NIrving

After a morning of tinkering I have managed to get the BBC iPlayer to work without using a web proxy for the browser, which means that you can go to one URL and view the BBC Videos for the past week.

It still requires a proxy, but this is only for the backend server and all connections are over your normal ISP connection and not via my proxy, so you get the videos as fast as your ISP can serve them.

Now not sure of the legality of it all and not sure how long the UK proxy will stay alive, but it works and now I can catch up with the BBC Programmes over here in Australia.

The link is www.darkedges.com/proxy/curl.php and is a little slow, but stay with it as it does work.

Just found an issue with Parental Guidance, but should not take too long to figure out.

goto http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=3258 and crack the first message.

I have been trying to find a decent code formatting solution for a project I am doing with NetBeans. I tried Jalopy, but it could not match the power of the Code Formatte within Eclipse. I then found that some helpful chappy had made it possible to do Batch Code Formatting using Eclipse from the command line. This would not do for what I wanted to do, so I looked at the source code and found that with some tweaking I could run this without having the Eclipse executable, only the core JARs. After that discovery I thought this would be a nice Ant Task and so I made a fairly simple one, which works for what I want to do.

You can download the code and JAR from http://www.darkedges.com/java/ant/JavaCodeFormatter.zip and use it in your Ant build file as follows.

<taskdef name="jcf" classname="com.darkedges.ant.JavaCodeFormatterTask" classpathref="jcf.class.path" />
<jcf config="config/config.xml" verbose="true">
<fileset dir="src" includes="**/*.java" />
</jcf>

You can enable verbose and quiet mode by setting verbose="true" or quiet="true".

Now I am not a great Ant Task writer, so please be gentle on my code, and I had to change 2 lines of code as I couldnot figure out how to initialise the Platform Object, so perhaps a bright spark can take what I have done and make it better.

One thing I would like to see is the Code Formatter only saving changes if there has been some code format changes, as otherwise Ant will recompile your code base again. Oh and there is also a Command Line version there too, I am just too busy to document this all at present

My future sister in law just came back from a business trip to Hong Kong. Since I get a lot of aches and pain with my feet I use a lot of Tiger Balm to help out. However the red version stains the sheets, so when she saw the white version and was told it does not stain she brought me one.
As I was reading the packaging I read out what could be sooved by the miracle product from the mystic east. “Headaches, stuffy nose, insect bites, itchiness, muscular aches and pains, sprains and flatulence. Apply Tiger Balm gently on the affected area.” Yes you have read correctly, “flatulence“. Then I began to wonder, where on my body do I apply this to solve this problem? I know it burns like hell when it heats up and there is no way I am spreading that around that area.
for those doubters, take a look @

After some digging around I found out how to apply this for flatulence

Massage Tiger Balm into your tummy then relax with a warm, moist towel covering your stomach and abdomen. Repeat the process when the towel cools down.

@ http://www.medekit.com/controller/Info/page/tiger-balm/TigerBalm-productfocusfortravelfirstaid.htm

Also

Hello, I was on a forum and somebody mentioned that it says on your site at the bottom for What is Tiger Balm used for: “It is also effective in relieving headaches due to tension; itching due to mosquito bites; and flatulence.” http://www.tigerbalm.com/02_whatis.htmI was just wondering if you could tell me how it relieves  flatulence, and the procedure to use that fix? Everyone knows how it’s used for muscle pains and insect bites, but the flatulence is a new one.

Thanks alot,

Paul, a loyal Tiger Balm user

Dear Paul

Sorry for the belated reply. The answer to your question is per below.

Mint Oil and Menthol are aromatic carminatives. Tiger Balm contain Mint Oil and menthol, which have shown to have beneficial effect on gastrointestinal function. After being applied on the affected area topically, the mint’s carminative properties work by relaxing the esophageal sphincter though a local action and thus allowing gas pressure to escape the stomach. ( Reference: Peppermint Monograph, Herbal Companion to AHFS DI 2001 published by American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Inc USA ).

