Holiday Playlist

Before a wrap up of the songs that I've enjoyed most in 2009 I present the songs I've enjoyed most in December:

Swedish rapper Henok Achido singing high on life (when the drugs don't work).



And...A track I heard in the Morgan Freeman movie 10 Items or Less by Kemo The Blaxican named La Raceta.


It may only be two but I have a feeling that they will be songs that continue to be played throughout 2010.

The internet that Australia is missing out on

Australians who have experienced the rest of the world's broadband can often be heard complaining about the slow speeds and low data caps available to us. Whilst I sit here in Sweden with my (girlfriend's) 100mbit connection my friends at home max out an an effective 7mbit. There are numerous technical, environmental and commercial reasons why the speed of our internet has lagged behind but here I would like to examine some of the services that Australia misses out on either partly or entirely due to the speed of our internet.

• Spotify: This is a music service that streams songs, entire albums and playlists written by you or friends on demand. Simply search for a song or artist, play the songs you want and now and then an advertisement will play. If you don't want to hear the ads then pay to subscribe and they're gone. There isn't anything else available in Aus that compares to the functionality and simplicity available with this service. Now why wouldn't it work in Australia: 5 hours of listening to medium quality songs (160kbs) would equal 2.8GBytes of data. That's 10% of my cap at home in less than 1 day of listening to music!!
• BBC/4OD: Both the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK stream all of their programs to UK residents. As with broadcast TV the streams have adds at the start and sometimes during the show, but unlike broadcast TV you can watch what you want, whenever you want.
• Streaming Movies & TV (and some more) in the US. To download a 2 hour movie at the lowest quality (500kbs) would chew through 3.5GBytes of limit and for most people cut a third out of their bandwidth. Leaving anyone who wasn't watching the movie with genuine 2002 speeds.
• And MOG: a music streaming service that is not quite as good as spotify but still worth looking at.

Of course the federal government is attempting to build the National Broadband Network and they are doing their best to convince the public it's what they want but the spruking is in the hands of one of the least respected members of the government so I don't hold much hope.

All I've heard so far is stories of rural tourism firms that want to upload movies and high res pictures. Who is that convincing? The tiny number of people in the country who want fast internet? Innovators should be hearing about the amazing opportunities for new entrepreneurs (Spotify), the large media corporations should be hearing about the way to win back lost viewers (on-demand TV streaming) and the rest of the public should be hearing about the way in which entertainment will once again be enhanced with the new technology.

The problem is listing the services available to others doesn't really help. It's like telling someone the wine they're drinking is horrible, if it's all they've ever had they would have to have great faith in your judgment to change. Just telling people about the services available won't convince them that its necessary, that comes through experiencing the difference.

I have a dream: Great Bike GPS

And someone made it:

 
Garmin Edge 705

I've been reading reviews and it seems to do almost everything that my ideal bike computer would do:

• GPS, elevation, temperature;
• heartrate;
• ghosts of trails or a 'training partner' to compete against;
• inter-device connectivity for sharing data with fellow users; and
  
• online community to share data with.

It's bloody expensive at ~$500US (I think $300 would be a more appropriate pricepoint, but whilst no competitors exist I guess they can charge what they want) but most reviews are very positive about the quality and feature set.

I really want to know more about their 'training partner' as I've always thought that ghost partner to race against was a great idea in a bike computer. I would love (hate actually) to be able to see myself from last weekend gaining on me as I rode up a hill, knowing that I must beat him.

This does bring up a problem though: what if you don't want to race? Once I started timing my 5km runs I also started to skip runs when I wasn't feeling 100%. My logic was why run when I knew I wasn't going to beat my time? Of course this had a double negative effect. If I skipped a run I was inevitably slower next time, even more demoralising as I actually felt good and then didn't perform.

Would this happen if I had a 705? Would I even care about that if I had $500 to spend on a bike accessory? (I don't have that to spend on a bike!). Could I make a better bike GPS? These are today's important questions.

James Bond

I loved Casino Royale.

