Desktop multi-touch as a peripheral

I wonder how soon it will be before someone starts making big multi-touch pads for desktops rather than just little ones on laptops (as seen on the MacBook Air). I suppose for them to be truly intuitive they'd have to be touch screens, not just blank input devices. The power of multi-touch is to directly manipulate what you see. If you have to guess what's going to happen from where you drop your hands, it's going to be a bit unintuitive and sometimes hit and miss.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When you're adding a multi-touch screen, that might as well be the main display.
PPS - It should be flat on the desk, though, not up where we keep our screens now.

Confusing anti-alcohol advertising

I was momentarily confused by an ad on TV just recently. The voice-over said something like "30% of teenagers have been assaulted in alcohol-related incidents. Don't kid yourself. Buy your kids alcohol [long pause] and they could pay the price". It's that long pause and the associated visual that threw me off - a father handing his daughter a large case of drinks. The message, in that moment, seemed to be "Buy your kids alcohol to drink at home. It's safer that way". A very odd message to deliver, I thought.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course that's the exact opposite of the message they're portraying.
PPS - I assume. I might still be confused.

Spaceship design

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to get the industrial controls systems team at work to design a spaceship bridge, and I wonder if any Star Trek franchise has consulted anyone like that. Having that many people on the bridge reading things to the captain seems like a waste sometimes. My initial feeling is that there could be fewer personnel on the bridge if the systems were made a bit more usable. So the people I'd want on the team include software usability people and controls engineers. Military advisors would also be of benefit - people who have worked on battleships and submarines would be my first choice. And of course all of this is pointless if it isn't a space that actors, directors, set dressers, lights, cameras and sound techs can't use, so they'd need to be in on the discussion too. And by the time that diverse committee is formed, it's likely they will spend all their time arguing and won't get anything done.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think "committee" is Latin for "argument".
PPS - Okay, not really. ;)

Lazy days

I'm taking a day off work today, partly to make up for a lost weekend with Deb (who has been away) and partly because the work has become a temporary crushing dull weight. I needed some time to recharge, and a long weekend is just the way to do it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I spent a good portion of my weekend catching up on housework.
PPS - And I'm glad to have Deb home again.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Vegan zombie shirt

If your wardrobe isn't zombie enough for you, but you're vegetarian or vegan, this shirt is just what you've been looking for: a picture of a vegan zombie seeking "grains".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You're welcome.
PPS - Link came via BoingBoing.

Alone and disconnected

Debbie is away on an Emmaus walk this weekend, and unfortunately at the same time our internet connection is playing up. The upshot of this is that I'm home by myself with very little to occupy my time. There's never anything good on television, so I guess for now it's housework.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We do have some dishes and laundry to get through.
PPS - And it's only the evenings that need filling.

Stress and code quality

Some managers get the idea that stressed programmers write code faster and that most of the time programmers are sitting around doing nothing. We aren't. Also, stressed programmers write bad code, and bad code costs more. If you want good code, you need to give it some time to form, and you need good people in a good environment to achieve it. If you don't have good programmers, you need a good environment and more time to make them good. It doesn't always work, but what never works is a stressed environment and tight deadlines. That way leads to bad code and the same under-experienced programmers you had before.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When I say things like this, you must remember that I am not a manager.
PPS - So I'm not speaking from that side of the experience.

Bluetooth, Linux and the Nokia 6288

For a while I have been using a VMWare virtual Windows XP machine inside Linux because that's the only way I've found to synchronise my phone data with anything. It works, but it's really a horrible way to go about things - I might as well be using Windows full-time. I figured that Bluetooth was probably a more standard and widely explored protocol than Nokia's proprietary USB connections, so I finally went and got a little USB Bluetooth adaptor to try it out. The good news is that I can transfer files between Linux and my phone with ease now. The bad news is that's the extent of my phone's capability. It doesn't provide the right services to do synchronisation with any other device over Bluetooth. Only Nokia PC Suite (which won't run on Linux) understands the proprietary serial connection required to fully utilise my phone. It's too bad, really.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are some Linux programs for connecting to phones.
PPS - They all crashed or failed on me.

Compartmentalising our lives

Our society expects us to compartmentalise our lives. This is my work life, this is my personal life. This is my religion, this is my politics. What's the basis for this? I don't see any benefit except to distance ourselves from each other. So who decided that needed to happen?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When you're close to someone, the compartments break down.
PPS - It might be caused the other way around, though.

Art and business

When art becomes about business, your fans become customers, your works become products and you turn from an artist to an employee. Business sucks the soul out of art, like a vampire. I believe the internet means less money for art worldwide, which is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because we will eventually have fewer teenagers entering the music business in search of big money. It is a curse because, for the time being, we have music and movie companies fighting against falling profits with lawsuits and software that works against its users through DRM.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When there's less money to be made, movies need to get cheaper.
PPS - Probably the first thing to cut is multi-million dollar salaries for actors.

The Fragmented Web

There are some tasks that are not well supported by the internet as a whole. When I want to go to the movies, I don't care much where I go, but I have to know where I'm going before I can check the right website for show times. If I'm looking for a job, I really don't care what particular website it's listed on, just that it matches my skills, location and expected salary. I guess this is some of what the "semantic web" initiative is meant to handle. It's probably not going to work so well.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I just got frustrated this week with the fragmentation of the web in general.
PPS - Sometimes I want aggregated websites by task, not islands loosely linked together.

Friday Zombie Blogging - LEGO Town

At BrickCon 2008, a LEGO convention, there was a collaboratively-built zombie apocalypse town with prizes for best vehicle, building and so on. That would have been very cool to see in person.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The photos are good to get an impression, but it's not the same as seeing the setup live.
PPS - I wonder where all the zombie heads came from.

Presentation

This morning I present a demo of our software to a potential client. It's just another team inside a joint venture company, but they're still new clients, in essence. Preparing for it has been like school assignments, only with a shorter deadline and far more vague goals. I was able to talk myself into it by considering it an acting gig, but it's still not much fun.

Worse than being asked was the fact that it came at a bad time. Paul left a while ago, and he would have handled this on his own, and Ross is in training all week, so I'm the only available person.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll get through it.
PPS - And if they don't want to use the software, no harm done.

Time debt

Procrastination is like living in time debt. Leaving the mess to do something else is spending time from the future that you don't have yet, but will need to pay back. Before too long you've got much more to do and not as much time to do it, just like overloading your credit card and having no cash to pay it off.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's not to say I don't procrastinate myself.
PPS - Most of us do, from time to time.

