Some Collected Bits of Humour
Monday 14 June 2010 at 8:59 pm Brilliant sign - Safety First.Create your own labels - Beer Labelizer.
These two are hilarious - Garfunkel and Oates. Check out all their videos.
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Linkdump
» What is a karonkka?
A friend of mine recently returned from Finland where he was examining a PhD defence - the process is called a Karonkka.
As well as getting decked out in a full-on tux & tails they actually had ceremonial swords to boot. How cool is that ?
Be sure to read Shauns other posts on the nature of research, patents, science and technology in New Zealand. | ¶
As well as getting decked out in a full-on tux & tails they actually had ceremonial swords to boot. How cool is that ?
Be sure to read Shauns other posts on the nature of research, patents, science and technology in New Zealand. | ¶
» TED Talks
A friend of mine (cheers Eddie!) pointed me at the excellent TED Talk series.
Subscribe to their RSS feed now.
Theres always something you can set aside 15 minutes of your time to learn about or dump to your mp3 player to listen/watch while you commute.
Recent favourites of mine have included - 'Build a brain in a supercomputer', 'Our buggy moral code', 'What brain damage can point out about our mind', 'Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet?' | ¶
Subscribe to their RSS feed now.
Theres always something you can set aside 15 minutes of your time to learn about or dump to your mp3 player to listen/watch while you commute.
Recent favourites of mine have included - 'Build a brain in a supercomputer', 'Our buggy moral code', 'What brain damage can point out about our mind', 'Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet?' | ¶
» Useful Ways to be Persuasive
I realised my Linkdump category hadn't been updated in a looong time so I'll kick start it with this link to some common-sense ways to be persuasive.
As per the link comments in the preamble, its a bit pop-psych but theres some useful stuff to help get your head around how you can get your point of view across to other people. | ¶
As per the link comments in the preamble, its a bit pop-psych but theres some useful stuff to help get your head around how you can get your point of view across to other people. | ¶
» Because you need to know - Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout
It'll be interesting to see if the New York Times keeps this table up to date - Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout.
See which financial institutions receive money and how much they get. | ¶
See which financial institutions receive money and how much they get. | ¶
» Good Music - Le Pop by Katzenjammer
Discovered while reading Popmatters list of Also-rans for 2008 - Katzenjammers 'Le Pop' is one of those joyful albums by a band determined to put a stupid grin on your face at all costs or die trying (cf early Violent Femmes, Crowded House, Pogues).
Check out a couple of videos on YouTube - 'A bar in Amsterdam' and 'Aint no thang' | ¶
Check out a couple of videos on YouTube - 'A bar in Amsterdam' and 'Aint no thang' | ¶
» Good Books - The Shock Doctrine
Another excellent read from Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine. I have to admit I'm only halfway through this book - mans inhumanity to man makes for tough going - however its pretty much compulsory reading for anyone that wonders how the worlds free market economy's were lead down the track they're currently on.
Essentially what Klein does is posit the idea that free market economies and reforms can only be forced through on the back of an external crisis (sometimes real and sometimes engineered). As a result those people best placed to take advantage of the reforms do extraordinarily well and the vast majority of us end up worse off - with globalisation these disparities keep getting worse as multi-nationals cease to be bound by georgraphy.
As the recent recession and American bank / finance / auto bail-outs have shown - the free market has failed to a certain extent - their own calls for deregulation have bit them on the ass and now they're going cap in hand to the very regulatory bodies they once reviled for assistance.
So even when things go wrong for the wheelers and dealers of the world - they still come out on top. | ¶
Essentially what Klein does is posit the idea that free market economies and reforms can only be forced through on the back of an external crisis (sometimes real and sometimes engineered). As a result those people best placed to take advantage of the reforms do extraordinarily well and the vast majority of us end up worse off - with globalisation these disparities keep getting worse as multi-nationals cease to be bound by georgraphy.
As the recent recession and American bank / finance / auto bail-outs have shown - the free market has failed to a certain extent - their own calls for deregulation have bit them on the ass and now they're going cap in hand to the very regulatory bodies they once reviled for assistance.
