The rock-star life cliche

I sometimes wonder whether rock and movie superstars worry that their lives are a cliche. Living large and expensive lives with overstated mansions and big, shiny, custom-made cars, no matter the personal spin you put on it, has pretty much all been done before. It's expected, and the security is necessary, but that doesn't change the fact that none of this is new. I'm not sure what could be done to make it different enough to be truly unique, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Given half the chance, I'd probably live that way too.
PPS - With a personal touch of custom-built computers everywhere.

Conveying secrets to console game players

I was wondering the other day how to relate secret information to different players in a game when they're all playing on the same TV. You can't put it on screen, because other players will be able to see it. You can't get around that by encoding it in a secret code known only to the player, either, because they don't have time to look it up.

Then I thought that you could put a separate headphone port in each controller, giving a private sound channel for each player. It satisfies all the requirements of secrecy, but it does require at least additions to the console hardware. And if we're talking about the Nintendo Wii here, the game would have to forego requiring any vigorous control motions or else headphones could be dislodged.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess you could make the headphones wireless too.
PPS - Which means more batteries. Everything has a down side.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Department of Zombie Disposal

Apparently someone has seen fit to decorate their car as a fake "official" vehicle for the imaginary "Department of Zombie Disposal".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I expect you'd be disappointed if you called on them.
PPS - It would take more than one car to handle most zombie outbreaks.

Keeping technology from being scary

We should not have scary technology in our world. I recently had a mock interview that was supposed to be video-recorded for review. My interviewer was a chronic technophobe who managed to hit the right button but not for long enough on the camera, thus producing no recording at all. She confided that technology scares her, from her phone all the way up to the Cthulu-monster we call Internet. And in a way I sympathise, because technology should enable our lives, not uproot them and make them scary.

And yet a lot of technology is confusing and potentially scary. Powerful machines should only be difficult to operate in dangerous ways, but that is not always the case. I think the problem is that the minds that design our devices are not necessarily oriented towards user-friendliness. At best, with one tech-oriented person designing something, you get something another techy can use.

This is why, in software, we have user interface specialists, whose job is not just to understand what the customer expects, but what they actually need and how to make it clear.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may one day be one of those guys.
PPS - It's one of the things I enjoy doing in my work.

Wiki critical mass

There's a point in social media best termed "critical mass". Before that certain, yet unknowable, number of users, "nobody" is using the service because they think nobody else is. After the critical mass point, "everyone" uses the service, because "everyone else" is doing so. This is as important for Facebook as it is for Wikipedia.

Some of my forebears at my former employer had tried setting up a wiki for the sharing of knowledge. It was not entirely smooth. Some people misunderstood the purpose and requested that certain people be given only read access, or that they have a separate wiki for their project. Mostly people didn't bother trying to read anything there because too few people were writing anything. To get it off the ground, we needed a lot more people devoting attention to this effort as part of their work day. The point is that it's tough to get started, but once it's done, it is well worth the effort.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Encouraging early contributors means finding them before they have contributed.
PPS - I have no idea how to do that.

How to spend time when there's nothing to do?

Is it possible to do something that is simultaneously fun, free and easy? I am finding myself less able to occupy my time since I lost my job, I don't have money to splash around and there is often little energy to work with. TV is never any good, Deb and I get sick of DVDs and if we play games we're not together. We long ago exhausted the entertainment possibilities of our existing board games and the internet can only occupy so much time before I start feeling lazy and antisocial. So what's a guy supposed to suggest for the evening's activities?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A good amount of our time is spent trying to figure out what to do.
PPS - And rejecting most ideas because they are too boring, expensive or difficult.

P!NK

Deb and I were fortunate last night to see P!NK perform live at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. We brought along our camera, but the battery died before we were able to take a single shot, so unfortunately there are no photos to accompany this post. It was a brilliant show, though, with a stage set up like a Funhouse, including slides and crazy mirrors, and several high-flying stunts, too. P!NK herself sang "Sober" while performing several trapeze-swinging manoeuvres up as high as the lighting rigs.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - After the show we were able to check out her stretch pink Humvee outside.
PPS - Rock stars have all the fun.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Resident Evil t-shirt

I saw this article about a Resident Evil t-shirt with a zombie face printed on the inside in just the right spot. When you pull it up and over your head, your own face is replaced by the zombie one. It's really quite clever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm guessing this is aimed mostly at males.
PPS - Then again, all girls would need to use it is a second shirt underneath.

Three wishes to change your view of the world?

If you had three wishes, but could only use them to change your perception of the world, what would you wish for? Personally, I've always wondered what it would be like to see ultraviolet and infrared, so I'd wish to see a bit beyond the human-visible EM spectrum. I also think it would be cool to sense magnetic fields. As for a third wish, I'm stumped.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That is, unless super reflexes counts as a perception difference.
PPS - I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Spam comments in Japanese

I've started to get a lot of spam comments on this blog in Japanese. They seem to come in bundles of 10 at a time, and are always on the same posts. I guess those are showing up in some keyword search, or else they were picked at random and stored for repeat visits. Either way, it's a pain to get rid of each time, so I'm thinking of disabling comments on just those specific posts.

Just in case you're curious, the Google translation of the text reads:

Internet cafes and the women do not have a place to stay while away from home and women are living with hunger meet all you can drink beverages. This site is a site for women in need with people who want to support women's

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have no idea what that means.
PPS - And every time I mention spam comments, that post draws more.

Programming the Microsoft Way

Last night I went to the Queensland Microsoft Developer Network User Group meeting. It's a mouthful, but basically it's a bunch of programmer nerds like me hearing Microsoft hype it's upcoming products. The thing that struck me this time (aside from some cool Silverlight demos and user interface testing tools) is that Microsoft seems to have two significant beliefs about programmers:

1. Nobody wants to write code.
2. People are writing their software haphazardly, and we need to make that more pleasant.

Both of these points seem odd to me, since I like writing code and I strive to write it in better ways. If everyone did things the Microsoft way, we'd all forget how to write code at all. That would probably leave Microsoft as the only employer of actual programmers in the world, which I'm sure would not bother them at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I arrived just barely in time to grab the last of the pizza on offer.
PPS - And I had to leave halfway through questions at the end of the session.

DIY PocketMods

I'm interested in the ability to compose foldable, pocket-friendly printouts for reference on the go, also known as "PocketMods". I use one for my next actions list (all too infrequently referred to) which is generated by ThinkingRock, but it has struck me how useful it would be to have things like public transport maps or directions, my calendar and other things printed in pocket-friendly sizes.

There are some tools to do this, but nothing quite flexible enough or multi-platform. The PocketMod website provides a tool for creating these prints from PDFs, and some online tools too, but they're limited. I want to arrange things like this myself, in a graphical way, and that's just not available. The trouble is that 8 pages to a sheet, the most convenient size, makes each little page A7 in size, which is not standard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My best option may be four columns, landscape, with a wide top border.
PPS - That's still awkward for the second side, though.