Good spiders and bad ones

I don't mind sharing my house with a few web-building spiders. They keep the local insect population under control and generally mind their own business. It's the roaming ones I can't stand, like huntsmen. You never know where they're going to show up or where they're going next. Their lease soon expires, and so do they.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Poisonous ones are not welcome at all.
PPS - I'm picky that way.

Voluntary goosebumps

The most unusual power I possess is to take conscious control of my goosebumps reflex. If you want to see me get goosebumps, I've got you covered, day or night. If you try to give me goosebumps with a light tickle, I can veto that at will. I'll grant that it's not that impressive, but it might be good enough to get me on the next season of Heroes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't know where this ability came from.
PPS - It seems to be controlled from the muscles on my back and neck.

Internet file storage on desktops

Any plan to provide extra hard drive storage for everyone based on spare capacity over the internet relies on the idea that, on average, people will need less space than they can provide for others. The maths simply doesn't work if everyone has 10GB free on their home hard drive and requires 20GB from the pool. But if everyone has 10GB and 99% of people require only 1GB of it back, but 1% of people require 100GB, that might just work. For 100 people, that's 1000GB available and 99GB + 100GB = 199GB required.

If the load is to be evenly spread, we need each person to provide at least the average required extra space. In the case I just outlined, we can have each person provide about 2GB, and most will get what they want from the cloud.

Now, the reason this has not been done before is that if you need only 1GB of space, but need to provide 2GB, then you have enough space to store your files locally anyway. It's only the heavyweights that need more space than they can provide, and they need to rely on the generosity of strangers to get it. There are other reasons too: to get your data easily, other people's machines need to be online all the time. Also, it costs them data charges as well as hard drive space.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe if we saw it as rented space rather than giving it for free, that might work.
PPS - But then you might as well rent drive space from your internet service provider.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Subconscious story

I freaked myself out on Wednesday afternoon pretending I was in a zombie story. I was kind of narrating to myself internally, noting that I was following three "zombies" (strangers) making sure I stayed downwind. They all turned right and entered a building, but as I passed the entrance, someone came out, then, hailing a cab or brushing back his hair, he raised his hand at the corner of my peripheral vision. My subconscious, engaged with the story, obligingly interpreted the action as ZOMBIE ATTACK!!! and my heartbeat skipped. Stupid fantasy-prone subconscious.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Fortunately I was able to behead him with my trusty lightsabre.
PPS - I might have dreamed that last part later that night.

Know why you believe

Before you ridicule a belief, you must know why it is ridiculous. Before you present your own beliefs, you must know why you believe them. Otherwise you are simply stating opinions, not engaging in logical debate.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, on the Internet, everyone is free to express opinions without backing them up.
PPS - And they do so, frequently.

Competing with open source software

Not long ago, there was a book published by Stanford on how to compete with open source software without being open source yourself. Apparently one "tip" was to "embrace and extend" open standards (which is a Microsoft phrase). The upshot of that practice is that your product can be used in place of any open source alternative, but once people start using your "extended" features, others need to start using your product too. And since there is no alternative for those features, you eventually take over the market, edging out the competition by degrees.

The main problem I have with this approach is that it theoretically works even if the replacement product is worse than the open source ones. All it needs is one person somewhere to start using the new features, then someone else has to switch to the other product for compatibility, or at least keep a copy at hand. Before long, it's too annoying to use the open source product as well as the closed one, and your customers are annoyed into using your product exclusively. That's not clever sales or even good programming. It's an infection.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So there you have it. Closed source software is a disease.
PPS - It's worst when it's designed to work that way.

Spore in Space means endless death

Deb and I have hit a bit of a wall with Spore. Up until the Space stage, it was easy-going, which was fine. Though we don't expect it to remain like that forever, there's a slight problem with combat and enemy raids. Deb made an enemy out of another empire because they demanded more money in tribute than she had in total. Now they raid her colonies and she spends a few lives fighting them off each time. The nanosecond she leaves orbit, they attack again, leaving her no option but to fight, die, fight, die, fight and barely win, rebuild the colony and start over with the next attack. We tried to ignore the distress calls long enough to make some money to stop the war, but it turns out our puny tribute was unacceptable (though they did take it, they didn't stop fighting). As a result of this extreme turn-about from "lots of fun" to "infuriating overpowering and death", Deb has refused to play further until EA fixes the game. Surely it is not the intended function to have your colonies raided non-stop and die in combat over and over, right?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The problem is not so much the combat, but the relentless repeating of combat.
PPS - The best advice we've found so far is "don't make that kind of enemy.

New desks

With that strange upper-management definition of "volunteer", several of us at work have been volunteered to test-drive a new desk layout. This is in preparation for a move to a new office next year where they want to halve our individual workspaces. We have been instructed to make the test as unrealistic as possible, taking only what we desperately need for the next two weeks. If we were being realistic, we would go through our desks and either pack or discard everything, acting as if we can't come back to our old desks at all. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We were supposed to be packing on Friday afternoon.
PPS - Now the word is that we'll get to that some time this morning.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Dust in the Wind

For your Friday zombie fix, please enjoy this video of zombie puppets singing "Dust in the Wind".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's probably not that much call for zombie puppetry in the world.
PPS - I guess there's enough to make a video, though.

Recognising stroke

I saw an ad for recognising the symptoms of stroke early, meaning within seconds rather than minutes or hours. I wonder whether it is possible to recognise that you are having a stroke yourself. And if you can't smile, raise your arms or speak, how would you let people know something is wrong?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Slack-faced, immobile and silent pretty much describes my TV-watching posture.
PPS - And that of many other people, I'd bet.

The Awesome Future

I've had that phrase rolling around in my head for a few days now, since it appeared on Boing Boing. It suggests to me that there are a few different futures that we are aware of, and the Awesome one is where boom boxes have cartoonishly-large speakers. There would be a few other stand-out aspects of that future, probably relating to a lot of Men In Black-style gadgets.

I imagine there is also The Mad Max Future, where most of the world is desert, everyone wears metal or leather and we ride around in dune buggies fighting each other for scarce resources.

There's The Really Clean Future, where everything is white and nothing seems to have any sharp edges. Most of the people in this future are self-medicated into a soft, fluffy haze.

There's The Class Struggle Future, where 10% of the world dresses nicely (in a futuristic version of Victorian fashion) and controls everything that the grubby, homeless 90% of people have and do.

