I was talking to someone tonight about stuff to eat, and that got me thinking.  What sort of stuff do I normally have on hand for quick cheap and easy meals?

I guess it depends on the time of year but here's my list.

• Lots of small tins of fish.  I get the John West or Coles brand tuna or salmon tins in the 95g or so size, the type you get which are different flavours such as "mexican style" or "mild indian curry", etc.  Cook up some rice and throw in a tin and it's a 2 minute hot meal.  In the summer, one tin and some sprouts (which I grow myself) and a bit of mayo is an excellent quick dinner.
• Also plain tuna or pink salmon in tins for making fish cakes (also eggs, flour, and various herbs in the squeezy tubes such as lemongrass, ginger, garlic, basil).
• Rice.  Basmati.
• In the winter, lots of root vegies (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, maybe a turnip or swede, maybe some purple carrots or similar).  In the winter I roast up a big batch and shove them in the fridge, just a reheat during the week and they are ready to eat.
• Makings of soup for the winter, which usually means chicken stock (or leftover bones/scraps that can be made into stock), vegies, and some meat, and maybe some pearl barley or some soup mix.  Not a fast meal but can be left to cook while I get on with other stuff.
• Most weekends during the winter I'll roast up some meat and that can be reheated during the week with the vegies.
• Anchovies, cheese, tinned diced tomatoes.  A spoonful or two of tomatoes on a slice of toast, add some anchovies and top with grated cheese and sprinkle on some herbs (oregano or thyme for this), under the griller and it's an instant bruschetta.
• Muesli.  Mostly for breakfast but can be a good any time snack hot or cold.
• In the summer I'll have some salad bits including pre-made coleslaw or potato salad or something, in the winter it will usually be some green vegies that are easy to cook, or mushrooms and capsicum which can be grilled up quickly.  I'm not a big fan of lettuce so that will usually be swapped out for sprouts.
• Tomatoes at any time of year.  Grilled or roast in the winter, fresh in the summer.
• Bread, usually wholemeal.  Occasionally some raisin toast.  Vegemite, peanut butter, and some marmalade or similar.
• Onions, olive oil, sugar, herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, sage), spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamon), plain flour, honey, salt, mustard, milk, eggs, cheese.

It's not a huge list but there's a huge list of fairly plain and easy stuff that can be whipped together in a few minutes from the above.

Carrier Sense, Multiple Access / Collision Detect.

Well it's moved on a bit since then at the topology/packet transmission level, but fundamentally it's still the same principle.  Ethernet networks, that sort of network that your computers at home are connected together by and also the network that is the main and primary communications channel holding the internet together, is CSMA/CD.

Carrier Sense:  All parties wanting to talk on the network have a quick listen to the network first to see if it's quiet.  If it is not, then they wait a bit and try again.

Multiple Access ... and here's the rub:  Many parties have access to the same shared network at the same time.  All parties can talk at the same time.  All parties can hear what the others are saying.  Well things have moved on a bit since CSMA/CD came out, network switches by and large have a larger backplane bandwidth than the bandwidth of the network so can isolate various network segments from each other based on MAC layer protocols, but even then it's reasonably simple for any listener to inject a MAC layer packet into the protocol that switches use to figure out who is where, so that the listener can hear some or all of the conversations on the network tha were not intended for it.  Alternatively it's also reasonably easy to program that at the switch level, so that the switch will (unbeknownst to the talkers) send all traffic to a specific listener as well as the listener that it was intended for.

There are a few Point-to-Point protocols on the internet, mostly used over long distances, but when packets are rattling around in a data center (where they tend to spend a large portion of their lives), there is nothing to stop party A listening in on a conversation between parties B and C.  That's how ethernet works, and so that's how the internet works.

Collision Detect.  If two parties talk at the same time, there will be a collision.  So if party A and party B send a packet at the same time, there's a protocol for party C (the intended recipient) to say "I didn't get that, it was garbled, please send it again".  Alternatively, party D, not the intended recipient, can also say "please send it again" so that it has a better chance of analysing the conversation going on and perhaps capturing the keys for any encrypted traffic that's being sent.

