Readiness

I keep a lot of windows open on my computer most of the time. At work, I'd typically have email, web browser (with up to 10 tabs), several file browser windows, two simple note-taking programs, a project timer, one personal wiki, one plain text file editor, a development environment and, quite often, a database management window. That doesn't count Dropbox, TeamViewer and Belvedere, the apps that run in my system tray. Oh, and I forgot Wunderlist, my action list program.

Is that excessive? Perhaps. Maybe it's a case of laziness or impatience. If I close things down when I'm not focused on them, I need to spend extra time doing that when I switch away, and I need to spend extra time waiting for it to come back when I need it again. This is about speed and convenience. It's how I need my computer to work for me. Quickly and without getting in the way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I try to write my software that way, too.
PPS - It's why my note-taking program doesn't need a "new note" button. You jus start typing.

Defaults can trump quality

Defaults can trump quality more easily than you might think. There are several better web browsers in existence than Internet Explorer, but since IE is the default on Windows, that's what a staggering number of people use. Lots of other programs out-perform Adobe Reader for displaying PDFs, but, again, it's the default program and that can mean more than quality. If a default option is easy and works well enough, very few people are going to go looking for the best option, or even a slightly better one.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is also how a lot of fast food places stay in business.
PPS - And a fair few TV shows.

Cleaning externalities

Practically everything about the quality of their work is an externality to a contract cleaner - it doesn't affect them. If the toilet looks mostly clean and they won't get fired for it, that's good enough. If the paper rolls are loaded the wrong way around for the dispenser and they're glued together, that can be a frustration for anyone who uses the bathroom, but not to the cleaner if it won't get them fired. If the floor is vacuumed in all the major traffic areas, but not behind the plants or under the stairs every day, that's good enough. Pretty much everything falls into that category. It is in their best interests to do their job just barely well enough to avoid getting fired. That is the only way their work directly affects them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Once you start noticing half-hearted cleaning, you keep seeing it everywhere.
PPS - So, I guess I'm sorry for doing that to you.

Cushy jobs

The cushy jobs have to go to the stupid people. Do you want the best and brightest wasting their time somewhere that their work is essentially meaningless? Do you want the dummies in charge of critical, high-pressure situations?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some would say dummies in power is how we ended up with failed banks.
PPS - I think that was greed, though.

Proposal quid pro quo

There may come a day when the response to a marriage proposal becomes as important as the proposal itself. I mean, do you want someone to go to the trouble of arranging a flash mob dance number with fireworks and a lion tamer only to say a simple "yes" at the end? A mere "yes" hardly does such effort justice, does it? Instead, you should go and plan your own surprise event with skywriting, fire jugglers and jet ski ramp jumps to deliver your positive response. It's only fair.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Where are those YouTube videos?
PPS - At some point in the distant future, I guess.

We need a mobile power breakthrough

We really do need a breakthrough in mobile computing. We keep wanting to run more powerful processors with bigger screens and more demanding software in a thinner package. The end result is dramatically reduced battery life, to the point that you can barely get through your waking hours on one full battery charge. People have started to look at this problem, but the answers so far are other ways to charge up - at the desk at work, a luggable backup battery, even solar panels. These stop-gap measures only stand in the way. We will soon end up with high-end phones that you unplug at 6am and expect to have dead batteries by the time you get home from work, without even really using it.

More compact battery technology would be a start, but our advances in this space have been incremental rather than revolutionary. Lower-power hardware would help, but probably not enough, especially if we take that as a cue to run ever more demanding software on it. Basically, our increasing demands on mobile computing technology are slowly eroding the very thing we designed them for. Eventually, if we continue on this path, the advantages of mobile will disappear altogether because the batteries suck so hard that they need to sit in a charging cradle non-stop.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Every couple of years I get a new phone and have to charge it more often. Right now it's often twice per day.
PPS - I know I wrote about this not too long ago, but it keeps coming up.

Windows Experience Index should consider RAM amount

I think it's a shame that the Windows Experience Index only takes RAM speed into account, not the RAM amount. You could be running Windows 7 on 2GB of very fast memory, and the Experience Index will tell you that is very good when, in fact, it's not good enough.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My computers all say they'd do better with a beefier graphics card.
PPS - I don't know if I've ever run a high-end graphics card in my machines.

The speed of progress indicators

As humans, we make progress on monotonous tasks in an uneven way. When we start out, we're full of energy and tend to make quick progress. In the middle, we're tired of it and there seems to be no end in sight, so we go more slowly. Near the end, we speed up again because we're getting closer and we just want to finish.

Computers, of course, are not like that. They make progress evenly, and so they should. Perhaps, however, we should scale progress indicator bars to allow for that fast-slow-fast pattern and make it look more natural to people. For the first parts of the task, mark off sections of the progress bar quickly, then slow down in the middle, then speed it up again at the end. I'd like to do some testing to see whether this affects people's perception of the speed of the task. It might actually turn out to be better to reverse the process, going very slowly at the beginning when users have the high energy to allow for that, speed up in the middle to offset the user's lowered energy, and slow down again at the end.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some progress bars already seem to be fast in the middle and slow at the end.
PPS - So maybe someone already thought of this.

Hotel price comparison comparison, ad nauseum

Every hotel has a booking website. To make the comparisons easier, people have set up separate price comparison websites. But which one of those should you use? Perhaps we need a hotel price meta-comparison website, to help you find the best hotel comparison website before you start actually comparing hotels.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Just make sure we don't set up more than one of those.
PPS - Because that would get really messy.

Taxonomy doesn't lead to understanding

A lot of what I would call "taxonomic philosophy" questions, such as "do digital natives exist?" or "is this thing a 'real' game or not?" disappear when you consider what the results of the answer will be. If you figure out whether a certain piece of interactive art is a game or not, what will be the outcome of that answer? Will people have more or less fun playing it? Will its value go up or down? I don't think anything much changes, and that's the point. There's a difference between understanding something and classifying it. Classification is not an act of understanding but of filing and grouping. That doesn't really lead to anything but more refined definitions of the classifications that you yourself developed. If other people don't agree with those classifications, then there's very little basis to argue with them. You drew an imaginary line and said "these things belong here", but so what if they don't? Knowing the type of thing to call a particular object, person or concept doesn't put you in any closer relationship with it. In fact, it may distance you from it, because if you only play "real" games, there are all kinds of experiences, many of them positive, that you will never have, just because you decided already what did and did not fit into your world.

In short, classification and its related questions do not lead to deeper understanding.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We should do less of them.
PPS - And we should do more understanding of each other.

Motion-sensor lights

In what rooms of the house does it make sense to change all light switches to motion sensors? I think the only place it wouldn't make sense is anywhere you want it to remain dark - the bedroom and maybe home theatre. Everywhere else, it makes more sense, to me, to have motion sensors so that the lights are only on when people are present, and, furthermore, come on automatically when people arrive. I've seen motion-sensor lights becoming more common in offices. I think they'll start being used in homes before too long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You probably still need kill-switches for when you're going to change the bulbs.
PPS - Or else it would be like a heist movie every time as you try to move slowly enough not to set it off.

Spotting found footage fakes

Whenever alleged "found footage" begins a few seconds before the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime occurrence or the blink-and-you-miss-it weirdness, you should be suspicious.

It usually looks like several seconds of why-would-you-film-this banality until someone suddenly says "OMG LOOK AT THAT!" and the camera swivels around to see the monster/alien/cryptid/magic for a second. Real footage of such unusual events would begin several seconds after the exclamation, at best, and that's if someone whips out their phone immediately. Also, anything that zooms in was probably not filmed on a phone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not actually that familiar with high-end phone cameras.
PPS - They might zoom. But I doubt anyone thinks of that in the moment.

Amazon should have Kindle sales events like Steam

Amazon should take a cue from Steam and run limited-time specials on Kindle ebooks and send me email when books on my wish list go on sale. I'd end up buying more books, I'm sure, just the way I've bought a lot of games from Steam that I don't have time to play.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps their publisher agreements don't allow that.
PPS - Which is the equivalent of "we don't like money", but that's their loss.

Working better with YouTube subscriptions

When I subscribe to a YouTube channel, I do so because I want to watch basically everything they upload, or I at least want to have a clear view of new uploads on that channel. The best possible arrangement, for me, would be to have all new uploads from my subscription channels added automatically to my Watch Later playlist. For now, here's the best solution I've found:

Get an RSS Feed Of Your Youtube Subscriptions

This page describes how to get an RSS feed for all your subscriptions, which you can use in any news reader of your choice. I've added it to Feedly, which I use for my news since Google set fire to Google Reader. Anyway, it's a fairly simple matter of making your subscriptions public, finding your user ID and pasting it into a GData URL. It looks pretty good to me so far.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's made my subscriptions useful, anyway.
PPS - I like working with single feeds for similar purposes.

Witness protection

Hypotheticals: How would you handle permanent witness protection? I mean completely ditching everything about your life, deliberately disappearing and starting from scratch. It is difficult enough when you have to do something like change your phone number or your credit card. Imagine also having to abandon your Facebook profile, your email, your house, your car, all your possessions, your friends, your family, your job (and job history) and even your entire name. Call it the Men In Black treatment. All that remains of you - anywhere - are memories.

