Year: 2010

Blake’s 7 [TV]

by

When I was growing up in Country Victoria there were only two TV channels, no McDonalds and KFC was an hour drive away.
Did I mentioned the shops closed at 1pm on Saturday? … a very fast paced life

The point of this? …. a few shows on TV captured my imagination and allowed me to escape the fast life in country Victoria.

– Doctor Who
– Star Trek
– Black Adder

And last but not least, Blake’s 7. The special effects made Doctor Who look good. The fight scenes were terrible, but the story and the characters were wonderful. My favourite? Avon, who would sell out his own mother if there was no other choice.

Anyway I have just finished watching them all again, all four seasons.

Technology is pretty amazing now. I can stream the Blake’s 7 DVD rips from my computer to my iPad.

Victoria Sword Exemptions cut back

by

In Victoria (Australia) it is generally illegal to own a sword, unless you have an exemption

    GENERAL EXEMPTION UNDER SECTION 8B TO POSSESS SWORDS

    1. Museum
    2. Theatre or Opera Company
    3. Accredited Fencing Organisations,
    4. World Singlestick Federation
    5. Member of a Religion whose practice involves swords
    6. Defence Force Serving Member
    7. Former Defence Force Member if obtained in official duties
    8. RSL officer/member
    9. Masonic Lodge
    10. Participant in Scottish Highland Dancing
    11. Inheritance – maximum of two swords.
    12. Australian National Wushu & Tai Chi Association
    13. Australian Kendo Renmai Associated Club
    14. A sword owned prior to July 2004 that has never had a sharpened edge
    15. Active Scout Association member.??

or you have a licence similar to a gun licence!

The cheapest way until recently to legally own a sword was to joint the Australian Knife Collectors club which has a general exemption for members owning swords. On my last blog article I mentioned that in Victoria there is a big crack down on knives. Something which I have no problems with.

This naturally caused a problem for the Australian Knife Collectors club b/c they were the most prominent organisation providing exemptions. Because of this pressure and to protect its core interest, knife ownership it has relinquished the exemptions bestowed upon it for swords. If you are covered by the exemption you will have until 30 September 2010.
After that you will be breaking the law if you don’t have a licence or an appropriate exemption.

In summary, bring on the nanny state 🙂


Rsync backup on OS X

by

Mission: To backup my music and picture collection onto portable hard drives as a backup .

Music: 406.66 GB
Pictures: 57.86 GB

The pictures folder is updated every two or three days with pictures from my iphone and the occasional run with my SLR.
The Music folder is updated multiple times a day with podcasts and other downloads.

To copy the entire folders to an external USB 2 drive would take most of the night. This is simply not practicable, at least until USB 3 comes along.
Even then it makes more sense to only copy the changes.

The solution, RSYNC

Original disk: work ==> backup disk: backup500gb

>>> sudo rsync -vaxE –delete Music /Volumes/backup500gb

This would recursively transfer all files from the directory

/Volumes/work/Music to /Volumes/backup500gb/Music directory.

The files are transferred in “archive” mode, which ensures that symbolic links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the size of data portions of the transfer.

The archive mode is overkill for pictures and music, but if I were copying programs, batch files, etc it would be very important.

-v, --verbose               increase verbosity
-a, --archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
-x, --one-file-system       don't cross filesystem boundaries
-E, --executability         preserve executability

>>> sudo rsync -vaxE –delete Pictrures /Volumes/backup500gb

bpython

by

bpython is a fancy interface to the Python interpreter for Unix-like operating systems It has the following features:

  • In-line syntax highlighting.
  • Readline-like autocomplete with suggestions displayed as you type.
  • Expected parameter list for any Python function.
  • “Rewind” function to pop the last line of code from memory and re-evaluate.
  • Send the code you’ve entered off to a pastebin.
  • Save the code you’ve entered to a file.
  • Auto-indentation.

To install it on OS X type “easy_install bpython” at the command line

To run it, type “bpython“

Its great for people like me who are still learning python.

Sword ownership in Victoria

by

There has been a disturbing trend for young people to carry knives for self defence. This has lead to an inevitable increase in knife wounds and deaths.

Quite rightly the government is worried. In Victoria this inevitably leads to increased regulation and costs for legitimate law abiding users such as martial artists and collectors.

The Age has an article about another crackdown with a redundant title of Sharp eye on lethal weapon collector clubs. Weapons by their very nature are always capable of killing (just look at non lethal weapons like capsicum spray and tasers. In rare cases these have led to deaths.)

“The Brumby government is cracking down on weapons ”collector” clubs that may be abusing their legal right to own banned samurai swords and daggers.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with this. I hank a sinking feeling about this.

Statistics

by

Just after Christmas I ordered two books on statistics. Both are part of the O’Reilly series Head First series.

If only my University stats course was as well done as this book. I probably would have remembered more.

More to follow on stats because without practise, there is no retention.

So expect to see some blog posts on weather stats in Melbourne and some pretty pictures -)

Probably done in Excel or the stats package R

Toilet Humour

by

Working for the government or any large corporate you often are told to do things are certain way. Much of this is common sense and political correctness. In moderation it is fine because it often provides humorous examples such as this:

This is part of a poster telling you how to use the toilet and to wash your hands at the end.

Is this directed at asians and others who are used to squat toilets?
I have read that squat toilets are actually better for you body because they provide a more direct way for NO#2 to leave you body. You can even buy special seats which sit on top of a normal western toilet so you can squat!. Hence the first picture I can understand. But the second? …. what the #%$#%#$ ?