Over the falls

I have a really sore neck this morning, from the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore. My wonderful wife bought me two tickets for my birthday, so we found a kind hearted soul who wanted to play with my four kids for the day, and drove up the Beltway into Maryland. After parking the car about three kilometers away, we walked in the direction of the pulsing drums up to the pimlico race track , where the event was held. I felt a little old, hanging out with these kids, but we managed to sort of fit in.. (maybe?) Twenty Dollars for two beers was a bit steep...Old guy whinging at the bar. When I was a kid, me and my brothers would be driven around town in our big red family van, and Dad would blast The Who on the crappy cassette player. We grew up singing along to tunes like ' Boris the Spider' , ' Magic Bus ', and ' Can't Explain '. When I heard that The Who were re-forming and coming to town, I just had to go. To be honest, I thought they would probably suck. ...

Here's a truly special idea - via those crazy Thrashers , I ran into this intriguing article from The Economist, which points to the world of Negative Databases, and how they might be able to help the world of encryption and data security. In a world where sensitive data gets frequently lost, Data security folk are always trying to come up with the most secure way to store data. And it doesn't take a six year old to tell you that the best way to keep your data safe, is to not have it there in the first place. "Pshaw!", I hear you say, "You can't store it and not store it at the same time!", and in a way, you'd be right. But then, in another, more accurate way, you'd be a bit wrong. Consider the following statement: "All Ravens are Black" From here, you could make all kinds of crazy assertions about all black things being ravens, but these are incorrect, despite being amusing. What's not incorrect, is that: "All Non Black-Thin...

Simon has the rules of this blog meme over at Exceptionally Uncaught. I had to seriously look around for the closest book - the first two I found were "Good Night Goz", which I discounted because it only had eleven pages, and the websters dictionary, which I discounted because it didn't technically have any sentences - (well, no full stops, anyway, which I believe maketh the sentence) So I ended up with: Fax:202-333-8308. www.georgeowninn.com. Hotel George $$$$ Capitol Hill Modernistic Posters of the first president adorn the hotel, which attracts lobbyists, celebrities and others who dig hip surroundings and proximity to power. See Map P.102. From Washington DC for Dummies, 3rd Edition. ( I really have no idea how I came to own this book. No, honestly...) So , yeah - you're all 'it' and that...

I was shocked and stunned when I woke up this morning to hear of Steve Irwin's accident . I never met Steve personally - to be honest, for a while I thought of him as a bit of a joke - some hyperactive ocker maniac, giving us Aussies a bad name overseas. (I mean, over here, as soon as you say you're from Australia, it's a matter of time before an American asks you if you know the 'Crocodile Hunter'...) But that all changed the day I took my kids to visit the Australia Zoo , up on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland. There, built around his parent's original reptile park, is a fantastic and huge zoo that is focused on protecting animals and educating people as to the way the natural world works. My Family and I spent the whole day attending shows and walks, and feeding Elephants and Kangaroos, and by the time I walked out, I felt privileged to have been a part of Steve and Terri's passion and enthusiasm for the natural world, and the way that they managed to m...

Having been living here for a little over three months now, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about America... As Lindsay remarks , Americans (in America) are great people. I've met some really kind, smart and wonderfully warm people throughout my travels in America. Because there are so many people here, most Americans aren't easily surprised - so they tend to be pretty direct and open, which is a little different to people back home. I find myself much more inclined to make smalltalk with strangers, which is something I've always found awkward. Of course, there's always that element of being a zillion miles away from home, and extremely low chance of ever running into the same person twice... America is kind of a selfish place. There's a real 'hands-off' approach to government here. In many ways, its seems that Americans would rather 'Do-It-Yourself' than let the government help you. For instance, there's no Garbage Collection where ...

I was poring over Slashdot today (as nerds are want to do when they procrastinate), where I found an interesting article about Microsoft working with Mozilla to make firefox work better with Windows Vista. In between all the usual rantings and zealotry, there was an interesting idea raised - "Are Microsoft planning to ship Firefox with Vista?" Initially, I just Auto-Snorted and read on... But then later I came back to think about it... You know, if Microsoft (MSFT) is really serious about being seen as a company that's about innovation - one that is about embracing great ideas, this would be the perfect way to leave all those crazy slashdotters gaping slackjawed in their tracks. To regain a bit of the market trust that they lost. To get people to like the company more - maybe the way they feel about other giant companies... All that anti-trust stuff, lock-in and lock down stuff would just be blown away if they would include, on equal footing, the open-source browser as...

