I bought another Acer X1800 desktop machine today (dual core 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD for only $380 from JB Hi-Fi!) with the intention of creating the first node in our specjour/Hydra test cluster. You might recall we name all the computers at work after Transformers characters, which meant I needed to determine which sub-group these machines would live under. We have already used a few of the Decepticon mini-cassette names like Ravage, Rumble and Laserbeak, so I had a look at what the Autobots provided in the same suite.

I found this site which outlines the Autobot mini-cassette characters, and decided our first node would take on Grand Slam’s name. I was sold when I read that Grand Slam combined with Raindance to create Slamdance! These guys sound like the perfect machines to tackle the task of running our automated test suites.

Once again we’re looking for some more full time developers. If you know someone who might be interested, let them know.

Full details are over on The Frontier Group’s blog.

In a few weeks my contract with Vodafone is expiring. This coincides with the (suspected) release of the iPhone 4G.

My iPad is using Telstra Next-G for mobile coverage, so I used the SpeedTest iPhone application to check each carrier’s connectivity from my office.

Each test was run once, so the results might vary if I used actual science and statistics to even things out, but that doesn’t reflect my real-life usage, so I opted for the “one chance to impress me” approach.

As you can see, Telstra’s network was about 1.5x faster downloading, and 2.5x faster uploading. Certainly, they’re different devices, but I think it’s comparable.

I just wish Telstra wasn’t, well, Telstra.