Valhalla Island

With Apple’s focus on the stuff that matters it’s...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:56:00 +1000

With Apple’s focus on the stuff that matters it’s surprising to see the very old link pointer cursor change in Mac OS 10.7.3. Stranger still considering the direction towards touch interfaces.

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, is disgustingly obese proof that money can’t...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:51:00 +1000

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, is disgustingly obese proof that money can’t buy beauty. External or otherwise. It boggles my mind and sickens me to think that someone with such vast financial wealth made from literally plundering the land would be so anti-tax.

The Dumbest Idea in the World

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:14:00 +1000

Maximising shareholder value that is. Roger Martin in his book Fixing the Game:

Imagine an NFL coach holding a press conference on Wednesday to announce that he predicts a win by 9 points on Sunday, and that bettors should recognize that the current spread of 6 points is too low. Or picture the team’s quarterback standing up in the postgame press conference and apologizing for having only won by 3 points when the final betting spread was 9 points in his team’s favor. While it’s laughable to imagine coaches or quarterbacks doing so, CEOs are expected to do both of these things.

[…]

If this were the situation in the NFL, then everyone would realize that the “real game” of football had become utterly corrupted by the “expectations game” of gambling.

This is why I’d be bothered about Facebook’s IPO if I had an account there, the focus will be moved from what’s best for you as a customer to what’s best for the shareholder. I don’t even know why Facebook would want to do it, they had $3.5 billion of revenue last year, they don’t need the money and they’d lose control.

Tesla Model S

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:12:00 +1000

Tesla Model S:

I’m definitely not a car person. I’ll go as far to say that cars are inherently flawed and even fuelled by 100% clean energy their prevalence has many negative consequences. But I digress, I wanted to write about the couple of things Tesla did right.

It looks like a regular car. Not that the Prius is a great example of an electric car but I think they really fucked up by making it look so unlike “normal” cars. And not that I think regular cars look or function that well. I think not freaking people out with radically ugly electric cars is a good step towards adoption.
The mileage the 85 kWh battery gets (480km) makes the car usable in the only scenario where cars are truly appropriate: travelling as efficiently as possible to remote places.
They made it regular sized. It can even carry 7 people with a special seat configuration. Like I said a couple of days ago, a tiny car with low range that just carries one person is barely better than walking.
It uses a regular power outlet with the option for a higher powered specialty charger. The Leaf requires a special thing installed by an electrician in your garage making impromptu charges impossible.

I think they’ve done a lot of things right to get it widely adopted.

But I think they’ve gone wrong with the ridiculous number of options. There’s 54 possible combinations of model, wheel and roof. Those are only three of many other decisions you have to make. The possible combinations go into the thousands. $250 for an optional parcel shelf!? Just decide for me whether it’s a good idea, if it is, put it in and charge me for it.

The same goes for the battery capacities. It’s obviously the most expensive thing about the car so removing capacity reduces the cost making it more accessible but it also removes the number one advantage: long range.

While companies like Qantas are willing to screw customers and lose millions of dollars as a tool to...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:36:00 +1000

While companies like Qantas are willing to screw customers and lose millions of dollars as a tool to not pay their employees what they’re worth, Ken Grenda hands out millions of dollars worth of bonuses to his loyal staff.

One bus driver, John, says Ken Grenda has been a great man to work for.

“He is a generous person and a true gentleman,” he told ABC local radio.

The definition of doing things right.

Thousands of parents illegally homeschooling: At a get-together of home schoolers in a suburban...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:50:03 +1000

Thousands of parents illegally homeschooling:

At a get-together of home schoolers in a suburban park in Brisbane, one mother, Cindy, said she was about to start home schooling her son but was afraid of the paperwork involved.

“I’m not planning (on registering) because of the work involved,” she said.

“I’m not very organised and disciplined in that sense so that would be a big thing for me to undertake.”

Wow.

Not The Solution

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +1000

The Segway didn’t spawn a transportation revolution because what it’s trying to replace is walking, the simplest, cheapest, most convenient and most environmentally friendly transport there is. Walking is the preference. If it can be walked people want to walk it.

The same goes for these kinds of tiny electric cars unveiled every six months or so and sold as the “answer to urban stress and pollution”.

A better (i.e. smaller, electricity powered) car is not the solution to transportation and social problems in urban centres which have been designed around the car but don’t need them.

These cars barely carry two people, never luggage and they only have a range of around 100km (which actually means a range of 50km if you want to get home). There’s much better ways to transport a single person that kind of distance with no luggage through a city. They feel like steps towards the future imagined in Wall-E:

We’re so car dependant/absorbed that we can’t even look away from cars as a solution to our car problem. It reminds me of that Henry Ford quote (possibly joke?): “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” There are a lot of problems with cars in cities, just as there were with horses 100 years ago and everyone thinks the solution is a faster horse.

Blake Wexler phones in a Christmas message for the Daniel Kinno...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:19:24 +1000

Blake Wexler phones in a Christmas message for the Daniel Kinno and Rory Scovel episode of The Todd Glass Show.

Not for everyone but I think this is hilarious.

"As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My..."

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:46:09 +1000

“As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?”

- YES!

It seems completely bizarre that Arthur Brisbane has to ask this question but I see this constantly at work. It’s especially prevalent during election campaigns when it’s a constant barrage of reporting on what he said and what she said with zero verification on whether there’s any truth whatsoever in those words.

Via Daring Fireball.

Photo

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:29:35 +1000

How I Manage Personal Finance

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:54:00 +1000

Every transaction I make gets entered into Quicken Essentials with meta data. If it’s an online transaction I do it immediately. If it’s away from the computer I keep the receipt and enter it when I get home.
All recurring transactions including regular bills and my salary are stored in Quicken and fall into view automatically as the date arrives.
Each week or two I login to my bank account or credit card website and reconcile the transactions. Confirming there’s no anomalies between how much money I think I should have and how much I actually have.

