Dear Customer (xxx@tpg.com.au),

Attached is an email that TPG has received complaining about certain conduct.
The IP Address and timestamps provided by the complainant indicate that the
conduct occurred over your TPG Service.

Infringement IP address:       xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Infringement timestamp (SYD):   2009-11-28 00:50:08

TPG does not condone the use of TPG Services for activities which are
offensive, illegal or infringe on the legal rights of other persons. Such
activities are expressly stated in your agreement with us as being a basis on
which TPG may suspend or terminate the supply of services to you.

It is alleged in the attached complaint that you, or someone authorised by
you, have engaged in such an activity. If you agree that you did engage in the
activity, please cease it immediately. If you do not believe that you have
engaged in the activity complained about or you believe that the activity is
not illegal, offensive or an infringement of another person’s rights, please
contact the complainant in writing as soon as possible and explain your
position to them.

If the complaint is about spam, it may be that your equipment has been
compromised by a hacker. Please obtain an up to date antivirus system and
ensure that your machines are cleaned as a matter of urgency. If you fail to
do so and the spam persists, TPG may take steps to limit the spam by
suspending your service.

If you have any questions about this email or our Terms and Conditions, please
contact Customer Service on 13 14 23 or customer_service@tpg.com.au.

Thank you.

Kind Regards,

Internet Abuse Team
TPG Internet

E-mail: abuse@tpg.com.au
Phone:  13 14 23
Fax:    02 9850 0813

———- Forwarded message ———-
From:
To:
Date:
Subject:

TPG Internet Pty, Ltd.
65 Waterloo Road
North Ryde, NSW  2113  AU

RE:  Unauthorized Distribution of the Copyrighted Television Series Entitled
Navy: NCIS

Dear TPG Abuse Department:

We are writing this letter on behalf of the relevant subsidiaries of CBS Corporation.

We have received information that an individual has utilized the below-referenced IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted television programs through a “peer-to-peer” service, including such title(s) as:

Navy: NCIS

The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted television programs constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3).  This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.

Since you own this IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), we request that you immediately do the following:

1) Remove or disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and

2) Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.

We also would request that you inform the individual who engaged in this conduct that legitimate copies of CBS content are widely available for viewing online, for example on www.cbs.com and many other sites that participate in the CBS Audience Network.

On behalf of CBS, owner of the exclusive rights in the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by CBS, its respective agents, or the law.

Also, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.

Please direct any end user queries to the following:

CopyrightQs@mediasentry.com

Please include the Case ID 12345, also noted above, in the subject line of all future correspondence regarding this matter.

We appreciate your assistance and thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.

Respectfully,

A Kempe
Enforcement Coordinator
MediaSentry

——————————

INFRINGEMENT DETAIL
——————–

Infringing Work: Navy: NCIS
First Found: 28 Nov 2009 00:50:08 EST (GMT -0500)
Last Found: 28 Nov 2009 00:50:08 EST (GMT -0500)
IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
IP Port: 54321
Protocol: BitTorrent
Torrent InfoHash: 390F03C5E7AEF0C48C7D74FEAF9CE2331C1C6A1B
Containing file(s):
NCIS.S07E08.Power.Down.HDTV.XviD-FQM.[VTV].avi.torrent (367,052,052 bytes)

All in all, about 45km of singletrack riding and proof that I need a LOT of work if I’m going to survive The Mont 24hr race next year. Still, the course itself is not overly demanding in terms of skill, the main problem is just fitness.

The “off-hours” on the weekend were spent idling around Maladjusted “bicycle emporium” in Dickson, trying to decide which bike I was gonna buy as an upgrade for my 2008 Kona Dew Deluxe. In the end, after much consideration given to the Surly Cross Check, I decided I was going to get a 2009 model Kona Jake the Snake. It’s a very well specced bike for the price, and a fairly popular bike amongst the staff at both my regular bike shops, which I take as a very good sign.

