There was going to be a "Year In Brief" covering 2006, but I got bored with the idea. Instead of looking back, I'm going to look forward to what the new year brings. Here's a brief run-down of some of the things that have happened already (in no particular order).

At the first training session of the year I found out that I had two weeks to prepare for a grading for both Iaido and Jodo, instead of the four weeks I was expecting. Panicking, I spent a fair amount of time at the dojo training and the rest of my free time writing the essay components of my assessment. It all paid off, as I passed both gradings on Tuesday, bringing me to Shodan in Iaido and Nidan in Jodo. During preparation, it felt satisfying to work through my own issues and make progress, and I felt like I was really beginning to learn. I can start to see the path ahead, something that was becoming clouded before. Although I'm not able to go to the national seminar and championships this year, I'm glad I've been able to make some progress.

There's been a spate of Ikea shopping recently. I purchased some cupboards to go in the alcove near the front door which will (eventually) hold a number of miscellaneous bits and pieces that are currently scattered around the house. More importantly, it will let free the spare room of the junk, making that useful space again. I also got the little boxes that fit in the bookshelf that I bought last year, providing more useful storage space for various things. I also picked up a new desk to replace my current ratty looking one. Its slightly shorter, but it will still hold all my junk. I haven't set it up yet, I'm waiting until I've got other stuff sorted out first. I'm not usually one for Ikea furniture, especially when they present storage the way they do in their catalogue, but I don't think I got anything too ugly, and am pretty happy with what I've got.

Sandy and Niaal have been cooking food and bringing it into work for the last week or so, sharing it around to those that want it. I cooked a Lasagna to participate, and will take it in tomorrow. Hopefully it won't taste like crap, and we can continue to do in-house lunches. I also roasted a leg of lamb (improvising from another recipe) and that turned out really nice too. Fortunately I don't have to share that :P Contrary to popular belief, I do actually enjoy cooking, but most of the time I just don't know what to cook.

Michele and I went down to Cottesloe beach on Wednesday night to look at Comet McNaught. We spotted it after about five minutes standing in the freezing wind, and continued to watch it for about another half hour until I finally got too cold. We also played with Michele's cameras for a bit, trying out the Holga in low light. We'll have to wait until they're developed to see how they went. When we look at the comet all we see is a little dot of light with a tail behind it hanging in the sky. Its hard to imagine just what the comet is, and how fast its moving. The closest I can get to visualising it is some corny sci-fi space movie, where there's an idyllic peaceful view of the Earth or some other planet in space, and then suddenly a giant ball of rock and gas comes hurtling past from behind us at a furious rate. What looks so peaceful so far away must be completely different up close, and I find that concept eery. We're such small beings on a chunk of planet whizzing through space at a mind boggling speed. It's almost enough to give you vertigo, if you think about it too hard.

Burning Crusades came out on Wednesday. I picked up my pre-order and started a Draenei Shaman on Argent Dawn. I played for an hour or two, but found it funny how packed the starting area was - everyone was starving for npc's for quests. I'm toying with the idea of starting a Blood Elf Mage, but I know my heart isn't in it. I might level my Tauren Druid instead - he's ready for the new levels. Sadly I think my WoW days might be numbered - I haven't played in two months, and still feel no compulsion to play. It would be a bit of a waste to have just shelled out for the new expansion just to close my account (although I doubt it would be any great loss). I'll see how it goes.

I think the spirit of this year will be to look for the little wins in between the bigger wins. I think last year I forgot how to live life, but I hope to learn from that and make this year count. There's things I want to do, both big and little, so I just need to get out and do them.

I was quite happy with the old site design when I put it together. I felt I had achieved a certain number of goals and that it was a success. Over time, and with proximity to people who actually know a thing or two about design, I started to notice lots of little (and some big) annoying details that really detracted from the design. Some of them were fundamental problems of the design, others were due to the way I approached the implementation, and the rest were just things I didn't know anything about at the time.

So instead of setting about to fix them one by one I decided to start from scratch, paying attention to the problems that I'd encountered before. And this is what I came up with. Sure, its probably got its own issues, but I think its a far sight better than the old one.

Edit: I've been playing with Photoshop and my photo archive to create a series of rotating banner images. So far I've got 8, but I might add more later on. Here is a view of all the banners.

This has to be one of the coolest things to come out on YouTube in a while. If you haven't already seen it, I recommend you check it out. Hell, even if you have seen it, watch it again!

Thanks to the local state government's recent decision to give daylight savings another chance despite it being knocked back the last three times the issue was brought up, IT staff all around Perth have been scrambling around trying to get their systems ready for it. Now, I don't really care if we have daylight savings or not. That's not what I object to. No, what I do object to is the meagre two weeks of notice that the government gave everybody. That sort of rash decision making has created quite a few problems, which is why I think they decided on the three year trial - so everyone would forget about the problems with its introduction.

So anyway, we're here and we're stuck with it. How do you make your systems Western Daylight Stupid time aware? If you're in Windows land, you can download the patch that'll fix you in about 75% of cases (except for your Outlook appointments - they'll be out by an hour). Mac users can probably just tick a box, but if you're in Linux land you've got a few more problems, mainly revolving around the fact that most vendors won't release new timezone files in a two week turnaround, let alone giving enough time for Sys Admins to perform proper testing. With a bit of digging around, you can figure out how to make your systems WDST aware.

First there's the simple way. Simply set your "TZ" environment variable with the appropriate POSIX compliant TZ string. Eg:

You can verify the string using the "tzselect" command. This approach is simple and easy, but is limited to only processes that inherit this environment. Its useful in a situation where you're working on a remote system that's in a different timezone and you want it to appear as if it was in your own timezone, but not so useful for a system wide change. One of the deficiencies is that its not really timezone aware for any other period. Ideally, you want to display times from different DST ranges in their correct timezone, but if they have different ranges, or only run certain years, then you can see that this approach is not suitable.

