Alan Cramer .::. Secret Diary of a Fall Guy

How To: Adding NFC / PayPass to iPhone

2011-12-04T14:56:00.001+11:00

Can't wait for apps like CommBank Kaching to be released? You can get some of the benefits of Kaching right now without waiting. Simply follow this guide and you will be on your way to NFC goodness with your iPhone replacing your wallet.

Step 1: You will need your Commonwealth Bank Debit Mastercard with PayPass (or any other PayPass based credit or debit card), an iPhone (any sort of iPhone will do, for this example, we are using an iPhone 3GS) and a roll of clear packing tape. Ensure you have all these things, as without any one of them, this will not work.

Step 2: Take your PayPass enabled card and place it on the back of you iPhone.

Step 3: Take the packing tape, and wrap it around both the iPhone and PayPass card. Ensure you do this side to side, otherwise you will not be able to charge your iPhone. You may need to have a friend assist with the taping to ensure a smooth finish on the front of the screen.

Step 4: Enjoy your iPhone with NFC.

Disclaimer: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (here after "The Bank") does not endorse this method of NFC on iPhone. This post was written entirely by myself, Alan Cramer, and is not the opinion nor idea of the Bank. This post was written with humour in mind, and neither the Bank nor myself recommend doing this to your iPhone, iPod, or any other piece of equipment. Any issues with the post are to be directed to the Author, Alan Cramer, and not the Bank. I, Alan Cramer, highly recommend if you want to have NFC on your iPhone, to awaiting a proper method such as CommBank Kaching and iCarte case to become available. For more information on Kaching visit http://www.commbank.com.au/kaching/

Gmail for iOS

2011-11-18T06:26:00.001+11:00

Is there really a point to downloading a separate app to access gmail? Especially one that just loads a HTML5 page rather than actually being a native app? I'd easy say no. Why have something as inflexible as an app, when you can setup the inbuilt mail app to do much the same? Easy solution that is far greater. Turn on Google Sync for Mobile, and setup your google mail account as an exchange account. You then get mail, as well as contact backup and calendar sync between your iPhone and google.

DNS Fun

2011-11-16T21:59:00.001+11:00

Just switched my DNS Provider from Dyn to CloudFlare. Previously I had the DNS with EditDNS, which unfortunately got acquired by the mammoth that is Dyn, which decided to discontinue their free service. As I use my couple of domains, on a non-commercial basis, I could not justify paying US$19.95 per domain to have a company host my DNS settings only.

I stumbled upon CloudFlare. It seems like a good service, and best of all, it is free! I decided to take someone's advice that I read on an online forum and copy the contents from the Dyn Advanced Settings page, paste into a new document, then upload to CloudFlare. However whilst everything looked over in the CloudFlare control panel, I all of a sudden, could not access my site.

Seems as though, in copying, it includes an extra space after the host name. This transposes over to CloudFlare and each entry then has this additional space after the host. I manually deleted the space, and like magic, everything is working again.

Google+: How much can be integrated?

2011-11-06T18:03:00.000+11:00

Been dabbling in Google+ since the release of Google Apps compatibility, and have taken it by the horns. Issue is, most people use Facebook and not Google+. With new social networking sites, it becomes mandatory to maintain a presence on not only the new social network, but also the old one, as the friendships you have become fragmented (ie. some people jump ship, and some stay on board).

The lack of a Google+ API, means for a lack of third party plugins that can currently be found on other social networks such as Facebook. For example, I don't actively use Facebook, and my Facebook updates via my Twitter feed, thanks to the Twitter "Facebook App".

I am now using a tool called ManageFlitter which can be found at http://manageflitter.com/plus to update my Twitter feed whenever I post to Google+. Thus in turn, updates Facebook.

I have also used Yahoo Mail to import my Facebook contacts and in turn, import them into Google+. A number of those would have had an invite. Surprised to see the number of people of Google+ anyway.