So, having been offered a fairly good price on Saturday arvo, but needing some time to think, I went to Mal’s on Sunday morning, ready to fork over the credit card and load a shiny green machine into my car for the drove back to Sydney. As I walked in, the guy who had been serving me the day before spread his arms and have me a sheepishly apologetic look. The bike, MY bike, that had been on the shop floor unwanted for almost a year, had sold in the 4 intervening trading hours. I was gutted, but still managed to buy some consolation accessories.

So I drove back to Sydney, still quietly fuming, and held out hope that my Sydney regular shop still had 09 models in stock in my size.

Come the morning, I hopped on my DD for (hopefully) the last time and headed in to work early. I got in at 8:30, the same time City Bike Depot open, and gave them a call. The conversation was something like:

“omgpleasetellmeyouhavea2009jakethesnake54cminstock”

“Yes, last one, on display”

*mental cartwheels and then slight sanity return as I start talking prices*

In the end they said $400 off retail, I said yes, they said 5pm, I cheered. Then went and had a shower, for I was smelly and had sore legs.

So in the afternoon I wandered down to CBD, picked upy shiny new bike, and rode it home. The total cost was $1960 including a luggage rack (an unsightly necessity). I think the ride home, after stripping pump and speedo off the DD, was worth about $1000 itself, so it’s almost justified after a scant 12km.

So now I have a more speed-oriented bike, with moderately specced road gearing, a ridiculous weight drop over my precious “commuter” and all the green goodness I could want between my legs. And to cap it off perfectly, my shiny new MTB shorts were waiting on my front porch when I got home. Granted, a bit late for Friday and Saturday’s adventures, but they’ll be getting plenty of wear in the next few months.

Now it’s just ride, ride, ride and hope that somewhere between now and March 2010 I’m fit enough to not die on a hill, in a pine forest outside Queanbeyan.

“JUST DOING IT EZY P/L, BURWOOD AU”

showed up on my statement, I was a little bit perturbed. I racked my brain for what I’d spent money on recently, or what that could possibly be. I googled the company name, nothing. My other half checked the Australian Business Register – found the company listing, but no clues as to who it might be. Eventually, after both of us mentally backtracking all the purchases we’d made lately, we traced it back to a DVD purchase at ezydvd.

Now sometimes credit card billing names don’t always match on some smaller companies, but seriously, WTF? This is ezydvd, a fairly well known chain. It appears that the answer is franchise-owned stores, but surely they can reach some agreement that customers don’t have lines on their credit card statements that are only identifiable by the annoyingly common misspelling of a single word.

Maybe I should go buy something expensive from them, then contest it with the bank when it comes up on my statement, or is that being too much of a dick?

So far it’s working, and I’ve registered over at dailymile to keep track of all the cycling I do (xeyr is my username over there).

Next project – building up the Surly Instigator frame that I just bought off ebay …  It’s last year’s model, bright orange and is gonna end up being an off roader for doing silly stuff with my brother and friends that are “that way inclined.” Looking forward to it, even though it’s gonna be an interesting experience working out how to build a bike!

Check it out – The Twitter Agency.

To put this in context … in the past 12 months I’ve bought a new bike (Kona Dew Deluxe) and a new camera (Nikon D80). In both cases there were cheaper options available, even staying in the same broad requirements (a cheaper hybrid bike, or a cheaper DSLR), but I decided to pay for the best gear I could afford.

One of the problems with this attitude though, is that with some purchases it’s not the initial hardware that hurts. It’s the “Razor and Blades” scenario, but this time it’s a much larger scale.

Take, for example, the camera. When we got it, we paid a reasonable $1300 for the D80 with a 18-135mm lens included in a kit. But having a “real” camera, and starting to get more interested in photography, I’m now shopping around for accessories. First thing I hunted for was a 50mm f/1.8 lens. This was supplied by my partner as a birthday present, but the price tag was around $200 … a significant percentage of the initial purchase price of the camera. If I’d been after the higher-spec f/1.4 version of the lens, that would’ve been closer to $500!

