I'm the author of a usage tracking utility on Android called NodeDroid. Originally it only supported Internode, but I am now expanding it to support other ISPs and telcos. The first one I want to try out is Optus. I've just uploaded the new version of the application, and I'm hoping some of you guys would like to try it out.The application works by screen-scraping the optus web site, and presenting it in a better format, along with usage graphs and the normal sort of thing you would expect from a usage meter.

This weekend, I thought I'd extend my little Android usage tracking application to work on more ISPs than the one (Internode) that it already does. As my phone is (sadly) on Optus, I thought I'd write one for that. Internode was easy to add, as they have a documented API for accessing usage counters which are ideal for computer consumption. Optus on the other hand only provide a web application interface to check usage, necessitating the use of a web scraper.

I purchased an Android phone a few weeks ago. Part of the reason that I got it was that I wanted to see what the differences were between Android and iPhone.  This extends out to how to program them as well, so I had to write an application, just like I did for iPhone. Last night, I released my little application.  Its a usage meter for my ISP, Internode. I deliberately chose something quite simple so that I could cut my teeth on the platform, and I must say that I'm very impressed.

I’ve been trying to work out what I want to do with my career recently. When I’ve been speaking with mentors and colleagues, the first question that comes up is quite reasonably always “What is it you want to do?”. I have to admit that this question has had me stumped for some time. For the last three years, I’ve been working as a principal consultant in the system integration space for medium to large size businesses, and I have not found it satisfying.

My ageing iPhone 3G didn't take the update to iOS 4.0 very well. It still worked, but it seemed clunky and slow after the upgrade. Six weeks ago, I (conveniently) took this as a sign that I needed a new phone, and started considering my options. I could wait for the new shiny iPhone 4, or I could look at Android. It has been reported that Android has caught up to Apple now, both in terms of hardware and software.

This post is basically just to try out embedding a google wave post in a blog post :) There is some news however. I am giving a lecture to a Masters of IT class at Monash. This wave is the place where I am gathering information about what I will present. I will also provide access to the students during the class, if they wish to participate or continue the discussion at a later date.

With Facebook's recent stumbles in online privacy, a lot of people are now calling for distribtued information sharing systems, which people can use to interoperate between different servers, different providers, or run your own if you so choose. The Diaspora project has been started by a bunch of grad students to do exactly that, and it looks like they've gone viral.  At the time of writing, they had raised over $160,000, when all they were looking for is $10,000.

Okay, that should be forwarding, but I wanted some alliteration :) Some time ago, I posted a very technical approach to forwarding email properly using Microsoft Exchange, which is useful if you work at an organisation that uses it. At the time, I was aware that the steps involved were to technical for some people, so I didn't really expect too many people to take it up. Some colleagues at work expressed some interest in using themselves, but didn't want to go to the effort of setting up their own man-in-the-middle server to fix the emails.

I'm presenting a session at EJA tomorrow, entitled "Choose Your Cloud". I'll be comparing the different cloud vendors, with a particular focus on Google App Engine. As an experiment, I've done my presentation in Prezi. I'm not sure if its cool or distracting. I'll check with my audience tomorrow to find out :) Choose your Cloud on Prezi

Ars Technica has posted about research that has been conducted about prediction your location, based upon data gathered from mobile phone towers.  The research shows that it is possible to predict where you will be at any given time with 93% accuracy, even before additional information such as calendars is taken into consideration.  That is spectacularly good, and just goes to show how good the information that is being gathered by our gadgets really is.

Yesterday, I posted a quick reply to a post on the google wave developer blog about creating a form based workflow system for google wave.  I was quite busy at the time and i think in my haste I may have been a bit brusque.    By way of making amends, here is how I would set up such a system. A forms workflow engine needs a number of components in order to operate correctly.

Google just posted on their Wave Developer Blog that their "wishlist" would have on it a way to process document workflow using google wave.  This reminds me of apost I wrote a while back on what google wave could be used for.  I did a proof of concept, but taking the concept to production would take too much effort for one guy in his spare time.  Probably the biggest barrier is integrating with HR systems.

Last week, I ranted about how our cellphones will start adapting to what we are doing based upon the information they can gather on our behaviour.  Right on cue, Toshiba have now announced that they are building exactly this technology, and it will be available by the end of the year.  I'm impressed.  I wonder if they will introduce it only into the Japanese market, or more widely on Android or something similar.

