Today is my last full day here out at Coal Point. Tomorrow I’m packing laptop, camera, and clothes and heading to Sydney. The rest of it can wait until I’ve found my own place to live in the city.

By the way - If you know anyone who is looking for a tenant for a 1-2 bedroom apartment/whatever within about 20mins walking distance of Surry Hills, I’d really like to hear from you. It’s probably a really long shot, but who knows, right?

I finished up at Telstra last week. A big thanks to the folks there in the Newcastle building giving me a great farewell during lunch on Wednesday. It was great to catch up with the old gang who’ve left before me, and those I hadn’t seen for ages. 

Anyway, I’ll be on Three’s X-Series (2GB)  for internet access, plus whatever I can get on WiFi until I do get my own place.  Here’s hoping it’s not too long.

Until then - Adios

Because people seem to be asking the same five or so questions about my new job, I thought I’d put up a FAQ.
I’m sure it won’t stop people asking anyway though

Who is the new job with?
It’s a contract position through an agency. Who their client is (where I’ll be working) I’m not saying yet - I’ll wait until I get to know the guys first. They’re located right in the centre of Sydney - 10 minutes from Central Station.

When do you leave / have you left Telstra yet?
My last day at Telstra is Friday the 26th of October (so, this week is my last).

When do you start at the new job?
Monday 5th November.

Are you commuting from Toronto?
Nope - I’m moving down to Sydney. A 3 hour commute *each way* really isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time.

Have you got a place in Sydney yet? / When are you moving?
Not yet. I’m staying with one of my Uncle’s first - he’s got a place about 15 minutes walk from the new job.
I’m looking for my own place at the moment, again somewhere near the centre of Sydney.

(This is for the folks who didn’t see this post on Facebook)

This is Claude, he’d just like to let you know that he really dislikes:
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- Zombies
- People who Poke/Prod
- And other silly Facebook applications

Claude says he’ll come visit all the people who send these through.

Just… y’know, so you know what to expect.

PS: Claude is a Huntsman Spider. He’s currently residing in my bedroom, and plays around on Facebook and Twitter whilst I’m asleep.

For several years, the various Recording Artist Associations (eg: RIAA) have been on a campaign to prosecute their customers. These associations claim they do it to protect the rights of their members. In reality it’s all about increasing profits for certain key members - that is, large record companies.

Last week came news from the UK of the latest attempt by these organisations to stick it to ordinary consumers for something which is, really, fairly innocent. What’s the problem? Some employees of a car repair company played their radios a little bit too loud.

The Performing Rights Society (the UK’s version of the RIAA) is seeking £200,000 (AUD$450,000) in damages for this obvious heinous crime.

Seriously, there needs to be a complete change in copyright law. For a long time these large organisations (and don’t kid yourself, they are giant corporations, not struggling musicians) have been steadily edging out what we would all consider fair use. It should not be a crime to listen to the radio at work, or to play a CD for friends at a private party. 

The way things are structured at the moment, it’s better (financially) for me to drive a car at well above the legal speed limits, placing people in serious danger - than it is to play a radio a little loud, or to share a song with a friend.  This is not the way things should be. We need to say enough is enough, and tell our elected representatives to change these obviously stupid copyright laws.

I’ve been frustrated for a while trying to use various products and services. I thought I’d compress all of them into a single post.

Click through to read this collection of rantings…

(more…)

It might’ve taken a day or three, but here’s the pics a few folk wanted to see…

Let me just say first up, that the pie was great… and it’s all gone (I had the last bit for dessert tonight)

Unfortunately, because I was trying to help serve (we had folks over for dinner) -  I didn’t have a huge amount of time to get the exposures right.

A slightly too large piece of Mulberry pie… they’re messy things.

Apologies to the colour-space fanatics - I tried to get the colour of the pastry to match between each of the three shots and still show as much detail as I can, but it’s difficult.

Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy Blog fame) stumbled onto an Alaskan singer Marian Call a few weeks back, and blogged about it.

Several things immediately piqued my interest: She’s a Firefly fan, won a song writing contest ”Sing a song of Saffron“. (Saffron of course being from the Firefly episode ”Our Mrs Reynolds“), and the two or three songs on her MySpace page were really really good.

Phil gives a better description of Marian’s music than I could hope to do:

“Marian?s music is hard to pin down; it?s like folk but not at all cloying like so many folk singers are. It?s not dance or rock; it?s simple, personal, small band coffee-shop kinda stuff. Sorta [...] Her voice is clear and beautiful, and not at all artificial like every gorram singer on the radio these days”

Read Phil’s blog entry for more.  This is also one of the rare times when I’d recommend actually going to a MySpace page. The sample tracks Marian makes available are well worth listening to.

I bought Marian’s Album “Vanilla” on CD and it arrived yesterday - I’ve only managed to listen to it two or three times, and I’m really impressed.

Definitely check it out. 

There’s a recurring Food theme here at the moment, but work’s keeping me pretty busy handing over all the applications I support to colleagues.

Today we got a big bag of Mulberries ~3KG I think - they had their stalks on them, so I had to remove them before they are made into Mulberry Pie(s) tomorrow.

Needless to say, my hands got, err… a little stained from the mulberry juices. I imagine the stains will hang around longer than the Mulberries themselves will last (in pie form or not). Mulberries are kinda like little tasty packages of anti-theft dye.

Photos of the mulberry pies will come later.. Yum.

I made some cookies recently… and took some photos for the heck of it.

Slightly over-done on the left, slightly under-done (but chewy) on the right.

 Acres (not really) of cookies….