I am happy to read the chapters and implement the things I learn all day every day; this kind of behaviour is a much more natural learning experience for me. Memorising tables, commands and state diagrams is not. Nor is playing dodge-ball with the sometimes extremely “Cisco-ified” questions wherein a slight misunderstanding of the wording can get you thinking in the wrong direction and ultimately missing the entire point of the question. This kind of misdirection in questions is the absolute worst way for me to incorrectly answer a question. It makes me feel cheated and contempt toward Cisco. Of course the cynical side of me would say that they have to do something to make the exams difficult, albeit the methods they use aren’t genuine. Single-word differences between two command syntaxes isn’t exactly testing the knowledge you would expect a CCNP-level technician to possess. The command interface on every Cisco device is interactive and has tab completion at a bare minimum, so as long as you know the first 3-5 letters of every command you wish to use, you can TAB-complete your entire 6,000 line configuration. Disingenuous. That’s a good word to describe this kind of exam question trickery.

Anyway, I should stop procrastinating on my blog and get back to it.

Force India did not attend FP2 yesterday because the team wanted to pack up and leave the circuit before dark in order to ensure the safety of the team members. That to me indicates there is a serious issue surrounding the F1 circus as it exists in Bahrain.

In terms of how the race can affect the issues in Bahrain: the ruling parties are keen to see it happen so they can “prove” that Bahrain is a great place to be in order to save face. The protestors are keen to see it happen, and also not keen to see it happen; firstly because they can use it as an opportunity to get international recognition (although this is unlikely) and secondly for exactly the opposite reason the ruling party wants to see the race run; they fear it is working toward legitimizing the current regime.

You have to realistically look at the protestors point of view. I mean, we aren’t really used to that form of government backlash in this country. Australians are simply too lazy to protest much of anything. Yet in Bahrain we have people risking their lives, going against the fucking military for christ sake, and what for? There must be a serious message they are trying to deliver. It’s not worth risking your life for something trivial. There is a chance they can get a slight exposure to the international community by protesting during the F1 broadcast, but seriously it’s an extremely slim chance – with the military physically blocading and protecting the circuit, the protestors would literally have to overwhelm and invade the circuit for it to be shown on the television. Even if a massive shitstorm was occuring just a few kilometres away you can be sure the cameras would do their utmost to avoid accidentally capturing any of it.

Channel 10 announced on their Facebook page a few days ago (link) that F1 broadcasts are moving from the HD channel “OneHD” to the SD channel 10. Channel 10 have stated this is to allow a “wider audience” of F1 fans to view the broadcast. In addition to the channel swap, the programming itself will start from 9.30PM in all time zones – this effectively means that viewers in SA and NT will be delayed by half an hour, and viewers in WA delayed by up to two hours. This is apparently also an attempt to get F1 viewers to a “wider audience”.

How cynical you are will determine the  kind of theories you have about the true motives behind these decisions. Channel 10 have stated they want F1 to be part of their “Super Sunday” broadcast – effectively a marketing push to collect several hours of popular programming into a prime-time slot of Sunday afternoon through evening. This was first done for the broadcast of the Australian GP due to its convenient broadcast time smack-bang in the middle of “Super Sunday”. My guess is that the “success” of the Australian GP broadcast has prompted this move to shoehorn all other F1 broadcasts into this time slot. Not only were more ad breaks than ever before seen on the Australian GP broadcast, more vapid talking heads than ever before seen were also present, thus making the broadcast “family friendly” and apparently helping it to appeal to a wider audience.

As you can see if you have clicked the link to Facebook above, nobody is happy about this decision. Approximately 150 negative comments were made on their post in the first day. Channel 10 seemingly doesn’t care, they posted this message in response:

We are wanting to bring F1 to the widest audience possible, which is why it is on Ten. This allows all Australians to access the Formula One coverage in a consistent time slot every Sunday night. Sorry, guys. This is locked in.

Since that post, several hundred more comments have been posted. The most poignant of which states “your schedule might be locked in, but your viewers aren’t” with several people posting references and links to online streaming of the F1 coverage.

What I want to do is send a message to Channel 10 to let them known this is simply unacceptable behaviour. I am annoyed personally because I am losing HD broadcast, most certainly gaining many more ads, and for some races throughout year will also be delayed. I live on the East coast of Australia, but it’s worse for the people on the West coast: all of the above, plus a two hour delay! What is the point of F1 live timing, F1 twitter accounts, and following each team’s respective ‘live postings’ on websites etc if there is no live coverage?

F1 broadcasting in Australia has always been terrible due to the structure of our commercial television networks and the timezone difference between here and where F1 happens. For a short while (2010, 2011 and the first three races of 2012), OneHD for the most part did a good job of broadcasting – all races live, almost all qualifying sessions live, and contrary to many complaints, I do feel they took minimal ad breaks.

We were given a bone, and now they’ve taken it away.

