miscellaneous

Cloud Camp London:

First talk, good. Last talk, good. Stuff in between… meh.

Highlights of the evening: catching up with Ben. And, after 7 years, finally meeting Alan (the last talk!) in person…

…even if it was only for a few minutes.

Scott blinkin’ rocks.

It appears the only one who’s lost contact with reality is the NZ finance minister…

On one hand:

In particular, households are being squeezed by higher fuel prices since the budget, he said. Gasoline prices have surged 14 percent the past three months

and then on the other:

…workers needed to be aware of the outlook for the economy when they made wage claims… …Wage expectations in the public sector haven’t caught up with the changing economic environment. Some have lost a bit of contact with reality.

The word that jumps to mind starts with T and ends with WIT.

As a matter of interest, just searched on Google for “wordpress shopping cart” to see how far down the list YAK turned up. Surprisingly, it’s on the first page. Well, the bottom of the first page, but it is the first page.

Cool geek-out moment!

I only found out the Wii was (might be) region-locked after carting all my Wii stuff from NZ to the UK. A rather depressing thought — I’d have to export any new games I wanted from back home.

I contacted Nintendo UK to find out for sure, and they confirmed, yes it was region locked… but then went on to describe the region locking as though it was tied to the TV colour encoding system. They continued, “For example, the UK uses PAL-a, and New Zealand uses PAL-b which should be compatible”.

I’m guessing the question was completely misunderstood.

Anyway, rather then destroying any chance of becoming carbon-neutral this century, I thought it was worth buying a local game and trying it out. Zack & Wiki duly arrived from Amazon, and was inserted, with some trepidation, into the console… and worked perfectly.

Conclusion: if the Wii region encoding is controllable by the publisher, as some have reported (see the comments of that page), then Capcom, at least, have not exercised that control. Well done Capcom, and… awesome game, by the way.

HP + EDS

Two wrongs making a right? Only time will tell.

Through cruel (pronounced in melodramatic fashion with emphasis on all the verbs) twist of fate, I wound up clicking on a spam link the other day.

I never click on spam links. To mix a few metaphors, one has to be rather too many brain cells short of a four-cylinder engine to click on anything in a spam message.

I do have an excuse for my actions, although rather a feeble one: I was skimming rather quickly through my new mail and went from one email, from my father, to another. The second email was about replica watches.

Why is he sending me emails about replica watches?

The email was in a similar format to some of his others (a paragraph of text followed by a link), but the words “replica watches” and that link somehow caught my attention. An ominous orchestral theme should have started up as I moved my mouse, in slow motion of course, towards that little blue underlined set of characters…

I realised yesterday, after receiving another message about replica watches that I’d been duped. By the bizarre combination of a spam message formatted exactly the same as another, and the fact that Thunderbird occasionally doesn’t update the header info (from address, subject, etc) at the top of the message when I flick through too fast.

And somewhere there’s a twit with Dr Evil ambitions who’s currently rubbing his hands together with glee, because the “sucker” light has just flicked on next to my email address. I can look forward to an inundation of messages about cheap gucci bags, replica watches, “enlargement” remedies, and so on.

Needless to say, I won’t be buying that Breitling at the fraction of the price of the original.

Response from someone who grew up in the somewhat tectonically active east coast of NZ (i.e. me):

…

Meh

…

A somewhat surreal conversation with my daughter last night:

“Papa, what’s yod?”

“What’s WHAT??”

“Yod!”

“I don’t know.”

Kid wanders off, and comes back 2 minutes later.

“What’s yod?”

“I don’t know. What do you mean by yod? I don’t know any such word.”

Kid sighs in exasperation (conveying depths of feeling only possible in the average 5 year old), and stalks off down the hallway…. singing the NZ National Anthem to herself:

“Yod of Nations, at thy feet, in the bonds of yove we meet”.

Ah… that Yod…

Haven’t been posting lately because we’ve made a move back to the UK.

Again.

My carbon footprint must be of obscene proportions, given this is now the 5th time I’ve made a move from NZ to the UK.

A couple of immediate impressions after arriving back in the Mother Country:

1. I’d forgotten how dang cold this part of the northern hemisphere is. Even after leaving a rather average start of summer (well it was pretty average in Dec).

2. Getting longer-term accommodation is a nightmare — particularly the referencing process. We’re (hopefully) moving out to Rickmansworth next week (that’s Hertfordshire for the uninitiated), but it hasn’t been straightforward. Touch wood, cross fingers, etc, etc, etc.

3. Mobile phones are so much cheaper than back home. Even prepay. 15p for the first minute and 5p after. That’s about $NZ0.41c per minute followed by 0.14c per min. Plus free mobile phones with an 18 months plan, and in some cases free gifts like Sony PS3s, Nintendo Wiis, iPods, etc. Of course, those are for the crappier models.

