The Sunday Mok - Seaworld

Sunday - There was a barbeque lunch after the morning church service, but I skipped it. In the afternoon, I took a nap and played City of Heroes a little bit. I sang in the evening service, then I had a good night of comedic responses at supper at the Coffee Club.
Monday - Work was all appraisals database and timesheets (which didn't go quite right). At Alpha in the evening, I didn't participate much in the discussion after dinner.
Tuesday - The day at work was much like Monday. Karate in the evening was all combinations, kata and sparring, which was good. I watched TV afterwards and talked to Deb on the phone.
Wednesday - Mostly performance appraisals database work at the office, and dinner at Deb's afterwards. We watched some Arrested Development, thanks to Sam. I liked it.
Thursday - I got questioned by four different people about a single problem at work, so that felt a bit overdone. Dad, Ug, Deb and I had Thai for dinner, then Deb and I watched two episodes of Angel.
Friday - I finished some navigational overhauls of the performance appraisals database, but Paul didn't have time to review them. At youth group in the evening, we played a game where we pretended to live in a country that was persecuting Christians, then let the kids have a go at running it. They were far more oppressive than we were.
Saturday - Deb and I spent the day at Seaworld. We took about 80 photos of marine animals and went on Deb's first rollercoaster. We finished the day with dinner at Southbank and a couple of Angel episodes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This post is way later than usual because I finally installed my digital TV card today.
PPS - The recordings are much larger than I was prepared for.

It's not me, it's you

If we're going to make progress towards standards and usability, we have to change our thinking just a little bit. If my browser isn't supported by a particular website, that website is broken, not my browser. If I can't figure out how to use a particular piece of software, then that software is broken, not me.

As long as someone big is out there saying "Screw standards, I'm doing my own thing" then we get problems. As long as we assume software users are incompetent when they need something explained, we'll never fix anything.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I get to be on both sides of this problem.
PPS - It's not always fun.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Did you know you can be arrested for dressing like a zombie and carrying bits of wire? It's true.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This news has been reported by several sources so far.
PPS - All with a different angle, too.

Today's bus ride brought to you by the letter Crazy

I've had my share of odd bus drivers over the years. Heavy-brakers, who try to hurl you through the windscreen, curb-riders who want to get the bus up on two wheels and Enforcers who are real sticklers for the rules like not standing in certain places, keeping the aisle clear and leaving your llama at home. But an informant tells me that I have not yet met the craziest bus driver in Brisbane. Yesterday he called in a replacement bus because the driver's seat was "just not good enough". This caused a ten minute delay in the trip.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So, you know, if you want to ensure a quick trip, bring a cushion for your driver just in case.
PPS - "Not good enough" was all the detail available.

Unprepared

A short time ago I decided that I could start using my Creative Zen Micro to listen to podcasts on the bus. I haven't used it for a while, because I tend to just read, talk or stare while travelling. So I pulled it out this morning, got a couple of tracks, put it in my bag ... and completely forgot to grab the headphones. If I could pick up sound from the device in some other way, that might not be a problem. As is, I need to use my ears and headphones are essential to that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I could take home the ones I use at work.
PPS - But then I'd probably forget to bring them back tomorrow.

Seasonal

My Windows desktop background should change at least with the seasons. I'd love to see, say, an orchard that grows fruit, drops leaves and so on according to the season, but I'd settle for an automatic once-a-month picture change, like a wall calendar.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I dug this post out of the draft archives and forgot to change the date.
PPS - I must be more tired than I thought.

A quadrilemma

I woke up this morning and immediately thought:

I want to keep sleeping.

Then I thought:

But I'm supposed to have installed my new digital TV tuner this weekend. Maybe I should try to do that.

That was followed by

But if I have time for that, I should probably try to watch some of the old programs I've recorded and make some more room on my hard drive.

Then

Well, the whole reason I haven't installed the card in my PC yet is that City of Heroes had a double-XP weekend on. It's still on. Maybe I have time to get in a quick mission.

So, in summary, my brand new digital TV tuner is still in its box.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I ended up watching about 10 minutes of TV.
PPS - Yes, sometimes my thoughts have hyperlinks in them.

The Sunday Mok - Goths need love too

Sunday - I only started getting tired halfway through the morning church service. I had lunch at Deb's then took a nap in the afternoon. After the evening church service, we went to the local Coffee Club and they gave my iced mocha, with the last of the cream, to Stu by mistake.
Monday - I found that my bus ticket had been washed in one of my business shirts, so I had to buy my way to work with a $10 note. The driver was not too impressed. We had the first Alpha session at the church in the evening.
Tuesday - I spent the day at work looking through timesheet records to see if we missed anything. We didn't. Karate in the evening was fairly standard, then I played City of Heroes.
Wednesday - I had some differences of opinion about my priorities at work, so I made sure to get those involved speaking to each other. I had dinner at Deb's, followed by some Stargate SG-1.
Thursday - I spent the morning studying for an exam at lunchtime, which I just passed. After dinner, Deb and I finished season 8 of Stargate. There are some good episodes around that point.
Friday - I was worn out before I even got up in the morning. I fixed bugs and planned a new feature for our performance appraisal database. It still needs work. Youth group in the evening was a long chalk chase. My team gave up near the end and still only arrived a short time after the first team.
Saturday - Shopping, mostly for birthday presents for Erin. We had her birthday party in the evening and stayed with everyone else until after midnight. I dressed a bit gothic and found that it was next to impossible to look friendly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may post a photo of that sometime.
PPS - Maybe.

The valve is up-river

I once had a friend tell me that they turn Niagara Falls off at night. The reason I didn't believe her when she said so is this: it's exactly the kind of lie an Australian would tell a tourist, just to mess with them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's pretty much the only reason we talk to tourists.
PPS - Or maybe it's the only reason I talk to tourists.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Wesley Snipes set to star in a zombie flick.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - His character is the son of a nun.
PPS - That's either divine intervention or a pretty bad nun.

Are you?

A friend of mine at uni once saw me reading "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", by Philip K. Dick, and asked me "So, are you a Dick fan?".
...
Even though I enjoy reading the works of PKD, I was forced to answer in the negative.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Ah, the delightful nuances of English!
PPS - Perhaps this could have been worse.

Domestic design failure

I don't like doors with the knob in the centre. Typically, they come from the 70s and you never know whether to push or pull or which side of the door will open. Also, it eliminates much of the force you can apply to the door by putting your application of force at the centre of gravity, denying the lever principle its glory.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In all, the one thing these doors bring to the table is some visual style
PPS - And if you need style that badly, perhaps the rest of the house is flawed.

Window cleaning

With the retirement of Microsoft support for Windows 98, the question is raised: should unsupported software be made open source? Since Microsoft does not plan to make any money from Windows 98 anymore, and since its code is about a decade removed from the brand-new Windows Vista, it could probably be safely sent out into the brave new world as a gratis+libre code base. I suppose the main motivating factor against this would be fears that it would cut into the sales of Vista. It's also possibe that someone might show up the in-house Microsoft talent by cleaning up the Win98 code, patching the leaks, speeding it up tenfold and then releasing it under a heading like "Windows 98: The Way It Should Have Been".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It will probably be a very long time before we see OpenWindows come from Microsoft.
PPS - Even for one of the old versions. Where's version 3.11 these days?

You need a break from this

Radio station 96.5fm is currently running a series of ads in which they use bad childrens' music to say "You need a break from this". The problem is that the bits they're using are stuck in my head, along with an image of a toddler doing that uncoordinated bobbing toddler dance. You know, the one where the arms flap up and down just a bit and the knees bob out of time with the music? Yeah, that's it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's tough to reproduce once you've learned how to walk fluidly.
PPS - And once you know how to find a beat.

