Church today

Surface Pro

Megan has a new computer.  Microsoft Surface Pro.

Setting up....

Wireless
Pretty much the first thing it wanted was the key.  Entered and we were away.

Office 365
This is ~$100 per year for up to 5 computers in the one house.  Setting up took a while as it wanted to set up an account.  Done and it works.

Skydrive
Skydrive is Microsoft's cloud storage and we get 20GB per year included with the office 365.  However it would appear there is no Win XP version.  As we were upgrading from XP I figured I would just install Skydrive on both machines and drag and drop.  But alas no.  So we are going to use drop box instead.

Mail
Now we seem to have it a hurdle here.
I want to connect the mail app on the surface to gmail using imap protocol.
On the windows desktop I click on the mail app and it prompts me to add an account.  I choose google and enter Megans user name and password and it responds with
unable to connect ensure that the information you have entered is correct.
Of course it is and to be sure I log into google via a web browser.
Ah silly me.  I had checked the box that said something like include contacts and calendar.  Maybe that does not work

Synchronisation
Google apparently has as a part of it's company policy "don't be evil".  Well it appears that  Google has turned off the interface that permits microsoft and apple things to sync.  So I guess they did not include "don't be dumb" in their company mantra.  So I guess I need to find a new way to sync my calendar and contacts.

UTE Insurance

The ute insurance is due again.

The existing mob (Suncorp) want $602 for comprehensive plus windscreen.

NRMA 3rd party property only.
Looks like there is a $50 discount for doing it on line.
Put in 1 incident in the last 5 years.  I am sure I must have bumped into something at some time but who knows when.
It popped out these options.  Kind of nice of them to lump em all in together.
Housed at home (Oxley)

Excesses:
Basic $600  Under 25 $1600 wow  Over 25 but <2yrs br="" experience="">

Housed at Oxley.  Private use. No additional people. 50yo driver with one incident in 5 years
Result - identical to above

Now lets try housing at Yeronga, Private use, no GST.

What tha' Basic third party has gone up by $10

BUDGET DIRECT www
$487 Comprehensive
Excesses
Basic $600 Under 21 $700 <2yr ecper="" p="" unlisted="">

Crash Bam Boom

Last week we played host to 5 bright young men from Sydney Grammar School.

They had traveled to Brisbane to take part in the combined schools music festival

Now the question arises - what do you do to give 5 smart young easily bored fellows as an experience to remember.  Put em in a van, race down the freeway, stop in the fast lane and wait for the cars behind to crash into you.

and that is exactly what we did.  In a way.



Well almost.  As we were driving home, we come over a small rise on the Western Freeway and observed that the cars in our lane (the right hand fast lane) were stopped.  The queue of stationary cars extended into the distance.  I mentioned to Marcus who was driving that stopping would be good.  So he slowed and stopped.  Reasonably quickly but not so fast as to cause the abs to kick in.  I glanced in the door mirror and thought to my self "This might not be as as good as it appears".  Then as if in slow motion a screech of tires and the crunch. 

Dan Soccer on youtube

I filmed Dan's soccer game.
Oxley UTD vs Souths at Souths.

I arrived at the field and observed a big scffhold on the far side of the field.  Upon clser inspection I observed the gate was open and it sported a sign mentioning that entry was available only to "authorised persons".  Pausing momentarilly to authorise myself I entered and climbed to the top.

 I had a birds eye view so I decided to shoot the game with a reasonably wide shot.   I kind of hope that the team members will look at the video and observe positional and strategic information.

NBN

The National Broadband Network

Hmm

Currently we get our phone and internet over copper.  The copper wires are owned and maintained by Testra.  We get our phone from Telstra and the internet from tpg.
Current expenditure:
Phone Line Rental:  $44.95  (Home line advanced)
Phone Calls: $34.46  (approx 50 calls)
Internet:  $50 for 500GB.

Total monthly spend ~ $130

Current internet usage is about 50GB per month.  We tend to get a bit rate of around 5Mb/s although at times it gets quite laggy although I am not sure whether the blockage is in tpg or in our wifi router.

As a base line comparison, TPG have been advertising that for $79.99 per month you can have
phone line rental, unlimited internet and unlimited phone calls to Australian mobiles and land lines ad some overseas destinations incl UK and USA. Just be clear here that for $80 we get a lot of unlimited.

With the NBN on the horizon I figured I need to consider the economics of it for our family. 

So what will the NBN cost?

That seems easier said than done to resolve
 I will have to look harder.  TPG do not seem to offer NBN plans.

Exetel:

$50 50GB voip at 10c / call

And when will the NBN happen.  

Well according to the NBN web site:

This is the NBN rollout activity in your area.

• Fibre | Construction to commence within three years - we will commence construction in your area from Sep 2015 in phases with last construction scheduled to commence in Jun 2017*.

