McCulloch House Blog

iPhone: Multiple Recipient SMS's are Sent as MMS

2009-07-06T16:23:00.004+10:00

I discovered today that the iPhone doesn't support multiple-recpient SMSs. In fairness, no phone I know really does. Most phones when sending such SMSs will send a single-recipient SMS separately to each recipient. The phones just save you the trouble of typing the message X number of times.

Today I discovered adding a second recipient to an SMS on the iPhone automatically causes the SMS to be sent as an MMS, regardless of whether there is any multimedia in the message being sent.

This is a huge disadvantage in Australia. A large percentage of the people I know aren't able to receive MMSs. For myself it costs more for me to send a single MMS than it does to send two SMSs, and that's the best case scenario assuming I'm not being charged per recipient.

Oh well, I aint going to get hung up on it, but if you send multiple SMSs a lot and you see MMSs on your bill, you'll know why.

A discussion has already been started on this at Apple's Forums.

Cost-Effective Potatoe w/ Sauce for the Economic Crisis

2009-07-01T21:03:00.005+10:00

Tonight I cooked another economic crisis friendly potato based meal, at only $3.26 per serving.

Ingredients (makes 4 Servings)

4 Large (375g) Potatoes	$4.46
400g Diced Tomatoes	$0.75
184g Champignons	$0.99
1 Large Onion	$0.40
1 Large Carrot	$0.25
1 Small Broccoli	$2.00
430g Olives Black Sliced (1 cup of which is needed)	$2.14
3 Garlic Cloves	$0.20
500g Tasty Cheese (1/10 of which is needed)	$4.09
Total Cost for 4 Servings	$13.05
Cost per Serving	$3.26

Bake the potatoes in the oven, until cooked, probably 90 minutes. About 15 minutes out from the potatoes being ready, mix all the other ingredients together in a pot on the stove until vegetables are cooked to your liking.

* All costs are estimates in Australian Dollars. Homebrand or other cheap brands were used wherever possible.

A Great Breakfast

2009-06-27T12:50:00.004+10:00

I have discovered a great breakfast. For the past while I've been trying a few different healthy things to eat for breakfast, in an endeavor to launch myself into the day more effectively. Well for the past month I've been going pretty consistently on what seems to be a great breakfast.

My breakfast consists of:

1 Bowl Sanitarium Skippy Cornflakes with:

1/2 Banana
3 Prunes
Fruit, Seed and Nut Mix

Note: This isn't exactly a cheap breakfast. Prunes and Fruit, Seed and Nut mixes aren't cheap. I did however find that Sanitarium's Skippy Cornflakes were cheaper than the more popularily known Kellogs Cornflakes.

Cost-Effective Spaghetti Bolognaise for the Economic Crisis

2009-06-22T21:30:00.014+10:00

Tonight my wife and I cooked a very economic crisis friendly spaghetti bolognaise, at only $1.80 per serving!

Ingredients (makes 6 Servings)

500g Spaghetti	$0.99
500g Premium Beef Mince on Special	$4.00
400g Diced Tomatoes	$0.80
184g Champignons	$1.06
400g Three Bean Mix	$0.96
1 Large Onion	$0.40
1 Large Carrot	$0.25
430g Olives Black Sliced (1 cup of which is needed)	$2.14
3 Garlic Cloves	$0.20
Total Cost for 6 Servings	$10.80
Cost per Serving	$1.80

Put the Spaghetti in a pot on the stove, cook for approx. 20 minutes in boiling water. Cook the mince in a frying pan, once brown add onions diced and garlic cloves crushed. Once further cooked add diced tomatoes, a cup of olives and all the remaining ingredients to the mix.

Once the spaghetti is soft and ready to eat, the bolognaise should be ready. Serve and enjoy.

Bonus: The extra bonus of this meal is the lack of added fats, sugars and salts that come with using bottled or jarred bolognaise sauces. Resist adding any bought tomatoe sauce too! You don't need it.

* All costs are estimates in Australian Dollars. Homebrand or other cheap brands were used wherever possible.