I didn't even mind the non-stop, no-story action of Quantum of Solace the first time I saw it. I thought Daniel Craig was an interesting Bond, he'd obviously decided he wasn't going to ham it up; just play it straight and tough and I appreciate that in a secret agent.

However, I've been reading Thunderball, the James Bond story that introduces his nemesis Blofeld and all I can say is that the book Bond is an infinitely more interesting and likeable character. He's unashamedly smart, witty, not quite as self assured as movie Bond, and is a much more believable lady killer. I think that I shall research the Bonds of the past and report back on the blog on whom I think is the best match to the book - and then who I like the most.

Off to spend Christmas in The North.

Tomorrow I leave for 5 weeks in Sweden (with a weekend in London). I will make the most of my post uni holiday by spending time in Norrköping, Falköping and Göteborg. I'm looking forward to reading some James Bond on the plane, the cool weather (a chance to use my gloves from Antons) and of course to catch up with special people.

I'm not looking forward to bad airport coffee, running out of laptop batteries at some point during the flight and manky hair.

The song of the weekend is Little Lion Man:

Seven years of robots.

At the completion of seven years of an engineering degree (seven rather than six as I spent 18 months working full time) I guess I should post some form of summary; my thoughts on Computer Science, Robotics, Swinburne, etc. I  don't really have the energy to do that at the moment as I've spent the last few months working flat out on our final year project and a number of assignments, I feel a bit fried. I also think that these thoughts form over time, attempting to tease them out now when everything is so fresh may not lead to anything too valuable.

However, I would like to point out that the best parts of my course were the people that I met. I've worked with people who are infinitely more intelligent than me, much more likeable, and even some with more style. These are people who I would contact straight away if I was about to start a venture, if I needed advice or a question answered, but best of all people who I will always look forward to sharing a drink with.

Lines (and lines and lines and lines...) of Code

I shall post a summary of all of the interesting things I've learned in Software Deployment and Evolution when I'm revising for the exam. In the meantime though this is a good example of why any company that thinks lines-of-code is a good metric compared to 'bits-of-functionality-actually-implemented' is a company to stay away from.

The Daily WTF: The Ultimate State Selector

My professor explained that he was once tasked with investigating a contractor who had recently failed deliver any real functionality - despite an increase in code size and hardware requirements. It turned out that the contractor had created a script to auto generate sutb/empty classes... thousands of them. Of course large, successful companies don't get where they are without precise standards and expectations on deliverables. So just how long did the contractor get away with this? Surely at most a month or two before someone said "Where is feature X? No... 3 years!! The contractor spent 3 years and a million dollars delivering nothing before anyone guessed something was amiss.

There is room for improvement.

Machinarium

To avoid doing any homework I have started playing Machinarium.

You point and click your robot through a beautifully designed environment, solving puzzles and helping other robots. It isn't too difficult and it's the first game I've played for more than 10 minutes since Grand Prix Legends (which came out in 1998). Best of all it only costs $20!

Ramses the humanoid

We seem to be getting together a blooper reel for our final year project (the humanoid robot named Ramses). This is one of his many 'freakouts'.

Nassim Taleb's essay on The Limits of Statistics

This essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is fantastic:

The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics

The abstract doesn't quite do the essay justice. It's main contention is that there is a realm in which statistical and model based decisions are entirely flawed. There is no model that can predict the impact or return of rare events of great consequence.

Nassim Taleb is one of the few people whom when I read I feel entertained, smarter and generally inspired to be a better human. I read in this article that he follows a paleo diet (which despite not really following at all I have a lot of time for) and earns $60,000 a lecture; how can you not be inspired by this man?

How to move a drop of fluid.

One constant difficulty in microfluidics is devising similarly small systems to move the volume of fluid. It seems the University of Michigan has come up with one very elegant solution:

Tuned cavities are resonated, causing air to move through connected channels and push fluids along.
Video

While still very much a concept the simplicity of the solution is admirable.

Ricky Gervais interviewing Larry David

This is part 1 of 6 where Ricky Gervais talks Curb, The Office and comedy in general with Larry David. It's superb.

