The Sydney Diver not so Daily

Is DIDO a Dido?

2011-08-01T17:39:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Over the weekend, there was much noise in media about a new revolutionary technology dubbed distributed input distributed output or DIDO for short. In Australian media the technology was dubbed an NBN killer.

Of course I was intrigued since the article in the SMH I read claimed that DIDO would prove the Shannon capacity wrong --no little claim even if it came from a tech reporter who had never heard of information theory in their lives.

So, what is this all about? Well, there was a white paper released that was supposed to detail the new revolutionary thinking and of course I read it on my iPhone while waiting to get my new tyres fitted on the car. The paper is very poorly written. In fact, the writing style as well as the inaccurate reference to the Shannon capacity and other subtleties makes the piece very unconvincing (unless you have a pocket full of money and are looking to invest). There is no explanation of the system that any researcher can make use of to understand exactly what DIDO is supposed to do, but media has bought it outright.

However, it is complete unfeasible what is being proposed? I would say no. The paper alludes to some sort of network coding using superposition of radio transmissions that given a specific coding could very well yield a constructive result at given spatial points. However, I seriously doubt that a small group of people would build such a system on their own in a short time. If they have succeeded, the best thing ever in communications.

However, given the white paper that was released and complete lack of information, I would say it is a hoax or hot air at best. Perhaps the definition of DIDO in the dictionary gives a hint. Miriam Webster lists:

Definition of DIDO: A Mischievous or Capricious act. Synonyms: Prank, frolic.

For now, I will still be using Shannon when I work.

Why you should avoid to use the US cloud

2011-07-05T15:19:00.002+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I just read this interesting blog entry from ZDNet.

Microsoft has now openly admitted that US authorities has the power to force any US company to hand over private and public data stored on ANY server in the world AND to force the company in question not to disclose this to the owner of the data. Now, call me overly cautious, but I really don't like the idea of this for my future cloud services. Already, this blog, my Gmail data, flickr images, youtube videos, Google calendar, documents, facebook account, twitter and linkedIn data is readily at hand for these authorities. Couple this with Google keeping a history of all my web searches, Apple keeping my movement history from my iPhone and you guessed it, US authorities know more about me than my wife does already.

In my line of work, I am dealing with filtering of child pornography, web pages with threats to national security Internet vulnerabilities etc. I have publicly commented that the Obama kill-switch is ridiculous etc. Am I an interesting object to investigate? Not unlikely.

Let's play with the thought that some homeland security desk clerk gets an alarm from the data mining stream filter tool that there is an individual who has searched for some irregular things and also publicly commented that the US administration is giving itself powers they should not have. Hmmm, that's interesting perhaps this Australian professor is hiding something... With a mindset of finding incriminating evidence and irregular behaviour it is not far fetched that I would be subject to an investigation and if I had all mu data and all my information stored on servers that are owned by US based companies, I bet there would be lots of very personal information about me in circulation among US authorities. Would I mind? Probably not if I was kept unaware of this situation, but what if someone saw some incriminating pattern by chance and they actually acted on it?

I guess there is a real business case for non US owned cloud services. Greece?

2011-06-15T08:40:00.002+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

We had the pleasure of hosting Kevin Brown, the CHRO and Manager corporate services for the Australian NBN Co in School of IT at SYdney Uni last week. He was going through the reason behind the NBN roll out, the state of affairs and projections for the future. In all, the talk didn't contain any news apart from what has been covered in the media already but one thing he did state that I thought surprising was that the reason for their existence was that Telstra has failed the market and something needs to be done to break up their near monopoly. I have suspected this for some time now, that the motive behind the NBN is not to provide broadband services as such, but to correct the horrible mistakes done when Telstra was privatised. In fact, I remember telling Quentin McDermott from 4-corners about my suspicions a couple of years back when his team came to interview me about the mandatory Internet filtering.

I was reflecting on this statement for sometime after the talk and it dawned on me that this can in fact be one of the most expensive stuff ups by any Australian government in terms of cost to rectify the situation. If the point of the NBN is to create a functioning telecom market, isn't $42bn a pretty hefty bill compared to the cost of breaking up Telstra in a retail and a wholesale company from the beginning and then float one or both? True that tax payers bill is only estimated to be $27bn, the rest coming from private investments.

Since I am generally speaking a bit interested in what is happening in the telecom market around the world, and I still have pretty strong ties with Sweden I couldn't help myself but to investigate the state of affairs in that country just to compare. Sweden is an interesting country to compare with because it is just like Australia a country with high concentration of the population in few cities with much rural regions in-between. It is true that Australia is vastly larger, but the majority of Australia will be covered by satellite which in effect renders the vastness pretty unimportant. In Sweden, rural areas will be covered by LTE just as the case in Australia (Ericsson just got a large order from the NBN Co). Also, Swedes and Australians are fairly much at the same level of computer usage, literacy etc. and the envisaged applications for the NBN is the same as the applications envisaged for the broadband network in Sweden in general.

So, how do things stack up? Well, in Australia the vision for the NBN is to provide 100 mbps broadband to just over 90 % of the population with the remaining part receiving 12 Mbps. Currently, it is far from certain that one can get more than a couple of Mbps even in Sydney because the distance to exchanges can be quite long and mobile broadband deployment is pretty patchy. Of course, there is no doubt that the NBN will deliver a completely new infrastructure and service to Australians but how much ahead of the rest will AUstralia be after paying all this money?

The Swedish equivalence of ACMA, the PTS, released a report on the state of broadband in May, detailing how it sees the compliance in the country with the Swedish government's broadband policy. The policy is in many ways similar to that of the current Labour Government, including target broadband penetration, minimum rates, competition in the market etc. The difference is that in Sweden, the Government has not had to roll out anything, the market is taking care of this on its own with the aid of spectrum release and other policies.

The Swedish state of affairs is as follows; currently, 44% of the population (residential and businesses) had access to at least 100 Mbps in 2010. The Government's goal is that 90% of the population will have access to at least 100 Mbps in 2020 and PTS sees this goal as being likely to be met (nothing of concern at present). Currently, there are 1100 households that do not have access to at least 1 Mbps broadband in the country and the average broadband downstream speed is ~18Mbps.

So, it is clear that Sweden is miles ahead of Australia in this regard and it is also clear that in 2020, the two countries will have similar levels of service. It must be noted that the Australian NBN will have a larger fibre base, the Swedish rollout will incorporate a larger portion of wireless broadband through LTE2 technologies so it is most likely easier to upgrade the NBN beyond 100 Mbps when there is a need for that. However, the investment level in Sweden in broadband technologies is in the order of $1 bn per year by the market, a far cry from the NBN figures. Tax payers do not pay for the roll out and monthly broadband subscription costs are lower than they are in Australia currently.

Where there is a significant difference between Government policies is also on the focus of what to do with the beast! THe Swedish government has concerns about inclusion in the digital ecosystem, how many people feel integrated in the broadband world and do not feel excluded, alienated and disadvantaged. There is a similar goal of 90$ of the population feeling part of the digital ecosystem by 2020. Also, the Swedes are clever in that they actually discuss how to make good use of the infrastructure, how to grow industry and maximise benefits since this is the driver for the development. Sadly, in Australia we are breaking up a monopoly.

Suits in Sweden

2010-09-10T21:40:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Since I am visiting the country of the Polar Bear, I thought I'd have a look at cold water diving equipment and pricing compared with Sydney. So far, it is looking good.

I am considering buying a new wet suit or dry suit since 1) My old crap Mares trilastic completely fell apart the last dive I did before leaving to go to Europe and 2) My Pinnacle Dry suit Cordura is just far too stiff and captures a lot of air so I need far too much led to break the surface. There are quite a few dive shops in Stockholm but similar to Sydney, the vast majority do not disclose any prices on their web sites. There are some different options available of course, but where I can see some interesting alternatives are basically in two different shops.

First, we have Alpin & Dyksport in Stockholm. The sell the Northern Diver Vortex dry suit for kr 7500, about AUD 1136 and the Waterproof W1 wet suit for kr 2600 (AUD 400). Then we have Dykmagasinet in Karlstad that stocks a wider range of options:

Waterproof W1 kr 3000 (AUD 455)
Waterproof Taurus Semidry kr 4500 (AUD 682)
Waterproof Sedna Drysuit kr 8900 (AUD 1350)
Waterproof Drako Drysuit kr 9500 (AUD 1439) and
Ursuk Heavy Light Drysuit kr 7800 (AUD 1180)

All prizes include 25% sales tax.

The Waterproof suits are really top of the line quality with lots of features and an aura of quality. There is a funky looking Australian Waterproof web site that lists some retailers, but the websites have all but no information / little visibility and no pricing. I found one company in Victoria that retails the Taurus for AUD 1000.

