email watchdog

i recently blogged about how safe is your password, and mentioned the shouldichangemypassword.com website. in the past, you could have placed yourself on their mailing list to be notified each time they find out about new compromises in general. the evolution of this passive monitoring to a new active monitoring service is called email watchdog, which

keeps an eye out for your email address and password, and will immediately notify you if they are compromised in any future breaches that [they] identify.

you can sign up to watch up to 10 email addresses for free.

migrating your whatsapp message history

i've had to change/use a different phone a few times since becoming rather dependent on whatsapp, "a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS." in the past, i've considered it "too hard" to move the message history with a new installation. this time round, in preparing to send my currently primary phone in for repairs, i tried to figure it out on my own. it didn't work... the correct solution is actually pretty easy but dependent on a specific order of steps. nobody will keep using the same phone forever, so this will come in handy sooner or later.

household hazardous waste disposal

when it comes to household hazardous waste, there's some handy information on brisbane city council's website about what sorts of things you can and can't dispose of via the normal rubbish bin collection. according to this page, it's important to know how to dispose of such waste properly, because:

1. disposing of them improperly (eg. via the rubbish bin) creates a hazard for waste collectors, sorters, and the environment.
2. not disposing of them at all (ie. keeping them in your home) creates a hazard for yourself or others who may come into contact with them.

some tips i was able to make use of recently in relation to this topic:

• small amounts of paint can be disposed by pouring the paint over newspaper and left to dry, then the newspaper thrown into the bin (as per pics below)
• the now empty paint tin (with minimal residual paint) can be recycled / thrown in the recycling bin
• CFLs and flourescent tubes can be thrown into the rubbish bin if wrapped in newspaper or put in the original box (or the box your replacement bulb/tube came in).

Initial pouring of paint

Paint spread out to dry

Tax, super and you resource

"Tax, Super + You"  is a new and recently launched resource from the ATO designed to help high school students understand Australia's tax and superannuation systems.

As individuals, we all have our aspirations – a desire to make money, to achieve success in life and maybe raise a family. But no matter how successful we are as individuals, we all rely upon others because we are part of a community.

The basic goods and services that we all need – schools, roads, hospitals and social services – are available because we have all contributed to the tax system to provide government with the funds they need to deliver these services on our behalf. 

Regardless of what you want to do in life, you need to understand the tax system. You do not have to be a tax lawyer or an accountant but you need to understand your obligations – paying your tax is a serious matter, regardless of what area of employment you end up in.

-- the Assistant Treasurer the Honourable David Bradbury MP, during the program launch at MacGregor State High School

I was never taught financial literacy during my school years. Whilst still far from perfect, I think my financial literacy is generally passable these days, thanks to more than a decade in the workforce, doing my own tax returns, engaging the services of a financial advisor, making some pretty big mistakes (some of which I was able to recover from), and time spent dealing with the tax and superannuation systems in the course of my employment.

I can't recommend more highly the the benefit of starting this aspect of education earlier. If you think your knowledge in these areas is lacking but you're past your high school days, fear not as you can still access the material by registering here as a member of the public, and you can also take a preview and sample one of the lessons without registering.

One of the first things you are presented with is this perhaps sobering statement:

You have a legal responsibility to know what taxes you are liable to pay. You can't claim, 'I didn't know I had to pay tax on it'. The Australian income tax system relies on taxpayers self-assessing, which means you are responsible for working out how much you need to declare and can claim on your tax return.

Check it out.

food truck dining

food trucks - not the kind like these that bring/sell breakfast/morning tea/lunch fare to workplaces (sometimes known as smoko vans), but the more gourmet versions helmed by the likes of ex-restaurant level chefs, typically selling a fairly limited menu of items. there's one in brisbane that i know of, the bun mobile, but i've not yet tried it. there are a few more options in melbourne and sydney, and when this type of dining option becomes more mainstream, wherethetruck.at (who have recently added brisbane/the bun mobile to its coverage) will probably be the best place to track them all down and find out, well where they're at!

