The Blarg of Fosnez

Walking past the office of Desley Boyle today, I saw that the signs were going up already: With some additional artistic licence from myself This can only mean an election is just around the corner . Be sure to pre-tune your Bullshit Meter. If you don't have one, I suggest you invest in either a Watch , a Button or perhaps a General Bullshit Dector

Too often, we become complacent as to our society's reliance on technology, specifically power. Today, the Cairns region (including up to Mareeba and possibly further) one tenth of Australian (by area) lost all electrical power . I was attempting to get into work to check on my computers during the power outage, poor dears, when I came across an interesting and annoying "safety gone mad" moment. When the city loses power (twice in the last two months I might add) all the boom-gates over railway crossings close. The only way to enter the CBD from the south side (without diverting halfway to Mareeba) was to go up to the top level of Cairns Central on Bunda Street, down two levels of parking and out the Spence Street exit. Too bad if an ambulance needed to get from the CBD to Parramatta Park quickly hey?

Well I just found another great vista feature, Multimedia Class Scheduler Service ( MMCSS ). Now here is how you turn it off: Open up the registry editor ("regedit" in the Run box) and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \Audiosrv Fine the DependOnService key and remove "MMCSS" from the list of values. (be sure to leave the other ones there) Reboot, and disable the service in the service manager and you are set. To give some indication on how much faster this may make your network, with it on and me playing music I was getting 8MB/s transfer of data. With it turned off I am getting 50MB/s. Thankyou oncea again microsoft. More info as to why this happens here . Original solution guide here

Turns out the Kogan Agora is indeed Fail . Told you so . Tis a pitty tooo, because now noone will buy a phone from Kogan now.

Over the last few days, with all the rain around, I have been checking the webcams on QLD Transport's Site every now and then. I use iGoogle as my homepage most of the time, so I thought it would be convienent if I could watch them there. After a some hours of programming, here is the end result . It allows you to select up to 5 of the 75 cameras in Queensland ( there are four in Cairns ). You can also add two of your own feeds, so if you have a webcam at home for security or whatever, you can load it in as well. Let me know what you think and tell your friends about it!

Australus Roast. Heard that term before? It is a palatable name for kangaroo , like venison is a neutral name for the fluffy, pretty deer. So Skippy has a nice name now. Kangaroo is quite a "good" animal for Australians to eat. It is good for the environment - as they do not produce anywhere nearly as much methane as cows do, and they have no impact on erosion like hard hoofed animals do. It is also good for people - as it is very low in fat, and high in protein. If you have not had Australus before, I would encourage you to try it. For my friends in London, goto your local Walkabout and try their Kangaroo Burger . For us back in Oz, pick yours up at the supermarket, I got mine from the Redlynch Woolworths. It was Macro Meats brand. They have Filets, Roasts, Sausages and Mince. It doesn't really taste like anything else. Just buy some and try it, it is rather cheap too!

No, not that one . Australia seems to be gearing up to be a real battleground for the Android mobile phone platform. I have previously spoken on the Kogan Agora , but some new news at hand seems to indicate that it won't be the only Android phone in Australia for long. (Yes, I know you can import a G1 Development Edition ). Smarthouse has apparently been speaking to a Telstra executive (whatever that means), and Telstra will apparently be releaseing a HTC built Android phone with a "huge screen". I'm wondering if the just-leaked " Sapphire 2.0 " is what they are talking about: