There has been a new Betta Electrical Advertising TV campaign released and it looks pretty good… The last one generated a fair amount of controversy and more than one nutter came out of the woodwork to provide all sorts of insults and threats.

Theses ads cover four different ranges available in the stores – Computing, Home Entertainment, Kitchen and Laundry

I reckon they are pretty good, get onto YouTube and update your comments and ratings

DISCLAIMER: of course, it must be said that I do work for betta Electrical (well, the Parent Company) but i wasn’t involved i nthe production of the videos…

Tags: Betta electrical betta Commercials ads advertising

So I finally sat down and wrote out all the things that need to be down over the next few weeks. by the time I finished on the first pass, I had 30 tasks written down across 6 major areas

1. MS Exchange 2007 Migration
2. MS SharePoint 2007
3. Backups
4. Desktop Clients
5. AV Migration
6. Documentation

Holy Smokes, that’s some work that we (my offside and I) need to do… I was looking onto some options for setting up some kind of GTD stuff to document all this and possibly keep up with it all, otherwise I am going to get mired down in paperwork and tasks and emails and everything. I can never find one that suits me… There are plenty of them about but most seem to be either Desktop or Cloud-based, some look great, some not-so-great, some use email and work with Outlook, many do not. I still haven’t found one really suits me. I guess that search goes one..

In the meantime, we created a SharePoint site and list all the Projects and the tasks and cross-linked them as well as did up some quick custom views to keep us going for now… That does me for now, on the work side of things anyway… that still leaves all the stuff i need to do at home though….

For this, I am thinking of using MS OneNote combined with Live Mesh. That way i can access the OneNote file from both Work and Home as well as synchronise with my HTC TYTN II.  I am still only scratching the surface of OneNote and I look forward to putting more into the way it works and integrates with Outlook

Any tips on GTD Apps and also OneNote resources and tips would be appreciated…

So now we have a local blog on Windows Mobile. I Hope this does well, the most comment i get when asked about my HTC TyTN II (Kaiser) is “what do you do actually use if for?? I am still working on all the things that i use it for, as is my wife who inherited my old Dell x51v ( the best Windows Mobile PDA ever…). I do lists, gaming, ebooks and all that as well as starting to incorporate using MS OneNote synchronisation as well.

This is very much a work in progress and i look forward to reading more articles from the Blog, especially with an Australian flavour. Unfortunately, we suffer from horrible, horrible pricing plans for data connectivity unlike the all-you-can-eat buffet that the US folk do. I remember getting a $375 bill from a single month because i had left my email checking at the default 2 Hour Interval… Ouch! This kind of limits some of the better stuff we can do so I hope that we can look forward to articles full of localised content.

Ouch, we go down again by a skinny margin… While I didn’t expect to win this one ( I actually tipped against the boys), It annoys me that we were up by 25 ( again) and then got closed out and lost by 10 points. this could have been one of those unexpected wins that we all love so much. We need them to balance out all those ones that we are expected to win but ending up losing…. We did come close and who knows what might have happened if Anthony hadn’t had to stagger off.  Reid and Rocca out again to serious injuries. Any tall forwards anywhere?? This will cause another shuffle and place more Pressure on Travis Cloke. I hope young Trav is up to it now he’s back. At least we stopped the Bulldogs run of 100+ scores

Match Results

Match Comments

• ANTHONY ROCCA in Q3 kicked his 400th goal for Collingwood in his 216th match for the Magpies
• The Bulldogs' run of successive 100+ point scores ended at 12 – they kicked only 99 points in this match
• 100th ADAM COONEY (West.B'dogs, 2004-08)

I Finally got the right Skin for my Dell XPS 1530. I had ordered one from the Dell Skinit Webpage while back and i received the wrong one. The Support guys were fantastic and whipped me out the correct one for me right away.

So now i have it, a pre-cut Vinyl skin for the laptop to make it all my very own, considering how successful the XPS line is going, I’m glad mine can stand out a little from the crowd.. definitely one to check out, considering it is only $30 US to buy. They also have the regular Skinit site for other gear.

