This is likely to be my last post of the year – certainly the last post before Christmas – so to all – A Very Merry Christmas!

It’s my second Christmas down under, and I still find myself unable to reconcile the fact that I am in a summer of blue skies and dry, warm weather, and that Christmas is fast approaching.

I mean, Christmas… that time of white snow, and cold, long nights. Of fir trees and rosy cheeks. Instead, I’m seeing dry grass, warm long, days, palm trees, and tans.

But Christmas it is – and while we are in vastly different country to the United Kingdom, we are still influenced by the idea of Christmas developed by Dickens and built on in the public zeitgeist over years of reinforcement.

We still have a fat, jolly ol’ Saint Nick – although, this caused concern when he suffered a heatstroke on a parade a couple of years ago. We still think of “white Christmases”, and baubles on fir trees, and roaring log fires.

So, yeah, it’s a bad odd being here for Christmas – but I wouldn’t miss spending it with my family for the world. And that’s what Christmas is really about, after all.

For my friends and family who I can’t be with – Merry Christmas! And if I don’t get a chance before – have a Happy New Year.

I needed to borrow my Mum’s car for a bit today, so I caught the train up there this morning with my bike. Then I got to ride home after I’d finished my runs.

A couple of things I’ve learnt – 45 minutes is plenty long enough for white skin to turn red! And that it really isn’t easy cycling in hot weather like today (hitting about 32 °C).

Still, I managed to maintain my average of about 20 km/h – aided by the long downhill section from Hallett Cove down to Brighton (not all downhill, I might add, with some uphill stretches to break the flow and pummel my legs).

View Larger Map

I finally allowed myself to buy a Nintendo Wii on Thursday – I’d been holding out until I was sure that I had enough of a financial reserve to justify the purchase.

It wasn’t the cheapest deal possible, but I had to weigh up the choices of free games (I really didn’t want Super Cheerleader AllStars or whatever it was).

Bad Connection

Unfortunately, the Wii comes with only a RCA connector, and my TV (old thing that it is) only has SCART and co-axial inputs. So I wasn’t able to setup and play when I got home on Thursday night.

I also had the worry about the fact that my TV was manufactured for use in the United Kingdom – so there might have been a chance that the Australian-market Wii wouldn’t be sending the right signals.

I’d managed to get a RCA-SCART adaptor (after wishing that I hadn’t sold my last one with the GameCube) and I got home on Friday night. Now I had another problem – the TV defaults to channel 1, and I needed to access the AV input channel, and I didn’t have a functioning remote!

Thankfully, I found the remote, and batteries, and discovered that the remote (one of those fancy programmable multiple-device ones) still remembered the codes for the TV.

Finally, I was welcomed by the Wii home menu.

Games – Olympic Kart Unleashed

I’d gotten a couple of games free with the console (on top of the generally included Sports game) – Sonic and Mario at the Olympics, and Sonic Unleashed. While out on Friday to get the RCA-SCART adaptor, I also got a couple of others – Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Mario Kart Wii.

The Olympics game is pretty fun – although, quite demanding on timing of actions. There’s a good variety of events, and it’s very good for a short blast of instant action fun.

I’ve always loved Mario Kart since I played it on the SNES. This version doesn’t seem as frenetic as I recall earlier ones to be, with corners being fairly leisurely in most races. It is a challenge, though.

Sonic Unleashed is typical of the series – work your way through the stages and levels, although with quite a detailed story going on. Although, there is a brilliant Star Wars homage right at the start.

Finally, the Force Unleashed is nice. The Wii-mote controller has a built in speaker, and I was surprised to learn this as activating my in-game lightsaber caused the Wii-mote to crackle and spurt. I have to admit that I am a Star Wars Fanboy, and I really do like it when the games add things like this to the experience.

So, I’ve been having a lot of fun with these games – in between cleaning up the flat.

Must-Have Extra

One thing that I really suggest getting is one of the Wii-mote recharging docking stations. It might seem a bit pricey at $50 (especially after paying four or five hundred for the console pack), but you get two rechargeable batteries for the Wii-mote controllers, and you will save on replacing the AA batteries in the long run.

I-Nex on the Temptation

It’s the last week before Christmas, and Mark (my boss) very kindly setup a trip for the company and friends out on the Temptation. This catamaran sails out of Glenelg, and runs up the coast and back for a distance offering chances to see dolphins and other sealife that you might not normally see from being on the beach.

As it was – we saw only the one dolphin as it was feeding at the harbour-mouth, but it was nice to be out of the office and with friends on a calm and sunny day.

Of course, the camera went with me, and you can see the pictures here.