I decided it was time for a new HTML template - thanks to the folk over at oswd.org , makers of fine xhtml chicanery, I managed to piece together this kind of web 2.0 something or other thing using the magic of the blogger markup language. Nothing says 'web 2.0' like those wacky diagonal stripes in the header... I decided I wanted less "busy-ness", and then I decided I had too much whitespace (can you have 'too much' whitespace?) so I added my random coloured squares down the left. Interestingly, through some awesome mind-reading javascript programming, if you click one of the squares that best matches your mood, it will take you to a web page that allows you some insight into your true self. Anyway, I'll leave this in place for a while, and see how things go. There's a brand new version of blogger in beta now, so when that arrives, things will probably get shaken up some more...

Why is this so fun? It has only one button. And yet - I play it...

Well, It's official. Not content with being Australian, American and British, I'm now also an honorary Newfoundlander. In addition to being some of the friendliest and most fun people I've ever met, Newfoundlanders have a ritual that allows us mere CFA's (Come-From-Aways) to join their ranks as honorary Newfies. The process is called 'The Screech-In' and as far as I can tell, it usually takes place in a bar. George Street, in St John's is the proud holder of the Guinness world record for the highest ratio of bars to street - there are around 45 bars in about 500 feet of road. The aim of the Screech-In is to prove you can eat, talk and drink like a Newfie. This involves scoffing something horrible ( I had to eat a chunk of Bologna), drinking a shot of ' Screech ' - which is a pretty rough Jamaican rum (in earlier times, Newfoundlanders would trade saltfish with the Jamaicans for it) and when asked the tradtiional question: "IsyouaNewfunLanderCock...

On those languid hot summer days, I’d listen to the children shriek with mock annoyance, recalling the delightful pangs of irritated adults carried from my own childhood. The sun was hot, and it beat down on the tin roof of the Dalmeny House known to us as ‘Sea Eagles’. This place was as defining for me as holidays themselves. Sand in floorboard cracks, abandoned hand-me-down china and an expanse of green lawn strewn with eucalypt twigs that splayed awkwardly, giving way to the gravel that would hurt your toes on the way to the ever present even blue of the Pacific ocean. My major focus should probably have been on re-capturing the exuberance of a forgotten summertime with my children. In truth, it was on surfing. My mind was filled with transient snapshots of waves, frozen toppling into clear blue crystal arcs, or foaming lash-like streaks of spray blown up from the perfect off-shore winds. My mission that week was to catch another wave. It didn’t matter how big it was, or what shape ...

I don't know about you. But when I read my web fiction, I'm looking for one thing . And that one thing is neo-gothic post modern thriller, mystery action stories with undertones of historical religious zealotry, and slight Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy twinges that collide with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a very Frank Miller, existential, harsh metropolitan, red, black, white and steel kind of way. So naturally, I'm pretty glad that Simon started writing Harsher Light: The Story of Dante Harsher. I wonder if Tornado Glory will get to make an appearance...

I think that Mikal's post on ' A day at the shooting range ' might have angered my Inner Hippy. Not that I want to prolong any talk of politics, but... You know how people often come out as 'politically opposed' to things, when in reality, they're frightened of them? (Of course, I'm generalizing, but most of the prejudiced xenophobic or pro-life or otherwise moralising politics seems to always stem from a fear of strangers, or homos, or God, or whatever...) Most of the time I can recognise that. And I'm able to set whatever personal prejudices I have aside and try to deal with the facts alone. But on the gun front, I'm just like the Fred Niles and Rush Limbaughs of the world, in the sense that my fear overcomes my judgment. Truth be told, I find the concept of applying human ingenuity and brilliance in engineering towards the 'science' of killing people to be absolutely terrifying. I'm afraid of guns. I'm also afraid of Death Adders....

Dean over at Thrasherville has been chronicling the story of TOWER Software's SDK wiki , which has, as of today, returned to the fold as being available to all (and more importantly, indexed by everyone's second brain .) The underlying principle of a wiki is that it is quick to publish. The word "Wiki-wiki", for which the modern wiki is named, means 'hurry-quick' in Hawaiian. (Not surprisingly, wikipedia has a great article on the subject...) When you create or edit a wiki article, there are no approvals, no hoops or editors involved - any change made is immediately visible to all visitors to the site. This very feature is what makes a wiki so scary, and so extremely valuable. You see, despite the fact that people invented bureaucracy, most people hate it. If I have to fill in a form just so, and then wait for a human to approve/edit/reject my article, chances are high that I just won't bother. Which means that everyone misses out on the knowledge I keep...

Okay, I know you're not supposed to click on your own ads, but I found this link to Cambrian House quite intriguing. Remember those guys who bought Mikal lunch? well, this is them, so they obviously have a pretty smart marketing team. It turns out that they also have a pretty neat idea, too. Or rather than just one, about a squillion... You know, If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me: "Hey, you're a computer nerd. You know what would be really cool? [insert some random weird person specific software idea] Now I'm sure that would make you a million dollars!" Well, then I'd have at least seven dollars. Which isn't really that impressive, but when you consider that there are at least 3 hundred thousand computer nerds out there, each with at least seven different [insert some random weird person specific software idea], Then that old longtail large number theory starts to kick in... Cambrian House are offering a battle ground where ideas can p...

