I’m always game for better video performance watching all these DivX etc. hanging around.

After a great deal of research, I found Media Player Classic Home Cinema. The big deal here is two things:

1. All codecs are "burned into" the Media Player Classic executable, so there's do dependency on whatever random codecs your PC happens to have installed (eg, ffdshow, cccp, Ivan's Krazy Elite Kodek Pak, etc).
2. It supports offloading video decoding duties to modern video cards. This is limited to recent Radeon HD models and nVidia 8 and 9 series. Fortunately, my HTPC motherboard includes an embedded Radeon HD 3200 -- and since I blew up my old one (it's a long story) the new version I just installed includes 128 megabytes of dedicated DDR3 video memory, too.

Coding Horror: Easy, Efficient Hi-Def Video Playback

Thanks to Jeff Atwood for always doing something interesting, and in these cases, something that may directly apply to our situation?

Funny I was listening to this old Rock n Roll piece about getting into trouble and not believing what was taught in Sunday School, but that’s another story.

We’re doing the Sunday School thang with the kids, and they absolutely love going to Sunday School. So much so, that they get up in the morning prepped to go, and as soon as Sunday School is over there’s a million reasons why we have to come home.

Funny to see how far we have come, not, when it comes to the Sunday School and the Tongan congregations.

The farthest I recall back with the Tongan community church services, is back to when services were held at the Pitt St. Chapel (hmmm, I’ll have to visit there some lunch time next time I’m in the city.) and at the 5 Rogers Avenue, Haberfield, Mission Centre (long since sold to the heathens with better financial management skills. (smiling)

The thing I recall is that we didn’t really have Sunday School for the Tongan Language at the Pitt St. church, and Sunday School at 5 Rogers Avenue was on a Monday evening.

On Monday evening’s the Sunday School members would gather with our teachers at the 5 Rogers Avenue Chapel (a small room part of the complex.)

Sometime later the Sunday School moved together with the main service to St. David’s Haberfield where they actually had a hall and separate rooms. So Sunday School developed into having separate classes and being in different parts of the hall. There were some material, but I’m not sure they were ours or ‘left-overs’ from the palangi church.

Something or someone did something and the congregation moved again to the Ashfield Uniting Church, and they too had a hall and rooms. Sunday school got bigger as we had more kids and plenty of volunteers to be teachers.

Bill Crews expanded his Exodus Foundation on the premises so Sunday School programs moved to the Minister’s Manse (i.e where the faifekau lived) but again we have plenty of space to spread out the classes.

I went on vacation into la la land and came back 10+ years later to find out that we’re back to using the main chapel for our Sunday School program, with only a single volunteer teacher.

Fiona’s busy being creative with a program that fits everyone, and the youngest children get activities they can do on the seats, or on the floor, while she puts in some more in depth time with the older kids.

Petersham Uniting Church – Tongan Congregation is definitely very fortunate to have Fiona on the team.

Well done Fiona.

Would you believe I got jacked/bumped off my Internet connection today?

I’m on Optus’ Cable Internet service, which isn’t hot but has been mostly stable and functional.

Recently I’ve been noticing some problems with the connection going down arbitrarily (kind of like the Internet back in Tonga.) looking at my tiny little router, it seems that it isn’t picking up the public-ip it normally gets from the ISP.

Looking at the address that I’m given, it looks like the “Surfboard” modem that’s plugged into the ISP suddenly decided that it wanted to give me some other IP through a DHCP server.

Imagine getting kicked off my own Internet by the very modem that’s supposed to be keeping me connected.

It’s scary what’s not configured on this thing (like no attempt at even having a password ?)

The kids are growing bigger and bigger, louder and noisier.

We’ve been attending Sunday School for a couple of weeks (our church’s schedule is kinda on and off whenever the church feels up to it.)

Unfortunately, the timetable is still a little screwed, so the kids decided they wanted to sit down and ‘hiva talitali’ while waiting for the rest of the mob to turn up.

