Went down to Canberra to see an old and best friend.  Was a little interesting as it was my first big trip in the car and also taking Tonto along.  I'm going home for Christmas and the plan is to leave Tonto with my friend K in Canberra.  He has his own dog so we needed to do a little test run to see how they go on.

My big surprise was just how agressive Tonto can be.  We walked the dogs as an intro which was a good thing and when they got back it seemed okay, then Tonto was very definnative about his space and was quite vocal about it.  As he doesn't back at all with me it was a little education.  He is quite vocal when he wants to be!  It all worked out well and it was really older dog, younger dog working out who was boss.  Not entirely sure who is alpha dog as in the evening we went to an Ethopian restaurant which was AMAzING and lived up to the fantastic food I had there 4 years ago.  

Great weekend and can't wait to go back again, which will be um, when I drop Tonto off for Chrimbo, so if he and Charlie haven't worked out who is top dog, they can do it then.  And they will and end of the day there is nothing we humans can do about it so lets leave it to them.  

It so hard to believe a month has gone by all ready. Tonto is home and all my stuff is arriving next week. I have even managed to get a quick trip home to New Zealand. Well to be accurate I’m on the plane to nz now.

Thought I would give the iPad a spin and see how well it went as a word processor. Not bad, but also not as easy as a keyboard. The main problem seems to be that on a regular keyboard I would rest my fingers on the keyboard in the rest position. On the iPad it is just way to sensitive to this and it’s a case of having to keep ones fingers above the keyboard at all times. After 20 odd years of touch typing this is no easy trick.

I suspect that the hunt and peck typers would actually find the easier. One of the big problems I have is I don’t actually know where the keys on the keyboard!!!

How can that be. Well when you touch type you don’t actually look at the keyboard. Your hand automatically find the guide keys (another thing missing from a virtual keyboard) and then you start typing. If you ask me where an actual key is I have to look. My hands and muscles know but i don’t consciously think I must now type the letter t, then h etc. The brain and fingers just know the combination that will result in the word think.

And the more I think about it the more I realise I don’t type in letters rather I type in words at a time. Some rare ones get mentally spelt out, and even then the fingers just follow the letters.

So far it okay, but I think if I wanted to type a whole lot of stuff I would use the blue tooth keyboard. Or since I don’t have that with me some mor practice.

Back to sydney things are all falling into place still. Finally got delivery of my outdoor furniture after about the third delivery attempt at 7 Pm. Still it was definitely worth the wait and I am very happy with it. Story here is that I wasn’t even thinking about outdoor stuff and popped into the big w store to pickup some cables for the tv and walked past the outdoor furniture display. They had a very simple and elegant table and bench set from Jamie Durie. That got me looking around and I just could not find anything that I like and the price was excellent.

Went to buy it but the local store only stocked the table and not the benches. Some research showed that the store in Norht Ryde did have the benches but not the table. Since I had the rental car Tonto and I went for a road trip (he loves road trips). The benches only just fitted into the car so I decided to order the table online and have it delivered, whoa me how stupid was that. Australia has then most crap delivery service.

Finally in the pouring rain the table arrived last night. But it’s been worth it. I sat on the bench of a similar model and it was wobbly. This set is solid! Now for the BBQ and we see all set for some outdoor eating. I wonder what Tonto would do with a whole steak?

Probably eat it and then tell me he has not been feed yet! Then when his tum kicks in sleep for three days.

Well almost at NZ so laters.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Brighton St,Botany,Australia

Over many years now I’ve heard just about all the moral majority come out in some form or another against just about everything.  If they did like someone who said the sun came up in the east they would say no, it comes up in the west cos we the sinner just got the direction wrong.

Where it gets to me is that I hear all these people going on and on about the ‘gays’. For some very odd reason the moral majority seem to think its there right to tell us what to do and how we should behave.

See the thing is I spend about zero-1 minutes per week thinking I should be telling the heterosexual world how to live there lives.  Conversely thou I do spend a lot of my media consumption time reading about how unfaithful they are to there wife's  etc.  I only say alot because it seems to be in the media all the time, oddly because it happens a lot.  The political headliners seem to spend an inordinate amount of time condemning my life  upon which I had no choice in, also seem to be the ones who go off and get caught up on all sorts of scandals' which they did have a choice in.

So the next time you hear someone going on and constantly on about the homosexual agenda, just take a look at how well they are doing with the heterosexual agenda.

As I said, I spend no time telling other people how they should live there lives, so why should theyyou be interested in how I live mine.  Are they really that bored?

Beginning my NZ refresher course with a game of rugby. Had to be schooled by kev last night on the different rugby leagues and abbreviations.

