jury duty - the waiting

having received my summons, i checked the daily law list the day before the start of my jury duty period, and found out i wasn't required on day 1! what an anti-climax. i was notified that i needed to make myself available for a 2 week period, and imagined that i would have to go through a process for many a day whereby i would check to see if i needed to turn up, and when i did turn up would go through some period of waiting and if not selected for a jury repeat the whole thing the next day. this didn't quite turn out to be the case... i was required on day 2 and at 8:45am no less. some days i could still be thinking about getting out of bed at that time of day! this is a live blog of sorts of that day, as recorded on my PDA:

Bus trip went 7:38-8:30; it was supposed to arrive in the city at 8:16 but took longer to get on the busway. Glad I took an earlier bus. The walk from home to bus stop took >10mins, walk from stop to courts 5 mins.

Not much signage at the courts, walked in abt 8:35 to see queue for security screening. Guessed this was line for jurors based on notices (summons) others were holding. After screen, faced lifts - no idea where to go. Hoped someone else did. First stop happened to be floor 3, doors opened and saw sign for "jurors assembly area" - guess this is the right place!

Bailiff calling out instructions for registering and lodgement of paperwork, then the start of waiting. As the bailiff advised, nothing moves quickly in the law courts!

09:05 sheriff making introductory announcements.

09:25 deputy sheriff's turn. 10 min informational DVD. Recognise narrator's voice as that of Bruce Paige! NB. video is very old. 80s? stream of jurors wanting to speak to deputy - most applying for excusal?

09:45 waiting... DS says not offering comfort break cos half the room will disappear, asks us to wait around and he'll address us again in 2 mins. I need to go...!

09:53 deputy sheriff confirming jurors' availability for a 10 day trial (will go past originally advised 2 week period). I originally answered "unsure" on the computer during registration, but decided to say yes when asked again.

09:58 waiting again.

10:05 deputy sheriff confirming jurors' availability for a 7 day trial - surprising number of people opt out.

10:08 waiting again.

10:12 first lot of jurors being called and taken away for a trial. 5 more trials to go for today. Girl sitting beside me moves away - maybe I smell!

10:19 back to waiting after a comfort break (gents was closod for cleaning! Thankfully the cleaner finished fairly quickly) now showing channel 9 on the TV.

10:36 trial 2 jurors being called. At least 28 jurors required each time for empanelling process - 12 per jury plus 8 each for challenges and stand bys.

10:38 waiting, TV. Starting to feel hungry. Court sessions usually run 10-1, 2:30-4:30.

10:45 some jurors (presumably from 1st lot who were not empanelled) return to waiting area.

10:50 trial 3 jurors

and it was at this point that my number was called. some 30-odd jurors were then led to a court room where the trial was just getting under way. the defendant pled not guilty, and the empanelling began...

about jury duty

i recently finished my first ever stint of jury duty, and wanted to blog some thoughts and observations. so i'm going to start another mini-series on jury duty knowing full well that my previous one has stalled something serious...

anyway, a bit of background to begin with, taken from the queensland courts website:

Juries are an integral part of our legal system and are used in most criminal cases and some civil cases in both the Supreme and District Courts in Queensland.

Jurors are ordinary citizens aged between 18 and 70 years who:

• come from all walks of life.
• may not have any legal knowledge.

They do not have to decide on questions of law, or what sentence a guilty person should receive.

Juries listen to the evidence in court cases and decide whether or not the defendant is guilty or not guilty (or, in civil cases, who is at fault).

A jury is usually made up of 12 men and women selected at random.

The process for jury selection is as follows:

• random selection from the electoral roll by computer.
• notification by way of a Questionnaire to prospective juror.
• summons.
• empanelment (serving on the jury).

you do receive some (but not much) renumeration while serving jury duty, as well as reimbursements for public transport costs and a lunch allowance if lunch is not otherwise provided.

this was actually my second notification in the space of about six months. the first time i managed to be excused due to work commitments, but this time round i didn't have a valid reason and figured i'd go and fulfil my civic duty. as i subsequently discovered, there's more than one way to be excused if you really want no part of this process. but more on that later.

