Rubenerd

Compared to the horror that was yesterday, today was spent with good friends in one of my favourite places! I'll let the illustrious Sebastian (pictured above) take you through it in detail, but essentially we strolled around the wonderland that is IKEA, shared lunch, cracked jokes and generally had a great time. For someone still coming down from shattered nerves, it was wonderful… well, other than for the sudden floods of course!

Thank you to @Sebasu_tan and @hanezawakirika :)

Regardless of where you stand on the Google+ integration into Google search results, this site is an eye opener for what it returns, and who's behind it.

Complete with an Orwellian name!

From the page:

How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.

Now in Google's defence, they claimed on Google+ that they couldn't perform the same (or similar) thing themselves because Twitter (and presumably Facebook, etc) had closed access to their silos. Right?

All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google’s own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

Ouch

Now I don't see Google+ as being a credible threat. I also still don't trust Facebook, and feel like they're playing politics here by capitalising on the stumbling of an opponent. As a service Google singled out to make an example of, you can bet the folks at Twitter also relished the opportunity to design the service.

Despite all these caveats, the results speak for themselves. Google could implement this, no question.

What's most breathtaking about this is Google did something that Facebook, Twitter and the like couldn't do: unite them. Seemingly Google didn't get the divide and conquer memo.

Not to pound a dead horse here, but I keep coming back to my theory that marketers and managers now run Google, not its otherwise talented engineers. This is clearly not a technical issue, it's a matter of PR and priorities.

So I was walking down our two lane street, when a large family car travelling in the opposite direction to me suddenly started careening towards the footpath. Next thing I heard was a loud crash as it hit the high curb a metre or two behind me, and the back of the car swung 90 degrees to hit a masonry fence, breaking off huge pieces. A chunk of plastic from the car and some small pieces of rock hit my leg, making a small tear in my pants.

The few of us on the footpath watched dumbfounded as the driver climbed out of the car without a scratch. We started talking about how if we'd been a few seconds slower, we would have been in a car fence sandwich. Would it have killed us?

It's cliche to say, but the next half an hour were a genuine blur. I don't even remember making my way to my regular coffee shop until I was almost there, and sat down to calm my nerves. The barista who served me asked if I'd seen a ghost! I guess… I almost did.

I really started to have doubts whether I was just dreaming when I noticed the man at the table next to mine was none other than the Mayor of Canterbury, our area of Sydney. Another weird occurance, the TV they have installed at the coffee shop was playing a hit music station (Channel V, or Max Brenner, or whatever), and I swear I watched the same music video play for more than half an hour.

But I digress. This all occured in the morning, by the mid afternoon crane operators were already at the scene repairing the electrical poles and clearing away rubble (photo above). The car was nowhere to be seen, though there was still plenty of debris littered across the footpath and down the road.

Coming back later this evening, I noticed the hubcap from the ill fated car was still next to the footpath. Creepy.

Needless to say, for much of the day I almost felt like a living ghost. I shouldn't be alive. Had I taken a shorter period of time to tie my shoelaces before bolting out the door, there's a good chance I (and the people walking in front of me) would have been splattered across the fence. I just… it felt so unreal walking away from an incident like that with only a torn pants leg to show for it. It could have been so much worse.

Not be overly melodramatic, but I suppose we all have our brushes with death at some point. Rather than feeling terrified that I came that close to being crushed, I should be feeling overjoyed and happy that nothing happened, and that I'm here to write this.

I don't care how cliché it sounds, this whole incident really made me stop and appreciate my life again. To quote Sting, how fragile we are.

With photos from my bedroom in Malaysia in 2006; only photos I could find of my old 7280 on such short notice!

BlackBerry go Boom

The retirement of the dual CEOs from BlackBerry have the tech world all a dither. The current meme on Twitter seems to be how RIM is just as irrelevent as Kodak. Seems less brilliant and insightful after you've read the same thing several trillion times.

Given the ridiculous amount of coverage from all across the tubes, I could have my pick of news outlets. So I did. From Ryan Kim over at GigaOm, my favourite tech journalism outfit and currently one of the few I can stand reading:

Research in Motion, scrambling to keep up in a smartphone market it once led, has announced it has replaced co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with Thorsten Heins, the current chief operating officer. Laziridis, who founded the company in 1984, will serve as vice chairman of the board of directors, while Balsillie, who joined in 1992, will stay on as a director. Both also served as co-chairmen but they will be replaced by director Barbara Stymiest, a board member since 2007, who will now serve as the independent Board Chair.

In a nutshell, while everyone is talking about the retirement of the co-CEOs, they're not going anywhere. Sounds far less revolutionary when one actually reads the news stories instead of just retweeting them.

