Elucid

'A quick meme' of quotes

2006-08-30T22:01:00.000+10:00

Jason Kottke engages in what he delightfully calls 'a quick meme' (ten a penny these days, do one while you step into the kitchen for a snack) in which you look through random quotations until you find five that you like or relate to. Mine:

The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent. -Dr Smiley Blanton
It is not giving children more that spoils them; it is giving them more to avoid confrontation. -John Gray in Children Are From Heaven
Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty. -Jefferson Davis
It is not enough to aim; you must hit. -Italian Proverb
Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible. -Mark Jenkins in To Timbuktu

What will Apple do next?

2006-03-02T20:04:00.000+11:00

After Apple's hardly world-shaking and over-hyped presentation of its latest products - the Intel-inside Mac Mini and the iPod Hi-Fi (which is essentially an Apple branded set of speakers for the iPod) - I'd like to make my prediction as to what's coming next. Apple hasn't been annoucing all too many new products in the last few months. (I'm not counting the Intel-based computers, because the computers themselves aren't new.)

Apple is a bit short on form factors for the PC, really. They have desktops and laptops, as well as wild speculation about an Apple phone. No PDA (just wait) and no tablet PCs.

My prediction, therefore, is that Apple will release a tablet PC sometime this year. They will then busily imply that they invented the concept.

Cross Crescent Crystal

2005-12-05T16:57:00.000+11:00

The Red Cross is set to accept a third symbol for humanitarian operations - the red crystal, which'll be a red diamond on a white background. This is in addition to the red cross and the red crescent.

When you see the two current symbols together, it really reminds you of the symbols for Christianity and Islam, modified slightly. And, indeed, the Red Crystal is being introduced primarily so that Israel will stop using its national symbol, the Star of David, as a humanitarian sign.

Cross, Crescent, Crystal. I like the idea that there'll be a symbolically neutral sign.

Save Van Nguyen

2005-11-18T17:22:00.000+11:00

In two weeks' time (December 2), Singapore plans to hang the Australian citizen Van Nguyen. Nguyen was caught smuggling a little less than 400g of heroin into the country three years ago.

This was Nguyen's first offence. He confessed as soon as he could and assisted the police with their enquiries. He was hardly a big fish - he was trying to get money to help his identical twin brother, who was heavily in debt due to a drug addiction.

Any instance of the death penalty in any country is inhumane, fundamentally against the idea of human rights (right to life, for instance) and hopelessly anachronistic. Particularly with all the mitigating circumstances above, Singapore should not be executing Nguyen (or in fact anyone else, but that's another issue). He's a young man who made a mistake. What he did was wrong, but executing him would also be wrong.

He deserves a second chance. He doesn't deserve to die.

Amnesty International is running a campaign to get Singapore to commute Nguyen's death sentence. Here's their details on how to email the Singaporean Pm or how to SMS your support for Nguyen.

Breaking news: Web 2.0 helpful

2005-11-03T20:59:00.000+11:00

There are those who are cynical about the value of tags (TagTagger, for instance - link from Kottke). There are those who think they're a pointless buzzword. I, for one, am hooked.

Why? Since I started tagging my posts, my readership has shot up. Forty per cent of my top referral pages are tag-related pages. That's the power of Web 2.0. Don't fight it. Embrace the power.

Cup Fever: The Reckoning

2005-11-02T16:47:00.000+11:00

Astute readers will remember that on Monday I issued my tips for the Melbourne Cup:

Mr. Celebrity will win; and
Makybe Diva will not.

Makybe Diva won. As you might expect. And Mr. Celebrity, as well as not winning, came 23rd in a field of 24.

Your best bet at next year's Cup is to do the exact opposite of what I tell you to do.

Cup Fever

2005-10-31T22:56:00.000+11:00

Well, every man and his dog have tips for the Melbourne Cup, so I thought I might put mine down for the record.

23: Mr Celebrity. Trainer: Gai Waterhouse. Current odds: $18.80 Win, $5.30 Place.

Why did I pick him? A few reasons.

He's not the frontrunner, so I feel independent.
He's got fairly good odds, so I have a chance of winning.
I like the name.
I like the colours of the jockey's gear.
The trainer is Gai Waterhouse. Who could resist?

Makybe Diva? I honestly can't see her winning three in a row. Arguably, I'm one of those people who has no interest in horse racing whatsoever, but who suddenly becomes an expert the day before the Melbourne Cup. And last year I said Makybe Diva wouldn't get two in a row. Shows how much I know.

31/10/05 Links

2005-10-31T20:12:00.000+11:00

The Plateau is the official website of Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities - making him essentially in charge of Egyptian archaeological administration. Fascinating if, like me, you're an ancient history buff.
The Forbidden Library records banned and challenged books throughout history and why they were objected to. An example - James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl, was challenged at two US schools in the early 90s because it uses the word 'ass' (as in "You silly ass!" or similar, if I recall correctly) and refers to, and hence encourages the use of, tobacco, snuff and whisky. Well, that's clearly inappropriate. Burn it, I say.
Google Hacks use the power of Google to create interesting projects. Examples are the program to find the colour of a word or the utility to translate a phrase through three languages and see what the result is.

Tags (but not the graffiti kind)

2005-10-30T18:20:00.000+11:00

As a service to the great work of building a tagged internet, I'm currently engaged in the tedious task of going through all my posts and adding tags to them. Thankfully, I've managed to get it automated, but it still involves a bit of elbow grease.

