What I Learnt Today

Computers are meant to make life easier, (although I would agree that it often doesn’t feel like that).

‘Power users’ often make use of small applications that enable them to handle repetitious and common tasks with much less work.

Lifehacker recently listed their top 10 micro-utilities for both Windows and Mac.

These applications might be a shortcut on your path to “Power-user-dom’.

Any other suggestions? Let us know in the comments.

What I Learnt On 12th April in other years

12th April 2012 New Goldberg Machine World Record

Dave, my friend the muso doctor, tells me that you can play any pop song ever written if you use the 1 5 6m 4 (I V vi IV) Chord Progression. 

Of course, I dont know what this means, so he demonstrated using Garage Band on the iPad in C major using the chords C G Am F.

You can see how frequently this chord progression is used by watching this video by Benny Davis, from the band Axis of Awesome. This was first performed at the 2006 Sydney University Arts Revue: ‘The Complete History of Everything That Ever Happened Ever. On Ice. On Fire.’

Now, go and write us a pop song.

What I Learnt On 11th April in other years

11th April 2012 The End of Awesomeness

It seems the characters of Pixar have always been part of our family. 

For many months Will was indistinguishable from Buzz Lightyear.

I was very glad it was dark in the theatre as we all watched Toy Story 3 last Xmas. Andy has to leave his favourite cowboy at home when he goes off to college. This year our own little Woody sits lonely on the shelf, ‘Olly’ boldly written on the sole of his boot, waiting for his owner to return tomorrow from his first term away from home.

Pixar was established by Steve Jobs in 1986. Chef animator John Lasseter says that it takes three things to make an animated film: world, character and story. Pixar has remained true to that edict since their first short Luxo Jr – and the other 19 short films and 12 feature films they have made since.

The ground breaking Toy Story came out in 1995. Cars 2 will be released later this year.

An exhibition at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image in 1987 celebrated 20 years of Pixar animation. 

So this year marks 25 years of Pixar. To celebrate, this video has been produced which shows key Pixar moments. 

What is your favourite Pixar movie? Let us know in the comments.

• Toy Story (1995)
• A Bug’s Life (1998)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• Monster’s Inc. (2001)
• Finding Nemo (2003)
• The Incredibles (2004)
• Cars (2006)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• WALL-E (2008)
• Up (2009)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Cars 2 (2011)

mancave n. A dedicated area of a house, such as a basement, workshop, or garage, where a man can be alone or socialize with his friends.

Social catastrophe may be just around the corner. Modern houses may have 5 bedrooms, four bedrooms, a living room, dining room, a kids room, four bathrooms, and a home theatre – but they have no backyard and therefore no backyard shed. As the great philosopher, John Williamson, says “Every man needs a shed”.

I remember the father of my friend Paul received a plaque on his retirement that read

‘Watch TV, Sleep a Lot,
Lead a Life That’s Lazy.
Mope around the House all day,
Drive your poor wife crazy”

Wives – you should insist that your husband builds his own special place before its too late.

mancavesite.org is dedicated to celebrating the ‘mancave’ in all its forms. And there sure are some interesting forms!

In my research, I have discovered some common mancave elements.(there are no surprises here)

• A display of sporting memorablia
• A dedicated interest in beer 
• A collection of games – pinball, video games, darts and/or pool
• A large screen TV

Here is a random selection of mancaves to give you some ideas.

Now that I’m inspired, “Tellembugrum”, our shed, could make a humble start. I’ll have some work on convincing the rest of the family.

Have you got a mancave? Or seen any exemplars? Let us know in the comments.

I suspect I may have spent a little too much time in pool halls and pinball parlours when I was young.

One of my first memories is having to wash the blue powder from my mouth when I mistook a block of billiard chalk for a piece of Scanlan’s Metro Gum in the parlour under the Florida Hotel in Terrigal, aged about four. By six I was familiar with every pinball machine there.