A short while back I started to look at tripods, remote shutter releases and a good quality bag to carry all this stuff in. While you can get tripods very, very cheap in various places, I’ve looked at some and there is no way I would trust 1.5kg+ of camera and lens on them … In fact, I have a crappy tripod that I got from Zazz for about $25, and it’s so poor that the head doesn’t even sit level. On a flat, level floor, you need to adjust the legs to different heights so that the head of the tripod and the camera are level. No thanks. So now I’ve just spent $470 for a remote control ($50), bag $(120), tripod and head ($300). If you’re interested in what gear I’m using, check out the Camera Gear page.

This is just the camera hardware! Then we go back to the computer, where after several weeks of research and agonising, I caved in and bought a 23 inch Apple Cinema Display. That one really hurt the bank balance, but once I dropped it on my desk and took out the crappy 19 inch Viewsonic monitor that it replaced, it felt like the right decision. But now I’m looking for software to take me out of iPhoto … And I haven’t even started on the bike gear!

So beware! Always buy the best you can afford, I stick to that. But make sure you know what buying the best entails, now and in the future!

But surely it’s getting ridiculous when movie trailers start picking up the (sponsor’s) message and running with it. Have a look at the trailer for the latest Jim Carrey film, “Yes Man“. Seems to be all going fine until you get to about 1 minute in … even then it’s just dropped casually. Then about 10 seconds later, in case you missed the first one, RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL. I mean, I get it, the movie industry wants more money, and they can get that from advertisers in the form of product placement. How else do you explain Apple usage in “Hollywood America” being exponentially larger than the regular USA? But sometimes it’s just ridiculous.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m thirsty …

Whittled the 200-odd photos taken while skiing in July down to 21 shots uploaded to flickr. Check them out over there. The down side is that while I was sorting through iPhoto, I found another batch of photos that need sorting, so my total didn’t go down quite as much as I was hoping. Still, 406 is a better number than 600.

The good, and bad, thing about having a good camera is that you feel the need to justify the large sums of money spent on it by taking a lot of photos. Although I enjoy taking photos, I’m typically not the type of person to photographically record every major event, simply because I hate being that guy who wanders around at a party taking photos, not having a party. As a result, my photos tend towards landscapes and places, rather than people. What it also means is that when I do take the camera out, I take a LOT of photos.

Coming back from a recent ski trip, the camera had 250-odd photos on it. Not bad given that it was one day of photos in a place where, trust me, I’ve taken a lot of photos in the past. And then this past weekend was up at my parents’ property (“The Glen”) in the Hunter Valley (just north of Sydney), which netted another 266 photos. Combine that with some other, smaller “rolls” and my “Current Working” set – being all the photos I need to filter through, clean up and upload – is sitting at around 600 now.

Of course, that will filter down to something like 30-40 shots that make it up to my flickr page, but that’s a lot of culling to do! And on that note, I’ve got some photo tweaking to do – expect some serious picspam in a post soon!

For now, here are four shots that I uploaded quickly, just so it felt like I got something done.

Bee and Cherry Blossom 1

Bee and Cherry Blossom 2

View From the House

Front Paddock

See now, I’m working full time and being paid a satisfactory amount, but I’m still paying for all the regular things that I was paying for before. In addition, I’m now spending around $10 per day just on coffee. To break it down, that’s one on the way in to work, one in the morning (yes, often straight after I get to work) with the team and then usually one after lunch or in the mid afternoon.

On top of that you have lunch, which can cheap out at $0 (brought from home), or can involve a further $8-$15 per day (far, far more frequent). And then there’s getting home after work, not being bothered to cook, and so the “takeaway” (that quotation marks mean “delivered to the door”).

So I’ve gone from spending between $0-$10 per day (on a splurge day) to now sitting at around $20-$25 most days, and occasionally $45. Ouch. Working is expensive!