It really is happening!  I had my last day at work on Friday.  The plan was to leave at 5pm, but fate would have it that I walked out the door at 7pm to no fanfare.

But it was good!  I had a nice lunch with the team that I really like.  Rather impromtu but worked out really nice in the end.

A good thing was that leaving so late, and I was still actually doing stuff at 10pm was that I leave knowing one of my long term projects went into production and worked!  It was a nice was to leave actually. Thou to be accurate I'm not actually leaving the job, I'm just going to be doing it from a different office now.  

The apartment is a bit of a war zone now as there are cardboard box's everywhere. Tonto and I head off to the vet tomorrow for his final checks and vet certs then he flys the 31st the same day the apartment is packed up.  Rather a good result as I was not looking forward to the idea of being in the house without him. He has become very much a fixture.  

i'm off to Kyoto on Wednesday for some major time out and zening out in the gardens and temples.  Its a nice way for me to leave as I've always had a love of Kyoto and it will be good to leave from a place I've enjoyed so much.  It will set the stage correctly!

Its almost official now!  I'm leaving Japan after 4 years and 11 months, almost to the day!

My last day here will be 3rd Sept 2010.  I'm spending the last few days in one of my favourite places.  Kyoto.

Going to spend a few days there chilling down at the temples and gardens just putting everything back into place. 

Tonto flys on the 31st of Aug and I'm going to miss him alot as he has to spend 30 days in quarantine.  The paperwork to get him there is taking up half of my moving binder, but I could never leave him behind!  He know something is up as his crate has been in the apartment for a while now!

so if I don't write again, see you from the southern hemisphere!

LIttle after the fact, but I got myself an Ipad.  Had been thinking about this well before Apple actually annouced it and when they did I wanted one. I got mine via a forwarding company I use in the US and it worked really well.  Oddly I could track my Ipad via the apple store coming from China to the US to Tokyo.  Go figure that.  Wonder if I can get the airmiles for that.

So whats it like.  Well to be honest a little heavier than I expected, the whole curve back hides alot.  But I'm getting used to that.  Functionally whats its like.  Well lets start with I'm a huge internect connected person.  I don't buy news papers and get all my news from the net.  Well for thats its totally amazing!  Push, swipe  and click and I have my news of the day.  My favorite apps so far is Newswiper as it lets me read all sorts of news feeds for that.  The dedicated apps are good as well.  USA Today is nice, and WSJ is almost worth a subscription.

In other things the always on thing is great.  Want to look up something goto Wikipanion and get full wikipedia in great format.  Love that.

take notes with it, getting used to that as well.

Email, well its not doing well with my main account, but I do love the gmail access.  Bento the database, wonderful, but no PC translate, not sure on that yet.  IM, getting used to it.  But overall I do love it.  The stuff on it so far works well and I can't see where there is going to take us with media going forward.  What if really love is that it's just there.  Its a real internet applicance and its does it really well. 

When they sort out the IMAP push events for normal email accounts it will be an amazing family tool and I'd buy one for my parents in a second. (i'd have to work out the whole remote access issue, but then a 3g version could just do the trick here.)

I take my hat off to Apple here they have created a device that those of us in IT didn't think we needed as touch has failed before, but this device well its one for the rest of us.  Sure some of the setup for email may be a little tricky and there are many options on what would work best here) but overall this is a killer device.  The applications it has so far turn the internet into just a source of information that is presented to the user in an understandable way.  I can't wait to see the applications that will come out in the next few months to really take advantage of this new platform.

Look as an It professional I see that Apple are creating a walled environment for the applications, but I also have to take into account people like my parents who are starting to use the internet and having it packaged in such an accessible way can't be that bad.

d

I love lego, my nephew loves lego, and it just go ah so much cooler.

Found at Gizmodo

Gave a try to a new app today called Bento from FileMaker. It's like a mini database done well. My only complaint so far is that I can't email the information off or sync it unless I buy I Mac! Oops

Loving the iPad more and more thou. Internet made easy and very consumer able

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How so incredibly sad that it will take an ecological disaster of huge proportions to wake up the social consiousness of the right wing american public.

They have all been for drill baby drill, less government, lower taxes etc etc.

Now that the coast line of the lower southern states is in imminent danger its call out the national guard, or any government agency to come and help them.  Bobby Jindal must be in a complete meltdown now!  Suddenly he needs federal government help!

So Sarah, how you going to spin this one.  Guess the lamestream media are over reporting it all, no birds or wildlife died?  Its all a big hoax?  

oh, I have it now, big incredible democratic plot to undermine your drill baby drill thing. 

so so sad