almost over

Sadly the holiday is over and I'm on my way home. First stopover was 8 hours in London, I took the oppurtunity to do some siteseeing, so some photographic proof follows:

Now I'm in transit in Singapore (for just 45 minutes.) The local mobile phone company gives you free wireless access if you register your mobile phone with them (via global roaming.) Certainly an enticement that other mobile phone companies could learn from ( I visit Singapore on a regular basis, so next time they get my business.) Anyway, this blog will shortly return to technical topics (but I'll probably keep slipping the odd useful photo in.)

Posted at 09:29PM Sep 27, 2004 by oz in General  | 

France

Went to Chamonix (in France near the Swiss border) and stayed with an old school friend. Took the childrean up to Aguille du Midi (at 3870 meters up) and the view was simply breathtaking.

After that it was off to the Jongfrau valley in Switzerland, again simply beautiful. We walked through the mountains, heard a group of yodelers (with the sound echoing off the surrounding mountains) and went into a cave system to see waterfalls in the mountain with drains the 3 major glaciers (20,000 litres per second or so they say.)

The final day turned out to be the day they shift the cows from the mountains to the fields in the valleys (in preparation for winter) so all the cows came running through the main street on their way to the fields (some of them with huge bells and decorations.)

I believe my father in law is finally convinced on the value of a digital camera (or at least the convience of being able to take as many photos as you like.)

Posted at 07:24PM Sep 23, 2004 by oz in General  |  Comments[2]

automatic carparks

Visited the Amersfoort office today to meet up with old friends and collegues. While I was there htey pointed out the new car park (the whole office is new and very nicely fitted out.) Seems when the car park is full you can push a button and one of the cars will sink into the ground and a new parking spot appears. You can later recall your car (via one of the phone booth things in the photo) and a conveyor belt like systems reshuffles the cars and your will rise up from the ground.

Apparently a few people parked their cars however and sat there talking away on their mobile phones and suddenly found themselves sinking into the ground (and htere is no way out down there, they had to ring for help!)

Posted at 05:18AM Sep 13, 2004 by oz in General  | 

castle

Today it was off to visit the local castle, very nice indeed

Apparently my wife used to babysit in the castle when she was younger (people still live in the castle, it's not publically owned.) Also spent half the day trying to get the next door neighbours computer working again, I have never seen a computer full over so much spyware/malware & viruses. Spybot located 500 odd objects to remove on the first pass. Lessons were the ovoius ones, run adware/spybot from time to time, keep your anti virus up to date, put a password on your administrator account (sigh) and don't use internet exploder (installed firebird for them.) Of course the real answer is use Java Desktop System.

Posted at 07:38AM Sep 10, 2004 by oz in General  | 

Night watch

We went into Amsterdam today, went to see first the Anne-Frank musuem. I was pleased to see it had quite an affect on the children, they realised what it must have been like to like in such a small space with so many people for those years with the curtains always drawn (they have renovated the museum since I was last there and have done a very good job of it.) After that we went to the Rijksmuseum to see the Nightwatch

and I have to say the ability of Rembrandt to catch the detail and the lighting was certainly astounding. Doom3 has come a long way in terms of lighting and detail but I still wouldn't say it compares.

Posted at 06:03AM Sep 09, 2004 by oz in General  | 

Holland

This week was fun. The children were already bored as it had been raining for the week before, but thankfully cleared up when I arrived. Some obligatory photos are:

and

We have been taking the children around to all the touristy places (as this is their first time in Holland.)

Posted at 11:51PM Sep 07, 2004 by oz in General  | 

arrival in Holland

Well, I arrived in one piece (although I did get "randomly chosen" to be run through an explosives detector.) A long trip, but it gave me time to play with dtrace which was actually much easier to get the hang of than I expected (and it really is a good as everyone raves about.) If anyone is holding back learning dtrace on the basis of "oh, no not another tool to learn" then this is one tool you should go and learn.

Posted at 06:14PM Aug 31, 2004 by oz in General  | 

the next few weeks

For those who may be wondering why I was quiet for three weeks and all of a sudden began posting again, it's beacuse I'm off for a 4 week holiday to Holland on sunday (the last month has been busy finishing off everything so I can go.) The web log for the next few weeks will mainly be photos from the trip (I'll visit the Holland office & the Order Fullfillment Center to see old friends, as well as going to France, Switzerland and Italy) so there won't be much in the way of technical content, but after that it's back to normal.

Posted at 09:59AM Aug 25, 2004 by oz in General  | 

USB DDK 0.9a is out

For anyone itching to write a device driver for a usb device, the latest DDK is available via http://wwws.sun.com/software/download/products/411be89d.html and according to the blurb the latest version contains:

* Updated Solaris Express (Sparc and x86)debug binaries
* Updated whitepapers and manpages
* USB Serial drivers
* Updated Sample drivers and applications
* Libusb support for Solaris Express
* UHCI hardware support with Solaris 9

Posted at 10:56PM Aug 21, 2004 by oz in General  | 

Solaris x86 & vpn

Hours wasted on my laptop again as I forgot the problem with getting my old vpn software to work (make sure it pushes the vpn module after it's gotten the ip address from dhcp.) Anyway nice it's working as the wireless link isn't now (a netgear ma401 pcmcia card & the lynnsoft drivers, normally works very reliably.) Apparently my wireless router is giving out bogus addresses and then not routing them :-<) Anyway next step is to get Oracle & Sybase working on it.

Posted at 04:32PM Jun 18, 2004 by oz in General  | 

Start

Well, Here's the first entry just to try how it works (ie content = 0)

Posted at 10:16AM Jun 10, 2004 by oz in General  |