Spiritual eating disorders

I'm pretty sure it's not a new concept to me, but last night I was slightly inspired by the idea of spiritual food vs spiritual exercise. Too much food and not enough exercise makes you obese. I started wondering how far the metaphor stretched in terms of eating disorders. Spiritual anorexia is likely what you see in people who attend church only at Christmas and Easter - hardly feeding at all, and growing dangerously thin as a result. Spiritual bulemia is more like going to church every week, but forgetting everything on Monday. That's as far as I got.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps there are spiritual food allergies: certain teachings that make you sick.
PPS - That might be good or bad, depending on the truth of the teaching.

Friday Zombie Blogging - So You Think You Can Dance

The auditions for American So You Think You Can Dance including an eerie zombie routine. These guys move in unusual ways, like they're gliding and their joints are coated with Teflon.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The video was uploaded some time ago.
PPS - It does still seem to be there, though.

Disappointed by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Deb and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Wednesday evening, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I believe this is the first of these movies where I've read the book first, but I have a feeling I might have been let down otherwise. The whole thing is slow, dark and quiet, including the climactic ending. The mystery of the Half-Blood Prince is only mentioned in passing, and the battle at the end adds very little to the whole picture. We agree that it would have been redeemed by sticking closer to the ending of the book, where there is a larger-scale battle.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - From an actor's point of view, the performances were adequate.
PPS - Though I think young Tom Riddle fell a little flat.

Degrees outdated before you graduate

At some point I imagine various fields of knowledge will advance so quickly that university degrees will be outdated before the students graduate, for instance, medical knowledge. That means we either require either faster (and therefore less in-depth) degrees, constant study (like a more extreme version of the current case) or some new method of creating doctors.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - New methods for doctor creation may be up to other doctors.
PPS - Or artificial intelligence researchers.

I has a shiny

Yesterday Deb and I went computer shopping and picked up a new Acer computer including a 23-inch widescreen monitor and Logitech Z4 speakers. After five years or so using a home-built machine, a few things were immediately apparent:

1. My old rig sounded like a jet engine compared to this new one.
2. It's astonishing how quickly a bigger monitor starts to feel normal.
3. External speakers are just what I needed all along.
4. The faster processor makes everything generally more pleasant.
5. Too many USB ports is never enough.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - After I plugged in mouse, keyboard, external hard drive and printer, I'd run out of USB on the back.
PPS - The wireless network adaptor needed to go in the front.

Amazon Prime has already lost my business

Amazon has been consistently advertising their Amazon Prime priority shipping deal to me for years now, so I've learned to ignore it. This is primarily because it is valid only within the continental United States, and I'm halfway across the world from there. It's okay for both of us for now - Amazon continues to tell me to sign up, then sorry but I can't, and I continue to ignore the ads. The problem will come if Amazon Prime is ever extended beyond the USA corner of the world to include me. Do you think I will notice the change and start placing orders? Not a chance. By advertising too aggressively too early, Amazon has probably lost my future business.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This assumes they ever intend to acknowledge the presence of Australia at all.
PPS - To the best of my knowledge, they still don't stock region 4 DVDs.

Houses with service corridors

It would take extra space, but I think it would be handy to build houses with things like cable ladders and service corridors. Imagine being able to install cable TV or a new phone line without cutting any holes in walls or fastening any new wire clips to beams under the house. Imagine being able to hide all your stereo wiring out of sight and go into a narrow corridor to change it around.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's the extra space requirement that means few people can really do this.
PPS - The rest of us just need better ways to manage our cabling.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is the big three-oh, but I don't feel like an adult yet. Perhaps I never will. I still play games regularly, watch science-fiction DVDs and spend a lot of time on the internet, though I guess that qualifies me more as a geek than an adolescent.

As for today, Deb and I will be having lunch at the local Coffee Club and meeting with some friends tonight for a barbeque, which does sound more grown-up. I had hoped to have a new job before my birthday, but I guess you can't have everything.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Many of my friends are pitching in to buy me a new computer.
PPS - That alone should be worth the hassle of turning 30.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Plants vs Zombies Purchased

Today being my birthday, Deb purchased the full version of Plants vs Zombies. It's definitely a step above the 1-hour demo, with many more plant and zombie types to pit against one another. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to play it quite as much as Deb has. ;)

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you did like the demo, it might be worth buying the full version.
PPS - On the other hand, it is fundamentally more of the same.

Science vs religion in popular entertainment

I'm kind of tired of seeing TV episodes and movies that broadly follow the "enlightened scientist vs the evil, closed-minded, oppressive religious establishment" genre. It just doesn't sit well with me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Science vs religion is a false dichotomy anyway.
PPS - Many of the founding fathers of science were devout Christians.

Written sarcasm

I like the use of brackets around an exclamation mark to indicate written sarcasm, such as "Oh, yes, it all makes sense now(!)". I saw it first in Stargate SG-1 subtitles. It does require establishing it as a convention before people recognise it intuitively, but it's well known that written English could use a sarcasm-mark. Whether it's this or something else doesn't bother me. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some people prefer as the marker.
PPS - It takes longer that way, but it is clearer for the uninitiated.

Ink more expensive than printers?

My uncle pointed out the other day that, in some cases at least, it is cheaper to buy another printer than to replace all the ink cartridges. While my cursory research does not show that to be entirely true, it seems to be the case that two ink refills usually out-price the printer. Does that seem right to you?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It may not be long before printers are free with ink purchases.
PPS - We'll want them to be more disposable at that point, though.

Networking is a dirty word

I've been to a workshop on "networking", which is variously defined as "making and keeping friends" or "schmoozing to increase social status". The workshop took the first definition, and in my opinion did a good job of keeping the whole thing sounding relatively sleaze-less. The trouble is that I still imagine networking pamphlets titled "How To Use Your Friends For Fun And Profit!".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may never get over that.
PPS - I do appreciate my support network at this time, though.

Blu-ray ahead in the encryption battle

For now, it seems that the Blu-Ray publishers are winning the battle against disc rippers who just want to enjoy their movies in ways Hollywood has not yet caught up with. The end result seems to be that more people own old HD-DVD gear than Blu-Ray, and that shows no signs of improving. That's the cost of winning the DRM war for publishers: consumers abandon your platform.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The Sony PSP "won" a similar battle against indie game developers.
PPS - It didn't work out all that well for them in the end.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Augmented Reality Game

Augmented Reality game "ARhrrrr! is played with a device like a touch-screen mobile phone and a printed board. Watch the video to see what it's like. Basically the device simulates tiny table-top zombies on the board map and pretends to be a helicopter from which you fire at them. You can also place Skittles on the board to use as bombs. Amazing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - M&Ms would probably work too.
PPS - From a certain point of view, I guess this qualifies as a board game.

Random permutation encryption

Years ago I dabbled in writing some cipher programs. Very basic stuff, really, but one came back up in my mind just this morning. The method of encryption was to pseudo-randomly rearrange the letters in a message according to a particular random seed. Without knowing that seed, I supposed, it would be impossible to restore the original message.

The problems were two-fold. First, the random seed I chose to use was the length of the original text, which would be easy to discover and also meant that all messages of the same length would be rearranged in similar ways. The second problem is that all the letters of the original message are right there in plain view, so a common anagram solver could reassemble the message with a little human help.