The Sunday Mok - Full

Sunday - I handed out the bulletins before the morning church service. It's a skill job. Deb and I had lunch at Dad & Beth's, then went to Bardon to book a restaurant for a family birthday dinner. The evening church service was the national assembly of the Uniting Church at Brisbane City Hall.
Monday - The birthday. The day at work was ordinary, except for an automatic text-to-speech phone message that I received wishing me happy birthday. It was from me, and I forgot that I set it up, so it was a surprise when it happened. Family dinner in the evening at Bardon Oriental. It was too big for the 8 of us to finish off.
Tuesday - Work felt hectic and stressful. There were too many things going on, and they were all top priority. I had to skip karate in the evening to get to a youth group planning meeting at Erin's place. We planned out the next term in full, which was good.
Wednesday - We began a "development freeze" on our performance appraisal database by adding a new feature. That's not how it's meant to go. I had dinner at Deb's and we watched three episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. When I got home, I found that my habit of recording television on my PC and not watching it had finally filled my hard drive completely up.
Thursday - I spent the morning cramming for my exam in the afternoon, which I passed with flying colours. Not bad for a morning's work. Dinner at Dad & Beth's in the evening, and we left a little earlier than usual because Ug wasn't feeling well.
Friday - I had to update our bug tracking software to a new version, because the old one didn't quite function as advertised. Youth group in the evening was combined with a welcome dinner for an Alpha course the church is running. Most of the boys at my table got bored.
Saturday - A very long training day for an Emmaus weekend coming up in mid-August. I got up at 6am and got home again at 10:30pm.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My schedule is full, my hard drive is full, my brain is full.
PPS - I should do some spring cleaning.

Geeky Christmas tree

I had a brilliant idea for a Christmas tree, geek-style: program a laser projector to show a tree outline on the wall. Once that's done, it's easy to switch on and off when you want it, and you can move it around without much hassle at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure this has been done at least once.
PPS - I should go searching for it.

Friday zombie blogging

Day of the Dead Remake starts filming July 23rd
Via MoviesOnline. Can't wait!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't seen the original yet.
PPS - It's still in my Quickflix queue.

The silent phone experiment

I have discovered that the ringer volume on my company-supplied landline telephone has a "silent" setting, so I immediately activated it. My theory is that some people will consider it broken and some will leave messages. My operating principle is that the telephone on my desk is for my convenience, not yours, and that it is most convenient for me to decide for myself when I should answer its call.

I have heard other people say that they don't use email because, if it was really important, someone would use the telephone. I just substituted technologies into that decision, saying that I refuse to use the phone, because if it was actually important, you'd come around to see me in person. This may prove that both statements are fallacies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't listen to people in person, because if it was really important, they'd write me a letter.
PPS - I don't read smoke signals because all the really important messages arrive via jungle drums.

A Poem

I'm a little teapot, short and stout
Here is my handle, here is my hyperdimensional energy flail.
When I get all steamed up, then I shout,
Tip me over, your guts come out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's been a rough couple of days.
PPS - Why can a project never be FINISHED?

Status symbol

I don't like that one of our cultural indicators of social status is the ability to drink very large amounts of alcohol without losing consciousness or dying. Conversely, the choice to stand out against that trend and deny that alcohol is an essential part of life is viewed with curiosity or confusion.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes teetotallers are met with hostility.
PPS - I hereby assert that most of Earth is alcoholic and unaware of it.

Level Up!

In this massively-multiplayer game called Life, I have just hit level 27! Excitement ensues. I think this is the level where you get a jetpack, but I haven't seen any yet. I'm planning to spend my level-up points on speed and agility to counter the yearly random penalty to those particular character stats.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This all translates to "I turn 27 today".
PPS - And apparently I share my birthday with Schapelle Corby.

The Sunday Mok - Enough calamari to end world hunger

Sunday - We drove out to the Tahune Air Walk, a treetop forest walk. It was nice. When we were done, we drove to Hastings Caves, but they were just about to close for the day.
Monday - We finished what we could of the food we'd bought for the week, then caught our plane home. Erin drove us from the airport, then in the evening we went out to see Over the Hedge, which was fun.
Tuesday - Our section at work moved to the ground floor, thankfully waiting for me to return before doing so. Karate in the evening was a basic class, and at home I tried to catch up on my online news. I gave up after 300 articles.
Wednesday - Work as usual. I'm trying to generate summary pages for the vast amounts of info stored in our staff appraisals database. I had dinner at Deb's, followed by disc 1 of Star Trek: Enterprise, the first rental from online service Quickflix. Quickflix is just like Netflix, with the added benefit of actually being accessible in Australia.
Thursday - More summary page work at the office and dinner at Dad & Beth's. More Star Trek at home before going to bed a little bit early.
Friday - Summary pages. It gets boring, so I also took steps towards automating our website deployment procedure. In the evening, Deb and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. We planned to see it in Gold Class cinemas, but we hadn't made a booking.
Saturday - Deb and I had brunch at Miv & Julia's place, which was certainly more of a feast than I'm used to. Took a nap in the afternoon, then just lazed around the house, watching Star Trek and Stargate, and cooking dinner.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The promised Tasmania trip Sunday Mok is also up now.
PPS - It's hard to complain about the cold in Brisbane anymore.

Friday zombie blogging

The Dilbert Blog: Night of the Living Ant
Scott Adams compares ants invading his home to zombies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I like his writing most of the time.
PPS - Sometimes I could do without it.

Evil = Nigel

Evil has no friends. Anyone evil is aligned against everyone else for one reason or another, leaving them completely alone in the end. There may be an alliance, and it may even be for mutual benefit, but you cannot count on an evil ally to knowingly stand up for you to their own peril. Evil is out for number one all the time, and altruism is just nonsense to them. Given that, when faced with a choice of saving themselves or saving an ally, evil chooses itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm still thinking about what would attract minions to follow evil orders.
PPS - Possibly stupidity or power.

Tasmania in a nutshell

Tasmania is cold, but you get used to it and as long as you've got a warm jacket and two pairs of socks, it's fine. There's a fair amount of old brickwork from convict settlement days still standing.
Our adventures were punctuated by making wrong turns on the streets about every five minutes, which was caused by a combination of factors. It wasn't until day 3 that we managed to get a decent street directory.
We took a ghost tour around Hobart, saw the old prison settlement at Port Arthur, two museums, a zoo, the Cadbury chocolate factory, a Derwent River cruise and the Tahoe Air Walk.
Pick-of-the-bunch photo below:


Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can provide further details on any of these if required.
PPS - The photo is out over the water at Port Arthur.

Propagandist

If your job is propaganda, disinformation and deception, you don't need everyone to believe all of your lies straight away. You just need to sow enough doubt that people no longer know what to believe. If you have the time, then, you let them grow up believing nothing and teaching that to their children. Those children will then swallow whatever blatant falsehoods you point in their direction, because they've got nothing else.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Summary of the Tasmania trip and a (belated) Sunday Mok should be up this week.
PPS - Hopefully tonight if I don't have too much housework to do.

The Sunday Mok - The Trip

Sunday - After church in the morning, I ate lunch at Deb's, then counted out my money box in which I have been storing 5 cent coins for many years. We watched Stargate SG-1 at my place in the afternoon.
Monday - My time off work started, and I took the chance to pack my bags for Tasmania. Deb and I drove out to Brookside to shop for a few travelling essentials, too. Bible study in the evening wrapped up our series on ministry.
Tuesday - We flew to Hobart via Virgin, hired our car and drove to Woolmers Inn. We did make a few wrong turns, and this pattern of navigational mishaps was a common theme of the trip. We ate at the relatively local Ball & Chain Grill for dinner.
Wednesday - We slept in, thanks to late sunrise and electric blankets. We wandered around the museum and art gallery, then headed to the maritime museum. We browsed shops around Salamanca Place until evening when we took a ghost tour around the city. We saw no ghosts.
Thursday - We drove out to the Zoodoo Fun Park, which was more like a farm, really. I took many photos of monkeys. After we were done at the zoo, we drove to the Port Arthur Historic Site, arriving just in time for a twilight pass and an hour of daylight.
Friday - We took a double-decker bus to take the Cadbury chocolate factory tour, but saw no Oompa-Loompas. In the afternoon, we wandered around the botanical gardens. After the sun went down, we watched movies at the Inn.
Saturday - We browsed the Salamanca Markets and took a short cruise up the Derwent River. We also watched my first episode of Iron Chef.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The only penguins we saw were on the river cruise.
PPS - And they only surfaced for a moment.

