The Blog of Harald

Not worth blogging individually, here is a bunch of links that I wanted to share:

* “Binary marble adding machine”:http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/index.html – watch the video!
* “Chore Buster”:http://www.chorebuster.net/ – Web 2.0! enter people and chores, and it will automatically generate a ‘fair’ schedule and email it to you weekly!
* “flotsam”:http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/28/coolsc.oceansecrets/index.html – rubber duckies travel from the pacific to the atlantic via the arctic ocean! – see also “Beach Comber’s Alert”:http://www.beachcombers.org/
* “War on Clutter”:http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/02/war-on-clutter/
* “Teach Your Kids to Clean Their Own Rooms”:http://www.curbly.com/badbadivy/posts/1058-Teach-your-kids-to-clean-their-own-rooms

Star Trek meets “Steampunk”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk.

“http://slumbering.lungfish.com/?p=417”:http://slumbering.lungfish.com/?p=417

If I knew more about 19th century Science Fiction I could use this as a campaign seed… :-)

Toronto is a happenin’ place! A list of SF&F stories set in Toronto:

Fantastic Toronto

Someday I’ll have to go through the list and figure out which ones I’ve read.

I liked the thematic lists at the end of the page:

bq. *Vampires*: Nancy Baker, “Cold Sleep,” “Exodus 22:18,” The Night Inside and Blood and Chrysanthemums; Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, The Bleeding Sun; Robert Boyczuk, “Doing Time”; E.L. Chen, “Fin-de-siècle”; all of Tanya Huff’s Blood novels plus seven related stories; Karl Schroeder, “Dawn.”

bq. *Werewolves*: Kelley Armstrong, Bitten and Broken; Don Bassingthwaite, Breathe Deeply, Pomegranates Full and Fine, and As One Dead; Sara Joan Berniker, “My Mother in the Market”; Tanya Huff, Blood Trail.

bq. *Zombies*: Kelley Armstrong, Broken; Tony Burgess, Pontypool Changes Everything.

I’m apparently totally out of the loop these days.

Bill Amend announced that he was pulling back, moving Foxtrot to Sunday Colour only as of December 31, 2006, and I only just noticed this week!

Universal Press Syndicate: News Release

This guy has an unusual and amazing job: inspecting operating power lines. The video is cool enough to share:

glumbert.com – High Power Job

(via “Ned Batchelder”:http://www.nedbatchelder.com/blog/200705.html#e20070514T163107)

First tropical storm of the year: “Andrea”:http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT1+shtml/091443.shtml on May 09, 2007. And so begins another year of watching hurricanes…

(with my luck the remnants of a hurricane will blow through Atlantic Canada when we’re supposed to be on the ferry between NS and NF…)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect

bq. Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”

“Bruce Schneier”:http://www.schneier.com/ has been collecting a bunch of these stories lately. His point is less about civil liberties, though. If police and emergency services are kept this busy chasing false alarms, it’s that much easier for the real criminals to slip past unnoticed…

I’ve linked to some of his recent entries:

* “A Rant From a Cop”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/a_rant_from_a_c.html
* “Stage Weapons Banned”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/stage_weapons_b.html
* “How Australian Authorities Respond to Potential Terrorists”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/how_australian.html
* “Another Boston Terrorism Overreaction”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/another_boston.html

Now all of the women I know can “pee standing up like a man”:http://www.whizbiz.com.au/ …

What _will_ they think of next?

(In all seriousness, I can see a use for this; many public washrooms are truly disgusting places that _I_ wouldn’t want to park my buttocks in…)

Why the treasure ships from the Americas were allowed to skip Customs: no one inspects the Spanish acquisition!

(Shamelessly stolen from “olletho”:http://olletho.livejournal.com/381557.html)

As seen in the Pachelbels Canon – CollegeHumor video, it really is everywhere.

Maybe you have to be a bit of a music geek, but I laughed myself silly over this one…

The house of the future: complete computer control.

bq. The House of the Future: Complete Computer Control

bq. As Don Sheppard punches his special code into the electronic keypad at the entryway, a monotone computer voice says, “Welcome-home-Don-come-rightin.’ The front door then glides open.