One thing i have learnt though… i completely suck at taking photos with a camera-phone… I’m not sure i have ever got one without being blurry somewhere… I might try taking some without the silicon skin to see if that is causing me to press too hard…

So ends the (all-too-short) winning streak. This was the first loss that i watched on (free-to-air) TV as well. I can’t believe we were up by 25 points mid-way through the third quarter and looked home and ended up 30 points behind at the end..  Brendan Fevola proves how much of a dickhead he is again and looks to have takedn the Top Penalty-Milker award from Matthew Lloyd as well.  Carlton had the run of the whistle, that’s for sure.. I’m still wondering how Brad Fisher was pushed in the back in a marking contest in the goal-square without a player touching him. or how Paul Medhurst pushed an opponent in the back when he was facing him, again in the goal-square. these is just two examples of a litany of bungles… and now the perennial cellar-dwellers are in the bloody 8!!

Match Result

Match Comments

• at the 237th meeting the Blues beat Collingwood for the 122nd time – they've lost 111 times, and the two have drawn on four occasions in 1914, 1923, 1964 and 1972
• Carlton kicked 8.4-52 in the last quarter for the first time since 2001-R21, appropriately against Collingwood in a 68-point win at the MCG – it's the fourth occasion Carlton have kicked 8.4 in Q4 versus the Pies; others in 1971 and 1975
• For the first time in 4 years, Carlton have done the double against their old foes, Collingwood, winning both games in the home and away season
  It was in fact the 27th time they have completed this feat...
  1904, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1915, 1916 (x3), 1917, 1921, 1932, 1941, 1956, 1961, 1968, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2008
• Collingwood on the other hand have done the double over Carlton only 20 times, but did so in the last two seasons.
  1897, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1905, 1913, 1924, 1933, 1953, 1955, 1958, 1970, 1977, 1981, 1988, 1990, 2003, 2006, 2007
• Carlton are in the top 8 for the first time since Round 1, 2007 (they were 5th). One has to go back to 2001 to the last time that the Blues were in the top section of the ladder in the second half of the season - when they finished 5th.
• 150th HEATH SCOTLAND, 97 Car 2004-08, 53 Col 1999-2003
• SHANE WAKELIN played his 150th with Collingwood (2001-08); also 94 StK (1994-2000)
• 750th – MICK MALTHOUSE coached his 576th match, 198 Col 2000-08, 243 WCE 1990-99, 135 Fsc 1984-89 and played 174 matches as a St Kilda (53 games 1972-76) and Richmond (121 games 1976-83) player ...

Woohooo.. a chance to extend the winning streak… We dropped this corresponding game earlier this year so I hoped the boys would be able to get up. for the first three quarters we looked a bit scratchy and couldn’t put them away.. Fortunately, the boys found their accuracy and stopped indiscriminately bomobing onto the Forward 50 and started tohit targets and ended up with the Chocolates.. Now to put Carlton away…

Match Results

Match Comments

• For the third successive week Collingwood had 13 goalkickers for the game
• at the 221st meeting of the pair no other new match records were noted
• MICK MALTHOUSE coached his 575th match, 197 Col 2000-08, 243 WCE 1990-99, 135 Fsc 1984-89, equalling the record of ALLAN JEANS, 332 StK, 1961-76, 221 Haw 1981-87, 89-90, 22 Rch 1992
• 150th LEON DAVIS (Collingwood, 2000-08)

I am sooo glad that I bought my copy of Windows Home Server. I installed it on a Dell PowerEdge 715n Server Appliance that i happened to purchase cheaply second-hand. Since then it has been backing up our laptops and also my desktop PC.

Last week, it earned it’s keep. I had been running some stuff remotely via logmein.com and all of a sudden, it disconnected me and i could not re-connect. I got home that arvo and my wife said that my PC had been beeping all day and kept rebooting. I sat down to have a look and sure enough, boot to logon screen BAM! Blue screen and reboot. I was able to boot into Safe Mode and nothing looked out of place and i was beginning to wonder what the hell it could be. of course, i was having that feeling of dread starting in my stomach because these things rarely go well… Then i remembered….

I went to the shelf, got my PC Restore CD and booted it up in my PC. I selected the previous nights backup and started the restore. I went upstairs for Dinner and promptly forgot about it. the next morning I came downstairs and lo and behold, my PC is sitting at the Logon Screen. I logged in, Updated the System Time and whaddyaknow.. She was all fixed. Simple, no loss, no heavy investment of time…

Thank you Home Server and Thanks to the WHS Product team… If you ever come to Australia, there’s a beer in it for you from me…

you know, I had a whole bunch of other things i was going to post about but right now I can't think of any of them...

