Boredom

A while ago, I believed I would never be bored again. This was based primarily on always having a list of things to do that could occupy my time. Yesterday, however, I was at home sick and, for most of the time, alone. I did not work from my list because it didn't occur to me. Usually I don't have to. So yesterday I got bored, and it was a kind of revelation. It may just mean that I need to pay more attention to my actions list at home instead of just at work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Being sick, I may not have been able to do much anyway.
PPS - But I can see now a few achievable actions I could have done.

Sick at home

I've been sick at home yesterday and today, hence the slightly irregular blog posting schedule. You'd think it would be easier to keep a routine without work to worry about, but somehow it throws everything a bit off centre. I guess work has become a part of my subconscious routine-keeping so when you take it away I get a bit lost. It makes sense. Anyway, the sickness seems to be clearing up, so I should be back at work and back in the routine tomorrow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Hopefully I'll have something interesting to post then, too.
PPS - I caught up on all my news yesterday, but it keeps building up.

Boastful complaining

Boasting is traditionally known as exaggerating your accomplishments beyond what really happened. There is another way too, where you overstate the difficulties you overcame. I've been guilty of that in the past, and I didn't classify it as boasting at the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My opinion on the matter has changed since I realised this.
PPS - And I plan to change my behaviour too.

PC fixed

A while ago I had some trouble with my PC at home. It wouldn't turn on properly, so I replaced the power supply. That worked up to a point, but then it wouldn't stay on for more than about an hour. I was frustrated, and ready to replace all the inner bits - motherboard, CPU, RAM etc. Over the weekend, however, I made a discovery. When I had unplugged all the power leads to replace the power supply, I had unplugged the CPU fan too. Then I had neglected to plug it back in. So now I have a working PC again, and all it took was one fan cable plugged in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a much cheaper solution than I was prepared for.
PPS - I would have rather made this discovery straight away, though.

Semi-automatic door

I am, so far, the only one who finds this sign funny, but I'll let you be the judge:


Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just think "to open push button" is not very automatic.
PPS - It might just be me.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Dearest

Zombie Dearest is a short animated film about a vegetarian zombie called Tofu. I've heard it's rather good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do plan to watch it soon.
PPS - Perhaps in my copious free time.

Progress on the web

The web is tending to slow down in some ways, even as it explodes in other directions. It's gaining a kind of technological momentum, which is great if you're headed in the right direction already. But the thing about the future is that it's all a grey fog, so who knows what the right direction is?

Although we're doing spectacular new things with web applications, they're limited by the current crop of web browsers. That does tend to push browsers to greater heights, but as a web designer you need to aim across the board. That means you can't demand your users view your site with any particular browser, and so sites in general need browsers to have features in common.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's why we have standards for things like HTML.
PPS - But the standards tend to follow behind what people are trying to do.

A fictional exchange

I thought I'd dig through my miscellaneous writing file a bit today, and found the following two-line dialogue exchange:

"How can you smile on your way to work?"

"I'm not at work yet. That's how."



It's a little slice of life that never happened, I suppose.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have never asked or been asked that question.
PPS - I guess it could still happen.

The speed of fashion

There is a limit to the speed of fashion based on the production chain. You can't wear something faster than it can be designed, produced, shipped and purchased. To break that barrier, you need something that can be designed and built right where you are, no matter where that is. I have trouble imagining such a system, but I expect fashion will become much more confusing if they ever break that speed barrier.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's also a certain crowd momentum, filtering for design quality.
PPS - That's why most things never appear off fashion show catwalks.

Room in your eyes

I looked up the correct medical name for that yellow crust that forms in the corners of your eyes while you sleep. I usually call it "sleep", but that seemed ambiguous to me, so I thought the proper term would be more helpful. It's called "rheum", pronounced "room". Oh, yes, that's much better, especially when speaking:

"I had some rheum in my eyes."
"Room for what?"
"No, R-H-E-U-M. You know, sleep."
"Why didn't you just say 'sleep' in the first place?"

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do this kind of thing because I am difficult.
PPS - Doctors probably have to explain their terminology all the time.

A quick question

If desk allocations were decided at your company by an impartial optimising computer program, would you feel better about that or worse? It would probably depend on who wrote the program and to what specifications. It would be too easy to write a program that does a much worse job than a person in this regard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Our section was going to be moved again last month.
PPS - Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the plan any more.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Effective Brains

Technically not zombie news, but tickled my zombie sense anyway:
10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains. Just sounds a bit zombified to me.



Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure the article has value besides a zombie joke.
PPS - Link via BoingBoing.

Why badness is interesting

I think, in the general view, "being good" and "being bad" are seen not at the positive and negative ends of the morality spectrum respectively, but at the middle and negative. Being good is usually seen as a kind of passive neutrality where you don't do anything at all. At best, goodness fights against badness, but in the absence of badness, it wouldn't do anything.

Badness, in contrast, is interesting because at least it means doing something. There's some substance to it, even if it is destructive.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Being actively good in our society is lumped in with "sucking up".
PPS - Or helping old ladies cross the street.

So You Think You Can Act?

I'd be interested in a TV talent show based around acting. Despite bad experiences in the past with Big Brother auditions, I think I'd even go along to the auditions. I can imagine the actors working with different directors in different styles week by week and a panel of judges responding. It's all fairly plausible, but it wouldn't work very well. For one thing, it's not nearly as exciting as singing or dancing, so I would expect the ratings to be lower than those shows.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, there's irony in making reality TV with actors.
PPS - It's a niche-focused idea.

Freaky life narration

If you ever want to freak yourself out, imagine your day being narrated by the host of Unsolved Mysteries. If you break your normal routine, it sounds particularly worrisome.

"Instead of taking his usual route home, he decided to get off the bus one stop early walk down some back streets. Several strangers reported seeing him leave the bus, cross the road and head into the alley."

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You should stop when you start inserting "That was the last time anyone saw him alive."
PPS - Because by then you'll probably be panicking.

Public transport smart cards

I've been doing some thinking about Brisbane's new public transport smart card system, the "go card". It's technologically spiffy and probably faster than the current 10-trip or driver-issued ticket system, and I'm sure it benefits those who have bus or train as alternatives to each other. I only have the bus, unfortunately.