Anyhow. The idea of tagging is that all of my posts end with a list of keywords that are related to its content. As well as making it easier for the new breed of blog search engines (eg Technorati) to index the posts, it makes it easier for you, dear reader, to navigate the site.

If you read a post and want to see what else I've written on the subject, click the appropriate tag at the bottom of the post. For example, clicking 'Internet' at the bottom of this post takes you to a list of all the posts I've tagged 'Internet'. (This may not be many, as I'm still in the middle of doing the tagging for my older posts.)

If you want to browse, go to http://del.icio.us/elucidblog to see a list of all the tags for Elucid.

No doubt tomorrow Blogger will announce an in-house categories/tagging service and all my work with del.icio.us will be for nothing. That'd be just my luck.

(UPDATE 8.12PM: All tagging now complete, although some errors seem to be occurring on older post pages.)

30/10/05 Links

2005-10-30T16:04:00.000+11:00

FutureMe.org allows you to send an email to yourself someday in the future - to remind yourself of something you need to do, as a historical record, or somewhere in between.
The Apostrophe Protection Society deals with one of my pet hates - misuse of apostrophes. Remember, apostrophes are never used for pluralising a word.
Death in Sakkara is the latest ambitious online game from the BBC. It has four episodes, of which one has been released. I'm hooked already, even if the actual gameplay is rather sparse. Just the music and pictures are enough to draw you in.

Flock: The World's Newest Browser

2005-10-29T17:10:00.000+10:00

The new coolest browser around is Flock, currently at version 0.5pre (a developer preview). It's billed as an early Web 2.0 browser - in which interacting with the internet is easier and in many cases automatic. For example, Flock's bookmarks integrate automatically with del.icio.us, allowing your browser bookmarks and del.icio.us bookmarks to stay synchronised. It also integrates with Flickr to enable easy access to your photos, and has a rather nifty blogging function. The inbuilt Blog Editor (which I'm using now, or at least would be - see below) has a fairly full feature set, including (wonder of wonders for a Blogger user) automated tagging, which produced the tags you see below. It also allows you to drag text straight from a page into a new blog entry, including a reference.

Of course, Flock has its share of problems. My biggest gripe is that it treats the Bookmarks page as a webpage, so the only way of getting out of it is to click the Back button. What the hell is going on with that? It's also somewhat unstable (it's crashed a number of times, but that's to be expected on Version 0.5pre) and the new toolbars and such aren't as customisable as I'd like. Finally, the Blog Editor is rather intermittent. My earlier post on Iran worked perfectly on it, but I got errors when trying to post this current one and bullets didn't work properly on today's links. Hence, I had to copy-and-paste the text into Blogger's normal interface and manually enter the tag code. That needs to be fixed.

What effect will Flock have on Firefox? Right now, not much, since it's only being used by the very early adopters. Once it's out in a finished form, I think it could make a dent in Firefox's user numbers. Flock is actually based on Firefox's code, so Firefox users would find it easy to make the switch. I think the best solution would be to integrate Flock's features into Firefox, making them available to as many people as possible.

The bottom line is that Flock clearly isn't ready yet for use as a main browser, however, the unique and useful features it offers will be great once the bugs and certain interface issues are sorted out.

29/10/05 Links

2005-10-29T14:46:00.000+10:00

The Lorenz Butterfly is a very interesting study in chaos theory. This Java Lorenz generator is also almost hypnotic.
How Much Is Your Blog Worth? This site, using Technorati's popularity rankings and Tristan Louis's research, aims to answer that question. I'm happy to report that Elucid is worth, at time of writing, USD$2258.16 (AUD$2994.51)
The Skeptic's Dictionary is always helpful for rebutting mythical ideas like biorhythms and magnet therapy.

Iran vs Israel

2005-10-29T14:12:00.000+10:00

The UN Security Council has criticised the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map". A good move. If there's ever going to be lasting peace in the Middle East, Israel's right to existence should be accepted. This will, at least, make Israel more amenable to a more lasting and wide-ranging agreement, which can only be a good thing. Eventually, the only thing conflict in the Middle East achieves is death and instability. To find peace, Ahmadinejad needs to realise that.

27/10/05 Links

2005-10-27T18:56:00.000+10:00

Yes & No bills itself as a dyseducational road movie. It's bizarre, but once you get the idea it's quite funny, in a way. (Opens directly into a Flash movie)
Russell Beattie on why he might switch back from Mac OS to Windows.
An old CNN video featuring an unpleasant surprise for Bill Gates. (Opens directly into a Quicktime movie)
Take a look at the information any site can get just from you visiting it. You might be surprised.

An Apple story a day keeps the objectivity away

2005-10-26T18:20:00.000+10:00

Yes, Apple make some good products. I accept that. But the press coverage is getting ridiculous.

Take, for example, this gushing Time article. A quote:

Even though [the new iPod] costs the same ($299) as its immediate predecessor, which Apple introduced only 15 months ago, the new iPod has more memory (30 GB as opposed to 20 GB), and it's thinner (0.43 in., as opposed to 0.6 in.). Plus, it plays video. The screen is just 2.5 in. diagonally, but because it's extremely bright and very sharp, it looks bigger than it is. It's the kind of thing you could definitely imagine being unable to live without.

There are other portable video players out there, but none look as nice or are as easy to use as the new iPod.

