Category: the daily column

I think the speed peaked somewhere around 700kbytes/s before I ran out of file.

This is awesome. And I’m not even that close to the exchange.

I’ve been without the net for over 3 and a half days now, at home. And somewhat inevitably, it’s just when you don’t have something…

It’s at the point where even dad has complained that it’s not there. Mum, sure, she sends plenty of emails, she’s even on Facebook. Dad on the other hand barely spends time on there, and yet even he’s noticed. When you consider that 8 years ago, we didn’t have the net at all, and 5 years ago we were all too happy to be on 256kbps “broadband” (yeesh, really? who on earth would call that “broad” by any reasonable measure?), the change has been pretty drastic. I could go days without touching my mobile, but without the net, I feel unplugged, disconnected from the stream of the world.

It’s not even as though I do anything drastically important on the net. Between blogs, emails, facebook and news sites, all the net really is to me is a service to find out what’s going on in the world – mostly a world that doesn’t affect me at all. Events which matter to the blogotubes are given undue importance in my view of what is going on, and that can’t be healthy for connecting with local events. But none the less, to be returned to scheduled programming and nothing else is a shock to the system.

Every day, I have about an hour on the train and the walk home to contemplate what to write on the blog when I get home. And every day, without fail, whatever nascent ideas I have disappear shortly after arriving home and having dinner.

There are some distinct advantages to living at home, such as hot dinner ready as you arrive.

In any case, none of the ideas have been terribly great. There’s been no travel or significant events or major love-of-my-life or anything that rates as newsworthy, and so I find myself without terribly much to say. Which is where it gets meta and I start to say that I don’t have terribly much to say.

Having thought about this on the train this morning, rather than work as I usually do, I can pin down one thing for sure. Back in 2003, 2004, half the people I knew were blogging. Even if it was just the same events that we all went to together, or happenings we knew about collectively, blogs let me see a different perspective on things. This prompted thoughts and conversations, and it felt like there was an active community I was a part of.

However, ever since moving to Sydney, I’ve lacked that. None of my friends here keep a regular blog, and those I knew that blogged previously have slowly fallen by the wayside. With a few exceptions¹, I rarely find personal blogs of people I don’t know offline, or outside of just the blog, compelling reading, and at times I even find it awkward – as though I’m peeking into a diary I’ve no right to be in.

The obvious fact to rubbish that idea is that blogs that I can read are public, meaning any reservations about looking into a stranger’s life are entirely of my own making. The hook there is though that it still feels wrong to me to read, uninvited. This rules out, for me, reading strangers’ personal blogs.

The sense of community has gone, but not the desire to continue saying something. The drive to redesign has gone, too, though not through being entirely happy with the current one – I simply no longer derive as much pleasure from pushing around pixels and CSS. I’d love to play with some Javascript and the effects that are myriad over the net these days, but the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at some more code.

I could write opinion – I could easily discuss world events, how Rudd’s attempt to get people talking about the future really is change, how Obama is increasingly looking like the rest of the pack, how the worry about the economy in Australia is overblown, how the world food shortage is one thing that could really be a worry – but there are far more expert commentators. Whenever I re-read one of my peices later, I realise what I’ve missed discussing, and where I’ve fluffed on about entirely random things.

Like I think I am now. Ahem.

And that leaves me back at square one. With apologies.

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¹ The exceptions are dooce, this fish, kahiti and defective yeti, all of whom have repeatedly written excellent posts that really grabbed my attention before I subscribed.

On Staring into Eternity

Standing outside last night, I was looking up at the stars, the lights dark around me. I fancied that, upon staring particularly intently, I could feel our position in the universe. The stars actually looked to be positioned in a 3D space, as opposed to the usual flat feel of pin-points of light peeking though the blanket of the night. The moon, waxing two-thirds full, low on the horizon, particularly served to emphasize the depth of field.

The feeling, incredibly humbling, of a vastness unexplored, unexplorable, and of being able to witness such magnificence… It’s little wonder why early man looked to the heavens when he thought of gods. Science gives a different perspective, but the immenseness of the universe overhead and of insignificance, the tiny scale on which we live, is no less awe-inspiring.

On How Small a World It Is

You travel far and wide, and you meet someone though a new, random connection. A connection accidental and yet in itself surprising, but this new person promises to be something different. Only it turns out they knew everyone you knew, but by chance our paths never crossed.

Or had you met some time years before, but just forgotten? or, had a slightly different decision been made, would you have met then and now? Did you sit next to them on the train every week and just not realise you would meet years down the track? It’s another humbling reminder of how connected we all are with each other.

On Writing Stories

Max Barry’s Syrup just got republished in Australia, and I picked it up the minute I saw it in the shop. And damn me if Syrup isn’t exactly the kind of novel, story, characters and dialogue I’ve always wanted to write. With characters named 6 and @, you know he’s got a quirky idea or two in his head.

While Syrup may have been written years before Jennifer Government, it is almost the better read. Jennifer Government and Company are more acomplished stories, but this is just that much funkier, that much more creatively written and imagined – chapters have many sub-“chapters” which deliver a quirkly by-line on the running plot. Fast paced and creative, Syrup is all kinds of cool, all the while being funny-as.

I am so in love with Ellen Page right now.

Juno is about a 16 year old, Juno, who gets pregnant and has to deal with it in a way that only a sixteen year old could – professional detachment from the whole icky business.

