vk7hse.hobby-site.org

Energy bill power cut (meaning rise)

Scott Evans — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:33:47 +0000

THE average Tasmanian household will receive about $200 relief from the huge power price rises tipped to begin in July.

The welcome news was foreshadowed in the Sunday Tasmanian yesterday, and specific details were outlined by Premier Lara Giddings in Launceston yesterday.

Ms Giddings said forecast electricity price increases of up to 26 per cent in the next financial year were not acceptable.

This week, the Government will introduce legislation so households can avoid about half of the $400-plus increase feared.

“The State Government understood that the foreshadowed increase in the order of 23 to 26 per cent [from July 1] was a burden Tasmanian households could ill afford to bear, which is why we’ve taken action,” Ms Giddings said.

She said the price increase would now be in the range of 11 to 12 per cent, and on top of that people would benefit from federal carbon tax compensation of about 5 per cent.

Tasmanian Council of Social Service president Noel Mundy said anything that would help people on low incomes was good news.

“The only issue obviously is [potentially] reducing the government spending on other services, but the bottom line is that we welcome the announcement,” Mr Mundy said.

But Liberal energy spokesman Matthew Groom said the announcement was a power price rise statement in disguise.

“The decision to change the pricing has been forced on the Government because the expert panel has caught it out ripping off households and businesses,” Mr Groom said.

“Even with the new arrangements, Tasmanians will be hit with an increase of up to 14 per cent on 1 July. This is nothing more than cynical gloss.”

Mr Groom also said efficiencies to be secured from Aurora and Transend should have happened much earlier, showing a failure of government oversight.

Ms Giddings said the legislation would reduce the wholesale cost of energy, which would limit price increases.

“This will immediately wipe off 7 per cent of the price increase,” she said.

Energy Minister Bryan Green said the cost to the state’s energy businesses would be offset by future returns from the Federal Government’s carbon pricing policy.

He said the July 1 forecast rise would be reduced by another 2 per cent after a decision by the Australian Energy Regulator to average out charges relating to expenditure on poles and wires assets into the next regulatory period.

Transend has also adjusted its revenue and cost forecasts, bringing another 3 per cent reduction in expected rises.

Ms Giddings said there would be a cost, which would be detailed tomorrow. Concessions also would be extended to many Tasmanians.

Ms Giddings hinted the carbon refund available to the state because of its reliance on renewable power would bring a much-needed boost that would be detailed in the State Budget on Thursday.

Sourced from The Mercury

Well here we are not even a year from the last price rise and surprise, surprise Aurora want yet another 26% Now with the spin of the Government they are claiming they have saved the Tasmanian people 15% saving! Hows that for telling you that you are better off, but hang on I’ll be paying yet a further 11% on top of the existing over priced rate & standing charges. Where’s the so called “Independent” regulator during all this?

Now with the introduction of the “Federal Carbon Tax” Tasmania is supposed to be better off due to our renewable hydro electric scheme. But for some reason Tasmanians will be slugged by Aurora a fee to cover carbon tax? (if you can make sense of that then you’re doing better than me!)

No related posts.

Recession we had to have!

Scott Evans — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:51:00 +0000

THE State Government will neither know nor admit if the state is in a recession before November, Premier Lara Giddings said yesterday.

Several hours of parliamentary proceedings were yesterday consumed by debate over the state of Tasmania’s economy, with the Premier staunchly denying it was possible to tell if it was shrinking or not.

“It is impossible to prove one way or the other whether Tasmania’s economic performance meets the conventional definition of recession,” Ms Giddings told State Parliament.

“The 2011-12 annual gross state product figures will not be published until November of this year.

“If this does indeed show that an economic contraction has occurred then we will acknowledge that.”

But Opposition Leader Will Hodgman insisted that with rising unemployment and languishing business sectors, the state’s economy was clearly in trouble.

“What Tasmanians have seen this morning is a government in denial,” he said.

“We have the highest unemployment rate in the nation and this Government needs to take action to deal with that.

