girtby.net

Over to the right — unless you are using one o’ them fancypants RSS aggree-gators — are the monthly archives for girtby.net, with a count of the number of articles posted for each month. Last month there was just the one and this month isn’t looking too promising either. That’s as good a measure as any that I’ve been, well, preoccupied.

It’s a pretty safe bet that if you see a semi-regular blogger (still not quite ready to label myself like that, but anyway) suddenly go quiet, then they have either had a baby or a new job. And so it is with great pleasure that I can announce that I am the proud parent of … a 5- and a 7-year-old, and also I have a new job!

I like it so far, there’s a lot of c++ coding about which I intend to blog copiously until every last remnant of a regular audience has fled for their lives. Whilst simultaneously, and endlessly, reciting the latest internet meme to jump the shark (eg “FAIL!”). Oh yes.

But not to worry because I promise not to drive you all away just yet - not until I have at returned from a 2 week northern hemisphere (just) vacation. Tomorrow, the family and I are on the next plane out of Sydney, and after seven flying hours we’ll be landing in Phuket. More interestingly we’re also venturing inland to a rather remote part of the country, staying in a villa about which you can read on their excellent website. In short, I’m very much looking forward to it.

Naturally I have some reading matter and some new toys to sustain me for the flight, and I will make a vague, non-committal promise to blog about one of these on my return.

Keep the internet warm for me while I’m gone, won’t you?

One of the main joys of home ownership is the ability to run Ethernet cable throughout the house without asking anyone’s permission. For ages I have wanted to do this, and now I have. Behold.

In lieu of a server room, I have a server shelf. It’s in the laundry/garage area under the house. The gang plate terminates ethernet cables which run to all parts of the house. They are in turn connected by short cables to my trusty WRT54GS.

You may be able to just see a phone line in the centre of the gang plate; it provides connection to the ADSL2 modem. This line is connected through a central splitter to the outside world, providing as-good-as-it-gets ADSL2 throughput (still not great though because I am a long way from the exchange).

Yes, I have used a slightly dodgy double adapter to make room for the stupid wall warts to co-exist. I am, however, totally desensitised to this sort of hackery, because it just so common. The power socket people really need to get together with the wall-wart people. Failing that, there’s definitely a market for 10cm extension cords; anyone know where I can get these, cheap?

Oh yes, I’m writing a blog article about the importance of note taking. That’s right, note taking.

Why? It’s a skill that I have been working hard on recently, and so at meetings I often find myself the only person who is doing it. This article is an attempt to evangelise note taking, a possibly dying art amongst all you young whippersnappers with your fancy tablet PCs and your screencasts and whatnot. Why in my day …

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So with the change of job, I’m eager to keep in touch with all (well, some) of my former colleagues. In the past this has taken the form of sporadic individual emails of decreasing frequency. So, I’m experimenting with the latest craze, social networking sites. Some very early impressions follow.

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Fortunately the reason for my extended absence from this blog is not a tragic one. I’ve just been busy, is all.

Firstly, I got a new job. As with the last job I’m not going to say too much about it, or identify the company. Suffice it to say that I’m doing stuff with compressed video for the broadcast industry, and it’s really interesting. Lots of customers, great technology, some software engineering, err, challenges.

One other thing I can say about the new job is that involves a lot of air travel. But I’m here to claim that my work’s air travel is the least onerous that you could possibly experience and still be leaving the ground on a regular basis. I’m talkin’ 2 hours door-to-door, people. This miracle is brought about because home and work are close to their respective airports at either end. Very close.

After working out how not to bump my head on the door of a Dash 8, I actually prefer flying in these than in Real Planes. It feels more like actual flying. You are closer to the ground, get some great views – even the landing gear, as it touches down – and generally enjoy the experience more.

Anyway if the new job wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I have also been through the experience of selling a house. This would not ordinarily be blog-worthy, except that I wanted to convey the giddy feeling of disbelief that we experienced during the auction. The estate agent did his preparation and we ended up with a huge crowd of people. The price went up steadily until it passed reserve, and then … kept on going. We stood there trying not to look conspicuous as our jaws dropped further and further while the price went higher and higher. Each bid became a new plasma screen or an overseas holiday. In the end we made over $50,000 over the reserve price on our humble 2 bedroom unit. Much rejoicing was had.

Was it a good investment? Probably not. In over 7 years, the price went up 40%. I don’t know what annualised rate of return that works out to be, but probably not more than the share market over the equivalent period. Still, the property market in Sydney has been famously flat for the last 5 years or so, overall not too bad.

Now, to clear that blogging backlog…

Do you have a todo.txt file? Are you like most alpha geeks?

I used to have one. In fact I had lots of them. One for each machine I used regularly.

