I am an Australian living in the UK and i just thought i would point out that Australia has a population of 22 million, but approximately 15 million live in large cities (population over 200K), and another 3.3 million live in small cities. So even thought we have an extremely low population density per square kilometre you will find most of that is farm land that doesn't require any infrastructure at all.

I mean just between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane you have almost half the countries population..

It is funny how you can predict the features of the future apple products. The first ipad is a nice product but its glaringly obvious that the next version will have at the very least a front facing camera, and probably a better screen and A9 dual core processor.

Ah so that's what I have been doing wrong for so long. No more biting and head butting my girlfriend while in bed! Great article btw.

That is the whole point of this, most online retails will just stop selling to Australia forcing you to go back to shop fronts.

Best urinals i have ever used are at the regatta club on the Brisbane river in Australia. The urinal is a big one way window looking over the beer garden. Its awesome when your full of beer taking a long piss and can stand and comment on the "view"

I work for a large electrical engineering company that develops technology that could be classified as smart gird technology. I think that the big game changer in the next 20 years is mainly going to be HVDC links using Voltage Source Conversion technology. This will allow a lot of low cost HVDC links to be constructed (this technology is perfect for offshore windfarms). Another technology that my company is involved in is Energy market management. So we run the servers that predict the loads from the network and also can predict future supply such as from power stations, stand by spinning loads, wind farms and solar stations (using weather data as input) using all these inputs the market can predict the wholesale price of power over the next 5 minute period. This combined with more HVDC links between networks will allow much more efficent power management from the generators perspective. This is the low hanging fruit of the next 20 years, and at the same time you will see consumer level optimisations as well such as smart meters etc.

Exactly at my company we deal with complex engineering problems. I had one guy I worked with who was an absolute genius he has a knack of solving difficult problems with abstract thinking. The problem is that you ask him a question and he gives you answers with the same sort of abstract thinking. So now picture the scene, your on a construction site and a industrial electrician comes up to ask a question and gets more questions shot back at him structured as a riddle... had so many complaints and people just getting upset. His only saving grace was when the installers learnt that its easier to email him a question than to ask it face to face.

Exactly, i wanted a very specific amplifier and speakers just the other day and had no option but to order them through the official distributor because no one else sells them.

And this is why when we design substations most clients specify steel or brass wire Armour. If you leave a wire sitting there for long enough, something will try and chew through it. We actually had to stop installing Steel wire Armour cables laced with Peppers as they where causing OH&S issues. The cables in Questions weigh about 80kg per meter and so the blokes who where working on them would get quite sweaty while them and their apprentices held them in place and prepared them for termination. And then when they went to wipe the sweat off there face half way through preparing the cable for termination they would get pepper in their eyes. There are some nasty little critters for eating cable in the desert of Western Australia. These days if its an area known for having really bad termite problems, we will go for double brass Armour.

I find most people at my work are careless with our passwords because they have an over zealous password change policy. We have to change our password every 2 weeks, and it has to be so different that most people can not remember what they have changed it to. Hence if you open most users draws you will see a note with there current password on it....

All those books, and photo albums that use to occupy space in peoples homes have now vanished. I have a small book shelf for technical books, or books that i cant bring myself to part with. Everything else i donated to my local library. It actually feels quite liberating to know that the only things keeping at my currently location are a few pieces of furniture and a car...

On the downside, if i lost my laptop, NAS and my online backups i would be devastated.

I am an electrical engineer who use to work in IT, and i found that most people i worked with where to lazy to implement any sort of system for improving what the company can do with its information and when you finally do get someone enthusiastic enough to make a difference it takes years to get the cogs in the bureaucracy turning...

Going back to engineering was the best decision i ever made.

The funniest thing about commercials is that the people with the least time and patience to waste on them are also more likely to be the people who will actually buy your product. Particularly young males between the age of 21-30... I have a threshold. I cant stand more than a few minutes of commercials. Hence why i stopped watching TV and started downloading my shows. Same with i wont listen to the radio on the way to work because of the number of adverts in peak hour. But during the day they run great programs that i actually bother to tune into and aren't saturated with adverts...

After reading those quotes he sounds like he is ageing fantastically. He has just reached that point where he doesn't care what people think anymore and is free to speak his mind and good sense of humor!! He sounds like a real champ =p

You can get natural skylights now that use fibreoptics to transmit the light.

http://www.skydome.com.au/products_parans_home.htm