DaveBinM

Love... "The Guy Thing"

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Today, I came across a little sheet with notes from an old Boys' Brigade devo on love, which I thought I'd share.

Proverbs 4:23.... "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life"

"Heart" attributes that drive good lovers !!

1. THANKFULNESS :: "I'm thankful for what God has given me."

2. RESPECT :: "What God has given me is profoundly valuable."

3. COMPASSION :: "What God has given me is profoundly fragile."

4. RESPONSIBILITY :: "I was born to work hard."

5. PURITY :: "If God doesn't give it, I don't want it."

6. SACRIFICE :: "I'm willing to give up what is mine."

7. TREASURE :: "There will be only room for one in my heart."

8. AFFECTION :: "I will roll out the red carpet."

So there you go. Any thoughts or comments, feel free to leave them below.

Unlocking My iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:07:00 +0000

I finally managed to get my iPhone last September, two months after it was released. Now, the thing about buying it outright, was I could get it unlocked and be contract free. So about 3 weeks ago, I called Optus, my carrier, and asked them to unlock my phone. Two days later, I got a text message saying it was unlocked, but I had to restore it. So I plugged it into my MacBook, restored it, and got this:

So I now have an Apple approved unlocked iPhone. W00t!

Love/Hate

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:26:00 +0000

I hate how I make things easier for my friends, and harder for myself

I hate how I still care, when I know I shouldn't

I hate my memory, and my sentimental self

I hate my sense of loyalty, which goes beyond sense

I hate my word, because I hate to break a promise

I hate my promises, because I said I'd always be there

I hate to be here, in this bland colourless room

I hate that what gave it colour disappeared so soon

I hate that my best friend is lost for all time

I hate that no matter what, I still can do nothing but cry

I hate all these nightmares, out of my control

The thing I hate most of all, is that it's not hate at all

But love that creates all these things, and drives me up the wall.

Results From My Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Today I'm back online, for the first time in a week. As I detailed last week in my previous post, I took a couple of days forgoing instant communication, just to see what it was like. The overall verdict? Life is much better without it.

I found aside from having more time to do other things, I found life was in part more enjoyable. This I would attribute to not looking to see if anyone contacted me or seeing what other people have been up to. It was nice to just have my own little world, and have some distance between me and my friends. Now, I'm not trying to say I didn't want to see my friends, but most people I'm sure would be familiar with the phrase "absence makes the heart grow fonder", and I definitely found this to be true this week. When I did see my friends, it was more fun and enjoyable, and the conversations more interesting, I could ask them what they'd been up to during the week, and not already know, thanks to Twitter or Facebook. It was definitely a more enjoyable week.

This week, I found plenty of things to fill my time, rather than checking my e-mails every five minutes. I went for a five hour bike ride on Tuesday, (note; I was out for five hours, not riding for five hours straight), played cards and had dinner with friends. Spent a day wandering around the wonderful city of Melbourne with a friend, and I played a LOT of guitar, which earned me some callouses on my fingertips. I also spent some time watching movies, playing some video games, and even had a night at Dark Zone (Laser Tag).

My plan wasn't an entire success though, I gave up in part on SMS-ing, as I kept receiving messages from people which required a response, though I did not send any unnecessary messages to anyone.

Now having completed my little experiment, I've come to a few decisions. Having enjoyed my time "offline" so much in comparison with being "online" all the time, I've decided to keep reading blogs but once a day, and I'll check my e-mails twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening. Facebook will be receiving the same treatment as e-mail, and for Twitter, because I use Twitterific, I'm thinking I'll use it while I'm on the computer, and I'll use it on my iPhone if I think I've found something worth Twittering about, but otherwise, it's going to be stuck to the computer only.

Other small little things I discovered this week, are how nice it is to receive a handwritten letter, or a phone call from someone, rather than an e-mail or SMS. Call me old fashioned, but I think they're nicer.

An Interesting Little Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Anyone that knows me well will have probably heard me talking at some point about my views on instant communication, (which I'll not discuss here, that's an entire post on its own), and I've decided to conduct a little experiment.

Next week, between the 2nd and 6th of December, I shall be going without any form of instant communication technology, and going back to handwritten, posted letters, and phone calls as my only method of communication. I know it's not the longest period of time, but I did choose a rather busy time of year for my little experiment. So, what will I be forgoing?

