Stand-up

Yesterday for the first time I tried my hand at stand-up comedy. The Classic Comedy Club (CCC) on Queen Street has an open mike night on Mondays, after a lot of thinking I decided to have a go.
When I say a lot of thinking, I mean a lot. I first thought about trying to do a stand-up routine when I lived in Wellington, and I moved back to Auckland in late 1998. This means it was at least 10 years back, and I'm sure it was a year or two before that. In those days there were no Comedy Clubs in Wellington, and I suspect none in New Zealand.
I was inspired to actually put my hand up for the open mike night when work was looking for suitable venues for our Christmas function. The CCC was short-listed, and this got me motivated to actually do something about this long term interest. I had a thought about what I could do on the bus into work one morning & brain dumped it over lunch. I didn't have the requisite 7 minutes of material, but I had enough to tell me I could do 7 minutes. Tessa & I went down to CCC that night and checked it out. The place seemed friendly and supportive, and the other raw talent we saw were (mostly) competent, but not so good that I'd fear for the quality of my likely effort.
A couple of days later I phoned them up and booked myself in for yesterday. Tessa listened to several early drafts of my material, and we went down the following Monday to have another look. Last night, I was up. Tessa, Angela, and I went off to dinner together and then wandered up to the club early as I had to check in at least 1/2 an hour before the start. Two other workmates came along to wish me well, Dazz arrived while we were waiting and Robert arrived with Ruth, his wife, a little later.
I was the first up in the second half of the evening. I chose to sit with my friends for the first half of the show before going up to the green room during the intermission. In retrospect I think from a technical viewpoint I would have been better off being in the green room & talking to the other performers, but from an emotional viewpoint I needed to be with my support network in the audience because as the moment I would have to stand up infront of the audience got closer and closer I was getting more and more stressed.
A professional comedian from Kaitaia named Figjam was the MC for the evening and when he introduced me I walked onto the stage and began my act. To my surprise I got a good laugh from my opening ... surprise because, althought I knew I had some good material, I regarded the opening as fairly weak ... but it got a better laugh than some of what I thought was my better material later in the show.
Everything went pretty well until about 3/4 of the way through the sketch, when I lost the plot a bit. I knew I was losing it and quickly went to the end. I left to a good laugh and went outside to calm down before rejoining my party in the audience.
With it being my first time I had no expectation of it going perfectly. On the whole I think I managed to present my material better than I expected. One part of the sketch was a fairly complex sequence of witicisms that I kept re-ordering during practice. I'd re-ordered it so many times that I was hopelessly confused how to present it, so I wrote the order on my hand. On the video Tessa did, I was obviously having trouble reading it off my hand ... despite the way that I liked it, the sequence got no laughs so I might as well not have bothered. There were a couple of other bits that I really liked, but which I completely forgot to use on the stage.
The other thing that was obvious to me on stage was that I was having problems with the microphone. Right at the start I wandered away from the mike, completely forgetting that I needed to take it with me. In a couple of places I needed both hands free, so I put the mike back on the stand.
I'm going to go back in a few weeks and have another go with the same material. Before that I'm going to review the video, eliminate the bits that didn't work and reinstate the bits I forgot to use. I'm also going to freeze my script a few days out so I can just practice the final version. Maybe I'll still ad-lib on stage a little, but I need to have a rock solid sequence I can return to to avoid getting lost again.
I'm also going so see if I can source a cheap radio mike. It would make it so much easier to be able to both walk around and have both hands free. For the future, I already have an idea for two other completely different sequences and so if I do decide to keep at it I'm sure I can keep up a supply of fresh material for quite a while.

This wasn't supposed to happen

When I decided to split my blog into three it looked quite simple. Any domaining related posts to Domaining .NZ, my philosophical and similar views to ¿Que? & "Dear diary" type entries here.

The plan got it's first real test today & I'm not at all sure it's a success. I wrote an 1800 word article giving my opinions on Internet branding, or more precisely selecting a domain name for a business. It doesn't belong in ¿Que?, it doesn't belong in Domaining .NZ either, as it's talking about the end user process of selecting a domain name for their business and it doesn't really belong here either. In the end I decided to post it to ¿Que? blog with a link from Domaining .NZ.

It was really tough deciding where to put it, and this suggests that as I write more articles on general domain name related topics I'm goin to have to go through this process again. The thought has occurred to me that maybe I need a fourth blog, but I'm not going create one as its' already pretty obvious that I'm not going to have enough content to keep the three I already have going strong.

There's also a weird postscript to this, I'm going to need to write a follow-up on the wisdom of buying generic domains & that will need to go in Domaining NZ. So, am I actually writing three blogs, or just one with three pigeonholes?

Yonkly - Open Source clone of Twitter

Interesting development. Someone named Emad Ibrahim has launched an open source version of Twitter. Microblogs with links to your friends' entries and posting via the web or through txt messages. I'll be watching this one with interest.

More at Site

Auckland Daily Photo

I just stumbled on this amazing photo blog by a Lachezar Karadzhov about whom I know absolutely nothing except he takes great photographs. According to the site he was a finalist in the Best Oceanian Photoblogs 2007 competition for his Lachezar's photo_notes site, and I can well believe this.

As the name suggests, he publishes a photograph of Auckland every day and he's been doing it for around 18 months. My favourite photo (so far) on his site is The corner which shows a cyclist at the corner of Alex Evans and upper Symonds Streets. He's manipulated the photo to enhance the colour of the advertising posters and made the rest of the photo black and white, except for the baleful red glare of two traffic lights.

Well worth a browse and I'll be returning frequently.

Auckland Wine and Food Show

I'm bushed. Tessa & I went down to the waterfront for the Foodtown sponsored Auckland Wine and Food Show. I spent about 7 hours, mostly on my feet wandering around the various stalls, taking in the outdoor entertainment and sampling, sampling, sampling.

The entertainment was varied stating with a light jazz act followed my a couple of mediocre pop music acts. Then came three impersonators, the first Brett Wallace as an excellent Neil Diamond impersonator. He looks a little like Diamond in the 70s, but when I closed my eyes I felt I was listening to the real Neil Diamond, especially during his Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show finale.

I wasn't impressed by Brendon Chase's Elvis Presley I think he should join the real Elvis on the checkout at Foodtown.

The last impersonator we watched was Steve Larkins as Freddy Mercury of Queen he had the moves right, the voice was great and he took the crowd with him. Full marks to him. As we drove home we discussed him and felt it was a shame that a man with his obvious talent hadn't managed to make it big as himself. He certainly had the talent.

Later on, Ben Lomis was booked to impersonate a pop singer, but we were tired and decided to go home. The show was set to wind up with Debbie Harwood about now, but we're already home.

The entertainment is really a side show & we were there to see and sample food. There wasn't much here that was new to me and it doesn't really compare to the much larger Auckland Food Show. It seems that about a third of the stalls were wine or beer, which is fair enough for a wine and food festival. There was a lot of bulk produced & semi-specialist cheese and smallgoods like sausages, and salami, a smaller number of stands with olives, pickles, etc and not a lot else. Tessa felt there were less stalls this year compared to last and I certainly felt there was a lot less variety.

Rating 5 out of 10. Worth going to, but I wouldn't worry if I missed it.

On the other hand, a bonus to Foodtown for handing out mini-fruit kebabs. Very refreshing.

Where's the postings gone?

As it's title suggests, this blog is supposed to be an occasional diary, basically talking about what I'm doing. It's had a lot of long silences and it's ended up being a confused mishmash of personal news, my views on the world and domaining related essays.

I've decided to split it into three. This, the original blog, will be for personal news & revert to the occasional diary status, and I've created two other blogs for the other postings:

• Domaining NZ will be for domaining related posts and
• ¿Que? for my world views

I'll be moving relevant postings here over to the other two blogs. I'll leave pointers to the new locations for the articles here for a while & then delete them.

Bad Code Coming

(after John Fogerty)

I see the bad code a-coming.
I see trouble on the way.
I see corruption and crashes.
I see bad times today.

Don't compile tonight,
Well, it's bound to cause you strife,
There's some bad code in the pool.

I hear the crash logs a-spooling.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear access violations.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't compile tonight,
Well, it's bound to blight your life,
There's some bad code on the disk.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared for fright.
Looks like we're in for bad behaviour.
One byte is taken for a byte.

Don't compile tonight,
Well, it's bound to cause you strife,
There's more bad code on the rise.

Lunch, glasses, and shopping

Whew, I've just written a small website from the ground up with NVU. I don't recall the Suse version of NVU as being this painful, but on my Ubuntu system it was slow going. The version installed may be from 2006, but it felt like editing with Frontpage 97. It's like the last 10 years hadn't happened. Before I try this again, I'll definitely have to investigate alternatives.

Normally I wouldn't try building a site in html, but it was only going to be a single page, it ended up as 4, and a CMS seemed overkill.

The site's called "Glasses for less" and was inspired by some recent events.

We were going to have lunch with Diana, my sister, on Saturday & Tessa broke her glasses frame. This story is told in more detail on the site, but to summarise, we stopped off at the optometrists in Lynnmall and were told that the repair would take two or three days. Time she doesn't have.

Lunch was as quiet as lunch with a 4 year-old ever gets, especially one covered in face paint, but was great fun.

