As I am on Vodafone sim on my HTC-Desire (more outback trips I use a Telstra Sim), there are a few black spots along the coast I will be dropping back to Edge network as well… so I have no idea how well it work.

(p.s sorry about the frame as well, but all going well this should work)

(p.p.s sorry in advance for the fact that I will forget to turn on the software at some point in time )

Also you can stalk me in the usual ways via Twitter or Foursquare as well.

Let me get this straight first. I am against the filter, it won’t work, never will, and I will just get around anyway.  My reasons for this are around the fact that all governments of all persuasions would be to tempted by the lure of the vocal minority to secure votes. Sorry but the No Clean Feed People need to be as organised, financially together and focused as the Christian Lobby groups that seem to be pushing this.

Stilgherrian wrote a great piece on The Drum the other day about the Internet Filter.  However if you read the article nice and slow, paying attention to the big words you will notice he was drawing a very clear distinction between the person and the policy.  Yet the vast majority of the comments are about the person.

Now in the last few days a couple of interesting things have happened. Firstly the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy joined twitter @DBCDEgov. My first reaction was “ well that ain’t going to go down well the natives “ and secondly, the people behind that account are going to have be fairly thick skinned.

Didn’t take long (and by long I mean minutes) before the No Clean Feed people were jumping up and down all over that account. Jumping up and down on one policy of a massive portfolio isn’t going to change jack shit. (Or as they say, wake up and smell the cat food).  Then yesterday the Department made a change to the overall timetable of the policy along with a few changes to the possible implementation methodology of the filtering policy.  Then shock horror, to communicate these changes the department very rightly attached the #openinternet hashtag to links to the press release.  Why, because that is what they should have done.  They are trying to communicate a policy to the group that the policy effects.  Yet, the critics quickly said “oh the irony”, “outrage”, “WTF”.

Of course they did, if I was in the Department running that Twitter account, so would have I.  It is no “#budgies” hashtag AKA Budget reply, but a well targeted approach to getting their message out. But no to the “rabble” it was just more petrol on the fire.

One final point.  I see lots of people saying, well I won’t vote for Conroy (people who do not live in Victoria btw and can’t vote for him regardless).  Sure, you can take a single policy approach to an election. Or worse still a single person approach to an election.  But if you think that the Liberals (remember their great filtering software, the one the 14y/o broke in 5 min) will not jump at this kind of policy when it suited them I am afraid you are seriously disillusioned.

But what all of these stories miss is the “social” part of Social Media.  Most people think of the volume of traffic, the celebrities with over a million followers, the immediacy of breaking news or viral videos… but none mention the key part – the “social” part.

When I first joined my current work place some 8 years ago there were still smokers allowed on the premises.   Smokers were already relegated to the outside of the building when I joined, but they still could shelter from the rain.  (Note kids:  these people now hover around the back alleyways, at least 10 metres from the building, in slowly dying numbers). These smokers were never hanging around talking about what brand of cigarette they were consuming, they were discussing the day to day running of the corporation, the minutiae of the company and the projects they were working on.  These conversations were held amongst people from the different levels or divisions and from a wide selection of people across the organisation. Over a five minute smoko, frustrations would come out about how project X could not progress due to process Y.  Often something remarkable could happen out of these discussions.  Process Y was not always the bottle neck you thought it was and someone else may have a work around or have the connections to ensure that it wasn’t the problem that you thought it was.  Thus over a 5 minute smoko networking was utilised and sometimes a solution forthcoming.

Of course now we know just how bad smoking is for you, no longer seen as cool.  Certainly for the last 20 years it was never seen as productive.  The weak bonds that formed across the company through the smoko break have diminished greatly.  However the need for this kind of informal communication never did.

Now however, we all have a new tool on the block. “Social Media”, the quick update via twitter is still however like the smoko, frowned upon by those that don’t use it. More often than not just seen as wasting time, not head down bum up as it were.

The weak social bonds that a smoko gave can now be much stronger when using social media as the catalyst.  Unlike the traditional smoko bonds, (irl in one location) can now reach further; across a business or even the globe.  In my own work place I have discussions with everyone from the person working on a similar project to the managing director.