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If you’re anything like me, you have a voyeuristic fascination with other people’s work spaces. And since you’re probably at least a little bit like me, you might enjoy seeing my work space. Or at least my work space when I’m at home. And not always working.

As an added bonus, this post doubles as a collection of mini-reviews and updates for hardware I’ve bought recently! It’s two posts for the price of one!

Welcome to my Cave.

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I read that the ICANN has yet again had to fend off an attempt to set up a .xxx gTLD.

As a parent I am keenly interested in protecting my children’s actions online and often discuss with my SO how to manage their access when they start to reach the age when they spend more time online. Although I am far more worried about them exposing their own identities, than about being exposed to others, the latter is still a concern. There are certainly sites out there that I cannot now un-see, however much I wish I could. No doubt these sites and others will cause confusion, anxiety, and harm to tender intellects.

Like a lot of parenting, I expect there will be a fair bit of playing by ear. So when the time comes I expect it will involve some combination of: close supervision; logging and blocking proxy servers; whitelisting and blacklisting; an implicit understanding of Bayes’ theorem and the potential for false positives and negatives; some serious conversations and constant reassurance; and lastly acceptance of the fact that I’m ultimately not going to be able to stop a determined and curious teenager from finding what they want online.

Exactly what criteria I use to categorise a given site as unsuitable is still undecided. I expect to outsource to some suitably liberal classification agency of some sort. All I want, at least initially, is to block the worst material from accidental discovery, and log any access to only mildly dodgy stuff.

Anyway I can tell you right now who I wont be outsourcing this stuff to, and that is the government. Either my own government, or the US government, I have no reason to believe they will provide classifications that are compatible with my wishes. The various proposals to set up a .xxx domain also fall into the category of government-based classification, even if it is through an unwilling ICANN.

The arguments against using the gTLDs as a classification scheme are eloquently set out in RFC 3675 and there’s not much more I can add, except to ponder why PICS has languished for so long. A .xxx gTLD would be a juggernaut of laws and regulations, and a magnet for protracted legal disputes. Why can’t we just save ourselves the effort and instead do whatever it takes to get PICS off the ground? Or at least look at the business case?

I don’t know whether the folks from ICM Registry — responsible for the most recent .xxx proposal — included in their submission an assessment of PICS. Given that a technical solution to the problem of site classification is available, one would have to wonder why it is apparently not suitable for ICM Registry? The onus is on them to explain why that technical solution is not appropriate, and this one is.

Because it seems to me that the .xxx domains are simply proposals to solve a small set classification requirements with a specific technical solution, where a different solution to a larger set of requirements already exists. From a systems engineering point of view at least, it makes no sense.

Not that stops folks like ICM Registry who stand to make a ton of money in the short term, registering all those new domains. Sorry guys, looks like you’ll have to try a different sales pitch.

It’s probably a good thing that you don’t see what goes on behind the scenes at Casa Del Girtby. Instead of fully-formed posts (or what passes for such on this site) instead I have lately just been producing mostly unrelated snippets. They don’t deserve a post in their own right, but if I give each of them a bullet point, together perhaps they could form a bloggable mass. Again.

• In topical news, did anyone else think that the response from Sen. Barack Obama to John Howard’s outrageous insult was a little, well, lame? Obama basically said “well maybe he should commit 20,000 more troops”. That would bring Australia’s commitment up to something like 21,400 which is, apparently, above the magic figure which would make Howard’s trash-talk legitimate. Why 20,000? Why not 200,000? Why not 20? Surely Howard was out of line no matter how many troops we had in Iraq. For someone as legendarily lucid and articulate as Obama, this was a most disappointing retort.

• Because I am, apparently, a glutton for atheistic writings, lately I’ve been dabbling in some of the works of Bertrand Russell. Russell was a truly great man with a huge intellect and the ability to express with clarity and reason his views. Although others such as Dawkins have taken over the mantle somewhat, Russell still needs to be heard and read as much as ever. Have a read of some of the material online (courtesy of wikipedia, above). Then try your hand at following along as Mark Dominus explains Russell and Whitehead’s proof that 1 + 1 = 2. Brain-bending stuff.

• Also on atheism, it occurred to me the other day that the mental effort required to move from a state of belief to unbelief must be quite significant. Once you believe in something, it is very difficult to unbelieve it. The effort required is far greater than that required to become a believer in the first place. This realisation has caused me to ask myself: what would it take for me to become religious? The answer is quite a lot of mental contortions. This is a useful measure of the effort that I am expecting of religious people in renouncing their faith. In other words, I would find it extremely difficult to become religious, and should expect the same degree of difficulty for religious people to become atheists. Excuse me while I pat myself on the back for such exemplary tolerance.

