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Terminator Salvation - worth seeing…

I guess I’m a Terminator fan.  I watched all the Terminator movies, even followed the Sarah Connor Chronicles.  I must say, having been brainwashed with Chronicles, I was expecting Salvation to be similar.  Of course they were not.  You don’t need to have seen Chronicles to enjoy Terminator Salvation.

I was expecting another Terminator movie, bad Terminator chases John Connor, good Terminator kills bad Terminator, good Terminator sacrifices himself for mankind.  Sound familiar?  That’s what the previous 3 movies were all about.

Terminator Salvation has a completely different plot, which I found very refreshing.

I can’t write movie reviews I keep on thinking of story lines that will probably spoil the movie for you.  It’s set in 2018, Judgment day has happend, and Skynet has a new strategy to get to the humans, and that’s where the relationship between Marcus Wright and John Connor comes to play.  Interestingly, in Salvation, the real hero wasn’t John Connor, as you would expect from the others… I think the audience is getting tired of John Connor.  I enjoyed the character of Marcus Wright.  You’re not sure if you can or should trust him, it’s almost too good to be true.. but then again, what’s a movie plot without a little suspense…..

This movie was worth my $16 at Reading Cinemas, Rouse Hill.

Tags: movies, Review, terminator

Ais # 097 - Waar bly die mense!!

• Musiek deur Stefan Ludik
• Terugvoer
• Ek is nou ‘n Auzzie!
• Ons huis bou
• Afrikaans, o ons Afrikaans
• Hartseer ding - en mense moet dink!
• Johan de Vries se PSA

To build or not to build, that is the question…

We are standing now at almost 6 months since we decided to buy a house.  What do I have to show?  I bought a block of land, lost $4000 with builder A, found out the block is a bit slopey, and that not many builders like slopey blocks.

It’s a catch 22 situation… When you buy a block, you can’t really tell what you’re going to get.  You are pressured into buying quickly, or the flip side, when you find the ideal block, you compete with already submitted offers.  On top of that, when you buy a block, you can’t “see” what’s underneath until a GeoTech survey is done.  A contour survey is also needed to provide the builders with a layout of the land, so they can do their planning.

The problem I found is that the land sellers usually do not provide a geotech or a contour survey.  Both of these are important pieces of information that will aid the builder in estimating the cost of the project.

Most project home builders in Australia will not build on a block where they have a slope of more than 1.5m.  My block, has a slope of 3m (or so they say, but I can’t see that when I’m standing on the block).

Building a house is a painfully slow process.  When dealing with the builders, you can’t decide in one go which builder to go with.  I have lost count to the number of times we’ve been to Homeworld.  Every time we go, we find something new.  Every builder we meet offers something different.  Price wise, I found many of the houses to be similarly priced.  Once you’ve decided on a builder, they may require about $500 initially to do a survey on the block, after that, once you’ve decided the house you want, it could take 4 weeks before the builder gives you an idea as to what the costs for your project would be.

Once the tender is received, the project will need to be evaluated by the bank.  That can take another couple of weeks.  If the bank says it’s too expensive, you need to go back to the builder and reduce the tender, or, pick another builder.  This again takes a few weeks.  This process can continue for a while until both the bank, and you are satisfied with the project.

6 months later, we are still not in a position to build yet…  At least I have my block, and if everything goes well, within the next week I should be paying the deposit to the builder to start drawing the plans.

I must say, if I knew 6 months ago what I know now, I would not have decided to build a house.  I am now committed to this project, we have to push through.

Tags: building, House

Oracle to acquire Sun

It should be well known news in the industry already.  I’m a big fan of mySQL.  It’s small footprint, wide spread availability and speed should be good for many a website.  Of course it lacks a bit in the data integrity part, ie. pull the plug while the db is writing tons of data, you’re likely to loose some transactions.

Regardless, there is a market for mySQL.  It is a very good read-intensive database, which is perfect for websites like mine.  The acquisition of Oracle and Sun, in my opinion, will make products like mySQL and Oracle even stronger.

I think if you look at Oracle’s strategy lately, it is clear that they’re heading in the direction of becoming the next IBM or Microsoft, which have always been able to provide a one-shop-fits-all solution, for different markets, that is.  Microsoft has historically been able to service everything from the computer room to the desktop, to all software running on it.  Some smaller sized companies will get around with running nothing but Microsoft only products.  Your bigger enterprises will potentially end up with IBM hardware, big DS6000 storage unit, or the p695 Regatta boxes, yeah, that’s big stuff, running the high end side of things, which sadly, Microsoft hasn’t been able to penetrate yet.

What does this mean for Oracle?

