The Victoria Connection

The AFL (Australian Football League) Grand Final will be played this afternoon in the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). For the second year in a row, a Grand Final played in the State of Victoria is without a Victorian footie team (they called it football here and they call football 'soccer').

In the Grand Final this year, the Sydney Swans again will play West Coast Eagles, just like they did last year. Therefore for the second year in a row, the AFL fans from Victoria come to the MCG to see two teams who are not from Victoria.

Having no Victorian team in the AFL Grand Final obviously made the marketing department of the AFL adminsitration needed to think how to attract the Victorian to come to the stadion. Last year they tried to connect the Sydney Swans being a team rooted in Victoria therefore the Victorian must support the Swans.

The Swans indeed were originaly established in South Melbourne, as South Melbourne FC (not the soccer Football Club, mind you). Due to lack of interest from the local to their home game, the SMFC decided to move to Sydney and officially became Sydney Swans FC. Pretty much like Wimbledon AFC in England which became Milton Keynes Dons FC recently. Try to ask any Wimbledon AFC fans if they still want to relate themselves to MK Dons FC. There is no way they will.

So this year, the AFL marketing department came out with another bright idea. They publicised the suburbs of birth of many AFL players from the two teams on the newspaer a day before the Grand Final (yesterday). The message is 'Many of the players who will play in the Grand Final today are Victorian after all, so come to watch our fellow Victorian playing'.

I wonder what the marketing department of the AFL will do next year, if, again, Sydney Swans play West Coast Eagles or Port Adelaide in next year's Grand Final.

Ubuntu 6.10 Beta Released

Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Beta Version has been released by Canonical Ltd. Edgy Eft can be downloaded from the following mirror locations:

United States:
   http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/6.10/

Europe:
   http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/6.10/                  (Netherlands)
   http://de.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/6.10/         (Germany)
   http://it.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/6.10/         (Italy)

Asia:
   http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/6.10/

United Kingdom:
   http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.10/

Rest of the World:
   http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.10/

Instructions for upgrade from Ubuntu 6.06 to 6.10 can be read here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdgyUpgrades

Fatal Accident in Victoria

A road accident that occurred yesterday in the country side of Victoria has claimed life of 7 people. The accident happened in a Y-intersection and both vehicles were burnt immediately afterward. One of the vehicles involved in the accident was transporting go-kart and fuel. It is believed the fuel caused the fire.

The Y-intersection where the accident happenned looks like this:

It is believed that Vehicle A, which was carrying 5 passengers, didn't give way to Vehicle B. Although Vehicle A was travelling along a straight road when approaching this Y-Intersection, the marked lane shows that it should have stopped or waited until the Vehicle B had turned right. Vehicle B in this case, was allowed to turn right without even signaling, because despite it was turning right, the lane shows that it was travelling along a straight road. It is a bit confusing and the problem is, the driver of Vehicle A is not a local, but he is from New South Wales.

It is easy to take thing for granted and mistakenly missed the road sign in a new place, especially when travelling very fast along the country side road. Unluckily, this time it ended up with a tragedy.

Jews in Iran

Iran do not like Israel, right? Yes. Mr. Ahmedinejad himself said so.

But apparently about 25,000 of Jews live in Iran at the moment and they don't speak Hebrew that well, but Persian. Read more in the BBC website.

gFTP 2.0.18 in Ubuntu Linux 6.06

Ubuntu Linux version 6.06 comes with gFTP as its default FTP application. I have gFTP version 2.0.18 installed in my Ubuntu laptop. Having FTP application is important to me because I use it quite often for uploading files to my other websites. I have another blog at http://www.yarramall.com, which I installed WordPress into it. The blog is in Indonesian language and is hosted free of charge by Awardspace.

The gFTP 2.0.18 interface is pretty much similar to other FTP application such as WS-FTP. It has a complete set of menu, easy to use and straightforward. This application is also free to use (but donation is very much accepted). I attach a screenshot of gFTP above, taken this morning when I was uploading some WordPress plugins to Yarramall.

File Browser

The File Browser of Ubuntu 6.06 pretty much has a similar function to the Windows Explorer of Windows. Locating file and folder, creating folder, renaming and deleting them is easy and just a matter of clicking left and right button of the mouse and also typing, of course.

