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Tue, 20 Jun 2006
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Today, we had a construction night. Lots of time was spent learning knots and lashings. Then we built a catapault. Tons of fun was had by all. We used light weight balls, so no injuries hapened when people were hit. We also has a game where we had to hit a target on the floor. Here are some photos so people can build their own.. Thanks to Jackala for the ideas.
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After tons of effort, and making a compass trail over the sleepover weekend, tonight Sian was awarded her Gold Boomerang at Cubs. The next step is for her to complete her Grey Wolf. Well done Sian. I am very proud of you..
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Cate was a member of the Trinity Christian School debating team today when they participated in an ACT wide debate on various aspects of sport and their place in society. The event was run by the Legislative Assembly PR people, as a mechanism to introduce students to the techniques of parliamentary debating, so it was not a traditional cut and thrust debating event. I was soooooo proud of her when she spoke. I thought the entire Trinity team spoke very well. Surprisingly (for me), I was impressed with the Speaker of the Assembly (Wayne Berry), as he spent the entire day with the kids chairing their debates. In fact, when he spoke, he provided usefull insight into the subjects that they debated. Wo Hoo! Here are some pics - Sorry, I didn't take my trusty SLR digital, I had to resort to the phone...
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Years ago, I worked for the Patent office, well actually it wasn't called that, it was called the Australian Industrial Property Organisation (AIPO). But, because nobody could figure out what Industrial Property was (and, no it wasn't real estate for factories.) they decided to change their name to IP Australia. That is clearer, isn't it. But I digress, I was about to talk about digital Cameras.
Anyway, at the Patent Office, I was heavily involved in a document imaging project that used a massive 450Gb disk array to provide copies of abstracts to patent examiners for their day to day examination functions. This disk array was in a 19" rack cabinet and had a StorageTec tape silo attached to it to ensure that the data was backed up, which it was. In fact, there was a team present to ensure that it operated correctly. We stored data as Tiff files to ensure readability later, and all was good in the land of document imaging. Now, we move to the present day . I purchased a Cannon EOS 350 digital camera, and it is amazing. As a suitable replacement to my aging, but still superb Canon AE-1, it is brilliant. For the first time in years, I can take photos with no obvious consequences, just delete the ones you don't want, and all is right with the world. No more paying $30 - $45 to get a roll of film developed, and the pictures are so portable. I can email them, crop then for the web site, email then to the newsletter editor for the local scout group, etc, etc, etc. But some quick math, and a little thought, suggests that there may be a problem looming. Under my bed is an old suitcase that contains all of the photos (and negatives) I have taken in the 20 or so years I have owned a camera. That is relatively secure, and is not subject to loss through a disk failure. So far, I have over 8 Gb of data amassed in the 6 months I have owned the camera. What is about to happen to my storage world? Am I able to ensure that there are no circumstances where the 16Gb / year I am probably going to use gets dropped onto the digital floor? I am confident that the mirroring strategy I have used will help, but I am also sure that Mr and Mrs Joe Average don't run mirrored servers, and have a backup strategy in place. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the imaging or data storage standard changes. As an avid CP/M enthusiast from years ago, I have all sorts of storage devices, ranging from 8" floppy disk through to the Amstrad 3" floppy, through to a stringy floppy. Not to mention all of the data I have amassed on cassette tape. (Yes, I know that the data on those mediums is being compromised with age, I am working on digitising everything, but that adds to the digital problem). With storage formats and mediums changing over time, much of the worlds historic data being created today is probably under threat. Returning to Mr and Mrs Joe Average, I am pretty sure that they don't change their storage formats to ensure that their data is secure. At least the media that is my old photos is fairly secure, at least until I die. How shall I protect the new material? Well, I have recently discovered the art of scrap booking. I think that may be a significant part of the answer. But, don't let that plan detract from the long term strategy of purchasing more and more disk storage. Remember the one who dies with the most toys wins ;-) |
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I would never have believed it... These guys have written some software for the 8088 CPU, and a CGA card that shows an original PC could display full motion video - including sound. Here is the link - www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption Clearly this was done without a windoze front end.. So it begs the question, where would we be today if the operating system of choice wasn't so heavy.
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This weekend in Australia, we celebrate the birthday of the Queen of England. In actual reality, we have no clue about when she was born (look it up on Wikipedia...) but don't let that stop you from having a holiday. We went on a pilgrimage to Megan's Mum's House in Numurkah. The drive down was uneventful, staying overnight in Holbrook, and getting there before lunch on Saturday. Double demerits apply during this weekend, so we have a real incentive to not get booked. And the boys in blue were out in force - good on them. Maggie arranged for Megs and me to stay in a very nice Bed And Breakfast on the new highway (As it turned out, the B&B had just been sold, so we were the last customers). In all it was a great weekend, just spending time with family. I have attached a large swathe of photos that Cate and I have taken, showing typical sutff we saw on our trip. Megs really enjoyed the oportunity to catch up on her reporting for school. We also got to speak to Suzy, and her wedding is on 22 July at the registry!!! Wo Hoo!!!
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Cool, Sian just showed me a wonderfull helicopter that she has built using Magmax magnetic pieces. I think that it is the first complex model that she has built since she got her first set in France for Christmas. She just tried to tell me that it was the 'only' thing in the book. I'm sure that we can find other designs.
Wo Ho!
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Sian performed in a duet, in a production at the Canberra School Of Music. |
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Well Done! Yesterday, Sian performed in a production called 'Sacred Journeys' at the ANU School of Music. The work was arranged by Lynette Bone and Judith Clingan, and Sian was one of two artists who sang a wonderful duet. The show was really impressive, with a wide variety of pieces, including dance to poetry. All pieces had a spiritual focus, and were very interesting. There was a great write up in 'Panorama' magazine on Saturday, where the work was described as 'Glimpses of the infinite through poetry, Dance and Music.' All at the wonderful age of nine. I am really proud of her! I didn't get any pictures of her performing, as that is not the right thing to do, but I got a great one of her waiting for the performance to start.
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A while ago, I completed a PS/2 Keyboard logger using a simple PIC 16F84, and a NVRAM chip. It was a ton of fun to complete, and still needs a little work. Here are a couple of photos of the device. All it needs now is some heatshrink to protect it. The next step, is to do the same task for USB, but I suspect that it will be more complex, as the USB bus is quite a bit faster than the PS/2 Bus.
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Hmmm,
I just saw a new toolcase that turned up at work. It was a small black binder, containing an assortment of parts that would be usefull for working on PC equipment. The best bit was: ----- That it contained a DIP insertion, and DIP extraction tool, kind of like those we would have used back when memory was in the form of a 16 pin DIP package. Gosh !!!! I haven't seen those parts in years. The bit that scares me is that somewhere in China, a factory is producing these things in bulk.. When Will IT END (tm)..
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Wow Earth shattering information found: " Federal employees pose a bigger threat to private data than the computer hackers most security systems are designed to thwart, privacy officials and lawmakers said. Many agencies are vulnerable to the same type of security breach that occurred most recently at the Veterans Affairs Department, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit group concerned with technology.s impact on privacy. In the VA case, which was announced publicly May 22, a laptop containing names, Social Security numbers and birthdates of 26.5 million veterans was stolen from the home of an employee who was working on a project. " It is about time somebody actually write that down... Here is the link to the entire article: |
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Projects - Some of my projects
DRJ-Consulting - A site focused on saving energy. Dougs Word Clocks - I make my own clock that tells the time using words. we Just Dont Talk About That - A site for sharing funny family stories. Megan's weblog Email me at doug@stillhq.com |
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