- E-mail

- SMS

- MSN/IRC

- Twitter

- Facebook

- My mobile phone

While I'm giving up some of these things, it doesn't mean I'll be forgoing all technology, I'll still be watching TV, reading blogs (albeit once a day, like a newspaper), and listening to Podcasts. I'd like to see if life seems to slow down a bit, if I have more free time, and if I feel less compelled to see if anyone has tried to contact me in the past 5 minutes.

I'm planning on spending the week spending a bit more time reading, exercising, playing guitar, and doing things around the house, without my computer to distract me constantly. I'll be posting up my thoughts on this experiment at the end of the week, next Saturday, but for now, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Summer Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:12:00 +0000

Summer is now approaching fast, and as such, I have a lot of free time. So I'm looking at summer projects to do. Some bigger than others, and some quite geeky.

So here's what I plan to do over summer:

- Possibly write/draw maybe half a dozen little comics about love and geekiness with Scott
- Configure a Wii Remote to control my MacBook in some fashion
- Build a Hackintosh
- Take more photos
- Get in shape
- Improve my guitar playing

I've got over 3 months to fill, so it's not really very much at the moment. If you have any suggestions for other things I could do, feel free to drop me a comment.

Lessons In Life

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:03:00 +0000

I've been spending some quality time with someone who's pretty special to me recently, and looking at lessons I could learn from their life. So, without further ado, here's things about them I think that make them a very happy individual and a good friend.

- They're always happy to see me
- They're always forgiving, no matter what I've done
- They're always around when I just need someone to listen
- They appreciate the joy that a little silliness can bring
- They can see the fun side in almost anything
- They're not afraid to be themselves and do embarrassing or silly things
- They know just when you need them to just be there with you
- They don't waste time feeling sad
- They miss someone when they're away, and welcome them back with unrivaled enthusiasm

As I said, this is someone who is very special to me, and a good friend. Just in case you're wondering who this person is, it's my small, cute, fluffy and ever faithful dog Benje. It's amazing what you can learn from dogs.

There's Something Wrong Here

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:32:00 +0000

Dashboard's converter is not working right. Apparently AU$1 is worth US$21. I wish. I'd be going to the states to buy all my electronics. That new 15" MacBook Pro? Fully specced up comes in at US$2,897, or AU$136. LOL.

The iPhone I'm Still Waiting For

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:25:00 +0000

As I sit here writing this today, August 11, it has been one month since the iPhone 3G launched in Australia, and as my image above explains, I've still not got one, and I have no idea when I will. Since launch day, as far as I am aware, and what I have heard from stores is that Optus has not had any pre-paid (contract free) 16GB iPhones available at all. None, not even one. They have it advertised on their website, and so, you would think you'd be able to get one. Apparently not. Despite having a month old order for one, I've still not managed to pick one up. I'm not as hyped about it as I was before, I'm now on the verge of apathy, I just want the phone, and that's it. No real excitement or anything, this whole ordeal has drained me of any excitement or anticipation I had about getting one. I've seen them, played with them, and know them inside out. Optus, just give me my phone already.

Inverted Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:24:00 +0000

A little known trick is if you use the key combination control+option+command+8 on a mac, you invert all the colours on your screen, and they stay that way, until you use the key combination again. The inverted colours will even continue after you reboot or turn off your computer.

I came across this on Titanium's blog, and since then, I've had great fun going into stores and doing this, (it really confuses sales people), and checking out how different websites look. I've thrown in some screenshots below, but I think Yahoo7, Google, and particularly Google Reader look great like this. Anyone else got any sites they think look nice inverted?

Oh, by the way, I think iTunes looks pretty good inverted too, well the icon at least, not so sure about the album art.

Ticket Inspectors

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:54:00 +0000

As I got off the tram at University today, I saw the Yarra Trams ticket inspectors, the bane of all public transport users. So, I was stopped, and asked for my ticket which I produced, naturally, it was a concession ticket being a student. So, of course the ticket inspector asked for my concession card, then as I handed that over too, he gleefully pulled out his little book for handing out tickets, and told me "it's expired", pointing to the July 6 date. I smiled back saying "not yet", pointing to the year 2009 beneath it. He looked so disappointed not to be able to give me a ticket. Euch, I hate ticket inspectors.

