Piranha Systems

A History of Visual Voicemail:

January 2007 – Steve Jobs demonstrates Visual Voicemail on the iPhone.
11 July 2008 - iPhone 3G released in Australia.
26 May 2009 – Vodafone Australia activates Visual Voicemail on the iPhone
22 March 2011 – Telstra partially activates Visual Voicemail and charges a premium.
22 July 2011 – I switch from Vodafone to Telstra, but no Visual Voicemail.

I am so happy to be with Telstra. I’ve been with Vodafone for over 15 years but since the company had an implosion, I’ve been glad to escape from them. Now happily on the Telstra network I can: Make phone calls; Receive phone calls, Use data successfully.

The Telstra network works infinitely better than Vodafone’s network, no matter how much advertising Vodafone undertakes to tell me they are fixing their network.

The one problem I have with Telstra however is their attitude to iPhone Visual Voicemail. Today I have visited the premier Telstra store in the Sydney CBD where the two Telstra employees initially pretended that they don’t know what Visual Voicemail is. The best they were able to help me was to give me a free-call number to Telstra support. Calling this number led to a ten minute wait while the Telstra employee unsuccessfully tried to activate Visual Voicemail after initially pretending that it didn’t exist.

A short time later I was in the Chatswood CBD

For all over 20 years I longed to move from tape based recording to mature digital recording.

Every time I hear the end of INXS Kick or Mystify I cringe at the tape wow/flutter. (was it intentional?)

Recording on tape had problems with:

* quality of the tape (TDK-SAX... yeah!)
* limited frequency response,
* tape wear and tape aging,
* wow/flutter,
* dirty heads,
* head alignment and bias settings,
* dropouts and crinkles,
* tape hiss and other problems.

This crazy new "tape-delay" guitar pedal simulates all of these problems digitally (in stereo) with high precision!

Three years ago I purchased two pairs of powered monitor speakers for two music studios.

I made several visits to the audio store and auditioned many speakers with my favourite CD recordings. The deliberations tore me apart. I had tasted paradise but one pair cost far more than half the budget amount. I couldn't buy the sweetness for both studios. Now I'm not the sort of guy that would say "don't waste your money on a new set of speakers" and I was smitten.

I don't know if you've thought about it much but digital data storage formats change ALL the time and have relatively short lifespans and they fade away before we've copied all of our digital data to the next format.

You'd be very hard-pressed to find anyone who could read computer disks prior to the Commodore64 and Apple ][ computers.
You'd have a hard time even reading a disk from one of those "old" computers from the 1990's. I don't know of anyone anywhere who has an operating one.

This is a crazy test

I was looking at a cool website called www.longbets.org in which people make predictions for the future (around 10-100 years). I had an idea for a "longbet" - my own prediction on the future but when I went to enter it, they asked for a $50 publishing fee. I found it a lower cost to publish in my own blog instead. So here is my prediction: What is your prediction? In 30 years, some humans will have an additional heart installed as insurance for a heart attack or pulmonary failure. During cardiac arrest, the second heart will keep them alive until medical intervention repairs or transplants the primary heart. Why? Provide an argument in favor of your prediction: RAID5 hard disk systems have provided a popular layer of reliability for mechanical hard disks which always fail eventually. Why not do this for biological reliability? (Of course this will create huge ethical issues because there won't be enough spare hearts for everyone to have one... but that's a separate issue.) What do you think?

I just picked up two stand-alone CD audio player/recorders for installation in a studio. There's something extremely satisfying about a stand-alone music player The feeling is the same as playing a reel-to-reel tape... or putting on an old LP. (Don't get me wrong - I LOVE modern technology. I will never debate with you about an LP sounding superior to a digital recording. ... and I'm not that old that I own an LP collection....

A friend is moving on and selling their NSW country property. Have a look: http://gwabegar.com/

Recently I bought a portable Sony MiniDisc recorder (discounted to only $99) so that I can make recordings outdoors and then transfer them to the PC to edit and produce. (I wanted to buy the antiquated MiniDisc format for a particular reason to work in with existing infrastructure - otherwise I would have gone with a portable hard disk recorder) I was enticed by the USB connection on this portable recorder. I assumed that having a USB connection it would allow me to transfer my recordings digitally to my PC.

I have a green paperclip that I am willing to trade. Login to my site and make me an offer. (Actually, you can have a whole BOX of green paperclips if you like.) Just tell me what you would be willing to swap. I'm aiming to have a row of condos in Florida Keys. Just you sign up now, you hear me? Let's make a deal!