The Sunday Mok - They Called Me Buck

Sunday - I had lunch at Deb's after the morning church service, then we went out to buy a mattress. We found a good one for 15% off. I sang up front for the evening church service and Erin, Bridgit, Deb and I had supper at McDonald's.
Monday - Work was quiet as I tried to work myself out of the support loop a bit more. I'm not looking to make a career out of keeping bad code running, so I write better code to replace it and automate some support activities. Deb and I played Mario mini-games in the evening.
Tuesday - I skipped karate in the evening to take Deb and Mia to a meeting at the church. I wasn't feeling like training anyway, though I realise that's no excuse. After the meeting we watched the final Dancing With the Stars.
Wednesday - Deb and I got curry for dinner, then read about 1.5 chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to each other.
Thursday - The workers came to polish the master bedroom floor after I'd gone to work. I bought Monopoly / Boggle / Yahtzee / Battleship for the DS at lunchtime and was disappointed that it didn't allow download play for Yahtzee or Monopoly.
Friday - After work, it was still light and I had some time before dinner, so I went for a jog. We had dinner with Deb, Mia, Linda, Mal, Dad and Beth to run down a final week checklist for wedding preparations. Deb, Mia and I played Nintendo DS games for the rest of the evening.
Saturday - The bachelor party. Briefly, 8 of us went go-karting, indoor rock climbing and bowling, played video games and watched Bad Taste, all thanks to my best man, Miv. By the time we got to the movie, it pretty much cleared the room. It was a senseless gore-and-gross-fest with a few funny bits. I thoroughly enjoyed myself all day.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wouldn't mind going indoor rock climbing a bit more often.
PPS - My forearms might disagree initially.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Jonathan Coulton has a song titled "Re: Your Brains" on his MySpace page that is, well, very cool. It's written with a few office-speak phrases as a well-mannered, reasonable-sounding request to eat your brains. I love it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - He doesn't have it available for download as far as I can see.
PPS - I love the groaning zombie backup singers.

Reality TV: The Election Show

I think our political elections should be run like a reality TV show. Put all the "contestants" on camera 24/7 for about a month before the election. Award Survivor-esque points, sum up their daily activities and assign them pointless tasks to gauge their skills for office. Once we're done, we'll have seen much more reality from these potential pollies than we ever get through their usual campaigns. It should be the only form of political advertising allowed. That way they can't put together a slick 30-second spot for TV slandering their opponents, but are forced to do it in person and look like a whiner.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This post inspired by yet another dream.
PPS - Mostly.

Bringing work home

I don't like doing my job at home, so it was a while ago that I stopped programming for fun outside business hours. The same is reportedly true in other professions: janitors have dirty homes, chefs eat out. How many professions does this extend to? Do doctors resent having to handle their children's cuts and bruises? Are accountants' personal finances all out of order? Do professional counsellors have no patience and care for their friends and family? I wouldn't know, but I'd be interested to find out.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Taxi drivers would have a bad time if this is true.
PPS - And renovators.

"Movies" is a word

Why do so few spell checking programs seem to know the word "movies"? I've encountered it in at least four different programs so far, and I don't understand. Perhaps they all populated from the same proto-dictionary list. Perhaps it's just my imagination that elevated the incident in my mind. Still, for it to happen even once seems like an unusual oversight.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Has anyone else encountered this particular spell checking irregularity?
PPS - Or anything similar?

Communicating faster: email, IM, voice...

It is often the case that email is too slow and painful for some conversations. Those are the times that instant messaging steps in to save the day. However, there are some times when IM fails because it can also be too slow. That's when we want voice comms. There are probably times when voice is too slow for person-to-person communication. That's just too bad right now, because voice is about the quickest way humans are capable of communicating complex ideas to one another.

That's just my intuitive feeling, mind you. It could be that drawing diagrams while speaking increases the information volume you're able to convey.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't mean showing PowerPoint slides.
PPS - I do mean drawing on paper with one other person.

Staying in contact

I notice that the latest version of MSN Messenger includes an option to automatically update contact info for IM buddies. That's handy, and it's interesting too. It represents a decentralisation of the address book that I've considered a good idea for some time. If you still know who you want to contact, they shouldn't drop off your radar even when they change names, move cities, swap out their mobile phone plan, get a new email address and change IM networks all at the same time. I imagine that the generation of my kids will have no trouble organising a high school reunion because they'll have all the right tools available. Their kids will never even have a reunion because they'll stay in contact over the Internet for the rest of their lives.

On the other hand, if you don't want someone to find you again, you should be able to withhold your information from them. Privacy rules are necessary in that sense because we do live in a world with stalkers and plain old crazy ex-boyfriends and girlfriends.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's still tough to maintain contact these days.
PPS - Even with all our modern tools.

The Sunday Mok - Nintendo

Sunday - After church in the morning, I spent the afternoon waiting for a call from a floor polisher that never came. Deb and I watched Princess Diaries 2 at her place, then it was just church in the evening and a quiet Coffee Club supper.
Monday - I had a long meeting in the morning to discuss the direction of a general information management database and bought some new business shirts at lunchtime. After dinner at Deb's in the evening, we watched The Best of Victor Borge.
Tuesday - I had a bad night at karate where I couldn't balance, couldn't remember my techniques and couldn't even catch my breath properly. Deb came over for dinner and we watched some Scrubs and chatted.
Wednesday - I appreciated the sleep-in I got in the morning. The floor polisher came to give us a formal quote, then Deb and I did some major cleaning up in the downstairs study. We filled the recycling bin. I had dinner at Deb's with Mal, Linda, Mia, Sam and Scott.
Thursday - Deb met me for lunch, then we each bought a Nintendo DS. Dinner at Dad and Beth's in the evening.
Friday - Youth group in the evening was not too well attended. We helped set up for the church fair. Deb lost one of her rings and we eventually found it out the front of the church.
Saturday - I got up at 06:00 and spent all day at the church fair. For most of the time I helped on the bowling lane because I know that one goes easier with two people. Some of us had dinner at Sizzler afterwards.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm enjoying Brain Training on my DS.
PPS - Also New Super Mario.

Friday Zombie Blogging

WhoIsSick.com is a Google Maps mashup that shows you semi-live sickness data for your area as entered by users of the site. It should be relatively obvious what the zombie link is. Imagine logging in to WhoIsSick.com and seeing a whole lot of those little pie indicators sweeping across your city listing symptoms like "rigor mortis" and "craving for human flesh". Terrifying.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might make a funny online flash mob situation.
PPS - Which I would certainly not endorse, of course.

The role of IT support

The job of the IT department in a company should be to enable communication and provide tools for productivity. They do have to secure data that requires it, but I think we over-emphasise that aspect. The IT department is there to serve the users and enable them to perform their jobs better, not to lock them out of increasingly more applications and network access protocols. If we get into a mindset where the IT department are the World Wide Web Gatekeepers, I think we have a problem. If I say "I can't connect to my clients this way" and IT says "Oh, we didn't think of that. Let's talk about how it could work", that's more like it.

Personally I'd love to say to our help desk staff that Mozilla Thunderbird is the email client I prefer over Lotus Notes, then have them reply that they'll set up the servers to allow me to use it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Always remember that humans are in control of the machines.
PPS - Adapt your machines to suit your needs, not the other way around.

Software review: Launchy

I love Launchy. It's a keyword program launcher that I heard about on productivity site Lifehacker and it's sped up my computing in a few instances. Now I can load up my note-taking program with a few keystrokes rather than reaching for the mouse. I had to set it up to search my desktop shortcuts, but that was well worth it. I appreciate the ability to select my remote desktop connection shortcuts from the keyboard.

The one downside is that I'm more aware of which programs can't be easily driven by keyboard, since my mouse hand goes to my mouse less often. A program like Launchy makes it clear just how far Windows has moved us towards a mouse-driven world.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Launchy is free and pretty slick.
PPS - It's made it to my standard toolkit.

Flat fee online television licensing

What if we licensed television online the same way radio stations license their music? Cory Doctorow mentions this now and then for music online, but there's no reason the same model couldn't work for television.

The music model goes like this: sign up every college band in the world for license fees. Allow all college students everywhere to gain access to the entire world's college band music output for any purposes they like, completely DRM-free for a flat fee (say, 50c per student per month). Based on a random sampling of downloads, redistribute the fees as royalties to the bands.

I think the same kind of model can work just as well for television online as for music. Granted, TV is slightly different, but I think it can work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Movies too.
PPS - The flat fee would be collected and redistributed by internet service providers.

Friendships decaying over time

I don't generally consider that friendships decay over time. I think that's because I've been kind of bad at making new friends over the years - I want to keep any and all that I make. So it confuses me when someone says that they no longer consider themselves my friend simply because we haven't spoken very often recently. I imagine it also confuses them when I strike up conversations out of the blue.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may be bad at contacting them regularly, but I can't forget my old friends.
PPS - I don't want to, either.

