I recently updated all the packages that are used to generate this site, WordPress, Gallery and the vSlider theme, so let me know if you see any inconsistencies or problems with any of the content!

One thing that has changed is the fading in and out of the random header images on each page, previously they were random but static. Let me know how you think that works for you, especially those of you on slow connections because the headers each require pre-loading before they can appear, and this may be painful for all of youse still on dial up!

Stay tuned for some more photos of our recent cross country trip from Portland, Oregon all the way back to Baltimore, taking in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia! I’m busy sorting through all the 1000s of photos and fine-tuning them in preparation for uploading to the site.

Stay tuned!

Categories: Home Page
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I have corrected a problem with the AFL Ladder Widget not correctly updating the data associated with the bottom position on the ladder… oops!

But it is all fixed now and you can download the new version here or go to the AFL Ladder Widget page for the updated widget and more information.

Categories: AFL Ladder
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Update: The widget is fixed, download the new version here!

The AFL has recently changed the layout of their website, including the ladder page where the AFL Ladder Widget v1.4 (and all the earlier versions) downloads the ladder data from. Thanks to John Reed for letting me know. A fix is in the works and a new version will be available to download in the next day or two.

For those who want to know the technical details behind the problem, well the widget is simply downloading the entire ladder page from the AFL website and then parsing through the ladder page source code, looking for the ladder data, which is in a HTML table structure. Once it has found all the data, it is displayed on the front of the widget.

Every time the AFL changes thier website, the formatting of the ladder table changes and because the current algorithm the widget uses to find the ladder data isn’t fool proof, it will more than likely fail to locate it, giving the “Error with data” message. The AFL changing their web site is unavoidable, and it’s not possible to write a fool proof parsing algorithm, given that the AFL can change the site in any way they want at any time.

But I’ve already taken a look at the AFL’s new ladder page and to their credit, they’ve made it easier to parse for the ladder data by including new unique attributes along with the ladder table data elements which they previously didn’t have. So as long they don’t change these, parsing the ladder page should be simpler and more robust, until the next time the AFL makes a major change to their website.

Does anyone know of an XML feed from the AFL which provides this kind of data without all the formatting?? That’d make my life so much simpler…

Categories: Tech, AFL Ladder
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So now my website has a new look. I recently upgraded all the web applications on my server which allows this new look. Inspired partly by an inability to leave well enough alone, and in part by a curious email server incident last week, I decided it was time to bring everything up to the latest revision in the hope to fix bugs and make everything more secure. The web applications are also more tightly integrated than before making for an overall more consistent look to the site.

It is still based on Wordpress and Gallery, only now I am using the latest releases of both packages which proved both easier to configure and easier to get working together than the earlier version I was using. Integration of the two was made even simpler than before using the WPG2 plugin and the vSlider theme. A few hours of Googling for setup hints and some Photoshop frustration later (to create the header images), and you have what you see in front of you.

Migrating to Gallery2, which uses an actual database for image storage instead of the file system as in the old version was fairly painless, although it did mess up the descriptions and witty comments on some albums and photos and required some hand editing to fix - let me know if you see any problems and I’ll fix ‘em!

Categories: Home Page
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Over the last few months I’ve been working on a robotic platform. It’s been slow going and it’s still in the design stage but the plan is to create a mobile, rover type autonomous robot. I’ve spent most of the time so far thinking about how it’s all going to fit together, but have made some progress over the last couple of weeks towards getting the basic motor drive system working and tested.

Photos from the initial work I’ve completed can be found in my photo gallery.

I am no mechanical engineer, and I don’t have a decent workshop to build hardware in so I didn’t attempt to build the chassis myself. Instead I purchased it, along with the motors and wheels from Lynxmotion. Similarly, the motor drivers (internal to the chassis) were purchased from Pololu, another decent place for robotic parts.

I intend to design and build custom electronics for the main controller on the robot, based around the Atmel ATmega128 microcontroller, but at this stage I am using a Ethernut 2.1b board from Egnite to fill in for now. I’m also using their Ethernut RTOS to make software development simpler.

The final system will be autonomous, meaning it won’t require any connection to a computer to operate, it will just do its own thing. But for now I am using a Bluetooth serial adapter from Brainboxes for debugging and control - this thing is in the very, very early stages of development!

The robot as shown in the gallery has no collision sensors, no motor speed control sensors or any of the other things I want to add to the final platform like a digital compass or video camera on a pan/tilt platform. All this will come at some time later.

Below is a short clip (requires Quicktime) of the robot driving around under my control via a Bluetooth connection to my Mac.

Categories: Tech
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Here’s the latest update to my AFL Ladder Widget for OS X Tiger Dashboard.

It looks basically the same as the last version except for a few new graphics, most of the changes are beneath the skin - I had to re-write a lot of the Javascript to make it work properly with 10.4.4 and the changes to the AFL website.

It loads and displays the current Australian Rules Football season ladder and provides a link to each team’s website, that’s about the long and the short of it.

According to the information from Apple this widget should work on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macs, ie it is universal, but let me know if you have any problems with it!

Here’s how it looks when it’s running:

Get the widget for free here or click on the icon below to start downloading.

The widget actually rated a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald last year!

Instructions for use:

Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Feel free to contact me if you have any comments, questions or requests!

Change log:

• v1.4 - Major rewrite to adjust for 10.4.4 and AFL website changes plus add better error handling and new graphics
• v1.3 - Added favoutire team highlight, plus many code revisions, and a new look
• v1.2 - Fixed a formatting bug for the Sydney Swans
• v1.1 - Fixed an update bug and tidied up the code
• v1.0 - Initial release

Categories: Tech, AFL Ladder
6 Comments »

Here’s my first attempt at an OS X Tiger Dashboard widget. It loads and displays the current Australian Rules Football season ladder and provides a link to each team’s website, that’s about the long and the short of it.

Here’s how it looks when it’s running:

Get the widget for free here or click on the icon below to start downloading.

Instructions for use:

Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Feel free to contact me if you have any comments, questions or requests!

Change log:

v1.3 - Added favoutire team highlight, plus many code revisions, and a new look
v1.2 - Fixed a formatting bug for the Sydney Swans
v1.1 - Fixed an update bug and tidied up the code
v1.0 - Initial release

Categories: Tech, AFL Ladder
7 Comments »

Six months in the making, more anticipated than that new Star Wars flick, critically acclaimed on 2 continents and banned wherever good films are shown, here’s another video from the weekend in Nelson’s Bay. This time it’s go-karting action!

Click the image to download, requires QuickTime. It’s a big one, approx 30 MB

Categories: Videos
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After all the effort I went to set up my web server and documenting the process I recently found a fantastic resource which describes in detail almost everything I went through to set up my server, and then some. Nerd Vittles is its name and it can be found here, along with its more up to date sister site Tiger Vittles. Both these sites have excellent guides on many different web-based applications and services you can easily enable on a Mac, they’d make a pretty useful reference for Linux too.

Categories: Tech
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Well not really, but last week I was flown out to Seattle for a couple of days to visit Boeing for a guided tour of the aircraft/radar system I’m working on… A nice deal since I managed to tack on a couple of days extra to look around the city… Photos in the gallery soon!

Categories: Travel
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