Simon Rumble’s blog

For those of you outside Australia, Invasion Day is Australia's national day. Officialy known as "Australia Day", it commemorates the day white people took over Australia. Hardly something to celebrate if you're one of the original peoples of this place.

Anyway, due to it being a Friday, Holly, me, Matt, Maz, Vickie, Adam, Mikey, Leonie, Kev and Marg went up to my parents' holiday house up the coast for a weekend of lazing around, grilled pork products and drinking. Was really nice to get out of town and the weather was pretty good.

This was our first Invasion Day back in Australia in quite some time so it was strange being in warm weather. Still, I got to read about the festivities in London around at Scott and Katie's.

In other news, I'm doing a mini mash brewing course at my local homebrew shop.

It's starting to come out the grubby links between the Liberal Party and the extremist separatist Christian cult Exclusive Brethren. Expect the story about their ads being billed to the Liberal Party to be buried quick smart while the Libs make the shome mishtake, shurely? defence.

Next time you see an advert claiming Greens policies will result in compulsory sex changes, your daughter being skull-fucked by heathen hippies and dope smoking becoming mandatory, remember to think "who's paying for this".

All voters in Australia would do well to learn more about this weird cult. They're not the usual fairy-believers. Much weirder and more sinister.

Last night I was reading Saturday's Snidey Moaning Herald and came to the best byline I've yet read in that esteemed publication: "Miranda Devine is on holiday". Can't get better than that! And whattaya know, the column that replaced it wasn't filled with ill-informed, reactionary tripe.

The Big Day Out are discouraging people from taking Australian flags to the festival because they're worried about boneheads draping themselves in the flag. A better reason would be because our flag is crap and includes, prominently, the flag of another country. It's about time we got a better one.

Perhaps we could also get rid of our cringe-worthy national anthem (who the fuck says "girt"?) and replace it with a much more appropriate song about a sheep-shagging itinerant thief.

While we're at it, might I suggest the Romanov Solution? Oh I'm going to Gitmo for that!

We went to Sydney Park to look at the comet last night after Jeremy and Emily's wedding reception. It was incredibly bright and I took some great photos.

Now this is kinda weird. When I was up the ladder moving around the aerial for digital television, I was trying to tune in the UHF frequencies of the Kings Cross transmitter. This is sensible because I only bought a UHF aerial, whereas Gore Hill transmits on VHF.

Tonight I got home and thought I'd do a bit of playing around with czap and the like. Scanning with that I found I could tune in, using mplayer, all the digital channels. Weird! So I tried scanning with MythTV again, to get the same results I had on Wednesday. When I imported czap's output into MythTV, however, I found I could tune the full complement of channels!

So looking at the frequencies, my humble UHF antenna is actually tuning in the VHF transmissions from Gore Hill! I guess the only explanation could be that the huge power they're outputting is enough to reach here.

That's excellent news as I was starting to despair of getting digital TV at all. Now to run the rest of the cable, drill the holes in the floor and get the Myth box going!

Last night while talking to Raz I recommended he work for my former employer in London. The reason I'd recommend working for them is that they seem to have got the critical balance between rigid process and operational flexibility in software development about right. We hit every deadline and included all the features we promised more or less as specified, every release. That's really refreshing in the software business!

It got me thinking about why this isn't more common. The thing is, it's not getting the development process brings the biggest (business) rewards. My employer before that (name left as an exercise to the reader) was the direct opposite, running about as seat-of-the-pants as is possible to imagine. They're at least as successful, possibly more so at this point, and yet they pushed out daily releases that broke, crashed, looked like shit and had the worst imaginable user interface.

Given that getting the process right doesn't guarantee Bubble Goo rewards. So as a PHB, why would you bother to make the process perfect? The only advantage is happier employees, and what PHB gives a rat's arse about that?

I went along to the linux.conf.au open day last night and had a great time. Lots of really cool projects, particularly the OLPC (heavier than I expected), RepRap (homemade fab) and the very cool open source Segway. Really good stuff and I think they've got a good mix of slick corporate-style things and the handmade feel.

Was great to catch up with a bunch of people. Met Kim and Janet from Adelaide at last. Caught up with Dean. Also ran into Raz, who's apparently been living in the UK for the last five years, and Craige.

I really wish I could've been there for the whole conference. Maybe next year.

Saw a hit on my web server from an eBay auction selling tickets to see Razorlight and using a photo I took at Glastonbury. Since the arsehole couldn't be bothered serving his stolen photos himself, I thought I'd send a message to his potential purchasers.

If nothing else, I hope I've effectively pointed out that Razorlight were shit live.

Last night I got up a ladder to install my shiny new TV aerial that was expected to get us all the digital channels. Problem is, we only ended up getting the ABC and SBS digital channels. This is odd because all of the channels are on the same location so I'd expect that if we can get one, we'd get them all.

I used high quality quad-shielded RG6 coax, an antenna appropriate for the coverage area (UHF) and spent a fair amount of time pointing and checking. Still no joy. Analogue reception is improved over the rabbit ears, though not perfect and still with quite a bit of ghosting.

The only thing I can think is that topography is against us. We're in a bit of a hollow so, while I was up the ladder, I couldn't get direct line-of-sight to either Kings Cross or Gore Hill. There are buildings and trees in the way. I think this is the reason for the problems, though can't explain how we get two channels and not the others.

This has sent me back to the drawing board on my MythTV plans somewhat. I'll have to record the commercial channels from analogue, though I'll use the digital tuner for ABC and SBS. Graeme suggests trying a different tuner, so I might pop into Dick Smith who accept returns.

Any other suggestions? Obviously more height would help. I couldn't reach the top of the mast with the ladder I have, so that might help. A professional installer would be the usual recommendation but I can't justify $200-500 on a rental property!