One thing I am happy with now that Google Apps have been switched onto the Google+ infrastructure, is the integration of Picasaweb into Google+. There is also some preliminary integration with Blogger through replacement of your Blogger profile with your Google+ one, and a YouTube tab at the top right of the Google+ screen. Would love to see heaps more integrate, and have a true one stop shop, for when you want to use Google services.

You can find me at http://gplus.to/alancramer .

@Commbank Dollarmites Colouring Book Circa 1992

2011-10-30T21:34:00.000+11:00

With the Commonwealth Bank's 100 year birthday, I thought it would be appropriate to post a copy of a Dollarmite Colouring Book from around 1992. I found this book in cleaning up of my branch earlier this year. Many people will remember the original Dollarmites, and this colouring book / story book tells of how they came to help us save money. Example of pages below and a download link to the PDF copy of the book. Happy colouring.

Download The Colouring Book By Clicking This Link

Copyright (C) Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Reproduced for Historical Purposes. I do not claim any ownership of the Dollarmites characters nor the content of the pages from the book, both images above and the attached PDF book. The content remains owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and posting it to this personal blog, does not release any of the ownership of such content into the public domain.

The many hats of Bryce

2011-08-13T18:17:00.001+10:00

Kicking back, watching telly and Mr. Bryce emerges from his room wearing a number of hats...

Ten's @TheRenovatorsTV... What's there to hate?

2011-08-12T06:39:00.001+10:00

I don't see what the issue is. It seems that the world hates a little TV show called "The Renovators" that is currently airing on Network Ten. A lot of people are staying it is a rip off of the block. I love the concept and see it as a different show.

I mean really... Shelley Craft and Scott Cam? How can people like these guys? I find them far more annoying to watch then watching paint dry.

Just reading the network ten forums, there are nothing but complaints. One person says "how will a team of two finish a house" and another suggested they will shuffle the teams. Makes sense to me. Then first person states pretty much what about the hard work someone did with their ceiling if they are moved into another team. I say, big whoop. They should all be working together somewhat anyway, cause the winner of the show gets the profit of sale of all 6 properties. So really, why does it matter other than those in the world who have nothing better to do with their time other than whinge about a television show.

I love shows like this, and think the judges picked are a perfect bunch. What I wish ten would do, is bring back Big Brother on Eleven or something to that degree.

Picture of me...by Bryce Cramer

2011-07-23T20:44:00.001+10:00

by the way world....yes I am blogging again

2011-07-17T14:42:00.003+10:00

For those who have only just come to realise, I am back blogging again. I have reinvigorated the blog yet again, and included the standard widgets that Blogger has to enable reposting of blog posts to Google+, Twitter and the Likes.

Should be a bit of fun, and even the wife has started blogging also. In fact she inspired me to get back on board. Read her thoughts at http://kristie.cramer.id.au/ .

Why does Google make our lives easier and harder all at the same time?

2011-07-17T14:36:00.000+10:00

I'm a big fan of Google, and their ideas do make our lives easier. However, they also seem to make our lives harder all at the same time. Being a user of Google Apps, we seem to be users who are left behind the rest of the pack. Whilst new ideas such as Google+ come to a head, Google Apps users are unable to become members of this new social networking site, unless of course we use a legacy Gmail.com address.

There is also no easy way to migrate different Google services between different Google Accounts, if you have started with a Gmail.com address or a Google Apps Domain. Seems like once you lock it in, the only way out is to restart a new Google Account. Certain services such as YouTube or Blogger with legacy logins prior to a Google takeover, can be moved, but other services that started under the Google banner such as Adsense, you are forced to close the account, even prior to having another account. Seems a little wrong to me. Surely a large company such as Google could put some resources into creating an easy to migrate tool, between Google Accounts, or even from Gmail.com to Google Apps and vice versa. It is what's needed to make our lives even easier.

Google need to also implement a switch in Google Apps, that if you are using Google Apps as an individual, rather than a company, you can be kept up with the same as regular GMail.com users.

Part of the greatest family ever....and I never even knew

2011-07-16T22:39:00.000+10:00

Just got off the phone to my Dad....it was easily the most greatest conversation I have had with him....ever!