The solution to the seed problem is to use a shared secret seed between the sender and receiver of the message - one that is not dependent on the length of the text. The second problem can be solved by adding gibberish to the end of the message, which would then be mixed into the rest when it is encrypted. An anagram solver can still find the original message, but it will also (hopefully) find dozens of nonsense messages that are difficult to tell from the real thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are still problems, of course.
PPS - And if you need something properly encrypted, this is definitely not the way.

Where's the non-evil phone company?

Most mobile phone companies today, I think everyone would agree, are trying to turn as big a profit as possible in a small amount of time. They take back unused pre-paid credit, not because they have to, but because they can. They charge through the nose for mobile data access that is not substantially different from voice calls. What if one company decided not to be evil?

It would take a lot of capital to set up, even for a small trial, so it's not going to happen today or tomorrow, but at some point down the line I want to see it. I want to see a mobile phone company that gives you included data charges just like included call charges, and I want the rate per megabyte to be reasonable, not preposterous. I want to see a company that refuses to steal back pre-paid credit just because it's been sitting there unused.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It takes longer to build yourself up on principles of good rather than evil.
PPS - But when you get there, you'll be much harder to move.

Voice chat on Facebook?

How long do you think it will be before Facebook adds voice chat? I see it as pretty much inevitable if they keep growing, but they'll be starting way behind competitors in that arena like Skype. Their advantages will be the friend networks their users have already built up, the familiar site (assuming they don't change it again) and the fact that nobody has to sign up for anything else in order to use it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Having speculated all this, there's probably a Skype Facebook app in the works anyway.
PPS - The closest I can find with a cursory search is a "Skype Me" button for your profile.

Reinterpreting reality

I can imagine someone combining speech recognition technology with television set-top boxes to produce automatic censoring of common curse words as a feature. I can also then imagine writers turning to more unusual profanity to get through the censors and even classes for actors to teach them how to inflect their voices to avoid the most common brands of auto-censor. It could be a kind of arms race.

Another use to which I can imagine real-time signal processing being applied is "x-ray specs" that recognise humans and project naked versions over the top. This one would motivate fashion designers and perhaps tattoo artists to create clothes and markings to fool the image recognition.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Tattoos to fool image recognition is not a new concept.
PPS - But the other times I'm aware of it were for face recognition.

Michael Jackson dead?

I wake up this morning ready to go about my day in a world where Michael Jackson is still alive and someday soon is sure to pick up the pieces of his career and life to make us all remember why he was the "King of Pop". Not explicitly, not even in the back of my mind, but it's something I expected some time in the future. Then I get second-hand news that he's gone forever and somehow it's a shock. His music helped shape my young life, and I guess now that's all there's ever going to be.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As I write, the Wikipedia article is still locked to anonymous edits.
PPS - I hope it was natural causes.

The Improv Restaurant

There are some people who have a high enough "food IQ" to improvise in the kitchen. I am not one of those people, but I am aware they exist. I think it would be interesting to hire a few of them and have them work as restaurant chefs with no set menu. You come in for a meal and you get something random, perhaps from a broad dietary requirements category like "vegetarian". Whatever you get will be different every time, and it will always be interesting. It might not always be good, but that's the risk you take.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It would be hard to review without coming back several times.
PPS - But I guess, if you're being thorough, that could be said of any restaurant.

Mobile phone exclusive deals are bad for consumers

The United States FCC is investigating mobile phone exclusivity deals where one carrier is the only one to get a particular handset. AT&T, in response, claims that exclusive deals benefit their customers by providing "innovation, lower cost and more choice".

Innovation seems less likely to me when you have one company looking at one product on one type of plan, because they don't have any incentive to do anything different. As for lower costs, monopolies have historically been shown to increase prices, not lower them. And finally, how are you getting more choice when your only option to get an iPhone (for example) is to go with AT&T?

In short, AT&T's response is demonstrably false on all counts. Therefore they are either deluded or they want to maintain their own exclusive deal because they don't have to spend money innovating or providing better deals to consumers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think it's the latter, in this case.
PPS - Nobody could really believe their arguments if they are examined in any depth.

Redundant

Yesterday I was made redundant at work, which is like getting fired but more friendly. The large payout and the fact that I haven't had a lot to do for a few months gave me mixed feelings about the whole process. If I find a job quickly enough, I'll even come out ahead. My favourite part of the exit interview was when they asked me "Please don't hack our servers on your way out." Well, okay, since you asked nicely.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Today I'm packing up my stuff and heading home.
PPS - I'll also be wiping this hard drive clean out of basic paranoia.

Searching for actors in role classes is difficult

I'd like to be able, for instance, to search for all movies featuring John Travolta as a villain. It's that "villain" part that causes problems with most current search mechanisms. The most accurate way, but far from the most effective, is just to search Google for "John Travolta villain", though that will also show up reviews of John Travolta movies that mention the word "villain" in association with someone else. Perhaps "John Travolta as villain" would produce more helpful results, but only if someone has already gone to the trouble of compiling this information for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not really this specific case that interests me, but the shortcoming of search techniques.
PPS - The problem is applicable in other domains, too.

Electronic receipts

With current equipment, it would be possible (though slower and more fiddly) to create a system where retail receipts get sent to your phone via Bluetooth or MMS instead of being printed out and discarded. MMS would be easy when paying by card, since the shop can forward the e-receipt to your bank that knows your number, but then you get a bank record anyway, so there's no point. Getting an e-receipt by Bluetooth when paying cash means telling the shopkeeper your phone's ID, making sure it's received and so on. You'd need some kind of pad that can detect the Bluetooth ID of a device placed on it so all you need at the store is a space on the counter that says "Place phone here for electronic receipt".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's impractical and the transition period would be painful.
PPS - And I'm not sure it's better than paper, either.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Neurobiology

Zombie neurobiology from a Harvard neurobiologist. Mostly it seems zombies are very brain-damaged, but in rather specific ways, affecting their hunger, aggression and coordination.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This won't necessarily help you fight them.
PPS - Unless you have a can figure out how to modify their brains en masse and from a distance.

Windows 7 price

When I think about Windows 7 being leaner, faster and more efficient than Vista, that thinking tends to leak into my consideration of price, too. For some reason, I unconsciously expect to pay less for software that is smaller, faster and less demanding than for big, bloated globs of tar. I'm pretty sure that won't be the case, though. I'd like to compare prices at release for various versions of Windows to see what Microsoft has been asking us to pay each time we upgrade. I suspect it's a fair bit more (adjusted for inflation) for each successive version.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This information does not seem to be readily available.
PPS - Or not available enough for me. I gave up looking pretty quickly.

Handling sincere yet awful Idol/Dance auditions

If I were a judge on Australian Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, I'd have trouble with auditions from sincere yet awful performers. It's hard to be tactful when you've been shown something that's undoubtedly terrible but represents someone's best and most serious effort. This is their dream and goal, and maybe it's not happening for them today, but how do you say that without humiliating them?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps I'd start by asking if they've had any lessons.
PPS - If not, tactfully suggest that's the start point to fulfilling their dreams.

