An invention for the ages. Headbutt your friends in the ultimate pedal powered version of push me pull me. As you lose weight through exertion your friend gets closer to the road – eventually taking over with catastrophic consequences:
Category: Curiosities
Tanner’s hide
Finance and Deregulation Minister Lindsay Tanner is Web 2.0 enabled with a blog over at the SMH. Today’s post is all about the government’s new Web 2.0 based thinking – they’re probably going to use blogs in some upcoming community consultation. Ironic really, given that the same government is advocating restrictions to the internet that would put us on par with China. Perhaps comments they don’t agree with in the consultative process will be blocked? Or the IP address taken down and the perpetraitor (sic) silently removed from their homes and literally excommunicated (possibly a removal of Internet privileges).
Here’s Tanner’s rather convoluted description of what he thinks about Web 2.0…
“This new mode of production is known in the academic literature as peer production, but is more commonly referred to as Web 2.0. It is a trend that applies to much more than the creation of cultural goods, although these goods, such as the innumerable YouTube video mashups which poke fun at politicians, are acting as the harbingers of change.”
“Peer production empowers every citizen to be creator and critic, as well as consumer, of information. It is a mode of production that is enabled by two key factors. The first is the collapse of cost barriers to producing information – computers are now widely accessible in western society. The second is the removal of logistical and functional barriers to collaboration through new internet based networks.”
“The glue that binds peer production together is the ethic of collaboration it inculcates among groups. People contribute their time to peer production because they find communities with a passion for making their adopted content niche the best it can be.”
“This environment also creates efficiencies by allowing skilled amateurs to allocate their intellectual capital to the content niche about which they are most passionate. This is significant when you consider the quality and value of work done by people for love and not money.”
All in all, his article is a pretty garbled way of saying the Government is down with the Internets and all that.
“These changes are not easy for government to process. Our Westminster bureaucracy has optimised its policy production processes over centuries. Adaptation to the new information environment will be neither quick nor easy.”
I guess that’s something Obama can relate to.
Here’s his obligatory dig at the Howard Government:
“The Australian Government should be leading the way in adapting our old processes of consultation, policy making and regulation to the connected world. Yet we lag behind other nations in both the scale and pace of reform, a situation largely attributable to the culture of secrecy, spin and apathy of the Howard years.”
“I am taking steps to reinvigorate the Commonwealth’s efforts in this area. For example, early in the new year the Government will run a number of trial online consultations using blogs and other Web 2.0 tools”
You know what would be brilliantly ironic – if all this consultation got blocked by the Government’s proposed clean feed (a very bad idea – putting us on par with China in terms of restrictions) with it’s invisible blacklist of sites. My disdain for the Australian Christian Lobby is growing – I think they miss the point on so many issues when dealing with a secular government and trying to impose Christian values on the general public – who generally aren’t Christians. I acknowledge that as Christians we believe our way of life is better – and more in line with God’s expectations – but it’s not for us to impose our code of conduct on the rest of society. I also acknowledge that increased consumption of pornography has some links to increases in sexual violence and is socially undesirable. But I don’t think this is the way to tackle it – and I don’t think – as Jim Wallace so tactlessly put it that opposing this plan is tantamount to supporting the evils that lurk in the dark corners of the internet. Here’s the quote from the ACL Media Release.
“Obviously the Internet industry is going to continue to fight this important initiative
but the interests of children must be placed first.”
“The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must
be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access.”
Censorship is bad. Particularly for the church. Once you start advocating censorship what happens if a militant anti-Christian or Islamic party gets in and adds all the Christian sites to the black list? Have you thought about that ACL? Have you? Christians who are serious about Christianity’s real agenda – which is the proclamation of the gospel can not be supportive of Government intervention into the minds and beliefs of the general public.
By all means, if you’re a Christian then take part in the political process – but don’t pretend to speak for all of us – and do so to raise your opinion on a matter – not to demand legislation be based on a Christian world view. That is not in the spirit of democracy – that’s a theocracy.
Oh, and if you want to voice your opinion on this matter through the press (or the Government’s upcoming Web 2.0 consultancy process) – the ACL has a handy letters to the editor writing guide.
I’m going to do some work now.
Round of applause
Someone much more technically astute than me designed this cube – that lights up when you get a new email in your gmail account.
It’s pretty clever. But almost completely useless.
The reason I mention this now is that a British designer has just launched a “self applauding machine ” that will launch into a hearty clapping session at the touch of a button.
