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Linkdump
» Mailorder Beer
A plug and a bit of a bookmark for myself -
Beerstore in NZ does a great job of distributing beer of all kinds delivered to your door.
I've used them a few times now and they're quick and efficient - I even had one delivery with broken bottles which the couriers obviously screwed up and within a couple of days
Beerstore had another order on my doorstep no questions asked. Now thats service !
» Cult Calculator Turns 30
Even though I'm rubbish at all things mathematical I do like calculators. The HP 12c is a
cult-classic and its turned 30 years old. Still going strong in the finance world.
» Making Facebook Self Healing
Pretty fascinating - I'm guessing you get to a certain size and economies of scale mean this is the only viable option -
Making Facebook Self Healing.
» 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.
» 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?'
» 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.
» 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.
» 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'
» 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.
» 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.
» 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.
» 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.
» Operations Competitive Advantage
Those infrastructure guys beavering away in the background really are important -
Operations is a competitive advantage.
» 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.
» FitPC
Tiny PC -
FitPC. Looks like an ideal way to drive a kiosk or display system.
» 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.
» 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.
» 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.
» Free the Jena Six
Craziness -
Free The Jena Six. Its truly disturbing this kind of thing still goes on in the US.
Friday 27 April 2012 at 5:04 pm
I mentioned
Tiny Houses way back in 2006 - theres now a doco - posted in its entirety on Youtube. Its definitely worth a watch and theres some inspirational ideas for efficient use of space in here too -
Friday 27 April 2012 at 4:51 pm
Its been awhile since I posted anything let alone anything techie related.
To that end, some interesting stuff -
Seems like only yesterday that NT4 was the new cool thing (at least with SP3!) - but now the
new Windows 2012 Server Beta labs are available.
An insight into
Facebooks release management process.
A view on
Microsofts new Cloud Management tools from a systems admin.
Wednesday 29 February 2012 at 08:23 am
So much spleen, so little time.
Looking to upgrade my old 2008 Mac Mini to
OS X 10.7 (aka Lion) with a particular view towards
Front Row improvements. To my horror I noticed some notes indicating this was to be the last iteration of Front Row and that it was being dropped.
Aaargh.
The reason I hadn't discovered this earlier was that my Mini didn't have enough RAM to upgrade. Having bought some more memory I was keen to get back to the upgrade.
I guess there are two things going on here -
- Pulling Front Row will allow Apple to focus on Apple TV
- Apple have an awesome new Front Row replacement (squeee!)
I'd say its 90% about #1 and 10% about #2 - I'm happy to be proven wrong about this though.
My Mac Mini setup is great - apart from the age and inability to deal with 1080p it works really well. It starts up, logs in, auto-starts Elgatos EyeTV and drives my 32" LCD TV. A click of my Logitech Harmony and I can bring up Front Row, play my media (still ropey mkv support - whats with that?), play music and view photos all through a single easy to control interface.
Friends have bought the AppleTV and do rave about it but it just seems like another gizmo locked into another bit of the Apple eco-system. I'd rather get a Western Digital TV which is much more 'open' and I can playback content from my Mini as required. Even then, a WD TV can't do live TV thereby limiting its usefulyness.
What is the point of bundling a remote control if all it controls is iTunes ? How do you use a remote to switch froom iTunes to iPhoto or anything else that'll play media ?
Sigh.
Now if AppleTV built in a tuner, provided some pvr capability and enabled a plug-in architecture for media playback that might be a different story.
As for
Plex and
XMBC - they're fine efforts but compared to Front Row they lack elegence and simplicity. About all they have going for them is the ability to handle whatever media is thrown at them (and theres still no EyeTV integration). Oddly Plex is meant to be more 'Mac' like but XMBC is actually more polished. I know there are skins available to 'Front Row-ify' both of these tools but the process to download and install them isn't even remotely friendly - these tools both appear to have been written with tinkerers in mind; I don't mind tinkering but the reality is I have better things to do with my time - which is why I have a Mac and not a nerd-tastic Linux media centre.
And don't get me started on the Apple remote Menu button not doing anything post upgrade.
Grrr.
Saturday 25 February 2012 at 5:46 pm
Its been a long while since I've made a post venting spleen.
The iPad has effectively driven me to it though.
Why can't iOS apps follow some decades old interface standards for the sake of consistency ?
Heres my most aggravating example -
Flipboard. I actually really enjoy the application - its free and it just works the way I'd expect it to. It does have some annoying interface quirks though. Top of my list - why are urls not clickable ? In the 21st century having to 'visit the original' article which spawns a crippled browser that still doesn't give you a clickable url is surely punishable by something very nasty indeed ?