Lego - The Force Unleashed

wow, two star wars related finds in one day. the force must be strong within me ;) this is a lego stop motion video of a lightsaber duel. doesn't quite fit in my current template which i can't be fussed playing with, so click through to watch it on youtube itself.

stormtroopers 365

this is pretty clever... saw a link to What Stormtroopers do on Their Day Off on a friend's facebook message, and chuckled at the amusing photos. can't figure out what my favourite is, but here's an example of one of the shots, titled 'Are you sure it's a good idea?':

am currently working my way through the entire flickr photostream, which is still a work in progress (one photo a day for a year, started april 2009)

even if you are not a star wars fan, or don't know what a stormtrooper is, you'll probably enjoy at least some of these shots :)

ps. you need to see them with original titles/captions for full effect.

too much buzz about google

i hardly manage to keep up with facebook, and sometimes i wonder why i bother trying.

so the introduction of google buzz just seems to be extra digital noise i don't need. not that i've really used it, but i found this comic about the ability to fix typos a bit amusing: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/02/the-fatal-flaw-with-google-buzzs-edit-button/

and i found this account highly disturbing: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/02/fck-you-google/. even though they've made some changes, i reckon i've seen enough to un-buzz my life.

see also http://www.news.com.au/technology/google-buzz-reveals-who-youve-been-talking-to/comments-e6frfro0-1225830480595

sand animation by kseniya simonova - talent and artistry i can appreciate

ok so it looks like i'm quite a few months behind the times in terms of finding out about this "news", and i've hit a sustained pause in my planned series on my recent singapore trip, so here's a quick detour:

i came across a video clip of ukraine's kseniya simonova via alaysia, and have to say had a similar reaction: wow. using sand over a light box, her constantly changing images "moved audiences to tears as she won Ukraine’s Got Talent". i'm not familiar enough with the context of ukraine's history, but felt sufficiently touched by the images in any case to want to record this on my blog. hope you enjoy (if that can be an appropriate term for) it:

wedding frenzy (thankfully not mine :p)

The reason we are in Singapore this time is to attend the wedding of my sister in law, C, to M. Here is a potted account of the daytime events.

0636 It’s still pretty early, but I’ve woken up about 3 times so far this morning. There’s already activity happening outside and wifey is long out of bed. I think about doing a live blog type thing and decide to fire up the netbook.

0640 Netbook doesn’t seem to want to resume from hibernate. I think it’s the HDD problem again, which I’ll have to sort out when I get back to Oz. Hope a full reboot works…

0650 Now working on netbook after full reboot. Needs to hold out for another week. Loud (to me) chatting outside, I can hear my wife being a part of the conversation. Wonder when I should actually get out of bed.

0654 C’s ‘sisters’ are due to arrive in a few minutes. I think I should start wiping the sleep from my eyes. M is due to arrive with his ‘brothers’ at 8am to pick up his bride and go through the ‘negotiations’ to get past the front door. I’d better be dressed and fed by then.

0721 Time for breakfast. I feel like I’m in a house of strangers - many unfamiliar voices.

0736 The sisters have prepared some pretty nasty stuff for the groom and his men. Hope they don’t go overboard with these ‘games’. Time for me to make myself look presentable.

0747 Dressed and ready for action. The house is suddenly quiet. I’m going to stop being antisocial and see what’s happening.

0749 The closing of the veil by the parents being done. Photos with family and

sisters.

0753 More photos - closeups of C’s nail art. Brothers are here.

0756 E touching up C’s mascara and attending to some last minute adjustments. Relatives starting to arrive too.

0803 The boys are congregating downstairs, while the girls realise they have no structure to their tortures I mean tests, and knock up a plan/sequence.

0806 The boys have arrived at the front door. Door bell rings. The negotiations begin.

0810 The flowers have been rejected, the ang pao has been rejected. The boys get to work on their first challenge.

0815 The brothers are now watching a video clip on the laptop - I think it’s a music video that they need to perform / dance to.

0821 Dance is done, and to reward them for their hard work, the girls serve some “snacks” for the boys. So thoughtful, eh?

0824 Thirsty? The girls have prepared some drinks too… meanwhile the boys continue on another challenge - something to do with unscrambling some letters to form a sentence.

0826 The door is momentarily opened to let some relatives through. The boys make a half hearted attempt to force their way through.

