Life in the Geek Lane

I’ve had the iPad for a week now and I really can’t fault it. Battery life is great, it’s snappy, apps just work and the screen is amazing. Even typing on the keyboard isn’t as troublesome as I thought it might be.
Reading email and surfing the web is amazing on the device. It’s perfect for quickly checking email or sitting for long sessions of email sorting. I actually sorted out my gmail account on it pretty fast. The web is snappy and vie had no problems at all with the fact that it doesn’t do flash. I guess none of the sites I visit frequently use flash
The only thing I could fault about it is that the books and apple apps aren’t available in Australia yet, so I gotta wait for those.

Well it wouldn’t be a blog without some kind of “renovation post”, so here goes.

I’m sick to death of the damn palm trees out the back. They would have to be one of the most useless trees around, providing no shade and continually dropping palm fronds on the ground.

Got them booked in to be chopped down in the next few weeks which will be great. Also getting the mango and macadamia nut trees cut back. Seem’s like a full time job keeping the gardens in order. Doesn’t help that it’s so hot in Rocky that the last thing I want to be doing is gardening. Maybe during winter.

I’m also tired of the wireless internet in the house, so I’ve got a fella coming around to give me a quote on running ethernet. With all the network devices running in here, it seems like a logical thing to do.

Will hopefully let me centralise my storage so I don’t have to have a bunch of external hard drives sitting around plugged into everything. Just have a network device plugged in with all the computers / ps3 / beyonwiz accessing the central store. Good times.

I’ve become involved in a project at work that requires a website to be built, so I decided to bite the bullet and finally leverage the power of a php framework.

I’m not sure why, but for some reason I had never really embraced development frameworks. I had read about different ones but never really taken the time to download and try to use one.

Google says there are a bunch of different ones, but in the end I decided to have a bash with CodeIgniter. Truth be told, I picked it by going on first impressions of the website.

So far the whole experience has been great. I think the whole MVC design pattern I picked up from OS X development really helped and in a way help solidify the MVC stuff I already knew.

It’s been ridiculously fast to get a basic, decent website up and running and I’m currently working on the whole user authentication side of things.

I spent a few days reading about different authentication libraries and in the end I’ve decided to go with Tank Auth. It seems pretty lightweight and simple, so will be a good start I think. Ideally I’d like to include LDAP support in the web app, but that will come later.

I’m feeling positive about this project. Got someone pushing me all the way so chances are it won’t end up as vapourware like many of the other projects I seem to start and never get finished… sigh… but that’s a whole other blog post.

The tree out the back has been producing fruit for a few months now but for some reason the fruit kept falling off the tree when it was still green.

This afternoon I went out and took another look at it and it seems the fruit is now ripening on the tree. I managed to get 17 mandarins off it which actually taste really good.

I’m not sure why they were falling off the tree before while still green. Possibly season / temperature related?

Picked up a new lens on the weekend after much reading and researching. I had wanted a portrait type lens that I could use in low light conditions.

I have the 100mm macro lens, which is awesome for macro shots and also works a treat for portraits but you need a fair bit of distance for it so it’s not that effective in confined locations.

Everything I read about the 50mm lens said it was pretty much a “must have” considering it’s extremely cheap and also produces exceptionally good results.

I’ve taken a few quick snaps with it and they come up great. I’ll post some at a later stage.

I was playing around with come code on my iPhone tonight and came across a really weird situation.

Using the AudioToolbox to play sounds on the iPhone seems really finicky when it comes to mp3′s. Two mp3′s, each recorded and saved using the same program (WireTap Studio in this case). One worked fine, the other caused it to crash.

I have no idea why. A search of the web reveals that AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID(…) at one stage did not support MP3 but considering that one of the two files played I figured that it must have been updated.

Both files where the same format, right down to bitrate and exactly the same length (2 seconds long). I really have no idea.

Anyway, problem was solved by just making all the files WAV format. Increases the filesize a lot but at least it works.

The roses out the front of the house bloomed again recently.

Melanie was so lucky! She got so many roses!

Put some new veges in the vege garden a few weeks ago now and the plants are really starting to take off.

Eaten 3 beans, and a few bits of lettuce so far. Can’t wait for the strawberries and tomatoes to come good.

Didn’t check my email over the weekend. I really need to get a spam solution working. *sigh*

So I went away for Xmas and got no call back from the real estate. After returning back to Rocky, I waited approximately a week and rang the Real Estate again.
I was informed that the bond claim form had been submitted with an amount taken out for “cleaning and rent”. I questioned them about this, specifically regarding the fact that I was told they would talk to the owner and come to some arrangement then contact me about it. I never received any call after the initial meeting at the office.