The Diveoz forum has had some threads on these suits but there is little information available apart from everyone complaining about the pricing.

I am going to Karlstad next weekend to have a look at the suits and hopefully to try them on. Right now, I am leaning towards the W1 and Ursuk suits, but a Taurus would be a very good alternative in Sydney too.

The W1 has some nice features, extra strength around shoulders, elbows, knees and bottom. Ankle and wrist seals and zips, the shape of the suit looks much better thought through than the competition, neck comfort seal, front zipper (not dry) with flap inside, warm lining etc. (7 mm). The Ursuk seems in description very similar to the DUI TLS350 with an added hood with latex front. I would be very interested in a drysuit made of soft Nylon material with unrestricted movement and little trapped air. Sydney does not get cold enough to warrant really heavy undergarments and this suit can give similar buoyancy characteristics as a thicker wet suit.

I'll also have a look at the neoprene drysuits, it seems they are a much snugger fit on the body than trilam and a thin undergarment would be enough in Sydney. I might enjoy diving with this all year round, who knows.

Renting in Sydney

2010-06-09T22:38:00.003+10:00

So we sold our house in Western Sydney and moved to the Sutherland Shire to be in an area where the schools are bette and we are closer to the water. BIG mistake. The Shire is full of people who were born without morals. I mean completely without morals. Not just shifty, I MEAN COMPLETELY WITHOUT MORALS.

First we moved to Grays Point. We rented a house from Raine & Horne Miranda. The owners were traveling the world and even though the property was a bit expensive ($600 / week) we were in an area with a good school and it looked peaceful so we went for it.

After 4 months, the owners declared that they were moving back home and we had to find another house to rent. We had plans to go to Sweden for a sabbatical at this stage so we asked if we could stay a couple more months before we were going. The owners suggested that they would move in with us, we would pay full rent and they would use our stuff. Naturally, we were a bit hesitant and while we were discussing this, I got a phone call from the real estate agent siply stating " the owners are moving in with you tomorrow, is this OK?" I was a bit bewildered at this and told the real estate agent that we had made no such agreement. The agent was fairly abusive asking me what the owners were supposed to do now that they had already rented a truck. The next day we had the owners coming to our house to "have a chat with us".To cut a long story short, the real estate agent tried to rip us of by stealing our bond money but when we filed a counter claim with the tenancy board, there was a very quick shift in atitute and we got our bond back. We then moved to Gymea Bay and rented a house from Ray White Gymea. It became evident quite quickly that the house was in a very bad condition and needed some urgent repairs. The bottom floor had a rising dampness problem which caused mould to grow everywhere, on all our clothes, furniture, books, you name it. My wife even got respiratory problems and has started using asthma medicine as a consequence. The real estate agent never did anything about the problem as it unfolded. It was not until after we had called mould experts ourselves they reacted and offered to 'clean the carpet'. At this stage, we had all out belongings off shelves and out of drawers on the floor to stop the mould destroying everything.

The landlord came past and cut three holes 20x 10 cm in the walls in the bedroom plus installed a fan to circulate air and get rid of some of the moisture. If you have lived in Sydney during winter, you know that you don't want three such holes in the bedroom wall since the indoor temperature quickly falls to 5-8 degrees. We had no option but to request to move again, 3 months after we moved in. At this stage, Ray White Gymea started to become really abusive. The correspondence we have had with them is unbelievable. They have had my wife in tears, done everything they can to make our lives Hell even though we have started to get ill from living in the premises and we have two young children who may be affected for life. Very interesting people those Ray White people. Now, we have the outgoing inspection tomorrow and we notified the Ray White Ofifce so we could do the inspection together. We were tole that they were going to do the inspection alone and we were not allowed to be there, go figure.

I was told by the residential tenancy board to notify the agent that we would do an inspection so they can be present if they choose to. We should have witnesses and take many photos. When I wrote an email to RayWhite Gymea about this, the owner, Bill Anastasiadis wrote me an email saying that the tenancy board was ill informed and going on about him being the principal of Ray White Gymea.

I can't wait for the final inspection. Obviously these people are following their own moral standards, not what the tenancy board thinks is the norm for Australian renting agreements.

The question is, is this a Sutherland Shire decease or is this just Raine & Horne Miranda and Ray White Gymea business operations and moral standards?

One thing is for sure, renting properties in Sydney in this climate sucks. It is not enough paying rent on time and looking after the property. You also have to be prepared to take abuse from real estate agents and bow down to the people who own property, after all, they must be better than you since they own a house to let and you don't have that much money.

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

UPDATE!!

The principal left the following comment on this post

"Bjorn,

It is amazing how you have posted only parts of the true facts.

When we where alerted to the mould issue it was my office that paid for a steam cleaner and mould expert to attend the property not you.

It was my office that also had someone attend to rectify the problem.

You also fail to mention that my office also negotiated and had the Landlord release you from the Lease and also had the Landlord pay for your removalist costs and compensate you.

I advise that you have the true facts mentioned on this blog of yours otherwise it will be construed as defamation."

Anyone who may have thought I was exaggerating.......

It is true that Ray White wanted to steam clean the carpet, but it was not until we ourselves had an expert inspecting the property they got some cleaners in to clean the mould off the walls and outside the furniture. All clothes, books, inside book cases etc. were left covered in mould and also left for us to clean.

It is true that the landlords agreed to end the lease and pay for our move, after all we were starting to develop serious respiratory problems and with a pregnant woman.......

We are out of the house and there were no surprises towards the end apart from the removalists not moving everything so we had to do much of it ourselves, but still...

2010-02-16T08:54:00.001+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

While most media were focusing their attention on the Copenhagen climate change conference in December, the government quietly announced it would this year mandate filtering of the Internet by Internet Service Providers. This would require ISPs to block all access to web pages on a list, compiled by the government.

The announcement came in mid-December, at a time of year when most people were too tired or busy to care. One group however realized changing the law to require filtering by ISPs is highly ineffective, makes us vulnerable to future misuse and ignores possible negative effects on another, more trumpeted, government initiative the National Broadband Network.

The Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) felt strongly enough about the redundancy of the government’s approach that it banded together in its opposition to the government’s proposed amendments to the Broadasting Services Act. At its annual meeting in Brisbane, CORE, representing all Computer Science lecturers and professors in Australia and New Zealand, decided to officially oppose the government’s proposed filtering. I was asked to take the lead and draft a press release on behalf of CORE.

Never before has our group reacted so rapidly and decisively. The urgency was motivated by a sense of shock that the government would actually consider such a move, based on the painfully redundant trials of last year. Our objections are purely technical; it is over to others to consider the societal and moral aspects of filtering.

First, a list-based filter – whereby the government provides ISPs with a list of sites containing banned web pages - will only capture a small fraction of the content the Government wants to block and none of the material circulating around nasty pedophile rings. Claiming that it will be reliable and effective method in capturing unwanted content and especially stopping child pornography is absolute nonsense. Second, content generation is changing and information is becoming increasingly ephemeral or “short lived”, especially considering the shift in information sharing through social networking media, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. We don’t know exactly where we are heading, but we know the static web page will rapidly decrease in importance as the means to spread information and these web pages are the only items on a black list. Third, it is trivial to work around ISP filtering, in fact, much easier than it is to work around filters installed on individual PCs in homes. Since children are generally more computer savvy than adults, the question is whether the filtering scheme will effectively stop children or adults from accessing information. Perhaps in the near future, if wanting to find out what the Sex Party’s election platform is, one has to ask the kids. A simple poll among school kids and adults of who knows how to work around filters could make for interesting bedside reading, before pulling up the Internet blanket covers and going to sleep.

ISP filtering trials conducted prior to the government’s December announcement demonstrate the Government chose to only look into the past when carrying out the tests, not at all considering the National Broadband Network being rolled out. It is well known among the research community that list-based filtering can be done in existing systems without significant performance penalties. What remains unknown is how it will affect the NBN. Conversely, it is not known how the NBN will change the playing field for different kinds of media. There is a real risk it will require the filtering mechanisms to be significantly extended and developed to have any impact, which would put us on a very dangerous slippery slope. Making such changes and extensions would be much easier once the basic legislation is in place, setting the scene for further restrictions and censorship.

CORE has asked the Government for a working party to be put together to properly attend to the many issues surrounding the proposed legislation – a very sound suggestion. Australia is blessed with many smart people who are capable of properly investigating the matters surrounding this form of censorship and we can make informed decisions after the groundwork has been done. If we can implement filtering so that the effectiveness is maximized, and the risks and side effects minimised, it will be found out. Then, and only then, should nationwide filtering be implemented. If the case for filtering is convincing, I am sure Australians would embrace the scheme. An alternative is to stop talking and again make available the PC-based home filters the tax payers paid for during the previous administration, saving on the $125.8 million earmarked to improve cyber safety in the 2008 budget.