Solution to Luke Surl's Chess-Doku (Comic No.: 174)

2009-06-22T16:03:00.005+10:00

My brother, Christopher McCulloch, solved the chess-doku that Luke posted today. I've posted his solution below.

Good work Chris :).

Click to enlarge.

You can see the chess-doku problem here.

Update: Luke pointed out there was a flaw in the solution above, but I'm still impressed. :) There's an accepted solution Luke posted here.

Strange and Beautiful Music

2009-06-04T15:21:00.005+10:00

I heard a beautiful song today, so beautiful, so touching I felt compelled to blog it. It's not new, I don't remember it being popular but it's beautiful in it's own, simple way. I actually found the song in the movie Wicker Park, which if you haven't seen is definitely worth a watch.

Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung

Click the "play full song here" to play the full song.

EDIT: I removed the link to the Wicker Park trailer...because I watched the trailer after posting this, and the trailer sucks. Just watch the movie.

Questioning our Actions, Making Decisions

2009-05-28T12:42:00.003+10:00

As leaders, don't we have an obligation to question our actions, and make sure our decisions are the right decisions?

A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong. He accepts the consequences and lives with them, everyday.

Quoted from conversation between Captain Lee Adama and Admiral William Adam on Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Episode 2: Water.

How to Create a file of Specified Size

2009-05-22T20:49:00.004+10:00

So today for...unimportant reasons, I wanted to create a very large file, in the vicinity of 20Gb, without having to actually do any real work to create the file.

I found out in Windows there is a command you can use:

fsutil file createnew [filename] [size]

where:
filename = The filename for the file you are creating
e.g. file.txt or C:\Directory\file.txt

size = size of the file in bytes
e.g. 2147483648 for 2Gb

example:
fsutil file createnew twogigabytefile.txt 2147483648

On Mac OS X 10.5 you can use:

mkfile [size] [filename]

where:
filename = The filename for the file you are creating
e.g. file.txt or
~/directory/file.txt

size = size of the file in bytes
e.g.
512 for 512 bytes, or use the following suffixes b = half kilobytes, k = kilobytes, m = megabytes and g = gigabytes, i.e. 10m for 10 megabytes.

example:
mkfile 2147483648 twogigabytefile.txt
or
mkfile 2g twogigabytefile.txt

How to Extract the contents of an MSI Installer File

2009-04-27T16:19:00.003+10:00

Have you ever wanted to just get at the contents of an MSI file, without having to install the whole application or library? It's easy, just use the following command at the console:

msiexec /a yourmsifile.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\extracted

Note the TARGETDIR must be an absolute path.

Getting Fat

2009-04-23T09:26:00.006+10:00

A photo that marketing tells me will cause people not to read this post. (not me)

I was contemplating being fat a few nights back. A couple of years ago I put on weight, a lot of it. I'm sorta over it now, had my fun and want to return to my previous figure.

Anyway, I was contemplating being fat and I thought, if I'm fat because I'm eating too much or eating unnecessarily then I obviously have more food than I need. And if I have more of anything than I need I obviously have more capacity to share and give.

If we are fat, literally or figuratively, it might mean we need to share more. It's not to say if you have a weight problem you definitely need to share more, but maybe, maybe you do?

Enjoy what you have...

2009-04-14T22:53:00.004+10:00

"Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have. Dreaming about nice things is like chasing the wind."
-- Paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 6:9 (New Living Translation)

Battlestar Galactica uses PC (John Hodgman)

2009-04-01T15:15:00.002+11:00

While watching episode 15 of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica sometime back, I had noticed a character who looked like the PC out of the Apple Mac ads. But the people I was watching it with denied my claim, and I never chased it up and resigned myself that I was wrong and the majority was right. Today I came across it by accident, but it turns out my eyes weren't lying!

See a photo of "PC" on Battlestar Galactica over at IMDB: pin.nu/bsgpcphoto
See his wikipedia page as well for further proof.

