Per Vivere [To Live]

Wayne Swan's Anti-Solar Budget

2008-05-20T09:59:00.003+10:00

I was completely bewildered by the Government’s decision last week to means test the solar rebate scheme. We recently built a house and invested a significant amount of time, effort and money in designing it to be suitable for our environment and as sustainable as sensible (on our budget). As we are already 100% water self sufficient, the next step for us was to install solar panels to offset our energy use. I would not consider myself an unintelligent man, yet none of the arguments presented by Wayne Swan or Peter Garrett in the press make any sense to me at all.

Mr Garrett was quoted in The Age as saying "You do see over a long period of time some significant cost advantages". The fact of it is, even with the rebate, the return on investment nears or, in my calculations, was significantly beyond the warranty period (and I assume expected usable life) of the equipment. I would suspect very few people interested and in a position to participate in this program are in it for the economic advantages, because realistically, they simply aren’t there. So the argument of making a program that has no real economic advantage more accessible to a lower socio-economic group seems at best odd if the Government genuinely wants this program to succeed and make a difference.

With the Queensland Government’s, Solar Homes Program, they seemed to have a great model whereby they proposed to underwrite the bulk purchase and installation of 1000, 1kW systems at a time. The expected (pre rebate) cost of these systems was around $9500, opposed to the market value of $13000 to $15000. (I am sure there is a question to be answered there too about the solar industry...) I believe that in a matter of days they received 3000 applications for the initially available 1000 places. It would be very interesting to see where the demographic balance of these applications now sits with respect to the rebate means test.

Perhaps it’s time to dust off the Cool the Globe petition?!?!

Happy 44th Sailrocket (knot that is)

2008-04-23T08:58:00.004+10:00

For a few years now I've been following the efforts of Paul Larsen, an Aussie who is trying to sail above the mystical 50 knot ceiling and consequently break the world speed sailing record.

This week he hit a peak of 44 knots while they're still "shaking down" the boat. He and the designer reckon there's another (theoretical) 15 knots in Sailrocket by dropping all the logging and video gear and the additional rigging that makes day to day runs easier and with getting the tuning right.

The thing that I love about this project is that Sailrocket is based on a design by Bernard Smith from the 1960's. What a visionary!

It's a little like one of those "pick the differences" games...

24 Solo

2008-04-22T08:47:00.002+10:00

Stirred on by Fabian, Eric and Patrick doing a team 24hr over the weekend, I finally got organised and bought a mountain bike and have vowed to get into this mountain biking bit that Fabe's been obsessed with for a couple of years now. He lent me the movie "24 Solo" a little while ago and I only got around to watching it last night. Absolutely inspirational!

Some notes:
* Gary Fisher is a dude! :)
* Eatough was a decent guy even in despair...
* Eatough's manager's behaviour in spitting the dummy and stomping off when he (they?) lost seems interesting (read: reprehensible) behaviour for the guy that's supposed to be motivating you.
* Interesting they cut the bit where Eatough's manager acknowledges Gordon (even if he didn't know his name) as shown in the outtakes.
* The guy doing it on a single speed (a.k.a. BMX) was nuts!

Thumbday

2008-04-07T09:56:00.002+10:00

A colleague explained his work ethic to me on Friday. As he just this minute (10:00AM, Monday) sat at his desk, it reminded me.

He held out his right hand, palm down, and listed aloud, while pointing in step to his thumb through to little-finger, the days of the week. "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday..." He then explained to me that the "Monday" and "Friday" fingers were significantly shorter than the others and his attendance hours were adjusted accordingly...

Can't be arguing with this logic :)

Tradesmen

2008-02-15T09:32:00.006+10:00

I have a few friends in the process of, or about to start building houses. I have some advice for dealing with tradesmen. This may sound harsh and it may be a gross generalisation, but having just gone through the process myself and dealing with many trades over the last year, I feel it justified.

Treat them like idiots! The decent ones will understand and there is a very slim chance that you might get your point across to the not-so-decent ones. Hold their hand and explain every little thing that you expect, if you leave anything to interpretation, I will guarantee you'll be disappointed.

Most recent case in point: We had turf laid yesterday. I had left a sleeper blocking a gap in some palings that our dogs could escape through. (Yes, partly my fault. I should have removed it before going to work.) Imagine my surprise to get home and see the turf ever so neatly cut in around the sleeper. It would have been a lot less effort to remove it and just run the turf through, so it wasn't laziness. I am sure they actually believed that this loose sleeper, leaning against the house and protruding into the yard was a permanent feature that I intended to mow and trim around for evermore...

5 year olds

2007-12-20T20:31:00.000+10:00

This is pretty wrong, but pretty amusing all the same...

