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

Firstly, a couple of quick facts:

1. Sydney Airport is the busiest Airport in Australia
2. It costs $15.00 to travel by train between Central Station and the Domestic Airport (6.7km)
3. It costs $15.40 to travel by train between Central Station and the International Airport (8.2km)
4. The above mentioned train is the only direct method of transport between Sydney Airport and Sydney CBD (excluding taxis, private coaches)
5. This train service is not a dedicated Airport Train and therefore there is no dedicated area/space for luggage
6. The only real 'pure' public transport that passes through the Airport is the 400 bus that travels between Burwood and Bondi Junction

Fact #1 is probably not surprising at all - Sydney is Australia's largest city so Sydney Airport being the busiest Airport in Australia is in my opinion expected.

On the other hand Facts #2-#6 may raise a few eyebrows. $15+ to travel from the airport to Sydney CBD on a train that does not accommodate for your luggage? Looking for another form of public transport to the city - none exists. Need somewhere to put your luggage when travelling? Don't think about public transport at all - get a taxi or private coach.

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't sound very inviting at all. Definitely not a very good first impression of Sydney for first time visitors. Though, having lived in Sydney for a few years now, I've come to accept how troublesome and absurd it is to travel to Sydney Airport.

Let's have a look at the cost first. To travel roughly the same distance by train on the Sydney rail network it will cost you $3.60 (Central to Wollstonecraft, 8.34km). Yes, you read correctly $3.60 - a difference of roughly $11.40 or $11.80. The reason is there are four stations along the Airport and East Hills Line (solid green line in above image) - Green Square, Mascot, Domestic Airport, International Airport - that are not owned by the government, instead they are owned by the private company Airport Link Pty Ltd.

So the railway line itself is owned by Sydney's RailCorp, while the stations/gates are owned by a private company, therefore as a commuter you have to pay a $11.80 gate fee to pass through the gates of the Domestic or International stations. If you think the gate fee is rather steep given a $3.60 journey, I whole heartedly agree with you.

This begs the question - why? Why does a private company "randomly" own four stations on a public railway system? Why is the gate fee so ridiculous? Answer: NSW Government. I don't know the full details, but this is my understanding (main source: Wikipedia).

• In 1995, in preparation for 2000 Sydney Olympics, NSW government decided it needed to improve travelling to/from the airport.
• Due to the costs of building the Olympic venues, Sydney government went into a public private partnership. NSW Government will pay, build and operate the line, while the private company (Airport Link) will pay, build and operate the stations.
• As part of this agreement NSW Government gave Airport Link a guarantee on passenger numbers and train reliability.

This all sounds good until you realise that the NSW Government was overly optimistic and over estimated passenger numbers and train reliability. The inability for the NSW Government to correctly estimate these key factors in the agreement led to:

• Sydney government cancelling the existing City to Airport Express bus services (300, 350) that had dedicated luggage space in hope that this would increase the number of passengers using the train.
• The need to pay a station fee - which is determined by Airport Link (I assume they have made it so expensive to try and make up for the lack in numbers).

There is quite a bit more detail to the entire promise of passenger numbers etc, but basically NSW Government stuffed up. In order to try and fix this stuff up, they crippled transport to and from Sydney Airport.

Whilst writing this blog post, I came across this article from ABC News: Sydney Airport slams "absurd" transport links. The news article echoes a similar message to this post, but I would like to point out the end of the article which shocked me when I read it.

"People get horrified when they go to the local railway station and say how much to the airport and they say '$13.'"

But the chief executive of Airport Link, Tim Anderson, has rejected claims that it is too expensive.

"We think that our airport connection fee is comparable with all airport connection fees around Australia which are generally in the range of 14 to 16 dollars," he said.