Image source: FaceBook's photos of The Bun Mobile

btw the bun mobile's offerings are essentially what's known in singapore as a kong bak bao (扣肉包 or chinese braised pork burger), but with a twist on the fillings available. well if you have to copy an idea, might as well copy a good one, cos a good kong bak bao is quite the mouthful of deliciousness ;)

how safe is your email password?

another day, another piece of news about the leaking of email account passwords. this time it's a yahoo server that's been hacked, but the leak includes addresses from gmail and hotmail among other domains.

the security company involved have created a tool where you can check to see if your address was involved in the leak - http://labs.sucuri.net/?yahooleak

for a more general check to see if your password is known to have been compromised, go to https://shouldichangemypassword.com/. some would argue that you should change your password every so often anyway, and this is certainly the requirement in many workplaces. however others argue that such policies either offer no benefits, or actually reduces security - see for example this discussion on an IT security professionals website.

at the very least, use a strong password, and consider using a password manager to help you manage all the various strong passwords you have around the place. i use UPM - universal password manager, and have found it suitable for my needs.

Union Shopper - what you, I and they all need to know

NB minor edit/updated 20160329 

it's been a while since i mentioned union shopper. (it's also been a while since i blogged, but that's another story.) i've used it recently to help friends buy a fridge and an oven, with some pretty nice savings each time, eg $113 saved last week on an oven that retails for around $600+ (i'm not supposed to quote the actual prices i get from union shopper, hence i'm not giving the exact figures).

anyway, to save me the trouble of repeating this in future, if i'm doing you the favour of trying to save you some money through the union shopper electrical buying service, i'll direct you to this post so that you'll know what i need to know from you, in order to submit an enquiry:

Product type?

Brand?

Model?

Colour? (eg white, black, s/steel) / other options (eg for fridge, left/right/double hinge, freezer top/bottom mount, etc)

Other product type specific details? (eg for oven, runs on: electric / gas; type: single / double / portable)

Is item urgent (ie check for available stock)? When do you need it by?

Best price?

Is best price for pickup or delivery? 

From store (name & suburb)?

Choose preferred payment method: American Express / Bank Card / Cash / Cheque / Diners Club / Direct Deposit / EFTPOS / Mastercard / Money Order / Visa

Delivery address? (full, including suburb, state and postcode)

Contact person name and number?

Are you committed to purchase the item if Union Shopper finds a lower price?

a few more things to note before you proceed:

• this is not a price enquiry service, but a shopping service designed to try to help you save money on something you've already decided to buy. so you need to be committed to purchasing the item assuming union shopper can source a lower price.
• they'll respond within 4 business hours with an outcome (ie. either a cheaper price, or that they can't beat your best price).
• assuming they can get a cheaper price, i confirm with union shopper that i want to place an order, they'll pass the order details to the supplier who gave the lowest price. i will not know who the supplier is until they contact me.
• the supplier contacts me to arrange payment and delivery if required - at this point i'll request they contact you directly, and if possible note your name and address somewhere on the invoice (this might be just a comment). if for any reason this is not possible, i may need to pay for the item first, in which case you will need to reimburse me promptly.
• this service does not cater for extended warranties (ie. pricing is for product only, plus delivery if required), nor installation (ie. delivery is just that). there is no scope for me to include these details at the enquiry stage; the winning supplier may offer one or both, however i cannot be certain until the supplier contacts me (which only happens after i confirm with union shopper that i want to place your order).

happy shopping :)

a crook back

i've been waking up each morning this past week with a sore upper back - tense/tight muscles, spasmic sensations, sometimes just not being able to get comfortable whatever position i get myself in. the symptoms improve within a few hours, and i'm pretty much fine by the afternoon/evening, only to repeat the cycle the next day. there's also been possibly increased tiredness and some echoes of headaches.

all of which lead me to think for a while that maybe i've suffered some kind of whiplash like injury, but the only likely cause i can think of were the various bumpy rides during my recent SES deployment to roma/mitchell, which are more of an up and down movement than the typical back and forth of whiplash. moreover, my neck was about as good (or as bad) as it normally is. so, whilst i've discounted whiplash, i did come across a UQ site about the treatment for such injuries which i found of interest - the whiplash evidence based information resource. contrary to (some?) popular belief, the best treatment plans seems to be to basically get on with it - act as usual and keep exercising, in conjunction with seeking multi modes of treatment.

and given that i've not been able to find much info about "bumpy road" type injuries (although this was quite disturbing!) that's basically what i've tried to do... go to work, play my weekend games of social tennis, housework etc as usual, and seeking some additional treatment from my dad (a registered reflexologist and practitioner of various other alternative therapies). he says that part of my spine (upper back) is out of alignment, and this was likely to have been caused by the bumpy rides with the repeated bouncing/shock transferred from the seat/bum up the back...