Let's assume, for the sake of sanity, that you are being taken in by a secretive government agency for some reason. They'll give you a new name, new house and a new job, but it won't be flashy, and it won't be familiar. How long before you snap and what is the thing that makes you break your cover?

For me, I think it would be the internet. Not in and of itself, but because it's the quickest, easiest way to blow my cover and reconnect with people I know and love.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Bonus question: how would you drop a hint to secretly tell your family that you're okay?
PPS - I'd probably try a cryptic letter, but then it would be hard to know if it worked.

Political incentives

On Extra Credits, a sort of gaming-philosophy-related YouTube channel, there's a video about political incentives, focusing on the USA, because that's where the video creators live. It makes some incredibly good points about members of congress being insulated from the effects of their actions, and ways to fix that, such as tying congresspeoples' wages directly to a multiple of the average US wage, and giving them exactly whatever health care options are available to an ordinary citizen of their age. Those are stellar suggestions, I think, and they would definitely result in a much more fair, balanced, involved and trustworthy government. We should enact those measures immediately, is my point.

The problem comes next. The people who would be 100% responsible for setting up those laws are the very same people who would be voting themselves a pay cut and more limited health care options as a result. That's not going to go down so well with the current members of congress. The crippling arterial blockage we are trying to remove is the very reason many of the most powerful congresscritters are there in the first place: it's a cushy job with tons of benefits and very little in terms of actual negative consequences of your actions, plus the ability to vote yourself more money at any time. Trying to root that out of the system is going to be practically impossible, and keeping it secure once it is miraculously accomplished is going to be a constant ongoing battle. As soon as you say "congressional wages will be 2.5 times the national average", someone will introduce a bill to say "actually, let's make it 3.5 times" and so on.

Because Congress is in power over itself, it is going to drift further and further into corruption as time goes on. The deeper it gets, the harder it will be to root out. In the end, a total collapse of the political system may be required to bring about the necessary change, and that assumes you can keep the warlords and backstabbers out of the revolution.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think political systems naturally drift towards corruption.
PPS - Or basically every one of them has so far, some slower than others.

Online retail needs different jobs

I don't think retail is dying as such with the move to online shopping. It's just that the kinds of jobs we require to support online shopping are different to what we needed for bricks and mortar shopping. We used to need shopfitters and signwriters, but now we need web designers. We used to need commercial landlords, but now we need web hosts. We used to need sales staff, but now we need warehouse staff to pack and ship orders. It doesn't mean that everyone's skills transfer directly over, but there should be room for everyone, at least in theory.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We need to train people for these jobs.
PPS - And, I guess, figure out what those jobs are.

File everything

If you're looking to get more organised, it's really a whole journey to having a full system and the habits to maintain it. However, if you're just looking for that quick hack that will give you the most benefit with the least effort, start using a filing system. Buy a ton of manila folders and a filing cabinet, and start using it for literally everything that will fit. Don't leave things around the house in places where you'll "just remember", and definitely don't pile things on the desk, even if you have a piling system ("this is next week's bills, this is letters from Grandma, and these on the floor over here manuals for household appliances that stopped working five years ago"). Your goal in this filing-obsessed situation is that the first response when you wonder "where is such-and-such?" is always "filing cabinet". If you can't fit an item in there physically, you find a place for it elsewhere, then write down where it is in your filing system. It should be like the library card index of your house.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My filing system is not quite as good as this.
PPS - It needs some maintenance.

A possible future of social networking

There is a way - a bad way - that social networking online could go. It might look something like this.

In an effort to fight back against heavy-handed NSA surveillance and over-sharing on Facebook, ISPs are forced to take action to protect their customers. Rather than paying Facebook for access and not being sure that they really are protecting the privacy of their users, ISPs set up their own social networks as an opt-in extra. Users pay to have an account, but the ISPs, in a move designed to encourage more business, make these new networks walled gardens, exclusive to their own customers. If you want to network with your friends, better convince them to switch ISPs.

These buggy, awful, too-closed networks will, however, eventually win out, because they don't sell user data to third parties. At first. Then the allure of bringing back the Big Data economy will tug longingly at the wallet-strings of the ISPs and they will cave in. After all, someone else must already be doing that, right?

So, in order to save ourselves from government surveillance, we will sell our social data to our internet service providers instead, who will, in turn, behave exactly like little Facebooks, selling user data and, eventually, collaborating with government spy agencies anyway. We don't get a say. We never did. We are the product. The cow doesn't get a vote on the way to the abbatoir.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know it's bleak.
PPS - Some futures, especially with little corporate responsibility, are just that way.

Modular design

I really do love modular design. Snap in, snap out customisation. It's something between bespoke designs built from scratch and one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it mass production. I think about it a fair bit, possibly because I played with LEGO as a kid. And as an adult, though less so. Lately I've been wondering about modular housing. You could, perhaps, use shipping containers for the bulk of the structure, and design individual ready-made rooms with power, water and lighting wired up and ready to go. I don't know how well it would work, but I'd love to see someone try.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People do build the occasional house out of shipping containers.
PPS - I'm thinking more of mass-produced snap-together rooms to make a whole house.

Atypical writer

I feel like I might be a bit atypical as a writer. It's a common observation that writers have this kind of problem where they can't keep their word count down when it's required. They just write and write and before they know it they're 20,000 words into what started as an ad to sell their couch.

I'm not like that. Yes, I can be a bit wordy, but, to take up a horrible metaphor, my writing is more like constipation where other writers have diarrhoea. I have never written as much as I think, and every word comes slowly. My brain needs to slow down, stop and think about what I'm doing, and then the next word comes. It's painful and slow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, every writer is atypical in some way.
PPS - Just like every human.

Mockery and insecurity

One of the first things John Scalzi says about his Creation Museum visit article and photo essay is "if you don't want me to mock your beliefs, get better beliefs". I don't think he's kidding, because of aforementioned extensive mockery being the very purpose of the visit, the article and the photo captions. In other words, his position is "I will not mock you unless I don't like what you believe". That's not a moral position. That's schoolyard bullying. It's the same as saying "I will mock your beliefs", but it puts the onus on you. It looks like it's up to you whether you get mocked/punched/bullied, but it's really not.

Mockery doesn't change beliefs, it only reinforces prejudices when used this way. This form of mockery is rooted, deep down, in insecurity. If I am insecure about myself, then I need everyone else to validate my choices, my beliefs and my physical appearance by conforming to it. Your sheer comfort with believing something different to me is a threat to the security of my personal world view. It must be attacked.

The point is that, while you could change who you are, what you believe, the clothes you wear and the way you cut your hair in order to appease someone, why should you do that? They're the one with the problem. You are free to express your beliefs (as long as you can defend them with logical argument), just as I am. Instead of mockery, how about we have a proper discussion? We might not end up agreeing, but we should end up understanding our own beliefs better as a result, and that is always a good thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just know the "get better beliefs" line is going to be repeated without thought.
PPS - Just know that, if you repeat it, it's more of a threat than a hilarious observation.

The people problems of communication

We solved the mechanical problems of communication and found out the real problem was people. I mean to say that these days we have phones that are always within reach, answering machines and voice mail, email, text, Facebook, Twitter, actual video phones, any number of ways of getting in touch with people, and we still fail to do so. We still don't respond to the messages people send us. We misunderstand each other or respond in anger or haste. The technology makes it faster to get in touch, but all of the people problems are still there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm pretty bad at this, too.
PPS - I was bad at it before I got connected.

Importance

If we all had a crystal ball to see who would be important in the future, we would treat some people better, but we would also treat some people worse. I mean, most people you meet won't be critical to your future success, and especially not to history as a whole. If we had some mechanism to tell us who was most important, it would also tell us that most people are not, and we would definitely end up abusing that knowledge. Better to follow the Golden Rule and treat everyone as if they are as important (or more so) than yourself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't do that nearly well enough.
PPS - It's so simple to say and so hard to do.

The grammar of mobile app interoperation

I have to think in Yoda grammar when navigating on my phone. "person, navigate to", not "navigate to person". It's a weird adjustment I've had to make, but I know where it's come from. It's just the way the software handles app interoperation. If you have data of a particular type - say, an address - then a contextual action on that data can be handled by any installed app that accepts it. It's pretty flexible, and it means you don't need every app to have browsers for data that the others hold. It just means a different way of thinking.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll get used to it.
PPS - Eventually.

Business software needs integration

Business software customers already have a lot of people using a lot of other tools. If you want to sell some software to a business, it needs to integrate with those existing tools. Selling a customer service issue tracker to a software house that doesn't integrate with their source control is a non-starter. Selling a timesheet solution that doesn't integrate with HR databases and invoicing software won't get you anywhere.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Selling directly to consumers, on the other hand, makes "integration" a dirty word.
PPS - Go figure.