Financially, I am slightly better off with a 10-trip ticket than a go card. The trips work out about the same per week except when there's a public holiday. Go card discounts only apply if you make six trips between each Sunday and Saturday, making a normal working week cost as much as 8 trips. A 10-trip ticket is sold for that same price. If there's a public holiday, the 10-trip ticket just remains valid over that time. The go card discount does not.

Furthermore, if my 10-trip ticket fails, I get free travel for the day. If my go card fails, I pay a flat fee of $3 for the bus trip. This is a necessary consequence of the go card system, but it is also a weakness. Allow me to demonstrate.

If I had four zones to travel to work five days per week, that makes ten trips per week. A Go Card would charge me a total of $32 for the week on buses. However, if I simply fail to "touch off" at the end of every trip, I am charged $3 per trip. Multiplied by 10 trips, that's only $30 per week. Four zones is where this saving overtakes the frequent user discount for buses. It's higher for trains because the no-touch charge there is $5. Still, if you're taking a single trip and the charge would be more than the $3/$5 no touch charge, doesn't it make sense to do that instead?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And if I have an unregistered card they can't come to yell at me for doing that.
PPS - I don't know how many people would deliberately do this.

Danny Boy, Muppet Style

Via BoingBoing, I've been laughing at this Muppets clip recently. Enjoy!


Mokalus of Borg

PS - BoingBoing posted this for St Patrick's Day.
PPS - I know, it's a pretty lazy post.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Walk Delayed

The Brisbane Zombie Walk, held for the past two years in April, has been delayed this year due to unspecified organisation changes. The current estimate is "late June, mid July".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That means I may miss my chance to participate this year.
PPS - Here's last year's post.

Donate airport parking fees to charity

I think of parking fees at the airport as more of a deterrent than a cost covering measure. You can't make millions of dollars a month for having empty space available and claim your costs are that high. It is, rather, a way of artificially lowering demand for those spaces and keeping people moving. Now, the socially responsible thing to do with such fees is not to keep them to yourself, but to donate them to charity. I doubt any airport worldwide would even consider such a thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There may be a need to keep some of the fees for routine maintenance.
PPS - Roads and driving surfaces do deteriorate, after all.

Smart bombs

How smart does a smart bomb have to be before you feel guilty about destroying it? A self-guiding mechanism is fair enough, but what if the bomb had the power of speech?

"Dave?"
"Yes, Bomb?"
"Why are we going to Baghdad?"
"Uh ... There are some bad people there. We're going to, um, blow up their building."
"Oh. How are we going to do that?"
"Well, when I say 'we' are going to do it, I mean you are."
"How?"
"... We're going to drop you from this plane, then it's your job to find that building and hit it."
"And I'll blow up the bad people?"
"Yes, Bomb."
"Will it hurt, Dave?"
"I don't know, Bomb. I don't know."

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Bombs probably don't need to speak.
PPS - And the armed forces would need a lot more psychiatrists in that kind of world.

Above average web users fail to perform Google search

I have heard an astounding statistic recently: out of a group of "above average" web users recruited for a study, 24% of those that expressed a desire to perform a Google search failed to do so. They could either not reach the website (because they didn't know where it was) or they just typed their query into whatever search box happened to be at hand. I have a hard time coming to grips with this because it sounds so fundamental. How does someone get classified as an "above average" web user when typing "www.google.com" in a location box is beyond them? It just blows my mind.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's possible that "Google" was a generic term to them; a synonym for "search".
PPS - Statistic via this useit.com article.

Public Holidays

Greetings from the other side of Easter! I promise to get back to my regular blogging schedule of approximately 8am on weekdays after the extra-long weekend is over.

I enjoy a day off work now and then, and the beginning of the year is great for that. There's a long weekend almost every month up to June or something. I haven't checked in detail, but that's how it seems. The other half of the year, by comparison, is a hard task master. We get one public holiday - People's Day. Doesn't seem quite fair. Oh well. I've heard elsewhere that Australia has the highest number of public holidays in the world, so I shouldn't complain that they're all packed down one end of the year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe some day in the future we'll have more.
PPS - But some will be taken away in the meantime, I'm sure.

Good Friday and Formal Friday

Today, among a certain group of friends is known both as Good Friday and Formal Friday. Formal Friday is a day to wear second-hand formal clothes around Toowoomba and the Gospel Music Festival (now known as Easterfest). It's fun mostly because these formal clothes look great, but you're not as attached to them because they were so cheap, so you can get up to various mischief and shenanigans if you so choose.

One year we had a sign up in the camping grounds of the festival and were mistaken for a band, so in my mind, as much as I like my old fake band Milhouse, I think I prefer the name Formal Friday. I even made a logo. So as you contemplate the meaning of Easter, you might also like to wear an old suit or gown, or pretend you're in a band for no good reason.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Happy Easter!
PPS - I'm not in Toowoomba this year because I thought (erroneously) that I'd be busy.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Brainz

Brainz is a simple zombie point-and-click game that might provide enough entertainment to get you through the Easter long weekend.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I died pretty quickly.
PPS - I might have done better with a mouse instead of the laptop trackpad.

A fascination

One of the things that is simultaneously fascinating and depressing about the internet is that you can always find someone who has taken that passing interest of yours and run with it much further than any sane person would. For instance, you have probably at some stage seen someone else's discarded shopping list and thought "I wonder what that person is like". Chances are, however, that you did not go around looking for more discarded shopping lists, write fiction in the guise of your imagination of the owner or dress up as that character and have photographs taken.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Artists are weird.
PPS - You probably already know this.

Phun - a physics sandbox program

I just had my first look at Phun, a 2D physics sandbox program, and I like it. I always enjoyed the game "The Incredible Machine", based on similar physics simulation, and Phun is a lot like that, with some differences. I didn't look too deeply, but it seems that the name is very appropriate.

It also got me thinking what other sandbox programs would be interesting and fun (or what other features could be incorporated into a physics program like this). Maybe magnetism, light and sound, but why not chemistry or even biology?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The Frankenstein implications of a biology simulator might be a bit much.
PPS - Still, it could be very interesting.

There's never anything good on

A new take on the Drake Equation with respect to television.