• In techy news I have been reading a lot about video compression lately. Specifically MPEG 4 and H.264. This is a fascinating subject, and Richardson’s book is an excellent introduction. I’m impressed by the extremely clever compression techniques employed by H.264 and the fact that it is relatively patent-free (in Baseline Profile anyway). For this reason I would probably suggest that H.264 Baseline be the video codec of choice for archival purposes, although I need to read more. I’m starting to question the conventional wisdom that H.264 requires significant CPU resources for playback, given that the Apple TV can do 1280x720 H.264 at 24fps with nothing more than a 1 GHz Pentium M. Hey, even my 5.5G Video iPod will do 640x480 H.264 at 30fps.

• Updated I almost forgot to mention that I’ve stolen from Typo the JavaScript for displaying “friendly” dates (ie “X days ago”) on each article posted. I’ve also adapted it for each comment, displaying the elapsed time since article publication. Check out the JavaScript if you want to see how it’s done.

That’s it for now, enjoy your week.

So there I am at Linux.conf.au on Tuesday. As with the previous day, there are lots of “MiniConfs” on fairly specialised topics, and I think it’s fair to say that the conference proper didn’t really start until the Wednesday. Nevertheless, there are lots of geeks hanging around, chatting to each other. I look over and there’s a guy who looks a lot like Linus himself.

“Naah”, thinks I. Can’t be him, he would be a keynote speaker or something.

Next day there is a keynote from Andrew Tanenbaum. Conference organiser Jeff Waugh does the warmup and introductions: “Ladies and Gentlemen … Linus Torvalds”.

I have a moment of cognitive dissonance: maybe it’s one of those in-jokes, referring to the infamous flame wars between ast and Linus when Linux was first released. But no, Linus is there to introduce ast, and in doing so demonstrates what nice guys they both are. And what an idiot I am.

That was my most memorable moment from the conference. Read on for some other highlights in no particular order.

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Here is a picture of a slinky that has been turned inside out, or reversed, or … something.

You can see that the circular logo of Questacon is still present, but each of the segments has been reversed.

Frankly, I’m at a bit of a loss to explain it. Well, I can imagine stretching the diameter of the first ring so that it can slide over the outside of the body of the slinky, and then repeating the process so that the entire slinky is turned back on itself. But that would be extremely difficult, and anyway that’s not what I did!

What happened was the slinky mysteriously got itself into a tangle (a 6-year-old may or may not have been involved). I tried to untangle it, fruitlessly, and then noticed that the slinky had been turned inside out in the process. I then cut off the tangled part — which is why the picture contains only part of a logo — and took the photo.

Anyone else care to have a shot at explaining it?

My SO came home this afternoon to a crowd of police outside our house. We’d been broken into. Again.

It happened while both of us were at work. The neighbour from two doors down came home and found a Lexus blocking his garage door. We live in a row of terrace houses with a rear lane entrance into our garages.

The neighbour was honking his horn and not getting any response. He noticed that our garage roller door had been levered open with a car jack. Just then the neighbour from three doors down drove up behind. Neighbour 2 says to neighbour 3 that he thinks we’ve been broken into, and he proceeds to walk around to the front of the house to see what is going on. He rings the cops at the same time.

Meanwhile neighbour 3 sees a man come out of our garage. Neighbour 3 asks him what he’s doing. The man says that he’s helping someone fix a garage door. Neighbour 3 starts to argue with him but the man gets into the Lexus and drives off. No one gets the number plate.

Neighbour 2 waits for over an hour for the police. Then he has to leave on other business. My SO arrives home soon after, to find the police swarming all over. They wouldn’t let her in the house. She rings me.

We eventually find out what happened inside. The burglar had broken into our rear garage and taken a garden tool to lever open our rear sliding doors. He had gone upstairs to our bedroom and rifled through it all, finding nothing, but leaving a mess on the floor.

In my study he really got busy. He had rifled through all of the boxes of papers and books, spilling them all over the floor again and making and even bigger mess.

In the end he got away with nothing. Err, I mean, a huge pile of jewels. Our priceless Picasso. My collection of rare sports cars.

Here’s what he left piled up neatly in the garage:

• My computer, but thankfully not the laptop which I had with me at work;
• An old iPod, which I had just the evening before resuscitated from presumed death;
• A pile of DVDs, although Pride & Prejudice had been specifically left behind;
• A box of iPod accessories; and
• A half-full bottle of orange juice

Thirsty work, robbing people.

Hello, I’m Alastair Rankine.

Well, as revelations go, that’s hardly as exciting as Kiss appearing without makeup for the first time. But I have been expending some effort trying to maintain a degree of anonymity on girtby.net, and so it’s not an easy decision to open the kimono.