Afterward it was just fun at home …

Yesterday we went to the park and afterwards we dropped by Grandma Fe and sang a few songs before getting back in the car for coming home.

The trip was short because you just can’t keep kids still at such an open space.

If it were only that would walk over the open space, but Sesilia likes to pick things up from other plots and just walk off with it. Must have something to do with her ‘motu’ roots?

Finally finished with reading the tome(?) Human Rights Overboard, and part of reading through that book was having to read some novels on death, mayhem and the arbitrariness of life.

Format: Pb
Extent: 448
Size: 234mm x 153mm
ISBN (13): 9781921372407
RRP: $35.00
Pub date: September 2008

To get through Human Rights Overboard, I was forced by the content to get through.

• Brent Weeks – The Way of Shadows
• Brent Weeks – Shadow’s Edge

and after finally putting it down, had to consume some more magic/fantasy straight afterwards

• Brandon Sanderson - Warbreaker
• Lee Child – Echo Burning

I can tell you its a relief to read something that you know explicitly is fantasy and the imaginations of a human mind (or in Sanderson’s case with the inclusion of a hive mind.) People in novels spray death left right and left again, and the only thing that gets hurt are the trees (except Sanderson’s novel which is only available as a download)

Human Rights Overboard is the type of story that can seriously get you jumpy at night. Heck, read the book and other great novels such as Frank Herbert’s Dune Series become truly prophetic plausible social engineering instead of a space opera.

The book itself alludes to the masterful strokes of misinformation as criminal genius.

The drama in Human Rights Overboard will become one of the most studied facets of human behaviour for the next generation. As the disaster of the Bay of Pigs brought focus to Behavioural Studies, it is certain that there are so many aspects of the manipulation, control, finessing during the period described in this book that Professors from Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, and other schools will be clammering over themselves to dissect how this ‘could and did happen.’

We already have local psychology reports of the effects of the Detentions, what other hidden forms of Torture Lite were experimentations in Australia on innocent people ? What and how were the Government able to mould the local citizenry, authorities and democratic safeguards against oppression by the majority?

The current Rudd/Labour Government has already started running with lessons they’ve learned from the Howard Government. Reframing public policy, winning at all costs, seems to be the way to go.

Reframe Internet Safety Policies to be a fight against Child Pornography, and who would dare question the prevention of such a heinous crime. So, a Minister in the Labour Party’s state government is stood down for lude behaviour, and this is the same mob that is trying to tell you that they should be in charge of your sexual safety?

Dude(ss), this mob (on average) are more corrupt than you and me, and they definitely have no interest in protecting your child beyond getting the next vote.  But, pushing the “filter the Internet” lets them make somebody else look like the bad people (visualise: it worked well for John Howard’s Pacific Solution.)

Keep your eyes wide open, not wide-shut.

The 3^rd Annual “Battle of the Bands” is a music festival of ethnic youth and young people within Victoria. The night will include ethnic action dancing, sway of the pacific, the glitter of Asia, Bands from the church groups will range from heavy rock to gospel country.

Many of the stars of the music festival will be “Second Generation” Australian born children of immigrants and refugees as performers.

Everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun and audience members are encouraged to come in costume of your ethnic heritage which include Anglo, European background.(Dutch, German, Scottish, English, Wales, etc)

It is proudly supported by the Uniting Church in Australia.

Date 22 November 2008.

Location Box Hill Wesley Uniting Church in 2-6 Oxford Street, Box Hill, Melbourne.

Times 3pm to 9.30pm

parking details Street parking

Tickets secretary. Tee Makoni - talaheumakoni@hotmail.com

Adults $5.00

Young people 12 to 25 Goldcoin donation

Children under 12 free.

Food stalls will be available

New Performers wishing to join in should contact:

Don Ikitoelagi (03) 9251- 5287 email Don.Ikitoelagi@victas.uca.org.au

One of the wonderful things about Open Source software is that there is a continuum of upgrades where users and developers find things that are broken and fix them.