I had to identify a couple of Fonts that i wanted to use in a project that i was doing so i could buy them... but then,  how do you do that.. Sure, there is the common list the MS provides as part of Office but i had two specific ones that i had examples of in a picture.

Now when it comes to design stuff, a blog i always check out is Brand New, one of four blogs offered by UnderConsideration. The Brand New Blog shows before and after shots of updated logos and brands by various companies around the world, along with offering an opinion on what is good or bad about the changes. Asa bit of an outsider looking in with respect to design, i always find it fascinating to look at what is updated and the thoughts behind simple little changes.

So, when it came to look for some fonts, i got in touch for some help. I got a return email from Armin Vit stating that he didn't know what they were but pointed my to the Typophile website, particularly the Type ID board. Sure enough, I posted the pic, asked for help and within minutes, i received my response (Coronet and Calcite) whcih also included links to a site where i could get them...

So my Thanks to Armin and also the members of the Typophile for helping me out...

So the Chapman family packed up and headed down to Sydney for four days. We had been invited to a friend's celebration of his twin daughter's christening so we made a holiday of it and went for an extended weekend. we flew down on Jetstar ( on an international flight - which wasn't worth the $20 saving) and stayed in the Menzies Hotel. We had booked it through LastMinute.com.au as a mystery booking and didn't find out where it was until we had booked it ( for a third of the price).

So we spent Saturday travelling and also met up with Mossy in Darling Harbour We managerd to catch up while the chitlins ran themselves silly on the playground. On Sunday we ended up being late and missed the Church ceremony of the christening and joined Justin, Nicky and the girls at the lunch we had later. We then repaired back to Nicky's mothers place to relax, watch footy and catch up as we hadn't seen them since they returned from the US.

Monday was spent touristing around the city. Mummy and Emily did some shopping in the morning while Daddy slept in (so much sport on Fox in the Room). We travelled on the trains and the monorail to Darling harbour again. After lunch back in the City, Mummy wentback tothe Hotel to have a nap. We took in Hyde Park and the Hyde Park Barracks Museum which Emily loved. The best bit was Emily swinging the the hammocks in the Top floor of the Barracks where the convicts used to sleep. We had a great time but were exhausted.

After a quick battle-nap, we headed out in the car, this time, to get some dinner and have a drive around some of the old haunts. I was a bit rusty on some of the driving around the city, we did seem to drive across the harbour bridge a number of times, but did alright around the 'burbs.

On Tuesday morning, we packed up, drove out to our old house where we bought Emily home as well as drive past her daycare centre and a few other spots and then headed back to the plane to come home.

Of course, We were very glad to be home. I sort of miss Sydney but in most ways i certainly do not. We managed to miss all of the wild weather here in Brisbane with only a little rain in Sydney falling.

Here are some more facts on Collingwood's progress so far this year

Round 10 Milestones

NAB Rising Star

Round 10 – Nathan Brown (Collingwood)

Collingwood key defender Nathan J Brown has been rewarded for negating some of the best power forwards in the AFL by earning the round 10 nomination for the Rising Star award.
Brown, 19, has been handed the big jobs on Matthew Pavlich, Jonathon Brown, Matthew Richardson, Lance Franklin, Matthew Lloyd and Brendan Fevola this season and handed himself with aplomb.
And last Saturday at the MCG, he kept promising West Coast youngster Josh Kennedy to one goal as the Magpies won by 100 points.
Brown spent all of his debut season in 2007 playing with the Magpies' then-VFL affiliates Williamstown.
He made his senior debut in round one this year.
Brown was an elite junior basketballer, who didn't seriously pursue Australian football until he was 16.
He was taken by Collingwood with pick No.10 in the 2006 national draft.
"Throughout the season Nathan has been getting better and better, he's just been a revelation for us this year," said Magpies coach Mick Malthouse

About bloody time too.. He has played on the creme-de-la-creme of Full-forwards and rendered them mostly ineffective. this is stunning for a first-year player and should be much. It'll be fantastic to see him grow more into the role...