Growing up in a house where you live only with your mother, you see the world one sided. So I can say, I have never grown up knowing who he is, other than what I have heard from my own mother. Unlike Disney movies, where kids grow up in a split household, and the single parent still loves the other parent, and tell the kids about how great their mum or dad are, in reality, it isn't like that at all. So it wasn't like I wanted to know my Dad when I was young. With your dad living on the other side of Australia, it isn't easy to get to know him, cause it isn't like you can jump on the push bike and ride down the road to his house. As I got older, in my teenage years, my Dad, moved to the east coast of Australia for work, and did a bit of travel to Townsville, where I felt like I needed to know my other side. Whilst I have got to know my Dad somewhat, it really is only the tip of an iceberg, where there is so much still under the water, to get to know.

My Dad and I are very different people, and as we have vastly different personalities, we have always had an awkward relationship. My Dad is interested in cars and mechanics, and I am very much computers and technology. Chalk and Cheese. Bit like picking the phone up and talking to a random stranger, conversations are always short, and never seem like we achieve anything by talking, the time between discussions are always a great distance, sometimes 6 to 12 months before we phone again.

But tonight, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach, that I needed to pick the phone up and call my Dad. So I did. And it was one of the best conversations we have ever had. We both felt comfortable, and the conversation felt like it would go on forever. We talked about a range of topics from Family (both immediate and extended) to Work to Holidays to Life in General. When I got off the phone, I felt great! And whilst I probably couldn't ring every week due to how different we are, I felt as though some inroads were made tonight, and it gave me the feeling that.....I have the greatest Dad in the whole world. The phone calls will certainly be more frequent than 6 months though, maybe once or twice a month will be okay. But I can say that I am proud to be part of a great family, and it is a shame it has taken this long to realise it.

In fact a couple of weeks back, I had a visit from my grandparents on my Dad's side, and it too was a great meet and greet, for something where I had not seen them since I was knee high to a grasshopper. It has given me this great feeling that I am cared about greatly, by people who barely know me, and I can not wait for the day to meet the whole Cramer clan in WA and introduce my family to them. It has been very exciting opening these new doors to reconnections of my past.

Another connection that has been made recently is my 3rd cousin twice removed, who lives in England. This too has stemmed from my grandparents visit. As their visit reignited my love for family tree, and some new information, has made me locate this long distant relative.

Overall, I have learnt that, I have been distant to too many people in my life, and time keeps going whilst you stop talking. People don't get any younger, so you need to make the most of life with family as you possibly can.

AIM and Google talk together (without ICQ)

2011-05-22T16:57:00.000+10:00

Understanding that ICQ was sold off from AOL a little more than a year ago, it is a surprise to find that the new AIM transports that Google are using to allow Google Users to chat to AIM users, will not connect with ICQ users at all, dispite AIM still being able to talk to ICQ users and vise versa. I will say that I have never been big with AIM, always preferring to keep my legacy ICQ username to talk with those on AIM. But excited with the announcement of the new possibilities, I have attempted to add some of my old ICQ buddies, only to find that they won't work, in the same way that AIM buddies do.

Lucky

2011-03-15T23:22:00.001+11:00

Have to mention, I work with a great bunch of people. I have recently been promoted, and my new peers have welcomed me with open arms. Felt a little bit like a school kid who had transferred schools mid term earlier today, but after tonight's shenanigans, I really feel like one of the team.

It is really hard going from a scenario where you are very much respected by your peers, moving branches, having to earn the respect again, then being promoted to have to gain the respect by your peers again (and staff, mind you). Whilst I can not say I am respected as yet, I can say that I have been accepted which for me, is a huge step forward, considering I have only been in this role for a week now.

Look forward to working with this great team to ensure I can contribute to success of the area.

Google Apps Data Migration Tool aka Data Moving Tool

2011-03-05T09:18:00.000+11:00

Hey Google.