4. Dang it’s cold here.

Anyone else noticed the suspicious similarity between Microsoft’s Volta logo, and that of Firefox?

Even down to the spiky tail.

Interesting…

Sometime in the last 5 days, while I wasn’t paying attention, the number of downloads of SWFK jumped from just under 2000, to almost 5000 (about 16 downloads to go, to be exact).

To put it in perspective, my lowly WordPress plugin has yet to hit that number in a year or two.

Well… …I’ve hardly been slashdotted, or dugg, but I’m impressed.

I’ve just added WP-Forum to my site, currently for YAK and SWFK. At 200+ comments, the YAK discussion is already too unwieldy to be useful, and the comments list on the SWFK page could probably use something a bit more ‘threadable’.

The URL can be found here. I’ll keep comments open on both pages, until any kinks have been ironed out. Here’s hoping it’s useful…

The definition of Instant Gratification?

In Rainbows.

Register.

Decide what I want to pay.

Pay.

Download.

Instant gratification in less than 4 mins. First track sounds good as well.

Interesting story on Close Up tonight, about the lack of interest in local body elections. “Boring” was the general consensus.

I couldn’t agree more. I have no idea about any of the candidates for the Auckland mayoralty, other than the current encumbent and the previous. Neither of whom I have any interest in voting for. Oh yeah, and the guy who started that horrible excuse for gratuitous nudity on Auckland’s Queen street. Skanks-on-bikes, or whatever it’s called.

The other half dozen or more candidates are unknowns. The paragraph on each person in the voting documents, is hardly enough to make a decision on who should be running the city for the next few years.

It seems to me, there’s an easy, web-based answer to fix a lack of interest in local-body elections. How about a simple form which asks a bunch of questions about relevant topics and, based on the answers given, presents the list of candidates who match the recipient’s answers. Questions like:

Would you increase rates to build more parks: Yes/No/Undecided
Do you believe rates are being used properly in [some area]: Yes/No
Which are do you think the council should focus on for the next term: [topic 1], [topic 2], [topic 3], [topic 4]…
Rank these issues in order of importance: [topic 1], [topic 2], [topic 3], [topic 4], [topic 5]…

etc

There could be a 2 minute form (short list of questions), 5 minute and 10 minute form (long list of questions), depending upon how much effort you wanted to put into your selection. The list of candidates at the end would be sorted by the percentage match to the recipient’s answers, and contain links to more information about their candidacy. It’s just a quick jump from there to adding online voting. Tick boxes next to the candidates in your list who you want to vote for.

Doesn’t seem like rocket science, and wouldn’t necessarily have to cost as much money as the Government throws into other projects. And at least there’d be more chance I’ll be choosing the right set of candidates, based on what I think is important. At the moment, I’ve got no idea.

It’s an impressive feat.

When my daughter was about 2 and a half years old, we got a long piece of string, poked it through holes in a pair of yogurt containers, pulled the string tight and used it as a telephone. It was difficult to get the concept across to a 2 year old; of talking into the container, then listening for the response. It was also difficult keep the string taut enough, so that sound waves were transmitted properly.

Somehow, Orcon have managed not only to keep a piece of string tight over thousands of kilometres, they have also managed to connect the yogurt container to the local internet loop. An extremely impressive piece of engineering. Even if it does mean my international traffic is slower than a 28K modem. Just think of the science!

So it’s now almost a month since I first noticed the problem, and over 3 weeks since I reported it — and there is still no resolution in sight. At least a couple of emails have gone unanswered in the last few weeks, although the initial response from their support department (instructions on how to provide all the data their technicians would need) was positive. Last night I finally gave up waiting and decided to sit on hold for 10 minutes or so. Their helpdesk, while nice enough (and local), were unable to shed any light and would need to pass on the details to technicians. But…

“…we have had reports from other customers of similar problems… it may have something to do with the traffic shaping…”

Yes. I’m blimmin’ well aware that it’s traffic shaping. I could’ve told you that a month ago.

“…a quick fix might be to upgrade your plan…”

Where’s the sound of screeching tyres when you want it?

Upgrade my plan?

I must remember that if I ever get a complaint about software I’ve developed…

“I’m sorry you’re having problems sir. Other people have also experienced problems with that version of our software. I invite you to upgrade to a more expensive version, in which we have fixed that issue.”

PS. Unsurprisingly, still no response from technical support.

…making my family wonder what on earth I’m doing:

Steve Yegge’s Tech News — humour you’ll only ‘get’ if you’re a techie, and Neil Gaiman’s “at-a-glance guide“. Which I still keep laughing at (the last 2 photos) every time I go back to look at them.