I reckon some enterprising software engineering type could rejig it so that it applauds every time someone posts a comment on your blog/Facebook photos/anything online that indicates they have taken some interest in your work. Any volunteers?
CSS and desist
CSS is confusing. I just saw my new design in Internet Explorer 7 for the first time – and it still didn’t work. Oh for a standards compliant Microsoft… oh well, I think I fixed it by essentially ditching the transparency setting for Explorer. Still, my design looks better in Chrome and Firefox. I doubt that will be the tipping point for anyone contemplating switching browsers. Any Explorer readers out there finding this easier to read? Let me know please – older versions than IE7 may still have problems.
Genius
iTunes 8’s genius feature is brilliant. I hearts it, I do. It’s house cleaning time. I picked Yves St Klein’s “Polka” the song from that ad with people throwing stuff in the car from their second story window. And I get the following:
Darren Hanlon, Xavier Rudd, White Stripes, Kaiser Chiefs, Supergrass, Pulp, Placebo, Gotye and the Dandy Warhols – a perfect Sunday afternoon clean up mix.
Read this post – free
Mozilla – the development company that brought you such products as Firefox 1, 2 and 3 – has performed an interesting test on content writing for websites . The general rule is that a link should essentially ask to be clicked. Your link should be compelling and descriptive. Basically you shouldn’t ask people to “click here” for more information. Anyway, Mozilla ran a test where their Firefox 3 page would present alternate options in the download button text – “Download now – free” and “Try Firefox 3” and the first option was “significantly” more popular (well a 10.07% conversion rate as opposed to 9.73%). So there you go. Boring reading – but I hope the title was compelling enough to bring you here… and that’s what counts.
Phoning it in
I admire the resolve of sub editors around the world not to make racially charged puns on the dilemma surrounding Barack Obama and his blackberry. This is a serious issue people. Due to security concerns – and laws surrounding the status of presidential correspondence – the President of the United States does not have an email address. Lucky the Republicans didn’t get in – Sarah Palin’s passwords are really easy to crack.
Obama’s Blackberry was a constant companion during the campaign. And now he has to give it up – his tech savvy approach to grassroots campaigning was arguably the factor that won him the presidency – it certainly won him the primaries.
Why can the White House not afford to pay the best security people in the business to ensure their Commander in Chief can have access to technology? Surely the US Army doesn’t have its officers receiving correspondence by carrier pigeon?
Slate provides some interesting background on the drama – and in the process makes the argument for the President to have email access and the ability to hold on to his preferred communications device.
I, on the other hand, am not the President of the United States. And I want an iPhone. I am lobbying hard for iPhones to be the phone of choice in our office’s upgrade of our current mobiles.
iPhones don’t just look cool – they’re incredibly functional and extensible. They will not go out of date any time soon. Other tech companies (like Google) are struggling to release an iPhone killer – a device to dent the iPhone’s popularity. Here is my suggested iPhone killer:
Coffee: the new black?
I spent much of last night redesigning my blog – it’s still not finished, but it’s servicable. It prominently features my coffee machine – and pays adequate homage to my coffee fixation. I really struggled to find an appropriate coffee colour for my background. Coffee has so many different colours. Roasted beans vary depending on how well they’ve been roasted. Green beans, as anyone who’s watched TV lately knows thanks to Nestle’s ridiculously stupid green bean blend (green beans taste like grass), are green. Brewed coffee has different colours depending on the method – plunger coffee is different to espresso – and espresso is different depending on the heat, grind and length of shot. Also – espresso has a layer of crema (coffee oils) that’s a reddy, browny, goldy colour. So I eyedropped a colour from these beans in photo shop (having come up with various shades of purple, red, and pink) that looked about right.
Obviously if you’re here reading my blog you know this already – it’s more for the benefit of subscribers and people who read this from my Facebook profile.
Ninjarific
I’m loving this new Gmail theme. I am Ninja! I especially love that the inbox stars are shurikens. Totally, awesomely ninja. It takes me back, somewhat nostalgically to the coolest ninja game ever – other than Shinobi – Ninja Mission on the Amiga.
Consoling myself
Attention console owners and video gamers you are killing the planet.* I hope you leave your conscience at the door when you turn your machine on.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has released an American study that found gamers in the US are filling the air with toxic carbon emissions and killing the polar bears.**
“NRDC and Ecos Consulting performed the first ever comprehensive study on the energy use of video game consoles and found that they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year — roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation’s electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year.”