How to Install Xwiki on Ubuntu

(This 3 year old post probably isn't relevant any more and sorry to those that have asked for help but I don't even have a ubuntu installation to check things with anymore. Good luck solving your problems)

Lately I've battled with installing Xwiki on Ubuntu. It is written in Java and while the stand-alone installer worked fine on windows, no one wants a windows server.


This is the process I used to install XWiki on Ubuntu Desktop 9.04:

1. Instal everything for a webserver using Synaptic: (I installed php as well as I knew I would use it later)

apache2, tomcat6, tomcat6-examples, tomcat6-user, mysql-server, mysql-client

2. Check tomcat is working: localhost:8080 you should see some welcome information for tomcat.

3. Download the current xwiki.war.

4. Copy it to the webapps directory of tomcat:

sudo cp xwiki-enterprise-2.0.war /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/xwiki.war

5. Download the latest version of the mysql connector

6. Copy it to the lib directory of xwiki:

sudo cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/xwiki/WEB-INF/lib

7. Create a mysql database and set the permissions for a new user 'xwiki':

mysql -u root -p -e "create database xwiki"

mysql -u root -p -e "grant all privileges on xwiki.* to xwiki@127.0.0.1 identified by 'xwiki'"

8. Edit the xwiki/WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml file,

 sudo vim /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/xwiki/WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml

replace the similar section with this:

 <property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/xwiki</property>
<property name="connection.username">xwiki</property>
<property name="connection.password">xwiki</property>
<property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
<property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>

 9. Change the security settings in Tomcat:

sudo vim /etc/init.d/tomcat

find and set the following to 'no':

 TOMCAT6_SECURITY=NO

10. Restart tomcat

sudo service tomcat6 restart

11. Head to localhost:8080.and you should come across a page which suggests you import the default .xar templates.

default administrator: username=Admin, password=admin
Log in: localhost:8080/xwiki/login/XWiki

Have fun importing the template and making your new spaces, pages and blogs.

References:
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/Installation
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/InstallationMySQL
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/ImportExport

The 3 deployment environments

A bit of software engineering theory for those interested.

If the environment is defined as the hardware and software present on a system then the following three environments are required to properly deploy software:

Development - on which the application is developed. Will generally contain IDEs and a range of libraries.
Testing - on which testing (except for performance) is completed. Outside of specific testing software this environment may contain utilities such as terminal emulation, or packet sniffing software.
Staging - an exact replica of the live environment. All performance testing must take place here.
Live - the actual final deployment destination.

How many of these environments have you combined and thus ultimately ignored? I know I'm now suffering as the Staging and Live environments of a recently deployed application were anything but exact replicas.

Have you read the Big Beat Manifesto lately?

These guys have:

This could be painful

Today I started crossfit.

Instead of the workout of the day, which was:

• 6 x (400m with 25 burpees)

I did:

• 3 x (~300m with 10 burpees)

And almost died.

I am excited about one day being able to complete a workout as it is written. Although, I know that there could be a bit of vomiting to get to that point.

To assist in my efforts I've been reading about Pose running; I'm hopeful that the technique limits the knee pain I experience and also helps improve my running speed, which has always been terrible in the past.
Of course like anyone undertaking a new fitness regime I've made a purchase. Introducing the Nike Zoom Waffle Racer VI

They are very light, stiff, recommended by the Pose crew and at only $80, much cheaper than the Asics runners everyone else wears. They are listed as cross country / dirt running shoes which seems to fit the local soccer pitch surfaces perfectly.

For the record at the moment my lift PBs are:
Dead: 325lbs
Squat: 245lbs
Bench: 190lbs
I have no running times, but will endeavour to get some over the next fortnight.

I'll decide on some goals when I get back to the gym and see how much strength I've lost.

Here's hoping I don't die from too many pullups.

What a year to be an Essendon supporter

What would most Essendon supporters remember of the seasons between 2002 and 2009?
I know I've been to my 11 games per season but I'm really struggling:

• I remember (missing) Jim's 2004 game where he hugged a fan.
  
