On leave this week

I'm away from work this week, taking advantage of the Easter holidays to get a good break with little impact to my leave balance. I've already been doing a lot of reading, but not online, since it's still Lent and I'm off Google Reader until Sunday. It's good to be able to sleep in and just laze around the house for a change. I'll be back at work next Tuesday, so the blog posts will probably be a little earlier in the day at that point.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Today I'm going to head to the library.
PPS - Just because I can.

Pentominoes

I love puzzle games. I especially like to write programs to solve puzzles. I have recently been obsessed with "pentominoes", and it's not the first time. I was introduced to the puzzle in high school and wrote a program to find solutions. It was slow, but I found some ways to optimise it. By the end, it was taking less than an hour to solve puzzles.

Years later I read a paper by Donald Knuth called "Dancing Links" that used pentominoes as an example and expanded my interest accordingly. Now I've rewritten my program in the old style but slightly improved, as well as implemented Knuth's method, which finds all solutions rather than just one. It counts up over 500 solutions in under 3 seconds. Knuth's method is also applicable to variations on the theme, including cubes, triangles and sticks.

And what is the point of all this? Don't know, really. It just seems like fun to me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That probably makes me weird.
PPS - I'm okay with that.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie high heels

I'm not sure what occasions would call for these zombie high heels, but whenever they are appropriate I'm sure they'll draw some attention. Perhaps some high-class Hallowe'en party?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I had hoped to provide a second suggestion here.
PPS - Apparently "monster party" is about the extent of my imagination this morning.

The Incredible Disappearing Pictures Folder!

This morning when I logged on to my computer I found that my Pictures folder was inexplicably empty. Just in case something weird had happened, I tried rebooting. Nada. 7GB of photos vanished into thin air. This is why we have backups, people.

Update: Almost immediately when I tried to copy my photos back from a backup, I discovered the problem. I had accidentally set the permissions of the folder too strictly so that even I was forbidden from looking inside. Easily fixed and all the photos have returned now. My bad.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The operating system is Ubuntu Linux.
PPS - I have five separate copies of my photo collection, not including what's online.

Age discrimination in cafe job applications

Is it illegal for a cafe to refuse to take a job application, or to refuse to consider it, because you are over 18? I would think that falls pretty clearly into the category of age discrimination. While they may want to hire people to fulfil "junior" positions, my understanding is that "junior" is only allowed to be lazy-speak for casual hours, supervised positions. Something like that, anyway. It certainly can't mean literally "under 18". So if it's illegal or even just plain wrong, why is it so common?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Years ago I was turned down from some desperate job applications for being too old.
PPS - Any lawyers in the audience?

Server-side rendered games

I gathered from Penny Arcade that there has been some talk lately of "server-side rendering" in games. That would mean your own hardware is not responsible for drawing what you see on the screen. The benefit is that the server hardware is likely to be more powerful, so it should look better (as long as the images can be downloaded fast enough).

I can also imagine something sneaky going on. Game publishers may be looking for ways to gain more control of the market, and putting a stop to piracy. You used to buy a game, install it on your machine and run it whenever and however you like. But if part of that game needs to be run from the publishers' servers remotely, they will be able to make sure that you can't play a pirated copy.

The downside for gamers is that you need the publishers to continue providing a service:

• to keep running that server-side component for as long as you want to play
• to provide that component whenever you want it

It will increase the complexity and support costs of games, not decrease the total cost because of reduced piracy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And when a publisher has dozens of server farms chewing up power, and the bills are going up...
PPS - I'm just saying you can't rely on them to keep the servers going forever.

Like poker for chocolate

On Saturday night, Deb and I hosted a night of Texas Hold'em poker, playing for chocolate rather than money. In almost every way, it was the best night of poker I've ever had. It was a lot of fun for everyone who could make it, and I even got a good run of cards. In the end, I was shocked to find myself the winner, and proud owner of five 250g blocks of various Cadbury chocolate. Michelle took second place, netting 2 blocks for herself. The good-natured trash talk, the jokes and even the antics of the new kitten ("Ooda") added up to a great night.


Mokalus of Borg

PS - I would definitely like to do it again sometime.
PPS - I credit mostly pure luck with my win.

Sub-functional My3 website

Every month when my mobile phone bill arrives, it tells me I can log on to the "My3" website to change my direct debit details. However, that website appears to do far less than is advertised. Besides showing how much I've spent and how many minutes of free time I've used, it doesn't provide anything that even looks like it would lead to a payment details change form. Even if it did exist, I've followed all the links anyway, so I know it's not there. I want to call up their support line to ask them to walk me through it, mostly so that I can either get them to stop falsely advertising the features of the website or to get them to realise that it looks different for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My best guess is that it was meant to do these things, but was never finished.
PPS - Or perhaps it only applies to other plans, higher up the food chain.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Driving

This article argues that modern safety devices are letting us enter a state of "zombie driving", where we pay too little attention to the road, drifting along on mental auto-pilot.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They argue it would be safer to have fewer safety features.
PPS - Or that we need to go all the way and remove human reactions entirely.

Literate programming

I thought it was funny reading about "literate programming" or "web" code, which is not as in "World Wide Web", but a method and tool set for mixing programming instructions and documentation. The way they talks about it is something like "if you're not using this, your competitors soon will be, and they will leave you in the dust". The idea is to keep your documentation and code together so that updating one reminds you to do the other. The trouble is that the idea results in clunky and hard to read documents.

In the meantime C# and Java have arisen with support for much more readable documentation in their code, though not to the same degree that Knuth proposed. And you know what? It's enough. The C# and Java inline documentation serves us well enough to document our code most of the time and still leaves us with readable code that compiles without running it through another tool first. Small compromise, big win.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am not aware of anyone outside academia using these tools.
PPS - Then again, I don't know everyone.

Lego Universe

I'm intrigued by the idea of LEGO Universe, a Lego MMORPG. I don't know many details, but the concepts I can imagine them creating are interesting. Perhaps there will be levels, or perhaps not, but I imagine there will be ways of earning more bricks to build with. As you gain more bricks - special pieces and generics, maybe? - you will be able to build more elaborate pieces to complete more advanced missions to earn yet more bricks. That sounds about right to me, but keep in mind, as I said, that I have no concrete details, just the market-speak on the website. Of course, being aimed at young children as well as adults will bring its usual shrill cries of "protect the children!" from the ever-concerned parents. It's a tricky question.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I imagine many giant death tanks on huge treads with monstrous cannons terrorising the LEGO countryside.
PPS - I'm just saying that if it can be built, it will be.

