Thomo’s Wargaming and Travel Tales
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 thomo the lost posted this in  General on  July 2nd, 2009
I was reading in the Sydney Morning Herald today that at a speech at the National Press Club John Hartigan, the chief executive of News Limited, launched yet one more attack on bloggers, news aggregators and others. The Herald reported:
His most scathing attack was reserved for bloggers, who, he said, lacked resources and access to key decision-makers.
“In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance,” he said.
He said blogs often gave a platform for “radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence”.
Now that last quote, “radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence” is a rich criticism coming from the head of a company such as News Limited which boasts such heavyweights of in depth journalism such as the Daily Telegraph in Australia and the Mirror and Sun in the U.K. Yep, there are some wonderful examples of of publications famous for not making “sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence”.
I won’t even go neat the “massive ignorance” that the Telegraph has managed to push in the last 12 months!
thomo the lost posted this in Naval, Peshawar, Wargaming on June 28th, 2009
I thought I should post a quick update of where I am up to with wargaming at the moment. I have given the Victorian Science Fiction (aeronef and land ironclads) a bit of a break at the moment as I wanted to get some 1/3000th ships out of the way. I have been painting a World War 1 Italian fleet. Up to today, I have the battleships finished and based along with about half of the cruisers (mainly the big armoured cruisers). The rest of the vessels (6 submarines, another 10 cruisers, 16 destroyers and about 22 torpedo boats) are almost ready to slide down the slipway, needing just some minor work to get them complete. You can see progress to day below.
Well, OK, the Wirraway is not a World War 1 Italian Ship – but it was in the same directory. 
On the blocks for the next batch of work is the Austrian World War 1 fleet – I’ll detail those later. Also, the German Aeronef fleet for Peshawar is begging to be painted as are the English and German Land Ironclads. Then there are the British, German and Russian land forces as well. I will get back into those shortly as well. One other thing I am looking at is mind mapping my Victorian Science Fiction as the scope of that little project has been growing.
Lastly, for the regular games with Terry, I think we’ll give Ancient Command and Colours a break for a while and play some GMT War Galley. I have the box next to me now and perhaps tonight, in front of Masterchef Australia, I’ll start punching the counters out.
thomo the lost posted this in General on June 20th, 2009
So, yesterday was one of those days for news in the paper and a few articles caught my eye (including the MSE article I mentioned in the last post). Of course, the Moran family hit was something that if it had not involved the death of a man would have been truly funny in a black kind of way. Other news was:
Pensioner risks losing home over unpaid BigPond account – this was a classic piece of typical Telstra combined with what happens corporate-wide when you outsource everything. Seems that the pensioner ran up a bill of about $1000 and hadn’t paid. Telstra stopped chasing her, added some fees, sold the bill off to a collection agency who added some more fees, got the bill up to $2000 (how does a bill in Australia double?) and then took the pensioner to Bankruptcy Court where administrative fees are now added to it all and from a $1000 start, the pensioner now owes $23,000. Well done Telstra – seems you have retained the Sol what’s-‘is-name efficiency!
Tears as senator’s daughter expelled from chamber – this has received a lot of coverage lately with opinions kind of split about whether the Senate should change its regulations to permit a child being in the chamber with a parent. I have a problem with this (a couple actually). The first is that it is a workplace and as such, there are risks involved in having a child around. The fact that it is the senate chamber does not make it any safer and it is, in my opinion, irresponsible parenting to have a child there. Secondly, if the Senate permits senator’s children in the chamber, then this sets a precedent for all other workplaces or creates another inequity in Australian society. So, for example, would we permit a child in an Army Main Battle Tank because dad is the driver? Perhaps in the No 3 smelter at the BHP steelworks in Newcastle? Why should these places be treated differently to the Senate? The third issue is one of that of fellow workers. They do not come to work to have children running around the office which may effect their work output. Unfair on colleagues, unsafe for the child and inequitable for society as a whole.
He had her jailed for adultery, now she’s headed to Australia with him – this was a classic. Bloke rings the police in Dubai when his missus disappears into a hotel with another bloke for a bit of jiggery-pokery. Police then arrest her and the other bloke, they are sentenced for naughtiness and spend 6 weeks in gaol in Dubai. She gets out of gaol and heads off to Australia (as she has been deported from Dubai) with her husband – seems that they have kissed and made up. Why is this interesting? Well, I am wondering if the Australian immigration folks actually let her in as she has recently been incarcerated and has a criminal record overseas. After all, she did 6 weeks in the slammer, the woman who pinched the bar mat from the bar in Phuket and was subsequently denied a visa to the US, she was only fined $20!
Yep, it’s good news week!
thomo the lost posted this in Technology on June 20th, 2009
Microsoft to provide free anti-virus software. I saw this article in the Technology section of the Sydney Morning Herald on 19 June 2009. I read it and my initial thought was “great”. The gist of the article was that a beta version of “Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) will be publicly available for download beginning June 23 in Brazil, Israel and the United States.” It will then be rolled out in other countries later in the year.