Well, thanks for that advertorial, Time! We don't have to bother reading the press release now. Only the thinnest veneer of objectivity prevents this article from needing an 'Advertisment' note at the top. Another example:

[On the new iMac G5, Apple has shipped] a nifty feature called Front Row that lets you run your computer from across the room, lying on a sofa, clicker in hand, without crouching over a keyboard. That is cool stuff.

Front Row is very similar to a Media Centre PC, which run on Windows XP Media Center Edition. They're available from such major companies as HP and Packard Bell. The difference between Front Row and Media Centre? Better marketing from Apple, based, as always, on Apple's 'cool'.

This Time article is symptomatic of the media's love affair with Apple. Think about it - how many articles do you read about Microsoft? (This is consumer-type articles, not stock market-type articles.) And how many do you read about Apple? Have you seen any coverage outside tech magazines and websites about Windows Vista, the major new version of Windows coming next year?

Don't worry, the next version of Mac OS is going to receive far more coverage than that when it's announced. It will be trumpeted as the Next Big Thing, even if it simply adds a couple of features of limited use. Bear in mind here that Windows is used by the vast, vast majority of computer users (95%+) and Mac OS by a tiny minority (~3%).

As John Dvorak of PC Magazine (through Slashdot) points out:

Microsoft can roll out a dozen cool products, and the media goes ga-ga over the video iPod—a rather late-to-market Apple product. They all swoon over the prospect of paying $2 to download an otherwise free TV show so they can have the privilege of watching it on a 2-inch screen.

Cool products, indeed, like the Media Centre PC. Stay tuned to be hearing a lot more about Media Centres now that Apple has one. And prepare to have them trumpeted as revolutionary and totally original.

I'll repeat here, to attempt to alleviate the hatemail I'll no doubt get from Apple fanatics, that Apple make some good products. I use iTunes, for instance. What irritates me is the media's incessant, unwarranted, fawning coverage of Apple products which lacks a shred of critical analysis, in comparison to their total failure to cover similar or better products made by other companies.

Timon-style supporters - now in soccer!

2005-10-23T17:46:00.000+10:00

A peculiar sense of deja vu: Australia is again to play Uruguay to determine which country will qualify for the World Cup.

If Australia gets through, stay tuned for plenty of fair-weather friends who suddenly have followed soccer all their lives. It's like the Sydney people who think that AFL is a game for wimps until the Sydney Swans got into the finals.

That's the sort of attitude the Soccer Australia's counting on to whip up public opinion in favour of Australia hosting the World Cup in 2018.

Gadgets/widgets/whatever else - Microsoft leaps onto the bandwagon

2005-09-29T23:08:00.000+10:00

An interesting trend in the last couple of years has been the movement of major tech companies into delivering environments in which users can install small applications with one specific purpose. These mini-applications are known as gadgets, widgets, modules and various other things, and have diverse uses. Classic ones give you weather reports for your area, headlines drawn from RSS feeds, stock quotes, monitoring of system resources and so on. Another popular one is controlling a program like iTunes or Windows Media Player without having to open the full program window. An important point is that anyone with a bit of coding knowledge can write them, so there's a very high potential for innovation.

We've seen a number of major companies experimenting with the idea: Yahoo! with its recent purchase of Konfabulator, Apple's inclusion of Dashboard in OS X Tiger and, to a lesser extent, the Sidebar in the beta version of Google Desktop.

Now Microsoft is getting in on the act, and in a far more interesting way than you might expect. According to the site of the new feature, which is known in a collective sense as Microsoft Gadgets, there'll be what you could call a three-pronged approach:

Windows Sidebar - as far as I can tell, a cross between Google's Sidebar and Apple's Dashboard, to be included in Windows Vista. Your gadgets or widgets or whatever get docked on the side of the screen where they are easily accessible. It's helpful, but frankly it's been done before.
Start.com - an MSN feature which reminds me a lot of Google's Personalised Homepage or My Yahoo!. It's essentially a customisable homepage, to which you can add internet-based variants of your gadgets/widgets/whatever. Interestingly, Microsoft Gadgets talks about being able to dock gadgets/widgets/whatever from Start.com in the Windows Sidebar. The transfer between a web environment (particularly Start.com's currently rather spatan interface) to the lavish Sidebar would be interesting.
Windows Sideshow - this is a feature which, as far as I can tell, is unique to Microsoft. Sideshow allows you to run gadgets/widgets/whatever away from the main computer screen. The suggestions from Microsoft are things like displays in the lids of laptops and in keyboards, as well as being able to access system and program controls from a mobile phone or PDA.

What can we say from this? Obviously, Sidebar and Sideshow will somehow be integrated, and the suggestion that Start.com will be able to integrate with the rest says to me that Microsoft is trying to move in on this field of technology with a lot of force. Microsoft is building support for Start.com into Vista as it built support for Passport into XP. No doubt this will take custom away from My Yahoo! and co. However, I'm not sure that Start.com has that bright a future - why use it when you can use a pretty similar concept built into your OS?

Sidebar's major limitation is the limited amount of screen real estate it has - perhaps 1/5 of the screen at most. Presumably it will autohide instead of hanging on the side of the screen all the time. The advantage Apple's Dashboard has is that it has the full screen, so there's far more space for users to distribute their widgets/gadgets/etc. Sidebar will inevitably have problems with this. However, the availability of the Sidebar will take away from Konfabulator's users, particularly if it doesn't hog resources like that program does. Konfabulator is thought of as Dashboard for Windows, and I can't think of any advantages it would offer to a Windows user if Sidebar has normal features.