This movie is perfect. The humour is light-hearted and on target. The drama is poignant without dragging the whole thing down. The pace is incredible, keeping the action moving when it needs to and slowing when you need to absorb the moment. Clocking in just over an hour and a half, there’s barely enough time to get to know the whole cast, but the main players come across so well that it feels longer, but in a good way. The actors do so well – at first, I thought Jennifer Garner was a little over the top, but she comes around by the end, really stepping into her role. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera still remind me a bit too much of Arrested Development, but none-the-less play excellent support roles.

I’m tempted to give this four and a half, surely finding some flaw or another, but Ellen Page again trounces any chance of me giving it less than a full endorsement. ★★★★★

Random idea: Inner-city multi-level caravan “park”

Implementation: Build a big “car park” for caravans in the city, letting people stay in the city with their caravans, keeping it cheap but convenient. Astroturf it even.

Up and down ramps will need to be wider than normal, and height of levels will also need to be more than normal, possibly. Width of parking slots would be wider too.

Why it won’t work: I hate caravans.

A friend asked me the other day to name one thing in London that was better than it was here in Sydney. At first, I thought I could pull out a long list, having stayed there long enough to learn the city fairly well. But only one thing really stood out: the tube.

The tube is a foregone conclusion, once you’ve used it for more than novelty value. Having now been to Tokyo, New York, London and Hong Kong, the transport systems of Sydney and Melbourne are quite obviously woefully inadequate.

While Melbourne’s trams go some way to providing a metro-esque service, it doesn’t come anywhere near frequently enough and is beset by traffic. London’s buses fill the same role trams do. Both Australian cities have a commuter rail system, rather than the frequent running and closely spaced stations of the international cities.

The reason behind it might be simple practicality – density of population being far lower here – but it doens’t take away from the fact that without it, our dependence on the car is not going to be shaken any time soon. More closely spaced stations and frequent trains reduces the load on each train and platform, and nothing beats the convenience of never having to look up a timetable, or of having stations spaced close enough to be within walking distance of much more of the population.

The other issue is the Australian systems being far more “hub-and-spoke” – Melbourne particularly so. If you look at the maps (Mel, Syd), you’ll see that it’s nearly impossible to change to other lines without going all the way into the city. Sydney avoids this by having a couple of outer suburban connection points, but both are almost artistic compared to the near-chaos of the tube map.

I bring this topic up because the NSW government has just announced a plan to build a metro rail line in Sydney. They’ve certainly got one point right – frequent services. However, they fail on just about any other measure.

Stations will be 2km apart, on average, which isn’t any better than it is now. The route will service the north-west, ultimately, where population density is probably the lowest in the city. There will only be one route, which is no better than a commuter line that is merely underground. And finally, there’ll be little interconnection with existing routes, again no better than it is now. All this serves to do is facilitate the spread of the city to the north-west, and gives us another white elephant of infrastructure that doesn’t do anything useful.

What we need is something with the chaos of the Tokyo, New York or Paris systems, and bugger the cost. Something as quick, clean and efficient as Hong Kong or Singapore. Hell, something even half of what Delhi is building right now. Suburban rail systems matter, yes, but they should be secondary to getting the inner city services up to scratch, something which makes living in the city as opposed to the suburbs worthwhile. The urban is the definition of a city, and that’s without even considering the environmental benefit of having both higher-density living and efficient public transport systems taking cars off the road.

The argument will always be that it would cost too much. But how have all these other cities built their systems? What price a vision, a change to the order of things? Where once grand projects were embarked upon, government debts raised to provide for people’s needs, to hell with paying it off today, because that’s what governments do. Statesmen with vision – dare I mention a certain presidential hopeful in the US? – led countries.

We now have bean counters and middle managers working to ensure the order of things stays static, manageable and most importantly cost-effective. There’s no chance of a Panama Canal, or a Snowy River scheme being built today, or the pyramids without corporate sponsorship; the national highways built after WWII in so many countries would take 10 times as long and cost a hundred times more than in 1950. A stasis grips the vision of politicians, and we wonder why we don’t believe in their so-called leadership any more.

Happy Holi everyone! This year is possibly the first time ever we’ve got four days off just for Holi :)

Just to document what exactly has happened:

It seems to be worst on the grey background – on a white background, it’s hardly noticeable. On a black background, it’s a thin white line.

I swear it’s gotten better, somehow – I didn’t take any photos when it had just happened (being too distraught and all), but there were patches of dead pixels and a distinct difference whenever something crossed the line. Now it seems like the dead pixels are gone, and it’s just a crack around which the backlight shows through some. My best guess is that the liquid from surrounding crystals has leaked or something, and it’s steadily going to get worse – the corner seems lighter than the rest of the screen.

Moving the screen causes waves of colour to cascade around the crack, and it may well be leaking, though not in any obvious way. It needs replacement, to be sure, but it’s far from unusable. I was considering an upgrade before, and this has just made that decision that little bit easier to make. Still, I wanted to give this one to mum, which would necessitate replacement – and all that aside, it still is a brilliant little system.

Price of a new MacBook: from $1499, base model.

Price of my MacBook, when new (16 months ago): $1899, mid-range with up-spec hard drive.

Price of a 42 inch HD plasma, 4 years ago: $5999

Price of a 42 inch HD plasma, today: $1395 (Samsung at Harvey Norman – catalogue price!)

Price of replacing a 13 inch MacBook display: $1300.

$1300.

For a laptop that costs $1500 brand spanking new.

WTF, mate, double-you, tee, eff.