I wanted to make guacamole the other day. Went to coles and even some of the local fruit markets to buy some avocado’s. $4.48 each … WTF !? Almost $5 an avocado ?! What the hell is inside these things, seeds made out of gold. The normal fruiters had it on special, $4 for 2 ? Still laughable prices…
Anyhow, I got pissed and left the shopping center without buying anything. Next day I went to Flemington markets at 9am in the morning and bought myself fruit and veggies at what I thought is the more appropriate price.
Whole box of Avocado’s for $12 … (that feels better *sigh of relief*)
Whole sack of Onions for $5
Whole box of Broccoli for $8
Whole box of Capsicum and Mild Chilli’s for $10
Whole box of Squash for $5 ! Yes $5 bucks
So what was the disadvantage of this, I had to pay 10 bucks for a trolly but got back 6 bucks if I returned it. I had to push the trolley up the ramp to where my car was parked (bit of a walk) and had to lug around big boxes and load it into my car.
Oh and you have to make sure you eat all the food otherwise it goes off. I don’t classify this as a disadvantage cause it just promotes more eating of good food 😛
Now that I have a whole box of Avocado’s I can make as much guacamole as I want and not feel like im getting jipped by the tossers running the big supermarket chains.
When there is no food in the house the first thing I do is go shopping. Back in the day I might have found some potato’s fried them and ate them with tomato sauce just to fill up the stomach but now I know better 😛
Today we had that scenario, after a long day at the conference yesterday we were to tired to drive home, specially after another call at 11:30PM to some guys in the US, so at the end we just stayed in the city. Woke up the next morning with no food in the fridge accept for some bread and some cereal. Needed to do a lodgement and a few other things but couldn’t start any work on an empty stomach. Decided that it was time to hit coles so went downstairs and headed straight for the specials to find any meat that was at least +40% off.
Got lucky, had a choice of scotch fillets or porter house steak at +40% off, so this is what we bought
Scotch fillets on special, usually $15 now $7.85 for 3 really nice cuts
1 x Eggplant
1 x Capsicum
1 x head of lettuce
1 x bunch of Bok Choy
Total cost was $15 dollars
Cooking time 15 minutes
Heated Grill pan until it was smoking hot, placed a small amount of olive oil just to wet the pan. When the olive oil starts smoking I use that as an indication to start putting on the meat
used pepper, oregano, paprika, salt and parsley and mixed them all up the make a seasoning
Heated the second pan until it was smoking and put on the olive oil, after it was sufficiently hot, threw in the eggplant followed by the capsicum and closed the pan to allow the eggplant and capsicum cook in its own juices
Few minutes later on the super hot grill pan put on the scotch fillets and simply put salt
Added the seasoning (previously made) on the capsicum and eggplant mixed it up a little and again closed the pan
Chopped up the lettuce and put on a dressing of olive oil, vinegar, pepper, salt and parsley
Didn’t use the Bok Choy so saved for later
Total time 15 minutes total cost $15 feeds 3 people satisfactory, no problems 🙂
Amidst the busy schedule of getting all the new software ready and primed the team went to the e27 conference today. It was important that we attended because it was all about the south east asian technology scene and how it is shaping up. It is important we get a clear view because we are about to launch our software within the region in the next month with our sales partners. As a result we wanted to get the news directly from the people involved within these regions to see how these regions are shaping up.
What we pretty much heard from all the speakers was as we had expected. The market is growing so large and fast yet still being ignored by many entrepreneurs due to much focus still on the traditional hubs such as the US. It was also pointed out that getting in early would be great strategy to adopt in this point in time.
There were experts on the panel from such regions as Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and much discussion about regions such as malaysia & vietnam. It was a great event because it was confirmation that we are moving into markets that are about to explode and where the next wave of users seems to be coming from. Regions such as Indonesia have had massive growth in the use of smart phones and the use of Facebook and many of the other social media platforms has been spearheaded in the recent years by users coming from Indonesia and other nations within the region.