0829 Next game - photo quiz. See if M can recall details from some photos with the mystery sections covered up.

0831 The boys offer their third ang pao, the girls approve of the increasing figure. Boys enter.

0834 Photo quiz continues indoors. Each wrong answer results in some food/drinks to consume.

0841 Games over, drinks consumed. M moves onto the last hurdle - signing and reciting the love contract before he enters C’s room and sees his bride to be.

0844 Last last hurdle - M has to pass E’s test before she will let him in to finally see her little sister.

0847 M kisses his bride to be.

0851 The couple are now out in the living room and group photos are being taken.

0855 The brothers and sisters depart. Things are running on schedule. Those who remain at the bride’s family can relax awhile. There’s talk of playing mahjong… hmm…

0905 People retreat to the air-conditioned bedrooms. The mahjong table is out and ready for action. We have about 3.5 hours before the bridal party returns here for the bride side tea ceremony and lunch.

1102 Have been playing mahjong, finished two rounds. The caterers have already arrived to set up the food - we’re having Peranakan fare from Ivin’s the Peranakan specialists (www.ivins.com.sg), yum yum! More relatives have come and E says it feels like Chinese New Year.

1140 I’m sitting down to my meal. It’s nice :) Don’t want to overeat, even though I could definitely have more of this…

1223 We get word that the bride is back - tea ceremony will follow soon.

1301 Tea ceremony and lots of photos now done. Things are running ahead of schedule. Time for a bit of rest until the evening program.

1316 People are leaving. I think I’ll stop this now cos not much will be happening the next few hours, and when it does I won’t be near a computer so can’t really keep this up.

Not just another flight

We were originally going to fly with Jetstar for this trip, as they were having same sales at the time we were looking to book. However we were given an offer we couldn't refuse to 'upgrade' to the more expensive Emirates flights - total about A$17xx for 2 (economy class). Despite the odd departure (2:45am) and arrival times (~1am), it would be more convenient for us to fly direct and save on travelling time. Jetstar transits in Darwin - and we'll get to experience what this is like later this year. Another potentially cheaper option was AirAsia which we flew about 12 months ago - this would have required us to depart from Coolangatta instead of Brisbane, as well as transit in Kuala Lumpur. And so began my first experience flying with Emirates.

I should not have been concerned about whether they had video on demand, because their in flight entertainment system called ICE (information, communications, entertainment) digital widescreen blows everything else I have experienced out of the water! Among other things, it features:

• a widescreen format for improved viewing, not the puny screens you might get in some other airlines (that is, if you get a personal screen at all...). The 10.6" screen is bigger than the one on my netbook!
• touchscreen control - this was a bit hit and miss because I had some trouble touching the smaller buttons/icons, and I couldn't find anyway to calibrate the touch alignment (not that I looked very hard). Of course you can still use the more traditional control pad, which features a little joystick type thing to move the cursor.
• over 1200 channels of movies, tv, music and games. There would have been a good 100+ new and recent release movies.
• the ability to be used pretty much at all times during the flight, including take off and landing. My previous experiences with other airlines saw them turn their system on after take off, and turn it off before landing. Of course, during announcements and safety briefings etc the system is paused.
• you can also do stuff like plug in your USB device to view photos, PDFs, play music(?) etc, though I didn't try any of these out myself.
• oh and there are two cameras on the plane that show the downwards view and the forward view, which I found quite novel. At least that way you can feel more connected to your surroundings.

I ended up watching 3 movies:

1. District 9 which I thought had a decent plot, with an ending that leaves the story wide open for a sequel which I fully expect to be called District 10 (for more reasons than one).
2. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen which was a bit of a waste of time. I started to fall asleep during this movie (by which time I was at least 6+ hours past my typical bedtime). So I paused it, took a nap, and continued watching when I woke up.
3. Michael Jackson's This is It I'm not a huge fan of MJ - I like some of his music and fully acknowledge that he was one skilled and talented individual - and missed most of the media storm that accompanied his passing because I was in China on an IT support short term missions trip at the time (maybe one day I'll get around to blogging my half finished offline entries from that trip), so felt kinda distant from it all. While I'm generally happy to hear his songs, I'm glad I didn't pay to watch this at the cinemas during its limited release.