About 3 months ago, I wrote a google wave gadget, which allows users to collaboratively work on a google wave gadget within google wave.  I've gotten a bit of publicity out of it and its all been great.   Sadly, tonight, the wave that I created to document my gadget has crapped itself, collapsing under the publicity of its own popularity, with more than 200 blips and 500 participants.   The main blip in the wave now has no content whatsoever, and I can't view its history to repair its view.

I've been thinking the last couple of days about the future of phone user interfaces, and I suppose the future of interfaces in general.  At the moment we have fairly static interfaces, with a scrolling list of applications with the occasional widget to tell us the weather forecast or what not.  We set it up how we like it and thats it.  Some user interfaces (in particular, I'm thinking of Android's pages) provide different screens to cater for different use cases, but it is still a manual affair.

The local Melbourne chapter of GTUG is hosting a meeting around developing extensions for Google Wave this wednesday at RMIT.  The big presenter there will be Pamela Fox, Google's developer relations person, but I've been asked to give a quick run down at the end on my experiences developing a mind map gadget.  If I get time, I might also theorise about how wave could be used to provide ad-hoc communications focused tools inside business.

Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently said that privacy is no longer a social norm, Google's Eric Schmidt has also said that if you want to do things online that you want to keep private, then you really shouldn't use online services such as Google, due to laws requiring identification and retention of data. There are benefits to treating your privacy as a commodity.  The most obvious examples are the personalities that have achieved fame and riches through living their lives in a very public fashion, such as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, but each and every one of us makes a decision to trade our privacy each time we go online, whether we do it knowingly or not.

I've just updated my Google Wave Mind Map gadget to a new version.  New features include: It renders graphically now, so things are a little prettierIt won't work on Firefox versions earlier than 3.0.  If you are running an earlier version I strongly suggest that you upgradeThere is now the ability to edit properties, accessable via the properties menu button.There is a context menu that can be used to access the menu, accessible via the Right Mouse button.

I was having a drink with some colleagues last night, and the subject of the over-use of high-availability environments came up.   At too many customer sites we see requirements that the system must have 5 9s uptime (approximately 15 minutes a year downtime) when there is patently no reason for such a requirement.  As a result, we end up spending far more time, more hardware, and more software licenses on the solution than is required.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I oppose the idiotic mandatory internet filter that is being proposed by the Australian federal government at the moment.  I took the time today to write to my local member, Michael Danby, to oppose the policy.  I suggest that anyone who agrees with me that the filter is stupid, which should be anyone that understands the concepts of the internet, does the following things:

My extended family is beginning to ask the standard christmas question: What do you want for a present?  I'm having difficulty thinking of a gaudy trinket to ask for, so I've decided to ask for a donation to a worthy cause. We saw Muhammad Yunus On Andrew Denton's Elders show the other night, and I was very impressed with his vision for improving the lot of the world's poor.  He makes it seem like solving poverty isn't hard, which makes a great contrast to the things that some people say.

Engadget have just reported that TI have released a hackable watch, which can do all sorts of things including HRM straight out of the box.  This is really interesting.  I wonder if I can make it work with Bleep.  Of course I should probably concentrate of finishing Bleep first. At $49 I reckon its a steal!  I might ask Santa for one for Christmas

A lot of people are saying that using Google Wave to discuss conferences live is the new hotness. Given that there will be a special google wave announcement at tomorrow's Enterprise Futures Forum in Melbourne, I'm willing to guess there will be waves for the conference. In anticipation, I have created a wave for the tech discussion session I am running on local implications for cloud computing. There's not much there at the moment.

Melissa, Courtenay and I went to see Abbe May perform a blues/rock solo gig at the Weseley Anne last night. We always try and see her when she's in town, and as usual she delivered. The style was a bit different this time, as she was on her own and had to adapt some of her songs to fit the format. Abbe also performed a bunch of covers, as she explained afterwards to "

Enterprise Java Australia are holding a conference on the 17th of November in Melbourne, with keynote speeches on the Broadband initiative, Green IT, SOA, andGoogle Wave.  I will be facilitating one of the afternoon tech sessions on Cloud Computing.  If you're at the event, come and say hi to me. There's a 2 for 1 registration offer open until mid day on Friday.