I described the original reason for anonymity was to protect myself from inadvertent career limitation: saying something now that I might have cause to regret later. Recently though I’ve come to the realisation that this attitude is too conservative, and that instead of minimising a possible downside to blogging on girtby.net, I have missed out on a potentially large upside.

When a hypothetical future employer googles searches for my (fairly unusual) name on the web, I want them to find some of my offerings and other worthwhile public content. These represent my online resume and are potentially very valuable to my brand.

I could have started afresh with a new blog (and the exhausting search for a new domain name), but this would have meant coming up with new, fresh, offerings to bolster my online reputation. This would be needed if in fact I had already tarnished the credibility of the girtby.net identity. Which is possible, but unlikely in my subjective opinion. A good spray once in a while shouldn’t do anyone any harm.

The other reason for decloaking on girtby.net was that my identity had already leaked anyway. Yes, this post on OddThinking was written by me. Maintaining anonymity is hard.

Henceforth, girtby.net will be the public representation of Alastair Rankine. It will be “officially” focused on mostly serious, but not exclusively technical, topics. Not much change, in other words. I had long ago abandoned the practice of blogging every passing thought or URL or movie recommendation.

If you care about such eminations of inconsequence from me, you’ll need to look at my other blog. Yes, that’s right, I have set up a blog which is a completely separate identity and uses a pseudonym. It’s open to all girtby.net readers, current and future, but you will need to email me to get the URL. The mildly ironic consequence of this is that you will need to decloak (or at least de-lurk) in order to read my new blog. I wish there was another way, but I can’t think of it.

“Everyone should have a project,” says Julieanne Kost in a recent podcast.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of this statement. A lot of the time “project” becomes synonymous with “hobby”, and hence something to not be taken seriously. But projects are important and everyone should have one. That is, a creative outlet that also challenges us.

Projects should help bridge the gap between work and home life. I don’t believe that maintaining a strict separation between the two is a very healthy attitude; the square wave transition every morning at 9am and every evening at 6pm inevitably takes its toll, on both work and home. Projects should help turn this square wave into a sine wave (if you’ll pardon the slighly overextended metaphor).

Projects help us in our work lives by developing our skills and providing motivation. Even when work is going nowhere, it’s comforting to know that a (seemingly) insignificant project is progressing. And even when (hypothetical) we hate our work, projects can very often provide the conduit into a change of job, or even change of career.

I originally started this blog not as a project in itself but as a way of describing some of the projects that I had completed, successfully or not. This of course didn’t last long, and the blog itself has turned into a significant project in its own right.

So I’ve learned a little bit about managing personal projects.

• Involve those around you. Make sure your friends and family are aware of the projects you’re working on and how important they are to you. But at the same time be aware of their needs too. Don’t isolate yourself.

• Consider informing your boss. Depending on the circumstances your boss may need to know about your projects.

• Inspire yourself. When you’re not actively working on a project, listen to others in similar fields. If you’re painting pictures, go to galleries. If you’re playing music, go to gigs. If you’re writing software, read blogs from other developers, go to user group meetings, and so forth.

• If you can’t get in The Zone, at least get in The Place. Thanks Rands for this advice. The important thing is to recognise that “hey I’m just not up to working on my projects right now”, and give yourself the down time.

• Learn to “fallow” projects. Merlin says that projects which are blocked for some reason, should be removed from sight. Excellent advice.

• Know when to quit. This is a tricky one. It takes some self-awareness to know when lack of progress on a project is simply hurting more than it’s helping. Learning to let go is hard. Don’t beat yourself up about it, failure happens to everyone. Sometimes a public declaration of failure is healthy. Also see Merlin again.

Of course there’s more to it than this, please feel free to add your suggestions below.

I'm sure the distribution of ratings in my iTunes music library says something about me.

I've spent some time thinking about how to assign ratings and even writing scripts to report on my progress. And what progress have I to report?

Of 2720 rated songs in my library, exactly 15 are deemed worthy of a perfect 5 stars.

This seems way too stingy, especially when I glance at some other peoples ratings. If not stingy then at least pessimistic.

I mean, look at Amazon or any other site which employs the near-ubiquitous five-star ranking system. Better still, conduct a social research experiment where you look for patterns in the way that people assign ratings to things online. My guess is that 5 stars are pretty common.

But it's nice to know that I'm not a complete freak of nature. On a recent O'Reilly Distributing The Future podcast, a professional photographer explained how he rated his photos. The short version is that he doesn't use 5 stars at all. Nope, according to him, the magical fifth star is reserved for future expansion!

Wow. I'd never thought about that. All those people with 5 stars and nowhere to go from there. What if they need that extra push over the cliff? Where's the iTunes that goes to 6 stars? Where?