Sim Space Colony and Zombie Dungeon

A few nights ago I dreamed of two computer games, neither one being especially innovative, but slightly interesting all the same. One was a zombie dungeon crawler, standard stuff except for the "scale" feature that meant shrinking down or growing larger as problems required. It reminded me of both New Super Mario, with the tiny and huge mushrooms, and Spore's Cell stage.

The other game was a "generational colonisation" game where a spaceship arrives on a barren planet and your job is to create a self-sustaining settlement. It seems a lot like SimCity, but with bubble cities on the Moon or Mars. The colonists would need to find resources to maintain the atmosphere and bubble, grow crops for food and hopefully eventually terraform the planet so that the bubble is no longer needed. They need to survive long enough to raise children, expand the colony and teach their descendants to survive and continue the work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know they're not that original, but I'd give them a go.
PPS - The second one is most compelling to me.

The iPhone only runs apps Apple likes

Apparently the big selling point for the iPhone is that it can run small applications. So it is in Apple's best interests to make it easier for developers to add value to the iPhone as a platform. They shouldn't use it as a way to get all developers to buy Mac machines, and they certainly shouldn't put up barriers to publishing apps or running them. If the ads said "we've approved an app for that" as opposed to "there's an app for that", the process becomes less exciting and more obviously another way for Apple to keep control of what you own.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can "jailbreak" your iPhone to run whatever you want.
PPS - Apple is trying to put a stop to that, too.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

I was overcome with glee when I found out about Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook - I've been waiting ages for Google to allow GMail contact synchronisation with Outlook. Then I found out that it only works with the "premier" or "education" versions of the Google Apps suite. Too bad.

In short, this Outlook plugin lets you synchronise your calendar, contacts and email from an Exchange server to the Google Apps servers, making the transition to Google from Microsoft smoother. The thing is, it would probably work the other way, too, making it relatively easy to switch to Microsoft Exchange if you've been using Google Apps. I don't think many companies are in that position, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Still, my guess is that the free Google services won't be left out for long.
PPS - At least I hope so.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Police disclosure

Responding to a report of a police officer hospitalised with a human bite to the arm, one Twitterer asks:
"If that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?"
The police reply:
"Yes, absolutely".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Good to know the police have our backs in case of zombie attack.
PPS - Assuming they are not the zombies, of course.

Worse IT service in the city than the country

I've just had an interesting story told to me by a co-worker who used to work in a more isolated situation. Their IT support was outsourced to a specialist company, and he was particularly impressed by the level of service they gave to their printers. Every morning someone would be around to load them with paper, he says, and again at lunchtime for the heavily-used ones. If one of them broke, there was a backup next to it, but the failure meant flying someone in to physically fix it.

Here in the middle of Brisbane's business district, we have less reliable printers and slower service. Why? My first impression is that when the location is remote, and particularly when failure means paying for a flight, the cost of failure is higher, so it pays them to provide better preventative maintenance. In the city, the cost of failure is lower, because six people are within walking distance of fixing that printer, so up-front preventative measures are not as valuable, but just as expensive.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's my impression, anyway.
PPS - The reality may be vastly different.

Sandboxie for software evaluation

When testing out some software at work just recently, I decided to try out Sandboxie, a program that allows changes to your system to be "sandboxed" and kept separate from the rest of the system. The advantages I was after were one-step total annihilation of the installed software after I was finished evaluating it, to leave my computer pristine (or at least untarnished by these evaluation versions). It worked like a charm. I kind of wish I'd done this before with some other software at home.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Once installed, you just right-click on an installer and select "run sandboxed".
PPS - Then when you're done, delete the sandbox contents.

How not to spot a terrorist

The culture of excessive fear of terrorism has led us (the layperson) to identify the following things as terrorism indicators: foreigners, cameras, bags, maps and cash. In other words, tourists. Does that seem right to you?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At the very least, it's not good for business.
PPS - I guess some people pronounce "tourist" and "terrorist" about the same.

Compulsory camera phone shutter noises

As far as I can tell, the camera on my new phone can't be set to be silent when it takes a photo. Some time ago I remember this being touted as some kind of security feature, so people can't take photos of you without your knowledge. The trouble is that it's still ridiculously easy to take photos without someone's consent, and if you're quick, they won't even see you with the phone, though they might have heard it.

If your candid photographer is in a crowd, or there's lots of noise around, or they've covered the speaker with heavy tape, then you can't find them or can't hear, so don't know. A system shouldn't be abandoned because it's not perfect, but we should recognise that turning off the anachronistic shutter sound doesn't do much to increase privacy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might do a little.
PPS - But I don't think anyone can do enough to win that battle.

Toll transponders fitted as standard

I think some time in the future car registration will include a transponder for automatic tolls rather than just number plates and a sticker. Standards are good, but drivers need to be able to turn off their toll boxes if they're not using toll roads, for basic privacy, and that option (plus the fact that it's hard to check for a transponder visually) means the standard benefits evaporate.

Anyway, my main point is that transponders on every car is a situation begging to be misused by both law enforcement and criminals. Once most (or all) cars are fitted with toll transponders, police cars can be fitted with devices to read all the signals around them and check back with a database of stolen cars. Before long, that mission creeps wider to include any speeding fines, parking tickets or out of date registration payments. Citizens who keep getting pulled over for database errors then demand the ability to turn off their transponders. Turning off the transponder is soon seen as a signal that you have something to hide, and therefore must be guilty.

On the other side of the fence, petty toll dodgers have incentive to produce and fit boxes whose identification changes randomly every minute, so that they never get a toll bill. Pranksters get incentives to change your ID to a known stolen car, or to change their own ID and speed through a red light so you get the ticket (this has already happened with home-printed number plates). Car thieves need to change the ID before the car can be sold, but it's more likely they'll just rip out the box and ditch it. It's not quite as dystopian as I was hoping to make my point, but it's not a clean idea either.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As too often is the case, this is a grey zone.
PPS - Those kinds of things muddy everything up.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Thriller Casino

Among his other plans to pay off his debts and rebuild his fortune, Michael Jackson plans to open a Thriller-themed casino in Las Vegas. My question is this: how do you tell the poker-machine zombie patrons from the zombie staff?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Presumably the casino staff will have name tags.
PPS - And won't be staring dead-eyed at poker machines for years at a time.

iTunes should rip DVDs for iPods

I need a program - something standard, easy and quick - that I can use to rip my DVDs to watch on an iPod. Technically, this is still illegal, but that's silly when CD ripping is fine, so let's not discuss that. What would really seal the deal is Apple getting behind the idea, allowing you to rip your DVDs for your iPod through iTunes, and never mind about region coding or encryption. Why would Apple do that? Because it provides an enormous value to iTunes/iPod customers, which translates into more hardware sales going their way. So far I can rip DVDs on Linux and transcode them to formats that should be iPod-friendly, but iTunes seems to reject every file I encode. It might be a resolution issue. I don't know.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do still have a few configurations to try.
PPS - I guess I could always try Rockbox.

