Blast, someone stole my RSS/text to voice idea!

One of these day I’m going to rig up a RSS to text to voice hack! One of these days…

Just found this RSS to voice post over at Doc Searls' IT Garage.

the link to rssdj.com

Gnoll110

are bloggers a sub-set of journo

Over the last week or so, I’ve been pondering, just what is the difference between a blogger and a journo?

I had concluded that there was no real difference between a good blogger and a good amateur journo.

This post was just posted over at Slashdot.

Now I might just have to conclude that a really good “A-list” blogger is up there with the professional journos.


Gnoll110

A podcast niche for someone

While I was vegging out (reading a novel) on the couch yesterday (Sunday) morning, with a idiot box on in the corner. This segment appeared on the ABC’s, Inside Business. It was an interview with the retiring journo, Trevor Sykes.

Trevor has been a finance journo for more booms than he cares to remember. He has written under his own name and that of his alter ego, the arch-capitalist, Pierpont. You got to love someone who’s got a stock broker name Leo Liability!

The following quote from the interview took my attention

Every morning when I open the Pierpont website I get all these emails from people, and usually there is one or two ideas for a story every day. I'm going to be leaving the office with a stack of paper approximately one foot high, and every bit of paper is an investigation I never got around to. So there is plenty of material for someone who wants to come along as a copycat!

This strikes me as an opportunity, where someone with writing skill could carve an internet niche for themselves!

Someone might even be able to construct a two person interview team, like John Clarke and Bryan Dawe stage on The 7:30 Report. A good place to host this would be a some place like Cameron Reilly’s The Podcast Network

The things Users say…: Installment 1

Got a user requested system amendment recently.

You got to fear an amendment that starts

----------------------------------------

1. Introduction.

Contrary to policy…
----------------------------------------

It’s a worry! Only got one of these stories at the moment, but I’m going to start numbering them. I’m sure the next one wont be long! Think I’ll start measuring Mean Time Between Worrying Statements (MTBWS).


Gnoll

Tune in next week for another adventure of GNOLLS IN S-P-A-C-C-E!

Struts: the King is Dead, long live the King!

Earlier in the year, just after JavaOne, I attended a CJUG meeting. The speaker, an Enterprise Architect for a federal government body, gave a general overview of JavaOne.

One of the point he made was that Struts (among others) was becoming ‘functionally stable’. That active development was moving to newer frameworks.

Well this trend has been confirmed by this post at Simple Thoughts

Merging Struts with Webwork2 does not surprise me. I always found WebWork easier to install and configure, while Struts has a big user base.

Gnoll

Open Power

At times over the last year or so, I’ve read about projects to produce open source software for spacecraft and satellites. Stuff like this and this .

Last Thursday I went to the monthly meeting of the Canberra Linux Users Group. The presentation/demonstrations on the night were about MythTV. This project has two major software components, a frontend and a backend. The way I understand it, the backend has the smarts to drive and capture images from multiple heterogeneous TV tuner cards.

Yesterday, Doc Searls, in his weblog, talked about his current home fit-out and the related Open House article in the Linux Journal.

The final straw, was the news this morning about the Montreal Climate Summit

Over the last few months, an ideas has been loitering in my braaain. That ideas is the development of an open source software suite to monitor and control small scale power systems/stations. What I’m talking about is the Operation Centre software for these systems. The systems I have in mind scale from home alternate energy systems up to small scale commercial system. The kind that a farmer or small business might invest in to produce power, where the excess is dumped into the grid (for money).

What do people think of this as an open source project?


Open+Source Power+System Power+Station Open+Power

Pop-up adds on TV? (News and Ads as one: Part 2)

This Content is King post with comments was posted to Cameron Reilly’s blog today.

It’s about this story in ‘The Age’.

For me these ‘pasted billboards’ are to TV, what Pop-up ads are to the Internet! To pursue this analogy, the scrolling banner is the text ad of TV.

I beg that content produces use the scrolling banner and keep some visible border between the content and the promotional materials that pay for it.

Do we need to go to the US magazine solution, where full page ads (and multi page ads) must have a ‘this is paid advertisement’ at the top or bottom of their advertorials. How could you police this solution on the global Internet, anyway? This enforcement issue is why I used the word ‘beg’ in the previous paragraph.

Is 'News and Add as one', the future?


I must get around to that RSS to text to voice hack sometime!


Cameron+Reilly News+Ads Content+King Pasted+Billboard Scrolling+Banner

News and Ads as one.

Had the idiot box on while I got ready for work this morning, again!

I note that in one of the human interest stories they ran, they 'painted' the shows logo into the interview. I’m not talking rolling banners here.

It was an interview with Terry Vo, the kid that lost two hands and a foot, last March in Perth.

Anyway, the background for the interview was a couple McMansions. They 'painted' the logo onto the front of one of the houses, over the front door. It was well done. It was behind the head of the interviewee (and partly obscured) and looked like a large shop sign.

So much for ‘pictures never lie’.

Ads News Pictures Never Lie

Is this really News, I think NOT!

Had the idiot box on while I got ready for work this morning!

I note that in the top of the hour ‘News bulletin’, before the sport, they 'reported' the winner of Australian Idol. Since when is this classed as News?

To think, this is going to count as local content and not as ad time!

One of these day I’m going to rig up a RSS to text to voice hack! One of these days…

voice hack news Australian Idol

Not a good weekend

Sometime between Friday evening and Sunday morning, someone broke into my car…

And stole the battery!


The bastards!

Is SBS a MSM organization?

Just been reading the Public Journalism Network blog site.

One recent entry is ‘Why People of Color Don't Trust the News Media’. For me, this poses the question “Is SBS a MSM org or not?’

