Despatch Australian Made World's Largest Battery Ship to Türkiye as Climate Talks Venue

This is to suggest the Australian Government borrow Hull 096 from Tasmanian shipbuilder Incat and send it to Türkiye as a venue for climate change negotiations. The world’s largest battery powered ship, which can carry 2,100 passengers is being completed for service in South America. The vessel could be temporarily renamed "Australia". This would send a message to the world that Australia is serious about renewable energy. 

There is a precedent for the use of an Incat high speed ferry as a venus at an international event. During the Sydney Olympics, Austrade organised Business Club Australia, aboard an Incat ferry at Sydney's Darling Harbour. I was a guest onboard and spoke to Robert Clifford AO, Chairman of Incat on the bridge. 

Voices of Singapore

Up to now I have not been impressed with Google AI. It seemed to just paraphrase the top search hit. But this afternoon wanting something to go to in Singapore I was frustrated by a lack of useful web hits so asked AI. This had several interesting results the first of which was an Autumn Concert for Lovely Moon at Voices of Singapore. This was an eclectic mix on European, Chinese and Japanese music. It is the only concert I have been to where the audience were invited to join in and have a group photo at the end.

History of Singapore Coffee Shops

Greetings from the Foochow Coffee Restaurant & Bar Merchants Association Singapore free muesuim on Singapore coffee shops. You need to go into the building foyer and up to the 4th floor and through the doors. Staff turned on the lights and gave a detailed talk. Or just wander around. 

Charging for Electric Trucks

Windrose electric prime mover,
Photo by Tom Worthington, CC-BY 20 October 2025

In Australian cities there are now chargers at major box retailer's car-parks and shopping centers. There are also small chargers on electricity poles in inner city streets. This week I saw a Windrose electric prime mover at an interstate highway service station, charging at the regular car chargers. Unfortunately, it was so big it was taking up two bays. There will need to be special provision for truck charging. There is still a problem with charging for those in apartments. Building managers are understandably reluctant to have charging in the basement car parks.

Designing Large Drone Weapons Systems in Australia

Ghost Shark submarines at announcement,
Photo by Anduril 9 September 2025

The Australian Government yesterday announced it will spend $1.7bn on a fleet of several dozen Ghost Shark submarines. These will be uncrewed, and made in Sydney by US company Anduril. This received limited media coverage as most of the capabilities and some of the purposes of the submarines are classified. I was asked to talk about this on ABC Radio Nightlife with Philip Clark at 1 am.

At  approximately 5.8 m, the Ghost Shark is one third to one quarter the length of the USA's Orca extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle (XLUUV). The Australian vessel has the advantage of being about the size of a standard shipping container, so it can be transported by truck, train, ship or aircraft. 

The range and power source of the vessel are classified. A reasonable guess is that initial units are powered by lithium batteries, with a diesel engine, which the Orca has,as a later option. Range is likely to be around 1,000 km, far less than the 10,000 km of the Orca, but still with an endurance of several months. These type of XLUUVs are not built for speed, as evidenced by the bulky shape. 

These XLUUVs are likely to be used initially for surveillance, mapping, and patrolling fibre optic cables. They are too small to carry the heavyweight torpedoes used by crewed submarines and too slow for topedio attacks. They are also too small to carry ship or land attack missiles. While minatore torpedoes and missiles are available, the sea mine is likely to be the primary weapon. Australia has already taken delivery of smart sea mines from RWM Italia. These could be laid by the Ghost Shark outside harbours and approaches, programmed to allow civilian to pass, to enforce a blockade. 

Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat at 2023 Avalon Airshow,
Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, 5 March 2023

Australia is also cooperating with Boeing on the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, a moderately stealthy, uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV). The Ghost Bat has been quietly under development, but came to prominence recently, when Boeing offered it to Poland, to complement F-15 crewed aircraft. The person in the rear seat of the F-15 would control multiple Ghost Bats, each armed with missiles. The  Ghost Bat could also be used to protect surveillance and tanker aircraft, while being controlled from them. Like the Ghost Shark, the Ghost Bat is small enough to be transported easily by road, sea or air. 