When the blogger's away...

Seems I've attracted the attention of another spambot recently, which is especially unfortunate, since I'm semi-offline at the moment. No biggie - all its comments are gone now.

Tasmania continues to be quite awesome. I'll post the choicest of photos when I'm back, and hopefully an amusing anecdote or two. TTFN.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We're about to embark on our third attempt at a harbour cruise.
PPS - The other two were cancelled.

Live from Tasmania

Mokalus is in Tasmania and everyone who told me this place would freeze my expletives off is a liar. There's no internet connection available at our chosen accommodation, which I consider to be a major oversight both for me and them. So this post is coming to you from the Drifters Internet Cafe on Salamanca Place by the Hobart waterfront.

There's not much to tell about the trip itself so far except that hiring a car between two geographically-challenged individuals such as Deb and me may have been a mistake. We haven't managed to get anywhere so far without either making a wrong turn or wrestling the locals for parking spaces.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Nearly forgot my password to get in here.
PPS - Lucky for you I can manage.

Like cable television by mail

I have now joined Quickflix, an online DVD rental service. This is specifically for things like Stargate Atlantis that I want to see, but may not want to own. Also, they have a much larger selection than all of my local rental places combined and doubled. It's how the internet is meant to apply to this kind of business, and apparently it's working really well.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I had to join when we started watching Stargate SG-1 season 8.
PPS - There was a bit of story that was told only in the Atlantis series.

The Sunday Mok - The Thinking Dance

Sunday - I did some grocery shopping after church in the morning then took a nap in the afternoon. I continued clearing out a branch from the back yard, played City of Heroes and did the laundry, too.
Monday - I reworked some of the web pages for our performance appraisal database and booked my car in for its 20 000km service. My brother and I had dinner with Dad at the local Thai restaurant, which made me a bit late for bible study at Bridgit's.
Tuesday - I dropped my car in for its service at 08:00 and caught the bus into the city, because the busses to Spring Hill don't run at that time. That meant a long hike uphill to work. In the evening, I skipped karate to go to the movies with the rest of the churchies.
Wednesday - I tried to get my Microsoft Certified Professional ID associated with my Microsoft Partners account. Two phone calls to MS tech support, one email and a whole morning of effort had yielded no results and I was not happy. I ate at home and then went to Deb's to watch Comedy Inc.
Thursday - I mostly worked on the performance appraisals database at work, then picked Deb up for dinner at Dad & Beth's. After dinner, we left rather quickly, then watched Stargate SG-1 at Deb's.
Friday - When I woke up, the Australia vs Croatia soccer match was still going on, and Australia was down 2-1. In the evening, we took the youth group kids to Laserforce. I didn't play as well as I would have liked.
Saturday - Very uneventful. Went grocery shopping in the morning, took a walk and a nap, and watched more Stargate, all with Deb.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "The Thinking Dance" is a complex sequence of foot motions that helps you think.
PPS - Obviously.

Friday zombie blogging

Zombie movie Last Rites debuts in Los Angeles.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have no idea if it is any good.
PPS - Primarily because I don't live in LA.

Eternity

The thing I crave most in my life is time. Not time by myself or time for any specific activity, just time. In my perfect world, the day is X hours long, where X is "as many as necessary". I have time to do my laundry and dishes every day. I have time to sleep in and still get to work; time to finish my projects and read all my mail. I have time to watch my television and time to do the shopping and cook a decent meal. I have endless time to spend with Deb and it never gets so late that I have to go home again. I have time to write and time to read, and before I go to sleep at night, I have time to pray it all through with my Maker. If I had the time I need, there is nothing that can upset my day. This is not an original thought.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am least happy when I am rushed.
PPS - Deadlines are my natural predator.

Break some rules

Last night I saw Stick It, a movie about gymnastics. This would not usually be on my list of things to do. However, I found myself enjoying it to a certain extent. Some of the dialogue was witty (though some was infantile) and the movie showed the power of civil disobedience. That is, when the rules start breaking down, you can start making a point by breaking the rules peacefully and publicly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes you even get your point across.
PPS - Change, however, can be very slow.

One random thought

If I had a pet manatee, I'd name him "Hugh", just on the off chance I could one day get the vet to say "Oh, Hugh, the manatee".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - These are the things I think when I'm asleep.
PPS - I'm not certain if I've lifted this straight from somewhere else, though.

The Simple Life (not Paris)

I am frequently accused of being lazy when I mention ways in which the world could be easier to use. I'm not talking about the total elimination of effort - that would leave me sitting as a passive blob with a feeding tube down my throat. I'm talking about the elimination of unnecessary effort. Am I lazy because the mail is delivered to my house rather than stopping at the post office? I'd say not. So why am I lazy if I want to use my computer to eliminate boring, repetitive and pointless tasks such as remembering email addresses?

This is what I do for a living. I make tasks easier for humans by involving computers. That's the way it's supposed to go, anyway. The point is that task simplification is the essence of my day-to-day goals, so it's what I think about a lot of the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The ideas I spout are usually the ones I can't enact myself.
PPS - The other ones are well under control.

The Sunday Mok - A few church activities

Sunday - Deb and I had lunch at Dad & Beth's to hear about their trip, then we came back to my place to play the Black & White 2 demo. I slept for part of the afternoon, then ran the computer in the evening church service.
Monday - Public holiday, so the bible study group met for breakfast. I brought scrambled eggs and cut up some fruit when I got there. When I got home at about noon I watched a whole video podcast sermon from Mosaic then studied for my Microsoft exam on Wednesday.
Tuesday - I worked most of the day on visual layout of the appraisals database. I skipped karate in the evening to get to a church council meeting and report back on the conference in Adelaide.
Wednesday - I passed my Microsoft exam with flying colours and also wrote some code to let people search the performance appraisal database for people by common nicknames as well as actual recorded names. I had dinner at Deb's followed by Stargate SG-1.
Thursday - I found it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. At work I was greeted with a few tricky bug reports that made the day a bit frustrating. Family dinner at Dad & Beth's, then back to my place for more Stargate with Deb.
Friday - Deb's actual 21st birthday. She came over in the morning to play on my PC while nobody needed it, and in the evening I got to spend more time with her in lieu of my usual youth group duties.
Saturday - I slept in a bit, read some news, played City of Heroes and watched Prison Break. In the afternoon Deb, Roni and I took the train to Brunswick Street to pick up some Korean cooking ingredients, then Deb and I got a pizza for dinner and rented Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Several of my links in this post almost came out sounding like spam.
PPS - I'm resisting the urge to compare the movie to the pizza in terms of quality.

Friday zombie blogging

Brad Pitt has won the movie rights to a zombie movie penned by Max Brooks, who authored The Zombie Survival Guide. Details, naturally, are sketchy at the moment.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The movie is currently titled World War Z.
PPS - Almost everything about this could change before the movie is finished.

What happens if you dial the wrong number?

I shouldn't have to remember phone numbers. I shouldn't see phone numbers on caller ID - it should be names. Phone numbers shouldn't change when people move house or change mobile carriers. I should be able to access my voicemail box on my PC. It should not be possible for telemarketers to call me if I choose to deny calls by default and whitelist only my friends.

I should have a default deny power for my phone at my end, or at least a specific denial power. If someone calls me and my phone picks up the signal but then recognises the number as a "deny" number, then my phone should not ring.

So why is this not how things work? One point is low interoperability and the lack of applicable standards. Our communications are on a few different networks that don't communicate. But on my own end, I don't get to blacklist phone numbers myself because the phone company makes money from every connected call.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think that problem is likely to be solved.
PPS - Too many interests are in conflict.

Fight or flight

It's funny that a fright response is a bladder movement. It's like your body saying "You know what would help out right now? Urine. Throw 'em off the scent or something." Perhaps the idea is to quickly shed some excess weight so you can run faster.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The sad part is that I'm sure someone has researched this.
PPS - I'm not going to look for them.

Banned

Banning a celebration because some people find it generally offensive is like banning shellfish from sale because some people are allergic. Or it would be, if they were allergic by choice.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Banning a celebration because it involves illegal practices is another thing.
PPS - Unless those practices were outlawed in order to ban the celebration. Clearly it's complicated.