I haven't embedded the image because I'm not sure of the legal implications with this particular photo. Nor do I want a PC on my blog.

A Battelstar Galactica perspective on the things God prepares us for

2009-03-26T10:54:00.004+11:00

** SPOILERS BELOW **

Final episode of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) has been released, and I finally got the opportunity to watch it last night and WOW what an experience. It had to be the most emotional, intense as well as satisfying end of a TV series. The music was as usual overwhelmingly immaculate. There's one part that stood out to me. Throughout the entire BSG series Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six have been on this journey, that would seem like the "god" of the BSG universe is guiding them and preparing them for something bigger. They have doubts, they have challenges and on numerous occasions it just seems like yes maybe they are pawns in some greater plan but chances are they're no different to anyone else but just obsessed with an idea of some greater power.

In the final episode they both indeed fulfill on what they had been prepared for. Due to all their preparation they are in the right place, at the right time to save, Hera Agathon, the young half-human, half-cylon girl and rescue her returning her to the CIC (the main command centre of the ship). That act that god had prepared them for was so insignificant compared to what they imagined it might have been, in a flash it was done and gone.

Baltar: "Hera, will she be alright?"
Angel Six: "She survived, thanks to you."
Angel Baltar: "Both of you."
Caprica Six: "And that's it, that's all god wants of us?"
Angel Six: "God's plan is never complete."
Baltar: "Great."
Angel Baltar: "But I think it's safe to say from now on your lives will be less eventful."

The reason such an act was unexpected in the show, is because we don't think something God would be preparing us for could be so insignificant. We relate to God preparing us for things that are bigger and better, things that are newer, things that are going to stand out bright compared to all our preparation. But it should be obvious to us now, the things God prepares us for, may seem so insignificant to us we might not even realise we've fulfilled on our training. God has a bigger plan than we'll ever understand in this world, so never underestimate the smallest things you do.

Photo of Gaius Baltar from TV Series Battlestar Galactica, downloaded from BattlestarWiki. This is a promotional photo falling under the fair use clause, which includes photos from press kits and used in promotion of the series.

Safari 4 - How to Set your Top Sites URLs Manually

2009-03-25T12:34:00.004+11:00

One thing that I love about Safari 4 is the Top Sites page that you get. I love the Opera interface, so along with Safari intergrating tabs into the titlebar, and the new Top Sites I'm right at home. The thing I've been frustrated about is that I couldn't figure out how to set the Top Site buttons to specific URLs. The only way I could get the sites pinned on there that I wanted was to delete each one, until the ones I wanted showed up.

Well finally I just stumbled across the solution. If I open the URL I want to put in the Top Sites, and open it in another window. I can easily drag the URL from the address bar onto a Top Sites button (in Edit mode), and that becomes the new URL for that button. See the video below.

AMCA Blacklist leaked on Internet

2009-03-19T16:36:00.005+11:00

The day after I blog about the AMCA's blacklist and it's $11,000-a-day fine for linking to any of the pages on it, and here in the news the blacklist has been leaked on the Internet.

According to the smh article, Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the Electronic Frontiers Australia, has said the Government could be considered a "promoter and disseminator of links to some pretty unsavoury material." And it's true, here the AMCA are claiming that this list, and it's fines and regulations that go with it are here to protect people but they've essentially found all the bad websites on the Internet and put them all in one place. Curious kids, or even adults will now search and find the list and the AMCA's blacklist will actually encourage the visiting of these websites.

Unfortunately though it seems the list isn't all about the bad websites. There's plenty of unexplained content on there, including stuff from YouTube, religious websites including Christian websites and even a tour guide operator and Queensland dentist.

AMCA Fine you for Linking to Blacklisted Content

2009-03-18T06:50:00.009+11:00

The latest in the news regarding the AMCA's interest in filtering internet content is the news that you can be fined $11,000 a day that you host content in Australia which links to websites on the AMCA's blacklist. At this point in time the list includes mostly illegal content, but has already expanded to include some 506 legal R18+ and X18+ rated websites, and it is well-known that any form of filtering on the Internet will result in more than just illegal/really-bad content being blocked, just look at what's happened elsewhere in the world. Today they block child porn and tomorrow we have China-like censorship.