Microsoft noted that
Cost and performance barriers prevent many consumers from using up-to-date security software to protect their PCs
The idea with MSE was therefore to provide a regularly updated solution to Malware that was available to all users, not just those with the money to pay for anti-virus upgrades.
I wondered about that sentiment as there are some good free anti-virus services available (AVG comes to mind in particular) but with Microsoft now providing the service for free, will this see an end to the current anti-virus firms.
After thinking about it for a while longer my thought was “crap – MSE will be such a target for the Black Hats when it is released – can any of those folks resist a target like that?”
thomo the lost posted this in Asia Pacific, Mongolia, Technology on June 19th, 2009
As Microsoft has taken a leaf from the Google book and released a product in Beta and as it was lunch time I thought I’d have a play with the two search engines. Rather than just leap out and search some obscure term (I’ll do that later) I thought I’d first compare the mapping side of the applications.
The first thing I noticed was that there are a number of common map scales between the two applications. For example, starting with a 2 kilometre scale and looking up, the scales up to 200 kilometres were:
| Bing |
Google |
| 3 km |
2 km |
| 7 km |
5 km |
| 10 km |
10 km |
| 25 km |
20 km |
| 50 km |
50 km |
| 100 km |
100 km |
| 200 km |
200 km |
It is therefore fairly easy to do a straightforward comparison between the two mapping applications – sort of a side by side comparison.
 I wanted to give both mapping servics a bit of a test so I selected a location I had been to before but that was a little out of the way. I selected Sukhbaater in Mongolia. I did that for a number of reasons, not least of which was that there are a number of locations with the same name in Mongolia. The one I was after was the town nearby to Altanbulag, the scene of Thomo’s detention at the hands of an overzealous customs officer who thought I looked like a terrorist. So, in Mongolia there are many Sukhbaatars – there is one Aimag (province) called Sukhbaatar whose capital is Baruun-urt and there is an Aimag called Selenge whose capital is Sukhbaatar. It was the latter one I was looking for. The image to the left is from Microsoft’s Bing and shows the pin located in the north of Mongolia, near the Russian border with the pin covering the town of Sukhbaatar.
 The image to the right is the Google Maps image of the same search. Clearly we are nowhere near the Russian border but rather south-east of Ulaanbaatar and near to the town of Baruun-urt which I also visited and had a wonderful shower in. Google has changed the original search term from just “Sukhbaatar, Mongolia” to “Sükhbaatar, Sukhbaatar, Mongolia” whilst Bing refers to the town it located as “Sühbaatar, Mongolia”. Both these spellings (with the umlauts) come from Anglicisation of Mongolian Cyrillic characters used for this name. Mongolians, when they Anglicise the spelling, simply spell it as “Sukhbaatar” which is the way it is displayed on all the English language signs in the country.
I searched again. This time I used the term “sukhbaatar, selenge, mongolia” and selected the 200 km view. Now Bing, which remember had returned a good result in the first search, returned an error (shown below and to the left).
Google maps, however, managed to find the correct location as shown in the map below and to the right.
However, one thing that is apparent from the displayed maps at the moment is the greater amount of detail available in the Bing map. There are just so many more towns shown on that map than the Google one. I found this when I tried other places I have been to in Mongolia as well.
For once I think Microsoft has it over Google. Whilst I still like using Google maps (integrates seamlessly with my Picasa photo albums as well as helps me to not get lost by running as an application on my mobile phone), I do think that the Microsoft map is a superior product. See particularly the last two maps on this post, they are both the same area set with a 50km scale – notice the difference in the number of towns displayed.
  I do wish, however, that both companies would start to use the Mongolian Anglicisation methods for writing Mongolian words in English – “sukhbaatar” is clearer these days than “sühbaatar” or “sükhbaatar”.
thomo the lost posted this in History, Naval on June 12th, 2009
 A recent post to Thomo’s Hole from Cesar commenting on “Banjo” Patterson’s poem, The Ballad of the ‘Calliope’ by A B “Banjo” Paterson, and a previous posting in Thomo’s Hole on the Cyclone in Samoa – March 1889 led me to do a little more reading on this, especially as Patterson was a newspaper reporter by trade and as the historic texts of many of Australia’s early newspapers are now available online.
The Brisbane Courier of 22 January 1889 had an interesting piece in relation to this – namely:
The War in Samoa.
[PER CABLE MESSAGE.]
LONDON, January 21.
Senator Bayard, the American Secretary of State, has heard that the United States subjects imprisoned by the German authorities at Samoa have been released. He has expressed the opinion that the whole situation has been exaggerated, and that probably it will be found, when detailed reports are to hand, that American rights have not been infringed.
AUCKLAND, January 21.
The object of the German war vessel Eber in visiting Auckland is to open cable communication with Berlin and to await despatches from the German authorities regarding Samoa. The Eber has taken no further action since the recent fighting, pending instructions from the Government. The officers of the Eber deny the statement published in a cable alleging that German sailors burned American flags and imprisoned American subjects.
