pushing the sky

Up until now, it looked like Google was chucking services out there in the hope that it would stick; Google Apps for Your Domain was mostly about getting businesses into the Google hivemind space by appealing to users who wanted to have their home experience of GMail at work too. Almost by accident they managed to pick up a bunch of micro-businesses whose only presence on the web had been a website built for them years ago but who didn’t want to bother setting up and maintaining a mail server to respond to the three emails a week they were likely to get.

Apropos of this, Apple came along with the App Store on the iPhone, and showed the world there was a whole new way to distribute programs on a platform, instead of relying on people to go to individual developer sites. And now we’re some 3-billion-apps-sold later, with a whole host of pretenders to the throne in the form of the Android Marketplace, Ovi store (Nokia), and others for Blackberries, WinMos and Samsungs. There’s suddenly a profusion of app stores, even to the point where someone saw a market opportunity for a Mac OSX App Store (Bodega) – though not Apple, at least not yet =)

Someone at Google though clearly added two plus two and got five, because Google’s now launched its Google Apps Marketplace – you can now add non-Google web apps to your Google Apps For Your Domain.

Wow.

If you haven’t grasped the wow yet, think of this way: you could previous start up a small business, have the e-mail, calendaring, online doc sharing, and all those lovely Google services hosted for you; now you can also have CRM, or bug tracking, or project management, or invoicing, all available for your business, with a single login, in the “cloud” for access anywhere, hosted by Google. All those IT costs of running and managing servers for businesses whose primary business is not technology-based is now effectively optional. Wow.

As long as you trust Google.

At the Cinema

Cost of two movie tickets to a standard session of latest hit: $36
Cost of a medium popcorn and two drinks: $16
(Optional) Internet booking fee to guarantee seats: $1 per ticket

At Home

Cost of a DVD on your giant flat-screen TV on your very comfy couch: 3 months from cinematic release date + $15
Cost of medium popcorn and multiple drinks: $3
(Optional) Seat guarantee: $0

Now, I don’t know about you, but is going to the cinema to see the latest hit really worth the extra $36 dollars? It’s starting to feel less and less like it is…

• Ok, I know the whole iPad thing is getting tired, but here’s one final one (for now) that’s making me reconsider it a bit – just look at this quote:

  I went back for a second helping of Avatar this Sunday. There’s a scene early on in the movie where one of the scientists walks across the lab carrying the “mobile computer slab of the future.” We’ve seen one of these in almost every sci-fi movie of the last 50 years. It comes free with a jetpack, I suppose. Except this time, one month later, my 12 year old son turns to me and whispers “Look Dad, it’s an iPad.”

  I’m still not sure those used to more power, for want of a better word, to do what they want on their computers will give it up for the iPad, but it does push the fulfilment of the average user’s expectations that one step further.

• Gary Kasparov, he of World-Chess-Champion-Playing-Computer fame, writes on the evolution of chess being influenced by computers, particularly since the historic victory of Big Blue, and how the computer’s lack of context, of appreciating the myth of culture around Chess, means its playing style is different and unfettered.Kasparov is left wondering if Chess is losing its heart to the march of technology, and whether this could he tackled by a better AI that actually tries to imitate human thinking – more efficient and elegant than brute-force, but certainly a harder technology to create.

  Either way, a fascinating read.

• The New York Times has an excellent info-graphic of the US Federal Budget as requested by Obama this year – The proportions spent on defence, health (both the boxes labelled Health and Medicare) and social security (which I would consider includes both the Social Security and Income Security boxes) are staggering, and if anyone wants to use it as propoganda for the relative socialism of the American state, it’s ripe for the picking. Wish we had a similar one for the Australian budget yearly… *investigates how to get this data ready*
• A beautiful image of an owl in flight. Just realised we don’t have many (any?) owls in Australia, do we?
• 50 second Avatar Lego spoof. Need. I. Say. More.

Ok, ok, no mucking around with an introduction for real this time. (and in case you’re coming here out of order, here’s part 1, and part 2, and part 3)

But before I do that… I have finished reading the book. And it is good. Later parts – indeed, parts that start to get discussed here – of the book are a… little more gripping, shall we say, and the idea of stopping after 6 chapters was blown out of the water. So here’s a few extra chapters of action from Randland…

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There’s nothing more fun than reading an 800-page novel on the way down from level 21 in the lift – when the lift comes to a stop on an interim floor, the look on the face of the person entering gives away so much, primary amongst which has been something akin to “Wait, if he’s reading that book in the elevator, how long could the lift have possibly taken that it’s like a commute to this guy?!” Of course, they don’t know that I could read while walking through bushland by the light of the pale moon, but that aside…!

Anyway, the looks on people’s faces when they see me reading is priceless.

Also one particular advantage of having such a large book is that others who are also interested can spot it a mile away. Already I’ve found someone at work interest, someone at a random food court, etc – and it’s always fun to discuss the series and see everyone’s take on things.

Enough blathering! Onwards!

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Well, after Part 1’s overly extended meandering get-nowhere introduction, I really shouldn’t be attempting a second round of introduction. So if I said here that I wanted to go through and try to introduce the Wheel of Time series to those who hadn’t read it, you wouldn’t like that, right?

Thought so. So for those who haven’t read the Wheel of Time, you … might not want to read the next, oh, 6 or 7 posts about this. On the other hand, if you’re looking to draw yourself into an epic fantasy series, you might want to go down to the library and borrow The Eye of the World.  (or if you’re looking to get into an epic fantasy series that’s not endless, go borrow Magician by Raymond E. Feist. And stop reading after Shards of a Broken Crown.)