I recall an anecdote told to me by an ex-US military guy who worked for signals during the war in Vietnam.  He'd listen in on VC and NVA radio traffic, having learned the Vietnamese language, record them and translate them to hand back to intelligence corps.  If something was said on the radio that he didn't clearly understand, he'd ask the talker to repeat that and the person being listened to would politely and often more slowly and clearly repeat the information that he was after.  After all, HF radio is a difficult medium, and traffic can be lost as it bends around mountains and bounces around the atmosphere, so why wouldn't you repeat what you just said if someone on the other end of the radio asked you to do so?  Even if they were an enemy spy listening in on the orders you were relaying from Hanoi.

My, what a lot of computerised gobbledygook.  vonstrassburg's talking c**p again, what does it all mean?

What does it all mean, dear readers (you've gotten this far so I'll be presumptuous enough to call you "dear")?

It means that nothing you say on the internet is private, at any time, on any level, ever.  All sorts of people could be listening in, traffic logging, all without your knowledge.  If they didn't get it the first time, they'll ask you to say it again, and your network layer will do precisely that without asking questions.  No, it's not Big Bad Facebook or Big Bad Google or Big Bad Pirates out to get you, it's the fundamental protocol that hangs the internet together.  Get used to it.  If you want to have a private conversation with someone, use the phone, or better still, have it in person.

Since I've gotten into another political s**tfight, here's where I stand on such issues in case anyone's interested:

• Climate change is real, it's here, and it's happening now.  There may be a lot of noise in the press saying "oh but wait some climate scientists think it's not all bad" and "there's this guy in Milwaukee who reckons that it's all caused by radiation from the planet neptune and it will go away when neptune moves further from the sun", there are actually ZERO published and peer reviewed articles in formal scientific journals that prove that human activity is not a prime actor in the process of climate change.  Sure, the scientific debate rages on about extents and percentages ("I have some evidence that the global sea level rise by 2050 will actually be 4% smaller than the report produced by that other guy") but the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that human activity cause climate change.  If someone has told you otherwise, then they are misleading you.  If you believe human activity does not cause climate change in the face of overwhemling evidence to the contrary then there is nothing I can do about that, but if you claim to others that you have proof that human activity does not cause climate change and you do not have the scientific evidence, proof, knowledge, and understanding to back up that claim then you are a danger to the continued survival of the planet and need to be dealt with as such.
• Yes, I'm an environmentalist in case you hadn't spotted that.  If you use the terms "loopy greenies" or "nutbags from the green movement" (Sarah Palin's epithet I believe) around me then you can expect a lot of complicated questions that will need detailed and accurate answers.
• Anthropogenic climate change is only one indicator that too many people on this planet are having too much of a destructive effect.  Not just on the climate, but on food and water resources, fossil fuel reserves and energy resources generally, and so on.  We can't keep expanding this planet's population forever and we have to accept at some point we need to contract it.  There is a lot of research that needs to be done on what a sustainable population for the planet is but I suspect it's closer to 3 billion or even 1 billion than the 6.8 billion that we have now.  What happens when we have 10 billion people and we discover that due to climate change, limited fuel and energy resources (no diesel left to run the tractors), and perhaps some incident such as a massive and wide-reaching drought, flood, or pest issue, that we hav the food to feed only 1 billion?  Who gets the job of saying "you live, you die"?  Population strategy, on a global scale, is needed.
• The planet is adaptable.  Provided we bring the climate under control, then we probably have 200 years or more before we need a stable population.  There is no need for panic.  However, if we pass the tipping points on climate change then the entire issue may very well be decided for us as many of our coastal cities and food production areas go under water.
• Despite the overwhelming opinion in society that greens are entirely left wing, I'm neither left wing nor right wing.  I think that Peter Costello did a reasonably good job of managing the economy in the first few terms of the Howard government and I voted Liberal twice during that time (OK, Liberal once, conservative independent once).  I did view John Howard as a bit of a liability to himself however and was quite glad to see him thrown down.
• Workchoices, in any form or under any name, needed to be disposed of and must never return.  The introduction of workchoices had me return to the ALP voting fold very quickly when I saw its effect on my business.  You would think that business owners supported workchoices?  Not as such.  Most Australian owned businesses are "small", and those small businesses employ a majority of the workforce. As a small business owner I regularly competed with large firms of overseas ownership and profit distribution -- very little of the profit from IBM, Oracle, etc, stays in Australia.  These sort of companies can implement workchoices or workplace contracts and screw over their labour force, with little deleterious effect -- there are always replacements who will work under those circumstances.  If I tried that, with a staff of 5, then my staff would quickly walk out and even losing 2 or 3 in the middle of a major project would be entirely destructive.  So for this reason I believe that the ALP's industrial relations policy is the best one for this country for a good many years yet, and the Liberals must never be allowed to regain hold on government while they still have sitting members from that era who want to bring back any part of the Liberal's past IR policy.
• On the other hand, I am mildly, although not vehemently, anti-union.  I believe that in the past the trade union movement has done great things for this country, but it is currently moribund, rife with corruption, and inclined to tactics that overstate the issues that are involved.  I believe that Kevin Rudd was a better leader, long term, than Julia Gillard simply because he was not as heavily influenced by the union movement.
• I am not religious and I believe that religion and politics belong in different "jails" to steal an IT term.  My main fear on Tony Abbott coming to power is that he is, without a doubt, unable to be restrained on certain personal religious issues that cross over into politics.  Apart from his many degrading statements regarding women in the press, he has also been published on such issues as forcing the (christian) bible to be studied in schools (YES ALL SCHOOLS INCLUDING JEWISH AND MOSLEM ONES!), revoking access to abortion, etc.  I have no idea why parts of the christian movement doubt the evidence and proof thrown up by climate change scientists, but he is also on record as saying that climate change science is "crap" and this viewpoint can be traced directly back to his christian roots.  The sooner the Liberals get rid of him, the better.
• I don't particularly care about migration.  The planet has a population problem.  Australia's population problem is insignificant by comparison. We may as well let them all in.
• I am in favour of an emissions trading scheme, and again it needs to be global (although the implementation needs to be national).  An ETS is probably the best short term way to trade our way out of high carbon pollution, and the way it works, basically, is like this:  Farmer A grows a bunch of trees.  That creates a carbon "credit" that he then sells to power station owner B.  Power station owner B puts carbon into the atmosphere and so needs to buy these credits to take the carbon back.  That costs money, so it makes B's power more expensive.  Wind farm owner C doesn't need to buy carbon credits, and so C's power doesn't get more expensive, and becomes competitive with B's otherwise cheap power.  Farmer A makes a nice little profit, electricity prices go up (which they have to do anyway) and the economy keeps turning.
• A carbon tax is a second best solution, although it's generally preferred by the deep green movement.  Basically in the scenario above, the money paid by power station owner B goes to the government that then invests it in infrastructure that helps wind farm owner C and farmer A in some indirect way.  It can also go towards projects such as restoring the Murray-Darling waterways, etc.  It has the advantage of giving the government greater control over the direction of investment in environmental restoration and so appeals to a lot of people that way.  I believe that the ETS is better because it brings in market forces directly.
• A "price on carbon" is a must have, and a starting point for either.  Farmer A needs to know how much money he's going to make by planting his trees, power station owner B needs to know what his price on burning coal is going to be so that he can factor it in to customer contracts, and entrepreneur D needs to know precisely how competitive wind farm owner C's energy is going to be so that he can invest much money in that and also make a tidy little profit.
• A global ETS, with or without a carbon tax, is a very good thing. It means that farmer A can be in Ecuador or Brazil, while coal power station B is in China, and suddenly there's a big incentive to stop chopping rainforests down.  Huge win for everyone (except B who can probably afford it anyway).
• Abolish state governments.  NZ copes quite well without them and most of ours are moribund anyway.
• Abolish the senate.  It's a waste of money.  Bring in proportional or MMP voting into a single chamber and that will do the same job.
• Abolish the monarchy.  Yes, I'm a republican and not just for Australia but for Great Britain as well.  Australia will hopefully do the right thing and ditch the Saxe-Coburg-Gothe monarchy when the current head of the household calls it quits, but surely it's time for the Poms to do the same?  It's rule by right of conquest, you know.  Time to go.
• I am an "equalist" especially when it comes to equal pay, equal access to education, equal opportunity, for everyone.  I'm not going to attempt to slur the feminists I know by pretending to be a feminist, because I'm not.  It's one small part of the equation but not the whole puzzle -- we need to get access to better education and health out to the aboriginal community, the poor and disadvantaged in this country, and then out to places like the Pacific Islands, etc.  The OLPC project is a worthwhile small part of that, support it as best as you are able.  Education needs to be free and accessible to all up to undergradute level -- education is the single best way to break the poverty cycle, and free education is an investment in the future of the country and of the planet, not just the person.

