Hello allâ?Š I know that itâ??s been a while since Iâ??ve last written. I guess that the main reason for this would be a combination of work and study. For those unaware, Iâ??m still here in Munich, working and trying to work out what it is that people say to me.

But that all makes for a rather boring email, so I thought that I would elaborate on a particular event that took place here this week.

Living in Europe means a large amount of history everywhere â?? both good and bad. Itâ??s an excuse for some people as to why certain pieces of paper are needed for minor little things (â??â?Šbut weâ??ve done it like that for 500 years!â?). But then there is also the good history. One such example is der Tag des Bayrisches Bier (Bavarian Beer Day).

I would not have heard anything about this if it wasnâ??t for the a classmate of mine, who thought that it would be in my interest. For this was no ordinary Beer Festival, but one in which a fountain in town would be shut off for three hours so that beer could flow instead of water from it. Free for anyone to drink from. You can see why I might be interested in this?

So I had all sorts of wonderful pictures in my mind of a great big fountain overflowing with the froth of freshly brewed beer, and all sorts of people bring along their glasses and filling them(selves) up. The only drawback here was that it was to be on a Monday, at lunchtime. Not that I was to be taken away from my duties.

So, armed with a (well proven) Guinness glass, I had a slightly extended lunchbreak. Sadly, my mental picture of a fountain overflowing with beer was not to be. It turns out that they capped the fountain, and put three beer taps onto it (for three different types of beer). As you can see from the pictures, a team of wonderful staff stood in the middle of the fountain and proceeded to serve all and sundry. And, also being Germany, the organisers come armed with plenty of glasses for the thirsty public. Of which I also had to add to my collectionâ?Š

I got to talking to one of the â??expertsâ? and learnt that the breweries never announce who supplies the beer for this. Apparently it adds to the mystery, or intrigue, of the whole event, was his explanation. All I can say is that perhaps it was the price, but it tasted pretty good to me! The day is a rather interesting piece of advertising for the local breweries. Just a bit of a shame that I had to go back to work, and couldnâ??t stay for the afternoon really. All good times really.

So I hope that wherever in the world you are, you can find your own local equivalent to der Tag des Bayrisches Bier. And that you have one for me.

Cheers,

Michael

http://jamisbikes.com/usa/bikes/06_durango2.html

It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine. Actually it’s an entry level MTB that I’ll be using for commuting to and from work. I’ll be picking it up in a few days, more pics to come then…

Edit: To those of you suggseting I get a car – I already have one, and if petrol prices werent so bad, I’d be seriously looking at a 2002 Altezza. But here’s some food for thought

People who take their cars to work are 13% more likely to be overweight or obese than those who walk, cycle or use public transport. And the chance of being overweight increases 6% for each additional hour behind the wheel.

Source: NZ Readers Digest April 2006

Edit 2: Seems I’m not the only clever cookie mmmm cookies

Edit 3: I got it yesterday, now to get the accessories…

This site needs more dancing skeletons. So here they are.

I hate waiting for computers to do spyware scans, antivirus scans or just plain being slow. I also hate killing time by zoning out and staring at my monitor while listening to music. So I’ve been considering getting a portable game system. For some time in fact. But which one is going to get my hard earned dosh?

I considered the Sony PSP. Aesthetically beautiful, but with beauty comes fragility. While no doubt a powerful piece of kit, I can’t help but feel that you wont be chucking the PSP into your overnight bag to take wherever, because it’ll be in bits by the time you get back. You could chuck it into some overpriced Sony branded leatherette pouch I suppose, but that wont protect it from the hard knocks of life.

Then, because it’s so powerful, it chews through batteries like no tomorrow. Movie playback? Online browsing? On that tiny little screen? What’s the point? Didn’t we learn our lesson with PDA’s? And let’s not forget the disaster that is UMD. It’s a media format with great potential, I think. It could have even replaced DVD as the standard movie storage format for joe.consumers had Sony played their cards right.

But just like MiniDisc, Sony went and fucked it up. With MiniDisc you were forced to use ATRAC. You wanted to use MP3, OGG, whatever? Sorry. With UMD, Sony made it highly difficult to be able to write to UMD. If you could get the equipment, could you also get the media? Not likely. Plus, nobody wants to buy on UMD movies that they already have on DVD. What could have been the killer feature of the PSP may turn out to be the feature that kills the PSP. The alternative is MemoryStick. A proprietary and costly alternative.

Ability to hook up to the PS3 is nothing to write home about either. The DS will hook up to the Revolution, the GBA can hookup to the Gamecube… the list goes on. It’s not a new feature, so calm down about it. Hackability is the other thing touted about the PSP. Well with newer firmware revisions it’s getting harder, and really, if you need to customise your portable game system that much, get yourself a GP2X/X2 or a Gizmondo.

