Inverted Reality

Australian iPad pricing and date

SYDNEY, Australia—8 May 2010—Apple® today announced that iPad™ will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK on Friday 28 May. Customers can pre-order all iPad models from Apple’s online store in all nine countries beginning on Monday 10 May. In the US, Apple has already sold over one million iPads and customers have downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store, as well as over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore. -snip- Pricing & Availability iPad is available in Australia for a recommended retail price of AUS$629 inc GST for 16GB, AUS$759 inc GST for 32GB, AUS$879 inc GST for 64GB for Wi-Fi models and AUS$799 inc GST for 16GB, AUS$928 inc GST for 32GB and AUS$1049 inc GST for 64GB for Wi-Fi + 3G models. iPad will be sold through the aaApple Store, Apple's retail stores and select Apple Authorised Resellers. The iBooks™ app for iPad including Apple's iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store on 28 May. Apple plans to release iPad in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore in July. Apple will announce availability, local pricing and pre-order plans for these nine additional countries at a later date.

We did LAN

wtf is LAN? Local Area Network. We (the family) headed to Tammin to stay at a friends place. (is about 250km east of Perth) The girls (read, wives) took off to the scrapbook shop in Cunderdin while the guys (Clinton, Jai and I) stayed home and looked after seven kids. YES, SEVEN. Finally we had the kids fed, clean, dressed for sleep, and in bed. It was grown-up time. So what did we do? Cranked out three laptops, a network switch, some beers and some network games! Our 'country' rig consisted of an 8-port netgear gigabit switch (GS608), 13" Macbook Pro, and two Toshiba Vista laptops. After we finally had all machines chatting with static IP addresses, we fired up some Unreal Tournament and some Trackmania Nations. Super duper fun! We attempted to fire up Command & Conquer - Red Alert, however on my machine (dual booting XP) could install IPX/SPX, the Vista boxes, unlucky. Red Alert needs IPX/SPX, doesn't work on TCP/IP. Fail. The night finished up with a few sips of port, the ladies returning from their happy-fun-time, and everyone hitting the sack. Pity the kids were up and running amok at 5AM. Geez I'm tired right now. Glad tomorrow is a public holiday! Great fun

New Apple iPad Blog

I've set up a new site. http://www.ipadicle.com/ (it rhymes with Radical, but is spelt completely different) I plan to add all iPad tips, tricks and news on the site, as well as hopefully gain some discussion. The idea is to make it a one-stop-shop for everything iPad. From Developers to regular users, hopefully it will become a useful resource!

BarCamp Perth

Is fast approaching. April 10th to be exact. While I've not been in the past (I was busy last year), I'd like to attend this year, and perhaps even contribute something. I'm just trying to think of some topic's that I could maybe discuss at BarCamp. Here's a list of things I've thought of so far... (I'll pick one): Webmin - A web systems administration package for servers (mainly Linux) Virtualmin - A web hosting administration package for servers Sysadmin on the road - Consultancy and systems administration whilst mobile. Apple iPad demonstration and practical uses in industry (health / medical uses) Social Networking as a business tool Or maybe I will just go and suck down all the Five Senses Coffee? Taken from their site:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment

If you've never been to a BarCamp before, the idea is simple. BarCamp Perth is a free, single day event held at Central Institute of Technology. It's kind of like a conference in that most of the day is filled with talks (both formal and informal) but anyone and everyone is welcome to speak (hence, an unconference). If you have a topic you're passionate about or you just want to help spread the knowledge, you're invited to submit your talk topic (once that part of the site is up) and people attending on the day will get to choose which talks go when. In past years, we've had talks on everything from Ruby on Rails to Hardware Hacking to Second Life. If you have something to contribute or just want to learn, BarCamp Perth is for you. The motto of BarCamp is simple: No spectators, only participants.

Fanboy

I was reading some of Chris Pirillo's tweets.. he's a tech nerd that does a live video tech show, runs some sites, runs a convention, does all kinds of stuff.... recently he's been tweeting about being a 'fanboy' or should I say, NOT being a fanboy. It's got me thinking, am I fanboy? I'm a pretty die-hard Apple fan... I love Apple products! I stalk the rumor and official sites for updates, new products, gossip etc... I could be a fanboy. I've not always been an Apple fanboy. Sure my first experience with a computer was an Apple IIc which my mother bought me when I was nine years old. I must have been the only kid in my entire school who was handing in homework that was done in a word processor and printed on a dot matrix printer. HAH. When Apple announced they were moving to Intel processors, and I had my first experience with a Mac running OS X. I dropped my cash on the bench and forked out for two brand new 15" Macbook Pro's. Revision A, pre-ordered. That was an easy $9k.

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Blogging and iPad

So I'm looking to get myself an iPad, if it's a great device, I'll get two (one for the wife, she loves books, mags, etc). I was thinking about what it will be like to blog using an iPad. A little different I would imagine. I've blogged using my iPhone from time to time, but rarely, it's not so easy with the tiny keyboard and screen. OK for small posts, or processing comments, etc. The iPad has a stunning screen and should be adequate for blogging on the go. Still with the software/virtual keyboard, which may or may not prove odd to type lengthy posts on, but we will see. The beauty of the iPad is obviously the form factor, battery life, display, and the completely awesome multi-touch interface. These things are appealing to me as someone who primarily uses the internet to carry out my tasks. I even write my doc's using google docs. I do not have MS office installed (or any other office suite) Would the iPad replace my Macbook Pro? No. I use my Macbook Pro for things the iPad just can't do (yet). Like coding web pages using coda, editing images in pixelmator, editing HDV movies of the kids in iMovie, etc. Who's to say that some of these apps couldn't run on an iPad? I reckon coda could, if it was designed for iPad. I can see the iPad being a fantastic bloggers tool. A great way to read your favourite blogs, administer and write on your own blogs, heck even blog about the iPad! I'll leave you with a couple of cool iPad things I've come across lately: iPad Safari (web browser) walk through: Wired Magazine on iPad:

Mosquito Death Ray

This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen. Man I hate mosquito's! They seem to love me though! I want it:

Kitchen Chef

Scored a Kenwood Kitchen Chef for Christmas. What a beastie! So far have busted out some cakes... can't wait to try mincing, and making some dough, etc.

Mobile Broadband x2

I've had some good success with using my Sierra Wireless APEX 880 USB 3G device of late. But when I saw the new Huawei E5832 (dick smith listing as E6939), I had to have it! It's a 3G modem and wi-fi router in-one!

some details:

• Wi-Fi - You don’t need to plug it in to USB port
• Wi-Fi range of 15metres
• Up to 3 users can share the connection via WiFi
• Connects with WiFi devices – games consoles, TV, cameras

RAID fail

Early this morning my NAS reported disk errors, a disk dropped from the array. I did a bad-block scan, all good, although a second disk reported as being 'ejected'. The array failed and was no longer recognised. A reboot later, and now I'm 'rebuilding' the array. Fingers crossed this works. I blame the power outages here lately. I've just gone and bought a UPS, and more hard disk's... grrrr