Everything is most important

Everyone tends to have the idea that their own focus is the most important, to the level where they will claim that, without it, the entire production will fall down and everyone should bend to make their job as easy as possible. They're probably right about the first bit. The other part about everyone else making their life easier doesn't quite track, especially if you're the one who has to change.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, in your particular situation, you happen to be right.
PPS - That's just the way it is.

Magnet Sense

I've always wondered what it would be like to be able to sense electromagnetic fields. It turns out that you can do it by implanting a magnet in your fingertip. While that's relatively cool, it's also kind of horrifying. Perhaps the same effect could be produced without surgery by using some kind of glove or finger sheath.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Link via digg.
PPS - I'd be down for the glove version, thanks.

The Sunday Mok - As discussed in committee

Sunday - I skipped church in the morning, which is very unusual for me. I'd been feeling unusually stressed and unable to handle it properly, and it seemed like a break in the routine might help. In the evening service, I performed in a short skit that went over pretty well.
Monday - I worked on report contents for the appraisals database all day at work. In the evening I went to bible study at Gwen & John's. There's really not a lot to tell about Monday.
Tuesday - I booked a Microsoft certification exam for this coming Wednesday and worked more on report contents. Karate in the evening, followed by a brief City of Heroes session.
Wednesday - Moved on to the visual representation of appraisals reports. I had dinner at Deb's, after which we looked through each others' old photos. When we were done with that, we had time for two episodes of Stargate SG-1.
Thursday - More tiny adjustments to the visual layout of the reports. It would have been nice to get it right in discussion first, before we go back and forth listing little changes for me to do and reviewing the results. More Stargate at Deb's in the evening.
Friday - I just worked on bits and pieces of everything, because we finished the report formatting on Thursday. In the evening with the youth group we went to see Cars, which I enjoyed more than I expected.
Saturday - A brief shopping trip in the morning with Deb, then rest at home. I was going to play City of Heroes, but the Issue 7 expansion had gone live, so the patch had to be downloaded and applied. Deb's 21st birthday party was on in the evening, consisting of a meal and Trivial Pursuit. And bubbles.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A lot of bubbles.
PPS - I had fun.

Complimenting strangers

Usually as I walk down the street I see features or accessories to compliment in the strangers I pass. I have never actually let one of these compliments exit my mouth, because I fear the stranger may misinterpret me or somehow take offense at the compliment. I will grant that my fears are very likely unfounded.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have known some subcultures where complimenting strangers is normal.
PPS - Most notably music festivals.

I never did trust dairy foods

Jesus ate no dairy foods while he was in the tomb, and three days later he was alive again. You know what else? He also did not wrestle any tigers and completely refrained from bungee jumping.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Blogger was down this morning.
PPS - The only explanation was that they were "fixing a database issue".

Invention of the day

Internet-enabled vending machines to "phone in" sales records would increase profits by allowing the vending company to keep popular items stocked up and optimise the routes of the restocking technicians.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Every now and then, these tiny ideas come to me.
PPS - They only occasionally include the term "internet-enabled".

Google Reader

They just keep on giving. I don't know exactly how long it's been out, but I've just learned about Google Reader, an online news feed aggregator that lets me store all my news feed subscriptions online and access them from anywhere. Though the concept is simple, it's taken me this long to get fed up with the offline versions. I had previously been leaving my work PC on all the time with Mozilla Thunderbird running just to make sure I got every item.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think that was causing it some distress.
PPS - Windows boxes are just not made for that kind of uptime.

The Cyborg Name Decoder

A while ago, Chris linked to this Cyborg Name Decoder, so I gave it a go. Since it's a fairly slow news day, here's the result:




I am impressed by the coherence of the acronym produced by this automatic script. Really, it's very good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a bit violent, I'll admit.
PPS - Click the image to go and find out your own.

The Sunday Mok - Extended warranty

Sunday - I slept until 07:30, went to church with Deb and picked up a few items from the supermarket. In the afternoon, I took a nap and cleaned out some overhanging branches from the back yard. I ran the computer for the evening church service, too.
Monday - I spent the whole day at work on the design of a new report format for the performance appraisal database. It had to go through three people for approval, and at the end of Monday I'd just gotten through one. At bible study in the evening, Murrae had brought a large selection of Jelly Belly beans to eat. I had too many.
Tuesday - I kept working on report design, though not entirely by choice. Getting everyone happy with a design is slow going, especially when they keep coming back later with new ideas. I picked up pizza for dinner and happened to run into Deb and Roni on their way to rent a movie.
Wednesday - I finally got to do some coding for performance appraisal reports, which felt much better than designing and writing documents. In the evening, my PC was busy recording the latest Prison Break episode, so I did some reading.
Thursday - The cold mornings are making it hard to get out of bed. During my lunch hour, I caught the train to Milton to pick up a new power supply for my PC, because the last one had been giving me trouble. I had dinner at Deb's, after which we watched some Stargate SG-1.
Friday - Bug reports and new appraisals code at work. Nothing too exciting. At youth group in the evening we basically talked about Schoolies week and life after school. The kids were kind of energetic, which didn't work especially well with the laid-back nature of the program.
Saturday - I took a walk with Deb in the morning, for exercise, then we went out clothes shopping to make sure we don't freeze to death in Tasmania. I also bought a basic laptop to take with us, so I should still be blogging while I'm down there. We had breakfast foods for dinner - pancakes, sausages and scrambled eggs.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've started doing daily push-ups and sit-ups again.
PPS - Apparently the difference is noticeable.

Intrusive MP3 convenience

As convenient as they have become, music players are still intrusive. Headphones or earbuds have to be wireless to be really useful, and their batteries must last for months without recharging or at least without conscious effort by the user. The best kind of music player would be worn like a wristwatch and require no headphones at all, playing sound by somehow directly stimulating the air inside the ear canal or transmitting sound through bone. The sound would still be private, then, but not require intrusive and anti-social earphones. This technology, once developed, could easily be adapted for hearing aids. I'd name the remote sound reproduction device after the technology named in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey: the "statiophonic, oxygenetic, amplifya-graphaphona-delaverberator", just to be odd and difficult. Marketers would then be free to name it however they feel.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have never liked tangling with cords.
PPS - I can stand the inevitable batteries of wireless, as long as they last a while.

Manipulative

I remember a horrible anti-acne product ad because of one particular line:

"And you don't kiss. No way."

This is what these advertisers are throwing at insecure spotty teenagers. "Your love life will not exist if you have acne at all. We just happen to have some cream here, and we say it gets rid of acne. Do you want some, or would you rather be a sad, pathetic, lonely, boring, ugly loser for the rest of your natural life?" Vultures.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The line was said in a joking, light-hearted tone.
PPS - I'm sure it wasn't meant to be taken lightly.

Blogger display bug

I'd almost come to accept it as part of the interface, but this morning it struck me again. There's a bug in the Blogger interface when viewing draft posts, which makes it look as follows (in Firefox):

My only theory involves the fact that these posts don't have titles associated with them, though why that might cause such a bug I don't know. Also, that one post that's indented far to the right is always indented, so there must be something special about it.

The last point to make is that this effect goes away after refreshing the page, so it is apparently not fundamental to the display code.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not even sure how to find out whether the folks at Blogger know about the problem.
PPS - I might go looking for that.

Improvisation

The difference between improvisation and creation is the zero time delay between imagination and performance. Personally, I like to think things through before I let them out of my mouth. Call it the "crazy filter" - it's there to keep most of you from thinking that I'm nuts. Sometimes it even works. But my crazy filter is why I'm not so good at improvisation. I have to remember to turn it off, and that can take a little while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Half of the time I forget the crazy things I filter out.
PPS - It's probably for the best.

What's on?

I would think that television stations would have a good incentive to provide free weekly program guide information to their viewers. Unless they currently sell that information to third parties, it wouldn't impact on their income, and I expect it would help to attract viewers, too. Before long, someone would concoct a service to aggregate the various program guides into one regional multi-channel guide.

