This is not anybody’s fault, just remember that a blank profile is a boring one and wont do much for them but with a few simple steps the beginnings of a profile and some good info may be of help.

I just got an invite to Google+ and I don’t know what to do now…

Most people have a google (gmail) account by now (if you don’t then get one) and you may receive an Invitation from a friend wanting you get into Google+ so where to from here?

You might have got an email like this (on the right) telling you all about the great Sharing, Circles and Hangouts that Google+ is all about.

Still not sure?

It doesn’t matter, everybody with a google/gmail account already has plus, it’s just a matter of going in and getting it started.

Click on the ‘Join Google+’ button on the email or go to plus.google.com

On this messy page to the right it asks you for a few final details, enter your real (or commonly known) name and ‘JOIN’

It also asked me to link this profile with my Picasa Images profile and connect those two old accounts together, Done.

Circles

This next page lists suggestions for you to add people you know to your Circles. Adding people makes Google+ interesting (like on Facebook or Twitter) and the ‘Circles’ are the groups that you make to organise people.

You can include people into Family, Friends, Acquaintances or create other new groups like Work or Sport as you go. They suggest including at least 10 people into your circles before you continue. Even better is when these people are active Google+ users. You can source other people from your hotmail or yahoo account too or if you have run out of suggestions you can start searching for people toward the bottom, try Mark Zuckerberg or other celebrities you may be interested in.
– Click Continue

Next is a page of other suggestions, people who like to post publically, add a few more if your interested in them.
- Click Finish

You have completed your Google+ profile.

OK, this is a nice full page if things going on, where to start and what to do?

The top navigation bar:

Allows you to quickly jump from +You to Gmail to Calendar and more…
On the right it has your Notifications (messages) in a red box and some Share/Settings controls.

Content:

Stream, Photos, Profile, Circles, Games and Google+ search

• Stream is shown below, a feed of all the updates and posts provided by your friends in your circles.
• Photos is the new Picasa image storage system, upload any picture in hear to share with your friends, include in your posts or share with anybody. Drag photos from your desktop to your albums, drag and drop uploading!
• Profile lets you edit details about yourself, your job or school and how public you might want this to be
• Circles lets you arrange friends or more into groups of your choice – simply drag people into circles
• Games I am told are quite good but I haven’t played with yet
• Search lets you find other people or posts about stuff you might be interested in.

Filters:

Under your Image on the left it shows your circles, so here you can select and just see the posts/stream from your family or friends more selectively.

There is also a ‘Whats hot’ link to find other content that would be public and popular but not something in your direct ‘circle’ of friends.

Under this is also the older (gmail based) text/voice chat.

In the middle:

This is of course where all the nice stuff is, things that people are saying, picture people uploading and it’s all gets updated dynamically as you watch.

The Best feature!

On the right are other ‘suggestions’ but the best feature is hidden below all this, a little button called ‘Start a hangout’

Why this is over there and down below the fold (out of view) I really don’t know because its the best tool for people to stay connected and the highlight feature of Google+

Hangouts are places that you can chat, share and video conference with many people at the same time.

So there is nobody else here right now, but when there is many people with video and audio can chat away. You can even share YouTube videos amongst yourselves.

Finally

It is easy to compare parts of Google+ to Twitter and Facebook and wonder why you need to move, well i am not saying you need to move, but at least go in and explore it a bit. With the above help things will be a lot better than a blank page, so get some friends, make some circles and see some new things happening on this exciting platform.

Go to Google+ before you’re asked to and sign in and be ready.

Coming soon: How to post something yourself…

I really want to keep the above simple, it explains the situation and poses the right questions, but let’s look at the answers in more detail…

Yes, global warming is happening. Some island nations are sinking and there is good overall scientific evidence that over the recent 100 years other factors are showing that climate change is real.

If this is being caused by humans (mostly) though is questionable. Again the overall scientific evidence is that over the last 70-100 years CO2 has increased at higher rates than it has at any other previous period of time that we have been able to measure. I am not going to sight some individual factors that may dispute this reality, look into all the evidence and you can not deny that our mechanical age has contributed to this increase. This is throwing out the balance of how our planet behaves and how it is currently reacting, temperatures are rising, in part because of our actions.