Anyways, back to the flight itself. Some other miscellaneous thoughts:

• The cabin crew speak a LOT of languages... I didn't keep count, but I think the announcement listed close to 10, if not more.
• I'm not sure if the plane we were on had just been turned around from another flight, but the seatback pockets weren't thoroughly cleaned/restocked. Minor quibble, but the pedantic me notices these little details.
• There is good foot room in the seats to stretch out. The space taken up by the equipment for the entertainment units is not as bulky as other airlines I've flown with.
• Speaking of the seats, they recline better than other airlines I've been on too. Both the upright and the seat pan (not sure if that's the correct term... the horizontal bit you actually sit on) move when you recline, instead of just the seat back. Looks like the plane I was on had their new generation of ergonomically designed Economy Class seating. Yay me :)
• Even the fold down trays were a better design - these planes had a double fold, so it takes up less vertical room when folded up. Not sure if it's related, but I guess this means more space for the screen :)
• Along with the headphones, you get a set of stickers that you can place on your seat to indicate one of the following if you want to sleep:
1. wake me for meals
2. wake me for duty free shopping (though I just realised I didn't see any of this at all... maybe it was while I slept, but that would have been an odd time to have it)
3. do not disturb
• Having said that, they did not hand out any comfort/amenity packs, eg with stuff like eye shade, ear plugs, socks, toothbrush etc, which I would have expected given my previous overnight travel experiences. I can only assume this would have been available on request...
• Otherwise the service was fairly good - wifey said before the flight that I should ask the cabin crew to hang my suit bag, but as we got to our seats, a stewardess offered to hang my suit, so I didn't even need to ask.
• Food wise I thought the meals were reasonable without being fantastic. The snacks we were served after takeoff included a choice of chicken or lamb pie, which turned out to be tiny - I probably could have done with another 1 or 2. They also served a choice of whole fruits, which I don't think I've had on any other flight. Having said that, I think my banana was a tad underdone.

Overall I think it was a definitely value for money flight - compared with the likes of Singapore Airlines or Qantas (both of which I've flown for this route), you are getting more bang for less buck, and that's a win in my books! I'll definitely consider flying Emirates again, assuming the travel budget doesn't consign me to only the budget airlines.

Another flight to Singapore

Here's something new - I'm going to attempt to blog my way through my current trip to Singapore. It won't quite be live, but I'll aim to update roughly daily, and see how I manage to keep up with the discipline. The first entry was written offline at the airport before we flew off. See all entries/follow the journey at http://quop.blogspot.com/search/label/sg2010-01

21 January 2010 1:45 AM
Location: Emirates Lounge, Brisbane International Airport
Waiting to board our flight to Singapore, which doesn’t leave for another hour. The airport was very quiet when we arrived just before midnight - no other flights were scheduled to depart before ours, and then there’s nothing until 6-something. Or is that 8-something? I can’t read the departures information screen from here.

Packing was a journey itself. My plan was to pack most of our things on Monday and Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday night relatively relaxed. That was until the addition of a tray of mangos Wednesday morning, followed by another tray in the afternoon, and then another bagful, plus some passionfruit. So now I was staring at about 70kg of stuff… good thing Emirates has a standard allowance of 30kg per passenger! In the end I repacked about half of what had already gone into the suitcases, shifting some 10kg into hand carry luggage. So that left us with a ~32kg suitcase, a ~22kg suitcase, 2 hand carry bags of about 6 and 7kg respectively, a backpack (mostly containing the netbook), a handbag (wifey’s), and a suit bag. Edit: pic on left taken at our destination. I take some comfort in that the bulk of what we’re carrying is for other people (ie gifts), rather than ourselves.

There’s a free wireless access point here in the lounge, provided by Emirates for its passengers. But I have no idea where you’re supposed to get the password from. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but in the meantime I can only conclude that the free wifi is an enticing, but ultimately useless service.
edit: I think this might be a service only for (ie passwords are supplied to) first and business class passengers...