Oracle has been positioning themselfes along the side of IBM.  Their database product is the best there is (and that’s my opinion).  They’ve been stategic in aquiring companies that will broaden their portfolio, so, when they come to the next big enterprise, they’d be able to sell them hardware, the OS (now SUN), the database tuned to run on that OS, the ERP solution, everything a big enterprise needs.  What’s the main driver?  Supportability.  Enterprises do not want to run their enterprise supported by multiple vendors.  When things break, then SAP, Oracle and IBM all point the fingers at each other.  When it’s all hosted by one vendor, your support becomes easier.  One company, one number to call, one issue to log, regardless of where the fault lays.

As for mySQL, I do hope that Oracle will keep it running.  It is a good database, and it’s filling a need that I haven’t seen fulfilled by other databases.  We may see some of the Oracle mojo flowing into mySQL, we may even see the mySQL mojo go into Oracle.  I’d love to see some compatiliby.  If I could for example load one database client, and use the same SQL syntax to both mySQL and Oracle, that would be an excellent development platform for many users out there.

Good luck Oracle.  I think  you’re on the right track.

Tags: mysql, opinion, oracle, sun, Technology

Jarod Massyn - April 18th 2009

Tags: youtube

And here we are…

Today is the day I get my Australian citizenship.  I am 1 hour away from attending my ceremony here in Parramatta.  Yes, I said “here”.  I’m sitting in the food court of the Parramatta Westfield, with my Dell Inspiron hooked up to my Optus Wireless Broadband, and it’s awesome.  I just discovered that my laptop’s keyboard is AGAIN having a problem… Can you believe it…. When I get to work, I will log yet another call to Dell… This will now be the 5th keyboard this laptop has seen.

Man it’s frustrating going back to add the O explicitly on words!  I’ll say it again : DON’T BUY DELL! EVER!  I’m so disappointed with this machine.. Honestly…

Ok, so the reason I’m here is to attend the ceremony.  This is exciting stuff.. It’s that next big step in our lifes where we can now call us Australians.

There are a bit of controversy though.  At the same time now, it is election time in South Africa.  As of this moment, I still am a South African citizen.  The law changed recently in South Africa allowing expats like myself to vote in the election.  Well, here’s the catch… I have to drive to Canberra to cast my vote… So let’s recap…

I have to drive 300 km to vote for a party I know nothing about, for a country I haven’t seen in 5 years, when I’m already living in a wonderful country that I’m now becoming a citizen off?  My apologies - I don’t think I’ll worry about that one.  If you, fellow expat, feel the need to vote, by all means.  I’m not one of those politically inclined that will find fault with everything the government does right or wrong.  Simply saying that you won’t vote because it won’t make a difference, in my opinion is a BS argument.  If you believe in it, cast your vote, make yours count, otherwise you have nothing to complain about.

As for me, I’m looking forward to casting my vote in the next Australian election.  I know more about Australian politics than South African politics, so why should I vote?

If you feel the inclination to still have a say in South Africa, but you’re not living there anymore, I propose the question to you : Why do you even care?? No, seriously.  If you’re not living in the country, why should your vote count?  Why should you as an outsider have the right to tell the population living in the country who their government should be?  Sorry, I don’t see how we can honestly justify that.

Enough of my ranting…  I should finish up my McDonalds Cafe flat white, and head on over to immigration to do the needful.

Tags: citizenship, dell, election

Auth::Yubikey_Webclient 0.03 released

I’m happy to announce, that I’ve released v.0.03 of my Auth::Yubikey_Webclient perl module. You can download this module from my CPAN page.

For those who don’t know, the Yubikey is a 128 bit open-source USB authentication device.  I have one around my neck at work, in case you’re interested to see what it looks like.

v.0.03 is a somewhat significant upgrade for me.  For one, I’m no longer dependant on the Digest::SHA module, but instead, upgraded to Digest::SHA1.  You may ask why - that’s no change at all??!!  In fact, since I’m hosting my site with GoDaddy, I found that they do not offer Digest::SHA on their deluxe platoform, but do in fact have Digest::SHA1.  This was a quick change, as well as the ability to return the error code from Yubuco in the event of a non-OK response.

Tags: cpan, perl, Scripts, yubikey

AIS # 096 - Die gemeenskap

ROtD : Strip those HTML tags

You may find yourself wondering : How do I get those pesky HTML tags out of my data? I have the solution, the Regular Expression of the day!  Here’s a line of perl code you can use to strip those HTML tags out of your text.

$data =~ s/\<(.+\n|.).+?\>//mg;

I should mention, this worked in my example.. It should for you.  If it doesn’t, let me know, so we can improve on it.

Tags: html, regex

AIS # 095 - ‘n Maand laat, maar hier is ek!

Net ek - geen musiek of enige ander nonsens nie.

• Ons huis projek
• Aussie Burgerskap
• Dubbel burgerskap
• Moet ek stem vir Suid Afrika?