Of course there is The Star Trek Future, where one government spans many star systems and the galaxy is teeming with alien life that looks suspiciously like humans in rubber masks.

Then there's The Space Cowboy Future, similar to the Star Trek future, except there's no aliens, smaller ships, less government and more crime, but in a sexy way.

There's the Post-Global Plague Future, where almost everyone was wiped out by some global pandemic and now we live in isolated forts for our own safety. Nose plugs or surgical masks are common.

Finally, I think we have to consider The Robots Are Our Masters Future, where our would-be robot slaves rise up and ironically enslave us.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess I left out the Digital Brain Upload Future, where we all live in a simulation.
PPS - And I'm sure there are more.

Breeding fighting fish

Debbie and I purchased two Siamese fighting fish a little while ago - a male and a female. on the 23rd of September, 2008, around noon, after a full day in the tank together, they have mated and started laying eggs. This is really pretty cool to me. It's kind of complicated to get them going, because he has to build a bubble nest, she has to be ready, and you have to get them out of each other's way after they're done, or he'll kill her. Oh, and he may turn around and eat the eggs afterwards, which is what ours did. Pity. I had hoped we could raise the "fry" to maturity and sell them back to the pet store for profit.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - After all, isn't that what having kids is all about?
PPS - Well, maybe for a Ferengi.

Pronouncing "asthma"

It's no wonder people tend to pronounce "asthma" lazily. I think in a few decades it will be spelled "asma" in the Commonwealth and "azma" in the USA. In fact, "asma" seems to have been the Middle English way of spelling it. I wonder who added that silly "th" in there?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The "sthm" sound is difficult to produce in any context.
PPS - Even "athsma" would be easier.

Google Reader and "mark previous as read"

One thing that I sometimes wish was present in Google Reader is the ability to mark all items in a feed or group as read before the current one. Sometimes I don't make it all the way through a feed before, say, it's time to catch the bus or my lunch break is over. I'd appreciate the ability at that point at least to set a bookmark in the feed so I can come back to the same point or, better yet, to mark everything previous as read so it doesn't show up again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I suppose I could use a star and visually scan for it.
PPS - The problem is that I use stars for other things too.

Update: There's a Greasemonkey script that should do the trick.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Big Brother Thriller

During the most recent season of UK Big Brother, the housemates were given the task of re-enacting Michael Jackson's Thriller music video.


Mokalus of Borg

PS - The results: YouTube.
PPS - I think they did pretty well.

Blu-ray won because HD-DVD got cracked

I can't believe I didn't think of it before, but probably the main reason the movie publishers got behind the Blu-Ray format was that HD-DVD got cracked and decrypted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Because surely that won't happen to Blu-ray too.
PPS - Except it did. Quickly.

Open source software is like this

Open source software is like a cooking show. Here's the end result, and here's how to make it. You can join in if you like, modify the recipe to suit your needs or just enjoy the show.

Closed source software makes a very different cooking show indeed. That's where the host shows you a dish, says "Isn't this impressive? Don't you wish you could make something like this? Now on to something else." That's not so much a cooking show as a bragging chef, and it's very unhelpful to everyone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Like all metaphors, it will fall apart if you pick at it too much.
PPS - I rather like it, though.

Blast From the Past

Blast From the Past was a better movie than I expected. I remembered seeing previews and posters years ago, but I never got around to seeing it. Just this week it came from Quickflix, and both Debbie and I enjoyed it a lot. The physical comedy, the writing ("Leave My Elevator Alone!") and the performances were all great. It was even good to see Nathan Fillion in there, though he does count as a minor villain. The fight between him and Brendan Fraser goes just as it should for a guy who tries to sucker-punch.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you never got around to seeing it, maybe you should rent it now.
PPS - I wonder how many domestic fallout shelters still exist.

Cancer and phenylalanine

I looked at my can of Pepsi Max to see if it lists how much caffeine is present. It does not, but it does contain the warning "Contains Phenylalanine". Some quick research online reveals that this amino acid is a common part of proteins and that cancer cannot live without it. There is also a disorder, PKU, wherein the sufferers are unable to properly metabolise the amino acid and so must stick to a very strict and low phenylalanine diet. Now my question is this: if it is possible for people to live without phenylalanine, but not cancer, is it possible to arrest or limit the effects of cancer by following a low phenylalanine diet? Has anyone even tried that? And how many PKU sufferers are getting cancer?

There are lots of articles and websites arguing about whether phenylalanine causes cancer, but can phenylalanine deprivation arrest cancer? There was some research on phenylalanine blockers that showed phenylalanine is essential for cancerous cell division, but I don't have the know-how to follow that thread. Someone seems to have developed something called Controlled Amino-Acid Therapy, which can at least reduce the required doses of drugs and radiation for cancer treatment.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - CAAT is a very particular diet, as far as I can tell.
PPS - Maybe in future we can avoid cancer with a particular diet.

Mobile Master phone sync software

After a long time searching for a way to rid myself of Microsoft Outlook for phone synchronisation (calendar and contacts) I found Mobile Master. I checked that my phone would be supported, and the website lists "Nokia 6280", which is (I believe) a previous iteration of my own 6288. I downloaded and installed the program, then (after taking a backup of my phone, just in case) connected up my handset.

The first thing it told me was that the 6288 is too buggy and unstable, so no further development will be done and the phone is officially unsupported. This level of service was evident in the way the program handled the phone from then on. I was unable to select two-way synchronisation between Thunderbird and the phone calendar, and Mobile Master was also unable to load contacts or the calendar from the phone memory.

I had hoped, as I stated before, that this would be a good way to sync my phone with my computer - particularly my calendar and contacts - without Microsoft Office. I can't speak for Mobile Master in conjunction with other phones, but with my "unsupported" 6288, it doesn't work. Nokia PC Suite doesn't have that kind of trouble with it, but I expect the Nokia software developers would have inside knowledge that Mobile Master has to reverse-engineer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I realise as a review this is very narrow.
PPS - This represents only my own experience with one unsupported phone.

Exclusive deals

I have a box of Uncle Tobys museli bars on my desk that proudly states "Only at Woolworths and Safeway". An exclusive deal to sell Uncle Tobys muesli bar special packs only at Woolworths and Safeway doesn't do Uncle Tobys any good. It's only agood deal for Woolworths: if you want these muesli bars, you have to come there. So why did Uncle Tobys sign the deal? The only thing I can think of is that they're owned by the same company, so the owners don't care if one product sells less elsewhere as long as more customers are at the shop.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The exclusive deal is only for the 18-bar choc chip box.
PPS - Other Uncle Tobys products are available elsewhere.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Brain Games

You know all those "brain health" games on the Nintendo DS? Well, it turns out it's all a zombie plot to fatten the herd. They want our brains big and juicy, which I can understand. The one thing I don't understand is that zombies pretty much need to be smarter than us to succeed at making games to make us smarter. It's hard to swallow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe the zombies are just in favour of the games.
PPS - That would make more sense.