So even when things go wrong for the wheelers and dealers of the world - they still come out on top. | ¶
» Good Books - Killing Rommel by Stephen Pressfield
Another quick summer read - Killing Rommel is a return to form for Stephen Pressfield - his 'Gates of Fire' was a masterpiece but after that I found 'Tides of War' and 'Last of the Amazons' to be a little dry.
His latest novel tells the tale of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and their various exploits in the North African campaign, culminating in a mission to track down and kill Rommel. | ¶
His latest novel tells the tale of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and their various exploits in the North African campaign, culminating in a mission to track down and kill Rommel. | ¶
» Good Books - Old Mans War by John Scalzi
My linkdump sidebar has been a little stale so I thought I'd fill it with a few short reviews.
Over Christmas I was looking for some lightweight reading material and Old Mans War certainly did the trick. Easy to read, great pacing, nice ideas and a milieu that you can't wait to immerse yourself in again (which I did by reading Ghost Brigades soon afterwards).
Both books focus on humanities move to colonise space, the competing species struggling for the same limited resources, the inevitable conflicts that arise and the rather unique solution humanity has come up with to ensure its survival.
Only complaint would have to be the 'el cheapo' Tor publishing values - cramped text and tiny margins made both books tough on the eyes. | ¶
Over Christmas I was looking for some lightweight reading material and Old Mans War certainly did the trick. Easy to read, great pacing, nice ideas and a milieu that you can't wait to immerse yourself in again (which I did by reading Ghost Brigades soon afterwards).
Both books focus on humanities move to colonise space, the competing species struggling for the same limited resources, the inevitable conflicts that arise and the rather unique solution humanity has come up with to ensure its survival.
Only complaint would have to be the 'el cheapo' Tor publishing values - cramped text and tiny margins made both books tough on the eyes. | ¶
» IBM Model M
You know you want one - IBM Model M keyboards.
Now I know I'm not the only keyboard nut on the interweb. | ¶
Now I know I'm not the only keyboard nut on the interweb. | ¶
» Retro Remake - Wizball
Dust off the joystick - Retrospec has remade Wizball for Windows.
If you had a Commodore64 in the 80's then chances are you had Wizball - one of the classic games on the platform. | ¶
If you had a Commodore64 in the 80's then chances are you had Wizball - one of the classic games on the platform. | ¶
» Operations Competitive Advantage
Those infrastructure guys beavering away in the background really are important - Operations is a competitive advantage.
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» Lessig: Corruption Lecture
Highly recommended viewing - Lawrence Lessig new ten year project is to tackle Corruption - view his presentation here. Starts a little slow but builds momentum and its an entertaining presentation.
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» DHTML Arkanoid
If you grew up in the mid to late 80's then you would have heard of Arkanoid - now it can be played in your web browser as pure DHTML Arkanoid.
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» Retro Mac Wordpress Theme
If you use Wordpress try out the Retro Mac Wordpress Theme in all its one-bit glory. Another brilliant domain name too.
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» For Lego and Apple Fanboys
Nifty - Young Woz and Jobs Playset goes on sale in two days. Goes to show that a little creativity goes a looong way on the interweb.
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» Free the Jena Six
Craziness - Free The Jena Six. Its truly disturbing this kind of thing still goes on in the US.
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» Groupware Bad
JWZ opines - Groupware Bad. As it turns out the Hula project went nowhere and spawned a fork called Bongo. Before over-complicating your application be sure to read about what users really want.
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» How the Meter is Measured
Nice infographics - Weights and Measures. The US is keeping great company sticking with the imperial system. Check out their other awesome content at GoodMagazine.
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» A4 vs US Letter
'Sane versus insane' would appear to be a better summary - a great comparison of 'A4 vs US Letter' and how best to avoid getting caught out when laying out pages for print.
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Create your own labels - Beer Labelizer.
These two are hilarious - Garfunkel and Oates. Check out all their videos.
Pull a Word Doc Contents into a Database + More
Monday 14 June 2010 at 8:55 pm Pretty funky - Parsing a Word document with PL/SQL. Given DOCX is essentially a compound file its pretty neat that you can dismantle it.I'm a sucker for cool stationary - Paper and envelopes that look like icons.