To Tim Anderson, chief executive of Airport Link:

• Do you not realise that just because "someone else does it" doesn't mean it is the right thing to do?
• Also, other airport connections around Australia are dedicated airport links. They have dedicated luggage areas. They are not normal suburban trains that just stop by the airport. Passengers of these dedicated airport links do not have to fight for a seat with normal commuters.
• Maybe consider lowering the gate fee? It might mean less people will be scared away (or pissed off) and actually use the Airport Link.
• Do you not think that forcing commuters to pay $11.80 to walk through the station and let the gate open for you is absurd?

To NSW Government:

• Please fix up this major stuff up - but don't stuff it up even more!
• Do include some form of 'pure' public transport between Sydney Airport and Sydney CBD. A railway that requires passing through a private station and paying an insane gate fee does not count as public transport. Also, don't forget to include dedicated luggage area!
• The 400 bus service that services the Airport is a great start - but we need more bus services to different parts of Sydney (or at the very minimum to the CBD).
• Fix up the 131500.info website - searching for journeys between Central station and Sydney Airport (Domestic or International) with "Trips with least service charges" selected, returns the Airport Link option. This is not the cheapest option - taking the longer route of 400 bus + another bus/train is approximately half price. Unless the cost to use Airport Link option is reduced to be less than taking the bus, this is providing false and misleading information.

To close off this rant - despite Australia being a first world country, Sydney being Australia's largest city and Sydney Airport being Australia's busiest airport, the current state of public transport to and from Sydney Airport is as follows:

• There is currently no public transport that takes you directly from Sydney Airport to Sydney CBD.
• The only 'pure' public transport available is the 400 bus service that runs between Burwood and Bondi Junction.
• To travel directly by train to Central Station you need to pay a total of $15.00 (Domestic) or $15.40 (International) for a single trip. This consists of a $11.80 gate fee. This train is a normal suburban train, thus it will not have dedicated luggage area, and many seats maybe already occupied by other suburban commuters.

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

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

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.

Small invisible 'surprises' that make usability better

Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome...are all web browsers and all have their good and bad bits (except Internet Explorer which only has bad bits). Firefox has the "Awesome Bar"; Safari is faster in comparison; and Chrome is even faster! Everyone has their own browser they prefer which is expected (though if you are still using Internet Explorer - I recommend you change to another browser, you'll never look back!).

I recently saw this invisible "feature" of Chrome that made me smile and marvel at the intricacies of usability design. As a super short summary - in Chrome when you want to close multiple tabs in succession with the mouse, you close the first tab, and the second tab's close button will land right under your mouse pointer ready for you to click again and close. While in Safari (and Firefox too) depending on which tab you close the next tab's close button may not be right under you mouse - thus requiring you to move your mouse to close the next tab. It's only something small, but it shows that Google has thought about it. Another 'plus' is it works so well you generally don't realise unless you are looking specifically for it - a true sign of something that is well designed in my opinion.

Despite the usability in Chrome being evidently thought out very well, I'm still sticking with Firefox for now - I can't live without my multi touch gestures, add-ons and the awesome bar! The super fast Chrome speed is something I'm hoping for but will have to live without for now.

Mini portable notebooks - www.pocketmod.com

A friend introduced me to this awesome discovery she made some time ago - make a simple notebook out of a single sheet of paper. No glue, just some folding and a cut in the paper! With the knowledge of how to fold a "PocketMod" you can quickly create a small notebook to jot your ideas/to-do list down. I've found that even though the area you can write in is technically the same (if not less) as the unfolded piece of paper, because it is now smaller and more notebook-like it is easier to carry around, write in and keep intact. Being able to turn a "scrap piece of paper" into a mini notebook is definitely useful.

Cool procrastination video

Not so much of a musing, but I am sure we all procrastinate. So here's a short video (~4min) about Procrastination for those who are in a procrastinating mood

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.

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."

Monday, 23 November 2009

#327 - Tackle things one at a time as they come - don't spread yourself out too thin!