If the 'app-ification' of computing means roll-your-own interfaces I'll give it a miss.
Whats worse is that if this trend moves over to OS X I'll just give up upgrading. If I wanted 'At Ease' as a user-interface I'd have stuck with a Mac LCII in a teaching lab circa 1993.
Postscript - since first venting, Flipboard urls seem to be much better handled now and the book metaphor seems to be improving.
Sunday 12 February 2012 at 11:58 am
Its been awhile since I posted some links -
Charles Stross (Sci-Fi Author, his
Singularity Sky is awesome) discusses
Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061-2561 AD.
Pretty fascinating -
Networking Needs a VMWare. Some of this stuff is on its way . . .
The future looks bright -
Building a new filesystem - ReFS for Windows 8.
This reminds me so much of William Gibsons 'Bigend Books' (
Pattern Recognition,
Spook Country,
Zero History) I had to double check it wasn't fiction -
Made Better in Japan. Theres also a touch of Umberto Ecos '
Travels in Hyperreality'. Remember, people - it has to be better than the real thing !
I caught this over on Boing Boing - pretty fascinating -
Bringing a 50,000-ton forging press back to Life. Makes you wonder what other wholly unique mega-gizmos exist in the world ?
Saturday 11 February 2012 at 12:26 pm
Its been awhile since I last posted (October 2011 seems so long ago !). To that end I figured I'd get to posting and aim for, at the very least, two posts a month in 2012 (and I have to catch up for January).
As I've gotten into photography I've found a couple of really useful and interesting sites with good, practical reviews and wonderful pictures.
So, if you have time go check out
Kirk Tuck,
David Taylor-Hughes and
Thom Hogan.
Some interesting insight into working as a professional photographer, as well as information on a range of cameras - from film to digital and thoughts on the new compact-camera that are 'good-enough' for just about anyone.
Kirk has great pictures (particularly portraits) and is enthused by the new Micro-Four Thirds cameras. David does wonderful 'stock photography' and tends to favour the new wave of mirrorless cameras that offer the best bang for buck sensor-wise, although he recently ran a series of his old medium-format film stuff which goes to show its more about the photographer than the camera.
If you're after all things Nikon, both old and new, you can't go to far wrong with Thom Hogans site.
If you're interested in a couple of communities to help you get into the photograpy 'thing' take a look at
mu-43 and
seriouscompacts. Both sites were started by Amin Sabat; the first focuses on Micro-Four Thirds cameras (primarily Olympus and Panasonic) and the second focuses on all types of enthusiast compact cameras from a variety of manufacturers (Sony, Ricoh, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax). They're both pretty friendly sites and you can get all sorts of good advice on the forums.
Sunday 16 October 2011 at 2:40 pm
A plug and a bit of a bookmark for myself -
Beerstore in NZ does a great job of distributing beer of all kinds delivered to your door.
I've used them a few times now and they're quick and efficient - I even had one delivery with broken bottles which the couriers obviously screwed up and within a couple of days
Beerstore had another order on my doorstep no questions asked. Now thats service !
Sunday 16 October 2011 at 10:56 am
Another medium format star, I'd always been tempted by Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) cameras since starting down the analogue film path but didn't really know where to start. Both Mamiya (the 'modern' C220/330) and Yashica (quite a lineup that mirrors Rolleis) had some quality candidates in this field but the true legend was the
Rolleiflex (and its cheaper cousin the Rolleicord).
The only catch was that the Rollei has achieved a certain cult status among TLR and medium format fans so finding one in decent condition for a modest price wasn't going to be easy. I'd regularly see them going for $500NZ+ and up to $1200 for ones in really good condition.
A few months after my search began a friend of mine mentioned his father had one for sale - turns out he had bought it in the 50's and carried the thing through the Himalayas and New Zealand alps so it had quite a colourful history. Apart from a little wear and tear it was in great 'user-grade' condition - leather, light-seals, speeds, shutter and meter were all in good nick. This was a later model Rollei with a Carl Zeiss f3.5 70mm lens and a selenium-cell light meter (the expensive f2.8 models were out of my league!).
Loading the film is a little tricky but there are plenty of useful
YouTube videos to help a Rollei newbie load film. The biggest hassle I find is the film advance and cocking handle doesn't easily lend itself to muscle-memory and can lead inadvertently to double-exposures. Definitely have a bit of a practise with the wind and half-cock reversal before you load film just so you've got it nailed before you go blowing expensive film.
I have to say that using a Rollei TLR is a great experience, even after fifty years it works just as smoothly as ever and the images it takes are stunning with the wonderful 6x6 framing adding to the overall filmy-goodness -
Useful Rolleiflex links
here,
here and
here.