“There are over 18,000 people in Tasmania on the unemployment queues and they don’t want to see a premier unable, because of political pride, to even mention the word recession.

“The Premier and her ministers can’t even accept the problem. What chance have we got of a solution?”

Greens leader Nick McKim said that rather than debating whether the state was in a recession, the Opposition might come up with some solutions of their own.

“If the Liberals wanted to play a constructive role they would stop talking the state’s economy down,” he said.

Sourced from The Mercury

Ok so when is a recession not a recession? To play on words simply makes a complete mockery of the Tasmanian population as a whole.

I still believe that the Tasmanian Govnor has a lot to answer for, after all it was he who directed the Labour Party to form a government (a minority one at that) Since then former premier David Bartlett has jumped ship to the private sector along with the former treasurer has retired from politics just in time for handing down the state budget blowout.

The current opposition (Liberal) have simply criticised pretty much all that the government has done or has indicated it will do. There’s not been a clear plan revealed from opposition as to how they will approach the situation.

Tasmania’s has the title of “The Natural State” So naturally anything that could assist the economic situation will “Naturally” never happen! (with minority government) The Greens (Stupidly I voted green) haven’t helped matters by not giving any leeway. The opposition simply has no plans beyond the next election!

Posted from WordPress for Android

Trailer Cam! (Revenue Cam)

Scott Evans — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:41:48 +0000

POLICE have a brand new, theft-proof weapon against speeding and so far it is working a treat.

The white trailer housing a speed camera worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is already attracting considerable notoriety after being unleashed on the southern public just a couple of weeks ago.

“We’re trialling the trailer to see if it provides a viable alternative to police manning speed camera sites themselves, and so far it is working,” Tasmania Police traffic boss Mark Beech-Jones said.

Anyone thinking about stealing or damaging the trailer spotted everywhere from the Brooker Highway to Huonville lately should think again.

“It’s fitted with a range of anti-theft and anti-vandalism devices so I’d suggest people leave it alone,” Insp Beech-Jones said.

Civilian speed camera operators have been sacked across the state as the police department battles to meet its multi-million dollar budget cuts.

“If the trailer is successful we will roll out more of them in the coming months,” Insp Beech-Jones said.

And complaining over its use and the use of speed cameras in general should stop to consider speeding proved the state’s prime problem on the roads this Easter.

“Overall, Tasmanian motorists deserve a pat on the back we’ve recorded a fatality-free Easter and while we’ve conducted 5000 more breathalyser tests than last Easter, we’ve caught five less drink-drivers,” Insp Beech-Jones said.

“But unfortunately speed continues to be a major issue with 818 people detected driving over the posted limit.”

Sourced from The Mercury

Well certainly a trailer is far cheaper than the latest model SUV! But the better thing is to simply not to speed! although I thought that Tasmania Police would have put a total block on the use of speed cameras as a way to say to the state government that cutting frontline services is not the best way to combat issues such as speed along with many other issues.

No related posts.

Power Shock (No Shock)

Scott Evans — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:06:49 +0000

Well this comes as no surprise! It was only a matter of time before the “Carbon Tax” is the excuse to jack up prices (again). Only nine months ago they got their way with an 11% rise last June. So at what point will it be cheaper to go and loiter in a shopping mall just to stay warm during winter?

TASMANIAN power bills are set to rise by an average of 26 per cent or $650 a year from July because of the carbon tax and other hikes being considered by energy regulators.

Industry sources believed the carbon tax would contribute about $140 of the total rise to the average mum’s and dad’s bill, which last year came in at $2450.

In 2010, an initial 8.7 per cent rise for the period from July 1, 2012, was approved.

But the Office of the Tasmanian Energy Regulator is now considering a raft of price rises, including whether it will pass through the carbon tax to Tasmanian residential customers. And it is expected that transmission companies will seek approval from the Australian Energy Regulator to hike prices to make up for a revenue shortfall arising from the national phenomenon of lower electricity usage last year.

Struggling Tasmanian consumers have already endured power price rises of 23 per cent in the past two years.