So, apart from the mild amusement value of a radioactive stream of pee on our nearest neighbour, I can’t say I’m particularly amused by the 51kbps, for international traffic, which I’ve been getting for the last 3 days (possibly longer).

It’s nothing to do with my connection, as far as I can tell, since a speedtest within the country reports an acceptable (relatively speaking) 3300kbps.

Word from the responsive (<– sarcasm alert) technical support department of my ISP? Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Official word on the system status page is “no known issues”.

So is the fact that I appear to be attached to the rest of the world via a small yogurt container and a piece of string, an “unknown issue”?

All kudos to Michael Rakuskin of Tower Books in Australia for the most exceptional response to a blackmail letter.

You should take the time to read his response to Angus & Robertson’s blatant extortion attempt. It truly is the literary equivalent of flaying them alive.

(Source: Boing Boing and Making Light’s excellent detailed breakdown)

Is there a Spam Eye of Sauron?

I feel like I’ve been caught in the blazing eye beam for the last month or so (a bit like Frodo in Sam in the final LOTR movie).

My web stats (never very large) suddenly jumped to between 2 and 4 times more hits per day. A sudden, vain hope that I’d said something interesting (unlikely though it may seem to the casual viewer) was cruelly dashed when I realised the jump was accompanied by a commensurate rise in spam messages on this blog (thank god for some nice WP anti-spam mechanisms).

Proving a couple of things:

1. spammers are stupid: continually targetting a website with spam messages that never appear because the anti-spam mechanisms reject them, just goes to show how dumb their spamming software actually is.

2. spammers are stupid: continually targetting a website that has a typical daily readership of bugger all (to use the technical terminology), just goes to show how dumb spammers are at picking their targets.

Anyway, thankfully the beam has now moved to point somewhere else….

Who else wants to see a movie made about Dr Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators…?

Greg Broadmore rocks… and possibly needs to get out more.

I’ve received a couple of donations for YAK over the last couple of weeks. Meant to mention it, and then completely forgot.

So apologies, and many thanks to Luke Chao, and 2 anonymous donors.

I notice that Richard E Grant is here for the Auckland Writers and Readers festival (an event I had no idea was even on, until I saw it mentioned on TV two minutes ago).

He would have to be one of my favourite British (well, by way of Swaziland) actors. Started when I saw the rather abysmal Hudson Hawk (he was about the only watchable character, I recall), and continued when, a few years later, I finally saw Withnail & I. My impression was well and truly cemented when, back in the mid-to-late 90’s, I was wandering aimlessly down Charing Cross Road, and happened to wander into Borders just when he was giving a talk about a newly released book (can’t remember which one it was, but damn he was funny).

If you have the opportunity to go to “An Hour with Richard E. Grant” (I won’t unfortunately), I’m thinking it’ll be well worth the effort.

Here’s a second view of job listing numbers (continuing from my post yesterday). This time, looking at the last 30 days, both permanent and contract positions, in New Zealand:

Jobserve doesn’t support more than 7 days (probably because that would result in massively large sets of data), but I didn’t do a very good job with my searches, so here’s another attempt which looks for ads with exclusively one skillset (i.e. java and not anything else) — with one exception: .Net and C# jobs are not filtering C/C++ jobs out, since many of those positions advertise for those skillsets and it skews the figures if they’re not included. I’ve also changed the search to look for both contract and permanent positions:

Draw your own conclusions about the data, bearing in mind what I’ve heard about the recruitment agency habit of fishing (listing non-existent jobs to get CVs), the fact that many jobs are listed with multiple agencies, and so on.

A bit over a year ago, I posted about the number of jobs which advertise Python as a skillset (well, to be more exact, the lack of jobs). My general theory at the time being, that as Python’s visibility in the marketplace (particularly in the enterprise) grew, hopefully so would the Python-related job listings. In NZ there wasn’t much happening, whilst in the UK it was only marginally more positive.

The fact of the matter is, sometimes you have to make your own opportunities. I’ve found a bunch of different reasons to use both Python and Jython at work. I think it’s made a difference, even though, at times, it’s hard to get the team to agree with that viewpoint.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to revisit those job numbers, to see if things have changed significantly… or at all.

First, the situation in New Zealand (note I’m doing a simplistic search in Seek for the last 7 days). I searched for both contract and permanent positions, because otherwise the numbers are too small to work with:

<table border="1">
<tbody><tr>
<th>Language</th>
<th>No. of Listings</th>
<th>% of total</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>C/C++</td>
<td>36</td>
<td>11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>.Net/C#</td>
<td>116</td>
<td>35.58</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Java</td>
<td>123</td>
<td>37.73</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Perl</td>
<td>18</td>
<td>5.52</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>PHP</td>
<td>25</td>
<td>7.66</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Python</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>1.22</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ruby</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>1.22</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

Python and Ruby look slightly better if I run the search for 30 days, rather than 7 — obviously this week has been a bit slow.

