During APEC, there was a big media storm around the Chasers War on Everything targeting APEC for pranks - in their well known style. If you haven't seen any of the media coverage, here's the actual show for your amusement.

NOTE: This info is VERY outdated and doesn’t work anymore. You should look at the new script for services provided by Reverse Australia.

So since I found the Australian gray pages on a lovely web site, I wanted to integrate this info into asterisk. 30 minutes of perl hacking later, and it works. enjoy :)

The following script & example will enable a reverse lookup of incoming caller ID and replace the name section with the lookup. It also allows you to maintain a comma separated file in number,name format. If this finds a match, it will add the name in the file to the caller ID string. If nothing is found in the file, it will consult the grey pages.

Updated 24/8/07: changed script URL to reflect new grey pages site.

Download this script and put it into /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin.

Create a file /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/numbers.txt and populate it with numbers that you already know in the format of: number,name eg: 0390001234,My Pizza Shop

The script will try to match numbers from this file first. If no match is found, it will consult the Australian grey pages for a match. If nothing is found here, it will not change the caller ID strings.

In your extensions.conf, call cid-lookup like so:

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exten => 100,1,NoOp(Incoming call!)
exten => 100,n,agi,cid-lookup.agi
exten => 100,n,NoOp(Caller ID: ${CALLERID(all)})
exten => 100,n,Dial(SIP/my-sip-phone,30)
exten => 100,n,HangUp

This is quite an interesting news article on the internet revolution of ‘internet’ and how it will change the world. It’s a great look back in time and where the internet started and what it was going to be.

While not quite calling it a service pack, Microsoft have released two major updates for Windows Vista. Microsoft have labelled these as a Performance Update and Reliability Update. The biggest change I found is the copy/move/delete file operations are behaving as they should after the Performance Update. The Reliability Update apparently fixes many standby and power management issue.

You can download these at:

• Performance Update: 32bit and 64bit (KB Article)
• Reliability Update: 32bit and 64 bit (KB Article)

Happy patching :)

Yay. After finally getting in and having my hernia operation, I’m back out and recovering. I have to say that with all the bad things you hear about the public hospital system etc in the media, I couldn’t have been happier with the way I was treated and the quality of treatment I received while at the Northern Hospital.

Niel was my anaesthesiologist - and he was great. He was upfront with everything - which helped out my nerves a lot as this is the first time I’d ever been in hospital for an operation. The nurses were great, everyone was friendly and it was all done before I could really get scared.

There was a few interesting things… The gas that they give you in the operating room to knock you out seems to have a sweet smell - and I remember being very nervous thinking that the gas isn’t working - and that’s the last I remember before waking up. The second funny thing was that I had to be given 29mg of morphine in the post-op area to get rid of the pain. Apparently that’s a lot for anyone to be given - and the nurses were really shocked that I didn’t throw up or feel nausea afterwards.

All in all, I’m feeling much better and progressing well on the road to recovery. Thanks to all that sent me emails wishing me well etc - it all helps :)