Handy - Creating Active Directory Taskpads. Looks pretty straightforward.
All it takes is a little thought - Space Saving Furniture. Amazing stuff.
Impressive - SeaMicro - 512 servers in 10U.
New Header - Korokoro Dam Track
Sunday 23 May 2010 at 9:34 pm Since taking my last header picture I've acquired a couple more Olympus cameras - an OM-1n, Pen EES2 and a new EP1. Other manufacturers have fancier and better cameras but no one really seems to cover the breadth that Olympus achieved from the consumer Pen series in the 60's and 70's through to the Trip and pro-am OM in the 70's and 80's - they lost their way a bit in the 90's (although the OM 4Ti is regarded as one of the greatest manual SLR's ever) and 00's but came right at the tail end of 2009 with the revamped Pen EP1.The EP1 is a fantastic camera - cult retro look combined with nice handling it takes some beautiful shots (obviously limited by the takers ability in my case!). Initially I thought the biggest drawback would be a lack of flash but its low light capabilities are actually pretty impressive.
I find the biggest problem (and this applies to digital cameras in general) is that the immediate feedback means you use it less; or you use it more but you tend to keep less. With a film camera you just have to keep shooting to see what comes out. As a result I'm actually shooting more rolls of film than digital pictures. In general I'm enjoying the results of film a lot more than digital; particularly shooting in black and white.
So todays header is from my Pen FT and some Fuji Provia 100 film - taken while walking along the Korokoro Dam track near Petone (a Wellington suburb).
I've had to crop and scale the picture so you don't get the grain of the film as much as you should. If I'd had more time I'd have liked to mess around with the Depth of Field a little more to try and get a lot more of a blur in the background ('bokeh') but thats life.
I'll definitely try and get some EP1 shots up next time.
Grammer Tips from The Oatmeal
Sunday 09 May 2010 at 4:01 pm Great comic strips to help the grammatically challenged -Thoughts About Timescale + More
Sunday 09 May 2010 at 3:58 pm Nice article on time and how humanity needs to start thinking about the long-term - Eight Thoughts About Timescale.Brilliant - Toronto subway etiquette posters.
Nice chart - Stages of a Photographer. I think I'm at the 'Everything I shoot is rubbish' stage.
Charles Stross writes about the recent Adobe/Apple Flash spat - The Real Reason Steve Jobs Hates Flash.
ArsTechnica does a rather nice review of Ubuntu 10.04. As of v 7 or 8 its actually been pretty usable by a mere mortal (ie your parents).
dotfiles + More
Sunday 18 April 2010 at 5:26 pm A place to share Unix environment config files dotfiles.org. Great idea and resource. Shame I don't do much unix stuff anymore.All sorts of things are falling under Microsofts new 'Forefront' banner (ISA is probably the most well known) - now their meta-directory product is coming under the same brand Forefront Identity Lifecycle Manager. It still seems overly expensive but the feature-set does look enticing.
Nifty - Why you can't work at work. My most productive time is probably from 7 to 9am - after that my day becomes primarily interrupt driven.
The art of writing is starting to disappear - I'm not a great writer by any means but proof-reading colleagues written work does make me wonder what happened to the education system in the five to ten years I between my schooling and theirs. Writing well, creatively and with humour appears to be a niche Clothing for Correspondence are happy to fill - you send them an item of clothing and they'll write something for you. Their samples are great - particularly the references !
YouTube Music Video - Katzenjammer
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 09:04 am Pretty much their entire 'Le Pop' album is awesome - finding a corresponding decent live video is a bit tougher. Small P & S cameras shooting video is not a great recipe for audio/video goodness.Check them out doing - "To the Sea.
Full marks for striking rock poses with an accordion and smiling relentlessly throughout the performance.
Still waiting for them to tour in NZ - they'd kick-ass at one of our arts-festivals, wine-festivals or even St Patricks day festivities.
Come down-under Katzenjammer. I should start a petition.
Humour - Letters to Famous and Infamous People
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 07:21 am Via Boing Boing - a guy poses as a 10 year old and writes letters to some interesting people -Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people.
The letters and the replies will put a smile on even a jaded face.
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