But it's Sideshow that is going to be most revolutionary, in my opinion. A second visual interface with the computer is something that has never really been seen before, as far as I can think of. Laptop lid or keyboard displays are fascinating ideas, but I think the mobile phone/PDA model is most interesting, as it could act as a remote control for the whole computer. Music player, video player, Powerpoint, etc. Being able to control functions of them from afar would be one of the most convenient innovations in a long while.

God, that was long. It was only meant to be a couple of paragraphs.

On rereading, I apologise for the poor editing, but it's almost midnight and I can't be bothered getting rid of all the redundant prose.

Firefox FAQ

2005-09-27T14:53:00.000+10:00

In the course of my usual technological evangelism I've recommended to many people that they use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer or similar. The questions and comments they made were common to many of them, so I thought I might put the answers up in a central location.

So, why exactly do I want to use Firefox instead of IE?

Because IE's features simply don't cut it any more. IE hasn't had a major upgrade for years and is beginning to show its age. IE is the least sophisticated browser on the market that I'm aware of - anyone who wants more than a bare-bones experience from their browser should switch.

What features, precisely, are you referring to?

Well, the best-known at present is tabbed browsing. This allows you to have more than one web page open in a browser window at one time - each page is accessible by its own tab at the top of the browser. As well as saving system resources, tabbed browsing is great for the 'surfing' that the internet was supposed to be about - if you see a link that looks interesting, send it into a tab to look at later. You don't have to fool around with opening other windows or finishing what you're currently reading and searching around for the link. Tabbed browsing makes unmapped exploration of the internet easy. It's more efficient as well - you don't have to waste time opening menus to find the window you want.

But Browser X has tabbed browsing as well...

Yes, absolutely. Safari, Mozilla, Camino, Netscape, Opera and pretty much any other browser you can think of have tabs. In fact, IE is the only major browser without them. But Firefox has an advantage over many of the other browsers I mentioned because of its customisability.

Customisability?

If there's a feature Firefox doesn't have which you want, take a look at http://update.mozilla.org. There you'll find hundreds of extensions written by Firefox users, offering pretty much any extra feature you can think of. An in-browser controller for iTunes or Windows Media Player, an embedded IRC client, a countdown timer ... if you can think of it, it's probably there.

Also available are themes, to customise the look of Firefox. I still use the default theme, majorly because I can't find a theme which both meets my exacting standards and doesn't make Firefox inoperable. However, if you aren't as picky about design as I am, no doubt you'll find a great theme.

There are plenty of other features I could talk about, but I haven't got the time.

I'm too used to IE to switch.

If you can use IE, you can use Firefox - it's not at all difficult to get used to. Firefox imports your Favourites from IE into the Firefox equivalent, Bookmarks, so you don't even have to bother transferring them.

What about security? Didn't Symantec say that Firefox is less secure than IE?

Yes, it did. However, Robert Vamosi of CNET contends that Symantec's methodology is flawed, and that a fairer analysis shows Firefox to be more secure. Firefox includes a couple of simple but helpful security features, as well as a system which allows it to quickly patch security flaws once they are discovered.

What have I got to lose if I download Firefox?

Nothing at all. Just try it out. If you don't like it, you can go back to IE, uninstall Firefox and nobody'll be harmed. However, with around 10% of internet users now running Firefox, I doubt you'll want to go back.

Download Firefox now.

Google Blog Search

2005-09-15T20:43:00.000+10:00

Google Blog Search is the latest utility from everyone's favourite multinational. It's been a long time coming - I recall reading about the idea a couple of years ago. Interface is stock-standard Google with even less frills than normal - it doesn't even have the links to other parts of the site at the top. Technorati's UI is more sophisticated, so it'll be interesting to see how Google fares against it. Jason Kottke, of course, isn't happy about Technorati, which means those who follow his every move will likely flock to GBS.

The logical next step is for Google to integrate Blog Search results into its normal results. Web/news/blog search results rolled into one would allow a user to choose seamlessly between in-depth information and live information. That would make life easy.

Big Brother is watching your confinement

2005-08-29T21:11:00.000+10:00

We've all heard the dire predictions about how Big Brother will eventually turn into a show in which the competitors die at the end, they're forced to have sex in challenges, blah blah blah to sate the public's insatiable thirst for such things. Maybe a little far-fetched, but in that vein a Dutch woman wants to give birth on Big Brother. The series starts broadcasting in a few days and the woman, Tanja, is due in six weeks.

Are they going to broadcast the actual birth? Live?
Is the baby going to spend its first six weeks in the house?
Will the baby count as a contestant? (Actually, don't answer that one.)
What if one of the housemates gets drunk and somehow mishandles it?
Who's the father? What does he think about the idea?

It's the sort of thing that you'd expect in the Netherlands, isn't it?

A brief message for bombers

2005-08-28T18:53:00.000+10:00

Another suicide bombing in Israel. It astounds me that the people responsible did it, especially after the Gaza pullout. Israel, they need to accept, isn't going anywhere. So instead of attempting to keep the divisions and the conflicts, why not take part in a peace process? They're not helping anyone or anything, other than their own misguided nationalist egos.

