Quirks of being human
We are all human, yet we are all different from each other, we are all unique; or as someone put it "You are unique, just like everyone else." However, for the majority of us, no matter how "unique" we are, we are still human...which means most of us are susceptible to quirks in how our brain works.
So what is all this random rambling about? Well for those that are unaware, I enjoy understanding and learning how the human mind works - especially when it doesn't quite work as expected, such as when we see optical illusions. So here are a few that I would like to share.
Impossible Motion: Magnet-Like Slopes
Our brain doesn't always decipher what we see with our eyes in the real world properly. It tries to be too smart and often fails. But that's ok, since it means we can see awesome optical illusions!
Change Blindness
You've probably heard of this before - as humans we can be very "blind" to how our environment changes around us. Some rather big changes can occur and we don't notice at all.
Another change blindness example - just for fun 
Leaning Tower Illusion
So what about a still image, no videos, just a plain old image. How will your eyes (or should I say brain) trick you now?
The two images are identical...really!
That's it for now - hope you enjoyed the random selection above What I find most interesting is that for many of these "brain quirks" even though you know what is happening, even though you know the trick you still can't un-trick your brain to see what is really there.
Oz slang and Street View in 3D!
So, it's April Fools today, and as usual, Google has come up with some random stuff...
Oz slang for directions in Google Map...Chuck a left! (Directions from Max Brenner to San Churro!)
Street View...now in 3D!
There seems to be a couple of other April Fool hoaxes Google has provided this year
Google Wave now with email notifications!
After having nearly forgotten about Google Wave, today, while talking to a friend we decided to give it a go for some brainstorming/collaboaration. To my surprise when I logged in to Wave, I was greeted with this popup
My first reaction was "Cool, they finally giving us the option to have email notifications.", but then I remembered how Buzz 'spammed' my inbox with all those random messages that I didn't care about, so in the end I just clicked on "No, thanks."
If you, like me clicked "No, thanks" but then changed your mind. The elusive "notification setting" is hidden under a menu which can be triggered when you hover over "Inbox" and click on the arrow icon that appears.
Interesting thing is I do remember that Google making a firm stand on keeping Google Wave and Gmail distinctively separate, guess that is no longer the case!
ps. Compared to when I last used Wave, it seems to have improved a fair bit. The inline commenting is win!
Which search engine do you use?
My answer: Google. Why? Because it's simple, loads quickly and most of the time gives me results that are relevant to what I want. Chances are a good majority of people will also answer Google. As far as I know people use 'Google' as a verb, while other search engines, eg. Yahoo, Bing do not get the same treatment.
To be honest, I just took the use of Google for granted and never really thought much about it until I went to Ignite Sydney last week. One of the awesome talks "Everything I know about you" by Michael Kordahi tested to see if our perceptions to the search results (he comapred Bing, Google, Yahoo) would be the same if the branding was removed. The results of preference (and the search terms people looked for) are indeed very interesting - definitely worth watching!
Interesting thing was after the night I went home and gave it a go myself. For simple/basic searches (which were essentially keyword searches) all three search engines were roughly the same for me - but in picking the preferred one I actually rarely picked Google! Though for more complex searches (eg. ones which I just typed in a question) Google was the clear winner. The other two were nowhere close.
Random footnote - I hear some of you may be asking, what is Ignite Sydney? No, it is not an event where pyromaniacs go and set fire to Sydney landmarks. Ignite Sydney is a series of presentations with one very simple idea behind every presentation:
Make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation.
This means no death by powerpoint - yay! and generally very interesting, entertaining and well thought out presentations - double yay! If you don't live in Sydney then don't worry - there are Ignite events all around the world. Have a look here for the full list
Sydney Airport Link Fees – Insane! Abusrd!
As you may have guessed from the title, this post is going to be a rant/complaint about the absurd fees we need to pay to use the Sydney Airport Link.
Firstly, a couple of quick facts:
- Sydney Airport is the busiest Airport in Australia
- It costs $15.00 to travel by train between Central Station and the Domestic Airport (6.7km)
- It costs $15.40 to travel by train between Central Station and the International Airport (8.2km)
- The above mentioned train is the only direct method of transport between Sydney Airport and Sydney CBD (excluding taxis, private coaches)
- This train service is not a dedicated Airport Train and therefore there is no dedicated area/space for luggage
- The only real 'pure' public transport that passes through the Airport is the 400 bus that travels between Burwood and Bondi Junction
Blog migration…
Slightly belated Happy Chinese New Year... and a very belated Happy New Year to all
Hopefully everyone has had an awesome start to 2010 and that new year resolutions are still going strong!
As the subject of this post suggests, I have migrated my blog, from one host to another - simply because the new host is slightly cheaper and offers more! But as with all migrations there is bound to be some things that have been broken 
So, it would be great if the awesome readers of my blog (yes you!) could comment/email me if you notice anything broken.
At the moment I've realised one thing that is broken, and embarrassingly it is my "More link modifier" plugin! Well, it works on the default theme, but doesn't seem to work with the Lightword theme I am using (I swear it worked before the migration, but looking at the code it seems 'impossible' that it would have worked...)
Unfortunately it seems like the WordPress import function doesn't take into account the blogroll nor inform you of what plugins you have installed. So at the moment I've removed blogroll from the sidebar, and trying to remember which plugins I had previously installed and would still need/use.
Update: The not-working more link plugin really annoyed me, so I looked more carefully and indeed with the Lighword theme it is impossible by default for the more link modifier to work! Back when I initially changed the theme I had modified the theme files and forgotten all about it! So now the theme files have been re-modified and all is happy
Musings of a psycho #51
A short musing for the holidays (just because I feel lazy), in fact only one...
Why is the flight attendant call button on the ceiling of the plane?
Flew JetStar few days ago and while reaching up to the ceiling to close the reading light realised that the call button to get the attention of a flight attendant was also there on the ceiling. My understanding is that one of the usages for this call button is when there is possibly some emergency/important matter you need to tell the flight attendant. So is it just me who thinks it is rather silly that this button is up on the ceiling making it rather hard to reach? (It would be quite bad if there was severe turbulence and a kid stands up to try and push this button to get some help...)
Ok, maybe that was a bit too short - but here are two quotes that I've came across in the recent few weeks that I thought are worth sharing:
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."
- Sir Ken Robinson
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
- Albert Einstein
Musings of a psycho #50
It's been a crazy few days and I know Musing #50 is long overdue - sorry! However, now that I am not doing a musing/thought a day I can foresee myself not religiously updating on Sundays any more, rather I will aim to put up a musing roughly once a week. So, without any more random ramblings, here are some random musings…
Don't forget your weaknesses, but pay more attention to your strengths.
This advice came from a work colleague few days ago. As summarised above, although you should not completely ignore your weaknesses your time is probably better spent concentrating and making your strengths stand out even more. My understanding of the reasoning behind this is if you spend a whole tonne of precious time and effort in building up your weaknesses, it will make you better overall, but you won't stand out. Since you have spent the time working on your weakness (and 'neglecting' your strengths) you will be able to do a good job at most tasks but it'll be harder to do a spectacular job at something.
On the other hand, if you concentrate on your strengths and make them even better you'll be an "expert" at particular tasks and you will be able to stand out in that area. So when someone needs someone to do a job in that area, you will come to mind as the person most suitable to get the job done well.
Of course you can't just not work on your weaknesses at all, for example, there are many 'weaknesses' that you can't just ignore completely - eg communication. If communication is not one of your strengths, I believe you should work on it so you can communicate comfortably and effectively; but there is no need to stress too much that you can't deliver speeches as well as the guy on the stage - after all, public speaking may as well be one of his strengths that he is working hard on improving.
Musings of a psycho #49
This week's musings will take a different format! Partly because the previous format took too long and partly because it sometimes felt like I was stretching myself to find a musing for each day. Or maybe I'm just lazy So here are some musings from the 49th week of the year.
Something as simple as "fun" can change people's behaviour for the better.
When I saw "Piano Stairs" on YouTube it made me smile It was great to see that by adding some 'fun' to something ordinary like stairs can change people's behaviour. It was quite interesting to see the range of people that chose to take the stairs over the escalator because the stairs had been converted into a piano - seems like everyone likes a bit of change and fun! If you're wondering who would spend so much effort transforming ordinary stairs into piano stairs, go and take a look at the people behind it - The Fun Theory.
Get feedback on your work - even if it is crap!
As some may be aware, I can be quite obsessed in making sure things are perfect. There is something in me that wants to go over every single detail to make sure nothing is out of place. This is all well and good for small projects/tasks (though I probably still spend too much time perfecting things that most people will not even notice) but when it comes to slightly larger projects this obsessiveness is a curse. So when I read "Version 1 Sucks, But Ship It Anyway" on Coding Horror, although not exactly related to obsessiveness, it still jumped out at me.
One of the reasons for my obsessiveness (I prefer to see it as attention to detail) is most likely because I want to know that I have thought of everything and checked everything. But realistically this is impossible. There is bound to be something I've forgotten, didn't think of or didn't know existed at all. Which brings me back to the article - no matter how much you try to polish something there is bound to be something you left out simply because you didn't know about it.
So it is important to get feedback as soon as possible - obviously you shouldn't ask for feedback on something that is totally hopelessly crap but neither should you wait until it has been fully polished and super shiny. In my opinion, the key is being able to identify when you have something good enough, stop being obsessed and get some feedback.
Here's a nice little poem by Donald Rumsfield about knowns and unknowns
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
Musings of a psycho #48
Another hot week in Sydney and another week closer to the end of 2009!
Sunday, 22 November 2009
#326 - Hot weather makes me feel lazy.
Today was a super hot and humid day in Sydney and I just simply felt like doing nothing at all. The day was indeed a very lazy day, just sat at my desk doing not much at all. In fact halfway through the day I just decided to lie down and sleep, though not much longer afterwards I woke up because it was too hot. Tried googling to see if there was any explanations to why hot weather makes people sleepy or lazy, but unfortunately didn't come up with anything useful other than a random comment on a forum saying "Cold weather makes me sleepy too. Being awake makes me feel sleepy."