Nick Carroll

If you are able to read this post, then the upgrade of http://ca.rroll.net from WordPress 1.5 to WordPress 2.0 went smoothly.

I have also added a Flickr badge and Google Adsense to the sidebar of the main index page.  I added these features for two reasons: firstly I needed something to fill up the blank space in the sidebar; and secondly I wanted to try out Google’s adsense so that I get a better understanding of how much revenue one can make from it.

Panoramic view of the OpenAir Cinema

Last night I went to the OpenAir Cinema with Kimmy and some of her friends from work. It was quite an experience watching The 40 Year Old Virgin under the open sky at night, with the Sydney Harbour as an amazing backdrop to the big screen. The above panoramic view of the OpenAir cinema was taken moments before the big screen was erected.

During the evening there were some brief patches of rain, however it didn’t dampen our spirits. The staff at the OpenAir Cinema had provided us with full length ponchos, so we were able to enjoy the show without getting soaked. It was kind of fun watching the movie in the rain, and it kind of added to the experience.

The movie was hilariously, laughing-out-loud, politically incorrect, comical genious. And who would have known that the lead actor – Steve Carell – was one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings!

It was a truly memorable experience, and one I truly recommend to others.

Sony Ericsson K6008i

I have laid my Nokia 6100 to rest and replaced it with the Sony Ericsson K608i. I also switched networks from Optus to 3.

I have previously had phones with Telstra and Optus, so it was time to try another network. In all fairness though, I did have excellent coverage on the Optus network, which is why I was a little disappointed with leaving. But if a company lies to you, then you need to remind them every now and then that the customer is King, and exercise your right to do business elsewhere.

I was previously on a $33/month contract with Optus. I had completed the 24 month contract with them, but they lured me in for another year by giving me $5 of call credits per month if I stayed with them for another 12 months. I was thinking of switching to 3G, and therefore to 3, but the salesman lied to me saying that Optus would soon roll out their 3G network. This happened 6 months ago, and there still isn’t any 3G content on the Optus network compared to 3. I wasn’t happy being lied to, and there was an awesome deal with 3 that I just couldn’t resist, even if it meant paying a $60 fee to bail out of Optus’ 12 month contract, which I was halfway through.

The deal with 3 was to pay a $29 capped plan per month, and you get a Sony Ericsson K608i for $0/month, $120 call credits, and an additional $70 call credits to people on the 3 network. Now that is value for money! Certainly beats the uncapped $33/month plan that I was on with Optus.

I also signed up for an additional $3/month for the News content package. I am now able to read/watch breaking news stories on my mobile, which means I won’t have to buy the news paper on my train ride into uni. Even better, I was given a $50 credit to my account, which kind of negates the fee that I have to pay Optus. This was something unexpected, but it certainly sweetened the deal and heavily influenced my switch to 3.

So far my experience with the new phone and network have been positive. 3 now roams on the Telstra network, so there is excellent coverage. However, when roaming on the Telstra network you can only access limited 3G content, such as the News content. Otherwise on the 3 network you have access to lots of 3G content, such as live streaming coverage of test match cricket between Australia and South Africa.

The other package I’m considering is the email package, where I can send and receive as many emails as I want for another $3/month. This certainly works out much cheaper than using a Blackberry. In fact, I don’t really get what all the fuss is about Blackberrys.

One thing I don’t like about the phone is the 1.3 megapixel camera. It takes ordinary pictures during the day, and lousy pictures at night (as shown in my last post). Nevertheless, it is something I can live with, and it also means I still have a need for my Konica Minolta DiMAGE Xg.

Sydney NYE’05 Fireworks

Happy New Year!

It is that time of year again to declare my New Year’s Resolution. I actually have a couple this year. The first and foremost is to finish my PhD, which is something that I’ve been doing for the last three years. The second is to use my blog more often.

I’ve changed the tagline from “My life in bytes” to “Erudition of software engineering, e-portfolios, and life”. I’ve spent the last three years of my PhD working on software and e-portfolios, so I figured I should be writing more frequently about these topics, especially in what should be my final year of my postgraduate studies.

I also promise to further my work on dotFOLIO this year. I have been taking some time out on it for another software development project called Curriculum Central, which is a workflow based application for managing course outlines and logistics for Higher Education. The application is available from the OpenACS CVS repository as curriculum-central.

Curriculum Central and dotFOLIO are separate projects, but will be linked. I intend to allow students to import completed course information into students’ e-portfolios. Therefore they will be able to progressively understand their learning development, as well as gain a clearer picture of where they are heading with their studies. There will be more to come on these concepts.

Another related project I’ve been associated with is Beagle, which is a plagiarism detection web service. We successfully trialled this software with over 2000 blog postings from a first year unit of study in 2005, and discovered all cases of plagiarism. With information accumulated by dotfolio, we were able to determine who copied whom. The results were very surprising, and when Juan Jose and I get round to publishing our findings, the results should be a wake up call to all tertiary institutions, especially those that facilitate online learning activities.

Finally, the last thing that I will aim to do this year is work out what to do with myself once I finish my PhD. I’ve thought about working for a company, and I’ve also thought about starting a company. I would actually prefer the latter, and in all likelihood I will probably start a consulting group with a bunch of friends that I can sell the vision to. In fact, I’ve already roped my good friend Bennett into it, as he too will be winding up his PhD in Medical Research this year. I also registered a domain name today for the prospective consulting group. However I can’t see us getting together to work on a business plan until 2007 and beyond. So like all good things in life, this one will take time.