I just spent almost two hours with Karen (Luke’s mum), Em and Josephine over at Mark and Em’s place. Karen had been wanting to meet Baby J and I don’t need an excuse to spend time with her or her folks, so I arranged a lunchtime meetup for today. I’ve had the past three days off, Karen is semi-retired and Em works Tuesdays now so it all worked out nicely.

I’ve spent the last few days cleaning up around the house, doing some computer-related house-work, playing with the puppies, reading, shopping and even laying down a few laps in Forza 3. With Magdalena away on school camp for a few days, it gave me a unique opportunity to get some of the things done that I’ve been putting off for a while, without impacting on her. It also meant I could spend some time doing the chores that I’ve neglected for the past few weeks due to the hectic work commitments, and two lil’ black time sinks. Plus I snuck some time to myself, to play some Xbox and read some magazines and start my next book – Peter Pan and Wendy.

I’m glad I got to cap off my three-day-break with the visit to Josie – it was really relaxing and comforting. Emma and Mark are always down for a relax, and having Baby J in their lives now hasn’t changed that.

Tomorrow night Josie’s spending some time with Mags and I whilst Mark and Em go out. I am really looking forward to the responsibility, even though I know Josie’s going to lie there asleep the whole time, and I think it speaks volumes to the open parenting style Mark and Em have.

I really respect and admire them as parents, and I feel very fortunate to have them as role models.

Many of you will know that I train Brazilian jiu jitsu, and have done for some time now. I first became interested in BJJ, like many others, when I saw Royce Gracie’s dominating performances in the original UFC tournaments many years ago. A guy weighing 170lbs was able to defeat much heavier opponents by using joint locks and chokes instead of strikes. This was something that I could see myself enjoying, and so I took up BJJ.

Back then mixed martial arts, or MMA as it’s known, wasn’t super popular. In fact the sport was only just being invented, as various fighters began training across multiple disciplines, mixing strikes, wrestling and submission grappling to become a complete, rounded fighter. From the beginning, the TapouT brand has been associated with MMA, and I’d argue it’s become the defining brand, in the same way as Intel, Oakley and Coca-Cola each define their product space.

The three personalities behind TapouT were Charles “Mask” Lewis, Jr., Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and their tall friend Tim “SkySkrape” Katz. What’s with the nicknames you ask? That’s part of their catch, or gimmick, and it works pretty well. They each have larger-than-life characters that they play up to, and it’s given their business a highly appropriate public face. In March 2009, Mask was tragically killed in a car accident. The MMA world was full of grief, and the genuine friendships that Dan and Tim shared with Charles were exposed and explored for all to see. I was personally upset at the news, even though I’d never met Charles. At the recent MMA Awards, both Dan and Tim were still visibly moved when accepting awards on behalf of Mask and TapouT. They were a family, in all sense of the word.

As with all brands, when MMA hit the mainstream a few years ago, TapouT exploded. I started to see t-shirts popping up in day-to-day life; people in pubs or guys in the city – I even saw a bogan mum with TapouT head-to-toe the other day. It’s no longer a niche brand for those “in the know.” As with MMA, the brand is appealing to a large range of people now, and that’s not always a good thing. My fear is that MMA will become too popular and we’ll start to see the rules modified in ways that create a more exciting experience for the fans. What do I mean? More average people are watching MMA, and they want to see people slugging it out rather than rolling around on the floor. These kinds of people don’t necessarily understand the nuances of MMA and just want to see some fights, some blood and some knock outs. Check the footage of the crowd at any UFC event and you’ll see more blood-thirsty morons than ever before. And most of them are wearing a TapouT shirt.

Now that you’ve got some background, I can focus on my initial point – what drove me, personally, to buy a TapouT shirt. I don’t want to be associated with this meat-head culture, that’s for sure, so why dress like them?

There’s a few reasons, the first being that I feel like I have a better understanding of the TapouT company, including their intentions and influences, than the average person. I have watched a few TV series that the guys did where they highlight an up-and-coming fighter, and follow them through the preparation for their fight. In numerous cases, the humanity and genuine good will that Charles and the other guys showed was heart-warming. I hear the critics and cynics out there saying that they were just presenting a face for their show, and whilst that’s true to some degree, I never felt that it was manufactured. Often they’d genuinely help fighters, providing motivation, support, or even paying their rent in some cases. TapouT cares about MMA, because they were there at the birth. I admire that.

Secondly, I can relate to the almost whimsical approach the three friends had towards their business. Being a partner in a small business, I know how hard it can be to stay true to yourself, and not bend to other people’s expectations. The TapouT crew are eccentric, no doubt, and that’s hard to maintain when you’re running a business.

When people see me wearing a TapouT shirt, I want them to know the real reasons that I admire and respect the company. I want them to know that I am supporting, in my very small and own way, Mask’s legacy and his memory. I hate to sound like the guy that was “into the band before they were mainstream”; that’s not my intention. I want people to know that I’m supporting a brand because it supports a sport I love.

That probably won’t happen, and people will probably presume I’m just another meat-head who likes watching people get beaten up, but I can hope. Does this make sense, or do I just sound like an elitist?