I would like all Australians to help me boycott Channel 10 and their sponsors. The following is a list of sponsors of the F1 on CH10/OneHD:

- Mercedes Benz
- Ashley & Martin
- TAGHeuer
- Swisse
- Harvey Norman
- Pedders
- Shannon’s Insurance
- Colli Hardware

I will provide contact details for these companies later.

Here are Channel 10′s contact details: http://ten.com.au/contact-us.htm
Sydney
1 Saunders Street
Pyrmont, NSW 2009
GPO BOX 10, Sydney, NSW 2001
Ph:   02 9650 1010
Fax:  02 9650 1111

Melbourne
Como Centre
Level 4, 620 Chapel Street
South Yarra, VIC 3141
Private Bag 5000, South Yarra, VIC 3141
Ph:  03 9275 1010
Fax: 03 9275 1011

Brisbane
Sir Samuel Griffith Drive
Mt Coot-tha, QLD 4066
GPO BOX 751, Brisbane, QLD 4001
Ph:  07 3214 1010
Fax: 07 3369 3786

Adelaide
80 Hutt Street
Adelaide, SA 5000
Locked Bag 10, Adelaide, SA 5001
Ph:  08 8225 1010
Fax: 08 8225 1011

Perth
Cottonwood Crescent
Perth, WA 6062
PO BOX 10, Mirrabooka, WA 6941
Ph:  08 9345 1010
Fax: 08 9344 8076

A list of their Twitter accounts:
One HD: @onehd
Ten Sport: @tensporttv
Craig Baird: @cbairdo
Greg Rust: @Thrusta1
Darryl Beattie: @Hanginfive

Their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/TENsportTV

And a link to a discussion on Ten’s own forums about this very topic:
http://community.ten.com.au/community/other-ten-tv-shows/f/69/t/26774.aspx

Please can you all make every effort possible to contact Ten and let them know your displeasure at this move. Australians and non-Australians alike, please descend upon Channel 10′s contact points and overwhelm them with negative feedback. I would encourage people not to be vulgar or aggressive, merely state your displeasure and suggest you will be using alternative ways of watching the F1 coverage in the future.

Hi Guys,

Just a reminder that the F1 will be joining @Channel Ten’s Super Sunday line-up from this weekend with the Bahrain Grand Prix from 9.30pm local time. This will be LIVE in AEST.

Qualifying will be LIVE in all markets on @One from Saturday 8.30 PM AEST.

Check out the schedule http://bit.ly/HJfMDJ for more details.
Like · · Share · 6 hours ago

14 people like this.
2 shares
Paul Fewings Worst decision ever.
6 hours ago · Like · 4
Craig Taylor Why no more live coverage in Perth? And no HD too?

Seriously shitty decision guys.
6 hours ago · Like · 9
Damien Gilcrist Haters gon Hate
6 hours ago · Like
Spasa Pasa No HD and delayed. Terrible programming.
6 hours ago · Like · 7
Anthony Kernich Q live race not
6 hours ago · Like
Adam Flockhart And 10 thousand ad’s when all the action happens.
6 hours ago · Like · 2
David Rees i will be watching
6 hours ago · Like · 1
Anthony Kernich I’m not too fussed its only Bahrain the race that should never have been on
6 hours ago · Like
Craig Taylor The ads ten are running seem to imply this will be a normal thing from now on
6 hours ago · Like
Chris Thorno Any chance for the NBL GRAND FANAL going live? After all it is the GRAND FINAL!!
6 hours ago · Like · 2
Dimitra Treli WHAT! we get a 30min delay? there better not be any of that carp channel one and ten call a preshow and cut straight to the race!
5 hours ago · Like · 4
Rhys James Hillman Guys this is a HUGE mistake, for the sake of a few extra ad dollars you’re going to piss off half of Australia. At a minimum PLEASE at least show the race simulcast on ONE HD LIVE for the rest of us. How do you think all the proud WA viewers feel now that they have to watch their boy Dan on delay and in standard def??
5 hours ago · Like · 10
Rob Golding Remember when OneHD was a pure sports channel? Those were the days… When they actually cared about Sport, not showing rubbish on 3 channels… No wonder they’re loosing money.
5 hours ago · Like · 6
Sadie O’Shea I’m confused… Why is it not on One anymore? Sport should be in HD and the F1 has been LIVE for a while now… Why change something that is working well???
5 hours ago · Like · 6
Rhys James Hillman Why not show it on ONE HD live as well?? That way you can sell ad space on both channels? Seems that’s all you’re interested in – both parties win, you get $ and we the fans get LIVE HD sport like YOU promised.
5 hours ago · Like · 3
Ben Stevens I’m in Brisbane so will have live coverage, but for the sake of the guys who won’t, please cut straight to the race & get rid of the irrelevant pre-race show for them…
5 hours ago · Like · 1
Michael Pipicelli So it is true, we now have lost our only HD coverage of the F1 in Australia and to makes matter worst people in W.A will no longer be watching the race LIVE.