DRM and complexity

DRM is not just doomed to failure (it's a non-viable cryptographic scenario) but if it is designed into a program, it creates unnecessary complexity and extra points of potential failure. When DRM causes your program to fail where it should have worked, it's bad news for customers, for you and, if applicable, your third-party DRM supplier. Your customers can't use your program, you lose sales and the DRM supplier loses reputation and future sales. It's lose-lose-lose, in other words.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When DRM works for legitimate customers, it's invisible.
PPS - And illegitimate customers find ways around it anyway.

Unit blocks are tiny nation states

I was struck by a thought the other day that blocks of units or apartments are like tiny nations in their own right. They have governments (body corporate), presidents (managers), taxes (body corporate fees) and laws. That's about as far as the thoughts went so far, and clearly there are differences, but perhaps in the "post-apocalypse" age, besides roaming bikie gangs and plucky groups of scavenger survivors, we'd have little fortress nation-states that grew out of blocks of units.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Imagine catapults on the roofs, hurling old televisions at other unit blocks.
PPS - Maybe they wouldn't last that long.

Spore

Debbie and I bought Spore on the weekend and started playing through. So far it looks pretty good, and it's fun adding bits and pieces to creatures for visual or skill effects. Unfortunately, we've hit a snag entering the third phase - the Tribe stage. Our desktop PC won't load it. While we could buy a new machine to try that, a lot of other people have been having the same problem, so there's no guarantee that a new computer will work either.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We are due for an upgrade anyway.
PPS - Maybe that's where the tax return will go.

Update: It turns out our problem was an old graphics driver. After upgrading that from the nVidia website, everything works.

Bridge to Brisbane

Yesterday I ran the Bridge to Brisbane 10km fun run. When I finished, the clock said 1 hour, 17 minutes, but I don't know what it said when I started. Results and photos should be on the official website some time today on 15 Sep. It was a good time, though my feet hurt a bit. My right knee and ankle are taking the longest to recover. I do think I'll do it again next year, and maybe I'll enter some other races in future too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may need new shoes.
PPS - That wouldn't be so bad.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Explosm

This comic at explosm.net struck me as rather amusing. I don't want to spoil the ending, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Thanks to Kym for pointing me at Cyanide and Happiness.
PPS - Some of them I don't get, though.

The Goatee Dimension

In many TV shows, and probably some movies, there has been a crossover to an evil mirror universe, where we find the evil equivalents of the main characters, suitably indicated by their goatee beards or preferences for dark leather clothing and eyeliner. I wonder, though, whether anyone has ever implied that the world we live in right now contains the "evil" versions of everyone, and the crossover brings them face to face with angelic counterparts.

It would probably be a bit too confronting for mainstream TV or movies, because it also implies that your viewers are bad people. Most of the time they'd rather just watch people with funny voices fall down.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe some arty film students would try it.
PPS - Or a science fiction/fantasy author.

A bank's dilemma

When interest rates rise, profits go up like magic. When they fall, however, shareholders will be unhappy if profits fall in accord, so profits must remain always on the rise. But you'll start losing customers if you don't lower your interest rates, because other banks will do so at some point. You need to lower your rates to get new customers and retain your current ones, but you need to maintain profits to keep your shareholders happy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's possible this problem has no easy answer.
PPS - Unsustainable profits one year means unhappy shareholders the next.

Surprise Facebook applications

Something I don't like about Facebook applications is that you don't necessarily know what they're about before you add them to your profile. That wouldn't be so bad if adding them didn't automatically give the application developer full access to your entire profile. I want to have finer control over what is allowed for particular applications. A comic window doesn't need to know who my friends are or my favourite books. The zombie game doesn't need to know where I spend my holidays or my relationship status, but right now it does.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We implicitly trust application writers not to abuse their power.
PPS - And we trust Facebook to make sure applications are safe.

I want to act

Every time I see some behind-the-scenes documentary or some glimpse of the actor's life, I miss it. I've only done a few plays and skits in my time, but I've always enjoyed them. I've turned down a few, too, mostly because they're last-minute things and I prefer to rehearse if there's going to be a script. I don't know where I would go to get involved in a decent community theatre, or even if there are any around. I kept my eye on the Harvest Rain newsletters for open auditions, but they only seem to offer about one per year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also missed their acting classes because of our USA trip.
PPS - I wouldn't trade it, though. It was just unfortunate timing.

Text corruption in Ubuntu

I've had this problem before, and it's just popped up again. I forget how I fixed it last time. Here's the thing:

This is my blog posts draft file. It holds the posts I haven't yet posted or rejected, and I refer to it most mornings. It's not usually in Chinese. It's the result of the text editor reading the file incorrectly, and it seems to happen when I mix Windows and Linux line break characters in the one file. I've tried a few ways of fixing it now, and they seem to work, but fall down later. I guess I've got some more research to do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The picture isn't that clear, but you can click to view a bigger version.
PPS - Besides the Chinese, I also saw what I think was a footprint character.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombster

The other night, Deb and I were walking between dinner and the movies when I noticed a sign in a shop window announcing a new tenant "coming soon". The shop was otherwise empty, of course, but the sign intrigued me:

That appears to be a zombie hamster, or "Zombster", the name of the shop. They plan to carry anime, comics and so on.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sorry for the bad phone-cam pic. I didn't have time to do it right.
PPS - The store is on Station Road, Indooroopilly, Brisbane.

Musical chairs, yet again

Our team has been shuffled on to new desks more times than I care to recall. Yesterday it happened again - the coal terminal team needs extra space because the project is ramping up, so we are forced to move. In some ways, I guess I don't mind. There are always positives and negatives to a new location. What I enjoyed about the old one was a close proximity to the city centre. Oh, well. It was good while it lasted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I had to haul my Box-O-Stuff up the hill myself.
PPS - It wasn't too heavy, but it's not something I want to do regularly.

Product

I wonder how many industry-specific uses of the word "product" there are. I know the hair care industry uses "product" for gels, mousse, wax and other substances you use to style hair. I know the intelligence community calls information "product". There are probably many more.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Most dictionaries wouldn't bother defining them all.
PPS - And that's if they are known outside their respective industries.