In London, the numbers are an order of magnitude higher (however, this time only contract positions)…

<table border="1">
<tbody><tr>
<th>Language</th>
<th>No. of Listings</th>
<th>% of total</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>C/C++</td>
<td>720</td>
<td>35.73</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>.Net/C#</td>
<td>619</td>
<td>30.72</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Java</td>
<td>493</td>
<td>24.47</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Perl</td>
<td>110</td>
<td>5.46</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>PHP</td>
<td>49</td>
<td>2.43</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Python</td>
<td>18</td>
<td>0.89</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ruby</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>0.29</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

How does this compare with this time last year?

C/C++ are similar numbers (761 last year compared with 720), but the overall percentage is higher.
.Net/C# has dropped slightly, though again the overall percentage is higher.
Numbers of Java positions have dropped significantly, as has the overall percentage.
Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby have all dropped as well.

So what does this mean?

Not much actually. What I should have done, at the time, was run my queries for a full month, and attempt to dump cross-over positions (such as C++ jobs which advertise for .Net/C# and vice versa), to get a true snapshot of the job market.

As it is, there’s an interesting correlation in some of the numbers between here and London with C/C++ being the aberration.

I think if I’m going to keep doing this comparison every now and then, I need to be a bit more rigorous in documenting both my search and calculations.

Which is a job for another day (or night, to be more precise).

Never liked my last effort.

Since I’m slightly artistically challenged, I have difficulty getting graphical elements to look the way I see them in my head. Some fundamental disconnection between brain and outer extremities I think. I have a pretty good idea what looks good, but my attempts in any graphics package you care to mention are… best not mentioned…

So, with apologies to John Gruber, for stealing the basic layout of his site, hopefully this new version will last a bit longer than the last.

PS. The logo at the top is Thai, by the way.

There is nothing worse than egosurfing your own name, only to discover you’ve missed the top spot in Google by one… because of a spelling mistake:

I’m pretty sure that first link should be “Jon Briggs”.

Damnit.

Erm…. was that just an earthquake in Auckland?

Didn’t hear a truck go past (trucks & buses never shake the house anyway), and the whole house shook for at least a few seconds.

If it was, it’s the first earthquake I’ve experienced in Auckland (been through dozens in the Bay when I was growing up)

…

Aha, while writing this, the Herald was updated. It was a mini-quake.

We’re currently trapped in the nightmare of the interminable house hunt. While doing a bit of research about house auctions, and came across this quote at realestate.co.nz.

A real estate auction is a controlled and fair process which is generally a win-win proposition for everyone involved. For the buyer, the benefits include knowing that you are making a smart investment as you are sure you are purchasing the property at a fair market value.

Here’s the rub: when bids are allowed on the part of the vendor (see the Real Estate Institute of NZ “Code of Practise“, section 3.4), how can the purchase price be a “fair market value”? A fair market value is only possible when only potential purchasers are bidding.

I even came across a brilliant (sarc.) page (unfortunately can’t find the link now) saying something along the lines that “vendor bidding helps you, because it raises the price to a point where the vendor is willing to sell”. Arrant nonsense.

On the positive side, not all real estate agents allow vendor bidding. Barfoots don’t appear to allow the practice — but on the negative side, their process for pre-auction offers seems convoluted and buyer unfriendly… or at least, me-unfriendly.

Here’s another nonsensical real estate statement in relation to auctions:

Make sure all the t’s are crossed: have your solicitor examine the Contract of Sale prior to the auction to ensure everything is in order. Also have any building and/or pest inspections carried out prior to auction day.

It’s the latter part that gets me. A building inspection could run to $500 or $600, and you’ve potentially got only a small chance of winning a property at auction. Assuming you attend a number of auctions without a successful purchase, that’s thousands of dollars literally down the tubes. Perhaps some write that off as a necessary expense of house hunting. I suspect many people don’t bother. Which means one of the largest purchases you can make in a lifetime is made without much knowing whether or not you might have bought a lemon.

Cheerful thoughts, as we try to find a place ourselves.

VMware abruptly stopped working a week or so ago, after months of problem-free use. Neither reconfiguring nor re-installation made any difference, and I’ve been unable to find the exact problem on any forums (such as K/Ubuntu forums).

I had an urgent need to use Windows for something, and casting around for an alternative, came across the recently open sourced VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is considerably less involved to install than VMware, but appears to have less features (which is fine for my purposes). I’ve found a few minor issues (such as it doesn’t appear to fully take control of the mouse pointer — if I move the mouse off the windows screen, while the visible pointer doesn’t move, behind the scenes the real pointer actually moves… and that appears to cause VirtualBox problems if the pointer moves to another screen). But overall, positive experience so far.