The retail price hikes increase pressure on the State Government to share around Hydro Tasmania’s expected $100-150 million windfall from the carbon tax.

The state Liberals yesterday challenged Energy Minister Bryan Green to adopt Liberal policy and refrain from passing on the carbon tax to households and small business.

“Tasmania already operates on more than 80 per cent renewable energy, and it is outrageous and unfair that Tasmanians are being made to pay a carbon tax when their electricity is effectively carbon free,” spokesman Matthew Groom said. “We are already seeing the unthinkable, with some Tasmanian households having to choose between turning on a heater or putting food on the table.”

In Parliament, Mr Green did not deny Mr Groom’s assertion that increases of more than 20 per cent would occur on July 1.

Mr Green said the Government would look to put downward pressure on prices after examining the Electricity Industry Expert Panel report to be tabled in Parliament today.

Electricity price rises have also become political poison for the Federal Government since the Queensland election. The Federal Government reportedly fears that the electricity price rises will all be blamed on the carbon tax.

Also yesterday, a report by Sydney-based consultancy Intelligent Energy Systems predicted the carbon tax would contribute to significant increases in Tasmanian wholesale electricity prices.

Report author Stephen Weston said the carbon tax and the resulting retirement of coal-powered stations in Victoria would mean that gas became the primary fuel for energy generation.

In turn the increasing export of liquefied natural gas would mean domestic gas prices would become more and more linked to international energy prices.

“This is expected to drive the cost of gas for electricity generation higher,” he said.

Article sourced from www.themercury.com.au

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

Flag Counter Visual Approach

Scott Evans — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:13:47 +0000

Flag Counter just a different visual approach to seeing who has visited your site…

Although I use a plugin for WordPress to do similar

No related posts.

The Wrong Way (Bulk Email)

Scott Evans — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:56:11 +0000

Many years ago (2002-2004) Clare & I helped out with Targa Tasmania. Now I forget what year it was when the Targa administration started to distribute their information via Email, but naturally I submitted an email address so that I could receive this information. Well both Clare & I no longer do the volunteer work for Targa however we still receive their (Octagon/Targa) emails. Normally when one arrives I just trash it as I’m no longer interested in knowing what is enclosed.

So Today I received an email, and just before I sent it to the bit bucket, I happened to notice that as this material is essentially a bulk email, I decided to see if an un-subscribe option was available. To my horror I soon found that this email is simply placing all the people that have been sent this message are all included within the CC field. So there’s 1091 email addresses exposed for all to see! So not only is there no way to un-subscribe from this, but it only takes a nasty email harvesting virus to infect one persons PC and all those 1091 email addresses become targets.

So I’ll be contacting Octagon tomorrow to advise them of the error of their ways, for both not having a means to opt out & the security risk that they are posing to all those valuable volunteers. It is essentially a breach of the Spam Act 2003 within Australia to do this kind of thing! So let’s see how I go…

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

Meadowbank Fire activates Cambridge IMT

Scott Evans — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:49:19 +0000

I got a phone call at around 17:45 to ask me what I had planned for the evening! I was just a little non committal at first, but after I phoned the contact from the IMT the picture was looking pretty grim so I put aside my reluctance and headed to Cambridge.

This is the site of the fire…

This is the temporary radio room…

The TFS details of this fire can be found at http://fire.tas.gov.au/

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

Lymphoma, almost 5 years on…

Scott Evans — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:19:09 +0000

Gosh how time passes quickly, as it didn’t seem that long ago that I was on the front line for treatment. How I dreaded each chemotherapy session due to both the physical side effects as well as the mental breakdown within me as time passed. All the trouble I had after the 2nd, 3rd & 4th cycles of chemo when my remaining immune system was falling criticality low that required hospitalisation. Then the news after the 4th chemo session I relapsed and the cancer tumours started to expand causing my face to be stretched and the intense pain associated with this. Then to be subjected to 6 weeks of radiotherapy (a delicate procedure due to the location) Having a fibreglass mold of my face created as to hold me in the correct position when placed under the linear actuator so that the cancer was hit and not anything else. Also losing weight (almost 1/4 of my body weight) and the associated feeling of being weak and also feeling the cold weather conditions like I was exposed in -20°C without the appropriate clothing! Dealing with the high dose of Methotrexate that all up had me hospitalised for almost 11 weeks in total…

Jump forward to now…

Out of work (disability pension) low self esteem, not good in large crowds and elevated anxiety (something I never had trouble with) long periods of depression with flashbacks of certain procedures that were either painful or generally not pleasant. That continuous question… Why did I survive?

