Why your council rate goes up every year

Perhaps this is why Australia needs more migrant workers. Here is a picture of four workers standing by a patch of wet cement. They might be having a field conference, guarding the wet cement, or simply waiting for the cement to dry. Another worker, not in the picture, was sitting inside a truck. It is no wonder that the council rate always goes up faster than inflation. (If this is your own home, you will just need to pay for one tradie to come and lay the cement all by himself.)

Podcast, a portend for movie-on-demand?

Back in 2004, podcast was just getting ready for prime time. It seemed like such a good idea then; you could download a podcast and listen at your convenience. It seemed logical that among the broadcast audience there would also be a percentage of people who would want to have the option of downloading content for later enjoyment. Goodbye to conventional radio and welcome to 21st century podcasting.... or so it seemed. Today you'll hardly find anyone who has ever listened to a podcast.

Perhaps you could blame it on the Youtube, which came around just a year later. But then perhaps not. Youtube took the world by storm and it had nothing to do with podcast's success or failure.

So will movie-on-demand become a commercial success? Will it go the way of podcast or will it go the way of the Youtube? It is not easy to predict what the market wants. Prime Minister Julia Gillard is certainly banking on the success of movie-on-demand. She has committed AUD$43billion to make sure every Australian has equal access to it, whether they want to or not.

Morningstar Estate, Mount Eliza

Here is another one of those places I have discovered in Victoria through my association with photography.

Today I made a trip to see Peter Dwyer's photography exhibition. It is held in a chapel (first picture) in the Morningstar Estate in Mount Eliza. It is near Frankston, about 50min drive from my house. Peter Dwyer has been to our club before. I must say I enjoyed the exhibition, which consists of 60 beautiful images.

Apart from the exhibition, the visit to the venue was a treat in itself. Little did I expect to find myself in the courtyard of a cluster of grand old buildings. It could have been a setting straight out of the Jane Austen era. The chapel, although not much to look at from the side view, is quite a charming old building. Inside, you are treated to a high ceiling and you can still find adornments that has inspired many a worshipper. There are even a few pews, which are still in polished condition. The others may have been removed to make room for the exhibition. Out of courtesy for the exhibitor, I did not take any pictures inside the exhibition room. 

(all pictures taken with my camera phone)

The incredible shrinking telephone rates

Not many of you will agree with me that telephone charges are reducing at a rapid rate, unless like me you are in the habit of constantly scouting for the lowest rates. I take special delight in visiting the frontiers of low cost telephony.

(Lycamobile and Lebara, while still cheap for overseas calls, has raised its prices for local Australian calls. It stinks of anticompetitve behaviour (read: collusion). Stay away from these two)

A friend of mine introduced me to Fring, which works pretty much like Skype. Fring can be installed on most mobile devices and across various platforms. You can install Fring on Android, iPhone, and Symbian platforms. (That said, another friend sadly found that it was not suported on Android 2.1). Fring gives you the ability to make video call or voice-only call, while FringOut works on prepaid credit, which you can use to make calls to non-Fring phones.

I installed Fring on my Nokia E71 phone. I also bought FringOut credit. As my phone runs on free 3G (thanks to TPG's generous $1 mobile plan), I can make Fring calls through Wifi at home, or through 3G away from home.

Now for the cost. There is no flagfall charge. Calls to Australian landline is 2.1c per min and to Australian mobile is 9.5c per min. The only way to beat this super cheap rate is to install Fring on the other end. Fring to Fring calls are free. Forget about paid-Skype; it costs 3-4 times more than Fring for local calls.

How does this compare with VOIP?
MyNetFone charges 12.5c per min to landline (untimed and no flagfall), and 24c per min to Australian mobile (plus zero flagfall).

(For your information, FringOut calls to Malaysia landline is an incredile 1c per min, and to Malaysia mobile is 3.3c per min. As for quality of the call, it varies. I am happy enough with it, but I have yet to find out how consistently good it will be in the long run)

Updated on 30 May 2011
The quality of Fring cannot be depended upon. It is useable, but not good enough to carry on a conversation for long without wanting to fring wring somebody's neck.

Where did The Incredible Shrinking Man go?

You may have seen the movie called "The Incredible Shrinking Man." The story is about a man who was affected by a radioactive cloud, which caused him to slowly shrink. He kept on shrinking until eventually he was reduced to atomic size, as implied at the ending of the movie. I always wondered where he went after that

Have you noticed how things have shrunk into atomic size? A long time ago music was stored in a reel of tape. The reel was later reduced to an 8-track cartridge, which actually contained 8 songs in a cartridge roughly the size of a VHS tape. This later shrank to a cassette tape, which is the size of a cigarette pack. Around that time too, vinyl records gave way to CD, which later gave way to the USB stick player, which could store thousands of songs in something the size of a thumb drive. Eventually, everything has been reduced to digital data, which can be stored in the cyber "cloud." In essence, we have reduced physical music media to atomic size "ones and zeroes" that reside in a non-physical world - the world of cyberspace.

Therefore I deduce that is where The Incredible Shrinking Man went. He went into cyberspace.

VAPS Muster in Phillip Island

I spent the recent weekend in Phillip Island, attending the annual VAPS Muster; i.e. the Victorian Association of Photographic Societies. We had a wonderful time and the weather was very accomodating. I submitted one print and one EDPI; they didn't do too well. It was all in good fun, anyway.

What I get most out of trips like this is the feeling of being inspired, in addition to picking up some tips every now and then. The speakers were good, and so were the workshops. It was also good to look at the work from all the other clubs. This gives me an idea of where I stand and what I could do to improve for next year's competition. An important consideration is what the trend is and what the judges want to see, rather than what is technically sound.

The atmosphere was jovial, the food was good, and I got to see a lot of Phillip Island that I have never been to before. Trips like this really help me to learn a lot about other photographers too, such as their specialties, their equipment, and their shooting techniques.

Discovering the joy of radio

"When I was young I listened to the radio.... waiting for my favourite songs...." (The Carpenters)

It is probably difficult for children nowadays to fathom what it is like not to have instant access to their choice of songs all the time. When I was a teenager, collecting song albums was something not everybody could afford. Listening to the radio was a popular pastime. Radio stations actually published in advance the songs they were going to play. People gathered around the radio and waited for their favourite songs to play, just as The Carpenters used to sing. People actually listened to the radio, not just have it play in the background while they multitask in their busy schedule.

Several years after that I bought a shortwave radio. It was fun to tune in to stations far across the oceans. Through crackling reception in the middle of the night, I could hear people speaking in different languages; yes, real people talking in real time. It was a fantastic feeling to hold in my hand the ability to tune in and listen to strange voices coming from all over the world. However, I must admit that radio surfing was not a popular thing to do during my time.

Now I discovered that my new mobile phone comes equipped internet radio.What a pleasant surprise! In an instant, I have access to tens of thousands of radio stations, with more than 7000 from the US alone. Listening to American broadcast brings back memory of the time I spent in America. I could tune in to Malaysia and be instantly transported back to my country of origin. I could listen to the sweet chatter of foreign languages I do not understand, or imagine myself in Timbuktu or Bollywood.

In addition, my mobile phone also comes with free-to-air radio. Although I have a radio at home and in the car, it is great to have one in the pocket as well. Late at night when everyone is asleep, I could tune in to my local stations and simply relax in bed until I am lulled to sleep.

Unlike preselected music, with radio, you never know what you are going to get (er, Tom Hanks said that over a box of chocolates). That is what makes radio listening interesting. To hear a long forgotten tune come back to life always have me longing for more. I would feel the joy of rediscovering radio all over again.