The old man
About 7 months ago I took a new job in Pyrmont which means that I ride my bike through Mosman every day.
After a few weeks of riding in, I started noticing an old man with a cap and walking stick standing or sitting in a bus shelter in Mosman in the afternoons. He was there almost everyday and after a while he started watching me ride past. The thing was, he wasn't watching my bike, he was looking at me. Immediately I thought 'sour old bastard glaring at us young motorbike riders' and I started glaring back at him (almost impossible to see beneath my helmet and sunglasses.)
A few weeks more went past and one day in an uncharacteristically good mood (doesn't occur often when battling Sydney traffic), I nodded at him. He nodded back. Holy crap, he wasn't glaring at me, he was just watching me. The next day, I nodded. He nodded back.
So this went on quite regularly. One week he wasn't there and I remember saying to Bec "Oh man, I hope he's ok". But he returned after a few days and we continued where we'd left off.
Another few weeks went by like this until about 3 weeks ago when he would start taking his hand out of his pocket to wave at me. So, I have started waving at him now as I go past. I try to watch other riders who go past too to see if they too say 'gday' as they make their daily commute. None have.
So yesterday we progressed again. I stopped at traffic lights about 30 metres from where he was and he started hurrying towards me. I started freaking out! What does he want? He got pretty close before the lights went green.
So, on reflection last night, I started thinking .. What if I have offered this old man something that I can't deliver? What if he wants a relationship with me? What if he only goes to the bus stop to wait for me every day? This became a nice, friendly 'hello' but now I'm scared of what I may have done inadvertently.
Either way, why should I be scared? What is there to be scared of? This is how I want the world to be, more smiles and waves and less frowns and growls. But now I don't know how to handle it. I have thought before about stopping and taking him for a coffee, but now I don't know.
Ergh, what an odd thing to be concerned about.
That damn insulation scheme!
For the non Aussie readers (heh, see how I used a plural?) our Government (namely Peter Garret) introduced a scheme last year to pay for people's houses to be insulated.
This had multiple benefits;
- People weren't cold... Or hot. So less Air Con and Heating used.
- Industry stimulus. More work
- Made the government look good
This also had a few drawbacks;
- Shonky traders
- Poorly trained workers
Now, one of the options for insulation is foil. Basically, this giant roll of foil sheeting gets rolled out over your ceiling in the roof cavity. Its the cheapest form of insulation and this worked well for the shonky traders as it meant they could install cheap crap and bill the government for whatever they wanted.
Now, my family got the insulation from the government. We opted for green insulation which is biodegradable and non flammable. We got this because we were asked what kind of insulation we wanted. We had a nice guy to deal with. Unfortunately the people who didn't care what insulation they got and had not-so-nice guys to deal with were given the foil insulation.
The government was advised this and they took actions towards training and education of the installers but apparently it was not enough. If you lay foil over a live electrical wire (supplying a light, for instance) and then staple through the live wire, the foil becomes a conductor and anything touching it (say, an untrained teenage installers arm) becomes live. Or, electrocuted.
4 people died, a few of them were teenagers within this insulation scheme's lifetime. A few houses have also since burned down.
Now, the opposition and the unions and multiple other people, associations and pets, have called for Peter Garrets resignation over the 'foiled' scheme as he knew about the risks and was advised against the scheme and several other reasons. Apparently its all his fault.
I want to know, given the inflated industry at the time, how many (trained or not) people have died as a result of foil insulation in the past, prior to the scheme? The media doesn't report on these figures. Also, I want to know, how many of these traders would opt to use the cheapest insulation when they were trying to sell their products? What tradie would say 'nah, don't use the expensive, heavily marked up product, go with the cheapie that I don't make as much money on' ? Yeah not many I reckon. So, likely, prior to the scheme, less foil was used and fewer untrained installers died installing the stuff.
With all this in mind, how can anybody with any brains conclude that the deaths are the sole responsibility of our Environment Minister, Peter Garret? I simple cannot comprehend why he needs to take the fall for greedy tradies in a bloated industry? These were kids that died, not union members or life long industry people, these were 15 - 22 year old kids. Kids preyed on by insulation folk to be paid a minimum wage to do a mediocre job so the boss can bill the government while drinking his VB (beer) beside his pool.
What a joke. What an absolute sham. As usual, I blame the media as much as anybody else. They created so much unnecessary hype from this bullshit.
Please also read John Watson's article 'Insulation fire risk was worse before rebate'.
Nothing to be proud of
Tomorrow is Invasion Day.
In August 1770, Captain James Cook discovered Australia and claimed in 'No Mans Land,' dispite the existence of the indiginous people, the Aboriginals.
On the 26th of January 1788, Governor Arthur Philip arrived leading the First Fleet and 'settled' Australia.
Now, at this stage, the white settlers would have you believe that they just arrived and set up and we became an amazing country, just like that.