Mental sidenote for future reference: when adding a new virtual drive, once in Windows go to Administrative Tools (from Control Panel), then select Computer Management, then Storage, then the hard drive can be initialised in Disk Management.

UPDATE: Of course, it helps if you read the documentation. If you install the “Guest Additions” into your guest operating system (in my case Windows), the mouse problems vanish. Now it automatically grabs the pointer if I move my mouse over the top of the guest OS, and drops it when the mouse leaves — very convenient (better than VMware I think).

Some recent upgrade has completely destroyed the display of fonts in OpenOffice.org. Both the menu and in-document fonts look absolutely awful. This seems to happen once every few months or so, but hasn’t annoyed me enough before to be a problem (a subsequent upgrade fixed it the last time it happened). However, at the moment I’m using OO.O more often than usual, so it -is- a major headache.

Running…
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

And selecting…
Native (or Autohinter), automatic subpixel rendering, and disable bitmapped fonts

…appears to fix the menu problems, but only seems to make a subtle difference to the document font rendering.

Tried a couple of things in the OO.O fontguide, but none of those worked either.

Finally came across a posting in the Arch linux forums, here, suggesting that…

autohinting is inferior to the bytecode interpreter and that it should be turned off

…so back into fontconfig, switch the hinting to None, and I think fonts are almost back to the way I remember they were last week.

Phew!

The countdown is on… only 3 days till we leave Bangkok. Here’s a couple more thoughts about our trip:

1. Anna’s Cafe (near Sala Daeng) has a vastly over-rated reputation. Service: abysmal. Food: average. General decor: dated, and in sore need of a tidy up. Save your money and go to the S&P restaurant on South Sathorn (excellent service, excellent food, reasonably priced). Actually the S&P on Sathorn is my favourite restaurant in Bangkok. A trip here isn’t completely without more than a few visits for lunch.

2. I first went to Shabu shabu (Sukhumvit 33) about 6 years ago. We’d thought it had closed down, since they never answered the phone when we rang. Turns out we should’ve just taken a drive past, since it hasn’t closed down at all — and is as good as it ever was (meaning it’s about a million times better than the aforementioned Shabushi). What I don’t understand is how the excellent Shabu Shabu can only have one restaurant, when the awful Shabushi has multiple outlets.

3. There’s a distressing increase in the number of restaurants which include the service charge in the bill. Large hotels usually do this, but now smaller chains, and single restaurants appear to be doing the same in larger numbers. I say distressing, because the service from waiting staff in some of these places, is absolutely abysmal. Not in all cases (service in hotel restaurants is generally excellent), but 9 out of 10 establishments we’ve visited, which have the charge included, have had terrible service. Two possibilities: either the staff know they’re getting the tip anyway, so feel no incentive to make an effort — or the restaurant is pocketing the money, and the same is true regarding making an effort.
Not sure what the approach is in Thailand regarding an included service charge accompanied by profoundly indifferent service. In the UK, I’d probably pay the food portion of the bill and leave out the service. In NZ, thankfully we don’t have the problem. But here, I’m not sure whether refusing to pay a service charge is acceptable (my wife has been out of the country long enough that she doesn’t know and we keep forgetting to ask friends).

1. If you like Dim Sum (Yum Cha), you can’t do much better than “The Good Earth” restaurant at the Arnoma Hotel. Only 300 baht gets you a large buffet-style (but not choose your own) selection of Dim Sum dishes, plus soup, a noodle dish of some kind (such as Rad Nah), fruit salad desert and unlimited refills of green tea. Just across the road from Central World, so conveniently located.

2. I’ve only eaten at 2 mexican restaurants since I started coming to Bangkok, but we keep going back to Senor Pico each time we come back here. Excellent skewered bbq chicken, good live music (which my daughter loves), and the fajitas aren’t bad either (although I don’t think the fajitas are as good as the Mexican Cafe in Auckland — but that might just be personal preference).

3. There are a huge number of food courts in Bangkok. Most of the Central department stores have a food court attached somewhere — FoodLoft at Central Chit Lom is arguably one of the best of these (very upmarket though). Haven’t been to the MBK food court in years, but last time I went there they had a couple of pretty good vegetarian booths.

4. If you want to have an expensive meal out, a lot of the major hotels have all-you-can-eat buffets with a mixture of International and Thai cuisine. I really like the lunch buffet at the Grand Hyatt Erawan (excellent service), and dinner at the Riverside Terrace at the Marriott (rather expensive for Thailand, but has a show as well, which is good for kids).