Copyright on one-run preaching DVDs.

I bought DVDs from a conference in Adelaide where they were careful to point out that (a) these DVDs will never be produced again and (b) orders will only be accepted at the conference itself. Fair enough, because I wouldn't want to keep going back and producing more on my own, so I don't think they would either. The problem is this: they have a copyright notice at the start that forbids all copying. So, technically, if I want to share these non-profit Christian messages with other people, I'm breaking the law. I can't copy them even for people who couldn't afford to go to the conference or didn't know about it.

Why copyright? It was probably just a choice based on the fact that DVDs have copyright notices elsewhere, so these DVDs need them too. It wasn't motivated by protecting profit or recovering costs because there was no profit and the costs were all covered already by conference fees (for the cameras and editing) and the DVD order price (for blank discs and burning effort). The message should be allowed out as freely as possible. Putting the copyright notice on there was a tad short-sighted in my opinion.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might have been put there by external editors.
PPS - And it might just have been part of standard procedure at that company.

The Sunday Mok - Harry Potter Week

Sunday - After church in the morning and a short nap, Deb and I rented a few DVDs to watch during the week. I sang in the evening church service and heard such vivid tales of the Supanova sci-fi/fantasy night that Deb and I want to go next year.
Monday - It's been a relatively quiet week at work. In the evening Deb and I watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I liked the first half a bit better than the second.
Tuesday - We had a presentation at lunch from an instrumentation company. I attended, but it's really out of my area of expertise. I ran to karate in the evening instead of taking the car. Afterwards, Deb and I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which I think was my favourite so far.
Wednesday - I gave blood around lunchtime. It had been long enough since my last donation that I had lapsed out of their registry, so I had to go through registration again. In the evening Deb and I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I drifted off to sleep near the end, so I missed a little bit of it.
Thursday - I helped Deb put together the youth group program flier, then we watched The Break-up, which I'd have to describe as an unromantic comedy. I cringed at the shouting matches.
Friday - I helped with some safety assessments in the afternoon at work (not paper cuts). At youth group in the evening we went down to a local park for a barbeque. With the numbers we're getting (just one that night) it may be appropriate to redeploy some of our leaders elsewhere.
Saturday - Deb and I had a meeting with Gwen in the morning, then looked for music for the reception. Deb had her hen's night that evening, so I stayed home. I burned some DVDs for Mal, watched Full Metal Alchemist and went to bed. It was an early night.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I remember liking Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when I saw it, too.
PPS - I might pick up more if I watched it again.

Friday Zombie Blogging

There's been a zombie attack on Twitter! I can't read the actual story right now (must be a heavy server load) so for now I'm reading the news coverage. Apparently it's a Twitter feed from a fictional zombie attack, meaning that it tells you how two brothers are fleeing from their small home town after a zombie invasion. It sounds fascinating.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do hope the Twitter servers are back online soon.
PPS - I don't use Twitter myself.

Annoying people don't mean it

People rarely realise how annoying they are, and only very occasionally do it on purpose. So if you assume that someone is doing something deliberately to annoy you, you're probably wrong. If you let it build up inside you, the first time it comes out will sound exasperated for no reason.

For instance, say someone is crunching chips near you while you try to watch television. This is probably not a deliberate act to keep you from hearing, but if you assume that it *is*, you might try waiting patiently for it to stop. When you can't take it any more, you'll burst out with "STOP EATING YOUR CHIPS SO FREAKING LOUDLY!" which will take the offender completely by surprise and serve to generate bad feeling between you. So if you're one of those people, just take a breath before you burst out at the next annoying person you meet and remember that they probably didn't mean it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes people do it on purpose.
PPS - Just remember that's the exception, not the rule.

People are essential to success

It is never our procedures, manuals or training materials that bring success. It is not our money or our advertising or our location. It is our people. As such, we must think first of the people who work for us and do right by them. If we do that, the work will come in and the money will follow, the advertising will be done for free by our clients and our procedures will be grown and improved as part of our daily work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It does take longer to grow a business with Good rather than Evil.
PPS - But Evil businesses collapse quickly.

What is the technological singularity?

I'm reading about the concept of the technological singularity on Wikipedia, just trying to get my head around it. I think the idea is that technology starts advancing so quickly that it represents a fundamental break in the nature of the world. Cory Doctorow described it in an interview as "things getting better and better until they burst".

It's hard to squeeze a big concept like this into my tiny brain. It seems to me that the world would grow an extra dimension. You need to see something like that from an outside perspective to make sense of it, and the only way to explain that from my point of view is from totally outside the three spatial dimensions as we know them.

If you look at the number of blades on disposable razors (stick with me, it's from the Wikipedia article), it's increasing exponentially. Extend it onwards into the future and you have infinite blades by 2015. So what does that mean in practice? You can't fit infinite blades on a disposable razor, so it must be something else. Everything post-Singularity starts sounding like that: a totally logical but inconceivable notion.

The whole of this concept makes about that much sense. You start talking about crazy things like computers that build better ones faster than you can count the generations. By the time one is finished building the next, the third one is designed and running. You're standing between two mirrors and you see the reflections start to propagate, then accelerate, and then they all stack up and rush back to the mirror face and you're falling. You don't even know where you are any more, because the world has popped and it moves too quickly for you to keep up.

The concept of ascension as in the Stargate universe can be seen as a kind of singularity result. When your own earthly intelligence builds at a rate that exceeds the capacity of this universe, your mind bursts beyond it and you ascend to a higher plane. Your life there, though far beyond what lower mortals comprehend, is still mundane relative to the other denizens of that plane. I think that's the post-Singularity answer: it's huge, but once you're there it becomes mundane.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't understand half of this.
PPS - I don't think I can.

The right to communicate globally

It is the government's job to ensure that the rights of each citizen are upheld through the creation of appropriate laws and the agencies to enforce them. When communications technology (broadband Internet and telephones specifically) is a basic right, the government's job is to create and maintain an agency and infrastructure to uphold that right. That means a state-owned telecommunications company that is motivated not by the bottom line but by service of the citizens. If Ma and Pa Farmer in the remote outback want broadband Internet, then, they can get it at an affordable price or even (dare I say) free because of their tax money.

Now obviously electronic communications is a less urgent right than food, shelter and the right to live, but how do people hear about your problems if you're invisible and silent, cut off from the world? If you're stuck in an alley in a rich city and people who could help you walk past every day, oblivious, what's would be the first step? Either call out so they hear you or get out where they can see you. If everyone physically around you is in the same crummy situation, you need a wider audience. That's what the Internet is for.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We used to have a state-owned telco in Australia.
PPS - We let the government sell it.

The Sunday Mok - Odd Jobs and Wild Hogs

Sunday - Deb and I attended the Uniting Church in the morning rather than the Baptist, then took a nap. After lunch we worked on our wedding order of service and watched Ella Enchanted. I ran the computer for the evening service.
Monday - I slept in a bit before a youth group planning meeting at my place. We cut down a pesky guava tree in my back yard. At Deb's we watched the old-school Ninja Turtles movies and Just My Luck.
Tuesday - I've been listening to podcasts (mostly Cory Doctorow) on the bus all week. I worked on odd jobs at work all day. Karate was good, and was followed by City of Heroes.
Wednesday - The odd jobs theme continued during the working week. It gave me a chance to improve things rather than just fighting metaphorical fires. Deb and I tried to watch Scrubs but the disc was a bit scratched.
Thursday - I finished a tool at work that should save me lots of time updating project codes and eventually pass the job on altogether. After dinner at Dad & Beth's, Deb and I watched Scrubs.
Friday - Deb and I dressed up nice and went to dinner at Dos Amigos, then saw Wild Hogs which was funny stuff.
Saturday - I eventually got up at 08:30, went for a jog and headed to Deb's. We scouted some locations for wedding photos then drove out to Ikea to buy a bed frame. They were sold out of the kind we wanted. The evening was a 70s themed party at Tracey's with the church folk.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I was going to say I hadn't had fondue before.
PPS - There was only one other time.

Australian television downloading habits

We download television in Australia because we like television and we have to wait six whole months to get it through legitimate channels. Meanwhile our internet friends in the United States are talking about shows we haven't seen yet and won't see until they are very old news. How do we continue to relate to our friends in the global community when our local media channels have a half year gap between them? We go where the television is. In pre-internet days that would mean trekking across the globe to the right geographical location, but also in those days we might never have heard about our favourite show because it just didn't play here and nobody could tell us.

Now with the internet we don't need a geographically dense population of the right demographic to make a successful television show. We have a global pipe that can get our show to exactly the right audience worldwide simultaneously for near-zero distribution cost. So what's standing in the way? Well, for one thing there are myriad lawyers lining the virtual borders with copyright banners and licensing contracts.