We knew my sister has used an overseas supplier for glasses & after lunch picked her brain about them. She told the story, and Tessa picked her frames. We then went home to get her prescription and ordered the glasses. With any luck they'll be here in just over a week.

After this I decided it would be a great idea to document the process. As it happened, there was a suitable domain name in the drop auction last night, so I grabbed it.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Interesting search engine "LemmeFind"

I Recently stumbled across a new search engine aggregator in the Dogpile vein.

This one's called LemmeFind. It has a number of localised searches by country code and the New Zealand version gives some great results from NZ websites.

As a comparison, here's the same search for the 1plus header text from Dogpile & LemmeFind (NZ)

My only gripe is that there is a bug where if you use quotes on the search string, the page 2,3,4 links omit the search term. I tried to alert them but their feedback form is "disabled because of abuse" and their whois information lacks useful email addresses.

Swiss in Liechtenstein 'invasion'

The traditionally neutral Swiss army has staged an unplanned invasion after troops blundered into Liechtenstein. A 171-strong Swiss company got two kilometres into its neighbour before realising the mistake and heading back. Liechtenstein authorities made light of the intrusion, saying they only knew about it when the Swiss told them.

It sounds like it's time for the Swiss army to have a GPS tool in their famous knives. Or maybe just something more accurate than a cheap cuckoo clock to know the time when navigating by the stars. Or just perhaps it's something more sinister than that. The Swiss population has been rising, are they practising for all-out conquest to provide leibensraum?

Dunedin Fragment

Hard to know where to start.

After an eventful morning that I won’t dwell on here, Tessa dropped me at Auckland airport & I caught the flight to Christchurch. The flight was uneventful & surprisingly short — I had expected it to be about twice the time of a Wellington flight, but it was only a little over half as long again.

I checked in & was soon searching for food. Dunedin seemed pretty much closed, but I found a Pizza place & satisfied my hunger before climbing into bed. At Christchurch I had about 15 minutes on the ground before it was time to board the flight to Dunedin. The flight crew were friendly, but nothing could disguise the age or size of the aircraft; nor the propellors.

None-the-less we made it. First surprise, the airport is a very long way out of the city. Still the shuttle bus delivered me and two others safely to the university college

Add 1 to Cobol Giving Cobol

In 1992 I used to work at a place that was transitioning from Cobol on IBM's VSE operating system to Oracle (Forms, Reports, etc) on HP/UX. I was writing Rexx and C and learning C++.
Usenet's alt.folklore.computers was on my reading list and one thread there was a discussion "If the object orientated successor to C is C++, what is the object orientated successor to Cobol?"
When I zapped off a spoof to alt.folklore.computers in January 1992 I never dreamed it would get reprinted in sigplan notices or that there would be citations to the sigplan notices reprint of it floating around 13 years later.
I'd like to correct two widespread inaccuracies. Although I guess I "invented" the language in its published form by giving a sample of a horrid, if ficticious, dialect of Cobol, I didn't invent the name. Secondly, the initial publication was on Usenet not Sigplan notices. This posting was reprinted in SIGPLAN Notices 27(4):90-91, April 1992.
As far as I can tell, the name was first suggested seven days earlier by a Lars Soltau (space at ncc1701.stgt.sub.org). My posting was a follow-up to a follow-up of his article.
I remember when I read that thread & saw "Add 1 to cobol giving cobol" I had the inspiration for a Cobol stripped of all Cobol's redeeming features with the worst imaginable implementation of object orientation bolted on the side. I really feel that Lars (whoever he is) should get some credit.
The widly reprinted entry could be re-worded 'A tongue-in-cheek suggestion by **** Clement for an object-oriented COBOL inspired by a one-liner by Lars Soltau.'
The funny thing is I still remember how much fun it was to write a believable 50 line program to add 1 and 1 and print the result. Ah, the simple joys of youth.
For the record, here's the original article.
Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!waikato.ac.nz!comp.vuw.ac.nz!cavebbs!bclement Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: COBOL Message-ID: <1992jan17 .121358.6700=".121358.6700" cavebbs.gen.nz="cavebbs.gen.nz"> From: bclem...@cavebbs.gen.nz (Julia Clement) Date: Fri, 17 Jan 92 12:13:58 GMT References: <okes .92jan11224859=".92jan11224859" solb1.essex.ac.uk="solb1.essex.ac.uk"> <vkiq0lg fido.asd.sgi.com="fido.asd.sgi.com"> Organization: Children of Ingle-Frey Lines: 95 This is a repost, I don't think my original post got out, my apologies if it did get to you twice. &gt; In article <okes .92jan11224...=".92jan11224..." solb1.essex.ac.uk="solb1.essex.ac.uk"> o...@solb1.essex.ac.uk (Oke Quotes the original author: &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt;No, no, no. Just as the object oriented version of C is called C++, the &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt;object oriented version of COBOL is to be called ADD ONE TO COBOL. &gt; &gt; &gt; I am not a COBOL expert, but isn't it called "ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COB &gt; &gt;You forgot to say please :-) Nondisclosure agreements limit the amount of precice information I can give, but object oriented CoBOL will have the following enhancements on procedural CoBOL: 1. There will be 3 new DIVISIONS: The CLASS Division where object classes will be declared The MESSAGE Division where all messages which may be used are declared The METHOD Division which associates MESSAGES with CLASSES. 2. All existing verbs are deleted from the language. Gone are ADD SUBTRACT COMPUTE (Which should never have been there in the first place, it makes CoBOL too much like ForTran) READ WRITE OPEN CLOSE. There is only one remaining verb SEND which sends messages to objects. 3. Programmers must be careful to avoid using any of the reserved MESSAGE names: ADD SUBTRACT MULTIPLY DIVIDE READ WRITE OPEN CLOSE etc. These are only permitted with built-in object types. 4. The data division has OD declarations to define Object storage. The following is a brief example of an ADD ONE TO COBOL program: IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. PROGRAM ID. SAMPLE. AUTHOR. JULIA. SOURCE COMPUTER. INTEL-386-REAL. OBJECT COMPUTER. INTEL-386-PROTECTED. REMARKS. (C) 1992, Diversity enhancements. CLASS DIVISION. DEFINE CLASS NUMBER. DEFINE CLASS INTEGER EXPANDS NUMBER. MESSAGE DIVISION. VIRTUAL MESSAGE SORT-OF-ADD APPLIES TO NUMBER INTEGER. VIRTUAL MESSAGE KIND-OF-PRINT APPLIES TO NUMBER INTEGER. ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. DATA DIVISION. OBJECT SECTION. OD NUMBER. * An empty definition, one byte minimum. 01 FILLER PICTURE X. OD INTEGER. 01 I-VAL PICTURE S9(9) COMP. WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. 77 A-NUMBER CLASS INTEGER. LINKAGE SECTION. 77 VALUE-IN PIC S9(9) COMP. METHOD DIVISION. MD CLASS NUMBER. SORT-OF-ADD MESSAGE USING VALUE-IN. EXIT METHOD. KIND-OF-PRINT MESSAGE. SEND DISPLAY "Number: " TO SYS-PRINT. EXIT METHOD. MD CLASS INTEGER. SORT-OF-ADD MESSAGE USING VALUE-IN. SEND ADD VALUE-IN TO I-VAL. EXIT METHOD. KIND-OF-PRINT MESSAGE. * Note the power of inheritence of parent methods SEND KIND-OF-PRINT OF NUMBER TO SELF. SEND DISPLAY I-VAL TO SYS-PRINT. EXIT METHOD. PROCEDURE DIVISION. ONLY SECTION. SEND MOVE 1 TO I-VAL OF A-NUMBER. SEND SORT-OF-ADD 1 TO A-NUMBER. SEND KIND-OF-PRINT TO A-NUMBER. STOP RUN. I hope that this simple example of an ADD 1 TO COBOL program suffices to show something of the power of the language, and demonstrates the true utility of a modern Business orientated object orienated language. -- Julia Clement speaking for truth, beauty, and the New Zealand way. Exception #13 at F0AF:5A1D Error code: 0000 Do you want to T)erminate the program, R)eboot, or try to C)ontinue </okes></vkiq0lg></okes></1992jan17>

He's Back

I've been away from this blog for a while.

No idea if I'll blog regularly or not, but I'm certainly intending to put something up from time to time.

Less of the "Dear diary" recounting of my days & more commentary on the things that delight, interest, or annoy me about the world.

I'll fill in some of the blanks later, oh and the not smoking didn't last. :(

The New Zealand Herald

The New Zealand Herald: "oue always suspected it, but now there is scientific evidence - many bosses are psychopaths who shouldn’t be allowed to look after a cat, let alone staff. A recent British study, backed by psychologists and management consultants here, found that a sample of senior executives scored higher on measures of histrionic, narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders than a group of disturbed criminals. These personality disorders are characterised by superficial charm, lack of empathy and perfectionism."