Queuing For An iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:51:00 +0000

Most of you I imagine would know that the iPhone 3G was released on Friday, and as you would have read, I want one. I was also one of the thousands of people who queued up early on Friday morning in order to secure myself an iPhone 3G, it's been interesting, and a little frustrating.

There were 2 stores near me that were going to have the iPhone on launch day, and coincidentally, they were next to each other. The first one opened at 7am, and I was in line from about quarter to 7, and the 15th person in line. Upon the store opening however, we were told that they didn't have any iPhones yet, they were to be delivered that morning, and they were only getting 15. I was stoked that I'd just got there in time to get one. Then the employee from the store said that unless people had pre-ordered and paid a $100 deposit, they would not be allowed to purchase an iPhone from that store. Feeling quite annoyed and a little disappointed, I went and started queuing at the store next door, 2 hours before it was due to open at 9am.

It was myself and another guy that was in line with me at the previous store that started this new queue, and being second in line, I was pretty sure I'd get one here, as long as they didn't have the same policy that had prevented me from getting one earlier. After a few minutes, other people that had been turned away came and joined this new line, with only two people that had pre-ordered (making me essentially fourth, as people who had pre-ordered got priority, but other people could still purchase an iPhone).

At about 7:20am, the courier came to deliver the iPhones to both stores, however, the store I was queuing at didn't get any, as it wasn't yet open. At 9am, the store opened, and orders started to be taken, people who had pre-ordered signed their contracts, and were told they'd be called when their iPhones came in. The rest of us stood in our queue and were told the store was only getting 9 iPhones, and only 3 16GB models. Three phones were allocated for pre-paid customers, and 6 for post-paid customers.

As such, those of us that wanted to get a phone pre-paid and unsubsidised wrote our name, phone number and position in the queue down. I was second. The courier was called and said he'd be back in about an hour, so some people went home, and some of us decided to wait. The staff at the store were great, they were nice and friendly, explained they didn't get to choose what phones came to the store, and said they'd call anyone who left their details once the iPhones got delivered. Those of us who stayed got tea and coffee, we even got to have a play with the demo unit before it had even been activated, and see how everything worked.

It's at this point things got frustrating. The courier didn't show an hour later, most people went home at this point to wait for a call to tell them when they'd be in, and some of us elected to stay, with the rest of us going home about 12:30, 1pm. At about 4pm I got a call to say that the store had been informed they wouldn't be getting any iPhones until the day after. I was kind of disappointed that despite all my queuing, I wouldn't be getting an iPhone that day, but I at least knew there was one waiting with my name on it.

So today, I waited all day for the call to say when the iPhones were in, finally at 1:30 this afternoon, I got a call saying that the iPhones had just come in, with no 16GB models for those wanting to pre-pay, like me. Only 8GB models. I was after the 16GB, in black. So despite all my queuing and waiting, I now have to wait until the next delivery at the store, sometime this week, to get an iPhone. Second in line outside a store on launch day, and no iPhone. Very annoying and frustrating.

It's cold

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:28:00 +0000

Well, it's cold down here in Melbourne this week, and the weather doesn't look so good. Just before I took this screenshot, it said the current temperature was 3 degrees, then it went up to 6. I much prefer summer over winter.

The Great Mitcham Scavenger Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:33:00 +0000

So I'm now a judge in The Great Mitcham Scavenger Hunt this week, along with Josh, the General, and a few others. Good luck to all the teams this week, we're halfway there, and yes, I'm open to bribes. Keep trying to complete as many tasks as you all can! See you all on Saturday.

Babies

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:27:00 +0000

Today's xkcd cartoon, I love the idea, "We should disassemble it, check all the parts, and put it back together!", Hilarious!

Exam Downtime

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:35:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks I've had exams, and as such, I've had more "downtime" (i.e. time offline), so I've been blogging, twittering and posting in the BOL Lounge less. On the upside, I have paintball later today with some guys from church, so expect some photos to appear in the next week from that! However, the end is in sight, so I'll be back up "online" as of Wednesday. Expect blog posts, forum postings, photos and twitterings galore!

iPhone Announced For Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:51:00 +0000

The iPhone (3G) has finally been announced for Australia, and as I said last year, iWant. But, I'll need to wait and see where I can buy it, limitations, how it's activated and the like, as I don't want to change carrier. July 11 though people, on Optus and Vodafone.

