Rubenerd

The "Aggie Bonfire"

Jim Kloss's recent disillusionment with some of the people at Wikipedia recently made me think about my own brushes with Wikipedia's moderators. The first was when I created articles for the terms Audio Magazine and New Time Radio to highlight the limitations of the then-new term "podcast", but both were removed because they lacked notability. I respected the decision at the time and moved on.

My opinions changed in late 2007 when I noticed the featured article for the day was about the so called Aggie Bonfire. I had seen many articles removed for not being notable, but apparently an article about a ritualistic bonfire to show rivalry between two universities was somehow deemed not only notable, but worthy of featured article status. Suffice to say, I commented on the talk page:

Very thorough and well designed article, even if the event it reports barely counts as encyclopedic material. A fire to highlight rivalry, how childish.

–rubenerd (talk) 12:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I received two replies. The first was from someone right underneath my comment:

Some people think wars are childish. Some people think others are childish. However these things happen and WP tries to ensure every notable person, event, and thing we can verify using reliable sources is covered. While somethings are more notable than others, the others sometimes are well documented. […]

–spryde 12:31, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

You read that right, this user compared my calling out of a ritualistic rivalry bonfire as childish, by saying some think war is childish. Yes, I'm sure veterans and people who have lost loved ones and family members in armed conflict would agree that it's on par with a university rivalry bonfire. Un-freaking-believable!

The streets of Kiev during World War II

He also exposed something which I think is at the heart of the problem Wikipedia is facing right now: the notability of articles isn't based on how important they are, it's how much material is about them online. An independent musician with a link to their own website and to a non profit website like Whole Wheat Radio is therefore less important than a… bonfire?

The second comment was posted on my own talk page:

Hello, Rubenerd. This is in regards this edit you made – please be aware of what Wikipedia is not, especially that talk pages are not forums for general discussion of an article’s subject. Your compliance with these policies would be appreciated. Thank you.

–BlueAg09 21:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't want to reply to the first guy, but to this person I replied with what I thought was a diplomatic answer.

I appreciate your response, however I believe my comments were in line with the legitimate questioning of a subjects notability for inclusion in a global encyclopedia. A rivalry between two universities which results in a ritualistic bonfire just doesn’t seem to be that important. I respect your opinion though and will try to adhere to Wikipedia protocols. Cheers

–rubenerd (talk) 03:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a valuable resource that we're all better off having online, but it has some real problems. Or perhaps I should word that more accurately: some of Wikipedia's editors have some real problems. Perhaps it's time to rescue Wikipedia from some of it's own people? Viva la revolution!

One of the questions I'm most often asked by people moving to Mac (the latest is my dad!) is whether or not their new Mac can read their external hard drives and memory keys. To save myself typing long responses every time, I'm creating this post instead.

The short answer is: YES your Mac can READ Windows formatted drives with no problems. The problem is writing.

Modern versions of Windows format drives either as FAT32 or NTFS:

FAT32

Can be read and written to by Macs but because it’s older it only supports drives up to a certain file size. Most USB memory keys use this.

NTFS

Is more robust and reliable and is used by most external hard drives now. Macs can only read not write such volumes out of the box, but if you download and install the NTFS-3G project drivers you’ll be able to write without problems.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I’ve never been able to get Windows or Mac OS X read or write to a grilled cheese sandwich, but I intend to start a SourceForge project to accomplish this once I get a $50,000 grant to develop it. If anyone here is willing to sponsor me with this, feel free to contact me.

ANZ and Westpac bank buildings on an appropriately drizzly day in central Adelaide, by Dodge 76 on Flickr

ABC News is reporting Aussie banks are taking advantage of vulnerable consumers. And you know what my first reaction was? I questioned whether they were also going to tell me the sky is blue, you need oxygen to live and grilled cheese sandwiches are generally made with bread. It's sad our financial systems around the world have become such… I'm trying to think of a word that's less harsh than "cesspools" but has more bite than "meanie companies".

I know my writing this here won't make a lick of difference, but it's time to throw out Thatcherism, Reaganism and it's derivatives that define all regulation as burdens to capitalism and dampners on growth, and regulate the crap out of these guys! The regulations have to make sense; mindless red tape doesn't get us anywhere; but conversely no regulations are not the answer. We need some serious checks, balances (terrible financial puns) and oversight on these guys. And it needs to be done globally.

If we've learned anything from this financial crisis, it's that banks and other large financial institutions cannot be socially or financially responsible by regulating themselves. It didn't work in the 1920s, and it ain't working now.