Smoking Auctions

I'm sitting back, sipping on pinot noir, munching chilli tim-tams, and instead of mellowing out I'm quietly dreading tomorrow. Today, you see, is my last day as a smoker. Before I go to bed tonight I will destroy my remaining cigarettes. Tomorrow I need all my strength.
Perhaps I should certify the butt from my last cigarette and sell it on trademe. LOL.
I was reading before about how internet auctions are driving conventional auction houses out of business. Apparently Dunbar Slone has had to cut staff. As usual with our media they addressed it from the most superficial angle. Basically they took Dunbar Slone's statement and got a couple of tame "experts" on the internet to say that internet auctions are fun.
It used to be that auctioneers took 10% of the sale price, and they took it from the seller; then they started to get greedy. They both increased their cut and demanded a "buyer's premium", so whatever you bid, you had to pay more. Last time I bought something through an auctioneer I had to pay 10% of the total price (including GST) and then pay GST on the 10%. This was on top of the seller's premium, which was probably the same. So the auctioneer with no capital tied up in stock was getting something over 20% of the sale price.
I've also sat in auctions where the auctioneer decided the auction was moving to slowly & suddenly combined several lots together & knocked them down to the first bid.
The final reason I have for not attending real auctions is that if I'm interested in lot 300, I have little idea what time I should arrive, and I don't want to sit through 2 or 3 hours of watching things I have little or no interest in being sold.
I don't go to auction houses any more. They misused their near monopoly position, and lost my trust. They are overpriced and inefficient.
On the other hand, with internet auctions, the auctioneer doesn't get bored and combine lots, I don't have to wait for other lots to be sold and the fees aren't so greedy.
In the news in recent days has been the story of the auction of the last cigarette legally smoked at one Auckland bar. Very much following on from what I said the other day, here's an example of the same story being reprinted nearly verbatim around the world.

Used cigarette sells for $6948
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 9 hours ago
A CIGARETTE butt said to have been salvaged as a souvenir before a smoking ban has been sold in an Internet auction in New Zealand for $NZ7475 ($6948). ...
Sale of $7475 [cigarette] end leaves bidders gasping
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 15 hours ago
by David Eames. A cigarette butt auctioned on the internet has smashed visitor-number records at the TradeMe auction house on its ...
NZ cigarette butt sold for $5,300
BBC News, UK - 21 hours ago
The remains of a cigarette smoked in the final seconds before New Zealand's smoking ban came into force has been sold for more than NZ$7,400 ($5,300). ...
Last remnants of smoking New Zealand for sale
Independent Online, South Africa - 23 hours ago
Wellington - A cigarette smoked in the dying seconds before New Zealand's smoke-free laws came into effect in 2004 is set to fetch more than NZ$7 500 (about ...
Cigarette butt on auction for $5,400
AZ Central.com, AZ - Apr 13, 2005
WELLINGTON - A cigarette smoked in the dying seconds before New Zealand smokefree laws came into effect last year is set to fetch more than $5,400 in an ...
Cigarette Butt on Auction for $5,400
Reuters - Apr 13, 2005
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A cigarette smoked in the dying seconds before New Zealand smoke-free laws came into effect last year is set to fetch more than NZ$7,500 ...
Cigarette butt on auction for more than 2,000 pounds
Reuters.uk, UK - Apr 12, 2005
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A cigarette smoked in the dying seconds before New Zealand smokefree laws came into effect last year is set to fetch more than NZ$7,500 ...
Cigarette butt sells for R33 300
Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa - 19 hours ago
A cigarette butt said to have been salvaged as a souvenir before a smoking ban has been sold in an internet auction in New Zealand for NZ$7 475 (about R33 300 ...
Cigarette Butt on Auction for $5,400
ObviousNews.com, Canada - Apr 13, 2005
The butt, witnessed as smoked at 11:59 pm on Dec. 9 by the owners of an Auckland bar, has exceeded its NZ$1 reserve price by NZ$7,574 ...
Cigarette butt on auction for more than 2,000 pounds
ObviousNews.com, Canada - Apr 12, 2005
The successful bidder when the auction closes on Thursday will also get a certificate of authenticity and a mounted display case. ...
NZ cigarette butt on auction for $5,400
Reuters India, India - Apr 12, 2005
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A cigarette smoked in the dying seconds before New Zealand smokefree laws came into effect last year is set to fetch more than NZ$7,500 ...

See how many coincidences you can find.

Business as usual

It's been a few days since I last posted here. The title of the blog is "An occasional diary" and I always intended the occasional. As always I've been busy. So what else is new?

Work

There was a bit of a management vacuum with the rush project. All four teams had some work to do on it, and nobody was acting as overall co-ordinator. To get the Finance work done I needed some bits of the Systems work done first, and nobody from Systems was available for a couple of days when I wanted to start. Rather than wait I got agreement from Steve & did that part of his work. Production also depended on that work & with no obvious volunteers I established communications with Aus about delivery to us of installation databases we could test against. Next thing I knew I was acting as a defacto project manager, and the expected happened. So a fair amount of the last week has been spent doing the not-so-much fun part of project management - plans, resourcing, Gantt charts and so on. Yuck! Come to think of it, are there any fun parts to project management? In other words, work is strictly business as usual.

The other other blog

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd set-up AucklandToday.com. In theory the site is strictly stock-in-hand, but I've been writing the odd news item here and there. I'm also mining a rich vein of legal content, media releases. These are lumps of text where people or organisations say what they want people to hear about their product, their company, their political views, and so forth. Sometimes they are pretty much factual reports of something they want to tell the world about, sometimes they are just adverts in sheep's clothing.

Where they look like being reasonably factual, and about Auckland of course, I add them to the site with full credit. Interestingly enough, I'm not the only one playing this game. Scoop.co.nz is very open about the fact that they publish a lot of press releases, verbatim; they see it as part of their site's unique sales proposition. At the other end of the scale are the big media. We've always see the NZPA or Reuters bylines in papers, but now thanks to the internet we can see what this actually means. A few minutes following links from Google News quickly show that dozens of papers around the world have the same text for a large proportion of their content. They're just printing what they are sent. Obviously they each decide which of the various articles they are given they will use, but for the material they don't write themselves, that's about it.

Political media statements are interesting, I wouldn't print one verbatim, but cutting and pasting quotes from two or more of them to make the guts of a story can be quite fun. I get the feeling that a lot of the reports in the media are produced in a similar way. My entry into the world of low-budget journalism seems to be business as usual.

Finally, there's headlines. When I see something about Auckland and don't have time or energy to do an article on it I just take a brief quote with a pointer to the original article, tack on a headline (usually the original one) and add an entry into AucklandToday.blogspot.com, my other, other, blog. Naturally I provide pointers to all the AucklandToday.com articles too.

Politics

Political media releases are an interesting sub-gendre. Whatever the government does, Act and National savage it. I don't expect any better from National, but Act started out as a party of principles, committed to the Liberal viewpoint. Over the last few years it's downplayed its principles in public in favour of cheap points scoring, chasing the sound bite and becoming progressively more like the conservative rump of the National caucus. I used to say there were only 3 parties in New Zealand worth voting for: The Alliance, The Greens, and Act; all parties that stood for something. Now Alliance is history, Act seems to have lost its way, and only the Greens remain. I find this sad for New Zealand. I could never vote for the Greens, I agree with many of their environmental policies, but I could never agree with some of their more extreme socialist views.

Today's effort, and it's strictly business as usual. There's been a big fuss in recent weeks about the planned new electricity transmission lines to power Auckland, and how it was going to force farmers to give up their private property to make the transmission corridor. Today the Government backed down a bit. The New Zealand Herald reported

Energy Minister Trevor Mallard has written to the Electricity Commission demanding it consider other options to the pylons proposal to meet Auckland's power needs. There has been strong opposition to a line of pylons from the Waikato. Mr Mallard has now said the commission should carry out an "independent and wide consultative process" when considering Transpower's proposed new grid upgrade from Whakamaru to Otahuhu.

So Act applauded the change? Maintained a dignified silence? No. Ken Shirley issued a press statement

"Labour’s cynical attempt to appease angry voters over its unpopular pylon plan is all about electioneering, ACT Energy spokesman Ken Shirley said today. The MP was responding to Energy Minister Trevor Mallard’s announcement that the Electricity Commission will investigate alternative methods of supplying Auckland’s future electricity needs.

“The state-owned monopoly has been studying national grid options for 10 years and all of a sudden the Government is telling it to go back to square one and start again."

and so on.

Council dog control fails, woman attacked

"A woman walking past a house in Owairaka yesterday when a Staffordshire terrier cross and a Rottweiler cross attacked her and pinned her to the ground. The dogs were not confined to the property.

"The dogs have a history of aggressive incidents and the owners have received a number of infringement notices for failing to control the animals. One of the dogs has been classified as menacing, and as such has to be neutered and muzzled in public; the other is in the process of being classified."

You can read the rest at The New Zealand Herald

I took those two paragraphs out of context from the article. One was at the top, and the other at the bottom. This wasn't just a good dog turning bad, these dogs had been trouble before. Why did the Auckland council dog control permit these dogs to be kept? Why were they permitted to stay on an unfenced property?

To me the real crime here wasn't so much the dog owners, as the negligence by the authorities allowing the public to be put at risk, and the sad thing is it happens all the time at all levels of society. Every election politicians talk about "Law and Order" and then for three years it is put in the too hard basket. Meanwhile on the odd occasion a conviction is obtained, we see dangerous criminals back on the streets within hours. The criminal underculture has been taught that they will simply get away with it. The sad thing is they usually do; burglars, dangerous dogs, unlicenced drivers, you name it, they ignore the law, and the people who are supposed to protect us are doing nothing except talk about it. For both sides, strictly business as usual.