Maldives, my kind of government

2009-10-18T10:24:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So it has happened. The world's first cabinet meeting under water. When the Maldives' cabinet held a plenary session under water they definitely raised my interest in the country. I don't think we will see Joe Hockey and Kevin Rudd getting into their wet suits to discuss climate change in the near future.

Whoever votes to move part of the cabinet work under water gets my vote in the next election.

Hmmmm, practicing for long deco perhaps

2009-09-21T22:44:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Apparently, there is a Guinness world record to break for spending the longest time under water. Yesterday, the Irishman Sean McGahern spent 27 hours under water to smash the previous 24 hours to pieces. The record breaking took place in Malta. One may wonder what the point of that is, but then again, people seem to do just about anything to break a record.

I had better rethink my thinking that 15 min deco is boring if I wan to get into that sport.

Video at:

Tech gear

2009-08-22T08:18:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

It may be a late revelation, but it seems to me as if the tech dive industry is moving towards a low cost breakthrough. I was searching a bit yesterday and found some threads on fora such as scubaboard about new tech dive gear. For example, EDGE-HOG, Highly Optimised Gear. It seems there is a factory somewhere in Taiwan that makes much of the techie gear and things are re-badged under different names. For example, look at this regulator from HOG.

This looks surprisinly much like an APEKS to me.

Tech Diving Limited is selling the HOG second stage plus a first stage that also looks much like an APEKS first stage together with an SPG and hoses for $249. The Wings on the HOG web site also retails for $199 about half of what looks like a standard OMS or DiveRite wing.

Does this signal the start of a price collapse for tech dive gear? If it is possible to manufacture and retail for such low prices and the gear is very similar, interesting development. It will be interesting to follow the development and see if there will be any reviews of this stuff.

New Canon G11 - even better for Underwater photos

2009-08-22T08:04:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Canon has just released the new G11 compact and it has some interesting features for UW shooters.

Most notably, Canon has reversed the trend of hunting for increased pixel density and instead gone for image quality. The new G11 has a 10 Mpixel sensor which is significantly down from the G10's 14 Mpixels. Canon wanted to create a camera that can truly work as a replacement for a DSLR in some situations, such as journalism where photographers may want to take photos without being too intrusive. This camera is built to provide much better low light and difficult light results. For an underwater photographer that sounds heavenly.

I am waiting for dpreview to test its capabilities. It is clear that it will be much much cheaper to go G11 and housing than any dSLR and housing / ports.

Canon D5 Mark 2 Underwater video review

2009-08-12T13:32:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Backscatter has posted a review of the Canon 5D mark 2. There are lots of reviews around about its capabilities and pros and cons but what makes this one stand out is that it is a dedicated underwater review and also about the specific task of producing underwater video. Who would have thought a couple of years ago that DSLR would come this far.

The resulting video is stunning

View the 720p video for some nice shots of dolphins and sharks in the Bahamas. I know this is a bit of a promotional video urging us all to open up our wallets, but it is clear one can create very nice video photography with this gear. Unfortunately, the initial setup cost (without the scooter) is around USD 10.000, a new car.

Well, one day when housings get cheaper perhaps.

Olympus E-620 Underwater test

2009-07-21T15:42:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

DPreview has released a test, well a story more than a test, of the Olympus E-620 in the PT-E06 Olympus housing. One of their reporters went on a dive holiday to the Philippines and brought this setup along, together with two sea and sea YS 100 strobes.

The general opinion is that the setup is working well, the housing is of reasonable quality and she also seemed happy with the new 9-18 mm wide angle lens. My friend Taso has the E-520 in the PT-E05 housing (almost identical setup) with the 50 mm macro lens and dedicated INON magnetic manual focus ring port and he took it diving for the first time last weekend. It was clear, looking at the first photos that the macro lens can yield some very good results, especially with the two INON strobes he uses, even spread light etc.

I am getting more and more interested in this combination as the upgrade path from my current Canon G7 in Ikelite housing. First, the Olympus body seems to be very reasonable with many features that are nice for underwater use such as fast focussing and inbuilt image stabilisation in the body. Second, the housing is cheap compared with most other housings on the market. Third, with the catering for popup flash one can use any strobe, in my case I have an INON z240.

I have been toying with the thought of buying a housing for my Canon 40D. The only reasonable housing seems to be the Ikelite but since it does not allow the flash to pop up and the TTL circuitry only supports Ikelite strobes, I would have to buy two new Ikelite strobes of many $100 a pop. The Olympus alternative sounds more reasonable.

Without having searched for the the cheapest prices, BHphoto lists the 620 housing for USD570 and the 9-18mm wide zoom is USD510. The PT-E06 housing is AUD 1200 or so locally and the PPO-E04 dome port plus the PER-E01 spacer ring is about USD1100 at BHPhoto. I bet you need some gears etc. on top of that.

Not cheap, but still cheaper than going Canon.

Getting the iPhone to work with Exchange and Google

2009-07-09T14:29:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Thanks to some new features in OS 3.0 I finally managed to get my iPhone to synchronise both with my work email and Google calendars.

The problem with the iPhone is that it can only have one exchange account active at the time. Since my employer (the University of Sydney) mandates the use of Microsoft Exchange, I am forced to synchronise my emails using this server and that has left me without any means of synchronising with Google calendar. Google mail has been easy for a while using an IMAP account.

The new trick that works well is to use CalDAV to Google, and even though there are some rumours that this only allows one way synchronisation, I can create new events on the iPhone and they show up on the Google web interface so all is good.

Here is what I had to do.

1)
I created an exchange account to the University and set up mail and contacts but I deactivated the calendar option for this account since I don't use the corporate calendar. If you leave it turned on, the entries will be merged in iPhone. You will also have to set the default calendar in settings>mail, contacts, calendar down the bottom, settings for calendars.

2)
I created an IMAP account on the iPhone:

settings> mail,contacts,calendars> add account

select Gmail account type
enter username@gmail.com as address and fill in password
set outgoing server to smtp.gmail.com

3)
Create a new account for the calendar
settings> mail,contacts,calendars> add account
account type other
select CalDAV

Server name www.google.com
user name your.name@google.com (your gmail account name)
password (your password)

Now, the email client should have two accounts, one for the exchange mail and one for the Google mail. The calendar application should have your Google calendar contents and you should be able to create and read events on the iPhone as well as the web.

Pshycho babel fish

2009-07-06T20:59:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

My wife bought a little craft set for my oldest daughter to do now at the start of the school holidays and here starts the story of the Chinese cutting corners on translation and using babel fish instead.

The craft set is something called "colorized scalewing of flutter" from a company called Karry. The description on the package (and I suspect this is why my wife purchased this specific product) states:

Colorized Scalewing of Flutter is a new product congregated with toy and DIY together, using your both hands to portray and assembled beautiful colorized scalewing. set free your polychrome dream in the play.

Then the packaging goes on to describing HOW to set free the polychrome dream as follows:

Playing method:

1) Unscrew the outer lid (OK I follow so far)
2) Smear different colors glittery glue on wing of Scalewing, beautiful and likable (Hmm, alright I get the gist)
3) Hang the small colorized scalewing after was finish. That will have a distinctive gout. (No, lost me there)
4) We can make it as pendant or hang it on the bag,and you will feel very complacent.I (Surely someone is taking the piss)

The packaging warns:
Not suitable for children under 3 years due to small parts.

I think what they meant was:
It is not suitable for children under 3 years to run export companies, play with lego instead.

Isn't it great to see what Australian shops import and sell to us, such quality products. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about just how much the shops care about the products they sell.

Lesson learned, don't use babel fish to translate instructions and manuals. Hire someone who speaks the language in question.

Waterproof compacts

2009-06-25T09:03:00.005+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I wonder if waterproof compacts are the best option when getting into underwater photography on a budget. Having flooded a Canon G7 in a flimsy WPDC-11 housing a couple of years ago, I know it can easily happen and it is costly. Olympus has a range of shock/water proof compacts that have housings available on the market. The cameras don't look like they would produce professional quality shots, but for the enthusiast!!

Pentax just released the new OPTIO W80 (available in July). The camera looks very interesting and would probably produce acceptable UW shots (I don't know about RAW). The question is, will there be a housing available for it?

Craftivism

2009-06-21T07:57:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Found an article about a new global movement called craftivism. The idea is to use handcraft to change the world for example by making happier looking crocheted coats for tanks.

Isn't this the ultimate passive resistance movement in a sense? I would have loved one of those when I did compulsory military service in far northern Sweden in -30 C for a year and a half. The tank was cold from time to time.

