My Ancient GPS

I've been to India as a tourist three times. The first time was in 1996 and I toured the southern part of the country, Kerela, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Before I left my then home in Wellington, New Zealand, I did my homework, got vaccinated, devoured guidebooks, checked the nascent web for travel warnings, redirected my email. I thought I was prepared, until I was in a smaller city and discovered that the street signs were only in Malayalam, a Dravidian language with its own script that is totally unreadable to someone who only knows the Roman script we use in English.

I was in trouble. I'd been covering a fair amount of ground that day, and was miles from my hotel. I wanted to get a bus back to the city I was staying in, and there were plenty of buses, but they were only marked in Malayalam and I couldn't read the destination signs. I got lucky, there was a family standing at the bus stop and the son spoke English; he was able to tell me which bus to catch and it only cost me a few minutes telling him about my country. I had a couple of other experiences like this and once hired a Taxi to go around the corner.

When I got home to Aotearoa I knew I would go back to see Mumbai in Maharashtra and continue up through Rajastan, Gujarat and the Punjab and I didn't want to get lost again. It took me 18 months to go again and in that time primitive hand held Global Positioning System (GPS) units became affordable and available. These early models didn't have maps or tell you to "Take the second exit at the roundabout", but I knew I could use it so I bought a Garmin one.

Once my destination was programmed in, it could point an arrow there, give me straight-line distance to it, and it could remember about 100 or so destinations. This was really all I needed, when I arrived at a town I recorded the location of the bus or train station and my hotel. If the tourist map told me a destination was close I'd program a guessed location for it and could follow the arrow. This method of navigation took me to some interesting places where tourists normally don't go: sedate farmers' vegetable markets, a street of jobbing arc welding businesses, busy chicken markets; real India and not just the tourist destinations.

I had to use my commonsense too. If the little arrow was telling me to walk through a brick wall it was obvious I needed to detour, but sometimes it wasn't quite so obvious. I ended up in a couple of "interesting" locations where I got cheerful hellos from the locals, but strongly felt it was safest to smile, wave, say hello back, but keep walking. I also once got steered straight through a squatter camp, I knew where I was going, but by the time I knew it I had a choice of walking through or detouring over a mile.

Thanks to my little Garmin GPS I never got lost again and enjoyed my second and third trips with far more confidence than my first. Twelve years later I still have it, and it still works. We now have one with a map and spoken instructions for the car, but the arrow and distance still serves me well for navigation on foot or for long distance cycling. When it does finally wear out I'll replace it and I'd never consider doing another overseas trip without a hand held GPS.

Originally published on Qondio

World's Worst Tasting Cough Medicine, But It Worked!

n January 2007 my partner Tessa & I were touring in India and after nearly a month on the road we were in the beautiful city of Bhubaneswar in India's Orissa state.

Tessa came down with a cold and it sparked her asthma off. She hadn't been to a doctor since we left our home in Auckland, New Zealand and even though I knew she needed help she was determined not to make a fuss. I can't really blame her, a week or two earlier I had resisted getting help for one of my travel ailments. Admittedly neither of us would have run for the doctor back in Aotearoa NZ either.

During the day we had passed a closed shop front not far from our hotel claiming to be a doctor's evening surgery and that evening I "accidentally" steered Tessa past it. Inside the now open store was a professionally dressed man sitting at a desk with a minimal amount of medical equipment, an assistant and a curtained off examination area. At first I was a little dubious that he was the real thing, but when he started examining Tessa he did exactly what a real doctor would do anywhere and asked familiar questions. After a couple of minutes he wrote a prescription and when I asked for the bill only asked for 50 Rupees ... at that stage a little less than two dollars!

I was a little surprised at the minimal fee, but paid up and we went to get the script filled. The pharmacy dispensed some antibiotics and an allegedly cherry tasting cough mixture. These medicines were all fairly cheap, but still cost more than the doctor's fee.

Tessa told me it was the worst tasting cough mixture she had ever had ... but it worked better than anything she could remember. Within a day she was back playing the tourist with gusto.

Since leaving India and coming home to Auckland I've often wondered what was in that cough mixture, as I'm sure it must come with other syrups.