The Excessively Secret Life of Bees

I entered a Quickflix competition for a double pass to see The Secret Life of Bees, and I won one of the tickets on offer. However, it seems that I would have to drive out to another town in Queensland or to an independent cinema in New South Wales or Victoria in order to use that ticket. If it was playing at all here in Brisbane, the movie's run has finished after less than two weeks.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, well. At least I can prove I won.
PPS - I'm not looking for sympathy or reparations. I just thought it was funny.

Metaphors and lies

It's probably difficult to explain to some literal-minded children the difference between metaphors and lies. Then again, I remember not being particularly able to grasp the concept of metaphor at all when it was first explained to me, so I may have an inaccurate impression of the problem. Still, I can't help but think that some kids, when told that "metaphor is describing something by saying it is something else" might draw a parallel to their definition of lies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might have to be an unusual child.
PPS - But then I understand they're not all "usual" to begin with.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Cake topper

A pair of zombie figurines for the top of a wedding cake. Quite cute, in its own way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Almost forgot the zombie post this morning.
PPS - Not enough sleep.

Getting worked up about Facebook changes

Why do people get so upset about changes to the Facebook look and feel? I'll grant that a lot of people spend a lot of time there, and that learning how to use a redesigned website takes time. But since you spend a lot of time there anyway, the amount of time you spend learning the redesigned page layout will be insignificant. So why the passion about keeping Facebook looking the same forever?

My guess is that people feel as if they own their Facebook pages, and when the Facebook team changes things, it starts to feel like someone has come into your bedroom and rearranged the furniture when you weren't looking.

Personally, I don't feel that way about Facebook. It's a website that I use, now and then, and I understand when the company wants to improve the look, especially when it's designed to be easier, faster, clearer and more attractive to new users.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Jeffrey Rowland mentioned the latest change in his Overcompensating comic.
PPS - Read the text of the blog post too.

Google Voice

With Google Voice, it looks like Google is stepping towards integrating phones into its already-integrated chat and email packages. Voice mail can be transcribed, so it looks like email, but still includes the audio recording. I can imagine a future where you can take a voice call as an IM session, typing your responses, having them read out, and receiving transcribed responses with audio attachments. It would take a bit longer, and might be more annoying to the person using voice, so it might not catch on, but it's tantalisingly possible now. It would be more transparent with SMS.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is GrandCentral rebranded and given the Google treatment.
PPS - It looks useful.

Predictable advances in collaborative computer displays

I used to catch the bus with an old-school engineer - one who grew up drafting on paper with set squares, compasses and so on. Once he mentioned that his company was having trouble keeping the printers running properly, and that this was essential for his work, because you can't properly gather around a computer screen to discuss a drawing. He seemed to think that's the way it is, and so that's the way it will always be. For someone who has lived through the change from paper drafting to AutoCAD, you'd think he would be a little more imaginative. While it's true that today's computers don't offer a good cooperative viewpoint, perhaps tomorrow's will. We already have things like the Microsoft Surface, which would be an almost ideal replacement for discussing large paper printouts. I'm guessing it will only get better from there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Especially if "better" means "cheaper" and "more common".
PPS - And that's what computers have been doing for decades now.

Scouting out a running route

I went running from our new home last weekend, looking for a good route I can run regularly. I started off down the road, past the park, around the back of the school, looking for a way back to the park. I didn't realise that the park and the school are separated by a creek with no bridges but the one I had already crossed. When I'd gone through a lot of back streets, through another park, through some bushland reserve and started down an industrial road, I'd taken 45 minutes and was no closer to my goal. It was also becoming clear that I had crossed a suburb boundary.

I turned around and headed back, looking briefly for a way through the school (during Saturday cricket games) back to the house. None was to be found, of course, because of the creek mentioned earlier. I finally arrived home some 90 minutes after I started, somewhat dehydrated and quite tired. I think I'll head in the other direction next time, and take my bike rather than try to scout on foot.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I didn't inspect the map well enough before I headed out.
PPS - Live and learn, I guess.

Home communications contracts and networks

Someday I'm sure we will have our home phone, internet and mobiles all bundled together, particularly if a household has more than one mobile on the same bill. Some time after that, however, the landline will disappear entirely in favour of so-called "naked DSL" as standard. At some point the terminology will have to change, which will be fine, since we will have moved on from DSL to FTTP or some other next-generation wired standard.

Our mobiles will serve as our music players, personal organisers and portable game devices besides handling voice and internet too. WiFi or its equivalent is already the standard way to get a whole house online, but more devices will use it in future. I find Foxtel IQ particularly anachronistic in that it requires its own dedicated telephone line to "phone home", rather than using its two-way network cable connection. Wireless is the way to do that properly, so our set-top boxes will connect to our home wireless network. Your TV and radio will access the web rather than broadcast airwaves, and your digital picture frames will pick up images from your shared home collection.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or your picture frames could display your Facebook friends' new images.
PPS - Or a random Flickr stream.

Contrasting hardware and software attitudes

I seem to be a hardware luddite but a software ... pioneer? Is that the word? I own the lowest possible phone that does what I want, and I didn't pay a cent for it, because it came free with my phone plan. I will only upgrade it when the contract runs out and they'll give me a better phone for free. My desktop computer hasn't been upgraded in years and my laptop is pretty much gathering dust.

But in software, I'm reading books on my phone, synchronising my Outlook calendar with Google Calendar, keeping a personal wiki of many of my thoughts, running virtual machines on a Linux host and writing new software if I can't find some that does the job for me already.

Of course software is more easily changed than hardware, so it's easier to experiment with it. As long as you can back up your data, there's very little risk associated with trying out something new.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps I'm just a cheapskate.
PPS - Most of my software is free.

Where is the mobile web going?

Where does the mobile web take us into the future? There are always some effects that are impossible to predict, but there has to be a definite vector to project into the future. How about the amount of data projected to be downloaded over mobile airwaves over time, or the infrastructure spending that would be required to support it? At some point we will have to wonder what new wireless technology will bridge the gap to keep up with exploding growth.

On the consumer side, our address books get replaced with social networks, local memory with web storage, particularly for photos, and more location-aware services like advertising and service finders. Imagine being at a party that's in your online calendar, taking a photo and having it instantly appear on Facebook on that party's page. Your phone knows where you are and what time it is, plus where you were invited that night. It can match them up pretty easily, and the photos have an obvious place to be filed, then.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Everyone I talk to about this looks uneasy at the suggestion of instant photo publishing.
PPS - So I suggest uploaded photos are not shared automatically, but kept private until authorised.

Too much fuzzy thinking for my head

I'm starting to feel that the ideas I have, or the references I am trying to carry around in my head, are getting too big, but I don't have a good way to store them elsewhere. It's especially true when you think of how I can form associations in my mind even when I'm not thinking about certain topics. Keeping my ideas on paper won't help me do that, nor will a personal wiki, though that's closer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe I just need better ways to take notes, or better software.
PPS - Or both at once.