Where is this so called Data Moving Tool you promised us a while back? Two days ago, there was mention of it in the new infrastructure help guide, but now it has all but disappeared. On various blogs, you have mentioned that infrastructure was being put in place for us to easily move our data from gmail.com addresses to our own domains, but it seems like another empty promise from the big G. I am fed up with maintaining both a gmail account and my own google apps account. surely it can not be that hard to replace all entries in a database with a new address if I choose to migrate my data from gmail to google apps. Even better would be to merge your gmail.com address into your google apps account, and have all e-mails or notifications sent to the old gmail.com address to automatically remap to the new google apps account. Somehow I don't think that this was well thought out.

Almost like no activesync services for desktop PCs. Another Google Fail.

Moving again

2011-02-12T09:28:00.001+11:00

So it looks like we are on the move again, heading back to Orange NSW. I start my new role with my employer on 7th march, and that date is starting to creep up. As it gets closer, there is a realization of how much there is left to do. We have found a place to live in Orange, and I have put the mail redirection in place. We still need to talk to both Telstra and AGL about moving the services, pack the house up, etc. Not to mention tying up loose ends at work here in Dubbo before the move.

One good thing about going back to Orange is that we are closer to the Blue Mountains and Sydney, so hopefully means more road trips on weekends.

H2g2: either close or buyout

2011-01-25T23:47:00.001+11:00

There is talk that the BBC is looking to shut down h2g2, a site that the BBC acquired A few months before the death of the late Douglas Adams. Originally known as the "HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition" or h2g2 for short.

The idea is that a consortium of users of h2g2 come together to donate money into a not for profit organization to buy the domain and trademark from the BBC. Now I am all for this idea, except I don't want to see h2g2 become some two bit poorer version than what was originally available when DNA was alive.

On a google mailing list that was setup for this consortium, there is mention that some shared hosting could be paid for. My thought to that was, "are you serious?". Seems like this idea is going to be almost like the disaster that became webring after they went independent from Yahoo!

My thoughts on the matter is that the Wikimedia Foundation should buy this domain and trademark. Why? It seems to fit their business model. H2g2 was like the original Wikipedia of it's time, so why not? At least they have the resources to ensure the site remains somewhat professional, as well as benefitting and complementing Wikipedia.

I hope that the site doesn't disappear into obscurity with a history of pages (including some rare pages edited by DNA himself) lost to future generations of net users.

Reliant on large corporations

2010-12-24T07:40:00.001+11:00

If anything has taught us these past 24-48 hours, it is that we rely way too much on major corporations when it comes to services online. So this company called Skype, you may have heard of them, they do Internet telephony, and have squillions of users, well their server mysteriously went down and caused absolute anarchy at a time that is suppose to be shared by families. These families have either had to resort to using other more costly means to communicate or not communicate at all.

But it does make you think... What if google went down tomorrow? How many people rely on the big G for not only searches, but for other services including blogging (yes me, I know), email (me again), communication (what a surprise, me once again), etc etc.

Gotta make you think though about those what ifs. Would Google go down lightly with enough time to migrate your data to an alternative, possibly open service or would it go down like a ton of bricks with a never see anything you own ever again approach.

For those that still await Skype to come online...such as my self (as we are on naked DSL and use it for outgoing calls)...Merry Christmas.

Mobile Blogger

2010-12-22T07:51:00.001+11:00

All I can say is, about time google. The only thing lacking in mobile blogger is the ability to customize the template. Hopefully when this feature graduates from Blogger in Draft that we will see the ability to customize. Mainly want to go back to using disqus for comments. Guess we will play the wait and see game.

My son's sleeping habits

2010-12-21T21:23:00.001+11:00

Couldn't help but post this picture of my son's foot hanging out of his bunk bed.

Blog back in business...

2010-12-19T23:27:00.002+11:00

After a long break, I decided it was time to get the band back together. Whilst I do a fair bit of microblogging via Twitter, I thought it be time to start blogging again also. Something good to start 2011 with.

iPhone App Store is intelligent

2010-08-05T21:40:00.000+10:00

I was searching for the weird and wonderful on iPhone App Store, and everything I tried to search for, came back with an app for the occasion. I decided to see how intelligent the App Store was, and what I searched for blew my mind...