Anyway, if you're after an argument, call me out on one of the above points and you'll get one.  I rarely step back from arguing about stuff that I care about, and there's a good deal that I do care about (and some that I don't).

This week I decided that my fat and lazy abs needed a bit of a work out so that they could match the muscle tone of the rest of my body (you there! up the back! stop laughing and STFU!).  I do have a six-pack, it's in the bag with all of the other groceries.

OK, plan good, execution poor.

Monday was the ab workout from hell.  Rowing machine, lots of crunches (fast and slow), back to the bikes, then leg raises with weights, etc. Felt pretty good afterwards.

Tuesday I awoke in pain.  Quite a bit of it, not too bad though, so I'd clearly overdone it but nothing to complain about.  So on Tuesday at the gym I took it easy, worked my legs a bit and did a bit of a desultory upper arm and shoulders workout.  I could sit down OK but standing up became an issue late in the workout so I left early.

Wednesday the pain had sharpened a bit but mostly receded, so I decided it was two day up.  Those people who work out will be familiar with the concept that if you overwork a muscle group then the most distress you're likely to get from it is two days after the event, and so there's a thing I've heard people call "two day up" that's basically akin to "hair of the dog".  On that second day after the overwork you hit the muscle group again with a lower impact phased workout.  You work the muscle group until you feel pain, then stretch until you stop, and repeat a few times.  90% of the time this gives you pretty good results, the damage begins to heal and you're up and running again the next day.

10% of the time it fails dramatically.  That was today.

I awoke this morning curled into a ball, unable to move either sideways or up.  After some hauling I managed to get myself out of bed, where I stood up, or at least tried to and failed, cracking my head against the wall.  Some minutes later I could drag myself up off the floor far enough to get at some nurofen, which deadened the pain enough to get to work.  Sitting all day was the order of the day, with occasional waves of cramps, mild nausea, set aside only by munching more painkillers and interspersed by short bursts of actual getting work done.  By the end of the day I'd managed to get lunch down, and I could stand up well enough to get to the car, swing past the shop briefly (where I spent more time sitting) and home again.  I arrived to find a friend of mine up from Canberra for the weekend had swung by to visit, so I had her cook dinner for the 3 of us (she'd brought her 11 year old son) and heat me up a wheat pack or two.  After being sat curled up around a cushion, cat, or wheatbag for most of the evening she decided to take pity on me and offer me some of her strongest period pain medication which has, miraculously, stopped the hurting for long enough for me to get to bed and sleep (I think).

So my sympathies go out to each and every one of my female friends who has to put up with this sort of thing every month.  I am in true and spectacular admiration of your fortitude.

sigh.

Another facebook trojan doing the rounds, no doubt aiming to steal passwords, and another few friends had their accounts tumbled into.  Here is what to do to stop it happening to you.

First, the simple rules.

Rule 1.  The people trying to hack your accounts are either l33t h4x0rs (rarely) or pimple-faced geeks with nothing better to do (most common).  They are looking for an easy ride.  They are lazy, and generally speaking don't want to cause a major incident by identity theft.  They may be after a few dollars from your bank account, but mostly they are after a bit of fun.

Rule 2.  Most people have passwords that are pretty easy to guess.  It's either the same as their login name, or it's the same with a few numbers, or can be figured out by looking at their on line profile.

Rule 3.  Catch one, catch them all.  Most people have the same password for their facebook account as their LJ as their gmail account as their internet banking.  Either that or add or remove a few numbers from the end and you have them all.

Rule 4.  Most people who don't fall into rule 2 or rule 3 have a complex and difficult to remember password that is written on a yellow sticky note next to, or under, their keyboards.