I remember at the beginning of the new ONE HD promise all F1 and Motogp Races live and in FULL HD… so why have Ten change there mind?
5 hours ago · Like · 9
Ryan Kim Hi Ten Sport. Just want to say, this is the worst decision you have ever made. Kind regards.
5 hours ago · Like · 6
Annette Smith For those of us NOT IN THE EASTERN STATES, Please forgo all the Pre-Race CRAP and then we will be able to watch the RACES LIVE!! Will MOTOGP going the same way???I hope not as we enjoy watching MOTO3 and MOTO2 as well as MOTOGP…
5 hours ago · Like · 2
Michael Williams Great lesson on how to stuff up a network. Good work morons.
5 hours ago · Like · 7
Michael Williams I hope your advertisers leave you after this decision. Good luck to all Ten staff, your jobs are at risk.
5 hours ago · Like · 4
Ben Johnson I watch all races and qualifying sessions religiously but will be switching off Ten’s coverage (and relentless advertising) of the Grand Prix in favour of a LIVE HD stream.

Build up a big viewerbase in Australia by showing qualifying and races in HD live.. then in an attempt to save a failing channel, alienate those viewers by downgrading your coverage. GENIUS MOVE!
5 hours ago · Like · 10
Fred Bear No delay – Qualifying Sat 21:00
Race Sun 22:00
5 hours ago · Like
Michael Pipicelli Fred if you live in W.A the race is delay. Saturday 8.30 PM AEST
5 hours ago · Like · 1
Kenny H’ng stupid decision. just dumb~!
5 hours ago · Like · 1
Tyson Rignall Delay the F1 for WA? Great call by your programmers! Who doesn’t want to watch a delayed and potentially know the result before the Rex has finnished… Bravo 10, bravo!
5 hours ago · Like · 6
Tiffany Hansen Put it on One HD and bring back RPM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 hours ago · Like · 2
Rhett Hislop Muppets. I hope your studios burn down.
5 hours ago · Like · 2
Steve Viktor Ovsienko Boo
5 hours ago · Like · 2
Lionel Davey Nice to see a motorsport at the forefront of technology being broadcast on yesterdays technology by a bunch of money hungry idiots.
5 hours ago · Like · 6
Sam Bateman Stupid move, veiwers in states other than the eastern states would like the race LIVE as well you fools.
5 hours ago · Like · 3
Tim White What a joke. You give us the worst commentators ever, then you give ads every 2 minutes, and now your not even broadcasting HD (and not live in some states)..? At least broadcast it on both channels as compromise..
5 hours ago · Like · 4
Lionel Davey Will stick to streaming the races online form now on.
5 hours ago · Like · 2
Kent Jones Nice work. Jackasses.
4 hours ago · Like · 4
Dan Ede Not only going to stream the race, but will boycott TEN for everything and encourage others to. Sick of being screwed over by networks, but TEN/ONE have stepped over the line in so far as they advertised their commitment to F1 in HD this time last year.
4 hours ago · Like · 6
Leigh Godson Show it on ONE in HD! Dont want to watch this SD crap. its F1′s we are talking about!
4 hours ago · Like · 6
Clinton Westall So still no answer or response as to why you are screwing over WA viewers with no live or HD coverage?
4 hours ago · Like · 6
Firmin Li Wow what a load of crap,F1 only on SD and not live. What next ? Commentary from Rust and Beatie ?
4 hours ago · Like · 5
Salmon Bento F1 was the last show i watched on FTA, but if its going to be in SD i will just go back to streaming it online for a overseas source
4 hours ago · Like · 3
Ursula C. Pavlou The WORST mistake you’ve possibly ever made… SERIOUSLY!
4 hours ago · Like · 4
Paul Wright people will just go back to online and your ratings will suffer – but Channel Ten you like your ratings suffering dont you
4 hours ago · Like · 3
Jillienne Hoyle Hahaha The ratings and ad revenue will continue to plummet with the muppewts in charge making stupid decisions like this. Thankfully the internet will supply what motor racing fans want.
4 hours ago · Like · 4
Nathan Wood Why not show in HD? Going to use the sport chan for HD movies are you??? Great….chan 10, this is a massive mistake. I really hope you change this.
4 hours ago · Like · 3
Steve Brady Appalling news … F1 needs to be in HD and live. You’ve just set television programming back 3 years. Network TEN might as well give up their HD licence altogether if you are not going to use it properly. I’m disgusted.
4 hours ago · Like · 5
Craig Taylor Just give up and pass it over to Foxtel. No ads during the race would be awesome.
4 hours ago · Like · 3
Travis Silvester Disgusted at TEN not showing the F1 in HD anymore. Why are TEN so contempt of their viewers? Put the movie “Domestic Disturbance” on SD (channel 10) and let the F1 be in HD (channel 1). Honestly, no wonder viewers are seeking out other ways to watch their sport.
3 hours ago · Like · 2
Justin Spencer Terrible decision. Why watch SD broadcast when I can get it through other means in HD, live and without Daryl Beatie. Poor form TEN.
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Blake Currall Hey channel 10 when can I expect a cheque for $2000 in the mail for my now useless HDTV?
3 hours ago · Like · 3
Rodney Thomson
HD would be nice, but I can survive without it.