Depressingly Diverse Downloads

2005-08-28T12:12:00.000+10:00

I'm afraid I have a rather bad habit. Now that I've got broadband (and let's not go into the circumstances of why it took so long) I tend to download almost any program that sounds half-useful or interesting that I can verify is spyware- and virus-free. This leads to a Start menu cluttered with programs that I will never use but which I refuse to uninstall on the hope that they will come in handy some day. To help me cope with this, I'm going to make them seem like they have some use by giving brief summaries.

Filezilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/). An FTP client which is doubtless very good but which I have never used, because I don't use FTP.
PGP (http://www.pgpi.org/). An encryption program delivering essentially unbreakable encryption without the problem of key exchange. I have it because I'm interested in cryptography, not because I actually know anyone who uses a compatible cryptographic program or ever send emails (or so on) that need to be encrypted. The free version, which I use, does not have as many features as the paid version. PGP9, released recently, does not have a free version but a 30-day trial of the paid version, so I still use PGP8.
Mozilla Sunbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html). A calendar program from the makers of Firefox (which has the distinction of being one of the few downloads I actually use and find useful or good). The problem is that I don't actually have any need for a calendar program.
Google Desktop (http://desktop.google.com/). Desktop search program allowing you to search your own computer, which I don't need because my folder system is meticulously organised anyhow. Now that it's onto version 2, it also provides alerts when certain blogs are updated and when I get new mail. Nothing really revolutionary.
Hello (http://www.hello.com/), Google Talk (http://www.google.com/talk/), ICQ (http://www.icq.com/) and Skype (http://www.skype.com/). All instant messaging programs of various types, limited by the fact that I don't know anyone else who uses them. Hello involves lots of picture capabilities, Google Talk is IM as it would be in Sparta, ICQ is presumably a worthy program but one I can't use as mentioned and Skype is a VoIP (internet telephone) program made even more useless because my computer doesn't have a microphone.
The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/). The GNU/GPL Image Manipulation Program - essentially, like Photoshop only free. Useless because of the amount of RAM it uses compared to the amount I have, the fact that I can't figure out how to use the myriads of features and because I don't have anything I particularly want to draw.
Konfabulator (http://www.konfabulator.com/). Program allowing you to run mini-applications known as widgets. Unfortunately, there aren't that many widgets that are particularly useful.

There are more, but now I'm just getting depressed. I don't even want to know how much hard drive space they take up. To coin a new term, I suffer from chronic uninstall resistance.

Piano Man: more answers

2005-08-25T18:05:00.000+10:00

All right. So I was mistaken in my earlier post. We have some answers to the questions I asked about the Piano Man.

His name's Andreas Grassl, he's 20 and he comes from Germany (the city of Prosdorf, to be precise). Apparently he was suffering a psychotic episode which rendered him unable to speak.

Now that the mystery's gone, it seems so unlikely that the world could have been fascinated by the story.

Speechless no longer

2005-08-22T20:13:00.000+10:00

Remember the Piano Man? He was the guy who was found in Kent a few months ago soaking wet and unable to speak, and garnered a global response.

Apparently, he's started speaking again. He said he was German and has now been flown home. The hospital's not releasing any more details for patient confidentiality reasons.

The questions remain unanswered: why couldn't he talk? Could he hear/understand what everyone was saying to him? What's his background? For that matter, what's his name?

Very anticlimactic, I'm afraid.

Review: Fingersmith (TV)

2005-08-07T16:19:00.000+10:00

The second and final episode of this miniseries is airing tonight at 8.30 on the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, incidentally, not the American one), so I thought I'd give my advice as to whether to watch.

Don't bother.

Fingersmith is the second-worst period drama I have ever seen (I'm not even going to mention the worst). It has a few good points, but it is overlong and tedious. The producers seem to think you can get away with 1.5 hours of boredom by inserting a fairly predictable plot twist at the end of the first episode.

Nothing springs to mind that is particularly good about this miniseries, but the above (as well as the contrived plot points - I'm thinking of the illogical and poorly explained way they get the main characters in bed together) spring out as particularly bad. Therefore, unless you're desperate for fully-clothed lesbian soft porn (not so remote a possibility for some, I suppose), I'd recommend you avoid it.

The new drug pilgrimage

2005-08-06T22:22:00.000+10:00

According to Italian scientists, 40000 doses of cocaine are taken each day by people in the basin of Italy's Po River.

How do they know this? They've tested the river water for a chemical that is only formed when the body processes cocaine. Almost five kilos of this chemical, benzoylecgonine, enters the Po River through coke users' urine each day.

I predict desperate cocaine addicts converging upon the Po and attempting to snort the water. Problem: you're not snorting cocaine, you're snorting urine.

Designer flaws

2005-08-01T22:07:00.000+10:00

CNET News.com offers us a first view of Windows Vista. While I'm not sure of the colour scheme (black, while stylish, doesn't cut it for the Start menu), I'm sure it'll be customisable.

In other tech news, a speaker at this year's Black Hat, Michael Lynn, revealed in public a vulnerability to Cisco routers that could potentially bring down whole portions of the internet. Now, I'm not a programmer or a techie (the most advanced language I know is BASIC), but why not just call Cisco and tell them? Why let a whole heap of crackers
start trying to find the exploit?

Look through window. See vista

2005-07-26T22:16:00.000+10:00

The next version of Windows is no longer codenamed Longhorn - its All New! name has been released.

Windows Vista.