Everyone of us have the same amount of time - 24 hours in a day and it is really up to us how we use these precious 24 hours. Many of us have heaps of things that we want to do, a huge "to do" list that seems to only ever get longer and longer, unfortunately with only 24 hours it isn't always possible to accomplish everything that we want to do. Discussing this with a friend, we came to the conclusion that the best way is to concentrate on a few things and tackle them as they come, rather than spreading yourself out, having a finger in everything and only getting bits and pieces of everything done. We felt it was more important to get a few things done well rather than have lots of things partially done. In fact, this is quite related to one of my earlier musings (Thursday, 29 October) - focus is important in achieving a goal.

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

#328 - USB 3.0 will be here...soon!

Today was the first time I heard about USB 3.0 when I read this article: "Where's USB 3.0?" Maybe I'm slow, but a quick skim of Wikipedia reveals that USB 3.0 was first demonstrated in September 2007, the standard/specifications released in November 2008 and the originally estimated public release was sometime this year.

Reading about USB 3.0 makes me want it right now! It is said to be approximately 10 times faster than USB 2.0 (max transfer rate of 3.2Gbits/s compared to 480Mbits/s) - that is like transferring 700mb (amount of data that fits on a CD) in 1 second! In addition, USB 3.0 will be able to simultaneously send and receive data (current USB devices can only do one at a time).

Unfortunately the good news sort of ends there. If you plug the new USB 3.0 device into a normal USB 2.0 port it will transfer at the USB 2.0 speed. Also, as with many 'deadlines' the public release has been delayed to sometime next year, so still sometime before we get devices using USB 3.0 and computers with USB 3.0.

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

#329 - Be optimistic and don't say something you'll regret.

Watched the TED talk Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion today and despite probably missing his focus on classical music, I still felt it was quite good (he is a great speaker). The two messages that I took from his talk were right at the start and at the end.

The first one was: be optimistic. Benjamin tells of two shoes salesman who went to Africa and saw that the natives were all barefoot. One of them reported "Situation hopeless. They don't wear shoes." The other reported "Glorious opportunity. They don't have any shoes yet." Exact same situation, yet so very different responses. I try to be as optimistic as possible, so I would hope that I can be like the second salesman and have a bright view on any situation.

Towards the end of the talk, Benjamin tells a story about a girl who survived Auschwitz. Unfortunately one of the last conversation with her younger brother ended with her berating him and calling him 'stupid'. So since surviving Auschwitz she made a promise to herself: "I walked out of Auschwitz into life and I made a vow. And the vow was, I will never say anything that couldn't stand as the last thing I ever say." Although this is probably something that is going to be very hard to achieve, I think it is something that we can all aim to do - don't say anything that we'll regret.

Thursday, 26 November 2009

#330 - TEDxSydney

Being a big fan of TED (awesome talks - many of them are must sees) the idea of having TED in Sydney sounds great. Although I don't think this is strictly a TED event per se (the 'x' means "Independently organised TED event"), I hope the talks will be just as great. Since TEDxSydney will be held in Sydney, I would imagine it will have a more local focus with more speakers coming from Australia - it'll be interesting to see what talks come as a result of TEDxSydney!

Friday, 27 November 2009

#331 - Be grateful - it's good for you

As kids I'm sure we've all be told to be grateful for what we have and thank people who help us etc. So it was quite interesting to read this article Does "counting your blessings" really help? It explains a 10 week experiment where three groups of participants, one group was told to list five things they were grateful for, the other five things they found a nuisance and the other five to just list events during the week. The group that listed five things they were grateful for were in general more positive and also healthier. Other studies have shown that gratitude is not only related to feelings of happiness, hope etc but it might actually cause you to be happier!

Saturday, 28 November 2009

#332 - WordPress doesn't have tables!