In actual fact, the 26th of January was the start of hundreds of years of oppression, mis treatment, murder, stolen babies, stolen land and more. Hence the title 'Invasion Day' and not 'Australia Day'.
In Australia, at any given time, you will see cars driving around sporting an Australian flag, or the Southern Cross somewhere on it... Either in the form of flags, or a sticker. Guys walk around topless with their Southern Cross tattoo's on their torsos or arms or where ever.
The level of patriotism in this country is super high, in fact as high as I have ever seen. I haven't seen people do this in other countries (apart from the states.) What on earth do we have to be proud of? I see nothing at all. We live on stolen ground with a tainted history. We do nothing special as a country. Ever.
As a side note, if I was not born in this country but were now living here, I would be offended by the flags on all the cars and feel as though this country could never be shared with people not born here. It sends a very strong 'this is MY country' message that cannot be ignored.
Why do people feel so strongly about the country they live in? Its a block of land in the middle of the ocean. You're not saying 'Yay Australia,' you're saying 'Yay our oppressive and overly aggressive governments.'
I love my rugby team. The Wallabys are just my team, I read about them in the off-season and I dont miss a game in the on-season. Its the only aspect of 'Australia' that I like, as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I am talking of Australian representatives, idols that demand respect. Not individuals, businesses, etc.
I am semi ranting again in this post. I am just cranky at people feeling proud of this country and what it has 'achieved.' Also, I used the Aboriginal flag in this post as I refuse to use the Australian flag. Ever.
Thirty.
About three weeks ago, I turned 30. It was a hard milestone for me, I had hoped to achieve more in my life than I have.
It arrived quickly, suspiciously quickly. I wasn't entirely convinced that 3 decades had indeed passed since I was born... But alas, it was correct and I enjoyed a few beers and some bloody red meat with friends and family at my house. The way everybody should see in 30.
I am my own biggest critic. I give myself a hard time for everything, I seriously cannot be happy with myself, so when I realised that I had made a lot of plans that I had wanted to have done by this age and that none of them had been accomplished, I got really down on myself. I wont go into what they are, mainly because they'll seem silly and people will say "but what about all these other things you've done .... " and its not for other people to comment on.
A few other things struck me when I turned 30...
- Its been 11 1/2 years since I have seen my mum. She passed in 1998 after battling cancer for 12 years.
- Its been 12 years since I had the accident. I lost three fingers on my right hand and spent a lot of time in hospital having a lot of different procedures that still make me feel like a scar-covered freak.
- Its been 13 years since I met my beautiful wife and the backbone of my life. Yes, I was 17, we were only together 8 months before my accident and 13 months before my mum died. She is my everything (well, her and Abbey.)
- Its been 19 years since my parents split. This is a big one, I couldn't believe it had been that long.
While I may occasionally be guilty of wallowing in my own misfortune while having a glass of wine and listening to nostalgia provoking music, I am not one to want or tolerate peoples pity of me. Others in the world are more deserving of that and I don't write posts like this in an attempt to go 'fishing' for comments. I write them because I feel better when I put my feelings into words.
I dont feel thirty. I sometimes hear my voice and think I sound like a 13 year old. I don't feel like I should be old enough for a mortgage, children, married life.... Its a hard feeling to describe. I'm not saying 30 is old, I'm saying I don't feel 30... Or old... whatever.
I'm a seriously lucky guy, I have a beautiful healthy family, I live in a great city within an even greater country. I am the ultimate optimist, I hate negativity, the glass is *always* half full and I sometimes fear I haven't entirely grasped the situation when I am positively moving forward while others seem to be going mad in their stress.
I created an email address for Abbey the other day so I can email her my thoughts and feelings (yes, I know she is 2) and I will hand over the login details for her when she is 16. I tried to keep a book for her, but I never had it on me when I had something to add into it. I also started a new site just for her... AbbeySays.com - somewhere for me to log her amazing adventure through speech.
Buenos Noches friends, I hope you'll be here when I post about my 40th.
Stupid Usability FAIL!
Ok, I know I have been neglecting this blog for a long time. Thats because most of my technical rantings have moved to Fliquid Studios. But, I needed to share one of the most ridiculous usability failures I have ever experienced.
Today I was searching for a simple tank volume calculator to work out how many US Gallons my fish tank is (179 for those interested), so I made a quick search on Google and then clicked on the second result. Well, the page loaded and then a javascript alert popped up saying "The Lightnin Tank Volume Calculator currently supports Netscape Navigator 6 and Internet Explorer 5." which wasn't too bad but then by clicking yes, sent me back to my Google results! So, basically they are saying that because I don't use IE5 (released in 1999!!!) or Netscape 6 (released 2002) and that Firefox only accounts for 20% of the browsing market share, I cannot view the page. Of course, I could disable javascript but why? If they don't want me on their site then that's up to them, but I can't see how they still have the 2nd spot in Google with this stupid approach to web development.