However, not showing the race LIVE as promised at the start of the season? TERRIBLE.

We are living an online real-time world. When I watch F1 its not just my wife and I on the couch with the…See more
3 hours ago · Like · 6
Dan Ede They promised live and in HD Rodney. But yes, WA and SA fans copped it the most, but nothing other than live and in HD one ONE nation wide is acceptable imo. Guess this means Ricciardo’s WA based family members won’t be able to watch him live either?
3 hours ago · Like · 2
John Gorman What a disgraceful decision by ten showing a total disregard for f1 and sport fans. Ten was doing ok showing f1 live and in HD, which considering how 9 and 7 treat their sports coverage was actually very good. Now to scrap it on one HD, not even live in the west, while a rerun movie and netball repeats run in HD. Surely the f1 was one hd highest rating program?
Fuck u channel 10
3 hours ago · Like · 5
Michael Harris Come on Channel Ten, messing with F1 fans this weekend in WA isn’t at all nice – and flies in the face of One’s F1 Live marketing campaign.

How about you show us some respect and screen the F1 live like you always do:

http://allthingsempty.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/swf-rtl-fail-or-why-fans-matter/

3 hours ago · Like · 1
Trevor Page So I’m guessing you’ll switch to the F1 race at 9:30 in Darwin as well even though we’re not on AEST, and then make us watch the pre race show? In otherwords we’ll end up watching the ‘live’ race 30 mins late?
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Jacek Szymenderski I’m really disappointed in this decision. As someone else has mentioned, just hand this over to foxtel so that we can at least pay for the privilege.
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Mark Lloyd Disappointing… Now we get the F1 in standard definition and covered with ad’s.

1991 called, they want their broadcasting back.
3 hours ago · Like · 2
Juan Rodriguez In this day and age not showing F1 live with F1 live timing, social media etc is ridiculous. If I lived in WA I’d grab a VPN and stream it live from Europe, sans Rusty and crew.
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Simon Smithers Ch 10, you are idiots!
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Jason Brennan I predict, in five years time the Ten Network will no longer exist. It’s a shame, since I’ve grown up with Ten and have almost exclusively tuned in since I was in primary school. F1 was the last piece of programming I watched and now that is gone I no longer need them. All my TV comes through the net now. RIP Ten Perth 1988 to 2012.
3 hours ago · Like · 2
Kev H’ng
I watched a replay of the recent race on Ten the other night. F1 in SD is rubbish compared to the coverage on One. It is amazing that this change is happening when two highly regarded aussies are on the grid. How are we supposed to recognis…See more
3 hours ago · Like · 6
Dan Ede Guys the only way this will spread and have a hope of affecting TENs’s decision on this is if you post about it on your own Facebook pages and link to here asking them to comment if they watch F1…
3 hours ago · Like · 1
Paul Fewings I used watch the one hd coverage but will now boycott the SD delayed telecast here in WA. I will watch live net streams from now. I strongly urge.all others to do so too. By no one watching will force them to change it back. This is beyond appalling and a major step backwards. So how long before sky f1 hd channel is available subscribe to here?
2 hours ago · Like · 2
Judd Howie This has confirmed it for me, taking up the Sky Sports HD Streaming subscription. Good work Ten…
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Dale Christey so much for live and HD, just lost another viewer. sad as your AFL, and F1 coverage was about all i watched on C10. Now a viewer gone altogether.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Owen Stickley
And the TV stations in Australia wonder why people keep going online for their entertainment – did anyone at Ten/One actually put some thought into this? If they did, it was surely malicious. Although I am a popular fan of the quote “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” – it’s a good job the TV stations in Australia have an effective monopoly, because that’s the only way people would voluntarily consume their rubbish.
2 hours ago · Like · 3
Josh Swain Unacceptable.

In WA, the race will be over before we watch it, with all the comments ‘f1 live on super Sunday’.