If you’ve used UNIX-based systems for any length of time, there’s a good chance that you’ve come across bwm, or the next-generation version, bwm-ng. It shows real-time data flow across your various network interfaces:

  bwm-ng v0.6 (delay 0.500s); press 'ctrl-c' to end this
 /proc/net/dev
 |         iface                    Rx                   Tx               Total
 ==============================================================================
              lo:           0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s
            eth0:         707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           total:         707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s          707.88 KB/s

I was wondering if there was a similar tool to monitor the flow of data across disks, and asked the mighty Google as such. Through the results I gathered that in bwm-ng v0.6 the tool gained this feature. I checked my local copy of bwm-ng, and sure enough it was v0.6, so I had this functionality I just needed to specify the input as disk (all disks visible to the system, including RAM disks) or libstatdisk (just the physical hard disks – much more meaningful):

mlambie@falcon:~$ bwm-ng -i libstatdisk

Results in:

 bwm-ng v0.6 (delay 0.500s); press 'ctrl-c' to end this
 libstatdisk
 \         iface                    Rx                   Tx               Total
 ==============================================================================
             sda:       11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s
             sdb:           0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s            0.00 KB/s
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           total:       11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s        11624.00 KB/s

I have an iPhone 3G, and lately I’ve been saying that it’s the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and the worst phone I’ve ever owned. There’s been two main reasons why, one of which Tony helped fix a few days ago. Allow me to tell you a story.

Firstly, ever since I installed the iPhone SDK (software development kit; the tools necessary to build applications for the iPhone) I started getting an error everytime I tried to sync the device. Tony pointed out that leaving tethering enabled caused issues, and disabling it on the iPhone has meant this probem went away. I think it was just a co-incidence that I’d installed the SDK, but it might not have been; it didn’t cause that error previously when tethering was enabled.

More importantly though, in the last few months I’ve had more dropped calls, failed calls and general frustrations with the iPhone than I’ve ever had with any phone, ever before. There’s a specific section of Berwick Street that, without fail, will disconnect any calls as I drive through it. My tech-mind put that down to the phone jumping from one cell tower to another, and that made sense. Then the calls started to fail anytime I’d attempt to make them. Then they’d start dropping with a “call failed” error when people called me. Not to mention that the mic stopped working for a while, and I’d have to switch to speaker mode to talk to anyone, though I think that’s more to do with crap getting in the headphone jack (which I use all the time in the car, for music and podcasts) and it thinking that an audio cable is attached.

As you can imagine, this is all quite frustrating, considering how important my phone is for work, let alone socially. There’s little relief in the knowledge that it’s fairly well accepted that 3G on the iPhone uhh 3G isn’t all it’s cracked up to me. The problem is, who’s to blame – the carrier (in this case Vodafone Australia), Apple, or Infineon, the 3G chipset manufacturer?

My short-term solution has been to disable the 3G network, and stick to WIFI when I’m at home or in the office, and regular ol’ 1G (or is it 2G, or 2.5G, or 3.14G?) when I’m making calls. That works kinda OK, but it’s annoying having to go into the settings to enable 3G anytime I check Twitter at a cafe, for example. I know, it’s such a first-world-problem, isn’t it?

Earlier this morning I found out that the iPhone supports a field test mode, which you can access by dialing:

*3001#12345#*<call>

Don’t forget that last star – I was missing it off and getting a “Error performing request No Network Service” message popping up.

There’s a whole raft of information that’s available here, but the only bit that interests me is the signal strength indicator that appears in the top left corner, where the “bars” normally are. This turns into a negative integer, where the higher the number (closer to zero) the better the signal. For the mathematically-challenged, this means -60 is better than -80. According to TestFreaks (when they tested the Cell Ranger Port, an interesting signal amplifier):

For me, sitting at my desk in West Perth I get -81, which shows up as 5 bars. To be fair, the downstairs office is three walls of concrete, with three storeys of concrete above above, and a wrought iron clad window. It’s pretty much impervious to radio frequency signals. If I cover the antenna area (which is at the base of the handset, incidentally right where people tend to hold their phone) then the signal drops to -95, which is a significant change. I figured I’d check out the reception on Wellington Street, where to my surprise I get a solid -57.

OK… now we’re getting somewhere.

Further investigation also revealed an CNet article which suggests that you can boost the signal by attaching a piece of sticky-tape to the backside your SIM – it’s got something to do with the SIM making firmer contact with the phone. They also recommend using an eraser to remove any oxidation that might have ended up on the SIM. It’s all about the contacts, baby!

And then it hit me – a few weeks ago my phone reported that it had no SIM! I rebooted the phone and it worked fine, so I had just dismissed it as the phone being silly. Maybe there was a connection issue that was causing problems?

I dug out some scotch tape and found a paperclip on Hale’s desk, and went to work. I stuck two pieces of tape to the back of the SIM, just to be sure. I cleaned off the oxidation with an eraser. This changed resulted in -81 inside, -51 on Wellington Street, so no change inside, but a jump of 6 points outside. That’s not bad, but might just be a regular fluctuation.

As a last test, I checked the inside strength again. I saw the inside value change from -73 (momentarily) to -79, and then hover around -75. Then back up to -81.

The end result: I’m not sure that the hackery did much, in fact I don’t think it changed anything to be honest. I think what’s more likely is that Vodafone are being a little generous with their “convert signal reading to bars” function, and should be showing me less bars when I have a poorer signal.

Either way, I’m now armed with a snugly-seated-deoxidised SIM, and the tools to measure signal strength next time I get a drop out. I’ll keep you updated.