At the moment, in Australia, the only options of which I am aware are IceTV (a pay service) and yourTV, whose guide is only available for a quarter of a day at a time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I long to be able to program my personal video recorder by keyword or show name.
PPS - Then I'd never miss another stand-up comedy festival.

The Sunday Mok - A camera of our own

Sunday - I was still in Adelaide, and we had to start early to get to the airport in time to catch our flight back to Brisbane. I listened to stand-up comedy again during the flight. I slept in the afternoon, and spoke very briefly about the Adelaide conference in the evening church service.
Monday - I worked all day on appraisal database security and ran into an old friend at the bus stop. In the evening at bible study, we talked about spiritual gifts and Erin handed me a copy of The Barbarian Way. She tells me she bought about five copies to hand out.
Tuesday - I couldn't focus at work, and it was only when I got home that I figured out that I was coming down from the conference high. I had dinner at Deb's, then spent an hour gathering info to place an order for RAM for Jenny and Trevor. After I got what I needed, I watched some Stargate SG-1 with Deb. I skipped karate.
Wednesday - A really cold morning, and I don't need to tell that to anyone who lives in Brisbane. More appraisal database security work, then the bus was about an hour late. After dinner at Deb's with several guests, we went to watch the State of Origin game 1 at Stu's.
Thursday - I found out why the appraisal database is upsetting our regional manager so much. I've been told it's not really my fault, but since I'm part of the project, it's tough to believe. I picked up and installed the RAM for Jenny and Trevor in the evening.
Friday - I caught the late bus into work, just because the week had been wearying so far. I haven't played City of Heroes all week, which usually means I've had no personal time at all. Youth group was cancelled in the evening, so Deb and I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand and ran into Miv and Julia there, which was cool. The movie didn't have much plot to speak of.
Saturday - After feeding Meg at her insistence at 06:00, I went back to sleep until 09:30. I watched some recorded TV in the morning and then picked up Deb to go to Indooroopilly to buy a digital camera. We wound up with a Kodak Easyshare V530, which seems pretty good so far. We watched some more Stargate in the afternoon, then went to Bridgit's for dinner.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Our internet connection may have been speed-limited.
PPS - Then again, my router is blocking a large number of incoming connection attempts.

More Force theology

A good kind of manager recognises potential savings in the future as well as potential savings now. The bad kind of manager recognises only savings related to cost-cutting right now. Temporary expenditure for massive savings later will never get past a manager like that, no matter how many orders of magnitude of savings we are talking about.

It's another Light Side/Dark Side difference. A good manager is focused on the long term greater good. A bad manager tends to see decisions in terms of what it will mean immediately.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've only known a few managers in my time.
PPS - It seems the Dark Side kind are more common.

A maroon-coloured soul

I've mentioned previously that I care very little for spectator sports, but I do watch the State of Origin matches every year. I only managed to see the second half of last night's game, but that was the exciting one, so it's okay. Unfortunately for Queensland, a missed conversion meant that the scores were tied with three minutes to go, and a simple field goal from New South Wales effectively ended the match. I was interested to see the excitement the game generated in me, shouting gleefully at good plays and tries. It's not something I usually do, but I now understand why spectators can have so much love for a game they never play.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I need to buy Meg a little kitty clock so she knows when is too early for breakfast.
PPS - For future reference, half past four is too early.

A night at the supermarket

Last night I was doing my shopping at the supermarket, as I often do. When I turned the corner into the confectionery aisle, I saw every centimetre of shelving being methodically ransacked by a platoon of people, like locusts on a crop. What confused me was that most were not wearing the supermarket employee uniform and were not carrying any calculators or portable barcode scanners. This meant it wasn't a stocktake.

So what could it be? I wondered quietly to myself. Perhaps there's been some kind of chocolate recall and these people need to sift the shelves looking for certain brands and certain batch numbers. Many packages lay on the floor. This was a feasible explanation. I also theorised that there may have been some kind of printed barcode scam, and they needed to check each product in the store to make sure its barcode was intact.

I kept wondering as I shopped, and only when I got to the checkout did I learn that it was a stocktake after all - those people were counting, then would write the total number of items next to the barcode on the shelf. Someone else was following behind and doing the traditional scan-and-multiply job, but without the hassle of counting items himself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wonder if the process was experimental.
PPS - I guess this story wasn't that exciting.

Flashy Messenger

In MSN Messenger, when you're in a conversation and your counterpart sends a message, the toolbar button flashes to show you something has been said. If you click in, then click out again quickly, the button continues to flash, thereby indicating that something new has been posted - the same new thing you just potentially read. This happens to me all the time, especially when the message I receive is something like "okay".
I think the reason that I get bugged so much by the continued flashing is that Messenger is making an assumption about me and getting it wrong. It believes I cannot have read the message that quickly, and so continues to display it as unread. It's telling me "You didn't read this yet. You clicked in, but you didn't read it." and that's not true.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do, however, understand why the mis-feature was introduced in the first place.
PPS - I just don't think it should have been introduced.

Google Speculation Update

I noted in a previous blog post that Google don't have a calendar application. That's no longer true, as some of you may know already. At the risk of sounding like a spambot, you can find out about Google Calendar here.
The one thing that disappoints me about this particular calendar application is that it's not possible for me to use Mozilla Sunbird to manage my Google calendar in a seamless partially-connected fashion. As nice as the application is, I'd just like to be able to use it offline sometimes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm a fan of partially-connected applications.
PPS - They allow the user more freedom.

Update: It's been some time since this post, and there are now ways to use Google Calendar with either Sunbird or Outlook.

The Sunday Mok - Live From Adelaide!

Sunday - After the morning church service, I ate lunch at Deb's, then came home to do laundry and dishes. I took a nap while Deb played City of Heroes. Baby Eli was at the evening service and getting lots of attention. Deb and I got some ideas from Michelle about things to do in Tasmania.
Monday - At work we had a presentation about some software we may be purchasing. I still don't know exactly what it's all about. I had dinner at home before heading to bible study, thoroughly unprepared, as it turned out. Deb and I watched another Stargate SG-1 episode afterwards.
Tuesday - I ate leftover taco filling for lunch, which was all meat and cheese. Somehow I doubt it's good for me. I went to install some hardware for Jenny and Trevor, and that went on way longer than I planned.
Wednesday - After a couple of days of planning, I got down to the more-interesting details of implementing a security framework for our performance appraisal database. It's coming along nicely. Deb came over in the evening and made enchiladas for dinner while I packed to go to Adelaide. We watched more Stargate.
Thursday - I had an early start to get to the plane in time. The flight, apart from being hurled through the air in a metal tube, was nothing extraordinary. I listened to stand-up comedy because I couldn't sleep. Erin, Gwen and I spent the afternoon at Glenelg Beach before the evening conference session, which was great.
Friday - The day was full from start to finish with five conference sessions and short breaks for food. I learned a lot about God, myself and our youth ministry. There will likely be more on this later.
Saturday - Just like Friday, but more tired. As an example, imagine that I had writted "tireder" right there, and you might get the picture. By the evening, I just needed a quiet place to sleep, away from humans and traffic.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sleep still eluded me on today's plane trip.
PPS - Back in my own bed, things were different.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging

From early tomorrow morning until Sunday afternoon, I'll be in Adelaide, and it's likely that posts will temporarily cease over this period. I keep meaning to write a program that can post a pre-prepared entry automatically in my absence, but somehow I never quite get around to it. If I ever did, you wouldn't have to know that I was gone at all, unless you notice that I'm not around or not answering my landline.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I considered leaving you a "thought for the day" for each day I'm gone.
PPS - Maybe I'll do that later.

Esteem modifiers

It is interesting that one of the goals that occupies my Light Side is to boost everyone's self-esteem up to a self-sustaining level, and that one of my favourite Dark Side games is to make people feel bad about themselves by tearing down their hopes and dreams. I don't give in to that Dark Side urge too often, but sometimes it slips in there like the Octopus of Evil, squeezing through tiny gaps simply because that's what octopi love to do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think that's a more apt analogy than I intended.
PPS - Because, you see, the Octopus of Evil has to be spineless if it's an octopus.