No. Just no. I take it that TEN are happy for us to use other means to watch F1 since they don’t care? #boycottTEN
2 hours ago · Like · 3
Johnathan Staverman Again with the ridiculous decisions. I’ll ensure I find alternative ways to view these sports, and try my best to encourage others to follow suit.
2 hours ago · Like · 1
Dale Hall What about the rest of the year dickheads, is it gonna be live or delayed come on chnl 10, sort it out, we dont care for the 3 muppets doing the pre race show crap, just show the racing live in HD…
2 hours ago · Like · 3
Damian Lewis Useless Chan10…..not going to bother watching on your SD channel, but will instead stream it LIVE on the Internet, which will still be better quailty than your SD Channel. Do you want to lose viewers?
2 hours ago · Like · 2
John Gorman Is a spokesperson for ten/one going to actually explain the reasoning behind this decision? They think more people will watch a netball repeat and a re-run movie?
2 hours ago · Like
Bruce Large GG Channel 10, way to piss off even more potential consumers … Keep this up and you will be just as bad as Channel 7.
2 hours ago · Like
Allan Langford no they will just delete this like “the circle” facebook page when everyone complained about them making disgusting comments about Australian war heros… maybe they should delete Ch10 management!
2 hours ago · Like
Michael Lawrence what a joke! Give us live F1 coverage in Perth and in HD
about an hour ago · Like
Luke Rayner And they will wonder why their ratings plummet due to the majority watching streams online. So what happens post europe rounds when the race is monday am time? Oh hang on, it will be delayed to the next sunday AFTER. Mega excited to watch canada and brazil in SD, chock full of ads and a week late!
about an hour ago · Like
Steve Leonard I rang Ch10 in Perth (WA) today to complain about the 2hr delay in broadcasting of the F1. Response was (to my comments about Eastern States knowing the result before the transmission starts here in the West) “Well, turn your phone off and stay off the internet”. Really? That’s your best effort? Ch10 need a reality check to think they could do this without upsetting MOST of the population.
about an hour ago · Like
Josh Swain
Unbelievable… TEN are aware that it’s 2012 right?

So we can’t use live streaming to analyse the race. F1 fans are passionate, we are interested in deeper details, and we hold grudges when we get stuffed over. Look at how NINE treated F1 with contempt.

TEN have now done the same.

#boycottTEN and their seven or eight sponsors that will get their ads repeated ad nauseam while we miss action.

I wonder how long it will be before TEN deletes the post like they did with the Circle…
about an hour ago · Like
Bastardfred Child National disgrace. Hang your heads in shame 10
about an hour ago · Like
Leighton Sublevel Will be boycotting all of your channels and advertisers…F1 deserves to be on HD and live for all states. For shame Channel 10, FOR SHAME!
about an hour ago · Like · 1
Ben Dunn Welcome to 2005. Thanks chn 10
57 minutes ago · Like
Tom Sindoni Boo hiss… I bet Rusty is behind this!
46 minutes ago · Like
Clint McKay The department head who made this call should be sacked…
43 minutes ago · Like
Anthony Bortolotto FFS really who makes these decisions? Do they actually watch or understand sport?
39 minutes ago · Like
Kenny H’ng un-Australian . . . so Webber and Ricciardo aren’t good enough to have the races on live across Oz and in HD? *shakes head* disappointing and dumb decision Channel 10~!!!
33 minutes ago · Like
Udana Athuraliya Fail on Channel 10′s part. They will find out the hard way when people turn to online streaming from VIPBOX etc etc…..it is what I will be doing the minute F1 is not broadcast live.

In this day and age of technology, the punters have many other avenues to watch their favourite sport.
30 minutes ago · Like
Paul O’Halloran
Very poor decision Ch10 and a double whammy for us in WA. Super Sunday isn’t something to rejoice but just a kick in the teeth for us loyal F1 fans. Especially when for the first time in 30+ years we have 2 Aussies on the grid with 1 from WA! Way to keep your fan base Ch10 – Will be looking to stream live this weekend until these shenanigans are finished or it goes to another channel, paytv or otherwise. Big thumbs down!
23 minutes ago · Like

Currently there is a long thread on the Channel 10 discussion forum wherein many people are also making complaint about the decision. Not to mention the outcry on Twitter with the associated hashtag #boycottTEN.

My post on the matter is reproduced here in (near) full:

Why can’t 10/One simulcast the F1 coverage like they have done for AFL in the past?

On that point, why do they bother simulcasting national sports anyway when they aren’t even broadcast in HD? Everyone can receive the SD channel 10, but not everyone can receive the HD channel 11 – that’s fair enough – so don’t bother polluting the HD channel with SD content. Leave HD content for the HD channel.

I actually thought the coverage by OneHD wasn’t too bad on the Malaysian and Chinese GP’s – the ad breaks were timed decently, with Greg Rust holding off on a break when Jenson came in for a pit-stop at a crucial point in the Chinese GP. Well done there. I won’t go into the quality of the Australian “commentators” because I’m sure they do the best they can with the information they have available – not much, it would seem, given their performance.

With respect to the Australian GP, any kind of coverage at all would have been an improvement over the absolutely disgusting broadcast we received from that race. No F1 fan cares about a bunch of talking heads blabbering on with cross-promotion and unrelated celebrity gossip. How unrelated chit-chat is meant to make F1 appeal to non-fans is also a mystery to me: surely if Ch10 wants to increase the F1 fanbase (and viewership) they should have packed the AusGP coverage full of motorsports-related material? Everyone has a mute button on their TV. Mine was used to full effect whenever anything that didn’t involve motorsport was shown. Funnily enough I used the mute button that weekend more times than I’d ever used it in my entire life – literally!