25

House Construction - progress

2007-11-25T20:15:00.000+10:00

It's getting really close. Going to be touch and go for a hand-over before Christmas though.

Plastering pretty much finished, painters and hopefully kitchen and bathrooms in this week.

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

Collage

House Construction - progress

2007-11-06T08:29:00.001+10:00

It's been a coupe of weeks since I've posted pics. A fair bit has happened - the inside is taking shape now, so the external shots won't be showing much change from here on.

Gyprock is up, fireplace installed, doors delivered.

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

Collage

Smart Cycle

2007-11-02T08:18:00.000+10:00

Yes, you could do this... orrrr you could go outside and ride your bloody bike!

House Construction - progress

2007-10-08T07:27:00.000+10:00

Well, it's actually starting to look like a house (from some angles). Wall cladding is going on, some roof battens installed, so the roof has got to be getting close. Lots of scaffolding up, so they can work on the high side. The bath is sitting in the middle of the lounge and we have some of the doors in the garage waiting to be installed, so all in all things are still moving along pretty quickly.

Sketchup

2007-10-06T11:02:00.000+10:00

Some years ago, I was a Monday to Friday AutCAD user. Which I think made me a bit of a CAD snob. In recent times when I've had to draw up bits and pieces I've tried a few free / open source apps and have never been happy with the features or interface. I also downloaded Google SketchUp a while ago and never really gave it a chance.

Last night I got the latest version and spent a few hours toying with some ideas for a Gazebo. I am incredibly impressed! Once I was a little used to the interface, it's really intuitive and the output is fantastic.

Hmmm, what to do next... Chook Pen, Work Bench???

PS - The shadows are for Christmas lunch at the precise location it will be built.

House Construction - progress

2007-10-02T13:23:00.000+10:00

More action this week, all the windows are in and supposed to start on the roof and cladding (hopefully) by the weekend.

Pool was dug Friday (well, the hole for the pool...) and concreted up yesterday, which left us with a heap more landscaping / earthworks to do...

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

Collage

VELO

2007-10-02T13:12:00.000+10:00

I just wandered down the road to grab some lunch (mmmmmm pide...) and was confronted by a group of tourists (a regular occurence in the China Town mall). One couple I noticed, were holding hands, wearing identical t-shirts, with identical (very large) lettering. On the first was "VE" and the second "LO", which left me wondering "What the hell is VELO?!?!" Until I noticed the tiny "LO" preceeding the big "VE" and the tiny "VE" following the big "LO". "Ahhhhh 'Love'!" If you're going to do that sort of thing, the very least you can do is stand in the correct order...

How nausiatingly cute. :-)

How To: Fly Like a Bird (aka - Project: Driftnet)

2007-09-27T08:16:00.000+10:00

One of the things that feeds my passion in IT is human interaction with systems. I'm not talking keyboard and mouse stuff, I mean interactive vision systems and voice control and haptic type things and wearable computers.

This, I absolutely love!

Imagine flying like a bird through a musical composition that surrounds you, immerses you and reacts to your presence.

Driftnet is a confluence of two ideas – bird-like flight, and a spatialised, navigable musical environment.

House Construction - progress

2007-09-24T08:13:00.000+10:00

Yep, loads done this week. Wall frames pretty much complete, roof trusses and rafters almost there, veranda done, just the rafters over to complete the frame.

Funny thing is that they got a couple of things completely wrong to what was designed and shown on the plans - in both cases we prefer the way they've done it and are going to leave it that way.

The Media room has about a 3m high ceiling rather than the 2.4m proposed. I think should work quite well for the mini-cinema we intend using the room for.

The Porch and Entry were supposed to have separated, raftered (raked ceiling) roofs. They have built it as a single roof over both, which gives a lot more volume to the Entry. It does make the external roof lines a lot less tidy than the original design, but I'm guessing we'll spend more time looking from the inside out, than perched high above the house looking down at the roof...

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

Collage

House Construction - progress

2007-09-18T12:33:00.000+10:00

Not a heap of progress this week just gone... but wait 'til next week! :-)

We went out last night after work and we now have a deck. Very exciting. The effect of being up high (level with the tree tops) and the ground falling steeply away below is everything that we were hoping for with our design.

The frames look they've now been braced to have the roof trusses installed, so maybe they'll be in this weekends pics too.

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

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Company Car

2007-09-14T10:12:00.000+10:00

Driving through the city yesterday afternoon and was passed by an orange Lamborghini Gallardo (though the Lambo varient of this colour is more like ORANGE) with "www.superoffice.com" across the back bumper.

Nice company car!!!

House Construction - progress

2007-09-08T18:32:00.000+10:00

Well the builders aren't setting a blistering pace, but they are doing a very nice job. Found a couple of things in the frames that aren't right to the plans and a bloody great window that we really don't want there anymore. Will have to catch up with the builder this week to see what we can do.