There are those people that will fret when the boss or even the competition starts to follow them on Facebook or Twitter.  What they don’t see are the opportunities the connections can bring.  That problem Y you are having is not going to be yours alone, nor your companies alone.  It is likely to be something that someone somewhere has already encountered and solved.  So talking about it gives people the option to help.   You can talk about a lot of problems without divulging confidential information or even bringing your company into disrepute and find the solution. There are tools like Yammer you can use internally to create a social network if you wish to limit discussion to an internal network and helping those not ready to step out into the big wide world.

The #spill tag showed how media organisations in Australia shared information.  The traditional rules of journalism, if only for a brief moment in time, were shaken as journalists and media commentators shared information retweeting each other, correcting, enhancing and distributing information outside the walls of their own institutions. This was the “social” aspect of Social Media coming into play.  These are people who traditionally in the old days, would have had private conversations over a smoke, out the back of parliament house. Now they could share what they’ve learned with not only those directly around them but with the rest of the world.

The times they are a changing, is not really what is happening.  The community where you talk over problems and information just got a whole lot larger and a whole lot faster.

And remember that person having a twito (a twitter smoko) is not always wasting time (though they may be ) they are collaborating solutions to problems across not only their organisation but the whole world.

It may just be time to put down the cigarette and get back to your desk and tweet someone.

So here are some of the facts and figures from the trip

• Minimum distance planned for the trip: 4,203 km
• Total distance (that is door to door): 5025KM
• Total Cost of Petrol: $623.24
• Total Litres: 491.17
• KM/Per Litre: 10.23
• Most Expensive: 138.9 BP Cunummulla
• Tweets where I wrote in the Lat/Long: 48
• Photos: 5000+ (including family Xmas day ones)
• Percentage of Photos Geotagged to within 20Meters: 95
• Hardware Failures: 1 320 WD HD Drive… Rooted when we stopped in Canberra (MBR error)
• Roadkill: 1 Bird (countless insects)
• Near Miss: 1 Emu (missed by 30 cm or so)
  
• Total Distance of Video for the trip: Approx 3300km (will try and rescue another 500km of video yet)
• Total Distance Recorded as GPX files: 5000km (only one Nokia GPS fail on a small side trip)
• Number of Twitter followers meet IRL for the first time (Not including a dog): 4
• Number of Bolt of lighting seen: 4 (number missed because storms hit the day after I left 30K+!)
• Number of States/Territories Driven in: 4
• Damage to the Car: 1 Stone Chip to windscreen (Location Dual Carriage way just outside Taree of all places!), 1 blown rear power outlet.
• Most Easterly Point: -28.636305°, 153.637817° (Cape Byron Light House)
• Most Northerly Point: -26.397385°, 147.176207°
• Highest Point: 850M -35.275425°, 149.097745° (Black Mountain Telstra Tower)
• Lowest Point: 0 Meters (Surfers Paradise + Norah Head and other beaches)
• Longest Distance Between traffic lights (not inc side trips): 1800km (from -35.836815°, 144.907532° which were roadworks in NSW to Dalby in QLD)

I will put together the driving videos and the KML files when I have finished cleaning them up.  Most of the KML files are a lot larger than they need to be as I would leave the N95 running whilst I stopped to take photos and wandered around.

The rest of images I uploaded to Flickr are in my #Wtrip09 Set

View Larger Map

The point markers are approximate stops… some are just over night others are for more than a couple of days.

Of course you will be able to follow the trip on twitter via the hashtag #wtrip09

basically about the same distance, but a bit more dirt driving… lucky I have that new set of Coopers ATR’s on the Suby so that wont be a problem.

so here is the more detailed route for day 2.

View Larger Map

remember if you know of something I should see along the way let me know

full route in this post.

From Red Bubble….

1. Calendars are printed on high quality, high density paper that’s easy to write on
2. The cover and all pages are printed on 200gsm high quality satin art paper
3. Calendars have a hanger and white wire binding
4. They’re A3 size (297×420mm, or 11.69×16.54”)

They’re A3 size (that’s 297x420mm, or 11.69×16.54″)

and via standard shipping in Australia: 2 – 4 business days

FYI if I can sell a few of these I can get some new filters for my camera before my road trip at Xmas to Brisbane.