The Month of May

In Round 10 a total of 4 matches were decided by a team which won all 4 quarters

Collingwood won all quarters against West Coast, Western Bulldogs against Hawthorn, Sydney against Richmond and St Kilda against Melbourne. This is the 17 time this has happened including two occasions where 5 teams have won all quarters in a single round.

Most 4-quarter wins in a round

5

• in 1990 – Rnd 4
• 2000 – Rnd 18

4

• 1926 – Rnd 11
• 1944 – Rnd 11
• 1971 – Rnd 17
• 1986 – Rnd 19
• 1988 – Rnd 9
• 1992 – Rnd 20
• 1994 – Rnd 24
• 1996 – Rnd 7
• 1996 – Rnd 20
• 1997 – Rnd 16
• 2002 – Rnd 6
• 2004 – Rnd 1
• 2006 – Rnd 22
• 2007 – Rnd 16
• 2008 – Rnd 10*

In doing so Collingwood won their 4th four quarter game of the season (against Fremantle, Essendon, Geelong and West Coast) – matching the performances of 13 other seasons. Only three times have they won five games in a season winning all 4 quarters.

Most 4-quarter games won in a season – Collingwood

• 5 – 1901, 1971, 1991
• 4 – 1899, 1902, 1917, 1952, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1979, 1986, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2008*

Go Pies in 2008!!

Wooohooo. 3 wins on the trot.. not only that, the last two have been by a combined tally of 186 points... I watched this game twice. Once on Friday night and caught the replay on Fox ( i was in a Hotel room). Of course this made me late for the day. What a pumping, the boys won every quarter and didn't slack off in the last. This was always a bit of an issue, we'd get 30 odd points ahead but not really build it into a big winning margin. well, we cerainly did that tonight...

Match Details

Match Comments

• Collingwood equalled its highest score against West Coast to parallel 26.17-173 in 2001-R12 at Docklands
• the Magpies posted a new Greatest Winning Margin against the Eagles, topping the 81 points of 2001-R12 (173-92)
• West Coast suffered its sixth heaviest defeat of 508 matches since 1987 –
  142pts – 1989-R15-WH – 1.12-18 v Ess 25.10-160
  130pts – 1987-R16-SCG – 10.11-71 v Syd 30-21-201
  119pts – 2001-R10-PP – 3.12-30 v Car 21.23-149
  112pts – 2001-R22-FP – 7.9-51 v PA 24.19-163
  100pts – 1999-R17-BCG – 9.12-66 v Bri 25.16-166
  100pts – 2008-R10-MCG – 10.13-73 v Col 27.11-173
• Collingwood for a second week produced 13 goalkickers
• Collingwood with 8.1-49 kicked a new Q4 high versus West Coast
• Dane Swan was the Pies' best ball-winner with 35 touches while Alan Didak picked up 28 possessions and three goals.
• All this was achieved despite the Eagles having the dominant ruckman on the ground – Cox had 15 kicks, 15 handballs and 36 hitouts – and breaking even in the clearances. In anything other than a 100-point loss, the ruckman would have been best afield

Booyah.. what a cracker of a game... I had been out ( watching Indiana Jones, no less) and came home to listen to the final quarter streamed via the AFL Website. I was cheering and carrying on. I turned up the sound for the Club song... Not only that, I then rushed upstairs to watch the game... Of course, i had to sit my way through a bloody Benny Hill repeat of a repeat of a repeat episode before the game kicked off... I had to do the silent yealling and cheering and singing the club song as the girls had all gone to bed... and there were plenty of cheering.. Thomo's goal of the year and the tackling, tackling tackling...

Match Details

Match Comments

• close to a parallel – at half-time the Pies led the Cats by 51 points – in 2006 in Round 8 at the MCG, it was 59 points difference 12.3 to 2.4, with Collingwood that night (May 20) winning by 102 points
• Collingwood's 86-point win is their 4th-best of 214 games versus the Cats; only 102pts in 2006, 97pts in 1945 and 89pts in 1902 are better
• also close to a parallel – TIM LANE noted on ABC 774 that in 1953 it was Collingwood who severed the string of Geelong's 23-straight victories – on Friday night it was the end of 12 successive wins by the Cats from last year's R22
• The Magpies had 13 goalkickers for the match; an equal best by Collingwood – last time 1990-R16-SCG v Sydney – see Goals-most
• 50th DALE THOMAS (Collingwood, 2006-08) who in Q4 kicked Collingwood's 19th of the night and a contender for goal of the year
• The Magpies amassed a staggering 85 tackles, 56 of which came in the first half as they turned the Cats into a side which bore no semblance at all to the one which had won 27 of its previous 28 matches.