Mars operating systems

A computer on Mars doesn't need a whole different operating system. It just needs a different calendar and clock. Cory Doctorow wrote in his story Martian Chronicles about how computers needed to run on a Mars-specific operating system, to match the particular clock and calendar for that planet. It may also have been a point about the specific circumstances of that story, but it shouldn't really matter. You can run a different clock and calendar on the same operating system as everyone else. The computer doesn't mind, as long as there's a way to translate dates to and from a number of milliseconds. That's all it would need.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is one of those technical discussions that bugs me, deep down.
PPS - It's also one of those with very little impact on my life.

Gaming comics

The reason I prefer Penny Arcade over Ctrl+Alt+Del is that I'm not a voracious consumer of games. I have a casual association with games, though not in the sense that would necessarily make me a "casual gamer". These days that means you only play Candy Crush. Anyway, because I do not, as my life goal, aim to play ALL THE GAMES, I don't always recognise a significant new cultural artifact a week after it pops up. Ctrl+Alt+Del does a comic about Rust, but to me it's just two naked guys in the woods discussing the merits of guns over pants. Which is fine, I guess? But when Penny Arcade references Rust, there's a comprehensive news post that goes along with it, incidentally explaining what Rust is and what they think of it. To be fair, Ctrl+Alt+Del does often also put up a blog post with it, though not always, and I'm not in the habit of reading it or looking for it, because it is so often absent.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm much more likely to read a book than play a game, in general.
PPS - Depending on the book and the game.

Chuck Wendig on spanking your children

On Christmas Eve, Chuck Wendig posted a long rant to his blog with the title "Spanking Your Children Is Hitting Your Children". Amid his usual profanity, he put forward the opinion that spanking your children is a form of abuse, which is not a new argument, but was backed up with some reasonable and well-thought-out logic.

His follow-up post attempted to address some of the comments he received, and he presents studies that support him, though none that found any alternative conclusions. The main thrust of the argument here is that spanking is the low-brow, knee-jerk reaction to tantrums and other behavioural problems in children. It only teaches them to fear you and that they should not behave that way, not why they should not.

Here's where I started thinking that, whether you spank or put your child in time-out, neither approach is going to accomplish any understanding without some long discussions where you outline expectations and that actions have consequences, choices and all that kind of thing to your tantrum-throwing two-year-old. Do they understand? Probably not. There is going to be a time in your child's life when they are punished for something and cannot know why.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't have kids, though, so I'm not actually qualified to weigh in on this.
PPS - You'll note that hasn't stopped me, but feel free to ignore me on that basis.

Google feature shrink

Google is betting a lot on Google+, shoehorning in a lot of features that used to be provided by other services. Chat? Google+ Hangouts. Latitude? Google+ location tags. YouTube comments? Google+ posts. I suppose, in one sense, it's good, and I didn't use some of those services anyway, so that's more neutral. On the other hand, when they're absorbed into Google+, those services inevitably lose features, and they seem to be the features I was using.

This says one of two things. Either Google is doing a sloppy job incorporating these new features into G+, implying they might come back later, or I am significantly atypical as a Google customer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm willing to accept that I am atypical.
PPS - It seems to be the way I am.

Predicting the future

Predicting the future is hard. Some small things, especially extending technology to say that this or that will become smaller, faster, cheaper and more efficient is the baseline. Predicting exactly what effect that will have on society is nearly impossible. You could "predict" that cameras will get smaller, networks faster and batteries more efficient, and you could put those together to predict tiny wireless spycams that run for months on a single battery charge. You might predict that such cameras would be worn on glasses to document people's lives, or used by perverts in public toilets and change rooms, but maybe you wouldn't think they would, for instance, be shotgunned into burning buildings for real-time mapping or used to monitor national parks or any number of other applications. What people think to do with technology is always unusual and always astounding.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People are the usual cause of unintended consequences.
PPS - They are the most creative and most unexpected part of any system.

Videogame brain health

Videogames may be good for your brain in certain ways, but it still matters what you're using it for when you're not playing games. You can't spend all your time on games and expect to come out a genius, even in very specialised arenas. You need to put your brain skills to use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As I clearly ... have.
PPS - I word good all time.

Retry, Reboot, Reinstall

My standard computer troubleshooting procedure is The Three Rs: "Retry, Reboot, Reinstall". There's quite often a Google step in between the last two, though, because reinstalling is a big operation and if there's a quicker route, you might as well try that before the scorched-earth policy. Still, that's the basics. If you're going to ask me for help, this is what I'll do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or this.
PPS - Some problems never get fixed.

What makes an urgent problem

The only things that are actually urgent are where nobody is in control. Need to eat right now and have no food? Urgent. Been shot or stabbed or poisoned? Urgent. Planetary alignment window for space launch? Urgent.

Rent and payday? Not urgent. Sort of. What I mean is that, at the other end of the "urgent" bill is a person, and the huge advantage of people is that we can be flexible. Get talking to the right person and anything "urgent" that they are in charge of can be moved, if the right motivators are in place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, there's only so much negotiating that one person can do, in the end.
PPS - When you reach that limit, your urgent problems are staying urgent.

Amazon.com.au doesn't know I have a wish list

Since the launch of Amazon Australia for digital content, my wish list is a mess. I had a lot of titles on there for my Kindle, and now when I log in, I am told that some of them are no longer available. This is because they are now to be exclusively sold through Amazon.com.au if I am in Australia, though this is not spelled out on Amazon.com. To make it all as difficult to use as possible, of course, my wish list itself is not accessible from the Australian site. So to buy a title from my wish list for my Kindle, I have to make sure I go to Amazon.com, but if the title is not actually available there, I have to go to Amazon.com.au and do a search to make sure I haven't been lied to.

Like I said, a mess.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm moderately confident this will get better in the future.
PPS - Moderately confident, not supremely confident.

Trust vs accountability

An act of trust is an act of faith. Some people say that we need total transparency to trust each other - everything out on the table up front. But total transparency is not trust. It's accountability.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's still a good thing.
PPS - Just not the same thing.

Home automation

If I were installing some home automation, and I could secure it properly, I would put internet-enabled sensors and controllers all over my house and get an app for my phone to control and monitor it. I'd want to get alerts when my doors and windows are open if I'm out of the house, and just a basic report on those states available at all times. I'd really like to be able to close the doors and windows remotely, in case I left them open and I hear there's rain coming. That also goes for the garage door: alerts when it's open, remote control to open or close it.

I'd want to be able to switch the lights on and off in blocks all at once, and be able to check and switch off appliances and power points too, in case I think I left the oven or iron on. It would be nice, but not essential, to be able to control my TV, DVD and media centre from my phone, but that can be a separate project.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In a pinch, I would probably settle for an "all lights out" switch in the bedroom.
PPS - I think home automation would be cool, but then I struggle to think what I'd actually do with it.

Following your dreams

We can't all follow our dreams. First, the world won't work if everybody refuses to do anything that doesn't interest them. There just aren't enough truly passionate career janitors and retail salespeople in the world. Society would collapse on that alone. Second, for every successful musician, there are at least a thousand garage-band wannabes who will never make it, despite being just as hard-working and talented. There is just not enough room in the market.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We all have to do things we don't enjoy.
PPS - Sometimes, we have to do them to make a living.

Hugo Something

I am somehow constantly forgetting Hugo Weaving's name. I forget it for a while, go around in my head trying to remember it, usually bringing up "Hugh Jackman" as something similar and immediately discarding it, but the only other suggestion that ever seems to come to mind after that is "Jack Human", then "Something Hu-something" and white noise static. So I look it up, smack my forehead, vow to definitely, really remember it this time, only for it to come up a few days later and to draw a complete blank.

It's Hugo Weaving, brain. Hugo Weaving.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I very nearly typed "Hugh Jackman" again there.
PPS - Hugo.

Open plan

The promises of open-plan offices are that it makes everyone more available to help everyone else, and makes it easier to work with your neighbours. The reality of open-plan offices is that being available to help others means you are more likely to be interrupted and unable to get your work done, and even if you aren't the subject of an interruption, you will be aurally distracted any time coworkers strike up any conversation, work-related or otherwise. Open-plan offices have been shown experimentally to be terrible for productivity, and employees must usually deal with the overwhelming noise by drowning it out with headphones, further harming productivity.

If you want your workers to be productive and to cooperate with each other, almost any office layout will be far better than open-plan. Just keep it in mind if you've got an office on the drawing board. Open, flowing space is good for parties, not for getting work done, for identical reasons.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not a fan of open plan.
PPS - Unless you're throwing a party. Then I'm in.

Technology in cars

I don't think we really know how we want technology to integrate with our cars just yet. There are some things that seem like good ideas (integrated GPS) and others that are boneheaded wrongness shoehorned in because the car manufacturer says so (DRM on batteries). Some are a mixed blessing, offering some benefit while keeping it locked up and adding unknown security vulnerabilities (Lojack/OnStar come to mind, that can track and remote control your car, including unlocking it with a phone call, but might be accidentally offering that capability to hackers). We're starting to see concept cars with computers that keep you up to date on social networks. Distractions are a terrible thing to build into a car, but apparently that doesn't occur to the designers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think car technology should be halfway between real-time industrial monitoring equipment and mobile computers.
PPS - That's a lot to cram into a computer system.