HTML 5 vs Microsoft

I see some enthusiasm about HTML 5 and its ability in particular to free web users from Flash for video. HTML 5 specifies a standard way to stream video to the browser, meaning you don't need to download a plugin to play video, and websites don't need to provide a Flash player for it either.

The problem, as I see it, is chicken and egg with YouTube and Internet Explorer. If IE supports HTML 5, but YouTube doesn't, nobody will notice, so Microsoft has very little incentive to implement that part.

Conversely, if YouTube switches to HTML 5 while IE remains on the older standard, suddenly the biggest video site on the net seems "broken" to most people. They will blame YouTube, not IE. A hybrid site might be the way forward, serving HTML 5 if your browser can handle it, but that costs more to support and still gives no incentive to Microsoft to change.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I suppose they need a hybrid site that serves a warning for older browsers.
PPS - Or perhaps they just need to take HD content to HTML 5. I don't know.

Dropbox

I have moved to Dropbox as my file synchronisation solution, where I previously used a 1GB flash drive and Unison. Dropbox stores my files online and synchronises them automatically with a folder on each of my computers. This works pretty well for me, because everything is updated more quickly and easily than with the flash drive. I was worried about using an online service, because it means giving someone else access to my data, technically, but I got over it after finding out how much easier it is. I was also concerned at the amount of bandwidth it would use, particularly when I first set it up and uploaded a few hundred MB of files at once. That turned out not to be much of an issue either. So in all, I am pleased.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I try to update my home machines during "off-peak" times.
PPS - Now that all my files are there, most updates are small.

Binna Burra

On the weekend, Deb and I took a trip with friends to Binna Burra in Lamington National Park. We had intended to stay for two nights, but on Saturday we walked the equivalent of a cross-country half-marathon, and really felt like sleeping in a comfortable bed that night. Also, I broke my phone when I slipped in a stream, crushing it against a rock. I didn't notice this until later. Still, it was a good getaway, and we look forward to going back again, though slightly more prepared this time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Miv and Julia were particularly accommodating of our lack of preparation.
PPS - Thanks, guys.

City of Heroes Reloaded

Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in. I have reactivated my City of Heroes account as the result of some light prodding. I look forward to finding out how the game has changed since I last played, and of course I look forward to pretending I'm a butt-kicking superhero too. My two main characters, Dire Sun and Bane Mage, should be waiting there for me to pick up again, but it seems likely that the name "Zombie Slayer" has passed into the reusable pool and been snapped up. I'll have to come up with something a little more original for that plucky young scrapper.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Suggestions are welcome.
PPS - And this occasion may call for a new character too.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Haiku for Plants vs Zombies

On BoingBoing.net, they had a short competition to give away a full copy of Plants vs Zombies. The only thing to do was write the best zombie-themed haiku in the comments. I entered twice with these elegant pieces:

I have a hunger
Insatiable, ravenous
Demo far too short

The shamblers approach
Unresting, ravenous, dead
Thank God for pea guns

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's fun, but I don't think I'll win.
PPS - But if one of you wants to donate a dollar towards my purchase...

Tackling big tasks in tiny chunks

When I have a really big task to do, and it can be broken into lots of identical smaller tasks, I get it done by making the smaller tasks part of my routine. For instance, after I had been blogging for about two years, Blogger introduced the labels feature. I wanted my old posts to have labels, but tagging them all at once was a daunting task. Therefore I counted the untagged posts and divided them across one year, which gave me three per day. By tagging three posts per day over the course of a year I got the whole lot done and I never had to sit down and do one enormous, boring task in one sitting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This comes up more than you might think.
PPS - It may qualify as a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.

Shopping centre directions as an iPhone app

Whenever I'm using an interactive map at a shopping centre I wonder whether the same thing could be turned into an iPhone application. The main reason is that although I can read maps, I have trouble remembering them, and one I could carry with me would work very well. Unfortunately I don't think you can just hook into the GPS system inside a shopping centre, so you'd need some other solution like "You Are Here" barcodes scattered around the centre that the phone can pick up with its camera.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In the end, it would probably be easiest just to attach a printer to the interactive maps.
PPS - I'd be surprised if nobody has thought of this before.

Samurai sword umbrella

I want the samurai sword umbrella from ThinkGeek. It's a shame the "scabbard" is just a nylon sheath, but it does have a strap, and since this means the umbrella can be worn across the back, I'm willing to put up with it. I would predict about five minutes before someone calls the police about a sword-wielding commuter, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I realise this is the second low-content post for the week.
PPS - I also realise this is the second Thinkgeek umbrella I've linked to.

Suspension of disbelief

I don't like the term "suspension of disbelief", because it's kind of a double negative, and I always have to stop to figure out what it means in context. I usually mentally substitute just the word "belief", or sometimes "gullibility".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It does make the sentences less "active", though.
PPS - But if it's also less confusing, I'll accept that.

Windows 7

Most reports coming in about Windows 7 are that it is fast, shiny, and everything that Vista should have been. Microsoft, I'm sure, would rather you not compare it to Vista, but the comparison is inevitable. With the short time between these major Windows version releases and the striking similarity between Vista and Windows 7, how can we be expected not to do so? Besides, every version of Windows has the previous version as its benchmark.

Windows 7 must achieve in a couple of areas where Vista failed: the netbook market (processor, memory and hard drive demands must be lower than ever) and in business. It seems they've succeeded in the former goal, but who knows whether businesses will adopt it? Eventually they may have little choice.

I've seen a complaint that Windows 7 will cost more, but for most people the cost of Windows is buried in their new computer purchase - all they see is that computer prices keep going up. Now, if Windows 7 adds $300 to the cost of a netbook (when placed against a Linux or even XP machine) someone should perk up and say "why pay more?". For a netbook, when you're trying to run web browsing, photos and maybe a movie, Linux is better. It's the lack of MS Office that will throw most people.



Mokalus of Borg

PS - Few people try to run just a web browser on their netbooks.
PPS - I haven't seen a netbook running Windows 7 previews yet.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Facebook quiz

I had hoped to be able to post something amusing about the Facebook quiz "Would You Survive a Zombie Invasion?" today, but when I logged on to take the test, it seemed poorly constructed. The questions are oddly worded, as are the multiple choice answers. I stopped at the following question:

4. What Would You Do If You Were Surrounded By Zombies......
Shoot One With LAst Bullet
Spin Round Shooting Like Hell
Turn Round Run Up And Shoot
Drop YOur Weapon And jump on floor

I have no idea what the last two options mean, and I doubt I ever will, even if I get to talk to the writer of the quiz in person.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "Run Up" what?
PPS - I guess they can't all be winners. This is Facebook, after all.

Freeview is about limiting your TV capabilities

There are ads currently running on Australian TV about "Freeview" saying that "Only Freeview gives you high-definition television" etc.

Lies.

Take note: Freeview is just a trademark that signifies compliance with a certain set of features. While some of those standard features are good (160GB hard drive, HD tuners) some are designed specifically to limit the functionality of the device. For instance, to sport the Freeview name and logo, a set-top box MUST apply evil DRM to any recordings in the device and those copied off, and NOT provide any ability to skip ads (but they can skip forward 10 minutes at a time).