Unfortunately, some of the fixes cause more breaks than existed in the system.

Gallery 2.1 upgrade to 2.3svn failings

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on January 11, 2008 2:56:59 PM (821 Reads)

The regular problems taking for ever and a day to resolve happened again when I tried upgrading (due to security warnings) to a more current version of Gallery2.

Unfortunately, the upgrade coincided with Tonfon deciding to give me a hard time with Internet connections.

Clear problems from the upgrade.

it’s a good thing I’ve wandered this space often enough that my own records are augmenting poor memory, such that I can fix the new problem with the old fix.

Upgraded my Gallery to the current release as there were a number of documented security reasons to upgrade. Unfortunately, the update broke my Gallery and I haven’t been able to dedicate the time to fixing it, until I decided to google nomoa.com!!! Way to go nomoa.com.

It’s 2008. Every other month I go over my Internet bandwidth limit at home because Ubuntu needs an update, …, and the update just wants to bring home the neighbours kitchen sink.

The update process in Ubuntu has …. well it has gotten out of control. There is no doubt that updates are a necessity for security patches and bug fixes…no argument there. However, Ubuntu seems to want to build the operating system as they go… having you download huge numbers of updates, often daily.

read more

Ubuntu…Please Don’t Release on Time!
mogyweb
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:50:28 GMT

But that is the life of a wannabe techo, bleeding edge bleeding pocket book.

Ian Stehbens’ put up some earlier images of the church under constructions. Awesome photo, and the celebrations are in full swing for the opening.

Zion Church of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga in Australia under construction. This building replicates Centenary Church built in Nuku'alofa, Tonga in the 1950s.

• 

All those in the know are there … so more photos should be available somewhere…

Ian Stehbens’ put up some earlier images of the church under constructions. Awesome photo, and the celebrations are in full swing for the opening.

Zion Church of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga in Australia under construction. This building replicates Centenary Church built in Nuku'alofa, Tonga in the 1950s.

• 

All those in the know are there … so more photos should be available somewhere…

I’m not sure whether the date on this news item is correct Oct 2008?

From Radio Australia.

A parliamentary inquiry has heard Australia has one of the harshest immigration detention systems in the Western world.

A Joint Standing Committee on Migration is holding a public hearing in the west Australian city of Perth, as part of an inquiry into immigration detention.

Linda Briskman, from Curtin University's Centre for Human Rights and Education, told the hearing a Royal Commission is needed to expose the abuse of children in detention

Great to hear citizens trying to make a difference within their democracies.

Some are calling for abolition of the practise or the law, I think the deeper problem in Australia is that Governments with significant control in parliament can create laws that are outside the check-and-balances necessary for a functional democracy.

When you allow a law where decisions made cannot be challenged through the courts, then you aren’t too far different from a dictatorship. Same thing in pretty clothes. Oh wait, we have a term for countries like that, such as banana republics, pacific island countries?

Suppress innovation, but claim the credit

It is a staple of wisdom amongst many physicists that “physicists invented the web”. This is a story trotted out particularly when physicists justify their work to the outside world. A string theorist once told me that virtually all his grant applications include a paragraph that says “support fundamental research in physics - that’s what brought us the web”.

In fact, the claim that physicists invented the web is largely mythical.

read more …

For geek's it’s an interesting recount of history, for management it is an opportunity to re-appraise why you don’t like something.

Weather in Sydney is taking a Melbourne turn. We’ve had the coldest day of spring in aeons (or at least within the collective memory of the weather bugs) and it doesn’t feel like it’s getting any warmer.

They have this problem of a high percentage of asthmatics in Australia and a side of the medical profession believe that there a significant factor of the Australian lifestyle to the high rate of asthmatics.