Sexism at the office

A few times during my office-worker career, the admin assistants or receptionists have had occasion to complain that people are leaving unwashed dishes in the sink, and that they are having to wash them up. "We're not here to clean up after you", they say in the meeting. At this point I always notice the older men smirking and looking at each other as if to say "What does she think she's here for, then?". I realise that attitudes towards gender roles have changed over time, and that institutional sexism has, in theory, gone away, but it always stuns me to see that it was only a couple of decades ago that wearing a skirt in an office was the clear signal that you are here to look after the important men-folk who do the real work. It's funny how quickly and how slowly that change has happened, is what I mean. Quickly because it was not that long ago that it was normal, but slowly because it's technically not gone yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's usually the way deeply-entrenched ideas die.
PPS - By failing to be passed on to the next generation.

DRM from another perspective

I'm starting to see DRM from a different perspective lately. Not a positive one, just one of understanding. See, I would like to be taking steps to counter the actions of those who would prey on me. It's just that, because I'm an individual, the ones who would prey on me are big, powerful corporations. I use encryption and privacy-preserving services to keep them from taking advantage of me.

If, however, I were a big powerful corporation trying to sell things to the public, then those who would prey on me are the general public or, more specifically, the behaviours of certain members of the public, such as those who take what I'm selling without paying. If I were in charge of one of those corporations, I would take whatever steps I could to mitigate those behaviours. DRM is one of those "solutions" sold to such people. They're being told it works. It will protect them. It's not true, but they bought the lie anyway.

A better approach might be to look at those behaviours, at what motivates them, and try to change business practices to remove those motivations. For instance, lots of people in Australia pirate TV. It's the national passtime of our geek set. Some of the motivations given are that it takes far too long for content to get here from the USA, and then all the legal channels are either blocked or sold in ways meant to maximise the customer's bleeding. A lot of this has to do with regional distribution agreements that were designed last century to handle pre-internet-era TV, and have persisted mostly on momentum and habit.

So the best way to mitigate the behaviours being displayed is just to sidestep everything in the old system. Make your shows for the internet directly. If you need a lot of startup capital, go to Kickstarter. I think this can work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I'm not the one who knows what works.
PPS - I just know the promises of DRM are lies.

City needs

For life in a city, electricity and running water are as much needs as food, shelter and clothing. When the power goes out and the water systems fail, cities get sick. They can't function the way they should.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They become individual needs because the environment requires them.
PPS - It's a bit of an odd position.

Redundancy 2

Yesterday I was made redundant at work. Downsized. Regretfully let go. It's the second time in my career that's happened to me, and I think I handled it better this time around. The payout was nice. It will go a long way to keeping us afloat while I find another job. I could see on the video conference that my boss was not having a good day either. I gather he had to do this a few times today. I was hoping I could wheedle a last-minute title change to "Senior Professional", just to look better on the resume, but that was evidently not an option.

I'm considering options at the moment. I could take a month off, attend some acting auditions, maybe try to sell some writing. If it doesn't work out quickly, I can always look for a more traditional job. Maybe it won't interest me enough at all. I guess we'll see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - While it gets easier to receive redundancy, I wonder if it gets easier to give it out.
PPS - I doubt it.

Secret accountability is not accountability

FISC/FISA is clearly not working as a procedure for keeping the NSA in check. Why? Because "secret accountability" is a contradiction in terms. It isn't real accountability, it's conspiracy, because the wall of secrecy is drawn around the two of you, and all information is forbidden from leaving, ever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Self-policing always devolves into no policing.
PPS - Because it's easier that way.

Trusted random number generation

When you're engaging in some activity online that requires random numbers and you don't know if you can trust the other side, you have a problem. Say it's a game, and you each need to roll dice regularly. If you each just generate random numbers and tell each other what they were, you can't know that your opponent isn't lying in their own favour. You also can't just generate the random numbers for each other, because that has the same problem. To trust the randomness, you need something that neither side can lie about, that can't be rigged to favour one side or the other, and that can't be known ahead of time.

Something like this:

1. Both encrypt a seed and send it.
2. Once you receive your partner's seed, send the key to decrypt your side. This is important, because your partner can't change their seed at this point, and neither can you.
3. Decrypt the seeds and combine them in some agreed way (say, by multiplying or adding them together).
4. Generate a random number using the combined seed.
5. Discard seeds and start over to avoid look-ahead cheating.

It seems simple enough, and there are some variations you can do for other, more complicated scenarios. Unfortunately, it doesn't stretch far beyond the limited concept of shared, verified randomness. It can't be used to verify identity, for instance. It only tells me that I can trust the random numbers generated this way, not that the other machine generating them is who I expect to be on the other end. Also, since I'm not a security expert, it's possible (or very likely) that there's a blatant flaw in the scheme that allows it to be biased for some purpose. I don't know.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So far I've been unable to determine a version that allows the equivalent of both sides drawing random cards and keeping them secret.
PPS - For now, this is obviously a trusted P2P dice mechanism and nothing more.

Blank board game supplies

Just on a whim, I went looking for blank playing cards online, and I was delighted to find a whole range of blank board game equipment for sale: blank playing cards, plain white game boards, blank-faced dice with stickers, plain coloured pawns. This makes me very happy just because it's a kind of midpoint between total DIY and professionally-published games.

If you've got an idea for a board game, obviously you can find some cardboard and do a lot of cut-paste-draw-write yourself, but after some play testing, maybe you want your home-made game to look a little more professional. Something you can bring to family and friends game nights. This is just what you need. If I ever hear of a kid who is into board games and is pretty creative (as kids often are) then I will order a bunch of this stuff for their birthday or Christmas, probably along with some professionally-published game too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't think the world has enough good board games.
PPS - I also don't think there is enough good board game software, but that's another story.

The interpretation of facts

People who think they are having a scientific argument online try to throw up supporting facts for their theory or falsifying facts against their opponents. This is what is happening with the anti-vaccination movement. Celebrities have bought some story about vaccinations causing autism, and are taking up the noble cause of terrifying parents into foregoing all vaccinations. As a result, preventable illnesses and deaths are on the rise in America, and autism ... well, autism is still doing its own thing exactly as before.

It would seem to be a simple cut-and-dry case of "What The Hell Were You Thinking?", but no matter the facts being shown, the scare-mongers are not backing down. It is therefore clear that this is not a fight about facts. It is a fight about mindset, about worldview, about basic scientific literacy. It is a fight about the interpretation of facts. If you start with the wrong axioms, you will view facts in a distorted way, but it is also the case that starting with the right axioms gives you a bias. Facts do not speak for themselves. They never have, and they never will, because your audience will always have a worldview ready to apply their own interpretation. Facts don't cut through delusion automatically. When you present facts about the number of preventable illnesses and deaths, compared to the number of autism diagnoses scientifically linked to vaccinations, someone with the "vaccination = autism" viewpoint will assume that not enough scientists are looking for the link, so they need to scream louder until the world wakes up. The same facts, wildly different interpretations.

Question the axioms. It's your only hope of winning an argument like that. Also, you can't change someone's mind for them. You need to ask the right questions to make them examine their assumptions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Knowing what your opponent is assuming is always a good step in an argument.
PPS - At least for understanding them.

Weather warnings that aren't warnings

It's storm season here in Brisbane, which means occasional severe thunderstorms and warnings to pay attention to. What I need is an app on my phone that tells me when I or my home is in a storm warning area so I can react appropriately. The "Early Warning Network" has an Android app, but it seems to be nothing more than a slightly different version of going to the Bureau of Meteorology website and checking the warning areas manually. Not even a slightly better version, just slightly different. Either way, I need to check the warnings myself, and that's not a warning or alert system. That's a passive information system.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Doing it properly would require spatial data to be published by global weather services.
PPS - I don't know if they do that.

Spending movie marketing money on charity

I would like to see lots more charity projects as publicity stunts like this Walter Mitty Philippines trip, even if the studios get to write off their marketing budgets as charitable donations. Wouldn't that be great if all marketing budgets turned into foreign aid instead? Even if we get "Coca Cola Presents Uganda Aid 2014", I think we'll come out on top.

By the time Casey Neistat suggested spending $25K on a trip to help typhoon victims in the Philippines, 20th Century Fox kind of had to let him do it. They'd look like major douches if they turned him down, and it still kind of fits into the theme of the contest they were running. I understand Walter Mitty does some travelling to poor areas in the film. Plus they still get their publicity. It's not as if Neistat just took the money, quietly gave it to people and went home without a fuss. He gave it to them on video on behalf of 20th Century Fox and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and it's going viral. Everyone wins.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not sure yet if I'll see the movie.
PPS - It's on the list, but so are lots of movies I might not end up seeing.

Setting priorities

I am terrible at prioritising my time. This is obviously not a boast. It's also how I ended up with over a hundred YouTube videos waiting on my attention, a growing backlog of podcasts, tons of unwatched TV and many articles and books (physical and ebook) to read, all sitting and rotting in multiple lists I might never get around to.

