So, time to play with Yahoo! Pipes … which I’ve been waiting for an excuse to try. A few minutes hacking around (no, really, it’s very quick-and-dirty), and voila! a pipe that takes your CFA region as input and returns incidents in that region, less the false alarms.

You can find your CFA region (hint, not for people in the main metro area) at: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/incidents/definitions/region.htm

To use the pipe, head over to CFA by Region and enter your region number in the field and hit run pipe. Easy. You can then grab the RSS feed from the pipe to use in your favourite reader, or use the Yahoo! alerts to e-mail new entries to you. Sadly the SMS alert feature does not appear to be available in Australia, otherwise we’d have the suggested warning system all set.

If anyone can think of improvements, let me know, or you can just clone it and create your own pipe. Enjoy.

Taxi drivers, I believe, are professional drivers.  Professionals in that they get paid to drive you from one location to another location of your choosing.  Lets break that down shall we?

Driving: there is a large body of laws and regulations regarding the operation of a motor vehicle on the roads and highways.  It includes many simple things like speed limits, indicating when a change of lane or direction is desired, and how to follow the lines on a road when turning a corner through an intersection.  It also covers more arcane things like when the use of high-beams is permitted and what to do when another motorist is in distress.  Of the many taxi drivers of many many nationalities that I have encountered, there have been less than 5 that I think would pass a driving exam.  Take some pride in your work people!  Make an effort, know the rules – even the sillier ones, and use them!  I’m sure it doesn’t help that their employers just don’t care; there is no incentive to improve.  Have you ever called a taxi company to make a comment on a drivers performance, or the DoI?  I have never heard people more uninterested in my life.

Location: Police, Fire, and Ambulance services don’t generally have GPS navigation devices – the reason stated is usually that the money could be better spent on life saving equipment, etc.  Their professional drivers are instead expected to know how to get just about anywhere in Melbourne, and to be able to read a map in a moments notice when necessary.  Is it so much to expect this from Taxi drivers?  So they are new to the city perhaps?  A modest up-front (credit-paid, tax-claimable, interest-free for 12-months) fee for the purchase of a GPS navigation device would pay for itself within days or weeks in efficiencies gained through better navigation.

Of course, I write all this in the presumption of innocence, that they do this from incompetence or lack of effort.  I believe this is largely the case, but have definitely had some very shonky drivers.  One for example doubled the fare at the last moment and then tried to deny it.  Sure, it always costs $90 to get to Mill Park from the city at 11pm.  Nice try buddy, but I’m sure it works often enough to make it worthwhile for him to try.

Feeling ranty?  Have a go!

The target organisation is a popular Australian company, established by 3 friends around 10 years ago, and does at least 90% of it’s business Internet facing.  It’s grown quite large since then, but they claim to have kept the DotCom feel to the organisation and placed a large emphasis on their “Values” during the interview.  The values are: Honesty, Ownership, Teamwork, and Passion.  I was specifically instructed to address all of these values in my answers during the interview, and I thought I did rather well.  Keep in mind here, that to even be considered for interviewing I was required to have had 8+ years of serious Systems Engineering experience on Internet facing and corporate systems and had to pass the qualifying interview from the recruiter.

The point of contention arose from one of those “Do you have any questions for us?” moments.  I asked what the policy or position was regarding discussing my prospective new employer and broad details of day-to-day activities on “new media” such as blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.  As this is evidently where it all went wrong…

Their 1st response was to presume that I wanted to spend my day blogging or tweeting, followed very quickly by repeated concerns regarding client confidentiality, trade secrets, product launch schedules and similar.  I was staggered and tried in vain to steer the conversation back to the Honesty, Ownership and Passion values they had just been espousing.