From the smh article, to which I agree, "The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment."

The biggest problem I see with any sort of internet censoring is that once a government body takes responsibility for blocking illegal/inappropriate content, it creates a sense that if something isn't blocked then it is approved. Once that pattern of thinking sets in someone will come up with the bright idea of banning more content, and more content, and before we know it we have websites being blocked for saying the wrong thing.

I agree with the AMCA that child porn and alike shouldn't be available online, however I don't need AMCA filters and fines to choose not to visit those types of websites. And in regards to keeping kids safe from such content, it is your job as a parent to monitor your child's online interactions, no one else's!

One thing to take from the AMCA's intention to fine websites $11,000 a day, is to realise it's a great time to move your website to a web hosting firm that house their servers elsewhere, like the US, UK or Sweden.

P.S.: According to a related article on efa.org.au the full Australian blacklist is kept secret, so good luck avoiding the $11,000 fine.

Projection

2009-03-14T16:45:00.005+11:00

Linked from Battlestar Wiki and copyright by Universal Studios. Use of it here is believed to be fair use.

In the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004), cylons do something they call projection. No matter their environment or experiences they project an environment they find more pleasing. So walking down a dark, uninteresting, cold hallway in a spaceship for them they can experience, as did Tricia Helfer as a Number Six, a beautiful rain forest.

This science fiction concept of projection isn't far from how we already, knowingly or not, experience our own reality. The main difference being we aren't aware that what we experience as reality is in-fact a projection, and we aren't aware that we actually have a choice.

You won't physically see, hear and feel a rain forest while walking down a dark, cold hallway. But what you would experience walking through a rainforest, you are capable of experiencing anywhere, anytime and with anyone. It just requires you choose that experience.

What we experience is defined by us not by our circumstances, but we neglect to choose our experience resulting in a default to whatever our circumstances have to offer. Think of Paul (Philippians), in prison he was able to feel joy, peace and love. His experience weren't defined by his circumstances but instead he chose to look elsewhere, to look at Jesus. Through knowing, remembering and thinking of Jesus and knowing and experiencing who Jesus is Paul could experience joy, peace and love.

Google Suggests Suicide

2009-03-14T08:41:00.003+11:00

My wife recently discovered that when typing the words "best way to" into the Google search tool in Firefox, Google provides the following search suggestion high on it's list, "best way to commit suicide." Click on the image above to see the full window shot.

My understanding with Google Suggestions is they are provided based on other peoples common searches. If millions of people search for "ice cream" then entering "ice" will result with Google suggesting "ice cream." It's an interesting technology I assume based on the idea that if someone has searched for it once, someone else will search for it again. But this suggestion above proves to complicate things. Suggestion tools usually serve to turn popular searches into exponentially popular searches.

Firefox on it's own, and Google should be safe for kids/teens. When monitoring our kids and teens using the internet we're usually very interested with what websites they're going to, but not other information displayed in the browser that isn't a webpage. For teens depression is rather common place, with some going as far as suicide. But for a kid whose in despair and looking up online "best way to something else," and it comes up with "best way to commit suicide" that search suggestion could be detrimental.

If you have kids, turn off the Google Suggestions in your browser. You don't know what ideas it's putting in their heads.

Online File Storage

2009-03-13T23:53:00.007+11:00

I've recently fallen in love with the idea that online file storage would be cool to setup for easily sharing files between my wife and a few friends computers. It's not uncommon I need to send a 20-30MB file, and email doesn't handle that well. Or sometimes I just want to make a file available quickly on a URL to a group of friends, or maybe even an album of photos.

Now I know there are services that already exist for emailing last files, and I own a web hosting business so I have plenty of webspace I can FTP a file to, and yes I know about Flickr and Facebook for sharing photos. But what I've discovered transcends all these pre-existing services when it comes to ease and integration into my computers user interface. With the drag of a file I can do all of the above thanks to the new service, Dropbox.