This marks another milestone for Windows naming - the first full word. Vista, though? Microsoft presumably spent sums of money that would make up a fair percentage of Bill Gates' net worth on focus groups and consultants to come up with that. So why couldn't they pick up that no one is going to be able to say 'Windows Vista' without sounding like some misty-eyed corporate vision consultant who takes operating systems far too seriously?

The slogan: "Clear, confident, connected: bringing clarity to your world". I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't clarify my entire world that much, and the word 'confident' may be experiencing its first use here outside a deodorant or tampon ad, but it's a nice piece of alliteration.

Humanity

2005-07-22T19:31:00.000+10:00

The BBC's diary of a London bomb survivor concludes with this comment.

In the almost-animal panic, we remembered our humanity, that we were human beings. We stood up, we comforted each other, we held hands, and if we could, we led and carried each other to safety ... This week we felt what it is like to come together as a city.

Humanity is a strange quality. It seems to be a mix of empathy, compassion and general care. Traditionally at this point I'd mention all the horrible things we do to each other in wars, etc. etc., but the thing is that the great majority of us don't support those things. We have that humanity.

It may not be what defines us, but it's a quality we are intensely proud of.

Roving above the law

2005-07-20T20:53:00.000+10:00

Dave Pell of Electablog points out that George Bush firing Karl Rove (in reference to the Valerie Plame affair) would be like the Pope firing God. That refers to the past, but if Rove is heavily implicated in the Plame affair Bush will be considering his own future when making a decision about Rove's.

With mid-term Congressional elections coming up next year, Bush will want to safeguard the GOP's majority in both houses - he'd also prefer at least a GOP 60 - 40 DEM split in the Senate to prevent Democratic filibusters. The Congressional Republicans' fortunes are tied, to some extent, to the fortunes of the President. With Bush's popularity sagging, he won't want to sacrifice Rove's influence on the elections.

Then again, if Rove is convicted of involvement in Plame's exposure, Bush will very possibly be forced to sack him. He's already said that if anyone was convicted of anything they'd be fired.

I get this uncanny sense, though, that Rove's job is pretty safe.

Googling Space

2005-07-20T19:37:00.000+10:00

Google's just launched Google Moon - in the same vein as the satellite-imaging program Google Earth, only - wait for it - with the moon instead of the Earth. While, of course, it's an interesting idea, I can't help thinking that it lacks the functionality of Google Earth. The moon's a lovely place to look at, but there's almost never a pizza place within 20km of your postcode.

Prayer goes scientific

2005-07-15T22:53:00.000+10:00

A US study gives this remarkable result - praying for heart patients does not improve their chances.

Those who were prayed for were as likely to have a setback in hospital, be re-admitted, or die within six months as those not prayed for.

Imagine that.

DR Congo troubles

2005-07-12T23:53:00.000+10:00

This story has not received nearly enough publicity.

Imagine this. You're peacefully living in your village in central Africa. Then one day, rebel militias attack. They lock your wife and children in your hut and set it ablaze, wounding you in the process. They leave you for dead.

39 villagers, most women and children, were killed in this way.

The UN is doing the normal thing in the Democratic Republic of Congo, working without praise or publicity. But when things like this are happening, clearly more needs to be done. The problem is figuring out what.

BNP - Blatant bigotry

2005-07-12T22:42:00.000+10:00

If you know much about the British National Party (BNP) - they're the extremist anti-immigration racist etc. etc. party that now seems obligatory in any democracy - you'll know that they're pretty distasteful.

Now they're using a photo of the bus destroyed in last week's London bombings in their advertising. The caption reads "Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP".

To attempt to exploit these events for their own political ends is abhorrent.

Death's better when you bet

2005-07-10T20:27:00.000+10:00

News just in: betting on your own death isn't morbid.

Blair on terrorism

2005-07-10T18:53:00.000+10:00

Tony Blair: "[The G8 deal] has a pride and a hope and a humanity at its heart that can lift the shadow of terrorism and lead the way to a better future ... there is no hope in terrorism, nor any future in it worth living. And it is hope that is the alternative to this hatred."

Great speech.

Wordsearch Space

2005-07-09T16:00:00.000+10:00

I had a mathematical idea yesterday, which I want to record before it's consigned to the dustbin of my memory. It may seem a little abstract, or, in fact, fallacial, but I think it might just be true. Any budding mathematicians, please leave a comment with your thoughts on it.

Consider a wordsearch puzzle - an array of seemingly random letters arranged in a rows-and-columns grid. The idea is to find the words hidden horizontally, vertically and diagonally in the grid. For our purposes, let's assume that any wordsearch is a 10x10 grid.

Now imagine an infinite wordsearch puzzle - one with an infinite number of rows and an infinite numbers of columns. Place the letters entirely randomly within the infinite grid.

An important part of my argument (but also, sadly, the part I'm least sure about) is that this infinite grid will contain within it any wordsearch puzzle you could ever design. An infinite grid filled with randomly selected letters will contain all possible solutions to a 10x10 grid filled with letters.

However, there are, of course, a finite number of of possible 10x10 grids. If we limit ourselves to the Roman alphabet, without punctuation, spaces, numbers and so on - just the 26 letters - there are 26¹⁰⁰ possible ways to fill the grid. That's a pretty large number, but certainly a finite one. As our infinite grid is, by its very nature, infinite, and as it must be composed, at some level, of 10x10 grids put together, it must contain each 10x10 grid an infinite number of times.