5. Non-food-related (surprise): the Ancient City is really worth a visit. Full of replica and relocated temples, buildings, mini villages, etc. I’ve been twice now and still enjoy it. Will probably go back on the next trip, because there’s parts of the 300+ acre park that we haven’t visited yet (plus they’re building more attractions). You will be impressed. By the way, contrary to that article I’ve linked to, entry fees have increased to about 300 baht per person (at least for foreigners).

A couple of observations, so far, from our latest sojourn in Bangkok (Krung Thep, in Thai, which hopefully explains the title):

1. Shabushi restaurant (a mixture of Shabu Shabu and Sushi), is definitely not worth the 219 baht per person. Save your money and go to Coca, or even MK (though MK is pretty average as well). Better yet, go to Daidomon. It’s a bit old, but much better value for money — plus the locals are a (mostly) bored with it, so it’s easier to get a seat. We waited almost an hour to get into Sabushi. What a waste of an hour that was.

2. Today I managed to get across 3 lanes from the exit from a car park building without too much pain — admittedly by following a BMW. Here’s a trick for driving in Bangkok: get behind someone more obnoxious than you are (the bigger the car, the better).

3. The difference between a foreigner (me) driving in Bangkok, and a local (expert) driver: last night the driver of a friend of my wife, drove from a carpark across 5 lanes of traffic. Amazing. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea. If you’ve experienced Bangkok traffic, you’ll know what I mean.

4. “Breakfast included”, is overrated. You can get really sick of eggs on toast, or thai-style omelets, really quickly. A serviced apartment with breakfast included is nice, but not really worth the extra money (unless, of course, your company is paying for it).

More to come when I think of them…

The weather in Bangkok is surprisingly mild at the moment. This is my 5th or 6th time here, and without a doubt, experiencing the mildest temperature yet.

Living in a city where jaywalking is the norm (if not encouraged), I read this story with amusement (although with sympathy for the professor’s plight).

Interest in visiting the US… rapidly decreasing.

We’ve just returned from a 5-day stay in Chiang Mai (in the north of Thailand). It’s been 8 years since we were last there, and it seems that very little has changed. The Riverside restaurant is still brilliant, the steps of Doi Suthep are still crammed with a ridiculous number of street sellers, and Tuk Tuks still follow you down the street, hopeful for a fare.

There is, however, a new attraction in the region — the Chiang Mai Night Safari. First impressions are quite simply amazing. The architecture of the main building is consistent with traditional northern Thai styles (and an impressive size), the fountain-light show on the lake is good, and there’s a level of professionalism that you don’t typically see at other Thai tourist attractions.

Visitors travel around the park in an (approx) 40 seater glorified golf cart (basically an open-air bus), and pass through various enclosures to see the animals. The individual habitats seem reasonably sized and the animals look healthy (at least what you can see of them in the lights of the bus)…

…that is, until you reach the very last enclosure, containing the elephants. Where the other animals are free to roam their enclosures, the elephants are chained to the spot. Where the other animals at least seem relatively comfortable, most of the elephants constantly struggle to free themselves… I say most of the elephants, because a couple just stood there rocking backwards and forwards — I’m no animal behaviourist, but it sure looked like psychological problems to me.

The experience is like an ice-cold bucket of water in the face after a hot shower.

Contrast with the Maesa Elephant Camp we went to a couple of days earlier, where the elephant we rode (yes we did the typical touristy stuff) felt free to stop and munch bamboo leaves whenever she wanted (completely ignoring her exasperated handler) and all the elephants looked healthy and interested in what they were doing — without a huge amount of intervention from the handlers (mahout).

The treatment of Thailand’s national animal, is quite simply shameful.

I also wish I’d had internet access to do a bit of research before we went there, because a quick search uncovered the following:

http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/news/0511a.htm
http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10906

What could’ve been an attraction I’d recommend to anyone, instead becomes something I recommend you stay away from. Save your 500 baht and give it to support the animals at Maesa or one of the other elephant camps, where the animals are treated with a bit of respect (in fact the mahout live with the animals).

1. plug new digital camera into usb
2. run gphoto2… get error (something about kernel)
3. try digikam. error connecting
4. try konqueror. nothing detected.
5. unplug camera, repeat process with a vague sense of futility
6. remove SD card from aforementioned camera, try plugging into internal card reader in laptop
7. when nothing happens, spend 45 mins reading about internal card readers only to discover they’re generally not supported well. fail miserably getting anything to happen there
8. give up on SD card, return to camera, plug in usb again and begin search for more info about specific model
9. KDE automatically detects USB mass storage and pops up a dialog… twice. in annoyance, select “do nothing”… twice
10. Somehow Konqueror still opens, displaying the now-mounted usb storage device representing your camera, complete with photos ready and available to be copied.