Clearly the latter is the worst part of all as it consumes me, sometimes to the point of… Well you can make your own opinion of that!

So sometimes it’s hard to be truly happy that I’m a cancer survivor (although those who are close to me share a completely different view) Certainly the person who I once saw in the mirror has changed considerably from the one I knew prior to all of this..!

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

Healthcare condition critical

Scott Evans — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:43:48 +0000

PATIENTS with gallstones or hernias faced never having their necessary operations unless they suffered serious complications that required emergency surgery, an inquiry into Tasmania’s health cuts was told yesterday.

Leading Tasmanian health professionals have called on the Federal Government to take over the state’s public hospitals, calling the current health system a “dog’s breakfast” at a parliamentary inquiry into the impact of $100 million in health cuts.

A lack of funding had caused avoidable deaths and there would be more if nothing was done, the Legislative Council committee heard yesterday.

And Dr John Davis, the Australian Medical Association’s state president, called for a total redesign of Tasmania’s ailing public health system.

“The system is broken, and it has been broken for a very long time,” Dr Davis said.

“It’s broken at a state level, it’s broken at a federal level. There is no integration; no one talks to each other.”

He said the solution to fix the sinking health budget was to make the Federal Government responsible for funding all Tasmanian healthcare.

“Tasmanians deserve the same level of healthcare as any other Australian and we are not getting it at the moment,” he said. “We have to sit down and redesign the [state health system] with one funder.”

Elective surgeries were identified as one of the biggest problem areas, with waiting lists set to escalate and would result in the number of emergency surgeries increasing, costing the health system financially and having a flow- on effect across the whole Tasmanian community.

Meanwhile, general practitioner Graeme Alexander told the committee the $100 million in cuts announced last year was the worst thing that could happen to the already ailing health system.

“How anyone could have come up with the idea this was somehow fiscally responsible is mind boggling,” he said, likening the situation to the sinking Titanic and saying the state needed to jump on the nearest lifeboat.

He added: “The lifeboat in this case is a Federal Government takeover. We need a federal takeover with considerable local input into how our hospitals are run.”

Before the recent cuts, Tasmania had already won the “wooden spoon” in nearly every category of health care.

However, he warned that already disastrous figures would now only get worse.

The summer period is usually the quietest for the Royal Hobart Hospital but AMA acting secretary and Hobart endocrinologist Tim Greenaway said the hospital had been full over recent weeks.

That situation had caused grave concern in regard to what would happen with the flu season expected to hit Tasmania in a few months.

The lack of integrated healthcare was identified as a fundamental problem by several health practitioners who made submissions into the Legislative Council inquiry at Parliament House yesterday.

Original article source The Mercury

Ever since the last election the Government has had more cabinet restructures than I’ve ever had Sunday roasts and the total incompetence has become all to obvious. There’s been dramatic cutbacks in crucial services while the politicians have lined their pockets with a 2% pay rise (more than enough to keep essential services going) I am truly ashamed to be Tasmanian. I also belive the Tasmanian Governor has a lot to answer for by simply telling the Labor party to form a minority government as the election was a stalemate with no clear winner (blame the Hare-Clark system) The current opposition has no clear plan to remedy the current situation but to simply criticise all the current incompetence.

The question was raised that the Federal Government should intervene, but it too has its share of problems and really doesn’t have much time for the state of Tasmania (except in marginal seats that are in the north of the state!)