The fact that there is no simple way to insert tables in WordPress came as a big surprise to me when I started writing the "Firefox Multitouch Gestures" post. Googling about it only led me to various WordPress plugins for adding tables, though none of them seemed to do what I wanted to do - a simple table! I had always assumed that being a fairly mature blogging platform, WordPress will support simple tables 'out of the box' by unfortunately this is not the case. So I resorted to the HTML mode and manually entering table tags for the table. As expected, switching between HTML and WYSIWYG mode in the post editor screwed up the HTML, but luckily it wasn't that bad. The table works, but it appears slightly malformed (there is no right border) - will do for now I suppose.

Having said that I spend a good chunk of my time on Firefox while using my Mac and there are some very useful multitouch gestures you can add! There are a couple of other tutorials out there already, but for some reason the ones I've found only talk about the twist left/right to move to the previous/next tab. Being curious me, I went exploring and found out how to get some more equally helpful gestures working!

Here is a screenshot of my about:config page.

Firefox Multitouch Gestures

Adding/modifying these values is very simple - here is a quick tutorial:

1. Open firefox and enter about:config in the URL bar
2. Filter the list of gestures by entering: gesture into the filter (optional by recommended)
3. Modifying a value:
   • Double click on an existing preference name (eg: browser.gesture.twistleft)
   • Enter a value (eg. Browser:PrevTab)
4. Adding a value:
   • Right click somewhere in the window (probably best on empty space)
   • Select New->String
   • Enter a preference name (eg: browser.gesture.swipe.down.alt)
   • Enter a value (eg. History:UndoCloseTab)
   • Note: You will have to refresh the filter for your new custom value to appear.
5. Close the 'about:config' tab - and you're done!

You might want to play around with it to find out what you feel is most useful for your browsing habits, but these are the ones that I like the best/use the most:

The zooms are also quite cool but they are there by default so it should work without you having to do anything. Hint: hold down shift and zoom in/out and it'll reset the magnification to the default.

Once you get used to your gestures you'll wonder how you lived without them! Be interested to hear what other gestures you guys have set up

Sunday, 15 November 2009

#319 - Two things: Fast decision making can be critical at times and people can sometimes think very irrationally...

I was standing at the train station today waiting for the train and looking at a group of three people who were just talking to each other. Suddenly one of them accidentally drops their phone (an old Nokia 3315), all three look down at the phone, then one of them stepped forward to pick the phone up. Except when he stepped forward he kicked the phone down onto the train tracks. Now all three were staring at the train tracks. At the same time the announcement overhead starts "The train arriving at platform three...", the group looks to their right and indeed a train is coming.

So what do they do? One of them is just standing there seemingly still deciding whether he should go and grab the phone or not; the other jumps down to grab the phone while the other is yelling "leave the phone!". Luckily the guy that jumped down to grab the phone jumped back up before the train passed - he had probably only 1 or 2 seconds to spare. The fast decision made by the guy that jumped down meant that he was able to get the phone and be safe (had he hesitated he would not have made it in time), but on the other hand, I feel that it was a rather silly decision to make - risk your life for a phone.

Monday, 16 November 2009

#320 - Yann Tiersen's  Comptine d'un autre été: L'après midi is lovely song.

My sister introduced me to "Comptine d'un autre été: L'après-midi", a piano piece composed by Yann Tiersen and I feel it is a very nice song. If you feel like you've heard the song before it might be from the movie: Amélie. Although the YouTube movie clip isn't actually related to the movie, it is a nice (but sad) clip to watch. Will be looking forward to learning to play this song when I get my hands on a piano!

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

#321 - Message to Oracle: Empty string is not the same as null.

This is just a rant as a result of a 'bug' that needs fixing from work. For those of you who are non-programmers, 'null' in programming is quite literally 'nothingness'. While 'empty string' is a string that has zero characters to represent nothing (Strings are just a series of characters). Null is the absence of a value. Empty string is something to represent nothing. This probably isn't the best explanation, so it might not make much sense as to why there is such a distinction to represent "nothing" ... but take my word for it there is.

So this brings me to my rant of the day - Oracle databases silently converts any empty string values into null. So if you try to store an empty string into Oracle it will magically be stored as null. This causes all sorts of problems when you take the value out from the Oracle database and try to use it, since it will give you null when you are expecting empty string (all other databases will return empty string).