Recently I realised that I need to make some choices. Clean house. Admit my limitations. I also realised that I have a suitable toolset for the task already. I have a program I use to vote pending blog posts up or down, relative to each other, to help ensure I post the best stuff here. As it turns out, that same tool can let me prioritise my entertainment if I put it all into one giant list, and the only decisions I have to make, now and then, are whether I want to watch, for instance, this TV show more than I'd rather read a particular book.

So far, it's working pretty well. It's still a bit of a pain deconstructing my other playlists and wish lists, but because everything is in one big list, it's really no extra trouble once it's done. It's helping me to feel like I'm not going to neglect something important or fun. And eventually, if I keep at it long enough, the worst items, whether books, movies, TV shows, articles or YouTube videos, should naturally fall off the end of the list, never to be heard from again. That is the ultimate goal: discarding what I really didn't need to spend my time on while using my recreation time on the most enjoyable things. It's a system for strategically neglecting the least important entertainment.

I'm actually pretty excited about it at this point. My previous method had been to arrange one whole type of entertainment - say, my TV backlog - before all others, and to stick with that until I was completely done with everything in that category. I'd listen to all my podcasts on the train ride home until that queue was empty, then allow myself to read books. It wasn't working. This new way, with everything in one list, a good book has an actual chance of winning out against TV that, in the end, I might rather not watch at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I rewrote the voting algorithm just for this.
PPS - That's another bonus of this method: I get to write more software.

Blackjack

Playing on some fake blackjack tables for our company's Christmas party, I started wondering about dealer systems. Do casinos have a simple set of rules that blackjack dealers are to follow? Say, if hitting one more time on your own hand, the dealer's, might be safe a lot of the time, but you've already beaten half the table, it would be better if you don't hit and pay out half the table rather than hitting, busting and paying out the whole table. I'd be astonished if there weren't several such simple systems for blackjack dealers to follow, all with their own names, special rules, advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, a quick web search shows up lots of results for player systems rather than dealer systems.

I also gained some respect for people who are able to count cards, even in a very simple system. Those cards come quickly on a busy table. If you're able to keep track of a deck score by registering each card, counting up or down and still keep track of your own hand, deciding whether to hit or stay based on the deck score, your cards and whether you still need to beat the dealer, and do it all quickly enough not to raise suspicion, my hat is off to you, sir.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If systems exist for the dealer, they're buried under a lot of chaff.
PPS - It wouldn't need to be secret information for the casino, though. They'll win regardless.

How Facebook will retain dominance

How should Facebook combat open social networks as a business threat? Two possibilities. One, just be the better product. Use your head start to keep adding the features that people want in their social networking. Two, allow one-way interaction. You could view anyone else's external feed integrated with your Facebook page, but nobody can view Facebook anywhere but Facebook itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So far, the threat of other social networks to Facebook is minimal at best.
PPS - And they're already doing one-way interaction of a sort.

Freedom vs security

What is the point of safety if it takes away your freedom? You can be perfectly safe suspended in a tank, fed through a tube, guarded in an underground, nuclear-proof bunker, but then what? You won't be truly living at that point, just surviving. You aren't being kept safe for anything. You might as well be a food processor or, better yet, not exist at all and save everyone the trouble.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think that's what they mean when they say you shouldn't give up freedom for security.
PPS - Freedom is what security is for.

Disagreeing with substance

When you encounter someone with whom you disagree directly - a "yes it is/no it isn't" type of disagreement - please try something other than head-butting for resolution. If your first response to a conversation that started with "Yes it is", "No it isn't" is to say "Yes it is" more loudly, the next response is not going to be "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise, but your loudness must indicate the force of your belief and therefore your correctness. I humbly apologise." Like five-year-olds who lack negotiation and proper argument skills, you're just getting into a yelling match. If you recall being in that kind of conflict at age 5, it ends when someone hits the other or backs down in tears.

There needs to be some substance to your argument. Try "Oh, I thought such-and-such meant that this was the case." At least that offers the possibility of debate rather than the suggestion that you are digging in your heels and stubbornly refusing to be swayed on an opinion you have pre-decided.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes I get sucked into a content-free disagreement.
PPS - It's hardest to step out of it when I'm tired.

Is it the future yet?

Our cars continue to get more amazing features, such as self-parking, reversing cameras and integrated GPS. Many car stereo functions, however, would be better served by an off-the-shelf tablet computer. Some US states allow test-driving of robot cars.

Speaking of magical handheld glass screens that put the entire world's knowledge at our fingertips at all times, we have a large variety of those now, but they're all incompatible with each other and still cost a fair bit. 7" tablets are cheaper than both 4" phones and 10" tablets. Smart watches and head-up displays are making consumer inroads.

Amazon wants to deliver your purchases by flying drone. Assume that pizza delivery and PO boxes will allow this, too, but not for a few years.

3D printers keeps getting cheaper, in general, but are still not regular household appliances.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can also buy internet-addressable light and power switches.
PPS - Facebook continues to grow into the size of a small country.

Non-standard office phone headsets

Why has nobody made a phone for office desks that includes Bluetooth, so you can use any wireless headset you want, or even one with a standard plug for mobile headsets? Even my home phone has a non-standard plug. I don't get it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe some office phones do allow the use of standard headsets.
PPS - Just none I've ever seen.

Low-power tablet computers could run on ambient solar energy

We need tablets and phones that consume so little power that they can run on ambient solar energy. That's something I didn't think of when I was talking about orders of magnitude gains in power generation and consumption. If our devices are efficient enough and our ability to generate power grows far enough, then we won't need central power stations at all. Your whole house can run on a couple of solar panels on the roof, and your portable devices can run on ambient solar energy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless it's cloudy.
PPS - In which case little wind turbines might suffice.

Paying and getting paid

There's always a tension between customers and producers. As software producers, for instance, we want to keep getting income on an ongoing basis. That means monthly or yearly subscriptions. As a business, we try to set up those ongoing yearly license fees to keep getting paid by our customers, and we congratulate ourselves whenever we succeed.

Our customers, on the other hand, would very much prefer to pay once for our software and never pay again, which is fair enough from their point of view. When I consider BuildMaster, the software I use to maintain my personal programming projects, I try not to hit the limits that require add-on subscription licenses to keep using it, such as having more than 10 projects or more than 3 distributed packages per project. I try to think of how I can organise my projects to avoid those limits, because otherwise I will have to pay every year to keep using the software.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And if I were selling my software, I would be trying to get yearly subscriptions.
PPS - Until someone undercuts me by selling a once-for-all license.

Putting the pieces together

On Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the characters said that she was part of an organisation because one person might not have the whole answer, but 100 people with 1% of the solution will get it done. Those 100 people would still need a coordinator to fit them together, though. A 100-piece puzzle doesn't assemble itself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless you count "badly, in a random pile" as "assembled".
PPS - I doubt anyone would count that.

Merry Cmas!

If you're going to abbreviate the word "Christmas", personally I much prefer that you use the English initial "C" than the Greek "X" (chi). Just a personal preference. Merry Christmas!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you celebrate Christmas as a pagan winter festival, don't say "Christmas" at all.
PPS - Better say "Yule" for that.

Gmail increased image security

Gmail has taken the excellent step of increasing image safety in emails by pre-loading them and presenting transcoded images by proxy. This means it's safe for you to always show images in Gmail now, and you as a user don't need to make a security decision whenever an email contains pictures. That's good, because people are, on the whole, pretty bad at making security decisions. However, Gmail's new functionality is also disruptive to old marketing email practices.

It used to be the case that embedded email images could track who had opened an email and when, by using a unique address for the image in each individual email. Whenever that address was accessed, you could know who was looking at that email. Now that Google hides all image loading behind a proxy, you can't really rely on it any more. It doesn't tell you that an email address is valid, because Google might open that image anyway for an invalid email address, and you can't tell that a particular person opened the email either, because of the same image pre-loading. This could be pretty big.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's one of those situations where we win, Google wins and spammers lose.
PPS - Google's win here is a more usable and more secure email service.

Where the phone connection belongs

If people are abandoning traditional home phones in favour of mobiles, then the wired phone connection is going to be exclusively (or at least primarily) for internet access. Therefore, the phone points that are normally placed in the kitchen would be better positioned in the lounge room (for media servers, game consoles and other set-top boxes). Has anyone done that yet?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know it would make much more sense for me, personally.
PPS - When we move house next, we won't be connecting a landline.

Airline business conflicts

We have reached an odd situation with airlines now. The modern world requires airplanes to function, but they're so expensive to run that they are already optimised up to the eyeballs. Any little delays bump the whole schedule out of whack, plus they're cutting costs and services everywhere they can just to maintain an operating profit in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. There's no loyalty to speak of, so we all pick the cheapest flight we can get for where we need to go.

However, airlines are also businesses. They should, technically, have the right to refuse service to any person for any reason, from "I think you might be a danger to others" down to "I don't like that thing you said about us on Twitter".

And there's the conflict. Our world depends on airlines, so they're a necessity, and necessities should be rights, but they have the right to deny us their necessary service for arbitrary reasons. We need to fly, but we hate it, and if we say so, they can keep us from flying.