So really what does this mean for fellow Tasmanians? Simple, don’t get sick or expect to have that elective surgery (that you’ve been waiting for) done anytime soon (I’m on the public waiting list and have been for 2 1/2 years now) as the status of Category 1 has about as much meaning as take a number from this machine, Oh, is now out of paper… (due to cut backs!)

No related posts.

Trial use of WPGplus

Scott Evans — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:51:57 +0000

One of the frustrating things about Google+ is the lack of an API for developers to be able to write 3rd party plugins for either posting to or reading from Google+

It’s been a while now since I last checked on WordPress.org to see if there’s been any progress with a plugin for posting from WordPress to Google+ and to my surprise I stumbled across WPGplus

I’m not sure if it’s going to be suitable just yet, but at this point it looks like the only solution. So this post will be my first at using it (WPGplus) so let’s see how it fares!

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

Twitter Spambots #FAIL

Scott Evans — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:45:16 +0000

Doesn’t it annoy you when you get an @user reply from an account that is simply scouring the public twitter feed for key words to then send you their rubbish. Well over the past few days I’ve flagged about 23 accounts as being a spammer.

So I’ve changed my account to now be private, this is not a practical solution as I would much rather stick with using a public feed.

This almost makes using Twitter a non event, but for now that’s the way it’s going to be…

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

What’s With Port 70 ??? (Gopher)

Scott Evans — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:54:57 +0000

Ok so if you recognise the critter in this image then your half way to understanding what I’m talking about! Port 70 is traditionally reserved for the Gopher protocol. What is Gopher? Well it’s a slim text only layout that pre dates the internet as we know it as (aka HTML)

Gopher started life back in 1991 and lost popularity in the mid 1990′s in favour to HTML (port 80) Just recently I have rediscovered Gopher and so have a group of friends (identi.ca, StatusNet)

I’m hosting a Gopher service using Pygopherd. This has the advantage of serving both Gopher & HTML simultaneously. This means that you can point your browser at vk7hse.hobby-site.org:70 and view using HTML then if you have the Overbite plugin installed for your browser you can then switch to Gopher.

Take a look, follow the links and enjoy the world of Gopher!

No related posts.

A New Trend (StatusNet)

Scott Evans — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:59:47 +0000

Since around September last year when Identi.ca was updated to the much-anticipated Status.net 1.0 it has suffered from many outages causing some people to focus on either abandoning identi.ca or hosting their own Status.net instance. At first I wasn’t overly bothered on hosting my instance, but some time back I did setup a test instance of Statusnet version 0.93 but decided at that it wasn’t necessary for me to simply duplicate the service of identi.ca (that I was using fairly regularly at that time)

In recent weeks I had decided to spend some more time again on identi.ca, but most of the time when I went to post notices I was having some trouble with Mustard (Android Status.net/Identi.ca/Twitter client) but it simply turned out that identi.ca was down! So I wanted to make sure that Mustard was ok with Statusnet 1.0 so the only way to test that for me was to simply setup a setup an instance and well that led me to keep it going once I’d finished the test!

Here’s a copy of my config.php (sensitive data removed!) for reference on how my instance is configured…