Side note: so, so very glad we don’t get the American cover for The Gathering Storm in Australia. That just looks awful.

Ahem. Enough of the chitter-chatter. More below the cut!

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A Prelude, or What on Earth is The Gathering Storm?

When I heard Robert Jordan had died, I gave up on the idea of ever getting a satisfying conclusion to the Wheel of Time series. Here was an author who had stretched and stretched a story over 11 meaty volumes, one which apparently at the start had only been destined for 3 books, but due to burgeoning sales managed to get extended. Every book introduced new characters, new plot threads, and somewhere around book 7, I found myself thinking I should only ever pick up new series when they’ve already been finished or the author is dead and I know there’s no more coming.

Jordan promised the readers a conclusion in one book, A Memory of Light, and he said he was damned if he wouldn’t deliver. Well, fate caught up with him first and so his series was doomed to be left with an unfinished story, the remainder of his notes locked away for all we knew. So now we find ourselves with an author who has passed away, and yet the series continues… because there’s a demand out there for this damn story to be finished.

Naturally, with sales to be had, the publishers hired on another author, and so Brian Sanderson was picked to fill the shoes of the indomitable Jordan. Sanderson got to writing… and writing… and writing. It turns out he’s either even worse than Jordan at concocting a quick conclusion, his editor is just as bad at chopping unnecessary bits (not surprising given it’s Jordan’s editor, his wife), or they’re all out for a quick buck.

Maybe all of the above, because what we have now is not one final volume, which would end the series on an appropriate 12 book note, but rather 3 final “volumes” of A Memory of Light, the first of which is The Gathering Storm. I don’t want to complain at the prospect of having more reading material, but lordy, this thing is heavy enough already. Coming 4 years after Knife of Dreams, tGS isn’t so much a book as an old-fashioned tome. I can only imagine what this will be like when bound in smaller paperback format. And what has me worried is that this is only volume 1 of 3 of the final book – and by gods, will it be hefty when finished.

So, it is with this trepidation… that I rushed down to the book store and picked it up, and have been reluctant to put down since yesterday. And it is with some assumed knowledge that I assume you are coming into this, because I know for sure it’ll make little enough sense to anyone else. And if you really do care, there’s a jump to click through:

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At least, not like they used to. Dan Cederholm caught the mood rather succinctly:

Like anyone who used to blog with frequency pre-2005, I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.

Looking around at the blogs on and formerly on my blogroll, those which are still around mostly lie fallow, updated sheepishly every few months. There’s a few who are still going strong – Dooce, Kottke and the like – but they were a different part of the internet experience to begin with. Few who once posted on a regular basis do so any more, and the list of inactive sites has grown over the months to include former favourite sites.

And here I was thinking what sapped the conversation for me was just a change in lifestyle…

Err. Well. That’s quite the embarrassment. I appear not to have updated with anything of significance since, well, 4 months ago when I said I couldn’t post anything of significance due to looking for work. Since then it has literally been one thing after another that’s just kept me occupied and neglecting this place significantly. Suffice to say, it’s not something I’m proud of.

So. Stuff.

Looking at what I get up to most weekends and even week-day nights, I wonder what it is that is keeping me so busy, but that’s only in hindsight. When you try to recount the story of the day, it sounds a little lame – e.g., Saturday: woke up late, hung out the washing, did a bit of hedge trimming and lawn mowing, played a bit of basketball, helped design my parent’s 25th anniversary invite, went over to a friend’s place and watched Speed while chattering away. Oh and when I got home we had people over so I stayed up talking until 1.

And don’t even get me started on Sunday, where I genuinely was shocked when I looked at my watch to find it was nearly 2pm when I decided to go for a shower. Or, indeed, Friday night, where I managed to get four separate things in between 5pm and 1AM when I got home.

So in summary, a social life is no more conducive to blogging, in any extent beyond that of say Facebook status updates or Twitter, short of setting aside time specifically for it. Which says loads about the time when I could pump out four posts a day no hassles. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

I have, on the other side of the coin, been attempting to flex some creaking web design muscles while helping out a friend with a site for his new business, and boy, has it been a while. I forgot how to lay out columns for one, and was half tempted to yank out an ancient copy of Dreamweaver I’m sure I’ve still got a license for and lay about with Tables. For design. Luckily I stepped back from that brink shortly before the temptation was too much, but there’s nothing pure about my CSS for this site, and the theory of grid based design I explored for a short while was put out to pasture while I try to actually get something done.

I am a huge fan of CSS3’s more design-focused properties, like box shadow and rounded borders. Suddenly those hours spent trying to get pixels to line up and not look too incongruent with the CSS-rendered remainder of the page are  gone, replaced by a few minutes of fiddling with a text file. Thank you, powers-that-be, for Gecko and WebKit. Now if someone can give Microsoft a poke…

Brilliant article on “The $20 Theory of the Universe” (alternatively, The Power of a 20):

One afternoon, Bobby the bellman alerted me to a corporate meeting at the dinner club next door. “It’s all day,” he said. “They have very nice buffets.”

I decided to scam a lunch. I walked boldly to the door, leaned toward the door-man — you come face-to-face with a lot of young, large black men when you are passing twenties in New York City — and said, “Is this the lunch?” He raised his eyebrows. “I forgot my letter,” I said, holding the twenty pressed flat against the palm of my hand and reaching for the shake. He looked confused; I tried to look equally puzzled and said, “Just give me five minutes.” He took my hand and nodded me in. I went to the buffet, fixed myself a large plate of tiger prawns. I got a beer out of a bucket of ice and sat, balancing it all in my lap. Good shrimp.

It took me fifteen minutes to realize I was listening to a symposium on corporate ethics.