That, my friends, is the true definition of frustration.

TradeMe might account for NZ’s highest percentage of internet traffic, but in my opinion, Fairfax have no hope in hell of a reasonable return on their investment, if my experience is anything to go by.

My wife has used TradeMe, for a year or two, to sell things we’re not using any more (a lot of baby stuff as my daughter got older). We’ve basically had a lot of positive feedback, and no negative. The experience has, generally, been pretty good, although we have had a couple of bad experiences with less than honest traders.
Anyway, she hadn’t used it for a few months, then sold a couple of larger value items, and our account went into deficit (to the tune of a bit over $20, I think). She forgot to tell me, so we didn’t “charge-up” our balance, and another few months (possibly 3?) rolled by. Went to use the account again, a month or so ago, only to discover our membership is no longer enabled.

Here’s where the problem with the lack of customer service comes into play: there is no info in the online help that tells you what to do in these cases, the only option is to send a message online, or use their $1.99 per minute help line. Despite the fact that it’s our fault, I have no interest in paying 1.99 per minute just to talk with some monkey to explain what happened, that we want to pay and re-enable our account.

So I sent a message using their contact form.

No reply.

So I sent another message.

No reply again.

I’ve even tried dropping a suggestion in their online equivalent of a suggestion box.

No reply.

Which is crazy. Because, here’s the thing: I -want- to pay. I want to give them my money. Not just to get back the positive ‘kharma’ associated with our account, but also because it’s a valid debt and I believe I should pay it.

Is it logical to close the account of a customer who has used your system for a few years (without any problems I can recall), because they screwed up and owe you a small amount of money? Isn’t it more logical to keep the account open, but stop them from trading (bidding or selling) until they pay the balance? That seems like a far more intelligent and customer-centric approach — but what do I know? I haven’t built a company up from scratch and sold it for a few hundred million.

So… TradeMe doesn’t want my money, and I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence (forum postings and other commentary… albeit a few years old) on the web to indicate other people have also had problems when dealing with them. If that’s anything like debugging software (i.e. the obvious stuff is just the tip of the iceberg), then it doesn’t bode well for TradeMe’s future, and for Fairfax’s investment.

UPDATE: Months after sending the original message on TradeMe’s contact form, we finally heard back. It appears we can pay our bill (only $6 rather than $20 as I originally thought) by just ringing the Wellington office direct and paying by credit card. Which is considerably better than calling an 0900 number. Unfortunately, the email arrived just as we were leaving to go to Thailand on holiday for 5 weeks. Obviously been back a month now, but haven’t yet had a chance to ring. I figure since they took a few months to get back to us, there’s no rush for me to rip out the credit card… but will do asap. Have a couple of things to sell, although Ben’s looks interesting…

Ugh. motivation dropping… enthusiasm waning… (vague cinematic tribute to favourite Mystery Men character — Mr Furious)

Pre Christmas Blues have definitely set in. Serious inability to focus on the masses of stuff I have to get sorted before Xmas. Thank god, in 2 weeks time we’ll be in Bangkok, with ready-and-willing inlaws available for babysitting!! A social life… how curious.

Can’t wait for Gaeng Paa Gai (that’s Jungle Curry with Chicken if you’re not in the know), from S&P in Sathorn (favourite mid-range restaurant).

Is it just me, or does the soundtrack on the settings screen of the Nintendo Wii, sound a bit like the soundtrack for the movie Solaris? Or is it just the fact that both use bells?

Awesome! An animated version of PvP is on its way…

…but it’s $US19.95 for a subscription.

I mean, come on! I’m stuck with Pacific Pesos here. That’s like a million NZ dollars at the current rate of exchange (warning: extreme exaggeration alert).

In any case, this is officially the first time I’ve considered taking an online subscription…

Anyone getting the following error when compiling cedega:

undefined reference to `__stack_chk_fail’

Try editing the Makefile in miscemu and adding “-fno-stack-protector”. Thus:

CFLAGS = -g -O2 -Wall -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -fno-keep-static-consts -D__const=const -fno-strict-aliasing -Wa,–execstack -D__int8=char -D__int16=short -D__int32=int “-D__int64=long long”

becomes…

CFLAGS = -g -O2 -Wall -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -fno-stack-protector -fno-keep-static-consts -D__const=const -fno-strict-aliasing -Wa,–execstack -D__int8=char -D__int16=short -D__int32=int “-D__int64=long long”

I also added it to the root Makefile, but that appeared to make absolutely no difference. No guarantees it will sort all problems and/or even run after compiling, but it certainly got me past that problem.