Ghost Gecko Concept

A third arm not yet announced for Australia defence is the land equivalent of the Ghosts: a robotic land vehicle. To fill that gap I speculated about a "Ghost Gecko", an Uncrewed Ground Vehicle (UCV) for the Australian Army. This  would be derived from the Hawkei four-wheel-drive protected mobility vehicle. The crew cab would be removed, to lighten the vehicle, and lower its profile. In its place would be an Australian made remotely controlled weapons station (RWS), with a cannon and missiles.

The main area for research and development of these platforms is not the hardware. The problem is the level of autonomous control available. Submarines cannot easily communicate when underwater. The Ghost Shark will need to be able to make decisions itself. The Ghost Bat can be communicated with more easily, however ione operator may be controlling multiple aircraft simultaneously, so a level of autonomy is still needed. Land vehicles have fewer issues, except where large numbers are used. These are issues which are addressed in computer and engineering departments of universities world wide, including in Australia.

Using an Android Phone as a Desktop Computer

Equipment to turn phone into a desktop computer, 
Photo by Tom Worthington,
CC-BY, 6 September 2025

After years of trying, yesterday I was finally able to plug my generic Android phone into a monitor, keyboard and mouse, to turn it into a desktop computer. This was with a Unihertz Atom L phone running Android 11, a second hand Dell D6000s Usb-C Docking Station and an unbranded USB-A To USB Type C OTG Adapter.

First I installed  Synaptics' free Displaylink for Android app. Then I plugged a Dell power supply, mouse, keyboard and monitor into the docking station. I inserted the USB-A plug of the station into the OTG adaptor and the adaptor into the phone. After some head scratching and rebooting the phone, I was asked if I wanted the display sent to the dock. 

The phone display on screen looks like a giant portrait phone display. So I then needed to set the phone to the smallest font, and rotate it to horizontal, so it matched the screen. Within an application, such as web browsing or Google Document, the mouse and keyboard worked fine, like a desktop application. But for moving between applications I used the phone touchscreen. If you need to bash out a book chapter, this would be fine. But you would not be wanting to be working between applications.

The docking station plus power supply is much larger than the phone and there are a lot of cables. This would be fine to leave on a desk, but a nuisance if carrying around. There are smaller adaptors, but do they use DisplayLink? Also the station doesn't charge the phone via the USB cable (there are OTG adaptors which allow you to inject power, but I bought the cheapest one). 

Google are working on a desktop mode for Android, currently in Beta for version  16. This will make it much easier to use applications on a large screen. For non-power users, this should be sufficient. You would just plug one cable into your phone and be in desktop mode.

Fearless Women in fiction and reality

Greetings from the Canberra Bowling Club, where I am attending an author talk by Catherine McCullagh. The event is hosted by Fearless Women for book week. Catherine writes alternate history novels about strong women around WWII. 

I am not sure why I am here. I received an invitation via LinkedIn, but not sure who from. While a fan of alternate history war stories but who knows that?

The last time I was perplexed at an author talk they became a best seller. 

It was an entertaining and informative talk on how to write and some book excerpts. I suggested crowdsourcing details from fans as John Birmingham did for the Axis of Time aeries.

Voice data wireless modem for a return of the home phone

TP-Link TL-MR6500v, 
N300 4G LTE Telephony Wi-Fi Router

My home wireless internet service has been working very reliably. However, after being rushed to hospital in an ambulance recently, I thought it might be useful to have a home phone. In an emergency I don't want to hunt around to find a phone and hope it works. So I connected my home wired phone to a 4G modem. I could not find a single Sim which would do this, so had to run two modems: one for data and one for voice.

Wireless desk phone  

My first option was to buy a 4G wireless desk phone. These look like an old fashioned analog phone, but have a slot for a SIM card and the electronics of a dumb mobile phone inside. These also act as a WiFi hub for home Internet access. They are sold in Australia for seniors, who want the comfort of an old fashioned home phone.

I found one online which also has an ethernet socket. Unfortunately when it arrived this did not work on the Telstra network. So I sent it back and tried again. I ordered another model, but the supplier had discontinued it and returned my money.

Wireless Modem with Phone Socket

For my third attempt I purchased a TP-Link TL-MR6500v, which is a slightly more expensive version of the wireless modem I already had. It is about one centimeter wider, and has a RJ-11 phone socket added on the back. The configuration settings allow the socket to be used for Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) or Voice Over LTE  (VoLTE). VOIP requires purchasing an additional phone service, so calls can be made. However, VoLTE uses the mobile phone account associated with the SIM card inserted in the modem. The phone is then essentially free, with the internet access.