Then there are the problems of how much (and just plain how) to charge for it and make money. Someone's got to figure out both of these problems together. If you start selling all the content over iTunes six months ahead of an arbitrary local schedule, will you put the local free-to-air broadcasters or pay TV providers out of business? What kind of mayhem will result when people can just buy television that has no ads in it? How will we promote new shows when there's no time scheduling to provide lead-in and there's no advertising between acts?

Until these hysterical questions are answered, it's unlikely commercial television will move forward into a proper global culture.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't bother with much television any more.
PPS - That's mostly a quality issue, though.

Google Calendar SMS alerts

Google Calendar SMS reminders are the best thing to happen to me this week. If you provide Google Calendar with your mobile number (and you are with Vodaphone or Optus if you're in Australia) you can get reminders for your events sent to your mobile phone via SMS for free. My main temptation will be to send myself too many of these reminders initially, and it could be a little while before I find the right balance, but for now it's an excellent service of which I plan to take full advantage.

My main problem with my calendar is that I can't see it all the time, and that's because my phone is very old and can't sync with my PC. Having the ability to get SMS reminders of calendar events this easily will definitely help me stay on top of my calendar.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I anticipate getting a newer phone fairly soon.
PPS - Not sure exactly when, though.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Babylon Fields is a TV show filming at the moment and due to premiere on CBS "later this year". The premise is that the dead awaken and just try to go home to resume their un-lives. Naturally, there's not much to go on right now, but you could keep track of the IMDB page if you so choose.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've also heard that Grindhouse's Planet Terror is worth a watch.
PPS - Not yet released in Australia.

Brisbane's water crisis affected by population growth?

I've toyed with a theory about Brisbane's water crisis over the past few months that goes something like this: we have a weekly influx of 1500 people coming to live here permanently, and they use water like the rest of us. At that rate, even with arbitrary water restrictions of 140 litres per person per day, our water needs are increasing at a rate of 1.47 million litres per week. By the end of one year of population growth at that rate, our water needs have increased by 76.44 million litres per week.

Our "level 5" water restrictions are meant to save us 48 litres per person per day. If the current population is 2 million people (which is an overestimate) level 5 water restrictions will be overtaken by population growth and increased water demands in just over a year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did some calculations on required rainfall for water tanks too.
PPS - But I'm not confident enough to post them.

Software designed for the good of the customer

When software design choices are motivated by some interest besides the good of the customer, the program has already failed. This makes DRM a failure. It also makes bloat, feature creep and pointless chrome a failure condition. It means that the customer will want what's best, but doesn't always know what's best, and making that decision for them is a big responsibility with big consequences.

DRM is a failed design because it looks for the good of a third party rather than the user. Once you get your songs from iTunes, for example, the DRM there attempts to control whether you can play that music on another computer or a device not made by Apple. At best, that's silently stabbing your customer in the back, and at worst you lose the customer because you're fighting with them.

If people want DRM-free music, they know where to get it: the peer-to-peer networks. They might start out wanting to do the right thing and purchase the music, but once they run into the DRM wall that says "no, you can't use it that way", chances are they'll defect. I see it as a losing battle.

If software is designed right, then it always does what the customer wants. It won't tell you that your portable music player is unacceptable. It won't tell you that you can't copy and paste from this or that document. It won't lock you out of your operating system for failing to dial home and tell the vendor that you really did buy it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you try to force the customer's hand, you'll force it away from you.
PPS - There are plenty of developers doing it right on their own time.

New note

To me, a note-taking application that makes you issue a "new note" command before you start writing is broken. Note taking should be very free-form, not limited by the software. Forcing users to click a "new note" button (even if it has a keyboard shortcut) is like putting a plastic sheet between every single sticky note in the pad. The customers don't want it and it's not necessary. I could never get used to it after a note taking application that just lets you start writing, so any program that makes me take two actions (open program, "new note") gets immediate black marks next to just one action (open program).

Trust me. It builds up. Anything you have to use all the time gets its quibbles and irritations magnified before they fade into familiarity.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If the program is meant to stay open all the time, it's a little different.
PPS - In that case there will always be an action to focus on the program before writing.

Solutions and technology

Technology is not an answer in and of itself. It is not a destination, it is a tool. If you can't think about your problem without computers, you can't make them give you the solution.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm starting to learn to see the user over the tech.
PPS - The perception of functionality is more important than actual functionality.

The Sunday Mok - Happy Easter

Sunday - After church in the morning, Deb helped me prepare for the Brisbane Zombie Walk. Maybe next year she'll come along. Dinner was at the church during the evening service, followed by supper at the local Coffee Club.
Monday - I started evaluating ThinkingRock as a tool for implementing Getting Things Done. I found a few annoyances during the week. Bible study in the evening consisted of four of us at the manse, then Deb and I watched a couple of Hellsing episodes.
Tuesday - A standard day at work consisting of odd jobs. Karate was a bit easier than usual in the evening.
Wednesday - I finally finished some personal scanning that I brought to work over a year ago. After dinner Deb accompanied me to a church service rehearsal for Thursday, then we chatted for most of the evening.
Thursday - I spent most of the work day figuring out some timesheet transfer problems. Deb met me for lunch, which was nice. I met my step-nephew James for the first time in the evening. Being only a week old, he was essentially unconscious, but deadly cute. After the church service, Erin, Laura, Deb and I watched The Passion of the Christ at Erin's.
Friday - I slept a teeny bit too late to make it to the Good Friday church service on time. I was only 10 minutes late, though. We followed the service with a youth group Easter egg hunt, then Deb and I spent the rest of the day watching DVDs - a bit of Hellsing and some Scrubs.
Saturday - I went for a run in the morning, then did some touch-up painting with Deb and Linda. Mal, Linda, Deb, my Dad and I shared lunch and in the afternoon Deb and I went to Officeworks at Milton. Left unrestrained, I could spend a fair amount of money there. We saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the evening with Murrae and Tracey. I liked it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The animation was quite hyperactive.
PPS - Overall, TMNT was a positive-flavoured flashback.

Your own private jet (butler not included)

We are creating larger and larger passenger airplanes all the time, requiring the expansion of major airports that are already micro-cities out in the sticks for various reasons. This is, apparently, an economy of scale, where bigger craft means less cost per passenger, but requires massive infrastructure to support it.

Now, if someone figures out how to reduce the size of the planes, their piloting requirements and the logistics involved, we get a totally different situation. That's as long as this is all cheaper than the centralised option. If it is cheaper, everyone can fly more and fly to more convenient destinations. That would be one of the biggest wins in history.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You could fly direct from Weipa to Auckland by yourself.
PPS - For $20.

Friday Zombie Blogging

At the risk of harping on the one event for three different posts in a week, today I bring you my very limited and very low-quality set of photos from the 2007 Brisbane Zombie Walk as well as a couple of news stories covering the event.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not sure why the photos are such low quality.
PPS - Maybe I'll try uploading them again.

A soundless bubble

Sometimes I can't stand the sounds of the office and I want to block them out, but I can't concentrate properly with music playing. At times like that, I wish I had a white noise track I could play to block out sound but not distract me from my work. It seems like an extreme, crazy-person kind of idea, and there's a good chance that's accurate. I may be the only one who notices. Quiet is important for me to work effectively. I've considered getting noise cancelling headphones just for that purpose, but so far I've resisted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - How much would you like to just turn off the ambient sound around you?
PPS - For me, that would be awesome.

Loyalty

Corporate loyalty, where the individual is loyal to the collective, is rare these days, primarily because the collective has been so disloyal to us as individuals. I heard a similar point to this espoused in Cory Doctorow's podcast novel "Eastern Standard Tribe", and it's started resonating with me. His point was that if you're not loyal to the collective (the corporation, the country, your subculture tribe) then don't expect the collective to be loyal to you and treat you well. That got me thinking about why we see no corporate loyalty in the modern workforce anymore. I believe the problem is as I've stated above.

Because we've heard (or experienced) stories of companies firing hundreds of employees at the drop of a hat, with no more reason than to boost quarterly profits, our tenures feel flimsy. Even if our own company is not one of those, it's hard to project the opposite image these days. So, with the end of job security comes the end of employee loyalty and that's that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been at this company for 4.5 years now.
PPS - Everyone raises their eyebrows at that.

Time-dilated kitchen

Here's a weird science-fiction idea: if the kitchen at a restaurant was on a different timeline, it might be possible to put an order in and get the food straight out again from our point of view. Inside the kitchen, time would be passing at a normal rate but the dining floor would be moving glacially slow. The main problem would be keeping the cooks occupied for the in-between times and paying them for weeks of work every night. I suppose the solution to that would be to run the time dilation device only when an order is up. So the cooks stand around waiting for an order, then zip through it on fast forward, and go back to waiting again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now that would look very strange.
PPS - And probably the food in storage would spoil faster.

