Good Music - Le Pop by Katzenjammer

Sunday 25 January 2009 at 4:19 pm Discovered while reading Popmatters list of Also-rans for 2008 - Katzenjammers 'Le Pop' is one of those joyful albums by a band determined to put a stupid grin on your face at all costs or die trying (cf early Violent Femmes, Crowded House, Pogues).

Check out a couple of videos on YouTube - 'A bar in Amsterdam' and 'Aint no thang'

Good Books - The Shock Doctrine

Sunday 25 January 2009 at 11:58 am Another excellent read from Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine. I have to admit I'm only halfway through this book - mans inhumanity to man makes for tough going - however its pretty much compulsory reading for anyone that wonders how the worlds free market economy's were lead down the track they're currently on.

Essentially what Klein does is posit the idea that free market economies and reforms can only be forced through on the back of an external crisis (sometimes real and sometimes engineered). As a result those people best placed to take advantage of the reforms do extraordinarily well and the vast majority of us end up worse off - with globalisation these disparities keep getting worse as multi-nationals cease to be bound by georgraphy.

As the recent recession and American bank / finance / auto bail-outs have shown - the free market has failed to a certain extent - their own calls for deregulation have bit them on the ass and now they're going cap in hand to the very regulatory bodies they once reviled for assistance.

So even when things go wrong for the wheelers and dealers of the world - they still come out on top.

Good Books - Killing Rommel by Stephen Pressfield

Sunday 25 January 2009 at 10:27 am Another quick summer read - Killing Rommel is a return to form for Stephen Pressfield - his 'Gates of Fire' was a masterpiece but after that I found 'Tides of War' and 'Last of the Amazons' to be a little dry.

His latest novel tells the tale of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and their various exploits in the North African campaign, culminating in a mission to track down and kill Rommel.

Good Books - Old Mans War by John Scalzi

Sunday 25 January 2009 at 09:38 am My linkdump sidebar has been a little stale so I thought I'd fill it with a few short reviews.

Over Christmas I was looking for some lightweight reading material and Old Mans War certainly did the trick. Easy to read, great pacing, nice ideas and a milieu that you can't wait to immerse yourself in again (which I did by reading Ghost Brigades soon afterwards).

Both books focus on humanities move to colonise space, the competing species struggling for the same limited resources, the inevitable conflicts that arise and the rather unique solution humanity has come up with to ensure its survival.

Only complaint would have to be the 'el cheapo' Tor publishing values - cramped text and tiny margins made both books tough on the eyes.

JavaScript to bypass Captchas + More

Sunday 18 January 2009 at 3:04 pm Another of those articles doing the rounds but just in case you haven't read it - GreaseMonkey Javascript to autocomplete Captcha dialogs. Pretty amazing stuff - this thing even has a built-in neural net!

Joels articles are always worth a read - How Hard Could It Be?: Thanks or No Thanks or "A young employee came up with an idea that added a million dollars to our bottom line. How do we reward him for the contribution? Do we even have to?"

Awesome summary of the year - The 2008 Feltron Annual Report. Brilliant drill down infographic - just keep clicking.

Darn youngsters - Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments. I'm starting to wonder if IT shops shouldn't focus on the basics (security and a stable LAN) and let people use whatever tools they like (incl their own PC) to get the job done.

Interesting and very true - 30-Second Security Assessment.

I don't think anyone does fear multi-core (OK maybe developers if their toolset doesn't make it easy to use the extra power) - IT Departments Should NOT Fear Multicore. As the author points out - wether you need or use all the cores is largely irrelevant because Virtualisation will eat all the cores you provide.

Root cause is greed (from top to bottom) - Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis.

Finally - it looks like the blaxploitation flick is going to be making a comeback - check the trailer for 'Black Dynamite'.

Almost forgot - A review of the best robots of 2008. The self assembling chair and the autonomous modular snake are brilliant - be sure to play all the movies.

WTF?! : Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act

Wednesday 07 January 2009 at 4:55 pm Lots of stuff in the news about the shenanigans in Australia about their dinky new firewall.

Before Kiwis get to complacent, ponder this - theres been SFA in the NZ media about Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act in New Zealand itself.

Essentially - The proposed Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement.

ie no one needs to prove you have downloaded copyright content they can just accuse you and cut off your internet connection (albiet after a warning or two).

Like Australia (or China) anyone with any technical savvy is just going to use TOR or a VPN terminating overseas to bypass this type of monitoring but if the accusation doesn't require evidence then it makes no odds as to how you try and protect your browsing habits.

Its just one of those pointless laws that has enormous nuisance value.

So sign up and lets hope this doesn't get passed into law!

Buglabs + More

Tuesday 06 January 2009 at 06:36 am Nifty gadget for the compulsive tinkerer - Buglabs. Some interesting possibilities here for the enthusiast - particularly if you're also a Java-geek.

Nifty gadget for the suicidal - Electric Bath-tub Rubber Duckie. Ernie & Bert would love this.

Pretty good - Wired - 12 (Or So) Favorite Techie Cartoons of 2008. The last few (including the 'Joy of Tech iPhone vs Investing' one) are my favourites.

Interesting (and amusing) comparison - The Cheeseburger Footprint. Once again it shows that a sustainable world requires a holistic view that might entail some serious thought about contributing factors to global warming.

I found this years MacWorld to be a bit of a non-event - however ASUS are showing off some nifty stuff at CES - A media center stuffed into a wireless keyboard which also does wireless HDMI (ie you can use your telly as a monitor without any leads) and two PCs & Monitors in one laptop (trackpad is a touch screen you can use without powering up the whole laptop using the second low power CPU). While Apple is definitely the most polished consumer IT company out there it looks like the innovative hardware baton has definitely been handed over to companies like ASUS.

The other nifty CES gadget release was the Palm Pre - I'd pretty much written Palm off but if they can deliver this device with a minimum of bugs they'll be giving the iPhone (which still looks classier) & Android a run for their money. Of course we're all wondering what the 'Pre' is before or in front of ? Maybe Palm has something much better coming up (Palm Post . . .) ? Someone in Marketing should probably be shot.

The world is headed for some tough times - I've been doing some reading on alternative energy sources for the last few months so this recent Cool Tools post about the Generac Standby Generator really caught my eye. I also didn't realise the power problems in that part of the US had gotten so bad this winter. Hopefully the NZ government will do a little more to subsidise generators, solar water tanks and panels.

Clusterfuck Nation: Forecast for 2009

Saturday 03 January 2009 at 10:06 am Pretty interesting bit of speculation for the coming year - Clusterfuck Nation: Forecast for 2009 by James Kunstler.

Whats interesting is the idea that merely being eco friendly and green is just not enough - the coming years will (potentially) lead to a radical lifestyle change for everyone. The comfortable consumer lifestyle is just not sustainable and people would be shocked if they knew what was really in store for them when systems we take for granted start to fail.

New Header - New Years Day in Brooklyn

Thursday 01 January 2009 at 1:27 pm A new header for a new year - hope everyone has a great 2009!

Scorching hot - although only 22 deg C - its pretty muggy this summer and due to the ozone hole your skin will start to burn within 15-20min. Reminds me to get some sunscreen . . .

Taken while overlooking Central Park through the trees into Wellington Harbour from the corner of Brooklyn and Ohiro Road - heres the very spot according to Google Street Map. As you can see in the corner of the photo the Pohutakawas are looking spectacular this summer - the vibrant red flowers have led to the nickname 'New Zealand Christmas Tree'.

For anyone thats interested Brooklyn is a 'burb of Wellington. You can walk into the centre of Wellington in about 40 minutes - it was settled in the 1840's so it tends to be full of old colonial villas and farmers cottages (although a lot of these are getting knocked down in favour of town-houses and small apartments). Brooklyn also features the first NZ wind-turbine as a pilot project - there are now 5 farms in NZ supplying 2.5% of the countries power requirements with plans to build more farms in the future.