Well, it's been a few weeks since my family and I arrived here in America - during this time, so much stuff has happened, and I just haven't had much time for updates. So, here's the highlights of the last few weeks as they stick in my head. I'll try harder to post regularly, but I'm not making any promises... My family settles into our new home for the next few years- an old, almost condemmned vinyl siding house with a faint smell of mold, and a backyard the size of a regulation soccer field, surrounded by giant green maple,oak and cherry trees. Yes, That's the lawnmower. I already hate it. I remember what it was like to move out of home, with borrowed furniture, mattresses on the floor, and never quite being able to find the exact implement you want to cook with. Our house is still very sparse, and has the unique, University-Student-two-minute-noodle Group House feel. Home, sweet home. Two Australian Software consultants walk into a crawfish bar in ...

Mathematics tends not to be seen as the most emotional science. And yet, when I use a VOIP connection to hear my daughter tell me about her farewell party, 10,628 miles away, her giggle is being crunched into a string of 1s and 0s, and streamed across the Pacific Ocean to my ear, where it of course has a profound emotional effect on me - just as though we were together... Somewhere, there's passion in all of that maths. This Morning, I woke up early to stare at a yellow line and a dinky picture of an Airplane: Which is having a similar effect - that dinky airplane picture is a live 3D feed of Qantas Flight 149 as it brings me and my family back together for the first time in over a month. Data like Altitude, direction, speed and flight plan are all available and charted in real time fboweb.com offers the live updates as a KML feed, available for viewing through Google Earth. This must be one of the coolest uses of Google Earth I've seen (It does seem to be limited only to fligh...

The 70+ year old lady I met in line at the store, who told me that she... "...Really, Really love(d) Pink Floyd. I Think Dark Side of the Moon is the best album ever!" The street signs in Virginia that say in boldface "DO NOT DRIVE ON SHOULDERS" The black guy who was having such a great day that he offered to buy the shirt I was buying at Wal-Mart: "You know, I could buy an alcoholic beverage for a complete stranger at a bar, and people would think I was a terrific guy! But If I bought a complete stranger a shirt, or some peanut butter at the grocery store, they'd think I was some kind of weirdo..." The world cup presentation ceremony - after the game, the teams lined up to be presented with a medal from three important looking men in suits. One would give them a medal, one would shake their hands, and the third guy appeared to be there to give them a hug. Each player would get a big hug from this weird football official guy. Some of the players look...

You know, this might alarm some of you. But in my endless quest for truth and justice, I've discovered something that is, in and of itself, quite shocking. Because I care about you all, I feel the need to point this out, for the good of mankind. The TV Dinners, called 'Banquet' are NOT REAL BANQUETS! In fact, they are actually, (And there's no other nice way to say this) - Extremely Disgusting. When I was a kid, fresh out of home, and trying to figure out whether I should spend my rent money on beer or not, I found that I had this enormous other problem - food no longer just materialised on the table when I was hungry. So, I had to learn to 'cook' (well, prepare something that vaguely looked like food enough to keep me alive. It wasn't until I met my wife that she actually coerced me towards anything that actually resembled cooking. But I digress...) And as I was 'cooking' my 'food', I used to lament the complexity of modern Cuisine. ...

Well, after jonron 's nagging, I figured I better post something! It's weird - being so far away from home and in such a strange foreign place - you'd think that I'd have all kinds of things to say, but in truth most of the time I'm either so busy with work that I don't have time to post, or so lonely that I don't want to burden you all with my misery... (sob!) Anyway - I'm currently posting from the Best Western Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas . (We have a TRIM Customer here who needs some help with configuring their records management system, so Simon and I have been helping out. ) I'm not sure that I'd ever want to stay at the Worst Western. Or even the Average Western, but no matter... Texas has been a pretty entertaining place to visit. Our efforts at finding a place to park ended in a church parking lot where the sign said "Clergy Only - Sinners Will be Prosecuted (and towed)" When we finally found the office, there was another gi...

This is a great article from Clay Shirky about how Ontology is overrated - and how the human obsession with cataloging things and building file plans is slowly being questioned as the best way to organize information. My favorite quote is the one about building classification hierarchies requiring two skills that are hard to find: "Mind Reading and Fortune Telling"... If you're at all interested in information management, or the future of the internet, or knowledge systems, I'd urge you to go and read it right now: http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated My take is that while the shelves have indeed vanished, and some librarians are wringing their cardigans in denial, that from an enterprise content management position, the de facto tag driven classification schemes aren't quite enough to be able to guarantee the ability to obtain the complete business context of whatever information you've found. If I need to find a crucial accounting document, I ne...