Firefox.co.nz

Shrug. It came up for Auction; I use and recommend Firefox; It's been a bit painful finding add-ins for New Zealand search, etc. So I bid on it & won. Now to do the site justice. I've installed Mambo & found a theme that wasn't too blinding. Done some basic configuration, now to track down enough content that it doesn't look the idiot son of the open source movement. Strictly business as usual.

Can you predict the next pope?

I've just been reading, Universi Dominici Gregis, the rules for the papal election, and a couple of thoughts hit me.

Despite the way the rules go into the procedure if a non-cardinal (or even a non-priest) is elected, we all know that the next pope will actually be one of the current cardinals, and there's been a lot of talk about St Malachy / Malachi and his predictions of the next pope.

If none of the recent sedevacantist claimants to being a Pope counts as an anti-pope, then the next pope's Malachian motto would be Glory of the olive. If one is a genuine anti-pope then his motto will be Peter the Roman.

It seems to me that the Malachy prophesy can be tested on this point. There's only a hundred and seventeen cardinals under the ages of 80. Two have been excused attending because of poor health, so there's only 115 possibilities for the next pontiff.

So, here's the challenge. Before the cardinals choose the new pope, pick the one to whom each of the two possible mottos best applies. Then see if the cardinals agree with you.

If you feel that 115 people is too many to investigate, there's about 8 or 9 who have been suggested as likely candidates. Pick a couple of them & a random outsider. Post your analysis here, so others can pick different cardinals.

Teams Release

Release

We started the day knowing that to keep the project schedule we needed to get the first pre-release out today. At 10 we met and agreed there was no reason we could think for not getting it out. During the day we found a few bits and pieces, but managed to iron them out. Everything fell into place and it was out at 4:30 which meant Angela and I were free to go and play Interclub teams.

Teams

After giving up in 1998 I've been playing bridge again since July, but until today only pairs. We were asked to substitute for another pair that couldn't play tonight. It was my first attempt at teams for seven years, and Angela's first attempt ever. I wasn't expecting it to go well, and it didn't, but not for the reason we expected. When we swapped tables to play against the other pair we ended up sitting the same way as our team-mates, immediately invalidating the result. The format was a 24 board swapping opponents after 12 boards. We ddn't notice the wrong seating until after the first 12 boards, wiping out the result. At least we sat correctly for the second half so half the match counted.

When we left the table after the second round I felt we had done badly. Luckily for us the opponents did worse, so we had quite a tidy win.

Truth: Pravda Lives

Remember Pravda, the newspaper of the Comunist Party of The USSR? Despite its name meaning "Truth", for seventy nine years it was the boring parrot of whatever its totalitarian masters wasnted to say. Somehow it survived the break-up of the Soviet Union, although it did split between the hard-line comunists who now run the paper edition and a more pro-Russian faction that created the Pravda.ru news service.

Pravda.ru now sports Google ads and other signs of on-line capitalism, and recently published an article on a group of Americans who met for a weekend of fish-hook suspension.

The article was originally written in Russian the quaint translation requires careful reading which reveals more a whiff of the old communist dissaproval of western trends.

AucklandToday

Setup

After a quick bare-bones install last night I've just spent all night tonight setting up geeklog on my AucklandToday domain. The software was easier to set up than Php-Nuke, but is nowhere near as ambitious in what it does. I've created the bare bones of an information site by grabbing media releases from the regional council and entering a couple of cultural events in the calendar. First impressions are that it's clean and easy to navigate.

Visitors

It's commercial hosting, so I've got access to full stats packages. After I finished the setup tonight I had a look at the logs. I was surprised. I guess I shouldn't be, but within 8 hours of the site going live it got spidered by Google and Searchnz. It also received its first piece of spam after 10 hours. O tempore o mores.

Work, Play and Stats

The Project

Work was pretty full today. I didn't churn out a large amount of code, but I did manage to do a minimal modification to the style selection code on windows to ensure that once the 'Lite' flag is on the program is constrained to use the "standard" style for each windows. Probably only 25 lines of code all up, but selecting exactly where to place those lines of code ... that's where years of practice comes into its own.

Interesting encounters

I've been having some interesting conversations with a couple of other dabblers in the internet world. People with different, yet related interests to mine. Messaging & talking to them made me really start to think about what I am doing with this little hobby. Writing the blogs are a good way to clarify what's on my mind, and what a complex mess of different interests. The domains are like that too. There's no consistency in my portfolio. Am I spreading myself too thin? You bet! Do I need to re-appraise, or just slow down? I'll need to think about that.

I must think I'm like Marmite, the thinner it's spread, the better it is. Despite deciding I was overcommitting myself I had a little idea and went and registered a blog and three more domains called "AucklandToday". LOL. As Blackadder said "I have a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel" watch that spot :).

Statistics of Popes and Saints

Down the bottom of my sidebar is a link to StatCounter.com. Statcounter is a free service that provides basic analysis on web sites, telling the owner where traffic came from. I care about my blog and I'm always interested in knowing that others are finding my work. Over the last couple of days my traffic has nearly doubled. I was having a look through the referrer and search engine stats to try and work out why.

There is a lot of interest in St Malachy's prophecies. 72% of the search strings mentioning Malachy / Malachi by name, by reference (e.g. "Irish saint predicts popes") or by prediction "glory of the olive". Another 11% were searching for information on the late pope, or the details of the election of the new pope. The rest were a mixture, for example it seems I'm not the only one interested in Technorati.

Rainier III 1923 to 2005

Following shortly on the death of Pope John-Paul II, Price Rainier of Monaco has died after a battle with lung, heart and kidney problems.

For most of the world this will pass by unnoticed. For many it will be noticed but of far less import than the death of the Pope. For me, there's a link of coincidences of dates that makes it poignant; still less important than the Pope's death but still something to be noted.

Rainier was born on May 31, 1923; my father was born 12 days later. Prince Albert his eldest son was born in 1958, as was I. Albert on the 14th of March, me on the 20th of January. Neither Albert nor I have married, nor have we produced heirs. Both of us have had a string of female friends . Rainier has suffered increasingly from poor health over recent months, as has my father.

Sure, there's a lot of differences, but there's sufficient there to remind me of mortality.

Rest in peace serene prince, you are again joined with your beloved princess.

---

The title link isn't working very well and probably won't for a few days, their web-site seems over-loaded. The Google cache is here.

Project, Bridge, a New Blog

What a day

We've agreed to work on the rush project in a prototyping mode, which always results in rework, but avoids the slowness of formal design based development. So far it seems to be pretty good. We're doing the C++ here, and the reports / wizards / style sheets in Australia. For the moment the Australians are working off the old database schema, but nothings been broken by database upgrades yet. I worked hard on the project at work. I managed to get it working to the self-test stage and checked in my changes for a build. This means we have something for Rowena when she's next in. Things are looking pretty good for meeting the first internal ship date on Friday. About 5 minutes after I checked everything in, Australia came back with a few changes. Luckily it was just adjusting the availability of some windows, so I was able to get them tested and in before it was time to leave for Bridge. We'd left it a bit late, so it was a quick bite at Burger King.

Bridge

The room was so packed, that the sit-out table was moved into the foyer and the-other-Angela decided to split 4 tables off to play a teams event. We stuck with the pairs, which was lucky, as we led a charmed existence. We over-bid like crazy & kept on managing to make the contracts. I'm not too sure our tactic would have been as successful at IMP scoring. We only came unstuck on a couple of boards. One where Angela bid up to 7C, unfortunately the cards weren't with us on that hand.

The New Blog

I've decided to repatriate my software patent blog to blogspot. Yahoo 360 just doesn't do it for me. Once I made the decision I moved pretty fast and set it up with a basic template for now, then I just copied the postings back from the other place. I'll sort out page counters and so forth. I'd imagine it will be a few days befoe anyone finds it anyway.

Technorati

I'm really impressed by this service.

It's a specialist blog search engine, and is a lot more up-to-date for blogs than the web search engines such as Google & Yahoo! are. Of course, it only searches blogs, so you still need the big players.

I've placed a search box from them at the bottom of my side bar ... I may later lift it up, but I really don't feel like adding yet another way to leave my page too high up. Since you've managed to find this blog I might as well make it easy for you to read the content before getting too many temptations to wander off.

They've got a way to sign up and create a profile. Their help page says

"As a member, you can:

• Add a photograph to your profile and it will appear next to every search referencing your site.
• Help other people find your site's posts and learn more about you and your writing.
• Create free watchlists utilizing RSS to stay informed and track conversations as they happen.
• Enable your readers to search your blog on your own web pages with the Technorati Searchlet.

"

I figured "Why not?" I gave them a Spam Gourmet mail address, so if I've misjudged things, I can back out.

They also have a way to "claim" your blogs. I haven't a clue what that means, but again I've tried that. Their help pages told me the procedure, but

I was highly impressed that their newsletter was opt-in, not opt-out. I decided to subscribe just to see what it is.