We’re standing in the ‘smoker’s’ end of the station this cold morning, the wind is blowing a good chill factor. In our section is this cute little baby in her/his trolley standing with mum. There out here in the cold instead of being under the covers or behind the building from the wind because … good ol’ dad’s gotta have his smoko.

Way to go.

Sounds like Kevin Rudd has a partner in arms.

"Bush, in a meeting with his Cabinet, said he's confident that 'in the long run, that this economy will come back.'" -- As I recall, in the long run, the economy also recovered from The Great Depression. So basically Bush is confident we're not fatally screwed. Great prediction, Nostra-dumbass.

Bush confident nation not doomed
Sumocat
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:22:00 GMT

I guess they subscribe to the philosophy that what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger ? From their nice comfortable, government funded housing, cars, etc.

Meanwhile a lot of people forced out of their houses this summer/winter wont be too happy about things.

I’ve been tracking OpenOffice (using it exclusively on-and-off) and they are really progressing quickly through their RC (Release Candidates)

The wonderful thing about their recent announcement?

The first office suite to use the new OASIS OpenDocument format, the future-proof international standard for office software

So now all those Paranoid types can get the ‘standards’ compliant Office Productivity tool for which IBM and Sun have been pushing to save your soul from Microsoft.

Read: There’s been a lot of hoopla huffing and puffing over a ‘standard’ that only now exists?

Not even in Tonga.

From: OpenOffice 3.0 RC4 

OpenOffice.org is an open-source, multiplatform and multilingual office suite comparable with MS Office.
It is compatible with all other major office suites and is free to download, use, and distribute. It was previously known as StarOffice before it became an open-source project. OpenOffice comes with OpenWriter - a word processor, OpenCalc - a spreadsheet and OpenImpress - a presentational package.
* The first office suite to use the new OASIS OpenDocument format, the future-proof international standard for office software
* Easy to install, with a whole new look and feel, matched to the type of computer in use
* More intuitive, more easy to use than ever, with a host of new usability features
* Complete with Base: an easy-to-use database manager with a fully integrated database
* Compatible with other software packages - now understands even obscure and rarely used features in major competitors.
You may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence fees, use it for any purpose - private, educational, government and public administration, commercial - and pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.
News source: OpenOffice.org
Download: OpenOffice 3.0 RC3
View: Release notes
Read full story...

OpenOffice 3.0 RC4
Marcel Klum
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:53:33 GMT

Game Over Man, Game Over ….

It looks like annoying flash has become a serious security threat.

But where does it leave the security bod out there trying to let people in their organisation use the Internet ?

Looks like a great opportunity for a security appliance border device between users and their web experience.

Net game turns PC into undercover surveillance zombie
Daniel Fleshbourne
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:17:02 GMT

Underscoring the severity of a new class of vulnerability known as clickjacking, a blogger has created a proof-of-concept game that uses a PC's video cam and microphone to secretly spy on the player. The demo, which is available here, appears to be a simple game that tests how quickly a user can click on a series of moving targets. Behind the scenes, it combines a generic clickjacking attack with weaknesses in Adobe's Flash technology to record the player using the PC's video camera and microphone.
The proof of concept is a powerful demonstration of the spooky implications behind clickjacking. The vulnerability allows malicious webmasters to control the links visitors click on. Once lured to a booby-trapped page, a user may think he's clicking on a link that leads to Google - when in fact it takes him to a money transfer page, a banner ad that's part of a click-fraud scheme, or any other destination the attacker chooses.
View: The full story @ The Reg
Read full story...

We all knew nz’s?

THE Federal Opposition's new immigration spokeswoman has raised strong concerns about the Government's new seasonal worker program.

Sharman Stone, from regional Victoria, where many of the new visa-holders would work, said the program was confusing and lacked detail.

Regulations to allow 2500 Pacific Islanders into Australia as guest workers were introduced into Parliament on Tuesday.

Unease over seasonal jobs - National News - National - General - Central Western Daily