Dropbox seems to be based around the concepts of a versioning system like Subversion rather than your typical online storage. Files are stored locally and then synchronised immediately with the server upon changing, using diffs of the files instead of transmitting the entire file on each sync. Files even have revisions based on previous syncs, and you can recover deleted files too. Your Dropbox contains a Public directory allowing you to quickly share a file with anyone via URL, and it also contains a Photos directory where photos and directories within it immediately translate to albums and photos you can share using direct links.

Dropbox does it not only with features, but with grace. Syncs occur immediately and quickly, especially compared to other services like Apple's iDisk, and if you're transferring large files it's easy to find out how long it's estimated it'll take to sync. So in short I'm in love. Give it a go, Dropbox works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Style - What are we missing?

2009-03-13T10:26:00.004+11:00

Hey so in the world of successful entrepreneurs, Nikki Lee is the one I see having the most fun. She's taken on designing, inspiring young adults and with her sister, Anita, discovering your unique style.

Their business ZaZaZu is odd and foreign to me, although that's probably because I'm a software engineer who on an average day has about as much style as a wild animal. But regardless of that, I can't help feel inspired when reading about their business. An article on their website caught my eye. It's looking at the "Golden Era," and really taking a look at what we miss from it. It's an enjoyable read, and something I feel like I now miss and want too.

Article: http://www.zazazu.com.au/soapbox/articles/20-the-lost-age-of-elegance.html

P.S. If you want to checkout the sort of thing they do at ZaZaZu, checkout this video linked from their facebook page.

An Inspiring Method to Studying the Bible

2009-03-01T13:02:00.006+11:00

There are several problems with the commonly used methods of studying the word. If you've ever used the S.O.A.P. method, you'd agree it's good however they miss a step for the sake of making a catchy acronym. If you've ever used the Swedish method, you'd probably also agree it's good, but it has too many steps to remember them all and lacks simplicity.

The last time I prepared a bible study, I decided to come up with my own approach to studying the word. One, yes, inspired by these previous two methods, except following a set of requirements, much like how I define requirements for software I develop. These requirements were:

Short
Simple
Inspiring
Action Encouraging

The method I invented/re-invented/whatever is not an acronym, sorry, you'll just have to remember the 4 steps in total. P.S. If you notice, 'acronym' wasn't in my list of requirements.

First Impressions - After having read and absorbed the passage, what stands out, what observations can you make. Note: as a "first impression" you are to be looking at this passage with no preconceived ideas, even if you have read it before!
Concerns - What is there that needs to be explained? What doesn't make sense? Or, why does it make sense?
Revelation - What is there to be discovered?
Action - What is there to do? To declare? To commit to? Or to pray about?

Steps 1 and 2 create an appropriate context for step 3. By giving up any pre-conceived ideas, and truly getting a 'first impression' of the passage, Step 1 allows you to see the passage in new light, and Step 2 will then allow you to understand it. So don't rush through them quickly to get to Step 3.

Hope you find it as useful as I do :).

Protecting your Intellectual Property / Trademarks

2009-02-24T15:29:00.007+11:00

The Internet has made it easy for us to get ahold of information. Information about history, from literature, movies, gossip...the list goes on. And as social networking becomes commonplace amoung the young the ease to find out personal information online has increased dramatically.

If you haven't heard, there have been cases where Facebook users have been caught out saying nasty things about their employers and in one case getting caught taking a sicky when they weren't really sick, costing the employee their job.

Evermore is your own trademark, your own intellectual property, your name and everything that goes with it, now something that can condemn you or make you shine. Once upon a time your name and your reputation made its way via word of mouth and if you ever stuffed up it'd be rare if your next employer would find out. How that contrasts with today. I can lookup my doctor/hair dresser/physio/massuse/whatever on Facebook and find out who his friends are, see the photos of his last birthday party, so on...