Shambletown

Yesterday was the second annual Brisbane Zombie Walk, and my first ever. I was dubbed "cubicle zombie" by my fellow faux-undead, and it took us a good hour to wander across town from the Roma Street Parklands to the City Botanic Gardens. Once through the gardens, we sort of dispersed in confusion, but it seemed like everyone was getting tired by then. It was nice of the police to help us out - they blocked off streets as we shuffled past, moaning wordlessly or calling out for brains.

We startled a few shopkeepers, but the folks at Tiffany's were unshakeable. They must be specially trained.

Stand-out costumes were the zombie Wiggles, and many others had gone to a lot of effort. In all, a lot of fun, but if I go again, I'll probably spend a little less time in character and a little more time meeting people.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Lots of funny looks once I left the horde to go home.
PPS - Many thanks to Deb for doing my make-up.

The Sunday Mok - Uncle Mokalus

Sunday - After the morning church service, Deb and I put the first coat of paint on the master bedroom here. It took a while because we had to resort to brushes instead of a roller for three walls. I set up the computer for the evening service, then Deb did the actual clicking around. Supper at the Coffee Club afterwards.
Monday - It felt like a quiet week at work, even though I always had things to do. For bible study in the evening, it was just Deb, me and John who led us. We went ahead with it anyway.
Tuesday - Deb came to watch the karate class in the evening, where we started at the top level kata and worked down, mostly for my benefit. When we start at the bottom and work up, we never get the whole way to my level. We watched a couple of episodes of Hellsing, which is a bit odd.
Wednesday - I made a couple of optimisations to programs at work, and both felt good. I picked up Deb's freshly-minted wedding ring, too. After dinner we watched Super Troopers with Sam and Mia. I laughed.
Thursday - Family dinner was suspended for the evening because my step-sister went in for an induced labour. She had a baby boy, so now I'm a step-uncle. I haven't seen him yet. Deb and I watched more Hellsing after dinner.
Friday - For youth group in the evening, we five leaders and the one attending youth painted mini golf props for the upcoming church fair. Since there wasn't much actual painting to do, we talked about movies, games and books for the rest of the evening.
Saturday - I went for a jog in the morning; apparently it was my first in some time. Deb and I painted more of the master bedroom in the morning, then went to see Glenys and Gary's new rented place and catch up with the gang. Just when dinner started, we left to meet Erin, Michelle and Bridgit at the Normanby Hotel. I thought there were going to be more people there.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may get to see my step-nephew this week.
PPS - I hope so.

Omigoshomigoshomigosh

Finally the dream can come true: this Sunday at 2pm is the second annual Brisbane Zombie Walk, and I am so there! If anyone wants to come along, please do so. Though I'll be just spun out being part of a zombie horde, it would be nice to see a few familiar faces, too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll take photos.
PPS - All the details are on the website.

When do I throw out my shoes?

I read about a disposable pedometer that you can attach to your shoes. Its purpose is to let you know when to replace your worn-out runners based on the amount of use they've got. I have a better and simpler idea: a wear spot. Basically there's a spot on the soles of the shoes and you're meant to replace them when it's worn out. It would be softer and more wearing than the rest of the sole because apparently you're meant to toss your shoes long before they start to show visible age. This product could even be made in a sold-separately sticky version to attach to shoes not made with the feature. There. I just saved you a few dollars.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, I don't think "disposable" and "electronics" really go together.
PPS - Unless you can put it through a paper shredder and make Christmas cards from the pulp.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Evil Dead: The Musical. Yes, really. Apparently it's been relatively popular off Broadway.

As exciting as that may be, and a solid blog post in itself, I can't pass up this week's announcement of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am, an "epic, action-adventure combat golf, cart racing game". It sounds like it has everything.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Except pirates.
PPS - But I guess they'd overshadow the golf carts a bit.

Social islands

The number of social networking sites currently in existence is approximately the square root of the number of users. It seems fine, because The People have Choice, but it's a pain when you have to maintain nine different profiles to stay in touch with all your virtual buddies.

Social networking websites could be interoperable if they were based on OpenID. The profiles wouldn't be the same between sites, but I believe it can be done. Furthermore, I believe it will become increasingly necessary.

For new social networking sites to get off the ground, they need a "critical mass" of users. If "nobody" is using the site, almost nobody will sign up. By creating a standard for interoperation, a new site doesn't need its own critical mass to get off the ground. They can service a few hundred users and be fine with that, especially if they fulfil a niche that caters particularly to those users.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I could start designing an interoperable social networking protocol myself, I guess.
PPS - But I'm too busy updating my profiles.

It's backwards inside

I've noticed that church buildings and other auditoriums (auditoria?) have different directions for "front" and "back" depending on whether you're inside or outside. As you walk in the front doors, you're usually standing at the back of the auditorium, and the speaker stands at the front. Continue past the stage and you exit from the back doors and you're then standing at the back of the building. So the doors appear to be considered part of the outside, but the rest of the building inside is back to front. Just an observation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't tried to consider the question of left vs right.
PPS - That one probably just depends on which direction you're facing.

High-def DVD decryption

The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD encryption schemes have both been broken by the same person. That means the content protection on certain discs is now useless and one particular software player is compromised. Now the issue is this: the entertainment industry will revoke the keys used by that software player that allowed the decryption. Users who continue to use that software will be unable to play new movies produced after the break, because the software simply won't be capable of decrypting the movie for playback. They'll have to upgrade.

Sounds like not too bad a solution? Well, replace the word "software" above with "hardware" and imagine that the break had been performed with a set-top box. Would you like to hear that your expensive set-top box is now nothing but a paperweight because some guy used its key to break DRM? Hell no. But that's exactly what will happen if someone uses a hardware player to break HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DRM.

As grim and frustrating as those consequences would be, I'd like to see it happen. Once consumers start losing a few thousand dollars each because of big media paranoia, there's going to be an angry response. That response should get media publishers to rethink their strategies, especially since it's not the angry consumers who caused the problem.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And that might be the catalyst to end content "protection" forever.
PPS - You know its only effect is to hurt legitimate customers, right?

Digitally signed

The most narrowly-useful invention of the day: a digital camera with touch screen for autographs. Say you're backstage at a concert and snap a digital photo of your idols, but also want it signed. What then? Well, you could just hand them a stylus and have them scribble a cramped, pixellated autograph that completely covers the image. Brilliant!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Patent pending.
PPS - This invention brought to you by the tiny minds at Mokalus Corp.

The Sunday Mok - Sugar in the soap

Sunday - I went to church and grocery shopping in the morning, then Deb and I drove out to meet with a photographer. In the afternoon I mowed the front lawn and I sang in the evening church service. That was followed by supper at the Coffee Club.
Monday - The week at work was relatively quiet. Most of the time I just plugged away at bugs in the performance appraisal database. In the evening, bible study was at my place with just four of us.
Tuesday - Karate in the evening was a bit of a workout, but manageable. Anthony cooked dinner for Dad and me, then I played City of Heroes and watched some old recorded television.
Wednesday - In the evening, six of us went to see Hot Fuzz, for which I have already expressed my appreciation. There were a few problems at work with temperamental databases.
Thursday - I had my own performance appraisal with Jeff which was fairly positive. After family dinner, Deb and I watched a few episodes of The Awful Truth and found it amusing.
Friday - At youth group in the evening, we mostly played Wii Play, but also talked about prayer.
Saturday - I found our internet connection has been throttled again. Over the course of the day, we washed the master bedroom walls with sugar soap and sanded them down in preparation for painting. We also had dinner at Dad & Beth's.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd never encountered sugar soap before.
PPS - It seems like pretty nifty stuff.

Friday Zombie Blogging

A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead is a zombie music video mashup of the Beatles' Hard Day's Night where the band is chased by ravenous zombies instead of screaming girl fans. Sweet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It didn't load for me completely. I'll watch it later.
PPS - Link via Boing Boing.

Virtually Real

Since starting to play with VMWare Player, I've grown just a tiny bit more familiar with Linux, but not that much. I'm able to run a virtual Linux box on my PC here at work without messing with anything much (just installing the player). Now, while that's cool and all, I'd really like to dual boot Linux and Windows, and I'm far more comfortable doing that with a machine I don't own (ie my work PC). Even though I might be okay with trying this, I have a feeling that the IT guys might see it a bit differently.

I have a theory that I could use the VMWare player as a shell and boot into the virtual Linux box directly if I made some changes to the boot settings. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any guides on doing so, and it might just be another harebrained scheme. However, I have seen references to a way of doing just that, so I remain confident that it can be done. I just don't know how.

