This looks like fun: a hovercraft that is also a ground-effects aircraft. I know hovercraft are also GEVs, but they are limited by their cushion height.

Parkes Radio Telescope had an open day, so I headed over. I've been there before, of course, but this time they were doing guided tours inside the dish.

I went into the support tower, through the control room, around the azimuth track. under the 450 ton counterweight, into the "cable wrap," down the spiral staicase in the centre of the structure, past the observation room ("This is where the astronomers work. Don't feed them") past the computer room and out again. Photos to come.

I finished the tour with a steak and Guinness pie and capuccino.

Not a bad way to spend a morning.

Article on Futuretech and what we have now. mmm robots. The writer mentions borohydryde fuel cells which sound a much better choice over direct H2 fuel cells.

Does anyone out there in Technogeekland have a comparison between H2 cells and borohydride cells?

HPR-3 mk2 Useful humanoid robot that does more than climb stairs and say "Hello."

Open Google Earth, enter 55.957597N, 3.311305W, zoom in.

I usually don't get excited about things like iPODS and such, but I like the iPHONE. I can see a lot of use in this thing, especially for the company guys who are on the road all the time and need email/web/phone connections (I'll have to put a filth-filter on Pat's to keep him away from the XXX sites). So I rang Apple Australia to see when they are releasing the iPHONE here.

They're not.

At least, they not releasing the iPHONE until they get assurances from Telstra that the iPHONE will be supported by whatever network is in place - CDMA or 3G - and at the moment Telstra has made no reply apart from telling Apple Aust "We'll look into it."

The bloke I spoke to said he was doubtful Telstra would let another competitor into the market to use the 3G network they sell phones for. "If that's the case," said the fellow at Apple, "Apple will have to set up its own network."

Sign me up.

Some Windows update or other has decided I don't want to run Zone Alarm firewall and want the XP firewall instead. Zone Alarm autostart was disabled, so I thought "Oh! I'll just uninstall/reinstall ZA and it'll be fine.' NO! Uninstall went fine, but now the installer can't find the truevector service installed components. I can't install Zone Alarm and I am now stuck with an almost non-configurable firewall that doesn't tell me ANYTHING apart from the fact that it's working. I can't trust a firewall like that.

Congratulations Pluto for being confirmed into the Planet club! And congrats to Charon, UB313 and Ceres on your promotions!

HOORAY!

My new ee-m@il account is battyden AT snoopadubbo DOT com. My old bigpond account will last for a while, until the contract runs out.