The number of good shows on right now can be expressed as follows:

N = s * c * i * t

Where:

s is the number of shows currently on a typical TV channel
c is the number of channels available in your area
i is the fraction of shows you find interesting
t is a fraction representing the current timeslot as a piece of the day

Personally, I have 4 free-to-air channels available and I estimate that I find about 5% of television shows interesting. If a day is divided into 48 half-hour slots, then t is about 0.02. If these numbers are representative, I should feel compelled to spend only about 6 minutes per day watching television (c * i * t * 1 day), and that's before I decide which particular show to watch. And if a third of the time is ads, I'll only get 4 minutes of actual content.

If TV shows are split about 50-50 between one-hour and half-hour shows, then we expect to see 56 one-hour episodes per week and 112 half-hour episodes for a total of 168 shows on a typical TV channel. 168 * 4 * 5% * 0.02 = 0.672 good shows on right now.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So I guess you have about a 2 in 3 chance of something good being on.
PPS - I haven't taken all factors into account, though.

Post-show let-down

The Easter production at Ashgrove Baptist Church is over, and now I'm going through a bit of post-show let-down. It's like I made some friends over the past few months, and somehow when the show finished it felt like they'd all died or something. I wasn't prepared for it to hit me quite so hard, but a couple of things built it up and I just couldn't take it. I'll be fine, I just need some time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I shouldn't have left so quickly afterwards.
PPS - And I won't be able to make it to the cast party either.

Open source and backwards compatibility

Windows, being closed source and running closed source programs, had a large amount of compatibility code included (until Vista, that is). We relied on Microsoft to keep our old programs running. Linux, being open source and running open source programs, can offload the burden of correctly running old applications into the applications themselves. And if you're a programmer, you can make sure your favourite open-source programs keep running regardless of changes to the Linux system.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Actually this is more a benefit of open source in general, whether on Windows or Linux.
PPS - But it's easier to work around quirks in a system you can examine thoroughly.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Slackers

Boy on a Stick and Slither on zombies as slackers. They could be more productive members of society, but they'd rather just stumble around eating brains.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This one ran some time ago.
PPS - I like it.

A quick plug - Easter play

Three years ago I was in a well-received Easter play at church. It's on again, and somehow I have failed to mention this until now. Anyway, this time around we're doing three performances from the 14th to the 16th of March inclusive - this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 7pm to 8:30 at Ashgrove Baptist Church, 7 Firhill Street, Ashgrove, QLD, Australia (map). Free entry. I'm playing the same characters as last time: the high priest Caiaphas and the disciple Thomas who gets to wear a Transformers t-shirt. Due to some quick costume change necessities, Caiaphas also wears that shirt underneath his suit jacket.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Final rehearsal is tonight.
PPS - And only now am I slightly freaking out.

Google Calendar Sync

I have changed from using the RemoteCalendars Outlook plugin to the new official Google Calendar Sync, and I'm a fan. It's faster, it seems more reliable, and I don't have to open Outlook at all to sync my calendar any more. It also does two-way synchronising better than RemoteCalendars, so changes I make on my phone get to Google Calendar effortlessly. I do still have to use Windows rather than Linux to complete the transfer to my phone, but that's Nokia's fault, not Google's.

The most beautiful part is this: RemoteCalendars used to stomp on the hidden event IDs, so every time I synchronised my Outlook calendar with my phone I'd get the month's events deleted and re-added. Google Calendar Sync maintains the IDs, so now every sync I only see actual changes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It sounds small, but it's a big help.
PPS - Now I'm waiting for an official GMail contact sync application.

The real cost of interruptions

We have a PA system here at the office and it's not my favourite thing in the world. I've made no secret of that, but there's a bigger problem than annoyance. It costs real money in lost productivity. Let me demonstrate with some calculations:
Assume 200 people in the office, costing $100 per hour each (charge-out rates, not salary), 4 interruptions per day and 15 minutes of lost productivity per PA interruption. The 15 minutes is recognised as the time required to get back into the "flow" of work. These figures are conservative.
Now, 4 interruptions times 15 minutes times 200 people is 200 hours per day. 200 hours at $100 per hour means our PA system is costing us $20000 daily in lost productivity. If our upper management had to fork out that much deliberately every day to keep the PA system going, I think it would be cut out of the budget fairly quickly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The problem is that lost productivity is always a hidden cost.
PPS - You pay the employees the same, but there's a potential to use their time better.

Earth Hour - 29th March

Earth Hour is coming up on the 29th of March, 8pm. Turn off all your lights from then until 9pm if you're participating, but many people have called it a waste of time, producing insignificant results. A better idea would be the "digital Sabbath" where you leave your computer, television and power-hungry devices off for one day in every seven. Instead of saving only one hour's worth of energy over a year, you'll be saving 52 days' worth.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apparently there are psychological benefits to unplugging one day out of seven, too.
PPS - If I had made the Earth Hour photo gallery on the website, it would have been all completely dark pictures.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Copyright battle

Apparently, film company MKR is complaining that Capcom's "Dead Rising" is a rip-off of Dawn of the Dead. Because they both have zombies and a mall.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Could be tough to win that one.
PPS - Then again, you never know.

4 Dec 2008 Update: Capcom have won the copyright battle, as it should be. I guess "mall with zombies" is too vague to copyright.

Low-hanging fruit

When I wash the dishes, I tend to start with cutlery. However, this habit doesn't serve me well when I have only ten minutes for dishes and I know I won't be finishing. After all the cutlery, there seems to be just as much washing up left as before. So recently I started cleaning the big items first: saucepans, strainers, a big vase, the pizza tray and so on. I found that it gave a much bigger visual and mental pay-off than starting small, and took exactly the same amount of effort. That's a good lesson in general: grab the low-hanging fruit first.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you're tuning your budget, go for the biggest savings first.
PPS - If you're dieting, cut out the worst food items first.

Online help as a wiki

I've thought for a little while now that online help should be presented in wiki form. That way anyone who comes along and notices a mistake or omission can correct it straight away. Of course, like any wiki, it will require a bit of moderation. I expect the main issue will be filling in user-created question sections rather than correcting vandalism.

Many open-source projects provide a wiki for users to generate documentation and help each other out, but they seem to be much less maintained than they should be.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't gotten to try this for any of our web-based systems here at work yet.
PPS - If I ever get to do so, I'll let you know how it goes.