Snorkelling trail

2009-06-18T09:05:00.002+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

This is something I like. In Haninge in the south of Stockholm, the local council has put together a track for snorkelers. The track runs along a sandy bottom in shallow waters and is made of a runner to follow as well as information plaques. The plaques are educational, telling the snorkeler about the flora and fauna they have around them.

This is a great idea, I reckon the coastal councils in Sydney should consider this for the community, perhaps coupled with an artificial reef in Gordon's bay or similar. How about a section for snorkelers and a deeper section for scuba divers.

Olympus micro four thirds released and tested

2009-06-16T22:06:00.005+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So finally, Olympus has released the E-P1 micro four thirds system and DP review has done a test.

It will be very interesting to see how the underwater photography market will take to this standard and overall type of camera. It is really an interesting concept with compact size, back LCD display and interchangeable lenses for wide angle and macro.

The E-P1 is basically an E-610 in a tiny package so there are lots of goodies and features as well as a sturdy metal body. It does however, not have inbuilt flash which would be an issue if you have got the wrong strobe for whatever housing will come out for it, and its conversion circuitry.

Check out the DP review article.

Pirates in the EU

2009-06-08T16:51:00.005+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So it happened. In the election to the EU parliament, the Swedish pirate party managed to get over 7 % of the votes and thus scored a set in the parliament. Their only agenda is to allow free downloads over the Internet. I love European democracy, so corny compared with the Australian Labour - Liberal two party set agenda nothing ever changes politics.

However, I don't think we will see 'downloads of anything' legalised in a while.

Conroy backflips

2009-05-28T08:02:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Finally it seems, has senator Conroy realised the political incorrectness of his mandatory filtering mantra.

Yesterday, senator Conroy stated in a senates estimate committee that Internet filtering wold remain voluntary in Australia. This is in stark contrast to his former stance where he has diligently been telling the entire ISP industry to keep quiet and stop questioning his authority.
Telecom TV reported over night but funnily enough there is nothing in Australian media as yet.

Lets hope that Xenophon remains sensible about the issue.

However, Labour has not given up on their plans altogether, Conroy states that if there would be majority in the senate, they would push legislation through. Let's hope there is time at least to gain some knowledge and more insight into the entire matter so that sensible decisions can be made if that time would to come.

Confusing

2009-04-28T16:59:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I noticed today that NICTA (a research institute here in Australia) uses some interesting terminology to specify how its research should be categorised. NICTA is following a model proposed by Donald Stokes where the term used is 'used-inspired basic research'. The analogy is 4 quadrants where in one dimension there is scientific advancement and in the other application or usefulness. The 4 quadranta then have a yes or no along the two columns or rows. In one quadrant there is yes-advancing knowledge and no-no practical application called the Bohr quadrant, in another there is no, does not advance knowledge and yes-practical application called the Edison quadrant. In the third useful quadrant (the no,no is not particularly interesting but can often be seen in grant applications) we find Louis Pasteur who made foundational contributions as well as gave us nice and bacteria free milk. The Pasteur quadrant represents the 'use-inspired basic research', fair enough.

However, stumbling across the NICTA entry on wikipedia, I find that the organisation is muddying the waters a bit. They talk about 'pure basic research' and 'pure applied research' as well. OK so now we have what the rest of the world uses, 'pure, basic or foundational research' and 'applied research' as well as the Stokes' 'use-inspired pure research' as well as the NICTA 'pure basic research' and 'pure applied research'. I believe seeking to prove that it is possible to prove P=NP if indeed it holds true should be regarded as 'applied basic pure research' because it is useful to know that a proof can be found if indeed it holds true that it is so and that is applied, but the proof itself (if it indeed is true) is to be regarded as F***ing pure basic for most people.

It should also be made known that proving that it is possible to construct a pair of shoes that will not wear out for at least 10.000 km of normal walk so that it is possible to investigate the effects on human psyche having to walk for that long, should be regarded as 'pure applied use-inspired basic research'.

Now back to that 'no,no' grant application..

Public lecure video

2009-04-08T22:07:00.006+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Last Friday I gave a public seminar on the proposed filtering of the Internet by the Australian government. A video of the talk is now available on the school of IT web site. The current version is mp4 encoded, flash video will come later.

Update, an embedded flash version is now available here.

Interesting NBN news

2009-04-07T17:33:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

The government should be congratulated on the courageous plan to build a government/industry funded broadband network as announced earlier today. Coming from outside Australia and seeing the close to monopoly position Telstra currently have one may wonder why this has not happened before. Perhaps now we can get SIP pops and IPTV plus video on demand like civilised countries. This will inevitably open up opportunities for innovation and service roll out in Australia. If the government combine the one laptop per child, NBN and a building policy that each home should have at least one networked computer as minimum standard as is the case in countries such as Sweden, perhaps Australia will be able to embrace this crazy thing called the Internet and start to take advantage of its enabling powers and information distribution capabilities.

One worry though; if the government owns the national backbone, wouldn't that be the perfect place for content filters? This way the government fully control the Internet and will not have to deal with irritating and questioning ISPs. THey don't even need to tell the general public they are doing it, shhhhhhh.

Public lecture

2009-03-26T10:10:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I will be giving a public lecture next Friday April 3, on the topic of the Australian Internet content filtering affair. The point is to provide an academic researchers view on the matter and to highlight some fundamental issues that makes it difficult to implement the proposed scheme, all welcome.

The lecture will be held at University of Sydney, the Peter Nicoll Russel (PNR) building in the Engineering precinct, 4-5 pm.

Councils getting rid of scuba diving in Sydney

2009-03-24T08:01:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

One aspect of scuba diving is that you carry heavy equipment around, and it is important to be able to get close to the entry/exit point when changing and putting the gear on. Another important issue is to have safe entry/exit, shielded from waves and swell.

Pat Morin just forwarded an email by Michael McFadyen about Randwick council wanting to change parking conditions at Bare Island, so that the number of spaces is kept constant but the ones close to the island are removed or largely removed. For scuba divers this is of course an absolute disaster. Bare Island is the most popular Sydney dive site because diving is really good and there is convenient parking close to the dive sites. Already, divers cannot use Clovelly pool at Shark point for much of the year and getting out at the point is close to deadly (forcing people to try can really cause accidents). The parking at North Bondi was removed last year so that can't be dived anymore.

Why can't councils see that scuba is a recreation that has real advantage for the environment (divers care and help cleaning up etc.) and a great way to get eco tourism into the council, selling coffees, sustaining scuba shops etc. I don't think it wouldbe very costly to put in small wave breakers here and there and create good entry/exit points for us to enable access and minimise accidents. Look at Voodoo (shore version) for example. A small breaker running out 10-15 m with steps down could make that a premier dive site in Sydney at low cost. Let's lobby to make it happen.

Second black list made available

2009-03-23T23:01:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Wikileaks made a second list available on the 20th of March. The second list is a cleaned up version of the first list that now contains some 1170 entries.

Since the government threatened to prosecute any Australian involved in leaking the list, Wikileaks responded by threatening the Australian government with legal action since the action is firmly protected by Swedish law and Wikileaks operates within that jurisdiction. Interesting, is there an international diplomatic conflict about to happen as well over this? Perhaps I (as a Swede and Aussie) will have to chose sides, and which army to join after all :).

It is extremely stupid to distribute a list in cleartext in the first place. I have no idea who at ACMA decided to hand out clear text ASCII files with all the banned sites but it was not a struck of genius to do so. Why did ACMA not simply hash the sites and distributed a file with hashed values? Any filter implementation can still hash each destination URL and compare with the list without the destination address ever being exposed. It is true that there would still be people within the ACMA who would have acces to the original clear text list but the risk of spreading of the list would be much lower.

Wikileaks apparently also published a simple way of extracting the list from a down loadable software package from the netalert scheme era. Apparently, it is possible to extract a file with the conspicuous name "Websites_ACMA.txt". Well designed security software!! I wonder if the developers had dumbed down 3-year Australian university degrees......

Swedish newspaper names Australia as the country that exercices most control of the Internet

2009-03-22T12:55:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Australia is getting quite a reputation among the international community as the country most controlling and censoring the Internet together with Turkey. Dagens Nyheter (DN), Sweden's largest daily newspaper reports on studies carried out by Oxford Internet Institute, Harward, Toronto Uni and Cambridge in a project called ”Open net initiative”.

It doesn't feel good to be put in the same category as Turkey when it comes down to freedom of speech and human rights issues in any form

The authors of the report are concerned with the prospect of censorship and what different regimes will use it for in the future. It is clear that content filtering will lead to segregation in the Internet user community and that well educated and computer savvy segments in society will be able to get around censorship much easier but the less educated masses will become much more limited in the information they will have access to.