No Google Reader means no news links on the blog

A side-effect that I did not anticipate from giving up Google Reader for Lent is that the links on my blog sidebar will not be updated. They are from my Google Reader shared items, so if I'm not reading, I'm not sharing anything, and that means no new links.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Consider this my apology for the stale links on the right.
PPS - I may temporarily replace that list with a different gadget.

We're using more paper, but is it less per task?

Nobody would say that we are using less paper now that computers are everywhere: we tend to use more of it, for whatever reasons. The question I would like to ask is how much paper are we using now for the amount of work we get done, vs the pre-computer era? If we are getting more done with less paper per task, then in a way we have reduced the amount of paper being used. The confounding factor is that it's more paper overall, but less per task - a relative decrease in paper coupled with an absolute increase in work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There would be a distinct drop in the amount of paper being mailed around.
PPS - I imagine the question as a whole would be hard to answer.

DVD library management with Libra

I am interested in using a program called Libra for managing my home DVD and book library. It has this neat feature where it can read barcodes via webcam and look up details online to save you entering it all manually. Unfortunately, I don't have a webcam. I do, however, have a regular digital camera and access to the internet, the standard repository for all human knowledge (among other things). My search for how to use a digital camera as a webcam turned up a page that pretty much said "read your manual to see if and how you can". Not especially helpful. However, I still have high hopes for Libra as a home library manager.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure my Dad would make good use of it too.
PPS - His DVD collection is extensive.

UPDATE: Since Libra uses Amazon to pull data down, and Amazon refuses to believe in Australia, Libra is not so smooth to use in this part of the world for DVDs. It should still work well for books, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Simpsons

The Simpsons' 2009 Treehouse of Horror show includes the family turned into zombies by mad cow burgers. Thanks to Erin for the link. Also note that this is not the first time zombies have appeared on The Simpsons, nor the first the zombie reference there, either.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - One of the first Treehouse of Horror episodes involved Bart and Lisa raising zombies.
PPS - They were trying to resurrect their cat.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria

It seems a lot of people are terrified of antibiotic resistant bacteria and their potential for infecting humans, wiping them out. Whatever will we do when our most powerful drugs cannot kill the most highly-specialised bacteria? Allow them to be out-competed by the older, less-specialised versions, that's what. The resistant bacteria are specialised to survive in high-antibiotic environments like hospitals, but out in the wild they're unheard of. Nobody is going into hospital with Golden Staph infections, are they? It's not because the hospitals have been really good at keeping them contained. It's just that they are so bad at surviving outside that they die out quickly beyond the hospital doors.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not a doctor or a microbiologist, though.
PPS - I just think they're not in the wild, and they would be by now if they were so superior.

Karate in repose

Last night I returned to "senior" karate classes - those intended for instructors. I did anticipate a hard workout, so the buckets of sweat were not a surprise, and thankfully we got a kind of break later. We practised tournament technique, which is slightly different sparring and more performance-oriented kata. We also did some kicks from the ground, lying down, which was more of a rest. In all, I think it was a good way to ease back in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I forgot that they don't accept pre-paid fees there, only cash.
PPS - And I might not be allowed to continue training there as just a student.

Infinite resources won't solve our problems

An infinite chamber of resources that need transport out to be used will not solve a resource crisis. If the chamber is full of, say, trees, then we need to send trucks and lumberjacks further and further to get the trees as time goes on. Eventually, it's not worth the trip, or it would take longer than a lifetime to return the goods.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The only solution I can see is to move our settlement along with our harvesting.
PPS - This weirdness inspired by Greg Bear's book Eon.

What's missing?

There are two things I miss about my new house. In the house where I grew up, we had a spacious bedroom, a spacious lounge room, a spacious kitchen and a spacious dining area. In the new house, we have room enough in the master bedroom for the bed and little else, a tiny second bedroom, a smaller kitchen, a smaller everything. We don't even have shelves to put up most of our knick-knacks. I miss the space.

The other thing I miss is the cat. We went to visit on Thursday night, and dug the cat out of her hiding space in the corner. She felt so tiny and she's losing her hair now. Deb keeps saying the body corporate would be pretty heartless to deny a man his feline companion of ten years, but I don't see that they owe us anything or need to be particularly nice to us. I don't expect anything from them but flat refusal if we ask to bring the cat in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Still, at least we can have the fish.
PPS - But they're more like decoration than pets.

Property prices and population falling in Dubai

Apparently the global financial crisis is hitting hard in Dubai, especially with property prices. However, the video I watched claimed "there is not a buyer in sight" and that prices have dropped "dramatically", while giving examples like an 800 000 Euro apartment dropping in asking price to 720 000, and having nobody even willing to rent it. Now, I might not have a great understanding of real estate, but it seems to me that if there are literally no buyers anywhere, then a 10% drop in price is not likely to bring them swarming in. With people fleeing Dubai so quickly that they're abandoning cars at the airport, it seems likely the place has a long way to fall yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, lowering prices slowly is the way to ensure you get the best deal as a seller.
PPS - And crisis or not, Dubai is still a luxury place.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Corporate Zombie shirt

Spotted on Threadless, a Corporate Zombie shirt. He's hungry for dollars.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Aren't we all?
PPS - The plodding, handout-assisted banks of the US are being called "zombie banks", too.

DMCA vs DRM

A quick thought: if DRM worked, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act wouldn't need an anti-circumvention clause.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, if the law worked, we wouldn't need copy protection.
PPS - The arguments are getting a bit circular.

Google Reader fast now active

Today is the beginning of Lent, meaning my Google Reader fast is on from now until Easter. I think I'll manage, but I anticipate a sharp upswing in my television viewing and possibly increased Facebook usage. It also means that Friday Zombie Blogging may be links to less recent stories I've gathered in advance.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll let you know how it goes.
PPS - We don't have internet at the new house yet, so it won't be a challenge there.

Home entertainment

In discussing how to set up our new lounge room, Deb mentioned the idea of getting a big flat TV to mount on the wall, to save space. I mentioned that this would not save too much space - the DVD player still needs to sit horizontally, so the same amount of floor is occupied anyway. The true futuristic option is to set up a home media server, rip all our DVDs and store them digitally, then set up a projector to beam them onto a blank wall on demand. The same goes for music.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Though, technically, ripping DVDs is still illegal.
PPS - When is that going to catch up with music?