While we increase CO2 outputs we are also reducing the ways CO2 is stored in the quantity of plant materials and sequestered from the atmosphere. Burning the CO2 candle at both ends has the same affect on our planet as doing the same thing to your personal energy process. Increase the intake of energies and reduce your exercise you will personally get obese and unfit, the same thing will happen to our planet with CO2.

Are we able to prevent the affect or turn the tide is impossible to predict. We are already beyond the point at which we have total control over the effects of this change, already islands are sinking – is this acceptable?
If our affect on global warming is something we can prevent or if it something we can even begin to manage better – should we not do something about it?
Should we not do anything because its too big or hard or even in the eyes of many seems questionable, at the other end of the scale is the potential for our extinction – is this acceptable?

I think we are beginning to do something, it’s late, it’s limited and in the eyes of many it has little hope of achieving the level or return needed to ‘solve the problem’ but it must start somewhere.

Our footprint or affect on this planet is now easily measured as the CO2 emissions caused by any activity we do. In the extreme cases this must be monitored, reduced and balanced with equal positive initiatives.

Australia is now implementing a carbon trading scheme (CTS) as has been done in various degrees in other countries and regions. As a form of tax this ensures that any excessive CO2 output will be managed and costed. No it will not resolve the emissions of the world but it is the starting place where we in this region can begin to do our part. For now this will have some negative affects on the local economy and add to the actual cost a CO2 based business has to account compared to other industries in other countries that don’t yet account for this burden.

Eventually it will do more. Because of the CTS Australia will begin to shun vehicles or equipment that don’t live up to our long term expectations and CTS obligations.
In recent years as cars have become smaller, more efficient and safer and the same thing must also happen with our carbon footprint. The ‘product’ can no longer have the environmental consequences without it being fully accounted and payed for.

I feel that many of these simple concepts get blown out of proportion and argued through politics and sideshow advertising to sway opinion to the point where the essential idea is lost. I hope the above summarises this reality into something anybody can digest because all I want is for people to start being responsible for their crap and to clean up after themselves. It doesn’t always happen, but I hope that better global etiquette is lead by example and if that’s through CTS’s or other initiatives then that can only (ultimately) be a good thing.

Queen St like most in the city does get busy, I also have buses pulling in and out, and a lot of centre road parking. This means cars can pull out quickly with low visibility and also turn into them taking a wide run but it also means that
there is no trams to worry about. Trams in Melbourne mean that drivers turning right at large intersection need to do a hook turn from the left, basically pulling over out of every-bodies way until the lights go yellow and beginning the turn ensuring the road and late traffic has stopped. This is confusing to non Melbourne drivers so be sure to do some reading before coming here.

So having negotiated all of this, things were clearing as I came toward Lonsdale St. A car pulled out of the centre isle parking about 6 car lengths in front of me, and then went full over to the left side and appeared to me about to turn left. As I got closer to both him and the intersection, he seemed to be changing his mind, perhaps no longer turning but coming back into the lane I was in, but then at the last moment, I was now just going over the lines of the intersection, his car was perhaps about 4 car length ahead and the light changed to yellow.

It all goes into slow motion for me now as he decided that he was doing a hook turn, to the right directly in front of me. Not checking for any further traffic and not seeing me, I just suddenly had a car in front of me ready to t-bone.

I was all brakes and various swear words as I knew what was coming. I may have been doing 40-45 at the start, and perhaps 15-25kms when we collided. I kept the bike upright, no significant skidding but under the circumstances there was not going to be any spectacular near misses either.

My front wheel headed for the drivers door hitting it hard, the rear end of the bike then pushed left and parallel to the car from the impact. Between the two was my left leg among other things. At the last moment the bike bounced from the car, and out from under me ricocheting in front of me, during this the last of the energy pushed my upper body into the cars back right passenger door, and finally my head gave the window a bit of a smack and I remember clearly it smashing and having a moment to look inside the car.

I quickly bounced off and was sitting on the road next to the car, seeing my bike a few feet away from my feet with a lot of front end damage.

I actually felt quite fine, wasn’t shaky or traumatized and a number of people including the driver appeared to check me out… “are you ok?” etc and then somebody asked if I wanted to get off the road, I had felt my left lower leg was bad at this stage, that I was quite well protected by the car and people and said that I won’t be moving until the ambulance got there. I removed my helmet and gloves and everything still seemed attached, I opened my jacket to get my phone from inside the breast pocket, this too was fine and I called me wife and left a voicemail to let her know what happened and that I was ok.