i'm really hoping that this is a temporary thing and that it'll heal by itself in due course (a few weeks?). i'm trying to sleep more on my side so that i'm not putting as much pressure on my back (when lying down) for hours on end. it might be helping a bit...

now if only the vehicles we travelled in had suspension systems like these...!

alternative DNS server options

as with probably 99.5%* of the online population, i have for years used the default DNS servers that get assigned to me by my ISP as part of the DHCP process. i knew that other DNS servers existed, but never thought about using any alternatives. in recent months, i've found out about two such options, both free:

1. OpenDNS, which claims to be "the leading provider of Internet security and DNS services", featuring
• Industry leading malware and botnet protection 
• Award winning Web filtering 
• Faster, reliable, more secure DNS 
• Ultra-reliable, globally distributed cloud network 
• Simple, Smart, Easy
2. Google public DNS, which claims to give performance and security benefits

i haven't tried google's public DNS, but have been using the familyshield product from opendns, which comes preconfigured to block adult websites, on top of other standard opendns features. it's quite easy to setup, and seems to be working fairly well thus far, though i can't say i've really noticed much difference (performance wise) compared to my ISP default. well it is meant to be a set and forget thing, so here's hoping i don't need to remember it much.

* yes i totally made that up, but that doesn't mean it's wrong :p

how does orange suit me?

i finally got my SES uniform a few weeks ago, which means i now need to wear it to training every week. putting a high visibility vest over my (civilian) clothes was a much easier option, but at least i can look the part alongside the rest of the orange-clad membes, and not stick out as the non-uniformed new recruit.

it's still not all smooth sailing though - i'm missing a few items in the kit, and have no idea if/when these will come through. weirder yet was that my boots only came with one shoelace...

with no time to visit the shops to buy new laces, i stole the laces from an old and falling-apart pair of sneakers. but these were at most 60-70% of the length of the boot lace, so it was off to google for some inspiration on different lacing methods, and boy are there lots of ways of lacing a shoe!

i settled on the army lacing method, mostly because this method uses less lace length and is used for combat boots. it was pretty much just right for the old laces on the new boots.

so, i'm all geared up (more or less) and ready to be deployed.

and i just so happen to be going on my first deployment tomorrow! 5 days in st george (about 500km west of brisbane), helping with post flood efforts (the town has just been flooded for the third time in less than 2 years). i'm told the conditions will be rough, which is outside of the experiences of this urban creature... but this is what i signed up for, so it's time to finish packing, get a good night's sleep, and set out early in the morning.

- - - - -
related posts: joining the SES

getting more out of my NAS

funnily enough, not long after my last post on using a NAS for download automation and thinking it would just be interesting knowledge without a paid usenet account, i came across a free usenet service! so, with a bit of fiddling around, i installed sabnzbd+ and sick beard, and started using this to keep up with a few tv shows out of the states.

it was working pretty well, except for the post processing part which never worked. essentially this meant that the downloaded files remained in the sabnzbd area rather than getting moved (and renamed) to more organised folders under sick beard. it wasn't a major issue, since i could just look in the former location instead of the latter.

however, today i somewhat chanced upon the cause of the post processing problems and got it working - it was pretty simple: a config file needed to be updated with the actual login details for the NAS. i also recently enabled the twonky media server on the NAS, and installed BubbleUPnP on my phone to access the files using UPnP, which i'm told should be a better/more stable solution than the SMB mounts i was previously using for this purpose.

good times. except that the usenet service seems to have gone down about the same time i was getting all these wins with improving my home network setup! oh well... maybe i'll just have to wait for homeland to play out on australian tv, as i'm presently missing more than half the season!

joining the SES

about a year ago some major flooding hit my home city. there had been flooding to other parts of queensland prior to brisbane being affected, including some pretty serious flash flooding in toowoomba just a few hours drive away. whilst i personally did not see any damage to my property or livelihood, i had friends whose homes were flooded, and got to see first hand some of the devastation when i helped with some of the cleanup.