Random Blogging

Sunday

Largely spent researching and blogging about Malachy, and also re-did my layout for this blog. It wasn't all at the screen, I've done laundry, cooked some chili tofu and vegies (vegan) for lunch & am seriously considering a large slab of red meat for dinner ... Either that or open a can of beans.

Blog

As I reported a few days back when I installed Haloscan trackback I badly damaged my publishing template, and also ended up with a second, unrelated, set of comments. I knew I had to fix it, and started again from a default template, applying my personalisations. I hadn't been too happy with the look of the site before, so I selected a different starting point. I like it more.
The Blog was supposed to be a kind of diary. Looking at recent efforts I seem to have wandered off into current affairs. I'm going to make a conscious effort to bring the subject of the blog back to my life.

John Paul II & Malachy

I've spent a fair amount of time on this, see next entry for what I came up with. It's Interesting how what started out as a brief article on his death turned into major blogging research on Malarchy. I'd heard about Malachy long ago - I've been on the Internet for 13 years, and I first heard about him long before then. I remember trying to find out about his predictions way back in my late teens. Today, thanks to the internet it wasn't that hard.

Yahoo 360

Environment

I've decided I really don't like the Yahoo 360 environment as much as I like this one. It's only customisable within very tightly constrained parameters. I'll keep it around for a while, but only are a place to store the Software Patents blog.

Arrogance

There are a number of extras they throw in my face that are only available overseas, they have my country code on file, so why do they insist on presenting me with the suggestion I add them to my start page?

Copyright Debacle

This must have hurt. The disclaimer that they added to my original Yahoo 360 entry, is found several other sites around the blogosphere, Geek News for example. Weirdly enough, they started with "How a cut-n-paste can ruin your day", and cut-n-pasted it to several pages. I hope they checked it first.

Site Stats and Search Engines

I've been looking at my site stats from Statcounter It's revealed some interesting things.

• 71% of my search engine originating traffic is from Technorati, and the other 29% from Google. I also had a search from Blogpulse, presumably they don't consider this a search engine.Looking at Technorati it is much more up-to-date and seems a much better option than Google for searching current blogs.
• 68% of my search traffic was from "Yahoo 360", with other search terms: Albania, "take3 movie newmarket", "kiore personal firewall", and "simplified characters". Only the movie one gave me pause for thought. It was Google having several postings on my main page that happened to contain those words in different entries.
• A fair amount of my traffic seems to be coming from the next blog button. I know it's coming from other blogs on blogspot, and I can't find any links to me from those blogs.
• I'm getting no traffic from the web ring I joined.

Quote of the day

"Always live your life with one dream to fulfill. No matter how many of your dreams you have realized in the past, always have a dream to go. Because when you stop dreaming, life becomes a mundane existence."

-- Sara Henderson, Writer

John Paul II and Malachy

Ioannes Paulus II. Requiem in pacit

I just heard the news that the pope had passed over. I wish him peace.
Like his two immediate predecessors he rehabilitated the papacy in the eyes of many non-Catholics. In my early childhood Catholics kept themselves aloof from many of the aspects of our secular society. The reforms of Vatican 2 allowed them to integrate, and the travels of John Paul the second in the early days of his papacy humanised that office.
Thanks to him, Rome is no longer seen as some kind of medieval holdout in the modern world.

An Irish Saint

St Malachy (Archbishop Malachy O'Morgair, 1094-1148) also known as Maolmhaodhog ua Morgair; Maol Maedoc is supposed to have predicted all the remaining popes between his life and the end of time. Malachy is a figure at an interesting point in time. It's hard to track down details but there are hints that the Celtic church was going its own way and if not actually schismatic, was close to it. The new advent article on him says

"St. Malachy was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, 1132, which dignity he accepted with great reluctance. Owing to intrigues, he was unable to take possession of his see for two years; even then he had to purchase the Bachal Isu (Staff of Jesus) from Niall, the usurping lay-primate."

definitely something was going on while the Catholic Forum says

"Replaced the Celtic liturgy (the "Stowe" missal) with the Roman liturgy in an effort to bring uniformity and discipline to the clergy and those in religious life. [...] Friend of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who helped him establish the Cistercans in Ireland, wrote a biography of him, and sat with him as he died."

More on the biography later, but doesn't the rest suggest that the Irish church was alienated from Rome? St. Malachy was canonised by Pope Clement (III), on 6 July, 1199.

The next pope?

Malachy has one further claim to fame. He may have been a prophet. Certainly a list of popes from his day to the present is frequently attributed to him. They may also well have been forgeries as Malachy's prophecies are said to have been locked away for four hundred years before they were allegedly discovered in 1590 in the Roman Archives. John Reilly reports

"They appeared in a long work, 'Lignum Vitae,' by the Benedictine historian, Arnold Wion (or Arnold de Wyon). Dom Arnold claimed to have discovered them in archival research. No one else, contemporary with either him or St. Malachy, had ever seen fit to commit mention of the prophecies to paper, or at least to any paper that has survived. Apparently, however, rumors of the prophecies were current at the time of publication, and reasonable people might surmise that the prophecies had been created to influence either the conclave of 1592 (which elected Clement VIII) or in anticipation of the next one, which occurred 1605 (and which elected Leo XI)."

The debate has raged ever since as to whether they are forgeries or genuine predictions of St. Malachy. He was certainly far more detailed about Popes that reigned between his death and the time of the discovery of the list. Skeptics especially note that his friend Saint Bernard of Clairvaux didn't mention them in his biography. So genuine, or not, the last three entries in the list are

110

John Paul II 1978 - 2005 The late pope Karol Josef Wojtlya
De Labore Solis (From the toil of the sun). Descriptive of a man that travelled across the world as did the Sun, high in the air (in a jet plane). Don't forget in Malachy's day people believed the earth to be flat, so the Sun appeared a tireless traveller. The also couldn't travel at much more than 5km per hour, jetting around the world wasn't an option.

111

The next pope gloria olivae (The glory of the olive)

112

The LAST POPE!

(Peter the Roman) "In extreme persecution, the seat of the Holy Roman Church will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed the sheep through many tribulations, at the term of which the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the formidable Judge will judge the people. The End."

And the meaning of The glory of the olive? Many see this as something to do with the Jews as the olive is taken to refer to them. From Crawford2000

"Look at Paul's Letter to the Romans, Chapter 11:17-24. Paul describes God's possessors of the Covenant, Abraham's descendants, as a cultivated olive tree. Gentile Christians are the wild olive branch from a wild olive tree, that has been grafted onto the original cultivated olive tree. Neither one, either Jew or Gentile, is considered better than the other, since Paul says neither group supports the roots."

Wishful thinkers see it as suggesting the conversion of the Jew to Catholicism. Others simply see it as suggesting that the next pope will have jewish ancestory. Of course, whoever replaces JP II, the believers in Malachy will find some connection to the olive. That's the joy of vague prophecy.

Other blogs are saying

BloGlenn

"The Order of St. Benedict has said this Pope will come from their order. It is interesting that Jesus gave his apocalyptic prophecy about the end of time from the Mount of Olives. This Pope will reign during the beginning of the tribulation Jesus spoke of. The 111th prophesy is "Gloria Olivae" (The Glory of the Olive). The Order of Saint Benedict has claimed that this pope will come from their ranks. Saint Benedict himself prophesied that before the end of the world his Order, known also as the Olivetans, will triumphantly lead the Catholic Church in its fight against evil."

Covington

" The Malachy "prophecies" claimed originally that the pope about to be elected in Rome will be the one who sees the end of the world, and identified him as having something to do with the glory of olives. In 1820, they added one more, just for the [...] of it, bringing Peter back as a frame story." I can't find any references to this insertion, can anyone enlighten me? -- Julia

Sharon K. Gilbert

"Once a Cardinal has received the required number of votes, the Dean of the College of Cardinals asks him if he accepts election and by what name he wishes to be called as Pope. On giving assent, the Cardinal immediately becomes Pontifex Maximus, the Holy Roman Pontiff.
"The Cardinals then pledge their obedience to His Holiness in turn. The Pope vests in his Pontifical clericals (white soutane and skull cap) — the Italian family business in Rome that makes all the Papal vestments has several different sizes prepared in readiness for His Holiness, no matter what his shape or size!"

The Holowach Blog

"It is interesting to note that "Peter the Roman" won't necessarily come right after the olive guy. He may come right after, or how-ever-many after. Though, common sense would dictate that the list moved forward singularly for the rest, thus, this last one should be right after the former in chronology"

"'glory of the olive. (Some prophets believe this pope will take Leo XVI for his name and will bring peace between Israelis and Arabs). St. Malachy predicts that Pope John Paul II's successor will be an active peace-making member of the religious hierarchy. But he will die in 2008 with his work unfinished and the next pope - called Peter of Rome ('Peterus Romanus') - will rule until the Apocalypse in 2020." Dates? What's the source? -- Julia

Asteroid as a comment on samaBlog

"this prophesy is worth studying, because it has some unique properties. The most interesting is that it is verifiable. If you look at Nostradamus, for example, if a prediction doesn’t fit, you can say “well, this must not have happened yet”. You cannot do this with this prophesy, because it predicts events that are known to have happened (the succession of popes), in order. Also, the prophesy is about a very specific topic, which doesn’t happen that often. The pre- and post-1595 hit rate are also interesting reading."
This is apparently a paraphrased extract from a longer posting at the Asteroid blog.

