Re: AUS & HA

["i_lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Neil - quite enjoyable on the whole.

I reckon I made a bit of a mistake by moving to Perth, rather than
Melbourne or Sydney - it's just way too parochial and backwards for me!!

Spent some time across in Melbourne and the gold coast - very much nicer!

In Automation terms, I'm very restricted in what I can do - I'm on a
temporary visa, so not allowed to buy a house and having to rent, and the
agents are really inflexible compared to the UK - we have really strict
restrictions on everything in the house... so they wouldn't let us run a
telephone extension from where the phone socket is to where we wanted to
put the router.

I'm back to using X10, and a CM11 - which I picked up cheap from Bunnings,
along with a bunch of the 'winplus home automation' kit.

Quite ironic, as I got the kit just as bunnings stopped doing it - in
exactly the same way as I did in the UK.

I love Jaycar electronics - they seem to be now where Maplin electronics
were back in the 80s, which is great (Maplin just sell crap now).

The biggest shock for me has been how freezing cold it is - like most
brits, I had a vision of Australia as being warm and sunny. A few of the
ex-pats took great joy in pointing out to me that I would be very cold -
coming from Scotland, I kinda laughed it off..

but of course, in Scotland the houses are built for the weather, so whilst
it can be -8 outside, it's a nice comfortable 20 inside. All of the houses
we have lived in here have no insulation, and only single glazing, so the
temperature is down at 3-4 degrees above zero *inside* the house at night -
for nearly six months of the year! It was a real shock.

as a side note to the UK folks - I *know* you probably don't believe me. a
steady stream of guys come across from the UK, and nobody believes it
(including me) until they spend a winter here..

I have stopped doing a lot of the computer updates I had planned - computer
equipment across in Western Australia is a cool 2-3 times more expensive
than the UK (I understand that the eastern states are better?). In work, we
see Dell servers that cost 2-3K GBP costing nearly 12K AUD (at straight
exchange rates, it's only 2:1).

I had hoped that CBus might be cheaper here - what with Clipsal being
Australian - but as with most things, it's so much more expensive that
there's not much point in looking into it (because I can't install it until
we are back in the UK anyway).

I remember the panic when Part P came into effect - but that's nothing
compared to the restrictions in Western Australia. Apparently, it's not
even legal for home owners to change plug tops (not that this stops people
- my boss's beach house is powered by a well constructed network of
extension leads!)

Again, I understand that it's better on the east coast, where Telstra's
evil grip has been loosened a bit, but the broadband situation is horrific
here - I'm right in the heart of Perth (only about 8km from the CBD), but
the best I can get is about 3Mbps.

I wanted a static IP address for hosting my exchange server etc, so I had
to go on the business package. It's costing me $189 a month for 3Mb, and I
have a 40Gb bandwidth cap. I would, quite frankly, kill for Be There's Pro
package right now!!

Basically - the short answer, I'm loving the outdoor stuff, learned to swim
(which I couldn't before I got here), and visited some amazing places (like
the Ningaloo Reef), but finding the hassle of having to rent a bit of a
damper on the things I would like to do.

I'm planning out how to do proper automation when I get back to the UK  - i
don't think I'll be able to do much while I am here.

Where abouts are you?

Ian.



------------------------------------