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

#322 - Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right

As most people know our brain has two halves - left and right. The biggest difference between the two halves is how it processes what we see. The left brain takes a more 'bottom up' approach - looks at all the small details and builds a bigger picture. Whereas the right side is more 'top down' - looks at the big picture and slowly breaks things down into details.

Obviously we need both halves of our brains to work, but generally we all have a dominant half which effects the way we think and perceive the world. I used to feel that the more creative of us were right brain dominant and thus it was in their nature to be more creative. However, this article brings up a very good point - left brain dominant people are just creative in a different way compared to right brained people and depending on your brain dominance you should play to your dominant brain's strength. I'll be giving that a go and trying some slightly more orderly creativeness

Thursday, 19 November 2009

#323 - Don't be afraid to ask for help when you're in trouble.

Today was a rather slow day at work because I was attempting to figure out something I knew very little about. When first tackling the problem it felt like there was a possibly I could get it working, but then as the hours passed by it became clearer to me that I was just going around in circles I could have (and should have) at that point asked people around me for help since I knew they would know much better than me, yet me being stupid I didn't. Why? As stupid as it sounds, it was because I didn't want to feel stupid asking a potentially stupid question. But as the day drew to a close and not having progressed much, I realised my stupid mistake and felt very stupid.

So, the lesson of the day? Ask for help when you feel like you need it (do give it a good try first, don't just ask for help before giving it some thought), because it may or may not be a stupid question, but if you don't ask for help at the end you will most likely eventually have to ask for help and you will feel stupid for not asking for help!

Friday, 20 November 2009

#324 - Google releases the Chromium OS open source project.

Sometime ago there was talk about Google releasing Chrome OS and today that exact project has been open-sourced! The main idea behind Chrome OS is that for most of us, a good majority of what we do on a computer these days is using the Internet. We boot up our computer, and chances are we open the web browser, check our email, the news, forums etc. So the smart people at Google thought, well if we are hardly using any of the desktop applications and all we really want is to surf the Internet, why not cut out all the wasted time loading desktop applications that we rarely use? As a result, they came up with Chrome OS. It seems like a very interesting idea to me and now that it is available for poking around, might just install it on my old laptop and see how it goes ps. Is it just me or does it feel like Google will take over the world?

Saturday, 21 November 2009

#325 - Writing emails in a language you are unfamiliar with is a long and painful process.

It's no secret that I'm not that great with written Chinese, in fact I'm quite bad at it. Today I tried writing an email to my parents in Chinese and it was really really hard! In the past, I would enter Chinese using 'bopomofo' (a phonetic way of entering Chinese) which was slow since I didn't know which keys were where; but do-able since I know how to speak Chinese, so all I had to do was enter the sound and pick the correct character.

However, this time I was trying to practice my written Chinese so I was using the awesome Chinese input method in Snow Leopard - you quite literally draw the character in. After a couple of characters, I realised how much I had forgotten - even the most basic of characters I had no clue how to write! I ended up going to a English-Chinese dictionary and looking it up. The entire email of approximately 3 sentences took me at least 30min!

Sunday, 8 November 2009

#312 - There is actually a ISO standard (ISO 8601) that covers the "representation of dates and times"

In my attempt to give my weekly musings a bit more structure, I looked up what day and week of the year we were in. The day of the year was simple enough, but the week was actually more complicated that I thought it was! I always assumed that 1st January will be Week 1..but then thinking about it, if 1st January is a Friday, will it still be Week 1? According to ISO 8601, if 1st January is a Friday, Saturday or Sunday it is actually Week 52 or Week 53 of the previous year (ISO 8601 week starts on Monday). To confuse things even further, the system followed by USA is different to ISO 8601 - weeks start Monday, and there are partial weeks at the start/end of the year. If you're wondering, 09/11/2009 is Week 46 and the reason I start on Sundays for these posts is so I can have Sunday to write them up, and it's no fun to come up with the musing for the day and write about it on the same day.