This means that as the population becomes more tech savvy at such a fast pace, they will consume internet and mobile technology at the same tremendous rate. The key is to get the technology and product right and to find the right channels into the market.
There were also some great pitches from various startups at the event and some of the highlights I thought were from mathspace, workdivision and soundgeko. I thought these where the cooler of the startups because being a tech-head I could imagine the technical expertise it would have taken to build these products and it really is amazing.
All in all it was a great day, its been a long time since I had to sit in a conference for so long but it was well worth it. Met many great people that I will certainly be contacting in future.
Today was a great start to the day ! Damir got to my house at about 6:15am in the morning so we could drive down to Shelly beach to go for the usual morning swim and then make it on time to have a BBQ organise by the Brass Monkeys.
The Brass Monkeys are a morning swimming club based in the Cronulla (Shelly Beach area) and for some members, its been a place where they have been swimming for over 40 years. The cold water, fresh air and the friendly atmosphere, i’m certain … contribute to good healthy and well being of all the members and this definitely shows ! The members of the swimming club wakeup at the crack of dawn (around 6am) and swim their laps before starting the day.
Members of the club are also responsible for taking the water and air temperature every morning and posting it up within “the shed” billboard so that anyone swimming at the pools can tell whether the water is to cold for a morning dip or just right. The shed also contains the water and air temperature from the previous week so that swimmers can compare the change in temperature over the weeks. I managed to meet many of the members today at the BBQ to say “hi” and it seems that there are members from all different parts of the world all with lots of stories, from being in the olympic games to having, had lots of exciting and different travels throughout the world. Regardless of all the differences the one thing in common it seems, is that every member loves the sea water and love to start the day with a nice morning cold swim at Shelly Beach !
Today was the BBQ day organised by president of the club, Bruce with his wife who was kind enough to do much of the preparations for the food, so just want to say … thanks for that 🙂 Also this particular morning picked for the BBQ couldn’t have been planned any better. It was the best that I have seen in a while. There was almost no wind, the sunrise was extremely beautiful, the air was quite warm in comparison to the last few days and the weather was just right, no rain, lots of sun and just a few clouds.
I have a planned trip to go overseas towards the end of June where I have to take care of work related matters and I can already picture having mornings without the morning cold swim and I am already feeling a bit of dread ! “How am I going to start the day without that cold swim to wake me up and feel refreshed ?!?!” 🙂
Anyway, it was a great day, thanks to Bruce and all the others that organised the BBQ day. I have also added a few pictures from this mornings BBQ ! So … Enjoy 🙂
Been so busy as of late I haven’t had time to catch any new movies and see whats new in 2013 though there are a few that I had heard about in late 2012 that I want to go and checkout. However I have been browsing the songs on youtube and found this absolutely awesome dance mix.
It has many of my favourite songs from the different movies up tempo’ed with a dance mix background. Awesome ! 🙂 As of now it has about 2812 hits but its relatively new so I think it will definitely increase this year.
My attempt at translations below 🙂
यह मह मे बाहुत वयसत है तो नए हिनदि movies देखा नही है. लेकिन वह साल , कुघ आछी movies मे देख चाहते. Instead मे हिनदि music, सुन कार राहे है आैर यह नाचे mix पाया कार राहा है ! आरे वा ! मे बाहुत पासानद हौ totally awesome !
य़ह mix मेरा प्रिय songs है and the beat is awesome 🙂 अबी hits 2812 है लेकिन मे सोचता क्योंकि नए है.