Anyway, as others have said if Ch10/One is going to start broadcasting F1 only on the SD channel there literally is no point watching their coverage at all. Spam removed

The small “spam removed” comment was one added by the site administrator in place of a reference I made to streaming the coverage online at the flick of my wrist via Google – which despite what is stated, had no connections to spam at all. I didn’t paste any links or even mention any sites in particular, the evidence of “spam” was missing entirely, though I guess we can’t have people getting ideas about online streaming on one of Ten’s own forums.

Once you pair the watch via Bluetooth with your Android or iOS based smart phone you can then load a multitude of apps onto the watch to let it interface with your smart phone – and through your smart phone, the internet at large. Out of the box, the watch will support incoming Caller ID, e-mail (Gmail or any IMAP email account), calendar alerts, Facebook messages, Twitter, weather alerts, and silent vibrating alarm and timer. The list of possible uses for the phone is much larger than this, however, with the accelerometer and connection to the internet via smartphone it is possible to create many unique interactive experiences.

The project aimed to raise $100,000 over 40 days – the response, however, was phenomenal. The initial $100,000 was raised during the first two hours of the project page being live. As it currently stands, eight days later the amount pledge is $2,900,000 – that’s $2.9 million dollars. This is despite similar products already being available, e.g. Sony’s SmartWatch, the Imwatch, and others. This is because despite the Pebble not being first to market, it is smartest to market. I would say this is due to two important factors: first, the Pebble is going to provide an open API for developers using a standard gcc toolchain, meaning that anyone can develop for the Pebble without paying any licence fees or investing anything at all into the platform. Secondly, the Pebble makes use of e-ink display technology to give an estimated seven day battery life, which is a far better option than competing products which last for a day at most. Although this limits the display to monochrome, the physical size limitation of such a device does not lend itself to high quality graphical output even if the display were a high pixel density colour display – it would be like trying to squeeze modern smartphone apps onto an old Nokia mobile phone; or like printing postage stamps with 500 dpi resolution.

The project is due to deliver a final product around September. Needless to say I am very excited and will have trouble waiting that long!

My apologies.

Original:

Modified:

What do you think?

I have always like small cars. I can appreciate large cars but my personal preference is to buy small. My old car was also a small car. I enjoy not paying ridiculous amounts of money for insurance and road registration. I don’t use my car for anything but driving around, and rarely long distances, so large cars aren’t a necessary part of my lifestyle. I’m also relatively average height, so seating/roof height/footwells etc in small cars are rarely too small for me.

The Fiesta XR4 (or Fiesta ST as it is known in the UK) is special because it has a 2.0-litre engine from its big brother, the Ford Focus. Not only that but the engine has been tuned to provide more power (110Kw) and a better torque band (190Nm) which kicks in from around 3300RPM. The car also has sports suspension, a five-speed manual transmission, wide grippy tyres, a subtle bodykit and – if you are so inclined – racing stripes from the factory.

I first saw this car on an ancient episode of Top Gear – around 2005 or so – and was unimpressed to note the car wouldn’t be available in Australia until 2006. I researched it over and over and over until I had memorized every little detail about the car. I even took one for a test drive from a dealer. I was pretty much in love with this car (though not to the point that I actually made love to it). However, at the time I was still a uni student, and although I was working full time it was in a dead-end job. I could’ve technically afforded to buy it with all the on-road costs and a drive-away price around $28,000, but I would’ve had absolutely zero money to spend after that.

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I went searching and I was impressed when I saw this for sale:

As you can see it has stripes, though they aren’t ridiculous fat slug trails from front to back. It also has some nice white wheels. Aside from that this car had done about 48,000 kilometres and was going for a price I couldn’t refuse: $15,990. The only problem was that it was coming up to Christmas (the weekend before) and the car was in Sydney. I had organised the loan the week before so the cash was sitting in my bank account ready to go. I just had to organise the purchase. It was an experience in quick-thinking logistics to sortthe flight, accomodation, legal papers, etc etc.

I had my aunt and uncle living in Sydney inspect the car for me and they gave me the thumbs-up, so it was ‘all systems go’ on the plan. Carly and I flew down to Sydney on the Saturday afternoon (5PM flight) and were picked up by the seller in the car from the airport. We drove back to his house and did all the paperwork and exchanged the cash (he wanted cash to buy a replacement car the next day), went to his parents place to pick up the stock wheels and tyres, and everything was a done deal by around 8PM that evening. We waited on the road side while I waited on the phone for the insurance to be instated and away we went.

We stopped off at Carly’s sisters place in Mona Vale for a visit, then drove on to Newcastle. We arrived in Newcastle around 2AM and stayed the night, then took the inland route to Brisbane through Glen Ines etc. We arrived home at around 7.30PM that evening and were well-pleased with our accomplishments! The car performed brilliantly for the journey and never skipped a beat. Although the low-profile tyres and sports suspension sometimes proved to be uncomfortable over the old country roads, the journey was otherwise comfortable and stress-free.

