January, 2009

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27
Jan 09

Australia Day

Here’s my take on this change-of-date hoo-hah.

The arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 is a significant part of Australia’s heritage. This event was truly instrumental in shaping Australia as the nation we know and love today.

There’s no dodging the fact that British settlers back then were complete and utter bastards and one only has to watch First Australians to be horrified at the treatment of indigenous Australians. So it’s completely understandable that many Aboriginals see Australia Day as the anniversary of the day their world came crashing down.

But… changing the date would be taking the celebration away from a significant number of Australians who have a right to celebrate the birth of our nation.

I say, keep Australia Day for all of us Aussies who wanna have a barbie and go down the beach, or play Mario Kart. Then create a new public holiday where we celebrate indigenous culture in all its glory! There would be parades and dancing in the streets and didgeridoos – loads of fun ways for indigenous Australians to get creative and show off just how bloody brilliant their culture is. We don’t want it to be a day just for Aboriginals – us non-indigenous Aussies need to get involved in the shenanigans too. Slap on a bit of ochre paint and get out in the streets and have a corroboree like you’ve never had one before! It needs to be about celebrating and embracing diversity, not dwelling on past wrongs.

One suggestion for the date is the anniversary of the day Aboriginals were given equal rights. Whilst this was clearly a step forward, isn’t it still a bitter reminder of the fact those rights were taken away in the first place? The Aboriginals should choose a date intrinsically significant to their culture – a culture which is not defined by British settlement.

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23
Jan 09

Painless AVI to DVD conversion

Finally! I have found an easy, no fuss method for converting AVI videos to DVD. The Google search “convert avi dvd best” led me to this guide over at afterdawn.com which uses the Avi2DVD program. It’s just a GUI for other freeware command line tools, but one that makes sense. I did a video 1h 46m long today and it took about 2 hours on my P4-HT desktop machine. The original was 656×352 resolution. The quality after 2-pass encoding was not too shabby either, and the audio was perfectly synced. It supports batch processing too.

Not that I’ll be using this much since the 360 plays most AVI files.

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22
Jan 09

I know how hot it was last summer

I’ve been playing around with Google Spreadsheets today and I’m slightly impressed. Not at the usability, as that still needs a bit of work. But rather at the data grabbing functions.

We’ve had a few hot days in a row here and I was wondering how the summer compared to last year’s. So I made a Google Spreadsheet that, using the ImportData function, pulls the max. and min. temperatures straight of the CSV’s on the BOM website and makes them into a nice graph. The best part is, when the BOM adds new data, my Google Spreadsheet will be automatically updated. There are also functions to grab data from HTML and XML web sources, but I figured the CSV would be the the most reliable and most consistently formatted.

The chart uses a 7-day rolling average to smooth out the data and better visualise the trends, taking the 7 days either side of the actual date. Graphing the raw data was all spiky and didn’t mean much. Conclusions? Um I’m not sure. The current heat-wave is nothing compared to the one we had around New Years; I’m glad I was out of town.

View the temperature chart here. I also made a chart of the delta’s between summers. I added a best fit line (after *much* googling) and it slopes up. Does this mean our summers are getting hotter? Or because it’s below zero on the y-axis does that mean that on average this summer is cooler than the last? I’m not a stats whiz.

Learn about the import functions here.

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22
Jan 09

My Uncle, My Father

What happens when two cousins who love each other very much approach documentary film maker Tom Chandon to film their wedding video? He tries to shoot a humanitarian film about the couple’s struggle to have society and their family accept their forbidden love.

Wednesday nights on ABC or download from the website.

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22
Jan 09

Share with Google Reader

Do you use Google Reader? I’ve been enjoying it’s Shared Items feature for some time now. It enables you to share feed items you find interesting with other users of Google Reader. You can even attach a little note to give some commentary. What I like most about the feature is that I get to see what my friends are reading on blogs I don’t subscribe to. I have discovered several cool blogs this way.

If you use Google Reader and want to jump on the sharing bandwagon, click on Sharing Settings (tiny text, easy to miss) on the left-hand side menu, then click on Change next to “You are currently sharing with (whoever)”.  Mine defaulted to “Friends” – I’m not sure where Google gets that subset of contacts. So I changed it to “all chat contacts” and also published my shared items to a web page and feed.