So if you build a set-top box that is too functional, it can't be called Freeview. Freeview certification is more about making sure of what the device can't do rather than what it can. Other set-top boxes can be sold without the Freeview name, but if people are only aware of the "only Freeview" campaign, DVD recorders and other useful devices will disappear entirely due to poor sales.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is why the Freeview and "Get Ready" campaigns launched at the same time.
PPS - More details here.

Software for upgrades

We can't always afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware, and we shouldn't have to either. It's expensive and wasteful to change your phone every six months and your computer every two years. Software, however, is far more cheap and flexible, and that is the way to make the best of what you've got.

The other day I mentioned that I have a book in my phone that I can read, and was asked if it was an iPhone. Nope. This is a plain old Nokia running the now-outdated Symbian S40 system. The way people go on about it, you'd think Apple invented running apps on phones, but all your Java games are apps too, running on your older phone.

Your old laptop can be salvaged with Linux or (soon) Windows 7 and your "outdated" iPod can run Rockbox. When the pace of hardware seems to outrun your wallet, look for new software to fill the gap. You'll often be pleasantly surprised. I'd like Google's Android to be able to run on my phone, but unfortunately this seems to be a case of software designed for new hardware.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have never installed Rockbox on an iPod.
PPS - But since it lets you keep the original firmware too, the risk is not too great.

Reality TV needs sub-genres

I think we need to start sub-categorising reality TV to distinguish one show from another. So You Think You Can Dance and Australian Idol are in a different class to Big Brother, and all three of them are different to The Biggest Loser. BB is voyeur TV, the reality equivalent of a soap opera and just as substantial. Dance and Idol are more along the lines of game shows, the main distinguishing factor being the live-in nature and voting. As for Loser, it's probably a step below that, where the competition is not about skill but character and achievement. I'd call it "competition TV" in the same league as arena game shows. Then there's "documentary TV" like The Recruits where there's no competition at all, but it has the "real people" factor.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The Wikipedia reality TV page states that documentaries are not typically considered reality TV.
PPS - I wonder if that's only certain kinds of documentary.

Free photo shoot that's possibly not free

This morning Deb and I are headed off to a "free" photo shoot. I'm dubious about exactly how free it will be, though I have been assured that one print does come with no charge. My guess, if they are able to promise one free print is that they will print many more in the hope of enticing/guilting me into buying more. We will see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It helps my self-control that the budget is too tight this week to buy photos.
PPS - Though I guess that doesn't really count as self-control.

Dexter

I've just finished watching Dexter season 1 with Deb, and I find it quite fascinating. He's a messed-up guy, and always on fairly thin ice, socially, but somehow endearing too. Most of the other killers he targets aren't exactly deep characters, and there's something tickling at the back of my mind about the main villain too, but on the whole I enjoyed the series. I look forward to the next one.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I remember being interested in the show when I first heard about it.
PPS - Then I was too busy when (if ever?) it came to Australian TV.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Plants vs Zombies

Last night, I downloaded and played a demo of Plants vs Zombies^TM and I have to say it's fun. I lost track of time long before the timed demo ran out, which is a common side-effect of fun.

Now I should note that the game was not difficult in any sense of the word - resources were not especially scarce, new weapons were given out at every level and the zombies have a hard time chewing through anything more substantial than a mushroom. But the fun of the game, at least as far as the demo goes, is not in the tower defence challenge, but in watching zombies get shot to pieces by frozen peas.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I had to use my Windows machine, since the game is a download for Mac or Windows only.
PPS - On Linux it kept offering me the Mac download.

Mad Max

I saw Mad Max for the first time on Tuesday and was disappointed. This is supposed to be a "dystopian future", but it looked more like two rival outback gangs and some misplaced guys in suits. The story, such as it was, was hard to follow, mostly because of Johnny The Kid, whose status and origin I was never quite clear on. I may have gotten him and someone else mixed up. The characters were thin and the effects more implied than carried off. The only reason this movie is culturally recognised at all is that Mel Gibson went on to do better things. Anyway, the interesting thing that I wanted to note is when he leaves Johnny The Kid with a hacksaw and his ankle handcuffed to the burning car. Sounds a lot like Saw to me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Yes, I realise Saw came a lot later.
PPS - I just wonder if Mad Max inspired it, at least in part and subconsciously.

How to get from Brisbane to Brisbane

If you go to Google Maps and ask for directions from Brisbane, California to Brisbane, Queensland, you will be told to "kayak across the Pacific Ocean". When I first discovered this, I hadn't seen this particular Google Maps Easter egg listed anywhere else, though I am familiar with the older USA-to-UK version that asks you to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. If you search Google for "kayak across the Pacific Ocean", you'll find the other references.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Following the directions, you'll go via Hawaii and Japan.
PPS - You could easily add a stopover in Papua New Guinea too.

Ruined immersion in entertainment

Sometimes I wish I could go back to enjoying some simple entertainment pleasures as they are presented. Now and then, however, my brain does this higher-order recognition thing and brings up an idea like "interesting camera angle" or "the cat is a metaphor" and the immersion is ruined. It's quite frustrating.

When I watch Star Trek I often wonder how much easier the captain's job could be if someone would just design a proper user interface. There are endless little internal interruptions that break my suspension of disbelief (and the phrase "suspension of disbelief often throws me, too, but that's another story). I expect this is fairly common for people whose entertainment matches their expertise to some degree.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My step-sister the doctor is known to complain about House.
PPS - And I frequently laugh when someone has "almost decrypted" a file on a computer.

Not swine flu

I took Friday off work because I had a head cold - lots of sniffling, sneezing and coughing. I felt better on Saturday, but sounded worse, and Sunday was about the same. Now I've come into the office, but I feel like my illness has regressed somewhat. It might just be Monday, but at this stage I'm not at all certain I'll be at work the whole day. While I'm pretty sure I'm not contagious any more, I think I'm still going to be annoying as I constantly blow my nose, sneeze and cough my way through the day.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't seem to open my eyes properly, either.
PPS - That might also be a Monday morning thing.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Fake Zombie, Real Ambulance

An ambulance crew and fire truck stops at the wrong address, walking onto the shooting location of a zombie movie. They must have been a little confused. Unfortunately, that's just about the whole story right there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do hope the cameras were rolling.
PPS - The film was "Silent Night, Zombie Night".

Pre-paid mobile plans better for light users

Considering how few calls I make with my mobile phone, it's possible that a pre-paid plan is better for me. Not for Deb, though: I'm certain that paying $29 for her regular $80 of calls per month is a good deal, but paying $20 for my own $8 a month is silly. Perhaps when my contract runs out I'll switch to a pre-paid plan and see how it goes. If it doesn't work out, I can always sign up for another contract.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This post was triggered by an article on Get Rich Slowly.
PPS - I haven't looked into my options in detail yet.