Hope the above helps.

Thank you for your trust and support in Tiger Balm.

Rgds
Haw Par Healthcare Ltd

Tony Yong
Regional Manager

@ http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-8594.html

I just received an email from my boss telling the staff about my blog. It seems that he has a Google Web Alert for “First Point Global” and that my last post (final email to NAB) was indexed by Google last Friday. So I guess in another week he will get another Web Alert informing him of this post, and so I am sure the cycle will continue.
It seems that nobody from FPG looked at my blog anyway so I guess all my secret’s are safe for now, but who knows what the future holds.

Hi All,
To those who don’t know my journey to today, let me tell you a story. Unlike most stories there are no heros, villians or magic pies, just little old boring me and my dream. I left the UK on May 30th 2003 to start my epic journey down under, to live with my fiancee Narelle, which would take me from London to New York, Miama, San Jose (Costa Rica), Dallas, Los Angeles, Auckland and finally Melbourne in around 5 days. I was on a mission to replace our Estonian Development Team with that of a Costa Rican Development Team and had to hire 5 local J2EE developers in the course of a weekend and train them remotely once I landed in Melbourne.

Within 2 weeks of landing in Melbourne I was called back to Costa Rica, this time for a little longer, but this journey almost ruined my new life with my Fiancee as I worked too hard to hand over my role to a guy called Edgar. We communicate mainly through broken English (he was not my choice for tech lead, but he was the best of a bad bunch) and the ancient art of doodles and at the end I was happy to hand the reigns over to this guy and start my new life in Australia.

I then spent the next 9 months trying to earn a living, as working on a Working Holiday Visa is a little too easy for an employee to say “Yeah your great and would suit our project nicely, but we are looking for 3 months to perm.” So instead I worked as

• a delivery guy for Ikea (lasted 4 hours until my driver drove the hire van through a bridge just a tad too short for the roof)
• a call center operator for Telstra Country Wide to gain email addresses.
• a tele-marketeer for AAPT (sorry if you got a call from, but I needed to earn a crust)
• a tele-marketerr for Fuji Xerox.

Eventually I got an interview for the National Australia Bank, where they wanted to employee me as an Analyst Programmer to develop Perl Scripts to nterface into SAP, whilst the rest of the team worked on implementing SAP. I was optimistic at first, seemed to handle the Interview correctly and then when I was finished I was escorted out one of the Interviewers said “Enjoy the rest of your stay in Australia”. I was gutted, but eventually I got a call back to say the job was mine, but I needed to pass some probabity checks. 3 weeks later I was working for the bank in a short term contract (I think I had just over 2 months left on my visa) developing Perl Scripts to convert SAP Data into LDAP for Central ID.

All was going well and then it got better when I met Tristan, as he had to go to the UK to help with IB UK for some reason. I was to take over some of the work he could not do in the J2EE space, and I got my first real development gig, extending HelpDesk and USRPA. At first Tristan was not happy that I was walking in his foot steps, but after some crazy Kung-Fu moves I won him over, and then the next day he left the project to come and work for CBIB. Needless to say during this time I needed to extend my stay and got a Business Visa with the support of my Agency and the bank because< without me apparently the sky would fall down, or something similiar.

3 changes of management later, 2, floor and 1 building move I was offered the opportunity to work in the hallowed CBIB project. It was considered the Holy Grail of jobs in the bank and everybody wanted to be with CBIB. I umm’d and arr’d for a while as I did not want to leave Central ID as it was a great team, but for me it was the best choice. That was nearly 2 years of my life in that team.

The rest you all know, and if you don’t I think I have said enough about my beginnings with the Bank. Needless to say I have had the opportunity to work with some great people, learnt some new tricks and even taught a couple myself. I think the Wiki is testiment to my powers, which is one of the inventions I wished Central ID had and is a great way to share knowledge.