Part of the problem of searching for info on dual-booting a virtual machine and its host operating system is that the search terms are the same as setting up the virtual machine in the first place. The other part of the problem is that it's weird and insane. After all, if I can use a virtual Linux machine on my Windows desktop, why do I need to do the same thing without Windows?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I imagine your nerd radars started going a little crazy back there.
PPS - It should be safe to turn them back on again now.

Hot Fuzz

Last night about six of us went to see Hot Fuzz, and I loved it. The humour was right up my alley (except for some of the violent humour), the acting was decent and the editing was spot on.

The whole movie plays with energy (thanks to the hyperactive editing) and the climactic end scene feels like it's straight out of Time Crisis. The references to other movies were probably everywhere, but I only noticed the obligatory Shaun of the Dead nod and what may have been a veiled Demolition Man reference: the swear box.

The three criticisms I have are that the gore was a bit overdone at times, the persistent foul language and the difficulty I had in deciphering some of the plot. Overall, though, the laughs were hearty and the action intense. I give it a solid "yarp".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There were also very obvious Point Break and Bad Boys II references.
PPS - Given that those actual DVDs appeared, that's not surprising.

Procrastinator's Clock

I like the idea of the Procrastinator's Clock, which runs randomly up to 15 minutes fast. It could be right on time, or it might be reading as a full 15 minutes in the future. You never know ... unless you have another clock nearby. To get the full effect, since it's only software, you'd have to disable your system clock display (right click the clock, select Properties, untick "Show the clock", click OK).

Something like this would be very useful as a physical device too. The main problem would be that it must be the only clock in the house (otherwise you'd check and defeat it) and you can have only one (otherwise they'd disagree and you could get a more accurate estimate of the correct time).

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess you could have computer-controlled synchronised clocks all around the house.
PPS - If you were some kind of super-nerd.

The missing link

Why is there no map link from GMail contact addresses to Google Maps? The same links do appear on Google Calendar, so they can be done. It must just be that nobody at Google has gotten around to that part yet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I predict that they will appear.
PPS - I just can't predict when.

Price check

If petrol stations had wireless data points in their signs that transmitted price data and I had a receiver in my car for this data, I could be alerted when I'm coming up to a petrol station with a good price. Better yet, we can all collaborate and send the live data to the Internet as a city-wide price monitoring project so everyone can quickly and easily see the current petrol prices in their local area. We can also graph the sudden rises in prices over time to see when are the best times to go for a fill-up. The way around that for the petrol companies is to start varying their prices more randomly to avoid people gaming the system. Large hourly changes will prevent the system from being useful but will also drive away casual customers who can never be sure what your price will be.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's a kind of information arms race.
PPS - So far, the companies are ahead.

The Sunday Mok - The Carpeteers

Sunday - In the morning church service, Deb and I took a look at Dean and Wendy's wedding photos to get an idea of their photographer's work. After lunch, we cleared most of the clutter out of the patio. Supper after the evening church service was at McDonald's because the Coffee Club was closing early for the night.
Monday - For the performance appraisal database at work, I had to get the printed results to look identical to the original paper forms, which took a little while in HTML. In the evening, Deb and I assembled our new lounge suite from Ikea, but first we had to move lots of the old furniture out to the newly-clear patio.
Tuesday - A few too many things happened at once at work, so I was feeling a bit rushed. I left work early to get home in time for a meeting with Gwen, the minister. After Deb and I got home, we worked out a budget as homework.
Wednesday - I had definitely developed two big knots in my shoulder muscles, and it could be related to throwing all my projects up in the air without any good way to catch them again. Deb and I watched four episodes of Scrubs in the evening.
Thursday - I bought Meg the cat a scratching post to distract her from the new furniture. So far, she seems reluctant to go near it. Deb and I watched Wandering Samurai episodes from Anthony's collection, but I mostly dozed.
Friday - I managed to have a pretty quiet work afternoon, because everything was under control. In the evening for youth group we played beach volleyball, which was fun.
Saturday - I drove Deb to Deception Bay for a debriefing day on her Philippines trip, then hung around reading. I also went for a run. We tore up the carpet in the master bedroom when we got home. Dinner in the evening was Thai at Dad & Beth's to celebrate her birthday, then Deb and I left to go to a St Patrick's Day/congratulations party for Erin.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been reading Getting Things Done to help organise my life a bit better.
PPS - So far, I like it.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Courtesy of Homestar Runner, a flash-forward to Strong Bad's funeral, featuring an imaginary zombie movie excerpt easter egg at the end. Sweet.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "I hope the zombies still let me fight on their side."
PPS - Speaking of fighting zombies, here's a zombie jujitsu movie write-up.

Sorry, it's the law

The law of maximum humiliation: the second you do something silly or embarrassing, someone will walk around the corner to witness it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have experienced this a few times myself.
PPS - I guess the trick is to stop being embarrassed by it.

Big Brother

Some time ago - more than a year now - I auditioned for Big Brother. I expect that I failed for presenting as a compliant introvert who could act. The rest of what I showed them was inconsequential.

I went to the auditions to have a good time. I waited in line for four hours until they let me inside. From then it was a very quick "You lot pretend to be monkeys, you lot pretend to have sex with the floor. Okay, you three come with me. The rest of you can sod off." Not as much fun as I anticipated, but at least I met some interesting single-serving friends.

If I ever went back, it would basically be in protest. I was just being myself last time, and apparently I'm not good enough to be humiliated on national television. I think that should make me feel relieved.

So anyway, next time a Big Brother auditioner asks me to pretend to be a monkey, I'm going to poop in my hand and throw it at them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't anticipate that situation coming up again.
PPS - And I probably won't be watching the next season.

Thought for the Day: Delegation

Delegation is a lot like slacking off. The difference is that you get to blame other people at the end.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's the "best" of both worlds: no work and no accountability.
PPS - I'm guessing some people have already figured this out.

Trusted software

I hear an engineer behind me say "never ever rely on software" and perhaps in context he is correct. But if you can't rely on software for anything, then there's very little you can do in this online world. Software is tracking your pay and the bank account it goes into. Software helped designed your car and the roads on which you drive it. Software counted up the total of the groceries you purchased this week and software gave you the cash, one way or another.

If software is so very unreliable, then we have a lot of double-checking to do, and it will occupy most of our days. Once we trust software (usually once it has proven itself reliable) then we can stop double-checking its results and get on with our lives. Those lives, incidentally, will probably require more software to keep track every year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's another kind of "trusted" computing that's best left unexplored.
PPS - It doesn't mean that you trust your systems, but the other way around.

Good Morning Zombie!

I get up alone, eat breakfast alone and travel to work reading or listening to music, so the first words I speak in a typical day are at work. Traditionally, that would make my first words "Morning!" or "Good morning!". Some kind of early-day greeting, at least. However, it seems that I lose the ability to speak during the night and must re-learn how to make sounds every day. If you surprise me around a corner with a stealthy "good morning", you're likely to catch me off guard. At that point, you'll be greeted by a sound like a zombie trying to puzzle out a calculus problem. It's kind of like "ah-wah". Imagine trying to say "morning", "hey", "hi", "oh" and "what?" all at the same time. The main problem is that it's usually out of my mouth before I have control, and my feet decide that a hasty retreat is the best follow-up option, so I'm not around to take a second crack at it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess this situation will only last about two more months.
PPS - That's assuming Deb is awake in the mornings to share breakfast.

The Sunday Mok - Fortune cookies in bed

Sunday - After the morning church service, Deb and I drove out to my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Handley's place for lunch. The drive took nearly an hour each way. We skipped dinner because of the big lunch and I sang in the evening church service. By the time the service was finished, we were hungry enough for dinner at the Coffee Club.
Monday - I spent half of last week at work trying to track down an accounting program bug. On Monday I found that it had resolved itself somehow. Bible study in the evening consisted of John, Murrae, Tracey, Deb and me.
Tuesday - I started reading Getting Things Done, and it will take some time to absorb and process it. I skipped karate in the evening because I felt like taking a break and I did some grocery shopping.
Wednesday - I got some of the tools I needed to work on a Lotus Notes email archiving program at work and couldn't quite make it go. In the evening I had dinner at Deb's followed by some of Scrubs season 3. We also discussed some wedding ceremony plans.
Thursday - Family dinner was at a local Thai restaurant because Dad & Beth's house was unavailable at the time. Deb and I had ice cream for dessert and watched more Scrubs.
Friday - For youth group in the evening we had a "drive-in" movie with Scott's car in the lower hall. We watched Air Force One. Afterwards, when I dropped Deb home, we had a long chat.
Saturday - Deb and I spent all day at Ikea looking at new lounge chairs. We got one very long couch and an armchair, so now we have to clear the old chairs out. And get a scratching post for the cat. We met with Murrae and Tracey for ice cream, then went to Dad & Beth's for dinner with Mal and Linda. We watched more Scrubs when we got home.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Scrubs season 3 episode 14 needs to be watched twice.
PPS - Even if you just skim though it quickly the second time.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Land of the Dead comes to your mobile phone in a game from Ojom GmbH. Of course I have no idea how good it is, but the description indicates that it revolves around looting and defending yourself while doing so.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My phone doesn't play anything more advanced than Snake.
PPS - And it's no extra fun to call it Zombie Snake.