Its not nearly as bad as all that.  In fact its a good thing.  Melissa's first solo show outside of the university system opened last night at Metalab in Sydney, and was very successful.  She sold some pieces, chatted with lots of people, and we had some fun.  The proprietors of Metalab are very welcoming and friendly and we all went out for Vietnamese food afterwards which I thought was a nice touch.

The other day, I released a mind mapping gadget for google wave, and its proven to be quite popular. Popular for something I knocked together quickly anyway. There's an active wave discussing features, which also serves as the main description of the gadget. Its getting a bit long now, and I'm aware that there is a limit to how big waves can get before they start to slow down. It also gets to the point where I want to simplify things so that a new reader coming upon the wave doesn't get confused by the threads of conversation there.

As you can probably tell by my recent posts, I’ve been mucking about with Google Wave for the last week or so. It shows a lot of promise, but we still need to work out the best way to use it. Some colleagues and I were discussing some practice development the other day. One of them said that they had created a mind map on mind42.com and had shared it with us so that we could map out some ideas.

I've been spending some time recently thinking about Google Wave, and how it can be useful as a method of communicating and working with multiple participants at the same time, which is what Wave is for, but with a robot as one of those participants.  Wave provides an easy way to incorporate a computer participant in a conversation with people, getting it to receive all updates to the wave and provide its own input.

In the last week, two people have independently told me about an Australian government sponsored conference to create interesting mashup applications from government data.  I love the idea, and I'm really glad that the government believes that its data should be freely available.  I think most app providers are realising the power of providing open access to their data to drive adoption now.  In my opinion however, independent transformation of data between web applications is still missing as a generic tool to mashup creators.

I’ve been thinking over the last few days about what Google Wave could be used for. Obviously it can be used as a document collaboration and review platform. It can also be used as a multi-user chat program, although there are probably other existing programs that are just as good for managing that. Some people have claimed that it isn’t anything revolutionary. In and of itself, this is true, as it just takes concepts already available in email, instant messaging and collaborative documents and puts them together.

Gizmodo have an interesting article on the price of iPhone applications, how they have dragged the consumer's expectation of app pricing down, and how this might not be a good idea in the future. I can certainly say that I won't be expecting to make much money out of Bleep. Its taken longer than expected to develop, and I don't think I'm going to sell lots of copies. How anyone can make a business out of developing these things is beyond me.

There's another company that is producing a heart rate monitor device for the iPhone. Its outlined at fastcompany.com, and looks great. Its exactly the sort of thing that would render Bleep irrelevant. Sadly, its not going to be made into a product at this stage :(

When I started Crimson Cactus, I started up a blog for it. It seemed to make sense, and I could keep the company posts separate from holiday pictures and musings and whatnot that way. As its turned out, I find that I want to cross-post. That is, I want to be able to post to both of my blogs. There are a couple of ways of doing this, but I think it just goes to show that I'm doing it wrong.

Engadget have released a review of the fitbit networked pedometer. I remember first seeing this about 12 months ago, when it had just launched at techcrunch 50. I like the idea of the device, but it is yet another thing to carry around, and yet another thing to charge. It makes me thing of the belt valet computers in David Marusek's Counting Heads (Thanks for the reccomendation @doctorow). One day, not too far away, we will have computers that we carry, strapped to our person (perhaps in belt form), that can handle all of the biometric sensing that we want.

Melissa and I went to a Royalty themed fancy dress party last night, so we went as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Here's a couple of photos.

Gizmodo are running a theme of playing with balls this week, which fits right up the alley for Bleep. In the linked article, they mention heart rate monitor gadgets in particular. At least my approach will be relatively inexpensive. What a pity that Bleep isn't ready for the publication yet. I'll be following their posts with interest.

I was operating under the impression that nobody had created a heart rate monitor system for the iPhone yet. This seemed illogical to me as it is such an obvious thing to do. As it turns out, there is one. I found it today at Smheartlink's site. It looks like a great product, but it is a lot of money to spend, especially after you have already purchased a HRM belt.