I am now thinking about what extra bits and bobs I can buy for it. I am not sure if I want to modify anything; cars are a more huge money hole than any hobby I’ve had before. I am looking though at getting a cat-back exhaust, or perhaps a full system including extractors, as well as a cold air intake. That’ll be about it though for performance mods as I don’t want to put the car too far out of spec. for the purposes of keeping it drivable for the long term. Cosmetic mods I’m considering are replacing the LEDs on the dashboard from green to white, upgrading the stereo, and maybe replacing the exterior plastics with carbon-fibre look-alikes. Not because I like the look of carbon fibre, but because they’re darker in colour and enameled, so they should last longer.

Another cool toy which I am thinking about getting is a Bluetooth ODB plugin. It connects to the diagnostic computer interface of the car and then you can pair it to your phone. With the aid of an app (Android or iOS), you can get real-time readouts of all the critical system parameters. Considering this requires zero modifications and costs around a hundred bucks, although it’s probably useless it’s still pretty freakin’ cool.

I enjoy using small and light laptops because I believe this type of machine properly fits the purpose of a laptop. Anything larger than 14 inches diagonal screen size and the corresponding laptop body will no longer fit on the average lap. The term ‘desktop replacements’ seems like an oxymoron to me; what’s the point of a laptop that lives 90% of its life on a desk, tethered to power because the battery only lasts two hours?

Anyway, enough proselytizing. This post is about my new laptop which I have become enamored with, to say the least.

As you can see the shape of the system bears a striking resemblance to that of the MacBook Air. However, the main difference is that the Apple offering is less industrial-looking. The Air has a matte finish to its brushed aluminium lid whereas the Zenbook has a more polished look.

Inside the colour is more ‘gunmetal grey’ (one of my favorite colours) than the more silver-looking aluminium of Apple products.

The laptop weighs just over a kilogram and measures just 18 millimetres at its thickest point. Connectivity consists of a USB2, a USB3, SD/MMC card slot, headphone/microphone in/out, micro-HDMI and mini-VGA. The top of the range version sports an Intel Core i7 2677M, 4Gb DDR3, 256Gb SSD, 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. Battery life as tested by Engadget is approximately 8 hours with WiFi enabled.

I have installed Windows 7 Home Premium on mine and it is very nice to use. I intend upon replacing my Lenovo T410 work-provided laptop with my Zenbook. Fortunately my employer is very big on the current trend of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ whereby most of the corporate software stack can be accessed through Citrix XenApp. In terms of functionality it’s basically X window forwarding except it works on all operating systems (sidenote: checking my e-mail in Microsoft Outlook on my Google Android handset is probably one of the most ‘haha, this is so dumb but cool’ technology exercises I have recently undertaken).

At first I tried to use Ubuntu 11.10 on this system. It worked OK but wasn’t suitable for use as a full-time work laptop replacement because of the various issues leading me to doubt the reliability of the system as a whole. As mentioned there are a few issues with Ubuntu 11.10 currently:

• Can’t easily suspend/hibernate: requires tweaking with a custom powerdown script which I can’t get working, although reportedly it does work fine.
• Bluetooth support not available until kernel 3.2.
• Some models have a ‘Sentelic’ touchpad, which is not supported by any drivers at present for multi-touch etc. Other models have an ‘Elantech’ touchpad which is fully supported. You can’t tell which you’re buying until you open it up. I have a ‘Sentelic’ model.
• Currently power consumption on all Sandy Bridge CPUs is poor with kernel 3.0.x and 3.1.x; reportedly fixed in 3.2.x though currently there are workarounds which make the system somewhat unstable.

Unfortunately the lack of Bluetooth and poor touchpad support is a killer. In the office it’s not such a big deal but while I am out on site and needing to connect a USB-to-serial adapter to access the console of networking devices, I can choose to either have a mouse plugged in or my phone or the provided USB-to-Ethernet adapter. When working away from the office on unfamiliar network equipment, it’s typically essential to have at least a console and ethernet or console and mouse.

The performance of the system is very good. This is the first computer I have owned with a solid state drive and I am impressed. I have seen other computers with them but never really used them for an extended period of time to really appreciate how fast an SSD can do things. Now whenever I am using any other computer it seems like I am waiting for far too long for anything to happen.

With Windows the battery life is pretty good. Windows usually reports about 7 hours of life from a full charge, though I have never used the laptop continuously for that long on battery, I have seen a solid five hours out of it with two overnights periods of sleep. This may not be optimal, because I have installed Windows from scratch I can’t install most of the Asus utilities, including the “Instant-On” utility which I presume provides some power saving mechanism.

As compared to my last laptop; well, this one doesn’t compare. It is simply better in every way. Even the integrated graphics are better than the old nVidia graphics chip in my Dell. I experimented by playing Grand Theft Auto III on this laptop and it ran quite well.