Blurring the lines...

2010-08-03T22:33:00.001+10:00

A lot of talk of late around everyone's hero, Stephen Conroy, scrapping Television Audience Reach has got me thinking. Could it be possible that no matter where you would go within Australia, you could literally get the same selection? The Hawke Government's Aggregation was suppose to give regionals the same selection as a Metro area, without affecting localism. Nowadays the localism is all but gone, with the regional television stations, Prime, WIN, and Southern Cross being carbon copies of their Metro cousins.

There is talk that both Seven Group could swallow Prime Television, and Ten Network Holdings could buy out Southern Cross Media. Whilst some complain it would be the end of localism, the question is. What Localism? There is not much that Prime are doing to keep things local, by culling their local news services to broadcast out of Canberra. Southern Cross upon purchase of Telecasters shut down a number of successful local news broadcasts, reducing it to these 2 minute updates throughout the day.

According to http://www.mediaspy.org/report/2010/08/03/wins-gordon-interested-in-buying-nine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wins-gordon-interested-in-buying-nine the reverse may occur for Nine. WIN owner Bruce Gordon, would be open to purchase of the Nine Network. Would we see a national Nine Network or will all stations become WIN? Would it mark the end of the WIN skidmark or blue box of death? Would that ultimately mark the end of localism, as WIN produce a lot of their own programming, or would it continue, just being more transparent around the fact it would be a single brand?

At the end of the day, I think that any consolidation in this industry can be a good thing, and with the digital multichannels existing, maybe some of these regional networks can live on as a multichannel, continuing to use the brands they have built on in regional areas without having them disappear altogether.

All the fabricated news for the cost of $1.20

2010-07-28T22:57:00.000+10:00

Recently some family events, which I have chosen not to discuss here to respect my family's wishes, has confirmed something to me. A certain Dubbo newspaper is not worth the paper it is printed on. You can buy this paper for the cost of $1.20 per day, and it is chock filled with rubbish. The local stories, I thought, may have had some journalistic truth to it, but those stories also seem to be fabricated. Those who bother buying this paper, would better sink their pennies into a real newspaper like The Daily Telegraph, which for the cost of $1.00, gives you at least twice the size of the local paper, and news, in a less fabricated fashion. Plus, who doesn't like to read a paper that is backing the perfect Prime Minister, Peter Best. http://twitter.com/PeterBest4PM

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

2010-07-09T20:24:00.000+10:00

We are watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on GO and I came to realize a couple of things. In the first scene when the shop keeper sings the candyman song, he is throwing around free candy to all the kids. Why on earth is Charlie just standing outside the shop? Especially when his family are so poor that his grandparents have to all sleep in the same bed. Shouldn't he go inside and fill his newspaper bag full of candy for his family? Now his grandparents have also been in the same bed for 20 years...how does one person, let alone four people sleep in the one bed for 20 years? Now grandpa Joe is going to give up the pipe cause he can no longer afford the tobacco,but if he has been in bed for 20 years smoking a pipe, either he would be suffering from lung cancer or nearly dead. Not to mention the walls and roof would be stained. There are many other things...however these are the first things I picked up when watching this classic movie. Now I've got a golden ticket....

Dictatorship of Australia

2010-06-24T21:54:00.000+10:00

I am wondering how long before the Gillard-Police attempt to take down internet posts that tell truths...maybe that Internet Filter will come in handy for them.

I can not believe that our one big right has been taken away today. I did not vote for Julia Gillard to be PM, and nor would I want her to be. But she is now. I did not even know that our country had become a dictatorship, until today. We might as well not even bother to turn up to the polls later in the year, we might as well let our pollies vote whoever they want in as our Prime Minister.

Those fat cats in Canberra sitting pretty, are already paid by the public to make decisions for this country, and maybe they thought they would take it on their own merit to elect Julia Gillard in the role. Maybe it is time to change our flag to a hammer and Sickle? All Hail Gillard.