• I remember Jim and Sheed's last game - both at the G and then at Subiaco.

Now, 2009 is a completely different story! There was the Anzac day game, after which my voice was ruined for a couple of days; both Carlton games, which just warmed the heart; I think the first Hawthorn game left supporters  feeling that maybe Essendon were finals worthy and not just lucky.

Then there were the last 3 weeks. The St Kilda game is one I will always remember. The feeling that Essendon were just unstoppable in the third quarter took me right back to 2000. Finally, there was Saturday's game against Hawthorn. Hawthorn were undermanned, probably younger (I've thrown out my Prospectus) but they were the reigning Premiers! Essondon were fitter, smarter and much more mature and composed when they needed to be (oh, and after the game).

Who knows what this week will bring with regard to suspensions, appeals, elimination and qualifying finals. All I know is that in 50 years time when I'm looking back on my life as an Essendon supporter I will remember with great pleasure the thrill of being a bomber in 2009.

Which linux distribution is right for you?

The one that works the best out-of-the-box.

I have spent a great deal of the week attempting to get openSUSE 11.1, 11.2 RC6, Fedora 12 Alpha, and then finally Kubuntu to run on my new laptop (Dell Inspiron 1545).

Firstly, the wireless chip on the 1545 is the wonderful broadcom 4312 for which no open source drivers exist. Thus a third party tool is required for all distros to get the chip working. (There goes 3 hours of research and experimentation)

Next, the intel graphics chip (945GM) is a stunner. It is one of a few that work very poorly with the intel graphics drivers that basically every distro runs as standard at the moment. New drivers fix the problems, but new drivers are only available on very new distros (which led me to 11.2 RC6).

As this is getting boring I will summarise with a chart:

So after 6 months of openSUSE (and a year of Mint prior to that) I've now switched to Kubuntu.

I use linux because I find that for every day computer use it is prettier, easier to use and more reliable. However, the install process can still be a pain for people who haven't mastered google.

So what should I have done? Find the distro that worked best on my laptop, or stick with openSUSE, get 11.1 or .2 to work and put back into the community with my knowledge on how to fix the problems.

Things I'm missing from KDE (and things I'm not)

I just bought a Dell Inspiron laptop, of course it came with Vista pre-installed. As I am yet to find my copy of openSUSE after moving house I am discovering what is/was actually good about Vista and what, after a year of KDE use, I had begun to take for granted.

Things I am Missing:
The ability to right click any window and say "Stay on Top".
Is there a better way to distract yourself whilst doing important work than watching an episode of Mad Men? Of course if the video is constantly ending up behind your word document you can miss all of the stylish clothing and wafting smoke. KDE (and GNOME I believe) allow the user to right-click and then select a "Keep This On Top" option. Meaning that despite your typing the movie stays as the uppermost window on the screen.

Of course whilst this is my most common use of the function I can imagine in the future I will want to reference an open window whilst typing into another (for instance transferring a small amount of data from a text file to excel), I can imagine that without the Keep On Top option this task will be tedious.

The ability to download practically anything ignoring the risk of viruses

Earlier I was about to download something (A freely available DJ mix) from a site that had a slightly dodgy name and was packaged as a .zip file but then I realised "Hang on, what if this is a virus?". Thanks to obscurity and what I'm lead to believe is a better permission and security system (I haven't done any thorough investigation into this though) I never had any problems downloading random zips and seeing what was inside on my linux system.

Workspaces

I have always wondered if I really did need 4 seperate desktops as is the KDE default. It turns out I did. Although I never had a well organised system for using them I did enjoy just dragging things such as media players off to the side, knowing that I wouldn't have to alt-tab through another window. However, when I was ready for it *BAM* it was back, already maximised and ready to be intereacted with (compared to something that has minimised to the system tray).

Things I'm enjoying on Windows:

The knowledge that I can run multiple programs that use the audio without all of them failing.

I'm pretty sick of playing something in Amarok only to find that flash video becomes audio-less until a browser restart. I had so many problems with audio on my previous system that I just got the feeling most of my fellow linux users felt that sound was a primitive sense.