WWDC Tomorrow!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:04:00 +0000

Tomorrow, it's Apple's WWDC, (World Wide Developers Conference), at a convenient 3:00 am for me. Although it's marketed as a developers conference, it's not unusual to have a product announcement. The expected one is the 3G iPhone (which will hopefully come to Australia), which I'm kind of excited about, but I'd be more interested to see OS X 10.6, the latest version of the Mac operating system, what does everyone else want to see?

Shuffling Things Up A Little

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:24:00 +0000

Last year, I started listening to some podcasts on my travel to and from University, and since then, the amount of time I spent listening to music on my iPod declined. A lot. Most of the time I now use my iPod purely to listen to podcasts, but recently, as I streamlined the podcasts I listened to (and caught up on all the ones I had to listen to), I started wondering what I should listen to on my iPod. Often I'd find myself two or three songs into an album or playlist, then change to a different one. Then I remembered the nice little menu item on the top level menu on my iPod, "Shuffle Songs".

So now, once I have no new podcasts to listen to, I simply hit "Shuffle Songs", and I get a wide variety of music from my iPod. Some of them new things I've put on, others old favourites I'd forgotten I had, or how much I liked. However, sometimes I also get some music which makes me cringe too ("As if I ever listened to that? What was I thinking? *skip song*"), but it's not all that bad. It's a feature I've discovered I love on my iPod. Sometimes, you just need to shuffle things up a little.

Why I Moved To Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:44:00 +0000

I used to be a huge Windows fanboy, having used every version of Windows from 3.11 up to XP (Windows 3.11, 95a, 95b, 95c, 98, 98SE, ME, XP Home, XP Pro). I loved it at first, it was nice and easy to use, and it ran everything I wanted it to. After a while though, as the newer versions came out, it seemed increasingly clunky, slow, and bloated, and it took more effort to do things. The most stable computer I've ever had was my old 486 which ran 95c. It was great, NEVER crashed, ever.

In '98, I got to use my cousins iMac, running OS 8, which I found strange, especially as there was only one mouse button, and I couldn't work out how to do things. Windows was so much better, nice and easy to use. I was still pretty happy with Windows, until mid 2004, when I got a G4 iPod. For me, it was so nice and easy to use, beautiful to look at (still the best looking "Classic" iPod in my opinion), and the iTunes software so much easier to use, navigate and to organise my music with than Windows Media Player, which I'd been using previously. This made me look seriously at the Macs, and I loved the look of the iBooks, and the OS X operating system, which seemed new and fresh and totally different from what I had used previously. But then when I learned that I couldn't use any of my Windows programs, I was convinced to stay with Windows.

After a few more years, when Apple switched to Intel, I was getting increasingly tempted, especially when I found out about programs like Parallels, which allow you to run Windows in Mac OS X, and so all the Windows programs I had. The deal sealer for me though was when I saw OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Boot Camp. Boot Camp was the thing that sealed it for me. All my games and programs I'd bought, I could run in OS X, but they were slow, and now I could install Windows on my computer and dual boot OS X and XP.

I had no reason now not to move to Mac, I had *nothing* to lose. If I tried OS X, and liked it, I could keep using it, if I didn't like it, I could install Windows onto my MacBook, and run XP on it, having a very nice looking XP machine. When I got my MacBook, I loved it, I loved how everything was so simple to do, installing and uninstalling programs, organising photos, but I could still do everything that I had been able to before, and I loved how it looked, and the little things like Exposé and Dashboard.

To think how I'd previously abhorred Apple and their computers, and all it took was a nice looking mp3 player that was simple and intuitive to use, with equally nice software to move me over to Mac. Apple's strategy perhaps?

GTD Tools: Google Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:51:00 +0000

Titanium gave me a suggestion on Skribit recently on what to post on, tools I used to get things done (GTD). So here's my first one; Google Calendar.

I use this to keep track of what I'm doing regularly and scheduling my time. So I put in when I have Uni classes, assignments due, when I'm playing guitar or doing live sound mixing at church. Little reminders for things that I know I need to organise by a certain date. I don't tend to use it for day to day things like meeting friends, but parties and the like get put in, along with birthdays of course.