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21
Jan 09

My Macbook Pro battery died

First it would get down to 10-20% capacity then the Mac would suddenly shut down.

Then eventually it stopped charging all together. I tried resetting the SMC. After this, the battery charged once but when it discharged, would not charge again.

So I bought a new battery for $140 on eBay. I calibrated it straight away.

  1. Charge to full
  2. Wait 2 hours
  3. Drain to empty
  4. Wait 5 hours
  5. Charge to full

It’s working fine now. Does anyone need a shiny aluminium paper weight?

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21
Jan 09

Films to look forward to in 2009

Here’s my to-see list so far:

Oh and while we’re on the topic, here’s what I thought of 2008:

Biggest disappointments:

  • The Dark Knight. Look, I know it’s the 4th highest grossing film ever but I just felt deeply depressed while watching this. And the feeling hung around for about half a day. I will not watch it again.
  • The X-Files: I Want to Believe.  Nothing like the epic first film. More like a long episode of Millennium, really, but without the suspense. In a word: forgettable.

Surprisingly good:

  • WALL-E – There’s no dialogue for the first 20 minutes and I was in stitches. This film also made me realise (properly) why I don’t like Facebook. And it exemplifies why that stupid Toyota chair is a step backwards in the fight against obesity.

Worth watching

And….drumroll…my favourite film of 2008: Burn After Reading. Definitely check that one out. Destined for cult status.

Movies released in 2008 I have yet to watch but plan to: Never Back Down, Stop-Loss, Get Smart, Hancock, The House Bunny (Anna Faris), Disaster Movie, Bangkok Dangerous, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Simon Pegg), Saw V, Quantum of Solace, Bolt, Twilight, Waltz with Bashir.

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11
Jan 09

Words are Free

In his latest “podgram”, Stephen Fry has echoed my views on linguistic pedantry.

After a lengthy (skippable, even) introduction Fry condemns the view that there are “right” and “wrong” ways to use language. Instead, he encourages us to embrace language as a fluid and perpetually evolving organism. It’s my strong belief that to have a true understanding of language, one must go beyond the simplistic literal interpretation of words and phrases, and acknowledge that meanings evolve and change over time. We should be free to let language evolve; it’s been doing it for thousands of years, so what’s all the fuss about?

Most of us use words today with little knowledge of their etymology, so how can we claim to impose any absolute meaning onto a word or phrase? Fry points out a key observation; that it’s usage that defines meaning. As usage changes over time, so will the meaning. And this is a natural process for language to undergo. The rules pedants impose on language have a restrictive and damaging effect. Cleverly comparing linguistic evolution to the biological kind, Fry says, “Things that are kept to purity of line develop all the ghastly illnesses and deformations of inbreeding and lack of vital variation. ”

That’s not to say that I support chaotic, unrestrained use of language in all circumstances. There are definitely times when applying rules to adjust one’s language can be of benefit. But it all depends on the context. As Fry exemplifies:

“What offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it. You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. Most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances; it’s only considerate. But that’s an issue of fitness, of suitability; it has nothing to do with correctness.”

The pedants underestimate our innate ability as human beings to extract meaning from language, however informal or adulterated it may be. As long as meaning is conveyed, any use of language is successful. What I find disappointing, however, is that such pedantry views tend to degrade one’s aptitude for decrypting unruly language, leading to an impaired ability to extract meaning, and thus communicate.

Go listen to the podgram.

Via BoingBoing which I can’t believe I wasn’t reading up until a few days ago!

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6
Jan 09

Goodbye Charlie

I was shocked to hear over the Christmas break that one of the hosts of Top Gear Australia had quit and would be replaced by James Morrison. The news reports confirm that Charlie Cox has indeed left the show.

“Although reluctant to be leaving, Cox said he was quitting the program due to lack of time.

As a director of 10 British and Australian companies, as well as a broadcaster for the BBC for the last decade, Cox admitted his professional priority isn’t Top Gear Australia.”

He was fun. But you know, I think James Morrison will be so much better! All reports say the man has serious motoring passion. Bring it on!

On another spinoff related note, I was excited to discover that Sabine Schmitz was one of the hosts of the German Top Gear equivalent (called D Motor). She rocks!