Anyone know what it is???

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The mission was set, check out what I have been putting off for ages. For those outside of Australia – I should let you know that Australia is an expensive place to travel, especially to a resort such as Hamilton Island.

After a bit of research and obtaining a few quotes, it was booked. I was flying to Hamilton Island and staying at the Reef View Hotel for 7 nights. I also purchased a water-proof camera in anticipation (Sony Tx-10).

Hamilton Island itself is quite small (4 x 7km approx) and there are people that live on the island – but most people are tourists. There are close to no cars, and you either walk or drive around in golf buggies. There are plenty of pools to spend your days, and there is Cats-eye beach, where there is a reef with fish that you can practically walk out to during low-tide.

Most of the adventureous stuff requires travel – boat, helicopter, plane. Take your pick from the various tour operators. This includes snorkelling and diving in the middle of the reef. I would highly recommend this, as you will get much clearer waters and experience the reef in it’s full glory. You may get sea-sick travelling out to these locations (as I did), so medication for those affected is recommended.

Have a look at some of my photos below. You may find that a 7 nights is quite some time, so you can probably reduce it to 5 or less. Just keep in mind that food and general expenses can be quite steep on this island. I was quite happy to chill and do a whole lot of nothing most of the times.

You will see that one hermit even left his shell to fight, quite unusual!

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I heard it is extremely hard to get these guys to breed, and their eggs are mostly infertile. I took some photos to post up here just in case anyone else was curious. The shots are a little blurry, so I’ll have to try again next time!

Other problems that occur when the stuck End Call screen issue arises seem to be (for me anyway):

• No incoming SMS
• Can’t call out
• People calling in hear a your number dialling, but your phone does not ring.

I will run through my troubleshooting steps.

Some people believe it is a carrier issue, and you perform a carrier update if one exists. To do so, go to the About screen on the iPhone. Provided you have some sort of data connection, if there is a carrier update available, a prompt will pop up asking you to update. This did not solve my problem after updating.

It can be an iOS issue, but again I am running the latest. You can always upgrade and see if it sorts your issue.

It can reportedly be an upgrade issue, where you have kept the same settings from upgrading phones (ie. you have migrated from a 3GS to 4 then to a 4S). This was not applicable in my case, as I started fresh. You can try to setup your phone from scratch or factory reset. I’m skeptical of this fix, because a factory reset seems to fix everything, but the problem will probably come back due to an underlying issue.

The fix for me was to turn on mobile data, and then turn it off again. I leave mobile data off at all times, because I like to control when and how my data is used. There seems to be a bug with iOS when the phone runs for prolonged amounts of time with no data capability.

If the hard drives were used in a RAID array (mine were from an Intel Matrix RAID), then the hard drives are formatted in a way that the Windows 7 installer can no understand.

You have two options:

• Run an XP installation over the top of the hard drive (yes, XP will be able to install onto the hard drive). You do not need to go through with the full XP install. When files start to copy on the blue screen with the yellow bar, just reset the PC and install Windows 7/2008.
• Format the hard drives in Linux or similar (put an ext3 filesystem on it). Putting the hard drive into an USB case and formatting it in Windows does not resolve the issue.

Fisherman’s Wharf is a cool place to hang out, but it is very touristy. Parking is outrageous, with most places wanting US$45 or more a day. Try to park on the street or just use public transport. Some of the great things to do in San Francisco would be to check out the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, hop on a trolley tram, and visit Golden Gate Park (hop on a segway if you can!).

Funnily enough, Vancouver was a place where we could actually “normal” coffee, similar to what we were used to at home. The food there was also quite pleasant and tasty to eat, and the random places we ate at were alright (whereas in the US, it seemed to all be of lower standard).

Unfortunately, there isn’t too much to do in Vancouver. We loved Richmond – it felt like they picked up a piece of Hong Kong and dropped it here in Richmond. Take a walk through Stanley Park if you can, and walking along the Sea Wall is a relaxing option after dinner.

We past Fork along the way, which is where scenes from Twilight were filmed. We went up the space needle like typical tourists, and had a great view of Seattle and the surrounding mountains that encompassed the city.

Even for the history rich, I think 1-2 days in DC is plenty of time to explore the city.