The Aftermath

After the move on Saturday (thanks for the help, guys!) our new home is being gradually unpacked. The boxes are currently prioritised in order of frustration of physical positioning, so a few daily semi-essentials have been overlooked for now. Our second night last night was when we found our blankets, and I still don't know where my belt is. I have the other ones, but the black slide belt that I wear to work seems to have made a break for it. The lounge room has been rearranged two or three times, and the TV and DVD player still has a kind of "temporary set-up" feel to it.

The train to work is a new experience, too. By 7am it was already standing room only, and today seems to be shaping up into a warm one, so the walk from the station to the office was a bit unpleasant. In all, once we're settled in and getting used to the smaller space, I think it will be alright.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm starting to notice the little odd things about the house construction.
PPS - Like the power point position in the laundry, far away from the taps for the washing machine.

Filing some of my discarded blog posts

There's bits of my discarded blog posts that I should be recording in my personal wiki, but they're too small and disorganised for that. It would take me much longer to file them away than any individual benefit they would confer. But at the same time, each snippet could be part of a bigger picture, if only I had the tool to look at them all together, colour-coded and movable, to form the right connections between this and that random synaptic impulse. It's all too much effort to do without tags, and I don't have tags to use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And I don't want to start another file or repository for them.
PPS - I've got too many things to track like that already.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Kittehs want brainz

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Picture via I Can Has Cheezburger.com.
PPS - And a bonus picture from the same site.

The limited utility of the mobile web

Since I have only a low-end mobile phone, there are only a few tasks I can imagine wanting mobile internet for. Occasionally, while out and about, I would use it to locate services, such as an ATM, a restaurant or cafe, in rapidly descending order of frequency. I may use it to look up movie show times at nearby cinemas. Finally, I may use it to read news from the web while commuting, though exorbitant data charges discourage me from doing so. I presume that is the goal of high charges.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - According to Jakob Nielsen, "Using a mobile makes you a disabled user".
PPS - That's using a mobile for the web, not in general.

Cities are not for cars

It seems when population densities get too large, cars are the first things to disappear, in favour of pedestrian access and public transport. Where the city is at its most dense, car use is actively discouraged with parking restrictions and fewer car-accessible road routes. It seems reasonable to assume that the car is not necessarily for inner-city driving, but for personal transport around the outer parts of the city. The inner, most densely populated parts of the city are for humans, not cars, reminding us why we build cities in the first place. It's not to have a nice place to drive, but to have a convenient place to live and work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes private vehicles are needed in the inner city.
PPS - The problem is that with large populations, "sometimes" translates to a lot of cars.

A computer as books on a shelf

I'd love a computer that looks like books on a shelf. The screen, keyboard and mouse probably don't fit the aesthetic quite properly, but the main casing plus any external devices like modem/router and shared storage device should work. The small bits could be shrouded in book covers, and if I were ambitious enough, I could rearrange the actual innards of the computer to fit in a series of books, such as a multi-volume dictionary or small set of encyclopaedias. I would probably pick the book covers to match the device contents, too, like a self-help "better communication" guide for the modem, "Improve your memory" for the external storage and so on.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or maybe they should look like generic old leather-bound volumes.
PPS - That seems to fit the vision a bit better.

Computer keyboard to piano keyboard

I wonder if proficient use of the computer keyboard could translate into piano playing. Deb and I may buy an electric keyboard for our new place, and I'm sure we could both learn to play it with some practice. I would like that. Of course using language on the computer and using music on the piano are different functions of the brain, but maybe there's enough cross-over in the finger dexterity to make it worth a shot.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may have to imagine "spelling" music on the keyboard.
PPS - But I would need to work on rhythm.

Moving house is getting real

I think the reality of moving house is starting to sink in for me. In one week, I will leave behind the only house I've ever called "home", as well as the suburb in which I grew up, went to primary and high school, and attended some of the best parties of my teenage years. I'm excited about getting our own place, but leaving this one is going to be hard.

We have started packing and trying to figure out what we take and what we leave for Dad and Anthony. We won't be able to fit all the furniture, I'm sure, and moving day itself is bound to be weird for me.

The stress is starting to build up, and I've put it into two muscles on my back, for safe keeping. It's not comfortable, but apparently that's all my body knows to do with stress.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Valentine's Day tomorrow hasn't crossed my mind nearly as much as it should have.
PPS - I think Deb is in a similar position, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Umbrella Umbrella

Today is a rainy day in Brisbane, so it's a good time to invest in the Resident Evil "Umbrella Corporation" logo as an actual umbrella, from ThinkGeek. Not the most obvious game reference you can carry with you, because it's pretty much a red and white umbrella, but you can chuckle quietly to yourself if you want.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I saw someone with an eight-panel red and white umbrella this morning.
PPS - I don't think she meant it as a Resident Evil reference, though.

If only

If I were one of the world's super-rich people, my summer home would be on a blimp, flying wherever I please and generally being eccentric.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now and then, I'd probably terrorise the countryside with a round of floating golf.
PPS - Or just drift out over the sea to hear the waves.

Digital TVs lack variety

There is something deeply wrong with the current digital TV market. What sizes are available? Big. What colours? Black. How expensive? Very. These are your options. Now buy it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not that I'd be upset to have one myself.
PPS - I'm sure I'd be quite happy with a big black TV if they weren't so expensive.

Diablo 2

I started playing Diablo 2 with Deb, mostly at the recommendation of her sister Mia, and much to the amusement of my brother. The graphics are blocky and the controls are tricky on my laptop with just a trackpad. Still, this game has a massive advantage over, say, World of Warcraft or City of Heroes: we can play offline with each other or we can play online for free.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm impressed that the game is still selling new copies this many years after release.
PPS - On the desktop, it demands that a game disc be in each of two drives before running.

Quickflix instant queue?

I wonder how long it will be before Quickflix in Australia has a similar feature to the "instant queue" of Netflix in the USA. This is a feature whereby movies are streamed directly over the internet to your desktop. Of course I expect them to come bundled in DRM, which means I can't watch them on my TV or iPod, only on my PC. This would be "requested" by the movie studios ("DRM or no content for you") and implemented by Quickflix as a CYA measure, even if it was not requested. I don't know the Netflix pricing model for this business, but I expect it would not be included in the monthly subscription either. If that is the case, then I might as well buy them from iTunes, even if those items are still under DRM.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess I'll have to wait and see on this one.
PPS - Unless someone from Quickflix comments here again...

Custom made vs standard retail

I quite like the idea of unique, custom-made furniture, whether DIY quality or outsourced master craftsmanship. Why does everything need to be mass-produced and sold retail? The internet is perfect for putting us in touch with craftspeople who can produce just what we need to fit the space we have. It's more expensive, of course, but it appeals more to my sense of individuality than does run of the mill, assembly-line stuff.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Plus it's guaranteed to fit the space you have.
PPS - Custom doesn't even need to mean "hand-made", really.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Hello Kitty cake

A zombie Hello Kitty birthday cake, for disturbed children.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or if they're not disturbed now, they will be.
PPS - I guess that makes it for everyone.