if (!defined('STATUSNET') && !defined('LACONICA')) { exit(1); } $config['site']['name'] = 'vk7hse.hobby-site.org'; $config['site']['server'] = 'vk7hse.hobby-site.org'; $config['site']['path'] = 'status'; $config['site']['fancy'] = true; $config['db']['database'] = 'mysqli://xxxxx:xxxxx@localhost/xxxxx'; $config['db']['type'] = 'mysql'; $config['site']['profile'] = 'singleuser'; $config['singleuser']['nickname'] = 'vk7hse'; $config['site']['logfile'] = '/var/log/statusnet.log'; $config['site']['theme'] = 'neo-kafei'; $config['queue']['enabled'] = true; $config['oldschool']['enabled'] = true; $config['attachments']['supported'] = array('image/png', 'application/ogg'); $config['attachments']['supported'] = true; $config['sms']['enabled'] = 'true'; $config['admin']['panels'][] = 'sms'; $config['discovery']['cors'] = true; $config['attachments']['supported'] = array('image/png', 'application/ogg'); $config['attachments']['supported'] = true; $config['attachments']['file_quota'] = 25000000; $config['attachments']['user_quota'] = 1000000000; $config['attachments']['monthly_quota'] = 350000000; $config['attachments']['uploads'] = true; $config['attachments']['path'] = "/file/"; $config['attachments']['dir'] = INSTALLDIR . '/file/'; $config['sphinx']['enabled'] = true; $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'localhost'; $config['sphinx']['port'] = 3312; // addPlugin('TwitterBridge'); // addPlugin('FacebookBridge'); // addPlugin('OStatus'); // addPlugin('Realtime'); // addPlugin('ClientSideShorten'); addPlugin('InfiniteScroll', array('on_next_only'=>false)); addPlugin('SubMirror'); addPlugin('Autocomplete'); addPlugin('TabFocus'); addPlugin('Blacklist'); addPlugin('SiteNoticeInSidebar'); addPlugin('Blog'); addPlugin('Memcached'); addPlugin('LogFilter', array('priority' => array(LOG_DEBUG => false))); addPlugin('BitlyUrl', array('login' => 'xxxxx','apiKey' => 'xxxxx')); addPlugin('Gravatar'); addPlugin('Realtime'); addPlugin('Sitemap'); addPlugin('UserFlag'); addPlugin('NoticeTitle'); addPlugin('LinkPreview'); addPlugin('Meteor', array('webserver' => 'vk7hse.hobby-site.org','webport' => '81','controlserver' => '127.0.0.1','controlport' => '4671'));

Don’t be alarmed by seeing the section commented out (hence the double //) I noticed that I had duplicate listings for plugins so I commented them out. I hope that seeing this configuration helps you out should you wish to setup your own Statusnet instance.

Credits to: @jpope, @parlementum, @ryanweal, @jonkulp & @sazius for helping me by sharing their config files with me, I owe you guys a BEER!

No related posts.

HTC Desire Bootloader

Scott Evans — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:34:49 +0000

HTC have made available (finally) the official unlocked bootloader via the htcdev.com site. OK so the HTC Desire is a fairly easy phone to hack and replace the locked bootloader using alpharev and to install root access using reflash. The new replacement for these tools is revolutionary, this simply combined the two tools into the one.

So the latter of the above is the unofficial way and for most (including myself) have used to replace the locked bootloader, however now the tool from htcdev site gives you a link to download a replacement bootloader (that is locked at this point) Now this is where for me the expectations from the bootloader program didn’t agree with both the version of hboot and current android version.

The bootloader program (naturally only runs under MS Windows) that you download from htcdev you need to select your carrier and the firmware update number (froyo)

So here’s the catch, the RUU that you download is expecting to see the release of hboot that came with the official froyo update. So if you have any other hboot version then you are going to get an error stating that this update doesn’t support the release (number) and that an update will be released soon. Clearly the latter is untrue! but then I suppose it’s better than simply being told nothing! So it’s essential to restore the hboot version that is included with froyo. It’s also necessary to roll back to the official froyo release (don’t worry you can remove it once you’re done)

Once you have restored froyo you can go ahead and run the RUU to replace the hboot version (yes again!) It’s now that you can follow the instructions on htcdev to unlock the bootloader!

Ok so I decided to go down this path of using the official unlocked bootloader, however in all honesty it’s far easier to use the alpharev bootloader!

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.

T2TAS First Birthday

Scott Evans — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:40:26 +0000

Oh I overlooked T2TAS first birthday!

Back in December 2010 I applied to become part of the T2 server network. It’s now just a little over a year since then and for me I believe that it was a good decision to pursue. At the time of applying there was only two T2 servers located in Australia, they being T2AUST & T2SYDNEY. Now just a year on and there’s now 5. This has certainly improved the user experience within AU as this provides some more redundancy to the network.

Status pages can be viewed on…

T2TAS IPv4

T2TAS IPv6

Posted from WordPress for Android

No related posts.