I saw an article on gizmodo a few minutes ago that says that apple approved almost 1400 iphone apps last friday. Even on the slow days they approve hundreds of applications. Its massively impressive that Apple have got so many applications. It just goes to show how much of a runaway success they have on their hands. I can't help wonder though how hard it will be for anyone to find the app that they want when there are so many apps to choose from.

I had hoped to finish Bleepto the point where it could be submitted to Apple over the weekend. Sadly, I’ve run into some problems causing the application to crash on the iPhone, even though it runs fine in the simulator. I’m also trying to polish the user interface to make it a better experience for users. In the mean time, I’ve uploaded a sneak peek video of Bleep in action. Bear in mind that this is an early version of the software, and it is still being tweked.

I just got back from 5 days in the Snow at Mt Hotham in Victoria. Despite the weather forecasts looking like complete arse all week, we got to ski 4 days out of 5 which is not a bad for Australia. Only friday let us down with bucketing rain and howling wind. Given we were due to head back to Melbourne on Friday anyway, we packed it in and headed back early.

Recently, I found out that Yarra Trams has published a web service interface for finding out information on tram arrival times. This is awesome, and I've been trying to think of cool little apps that I can write to take advantage of it. As I'm also playing with GWT at the moment, so perhaps I could do something that way... There is a problem however, in that the Same Origin Policy will block any attempts by my javascript code to access the webservice, as it will come from a different origin.

I've been using my google account to store mail for a while now, including forwarded mail from client organisations, where this is allowed. The only problem that I've had so far is that when I'm sending mail as another identity (like a client one), it would always come up as "from me@brucecooper.net on behalf of me@the.right.domain" Its a bit annoying, but thats what Google had to do in order to be good email citizens and not get everything marked as spam.

I'm a fan of the TramTracker iPhone application. Its a little doohickey that fetches information from Yarra Tram's real time tram arrival service to tell you when your next tram will be coming. Having used it a lot over the last couple of months, I wondered last night how the app got its data. What service did it contact to fetch the data. So I hooked up a logging proxy to my iPhone and traced the calls it was making.

Melissa and some of her colleagues are launching their new collaboration, the brown paper collective at 'this is not a design market' in Melbourne in July. The Brown Paper Collective is a group of artists from the fields of drawing, glass and jewellery, and the market at which they will make their first group outingwill be happening in Melbourne on Sunday the 19th of July at The Factory, 500 La Trobe St, Melbourne from 10am - 5pm.

I was going to write a blog post yesterday about where integration platforms were going, which seems to me to be online webapps without the need for an IDE at all. some products like Oracle's Aqualogic ESB are pretty much already there. I couldn't quite gather my thoughts properly though, so I thought I would do a mind map. I was going to use FreeMind, but considering I was talking about web-apps, I thought I'd do a search for whats out there.

Moments after taking this shot, the passenger folded up his Elvis cut out and got off the tram. Given that the cutout had well worn fold marks at the hips and knees I can't help wondering if he takes the king with him on all tram rides for company (or deterring other people from sitting next to him) Either way it's hilarious

UPDATE: I've now created a service to make this much easier to forward email. If you are interested in this, please have a look at the service's site. I've got a million email accounts. Every time I start work on a new client site, I get given yet another email account. Its a pain in the butt to manage all of these, so wherever possible I forward the mail onto my main gmail account where it can get filtered, stored and searched easily.

I'm an IT consultant. As a result, I spend the vast majority of my time at work doing one of the followingReading or Composing EmailReading or writing Word DocumentsEditing our corporate WikiResearching stuff (or skiving off) on the WebLooking at Microsoft Project plansVery occasionally coding... very occasionallyTo perform these tasks, I lug around a quite heavy laptop. Its not a particularly special laptop, but it does the job. I would like to exchange it for something lighter and easier to work with in order to save my back, especially when I ride to work.

Melissa and I just got back from our holiday in Tasmania. We spent 5 nights in Cradle Mountain, 2 in Launceston, and traveled on the Spirit of Tasmania. As long as you don’t mind loosing a night, the Spirit of Tasmania is not a bad way of travelling. Below are some blurry iphonecam shots from the trip Tasmania

Melissa got her thesis corrections back today. One correction in total, and that was for a typo. Congratulations Mel. That's a great effort!

My wife Melissa is having her final Masters of fine art exhibition happening on the 1st of April (no its not a joke) at Monash uni in Melbourne. Click on the image for more info and a slideshow.