On that note, the GP2X/X2 and Gizmondo appear on paper to be damn appealing systems. They’re like the PSP but rugged and done right. I almost got one too, I was ready to wire my money to a friend in Germany to ship one over. But there’s feedback on the internet about the GPL nature being violated (source release issues) and poor build quality. I had a feeling it was too good to be true. With the exchange rate being what it was, warranty issues and the chance that Customs would rape me, suddenly I wasn’t keen on taking the gamble.

So that leaves… The Nintendo DS or a legacy system like the GBA (GBA-SP or even the GBA-Micro). While not as flashy as the PSP, Nintendo have been making portable systems since the beginning of time, so they know how to do it. The DS is rugged, has great battery life, is backwards compatible with the GBA library. And Nintendo have paired it up with games with actual gameplay (where the PSP depends on flashy effects) and a usable SDK (apparently the PSP’s weakest point is that it’s difficult to develop for)

For all its weaknesses, the DS is a well rounded platform and, I think, the most worthy of my money at this point in time. I just want to know – when is the DS-Lite due to arrive in NZ?

Last night my wireless internet connection went down while I was at work. An msn message from Crazy notified me of it and initial testing and a quick phonecall to my flatmate diagnosed it as the wireless link at fault.

I was freaking out, as an aside, because I have recently modified my UPS to accept standard 10A IEC power cords, not the impossible to find 16A IEC R40 type, and I was a little concerned about one of the crimp connectors in there. It should be fine, but with Mains power you can never be too careful. As someone with electronics qualifications, I feel obliged at this point – if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t fuck around with electronics! Anyway, images of my uninsured apartment and all my belongings going up in fire from an electrical fire started at my UPS were streaming through my head while I phoned my flatmate.

So I got home, fired up my rack config laptop (a dying IBM with win2k on it that I use for configuring routers, bridges etc) and popped in my stumbling kit and proceeded to scan the immediate area. It looks like Telecom have setup a hotspot, and it looks like it was nuking the ISM spectrum, which includes my link.

I got to work this morning and was pleased to see that my link had come back up:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

H:\>ping 203.110.28.91

Pinging 203.110.28.91 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 203.110.28.91: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.110.28.91: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.110.28.91: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=61
Reply from 203.110.28.91: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=61

Ping statistics for 203.110.28.91:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 7ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 7ms

H:\>

I can’t wait until I’m on WiMax. Ironically I also can’t wait until Telecom hook up my free DSL connection that I can use for failover.

So, Adobe gobbled up Macromedia. That’s cool, takeovers happen. Then Adobe went and messed everything up.

I am of course referring to this: http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/license/desktop/

Specifically:

Definitions

1. â??Authorized Operating Systemsâ? means the desktop and standard-laptop versions of the following operating systems:

1. Microsoft Windows operating systems (including desktop and standard-laptop PC versions of Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP Home, XP Professional, and XP Tablet PC Edition, but specifically excluding Windows XP Embedded, Windows XP Media Center Edition, and successors);
2. Macintosh operating systems;
3. Linux operating systems, but specifically excluding any embedded version of Linux; and
4. Solaris operating systems.

Wait on a minute! Where’s BSD? Mac OSX is a BSD derivitive. Linux is basically BSD with a different “legaleese for the sake of keeping RMS happy” licence (rimshot please).

It used to be that we could use the Linux flash binary in a wrapper, and I mean, if you’re not going to make a BSD binary, the least you could do is add BSD to the Authorized Operating Systems list so that we can continue to legally use the Linux binary.

For readers who believe that online petitions work, here you go:
http://www.petitiononline.com/flash4me/petition.html

For readers who believe instead on “sticking it to the establishment,” well, here you go:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=17&6213=19

Adobe, show some common sense and don’t alienate us BSD users, please, go back to the heady days when you were a nice company, and we skipped and frollicked in the meadows while other large software companies raped puppies.

Update: This has now been resolved

Well, the latest stats are out. There’s some interesting numbers there, I am not a statistician by any measure but I’ll give the interpretation a shot.

Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, by technology, December 2005

Ok, so we’re still 22nd. Not so great, but hey.. we’re better than Ireland, and by far better than Mexico – the only other OECD country to not have gone through with LLU. But can these figures be looked at from another angle? Why not?

Time Series: Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 2001-2005

Ok, we can see here that between 2001 and 2005, we have gone from 0.7 Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants all the way up to 8.1 Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Not too bad. 8.1/0.7 = 11.57 (2d.p.)
Compare with the OECD average of 2.9 up to 13.6. That comes to 13.6/2.9 = 4.69 (2d.p.)