A credit card that rewards repayments

A credit card that rewards you for paying off your balance rather than racking up a higher balance is only different from the timing point of view. You still get rewarded for the same amount of purchasing, but the difference is that the bank doesn't have to pay you rewards until you've paid them back for what you've borrowed. Considering that I paid off part of my credit card with reward points, It could even be seen as worse to go this way as a customer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't find a link to the current scheme being advertised on Australian television.
PPS - That's how much attention I pay: I can't remember which bank is offering it.

Car vs property brokers

I purchased my car through a broker. I just gave him a description of what I was after, and in a day or two he found one for me. It was very easy and not at all stressful. It would be good to have that same kind of experience buying a house, but I doubt it would be possible.

The reason is that houses are much bigger purchases, they always require a complicated loan agreement and most of all the market is too fragmented. This agent gets some listings for this area while other agents get other listings or other areas. You can't just go to one agent and be sure you're getting the best deal or the best product, so you have to go to many. This increases competition among agents which means they become less discerning about who wants what. In the end, it just turns out a mess.

What we need is a proxy for the real estate agents who can gather listings and inspect properties in advance before making a recommendation. The trouble with that, however, is that sometimes the market moves so swiftly that any layers between buyer and seller are too inconvenient. You can't have an owner dealing with an agent, dealing with a broker who in turn deals with a buyer when someone else walks in with a chequebook.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe it would work in some situations.
PPS - Like when you're only interested in a location, not a house.

What a real holodeck will mean

The day humanity invents a successful holodeck is when the very richest eccentrics stop bothering us forever. They can live their entire lives inside, being the objects of their own affection, contemplating their existence and having their every wish come true.

For those of us who can't afford a holodeck of our own, we'll have to rent time in public ones. Some will become addicted, spending all their time and money there as some do with casinos now.

There will, of course, be thousands and thousands of perverse programs for sale in back alleys, pandering to twisted tastes or merely insatiable appetites, much like the web is today. And for some, the fantasy worlds will be just too unreal to bother with. There will be support groups to help you break your dependency on the technology. There will be virtual island holidays for sale in the middle of the busiest cities. Pristine virtual paradises amidst modern developments.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It will change the world, particularly our perceptions of fantasy.
PPS - That is if it ever comes about for real.

Office map Risk

Our section secretary has a map of our three-level office on the wall, presumably so she can find people when necessary. I may be strange, but every time I see it I imagine laying it out on a big table, defining some territories and using it to play Risk. It's like office politics, but trivialised!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may need to find the files on our network to print for myself.
PPS - Or I may forget about this in a month or so.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Sewer zombie in East Sussex

Sewer workers in Eastbourne, East Sussex claim a zombie-like creature is stalking them. Apparently the place has already been checked for electromagnetic haunting energy, but came up negative.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think these guys would get particularly creeped out regularly.
PPS - After all, they're in those tunnels all day.

Casual but functional: formal slippers

Sometimes I'd really like some "office slippers" to wear during the day. Some kind of comfortable footwear that still looks professional enough for work. Of course once it's clear I'm wearing slippers at work, no amount of professional looks will fix that perception.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps what I really want is to work from home now and then.
PPS - Then I can even go barefoot.

A haiku about bus travel

If only I'd known
The bus wouldn't come today
I'd have stayed in bed

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's true.
PPS - Composing this poem is how I spent my long bus ride in.

Invasions of privacy on the starship Enterprise

I have come to the conclusion that people in the 24th century must have very different expectations of privacy to us. At any time, it seems anyone can ask the computer to locate anyone else on board. If you're trying for a secret rendezvous, that's something you have to keep in mind. Also, there don't seem to be any privacy locks or controls on the holodeck, so you shouldn't run anything truly personal there. Nor should you even store a personal holodeck program, because it seems anyone can call it up later if they so desire.

Now, there may be some privacy controls in place that are not obvious to me - for instance, it might be that only your commanding officer can view things that belong to you - but that is never made obvious. Also, it seems there are personal identifications and you can manually assign arbitrary locking codes to personal files and functions, but the crew rarely seem to bother. There is probably a feeling that if you hide something, it must be illicit.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's probably because it would complicate the plot too much.
PPS - I don't have enough info about the original series to compare to that.

DNA evidence

Criminals on CSI Miami seem very willing to confess based on the assertion of genetic evidence. Mind you, I am basing this on only one episode, but the exchange at the end went something like this:

"It got too slippery for Jimmy on your boat, didn't it?"
"He was never on my boat."
"We found his DNA there."
"Oh, that. Yeah, I found him in the water, then killed him because he wouldn't give my drugs back."

He must have been kicking himself later that it never occurred to him to say "I don't know what you're talking about".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This may also apply to other flavours of CSI.
PPS - I wouldn't know personally.

Real practitioners of fictional martial arts

A thought grew upon me recently that at least a few fans must have tried to practice fictional martial arts from their favourite books, movies, TV shows or games. I know there are a group of Jedi swordfighters in Los Angeles, and I think I can safely assume that a few fans of Star Trek's Klingons have gotten together to flesh out moQ'bara into something more solid.

The question that follows, then, is whether these martial arts are made less fictional by having real practitioners, or if it moves the practitioners themselves further from reality.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Most people would argue for the latter.
PPS - Especially when it involves wearing Klingon make-up.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Teaching English

A game with the slightly strained title English of the Dead aims to teach English to native Japanese speakers. The Japanese words are presented by an advancing horde of the undead and the only way to kill them is to write the correct English translation. As the zombies die, they speak the English word to provide the correct pronunciation. It sounds rather interesting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Zombies. Is there anything they can't do?
PPS - I mean, besides work doorknobs or climb ladders.

Why the disciples didn't understand Jesus

As we chatted through Bible study last night, I started sympathising with Jesus' disciples. They didn't always understand what he was talking about, but it was the first time a lot of it had been said, let alone presented in metaphor. Also, half the time it seems Jesus would take any old situation and turn it into a teaching exercise, so when he said something mundane it might have been a bit of a shock to the system. If he was hungry, he might ask if you have any bread around, but did he mean literal bread or metaphorical bread? And if you ask, will he start teaching again in those confusing parables?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might have been safer to assume he was speaking in metaphors all the time.
PPS - But even that would get confusing now and then.