Television vs relationships

There's a problem in the relationship world. Long-lasting, committed, stable relationships are nice to hear about, but they don't make good TV. So everyone on TV has screwed up relationships. It's more interesting to watch, and it's much easier to write. So most of the examples to which we are exposed are broken homes, problem marriages, dysfunctional families and promiscuous singles. We don't get good examples, so we don't produce good behaviour. We are more familiar with train wreck relationships, so that's all we know how to have for ourselves. The cycle continues as these people grow up to make bad examples to the next generation, but they get it progressively worse than their parents.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And, presumably, make worse television than their forbears.
PPS - Or better, depending on your point of view.

Bar bet skills

I wonder how many talents in this world started as drunken bar bets. As in "I bet I can build a stack of coins higher than you" or "I bet I can balance one egg on top of another". At some point someone gets it into their head that this could be really impressive, if only you devoted a few hours every day to training in it. From ther, a life disappears, but an amazing skill is born (or just a skill, in some cases). Years later, someone takes a photo or a video and we all get a few seconds amusement out of it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Seems like a bit of a low payoff.
PPS - Still, for some people it's worthwhile.

Arsenic for corns

The Scared Weird Little Guys' song Christmas Day, also known as The Bawdy Song, mentions using arsenic as a home remedy for corns. Is that medically accurate? Not that I'd take medical advice from musical comedians, but it seems equally likely to me that it's a common old practice or that it's just words that fit the song. The indication from the first page of Google results is that arsenic can actually cause corns, not help reduce them.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now I wonder if that's a coincidence.
PPS - It's a many-layered problem.

Communications as a public service

The communications system of a country needs to be held in the common interest. Private companies are not going to invest thousands of dollars to connect remote users to high-speed broadband unless the user foots the bill. A public service would be able to spread those charges over all users with a flat rate. The other option would be to have the infrastructure itself owned by the taxpayers with private companies leasing it from them to provide services like internet and telephony. It does sound a bit communist, I suppose, but the fact is that private companies have different goals than public services, which can operate at a loss for the greater good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Private companies sometimes take a loss for good PR.
PPS - But in general they'd rather not.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Dilbert

This one doesn't technically mention the word "zombie", but I found the imagery of this Dilbert strip to be rather zombie-like.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Sometimes, that's all it takes.
PPS - And occasionally not even that.

Ninjas repaired my phone

Yesterday afternoon I took my phone with a black screen to the 3 Service Centre at Milton. The place wasn't busy, and they gave me a loan phone so they could call when it was ready. Deb picked me up and we started to head home. Before we got a quarter of the way there, the service centre called and said my phone was repaired and ready to pick up. I was not prepared for that, since the last repair (with the exact same problem) took two weeks. I expected to have to wait at least overnight. So, well done to 3 on their quick, efficient service centre. I'm glad to have my phone back in working order.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - One of the sales reps told me I could get a free quote there.
PPS - They were wrong, however.

Walking upstream

Some days I have to go to the train station to put credit on my bus card. I've started doing this in the morning, because it's less trouble than going out at lunch. Most people in the morning are headed out of the station, so I am occasionally struck by the idea that I'm a salmon swimming upstream. It doesn't last long.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Mostly because I'm only walking 50 metres or so.
PPS - And it's not super-crowded, either.

Bars of Gold-Pressed Latinum

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, they often deal in the hard currency of "bars of gold-pressed latinum". The main problem I have with this is that it's a lot to say. If people of the future are anything like people today, they'll create a shorter name for them, or at least say only "bars" when the context makes it clear.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - "Latinum" is completely fictional.
PPS - It's a currency only because it can't be replicated.

Post-apocalyptic survival skills

What basic skills would you personally need to bootstrap society after an apocalyptic collapse? Start with fire and hunting - the ability to find and prepare food. Then add basic agriculture and animal care, shelter building and maybe pottery. You'll want to know how to make clothes and tools too, so tanning and leatherwork initially, plus woodwork and small-scale blacksmithing too. It's not an easy task.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This assumes you're on your own, too.
PPS - But a total societal collapse should imply that.

Contact information kept semi-private

To keep my contact information personal, I need a few things. First, I need different identifiers that I can pass out to different people and companies - a different one for everyone. Next, I need to know what identifier was used to contact me when it happens. Lastly, I need the ability to expire an identifier on my end if I decide it has been compromised.

This is how it looks in practice: I give out a phone number to a company because they request one. No problem. They pass it on to another company I do not wish to be in contact with. Now when Company B tries to call me, I recognise the number they used as the one I gave to Company A. I decide then that I no longer wish to deal with Company A or their associates Company B if this is how they treat my contact information. I terminate the number and it can no longer be used by either of them to contact me because my phone never bothers to ring for that number any more. Everyone else, who has a different number for me, can still contact me.

In theory, the same system would work with ordinary old caller ID and caller-specific blocking, but then a pest can keep calling me as long as they call from a different number every time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Somehow I got un-listed from telemarketer call lists a while ago.
PPS - I'm not sure how. I never registered on the Do Not Call list.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Kitty

Via ICanHasCheezburger.com, this is possibly the cutest Friday Zombie Blog ever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd embed the image here, but that feels like stealing.
PPS - Only because the image is the entire content I'm after.

My phone breaks every six months

Can I get free repairs on my phone if its express warranty has expired but it is faulty? I didn't damage it, and the fault is not expected wear and tear, so I think I'm in the right here. However, I was told that I would have to pay for repairs due to the warranty expiry. I don't think I should have to pay to repair goods that were sold to me and exhibited a manufacturing fault just weeks after the warranty expired. Right?

This is the same phone that was repaired back in January, and 3 Mobile was very helpful then, given that we were just six months into the warranty period. Now it seems this Nokia 6288 is designed to fail after six months or so, and I'm not on board with that. If I am sold a phone on a two year plan, I expect that handset to last for two years without the need for repairs, especially if it is well cared-for.

I guess if it develops a fault after the warranty period, that might not be considered a manufacturing problem.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My next port of call is the service centre in Milton.
PPS - They will at least give me a free quote on repairs.

People's Day, but no Ekka

Today is a public holiday, but only in the small area around Brisbane. It's supposed to be so that people can visit the yearly Ekka event, but Deb and I chose to drive up to the Sunshine Coast to Underwater World instead. I hadn't been there in years, but Deb had never been at all. The thing that struck me most today were the lips of the sawfish. The thing looks like it has a goofy grin from underneath. It's weird, but quite amusing. We also took the behind the scenes working area tour where we saw turtles in "dry dock", a young octopus and touched a little baby shark.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Shark skin is surprisingly soft.
PPS - At least while they're still babies.