Shortly after this I heard the ambulance sirens arriving and got a call back from my wife. The ambulance guys were great, and got me to stand on my good leg, but it was obvious my bad one could hold no weight so I got trollied in. My wife was calm so we suggested she could go home and feed herself and the cat before coming to the hospital.

If your wondering why the ambulance seems to be taking forever and blocking the road, why doesn’t it just go and stop the rubber-necking? Well in my case where it’s not urgent there a few things that are done first. Some simple medications to get my shock under control, a lot of questions about what else hurts, did I hit my head, what do I remember, what day is it? The police are also getting statements and evidence to ensure they understand the cause, checking for drinking and ask a batch of their own questions about if I hit my head, where I lived, what I remember and what day it is. Then a quick trip to a big city hospital where I got into emergency (no waiting) and asked a bunch of questions…

Gladly this was a short story each time (basically no health problems or many allergies) so then soon off to x-ray which quickly confirmed I needed a cat-scan. My wife saw this with the doctor which showed the result of the situation. My upper and lower leg had been compressed together causing a tibial plateau fracture. It had also appeared to have shattered away a piece about the size of a large marble.

So I was told that without surgery it would heal but the bad alignment of the joint would cause a knee reconstruction in a few years. Surgery would re-extend the crushed part, align the join as best as possible and with a plate, pins and grafts it would mend better, but it is still expected that some arthritis and a knee replacement would be likely later on, 20 plus years. The grafts are often a synthetic material used as a scaffold to cover gaps in the broken areas allowing for the original bone to grow over it and mend the area.

With all this now, I am in fairly little pain. I expected a broken bone to hurt more, but without any real radial damage that’s not the case. I am on little more than Panadene and thus a low priority case. I got some sandwiches for dinner (and swindled a couple more) and transferred to the onchology ward and begun fasting expecting surgery to happen on Thursday. At 1am they woke me deciding they needed another cat-scan and for all the other reasons a hospital never let’s you sleep long and well.

Thursday was a long day, no food, no water and of course no ciggies. I had visits from the surgeons to discuss plans and risks but it was lovely to have my wife with me again eventually at about 10pm it was realized that the surgery wasn’t happening so I got a left-over reheated meal, and it was good.

Friday was much the same, no surgery but at least that day I got lunch and dinner, and nice visits from family and friends. In the afternoon I got transferred to level seven orthopedics which has others in a similar situation to me. The guy in my room got thrown from a horse and air-lifted in, very broken right arm and right leg smashed in 8 places. His first round of surgery went for eight hours and is now recovering for a few days before going back for more. This helps me understand why I was still waiting all this time with others like this coming in.

Saturday the surgery was quite assured, there is a special priority round of cases they concentrate on and I was booked in for about 10.30. Fasting again wasn’t bad this time, the morning went quick and soon enough I was heading down to the theaters. I was wheeled in and seen by the anesthesiologist and then again by one of the surgeons. He raised the issue of the size of the hole seen in the knee area. To fix this a part of the hip bone is often taken and used where a synthetic graft is not ideal.

Another guy with a broken jaw was also there (and in more pain than me) and shortly got wheeled off, but not two minutes later came back as I heard helicopters landing above. We had been bumped again but fortunately this time not too long and within and hour or so we were going in for our turn.

A bit of shuffling to get me on the bed, arms placed out for access and soon enough I was getting put under, ‘you will feel some hot rushes coming up your arm and then a bit dizzy’ and that was it. Almost two hours later and I was outside waking up. My leg and knee were very sore, although I had been given morphine in the op, they purposely limit how much and as you wake up you start to push the button and the pain gets monitored, shortly it was returning from an 8/10 to a 4 or 5. I soon checked to see about the grafting, my hip didn’t hurt and i found out that no grafting was required. Most of the pieces were found inside the compressed knee and when put back into place the doctor was happy enough not to have to use any, but still of course it’s all bolted together with a plate and two pins.

Later that night I had to get up a few times to get things moving, this has been quite good and got me mobile quickly, albeit on one leg and a frame for now. Tomorrow I hope to get my crutches and if the rest is good out by Tuesday or Wednesday.