There’s a lot of odd buildings out there, not the least of which being this house:

Taken from Arthouse at Flickr. Attribute: Kevin O’Mara. Licence

There’s a lot more at Unusual Architecture:

Device to Root out Evil by Dennis Oppenheimer

Okay, so those two are actually artworks rather than functioning buildings, but there are some even more incredible designs which are actually used:

The Crooked House in Sopat, Poland

More incredible is the design for a new building proposed in Dubai – a region of some exceptional designs:

I’ve sorted out a couple more of my old libraries, and uploaded some more pictures from my holiday to Australia back in 2003.

New photo albums

Australian Firewall

A few months ago I was in a bit of a self-induced media blackout – I wasn’t reading news so much and I don’t have a receiving TV anymore. So, I was a bit surprised when a fellow member from the UK at HTML Forums asked what I asked about the proposed national firewall in Australia. I can’t find the original article he linked me to, but what was apparently being proposed half-a-year ago was a national “naughty” filter to help parents block content being delivered to their children.

Lack of Transparency

Since then, as the government has been developing the proposal and policy, more details have been coming out. The system will be a two-tier system. First, “naughty” content will be blocked by default, but with an opt-out (for all those “responsible” adults). However, it seems that there will be a second, mandatory blacklist. The details of this list are being kept a secret from the public.

Unsurprisingly, this lack of transparency is causing a fair bit of fuss from a lot of people, although that isn’t the only thing creating a stir.

What is surprising is where the main push for this policy is coming from. Australia’s Federal Government relies more on co-alitions than the UK and the US, and it seems that the majority party is being led by a “partner” party that only has one elected Federal official – Steve Fielding from Family First. Obviously he is not the only proponent, but it does seem that a rather vocal minority is leading the government in at least this particular issue.

Censorship – Fail!

As I have been tracking the Australian Firewall issue, I found it quote interesting to read an article about the successful attempts by a German Politician to block access to WikiPedia because he didn’t like what had been written about him. Apparently he wasn’t after censorship, just “the truth”. Of course, if you block a website because you allege that the content of that site is “untruthful”, then you are committing an act of censorship. WikiPedia has had a long experience of personally biased edits and alleged slander of politicians, but previous cases have usually been resolved within the site’s arbitration systems without such drastic measures as blocking the site.

There is also the rather amusing fact that the censorship ironically increased the page hits to the WikiPedia, since the news articles and broadcasts highlighted the issue, and Germans were able to use proxy services to bypass the nationwide block.

One country that has had a longstanding national firewall policy is China. And it has been a longstanding failure – ever since the restricted connection was created in the mid-90s, people within and without the country have been circumventing the system to enable free transfer of information. The Chinese government keep plugging the holes, but new ones are found all the time. Even the reported team of 40,000 or more internet watchdogs cannot keep up.

Almost 15 years since the Chinese firewall was started, it is still leaking information in and out of the country.

Technology – Fail!

The government is apparently trialling a number of different technologies, each with different success rates. More alarmingly, they have different and wide-ranging effects on the performance of the network they are used on – with at least one dropping functioning bandwidth by 75%.

Imagine that for a moment – you’re paying so many dollars a month for a bandwidth that is suddenly reduced to 75%. In order to restore your connection to the previous speed, you will have to py four times the amount!

The worst thing is that even the most resource hungry technology being tasted isn’t successful. A considerable number of “censored” traffic still leaks through, and an even larger amount of “legitimate” traffic gets blocked. The ratios of failures in detection increases as the bandwidth requirement falls. And that’s before people actually work to circumvent the system.

Why, then?

With all the problems facing a national firewall, and all the opposition to it, exactly why does the government want this? Especially when it will cost tens of millions to setup, and a continuing flow of money to support it.

The main argument from the government is that it is to protect the vulnerable children of Australia from a lot of unsavoury content. However, where parental responsibility fits into this, I’m not sure.

Also, the second, secret, blacklist really has no justification – at least, as long as it is kept secret. The government is trying a variety of rationalisations, but the strongest one is “security” – the greatest political football of the current times. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly convincing argument, since anyone wanting to get at the blacklisted content in this case would be quite competent enough to be able to get around any net restrictions.

What can be done?

One particularly high profile protest is coming from Michael Malone of iiNet.

For the general public, however, there are less spectacular ways which can be just as, if not more, effective:

Internet Petition at Taking IT Global.

Also, writing to your local government representatives in both houses of the Federal Government will let them know exactly where public opinion is on this issue (this does work – letter-writing like this was instrumental in gaining an exemption for sports climbing in the UK from restrictive regulation meant for the workplace, along with lobbying from the national governing bodies).

Members of the House of Representatives – Members of the Senate

Finally, there are a number of protests organised in the state capitals.

Learn more