We’re doing 2.47 times better than average.

While not being an apologist for the mothership, I think that’s an interesting statistic to look at. Of course it’s a pretty narrow world when you’re just dealing in averages.

Of course, the same old people made the same old arguments. Regulate! they cry, Unacceptable! they moan. I still maintain that it’s a chicken and egg situation – more broadband uptake fosters better content, but without good content, no typical New Zealander is going to want to upgrade, so what should we focus on first?

You can have the most deregulated network you like, you can have the best broadband plans in the world, it’s useless if the only decent content we can come up with is trademe, stuff and nzherald. If dial up is ok enough to browse trademe and do the odd email, really, why should joe.consumer move up to broadband?

The big things we need are: cost reduction, peering, higher upload speeds, and higher caps.

With cost reduction, this comes back to the “if it aint broke why fix it?” argument. The base DSL plans are not offering enough data. You can download more on dial up while paying much less, that’s pretty pathetic.

Peering is a no brainer.

Higher upload speeds, simply because it’s impossible to remote control my clients and help them out that way. Sure there are highly compressable remote protocols, but they are either overcomplicated or expensive. And what if I want to run a private ASP for a couple of less technically inclined family members? I cannot deliver such services over DSL. Instead I get stuck with a support nightmare.

Higher caps, again a no brainer. Remote controlling can chew through a bit. And get rid of extra data costs. Simplify the offerings with speed restrictions beyond the cap. Perhaps peered ISP’s could look at a distributed anycast proxy to keep as much traffic domestically peered as possible.

I have no doubt that FTTC is going to be great, but I am inclined to put more faith in WiMax right now. You don’t like how long it’s taking to unbundle the local loop? Roll out your own local loop. Hell, with enough capital, you could WiMax the entire country long before FTTC was finished. Provided you get interconnect agreements with Telecom and Telstra, and provide your phone registry to the Police for Tessa, there’s no problem.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060414

Could not have said it any better

Isn’t it amazing what bored intellectuals will do?

The magical figures are (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V. Though the equation looks rather complicated, it is, according to the scientist, simple.It assesses shape, bounce, firmness and symmetry â?? all factors that add up to the bottom line.

S is the overall shape or droopiness of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.

V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures the skin texture and presence of cellulite.
David Holmes, a psychology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, England, devised the formula.

He asked about 2000 women across Britain to assess their bottoms using a simple points scale.

For example, those who believed theirs resembled a trodden doughnut scored just one point for shape, whereas those with a small peach scored the maximum five.

Points were then entered into the formula and the closer a bottom scored to 80, the nearer it was to posterior perfection.

“The perfect female derriere has firmness to the touch and a resilience that prevents undue wobble or bounce, yet looks soft with flawless skin,” Dr Holmes said.

“Slender thighs and a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 will frame the perfect bum, well perfectly.”

So, any of my female readership keen on a free consultation?

A comparison can be drawn between the differing tiers of Tech Support and the differing tiers of Medicine. Here’s my jaded first attempt:

Tier 1 – the most direct customer facing tier. In the medical corner we have Nurses and in the Tech Support corner we have Customer Service Reps.

HELLOOO NURSE! You can put your thermometer where you like!

Nurses, endowed initially with people skills and doing most of the medical work with the least pay and the least recognition also have their failings – after years they tend to get sassy (not a failing in my book, but others see it differently and label it as arrogance), and they also have an inate ability of being horribly portrayed on horrible programming, like Shortland Street and ER.

Customer Service Reps put up with idiot calls like “paper isnt coming out of my CPU!” and filter out most of the stupid that reaches the 2nd tier. I’d feel sorry for them, but I don’t. Plus they send me such amusing spam.

Also this is where the sexy-but-vapid are employed, unfortunately after 20 years in the same sort of role, they become haggard-and-annoying.

Conclusion: My mum’s a registered nurse, but I have to work with CSR’s. This is a draw.

Tier 2 – When the CSR’s just plain give up (or have their hands politically bound), or when the nurses don’t want to look at what’s oozing out of your urethra, you get directed to the second tier.

“ma’am, you have full blown AIDS” | “haha luser, you have full blown NIMBA!”

Welcome to the second tier. If you get a doctor, you have 20 seconds to rush through a list of symptoms before he stops caring and gives you an interrogation and a wheel of fortune diagnosis. Count yourself lucky, second tier IT geeks will not listen to you at all. If you’re fortunate enough to have an on-site geek, he’ll abruptly tell you to move and fix your insignificant fault in 2 seconds, followed by 5 minutes of mocking you. If you have a phone based geek, he’ll feign caring long enough for his boss to look away before fobbing you off so he can go back to reading CAD and Penny Arcade.