I finally had the Aqua Lung Falco mask arrive in the mail few days ago and took it out for a spin the next day. This mask is a massive upgrade from my previous mask and feels so nice on the face that sometimes I forget I have a mask on. Im sure this feeling will wear of soon as I get used to the better quality products 😛
I decided to buy the aqua lung falco mask because many people where discussing how the aqua lung sphera mask (that was also very highly rated and one that I felt was also very comfortable when I tried it at the store) would scratch easily because of the plastic lens. I did some research and found that the Aqua Lung Falco was a similar mask except for the fact that it was tempered glass. I looked at the images to see if I could see any differences but wasn’t able to see it possibly because of the angles in the images (it just didn’t show the mask at that right angle). Many of the stores I went to didn’t stock the Falco and couldn’t tell me much about it.
It made me wonder why people didn’t buy the Falco when it was supposedly the same as the sphera but had tempered glass, which in essence would mitigate the easily scratched plastic so I decided to buy it, it wasn’t much $59 was the purchase cost. I finally got my hands on the Aqua Lung Falco mask and am now able to see the difference. Other then the fact that the lens is glass the way it wraps around the mask is somewhat different. All the materials used and the design of the mask which includes the housing and straps are pretty much identical except for the actual lens surface area (and material). The Aqua lung Falco has a straight lens with added plastic on the edges so it lines up whilst the Aqua Lung Sphera curls all the way around the mask. (The video shows a better illustration of this)
Check out the video to see the actual difference. Hopefully if you were ever confused about the differences like I was you can now see the difference in the two masks and it can help you decide whether you would rather have a plastic lens that does have better visibility but is prone to scratching or whether you would rather have the tempered glass lens which doesn’t scratch as easily but doesn’t wrap around the whole mask.
Anyway, check out the video above.
If your convinced that you would rather have the sphera with the plastic lens but has full wrap around then the cheapest I have seen it online is at amazon, though please let me know if you find it anywhere else cheaper and I will put links to those site also.
Click on the image below to be taken to the amazon page if your interested in purchasing the Aqua Lung Sphera.
$39.00 US and ships to Australia for $10.44 (this is where my friend has purchased his sphera and where I have purchased mine as a secondary mask). I think for the US customers this is free shipping.
$49.00 US for the clear aqua color at amazon though im not sure what the shipping price to Australia is because I didn’t purchase this one.
Im looking at some new gear to buy sometime in the future and was just reviewing what I currently have. It’s nice to look at what I have bought, how much I have spent and to know for such little money and a bit of training I have been able to enjoy the ocean like I have never ever been able to before 🙂
I think the most important piece of equipment is to be safe and officially get the SSI or AIDA certifications which I plan to do soon. Only issue right now is im still deciding where to do it as I might have to reside overseas for a while and it may actually be a requirement that I get the training outside of Australia. Currently my business might take me to Indonesia for a few months 2-3 (possibly) so if this is the case I have seen some really good places where I can go for 3-4 day certification training including accommodation in Bali that seems to come highly recommended. In the next few weeks I will know where i’ll be and if its Indonesia im gonna call the guys up in bali 🙂
As a result of not yet getting the full training and not yet having fins I kept my depth to something fun and challenging but not going past it (about 15m max) and always wait for scuba guys or other divers to start populating an area before I start diving after my first mishap with the blue bottles some weeks ago. Reason being is, im sure the professional diving instructors can tell the conditions so I just chat with them before hand and follow them into the water.
With that aside I do have some equipment that I use to keep it fun, most of it is pretty crappy except for my new Falco mask which I really like. So currently my kit includes the following:
Aqua Lung Falco mask. I got it a few days ago and going from my previous non free diving mask by TUSA, this mask makes it feel like im not even wearing a mask anymore. Its really comfortable and compresses nicely to the face. Previously the TUSA mask that I had would hurt around the face when I went deeper and after a days diving would leave marks that would last for a few hours. Just to be clear though, there is actually nothing wrong with the TUSA mask that I had previously, the visibility is great, its just not a low volume free diving mask that compresses nicely to the face.