A different potential career

Sometimes I wonder whether I might enjoy a diversion of work focus. Not into a different area of software, but into designing liveable work and home spaces, like an interior architect or something. I enjoy thinking about that kind of problem - how to make the best use of space - and I would like to be able not only to draw what I think about but to do it as well. Perhaps my temporary place is on Better Homes and Gardens, or perhaps I'm just getting a renovation itch because Deb and I finally have our own place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or perhaps I'm remembering playing The Sims.
PPS - Anything is possible.

The Latest Tech presentation

I got sent a PowerPoint presentation in email called "The Latest Tech", which looked and sounded cool, but some of it was just interior design, and a lot of the rest was concept art, not working products. To me, that doesn't interest me as much as what we can do today. I don't want to see a "compass touch screen phone" that's nothing but a disc of glass with bright blue numbers photoshopped onto the surface if you can't build it and make it work. I don't even want to see the concept art if you haven't thought about how annoying a round glass disc would be as a mobile phone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Which way up for the earpiece and microphone?
PPS - I guess I'm more interested in its functions than its looks.

Forbidden DVD loans

According to the opening warning, we are technically breaking the law by borrowing Dad's Black Adder DVDs. And I'm sure the phrase is meant to forbid both lending by DVD rental places and casual friend-to-friend loans, because it said both "loan" and "rental" were forbidden. Does that seem wrong to anyone else? Of course they're not going to know, but they have specifically tried to prohibit it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't think of a legitimate reason to attempt that.
PPS - Imagine "I can't lend you my DVDs. You'd better buy your own.". Ridiculous.

A cat using a computer

Ooda occasionally sits on my keyboard while the computer is on. This is not that uncommon for cats, so I hear, and the results are usually not that interesting. His random button mashing searches for nonsensical strings in the web pages I'm viewing, or he manages to open a lot more tabs in the browser. Once he managed to turn off the wireless network adapter, and it took me a few minutes and a reboot to figure it out. Most recently, though, he managed to take a screenshot and save it to my home folder:

In case you can't read it there, the file is called "GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGG
G". This is clearly an inscrutable part of some cat plan to take over the world, as are most of their actions. The file name must be some kind of complex code.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Ooda has attempted to sit on this computer twice while I am composing this post.
PPS - No, make that three times.

Eagles raised by chickens and vice versa

There is a story told of an eagle raised by chickens. He fluttered short distances, scratched at the ground, pecked and clucked, never suspecting he was an eagle that could fly. This story is meant to inspire us to reach our unrealised potential.

As I often do, however, I wondered what the story would be like if the whole thing were turned on its head. That is, make it a story of a chicken raised by eagles, in a nest high on the cliffs. When he gets big enough, he takes off from the nest, flutters all the way to the ground and lands there, unable to fly at all. , b

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Believing you are something you are not is never a good thing.
PPS - But some of those situations are less tenable than others.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Scaring children

A Japanese TV show organises a simulated lone zombie attack on a group of three kids. Unintelligible hilarity ensues, though at some points the kids do seem to be distressed.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The kids seem to have organised their defences themselves.
PPS - And it's only unintelligible if you don't speak Japanese.

Medicare online guards your secrets

The Medicare website allows you to log in and update your details, such as postal address, phone numbers and bank account number. What it does not do is display your existing information. This is "to protect your security". They also have you enter five (!) secret questions and answers in addition to your card number, individual reference number, birth date and password. While I'll grant that it does technically increase security to never even give out private information over the web, it does somewhat reduce the usefulness of the website. For instance, I couldn't remember whether my postal address had been updated yet with Medicare, but I can't check whether it has been done. I can only submit the details and hope they get it right at their end. Similarly I don't know if they have my new bank account details.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And yet the banks themselves seem happy to transmit personal details online.
PPS - Perhaps they have more money to spend on ensuring security.

A note of thanks to Ubuntu 9.04

In the last week, a new version of Ubuntu Linux, 9.04, was released. I got a copy and tried it out at home on my old Celeron-based Toshiba laptop. I had hoped, since Ubuntu 9.04 comes in a special netbook edition, that it might work well for an old laptop. Leaving aside the fact that most netbooks these days are better specified than this thing, it actually worked quite well once it was installed. The proof of this claim is that I composed this post entirely on a laptop given up for dead over a year ago.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Thankyou Ubuntu for bringing my laptop back from the dead.
PPS - Not exactly like a zombie, but with a new personality for sure.

The ill-fitting drawers

Deb and I have a master bedroom just barely big enough for our queen size bed. It's caused a few problems, such as a lack of storage space for clothes. Though the built-in wardrobe is good, we can't hang all our clothes, and besides that there are socks and other things that don't make sense on hangers. For a while we used a tall chest of drawers as a dressing table substitute, but the time had come to make better use of the space. We set out in search of sets of drawers for either side of the wardrobe.

After getting a quote for one kind at $500-$900, we decided to go with a much cheaper pair of free-standing sets, 4 drawers each. Simple and effective. The plan was to place them on the floor inside the wardrobe at either end, keep our shirts and other things hanging above them. We would also have some floor space between them for shoes or bags.

After getting the units home, we discovered quickly that we would need a hammer or mallet to assemble them properly, so I had to go back to the shops and procure one, having never owned my own mallet before. The assembly went easily enough after that, as did moving the old chest of drawers out of the way, but once we tried to put the new drawers in we found that they were just a couple of centimetres too deep for the wardrobe. I got very unhappy with my lack of foresight at that point, and we realised that the only way to use them would be to turn them sideways, removing all possibility of using the floor space at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This creates a new storage space problem.
PPS - We can't seem to win.

When Hairy Met Silly

On Saturday Deb and I brought Meg home to stay with us. This was always going to be the case, assuming body corporate approval, but the presence of Ooda, the new kitten, was a bit of a complication. We tried introducing Meg to the house on her own, and after dismantling the box to get her out, she retreated to a corner and promptly quivered with fear. Ooda made noise about being locked up, and Meg didn't seem to be going anywhere, so we let him out to meet her.

Now, Ooda being a young male and Meg being a crotchety-though-quiet old lady of a cat, there were a few possible attitudes they could take to one another. Ooda's default reaction is, of course, "Ooh, new thing!" Meg, it was hoped, would adopt Ooda as her surrogate child or at least they would agree on territory quickly. Apparently Meg has no latent motherly instincts, and took the path, in cat equivalents, of yelling at Ooda to get off her lawn. Since then, she has only moved when nobody is watching, and has discouraged further interaction from Ooda in a similar manner, hissing and growling, but not actually striking.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Not exactly the community feeling we hoped to build.
PPS - But I guess it's better than any actual injuries on either side.

Web 2.0 requires HTTP 2.0

With all the talk of "web 2.0", it occurred to me the other day (and very late into the game, unfortunately) that we won't truly have Web 2.0 until the HTTP protocol, currently at version 1.1, is updated to its own version 2.0. I imagine that would involve the addition of state awareness better than cookies. The problem is that it would still have to be backwards compatible or else there would be too much confusion while browsers and websites catch up to the standard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Very geeky, I know.
PPS - And I don't have anything productive to add to the standard.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Differently Alive

I'm pretty sure this "interview" owes a lot to Terry Pratchett, but what can you do? Zombies, vampires and werewolves prefer to be called "differently alive" rather than "undead". It's political correctness, you see?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Political correctness has gone a bit out of fashion lately.
PPS - Maybe we're over it.