So finally thanks to Facebook and Twitter for getting the word out to so many friends and colleagues so quickly, and to the ambulance guys that were great about me being on the phone/internets while they were doing their thing. To 4-Square for giving me bonus points in the ambulance and hospital, my first checkin there ever and perhaps anywhere special for a while.

And a big hug and thanks my love to my wife for her support and help over this time.

A few months down the track you have all these wonderful unused apps installed, the hard drive is half full of pictures and music and movies, you have two or four user profiles, maybe a little crap-ware, three conflicting virus scanners just to be sure and before you know it you can make and finish a coffee before your computer has finished booting up.

Not only that but as it runs, things get slow,the computer stalls at critical moments for no obvious reason. Well it can be obvious…

Look at your hard drive light.

Most of the time when your PC is getting slow it is busy talking to your hard drive. There can be lots of reasons for this.

When your memory is full of programs and big pictures or movies being edited, windows throws other information out to a swap-space, information from the quick internal RAM is written down onto the hard drive and thrown out to make space. Great for windows, but slow for you while you are trying to work. The more programs loaded behind the scenes and all other manner of things the more often this happens.

With more random data on your hard drive, this process causes the hard drive to store that data in more various places around the drive space, and has to go searching again to read it all back.

So over time, your drive data gets more disorganised, your base computer memory gets more full and your computer gets slower.

From time to time, we may resort to formatting the PC, taking backups, re-installing all the same stuff as was there before, and again for a time it runs like a dream again. But it takes a good few days to get things back to what you like, so much time wasted.

But before you do this next time, take a moment to consider this option.

Buy a new ‘Solid State Drive’

Known as an SSD, a few manufacturers have been releasing new types of hard drives that are much faster.

I recently got myself a Kingston 128Gig SSD for my PC and again (for the upteenth time) re-installed windows and all my apps.

These drives are fairly expensive compared to normal drives with the old spinning platter, and are smaller in capacity. A 1Tb drive at todays prices might be $70, a 128G SSD might be $250. But here are some advantages to consider;

• No moving parts and therefore should be more reliable
• Lower power consumption and remain cooler
• Much much faster to write and read data

For my computer I kept the standard hard drive I already had, it was working fine, but the SSD I installed as my main C: drive. All my normal data, images and music will remain on the old hard drive (D:) but the Operating System and Major applications will be on the fast drive.

Installing a new hard drive takes a bit of connecting and wiring and setting of the Bios. Nothing too complicated if you have ever replaced one before, or you may get a bit of help with a friendly tech expert if you have not done it before. Tell them they can play with a new SSD and they will come to help and check it out.

I installed windows the normal way, it still took a while as it read (slowly) from the CD, but I could already tell the writing times were much quicker.

After all was done, windows update did it’s thing, very quickly.

Running a browser (IE or Firefox) now happens on my PC in the blink of an eye, and even surfing the net is now much quicker. Don’t ask me how, because if you think that a decent PC browsing the net is not working hard, you will see that with a nice SSD it it is noticeably faster. Even with a couple of profiles, big applications re-installed and lots of files, everything is running very nicely.

Basically in my profile, for each My Documents, music, videos etc, right-click on the folder and change the ‘location’ pointing to the old spot on your (now) D: drive. This means no backup of files required to do the update as your not formatting your old hard drive. You do need to go back and remove old redundant windows and apps of this drive, but for the most part, you have a super fast windows on C: and all your data on D: and your done.

This is the most effective way of making any normal PC and apps run faster with a small investment. I would also recommend this too if you have a chance of getting your main laptop drive as an SSD.

Other times this is not the case, and the only way to fully try software before shedding out the bucks is to do so by unscrupulous means.

This is a way to do it if you want to.

So you have jail-broken your device, and that’s great. There are a few utilities and things that are fun, but the wonderful apps that made jail breaking so worthwhile are no longer needed.

If you don’t have the latest version of the iOS on your device, browse to http://www.jailbreakme.com in safari and slide the button.

This jailbreaks it and installs ‘Cydia’ as an app.

Cydia gives you direct access to many apps, themes, ringtones that are not listed by Apple on iTunes. But it has another trick up it’s sleeve, repositories.