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Looking West

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Bird

2007-09-03T13:11:00.000+10:00

My cousin and family were up from Melbourne the other day, so we took them to a nice little restaurant at a vineyard / winery a little North of where we live.

This little bird was near the front door to meet us.

PS: I admit it, I did reposition it ever so slightly... :)

House Construction

2007-09-03T08:29:00.000+10:00

I've been threatening to do this for a little while...

Looking East

Looking South-East

Looking South

Tahoe - .Net Micro Framework Dev Kit

2007-09-02T21:32:00.000+10:00

I have been following the .Net Micro Framework from the sideline since Beta.

The Microsoft .NET Micro Framework is an environment that extends the advantages of Microsoft .NET and the toolset in the Microsoft Visual Studio development system into a class of smaller, less expensive, and more resource-constrained devices than previously possible with other Microsoft embedded offerings.

Having read the book, it was high time that I got out of the kiddies pool (playing with the emulator/simulator) and bought some hardware.

The application that I have in mind is an autonomous robot (of sorts) that is actually better suited to a headless device. Of the devices that I found running the Micro Framework the Embedded Fusion, Tahoe kit seemed by far the most impressive (and I'll live with the cool little colour screen that I don't really need, but am sure I'll find a use for).

The kit that got delivered was in this great little case, with the dev board safely encased in foam. Included in the kit was a 180 day trial of Visual Studio, the emulator, sample apps and doco on a CD and a startup booklet.

Before purchasing the board, I emailed with some questions and got prompt responses and even a call from the MD of the New Zealand company. I cannot speak highly enough of the service and product received from Embedded Fusion.

Do the Waggle Dance

2007-08-28T07:58:00.000+10:00

Last night I went to a BrisScience hosted lecture presented by Prof Mandyam Srinivasan. The lecture was titled: Small Brains, Smart Minds: Vision, Navigation, and ‘Cognition’ in Honeybees and Applications to Robotics. Having been involved in some (very humble in comparison) machine vision and autonomous robotics, this subject absolutely fascinates me, and Prof Srini did not disappoint. The Profs team train and research Honeybees and apply their findings to UAV's and terrain following applications.

Some of the findings included the bees use of matching the apparent speed of objects passing their periphery to maintain a path through the center of obstacles. An experiment the team performed to confirm this was to train the bees to fly through a tunnel with vertically striped walls. The bees flew a path down the center of the walls. On subsequent passes they moved the stripes on one wall forwards or backwards. The bee would attempt to match the speed of the stripes passing its left and right sides and change its path to the left or right of the tunnel appropriately (for some reason this amused the hell out of me).

Something else that Prof Srini introduced to me was the Waggle Dance. A bee returns to the hive after finding a food source and communicates to the others the distance and direction (polar coordinates) from the hive. The team again tricked the poor bee with their stripy tunnel, this time into thinking that it had flown 200 meters when it had, in fact, only flown about 10. The result was that it returned and communicated back to the hive (what it thought was) the location of the food source. The other bees then flew 200 meters in the appropriate direction to find no such food source. When I recanted this to my wife she asked if the other bees then returned and beat up on the first bee for giving them a bum steer. :-)

One of the things that I love about autonomous vehicles and robotics is the way that they develop 'personalities' (a.k.a. random or unintended behavior). The robot soccer players we toyed with at Uni seemed to have specific traits that they exhibited when the vision system lost track of them. One would turn circles on the spot until it was found again, another would do a full speed suicide run into the fence and launch itself over the top, into the distance. As I mentioned, one of the Profs teams experiments was using their findings from the bees to develop a terrain following robot. Prof Srini showed a video of the robot elegantly following the 'L' shaped course to the goal, then, rather than retracing its path home, it made a 'bee' line back to its starting point.

I think labeling this behavior a lazy personality trait is way more interesting than a failure or unintended path optimisation (but maybe that's just me...)

F430 + Fluffy Dice

2007-08-13T07:14:00.000+10:00

I was nice and early to work today, so got a prime car-park, right next to an F430. As I pulled into the park I glanced sideways to see a pair of fluffy dice hanging from the mirror. Some people just shouldn't be let have beautiful things!If there is a positive to this, the die were rosso corsa...

CD Hole Art

2007-06-28T07:33:00.000+10:00

Stumbled across these. Very amusing... :-)

Tesla

2007-06-22T08:06:00.000+10:00

"I’ll just stand over hear in my protective Lycra, by this steel shed where it’s safe..."

"It’s ooookayyy, I’m wearing my foil beanie!"

Makes ya proud to be an Aussie. :-) This site has some pretty cool experiments documented.