Power saving mobile phone charger idea

Apparently, 95% of energy wasted by mobile phones is because of chargers left on when the phone is at full power. Given that the phone can detect when it is at full charge, it shouldn't be too difficult for some enterprising electronic engineer to design a system that shuts off the charger when the phone reaches full power. It would have to be a physical switch-off, though, not just going into standby and still wasting power. That would mean an extra button on the charger that you need to remember to push in when you want to charge and that pops out when it's done. It will take some getting used to, but so did mobile phones, right?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This should be especially easy if the phone charges via a mini-USB connector.
PPS - Because cords like that are already designed to carry data signals.

Making friends is as awkward as dating

Making friends can be like dating. You meet, find out more about each other, and there's always the awkwardness about who makes the first move. We have found this in moving to a new church - we've met some people, but being the new ones in town we don't quite know how to act. Giving out our phone number would feel a bit like inviting ourselves into other people's lives rather finding out if we're actually friend-compatible.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know Jerry Seinfeld characterised dating as a job interview.
PPS - Maybe there's some deeper force at work in all three situations.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome exercises

I've found some new stretches to do that are specifically focused on tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. The video says I should expect to see some improvement in two days, and to keep doing the exercises every hour. It's a lot, but when it's that or the other options that haven't worked (anti-inflammatory meds, strapping and my own stretches) I'll take the one that hasn't been proven ineffective yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't been doing them nearly as often as I should.
PPS - At one point I think I had more pain than before, rather than less.

Moving other people's houses

This weekend I have learned that it is more fun to help other people move house than it is to do so yourself. Debbie and I helped good friends Murrae and Tracey move to their secret lair new house, and though it's just as much work, the stress was completely absent. I'm sure Murrae and Tracey were stressing at least a bit, and I sympathise, but I didn't feel it myself. Besides that, I got my exercise going up and down two flights of steps over and over - my pedometer registered over 10200 steps by lunchtime.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As long as actual removalists do the heavy lifting, I think it's fun.
PPS - I'm not officially volunteering for any and all future house moves, though.

Cat training of the most basic sort

I don't understand what's so difficult for a cat about learning to pee in a box. A while ago we had Ooda the kitten in our bed, and woke up at 04:00 to find poo and pee on our duck down doona. Since then we have experimented with various arrangements for Ooda that did not involve him in our bedroom. At various times now, we have found places where he has urinated outside the confines of his litter box, including our single armchair and a bag of Debbie's Mary Kay makeup (worth ~$600).

One of Deb's theories is that he is doing this out of spite: he doesn't like being locked up, so he pees on things. The problem is that we can't unlock him or else he pees on us. I think he just hasn't learned where to pee yet, and I have never had to train a cat to pee in the right spot. Meg just went straight to her tray and never went anywhere else. I don't know what it was.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It seems to be only upstairs now.
PPS - Perhaps we should put a second litter tray up there.

Friday Zombie Blogging - I Am Not Infected

There's a YouTube-serialised zombie survival show called I Am Not Infected, set on a university campus and framed as a survival horror/comedy with a reality TV feel. Apparently. I haven't watched it myself, but it sounds like they have high production values, which is generally a plus.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll probably never get around to watching it.
PPS - I'm okay with that.

What's so great about the Mac OS Dock?

What's so great about the Mac OS dock? I see countless projects and tools emulating it for Windows or Linux. Not being a Mac user myself, I don't have much first-hand experience with it, but what little I had left me unimpressed. I was unable to tell currently-running programs from shortcuts to start new programs, and that seems pretty important if you're trying to switch to another running process. Perhaps it's balanced with other OS X features that make sense of it all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Mal and Linda are both Macbook owners now.
PPS - Perhaps they can explain it for me.

Free laptops with mobile broadband plans

Mobile broadband plans with a free mini notebook is an emerging trend that I see becoming more popular. I also imagine that mobile networks will use these plans as a way to segment their market to make more money. Want a mobile phone? Get a phone plan. Want mobile data? You will have to buy a separate data plan with a "free" laptop.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have a very cynical streak when it comes to these companies.
PPS - Dell/Vodafone and Asus/Dodo are the available hardware/broadband pairs I'm aware of.

A suitable day for going back to work

I haven't been awake this early in a week and a half. I'm back at the office today, and it's appropriately dark and rainy outside. Not that it particularly suits my mood, but it does represent a widely-held attitude towards corporations in general. I'm also back on Google Reader, so the sidebar will be updating with news again, whatever I find interesting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - No guarantee is offered that you will also find it interesting.
PPS - That would be far too difficult.

Reading EULAs before purchasing software

Apparently most software doesn't give you the option of reading the End User License Agreement (EULA) before opening the box and starting to install it. If you don't agree at that point to the terms and conditions, you also can't return the software because the retailer has no way of knowing whether you've taken a copy. So what if someone went and got the EULAs for popular software off the web, printed them out and attached them to boxes while they were still in-store? I'd do it myself, but the follow-through on this one is really more suited to a YouTube video than a blog post, and I don't have the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It probably wouldn't have much effect.
PPS - Most people don't read them anyway.

Good Friday

Today being Good Friday, Deb and I attended a church service this morning. I've come to expect challenging messages from this preacher, and today was certainly no exception. He touched on the way Jesus did not conform to the image of Messiah in the culture of the day, in fact being humiliated and looking defeated on the cross, and that's pretty much all anyone could see at the time. He also mentioned the fact that Jesus was forgiving sins before he got to the cross, so that's not about him taking the punishment for your personal sins. It's about expending the very state of sin of all Creation. There were some tricky concepts in there that I will probably struggle to understand for a while, but on the whole it's a good thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - No zombie blog today.
PPS - Just for today, though. I'll resume next week.

When it's too late to make a good choice

I've noticed in a few TV shows recently where a character has to make a choice, but all the options seem bad. At that point an idea comes to my mind. When you're in that situation, you've already made your bad decision. Now you're at a point where you're dealing with the consequences, and there's little you can do about it. It would be good if those choices were obvious at the time, but too often it's easy to rationalise and write off the initial bad option as "for the greater good" or just for the short term.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Lies often fall under that category.
PPS - They compound on each other until it's too late to get out.

The history of colour

Modern ideas of colour sense say that it developed basically as a way of telling the good berries from the bad in our hunter/gatherer past. However, I have learned from Qi that the ancient Greeks had a very under-developed cultural colour sense, so either we have a drastic drop and regaining of colour sense in the past, or the current theory is wrong.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have not been able to back up the Qi claim with my quick research.
PPS - One group of people, of course, does not present a break across the whole human race's history.

The smell of Subway

The smell of Subway restaurants is as much a trademark as their name or logo, but it's not designed. I'd have to call it an "emergent trademark", because it just came about from their particular combination of breads, sauces and other sandwich components. It is strongly associated with that brand, at least for me, and is quite recognisable.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's hard to put a trademark notice on a smell, though.
PPS - I'm sure some perfume manufacturers have tried before.