Rule 5.  People who don't fall into rules 2, 3, or 4 make life hard for the PFGs and they will go elsewhere looking for fun.  See rule 1.

So here's what to do.

Step 1.  Get hold of a decent password safe program.  There are many of them about, and most of them are free.  The one I use is called KeePass, and it can be found here: http://keepass.info/  There is a Linux version that is compatible with KeePass version 1 files, which is here: http://www.keepassx.org/  The thing I like about it is that it's free, and it can be obtained in a "portable" edition that can be copied onto and run from a USB stick.  In fact it's not that hard to compile the Linux version statically, so that it can also be run from a USB stick.

Preferably, use a free one.  This is not an endorsement of KeePass as a product, but free is the way to go.  Whatever you do, don't use one where the source code can't be obtained, or one that says "we have a fantastic proprietary encryption algorithm that's all our own that nobody else knows about so it's ultra safe".  That is BS.  The best encryption algorithm to use is AES, preferably in the 256 bit variant.  The US government uses this algorithm for all of its defence needs and mathematicians all over the globe have been studying the algorithm for years and failed to find any faults.  The worst algorithms to use are the secret and proprietary ones, because they haven't been scrutinised by hundreds of mathematicians, and nobody knows if there are faults or not, or what those faults are.  The source code and mathematics behind AES are publically available, which makes it more secure.

Step 2. Go buy a USB stick.  Doesn't have to be big.  Get one with a swivel, that has a small loop on the swivel so that it can be stuck on your keyring.  Yes, that keyring, the one you keep your house keys on.  This is going to be your "internet" key, and you should keep it safe just like your house keys. Fetch and install KeePass or KeePassX or whatever onto the USB stick.  Make a folder on the USB stick and call it something like "holiday snaps".  Copy a couple of hundred of the most boring holiday photos you can find into the folder, preferably the ones of Uncle Ernie when he got drunk at your sister's 21st and felt up the cocktail waitress.  In addition to those holiday snaps, create your password safe file (KeePass calls this a KDB file but you don't have to give it a .kdb extension, in fact you can call it ernie_001.jpg.  This will confuse your JPEG viewer but won't bother KeePass.

Step 3.  Think of one password that you will never forget.  That's going to be the password to your KDB file.

Step 4.  Use KeePass or your favourite program to generate new, random passwords to all of your on line applications.  You want a different password for each app, so your facebook password and your LJ password and your internet banking password will all be different.  What size password you use may vary from place to place, e.g. LJ requires 8 or more characters in a password, and some require a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 32 or something like that.  16 or so randomly generated characters of upper & lower case plus some numbers is usually pretty good.

Don't try to think of different clever passwords for each application.  Use the program to generate a random one, within the constraints allowed by the application.  There might be something in your thinking that allows a hacker to guess what password you might choose, but nobody can guess what happens when you push the "Generate" button to create a random one.

The other simple rules

This is not a tutorial about how to use KeePass.  It's a pretty simple program, really, and there are many others like it.  There are on line manuals and tutorials and stuff for them, it's not rocket science.

Save your KDB file back to your USB stick.  Carry the USB stick with you.  Don't copy the KDB files to your hard disk, and don't write a copy of your password onto the USB stick (or on a yellow sticky note on your keyboard).

Make a backup copy of the USB stick every now and again (get a second USB stick) and give it to your mother, sister, aunt or some other trusted family member (probably not Uncle Ernie, especially if he's prone to getting drunk and feeling up cocktail waitresses).  Don't tell the person who you give the USB stick to what it's for, or what's on it, or what the password is.  If you like, make a copy of the password, put it in a sealed envelope with the name of the KDB file and give it to your solicitor, to be opened in the case of your accidental or untimely death.

Don't write the passwords down somewhere else.  It's an easy enough job to cut and paste the passwords from the KeePass program into your web browser or whatever other program you use that needs the passwords (your work's VPN client software for example).  KeePass has a special mechanism where it will put the password into the clipboard so you can copy and paste it for 10 seconds or so, and then erase it.