Gender role-reversing romantic comedies

The next time you see a romantic comedy, try to imagine what it would be like if the lead characters were male instead of female and vice versa. It usually doesn't turn out as funny, and quite often gets creepy or just sad. Why would I tell you to do this? Well, there's certain behaviour that is expected of men and certain things women can just get away with. When you try to see it the other way around, those things become more obvious and more ridiculous.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some movies should not be role reversed this way.
PPS - It would get too weird.

Guerilla Wireless Internet

I'm sure it's been tried somewhere around the world by now. Some local governments and councils have occasionally announced plans to build a public wireless internet service, and all of these plans have fallen through. If a few tech-savvy citizens got together, they could easily buy a business-targeted internet plan and distribute it wirelessly over a local area, splitting the bill among everyone who uses it.

That would probably be the biggest problem: billing. Besides that, the technical problems are practically nil.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - But billing does count for a lot.
PPS - Especially if access is not restricted.

Curing colour blindness

Deb had a dream that you could use special contact lenses to correct colour blindness. It probably couldn't work quite the way she dreamed it, but I think her subconscious might be onto something. After all, coloured lenses is how they used to do colour television.

My first prototype idea would be to wear some big chunky electronic glasses that change colour a few times per second, from red to green to blue and back. The problem would be communicating to the brain which colour is currently filtered so that the images made sense. Maybe if the colours switched rapidly enough it wouldn't make a difference. A fully colour-blind person wouldn't start seeing in colour the same way we do, but they might start to distinguish better between the shades of grey they see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Full colour blindness is probably too rare to bother trying this.
PPS - Except perhaps out of curiosity.

Everything is broken #3: The home telephone

In keeping with the theme of everything electronic going wrong for me, the home phone is on the blink. The positive twist in this case is that it's Telstra's problem, not mine, but I'll still have to wait up to two weeks for it to be fixed. In the meantime they promise to deliver a magical telephone that only requires power, not a working hard line. I am slightly intrigued to discover how it works.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps it uses the mobile network.
PPS - It's possible Telstra will receive this device back disassembled.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Undead debt

One from the archives. About a year and a half ago, podcast "Pseudopod" ran a story called "What Dead People Are Supposed to Do", which follows a son taking care of his deceased father. His father is still walking around because he has debts to work off. I haven't listened myself, but the premise sounds interesting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe later.
PPS - In all my free time.

Valentine's Day postponed

I have decided that Valentine's Day will be postponed until Saturday, when things are more convenient for me. Please make a note of it. That is all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In the meantime, please refrain from all romantic activities and public displays of affection.
PPS - Police have been given authority to confiscate picnic rugs and champagne, just in case.

Connecting my phone to Linux, but not really

My trusty Nokia 6288 (running Symbian S40) was being repaired during the Great Office Linux Switch, so I had yet to see it in action with Ubuntu until now. On Windows I had set up an elaborate but effective chain of tools for automatic data synchronisation like so:

Phone <--USB--> Nokia PC Suite <--> Microsoft Outlook <--(plugin)--> Google Calendar

It works like a charm except that the Outlook plugin (Remote Calendars) does its slow network access and sync in the same thread as the Outlook user interface. It locks the whole thing up for a minute or so, which is annoying but not a deal breaker. The two things I like best about this setup are (1) it costs me zero in phone company data charges since I'm going via a wired internet connection and (2) it doesn't require any third-party website memberships.

On Linux, the best replacement I can find for the Nokia PC Suite is MultiSync, but it's not working for me so far. I may need to read up on it some more. For now, the solution is to run Windows in VMWare Player and just use the old way virtually.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not what I wanted to do.
PPS - Maybe another option will open up further down the line.

What does "better" mean?

Ways things can be better than others:

Cheaper
Faster
More convenient
More reliable
More efficient
More secure
Tougher
Longer lasting
More attractive
More effective
Simpler
Easier to use
More fun
Cleaner
Safer
More interesting
More portable
More entertaining
Louder
Quieter
Softer
Harder
More crisp
Sharper
Fresher
Tastier
Brighter

And that's not all. Very rarely is something "better in every way" than its predecessor, despite our desires or the advertising. Even if it is better in many ways, it might be worse in some way that counts for more.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Windows Vista is one case in point.
PPS - Much shinier, but more frustrating.

Alcohol prohibition in Australia

Is Australia moving towards alcohol prohibition? We've seen the positive effects (or perhaps the reversal of negative effects) in rural Aboriginal communities, so how long before the booze ban hits urban centres as well? There are probably some places that could benefit right now, if their alcohol-fuelled car accident and violence rates are high.

I don't imagine it would go down well at first, especially with so many people addicted, so perhaps what we're looking for is a kind of enforced moderation. It won't keep the die-hard alcoholics from drinking, because they'll find a way around it, but it should push back the border a little, reducing accidents and hospital admissions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think it's coming soon.
PPS - There would be many more years to go before we get to that point.

Win some, lose some

Long-time readers may remember the "Free Money" tray I kept on my desk for a while. People started putting in their vending machine change and using it like a communal spare change tray. Then for a while my desk was nowhere near a vending machine. Since we moved back, I decided to return the tray to its rightful place, right beside the vending machine.

The entire thing, tray and all, was gone the next day. I'm not sure if it was claimed according to its stated purpose or if it was "cleaned up" with a bonus to the cleaner. Either way, the tray is no more.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe I'll make a new one someday.
PPS - But not today.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Global Warming

Apparently, Global warming may cause an increase in zombie attacks. It's true. I read it on the internet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's because cold weather slows them down.
PPS - But only in places that have fairly cold winters.

Microsoft Access for Workgroups

I've occasionally had a vague ambition of setting up a multi-user database environment that's as easy to use for database newbies as Microsoft Access. The problem is that supporting multiple simultaneous users immediately multiplies the complexity of software much more than you'd think. Besides the creation and management of user accounts (and someone to reset passwords when the users forget them), you've got to have security policies on the data and make sure that people editing the same data at the same time don't cause problems for each other. So any software like this would have to come with all that user management functionality built in, not just in the basic system but for every new database. At this point, I tend to focus on something else.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This leaves out the point that Access is still too hard for most newbies.
PPS - There's a learning gap between spreadsheets and databases that needs to be filled.

Standards and mobile phones

Nobody would think of using a non-standard wireless protocol in a phone these days. Why are non-standard wired accessories so common, then?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not for a lack of standards.
PPS - I get the feeling it's to sell particular accessories.