I spoke again to lady at Pat O’Driscoll after this and asked her if they still had copies of the original entry condition report as I believed the state I left the flat in was far better then when I entered it. She could not find them on file and said they could possibly be ‘archived’. She asked if I could supply them with a copy form my records. I dropped the entry condition report in and was advised by the front desk people that it would be passed on to the relevant person. Since then I have heard nothing else from them.

A few days later I received the “Notice of Claim” from the RTA in the mail that said a total of $225.70 had been taken out to be paid to Pat O’Driscoll for “cleaning, Rent”. I knew I owed approximately $85 for rent which was fine (I was told verbally that I owed $85, I still have not received any kind of written confirmation on this), but I feel the $140+ for “cleaning” is simply not justified considering the original condition of the flat when I started leasing and the condition that I left it in after cleaning.

I went ahead and filled out the “Dispute resolution” section of the form, attached all the relevant info and sent it back to the RTA.

Fast forward to today and I received a letter from the RTA stating that my dispute form had been received and action was being taken to resolve the matter.

In the same bunch of mail was a letter from Pat O’Driscoll which contained a bond refund form. The weird thing is this form (which I assume was meant to be my copy of the form they submitted) only mentioned $85 for cleaning. The rest of the bond was meant to be refunded to me. This is weird because the notice I received from the RTA had a much higher value.

The only thing I can think of is that Pat O’Driscoll have taken a look at the copy of the entrance condition report I dropped in and decided I was right. Even though they had already submitted a claim to the RTA they were now sending me another updated claim form.

I have no idea how that works so I’ll be ringing both Pat O’Driscoll and the RTA tomorrow to ask what the heck is going on.

Looks like I’ll get my bond back (minus the remainder of rent I owe) but sheesh it’s been an ordeal.

Was thinking tonight about the new features bought to mail with the release of Leopard. In particular stationary, to do’s and notes. I realised I dont use any of them… and im not sure why.

I guess I’ve just found no real use for them and honestly I can’t say I know anyone who does actually use those features in Mail.

Maybe I need some kind of “Being uber with mail” guide or somthing?

I’ve been working on a new mac app and recently stumbled across a problem. I had a set of ‘actions’ which each had dependency values. i.e. One ‘action’ had to perform before another ‘action’ could. I needed some way of sorting these ‘actions’ in order to list them in the correct processing order, kinda of like a flowchart.

With the help of Google I found out that this type of problem is actually a graph theory problem which could be solved using a Topological Sort.

It took me a while to get my head around it, but with the help of the algorithm on the wikipedia page I was able to get an Objective-C version written and working in a few hours.

Programming can be frustrating at times, but it’s so rewarding if you stick it out and manage to work out a solution.

My favourite smell would have to be the crust of fresh bread followed closely by the smell of books.

I spent 3 days recently cleaning the flat for the vacancy inspection to get the bond back. I took special note to tick off the real estates checklist as I did so and was pretty happy with it at the end.

So I was a bit surprised when the real estate called and said there were a few “problems with the cleaning”. The lady specifically mentioned dust on the:
- skirting boards in the bedrooms
- tiles in the laundry
- AC vent
- laundry light

She made a point of mentioning that it wasn’t thick dust, just light dust.
I was a biff miffed about this because I knew I had cleaned everything with sugar soap and it was more than acceptable.

So anyway, she said I needed to go in and get the keys and fix the problems. I went in and refused to take the keys. I told her I thought the ‘light dust’ issues were petty considering:
- I’d been in the flat for 6 years
- I’d lodged multiple maintenance forms, some of which were ‘lost’, most just ignored
- The Bathroom drain has dropped about 1/2 an inch, tiles around the drain were all cracked. It had been patched by some handyman who simply slogged it all up with silicon but has since been worn off
- The bedroom adjacent to bathroom STILL has water damage after the shower leaked some 2 years ago. There was a hole in the wardrobe wall from it rotting and the carpets in the wardrobe were mouldy. Nothing was ever done about it.
- The bathroom / laundry wall tiles are loose with grout falling out.

All of this and she was telling me my cleaning was unacceptable because of some dust?

I told her I was not happy and I think she got the message because she told me she would contact the owner to see if there was some ‘arrangement’ we could come to. As yet, I’ve got no call back.

I really don’t like real estate agents. All my dealings with them after renting for 10+ years and recently having bought a house has led me to believe that it takes a special kind off ass to be a real estate agent.

I’ll hold out and see what happens next, I’d kinda like my bond back.