Non-negotiable

Meg, the cutest cat in the whole wide house, decided this morning that breakfast would be 15 minutes early. She declared this rather loudly in her limited vocabulary from the other side of my closed door. My "calm" counter-offer involved asking her to wait patiently elsewhere until I got up at my usual time of 06:00. I came out on top of these negotiations primarily because I have thumbs and a bigger brain.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I got the impression, however, that there was a slight communications barrier between us.
PPS - That might have been the door, too.

The Sunday Mok - A cult of plastic kitchenware

Sunday - I received the first actual news I've gotten from Dad & Beth overseas, which summed up to "we're in Frankfurt". I watched last Sunday's Big Brother, then played City of Heroes for most of the afternoon.
Monday - Work seems to be quieter recently. I did some appraisal database documentation and fixed a bug in Asset Knowledgebase. I booked accommodation for the Hobart trip, and had dinner at Gwen & John's with the rest of the bible study group.
Tuesday - Timesheet transfer dramas held the process up, so it didn't happen on Monday or Tuesday. In my spare time I updated my WorkDiary note-taking program to include a project tag for easier searching. Karate in the evening was a tough leg workout.
Wednesday - My legs got progressively more sore during the day. I had dinner at Deb's and we watched three Stargate SG-1 episodes. I had to do the dishes when I got home.
Thursday - I worked on gathering info for the switch to a new accounting system at work. As it turns out, to keep our peripheral services running, we'll need full access to their database. I had dinner at Deb's, then helped Rachel look up some info on setting up an online forum for a university assignment.
Friday - I got word that I'll need to work out lots of complex security requirements for the appraisal database. At my current estimate, though the site is otherwise ready to be used, it will take a month. For youth group we took everyone to the Oxley driving range. I think I could get to be an average golfer if I took the time or had much interest.
Saturday - I tried to help Jenny with her PC, but in the end it seems that the hard drive is dead. That took all morning to find out, because it wasn't dead yet. I bought the next two Stargate seasons and Deb and I finished off season 5.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The "cult of plastic kitchenware" has likely invaded your kitchen, too.
PPS - I won't mention the name, but I think you know who I mean.

A steaming pile of unposted thoughts

I'm looking over my draft blog posts (there are a lot of them) and I don't see any that are particularly worthy. In fact, with very little discomfort, I would use the metaphor that I have amassed a huge pile of manure, and now I'm digging through it for the bit that's not smelly. Most of the half-formed thoughts that sit here, waiting to be posted, sound like the things I've already said before, numerous times. Am I running out of steam? Is it possible that this long road of blogging has been steadily sapping my creativity and ideas so that now, in one sense, I'm finished?

I doubt it. However, if you see too many more meta-posts like this one, let me know and I'll try to dig something up.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I should produce an essay on television in the internet age.
PPS - That alone would eat up half of my unposted entries.

FOX Shows Added to iTunes Music Store

You can now buy (some) FOX television shows on iTunes, including Lost and Firefly. While iTunes has its DRM issues, it's good to see television producers gradually embracing the web. Link via digg.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't checked it out personally, but they might be US-only.
PPS - That sounds like something they'd do.

Introvert Disease

I'm a little bit tired of people treating me like I'm not a proper functioning human being just because I'm an introvert. It's not a choice, nor is it a disease. It is not even - shock! - a problem that has to be solved. It's me. I'm now imagining organising an introvert pride parade, but it would have to be online - say, in World of Warcraft or something.

So here are some things you need to know:
1. Yes, I do like people, actually. I enjoy conversation, too, and I regularly seek the company of others. This is, however, a way I choose to spend my energy, not regain it. I will grow ever more weary if forced to spend my entire day interacting with people.
2. I may be thinking more than I say. The fact that I do not immediately pipe up with my thoughts on a subject does not mean I am not paying attention, nor does it mean that I have no ideas. It also doesn't mean that I'm the deepest and most profound thinker you know.
3. In just the same way as you think I'm strange because I spend time alone, I find it entirely alien that you spend so little time alone. This is just something we will have to grow to understand about each other.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not abnormal, just different.
PPS - That's different from the majority, not necessarily from all of you.

Separation of concerns

When people separated from the actual work make unreasonable time demands, they usually get substandard work in response. As the saying goes, "faster, better, cheaper: pick two". If you want it faster, you need to spend more or sacrifice quality. Many managers are of the opinion that if they just crack the whip harder, they'll get the work done faster, which also means cheaper.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Beware of managers who don't also work on projects.
PPS - I'm aware that some people have the simpler motto "Beware of managers".

The internet and television, again

Looking over my posts and drafts for this blog, I find that I think a lot about television and the internet together. This is clearly the area of the world where I want to see the most changes made. Some public broadcasters are starting to provide interesting services over the internet, which is a good start. They are free to do this because the viewers own the station, so to speak. They are therefore more likely to engage in pro-customer behaviours and to lead the way in that area of innovation.

In other words, they put the customer/viewer first and are at the forefront of information-age television services.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not just a coincidence.
PPS - "Customers first" leads to goodwill, which leads to profits.

The Sunday Mok - Krappenfest

Sunday - I was handing out bulletins at church in the morning. I was meant to be on the previous Sunday too, but I forgot. Deb and I did some grocery shopping, then I spent the afternoon alone sleeping and playing City of Heroes. After the evening church service, several of us went to Erin's to watch The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD.
Monday - Because it was a public holiday, I slept in and then caught up on Big Brother. After dinner I went to Deb's, where we watched Stargate SG-1 and talked about our upcoming Tasmania trip.
Tuesday - I overslept in the morning, so skipped breakfast in order to make it to work on time. During the day it felt like interruptions were constant, so it was hard to focus. Karate in the evening was good - all about basic techniques.
Wednesday - I worked on the appraisal database all day, finishing off the initial security code, then started on some changes. I started reading a book by 37signals about leaner, simpler, lightweight programming. I ate dinner at Deb's, followed by more Stargate.
Thursday - I spent all day working on the appraisals database except for a presentation after lunch. Because Dad & Beth are away, I had dinner at my place with Deb, followed by Stargate and a brief chat about our Tasmania trip.
Friday - We had a section meeting about consolidating the company data stores that deal with employee information. Right now there's no really good authoritative source that we can access. Youth group in the evening was a separate boys/girls event. We boys stayed up in the auditorium playing games while the girls did whatever girls do.
Saturday - I slept in until 09:30, which is 3.5 hours, according to my regular get-up time. I was at Deb's from lunchtime until late, and that time included booking our flights to Tasmania and picking up Rachel from the domestic airport. We watched four Stargate episodes in the evening, then talked for a while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The post title is a reference to the big rubbish pickup going on now.
PPS - Some of it is being picked up and taken back inside other houses.

MS Office / OpenOffice Co-operation

How long will it be before someone produces a plug-in for MS Office 12 that allows importing and exporting of OpenOffice documents? My guess is not very long at all. Microsoft is doing all they can to prevent interoperability with OpenOffice.org, unfortunately for their customers. If Microsoft had any confidence in their software at all, they would be happy to support the open document standards, secure in the knowledge that they are providing a superior product at a reasonable price that will still turn a profit. Instead, they are locking up Office 12, refusing to natively support the public open XML document standard (recently voted in as ISO 26300) and patent-licensing their own XML document standards in order to close off as many interoperability pathways as possible. Somebody at Microsoft is scared. Very scared.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you serve your customers well, they will reward you.
PPS - If you lock up your customers, they'll try to escape.

UPDATE: Seems I am unconsciously in tune with Slashdot - this story appeared there just recently, detailing someone working on exactly the problem I've detailed above.

Moral Ambiguity

In City of Heroes, I've never been asked to choose between two actions that are both a bit good and a bit bad. There is no moral ambiguity in the game - it's all black and white. Every time I go off to fight someone (or something) I know that it's the right thing to do, even if it's breaking up a gang war that would seriously diminish the numbers of both gangs if allowed to continue.