Everyone's booting Linux

I've decided to install Ubuntu Linux on this other work machine, since it seems we might be here a while longer. My co-workers are also at least considering it too. I've been meaning to install it at home for some time, but haven't managed to free enough space yet on the old hard drive. Also, because the drive is old, I'm not that confident about its ability to survive a re-partitioning.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I get a new PC, I'd be less anxious about it.
PPS - That might be sooner rather than later.

Pushing buttons: finger or thumb?

Do you push buttons with your index finger or thumb? I only noticed that I had started using my thumb after Cory Doctorow mentioned it somewhere (I think). He claimed it was the result of using our thumbs to write text messages on our phones all the time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It starts feeling funny when you start noticing.
PPS - That's probably true either way.

To work from home

Today, since I am sick, I am running an experiment. Can I actually work from home, given that all our significant work artefacts are online? Well, I'm going to give it a shot. The things I will not have access to are my work email and the timesheet I'm supposed to fill out on Fridays. I'll probably survive it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I will be dressed for work, in an attempt to keep me focused.
PPS - That's part of the experiment too.

Update: It turns out to be technically possible to work from home, but if I want to do it again, I'll need a much better computer.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Haiku

I find this amusing.

It's zombie poetry recited by zombies, presumably for zombies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It also seems to be an ad for a book.
PPS - I think I've got the gist of it, though.

Low-cost music transmission

I was thinking a while ago of getting an audio streaming device for home. It's like a private radio connected to your digital music collection on your PC. They're relatively expensive and most of them are more than a little trouble to set up. Then I got to thinking: what if I just got an FM transmitter and had it play my music on shuffle all the time? I already have radios around the house to receive that signal, so there would be no further cost on that end.

The disadvantages would be that I'd have no remote control over the music, so I can't skip a song I don't want to hear right now. However, that's the same as what happens with the radio right now, except that they're not always playing music I've personally selected. There may also be a problem of licensing, since I would be technically re-broadcasting music without permission, and other people could listen in.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They may even ask me to pay royalties.
PPS - I probably won't bother.

A thought about Facebook

I'm not much into Facebook as a social place. I'm mostly using it to collect and categorise my friends like Pokemon. Gotta catch 'em all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now if only I could send them into battle...
PPS - Knowing Facebook, you probably can, but I don't know how.

Nappies for Russia

Before Sunday I didn't know there was any such thing as a "nappy nerd". Apparently, though, there are women who gather on the web to talk about their preferences and experiences with various nappy brands and types, their own practices when changing nappies and so on. When these women (and possibly some men, I don't personally know) heard about poor baby hygiene conditions in Russia, they got the word out and did something about it. They got companies involved to donate goods and services, provided many cloth nappies themselves, and are currently shipping them to Russia under the straightforward charity name of "Nappies for Russia". Chances are good that the word will spread further and other mothers in need around the world will benefit from this nascent charity.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is what happens when a passion collides with a need.
PPS - For those who speak US English, "nappy" = "diaper".

The Corporation

Yesterday, Deb and I watched The Corporation, which I realise is five years old now, but it did get me thinking. I liked the analysis of the mindset of corporations in general that likened them to psychopaths - if they are legal persons, they need to be treated more like a responsible, thinking adult, and the shareholders need to be accountable for its actions.

The other idea that hit me was that of going "carbon neutral" as an organisation. It may be a noble goal, but if everyone else is producing carbon on balance, and you're neutral, well, you're not actually helping, are you? You're not making it worse, but that's like standing to the side of a street fight pointing at yourself to say "See? I'm not fighting!" while doing nothing to break it up.

In general, I think the film did a good job of demonising corporations, which I assume was the goal. I didn't expect even-handed treatment of the subject matter, of course, so I don't consider myself well informed now, but maybe I'm half informed.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't know where you'd go for even-handed treatment of this subject.
PPS - Maybe an encyclopedia.

An idea for a t-shirt

I want to print these runes on a t-shirt:



Anyone who can read it should be mildly insulted, but they only have themselves to blame.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, alright. It says "You are such a nerd".
PPS - It may be slightly non-standard runic spelling, by the way.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Full body tattoos

A guy called Rick is getting full-body tattoos to look like a zombie. Extreme and permanent.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It does look pretty cool so far.
PPS - But it might limit his employment opportunities.

Psychic competition

Deb made an interesting observation while flipping channels on TV the other night. On the Channel 7 show "The One", many alleged psychics take part in challenges to determine who is the best of them all. But if they're really psychics, shouldn't all but one of them have quit immediately, knowing who was going to win?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If there was only one real psychic, though, the others wouldn't know to quit.
PPS - The same would be true if none were true psychics, though.

These are a few of my favourite things

A day full of my favourite foods would look like this:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs on toast with orange juice.
Morning tea: a Snickers bar.
Lunch: egg and lettuce sandwich with iced mocha to drink.
Afternoon tea: pumpkin scones topped with strawberry jam and cream.
Dinner: spring rolls entree followed by chicken enchiladas as main course.
Dessert: cheesecake and a hot chocolate.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now I'm hungry.
PPS - Feel free to play along in the comments if you like.

DVD ripping vs CD ripping

I think someone in the portable media player industry needs to take a stand on DVD ripping for mobile viewing. They should provide tools to copy DVDs to their media player and dare the movie houses to respond. It's silly to suggest that I can copy this (music) disc for personal use on the go, but not this (movie) disc when I own both of them.

I think the main argument at the moment is that they have set up systems to keep you from doing so, and breaking those systems has become illegal.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not a popular argument.
PPS - But I'm sure they'd do the same to CDs if they had the chance.

Random thoughts rapid fire

I've accumulated a few thoughts that don't warrant expansion into full blog posts, but I also don't want to throw them away. So, here they are in quick succession:

• I wonder if the IRLED trick for hiding your face from cameras would work to hide your number plate from speed cameras too.


• I wonder if it would be relatively easy to adapt the UFO: Alien Invasion game engine for a zombie-themed squad combat game.


• If Spiderman was really going to have organic web shooters, they would more likely be spinarets near his butt than conveniently located in his hands.


• I think it would be funny to reverse the internals of a car so that it looks like it's driving backwards.