Speedo snorkel :P. Yeah its a cheapo snorkel that I got when I bought those mask and snorkel kit may years ago. It gets water inside, purging requires me to blow really hard, the tube is really thin and make sit hard to get the air I want but hey, for now it does the job and lets me have fun. Out of all the equipment I have this will be the first to go and im testing out a few snorkels now. I found a few that I like and they can be bought on Amazon but for some reason those sellers overseas do not ship to Australia. The equivalent products can be found on Australia scuba sites and in the stores but are just 2-3 times more expensive in some cases (even including the shipping from overseas scuba sites) so I will hold out and wait a bit longer to see if I can find a better deal here in oz. If not I will just bite the bullet and buy it at the prices quoted here.
Intova camera. It’s the cheapest I could find on the market that had a decent depth resistance of 60M. Again I didn’t want to buy the best equipment without knowing what I was doing and this camera only cost me $160 and up to now its done a decent job. Now that I know more about the equipment I need, I somewhat regret that I just didn’t buy the GoPro for between $240 – $350. It’s ok though as I can use this as a secondary camera or something that I mount to my mask/head where the new camera I buy can be used to take long view 3rd person shots from the top or bottom.
Camera Pole. I saw a few cool videos on youtube of people taking the camera down with them but using a pole instead of just holding the camera. It created really good videos of both the surroundings and the diver and I thought it was a good and easy way to make some good videos. My pole is pretty make shift though, I use a camera bike mount and attached it to an electrical wiring conduit that you see up against the walls. The pole is probably just over a meter long and pretty sturdy. I tested a few materials and found that this particular one floats, so if the camera ever fell out of my hands I know that the camera would float to the top instead of end up on the sea bed. The mounts cost me $6 and the pole cost me $5 so all up its $11 which I am pretty happy with.
Vibrams. These were never intended for diving, I used them for jogging and walking about but I use them for diving because they work well in the water and are pretty sturdy. I mainly use them because in most of the dive sites you have to walk on lots of rocks and coral to get into the water. I know that people do lots of safe dives and end up cutting their feet and legs due to a wave washing them about just as they are about to exit so I thought to keep my feet safe and ensure that I dont get gashes on the soles of my feet wearing the vibrams would be a good idea. Also sometimes I end up doing some sea walking and you never know what is down there so covering up the feet is a good idea for this reason also. Soon however I will need to get some fins, need to do some research and see which are the best for me.
Nylon reebok pants. Yep my nylon reebok pants, im pretty sure they are fakes because I bought them for the equivalent of $5 but they work just fine. They dry up quickly are very thin and very comfortable to wear all day 🙂 Though when the weather gets colder I will certainly need to replace these with a proper wet suite.
Toothpaste 😛 The cheapest and easiest way to keep the mask from fogging up. Works great, when I realised you could use toothpaste it made my diving experience 100 times better because I wasn’t fogging up anymore (probably the most important thing in my kit other then the mask and snorkel :P)
Over the next few months I think I will be purchasing upgrades as i definitely need them. I will start with snorkels, followed by fins and/or wet suite and probably a new camera. Its coming towards winter here in Australia and the waters might start to get colder so if it does a wet suite might end up becoming the highest priority.
I just recently watched “My Name Is Khan” starring Sharukah Khan & Kajol and I thought that i would do a movie review on it. Whenever I watch a Bollywood movie I try not to read to much about the plot. This way when I watch the movie I can be surprised by the storyline. When picking a movie I just go by the actors and recommendations by people who have seen it 🙂 In this specific case the title, “My Name is Khan” doesn’t say much about the movie but since it stars two of the biggest names in Indian cinema and with all the 5 star ratings it received I knew it was a movie worth watching.
As many fans of Bollywood movies can attest, usually prior to the intermission the characters are defined, their backstories defined and a picture perfect image of the characters are created. By the time the intermission is completed the movie takes a complete 180 turn and we learn all about the plot and the major issues, secrets and conflicts between each of the characters.