Now one of the great things about it is that it's "in the cloud" or online, so I can go check and edit my Calendar any time I'm on a computer with an internet connection. Of course, I'm not always connected to the internet (unfortunately), so I sync my calendar to iCal from Google Calendar, and I can look at it offline. Currently though, I can't add things to iCal and sync them back to Google, which is a little frustrating but I can deal with it. However if you have Windows and use Outlook, Google have a nice little utility that allows you to sync both ways, so if you add an event on Outlook, it syncs back to Google Calendar. I would love this for Mac. Hopefully it's in the works. As a side note, if you sync from Google Calendar to iCal or Outlook you can usually sync your calendar from your computer to your phone/PDA/iPod, allowing you to have your calendar with you almost always.

There's also a few niceties with Google Calendar, such as being able to embed a Calendar on a website (see Youth @ Mitcham for an example of this). This last thing, I think is really great. You have a couple of choices for notifications, e-mail, pop-up, or SMS. Now, SMSs, they're free, yes free. Google will send you reminders including when, where, how long for and the like, straight to your phone. So I get a text a week before someone's birthday, or before an assignment, and more to remind me as the date gets closer. As of yet I've not discovered a limit for this, and because of that I think that this is what makes Google Calendar so great, and why I use it to get things done.

Digg, Blogger & Blogspot Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:22:00 +0000

Recently I discovered how to integrate Digg with Blogger, thanks to the help of the great folks over at the Buzz Out Loud Lounge, so I thought I'd post on how to do this little blog hack for anyone else interested.

It's actually a lot simpler than I thought it was, though it does involve editing the HTML in your Blogger template.

First of all, log in to your blogger account and under the "Settings" tab, go to "Archiving" and set "Enable Post Pages" to "Yes" and save your settings.

Next, click on the "Template" tab, then "Edit HTML". I recommend downloading the template and working on it locally, as it's easier to find the exact line you're looking for in the code.

Once you've downloaded your template and have it open in your editor of choice, find the line (using search or scrolling) "<p><data:post.body/></p>".

Then insert your code, which in my case is:

<div align="right"><script type="text/javascript">digg_url ="<data:post.url/>"; digg_bgcolor = '#000000'; digg_skin = 'compact'; digg_window = 'new'; </script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>

Save your template, and upload it to Blogger.

This makes the compact Digg button appear in the bottom right corner after the post, and I changed the background colour to black to suit my site. The "<data:post.url/>" line makes Digg link to that specific post on your blog, making each individual post "Diggable" automatically every time you post. Just type your post, publish it, and it's done. (See the Digg button on this post to see how it looks)

For more detailed information, please see the "Tips For New Bloggers" post on this.

Feeds: What Do You Read?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:02:00 +0000

Following on from my previous post about podcasts, I thought I'd ask how many, and what feeds everyone reads. For me, I have quite a few, coming in at 65 subscriptions. These include friend's blogs, various IT news sites (Engadget, Ars Technica, Slashdot, Boing Boing, Lifehacker, etc.), some products (Google services [such as Gmail, Google Docs, etc.], Skribit, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), friend's photostreams, and various things related to my church (podcast, news blog, etc.)

So what's everyone else into?

New MSN Messenger For Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:55:00 +0000

So, Microsoft, finally brought out a new version of MSN Messenger for Mac, taking us up to version 7. Now, I know there are programs out there like Adium, but I've generally liked Microsoft's Messenger program, with just two exceptions. One, we still don't have the ability to talk while appearing offline. And there is STILL no A/V support for personal users. This new version has allowed corporate users to have A/V, but not personal users. This annoys me. What could be so hard to implement in both corporate and personal. (Also, what the heck is with corporate and personal accounts on windows aren't they all the same?). This is the one feature that I would like to see in MSN for Mac. I think Microsoft are the most likely to push out A/V first as well, so that one thing is keeping me tied to the program, as I have some friends overseas I would love to use this with, none of whom have Skype. Anyone else as frustrated as I am?

Mario Kart Wii! New!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:22:00 +0000

I managed to get my hands on Mario Kart Wii over the long weekend, much as they seemed to be selling like hotcakes, (five people in front of me at K-Mart in the queue bought it), but I've not had a great chance to play with it yet, try out different controllers, or unlock anything, but once I've had a bit more of a chance to play with it, I'll post up a review or something similar. In the meantime, I'll say this, I love having the motorbikes, but I'm not sure I'll get used to that steering wheel, but it's all been good fun so far!