I'd like to be using e-books, but...

There are three reasons I am not currently purchasing my books in electronic form. The price, the device and DRM.

For the price, publishers are currently charging equivalent costs for an e-book as they do for the paper copy, which vastly inflates their profit margin mostly because they don't want e-books to cut into hardcover sales. They would make more money if people bought the e-book instead, and more people would buy it if it were even a dollar cheaper.

As for the device, I don't have something that I have with me everywhere and allows me to use any e-book reader software. My phone is the closest, and I have, in fact, read two free books on it, but the experience did not convince me to go so far as to purchase anything. Frankly, I will end up using either my phone or my portable media player, assuming either one is capable and my other concerns are met.

DRM, or copy protection, is the final sticking point. I don't want to pay for e-books only to have them locked to my portable reader. If I wish, I want to read sitting at my PC, then transfer the bookmark to my portable reader to take on the train with me. When that reader wears out and my PC dies, I want my e-library to come with me without having to repurchase the books.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Textbooks on something like the Kindle would make a killing.
PPS - This rant mostly inspired by a long article on e-books.

The cat on the roof

I heard someone speaking outside my window this morning. The same intonation over and over: "Michi! Michi!" like calling a name. I poked my head out the window and indeed saw that it was a woman calling to her cat, evidently "Michi", on the roof. As she walked back and forth, the cat mirrored her position, but made no move to come down. "Come on Michi, come on." No visible response.

It occurred to me that the cat had no reason to leave the roof. With no immediate concerns - or at least none that could only be served from the ground - the roof is as good a place as any to be. And with a person walking up and down calling your name, it could start to feel a lot like worship. "I will parade before you my magnificence, that you might marvel at it and call my name in admiration." Why would you ever stop if that's what your world feels like?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sure leaving the cat alone up there would have achieved faster results.
PPS - I didn't get to see how it ended.

Why do you believe that?

I like engaging in theological debate, but the opportunity only rarely presents itself. I like it because it gives me the opportunity to more deeply explore the reasons for my beliefs and the specific ways they differ from the beliefs of others. It strengthens me. Whatever you believe, you must be able to argue for it logically. If your beliefs are true, they can stand up to even the most intense scrutiny.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Face to face is better than online for these discussions.
PPS - I don't intend to start such a discussion here.

Dream: is Bigfoot dangerous?

I don't often post my dreams here, because it's weird enough already and usually I don't remember them. Last night held an interesting one, though.

I was a zookeeper at a kind of a free-range exotic animals park, and we had a pair of creatures that, for all intents and purposes, were Bigfoots (Bigfeet?). Anyway, we weren't sure if they were dangerous to humans, so as we were locking up one night, and letting our sasquatches run free in the park, they happened across a group of elderly people, one of whom fell down. The male looked up in interest and started towards the fallen person. I was watching by the open door, fascinated. The creature gathered speed, bounded right over the fallen person without a glance, charged past me through the door and out into the city. Oops.

So there was a meeting of zookeepers, some of whom had followed Bigfoot's trail up to a point, and gathered various clues in a sack that I was to present to them. The first thing that caught my eye was a pair of women's gumboots, which aroused some interest from the other keepers. This was followed by pair after pair of children's boots, evoking greater outrage with each pair. Bigfoot was clearly eating children!

At this point I "remembered" the twist in the story, despite being in it myself. Anyway, as it turns out, Bigfoot had found and adopted a human child, who was crying. Bigfoot, being observant but not that bright, noted that other human babies had shoes and were not crying, while his had no shoes and cried all the time. The solution was clear: baby needed shoes. So Bigfoot was stealing shoes from other babies and giving them to his, only to find that they were, apparently, the wrong shoes, since the crying continued. Thus resulted the long trail of discarded shoes, a missing baby and a very confused Bigfoot.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I presume we caught him, returned the baby to his mother and all ended well.
PPS - I didn't dream that, but it seems the way things would go.

The Periodic Table of Awesoments

A single story involving everything on the Periodic Table of Awesoments would be off-the-charts amazing. Pirates, ninjas, zombies, jedi, tanks, bombs, kung fu, battle axes and bacon, plus Batman, Chuck Norris and William Shatner, to name just a few.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The name "Awesoments" seems a bit awkward, though.
PPS - I can live with that.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Zombie Bandit

Al Hurwitz, a convicted bank robber, has the dubious honour of being known as "The Zombie Bandit" because of his vacant expression in surveillance photos. To the best of my knowledge, he has not succumbed to the temptation of styling himself as a Batman villain with makeup and costume fitting his name.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Staying in character might make getaways more difficult.
PPS - Unless you had a massive horde of genuine zombie henchmen to attack the police for you.

Sudoku programming

In my spare time, and for personal interest, I have written a program that solves Sudoku problems. It usually solves them in a matter of seconds. When I found the puzzle listed on Wikipedia as the "worst case scenario", I decided to give it a go on my program. It took 40 minutes. Upgrades were in order, and now the program uses another method to simplify the grid first. It still takes two minutes to solve the worst case scenario, but 2 is much better than 40.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It hurt my brain a little bit, which is sad.
PPS - I used to eat these kinds of programming challenges for breakfast.

Online transaction protection is hard

It's difficult to protect both the buyer and seller in an online transaction. Policies will probably favour one over the other, as evidenced by occasional eBay changes and who gets outraged each time. As an illustration, imagine that I am managing my bank accounts online, and there are regular transfers going out of my account. If I have control of all of them, then I can stop payment for any goods and services already received, and the seller gets screwed. If I have to allow others to pull money blindly out of my account, I have to trust them all to take only what they are entitled to. Even the hybrid case results in a few oddball situations, such as donations being pulled regularly and out of my control.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Both parties need to trust a third, neutral agent.
PPS - But that still doesn't protect them from all fraud.

Star Wars: Retold

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) is hilarious. I linked to it in my "news" section a while ago, but since then I've been showing it to just about everyone, so I thought I might as well make a feature of it here.

I'd love to see someone do a whole series of these for cult movies. I guess it would be hard to give someone just enough information to get the story right enough to recognise but wrong enough to be funny.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For extra fun, here's a Star Wars-related LEGO animation.
PPS - It is not related to the LEGO Star Wars video games.

Grey Australia Day

Today may be the greyest, most overcast and dreariest weather I've ever seen on Australia Day. I wouldn't let it get me down, but we have plans to drive over an hour to a park near the bay. If it's raining, that would make the trip feel much less cheerful.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At least I have the day off work.
PPS - And breakfast, whether here or there, will be delicious.

