Tales of interest

If you are like us, the Christmas period offered the first chance to visit family and friends since the arrival of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the resurgence of the virus during our time in Melbourne has meant that we wanted to the monitor the list of exposure sites as listed on the DHHS website, a task which is well suited to a python script rather than one of us.

In the quest for the perfect hiking tent, we found ourselves with a Nemo equipment Dagger Ultralight backpacking tent. Our friend had recently purchased the 3-person tent and the tent was (at the time) the number one pick on OutdoorGearLab, which meant that even though we had not tired the tent ourselves, it was likely going to be a good-quality tent. Given the Australia Tax can be particularly brutal for outdoor gear, we elected to purchase the tent in the USA and have it shipped to a friend living in Washington DC who was very kind and offered to forward it onto us. In the end it would turn out that his partner would be coming to Australia for a visit, so she took it directly with her on the plane and avoided the shipping kerfuffle. The first thing we did with the tent was take it on an eight day walk: the South Coast Track in Tasmania’s wilderness and delightfully the tent was up to the task.

Directly following on from my previous post TPG: a scourge to society, this post could be entitled
TPG: a scourge to society II. The quality of our internet connection was appalling, but TPG would not believe me. I saw this as a challenge, and subsequently set out to prove to them our connection was junk. Previously, I was monitoring if I could connect to google; however, I also wanted to monitor our internet speed. Using speedtest.net I was able to create a picture of what was happening with our connection, but the results were not entirely clear.

According to their website, “TPG is a leading Australian ISP Telco providing cost effective and reliable NBN, ADSL2+, Fibre, DSL Internet Broadband with Phone and BYO Mobile plans”. In my experience, TPG is the bottom rung of the Australian internet ladder - which is no mean feat - and unable to deliver an acceptable quality of internet service. Moreover, their ability to gag their own support staff and find seemingly the least competent technicians and engineers is simply astounding. Unfortunately, what adds the salt to this festering wound is the state internet infrastructure in Australia, which has been purposely crippled by commercial interests to the detriment of all. The result is that you have no choice but to accept your lot. During my fight for a better internet connection, I made a few scripts which might be useful to others and also produced some neat plots, so if that is your thing please, take a look around.