We’ll be boarding soon. The flight’s not very full. Seating on the plane is in a 3-4-3 configuration. We’re booked into one side of the middle ‘4’ section, but I hope there’s room around us to be able to split up and spread out across a bank of 4 seats for some sleep. I don’t think I can handle an all-nighter, even though I’ll be battling to extract maximum value from the onboard video on demand. It had better be VOD…

give a chicken for Christmas

there are a still a few days left to act on the ‘Old Phones for Chickens’ campaign being run by mobile muster (the official recycling program of the mobile phone industry) in support of the work of oxfam. nice way to clear out three old phones sitting around in my home.

to take part, gather your old mobile phones (and any accessories like batteries, chargers and hands free units), put them in a box/envelope, send it off using the mailing label you can download and print off (postage is free), and mobile muster will donate one chicken for every mobile phone that is posted by 31/12/2009. too easy yeah?

looks like they've been doing this for a few years now, so if you miss out this year (or have more old phones by next Christmas) maybe there'll be another opportunity to give in this way.

union shopper - united we save (money)

i've mentioned the union shopper in passing in a few (much) older posts, but never blogged about it. it's a shopping service for members of (most) unions which

strive[s] to save members as much as [they] can through sheer buying power. That's either through direct dollar savings or matching up members to our preferred suppliers so you get what you want, with great value and without the hassles or headache.

it's pretty easy:

1. shop around for the product you wish to purchase and be ready to buy.
2. call them with your Union membership details, product brand name, model number and description of the item, and your best price including delivery and extended warranty details, if required. There is also the option of doing this online (once you register).
3. Union Shopper will respond with a price in approximately 2-3 business hours.If they can better the best price

if they can give you a better price (and they usually can), you place your order with Union Shopper, and their preferred supplier will contact you to arrange payment and pick-up or delivery terms.

the service is great for bigger ticket electrical items, and can also be used for a whole range of other products like motor vehicles, theme park discounts, accommodation and travel etc. i've only really used them to buy whitegoods and other electrical goods myself.

so what sort of savings can you get? well here's an example of some items i helped a friend to buy for his new home.

• FRIDGE - fisher & paykel E522BRX stainless steel. the best price he found was $18xx from a Good Guys store. union shopper got it for $176 less.
• WASHING MACHINE - fisher & paykel GW712. the best price he found was $8xx from Good Guys. union shopper got it for $146 less.
• MICROWAVE - samsung ME6124ST stainless steel. the best price he found was $2xx from Good Guys. union shopper got it for $53 less.

total saving $375. not something to be sneezed at, huh? not for the likes of me anyway. and pretty good return for a few minutes' work to submit the enquiry.

if you're not a union member and would be interested in potentially saving some money on a purchase, drop me a line. members can use the service to buy stuff for family & friends, but the order needs to be placed by the member and in come cases the paperwork needs to be in the member's name.

christmas lights videos

and speaking of christmas light, here are some nice setups you can enjoy without needing to go for a drive. these are houses rigged with a variety of lights that are set to music. enjoy :) you might want to watch them on youtube rather than the via the embedded link - my blog layout is a bit narrow for the clips.

this is from a house not too far from my place... maybe i should go see this live.


another one from the same house.


this is a place in perth. i think it's the best of the lot (at least within this post :p)


and the one that started it all for me, which i first came across in this gizmodo post.


and a PS if you're interested: another gizmodo post on Christmas Lights, The Brief and Strangely Interesting History Of

- - - - -

related posts: christmas lights tour

google maps fail

for the past few years, i've made some effort to see displays in the 4KQ Christmas Lights competition. last night i thought i'd hit up google maps to navigate my way around some eastern suburb displays, as i was going to be in the area but didn't know the streets well.

this is where the map tried to get me to go - down castlerea st, left to marwood st, and right to dairy swamp rd)

and this is how the satellite view of the area actually looks like. see the bunch of green stuff (ie trees) in the middle? no road there...
having found myself at an unexpected dead end, i turned to my street directory which showed me something along the lines of what whereis shows - quite a few stretches of road that don't actually exist.
that's a big fail for google maps in my books!

uq(dis)connect

i've known for more than a year that this day would have to come. now the deadline is mere days (perhaps only hours) away, and i still haven't quite prepared myself as fully as i ought...

today i mourn the passing of a part of me - the email address that has accompanied me in my digital travels for the past almost 12 years.

you see, early on in my explorations of the world wide web, i discovered that the free student account given to all UQ students wasn't going to be enough for me. how convenient that UQ also operated an external ISP. after some signing of forms and handing over of money, i became the owner of a uq.net.au email account.