Although I appreciate your friendly concern and understand the difficulty an organisation such as yours has in raising funds, I am sorry to inform you that I am unable to contribute to your treasury at this point in time, or at any other point in time I might add.

The reason for this is, primarily, because you're just so damned wrong it's not funny. Although I have been approached by less deserving organisations (the chap who was fundraising for the KKK who approached me as I was "engaged in personal business" in a bathroom in Pennsylvania springs immediately to mind), I can't consider your organisation worth contributing to.

Let's look at the bare facts.

Elizabeth Windsor, usually referred to as Queen Elizabeth II, nee Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gothe (before the family changed it, that's their business why) is currently the head of state of Australia because she's the head of state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Now I have many friends and even a few relatives in said United Kingdom, however it's a completely different country on the other side of the planet and I have no desire that their head of state should be our own. Their language is similar (although more restrained) and they have a past association with this nation which dates to prior to my date of birth, however their phone prefix is +44 (as opposed to our +61) and their internet domain suffix is .uk and not .au. They are a different nation, with different goals and ideals. I don't want to adopt their head of state any more than I want to adopt their cricketing standards.

The reason that the head of state of the UK is also head of state of Australia is essentially, as I'm sure you'll agree, by right of conquest. I'm not convinced that I'm willing to be ruled by a head of state who rules by right of conquest.

Furthermore, her legitimacy as head of state of the UK is also founded by right of conquest. This is given that she is, very vaguely, a direct descendent of the original conqueror, William I (known as "the Bastard" or perhaps more frequently "the Conqueror"). Even for someone without a thorough grounding in history, a comparison of William's two nicknames would lead one to immediately infer that he did not rule by any legitimate claim of law. This acceptance of William's lack of legitimate claim is generally accepted by most historians today.

Even if you accept the doubtful claim that William was the rightful king of the nation that eventually became the UK, there are many counter claims to the actual legitimacy of claim of his current batch of successors. The most obvious one would be the abdication by legal fiction of the last ruler of the house of Stuart and the installation of the Dutch Stadtholder William III of Orange as King (and Mary II as Queen) of Great Britain in 1690. British subjects today like to kid themselves that their nation has never been conquered by force of arms, but the invasion of the troops of the Dutch Republic in 1690 and the subsequent change in government in Great Britain can only be described as a successful invasion and conquest of similar nature to William's.

As I stated earlier, I'm not certain that I wish to be ruled by a head of state who claims legitimacy by right of conquest, and more specifically I am unwilling to be ruled by a head of state who claims legitimacy by right of conquest from another who claimed it by right of conquest. Who knows where this could lead to -- the UK certainly doesn't have the largest navy on the planet as it once used to, nor does Australia have an army of sufficient size to fend off invasion forces from various other parts of the planet. I am certain that the continued upholding of this type of rule as legal and legitimate could eventually result in Australia being ruled by King Pat Robertson 1st, or King Kim Jong Il 1st.

If it's all the same by everyone else, I'll put my tick in the box marked "I would rather vote for my head of state".

I hope that's OK by you guys. Sorry to hear about the funding.

* Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, if you haven't already twigged.

So here's my current strategy for wrangling my contact lists.

I have a spare gmail account, linked to my android phone (android syncs its contact lists with a gmail account).

I have accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn and here. I'm not so worried about my LJ contacts because they tend to duplicate people I email and I have my contacts in email as well. Plus LJ doesn't really export a contact list.

My main email account is an IMAP one for which I have several email clients. For various reasons my email client of choice is Seamonkey although I occasionally access it from a machine using Thunderbird (because it's a stripped down nav laptop and the extra weight of seamonkey is a hassle on that machine).