The Official Media 140 Blog take on the panel I was speaking on…

(will add the speaking notes over the weekend)

More Photos from Media 140 here

Programme and links here

and the video stream of the whole panel…

Facilitated by Mark Jones, the speakers in order: Renai LeMay, Wolf Cocklin, Latika Bourke, Andrew Davies and Dave Earley.

ps… buy a calendar

“It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,”

“In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy.”

“Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the Internet.”

and the clincher

“The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit,”

now compare a few of the gems of Ferengi philosophy… thinking of the history of News Corp.

Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition

1. Once you have their money … never give it back.
3. Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
6. Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.
10. Greed is eternal.
13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
16. A deal is a deal … until a better one comes along.
19. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
33. It never hurts to suck up to the boss.
34. Peace is good for business.
35. War is good for business.
41. Profit is its own reward.
45. Expand, or die.
48. The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
52. Never ask when you can take.
59. Free advice is seldom cheap.
60. Keep your lies consistent.
76. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
82. The flimsier the product, the higher the price.
85. Never let the competition know what you’re thinking.
89. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.
97. Enough … is never enough.
99. Trust is the biggest liability of all.
106. There is no honour in poverty.
162. Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit.
189. Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.
202. The justification for profit is profit.
239. Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
242. More is good … all is better.
285. No good deed ever goes unpunished.

I rest my case.

So it is finally time to build a new pc here in the Wolfcat household… after 5 years the old one after having most of its internals replaced over the years is about to be made history….

I thought I might as well crowd source what I want… yes I have a budget in mind…. which you can ball park anyway from the stuff below…. yes it has to be a PC not a Mac… and it does have to last me a while… so keeping in budget but getting the best I can….

what would you change from below…

• Intel Core i7-920 2.66GHz
• Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R Intel Mainboard
• GA-EX58-UD4P (decided to go up a model for the extra ram and sata ports)
• Western Digital Caviar Green Power 1.5TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA 3Gbs
• Western Digital Caviar Green Power 1.0TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA 3Gbs (didn’t need the extra expense of the 500meg as I already have a 1tb drive as well… 2tb will be enough to start with )
• Pioneer Blu-ray (BDR203) Writer DVD
• Pioneer Blu-Ray BDC-S02 Combo Drive (Opps I really don’t need a blue ray writer… so money saved here goes the on the motherboard upgrade and extra ram)
• Kingston DDR3 6GB PC-8500/1066 (2x2GB) CL7 Value Ram x2
  
• Kingston DDR3 6GB PC-10600/1333 (3x2GB) x2 (bugger it … going for the 12gig of ram option… read that ddr3 ram likes to be in lots of 3
• Cooler Master RC-690 – Black ATX Tower Case – Top I/O Ports (460W)
• Thermaltake M9 – Black ATX Midi Tower Case (430W)
• Gigabyte GF9800GT, 1G, DDR3
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (to be replaced with 64bit Windows 7)
• Leadtek WinFast PxDVR3200H PCIEx1 – Hybrid, FM (whilst a tv tuner would be nice… I might be able to get my old one to work.. and if not meh )
• Benq 23.6″ G2412HD BLACK LCD – 2MS / WUXGA 1920×1080 / D-SUB / DVI / HDMI

The Old Computer

… what I am upgradign from…  oh this will be a change…

• Pentium 4 2.4Ghz
• Western Digital 1.0TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA 3Gbs (motherboard only supports 1.5gbps) + 250gb and 320gb Hd’s (1tb and 320gb to be migrated)
• LEG DVD 16x Dvd Burner +Pioneer DVD/CDRW (Burner to be migrated)
  
• 2 Gig DDr2 Ram
• Creative SB Live Sound Card
  
• No name 300 Power supply as the last one blew over a year ago.
  
• No name case which hasn’t had the side on it for many years (see photo)
• Geforce FX 5600
• Windows XP Sp3
• Chimei 22″ LCD (Currently in VGA mode as old video card doesn’t support dvi at panels’ native resolution) (to become second monitor)