But how does this really affect you? If I was interviewing you tomorrow, prior to our appointment I would have Google'd you, Facebook'd you, and so on. If I was hiring you for web design, and I found a poor eye-sore of a personal home page, I'd probably discard you there and then. If I was hiring you for something else and found you bad-mouthing your last employer on Facebook, I'd probably discard you too.

So this lead myself to ask, what can I do to protect my online reputation and my name. The obvious thing is commonsense. Don't act online in anyway you wouldn't act offline. The second, and something I strongly encourage you to do is I registered [myname].com, i.e. leighmcculloch.com. With Google searches it's easy to get a domain in the top 10 if it exactly matches a search, so if you put up a web page stating who you are and your qualifications, you'll have a presentable online version of yourself for future employers to find. If you're not web-savvy, there are a few options online that make it very easy to get a website with little to no technical knowledge.

NSW Loses Public Holidays

2009-02-23T14:05:00.004+11:00

It's only just come to my attention that New South Wales in Australia (where I reside) will likely be losing two public holidays this year.

ANZAC Day (25th April 2009) - falling this year on a Saturday.
Boxing Day (26th December 2009) - also falling on a Saturday.

As I crawl around online forums, reading peoples opinions, and seeing the email petitions, I can't help feel a nasty taste in the back of my throat. There is a real sense that we deserve these public holidays. On one side I love public holidays, as do most Australians, and while I stand undecided on Boxing Day, I have to highlight that ANZAC Day has nothing to do with having a day off. Technically ANZAC Day is still a public holiday, but it falls on a Saturday, as it should this year. The day is marked as a public holiday, which allows anyone who works on the 25th April, whether it be a week day or a Saturday, to remember and honor the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

The solidiers who fought at Gallipoli gave there lives for all Australians. They put their lives on the line, and you Australian's are bitching about working one extra day this year? Just because ANZAC Day doesn't fall on a day you work?!

Flash Webcam

2009-02-10T14:33:00.007+11:00

If you have a computer on a secure network you'll understand the frustration in trying to access a webcam on the computer remotely. About the only way you can really monitor a room or desk when the computer is behind a NAT or firewall, is to have that computer upload to an FTP server. But what good is that? You then have to download the images individually, it's pretty painful. Plus most apps out there (free or paid) that do this, only allow uploading to a single file. So you'll only ever have the latest image.

That's why I wrote autocam. Autocam is programmed in Flash ActionScript 3, and basically sits there trying to load an image over and over. It correctly handles partial images, detecting if only part of an image has been uploaded onto the FTP server, as well as caches all the images it's currently loaded. On first load it automatically displays the latest picture uploaded, but dragging the slider at the bottom will disable the auto showing the latest, and will allow you to flip through all the previous files it has.

It's not ground breaking, and it isn't designed to solve all your problems. But it'll allow you to view a webcam, and then scroll back through frames you've downloaded. Use it for personal stuff, but © 2009 Leigh McCulloch, All Rights Reserved. If you use windows, you can use Fwink to upload from the webcam, and on Mac I think EvoCam does FTP too.

Download: autocam-1.1.zip

Update: A friend has written basically the same thing, but in Silverlight instead of Flash: autocam_silverlight.zip

Digital TV Australia

2009-02-09T11:19:00.003+11:00

This is a JPEG 72dpi version of the poster freely available at scifi.com/battlestar.

Doomsday Labs has an article on Digital TV this morning, in the context of America. Well here in Australia the government has been pushing Digital TV as well, and I welcome it. Sometime in the near future we'll be losing Analog and Digital will be the only available medium for mainstream free TV.

Advantages like more channels, and the ability for stations to easily setup new channels is the main thing that interests me. For too long Australia has been limited to providing content for the main stereotype of TV watchers. Stations like TEN, Seven and Nine have only 24 hours a day to display content, and there is much more content available than what can fit into the primetime slots. For Australian's like myself that prefer TV shows that aren't the mainstream interest, like Battlestar Galactica, it means we don't really get to see our favourite TV shows, leaving us with no option to wait for DVD releases.