Cardinal 7s

I have previously written an article on the Air Jordan VII - being the Bordeaux colour scheme. This article is on the same shoe, but in a different colour scheme - the Air Jordan VII Retro - Cardinal.

As opposed to the Bordeaux colour scheme VIIs, the Cardinals are very similar to each other. They also differ by replacing the suede / nubuck upper material with a tumbled leather. And besides the obvious colour differences, I cannot really comment on them being much different from the Bordeaux ones.

The appeal of this shoe is one I think will be broader than the Bordeaux. Whiteish shoes appear to be more popular than darker shoes, and I believe this will appeal to a younger demographic as opposed to the Bordeaux, which appealed to an older demographic who may have once upon a time have owned a pair. I do not think these shoes will be used very much for playing basketball, and will find their way onto feet of people into fashion.

Without taking up too much more time, here are the images:

These shoes were obtained from the Footlocker on Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Things they could fix in Canberra #10

This next "thing" to fix in Canberra is going to be quite harsh, but I believe it is a reflection of the environment - the suicide rate in Canberra. My intention is not to offend or disrespect the memory of anyone lost to suicide - but to address a propaganda campaign trying to attract people to the region.

For many years, people have speculated about the suicide rate in Canberra being high. There is now documentation that the suicide rate per capita in Canberra is higher than New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland (the suicide rate is published in a brochure made by the Australian Government).

Loss of life, especially when someone takes their own, is truly a sad event. Suicide is very tragic.

According to the liveincanberra.com.au website's front page:

Take advantage of the employment opportunities and lifestyle benefits available in Canberra, Australia's capital city.

There are jobs available right now in Canberra for skilled workers across selected industries. Canberra's unemployment rate is consistently among the lowest in the nation at around 3.0%. The pay's good too - in fact, workers in Canberra enjoy the highest full-time average income in Australia.

What's more, Canberra offers a fantastic lifestyle for you and your family, with an outstanding school system, excellent health services, shorter commuting times, plenty of fresh air and community living. Much of what is best about Australia can be found in the nation's capital - it's a clean, safe and relaxed place to live.

Canberra has all the lifestyle amenities, city services and events of a world-class capital, yet the bush is on our doorstep and Sydney, the snowfields and south coast beaches are within easy reach.


If Canberra was so good, why is their per capita suicide rate higher than some other areas in Australia? Surely people would flock to Canberra and find it an utopian paradise.

I believe what the website fails to mention is that with the advantages of working in Canberra, comes the disadvantages of higher cost of living, higher petty crime, higher drug usage, all stemming from a higher boredom - as there is very little to do in Canberra. The typical resident is still elitist and arrogant.

To address this problem, the local Canberra government needs to determine why the city is "soulless" and boring, and why the mentality of its residents is to be elitist and arrogant. It will require a huge mentality shift in the people who choose to reside there. If they can bring in schemes to counter those problems, the city would be far more livable, it would attract more people, and, dare I predict, the suicide rate would be lowered.

Carbon Tax - is it worth it?

I recently received this in an email from ninja (someone I used to go to University with):

Carbon Tax explanation. EVERYONE can understand when it’s put like this...

ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) tax for dummies - regardless of your political persuasion. Let's put this into a bit of perspective for laymen!

ETS is another tax. It is equal to putting up the GST to 12.5% which would be unacceptable and produce an outcry.

Read the following analogy and you will realize the insignificance of carbon dioxide as a weather controller.

Pass on to all in your address book including politicians and may be they will listen to their constituents, rather than vested interests which stand to gain by the ETS.

Here's a practical way to understand Julia Gillard’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Imagine 1 kilometer of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.

• The first 770 meters are Nitrogen.
• The next 210 meters are Oxygen.
• That's 980 meters of the 1 kilometer.
• 20 meters to go.
• The next 10 meters are water vapor.
• 10 meters left.
• 9 meters are argon.
• Just 1 more meter.
• A few gases make up the first bit of that last meter.
• The last 38 centimeters of the kilometer - that's carbon dioxide.
• A bit over one foot.
• 97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.
• Out of our journey of one kilometer, there are just 12 millimeters left.
• Just over a centimeter - about half an inch.
• That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
• And of those 12 millimeters Australia puts in 0.18 of a millimeter.
• Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometer!

As a hair is to a kilometer - so is Australia 's contribution to what Julia Gillard calls Carbon Pollution.

Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway Bridge, ready to be opened by Julia Gillard. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometer length is surgically clean. Except that Julia Gillard says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair on the roadway. We'd laugh ourselves silly.