Felix Mobile SIM

My existing Telstra data only SIM worked fine in the new router. This might have been sufficient, if I could make emergency phone calls. However, I was unable to determine, with any certainty, if I could. I tried asking Google, but got conflicting answers.

When I did this search: "Emergency call on telstra data sim", Google AI said yes, I could:

"Yes, you can make emergency calls (000 or 112) on a Telstra data SIM, even if it's a data-only SIM and doesn't have a phone number"

However when I searched on "use telstra data only sim for emergency call", Google AI said no, I couldn't:

"No, a Telstra data-only SIM cannot be used to make emergency calls (like calling 000 in Australia). Emergency calls require a voice service, which is not included in data-only SIM plans." 

I solved the problem by replacing the data only SIM with an ordinary voice/data SIM from another provider (Felix Mobile, owned by TPG). This is $5 a month cheaper than the Telstra data only service and like it is shaped to 1.5 Mbps when the data is used up (rather than being cut off).

I plugged the wireless modem into a phone socket on the wall with an RJ-11 cable (cost $1 at a second hand store). The wall phone in the kitchen, which has been unused for more than a decade, then worked (I kept the phone because it covered a large hole a lazy phone installer left). Felix Mobile uses the Vodafone network, which is different to the service I use for my phone, so if one fails, the other might keep working. The phone is powered from the wireless modem, which in turn is powered from an uninterruptible power supply, so it will keep working in a blackout.   

Amaysim

The Felix Mobile SIM worked fine for calls and data on my laptop. But it did not work at all for my set top box. I am not using the set top box for video streaming, just downloading the program guide. Even so, it appears Felix don't allow more than one data device connected at a time, the service being intended for a smartphone. I could not find a reasonably priced service with shaped data which also had phone access. So I signed up for a year long Pay As You Go (PAYG) service from Amaysim, which uses the Optus network. This charges by the minute for calls and per megabyte for data. The charges are high, but I will not be calling out from the phone normally and I have switched off data access, using the modem just as an interface to the analog phone. I have replaced the Telstra Sim for data in my old modem. I paused the Felix service, so I still have an account if needed, but am not charged (it is sitting in my dual Sim phone). This is not an elegant solution, but workable.

User Group Alive and Well in Sydney

Greetings from the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG) meeting at Google Sydney. I haven't been to a Slug meeting for years. It is good to see nothing has changed. The same pizza and soda, the same talk topic made entirely of acronyms and attendees who look like extras from Big Bang Theory.

Slug talks are very technical and practical. This is about advanced software which anyone can use. Tonight was on ZFS, with the speaker admitted not being an expert. They then went into detail, contradicting that. Of course it wouldn't be a Slug meeting without a free software zealot taking the speaker to task and someone pointing out a error. Also 85 is often something incidental which is useful, in this case that Gamma was used to generate the slides.

Backing up, the topic tonight l, is a very boring one, untill something goes wrong and you need it. Several decades ago my email stopped working when someone flew an aircraft into the office complex holding the server. It took days to recover.

Wherever you are in the world there will be a user group for something you use, so go along.

HIR, a play about what?

 

Yesterday I attended HIR at the New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney. This is a confronting work about a dysfunctional family. An abused wife takes revenge on her husband, a daughter in transition and a son back from war wondering what happened to the family he left. This is not Broadway Bound, being confronting. All performances are good, as is the set, but it is hard work for the audience, with a few laughs. HIR might be a metaphor for current US politics.

Google AI Gives Wrong Size Conversion for Shoes

I wanted to convert a shoe size from european to US. So I typed "eu38 shoe size us mens" into Google search. The AI result was: "A EU 38 shoe size for men in the US is typically a size 7 or 7.5. Some sources might list it as 7.5". There was a small image of a chart from Bespoke Unit, next to the text. When enlarged this indicated a EU 38 was a US 6. However, the Wikipedia's "European shoe size conversion", and most other sources, has a EU 38 shoe as equivalent to between US 5.5 and 6.5, which is a long way from a 7.5. 

Everyone looks familiar at the Sydney Writer's Festival

Just been to one free and one paid session at the Sydney Writer's Festival. The wine was expensive and seats few at the bar. It had the atmosphere of "Shut up and write", with budding authors tapping away at laptops.