Office 2007

Good looking documents and presentations are so much easier to make on 2007 than on Open Office.

The Future:

Probably a dual booted system with openSUSE for day-to-day operations and Vista for Office and some VB6 software development for work. Whether or not this will be possible (soon) is a post for another day.

The Tram Sessions

This is the Göteborgs Indie Choir covering Marble House by The Knife (on a tram).

Facebook Privacy

Ars has just posted a good guide to controlling your privacy on facebook.

It might just allow you to befriend your parents and colleagues yet still post photos of yourself drunken dancing on a Saturday night.

Also, the blog has ground to a halt as I don't really have a heap of computer time at the moment (or my own computer). I expect this will be rectified within a fortnight.

I wish

The Hives playing all of your favourites

The notes he sings in Hey Ya are the same I sing... not the right ones.

Calvin Harris gets taken down.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/07/musician-has-strong-words-after-youtube-video-takedown.ars

The Independent Retailer

Hear Now are a record store in the Melbourne city centre. You didn't know this, but that's ok, they are closing so obviously you weren't the only one unaware of their existence. 

In their letter to the adoring public they say “We are saddened seeing the demise of a once prosperous industry & culture” and “The growing dominance of the internet is probably the most to blame”.

I buy quite a few CDs every year, I shop at independent stores, JB HiFI and of course online; do you know what the best part of CD shopping is? Leaving the store, going home and listening to the CD! The idea that just because your store is down a laneway, has been the venue for an in-store performance, or stocks more vinyl than Polyester, you somehow transcend the earthly shopping experience, well it is simply ridiculous. Record stores have had a diminshing role in music retailing for 10 years now, perhaps, rather than shaking their fist at the sky, Hear Now may have realised that a growing number prefer their music without narcissistic record stores.

What stuns me the most about this self important concept of the 'independent retailer' is that (except for Polyester on Brunswick street) I'm yet to be spoken to at a record store. They change the CD in the store hifi, they chat to other staff and they ask if I need a bag. I can't remember a single time I've had a conversation with either the staff or another customer at one. So exactly what culture will I be losing when Hear Now closes? 

"people become more and more reliant on their online personas rather than interacting with people face to face, which is such a shame"

Book stores have been playing the internet card since Amazon first started serving up pages in the late 90s. And yet despite all their cries of financial woe I can walk up Burke Street and pass at least 3 independent retailers in 2 blocks. I wonder how this was sustainable before Amazon let alone after we learned that books could be purchased online for half the price. Combine the price with the fact that online buying meant dramatically less navigating of the Saturday-morning-father-with-3-year-old-in-pram-crowd and I'm surprised anyone still shops in town.

That is a lie, whenever given the opportunity I will find a book store, wander around for fifteen minutes and then inevitably buy something. But as with CDs in record stores, ultimately I enjoy the reading. That's why we shop at bookstores: so we can read something when we leave. All they offer is one (of many possible) places to purchase a book. It is relaxing indeed, but 'a place to wander in silence, to browse in solitude, maybe buy' is certainly not a business plan I would be investing in. 

Compare all of this to Abbotsford Cycles. An independent cycle store that whenever I've visited have been amazingly friendly, very knowledgeable and made me feel entirely at ease despite my status as a neophyte. They don't have the best alleyway location, I can't remember any famous cyclist in-stores and yet they are the perfect example of what an independent retailer can be.

Too often independent stores appear to believe their value lies in their existence, a 'we have built it, they will come' attitude. They are obviously wrong.

The Ashes vs The Tour (aka SBS v SBS2)

This test has proved both the value and the frustration of independent umpires in cricket. Each time an Australian is questionably dismissed (which has, admittedly, been quite a few times) I want to cry 'cheat' and blame some biased umpire. But... I just can't. It is very frustrating. 

I guess it all evens out in the end as I remember in the 2007/2008 series against India, Australia did very well with the umpires. As a result of the Aussies' good luck and India's frustrations I remember Singh broke out some classy racism on Andrew Symonds, I wonder if Australia will do the same?