“My Name Is Khan” was no different and the story basically revolves around a young mulsim boy (Rizwan Khan) with Asperger syndrome who has many social disabilities at a young age but is lovingly brought up by his mother who teaches him the ways of how to live a decent and good life. Rizwan though cursed with social disabilities is blessed with an uncanny skill of being able to fix just about anything mechanical and with this skill manages to earn the respect of a wise and educated man within the village who helps Rizwan hone his skills and also earns respect from the villagers by helping them clean their town center after it is damaged by floods.
Rizwan grows up to be an upstanding man and loving husband to Mandira, his Hindu wife (played by Kajol) woos into marrying him through his charm and his loving nature. They live life together happily running their beauty salon and raising Mandira’s child (Joel) who was from her previous marriage.
Life is perfect until the september 11 attacks occur and their life is changed. Due to the instant resentment towards Muslims and the persecution of anyone who resembled a muslim looking man (or women) either by attire, name or look their beauty salon business bearing the name Khan is instantly effected when no more customers come through their door even though Mandira herself is not a Muslim but simply bares the name Khan through marriage. Both Rizwan & Mandira manage to get by but things change forever when their son Joel is killed due to racial persecution by kids at his high school. Mandira blames Rizwan for her sons death as a result of his name and the pair part ways.
From there Rizwan begins his journey for redemption and to understand why Muslims are being persecuted the way they are when he remembers his mother teaching him that all men are the same and the only differing factor is their are good men and there are bad men, color, skin race and religion do not matter.
“My Name is Khan” is a beautiful movie of love, struggle & redemption and one that I wish more people could watch. I show it to many of my friends and most of them can’t help but get teary eye’d. It’s one of the movies that I think defines greatly why I like indian cinema. It gives the other side of terrorism a face, the side where other muslims stare in disbelief at the actions of people that share the same beliefs as them but commit murder at such a large scale that its unimaginable to anyone (same beliefs or not). As a result the rest of the Muslims are persecuted simply because they share the same beliefs even though they don’t share any of the violent ideologies and are actually whole heartily against them. In many Bollywood movies this is represented well but I think this aspect, where the bad guys are the “Muslims” is something that many times is grossly mis-represented in the typical hollywood movies.
I think it’s Sharuhkah Khan at one of his best (It was great to see SRK play someone who has Asperger’s and less suave should we say – Kinda like Priyanka Chopra in Barfi) and seeing him work with Kajol in this very different context is great. I’m sure they must have worked together many times but the last time i remember watching this duo was in the classic “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”.
It’s a great movie and one I will recommend to many other people who don’t mind watching foreign movies. Hope Bollywood keep making movies this great !
AND BTW, if by some freak of nature SRK types something into google and this page comes up I just want to say …. thanks for visiting Indonesia Sharukah, hope you visit again when im around so I can get an autograph 🙂
So I finally got around to getting a diving buoy so we can move into deeper waters and let boats know that we are there along with being able to rest and do some breathe up’s in between the dives.
I was torn between buying an official diving buoy or creating a make shift one but after some consideration (for now) my self and damir have decided on just creating a makeshift one.
We purchased a second hand truck tube from the kind folk at “tyres for less” for $10 which I think was a great find since it was cheap and also impossible to find anywhere else as now tyres are generally tubeless. I also purchased some rope from Bunnings (30m) for $3.99 (it on special so I bought 2) and a lead weight to let the rope sink. I think to complete the make shift buoy we need to paint the tyre bright orange and also purchase a rope roller so we can roll the rope down without leaving any slack or having to go through the hassle of rolling it whilst in the water but for now this will do just fine. The idea is to take it for a spin tomorrow at Gordon’s Bay.
I am what you would call a bit of a geek and love to play with different types of technology. For the last 8-9 years I have worked in corporates doing either development, design or architecture on either software projects, hardware projects or a combination of both whilst also in my spare time tinkering with all sorts of crazy stuff 😛
After years of working in larger companies about 1.5 years ago I (along with a friend of mine) decided to venture out and develop our own technology to hopefully make a living building and doing our own thing.