I've also wondered about that doctor. I sometimes think we might have wandered in on a charity clinic and if so he was probably as surprised at me asking for a bill as I was at the low fee, but again it's something I'll probably never know.

Originally published on Qondio

Garlic For Coughs And Colds

Whenever I have a cough, a cold or a generic viral fever I take fresh raw garlic as a herbal remedy to help myself recover faster. I take it twice a day, first thing in the morning and about 12 hours later at night.

My method is to take a large clove of garlic, place it on a chopping board and lightly crush it with the blade of a large kitchen knife, when I say lightly I mean so it is bruised and maybe a little split, but not turned to pulp. After that I peel it and cut it into pieces about 1 cm (the size of a broad bean). Once prepared I swallow the pieces whole with water.

I make sure I get fresh New Zealand garlic rather than the cheaper imported Chinese garlic. I'm sure that China's garlic is just as good, but buying locally grown produce means I'm getting it fresher. If you're planning to try this, I suggest you buy local produce from your home area for the freshness factor.

Does it help? I like to think so, but as every cold is different it's hard to say. I do know that within an hour of taking it I can feel the garlic working in my lungs (yes, this could be psychological) and scientific studies have shown that garlic contains compounds with antibiotic properties.

Even if it doesn't work, the aroma of garlic means other people are warned and will stand further back so you're less likely to pass the cold onto them.

I've used this method or a close variation for over 10 years. It is based on my personal experience and the results may not be typical.

Originally posted on Qondio

Mystery Gift

This morning while I was having my bath there was a knock at the door. Outside was a courier with a box clearly addressed to me. It had my name, street address, and suburb in large type with no clue as to the sender or the contents.I guess it was sent from somewhere in Auckland as it didn't name the city or country

I didn't open it as I thought it might be something Tessa had ordered and I wasn't supposed to see until the 25th. Tessa had already left for work and when I got the chance to ask her she was as much in the dark as I was.

It was the last night of bridge for the year and as I hadn't had a chance to come home before going up to the club, it was nearly 11PM when I got home and opened the box. Inside was a confectionery hamper from SweetzRUs a.k.a Lollies online with Toblerone chocolate, a teddy bear, some loose wrapped chocolates and three packets of Sweet Love products. Still no clue as to the sender.

I'm working on the basis that either there was a miscommunication and the card was accidentally left out or it was someone I've done a favour for over the last year who wished to do something nice for me anonymously, and if that person is reading this: thank you, it's appreciated, but you shouldn't have :)

While on the subject of giving, if there's anyone else out there thinking of doing something nice for a stranger or near stranger, can I suggest making a donation to the Tear Fund's Gift for life campaign, or a similar fund, they help people in the third world lift themselves out of poverty by providing a loan of livestock, tools, training, or capital to start a business.

I guess nothing much remains but to wish you all a very merry XMAS.

Seven unsolved medical mysteries - New Scientist

"In this week's issue of New Scientist [the author] edited a profile of a doctor who is the real-life version of TV's House MD. William Gahl recently set up the Undiagnosed Diseases Program to hunt for the answer to mysterious diseases that have defied all other medical experts (read the interview at New Scientist). "This got [him] thinking about ailments that have perplexed the medical profession. Here is a selection of the most unusual."

Fertile women more open to corny chat-up lines

Psychologists carried out a test where men rated as good looking by women approached strange women and attempted to set up a drink later, getting their phone number. Afterwards the women were approached by a female researcher who asked questions designed to determine their fertility. The result, women are considerably more open to advances from good looking men when they are at their most fertile -- New Scientist

The surprise, of course, is that this is a surprise. You only need to consider the evolutionary pressure to reproduce and look at the behaviour of other mammals to understand why this makes perfect sense. The only reason it wouldn't make sense is if we believed that somehow the rules of evolution didn't apply to our species.

John Key Joke

After being sworn in as Prime Minister, John Key walked out of Government house and got into his ministerial limousine for the first time. The chauffeur turned to him and said "Where to Mr Key?"

Without even a moment's hesitation Key replied "I'm National, so signal right and turn left, of course."

---

Ever wonder where jokes come from? This was originally a joke about Argentine President Juan Peron, only in his case it was signal left, turn right. I read it and felt it ideal for our own JK, so I translated -- Julia.