So what do we do? We need an airline that cannot deny us service for arbitrary reasons, only for operational ones. A not-for-profit airline. Well, providing necessary services where it is not profitable to do so should be one of the pillars of government. Perhaps this is a service the governments of tomorrow should consider investing in, along with education, public health care, roads and internet service.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are very few rights that I think governments should ignore.
PPS - I'm not sure what label that puts on me.

MediaSync

Apparently I haven't written about this before, or at least I can't find the post, so here goes. I have a custom file sync program I wrote myself, called MediaSync, in order to synchronise collections of files across very disconnected computers that don't have any way to connect with each other except flash drives. I wrote it for picture and video files, but it works on any files, of course. Since Windows Live Mesh shut down, our office network blocked BTSync and my personal photos and videos collections are too big to fit into Dropbox, I have opened up development on this project again, and it's going great.

Basically, it takes an index listing of every machine that participates, checks which files need to be copied around and puts them onto a flash drive. The unique feature it has is space limitations - you allocate, say, 2GB on your 8GB drive, and the sync copies will only ever take up that much space. It might take a few trips to get fully in sync, but you can run it on whatever flash drive you have lying around.

If you can, the whole process would be better served by a large external hard drive and SyncToy, but it's kind of neat to watch the collections gradually get in sync over the course of a week.

The big disadvantage is that it won't update or move files yet. If you rename a file in one location, MediaSync will detect that as a new file and will copy duplicates back and forth between machines. I'm working on that feature, to propagate renames instead of duplicating files, but it could be a while.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not ready for the general public yet, though.
PPS - It still runs in a text-only interface and requires editing XML for full functionality.

Reviewing free items

The practice of sending free stuff to reviewers doesn't result in the same kind of review as you would get from someone who had to pay for the item. A person who got a gadget or accessory or whatever for free will naturally place a different value on it from someone who paid. The reviewer who gets, say, a free Microsoft Surface Pro 2 just because a lot of people follow him, will feel like it's a pretty sweet deal. And why wouldn't he? He's probably also got so many other tablet computers that he's already got his whole family covered for Christmas. It doesn't even have to last for him, because he'll probably get the next generation for free when that comes out in a year.

Someone who paid for the tablet will need it to last. They'll need it to be worth what they paid, not just do cool stuff. He probably already resents the cash outlay he had to make and so starts with a negative impression that needs to be overcome. A reviewer who gets the same gadget for free is already grateful for that, so the minor quibbles are forgiven and forgotten where they might be a dealbreaker for everyone else.

I'm not saying free stuff for reviewers should stop, or else a lot of reviews will also stop. I'm just saying I'd like to know up front whether a review unit was free so I can calibrate my reading accordingly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If anyone wants to send me a free tablet computer to review, I'd be happy to do so.
PPS - Any make or model will do. :)

Software that's always with you

It's odd to me when I see internet services advertised as "always with you", when what they actually do is keep your data far away on a locked-up server and provide you a tiny little window via your mobile phone. That's not "with you", that's available, and it's only so long as you have mobile data, which can be spotty.

Personally, I write portable software and allow it to sync via Dropbox. That's the way I like my data and apps "always with me". They keep working even when my internet connection drops out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Online services are only "always with you" in the sense that the internet is.
PPS - And their servers are still running and not flooded with traffic...

Toll transponders for parking payments

You know what would be kind of handy for parking payments? Linking to vehicle toll transponders. That way, as long as everyone has a toll account, you wouldn't even need boom gates, just the archways that detect and charge accounts for entering and leaving. You'd still need to impose the same constraints as normal parking payments, such as being dependent on the duration of your stay. The biggest problem I can think of would be waiving the fee for big spenders. The current procedure is to take your receipts and your barcode card to the concierge who makes a note in the database that lets you out for free. Without taking your toll transponder directly to the concierge, you'd either need some other way to identify your vehicle to the database or you'd need a card to show, which brings back the boom gate and ticket reader. Maybe in that case you can do without the boom gate, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And you have to rely on toll transponders.
PPS - Which can sometimes be a bit unreliable.

For-profit social work?

I saw a TED talk saying that the best way to tackle poverty and other global social problems may be to get for-profit businesses involved. If there's a profit there, said the speaker, that motivates business to succeed and also means the solution will scale, because the more you do, the more profit there is, and that is a big carrot to business.

My objection is that "profit" is not some magical wealth created out of nowhere. Wealth is zero-sum. There's no such thing as making money, only taking money. So if your business is working on global poverty and making a profit as a result, where is that money coming from? If it's just you and a poor country's economy involved, then that wealth is coming out of a poor country and into the pockets of a rich company.

That is the exact opposite of solving the problem, and it is the only way that I can see for turning a profit from social justice projects to work. The only other thing they have to give is time and work, and that quickly turns into sweatshops.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Which is the time an ethical business will withdraw.
PPS - Here's the talk, if you're interested.

Art of any kind needs practice

I'm starting to think about writing in the same way that people think about music. To get started in music, you take lessons, buy instruments, practice in private, eventually allow your close friends and family to hear what you've painstakingly rehearsed, then, if you're good enough, get some live performance gigs or a recording contract.

People's general view of writing goes more like "pick up pen, if good, get published". There's no notion of practice, let alone tools, and no popular conception that getting good at writing is something that takes time. Of course, there are also people who don't think that getting good at music takes time, either, perhaps because they aren't willing to put in the work themselves.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I practice most days now.
PPS - Not every day, though.

Making a living from art

I feel like I would rather make my living from acting and writing, but that's not a sound economic plan. It's my art, not my trade, and most people can't make a living from their art, for a variety of reasons. It begins with a saturated marketplace: too many artists for the level of demand, therefore the natural price point is negative. If you want people to see your art, you'd better be prepared to pay them, rather than the other way around. It's simply unreasonable to expect to be noticed in that kind of environment. The other consideration is quality. If most artists are amateurs, then most art is going to be amateurish and not worth paying for even if it does get noticed. There's plenty of art of all forms, and there's no rush to see it all. Every cent spent on art is discretionary and non-vital. Nobody *needs* to spend a dollar on your painting, drawing, sculpture, novel, play, interpretive dance performance. They could just as easily spend that dollar on food or clothes or any other basic need. Art is never going to be a need, essential for survival, so convincing people to spend any money on art at all is going to be a bit of an uphill battle from the start.

In addition to all that, it's not even a matter of being good at what you do. Plenty of artists are good at what they do, but they aren't going to get far because they don't have the right connections. Does every single blockbuster movie draw from the same pool of 50 different actors because they're the only ones available and suitable for the roles? Of course not. They do it because they're the ones the top five Hollywood directors have worked with before, and learning to work with new people is really hard, you guys, like seriously. It's easier to stick with the club you know rather than give newbies a shot, so that's what you get.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Well, that plus big names have drawing power.
PPS - Which is another way of saying fame makes money which means more fame.

Android app permissions

One thing I always thought would make a brilliant addition to Android is individual app permissions. Some apps I don't want to be able to use 3G data at all. Some that are just greedy with their permissions need to be put in their place. All of this is in Android version 4.3, and I intend to make the most of it, if my phone ever gets to update to that version.

Now, what are the potential side-effects? Well, legitimate app makers will want to explain why they need certain permissions, but will need to write their apps to deal with the situation if they are running without them. Less scrupulous app makers will actively ensure their apps don't work at all unless all of their sleazy permissions are enabled. Don't expect to disable the ability of the Facebook app to read your contacts and messages and still have it work. They don't want to lose that permission and the juicy, juicy data that makes their money in the process, so the app will simply refuse to operate if those permissions are denied.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably.
PPS - It depends how many people actually try to turn the permissions off and how many kick up a stink about it.

The paradox of data convenience and unity

For me, having my own data all in one place, cross-referenced and easily queried is exactly what I want. It's convenient, useful and valuable to me, because that makes it easier to use. Unfortunately, having all that data together and easily-queried is just as valuable for anyone with access to the data, including identity thieves, spies, marketers and unscrupulous government agencies with too much power. So when I'm dealing with a corporate or government entity I can't trust, it is better for me to have all my information scattered, difficult to retrieve, error-prone and out of date. In other words, for myself, I want Facebook to expand and expand until it is the only online tool I ever need. For the NSA, I want Facebook to shrink, stagnate, fragment and die, because otherwise they will end up using it against me. That data is power, and I do not want to give over that power where it may (will) be abused.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Some would argue that governments naturally produce error-prone, out of date, scattered data.
PPS - But even that can be dangerous.

Dish soaking detergent

I wonder how long it will be before someone markets a dish detergent specifically for soaking prior to washing up. Never mind how necessary it is - deodorant wasn't "necessary" until it was for sale, and for a long time there was one type of soap, rather than the definitely non-interchangeable hand soap, face soap, body wash, shampoo, laundry soap and dish soap we have these days. If someone can convince enough people that a soaking detergent is a good idea, it will start to sell.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If nobody is doing that already, then patent pending.
PPS - I'd probably start with dishwasher powder.