As for the article about Australian banks? I remember discussing a similar case with a conservative guy on Twitter when the subprime mortgage crisis was first rumbling in the United States. He claimed liberals (American not Australian sense) were to blame for it because they had the gall to want affordable housing for people, which in turn led to unrealistic loans being given out to people who couldn't afford it. It's interesting how predatory lending, extortion and and blatant exploitation of the most vulnerable people in our society can be twisted to be entirely their fault. I would think even from a conservative standpoint this argument wouldn't make sense.

And to think banks around the world are receiving tax dollars to stay viable, only to pull stunts like this on decent people, some of whom perhaps need education in fiscal prudence and management but who nevertheless don't deserve this treatment. It generates some resentment in me, but mostly it just makes me… sad.

Clipmarked from ABC News:

Banks are being accused of exploiting their most vulnerable customers by offering them credit they cannot afford.

Many face bankruptcy with no prospect of paying down debts totalling tens of thousands of dollars and banks are being accused of taking advantage of them during the boom via direct marketing campaigns.

Chris Gration from credit reporting group Veda Advantage says those in the greatest financial trouble are the ones most likely to take up an offer.

NAB says it is winding back its direct mail campaigns and Westpac is doing the same.

But the CBA and ANZ continue to direct market at the same levels they did 12 months ago.

Je m’baladais sur l’avenue le coeur ouvert à l’inconnu
J’avais envie de dire bonjour à n’importe qui
N’importe qui et ce fut toi, je t’ai dit n’importe quoi
Il suffisait de te parler, pour t’apprivoiser

Aux Champs-Elysées, aux Champs-Elysées
Au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi ou à minuit
Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées

Tu m’as dit “J’ai rendez-vous dans un sous-sol avec des fous
Qui vivent la guitare à la main, du soir au matin”
Alors je t’ai accompagnée, on a chanté, on a dansé
Et l’on n’a même pas pensé à s’embrasser

Hier soir deux inconnus et ce matin sur l’avenue
Deux amoureux tout étourdis par la longue nuit
Et de l’Étoile à la Concorde, un orchestre à mille cordes
Tous les oiseaux du point du jour chantent l’amour

We got our first good dose of rain here in Adelaide yesterday and today for the first time in months. The river here in Mawson has that stuff in it again… what's it called? Water!

I usually correct the white balance when I take RAW images on my D60, but I left it as is on this one, it really shows the sudden cool change and whatnot. Just straight shooting with my 50mm f/1.8D. I might not be a good photographer, but it doesn't make it any less fun!

It's quite literally the end of an era; Yahoo is no longer allowing new registrations for GeoCities which essentially marks the end of the service.

The first website I ever made was in primary school computer class when we first moved to Singapore. Mr Napier taught us how to code basic HTML, insert images and use the GIF Construction Set to make animations. When it was done, our pages were uploaded to the school's website which I hastily jotted the URL down for and told my family back in Australia about!

When that school year ended I moved the site to GeoCities which at the time organised you into neighbourhoods depending on the content you were hosting: I went with "SiliconValley". Later when Yahoo bought them out and they introduced URIs based on usernames I changed to http://www.geocities.com/rubenerd. After a few years I moved over to Tripod over at Lycos before getting a paid webhost and my GeoCities account was deleted due to a lack of activity. What I wouldn't give to see that page again!

I guess it was inevitable that GeoCities would be discontinued eventually; it's just a shame it wasn't managed properly and was essentially left to languish. It was bigger than Jesus back in 1997.

RIP.

Screenshot on Flickr I uploaded of AskJeeves.com. They brought back Jeeves!

It's another example of a feature that's available but unless you're specifically looking for it, it may elude you: Flickr supports screenshots. When you think about it, a screenshot is merely a photo taken on your computer in a specific state anyway and you could upload it as such, but you can actually declare images as screenshots as opposed to photos when you upload them.

If you use the Flickr website upload page, the option to declare an image as a screenshot is available when you click the "Show more upload settings". In the Flickr Uploadr [sic] application then option is under the "Content type" listbox.

When you think about it, hosting screenshots on a site like Flickr makes sense. Because they have many sharp lines and text you want to preserve, full sized screenshots tend to look degraded and crappy when saved as JPEGs, but saving them as PNGs drastically increases the file size to the point where sometimes their file sizes are larger than photos from my D60! Flickr also gracefully scales photos to many different sizes and sharpens them which also works great with screenshots.