as the years rolled on, i graduated from uni, and my internet needs outgrew what UQ's ISP (later known as uqconnect) was able to provide. i changed ISPs, but kept paying UQ $15/year to keep my address because

• i had already been using the address for years and i kinda liked it - it was shortish, fairly easy to remember, and attracted lots of spam.
• ok the spam wasn't a selling point, but the idea of not having to get all my contacts to update their address books, and me not having to update my subscriptions and accounts on all the mailing lists and websites i've signed up for over the years - that was worth $15 a year for me.
• plus uqconnect told me they would offer this mail forwarding indefinitely, as long as i kept paying the annual fee.

my world was at peace.

until one day i received the fateful news that "UQconnect recently reviewed its products and services. As part of this review, it was decided that UQconnect would no longer offer a Mail Forwarding service."

i had 2 months before they were going to cut me off.

i kicked up a stink. actually it was more like a please please please appeal to get an extension.

they gave me another year. that extra year expires imminently, and i shall soon be permanently disconnected from uqconnect. don't go looking for me there, cos i don't live there anymore. let's hope gmail doesn't ever decide to stop providing a (free) email service. i don't really fancy another change of email address during my remaining time on earth.

taro cash

just saw this offer from tarocash - http://www.tarocash.com.au/Voucher/673/n/3/0/0/

fill in your details to be in the draw for $100, and provide your date of birth to receive a $50 voucher to spend in store as a birthday pressie from tarocash! my excitement at the offer was scaled back a few levels when i took a look at their current catalogue and realised that $50 will get you a tee or a belt, anything else will be over $50 ie. involves some out of pocket expense. oh well, i could probably do with a new belt by the time my next birthday rolls around...

becoming a solar home

it was march 2008 when i registered my interest for the queensland solar homes program, a ClimateSmart 2050 initiative designed to develop the photovoltaic industry in Queensland and make solar power systems more accessible and affordable to the home owner. essentially this meant i could get a 1kW photovoltaic system (solar panels, inverter etc) installed for the grand total of $185 after accounting for applicable federal government rebates and RECS (renewable energy certificates).

a year and a bit later, the system was finally installed in april 2009. here are my panels in all their solar-radiation-collecting glory:

(i've never been up on my roof; wifey got the installers to help take this photo)

that was part 1. the system would now be able to save me money with free electricity - whenever it's generating energy, my home's energy needs would be met first via the PV system (the "free" bit) before looking to be fed by the electricity grid.

it would be another few months of to-ing and fro-ing (all rather unnecessary, i'd say) before part 2 got up and running. once i eventually had my old meter replaced by a bi-directional one, i could start making money out of the system by selling any excess energy produced during sunlight hours (ie if the PV system is producing more energy than what my home is using) back to the grid, at a rate that is three times what one pays when using electricity. in reality it's still a saving because whatever i produce is given to me as a credit to offset my usage charges. here is my new meter in action, showing the two readings a fortnight after installation (energy used, energy generated):

the part 1 savings i'd estimate at roughly 30c/day, and so far my part 2 savings have been $24.20 in my latest bill - that's based on 18 days of having the new meter, so about $1.30/day. this means after another 3 months or so, i would have made back my $185 investment. not a bad return, i'd say - thank you australia, thank you queensland, and thank you sunshine :)

HTC =/= help the customer

i decided to upgrade the operating system on my htc touch some time back, giving it a new lease of life by installing the official windows mobile 6.1 rom from http://www.htc.com/sea/SupportDownload.aspx?p_id=88&cat=2&dl_id=421. i dutifully followed the instructions, waited with anticipation as the progress bar came up, and held my breath as the seconds ticked by while the progress indicator sat on 0%.

then the screen showed "error [266]: update error". ok not to worry, let's check the documentation. no mention of error code 266. hmm... try running the update again, same error, and i seem to well and truly stuck in the boot loader screen, rendering my pda phone useless. it's midnight and i'm starting to feel pretty panicky at the thought of losing my touch. i tried googling and found some references to checking the usb connection, which i have already confirmed is working fine. i send off a query to htc support via their website asking for help.

the response i got the next day said:

The multi color screen is called the boot loader screen. The white bar on the bottom should say "Serial" if its not connected to the computer. On Active Sync on the PC go to File > Connection Settings and untick the box that has "Allow USB". Click OK and try to run the ROM upgrade again as per normal. If it is unsuccessful, your device has become bricked and you will need to send this off to the repair center. Our repair centers contact number is ....