Last word

I'll leave that to John Reilly who points out

"The Papal Prophecies of St. Malachy are worth examining in a little detail. For one thing, the prophecies have great historical interest. For another, it's a good bet that they will get another public airing during the next papal conclave."

Here's a Google news link for when they do.

Pope John Paul II Quote

"The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation." Pope John Paul II

Gmail Doubles Storage

G is for growth

Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2 gigabytes by giving you more space as we are able.

Two gigabytes? Are they mad?

History suggests they are not. So how can they give this amount of storage for free? Let's start by considering what it must be costing them.

Most users are going to take a long time to build up that much archived mail, for example I just looked at my thunderbird mail repository containing my saved mail going back over a decade, it's only 200 megabytes, and Google would be mad if they aren't compressing their mail storage. Naively zipping up my mail reduces it to 60 Megs. Compression varies and images in popular formats like jpegs and mpegs don't compress well, so not many people are going to get compression like that, but the 2 gigabytes is somewhere between 2 gigabytes and 600 megabytes; probably closer to the 600 megabytes end. Most users won't use anything like their 2 gigabytes limit for a few years, so let's say that the average use is going to be around 1 gigabytes or 400 megabytes once compressed.

At current disk prices that works out at about 50c worth of disk per user. OK, they need backup media, and computers, and will have some other hardware costs, so lets say that doubles the requirements, bringing it to $1 per user. With their adsense technology it isn't going to take them very long to pay that dollar off from paid clicks. Obviously there's running costs as well, electricity, maintenance on their servers, etc, but no more than for any other web hosting business, and I'll bet they buy internet bandwidth at bargain basement prices.

Quote of the day

'Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.'
--Sam Brown

Google Gulp

Google are carrying on two of their favourite traditions

1. April fools announcements of new services
2. Doing it a day late

The joke

Google Gulp, a new fruity drink with a DNA reader that indexes your genetic code and modifies the drink to change your hormonal state to produce optimal effect.

This reminds me of the other DNA's description of the Sirius Cybernetics NutriMatic Drink Dispenser

The way it works is very interesting. When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant, but highly-detailed, examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain, to see what is likely to be well received. However, no one knows quite why it does this, because it then invariably delivers a cup-full of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Make sure you read the FAQ, it's hilarious, but oh-so-true.

A day late

Yes, it's already the second of April here. Google are obviously keeping US time, which for a service based in the US would normally be reasonable, except that I'm reading this page on google.co.NZ, a site that they run which masquerades as a New Zealand site and customises its view for New Zealand readers, so it would be expected that they used the New Zealand time zone for their jokes.

I remember from childhood that jokes were OK until Noon on the first of April, after that the trickster was the April Fool, not the victim. So April fool, Google!

On the other hand, Google have built a massive business on not being first to market, but on coming into an existing markets and doing it so much better that they sweep the former incumbent aside. I remember the old search engines from before Google. You do a search and their databases were so confused by keyword stuffers that you had to look through 10 or 11 pages before you found what you were looking at, as time went on this got worse and you had to look for more pages, tell it to exclude certain terms, etc. With Google, if what you are looking for isn't on the second page, you've asked the wrong question.

Another good example is adsense. I used to see ads as a browser, but they were never terribly relevant to me, and as a small publisher it was difficult for me to get relevant ads on my site. With Adsense I see ads relevant to the page I'm looking at, and customised for the fact that I'm browsing from New Zealand. As a publisher I can place ads on my sites and have Google's software select the ones that are most likely to be relevant to my content.

So let's just be charitable and assume that Google have spotted the business advantages of being in the April Fools industry and are simply coming into the market with a better version. Nah!

Last word, a Gmail reference?

From the Google FAQ:

I mean, isn't this whole invite-only thing kind of bogus?

Dude, it's like you've never even heard of viral marketing.

Yahoo 360 blog

I'm having a play with the new Yahoo! 360 beta. Thanks to Wannabe Lawyer for the invite. Looking at the layout, I feel it is best suited to be a personal diary style blog. I already have one of those, right here, and I'm not interested in cutting and pasting from here to there, so I've decided to use it as a place for recording the more interesting of Google Alerts I'm already receiving. My initial feeling is that the editor and environment are a little harder for me to use than the blogspot one, but then I'm used to the blogspot environment, so I'll withhold judgement on that until I'm more skilled.

Yahoo! And Creative Commons

Y!'s done it again, they've released a beta web search for material available under a Creative Commons (CC) licence.

What's that?

It's applying permission to copy and change to written works basically the same idea as open source applies to computer software. Just as open source means that the authors of some software have chosen to allow others to freely share and use that software, while reserving other rights, a CC licence on writing means that others can take that writing and use it.

So it's free?

Yes and no. It's free as in beer, but it's not necessarily free as in speech. The original author retains all rights except those they choose to give away. With open source software, it's usually free for anyone to use for any purpose typically with the only restrictions being that they must distribute the source code of any modified version they distribute and they must distribute the modified version under the same licence. With CC, it's very common for the original author to place more restrictive conditions, such as no modifications or no commercial use. Strangely enough giving attribution to the original author is an optional, not a required, part of the CC licence. This last point doesn't make any sense to me, as I believe if you're quoting someone you should give them credit.

Why am I interested in this?

I have a little hobby web site with information about the kiore. While I can write general information for the site, there's a lot of scientific papers out there that I'd love to be able to extract large quotes from. Unfortunately standard copyright doesn't permit this, so I need to either request permission or paraphrase. Paraphrasing is fine for general text, but if I'm trying to quote a scientific paper and paraphrase I'm likely to miss a key word and give wrong information.
Of course it's not automatic, and unless the original site uses CC I'd still have to seek permission.

So why don't I use a creative commons licence myself?

Copyright laws differ from country to country, and there seems to be a different licence text for each country. Nobody has written a licence for New Zealand law that I've found yet. Actually on Kiore.com I have chosen to release under a CC licence, even though it may be partially incompatible with New Zealand law. At the bottom of ever page is 'Except for journal entries, and obvious quotes under different licences, content on [that] site signed [my common bylines], or "Kiore.com" may be reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence.' with a pointer to the licence I've chosen to use (Non commercial, must give attribution, modified versions are to be released under the same licence).
So, why don't I do that here? While I've been typing this I've realised that the same logic I applied on kiore.com applies here. I think I'll update my template to make that point.

The fifth Kiore

Until about 10 minutes ago I knew 3 meanings of 'Kiore', and was dimly aware that there was something unknown in Korean that looked like "Kio Re".

The ones I knew

• The New Zealand Rat
• in the Manx Language, it's the word for "four"
• Somewhere in Albania is the town of Kiore

Today when browsing I found in the ICUN Red List of Threatened Species that Hippocampus abdominalis, the big or pot-belly seahorse, is sometimes known, in New Zealand, as "Kiore".

A Google search found 12 entries, one gives the Maori Kiore-waitai.

As pre-European Maori didn't have the horse, saying it looked to them like a rat makes sense.

Boxers in skirts?

I'm not a boxing fan, but Samoan Kiwi David Tua is facing American fighter Talmadge Griffis in the first of his comeback bouts at Waitakere Trust Stadium. Round one is currently on TV.

I don't know if it's a nod to his Polynesian heritage or what, but Tua appears to be wearing a mini-skirt.

I guess he's big enough to shrug off any flack.

HaloScan

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. Well, that's what they said they'd add. What they didn't make clear is you lose the blogspot commenting ... including the stored comments! It may not be a biggie, but ... people made those comments, I don't want to throw them away just because I've added trackback. So, about 2 hours later I have both sets of comments showing on my blog. It's ugly, but ... Let's see how it goes. What's really really ugly is I seem to have doubled up the haloscan insert on the individual article pages. Now that needs to be fixed, but not tonight.

Yahoo! 360

Yahoo! are readying their assault on the world of blogging and social networking. At the moment it's in beta and they are doing the Gmail "Invite only" trick, so you can't just sign-up for an account. This is a shame as I'd like to at least experiment with the software. If anyone from Y! is listening, I'd love an invite, email me: yahooinvite.u.kiore@antichef.com. One thing they are doing that's, I believe, unfortunate is that you need to be logged on to Y! to even view blogs. Most of the blog directories and search engines won't like blogs that are password protected. Here's hoping that they reverse this decision soon, so I can report on it myself.

What others say

Michael Schuermann has reviewed the service.

The interface is very well designed. It works smoothly in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and is very clean. In fact, it properly uses CSS and XHTML for it’s design. No tables used for layout as far as I could find.

The blogging tool is the centerpiece of the experience, and overall it’s pretty nice. The blog entry form is WYSIWYG, which will be a benefit to blogging newbies or others without HTML knowledge. However, there’s no spell checker that I could find. I would suggest that Yahoo add one ASAP, so that we’ll be spared from posts rife with misspelled words.

Tristan Louis says

The first thing that is apparent is that this is more than just a blogging package or social network one. From the name to the way one's web page is integrated with other parts of Yahoo!, it is clear that this is a longer term play with attempts at integration.