There’s a number of advantages to my approach:

At any time, without logging into any websites I know my complete financial situation across all my accounts and cards.
I have descriptive and consistent meta data which if you’ve ever looked back at the cryptic list of transactions in your bank statement you know is valuable.
I can use the meta data as criteria in live reports like how much cash I withdraw at ATMs, spending on alcohol, bike stuff or more boringly, to help me complete my tax requirements.
I always know what my balance is going to be in the near future plus income and minus bills.
“Doing my finances” is never a chore. It takes a few seconds to enter each transaction as they happen and only a few minutes to reconcile each week or so.

I also think there’s a less tangible benefit of “dealing with” every transaction I make. Without looking back through the history I always feel like I’m across where my money is going and even if I’m going through a period of spending a lot, it never feels out of control.

My financial situation is purposefully simple and this may not work for everyone but it works very well for me.

Side Note

Quicken Essentials is a bit rough around the edges. I’d love to switch to Koku but it’s missing scheduled and recurring transactions, an important requirement.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:39:00 +1000

Pearls Before Breakfast:

This is almost 5 years old now but was recently brought to my attention again and I want to talk about it.

Short version of what happened: one of the world’s greatest violinists, playing one of the world’s most intricate pieces of music on one of the world’s most expensive instruments posed as a busker in a subway for an hour and on the whole he was ignored.

I’m partially playing devil’s advocate as I agree with the point they’re trying to make, that people are too preoccupied with their meaningless, mundane, routine existences to experience something truly beautiful, but…

It is not a surprise to me that people unlikely to be fans of classical music (because it’s not very popular in general), by definition on a schedule either to catch a train or get to work, in freezing cold temperatures, in a place designed around moving people through as quickly as possible, in a place with a lot of atmospheric noise aren’t stopping to listen to this guy.

Do the same “experiment” in a park on a weekend with lovely weather and I’m sure you’d gather a decent crowd.

How To Buy Things

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:15:00 +1000

When you see something you want don’t buy it.
Instead add it to a list.
Every few weeks review the list, remove the things you no longer need or want.
If you have the urge to impulse buy something because it’s on special, don’t buy it if it’s not on the list, optionally add it to the list.
If something on the list is on special or has remained on the list after multiple reviews, buy it.

I’ve used this system for a couple of years and it works well. Over time I’ve avoided buying 1000s of dollars worth of stuff that, as time has passed, I’ve realised I don’t need or want.

Anyone can enter whatever they want, they’re just text...

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:32:46 +1000

Anyone can enter whatever they want, they’re just text fields.
This is a website on the internet, drinking age varies between countries.
Why would you have to be drinking age to view a website about alcohol anyway? It’s not like it’ll turn your USB port into a beer tap.

What a waste of time.

Escalators

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:53:00 +1000

The way people behave on escalators fascinates me. When faced with an escalator with minimal obstacles you have two options:

Keep walking. Get double the speed for the equivalent effort.
Stop walking. Go the same speed, or slower for zero effort.

It blows me away to see people walking briskly through a shopping centre only to stop dead on an empty escalator. To choose doing nothing and maintaining speed over making no extra effort and doubling your progress says something greater about a person I think.

Last Place Aversion

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:35:56 +1000

Last Place Aversion:

This has been sitting in my drafts for a few months and now I can’t remember what I wanted to say about it. It’s a sad phenomenon.

Via Daring Fireball

"Whether to expand recurring events into instances and only return single one-off events and..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:25:30 +1000

“Whether to expand recurring events into instances and only return single one-off events and instances of recurring events, but not the underlying recurring events themselves.”

- Google’s developer documentation drives me insane. This is a verbatim quote from their API explorer describing an option for calendar outputs. For a company which maintains so many public APIs and is apparently full of smart people they’re terrible at documentation.

"If the US government responded to the Occupy Wall Street movement by implementing a large policy..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:53:00 +1000

“If the US government responded to the Occupy Wall Street movement by implementing a large policy program that Australia already has – Occupy Wall Street would declare victory and go to the pub!”

- Pollytics in an incredibly well researched and visualised article on just how well Australia is doing despite the general perceived hardship.

Beautifully demonstrates the ridiculousness of the occupy movements in Australia.

New Twitter

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:16:00 +1000

New Twitter:

I’m seeing lots of talk about whether it actually is a simplification, who it’s for, which direction they’re going, what’s been demoted, what’s being emphasised, the confusing iPhone app, how horrible it is and how great it is.

Personally, I interact with Twitter exclusively via the API and third party applications (Tweetbot on iPhone and Twitterrific for Mac) where these issues don’t exist.

Getting Bought

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:10:00 +1000

Preface: I’ve never used Gowalla but apparently it’s a better foursquare (which I also haven’t used and don’t get).

Anyway, they got bought by Facebook just the other day. MG Siegler said:

I’m really happy for the Gowalla team.

This seems to be the vibe whenever one of these small companies gets bought by a big company. I say “vibe” because I avoid actually following this kind of news and only see reaction to it on Twitter.

If you’ve started a small company, working with great people (which I would assume because you’ve hired them), making something great that lots of people enjoy and you’re making money I can’t see how getting bought by a huge company would be anything to be happy about.

But I guess that’s the classic (and ridiculous) problem for these kinds of startups: everything’s great except they’re not making money, they have no plan to make money and that can’t possibly be sustained. I’d imagine Gowalla would have much preferred to find a way to make money themselves. It’s bizarre that people would be happy for and congratulate a company for doing the only alternative to eventual bankruptcy at the expense of all their control and identity.