Woohoo another win.. a good hard tough win that might make the difference for the year. Now we ar 4-4 and will be able to build on that. What i wouldn't give for some consecutive wins.

Match Details

Match Comments

• at the 202nd meeting no new match records were noted
• 200th SHANE O'BREE (181 Col 2007-08; 19 Bri 1998-99)
• 200th career match LENNY HAYES (St Kilda, 1999-2008), 176 premiership games, 22 pre-season, 2 International

Ok, so have fallen way behind in posting so here comes the rain...

Whoops, almost forgot to post... It was (apparently) a dismal game for us anyway. Of course, i didn't see it. Heaven forbid....

Match Details

Match Comments

• The Hawks fell short of their best score of 146 meetings against the Pies – it remains as 25.22-172 in 1976-R3 at Princes Park
• Q4 and 10.1-61 produced the biggest score of any quarter against the Pies, greater than 9.5-59 in 2001-R16 at the MCG
• It was the first 10-goal term for Hawthorn since 10.0 in Q3 versus St Kilda in 1999-R12 at Waverley – it was the 21st time the Hawks have kicked double-digit goals in the last quarter and overall 41 times in a League match
• The last occasion the Magpies had 10 goals kicked against them in a quarter was Carlton's Q3 of 11.3 in 2000-R18 at Princes Park
• 250th SCOTT BURNS (Collingwood 1995-2008)
• no other new match records were noted

Hello, we exist.. come on. This is a global village these days.

The shot on the right shows the  current US Games for Windows website showing all of the new games and all that, including the new LEGO Indiana Jones game demo for download.

The shot on the left shows the Australian site for Games for Windows. Hardy inspiring since it is trumpeting games due for release in "early 2007". That is sooo last year, baby.

Right up there with the whole "who needs a Zune outside of North America anyway, let alone a gussied up one from Zune originals

The lack of globalisation in MS products annoys the crap out of me. is it just too hard to make any more than a token gesture of globalisation features. I can set my system settings to English (Australia) and get rid of the tonnes of red squiggles from my correctly spelled documents which is great. However, these are the things off the top of my head that i cannot do if i fly my Aussie Pride

• I can't install Zune software (let alone buy one)
• Media Player will not display Recently Added music
• Can't use Live Mesh (even if I could get an invite). 
• Couldn't access SkyDrive when it was in beta

These are the ones i could think of while i was still on the boil. i bet there is a ton f others as well... Besides, my Lego Indiana Jones Demo has finished downloading...

Yikes, My Work Vista VM has just been completely done over... I had to reboot it for something elso and soon as i started up, it prompted me to activate it.. no probs, so i run through the wizard.. Error 0xc004e003 and it fails to activate.. dang.. Everytime it does this, it then logs me off. So i log in and so it again.. nup, failed ( and logs me off). So i try again manually.. damn, it does the whole manual thing and now i have the screen to call up and do an activation over the phone...BUT... there are no codes in the section required to be entered in the phone ( or to the operator..)

So, off to 132058 option1, option3 to get a call logged. I was on the phone for an hour with this guy trying to assist.  no og.. we tried a System restore, no such luck.. I even did a repair install.. that seemed to fix it. Of course my previous installation and all the data was now in a folder called Windows.old but at least it was still there.

I start doing my updates and Service Packs as well as adding some essential applications that i need on my work machine. I had just gotten my profile back to normal and then i had all these errors trying to insall Office 2007. What the...? I tried a couple of different option and uninstalling and all that with no success. Then I rebooted and started up when i found myself in one of the dreaded Windows Update loops.. you know, where it says it is updating and then shutsdown over and over and over again...

In the end, i created a new HDD for my Virtual Machine and started again.. That was yesterday and today i ma finally back to where I was Wednesday lunchtime.. All I can say is thank god it was a Virtual Machine and I still had my Laptop Host to work off while i was rebuilding...