Back down to Earth, please

BlackBerries have the reputation (undeserved in my opinion) as business phones that people only begrugingly use. I had a BlackBerry in 2006, and it was by choice!

I'd suspended my uni studies for family reasons, and had joined the family back in Malaysia. Low and behold, on a trip back to Singapore, in Sim Lim Square a merchant was selling a GSM BlackBerry 7280 for peanuts. I'd had a Windows CE device, a Palm Tungsten W, but never a BlackBerry and decided on a whim to try it out. I popped in my regular Maxis SIM card which I'd had activated with a data plan. I never used the BlackBerry Messaging system or whatever it is you're supposed to do, I just used it as a phone with a QWERTY keyboard.

Even in this more restricted capacity, it was one of the best phones I'd ever had. Initially I missed having a touch screen, but I quickly realised I was just as quick navigating the screen with the scroll wheel and clicking to select than I ever was tapping a screen. Within a few weeks, I was faster. I reckon if I timed myself from the home screen to sending a message on my iPhone and on my old BlackBerry, I'd be faster on the latter!

BlackBerry Vista

As a temporary customer I know little about of their current devices save for their tech specs and a few minutes of playing with them at my local Optus store. What I theorise however is BlackBerry fell into the same trap as Microsoft. The BlackBerry was great at sending email and SMSs and generally getting out of your way, but they developed envy for another platform and broadly attempted to clone it. The result was a mess that compromised on the strengths they had before, while not becoming the device they'd copied either.

I hope the new executives (of whom the former CEOs make up a part) can figure out a way to bring BlackBerrys back to their roots. The rest of the tech world has already put them out to sea, but they still have tremendous reach in the business world and I still know enough CrackBerry users who wouldn't trade their devices for anything. Frankly, if BlackBerries had Foursquare, Twitter and a solid Sudoku game I wouldn't mind having one still!

I'm cautiosly optimistic there's room for a comeback.

Notes

Yes, that's the same MacBook Pro I still use as my primary mobile workhorse now. MacTheKnife has been a real trooper :').

I arrived a little too late for much of the Chinese New Year Markets in Sydney this weekend, but that didn't stop me gorging on dumplings and taking a few photos! Enjoy, and Gong Xi Fa Cai! :)

The early evening

 

 

The night

After wandering around enjoying the atmosphere for an hour, I head off to the nearby Starbucks on Elizabeth Street. In Singapore they had Chinese New Year themed drinks with mandarin and other such flavours, but no such luck here. Oh well!

I did some more wandering around Chinatown, then came back after the sun set to take a few more. Without a tripod and with the D60 that looks super grainy even at 1600 ISO it was tough, but still fun :).

 

Checking out one of the latest entries on Heartdrops.org that arrived in my RSS reader, one particular section really struck a chord with me.

Australian news sources

It’s always "three thousand people were killed when a ship ran aground on the east coast of Whatchamacallit. About fifty of them are believed to be Australians". The latter sentence always ticks me off, because for some reason, when a large number of people have died, the fact is always put forward that so-and-so Australians have died.

This x 10¹⁰²⁴.

For me, nothing showed the shallow nature of much of the Australian media than when the Bali bombings took place. I was still living in Singapore at the time, and remember reading the stories in the Australian newspapers online about how many Australians had died in the attacks. If other nationalities and the greater number of innocent Indonesians were mentioned at all, often it would be in a throwaway remark or in the footer somewhere.

I don't care about nationalities, or patriotism, or any of that feudal nonsense. We're humans, and humans died.

Other news sources

I begin to wonder if it is like that in other countries. Perhaps not.

Unfortunately, Australia isn't alone in this case. As I've lamented on Twitter time and time again, I'm so sick of reading about all the American fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan without any mention of the hundreds of thousands of civilian fatalities. I'm sure you've all noticed this too.

I've had people try to spin this, but to me all this says is some lives are more important than others. The truly horrifying part is, some people don't see an issue with that.

My brother, on the other hand, gratuitously laughs and repeats lines from newsreaders that follow as such: "Good evening a man has died…" where there is no pause for breath between the greeting and the announcement of a tragic incident.

Reminds me of those line from a Jack Johnson song. Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die? At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes.

He answers the question in the same verse. It's just make believe.

While attempting to download an application:

The program you want to download will be downloaded through the Softonic Downloader, making the download process much faster, showing a progress bar and ensuring the program is virus-free.

Ensuring it's virus-free? Miraculous!

First, the Softonic Downloader will be downloaded, and through it you’ll be able to download the main program. During the download process we show commercial offers, such as the Softonic Toolbar.

Sounds… super. I've gone back in time to 1999!

The previous entry was Rubenerd.com post #4300! Time for another of our beloved pointless milestones!

What’s with this post thing?

