am is manipulate the digital photos of the birth, register jasmineaurora.com, start a blog for her and put some photos on the web.

We usually get a great view of plenty of planes and hot air balloons from the balcony but very rarely military aircraft (grand final, anzac day, f1 etc) but today there has been an army helicopter whooop whooping by 3 times so far today...sounds great.

Amusing Kofi Moment I'm watching Sesame Street with Oskar and on comes Kofi Annan to help Grover, Elmo and others sing the alphabet song Together. After the song, the monsters all want to hug Kofi, so one suggests they "Do it the United Nations way; all together.". I laughed. I wonder if this episode is brought to you by the letter W.

Another lovely sunny weekend
Cooking filled the 1st half....Rack of Lamb Friday night, Yummy scrolls Saturday morning, Beef stock Saturday arvo, Veg. Dim Sums, Sweet Potato Curry Puffs and Cardamom Orange Creme Brulee for Saturday evening.
Unfortunately I've been a complete blob today....too tired to run or play too much.
Hopefully this week will be a bit easier than last, finishing off work for The New Project, enjoying resturant week here in Melbourne and some running of course.

Then its baby time !!!!!

MAC Address and Telstra Every so often, Telstra's ADSL service spits the dummy. The problem for me is that I'm connected via a router rather than Windows which means zero support. Generally this is ok as I try connecting with OS X but today OS X worked and Router didn't. After some stuffing around.....I changed the MAC address on the wired side of the router...bingo....connected. It seems that my router's MAC address must have been locked or such. Anyway...if someone find this useful. Bonus is that everything seems HEAPS faster which I'm not going to argue with.

Squid's Alive I'm always amazed by these huge squids. Apparently with the slight increase in water temp due to green house blah blahs the squids have a huge amount more to eat and are coming closer and closer to the shore. Additionally the world's squid population now takes up more mass than the entire land.

More bubbles Hmmm another bottle of bubbly for dinner. I run a lot. Today I was running trying to do 3D vector math in my head. I took my mind of the running for a while.

Coins in the machine

GoldFinger Aaa aaa.
Do I have the only two year old who
a) Cries when he can't watch James Bond's GoldFinger movie
b) Walks around the house pretending to be Odd-Job
c) Sings GoldFinger theme song in the supermarket

Bubbly Pop Music
It's amazing what a bottle of bubby and some newly recommended pop/dance music can do for ones mood.

Fuzzy Bubbliness
In the moment, I always forget the fuzz that fills my sleep after a little too much alcohol.

Welcome....
to my blog. I guess it's a case of everyone's doing it so why not me?