It’s an ethnic broadcaster, in that is includes non English language programming etc.

But there are three aspects that scream MSM to me:

1. It does not specialize in a specific language group
2. It’s a federal government ‘business entity’,
3. with big business ads.

What do people think?

Getting content into Google

Tired of waiting to be web crawled by Google, try this

http://base.google.com/base/default

My big question is:

How do they stop spammers submitting spam?


Tune in next week for another adventure of GNOLLS IN S-P-A-C-C-E!

Noon Friday.

All the presentation work is finshed.

Just the last big exercise to do!

We found no big holes in my knowleadge. But its been a while since I last played with threads, networking (expect FTP in Jakarata Commons) and GUI classes stuff. All my recent UI work has been using framework for web interfaces, stuff like Spring & WebWork.

Time to hit the books and get that certification!

Anyone need a Java programmer in Brisbane or Melbourne?


Tune in next week for another adventure of GNOLLS IN S-P-A-C-C-E!

Start of Day 4

About to begin the 4th day of my basic Java course.

Over the last 2 days, it's still been filling small holes in my basic Java knowleadge. Also found out about a few things/classes new to version 1.5, particularly Generics.

W'll see what today brings.


Tune in next week for another adventure of GNOLLS IN S-P-A-C-C-E!

Filling Holes

Just about to start the second day of the SUNs Java(TM) Programming Language cource (SL-275). Day 1 was language basics. So, as a self-taught java programmer, I knew most of it, but we did fill a few small hole.

So, if this cource is going to be of any value, we had better fill some bigger holes, later on!

But, when it comes down to it, it's resume build. I know the language (I think), but no commerial experence, so can't put it on the resume.

Time to start, today.


Tune in next week for another adventure of GNOLLS IN S-P-A-C-C-E!

and then there was One

Well, time passes. Where did the last month go?

I do want to note two passing in the last month.

The funual of Australia's second last WWI veteran was last week. He was William Evan Allan, he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy at the outbreak of the war when he was just 14. He was the last active service veteran.

John Campbell Ross, 106, a wireless operator who enlisted just before the war end is Australia last WWI veteran.

Lest we forget.


Ronnie Barker, one of the comic greats, passed at the start of the month. One of the great stand-up comics. His most noted works are 'the Two Ronnies', with Ronnie Corbett, 'Open All Hours' and 'Porridge'. A master who's range included everything from verbal 'Spoonerisms' to dressing up in all kinds of outfits!

I'll just close with the Two Ronnies classic close.

It's Goodnight from me.
And it's Goodnight from him!

I’ve been spammed!

Well, it took 2 weeks and 5 day (since I started this blog, 25/09/05).

Today, after my 5th post, that post got two comments.

Both at the same time. Both generic ‘Great Blog’ comments and link(s) to ad stuff. In these cases; hearing aids and ‘Big Savings’ Car Insurance. Different Blogger.com accounts, but me thinks its the same person, given the common posting times!

Looks like I need to call for trender on a second contract!

Call For Tenders: Contract on Sydney CBD Traffic Planners

Went to the Sydney CBD yesterday evening. The first time there, since the opening of the cross city tunnel.

Usually it takes me 20 to 30 mins to get from the top of the M5 to where I park, in the City West (King/Kent/Sussex streets) area. This is during peak hour times, as I’m usually going to the Sydney XP Activity Club (SyXPAC) geek nights. I try to get up to Sydney for this, about once a month.

Last night it took me 70 minutes to get parked! Got forced across the Habour Bridge once (first time ever) and ended up in Pyrmont/Darling Habour twice!

The worst bit was that by the time I parked, it was after 7.00pm, and Borders Books was closed! Borders are the only place I know, that offer a good selection of US magazines that don’t generally make it to the local news agents. I usually buy two mags (that have cheap, crappy Australian editions). Must rings Borders today, and see if they will hold this months’ editions for me.

Comments about 'The New Inventors', Stubble Star (7/Sept/05)

Stubble-Star was one of the devices on last night’s show.

Being a farmer son, I'm close enough to the subject to realise how inept most of the questioning about the product was!

Two of the panel had no idea about the subject. Just asking motherhood questions. The one that has closer knowledge was still far enough removed as not to be able to ask the hard questions.

The Star competitor technologies are tine and chisel ploughs (used for seed sowing), not the seldom used disc plough. Disc plough use has been declining since at least the 60's.

This also allowed the inventor/promoters to push as major selling point, sometime that is only a minor point. Stubble burning is a seldom used practice, it had disappeared from the northern wheat belt by during the 70s and largely disappeared from the southern wheat during the 80s.

The promoter talked about the stars being trialled in the Wagga Wagga area and in the sandy soil of the WA. Then made the sweeping statement that it was suitable for all the wheat belts. I'ld like to see it tested in the heavy red and black (basalt) soils of the Eastern Darling Downs, the Brigalow Clays of the Western Darling Downs and the Liverpool/Moree Plains.

It looks like an interesting bit of equipment. It has good potential, even if it only matches current methods, given its claimed fuel savings.

One last silly comment from the panel was about it being a good invention, going into a growing market. I want to know, what growing market? Given the current economic and polito-legal frameworks in Australia. At most, the amount of land under the plough is either plateauing or static. An 'out of touch' comment! If the wool market improves markedly, it may even start to fall as land in SA and NSW returns to wool!

I think the Show should get Subject Area Experts to prepare a background reports for the Panel.

Outlining area such as
- Competitive technologies/methods and the economics.
- Market state
- Pros and cons of the Invention & major competitive technologies

the Poseidon device

Saw vision about this story on the TV morning News bulletins today.

And found this online.