The price I paid worked out to be around $1760 from a local retailer. They included a free Bluetooth mouse for some reason which I was quite happy with. Unfortunately for me and my insistence on buying the best version of this laptop I possibly could, paying that price meant I missed on on buying the next model down for around $660 cheaper – an i5 / 128Gb SSD model, which can be had on special at JB HiFi. It’s worth it though. With 256Gb I don’t really have to think about what I put on my system. I just know it’ll all fit.

• ADSL sync started dropping out; line would stay up for between five minutes and two hours though it was seemingly random and always different. It might drop out three times in a row with ten minutes in between and then stay up for two hours. Only to drop out again every fifteen minutes twice in a row, etc. Most of the time it would reconnect at sane speeds, above 5Mbit, but you’d also often get less than 1.5Mbit and essentially the internet was unusable. Typically we sync. at around 11-13Mbit, so even a 5Mbit line speed was pretty shitty.
• During the first week it was a call every other day to iiNet for them to get me to change some random settings on our modem or to try another modem. After three different modems and three different line filters, we decide the problem definitely isn’t on our end.
• It took about a week after our first complaint for iiNet to decide to send someone out. This they did extremely poorly. Our service is under the original owners name (my housemates mother) who is currently living overseas. So the iiNet call centre staff would ask us the best contact point and I would give them my brothers’ name and phone number. Of course, the guy doing the callout never got this information for whatever reason, so our first visit was delayed due to them calling the wrong number and being unable to organise a time to visit – or anything at all – on account of that numbers’ owner being overseas.
• The first guy to visit does some basic testing on the line. His equipment looks like it is straight from a 1980s science-fiction show. Basically all he did was test the voltage, amperage and such on the line, which was normal. He then poked around out the front of the premises where the line comes in from the street. I had never seen this before so was rather annoyed to learn that our cable entry point was actually a twist-tied cable join covered in electrical tape. Still, this line had been fine for ages so I guess that was “good enough”. The guy visiting just cut back the cable to remove any oxidization on the exposed copper and then re-twisted and re-taped it, declaring “problem solved” and the issue fixed.
• This didn’t fix the problem. We still had the same random dropouts and line speed issue. Again iiNet organised a tech to come out, this time a proper Telstra technician. Apparently he was to make changes at the exchange and investigate at our house. Again he was given the wrong number by iiNet and again his visit was delayed by this.
• So up to now about two and a half weeks have passed with no resolution of the problem. This entire time we had been unable to do much of anything online on account of these dropouts and random line speeds.
• Telstra guy shows up and does his work, we are told the problem will be fixed by close of business that day, 7PM. So we wait until 7PM and tentatively fire up all our data-hungry games, video-on-demand etc, and are surprised that we’ve managed to stay online for about five hours or so. Cool.
• Until the day afterwards. Another Telstra technician (or maybe the same one), unbeknown to myself or my brother, shows up. He is let in by family staying temporarily with us and does further work on the line. This time however, he leaves behind a completely non-functioning line. When I arrive at home late in the afternoon to discover that not only do we not have ADSL line synchronisation, but in fact we do not have a dial tone or any kind of service at all, I am completely dumbfounded. They had literally just undone everything we’d been waiting for for the last three weeks. As I write this, the next day, our service is still offline.

What the fuck? I work in this industry. How can anyone fuck up so badly and still be a dominant market force? Oh sorry I forgot, it’s Telstra. I called iiNet to lodge this latest fault – the support guy sounded genuinely surprised – and at the same time had a whinge at them about their poor handling of this whole fiasco. The support tech. was pretty helpful and after I had my little rant to him he apologised to me. I explained to him that I meant no offense, but his apology meant nothing to me as it was obviously not his personal responsibility. I preempted what I thought would be typical blame-game responses by reinforcing the concept of the service contract existing between myself and iiNet, and while yes Telstra had fucked up on this occasion and not iiNet, it was iiNet who I was paying for a service and whatever dealings they had with Telstra behind the scenes were not my concern. I asked if I could be given a one month credit and he agreed to put me through to the billing department for that.

The guy in billing was also quite helpful but at first he told me his supervisor would only give us a three week credit because that was the length of the fault time. I responded by saying to him that at this very moment, our service was still not fixed, so should I wait for it to still not be fixed in a weeks’ time and call back then? He said that he hadn’t thought of it like that and then asked his supervisor again, and I was given a one month credit.

At this point in time, if our line is fixed today and the credit goes through without problems I will be once again happy-with-but-cautious-of-recommending iiNet to anyone else. If the service isn’t fixed today, without some plausible excuse as to why, I will have to seriously reconsider my subscription to iiNet.

To pull this all back to the title of this post, the way the NBN works would mean that more companies than Telstra alone could have been called in to investigate the fault initially, thereby reducing our chance of extended downtime.