In Defense of Alchemy

Alchemy, and by that I mean the attempt to change base metal into gold (chrysopoeia), has a really bad name today, but was it as bad as we are led to believe?

Today we can look at alchemy and say it was pseudo-science, occultism, and just plain crazy. We have images of an unkempt train spotter (or should that be coach spotter?) in the medieval equivalent of an anorak hunched over his heated retort adding foaming chemicals to something nameless at the bottom. We know it was crazy because gold is an element and you can not change one element to another by chemical means. Copper will always be copper, and to change it you need the type of energy found in the heart of dying stars.

To understand alchemy it is necessary to understand a little about the cultural context and the knowledge of that era. Well before they learned how to make metal from ores, our ancestors probably discovered naturally occurring gold, the native American civilizations who never transitioned from the stone age certainly did. Some time in the late neolithic (stone age) our ancestors discovered how to use heat and chemicals to treat stones "ores" containing metallic salts and oxides to turn the compounds into metal. The metals created from this were soft ones like copper and tin. South Americans made sewing needles out of gold and Ötzi the Austrian Iceman carried a copper axe, so these primitive metals were usable.

Our ancestors were as smart as we are, and experimented and learned. After a while they discovered that if they mixed soft metals together they could make harder metals and the bronze age was born. Later came the discovery of iron, and how to mix iron with other chemicals to make harder forms of iron and eventually steel.

Meanwhile gold hadn't been forgotten, it was then as it is now a highly desirable and precious metal. Enter the alchemist who reasoned "If mixing different metals makes hard alloys, and I know that some ores make harder versions of the original metals, presumably because ores already contain more than one type of metal, and gold is soft, then if I can remove the impurities from other metals I should end up with gold and be rich." These alchemists didn't have our knowledge of elements, so the logic was entirely reasonable for that age. It was further enhanced by the "four elements" theory of antiquity, this held that all physical objects were made from different combinations of only 4 elements.

With the knowledge of the time, the alchemist's theory wasn't actually too bad. Mixtures are hard, I want soft, so I'll un-mix. Unfortunately the theory was flawed, and they began casting around for better theories, these theories led them further and further down unproductive roads, and further from what we now regard as the truth. Eventually starting with people like Robert Boyle and his book The Sceptical Chymist, the experimental and more logical aspects of alchemy became chemistry while the more bizarre elements wandered off to become a true pseudoscience. Robert Boyle himself is largely regarded as having his roots in alchemy, yet his book is regarded as the start of modern chemistry and chemistry as distinct from alchemy dates from its publication in 1661.

For over two thousand years (and possibly several thousand years, depending on when Egyptian alchemy began) alchemists slaved away in secret on their impossible mission, and in the meantime made a large number of important discoveries and laid the basis of modern inorganic chemistry including a lot of the laboratory equipment that early modern chemists used, in China the alchemists searched for and made medicinal discoveries some of which are in use today.

We should salute these explorers as early scientists and while we must never forget their excesses we need to balance these against the benefits they bought us.

Of course the final irony is that even if they had succeeded and found how to make virtually unlimited quantities of gold, rather than becoming incredibly rich they would have just devalued the value of gold and we'd be using it to roof houses. A similar thing happened in the time of the conquistadors when they brought large amounts of Aztec gold back to Spain and invented inflation.

Who Was Behind The Mumbai Terror Attack?

The world is reeling from the reports of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Attacks that were dealt with in a highly professional and effective manner by the Indian security forces, both police and army. Unfortunately before they were stopped the terrorists killed over 200 innocent people.

Now attention is turning to attributing the blame. We understand that one of the terrorists has been captured, but we don't yet know if he even knows who was behind the attacks. What we know, so far, is that they apparently hijacked an Indian trawler, killed all the crew, except one, and forced that crew member to sail them off the Mumbai coast. Based on a GPS found on the boat it seems that their route included Pakistan and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is an obvious candidate for being behind the attack, but is that really what happened?