It is estimated that the average time from construction beginning to NBN services being available is 12 months.

Why I disagree with the NBN

philosophically

I already disagree philosophically with the idea of the government being a telecommunications provider. We are back in the days of the PMG.  I am OK with the idea that the government may decide that for the good of the nation and its citizens that we need more bits per second.  I believe that the government should do that tilting the playing field a bit to encourage business to move in that direction but when private industry have the ball, the government should not run onto the field and kick it or in this case, grab it and run off onto their own special field leaving the remaining players looking bewildered.

Cost

Then I disagree with the cost.  $40 000 000 000 of our tax dollars.

Technology

For the NBN, we are effectively being cajoled into fibre to our house.  But most things in this world are becoming more portable.  Phones, laptops, computers, tablet PCs and so on.  We bought a printer recently that only had a wireless connection.  So connecting without a piece of wire is becomming the easy way of connecting.  At work we will probably go for the fibre as soon as it become available.  At home?  Not so sure.  My suspicion is that that with the steady increase in bit rate on the mobile phone networks that a wireless solution is likely.

Oxfam Trailwalker

Work in progress here.  Will be added to over the next day or so.

Megan, Alan, Ainsley & Susan

In the car park at Belbird Grove. 
Registrations closed at 7:00 for the 8:30 start.  There was also a 6am ish start and a 10:30 start.  The faster people got allocated to earlier start times.

At each major checkpoint, Oxfam had big white tents.  The team had to check in and out.  Here they are at the registration tent finalising their details.

vvv

Ainsley and

 

The GPS Tracker worked really well this year.  It was a TK102-2 programmed to send the data straight to Cameron's computer where his program generated the map.  Due to time constraints, the trail shown was last years rather than this years (the purple bit was obviously different).

This next grab shows the finish.  For some reason we get very few messages through at that stage.

2013 Oxfam Trailwalker Oxfambulating Serial Hillers GPS

The link for the GPS tracker is

http://oxfambulators.javonix.com

For the next 24hrs you can see where Franks Car is.
From Friday morning you will see where the team is.

Click the orange square below the zoom control on the left of the screen.  It will centre the picture on the current location.

Frank

TK102-2 Raw

Connection from 1.137.249.134

raw 130612174723,+61414329164,GPRMC,044723.465,A,2733.6491,S,15258.8192,E,0.00,0.00,120613,,,A*73,L,, imei:354779035581975,04,31.9,F:3.85V,0,137,6796,505,01,3861,7D6F

{ raw: '130612174723,+61414329164,GPRMC,044723.465,A,2733.6491,S,15258.8192,E,0.00,0.00,120613,,,A*73,L,, imei:354779035581975,04,31.9,F:3.85V,0,137,6796,505,01,3861,7D6F',

  datetime: '2013-06-12 17:4723',

  phone: '+61414329164',

  gps: 

   { date: '2013-06-12',

     time: '04:47:23.465',

     signal: 'low',

     fix: 'active' },

  geo: { latitude: -27.560818, longitude: 152.98032, bearing: 0 },

  speed: { knots: 0, kmh: 0, mph: 0 },

  imei: '' }

TK102-2 GPSgate Buddy Tracker

To set up my TK102-2 to operate with gpsgate.com buddy tracker

0.  Make sure I have plenty of time as it sometimes does not seem to work.

1. Make sure the sim works with text messages.
Put it in my phone (unlocked of course).
Send a text to my phone.
Send a text back.
Don't laugh.  Some data only sims are not activated for text messaging it seems.

2. Put the sim card into the TK102 and make sure that I can communicate with it.
Wait for the LED stop stop flashing quickly.  The mostly off occasional short flash on seems to indicate connected to the mobile phone system.
We use the imei command as this does not require the GPS to have a fix.

Send text
imei123456     where 123456 is the default password.
and after about 10 seconds I get back.

3. Configure TK102-2 for GPRS with Gpsgate.com buddy tracker service.
Send each of these as a separate text.  Wait for the response.
begin123456    BEGIN ok!
Adminip123456 69.10.131.178 30176  ADMIIP ok!
Apn123456 telstra.internet      APN ok!
t030s***n123456                    T030S***N ok!

The last line sets it to continually send at a 30 second rate.  Obviously can be costly so don't leave it like this if the thing is going to be left on for a while
t005m***n123456 sets it to 5 minutes.

4. CHECK GPSGATE
Have a look and see if the icon has turned green.

TK102-2 LED FLASHING CODES
This is my guess
LED OFF = Power is off
Fast Flashing = Searching for phone network

Long ON Very long OFF = GSM OK.  NO GPS
Short on flash = all ok

I do not think it sends a first message until it has received a valid GPS fix.  Then it sends continually at the programmed rate.  If the GPS drops out, it simply sends the last good fix.