Now consider a 100x100 grid within the infinite grid. It contains 100 10x10 grids (for simplicity, I'll refer to them as 10-grids, and 100x100 grids as 100-grids). A 100-grid must, of course, be composed at some level of 100 10-grids. As there are 26¹⁰⁰ possible 10-grids, there must be (26¹⁰⁰)¹⁰⁰ possible 100-grids. This can be simplified to 26¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ 100-grids.

While this is an enormous number, it is still finite. As the infinite grid is not, but must be composed at some level of 100-grids, it stands to reason that the infinite grid must contain each 100-grid an infinite number of times.

You can use this argument to show that the infinite grid (Wordsearch Space) contains each possible grid of any size an infinite number of times. OK, so it's not very useful, but next time you're doing a wordsearch, think about it. It's not just a slab of letters - it's a finite slab taken from an infinite grid.

Link of the Unspecified Time Period

2005-07-09T13:16:00.000+10:00

Mr. Picassohead

Take a look. It's pretty good, in an odd sort of way.

Spy Survey

2005-07-08T17:39:00.000+10:00

According to a new study, 48% of internet users in the US have stopped using certain websites, and 25% have stopped using filesharing programs, for fear of spyware. While that's heartening, it's also depressing that spyware could become such a problem.

London Blasts

2005-07-07T21:49:00.000+10:00

There's been a series of bombs in London, now clearly a co-ordinated terrorist attack. The idea that people could do this to innocent civilians, at a time when the G8 is trying to do something about the most pressing problems in the world, is sickening. The War on Terror, ultimately, is about stopping people from doing these things - these horrid, barbaric attacks. The focus on Iraq may not be justified. But the War on Terror's aim is just.

Even if they have genuine grievances (and not, as might be suspected, misguided religious dogma), this is not the way to go about expressing them.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not a Karl Rove-like political exploiter of terrorism. But I cannot have any sympathy for the people who would do this. Like I cannot have any sympathy with the September 11 perpetrators, and so on. They do not deserve sympathy for what they do. People who could contemplate these random, vicious attacks are simply sickening. I can find no other word.

My thoughts are with Londoners, including my own family there, in this period.

Paint and Pandora

2005-07-06T15:19:00.000+10:00

If you please, I'll just rant and complain here for a moment.

What about?

Microsoft Paint.

Pardon my criticising my beloved Windows XP twice in a week, but why is Paint so shoddily featured? Even drawing a circle is an operation taking meticulous planning.

I've figured out the root cause of Paint's problems: it does not have objects. Once you have stopped working on (say) a text box, the text becomes part of the image. You can't select the text box again. You can't edit the text. If you want to change it, you have to rub it out (with the ridiculously small eraser tool, God help us) and do a whole new text box, with all the horror that entails.

This also applies with anything else you might want to draw. A diagonal line, say. Obviously, it's not as labour-intensive as text, but there's one problem with editing lines.

Changing the colour.

You can't, essentially. The only real way to change the colour of a line without erasing it and trying again is to use the Pencil tool to go over it again in a different colour. The problem? It's not exact enough unless you're at a high level of magnification. The consequence of this is that you have to individually click on each pixel of the line to change its colour. This is an excruciating process.

Obviously, something's wrong. Please, please, Bill, put a better image editing program into Longhorn.

However, I would like to praise Microsoft a bit as well. Get yourself a copy of Pandora's Box. Do it. Then play it. You will be addicted within minutes (if you can work out the buggy AutoPlay). Whoever designed it deserves our unlimited praise and worship.

Deep Astrological Impact

2005-07-06T12:16:00.000+10:00

I suppose it would have been too much to ask that no one would sue about NASA's Deep Impact probe. A Russian astrologer has.

Marina Bay is covering her bases, mentioning at least three ways in which her life has been affected. Her lawyer: "Nobody has proven that this experiment was safe. The impact could have altered the orbit of the comet, so now there is a chance that the Tempel may well destroy the Earth some day!" Somewhat spurious, but yes, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Problem 2. Because dear Marina is an astrologer, an alteration in the comet's path might affect her fate. The BBC reports that "Ms. Marina claims to be experiencing "a moral trauma" - which only a payment of $300m (252m euros; £170m) can put right. This is roughly what NASA has spent on the experiment so far.

Problem 3. Her lawyer again: "This impact changed the magnetic properties of the comet, and this could have affected mobile telephony here on Earth. If your phone went down this morning, ask yourself, "Why?" and then get in touch with us."

A Moscow court is hearing the case. But doesn't anyone realise that she can't prove any of it?

iTunes v. WMP (Podcast Division) - No contest

2005-07-04T19:26:00.000+10:00

OK, I'm no big fan of Apple. I can't stand the cyber-pretentiousness of those who worship Steve Jobs like some sort of cult. However, Bill Gates, Microsoft, etc. take note. This is a life-long Microsoft and Windows man speaking here.

There is no way you will get me even to touch Windows Media Player until you integrate Podcast support into it the way the latest release of iTunes has.

Hydro Power

2005-07-03T15:48:00.000+10:00

In my opinion, one of the most interesting areas of energy development today is hydrogen power. As well as being a cheap replacement for oil, hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide when used in a engine. (Arguably, it produces water vapour, which is also a greenhouse gas, but I feel that that can be turned back into liquid form and utilised elsewhere.)