The Calliope sailed for Samoa to-day to relieve the Royalist
The West Australian noted on Wednesday, 23 January 1889 (presumably as a result of receiving the same telegraph/cable message as the Brisbane Courier above), that:
THE SITUATION AT SAMOA.
(By Telegraph.)
(From our Correspondent.)
Auckland, Jan 21.
The object of the visit of the German warship Eber to Auckland, is to open cable communication with Berlin and await despatches. The German authorities at Samoa have taken no further action since the recent fighting, and will not do so pending instructions from their Government. The officers of the Eber deny the statement which alleged that German sailors had burned American flags and imprisoned American subjects, H.M.S. Calliope sailed for Samoa to-day to relieve H.M.S. Royalist. A fire occurred at the German consulate at Apia on the 9th inst. It was caused by a lamp upsetting. Before the flames were extinguished 9 large and 13 smaller buildings were destroyed, including the Hamburg Hotel and a Samoan church.
Some fire – 22 building destroyed and supposedly an accident, although at a time of a great deal of international tension.
The Adelaide Advertiser of Saturday 30 November 1901 ran a brief obituary of a Lieutenant Kane, nephew to Rear-Admiral Henry Kane of the Calliope. It read:
Lieutenant Kane, who died so gallantly at Fort Itala on September 26, with “no surrender” as his last words, was a nephew of Rear-Admiral Henry C. Kane, C.B., whose indomitable pluck and seamanship saved the warship Calliope at Samoa in in March, 1889-when, in the teeth of an almost unprecedented hurricane, he, relying on his engines, steamed to sea. It will be remembered that the vessels that remained at the anchorage were all wrecked, with a loss of 130 lives. Lieutenant Kane was also a nephew of Mr. Justice Kennv, who was M.P. for the Stephen’s Green division of Dublin and Irish Solicitor-General in the Government.
I can see I will need to do some research on Fort Itala now, which was, as I understand, captured by the Boer General Botha on 26 September 1901. This was after an unsuccessful attempt earlier (and reported in the New York Times of the time).
All in all, the Calliope is definitely something of a “Boys Own” kind of tale.
thomo the lost posted this in Thomo on June 11th, 2009
It’s been three years since Dad’s passing and nothing much has changed since last year. I still think of him every day. Something I say, something I see or something I hear tweaks the memory and thoughts of Dad drift into my head again. I still miss him although the pain is not so great any more. I still miss his wit, his wonderful view of life and his love of life. Others tease me but none so well as he could.
Mum is still doing it hard. She has times when she looks around and goes to tell him something then notices that he is not there any more. At least she feels comfortable in his train room now, occupied as it is with my books. I know she has blue days still, something she hears, or sees, or smells, or remembers and “gets a little weepy”. I guess that is the strength of the love she shared with Dad.
Still thinking of you Dad.
thomo the lost posted this in Peshawar, Wargaming on June 9th, 2009
 As one of the main protagonists in my Peshawar Campaign, I selected the Germans. In Victorian times the Germans were very active creating a nuisance in Europe and trying to compete with the French and English in building overseas empires.
To speed the process of building a German Aeronef fleet up, I purchased the German Grand Fleet pack which has a mix of Aerostats and Aeronefs. The Aerostats are based around 5 dirigibles – which are really very easy to see in the picture. The rest of the vessels in the pack consist of a couple of battleship types, some cruisers and patrol vessels. Full contents are:
- Two Markgraf class Battleships
- Two Schleswig-Holstein class Dig Battleships
- Two Koln class Cruisers
- Two Emden class Cruisers
- Five SA15 class Escort
- Five VA7 class Escort
- Three Brandenburg class Digs
Can’t wait to get paint on these guys and see how they look with the German Land Ironclads and the 2mm infantry.
thomo the lost posted this in General on June 8th, 2009
 In a moment that really only an Aussie (and perhaps a Westie at that) can truly understand, my thong died last night. The strap finally broke. The sadness comes from the fact that these were just worn in and comfortable. The heel was so thin that light actually passed through the rubber now. As Aussie’s know, your thongs are only truly worn in when you can walk across the grass and feel the bindii thorns in your foot.
So, now I have the task of breaking in new pair of thongs. Sigh.
Vale Thongs!
thomo the lost posted this in Asia Pacific, Australia, History, Naval on June 3rd, 2009
 HMAT Bulla I was looking at some websites the other day and I came across a collection of ships that were used by the Australian government during World War 1 in particular as transports. Some were Royal Australian Navy ships (HMAS) but many were merchant vessels leased by the government (and bore the prefix HMAT – His Majesty’s Australian Transport).
HMAT Bulla caught my eye in particular, mainly because she was the first vessel I saw as I paged down the website in camouflage.
HMAT Bulla weighed 5,099 tons and had an average cruise speed of 10.5 knots. The Bulla was a prize, previously being German vessel called Hessen. Bulla was manned by Australian officers and crew and transferred to the Commonwealth Government Line on 15 April 1918.
This photo tied in well with the post in Thomo’s Hole WWI Merchant Navy Camouflage Patterns and Mal’s piece on Colour Schemes of World War 1 Warships.
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