Turned on to the Vibrator Play

On a whim today, I went along to the matinee of "In the next room, or the Vibrator Play" at the New Theatre in Sydney. The play, witten in 2009 by Sarah Ruhl was surprisingly thought provoking, as well as very amusing. It is set in victorian era USA. A progressive physician is using the newly invented electric vibrator to treat nervous conditions, while failing to pay attention to his young wife. This allows for some humour about the effect the treatment has, as well as more serious issues of the effects of the narrow lives women were forced to lead. The play runs until Saturday 17 May at the New Theatre, Newtown, Sydney.

The set design by Tom Baderman is lavish, unlike the usual New Theatre austerity. There were some fun effects, with the lights dimming each time the industrial strength vibrator was switched on. Costumes were also lavish, but had to be practical, with several of the cast shedding their outer garments on stage. 

Sarah Greenwood stood out in a uniformly good cast. Her american accent was unobtrusive, reminding me of a young Meg Ryan, in one of her quirky rom com roles. 

The play seemed to be descending into farce, with people popping in through different doors, catching the characters in compromising positions, but that passed. Also the playwright tried perhaps a little too hard to cram too many social issues into the script. However, this can be treated as simply entertainment, or you can try to catch all the references. 

Some elements of the play are stranger than fiction, such as mention of Edison electrocuting assorted animals, to try to discredit his rival Tesla's ACS current electric system. 

Sofa Upgrade Seventeen Years On

Seventeen years ago, I purchased a Delta modular sofa from King Furniture in Annandale, Sydney. Recently I found a module for this system at Vinnies. It needed cleaning, but the biggest problem was no legs. So I looked online and found that while the Delta has gone through several upgrades, parts were still available. 

As I was in Sydney, I went back to the same store I had ordered from 17 years ago. Two helpful staff took me through the intricacies of which spare parts fitted which model sofa, which height legs I needed (adjustable or fixed, what finish). I handed over $50 and left with four legs and two brackets to turn the sofa into a bed. The legs and brackets simply push into sockets on the chairs. King's modular furniture is not cheap, but as I can attest, is durable and flexible.

More help points for Sydney Central Station?

"This is to suggest installing more help points in Sydney Central Station. Last week I was descending on an escalator from platform 21, when I saw someone fall backwards on the up escalator. They were being dragged up feet first, with arms flailing, as they attempted to get up. I was worried they may be injured, so ran down and pressed the emergency stop button. I looked around but could see no staff, nor an emergency help button. Two other members of the public (more spritely than me) ran up the escalator and helped the person to their feet. However, they were obviously injured, so I called Triple-0 on my phone and asked for an ambulance. As I was describing the injuries to the emergency operator, two station staff arrived, summoned by another bystander, who had finally found a help point. I handed my phone to the senior staff member, and after they talked to the ambulance center, returned it to me and I left the station." Sent to Transport for NSW, 19 April 2025

Apart from being unable to find any way to summon station staff, I had difficulty describing where I was, being underground away from streets. So I have now installed the Emergency+ app from the emergency services. This includes what3words, which uses 3 words to identify every 3 square meters of the planet. 

Refurbished Dell Latitude E7290 for Teaching with Linux

My Dell Latitude E7270 laptop had developed the disconcerting habit of blanking out the external HDMI signal at random. This 12.5" laptop was a premium product in 2016 but after four years of intensive use in my hands (second hand), it needed replacing. Perhaps I could have had the unit repaired, but the simplest option was to buy a newer model, the E7290, refurbished from the same place as the previous model, Australian Computer Traders. This time I purchased direct, not through Kogan. 

The package arrived on time, looked brand new (but with a HP USB power supply). One catch was that when I booted the machine it had the logo of a mining company on the startup screen. It looked as though Microsoft Windows was still registered to the previous owner. This was not a great problem as I was installing the Ubuntu version of Linux and erasing Windows. There were a few difficulties with Ubuntu: as per Dell's instructions I turned off the BIOS security. The install stopped part way through. I then found the suggestion online to switch off WiFi in the BIOS, install Ubuntu, and then switch it back on. This worked fine. 