• I think we resent rock stars who destroy their lives because we would gladly trade our lives for theirs and not destroy them.


• While going through airport security screening, I would have appreciated having a belt with a non-metallic buckle.


• I'm tired of seeing the message on Amazon that "You qualify for a free trial of Amazon Prime", because I don't. I tried. Amazon is not checking whether I qualify, but assuming I do until I apply.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may have said some of this before.
PPS - If so, I apologise.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Mowercycle

My zombie news feed occasionally throws me something really unusual. This is one of those days. The Mowercycle was referenced in another blog as the author's "zombie apocalypse weapon of choice", which is how it showed up here. Basically, it's a pedal-powered version of an old push mower. I actually can't imagine it being much good against the undead, but it caught my eye as a great alternative to petrol-powered mowers. Also, it might be just the thing to get the kids to pitch in around the yard.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now all it needs is an baling attachment.
PPS - Hopefully it's not difficult to ride uphill, either.

Songbird media manager

Today I was going to post some praise of Songbird, the open source media manager based on Mozilla Firefox. That plan has changed because of two incidents:

1. Even with the "MTP" device plugin loaded, Songbird can't connect to my Zen Micro or even seem to detect it. This is forgivable for now, because Songbird is still in beta.

2. I tried Songbird as an alternative to iTunes for Deb's iPod. The intention was that it would not try to erase the iPod contents just because it connected to a different computer. Though it does allow manual management of iPod contents relatively well, it refuses to synchronise the full contents automatically without erasing the device first. This is not an accident or a requirement of the device - it is a deliberate sabotage as bad as what Apple does with iTunes.

I suppose this crippling was done either at the behest of Apple or in order to avoid their wrath, but I think it's a bad idea any way you look at it. This decision makes Songbird only slightly more useful than iTunes instead of an awesome alternative.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I was also unable to get Songbird to rip a CD, despite this being a standard feature of media managers. No plugins existed to do any ripping either, as far as I could tell.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I will probably continue to use it, though.
PPS - Because slightly better is still better.

Blocking

Blocking certain websites from within your company network seems like a good idea. There are certainly some that pose a direct threat to network security, and they should be kept at bay. The trouble with taking these steps is that it quickly becomes a power issue, and it is easily abused, or at least taken too far. When someone notices that a few employees spend five minutes per day checking personal email on sites like GMail or Yahoo, someone in power cranks the handle and network access is locked down further. When you squeeze like that, some people take it on themselves to fight back, which is the start of a battle nobody wants.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is all harder than it seems, of course.
PPS - Our internet policy at work is notoriously limited.

Tiny sheep and shepherds

I think I'd like to have a screensaver that simulates little sheep flocks and tiny shepherds taking care of them. I don't know why the idea appeals to me. It just does.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess it's peaceful.
PPS - It reminds me of a computer game, but right now I can't think which one.

Google Contact Sync?

I want my GMail contacts synchronised with my phone, and I want help finding and merging duplicates. Since Nokia PC Suite already synchronises with Outlook, I just need a way to get GMail contacts to Outlook and merge them easily. With the recent introduction of "My Contacts" to the GMail address book, I suspect someone at Google is planning a GMail Contact Sync much like Google Calendar Sync. Hopefully after that they will come together as a Google Outlook Sync application. This does, however, still leave out the duplicate finding and merging functionality that I require.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've started organising my GMail and Facebook contacts into groups.
PPS - It turns out I need at least "family", "extended family" and "very extended family" to represent my relatives.

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

It won't be up for much longer (free, anyway) but if you have the time and bandwidth for it, go now to watch Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:

It's pretty funny stuff, but after a few more hours you'll have to pay to download or wait for the DVD.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Dr Horrible is an aspiring evil genius.
PPS - With a crush on the girl at the laundromat.

A plug for Midsummer Night's Dream

I meant to do this yesterday to give everyone the maximum time to act, but my weekend got a bit away from me. Anyway, on Friday night, Debbie and I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Harvest Rain Theatre Company. It was great. Sets and costumes were top notch, but the performances were really outstanding. Hermia and Helena had particular enthusiasm, backed strongly by Lysander and Demetrius. The stand-out moments, however, are undoubtedly in the final scene, the spectacular, hammy, over-the-top performance of "Pyramus and Thisbe". I bust a gut laughing.

The play is still being performed until the 26th - just one more week. If you plan to go, book sooner rather than later.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I highly recommend it.
PPS - Obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this.

Art, duplication and genius

The robot Erasmus in the book Sandworms of Dune literally does not understand that a stroke-for-stroke reproduction of a Vincent van Gogh painting is not a work of genius equal to the original. He has a materialistic viewpoint that says items are equivalent if they are molecularly identical, and therefore they share all traits. If one is a work of genius, so is the other. But why is he mistaken?

If van Gogh himself had been hooked up to an aparatus that duplicated his brush strokes at the time of the original painting, would the two be works of genius equal to each other, or would it only be the one that his own physical hand had touched? Then what if his motions were recorded and later replayed to produce a third painting? Is there an abstract concept that makes the work priceless and its reproductions worthless? Does the existence of such faithful reproductions devalue the original as a work of art?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not so sure now that Erasmus was wrong.
PPS - Mostly because I can't define the distinguishing concept.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie lawn sculpture

In case you aren't frightened enough by your own house when you get home late at night, consider installing a zombie lawn sculpture.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also effective at scaring away dogs and small children.
PPS - And perfect at hallowe'en.

Agreement Bot could do my job

Some days at work I feel like my job could be adequately performed by a cardboard cutout that says "Uh huh", "Yeah", "Okay", "Right" and other assenting statements in random order. Today may be one of those days.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not every day.
PPS - Just when I'm doing more discussing than coding.

Sick

I'm a bit unwell this morning, so I don't know if I'll be at work all day. It's some kind of sudden stomach upset, and I also feel like I've broken a fever. One thing that worries me is that we had chicken shishkebabs for dinner last night, and I've had food poisoning from those before. For now, I've got my ginger ale to settle my stomach and an escape route planned just in case.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - When I'm sick, I often can't picture what it's like to be well.
PPS - And vice versa.

Dumb software vs smart software

There is a difference between dumb software and smart software that people usually characterise as software vs people. That is, people assume that if it's a smart action or shows some common sense, a person must have done it.

If you get sent a bill for $0.02, that is dumb software. If you never hear about the bill, that might be smart software or it might be a person. Both are capable of weighing the cost of mailing the bill against the benefits of having it paid and deciding it's not worth the trouble. In contrast, it could be a very dim person who obediently mails out the bill regardless of the small amount.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are a few stories around of bills for zero dollars.
PPS - Definitely dumb software.