While some integration points are pretty solid (Yahoo! messenger, Yahoo! Launch, Yahoo! local, and the Yahoo! photo service seem well integrated), others are major misses. For example, why is it that this service has a different mailbox than my already existing Yahoo! mailbox? (and does that mean I now need to check mail in two accounts?) Going further, why are services like Yahoo profile and Geocities not integrated in this? It seems they would be natural integration point and yet they are nowhere to be seen. Last but not least is the main question about integration of my.yahoo and "My page" on this service. There should be another natural point of integration there, shouldn't there be?

[Update 10:31 AM 31 March] I've deleted a reference to copyright. Yahoo have explained that there was a technical mistake caused by a cut and paste from some existing code and that blog contents are copyright by their owners. See the first comment to this posting for more. I'm a software developer myself and I know that the purpose of a beta is to find and fix bugs. Yahoo! are doing just that.[/Update] Danah Boyd's summary

Anyhow, my general impression is that i'm wary, but i don't think that this is for me and i think it will be nice for the heavily integrated Yahoo user.

Marc Canter enthuses

Can't yah feel the vibe?

That's the sound of a 100,000 rushing into the next big thing - Yahoo 360. Over the coming days people's impressions will be revealed on this hybrid social network/blogging tool.

Just to be clear. This is what I call a DLA (digital lifestyle aggregator.) No they didn't get completely right- but it does successfully combine these two latest technology aspects - which each have been hailed as new 'spaces' (marketplaces, trends, what have you.)

Browsing the blogscape

This evening

I've been browsing blogs. Not just any blogs, but popular blogs. I called up the blogrolling top 100 and looked at the top 50. Now as far as I could tell these are sites that blogrolling's users, mostly bloggers themselves, have added to their links. Examining these sites should tell me what other bloggers believe makes a useful blog.

What did I see

The majority of sites I visited had a better layout and design than the default template I have here, but some were far worse; so pretty is good, but ultimately it's content not pretties. Most sites were well written. One or two were scarcely literate, so there's hope for me yet. Many sites have a strong theme, but some are personal. Themes are good, if you have a single strong, central subject you want to write regularly on. This is a personal site based around my idiosyncratic tastes, so a single leitmotiv is unlikely. A lot of them commented on the world news of the moment. Article length varied vastly. Some had essays, some were one or two paragraphs.

Conclusions

There seem to many definitions of what makes a good blog. I think I'll look for a visual improvement by switching to a more appealing template. Other than that I shall continue to write about what I want, approximately as often as I fee like it.

Faith

Falsafah

Falsafah means the love and pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. Serenity ; Calmness. A few weeks back I mentioned her blog.

I was back there today, she said "hello", and I wanted to catch up on how she did with work, her exams, and "Mr Nice Nose".

I could be a bastard and make you go and look, but to summarise she's reasonably confident of a pass, not working for money but developing her cartoons, and "Mr Nice Nose" seems to have dropped off the horizon.

Excursion

These are the bits of her blog that inspired this posting. Please read (after you've read mine, of course .. I'll give the links again at the bottom), the first posting talks of her visit to the Islamic section of her local cemetery (I gather from context that she is follows Islam). Here the Moslem dead lie between Christians, Hebrews, Chinese (Taoists?), Persians (?? This escapes me as Zoroastrians didn't bury the dead, perhaps Bahá'í, perhaps monophysite Christians), even the Ahmadiyan (Qadiyanis). Ahmadiyani aren't even permitted to pray for Moslem dead (Rioy av Religinter, pp. 69), yet here they lie next to them.

The second posting is also entitled Faith. She talks about her visit to a restaurant with her auntie and how her faith gets her through rough times.

The blessings I got through people made me believe more in the Almighty's existence.

Why does sickness and sadness bring some people closer to the Almighty?

Why are most god-loving people sad, poor and ill?

They don't match up to the expectations of the materialistic. What's here is temporary and what's beyond is eternal.

Sadness is like a hidden beauty. Most of the time, with spiritual guidance, it's negative power moves you to create something beautiful - like art, music, writing and devoting your time helping the less fortunate.

Her belief in a greater power gives her strength and the ability to continue through hardships.

Faithlessness

I, on the other hand am an agnostic. Please note, I am not an atheist; there's a big difference. Faith, loosely defined is the belief in something that can not be proved; something beyond the human experience. Atheists have a religious belief, they have faith, their faith is that there is no deity. Agnostic is a constructed antonym of Gnostic which comes from the Greek A- "not" and Gnostikos "One who knows"; in other word an agnostic doesn't know if there is a deity, or not. Some Agnostics believe it is not possible to know, I am not one of them either.

I've spent a lot of my adult life searching for the deity (or deities) and have come to the conclusion that if there is a deity, either he isn't ready for me to believe in him, or he doesn't feel I am ready. Either way I didn't find him (or her). OK, let's cover what I found out. God(s) are either supernatural beings that existed before the universe, and caused humanity to exist, this is the basic Judeo Christian Islamic belief; or Gods descend in some way from humans, this is in the Chinese religion where Gods start off as ghosts and gain position, and also was the ancient English (Scandinavian / Germanic) religion where the gods and people both descended from Bori, the first man. Does this help? Not really, just adds to the confusion.

I grew up in a Christian country, and my agnostic/atheist parents sent me to a Presbyterian Sunday school, so my tendencies are towards the God that existed before the universe and created everything from the ylem to the silicon my computer is made of. Reading the Torah, the Gospels, the Koran, even the book of Mormon (but like the bullet I couldn't get through Second Nephi). None of this helped though. Talking to the faithful isn't much better, they are totally convinced of their beliefs, that is what Faith means, but their faith is not mine. Some try "proving" their beliefs, unfortunately as Douglas Adams pointed out "Proof denies faith, and without faith I [God] am nothing". Actually he wasn't the first, I think Jesus is recorded as saying something similar about St Thomas.

The other thing they do that gets my goat is showing weaknesses in the arguments of the opposing camp and treating that as proof of their standpoint. That's as ludicrous as saying that "as fundamentalist Christians believe that pi is 3.0 (I Kings, 7:23), I can show that pi is more than 3.0, therefore fundamentalist Christians are wrong and pi must be 4.0". In logic this is known as the fallacy of Non sequitur. You see this a lot in creationist arguments, both Christian and Islamic, where the supposed inability of evolutionary proponents is taken as proof that the Biblical / Koranic version must be true. Of course it does nothing of the kind; proving that pi is more than 3.0 doesn't prove it is any other incorrect value; proving that there is not [yet] an explanation for the evolution of salt water tolerance in dolphins (One I remember from The Worldwide Church of God does not prove that dolphins were created exactly as they are today. Equally the Athiest position sometimes comes from "I don't believe the Bible story, hence there is no [Deity]" is a Non sequitur. Just as illogical.

Problem is I can't find the faith to believe that the Deity exists. Sure a lot of the stories resonate: God creating man then commanding all the angels to bow down to his greatest creation, and they all obeyed, except Iblith; God appearing to Moses in the form of a burning bush and then, as humans would be destroyed by his face, permitting Moses to gaze upon his hindparts; Job having a faith so strong that every torment that was sent to test him was shrugged off; God commanding Jesus to be, and he was. If you examine the stories, none of the prophets were given any real choice in the matter. They didn't have faith, God (or an Angel) came and rammed themselves down the prophets' throats.

Adam met and talked with the deity; Moses as I mentioned before was sent pretty convincing proof; Jesus at Gethsemane is recorded as saying "Remove this cup from Me" (Luke 22:42) as he feared going through with God's plan but concluded "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done" (Luke 22:42) Jesus had seen too much to be able to deny what he experienced. Job, Ezekiel, Mohomet, the Bab, Joseph Smith all were forced by the Deity to believe; not faith, but actual knowledge. Yet, the Bible records when Thomas wanted that proof he was reproved.

Thomas, of course was forgiven, and the Acts record him travelling to Asia to spread the Gospel. In India he is credited with founding the indigious Mar Thoma Christian community; travelling to China and back, ultimately he was martyred in Chennai. I've been to the place where he is supposed to have landed, and seen his bones and the arrow heads that are presumed to have killed him. Thomas had no more choice than Adam, Moses, Jesus, or the others. Of course, where he went he left a monophysite form of Christianity very different from the polytheistic Trinitarian form the successors to St Paul ultimately legalised by the corrupt and degenerating later Roman Empire.

Faith revisited

Perhaps that's the meaning of Faith, and why it is so important. Your life isn't destroyed and you still have hope; a future; a comfort. So Falsafah, perhaps you could endorse love, pursuit of wisdom. Serenity ; Calmness. Add knowledge to that list and your life may be changed, not necessarily to your advantage.

Me? I'd settle for either faith or proof.

Postscript

I said I'd repeat those links, here they are: Cemetary trip, and Faith.