This is from a 1983 issue of Creative Computing. It amuses me that the “House of the Future” articles haven’t changed all that much since then. The technology has improved (“Insteon”:http://www.insteon.net/ by “SmartLabs”:http://www.smartlabsinc.com/ is pretty cool) but it’s still to expensive (and too geeky) for the average home buyer. Because retrofits are so hard (and labour intensive == expensive), this stuff is best installed by the homebuilders, but there’s no demand…

After reading “Rick Klau’s weblog”:http://www.rklau.com/tins/archives/2007/02/06/more-on-the-site-update.php I installed a couple of useful WordPress plugins:

* “404 Notifier”:http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress
* “Redirection”:http://www.urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection

They’ve already found a few errors within my website, and a few dangling URLs leftover from the days when I converted my Movable Type URL format. Recommended to my fellow WordPress users…

Via “Ned Batchelder”:http://www.nedbatchelder.com/blog/200702.html, I am now reading indexed, a collection of tongue-in-cheek venn diagrams and charts by Jessica Hagy.

I laughed myself silly reading the first page, so I thought I’d share…

Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted

bq. One group has to choose which sandwiches they want for an entire week in advance. The other group gets to choose which they want each day. A fascinating thing happens. People who choose their favourite sandwich each day at lunchtime also often choose the same sandwich. This group turns out to be reasonably happy with its choice.

bq. Amazingly, though, people choosing in advance assume that what they’ll want for lunch next week is a variety. And so they choose a turkey sandwich Monday, tuna on Tuesday, egg on Wednesday and so on. It turn out that when next week rolls around they generally don’t like the variety they thought they would. In fact they are significantly less happy with their choices than the group who chose their sandwiches on the day.

you have nothing to lose but your germs!

‘Waving’ Goodbye to a Kitchen Hazard

bq. A team of University of Florida Engineering researchers have come to the conclusion that microwaving plastic scrubbers and kitchen sponges on full power can destroy practically 100% of the bacteria and viruses, parasites or spores collected on them.

(via “diane duane”:http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/)

ConsumerReports.org – Infant car seats 2/07: Safety alert, European models, Ratings

bq. You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car seats would be the most protected passengers of all. But you’d be wrong, our tests reveal.

bq. Cars and car seats can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash. Car seats aren’t.

bq. When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.

I’ve been trying to write a rant on the topic, but can’t seem to get it organized. The fundamental issue for me is that:

– government officials don’t want to scare consumers, so publicly refuse to admit there are any problems.
– manufacturers slip through the cracks, doing the minimum possible to develop and sell products.
– both parties seem more interested in the appearance of safety than in actual risk analysis.

I do not believe that consumers are served by this process, but I’m at a loss to suggest alternatives…

Update 2007/01/21: The whole point is apparently moot:

“CONSUMER REPORTS WITHDRAWS INFANT CAR SEAT REPORT”:http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cu-press-room/pressroom/2007/2/0702_eng0702ccs.htm

bq. We withdrew the report immediately upon discovering a substantive issue that may have affected the original test results. The issue came to light based on new information received Tuesday night and Wednesday morning from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) concerning the speed at which our side-impact tests were conducted.

The New Yorker : talk : content

bq. a study of the performance of twenty major American companies over four decades found that the ones putting more emphasis on market share than on profit ended up with lower returns on investment; of the six companies that defined their goal exclusively as market share, four eventually went out of business.

I’ve believed this for decades. It is perfectly reasonable to be a successful “niche” player in a larger market, eg. Apple Computer.

I work for the sixth largest software company in the world. We used to be the seventh largest, after Electronic Arts. I’m not entirely sure why we think this measure is so important; I’d rather we measured our success, not our size…

An analysis of a large collection of passwords gathered in a Myspace phishing attack reveals that passwords are getting better, although:

bq. We used to quip that “password” is the most common password. Now it’s “password1.” Who said users haven’t learned anything about security?

Schneier on Security: Real-World Passwords

The map itself is cool, but so is the method used to create it; check it out!

xkcd – map of the internet

(boy, that title is going to make the spammers love me!)

Best Mashup Ever: Caffeinated Viagra Beer (by Jeremy Zawodny)