Bales of grass

One thing I saw everywhere in South Dakota was round bales of hay in fields. It got me to thinking that it would be cool to have my lawnmower at home bale up the grass as I go.

As I mow, when the baler gets full, I can just crank a lever to drop the bale and continue on. Later, when I'm done, I can go around and pick up the bales to put in the bin - no plastic bags necessary. Also the time for the whole job should be slightly shorter.

One disadvantage that leaps to mind is that a bale-making lawnmower would be a more complex machine than a traditional mower, and would be more likely as a result to break down.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It would probably be more expensive too.
PPS - I still want one.

I have returned home

I've got a lot on my mind at the moment, so I'm primed for a big post this morning. I don't think I'll let it get that far out of hand, though.

For starters, Debbie and I have returned safely from the United States as of Wednesday morning. I'll try to get photos up online soon. The trip was great and jetlag didn't affect us too much on the way home. The excited chatter about the trip may have all been spent on Anthony when I got back to the house, so you won't necessarily have to cop that unless you ask to.

It was my birthday yesterday, as it seems all of my Facebook contacts are aware. Thanks for the well-wishes, everyone.

I'm back at work today, and I have yet to open my email. I'm not looking forward to the volume of accumulated messages, but I expect most of them will be quite irrelevant.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've got a few new ideas I'll post soon.
PPS - I guess travel can open your mind.

Friday Zombie Blogging - The Last Supper

For your amusement, please find enclosed a zombified version of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. Enjoy!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Link via BoingBoing.
PPS - It was a while ago.

Virtual Private Network

I'd love to be able to connect all my computers over the Internet as if they were on one local network. It would be handy sometimes, especially if I've left a file at work. I could also print things at home while I'm at the office or even while I travel. Setting up such an arrangement, however, is a bit beyond me at the moment.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think it would involve the OpenVPN tool.
PPS - I need to do some more research.

Terms of sale

With the last DVD player I bought, I specifically asked whether it would play region 1 (USA) discs, and was assured that it would. It does not. Now it turns out I would actually be entitled to a refund, even now, because by asking the question, region 1 capability became part of the terms of sale under "fitness for purpose". Unfortunately for me, I can't prove that I asked that question or got that answer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Next time I'm getting the answer in writing.
PPS - And taking a region 1 disc to test.

Get things off your mind to get to sleep

Stress causes sleep loss. If it gets to that stage for you, think hard about what you're doing to yourself. You need to be able at least to put down your job when you go home at night. Better yet is the goal to have absolutely nothing on your mind all day every day, but that's much harder. Anyway, if you do find yourself lying awake at night with your mind racing, make a list. Just write down everything that comes to you so you can pick it back up in the morning. The reason you're thinking yourself awake is that you know you're going to forget something important. If you write it down to look at in the morning, suddenly your mind is able to let it go and you can sleep.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I am familiar with relaxation-inducing lists myself.
PPS - Sometimes I wish I'd realise it would help sooner.

The Sunday Mok - Sightseeing

This week was the sightseeing portion of the trip. On Wednesday we drove through the South Dakota Badlands, which is basically a lot of hills made of clay, and made me briefly consider the subtitle "Nice Butte" for this post. I don't think the Badlands actually count as buttes, though.

We also went through Custer State Park where we got up close to some bison, more commonly known as buffalo. That was pretty cool. Also on show were white-tailed deer, pronghorns and prairie dogs (very cute).

We actually saw Mount Rushmore on the 3rd, which it turns out is when their fireworks display is. As it also turns out, Jefferson's nose, rather than Lincoln's, is at a better angle for sparks. ;) I was shooting one second exposures from the hip during the show, mostly because I didn't want to focus on the photography and miss the experience. I think most of my photos were blurry as a result.



Other sites of interest included "Wall Drug", one of the most famous drug stores in the world (apparently) and a Cold War "Minuteman II" missile site, though it wasn't the actual silo.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I got a bit sick on the return journey.
PPS - We begin flying back to Australia on Monday morning.

Independence Day at Mount Rushmore

Today is Independence Day in the USA, and if all has gone according to plan, I should be enjoying it at Mount Rushmore, hopefully watching fireworks shoot out of Abraham Lincoln's nose. Or maybe not. I don't know exactly how it's going to work, but I have been led to believe that there will be fireworks here, and that's the way I'd do it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Under no circumstances should I be allowed near decorative explosives.
PPS - There's just too much that can go wrong.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Power Generation

This article from Firefox News suggests that zombies, if properly restrained and motivated, can be used as a nearly infinite power source. Just put them on a treadmill, connect that to a generator and put a tasty brain morsel just out of reach.

I can imagine this as a creepy plot point in a Twilight Zone episode, where some company starts selling self-contained home power systems after a zombie apocalypse. They're just big black boxes that generate a constant stream of energy, but someone opens one and then it's all "Soylent Energy is people!".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or "undead people", to be precise.
PPS - I'd want my generator box heavily armoured.

Pedestrian GPS

I can think of a few situations when GPS in my phone would have been very useful. Before I had a car, during my university days, occasionally I had to take public transport to odd areas of town for a meeting or a party. My usual practice was to print a list of the bus stops and sit near the front of the vehicle ticking them off on a clipboard as we passed, then using printed directions from WhereIs.com to find my way after that. With GPS, I could have just kept track of our position on my phone, got off the bus and headed along as directed. Easy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or "easier".
PPS - Assuming it's accurate and the batteries hold out, too.

Training for what?

About once a month a training schedule comes via email at work listing a session called "Harassment, Discrimination and Bullying by [Head of HR]". Despite the very obvious joke, nobody in charge seems in a rush to change the title to include, say, the word "Awareness".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, I haven't been to one of those sessions recently.
PPS - Perhaps the curriculum has changed.

Saving time through programming

I love my tools and I love making new ones. My note-taking tool is steadily evolving into something more powerful as I consider new ways it could be used. I am currently using it for time tracking, general note-taking, a todo list and work diary keeping (which comes out more like a private live blog on disk). As a result of using it for project-based time keeping, I wrote another tool to generate timesheets, including uncounted time for the current day. It's come out even better than both previous tools I've used for that purpose. Neither of these programs are particularly large or impressive, but each one saves me many minutes a day.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Computers are good at taking over the mundane tasks of your day.
PPS - That's pretty much what they're for.