so, besides telling me what i already knew / had tried (and indicated as much in my original query), this response also failed to mention one little detail which i found after doing some more googling - giving the suggested solution for error 266 (Update Error - Not able to detect the USB connection) being to remove the memory card before flashing again. what this has to do with the usb connection i don't know, but it certainly worked.

i replied to htc with the feedback that "it might even be helpful to include this information in the documentation that comes with the ROM downloads, given that the use of memory cards would be fairly commonplace." makes sense, don't you think?

one day, when i'm feeling game / foolhardy, i might contemplate installing an unofficial WM6.5 ROM if i can find a suitable one for my model.

Cine Asia - will it reel in Asians?

saw this in the local newspaper last week:
at first i thought it about AMC rehashing what it was meant to have done years ago when it first opened in sunnybank plaza, but then noticed that this is with the birch carroll & coyle cinema at garden city (as well as other selected cinemas around the country). it sounds like a good and smart tactical move - catering to the large asian population (and those non-asians with an interest in asian cinema) in the area, filling a niche in the market (previously you'd have to wait for film festivals and similar special events to see decent asian movies in your local cinema) - but part of me wonders if this move comes a few years too late. i can't remember why AMC reneged on their pledge to showcase asian films - from memory they lasted a few movies before the menu went to 100% standard hollywood blockbuster fare. perhaps the market wasn't really there - yes there will be people wanting to watch such movies, but between the flourishing piracy market in the orient and the propensity of people to travel (or have family / friends who do), the how-can-it-be-legal video hire shops smack bang in the middle of the asian centre that is sunnybank, and in more recent years the rise of torrents and youtube clones on the internet (though the latter is more widespread for tv series), people have worked out how to get their fix of asian screen goodness without having to fork out much (if any) money.

cine asia's mission is "to bring big screen, big budget Asian movies to Australian cinema goers on the same day and date as they are released in Hong Kong and China". time will tell whether this is a successful formula - the same day release bit should help their cause. i'd love to support it more myself, but trips to the cinemas aren't cheap these days. that's why i wished it was AMC who had run with the idea first - their prices are at least a tad kinder to the old hip pocket. i haven't been to the cinemas for a while now... maybe i can make an exception for a birthday treat? hmm...

i heard "tax bonus", is that right?

now that the politicians have finalised their bargaining and deal broking, and the australian government has given the green light to the tax bonus payment, i thought i'd get my act together and ensure that my bank account details were up to date so that i can get my share of the pie as soon as it's served.

and so i rang the automated service number (1300 686 636) and was left slightly unimpressed - the bulk of my 5 minutes 48 seconds on the phone was spent in repetition:

1. me repeating myself to the voice recognition system. it handled numbers ok (had no problem with my tax file number and bank details), but couldn't (despite 3 attempts at it) understand my date of birth nor my name. granted my name might not top the list of most common names, but it wasn't exactly a name out of 'the gods must be crazy' or anything like that...
   
2. the system repeating everything back and asking for confirmation. which i suppose you need in an automated voice recognition system, but it does get a bit grating after a while.
3. me having to get the system to repeat the receipt number, because after about the 10th digit i stopped writing, thinking 'surely this is the end of it', thus missing the remaining 5 digits... and of course you'd need a 15 digit number to record receipts because every man and his dog in australia is going to each call 50 million times...
   

the ironic thing was, after thinking about the whole process and how it could be better (eg. offering the option of keying numbers via the telephone keypad as a standard option rather than a backup after the voice recognition fails), i realised that i had confused myself about my details and they didn't need updating after all.

oh well.

new beginnings

within the last few weeks, i have:

• begun a new (chinese/lunar) new year, which in itself isn't very significant, but it kinda fits the theme of this post!
• graduated from the development program that i've been undertaking at work for the last 20 months
• along with the above, received my certificate IV in government (statutory compliance), which, just like my university degree, is a piece of paper that proves i've been able to pass some assessments
• started a new job in a team where i'm the first newbie for ages, and where i don't know anyone and everybody else has known/worked with each other for years
• moved to a new church (come check it out!), and

• made a tentative return to blogging... maybe?