In a way, I long for some uncertainty about what I'm asked to do. I'd settle for being asked to choose between two equally good, yet mutually exclusive, actions - like there being two people in trouble and time enough to save only one.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess there doesn't seem to be enough struggle in the hero life in Paragon City.
PPS - It would help keep me engaged in the story a bit more.

I'm Learned-ing

With a little guidance, I'm getting the hang of leaner, faster, simpler software development. Software is changing. Over the past couple of decades, we've managed to formalise our tools so that the main merits of any one language over another are syntactic sweetness. Some effort was made to study our processes, mostly in the light of traditional engineering practices.

As some of our brothers and sisters on the front lines have noticed, however, building software is a bit different to building an oil rig or a stadium. They've taken that blindingly simple observation and transformed it into a family of methods, practices and philosophy broadly called Agile Methodology. Less code, unit tests, smaller teams and flexible specs are all part of this. Slowly but surely, Agile methods are turning the software world on its head, and now it's making its way down to me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I imagine it will be a little while before these ways start being taught at schools or universities.
PPS - But that's the way it's always been.

No Places in Firefox 2

I was very excited about a new feature coming to Firefox, my web browser of choice. Version 2.0 of Firefox was to include a feature called Places, an innovative bookmarks and history manager. Very few people are still using bookmarks effectively, because our needs and web browsing habits have changed since the original design of that ancient feature. Places was set to bring Firefox bookmark functionality into the present, with searching and tagging. Sadly, according to this article, the Places feature will not be ready for the projected 2.0 release date.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess I'll have to keep using del.icio.us for now.
PPS - Places would have been much like that.

Non-Labouring Day

Honestly, it gets tough to keep up with all of these public holidays at the beginning of the year. I keep feeling like I'm going to get an angry phone call asking why I'm not at work. I'd hate to have nearly eight hours to catch up in a single week.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My only excuse so far would be "everyone else said it was a holiday".
PPS - The calendar does too.

The Sunday Mok - No map jokes, please

Sunday - After the morning church service, Deb and I hired the first three of the Scary Movie franchise. We watched them all, and I was quite glad that the total cost of those three movies for two people was just $7. We won't be watching the fourth in the cinema. Poet Cameron Semmens came to the evening church service and also to supper at the Coffee Club afterwards.
Monday - After work I went grocery shopping with Ug for picnic supplies for Tuesday. After dinner, at Deb's request, I went to her place to watch Stargate SG-1.
Tuesday - ANZAC Day. We went to New Farm Park to meet up with some of the extended family. Dad was sick, so he didn't make it, but we caught up with several cousins we hadn't seen in years. I went to karate in the evening, using my pre-paid card for the first time.
Wednesday - At work, for a bit of a change, I produced two documents. One was a coding style guide and the other was a brief user's introduction to our in-house framework library, Cornerstone. I had dinner at Deb's, then we watched more Stargate.
Thursday - Appraisals database at work all day. For dinner at Dad & Beth's in the evening, we had Thai take-away. It was pretty good.
Friday - Brad and I spent some time at work looking for bug-tracking and service-request software. We didn't find anything that particularly suited our needs. Deb brought me dinner before youth group, where we went bowling, which was fun.
Saturday - Deb and I went to a couple of travel agents to talk about going to Tasmania in June, then did a little shopping in the afternoon - I needed a new shaver. In the evening, we went to Bronwyn's place for her 25th birthday party, and left around 8pm.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Home hair-cutting kits can be bought for as little as $20.
PPS - The cheapest shaver I could find was $70.

Unbranded

I hate when programs install themselves with a folder in the Start menu named after the company. Do I want to remember who are the publishers of my games? Do I care who made my email application? No. That's their idea on brand-name brainwashing. I want my programs to install in a way that makes sense, not a way that makes customer loyalty or brand-name recognition. Of course, since it's the companies that make those choices, I usually end up with their company name on my machine anyway.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - What's perceived as good for business is often bad for customers.
PPS - That's because business is too often aligned with evil.

Surprise me

I'm intrigued by the idea of building a game that could surprise me (in a good way). So, despite the fact that I built it in the first place, it produces in-game events or effects that I did not expect. That would be the mark of a truly impressive game, to me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Please note that I have never done this.
PPS - I once started designing a space exploration game with this goal, and never got any further.

Happy ANZAC Day

Happy ANZAC Day, all you Aussies at home and abroad! Today we remember soldiers who died for our country (and sometimes for other countries) by taking a day off work. Personally I'll be remembering soldiers by having a picnic with part of my extended family.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's funny how a change in routine can almost make me forget to blog.
PPS - Almost.

Vitamin C found in Berocca

On Friday night I suggested that I got my extra vitamin C from Berocca tablets. This was a notion met with some derision, since "Berocca is vitamin B". I've checked the packet, since vitamin C was one of the reasons I bought them in the first place. Right there, admittedly below a reasonable list of B-group vitamins, is 1000mg of ascorbic acid in each tablet. So there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now and then it's nice to remind myself that my memory still works.
PPS - This post brought to you by the "Nyah-Nyah Advisory Board of Health".

The Sunday Mok - Coughing Continuously

Sunday - I had to take an unpleasant cold shower in the morning because the hot water was off at the AGMF campsite. We drove to HumeRidge Church of Christ for the morning service where Compliments of Gus were playing. By the time evening rolled around, I was too tired to stay up, so I went to bed early.
Monday - Drove back to Brisbane with Deb sleeping most of the way. When I got home, I slept too, and woke later with a fever. I had dinner with Ug the Caveman and Dad, then we all watched Mythbusters together.
Tuesday - Immediately after waking up, I decided I was too sick to go to work. I went back to sleep, then spent the remainder of the morning reading net news and watching The Fifth Element. I did not go to karate that night.
Wednesday - I went back to work because my fever was gone, though not my coughing. I worked on appraisal database documentation, making me feel unproductive. I had dinner at Deb's, then we watched Stargate SG-1.
Thursday - I worked on Asset Knowledgebase to downgrade the back-end back to MSDE because SQL Server Express was not working well enough. I left work at 17:00 just to have some breathing space. Deb had to miss dinner at Dad & Beth's.
Friday - Back onto appraisals at work. New features, but nothing too exciting. Deb came over to play City of Heroes while I was at youth group for theatresports. I had fun there.
Saturday - I spent most of the day alone, read news, played City of Heroes, did grocery shopping and washed my car. In the evening I picked Deb up to see Ice Age 2 which was pretty good. We had a little dinner beforehand and icecream after the movie.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Rest on Saturday did me good.
PPS - Doesn't mean I wouldn't like more, though.

The Black Lung and the Red Throat

So I've been coughing for about five days now, and I'm kind of tired of it. So tired, in fact, that I have begun trying to reason with my respiratory system. Neither of us wants it to self-destruct. I hold off coughs as long as I can, and repeat to my throat that "There's no point, there's nothing to cough up." So far, no response. I remain hopeful that a meaningful dialogue can proceed once we overcome our language barrier.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Coming to Nickelodeon next month: Black Lung and Red Throat!
PPS - It's semi-educational, but the kids won't notice.

Don't ask, don't tell

From now on, anybody who asks me "How are you?" better wait to hear the answer or at least be walking in the same direction as me. I never managed to get the hang of responding to "How are you?" as if it just meant "Hello", so I usually try to give a reasonable answer, then inquire about the greeter's state of wellbeing. By the time I get through my initial part of the response, though, we've continued moving and it's clear that the conversation starter was just a sophisticated grunt of acknowledgement.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Is the phrase "sophisticated grunt" an oxymoron?
PPS - I suspect so.

Spore and creativity

As much as I am looking forward to Will Wright's new game Spore (due out late this year, last I heard), I dread hearing people tout it as a great illustration of evolutionary processes. These people will be failing to recognise the intelligent contribution they make to the creative process. They will assume that random mutations and selection could produce effects as coherent and intelligent as they do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Mutations typically involve duplication or elimination of existing genes.
PPS - Selection can only destroy, not create.

Amazing

I want to be amazing to people, and I think it's a relatively common desire. I want to have people look at me (or something I do) and just say "Wow". Right now the closest I imagine anyone getting is "That's pretty cool".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a desire to be the best by an enormous margin.
PPS - So large a margin that nobody could ever catch up.