Having seen the blacklists leaked in Norway, Denmark, Thailand and Australia lately (which the respective governments did not want) is a sign that current government's intentions may not be future governments intentions and since we know scope creep is a reality, there is definitely reason to ask what such a move might lead to.

It is not reassuring to read Access Denied from MIT press, which has an overview of the filtering activities going on globally. The state of Australia has not been updated since 2007 and the report still maintains that Australia is not seeking to implement ISP level filtering. Even though, when the report was written, Australia got hardly flattering reviews. From the report:

"Overall, though, Australia’s Internet censorship regime is strikingly severe relative to both its neighbor and similar Western states. It is not, however, at the level of the most repressive regimes that ONI has studied".

The most oppressive regimes here are China and Iran.

This is rhetoric used by our strongest allies, the US and UK.

It is also worth noting that Senator Conroy claims that we are joining other countries such as Sweden in our filtering efforts but Sweden seems to think we are an oppressive nation in this regard since there is no talk of mandatory, only voluntary filtering in Sweden (plus stronger freedom of speech and freedom of information legislation).

Master Fry is not only amusing, he is wiser than most

2009-03-19T20:27:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I have been a fan of Stephen Fry for many years now, I can't begin to count the times I have laughed at him and with him viewing various TV shows such as Blackadder. Stephen is one of those people who seem to be able to put eloquence in any context and make us agree and realise that yes, this is what we mean and think.

I recently came across this article from the BBC in which he talks about his relationship with the Internet and his view on some issues regarding online life and customs.

He has a metaphor I am particularly impressed with. He writes as follows:

"This is an early thing I said about the internet at the time things like AOL were still huge. I said it's Milton Keynes, that's the problem with it. It's got all these nice, safe cycle paths and child-friendly parks and all the rest of it.

But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding - specialised museums, not just general ones.

A red light district
As important as the more traditional cultural institutions?
But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn't want your children wandering alone.

And you say, "But how do I know which shops are selling good gear in the city and how do I know which are bad? How do I know which streets are safe and how do I know which aren't?" Well you find out.

What you don't need is a huge authority or a series of identity cards and police escorts to take you round the city because you can't be trusted to do it yourself or for your children to do it.

And I think people must understand that about the internet - it is a new city, it's a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don't pull down London because it's got a red light district."

Damn, that is good!!

Blacklist leaked

2009-03-19T12:28:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So, it has happened. Wikileaks have obtained the ACMA blacklist from last year and are about to publish it online. Here is a link to the Sydney Morning Herald story.

I really petty the poor dentist who is now forever going to be associated with pedophiles, child molesters and satanists. I wonder if the neighbours in Brisbane will come over with cake and a pat on the back or with torches and pitch forks.

I really think it is wrong to publish the lists themselves on the web. Providing evidence that the lists have been leaked would have been enough since the people who will suffer will not be the ones intended. It must be recognised though, the posting constitutes the ultimate evidence that any system maintaining a blacklist is ultimately not trustworthy because of human nature.

What is really disturbing in all this is that inevitably, the list will be wide spread and children all over the world will be drawn to the ultimate among forbidden fruits, the really depraved stuff that adults create in their darkest hours. Had it not been for some governments around the world, this information, the sheer concentration and easy access would not have been possible. No single child will have the ability to compile such a list. It takes a distributed effort to do so. In effect, these lists constitute the concerned parent's worst nightmare.

I am glad I found an American filter I could install on my daughter's MAC, K9, since the Australian government removed the possibility of installing the netalert filters. At least, I have the power to investigate every site she visits so she won't get to the sites on the list.

I would recommend any concerned parent to consider installing filters at home because the genie is out of the bottle, it is widely known where to get the information and it is EASY.

I am also concerned with the content on all the lists that have been made public. It is clear that the authorities have put material on the list that is legal, and there is no transparency or accountability in place. Until recently when I actually gained an insight into what is on the lists I was much more naive regarding how the lists would be used. Now, I am concerned about fundamental rights, freedom of speech, religion, sexual preference etc.

It is time for a serious public debate about the core issues.

Radio national on Conroy's filtering

2009-03-13T15:20:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Radio national's background briefing will cover the government's proposed content filtering on Sunday.

I have no idea what the angle will be this time but I have a feeling Wendy Carlisle (producer) will discuss the effects of pornography on children and adolescents in addition to the debate on child porn and other illegal material. It will be interesting to hear what she has been able to dig up over the past few weeks.

New torrent provider

2009-03-10T08:35:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

An interesting development s the move by the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, Norsk Riks Kringkasting (NRK) to start sharing its own productions using Bittorrent. In fact, the torrent will use the same open tracker software used by the Pirate Bay in Sweden (not that it matters just notable right now during the trial). NRK will distribute its own productions while maintaining copyright and the move is seen as strategic as the company believes this is the best way of maintaining control over the material.

It is only a matter of time until all media producers make their products available over network distribution channels of course but it is interesting to see torrent used as preferred technology. I wonder how this will affect the debate on ISP filtering of P2P traffic in Australia. Clearly, with such examples, ARIA and the government can't claim that P2P is used for illegal purposes anymore and ISP level filtering (as is proposed to be trialled now) would have a much shakier ground to stand on.

HD version of Panasonic DMC-G1

2009-03-05T16:53:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

DP review have posted a brief hands on review of the new Panasonic DMC-GH1, the micro four thirds with added HD video capability.

A very interesting thought here is that you can get HD video capability with really good lenses and continuous AF pretty cheaply. Let's face it, manual focus is not very desirable when putting a camera in a housing and going down 20 m.

The thought of video and still capability sounds pretty appealing to me. I can imagine that some scenes just come out better with video but the stills are prettier in many cases.

Let's wait and see what the reviews of the camera says and also who will produce a reasonable priced housing for it.

A real MAN!

2009-02-28T20:34:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So today I went to Hacking river for some boating. Down at the boat ramp I put the boat in the water and saw that there was a parking spot fairly close to the ramp. As I drive up there is another car coming down to the ramp, queuing up to launch the boat. I drive around and line the car up to reverse into the spot when I see a kid standing in front of it. He won't move and as I get out to tell him to stand somewhere else his dad comes jogging over telling me his son is holding the parking spot. Now this has happened before at the Grays point boat ramp, it seems to be an Australian thing, to place your kid in the street in front of oncoming traffic.

There is an old bloke coming past looking at me, going, "run him over mate", bless him.

Inspired, I yell to the kid (about 10 or so) you had better move or you will be in pain! I reverse and the kid has to move.

I got a laugh when I went past the old bloke who was sitting at a picnic table and told him "I thought bagsing things stopped in third grade"?.

Oh, the joys of mingling with Joe the plumber at the boat ramp.

Australian governamnt just saved a nuclear power plant

2009-02-28T08:53:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Now that Senator Nick Xenophon announced that he is not supporting the government's plans for mandatory Internet filtering many people in Australia breathe easier. In a sense, the government should also be relieved they won't have to push this issue further because the ramifications might have been wide spread in retrospect.

Apart from all the issues raised in the debate so far, I was doing what I am paid to do this week, thinking in my office. I was considering the fact that the debate has been so backward looking and the changing face of computing has not been considered. In a world where cloud computing has a credible business model and the majority of our computing tasks may very well end up in the cloud, the filtering problem becomes almost embarrassingly complex. Couple that with the clear trend of video delivery (IP TV, triple play etc.) youtube popularity and so forth, and you have filtering complexity on a scale never imagined.

I a very un-scientific thought experiment, assume there would be a million concurrent data flows (IPTV) and a filtering system would have to determine if the content was prohibited or not by analysing the content. Also assume each process would use 100 W in processor, rack, mother board, memory and disk hardware consumption (oh yes, and the power to run the cooling machinery). Someone would have to produce 100 MW of power to do this filtering and since we have a carbon reduction goal I guess this would mean nuclear (people use the Internet at night and when the wind is not blowing).

It would be interesting to do a thorough study of the environmental impact on Internet content filtering and see just how much pollution senator Xenophon just avoided by waking up.

Beware of TELSTRA knocking on your door

2009-02-04T16:46:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

SO, last night this young man comes past my house and rings the door bell. In very broken English he manages to tell me he is from Telstra and he is investigating some complaints by customers in my street. I am not a Telstra customer anymore but they manage my underlying infrastructure so I thought let's hear the man out. Over the last couple of weeks or so, I have experienced spurious carrier drops with my DSL modem so I shared this with him when he asked me if I had noticed anything lately. Between drop-outs there has been no noticeable problems. After having talked to him for a while he starts steering the conversation in the well known "I have something to sell you" direction. As it turns out, he just wanted to wast my time extra much by talking about problems in the infrastructure before the sales spiel but this one was interesting.