Time shift

Time shifting is the act of recording broadcast television to watch at a later time. When the first video cassette recorders came on the market, the television industry moaned that it would be the death of television. They let everyone know this in no uncertain terms. At the outset, to them the VCR was a tool of the devil.

When video is downloaded rather than broadcast, the phrase "time shifting" loses all meaning. Nobody talks about your right to "time shift" DVDs, for example, because that just means "watching". Ditto for television shows on iTunes. Why is that so different from broadcasting? Why is that particular medium subject to terrifying stories of users setting their own schedule when that's the one medium that forces someone else's schedule?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just don't understand it.
PPS - Setting our own schedule is now the norm rather than the exception.

Paper is obsolete

Paying people to type, bind and file in the Internet age seems very strange. We have people whose full-time job it is to deal with the hard copies we are producing of digital work and files. It feels rather counter-productive, even. We don't need to print documents out - we need better and cheaper ways of distributing and viewing live copies of the current versions.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's only habit and technology holding us back from a paperless society.
PPS - And habit is holding back technology.

But I didn't study!

The notice at the top of this Wikipedia page says "It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Binary prefix. (Discuss)". In a panic, I concocted and turned in a half-baked essay on the merits of information consolidation, but I don't think it's going to fly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think I'll be repeating Wikipedia Editing 101 next semester.
PPS - That's unless I can make up for this pop quiz on the final exam.

Driving directions practice software

Imagine going to Google Maps and ask for directions from one point to another, then clicking "practice route" for a fast fly-by of the way so that it feels more familiar when you actually have to drive it. That would be really useful to me. I find that my biggest problem when following unfamiliar directions is knowing when a turn is coming up and recognising it when it does. If I can see the route from ground level beforehand, I think I'd make fewer wrong turns.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Fewer, not none.
PPS - Because I'd still forget how it looked now and then.

I feel much safer now

We have to review safety at the office. It's a big deal, so we have a meeting about it every two weeks for 30 minutes. At the two most recent meetings, we have been discussing a potentially fatal workplace injury, mostly arguing over how to classify and rate it properly. The hazard? Paper cuts. Yeah. Someone found an incident online where a woman nearly died from an infected paper cut, so we argued over whether this constitutes a potential fatality.

The answer is that it does, no matter how unlikely. And the arguments go on from there. Do hazard control measures eliminate the potential injury? Never. Do they lower the probability of serious injury? Well, the lowest rating our chart allows is "rare/very unlikely", and we already said that's the likelihood, so no, further measures do not officially decrease the probability.

Our facilitator tried three different tactics to argue us out of our quandary: (1) you should use the most likely outcome for assessing the risk, (2) if we classify paper cuts as a potential fatality, we will make you wear protective equipment to handle paper and (3) a paper cut is not actually going to kill you because the infection a secondary hazard.

In summary, we have so far spent 90 minutes of 10 people's time discussing whether or not you can die from a paper cut. Total cost to the company so far: approximately $400.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is definitely a Dilbert moment.
PPS - The most obvious one I've had so far.

The Sunday Mok - Reappropriated cabinets

Sunday - Deb and I left church in the morning relatively quickly, then did the grocery shopping. I mowed the lawn and took a nap, then we went to Deb's place to plan elements of the wedding ceremony. We also watched Scrubs. The church service in the evening was shorter than usual.
Monday - I spent the day at work on the routine bugs and features, then had to walk for the bus in the afternoon because the usual one was full. Bible study was at my place and we finished our Philippians studies.
Tuesday - I didn't feel like going to karate in the evening, but since last Saturday I couldn't make excuses. The class was pretty hard. I played City of Heroes in the evening.
Wednesday - Until the end of the working week, I was looking for errors in some website data for job leaders. The processes to load the data were still working, but there was nothing there. I still haven't figured it out. In the evening, Deb and I watched Starsky & Hutch.
Thursday - The usual bus went by full again, so I had to walk for another one. Deb and I went to see Children of Eden, which we both enjoyed.
Friday - I went through a few DailyLit.com emailed sections of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom at lunchtime, because I'm getting closer to the finale. In the evening at youth group we had three people show up, plus leaders.
Saturday - In the morning I helped my Dad and Mal bring kitchen and bathroom cabinets and benches here. That's in preparation for turning the rumpus room into a granny flat. Deb and I ate lunch at the Coffee Club, followed by a meeting with Gwen, the minister. We went for a swim, watched some Scrubs, then saw Pan's Labyrinth.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Pan's Labyrinth was a bit more reality than we expected.
PPS - Still plenty of fantasy, but a large amount of reality too.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Two zombie game preview articles to link this week: Hellgate: London on the PC (including a spell to transform yourself into a zombie for camouflage) and Touch the Dead for the Nintendo DS, in case your daily commute is too sparsely populated by the undead. Enjoy!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I doubt either of them will make a big splash.
PPS - Not as big as Dead Rising did, anyway.

Children of Eden

Last night I went to see Children of Eden by Harvest Rain, a musical interpretation of Genesis chapters 1 to 9, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For a pro-am performance, it certainly felt more pro than am. The first half, up to the murder of Abel, I found deeply moving, as I saw a familiar story in a new light (with a bit of artistic license). The human side of the relationship between God and people, as well as the heartbreaking betrayal was very powerful.

The second half dealt mostly with Noah and the flood (and you've got to respect rhyming "Noah" with "protozoa"). The animal puppets were a highlight there, and more artistic licenses were taken with the story to make a point.

The music was excellent, the theatre space very well used and the sets and costumes just worked. Overall, a very positive experience.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The show opens officially tonight.
PPS - I'm special, so I got to see it early.

Draft sifting strategy

My recent strategy for picking a blog post in the morning has been to look at only the most recent few drafts and pick the best one. If I see an entry that I don't much like, I just delete it to make more room in the window. Since I maintain my draft list in a text file, the default size of the Notepad window dictates how many entries I can see. If an entry does not appear in full in the window, it is not considered yet. As I remove entries by posting, more appear and the file is kept to a manageable size. I think it's working fairly well for me because I no longer have to consider nearly 100 KB of plain-text writing every day, and entries that I don't want to post straight away will eventually have to be deleted or posted to make room. It's forcing me to make some tough decisions on a subset of drafts, and it seems like a good thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Reducing information overload is a big usability win.
PPS - And I like making my life more usable.

Automated gifting

I had an idea for an automatic Valentines gift service. Register once with your credit card details and your significant other's birthday and anniversary and we'll send gifts of flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, perfumes and other assorted romantic stuff on the designated days. The gifts will be randomised so that, for instance, you're not just automatically sending a dozen roses three times a year. That makes it thoughtful, or at least makes it appear thoughtful. Email notifications will be sent out a week in advance for a chance to add items, personalise the gift or cancel if you've since moved on.

It wouldn't have to be limited to romantic gifts, either. What if you're a distant aunt or uncle with seven different nephews and nieces, all (naturally) with different birthdays? It seems like a useful thing to keep track of those dates and send gifts automatically.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wonder how successful an out-sourced gift service would be.
PPS - My guess is that I'd get a few customers at least.

Digital storage is too cheap

The biggest problem with ever-expanding storage capacities is information hoarding and unrefined data. It's far easier to store years of email on a subject than attempt to summarise it, especially since the storage problems are always shrinking. If I want to know what kind of trends happened over a project, though, I have to sift and distil lots more data before I get any answers. I see that as one of the biggest growth areas in information processing: summarising and distilling data. That way a program can tell you, for instance, that this two-year project was generally run with a policy of prototype design, hasty implementation and change requests.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - With more data being passed around every year, this will become more necessary.
PPS - Search is good only for finding particular parts of a data set.

Reasonable belief

Challenging your beliefs with foreign ideas is important. If you are blind in your convictions, you won't stand up when people ask you to explain them. Asking the hard questions is mind-exercise for your values and beliefs. If you let your body get soft and spongy, you don't expect to use it like a champion athlete, do you? If you never think your beliefs through, it's like going your whole life without exercise. You'll probably die too young of a preventable disease.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's sad when ideas die.
PPS - But it's sadder when the bad ones live.