Highlights of the Linux conversion

I've got a couple of things to share about the conversion to Linux at work. I hope they're interesting to at least some people.

1. My file synchronisation utility, Unison, needs to ignore file permissions on my flash drive to work properly.
2. My virtual Windows copy has stopped working, so I'll need to take a new copy, this time of my current Windows setup.
3. Printers are a bit more of a hassle to set up in Linux than in Windows. You can substitute just about any hardware for the word "printers" there, too.
4. The big shared network drive at work won't connect properly. I just keep getting recursive directory listings. This should be fixed in the next Linux kernel version, I'm told.

On the plus side, my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles migrated over without any big troubles, and I've found acceptable substitutes for most of my favourite Windows-based tools already.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I could get to like Linux quite a lot.
PPS - Provided I don't use much exotic hardware.

A story fragment

For your enjoyment today, a fragment of prose that never had a surrounding story:

"He'd bio-encrypted the data into messenger bacteria, and then hidden that inside the lymph nodes of his cat, there to wait until it was needed again. It was dangerous data, he knew, but he also took some pleasure in the kind of labyrinthine measures he'd taken to hide it. It made him feel like more than a two-bit cracker. Now he was a super-villain, complete with maniacal laugh.
"

Mokalus of Borg


PS - You must guess that he's not yet out of his teens.
PPS - And that he doesn't trust good encryption.

Taking the Linux Plunge

For a while now, I've been a kind of uninformed Linux advocate. I took the position that it was a good idea and more people should be running Linux rather than (or in addition to) Windows. I've had vague notions of setting up a dual-boot system at work or home. Now I've got my wish. I've installed Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows at work and the plan is to use it as my primary environment. I'm the guinea pig for the rest of the section.

It's not the first time I've run Linux, but it's the first time I've been this deep. Thus far, it's all been live discs that let me boot up, play around for a while and then disappear without a trace or short-lived virtual machines that might as well be an alternative web browser. Installing programs, figuring out hardware configuration issues and even resizing disk partitions has been a bit of an adventure.

I don't expect the migration to go all that smoothly. I've now made a virtual Windows copy that I can keep around, like a security blanket, whenever I find something I can't accomplish. I've managed to get my self-written note-taking program WorkDiary operating, even though it's written for Microsoft's .NET platform. Thanks go out to the good people who develop the compatible Mono libraries for that. However, that's not the only program I've got to get moving here in Linux Town. I've built up a whole slew of partially-useful applications, practices and techniques over the years that are specific to Windows. I imagine I've got some un-learning to do and some new tools to find.

If interesting things happen, I'll keep you posted, but that's quite enough for today.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My passwords database has been the most valuable migration so far.
PPS - And my Firefox profile will come next.

Friday Zombie Blogging: Zero Punctuation

Here's a Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles review on the Wii. It contains some NSFW dialogue and cartoon images, so not normally something I'd link to, but if you haven't seen a Zero Punctuation game review before, you probably should. It sounds like the "small print" at the end of a radio ad, but going on for five minutes or so, accompanied by simple illustrations that are not quite animation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I liked the descriptions of the game dialogue.
PPS - Also the depictions of the gameplay.

Sweeney Todd: Shiny happy killers holding hands

Deb and I saw Sweeney Todd over the weekend, and apparently the fact that it is a musical took some other patrons completely by surprise. That doesn't come across so well in the trailers and previews. I only have a couple of notes. One is that I'm not sure it was totally necessary to see the bodies crunch into the ground every single time, but I guess everyone on set was pretty pleased with the effect. The other thing is that a movie like this does not get a happy ending. That's just the way things are, and you could deduce this from the subject matter before going to see it. That said, it was worth the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I tend to forget by the end that I'm watching a musical if it's good.
PPS - That's more the result of a good movie than the music, though.

Mistaken identity

Imagine someone emails you out of the blue thinking you are someone else. You try to explain, but as the story pans out, it seems that these two people - your correspondent and his absent friend - have a history where she pretends to be someone else to avoid him. How do you convince this person that you are not who he thinks you are?

You'd have to act in some way that contradicts his assumption somehow, but everything I can imagine can also be explained by the liar scenario. I'm afraid I don't have an answer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This has never happened to me.
PPS - But it could.

Safe flight

I read a story about what air travel would be like if it were made "truly safe". Everyone had to submit to background checks for permission to fly, all luggage was sent separately, your clothes had to be changed for a disposable flight outfit and everyone was gassed into unconsciousness before take-off. In addition, the check-in building was some distance from the secret location of the runways. It sounds horrible, but besides that (and the impracticality) it's still not "safe".

Transporting passengers asleep like cargo only guards airlines against passenger threats, not crew or ground to air threats. It also leaves passengers vulnerable to the crew. In the unlikely event of an evacuation of the plane, it seems the passengers would pretty much all be lost.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think "truly safe flight" is a pipe dream.
PPS - The author was not in favour of the measures he outlined.

Further electronic breakdowns

In addition to last week's two computer breakdowns, my mobile phone has now started playing up, fortunately still in the warranty period. The DVD remote has also been playing up, though it works more frequently for Deb than me. That annoys me mostly because it has no logical reason for happening. Neither does the phone. In any case, I'm growing concerned that more electronic things might start breaking down before long, though that doesn't make me hesitate to use the laptop for web surfing at home.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I need my news.
PPS - Though "news" can sometimes mean "amusing videos".

GPS-enabled internet

A GPS-enabled internet, accessible everywhere, means spatially relevant information on the run, like train timetables, shopping centre locations and opening hours, movie times, petrol prices and so on. It would also mean you don't need to search much, because there's only so much information that's relevant to the place where you're standing. You might need to widen the field of inquiry to a larger definition of "local" sometimes, though, like when you're looking for the nearest service of some kind.

I say there's only limited information relevant to your current position, but I guess that's not entirely true. It depends on your focus. If you're doing a geological survey, the constellations currently visible from your location is of no help at all. If you're waiting for a bus, the rare insect species known to live nearby will probably not interest you. Still, you won't need to search for a result that matches your location because the reference locations of all pieces of information are known and can be matched automatically.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People have been talking about this for a while.
PPS - It only made more sense to me recently.

Friday Zombie Blogging - A Minority

Glenn, an average Zombie-American living a regular life as if he's part of a persecuted minority group rather than a shambling monster.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - To his credit, he does come across as quite agreeable.
PPS - I only watched the first episode.