Knowing that I am using DSL (since I don't have a cable plan with Big Pond) he told me that my intermittent loss of carrier was because DSL is an inferior technology and that I should change to a Telstra cable modem plan instead. There were two reasons apparently, 1) cable modems are always much faster than DSL and 2) I experience loss of carrier because there is so much congestion during peak hours because my neighbours are using all my capacity.

I accept that I live in a city where I cannot even get away from sales reps in my home day or night, but having to endure blatant lies like this is just a sign of corporate management in absolute ethical crisis. I am lucky to understand this and being able to kindly decline but what about all those people who are not telecom people and who actually trust what an old reputable organisation like Telstra tells them? Telstra is so dominant on the Australian market that there is no need to resort to such methods. In fact, they can leave people alone in their homes at dinner time all together and still pay out good dividends.

A different level of impact

2008-12-31T10:01:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

After the government released its report on Internet content filtering senator Conroy released a statement that the government will test P2P filtering as such tools currently exist. This is very interesting because the bar is raised considerably if this is the case.

In the report I did not raise and strong concerns with performance degradation at the ISP level when comparing HTTP requests to a blacklist. I believe the performance penalty can be significantly reduced by purchasing additional equipment and the ISPs can be compensated for such roll out. The current trials can actually answer some of the questions as to the performance penalty and cost to alleviate them in terms of additional equipment purchases.

However, with P2P filtering the situation is very different. In this case, the filtering system has to do deep packet inspection to figure out if something should be banned or not and this is very different to checking terminating address. The deep packet inspection will be used to try to identify what kind of content is accessed since in a P2P content distribution network end addresses are useless. This puts us in the realm of dynamic filtering which pretty much is the worst nightmare for the Australian ISP industry and necessarily will mean significant performance penalties for the Australian public. Even if some video in a bit torrent would be called "child abuse that is illegal in Australia and should be filtered by the government" a filter would have to perform analysis of this text to determine if the media should be filtered. Changing the name of this file to "daisies in summer" and the filtering system would have to analyse the content of the video itself to determine if it is illegal and should be blocked.

In addition to performance penalties, such system raises much stronger privacy concerns. Even if very little content would actually be blocked with such system, someone is really checking how Australian citizens are using their network connections.

It will be interesting to see how this will pan out.

It is a shame

2008-12-25T08:58:00.003+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Over the past couple of days there has been lots of articles and blog posts about Internet content filtering in Australia. Sine I am involved in this debate I have spent quite some time to go through the posts to see what interesting thoughts and views are out there.

I am a bit surprised at the emotional charge this issue has and really think it is a shame that the public debate is overshadowed by a sea of emotional outbursts and wild accusations. Especially, I think it is a shame that Senator Conroy's blog is flooded with such content, that is where people should try to be taken seriously.

I think it is absurd to compare the Rudd government with the Iranian or Chinese governments. I am also surprised that senator Conroy actually bothered to meat that criticism.

I am equally amazed at the notion that if you appose this scheme in any way you support child molestation.

It is becoming clear to me why this issue became such a prominent political issue in the latest election campaign and why it is so important to win political ground. It is a shame.

I am a proud Australian since 2007 but I was born and raised in Sweden. For all the lobby groups that are seriously concerned with children's welfare, I urge you to have a look at a country that is running at a few parsec higher speed than we currently are. I live in Sydney's South-West, in a suburb that had a plane crash, two shootings and a siege resulting in 4 dead all during last week. There is a lot of child neglect and abuse going on out here and this is something to really get upset about.

Of course, really caring for our children means a hefty tax bill......

Nothing is that easy, it is a shame.

Internet content filtering

2008-12-23T13:41:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning regarding a report I was involved in preparing for the Australian government late last year. The study was concerned with the feasibility of filtering content on the WWW at the ISP level. My own contribution to the report was not the major part and I mainly carried out a limited technical study

I feel that it is necessary to make a few things a bit more clear concerning the news paper article.

First, I don't think the study was very secret. In fact, the study made a wide consultation with the Australian ISP industry, content providers and other organisations / stake holders. There has been wide spread knowledge of this study even though the findings have not yet been widely released as far as I understand after reading the article. It is not my place to comment on at which time the government releases its reports even though I see no real reason not to release this specific report.

The issues raised in the report have largely been covered in preceding reports, at least the sections I was providing input to and even though they are very important issues to consider, I don't think they are damning since the issues are well known.

My stand on this issue is that there is a need to increase the scale of investigations if any such scheme should be made mandatory. If such a scheme is voluntary many of the difficult issues become obsolete or at least manageable. The following opinion merely reflects publicly available information that is not limited to the report. Anyone can search for this information in their local library or on the world wide web.

So, what is the big issue as I see it? A blacklist requires manual effort in order to determine what should be included. The Internet is a network of networked computers that carry information in many forms and realms, one of which is the World Wide Web. If we restrict ourselves to talk about only WWW, we have a global network with billions of pages worth of information. The information is made up of all different languages of the world and incredible diverse. Some information has a very high profile and some information has very limited visibility. Since a blacklist would rely on user reporting, it is questionable how efficient it would be to locate unwanted content in the first place. Second, every case would have to be tried to see if it breaches Australian law and falls within the categories specified for the filtering list. It will be a very difficult task to do this for content in the grey zone in all different languages. If the point is to stop child pornography, determining if a model is 19 or 25 in content from a different country with different jurisdiction is not an easy task and would be quite labour intensive. The next question is who is responsible for blocking of material that is legal if the wrong judgement is made?

The only way to identify such material quickly and significantly limit the risk of accidental access is to do some form of dynamic content filtering. However, the state of the art of such technologies is very limited in accuracy and if they are to be used there is a consequential performance impact on the response times of systems or at least an increased cost for the service provider. Current filters are rather good at detecting certain patterns of information such as a combination of many images and certain keywords usually means a porn site. However, there are at least two additional dimensions to consider. First, the current filters only look at such patterns, they do not try to analyse the actual content in any meaningful way. It is therefore difficult to distinguish between different types of content where there are similarities. For example, if a web site contains information about sex education or erotic content. Second, more and more content moves to other forms of multimedia and filtering and detecting the nature of content is much much harder in this case. For example, analysing a video and detecting that it has adult content is not a lightweight computational task. Separating sex education from porn is even harder. Third, if indeed there would be widespread filtering of content the providers would see a need to obfuscate content to fool filters. When we step into this realm it becomes very difficult for any filters to keep up.

This discussion can then be applied to an environment with other addressing realms than the WWW such as P2P networks and social networking applications and realms which shows that the level of difficulty is very high indeed. There is also a strong movement to anonymise users on the Internet to counteract information logging. Using simple tools such as VPNs to cross the Australian border would also enable circumvention of any centralised filtering scheme.

I believe it is a shame that the issue became a political issue in the latest election campaign. The question of protecting us from certain content is important and there should be a healthy and public debate about it. I have no knowledge of what other steps the government is currently taking to investigate this matter but I hope the scope of investigation is much broader than only doing a performance study of blacklist filtering.

I tried to download one of the free netalert filters for the computer my oldest daughter is using a while ago but the provider web site seems to be down. It is a shame, because I don't want her to see many things out there at her age, but I am making that choice and I accept responsibility for the over blocking.

Bjorn Landfeldt

Epoque DCL20 Wide angle lens review

2008-11-19T11:08:00.007+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So, I bought an Epoque DCL20 wide angle lens in New York a week back and had the opportunity to take it for a dive last weekend. Before I bought it, I could find no information about its performance on the web so it was a bit of a gamble whether to buy or not.

These are my initial thoughts without having had much time to really conduct experiments.

The lens is not very big, it doesn't really add much to my Ikelite and strobe arm setup for my G7, it adds a few hundred grams but that's pretty much it. The thread is so large and well defined it is easy to screw the lens on the port under water, I don't think there is much risk of damaging the thread with clumsy thick gloves etc.

The lens magnifies about 0.56 x so the angle is quite wide. My G7 has a 35mm equivalent of a 35 mm lens so I get about 19mm focal length (in 35 mm) with the Epoque attached. This is wide enough for the Ikelite standard port to get in the way and the result is vignetting (probably lots). I therefore also purchased the replacement port from Ikelite which is about 10mm shorter than the original port. There is a small limitation in the amount of zooming in one can do with this port because the lens eventually hits the port, but this is beyond the zoom when one can still focus in macro mode so I can't imagine it would be missed by anyone.

Above water one gets a bit of a shock when attaching the lens and taking a shot.

The first photo was taken without the Epoque at 35 mm (equiv.) and the second photo was taken at the same setting with the Epoque mounted. There were a couple of things I noticed straight away that worried me quite a lot.