The process involves:

* I started with my phone list off the old Nokia phone which I loaded into Thunderbird using the Nokia PC client (actually told the Nokia client that I was loading into outlook express, but Thunderbird was able to intercept the incoming address book and use it). I then exported that using Zindus (http://www.zindus.com/) to gmail.
* Export all of the contact lists from Seamonkey to CSV file (other email clients do much the same).
* In some cases the contact CSV files need to be edited so that the heading on the name field reads "Name". I then remove any extraneous columns and as far as the main (email) contacts are concerned I remove everything other than name and email address.
* Upload all of the contact CSV file to gmail contacts and manually merge those which are the same. This gave me most of my contacts in the one place with email addresses (from Seamonkey) and phone numbers (from the Nokia phone) merged.
* Connect to LinkedIn and Facebook and use these to search my gmail account for people who have addresses there, and add friend/contact requests (I don't send out invites to people who aren't already on LI or FB, that's just spamming really).
* Export my LinkedIn contact list to CSV file and load that into gmail contacts. Send that back to Facebook for another round of invites.
* After responses come back in, use the android "Facebook sync" app. This loads photos from Facebook for your friends who are in your contact list directly into the phone. The android will then sync these to the gmail contact list so your gmail contact list now includes photo icons for your contacts.

Things I like:

* gmail contacts syncs easily and automatically with android, so my contact list on my phone is always up to date.
* gmail contacts is an easy web based place to manage your contacts, with easy and intelligent merging of contacts. This is especially useful as some people are called (e.g.) "Matt" in my phone and "Matthew" in my email contact list.

Things that are lacking:

* Photo export from LinkedIn.
* Automation of all of this.
* Ability to search Facebook contacts from LinkedIn and vice-versa. Everything has to go through gmail.
* Automated sending of Facebook and LinkedIn invites from one place.
* Automated searching of twitter feeds of all of the above -- perhaps this is a job for PeopleBrowsr?

My flight from Toronto to LA has been delayed but with cheaper wi-fi here in Toronto than LA and plenty of time at LAX to change flights I'm not complaining. My bags are checked through all the way to Sydney so the worst thing that can happen is I get home late.

Surprisingly for many people it was my first trip to Canada, mostly because a single entry USA visa doesn't allow me to trip across the border from the USA while on a trip there. I have family in Canada so I really should have visited before.

Highlights for me of the Toronto trip include:

* Darius and Lynette's wedding, it was an honour to be invited to this and a pleasure to travel half way around the world for it. The ceremony was brief and intimate, the reception was excellent and the wedding cake (thanks to Magda) was spectacular. The food was as good as anyone could expect, I had the beef and it was very tender (unlike the piece of shoe leather that a certain establishment to remain nameless served me on a previous trip to North America). Guys, I hope you enjoyed exploring the "care package" I brought; and no you really don't have to sample the "you'll love home brand imitation maple flavoured syrup", that one was a joke.

* Seeing Niagara Falls from the other side -- I'd previously seen it from the USA side but the above mentioned visa restrictions had prevented me from getting to the Canadian side in the past. I had to laugh at the town though, it was the worst example of stereotypical USA carnival town you could imagine.

* KWDS -- dance symposium which followed. Everyone else's main highlights have been posted elsewhere so I'll refrain from going into great detail. It was good to meet new people (Emily, Emma, Wendy, David), catch up with others I see only rarely (Geoffrey, Katrina, Rosina) renew the occasional odd past acquaintance (Felice, whose book I've been reading and will send comments on shortly) as well as see everyone I see all the time on these visits (Darius, Lynette, Gwommy, Gregory, Magda, Charles & Elaine, etc). Highlights were the Saturday night ball especially La Volta with Phillip, and Sunday afternoon dance party (where Darius and I had inadvertently dressed almost identically, if someone has some photos please share) which I got to run, and played dance tag with Darius and Gwommy.

* Spa party. Having a hot spa at the end of a dance symposium is a very good thing. By Sunday afternoon I couldn't even lift my feet, however after a half hour in a hot spa I could walk again although I'm sure my legs will be frozen again after sitting on planes for the next 24 hours.

* Maple Syrup! I'll be bringing some home.

Anyway, my next USA trips will probably be Pennsic in 2010 and then followed by Terpsichore in 2011 (when Easter falls later, meaning festival will be later and I can get away to Terpsichore without it conflicting).

Moon and Sixpence. Murray St. Saturday 21st Feb. Probably start somewhere out the front depending on the heat. Hope to see you there. Be there or be somewhere else.

Addit: Around 3pm as previously advertised on faceplant.

Various environmentally aware friends of mine (plus those of us with detergent allergies) might be interested in this:

http://arjen-lentz.livejournal.com/128791.html