So it’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride but we are doing OK, it has its ups an downs but I wouldn’t have it any other way. One things for sure is it definitely beats the norm ! Also, as a result of building this business life has changed (in many ways) for the better in lots of unexpected ways.
We developed a site called BlipADeal found at http://www.blipadeal.com which is a platform for consumers around the world to find the best deals and coupons around. We also provide a large repository of deals and coupons for developers to access via our API’s. You can visit the site to get more information but in this particular post I mainly want to discuss the technologies that we used to build the service both on the mobile and web fronts.
The website
So the website was built using multiple different technologies which include, python, php, javascript, CSS, JQuery and HTML. Mainly the backend was developed using python frameworks and functions as an API so whenever the front end needs any new data it will make ajax requests and will receive only the specific information that it needs.
PHP is used to develop the front end dynamic pages. We could have used a python template library but decided that it would be best to use PHP so that updating designs on the fly would be much easier and would allow us to split the architecture much easier as traffic starts to grow (I might go through the architecture in another post later on).
JQuery and CSS is used for all the communications between the rendered HTML and the backend business logic and processing whilst also being used to render the presentation layer that interacts directly with the user. All data passed between the backend and the frontend is done through JSON objects. Its a nice little architecture and easily extendable to handle mobile requests also.
All of the software sits on top of the amazon cloud which runs EC2, S3, RDS and a whole host of other little services conveniently handled by amazon. Amazon is great and I think many founders can attest to how easy it has made their lives !
The Mobile Applications
In addition to the website we have also developed mobile applications so that users can easily receive their deals and vouchers on the go. So far we have supported mobile applications on both the main platforms, Android and iPhone. To save time we wanted to develop the application for both platforms using the Titanium (TA) framework but discovered that for android development there are very serious limitations.
We developed the iPhone application using Titanium pretty quickly and easily. All the code was developed using javascript and it was clean, easy and fast to test however once we came to developing the BlipADeal application for android we found the following limitations which actually where a pretty big deal.
Number 1 problem is that it would compile the whole javascript V8 engine into the APK binary file. So in essence this made the binary 20MB + where the binary should only be about 1 meg in total. This might not be a concern in places such as Australia and US where the mobile internet has pretty decent speeds but in some other asian regions (where we have a substancial user base) a 20MB file will simply be to large to download for everyone.
Number 2 problem is that its really difficult to have it supported on most of the devices and screen sizes, it just does not scale as well as if it was a native android app. This again is a big deal in Asia where many people purchase the more esoteric Android devices with weird screen sizes and models that Titanium complied applications simple wont run successfully on.
As a result of these pending problems we executed the mobile development in the following way, iPhone completed and done in Titanium whilst Android done natively using Android java.
The question always gets asked as to whether its better to develop natively or to use titanium. The answer to this is it really depends. As I described above, developing for Android using Titanium is a nightmare in my own personal experience. You have to develop many exceptions in your code and in the end to have a code base that works on both devices becomes really messy internally. This is simply not because of Titanium along but also because of the fact that there are some widgets that are not transferable between different devices.
If you want to develop for iPhone and want to get something up quick smart and you have existing skills in javascript using Titanium will exponentially increase your productivity. This means you could hook up and app in a week and have it on the store approved and ready. As far as my own experiences go with playing around with Titanium there has never been anything that I couldn’t do on the iPhone however I have never developed games and extremely complex layouts so there could be some limitations which I have not yet hit upon.
In terms of achieving a native looking app that functions well and is responsive, titanium can do this without any issues or problems on the iPhone platform. If you want to get something out as an MVP and don’t want to spend to much time on the MVP just to test the idea and want to do without spending more time developing the application natively, its the perfect option that in the intrim will buy you time to redevelop the application natively later.
