All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Australian Idol Winner: Kate DeAraugo Vs Emily Williams

General

A new article about Australian Idol 2006 finalists Damien Leith & Jessica Mauboy is now available.

Tonight saw the culmination of the third Australian Idol. For the last three months, contestants have been battling and belting out their biggest and brightest notes, in an attempt progress through the aggressive selection progress to make it to the grand final at the Sydney Opera House. What happened tonight, is sure to have gob smacked a vast portion of the Australian public. In some strange twist, Kate DeAraugo managed to out vote Emily Williams to win the grand final.

Kate’s performance throughout Australian Idol has been quite good, however compared to other singers – her overall package and skills were lacking. She has progressed through the weeks, by giving good performances and relying on other singers delivering an ok performance. As the competition crept towards the business end, her weaknesses were starting to show. Week after week, Mark would criticise her for not letting go of her voice, not connecting with the music, not transcending. Yet through all the criticism, the public continued to vote for her.

In stark contrast, Emily Williams has been delivering high grade performances week after week. She has received the ultimate ‘good job’ stamp (read: Touchdown!) from Mark no less than three times in the last few weeks. They suggest that she do something, next week she comes out and delivers it bigger and better than they could have imagined. Kyle went as far to say, that he hasn’t heard someone sing Whitney Huston, that isn’t Whitney Huston and make it worth listening too – yet he gives complements like that to Emily.

I have to believe that Kate DeAraugo has won Australian Idol, not through her ability to sing, nor her ability to perform – but in her Barbie Doll like appearance. No sane person could honestly believe that Kate was a superior singer to Emily, yet Kate stands in utter disbelief that she has won. The organisers of Australian Idol, need to some how factor in who is voting – not just the raw number of votes. Assigning the same importance to a 12 year olds vote as to an adults isn’t fair to the performers, they are just being cheated.

One can only hope that Emily Williams soars to the top, just like her amazing voice.

Google Analytics Released

Internet, Software

In March, Google agreed it would aquire the California based web analytics company Urchin. Urchin have been in the web statistics business since 1995 and are an established player claiming statistics that over 20% of Fortune 500 companies use their package.

Since finalising the deal on the 3rd of March, the Google developers have been hard at work. That work is now available to the general public in the form of Google Analytics. Google Analytics works by embedding a small piece of JavaScript into each page of your site and when a page is viewed, it is reported back to their central server. This is akin to how Google tracks conversion and clicks through AdSense.

Using JavaScript and/or cookies to track statistics isn’t a new thing, its been done before. What I think is different this time, is the scale its being executed on. Traditionally, client side tracking systems provided very limited information about your site. Now that Google have the ability to parse your traffic logs through a server side application like Urchin, the rules and boundaries of client side tracking are changing. Some of the key features Google list include:

  • Keyword Campaign Comparison
  • Executive Summaries
  • AdWords Integration
  • Trend Reporting
  • E-Commerce
  • Funnel Visualization
  • Site Overlay
  • Advanced Visitor Segmentation
  • GeoTargeting
  • Analysis Options

The majority of those features are available in server side log analysis applications. The two features that I think are note worthy, are keyword campaign comparisons and integration with Google AdWords. You can now advertise on Google through AdWords and see the effect that it is having on your site, without having to filter through volumes of information. Don’t think it is limited to tracking Google advertising systems though -you can track (but not necessarily integrate) all other advertising systems as well. The other point of interest with Google Analytics is that since it is client side, you are tracking real people on your site. The single biggest problem with server side packages is that there is no accurate way of filtering out non-human hits (ie, from the Google Bot). The issue of course, is that you are getting false positives which could ultimately change your decision making process in your site design or structure.

Google Analytics is a free service to the public allowing up to 5 million page views per month per account. If you have an active AdWords account, it is provided without the page view limitation. What isn’t outlined on the terms of service is if there is a cost after 5 million page views per account per month, when you don’t have an active AdWords account. If there is, there aren’t going to be a lot of people that take that level of traffic that don’t already have their own statistical package in use.

With the massive audience that Google has and what is on offer with this new product, I would expect there to be a massive update of Google Analytics in the future.