I saw this on the AGE this morning. Its good to see that cycling as a form of transport is getting some more attention these days. Melbourne used to be consistently rated as one of the world's best cities to live in, based in no small part on the excellent transport options. Due to decades of under-investment we no longer can lay claim to that title. Maybe we can start going back in the right direction.

When I started trying to loose weight, I said to myself that if I reached a weight milestone, then I would get myself a present, paid for by my tax return. It couldn't be a present that would undo all of my good work, so chocolates and wine were out, rather it had to be something that would excite me but also enable me to continue getting fitter and loose weight.

Available from Etsy

Virtualisation is a pretty commonly known practice these days. IT operations staff use it as a method of consolidation and getting rid of old legacy hardware. Now we are being presented with virtualisation on demand facilities, usually referred to as Cloud Computing. This allows any user to create a virtual machine as a clone of a disk image at any time, use it for a while, and then throw it away.

This is a re-post of an earlier article I wrote. Any links to the old version will now be busted... Sorry. In our project, we follow a strict governance process for governing our services. We identify the services and their operations from our Business Process Model, then proceed to producing a WSDL and associated XSDs to represent that service. Only once this is done will we proceed to implementation. This is called top down design and is generally a good thing.

This is a re-post of an earlier article I wrote. Any links will now be busted... Sorry. UDDI registries provide a number of features. Primarily they are billed as governance mechanisms for enterprises running SOA environments. They also provide endpoint indirection capabilities, which are useful from a governance perspective, but can also be used for testing. This is an extension of the dependency injection pattern, which is commonly used in object oriented programming, into the distributed world.

I'm trying to loose weight, and I'm tracking it using google docs Here's a graph of my current weight. Due to some google docs charts wierdness, I can't show the actual weight, so you'll have to read 0 as 80, 1 as 81, etc... Hopefully, this graph should change as I update the data. Thats what I'm checking out. How am I achieving this? Work kindly provides a gym, and has hired personal trainers to come in each day during the lunch break.

I have run my own blog, on and off, for some time now. I was paying for hosting, and setting up my own wordpress install. The first one got deleted due to user error (PEBKAC). The second one got defaced by remarkably funny russians. The third one had its database corrupted. I don't care if google has my information any more. You win, its easier to do it this way... oh well.

Its the end of Movember and now all of us Mo-Bros can finally get rid of the itchy, food catching monstrosities! Here's the final Stop-Mo

Here's lookin' at you shorty!

Thats right, I'm growing a mo for charity. Get with it!

Its been a good week for music this week. In adition to seeing Darren Hanlon, we also went to the first filming session for season 5 of RocKwiz. Melissa was the nominated rock-brain from our table, and competed for a position on the show. Unfortunately she wasn't fast enough for the other freaks. A boatload of beer and a load of fun was had by all. I heartily recommend it to any person that likes music.

We went to see Darren Hanlon at the Ruby Lounge Belgrave on Wednesday. It rocked

Melissa and I got engaged at 1:30 am on Christmas eve! Hooray.

Narelle's Boyfriend Dean is in town, and we went to see his DJ set at Luxe last night. Good work Deej, you had me dancing. He is playing again tonight (New Years) at 12am at the Bakery.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks to Mrs Yabuka for the lovely cake, which was gleefully consumed at a dinner party at Spaz's on friday.

I doubt anyone cares about this, but I've left my position at Thales Australia, and am now working as a software engineer contractor. My first contract is with BankWest.

This has been posted for the wrong date. Our wedding was months ago… I must have just received this Nope, its gone.

And I'm not going to work. No siiree!

I was walking to get lunch today, past some nice houses in Nedlands. One property I passed had a dog in the front yard, presumably guarding the valuable property Perhaps not. He looks vicious :)

Yes, that's right. They keep on coming back, and we keep on going to see them. Another good performance from the boys. John snapped a G string (ohhh vicar!) in the first song, and to the crowd's dismay, didn't have a replacement. Luckily the support band had an acoustic guitar, so the entire gig was played with a borrowed guitar. They played Jenny so I was a happy camper.

Just to break the monotony of wedding photos, I thought I would post some honeymoon photos instead! Honeymoon Photos

From Flickr Thanks a bomb April!