I'm a self confessed screenshot addict, always have been. I guess now the challenge is not to fill my Flickr account with screenshots instead of photos!

You can view all the screenshots I've already uploaded to Flickr in the surprisingly titled Screenshots set. Most of them have been used on my blog before.

(Update 2009: I moved back to self-hosting everything, oh well!)

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

An email I got just a few minutes ago:

Hi there,

My name is Peter and I’m interested in advertising with your site. We’re No 1 Commercial Software Reseller in US and having most competitive price on our website. It would be great if you link to our website, giving your visitors a better choice to buy wide range of products at a competitive price. If you are interested, we can discuss about the fee.

I would like to place a banner advert in home page or link buried in relevant content to your site. […] Feel free to contact us for any other advertising methods available on your site.

Regards
Peter Mavis
Marketing Executive

Uh, thanks but no thanks. I also doubt you're a number one US commercial software reseller given your email has more fractured English than even my own blog posts that I write with haste here and never seem to proof read before publishing. Grilled cheese sandwich.

Advertising on another blog? Just what the world needs! By the way, how great is AdBlock Plus?

It seems that while we debate how to best address the real threat of climate change before it's too late (some argue it's too late and we should already be in disaster recovery mode), some are still not convinced it's even happening.

South Australian Greens representative Mark Parnell (who's state party I proudly voted for in 2006, and who I've blogged about before) posted a new blog entry today discussing one local professor's new book that seems to take issue with climate change.

Adelaide University Prof. Ian Plimer is in Parliament House launching his book claiming that the science of climate change is not settled and that global warming and cooling are natural phenomena unrelated to human activity. I agree with the first bit – the science is never “settled”, but the trends are plain to see and the causes are overwhelmingly agreed by scientists to be anthropogenic. When faced with a choice between believing the good Professor and believing the thousands of scientists who have contributed to the International Panel on Climate Change’s comprehensive reports, then I think I’ll go with the consensus view. So yes, I guess that makes me one of Ian Plimer’s “rabid environmentalists”. If you seem me and I’m frothing at the mouth, (and not cleaning my teeth at the time) then stay away.

I know plenty of climate change denialists too, it seems to be a position that's very much in vogue right now especially by those online who label anyone who base their views on evidence as "sheeple". It'd be hilarious if it didn't have the potential to have such disastrous results.

The time for debating whether this is even happening has long passed; we should be spending our energy (no pun intended) coming up with solutions to this problem instead.

And hey, as I tell people who deny climate change is happening, if it turns out this isn't true, our actions to protect our natural environment would still have been worth it. I want future generations of people to be able to visit unspoilt nature reserves, to drink clean water, to breathe clean air and to live in sustainable cities and clean, lush countryside. If that idea of the future makes me a "rabid environmentalist" too, I'll join you Mark!

DOS messages after a successful boot with generic CD-ROM drivers

Time for another eccentric, pointless how-to post concerning a topic probably nobody cares about! Once I've installed DOS in a virtual machine for some ridiculously fun nostalgia, the first thing I usually want to do is get the virtual CD-ROM drive working so I can more easily load in my ridiculous collection of old software from my childhood.

If you have a Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition boot disk, you're already half way there. If not, the easiest thing to do is grab yourself a pre-made disk image.

ASIDE: I’m not sure as to the legality of downloading old Microsoft disk images; to play it safe I suggest you have a legal licence for Windows 98. I am not a lawyer though, so don’t take this as legal advice!

Boot your MS-DOS guest, then mount the virtual disk image. You'll need to copy over A:\MSCDEX.EXE and A:\OAKCDROM.SYS. I like to keep my file system organised so I copy them to C:\DOSDRIVERS.

Now we need to edit C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and add a line to load the driver with an 8 digit identifier and available drive letter. If you don't have a high memory manager installed, drop the LOADHIGH/LH command.

LH C:\DOSDRIVERS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:LISAONO

Then edit C:CONFIG.SYS and add the new device driver with the same identifier you used before. Again, if you don't have a high memory manager, swap DEVICEHIGH to DEVICE. You'll also need a LASTDRIVE command so there's a free drive letter to use:

LASTDRIVE=Z
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOSDRIVERS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:LISAONO

Unmount your disk image and reboot… and enjoy a CD-ROM on DOS! Most people didn't have CD-ROMs at the time of DOS, so consider yourself lucky!

Since the older DOS days there have been some more memory efficient device drivers developed than these Oak and Microsoft ones, but generally these are a good pair to start with because they're the most compatible. In a future post I'll be talking about alternative drivers.