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6th-Feb-2010 11:45 pm - TV Ad Tunes - Masterfoods
Masterfoods currently has an ad with people having a BBQ and using some Masterfood marinades.

The song associated with the ad is called "I Feel It All" from the album "The Reminder" by Feist.
Lipton Ice Tea currently has an ad with people turning off all their air conditioning, and then drinking Lipton Ice Tea to cool the global temperature.

The song associated with the ad is a song recorded in 1933 by V. Zakharov called "Along The Village".
The Mars Maltesers ad (strangely, no dedicated webpage for this product) currently showing here follows a couple of females driving around, with the passenger giving directions to turn right.

As the car turns right, the Maltesers roll across the dashboard towards her, for her eventual consumption and enjoyment.

The song which the two females briefly sing (and is heard faintly in the background throughout the ad) was created by Giles Gooden from the band, Alfie (who then went on to create the Giles Gooden Band, and then Jawbone).
Honda's Jazz ad shows a lot of building blocks making up various shapes and constructions in and around the car.

From the website, you can download the MP3 ringtone of the tune.

The credits show the ad and music were created by Australian companies.
2nd-Feb-2010 10:25 pm - TV Ad Tunes - Coke "Open Happiness"
Coca-Cola currently has an ad with people playing in a vertical air tunnel contraption out in the ocean.

The song associated with the ad is called "Open Happiness" performed by Patrick Stump (from the band Fall Out Boy).

Canberra has been doing some self-promotion on the TV channel, "GO!" in Australia.

The song associated with the ad is "Things Have Changed" by Bob Dylan, an American singer-songwriter.
12th-Jan-2010 12:30 am - TV Ad Tunes - Southern Cross 10
In Australia, the TV channel Southern Cross 10 has a song associated with their in-channel advertising.

After much searching, I found the song was "If Looks Could Kill" by Transvision Vamp, a British alternative rock band from 1986.
12th-Jan-2010 12:25 am - Rostering and Resource Planning
Shift work requires that enough people are working at the right time all the time, with the right skills for those hours, and with the right skills for the job during those hours.

For the most basic operations, a simple roster where every worker works the same hours day after day will suffice.

For larger and more diverse operations, simple rosters are nowhere near sufficient, nor are they flexible enough, and nor are they cost effective.

If a company operates during normal business hours, this is a relatively simple thing to roster.

If the company operates during extended business hours (e.g., 8am to 8pm), this gets slightly more complex. Most shift workers will only be at work for 8-9 hours, of which some of that time will be taken up by breaks and other activities.

If the company operates 24/7, this very quickly becomes much more complex. Is there a permanent night shift worker? Are the workers rotated through the roster? Do the workers have their own particular shift pattern? Are some workers only available during daytime hours? And so on.

So far, all of these scenarios make the implicit assumption that each worker is fully skilled and a full alternative to all other workers. This is not always the case.

For example,
  • a nurse may not be trained for a particular responsibility, and thus cannot attend to all patients
  • a call centre operator may be fluent in Japanese and trained to promote products A and B, but not product C or D
  • a casual supermarket checkout operator may only be available for 4 hours starting from 5pm, on Monday to Friday, and every 3rd Saturday
  • a security officer may need to patrol different areas on different days, but can only patrol the areas for which they have a security clearance
Differently skilled workers can only be rostered to work during certain hours or days, and may only be able to perform certain activities during those periods.

In addition to the previous requirements, there are often needs to have on-the-job training (OJT) for new workers, skills upgrading, team days, administrative days for supervisors, audit days, etc.

People also have different types of leave which needs to be consume each year. For some places, or under some agreements, workers may only be able to consume their annual leave in minimum sized blocks.

Within a particular shift, a worker has numerous activities which they may be required or expected to do. These activities could be (but not limited to):
  • reading corporate communications
  • participating in surveys
  • doing other administrative work
These non-operational activities affect the amount of operational time a worker has where they will actually "be doing work".

At this stage, it is possible to do a basic calculation of the number of workers required to provide the required services for any particular hour of the day and week. Starting with the maximum number of operational hours possible per person, and the total number of hours required to be serviced per day, a simple multiplication will yield the number of people required per day. Extend this to every day in a week, and you have the required number of operational people for a week.

Remember that some workers will be on leave as well (non-operational), while the rest of the team is still working (operational). So, taking the number of required number of operational workers, multiplying by the number of days of leave, then dividing by the number of weeks in a year, the result is the number of days of leave which need to be consumed in any given week. For each multiple of a week (rounded upwards), this will be the required number of "leave lines", when 1 or more people should be on leave during that week.

This is only just brushing the surface of the basics for rostering and basic resource planning.
9th-Nov-2009 12:25 am - Airing Dirty Laundry
Respect is a commodity to be bought nowadays, as it sometimes seems.

Many people desire the respect of those in the community.

Many people desire the respect of their peers.

However, forgotten in the desire for respect is the giving of respect.

Is there any respect given to parents and family?

Is there any respect given to friends, or colleagues, or elders, or those in authority?

A wonderful example of people caring about their own desires and nothing for others is found in the TV show "Aussie Ladette to Lady".

The women shown within are self-centred and care only for their own desires.

They have no cares for what anyone else thinks, and the only "respect" they get is from equally disfunctional company.

They care nothing for what their family thinks, and in fact they seem to be proud to "air/wash their dirty laundry in public".

They care nothing for what damage their behaviour and actions cause to their families, to their employers, and to their communities.

Endeavour always to be respectful in your behaviour, your thoughts, and especially in your communicating (written or spoken).

Airing one's dirty laundry in public is certainly not respectful.
28th-Oct-2009 05:40 pm - Random Software
  • VistaSwitcher has a very nice feature which allows you to switch between the different windows of a particular application. For example, if you have a lot of Word documents open, you can switch between only those windows. It's also very visual, which makes it easier to identify what you're switching to.
  • Why doesn't GMail allow you to resume uploading of attachments? It's annoying that you can be 90% finished with uploading a 15MB attachment which fails for unknown reasons, and then having to retry uploading from the start. It'd be much better if it'd just resume for the remaining 10%
  • Tree Style Tab is a nice Mozilla Firefox addon I've been using for a while. It makes tab organisation a LOT more convenient, especially when you have dozens or hundreds of tabs open at once. It makes it easier to close a LOT of tabs at once as well
  • Paste and Go is another Mozilla Firefox addon. It adds a small bit of functionality, where you can use the mouse to paste a new link and it'll immediately start going to it. Google Chrome and other browsers have it, why doesn't Firefox have this built-in?
  • Seamonkey 2.0 has just been released.
  • Where is my Google Wave invitation?
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