The e7290 is a slim sleek minimalist machine, which looks almost the same as the e7270. It worked so well I bought another one for a friend and installed Ubuntu on that. The second unit had an illuminated keyboard, and a different generic USB charger. After installing Ubuntu, the computer would only recognise the charger intermittently. There is much written online about problems with USB chargers not being recognised by laptops. The charger worked fine with my other Dell, but neither charger would not work with the new laptop. After much head scratching I decided to work around the problem, old school. The e7290 has an old style Dell DC socket, as well as a USB C socket, for charging. So I ordered a generic DC charger ($22 from MSY), which worked fine (just make sure it has Dell's unusual 7.4 X 5.0mm plug).

Canberra Health System Second First Hand Experience

A few weeks ago I put something in a bin, turned, took a step and my head hit something very hard. I screamed in pain, had a sensation of falling backwards, then the next thing I knew I was lying on my back looking up at someone. They asked "Are you okay?". It was a question I did not know the answer to. I took a few seconds to check I was not bleeding, & my limbs were working. I then slowly got up and introduced myself. I did this to check I still knew my name, which I did. I was remarkably uninjured apart from a bruise on my head & a slight headache. I then saw I had walked into the underside of an overhead concrete set of stairs. I suspect I was a victim of the forced perspective illusion: I had seen the sloping underside of the stairs as a flat ceiling overhead, receding into the distance.

Feeling not too bad I went to lunch, negotiated a parking space and new five year contract. However, several hours later I started to feel unwell. I found I had difficulty turning my head to the side & felt slightly dizzy. This got worse and as it was late at night I went to the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre. The wait was not too long, but I found myself getting worse. Show into a consulting room I explained what had happened. It was a little difficult to explain I had hit my head on a concrete stairwell, then fallen over. Asked if I was unconscious I couldn't say (eventually I worked out I must have been for ten seconds).

Things got interesting when the nurse took my blood pressure. They looked worried, then went out and got a much bigger machine, took another reading and looked even more worried. At this point ey suggested I needed to go to hospital & with my concurrence called an ambulance (at this point I was in a slightly dissociated state & would have agreed to anything). I was surprised they picked up a phone, dialled Triple-0 and relayed my details by voice. I had assumed they would click a red button on their screen & have my details (which were already entered in the ACT Health computer) sent electronically to the ACT Ambulance Service. Later the ambulance staff relayed my details by radio to the hospital, despite, again, this being part of the same health system. 

After a few minutes ,two ambulance personnel turned up and put me on a trolley. Unfortunately there is no curb cut directly outside the the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre and nowhere to park an ambulance. These are odd omissions for a medical facility. As a result I had to be wheeled along the footpath away from the ambulance, then after a 360 degree turn on the road, back to the ambulance. This was with traffic passing on the road. Some of the paperwork started blowing away and I could see the person pushing my trolley weighing up if they could level me long enough to secure it. We were on a downward slope towards a ramp into an underground carpark, so I had visions of careering down the street like a scene from Mr Bean. Fortunately the officer decided to keep hold of me and collect the paperwork later. 

The ride to North Canberra Hospital was surprisingly uncomfortable. This was my second ride in an ambulance (I don't remember much of the first one). I could feel every bump and the corners felt like the ambulance was spinning around (no doubt due to my condition). We arrived at hospital and I was quickly wheeled in and transferred to a bed. 

A succession of people asked me what medication I was taking. Unfortunately in my confused state I could not remember. I vaguely knew it was in an app on my phone but I couldn't remember which app (there are three different government systems I have records in). I have extreme difficulty trying to access MyGov, as it requires multi-factor authentication. It turns out the records I needed were in My Health Record, which only needed a thumb scan, but I lacked the presence of mind at the time. What is surprising is that staff at a government hospital don't have access to digital medical records held on government systems, in an emergency.

I was hooked up to beeping machines and had blood taken. Some time later I had a CAT scan. Every hour or so I was asked what were the three things I was asked to remember (I can still remember them). For the first few hours I was in the emergency ward and noticed that no one ever walked slowly. Everyone was walking very briskly, except for those pushing COWs (Computers of Wheels), where they were typing on screen, while pushing the equipment from patient to patient. 

My CAT scan came back okay & I was moved to a quieter ward. Unfortunately the gadgets attached to the patients still kept beeping all night. Around dawn I was asked to remember the three things for the final time and discharged. I walked down the hill from the hospital and, with a feeling of weary elation, got on a bus to go home.

Despite the above quibbles, I would like to thank the staff of the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre, ACT Ambulance Service and North Canberra Hospital for the excellent care I received.