Many cities are now experimenting with hydrogen-powered buses - Perth, in Western Australia, springs to mind. However, this is the first I've heard of a hydrogen-powered plane.

RSS 2 (figuratively)

2005-07-03T13:35:00.000+10:00

I've switched the site feed so that older RSS readers can use it (it previously used Atom, which some readers don't support). It's now compatible with pretty much any format and can be found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Elucid.

The Northern Lights, fjords AND a missing virtuoso pianist

2005-07-02T21:56:00.000+10:00

Remember the Piano Man? He's the guy found in April in Kent in a soaking wet suit, who hasn't spoken to his carers since he was found. However, give him a piano and he'll give you a fantastic performance. Very romantic, very mysterious.

It turns out he might be Norwegian.

The long walk to the loungeroom

2005-07-02T16:23:00.000+10:00

The Wire's David Stubbs on why he won't be watching Live 8.

A sample:

But [Tony Blair, the Pope, etc.] front the very institutions - church, empire, Western states - that can be argued have done little to alleviate African misery.

They should be interrogated, not cosied up to. Geldof's un-punkishly conciliatory stance to these people creates the illusion that, as with the tsunami, "no one is to blame".

A good point. I myself am sceptical of exactly what Live 8 is going to achieve. According to its official website:

8 world leaders, gathered in Scotland for the G8 summit, will be presented with a workable plan to double aid, drop the debt and make the trade laws fair. If these 8 men agree, then we will become the generation that made poverty history.

But they'll only do it if enough people tell them to.

That's why we're staging Live 8. 10 concerts, 100 artists, a million spectators, 2 billion viewers, and 1 message... To get those 8 men, in that 1 room, to stop 30,000 children dying every single day of extreme poverty.

This, I fear, is overly simplistic. Even if Live 8 attracts the estimated 2 billion viewers, passively watching a rock concert does not in itself imply support for the cause. Although, of course, we all in principle support ending poverty, support for the increase in taxes that such a grand plan requires is not what you could call guaranteed. People are willing to watch a concert, but not so willing to pay on an ongoing basis.

In any case, what exactly does 'making trade laws fair' involve? Even Make Poverty History, the organisation behind this year's sudden campaign, doesn't specify in its section on Trade Justice what it actually wants done in any detail at all.

This over-simplification of the issues - presenting the ending of poverty, totally and utterly, for all time, as merely a matter of the G8 signing a few pieces of paper - is overly patronising. Changing the way trade works - in effect, how the global economic system works - is not an easy task.

Live 8 and Make Poverty History have a worthy cause - to raise public awareness and help to end or at least alleviate this major problem. However, a series of rock concerts is not a brilliant way to go about it. The campaign needs better-defined goals than Make Poverty History has so far offered, and it needs to be more than just pressuring the G8. It needs to be about making people care more - enough to make sacrifices, not just to sit in front of their TV and listen to Coldplay and Paul McCartney. Otherwise, we might as well ignore overall solutions entirely and just encourage people to sponsor a child.

Swan Symbolism

2005-07-01T20:07:00.000+10:00

The UK's logo for its Presidency of the EU will be an animation of swans flying in a V-formation. Needless to say, it's symbolic, kids!

Kate Thomson of the European Secretariat:

The idea is a metaphor for leadership, teamwork and efficiency, which is particularly appropriate for the EU, given the system of rotating leadership. Migrating birds fly in a V formation. This is highly efficient, because all the birds in the formation, except for the leader, are in the slipstream of another bird. Periodically the leading bird drops back and another bird moves up to take its place.

Leadership, teamwork and efficiency. Qualities which, of course, exemplify the EU.

The Wonderful World of RSS

2005-07-01T18:31:00.000+10:00

I'm in the process of tweaking Elucid so that non-Firefox users can easily access the RSS feed. It's located at http://elucid.blogspot.com/atom.xml. If you don't think you can cope without the orange button, it's there, too.

Spam is good for you

2005-07-01T12:18:00.000+10:00

Reuters reports (link from Davenetics) that researchers who spammed test subjects about healthy eating etc. ate more healthily than test subjects whom they didn't spam. The conclusion they've drawn from this is that spam can affect people positively.

I can't help thinking that these messages, coming from a study these people presumably signed up for, would have been filtered into the Inbox (not the Spam folder) and read, unlike spam for, eg, banking services or penis enlargement. In which case, it's not true spam, but voluntary reminders. This study shows that people pay more attention to the latter than the former, but not, as far as I can see, much else.

Canada, now with extra marriage

2005-06-29T16:05:00.000+10:00

Canada's House of Commons has passed a bill to legalise gay marriage by 158-133. Interesting that a contentious bill not supported by the Opposition could pass a chamber in which the government doesn't hold a majority, and furthermore in which even the government was split as to whether to support it.

The Canadian Senate will likely pass the bill, which will no doubt cause a flood of gay couples crossing the border from the US to get married (something like when that Californian mayor legalised gay marriage in his city before having his decision overturned a week later).

Opposition Conservative leader Stephen Harper said defending traditional definition marriage man woman and so on and so forth. We've heard it all before. The fact that this is the only argument we've ever heard against gay marriage serves to highlight that conservatives oppose this only due to ideology and dogma.

Really, what is the problem with two people who love each other marrying? Why, when discrimination due to sexuality has been outlawed everywhere, do we have this entrenched discrimination within a fundamental part of society - the family unit? I'd be interested to talk to a conservative who can give a reasonable answer to that question.