Those of you who have been reading Rubenerd.com for years… you may need to see a therapist. You may also remember for each pointless milestone I include information on an industrial cleaning device as something utterly pointless.

How did this start? A very handsome question, and I'll answer it. When I wrote the first pointless milestone, I wanted to include a relevent image, but when I typed the post number into Google Images and hit search, all I kept getting were photos of industrial cleaning devices. Since then, I've made it a habit to do this on purpose!

Yeah okay, so what’s that buggy thing?

For post 4300, I uncovered the Tennant Green Machines ATLV 4300 All Terrain Litter Vacuum! From their product specifications:

• Rid-on [sic] vacuum improves the image of your community with superior litter pick-up
• Increase productivity by cleaning on all terrains: climb kerbs, navigate hills and clean along fence lines
• Low centre of gravity design provides a stable machine ride to safely protect the operator

Could this image improvement also apply to those who ride these devices? I could go for an image overhaul, I'm just saying!

• 48 in / 1,219 mm vacuum head provides a wide cleaning path to improve productivity
• Ergonomic vacuum hose reaches up to 270 degrees to allow the operator to clean hard-to-reach areas without leaving the operator’s seat
• Low centre of gravity, reliable disc brakes, and standard roll-over protection contribute to operator safety

This ride on cleaning machine has disc brakes?! This ride on cleaning machine is better than some cars! Clearly, this really happy guy agrees:

Happy post #4300 everyone! Time for celebrations!

I don't know why people are so worked up about Megaupload being shut down. The case was ruled in the same manner that VCR manufacturers weren't found liable for the potential for copyright infringement, similarly ski equipment makers can't be sued if their balaclavas are used to rob banks. Finally, the operators were US citizens under US law.

Oh, wait.

The CAPTCHAS, forced waiting and hoops you had to jump through to start a download meant I rarely used Megaupload if I could avoid it. I can still appreciate this ruling as setting a dangerous precedent though.

UPDATE: If true, the operators of SOPA will have to quicky get used to this.

As I mentioned previously, I was concerned by SOPA, but was a little irritated that it was getting so much coverage in light of far more dangerous laws that had a greater chance of passing. This opinion piece from The Times via The Australian however made me think twice about the relevence of the SOPA debate.

Photo of "sopa" (heh) by Audrius Meskauskas, released under the same Creative Commons licence as my material here at Rubenerd. We're such commies!

At least he got his bias out of the way

Before we get into SOPA, some observations from the piece that should set the tone for our discussion here.

THERE was a period when I looked down the length of my not inconsiderable nose at Wikipedia.

As they say, people are wilfully ignorant of things when their jobs depend on them being wilfully ignorant of things.

The online encyclopaedia, put together by volunteers rather than experts, has an engaging way of allowing people to slip in wrong revelations [..]

He called it an encyclopedia! Most people using the tired "Wikipedia isn't accurate" chestnut don't. Still, what does any of this even have to do with SOPA?

[..] and aware that there are ingenious people out there behind keyboards deploying all possible arguments to stop the Feds, Wicked Rupert and what they call Big IP from interfering with what they see as their right to take content – music, movies, words – from anyone they can.

That isn't a strawman argument at all, we're not about protecting and keeping a level playing field for one of the few currently growing industries from rich lobbyists unfairly influencing politicians working for your sister industries in the US, we're just a bunch of good for nothing typists who are out to steal things.

David Aaronovitch, educate yourself before writing such fluff. What's Wicked Rupert and his team of phone hackers paying you for?

Okay, onto SOPA

And that brings me to my real point.

Oh good, I knew in amongst all that waffle there was going to be a point somewhere. Mmm, waffles.

There are [going to be] two sets of rules in modern society: one for the online community, the other for everyone else.

I changed the tense, because that's what SOPA is trying to accomplish, yes. Isn't it amusing when journalists (or anyone for that matter) are right, but not in the way they intended?

Wikipedia has not used its capacity to “raise awareness” on behalf, say, of the protesters of Syria, but in defence of its own interests – even if you accept the broader threat that Wales perceives.

Another shameful distraction. Wikipedia would be directly affected by this legislation. Dragging the struggles of Syrians against their government into this is pretty low blow, even for someone writing for The Australian.

Damn, now I’m hungry

Read the full piece if you want, David goes to make more condescending claims and arguments backed up by nothing. Suffice to say, if this was supposed to be an impassioned defence of big media at the hands of super evil internet folk who are only out to steal stuff, I'm underwhelmed to say the least.

Still, I have to give kudos. He taught me just how much disinformation there is about this issue online, and how important these grassroots efforts really are. I'm willing to revise my previous stance that the blackout wouldn't accomplish anything politically; if enough people write about it in their papers (for or against) it'll keep the debate going. Whether or not that translates into action we'll have to wait and see.