The Sunday Mok - Shaped

Sunday - Deb and I drove up Mount Nebo for lunch, looking for a small cafe I remembered. Just when it seemed I'd hallucinated the whole thing, there it was. We took a nap in the afternoon, and after church in the evening went to the Coffee Club for supper.
Monday - I fell asleep on the bus to work. It probably did me some good. I had to walk for the bus in the evening, because a full one just breezed right past me. Bible study was at Deb's, and by the time we were done it was time for me to go home to bed.
Tuesday - I spent most of my working week on our performance appraisal database. Karate in the evening focused mostly on stances, then I spoke to Deb on the phone and played a bit of City of Heroes.
Wednesday - Deb and I ate dinner at Noodle Box, then finished the whole of season 2 disc 2 of Scrubs. We chatted until relatively late, too.
Thursday - Deb came over for the day and did some chores, which was really nice. We had dinner at Dad & Beth's, then left quickly to catch Murrae and Tracey at Deb's before they went home. It turns out they never came.
Friday - For youth group in the evening, we put together a chalk mural like we did last year, this time depicting Jesus' baptism. With fewer people to work on it, though, it was a bit smaller.
Saturday - I had a big breakfast at Ashgrove Baptist Church and heard Phil Jauncey speak too. He was really good. Deb and I went walking together, then shopping for my wedding shoes. In the evening, we went bowling with Murrae and Tracey, then also dinner. The four of us saw Ghostrider too, but I don't recommend it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Our home internet connection has been throttled.
PPS - This is the second time I've typed all this out.

Curious

How well does curiosity work as an advertising technique? I'm talking about teaser campaigns that are meant to generate empty buzz until an actual product announcement. I think it's been a bit overdone. People are generally time-poor these days, and have little patience for anything that doesn't make its point quickly. Combined with the fact that such secrecy and teasers are seen as suspicious, we have a very poor atmosphere right now for a curiosity-based advertising campaign.

If you're being secretive about your product or service, our modern sensibilities translate that into either "substandard" or "incomplete". That is, either you won't tell us anything because you're not ready yet (come back when you are) or you won't tell us because you want to sucker us with your shoddy merchandise (no thanks). So if your new advertising campaign centres around public talk of "what exactly is that all about?" you should take a breath and re-think it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As always, your mileage may vary.
PPS - That's pretty much true in everything.

Friday Zombie Blogging

A company called Life Gem is offering to make diamonds from the dead. Basically they take the DNA from a deceased person and fashion an artificial diamond from it somehow. Sounds like a creepy, crazy idea that just might come back to bite us all. I mean, what happens when these diamonds get exposed to radiation? I'd bet they focus the energy down through the gem into your body, mutating your DNA until you crave fresh, tasty brains.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Doesn't sound like a good idea now, does it?
PPS - Ideas rarely sound good after zombies are involved.

Unfinished stories

I write fiction sometimes, but my stamina typically runs to an introduction or a paragraph. I rarely have an overarching plan for a story. However, I think it would be a waste to let these half-written bits just sit here on my hard drive to rot. I may post one from time to time. This is one of the longer ones.

You should know that I don't know what year it is. Not really, anyway. What I know is that it is now six hundred years since the Earth was overthrown. The aliens came down and just took over - our weapons didn't work, and our soldiers couldn't fight anyway. Basically we were drugged into submission. But I only know this because I can read. A few pre-invasion books survived and were kept secret. The official books - their books - tell a different story.

I was chosen to be a wrangler at an early age, which was great news for my family. We were living in the city compound like everyone else - walled in "for our own good". When I was made a wrangler, we were stepped up ... to a less densely-populated part of the city. Relatively speaking, it was luxury: three rooms, electricity sixteen hours a day and running water.

That would all be beside the point, but it's where the story really started. It's where I started to learn the true history of the invasion and the terrible things that happened afterwards.

The official story goes like this: the aliens (they have no other name) found our backwater planet in a state of accelerating decay. Wars and greedy resource management had set us into a downward spiral. Much of the animal life was already destroyed, and the biosphere of the planet was collapsing too rapidly for us to handle. Then the aliens found us and rescued us from ourselves.

They kept the environment stable with their advanced technology and new life forms were brought in to maintain the balance naturally. The aliens kept us from interfering. After many centuries, the planet was stable again. It was still our home, but different now, and that difference was to serve as a reminder to us all of the hard-learned lessons of our near self-destruction.

That's a lie. But like most lies, it carries a kernel of truth. There was widespread environmental chaos, but only because the aliens created it. And they did create the biosphere we have today, but that was all part of the big plan. We are their pets now. Their prisoners. They stalk along the walls of the city, humming those alien tunes to themselves, projecting an air of peaceful benevolence.

That's a lie too. I have seen the cruelty they are capable of, and it is terrifying. The animal fights are just a symptom of that inner cruelty. One in which I play my part like the rest.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It came to me in a dream.
PPS - Most of it, anyway.

Using the phone like email

When I'm trying to get things done, I can't be interrupted by the telephone, because then it takes me a while to focus again and knuckle down. Usually by that time the phone rings again. So sometimes I'll turn off the ringer and sit the phone just behind my LCD monitor. It's still in plain view on my desk, but now it makes no sound and the flashing light is hidden. We have voice mail, so people leave messages. At two appointed times in the day, I will check my phone messages. Email gets the same treatment. The really cool part is that I can record a message on the phone and send it off without getting caught in a discussion.

Now I realise this could be seen as mean or anti-social, and it's certainly a lot less personal than answering the phone. The main problem is that I can't do anything effective unless I have the mental space to focus properly. Thus, I create it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't do this all the time.
PPS - That would be too much.

Flooded

To a certain extent, we rely on some parts of life staying at a manageable level on their own. We don't expect to come home to a mail box buried under a mountain of letters. We don't expect to have the telephone ring literally non-stop all day. We have, however, come to accept that an email inbox will be totally overflowing with spam. If there's just way too much of that, even with the best spam filtering software the address becomes useless because of the perfectly normal hit-and-miss ratio. You'll get a few false negatives (unfiltered spam in your inbox) and a few false positives (real mail in your spam filter). A false positive in an address swamped by spam will not be found because we don't have time or patience to sift through a thousand spams looking for one potential real mail. I don't even look any more. If Yahoo have shunted a real message to my spam folder, I'll never see it.
I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised that the problem of spam exists at all. It's a people problem on both sides. The spammer is greedy and the victim is under-educated. The technology enables a decent economic return because email is so cheap and people do respond.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Yeah, people are buying things from spam.
PPS - Lots and lots of people.

The Roman numeral 'M'

If my calculations are correct, today is my one thousandth post. Huzzah! I thought about doing a retrospective to the first post ever, or a "best of Mokalus" thing, but I didn't get organised in time. So I'll just leave you with an semi-original idea: laser carpentry. Rather than do rapid prototyping with plastics, we can do it with wood cut to shape by computer-controlled lasers. Even if it doesn't work out that well, it's got that geeky sci-fi ring to it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "My coffee table was created by computers and lasers."
PPS - "Any magical elves have a hand in it?"

The Sunday Mok - Imported chocolate

Sunday - Deb and I stayed home and watched my DVD of Erwin McManus' talk "The Barbarian Way". We did grocery shopping and laundry, then watched some of The Hogfather TV series. Church in the evening was followed by supper.
Monday - I was basically tinkering at work, waiting for some real change requests or bug reports to come in. They always do. Bible study in the evening was at my place, which was convenient. Deb and I watched one Scrubs episode.
Tuesday - The bus ride home was completely full. I think the city council reads that as "optimum". I went to karate in the evening, but I'm starting to feel like I need more of a challenge. I played City of Heroes and talked to Deb on the phone for about 30 minutes each.
Wednesday - Deb and I had a meeting in the evening with Gwen, the minister, mostly about communication techniques. Back home we watched more Scrubs before taking Deb home.
Thursday - I got our hazard reporting database back up and running after a total of about six hours of effort, which is not too bad. After dinner at Dad & Beth's, Deb and I watched Scrubs and Stargate SG-1. We also shared some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Friday - I had to spend a bit of time fixing security bugs in our performance appraisal database. Fortunately they had been overly restrictive instead of overly permissive. For youth group in the evening, we had to change plans and go bowling, which was fun.
Saturday - I went for a walk in the morning, feeling less than energetic. Deb and I wandered around the Indooroopilly shopping centre looking for a matching wedding band for her engagement ring. I dropped Deb off for step-sister Wendy's baby shower, then after dinner we watched Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and one Stargate episode.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have to start getting to bed earlier.
PPS - Don't we all, eh?

Friday Zombie Blogging

Dance like a zombie with the world-record attempt Thrill the World in October this year. The goal, as I understand it, is to get as many people dancing Michael Jackson's classic Thriller zombie shuffle simultaneously all around the world. Should be interesting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The first link also has video.
PPS - And links to some other Thriller-themed stories.

In the News

I've added a little sidebar to the blog that I've called "In the News". It telepathically discerns what I find interesting, then looks up news stories to match. Tiny gnomes then copy the headlines and links from those stories into my blog for me. The hardest part is keeping the gnomes fed and happy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Perhaps I should train them to keep more than five stories at a time.
PPS - I'll do it later.