</rant>
Save the net!
Terrorism for sale
Almost an hour ago (or maybe more) one of the worlds most popular blogs, mashable, posted about Google Ads for Terrorism. Basically, Googles automated ad server, which picks up on keywords and displays ads based on those words, seems to advertise a lot of bad stuff.
eBay had this problem for a long time. A Google search for 'live slaves' would bring up eBay ads for 'Cheap Live Slaves!'. Fortunately, they have now been removed and the only ads for 'Live Slaves' now are for women. Phew.
Anyway, so I was thinking to myself, that if one of the worlds largest, most popular blogs posts about something that is very offensive to a lot of people and being perpetrated by the worlds largest and most respected internet behemoth, they are likely to fix it quick smart, right? Wrong. The thing is, this has been happening for a while A quick search on Google reveals hundreds of thousands of results. Interestingly, the first link I clicked on that criticised Google was apparently a malware site.
I continued to the site anyway despite the multiple full page warnings. There were a bunch of great examples of this approach to automated ad campaigns;
I thought I'd try this out for myself. So I went to nytimes.com and did a search for 'terrorism'. Low and behold, look at the ads Google decided to give me;
Surely, in this extreme technological period. The worlds largest online company can come up with an algorithm that would stop this from happening. I personally, having never been directly affected by terrorism, dont find it very offensive, more surprising. Still, I find it very odd.
Greenpeace activists let off after 35k damage to power plant
A judge has let a bunch of Greenpeace activists off the hook after they did 35,000 pounds damage to a coal plant. In their defence, they stated that the plant will do much more damage than that in the future and were all found not guilty.
The common grep –exclude problem
grep is a file content searching tool for Linux. It is loved by programmers for its ease of use and swift search results (with customisable output). For example, if you forgot where you left your debug code, you can quickly display a list of the files that contain the code like so;
grep -ril 'var_dump' *
But, the problem with grep is that it is not possible to limit the subdirectories it searches within based on a pattern. A lot of people misunderstand the "-exclude" option, thinking that they can stop grep from returning results from SVN directories using it like so;
grep -ril --exclude=".svn/*" 'var_dump' *
Little do they realise that exclude is for file names only and grep has no functionality for restricting search based on directory names. grep can invert the found rows and only show the non-matching lines using the '-v' parameter and can remove the .svn directories but it is very slow;
grep -ril "'var_dump' * | grep -v svn
So, in comes ack. ack is much faster than grep (it uses perl regular expressions) and searches recursively and ignores revision control subdirectories (.svn) by default. Also, it displays the found code in a much easier to read format (if you opt to display the lines as opposed to just the file names);
To make things easier, ack is available in a lot of repo's for different Linux distributions. I was able to get ack this easily;
sudo apt-get install ack
Done. Its also available as a perl script incase you cannot install it due to dictator sys admins (you know the type.).
If you code and use grep for your line-level searching, do yourself a favour and get ack.
ER Diagrams from SQL files
A lot of people these days use graphical clients for creating their database schema's and therefor start with the Entity Relationship diagram and then have it generate the SQL for them. I prefer to write SQL directly as I seem to have an ongoing misunderstanding with most graphical clients but then I would need to somehow create an ER diagram for the SQL I wrote and this meant I'd double up on work a little bit. Today while searching for another application to do just what I want (and not cost me a cent) I found a post about something that will be extremely handy.
SQL Fairy is an ER Diagram creator for Mysql and other databases but uses the raw SQL files and includes relationships (like foreign keys etc).
Its not perfect by any means, but its easy and gives a great representation of the database relationships. The lines representing relationships actually go over the tables which is a bugger and as it outputs directly to an image, you cant edit it. But, for a quick and easy ER, its bloody good.
As noted in the post I found this little gem at, its super simple to install and use, particularly if you are using Linux. I am on Kubuntu (for the record, my distro of choice is Fedora) and installed it as easy as this;
sudo apt-get install sqlfairy
Then, to generate the diagram was as easy as this;
sqlt-diagram -d=MySQL -o=sample_schema.png schema.sql --color
Unfortunately, it did fall over when my schema contained a SOURCE within the SQL, but apart from that it was quick and simple enough for me.
Now, if I can find an app that does the same thing but allows me to edit my ER first and give me multiple saving options (XML, SQL, etc) then I'd be extremely happy.
sqlt Man page
sqlt-diagram Man page
EDIT: About a year ago, MySQL released an application named 'Workbench' for this very purpose. An ER diagram program with reverse engineering capabilities from .sql files. The application was used by me on Windows for a while before a Linux friendly version was released. But, when Sun bought MySQL earlier this year, they made most of the MySQL applications commercial and were charging for licenses. Thats why Workbench was not mentioned above.
I am pleased to announce that it appears Workbench is free for download again. More information on Workbench can be obtained at its website.
This is the same schema as the above diagram done in Workbench using reverse engineering from an SQL file.