DRM as cryptography

I just saw a thread on Slashdot about DRM where it was described as "Alice/Bob/Eve cryptography where Bob and Eve are the same person". That's quite an enlightened statement. With Digital Rights Management, the goal is to show content to a person only one way and to keep it a secret how it got there while also preventing certain uses after it is shown. In cryptographic story-telling, it would go like this:
Alice wants to send Bob a music file but keep it a secret from Eve. She encrypts the file in a certain way that Eve can't decrypt and sends it to Bob, who opens it and listens at his leisure.

The two problems with DRM are expressed as follows:

1. In the typical DRM scenario, replace "Eve" with "Bob" to express the fact that the content is to be protected from the end users. The statement becomes an impossible dream.
2. The other is a condition to add at the end: "After Bob has decrypted the file, he can only do with it what Alice decides to allow him". Bob has a decrypted file now, and there's nothing Alice can do about it.

The only way to make sure a user doesn't use a decrypted file in a way you don't like is to avoid handing it over at all in the first place or to destroy the user. The closest solution DRM has on that front is to make copying annoying, not impossible.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You could also destroy the user's equipment.
PPS - Or publish a sub-par media format and hope it catches on.

Management structures

Most company management structures are based on feudalism while the rest of the world has moved on to representative democracy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And on the internet we've got some weird "government" with no word to sum it up.
PPS - It would depend on who you ask to describe it.

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

When I hear someone say "coulda, shoulda, woulda" in response to someone stating that they should have done something, I think it's a bit too quick a brush-off. If you make a mistake, you should try to discern what preventative action can prevent that mistake in the future. Sometimes the preventative action will be too costly, so will not be undertaken, but to *always* respond with "coulda, shoulda, woulda" to the suggestion is stubborn and unhelpful. Someone who refuses to change any actions to avoid future mistakes has decided never to learn again, or at least never to learn anything practical.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They're really saying "can't, shan't, won't".
PPS - And that gives a whole new feel to the exchange.

All the computers are broken

It's a sad and strange time in my life at the moment when all of the computers with which I have regular contact are broken in some way. At home I seem to have either a dodgy power supply or a motherboard with a short circuit. At work I have network problems that literally prevent me from doing work but don't stop web browsing. The only option left is the laptop at home, bought more as a luggable storage device for digital photos while travelling. That one still works well enough, but it has to be shared and you have to be patient.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've considered bringing my hard drive from home to copy at work.
PPS - But since I couldn't make much use of that copy, it's kind of pointless.

Computers buying houses

Could a computer ever have a sense of what is a good space for humans to live in? Is there a calculation for how complex a maze is? Does it work for irregular shapes and three dimensions too? If so, it is probably a good starting point for figuring this problem out. Armed with that information plus a few more factors, we could start to build a computer program that locates desirable properties online and purchases them automatically if they are available.

As a "low-resolution" option, you could always replicate the houses in The Sims and see if artificial people like it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might be best to keep the details of your approach from your investors, though.
PPS - I doubt many people would accept property decisions made with game simulations.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Survival after the apocalypse

Here's a movie-themed guide to surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, including videos. It paints the worldwide disaster in broader terms than a zombie outbreak, but the theme is certainly familiar.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I almost apologised for being late with this post.
PPS - But I understand it's not that big a deal if it does go up.

When it happens, you'll know

"You'll know it when it happens" is a very low value situation because it doesn't screen out false alarms. If you're in love, you "just know it", but if you're not, you might mistake anything as mundane as motion sickness for love.

In fact, from that point of view, it can be said that being able to recognise something only by subjective measures when it happens to you is worthless. I imagine there are some criteria by which we judge these things, but they're layered thick so that it's difficult to articulate them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, for a subjective effect, it's difficult to get an objective viewpoint.
PPS - Probably impossible.

Public transport failure

I've decided to shift my working day to work better with the failing Brisbane public transport system. Many times I get off work at 5pm, but I don't get on a bus until 6:15 because they are full or simply missing in action. Last night, for instance, my trip home took 2 full hours rather than the usual 30 minutes.

So now I'm going to try getting in to work by 7:30 and leaving at 4:30 to beat the rush home. That's the plan, at least. It may not turn out any better, but I can hope.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Why would I have trouble only on the way home?
PPS - My guess is that people have staggered start times but everyone finishes at 5.

Video conference music lessons

In this Internet age, it might be possible for, say, a music teacher to give live lessons to students all over the world via video conference. It could also be a very frustrating way to learn, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some people called "FLaT" seem to have proposed a study on the subject.
PPS - However, their entire schedule has passed without apparent action.

Perspective vs control

According to David Allen, I am a micro-manager. That means I may be in control of some things, but I lack perspective on what requires my attention. For instance, I have an ever-growing list of news items to read "later" in Google Reader but I make bad decisions about what is going in there. I don't need to watch a video of a Super Mario level re-created with the Doom engine, or unusually musical armpit noises, but there they are waiting to take up my time. So I've recently started on a ruthless campaign to get some perspective into my reading stack, culling anything that I don't really need or want. The micro-management part of my brain gets upset as I do this, because that link to a book I'll never get to read might come in handy some day. However, I really do need to get this in perspective so that I'm in control of the right things at the right level, not just in control.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There is always more to learn.
PPS - The linked video contains good info on personal organisation in general.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie food pyramid

The zombie food pyramid recommends basing your undead diet on brains, and steering clear of bones and gristle. Good advice, I suppose.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Link sent by Linda.
PPS - I'm not sure where it came from originally.

Robot lawnmower name

If I were to make a robotic lawnmower (as opposed to merely aspiring to own one) I would name it the Electric Sheep. That's part Philip K Dick reference and part very accurate description of its function on my property: graze autonomously to keep the lawn in check. It would not have to look like a sheep, but I may include some sheep sounds for kicks.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might be a bit strained to come up with an appropriate S.H.E.E.P. acronym.
PPS - Special ... Hedging? ... [something] Electronic Prototype. See?

Pronged chopsticks

Has anyone ever created pronged chopsticks? That's chopsticks with little pronged ends like forks. I think it would be a decent fusion between forks and chopsticks, offering the best of both worlds. It might turn out to be more difficult than either to use, and maybe it's an insult to a whole culture, but I still would like to give it a go.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I found a few links online, but no pictures of an invention like this.
PPS - It's apparently not a totally original idea, but I can't find any.