Update: Apparently we drove out past the dreary weather for the breakfast barbeque, which made all the difference. Some day I must live by the beach. It's my natural habitat.

How long is that video clip?

Why do so few video streaming sites tell you how long a clip is before you click to play it? Until you commit, you can't know whether this YouTube clip is 30 seconds or 10 minutes long (at least when it's embedded). That might factor into the decision to start streaming the file, might it not?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I often close a page if a video is far longer than I thought it would be.
PPS - My decision might also be affected by how interesting it appears to be, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Wal*Mart

Watch the growth of Wal*Mart stores in the USA in eerie zombie-green on a black background. Then substitute "Wal*Mart" with "zombie outbreak towns" and fight the urge to move to the Western half of the country.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am safe in Australia.
PPS - For now.

Converting movies into short stories

My brother-in-law Sam revealed a trick he uses to save time and money on potentially bad movies - Wikipedia. Rather than going to see a movie that looks intriguing but that he expects to be bad, he reads the detailed Wikipedia summary instead. It's like taking in a bland short-story version instead of sitting through two hours of movie and feeling somewhat ripped off as a result. Personally I'm starting to use this technique to cull my own "to see" list, removing one- and two-star movies, most of which I added just because they sounded a bit interesting, but I didn't expect to be great.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Avalon had a disappointing film-student feel to it.
PPS - At least in summary.

Vacuuming a tiny fish tank

Deb has a tiny aquarium specifically for brine shrimp, which she feeds to her fighting fish now and then as a treat. The nature of the things, however, is that they aren't always all alive when you get them from the shop, and their little dead bodies litter the bottom of the small tank. The other day I saw how Deb cleans out the dead bodies from the bottom: she inserts a drinking straw with her finger over the end, then quickly releases and replaces her finger, sucking up water and debris from the bottom of the tank, which she then transfers to a small cup for inspection and discarding. I think it's ingenious, and for some reason I can't imagine having come up with such a solution on my own.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some days the world reminds you that you might be clever, but you don't have it all covered.
PPS - If I start having a lot of those moments, I should worry.

Uncle Tobys Body Wise muesli bars

Today I have brought to work some Uncle Tobys Bodywise bars to snack more healthily during the day. The box proudly boasts that each bar has "less than 100 calories". The first thing I discovered about them is that the calorie count has been reduced in part by making these the smallest muesli bars on the face of the Earth. 6 bars per box and 126 grams total makes just 21 grams per bar. For comparison, other Uncle Tobys bars weigh in at about 31 grams each. It doesn't sound like much, but it makes a difference in visible size. I feel like I should be eating two or three of them at a time, which I guess would defeat the purpose.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They taste good, though.
PPS - The nutrition table doesn't seem to be available for the Bodywise product yet.

Google fasting at Lent

I have decided to give up caffeine for lent, as I usually do, but I have also decided to give up Google Reader. That's going to be big for me, and I did not make the decision easily. I will let you know how it goes. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to be doing online, and I'll at least need to line up some Friday Zombie Blogging posts in advance. I usually use Google Reader at breakfast, again just before work, at lunchtime and sometimes at home in the evening. Cutting it out will mean a large chunk of my internet activity is gone for several weeks. I think that will be good for me, though I'm sure I will find another way to fill the time that is equally unproductive.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't checked the date of the start of Lent yet.
PPS - Hopefully it doesn't sneak up on me.

Good software is invisible

Quickflix updated their front page with a few extra features, and it is so well-designed that I didn't even notice until the third time I'd logged in. That's how software is supposed to work - you hardly even see it because you're focused on your task rather than thinking about how to use the tools you have.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is not always possible.
PPS - But familiar software starts to blend into the background.

Friday Zombie Blogging - About Thriller

25 little-known (perhaps) facts about Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album, including that it is the biggest selling album of all time, ever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The makeup artist and choreographer appear in the Thriller video.
PPS - MTV used to play the full 14-minute Thriller video. Twice an hour.

Recognising unnatural dialogue

It's weird, but a lot of the time I don't notice whether or not scripted dialogue is natural. Every now and then where there's a dramatic pause I trip up, but sometimes it's long after a line is spoken that I realise people don't speak that way. This probably means I watch too many movies. That's what my drama teacher told me back in high school.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This does not bode well for writing dialogue myself.
PPS - On the other hand, if they can get away with it...

You can't debate with a television

The television and movies (I'm thinking of documentaries) make people angrier than face-to-face conversation. Personally I think it's because you can't debate with your television, or at least not two ways. If you disagree with someone on TV, all you can really do is turn it off and walk away. When you disagree with someone who is actually in the room, you can speak up and engage in a conversation. The television makes it feel like that person is just speaking right over the top of you and ignoring you completely, which would make anyone mad when they have an alternative viewpoint to raise. It's possible that the same is true to an extent on the internet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't talk back to my television.
PPS - Not out loud, anyway.

Guitar Hero should be the new karaoke

Guitar Hero should be the new karaoke bar fixture. Rather than hear atonal drunk people belt out Celine Dion "hits", we can hear uncoordinated drunk people butcher The Ramones. Perhaps the entire assisted amateur performance genre should be confined to the home.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - With soundproofing.
PPS - My entire Guitar Hero experience is one brief demo in a store.

I think I bought a house

Last Saturday Deb and I went out to Strathpine to inspect a house that looked interesting. Everything seemed pretty right about the property and the location, so we decided to make an offer. After only a few minutes, the agent had the contract drawn up and had been on the phone with the seller to settle a price. Before I knew it, I had signed away more money than I have ever controlled in my entire life.

It seems something like that should take more time, proportional to the amount of money involved. Let's say one second per dollar involved. At that rate, thinking about a $30K car would take an entire workday, and a $300K house about a week and a half. That feels like a much more acceptable pace to me, rather than signing contracts within two hours. I guess I'm just more laid back than everyone who owns, buys, sells or negotiates properties.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm terrified.
PPS - The agent's calm (from his experience) just makes things worse.

Making really big background images

For landscapes, seam carving methods (or content-aware image scaling) should work pretty well for resizing them, and obtaining background images in the right resolution for computer backgrounds is a common problem. What if your computer could scale an appropriate image for you, so that instead of plain scaling it did content-appropriate scaling? I might do that manually from now on rather than trying to find wallpaper in just the right size, since I have two monitors at work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My first attempts with the "Liquid Rescale" plugin for GIMP have been disappointing.
PPS - That might just be my general ineptitude with GIMP and the plugin.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Attack on iPhone

Zombie Attack is a "tower defence" game for the iPhone. It involves setting up various automated defences so your tiny shack doesn't get overrun by the undead.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - From the videos, I'd think closing the gate would be a good idea, too.
PPS - Or moving to a less zombie-prone neighbourhood.