The news is not all bad for me – as I still don’t own a new generation console. I am an eco-friendly gamer with my Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 faring best in a tabled comparison of power usage.
For those of you who are visual thinkers, here’s the graph:
You can read the whole report here (PDF). A Playstation 3 ($160) will set you back 16 times the price of a Wii ($10) in energy costs over a year if both devices are left on, and five times the price if both are turned off – $3 and $15 respectively. More video game energy factoids can be found here (another PDF).
Climate Friendly’s carbon calculator says the Playstation 3 user who leaves their console on all year round uses an appropriate 1337 kWh per year – which produces 1.4 tonnes of carbon – offsetting that via the aforementioned company will cost you $95 a year.Year round use of the Xbox 360 uses 1031 kWh per year, produces 1.1 tonnes of carbon and costs $75 to offset.
My coffee machine uses 2190 kWh per year (estimated), produces 2.3 tonnes of carbon emissions and would cost $156 to offset. Luckily the Nintendo 64 doesn’t even register on the calculator in terms of its annual carbon emissions so I’ve got a fair bit of credit up my sleeve through my environmentally friendly gaming strategies. Come to think of it, I’ve been an eco-savvy gamer since way back when playing Eco-Saurus (aka Zug’s Adventures on Eco Island). A game so obviously ahead of its time.
*In a literal, physical sense not in the actual game you’re playing.
** Killing polar bears would be another fun game – Polar Bear Hunter the long awaited sequel to Deer Hunter…
Cheque your emotions
My hatred of emoticons knows no bounds and has been documented previously. They are bad. They are for lazy writers – they are an exclamation mark taken to a new low. So the idea of a USB keyboard dedicated to emoticons just makes me feel empty inside. Those who are interested may like to know that they can be removed from the keyboard and worn as jewelry.
Bajca’s (the company) designer says:
Bajca’s idea arise from connecting deeply the virtual with the real life. Bajca is the instrument that ” make real” the emotion- a digital translation of every sensation- telling the story of everyday life; spoken, touched and wearn every day.
I say :(. No word yet on how much these will set you back financially – socially they’ll be crippling.
Milestones
Interesting fact – while importing my blog into WordPress (I’m still toying with making the move but am thinking it needs to be done properly to a wordpress.org site rather than a wordpress.com blog) I noticed that today I hit 300 posts, and 2000 comments. My comment to post ratio is still reasonably good – but most of them are from posts a while ago. That seems worthy of some sort of celebration. I think I’ll go home and play some Bomberman on the N64 which arrived in the mail today from eBay.
Warning signs
This fully posable warning sign finally allows you to warn others of the perils of your mastery of obscure strains of martial arts. Otherwise it’s completely useless.
The new black
I’ve been doing a fair bit of HTML and CSS stuff at work lately.
So I found this shirt particularly amusing. I’d buy it – but my wife is campaigning against stupid shirts.
In other hexadecimal colour news – this site makes converting between RGB and Hex codes a breeze.
I don’t know how I, the colour blind guy with no design sense, became responsible for our website design (note: only the Corporate site – and the design is currently mostly broken and I’m not fixing it ahead of a comprehensive redesign), but that tool makes my job easier.
From the Vault 2 – the CD32
I made fleeting reference to this in the lego post – and decided that since I’m waiting around for some approvals on some things before I do any work today I’d write about it now.
The Amiga CD32 was the most technologically advanced Amiga I ever played with – and I got to play with a few courtesy of dad’s freelance writing gig (reviewing computer games).
Released in 1993 the console was out a year and a half ahead of the PSone – and offered pretty much the same capabilities – just without the volume of games.
It was a last ditch effort to save the mother company – Commodore – which declared bankruptcy in 1994.
Pretty much the coolest thing about the console was the game it came bundled with – or vice versa – Diggers which probably inspired a generation of mining exploration in the same way that lego inspired modern architecture. It was a race to find valuable minerals – teams of five race(r)s all with unique racial characteristics – literally battled for underground supremacy. You could win by wiping out the other teams – or by reaching certain cash thresholds. Mining revenue could be spent improving equipment – with automatic drilling machines vital weapons in the battle to (un)cover the most ground.
I think I downloaded a Diggers ROM to play using the Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator (UAE) and it was still fun years later. You can download it for PC here.