There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about.

It's hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.

Pass this on quickly while the ETS is being debated in Federal Parliament.

I do not know about the validity or the truth behind the analogy, but it made me think.

I don't oppose a carbon tax. Not at all. I believe something which is implemented to take care of the environment is a good idea. Something which stops people from just wasting resources on this finite planet is a good idea.

What I oppose is what will happen to the revenue of the carbon tax once it is collected. Will the funds be allocated correctly? Take for instance the tax on cigarettes. Around 2005, it raised over $6 billion in revenue for the Australian government. I would say it would exceed that amount today. My query is where does that $6 billion in revenue go? I doubt it would all go back to the health systems. Ministers need to pay for their superannuation funds, their air flights, and their spending budgets. The same can be said about the vehicle fuel excise, which should be used to upgrade the infrastructure / roads of Australia, but rarely is.

With the current "sales campaign" of the government, they have allocated $25 million to spend in "educating" the Australian public on carbon tax. Where did that money come from?

While I do not have a problem with the principle of the carbon tax, I do have a huge concern over the accountability of the funds raised in this manner. I seriously doubt it will be used to make the environment of this planet any better.

I welcome anyone's comments on anything I have written in this article, as well as anyone who can sustain or refute ninja's email. Is it misinformation, or is the government trying to increase taxes by pulling to wool over the eyes of the Australian tax payer? Will it mean an increase of conscious companies trying to clean up their businesses, or will it just mean an increase in the cost of living for all Australians? I hope this tax does not get implemented, and then Australians just get used to living in a more expensive society with less money...

Another person's view on WebSphere

As some of you may know, I work with computer "thingies", and this will usually involve me working with application servers. While not the most fun of all roles, it is interesting enough to keep me involved.

Recently, Chewie has gotten involved, and has started his own blog on doing WebSphere - WebSphere being a Java application server from IBM.

I look forward to seeing what he has to write up...

Australian Internet filter is easily bypassed

The good Senator Conroy is in the belief that he is still doing the correct thing - trying to save Australian net users from the dangers and disgust of an unregulated Internet. Even though he looks like he may be blocked in the Australian Senate, I believe he is still trying to advance his agenda for an internet filter for Australia - and still going ahead with rollout.

The rollout on Optus has an interesting twist in this story. The filter can be defeated by changing the DNS server in the operating system.

The news of bypassing the filter irritates me. A lot! The reason being is that I would have thought that to bypass the internet filter would require some fancy manipulation and installation of some interesting proxying software - not something a child or teenager can do in under 30 seconds. This is a multi-million dollar system, that can be bypassed with the simplest of ease. And this multi-million dollar filter is going to slow the internet down for all other users. The filter is useless and a huge waste of money, and just like the carbon tax, it will be paid for by Australian taxpayers.

If this article has inspired anything within you, please click on the link below and try to do something about it.

Do something (useful) now!

Jay gets older, Win Scripting is poor, and NBA is out

I have not got much to report at the moment. It has been a while since my last post, and while I am busy, I am effectively news-less.

What I can say is that my bro Jay is another year older. Happy Birthday to him.

I have also been doing quite a bit of Windows scripting in my current role to get application servers installed onto Microsoft Windows servers. While this does not sound like a difficult task, being exposed to other forms of scripting has essentially spoiled me. I much prefer the scripting on a UNIX / Linux system. It allows for better handling of different conditions - for example, checking to see files or directories exist, and acting appropriately afterwards. This experience only inspires me more to write more in my series on how to script on this blog.

Lastly, if you have not heard, the NBA is under a player lockout as they have not come to an agreement with the player's association for the "working conditions" for the players. The NBA wanted to introduce a new range of conditions that effectively means they can cut down on the amount of money that goes to the players. I have a mixed mind on this matter. I know at the end of the day, these players earn millions of dollars in today's modern game, and effectively we (the fans) are paying them to distract us from our day to day troubles, but I also understand that to a lot of these players, all they have is sports, and if you take that away from them, they will have little else.

If I think of anything else, I will be sure to jot it down here...

Mavs win the 2011 NBA Championship

Congratulation today goes to the Dallas Mavericks, who in game 6, have beaten the Miami Heat to win the 2011 NBA Championship. They played like champions, they played hard, and now, they win like champions.