Idea: Tangram dip bowls

On New Year's Eve, while looking at a set of dip bowls shaped as the wings and body of a butterfly, I had an idea. If you want to be very geeky but also quite versatile, you could make dip bowls in the shape of a tangram puzzle. It assembles into a boring square for storage, but on the table you can follow any number of patterns, readily available online, to make interesting and appropriate displays, such as boats, cats, people, or just abstract shapes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Blogger, unfortunately, won't let me upload an example image today.
PPS - The Wikipedia article has them, though.

Facebook events and Google Calendar

I tried to subscribe to my Facebook events via Google Calendar, but nothing appeared. I don't know why. Also, if I try to open or import the events individually, they have a time zone adjustment applied, which means a 4pm event gets moved to 2am the following day. It's a bit confusing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think it's a timezone issue.
PPS - But that doesn't explain the exact time differences I see.

Update: It seems I just needed to be more patient with Google Calendar. All the events are present and accounted for in their correct time zones, making this post pretty much obsolete.

The second banking security factor

I've ordered a Suncorp banking security fob, which is apparently necessary for third-party transfers. This is a new change. Commonwealth decided that SMS was a better security second factor, and now that I'm having to go through the Suncorp hoops, I think I agree. It's not really secure, since it's not encrypted or impossible to intercept, and if you have my phone and my password, I'm screwed. But since the same is true of the random number generator keyring, not much is different in that regard, except that I already have a phone, so it's one less thing to carry.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - SMS might cost the bank more than the keyrings.
PPS - But probably not.

Facebook Pokemon battles

I would find it amusing to turn Facebook profiles into Pokemon-like characteristics and send my friends into battle against one another. I could probably write a program to do this as a Facebook application, but I lack the necessary Pokemon knowledge to please fans of that franchise.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At first, it would not be graphical, so it would be far less exciting than it sounds.
PPS - It might still be amusing, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Practice what you preach

Unfortunately there's no link or photo for this one, but a bumper sticker was sighted that read:

Save the planet - kill yourself.

Now, given that this car was still driving around, a certain awkward question must be asked. If this guy practices what he preaches, is he dead already? If so, then he must be a zombie. I rest my case, your honour.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The other possibility is that he's waiting to make sure the job gets done.
PPS - Or else he believes only others are a danger to the planet, not himself.

The joys of air conditioning

Deb and I finally caved in to the summer heat and bought a small portable air conditioner that we have installed in the spare bedroom. That is our home now, especially during the day. While the rest of the house can get up to 34 degrees Celsius, we can be comfortable at 25 in that small room, which I gather is the point. We have moved the DVD player in there so we can entertain ourselves, but other amenities require leaving the room.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We went portable because it's not our house.
PPS - Also it's cheaper and we can take it with us if we move.

Navigation and traffic data

When our car navigation systems all use Google Maps and (anonymously) report back their GPS locations, it suddenly gets far easier for Google to provide up to date traffic data, then use that to provide traffic avoidance as part of directions. Of course you don't want to tell everyone to take alternative routes, but you can tell them, aggregately, to spread out a bit by taking other roads.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, traffic surveys can tell you most busy roads based on time of day.
PPS - I'd expect a sophisticated navigator to be able to use that data automatically.

The First Annual Original Messenger Quotes Retrospective

I archive my instant messenger quotes on another blog, "Proverbial", and this year I thought I'd pick out a few of my favourites from the past twelve months and post them here for your enjoyment, with a little commentary. So here they are:

• "Roses are red, brown if they die, coffee is bitter, and so am I."
  A cheery little heartbreak poem I wrote years ago.


• "I'll name my daughter Orange so nobody can write a lame love poem to her."
  It seems like a solid plan to me.


• "I wish I was a flower with a punk rocker in my hair."
  A misquote of Sandi Thom lyrics. Much more interesting this way.


• "Double shotgun wedding."
  Participation is forced on both sides of the wedding, probably due to a parental conspiracy.


• "Why is Giving 100% better than Doing My Best?"
  Mathematically, they should be equal, so why is one a winner's attitude and the other a whiner's?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Feel free to go over the list yourself and mention any other quotes you like.
PPS - It did feel a bit arbitrary picking out five winners.

Google web storage

I wonder why Picasa Web Albums has a policy of a single gigabyte for photos while GMail is up to about 7.5GB and counting ever upwards. I know Google sells extra online storage for photos, but they seem fine giving away ever more storage for GMail for free.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps it's because most people won't use all their email storage.
PPS - But photo storage would be used up quickly by most people.

Spam success would be self-defeating

If spammers get too successful at sending spam, they will fall victim to their own success. If we release the floodgates and let every single spam message through to our inboxes, everyone would very quickly stop using email entirely because it's just not worth it. That in turn makes the profitability of spam plummet, because so few people in the world are reading any email any more.

In addition, if there's that much spam going on, it would choke the entire internet, meaning that the network is not available for most people most of the time. This means less use of the network because it just doesn't provide the services it used to. Again, the profits from spam plummet because there are too few people online and too few of them are reading email.

We are marching inexorably to a place where legitimate users of the internet and email will be forced out by the choking pollution of spam, bringing down the network and changing the face of the world back again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In general, if your success means the end of the world, you're evil.
PPS - But that's a post for another day.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Call of Duty 5

Tim informs me that Call of Duty 5, after the "official" missions are over, finishes with a zombie stage. Wave after wave of nazi zombies attack the barricaded house where you are holed up and your job is to fight them off.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's usually the deal with zombies.
PPS - Unless you're a scientist, who usually aim for cures or started the whole thing in the first place.

Engrish gift bag

While shopping on Monday, Deb found this confusing gift bag:

The small print reads:

Always somewhere
Miss you
Where I laughing

My best guess at the proper translation would be:

Wherever I am
I miss you
When I'm laughing

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's still a bit odd.
PPS - Perhaps it's losing something in the second translation.

Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas from me to you. I hope your day is filled with cheer, various acceptable gifts and way too much food, if that is your tradition. Otherwise, have a nice day and relax if you can.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Personally I'll be trying not to overeat at family lunch and dinner.
PPS - Fortunately, if I fail, I still have a week until I go back to work.

Kung fu massage

On Monday I went out with Deb and Rachel to get a Chinese massage. I was not quite prepared for how vigorous or occasionally painful it would turn out to be. I was concerned at some points that they were going to do further damage to my bruised rib. And the masseurs (who probably have a proper Chinese name unknown to me) were crazy kung fu strong. I guess it's because they do this all day. I had my neck, shoulders and back done, but could probably have done with just the neck and shoulders.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not something I'll get done regularly.
PPS - And I should check out other options, too.