Oracle Express (XE)

Database, Software

On Friday 28th, Oracle announced the release of their new “free” Oracle Express (XE) product on the Oracle Technical Network.

Oracle Express is targeting the hobbyist, developer and people new to the database world. With that in mind, Oracle have Windows & Linux binaries for it. The release of Oracle XE places it in direct competition to other cut down databases on the market, such as Microsoft’s SQL Server powered MSDE and mySQL. For a long time, Oracle has been targeting enterprise and government environments, and has been doing a fine job of it. It would appear, the cogs have been turning and Oracle have realised the new turf war is below that level.

Oracle XE is powered by the same internals and implements the same API’s that Oracle 10g Standard and above support. The difference between XE and its big brother, are the limitations that Oracle have imposed. For instance, the database is only available for use on single processor machines, limits user data to 4Gb and can only address 1Gb of system memory. If not to throw down the gauntlet, these restrictions fall directly in line with Microsoft’s new SQL Server Express 2005.

It is no surprise that Oracle haven’t released it under the GPL, however the license for it does have certain GPL characteristics. Oracle Express is available for everyone to use and a developer is free to embed it into his own application and distribute it freely.

Competition in the market place is a good thing; I think everyone should be excited about the news.

RaceNutz Driving Simulation

Photos, Wedding

RaceNutz Hyper Driving Simulation, Gold CoastOnce we had finished eating ourselves into oblivion, we moved onto the afternoon activity – a car racing simulation. We could have gone to an arcade to play all sorts of different games but there was something kind of novel, about attempting to race around The Mountain in a V8 Supercar sporting a competitive time!

We had booked in for a 2pm session, which was not really limited in time. Once we got inside, the initial half hour to an hour was a bit of a mess. The simulators weren’t configured for us to just sit down and race, so we had some teething problems getting started. After the initial bump though, it was all engines go.

It took us a little while to get used to driving them, they are designed to handle like a real race car – so doing silly things in them just lands you into a wall. The owner spent considerable time explaining that it isn’t an arcade game to us and any inference or level comparison to a PC type game was frowned upon. While we all appreciated the complexity of his product, I think we all got a bit of a rise out of that – given we all work in IT or are at the very least, very computer literate. That said, the product itself is sold to various drivers in the V8 Supercar series, which is a testament to its seriousness. The tires take a period of time to warm up, you need to pay strict attention to gears, speed and breaking markers or things go pear shaped very quickly. The weight transfer of the car plays a huge role, so do the various surfaces of the track (ie: bitumen, ripple strips, dry and wet surfaces).

The owner was very accommodating, he opened on a Saturday and then allowed us to drink and drive! Overall, the experience was a bunch of fun. I don’t think an average person would get a kick out of it, the learning curve for driving fast is well above that of an average arcade style simulator. However, for his target clientele – it is spot on the money I think.

Ashmore Seafood & Steak

Photos, Wedding

Ashmore Seafood & Steak - A Window Display of SteaksAfter racing go karts all morning, we were hungry and definitely parched – enter Ashmore Seafood & Steak. I had heard from two different people that the food was good and the servings plentiful, so it seemed like an excellent place to pull up a stump and relax for an hour or two.

I had never been to Ashmore Seafood & Steak to dine, I’ve only ever driven past, so I had no idea what to expect. When we arrived, the venue itself was huge – much larger than I had pictured from the road (shot taken outside from doors). When we arrived, the service was prompt and we were seated immediately.

After a few minutes of chatting and getting the first beer down, we all ordered. The food came out in reasonable time, considering there were a bunch of us. What none of us could have expected though, was the size of the meals – they were massive! Most of us ordered some sort of steak and they had to have been knocking on 500gm in weight, maybe more. Andrew placed his spanned hand over the top of his steak and it was bigger in every direction, if that helps to give you an idea of the size. The steaks were nice, though the meat could have been a little more tender; however I think I’m a little spoilt in that department.

We ate, drank beer, chatted and then rolled out to the cars. Below are a bunch of group shots taken by Brendan:

Next stop, RaceNutz!