Onya Narelle

Is John Boyland        

Well, we've done it now....... we're married. Melissa and I would just like to say thankyou to all of the people that made yesterday such a special day. We're off on our honeymoon now, but we'll post photos when we get back. If anyone has taken their own shots, please feel free to email them to me, or send a flickr link. We'll collate them all here. We loves you guys!

Last Night, Melissa, Jason, Dzung, Jason's Parents and myself went to see The Automasters play at Mojos in Freemantle. The singer wearing the sunglasses is Jason's Brother Brendan Hutchens, who is a TV presenter on the ABC by day. They were ably supported by Petanque, whom we have also seen playing with the Burgers of Beef. Gotta love a band with a Moog in it. The automasters will be playing at Mojos every Tuesday night for the month of January

My Girlfriend's sister's best friend (Hey Star Man!) drives a ute around and is very proud of it. I saw this sticker on the back of another kingswood ute today, and immediately thought of her

While in florence, there was some sort of wierd art installation whereby people had decorated life size fiberglass cows and had placed them throughout the city. These are some of the ones that I took photos of, not necessarily because I really liked them, but because they were everywhere.      

Europe

I have been sent by work to France and the U.K. and will be away for 6 weeks.

I saw this ute parked out on the street near my house today. I like it! I wonder what its fuel efficiency is?

Last night, Melissa, Courtenay and myself went to see The Mountain Goats at the Rosemount Hotel in North Perth. We've seen John Darnielle live before, but not with his bass player, and not since he became quite popular. Last time, John wasn't even the headline act, and as a result, there weren't as many fans there. It had a very intimate feel to it. He played material from most of his back catalog, including my favourite, "

I've been trying to put together a HTPC for quite a long time now, up until now with little success. Recently, some of my workmates have started working on HTPCs of their own, which has spurred me on to try again. For a change, I succeeded, mostly through the really good MythTV distribution KnoppMyth. It takes out all of the hard work in configuring linux to work properly as a set top box, especially for obscure hardware like the VIA EPIA-M mother boards

Yesterday (Thursday the 24th) was my birthday. We went out for a curry dinner with some mates, which was very nice. It also happened to be the date of my Brother's new band's first performance at the Rosemount Hotel here in Perth. The band is called "Dobson and Fitch". Its a two piece band, with Mark on Guitar and his mate on drums. The guitar gets fed through a laptop to give it all sorts of harmonic distortion, which gives the sound a much broader feel.

Here's the Trail map from Perisher Blue

For the last week, my girlfriend and I, her family, and a bunch of mates have been skiing at Perisher Blue in the Snowy Mountains. Not much photographic evidence I'm afraid, as I was too busy snowboarding, but here is what I did get. Ski Trip 2005

Melissa, her family, a few friends, and myself are all going skiing next week. As a commemorative piece, and to make it feel more like a school outing, we have screen printed t-shirts for the expedition

I have a cyclamen pot plant, which has been through the wars over the years. As a result, it produces the most interesting shaped leaves that I have ever seen.

Melissa, Courtenay and myself went to see the Grates (supported by the Fuzz) at the Amplifier Bar on Thursday. It turned out to be a great gig, mainly based upon the energy of the Grates' lead singer, Patience. She was dancing around the entire gig with a gigantic smile on her face. Her energy rubs off on the crowd, which made it a memorable night. Apologies about the poor quality.

Check out this fantastic lambretta scooter ad, recently featured on Boing Boing

My nephew recently did a bit where he was telling his classmates about Otto von Bizmark. Isn't he cute?

You know you are all grown up when your father starts borrowing your suit to wear to a wedding. He's the one in the darker suit. Still, he doesn't look too bad in it.

It was a family weekend this weekend, with a wedding, an engagement party, and a dinner party for Mothers day. The only photographic evidence I have is of the wedding, so here it is

While half pints of guinness are cute, i know which of the two i'd rather be drinking

Melissa thinks my web site needs doodles on it. This is her suggestion

A Card for Gordon's Birthday

We went to a cake gig last night. It was fabo! First we went to the newly refurbished and re-opened Vivace restaraunt for some fine dining. Kirsten had volunteered to drive us to the gig, then she was going to go out clubbing. By the time we got there, we had conviced her to pay for a ticket at the door and come in. A good thing too.