Inkscape: SVG Application

This is a snapshot of Inkscape, a Linux-based (and also available in windows) Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) application that was installed into my Compaq Presario 700 running on Ubuntu Linux 6.06.

Inkscape is pretty much like CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. It can be used for drawing and editing figures. I haven't really tried using this application yet, but for first impression it seems powerful to me. The application actually run quite fast on my old laptop, perhaps it is because my laptop has quite large memory (384 MB).

Edit: Thanks for the correction Stelt, sometime I think I know what I know apparently I don't really know what I really know :)

The Derby Loss

Shipping out three goals without a reply, in a derby match yesterday, is very hard for any Liverpool to swallow. The image of Andy Johnson showing off his three right fingers and making a zero using his left thumb and second finger is very annoying. It is uncharacteristically Liverpool to concede so many goals.

So, where does the problem lie? Something is clearly not rigth in the defence this season. The defenders were still the same, the right back, the centre backs, with exception the left back. The midfielders are also no different, it is the same players from last season. Momo Sissoko, Steven Gerrard, Luis Garcia and Xabi Alonso. They are four of the first-teamers of the last season. Is this due to a different way of playing the game? Perhaps Rafa Benitez wants the team to do different thing this season? Were the players' mind was not in the game? Lack of idea, creativity, lack of confidence? Was it due to mistakes in defence? Basic mistakes according to Rafa?


Whatever it is, better results are needed very soon, because many important games are coming up thick and fast. Here's hoping for the better.

US Senate - Saddam Had No Links to Al-Qaeda

The US Senate say, "Saddam had no links to Al-Qaeda."

Yeah, we had known that for ages, it's all about oil stupid!

YASOU

Yet Another Screenshot of Ubuntu.

This is the screenshot of during installing an update to the Ubuntu 6.06. Checking update is done daily, and again installing it is as simple as clicking mouse. No need for thinking about where and how to install it. And there my own blog at the background.

Screenshot of Ubuntu 6.06

This is a screenshot of the Add/Remove Applications under the Applications menu in Ubuntu 6.06. This menu is used for downloading and installing any applications we need from the resiporatory. Installing new applications in Ubuntu 6.06 is as easy as clicking the mouse.

Oh and another thing, there are four workspaces, i.e. four screens, on the desktop. If you look at the bottom right corner of the screenshot, you can see 4 rectangulars. At the moment I am using the second workspace, shown by the earth (the browser) icon. By having more than one workspace, it prevents a situation where my small laptop screen is too crowded with many windows.

It's Called Service

A good friend of mine went to the Commonwealth Bank in Monash Univ. Clayton campus this afternoon to close one of his bank accounts. Apparently he has two saving accounts and is not prepared to pay double fees for keeping both accounts alive, so the better idea is to close one of them.

He went to the Customer Service (CS) and told him that he wanted to close one of his saving accounts. My friend said, "I would like to close one of my accounts that has only 10 cents in it."

"Okay!" said the CS, and then after asking birthday, and other security questions, the CS said again, "We will transfer this 10 cents to your other account, however the confirmation of this transfer will be given to you by phone. So in the meantime you may want to do something else if there's nothing else I can do for you."

So my friend and I walked back to our room, but before we arrived at the building, he got a phone call. Apparently from the CS in the Commonwealth Bank and this is what the CS said:

"You'll be very pleased to hear that I have transferred 10 cents into your account."

Let's calculate how much effort spent for transferring the 10 cents:
- a phone call to a mobile costs at least 40 cents
- electricity, computer and man hour

All of these for the sake of service.

Ubuntu Linux

I installed Ubuntu Linux 6.06 into my second hand Compaq Presario 700 this week and the outcome has been very impressive. The laptop has AMD Duron processor, probably 700 MHz speed, 20 GB hard drive, S3 Twister_K graphic card, 384 MB of memory. All devices can work properly, including the network connection and the optical mouse I am using at the moment.

The Ubuntu Linux can be downloaded here: http://www.ubuntulinux.org

It comes with a single CD, which can be used as the Live CD or installation. The impressive thing is, I had installed SuSe 10.1 to the same laptop before, but SuSe 10.1 could not be displayed properly due to some problem with the graphic card. Perhaps a new driver is needed for the S3 Twister_K video card.

Here are two snapshots of this Ubuntu Linux in my laptop: