Idle State

I was doing some random net reading (the articles are a few years old now) and found that aeroplanes use fibre optic gyroscopes - no moving parts - instead a few lasers and a bunch of optic fibre in a loop / coil. This was news to me. I was thinking that they still used a bunch of motors turning flywheels holding some accelerometers still in a sort of - don't bump that, we may end up landing in Uzbekistan* - way.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-9344.html

Fibre optic gyroscopes compare the time taken for light to travel around the loop in one direction vs the time for the light to travel in the other direction. If the loop is rotating in one direction, the light travels a shorter distance one way than it travels in the other direction. (Even though it is in a 5km loop of optic fibre - the light travels more than 5km in one direction and less than 5km in the other direction). Weird.

Not to be outdone, in the bid to adopt quantum technology, some guys are thinking that they could put quantum gyroscopes in aeroplanes.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2526

First Officer: Sir, we may or may not be in the South Pacific.
Captain: Well, did the cat drink the vial of poison or not?

Back to the beach.

* There's nothing wrong with landing in Uzbekistan - it's just that my boarding pass said Dubai.

Technorati Tags:
Flying, Idleness, Amusement, Random

Online SCRABBLE® is the greatest thing since the internet, dishwashers, Sudoku, automatic garage doors and Pianolas*. (These are all fantastic ways to be idle or ways to save time so that you have more time to be idle).

Benefits of idly playing SCRABBLE® are:

• Increase your word power
  
• Increase your friend's word power
  
• Thrash the pants of someone with a poor vocabulary
  
• Learn the meaning of the word Qi
  

If you play SCRABBLE®, you should aim to get more than 300 in any game - especially if you play me. Less than that, let's face it, is downright embarrassing. (English not your first language, then?)

Speaking of which, you can now play SCRABBLE® في العربية (in Arabic) which has 104 undecipherable tiles. It seems it would be quite hard to play, since none of the letters would actually join up to the other letters. And I don't read or write Arabic. ("For the last time, Mīm - Bā- Bā - Wāw - Alif does not mean anything!?!")

The benefit of playing online is that you can, of course, be in different countries and different timezones. [You don't have to be in different countries: for instance, you may wish to play online with someone who lives in the same house if they were ugly and you don't want to look at them]. What's more, it keeps you up to date with your friend's comings and goings. It's a dead giveaway that your friend has been out all night drinking because at 5 am their time they take their turn and try to spell "TROLLEYED" with one L, no Y and a P.

I regularly play several games online at http://thepixiepit.co.uk/scrabble/ and it's a perfect way to idly use up a hour or so each day. At US $10 per year it's an absolute bargain and the administrator is always really helpful if you run into problems. (Unfortunately, not problems like "what can I do with VVWIIIO?") You can also send little notes to the other players when you make a play (eg "Did you turn the gas off?", "Hi Mum, I'm still alive. Can you pay my parking fines for me?" or "I hate you and every thing you stand for and for taking that triple word score.")

Unfortunately, kwyjibo** isn't in any of the official SCRABBLE® dictionaries yet - but apparently is allowed if you play The Simpsons' version of the game. Can't wait for the online version of that!

Back to the beach.

* Pianola (aka Player Piano). For those born after 1980, you can find out more here. The pianola was superceded by the iPod.

** See "Bart The Genius". See The Simpsons Episode 7G02

I am proposing a new law for Operating System Selection.

Yet another friend asked me at the pub the other day if I would help her buy a new computer. We talked about it for a minute or two while I bandied around venerable selection criteria - such as usability, software requirements, viruses, price, the illuminated Apple logo on the top of the clamshell and so on. My friend was somewhat nonplussed.

It occurred to me that there had to be a much more didactic means of choosing a suitable OS. A selection criteria which would make all others pale into insignificance. Furthermore - the criteria must be technically sound, beyond questioning of the layman and free from FUD, marketing hype and OS wars.

So. Applying Occam's Razor a vast number of OS characteristics using the selection criteria above I arrived at a profoundly simple solution.

I present Campbell's Law Of Choosing An Operating System:

When selecting an Operating System, it shall be bundled with Vi. [But not in an "I can't uninstall it" antitrust kind of way.]

Straightforward, really.

Speaking of Vi - do you ever get in that really annoying situation where you have been using Vi for days, and then switch to Word or something similar in order to type a letter of complaint to your landlord who can't read Courier to find you yourself typing:

iDear Sir,<enter>Please replace my missing front door immediately.<esc>:y100p etc etc etc

It's annoying to say the least - that Word et al don't intercept Vi commands and simply carry out the actions. With accessibility the big issue for web sites and software these days accepting Vi commands should be part and parcel of every application. Rob Sinclair please take note - accessibility is for everyone, including Unix users.

I digress.

Now selecting an Operating System is easy. You go to the store. Pick a machine bundled with Vi. Buy it. Live happily ever after. Empirical evidence to date suggests that I am overwhelmingly more satisfied if you decide according to my law of OS Selection. I contend that this proves my law. The results are repeatable. Prove me wrong, if you dare.

In the event that you still can't decide, use Campbell's Law Of Choosing A New Computer:

When selecting a new computer, the machine shall have an illuminated apple on it.

Back to the beach.:wq

Technorati Tags:
Bits, Random

Seen in the Classified Section of The Gulf Times - Qatar's top-selling English daily newspaper last Monday 6th August 2007:

The advertisement seems a trifle Dickensian at best. A little elementary arithmetic and an educated guess on number of workers that may reside in each room makes me think that, more often than not, someone living here would need to be up very early in the morning to find a free bathroom, let alone the kitchen. The advertisement mentions that the "Labour Camp" is air conditioned - a necessity - considering the daytime temperature in Qatar in Summer is often 40 degrees celsius plus. So surely this is moot point?!?

This is not an isolated advertisement:

• Gulf Times Classifieds 24th July 2007


• Gulf Times Classifieds 23rd July 2007 Accommodate more than 200 in 20 rooms!!

For some interesting results, Google "Best Price Labour Camp".

Are we to start seeing a bear-market for hard to rent vacant "Labour Camps"?

Recent (well, May 2007) statements by the Qatar Prime Minister, regarding sponsorship changes, likening the current Sponsorship arrangement to slave labour, suggest that the winds of change are blowing through Qatar.

On the sponsorship law and the exit permit system in Qatar, the prime minister said he believed this was internationally unacceptable. “It is close to slavery,” he opined. “Laws are the same for Qataris and foreigners alike.”

Gulf Times Article 28th May 2007.

These changes will result in greater protection for expatriate workers, and a collective sigh-of-relief from those caught in the middle of this somewhat bureaucratic system and maybe an end to "Labour Camps" overfilled with expatriate labourers.

However, Interior Minister of State HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani said that a study conducted by a committee in his ministry had recommended keeping the law in force.

ibid.

Perhaps it would be closer to say the winds of change are a light breeze at the moment rather than a cobwebs-out-of-the-attic gale. Nonetheless, change is on the way.

However, moves by the Philippines Government to ensure that Filipino expatriate domestic workers are paid reasonable minimum wages in the GCC were met with knee-jerk reactions in some member countries: stopping immigration of Filipino nationals and aghast comments about the inequality of minimum wages since expats of other nationalities would be being paid far lower than their Filipino counterparts. Seems to me that the solution is obvious and that minimum wages need to be reviewed across the board to make them fairer and less on the border of poverty.

So recent events such as these make me doubt that, for the time being, "Labour Camp For Rent" will be the last advertisement of this type that we shall see, nor will this "Labour Camp" be uninhabited for very long which is a pity. That would be a welcome sign of change.

BTTB.

David Atkins Enterprises announced on Friday (21st September) that they had won the bid to produce the Opening, Closing and Victory ceremonies for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

David Atkins Enterprises was the producer for the magnificent Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2006 Doha Asian Games here in Qatar.

I've just finished reading Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" - basically the book of the film of the slide show. I randomly picked it up while wandering about the shops the other day. Actually - "reading" is a bit of a stretch. Perusing is probably a better verb since there isn't actually that much text in it. It's more a sort of printed slide-show.

It's an interesting "read". Actually - the pictures are great and the slides just as compelling as the film. [Hold that thought while I go and change my incandescent lightbulbs over to compact fluorescents.]

Two things surprise me about the book.

Firstly - it's printed on nice glossy paper. At a guess, I'd say that this is not the most greenhouse-gas-emission friendly produced paper. It's nice to touch though.

Secondly - I bought the book in Qatar (actually - it's available at The One). Qatar isn't the most fastidious country I've been in with regard to emissions reduction, concern about global warming and caring for the environment... far from it. I was driving around the north west beaches of Qatar a few weeks ago and found the amount of refuse along the shoreline staggering and saddening. That's an environmental disaster in it's own right. I wonder how many copies of the book will be sold in Qatar?

If nothing else, it's a pretty coffee table book, a relic of what will shortly be pre neo-environmentalism [Google Shellenberger and Nordhaus' Break Through on post-environmentalism].

In a RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Court Case a jury has ruled against single mother Jammie Thomas, in favour of Capitol Records. The damages amount to US$ 222 000 or $9250 per song that Thomas illegally downloaded.

The RIAA Lawyers stated: "This does send a message, we hope, that both downloading and distributing music is not ok."

The full story is available on ars technica.

In the US, copyright infringement, such as downloading music illegally using programs such as Limewire and then allowing other people to download the music from you can generate statutory damages for Copyright Infringement of up to US$150 000 per song.

It seems to me, however, that something is desperately and morally wrong with the scale of these kind of statutory damages. If I were, for instance, hit by a car being driven by an RIAA lawyer and I were to sustain permanent injury to my leg, I could make a claim for, say, ball park, AU $230 000. A severe spinal injury and perhaps, the loss of a toe, might get me, say, AU $250 000.

The problem here, is that the real damage and loss to the RIAA and the Copyright Owner is considerably lower - as some have calculated. The jury in this trial have set the damages, seemingly arbitrarily, which give the damages this kind of equivalency to say, a permanent leg injury which is nonsense.

When will sense prevail?

Smash! has become my new, favourite, expression.

I used Smash! a few weeks ago to describe what had happened to the display on my much beloved Apple Powerbook. I'm not at all happy, actually, about the smashing of the display. Not a good year for me and LCD panels, it seems, given the GPS slash Dog slash LCD episode a few months ago.

Several people, of now dubious friendship status and also with rather mediocre taste in computers, have made statements - to paraphrase - "well what's so great about these Apple machines if yours now has a broken display." Note that they also didn't use the rather evocative word "smashed" but rather the somewhat weaker and more cowardly "broken" as if to already concede that they didn't really have a very substantial argument, anyway.

I've got to admit that, prima facie, empirical evidence does tend to suggest that bouncing a PowerBook on the floor does appear to show the unit as being marginally less than robust. The truth of the matter is different. In it's splendid three year life, my PowerBook has crashed off my desk to the floor on several occasions, slid around the back seat and onto the floor of the car, been used in the rain, had several heavy items dropped onto it causing various dents and scratches and been unceremoniously dumped on the floor of many airline lounges (admittedly, in an STM bag) when the miles all became a bit much for yours truly. Although it has a few battle scars the machine was, in truth, fairly tricky to break. My friend, ex-housemate and all round great-guy, Darren Yap, always commented that my Mac had "street cred" because of it's scars from a well used, been-around-the-block-a-few-times, rough and tumble existence. It fascinated him, in a kind of I can't look away from this car accident way. God knows why. Bless him.

In the end, it took virtually throwing the machine, due to it slipping out of my hand mid-stride, onto a tiled concrete floor to break the display panel which now looks like some kind of fractal enhanced tartan. The machine still works just fine - without even one extra dent on the case.

Ok. Back to Smash!

A friend of mine - who is Lebanese (if I have the Arabic right -"min Liban") who does a great job of speaking English as a second language asked "what happen [sic] to your laptop?" I have to say, I really love his quirky English - mostly because he speaks English well enough that we rarely have confusion over comprehension but the small errors make his English quite endearing - like the occasional missing or extraneous "-ed" suffix and so on. Like "I just woked up" and "it just stop working" to name a couple.

So the conversation went something like this:

Friend: "What happen to your laptop?"
Me (smiling just a little) "It's happened. You would say, 'what happened to your laptop?'"
Friend: "Are you laughing on me?"
Me: (slightly more amused) "No no. It's just..."
Friend: "Ok. What happened to your laptop?"
Me: "Erm. Well I broke it. I dropped it on the floor and smashed it."

I said the word "smashed" in much the same way that my nephew, fine young chap that he is, used to say it when he was about two years old - with fairly exaggerated mouth movements - starting with an attacking "sma" sound and drawing out to a crescendo an unvoiced hissing "s" followed by almost barely perceptible "d". If you are having trouble imagining the sound of this, go find any two year old and have them say it for you.

My friend was hooked on this, until then rarely used but rather fantastic sounding word with many descriptive verbalisations - and he did quite some experimentation with it.

Smash
SMash
smAsh
smaaaaaaSH
SMASH
smash

In the maturity of my language I'd forgotten how many brilliant ways there was so say the word "smash". In fact, for the next few weeks we two thirty-somethings regressed into our own smashing world amusing ourselves with the discovery (or re-discovery) of this word.

Try it. Say the word to yourself a few times. If you avoid taking yourself too seriously for a few minutes you'll find yourself quite fascinated.

Well - the screen on my laptop is still broken - but the annoyance is quickly forgotten when I receive a random text message or a phone call consisting only of some hitherto unused variant of "smash". It's fantastic hearing someone learn English. It also gives a second chance to see some of the things that grabbed our attention or enlightened us as kids. (I'm sure that my Lebanese friends are having an equally entertaining time listening to my own juvenile Arabic but that's another story).

There's more to Smash! like US$1200 for a new LCD and an Arabic language revelation - but that will have to wait for next time.

...so if this pos.t isx a l1ttle sl0 and hard to reqd it's becase Im tping from the Mddle Est. Not really. The sand storms are making it hard to read my screen. (No kidding - it's really windy and cold here at the moment.)

In the last two days, some dudes in ships have "accidently" dragged their anchors through three submarine cables providing network to us here in the Gulf and some of India.

See Blogger News Network

So for the past few days the internet has been noticeably slower than it's usual Middle East 'net slowness. All my favourite sites are timing out fairly frequently the international telephone is fairly unreliable. Strangely I don't feel particularly disconnected from the rest of the planet although it would probably be different if we had no connection at all.

Side Note To App Designers In The US: not everyone has the benefit of the speeds that you have for net access. A few infamous web applications that constantly run into trouble because their designers underestimated the response times in locales like ours: Facebook (interminably slow), Google Reader (constantly times-out too quickly on Ajax requests), Blackberry by Etilasat (DNS lookups can take time - be more patient and get the freakin' email delivered rather than just giving up), DVorak.org (so much crap on the page that it takes forever to load - and then you have to reload the page because the cretins don't give you the content until your referer is their own site !?!)

Oh. And while I'm ranting, all you in the US who think US $10 per month internet is expensive: Here in Qatar we have an entrenched carrier and we pay over US $100 per month for 2048/512 DSL that has about one 9 and four zeroes reliability. So quit griping.

There's probably some fabulous CIA or anti-terrorist plot or another price-of-oil conspiracy theory or maybe there's just a a coincidently high number of sailors with particularly bad seamanship in West Asia at the moment. Not sure. Anyhow, if you can't contact your local bank's outsourced call centre over the next few days, that's why.

Update: I received loads of traffic from searches for "cable cut conspiracy". Seems like there's now a fourth cut cable and Egypt are claiming that there actually wasn't any ships in the area that where the cable runs. As far as I can tell, it probably is one of three things - damage caused when the spy submarines were tapping into the cable offshore, built in obsolescence (anyone seen an Alcatel salesman hanging around?) or maybe it's the reverse vampires. "We're through the looking-glass here, people".

More Here

Found this while randomly surfing, It's cute:

Wall Street Journey (from The Sun) writes here that Bill Gates has had to stop using Facebook:

“But he signed off after getting more than 8,000 friend requests a day, and spotted weird fan sites about him,”

Apparently, 8000 friend requests is a problem (I wouldn't know). That explains why he hasn't accepted my friend request. I wonder how many pokes he gets a day?

Seems like it shouldn't be a problem if Bill was to use, say, Firefox, and then run a Greasemonkey script to politely decline all those friend requests automatically.

Or maybe he's actually just bored with his $240 Million facebook toy like the rest of us...

Well I'm now relocated to Dubai - more or less - in the fantastic suburb of Greens in Apartment 1304. Not being a superstitious type at all - living on the thirteenth floor and all... Couldn't help noticing this in the lift though:

I can't help but to imagine some giant cartoon spring attached to the bottom of the lift - that Wyle E. Coyote might buy from Acme.

I can't recall ever having seen a notice like this before... I'm wondering if there is a higher incidence of free-falling lifts in the UAE. Should I be worried?

A friend of mine, Andrew Yoole, recently showed me a Music Video that he had been working on for Angus & Julie Stone. Andrew did the animation components of the clip. Here's the clip:

It's pretty cool. Andrew works freelance in Sydney and seems to spend all his life creating these kinds of things. They impress me every time I get to seem them.

The other Music Video that Andrew made for Angus & Julie Stone was for The Beast. I particularly love this one. It's beautifully emotive...

Kudos, Andrew!

Been meaning to take photos of this for quite a while now (several years, in fact) and actually had my camera with me yesterday.

One of the Apple Dealer's in Qatar clearly didn't receive the memo from 1998 when the logo changed...