Took a bit of googling and even then a bit more experimentation to figure that out. Hopefully this post might shortcut the searching for someone else…

PS. Came to a complete and rather painful halt with configuration shortly afterwards. Approaching the more-pain-than-fun limit, so about to give up…

Vodafone seems to be intent on proving that the duopoly that is Telecom+Vodafone != true competition, == bad service, and == overpricing. As evidenced by this article at Computerworld. They might have the design skillz… but that’s the end of it.

From Rod’s pictures (last link above), it looks like Telecom have the l33t tech skillz, but whomever designed the MiniMax device has the design skills of a small badger with one arm, worse than usual eyesight, and a propensity for garish colour schemes.

Gads!

And if that’s not bad enough:

EGAD:

…no, I’m not out of touch with the level of wealth in my own nation. Have you walked around a so-called “poor” neighborhood lately? I see big screens in almost every home…

1. I somehow doubt he’s been walking around in a -really- poor neighbourhood and,

2. let’s not forget the fact that it’s still possible for people on low incomes to get credit (only to have the items repossessed if they fail to meet the payments). We’ve got a similar problem here with banks extending 100% mortgages and the worry that when the market changes significantly, people with that kind of debt will be in serious financial difficulty… bringing me to,

3. what happens when you have all these debts and your financial circumstances change?

Frankly I can’t believe he’s promoting the idea of personal debt for an overpriced console, for god’s sake. Particularly when there is a (wii bit) cheaper, and potentially more fun, option.

I’ve decided my blog is best served from my personal domain name, making my company domain basically just a business card with a few additional bits and pieces (like the ever-so-gradually expanding products page). Which means url’s now change to:

http://www.briggs.net.nz/log for the blog, and:

http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/feed for the feed.

Feel free to update links accordingly.

You’d think a Flight Centre “Risk Manager” would take into consideration the risk of extremely bad publicity from this story getting out and spreading…?

Here’s a hotel to add to the list of places not to stay when in Bangkok: Swissotel Nai Lert Park.

My wife was just telling me a story she’s been reading on a Thai website, about a girl who booked a conference room at Nai Lert Park, for her wedding, months in advance. Three or four months before her wedding, she was contacted by hotel representatives asking to move to the gardens (for a reasonable discount). Someone ‘important’ wanted to use the larger conference room she had booked. She declined.

She was contacted again and again over the next few months. More discounts offered, for the use of the smaller conference rooms. She also declined moving to these (I imagine because that would affect the number of invitees).

Finally, a month before her wedding she was contacted once again, and given an ultimatum: either move to the garden or the smaller conference room. Once again she declined, feeling she was in the right because of her early booking.

The response of hotel management was to cancel her booking and return her deposit.

With an attitude like that, cross Nai Lert Park off the list of places I’ll ever stay. Lucky there are plenty of other awesome hotels to stay in, if I’m ever feeling exceedingly extravagant…

excellent: http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=401

I notice that I can occasionally suffer from wrong-syntax-itus when switching between Python, Java and PHP; particularly when I’m caught up in the development moment. Although the more I get used to a language, the less this seems to occur.

However, there is an exception to this rule — the switch from SQL to HQL — my particular gripe du jour. I still find Hibernate’s Query Language a jarring wrench from thinking ‘relationally’, so to speak. For that matter, I also find it far more efficient to write queries in SQL (only to then suffer the pain of converting them to valid HQL — which is perhaps part of my problem).

Which brings to mind another gripe when moving between languages — the lack of features in one that are available in another. Case in point: the lack of multiline strings in Java. There’s nothing worse than a large SQL (or HQL) statement split over multiple lines in Java — the string could be included from a separate property file, but in my opinion, this makes the code more difficult to work with and it doesn’t easily explain itself on first glance. There’s a lot to be said for immediately readable code.

Having said that, I’ve thought of something worse: the hideous blight inflicted on code by complex Hibernate Criteria Queries.

…for some reason it was really hard to see the monitor (see photo below).

For the benefits of Planet NZTech feed subscribers (like myself!), here’s a list of the posts missed since I migrated to a proper hosting provider:

• Murphy’s Law example - a discovery that changing to a new host (that you’re actually paying for) results in a complete lack of time to do anything with it
• python multicast - a comment I made on Tim Bray’s Java multicast posting (even better, I got a mention on his original post)
• templating revisited - where I start to try to prove that I know what I’m talking about in regard to web templating, and that the JSF/facelets way of doing things is naff
• templating continued - where I continue being a know-it-all, have given up on convincing anyone else, and have settled on just convincing myself that I’m not talking complete b*ll*cks.

END TRANSMISSION

It seems as if the migration away from Blogger was successful, though I had a few hiccups that would probably have been easier if I’d planned things a little better.

Such as the fact that I temporarily staged my environment on my development machine, worked out the style and structure, imported all my posts from Blogger, only to then realise that everything would be associa