Monday, 9 November 2009

#313 - Magic is awesome! But figuring out how it is done is tricky.

Had been playing around with Ruby on Rails for the past few nights (getting it to work with PostgreSQL is amazingly tricky!), but when I finally got it working I was able to continue with the very basic online getting started tutorial. A couple of commands later I had a "working" web-app - create/update/delete posts and comments was all working. It was great to see it working, but unfortunately I had close to no clue as to how it was all working thanks to all the rails magic. My initial quick attempt (it was like 2am) at poking around to see how everything worked was futile - I just confused myself even more So as much as I like all the awesome magic that makes things "just work", I think understanding and finding out how everything clicks together is important too. (Of course, this applies to 'normal' magic too - watching them is fun, but working out how they work can be challenging, but probably just as rewarding)

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

#314 - An item that is expensive doesn't necessarily mean that it is of higher quality - do your research!

A couple of weeks ago, read "9 Ways Marketing Weasels Will Try to Manipulate You" on Coding Horror, and would say it is definitely worth reading. The 9 points listed are all quite good and I have to admit have been victim of most, if not all of them. Reading/knowing these 9 points will probably not make you immune to sneaky marketing techniques, but hopefully it'll make you more aware when you are deciding what to buy. Though, if you do end up buying something for a bit more than you should've paid, don't worry - a random post I read ages ago (will try to find it) said that you'll grow to like what you own and think it is the best

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

#315 - Even something boring like a business card can be made awesome with some creativity.

To a good majority of people, business cards are probably quite boring - a rectangular piece of cardboard with the contact details and logo of the company. They're all about the same, with some variation in the colours/logo/names, but it is probably hard for any particular one to stand out. Of course there is nothing wrong about standard business cards, but even something as simple as business cards can be made to be simply amazing with some thought and creativity - 100 (Really) Creative Business Cards. In my opinion, some of them are probably a bit overdone, but there are plenty that are just simply awesome - the one I like most is the tooth decay/dentist one. Looking at all the business cards made me want to think outside of the box and take something old and boring and give it a twist.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

#316 - "...the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." -Apple

Looking into the Evolution of Apple Ads lead me to one of their earlier campaigns "Think Different". It was quite interesting to see how much has changed from when computers first came out and comparing it to what we have now. Though the one thing that stood out for me was the quote above in one of the ads. To me the quote seems to be challenging people to voice what they are thinking without worrying if other people will think they are crazy and/or stupid (something that I find hard to do myself). The other reason I like it is if someone calls you "crazy" you can point them towards this quote

Friday, 13 November 2009

#317 - Window blinds are opened during take off and landing so that passengers on the plane can be aware of the outside surroundings and alert the crew if anything seems amiss.

Was on a plane tonight and the usual take off/landing notice of "please open your window blinds" caused me to think...why? A quick google gave me a reasonable answer which makes sense: with the window blinds open, the passengers can see outside and alert the crew if needed. To be honest, I never thought of it that way - always thought it was something to do with some technical reason such as cabin pressure. As the idiom says: many hands make light work! Well, in this case, many eyes make flying safer!

Saturday, 14 November 2009

#318 - Listening to 'live' music and playing music sounds different (in a better way) to listening to music from the computer/stereo etc.

Without thinking much, it might be easy to think that listening to music from CDs etc would sound better then listening to someone play since the recorded CD is probably a professional playing and recorded in a specialised studio with all the acoustics tuned to perfection. However, I have always found that listening to someone play (especially someone you know) almost always sounds better! They may make mistakes, but somehow the overall feel of the music just feels better. Similarly, playing a song yourself is very rewarding - despite all the mistakes when practising, when you're finally able to part of the song it feels great! Note: I often label myself tone-deaf, so you might have to take this point with a grain of salt, though it'll be interesting to see what other people think.