Non-verbal restaurant reviews

Someone with a bit more time on their hands than me (and a decent video camera) might like to take a shot at creating non-verbal restaurant reviews on YouTube. I imagine shots of the restaurant from outside, shots of the menu, the staff (suitably anonymised if required), the food and a thumbs up or down at the end. It would be an interesting gimmick.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might not last long, though.
PPS - Still, even one or two would be cool.

Relating to the world on behalf of Hollywood

Big Hollywood stars need a liaison for the real world. This is the conclusion I came to when watching America's Sweethearts. Some people rise so far above the day-to-day world (where the rest of us live) that they need someone else to translate between the their world and the ground-level reality. I suppose the same thing happens to a lesser extent with the heads of companies. It's a weird feeling. It's like they're aliens now, and the world of closed shops, bills and traffic is foreign territory. Instead they've got personal service with a smile wherever they go, helicopters and a fairy godmother that grants wishes. They speak a different language.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Such a life is clearly troubled, though.
PPS - It's just troubled in different and alien ways to the real world.

Reasons to be in your job

The way I see it, people can be in a job for the money, the work or the power. Those in it for the work are the ones you want to hire, in the ideal case. If they're in it for the money will at least get the job done, but they won't stay around and they won't have as good an attitude as those in it for the work. If anyone is in a job for the power, they'll pretty much make things worse for everyone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a bit of a shock coming back to work.
PPS - The biggest shock being the inability to sleep in.

A computer in the car

An idea I've toyed with now and then is replacing my car stereo with a computer. The benefits are many and varied. It would be able to store a large music collection for listening on the go and wouldn't need any portable player dock or cables. It could still be made to pick up radio signals, but could also play (or rip) CDs, DVDs and TV. Playing video would, of course, be for passengers only. It could connect to the home network over a wireless link and provide internet access when in range. I'd also incorporate a GPS receiver and navigation software.

It would have to operate via a touch screen on the front, because a keyboard and mouse are ridiculous in this context. It would also have to be very power efficient to run off the car battery. Sound output would be through the existing car speakers, of course.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Any other ideas may be left in the comments.
PPS - This is, of course, just a dream so far.

Happy New Year!

Mokalus is currently unavailable at the moment, as are probably most of you. Sleeping in, see? We will resume regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure I had a good night.
PPS - This post was prepared in advance.

Why apologise for being late online?

I read a few online comics and I often see some artists apologising that the images will be up late on a certain day. Either these guys are extreme punctuality perfectionists or they have rabid fans who hoot and throw poop when their comic is 0.006 seconds late. It's not all artists, just a few, and I have no real way of verifying either conjecture. Maybe it's both.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is where I apologise for being very late with my post for today.
PPS - Happy New Year!

Counting smiles

If you're out and about today, try counting smiles of strangers. If you're like me, you'll find yourself wanting to smile in response.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Smiles in public usually come in groups.
PPS - Most of the ones I saw were grouped.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Octopus figure

At Etsy.com, they sell posable octopus sculptures. This one is a zombie, complete with greyish colour, exposed brain and torn tentacles.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Via BoingBoing.
PPS - I'm not sure exactly how flexible the tentacles are.

Procrastination vs laziness

The difference between procrastination and laziness is that procrastination at least achieves something, but it is the wrong thing at the time. Laziness is just sitting back and saying "I'll do it later", while procrastination is saying "First I'll do some laundry, then wash the dishes, then clean my room...".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So if you have to choose, take procrastination.
PPS - But obviously choosing to do your work is better by far.

The shortest sleep experiment ever

I've mentioned before an interest in polyphasic sleep, and I had decided that this Christmas/New Year break would be a good time to try it out. So after Deb and I got home from Christmas dinner, I took a short nap from 21:00 to 21:30, intending then to be awake until 01:00, take another half hour nap and be awake until 05:00 and so on. However, at 22:30, a mere hour after waking up, the committee decided that the general crabbiness of the adjustment period would not be worth the trouble. I slept through the night.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did have an odd dream about being a ninja chasing someone in a rabbit suit.
PPS - I played Killer Bunnies a lot the past two days.

It's Weasel Stomping Day!

I mean Christmas! Hooray!

Now, I want to know from the few of you who are still reading over the holidays: what was the best gift you gave this year? I enjoy giving and when a gift is just right, it feels really good. When you get all hung up on receiving, you're bound to get disappointed and cynical.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Better to focus on the positives, eh?
PPS - I'll accept stories of birthday gifts too.

Rejection more common than acceptance

Given that percentages are low of compatibility between people for the purposes of dating, rejection happens much more often than acceptance in this world. If you're looking for a TV or movie romance, the most you expect in the way of complications is possibly a triangle situation and one major misunderstanding. In reality you know a large number of people who count as romantic prospects, but all our lists don't overlap quite the right ways. For every person who wants to go out with you there are a minimum of nine hundred others who won't. That's just the way the population and attraction factors work out here.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If this is not borne out by your experience, you were probably very popular in high school.
PPS - Few people place any importance on that later, though.

Finishing very early every Friday

I figured out this week that if I go in early every day and take a short lunch break, I could come home at noon on Fridays. Our Friday afternoon is usually just 3 hours long, and starting 30 minutes early every day makes 2.5 extra hours. Now, the main problem with this plan is that officially the company does not allow flexible working hours. Unofficially, as I understand it, just about every manager allows some flexibility. I haven't asked anyone about this possibility just yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Another option is starting early to come home a bit early every day.
PPS - That would be easier to swallow for a manager, I think.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Christmas tree ornament

Just in time for Christmas, here's a zombie tree ornament to give your festive celebrations a touch of the undead.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That is assuming you want that kind of thing.
PPS - It probably wouldn't arrive in time for this year anyway.

The standby gift idea

To buy gifts for people to whom you are not really acquainted, I recommend classifying them into the "sweet" or "savory" group and buying them chocolate or mixed nuts respectively. This does require that you know a little about someone's tastes first, but it's quite possible if you try.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Being a sweet-tooth myself, I tend to assume everyone wants chocolate.
PPS - So this is as much a suggestion for me as for you.