Now there are a number of great people working on this project and within the Bank itself and if I was to name names I think it would take too long and be of little point. Those people know who they are and I tip my cap in honour of knowing you, the rest I give my thanks for letting me part of a great company. I am moving on to greener pastures and a couple of you may know the name of First Point Global as a number of them worked on this project.

It has been an experience for me, some highs and lows and I would invite you to Madissons opposite 500 Bourke Street from 4pm, as my old team has invited me out for some drinks. I cannot afford to buy any drinks due to reasons beyond my control, but you are most welcome as I believe Happy Hour is around that time.

For those wanting to keep in contact my email address is nirving@darkedges.com and for those wanting to ask me TAM questions it is nicholas.z.irving@nab.com.au

All the best for the future of the projects you work on.

Nicholas Irving
nirving@darkedges.com

P.S. I can tell you the secrets of how to get 100% first time on LMS, but it is gonna cost you as no matter how many times they upgrade it I always find a way to beat it.

I was riding up from Anglesea over the weekend when I was talking with Relle about some old shows that I loved to watch in the 80’s. One in particular entered my head as being something I would like to see again and I could not remember the name of it. All I could remember was that it involved kids solving crime using computers, how hard could that be to find?

First thing I found was an 80’s tv website over @  http://www.series-80.net/us/ with has over 123 TV Shows from the 80’s. Then I had to review the shows it had, and found other classics like The A Team, Street Hawk, The Fall Guy and Air Wolf. Towards the end I found what I was looking for Whiz Kids.

It is desrribed as “Richie, Ham, Jeremy and Alice are teenagers living outside Los Angeles. They are also computer hackers who worked as amateur detectives in their spare time. Llewellen Farley is a reporter who is a source for the kids and sometimes asks them for help on stories he is writing. Farley’s brother-in-law is Lieutenant Quinn who also provides the kids with help.” So next on my travels was to find a video of it, and I found some on You Tube, mainly shot from a video camera in front of the TV, and so in desperation I wanted to find the episodes online. Thank god for isoHunt as it had 1 guy with a torrent to the episodes, but @ over 7 gig in size it is a little to large to download in one hit.

Kope Luwak-gourmet coffee from Indonesia from beans digested by an animal-Truth!:

Kopi Luwak does exist, is very expensive, and is made from coffee beans passed through the digestive system of an Indonesian animal, but it’s more like a cat than a monkey. According to a feature article by the Manila Coffee House, which sells the stuff, the people who harvest the digested beans don’t really have to pick through cat litter to get it. The animal processes the beans and excretes them whole, unscratched, and without dung.

The animal is a palm civet, a dark brown tree-dwelling cat-like creature found throughout Southeast Asia. The scientific name is paradoxurus hermaphroditus.

According to the Manila Coffee House, the palm civet just happens to like to ingest the ripest and reddest coffee beans, which also happen to be the ones best for brewing. The cat eats the outer covering of the beans in the same way that is accomplished by de-pulping machines. Something happens to the beans in the journey through the cat’s intestines that gives it a flavor that is celebrated by coffee drinkers.

At this point, most of the beans are purchased by Japanese buyers.

Well I never. If this takes up in Melbourne then I guess that there would be no problems with people drinking recycled water. I guess this is something Bracksie will pull out to say that we should not do this, as who wants to drink water that has gone through somebdoy 9 times? Oh I guess that would be me as I come from London, where the water is recycled and I have had no side effect yet!

Free Internet Phone Service From AIM Phoneline - Free Local Phone Number:
I got me one of those phone numbers that allows anybody to call me on +1 310 601 5826 and talk to me. Wonder if I will get a call from the President of the United States congratulating me on this new number. Or could I get a missed dial call from somebody trying to dump their partner of 3 years because they discovered they were sleeping with Elmo (not the the doll but the voice actor).
I don’t mind what you say it is all in good fun.