Select ‘Manage’ from the bottom toolbar and go into ‘Sources’
Select Edit and then Add from the top menu

Add http://cydia.hackulo.us as a repository
Select DOne to complete the additional repository

In the installed ‘Hackulo.us’, select and install the Installous application

  Installous is your new application finder/installer

Once you search and find an app, installing takes a few steps
Click the ‘Download’ button to list locations that the file exists

Many of these files come from places like FileDude (below), others may work different ways. Look or wait for the link to be presented on these sites.

For FileDude, you get this page, click the ‘Or just download normally’
Enter the Captcha (image) in the box and select ‘Download’
Then the final ‘Download’ link will be shown.

The Installous download manager will then show the file being retrieved.
Once completed, you can select and Install it, easy.

The problem is that most video recordings that MythTV make are huge, and others that you may have downloaded are in various formats of AVI, mpeg and whatever.

Traditionally the method is to use Handbrake, which re-encodes a video file in a nice neat iPhone (or other) format ready to drag into iTunes and Sync (upload) onto the unit so you can watch it later. This is great if you want to put something there to watch on the train or bus or on a plane… but requires planning, preparation and time to do this.

If you want to see something that you recorded on your TV-PC decoder system (like MythTV) last night while still in bed on a Sunday morning then that’s an issue.

Now just to cover a technical point, MythTV records big mpg videos and there are more than 4 solutions I tried such as;

• MythTV – The Web Server
  Delivers streaming content to PC’s but this uses flash which does not work on iPhones and is pretty low res.
• MythExport supposedly re-encodes recordings and puts them into an RSS feed
  Problem: still need to sync with iTunes to view
  Problem: the re-encoding doesn’t work, at least in Lucid MythBuntu
  Problem: even if it did work I have networking/sync/iTunes issues with it
• MythPodcaster does a similar thing above, but live
  Problem: Resides in a Tomcat (other) web server
  Problem: Doesn’t work, unable to get all components installed on Lucid Mythbuntu

Hello AirVideo, an application I recently and eventually found to do this and it works.

The product works in two parts, the viewer (residing on your iPhone or iPad) and a server, ready and running to deliver and re-encode your movies and recordings on demand.

I first got the server and put it on my work desktop machine, it runs as a service and allows you to ‘point’ it to a directory on your drive where your video files are and can watch them.

This is available in both Mac and Windows and it could not have been simpler.

Second part is the AirVideo iPhone or iPad application or Viewer.

There is a free trial version on iTunes, or the full version for $3.99 AU. (iTunes links)

So, my first try was on my work pc, I downloaded and ran the server, easy, installed the iPad app and then in this added a reference to my server, the network IP address of my desktop pc. Then over my work network it connected to the server, showed all the movies in that directory and allowed me to watch them.

This takes a bit of processing power and may slow your desktop pc down a bit when you do this but it was all just too easy. The resulting quality and speed however was great.

Now onto MythTV. This uses the linux operating system and can be quite fun and a challenge to get running. I have talked about this before.

The issue is that, if Air Viewer Server is only for Mac or Windows, how to use it on this platform?

The answer is here, a basic guide for installing this application using ‘wine’, a windows emulator for unix and have it run on your mythtv system.

Two things I would add to that are…

1. Do this on a terminal window on the box itself. Do not just telnet to the system and try it because the install needs a GUI interface while it pretends to be a windows system.
2. After step 2 of this guide, you also need to install Bonjour from apple.

Step 2.5:
wget http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL999/en_US/BonjourPSSetup.exe
wine ./BonjourPSSetup.exe

And it works, AirVideo server is running on my Myth box, I can stream and view any recordings or stored video files at will to my iPad.

The one last thing I am looking at is the filenames. Those created in Myth are date/channel/time/length based and not informative of the actual recording. There is a script I am going to try that is intended to produce a list of nicely titled links referring to the videos which should make finding the recordings much nicer… but for another time.

I hope you enjoy and find this helpful.

Edit/Addition

To make this all a little nicer, listing the programs by name rather than the Myth id format would be helpful and this is how I have done it.

On the myth system I now use a perl script called mythlink.pl which makes symbolic links to the recordings.

I made a new directory in my files, next to recordings called airvideo and did chown to the mythtv:mythtv user and chmod to 775
copy /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/user_jobs/mythlink.pl to /usr/bin
mythlink.pl –link /..(location)/mythtv/airvideo
(note, that’s a [double] dash dash link)

Set the airvideo server to the new airvideo directory location instead of recordings

To make this happen regularly I put this script in a crontab so it runs every 30 minutes keeping them updated regularly.

Airvideo can stream and convert on the fly, this works ok but I have found its hard to skip and sometimes drops out when trying this on an iPhone, on an iPad it seems to work better.

Airvideo allows you to pre-convert files allowing much better playback. This is done in the client and on my machine (a fairly nice AMD 64) a 1.1Gb recording (of 40 minutes) was converted to a 188Mb m4v in under 10 minutes.

Having the nicely named program links in a seperate airvideo directory also means the converted files are located and managed there.

Good luck

All the same, I have done some updates. This new version of the User Guide is updated to newer versions of Acrobat Reader (8 and above) and also it’s now OCR’d so you can search it.

Get the OCR version (8.5Mb)

Get the original (Colour) version (4.5Mb)

There is also the full workshop manuals and extra diagrams for download here too.

I am now nearing 55,000 Kms on my ‘97 across. It’s going great guns after some minor and major repairs to it since I got it. In some order, chronological memory…

• Chain and Sprocket
• Head stem bearings
• Fuel tank sensors (replaced after leaking)
• Temperature gauge
• Front fork bushes
  Getting some pretty nice spring and work done by suspensions-r-us.
• New rear tire
• Gear lever actuator

So I have been doing some serious maintenance on it. I would rather it was perfect but a 13 year old bike is not without it’s issues but generally I have been happy with it, it rarely lets me down.

I would love some feedback using the form below or direct to warren[@]morgans.cc

Here are some new bike pics, for your entertainment…

The other day, I noticed the charger for the phone was not on (no light) and it wasn’t charging the handset… Soon it was flat. No big deal as there is also a charger in the base router box I got but all the same I want the second charger unit for downstairs.

Me: Called them up

Them: All our operators are busy, we can call you back in 20-27 minutes…

Me: OK

Them: Phone rang 15 minutes later…

Me: Explained problem.

Him: And you have tried connecting to another power outlet.

Me: Yes, but no luck. The handset is fine, it’s charging in the other base.

Him: OK, Seems the router and phone was sent as part of a bundle, when we send a replacement you may have to send all the older equipment in return, just a minute.

Me: Wait for about 2 minutes

Him: Thanks for waiting, ok, we will send a replacement handset and base charger. When you get these you can return the faulty/old ones in the return package we send along with it.

Me: OK, that’s great, thanks for your help.

Him: Anything else we can help with?

Me: No, that’s all thank you.

How good is it when it works? Thanks iiNet.

Her: You want medium coffee? (Handing me one she just made as I entered)

Me: No, I haven’t ordered anything yet

Her: Oh um… Goes back to serving first person

Her: You want this coffee?

Me: No, I haven’t ordered one yet…

Her: Oh, what you like?

Me: Small latte please.

Her: Rings it up on register, gets distracted by LCD screen listing all the shop orders.

Her: $4.15 thanks…

Me: No, I ordered a small latte

Her: Oh, um, Medium… (Me: No).. Oh, um $3.15

Me: Paid and waited… and waited…

Her: Here is coffee.

Me: Thank you, do you have any sugars?

Her: Um, oh, um.. I put one in.

Me: ok, thanks..

Me: Tasted, burnt tongue.

Me: Waited until it was much cooler.. Um, hello taste..

I would say almost no coffee and no sugar was in it, this is not a decent experience or result.

Me: Can I have the dozen assorted and a latte please?

Him: What?

Me: A dozen of the assorted donuts and a latte please…

Him: You want… (something I couldn’t understand)

Me: Pardon?

Him: Just me select? One of each?

Me: Yeah, sure, a bit of anything…

Him: Three bags selected, assemble a box, start picking…

Me: Not quite one of each in the box, so I ask for a couple of pinks ones.

Him: In the box, in the bag,… Is that all?

Me: Well I still want the latte

Him: Makes a latte

Him: Do you want a discount card?

Me: No thanks

Him: You wanna 50% off card?

Me: No thanks

Him: You wan sugar?

Me: No thanks

At last, why is it so hard to make it easy?