2009.07.03 – 20:41 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
UPDATE, 02:50 I give up, I can’t take these insults and rude messages any more. You all win, I’ve censored this post. Sorry to disappoint those who agreed with me.
I didn’t think I said anything inflammatory, but I guess I was wrong. Religion obviously is still a very touchy subject with lots of emotion.
I apologise if I offended you, it was not my intention.
UPDATE, 22:23 This post has been up for less than 2 hours and already I’ve had a broad range of comments in email and on Twitter ranging from severe disappointment to rude attacks on my character.
I get it, religious people are allowed to discuss their beliefs without question even if it includes slandering scientific, historical and medical institutions… but if I discuss my beliefs as an atheist I’m just intolerant, arrogant and self-centred. Lesson learned, I won’t be talking about my views any more.
If I’ve learned one thing from this experience, its that I have even more respect for public atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. I’ll be frank, I don’t know how they do it.
:’-(
2009.07.03 – 18:51 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Oh yeah? Well that’s what SHE said! I have to remind people I’m hilarouous otherwise they’d forget.
For those using text browsers, the error message reads:
Unable to burn [disc]. The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.
In all seriousness though, in all my years of burning optical media I’ve never come across this problem before. I’m crossing my fingers it’s because the disc is dodgy and not a sign the laser mechanism is on its way out.
For those interested, I was burning a copy of FreeBSD to a DVD-R disc. Usually I use DVD+R media but this particular coaster was destined for an older machine.
2009.07.03 – 18:29 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
I was asked by a friendly person this afternoon who’s writing a book what I thought of the importance of mentors to young people. In 140 character Twitter goodness:
I’d say mentors are applied educators that take help young people develop. You can’t learn such experience from books or classes.
I can really attest to this. When I left high school in 2005 I got a job a Veritas writing Perl and MySQL code for a friend of my mother here in Singapore. I drew a paycheck, I had a desk in their offices, I worked alongside other people, and I reported to someone who was genuinely interested in my progress and offered patient help and guidance. I learned more from studying and working with Mr Whiting for several months than I have from several long years of university education that are still ongoing. It’s absolutely, 100% true, and I suspect a great number of people who’ve experienced both would agree with me.
Unfortunately the prestige bestowed upon people with a magical piece of paper that says that person completed a university degree is still far higher than those who developed experience and character in the workforce under the watchful eye of a mentor. I think this really needs to change.
2009.07.03 – 16:26 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Twitter has become such an integral part of my life that I sometimes forget most people don’t use it. Probably everyone else has this thing called a "life" which I hear so much about.
This was a photo I took outside my bedroom window yesterday afternoon after I’d finished a coding session. Since the last time I was in Singapore back in March I can count two new apartment buildings and several more under construction. Time-lapse photography over a period of months would be pretty cool from here, I can tell you that!
What gobsmacks me is how ridiculously tall some of these apartment buildings are becoming. In Australia there’s the Eureka Tower and Q1… and that’s pretty much it. Then again, Australia isn’t trying to cram all it’s population into a minuscule island dot!
2009.07.03 – 16:08 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Just got another newsletter from Apple talking about some of the features of their MacBook Air notebook computer:
The advantages of a solid-state drive. With no moving parts, solid-state drives enhance durability and use less power. And now with MacBook Air, this 128GB option is more affordable than ever. Learn more
Don’t get me wrong Apple, I absolutely adore your products and would love to own this device your advertising, but referring to anything about the MacBook Air as "affordable" is like The Governator saying he’s helping the environment by using hybrid Hummer… in context it doesn’t really mean much!
As a token of apology, I would gladly accept a MacBook Air from Apple. If you work in their PR department, feel free to contact me. Cheers 
2009.07.02 – 16:44 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Remember that maddening "Personalised" Start Menu option Microsoft introduced with Windows and Office that hides certain applications and items you didn’t use as often behind a chevron? Alas it looks like Gmail has been given a similar "feature" as of this afternoon.
When you browse to Gmail now, only a subset of your labels are shown, along with an option to change what’s visible. Fortunately this allowed me to painstakingly click "show" next to each one to display them all again. Neal from the IntoYourHead show seems to like this though, which leads me to think at the very least Google should have given us the option to disable/enable this function. Unless they don’t think we can handle such a thing. Grilled cheese sandwich irons have handles, and aside from the occasional blindingly painful liquid cheese scaldings I’m fine.