(it wasn't a day for photography, but i did take a few on my phone, including this "favourite", if such a term can be appropriate. pictured is a friend whose home had water about a foot past the second storey floor.)

probably like many others in the community who responded with aid in the days and weeks following the flood, i was left feeling mostly helpless - wanting to do something, but not really knowing where to start, what to do, or how to best give of my time and energy and convert the willingness into something worthwhile. this is part of the reason i decided to sign up as a volunteer with the SES (state emergency service).

that was in mid january last year, and probably the worst time to join. it wasn't until september that i eventually got into a recruit intake group and began my induction. some three months later, i'm about to finish my probation period and become a community member, which means i can officially take part in activations and call outs. it hasn't all been quite what i expected so far, but i plan on sticking with it for the time being and continue getting trained and better prepared to be able to help and respond to times of emergency. it's also a good opportunity for me to work at forming friendships (maybe) with people outside of my normal circles. and one day, i hope to turn out in my orange uniform and be a part of a well coordinated effort to help someone in need.

first wedding for the year

i have a few weddings to attend over the next few months, but another one came up last weekend on fairly short notice. i didn't even know this person was getting married, but since they took the trouble of inviting me and i wasn't already busy, i went along to the ceremony.

she's a friend of a friend from my uni days, so at best an acquaintance with whom i've had minimal contact over the years. having said that, we have had some deep-ish facebook/email conversations about church/faith related topics, and wifey and i had her over for dinner once.

anyways, i went along expecting to only really know the bride, however found that i knew/recognised a fair few other people:

• the celebrant (not that i really know him, and not that it's a total surprise given he's a pastor of the church where the ceremony was held)
• my elder sister's high school classmate/s
• my younger sister's uni coursemate and husband
• people from CCCB Coopers Plains
• people from a previous church i attended
• someone i know from my YF days
• someone i know from my uni course
• the photographer (a mutual friend who covered our wedding some 4 years ago)

i even found the groom familiar, though i have no idea where i might have seen him before.

hey jacaranda

so i was walking along on a breezy afternoon, approaching a jacaranda tree, seeing some of its flowers being blown off by the wind, thinking to myself that wouldn't it be cool if I reached out my hand and caught a falling flower (like some kind of super hand-eye coordination skills)... when suddenly a flower blew into my slightly cupped hand whilst my arm was swinging in the normal act of walking. just like that. ha!

i held into it a while longer as i continued walking and marveling about what just took place. then i stopped to take a picture, so that i could remember this moment.

NAS and download automation

i'm relatively new to the world of NAS ownership, so was somewhat amazed when i discovered how it's possible to set one up to act as a PVR of sorts, and to automate download of shows. there may be others, but this is one way i found from a bit of research:

• install SABnzbd - an Open Source Binary Newsreader written in Python
  SABnzbd makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible […] everything […] will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction.
  http://sabnzbd.org/
  http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=6752
  
• Use SABnzbd in conjunction with one or more of the following:
• Sick Beard - The ultimate PVR application that downloads and manages your TV shows
  NB does not download actual TV episodes, it only downloads .torrent/.nzb files. In order to automate your downloads you need to also configure SB to communicate with your favorite download program (eg can put torrents in a "watch folder")
  http://sickbeard.com/index.html
  http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=223&t=35015
• CouchPotato - automatic NZB and torrent downloader
  You can keep a "movie I want"-list and it will search for NZBs/torrents of these movies every X hours. Once a movie is found, it will send it to SABnzbd or download the .nzb or .torrent to a specified directory.
  http://couchpotatoapp.com/
  http://forums.sabnzbd.org/viewtopic.php?t=4636
• Headphones - sick beard for music albums and artists
  https://github.com/rembo10/headphones
  http://forums.sabnzbd.org/viewtopic.php?t=6486

of course i'm not suggesting or condoning piracy of movies and music etc, but i could definitely see a use for this sort of thing when it comes to keeping up with TV shows, particularly those from the other side of the pacific ocean. beats checking for torrents manually and/or scouring youtube.

anyway i started trying this out before realising that i'd probably need to pay for an account to access binary news groups, without which these tools won't be doing much downloading at all!

oh well, looks like it's back to an ad-hoc combination of regular PVR / torrents / youtube / local tv station websites for me...