First, there is obviously the barrel distortion to take into account. I was wondering what this would look like when taking photos under water. Second, there is significant softness around the edges (actually gradient from fairly much the center). Third, there is still a bit of vignetting happening. One obvious thing I noticed was the fact that the Ikelite housing has a pretty shoddy make. The camera is not centred in the lens barrel and when I first got the housing I had to cut of a lot of the light masking foam around the lens. With the Epoque mounted I get big black vignetting parts on the left side of the barrel and nothing on the right side. I lose quite a bit here since it means I have to crop much more to get rid of the vignetting.

So what happens under water?

I am pleased to say that my concerns are largely invalid when the lens comes in the water. First, I wanted to see what the coverage would be and how much distortion there would be so I took a few maximum wide angle photos of different things.

The visibility of the day was not too bad, probably about 8 or so meter (~24 ft) but there was a lot of particles in the water. The first photo would have been taken at about 3m from Taso and one can see that there is a lot of coverage at that distance and the diver is well defined since the distance is quite short.

Also, there is little evident barrel distortion in the photo. I then took some photos at closer distance and also tried to take some close up with the Epoque still attached. There was little evident distortion even at closer distances but closeups were heavily affected by the wet lens.

In the closeup of the snail one can clearly see how much blurring there is of the photo surrounding the snail. It doesn't look too bad in this specific photo, but it canreally make things bad.

So, all in all, I am looking forward to playing around much more with the lens and get a better understanding of what it can do and where there are limitations.

Automatic BCD???

2008-11-08T17:32:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

A pair of undergrad students presented the outcomes of their thesis work on an automatic BCD in early October at the UNiversity of Auckland (Mechatronics).

The (invention) is a control system for managing ascents and descents of divers using an embedded system and a control loop for the inflation circuit. Apparently, there is also what is known as a cruise control whereby the (pilot) sets desired depth and the circuitry maintains that depth.

To me this sounds like a pretty stupid idea for a number of different reasons such as:

1) Increased reliance on equipment, especially for new divers who might be in a very bad position if the circuitry fails
2) One more point of failure (actually several)
3) Need to bring batteries for the BCD on a dive trip (or do you hook it up to 240V and charge overnight?)
4)Costly circuitry and mechanical control components
5)Completely unnecessary, buoyancy is a necessary skill to learn anyway and it needs to be practiced
6)etc.

I wonder what George Irvine III would say? Unnecessary Crap perhaps!

Leisurepro shop

2008-11-08T16:55:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So, I finally got to go to New York and visited Leisurepro's shop. It is tucked away on top of ADORAMA photography run by the same owners. After one has been shopping for dive gear on their web site for a while, and experienced the massive range of gear they carry, the shop is somewhat of an anti-climax. I fully understand that real estate on mid - lower Manhattan is pretty expensive contrary to the impression Macy's gives. But, the 40 or so sqare meters of Leisurepro shopping experience is pretty dismal. In the shop itself there is nothing to look at apart from a handfull of items so one has to be prepared when going there. The idea is to shop on the web first, and print out a list of items to look at. Presenting the list to the staff and the stuff comes up from the basement if it is in stock. Then you can see the things you are interested in up close.

So, what's the verdict?

Leisurepro serves a purpose, cheap prices for gear when one knows what to get. However, the shopping experience is far from satisfactory, if one wants some advice or just to browse this is not the place, there are many dive shops that do a much better job at this. I guess you can't have everything.

New world record

2008-10-21T17:59:00.004+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Yesterday, the current free diving world champion, Tom Sietas broke the world record for holding ones breath voluntary. He managed to break the previous record of 17 minutes and 4 seconds, bettering it to 17 minutes and 19 seconds during a TV show "Live with Regis and Kelly".

What the....

I wonder if that makes any permanent damage to the brain? How much pain is involved? What's wrong with feeding ducks in the park?

If this guy has a scooter, can he go around Bare Island on a single breath? Now that would be an achievement and it would be so cheap to dive that way too.

Domestic prices not so bad anymore

2008-10-08T21:48:00.002+11:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Leisurepro has been a popular place to shop over the past few years. Normally, prices within Australia have been about twice of the overseas on-line shop prices and there have been endless discussions on on-line forums about the rip off. Back in July, the Australian dollar was worth about 95 US cents and about 5.85 Swedish kronor. Having a look at Leisurepro now and you can buy a cheap and nasty Bear suit for about USD 700 which after the financial turmoil so far equates to about AUD1100. Add $150 for shipping (or 15% sales tax if going there) and the nasty dry suit will cost $1250. It is true that it is hard to find a dry suit in Australia for that price but then again cheap Bare suits are not sold here, at least not in the shops I frequent. Now, all of a sudden, the price for scuba diving went up by 40% and it seems the Aussie dollar might continue to fall even further. Can I afford to continue diving? yes probably but I will have to use the equipment until it falls apart completely.

Why is it the Aussie dollar has fallen so sharply? Look at the Swedish krona for instance. Sweden is a much smaller country than Australia with a population of about 9M people. If anything, the smaller size shuld be a disadvantage when the financial markets crumble, but the Swedish krona has risen by about 30% compared with the Aussie dollar so far over the past week or so. One might start to think it is bad for a country to completely rely on digging stuff out of the dirt and selling to whoever might need it at the time. Perhaps getting serious about qualified products and services... Rudd!!!

Can't wait for inflation to take off.

5D Mark 2 could be the ultimate dive camera

2008-09-23T17:59:00.010+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Look at Vincent Laforet's blog. He tested the new Canon 5D mark 2 over a weekend and discovered that it has absolutely stunning low light performance and deals with strange white balance like no other camera. The following picture is a frame grab from some videos he took one night.

Not only is the video of excellent sharpness and resolution (shot at 1080i) it is taken straight from a RAW quicktime dump without any post processing. Now, if you have a camera that can take 21 Mpixel shots and full HD video and produce this quality in very bad light conditions, that camera should be an awesome dive camera. $3000 plus a couple of lenses plus a housing......

Full frame or APS-C camera

2008-09-20T10:16:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

For a few years now, the APS-C sensor format has been the dominating standard for the consumer/prosumer market and only in really high end models have we seen full frame 35 mm sensors. The Canon 5D has been at the lower end of the market at around $3k but there has been little movement here. There has been a lot of activity in the APS-C range though with models competing in a few different ranges and classes. Interestingly, there has been a sudden shift in the full frame segment with the almost simultaneous introduction of a few models. Nikon just introduced the D700, Canon the 5D Mark-II and Sony the long anticipated A900. Since they are all priced similarly at around $3000 there will be downward pressure on these models. In addition, it will get cheaper to produce full frame sensors over time so the gap between full frame and APS-C will shrink.

What does this mean?

Well, for one, it will become cheaper to get real high quality photos but there will also be some problems to consider.

What lenses should we buy now? I am thinking about getting some more lenses for my 40D, I would expect the lenses to be useful for 10-15 years or so and I won't have the same body for that long. So, what sensor will I have in my next body? If full frame will grow down into the prosumer end of things I can't buy EF-S lenses because they won't work with full frame. However, right now there are some interesting EF-S lenses around.

One lens I am especially interested in is the Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 EF-S. It has gotten some really good reviews and test results show it is crisp, has really little barrel distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration. It got better test results than the 17-40 L EF lens in tests I have read at a lower price. So, what to do?

Get full frame lenses now and miss out on the goodies from the APS-C platform or bite the bullet later if the next body will be full frame?

New Canon D5 Mark 2

2008-09-17T22:19:00.005+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Digital SLRs are becoming soooo good. We just read about the new Nikon D90 and the new Canon EOS 50D. Now the mysterious new silhouette on the Canon US web site has been unveiled, the 5D mkII.

DPreview has a pre-release review and major points are:

21 Mpixel full-frame sensor
ISO 50 - 25600 expansion (who needs light)
The new DIGIC 4 processor
Slowish 3.9 fps continuous shooting (after all 21 Mpixel)
vignetting correction
Live view with three mode auto-focus (including face detection)
No mirror-flip for exposures in Live View if contrast detect AF selected
Movie recording in live view (1080p H.264 up to 12 minutes, VGA H.264 up to 24 mins per clip)

What will it cost?

List price is US$2700, nothing really.

Just missed the dive of a lifetime

2008-08-30T17:05:00.002+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Three weeks ago I dived Kurnell the leap with Tasos, Joachim and Thierry. During the entire dive we heard really loud whale song which was very nice. We got out at the steps and when we came up to the car park we met these two guys with BIG grins on their faces. They gave us the explanation of the whale song loudness because they had just had a humpback hale swimming past a few m away. One of the guys posted a note about the episode with a photo here.

Aaaaah! so close, how frustrating is that!!