As always the internet is abuzz with conspiracy theories and the finger has been pointed at the CIA, the ISI, the shadowy figures behind the Yorkshire 7/7 attacks, Dawood Ibrahim and even Al Quaeda. Personally I find the claims that the CIA was behind the attacks bizarre as they are reported as having alerted the Indian authorities to the possibility of an attack on the Mumbai Taj hotel.

Whoever was behind these attacks, they intended to damage India by attacking foreigners in India and frightening them into staying away. It's also highly likely that they intended to damage the slowly improving relationship between India and Pakistan. It's difficult to see how the government of Pakistan can see an advantage in goading India into an attack, which suggests that whoever in Pakistan assisted the attack was acting against the interests of their own country and their government. This suggests it is either some disaffected faction in Pakistan's security services or an extralegal force such as Ibriham or Al Quaeda. I wonder if the truth will ever be revealed.

Who do you think was behind the attack?

Originally published on Qondio

Giant Single Cells

I've been fascinated by something I read a couple of days back. Most cells are microscopic, the largest bacteria is a little under a millimetre in length and the largest amoebozoa (amoeba and similar protists) gets to about 3 millimetres and all is well with the world. These large bacteria and amoebozoa face difficulties with life as giant cells and many of them resort to having a large number of copies of their DNA (In the case of protists multiple nucleoli) in the cell. The giant bacteria can have 100,000 to 200,000 copies of its DNA.

A few days back I read about a recent discovery, an even larger protoist named Gromia sphaerica There's a nicer photo of it on the Discovery web site. This is one weird looking beast, and I'd so like to know more about it.

But wait, there's more. It seems that gromia leaves trails as it crosses the sea floor ... trails that are identical to the pre-Cambrian trace fossils which were previously taken as evidence there were multicellular animals before the Cambrian explosion.

I remember being fascinated when I was much younger by the question "what's the largest cell" ... and the answer was "An ostrich egg", which it was, if in a fugacious way. Only now the answer isn't so simple. Sure an ostrich egg is a lot bigger than gromia, but it turns out there are even bigger candidates. Some seaweeds are made up of giant single cells Caulerpa can be up to three metres long, and it's all one cell! Sir Arthur Eddington was right when he said "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." and it isn't just the universe, there's enough here at home to baffle and amaze.

Photo credit Eurakalert.org.

Tessa's Graduation

Tessa's school NSIA had its graduation ceremony today and we attended. It's been about 6 weeks since the end of lessons and Tessa's been working as the baker at an Ellerslie cafe (which foolishly doesn't have a web-site) in the meanwhile. She's been really looking forward to the graduation.

We got there about 90 minutes before it was due to start and Tessa had a great time catching up with her classmates. She also showed me around the school and introduced me to several of the staff. Being an adult student, Tessa is more the age group of the staff than the students and with the NSIA's emphasis on foreign students was also only one of three (or possibly 4, I'm not sure about the heritage of the Brazilian student) Caucasians in the graduating class.

Each member of the class was called up in order, by name, except for Tessa. When the presiding tutor called her he said a few extra words about how good and how helpful she had been.

Afterwards the school put on a lunch and there was a chance to say goodbyes.

Submitting sites to reciprocal directories

If you've tried getting your domains listed in reciprocal internet directories, you've probably noticed that it's getting a lot harder to get accepted than it used to be. What's more, it's going to get harder to get into any directory that vets submissions.

I own several directories and I'm getting so badly spammed by directory submission services that I've had to get a lot tougher.

The problems they present me with are that they completely ignore the submission guidelines and they attempt to trick me out of my reciprocal link. They do this by either having a links page that isn't linked to from the rest of the site or sometimes just trying to claim an existing link as their reciprocal ... in one case they had the cheek to claim a link on one of my own sites.

It's the reciprocal links that make my directories worthwhile and if they can't even be bothered supplying that I'm not interested in helping them out.

These spam submissions have increased my workload to the point where I have become quite brutal about deleting them. I used to try and help out submissions that almost made the grade, but now if I don't find exactly what I'm looking for I'm likely to just toss the submission. I know this is harsh, but that's the reality of a very marginal businesses, here just isn't a margin to support any more detailed examination. Occasionally I spot a really good site that almost makes the grade and I'll still email them to try and clear it up, but I'll only email once.