The Mavs played with a core group of people that played like a team. They had less superstars than the Heat, but they played the way the game should have been played. Much of the comments so far have fallen back onto LeBron James. LeBron made The Decision to go to Miami, turning his back on the Cleveland Cavaliers. I did not mind the type of player LeBron was when he was with the Cavs. It was personally disappointing the way he decided to turn his back on that team to go play with D-Wade and Chris Bosh. LeBron is one of the most complete players in the NBA today. He can score, handle the ball, penetrate the defense, as well as defend well. If he had been traded by the Cavs to the Heat, then this would not be a discussion, and I would still think that he is a fair person. The fact that it was his choice has not just upset people like me, but an entire city of fans. I may have his Superman VI shoes, and his Christmas VIII shoes, but I do not like him.

Congratulations, once again to the Mavs, but for 2011/2012...

GO CELTICS!!!

Over-engineering and sales in IT

I see so much over-engineering in my work while I work in the IT field. People have decided on products based on sales people coming in, showing a fantastical presentation, and then get sold on a product that will meet their needs (with the promise of having enough features to make it "future-proof"). In some instances, this may work. In many it fails.

In times like this, I reflect on an article which was written back in 2005 to address allegations that open source cannot compete with proprietary enterprise ready applications (usually the ones that are over-engineered) - Ryan Tomayko's article: IBM Poopheads: "LAMP Users Need to Grow Up".

I suggest that all decision makers in all organizations, regardless where you are on the corporate ladder, has a read of the article and draws their own conclusions. Have a read of the attached comments, and feel free to voice your opinions either there or on this blog.

LeBron's Supermans

Before LeBron James joined up to form the Three AmEGOs for the Miami Heat, he played for Cleveland Cavaliers. For 8 years, LeBron wore #23 while playing for the Cavs, unlike the now familiar #6 jersey he wears for the Heat. While playing for the Cavs, in 2009, the Nike Zoom LeBron VI - Superman colour scheme was released. Unlike Dwight Howard's Superman Beasts, there is no official branding or affiliation with the Superman logo - only the same colour scheme that makes up the comic book character's costume (a fuller range of colours of the LeBron VIs can be seen on the sneakernews.com site - originally I was looking for the "Chalk" shoe, but was happy to get this one instead).

The packaging is not the traditional box with a lid, but it comes as a drawer - similar to the other pair of LeBron shoes I have - the LeBron VIII V2 Christmas edition. This is where the similarities end with the VI and the VIII. The shoes are constructed differently as well as having a different feel. Where the VIII feels lighter and allows for more ventilation of the foot, the VI feels heavier, and lacks the same breathability. The VI does feel more solid and stable on feet, and this is due to the internal Zoom Air cushioning, as opposed to the use of the 360 degree Air Max full length bag used in the VIII. The shoe feels like it was made for a person playing a heel-to-toe transition, as opposed to a person running on the balls of their feet. Due to the construction, it feels sluggish when trying to change direction quickly.

The VI does not feel as flimsy or as delicate as the VIII, and in a way, this reflects LeBron's physical build. While he has not recently become more delicate or flmisy, he has added more techniques to his game, making him evolve to a more rounded player. It has a definite feel that the shoe was built to last a long time.

Visually, the VI encompasses much detail. The upper of the shoe has 3M reflective materials on it, which was a concept that was originally pioneered on the Air Jordan V - the idea being it would light up when people took pictures with a camera flash. To illustrate the 3M concept, I have attempted to take the same angle of the shoe's cuff L23 symbol, one with flash, and one without:

The other details on the shoe include lion heads on the tongues, LeBron's signature and initials on the side and the heel, 2 on the toe of the right foot and 3 on the toe of the left foot, the word "UNSTOPPABLE" on the outer of each sole, as well as the word "ZOOM X2" on the heel of the sole.

Without further delay, here are the rest of the images:

My thanks for these sneakers goes to Footage by Thecoolshoeshine. Those guys have fast shipping, and a good range of shoes that stretch back a few years. Contact them, and ask them for their "best price", especially when shipping to a foreign country (like Australia) is involved. As time goes on, these shoes are harder to get, as there has been no indication from Nike that they will start reto'ing them, like they have with other shoes like the Jordan range, or even CB34s - so companies like Thecoolshoeshine are providing a much appreciated service.

Spudman's bookshop

Some time ago, I used to work with Spudman. He was a very wise person, who favoured using command line tools over a graphical interface. He preferred running scripts more than clicking on buttons. Open source over proprietary products.

And he was good for a chat and a laugh.

He has left IT, and now works in his own bookshop in Tasmania - Shambles. If you are down his way, and you want to pick up a book, or have an interesting chat about poetry or IT, don't hesitate to pop in. He is a very approachable guy!