A Star Wars Dad Joke

Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are standing by a lake, on opposite sides. Darth Vader is feeding the ducks, and sees Luke, all alone, across the lake. He calls out ...

"Luke, come to the duck side."

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Thankyou and goodnight.
PPS - This is actually an original Mokalus joke.

I have a bed

One month ago, our mattress was destroyed by a storm. On Saturday morning, we received our replacement and spent a good half hour just lying there appreciating having a soft bed. It's amazing how much you can appreciate something so simple after having to do without it for a month.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I actually had to adjust to having a soft place to sleep again.
PPS - The couch just doesn't compare.

My old laptop - too weak even to boot old Ubuntu

I thought I had hit upon a master stroke this week. My personal laptop at home is rather sluggish and a bit under-powered, even for things as simple as web browsing. It is also, it seems, too weak to boot the latest Ubuntu live discs. Since the really old version, Dapper Drake (released in 2006) is still under support for a little while longer, I thought I would burn that disc and see how it goes.

Alas, the little machine only has the energy to boot the live disc and not to actually install to the hard drive. The confusing thing is that Linux is supposed to be *easier* on hardware than Windows, but it seems Windows XP is the only thing that can actually boot on this machine, including the "low-power" version, Xubuntu. It is just barely possible that Xubuntu 6.06, if such a thing exists, would boot and install, but I'm not counting on it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The laptop is otherwise unused.
PPS - Linux would help bring it back to life.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie gifts

If you're still struggling to get something special for a friend or family member, here are a few things you may want to consider (or avoid, as the case may be):

• A stuffed zombie doll that can even be ripped limb from limb and reassembled.
  



• A hand-made Half-Life head crab zombie action figure. Impressive work.


• A zombie Santa figurine (not for kids). Also on the page are Marvel Zombies LEGO-esque figurines.


• A book: A fictional reconstruction of a real trial in which Wilfred Doricent was accused of turning his cousin into a zombie. The book aims to present a reasoned scientific approach to the question, mostly so that people will stop thinking of Haiti as "where the zombies and voodoo come from".


• Another book: Zombie CSU: Forensics of the Living Dead. A fictional book based on many interviews with professionals in law enforcement, forensic science, medicine, military and more fields.


• And finally, a remote-controlled zombie toy.
  

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Every Christmas needs something with a remote control.
PPS - As you get older, they just change from cars to home theatre components.

Consistent mental models and programming

A class of computer science students was given a programming quiz on the first day of their studies, before they were taught anything. I find it interesting that other programmers believed students who refused to answer the quiz would make the best programmers. The reasoning, apparently, is that those students have the sense to know that they do not know anything. I admit that humility of wisdom is highly prized by my people in our users.

But the highest performers in the subsequent years of the course were those who applied a consistent mental model (whether wrong or right) to the problems. Still others used inconsistent models to answer the questions, and these were expected by non-technical people to be the most successful programmers since they applied the most appropriate model for the situation. I may be unusual among programmers, but I did think the consistent ones would be best. The inconsistent ones would have to learn the same thing over and over, while those who simply refused to answer are more likely to be slack than humble. They were rebelling, not confused.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Another study suggests that consistency might not be the whole story.
PPS - It's rarely that simple.

Personal data tracking

After finding this post about daily personal statistical tracking, I'm thinking about expanding my personal data tracking. I currently track two things for personal purposes, and they're both exercise-related: when, how far and for how long I run and how many steps I take per day. One thing I want to know about is how much sleep I tend to get and the quality, so I think I'll start with that. I don't want it to get too onerous or intrusive, though, so I need to keep it simple.

I have previously thought that a custom software tool might be the way to go, since it can present the right fields for me to fill in, but I'm not sure I can be bothered setting it up.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Come to think of it, I also track what I spend on a day-by-day basis.
PPS - For work, I must track time spent by project, to fill in my weekly timesheet.

Egotism vs depression

In some ways I think egotism is the opposite of depression. When a depressed person encounters success, they minimise it, and they mentally inflate their failures until they loom so big they cannot be overcome. An egotist, on the other hand, artificially maximises their successes and ignores or explains away their failures to the point that their own involvement is hardly even remembered.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course there are many more aspects to it than this.
PPS - These parts just seemed to be interesting counterpoints to each other.

Caffeine vs naps

Apparently naps produce the best cognitive pickup for tiredness - better than caffeine or placebos. The silly thing, however, is that caffeine produces the highest self-perception of alertness. That is, someone who has had a coffee in the afternoon is more likely to say they feel awake and alert than someone who has had a nap, but they are likely to under-perform in cognitive tasks. Conversely, the napper would not assert that they are awake and alert, but would out-perform the caffeine recipient most of the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's hard to be empirical about how tired people are.
PPS - At least as far as I know.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Left 4 Dead

Zero Punctuation reviews Left 4 Dead, cooperative zombie survival shooter, in the typical fast-talking, half-animated, scathing style.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I laughed.
PPS - Of course.

Hive mind resistance

If presented with the idea of fusing their minds into one global entity, I expect most people would pass. The loss of identity is enough, but on the whole, each individual tends to believe themselves to be of above average intelligence. If the worldwide pool of intelligence was divided evenly between everyone, then, most people expect they would be worse off. It's possible nobody else is thinking of it that way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And if we're all part of one mind, "my IQ" is a totally meaningless phrase.
PPS - Unless you mean it corporately.

The snake on the car

Late last night I went outside to bring the car into the garage. Waiting there to greet me was a small snake on the bonnet of the car - about a finger thickness and maybe 70cm long.


After I tried to persuade the creature to move with a broom, he slithered into the engine compartment and out of view. Deb and I tried for a few more minutes to locate him, and even tried starting the car to scare him out, but he made no further appearance.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Rather than risk bringing the snake inside, I left the car on the driveway.
PPS - It seemed best that way for everyone, including the snake.

Peer-to-peer photo sharing

I think keeping family and friends up to date with photos is a very legitimate use of peer-to-peer technology. Say I have some photos and my Dad has some, and we want to keep off-site backups easily. We both install a P2P client on our machines and add each other as friends. Then we set the client to share our photo folders, tell it to keep them synchronised and away it goes, duplicating our photos across each others' machines, whether we live a few streets from each other or across the other side of the world. That's not the whole story, of course, and there are tweaks to make to the idea, such as bandwidth caps (only use 1GB per month for sync) and sharing only certain subfolders with certain people (my friends are not interested in family snaps from my childhood, but Dad is). Now I just need the software to do it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A website with adequate privacy settings and decent storage would work, though.
PPS - That's why this will probably never happen, or most people won't use it.