I'm sure other directory owners are finding themselves with much the same problem as I have and you can look for them taking a tough line. Sorry, but it's a matter of survival.

If you want to get your site listed in directories:

• Read the guidelines ... if your site doesn't fit, move along to the next directory. There's thousands of them out there, you'll just save yourself time.
• Create the required back-link. Put it on a page that's in your site map. If the directory requires some special condition for the back-link, either follow it or move along. It isn't worth your effort to try a submission that doesn't fit.
• Describe your site in a real sentence or two. Have a look at the directory you are submitting to, if it's of any value, it will have real sentences, not just strings of keywords. I always slightly reword submissions to avoid duplicate content, but I like to have a sentence to start with. Other directories will simply incorporate your text, as long as it's real English.
• Give a real email address that you actually monitor. It's possible that the directory owner might try and contact you, if you don't respond to the email your submission is history.
• Now, and only now, submit.

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Want to know the official way to SEO your site? Google have published a 22 page guide giving their preferred way for you to do it.

That's not really a fair summary. The guide does explain how to make your site list well on Google, how to make it display correctly in the search results and how to select which pages are indexed, but the 22 pages also offer a wealth of simple to understand gems on how to make a site that is both useful to your visitors while being easy for Google and other search engines to analyse and index. There is little in here that is new to the experienced designer of well indexed sites, but there is a lot that people who have never really considered the search engines could learn from it.

Finally, they've kindly published it under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Licence, so it would be possible for annotated versions to be produced, the guide is at http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf.

Yonkly Update

Back in April I had a brief look at a Twitter clone project called Yonkley.

I browsed back to their site tonight and its' still there and apparently business is growing despite the Yonkley site itself having very little traffic. They seem to have morphed the business from straight development to hosting private label Twitter clones.

The hosted sites allow advertising, mini-cms, editable profile pages and various other features.

I find this fascinating. I can't think of terribly many businesses that would benefit from a service like this, but iSweat.com is one. It's people doing regular exercise programs supporting each other to keep up with their programmes. I'm sure that there are lots of other special interests that could use a service like this.

It's also interesting to me because they have a product for an obscure niche and yet they can find enough customers to stay in business.

How Microsoft could kill Linux

Another from the oldie but goodie file. I wrote this in February 2005 on Slashdot I've rescued it from their archive so I don't lose touch with it. The discussion was on how Microsoft could use the dearth of Linux device drivers to kill Linux. As is typical with me I looked at the problem the other way around.

In my opinion, and it is just opinion I have no facts to support this at all, if Microsoft released a Linux it would become a nearly instant success in the corporate market.

Year -1 (Now)

System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity PHB: No way. We're not having something put together by a bunch of hackers

Year 0

System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity PHB: Hmmm, OK, as long as we do it quietly. To protect us we'd better be safe & go with Microsoft Linux

Year 1

System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity

PHB: Good thinking. MS Linux gets great reviews in PHB Weekly. Just make sure you get service pack 6.2.

Year 5

PHB: The CEO wants to know why aren't we running Linux on our servers?

System Administrator: It's too unstable, Microsoft keep screwing up the updates.

The few PHBs that ever knew there was a Linux before MS got in the market would quickly forget that unpleasant fact. If they ever heard of them they'd probably think Debian SuSE & Redhat were either cheap clones or outright warez. In either case something to be avoided.

Although I'm glad they didn't, I've never understood why Microsoft haven't done this, it's well within their capabilities.

Why did Neanderthals go extinct?

Back in 2005 a report appeared on the US ABC that modern Humans and Neanderthals co-existed in what is now France for over 1,000 years before the Neanderthal gradually died out. In those days I used to frequent Slashdot and there was a typical Slashdot discussion filled with hype and in-jokes on why Neanderthals went extinct. I just decided to rescue my contribution to that discussion and archive it here. Enjoy

"They started receiving email

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear Mr Neanderthal,

First I must solicit your strictest confidence of this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and "Top Secret".

You must be surprised hearing from me in this manner as we have not previously communicated.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS, descendant and heir of the late HOMO HEIDELBERGENSIS of AFRICA.