Peak time bus information

TransLink should allow a search for which bus numbers go where I want, especially at peak time. At those times, buses don't run perfectly on time, and there tend to be a lot of them I could catch. They all go to the same places, and they often leave from the same stops in the city. This means I have a lot of options, so I don't need the specific time and number if an earlier one arrives and will do just fine. The way the TransLink website presents search results works well for off-peak travel, and shows several options for a specific journey, each on a separate tab and each assuming they run exactly on time. It's good for answering what's the best bus to catch for a given journey, but less useful for finding any bus for a given route.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It wouldn't even be so bad with more results and a slightly different interface.
PPS - Acknowledging that the schedule can be off at peak time, however, would be a good start.

Nothing to hide

The first response to "I don't worry about surveillance, I have nothing to hide" should be "Cool, what's your ATM PIN?" If you think you have nothing to hide, you're not thinking very hard. There are things you hide right now whose secrecy is such a natural part of your world that you don't even think of them as secrets. They're just private, personal details or actions that are hidden by default. They're not secrets because they're shameful. They're secrets because they have to be for the world to work. Those are the things you should think about when people talk about NSA-level global surveillance, not your empty criminal record.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The next question is usually "But why would they even be interested in me?"
PPS - In response I ask, "I don't know. Has anyone named like you ever done anything bad?"

In case of emergency

People don't know what to do in case of an emergency building evacuation. I was a fire warden at our previous office for nearly three years and I was still vague despite six-monthly training. Everyone else's idea of procedure is considerably less informed.

Buildings in Queensland (and probably all of Australia) have two-stage evacuation alarms. The first sound you'll hear is a constant tone, often written down as "Beep-Beep-Beep". On this tone, the fire wardens get up, put on their hats and look around for hazards. You, as a non-fire-warden, gather your belongings, lock your computer and stay in your seat to keep out of the wardens' way. Most people, rather than sit still and wait, get up and walk out the nearest door to mill about aimlessly or follow the first crowd they see. Often, this is not a big problem, but it is against standard procedure for a reason.

First of all, what if the danger is outside and your best course is to stay in? You are walking straight out into danger because you didn't wait for anyone to do their job and keep you safe. Second, what if the danger was in a hallway and, because you don't pay attention to stupid emergency evacuations, stumble straight into it before the wardens can determine a safe evacuation route and direct you there? Again, dead because you hate waiting. Third, you might not need to evacuate at all, in which case you're wasting time.

In short, everyone please remember that you don't evacuate until the rising tone, usually written down as "Whoop-Whoop-Whoop".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unless your building has a different procedure for some reason.
PPS - Such as being located in another country with different regulations.

WiFi Terms and Conditions annoyance

I have a few public WiFi networks to which I connect regularly: Queensland Rail on my commute and the "guest" network at the office (because it doesn't block Dropbox). Each one of them requires a terms & conditions click-through or a manual login every single time, and I was thinking it would be nice not to deal with that more than once, or maybe not more than once per month. If Windows or Android had some kind of automatic click-through process for sites where I've already agreed or logged in, or the same was available via a browser plugin, that would make life a lot easier for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did go looking for one, but didn't find anything yet.
PPS - If I ever do, I'll be sure to post a link.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 4

At this point, I'm on schedule to win NaNoWriMo today, and that feels pretty good. I'm probably not finished telling the story yet, but that's okay. The only goal of NaNoWriMo is to finish 50,000 words in 30 days, and I've done that this year.

I think I need NaNoWriMo. I've realised that. It gets me back on track, writing long-form fiction again, and sort of lets me check in with my skill levels. Am I getting better at writing? The answer this year is "yes, slightly and incrementally".

Something else I've learned this year is that writing from an outline doesn't (or didn't) work especially well for me. This might be because of how I did it. I don't know.

Lastly, I think I need to try new things. I don't want to keep rewriting this same book in slightly different forms. I want to be able to say "I've written three novels" next year, and "I've written four" the year after that, rather than "I've written two novels, but they're not really good and I keep rewriting them, but they're not getting better".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It feels pretty good to have gotten this far.
PPS - Last year's win didn't feel as real as this.

UPDATE: I'm done! I finished my 50,000 words on the train this morning.

Google+ makes YouTube comments worse

Google's algorithm for determining what is a "valuable" comment to promote on YouTube with its new Google+ integration includes how many replies it generated. This means trolls, who post exclusively for the "glory" of inciting as much rage in the general public as possible get promoted comments for it - exactly what they wanted. This makes the fetid cesspool of YouTube comments an even less desirable place to be, giving it over entirely to the trolls and ensuring that the rest of us never, ever read or bother writing any comments on videos ever again.

If Google wanted to shut down the YouTube comments section without actually taking it away, they couldn't have done a much more effective job than this.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I haven't bothered reading YouTube comments in a very long time.
PPS - It was terrible before this. Google+ just made the worst more accessible.

Vanishing area and infinite chocolate

There is a paradox or puzzle in mathematics sometimes known as the vanishing area paradox. There are several variations, but they all share the same principle, so I'll just talk about the one in the example video below:



You take a rectangle (in this case, made of chocolate), 4x6 units, and cut it diagonally between 2 and 3 units from the bottom. Make a couple more cuts, swap two of the pieces and suddenly you have a piece left over. You've created extra chocolate out of nowhere!

But you haven't, actually. It's a rounding error and sloppy measurement. The main rectangle is now actually only 5.75 units high, and I can prove it. Think about the right-hand edge. When you make that second cut, 1 unit in from the left, the cut goes partway through that first piece on its right-hand edge. The piece that moves from the top is only 0.75 units tall at that point, but the cut on the original right-hand edge takes the full piece away. You're replacing a full piece with a 3/4 piece, making the whole block of chocolate shorter. Because it's a fairly small difference, you don't notice.

If you're still not convinced, do it for yourself, but do it four times and count the resulting rectangle. You'll probably notice it getting shorter long before you get through all four times. After the second time, one of the rows will be suspiciously half-sized. After the third time, it will be a ridiculously stubby little quarter-size row.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a neat trick, though.
PPS - The shorter row gets less noticeable the wider the block.

Business and hipster don't mix

I once heard a hipster say to a bartender that the place has been ruined by popularity already. I'm fairly certain the owner would disagree, because popularity for him means more money, and that's why he's in business. He's not there to provide a space for bohemian beardies to congregate in obscurity and congratulate each other on finding yet another place that nobody knows about yet while drinking cheap beer "ironically". Obscurity is the enemy of a good business.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - To be fair, I was standing behind the hipster dressed as the Joker at the time.
PPS - That probably has a way of affecting people's judgement.

The limitations of drunk text prevention

A drunk text protection app has to assume that anything and everything you try to text, or any call you try to make while drunk is a bad idea. That might not be the case. For instance, you could be ordering a taxi to take you home, or calling for help after getting lost or stranded. The app won't be able to tell the difference and will block everything. This means either that you will have problems from false positives or you will need some kind of "No, I'm totally fine, I swear" override mechanism which destroys the effectiveness of the app.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've never had need of a drunk text protection app.
PPS - Is there a stone-cold-sober bad-judgement protection equivalent?

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 3

I thought I was ready to rewrite this book. I was wrong.

I mean, that much became obvious from my outline pretty early on, but I'm talking about something deeper now. I'm not 100% sure I was ready to write anything this long and have a good result come out of the other end. Even a usable first draft.

My characters are flat. They have some characteristics, but the whole spaceship colony acts like a big hive mind. They're all tentacle appendages of the communal will. That was not the goal, though it might make an interesting setting if I can figure out a story to tell about it. The point is that, although I know where the story is going and I think I'm going to get there, I'm not happy with the results.

That's normal, I suppose. I mean, you're not supposed to be happy with a first rough draft. It's like the raw clay you smack down in the centre of the pottery wheel. It's not anything much yet. Maybe I'll be happier when I finish.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As of right now, I'm about 1600 words behind schedule.
PPS - I've been behind this whole time.

Internet reliability

Does anyone actually live somewhere that the internet uptime and reliability is five nines? Have you ever worked in a place that blocked Facebook or IM or external email? Do you have the mobile bandwidth to watch a movie per day, or leave your music streaming constantly off WiFi? This is what I mean when I say that the internet is not reliable. It's always there, but if the electricity went out as often as, say, I can't get a website to load, we would consider it third-world standard. If I had to turn my home water supply off and on as often as my router, I'd be looking to move house. It's absurd to talk about the internet as a safe, stable, reliable platform, but that's the way we are using it. Yet every single week something goes wrong somewhere and renders it inoperable in some way.

Yes, it's more complicated than water or power or radio or TV, and yes, it involves a lot more different entities doing their jobs. It's frustrating when the network goes down, but my answer is not "fix my internet or else", it's to stop and rethink how the internet works. If your app depends on 100% internet uptime, it's going to fail for everyone at some time, and for some people most of the time. That looks bad for you. Make sure you don't assume 100% internet uptime when you write software.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess it's a good thing the internet is mostly optional.
PPS - And for essential tasks, they're often not urgent.

Software documentation rot

When your tools don't work, you stop using them. This is a problem with software documentation in particular - a kind of Catch-22 situation. If the documentation is out of date or inaccurate, nobody refers to it. If nobody is referring to it, then nobody bothers to update it. So software documentation naturally tends towards chaos and particular software expertise tends to migrate to people's brains instead of documents.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you still need to do the same job, you must get better tools.
PPS - Quite often, better tools just don't exist.