UPDATE: I’ve been told you can click the “Show All” link in the Settings→Labels screen to show all your labels again. Whew!
Normally I’m not this harsh (at least I hope I’m not!) but I was so vocally against this when Microsoft did it, and now Google is doing it with Gmail. I really hope this isn’t becoming a trend.
This also raises another issue with this whole Cloud Computing (or whatever the latest 1337 catchphrase is) concept: we don’t really have any control over these web apps.
2009.07.02 – 16:23 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
If I had posted this entry before my praise for Unicomp (Kudos to Unicomp), it would have been entry 1787, a particularly onerous number considering troubles at Boeing with their latest generation 787 Dreamliner. A sub-par segue I admit, but I did think it was spooky.
After yet more delays, Qantas have cancelled their order for 15 of the medium range, energy efficient airliners and have deferred their order for Jetstar, their low cost subsidiary. From Flightblogger:
The news came early this morning in Sydney, that Australia’s largest airline, Qantas had made significant changes to its 787 order, deferring the 15 787-8s it was supposed to receive starting in mid-2010 for Jetstar, while [cancelling] 15 additional 787-9s scheduled for delivery in 2014 and 2015.
Qantas management claim this has nothing to do with the repeated delays for the 787, instead citing troubling economic times as the reason. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I can’t help but think these delays did have some bearing on their decision. On the other hand as a regular air traveller I would take designs thoroughly safety tested over well timed releases any day of the week!
While ultimately I’d much prefer to have high speed trains replace the bulk of air travel because they’d use less energy and would be more comfortable and fun, I think the 787 Dreamliner is a remarkable plane. If you haven’t followed it’s development, the fuselage is the first to be fabricated largely out of composite materials which is more lightweight and stronger than aluminium, and the uniquely shaped GE engines give similar thrust with less fuel consumption. We’re really looking at the future here, at least I hope we are.
2009.07.02 – 12:45 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
It’s often the case people are quick to report negative experiences with products and companies, but they don’t talk when something goes well.
Yesterday I ordered a Unicomp SpaceSaver bucking spring keyboard and paid in full as talked about here. A few hours later I received an email:
Thank you very much for your recent keyboard order. As you are aware, shipping costs today are considerable and an important part of your buying decision. We want you to understand that we do not add handling costs and we pass along discounts we receive from our carriers so our shipping rates are among the lowest in the industry.
[LIST OF QUOTES]
The shipping costs do not include any duties or taxes which your country may impose. [...] Please give us your approval and tell us how we should ship your order. An email note with the appropriate tracking information will be sent when the order ships.
–
Jim Owens
So by being an international customer I received an email shortly afterwards with a list of shipping options to Singapore including prices and estimated arrival times, and I was given the option to choose on the proviso that if they can get them shipped cheaper they’ll refund me the difference.
I haven’t even received said keyboard yet, but my email exchanges with Unicomp including this recent message have really impressed me. The people who run this company are friendly, honest and sincere. Other online retailers could really! learn from these people.
If I love this keyboard as I suspect I will, I’ll be recommending Unicomp to everyone I know.
2009.07.01 – 22:24 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Unfortunately I’ve come across something that doesn’t seem to be playing well with Mozilla Firefox 3.5: Tab Mix Plus. Despite working flawlessly in the betas and release candidates, my tabs since going to the final release have been displaying weird artefacts or are simply not drawn properly.
I’ll wait to see if I can reproduce it predictably, then file a bug report or post a message on their forums. I’m running version 0.7.2009062901 which as far as I know is the most current one.
2009.07.01 – 18:58 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
A happy Canada Day and Fête du Canada to all those whom this greeting may concern! As I’ve said before here, my father loves your country, he says it’s the most breathtakingly beautiful place on Earth with some of the friendliest people… he did say "warm people" at one point, but given the double entendre regarding climate he changed his wording! I’m determined to visit it myself one day .
As for the photo, when my dad came back from Toronto after his last business trip he brought me back a huge flag. Taking a photo of something so lightweight and that’s constantly moving in the breeze was harder than I thought it would be! The white balance is way off given it was taken in the early evening, but I really love the colours as-is.
We Aussies desperately need a new flag as beautiful as the Canadian one. Canada proves you can be a Commonwealth realm (aka: having the Queen) without needing a boring Red or Blue British Ensign as the basis of your national flag.
Peace, democracy and love… keep showing us the way Canada!
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