Now Grandfather was an inventor

Another bit of browsing

I'm waiting for Ethohost to fix an issue with the server, and being Easter Monday it's a wet autumn day so I've been doing a little browsing today. Here's one from kimthew.com

"In Rose Family lore, there are a great many things my grandfather was supposed to have invented. Some of the stories are actually true. He played a role in designing prefab housing after World War Two, and true to his roots as an unreconstructed Fabian, told a reporter from the London Times he didn't understand 'why we don't make similar buildings today for the homeless.' As a kid, every time I traveled on an airplane, one parent or other would mention that Papa had some role in making the black squishy resin that glued the slabs of concrete together to form runways. This is unverified and probably apocryphal, but I promise to ask next time we talk. "His other great breakthrough in the world of applied chemistry was the development of fusible interlinings, a manufacturing process that allowed apparel makers to glue garments' interior linings to their exterior fabric, obviating the need for skilled craftsmen to stitch the pieces together. Faithless to his roots as an unreconstructed Fabian, he transformed the schmatte business by allowing companies to fire lots of people and move their operations to Bangalore."

I find this interesting because both Dad & I have invented things, but nothing has ever come of them. When he was a young man Dad invented a kind of electric guitar ... Not the electric guitar as we know it, but a feedback loop on an acoustic guitar that caused a plucked string to vibrate forever until the musician decided to stop the string and then when I was a young child he and a friend had a provisional patent on a television aerial that was placed under wallpaper. From memory he gave up on that one because he couldn't find a manufacturer interested in turning the idea into a finished product. In my case, the one that really rankles was having the basic idea for a mountain bike, stronger frame, lower gears, wider tyres. I called it the "off-road bike". I never got beyond the thought experiment stage because I listened to my friends who thought nobody but me would ever be interested in riding a push bike off-road. It looks like Matthew's grandfather took his idea of fusible interlinings and pursued it with a single minded dedication. Something that both Dad & I have lacked. What would have happened if, rather than accepting a "No" from people quite happy making what they always made, Dad and his friend had invested a bit of money and made the aerials themselves? What if I'd tried for a patent on the "off-road" bicycle? I don't know if I'll ever have another flash of inspiration, but if I do I'm going with it to see where it leads me.

A large salesman of dreams!

Aside

You have to admire those French for style and panache. The page un grand vendeur de rêve which FireFox translate tool rendered as "A large salesman of dream[s]!" shows a man by a lake wearing a mint condition fisherman's vest, carrying a brand new fishing rod that's taller than he is ... and he's caught a fish the size of his hand.

---

Original link broken by 2015. Web archive (Missing picture) substituted.

Stupid crooks

Found on the net, a story of a really stupid thief

Scotsman.com News Archive - Hello, hello, hello- your nicked

A handbag thief was snared by police after answering his victim’s mobile phone and agreeing to return it.

"The sneak thief did not know he was talking to PC Mark Pickavance when he answered the phone hours after stealing it."

OK, street thieves are never the sharpest knife in the draw, but this guy wasn't even the sharpest spoon.

Pacific Island Pigs

The pig followed human colonisation of the pacific, so why did it get to the Polynesian islands, but miss out on reaching New Zealand until European contact? Or did it?

I got alerted to this through a web search turning up a paper from 2001 by Melinda S. Allen, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith and Ann Horsburgh, researchers at Auckland University, who became interested as an outgrowth of the genetic work of Matisoo-Smith and colleagues on the ancestry and historic dispersal of the kiore. My interest in cute little furry creature is dealt with elsewhere.

Their paper begins "Pig was one of three animal domesticates in prehistoric Polynesia, transported from Near Oceania into Polynesia as far afield as the Hawaiian Islands by the region's earliest colonists."

Summarising Allen et al

Humans introduced pigs into New Guinea at an unknown date with archeological traces from 6000 BP, or perhaps much earlier, and "By 3000 BP, pig had been dispersed to West Polynesia (including Fiji) by Lapita-pottery bearing populations, along with dog, chicken, and the Pacific Rat." They spend some time discussing the absence of the pig from Easter Island and New Zealand, then got into discussing mitochondrial DNA analysis which unfortunately went over my head in places, but if I read them correctly they have been unable to do mitochondrial DNA analyses on ancient bone samples, but on modern pigs they have tests that distinguish Polynesian from European pigs and the New Zealand kune-kune pig corresponds to neither breed.

No pigs on Easter Island (Rapanui)

"In general, there is a decline in flora and fauna as one moves from the large, rich Melanesian islands, to the smaller and more remote Polynesian ones. Rapanui is the extreme of this rule. In ancient times, livestock consisted of the Polynesian chicken and rat (Kio`e), there being no evidence of either pigs or dogs." G. McCall

Pigs in New Zealand

So if the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori had pigs were there pigs in New Zealand before European contact? Apparently not

"There is a most interesting Maori reference to pigs in the journals of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his first voyage to New Zealand. Near the North Cape of the North Island in December 1769, Cook's Tahitian interpreter, Tupaea, was told by the local Maoris that N.W. by N. or N.N.W. was a large country to which some people had sailed to in a very large canoe, the passage taking up to a month.

"From this expedition some members returned and told their countrymen that they had seen a country where people ate hogs. And for these animals they used the same name, Booah, as is used in the Islands.

"Though Tupaea ridiculed the story, claiming that it could only be believed if they had brought back pigs to prove it there is a good reason to regard this as a memory of a return voyager to Tonga, Samoa, or even the lower Islands." -- Percy Tipene

OK, if the pig wasn't here before the Europeans, and isn't a European or Polynesian breed, where on earth did Cook get them from? If seems possible he didn't. Percy Tipene's paper suggests that the ancestor of the kune-kune may well have been introduced by later European visitors.

And finally

What happened to the Polynesian chicken? Enquiring minds want to know.

Farewell

A sad day for the Clement tribe as we farewelled one of our number. Michael is now in the air travelling back to his home in Australia. Diana picked me up before 10:30 AM and we headed over to Mum and Dad's. They were all downstairs to see Michael off. Apparently Dad had insisted. Michael got quite emotional as he knows that this may well be the last time he sees his father, probably Dad worked on the theory. I was thinking what it must have been like for Dad in 1972 when we left the UK at the end of our 8 week visit, even though he was much fitter than Dad is now, Dad must have had similar thoughts about his father; and in those days you didn't make international calls as readily as we do today. Diana dropped Mike and I off at the airport to get him checked in, while he was doing that I returned his rental SIM card to Vodaphone, then Diana picked us up and we went of to the butterfly creek cafe for lunch. After lunch we talked for a while and then it was time to drop him back for a farewell. Not as hard for me & Diana as we can be reasonably certain of meeting up again, Bon voyage Mike.

Cadbury Trademarks the Colour Purple

Seen while browsing

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things reports:

"and they're not alone How does a company trademark a color? Boing Boing reader Rob says, Because it's Easter, I find myself in the possession of a Cadbury chocolate product. What do I find on the back? 'Cadbury, ellipse device, dairy milk, the glass and a half device and THE COLOUR PURPLE are Cadbury Limited trademarks used under licence in New Zealand by Cadbury Confectionery Ltd.' All our purple are belong to Cadbury Confectionery Ltd.!"

They've put in a few updates noting other colour copyrights from around the world.

Background

As this is a New Zealand trademark I thought I'd search for other NZ trademarks on colours. First up, Simpson Grierson have a PDF discussion analysis based on the trademark commissioner's ruling on Telecom's earlier failed attempt to trademark the colour yellow. This sets forth a number of principles including that the colour must be defined by a classification system such as the Pantone system. This was followed by an ominous note that the requirements would differ from industry to industry.

Chocolate, on the other hand seems to have different rules, and Cadbury have succeeded. Norris Ward McKinnon have a piece on the history of the Cadbury claim pointing out that they have been trying to protect it since 1999, and had a run-in with the makers of Harry Potter chocolates. They finish with

"Trade mark changes that came into force last year have relaxed the boundaries of what things may be trade marked. Many colours are now trade marks owned by various companies, and associated with various products. The colour green is now exclusively BP's in relation to petrol station services. The colour yellow cannot be used by any of Telecom's rival printers of telephone directories. No home insulation manufacturer can use the colour pink other than Pink Batts, and Sunlight dishwashing liquid has rights over the sound of a 'squeak'. Arguably it is just a matter of time before 'purple' becomes a Cadbury trade mark."

Obviously the prediction has come true.

Another snippet from AJ Park's Brandscape talks about past efforts to trademark the colour Green for motor oils, apparently BP have managed to trademark it in some jurisdictions, and prevented others trademarking it in others; Nestles succeeded getting green for Milo, but V failed.

The future

How many identifiable colours are there? OK, paint colour cards & the Pantone system list thousands, my computer claims to be able to make millions, but twiddling the lowest few bits on colour codes make little or no difference to the colour perception, and there's more variation between different monitors than these low order changes make, so let's say there's 500 truly different colours. If every manufacturer can trademark only one of those colours, we'd be limited to 500 brands in each category. With WTO trademarks, that would be 500 products worldwide.

Problem is manufacturers don't play fair. Once they have peach, they'd put out a slight variation of their brand in nectarine, then gala, etc. I'm sure a certain software vendor who are well known for their ubiquitous 'Blue screen of Death' will be rushing to trademark the colour blue, and it won't just be the royal blue they use there, it will every variation they can think of. Soon new entrants won't be able to get into the market because every colour they try to make their products is already someone else's trademark.

I despair of the future in this increasingly corporatised world.

aside

Blogger.com's spell checker doesn't recognise 'Cadbury', its only suggested correction is 'Cadaver'.