• Honesty: blogging, etc giving a genuine and human face to the organisation
• Ownership: admitting mistakes, taking credit, and being proud of my work
• Passion: exhibiting pride in my employer, our work, enticing more clients to the sites, etc

After some further discussion This is where I left it and felt the gaff had been resolved, but no.  The recruiter’s feedback to me was that they thought I was a security risk, wouldn’t fit well with the team (of 3), and would be “troublesome to manage”.  I don’t know of anyone who could have worked in the corporate, government, or financial spaces without learning a few things about non-disclosure agreements and keeping secrets.  I have to seriously wonder what has happened in the past to have them respond this way…

And this is where I don’t get it: for a dotcom-survivor they just don’t understand Web2.0.  There are a multitude of examples where staff can provide the human element without revealing too much information, and generating real interest in the organisation and it’s people.  Hey, even Robert Scoble abrasive as he can be, did wonders for Microsoft’s public image in the years he was there.  And *many* finer examples are still coming out of the Microsoft wood-work!  Surely the potential positives that come from the efforts of honest, hard-working, passionate staff connecting with clients in a meaningful way are obvious…?

Perhaps I’m missing something obvious?  Please, can someone clue me up as it’s driving me insane.  This is precisely the response I would expect from my current employer which is still largely stuck in the 70s and doesn’t understand much beyond web-sites as extended newspaper ads.  But they are actually trying I guess…

Anyway, the process of writing this has been therapeutic for me.  I would dearly love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment here or check How to contact me if you would like to make more private comments.

Thanks for listening, and Have Fun!

[Update: Oh, and none of the interviewers I dealt with seem to exist on LinkedIn, they have completely locked off their FaceBook profiles, no blogs, and Google is not their friend. Then again, that goes for all the staff we have interviewed for positions at my current employer... Am I wrong for expecting guru-level IT staff to have an Internet presence?]

Yes it’s Easter (insert other full-moon at spring/autumn festival of your choice) , which means that Conquest is here.  It’s too late to register on-line, so don’t bother.

What you can do is read the game blurbs and turn up early on Friday to register for any games you want, or even just as a visitor (hey, it’s free!).

I’m likely to be around, so be sure to introduce yourself if you see me!  (hint, check nametags)

Enjoy!

So, what’s news around the Froosh-iverse? I guess an update is in order…

!st, to news everybody (well, a few and you know who you are!) is waiting for: Yes, we have settled on the land part of the house-and-land package! As of 3:30pm on 21st December 2006 we became the title holders of a block in Doreen, Melbourne (In the Whittlesea area). Of course, we have a mortgage so don’t really own it – but who does these days? Construction of the house is expected to start in about 3 weeks and finished in 16 weeks after that. I say ‘expected’ in the expectation that things will not go according to plan … just look at the delay between when we signed to start the deal and the land settlement – about 50% longer than expected.

And now, a summary of other various happenings this year (not sorted for significance or temporal accuracy):

• We bought a new car and kept the old. ‘Zuki is joined by Stormy.
• We sold our dog off 2nd-hand. Kelson the chocolate lab is now living the farm life.
• Kim’s favoured grand-uncle passed away. Rest peacefully Keith.
• We got a new kitten. Compatibly named Cinnamon to match our other cat Cardamon.
• My brother and his wife had a daughter! Welcome Alexandra, to the Froosh-iverse.
• I bought an Xbox 360 and praise be to Microsoft for making the Tripod song “Make You Happy” come true – … the best present I ever bought for you … Both Seb and Kim get (almost) as much out of it as I do.
• My uncle and his wife had a daughter! Welcome Monique, to the Froosh-ivers.
• Sebastian finished his 1st year at a public school on an absolute high. $12,000/year public schools are not necessarily worth any of it, and public schools can so far surpass your expectations that it’s unfathomable. I’ll keep harping on about it I’m sure, but that’s the power of bad consumer experiences.
• More new ‘pets’ arriving in the form of a spiny leaf insect (Spikey) and some gold fish.
• Our remaining bunny passed away, seemingly of old age. He died in our arms and signals the end our bunny-ownership for a while.
• Currently residing in the disused bunny cage are 3 chookies of vague sexuality (pullets or cockerels – unknown at present). They’re on ‘semi-permanent loan’ from our neigbour until her country-based friends have facilities to house them – I’ll be spending New Year’s Day re-constructing our damaged chook pen to accomodate them until they leave.
• Kim has started working on a more regular basis with a casual job in retail sales.
• Seb began:
• • Roller-skating lessons
  • Piano lessons
  • Swimming lessons
  • Joey Scouts
  • Jazz and Tap … although they didn’t last the year out. Still doing ballet though.
• Some friends were getting to know quite a bit better packed all their stuff into our garage and moved to England for a year.
• Kim and I joined the management committee of a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting gaming and operating games conventions. I’m way behind in my duties in the web-site maintenance portfolio!