Commercialised

Valentines Day is too commercial. Just about every holiday gets the treatment, of course. Anything for a buck. The thing is that Australians are expected to spend one billion dollars on flowers and chocolate today. They're both nice things, but we've been brainwashed into making this a day for purchasing rather than love.

Today, if it's not too late for you, I want everyone to stick it to the man. You don't need bought flowers. Pick some wildflowers instead or make an origami bouquet. Create rather than consume. Say "I love you" to someone without saying "I need you" to stores and companies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you're not attached, just ignore the day.
PPS - And glare daggers at anyone who mentions it to you.

Auto-hide

I would like a Messenger plugin that detects when a message window has been inactive for an hour (or another time period) and just closes it automatically. The main reason I want this is that my instant messaging conversations don't always include a "goodbye" portion. So usually I end up with windows that stay open forever, just in case the conversation is not yet over. Sometimes I close it myself and it turns out we weren't done. That's not the main point though.

The Windows System Tray has (in Windows XP) an auto-hide feature that keeps inactive icons out of sight. The idea can be extended to any open windows. If you haven't used it for an hour and it hasn't changed in that hour, move it to a "limbo" tray. It would keep the task bar relatively clutter-free, if that's your thing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Clutter-free is my thing.
PPS - But only in information, not physical objects.

I [heart] my pedometer

I know this ratchets up my geek rating a notch or two, but I quite like my pedometer. From a certain point of view, it's just a device that clips to my belt and tells me how much more I should be exercising. Anything that clips to a belt is instant geek points. If you wear any more than one, you start looking like Batman, but not in a good way. Anyway, I don't know exactly what it is, but I enjoy collecting these daily statistics on how far I've walked or run. I've considered buying pedometers as presents, but I doubt too many other people are interested.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Usually a day at the office averages 4000 steps.
PPS - A half-hour jog is 5000 by itself.

The Sunday Mok - Mysterious keyboard error

Sunday - I mowed the dirt and weeds in the morning before church. It felt good to be on top of things. I spent the afternoon watching Star Trek Enterprise, then went to Deb's to help with wedding invitations. I sang in the evening service, but felt like I did an awful job.
Monday - I spent most of the day at work on a thorough clean-out of my PC and trying to get an old program compiling in Visual Basic 6. I went to pick up Deb for bible study, but she'd sprained her ankle and couldn't get around, so I went alone. I came back later to say goodnight.
Tuesday - I handled performance appraisal bug reports all day at work, then went for a run instead of karate in the evening. I watched Scrubs with Deb at her place, finishing season 1.
Wednesday - We had lunch at a local pub for David's last day, then in the evening I helped with the presbytery meeting by running the PC. I walked Linda home and spent a very brief time with Deb, little more than "goodbye".
Thursday - I brought Deb to my place in the morning and worked on performance appraisal bugs and features all day. I cooked dinner, did the dishes and laundry and watched some Stargate SG-1 with Deb.
Friday - Between work and youth group I had about 30 minutes, so there was no dinner. We just played Wii Sports most of the evening, plus a brief supper break. Deb and I fit in one Stargate episode before I took her home.
Saturday - I spent the morning at Child Safe Church training, then went shoe shopping for the wedding. I didn't get mine. In the evening, Deb and I saw Night at the Museum which was better than I expected. I fell asleep halfway through the Stargate episode we put on afterwards.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My keyboard seems to have failed today.
PPS - The one I'm using now is a backup. It's louder.

Geomarks

On my Google calendar, I often fill in the Location field to remind me where to go. It helpfully links to Google Maps to show me where that place might be. The problem then is that I must formulate my Locations as precise Google Maps searches to make the links work. I want to be able to write, for example, "Adam's house" and have it work properly. In fact, the best way for that to work would be to link to my GMail account book and search for "Adam", then see if I've got his home address recorded. If so, that's probably the place I mean.
Failing that, maybe I can have some personal locations bookmarked in Google Maps, the same way I can in Google Earth.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just don't want to write "Queensland, Australia" after every Location.
PPS - And people are easier to remember than street names.

Friday Zombie Blogging

The first ever Choose-Your-Own-Adventure podcast, Jethro Thule: Zombie Killer, launched some time ago (they're up to episode 9 as I write). It's illustrated and, from the short amount I've seen so far, seems to be an interesting story.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The previous episodes might be buried in the main site podcast.
PPS - Jethro Thule is also available via iTunes.

DVD region exchange

Moving overseas and want to take your region-locked DVDs with you? Well, perhaps someone else is moving too, but in the opposite direction. You could swap the same titles for the correct regions to minimise the expense of replacing your entire collection. We could hook people up online, like a dating service but matching people by movie titles and destinations.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You could *also* buy a region-free DVD player if the market wasn't evil.
PPS - I don't believe region locking DVDs is helping the industry.

Early to rise

I'm experimenting with getting up at 05:45, fifteen minutes earlier than usual. The theory is that I can get a few more things done in the morning before anyone notices I'm up. Since my current workload almost amounts to a single working parent with a three-bedroom house plus an active social life, I have some problems with time. Hopefully this experiment will let me stay just a little bit above water at the expense of a bit more sleep.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I shouldn't be this busy.
PPS - Nevertheless, that's how it is.

Little lies

People who lie for personal advantage are seen as evil. People who tell "only little white lies" are seen as normal. People who do not lie are seen as strange.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People who point out big lies are known as journalists.
PPS - People who point out little lies are known as tattlers.

Fashionable malice

I read just the other day about this chameleon clothing with wireless data transfer abilities. Here's why I think it would be a bad idea:
1. Enterprising cracker discovers how to break the user permission locks.
2. Cracker loads high-res images of a naked female torso on his PDA and sets it to push the design to all shirts.
3. Cracker goes for a walk and enjoys the chaos as everyone's shirts suddenly seem to disappear.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course this assumes lots of people are wearing the garments.
PPS - Or just one would be enough, actually.

The Sunday Mok - Invitations

Sunday - After the morning church service, Deb and I went to Invitation House in Fortitude Valley and bought some paper and envelopes for wedding invitations. In the afternoon I fell asleep watching Van Helsing with Deb and Mia, then had a youth group planning meeting. I ran the computer for the evening church service.
Monday - I took my car in to be serviced in the morning, then spent the day at work getting the regional organisation chart details into the performance appraisal database. In the evening Deb and I had a meeting with Gwen and watched some Stargate SG-1 (season 9).
Tuesday - After the day at work, I hoped the bus would be late to give me an excuse to skip karate. It wasn't. I did laundry in the evening while watching Star Trek Enterprise.
Wednesday - Deb and I had dinner with Dad and Beth in the evening and watched some video from Deb's trip to the Philippines. Back at my place we watched some Scrubs episodes and looked through some wedding invitation designs.
Thursday - I tried to help install a database in the morning, but just couldn't get it to work, even with administrator privileges on the machine. In the evening we had the weekly family dinner at Dad & Beth's, then spent the rest of the evening working on the layout and wording of invitations.
Friday - I started reading The Joy of Work on the bus. It's funny. I spent the evening watching videos I'd flagged for later in my Google Reader news feeds and got through a lot of them. About a quarter were no longer available, though.
Saturday - Breakfast with Mal, Linda, Dad and Beth to discuss caterers for the reception, then more registry shopping in the morning. In the afternoon we started putting together some actual invitations and watched some more Scrubs.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My life seems very busy.
PPS - Friday night being the anomaly.

Friday Zombie Blogging

http://www.hecklerspray.com/nicole-kidman-in-50mph-zombie-car-smash-footage/20066711.php
Nicole Kidman in a stunt accident on the set of a zombie movie. It's not that shocking.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Our net connection is flaky today.
PPS - Hence the slightly irregular post format.

The Mechanic's Dilemma

A car is dropped off before your shift for a standard service. At the end of the day, two men show up to pick up the car, and each claims that the other is an impostor. Each has identification proving that they are the owner of the car, each has a spare key that opens the car, and each one offers to pay for the service. Also, the classic Solomon gambit fails: when you offer to cut the car in half and give them half each, both men object and offer to give the car away.
How do you determine the true owner?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't have a particular answer in mind.
PPS - I'm just curious about everyone's problem solving approaches.

A few thoughts on magnets

- Magnetic paperweights: just like fridge magnets, but horizontal!
- How much iron would there have to be in a person's blood before they could be physically moved by strong enough magnetic fields? Probably a fatal dose.
- It would be possible to construct a magnetic memo blackboard wall from layers of magnetic paint and blackboard paint. Then you can draw in chalk and stick notes to it with magnets too. A very creative space. This is just a combination of ideas I saw on Boing Boing and/or Lifehacker, but it makes terrific sense to me. Alternatively, get a magnetic whiteboard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The magnetic poster wall.
PPS - Blackboard wall calendar.