Rudi Koertzen would have given him out caught and LBW

Now to The Tour, I'm giving it 1 hour to get interesting. All week we've been waiting for Verbier and yet this isn't really enthralling stuff. I've tried to get excited by the team tactics, by the challenge for the green jersey and finally by the battle between Contador and Armstrong.

It isn't working.

Astana have sat on the front of the peleton for the whole week and if someone doesn't beat Contador or Armstrong up the hill tonight then I can't see the value in any many more late nights this week. Let's hope it's Cadel that does the beating.

Heinrich Haussler's win on Friday was definitely the highlight so far.

Edit: Ricky Ponting's attitude in the post-(losing the)match interview was just terrific. He deflected the umpire question with such grace and skill; the kind of class he normally reserves for high pressure innings. The acknowledgement he received from the crowd was also great to hear. One of my favourite 100-run loss tests.

The tour was not surprising, Contador kicked in to gear and left the field behind... I could hear the collective sigh of resignation as he sped away 'well that is settled'.

Hans Rosling's amazing presentation

make sure you watch until the end.

A better way to educate

Lately, as another 6 years of education comes to an end, I've been discussing traditional higher education with some friends. One raised the interesting point that despite the enormous increase in the number of students entering higher education and the increased accessibility of information thanks to the internet the process of education has barely changed since the post-war boom. It seems like a reasonable suggestion that there must be a more effective way to educate and in particular prepare students for employment while at university.

 My university claim to offer career-oriented education. They encourage 12-month internships and throughout my course I've been exposed to many projects. I, along with most people I know, found the internship the most valuable component of the course. However, what about the coursework in general and in particular the projects? Are they truly representative of professional life? Ultimately no, I don't believe so. Projects are used just like traditional tests, to reinforce the facts and information presented in lectures. They are group, open-book exams. In my experience professional projects never reinforce prior learning, they always require new research, the development of new skills, applying new technology (or at least new concepts), and then implementing something that hasn't been tried before. Compare this to uni: I can't remember a project where I was forced to decide from a range of possible implementations. There is always a clear sequence of steps, always an obvious source of information (lecture notes or textbook) and thus, their value is diminished.

I don't believe the answer is simply a change in the way a subject is taught. A better approach would be a supplementary course, run by respected professionals where students were simply given problems to solve? They wouldn't need to relate to the student's course, they only need to encourage a way of thinking and tackling problems. The small projects could last for a week, a month, a semester, however long was needed. The result of the class would be a folio, with information on the objective of each piece of work and then the results. The experience for the students would be invaluable and any employer who isn't impressed by a varied (ideally, high quality) folio isn't worth working for.

I don't like the idea of integrating the course into a university, which means that the course would require financial support from the companies providing the professionals. However, if the tutors are doing their job the students should be very valuable upon graduation. The concept is one of increased quality, not increased efficiency but if communication was predominantly online the course should be less costly to deliver. Email and teleconferences are also representative of how the majority of real project communication occurs these days. How much would students pay for such a course? I'm not sure, but with the right professionals and innovative and challenging projects I know I would have found the money.

There are a range of other ways education could change to take advantage of the changes in society and technology and I think anything that challenges students to be more responsible for their education and have a well rounded knowledge base should be welcomed. 

Saturday Morning Legs

Every Saturday morning I drive to Lysterfield for a pretty casual spin around the singletrack there. And every saturday morning I completely dread that moment when I step out of the car, peel off the fleece trackies and expose my pale legs to a Melbourne winter morning.

Come Wednesday night however, I couldn't think of anything more appealing than a face full of mud (or bugs lately) and the inevitable warm and rubbery legs after a 2 hour ride. Not long to go now...

The Briggs Constant

I've always wanted to make an important scientific discovery. I don't think it gets any better than this:

Nfunctioning = B x Nmanufactured

Where Nfunctioning is the number of bolts required to operate a device and Nmanufactured is the number of bolts originally installed.

B=0.5 for just about everything.