There’s probably more I’ve forgotten about and may update this later or add photos. Or, you know, whatever.

Now, the bus service is titled “TrainLink”. Train. Link. Far too many times (3 times this week) the bus has arrived too late to meet the train. Similarly in the evening, if the train is running late the bus does not wait for 5 mins. I (and others) then have to wait 30 (!!!!) mins instead for the next bus.

Train. Link. Not working.

And finally: I get substantially better service from the 571 route on weekends (and even Christmas day!) than I do during the week. It runs down Centenary drive every 20 mins on Christmas Day, why can’t it do that during the week??

I guess there’s nothing else to do except admit to being 33 years old. Last birthday was a fun one – I got to say I was 5 (2^5 = 32). This one, not so interesting. Just 33. Although, I’m thinking a 33.333* party in December could be fun.

I did enjoy the day though; work was not too busy, the extended family dinner was pleasant, and in general everyone was suitably considerate and salutary. And I got to eat too much pizza and cake.

The weekend was much more interesting though: At the ripe age of 33 and 1 day, I witnessed “snow” for the first time. Now I’m using the term snow in a rather loose sense – it was old, having fallen several days before then slightly melted and re-frozen into ice by the non-wintry weather. There was none of this gently falling from the sky stuff, or soft puffy drifts of it, just slightly less dense ice. Again, it was fun though. the experience immeasurably improved by co-operation with my six year old son.

Sunday brought a 5 hour trip to the Melbourne Museum and their Bugs Alive! exhibition, again enhanced by the presence of a 6-yo. I found it fascinating how they are using technology to market the science and history contained within the Museum. Kids seem to find it much more accessible and interesting, and learn far more than they realise.

Of course, I’m back to work today. Meh.

Oh! To top the birthday off, I had my name mentioned for the first time on the Whole Lot Of Nonsense Podcast. Coincidentally, I listened to WLON show 32 and 33 on my transition from age 32 to 33!

Final geek-iness: Post written and published with Windows Live Writer (beta). Not too bad, but I might as well use the web-interface to WordPress – it’s just as good.

If only you would actually follow up the link to Google you provide and use it to define Podcast, you would find this: “Podcasting, …, is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, …”

And from Wikipedia: “Podcasting is an automatic mechanism by which multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client, which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files.”

What you have is not a podcast, it is a manual download of an audio file. I would gladly add an RSS feed to my podcatcher and listen regularly as new shows are automatically downloaded – like a real podcast. I will not regularly be registering all my details on a page before manually downloading the audio and manually causing it to be synchronised to my MP3 player. I’ve done it once and will not be doing it again, no matter how compelling the content.

Thank you BOFH!

This year, I’m really liking the new LEGO Mindstorms NXT – you should watch the (slightly) hidden “Easter Egg” on the Mindstorms site (hint: Steven from BimP shows the way).

However. I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. The LEGO Shop at Home for US lists the NXT Kit for US$249.99. Google tells me USD$249.99 in AUD$ is AU$327.68. The LS@H for Australia lists it for $429.99. Yes. Thats right. AU$102.31 more than the equivalent US price. And if I want to do them a favour and pre-order it, I can pay either $45 or $100 extra for delivery.

Nope. Can’t do it. Sorry LEGO, you had me then you lost me. There is no way I’ll pay $150-$200 more than US Retail.

Now I just need to find something I want that I can justify.