Another AGMF, another fake band

There is a kind of tradition among our people of dressing up in cheap second-hand formal gear on Good Friday at AGMF. We call it "Formal Friday", and the sign hanging near our campsite prompted some passers-by to ask whether we were a band. The obvious response was "yes", so in addition to Milhouse, I am now a member of the fake band Formal Friday.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Merchandise out soon.
PPS - It'd be cool if we could keep just one of these jokes going.

The Sunday Mok - Quickshot

Late but in place, a week-old Sunday Mok, actually posted on the 23rd of April:
Sunday - Expensive groceries, youth group finances and a Passover meal in evening church.
Monday - Communications training, day 1. Required public speaking, to which everyone objected.
Tuesday - Communications training, day 2. Karate and dinner at Dad & Beth's.
Wednesday - Appraisals database issues at work, tested, fixed and patched.
Thursday - Drove to Toowoomba for the Australian Gospel Music Festival.
Friday - AGMF day 1. I bought poet Cameron Semmens' book of 26 alliterative bible stories.
Saturday - AGMF day 2. Sent Deb to Brisbane for the day by coach. Overcrowded ska showcase in the afternoon.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sorry if that's too terse for you all.
PPS - I should have done a proper entry when I got home on Monday.

They got me

I may have mentioned to you one of these crazy products from ThinkGeek. As it turns out, they're all jokes, which seems obvious in the graphical version of the newsletter. I receive the text-only version in email, so the big hint that I should have picked up on - the USB Tanning Centre picture - was absent.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Another hint: a slot-loading vinyl drive in the "iZilla".
PPS - It would have been pretty cool to grow my own Mario 1UP mushroom, though.

Another look at television

Web-based, fan-funded serialised television: put the pilot online for free. Place a "pre-purchase next episode" link on a web page. If enough viewers pay, the episode gets made and the viewers are charged and can download the show to watch. If not, the series stagnates and eventually dies. This would have ensured the continuation of Firefly. Of course, once a show's directors, actors and so on lose interest and move on, the show won't be quite the same. The viewers will likely become disheartened by new episodes featuring an all-new cast and would stop paying to see it, guaranteeing the show's demise. This model may also help pay for Star Trek seasons and much other sci-fi that earns constant sneers from network executives.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is, of course, assuming that the pilot episode gets made in the first place.
PPS - There would be both very good and very bad television produced this way.

Lost & Found

I realised yesterday afternoon that I wasn't entirely sure where I'd put my AGMF tickets. I had a few ideas of where I would have put them, so I wasn't too worried. They had to be in the house somewhere, even if they weren't in the places I expected. They were buried a bit further down one pile than I remembered, but I did find them. That made me realise that I should be far more organised at home. I don't think it would be too difficult, but it would probably involve a herculean cleaning effort, plus an initial organisation phase, and frankly I'm too busy to get organised.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know that I'd be less busy if I were more organised.
PPS - It's a bit of a catch-22 situation.

Zombie Season

I have a feeling that Autumn and Winter are the season for zombies. It's getting colder and many trees are dropping their leaves for that dead look. The nights look more eerie and it's easier to imagine that the undead are around the next corner. Thus I pronounce zombie season officially open!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "Wabbit season".
PPS - "Duck season. FIRE!".

The Sunday Mok - Lessons in Punk

Sunday - My Dad and Beth came over to Deb's place for lunch to meet her Mum and Mal. They talked a lot about travel. I sang in the evening church service, then helped Gwen with her errant computer.
Monday - A quiet day at work. I focused on the appraisals database. After dinner with Dad, I picked up Deb and Mia to go to Keperra for dessert with most of the Bible study crew.
Tuesday - After an ordinary day at work, when I got off the bus it was bucketing down rain. My feet and the legs of my trousers were soaked by the time I got home, so I stayed there. I didn't feel much like going to karate.
Wednesday - I stopped at the Ann Street office in the morning to help Yan fix his database back-end upgrade. We'll have to downgrade it again, because it's not working out. Lunchtime presentation from David about our section, dinner at Deb's, then Stargate SG-1 at my place.
Thursday - Mostly appraisals database at work, then dinner at Dad & Beth's. We looked up coach prices for Deb to get from Toowoomba to Brisbane and back during AGMF, for her step-brother's wedding. We watched one Stargate episode back at my place.
Friday - I worked on security for the appraisals database since Damien wants managers to start using it. That's a relatively big job. For the youth group end-of-term program we went down to the local park and played games with glow sticks. When I got home I watched The Chaser's War on Everything. Very funny stuff.
Saturday - I went to the doctor in the morning, then to Stu's for this month's Beyond social event: an Easter egg hunt. It was fun. Deb and I went clothes shopping in the afternoon and bought her a whole new outfit as a very early birthday present. In the evening we watched Flightplan at Erin's.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think the Flightplan plot was needlessly complex.
PPS - Or perhaps implausibly complex.

Calling in "sick"

I don't call in sick unless I'm actually sick, but I've sometimes wondered how far the definition stretches. Today might have been a good day to stay home on account of mental illness. I feel everything just pressing in and I haven't had much time to myself in the past several weeks. I need some kind of break, preferably near a beach and away from even the everyday at-home activities. I'd need about a week, though, not just a day.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've only got two regular working days between now and Easter.
PPS - That might help.

A Thought on Peace

There are no public holidays celebrating the beginnings of wars.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Even if there are, they don't count.
PPS - Very short today, I know.

Deb's Angels (and one Devil)

I've been meaning to post this for a while, so now here are the three heroes and one villain Deb has created in City of Heroes. I took screenshots of each one and pasted them onto an Atlas Park plate background because I thought it looked a bit better than the four separate zones where I found them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can only approximately remember their names in order.
PPS - I think, left to right, it's Sparkling Diamond, Sahra, Tria and Kallia.

Bumping up the resolution

Yesterday I installed the Urban Dead Toolbar for Firefox (my browser of choice) just to upgrade the look of Urban Dead. The game was a little too low-tech sometimes, so I liked the idea of graphical maps and an organised inventory. Though I haven't used it properly yet, I like what I see so far. The proper test drive is at 12:30, local time. I expect to be very pleased - as much as if I had a new office with soundproof walls.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - 'Cause, you know, sometimes you just want to scream something.
PPS - Or not be bothered by chatterers who stop nearby.

Motorised laziness

If you need one of these motorised spinning ice cream cones, you deserve to die of starvation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Link via Boing Boing.
PPS - It was some time ago, though. It's a slow day.

The Sunday Mok - Carny for a Day

Sunday - I took a one-hour nap in the afternoon because of my relatively late night on Saturday while Deb played City of Heroes. When I woke up, we switched. I ran the computer in the evening church service where we had a guest speaker. Only four of us went to the Coffee Club afterwards.
Monday - Two problems with the timesheet system at work, neither of which was my fault or under my control. Bible study at Erin's in the evening, sitting outside where it was a comfortable temperature but noisy.
Tuesday - The staff appraisals database finally started being used, but not for long, since it turned out to be slightly broken. Also Yan's Asset Knowledgebase had some issues. Karate in the evening mostly involved games and punching bags.
Wednesday - I had a problem with the appraisals database that wasn't easily solved and the information gathering was also broken. I had dinner at Deb's where we watched a few Stargate SG-1 episodes.
Thursday - I got the appraisal database working again and attended a training session on managing work. For an hour after work I helped Deb sort clothes for the April Fair on Saturday, then went to Dad & Beth's for dinner.
Friday - In the evening I helped with site works for April Fair, carrying tables and erecting stalls. I think I was meant to be a bit more in charge.
Saturday - April Fair itself, what the church has been leading up to for weeks (if not months) now. I arrived at 08:30 and ran the bowling lane from 10:00 until 15:00 with a short break for lunch. I left at around 16:30 and then had to get ready for a formal dinner at Mt Coot-tha. When I got home at 23:00, I was wiped out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Dinner conversation with Tim touched on the topic of "shrimp cutlery".
PPS - Cheese knives are the gay dwarfs of the knife world, apparently.