Santos City of Lights and other light displays

i wished my camera battery didn't die on my half way through the show, nevertheless i managed to capture a few minutes of the city of lights display:

"The first laser light show of its kind in Australia... Santos City of Lights will fill the space between Kurilpa and Goodwill Bridges with a nightly choreographed spectacle of lasers and lights that can be seen across the city", happening 3-24 September 2011 in Brisbane as part of the Brisbane Festival.

i also tried to capture some stills:

more info at http://brisbanefestival.com.au/Santos-City-of-Lights

also at southbank during the festival are things like the light sphere

and the liquid interactive light scope, of which i don't have a nice picture... but here's one i took while queueing for the light scope - it's some art piece which looks to be lost of bits of paper or other light material, attached to a net/mesh structure, which all go a-flutter in the wind:

swype beta - now my keyboard of choice

i posted about the flexT9 android keyboard earlier, noting some issues i had while using it. i had a few other gripes which i did not write about, so when i found out about the swype beta, i immediately signed up and installed swype.

it's good! the current version (v3.25) introduces gestures and personal dictionary management, which i think are great improvements. there are also a number of tips/tricks in using some shortcuts to do various things, which make using swype much more pleasant than flexT9 - basically i installed swype about a month ago and haven't looked back.

plus it handles Chinese text entry (pin yin) pretty well too. (there are other language options which i haven't looked into/tried)

find out more about the swype keyboard here.

Google - warning PC owners of malware

it's not quite the same as remotely removing malware from your android phones, but if Google detects some malware on your PC, they'll now warn you about it as well.

thanks, Google - i hope i never (need to) benefit from you watching over me!

Official Google Blog: Using data to protect people from malware

Nuance responds to flext9 bug reports/enhancement requests

i decided to contact flext9's technical support about some of the things i'd found from using their keyboard (see previous post). it wasn't quite the 48 hours suggested by their submit a ticket page, but they did eventually reply after about 2.5 weeks, and with some detail:

Hi,

Sorry for the late response.

Our software engineers' investigation points to WhatsApp text buffer management as the culprit. Here's how they explained it:

For this particular app, this problem happens only if we're trying to recapture the only word in the text buffer. It works fine if there are more than one words in the text buffer. Seems there is bug in this application’s text buffer management.

Notice that when the problem occurs, the inline word does not have the underline. This is because to recapture a word, we first copy that word into our text buffer, delete that word, call core recapture function, build the word list, then display the word list and the inline word.

But for some reason, WhatsApp does not delete the word and did not render the inline word. And if we press the delete key again, it then displays the inline word after the word that should have been delete but it was not.  So we believe this is a bug in WhatsApp.

Moving forward, we suggest:

1) As a workaround, long-press on the delete key to delete the only word in this text buffer.
2) Report the problem to the WhatsApp development team.

About trace mode in URL entry box: The fact that you cannot use the FlexT9 Trace feature in the URL entry box is intentional by design since it was discovered that tablets maximize the input buffer when the URL is in focus. As a consequence, the entry box fills the entire viewable area of the screen -- you would no longer see any part of the webpage you were on.

Note that our engineering team is following closely this situation with tablets and will look into findind a workaround or improvement for it.

As for the case toggle and trace shortcuts, we have received similar suggestions and feedback from other users and we have forwarded them to our Product team.  These features will be considered in future releases.

Thanks for the feedback!

FlexT9 keyboard for Android

tapping away with thumbs/fingers at an on screen keyboard for data entry is not my favourite thing in the world, but it's pretty much what you have to put up with on smartphones without a hardware keyboard. whether you call it sliding, swiping/swyping, tracing or whatever, the concept of keeping your finger on the screen while you move over the relevant letters of a word is a much faster way of "typing". i had been using an old version of shapewriter (from here) which was working out pretty well given that it was no longer available on the android market, i didn't like slideIT that much, and i couldn't get swype.

and then multi-input flext9 came along. i first saw it via gizmodo, followed by ausdroid (and subsequently on ozbargain also). i've been using it for a few weeks now and have been finding it pretty good - at least as good as shapewriter (which should be expected, given that shapewriter was recently purchased by flext9's makers, nuance communications). my thoughts on flext9 so far:

• PROs
• Versatility: can trace, tap, draw or speak straight from the keyboard - the latter two cannot be done in Shapewriter (no draw option, and need to switch to another keyboard to be able to access microphone key)
• Voice recognition seems to work better than Google's
• CONs
• Bug in whatsapp application: deleting (backspace) sometimes doesn't work properly
• Can't trace in URL entry box in browser (tried with Dolphin and stock browser) - could be feature
• Can't change case easily with entered words (cf. Shapewriter's case toggle key)
• Can't trace shortcuts/commands (cf. Shapewriter's command strokes)
• Can't add new/custom words to recognition dictionary
• NEUTRAL
• Voice recognition requires network (this is also the case with Google's voice recognition service), and uses own server side processing (not Google)

the australian english version is free until september 14, so try it out while you can do so at no cost.