Many years later, I remember watching someone play the first Space Invaders machine in George St, Sydney, and being amazed as he achieved replay after replay. I soon learnt the special tricks – including that you needed to hit the mystery UFO on your 23rd shot of the game, and every 10 after that, to score the maximum 500. I studied ‘How to WIn at Video Games’ so that I knew by heart the optimal path for the first 10 levels of Pacman.

Mark ‘Zap’ Deller and I would walk to Manly on weekends to visit the video games ‘lounge’ upstairs above the Corso. Mark was an expert on the most complicated video game ever put to market – Defender.

In 1983 I was the Sydney University Medical Society Donkey Kong champion. The Grandstand Bar also had Ten Yard Fight, 1942, and Pengo.

All up, that’s a big investment in 20 cent pieces.

This explains why I am excited about ‘what I learnt today’. 

Atari has made available its Greatest Hits App for iPad, with their top 100 video games of all time.

Atari’s Greatest Hits – Atari

The App is free – but that just lets you play Pong. You can ‘in app’ purchase the right to unlimited play on other machines one-by-one, or for $17.99 you can get all 100 as a job lot. (Note – only 18 are Arcade games, the rest are Atari console games – which you would have to be very nostalgic to want to play)

Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command, Centipede, Gravitar, Red Baron, Space Duel, and Tempest are among those represented.

Meanwhile, Capcom have released a similar arcade pack for iPhone. It contains Commando, 1942, Ghosts and Ghouls, Street Fighter II, and others.

Other classic video games available for the iPhone and iPad include

Dragon’s Lair

PAC-MAN

Space Invaders

Scramble!

Defender!

To top it all off, the team at ThinkGeek will soon release their iCade cabinet. Last year they announced this as an April Fool’s joke – the response was so enormous that they’ve partnered with Atari to develop it ‘for real’. The iCade is a video games cabinet, with push buttons and a joystick, into which you place your iPad. The iCade controls the iPad through a bluetooth connection. It will retail for $99.

I can’t wait.

What I Learnt On 8th April in other years

8th April 2013 Changing Priorities

You would, if you could.

The simple joy of climbing a tree – an activity all of us have enjoyed at some time, although perhaps not for many years.

Unless, like Peter King, you are a card carrying member of Tree Climbers International.

Until today, I was unaware that tree climbing is an official sport.

Wikipedia tells us that:

Tree climbing as an organised recreational activity using modern climbing equipment emerged in the early 1980s in USA. In 1983, Peter “Treeman” Jenkins, an active arborist and retired rock climber, founded Tree Climbers International, Inc. and opened the world’s first tree climbing school in Atlanta, Georgia USA. TCI eventually developed written safety and training rules for tree climbing which are used to this day. Now there are numerous organizations promote tree climbing around the world (Japan, USA, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, Australia, Indonesia, China etc.).

Peter King is a member of Tree Climbers International (Australia). He showed me where Treeman Jenkings has signed his membership card.

Peter points out that tree climbing combines physical fitness, problem solving skills, team work, adrenaline, contact with nature –  and you get to use some pretty cool gear.

Special climbing techniques and equipment have been developed that make tree climbing safe. TCI says that tree climbing done according to their rules is safer than walking across the street. In fact, since the formation of the club in 1983 no participants have been injured (except for crossing the street to get to the tree, perhaps)

Once upon a time, you and I would have used the technique of ‘free solo climbing’, (without knowing it by that name.) Organised tree climbers use ‘single rope’ or ‘double rope’ techniques so that they can belay themselves using a system of friction hitches (ie if they fall a rope will catch them).

Peter and his clubmates are always on the look out for really high trees to climb. Working out the best path to the top of a new tree gives similar satisfaction to solving a difficult puzzle. 

Thanks for the photos, Peter. I’m still considering whether to join you and Simon next time you’re out. Perhaps we could start with this tree

or maybe these