New Canon 50D

2008-08-27T22:34:00.006+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Canon announced its new 50D DSLR a couple of days back. It looks very similar to my 40D but there are some improvements of course 15 Mpixel, live view with phase detection and faster CF card writing than the 40D. The good part is that the body probably will be compatible with the current 40D housings so divers will be able to purchase camera and housing in one go. That is unusual in the UW photo world.

DP review has a press release
and photos

Full circle

2008-08-26T11:49:00.007+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

I recently found this old post card that my brother sent to me in 1982. Believe it or not, it is dive related.

At the time I sent him over to New York to buy me a Canon EOS 10 from a shop I found in an imported American photo magazine and he sent the post card back telling me how fantastic the camera was. When I saw the post card again something caught my eye it the top part. Looking closely I saw this sign of a photo shop, ADORAMA which I re-discovered last year when starting to purchase diving photography equipment.

My strobe arms and Ike housing were purchased from there. Back in those days ADORAMA was a small outfit on 34th street with what looks like a hand painted sign next to a bootery. I can't remember if I got the camera from ADORAMA back then but this is too much of a coincidence, I was destined to purchase UW photography gear. I feel a bond with ADORAMA now, a call to buy a housing for the 40D I have and better strobe set up, it's destiny.

In addition, I really think the post card has depth now, not only through the vice like grip on the bottom but also through the destiny thing!! Am I linked to Nick Migliore who took the photo in some mystical quantum photographic manner?

That's a submarine

2008-08-21T10:25:00.004+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

If ever I would get tired of putting on my dive gear I think I would befriend the Danish submarine enthusiast Peter Madsen and join him on his underwater trips. Peter has built the worlds largest home made submarine, which was put in the water in May 2008.

The sub measures 18 meter and weighs in at 36 ton so there would be plenty of space for me and a few bottles of Bordeaux. Apparently, he has managed to keep the build cost down to about $300.000. Apparently Peter wants to use it to go holidaying in the Mediterranean. Would create a stir at the docks in Monte Carlo I bet.

A photo series and some Danish commentary is available here:

Oil shale mining on the Great barrier reef

2008-08-11T21:16:00.003+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

There is a proposal by a company called Queensland Energy Resources Ltd (QERL) to mine and process the McFarlane oil shale deposit in the Whitsundays, Queensland, 8 km south of Proserpine, 12 km southwest of Airlie Beach, partially overlying the listed Goorganga Wetlands and adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef and Conway National Parks. I wonder how anyone can come up with the idea to threaten a reef that is already under such stress.

There is a petition to stop this here http://www.saveourforeshore.com/petition-oilshale.shtml

That's art

2008-08-08T20:52:00.002+10:00

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Just when I thought art was in serious risk of becoming boring I read about Sara Nilsson and David Aberg's groundbreaking work. On Sunday August 10 they have the opening of their exhibition called "C – Above and under". The exhibition takes place at Ransvik, Kullaberg in Sweden and involves a number of paintings of eyes that are displayed both above and below water.

I see an opportunity to tap into cultural funding for scuba divers here. How is this turned into something new and exciting?

Eastern Frogfish

2008-07-29T11:48:00.003+10:00

By Bjorn Landfeldt

I saw this nice little Eastern Frogfish (Halophryne queenslandiae)at Bare Island last Sunday.

I was happy about finally being able to get a decent photo of them. Every time I have seen one, it has been hiding well under a ledge or in silt so photos have turned out dark, blurry or silty. This one was lying in-between two rocks on sand waiting for that cover shot.

Cuil search engine

2008-07-29T08:28:00.002+10:00

By Bjorn Landfeldt

I just tried Cuil, a new search engine from some former Google people. The interface is nice, the search results are laid out side by side in columns with example pictures from pages. I found a curiosity though, simple searches such as "Sydney university or "Cuil" yields replies in no time whereas complex searches such as "Salvo rebel 12w LED" yields an error message saying something like our servers are overloaded at the moment. Could it be that the search algorithms are somewhat complex and this is the price to pay?

Paragon Dry Suit

2008-07-27T20:43:00.002+10:00

By Bjorn Landfeldt

I saw the paragon dry suit down at a local dealer after the dive today. It seems to be quite similar to the Northern Diver Cortex I have but there were some differences.

1) The suit is made of tough cordura as the ND suit is but this one felt softer and more pliable. The ND suit is tough as nails but it is also a bit restrictive. Without trying the Paragon on, I assume it is nicer in the water.

2) It has socks instead of boots. I think this is a good thing actually, it is better to put a decent boot on for rocky shores.

I have a problem that the ND suit traps quite a bit of air so that I need a lot of extra weight when diving dry. I suspect the Paragon is a bit better in this regard.

Nice or Nuisance

2008-07-24T21:45:00.000+10:00

I remember when I started to dive, how fascinating the Eastern Blue Groupers (Achoerodus viridis) were. For those of you who don't know them, these fish exist all around the coast of NSW, they are big, blue and extremely friendly.

Nowadays I am not sure. Since I started to take photos underwater I have realised that they more common than not just swim between you and the photo object, wrecking that one in a lifetime photo opportunity of the extra rare species. Are they a nice friendly part of our oceans or the hobby photographers worst enemy I wonder?

Salvo Rebel 12 W LED review / opinion

2008-07-24T17:02:00.001+10:00

This page contains my opinions of the Salvo 12 W LED canister light. I am putting this information on line since I couldn't find much in terms of testing before I ordered it. I am not in any way a light professional and I don't have access to proper light meters so I cannot provide any hard numbers on the output. What I can do is to provide my own thoughts and experiences with the light.

First, the cannister is very small and very light. There is no problem mounting it on a back plate or on the webbing of a harness, it will not be in the way or feel heavy. In fact, I will try to mount it under my Ikelite housing at some stage for night dive photography and see how that works. The light feels very solid. Since there are no parts to open apart from the light head for recharging it all looks like a light that will last many years and the LED will not break easily either so overall, a solidly crafted package set to last for a long time with minimum maintenance. I will need to use the light for a while before being certain about the quality of the steel etc. but it all looks good.

Some facts:

Battery pack, 5.2 Ah Li-Ion
Burn time, 5 h
Output, 750 Lumen
Temperature, 5600 K
Cannister weight, 1.1 kg
Cannister size, 19 cm x 5 cm (diam)
LED manufacturer, Ostar

Light beam:

When switching the light on I was surprised at how much light was leaking outside the 6 degree beam listed on the Salvo site. Personally, I don't mind since I believe this will just help illuminate the reef around me and help me spot interesting critters. However, it also means the output is not concentrated on the spot so people who want a strict pencil beam for wreck diving etc. may get a bit disappointed.

The picture above shows the 6 degree spot in the center and the surrounding illuminated ring. In my opinion, the surrounding ring should be bright enough to illuminate a reef quite well (compared with my old c4 1 W LED torch). The photo is very much underexposed to bring out the center spot.

The below picture shows the spread from the light head. The head is about 50 cm from the wall and the large ring about 1m in diameter which shows that there is quite a large illuminated area. The camera can't separate the spot from the outer ring in the photo since the illuminated area is completely overexposed and all highlights are clipped. Also, this photo shows better than the top photo how bright the outer ring is.

In order to get a feel for how strong the torch is, I put it next to my backup torch, a Salvo Rat 3 W LED. Now, when I got the Rat I thought that was really good with a beam that went far in under ledges and nice bright light. As can be seen from the photo below, the Rebel on the right copletely kills the Rat on the left. It is hard to see in the photo but there is a wider ring around the rat spot as well but compared with the Rebel it is almost invisible. The two torches were placed side by side about 1m from the wall in the photo.

In the Water

I went diving with the torch for the first time on July 16. My immediate reaction was that the light was very bright. Greg brought his old 20 W halogen cannister light and at first I thought he was running low on batteries when he turned it on and after having seen the Salvo on. For Sydney divers who are familiar with Bare Island in order to get a feel for how bright it is, it clearly illuminates the fort on Bare Island from the boom gates (200-250 m).

I tried to take some photos from under water but it was impossible to hold the torch and take meaningful photos. Since the light source was so close to the camera all I got was a coplete whiteout from the beam, backscatter and nothing of the target wall. However, if looking at the photo below one can see the sand bottom and get an idea of the light spread. The torch would have been about 1 m above the sand at this point.

The torch is brilliant for reef diving. As I suspected the outer ring illuminates a wide area enough to see the night critters so as you dive, fairly much the entire field of vision is lit up decently. The center spot is strong enough to penetrate deep into caverns and light up the insides of caves. It was difficult to tell how far the torch penetrates since this is dependent on some quantifiable measure of visibility and particles in the water at the time. However, the reach was much further than the halogen spot (focusable).