The internet is not special

The world has changed, yet stayed the same. We still do all the same things we did 10, 20, 30 years ago, just faster and with different tools. We order pizza delivered online, but we could order pizza before the internet. We broadcast our thoughts to the world, but we could do that before Twitter. It's just that it took longer, was more expensive and nobody cared (most people still don't care, but high follower counts trick us into thinking they do). We have a global communications network, but so did the British Empire - it just ran on paper, horses and ships, with higher latency and lower volume.

What changes - fundamental changes, not just changes of magnitude and speed - has the internet really wrought? Those in power are still in power, those in poverty are still in poverty. Expertise is more accessible, but that's a change of magnitude and speed, not fundamentally different to pre-internet education.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think, in a lot of ways, a lot of our modern technology is a change of degrees, not a fundamental shift.
PPS - Some of it is genuinely new, but the people side tends to stay about the same.

Riddick

As much as I want to see Riddick, the third movie starring Vin Diesel as an escaped convict and murderer as anti-hero, I think someone lost track of what Pitch Black, the first movie, was about. Riddick was a big part of that story, but it was a story about redemption, forgiveness, trust and cooperation in the face of life-threatening danger. By contrast, the sequels are about Riddick being an amazing badass in the face of explosions. That's not a story at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm aware I missed it in cinemas.
PPS - Right now, I'm not too cut up about that.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 2

Last week I vowed to keep writing, even if I was putting down a steaming pile of words that would never amount to anything.

This week, I wondered a little bit why I am even doing this if I don't think it's good. The answer, in part, is to get better, and that led me to my second related thought for the week: I can write better than this. I don't have to just hammer out terrible words, get my daily count in and go home. I can, at the very barest minimum, practice my craft within the terribleness of my plot. So I started doing that. I took more time, I wrote scenes that might not suck. I brought a little more life to what I'm doing.

It felt better. Not great, just better.

In general, I'm still finding it hard to follow my outline, I think because the plain text format turns out to be awful for outlines, at least for me. I'm still behind on my word count, but slowly catching up, managing to write about 2000 words every weekday. If I can keep up over this weekend, I should be ahead next week. I want to win on novel words this year, rather than novel+notes like last year.

I've also been getting physical pain in my right shoulder, and it's been worse on some days than others. At work, I've moved my mouse to my left hand, and that seems to be helping a little.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably what I need is to get away from computers for a while.
PPS - Or get a work desk that doesn't contort my body into awful positions.

The need for space

There might be something missing from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: space. Either that or else it's very subtly implied by "security of property". I say this because I've heard that the most common dream among residents of Manhattan is that their apartments have whole other rooms they never knew existed. This says to me that they feel crowded in their normal daily lives, and their subconscious wishes for more space. The reason this would be overlooked most of the time is that there are only a few places on Earth where the crowding is that severe, so most people have enough space not to feel overcrowded most of the time.

It makes me wonder what is the actual space that people need, psychologically, to feel right about it. Not in the short term - unless you're agorophobic or claustrophobic, you can stand almost any size space for a short time. Not even the space required to produce the food and energy needs of a person. I mean in the long term, what is the minimum living space that a person can realistically put up with? Is that affected by living with other people? Does it matter how much time you spend in your house as opposed to outside or at work? Maybe we're all living on a sliding scale of claustrophobia, and the more time you spend in smaller spaces, the less comfortable you feel.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Those psychological sliding scales seem to show up everywhere.
PPS - Or at least everywhere in our heads.

Practical projects

I was thinking, just as in Julie and Julia, of taking on a big, ongoing project for my blog. I considered using Jamie Oliver's 15-Minute Meals, which is not especially different to Julie and Julia, but now I've got this Reader's Digest book on tools and home handyman skills. I've always wanted to learn that stuff, so maybe that's the way to go. I need something to encourage me to work through the book, and I feel like doing something more practical with the blog, too. Most of my posts stop at the idea stage, and that's not helping anyone, really.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
PPS - Just ask an executioner.

Google Keep dictation

Google Keep has the option to dictate a note, which is very handy when you can't type or when you just want to get an idea down quickly. I use it often. The thing is, it can't take dictation without a network connection. In that situation, why not just record the audio? If you need it turned to text, save up the audio and process it later. Would that be so bad?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - No. It would not.
PPS - Other than that, I find the dictation works fairly well.

Food standards and junk food

I think any food standards watchdog organisation has a problem, because the food industry will naturally tend towards addictive junk. Some of that might be acceptable for sale on its own, but when it makes up the majority of food for sale nation-wide, that's not going to work. Say, for instance, that a certain amount of sugar is acceptable in foods for sale. It's kind of okay if it's high in one or two things, but when the high level is the new "normal", you're going to start messing up the insulin sensitivity of your entire population.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It will always, to some degree, be an individual's responsibility to eat healthy.
PPS - A food standards organisation can only really ban foods that will kill you immediately.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 1

I'm sick of rewriting my book. There, I said it. It's exhausting and it's stupid and it's not coming out any better than the barftastic first version that I wrote two years ago. This is disappointing and a little unexpected. I thought I had matured a lot since then, but I have not sat down like this to write a book in some time. It shows.

I'm behind schedule and I'm not catching up. My outline is hard to follow. It's full of major plot problems that aren't going away, because they're too big. Also, it's physically uncomfortable. I've been writing on the train to and from work, and hunching over in that cramped seat, trying to get the words out is pretty awkward. It wasn't that way when I started doing this. I have an appointment with a physiotherapist (or some equivalent) on Monday to try and help.

I'm going to keep going, though. Might as well. The disappointment has already set in, though. The first draft was far from perfect. This second draft is at least as far from perfect as that, but in different ways. So I guess that's what I'm taking away from NaNoWriMo this year: a second draft that proves there is more than one way for me to suck.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's good that I'm allowed to suck, though.
PPS - How else could I get better?

Pop scare videos

Why are pop scare prank videos so annoying? I'm talking about those videos you get either shared on Facebook or some I've got in email that seem innocent or curious, inviting you to look closely, and then pop up a scary face and a scream sound. Why would that be so much more upsetting or irritating than Rickrolling?

Well, it starts with the way the videos are presented initially. They deliberately lie to you to draw you in. They can't do so any other way. If they were titled "Get ready for a scary surprise!" rather than "This is really weird, watch closely" then they wouldn't have the same effect. You already feel like a sucker when they get you.

Secondly, the prank instigator is not there to have a good laugh with you at the look on your face when it happens, as would be the case with a live prank. You'd have someone to share the "joke" with, or at least someone to hit. With the video, that's all there is. You get sucked in, a genuine pop scare, then it's over. Nobody says "Oh, man, that was great! You should have seen your face!" The video just stops playing and waits for another sucker. The disconnection of the internet strikes again, and the only motivation you can attribute to a person like that is sheer malice.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know Rickrolling has to lie to get you in.
PPS - That one ends with a song, though, not a scream.

Limited term offers

The time-limited offer sales pitch is meant to pressure you into a bad decision. Remember that the next time you find yourself presented with an offer that is "only available for the next 30 minutes!"

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The shorter the time, the sooner they expect buyer's remorse to kick in.
PPR - Or common sense. Either one.

The problems 3D printing doesn't solve

If 3D printing successfully usurped every kind of manufacturing at every level what would the world look like? What tasks would take on greater importance? Well, even if you can just make anything in your own home in short order, you still need to know you're making the right thing, so you need the skill of requirements analysis. What job is this piece supposed to perform, and is it fit for purpose before I go and manufacture it? You also need the skills to install or assemble and maintain what you manufacture. How do you use what you've made? That's not included in manufacturing. Finally, if you can't find the exact ready-made design to fit your needs, you need the skills to produce it from the ground up, including the materials knowledge to decide from what it should be made. Is this a job for ceramics, or plastics, metals or something else?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In short, even ubiquitous, all-encompassing 3D printing won't solve all our problems.
PPS - As with most technologies, it just shifts the problems higher, which can still be a good thing.

Buying custom clothes online

The internet should be able to connect clothes makers with customers directly. You could find a small-time designer you like, send them your measurements, and you get custom-fitted clothes without having to search the racks at stores, plus you would always feel that you were wearing something unique and special.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe that's what some corners of Etsy are for.
PPS - Or maybe someone else is doing exactly this.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Day 1

As of this morning, I am embarking on my third National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I'm going to be attempting a rewrite of the book I finished two years ago, because, when I read it again, it was quite choppy and weird. Unpolished.

I treated the first effort as a first draft, turned it into an outline and edited that. I've changed some characters and some scenes, and I'm quite pleased with the outline as it currently stands. I still don't think it's quite perfect, but now I'm out of time. I'll be writing on the train to and from work, as I have before, because that worked out pretty well for me, but I'll also be getting some work done on the weekends this time around. On a good day, I get down about 800-1000 words each way, so the weekdays are covered. I'm not totally sure how I'll handle the weekends yet, but we'll see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do feel like I should be attempting something totally new.
PPS - However, I also want to get this done to a point that I'm really proud of it.