Before he passed away my late ancestor secreted one hundred thousand (ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND) african elephants (AFRICAN ELEPHANTS) in the plains of Africa and I seek your assistance to export these animals to Europe where the growing shortage of the similar "Woolly mammoths" would make them highly marketable.

While the seas and deserts separating Africa from Europe are easily overcome, African Animals are unable to tolerate cold and I will need a number of large fur coats to protect them for the journey.

In return for the suply of these furs and acting as my agent for the sale I would be delighted to offer you a full 50% of the realised market value.

Yours Faithfully

Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Lagos, Africa

Yeah, I know. but I like it, and it's my blog.

Goodbye to the Rat

I've just renamed this blog from the "My name / Kiore" name it's had since I started it to simply  my name. It feels a bit weird as I've been using the Kiore nickname for over 10 years, since I signed up for OKBridge in 1996 or 1997, and when I started this blog I was definitely at least partially in that persona. For the last couple of years this has been the last place I've been using it.
I was showing someone my blog today and they asked about the Kiore, as I explained it I realised that my head and thinking are definitely elsewhere and in October 2008 the name is fairly meaningless to me.
I'll be retaining the Kiore.com domain name though. The logical side of me says it's too much hassle to change the registration data on 1,500 domains . The sentimental side doesn't want to let go that finally.

Directories

As is usual for me I've got too many ideas & not enough time.

I have recently acquired Queensland.co.nz and will be creating a site of some kind on it, probably a travel portal. While I'm waiting for inspiration, I've invested some time in my long neglected directory portfolio.

I run a small number of directories, mostly monetized by Google Adsense, and currently have 4 private ones and 5 open submission ones operating. All the open ones are relevant to New Zealand and I run them as genuine directories. I choose to apply my own variation on the DMOZ rules for entries: real sentences, in English, normal capitalisation and not just a string of keywords; I also find and list sites I think worthwhile in a non-reciprocal manner so they are genuine directories. I'm determined to avoid duplicate content penalties & subtly vary the wording of entries, especially between the directories, but also when compared to other links.

I find legitimate SEO practitioners submit client sites for a while and then fade away. I realise that SEO practice wants to get the links and keywords repeated verbatim on many different websites while I on the other hand want traffic, so I get my ads clicked. The two desires differ, and surely with a little management could be converged, but this seems an idea that's difficult to convey. My way of looking at it is that I am running a genuine directory that is well indexed by Google, so there is still a benefit to listing on them. At the moment I'm getting spammed by so-called SEO experts in China who seem to think having an overwelming bot attack on my site's Capcha is a professional way to promote their customers. I just delete these turkeys on sight. I get a few very welcome submissions from web site owners, so growth continues.

The public directories are

• SearchNewZealand.co.nz which has been around for a while and gets of the first page of Google for some searches. This was my first directory and has taught me how to run a smallish directory. Unfortunately some of the mistakes I made in the early days show in it, so I decided to create 2 others to experiment with different ways of presenting the same information.
• SearchMe.co.nz is a site that sat around for a while with a small database doing very little. I've decided to repurpose it, initially as a near clone of Search New Zealand in terms of sites, but structured to have a flatter structure with more top level directories, and avoiding the deep directory structure I created for SearchNewZealand. I'm hoping this will make it more useful to visitors and better indexed. I'm copying the links across with light rewording. Longer term I'm going to aim more for paragraph length descriptions rather than the short DMOZ style sentences.
• Weblinks.co.nz In its current incarnation is new. It's a looser version of Search New Zealand / Search Me that was initially build by merging the two databases (about 50% from each) with the Search Me structure and adding a list I had of sites that were OK, but weren't up to the quality I required for the other two directories. It will be interesting to see how it develops, I fear it will eventually become the main site, but I'll let the market decide.
• SportsDirectory.co.nz was registered in late September 2008 and is for sports and sports related sites only (Although I do have reciprocal links to sites such as directories). I have no idea yet if the format will work, but I'm watching.
• AffiliateDirectory.co.nz is a previously abandoned project I've recently resurrected. It's purely for affiliate programs, so won't be of interest to many people, but suits my needs. It's really hard to make though as I'm listing information about the affiliate program & many of them don't have all the information I want easily accessible. The logs show that I'm getting a few visitors who click through to read about the programs, so it's serving a purpose.

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