Foggy day in Melbourne

When I got on the train this morning at Dandenong it was freezing cold and the sky was clear but when I arrived at work in Richmond it was thoroughly foggy. So I thought I'd try to take some photos of it with my iPhone.

Planets converging at dawn this month

During the month of May, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus (and others) will become visible in the dawn sky, in a very tight formation only a few degrees apart. See spaceweather.com for more information.

I tried to take a photo this morning, but rushed it. I used my (Vinh's) Nikon F4 200, wide open, with the camera set to ISO 200 and used a shutter speed of 1/10s. Tomorrow I'll have another go and use a longer exposure time. I should have used a timer, because I got a bit of camera shake even though I mounted the camera on my Manfrotto 190 tripod.

Objective C and iPhone development

I've started trying to learn how to write iPhone apps, again. I've had one false start (12 months ago) where I tried to get a working app before learning Objective C first and failed miserably. This was partly due to impatience, and partly due to the lack of decent tutorials on the web.

This time, I'm going to learn Objective C first, and I've already found a great tutorial which explains the basic syntax of Objective C and how it differs from C++.

Then I will try to build some basic apps by following the Apple guides at the Apple iOS Developer Center.

To create an iOS app, you must use Apple's XCode, which means you need a Mac, and you need an Apple Developer account which costs $99 (but only if you want to build to an actual device, otherwise you can just use the simulator in XCode to see your app in action).

I've been told by some commercial iOS developers that Interface Builder is great for "standard" apps, but if you want to do something really funky, it's best to ditch IB and learn how to write all the code yourself. The reason for this is that IB does not write out source files for everything that you build - instead it bundles it all into an XML file which is not user editable, so it's impossible to do many customisations that you may be used to doing with NetBeans or Visual Studio.

Took the family to Halls Gap Zoo on Sunday, which is about a 3 hour drive up the Monash and down the Western Highway. The weather was perfect, and it's ages since we got away from the city.

The zoo was great fun - you get to feed the animals and get chased by deer - and they have a good range of animals from the usual Aussie natives to Bison and Monkeys. Well worth the drive if you've got a young family or you are just into nature. Tickets were cheap: $54 for two adults, two kids, and 4 bags of feed.

The freeways are obviously boring, except for a couple of "cuttings" where the road is twisty enough to be fun at the speed limit, hence the 80kph advisory limits.

It gets more interesting on the other side of Ballarat, and particularly on the Ararat-Halls Gap road, which undulates quite a bit and has plenty of corners to keep you awake. And there were plenty of opportunities to stretch the legs while overtaking, when you really appreciate the turbo powarrr of the Megane. In fact, with a family on board, it's about the most fun you can have while driving. A trip down The Great Ocean Road would actually be boring coz I'd have to drive much slower to avoid making the passengers car-sick.

The Megane didn't miss a beat, except for the computer thinking the rear-tyre pressures needing checking. I checked them in Ararat and the fronts were about 43 and the rears were about 39. When cold, they're about 4 PSI less, and I don't get warnings, so I'm guessing it was due to the higher than expected pressures. After resetting them to 40/37 this morning, the computer was still complaining...

Now I'm trying to find another place to go for a day trip. Suggestions?

iPad in car

I recently bought an iPad and decided to mount it in the car for big screen GPS and iTunes for music. My effort is no better than a prototype, but I doubt I'll be able to improve it much - trying not to spend any money, just used parts I already had at home.

I used an aftermarket stereo mounting bracket, a bit of right angled metal, a wall speaker mount, small piece of thin MDF, and velcro (with one side attached to the back of my TPU iPad case). The speaker mount allows me to set the perfect position, and this brings the iPad closer to me, so I don't have to reach to change songs or whatever, but it's a bit in your face, so i may remove it. I've used wingnuts so I can easily remove the bracket if I need to. And as you can see I haven't trimmed any bolts yet or painted any of it to make it blend in.

I've temporarily mounted it in the top slot, and moved the stereo down but the stereo face plate is a different shape to the hole in the dash so it doesn't fit and looks terrible. At least this way I can still access the stereo controls easily, but I don't need to as steering wheel controls will change volume and still switch to radio if I want.

I'd love to do something like what these guys have done but I don't want to completely destroy the dash, and it would probably cost at least $500 (if not $1k including new dash parts) to pay someone else to mount it properly:

Movie: Burn After Reading

We went to see Burn After Reading last night not knowing what to expect and we left with a similar feeling.

Starring:

• Brad Pitt
• George Clooney
• Frances McDormand
• John Malkovich
• Tilda Swinton
• David Rasche
• J.K. Simmons
  

I particularly enjoyed the performances by Pitt, Clooney, Rasche, and Simmons.

In a nutshell:

• Starts slow
• Brad Pitt quite funny
• Ends abruptly
• More than a little bit absurb
• Fairly funny
• Entertaining

My rating: 3/5

Internet Movie Database page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887883/

Bloomin' Roses

Our roses are blooming nicely - we have 18 rose bushes in total and most of them are starting to flower.