The other solution is to provide a system tzfile for the timezone. This is what your system uses to set the timezone for the entire system. /etc/localtime is often a symlink to the tzfile for the appropriate timezone (eg: /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Perth). By writing your own file and linking to it (or simply setting it using the TZ environment variable) you can resolve some the issues above.

These files are actually binary files compiled from definition files contributed to by interested individuals. You can download the definitions and the code to compile them from the web. A script to do it all for you might look like this:

You can then just poach the files you're after from the tzdir directory and copy them into to appropriate locations on your local filesystem (ensuring to backup the originals first). If you want to create your own zonefile, you can do so by creating your own definition file and using the "zic" tool to compile it. You can inspect the contents of any of these binary files using the "zdump" command.

Funnily enough, the definition file for Australia/Perth has already been updated (although not yet propagated to your installer package), so you shouldn't need to roll your own. Just copy the new ones in, verify them, and you're almost done. The last thing to remember is that processes that have already looked up the timezone information will need to be restarted, as the relevant libraries will cache the information to save time later. It might be simpler to reboot your machine, but you can stop and restart all the important daemons that you're interested in (don't forget "cron"!)

So now I'm the tardy one, not updating in over a month. Fair cop, 'guv. So what's been on the go since the last update? Here's a brief rundown in something vaguely resembling chronological order:

A few of us went and saw FourPlay at the Fly by Night again. They were awesome, just like last time (except last time Peter didn't crack his cello - he didn't look happy about that at all). Sandy piked at the last minute, but that didn't stop her from getting Emiko to make Peter sign a shirt for her. He went the extra mile and wrote a haiku. I also picked up their "TheJoyOf" cd, the one I didn't have already. Shenzo threatened to sign it "to Susan" again, but luckily it escaped untarnished!

We found a fantastic new restaurant in North Bridge called "New Orleans". We stopped there by chance, and decided to give it a shot for dinner. Run by some people we suspect escaped from a devastated city after the flooding, they serve up a fine selection of Creole dishes that leave you wishing you weren't quite so full. Quite probably some of the best food I've ever had the chance to try, and at a very reasonably price too. We went back a couple of weeks later and I'm sure we'll be heading back there again and again.

We had a killer meal at the Oyster Bar in South Perth overlooking the Swan river (if that's your idea of fun). I ate too much and spent even more (but not as much as some others), and I'm still not sure if it was worth it. Their steak wasn't very good - I feel cheated. Although I haven't really been a big fan of oysters in the past, I have to admit they were pretty nice. I think I'll have to go back for more of them, and not try to order for variety.

We had a quick game of Trivial Pursuit at Darrell's, playing the 2006 genus. Our team didn't win, but at least Marcus and Darrell got their piece of pink pie! Dunja, Steve and Elissa's team won, but I feel luck was on their side when it came to the easy questions. I mean, c'mon! "What is the name of Google's email service?" "What is the name of the internet search company, who's name is the same as a one followed by 100 zeroes?"

Joey celebrated his birthday in style by having dinner at Seizan Japanese Restaurant in town. 25 or so people stuffed into the party room. They should have closed the sliding doors - we made too much noise. There was karaoke afterwards, but we didn't stay long 'cuz we were tired.

The office provided an almost perfect venue to watch the Red Bull Air Race. As our window overlooks the river and Langley Park, we got to watch them setting up, doing practice runs, time trials, etc. There was no productivity that week. Strangely, its more interesting to watch than Telstra Rally Australia. We're all looking forward to next years event.

Michele cooked us all a fabulous meal at Marcus and Michael's house. The meal was to wish J a happy work trip to Brisvegas for the few weeks she was there (any excuse for a meal, really - she's back already!). Michele cooked all sorts of Japanese dishes, and when I wasn't busy pre-washing the bowls and chopsticks I helped by standing around looking bewildered. Uber scrumptious. I even tried Natou!

We spent last weekend at an Iaido and Jodo seminar at Kent St high school. Budokan Academy arranged for Oda Sensei and Nagayama Sensei to come down from Japan for a week, and Dr Lee Sensei also came by. Together they spent the weekend beating us into shape, clarifying and refining our techniques. It was extremely worthwhile, especially since I won't be able to make it to the national seminar in January. Unfortunately I had been feeling off-colour since the Friday before and it caught up with me on the Sunday afternoon, but I did enjoy what I was able to participate in. They're trying to make this a regular event, so hopefully they'll be back ext year too.

Sadly, Rebecca is leaving us for greener pastures. She's moving to Melbourne for work and play. We sent her off with a meal at Mathilda's in Vic Park (nice place, check it out). She'll be missed around toe dojo, but no doubt she'll be living it up in Melbourne (on the other hand, that means she'll be a Victorian).

Michele had her birthday last weekend! Yay Michele! Yes, the same weekend that we spent at the seminar. Celebrations were held in a mass birthday gathering last Friday, where we also celebrated the birthdays of Darrell, Jono, Luke and Yen. One big happy birthday party at The Blue Duck in Cottesloe. Jono and I got her a placeholder present of "Chess inna Tube" while her real present came from Sydney.

Yesterday saw the beginning of the Day Light Savings trial in WA, and what better way to start that by waking up at the equivalent of 5am to attend a grading. I wasn't attempting anything but was there to watch Michele. Although she was a bucket of nerves, she passed her ikkyu in Jodo and yonkyu in Iaido convincingly. Yay Michele!

So that's about it for now. Christmas is coming up soon, and that means there's some annual leave coming. I'm sure to have more to talk about later.