It’s not your fault, they entered their respective careers all wide eyed, innocent and with the best of intentions. However politics, workload and having to deal with stupid people has brought out the misanthropistic worst in them. Your IT geek has probably been in the job like.. 8 months.. which is, like.. 30 IT years. And your doctor is tired of treating non-issues and secretly wishes his sworn enemy, natural selection, would try a bit harder.

You want to get the best out of us, give us something interesting… Like extreme stupidity. See the doctor with a size 10 boot stuck firmly in your rectum, set your computer on fire and call the geek, telling him you just installed a firewall.

Conclusion: My favourite doctor is Dr House, and I work on the second tier. So another draw.

Tier 3 – Heaven forbid if the second tier can’t be bothered fixing it, you get to pass go straight to the third tier! They don’t want to talk to you, they just want to fix the problem and get you out of their hair so that they can go back to.. oh I don’t know, a fast paced life of fast cars and sexy lovers.

“I pull this cable and your porn goes bye bye”

If Nip/Tuck is to believed, surgeons are cool. And the last surgeon I saw was wearing gumboots just like the ones I wore when I was a butcher. Then he fixed my hernia, which gave me a new lease on life. Plus the whole mask and gloves thing is like a modern day ninja. You cant trust those surgeons, they may appear to be in front of you.. but like a ninja, they’ll surprise you. Like.. leaving scissors inside you.

Third tier IT guys just want to avoid office politics so they can go back to watching movies. That’s really their only motivation, apart from the interesting jobs that the second tier couldnt figure out. Piss them off though and you’ve got hell to pay. Then again, you don’t want to piss off a surgeon. You might wake up without kidneys.

Conclusion: I dunno… one is as volatile as the other. I’ll stick with the status quo and call a draw.

Unfortunately behind all of this is the business layer. The layer that keeps common sense out of the working tiers, tying us up with silly proceedures and creating roadblocks to providing services. This ultimately keeps us all stuck in the vicious karmatic cycle called “Dilbertonian Hell.” There is also an old Slashdot saying “Management is where geeks go to die.” Aaahhh PHB’s, you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em.

If you’re in the medical industry, the message from management is the same: “Make us money, and by the way, don’t kill people”

If you work in IT, the message from management is the same: “Make us money, and by the way, don’t kill people”

Conclusion: Everyone loses when there is a layer of manglement ruining things with overbearing policies and a restrictive hierarchical nature. Collaboration technology? Would work if manglement didn’t demand restrictive access rights.

Having a hierarchy is nice, but if it’s too overly structured, the output is affected. I think what I’m saying here is that I agree with the Cathedral and the Bazaar. However, in business you need structure. Just loosen it back a bit, perhaps a good halfway point between both styles could be found… like Google which appears to have great employee satisfaction.
I can’t in good faith call this a draw, because due to this layer there’s a lot of losing in the working tiers, of which I’m part of. So let’s call this a disqualification.

Then you’ve got the Vendors. They’re the same, no matter the industry; Making great products and charging an arm and a leg for them, be it cancer-killing drugs or cancer-inducing routers. They also have a habit of bedding the management layer to sell more products. As it is us, the working layers, that have to do the use and support, why arent they sleeping with us? Cisco, the last seminar I went to had a cute chick, let her try to sell me on some wireless gear!

“BUY OUR CRAP! WE LOVE YOU LONG TIME ^_^”

Conclusion: If you’re hot and not a first tier lacky, chances are you’re in sales. Points given for being attractive, points lost for sleeping with manglement instead of me. In the wider picture of this rant, drug companies save lives, no doubt, but they charge so much and they can’t route OSPF packets, so the hardware vendors win. Also, the hardware vendors provide hardware that enables communication that can be used to save lives – vital service dispatch for example. Hardware Vendors win this round.

Finally you’ve got the rogues/mobile consultants/freelancers. These are the geeks-on-wheels college students, or the ones who were so tired of office politics that they decided to scratch out their own living as a consultant, or the wannabe medicine-(wo)man who caters for people silly enough to live in the middle of nowhere.

They’re rough, they’re raw, and they can sometimes cause some havoc – especially if they’re amateurish or into some kind of hippy spiritual cultish side of their industry. Like Macintosh, or Homeopathy.

Do not be fooled! Looks can be deceiving! That guy on the right cannot configure the correct IRQ settings on your archaic dial up modem! And the hot chick next to him, she kills puppies!

Conclusion: Kim from the Vengaboys didnt really kill puppies, and she’s hot. Win-win.